VII Notes
2010
Notes
[Sunday 3 January 2010 - Saturday 9 January 2010]
[Notebook: DB 67: jciii]
[page 138]
Sunday 3 January 2010
Universal network
PHYSICAL LAYER = GOD (THE FATHER) omnino simplex
METAPHYSICAL LAYERS = TRINITY +++
Fides quaerens intellectum = potential seeking realization = love seeking reproduction. Thomas Williams
Love reproduces; hate dies.
Love: process successfully completed.
Hate: error and exit.
EXIT == DIE
Many people close to machines begin to think of them as personalities seeing their moods, trying to predit their behaviour. In every machine some behaviour is predictable because connected to something else, like a
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piston to a crankshaft, coupling = 1 (they move as one). Other behaviour is unpredictable because it depends on inputs from outside the machine, (by definition uncorrelated inputs), eg the operator, failure of a part, etc.
. . .
Old Testament Yahweh's role: the prevention (by law) and correction (often by severe punishment) of error. See the Prophets.
Power corrupts: an indictment of the Catholic Church.
nop is formally identical to actus purus, omnino simplex. nop is simply formal, whereas god is purely operational.
FORMAL - STATIC / ETERNAL
ACTUAL - DYNAMIC (ETERNAL?)
All angels are specifically different - FORMALIST Aquinas 264
Formalism is kinematic. In physics we convert kinematics into dynamics by studying the kinematics in the infinitesimal limit.
The radical error, which has enabled the Church to become a parasite degrading the human spirit is the supposed dichotomy between God and the World.
Lonergan Triune God: Systematics Lonergan
Universe (and so God) grows by understanding itself.
[page 140]
Understanding combats error by compression and redundancy.
Monday 4 January 2010
Natural religion will be a stumbling block to many because it renders obsolete many cherished beliefs of the afterlife, merit and reward, guilt and punishment which once served as constraints on human behaviour to maintain the integrity of society, replacing them with more abstract guides to fitness derived from the theory of communication. Every hair on my body, every pore of my skin, every atom of my physique has been shaped by this force, which acts at all scales with perfect symmetry.
A good machine, insopfar as it obeys formal rules, suffers no decoherence from its environment. At equilibrium there is no possibility whose realization leads to a fatal error, ie the premature termination of a process peer to the equilibrium state, ie all possible processes are dealt with gracefully in the equilibrium state except murder.
MURDER = CONTRADICTION
At the cardinal level we do not ask how the Father, the Son and the Spirit are related to one another, simple that the cardinal of the set of divine persons, reresented by the symbol {father, son, spirit} is three. However, in representing that triad, we introduce a certain amount of meaning which is formalized in the various creeds. Where Christians say "I believe . . . ' critical naturalists say 'I propose. . . ' as an hypothesis for the observed behaviour of the world.
[page 141]
We cannot separate hypotheses from belief, since we need a certain amount of belief in the hypothesis to finance the collection of evidence relevant to the credibility of the hypothesis.
Much of the complexity of software systems derives from the need for error handling by killing defective subroutines and restarting them. A major task is identifying when a process is in error.
Lonergan Triune page 127: 'The problem. The fundamental trinitarian problem lies in the following facts: (1) the Son is both a se, from himself, and not a se, from himself; (2) the Holy Spirit is both a se, from himself and not a se, not from himself; (3) the way in which the Son is not a se, not from himself, is different from the way the Holy Spirit is not a se, not from himself. . . . '
page 126: 'Nam Deus est a se. Sed Filius est DFeus. Ergo Filius est a se. Similiter, Spiritus Sanctus est Deus. Ergo etiam Spiritus Sanctus est a se.
Attamen, Filius non est a se. Nam est Filius, natus ex Patre, unigenitus, de substantia Patris, Deus ex Deo, lumen ex lumine, Deus verus de Deo vero (DB54, DS 125 Denzinger)
'Similiter Spiritus Sanctus . . . '
TRINITY - CREATION
The world is driven by thermal noise?
Dissipative - non-dissipative (quantum, reversible)
[page 142]
INDETERMINACY - CREATIVITY
'Begotten, not made' ie self made, given a pattern (in living things encoded in DNA).
My hope for the Trinitarian model grows as it becomes more formalized and less mysterious [numenous] in my mind and begins to fuse with quantum mechanics, the Father, observing Himself becomes one source of a communication, the other being his image, Word or copy. So we see the initial singularity copy itself identically, since it is an empty set, yet one copy becomes orthogonal to the other, remaining entangled in the 'godhead', as a creation of the new interaction between two copies of the initial singularity. The Father and the Son are formally a qubit.
Maybe all Lonergan's trinitarian talk can be replaced with quantum theory.
