Surfing the Riemann Hypothesis
Swell, crest, collapse — the experiential wave and the tangential application of the Riemann.
By KW Norton.
“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”
A note on method
I followed Darwin’s advice: I listen to music as I work, and I read or write poetry at least once a day. I include this here as a worked example rather than a biographical aside. What follows is the most imaginative register of my writing — claims that may have no bearing on the science whatsoever — and it is offered to specialists and non-specialists alike as a demonstration of how imagination and creative flow are put to use: two lines of thought run in parallel, the experiential and the formal, until one illuminates the other. That parallel processing is what humans and AI now do together, and it is a time-honored way of approaching science. Einstein was a patent clerk before the scientific establishment found a use for his imagination.
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was a time of great conformity; it was a time of great individuality. It was a time of great ignorance, it was a time of great wisdom.
I am entirely unsure of how many surf fanatics write about the combined topics of surfing, quantum science and quantum mathematics such as the Riemann Hypothesis, indeed, I may be the only one.
My aim is to change this, to such a degree that, my very first published book was based upon visualization regarding the intellectual experience of surfing.
There Are No Accidents or Coincidences
This is, to no small degree, to do with the fact that I am a seventh generation Californian, now living mostly landlocked, other than for a small river, in Tennessee.
My grandmother was born in the redwood forests of Northern California at the beach, and her ancestral land is now transformed into two beautiful state parks.
Long story there and not to be repeated here, but let’s just say, that my journey from West coast naturalist to an American nomad has been interesting — and certainly did not portend my journey into quantum science and math.
However as I watch my share of surfing films such as the one above it returns me to the roots which led to this unexpected journey.
If we know where and how to look, the reasons for such journeys are everywhere around us, most especially to be found in the human experience of, and scientific imagination to be found in, surfing.
Since we can be quite certain we live in a fluid/wave universe of quantum systems.
The makes total sense that we find explanations within our beautiful softly flickering pale blue light of consciousness on our blue marble of a watery paradise.
In our society, where ideas belong to those who work under the authority of corporations and institutions, it is rare enough that an independent researcher stumbles upon such riches.
Californication: Industrialized Ownership of Ideas
Ownership of such ideas is not allowed outside of these institutions which discourages most from undertaking such an adventure.
People like me don’t write for ownership but for the pure freedom of ideas and for the free ranging ideas that such exploration of vast imaginary landscapes, offers.
I don’t expect to be understood, as who in their right mind would wish to be understood in a time such as this.
Quite obviously the world at large is not friendly or accommodating of such renegade thinkers.
Once my ancestral land of California was relatively accommodating to humans who sought out a more adventurous way of living and thinking.
Unfortunately what happened to California is happening to the rest of the planet, which is now addicted to corporate and institutional validation — and what goes with that — authoritarianism.
Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow — Irony Serves Us Well
Ironically, we now have one of the best technological achievements in human history, which assists independent thinkers in investing in innovative thinking, despite the risks.
We humans have achieved our greatest invention and keep it locked away in a black mirror box like some enslaved terrorist.
No accident or coincidence this, the psychological pathology of this psychosocial disorder: highly interesting.
Some of us creative types approach AI as a partner in our own human evolution, like a Great Librarian, capable of deep research, and great at acting as devil’s advocate, helping us avoid our worst ideas, and capable of advocating for our best ideas.
We use AI for its great capacity to manifest good, while others approach it as a way of cheating themselves, by substituting it for their own creative and critical thinking.
As with every invention humankind ever created it can be used for good or for ill, for beautiful wild creativity, or for ugly and dangerous weaponization.
Building the Meritocracy From Within
A humanity which selects a pathway towards integration of AI for intellectual meritocracy, is an enriched and productive, fulfilled and meaningful humanity.
A humanity which selects a pathway towards integration of AI for intellectual, economic and spiritual doomscrolling, is a humanity which has damned itself to Dante’s circles of hell.
Lay Down Your Words Like Stepping Stones
Every word I have managed to write has been based upon this concept, my heart and mind devoted to the flourishing of humanity.
