What If?

We all have “what if” questions.  We wonder about how things would be “if”.  What if one day we turn on the switch and no light comes on, the dishwasher, the garage door, and oh no! The TV does not work. We take these things for granted because they’ve always worked.  But we know better because indeed things could go wrong.  Also, sometimes we do wonder about some outlandish hypothetical “what ifs”.  What if the sun does not rise tomorrow?  What if the tide does not come in, or for that matter, not ebb?  I read this e-book while on vacation last week that addressed some insanely ridiculous “what ifs”. What hooked me to it was that the author actually put in the time to look at scientific scenarios for what would happen “if”.

From the book, “What If? : Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions” written by Randall Munroe, Emily Dunham asked this question, “When, if ever, will Facebook contain more profiles of dead people than of living ones?”  The author went on to pose a lot of assumptions, based on a lot of things: Facebook’s growth rate, age breakdown and compositions of users, etc.  With so many variables, the surprising answer was a date range of between 2060 and 2130.  Again, one must assume Facebook will still be around then. It is possible something new and more exciting mass media phenomenon will replace it, people will get tired of it, or some kind of earth-shaking cultural shift takes place, or for some unforeseen sociological forces – who knows?  I don’t have a Facebook account so I have no opinion on its future.

These “what if” questions do seem to be more intriguing than the standard run-of-the-mill ordinary questions and they do make us wonder.  For example, Mr. Munroe estimated that since its inception as many as 10 to 20 million who created profiles on Facebook had since died; however, more young people than older ones are in that category. That is counterintuitive but one must consider that there are more young people who use Facebook by a huge number over people older than 50.

There are a lot more but less morbid hypothetical questions in the book. Some are even funny. Mimi asked this, “If you call a random number and say “God Bless You”, what are the chances that the person who answers just sneezed?”  As difficult as that to determine, even unknowable perhaps, the answer is an estimate: probably one in 40,000. Other questions are more catastrophic:  (a) What if all the rain in a thunderstorm fell as one raindrop? (b) What if all lightning strikes around the world (and there are a lot) were concentrated in just one spark over one spot, what would happen? (c) What would happen to the batter if a fast ball was pitched towards him at the speed of light?

Here is one for the physics nerds. Asteroids and man-made space junk burn up on entry and re-entry towards earth, respectively, from atmospheric friction.  Alex Haley asked: “From what height would you need to drop a steak for it to be cooked when it hit the ground?” First, we must ask whether one wants his steak rare or well done; is it 8 ounces or 12 ounces, defrosted or not before the drop.  From my personal experience, a typical ¾ inch thick steak needs to be cooked 4-5 minutes per side (8-9 minutes total cooking time).  Apparently, even if dropped from 100 kilometers above the earth, there is not that much time before the steak hits the ground because falling bodies like a piece of space debris, even the size of a grain of sand, do travel rapidly and fall fast downwards.  Anyway, if NASA has some extra money, which it does not, it will have to settle this one or maybe Richard Branson or Elon Musk may fund the experiment. Meanwhile, try wrapping steak in an aluminum foil, secure it just above the exhaust manifold of your car, drive for thirty minutes and see what happens to the meat afterwards.

American high school students prospecting to go to college must face taking the SSAT (Secondary School Admission Test). Rob Balder asked this: “What if everyone who took the SAT guessed on ever multiple-choice questions? How many perfect scores would there be?” Actually, one had come up with a scientific process that involved statistical probabilities and intelligent assumptions and the short answer is: NONE.  The question reminds me of another one.  It is the classic query about getting a chimpanzee to type away random keys on a typewriter.  How long would it take, if at all, for it to somehow type a readable novel?

Anyway, the message to high school students is: There is no other way but to study for the SSAT because, quoting from the book, even “If all 4 million 17-year-olds took the test and they all guessed randomly… each used a computer to take the test a million times each day, continued this every day for five billion years … the chance of any of them ever getting a perfect score on just the math section would be about 0.0001 per cent”. From that, a high school student will have a fair idea about his or her chances of passing the SSAT by just guessing – ZERO. On the other hand, a diligently prepared student can do it in one take. So students, like everything in life, there really are no short cuts.  Guessing, in fact, will take forever.

