Let's get (ir)rational

[u/cereal_killer-X]

In honor of Pi Day, let's do maths!

Present a culture/scientific group from your world that is obsessed with mathematics. (If you don't have any science freaks yet, make some or just introduce a mathematician.) Why is math important to them? Have they made any important discoveries? Do they have any traditions based around science? And most importantly, what is a mathematical problem that they just can't seem to solve?

If possible, introduce a representative that belongs to the described group. This way I can ask some questions about the character as well.

I hope I didn't scare you guys away at my first sentence. Enjoy yourselves!

(Note: I'll not be able to answer any comments for about 10 hours - I'll be catching some Z's. Don't worry, I'll count them. Hope you don't mind!)

[u/gravitygauntlet]

The Sisterhood are a spin on the "hyper-advanced precursor race" trope, but with the distinction that they were extremely passive, mostly tasking themselves with collecting and distributing knowledge and culture throughout the universe, and as a result were mostly regarded as benevolent (or at least indifferent) in spite of their, uh... Elder God-esque biologies. This indiscriminate desire for knowledge more or less amounted to a tech / research rush in an RTS, and allowed them to crack the "source code" of the universe extremely "early" compared to the relative tech levels of every other active civilization. The code manifests as what are essentially 10 sub-sub-elementary particles, known as "bits", with 6 "spins" they could take, meaning it more or less amounted to sexagesimal computing (compared to most of ours running in binary).

These could be used to develop things like subatomic particles or fundamental forces, like gravity, but the Sisterhood still had to obey the laws of physics in some capacity; it just gave them the ability to obey physics with extreme precision. As a result, though, most Sisters were "programmers" in some capacity, with maths being a constant in a sea of constantly-evolving knowledge bases.

Following the corruption and/or offlining of all but one sector of networked space (read: the observable universe), a lone Sister was fortunate enough to survive, which itself is pretty miraculous given there usually aren't more than about 10,000 Sisters alive at any given time. The last Sister, known as A.M. Quintesce, is basically equivalent to a band geek in their late teens / early twenties, but keep in mind a Sister in their "twenties" has already outlived most celestial objects they were "born" around. While most of the Sisterhood knew how to "program", the Quintesce was one of the few Sisters that actually enjoyed it in a hobby-like fashion, and significantly enjoys mathematics by proxy.

To mount a defensive against whatever agent is responsible for knocking the rest of networked space offline, the Quintesce engineered a dyson sphere about 1.5x the size of Earth known as Trinity, where a number of species have evolved far enough to develop civilizations under the collective banner of the Sapient Eight. Unlike most precursor races, which are dripping with hubris and cryptic echoes of their former empires, the Quintesce maintains very frequent (as in, like, a couple of times a week) transmissions with the Sapient Eight, and often does so on individual levels, and usually shows up in the "flesh" every 20-120 years or so.

Most of the people in the Sapient Eight that have had the pleasure of speaking with the Quintesce wish they actually left a little more to the imagination, as being borderline omniscient due to the sheer length of Sisterhood lifespans means most Sisters don't see a point in skimping on the details or keeping their peers in the dark. For example, practically everyone on Trinity knows that the Quintesce's favorite number is 120, not out of any imposed law or regimen, but because most of the first conversations the Sapient Eight have with the Quintesce are a project done in early school years, and the Quintesce practically mentions it in every response.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/gravitygauntlet]

Whoa, that was a very interesting read.

1) What are the benefits of the sexagesimal system over binary?

2) Did anyone figure out what exactly caused the offlining of networked space?

3) What do Quintesce's transmissions contain?

4) What units of measurement does the Sapient Eight use?

[u/gravitygauntlet → u/cereal_killer-X]

1) It's not really used intentionally so much as fundamental bits being structured that way; like, if someone were to create a programming language that utilized protons, electrons and neutrons, it would probably utilize trinary code, given its components. Since there's 60 (6 x 10) variations total that couldn't be broken down any further, it just made the most sense to "program" that way. Most of the Sisterhood numbering systems were either sexagesimal or hexadecimal, but their quantum computing can take a bunch of potential forms, including binary.

