Russell Foltz-Smith 7/10/17 Russell Foltz-Smith 7/10/17

Data, Mappings, Ontology and Everything Else

Caveat: I do not have all this connected in some incredibly conclusive mathematical proof way (an impossibility). These concepts below are related semantically, conceptually and process wise (to me) and there is a lot of shared math. It is not a flaw of the thinking that there is no more connection and that I may lack the ability to connect it. In fact, part of my thinking is that we should not attempt to fill in all the holes all the time. Simple heuristic: first be useful, finally be useful. Useful is as far as you can get with anything.

Exploring the space of all possibles configurations of the world things tend to surface what’s connected in reality. (more on the entropic reality below)

— — — — — — — -

First…. IMPORTANT.

useful basic ideas with logic and programming (lambda calculus)

Propositions <-> Types

Proofs <-> Programs

Simplifications of Proofs <-> Evaluation of Programs <-> Exploding The Program Description Into All Of It’s Outputs

— — — — — — — — — — -

Data Points and Mappings

A data point is either a reducible via Lambda Calculus (a fully determinant/provable function) or it is probabilistic (e.g. wavefunction).

Only fully provable data points are losslessly compressible to a program description.

Reducible data points must be interpreter invariant. probabilistic data points may be interpreter dependent or not.

No physically observed data points are reducible — all require probabilistic interpretation and links to interpreter, frames of reference and measurement assumptions. Only mathematical and logical data points are reducible. Some mathematical and logic data points are probabilistic.

Each data type can be numbered similar to Godel Numbering and various tests for properties and uniqueness/reductions can be devised. Such a numbering scheme should be UNIQUE (that is each data point will have its own number and each data type (the class of all data points that have same properties) will all have identifying properties/operations that can be done. e.g. perhaps a number scheme leads to a one to one mappings with countable numbers and thus the normal properties of integers can be used to reason about data points and data types. It should be assumed that the data points of the integers should probably simply be considered the integers themselves….)

A universal data system can be devised by maintaining and index of all numbered data points… indexed by data point, data types and valid (logical/provable mappings and probabilistic mappings — encoding programs to go from one data point to another). This system is uncountable, non computable but there are reductions possible (somewhat obvious statement). Pragmatically the system should shard and cache things based on frequency of observation of data points/data types (most common things are “cached” and least common things are in cold storage and may be computable…)

Why Bother With This

We bother to think through this in order to create a data system that can be universally used and expanded for ANY PURPOSE. Humans (and other systems) have not necessarily indexed data and mappings between data in efficient, most reduced forms. To deal with things in the real world (of convention, language drift, species drift, etc) there needs to be a mapping between things in efficiently and inefficiently — and the line is not clear… as almost all measures of efficiently on probabilistic data points and “large” data points are temporary as new efficiencies are discovered. Only the simplest logical/mathematical/computational data points maximally efficiently storable/indexable.

Beyond that… some relationships can only be discovered by a system that has enumerated as many data points and mappings in a way that they can be systemically observed/studied. The whole of science suffers because there are too many inefficient category mappings.

Mathematics has always been thought of as being a potential universal mapping between all things but it too has suffered from issues of syntax bloat, weird symbolics, strange naming, and endless expansion of computer generated theorems and proofs.

It has become more obvious with the convergence of thermodynamics, information theory, quantum mechanics, computer science, bayesian probability that computation is the ontological convergence. Anything can be described, modeled and created in terms of computation. Taking this idea seriously suggests that we ought to create knowledge systems and info retrieval and scientific processes from a computational bottoms up approach.

And so we will. (another hypothesis is that everything tends towards more entropy/lowest energy… including knowledge systems… and computers networks… and so they will tend to standardize mappings and root out expensive representations of data)

p.s.

it’s worth thinking through the idea that in computation/information

velocity = information distance / rule applications (steps).

acceleration etc can be obtained through the usual differentiation, etc.

This is important note because you can basically find the encoding of all physical laws in any universal computer (given enough computation…)

Not a surprising thought based on the above. But it suggests a more radical thought… (which isn’t new to the world)… common sense time and common sense space time may not be the “root” spacetime… but rather just one way of encoding relationships between data points. We tend to think of causality but there’s no reason that causality is the organizing principal — it just happens to be easy to understand.

p.p.s.

humans simply connote the noticing of information distance as time passing… the noticing is rule applications from one observation to another.

the collapsing of quantum wave functions can similarly be reinterpreted as minimizing computation of info distance/rule applications of observer and observed. (that is… there is a unique mapping between an observer and the observed… and that mapping itself is not computable at a quantum scale…. and and and…. mapping forever… yikes.)

p.p.p.s.

“moving clocks run slow” is also re-interpreted quite sensibly this way… a “clock” is data points mapped where the data points are “moving”. that is… there are rule applications between data points that have to cover the info distance. “movement” of a “clock” in a network is a subnetwork being replicated within subnetworks… that is there are more rule applications for a “clock” to go through… hence the “clock” “moving” takes more time… that is, a moving clock is fundamentally a different mapping than the stationary clock… the clock is a copy… it is an encoded copy at each rule application. Now obviously this has hand wavey interpretations about frames of reference (which are nothing more than mappings within a larger mapping…)

one can continue this reframing forever… and we shall.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Related to our discussion:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_inference

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_distance

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComputationTime.html

computation time is proportional to the number of rule applications

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_encoding

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1315256/encode-lambda-calculus-in-arithmetic

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_combinatory_logic

https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~chaitin/georgia.html

https://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/64743/lambda-calculus-type-inference

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~knill/graphgeometry/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice_gauge_theory

https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0408028

http://www.letstalkphysics.com/2009/12/why-moving-clocks-run-slow.html

Russell Foltz-Smith 5/27/17 Russell Foltz-Smith 5/27/17

Parallels - an essay concerning the extent of trees and humans.

concerning the extent of trees and persons.

"The digital is fun and interesting and useful — but ultimately is a fragile technology, so ephemeral, so fast moving and so illiterate to the wider universe that it cannot be anything more than a toy and a simple medium of commerce and rapid, mostly meaningless, communication. I love the digital and enjoy it. But I need the trees and other people.

And that is a big difference."

read the whole essay over at https://medium.com/@un1crom/parallels-the-extent-of-trees-and-persons-9a1bf8eb91a4

Russell Foltz-Smith 12/15/16 Russell Foltz-Smith 12/15/16

The Data Science of Art

The Data Science of Art or Pictures of Data about Pictures

My larger theory is that data=art and art=data and that Artificial Intelligence will be nothing more or less than a continued exercise in artistic-historical integration of new mediums and forms. However this post isn't another rehash of those ideas. This one is about the data of art.

Here I offer some insights by computationally analyzing art (my own and pointing to others analysis.) There are quite a few excellent and very detailed data science analysis of art that have come out recently due to the fact that more and more collections are being digitized and data faceted. Here's fantastic write up of MoMA's collection. Michael Trott offers a very detailed analysis of ratios and others hard facets of a couple hundred years of visual art. Last year Google made waves with Deep Dream which was really an analysis of how neural networks do work. Turning that analysis on its head and you get art creation (my first point above... the lines between art and data are more than blurry!)

On to some pictures depicting data about pictures!

