Do You Experience Number Forms ?

[Averagesupernova]

Exellent! This sounds like an authentic number form!

Be very cool if you could photoshop up a calendar to show us how you envision it.

I'll try to throw something together. I am lousy at drawing 3D and to convey it accurately the lines will need to converge in the distance. I also have a 'zoom function'. LMAO I sound like Kryten in Red Dwarf. Seriously, in time periods that I have studied the same as any other person would have through their school years, I zoom in on various periods to examine them more closely. Looking back on my own life, the lines get converged pretty close together within a few years of my birth. However, if I think about it in a different context, I 'zoom'. For instance, my parents birthdates form a convergence of lines a number of years earlier when I think about the history of their lives. Honestly I didn't know that there was another way to think about it. The lines and blocks that form years go into the future away from me at about 1 to 2 o'clock and slightly upward. 12 o'clock would be the direction I am facing. Obviously, the past goes opposite of the future by 180 degrees.

 

[Chi Meson]

Chi Meson, Zooby,

This whole exercise is giving me chills, imagine, people are discovering on PF that they may have synesthasia their whole lives and never knew it, that simply blows me away !. Man do I ever love this subject... a living, highly educated, curious group at our disposal to probe and question, hehe, just kidding. I will look for some official documentation on Feynman, I seem to remember if was from James Gleck's book, "Genius: the Life and Times of Richard Feynman". I read it so many times I wore the first copy out and have since lent my second copy, beat up and dog eared to someone at work, I will try to get it back, and do some googling and general poking around in the meantime.

I have recognized this as minor synesthesia, but nothing like what I read about. Loud sounds have vague shapes to me, and some shapes make noise in my head, but everything has to be quiet all around me for me to notice.

 

[waht]

Well, Cytowic, who is responsible for the revival of interest in synesthesia, figures number forms are incredibly common, that one-in-ten people experience them. So, lots of people know, they just think they're the only one.

From my point of view, it was impossible to pry out synesthesia on my own. I would note once in a while that some things are in color, but never fully extend that concept outside the box such that there are serious studies revolving around it. I just go with the flow and not think about it, nor think to investigate it. But once the cat is out of the box, synesthesia became pretty quantified in my head as just another process of the brain. It brings closure.

You can see, though, that this is different than a number form. You manipulate this image a lot by act of will. A number form pops up involuntarily and seems like the way it's supposed to be envisioned, despite the fact it's idiosynchratic to that individual. (No two people envision the same number line or calendar, days of the week, or alphabet.)

That's right my perception of it is a dynamic evolution, with few static mental structures. So I guess it doesn't fit description of number forms.

The string with colorful numbers on it can evolve from a straight line to a knot, and then conforms to a string wrapped around a needle, with one end of the string going through the eye, and the other pierced through its sharp point, then bending the whole needle into a circle, and then getting all the numbers dissociate and fly apart from it spinning and rotating. But at this stage it's hard to tell what these number are. Then I think about something else.

 

[turbo]

I don't have a strict synesthesia with numbers because things would get complicated too quickly, but when I was a child, I saw 4 as blue, 2 as red, and 3 as yellow. I don't know why. That happened when I was really young, but to this day, I have a soft spot for squares of 4 and don't have much affinity for multiples of 5.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I'll try to throw something together. I am lousy at drawing 3D and to convey it accurately the lines will need to converge in the distance. I also have a 'zoom function'. LMAO I sound like Kryten in Red Dwarf. Seriously, in time periods that I have studied the same as any other person would have through their school years, I zoom in on various periods to examine them more closely. Looking back on my own life, the lines get converged pretty close together within a few years of my birth. However, if I think about it in a different context, I 'zoom'. For instance, my parents birthdates form a convergence of lines a number of years earlier when I think about the history of their lives. Honestly I didn't know that there was another way to think about it. The lines and blocks that form years go into the future away from me at about 1 to 2 o'clock and slightly upward. 12 o'clock would be the direction I am facing. Obviously, the past goes opposite of the future by 180 degrees.

