Today I wrote down 7 elements in a to be written children’s story inspired by the spirit of Alice in Wonderland.

One of the seven was “scary numbers.” This just popped into my head?!?

How can numbers be good storytelling?

Scary Numbers In Severence

In the tv show severence, people have their personalities split between work and not at work. Work personalities don’t know what happens outside of work and vice versa. Theoretically, this is because the work is too important and top secret to let out.

The main characters, members of the macro data refinement team, look at a grid of moving numbers all day and put the scary numbers in a bin.

This is what I mean by scary numbers.

Numerical Grids

When I think of a numerical grid I can think of excel. Excel is not exciting.

There are also magic squares. Magic squares. Magic squares are a grid of numbers where the sum of the numbers in any horizontal, vertical or main diagonal line is the same number.

There is a history of different magic squares associated with planets. Drawing lines between each number in order crates glyphs associated with each planet.

So we can create meaning from grids of numbers.

Artificial intelligence

The other thing that comes to mind when I see a grid of numbers is AI. In AI we call this grid a “matrix.” In AI a matrix can relate to a list of weights for particular attributes. Like 10% probability for red hair,20% for blond, and 30% blue eyes, 40% brown eyes - could be represented as two lines of numbers the columns representing hair and eyes and the rows the different probabilities.

When I think about something like deep dream- googles visual ai project - it is obvious that there is a step from a bunch of weights and attributes. We still get a story from a grid of numbers.

Even if it is imaginary it is real

Do numbers exist apart from human perception? Are they real? Do these questions even make sense?

I have been reading two philosophers this week that touch on this topic - Bernardo Kastorp and Markus Gabriel.

No matter the ontological status of numbers - imaginary events can still impact us. This is sort of the foundation of Freudian psychology.

So so scary numbers exist? If you find them scary than they do.

Fidelity and Resolution

Computer programming is a dance between resolution and fidelity. Drawing a sigil on a list of numbers is an increase of resolutions. Splitting the personality into work and home versions is a loss of fidelity.

Maybe finding emotions in numbers is how the severed employees connect with their non work (outie) selves.