TED Community » Andrew Petts

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Space, more than anything. I love physics, cosmology, and staring up into the stars and contemplating the universe. It's so mind boggilingly existant.

An idea worth spreading

That we are all star dust. I know that it's overused in cosmology circles, but I think we could all use a little humbling every once in a while. You are one human among billions. You live on one planet, in one star system among billions. If there are other civilizations, each one of them has their own beliefs about the universe that are just as correct as any of our beliefs. You are not unique, and everything you know is likely to be wrong. Don't take that information and despair though, take that information and strive to make what you can with it. The thought of being wrong about everything is a blessing not a curse. Once you accept the impossibility of what you believe, the possibilities of the rest of the universe begin.

Talk to me about

Anything you want! I'm terribly passionate about space, but I love to learn about anything and everything. Talk about music, space, math, colours, the brain, water, nature, or carpets. Anything!

People don't know that I'm good at

Math and astronomy! It is what I'm passionate about now, but for most of my life I was an environmental science kid. And that had next to no math, and I ended up looking at the ground instead of a sky

Comments

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• A reply on Conversation: Synaesthesia allows us to understand if the blue I see is the same as the blue you see.

  Feb 19 2012: There are several hits, but most of them are forum posts with next to no replies, or they are just talking about synaesthesia in general. Most of the hits don't actually talking about tasting colours, they just happen to have the word "taste" and the word "colour" on the same page. In the first 3 pages, I followed most of the links and only one actually had people discussing tasting colours in the way that I described. A lot of them talk about chocolate tasting brown, cotton candy tasting pink, lemons tasting yellow, etc. More about the colour associated with the food than the actual taste of the colour.
  That said, http://www.theperfectworld.us/thread.php?id=1924 that link was actually quite interesting and I thank you for convincing me to search for it again!

• A comment on Conversation: Can we ever know how another person "senses" the world?

  Feb 19 2012: I think the answer is that while not everyone will perceive and interpret things the same way, a lot of people do. I have a form of synaesthesia where I can taste colours in my food (eg, lemons are green to me, most fish is blue). I also frequently see the letter "y" as a deep purple. I find it odd, because I've never been able to find a case taste-colour synaesthesia online, yet my mother has the exact same one as me. She even interprets the same colours from the same foods that I do.
  So having never found a case similar to mine on the internet, I'm drawn to the conclusion that I am very unique in the way my world is compared to yours, even if it's unique in a minor way. At the same time though, my mother having the same synaesthesia shows me that as unique as it is, her visual blue is probably the same as my visual blue based solely on the fact that her tasted blue is the same as mine.
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  A comment on Conversation: Which video game has challenged your perspective on the way you live your life and how?

  Feb 18 2012: I definitely have to say Chrono Trigger changed my outlook on the world, and my place in it. The contrast of instantly travelling from a happy, green world of peace to 1000 years into the future and seeing a dystopian civilization was an eye opening moment for my younger self. The way the game progresses, you can make decisions to make the world a better place for everyone in the future (restoring forests, spreading peace and goodwill, many other options along those lines), or simply eliminate the immediate evil. It made me realize that if I try to help the world, help the people, and help myself, then the world can only become a better place. I see the world now as having unlimited options to change it for the better, whether I live to see the results or not.

• A reply on Conversation: What's Your Favorite Dinosaur?

  Feb 18 2012: Mine was also any kind of Ankylosaur! That was mostly because I always used to imagine them knocking out peoples ankles with their tails, I thought it was the funniest image in the world as a kid