A cluster analysis of 534 of my visual works

While an artist has intimate knowledge of their own work it is likely highly biased knowledge. We often become blind to our habits and tend to forget our average work. Doing a large scale unemotional analysis of all the art is enlightening.

The cluster analysis above was created using machine learning to cluster images by similar features (color, composition, size, subject matter, etc) (I did everything in Mathematica 11/Wolfram Language). A cursory view shows density in deep reds and faces/portraits. My work tends to be more varied as I move into dry media (pencil, pastels) and remove the color (or the algorithms simply don't find as much similarity. And, of course, the obvious note here is that this is just a quick view without attempting to optimize the machine learning or feed it cleaned up images (color correction etc). What else do you notice about the general shape of my work? (I am currently running a larger analysis on 4500 images instead of just 530, curious if things will look different.)

Drilling in a bit we find some curiosities. Below we see a couple of deeper dives into particular images where we break down the images geometry, detection of objects/subjects and a little bit of color analysis. What I find most interesting is just own often similar compositions show up in varied subject matters. Not terribly surprising as it's all just marks on a page but it is interesting just how biased I am to certain geometries?

I tend to love strong crossing lines or directly vertical or horizontal. In my own art history studies we find this isn't necessarily optimal for keeping a viewers attention. Often these geometries are taking eyes right of the page.

Below is a bit of a detailed view of a few images and their 4 closest neighboring images/works. Pretty weird in a lot of ways! I am heartened to see that over a 18 month period of work I haven't particularly sunk into a maxima or minima of ideas. I can see many older works in a cluster with newer works as old themes/ideas resurface and are renewed, often without active thought. Another study I should do is to sort these out by source of the picture as I can tell that photos taken from phones and posted to instagram etc often distort what was really there etc. (not a bad thing, just something to analyze to measure effects/artifacts).

I'm going to continue drilling into all this and do a full color spectrum analysis, histograms of subject matter, categorization of mediums and materials, etc. The point is not to find a formula but instead to learn and become aware and enjoy. I do not find data forensics to be limiting or mechanical. You can see in the above that even the math is fairly interpretative and loose - the object identification is off often, faces often are missed, images are misgrouped... OR are they?

One of my recurring themes in my art exploration is a simple question "what art entertains a computer/algorithm?" or more provocatively what if to art is to be human which is really just data science....

Russell Foltz-Smith 7/4/16 Russell Foltz-Smith 7/4/16

Searching The Future

My efforts over the last 25 years may appear to be scattershot and unrelated. Perhaps this was true when I launched into various trajectories of theater, mathematics, data analysis, search engines, software product development, and, now, fine arts. However, the convergent thread is now very clear. My life project and what will be the most pervasive technology for generations is simply stated as Searching Through Possible Futures.

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Goes the popular saying. This is a mostly useful, directional correct sentence. I take it a step further; make all predictions by creating all futures and then search through these futures for common objects, events, trends to form a probability wave of what are the “good bets”.

The development of the hard sciences and the arts and the resulting technologies and cultural forms all indirectly and inefficiently attempt to do this. The physical sciences have spent the last 400 years obsessed with observing our world in finer and finer detail and forming explicit and excruciatingly detailed theories/models to help us explain and predict a singular reality. We can know we will know!

Art of all types for 40,000 years has depicted various events and imagined events helping humans to parse the confusion of a threatened existence. Only in the last 100 years did most of the arts more fully break from religious patronage and start constructing divergent possible aesthetics. The arts are no longer chasing a similar aim to the sciences: a singular reality. The arts embrace a variety of realities, even pata-realities.

Global cultures have shifted as well. As the arts unchain themselves from the singular reality and science pushes forward technologies (measurement tools) capable of manufacturing any reality of which we can conceive the people of the planet now try out new ways of being at a breakneck pace. Our politics, war techniques, communing, courting, gender defining, procreation, food supply…. everything is undergoing rapid experimentation and integration or rejection.

These activities all bear the same basic approach – roughly an educated (oftened simply biased) trial and error. In tech circles this is called the “adjacent possible” approach – things proceed by slight variations on what exists nearest in spacetime. Most artists (musicians, actors, painters, etc) proceed through a huge amount of “studies” before perfoming a final work. These studies are often built on the backs of previous artists studies. Scientists and mathematicians proceed similarly through slightly advancing previous work or refuting old experiments. Businesses photocopy each others efforts looking for slight efficiency gains. Occasionally this brute trail and error happens into a tipping point where a paradigm shift occurs – often the result of new measurement tools emerging that expand the scope of the world available to us to explore. And the cycle across human activites renews itself.

There is no longer any engineering or cultural or religious constraint on why this must happen in this plodding brutish way. Our tools and abilities and awareness allows us to engineer any reality and “let it go”. That is, we can set in motion vast ecosystems of reality generators to just go construct strange and wonderful things. These ecosystems can be physical and virtualized, more or less shaped by other realities, adhere to commonly accept physics or trying out completely different ones. Simulations are a simpler earlier conception of such activities, but simulations are not a broad enough concepts. These Futures I’m talking about are universes unto themselves, not attempting to simulate The One True Reality. These are possible universes, possible futures of possible universes. Video games, cinema, painting, theater, role playing, LSD, 3d printing, etc have all been various ways to dance with this idea.

All of that is horribly inefficient for humans, machines and nature to integrate interesting ideas from all those possible futures. Humanity has relied more or less on various linear codices. We inefficiently attempt to transcribe experiences into letters, books, science papers, programs. Repeatedly in human history the codices have outgrown our taxonomic capabilities and we’ve had to invent various tables of contents, shelving systems, indices, catalogs, meta datas, electronic links, search engines, and now, social graphs. Each one of these taxonomic systems pointing to someone or something that “must know” something about something else; eventually somehow the right transcription is found or cobbled together to instruct a system (usually of humans, animals and machines) to do something. Hopefully the system behavior is transcribed somewhere that can later be analyzed, etc

The efficient stepwise function going forward involves a way to translate or transcode or communicate or measure … that is, SEARCH through all these possibilities. Yes, we should actively be igniting as many new realities as possible in as many mediums as possible while maintaining ontological links between them all. Various technologies are evolving along these lines – virtual reality, blockchain, machine to machine payments, “AI”. These links will not end up being explicit links like a “hyperlink” or the dewey decimal system or anything like that. The generalized machine learning capabilities built around unsupervised pattern recognition are those links – the links themselves are evolving dynamic systems that keep track of the happenings within various evolving realities.

A search engine for possible futures will be multi-modal and allow searching via any kind of signal – words, images, sounds (verbal or otherwise), electro chemical, etc – “everything is just ones and zeros”. The results / returns of this search engine will not be 10 blue links but instead multi-modal evolving returns with “tunnels” to enter that reality and explore its past, present and future – to experience its relevance. The returns will also provide various statistics that show how robust phenomena search for is across the space of possible futures. For example, thousands of realities will launch playing out various BREXIT histories and futures. A user might want to search for “Gove is PM” and explore the various realities in which BREXIT leads to Gove as PM. The user would want to enter the realities and explore (really live in) the conditions of those realities that lead to Gove as PM situation – it wouldn’t necessarily match to conditions of any other reality. If many realities end up with Gove as PM with similar conditions then Gove as PM happens to be favored in the overall probability wave. (Please note: The user won’t be uploading themselves into all these virtual, but instead will send in proxy avatars, much like video gamers already do thousands of times a gaming session.)