After reading the book, I thought I’d come up with a couple of absurd hypothetical questions of my own. There was not much to do on this rainy weekend so, why not, especially coming back from a 10-day vacation?

1)      What if suddenly one morning we (all of 7 billion people around the world) woke up and each household or every single unmarried able-bodied adult has a net worth of over a million dollars?  Don’t ask how? What would the world be like?  I think it will be worse than yesterday. Imagine Elon Musk – I’m picking on him – took out his top of the line 2017 Tesla Model S to drive to a nearby Starbucks for his favorite latte. He won’t get one because the barista who served him yesterday (and all baristas, in fact) is no longer working there. Would you, if you had a million dollars in the bank? Elon Musk will soon find out there is no one to collect his garbage, deliver his mail, and there is no one working at the Tesla plant or the Space X headquarters. He will not be alone in that predicament.  Try imagining every scenario anywhere and you’ll know it is not going to be pretty. The Maasai cattle herder in Tanzania, previously subsisting on a daily food intake of 1400 calories or less daily, who can now afford to increase his herd of cattle, will find out that there are no cattle available for sale because every Maasai around the region will want to do the same. There is much celebration across the country and alas, every cattle was butchered for the big party.

Around the world home prices will skyrocket when every homeowner, including those living in cardboard boxes from everywhere poverty was the norm yesterday, will want a nice home today.  Mathematicians, sociologists and political scientists will not want to answer this “what if” scenario.  Economists – let us not forget them - will for the first time agree on something: the world economy will collapse into a sudden implosion. There will be no one to sell anything to anyone; besides who will be working anywhere to produce the goods or provide the services of any kind. Who will keep the peace on the streets, and so on and on? You get the picture. Suffice it to say, it is going to be a maddeningly chaotic world!

2)      What if one day your doctor tells you after a very rigorous checking and re-checking that your cells will go on forever young – a kind of incredible mutation has your body replenishing every dead cell? You will live forever; you are an immortal. Wow, you say, but what’s the problem?  You did jump up and down and even did a head stand while still at the doctor’s office. The jubilation stopped when you reached home.  You are gripped by uncontrollable fear and quivering with incessant anxiety in the following days.  But why?  Now that I had time to think about it, it is not what immortality is made out to be. 

Living forever has its drawbacks that, believe it or not, may far outweigh most of anything we ever fantasized about living forever.  You’d be worried sick about retiring. How would you like to be wondering if you had enough in your 401k to last forever?  If you will be receiving a pension, will the company or government entity from which you draw your pension survive even for just a couple of hundred years?  You can say, since you will not grow old, you can work forever.  Would you?

On the other hand, you can try every hobby there is.  25-50 years to master golf, chess, bridge or canasta. In a century, you’ll get tired of woodworking or aqua culture, you can fish and hunt and witness the evolutionary processes change the behavior of the fishes and animals you’ll be going after.  “Climb Every Mountain” is not just a song from the Sound of Music – you will actually do it. Come to think of it, Mt. Everest goes up in height about 4 millimeters a year from tectonic action - you can climb it every time it rises another meter.  Traveling the world through space and time may get you the chance, like no person ever will, to find the proverbial soul mate. It comes with a price, of course.  Your soul mate’s limited life span will have a devastating effect in the end.

Now, we know why anybody will get sick at the prospect of living forever. The first "what if" above goes to show why income and wealth equality is impossible to achieve, it may not even be actually good, Mark Zuckerberg's suggestion of guaranteed income for everyone notwithstanding. Think hard about it. What will it do to society and what will it do towards aspirations, ambitions, working harder, etc?  Mr. Zuckergberg's net worth is $50 billion. He seems to suggest that, perhaps with a tinge of guilt, that rich people should redistribute some of their wealth to help even out incomes, or is he just talking about another government role to achieve such a Utopian dream.

Well, what “what if” scenarios can you come up with. Try it.  It could be fun. And exercise the mind to go along with it. 

(Note: The book I mentioned is free for download online).