Hi, I'm Daphya. Hi, I'm Kahran. Welcome to the 23rd episode of Thinking on Thinking. Today we talked about a lot of different things. We started from the premise of life always works out or things always come together.
And we explored how we have united that belief in our lives and how that might be related to psychology, how we see the world. And then we made some off-shooting discussions to a bunch of other things, including some nuclear physics. We hope you enjoy it. So there was this exhibit I saw at the Singapore Museum of Art and Science
that was about how like things attract like. Can I tell you about this? No. Oh, it was super cool. So this artist had done this interactive exhibit on the wall where people could walk up to it and you could touch the wall.
And when you did it caused disruption and everything would float apart. So what was on the wall was these particles that were all a color and they were just floating around. And the wall is like two stories high and it's maybe I would say it's kind of like a hexagon sort of shape like you're standing in the hexagon and it's the half hexagon. You kind of feel like you're in a semi-enclosed space, right? And maybe like six people could easily interact with it at once.
And all of these particles are different colors and what starts to happen is the particles of the same color will start to gather together. And then as soon as you touch them, they will fly apart and like chaos will erupt and then slowly over time it will gather together. And what the artist is trying to illustrate with this is the notion that like attracts like, right? That like things will come together in the universe. That whole exhibit is a little bit talking about how it's like improbable.
I guess that like matter would have all found each other because the universe is so big except that like matter attracts each other. Do you know kind of what that idea is? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, you might have to explain. Okay, is it just gravity?
Yeah, I mean like, yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. Oh, I guess, yeah. If you think about it, even though it takes millions of years for a hydrogen cloud to actually coalesce into a star, one on the like universe scale, that time is not too long. And ultimately, even though you have so few hydrogen atoms that maybe you begin with like, you know, one atom or two atoms in a cubic meter, which is like insanely low. Yeah, but over time, because of the minute gravity that they all exert on each other, they keep coming together.
But that would attract all kinds of matter, not just certain like, I mean, there is only hydrogen and helium in the universe, if you think about it, broadly, that's just all that there is. Oh, and where's everything else come from? Oh, okay. So initially, when the universe began, there were only protons and electrons and neutrons.
So like the initial matter that formed was just hydrogen atoms and helium atoms. And then it's because of fusion reactions that took place that in the stellar core is so when if you might have heard this code, we are made of stardust. Yeah. It's because we are literally made of stardust. It's when a star like, you know, collapses and a supernova explosion happens is when the heavier metals like carbon and iron and all of that gets like, you know, thrown out in the universe.
It can serve as fuel for the next stellar disk that needs to be formed. Oh, so and fusion reactions happen inside of stars. Yeah. Oh, so in the beginning, there were the fusion reactions were only between hydrogen and helium or hydrogen and hydrogen. Yeah, hydrogen and hydrogen would form other hydrogen and helium.
And then over time, the entire periodic table was built. Basically, yes. Oh, that's so crazy. I never realized that that despite all the years of chemistry and physics I took that was never explained to me that way. Wow.
So like there's constantly more potentially more kinds of matter being formed in other stars yet discovered. Other kinds of matter hasn't like, I don't know what number is what's the higher. Number is what's the highest number on the periodic table. I think we are at we have made 200 something right now. But so.
Okay. So there are two parts to this thing. One is when's you. How much of nuclear physics do you know some I remember, like, like circles. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, electron orbitals.
But I'm, I don't mean that at all. I don't mean atomic physics. I mean nuclear physics. Just the nucleus. Okay.
So in nucleus, you have two things. You have your protons and you have your neutrons. There are two different forces that are at action there. Of course, gravity exists, but gravity at that smallest scale is negligible. You can just remember this.
Yeah, yeah. Right. So you have two forces, electromagnetic force, which is repulsion between two like particles, which is protons. Yeah.
And strong nuclear force, which is what is binding different, the neutrons and protons with each other. Yeah. Okay. So which is why like, while hydrogen will have like most common form isotope of hydrogen
as just a proton and an electron. The most common form of helium has two protons, but also two neutrons to balance out the force. Yeah. So there is like, you know, two neutrons keeping the two protons together. But now if you think about like, of course, this is a very, very oversimplified, definitely
not quantum mechanically correct way analogy. But if you think about it, right, like you keep assembling these balls together, right? Strong nuclear forces work only at very, very close distances, like literally at nuclear distances, they are not effective at atomic distances. Okay.
