Simple Facts that will Mess Your Mind

[Reasonable Doubt]

1. At some point your parents put you down and never picked you up again.

2. You are to yourself what your thoughts are and you are to others what your actions are.

3. If you don’t have children, you’d be the first person in your direct ancestry to do so.

4. The farther away you look, the further back in time you see. This is because even though light travels insanely fast, it does not instantly. Now, if you look at the sun, you don’t actually see the real sun. You see the light that the sun has emitted about 8 minutes ago. So even if the sun would now just vanish you would still see it for eight more minutes, because the light needs to travel the whole distance from sun to earth.

5. Given enough time, hydrogen starts to wonder where it came from, and where it is going. You are part of a universe that has sentience and consciousness. Your atomic particles are arranged in a way that breathes life. Stars died so we could live. We sit here and ponder about the likelihood of other intelligent life out there (which is very probable), and what we are doing here.

6. If you shuffle a deck of cards, chances are you will have created a combination that has never previously been made.

7. You pass your death anniversary every year.

8. There are an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1.

9. There was a longer time between the Stegosaurus and the T-Rex, than there is between the T-Rex and us.

10. Mars is the only known planet in our solar system solely inhabited by functioning robots.

11. You can’t clean. You can only make something else dirty.

12. The word “crisp” starts at the back your mouth and ends at the front.

13. You can make a human being, a real living person, completely by accident.

14. There’s no reason for the alphabet to be in that order.

15. The human brain is one of the most complex things known to man, according to the human brain. Also, brain doesn’t really understand how the brain works.

16. If you were given one dollar for every second you were alive, at less than 2 weeks of age you would be a millionaire, and you wouldn’t be a billionaire until you were 31. Because million seconds is 11 days, but a billion seconds is 31 years.

17. The oldest person in the world was born with a completely different set of humans.

18. Close both eyes and you see black; close one eye and it sees nothing. Darkness is the absence of light but being blind means your light receptors are broken, so it’s not like seeing pure black, it’s more like trying to see out of your elbow. You simply don’t have the sense of sight to do that.

19. You can constantly see your nose, your brain just filters it out.

20. Your age is the number of times you have orbited around the sun

21. The Pillars of Creation, which Hubble telescope first photographed in 1995, hasn’t existed for nearly 6,000 years. This is because right now we can see a cloud of dust expanding towards it. At the rate it is happening, it would have been destroyed about 6000 years ago. Since they are 7000 light years away, we won’t see it getting destroyed for another 1000 years.

22. Your heart hasn’t had a vacation, day off, even a 10 minute coffee break since you were in an embryo. It works day and night, night and day, 24×7.

23. The highest recorded temperature in the known universe is about 5.5 trillion Kelvin. It was measured in a LHC experiment. We, humans, living on an insignificant speck of the universe, have somehow managed to beat every known physical phenomenon ever in a display of raw power. The coldest temperature in the known universe was also achieved here on Earth. Magnets were used to bring the temperature to mere billionths of a Kelvin to power the LHC (Large Hadron Collider at CERN).

24. Thinking about what was there before the Big Bang makes no sense because the very concepts of “what” and “before” (i.e. space and time) began at that point. However, it may be reasonable to say that something might have existed. But since it is outside our space-time it has no meaning to us. Also, there is no edge to the universe and no border because there is nothing outside of it. Yet, it started small and is expanding.

25. The earth is rotating. The earth is also revolving. The sun itself is revolving around the galaxy. The galaxy is pushing through the universe. The universe itself is expanding. Stick out your finger. Now imagine time is paused, and imagine a red dot was created at the tip of your finger, marking that “precise” point in universe. (Yes, I know, it’s not really possible for a spot in space to be “precise.” Just use your imagination). Unpause time. Pause it again one second later. That point in space is thousands of miles away now, and you’ll never pass through it again.

 

[Reasonable Doubt]

Complexity of Eye Movements:
Look at an object on the wall across the room. Now keep looking at it while you move your head back and forth, up and down. Your eyes stay pointed at that spot. Not hard to do, is it?