Galton, I think, says it's very panoramic for some people and you sound like one of them. It's fascinating how three dimensional it is for you.

I have to assure you, no, nothing remotely like this goes on in my mind. "May 2" or even "May" is a bland, isolated concept to me. I experience a small emotional uplift because I associate it with warmer weather, but it is not connected to any chart or even an image of a conventional calendar page. My clock says 5/2 Sun: I may imagine it spoken in my vague inner voice - "Five, two, Sun". And that's it. Maybe a fleeting, very vague, image of warm sunlight on green plants.

 

[Averagesupernova]

It seems people think it is a gift, but I'm not so sure. I tend to force things into a visualization. There are some things that simply cannot be visualized. Those who do not think in number forms have an advantage because they are used to thinking without a form and when something that comes along that cannot be visualized they are accustomed to it.
-
Back when I was first introduced to arrays in programming it was pretty easy to envision a single or two dimensional array. Pretty basic, X and Y form a gridwork like a sheet of graph paper. The 3 dimensional array I could not get because I hadn't told my mind to think in depth to form a cube. Once I had that down it all went fine until I needed a fourth dimension or more yet. It threw me for a while until instead of trying to add another dimension to a cube I decided to just form a new cube. The fourth dimension was now the number of a new cube. How the fourth dimension was declared (size) determined how many new cubes there were. A fifth dimension? That involves a whole new set of cubes. And beyond that it gets really wierd. Bocks of sub-blocks of sub-sub-blocks of cubes. At this point I decided it would probably be easier to envision it like a real number. Each dimension was a place holder even if one dimension required multiple digits I still considered it a single to keep my thoughts straight. So, for those here who do or have done programming and have worked with arrays, how do you envision it?

 

[zoobyshoe]

No, now you mention it, there's nothing colorful at all about it. There seems to be some darker and light shades, but that seems to have more to do with the number that I am thinking of or looking for, or the year I am trying to recall. It will "highlight," but I can't say that it brightens or darkens, but seems to "pop out" nonetheless. But, alas, it's essentially monochromatic.

Thinking about color for the first time, I'm trying to actively add color. I tried to make 2008 blue, for example, but it's not sticking. I don't "think" colors very well anyway. My dreams have only muted colors too, if there's any connection there.

Yeah, there's a couple reports in the book of people trying to change them and the changes don't "stick". The whole thing is involuntary from the get go, not a constructed mnemonic device or memory of any real "chart". These configurations of serial information just appear. Most people with it assume everyone has it and that everyone elses' is the same.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Chi Meson, Zooby,

This whole exercise is giving me chills, imagine, people are discovering on PF that they may have synesthasia their whole lives and never knew it, that simply blows me away !. Man do I ever love this subject... a living, highly educated, curious group at our disposal to probe and question, hehe, just kidding.

Nice to see someone get so exited about a neurological thread!

I will look for some official documentation on Feynman, I seem to remember if was from James Gleck's book, "Genius: the Life and Times of Richard Feynman". I read it so many times I wore the first copy out and have since lent my second copy, beat up and dog eared to someone at work, I will try to get it back, and do some googling and general poking around in the meantime.

I found it:

"The calculus, the symbols, the operators had for him almost as tangible a reality as the physical quantities on which they worked. Feynman associated colors with the abstract variables of the formulas he understood so intimately. 'As I'm talking,' he once said, 'I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

Genius
p.131

This doesn't sound like a number form to me, but it's a pretty brief description, and he may have gone into it in more detail in a letter or conversation somewhere.

 

[rhody]

To all following this https://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=393977&page=5" thread, I posted almost the whole summary of The Man Who Tested Shapes, the Afterward section, just a bit more to go tomorrow.

Have a look.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

I have recognized this as minor synesthesia, but nothing like what I read about. Loud sounds have vague shapes to me, and some shapes make noise in my head, but everything has to be quiet all around me for me to notice.

Interesting! Explain about the shapes, which are particularly intriguing because it seems to go both ways.

 

[rhody]

Nice to see someone get so exited about a neurological thread!

