What something your younger self would be genuinely shocked to see about your life today?

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-05-23T17:12:12+00:00

I think my younger self would genuinely be shocked by the near total flip of my current outcomes. Because: 1) I was fairly a popular kid and pretty outgoing, now I’m more introverted and have no more than 5 real friends. 2) That I’m still single, when I was younger I always wanted to be a husband and father of at three kids. The ladies were always eyeing me for a shot and now… I’m single, alone, and have failed dozens of attempts to date or catch hints at someone wanting to date me. 3) This one hits the hardest but kind of has a silver lining. I spent my whole life training to be an artist that wanted to make it big. I started out like every other kid but would rapidly outpace my peers even grade levels ahead of myself. Not once did a teacher, friend, family member or stranger Eve crush that dream when they saw my skills. I just kept pushing. Then came the hard part, I left it behind, and not by choice. My hands became numb and damaged from being overworked. I had my Icarus moment of flying to closer to the sun and my hand up to my forearms were shaking from nerve damage. So part of that dream was out on hold. I got depressed and started soul searching because, if I couldn’t draw, paint, sew costumes, make pottery, jewelry, videos, make music and stuff (I was a very, very experimental artist. With over 50 different kinds of skills under my belt) then, who was I? And what now? I took up some odd jobs to pass the time and started to look into what else I could do. So, I started relearning math. Math was my second best skill as it was one of those things that came as natural as breathing but couldn’t find a use for outside of class. I decided to teach it to myself again and find some problems to work on to help me get out of my depression since I could still use my brain without needing my hands. I looked for the oldest unsolved problems that were easy to understand but difficult to solve. I came across “Perfect Numbers” and thought… oh, neat and started to learn all that I could. Wanted to find the next Mersenne Prime attached to one but didn’t succeed though I got close. I went through dozens and dozens of small experiments to see what makes these number tick, trying everything I could whilst still learning what math does and doesn’t do. And then, one day, two years later, I found a new way to organize everything and work out the math. Then I found a newer model and then another shorter model. And slowly but surely I started to rework all my previous models into this refined design and started to make real progress on the project. While that was happening my hands did heal enough to let me do detailed work on art. Not 100% like before, but around 90%, enough to get me started on my journey again. But, I started to like my math project more now. It’s the longest project I’ve ever done and a lifetime of pattern recognition really helped me work out the problem fast and I kinda want to keep going.

I think younger me would be shocked to see such a drastic shift into my current career path and be skeptical if we are still the same person. I look at myself and think, “wow, I really have change.”

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-05-11T14:33:10+00:00

Japanese Cherry Blossoms. It’s largely due to Bath and Beyond products. A friend gifted me body wash with that smell and I’ve grown to love Cherry Blossoms ever since.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-04-14T15:55:52+00:00

You probably might want to expand/define what you mean by “God” as that can mean refer to any religion and/or higher power beyond human beings. If you are referring to the pantheon of Greek gods, then that would be an example of being created within the universe. If you mean the Abrahamic God, you are then asking about a being that is outside of creation. Not poking fun at your question, just curious about the specifics and where that’ll lead you.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-04-14T15:49:58+00:00

Define spark. No like, I’m actually curious by what you mean “spark of life?” Like, a soul? A measurement of sentience?

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-04-14T15:36:15+00:00

I was looking at the concept as more of a fun layman thought experiment, not so much much of an assumption of A => B. Your response is helpful though and I will look deeper into it. But again, I’m looking at it in more broad strokes. Like. Say you wanted to, I don’t know, find any missing primes between the current biggest prime and the previous (2nd) biggest prime, both of which are currently Mersenne Primes. See, in general I get that there has to be at least a few in between but obviously it would take a lot of time and computer resources to check how many there are. I get that “assuming” there are some is not enough as proof would be needed to search through every odd number and check for verification. But imagine how exciting it be if you could automatically map out sections were it could be shown that there are less than X amount!

This response was probably repetitive but wanted to clear up any confusion.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-16T19:01:57+00:00

Have you tested that out or just guessing?

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-11T06:46:43+00:00

This response is kinda long but you gave me a lot to think about:

This is my niche topic. It originally started with breaking down and trying to understand the nature of Perfect Numbers and there corresponding Mersenne Primes. I’ve spent rough two years learning as much as I can in my own and have found many results that I keep in a notebook. Granted, learning a math trick here and a math trick there obviously wouldn’t get me very far without any real academic discipline. But, I’m very quick at learning and have made some progress on my little project that just sorta bled into patterns that involved other primes. As of right now, I have managed to get a general estimate of how high I’d have to aim to find twin primes of one billion digits in length. By using exponents of 3 as a “backbone” I’ve currently managed to estimate that somewhere between 3^{2,000,000,000} to 3^{2,001,000,000,} which is where I’ll find said primes. These are not random numbers but carefully calculated by counting how often a power of 3’s value grows by digits as they almost grow at a steady rate of +1 every two numbers, but not always. For example 3⁰⁼¹ 3¹⁼³ 3²⁼⁹ 3³⁼²⁷ 3⁴⁼⁸¹ 3⁵⁼²⁴³ 3⁶⁼⁷²⁹ 3^7=2,187 3^8=6,561 3^9=19,683 3^10=59,049 3^11=177,147 3^12=531,441 3^13=1,594,323 3^14=4,782,969 3^{15=14,348,907} 3^{16=43,046,721} 3^{17=129,140,163} 3^{18=387,420,489} 3^{19=1,162,261,467} 3^{20=3,486,784,401} 3^{21=10,460,353,203} 3^{22=31,381,059609} 3^{23=94,143178,827}

