Tag Archives: Joe Truss

A prediction nears reality

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Andrew Wilkinson said on X:

“Just watched my 5-year-old son chat with ChatGPT advanced voice mode for over 45 minutes.

It started with a question about how cars were made.

It explained it in a way that he could understand.

He started peppering it with questions.

Then he told it about his teacher, and that he was learning to count.

ChatGPT started quizzing him on counting, and egging him on, making it into a game.

He was laughing and having a blast, and it (obviously) never lost patience with him.

I think this is going to be revolutionary. The essentially free, infinitely patient, super genius teacher that calibrates itself perfectly to your kid’s learning style and pace.

Excited about the future.”

– – –

I remember visiting my uncle back when I was in university. The year was somewhere around 1988-90. So, at least 34 years ago. We were talking about the future and Joe Truss explained to me what learning would be like in the coming age of computers.

He said, (loosely paraphrased, this was a long time ago):

‘In the future we will have virtual teachers that will be able to teach us exactly what we want to know in exactly the format we need to learn best. You want to learn about relativity? How about learning from Einstein himself? You’ll see him in front of you like he is real. And he will not just lecture you, he will react to your questions and even bio-feedback. You look puzzled, he might ask a question. He sees you looking up and to the left, which he knows means you are trying to visualize something, and so he changes his lesson to provide an image. He will be a teacher personalized to any and all of your learning needs.’

We aren’t quite there yet, but the exchange Andrew Wilkinson’s son had with ChatGPT, and the work being done in virtual and augmented reality, suggest that Joe’s prediction is finally coming into being.

I too am excited about the future, and more specifically, the future of learning.

We Live in a Tetraverse

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Whenever you see a movie like the Matrix, data sets, information, and all storage are shown in cubes.

Even beyond the movies, it is clear that we represent the world on three axis: X, Y, and Z.

In the words of Joe Truss, these 3 axis are ‘necessary but not sufficient‘ to really understand the world we live in. We Live in a Tetraverse:

This is the first video in a series called ‘Book of Codes’, which over time you will help you discover for yourself the power you inherently have as a natural geometer. Join Joe and Dave Truss as they discuss the building blocks of a tetraverse… where the foundations of life, and everything in our universe is built around the unique geometric shapes that are comprised in the geometry of stacked and interlocking triangles.

The Book of Codes will awaken the natural geometer within you.

 

Some people spend their weekends watching sports… while the Super Bowl was on, I was putting the finishing touches on this video. That’s not a slag on anyone who enjoys watching sports, it’s just not my thing. What I do enjoy is nerding out and thinking about how I can use geometry to make sense of challenging ideas in mathematics and physics that are actually way beyond my capabilities to calculate and understand without the geometry. Thanks to Joe, I have almost weekly meetings on Sunday mornings to learn from him and to think deeply about the hidden geometry behind our universe and all life within it.

We record most of our meetings. This is hopefully the first of many we will share. While there are more videos to come, don’t expect them too soon… I only really get a chance to work on them on the weekends and editing video takes a lot of time. Still, I hope you enjoy this video, and as always, feedback is appreciated.

Coming Soon

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I have been meeting my uncle, Joe Truss, and playing with geometry regularly on weekends. We didn’t meet this week, but I still put some time into our project. Today I put the finishing touches on the first video we are going to share about living in a Tetraverse. We believe our universe is structurally built out of triangles… Triangles (not turtles) all the way down.

Is the video perfect? No, far from it. Is it polished? No, I could spend a few more hours tweaking it. Is it ready to be shared? Yes! We have hours and hours of video, but we chose this one because we are actually playing with the shapes we are talking about, and it seems like a good entry level introduction to the topics we discuss.

Originally I had hoped to have the video edited before the end of 2023, but I had almost no time over the holidays to finish it. So, I put in a few hours the past few Sundays and now it’s time to share… as soon as my uncle approves. I didn’t hit my year-end goal, but I got it done in time for my uncle’s birthday in a couple days.

I’ll share it here really soon!

Map of Mathematics

I came across this Map of Mathematics in a TikTok where people working in the field of Mathematics were all sharing how their fields intersected different parts of the map. Here is the video:

I love how the concepts and fields of study connect and interconnect.

