Poorly Explained

There was an interesting experiment conducted. People usually ask professional tennis players how they get the ball to spin so well, and the tennis players would always explain that once the ball makes contact with the racket, the 'dip' it inwards. That seems like a completely logical idea, doesn't it? It makes sense, the ball should spin more if that sort of swing is used. The interesting part is this:

A game was recorded using high tech cameras to detect the relationship between the style of hitting and the spin of the tennis ball. It turns out that not one of those professional tennis players used the technique they said they did. Now I don't find this very shocking. When I heard about this experiment, it felt like a prime example of how language gets in the way of everything.

I watched a documentary about the history of comedy and listened as countless comedians tried to explain the techniques they used. Some said timing was everything, some said the best jokes were ones that reflected the anxiety of real life situations(I think Sigmund Freud said that), and some said being able to make people laugh was a gift. But just like the case of the 'top spin' on the tennis balls, these comedians were trying to explain something that they didnt have the capacity to explain. Sure, comedy and hitting tennis balls isn't rocket science, but maybe that's where our answers lie!

You see, the way you'd explain rocket science, or at least make rocket science appear more explainable, is by using math. And something like rocket science pairs up objective terms with math, making it nearly the truth. And I say nearly the truth, because you can actually spell out 5. It's easy, f - i - v - e.

Now, surely maths is universal, or at least more universal than morality and ethics(but more on that some other time). The small flaw that mathematics has is that it incorporates symbolism and needs language to be explained. To put it plainly, imagine if I was right about mathematics being universal, and there was a sentient race of aliens that used mathematics the way we did. One, wouldn't be one to the aliens. And perhaps 10, 11, 12, etc were symbols on their own instead of a repeatition of the numbers 1-9 in more than one digit place. Like, if the number after 9 wasnt 10(think of that as ONE-ZERO), instead it was #(just an example, my keyboard doesn't have much else to use). Sure we could think of numbers in base 10, etc. But the symbolism involved in mathematics is what keeps it from being absolutely true. Or at least absolutely truer than words.