About_Author
ABOUT AUTHOR
I'm an American born amateur mathematician and philosopher who
specializes in megalo-arithmology, the study of large numbers and the methods
for generating them. On the internet I go by the alias "Sbiis", a name I created one day by typing
random letters onto the keyboard. In my day to day life I am a part time
mathematics tutor at my former community college and a freelance
computer programmer.
As both a mathematician and a philosopher I hold the view that well-defined
mathematical entities including large numbers, are "real" in the sense that they
are predetermined by the algorithm used to define them or the property they are
said to hold, assuming such an object with said properties happens to exist. Such
an object is "knowable" at least in principle, provided an answer could be obtained
in a finite amount of time, given an unlimited amount of time and memory.
are "real" in that they exist prior to the material, though
they themselves are inmaterial and do not exist in some abstract paradise, but
only exist as laws. To illustrate when a computer program is written to compute the
digits of pi, or check examples for goldbach's conjecture it is interacting with
a "reality" not ever fully manifested, but made real through a well-defined
deterministic process. It is my contention that the digits of pi exist prior to their
computation, and that in some sense the real world is able to interact with the
much vaster world of all possible worlds.
In so far as there is only one way the program can unfold, there are
digits of pi, goldbach numbers, etc. and this lends them a "reality" even when
not made manifest. Mathematics and the laws of physics therefore are not
representive of the material world, but only how the material world interacts
with itself. Thus large numbers are real in the sense that we could write a
program which, at least in principle, could compute them given an unlimited
amount of time and memory.
I first became interested in large numbers as a kid in grade school. I have
been fascinated by mathematics ever since I was old enough to count. My
interest in large number however was triggered when my first "mathematical
crisis" was reached.
My first
"mathematical crisis" was reached when I began to understand the
ramifications of the infinite.