SRH progress?

The self-reference-hypothesis again

To recap it hypothesises that "true" self reference is impossible. In other words a statement cannot gain meaning from refering to itself.

The progress is the realisation that self-referential statements are true a priori. Because if they were false you get a NULL statement. The classic example of this is the liar paradox.

"This statement is true." Is apparently a solid statement and we gain apparent security from its claim of truth which only goes to support our security in the statement. However

"This statement is false." Leaves us with a problem. We assume it is true when we read it but find that it is telling us that it is false. So we reread it with this in mind and negate the truth value and find that infact it is true. It is neither true nor false but is undecided. It is meaningless. It is NULL.

The most recent argument regarding the SRH is that if the second statement is NULL then the first statement can't be true!

The reason? True is used in a dialectic with false. When I say that potassium burns with a crimson flame this is only false because I should have said it burns with a lilac flame. Likewise if I say that potassium burns with a lilac flame this is ONLY true because it illiminates all the other things I could have said like crimson etc.

However "This sentence is true." can only be said one way. Say it the other way and it is nonsense. It seems that rather than true and false at work here it is more Existence and NULL. Self-referential sentences are either existing (self supporting) or NULL (self-defeating). This is much like real systems then which are not true or false but working or not-working. Real things where there is feed back require that feedback to not blow the system apart otherwise the feedback ceases to be and such systems no longer exist.

Taking my old favourite the T = {T} the argument runs as follows.

With non-self-referential sets consider.

E = {a,b,c}

We can define a set A = {a,b}

Now A is meaningful because we could have defined A = {b,c} or anything else. Most importantly we could have assigned it to the complement of the set A = {a,b}' which means A = {c}. By choosing from amongst the possibilities in the context we are adding structure and meaning.

Now let us define a new set T = {T}. I'll jump to the chase we can't define T = {T}' - it is meaningless. Infact T is now bound intrinsically to the definition - it depends upon itself. If T fails then the whole definition fails. It is necessary for T must be valid for the definition to be valid. The definition is thus on very artificial legs - it can't fail. My argument is that it can't then suceed in a meaningful way either!

Lets turn to Russel and Whitehead quickly. The set of all sets that contain themselves. We would naturally want to add the set to itself. All appears fine.

But led by that appearance they end up considering the "set of all sets that do not contain themselves". It's the classic problem. If we do not contain the set itself then it belongs to itself, and if we do then it doesn't belong to itself. So it becomes meaningless. Where did the problem begin?

Well my suggestion is that the problem began with the construction of the concept of a "set that contained itself". Being dependent upon itself it can't fail. It becomes a priori, lacking content at best and worse - meaningless. Self-reference leads to errors - avoid.

Yet we apply self-reference all the time. "I think that ...". "I want that...". Now these could be simple statements about the state of our bodies and minds. But this is not what we mean is it? We mean that in some unjustifiable way these thoughts and wants come from nowhere and are justified simply in coming from us. That "I" want something is justification in itself of its value. The fact that we may have been persuaded by an advert or a friend is always over looked. That "I" want it, becomes a reason in itself. I begets I. But the problem as argued above is that such a situation is relying upon meaninglessness. For who really says that "I want what you want"? Only those who have escaped self-reference can say this.

Now I'm not saying that human existence isn't entirely free and every permutation is possible and escaping self-reference is a common event - I'm just refering to that particular state that some humans get stuck in which begins the process of evil. In Hindu mythology the devils all issued from Brahma when he mistook his role as the vessel of existence as the grander (an impossible) creator of all existence. How could something both be existing and create existence? Likewise when humans come to think that they are both judge, jury and executioner they fall into self-justification, self-reference and meaningless - this way lies evil.

On more theoretical territory the same problem plagues Western thought and academia- and via these the concept of economy used in the West and which is trying to be deployed globally. In self-referential terms their exists a point where human knowledge will reign supreme with theories that completely explain reality, where economic systems are tamed and everyone is rich and technology has risen to give humans every freedom they want. But such a dream rests upon something being Absolute - be it the imagined True Universal Reality or Ultimate Economic Goal or even something abstract like Perfect Human Happiness (TUR, UEG, PHH three nice new TLAs)- and that Absolute will either remain Mysteriously-God-Given (MGG) or will require its own explanation. This will either lead us into further investigations (ad infinitum) or will eventually end up completing the circle and explaining itself (my old Ouroboros). It is the Ouroboros that I'm defeating here: if it does end up explaining itself then we have explained nothing and our theory stands next to meaningless as its closest ally.