If the reader is familiar with various quantum mechanical explanations of the physical laws then certainly a Multi-verse interpretation probably sticks out in reading this essay. Indeed. Even if the multi-verse interpretation is not the One True Reality, a search through possible futures still maintains utility. The articulation above, I believe, is a more computational efficient way to organize our science, artistic and cultural existence. And one concept found to be very robust across human activity and scientific research is the idea of computational efficiency. Systems tend towards computational efficiency… probably as some consequence of thermodynamic conservation “laws”.

These laws are observed robustly not because they are laws but systems that don’t operate in ways of “conservation of energy” don’t last/are low probability to survive/low probability to be observed… (There is a much longer discussion to be had here).

None of the above is a scientific prediction in the sense that I can test and falsify this stated hypothesis. Instead this idea is one in which I thinkwe should create to aid our integration of new ideas / new ways of being much like we ended up creating the scientific method, search engines, art techniques. I happen to think it is likely to come about sooner or later and I base that belief on my own 25 year forays into math, science, software tech, business, theater and fine arts.

All that said, a few of my closest friends and I have been quietly working on these concepts for a while now. It would be silly to claim we’re anywhere near releasing this and our approach is more pragmatic. We are carefully building up taxonomy of data detectors that are loosely coupled and able to translate between various systems. We’ve begun building generative abilities to synthesize data into new data visualizations and data experience in which to publish to users and get behavioral feed back from. We’ve been creating machine-learning systems that monitor all the linkages, translations, integrations that seek to try out new configurations of our taxonomy and then alter it as the system senses its translations don’t connect more systems. We’re trying out and integrating various opensource technologies that make it efficient to set up new sibling systems that can all talk to each other. We’re analyzing data we find interesting as well as performing work on behalf of others who wish to explore these ideas. We do all this with the above possible future we’d like to create and use – one in which we can search through all possible futures.

Russell Foltz-Smith 12/14/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 12/14/15

What is a painting? What is a poem? What is a program? What is a person?

an alien wants to know what our poems, paintings, programs and people actually are. What Is We.

Where exactly do we find the IT of painting, poem, program or a person? An intrinsic, contained whole? an experienced essessence?

These are the biggest questions of all, the questions that inform the whole of politics, religion, science, humanities, culture, family, education and identity itself.

Consider an alien from a far away galaxy arrived here or near earth wondering what exactly is at hand. Suppose the alien doesn't have eyes or ears or fingers or anything like humans or humanlike animals. This alien lacks computers like ours, meaning none of this alien's computers/perceptive tools run our biology nor our operating systems. What exactly would earth and humans and our artifacts be? What would our poems and our programs and our paintings and our people seem "like" to an alien?

There would be no decoder key overtly explaining or making sense of any of the human experience for any such decoder would be written / described within the very objects the decoder decodes. Our natural language, color theories, agile programming methodologies, data types, frames, etc would not make any sense at any level standing alone. An alien would literally need to learn humanity from the ground up. And it's not even clear whether learning natural language, human behavior patterns, visual systems or bits and bytes would be "the ground" from whence to go up.

Why is alien ignorance the case? Is there a conceivable reality in which this ignorance isn't the case? The only possible case to be made is that of ideal or universal or at least beyond human forms/ideas/information. While it is impossible to rule out completely the possibility of ideal forms/universals it seems incredibly improbable consider the fact that no two humans will ever agree on what exactly we mean by a painting, a poem, a program nor even a person is. In fact, that's exactly why we have these expressions and their, well, expressions. Whatever the existence of a poem is it is more than it's commonly stated rules and favorite examples. Paintings have battled their own existence since ancient hominids traced pigment and scratched rocks on rocks. Programs, while wholly invented by humans mostly in our lifetimes, have no full expression of their behavior. A person who does all these other ill-defined things cannot possibly be defined by the infinitude of its ill-defined activities.

The situation for exact knowledge and clear definitions is worse though. Even formulations/simply ideas/systems we've created entirely are not free of unlimited ignorance of their essense. The halting program and incompleteness theorem in mathematics and computer science, our most exacting disciplines of creation, thwart, beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt, any idea that we can know to the full extent all things, except the most simplistic.

This entire essay is probably not convincing. The human apparatus isn't set up well for ignorance and the unknown. Our biology seems to gravitate to pattern recognition and this, in turn, leads our institutations to peddle in the same. We all teach each other that We Can Know, We Must Know, We Will Know, despite the fact never has this actually be proven nor empirically been shown nor even lasted with the most fundamental faith ideals. It makes sense, to some extent, that we wish to know and even believe we can know considering what it seems the value of knowing would be - if we knew, we could control or at least come to grips. Even that is a bizarre baseless notion once we dig into it. Anything within the limits of knowing is so simple it's uninteresting and in almost every case is fading or short lived. Find a case and surface it, please!

Yet, it is still interesting or motive to try to explore and identify these things, as aren't we all doing these activities? or being these things? any and all?

My own response to these questions is simply... I don't know but I'd like to keep finding out what it is. And I even reject the idea of I. I take it as a given that I'm exploring paintings, poems and programs not for the person that is me, but for the persons I am and am connected to. I don't paint my paintings or write my poems or create my programs. What tinkles from these fingers someone else's DNA made and someone else's skill trained is a shared activity of connectivity.

And so.

There remains only inquiry and more inquiry. That is what all is not.

Until the aliens tell all myselves otherwise.

Russell Foltz-Smith 11/18/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 11/18/15

The Long Delay

Human history has a long arc, but a relatively short tipping point towards the illusion of control. We were for nearly unimaginable expanses of time and space a barely connected species roaming the earth, leaving slight traces in earthy pigment of hands, animals and dreams upon the rocks of our paths and the cave walls of our temporary dwellings. We were not dominant, mass-farming, tool wielding empires - we were nomads and temporary players in a grand kaleidoscope of Earth. Our existence was never guaranteed day to day nor over the centuries.

This changed rather rapidly and without some divine intervention - the blind watchmaking of natures evolution accidentally favored homo sapiens. We happened onto fattened and readily plantable wheat in soil freshly fertile from melting ice ages giving rise to agriculture and related activities. We relatively quickly took deep advantage of the situation (multiple times independently across the globe). Agriculture and animal husbandry provided all the obvious advantages for survival like reliable food sources, ability to stay put, deep energy stories, safety and time for knowledge seeking. The key stroke though was in being able to delay consequences.

Long Delay entered the human enterprise for the likely the first time. We were able to delay starvation through reliable, storable harvests. We were able to build up settlements, trade routes, currency and complicated economic exchange, and, ultimately, we could "plan" for the future. The idea of A Human Future had deep consequences for our belief systems - that is, our association of what happened in the world and why and how we were part of it. Without an idea of a future, as realized by reliably imagining one and living to see it realized, there was no sense in having the belief of destiny nor dominion nor property. A world without delay and of only immediate consequences is one outside of time and outside of storing up - storing up resources, storing up frustrations, storing up weaponry, storing up ideas. In a nomadic, temporary world - to store is to encumber and to encumber is to be too slow to keep on.