Let us guess that the interesting parts of mathematics are all worked out between a countable and an uncountable layer, such as the sides and diagonal of a square. It is suggestive that Cantor made his way into the transfinite heaven via a diagonal argument. There is first the mystical feel, like All Cretans are liars, and then there is the detailed exposition, via Goedel. What Goedel developed was a numbering (addressing) system which he could use to keep tabs on the ideas he was trying to express. [and the numbers were designed so that one could recover formal strings and order strings via the numbers] GoedelIt is normal for mathematics to assume the existence of infinite sets of identical points which can nevertheless be identified and made to correspond to one another. This is the formal Platonic world, but in the real world points can only be identified and
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addressed if they carry this information within themselves, as I carry my name and other identifying details in or on (with) me. So the point needs to have the same entropy as the space to identify itself in the space. Presumably within the space of the godhead the Father can say I am the Father and you are the Son and the Son vice versa. So too, in effect, with the two basis states of a qubit.
Lonergan page 129: '. . . since the Son is God, and God is absolutely simple, and within absolute simplicity there is really no this and that, no 'one' and 'another', it seems to follow that the same Son, under the same aspect is both a se . . . and not a se . . . '
Lonergan, Augustine and Thomas solve this problem with relations. Here we might be motivated to solve it with fixed point theorems on a dynamic system mapping onto itself. The Father and the Son may be thought of as fixed points in a dynamic unity, particles or sources.
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Diamant Red Tent. 0312195516 Diamant
A story of childbirth, grief and murder all ulttimately motivated by the human need for land, livestock, crops and shelter, a battle that continues (unnecessarily) today in the same country. It is unnecessary because with modern methods of birth control, food production, the constriction of shelter and the entitlement of property there can be enough for all and all can have a legally guaranteed share.
[page 144]
ENTITLEMENT
My religious heritage is a story of rape, murder, pillage and conquest and the attitude is still built into our societies. But it is not necessary, a history carried over by the stubbornness and stupidity to the old men and women who lay claim to the live of those over whom they have power, for religion, forged in the furnace of selection, has the power of life and death.
DEMOCRACY = NETWORKING A SUPERCOMPUTER
Powers:
Legislative = establishing potentials = laws
Executive - operations of control = government
For corruption free operation these mowers must be orthogonal, that is independent degrees of freedom.
These powers are superposed in any computation, the algorithm, the processor and error handling.
The Bible is a work of art designed to convey a certain message, written and edited by many minds, bounded by the common theme of the hiostory of a relatively well defined group of people whose ideas happen to have spread very widely.
Two Books: Indictment (What is wrong); Creation (putting it right)
The divine processions are driven [formally] by Cantor's theorem.
[page 145]
The doctrine of the trinity faces the basic conundrum of creation: how do we make many out of one?
Consciousness - we can argue with ourselves; Alice does it in Wonderland. Carroll
Wednesday 6 January 2010
Lonergan glories in a forest of distinctions between various real and conceptual entities, all of which can be understood in terms of cardinal number (requisite variety) and correspondence. If there are two distinct states in God, then we need two symbols to represent them; so if there are n details in a picture, we need n pixels to represent them, and how we name these pixels is of secondary importance. So we represent the Persons of the Trinity by three names which are orthogonal in the same way as the persons are orthogonal.
The traditional doctrine of the Trinity seeks to maintain the unity of God and the triplicity of person through the doctrine of relations. Lonergan page 231 sqq.
Copuncil of Florence, DS 1330 'omnia [in Deo] unum esse ubi non obviat relationis oppositio.'
'We can also conclude with certainty that there is no real distinction between the real relations and the divine substance . . . ' whatever that may mean.
Lonergan page 235: Four real relations . . . paternity, filiation, active and passive spiration.
Top know horses is to be able to decode and respond to horse
[page 146]
behaviour.
Only that which is formal can be written. We cannot represent the dynamics as such, but interpolate it mentally from the fixed points we observe. A message as such is a form and so outside (immune to) time.
To deny time to god is formally to deny life, for life is an ordered series of events whose most abstract formal representation is a string of ticks.
Interpreting a text = drama, expanding from the abstract work to the concrete play.
Part of the challenge is to relive the observation that many have become wealthy through religion.
We need transparency of ownership and of transfers of ownership, which is a complex ordered process represented in abstract form by cashflow.
The formal is obscured by the numinous, and so science has always tried to cut through the numinous to the processes generating it. Numinous - Wikipedia
If something talks to us, and listens, we know it is a being, and at the same time we become aware of our own being in the process. Of course we talk to one another in various human languages ranging from whispers to murder, and in my work as a builder much of what I say is transmitted through hammer, saw and screwdriver.
[page 147]
. . .