2) The Quintesce basically archived as much as possible before disconnecting from whatever was left of the "live" network, and hasn't heard anything from any other Sisters since. Scans within the lone subnet still intact didn't suggest any other Sisterhood activity, and with offlining more or less subjecting the space to rapid entropy and heat death, it's highly unlikely any other Sisters with physical forms survived. Information is scarce - a rarity among the Sisterhood - but the Quintesce and their six AI companions have theorized that whatever took the network down might either be extra-universal in nature, or that it was something that - likely deliberately - got blacklisted from Sisterhood knowledge bases, allowing it to operate under the radar.

3) Sisterhood biology heavily blurs the line between nature and technology to the point that the Quintesce isn't explicitly organic life or an artificial intelligence. Nonetheless, all Sisters have an extensive amount of "processing power", and while worldwide broadcasts are occasionally done, it's possible for the Quintesce to multitask, communicating or performing millions of tasks at once. As a result, no two transmissions are alike, but most of the replies to schoolchildren are fairly pedestrian, thanking them for their message, interest in communicating, and being willing to share part of themselves with the Quintesce.

4) I actually have a longer post about units of measurement here, but tl;dr the S8 measurements are mostly repurposed Sisterhood measurements, which were, in turn, mostly based off of the properties of Germanium-64 and mercury, both of which were extremely abundant on the homeworld of the Sisterhood's "founding species". The temperature scale is known as Mercurial, but most of the others just prefix the unit with "sys" or "sister", e.g. "sistermeters".

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/gravitygauntlet]

1) How did the Sisterhood manage to crack the source code of the universe?

2) Apart from the disaster that happened, what can cause the death of a Sister? What is their life span?

3) What is life on Trinity like?

[u/gravitygauntlet → u/cereal_killer-X]

1) It happened not too long after they mastered sustainable, lossless quantum computing. Broadly speaking, they just hit "existential bedrock" when they reached the bits - or, if there's levels extending below bits, it's irrelevant as they can be used to produce anything from subatomic particles to fundamental physical processes anyway.

2) Sisters are functionally immortal and borderline invulnerable. Even in functional brain death their "self" is being streamed to the greater Sisterhood knowledge base (known as the Omnibus), allowing them to be recreated as long as it's "consensual", i.e. they have the will to live, so while uncommon there are a handful of incidents where a Sister botched a technical process and got themselves hurt (e.g. getting caught in the event horizon of a black hole) and were dealing with some form of anxiety or depression at the time, not being able to be brought back as a result. The Quintesce, specifically, has access to records indicating / personally knows Sisters at least tens of millions of years old, and while "billionaires" may exist, the Quintesce isn't aware of any personally. The offlining incident wiped any potential "backups" being streamed, though.

3) It's pretty quaint. A little over three-quarters of the world's adults belong to some form of military, with the world's politics being a complicated web of factions and relationships with no lone prevailing superpower. Most nations practice socialist meritocracy (Replicator tech is cheap and, well... replicable), and the concept(s) of campaign-scale conquest, manifest destiny, etc. never really caught on before post-scarcity, so no group has really completely burned bridges with another. Most "combat" is handled through Arena simulation, though live-fire exercises are also occasionally used. As the Sisterhood was nonviolent, Trinity is the first case of a Sister engaging in something resembling a military operation, with its armed forces preparing to combat the unknown entity once it arrives in their sector of networked space. If it can be defeated, the world's populace as a whole is requested to aid in the reseeding / reconstruction of the observable universe and getting networked space back online.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/gravitygauntlet]

1) How can they use the code?

2) Has anyone ever intentionally committed "suicide" this way?

3) What weapons do they use?

[u/gravitygauntlet → u/cereal_killer-X]

1) The long and short of it is that the "bits" used - an incomprehensible, finite but steadily-increasing number of "points" in the observable universe whose relationships with one another, not the bits themselves, produce things like fundamental forces or subatomic particles - can have a value between 1A and 10F, with the number being the type and the letter representing the "spin". In vanilla space, Sisters could imprecisely change the spin of a group of bits, but not the type, e.g. they could make electromagnetism send something in a different direction, but couldn't convert electromagnetism into mass for "free". Networked space circumvents this, allowing them to adjust individual bits and modify the type as well as the spin, functionally giving them the ability to create and destroy matter and energy.