So strong nuclear forces can keep only nucleus of a particular size to keep. So if you think about like elements beyond lead, right, on the periodic table, almost all of them have nuclei so big that like protons on one side of it and on the other side of it will have stronger repulsion than the attraction force going to be able to keep them together. And that's why they're usually found in ion form.
That's why they are radioactive ions are chemical. This is nuclear physics, right? So you have to think about it in terms of radioactive isotopes. So almost everything out after lead, you don't have a stable isotope of them. Oh, what about, what about like the aren't there noble gases after lead?
There would be one which is radon. Oh, and it's not stable? Radon is a radioactive gas, noble gas. Okay. So there is chemistry which involves reactions between different elements, right?
This is where your electrons and the SPDF orbitals that you mentioned, they come into picture, right? And that is where noble gases are non-reactive because their orbitals are fully filled. It's not exactly true for the higher order noble gases like xenon and all because you have some empty orbitals. Like they have not been seeded yet, but you have one empty orbital. Should I get into this?
Why do you have an empty orbital? So think about it. If you remember how your periodic table was filled, you have like, you know, one S, then two S, two P, three S, three P, four S, then three D. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember that. So you are running like now suddenly one of your orbitals from the previous generation is running in the current generation.
Correct? So like you might have a four series running, but you haven't filled the four F, right? So like the F orbital series is called lanthanides and actinides. Okay. It'll start with lanthanum, the first four F and then five F is actinium, if I'm actinium or something like that.
It really has been years. But because of that, like you can actually make compounds out of xenon also. They're not particularly stable. But yeah, so that is one part of it. And then nuclear physics is about how stable is the nucleus of the atom itself.
So generally when we are doing chemistry and chemical reactions, we assume that the atom is never going to change. There's going to combine in different forms. Now, but that's not actually a safe assumption. Like in real life, that's not what happens. I mean, like in real life, that does happen.
Most of the elements that we are surrounded by are not radioactive. They have what we call them stable isotopes. Yeah. So hydrogen has three isotopes, right? Which is basically one proton, one electron is your hydrogen, then one proton, one electron and one neutron is deuterium.
And then you have one proton and two neutrons. That one is not stable. Oh. Because inherently neutrons are also not stable. Neutrons have the tendency to decay into a proton and then electron.
Oh. I think I never learned it through physics. I only ever learned it from chemistry point of view. This is entirely fascinating to me. Okay.
So like because of how these, like how the structure of the nucleus is, and I might be getting some stuff wrong. It's been almost a decade since I've like officially learned this stuff. But because of how the structure of the nucleus is beyond lead, we have not found any element that is stable. And like when you're thinking about most of the elements after lead, you have to almost all of them end up decaying into lead and something else because lead is the last stable one. So they will keep losing neutrons and keep, like, you know, going one step back in the reaction until they arrive at a stable space.
There is some hypothesis that some physicists have, which is like there might be islands of stability further on down the periodic table. So maybe like, you know, at some point at 300 or something like that, you might have an island of stability where you find like four or five elements. But it's one of those things that are like it's non falsifiable. You can't tell that it's never going to happen. Yeah.
It's also very difficult to say. Because we would find elements of that if things beyond that were decaying to that. Yeah. Do things naturally occur? Like higher periodic table?
Oh, we don't know because they decay so quickly. Yeah, we don't know. Like especially the later elements, most of them stay around for like 10 to the power minus 10 or minus 15 seconds or something like that. Yeah. So you're basically making them in these like, you know, large hadron collider type places and you just have them for like basically a blip in time.
So like to answer your question, we could have more elements, but the chances of that are pretty. Was that my original question? You were saying that like, you know, there might be a part of universe where different, like different elements that we have never found might be happening. Got it. Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I thank you. That was really interesting. I had not learned most of that. I feel, I think if I remember correctly, our physics teacher was part of the National Guard and he got called up halfway through the year.
And so we had substitutes for the rest of the year. And so we just didn't learn. Which is funny how that happens, right? You're, you know, random events impact your life. Anyway.
