Hi Andy. I've been playing with the program for a while now, and had a few questions/thoughts. I'm painfully aware of my ignorance of maths & physics, but I'm not sure if seeing the tesseract has much to do with either? Anyway-

-I think seeing the tesseract is a result of the continuous intention and effort that goes into wanting to see it. The fourth dimension has been completely constructed by force of will alone by every person who sees it. Am I completely off the right track? Does the 4th dimension really objectively exist outside of the special conditions created by this program and its users?

-Have you had reports of users seeing the tesseract right away without 'training' themselves to see it? Has it happened to you?

-Where did the name 'Mushware' come from, if it's not too prying a question?

Cheers

Hi!

I don't think a fourth spatial dimension is real in this universe, so you're right in saying that you have to imagine it for yourself. The surprising thing is that it's very difficult to imagine. I know of only a handful of people who say they can do it, and I've had no reportes of anyone seeing it straight away.

Mushware came from the thing you say to huskies to get them to get a move on. 'Mush!'

Excellent! I think I understand a little better now.

Since it does take such a huge effort to see a fourth spatial dimension, are you still hopeful for development of a 4d shooter? It would be fantastic if gamers were willing to put an investment into a game experience that consisted of more than money and emotion- an evolution from unthinking consumer to explorer of consciousness...

Best of luck with your ideas!

stockmausen wrote (View Post): › Since it does take such a huge effort to see a fourth spatial dimension, are you still hopeful for development of a 4d shooter?

It takes a lot of effort to understand 4D, but hopefully not much to navigate around in 4D and do things. After all, small insects can fly around in 3D and find what they want, even if they don't understand the world they're in. We shall have to see - I expect it'll take some getting used to.

Actually, if you make the shooter, I think it would be easier to understand the way 4D actually works...

Stuff involving snippets of my thoughts of the night:
I think that 4D is made when 3D shapes intersect, specificly, not just with more lines and such... which is why a cube is one of a tesseract's faces, if they're even to be called such. This also follows the trend with two lines intersecting to form planespace, and two planal intersections forming realmspace, as well as a line being the side of a square and a square being the face of a cube. Yeah, I probably just wasted a half or full minute of your life explaining something you already knew... But, if time is an illusion, who cares? Technicly, you don't exist.

I have got you.
Mano

Hmm... What shall we call the realmic borders of tetric objects? Point... Edge... Face... Tepce?

I've gotta the proof of the existence of others kind of intelligente beeings. Mano.

mano wrote (View Post): › I've gotta the proof of the existence of others kind of intelligente beeings. Mano.

XD

More points of things: I believe the circle, sphere, and glome are the "perfect objects" or such, NOT their corresponding straightish shapes. A "perfect" circle is exactly the same size in all it's dimensions. A square is not the same in it's diagonal measurements as it's straight measurements. Therefore, you need more diagonal space than straight space in order to house it, meaning the square cannot completely fill all of Planespace. Also, it's possible to see light upon a cube blocking out your vision and believe it's just a wash of color. With a sphere, you can know, just from that fixed picture, unless it's painted to counteract those colors, that it's spherical. And if it's painted to take into account the 3-Dimensional nature of the light source and sphere, then it is also, in itself, a testament to the 3-Dimensional universes existance. A square has edges, unlike a circle. An edge is a line. Lines divide 2-D space. Same goes for spherical and glomic equivalents. A glome cannot even be COMPREHENDED without knowlegde of the fourth dimension, because the sphere cannot be rotated in the 3rd-dimension in a way that enables representation of it's 4th-dimensional equivalent.

Almost perfect. Spheres don't tessellate to fill space like the square/cube/hypercubes do. They're very good with symmetry though.

One of the things I find weird is that, as you increase the number of dimensions, the area/volume/hypervolume or a circle/sphere/hypersphere increases until it reaches a maximum at seven dimensions, then decreases from then on. For your unit square/cube/hypercube it's always 1, which is neater.

I'm all for calling the realmic border faces by the way, but I think I'm in the minority there.

A note; while thinking about the 'decreasing n-volume' thing (which seemed strange to me, and I suppose still does to a certain extent), I realized that even if the numerical 'volume' goes down if you add a dimension, it's still infinitely more space that it was; just as a cube is infinitely thicker/has more 'space' than a square. I still don't quite understand why the numerical 'space' goes down, but it seems less weird now, anyway.

Also, a possible answer to the title question, the Fourth Dimension is real, in the sense that the concept is physically manifested within it's own dimensional bounds, but two dimensional realms are completely unintersectable, as intersections between two particles of different spatial dimension destroy either the particle, or move particles from the lower dimension out of place, thus destroying the infinitely thin bond between them, slowly degrading the realm and, via hydrostatic equillibrium, possibly transforming the particles into ones belonging to the higher dimension. So, it exists, as do all of them, but there may be no spaces that meet the criteria of belonging to said dimension in existence, and we cannot reach them through our realm without dire consequences.

I think I've seen Wikipedia use the term "cell" for 4-D shapes the way "face" is used on 3-D objects.

Quote: › A note; while thinking about the 'decreasing n-volume' thing (which seemed strange to me, and I suppose still does to a certain extent), I realized that even if the numerical 'volume' goes down if you add a dimension, it's still infinitely more space that it was; just as a cube is infinitely thicker/has more 'space' than a square. I still don't quite understand why the numerical 'space' goes down, but it seems less weird now, anyway.

About hypervolume, what do you mean? If we take a hypercube of n dimensions that is s units long on an edge, its hypervolume is:

V _n-cube = s ₁   s ₂  . . . s _n = s ⁿ

As long as the edge s is more than 1 unit in length, the hypercube's numerical hypervolume will increase as n increases.

ChaimLeib wrote (View Post): › I think I've seen Wikipedia use the term "cell" for 4-D shapes the way "face" is used on 3-D objects.

I've seen it in a lot of places, and I use it myself. I might have figured out what the decreasing hypervolume past 6D or whatever thing was at some point, but I'm totally at a loss now.

loki_clock"; p="469 wrote: › I've seen it ["cell"] in a lot of places, and I use it myself. I might have figured out what the decreasing hypervolume past 6D or whatever thing was at some point, but I'm totally at a loss now.

Maybe it's a hypersphere? According to Wikipedia, the volume of a hypersphere is

V _n-sphere = C _n R ⁿ

C _n = (π ^n/2 ) / Γ(n/2 + 1)

For large enough values of n, the Gamma function Γ(x) outstrips the growth of both R ⁿ and π ^n/2 multiplied together. (That is one quick-growing function! I just learned about it after reading your post and looking on Wikipedia.) According to my graphing calculator, that is around n=13 for R=1. For R=1.1, that's at n=17. For R=0.9, that's n=11. In other words, at those n and R values, increasing n will cause the numerical volume of the n-sphere to shrink.