I found it:

"The calculus, the symbols, the operators had for him almost as tangible a reality as the physical quantities on which they worked. Feynman associated colors with the abstract variables of the formulas he understood so intimately. 'As I'm talking,' he once said, 'I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

Genius
p.131

This doesn't sound like a number form to me, but it's a pretty brief description, and he may have gone into it in more detail in a letter or conversation somewhere.

Good, at least my feeble old brain did not completely fail me, now to find the part about Feynman thrashing about, and his wife (or one of his children's comments) as witness to it.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

From my point of view, it was impossible to pry out synesthesia on my own. I would note once in a while that some things are in color, but never fully extend that concept outside the box such that there are serious studies revolving around it. I just go with the flow and not think about it, nor think to investigate it. But once the cat is out of the box, synesthesia became pretty quantified in my head as just another process of the brain. It brings closure.

This is the standard pattern: people keep it to themselves.

That's right my perception of it is a dynamic evolution, with few static mental structures. So I guess it doesn't fit description of number forms.

The string with colorful numbers on it can evolve from a straight line to a knot, and then conforms to a string wrapped around a needle, with one end of the string going through the eye, and the other pierced through its sharp point, then bending the whole needle into a circle, and then getting all the numbers dissociate and fly apart from it spinning and rotating. But at this stage it's hard to tell what these number are. Then I think about something else.

Like I said last year, this is much like the way Tesla visualized things: very dynamic, and completely under his control. He could make the images take any form he wanted and perform any action. If he also reported grapheme--->color synesthesia, I didn't remark it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It seems people think it is a gift, but I'm not so sure. I tend to force things into a visualization. There are some things that simply cannot be visualized. Those who do not think in number forms have an advantage because they are used to thinking without a form and when something that comes along that cannot be visualized they are accustomed to it.
-
Back when I was first introduced to arrays in programming it was pretty easy to envision a single or two dimensional array. Pretty basic, X and Y form a gridwork like a sheet of graph paper. The 3 dimensional array I could not get because I hadn't told my mind to think in depth to form a cube. Once I had that down it all went fine until I needed a fourth dimension or more yet. It threw me for a while until instead of trying to add another dimension to a cube I decided to just form a new cube. The fourth dimension was now the number of a new cube. How the fourth dimension was declared (size) determined how many new cubes there were. A fifth dimension? That involves a whole new set of cubes. And beyond that it gets really wierd. Bocks of sub-blocks of sub-sub-blocks of cubes. At this point I decided it would probably be easier to envision it like a real number. Each dimension was a place holder even if one dimension required multiple digits I still considered it a single to keep my thoughts straight. So, for those here who do or have done programming and have worked with arrays, how do you envision it?

According to the book, Number Forms don't particularly help with mathematical endeavors. Their usefulness comes out in organizing, scheduling, remembering. Some people experience Number Forms for the hours of the day, for example, and being able to visualize the day in memorable detail, they're always on time.

I'm sure if you think about it there is some advantage you make of it. I.e., if it were stripped away, what would be the result? What would be lost?

 

[Averagesupernova]

According to the book, Number Forms don't particularly help with mathematical endeavors. Their usefulness comes out in organizing, scheduling, remembering. Some people experience Number Forms for the hours of the day, for example, and being able to visualize the day in memorable detail, they're always on time.

I'm sure if you think about it there is some advantage you make of it. I.e., if it were stripped away, what would be the result? What would be lost?

Oh I'm sure that I do use it to my advantage. I'm known for using every tool at my disposal. Based on the usefulness of number forms according to the book, it would appear that programmers should have quite an advantage if they see number forms since a lot of programming is abstract. I've never considered myself an exceptional programmer since it isn't something I do every day. This is all certainly interesting stuff.

 

[WiFO215]

As with most other people here who seem to experience this, I am surprised that I am not the only one.

For instance, when I am imagining a year, I can see the entire calendar grouped in sets of 7. They are colorless and like thin boxes. I don't quite see any light and dark shades either. However, the boxes themselves are a different color from the "background" which is darker. When I need to count, I just 'sift through these boxes' and then find the day I'm looking for. My boxes don't veer off towards the end, no tapering, no bending. Just straight and extending in either direction till they're out of focus.