The the video starts with a ‘stitch’ of a Tiktok user asking, “Did everyone know that Mathematicians are, like, discovering new Math?”

This plays into a recent post in which I state that Math is ‘Discovered more than invented‘. There is so much more to discover, and I believe, thanks to my conversations with Joe Truss, that geometry is the foundation of Math. But math is a hard conceptual language with which to understand the geometry… and if we study the geometry we can understand the universe without having to do the hard math. Oh, and if Mathematicians better understood the geometry they could discover new Math a little faster.

In the Map of Mathematics, Geometry is the key.

Discovered more than invented

Is Math invented or is it discovered? Is Math a human, or at least biological construct that helps mammals understand the world we live in? Or does it exist inherently in the universe and is it revealed to us through curiosity and scientific discovery?

I’ve shared my fascination in playing, learning, and discovering secrets held in Geometry (here and here) with Joe Truss.

Recently I watched a video that quoted Galileo Galilei:

“Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.”

With everything Joe and I have been playing with, I thought of an adaptation of this quote:

The universe is written in the language of geometry, and Mathematics allows us to measure it.

When I shared this with Joe, he tweaked it:

The universe is written in the language of geometry, and Mathematics allows us to take its measure.

I like this because it speaks to the idea of Math being discovered, of it being inherent because it is present in the geometry. It is Geometry that is the underlying language. Math is the alphabet, the universe is written in geometry. This is why Pi pops up where you don’t expect it; why the Fibonacci sequence is prevalent in nature; why we can land a ship on the moon and Mars; and even why our religious symbols come out of geometry.

The challenge we have is that we don’t fully understand the geometry, sometimes rather than discovering the true essence of the mathematics, we have to invent approximations that help us make sense of universe. Understand the geometry and maybe we can remove infinities and irrational numbers in our calculations… Understand the geometry, and the math becomes more accurate. Understand the geometry and maybe we can unify our theories that currently seem to contradict themselves.

Discover the geometry and we discover the math behind it, no longer needing to invent approximations of the math to translate the geometry into a world of calculations and numbers that don’t quite fit with they universe we are trying to describe. When we discover the geometry, we no longer needs to invent Math, the geometry allows us to take its measure… And in fact we can explain the universe with the geometry, and then we don’t have to be a physicist or mathematician to understand it.

Playing with geometry (again)

I’ve already shared that I’m playing with geometry a lot with Joe Truss. We met on Zoom today and talked about living in a ‘Tetraverse’, a universe that is built on the structure of a tetrahedron.

Today we spoke about how this Tetraverse would (and does) affect gravity and wheels spinning on axis. Then I went back to my magnetic ball and rod 8-frequency tetrahedron that I built a few weeks back and played some more. It’s late and I’m not going to try to do a synopsis of the intricate patterns I saw. What I do want to say is that it’s fun to play in a space where I am constantly learning both by being taught and by discovery.

It’s amazing what we can learn through play.

Playing with geometry

The image below is a blue cube octahedron with each triangular face forming a tetra-octa-tetra pattern coming out from the center.

This is a tetra-octa-tetra, with two yellow tetrahedrons on opposite sides of an octahedron:

I’m fascinated by these shapes thanks to my uncle, Joseph Truss, who has been playing with these shapes for decades, and who believes the fundamental building blocks of our universe is the tetrahedron. We live in a ‘Tetraverse’.

But the geometry he describes goes far beyond this. He intuitively understands the underlying structure of the universe through geometry in a way that mathematical physicists understand it through math.

Watch this 28 minute movie, Hacking Reality. It gets to some of the topics Joe and I discuss. I really think he’s on to something some of the smartest physicists in the world are still trying to figure out… but he’s done it purely by playing with geometry, and visually/intuitively making sense of how shapes are formed and come together.

Mind blowing conversation

Two of the smartest people I’ve ever met are my uncle and my dad. Last night I sat with my uncle until 4am, and he broke down the origins of the Enneagram… not the personality types attached to it later, the actual origins of the symbol.

