Limitless Box & Random Patterns
Epistemic status: Memories of science I learned as a teenager; and speculation/extrapolation on those ideas.
Limitless Box
🎵 What is a limitless box? Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? it is a box with no limits, no ends, infinitely large in all directions. If you were inside of the box, you’d just see... well, something like we see in the universe, which is a lot of stuff, and a lot of space, but eventually, the universe extends further than light can travel-this is because of the expansion of the universe, which pulls light away faster than it can travel-so, there is a limit to the amount of the universe that we can see, that we can observe. The observable universe, is probably not, the entire universe.
But, what if we went back to our infinite box, and stepped outside of it? What would a limitless box look like from outside?
Well, it’d be limitless, so it’d just stretch on forever in all directions, right? You look left, you see box, you look right, yep, that’s some more box there.
But, where are you looking from? A limitless box, would fill any space that you tried to observe it from. You’d either, end up inside of the box, or, if the box is truly limitless, you just wouldn’t exist?
This, must be what it’s like to be outside of the universe. We sometimes imagine the edge of the universe as a place we can reach, and that maybe we could step through, or push through with advanced enough technology, and we could see the parallel version of ourself, and say... “hello! I’m you.” But if we live in a limitless universe, there is no outside of the universe... Probably.
If being outside of the universe is the same as not existing, do you go outside of the universe when you die? Well, no? Maybe? Depends what you mean. You’d be in the same state, if you were outside of the universe or dead. But outside of the universe isn’t a place that you can be, it does not exist outside of our imagination. And that state, is not existing. If something doesn’t exist, it’s actually in no state at all. It too, only exists within our minds.
Keyboard Patterns
467e8444444444444442444443r5 is the pattern of keys that were pressed as I used a flat-head screwdriver to pop the ‘r’ key out of my keyboard, and clean under it so that it would stop getting stuck.
Yesterday, I accidentally dropped a squishy cube on my keyboard, and it said:
/.;l’-=
I thought that was a somewhat beautiful ‘random’ pattern of keys, and so I did it again on purpose:
98o0iu7
and again:
;/’p0[-
[]=.plouytf43]
Dropping an hourglass longways gives me:
fdk
And dropping it a few times results in:
sahhkfkhbp-=
kijedjjx6yqq
Which is much more like my random typing with my hands, which looks like:
agfbnaiunfoianwoifhbwiuy
Dropping a chunk of obsidian on my board gives me:
x c
and dropping a stapler gives:
768ert4szx
I don’t know why these patterns are beautiful to me. I don’t know why I want to take them, and preserve them as data, or why they inspire me to create art with them. I do not feel this way about my own random typing, which feels so artificial to me. It’s clear, when I ‘type randomly’ that there is a mind behind the typing. But is it really that clear?
There is an API for a quantum random number generator in Canbera, and a while ago it was used to create an app that scammed people into ‘manifesting’ using the quantum realm. I made a video about this. But really, the important part of this story, is that the numbers are generated by measuring the virtual particle fluctuations inside of a vacuum.
The website for the tool, contains a few toys that generate truly random data:
2a31fa1ab3704690a1f652f1e4d7cbcbbf493067e5f7253448edd5b85
Is random hexadecimal. But it looks more like my random typing than dropping a stapler on my keyboard does. That’s funny. Is there some engine of randomness inside of the human mind, and if I desire to, I can use it only to create spasmed movements in my body?
I’m fond of the Bernoulli noise page on the website.