What humans don't like about the MGG aspect of the universe is that this is where we began our enquiries all those millenia ago - the Universe is an extraordinary place appealing to our understanding but also always suprising and holding hidden depths. More troubling it means that we won't be able to explain ourselves and gain freedom from our place in the world. The world birthed us and where the world goes so we go. A modern eco message in there. However not all is lost because realising this 100% dependence on our circumstances and our inability to escape this is actually the door to freedom that the sages have taught us. These teachings have often been handed down in organised groups called religions which suffer all the problems of status and membership discussed in the blog. But the teachings themselves are free.

Social exclusion

"Some of the chemical pathways for physical pain and pain from social exclusion overlap (MacDonald and Leary, 2005). The physical pain system may have been co-opted to motivate social animals to respond to threats to their inclusion in the group." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exaptation

I would argue it evolved to counter the intrinsic cost of social existence which is the struggle for resources. In the short term social living should be impossible due to the negative effects of status (the "pecking order" that exists to distibute limited resources - lower status individuals die first in times of shortage). But in the long term orgainised groups are highly efficient and evolutionarily beneficial. So it is a genetic advantage to have a mentality which will suffer the struggle for status and

Occurs to me also that a second reason for the "cost" of social inclusion is a test against cheats. If joining and leaving groups was easy then an individual might join a group, cheat, and then leave again to join the next group. This positions the whole CV fiasco as a continuation of the more ancient evolutionary process. To prove "loyalty" a group might demand that a new recruit undergo a test which is so costly that having gained membership it is not worth leaving and joining another group. That test in the business world is the life long process of promotions. However if you leave a company you don't start again at the bottom of the new company so it doesn't quite work. However having gained so many years of skill and experience in a particular field it becomes increasingly costly to change and reskill. Anyway one might justify the behaviour of people around capital as being a test of new recruits to their loyalty of that capital.

If this is true then it would follow in a stable system however that the cost of gaining access to the capital would be of a similar order as the gain from being in control of that capital. One might envisage an individual working their way to the top of a bank. It might take them 15 years if they were very lucky. After this they have the freedom to set themselves any salary they want, fiddle the books however they want, rub shoulders on equal footing with the top of the business class, and be assured that they have the support of the system in everything except maybe the most serious crimes. Now the question is: was the 15 wasted years worth it?

You see there is an easier way to social inclusion. It is not the single-eyed approach of actually gaining social inclusion. This is a very imperfect inclusion because the other side of being included in one group is being excluded from another - what is the meaning of inclusion without exclusion? When we are born we are already included in a very important group, that of existence and within that the inclusion of living things and within that the inclusion of human beings and within that of family (genetically). These are real inclusions that have real meaning and are inescapable - that arise as a matter of being born at all. If we add further inclusions to the list they are only trivial and quite ironically only go to divide the previous memberships that we have. Unhappy with being a member of the human race we seek to divide the human race into subgroups to which we can become included and excluded from. A lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of status struggles and at the end of the day we are worse off than if we had done nothing!

This has been a motto of mine since the beginning of my life but I've been taught to view it as a weakness. I'm beginning to realise its the truth. Do Nothing (NULL) and be happy with that.

Diversity, University and Information

When storing information you can either have a distinct character for every eventuality, or you can limit the characters and instead store information in their spatial orientation. A graph or mono-chrome screen is an excellent example of the latter where monotonous binary points (on or off) can represent vast amounts of information simply by their relative position. A text like I write here is a mixture of 26 characters {A-Z,a-z} and a few punctuation marks e.g. {space,."()}... and on a aside it's interesting in a text how to grammatically produce a list of grammatical marks... actually I think its impossible (a Quine requires another approach to work)... these characters are orientated in 1 dimension to produce a line of text (which is wrapped but that doesn't change the meaning). Then we could have a sentence of Chinese where a greater diversity of characters doesn't even require place order.

So here we see that "essence" and "where and when" are actually inter-changeable!!! When we decide that something is a unicorn we are locating at a certain space and time a "thing" which is different from a "horse".

