The planiverse

What Hacker News says

1. jacquesmDec 2023
   Abbott's Flatland is a nice little book that attempts to do the same.

   And then there is AK Dewdney's Planiverse.

   Both are well worth reading if you haven't seen them before, the Planiverse is more modern and probably more engaging but Flatland is quite interesting as well.

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2. lioetersSep 2022
   The Planiverse: Computer contact with a two-dimensional world - by A.K. Dewdney

   > A mind-bending, paradigm shifting visit with Yedred, a denizen of the 2 dimensional Universe. It is written so that the physics comes through very easily for those without science training. A university student discovers that this being Yendred is communicating with him through his computer. There begins a lively dialog as both the 2D Yendred and the 3D author struggle to explain and understand each others worlds.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse

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   The Glass Bead Game - by Hermann Hesse

   > The Glass Bead Game takes place at an unspecified date centuries in the future. Hesse suggested that he imagined the book's narrator writing around the start of the 25th century.

   > The setting is a fictional province of central Europe called Castalia, which was reserved by political decision for the life of the mind.. Castalia is home to an austere order of intellectuals with a twofold mission: to run boarding schools, and to cultivate and play the Glass Bead Game, whose exact nature remains elusive and whose devotees occupy a special school in Castalia known as Waldzell.

   > The rules of the game are only alluded to — they are so sophisticated that they are not easy to imagine. Playing the game well requires years of hard study of music, mathematics, and cultural history. The game is essentially an abstract synthesis of all arts and sciences.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

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   The World as Will and Representation - by Arthur Schopenhauer

   > The phrase "Tat Tvam Asi" ('thou art that'), one of the Mahāvākyas of the Upanishads, displayed on an Indian temple. Schopenhauer uses this Sanskrit phrase to express a foundational tenet of his ethics: 'the will is the in-itself of every appearance, and as such is itself free from the form of appearance, and thus from all multiplicity'.

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_as_Will_and_Represen...

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   The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies - by Thomas McEvilley

   > Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought — Western and Eastern philosophies.

   > Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

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   Temporary Autonomous Zone - by Hakim Bey

       1. Pirate Utopias
       2. Waiting for the Revolution
       3. The Psychotopology of Everyday Life
       4. The Net and the Web
       5. Gone to Croatan
       6. Music as an Organizational Principle
       7. The Will To Power as Disappearance
       8. Ratholes in the Babylon of Information
   

   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

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   Nature of Code - by Daniel Shiffman

   https://natureofcode.com/

   > How can we capture the unpredictable evolutionary and emergent properties of nature in software? How can understanding the mathematical principles behind our physical world help us to create digital worlds?

   > This book focuses on a range of programming strategies and techniques behind computer simulations of natural systems, from elementary concepts in mathematics and physics to more advanced algorithms that enable sophisticated visual results.

   > Readers will progress from building a basic physics engine to creating intelligent moving objects and complex systems, setting the foundation for further experiments in generative design. Subjects covered include forces, trigonometry, fractals, cellular automata, self-organization, and genetic algorithms.

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3. webmavenDec 2021
   Bob Shaw wrote a duology "The Ragged Astronauts" & "The Wooden Spaceships" in which the ratio of a circles circumference to it's diameter is 3. As far as I can tell, the only reason this factoid is included is to defuse any arguments about the plausibility of other elements of the setting (a binary planet with a shared atmosphere such that it is possible for a feudal society to stage an invasion from one to the other using balloons).

   Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle has Ptolemaic cosmology and Aristotelian physics.

   The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World by A.K. Dewdney is sort of a modern take on the classic Flatland by Edwin Abbot, and manages to improve upon it considerably.

   The Long Earth series by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter posits an infinite set of parallel Earths that can be reached with a trivial but unorthodox electronic device. You have to travel to them incrementally, one sideways step

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4. mixedmathOct 2021
   This comment is related to the title but not the content. Several years ago I read "The Planiverse" by Dewdney [1], which I thought was delightful. The premise is that a CS professor and his students simulate a Game-of-life/Lenia type system for a while, and then in one case they learn that they can actually communicate with them. The book is clearly inspired by Flatland (which I'd also read and like).

   [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Planiverse

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5. martyvisMay 2021
   Or the Planiverse by A.K.Dewdney
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6. ReraromJan 2020
   Fiction:

   Mordecai Roshwald, Level 7

   Alexander Dewdney, The Planiverse

   Joseph Heller, God Knows

   Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams

   Non-fiction:

   Jane Goodall, In the Shadow of Man

   Gian-Carlo Rota, Indiscrete Thoughts

   C. S. Lewis, The Discarded Image

   Michael E. Brown, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

   Robert Kegan, In Over Our Heads

   Michael Harris, The Atomic Times

   I may add guilty pleasures like the Legacy of the Force series, but I don't think this is what people here are looking for.

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