Patterns

(and anti patterns —no, not that kind of anti pattern)

This is not a scientific paper.

It is not even an technical report.

Many people in the know will call it pop science.

But what I tend to talk about isn’t even popular.

So, if it isn’t science, and it isn’t popular, I guess it’s something else.

But I have always been obsessed with patterns.

Obsessed is probably the wrong term.

Disconcerted, confused, upended, dizzy-made, convoluted…?

They are probably all better.

But the fact of the matter is, my head loves and hates them.

“It’s a blessing and a curse.”

Some patterns are in the goldilocks zone. Just the right size to be seen and noticed.

But there are so many patterns that are invisible. Either because they are too small, or far too big to see, or too random to understand.

There are probably entire subsections of science devoted to patterns. But I’m not aware of one as an all encompassing subject.

Yes, some people will instantly jump to mathematics. But I disagree. Perhaps it is because I’ve been burned by maths in the past. Or, because it is taught —usually— in such dull ways. But I barely even see mathematics as visual. And anything that purports to be looking into patterns has to focus on all the senses.

Patterns are everywhere, not just in numerical or abstract forms.

Patterns are there when you cross a street, when the person who designed the street worked on a piece of paper, and when the paper, pen and desk in use were created. They are there when something has happened you cannot predict, and when you close your eyes at night. And whilst I’m sure there are some people that eat, breathe and sleep mathematics…

It just doesn’t feel like it captures that entire majesty.

Perhaps I’m talking nonsense. I invariably am. But… patterns are something my brain spends far too long thinking about. Up until the point I get worried and stop it thinking about them, because my thinking is definitely prone to tumbling down a rabbit hole or two.

You might notice this in reading TEOWAD (when I finally get it galvanised and shipped). You might not. But one thing is true, a pattern is there whether the observer saw it or not.

Or, is it?

This may be where you decide my recount goes into the realms of the never-was, the place where people who invent the turtles further down end up. But I’ve always felt that some patterns, like atoms and particles, have an effect on their surrounds, to induce other patterns, and even anti patterns.

‘Anti patterns’ seems like the wrong word. It sounds like it has been stolen from elsewhere. But it is the same if I use dark patterns.

What I mean is how a pattern can cause an interference with something to create a new pattern in something else, either one that mimics or is its antithesis.

And perhaps there are more inverted patterns than normal ones.

Is that just a feature of our universe?

Is that why we have all the things we have?

Why complexity arises from simplicity?

Because we are on the exact right “wavelength” for so much interaction between different things?

Probably.

We seem to live in a pattern cascade.

That notion is likely similar to the argument people have for our universe having the exact right meta configuration to exist in the way that it does.

But then you’ll have those other, awkward people, who remind us that the shape of the puddle is precisely because of the massively weird footprint laying in the ground.

I don’t even know where I’m going with this.

There isn’t anything useful to be found here.

Just a strange perspective trying to make sense of more perspectives than it can count.

If you were to chase down all the patterns, you would truly go mad. You might even start inventing patterns where there are none. That is clearly what happens when people descend into mental illness. So, in these maddening thoughts, I have to be careful.

Perhaps that is what reality is about? Discovering ALL THE PATTERNS?!

(Ed: hmmm….)

What really throws my mind is that the thought of thinking these particular thrumblings ends up creating different patterns within the very structure of my brain. And whether that leads to whole worlds of other patterns that could be interpreted as entirely new things —rather than the thing that inspired them.

Confused yet? I know I am.

And I wonder why I get so many headaches…

But perhaps this rambling will help people understand where I was going with ‘The Eighth Configuration’ series.

Or, perhaps it won’t.

There are no dragons to be found here.

Only Giggaraffes and Hawkfins. Inventions that have been combined, fused and twisted from too many other tessellated ideas, spiralled and spun from half thought notions and hard won investigations into our own chaos inducing reality.

Will we ever escape this mad idea of a monkey adventure?

No idea, the main thing to take away is that whatever we do, however many patterns we cause, they need to be balanced. We exist within a band of improbability. Push too far either way and it could be annihilation.

Maybe —if that happens— we end up as telling lines against a wall in somebody else’s experiment?

However…