From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Mon Nov 13 2000 - 10:50:23 MST
Matthew Purdon <playinmantis@earthlink.net> writes:
> Would someone please explain what the Extropians interest is in practicing
> this sort of numerology?
I seriously doubt most extropians care about it at all, except as
intellectual amusement.
Personally I have always regarded numerology as bunk since it is
usually not invariant when you change numbering systems. Hence
believers have to claim that there is something very special with a
positional decimal system if they want to claim some relevance - not
to mention the arbitrariness of alphabets and languages if you start
doing gematria.
There is of course *real* numerology: mathematical physics. Or number
theory - this morning I listened to a wonderful lecture by John Conway
about Fractran, a surprisingly simple and powerful programming
language composed of fractions. He showed how you could re-write any
arithmetic computer program into a set of fractions that can be "run"
by multiplication - that is the real wonder and power of "numerology".
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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