Yes, there was a cool exhibit I saw in Singapore, which kind of I felt like was kind of around this notion that we want to talk about right that like like things attract like I thought about commenting about how that was a really great explanation of nuclear physics that we use. But I'm not sure we'll keep the whole thing. I don't know. So anyway, whatever.
I mean, it was interesting. It was super interesting. And the other notion that I kind of first thought of, even for some reason, this notion just made me feel a little bit nervous, right? Whereas like, oh, why do I feel like hesitant about thinking about this? And I was like, well, it feels like a secret you shouldn't talk about with everyone.
Do you feel that way about this notion that things would just end up happening? Yeah, exactly. A little bit like so last year, a friend of mine was thinking about starting consulting. And she asked me very honestly, like, you know, how will I get people? I'm saying, just start talking to people and it will just happen.
And she just looked at me very weirdly. And she was like, that makes no sense. And I did not expect that answer from you. And I was like, yeah, I don't say that a lot, but somehow it almost always ends up happening that once you put yourself out there, things just start sort of. Working out for you or like things just start in a hokey wave and would say, oh, the universe conspires to kick you the thing that you want.
And like, I can't say that with a straight face. But one of my friends had said this quite well. And I think that was the notion that you were also leaving to that your brain like goes into the confirmation bias and selection bias process. The moment you start biasing it. And if you can bias it towards the right things, which is also why like, you know, having a positive attitude towards things and like a growth mindset versus having a fixed mindset, why that changes your life so much, right?
Because your brain is going to pick up on patterns, regardless. So if you give it the right patterns to feed off of that is a way better path than anything else. So yeah, but I agree, like it feels a little hokey to say. No, things are you believing in.
Well, I think you both of those things you said were quite interesting. I saw I'll come back to the first one in a second. But I think for me, the reason why it feels like a secret is not so much that it feels hokey. It's like, at least for me, I feel like there's a part of like the way that you can manipulate yourself and manipulate the brain that it's kind of uncomfortable to think about. Right. We like to believe that we have all these notions of like free will and like, right, that we're always making independent decisions.
And so it's kind of uncomfortable to acknowledge where it's like, oh yeah, if I do just acknowledge out loud the thing I want, it's more likely to happen. And it's like, why would that work? And part of that is because then you start to tell your brain that like, oh, this is the pattern of things that I want. And when you start to see things similar to that pattern, or you start to understand what the signs are of things that lead to that pattern, you start to just gravitate towards those because you've acknowledged this is what I want. And you know, in your example, right, once you start to talk to people more and more, you start to pattern match on saying, oh, these are the kinds of conversations I want. Then you start to understand, oh, these are the kind of people I want.
And then you understand what to say to those people because you're always getting these feedbacks around this is this is good behavior. Right. I think we've talked about earlier episodes around like children and growing up. But I think in those contexts, it's really right. You're always getting feedback on are you behaving in the right way? Yeah, I also like as you were speaking, I was also thinking about this thing where it can also backfire if you don't combine it with action. Like you said two things, right? Like one is you said your intent correctly, and then the other is then you actively take actions towards it so that you can iterate and you give your brain a chance to pattern match. In between are your wants on one side are I must and on one side are I wish.
And if you combine it with action, it starts moving towards I must but if you don't then slowly I want turns into I wish. Right, so like if you if you want to do something and you don't do it, you're going to feel like people like you don't do those kinds of things. Right. Like you are saying that there might be an identity mismatch there. Well, you start to create an identity mismatch is what I'm saying. And so then it becomes an aspirational identity. Like give more examples, like you know something more elaborate. Okay, so I mean a really basic level right it could be like, oh you know I wish I was in a different career path.
Right, and that comes from like I want to do a different kind of work. Right, but when you don't do that work, then it becomes like a oh people like me don't do this work right. I do the kind of work I do right and so it becomes oh I wish I was in a different career path. I think it's more complicated but tangible level I would say even something. I mean for me often you know like cooking examples come to mind right. And I think like I have wanted to make some more complicated cakes in my time, but I've looked at them, and I've just like shied away from them for various reasons at different points in time. I think I've become this thing where it's like, you know, do I really even really want to do it. I don't know I like I wish I could do it, but like, right like I convinced myself that that I just don't need to do those kinds of things.
