Comments | qijm: I've figured out why people do math

qijm

I've figured out why people do math

Jul 08, 2009 15:23

There's a feeling of secrets unlocking and everything being connected that I broadly associate with religious ecstasy, psychosis, LSD, etc. Math is simply a procedure for creating such experiences in such a way that they can

outlast the trip
be reliably communicated to others in specificity.

Comments 1

qijm July 8 2009, 22:29:58 UTC

Further evidence:

"From such a study, a new topic in discrete dynamical analysis will arise, namely, an analog to the driven harmonic oscillator: what I call the driven logistic equation. In the process, a device for quantifying the behavior of iterated mappings will be introduced, the Lyapunov exponent, with the indirect result of producing ever more fascinating images." -- http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/41.shtml

See: all about tripping.