It’s Not What You Think [FICTOID]

“Are you sure you found it?”

“Of course I’m sure I found it!”

“But are you sure you’re sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

“Tell me the story again, but listen to yourself as you tell it.”

“All right, I just got off my stint at the front desk of the Hotel Pretoria, got that?”

“Yes.”

“I decided to take the long way home, stretch my legs, take in some fresh air by walking through the forest.”

“Go on.”

“While walking through the forest, I smelled a mango tree.  I thought that was unusual, mangos don’t grow in the wild around here.”

“True.  Continue.”

“So I tracked the odor down and found a mango tree, only instead of regular mangos it bore examples of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.”

“Aha!  That’s my point.  If these were indeed examples of the Uncertainty Principle, then by definition you couldn’t be certain of that.  You might guess, you might feel, you might presume, you might even believe, but you could never know.”

“But I saw it with my own eyes!”

“I’m sure you believe that, but once again, how can the Uncertainty Principle do anything except disprove itself?”

“…wait…wouldn’t that mean by proving itself uncertain, the Uncertainty Principle would thereby prove itself?”

“Precisely.  Which means by proving itself, it becomes a certainty, thereby nullifying itself.”

“…wow…”

“Of course, there’s an even simpler explanation for your experience.”

“What’s that?”

“You popped some edibles as you left work and they kicked in halfway home.”

“…yeah, I think I’ll go with that…”

© Buzz Dixon