For that to happen, you brain needs to calculate the direction and rate of change your head is moving in 3 dimensional space and then send corresponding signals to the muscles in your eyes to exactly counter match the rotation and speed in order to keep them pointed at that spot and not only that, the muscles that have to be moved (and the rate at which they move) are different for each eye, since if you turn your head quickly right, you right eye contracts the muscles on the nose side to compensate, and the left eye contracts the muscles on the temple side.

It’s an absolutely amazing, fine-tuned process involving incredible spatial calculations and microsecond signaling and adjusting that we do all the time and take completely for granted.

Our eyes also function as fine-tuned motion detectors. Try scanning a room with a smooth eye movement and you will notice that you can’t. Instead, your eyes move in little “jumps” called saccades. Now, focus on a moving object and you will notice that you can now move your eyes smoothly as you track the object’s movement. This eye behavior, known as smooth pursuit, evolved because it allowed us to better spot and keep sight of prey (or potential predators). The little eye jumps are ideal for skipping over useless sights and scanning the entirety of a space more quickly. Then smooth pursuit allows us to lock on to a target and keep it in our sights.

Also, when darting your eyes from object to object the brain makes a conscious effort to erase the visual memory of the motion blur before your eyes rest on the object. The brain then fills in the lost memory with the image when your eyes stop moving. You lose 20-30 minutes of visual memory a day as the brain does this.

Body Destroying Cancer Cells:
Each day, your immune system spots and destroys cells that could easily go on to become cancerous. The irony is that both mutant and hunter come from the same source – the immune system. In this way, it could be argued that everyone gets cancer and beats it.

Also when you get a sunburn, it’s not your skin cells being damaged by the sun and dying, it’s your skin cells’ DNA being damaged by the sun and them killing themselves so that they don’t turn into cancer.

Our Running Abilities:
Humans can outrun most animals in long distances due to our ability to cool and our efficient 2-legged running. It is amazing because this used to be a way to hunt (and it still practiced in VERY small parts of the world).

It’s called persistence hunting. Basically, humans can regulate heat while running/jogging/walking, while the animals being chased (antelope for example) cannot regulate their heat efficiently.

The hunter keeps the animal in sight, running to where they can catch up to it, not allowing it the chance to rest in the shade and cool down. Eventually, the animal either dies of heat exhaustion, or is just too exhausted to continue running away, and the hunter can easily kill it with a spear at close range. It is insane to think that your body is able to run an animal to death.

In long-distance running contests(e.g., a marathon), humans are literally the best animal in existence depending on temperature. Horses beat us at cooler temperatures(which is why the man vs horse race they have in Wales is usually won by the horse), and husky dogs when it’s extremely cold, but on a hot day they’ll both die of heat exhaustion long before we will.

This is one of the major reasons we domesticated dogs. Wolves in Europe can also run very long distances especially compared to the animals native to Europe. They’re also unbelievably good trackers. However, they’re horrendous at actually killing an animal. It takes like 5 of them chewing on an animal for half an hour just to kill it. Humans are also phenomenal endurance athletes, but our sense of smell makes it much more difficult to track animals. Thanks to our throwing ability and intelligence to build tools, we’re also very efficient and quick killers. European hunter gatherers realized this and used the friendlier wolves to help track prey. Some of those same Europeans actually took these wolves, or really proto-dogs at this point, and traveled all the way across Asia, north into Russia, across the frozen Bering Strait through mammoths and saber tooth tigers into the Americas over the course of several thousand years. Those people became what we now know as Native Americans and that’s why the domesticated dogs that Native Americans kept as companions and hunting partners could trace their ancestry to Europe.

