THE SOCIETY OF FRIENDLY NUMBERS
Are Numbers the Cause of All Human Problems?
GEORGE WILSON ADAMS CPA MBA
April 6, 2021
Trouble Begins
Once upon a time there was a Society of Friendly Numbers, a Maine non-profit organization that truly believed that unfriendly numbers were the primary source of human misery and grief. Members of the Society were certain that language creates reality. The number one goal of the Society was to persuade every government in the world to ban unfriendly numbers. Given their belief that language creates reality, it is logical that a universal ban on unfriendly numbers would inevitably lead to global happiness, peace and prosperity.
Members of the Society targeted many unfriendly and potentially threatening numbers including age, weight, height, cholesterol levels, annual income, IQ, test scores, FBI crime statistics, performance reports, the number of women murdered by Muslim radicals in Stockholm, Sweden yesterday, etc. By deleting unfriendly numbers and replacing them with friendly numbers, members of the Society were sure they would improve living conditions for everyone, and fulfill their benevolent mission to help all of humanity.
They also firmly believed that by banning unfriendly numbers they would eliminate systematic discrimination and abuse of various social groups who were judged by various specific numbers. The Society of Friendly Numbers wanted to impose democracy on arithmetic because they were certain it is impossible for billions of people to be wrong. "People are more important than numbers" was their motto.
Who would dare to oppose banning all unfriendly numbers?
It so happened that the Society used the services of a local accountant to prepare their annual tax returns. The accountant was not a member of the Society, and did not hide his complete disagreement with the views of its members. The accountant argued that there was something called Objective Reality: physical facts that exist completely independent of language, belief and wishful thinking. But all the members of the Society profoundly disagreed with the accountant. However, they continued to use his annual tax preparation services because the amount of his bill was a friendly number.
Then one day the Board of Directors of the Society approached the accountant with a special project. The accountant was renowned for his exceptional mathematical ability and the Board wanted the accountant to develop a systematic way of converting unfriendly numbers into friendly numbers.
The accountant was very unhappy with this project, and warned the Board that tampering with numbers would destroy their validity, erase the valuable information about the real world reflected in all kinds of numbers, and falsify results. But the Board persisted, and offered the accountant a bonus if he could develop a system for converting unfriendly numbers into friendly numbers. Lured by the prospect of a nice bonus, the accountant grudgingly accepted the assignment and went to work.
One month later the accountant announced that he had found a way to translate unfriendly numbers into friendly numbers without destroying key information expressed by a number. Inspired by the work of Rafael Bombelli and the development of imaginary numbers, the accountant perfected a system where every number would be assigned a translation factor. The product of any unfriendly real number multiplied by the translation factor would always be a friendly number.
Trouble Gets Worse
The Board was extremely pleased with the accountant's work and promptly paid him his bonus. The accountant was relieved to be done with this annoying project and resume his normal work. But a week later he received a call from another non-profit organization that heard about his success helping the Society of Friendly Numbers. This organization had their own special issue with numbers and they were convinced the accountant could help them.
They called themselves Anti-Zeroists, based on their sincere objection to the number zero on political, religious, moral and philosophical grounds. Anti-Zeroists refused to ever use the number zero for any reason. They never wrote the number zero for any purpose, and used scissors to physically remove the word "zero" from their dictionaries. They never spoke the word "zero" out loud and never called anyone a zero (even if he was.) Merely to think of the number zero was a Thought-crime subject to punishment (unless it was preceded by the word "anti".)
But the Anti-Zeroists were experiencing significant financial difficulties, including overdrawing their bank account on a regular basis, and problems with the IRS regarding their tax returns (which never contained the number zero.) Several lawsuits had been filed against the Anti- Zeroists, and state and federal officials were threatening them with severe legal action.
The Anti-Zeroists begged the accountant to help them out, and offered him a very large bonus (the amount of which did not contain any zeroes.) Tax returns filed by the Anti-Zeroists used Roman Numerals, a system of mathematical notation that did not contain the offensive number zero. But the IRS refused to process returns using Roman Numerals.
Once again the accountant struggled with his conscience and fought against his primary impulse to stay away from the Anti-Zeroists and not get entangled in their many problems. He told the Board of Directors of the Anti-Zeroists that he did not want to get involved.
The Board considered trying to find someone else to help them. But the fame and skill of the accountant were known far and wide, and members of the Board doubted they could ever find someone else to assist them. They doubled the amount of the bonus offered to the accountant and merely asked him to develop a system they could use that would not contain the number zero.
Despite severe reservations, the accountant reluctantly agreed to accept this latest challenge, and develop a self-consistent system of mathematics that did not use the number zero. He reached far back to early work by Fibonacci, and developed a system of notation that replaced zero with the difference between two equal, non-zero constants. After a month of work he informed the Board of his success. They were extremely pleased with this achievement and promptly paid him his bonus.
The exhausted accountant began preparations for a very long vacation that would take him far away from trouble, aggravation, and annoyance. He looked forward to a lengthy stay at a five star beachfront hotel in Capetown, South Africa, where the weather was warm, the seafood was delicious, and the locally-produced wine splendid.
The Danger of Success
Before the accountant could escape on his dream vacation, word of his latest success spread far and wide. The Anti-Zeroists were so happy with the accountant's achievement that they referred him to some friends who were experiencing extreme difficulties. These friends called themselves Negativists because they objected to positive numbers of any kind on political, religious, moral and philosophical grounds. Negativists refused to use positive numbers, and always put a minus sign in front of any numbers they wrote down or spoke out-loud. They swore an oath to never use positive numbers.
Negativists were facing severe problems with the IRS and many members had been arrested and imprisoned for income tax evasion. The Board of Directors of the Negativists told the accountant that the IRS was persecuting them, and pleaded for his help. They were highly confident the accountant would find a way to rescue them from their current catastrophic situation.
It remains to be seen if the accountant would measure up to this latest challenge….
Pure mathematics is, in its way, the poetry of logical ideas.
Albert Einstein
Perfect numbers like perfect men are very rare.
Rene Descartes
If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is.
John von Neumann
George Adams
Certified Public Accountant Master of Business Administration
Tel: (207) 989-2700 E-Mail: GeorgeAdams@IntelligenceForRent.com
450 South Main Street: The HQ of IQ
Brewer, Maine 04412-2339
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