But exactly the same information is present in such a construction as we would have by limiting the types of thing but increasing the complexity of space and arrangement. Isn't this exactly what science does. We don't need to think of the multi-million number of species that might be in a particular space (unicorns, horses etc) we can think of the 100 or so types of atoms in hugely complex arrangements and "systems". "Arrangement" in then an abstraction of space into time so that states can preceed or postceed one another. This is necessary because without time... well that is a mystery... why do we need "now"? It is something to do with self-reference but can't quite see it.

We can then simplify further into subatomic particles, fields, strings whatever at each stage of simplification the "spatial" arrangement gaining a more sophisticated description. The information is thus preserved.

So very crudely "what", "where" and "when" provide a constant of information and these three components can be transformed one into the other without loss. Nice to see substance blend with location and age. Isn't this what Buddha does also when he says that there is no self or soul or substance unique to things only whetever is caused at a given time and place by prevailing causes and conditions.

(Just self-reflecting I'm probably rehashing in my own stream of thinking insights from relativity that I gained from that audio-book)

Youths n Violence UK

Had a complex situation with one of my tutees. He was asked to a fight yesterday. The fight went ahead I don't know what came of it. Complex because there are two sides to this issue (which is a meta-conflict itself!).

On the one hand there are the straight forward answers that fighting is illegal and the spiritual answer that violence only breeds violence and it achieves nothing.

However the argument put forward by the kids was that unless this guy "gets banged out" he will do it again. He is a known trouble maker and a situation has arisen where he can be sorted out. There is racist stuff involved too so it's an opportunity for the asian lads to make a stand.

I pointed out that this is a racist way of thinking as only racists see the difference between "asian lads" or "white lads". There is no such thing as racism when all people are equal. Unfortunately this argument falls on deaf ears because the establishment in UK is racist in exactly its recognition of racism! Kids have been taught to think in these terms of races and racial equality by the establishment. No progress here.

I also pointed out that it is simpler to ignore the threats and jibes. It takes two to fight so if you back down then there is no fight. I also quoted Lao-Tze that if you stay ordinary you avoid trouble. The answer was that if this guy isn't dealt with things will only get worse and if you back down you look weak you encourage more trouble. Again it is hard to argue with this since the first argument was used by the government in Afghanistan and Iraq and the second in the standard government response to terrorism. No progress here.

One solution offered was to involve the police with this trouble maker. This answer is the most revealing. The kids said that if the police would actually do something they would not fight. But the police won't so they need to do something. I've seen exactly the same thing when I questioned a lad who stole my bike. I asked him to think how he would feel if someone stole his. He said "it hurts" speaking in the present about numerous actual events at school. The main reason for youth gangs and disturbance in UK it seems is that we have a class of people who are outside the law - the children. They therefore feel the need to arm themselves and take care of things themselves. How ironic that the idea of kids not being responsible for their actions has led to kids having to be responsible for justice. You can't argiue with this either.

There are three failures in the thinking of British institutions here which I can't argue with. I had no choice but to let the fight happen.

It also follows from my analysis of "groups" in this blog that a fight is actually a very logical and essential part of the process of group membership and status. These kids are not very smart - they use their fists - smarter people use money, big houses and cars etc, qualifications, property law and general law to exactly the same effect. The institutional violence that exists in the workplace and in the class systems and inequalities of society (the "negative happiness" as I believe it is called) is beyond measure but it is normalised because this is what human society is all about. Again I cannot argue. I can only hope to show them the value of peace and non-violence as a solution in the future.

Ghandi btw I don't believe found the solution of non-violence. Civil disobedience is violence just a passive form. Jesus teaches us to turn the other cheek and forgive. He died without hatred a criminals death. That is the level of tolerance, patience and forgiveness that is required of shanti and ahimsa. We can't see injustice against ourselves if we are to see compassion for others. The moment we start to seek self-preservation and justice for ourself is the moment we lose the battle to peace and non-violence. The very concepts of justice and injustice - the very separating of actors into victims and perpetrators - is born of violence and ill will. I have put the point to the kids and will continue to put the point of which is the bigger man? - the man who takes a hundred punches with indifference or the man who gets angry and protects himself and others from even the first punch?

