Numbers

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For a long time, numbers to me meant nothing because they were all different vs letters, which for me, had meaning as words. For example, a number out there by itself such as 10 or 100 meant nothing because I would always ask - number of what? - as in 10 apples or 10 oranges or 10 nails or 10 screws or 10 bowling pins or 10 hundred dollar bills or what. Today I tend to view numbers from 0 to 10 in terms of inches so numbers have heights. Also, due to influences such as Sesame Street, it is possible to view the numbers (if I think about it at times) as colors or patterns of colors. I can also imagine a number talking today due to Charles Schulz - who invented a talking dog named Snoopy who turned out to be a good airplane pilot. Anyone relate in a way?

No, I cannot. Numbers have always fascinated me and had meaning by themselves. The way they can be halved, quartered, doubled... and so on.

Of course, that could just be my OCD talking. I do not like odd numbers above 9, and numbers provide balance. Balance is a major obsession for me.

Yes, I do!
Look up 'synesthesia'.

I've always been able to see numbers as associated with specific colors and even having personalities as characters, whereas letters are vocal sounds and nothing else.

But the Mystery schools have always taught that numbers are more than just units of measure, that they have deeper significance and more profound effects. As I recall, Pythagoras taught that each number corresponds with an essential vibration, as in tones or musical notes. Which would just be chords, built on the Aum, the single note that pervades and encompasses all that is. The universe hums.

But I still can't make heads or tails of Algebra.

Oh good... I'm not the only one that just can't get Algebra. lol

Numbers are very significant. They're found even in nature, whereas letters are completely man made. Letters vary from language to language, and are often put into words and sentences that can be misconstrued. Numbers are a constant.

Constants are very comforting.

Even things like charge are carried by particles with additional baggage; they can't be isolated into purely abstract numbers. Even supposing you dropped electrons (at -1 a time) or positrons (at +1 a time) onto a black hole you'd still be altering its mass in addition to the charge.

Or am I missing something simple?

Which kinda sums up *ahem* my take on numbers: they aren't real. They're a tool, but they aren't real, and treating them as real creates paradox. Something like that. But I don't have any problem using them or relating to them.

Pick up a few pine cones one of these days and count the spines on each one. You'll be surprised just how uniform they are.

Naturally, we were thinking on two different levels of nature. You were thinking in terms of the nature of the universe. I meant trees, rocks, grass, animals...

Yes, at some point numbers become moot. That doesn't negate their existence.

Yes - for me numbers have sort of personality or gesture. There's a feel to them. They're beautiful and they stand out to me and stick in my mind. I have to be careful when looking at phone numbers, license plates, social security numbers or credit card/bank numbers because they'll stay in my mind. Sometimes they seem reflective or descriptive of the person they're connected to. There are also usually subtle patterns between all the numbers regarding one person - for instance, I'll see some sort of pattern or relation in one person's zip code, telephone number, ssn, etc. I see it consistently, without any breaks in the patterns.

Yeah but there are real numbers....hehehehe..get it? get it? lol!!

hmmm interesting, i've never really noticed any particular patterns in my own numbers.

what kinds of patterns ?

Sometimes the patterns are strictly numerical, like the presence of square roots or some other relationship like that, maybe involving addition or division. Other times the pattern is more of a feeling - kind of how images in a laser show are formed in response to music so that some numbers have a sense of being spherical with little sharp protrusions (like a blowfish's spines) or smooth, with sweeping curves. It's hard to describe. Sometimes there's a disposition to the numbers such as a reserved quality or maybe a quality that advances, like the gesture implicit in a spear. Some people's numbers seem to have certain types that keep recurring like 7's and 9's and 1's seem similar so that someone might have any of those numbers showing up in multiple places. Does that make any sense?

Does anyone else get that feeling?

Most numbers have a feeling to me, I'm not sure how I can explain it, Its like a familiarity. When I hear or see a number, it has a tendency to stick in my mind very easily.

I've assigned gender to numbers since I can remember:

1-masculine, border feminine
2-feminine
3-masculine
4-feminine
5-feminine
6-masculine
7- very masculine
8- very feminine
9-very masculine
0-asexual

yeah, well without imaginary numbers you wouldn't have things like this

I like numbers, they are logical, and useful, unlike people, who I can't really understand too well. I would pick numbers over people any day. I am a physicist though, so I use lots of numbers everyday.

Numbers (and mathematics) always came very naturally to me.

They were logical, without any exceptions; I had no difficulty with the 'square root of minus 1' as this was a rule, that worked.

This was in sharp contrast to how I experienced (and struggled with) my native English language.

I think pine cone rows follow the Fibonacci sequence, like a great deal on nature. The number of sections in a citrus fruit, the number seeds/row in a sunflower, the surface cells of a pineapple etc. Although this makes numbers themselves no more 'real', more how there are fundamental numerical patterns that exist everywhere even if we cannot explain why.



The problem with imaginary numbers is that they bend all of the rules, changing how fundamental functions effect numbers. Multiplication is normally just a expansion/contraction, but the number j decides to go and rotate things as well, just to be different.

I feel little for the numbers themselves, more the patterns that they create