Hacker News Reader

Comment by javier123454321 | Hacker News Reader

Dont know how old you are or what age has to do with it. But i find that as I get older simple factoids about the world are even more amazing. There are 4 forces we know of. Strong, weak,electromagnetic and gravitational. Thats magic and that gets more interesting the more you meditate on it.

It means all matter is acting on each other at all times. It means your existence, acting through your will changes the universe, because something as simple as moving tweaks this balance.

Its the same with so many things like the water cycle or other seemingly boring elementary concepts of our reality.

View on HN

> There are 4 forces we know of. Strong, weak,electromagnetic and gravitational. Thats magic

Is it? I used to think so myself, but nowadays I realize my reaction was just imitating what others had shown me was an “appropriate” response to this.

Whether there are 4 fundamental forces, a single one, or 100, none of these help me understand the world in any sense I actually care about.

I shouldn't use the word magic in a forum like this, last time I did something similar, it also got caught up with the semantics. I mean awe inducing. I've been doing the exercise of writing poetry and one thing that I love about the process is that you can absolutely find inspiration in the banal everyday things.

By the way, this mode of being makes me happier so I invite everyone to take a second and actually consider the question "how is this magical?" for everything. It can be a beautiful experience.

I've met amazing buddhist masters who have meditated for decades that describe the world in these terms. They are also the happiest and the people most oriented towards helping others that I've met.

What exactly about it is “awe-inducing”? There are four fundamental forces. Okay. Not three, not five. Just like there are five Platonic solids, rather than four or six.

Now what? What am I supposed to feel awe about? Are you sure you aren’t just echoing words you’ve read in a popular science book?

To be clear, I have myself parroted such soundbites for decades. But at some point I asked myself what I was actually trying to say when I said them, and came up empty.

You're not the first time that someone in this site tries to argue with me that I should not look for beauty and wonder. I'll do it anyway and am not interested in arguing with strangers about what deserves being open about to wonder and interest.

I do find it interesting the fact that there's some kind of order that happens to make the world the way it is and not some other way. That's enough.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com