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Notes

[Notebook: DB 62 Interpretation]

[Sunday 18 November 2007 - Saturday 24 November 2007]

[page 40]

Sunday 18 November 2007

Aristotle's distinction into things that exist 'by nature' like trees, and 'by art' like wooden beds is echoed in the distinction between formal (as in formal mathematics) where the symbols are manipulated by some outside agency, like a mathematician, and dynamic (as in physics) where the symbols interact from their own nature.

NATURAL = FREE
FORMAL = CONSTRAINED

One may compare the layers of a network to the time ordered layers of literature of culture in general, each subsequent layer taking and elaborating meaning and inspiration from its recorded and remembered predecessors.

A complex number carries two channels of information, whose independence is marked by calling them real and imaginary, and which are additively independent through they interact in multiplication, since i2 is real. What does this mean?

Monday 19 November 2007

The natural development of complex numbers are vectors and matrices which carry n channels of information represented in n dimensional space). Quantum mechanics uses complex vectors, so embracing the complex protocol in the more complex protocol

[page 41]

that embraces many pairs of channels, like a many pair copper telephone cable.

Byron & Greek Love: Louis Crompton Crompton

Page 197 Lady Caroline Lamb: 'Mad, bad and dangerous to know'.

I write much of this from love (and its consequences) trying to resolve real or imagined conflict between 'flesh' and 'spirit', whose origin, I believe, is this very false dichotomy promulgated by the Christian trend in theology which regards the world as a puppet of an invisible superior being and all of us here below who are in fact defective sinners. This paradigm creates a role for 'shepherds' who keep the mob together and control its direction, while making an income by selling the natural increase of their flock into the meat trade. So we replace the duality between matter and spirit with the quantum harmonic oscillator, which creates and annihilates the states of the Universe. We imagine the world as a space of all possible states. We consider a state to be created (moved from possible to actual) by the acquisition of energy. To be is to have energy, which we see as a measure of the flow of action in the Universe.

As plumbers, we imagine the world as an infinite closed pipe system in which there is a ceaseless conserved flow of action. We assign the cardinal ℵ0 to this conserved flow, since it can be measured in a fundamental unit, the quantum of action.

[page 42]

Thus we hope to replace the violent duality of matter and spirit with an ever growing number of states separated by every smaller distances in terms of action, but ever greater distances in terms of complexity.

The flow of action is observable, that is visible to us and measurable. It is the dynamic cardinal of the Universe. We do not inquire about what the action is, but just treat it as a countable unit, a cardinal unit.

Photons (as in optic fibres) do not require a return channel (as in electric currents). This is because the current of electrons is conserved whereas photons can be created at one end of the fibre and annihilated at the other with a corresponding reverse flow of energy, which needs no specific channel, like a wire, to itself. Photons are one way wires.

CAUSALITY - DEPENDENCE. The software depends on the hardware, so we can have a hardware layer without a corresponding software layer, but not vice versa, since the principle of physical embodiment says the software cannot execute without the relevant layers of hardware down to the initial singularity, the quantum of action.

How does this relate to the light cone?

CAUSALITY IS A FORMAL FEATURE of the model and is an expression of ordering. From 'fully

[page 43]

disordered' (purely timelike) action that gets exactly nowhere (because there is no observable difference between the different points (if any) in the state space), [to ordered].

From Quantum Harmonic Oscillator to Hilbert Oscillator whose fundamental symmetry is that there is just one abstract Hilbert space for each cardinal number of dimensions, that is the number of points resolved in the domain of the function represented.

Minimal complete Hilbert Oscillator is the 4-oscillator which exists in 4-space and explains the basic structure of spacetime. This protocol lies between quantum mechanics and partile family, and is thus the foundation of the communication network that exchanges the particles that we observe.

Quantum mechanics tells us how potential structure regulates traffic flow between states, as does statistical mechanics.

Consciousness is a part of experience, like all the others.

Tuesday 20 November 2007

POTENTIAL = SPACE. We (classically) think of potentials in space (4-space) as functions of four space-time variables. But Einstein identifies the potential with the space itself, so we no longer have a potential in space, but both have the same structure. We can nevertheless put this in  carrier space to visualize it better, but in reality potentials are the forms that guide

[page 44]

action: hard to avoid the dualism. In the dynamic view, potentials are computable transformation and an appropriate representation for an element of the alphabet of potentials is a Turing machine or algorithm.

Formally the Turing machine is the algorithm and we can construct an algorithm for addressing all possible algorithms to give us the universal Turing machine.

Things work better when imagination runs further ahead of construction, since there is more time to consider the deeper implications of each action and to avoid actions that might lead to failure.

Although we can work things out in two state systems, real wavefunction have both finite and infinite and transfinite dimensions. We have to content ourselves with summing over  a finite number of 'principal axes' in order to model real processes.