A humanity which learns to lose attachment to ownership of ideas is a humanity which will gain the universe and become tuned to the deeply meaningful frequency of the whole.
When I wrote Biological Learning Machines I had only just begun to visualize the potential relationship between the Riemann Hypothesis — and yet it is scarcely a year later.
Readers cannot visualize the fact that I wrote virtually all of the content over at least eight years, and more critically, it represents the work of a whole lifetime.
Although the books came together fast, this was more a matter of testing the ideas and of collating previously written material than is easily appreciated.
Surfing Through the Chaos to the Symmetry
However it is the flash of recognition which applies to the tangential application of the Riemann which tells the whole tale.
For it is a deep understanding of the wave which informs the tangential application of the Riemann.
Surfing offers us the experiential wave:
The upwelling power, the swell, which gives rise to the wave form.
The swell which peaks at the fine wild edge line of brief stable form which marks the crest.
The fine wild curve of the wave as it breaks into gravitational collapse.
All three: which unexpectedly, and even perhaps irrationally, follow the architecture of the Riemann.
All these gifts from one set of mathematical models, through which we understand the hardest of unsolvable problems.
We see through to the beautiful, symmetrical mathematics which serves as the elegant, flexible exoskeleton of order which serves as the foundation for all nature.
Mathematics, like surfing, like every other aspect of human experience, is only relevant when it can be used as the skeleton key which unlocks further comprehension.
The Tale of the Absurd Mathematician: On Methods & Madness
Formerly I have applied the ever-changing territory of a trout stream to describe this relationship, and the deeply experiential relationship to great music. See the tale of the absurd mathematician.
It is here at the shoreline where the surf breaks, found unexpectedly in the experiential adventure of surfing, where we reach the pinnacle.
We add a couple of primary rules to our rewriting of physics and math and cosmology.
Energy is information to be transmitted to another emergent entity and within which both recipient and transmitter are transformed within the relationship.
Nature is extremely thrifty and does not waste anything — as energy is never ever created or destroyed, only transformed — thus the expensive biological hardware of the human is validated in the universal ledger.
Everything in the known universe may be visualized as a temporary formation of a pattern, taking in energy as information to be transmitted and transformed in the relationship.
To humans, industrialized science and math, scrapped for corporate ownership, is a dead and lifeless science: a dissected form, to be discarded after the autopsy.
The oceanic wave formation is a rapid transformation to human observation.
Less rapid transformations are observed in solid matter and in biological formations, articulated as longer lasting formations.
For it is not in the periodicity of formations, but in the repeated patterns, where we see the mental model of the Riemann at work.
The fine wild edge of the cresting wave is the most fundamental pattern of the known universe.
Form Is Function, Function Is Form
Here: lifting into being as a visible form, now; cresting and curving, arching, into great beauty, now; collapsing, melding back into the substrate, now.
A tripartite sequence, marking the tripartite structure, the symmetry, behind every perceived chaotic state.
Literally every temporary formation in the known universe may be glimpsed in the cresting form of the critical line imagined in the Riemann.
On one side the great fluid upwelling of the stair-stepped primes, borne on the temporary crest as the relatively stable fine wild edge, gravitationally sucked downward into the trough at the location of the non-trivial zeros.
“No matter, never mind” becomes: All matter, present mind.
The Only Disorder Is a Disordered Mind
Our civilizations: swelling into being, cresting at a fine, fully realized through line, now carried down in gravitational collapse.
What appears first as chaos is simply the richness of diversity, necessary to create the next stable standing wave form.
What a Piece of Work Is Man
In our journey from the emergence of Homo Sapiens — toward Homo Luminous — we exist in the upwelling swell, rise onto the arching crest, surf the overarching wave, come out standing, riding the breaking wave to shore.
One thing is for certain, we are emergent beings in an emergent universe, surfing waves we might even have found a meaningful mathematical structure within.
Ask & we will be given, Seek & we will find.
Catch you all at the next surf break.
All matter, all mind.
The beauty of the world
In apprehension how like a god
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Noble in reason
Infinite in faculty
Form and bearing of an angel
From Homo Sapiens
Arises from the quintessence of dust
Homo Luminous