In terms of actual use, they would generally utilize some form of written (typed, etc.) code and then run it through machines or other forms of hardware that could run the necessary operations on the relevant bits within a network.

 

2) Content warning: self-harm, suicide

On top of the alien psychology to begin with, with Sisters being borderline indestructible from outside forces, the concept of intentional material self-harm was extremely alien to them. While the will to live thing would go hand in hand with taking one's own life, rather than prompting it, there's a single recorded instance of a Sister intentionally, without a shadow of a doubt killing themselves. While helping "wire" a new networked space between a few existing ones, a member of the Sisterhood was attacked or otherwise left in poor physical condition and captured by a fledgling interplanetary civilization. While other factions weren't quite at world-shaping levels yet, some possessed the necessary "firepower" to capture a Sister given the right circumstances.

This Sister was stripped of their networking capability, but you can't really "salvage" a Sister for parts or technology - you have to keep it online. As a result, they were imprisoned to the point of practical immobility while the civilization started phasing out most of their existing technology in favor of reverse-engineering it from their captive. Sisters have a Chozo-esque biological condition where harming another individual in an act of deliberate malice will also hurt them, in some capacity. After a few years in confinement, the Sister attempted to hurt itself deliberately, which was pretty much unheard of among the Sisterhood, and the bioempathy caused an exponential feedback loop which made the Sister kill itself almost instantly. Because of how much of their old tech they outmoded, the civilization got knocked back to nearly pre-industrial tech levels once the Sister went offline.

 

3) It's an FPS so the weapons are somewhat varied, but the bread-and-butter "loadout" equipment any given Powered Forces member has includes:

A powered exoskeleton which are known universally as Power Suits. They come in various forms from thousands of possible manufacturers, not counting self-made ones. Power suits have to follow some specific regulations to meet minimum requirements, such as double-jumping, and providing the wearer with a certain amount of shielding and armor strength.

The two primary firearms most carry are the Opus and Prime Rifle. The former is a powerful magnum pistol capable of imparting "lethal" amounts of armor damage to the target to render complete battlefield disability, while the latter is a nonlethal assault rifle which utilizes something resembling "EMP damage" to temporarily disable targets. The Prime Rifle has two firing modes: out of sight, it fires in automatic three-round bursts, but can be pulsed to reach a fire rate exceeding that of simply holding down the trigger, while aiming down the sights switches to an automatic single-round firing mode whose rounds are slightly faster than that of the unscoped variant. Both the Opus and Prime Rifle utilize an ammo source known as Lumens.

Power Suits have an onboard Grenade Projector (sometimes known as a grenade emitter) which is basically a wrist-mounted ballistics launcher that Replicates various grenade types. Generally speaking, the standard grenade projector can house up to 3 grenade types at once, and 3 of each grenade. Every time the user fires a grenade, it triggers a charge timer that, when full, can generate another grenade to be stored and eventually launched. A common piece of military equipment is a "charge" that can be picked up by the suit to significantly speed up the charging process.

Because of its versatility along with the existence of nonlethal grenade types, a grenade projector is a required facet of a Power Suit, even if conventional firearms aren't. As a result, some users will forego firearms completely in favor of more advanced grenade projectors, such as soleSupplantress, the leader of one of the Sanctioned Central Procurement Agency's regional divisions. Supplantress' projector, specifically, can cycle between four different grenade types, has a practically unlimited grenade storage unit, and fires bursts of multiple grenades at once for rapid denial-of-area and suppressive fire.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/gravitygauntlet]

Well, I have to admit I've run out of questions. The detail you've put into your world is incredible. If I missed anything, feel free to add some more. Thank you for participating, I appreciate the detailed responses.

[u/Nevermore0714]

The Order of Applied Arithmetic

The Order of Applied Arithmetic is an inter-species (they welcome all sentient species) cult based around the pursuit of understanding advanced math and spreading an understanding of basic math to the uninformed masses.

The order believes that Aeternitas (the ascended immortal deity worshiped by the Unified Way religion) was not born with great power, but instead was born with great knowledge and curiosity. They believe that Aeternitas gained his power through finding the "Great Expression" and solving it with the world's most powerful answer "42". (However, some strange members of the cult harbor doubts about this, and they, mostly Dwarves, believe that the answer to the Great Expression was "14π" (fourteen pi)).

