A piece of ∏ on my mind.

I just finished watching "∏" (as in greek letter and math symbol). I had wanted to watch in when if first came out. For some odd reason, I was warned off it by a number of fellow engineering students and a professor, in a number of separate situations. Silliness, it was a show like any other. They might have done better warning me off Conspiracy Theory, that actually got my juices flowing. I did enjoy ∏.

∏ underlines why I chose not to pursue math further than I have and will be required to do. One last course and I am done with the stuff. Except of course for usage. There are only questions in it, and no answers to be found pursuing it that our limited rationality augmented by the finest computers which do not yet exist can come close to fathoming. Nothing it provides will be useful, even to the lowest step toward heaven it is now believed by some, and falsely, to reach. It is a fine pursuit for those who may safely enter the realm of questions. I have yet to meet such a one. I have only seen lost men sure that this theory they propose will be the answer, until it fails or they fail to complete the proof, and is repeated until their time is done. Some of these men are more lost than others, but none are untouched. It has only given them something to do before they die and after they were born. A few produced useful work and provided useful techniques in antiquity. Most today are quite sterile of even functional value. Let them play, they are a rather harmless lot.

In the movie, the protagonist presumed a number of things, which given the scope and direction of the movie seem to bolster my belief that movies are produced by the simple for the simpler, perhaps even my thesis that mathematicians are lost. All I know is, if I propose a character and setting, I could present no functional timeline in which that character learns nothing and no one else sees folly where it is plain. This character seems not to see what the movie seems to present, albeit sharply implicitly. None of the other characters see it, none of the sequences hint about it, and I think it may have been lost to those who wrote, those who produced, and most who watched. Simply put, the movie, through characters and evidence continually claims, roughly, that the universe and all is based upon numbers, that it is numbers. And, it argues there may or may not be a way to understand those numbers, how they sequence, and thus gain true knowledge. Yet everything in the movie actually indicates something quite different. It develops that the numbers only represent the universe. Something I have seen clearly forever, it seems. As well, though not something I get from the movie but believe, numbers may hold truth, but only past truth in such a manner we might perceive currently and no substance as absolutes. Through further iterations and manipulations, the future might or might not be seen, that is debatable, though that would require perfect understanding and reckoning, which is undeniably unattainable currently (currently as in; while inhabiting this life form).

Much as an artist who paints a picture of a fair maiden, living in a castle, with many servants, piles of gold, and many other blessings may never enter that painting and marry the damsel represented or lay claim any of the other rendered elements, so to can scientists and mathematicians never entertain their theories or numbers in form. It is madness. It matters not an iota how correct those numbers, theories, or portraits seem to be or even are, they are not real, cannot be realized. Simple, really, and frustrating thought it must be. This is why I should pursue engineering, should my will and way persist. My work will be real should I deign to dignify the craft with my coming of age, collecting of mental tools, and if all holds with a refurbished hail demeanor. Lord knows I shall never conquer the world of painting, prose, love, or politics. Even my shadows present problems for me at times. *laughs* We shall see.

Still, I do believe I enjoyed the movie. Something nameless and simple about it attracted my attention and I understand questions. Perhaps too, I know something of the labyrinth in which those questions may lead. I know about stepping back, letting go, and finding other paths in different directions. One might even say, if I thought his solution would work to such a degree, at one time I might have tried it as the lesser of darkness’s. So, I could recommend this. Though I think it is not for most, a trinket for geeks from some movie maker. But a major possible joy to those in this niche.