Fetus’ Superhuman Abilities:
When a pregnant woman suffers organ damage (such as a heart attack), the fetus sends stem cells to the damaged organ to help repair it. Doctors have observed that women who experience weakness of the heart during pregnancy or shortly after giving birth have better recovery rates than any other group of heart failure patients. A study suggests that fetal stem cells may help human mothers, as well as mice, recover from heart damage. It may also explain another curious clinical observation: The hearts of two women who suffered from severe heart weakness were later found to contain cells derived from the cells of a male fetus years after they gave birth to their sons.

The same thing seems to hold true for other organs. When pregnant women have damage in other organs, including the brain, lung, and liver, earlier studies have shown, fetal cells show up there, too.

Why we Experience Fear:
The point of fear is to maximize your chances of survival; your senses are sharpened, immune and digestive systems shut down to save energy, and chemicals are released to give you adrenaline. You pretty much become superhuman to get ready to fight or run away.

It should be added that when you are scared of something that is non-threatening and you have this uneasy feeling, (“creepiness” is a word that is commonly used) this is your brain’s response to the unknown. For example, clowns are a common fear because of the face paint that conceals their face. This prevents us from reading the true emotions of the person behind the mask and we are unable to tell whether they are a threat or not. Our brain decides to fear the clown to prepare for the worst of situations and take no risks.

Even the fear response in general is a pretty great one! If you look at a frightened face, you’ll notice the eyes opened wide and eyebrows up, face pulled taught. This is, according to some theories, a way to increase peripheral view and to also allow less obstruction to our sense of smell, as our noses flare out during a fearful reaction, too.

Fear conditioning is another reason we fear non-threatening things. If something negative happens to you in a certain situation or with a certain object, you associate this object with negativity, and you fear this object in anticipation of something bad happening again. The “Little Albert” experiment is famously known for fear conditioning in an infant boy. Pretty much they took a baby and every time they gave him a white, fluffy object they hit a metal pole behind him to make a loud noise. Albert would cry and eventually associated white fluffy objects with the loud noise and began to fear them.


Body’s Resilience:
The resilience of the human body is pretty damn incredible. Your body will fight with every ounce of its being to keep you alive, literally. Your body will digest itself to salvage nutrients for vital organs. Your cells will kill themselves if they can tell there’s something wrong with them for the good of the rest of the body, and you have so many reflexes that you wouldn’t even begin to understand them until they actually kicked in when you go into survival mode. The instinctive drowning response, for example. Every part of your body is focused on keeping your mouth above water for air. My personal favorite response is fight or flight. Normally your muscles are limited in how much power they can exert so that they don’t get hurt excessively during routine tasks like exercising. When your adrenaline surges, that limit is gone. Your muscles will work as hard as they possibly can without restraint, and you don’t feel the pain of overexertion either. This is where we get those stories of people lifting cars off their children – hysterical strength.

 

[disappoint]

I like these fun facts, thanks for posting. I don't see how they will mess your mind though. I do hope they undid the fear conditioning on the little boy if that story is true.

Here's one I'd like to add: "People don't get drunk to get high, they get drunk to not feel low"

Or how about: "People sometimes get drunk to forget. If they only knew they could forget without side effects they wouldn't need to get drunk anymore."

and then there's: "People don't need anesthesia or analgesics and their side effects for pain relief. Some people have even had surgery without medication using hypnosis."

 

[EliteRetard]

I know somebody who is seriously afraid of cotton and paper, because of the "sound" they make. Also has a strong physical reaction to certain textures.

 

[MongGrel]

 

[EliteRetard]

You posted that already, you cheater.

 

[MongGrel]

You posted that already, you cheater.

It was too good to just use once.

 

[Muse]

"Everything you know is wrong."

 

[Muse]

19. You can constantly see your nose, your brain just filters it out.

Not really, my glasses get in the way.

 

[Muse]

Here's an excellent demystification of the process of dissolving your mental blocks (I'm listening to it right now):

Alan Watts ~ How To Live Without Making A Decision

 

[Homerboy]

My brother and I always marvel at this one:

6. If you shuffle a deck of cards, chances are you will have created a combination that has never previously been made.

Think about that. The numbers are just crazy.
https://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/10002.4-6.shtml

 

[SlitheryDee]

The thing about your parents putting you down and never picking you up again got me. I suppose there did have to be a "last time", though no one knew to mark it as such.

