This really is a brilliant movie! Watching the movie reminds me of the novel "John Christopher" that I read before. At that time, I thought the novel was amazing, that is, it showed the life of a great musician. But unfortunately it is too verbose. And this "Death Code", it should be said that it is very rare to show the life of a mathematician, and the plot is compact and the rhythm is fast.
It is also equipped with a powerful talent for the protagonist Marcos, and then put it into a huge vortex, so that we can feel the danger and struggle of the protagonist "a small boat haunts the storm". Marcos, since an adventure at the age of six (looking directly at the sun, almost blind, and the sequelae of frequent headaches), has actually opened up the second vein of the governor and turned into a calculator, giving him a random set of numbers. He can come up with answers quickly (his calculation method is obviously mechanical. The little neighbor asks him: what is 73 divided by 22? He will 3.3181818... 18 all the way down). Moreover, the inherent mathematical talent has also emerged. In the words of his teacher: You are my most proud student. You published a paper at the age of 16 and received a doctorate at the age of 20. With such a legendary beginning, it's natural to get out of hand.
What I appreciate is that the following is not only an artist's imagination (if the director and screenwriter are also an artist), but also the conception and expression that conform to our imagination of a mathematician.
First: the philosophical foundation of mathematicians: everything is a number! Everything is a law, and mathematics is a law within a law. So mathematics is the core of how society works and the key to how the universe works.
Marcos' worldview is very simple:
restate my assumptions
1: Mathematics is the language of nature.
2: Everything around us can be expressed numerically.
3: Use pictures to describe systems represented by numbers, and patterns can be found.
So, there are patterns everywhere in nature.
Proof: cycles of infectious diseases; changes in the number of reindeer; sunspot cycles; the ebb and flow of the Nile...
So, are there patterns in the stock market? This digital system that represents the global economy is an organism, a natural organism that contains countless pairs of working hands, countless thinking brains, and a noisy living body with a huge network. My hypothesis is that in the stock market there is a pattern behind the numbers...
As shown in the film, the stock market is a complex system that can be said to change rapidly. Since ancient times, the financial giants of Wall Street have spent a lot of money to find the inevitable 1% chance of winning. Therefore, they attach great importance to the mathematical genius of the protagonist, not to mention that Marcos just happened to study the stock market. And it's not just the financial juggernaut that has his sights set on him, but the mysterious religious organization Kebra (because they believe: the Talmud tells us that when the temple was burned, the archbishop walked into the flames. It brought the key to the The roof, heaven opens and receives the key from the outstretched hand of the archbishop. We have been looking for the key ever since. And this key is the "string of numbers" in the protagonist's head).
Secondly, searching for laws is what a real mathematician should do. Of course, this often means rushing to the top of human thinking, trying to break through the limits and spy on the secrets of heaven. Therefore, its hardship and effort can be imagined.
On the one hand, Marcos relied on the "chip" of the financial group (the original chip had no fan to dissipate heat, no water cooling system to dissipate heat, and it was suspended by a few wires) to calculate his own guesses. On the other hand, Marcos also relies on the inspiration of the Jewish Cohen, who, as a believer of a religious organization, has some research on the mathematical decryption behind the religious classics:
Ancient Jews used Hebrew for their number system. Each letter is a number, A in Hebrew, Aleph is 1. B, Beta is 2. do you understand? But see, numbers are correlated. For example the Hebrew father ab. Aleph, Bet, 1 plus 2 equals 3. mother, haim. Aleph, Mem, 1 plus 40 equals 41, 3 and 41 equals 44. Right? Now, look at the Hebrew word for "child." Mother, father, child, Yelev. That's 10, 30 and 4, 44. The Law itself is a long list of numbers, and some say it is God's code for us. Of course, the "number" at the end of this text reminds Marcos of numbers in nature - Fibonacci was an Italian mathematician in the 13th century, and if you divide 233 from 144, the result is Theta. Theta represents the Greek letter for the golden ratio, which is the golden spiral. That's like the sequence you find in nature, like the flower disk of a sunflower. As long as there is a helix. So there is mathematics everywhere.
