Musings on 196

Take any number greater than two digits and add its palindrome. For example,

26 + 62

The answer will also be a palindrome.

26 + 62 = 88

Sometimes, you have to do the operation more than once:

48 + 84 = 132; 132 + 231 = 363

Sometimes, many times more than once.

59 + 95 = 154; 154 + 451 = 605; 605 + 506 = 1,111

The operation of adding palindromes has to be done twenty-four times for the number 89 to reach a palindrome.

But, consider this.

Do all numbers undergoing addition with their palindromes eventually wind up as palindromes?

Possibly not.

Numbers that may not eventually end up palindromic are known as Lychrel numbers. But Lychrel numbers have not yet been proven to exist; numbers that don’t quickly revert to palindromes when added to their palindromes are really candidates for the designation Lychrel number.

A clarification: Lychrel numbers have not been proven to exist in base 10; they have been proven in other bases, such as binary and hexadecimal.

The lowest candidate for Lychrel numberhood in base 10 is 196. The next two, going up, are 879 and 1,997.

Now, here’s a thought experiment. Or rather, the set-up to one:

Imagine yourself up one level of being. Not God, but something more powerful than a man. What a man is to an animal, you in your new self are now to man.

Imagine what new powers of reasoning you would have. Much greater than anything imaginable now, so I guess my command is a little self-defeatingly paradoxical. But, anyway, try to guess at what new intellectual capabilities you might now have.

For instance, I think I might have the capacity to move into another “higher” dimension. From this vantage point, I can look down upon that thing we call MATHEMATICS. I can see the whole gridwork our reality lies upon. Or within. Or analogous to. However it’s described, I can see it all as I “look” down upon it.

I bring my focus like a scalpel on the subject of Lychrel numbers. I can see how the pattern evolves, where it leads, how it twists and turns. I can see it because I can somehow transform this gridwork into more than just three spatial and one temporal dimensions. As many as I need until the pattern coagulates out of the mist. Then I have the ability to predict which numbers go Lychrel – if any indeed do.

Once envisioned, I have the ability to retain this information as I sink down back to the level of man. And I can teach man what I’ve learned, because though a man can’t teach an animal anything beyond the simplest of reward-punishment behaviors, can’t teach it to reason, I as a superior being can teach man to be over-rational. Supra-rational.

I wonder – can man alone bring about such a state of over-being? Meditation? Mind-altering drugs? A random knock on the head from a non-fatal accident? Or is this simply a case where an over-being needs to reach its “hand” down to “lift us up”? Did Einstein and Newton enter such realms without even knowing it?

Or will it simply and simplistically devolve down to developing a computer with enough chip power and space to grind out all the permutations 196 must go through to determine if its Lychrel or not?

Will we reach supra-being-hood before 196 is declared Lychrel?

My money is on the former.