In almost all accounts of big, long history agriculture and its resultant consequences is reverently viewed for all that it enabled. The great spread of human civilization - its tooling, its trading, its Metal Ages, its science, its culture. While these are all interesting and complex phenomena, they aren't necessarily good nor are they necessarily bad. They certainly have produced an incredible proliferation of humanity for many tens of thousands of years. And they've also come with extreme consequences for humans and non-humanity alike.

The ability to delay consequences and harbor resources for science and tools and culture also provides those resources for warring, tribalism, weaponry, radicalized ideologies. Oddly the delayed consequences have a downside that more false beliefs/non-true ideas about how reality works can fester unchecked. For a Neolithic person a non-true assessment of a situation would likely carry grave consequences. In the modern world, where most immediate needs for survival are assumed, especially in the West, a person can carry extremely non-true ideas about how reality works and what their place is in the world for decades. And this is at the root of our current confused and violent situation.

Humans have warmed the planet possibly passed the point of being able to reverse course before there are dire consequences for humans and non-humans. Humans have killed of an incredible number of species before they knew those species even existed. Humans cure illness and disease and pests only to unleash unintended stronger adversarial viruses, bacteria and pests. Humans craft new computational tools and methods with almost no thought to possible downstream uses. Humans social and civil organization is now dominated by the wealthiest even in its most praised form of Democracy.

Often all these pessimistic observations are rebuffed with the 100 year old idea of "Creative Destruction." That is, eventually we end up solving all these things and this is just the natural course of a free market of progress. It is also constantly remarked that we live in the lowest violence era in human history. These rebuttals are really just more consequence of Long Delays. Most of us do not live to see the consequences of these complex contingency chains we set in motion. We are never put to task for our false predictions, category errors, and misassociation blunders.

Our religions, all the major monotheistic ones, are all about pushing consequences into the "next life." Our popular moral philosophies typically justify various activities on the rather weak argument about doing it "for our children." We insure, amortize, capital expense, socially secure, in-debt, mortgage for generations into the future. All done because we've falsely assumed (or at least not proven to be absolutely true) that somehow, some way it all works out. We can't even define what that working out would be except within our own delayed, selfish terms - does each of our own families and our own heritage and our own way of life carry on.

We do not live in a less violent time - we have pushed the violence into the future and out of immediate human physicality. We've hidden our brutality of this world in our technology and our obsessions with new media. The most popular video game on the planet is Call of Duty - multiple billions of dollars in revenue. As our world virtualizes more and more how will we all distinguish the violence in that reality from real violence? We've ravaged our oceans with pollution and heat and they are rising. We've fracked the Earth into earthquakes in middle America. A huge chunk of the Wests GDP goes towards weaponizing - not education and end of life care. Our sense of identity and place in this world has gone haywire - racism and sexism is still rampant. That terrorism still works is a proof point. Terror doesn't need thousands of beheadings - just a few and a lot of YouTube views. Militaries don't need millions of troops in lines razing each other down, just thousands joystick controllers flying drones. Violence evolved in the resource of delay we provide it.

What repugnant, bizarre thread ensnares almost all of us in these violent delayed consequences? Shame. We are all shaming each other for not responding to the same consequences. The delayed consequences act like a microphone and speaker in the shrieking feedback loop. The complexity of delayed abuse is doubling back and echoing on top. We can't cure all suffering, so please cure mine. We shame each other into more mental abuse of ourselves so that we are incapacitated. In this shame we trigger the worse natures of ourselves - we lash out in the dark fog of delayed consequences. We hit anything in front of us we can just to feel something now, feel anything now. We are ashamed all those future plans and stored up resources didn't real free us as we assumed and passed on. We are ashamed to be ashamed - so we still treat different skin less worthy unable to admit our shame.

The arc of human history is long but most of it was before we began our short descent into delayed awareness. And here it is. The only hope. To be here now. To recognize now, not in the delayed future that isn't yours nor mine, we were wrong. We will always be wrong. When we decide we have answers or we decide to store more than what is needed for now - we wrong something else that has just as much right to existence as we do. Our shameful fight for the righteous, controllable future is what destroys the now for us and the future for others.

Resources for further consideration:

The Ascent of Man, J. Brownoski

The Origin of the Species, Darwin

Sex, Time and Power, Leonard Shlain

Guns, Germs and Steel, J. Diamond

Ishmael, D. Quinn

30,000 Years of Art, Phaidon

Cave of Forgotten Dreams (movie), W. Herzog

Between The World and Me, T. Coates

The Communist Hypothesis, Alain Badiou

The Silence of Animals, J. Gray

Matter and Memory, Henri Bergson

Beyond Freedom and Dignity, BF Skinner

Plato at the Googleplex, R Goldstein

I Am A Strangeloop, D. Hofstader

Better Angels of Our Nature, S Pinker

Making Money, O. Berg

Property is Theft, Proudhon

The Blind Watchmaker

The Selfish Gene, R Dawkins

anything by Martha Nussbam

and about a thousand other resources. I borrow language and ideas from all of them, perhaps, occasionally adding something new.

Russell Foltz-Smith 10/4/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 10/4/15

am I OK? a remark on authenticity.

A remark on authenticity where I non-definitely answer the question of Am I OK?

am I OK?

This is the question I get asked the most nowadays. Certainly when posts online stop being predominantly jokes about the NFL or filtered photos of babies doing funny stuff and start being drippy, gloopy bullshit painted rectangles with captions like “exist. I. do. not.” the question sort of begs itself. That and the bizarro, yet totally cliche, year that from age 38 to 39 turned out to be… a seemingly constant drip of great news followed by shit news… you tend to reshape your expression a bit.

But that’s really not what the question is about, right?

The question “am I OK?” is about authenticity and freedom and sincerity or rather the lack thereof. Our hyperconnected world and our American society’s obsession with brand awareness led to this confused and in-authentic mediation between people (and machines.) Listing all the causes of the mass delusion of what I’ll call the brand of My of Endless Happiness (M.E.H.: the American Dream!) is a waste of energy (as mathematicians do listing trivial causes is left as an exercise to the reader.)

MEH has us all engaged in small talk, trivia and endless duckfaced happy posts from all the fun things we’re doing instead of communicating. MEH has us all outraged at the outrages we all share (death and taxes from Presidents!) - those things that are mostly removed from us and outside our direct control - instead of VOTING. MEH has us big box shopping on Black Fridays and Cyber Mondays and whining about credit card bills in January instead of MAKING THINGS FOR EACH OTHER. MEH has us reading Fifty Shades rather than, well, GETTING IT ON.

and so on without so-ing on!

No, I’m not OK! OK is MEH. OK is eating Bennigan's left overs watching Game of Thrones binging while playing Angry Birds (that’s a madlib, insert your own CHAIN RESTAURANT, POPULAR TV, FAVORITE PHONE APP).

OK is watching GOP circus debates and ranting online while passing up the last 6 local election cycles because INSERT EXCUSE.

OK is ok, it’s normal. It’s buzzed but not drunk nor sober. It’s brohugs and not embraces or yoddles/chants. It’s regrams of misquoted inspiration not climbing that mountain 5 miles from your house. It’s watching TV not playing jazz with friends. It’s OK not GREAT! AMAZING! FUCKING PISSED! BUMMED! DEVASTATED! ENGAGED!