In fact, all of these cases have been read by math enthusiasts, but the screenwriters have collected them and placed them here, and they are obviously more connected. Why is Marcos so persistent in the end, because he seems to be only one step away from God and the truth.
But on the other hand, the financial group has been monitoring Marcos, and Cohen is actually a mysterious religious faction to induce or even kidnap Marcos. So much so that Marcos kept a distance from the neighbor girl who had always loved him deeply and paid for him silently, fearing that she was just a "spy". Marcos was outraged by the surveillance, not because of human rights, but because he felt that all (including love) had seriously interfered with his work. For him, money is not important, the key is to find the answer.
And Marcos not only comes from outside distractions, but also from inside headaches. He had frequent headaches, and the medicine stones were ineffective, and he even tried hallucinogens, which caused him to experience some hallucinations frequently. These hallucinations not only affect his health, but also threaten his life (for example, in the film, he is on the road at first, touching a living brain, but later he is going to cut open the brain to take out something. In the end, he even pick up a drill and point it at his own brain).
Saul, Marcos' mentor, has been discouraging him, not to work around the clock, sleepless nights, ignoring all work, not to be too persistent, to relax (also used the case of Archimedes taking a bath to discover density), and even advised him to find his own Emotional home. However, in Marcos' eyes, Saul died some time after he stopped working on pi, not because of a stroke, but because he stopped working. When he is so close to the earth essence of pi.
In the end, the process of searching for the truth is very bumpy, but the problem is not that the truth cannot be found, but that human beings are always "a little" away from the truth. Just like the expression about love: the furthest distance in the world is that I am in front of you, but you don't know that I love you.
"I've spent 40 years exploring patterns in pi, and I've found nothing," Saul said. Something I found...but not a pattern. It is obvious that Saul once, like Marcos, discovered the "key" consisting of 216 numbers by accident through computer operations while exploring pi. Sol didn't pay attention at first, and Marcos threw it for the first time, but after hearing that the teacher had reached a consistent conclusion, he was fascinated by the group numbers, and even got it from the computer again later (it seems very simple, but it is actually very simple. Difficult. Because the strategy of each operation is different, there are many, many detailed steps, and each step may change the outcome. We should have such an experience when doing math problems in middle school). So, Marcos continued to study, even asking people on Wall Street to supply him with only chips and food, and shut himself in his room to study. The problem is that Marcos didn't finally find the answer, even though he thought that the string of numbers was ready to come out, but when he got it again, he couldn't get it from the string of numbers (my understanding, from the stock market, or even the larger system. A simplified string of numbers, simply put, is to find out the key in the universe) and process it out of the law. It's like a math problem in primary and secondary schools, which always gives a string of numbers, and then asks you to guess which number should be in a certain space. Sometimes we can get a clear answer, but sometimes we can't because the laws involved are too complex. After all, our understanding of numbers is limited, and there may be too many hidden laws (although humans have even found some “idiot laws” that seem to have no solution, but they can still be distinguished), but the sequence of 216 numbers, to find The rules are too hard. Marcos, maybe one step closer to the truth than Thor, even said that he discovered the sequence of truth (this is the greatness of the movie, human beings have not been able to find such a sequence so far, which is an extraordinary imagination), but he But the truth itself cannot be found.
The movie chose π as the title, which is very interesting. Just like I like n because it can be any integer, x can replace any number, pi is just a number, but this number is an infinite number. The simple and orderly graphics behind the numbers, as the film says? We see the simplicity of the circle, but also the endless complexity of pi, 3.14 and beyond. In fact, even if we discover the sequence of truth, and even discover the law behind the sequence of truth, it becomes a simple and beautiful formula. We will also eventually discover that this formula only reveals the tip of the truth. Because truth is like π, it creates a perfect circle, but it itself is infinite, no matter with the brain and hand, with traditional computers, or even with biological computers, quantum computers, we can find more "accidental" laws ( For example, things like 00000, 11111 will appear behind the pi), but we can't see all of them.
Ultimately, Marcos, after some ups and downs, he stagnated at the reach of his talent. He took the drill to the brain and he became a normal person, he could no longer work out any numbers in his head. Maybe, wait until the next genius, experience a more terrifying blurred inversion, and then continue his work, approaching the truth once again! 18.5.11
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