WELCOME TO JIM MALONEY’S
EXPLANATION OF 666
“Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”
--Revelation, Chapter 13, verse 18 (King James Version)
Many have wondered what the foregoing passage means (or predicts). My own take on it is based on the appreciation that the human mind is prone to binary errors (left vs. right, etc.) while the computer is not. Computers operate wholly within the binary (Base 2) system. Conversely, while a human being is capable of readily intuitively appreciating the concept of “two out of three,” a computer cannot even express the fraction 2/3 except as an endlessly repeating binary or decimal number. The computer would round 2/3 to a series of digits, which (in Base 10, following the decimal point) begins 666... Thus, the inability to understand “two out of three,” and the repeating digits 666, etc., symbolize the non-human nature--and perhaps the limitations--of artificial intelligence. So maybe the Biblical text is a prescient warning of the dangers of letting the computer (the beast?) take too much control of human affairs.
But why is it written that 666 is also “the number of a man”? That I cannot answer, except to say that it may provide some additional (albeit farfetched) justification to those who oppose the Microsoft monopoly. I am not seriously suggesting that Bill Gates himself is “the beast” or the Antichrist (although perhaps some Linux aficionados have said that), but if any man can lay claim to a number that is linked to computer code, Bill’s gotta be the guy!
James M. Maloney
October 31, 2003
