Everything We Don't Know

This is green. This is red. And this is blue.

But  how can you tell that what you’re seeing as blue is the exact same thing as what I see  as blue? We’ve named the colors to give us a way to communicate and  reference them, but in reality, there’s no way of knowing that what you see  is the same as what another person sees. Even with the small steps and the giant leaps  we’ve made as a species, there is still a lot to learn about earth, life, and the human  condition.

There’s still everything we don’t know. On the 26th of February 2015, one picture  of a dress divided the internet. While some saw it as gold and white, others  saw it as blue and black.

Since then, there have been a number of repetitions of the  same experiment either using the same sense, in this case, sight, or even other senses, like  hearing in the famous “yanny” or “laurel” debate. These experiments remind us that there’s no  way for us to tell that you and I sense the same things. What I call red might just  be what you call blue, and there might be someone out there who sees human beings with  purple teeth, but just refers to it as white.

71% of the surface of the earth is covered  by water. Humans are made up of about 60% water, potatoes 80%, watermelons  93%, and Cucumbers 95%. It’s very clear that water is  essential for life on earth, but we don’t really know much about water. 

Not even about the very oceans we came from. In fact, we’ve only explored 5  to 10 percent of Earth’s oceans, the rest, well, who knows what’s down there?  It’s even scarier when you realize that fish like the blobfish and the barrel-eyed fish belong  to this slim percent of things we’ve discovered.

The deeper you go, the crazier things seem to get. What’s at the bottom of the ocean?  For the most part, we just don’t know.

But back on the surface, countries that  are bordered by water use something called “coastlines” to mark their territory.  The coast is the land along the sea, and the boundary between the coast  and the sea known as a coastline. So, how long is the US coastline or  any other coastline in the world?

The answer is… well, we don’t really know.  Coastlines constantly curve and cut in and out. Even the smallest deviations from  a straight line can add distance, and over time, these small distances add up. 

Some of these features are massive, like bays, while others are miniscule. Now, measuring each  and every little crevasse isn’t really efficient, so surveyors cut corners and straighten  rough edges into easily manageable lines. If you do a quick Google search of  the measurement of any coastline, you’ll find a lot of different answers. 

They all cut corners, just differently. Humanity as a species though… well we’ve  done well for ourselves. When in a pinch, we invent something to push us through.

We  made clothes when the weather was harsh, shelter so we could be safe from wildlife to  rest and recuperate, weapons to hunt for food, money to replace pure bartering. But what about  fire? Was fire a “discovery” or an “invention”?

And music? Music has been described by scientists as  a relatively recent invention by humans. It’s believed that music helped our ancestors  to help bring together a close-knit community.

But did humans really invent music? Or did we just discover that certain sounds  sound nice with other sounds? Birds sing, whales sing, even tree frogs  have a nice rich baritone sometimes.

So can we really say man invented music? If we  did, then what is the true definition of music? I guess we’ll never know.

On the list of man’s greatest inventions has  to be tools. In fact, for a really long time, scientists were sure that this is pretty much  what made us human. We were the only animals who, through the use of such a variety of tools,  were able to expand and grow so quickly.

Except… we aren’t the only ones who use tools.  In fact, a lot of animals, mainly primates, use tools for all kinds of reasons. A study  by Jane Godall on African chimpanzees would change the definition of man forever. 

In the research, it was discovered that these chimpanzees used tools to gather  food, brush their teeth, and even more. So in response, would this mean we must  now redefine man or redefine tool? They use tools for the same exact things we  would.

Do we accept chimpanzees as human? Well, of course not. This begs the question, if using tools doesn’t,  then what makes us human?

In the same research, it was also discovered that chimps had individual  personalities and were capable of rational thought like emotions and sorrow. They gave pats  on the back, hugs, kisses, and even just messed around with each other just for fun. They  developed affectionate bonds with family members and with other members of the community, and  some of these bonds lasted for over 50 years.

If emotions, rational thought, and affectionate  actions do not, then what makes us human? In the past, it was thought that humans were  the only animals who were self-aware. However, in the past thirty years, extensive research  has proven that many other animals are too.

In fact, in 2012, a group of neuroscientists  created the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness which states that “humans are not unique  in possessing the neurological substrates that generate consciousness. Non-human  animals, including all mammals and birds, and many other creatures, including octopuses,  also possess these neural substrates”. If consciousness, sentience, wakefulness, and  the ability to feel and experience do not, then what makes us human?

We really just don’t  know. All we know is that one day we weren’t, today we are, and one day we will be no more. We don’t know what happened before we were born,  neither do we know what will happen after we die.