Another instance is when I'm studying linear algebra. Every vector space looks akin to the 'calendar view' of mine, but somewhat bent and more mixed up. I can't describe this as well as that. I often explain many theorems to myself using these boxes and then try to translate that into English.

I didn't think very many people experienced this, as when I tried to explain some of the proofs of the theorems to my own brother, he was annoyed no end when I started drawing all these squiggles all over the page which made no sense to him.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Oh I'm sure that I do use it to my advantage. I'm known for using every tool at my disposal. Based on the usefulness of number forms according to the book, it would appear that programmers should have quite an advantage if they see number forms since a lot of programming is abstract. I've never considered myself an exceptional programmer since it isn't something I do every day. This is all certainly interesting stuff.

It certainly is.

I just read a bit further and found that non-synesthetes are always asking synesthetes to draw or somehow represent what it's like. People who don't have it are fascinated by it. There was a lot of Art done in the early 20th century by non-synesthetes trying to embody synesthetic principles. Produced a lot of pseudo-synesthesia.

Anyway, when synesthetes try to represent their experiences they always judge the results as falling short. The most successful case was judged 70% accurate, but the average was more like 45%. This demonstrates what Rhody mentioned, that these experiences are ineffable, very hard to describe.

 

[zoobyshoe]

As with most other people here who seem to experience this, I am surprised that I am not the only one.

For instance, when I am imagining a year, I can see the entire calendar grouped in sets of 7. They are colorless and like thin boxes. I don't quite see any light and dark shades either. However, the boxes themselves are a different color from the "background" which is darker. When I need to count, I just 'sift through these boxes' and then find the day I'm looking for. My boxes don't veer off towards the end, no tapering, no bending. Just straight and extending in either direction till they're out of focus.

Another instance is when I'm studying linear algebra. Every vector space looks akin to the 'calendar view' of mine, but somewhat bent and more mixed up. I can't describe this as well as that. I often explain many theorems to myself using these boxes and then try to translate that into English.

I didn't think very many people experienced this, as when I tried to explain some of the proofs of the theorems to my own brother, he was annoyed no end when I started drawing all these squiggles all over the page which made no sense to him.

Ah, another one!

The entire calendar grouped in sets of seven? You mean the whole year packed into boxes of seven days each? How are the days distributed in the boxes?

 

[WiFO215]

Ah, another one!

The entire calendar grouped in sets of seven? You mean the whole year packed into boxes of seven days each? How are the days distributed in the boxes?

The week is packaged into boxes of seven, but there isn't a very clear distinction between one packaging and the next. Somehow you know the seven in the package in front of you are distinct from the next seven.

Months on the other hand are also boxes, but unlike the days, a few months have colors. Most months are colorless. June, July are purplish. November is yellow. That's about it. Thinking of months in this way is no help at all, but I can't help it. Useless or not, this is how I see some months and dates.

Counting comes in boxes too. Again, these are colorless. I remember thinking of it this way helped back in grade school. I still think of counting this way, but I wouldn't associate any advantage or disadvantage to doing it this way. It just is.

Although most things I've mentioned above are colorless, some feelings and emotions have colors attached to them. Colors also pop in and out when doing math.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The week is packaged into boxes of seven,...

Does this mean 1 week = 7 boxes? Therefore each box = 1 day? Or something else?

Also, you said the boxes were thin. Can you estimate a ratio of height to length? Is the longer dimension horizontal or vertical?

I get the fact there is an involuntary grouping by seven that seems to serve no purpose, but I am trying to imagine what an individual group or box looks like and what's in it. Like, I'm asking myself: "Is one 'box' a tall, skinny column of seven consecutive numbers stacked on top of each other"?

 

[Chi Meson]

According to the book, Number Forms don't particularly help with mathematical endeavors. Their usefulness comes out in organizing, scheduling, remembering. Some people experience Number Forms for the hours of the day, for example, and being able to visualize the day in memorable detail, they're always on time.

