Information is funny stuff. It appears to display agency, to show preference in association and form - it has a chemistry, valences bonds etc and is statistically predictable. Information also engages in "niche building." Some types or forms of information can and do modify our brains, altering neural pathways to give greater access, bandwidth, influence to the information which may replicate and spread or otherwise modify our behavior. This may strike many of us strange, because we think of symbolic languages as inert technology; no more alive than fiber optic cables. Part of what's confusing about mathematics and language is we tend to regard it is additive and progressive. We think of 2, added to another 2 then "becoming" 4. Other cultures, like the ancient Chinese, took a timeless perspective, where the relationship expressed by 2 + 2 =4 is complete and eternal. Remove time from the picture things may become clearer. We don't actually perceive time; we perceive physical change and time is our explanation for it. One explanation. Reality, as we experience it, is a sequence of cyclic electric signals down the optic never to the brain. It is our minds with create the GUI world models we call reality.