If a person dies and comes back to life,  it’s referred to as a Near-Death Experience, because we see death as a  finality, but what if it isn’t? What if one of the beliefs of  humanity’s many religions is true? Even the earth itself can be  very weird, and sometimes, you just see formations that make no  sense.

Like, who built the Stonehenge and why? A quick Google search and you would  find Drids for sacrificial ceremonies, prehistoric people to bury the cremated remains  of their dead, while some believe humans couldn’t have done such a thing by themselves. But  again, in reality, we just don’t know.

The same goes for the pyramids. Some people  think the gods of Egypt made the pyramids, others are convinced it was made by human  effort. But, in reality, we just don’t know.

The human mind is everything.  All of man’s greatest inventions, theories, and discoveries have all come from  the human mind. We first conceive an idea in our mind before we can ever create it in the  real world, but perhaps, we don’t yet know or understand exactly how powerful the mind can  be.

The placebo effect gives us a glimpse. I made an entire video about the  placebo effect, but basically, doctors appear to give a patient treatment, but  in actuality, they don’t. However, this “fake treatment” registers in the brain, perceives it  as real, and kick-starts the healing process.

Basically, the mind heals the body because  it thinks the body is getting treatment, even if it isn’t. In research on social cognitive  and affective neuroscience, it was discovered that self-affirmation helps  to maintain a positive self-view and helps to restore your self-competence and self-worth.  Simply by telling yourself nice things, it is indeed possible for your mind to convince  your brain and body that you are those things.

And these are just the things we know the mind is  capable of, think about everything we don’t know. There are a lot of things we know about animals.  Dogs are sweet and loving, cats can have an attitude, and the lion is apparently the king  of the jungle, even if it lives in a Savannah.

Not everything makes sense, and we really  don’t know as much as we think we do. Going to space is one of man’s greatest  achievements. However, what space exploration has clearly shown us is just how small  we are in the grand scheme of things.

There are at least 2,500 other solar systems that  have been discovered, but that number could go up to the tens of billions, we cannot know for  sure. That’s just in our galaxy, the Milky way, and the Milky Way is just one of billions of  galaxies that are out there in the universe. It’s so incredibly massive that  you can’t just help but think, are we alone in the universe?

And if we aren’t,  why haven’t our neighbors come to say hi? We have ideas, but as always, we don’t know,  and we can’t really prove most things. A very fundamental question for nature is,  what exactly is the universe made of?

And why is there stuff in it to begin with? We know  that all matter is made up of indivisible atoms, but why? Why do atoms exist  and where do they come from?

When we die, what exactly do those  atoms become — everything else? At this point, you’ve listened to me talk for  seven to eight minutes. Time is persistent, for everything with mass, time never stops. 

We all know that yesterday is in the past, today is the present, and tomorrow is  the future. But what exactly is time and where does it come from? Even more confusing  is, did humans “discover” or “invent” time?

There are so many things about  the world that we just don’t know, and while some are deep questions like we’ve  talked about, others are more… well, trivial. While watching the video of this person yawning, you also probably just yawned, so even more  importantly, why is yawning contagious? When we’re happy, we laugh, when we’re  sad, we cry.

But… why? For a long time, it was believed that laughter was a social tool  to show one another that we’re enjoying what is currently happening. It was an evolution tool  used to help enhance connectivity in societies.

But if that was the case, then laughter should  be unique to us humans, or at least, primates, but it’s not. Other social animals like dolphins  and even rats laugh. So, why do we laugh?

And also, why do we cry? It’s as if crying has  emotional healing powers. Crying activates our parasympathetic nervous system and helps return  our bodies to a normal fully functional state.

It’s a good thing for your body, so why  do we associate it with such sad things? We often cry after something bad has  happened, not really while it’s happening. Is it a process that evolved solely for our  brains to process emotionally painful things?

Then again, we cry for happy reasons as well.  So scratch everything I just said. I don’t know.

Why are some people right-handed  and a few others left-handed? Why isn’t everyone ambidextrous,  wouldn’t that have made a lot more sense? We can have theories for many, many  things, but they remain just that, theories.

In actuality, proving theories as a  fact of nature is a lot harder than you’d think. Many scientific theories are superseded  with time, considered obsolete or simply wrong. We used to think  Earth was the center of the universe, then one day, we realized it wasn’t.

Then again,  not everyone could accept the fact that their view of the universe was wrong. I mean there’s  a “theory” that as recently as World War 2, the German’s attempted some advances under  the impression that the Earth was hollow. So, it is very possible that mostly everything  we do know about the world right now is wrong.

Honestly, it probably is. We simply  don’t know everything about everything. And that’s okay.

All we can do is keep asking questions and  keep learning about the world around us, trying to uncover each of its  mysteries one stone at a time, hopefully answering the most important question  of them all - what does existence truly mean?