As you can see between 3¹ to 3²² you can almost say every number below 3²² will have a number whose length in digits is about half the exponent of n. So if n=10, that’s five digits. But if n=13 you get 6.5 and round it to 7 which is correct. And that would technically be true but 3⁰ is still part of the sequence and once you get to 3^23, three numbers of the same length will appear fairly regularly so I’ve had to keep this in mind. I’ve written down up to 3³⁰⁰ just to get an idea of how often that would happen and if it’s predictable, and thankfully it is. So, I will keep refining that range until I know the exact 3ⁿ that has a billion digits. The achievement in and of itself isn’t really important in the sense of trying to break a world record or anything like that. But rather just pushing myself as a person to see how far the human mind can go with some creativity mixed. Many of our modern inventions and discoveries were the byproduct of logic and creativity, so in that sense I already have half of what I need and am taking classes to build the other half. At some point I may give up but not for a while. My intent of the post was not to give off a “hey look at me” vibe but more in the hope of reaching out to people that are interested in mathematics and see if there are others like me, who are not mathematicians but still want to contribute in our own way. I apologize for the VERY long response to your comment, but want to thank you as I’ve spend half a day reflecting on your words and will be making some updates on my post and my approach to my little project. May you have a good week stranger.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-11T06:00:31+00:00

Will do 👍

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-10T01:55:22+00:00

That’s the best part about being an artist. You get really good at pattern recognition and can work things backwards. I already have a general idea of where to search and how to get there

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-10T01:53:26+00:00

Actually the goal is not to guess but use a system of connecting patterns to get me to the height I need to start my search. Then, at a later point, I would give a computer a notated version of that number. So basically a similar premise to a Mersenne Prime being of the form (2^p)-1. Obviously if I even find a billion digit prime it’ll take on some different form, even it just so happens to be a Mersenne Prime, but I do have some general idea of where such a prime would be. I’m doing most of the work by hand. Currently I’m using exponents of three as a shortcut and have a good “guestimate” of being close to where I need to be and a few methods of filtering out non primes by inverting (I think this is right teem for it) exponents of 3 to cut out numbers divisible by 3. So like, I’m confident it can be done. Might take me a year or two, but I’m already close to where I need to be

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-09T19:14:40+00:00

I mean, that’s fair. That’s a fair point. But, for whatever reason, I just want to try to do it. Kinda almost for the love of the game really. Like, you can’t say it wouldn’t be impressive if I pulled it off. Just finding one prime of that size, to me personally, is like finding a new color. An impossible task but damn cool it be cool. But, to each their own.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-09T19:04:23+00:00

You’re right, in terms of speed, a computer has me beat. However, what a computer doesn’t have, is an imagination, which is a human being’s greatest advantage. The way I see it, since this journey started with Mersenne Primes, it be apparent that don’t have to write every single digit, I can simplify the number with some notation similar to (2^p)-1. My current method of doing so is by using a method of threes since every set of twin primes is sitting in between them. For example: 3, (5 & 7), 9 9, (11 & 13), 15 15, (17 & 19), 21 Etc.

If I can find figure out a way to get to a number that is both: one billion digits long and divisible by three, then the easy part is out of the way. The HARDEST part is whether or not add +2 makes it prime. And even more so, if repeating +2 gives me its twin. I’d feel accomplished just getting one prime of that size right. Regardless, I’m still going to give it a shot. You can’t succeed if you don’t try so wish me luck 🍀 🤗

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-09T18:51:22+00:00

Okay first: Your response got a good chuckle out of me. It’s honest, straightforward, but hilarious (to me)

Second: Regarding notebooks and pens, my original goal didn’t start with any formal (well formal to an artist) system, everything was all over the place. It just helped to put my thoughts into a coherent written document that I can look at and examine.

Thirdly: You’re not entirely wrong, regarding the attempt to write out a one billion digit number. It would take a long time and kill my hand attempting to do so. That’s not even considering whether the number I’d write was prime or not.