I'm sure if you think about it there is some advantage you make of it. I.e., if it were stripped away, what would be the result? What would be lost?

THis "thing" has only helped me in a vague form of memorization. I can easily remember "about when" something happened ("early june" or "during the late 70s, either 78 or 79," stuff like that) because the location on the number form (it has a NAME!) stands out; but it lacks precision.

It would help a lot if I could actively bend it right where I wanted it to. If I could fold it over exactly 12 times between zero and 586, for example and tell you the quotient, now that would be handy. I've tried it many times. Even if I could straighten it out, I think it would work better for math.

If I lost it, I think it would occur to me, after short while, "where did it go?" And I think that would be it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

THis "thing" has only helped me in a vague form of memorization. I can easily remember "about when" something happened ("early june" or "during the late 70s, either 78 or 79," stuff like that) because the location on the number form (it has a NAME!) stands out; but it lacks precision.

It would help a lot if I could actively bend it right where I wanted it to. If I could fold it over exactly 12 times between zero and 586, for example and tell you the quotient, now that would be handy. I've tried it many times. Even if I could straighten it out, I think it would work better for math.

If I lost it, I think it would occur to me, after short while, "where did it go?" And I think that would be it.

That's pretty interesting. The people Cytowic focused on all had a good use for it. BUT none were involved in activities that relied heavily on math. If a person's main field of interest is heavily math dependent a Number Form might well be a liability, a kind of lure down a path that is irrelevant and has to be ignored. Both you and Averagesupernova seem to have to obviate it in many cases, and attempts at getting it to work in your favor fail because it isn't plastic.

All researchers into this, and synesthesia, end up having to talk about it at the level of cross modal association. A cross modal association is when you perceive a thing with one sense but can more or less accurately imagine what it would be like to perceive it with another. The classic example is sight-touch. If I show you a bunch of elementary shapes, a sphere, a cone, a cube, carved out of wood, and then shut off the lights, you will be able to pick out which is the sphere, the cone, and the cube in the dark, by touch alone, even though you have never touched the carvings before. You have made a cross modal association between sight and touch.

Having a Number Form is not classified as synesthesia because it is a concept - sensory cross modal association and synesthesia was defined only to refer to cross -sensory associations. One wants to keep the taxonomy straight, but having a Number Form is clearly as vivid and insistent a reaction as many forms of synesthesia (and I have to suspect the neurological mechanism will turn out to be essentially the same when they figure out what the mechanisms are).

So, you mentioned you also make a mild cross modal association between shape and sound when the circumstances are right. I'm interested to hear about that. What sounds seem like what shape, and what is the shape of a certain sound? When does this happen, etc; whatever details occur to you will be interesting. Where do you feel the shapes? Hands, somewhere on the body? That kind of thing.

 

[rhody]

Nice to see someone get so exited about a neurological thread!

I found it:

"The calculus, the symbols, the operators had for him almost as tangible a reality as the physical quantities on which they worked. Feynman associated colors with the abstract variables of the formulas he understood so intimately. 'As I'm talking,' he once said, 'I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

Genius
p.131

This doesn't sound like a number form to me, but it's a pretty brief description, and he may have gone into it in more detail in a letter or conversation somewhere.

Zooby,

Found my example, Genius, page 244. It wasn't witnessed by a family member, it was someone who went to Cornell with Feynman First, I need to qualify why Feynman did these exercises:

Feynman said to Dyson, and Dyson agreed, that Enistein's great work had sprung from physical intuition and that when Einstein stopped creating it was because "he stopped thinking in concrete physical images and became a manipulator of equations." Intuition was not just visual but also auditory and kinesthetic.

A Cornell dormitory neighbor opened Feynman's to find him rolling on the floor beside his bed as he worked on a problem. When he was not rolling about, he was at least murmuring rhythmically or drumming his fingertips. In part the process of scientific visualization is a process of putting oneself in nature: in an imagined beam of light, in a relativistic electron.

and on the next page:

The mathematical symbols he used every day became entangled with his physical sensation of motion, pressure, acceleration... Somehow he invested the abstract symbols with physical meaning, even as he gained control over his raw intuition by applying his knowledge of how the symbols could be manipulated.

