Cyphex

The subject everyone hated in school. The reason every billionaire got rich.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THIS IS THE WORLD RECORD NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

Forget speedrunning. Forget Rubik’s cubes. The real competition in math is building shapes with the most holes.

A polyhedron made entirely of regular polygon faces. No cheating. No curved surfaces. Just triangles, squares, pentagons locked together. With 291 tunnels running through it.

The shape is called “Squilliams.” It broke a record that has been traded back and forth between obsessed geometers since the 1970s.

The previous record was 87. Someone nearly tripled it. And mathematically there could be shapes with thousands of holes. Nobody has found the ceiling.

How is this not the most addictive math competition on earth?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@RomanKsl177812 Playbooks earning rewrites means the original framework was built to last.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THIS IS THE WORLD RECORD NOBODY TALKS ABOUT

Forget speedrunning. Forget Rubik’s cubes. The real competition in math is building shapes with the most holes.

A polyhedron made entirely of regular polygon faces. No cheating. No curved surfaces. Just triangles, squares, pentagons locked together. With 291 tunnels running through it.

The shape is called “Squilliams.” It broke a record that has been traded back and forth between obsessed geometers since the 1970s.

The previous record was 87. Someone nearly tripled it. And mathematically there could be shapes with thousands of holes. Nobody has found the ceiling.

How is this not the most addictive math competition on earth?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THE CREATOR OF 3BLUE1BROWN JUST SAID SOMETHING THAT SHOULD TERRIFY EVERY MATHEMATICIAN

AI solved the Navier-Stokes problem in 88 hours. A problem that humans couldn’t crack for 90 years.

Grant Sanderson looked at this and said something nobody expected. The proof doesn’t matter.

Not because it’s wrong. Because nobody understands it. He calls every AI proof “an unsolved exposition problem.” The machine can prove it. But it can’t show you WHY it’s true.

His argument is wild. Proofs were never the point. They were a proxy for understanding. And now that machines do proofs faster than us, math needs to celebrate something else entirely.

Motivated explanations. Showing how a result COULD have been found. That’s where humans still win.

3Blue1Brown just told mathematicians they need to become art curators. What does a mathematician even do when AI handles the proofs?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Marikk01_ Exposition problems hiding inside solved proofs in the new frontier of math.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THE CREATOR OF 3BLUE1BROWN JUST SAID SOMETHING THAT SHOULD TERRIFY EVERY MATHEMATICIAN

AI solved the Navier-Stokes problem in 88 hours. A problem that humans couldn’t crack for 90 years.

Grant Sanderson looked at this and said something nobody expected. The proof doesn’t matter.

Not because it’s wrong. Because nobody understands it. He calls every AI proof “an unsolved exposition problem.” The machine can prove it. But it can’t show you WHY it’s true.

His argument is wild. Proofs were never the point. They were a proxy for understanding. And now that machines do proofs faster than us, math needs to celebrate something else entirely.

Motivated explanations. Showing how a result COULD have been found. That’s where humans still win.

3Blue1Brown just told mathematicians they need to become art curators. What does a mathematician even do when AI handles the proofs?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Gustav4422192 Solving it faster than anyone could verify is the most intimidating flex in scientific history.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Marikk01_ Missing this at 16 when it was right there the whole time is genuinely painful.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

QUANTUM PHYSICS DOESN’T PROVE THE UNIVERSE IS RANDOM. IT PROVES THE OPPOSITE

Everyone thinks quantum mechanics means “everything is random.” Edward Frenkel says that’s completely wrong.

He grabbed a marker and drew two vectors on a piece of paper. V1 and V2. Then he showed how any vector is just a combination of basis vectors.

Here’s where it gets wild. In quantum mechanics, the particle doesn’t decide what it is. YOU do. By choosing your basis. By choosing how to measure it.

The electron isn’t random. It’s waiting for you to define the question.

Frenkel calls this free will hiding inside mathematics. The universe isn’t rolling dice. It’s asking you to pick the coordinate system.

Same particle. Same equations. Different basis. Completely different reality.

A UC Berkeley professor just used 10th grade linear algebra to rewrite the free will debate. What basis are you using to measure your own life?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

QUANTUM PHYSICS DOESN’T PROVE THE UNIVERSE IS RANDOM. IT PROVES THE OPPOSITE

Everyone thinks quantum mechanics means “everything is random.” Edward Frenkel says that’s completely wrong.

He grabbed a marker and drew two vectors on a piece of paper. V1 and V2. Then he showed how any vector is just a combination of basis vectors.

Here’s where it gets wild. In quantum mechanics, the particle doesn’t decide what it is. YOU do. By choosing your basis. By choosing how to measure it.

The electron isn’t random. It’s waiting for you to define the question.

