In My Head (Part 1): Matrix Mind

This post night come off a bit scattered, as I have some random thoughts I want to share about what makes me… “me!” (They all fit into a specific category though). The common thing that really comes to mind predominantly is the way I see the world in numbers. Yeah, it IS a bit like The Matrix. But I feel like I must prelude this discussion with some more basic information on my mind. I suppose the first thing is to say that I’m weird. Now that we’ve established that, let me give some borders to that statement. I am an EXTREMELY left-brained person. It’s not that I don’t have any creativity in me, but it’s underdeveloped when compared to my logical/physics/math based mind. But when I say that I see the world in numbers, it’s not that I don’t see shapes and objects, but instead I see the world in “values”, “geometric shapes and patterns”, and especially “graphs”! How does one see the world in this way? I’m glad you asked! In regards to values, I see the associative number to things (even when there’s no “numerical value” associated with it). Lemme give you plenty of examples of these things, so you can get a better idea about my intense/crazy mind. Let’s pretend I am sitting in my living room; when I look at the furniture, the floor, the space both negative and positive, and I associate the equivocal numbers of those categories. It’s not a conscious thing as much as it is subconscious. Nevertheless, I’m mindful of it. I see the entertainment center and chair, and I perceive its relative value to its space in the room (both in regards to its two-dimensional value, and its three-dimensional value), and in relation to other objects. For simplicity sake, let’s take a look at it this way:

But it’s not just their blueprint; it’s so much more than that! It’s their relativity! I mean that in all ways possible too! It’s their function and their relativity not only to other objects, but to themselves, to their usefulness, to their purpose! Yeah, it really is as intense as it sounds! Here’s another picture to help you get an idea of my thoughts:

That’s a picture of a foot traffic graph for a local shopping store. Recently (a couple years ago), Macy’s (followed by Best Buy) revealed that they do cell phone tracking while you’re shopping in there stores (this does have a point). They track from where you come in, to where you go next, and how long you stare at each section. If you go to the camera section in Best Buy for a long time, you’ll likely find advertising on your computer or cell phone for cameras. Here’s a picture, to help you see it another way, and then I’ll discuss the relevance.

So, the reason I share this with you is because those same statistical graphs are how I CONSTANTLY see the world around me! For me sitting in the living room, I see how people use the living room (the “feng-shui” if you will), how the space is being utilized, and how to optimize the room to become more efficient (and that’s all in addition to all the other aforementioned things that I’m seeing at the same time). It’s what happens EVERYWHERE for me!  Even while driving, I’m constantly “measuring” the road, the distance of vehicles, and aspects of the roads that pertain to their “graph” coordinates and functionality.  Again though, it happens subconsciously, not always consciously.  While measuring all this in my mind, it really gets put together more like this in my mind:

All of it gets put into an infographic in my mind with all the statistics and correlations and data for every component of this “system” at the same time. Then I see how all that data comes into play as a whole (this all still happens instantaneously), and how to create improve the to this said “system”. But we haven’t even left the living room yet! This really applies to so many areas of life though, that I can’t even describe all of them, as time wouldn’t allow. But I will give a couple more simple examples. When driving and taking a turn, I consider the apex of the turn, the bank of the road, the special width of lanes, and so on and so on. When looking at or using products created by companies, I see the intentionality and use of every word and feature. Again, all this happens instantaneously and subconsciously, but I can pull it up and examine it in detail if needed. This might sound like a weird analogy, but it’s kind of like someone sending you an email with a LOT of attachments. You get the notification immediately, and the info is there, but you don’t have to examine the intel unless you want to.

Yet so far, I have shared with you only my observance of the world around me; however, this same algorithmic interpretation of the world applies to ALL AREAS of my life. Lemme share with you three more examples and you can see how far this rabbit hole goes into my psyche!

Music is a big one to me. I mentioned in a previous post that I have an intense passion and love for music!! When I listen to music, I’m not only hearing the vocals and the instruments, but I’m hearing the rhythm and “count” constantly. But it’s so much more than even that. I see the rhythm! This might be hard to explain, so I’ll try to utilize pictures to help you visualize what’s in my mind. When I say that I can see the rhythm of music, I mean that I can understand fully the pattern of sound, as it pertains to a wavelength. People who create music digitally might be able to relate with this concept a bit easier. Here’s a picture of a single instrument being played, and its associated amplitude wavelength (in regards to melody, not volume):

So that’s for a single instrument. But unless you’re listening to a specific instrument alone, you’ll likely be listening to a song, which will have more than one instrument. And not every instrument will have the same key, or the same melody even. That’s where it gets interesting to understand how I see it. With multiple instruments, it looks more like this:

I see “systems” all around me! But I’ll save that for next week.

