From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri Jun 07 2002 - 09:26:15 MDT
Note: this post is only incidentally about mathematics
so if you hate math, keep reading anyway:
I think that Spike's most important long-term conceptual
contribution here stems from his
> general technique for finding ever better numbers is by
> starting out with a sequence of prime numbers such as
> 3,5,7 and 11 (others will work, but this is a very good one)
> then finding the next number in the sequence by taking
> the product of the previous three in the sequence.
> For instance, in the 3,5,7,11 example, take
> 5*7*11 = 385, then increment to the next largest prime,
> which is 389.
> The product of 3*5*7*11*389 will be a really good number,
> but an even better one can be found by taking
> 7*11*389=29953, and incrementing to the next largest prime,
> 29959. The new record will be 3*5*7*11*389*29959.
Reading between the lines, one sees pure Extropianism
at work. There is a huge universe out there (in this
case the Natural Numbers), and unlike most mathematicians,
Spike is not content with narrowly focusing on The Next
Natural Number in the typical anal way mathematicians
usually work. He is quite happy to skip vast, vast
numbers of integers in the quest for the best almost
perfect odd number he can find, never looking back.
This is a model for the way that we want to explode
into the future. Another metaphor: we should colonize
every star in the galaxy at about the same time, none
of this "picking only the closest and going one by one".
Another: in AI, we should copy this impulse and feel
free to look by chance at enormously complicated structures
generated randomly or by hunch that we don't understand at all.
Lee
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