Right, even as I'm telling this to you and like, oh, my husband likes to bake those. Right, like I don't really even need to. I'm like, oh, and it's not really worth like how much you cleaning up you have to do. Like there's so many at like, I mean, and easily I'm seeing these right there. I make complicated things all the time that you might use like five different bands and three different parts. But for some reason, this has become a thing where I'm like, oh, I wanted to do it, but I didn't do it enough times I feel like it's become a thing where I'm like, oh that's not part of me. That's something I wish I was. It's almost like there have been enough broken promises that you no longer consider that a reliable intent.
Okay, so this is like not directly related. But recently I've mentioned this to you that like a friend of mine has been working with somebody who is holding multiple roles and like is really successful in what he does and is like a genius level person. Yeah. And those this one time when I was talking to my friend and he was just talking about how this guy just takes two minutes to do any admin task. And he like, you know, instantly replies to mail. And I'm sure he gets a lot of emails. But he just has zero overhead on his brain when he's thinking about doing admin things. And something about the way my friend was just describing the situation to me, I realized that I have always had this weird notion in my mind that admin tasks, of course, take long. I'm not the kind of person for whom they would happen quickly. And somehow that conversation just made me question but why why would a two minute thing take you up and all just like, there's that coming from.
And something flipped and now yeah, really admin tasks do just take me two minutes to do because I'm just not thinking about them in that manner. And like, as you were speaking about it, it's just like, it was a lifelong practice where I wouldn't do it. And then I would have convinced myself that this is how long it is going to take me for other people it might not but for me it will take me this long. That's funny. Yesterday, I almost I went to have lunch with them with a friend and after lunch hours right by this museum I've been wanting to go to called photographica, which is I think it's originally from Sweden and then they've opened this New York one. And then I don't know what happened. I was just like, Oh, do I even have time maybe I should go home like I really need to do some work and there's also like, well, I want to cycle home and I really won't have time. And so I was like, Oh, maybe what I should do is I should look up is like what exhibits are happening. So I'm literally standing outside the museum right I like look up like, like what exhibits they're showing and whatnot and I conclude that there's this exhibit opening on the second, and it's like $35 this entry so I'm like, Oh, I might as well go in two days.
I don't know. And I was just thinking about that when you're talking and I think sometimes part of what makes tasks feel longer is when you do a lot of research around tasks, right, like I think then when you're thinking about admin tasks, particularly, I have that notion right because sometimes I'll just end up like, Oh, like, you know, looking up how to send some letter before I'm going to send it right like who I need to do it. And now you put so much unnecessary you are planning to deal with it right now. You're just looking up stuff around it. So then you have created invested more time into the So I don't know. It's an interesting notion to me because I think sometimes it's part of like building up the enthusiasm. Right, like, I realized, sometimes like I'm often like a minute or two late to talk to you and part of it is like I feel like I need that like that almost that feeling of like, Oh my God, I'm running late, where I'm like, Oh, like now I'm like I have enough motivation to like drop whatever I was doing. It's very interesting. Maybe I should message you five minutes early.
I'm already here. It's very interesting how like, sometimes when we are thinking about these things, it's almost like you're walking on a very thin edge. If you don't do things like perfectly in one direction, you will slip. And if you don't do things perfectly in the other direction, also you will slip. Interesting. And then when you say these things, you mean like your brain. How are behavior, you can say behavior.
Like, yeah, my brain, I guess. I don't know. I mean, I also think like one has more resilience sometimes than anything, right, or maybe I would say more resistance to building new patterns. Like, like I tried all sorts of addictive substances and you know, luckily I've like never become addicted to any of them right like my father is a smoker most of my family were smokers at different points in time. And like I smoked a lot when I was in India because it was just like culturally what people did we would like go out for smoke breaks. And I'm a terrible sucker for doing whatever adults is doing.
But I've never, you know, I've never had that feeling where I've woken up and wanted a cigarette in the morning. So I don't know, right, like I feel like yeah, sometimes, you know, you do have to worry about like building bad behavior patterns really quickly and whatnot. And sometimes like you have more kind of resilience. I think maybe it also comes from what how you what you think about right and maybe come back to the notion I was saying is two seconds ago. If you feel like part of your identity is a certain kind of thing, it's going to be really hard for you to build a bad behavior pattern if you feel like that's not part of your identity. Hmm. Yeah, actually, like, I think I mean, works in the reverse also, it can also really stop you from engaging in good behaviors, which is what you were saying sometimes, like, it just slips away from us and goes into, oh, I wish I could do this, but can people like me really do this?
