Binary

[Queso]

I don't know who it was

but I just heard someone being interviewed on internet radio.

He was talking about Binary code.

 

He said that the Binary isn't even binary.

He said it's an optical illusion.

Said things like 1 and 0 are at the opposite ends, and that binary constantly oscillates at 6 + 9

 

I obviously don't really know what I'm talking about...

 

do you?

[C1ay]

Sounds like one of those wacky conspiracy radio shows. Base 2, binary, is composed of 1s and 0s...

[Queso]

space

 

it was this flash animation thing

 

give it a listen? It sounds very interesting

[CraigD]

Sign69 seems to me to be a audiovideo performance artist, seeking to evoke mental impressions thought flash collage, music, and spoken words. The images, music, and words don’t have much intrinsic meaning – space1097’s talk about binary code being an optical illusion because the binary of the ying-yang doesn’t really consist of 2 regions, but 3, because the line counts as a third part, is just a string of intelligent-sounding but fundamentally nonsensical phrases. Phrases like “we are building new software and hardware” evoke an image of real technologists, though no real technologists are actually speaking, nor do actual technologists speak this way, other than to have fun speaking nonsense. Among the various pseudo-meaningful utterances in the piece, the first voice notes that 3 x 2 =6, 6 x 2 = 12, 1 + 2 = 3, so “things oscillate between 3 and 6”. This is an application of the pseudoscience of numerology. This particular one works only in base 10, which is popular with us humans almost certainly due to the coincidence of us having 10 fingers. If prehistoric man had settled on base 7 or 13 as “common”, this oscillation would be 2 and 4, or 4 and 8. In low-level programmer’s favorite base, 16 (hexadecimal), the oscillating pair is 5 and 10.

 

There’s nothing wrong, IMHO, with art of this sort, but just as it’s important to stop suspending disbelief when finished reading a novel or watching a film, it’s important not to come away from a flash show like space1097 believing you’ve heard some sort of real math or science.

 

I think there’s a neuroscientific lesson to be had from space1097 and similar works: notice that these sorts of experiences feel, subjectively, much like the mental states produced by various psychotropic substances (in other words, they’re “trippy”). Functional brain imaging suggests that the “trippy” subjective impression of these experiences is due to activity in the parts of our brain that sense the particular kind of novelty associated with doing something for the first time – what people commonly describe as “being on the edge”, or a “threshold experience”. In the same way that it’s wise to understand that art like space1097 doesn’t contain real technological science, I believe we’re well advised to realize that even intensely powerful psychotropic and spiritual experience don’t contain “real revelation”. Both are, IMHO, consequences of “playing our nervous systems” – which, incidentally to obsycli’s title, is a reasonable definition of what a “neuromancer”, in the sense that many people take the term, might be said to do.

 

PS: this thread doesn’t really belong in Math & Physics. If nobody objects, I’ll move it somewhere more art or neurology-oriented. Suggestion re the best forum are welcome.

[Queso]

Okay.

I was pretty sure they were just compiling words to spark cosmic thoughts,

s'what I do with spoken word poetry.

The idea sounded cool and I wanted to ask you guys....

(whoa what if two wasn't even two, teeheehee)