And it’s ok. It’s perfectly ok to want OK. It’s OK to be ok. Sometimes, ok is exactly where to be. Sometimes it’s 100x better than not-OK.

Am I OK? Maybe. Sometimes. here and there.

Above all, I’m trying to engage. That’s it. Chasing experience. Being a Maker and Doer rather than an mostly an observer and critic.

Am I sad? sometimes. People die. People get sick. People hurt. Animals hurt. The world and life is hard.

Am I desperate? always. Desperate to exist. Desperate to renew my own agency.

Am I depressed? sometimes. Self diagnosis is generally a bad idea, but I can tell you, yes, I have been and do get depressed and darkness descends. And the times when it does… as far as I can tell it’s because I’m sitting there OK. and letting life happen to me.

Am I drunk? sometimes. sometimes more than others! probably more than I should be in quantity and quality.

Am I happy? not that often, but at least once a week. There’s two kinds of happiness, generally, to me. True joy… usually that’s experiencing something awesome with others. and then the little happiness… an espresso on Sunday mornings reading the NYTimes Book Review. (though that might actually be True Joy!).

Am I having fun? YES! Fun isn’t tickling and playing tag, though that is fun to do. FUN! is trying To Become Something, fun is Trying To Become A Person. Fun is being so bad at something you have to do it every single day unending to see even a shred of better than truly terrible at that something.

Am I Trying to be An Artist? No. Such a limited label, IMHO. I hate labels.

Am I Trying to be a Philosopher? Yes! But only for a limited time. Philosophers like Politicians make poor career titles… the idea of making a career (bring home the bacon) out of something that literally should be blowing up careers seems like a recipe for MEH.

Am I Trying to have a Career in Anything? No. I have tattoos on my hands (the things i use to DO STUFF) to remind myself of Information Destiny. Everything is Information. I am trying to Inform My Being. Always.

Am I Authentic? No. I’m trying. Each day I’m trying more and more to authentically engage myself and the world.

Am I Free? No. None of us can ever be free of contingencies. I think Authenticity and Freedom go together. And they are a process, not an end point.

Do I Want My Endless Happiness? No, absolutely not under any terms do I want MEH. I do not seek happiness at the expense of authenticity/freedom. Life is life (ugh, tautologies…) life is struggle and competition and birth and death and growth and shrinkage and change and stasis and highs and lows. It’s hurt and joy. It’s fast food and gourmet. Literally life exists on the border - the jagged blurry line - of order and chaos.

So to answer your question, no I’m not ok. Are you?

Russell Foltz-Smith 10/1/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 10/1/15

A Dialog (between friends) on The Law of the Conservation of Computation

the most fundamental law of everything:

computation is conserved.

Two friends have a dialogue on the matter.

Russell [8:16 AM]
This is happening to programs and programming too. http://www.worksonbecoming.com/thoughts-prefaces/2015/10/1/this-is-contingency

Some Works
This is contingency
Remarks on the contingency of new forms and the phenemenon of replication.

Schoeller [8:16 AM]
Very NKS.

Schoeller [8:17 AM]
I’m somewhat less certain of this outcome than you — it relies heavily on everyone playing nice and working with each other.

Russell [8:18 AM]
That's just you.

Schoeller [8:18 AM]
Which is challenging — witness the web API boom/bust of 5 years ago.

Russell [8:18 AM]
The arc of assimilation is clear

Schoeller [8:18 AM]
It’s the pragmatism/skepticism in me.

Russell [8:19 AM]
Most humans almost 6.997 billion of them have no idea about computers

Schoeller [8:19 AM]
I get it. But the pace of progress can be furiously slow in the face of economics.

Schoeller [8:19 AM]
For instance — where’s my flying car?

Schoeller [8:20 AM]
We’re not going to have networked 3D printed robots manufacturing things for some time.

Russell [8:20 AM]
That's not progress

Russell [8:20 AM]
Flying cars aren't selected for

Russell [8:20 AM]
They lack survivability value

Russell [8:21 AM]
Amazons prime deliver moving to Amazon flex... As they push delivery times to zero one must manufacture close to the source

Russell [8:21 AM]
Of the transaction

Russell [8:21 AM]
It's happening

Russell [8:21 AM]
Who needs to fly except the drones

Schoeller [8:21 AM]
I understand the vision. I’m just not convinced it’ll happen...

Schoeller [8:22 AM]
Well me for one :simple_smile:

Schoeller [8:22 AM]
Drone delivery is another unlikely occurance in any large scale.

Schoeller [8:23 AM]
The economics/logistics just don’t make any sense. Packages are heavy.

Russell [8:23 AM]
Personal drivers. Personal shoppers. Personal virtual assistants. ... All are shaping the world to not need all this movement. Once were three degrees removed from these activities we won't care if it's a machine doing it all.

Russell [8:24 AM]
So make people want less heavy stuff

Russell [8:24 AM]
Sell them a kindle and ebooks

Russell [8:24 AM]
:)

Schoeller [8:24 AM]
Agree on that.

Russell [8:24 AM]
It's happening.

Schoeller [8:24 AM]
Although (sidebar) dead-tree’s not dead.

Schoeller [8:25 AM]
You can’t digitize the tactile feel of thumbing through the pages of a book.

Schoeller [8:25 AM]
I suspect it’ll become boutique. Soft-cover trade books are done. But hardcover, well-bound, limited edition will carry on and do quite well.

Russell [8:27 AM]
Nice try

Schoeller [8:27 AM]
Back on track — A lot of this future stuff is the same: the hyperloop is just the next space elevator which was the next flying car, etc.

Russell [8:27 AM]
You can destroy people's ability to touch

Russell [8:27 AM]
Negative sir

Schoeller [8:27 AM]
I like my fingers, thank you very much :wink:

Russell [8:27 AM]
I'm making a much bigger systematic argument

Russell [8:28 AM]
Don't care about the specific forms

Russell [8:28 AM]
Only that forms get selected and replicated

Schoeller [8:28 AM]
Well, it has to be grounded in something.

Russell [8:28 AM]
Replicability!

Russell [8:28 AM]
Is it computationally efficient!

Russell [8:29 AM]
Boom boyeeee

Schoeller [8:29 AM]
Much of the problem of flying cars, drone delivery, space elevators, 3d printed manufacturing, and hyperloops is the connection from physics -> economics.

Schoeller [8:29 AM]
We don’t have that with software. There, the challenge is the rate and format of the bits flying around.

Russell [8:30 AM]
Hence computationally efficient

Russell [8:30 AM]
Economic networks also replicate computational efficiency.

Russell [8:31 AM]
Commodities have stable ish values because the idea is computationally efficient. Utility etc is well established in the network. So they are exchanged etc.

Schoeller [8:32 AM]
You’re asserting, then, that competition == computational efficiency?

Russell [8:32 AM]
Correct

Russell [8:32 AM]
Efficiency must have survivability.

Russell [8:32 AM]
The trivial would not be efficient for economies

Schoeller [8:33 AM]
I can buy that. At least in the sense of efficiency from the perspective of the system as a whole. Not for any given agent participating in the system.

Russell [8:33 AM]
Yes.

Schoeller [8:33 AM]
The agents are horrifically inefficient.

Schoeller [8:33 AM]
(individually)

Russell [8:34 AM]
Hard to separate them from the system

Schoeller [8:34 AM]
True, unless you’re an agent.

