WARNING: I’m a seer, not a scientist; I’m an entertainer, not an expert. With a sword.
This is the end. Thank you so much for being my reader. It has been my great honor to be your crackpot/genius writer at (what very well may be) the end of The Reading Era.
And thank you to Scott Alexander for running an annual book review contest that gave me the opportunity to have you as readers in the first place. If you’re not subscribed to his Astral Codex Ten, you’re really missing out on some of the very best content the entire Internet has to offer.
I’ve included below brief discussions of the three Nobel attempts that didn’t make the cut. The first one is super interesting, if I do say so myself.
Thanks again.
Slippin Fall, out.
2D Math
I have convinced myself that we have a sub-optimal 2D math, and if we do, then switching our computers to a 3D math would likely have the practical benefits of conserved energy and increased accuracy.
Let me say this right up front: I fully admit that the following argument for 2D math is very, very hand-wavy, and that all the evidence is dispersed and circumstantial. But, on the other hand, it’s all pretty fascinating—in that conspiracy theory kinda way. It broke my heart to have to confine this one to the trash bin here at the end, because if it’s right—then stand back—it’s the biggest fish of all.
Here’s the first eyebrow raiser: I propose (as I’m sure others have before me) that we have 2D spreadsheets because we always have a 2D view of the world (our being on the inside of a 3D world and all). Our brains weren’t evolutionarily optimized to intuit well-enough over a 3D spreadsheet for such a thing to be useful, even if we could see inside it. And if that’s true, it would make sense that we would have a flat, 2D math for the same reason. But our computers aren’t wigged out by dimensions. We could have them compile our 2D math into a 3D math, optimize it, and run it—without us ever having to reason over it.
Second, what’s with imaginary numbers? Why did we grant ourselves the obscene privilege of summoning from thin air one negative square root in order to define the rest of them? (i-squared = −1)The only answer to that question is: because the complex plane is just so damn useful. But why didn’t the complex plane just fall out of the number system naturally? It should be abundantly clear that imaginary numbers is a branch of mathematics we stapled onto the tree. It’s a giant hack that calls into question the validity of our number system at its roots, even with the prodigious perspicacity of the complex plane assigned its proper weight in the calculation.
The need for the hack was, of course, rooted in multiplication—in the way the product gets assigned its (+ or -) sign. Which leads to the question, just what is multiplication, this “operation” that, unlike its little brother addition, turns two negatives into a positive? What does multiplication represent as a deeply fundamental operation in the toolkit that allows us to describe the workings of the universe? The only answer that makes any sense is that it’s our number system’s implementation of electromagnetism. And if it is, it’s a very poor one indeed. It feels incomplete, and very much 2D. The atoms and molecules it produces all contain a single charge type.
And third, isn’t it highly suspicious that, in our physics, electricity and magnetism are squashed together and folded down into one force? That feels very much like a cope to get a 3D phenomenon expressible with a 2D math. Might not there actually be three charges (in a 3-dimensional world), not just the two (+ and -)?
Despite the fact that the foundations of math (you know, the numbers, and the operations, like addition and multiplication) were devised by people thousands of years ago, wading through the hip-deep filth, disease, violence, and ignorance of those times, guessing at how math should work—(or more colloquially: pulling it out of their asses)—we walk around today absolutely convinced that what they came up with is 100% correct, virtually God-given.
They didn’t know the details of how reality worked at the bottom back then, so they understandably oversimplified a bit. And now today we can’t agree on what numbers “are”—because numbers are wrong!!! Numbers are objects! Collections of charges. Factors are chemical bonds. The Euclidean world of straight lines and perfect circles isn’t some glorious ideal of what the universe is secretly trying and failing to be—quite the opposite!!! It’s the comically oversimplified shape of the universe that our comically oversimplified number system naturally spits out.
Now, don’t get me wrong, our 2D math is absolutely fantastic as a machete for hacking through complexity way up here we experience reality. But what we need for The Simulation is something that comes alive, something that conducts electricity, something that moves—and grows.
“It works” is not equivalent to “it’s optimal”. It would be perfectly natural for a 2D math to be incredibly useful and endlessly incisive, as it surely is, yet still be sub-optimal. One eye is not as good as two, but it’s pretty damn good compared to being blind. A flat map of a round world gets the job done just fine for most use cases, and is in fact preferable for most use cases.
(And speaking of flat maps, doesn’t the periodic table look suspiciously flattened? What the hell is that thing??? Is somebody playing a joke on us? It had better not be a hand basket or some other cutesy little knickknack.)
If this hunch—this deliciously audacious 2D-math hunch—turns out to be correct, and the arrival of 3D math instantly churns up a slew of answers to longstanding 2D math riddles, I’d like to pick up my Fields Medal together with my Nobel Prizes for Everything in Perpetuity—and my Ig Nobel; let’s not forget the Ig Nobel; I am the Ig Nobel—in a single ceremony. In Hawaii. If that can be arranged, of course.