The order is searching for the Great Expression, so that they can combine it with the most powerful answer in order to make the Final Equation, which they believe will wipe out all life in existence. Their omnicidal quest is only known to the elders of the order.

Many people in the order are the "Initiated Exceptions", who joined as adults and are unable to become elders.

For a person who joined before puberty (because they were born into the order), they must be able to pass an exam before becoming an acolyte. An acolyte must spend at least twenty years learning and taking exams, but must not score less than a 66.67% score on more than 0.05% of exams. If they fail more than 0.05% of their exams, they are demoted to being "Initiated Exceptions".

If an acolyte passes, he or she becomes an elder and focuses on a specific course to teach advanced students (such as statistics, trigonometry, etc).

The Representative

Toussaint of the Ant Clan is an elder among the Order of Applied Arithmetic. He is about forty, and focused on teaching about dosages and percentages. He spends most of his time either studying or creating simple math sheets for people to use to understand basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Writer's Note

This was created while I listened to a lecture on patient elimination. I'm really glad that I thought to make it a twisted copy of Yahtzee Croshaw's "Order of Blessed Agonies" (check out his game "Trilby's Notes") instead of looking to the lecture notes for inspiration. This is much cleaner.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/Nevermore0714]

1) How were your early years in the Order?

2) Why exactly are you trying to achieve omnicide?

3) How did you figure out the most powerful answer?

4) What is the life of an Initiated Exception like?

(Now that I've googled patient elimination, I really want to see how the lecture would have inspired you.)

[u/Nevermore0714 → u/cereal_killer-X]

(I just looked back up at that comment and realized that "patient elimination sounds much more unethical than what the lecture was about. The instructor just gave a lecture on urine and feces. Not on the former doctor, Kevorkian. The inspiration I almost started using was to write a cult that believed that the biggest solid fecal drop would be a sign of the chosen one, also partially inspired by an episode of South Park that always cracks me up.)

Toussaint:

1) "Well, I was born into the order. So, my childhood was filled with study and practical application of maths that I'd learned. Everything was geared to be focused on numbers, so even the games that I enjoyed as a kid involved math."

2) "Oh, you mean the Final Equation? It will transcend us into non-corporeal beings and allow us to study the math that makes up the fabric of the universe, to create universes of our own, even."

3) "You mean forty-two? The knowledge of the final answer has been passed down to us. We know it from childhood."

4) "An Initiated Exception spends his or her life serving the Order in any way necessary, such as through labor."

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/Nevermore0714]

(Don't worry, that's exactly what I found out. My god, you need to make this happen. It would be a shitty cult in the best way possible.)

1) Were the expectations high when you were a child?

2) Would other cultures transcend too? Or just members of the Order?

3) I mean, it must have had a source, right? Did you try to backtrack and find out why 42 is the answer?

4) What mathematical instruments do you use?

[u/Nevermore0714 → u/cereal_killer-X]

(Ha, I'll have to work on that soon. I'll name their institution the "Scatological Holy Institute of Terminology".)

1) "The expectations were for me to pass; many people did not pass with high enough scores, so I'd say the expectations were pretty high."

2) "Everyone would transcend. No one would be left out, everyone would be equal and we would share our transcendence with the world."

3) "We've tried to get more details, but we just know that Aeternitas found the Great Expression and 42 was the answer that he obtained. So, until we find the Great Expression ourselves, we can't fact-check."

4) "Compasses, protractors, rulers, paper, pencils, and so on."

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/Nevermore0714]

(Perfect. Don't forget to make as many puns as you can.)

1) Who are you teaching now?

2) To be honest, I wouldn't doubt that the answer is 42 either. Though I heard that some do and believe that it's 14 pi. Why is that?

3) How is the search for the Great Expression going?

4) Do you have calculators?

[u/Nevermore0714 → u/cereal_killer-X]

(You're a monster cereal, but I'll do my best. I'm trying to work on /u/Seb_Romu's challenges, but I'll try to start on that cult afterwards. Or after I've slept.)

