One thing that I have accepted in this lifetime is that there are infinite things I won’t ever understand. I can’t wrap my head around how humans created such ornate buildings hundreds of years ago, and I’ll never fully grasp how the internet works. I cannot fathom the fact that our galaxy contains billions of other planets, because honestly, even my smartphone blows my mind.
We are lucky to live in an age where we have so many more answers than we did a few centuries ago, but that doesn’t mean our brains can fully comprehend it all. Redditors have recently been discussing concepts that they’ll never quite grasp, despite how many times they’ve been explained, so we’ve gathered some of their thoughts below. Enjoy scrolling through these topics that might be beyond your realm of comprehension too, and be sure to upvote the ones you’d like to understand!
#1
Space, it's so big that it is unfathomable and I think it's expanding?! Into what? How did it start? It's all a mindf**k .
Image credits: VVinstonVVolfe
#2
How some people can have no inner dialogue. And how can those people have thoughts or ideas? I don’t get it.
Image credits: babyallenbunch
#3
Why America doesn’t provide healthcare & schooling to their citizens.
Image credits: deanstreat
#4
Universe is expanding. Expanding to where? .
Image credits: Lilutka
#5
Quantum mechanics. No matter how many times it’s explained, the idea that particles can exist in multiple states at once or influence each other instantaneously across vast distances just feels like nature’s most elaborate inside joke that I’m not quite in on.
Image credits: jane66x
#6
How a basic wax record and player works. I get it’s a grove that is tiny hills and valleys and the needle picks up on each little one but how the f**k does that equal a voice coming out of a large metal tube. It’s witchcraft as far as im concerned.
Image credits: -invalid-user-name-
#7
I don’t understand how we can see the Milky Way Galaxy in one spot in the sky. Why wouldn’t it completely surround us?
Image credits: raymond_noodles
#8
Why after thousands of years of history behind us, people still suck. You’d think we’d be improving but no, sometimes it feels like we’re actually getting worse.
Image credits: foxylady315
#9
How my cat always knows exactly when I’m about to sit down with a snack.
Image credits: Gracelovey12
#10
How a chicken can make a whole egg everyday! I’m always just blown away
Everyday. A whole new egg. And sometimes two a day! Why is this not talked about more?! Lol.
Image credits: jennylouwoo
#11
Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. What is? How does it work? Is it real? Where does it come from? Like really, where tf does it come from!? I freak out about when I really try thinking if it. ?.
Image credits: Old-Olive13
#12
The internet. WHERE IS IT? How can things be stored on something that’s not tangible?
Image credits: babygrlnad
#13
Why are clouds? How are clouds? What are clouds? Who are clouds?
Image credits: meme_medic95
#14
Which way is East, North, South and West. My husband used to try and teach me by turning my body and asking what direction is this? I was like, how the f**k do I know???
So, I’ve always relied on “Ok, is that a left or a right hand turn?”.
Image credits: Honey_Bellee
#15
I got a bachelor’s in physics then worked in a geophysics research group. Did some grad school.
It took me until **30** to understand why it was colder at higher elevation.
Edit: I spent the last three days researching this, and I’m confident enough to say that all of the explanations here and the Google response are in fact **wrong**.
Temperature goes down *exclusively* because gravitational potential energy goes up. That’s it. That’s the entire ball game — **energy conservation**. If you work out the math that’s 10 degrees C per km.
The *actual* temperature decrease is 6.5 degrees per KM. This, I believe, is due to energy released by condensation.
Adiabatic expansion is a *consequence* of all of this stuff, not the *cause*. The *amount* of pressure and volume is a result of the energy lost to gravitational potential, not the cause of the energy loss.
Image credits: BlackWindBears
#16
I’ll go, for me it’s the whole transformation from caterpillars to butterflies. I understand what they DO but it’s the most alien s**t ever that a worm just decides to rearrange itself into a winged creature that looks nothing like it did before.
Image credits: n0dust0llens
#17
Computer!! You take the rock!! You pound it into metal ore or something!! You put the metal together with some stringy bits of copper or idk whatever goes into circuits!! You run electricity through it!! It does math??? It’s a rock!! How it does math?!?!?!??
Edit: if I had a 1 and a 0 for everyone who has explained computers to me based on this post I could build MULTIVAC.
