Mathematical Synesthesia

In 2021 I read Penrose's Road to Reality, and something superb began to happen to my perception..

My notes on Chapter 3 read:

(apologies for the turgid & convoluted prose - it was written for myself, and I'm sharing it here in its raw, unedited form)

"This has already transformed my perception of the natural world. I look out to the sidewalk and ask whether the tangent vector to the curving path to the sidewalk having equal angles to the curving path on each side has a name (it should be equivalent to the curve being consistent) and asking why it feels like the concept of right angles may extend to the straight line connecting two curves, where the line cutting the curving path can be at a right angle to the tangent vectors or not.

Also, there's this 'internal' tangent vector when the curve is (I think concave?) concave?, while the tangent vector is normal when the curve is convex(?)."

I had attained a simple level of what I'm calling "Mathematical Synesthesia" or more evocatively, "Mathematical Consciousness" - the modification of my instinctive perception by mathematical models of those perceptions.

It's akin to thinking with mental models, but is much sharper, realer, grounded, and from a technological and scientific perspective far more useful than mere concepts & metaphors. It hints at direct mathematical control over the world around me.

The Details of My Enhanced Perception: The Mathematical Matrix

Seeing the geometry of objects: The axis of rotation & integral modeling the aluminum can you're sipping sparkling water out of.
Fractal patterns in nature: Seeing the fractal in the veins of the leaf a plant, the dendritic venation transporting its nutrients & life.
Energy as waves and particles: The infrared radiation behind fire.
Light as electromagnetic phenomena: Light as ray reflection into one's eyes; Electromagnetic spectrum frequencies & wavelengths as color.
Physical laws in everyday actions: I jump into bed and in addition to feeling the springs compress and repulse at their precise locations, Hooke's Law flashes.
Aerodynamics in motion: As my plane accelerates into flight, I extend my embodied experience to include the transitioning pressure differential below and above the wings as the plane reaches rotation speed.

Mathematical patterns pop out everywhere in nature when we learn to see them

The Mathematization of Perception

There's the mathematization of all perception as well, where you modify your basic thought process to create a working practical mathematical model of whatever you're percieving and then process it through your model (peaks can be represented as mathematical enlightenment).

Your personal cognitive limitations become a function of known mathematics.

Where computational challenges with Integrating the denominator in bayes rule make it hard for you to think certain thoughts (literally likely post-merge that this occurs with ex. network optimization & modeling inductive bias).

Seeing Forces

One of my favorite prospective applications of Augmennted Reality or Brain Computer Interfaces is to superimpose the mathematical models of forces onto the real world, like air resistance, electromagnetism, and gravity.

The level of physical and mathematical intuition that this would provide would allow us all to become Teslas, running hyperaccurarte thought experiments with natural ease.

Mathematically Woke; The Mathematical Red-Pill

Wake up!! What cowardice keeps you from tearing away the veil of ordinary perception? The equations that command the universe are at your fingertips, and yet as they devastate your proud philosohphies still you choose the comfortable darkness of ignorance! Become literate in the language of the God.