=== Update 17/10/09

I should trust nature more. Exactly as we would expect in animals the competitors compare each other and only risk engagement if they consider the chance and benefits of winning to outweigh the chance and cost of losing. Battles only occur between equal competitors. The "asian lads" provided a greater show of strength and no fight ever occurred. I often do wonder why we need a law when nature provides its own tried and tested Law. Am I right to consider the "establishment" as just a bunch of gangsters who have a protection racket going (rent/taxes) whose "law" is simply a means of control? These kids/hooligans conducted themselves in a perfectly rational and sensible fashion along the same lines as the governments do... yet one group is working illegally while the other is justified?

This is where the contradictions observed above occur. The establishment follows the Natural Law (of war, state violence etc) while its subjects are supposed to follow an artificial law imposed on them through war/state violence etc (consider modern Iraq was built from a war). The kids it seems do have every "right" in Natural Law to war and violence even if that contradicts the artificial law. The apparent civilised "peace" is then just the result of an "establishment" that is considered so strong that no-one ever squares up to it in fight. We always run away from the "establishment". This would be the process occuring in Iraq where factions are still fighting it out to find who is the strongest establishment. The one the people become most "afraid" of will be the "government". Altho "afraid" is a two edged weapon and we often feel "safe" due to "our" government's fearfulness. This is why governments need enemies so that their intrinsic violence can be seen as a force for good.

Yet as argued at length the establishment doesn't exist! It is an illusion that we create for ourselves with ourselves (since we are the very people who work in the police, army, legal system etc)! The true Law (the Law of God and NULL) is quite above all this for those who would see. I'll see if the kids ever understand that...

Relativity, Self, wave function & Quanta

Pure speculation and I have no foundation in physics but after listening to the opening of the "Fabric of the Cosmos" on audio book I was possessed on waking this morning by this thought:

I admit I got relativity from physics and simply saw its universality beyond motion. Thus rather than velocities being relative, it follows that all things are relative and cease to "be" in an empty universe.

Thus we arrive at the problem of self because Self suggests a self-reference or self-relativity. We don't classically look to other people to find ourself (altho in more sophisticated views we necessarily do). There is a contraiction in self if all things are relative. What is self relative to?

So I came to think of quanta. Relativity doesn't postulate an ontology of discrete entities rather the general rules of space-time manifolds relative to masses.

In Quantum physics there is the general field described by the wave equation, but there is also the collapse and the discrete "entity". In a relative world what is this entity relative to? That is exactly what an "observation" is: a relativising of the wave equation to a particular frame of reference and thus a discrete "self" - which is not really self since it only occurs under relative conditions.

Is that meaninful? Is that the problem? ... he asked so incredibly naively

===

Reading/Listening further it seems Physics always postulates Absolutism. Space-time is Absolute. Apparently Einstein and others didn't like the term relativity because it ain't relativity.

There is something interesting in the relationship between relativity and absolutism. Am I right to postulate that "all things are relative"? Isn't it that relativity itself is relative to absolutism? If you relativise the relative you get the absolute so to speak. And if you seek the absolute truth of the absolute itself you get the relative. Self reference becomes the coin whose sides are relative and absolute.

NULL of course is neither relative nor absolute - isn't it the coin, or the space "between" the two?

Old physics coming back here. Article in Metro still to finish reading but raises the issue of gravitational energy being negative and possibly equal to the positive energy of the universe. Thus the universe adds up to Nothing. I was aware of this as long ago as school so it's not new. Was very recptive to that idea as it mirrored an idea of my own at the time that the universe might arise from the separation of matter and anti-matter - naively not understanding that their sum is still the potential energy required to separate them.

What kind of Nothing is this? It is Zero. Well unfortunately Zero is positioned on the number line, and arises in relation to other numbers and therefore exists within a "theory". While the sum of energy in the universe may indeed be Zero this is kind of like a "coincidence" because it could be otherwise. A theory by definition selects certain values from the infinite possibilities - that is what gives it meaning. For example a theory of how a ball travels through space describes only a locus of points within an infinite solution space. If the solution was all of space it's not a very good theory! But what is evident is that we needed to know the "solution space" (literal "space" in the example) to create a theory. My question always is how do we construct the solution space? This is why Zero is never an absolute answer because it is Zero within a solution space... and the solution space aint Zero - that would be meaningless. So quickly the search for Absolute arrives at the meaningless and that is where NULL comes in. The Mind is large enough to encompass the meaningless. Thus to push the boundaries we have to leave meaning behind. The particular values that we arrive at within solution spaces may have remarkable symmetry and beauty** and may suggest hidden truths to the universe that we simply can't grasp within the theory - but why to an information processing device is Zero any different from Ninety-Nine? The only answer I have seen to that is Occam's: the best theory is also the simplest. If you can predict the motion of a ball with an 20byte algorithm you have a better theory than a 30byte algorithm. Zero is nice because it is 1 bit. But a theory with an answer of 1 is equally nice. But I've just made a new problem because why does size matter... ad infinitum.