Image credits: LadyCordeliaStuart
#18
Healthcare bills – they are engineered to not be understood.
Image credits: happyday752
#19
I don’t get how cell phones work. I get it. I don’t. How can I speak to my family in the Middle East on FaceTime without any sort of cords. My mind cannot fathom
Update: wow I thought waking up this morning I’d just put on my scrubs and it would be another day on the psych ward.
Just wanted to say THANK YOU to all of you for providing so many amazing explanations. For not being rude, or trolls or making me feel dumb about this. I had an old account I had to get rid of, I have been on Reddit for nearly 10 years. This is the most positive experience I’ve ever had. Thank you!
Image credits: Ola_maluhia
#20
Magnets.
I’ve decided that they’re magic, and that’s all there is to it.
(A few hours after posting the above):
Edit 1: I didn’t mean I believe in magic *literally*, jeez. It’s called hyperbole. Holy c**p, people.
Edit 2: Thank you, brainy people, for trying to explain it. You all failed, but I appreciate the attempt and love you for it.
(A day later…)
Edit 3: I had to google what all the ICP comments meant because I’m musically unhip. In other news, I’ve been listening to a new-to-me band today, so thanks, music-y people!
Image credits: Galliagamer
#21
That scene from Interstellar when they go to the planet for a bit, then get back to the ship and the dudes many years older. Why time passes quicker in different places in space.
Image credits: random5654
#22
I don’t understand color. I think it’s something about how the color we see is the color that wasn’t absorbed and therefore the one reflected into our eyeballs, but I just don’t really get it.
Image credits: _exposure
#23
Why people and animals know when someone is watching them.
#24
That the speed of light cannot be exceeded.
It is a finite speed, and yet nothing can go faster than that…
Image credits: Sprzout
#25
Quantum physics always feels like someone’s trying to explain magic with a lot of big words.
Image credits: MysticLuxce33
#26
So many things & all these answers are just adding more to the list ?.
Brains are insane to me…like every human is virtually made of the same things, we all have a brain etc, but everyone’s brain is so ridiculously different from others & then when you bring in things like mental illness / dementia- why do some brains go through that and others don’t? Why isn’t there a better way to help/ reverse/ stop progression.
Image credits: New_Chard9548
#27
How airplanes can be so big and heavy and fly.
Image credits: TangyCornIceCream
#28
MRIs, and I have a strong STEM education. They’re essentially magic. I mean I grasp the basic concepts but how you can create a picture from the response of molecular poles being pulsed is like, wild a*s s**t.
Image credits: SteakandTrach
#29
How NFTs work. Even Futurama couldn’t help me understand.
#30
Sound. Vinyl records, recordings, phones. I mean, I can kind of get behind vinyl records. That makes the most sense to me but even then, that’s so f*****g intricate with so much variety. So many different songs with the tiniest little ridges that make millions of different results I come out perfectly just by dragging a needle across it. It absolutely blows my mind. But the technological advances of not only recording and playing audio, but also being able to do so in real time? No matter where you are in the world? It f*****g blows my mind like how does that work? How the f**k does talking on the phone work what kind of witchcraft is this.
#31
**The stock market**.
How can it be possible for the value of an item to change so drastically? I understand supply and demand, but the large flunctuations are amazing.
Image credits: britishmetric144
#32
Mattress and furniture stores. They gotta be fronts for money laundering, right?
#33
Black holes. Space in general, but black holes really get to me. So strong that light and other stars/planets can’t escape it? Where does it all go?!!
#34
How Trump can still be allowed to run for President.
Any regular guy saying the things he constantly says in any post, podcast or YouTube video and the guy would be cancelled instantly. Old orange full of money says the same things “let’s make him President again!” I guess? I am not sure I will ever understand.
#35
Electricity.
Image credits: pvtguerra
#36
Music theory.
#37
How when I’m playing an FPS game in Europe and aiming my gun at another players head who’s in the US and pulling the trigger, electrical impulses are (roughly speaking) sent from my mouse to my computers motherboard to its CPU which makes the decision to forward it to my network card which sends it to my router to my 5G antenna, then through the air to a recieving cell phone tower a mile down the road, then down into the ground through cables again (I’m assuming) through the entire country to some major European backbone hub, then down into deep sea cables under the entire f*****g Atlantic ocean, through the same whole bunch of cables and switches and relay stations through HIS country as well and finally into his computer where he dies from the bullet a FRACTION OF A SECOND later.