I'm calling bullshit on the sentient universe one.

 

[GasX]

The thing about your parents putting you down and never picking you up again got me. I suppose there did have to be a "last time", though no one knew to mark it as such.

My wife and I sometimes find our kids crawling into our bed in the middle of the night to be annoying (they squirm a lot), but we know one day they will stop doing it, so we welcome them in every time.

 

[John Connor]

7. You pass your death anniversary every year.

How can you pass your death anniversary when you haven't died yet?

 

[SphinxnihpS]

How can you pass your death anniversary when you haven't died yet?

Because an anniversary is a month and day and the calendar is a cycle.

 

[SphinxnihpS]

Every atom in your body, with the exception of the enamel on your teeth, was not in you a year ago.

You life is a series of complex salt imbalances.

You are a speck on this "pale blue dot" in a nearly infinite universe, and all of it fits inside the volume of a grapefruit, which is about the size of your brain, because it is your brain which creates the entire universe.

 

[sdifox]

Most important one was missed. Cheesecake is a pie!

 

[K7SN]

How can you pass your death anniversary when you haven't died yet?

if you die on February 29th, you only have passed your death anniversary approximately age / 4 times.

 

[mundane]

Every atom in your body, with the exception of the enamel on your teeth, was not in you a year ago.

There was a recent RadioLab podcast which discussed the average age of cells within your organs (so perhaps not directly applicable to atom turnover). Due to the 'Bomb Pulse' from incredible nuclear testing during the cold war, levels of C-14 in cells can be used to directly map when the cell was created. As the levels in the atmosphere near background (some decades), this mechanism will fail.

IIRC some of the brain structure retains the same-aged cells (presumably, with more-or-less the same atomic makeup) from early development. Ignoring the mathematical improbability of cycling every atom out annually, it seems likely that a substantial portion of the molecules within longer-lasting organs are older than a year.

YMMV, it's been a long time since Bio + Chem sources, etc.

 

[SP33Demon]

You forgot that a coconut is a fruit, seed, and veggie. all. at. once. WOW SUCH DEEP THOUGHTS BY JACK HANDEY THAT WE ARE HAVING

 

[DaveSimmons]

" 'Cause, remember: no matter where you go... there you are"

 

[SphinxnihpS]

There was a recent RadioLab podcast which discussed the average age of cells within your organs (so perhaps not directly applicable to atom turnover). Due to the 'Bomb Pulse' from incredible nuclear testing during the cold war, levels of C-14 in cells can be used to directly map when the cell was created. As the levels in the atmosphere near background (some decades), this mechanism will fail.

IIRC some of the brain structure retains the same-aged cells (presumably, with more-or-less the same atomic makeup) from early development. Ignoring the mathematical improbability of cycling every atom out annually, it seems likely that a substantial portion of the molecules within longer-lasting organs are older than a year.

YMMV, it's been a long time since Bio + Chem sources, etc.

Even the cells that do not die often metabolize and repair themselves constantly.

The cycle is probably more like 6 months, but I hedged caution.

Every atom.

Of course this only points to the fact that you are nothing but the information of you. I think the far more mind-blowing fact is that the entire universe is all in your coconut.

 

[blinblue]

8. There are an infinite amount of numbers between 0 and 1.

The really cool thing is that there is a greater type of infinity that describes the real numbers (uncountable infinite) between 0 and 1 then the infinity that describes all of the integers (countable infinite). Both are infinite, but the reals are even more infinite. Also cool that there is a proof of this that is reasonably understandable to a layperson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor's_diagonal_argument

 

[Bubbleawsome]

I like this thread.

 

[brianmanahan]

"Everything you know is wrong."

black is white, up is down, and short is long?

man i love that song