Message #3261

From: Melinda Green <melinda@superliminal.com>
Subject: Re: [MC4D] Re: Visualizing Hyperobjects
Date: Tue, 01 Dec 2015 00:24:33 -0800

On 11/30/2015 9:51 PM, andreyastrelin@yahoo.com [4D_Cubing] wrote:
>
>
> I’m not very sure that universe should have any number of "dimensions"
> at all. Our universe looks like 3D+1D manifold (at least at large
> scale, from femtometers and up), but why any universe should be like
> this? Mimosa vacuum from Egan’s "Schild’s Ladder" shows how life can
> look in the regular graph. 5D world in "Diaspora" is nice attempt to
> describe physics, chemistry and life in the universe without planets…

I am suspicious about the true dimensional nature of our universe. I’ve
not read Schild’s Ladder but I do love everything I’ve read from Egan.
(Especially Permutation City which I encourage everyone to read.) The
fact that no time passes for photons in flight suggests that the moment
photons leave their source is the same that that they are absorbed, so
either there’s no space or no free will at least. But the real clue is
quantum entanglement which suggests the possibility that both particles
in an entangled pair are really just different views of the same object,
and space itself is far from being the simple stage we perceive it to be.

> As for 4D visualization, it’s much more easy to imagine 4D scene as
> it is, without visual details and extract features that you need now.
> My favorite example of 4D scene is a house surrounded by spherical
> hedge, with hexagonal gates, with small doghouse and 6-legged dog
> (that needs spherical collar because ring is easily slips from the
> neck), house is near the highway (and I know details of driving lanes
> and exit/entry structure). And I have a design of t he car too…
> Door is the middle of the cubic wall? No problem. Garage in the
> corner, diagonally from the door? Okay. I see the entrance from the
> outside and I know what part of 3D floor plan of the house is occupied
> by the garage. Some problem is with the roof (it’s {3,4} duoprism -
> not the best object to imagine).
> Main thing that you have to understand when work with 4D views - is
> that "forward" direction is not from the closest side of view area (as
> you see in 3D) to the far side, but from the bottom to the center.
> When you go forward you see scene expanding from the center (and
> disappearing at the boundary). When you follow the road, you see it
> going from the bottom of your view area, it goes up to the center if
> it is straight or somewhere to side (may be even to "front side" of
> view) if there is a turn.
> Actually it is very easy. But you have to spend some time with thes
> e scenes to understand them.

Wow, what a great description, Andrey!
I think you should contact Marc ten Bosch and offer to build this scene
into Miegakure. The tricky thing would be to design it such that all of
the 3D orthogonal slices of each element always resembles its familiar
form. I especially want to see that dog!

-Melinda