About_Author

ABOUT AUTHOR

I'm an American born amateur mathematician and philosopher who

specializes in megalo-arithmology, the study of large numbers and the methods

for generating them. On the internet I go by the alias "Sbiis", a name I created one day by typing

random letters onto the keyboard. In my day to day life I am a part time

mathematics tutor at my former community college and a freelance

computer programmer.

As both a mathematician and a philosopher I hold the view that well-defined

mathematical entities including large numbers, are "real" in the sense that they

are predetermined by the algorithm used to define them or the property they are

said to hold, assuming such an object with said properties happens to exist. Such

an object is "knowable" at least in principle, provided an answer could be obtained

in a finite amount of time, given an unlimited amount of time and memory.

are "real" in that they exist prior to the material, though

they themselves are inmaterial and do not exist in some abstract paradise, but

only exist as laws. To illustrate when a computer program is written to compute the

digits of pi, or check examples for goldbach's conjecture it is interacting with

a "reality" not ever fully manifested, but made real through a well-defined

deterministic process. It is my contention that the digits of pi exist prior to their

computation, and that in some sense the real world is able to interact with the

much vaster world of all possible worlds.

In so far as there is only one way the program can unfold, there are

digits of pi, goldbach numbers, etc. and this lends them a "reality" even when

not made manifest. Mathematics and the laws of physics therefore are not

representive of the material world, but only how the material world interacts

with itself. Thus large numbers are real in the sense that we could write a

program which, at least in principle, could compute them given an unlimited

amount of time and memory.

I first became interested in large numbers as a kid in grade school. I have

been fascinated by mathematics ever since I was old enough to count. My

interest in large number however was triggered when my first "mathematical

crisis" was reached.

My first

"mathematical crisis" was reached when I began to understand the

ramifications of the infinite.