The illusion of thought
I was sitting the other day outside my building and someone came up to me and asked whether i was cold or not. A simple question is it not. Well i answered but in my usual fashion i spent the rest of the day thinking about this mundane question. If one was cold, what would that really mean? Surely it is just electrical impulses flowing through ones nervous system to the brain telling you that it is cold. So therefore “cold” should be at a specific region by anyones understanding. For instance it is cold once the temperature is 7 degrees. But this is not true.
People at the coast find 20 degrees cold whereas people in Russia may find it cold only at -3 Degrees. Thus cold is purely opinionated and not really in existance. For if one person finds 20 cold and the other -3 then cold is simply based on ones own comfort level, and more importantly could be changed in theory.
By making yourself feel comfortable and more at ease with a lower temperature one could surely never get cold. However this led to my thinking evolving ever more. Is cold not then the difference between the average temperature in ones area and the current experienced temerature? For instance JHB temperature average is 21 so like today with it being 14 i feel cold as it is 7 degrees away from what i am used to and thus i am cold. This would certainly prove true for being hot if it was indeed a true way to measure cold.
Your thoughts?
Tina said,
April 22, 2008 at 2:13 pm
hehe My word! You are clever! haha How does your brain not fry??? LOL. No but serious, it’s good to be like you are! I agree with what you are saying but biologically I do know that every human body can’t survive at extreme temperatutes, wheather hot or cold. So you can measure how cold it is, based on your bodies ability to keep warm, eg how much body hair etc you have. But here’s a fact for you……I am cold in anything below 20 degrees, so there is your answer! hehe LOL
and this comment probably makes no sense at all hahaha
Mike said,
April 22, 2008 at 2:35 pm
I agree. There is a certain standard at which EVERY human will die from “cold” - probably in the form of hypothermia. Thus, while our individual perceptions of “cold” may vary from person to person, by racial group, geographical location, even from time to time - eg the first cold snap (IE yesterday) will seem a lot worse than the same temperatures in the middle of winter - The overall constant of “cold” remains just that: constant.