And then we all complain about the lag and the high pings because the internet is just so f*****g slow today.
But anyway it’s not so much that I don’t understand how this all works technically, I do but I just can’t wrap my head around how the information is able to travel as fast as it does for as far as it does. It’s not just the distance itself but also just the sheer amount of devices and things the data packets have to enter and exit on the way, with computer chips running software making logical decisions on how to recieve it, analyse it and send it on its way again over and over and over again. And all of this doesn’t even take a single second from start to end. Not even half of one.
I dunno it’s just mindboggling to me.
#38
Folding a fitted sheet is f*****g impossible.
Image credits: misanthrope2327
#39
I’m a classically trained singer and will never understand how I can think of a certain pitch and then recreate it accurately.
#40
The whole cousins x times removed thing. I mean I kind of get second cousin once removed but beyond that it just confuses me. I have no first cousins. God I wish I had the gold star of cousins but I don’t. Instead genealogy websites are always trying to tell me that someone who was 73 when I was 4 is my first cousin but twice removed or some c**p. Hell no my parents were only children. They didn’t have some secret brother who was like 95 years older than them so get outta here with this is your first cousin but…c**p. Also don’t even with the but it’s different generations line of whatever. Why the heck was everyone in my family having kids at the wrong time?
Also does anyone remember that we’re related app Ancestry used to have where it claimed you were related to certain famous people? It told me George Washington is my First Cousin seven times removed. Yeah sure Jan and people don’t understand why I find this confusing. Not like I remember hanging out with him and Tommy Jefferson at the family camping trip.
#41
Maths .
#42
How my pet seems to know when I’m sad and tries to comfort me.
#43
Solving equations using matrices. I can do other math, I don’t like it and it makes my brain hurt, but I can do it. I tried SO hard to get past this part of Algebra 2, for multiple YEARS, and continually failed, to the point I gave up on college because I needed that math credit to graduate. I had 3 teachers, 2 tutors, a friend who used to tutor, and a loved one who was a high level software and hardware engineer, ALL try to help me through it. I’d get through the one problem they walked me through, and fail as soon as they had me try on my own. I never want to see another matrix. Except the movie series.
ETA: Guys. I appreciate the sentiment, but if the list of people who tried to help me didn’t make it clear, you’re not going to be able to solve this for me over Reddit. I don’t need to solve equations with matrices to do anything in my life until/unless I try college again.
#44
Automatic transmissions. Those things are so complicated.
#45
Rear differentials. I’m fairly convinced there’s just an elf performing magic every time I need to turn. .
#46
Magnets. Don’t understand how they have that physical force locked up in them. Seems to break the laws of physics or something. I don’t trust them.
#47
Even before Brooklyn 99 this was my answer – the Monty Hall Problem. And I’m actually fairly GOOD at math, this one I just can’t get myself to fundamentally understand!
#48
The triple jump in track and field. Which leg? What jump is next? Which leg now? Argh!
#49
How a human 3-D prints another human in their abdomen, without any conscious effort. I understand the science. I still think it sounds made up.
#50
Coding.
I work in IT and I absolutely love it. I know it’s what I’ll be doing for the rest of my life and I’m perfectly cool with that, I love electronics and building pcs and all that.
Maybe someday I’ll dive deeper into it but GOD I cannot wrap my head around coding.
#51
Crypto mining.
#52
My health insurance
You mean I have to pay every time I use it even though I pay monthly? Unless I pay a big amount then I pay less? But if I don’t use it they just keep it all? But they don’t cover my teeth or my eyes?
#53
Affect vs. Effect
Please feel free to try and explain.
#54
The “cloud “.
#55
Daylight Saving Time.
#56
The electoral college. No matter how it’s explained to me, it will never make sense to me that we award arbitrary points to states over going what the majority of voters want.
#57
Peoples behaviour.
#58
Cribbage. My wife has tried to teach me several times, but to no avail.
#59
How airplanes stay in the sky.
#60
Taxes.
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