Perhaps, but there are also other, more philosophical, spiritual, practical ways to approach Pi:
Max [voiceover]: Something’s going on. It has to do with that number. There’s an answer in that number.
…
Max [voiceover]: Restate my assumptions: 1] Mathematics is the language of nature. 2] Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3] If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics; the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile. So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism. My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well… Right in front of me…hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
…
Sol: But life isn’t just mathematics, Max. I spent 40 years searching for patterns in Pi. I found nothing.
Max: You found things.
Sol: I found things…but not a pattern. Not a pattern.
…
Max [voiceover]: Sol died a little when he stopped research on Pi. It wasn’t just the stroke. He stopped caring. How could he stop, when he was so close to seeing Pi for what it really is? How could you stop believing that there is a pattern, an ordered shape behind those numbers, when you were so close? We see the simplicity of the circle, we see the maddening complexity of the endless numbers 3.14 off into infinity.
…
Lenny: Hebrew is all math. It’s all numbers. You know that? Look. Ancient Jews used Hebrew as their numerical system. Each letter’s a number. The Hebrew A, Aleph, is 1. B, Bet, is 2. Understand? But look, the numbers are interrelated. Take the Hebrew for father, ab. Aleph, Bet. 1 plus 2 equals 3. The word for mother, haim. Aleph, Mem. 140 equals the sum of 3 and 41. 44. Now, the Hebrew word for child - mother, father, child. Yelev. That’s 10, 30 and 4. 44. Torah is just a long string of numbers. Some say that it’s a code, sent to us from God.
…
Max [voiceover]: Failed treatments to date: Beta blockers, calcium channel blockers, adrenalin injections, high dose ibuprofen, steroids, Trager Mentastics, violent exercise, cafergot suppositories, caffeine, acupuncture, marijuana, Percodan, Midrine, Tenormin, Sansert, homeopathics. No results. No results. No results.
…
Sol: What…What’s happened?
Max: First, I get these crazy low picks, then it spit out this string of numbers. I never saw anything like it. And then it fries. It crashed.
Sol: You have a print out? Of the picks, the number?
Max: I threw it out.
Sol: What number did it spit out?
Max: I don’t know, a string of digits.
Sol: How many?
Max: I don’t know.
Sol: What is it …a 100, a 1000, 216? How many?
Max: Probably around 200. Why?
Sol: I dealt with some bugs back in my Pi days. I wondered if it was like one I ran into.
…
Sol: You remember Archimedes of Syracuse, eh? The king asks Archimedes to determine if a present he’s received is actually solid gold. Unsolved problem at the time. It tortures the great Greek mathematician for weeks - insomnia haunts him and he twists and turns in his bed for nights on end. Finally, his equally exhausted wife - she’s forced to share a bed with this genius - convinces him to take a bath to relax. While he’s entering the tub, Archimedes notices the bath water rise. Displacement, a way to determine volume, and that’s a way to determine density - weight over volume. And thus, Archimedes solves the problem. He screams “Eureka” and he is so overwhelmed he runs dripping naked through the streets to the king’s palace to report his discovery.
[pause]
Sol: Now, what is the moral of the story?
Max: That a breakthrough will come.
Sol: Wrong! The point of the story is the wife. You listen to your wife, she will give you perspective, meaning. You need a break, you have to take a bath or you will get nowhere!
…
Lenny: We’re searching for a pattern in the Torah.
Max: What kind?
Lenny: We’re not sure. All we know is it’s 216 digits long.
…
Max: You asked me if I’d seen a 216 digit number.
Sol: Oh, yeah. You mean the bug. I ran into it working on Pi.
Max: What do you mean ran into it?
Sol: Max, what’s this about?
Max: There are these religious Jews I’ve been talking to. Hasids, the guys with beards. I know one from a coffee shop. He’s a number theorist. The Torah is his data set. He says they’re after a 216-digit number in the Torah.
Sol: Come on, it’s just coincidence.
Max: There’s something else, though. You remember those weird stock picks? They were correct. I got two picks on the nose. Smack on the nose, Sol. Something’s going on. It has to do with that number. There’s an answer in it.
…
Sol: The Ancient Japanese considered the Go board to be a microcosm of the universe. Although when it is empty it appears to be simple and ordered, in fact, the possibilities of gameplay are endless. They say that no two Go games have ever been alike. Just like snowflakes. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. So, the Go board actually represents an extremely complex and chaotic universe. And that’s the truth of our world, Max. It can’t be easily summed up with math. There is no simple pattern.
