1+1

  

 1 plus 1, it sounds like the most basic question there can ever be, a kindergartener could answer it without hesitation, but hold your answers just yet, this is a trick question, I warned you. Most will fail to answer this question correctly, at at least in a manner that is the least wrong, probably due to no fault of their own, in this post I will try to delve into the "why" people can't answer this question, and what's going on with the self-conscious and brilliant yet still primitive mind of modern homo sapiens. 

Modern education system is supposed to teach us to solve problems, to equip us with knowledge to explore, however, more often than not, the pursuit of problem solving devolves into simplified techniques designed to look for answers, and obtaining knowledge too often just turns into a series of memorizations. In real life, however, this is as far from actual problem solving as it can get. You see, the "1+1" problem is so ill defined, that is has no definite answers, just as in life, one has to seek for the correct questions first, that's far more important. 1+1 = 1 is a perfectly good answer, if you're working under assumption of boolean algebra - the most used algebra in the world! Every computer uses this as a fact, after all, this was original notation of George Boole, inventor of boolean algebra, where "+" represents the "OR" operation, and 1 represents true while 0 represents false operands. In other words: "(TRUE or TRUE)? TRUE.". George at first was dismissed by his peers, partly because of his notation, partly because no one saw a real world use for it, and here we are, 200 years later, living in the world where most of our information is processed in a matter of 1+1=1. Well, lets just call it an exception to the rule, a happy little accident? What else can 1+1 be equal to? 1001 of course. Just because no units were provided at first, it doesn't mean both operands are normalized to be in the same unit, an oversight in author's problem? Maybe. Nevertheless, life is full of oversights, humans after all, are fallible creatures, so it could easily mean 1(g) + 1(kg) = 1001(g) where all the necessary information was simply provided only upon raising a question. We are also completely in the dark on if this is really an arithmetic operation, what if it's not? If it's something more real, like for example, an electron, what happens when two electrons interact together? What would be the answer then? For that we have to look at perhaps most interesting, humble and creative, and possibly the smartest human being to have ever walked the Earth - Richard Feynman. He would promptly say, that the answer to our "1+1" problem, where operands are electrons and operator is signifying an interaction between them, is this:

Or maybe, the operand in "1+1" stands for interactions between pigeons, and just maybe, if you're mad or brilliant enough, and you observe them long enough, you too can arrive at the idea of "Nash Equilibrium", as John Nash did, that changed the course of our understanding of economics and human behavior forever. 

This brings me back to a masterpiece of a novel series, that was then adapted as a movie, called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an alien civilization designed a supercomputer to answer it's most existential question: "What is the meaning of life the universe, and everything?". Computer stated it's a difficult question, and it will need some time to think, and asked to come back in seven and a half million years later, to receive the answer. And so they did, seven and a half million years later, the great descendants of the civilization gathered, to learn the answer they've been seeking for so long. And to dismay of many, they've heard it - 42. Naturally, upset with the answer, which doesn't make any sense, civilization leaders starting asking, why 42 and what does it mean, and computer simply stated that it just seemed right, however it can't have more meaning than that, because the question was too vague, and simply unanswerable, just like our "1+1" question. And if it this alien civilization really wanted an answer, they would first need to find the question, the correct ultimate question. 

This is what I'd like to be taken away from this. We should reconsider the way we approach problem solving, to unlearn what we've learned, ignore out initial programming, our primitive thinking fueled by the dopamine rush that we get from providing answers, and ignore all of our instincts developed by standardized education system. We have to broaden our minds and start looking for questions, no matter how obvious the answer may be at first, after all, with some luck, you might just find what you haven't expected, and that is the true human exploration spirit that I believe in.