37

On a number, an inexplicable attachment, and why we need things we can't explain

I can’t explain why I like 37.

If you ask me, I’ll say it’s my lucky number. But that answer is itself a kind of evasion — “lucky number” is a black hole of a phrase that swallows any reason whole while explaining nothing.

I like 37 the way some people inexplicably like a certain color, or a certain city, or the first three seconds of a song. Not because it gave you anything. It just moved in one day, without knocking.

But 37 really is a little different

Mathematically, 37 is a prime number. That’s not unusual — primes are everywhere. What’s strange is this: 37 × 3 = 111, 37 × 6 = 222, and so on, all the way to 37 × 27 = 999. It behaves like a hidden symmetry machine, quietly organizing chaos into mirrors.

37°C is the standard value for human core body temperature. The number that sustains our consciousness is not 36, not 38 — it’s 37. Every thought you’re having right now is burning at 37 degrees.

There’s another strange fact: if you ask someone to name a random odd number between 1 and 100, many people blurt out 37. It feels sufficiently “messy” — not as round as 10, not as extreme as 99. We think we’re being random. We’re actually following some collective unconscious pull.

The 37% Rule and optimal stopping

Mathematics has a thing called the Secretary Problem. Suppose you need to hire the single best candidate from a hundred applicants, but after each interview you must decide on the spot — no going back. The optimal policy is simple: reject the first 37% of candidates outright, using them only to set a benchmark; then hire the first person who is better than everyone you’ve seen so far. (Wikipedia)

That magic 37% is an approximation of 1/e — where e is Euler’s number, the base of the natural logarithm, the heartbeat of growth and decay throughout the universe.

I sometimes think the 37% rule describes more than a hiring strategy — it’s a metaphor for a life. You are required to spend a portion of your time just watching, unable to act, unable to choose. Only after you’ve accumulated enough reference points can you trust your own judgment about what “better” looks like.

Decide too early, and you have no standard. Wait too long, and the best has already passed.

Inexplicable preference might be the most honest kind

We live in an era where everything demands a justification. Liking something means producing four reasons for it, backed by data, aligned to some coherent value system. But 37 has taught me one thing: some preferences exist before their reasons.

Richard Feynman wrote in his 1985 book QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter that the fine-structure constant — approximately 1/137 —

“has been a mystery ever since it was discovered more than fifty years ago, and all good theoretical physicists put this number up on their wall and worry about it.” (PhysicsToGod)

He called it

“one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by man.” (IFLScience)

Nobody knows why the universe chose 137. It cannot be derived. It can only be accepted.

My feeling for 37 is something like that.

It’s just there. It keeps my body at temperature. It hides inside the natural logarithm. It’s where human randomness terminates, and where optimal decision-making begins.

And I already loved it before I understood any of this.