Have there been things where you felt like when you were, which seemed pretty hard, but then once you set your mind to it, things came together and like, you know, life found a way in your words. I mean, I kind of had decided that summer when I was living in Rochester and was like cooking a lot and writing the summer of 2015 that one of the things I wanted to do was spend more time in my family in India, while they were like still, you know, in good health and whatnot. And I ended up moving to India that year in a way I could have never really expected. But it happened, right. And, but and you know, I felt like my relationship at that point was untenable and that also resolved itself in a way that I, you know, at that point couldn't have imagined right so like in at that point in my life I felt like you know you do always get what you want but it's often in a way you couldn't have predicted.
Interesting. I was recently listening to somebody's interview and they said something similar. They said life will always work out. It might not work out in the ways that you wanted to work out, but it will always work out because tomorrow will always come. Yeah, right. So I think that's kind of an interesting way to think about it and it's just bright, maybe broadening your, your view of what is acceptable. I don't know. I think it might also be another thing. So like both you and I have a fairly optimistic disposition.
And so it might be that like we are more likely to think that life will work out. That's what I was kind of thinking about but not being able to articulate is I going to go yeah that it kind of depends on what you're willing to accept and if you broaden your purview of saying this is it you know this is my acceptable or this is even my delightful range. That it's a lot easier to be delighted. I mean there is there haven't studies on both also right like that people who perceive themselves as lucky are more lucky. Yeah.
And it's just very interesting. I think their study is with them sort of asking people to count the number of vowels or number of ands in the headlines of the newspaper something like that. And one of the articles on the newspaper contains this snippet of this newspaper has this many ands in headlines and people who like rated themselves as very lucky in life were the ones who were way more likely to find that line than the ones who didn't. Well that kind of goes to you know even what I don't know if you know this but like when girls start school I know in the US I'm not sure if this is true everywhere but they tend to be at par with boys in mathematics schools that as they grow go up through school girls start to drop behind. And right so the kind of contention the theory in contention that I've heard at least is like that people start to hear and ingest these myths that like oh girls are not going to school. Right so I think similarly if you start to believe like you're someone who's lucky right you're going to put in that kind of effort to feel like you are lucky right and sometimes being lucky does mean paying attention to unexpected things and you know searching a little bit harder or whatever like that is how you make your.
Yeah, or even like subconscious stuff right like your brain might not even know what you are thinking about what you are talking about or doing. One of the things that came to my mind when we were talking about how girls have similar ability of mathematics when they are younger in the US but like it drops off later on. There was a study done on women where they were given scars like they were given prosthetic scars and they were told that what they're trying to study is the effect of like you know facial deformation on how people perceive you during the interview etc etc. And then they said before the women like they showed the women the scar and then before they were about to go they said oh we will just do a touch up but then in the touch up they would remove the scar. So like the women have gone normally but the interesting thing was that those women really did report a lot of quote unquote discrimination based on their facial features and appearance and they attributed a lot of it to the scarring of how people they even found out things that the interviewer said that were pointedly about their appearance while there was nothing wrong with their appearance.
Because the scar had been removed. Yeah they just thought they had the scar. Yeah. And this was like one of those like just looking at do people actually get impacted by their own perceptions of how others may see them. Yeah I think we actually talked about that in one of our first few episodes right but it I mean yeah it's definitely true like how your perception of what you think other people think of you just in shape your your experience of things.
One other thing that I have recently been thinking about and as we were just talking about this idea of like setting intent and then letting your brain find the patterns was this this is a very common notion that you should focus on one thing and just work on that one thing. But both of us are not the kind of people who will just focus on one thing and while I've always experienced the benefits of not focusing on one thing I've really been able to actually. And I think this is one of those things that is the benefit of working in multiple things to give you a brain three or four different things that it can back and seek. And then whatever matches matches. That's interesting.