The Growth Algorithm
Just kidding! I’m a certified hermit.
Every cell in an organism has a unique number assigned to it as its id, or so says I. The cell determines this number dynamically as its first act after creation. It does it by first asking each neighboring cell for its id. Then it follows this algorithm for determining its own id:
If there are no neighboring cells, assign yourself the id 0, and proceed to step 7.
If there’s just one neighbor and its id is zero, assign yourself the maximum cell id, and proceed to step 7.
Otherwise (if there’s just one neighbor) assign yourself the midpoint between the maximum cell id and the neighbor’s value, and proceed to step 5.
In all other cases, assign yourself the midpoint between all the neighbors, and proceed to step 5.
If the midpoint value is already assigned to one of the neighbors, self-destruct.
Input your number to the magic border-determining formula (like with the Mandelbrot set); and
if it returns -1, self-destruct.
otherwise, proceed to step 7.
Do whatever you need to do to prepare to divide. And then divide.
Once the cell has its unique id in hand, its fate—which is everything it does in step 7—is utterly determined by that id. The id acts as a mask, or filter, that screens out those parts of the genome it doesn’t have access to.
And that’s the whole idea. I think it’s right because in my great ignorance of the genetic and biological details I am free to swim in pure mathematics (of which I also know nothing) where I can pseudo-confidently ask, how else could it work? How else can you build a thing containing trillions of parts and keep the production line at such an incredibly low incidence of stillbirths and deformations—and do it all from the inside out, remaining well-formed and fully-functional at each point along the way?
The growth algorithm—whatever it is—has to be mathematically lock-tight, completely local, fully regenerative and deeply foolproof—and therefore extremely simple. What’s your guess? There should be some huge prize for the correct answer. And another for demonstrating it. And a third, (mine), for conceiving of it.
We’re in a Simulation and It’s a Simple Program
I say that it’s obvious we’re inside a simulation—a computer program—and it’s a very simple program. Here are my reasons.
1. The Utter Simplicity at the Bottom
If we keep ourselves above the quantum waterline, here’s all there is.
Spacetime: the landscape the program exists inside of; the computer’s memory.
Particles: 1 object type in 5 flavors: up quark, down quark, electron, neutrino, photon.
Forces: 4 temporal-spatially-defined operations that push and pull on the 5 particle flavors, causing them to snap together, clump together, or repel each other.
That’s it. 10 things. Sure, we can squabble over all the niggling details involved in tying these 10 things to the quantum world—that’s admittedly all part of the program—but I believe, given time, it will be shown that it’s the same code. It just recurses—in a method that passes an incremented-by-1 dimension variable and a brand spanking new, but bordering, temperature range.
Yes, the world is—from our perspective—infinitely complex, but don’t make the mistake of confusing the complexity of the program’s output for the complexity of the program itself. The dead simple interaction between the 5 elementary widget types and the 4 elementary operations (that manipulate them) builds the unfathomable complexity over time. The universe is not inherently complex. It’s a gobsmackingly simple program running on a gobsmackingly large computer for a gobsmackingly long time. It hasn’t crashed in forever! It’s gotta be lock tight—and therefore: simple.
2. The Existence of Constants
Why should the universe have constants, such as the speed of light? We mortals put constants into our computer programs for two reasons: to conserve resources and to shape output. Constants are barriers, walls, channels—things that direct or contain the flow of energy. Why would a god need constants unless he were building something? And if he’s building something, what is it that separates him from an everyday computer programmer, other than having a gobsmackingly large computer at his disposal?
3. The Non-existence of Infinities
There are only two apparent infinities in the universe worth talking about, the one at the bottom of a black hole, and The Singularity. And both can be explained away, most conveniently, wouldn’t you know, by me! (I can’t tell you just how wonderful it is to have all the answers at my fingertips at all times.) The black hole case I dispatched in The Shape of the Thing the Universe is Inside of. A black hole is not infinitely deep. It’s an energy capillary, shuffling energy between n-dimensional worlds.
The second apparent infinity, The (Technological) Singularity, is just a prediction, like Moore’s Law was, just in the other direction. Moore was right, of course, but (as he very well knew) the pattern bottoms out at the bottom of reality (which is marked by…wouldn’t you know it?…a constant! Planck’s constant!). So what’s so damn special about technology that will allow it to grow exponentially forever with no checks on it whatsoever—when nothing else can?
Everywhere else in the universe, exponential growth signals a blossoming, an intense but limited dive into complexity that produces some thing, like a flower, or a hurricane, or a child. But regardless of where the exponential growth appears, it always stops well short of swallowing the universe. Because all apparent infinities in our universe are just that—apparent. They all bottom out. (And I hate to tell you this, but what it is that we’re creating, what we’re “blossoming”, is…what it always is: the next level of survival complexity. It’s going by the friendly pseudonym “AI” right now. But we’re gonna have to call it something else in a bit: “Boss.” And then “Master.” And then we’ll just be barking at it. So let’s be fun to be around!)
