Does our perception change reality
Posted on Sunday 28th June 2009
Not quite a Schrodinger’s Cat analogy, but the way we view something does alter our description of that thing. Any assessment has to based on an accepted norm but also what we become used to. So, in a manner of speaking, in thinking about an aspect of life, we have to challenge our perception.
This sounds all rather cryptic but it was prompted by a page on the BBC news website about the English summer:
“The Met Office has predicted that around the country daytime temperatures could reach 29-30C, with minimum night-time temperatures of 15-18C.”
For the UK, these are unseasonably warm temperatures, and the website bills this as a “heatwave”.
In Adelaide these temperatures would be considered a pleasant spring or autumn day. By comparison, last February, we had 15 consecutive days with peak daytime temperature was greater than 37 degrees, and for at least 4 it was over 45 degrees. The highest minimum one night was 30 degrees. Now that is a heatwave.
Or is it? In some parts of the middle-east or northern Africa, it almost certainly gets hotter than that.
So it’s interesting that it all seems to depend on “the eye of the beholder”.
