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submitted 2 years ago by aCosmicWave@lemm.ee to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

For me it is Cellular Automata, and more precisely the Game of Life.

Imagine a giant Excel spreadsheet where the cells are randomly chosen to be either "alive" or "dead". Each cell then follows a handful of simple rules.

For example, if a cell is "alive" but has less than 2 "alive" neighbors it "dies" by under-population. If the cell is "alive" and has more than three "alive" neighbors it "dies" from over-population, etc.

Then you sit back and just watch things play out. It turns out that these basic rules at the individual level lead to incredibly complex behaviors at the community level when you zoom out.

It kinda, sorta, maybe resembles... life.

There is colonization, reproduction, evolution, and sometimes even space flight!

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[-] 001100010010@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 years ago

The butterfly effect. The phenomeon that tiny seemingly insignificant changes can result in massively different outcomes. Someone out there could read this post and get distracted and leave home for work/school/shopping a bit later than they would've and avoid a major accident. But conversely, someone could also get distracted by this post while crossing the road and... you know... die...

Fascinating, yet terrifying at the same time.

[-] Rick512@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

The scale of the universe. It's an incomprehensible amount of emptiness.

[-] MostlyLazy@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago

Galaxies are not evenly distributed in space. Instead, when you look at the universe, galaxies are grouped in giant strings that look like a neural connections in a brain.

[-] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago

It blew my mind when I learned that we're in a relatively dark, empty part of space compared to what's out there. It really put into perspective for me how difficult space travel will be for us as we continue to advance.

[-] fearout@kbin.social 0 points 2 years ago

The concept of emergence blows my mind.

We have this property in our universe where simple things with simple rules can create infinitely complex things and behaviours. A molecule of water can’t be wet, but water can. A single ant can’t really do anything by himself, but a colony with simple pheromone exchange mechanisms can assign jobs, regulate population, create huge anthills with vents, specialty rooms and highways.

Nothing within a cell is "alive", it’s just atoms and molecules, but the cell itself is. One cell cannot experience things, think, love, have hopes and dreams, or want to watch Netflix all day, but a human can.

The fact that lots of tiny useless things governed by really simple rules can create this complexity in this world is breathtakingly beautiful.

Kinda ties into your example :)

[-] kenbw2@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

Reminds me of the statement that you can't dissect a rabbit to find out why it's cute

[-] vera@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago

Won't stop me from trying [joking]

[-] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 years ago

Don't, rabbit necropsies are the worst smelling thing you'll ever encounter.

[-] claycle@lemmy.world 0 points 2 years ago

I am focusing on the "blow my mind" part, rather than the "beautiful" part of your question, but I am certain many philosophically-minded people would consider the following "beautiful".

Peter Singer's argument in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality (1972)" that you and most everyone you know are probably immoral or evil and you don't even realize it. It really affected my ideas of how to strive to live.

Here is a good video explaining the idea in detail, worth 30m of your time.

Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil

[-] simon574@feddit.de 0 points 2 years ago

I've watched like 10 minutes and I hate it. Peter Singer is a very controversial figure as it is, on top of that the guy in the video comes off as super condescending to me and I can't stand watching him for longer. Me personally, I don't think it's "immoral" to not give money to charity. And terms like immoral or evil are usually defined by the society you live in and not some random philosopher. And I bet there are good reasons his radical ideas in "Famine, Affluence, and Morality" did not get embedded in our society yet.

[-] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml -4 points 2 years ago

I'd say that charity as it exists in a capitalist society is in itself evil, and contributing to it is no better then buying indulgences.

[-] aussiematt@lemm.ee 0 points 2 years ago

It would have to be Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. Such a beautiful proof that shakes mathematics to its core.

The science communicator Veritasium made a nice video about it: https://youtu.be/HeQX2HjkcNo

I first learned about it in Douglas Hofstaedter's masterpiece Gödel Escher Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

[-] prole@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 years ago

Second the Gödel Escher Bach recommendation. Don't really hear about that one these days.

[-] arthur@lemmy.ml -1 points 2 years ago

BitTorrent. I only need to share a file once and it could potentially reach millions of people. It's old tech now but it feels like magic to me.

[-] weirdwallace75@kbin.social -1 points 2 years ago

Noether's Theorem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether%27s_theorem

https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/noether.html

Fundamentally, it allows us to logically infer the conservation laws from the laws of motion of a given physical system using relatively simple math. It always applies, no matter if we're talking about massive systems or quantum ones.

this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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