This sounds very similar to your observation for Nicolai Tesla. According to Cytowic synesthesia is: involuntary and automatic, spatially extended, consistent and generic, memorable, and affect laden, both Feynman and Tesla were somehow were able to skip the involuntary and automatic part, and still incorporate the spatially extended part, pressure (touch) as mentioned above at will, which would disqualify Feynman's behavior in this exercise from Cytowic's definition of synesthesia today. He was not responding to blended five sense stimuli, he was creating it !

What interests me most is the discovery and intuition part that physicists use daily trying to make sense of seemingly intractable problems. Cytowic's definition of synesthesia goes a long way in explaining how some of the senses Physicists use come into play. Genius... was published in 1992 by James Gleick. I am sure he was not aware of Cytowic's work because "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" was published the year after in 1993.

Rhody...

 

[zoobyshoe]

This sounds very similar to your observation for Nicolai Tesla. According to Cytowic synesthesia is: involuntary and automatic, spatially extended, consistent and generic, memorable, and affect laden, both Feynman and Tesla were somehow were able to skip the involuntary and automatic part, and still incorporate the spatially extended part, pressure (touch) as mentioned above at will, which would disqualify Feynman's behavior in this exercise from Cytowic's definition of synesthesia today. He was not responding to blended five sense stimuli, he was creating it !

What interests me most is the discovery and intuition part that physicists use daily trying to make sense of seemingly intractable problems. Cytowic's definition of synesthesia goes a long way in explaining how some of the senses Physicists use come into play. Genius... was published in 1992 by James Gleick. I am sure he was not aware of Cytowic's work because "The Man Who Tasted Shapes" was published the year after in 1993.

I hope I didn't give the impression I thought Tesla had any form of synesthesia. He didn't. The thing he did was something else entirely. Tesla, also, did not use this ability to do math. He did math the conventional way, on paper.

Our friend, waht, has both grapheme -> color synesthesia and a Tesla-like ability to deliberately visualize and manipulate images that seem to exist in the space in front of him, outside his body. The latter is not synesthesia. How it relates to his synesthesia is not clear. Waht also has dyslexia and migraine. He's very complex and interesting.

There are a couple faint indications that Feynman might have had some unusually sensory element to his imagination, but I don't think there's enough about it in print to figure out what it was. More I think about it the more I think Cytowic may have jumped to a conclusion about Feynman on scant evidence. The quote about the tan and violet-bluish letters may actually only mean that the book he was referring to had those letters printed in those colors.

 

[waht]

There are a couple faint indications that Feynman might have had some unusually sensory element to his imagination, but I don't think there's enough about it in print to figure out what it was. More I think about it the more I think Cytowic may have jumped to a conclusion about Feynman on scant evidence. The quote about the tan and violet-bluish letters may actually only mean that the book he was referring to had those letters printed in those colors.

I think this was his only comment that links him to having a possible synesthesia.

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

The book he was referring to I think was published around 1945, and I suspect like all books at the time, and today in this subject were printed in black font, except the cover.

[PLAIN]http://www.12000.org/book_collection/HTML_LOC/images/26125f.png

The Bessels functions are labeled as "J" and a closely related Neumann functions as "N." When I work with these functions I think of a color purple for "J", and a reddish for "N." It suffices to think of "Bessel" and it's already purple, even though "B" for "Bessel" is reddish.

Interestingly, the cover of this book really caught my eye because the title suggests these functions should be in the book, and the cover is purple similarly how "J" appears - gives a pleasant feel to it.