But it honestly doesn’t stop there for me, because I also incorporate aspects of emotion, harmony, and flow of sounds. In the end, the 2 Dimensional plane of instruments and sounds becomes more of a 3D interface that looks more like this:

It’s a moment-by-moment collaboration in both time and space that encompasses the articulation of beat, harmony, and meaning. It is the reason I have such a passion for well-designed music, and get annoyed (inside) when people talk about how great certain (unnamed) artists are. To each their own style of music. But there is a truth to greater melody, and if you were to incorporate the sound wave patterns (440hz vs 432hz) (as seen in water memory, color and light wavelengths, and so on) into the equation, then you can really get into depths of universal harmonies and resonance of particle frequencies. But that’s a bit much for this post.

Perhaps an easier way to consider this concept of how I see the world is by a more planed graph of storyline/plot diagram for movies (another big one for me, and my second example). Consider the following graph:

This is a basic plot chart for a story (book or movie). You start with plot-development and character development, build suspense and create story line, introduce your basis for the event details, and draw out your exposition. As the story continues to build, you create more suspense, set internal response of characters, mark their attempts, design complication, conflicts, and sub-climaxes, and create turning points throughout the rising action. Then comes the final climax of the movie, where the audience is led on the journey of purpose and is left with an outcome afterwards through the falling action. Last is the conclusion and resolution of the movie (and if you have a good enough story, the expected reaction of the audience). This (again) is your “basic” story diagram. But of course, the world is given to creative measures! Take a Quinten Tarintino movie. It looks more like this:

They (all his movies) start off with an intense scene that is somewhere close to the climax of the movie, and gets you on the edge of your seat very quickly.  Then it goes back to the beginning of the story, and begins as most movies do.  Each director has their typical “signature” with each movie, and those range from beginnings/intros to endings, or specific “curves” that they follow.  I notice all of these patterns and graphs with every movie I watch.  But again, it is not only the script that comes into play, but also the emotional aspects, psychological evaluations, and all the other details of the nuances within and without.

Now, let’s get into the last, and likely the most intense aspect of this “way I see the world through numbers and graphs”.  Here it is… you ready?!  I see EVERY conversation and expression in numbers and graphs!!  Yes, when I am talking with someone, I can see the mathematics associated with conversation.  This might sound super-weird, but I hope the aforementioned examples will help to give you an idea of how “moment by moment” this happens, and what it looks like for me.  I won’t include any more photos on this example, but I’ll simply express how this works for me.

If you’ve ever seen the show, the “accountant” on Deal Or No Deal does this with a machine when cases are opened.  It’s not a preference thing, it’s numbers.  He presents the sum of averages for the dollar value of the remaining cases added and then divided by their number.  He does this with numbers as the variable, but I can do this at a very fast pace in my head with any variable.  While having a conversation with someone (it really doesn’t matter the topic), I associate words and patterns of words with their historical relevance and personal experience as it relates with each person involved in the conversation (!).  Also, I take into consideration patterns of tones (both increase, and decrease (or monotones)), body language, facial expressions, and spacial time and awareness.  (Now, most people do this to some degree… you can likely tell what a person is meaning and saying through all these last factors mentioned, but the difference is, I am plotting them on graphs inside my head, and drawing analytic data and statistics from them moment my moment).  Beyond all this, I factor in all of my known and perceived information on all individuals in the conversation, and correlate data based upon their (known and perceived) experiences, intelligence, memory, concepts, and so on.  It honestly isn’t as exhausting as it sounds, because I’m able to do it so rapidly and accumulate data and analytic info as it pertains to situation and conclusions.  Now, the real factor beyond this is being able to interpret all this data in quick processes and then create a role-reversal in my head to work backwards with all my own information (obviously all known), and work down to an appropriate response for a desired outcome.  That includes both words, tone, facial expression, and body language.  Imagine, if you will, pulling information from 10 websites to write a research paper.  You can’t just copy from one, because that’s plagiarism.  But if you can understand the information as it is in it’s holistic perspective, then you can repeat enough bits and pieces to create your own work.  Or if you did the same thing from watching 10 YouTube videos about how to change a carburetor, you could likely show your friend how to change his.  This is essentially what’s happening to me moment by moment through conversation, except it’s with 1,000 YouTube videos, 500+ books, 100,000 conversations past, countless internet articles, 1,500 movies, and resources beyond measure (and all this in addition to my own known experiences, environmental awareness, and time/space recognition of reality).  It is a LOT that happens in my brain at once!  It is not so uncommon really for that to happen to us all, as we recall (useful) information in a conversation, but the distinction of course is that I do all of these things through analysis and statistical information.

I hope I haven’t scared you off.

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