[ExI] lottery winner

Wed Jul 14 05:32:58 UTC 2010

--- On Tue, 7/13/10, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:

        On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 9:52 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net

        >>...Cooper
        > and Boone discovered TWO Mersenne primes, one in december 05 and
the other
        > in September 06.  That one defies logic and can be calculated to
be wildly
        > unlikely, but it happened... Hey maybe we are living in a sim, and
the observers are having a ball
        > watching how we deal with the occasional anomaly.  Let's keep our
eyes open
        > and our minds sharp, shall we?

        >I believe more thought is warranted on the Mersenne prime graph you
        posted a few months ago...

To this you refer, ja?

We aren't supposed to post images on ExI, but this isn't a bitmap.  Rather,
this is a microsloth object, so it takes only a
tiny fraction of the memory of any digital image.  Perhaps this fulfills the
spirit of the requirement.

        >...The slope of lines drawn through consecutive
        primes changed noticeably at some point in the progression.  The
'run'
        of >3 primes along each of those lines seems significant too...

Ja, it seems so crazy, I can't understand it.  That graph has shaken the
very foundation of everything I have believed for all my adult life.  How
can it be?  How?

Here's the data, if you want to fool with it yourself.  The columns are
marked.  For instance, reading across the first row, the first Mersenne
prime is 2^2-1 = 3, so the exponent is 2 and the log(2) of 2 is 1: 

serial number	 exponent	 log(2) of exponent	

1	 2	 1.0000	
2	 3	 1.5850	
3	 5	 2.3219	
4	 7	 2.8074	
5	 13	 3.7004	
6	 17	 4.0875	
7	 19	 4.2479	
8	 31	 4.9542	
9	 61	 5.9307	
10	 89	 6.4757	
11	 107	 6.7415	
12	 127	 6.9887	
13	 521	 9.0251	
14	 607	 9.2456	
15	 1279	 10.3208	
16	 2203	 11.1053	
17	 2281	 11.1555	
18	 3217	 11.6515	
19	 4253	 12.0543	
20	 4423	 12.1108	
21	 9689	 13.2421	
22	 9941	 13.2792	
23	 11213	 13.4529	
24	 19937	 14.2832	
25	 21701	 14.4055	
26	 23209	 14.5024	
27	 44497	 15.4414	
28	 86243	 16.3961	
29	 110503	 16.7537	
30	 132049	 17.0107	
31	 216091	 17.7213	
32	 756839	 19.5296	
33	 859433	 19.7130	
34	 1257787	 20.2625	
35	 1398269	 20.4152	
36	 2976221	 21.5051	
37	 3021377	 21.5268	
38	 6972593	 22.7333	
39	 13466917	 23.6829	
40	 20996011	 24.3236	
41	 24036583	 24.5187	
42	 25964951	 24.6301	
43	 30402457	 24.8577	
44	 32582657	 24.9576	
45	 37156667	 25.1471	
46	 42643801	 25.3458	
47	 43112609	 25.3616	

        >...Does this number spiral mean something too? [1]  Or are math
nerds
        simply constructing a very complex filter for viewing random noise
in
        a way that appears to have a meaningful pattern?...

The number spiral is something that has delighted me endlessly, but I have
not lost any sleep over it, as did the last seven Mersenne primes.  Why are
there eight of them bunched together way out there in the 24s and 25s?  I
expected a big empty Mersenne Desert out there, a most disappointing late
2000s, but we get this unexpected torrential downpour from a clear blue sky.
Cue the Twilight Zone music.

Did you guys see The Truman Show?  If not, get it and view it.  I feel like
Truman, when he has spotted something really weird and can't explain it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120382/plotsummary

Truman Show is my favorite movie, and very relevant to this discussion.
Perhaps we are software Trumans.*  

Or you are.

        >Where I was...
        non-committal answer John Clark's question about it being more fun
to
        believe in psi, I readily admit that I do think it is more fun to
        believe there is a deeper order in numbers than we are currently
able
        to understand...

"More fun to believe" is to me completely irrelevant.  In my mind, if I do
not believe something, it matters not one bit how much fun it is to believe
it.  I don't believe still.  Tough luck for me, no fun for me.  Search,
search for evidence.  Live and believe based on evidence, only, ever.

        >...Maybe it's a similar form of self-delusion, but I am
        more compelled by numbers than anything anyone has ever told me.  Of
        that I am sure.

        [1] http://numberspiral.com/

Thanks for the link Mike.  Numbers are my friends.  I see ads saying this
company or that company won't treat you like a number.  I never understood
that.  I want to be treated like a number.  I treat numbers with great
respect!  People, well, some of them.  Numbers?  All of them.
Transcendentals get even more respect, for I know that even tho I know they
contain, in their digital form, all that pornography and such, they also
contain every cool and mind boggling commentary ever written and all that
will ever be written, and a whole bunch of really cool stuff that will never
be written, the funniest jokes, the most uplifting and inspiring notions
never conceived.  All ExI-chat people, do feel free, compelled even, to
treat me like a number.

spike

* I expect the term "Software Truman" to become a common term meaning
something like an avatar, only it is you, and the universal Sim is all about
feeding information to make you think you are living inside some sort of
carbon based glob of protoplasm, when in fact you, my good Software Truman,
are really nothing more than a bunch of bits, flying around in some
meta-computer in a meta-universe.  I hereby donate to the public domain the
intellectual property rights to "Software Truman."  But remember you heard
it first from me, your simulated math-fan friend, and consequently you must
treat me with respect, like a number.  s

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