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Curiosa

Decoding the Matrix - Maths & Physics of the Universe

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Numbers have always fascinated me - especially the ways in which we use numbers to describe life, the universe and consciousness.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the kinds of numbers that a master architect might use to automate some of the more tedious and intricate work that would be encountered in giving birth to a new universe. Things like how many seeds are on a sunflower? How shall they be arranged? How many bends will a river make before it reaches the ocean?

It so happens that, over millennia of philosophy and tinkering, humankind has derived a few ideas about how this might be done. Numbers like Pi and e, and number sets like the Fibonacci sequence are found all throughout nature. They have been known for centuries, yet we have such little understanding about where they really come from. It is my guess that visual representations of these 'numbers of nature' have been seen and recognised in various forms since way back when Terence McKenna's stoned apes were introduced to fractal patterns and machine elves hundreds of thousands of years ago. Fast forward; and the way in which we understand the universe today leads us to believe that these numbers, and others we don't know yet, come together to form both the building blocks and the blueprints of what we call reality.

In this Topic I would like anyone else who ponders the algorithms that drive us to share their thoughts, questions, discoveries etc.

 

I am going to start off with two beautiful art pieces by Christian Vasile. Christian has created novel ways to visualise numbers, and here he has connected the first 10,000 numbers of pi to each other. Pi is an incredibly fascinating number for so many reasons, all of which are sure to be discussed in this thread.

In order to create these pieces, Christian arranged the numbers 0-9 in a circle, gave each number a colour, and started to process of connecting them to each other. In the second image, he places a dot close to the circle to show the colour of the number that has just connected to it, and on the outer circle, the colour of the number it is about to connect to.

I'm confident that for the psychonautically-intrepid among us, it won't be too much of a stretch to see these as two-dimensional representations of visualisations encountered en-route to distant realms. So many of history's great creators and discoverers would agree with you! What else have you discovered?

 

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I hope you're all having a great weekend - and the numbers are rolling in your favour.

 

 

Pi to 10,000 Digits.jpg

Pi to 10,000 Digits2.jpg

 

 

 

 

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Edited by Curiosa
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Greetings fellow philosophers.

 

Here is a video which briefly touches on some of the philosophical questions that have challenged some of humanity's greatest minds over the eons. Leonardo da Vinci is undoubtedly one of the most famous and influential philosopher/mathematician/engineer/inventor types in recorded history, and his drawing of the Vitruvian Man remains one of the most famous images of the renaissance period.

 

I'm posting this video to serve as a dose of mid-week thought-nourishment for your philosophical pleasure. As above, this video is largely concerned with Pi, the mysterious transcendental number which is found everywhere in the measurable universe (more on transcendental numbers later). This particular discussion on the Vitruvian Man takes us on a brief journey from the concepts of Pi and shows us how philosophers such as Leonardo da Vinci and Vitruvious related it to the geometric structure of the universe, the role of religion, the nature of man and his position between 'heaven' and 'hell'.

 

 

 

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My computer won't let me watch the vid atm so will have a look tomorrow, here is something i like about pi, it may be a little trivial but pi is about 3.14 which when added up makes 8 which is also the symbol of infinity, pi has a never ending sequence of numbers and will never have a repeating pattern of digits, so i think infinity suits pi very well. Also how a circle has no beginning or end which is also fitting.

 

The Fibonacci numbers and spiral is interesting as well, how ancients would draw spirals and i believe some ancient egyptian architecture was designed/built around these numbers.

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Good call bardo - Infinity is very fitting of Pi!

Thinking of the nature of the number sequence that happens after 3.14159265... is a great way to think about infinity. Infinity itself can very quickly become a mind bending mental exercise, especially when we start considering functions such as infinity infinity (infinity to the power of infinity). I have some interesting mental exercises to help us picture the different degrees of infinity - some of which have been given names, some haven't.

 

Back to Pi and its infinite sequence of digits - consider this...

 

Imagine that each of the digits 0-9 were given a note on a musical scale. 0 = C, 1 = D, 2 = E etc etc.

The infinite sequence of numbers that are contained within Pi would contain every musical composition on the C scale that has ever, will ever, and otherwise would never have been composed, dreamed or imagined. Ever.

 

Now imagine that the digits were assigned to letters of the alphabet, even punctuation marks could be given numerical values to make it a little more complex.

The infinite sequence of Pi could then be shown to contain exact, character for character replicas of every book that has ever, will ever and otherwise would never have been written. It would also contain transcripts of every conversation that has ever, will ever and otherwise would never have been had. It would also, on top of all that, contain elaborate descriptions of ever thought that has ever been had, every image that has ever been seen, every touch that has ever been felt and so on, ad infinitum.

 

The truly insane, but logical next step in thinking about infinity is to realise that the types of infinity described above are one dimensional. That is, they are a string of numbers shooting off forever in one direction. We can then start to imagine what an excel spreadsheet would look like if it had all the numbers of infinity running along the rows, repeated infinite times down the columns. Now, not only would we have a two dimensional table that is infinitely larger than infinity, we could prove (philosophically) that in doing so we have also created a number that is larger than infinity itself - by counting how many numbers we have diagonally across the table (imagine drawing an infinitely long line on a 45 degree angle down and to the right from cell A1 in the table - that line is philosophically longer than infinity, which we can show using Pythagorean maths - aka grade 8 trigonometry).

 

On the weekend when we all have a bit more time to consider all of this craziness, I will post a video or two made by people much more dedicated to this than I am who will attempt to describe levels of infinity that most people, including myself, would never have even considered.

 

As bardo mentions, the ancients have been using the natural numbers in construction, art etc. for millennia. The geometry of all that is absolutely fascinating - especially when they were building these structures out of stone that was cut and laid to precision that is almost impossible to replicate, even today. Fibonacci numbers are even used in psychology when analysts use 'Fibonacci retracements' to predict the herd mentality of samples or populations of people. This type of thing is done by technical analysts every day when they analyse movements in stock and commodity prices - often with incredible accuracy. There is so much of our existence which can be described by such a few numbers!

 

Thanks for your input bardo!

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This might be a bit off on a tangent and a little personal so i don't mind if you choose to ignore the question entirely, but Curiosa do you believe in a god or a creator of some sort ? I don't want to detract from the math and the intended direction of the thread to much and lead it to deeply into personal religion and philosophy, am just curious. 

Anyhow i look forward to seeing more from you : )

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