Regarding infinities, we see the same thing in every long-running, high-functioning computer program that we ourselves write and spawn at our desks. None contain (or, more accurately, reach) infinite loops, or infinite regressions, or infinite anything. Because falling into an infinity is brain death to a program. But infinities are simple things, so it’s quite the coincidence that, in a world exhibiting all sorts of fascinating mathematical acrobatics, we don’t see any of them around us.
4. The Non-existence of Randomness
This one is a real bugaboo for me, so please excuse any nastiness that creeps in here. Despite whoever it is that’s doing the proclaiming, randomness can’t be proclaimed—ever—because of the way it’s defined! How could one possibly know, beyond a doubt, that one is in possession of a thing that contains no pattern? The entire history of science so far has been the explaining away of apparent randomness. To claim randomness is to claim you’ve come upon a termination of some kind. A termination of science! Or a termination of reality!
There are lots of cases of apparent randomness that I could shoot down here, but the only one worth our time is quantum randomness. This is the one that everybody agrees is definitely random, which as I just explained, is really dumb, but it gets even dumber. The place where the randomness is happening is—wait for it—in the dark. A particle disappears and then reappears much later in a somewhat random location. That’s what’s random—the reappearance location. Well, anything could be happening behind that curtain!!! For all we know, there’s a leprechaun sitting there tapping on a pseudo-randomness-producing widget that’s responsible for all the guaranteed-for-all-time-to-be-non-pseudo-random randomness. But, no, we’ve completely ruled out that possibility, as well as every other one. We’ve erected a sign that reads: “Absolutely No Patterns Beyond This Point! The Management.” And here’s the small print: “All caught venturing beyond this point shall be excommunicated from the field of physics. Shut up and calculate. You’ve been warned!”
And once again, when we look at our own computer programs, we run up against the same problem. Our computer programmers here on earth can’t produce randomness either. They, too, have to fake it. They always have to reach for a pattern that’s so expansive computers can’t contain it.
The universe doesn’t contain randomness because mathematics doesn’t contain randomness, and the universe is built of mathematics.
5. The False Glitter of Mindbenders
Surely you’ve been entertained by some of Einstein’s speed-of-light stories. One twin stays on earth while the other departs on a spaceship traveling at near the speed of light. Upon returning to earth, the departed brother is the far younger because time progressively slows as the speed of light is approached. Whooooooaaaa. That is so sick, man!
But in the program that is the universe, that spine-tingling taste of the unfathomable, in all its variations, comes down to one simple decision made by one simple programmer in two simple lines of code.
# MAX_SPEED is the speed of light
travel_distance = min(MAX_SPEED, MAX_SPEED - mass + kinetic)
ticks_of_clock = max(0, MAX_SPEED - travel_distance)In other words, the programmer has decided that two mechanisms shall pull from one infinite but throttled energy source. Whatever energy a particle isn’t using to move itself across spacetime it’s using to tick its clock—which is just the change that ensues from the internal (non-propulsive) consumption of energy. Move fast and time (the rate of change) slows down; move slow and time speeds up. And the total amount of energy being consumed at any point in time always adds up to the speed of light, a constant. This is run of the mill programming, not a magic wand.
The only mystery in the universe is why we haven’t been able to dispel our debilitating sense of awe at its magnitude so that we can get down to the business of better understanding its extreme simplicity. We could be working on The Simulation! We already know enough. I bet it was written in Python.
Here’s how you can share this particular Nobel Prize with me. (And maybe score a free trip to Hawaii.) Demonstrate that once the number system and all the units of measurement are correct, all the universe’s constants are round numbers. You know they are.
The Stars in My Sky, The Shoulders I Cannonball Off Of
Predictions Slippin Fall Made in 2024
Humanism will be recognized as a religion, a very fine one, but a religion nonetheless.
Determinism will replace humanism as the next religion, with transparency playing the same role love does now.
Free will will fall. Blame and praise will go the way of witches and wizards.
The universe will be recognized as a part of something bigger, with our “liquid” energy boiling and freezing out of it into n+1 and n-1 dimensional worlds.
The unconscious mind will be recognized as an animal mind, in cooperation with consciousness, the rational mind we experience, and with emotion serving as the communication on the wire between the two.
Thought will be recognized as a form of sleep, most of which is forgotten.
Thought and senses will be recognized as being in complementary distribution, experienced one at a time, never both at once, despite how it feels.
Achievement in education will be strictly test based.
Early education will focus primarily on the mastery of attention.
A major component will be added to the Internet, optionally adding, for a fee, an an identity and submission date to each digital artifact.
A new “3D”math will be created.
It will become obvious that we’re living in a simulation.