Russell [8:34 AM]
I believe there is a law of the conservation of computation.

Schoeller [8:35 AM]
computation can neither be created nor destroyed, but can only change form?

Russell [8:35 AM]
Correct

Russell [8:36 AM]
And that results in all other conservation laws

Russell [8:36 AM]
And is why competition in all networks is computational efficient

Russell [8:36 AM]
And cannot be any other way

Schoeller [8:36 AM]
It’ll take a bit for me to wrap my head around that idea.

Russell [8:37 AM]
The singularity is pure probability. Computationally irreducible.

Russell [8:37 AM]
Once probability breaks down into four forces and matter and light etc. we have pattern

Russell [8:37 AM]
But by the law of the conservation of computation it can't go to all pattern.

Russell [8:37 AM]
Or that would reduce computation

Russell [8:38 AM]
So competition between networks must proceed.

Russell [8:40 AM]
And per my blog post the idea that replication normalizes nodes in the network as they become more fully normalized the network of replication starts to collide with other networks of replication where the normalizations selected started competing. Until a new form and new networks begin the process again.

Russell [8:40 AM]
Computation merely moves around these networks as the process of complexification and simplification double back over and over.

Russell [8:40 AM]
Even any american company is an example

Russell [8:41 AM]
We are simplifying and normalizing them all the time.

Russell [8:41 AM]
Employees replicate basic skills

Russell [8:41 AM]
And we recruit for these skills

Russell [8:41 AM]
revenue lines get simplified

Russell [8:41 AM]
marketing simplifies messages to the world

Russell [8:42 AM]
All for survivability.

Russell [8:42 AM]
But this is also exposes companies to competition

Russell [8:42 AM]
It gets easier to poach employees. And to see ideas and strategies on the outside.

Russell [8:42 AM]
Soon it tips and companies need New products. New marketing. New employees.

Russell [8:43 AM]
All the while computation is preserved in the wider network

Schoeller [8:43 AM]
Where I’m struggling is how this copes with the notion that the universe tends toward disorder.

Russell [8:44 AM]
Normalized forms become dispensable as individual nodes.

Russell [8:44 AM]
Disorder is pure noise.

Schoeller [8:44 AM]
Order in the universe is effectively random.

Russell [8:44 AM]
Total entropy.

Russell [8:45 AM]
Which if every network normalizes towards highly replicated forms they have less internal competition. They have heat death.

Russell [8:45 AM]
Which is total entropy.

Russell [8:45 AM]
Again. A singularity is pure probability.

Russell [8:46 AM]
No pattern.

Russell [8:46 AM]
Randomness.

Schoeller [8:46 AM]
I can buy that. Certainly there’s a low probability that any agent will succeed, thus the entropy tends to increase.

Russell [8:46 AM]
Fully replicated forms are those that maximize survivability.

Russell [8:46 AM]
So some super weird platonic object between order and chaos

Russell [8:46 AM]
Between infinities.

Russell [8:46 AM]
A circle for example is a weird object

Russell [8:47 AM]
Rule 110 is a weird object

Schoeller [8:47 AM]
Here’s a question — where does the computation come from to achieve fully replicated forms?

Schoeller [8:48 AM]
Presumably there’s some notion of “potential” computation?

Russell [8:48 AM]
Negative.

Russell [8:48 AM]
There's only computation

Russell [8:48 AM]
Potential is a relational concept

Schoeller [8:49 AM]
Hmm… then back to my question.

Russell [8:49 AM]
There is no potential time

Russell [8:49 AM]
There is no potential dimension

Russell [8:50 AM]
There is no potential temperature

Schoeller [8:50 AM]
Right, but time only moves forward — there’s no notion of conservation of time.

Russell [8:50 AM]
Ah!

Russell [8:50 AM]
But I'm suggesting there is

Russell [8:50 AM]
Time is computation

Schoeller [8:50 AM]
Actually, there is potential temperature. Temperature == energy.

Russell [8:51 AM]
Yes it gets rather semantic

Schoeller [8:51 AM]
The whole field is “thermodynamics"

Russell [8:51 AM]
Yes which is superseded by computation

Russell [8:51 AM]
Hence why info theory and thermodynamics are isomorphic

Russell [8:51 AM]
They are just substrate discussions

Russell [8:51 AM]
Which go away in the math

Schoeller [8:52 AM]
Well, strictly speaking that math doesn’t govern, but attempt to describe.

Russell [8:53 AM]
Look at how computer science handlse time

Russell [8:53 AM]
Steps or cycles

Russell [8:53 AM]
It defines time as compute steps

Russell [8:53 AM]
Hahahahaha

Schoeller [8:53 AM]
If info theory and thermo are isomorphic, then the principal of potential has to translate in some way. It’s important because that’s one of the foundations of conservation of energy.

Russell [8:54 AM]
Yes yes

Russell [8:54 AM]
I'll find a translation for you

Russell [8:54 AM]
It's got something to do with chaitins number

Schoeller [8:55 AM]
Computer science handles time as a long from a particular, arbitrary point. And calculates differences as a byproduct of the way it operates.

Schoeller [8:55 AM]
A “quantum” computer would handle time very differently.

Russell [8:56 AM]
Yes. Keep going.

Schoeller [8:56 AM]
“We” calculate time from celestial positions.

Schoeller [8:56 AM]
None of that relates to the more generalized notion of time.

Russell [8:57 AM]
I propose the translation of time fits within the law of conservation of computation

Russell [8:57 AM]
Quantum computers are closer to singularities. Computing with pure probabilities

Russell [8:57 AM]
Classical computers compute with approximated machine precision probabilities

Russell [8:58 AM]
Somewhere things get super weird with math (algebra and geometry meets probability theory)

Russell [8:58 AM]
Math itself suffers same challenge

Schoeller [8:59 AM]
Yes, well math likes to be very precise.

Russell [8:59 AM]
That which symbolically lacks pure probability humans and classical computers can handle

Russell [9:00 AM]
Once you deal with infinities and infinistimals you start getting to pure probabilities and math theory starts bleeding.

Schoeller [9:00 AM]
Okay, so I can accept a notion of a conservation of probability of time.

Russell [9:00 AM]
N-order logics require n+1 order and incompleteness and set paradoxes.

Russell [9:01 AM]
Math itself becomes computationally weird.

Schoeller [9:01 AM]
ie that the probably of an event occurring or not occurring within a system is 1. Of course, that’s tautological.

Schoeller [9:02 AM]
But also that it would hold for any number of events over any set of times.

Russell [9:02 AM]
Because once a math system becomes computationally inefficient it all of a sudden is incomplete. And we reduce to "somethings are true but we can't prove them in this system"

Russell [9:03 AM]
Yes pure probability is binary. Either everything happens or nothing happens.

Russell [9:03 AM]
If everything happens you must conserve computation as that everything happens

Russell [9:03 AM]
Can't be more than 1! Can't be less than 1!

Schoeller [9:04 AM]
Well, I think what I’m saying is that my need for “potential” computation is solved by probability.

Russell [9:04 AM]
And local events of everything take on less than all computation because of the halting problem.

Schoeller [9:04 AM]
Although I haven’t completely convinced myself.