Max: But as the game progresses, the possibilities become smaller. The board takes on order. Soon, every move’s predictable. So maybe, even though we’re not aware of it, there is a pattern, an order underlying every Go game. Maybe it’s like the pattern in the stock market? The Torah? This 216 number?
Sol: This is insanity, Max!.
Max: Or maybe it’s genius.
Sol: Listen to yourself. You’re connecting my computer bug with one you might’ve had and some religious hogwash! You want to find the number 216 in the world, you will be able to find it everywhere. 216 steps from a mere street corner to your front door. 216 seconds you spend riding on the elevator. When your mind becomes obsessed with anything, you will filter everything else out and find that thing everywhere.
…
Marcy: Mr Cohen…
Max: God damn it! I’m sick of you following me. I’m not interested in money. I want to understand our world. I don’t deal with petty materialists like you.
…
Max [voiceover]: More evidence. Remember da Vinci. Artist, inventor, sculptor, naturalist. ltaly, 15th century. Rediscovered the perfection of the golden rectangle and pencilled it into his masterpieces. Connecting a curve through the concentric golden rectangles, you generate the mythical golden spiral. Pythagoras loved this shape, for he found it in nature - a nautilus shell, rams’ horns, whirlpools, tornadoes, our fingerprints, our DNA and even our Milky Way.
…
Max: You lied to me.
Sol: You have it? OK, sit down. I gave up before I pinpointed it, but my guess is that certain problems cause computers to get stuck in a loop. The loop leads to meltdown, but just before they crash they become aware of their own structure. The computer has a sense of its own silicon nature and it prints out its ingredients.
Max: The computer becomes conscious?
Sol: In…In some ways…I guess. Studying the pattern made Euclid conscious of itself. It died spitting out the number.
Max: Consciousness is the number?
Sol: No, Max. It’s only a nasty bug.
Max: It’s more than that.
Sol: No. It’s a dead end! There’s nothing there!
Max: It’s a door, Sol. A door.
Sol: A door to a cliff, you’re driving yourself over the edge. You need to stop.
Max: You were afraid. - That’s why you quit.
Sol: I got burnt. It caused my stroke!
Max: That’s bullshit! It’s mathematics, numbers, ideas. Mathematicians should go to the edge. You taught me that.
Sol: It’s death!
Max: You can’t tell me what it is. You’ve retreated to your Go and books and goldfish.
Sol: Max, go home.
…
Marcy [to Max]: You don’t understand it, do you? I don’t give a shit about you! I only care about what’s in your fucking head! If you won’t help us, help yourself. We are forced to comply to the laws of nature. Survival of the fittest Max, and we’ve got the fucking gun!
…
Lenny: Where’s the number?
Max: It’s not on me. It’s in my head.
Lenny: Did you give it to those Wall Street bastards.
…
Rabbi Cohen: The High Priest had one ritual to perform there. He had to intone a single word. That word was the true name of God.
Max: So?
Rabbi Cohen: The true name, which only the Cohanim knew, was 216 letters long.
Max: Are you telling me that…that the number in my head is the true name of God?
Rabbi: Yes! It’s the key to the Messianic age. It will take us closer to the Garden of Eden. As the temple burnt, the Talmud tells us the High Priest walked into the flames. He took the key to the top of the building, the heavens opened and received the key from the priest’s outstretched hand. We have been looking for that key ever since. And you may have found it.
Max: I saw God.
Rabbi Cohen: No. You are not pure. You cannot see God unless you are pure.
Max: No…I saw everything.
Rabbi Cohen: You saw nothing, only a glimpse. There’s so much more. We can unlock the door and show God we’re pure again.
Max: You’re not pure. How are you pure? I found it!
Rabbi Cohen: Who do you think you are? You are only a vessel from God. You’re carrying a delivery meant for us!
Max: It was given to me. It’s inside of me. It’s changing me.
Rabbi Cohen: It’s killing you! Because you are not ready to receive it.
Max: It’s just a number. I’m sure you’ve written down every 216-digit number. You’ve translated all of them. You’ve intoned them all. Haven’t you? What’s it gotten you? The number is nothing. It’s the meaning. The syntax. It’s what’s between the numbers. You haven’t understood it. It’s because it’s not for you. I’ve got it. I’ve got it! I understand it. And I’m gonna see it. Rabbi, I was chosen.