 

[waht]

Combine the fact that Feynman used to imagine himself a sub atomic particle, affecting and being affected by other bosons (particles) and fermions (forces) around him (with different masses, spins and velocities) and the fact the he naturally was comfortable with colored number series in twisted chains, then it is not too far of a stretch to suggest that all the necessary mechanics or tools were at his disposal to simply remove the numbers and let his branching thought process create the scaffolding. In looking it up on wiki, it seems Feynman was not the first to invent them though: from the article:

It's interesting to link Feynman's diagrams to the jagged lines as described by number forms. But under the hood Feynman's diagrams try to capture patterns in extremely horrendous mathematical expressions. And even the simplest equations already suggest going from point A to point B so it seems natural to connect those with a line.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think this was his only comment that links him to having a possible synesthesia.

When I see equations, I see the letters in colors – I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light-tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students.

This is a longer quote than Gleick had in his book. Gleick doesn't have the first sentence, which pushes the interpretation more toward something unusual. Where did you find this version?

Gleick's descriptions of Feynman's thought processes all sound like yours (and Teslas) but there is no indication where he is getting this information. He doesn't attribute these descriptions to Feynman or anyone who knew him. I'm leary this could be Gleick hyping Feynman's thinking to fit the book title.

The book he was referring to I think was published around 1945, and I suspect like all books at the time, and today in this subject were printed in black font, except the cover.

Good point. It would have been a complex printing feat to have more than one color in a page of text in 1945. This also pushes his "seeing" colors more toward something unusual.

The Bessels functions are labeled as "J" and a closely related Neumann functions as "N." When I work with these functions I think of a color purple for "J", and a reddish for "N." It suffices to think of "Bessel" and it's already purple, even though "B" for "Bessel" is reddish.

Is purple your usual color for "J" and reddish for "N" or are they different in the context of these functions?

Interestingly, the cover of this book really caught my eye because the title suggests these functions should be in the book, and the cover is purple similarly how "J" appears - gives a pleasant feel to it.

Cool. It's how you would have designed it to have graphic design integrity!

 

[jim mcnamara]

Hmm. No. They are definitely not boxes, they are more like faint white square-ish lights that move around kind of in single file. Some lights go away or kind of fade out when I do subtraction, but they are really still there. So, if you think about 10 - 4, the closest 4 lights fade. Number one is always in front. His name is e.

Negative integers seem to upset the little lights, they turn a different color - usually
brownish. Larger numbers, like 100, turn off to one side and face to my left. When you have lots of numbers out there they don't slide around as much. Fewer numbers of lights seem to like to mess around more. Dates, distances, angles, program code -- all turn them on. Whenever I grocery shop, they are there because I keep a running total of the groceries in my head. They do not help at all.

I do a lot of programming. Calendrics frequently make the lights change. The lights for years 1582 and 1752 have a different sheen, they sort of ripple, for example. And the months in 1582 and 1752 do the same thing. Sep 1752 is very very faint and rippled.

When I was little I thought the little lights were real live things, but nobody else saw them. Especially the doctor my parents took me to see. I've always called the whatever-they-are eelights. I named two of them: e and eff. Hmm. I never tried to spell any of those words before. Since my doctor visits, the only person I've ever talked to about the eelights was my wife. Until now. It's nice to know they have a name. And I'm not nuts.

Anyway, they are kind of comforting, but are generally worse than usesless. As you can tell I think of them more like cute but annoying pets than anything else. I guess if they didn't move around I would not have thought of them as something alive when I was little. And now I'm too old to change.

 

[waht]

This is a longer quote than Gleick had in his book. Gleick doesn't have the first sentence, which pushes the interpretation more toward something unusual. Where did you find this version?

Gleick's descriptions of Feynman's thought processes all sound like yours (and Teslas) but there is no indication where he is getting this information. He doesn't attribute these descriptions to Feynman or anyone who knew him. I'm leary this could be Gleick hyping Feynman's thinking to fit the book title.

According to wiki this quote is taken directly from one of Feynman's books.

12. ^ Feynman, Richard. 1988. What Do You Care What Other People Think? New York: Norton. P. 59.

Is purple your usual color for "J" and reddish for "N" or are they different in the context of these functions?

Yes, they are regular synesthesia generated colors. It's just that a particular wording or grammar of these abstract concepts inherits the base colors in an irregular way.

Cool. It's how you would have designed it to have graphic design integrity!

