Re: One and Zero

On 5/1/07, Uri Even-Chen <[email protected]> wrote:

> > "One always remains one, zero always remains zero. They are completely
> > separate. Two parallel lines who never meet"
> >
> > Which confuse me - are you at any point in this article actually
> > referring to the actual numbers, the real numbers 1 and 0?
>
> Yes, the whole article is about the numbers one and zero.  For
> example, "One always remains one, zero always remains zero" refers to
> what happens to them when they are multiplied by themselves (or more
> generally speaking, powered by any positive number).

I think I would have got it on the first go were it explained like you
did now. Also you did not cover the part about them being like
parallel lines - did you mean the two lines f(x)=0 and f(x)=1?

> By the way, one and zero are the only numbers (integer, real or
> complex) who remain the same when multiplied by themselves (or powered
> by a positive number except one):
>
> x^2 = x    <=>
> x^2 - x = 0    <=>
> x * (x-1) = 0

Well, you can design a 2nd order polynomial for every two numbers,
like for 2 and 3:

x^2-5x+6=0

> The whole idea of articles such as this one is that I'm challenging
> deterministic logic, claiming that it is inconsistent.

I'm sorry but I didn't understand how you prove your claim.

> But although this article is about numbers, it's not a professional
> mathematical article.  It's literature.

This makes things much clearer; although as someone educated in math
it confuses me when I see an article using mathematical *language*
without the math.

> > The way that makes most sense to me when I read this article is as a
> > "stream of consciousness" free associations following one another.
> > This form does not have to adhere to any sort of logic and you can use
> > symbols from any language. It also explains the rapid and disconnected
> > changes in the subject. If you tell me that neurotoxins were involved
> > in the creation of this piece, I will not be surprised. Otherwise it
> > is pretty difficult (albeit possible, with some training) to capture
> > such an experience long enough to put it into writing.

> I didn't write it on drugs, if that's what you mean.  I don't take
> drugs.  But in the past, there were times I took psychiatric drugs,
> which are neurotoxins.  I object to taking neurotoxins, and why I took
> them is a long story.  Sometimes they were forced upon me.  But at
> least two months before writing this article, I didn't take any.  (a
> few months ago I was put in a mental hospital against my will, and
> psychiatric drugs were forced upon me).

Yes, I meant drugs, but drugs are not the only way to achieve these
states. You didn't answer my question about the article having the
stream-of-consciousness quality - is that how you created it?

What were you in for? Schizophrenia?

> It's not a mistake.  I decided to spell both of them "google".  I
> don't make any difference between "google" and "googol".  But usually,
> when I refer to the number I spell google, and when I refer to the
> company I spell Google (with a capital G).
>
> Sometimes people decide to change spellings of words.  For example,
> some words in english are spelled in american english differently than
> what they are spelled in the traditional, british english.  And since
> I don't like the spelling "googol", I decided to spell it "google"
> instead.

Again the language issue - if you use your own personal language to
describe the world, expect people to misunderstand you. To interact
with people you have to share some of their reality, and language
plays an important role here (I'm an Israeli living in the US, so I'm
painfully aware of that). If you don't share enough of other people's
reality, you will be misunderstood. If you don't have enough control
over yourself to share in enough of other people's reality, you might
find that people will tend to push you away from society.

> If you want to see another article on a similar subject, read my
> article "The limits of knowledge":
> http://www.speedy.net/uri/blog/?p=14

Ah! That's much more like it. An article about a single subject
following up on the subject from start to end. I liked that one more
than the one you wrote your original email about. I've seen this
argument before - creating a 1:1 transformation between an idea and a
natural number - and my response to that is: Copyright is not about
the idea itself. Copyright is about the ability of the author to pick
the *right* number out of the infinite pile of numbers and say - this
is it. Because, frankly, most of the pile is garbage.

-- Arik