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If you had no ego, you would just say Mandelbrot set. If Mandelbrot had no ego, he would have just called it "calculate z_{n+1} = z_n²+1 for each point repeate
by recivorecivo 10y ago
If you had no ego, you would just say Mandelbrot set. If Mandelbrot had no ego, he would have just called it "calculate z_{n+1} = z_n²+1 for each point repeatedly; color it black if it converges...".
Ponder this. Without ego, there is no judgement. And no judgement of those who judge. The cycle breaks.
- roywiggins 10y agoThe instructions are more useful. If you don't already know how to calculate the Mandelbrot set, "Draw a Mandelbrot set!" is meaningless to you and presumes knowledge you don't have. It also doesn't specify how to color it; maybe you end up coloring it black if it diverges instead! Addendum: The artist in the article specified the algorithm (“Within a circle draw 10,000 straight black lines and 10,000 black not straight lines. All lines are randomly spaced and equally distributed.”) and not the result ("Somehow, incredibly... an infinite field of stars emerges"). So I described another algorithm that produces an incredible, unexpected result- one that we use silicon to calculate rather than people. Further addendum: the Chaos Game is an interesting way to approximate a fractal that you can implement with pencil, paper, ruler, and lots of time on your hands: 1. Draw three points. Best results if they're roughly the vertices of an equilateral triangle. 2. Pick a point at random inside the notional triangle and mark it 3. Pick one of the vertices at random and mark the midpoint between your chosen point and that vertex 4. That midpoint is your new chosen point. Return to 3, rinse and repeat.
- brianberns 10y agoMandelbrot didn't name the set. It was named after him by the mathematicians who first studied it seriously.
- johnloeber 10y agoI don't think this is about ego -- this is just about naming for convenience. We say "Mandelbrot Set" rather than "calculate (...) converges" because the former has four syllables and the latter has thirty-two. Beyond that, I'm not sure what you're getting at w/r/t/ judgement and cycles.
- recivorecivo 10y agoSomeone could judge the original poster for not saying "Mandelbrot". In turn, the original poster can judge whoever discovered it for wanting to put a name to pure math. That is the cycle of judgement. Without ego, I can refer to it as "Mandelbrot Set", or the full equation. Ego is a qualitative limit upon mankind, as much as lack of vocalized language was. We talk sometimes of the Singularity here. The Singularity is the moment we remove ego. I can somewhat envision what is beyond it, but I think others cannot.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dang 10y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558310 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11558310 and marked it off-topic.
- MrTuffStuff 10y agoYou don't tell me what to ponder, guy.