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I had a coworker who was kind of obsessed with Christopher Langan's supposed "theory of everything," and one article of evidence he introduced was his thought that the way our eyes are circular and they cross their information to produce our three-dimensional vision, was somehow a biological manifestation of a Venn diagram for two circles. I don't know if this came from Langan's writings, but anyway, I did later note that for n = 11, it seems like there is a Venn diagram that looks similar to our eyes-with-cones, viz. the third sample in the following image (from Wolfram):

Emphasis on the third sample.

Another survey (from The Electronic Journal of Combinatorics) extracts the following from the n = 11 case:

Does this resemble brain folds?

Maybe it's my schizophrenia-spectrum problems causing it, but to me this looks similar to the folding of the brain.

So now, as far as I know, if the original premise was derived from Langan, I think he had a Venn diagram at the "center of reality" (so to speak) where three Venn spheres are in play (for his ultimate "triality"). I don't want to ask this question in the spirit of implicitly defending the claims of an arrogant, prejudiced analyst, yet I don't want to say that this guy is "just wrong about everything" or whatever, either. So at least without leading into some majestic and religious doctrine of three Venn spheres encoding the rest of reality by their "interaction," is it possible to interpret at least brains and their accoutrements as Venn-diagramatic in some physical embedded manner?

Kristian Berry
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    Yes they are. And they are the material embodiment of Venn diagrams, which makes Venn diagrams real and physically material ;-) – Frank Mar 10 '23 at 22:32
  • I'm wondering why it is so interesting to elucidate the "center of reality". Whether X, Y or Z is "real" or "physical" or "physically material and real" may be orthogonal to whether X, Y or Z is interesting in itself. You say it's real, I say it's in your imagination only - does it make a big difference? – Frank Mar 10 '23 at 22:37
  • @Frank I wish I could find the example that really "reminded me" of brain folds. I'm not sure the picture I saw was an instance of the *n* = 11 result given in this OP. I thought that I saw one where there was more curvature. I've seen some simpler examples with rainbow-shaped patterns involved, maybe I saw an elaboration on those. Re: Langan's "center of reality," IDK if that's quite the right phrase for his divine triality, but he does end up claiming that this thing is God (or as equivalent to God as is useful for his theory). It's like a pseudo-Trinity of Langan's three ultimate concepts. – Kristian Berry Mar 10 '23 at 22:40
  • Yeah, ultimate concepts are a dime a dozen. It would be nice if we had some method to triage them and get to some agreement... – Frank Mar 10 '23 at 22:42
  • In terms of his "conspansion" concept, I got the impression that one of the spheres was expanding infinitely, another was contracting infinitely, and the third sphere could somehow be encoded by the virtual gap between the expanding and contracting spheres. In principle(?), these three spheres have centers, in fact here the same center, and their dynamics control the rest of reality, so maybe this imagery is a good representation of a "center" or "nexus" of existence in some sense. But the deeper claim that mind = reality seems trivial or is used to false effect. – Kristian Berry Mar 10 '23 at 22:54
  • Going over the CTMU wiki right now, I'm not seeing references to the triality I thought I'd read about, there. There is a reference to a spatial triality, but I thought his Mind = Reality equation had a third term attached, like M = R = ?, but I don't recall what the ? is, if there is one, here. – Kristian Berry Mar 10 '23 at 22:55
  • The reason the brain has foldings is because it maximises the surface of the cortex, which is the place where complex thoughts occur: the more surface, the more complex the thoughts. This is no design as far as we know of, just the result of evolutive pressure for humans to be more clever. It has nothing to do with Venn diagrams. It's just a regular case of pareidolia. This morning the burning marks on my toast reminded me of the face if the Buddha. Should I deduce the toast had some very deep meaning about the afterlife ? – armand Mar 10 '23 at 23:01
  • @armand I don't want to make something mystical/magical out of this impression I have. My goal would rather be to say that if the brain has Venn-diagramatic aspects as to its form, this is why mathematical consciousness occurs to the brain, but this is not "on purpose" anymore than it is "on purpose" that matter and antimatter annihilate each other on collision. OTOH I'm also trying to balance this impression with a hedged commitment to eliminative materialism, so IDK. I'm going to leave off from further comments for this OP, though. I just hope that my comments can clarify my question. – Kristian Berry Mar 10 '23 at 23:05
  • Then isn't it more of a biology question? – armand Mar 10 '23 at 23:31

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