A 2D Worm in a 4D World
If you bounce a ball in front of a worm navigating a flat surface, the worm will see a horizontal line growing in both directions momentarily – and then disappearing, without any explanation that the worm would find plausible. That’s what a two-dimensional life is all about: left, right, forward, and back. There are no ups and downs if you are a worm.
When I had my first encounter with Einstein’s theories, I tripped on his spacetime concept based on four-dimensional space. Not surprisingly, most of my classmates agreed that we could explain the Minkowski space “back to the prof” but could hardly visualize it.
Only one student said that having four orthogonal axes is only natural, how else? And yes, of course, he can see it. This guy was blind from birth.
Recently, we had a client who said that there’s no such thing as “employee motivation.” And “they get paid for what they do, what else?” This VP said, “You mean, a couple of consultants had talked to the frontline – and everything works better now?! No way!” He looked at the data provided by his own analysts – and could not see the obvious improvement that his team was excited about.
The guy was not blind. He was a 2D worm in a 4D world.