Can you have (10) groups each one containing (0.9) numbers?
If (0.9) is a valid number, then we should be able to use it to quantify anything i.e. there should be no problem saying something like “Set (A) contains (0.9) numbers”.
One possible interpretation of (0.9) is “nine tenths”. Would you say “nine tenths” is a number? How about merely “tenth”? Or “half”? Is that a number? To me, it looks more like a function – similar to that if square root. A tenth of some number (x) is some number (y) such that (10 \times y = x). But it seems that (9 \div 10) stands for the result of the operation of dividing (9) by (10) rather than a function such as (f(x) = \frac{9}{10} \times x).
In order to turn (9 \div 10) into a valid number, you have to combine it with a valid number. An example would be (100 \times 9 \div 10). That’s a valid number: (90).
It’s similar to how in order to turn a statement such as “Donald Trump’s hair is” into a valid one, you have to combine it with an appropriate word such as “blonde”.
Does anyone know if James was asked this question about pi?
It seems to me that when anyone strongly believes that something should work one way yet persistently can never get it to work that way - they just might get a little crazy. They are clinging onto an irrational belief - so they become irrational themselves.
That isn’t what you asked to accomplish.
I must be missing what you are trying to say. But a decimal is an amount or quantity - not a function - which is a process description.
I think this whole pi issue is related to Cantor’s thesis on the fact that there are more finite numbers than can fit on an infinite line. The reason he said that was that he counted every ratio as a “finite number” (James disagreed that all ratios are “numbers” - similar to his “0.999…” is NOT a number/quantity but merely an endless set of digits).
There are more ratios of numbers than there are numbers. That is simple logic. So of course Cantor was right. Why they couldn’t see that way back then - I don’t know but I suspect it was because they thought of every ratio as a number (again a “get your words straight” issue - leading to all paradoxes and irrational thinking).
And when you try to calculate pi - you are actually trying to place a finite number on a transfinite value. It is similar to saying - “what number less than 10 represents 5+6?” You can estimate it forever and you will never get there.
It is an irrational thing to attempt so of course the number is going to be said to be “irrational” (mathematicians never blame themselves - “it’s the number’s fault”).
That is a good poetic and at the same time philosophical statement. Also, perhaps most importantly, this statement contains something like the beginning of what I mean when I talk about dealing with the irrational and trying to tame it (not eliminate it, because that does not work).
The great time of Occidental mathematics is long gone. It moves itself meanwhile in the direction of irrationality and very far away from reality. Who can still check that there is a space with n-th dimension. Such an assertion is closer to the irrational than to the rational. I do not want to say that mathematicians should not do this - they do it anyway -, but I want to say that also mathematics has limits concerning the relation between rationality and irrationality.
It is also interesting to note the parallel between the history of Occidental mathematics and the history of Occidental physics. Where are the successes of both compared to other fields which, while based on mathematics and physics, are advancing things that are less and less in the realm of physics itself and the realm mathematics itself, but more and more in the application we call “technology.”
Thus, informatics, as an original branch of mathematics, evolved into the field of engineering. In general, technology has triumphed. It is no longer about the “Great Leaps” of the past in science and auxiliary science, but almost solely about the application in technology. In other words, technology is taking rationality to pursue goals that are, for the most part, completely irrational.
To understand in more detail why all these irrational “ideas” are in the world and why they move and prevail at exponential speed, one should take a course of study in irrationality.
I suspect that today a course like that would be similar to the courses on “Critical Race Theory” taught in the US -an “anti-race” course that declares that all whites and anything whites are better at accomplishing is racist (taught of course by racists). They would end up teaching that anything that whites do is irrational (and that includes all rational maths, logic, philosophy, and any other intellectual skills).
Let us not be irrational about this. Irrationality should be acknowledged, not necessarily taught. Sometimes there is some irrationality in the creative process.
More to the point, we should not become unreasonable, and we should know that we are all fallible enough to be irrational at times.
Shouldn’t we be well aware of all of these irrational “ideas” in order to draw conclusions about how to deal with them rationally, how to face this on a rational level?
Have you ever heard of “gain of function research”?
“We need to know about the absolute worst massively deadly virus that can be made.”