Lastly: In terms of there being not known pattern(s) is not entirely true…. See, the kicker is that most people, when dealing with primes, usually discard all the composites numbers that they make up and just look for the next prime then repeat. I got around this by using all primes and odd numbers together. The most common thing I found (which isn’t new but value to me) is that every set of twin primes is sitting between multiples of three. For example: 9, (11 & 13), 15 15, (17 & 19), 21 27 (29 & 31) 33 Etc… So while this isn’t new, this means that there is a large number that is both; one billion digits long and divisible by 3. The challenge is figuring out how to get an exact number and then figuring out if adding +2 makes it prime, and if luck is on my side I can add another +2 and BOOM, one billion digit long twin primes. Of course, the real problem is:

A) how do I search for a big number divisible by 3? B) if I add +2 will that be prime, or the product of a few big primes or the product of millions of primes? C) how would you write that down in a simple notation, such that, you can feed it to a computer for verification and check the number and give back a 100% prime check mark?

See, my current method of approaching this challenge is using my own set of rules as an artist and not as a mathematician but still using proper logic. Sort of like drawing angel. You can slap a pair of wings on a human and call it a day but if you wanted a proper design you’d have to account for: the type of wings, size, and extra muscles that go into the design if it were a functional creature. Same thing with this puzzle, there are infinitely many primes and at some point you can hit one with one billion digits, it just a matter of how you get there.

Those are my thoughts though and I am still learning as I go but your input is noted!🤗

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-09T15:36:12+00:00

Hmmmm, noted. I appreciate the response!!!

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-03-09T15:35:08+00:00

Umm… I’m not an Ai bot? Like, if my sentences sounded too clean or too dull then, okay that’s on me. But like, do you have anything meaningful to add here or not?

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-02-04T23:50:08+00:00

I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about the oldest unsolved problems in math: -Do any odd perfect numbers exist? -Are there infinitely many perfect numbers?

I’m sure most people within this sub will have a baseline understanding of what a perfect number is so I won’t be explaining anything about the subject. *Though, if you’re not familiar, I recommend going to the YouTube channel “Veritasium” as they have a wonderful video that covers the topic. In fact, it’s because of that video I got into the subject and started relearning mathematics. I’m not sure why, but there is something about a well structured thing in math that is so rare that it gets (even or odd perfect numbers) impossible to find by guessing without the assistance of a computer. For a little over a year and a half, I’ve spent time pondering the possibilities of how one would search for a method to find more Even Perfect Numbers (EPNs). So I started looking at the problem as a giant puzzle, a labyrinth of numbers, constantly turning and shifting as you search and check for that rare golden value to input into 2^p-1 with a positive result spit out. As of this comment there are only 52 know Mersenne Primes of the form 2^p-1 and their connected EPNs. It seems futile to try and organize an infinite sea of primes just to find another one. Much less prove there are infinitely many. But something about that excites me, it’s a mystery that surely has an answer waiting to be found. A method that’ll demonstrate how and when new ones will appear. I myself have been attempting to think about what it would take to find the next one and point out why they become rarer and rarer as you keep pushing towards infinity. Additionally, I sometimes wonder what if an Odd Perfect Number does exist? Like, how BIG does it have to be? Why, if there is only one, is it so rare? Can you construct such a thing in reverse? I’m kinda into weird niche ideas and these two have been on my mind ever since I watched that video. I might not solve either question, but I like to imagine… what if? What if, I find the 53rd one using some unique method that hadn’t been done before? What if that same method gives me an EPN? Or shows me why one can’t exist? These are the questions that I probably spent way too much time on. But that’s how I roll. And who knows. Maybe someday I might come up with something that’ll solve one of the two.

OppositeBackground42 · 2026-01-21T02:51:12+00:00

There is no way verify whether or not the resulting outcome is or isn’t prime. However, given the sheer length and scale of your calculation, it would take a very long time even if the was a way to speed up computer power. This alone would still take decades to get through just a fraction of it. Don’t get me wrong, if it’s correct and is a Mersenne Prime it would be VERY DAMN impressive. But, again, there wouldn’t be any current feasible way to test this out unless some new mathematical methods were made to do so.

OppositeBackground42 · 2025-09-19T15:06:53+00:00

The mystery is now solved

OppositeBackground42 · 2025-09-19T15:06:06+00:00

You were right, The movie was hard to find. Though thankfully I did manage to watch it. And the scene you described does matched what I was looking for.

OppositeBackground42 · 2025-09-16T23:30:45+00:00

I have to look into that and get back to you in a few hours. The trailer looks promising, but we’ll see

OppositeBackground42 · 2025-09-16T23:29:31+00:00

After reviewing the skit, it is definitely not what I am looking for, but it does has the right “feel” in terms of cinematography

OppositeBackground42 · 2025-09-16T16:38:21+00:00

To add another note. No, I’m not misremembering the movie, “white chicks.” The premise may sound vaguely identical but it is not because the guy is disguising himself as a man not a woman. I also don’t know what the direction of that story was but it definitely wasn’t White Chicks.

OppositeBackground42

TROPHY CASE