It’s Okay To Be Smart: Piles of things figuring out piles of things

jtotheizzoe:

Every atom in the universe is created equal. Or, I suppose more accurately: Everything in the universe is created of equal atoms.

None of them really have a leg up on any other, unless having more or less electrons is considered an advantage, and I’m not in a position to judge such things.

Yet one day, there happens a particularly curious arrangement of those atoms, on a planet called Earth, which is itself a particularly enormous pile of atoms pulled together by an interaction called gravity that every one of the former is still trying to figure out. Earth houses atomy stuff like ice cream, seashells and hippopotamuses, and it’s probably the only place that has them. But certainly not certainly. The curious atoms decide to mold and rearrange a whole mess of the rest into something they call a “machine". The first “machine" they built wasn’t very impressive. Nor was the second, or three-hundred-thousandth. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone.

After a while, the curious pile of atoms creates a special “machine". They pile it and centuries of experience onto a particularly volatile and explosive tube full of atoms, and using something called “fire" (which, to be honest, not a one of them really understands), that tube releases enough energy to propel the “machine" to the planet next door, which is, of course, made of the same atomic stuff obeying the same rules of atomness as all the rest of our cast of characters. That’s remarkable in a way. There’s no reason it has to be so, that matter here is of the same parts and peculiarities as matter over there, but so it is.

The curious atoms use their molded “machine" to extend their conscious experience in the universe (consciousness, again, is something they know squat about, although they keep pretending that’s not true), to exist where they do not, and to see things that they do not actually see and know things which they have no reason to know, save one: They just can’t help themselves. So they do it again and again. They’re thinking of sending some of their own one day, but they need to figure out the words “fear" and “money" first.

Those curious atoms live a life (there’s one of those words again) whose chemical existence is greater than the sum of its parts. How is it that we are made of nothing more than the same stuff that makes up everything else, but we are the atoms who named themselves, who named the rest, and keep looking for more?

Are we special? Are we just like everything else? We’ll have to build a machine to find out.