Lonergan page 241: The distinction between subsistent and the rest has little foundation in reality. Even 'accidents' are substantial, since all information is physically embodies, whiteness, for instance, in a population of photons.
All Lonergan's distinct forms of being are nugatory - all we need to now about a being is that it sends messages and receives them.
Thursday 7 January 2010
It is depressing reading Lonergan's plethora of real, notional and conceptual distinctions designed to underpin the various Catholic ideas about God, Jesus and the Eucharist, knowing that while they are easily dismissed by the assumption that the Universe is divine, they have so much institutional momentum that nothing I say or do from my small perspective is likely to have any influence on them. But do not despair.
[page 148]
From little things big things grow!. From Little Things Big Things Grow - Wikipedia But I am out of my depth and have nowhere else to go so have no choice but to push ahead with the project, like a solder committed to battle.
FORMAL DISTINCTION = [at least] 1 symbol [operation] different in the ordered sets used to represent the distinct objects [processes] [Hamming distance =>1]
My power, if any, is the ability to entrain other minds using sets of written formal expressions.
The fundamental dynamic entity we call a computation, represented by a time ordered string [of operations] we call a Turing machine.
The computer is our formal representation of dynamics.
Lonergan makes syllogisms which purport to establish the existence of certain beings, whereas the only certainty we can have about the existence of a being is when we observe it [ie it talks to us]. Although the events leading to a given event are logical in retrospect, the past does not fully constrain the future, so that given any circumstance we can give a probability distribution of the possibilities and so cannot be certain which are to be realized.
We exist, and that is that. Formalism can show that our existence is possible, ie involved no formal contradiction, an that creation comes under this rubric, but this does not guarantee that we do exist. Only experience does that.
[page 149]
on_creation 03_Metaphysics - evolution / creation. Genes, like Gods, complexify by copying [and subsequent independent evolution]
Friday 8 January 2010
Lonergan page 323: 'by reason of their interpersonal relations the divine persons are not only related to one another but are also constituted as persons.'
This is the feature of the Trinity which is central to the natural theology of the divine Universe, which is a layered network of an infinity of persons; for a given person, its set of peers is countable.
The beauty of formalism is that it abstracts from the numinous power of established belief that has been passed on [to us] since infancy and allows us to get outside the old models into new territory, as Cantor's theorem says a consistent system must do. CantorIn the absence of control, we might assume that all the orderings of s set of objects (numberings, processes) are equiprobable ion the first instance, but the process of selection favours those that are self sustaining over those that simply happen to be.
STABILITY = RECURSION
Our principles:
1. to be is to communicate.
2. to communicate is to copy, differentiate and complexify.
3. durable processes are recursive.
4. deterministic operation is represented by a Turing machine.
[page 150]
5. There is no limit to complexification, provided that the complex systems can sustain themselves through recursion (and therefore error control leading to closure).
Lonergan page 331: 'According to the Fourth Lateran Council (DS 803 - ) "In God there is a trinity, not a quaternity." Therefore God is not some fourth person besides the Father, the Son and the Spirit. The reason is that a person is a distinct subsistent ion an intellectual nature; and since the Father is God, God is not really distinct from the father, and so in the case of the other two persons. And for the same reason God the Spirator is two persons, namely the Father and the Son; nor is the Spirator another person besides the Father and the Son.'
Here we see a clear expression of the Catholic error which is to see substances as existing in total independence, so that more complex structures (like corporations) cannot be built up as networks of simpler structures. Here we build on the alternative, that PERSON = {PERSON} or identically SOURCE = {SOURCE}. The minimum entity (element) of this structure is the quantum of action, an act of a person so simple that it annihilates itself by communication and reappears as something else respecting only the conservation of energy, ie formalism (?).
The binding of persons is dynamically seamless (like the process in an engine). This is an expression of the unity of the Universe. The foundation of dynamics is in discontinuous changes represented by creation and annihilations which can only be understood as probability
[page 151]
distributions.
PERSON = SOURCE (origin or destination of messages).
CREATION (waiting for an insight) vs WORK (realizing an insight in some material (like ink and paper or bricks and mortar)).
The beauty of Lonergan for me is the he has expounded the Catholic position with such clarity and detail that its errors are glaringly obvious, and so he saved me from the stunted life of a Dominican monk and set me free in a divine world of my own creation.
Darwin: The Origin of Species. 'that mystery of mysteries.' Mank
Origin of species (= form) = creation
'despite decades of study, evolutional biologists still cannot agree on the underlying processes that have produced the great variety of life we see around us.'
Isolation of a species (differentiation) requires the halting of gene flow between two populations which then diverge, as I have diverged from the Roman Catholic Church by staying away from it and reading its publications critically, sometimes perversely so.