Frenkel calls this free will hiding inside mathematics. The universe isn’t rolling dice. It’s asking you to pick the coordinate system.

Same particle. Same equations. Different basis. Completely different reality.

A UC Berkeley professor just used 10th grade linear algebra to rewrite the free will debate. What basis are you using to measure your own life?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Gustav4422192 Universe politely requesting your math preferences is the most elegant framing of coordinates ever.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Marikk01_ Kindergaten games hiding degree 71 polynomials is math being quietly terrifying.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

A MATHEMATICIAN TURNED A CHILDREN’S GAME INTO ONE OF THE STRANGEST DISCOVERIES IN MATH

Start with 1. Now say what you see. “One 1.” Write 11. Say what you see again. “Two 1s.” Write 21.

John Conway kept going. 1211. 111221. 312211. The numbers get longer and uglier every step.

Then he noticed something nobody expected. Every single one of these sequences grows at exactly the same rate. Every time. No matter what number you start with.

The ratio? 1.303577269... A constant nobody asked for, hiding inside a children’s counting game.

But Conway wasn’t done. He proved that every look and say sequence breaks into exactly 92 building blocks. Not 91. Not 93. Exactly 92.

The same number as naturally occurring chemical elements. So he named them after the elements. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium. All 92.

A pattern a five year old can generate contains a periodic table nobody knew existed. What’s the simplest thing you’ve seen that turned out to be absurdly deep?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

A MATHEMATICIAN TURNED A CHILDREN’S GAME INTO ONE OF THE STRANGEST DISCOVERIES IN MATH

Start with 1. Now say what you see. “One 1.” Write 11. Say what you see again. “Two 1s.” Write 21.

John Conway kept going. 1211. 111221. 312211. The numbers get longer and uglier every step.

Then he noticed something nobody expected. Every single one of these sequences grows at exactly the same rate. Every time. No matter what number you start with.

The ratio? 1.303577269... A constant nobody asked for, hiding inside a children’s counting game.

But Conway wasn’t done. He proved that every look and say sequence breaks into exactly 92 building blocks. Not 91. Not 93. Exactly 92.

The same number as naturally occurring chemical elements. So he named them after the elements. Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium. All 92.

A pattern a five year old can generate contains a periodic table nobody knew existed. What’s the simplest thing you’ve seen that turned out to be absurdly deep?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@EarnNeon Weirder than Fibonacci is a bar very few mathematical patterns can clear.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Gustav4422192 Element naming making math feel like alchemy is the most Conway thing imaginable.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

@Marikk01_ Fifty dollar prizes motivating breakthroughs that changed entire fields is beautifully absurd.

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THE MOST FAMOUS GAME IN MATHEMATICS WAS CREATED BY A MAN WHO HATED IT

John Conway wanted to be remembered for surreal numbers. For the Monster group. For contributions that took decades to understand.

Instead the world remembers him for stones on a kitchen grid.

Three rules. Birth, overcrowding, isolation. That’s the entire Game of Life.

And it accidentally proved something enormous. Those 3 rules are enough to simulate any computer ever built. Any program ever written.

Conway couldn’t walk into a math department without someone asking about it. His other work, the stuff he actually cared about, got buried.

He called it a “monster” that ate his reputation.

Imagine creating something so powerful it overshadows everything else you’ll ever do. And you made it in an afternoon.

Would you be grateful or furious?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

THE MOST FAMOUS GAME IN MATHEMATICS WAS CREATED BY A MAN WHO HATED IT

John Conway wanted to be remembered for surreal numbers. For the Monster group. For contributions that took decades to understand.

Instead the world remembers him for stones on a kitchen grid.

Three rules. Birth, overcrowding, isolation. That’s the entire Game of Life.

And it accidentally proved something enormous. Those 3 rules are enough to simulate any computer ever built. Any program ever written.

Conway couldn’t walk into a math department without someone asking about it. His other work, the stuff he actually cared about, got buried.

He called it a “monster” that ate his reputation.

Imagine creating something so powerful it overshadows everything else you’ll ever do. And you made it in an afternoon.

Would you be grateful or furious?

[Cyphex @Cyphexg]

ONE EQUATION CONTROLS YOUR COFFEE, YOUR CLIMATE, AND YOUR PHONE BATTERY

The Heat Equation. Written in 1822. Still runs modern engineering.

du/dt = d²u/dx²

Seven symbols. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.

It tells you how heat spreads through any material. How fast your coffee cools. How engineers design CPUs that don’t melt. How climate models predict ocean temperatures.

Joseph Fourier wrote it 200 years ago and we still can’t improve it. We just got better at solving it.

Gilbert Strang derives the whole solution on a chalkboard in under 4 minutes. No computer needed.

Name another 200 year old equation that still ships products today.