Is That Insanity Or Normalcy?!

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

The above quote often makes me feel uneasy because it seems to suggest that if you do the same thing repeatedly, it would be preposterous for you to expect a different result. And, it would be like an exercise in futility.

When Michelangelo kept chipping away on his slab of marble, his masterpiece "David" unfolded. If you attend a foreign language class regularly, you can expect to become more proficient in that language. Thus, doing something repeatedly can produce improvement and progress.

The following excerpt from Frank Wilczek's article on "Einstein's Parable of Quantum Insanity" (Quanta Magazine on September 23, 2015) provides some insight on the probable background story of this quote which is famously attributed to Albert Einstein:-

"First of all, note that what Einstein describes as insanity is, according to quantum theory, the way the world actually works. In quantum mechanics you can do the same thing many times and get different results. Indeed, that is the premise underlying great high-energy particle colliders. In those colliders, physicists bash together the same particles in precisely the same way, trillions upon trillions of times. Are they all insane to do so? It would seem they are not, since they have garnered a stupendous variety of results."

Photo by Anderson Schmig on Unsplash

In everyday life where we do not measure things so precisely as scientists do, we do things over and over again, and expect the same result. When the candles on the birthday cake are blown at, they are snuffed out. Likewise, when we aim the bowling ball at the proven pockets between the pins, we expect to obtain a strike.

However, at the microscopic level, the candles are not blown in the exact manner by different birthday persons and yet the results look the same (but not exactly the same as to how the flame went out or the pattern of the fumes). Likewise, different bowlers use dissimilar balls and techniques, hit the sweet pockets (not precisely the same) for a strike, and sent the pins flying differently but falling, nonetheless.

When the physicists do their experiments using the aforementioned particle colliders to smash particles with exact precision every time, they find a different set of results each time. 

Now, that's insane (extreme; outrageous)!! 

Think again about the birthday candles, bowling pins, and what the physicists have discovered. Maybe it's normal, actually, to be doing the same thing and expecting different results each time, after all, seriously-speaking.