'Because it has been difficult to build viable population genetic models of how gene flow might be curtailed in the absence of a geographic barrier, sympatric speciation has been regarded with a great deal of doubt by most evolutionary biologists ever since it was dismissed by Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky. Ernst W Mayr - Wikipedia Theodosius Dobzhansky - Wikipedia
[page 152]
Google Trends S 326:1645
Saturday 9 January 2010
Ultimately the selective advantage of understanding is the ability to predict in order to design one;'s actions to achieve moment to moment survival [and some profit]. Once killed you are deal. The nature of God is the set of rules (if any) by which we can predict. One of the most fundamental, learnt by babies and toddlers, ion that of your support fails you will fall, the universal law of gravitation that binds us, sometimes painfully or fatally, to the earth.
To understand is to construct a virtual machine (a network of Turing machines), which mimics the behaviour of the real world. So a tennis player contains a machine that, given all the inputs available on the court, particularly the motions of the other player, [which] can anticipate to some extent where the ball is going to go, and intercept and return it. One is trying to make the return unplayable, and this includes not just actual placement but deception, if possible, so that the other player starts moving the wrong way. Wew anticipate that given adequate technology all this can be represented and executed by a formal network of the type materialized in the neural networks of our information processing nerve system.
We have in fact begun to unite physics and theology, since they both treat the behaviour of systems that are omnino simplex, completely simple, like God and the electron, which is held to have no internal
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structure and consequently, since it has no need to memory distributed in space, no size. The next step, two plus, is metaphysics.
Montsarrat Pirates 'High above their heads, the masthead lookout in the crows nest completed the pattern of vigilance.' Monsarrat
Since God and structureless particles have no distributed internal memory, any process within them must take place at one point in space and be represented in time by a series of events each of which is the annihilation of one state and the creation of another.
Metaphysics describes systems com[prising two actors which are considered to be blaqck boxes, no internal structure, just a set of behaviours which can be learned and exploited. So we consider the coexistence of such patterns of input and output (which are in fact Turing machines) and their multiplication.
A glimpse of something new, but it has fleeted. *
An understanding (insight) is not just a formal string of static symbols (an ordered set of symbols) but a closed loop of operations (a processing pipeline) that can be applied to a given input (like this sentence) and form an output (an opinion of this sentence) and process (in the case of natural language input) all well formed sentences.
I cannot process the file x because it does not exist (for me, in the search space available to me)'
Theology lays the foundations for the evolution of the Anthropocene era. Science 3265:1646
[page 154]
My thesis (should it ever see the light) might be designed as an endless book with no particular beginning or end designed to be read over and over again [like an annual liturgy]. This loosens the constraint on its structure. Instead of being a work with a beginning, a middle and an end, it retains a logical order of exposition, but since it is a cycle, it has no starting point. From a most abstract point of view, this loop represents a pulsation in complexity, modelled by the transfinite oscillator running on the spectrum of 0 (God, electron, photon) to transfinity and back, creation and knowledge. So we have come around again to the Hilbert oscillator. An Essay on the Divinity of Money: The Hibert Oscillator This time we want to give a formal description of how it works and we do this on a trajectory parametrized by the natural numbers, beginning with the null operator and continuing in complexity.
This is equivalent to the cycle Peano's axioms - transfinite numbers - Peano's axioms and the concept of adding one explained in the theory of peace. A Theory of Peace 5: Spacetime
So the order of exposition is
1. the transfinite network (fqxi 2009)fqxi.org
2. the human social application (fqxi 2009)
3. physics and theology.
4. prediction
The mist slowly clears. The world was formless and void. God the creator defined it. Now we know this definition is a continuous process, marking the transformation from the undefined future to the perfectly defined past, a process which we must understand if we are to survive
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peacefully.
fqxi: God the the Hilbert Oscillator. Last year's effort was a bit abstract to gain traction. Now we make it more concrete applying it in the intuitive human sphere as then invoking Cantor symmetry to move to physics and theology, opposite poles which may nevertheless be identified, since no matter how complex a system, its complexity is as q to that of the next layer's 2. Each cycle adds 1 and subtracts 1.
To become a whistle blower one must become involved and so confess to one's own error.
Lonergan writes from within the Roman Catholic hypothesis, content to stay inside and prove to himself and his fellow believers that there is nothing outside, that is it is a functioning and useful model of reality, able to predict the consequences of various human acts, the main consequences being situated in an hypothetical afterlife for which we have no evidence.
Company spy: the detector and corrector of errors.
Each higher layer imposes an error controlling probability distribution on the layer beneath it. So the words of the English language establish a probability distribution among the letters, the the sentences impose a distribution on the words.
Let us trust in our Saviour always. He keeps us, every one, in his care. (Keep on the Sunnyside) June Carter Cash
