Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
Mathematics is everywhere, it's universal.
We are immersed in a world of men and numbers.
This world suits me perfectly.
To me, numbers, just like words, are similar to men.
Each one has its own personality: 4 is very shy;
11 shines brightly;
89 reminds me of falling snow.
Each number makes me think of a feeling, a picture.
Even the Joconda will never rival the beauty of Pi.
2030, what does it mean to you?
The future triggers in each of us an avalanche of pictures and emotions.
Everybody thinks about it, many talk about it.
Some, much more than others.
As if the future was a human being.
Either their best friend, or their worst enemy.
I don't know it.
I remember the story of the British writer G.K. Chesterton,
who said that one of mankind's favorite games
was called "bury the prophet".
That game first consists in listening with respect and attention
to every futurologist's forecast.
Then, when death inevitably comes,
they decide to bury them in the most harmonious way.
Then they fuss over doing the exact opposite of what they had foreseen.
That is how humans work.
Anyway, as this story reminds us,
one thing is certain about the future for all of us: death.
How many here among us will live to see 2030 with their very eyes?
(Laughter)
Feel it, touch it? How many?
This due date is 18 years away, that's a long time.
It's the equivalent of an entire young life.
Let's think about our future in 2030 from statistics.
Let's say the average age of the 1200 people here,
of both sexes,
is 40.
According to a mortality table,
85 people here will not live to see 2030.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
According to statistics
one of those 85 people will die behind the wheel,
one will die of passive smoking.
Beware of creaky stairs
or a wet floor in a bathroom
that will kill two of you.
(Laughter)
5 more will fall victim to the bottle.
6 people will be abandoned by their brain,
8 by too fat a body.
The Grim Reaper will visit 12 smokers,
and more than 40 people will suffer the whims of their hearts,
or the claws of a cancer.
(Applause)
Our lives are made of the same stuff as statistics,
but those figures only tell half of it,
because we are also creatures of chance, feelings and dreams.
I'll give you an example.
Thirty years ago, in 1982,
a man was thinking about his future too.
Until then, he had been dreaming about the year 2000,
which was 18 years ahead, like 2030 is 18 years ahead of us.
Here's what happened:
The man is 40, his name is Stephen Jay Gould.
He's an American paleontologist with a brilliant career.
One of the most talented biologists of our century,
he's also a husband, a father of two young girls,
a baseball fan and a biscuit lover.
How could his doctor break the horrible news to him?
He had just been diagnosed with a rare and incurable cancer.
According to calculations, he had an average of 8 months left to live.
Suddenly, even Christmas and the New Year seemed hopelessly far ahead.
What did Gould do in that terrible situation?
He did what nearly all those who get
bad news do:
he starts looking feverishly for
optimistic information, even the smallest ones,
even the tiniest ones. He doesn't want to give up.
Only 8 months...
Gould thinks. If half of all the patients
with the same cancer died
less than 8 months after being diagnosed,
that meant the other half
lived longer.
Some would live years.
That idea comforts him.
His mind clings to it. He is still young,
lives in a nice neighborhood,
has no other health problem.
He has an iron will,
an even temper, an ardent desire for living.
His chances to end up
in the second group of patients seem high to him.
He will die only once, not a thousand times,
and the median has little to do with that.
That becomes his mantra.
His friends and his family ask him to make himself clear.
"The average concerns populations,
not individuals", he answers.
If I should die a thousand times, about half
of these deaths would take place within eight months.
The deaths in the other half would follow
one by one, days, weeks,
months or years later.
Who can tell when his one and only death will happen
among the thousand possible deaths?
The following months were painful and agitated
for Gould, full of problems, suffering and exhaustion.
His body is exposed to radiation,
flooded with drugs, subjected to surgery.
He loses one third of his weight.
His hair detaches
from his head.
The hours of treatment, of solitude,
of weariness pile up,
weakening him, oppressing him.
Yet he survives.
His cancer goes into remission.
Two years later, he is healthy enough
to write a long article:
"The median is not the message."
Ten years after publishing this article
he is still strong. "I belong", he says,
"to a very small, very lucky,
and very select group:
the group of the first survivors to
a cancer that was incurable until then."
In 2000, he's alive and well.
He has a party. In his sixties, he publishes
his greatest work:
"The structure of the theory of evolution",
a massive 1300-page book. It's the 17th book
he writes since being diagnosed with cancer,
20 years ago. Two months after the publication,
his own death finally occurs,
the result of a second cancer
unrelated to the first one.
So, 2030?
Finally, no one can decipher a destiny,
the essence of human nature is in its infinite variety.
Variety, Gould noticed, is reality,
not a set of imperfect measurements
aiming at a central tendency.
Each to their own destiny. Thank you.
(Applause)