**The Symmetry and beauty - the qualities of good theories (especially in physics and mathematics) - would have to be explained by a theory which lacked neither symmetry/non-symettry nor beauty/non-beauty. Clearly this is in the realm of the meaningless. But it illustrates some of the qualities of the "space" we call meaning.

p.s. was intrigued by the "absolute" nature of space-time and of the speed of light. Where does this "absolute" quality come from. It seems to be a implication of the concept of "reality". That things "are" and are "facts" and have discrete values suggests that they have an absolute nature. While that may be relative to something else we just push the boundary of absolute a stage back. The value is relative but exists within an absolute framework. Quantum physics is interesting in this regard... i really need better maths :-(

Of Nothing, Uselessness and Pointlessness

Looking up the Painted Lady life cycle I thought about something unusual...

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/species.php?vernacular_name=Painted%20Lady

No Painted Ladies survive the winter is UK and apparently few return to the continent... it is a one way ticket for most...

In biological terms this is quite logical they escape densely populated continental ecosystems to exploit the free system here in UK; the winter having wiped out the population...

But in terms of "meaning of life" do we say that the Painted Ladies are a failure or a waste of space in biological terms? They won't breed successfully and will pass no genes onto the future... yet their "time" spent in the UK is not a non entity... it is certainly a highlight of the summer here for butterfly lovers.

IF ever I needed a demonstration that human life (at least) escapes the confines of biological determinism here it is. There is no fundamental imperative to breed, or be successful or even to live when it comes to Humans. We have at our finger tips an absolutely incomprehensible freedom which we try to indoctrinate and enforce a shape upon so that we don't have to grasp the meaning of NULL.

It appears more and more with each passing day that the answer to everything is ... . We may fill that space with anything and nothing... it actually makes no difference because if it did then our freedom to determine what filled that space would be limited. If Life has one characteristic it is this indefinable freedom (both empty and full at the same time, both everything and nothing: because if it was otherwise it would be definable; how else can we speak of the indefinable?).

In our current capitalist system built upon a protestant work ethic in which the universe was "made" and time divided into work and rest, we have ample definition of what Life is about. Yet it is relative and arbitrary. There is no rule which says we must live, there is no rule which says we must die. Some people chose life, some commit suicide, but most just let it happen without overly defining what is what. It is Ego which becomes self empowered to chose life or death, but this is not actually life or death which it choses. Life and Death as they truly are, neither come nor go, are neither made nor unmade and there are no rules upon which they are built either. Our existential dread only arises through our persistence in defining ourselves as something made or unmade. Sartre is a name on a book - if he had existential dread it is because he wanted to be famous and so thought of himself as a name on a book: how ironic ;-)

It is certainly a new step for me to synthesise all this recent "work" like this. Looking back: the contemplation in the shower of the relative wealth of receiving a swift death compared with a painful one is the turning point: that even upto death all things are relative pulls to rug completely from any vestiges of absolutism remaining.

A similarly important step was the realisation that production and consumption are exactly the same thing in reality, we only provide these labels relative to our desires. Thus what is production for one person is consumption for another. The example given was building a house. It is consumption because of the use of raw materials. It is production because a house is made. If you built a house for enjoyment - like building a model kit - then we term it consumption and we need to pay for the pleasure. If we did it to produce a house it is production and we would be paid for someone elses pleasure. Thus a foundation stone of capitalism turns out to be a phantasm. What is really going on is that social structures of class etc are informing our view of Human Life to produce a more clinical image of workers and non-workers.

So for those who are ready, it seems the sky of the mind is the limit and for those who are not ready the office or house roof is the limit.