“How best do we do that?”
“We need to create the worst possible and investigate it.”
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”
“It’ll be okay. We will keep it in the lab.”
How did that turn out? Seemed like a good idea at the time.
An irrational idea is like a virus. Investigating it from a distance - through a barrier - with expert rationalists - sounds like a good idea. Where did the idea of Marxism, Nazism, and Communism come from? - COmunisticVirulent-IDea-19.
But maybe we can make it even more deadly? Shall we? ---- COVID-20? The sky’s the limit.
Would you even know anything about what you just talked about, if you didn’t already know something about the irrational?
In what you have told, there is already so much knowledge about the irrational, that you could almost not tell anything more, if you had not always taken it into account.
Maybe that knowledge about the irrational is dangerous for many, but that is just also one of the main points to be discussed here.
I mean, we are here or should be here in a philosophy forum, right?
Doesn’t this take us back to my original concern - “integration vs inclusion”? Are you being very careful in making that distinction? In politics, they don’t.
The COVID-19 virus was being created and studied in global communist New York. The Yanks are savvy enough to ensure a very high safety standard (essential for integration - not so much for mere inclusion). The safety concern was respected enough that Mr Obama said - “time to stop this - it is too dangerous”. The gain of function research was “officially” stopped (but with carefully worded loopholes).
But then a tragedy in the globalist scheme happened - Mr Trump got elected.
As a result, Dr Fauci used a loophole to move the project to communist Wuhan. The safety standards in China are very poor (no real concern for public safety). The thought was that the intended use of the virus might have to be bumped up ahead a bit and China has been designated to be the global communist leader anyway.
That is how integrating an irrational idea became inclusion of a bad idea - a perceived nefarious Godwannabe use.
And once they could not remove Mr Trump from office - the irrational idea found its freedom.
Mr Trump then broke all historical records to find the rationality to offset the irrationality - a vaccine.
So there are three primary concerns involved in “integrating” irrationality into a rational world.
Good rational intent - not common subtle nefarious agendas.
Isolation by competent rationalists.
Compensating rationality being the priority.
I saw where James noted that posting on this particular site was safer because it is so small and isolated (a respect for safety - self-censoring). In another thread on psychology he noted that “one has to be careful when speaking publicly about this topic” (again a respect for safety - self-censoring). But does everyone here do that? Definitely not. But it is small and a bit isolated.
Is there good rational intent here? For some. But for all - definitely not. Are their irrational pursuits adequately compensated by the rationalists - vaccines? I think maybe yes and no. For some who actually read through the arguments - there are enough rational responses to compensate. But how often are there “leaks”? How often do people hear only the irrational and don’t read or care about the rational - “vaccine deniers”? I think quiet a lot.
This board might be more compared to Wuhan than to New York city. And James isn’t here to vaccinate the participants. I think the greatest saving grace here is the lack of creative irrationality/disease talent. It is a good thing that James wasn’t a Marxist/Communist/Globalist Irrationalist - “Godwannabe”
In completing Heideggers work on Nietzsche and thus completing western metaphysics, I revealed the absolute responsibility, essentially, of the human being for his rationality; this is what our decadent culture finds absolutely abhorrent.
Ive resolved so much that people still want unresolved, because the resolutions places responsibility with the thinker, in a way that was hitherto only known in occult circles.
The western culture of man is, if we look at the gladness whereby people accept what their little screen-machines tell them, quite dead, finished. I suppose my completion of the work of philosophy fits to this. The end of the western metaphysics comes at the end of the west.
What lies ahead now is either nothing or something new - something brought about consciously with self-valuing logic at it’s heart as indeed all great cultures have unconsciously had it at their heart.
The bottom line is that rationality is made of what western fools call “irrationality”, but which simply means “substance”, which in turn means valuing.
“A valuing” is a thing both fulfilling the criteria for rationality and irrationality; it is an actual being.
It is literally impossible for someone with “slave morality” to even grasp the possibility of thinking as pervasively as that; slaves are those who stand outside of their own arguments, who think without being.
But almost all of western thought has been slavish in this sense. All of it has feigned to seen an entrance into its origins, but has really scorned and insulted, defiled whatever opportunity arose for such an entry. And this continues; the sordid will to stay outside of ones own thinking persists and is unfortunately now having its physical effects.
