Leo D.M.J. Aurini - August 08, 2018


Do Prime Numbers have a Buddha Nature？

Topics
prime numbers and their nature in Buddhism
Hosted by
Leo D.M.J. Aurini
Mentioned
Deus Volt
The Architecture of the Collapse How to Keep a Wife

Episode Stats


Length

7 minutes

Words per minute

111.66

Word count

882

Sentence count

92


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, I talk about whether or not prime numbers have a Buddha-like nature, and why we don't know where they are. I also talk about the proof of infinite prime numbers, and how we will never find them.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So, in this video, I want to talk about prime numbers and whether or not they have a Buddha
00:00:11.700 nature. The great Zen master said once, do dogs have a Buddha nature? Well, let's ignore the dog
00:00:23.680 question for a moment. Space dog is asleep on the couch and she's not going to be joining us for
00:00:28.380 this video. Let's instead ask the question, are maps true? Well, yes. Yes, of course. A map is true.
00:00:46.860 That is, the map just tells you what the land looks like. Of course, it's true.
00:00:51.140 No, maps aren't true. Maps are a gross oversimplification that tries to take this
00:01:00.080 diverse territory and cram it into this small little square you have in front of you.
00:01:09.680 You know, the more detailed your map, the longer the coastline is. How long is a coastline?
00:01:14.280 Depends on your level of detail because every little squiggle adds a little bit more distance.
00:01:23.620 So, maps. Maps are true and maps are false and maps have a Buddha nature.
00:01:31.000 Now, what about prime numbers?
00:01:41.060 So, I recently did a video where I was talking about the proof of infinite primes. I was talking
00:01:47.240 about mathematical proofs versus scientific proofs, etc. Well, I'd like to go back to that,
00:01:52.120 that proof of infinite primes. And I'll briefly cover it here, link down below if you want the
00:01:58.260 thorough explanation. Because once you understand the proof, you know there are infinite primes.
00:02:05.600 And the proof goes like this. You take the highest prime number that you can think of. We're going
00:02:10.520 to go for 7 in this example. Then you factorial it. You take 7 times 6 times 5 times 4 times 3 times 2.
00:02:19.020 This gives you a result of 5040. Now, add 1 to that number.
00:02:24.420 By definition, this number is not divisible by 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, or 2. So, either it is a prime
00:02:39.900 number or it's a product of a prime number higher than 7. And sure enough, it turns out to be the
00:02:49.700 square of 71, the 20th prime number. So, by this proof alone, and you do this method to any prime
00:02:58.640 number, factorial it, then add 1, you're going to have a number which proves that there's a higher prime
00:03:07.740 number. So, there's an infinite number of prime numbers. But, here's the crazy part. We know there's an
00:03:22.800 infinite number of primes. We don't know where they are.
00:03:27.500 The thing about a prime number is we state prime number as if it's a discernible thing.
00:03:43.100 But, it's not. Quite the opposite. A prime number is a number that we can't find without brute
00:03:54.540 forcing it, without walking. Like, there's no map for the prime numbers. Our map says they are infinite.
00:04:00.720 But, it does not say where they are. The only way we can find a prime number is by walking the
00:04:07.420 territory, by taking every number and brute forcing it. The definition of a prime number is a number that
00:04:18.120 cannot be predicted, that cannot be formulaic, that cannot be arrived at through arithmetic equations.
00:04:27.100 It's a known unknown.
00:04:39.060 I really want you to think about this. How crazy this is, that we know there are infinite prime numbers,
00:04:44.060 but we have no idea where they are. And, we will never know where they are. Like, we know
00:04:49.400 all the even numbers. All the even numbers, very easy to figure out. You know, you can't make up
00:04:56.840 a number, no matter how big, that I would say, huh, I'm not sure if that's an even number or not. No,
00:05:02.940 we know what the evens and the odds are. Same thing with the squares. Squares can be arrived at
00:05:09.500 very easily. Not the prime numbers. You have to brute force it. And see, this is pointing towards
00:05:20.920 something very crucial in Zen Buddhism, okay, and Taoism. The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao.
00:05:33.740 The Tao is bigger than what can be spoken. The same way the prime number, we say prime number as if we
00:05:39.160 know what we're talking about. We don't know what we're talking about. We know some of the prime numbers.
00:05:44.680 We don't know all of them, and we never will. The Tao which can be spoken is not the true Tao. And numbers
00:05:57.180 which can be formulated are not prime. So, we have this massive gap in our knowledge. We know they're out
00:06:08.140 there. We don't know where they are. The only way we can know them is to walk along the beach until we
00:06:14.600 find them. And so, what is knowledge then? If we know it's true that there's infinite,
00:06:27.500 but we can't find them. We can prove they exist, but we don't know where they exist.
00:06:37.940 What does this tell us about knowledge in general?
00:06:44.600 What conclusions should we make about our day-to-day choices, our moral decisions, our pragmatic decisions?
00:06:56.200 If there's knowledge that we know, but we can't know.
00:07:00.980 There's a tree of life, but surrounding the tree of life is other life that we can't see.
00:07:08.640 I think the only sane conclusion is to acknowledge, with humbleness, that prime numbers do have a Buddha nature.
00:07:30.780 Deus Volt, Urini, out.
00:07:34.080 Amen.
00:07:34.620 Amen.
00:07:34.980 Amen.
00:07:46.980 Amen.
00:07:47.780 Amen.
00:07:48.060 Amen.
00:07:48.140 Amen.
00:07:49.240 Amen.
00:07:50.300 Amen.
00:07:50.840 Amen.
00:07:51.020 Amen.
00:07:51.900 ...