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The Planiverse is explicitly inspired by Flatland: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2005-06/planiverse/historicalcontext.html https

The Planiverse is explicitly inspired by Flatland: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/2005-06/planiverse/historicalcontext.html https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/project... Flatland leaves out a lot of details of physics, anatomy, and general science. Everyone is just geometric shapes floating in an endless plain. Planiverse attempts to envision a 2D world with gravity, a food chain, and digressions on the unpleasant reality of being a creature whose digestive system only has a single orifice due to the topological restrictions of their reality.

causality0 4y ago
That last point is quite interesting. I'm having some trouble extrapolating that up into higher dimensions, identifying what limits of the human body would be eliminated by a fourth spatial dimension. Edit: For some reason using a whole comment to say this got me muted from commenting at all, so I'll put it in an edit: Damn, that shoelace thing is really cool.
- macrolocal 4y ago
  You couldn’t tie your shoelaces in 4D because the laces would just slip around each other.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Filligree 4y ago
    Aren’t some organic molecules effectively knots? Though I imagine there are plenty of alternatives.
  - OscarCunningham 4y ago
    You can't knot 1-dimensional curves in 4-dimensions, but you can knot 2-dimensional surfaces.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      Therefore, a 5D being ties their shoes with 3D universes.
      - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
        New twist on the simulation argument: we're living in the shoelaces of someone's high-tech shoes.
        macrolocal 4y ago
        A 6D being even! We live from aglet to aglet.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  > I'm having some trouble extrapolating that up into higher dimensions, identifying what limits of the human body would be eliminated by a fourth spatial dimension. That's precisely why Flatland and the Planiverse are such interesting books. Making the step from 2D observing from 3D gives you a little bit of an intuition of how a 4D being would look at us as well as to how a 3D being would look at a 4D one.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    IIRC, Rudy Rucker’s Realware had some interesting stuff happening in higher dimensional spaces with humans kidnapped by high-d beings. As all his books, a very fun read.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      My favorite was 'The hacker and the ants'.
jhbadger 4y ago
Dewdney even wrote the introduction to a recent edition of Flatland. He definitely acknowledges the influence.
FartyMcFarter 4y ago
I don't quite understand the last point, couldn't the gut still twist around and lead to a lower orifice in 2D?
- ertian 4y ago
  If a 2d creature has two orifices, then it's bisected. The two parts of it's body can't be connected without interrupting the digestive tract. It's like saying of us 3d creatures: "the butt doesn't have to be connected to the head, does it?"
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
    Oh, that makes sense, thanks!
jrootabega 4y ago
It's been a long time since I read this book; am I misremembering? I thought they had a butt, but their digestive tract was filled with interlocking pieces that unzipped in waves to let food through? If that was true, I'm not sure how nerve signals would get between their two halves. Perhaps their brains and minds were just good at being split in half every now and then. Maybe they had to sleep to digest. Maybe I'm forgetting that, too. It would also be unsettling to know that your gut was the only thing holding your body in one piece.
- Avshalom 4y ago
  as long as some number of teeth were always sufficiently closed you could just have parallel/redundant communication channels using the teeth and never entirely break contact.
  - jrootabega 4y ago
    Good point; the higher level layers of the brain wouldn't even need to know that there was ever a disconnection. Although it would all still require neural connections that could be physically broken regularly. And we thought USB was picky...
- egypturnash 4y ago
  I distinctly recall a dinner scene where, after eating, everyone kind of hung out chatting for a bit, then used dedicated bowls to discretely hork up the undigested remnants. I seem to recall something about "zippers" at a cellular level? It's been a while and my copy is long gone.

causality0 4y ago

That last point is quite interesting. I'm having some trouble extrapolating that up into higher dimensions, identifying what limits of the human body would be eliminated by a fourth spatial dimension. Edit: For some reason using a whole comment to say this got me muted from commenting at all, so I'll put it in an edit: Damn, that shoelace thing is really cool.

macrolocal 4y ago
You couldn’t tie your shoelaces in 4D because the laces would just slip around each other.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Filligree 4y ago
  Aren’t some organic molecules effectively knots? Though I imagine there are plenty of alternatives.
- OscarCunningham 4y ago
  You can't knot 1-dimensional curves in 4-dimensions, but you can knot 2-dimensional surfaces.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    Therefore, a 5D being ties their shoes with 3D universes.
    - FartyMcFarter 4y ago
      New twist on the simulation argument: we're living in the shoelaces of someone's high-tech shoes.
      - macrolocal 4y ago
        A 6D being even! We live from aglet to aglet.
jacquesm 4y ago
> I'm having some trouble extrapolating that up into higher dimensions, identifying what limits of the human body would be eliminated by a fourth spatial dimension. That's precisely why Flatland and the Planiverse are such interesting books. Making the step from 2D observing from 3D gives you a little bit of an intuition of how a 4D being would look at us as well as to how a 3D being would look at a 4D one.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  IIRC, Rudy Rucker’s Realware had some interesting stuff happening in higher dimensional spaces with humans kidnapped by high-d beings. As all his books, a very fun read.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    My favorite was 'The hacker and the ants'.

jhbadger 4y ago

Dewdney even wrote the introduction to a recent edition of Flatland. He definitely acknowledges the influence.

FartyMcFarter 4y ago

I don't quite understand the last point, couldn't the gut still twist around and lead to a lower orifice in 2D?

ertian 4y ago
If a 2d creature has two orifices, then it's bisected. The two parts of it's body can't be connected without interrupting the digestive tract. It's like saying of us 3d creatures: "the butt doesn't have to be connected to the head, does it?"
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- FartyMcFarter 4y ago
  Oh, that makes sense, thanks!

jrootabega 4y ago

It's been a long time since I read this book; am I misremembering? I thought they had a butt, but their digestive tract was filled with interlocking pieces that unzipped in waves to let food through? If that was true, I'm not sure how nerve signals would get between their two halves. Perhaps their brains and minds were just good at being split in half every now and then. Maybe they had to sleep to digest. Maybe I'm forgetting that, too. It would also be unsettling to know that your gut was the only thing holding your body in one piece.

Avshalom 4y ago
as long as some number of teeth were always sufficiently closed you could just have parallel/redundant communication channels using the teeth and never entirely break contact.
- jrootabega 4y ago
  Good point; the higher level layers of the brain wouldn't even need to know that there was ever a disconnection. Although it would all still require neural connections that could be physically broken regularly. And we thought USB was picky...
egypturnash 4y ago
I distinctly recall a dinner scene where, after eating, everyone kind of hung out chatting for a bit, then used dedicated bowls to discretely hork up the undigested remnants. I seem to recall something about "zippers" at a cellular level? It's been a while and my copy is long gone.