Notes
[Notebook: Language DB 57]
[Sunday 24 October 2004 - Saturday 30 October 2004]
Sunday 24 October 2004
Monday 25 October 2004
. . . Business, in fact all action, is based on trust. So we come to epistemology, the study of the foundations of trust. The basic algorithm for developing trust is 'suck it and see'
Collision: conflict of interest.
Financial operations like share, bond and currency trading are a real virtual reality. Bringing us back to the divinity of money. An essay on the divinity of money Money, like quantum mechanics and general relativity, is a way of describing the world. We object to the fact that monetized value flows in society tend to take precedence to non-monetized flows like truth and beauty. As well as monetary value, there are all other possible values which must be taken into account, given suitable weighings (ie valuations)
Do we see it all as a conspiracy theory, or as
[page 26]
a lot of intelligent agents making intelligent decisions about the best thing to do, ie the bet algorithm or set of algorithms to employ to achieve a certain task.
Tuesday 26 October 2004
Wednesday 27 October 2004
Thursday 28 October 2004
Friday 29 October 2004
Economist October 23 2004 p 14 "In a spin" [re gambling law reform]
'The opposition to such plans seems motivated by, on the one hand, right-wing paternalism (the peasants must be protected against their mental and moral weaknesses) and, on the other left wing Methodism (if it's fun it's bad).'
The 'war on drugs' is a phoney war like the war on terror. It is a wilderness that we live in, and every effort to tame the wilderness is oppression.
Economist ibid: 'Most people (in non-Muslim countries at least) believe that drinking alcohol should be allowed even if a small minority is alcoholic.' The reason for this is that any other policy is unrealistic and unenforceable. All it does is create a large class of criminals and a large class of police, lawyers ad jailers to deal with them, causing all the while social disintegration. Instead, license the distribution of safe pure drugs in known doses and use some of the profits to prevent or help people people becoming victims of these drugs.
[page 27]
In a democracy which depends simply on cardinal numbers, there is no reason to believe that the majority is wiser than the minority.
Control: variety reduction/ harm reduction = error reduction,
Walls are the fundamental means of increasing human population density, ie the borders between individuals.
BOUNDARY == COMMUNICATION CHANNEL
Saturday 30 October 2004
Drilling ahead. St Andrews initial summary looks good, but goodness knows what they will think. So back to 'A scientific religion' aimed at Theological Studies (whose only articles I have read are Lonergan's Verbum. Lonergan) Might be mature enough to have another go at Nature Commentary: A New Theology
The difficulty with publishing is suitably generalizing the 'personal equation' in theological and metaphysical observations. Here in the questions of consciousness, feeling and self-reference the couplings between theory and observation become closer until theory and observation are identified - we see what we already know. Every structure has relatively static and relatively dynamic elements.
Knowledge is naturally subjective since it is the subject who is using the knowledge to increase its fitness. The
[page 28]
need for objective knowledge arises when the subjects unite into larger systems, something that requires a certain 'symmetrification' of individuals, ie agreement on necessary and sufficient communication protocols.
When we come to global unity, we need global protocols, which have the widest symmetry, mathematics.
The need to talk (and to listen) is common to all levels of complexity from atom to human and beyond.
SPIRIT == MEANINGFUL ARRANGEMENT OF MATTER == TEXT + ENCODER/DECODER
MERCY == GRATUITOUS ERROR CORRECTION
One tests oneself by going further and further out on a limb - can I really make a connection between metaphysics and quantum field theory or even quantum theory? The hope is to use the transfinite network as a bond. Does this network exist? Are its properties described by quantum mechanics X relativity = quantum field theory? Can it be expanded to any level of complexity. The answer to all these questions seems to be yes, the job can be done. So do it!
Religions are the primary actuaries advising us what provisions are in our best (self) interest, and estimating their cost.