Basically, there is a 3-dimensional geometric shape that the enneagram, traditionally shared as a flat, drawn image, is derived from. He basically shared a mind-blowing fact that has essentially been ‘lost knowledge’ since before George Gurdjieff (1866-1949), “a Armenian philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher, and composer of Armenian and Greek descent, born in Alexandropol, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia)” (Wikipedia) introduced this symbol to western culture.

Seeing the 3-dimensional origins of the image ‘unlocks’ some sacred geometry that is lost, or rather not available to be seen, in the 2-dimensional enneagram. My uncle has shared this with me before, but I couldn’t conceptually ‘see’ what he saw, and understand the underlying geometry. Last night I made a video of him sharing this lost secret.

The video needs a bit of editing, and I want him to share it on his own YouTube channel, not mine, but look for it to be shared soon. It’s not often you get to see an answer to a question asked and unanswered for over 100 years, but my uncle has ‘discovered’ the 3-dimensional origins of the enneagram!

Late night learning

Last night I had a conversation with my uncle that went until after 3am. Whenever we meet I learn so much. He’s working on a book that shifts the way we look at geometry and math. We went chapter by chapter and a 3 and a half hour recording that we made felt like it went by in under a couple hours.

My uncle took me on a fantastic learning journey, and explained his insights that made connections through many fields of study. He has an understanding of Math and Physics, life and culture, Science and technology, through basic geometry. His insights are both complex and mindblowingly simple. What’s really interesting is that it seems evident that his insights have been understood my ancient mathematicians and mystics. He is tapping into old knowledge that has been lost over time. Religious and occult symbols were born out of this understanding of geometry.

I hope that my uncle can meet his goal and get the book out in the next year. When he does, I’ll be sure to share it here!

Reciprocal influence

After a discussion with my Uncle Joe (Truss) last night on the topic of free will, I’ve reread my posts:

The Bell Curve of Free Will

And:

What does in mean to be conscious?

Joe said a couple interesting things, “Freedom comes with restraints.” And, “We influence the world and the world influences us.”

I speak of restraints on freedom in my bell curve post, but I don’t say this explicitly. I think restrictions to our freedom of choice can be circumstantial, or based on how virtuous we live our lives, or by things like our physical and emotional health. These restraints to our freedom can make us feel like we have less choice.

The simple, yet profound statement that, “We influence the world and the world influences us,” is one that I’m interested in deconstructing. When we react to the environment or situation we are in, we ultimately change that environment or situation. There are many experiments that prove the observer changes the experiment. We don’t live in a vacuum, and our interactions with the world alter that world, which alters our future interactions.

An example I’m thinking of is a crisis situation where the person in charge is calm and thoughtfully responsive vs the same crisis situation with a panicked and frantic leader. The crisis can be well handled or escalated. In both cases the leaders work in feedback loops that can help them deal with the situation at hand appropriately or have the situation become unmanageable. The leader’s actions (or inaction) changes the situation, which in turn influences their next action or reaction.

How often do we get stuck in a feedback loop of reciprocal influences between what we feel we can do next and how the outside world reacts? We move through situation after situation feeling like we lack choice and freedom because the restraints on us limit our responses… which in turn limits what we believe can happen next, and what our next actions can or need to be.

There are times when we do what we need to do, or feel obligated to do, and don’t recognize that we are in a feedback loop that continually limits our choices and decision-making. This can be especially true in work and family situations where past relationships and patterns of interactions influence our likelihood of reacting similarly the next time.

“I better do it this way or Peter will be upset.”

“Amy is going to complain about this no matter how hard I try.”

“My brother won’t want to join us, I won’t bother asking.”

We get into pattern ruts, habitual grooves where we get stuck limiting our own choices and freedom to do things differently.

I realize now that my thinking is less about free will, and more about how our habits dictate our future thinking. Our habits influence our world, our world changes and we react by reinforcing the same habits that can ultimately limit our future choices. In some ways we construct a limited future based on our habits, which emboldens our choice to keep these limiting habits. (You can also replace the word ‘habits’ with ‘addictions’.)

“We influence the world and the world influences us.”

Is this a reciprocal relationship, or is it one where we can choose to have more influence? I think there are countless self-help books written to suggest that we have more influence than we believe we do… we just need to make conscious choices rather than letting our past actions and habits limit our ability to influence the world around us.