Russell [9:04 AM]
If the halting problem weren't true every event / computation could self inspect and computation would tend to 0

Russell [9:05 AM]
Chaitins number is a measure of probability

Russell [9:05 AM]
Complexity is a measure of probability

Russell [9:05 AM]
Probability is a notion of unknown information

Russell [9:05 AM]
All data of everything would contain every program and all outputs

Russell [9:06 AM]
And has a probability of any and all events total of 1. All information is known

Russell [9:06 AM]
And the same time it is 0

Schoeller [9:06 AM]
Here wouldn’t the truth of the halting problem arise from the fact the system is influenced from elements outside the system?

Russell [9:06 AM]
Because all information is computationally irreducible of the maximal kind

Schoeller [9:06 AM]
(ie. similar to thermo)

Schoeller [9:06 AM]
Therefore a computation can never know its inputs.

Russell [9:06 AM]
Yes. Halting problem is exactly that

Russell [9:06 AM]
Unknowns

Schoeller [9:06 AM]
And thus, can never know its outputs.

Schoeller [9:07 AM]
Because the program can’t see beyond itself.

Russell [9:07 AM]
It's not a matter of inputs

Russell [9:07 AM]
It emerges from computation!

Russell [9:07 AM]
Elementary ca show this

Russell [9:07 AM]
Godel showed this

Russell [9:08 AM]
Mere DESCRIPTION! Description is computation

Russell [9:09 AM]
I think wolfram gave in too easily

Russell [9:09 AM]
He still believes in Euclidean time

Russell [9:09 AM]
Or whatever Greek time

Schoeller [9:10 AM]
Right. And if computation is probabilistic, the program couldn’t even know, necessarily, what it was actually computing at any given point (until that point occurrs).

Schoeller [9:11 AM]
Yeah, I think your theory only works if time is a probability not a discrete measure.

Russell [9:12 AM]
Time isn't discrete.

Russell [9:12 AM]
It's pure difference

Schoeller [9:12 AM]
Which is really to say that the outcome of a computation can’t be known until the state of the system is known.

Schoeller [9:12 AM]
Which itself can’t be known with any certainty until it occurs.

Schoeller [9:13 AM]
Or, it’s all wibbly, wobbly, timey, wimey stuff.

Schoeller [9:14 AM]
Or, possibly the Heisenberg uncertainty principal as applied to computation.

Russell [9:14 AM]
But 2+2 is 4

Schoeller [9:14 AM]
Only if the state of the system is consistent.

Schoeller [9:14 AM]
(which it happens to be)

Russell [9:15 AM]
And that math statement is a "localized" statement

Schoeller [9:15 AM]
So, the probably of 2+2=4 is very, very close to 1, but not exactly. Possibly so close that its limit approaches.

Schoeller [9:16 AM]
Right. So, part of why the state for 2+2=4 is consistent is because we’ve defined it that way.

Russell [9:16 AM]
It's what I call robust

Russell [9:16 AM]
In most universes 2+2 is 4

Russell [9:16 AM]
In the multiverse there are universes where that's not true

Schoeller [9:16 AM]
But, if you shift from say cartesian to spherical, it doesn’t necessarily hold unless you change what “2” and “4” mean.

Russell [9:17 AM]
But those are very small universes that reduce quickly

Russell [9:17 AM]
Yes.

Russell [9:17 AM]
Thank you!

Schoeller [9:17 AM]
i.e their definition is relative to the system you’re computing within.

Russell [9:17 AM]
Counting and the math emerges from the computational systems

Russell [9:17 AM]
Yes.

Russell [9:18 AM]
And in the entirety of the multiverse all maths exist. All description exists.

Schoeller [9:19 AM]
Sure. That’s as tautological as the probability that something either exists or does not is 1.

Schoeller [9:20 AM]
Since the probability of anything existing within an infinity, unbounded system would also be 1.

Russell [9:20 AM]
And your point?

Russell [9:21 AM]
Math loves tautologies

Russell [9:21 AM]
We have to state them all the time

Russell [9:21 AM]
Or reduce to them

Schoeller [9:22 AM]
Well, it’s consistent with probability theory. So, that’s nice.

Russell [9:22 AM]
Is that what symbolics and rule replacements are?

Russell [9:23 AM]
One giant computational tautology

Schoeller [9:23 AM]
If you’re going to have a theory that talks about local behvior within systems, you have to have consistency when you take that to its extreme limit — such as when the system contains everything possible.

Schoeller [9:24 AM]
Aren’t you just describing the state of the system with symbolics and rules?

Russell [9:25 AM]
Sure.

Russell [9:25 AM]
And the state of everything is what?

Schoeller [9:25 AM]
Here describe means “govern” (unlike my earlier math statement)

Russell [9:26 AM]
Isn't that the state of all sub states or local states?

Russell [9:26 AM]
Of which some local states are meta descriptions of sub sub states or neighboring states

Schoeller [9:26 AM]
I think the state of everything is that the probability of anything is 1.

Schoeller [9:26 AM]
It’s rather useless, but so is the notion of the state of everything.

Russell [9:27 AM]
Govern gets tricky because it's non sensible as a fundamental concept. Eg the spin of a quark doesn't govern. It's just a property.

Russell [9:27 AM]
Gravity and the other forces don't govern.

Russell [9:28 AM]
They are descriptions of relationships

Schoeller [9:28 AM]
Sure, but the definition of “2” on a Cartesian plane is.

Russell [9:28 AM]
If Gravity is merely space time curvature. A geometry that doesn't mean it governs.

Russell [9:28 AM]
What is the definition of 2 governing?

Schoeller [9:29 AM]
It’s governing the behavior of 2 within the cartesian system.

Russell [9:29 AM]
It's merely a description of relations between an X position and a y position on a description of a plane

Schoeller [9:29 AM]
i.e. that 2 can’t be 3 or an apple.

Russell [9:30 AM]
Ah. Yes. Definition bounds localized networks.

Russell [9:30 AM]
2 is a 3 in some systems

Russell [9:31 AM]
Say a simple system of primes and non primes without concern of actual quantity

Schoeller [9:31 AM]
I think this idea holds. The symbols and rules govern the system in a computational sense. But that does not mean that the system itself governs any physical phenomena. Only that it describes (to the extent that the rules reasonably describe the same.)

Schoeller [9:31 AM]
— moving back to describe and govern meaning different things --

Russell [9:31 AM]
Yes Im in agreement

Russell [9:31 AM]
Govern is a localized concept of bounding relations

Russell [9:32 AM]
Let's return to the main q in all this

Russell [9:32 AM]
WHAT DOES THE WORK OF COMPUTATION

Schoeller [9:32 AM]
Yes, bounding relations that define a specific system within the multiverse of possible systems.

Schoeller [9:35 AM]
Well, the computation would have to be done within the medium of the system, right?

Schoeller [9:36 AM]
It can’t be just one thing. Because we’ve already enumerated that there a quantum computers that are different than regular computers that are different than the human brain.

Russell [9:36 AM]
yeah, i haven't figured this out.

Russell [9:36 AM]
other than, it's everything i'm trying to figure out.

Schoeller [9:37 AM]
And to some degree, you pick the computational medium when you define the system. At least in the programming world. Mathematica vs Java vs Spark.