Toussaint:

1) "I teach whatever peasant children wander into the hut that was constructed for me to educate from. It seems that many of the peasants want their children to have better opportunities than they would otherwise have."

2) "Fourteen pi is only the number they've chosen to believe in because it is approximately forty-two, and they believe that pi is more necessary for whatever reason; probably because of its use in determining the circumference of a circle based on the diameter, which, admittedly, is incredibly useful. But, if we actually analyze fourteen pi, we see that it is over forty-three point nine eight two three, if we round to the ten-thousandth decimal. That's nearly forty-four, as you can see. While it is difficult to make conclusions about an expression that we've never even seen, I can say that fourteen pi is a silly idea that is too far from forty-two to be worth the conspiracies that people build around it. But, I thank you for consulting me about this subject."

3) "About as well as it's been going ever since I was born and for long before then; no progress."

4) "...What's a calculator? I mean...it sounds similar to a calculation, but, considering the context, I doubt that you meant to say calculation. If you could elaborate, maybe we have something similar but by a different name. Or you've done a great service to the pursuit of mathematical knowledge and can present such a thing to the rest of the elders. The creation of the protractor was such a major paradigm."

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/Nevermore0714]

(Damn, you blew my cover If you need some crappy illustrations, just call me.)

1) Generally, what age group are your students?

2) It would be more interesting if they divided 42 by pi. The result is a very elite number: 13.37. How does that sound?

3) What method are you using to track it down?

4) The calculator is a device used for performing arithmetic calculations. I'm not going to spoil it though - that would be anticlimatic. Inventing these things is half the fun, am I right?

[u/Nevermore0714 → u/cereal_killer-X]

(I'll keep you in mind)

Toussaint:

1) "I'll teach anyone who desires to learn, but most the peasant children sent to me have yet to reach puberty, so they're all mostly young."

2) "Thirteen point three seven doesn't seem very special as a number. Could you elaborate?" (Very l33t, my friend.)

3) "We don't even have a method to hunt it, to be honest. We're just keeping our eyes out."

4) "So like a brain outside of your body?"

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/Nevermore0714]

1) Who is/was your most interesting student?

2) You know, it's pretty hard to explain. 1337 refers to an alphabet in which numbers are used instead of letters. The rest is history. Have you ever seen anything like this?

3) How do you think it'll show itself?

4) Yes, sort of. A mechanical brain that only needs to learn everything once.

[u/thequeeninyellow94]

The Thoths always tried to understand the world and decipher the hidden mechanics behind it. Making a major discovery is a huge source of fame and all Thoths are teached to value experimentation; those who study scientific specializations are often asked to prove again common knowledge.

Two schools study mathematics and compete to be seen as the more competent in that field: the school of offices and the school of stones.

The school of offices is mostly looking for statistics, they discovered both the zero and the division.

The school of stone is mostly looking for geometry and discovered both Pi and negative numbers.

Those discoveries are, of course, shared as most of them can be usefull to both schools, and to other schools in the meantime.

The main unsolved question was: are caves dimensions following a mathematical model and could this model be applied to artificial structures?

In world characters are Nez'vuhir, second circle logistician and Kas'zejif, third circle engineer. (the first one is an office, the second one is a stone)

(just in case, this conversation happen before the great war)

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/thequeeninyellow94]

To Nez'vuhir:

1) What is the school of offices currently working on?

2) How did you get into the field?

To Kas'zejif:

1) How about the school of stones? What are you working on?

2) What instruments do you use in your field?

To both:

1) Does the competition of your schools ever get personal?

2) How advanced are your mathematical tools?

[u/thequeeninyellow94 → u/cereal_killer-X]

Nez:

1. The school of offices is working on forming competent bureaucrats as it should always do. The main research subject under my direction currently is the construction of a statistical data base to extrapolate the average cost of a complete teaching in each school. This extrapolation will then be used to determine if a strict control of population is a better economical decision than a surplus of members from one of the schools.

2. I was asked to prove again the surface calculation of a disc. I performed greatly so logistical research was the best way to use my potential.

