Q: "Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you - indeed, they don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you."
Q: What does this have to do with math? How is it possible for things that what makes you up isn't, in itself, even alive? How do the atoms "keep you you"? Why is it not a gratifying experience? If the atoms are not alive, is there even an experience to be had?
C: I thought that this section of the introduction was interesting because of the way it introduced atoms. Without really explaining what they truly are, the author let you know that they're what make you you, and, while they make you alive, they aren't actually alive. He also presented ideas that aren't usually brought up, like how "if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust", and I found that thought-provoking.
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