2019-06-04-rounding-to-zero.md 3.3 KB
layout: post title: Rounding to zero in human subjects date: 2019-06-04 16:52:43
categories: misc
Operating exact "real" (or at least computable) numbers is hard, even for exact machines. For humans rational and big integer numbers already present a problem. Perhaps most noticeable is this when they encounter "small" numbers "around zero".
What they tend to do in this case is commonly known as "rounding" and rounding towards zero is, of course, unforgivable when dealing with multiplication and inversion (with addition and negation it's not as important), but the human mind seems to much prefer additive operations and think low of something as complicated as multiplication.
This rounding error is not merely a computational issue. In fact, it seems to be at least one of the cases for certain philosophical systems, which author of this post is not very happy about. Lets see how that may be happening.
First of all, we must of course assume world of big numbers, but human world have been that for quite a while, and the few communication and transportation revolutions we've seen in the last centuries make this even more obvious, even for people who would otherwise ignore the question altogether. These days it is hard to be unaware of existence of billions other humans, and the small brain that human posses can hardly imagine even a thousand. But of course, to people who cared to think about the world, even lower numbers in previous centuries would still be high enough.
High enough for what exactly, one might ask? For example, to compare oneself (or, perhaps, any single human) to this mass called "humanity". If you divide one by a billion, you get.. one billionth, of course. But when you round this number to zero, you come to conclusion that one single human has zero significance. Funny contradiction arises when you then multiply it by billion back: you suddenly get zero. 1 = 0. A good starting point to begin doubting logic and start believing in something different, which can make it all come to terms.
In particular, one possible idea is to say that there's some "higher force" which is present in human masses, despite utter lack of its parts in any one human in particular. And wasn't that, in a way, a prelude to the catastrophes of XX century?..
But as i mentioned earlier, this rounding error does not affect philosophy only. Very mundane everyday fatalism might be explained by it. One person is zero, their actions are insignificant, irrelevant. One more piece of trash, one more fire, one more car burning gasoline will not be cause of ecological problems. One more vote, one more active citizen will not make a political difference. Even: one more stealing, one more kill will change nothing. Right?
And yet again, on a less philosophical level, humans tend to want to believe in something that would explain contradiction. In perhaps saddest (for themselves) case, believe in nihil, make this zero rounding error a grand postulate and a staple of the world.
Oh, and by the way: when i say "believe", i don't mean necessarily beliefs in some "higher" powers or entities. One can believe in a group of people, for example: "yes, one human is zero, but together we are..."
But lets leave that one for another study. I think this post is already full of not-so-fresh ideas, written in a pretentious and hopefully fun manner. Adieu.