Yes, indeed.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Hmm. No. They are definitely not boxes, they are more like faint white square-ish lights that move around kind of in single file. Some lights go away or kind of fade out when I do subtraction, but they are really still there. So, if you think about 10 - 4, the closest 4 lights fade. Number one is always in front. His name is e.

Fascinating that a number has a letter for a name. What happens with larger subtractions? Think of subtracting 256 from 876 and describe how the lights react.

Negative integers seem to upset the little lights, they turn a different color - usually
brownish.

This seems to come up a lot, that the elements of number forms and synesthesia have personalities and emotional reactions to some extent.

Larger numbers, like 100, turn off to one side and face to my left. When you have lots of numbers out there they don't slide around as much. Fewer numbers of lights seem to like to mess around more. Dates, distances, angles, program code -- all turn them on. Whenever I grocery shop, they are there because I keep a running total of the groceries in my head. They do not help at all.

All fascinating!

I do a lot of programming. Calendrics frequently make the lights change. The lights for years 1582 and 1752 have a different sheen, they sort of ripple, for example. And the months in 1582 and 1752 do the same thing. Sep 1752 is very very faint and rippled.

Just for the hell of it describe November 1963.

When I was little I thought the little lights were real live things, but nobody else saw them. Especially the doctor my parents took me to see. I've always called the whatever-they-are eelights. I named two of them: e and eff. Hmm. I never tried to spell any of those words before. Since my doctor visits, the only person I've ever talked to about the eelights was my wife. Until now. It's nice to know they have a name. And I'm not nuts.

I'm amazed at how well people learn to get by with something so vivid going on that no one else is aware of, and that you can't talk about. When I was having 100 deja vu's a day, I could, at least, tell people because almost everyone had had at least one and knew what I was talking about. Each number form is so personal and idiosyncratic you're guaranteed to never run into someone with the same, exact experience. It was quite remarkable for Galton to tease these reports out of people and realize they were all variations of the same thing, what ever that thing is, and that it's clearly a neurological glitch and not mental illness.


"e" is 1, "eff" is ?

Anyway, they are kind of comforting, but are generally worse than usesless. As you can tell I think of them more like cute but annoying pets than anything else. I guess if they didn't move around I would not have thought of them as something alive when I was little. And now I'm too old to change.

I once made a sock puppet for the 4 year old daughter of my best friend. Once she got used to working it and having dialogs with it, she started doing the same with anything that moved. Like, if her dad moved his big toe while napping on the couch, she'd start talking to it.

 

[zoobyshoe]

According to wiki this quote is taken directly from one of Feynman's books.

I found it, in the chapter called "It's as simple as One, Two, Three..."

The chapter is kind of remarkable because you see that Feynman was a natural neurologist. He discovered neuro-psychological testing, from scratch, all on his own.

"By that experience Tukey and I discovered that what goes on in different people's heads when they think they're doing the same thing - something as simple as counting - is different for different people. And we discovered that you can externally and objectively test how the brain works: you don't have to ask a person how he counts and rely on his own observations of himself; instead, you observe what he can and can't do while he counts. The test is absolute. There's no way to beat it; no way to fake it.

It's natural to explain an idea in terms of what you already have in your head. Concepts are piled on top of each other: this idea is taught in terms of that idea, and that idea is taught in terms of another idea, which comes from counting, which can be so different for different people.

I often think about that, especially when I'm teaching some esoteric technique such as integrating Bessel functions. When I see equations, I see the letters in colors - I don't know why. As I'm talking, I see vague pictures of Bessel functions from Jahnke and Emde's book, with light tan j's, slightly violet-bluish n's, and dark brown x's flying around. And I wonder what the hell it must look like to the students."

"What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
p. 59

Feynman is quoted talking about this also in another book, No Ordinary Genius. He's highly alert to the fact that no two physicists are speaking the same language, and the "linguistic" differences are due to the fact each processes very simple things in different ways. Feynman felt he always had to "translate" himself, and that other physicists were usually not even aware there was a language problem, erroneously assuming that everyone thought the same way they did.