Right. It's almost like letting things slow cook. And you have like four burners and you just leave all of them on and like slowly it all gets like Richard in play. And you and it's like that notion you were telling me about a few days ago with those 12 questions. Yeah yeah yeah who was it.
That was. Finman. Yeah yeah. Yeah Richard Finman like he had 12 problems that he was constantly thinking about and whenever he would come across and you inside who try and match it to all of them and see if something new comes up anyway. And like I'm not even saying something that active although I am trying to incorporate that more in my life now because like that just feels amazing.
But even beyond that right. Like I'm sure that sometimes when you have been thinking about. I don't know stuff that you're working on on your investor side and then you might be thinking about stuff that is happening on like you know your idea for a restaurant side and then something around joyous and then something in your personal relationship. And there is always like some cross-bonding mission that can happen. I think so.
I mean I don't really so much think about things in that way. I'm more find like that I'll give myself sometimes almost like random data points right and then I'll find that I'll kind of like revisit things and have made progress on them. If that makes sense. Like for example I'm like there's a scene I'm like trying to rewrite for this play that I've been working on. And like I know.
I have like the broad strokes of what it's going to look like and like whatever I keep going out to places and like doing things like sometimes like I'll think about different parts of it but I'm not like actively sort of thinking about it like I'm just kind of like. Right and I know at some point I'll like sit down and I'll have done some more work on it. I just but I tend to not so much like like I don't sit down and be like oh I'm thinking about this thing. Sometimes. Have you never done that.
I mean sometimes but usually when I like in an active form. Like I'll be like oh I'll like write about it or I'll brainstorm about it and then like. I think I want to add more of that and like that is what I'm almost like taking away from this conversation. So my sister has been doing this thing that like every week she's taking out 30 minutes just stop herself about things that she's doing and she's wanting to do it's just like 30 minutes or an hour. It's just a strategy time.
Yeah. Like I don't mark anything else. Yeah, I mean I find that because it's it's I like to be in an activity when I'm doing something like I'll do something else. Right so like I will like there's like some places that I like to go for a walk or I've been like going for more like meditation because I'm like a big one for group activities right. And so like you know those give you like space for at least like finding the thoughts right if not maybe like actively engaging with them but.
Sometimes actively engaging with them too. When you are finding these passive thoughts where do they come from. Now that we're like you know already in the Hoki territory. I guess usually I remember something. Like seeing something thinking about something or like something caught my attention usually like I remember that something caught my attention.
In a certain way. Do you talk to yourself. No. Sometimes I mean sometimes but not in those moments. It's not like oh remember when we saw this thing.
Wait when you're brainstorming with yourself you do not talk to yourself. But I'm not brainstorming then. I like wait without talking to yourself ideas come to you. Generally. Yeah like like for example I remember I was walking.
Yeah I I don't know I think I was like sat down on the bench and this guy like was taking a picture above me and then I was I don't know he just like reminded me of someone. Sometimes it's hard right because I think I was thinking about them and then I was thinking about like like a mutual friend of ours who also writes poetry and then I was thinking about poetry and then I was thinking about how I could. Apply for that. The summer writing program. Interesting.
Not that you can make random connections because like of course everybody makes random connections but I'm just. I think what you said earlier that you're like no not always is the interesting part because I think that when I'm doing creative work sure I don't think I have an active dialogue with that part of myself. But. Almost every other thing like specially for cognitive problem solving I'm almost always talking to myself in some way shape or form. Oh.
Like what if we try this no if we try this like what if we do it this way. Yeah. I like this wouldn't work and this would not work because of this and then one can try that and there is that study like basically how I talk is also how I internally talk. Well. Interesting.
I don't know if we've all tried that sometimes. Maybe like there isn't a voice in your head and it's just such a big part of your life that you don't even recognize that it is. It could be that. Yeah. Probably not though.
Okay. This is like a really fun episode. Yeah. I think it was interesting. I feel like we really kind of started from one place and covered a bunch around it.
But it was an interesting conversation. Yeah. Especially with an aside. Who knew. Okay.
This was fun. Bye. Bye. This was super fun. Bye.
Thanks for listening to this episode of thinking on the Internet. Our theme music is by Steve Gomes. If you were interested in today's topic or any of the topics we've discussed, please get in touch with us. You can reach us on our website joyus.studio.