by David LeMieux
Today I was doing some programming in Java and I couldn't figure out how to solve my problem. I needed to read a byte stream for a certain sequence of numbers and then use that info to do something else. Java is not a language that I have a lot of experience with. Also, I was busy doing other things at the same time, like laundry, cooking, going to the store, and playing Counter Strike : Source. For some unknown reason I forgot that "byte" is a primitive variable type in Java. It seems so stupid when I think of it now but this small bit of information just escaped me. When the light bulb went off in my head I was instantly relieved and humbled. How could I have forgotten something so basic? Oh well. Serves me right.
This experience got me thinking about how sometimes it just take that one extra bit of information to change how we think about things. SPOILER ALERT: The movie The Sixth Sense is not the same after you have already seen it. Sure its still good, but you start noticing things that you wish you had caught before. The small fact that he is dead the whole time makes a huge difference in how you perceive the movie SPOILERS END. Another example of this can be found by observing a little child, something that I fortunately get to do on a daily basis with my daughter. Every night we put her to bed with a story. We go in to her room, shut the door, and start the routine. She was always ok with this, or at least put up with it, until she realized that she could open the door (her door doesn't latch closed very well). Now when she realizes that she is being put to bed, she opens the door and runs out. She had been perfectly fine going to bed before, until she knew there was another option.
I think the word for what I am talking about is paradigm shift, but I have read too many cheesy mission statements that mention paradigms that I no longer desire to use that word ever again. Anyway, in the larger scheme of things I wonder what little bit of extra knowledge, if we had it, would open up our understanding of how the universe is put together. It would be cool to know.