How many spacial dimensions would you choose to live in?

[anderscolingustafson]

As this forum is about extra dimensions I was just curiose as to rather anyone on this forum would choose to live in more or less dimensions if they could. I am also curiose as to the reasons the people here will vote for the options they vote for and rather they would just want to live there for just a wile or if they would have rather been born in the number of dimensions they vote for in this pole.

[Keiji]

Four, because it makes so many things so much easier. You don't really need more than four.

[quickfur]

Why I voted for 4D:

• 4D has some very nice properties due to certain numerical alignments, such as the fact that 2*2 = 2+2 = 4.
• This particular alignment makes 4D the only dimension where the hypercube's radius is equal to its edge length, which in turn means that the triangle formed by a hypercube edge with its center is equilateral (below 4D, the triangle is a flat iscosceles; above 4D, it's an acute iscosceles with the angle at the center sharper than 60°).
• And that particular coincidence gives rise to a host of other related coincidences such as the existence of the 24-cell as a regular polytope, the 16-cell being both the hypercube's dual and its alternation, and a whole lot of other stuff. You also get an unusually frequent occurrence of "nice" coordinates for things involving equilateral triangles.
• 4D is the last dimension with interesting non-cubic regular symmetry (i.e., the 600-cell and the 120-cell).
• 4D is the beginning of multiple rotations (clifford rotation in more than 1 plane). In particular, the decomposition of the 3-sphere into two mutually perpendicular rings (ala duocylinder/duoprisms/grand antiprism) is Very Cool.
• My computer power cables, keyboard cables, network cables, etc., etc., will never get tangled again!
• We wouldn't need to build bridges or crosswalks, or wait at traffic lights.
• Above 4D, things get really tedious... I mean, painting in 4D is already bad enough, with a 3D surface for the canvas (just think how much paint you need to buy... artists would starve). You'd need an inordinate number of limbs just to not fall over. Just think of the amount of food you need to consume to maintain all those extra limbs. Or the time you'd need to spend to vacuum the room, given the insane amounts of floor space you'd have.
• I made a whole website on 4D, and I'm not about to throw it all away just yet.

If it weren't for the tedium of higher dimensions, I'd choose 8D, because that's where another set of numerical coincidences happen that give that space a variety of interesting properties. (Namely, the fact that 4*9 = 6^2, among other things. This particular coincidence gives some interesting properties to the 8-simplex.)

[Keiji]

We wouldn't need to build bridges or crosswalks, or wait at traffic lights.

This is the best one!

In fact, I looked into 4D road junctions, and not only do you not need bridges for GSJs, but I found that using my model (of driving on planar rails) means you can use the spare dimension for banking, allowing far tighter curves than in 3D (banking in 3D works on rollercoasters because the train is expected to be moving within an acceptable range of speed, but it wouldn't work where one could be driving at an arbitrary speed, due to gravity) - saving a lot of space indeed! Added to that, because there is so much more space in 4D, there should be enough room for 5+ lanes per carriageway, so you can use another idea of mine to keep merge/diverge distances short:
- lane "-1" splits/joins at each junction
- lane "0" stays on the mainline, but is reserved for the use of vehicles entering at a junction or leaving at the next junction
- lanes 1, 2 and 3 are for traffic not involved in this or the next junction

Carriageways could also be stacked on top of each other or rolled up if they need to fit into a different shape corridor.

[SwirlGlome]

For me it's a close call between 4D and 5D.

I like 5D because 2D knots seem to work best here.
Also the idea of a spinning tower room swirling in all horizontal directions,
whereas the 4D spinning room would have poles that only spin in place.
And I like that the 5D sphere has maximum content.

4D is nice because light/sound don't disperse as much as 5D.
I LOVE the 24-cell.
A space station can swirl in all directions,
or even a sprerical home on the ground, if it spins fast enough to counter gravity.
4D is enough space for everything I need, cords that don't tangle, etcetera.
4D is just more beautiful than 5D, IMHO.

Another good question is whether you'd like to live in
spherical, euclidian, or hyperbolic space, or some complex combination.
Hyperbolic is SO tempting... but I think I'd stick with euclidean overall,
with local, controllable anomalies, like wormholes and so forth.

[foursquare]

I choose to remain with 3 dimensions. As a creature constructed in 3d the chance of getting lost in four dimensions would be far too great. To tea late into a parallel hyperplane would mean an infinity of hyperplanes to pass through to return to ones own plane. Without some form of homing device it would be impossible to navigate.

[ICN5D]

All right, I'll put in my two cents. There's been a lot of reviving ancient threads, so why not?

I choose five dimensional space. Why? Because, I like having the ability to walk around a 3-plane as if it were a flag pole. From a 5D vantage point, one could see a 3-plane from an infinite number of angles on a circle. This image would remain unchanged, no matter the angle.

Another neat ability is how one could see all of a 3D+1T space-time as a still image from this perspective. Looking down, you'd see all world-line paths of all particles/creatures/planets at once, and how they interact.

[PatrickPowers]

I'd go for zero dimensions. If it's good enough for Galois, it's good enough for me.

[Prashantkrishnan]

I choose to remain with 3 dimensions. As a creature constructed in 3d the chance of getting lost in four dimensions would be far too great. To tea late into a parallel hyperplane would mean an infinity of hyperplanes to pass through to return to ones own plane. Without some form of homing device it would be impossible to navigate.

If you were living in 4D, you wouldn't be a creature constructed in 3D.

All right, I'll put in my two cents. There's been a lot of reviving ancient threads, so why not?

I choose five dimensional space. Why? Because, I like having the ability to walk around a 3-plane as if it were a flag pole. From a 5D vantage point, one could see a 3-plane from an infinite number of angles on a circle. This image would remain unchanged, no matter the angle.

Another neat ability is how one could see all of a 3D+1T space-time as a still image from this perspective. Looking down, you'd see all world-line paths of all particles/creatures/planets at once, and how they interact.

That would be if you knew that trionians existed. If you lived in 5D, you might be interacting with other pentonians and observing your 5D universe while remaining completely oblivious to 3D universes.