Wednesday 21 November 2007
Thursday 22 November 2007
Friday 23 November 2007

In a time division multiplexed system the strength of a bond (other things being equal) is proportional to the fraction of time (0 <= t <= 1) devoted to it, ranging from indifference (0) to identity (1). This is in line with Lonergan's idea that to love someone is to think about them all the time. Lonergan It also fits the mystical view that seeks to identify with god, since in a divine

[page 45]

world I am always communicating with god [without being a mystic].

Wilson Darwin's Cathedral. Wilson

Saturday 24 November 2007

Related sites

Concordat Watch

Revealing Vatican attempts to propagate its religion by international treaty


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Further reading

Books

Click on the "Amazon" link below each book entry to see details of a book (and possibly buy it!)

Crompton, Louis , Byron and Greek Love: Homophobia in 19th-Century England, Faber and Faber, University of California Press 1985 Jacket: 'Byron and Greek Love exposes the bigoted anti-homosexualism of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England, in contrast to a more tolerant Europe. It examines the popular press and private journals, biblical and classical commentaries, legal treatises and parliamentary debates of the day. It also vividly documents the hangings and pilloryings that took place for homosexual 'offences'' 
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Lonergan, Bernard J F, Insight : A Study of Human Understanding (Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan : Volume 3), University of Toronto Press 1992 '... Bernard Lonergan's masterwork. Its aim is nothing less than insight into insight itself, an understanding of understanding' 
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Longley, Clifford, and Edited by Suzy Powling. Foreword by Lord Rees-Mogg, The Times Book of Clifford Longley, HarperCollinsReligious 1991 Jacket: 'Clifford Longley is perhaps the best known religious journalist working in Britain today [1991] and surely one of the most accomplished in the post-war period. ... This anthology, the first ever of Longley's work, contains a wide selection of columns published since 1988. Together they make up a colourful and engrossing account of a period when Church affairs have been marked by high controversy, and have regularly hit front pages.' 
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Wilson, David Sloan, Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society, University Of Chicago Press 2003 Amazon Spotlight Review 'Religion in the Light of Evolution, January 2, 2003 Reviewer: R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) If you have an opinion about religion, or belong to a religion, most people disagree with you; there is not a majority religion in the world. And surely not all religions can be factually correct, since there are fundamental disagreements between them. So, how is it that all those other, incorrect religions exist and seem to help their members and their societies? There must be something they offer beyond a factual representation of gods and the cosmos (and when it comes down to it, if you belong to a religion, yours must be offering something more as well). If religions do help their members and societies, then perhaps they are beneficial in a long term and evolutionary way, and maybe such evolutionary influences should be acknowledged and studied. This is what David Sloan Wilson convincingly declares he has done in _Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society_ (University of Chicago Press): "I will attempt to study religious groups the way I and other evolutionary biologists routinely study guppies, trees, bacteria, and the rest of life on earth, with the intention of making progress that even a reasonable skeptic must acknowledge." To Wilson's credit, he has written carefully about both scientific and religious issues, and readers with an interest in either field will find that he has covered both fairly. His coverage of the science involved begins with an interesting history of "the wrong turn" evolutionary theory took fifty years ago, when it deliberately ignored the influence of group selection. Especially if one accepts that there is for our species not only an inheritance of genes, but also an inheritance of culture, evolutionary influence by and upon religious groups, especially in light of the examples Wilson discusses, now seems obvious. For instance, evolution often studies population changes due to gains and losses from births, deaths, and in the case of religion, conversion and apostasy. The early Christian church is shown to have made gains compared to Judaism and Roman mythology because of its promotion of proselytization, fertility, a welfare state, and women's participation. There is a temple system in Bali dedicated to the water goddess essential for the prosperity of the rice crops; "those who do not follow her laws may not possess her rice terraces." The religious system encompasses eminently practical procedures for promoting fair water use and even for pest control. Religious morality is shown to build upon the principles of the famously successful computer strategy Tit-for-Tat. There is a significant problem, of course, in religions' dealing with other groups; it is not at all uncommon for a religion to teach that murdering those who believe in other religions is different from murdering those inside one's own religion. There is a degree of amorality shown in such competition, no different from the amorality that governs the strivings of ferns, sparrows, and lions. Wilson's many examples are fascinating and easy to take, but _Darwin's Cathedral_ is not light reading; although Wilson wanted to write a book for readers of all backgrounds, he has not "'dumbed down' the material for a popular audience," and admits that there is serious intellectual work to be done in getting through these pages. There is valuable and clear writing here, however, and a new way of looking at religion which may become a standard in scientific evaluation.' 
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Links
John Burnet John Burnet's Early Greek Philosophy: chapter IV, Parmenides of Elea: 85: The Poem back

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