Tom Caylor wrote: > I've thought of bringing up the Monster group here before, but I didn't > think anyone here would be that weird, since I even get "weird" > reactions to my ideas about the Riemann zeta function. I've noticed > the connection with the number 26 also. (By the way, for some unknown > reason in my childhood 26 was my favorite number ;) > > In the past I've been drawn to the Monster group and the classification > of finite simple groups, perhaps for reasons similar to other > mathematically inclined people. There's just something mysterious > about the fact that there are only a finite number of classes of this > type of mathematical object. And yet it is a rather non-trivial > number, larger than the number of spatial dimensions, and even larger > than the number of platonic solids, or the number of faces on the > largest platonic solid. And when you look at the order (size) of the > largest of the finite simple groups (the Monster group), it is huge. > And yet it is the largest. This seems to be a signpost that something > fundamental is going on here. > > On the other hand, if I recall correctly without checking, rings and > fields don't have such a classification such that there are a finite > number of some basic type of them. I'm just shooting off at the hip, > but I wonder if this has to do with the fact that groups have only one > operator (addition or multiplication, say), whereas rings and fields > have at least 2. This rings a bell with the sufficient complexity > needed for Godel's Incompleteness Theorems (and a nontrivial G/G*?). A > similar point is that there are an infinite number of primes, whereas > the number of classes of finite simple groups is finite. Another > caution is to note the failure this approach in the past, notably with > Plato's "theory of everything". We don't want to go down the path of > numerology, which is a lot of what comes up when I google "monster > group" and "multiverse". But on the other hand, this is part of the > nature of exploring. > > Tom
i.e. "some amount of weirdness" (where have I heart that phrase before? Ah, yes, Bruno's UDA paper) is to be expected as part of the nature of exploring. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