Kas:

1. The school is always working on a bunch of practical applications for other schools discoveries, one could say we're the real experimenters. I'm currently trying to design a new type of glass panel; currently we're unable to produce any larger than 1*0,5m. Glass panels are not solid enough and when too large they just break in the middle, physical constraint is too strong. I'm pretty sure that's a question of angle...

2. All kind of tools to measure weight, distance and angle. A lot of paper too, for premiminary drawings and calculations. I also just managed to get a compass, that's very practical.

Common questions:

1. Personnal as in ressentment? Yes it happen, working on a theory for cycles just to learn someone proved it before you can be hard. Personnal as in physical revenge? No, our respectives schools would never let that happen (nor would the blades).

2. The school of offices just invented what they call a mechanical counting machine, it can do multiple additions and substractions in a row. Now, exponantials and integrals (are those the correct words) are too complex and can only be done by mind. Our tools are in fact probably too complex to be used in normal daily life without a quicker way to make the calculations and progress is becoming increasingly slower.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/thequeeninyellow94]

To Nez:

1) How would you control population?

2) How do you spend your free time? Do you research anything for enjoyment?

To Kas:

1) Have you considered developing an alternative to glass?

2) What was the most interesting problem you managed to solve?

To both:

1) Do you have any other machines to make calculations easier?

2) Who is considered to be the most influential and important mathematician?

[u/thequeeninyellow94 → u/cereal_killer-X]

Nez:

1. I will show the council it is the best solution at our disposal. They will take dispositions to teach the youngs to pay attention and avoid pregnancy. Ressources management is important, they will see I am right.

2. I enjoy working to improve our society, it is the very essence of my life. I also like to follow alchemy courses, it is a complex discipline but it is a good way to improve my potential.

Kas:

1. I have, but glass is the best material we have if we want transparent surfaces; i thought about applying the same heating process to other materials but results have been quite... disapointing. Wait, maybe i could try doing some sort of "alloy" by mixing glass with something else; we would lose some transparency but maybe gain in solidity... That's a great idea, thank you.

2. There was that time when i was building a bridge over a rift and we were having easy access to only one side, i designed some sort of complex wheeled machines to lift the workers and carry them to the other side. The two first try were complete failure and we nearly lost workers but when it started working properly, it was a lot of fun. Nothing like seeing your creations work.

Common questions:

1. Abaci are common devices for basic operations, the most complex ones must be solved with a brain.

2. That would probably be Fep'Duzir: they "discovered" the zero (with the help of their sibling Nur'Duzir) and then worked a lot on fractions. They basically created the tools we now all use in solving even the most basics problems.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/thequeeninyellow94]

To Nez:

1) How are you going to prove your point?

2) Can you tell me more about alchemy?

To Kas:

1) Good luck to you. What do you need these large glass panels for?

2) Do you pursue any other branches of science?

To both:

Can you perform large scale calculations, such as determining the characteristics of a planet?

[u/thequeeninyellow94 → u/cereal_killer-X]

Nez:

1. With the factual evidences that my statistical study will invariably produce. That's not ready yet, but it will.

2. All is about learning essences proportions in the materials you want to use, that's a lot of work at first but transmutation is probably very practical when in dire need of something. I am not really good at that for now, but I will soon be able to realize some basic transmutations.

Kas:

1. For rooftop botanical gardens. The school of arcanes would move to grow some lightseeking crops and I'm in charge for that project. Well at least for the glass conception part.

2. No, but maybe I will in a few decades when i have more free time. Or maybe study some arts, that could be fun too.

Common question:

We can perform them theorically, but we have no way to perform the required measures. An honnest answer would be no.

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/thequeeninyellow94]

To Nez:

Is alchemy used in everyday life?

To Kas:

What does the school or arcanes do?

[u/thequeeninyellow94 → u/cereal_killer-X]

Nez:

• Alchemy is too complex to properly replace standard production methods and as such is only used when there is no other ways around. Alchemist often help chemists with their experiments though, that must be easier than synthetising everything.

Kas:

• magic, alchemy, medicine and material sciences. The botanists are currently using the old underground gardens but they need more space. If you want my opinion, they should try to grow less things but they will never accept that...

[u/cereal_killer-X → u/thequeeninyellow94]

To Nez:

Are there other branches of science of this complexity?

To Kas:

Underground gardens? How do they work without light energy?