Russell [9:38 AM]
i think it's this.... or related.... to perceive/observe/describe/explain at all, whatever sub network of everything (whatever universe, computer, entity, person, rock...) IS. and the IS and IS NOT of breaking out of total relation to everything is COMPUTATION. and it's a super weird notion. but the mere simplification of total relation to partial relation IS the COMPUTATIONAL ACT.

Schoeller [9:39 AM]
And with a math problem, you’re defining the computational medium to be the human brain.

Russell [9:40 AM]
well, within the human / this universe frame of reference or partial relation to everything, yes.

Schoeller [9:41 AM]
Agree that it’s a weird notion that computational singularity doesn’t “seem” to underly everything. But the rules and computation have to be related and even dependent.

Russell [9:41 AM]
whether we can COMPUTE or "IS" with a different substrate... well, i think so.... i think "computers" and "virtual reality" are moving our COMPUTE/DESCRIPTION/RELATION to everything beyond/outside the Human Brain.

Schoeller [9:42 AM]
So, it’s easier if we constrain ourselves to the systems we make up.

Schoeller [9:43 AM]
As for what computes the physical world — maybe there’s a lesson in evolution theory, where “computation” is quite literally random mutations of the medium itself.

Schoeller [9:44 AM]
And where the “selection”/“survival”/“success” of the computation occurs outside the system (back to the halting problem discussion above)

Schoeller [9:46 AM]
I should clarify "But the rules and computation have to be related and even dependent.” … within a system. In the multiverse, anything goes. :simple_smile:

Russell [9:48 AM]
yes, on your evolutionary theory... or something similar to that. the resolution of probabilities IS computation. resolution being like the resolution of super positions in quantum stuff.

Russell [9:48 AM]
i believe that basically happens as you move from logic systems, computational systems, i.e. russell's theory of types etc.

Russell [9:49 AM]
related to all this numbo jumbo: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/quine-nf/

Schoeller [9:50 AM]
It’s an example of a chaotic system where order appears to arise naturally, so it seems like it’d be a reasonable starting place to think about other physical systems.

Russell [9:50 AM]
yes, i say we conclude there for now

Schoeller [9:50 AM]
I think the key is the halting problem bit — that the computation can’t possibly know if its successful. That occurs outside the system where the computation is valid. It only blindly executes.

Russell [9:51 AM]
we've created something between chaos and order in this dialog

Russell [9:51 AM]
which will be non trivial to clear up.

Russell Foltz-Smith 10/1/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 10/1/15

This is contingency

Remarks on the contingency of new forms and the phenemenon of replication.

Selection by consequences (the main phenomenon of evolution/learning/mediation) follows a basic movement towards interoperability and interchangeability through modularity. As forms/structure proliferate (are selected for survivability) an ever progressive reduction to the simplest aspect of the structure providing the survivability function occurs. What is replicated within the generational line, the environment and the overall mesh of consequences is a generally modular structure - the signal separates and replicates from the noise.

Noise and signal.  In replication. — Noise and signal. In replication.

That "life" on earth (and likely other planets) shares carbon as its elemental basis and proteins and cellular structures as replicating machinery is an example. Music and the arts are another example of a progression of signal differentiation until what is widely shared is almost pure signal. Music went from noisy localized and often private events to reproducible written scores to recorded and replayable sounds to studio produced to advertising jingle to 3-note musical logos to iconic ringtones to machine remixes and generative machine mixes. It is now almost pure signal and total self replication. Visual arts went through and are still going through this transformation from event to prints to xeroxes to Internet shared images to machine recompositions to computer vision and now googles deep dream and so on. Manufacturing, too, has gone from artisan craftspersonship to machine generated and exchanged designs printed out and machine assembly by networked 3D printers and robots. The object is now too pure signal.

In all these examples gone is the noise of the event. Noise of the making. Noise of the specific context of creator and environment. Soon we will have virtual realities that remove the noise of the singular universe and have everyone in their pure signal forms drifting through universes of platonic forms. For these are the most efficient and survivable concepts that remain after consequences.

Until. New forms disturb the peace. From the heat death of pure signal... Springing from probabilities... Which are outside of consequences or rather spring from the complex network of consequences all colliding... A new form burrows out and shocks the consequential network. A constant, yet choppy cycle of noise to signal to noise - from isolated event to selection to full replication to collision of pure signal to isolated event.

This is contingency. This is the phenomena of networks.

Russell Foltz-Smith 9/27/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 9/27/15

This Misconception of Validation

validation is relative... unless it's not. WHO ARE YOU?

Validation is the concept almost all Western ideas and cultures (politics, companies, social structures!) are based on. Validation, in terms of people, is in some sense the idea "you are approved to profess what you profess."

It's a social concept and it's horribly incomplete. Validation is a mostly built up on the idea of "you went through what I went through" which is not the same as what you do/say/build is truth/right/worthwhile.

The idea is the idea. The thing is the thing. The theory is right or not. The math works or it doesn't.

the idea is right. it's true. truth is true. what is true is true.

you're right because you are YOU! you are the person we know is right because you've been right before! you're RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT because you're the person IN CHARGE.

so which is it? are you about the source? the build up of authority or about the rightness of the idea.

it's Plato vs. the world.

I think Plato was right.

Russell Foltz-Smith 9/26/15 Russell Foltz-Smith 9/26/15

Believability

the success of a theory (narrative, proof, story, artwork) is its believability - its connective properties.

The issue before any narrative or story or theory is one of believability. That is, there must be some connection between the author's reality and the audience's reality. A completely absurd and non-sensical narrative finds no connection and is quickly dismissed into the pile of other things that are not things to an audience.

And so what is the nature of believability? this connection of reality to reality? Doubtful there's any common, easy notion to elucidate here but surely it swirls in some notion of shared experience (shared context, culture, events, language, image). And it is likely beyond a single shared instance of experience the repetition of the experience is a key aspect. For me to believe what you say/do I must have a reference point of my own or from seeing others having done/say what you say. Perhaps that's a valid concept... it still leaves open the issue of the INITIAL step towards believability. How does the initial introduction of a narrative catch fire? How is the initial expression not immediately snuffed out in indifference or ignorance?

I believe what we think is the narrative and the atomic aspects of a narrative/theory/story/proof/argument is much smaller than we think. That is, what it is that draws connections (the engine of believability) can be divided into infinitesimal chunks and only a very few recognizable chunks of connection are needed to spark engagement.

A chunk might not even be the words or art someone thinks they expressed. A connection might form by the smell in the air that an artist and audience might jointly experience during a demonstration. Incidental chunks are as much a part of belief forming as the intended chunks. All shared context that gets encoded into the individuals and the social dialogue and the works of expression themselves.

But was there an initial spark? Way back at the onset of language? way back with the first cave painting?

Unlikely.

There does not need to be an originating moment or gesture or act. Even a seeming nothing is an originating chunk of believability, of connection. Probably more practical is to assume we can never really know.

We ask the question of origination because after all these thousands of years of trying to know, to understand and our infinite origin myths of everything under the sun and the sun itself we still carry with us the idea that to know the origin is to believe the entirety. Where did this art come from? where did you the artist come from? what's the authors story? what's the story of this building? was this work of fiction based on a true story?

And that shared experience of wanting to know the origin of anything and everything is also part of the activity of believing. Let us ask together.