The Chinese have had their methods of including their thinking in their thought for millennia, thus they are prevailing over us, sad moralistic eunuchs refusing to acknowledge the fundamental reality of valuing.
Ironically though it is commanded by self-valuing logic (the explication of the will to power logic as holding itself as the interpretation of the world as interpretation) that all but the most sublime humans scorn and shun it; as they can not value its historical context in terms of their own self-valuing; they can not appreciate the lineage, the roots, the specific human quality that brought it forth, because it is not the quality of egalitarianism but rather of philosophic and cultural elitism.
It’s all rather comical. But it works as a selecting mechanism. All that works as a selecting mechanism among western culture is quite comical in somewhat of a sordid sense - the current events are extremely comical if one gets beyond morality - the end result of this is inevitably going to be a cultural-economic pyramid, where the masses have no longer their own bodies or minds, and the elites possess truly divine prerogatives and, more importantly, divine joys.
The world is to be transformed into such hierarchy as once existed in Greece, which Nietzsche called the body of Dionysos, or just, Dionysos; a spectrum in which every element had its proper place, supported by happy slaves, ruled by lofty aristocrats. This is, evidently, the true nature of man; to exist in an enormous hierarchy, for as it is said, men differ from one another much more than men in general differ from apes.
But you never answered my question concerning self-valuing being used in an irrational way. It sounds like pure capitalism (not regulated at all). What is the vaccine for it in case it is used nefariously - the rational response to the irrational outbreak?
The distinction rational-irrational is voided here, in as far as both pertain to existence. Existence is neither (or both) rational nor irrational in its ground;
but since reason is an eminent virtue without which little can be built, it is imperative to use self-valuing logic in a rational way to determine what can exist, how irrational being can be welcomed into rational edifices, to vitalize it, to make it truly existent and especially, resilient -
as edifices will always be attacked, it is imperative to enforce them using the same ‘method’ that allows for irrationality to even exist at all, which is the logic of valuing.
Selfvaluing logic works on the most fundamental ontological level, basic capitalism is merely an ephemeral phenomenon, transient in terms of the cosmos; to forge it into something more impressive man would indeed need to understand the nature of value as being sacred and the source of all being, rather than a by-effect of materialistic processes. Materialism is to be abandoned; all matter is brought about by the self-valuing logic and perishes by it; all wealth is amassed by it and distributed by it, - but only when the principle is understood can wealth lead to greater wealth.
See self-valuing logic rather as the science that can give rise both to virus and vaccine as well as to life-enhancing creations.
We are currently under the dominion of the stupidity of man - never in written history has mankind been this stupid, gullible, deserving of being enslaved. This process will run its course. A few years ago I was already a misanthrope in the sense of the extremely contemptible stupidity of mankind in general but the past 20 years have managed to astonish even me by the display of gullibility. Nature just doesn’t tolerate such weakness.
Manind at this point displays the near absolute absence of self-valuing logic; men are perfectly incapable of an unwilling to set their own terms, their only terms are fear and obedience, and they’re I imagine the most stupid creatures the cosmos has likely ever produced -
so, if you ask how can self-valuing logic help to bring about a superior political system in which liberty is guaranteed, the answer is; it can do so when it is carried by a great number of very intelligent and robust human beings. It cant do it by itself. Humans need to actually be the standard of their own liberty; they cant sit there and hope for a moral god to give it to them.
But okay to begin with, this is what needs done:
To never relinquish ones highest standards, under any condition.
To never obey an authority which has even the faintest whiff of corruption.
To never obey laws which one considers to be in conflict with ones highest standards.
The central essence of it all is the power of value-standard-setting.
All true beings have, by definition of their Being, this power, but only the utmost elite of the will do employ it.
So you really are talking about a never-ending battle of Godwannabes - Hell(enism).
Irrationality is about behavior and processes (such as arguments). Items are not irrational - only how they are used. So when it comes to self-valuing the question is how it might be used. And from what you just said is the “need” - it appears that your intent is purely to use it irrationally - restoring the never ending conflict between gods and Godannabes.
This is christian ‘thinking’ - clear enough proof that the end is all you have coming.
Simply due to the detachment from reality that christianity requires and has bred.
You display a remarkable combination of deep-bred ignorance and indecent dishonesty.
You seem to take pleasure in lying, twisting texts, preying on the lazy… your joys must be very thin and transient.