The Surprising Enumeration of the Grand Unifying Structure.

This blog contains a surprisingly simple question: what are the first ten numbers? Simple indeed. Through contemplating the possible answers, one can end up seeing the Big Picture contours of the Structure of Everything.

“Numbers on the starting line on a red running track” by Austris Augusts on Unsplash

It seems a simple question: what are the first ten numbers? When answering this with 1 to 10, the reply will probably be true to how most people would answer it. But look at your phone: the ten numbers on the display are not 1 to 10. The numbers are 1 to 9 plus a zero. Seemingly, there are two distinct answers possible.

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This is the introduction to a ten-blog series, investigating the ways in which we comprehend information and look at the Big Picture. Simple descriptions are provided to show how we can think both in natural and in artificial ways. By showing how distinct structures of the mind are used to understand the world we live in, the underlying Big Picture can become visible. This will help in highlighting important information, for instance, about how we view the Big Bang.

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Much like the number question above, consider ten bowls in which fruit is placed in such a way that all bowls deliver a sequential number of fruit in outcome, and that these bowls can be seen as the first ten outcomes.

Starting with the first bowl containing a single peach, each subsequent bowl contains one peach more than the previous, all the way up to ten peaches in the last bowl.

Yet when starting instead with leaving the first bowl empty, and then placing one peach more in each subsequent bowl, the last bowl will only contain nine peaches; this answer still fits the original question. The choice of starting with a single piece of fruit in the first bowl or leaving it empty is ours to make.

When reviewing the two sets of ten bowls, it doesn’t take a mathematician to discover which set contains more peaches. But it also doesn’t take a judge to rule which set delivers more of the diverse aspects we may encounter in life.

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Let’s place the two answers apart once more to uncover what makes both possible outcomes distinct from one another.