Yeah I think most dreams are just that: subconscious thoughts - but i think some people have access to some higher power through meditation by the opening up of the consciousness and the third eye to a sort of universal information. Sorta like tuning into the interstellar radio? I saw a video where a Monk focussed his mantra/chakra and was using it to heal people of diseases that Doctors cannot explain.
If you listen to these euro programed idiot haters and deniers, they say its fake - and if some priest is going around saying he can heal - it probably is fake - but that doesn't mean that everyone is fake.

No that's not quite the perfect case study you'd need to prove or disprove my point.

See, what im saying is that a person conceivably could figure out the relationship of certain numbers even if the humans surrounding them are ignorant entirely to numbers. I'm not saying that it would be expected, as a feral child individual or even small case would prove/disprove im saying its possible but unlikely that the human brain could make that leap of logic given only a handful of beans. Given they can logically understand an individual thing even without understanding what numbers are, a bean is a bean next to a pile of beans. Then the next logical leap is simply to realize between the bean you hold and have logically separated from the pack and the pile there are many different sized amounts. This grouping is what even mathematically challenged societies that we observe today can rationalize, one, many, many more. Group words over math. But if you can in an uncommonly gifted ignorant brain synthesize math in this way, which seems reasonable, you could also conceivably synthesize higher math, such as the indian boy. This would be a rare event among rare events, but i see no reason to presume its impossible to the point that his knowledge must be explained by other means.

I love when something is discovered - people are like "Well of course, I already knew that". A hundred years ago there was no such thing as a Garbageman, garbage was just the old stuff people threw out the window and then along came someone who thought "Hey we ought to have someone who jobs it is to pick stuff up you throw away" - I'm pretty sure your grandfather would have called him a crazy person though. Ya, basically i'm saying that humans are dumb as rocks in most cases - so for you to say "well obviously numbers are 100% a human creation" - isn't really that likely. Artist's recognize the importance of the muse in their inspiration. Could a large part of math have the same inspiration - quite possibly.

Okay, let me rephrase: numbers as a concept indeed exist naturally, but the representation of numbers is something humans came up with to facilitate the usage of, well, numbers. The fact that we use the decimal number system is just a matter of agreement. If we were all using octal, for instance, "11:11" would read as "13:13" and OP would most likely never have thought anything special when seeing that particular time on his clock.

I'll cut you some slack and say that, hypothetically, certain numbers can have certain natural qualities tied to them -- but only as long as you do not need to rely on the written representation of these numbers to describe these qualities.

Because numbers themselves are so fundamental to beginning of all understanding, you see them as inherent, but i assert that the very concept of what a number even is - is not natural and is a concept that begins all learning and understanding.

That's very true, but I think that when people say "numbers are inherent", they mean that what they represent is something that just exists.

For instance, you may take a walk through the desert and encounter three rocks. The quantity of rocks lying right there is undeniably three. This is not something nature "created", it's just one of the concepts that make up the world. And even if you want to argue about the fact that "a rock" is not a concept that exists in nature as such, we can give the same example on a much deeper level: take a normal molecule of water. There is no denying that this molecule contains exactly one oxygen atom and exactly two hydrogen atoms. The fact that there is exactly this many atoms of these specific types is what defines all the qualities and behaviors of this molecule.

Yes, number seem so inherent because they are they very beginning of all understanding: that's because once you understand them - their concept seems so simple - it is beyond understanding how profound their concept is in the first place.

This post was edited by card_sultan on Sep 27 2016 03:09am

^I think a bit of quantum physics is useful for thinking about the inherent value of numbers. In normal experience we don't really have any examples of where truly 1=1 what with space and time bending/everything being slightly different etc. But apparently when you start looking at protons they are remarkably identical, so much so that Richard Feynman proposed that it's actually just one proton moving backwards and forwards in time superimposing itself in multiple positions! But then we have the fact that all particle have unknown definite positions, in face any particle can end up anywhere in the universe just with lower and lower chance from it's normal/average/starting? position so trying to equate them might be wrong. Hopefully everything because determined at the planck length or something but who knows!

Anyway macro objects tend to behave nicely so we didn't have to worry about any of that stuff with maths/general life

0, 1, 2, and 3 are numbers that the simple mind can understand regardless of notation. All you need to see that is a child eating a pack of skittles.

The ignorant mind tends to have problems with numbers over that but even the simple mind can understand small numbers regardless of them knowing the notation.



Are you mixing up posts or something, i haven't even remotely said this. I said it seems logical that a human COULD, not that he DID, synthesize high levels of math naturally.

Its obvious that 99.999% of people learn all of their math from other people, there are very few original thinkers. What the discussion is, is whether or not someone COULD synthesize high level math only using the power of a human brain, to which i counter they COULD, so we don't inherently have to look for another source for the knowledge. Whereas if it were impossible we'd have to ask inherently, rather than at out own discretion, how that indian boy got that smart.

For the record I believe i've said that aliens could have given us math/tech like 5 times in this very thread.

i watched really good doc on this lately ill upload it when i get home from work