Thinking of Cake

 

It occurs to me yesterday that I am embedded in my own thoughts. I mean this is the sense that we get engrossed in a story or film and follow its narrative as it unfolds. Our perspective and horizons are closed down to the limits of the narrative so that it becomes a self contained universe. This is essential in a film for example because we could not accept the film as real and at the same time accept our sitting in an auditorium as real. At the same time we read a text and we either entertain the reality that we are reading a text, or we immerse in the “meaning” of the text, but not both at the same time.

This is identical to the issue of language and meta-language which Godel circumvented by introducing the numbering system so that “texts” could be referred to meaningfully within texts: isomorphism that provide correspondence between the substance of a text and the text itself.

Considering functions the other day I thought about that computing theorem which states that it is always possible to find a new program which takes a certain program as a parameter and computes the same results as that program: in other words an interpreter. This means there are at least 2 versions of every function that we can write. It means that the “result” of a function must be separated from the “implementation”. In that MIT lecture they showed that the Sierpinsky triangle could be generated by Linden-Mayerhoff diagrams as well as by Iterated Function Systems. There is no apparent similarity in method only in result. This means that one cannot explain an emergent property by the (computable) mechanism that created it. This is really why is it called emergent in the first place. So we immerse into the workings of a program or function (become a Turing computer i.e. someone who computes) and we start crunching through the rules of the system. We absorb into the narrative and close our horizons down to the limits of the system. The result and what emerges from our immersion however is quite different from that lower level of detail. To appreciate the result, indeed for a result to be distinguished from the system, for it to output, it must emerge from the system and be distinct from it. This is all present within the ideas of output and result before we even begin. This occurs because of context. A computer object will conceal as private its working and only make available, in accordance with a prescribed interface, certain values of its operation. These are deemed important to the outside. It is the outside which determined what the function outputs. Now this is the essence of one approach of the SRH that the inside cannot determine what it should be available on the outside of a function. Now Godel seems to have put the cat amongst the pigeons here by pointing out that separate the inside from the outside as much as you might try you cannot eliminate isomorphism and meaningful parallels between the two levels… something that the observant Godels among us can pick up on to show how inside and outside are not really separate. My argument here is that we still need the Godels amongst us to see these things: isomorphism don’t come out of the mix by themselves. So the Godels introduce a new level to the in/out systems: a level presumably which has its own in/out. I need to think this through still…

Linking to GEB (Godel, Esher, Bach) the inner message and the outer message are indeed separate. The outer message being the text or the code of the function and the inner message would be the meaning or the working of the function that we find when we immerse into. The pictures on the screen versus the story that is being told by those pictures. Vipassana Meditation in Buddhism specifically trains us not to get into the story being told so that we can see the pictures in their plain outer message way. The outer message is then the Truth and the inner message is the imagination that is an illusion. This I will investigate a bit further: my current understanding of sunyata (emptiness) is that the “form” or outer message is actually the illusion. An example being the bringing the components of a cake together and baking and being amazed at how this now delicious food came from what before was quite odd tasting. It is as though the cake has come out of nothing. We scientifically know the process that created it, like we know the processing of a computer function, but the result is an emergent property of that processing. Cake is not present in the original ingredients because if it was why do we need to make a cake? That refers to the blog on Making a few weeks ago. So the outer message is the illusion because it is quite separate from the ingredients. In Vipassana however it seems to be the other way around: the form is what we are sensing and the process is what we are thinking and so it is the illusion. This is Hegel’s view and that of Phenomenology for reference. Actually I see both views are the same. The point is that Cake is real. We eat it, we know it, we desire it. The process that creates it is something we learn and we imagine that it is happening. We don’t actually see it. Buddha uses cause and effect however to show us that that there is nothing in Cake that is not present in its ingredients to show us Voila! that the fixed form Cake (that we like) is empty and not itself “made” of something called Cake, but rather from things (we don’t like so much) called the ingredients. They are the same and our desires are for things that are ephemeral and substances less.

So returning to the start I realise that I am embedded in my thoughts. I find myself inside the story that my brain creates with all these words. Where I should try at will is outside these thoughts so that I do not take them to be too solid and Cake like!

Maybe this is the SRH. A function cannot identify its own output.

Adders 2010

Made a visit to Frensham Pond in Surrey on 24th April to see whether I could catch my first glimpse of an Adder in 25 years!!! I have looked for them on my walks but have never had the time to really track them down. I made a special effort to go to the right habitat and voila. Amazing. A male checking its territory I decided. I didn’t see any battling in the famous ‘adder dance’ so still have this to look for one lucky day.

 

 

 

 

 

They are fresh out of hibernation (late this year) and I saw two discarded skin sloughs too.

 

 

 

 

 

Also of interest was this Green Tiger Beetle… or actually many of them jumping all over the dry sandy soils of the heaths. I’ll be looking out for their grubs later in the year that lie buried in the sand in ambush.

 

 

Saw my first Brimstone of the year (very late) and heard my first cuckoo too.

No Algorithm to calculate Complexity

Can we find the shortest algorithm code to perform a task? This question seems to be behind most of what I’m trying to think out.

Is it possible to compute the shortest algorithm? Suppose we had an algorithm say a function: bool Optcpx(char* code) that returns TRUE if it is the shortest code and FALSE if there is a shorter code.

So we have some code that implements Optcpx() and we feed that into the Optcpx() algorithm to see if there is a shorter piece of code that performs the same function.

What Optcpx() has to do determine if there is any code that will do the same thing as itself and which takes up less memory. Here is Ouroboros and SRH problem seems to emerge!

Suppose Optcpx() returns FALSE. It means that there is a shorter piece of code that will also return FALSE when given this code as input. In other words the Optcpx() function needs to know that it will return FALSE before it has completed so that it knows that the other piece of code will also return FALSE. Put another way (this is not clear in my head yet) the code can’t determined whether another piece of code is functionally identical until it knows its own output, and if its own output depends upon the nature of another piece of code then it is stuck.

This assumes that you can only determine a codes “identity” from its output.

So Optcpx() can’t determine whether another piece of code is functionally equivalent to itself. Thus it can’t determine whether it is a larger or smaller piece of code to itself.

There is no way of computing the smallest algorithm for Optcpx().

Choice and Triviality

 

Where there is choice there is also triviality and arbitrariness. This is exactly the quality of the conditions of a formal system – there is no need for there to be any particular set of symbols. It occurs to me today as I continue to query sexuality that the very problem with “girls” is that there are so many. I saw at least 5 this morning that I would happily try things out with. “My Muse” is special, amongst other reasons, because she was a test of the notion of “true” love. It is important that I gave everything recklessly and with carefree abandon and acceptance of any future because I had to believe that she was “The One” and this entails that “what will be, will be”. Had I engineered even 1 spec of that structure, the whole thing would have become inauthentic and arbitrary. Had I ever “chosen” her then I could un-chose her, and I could chose any girl. Suddenly it all becomes arbitrary. This is what I fear about marriage realising that all those rules and vows are entirely arbitrary and have no foundation at all. We make the whole thing up.

But this is the truth isn’t it. We make all of existence up and then we forget we did it and become prisoners inside our own creation. We made marriage, if we neglect it then it disappears. The dream of “True Love” is an attempt to weave some necessary, essential quality into marriage to make is necessary and solid in some way. A security for those who become weak in their creation.

So to I see (and this was the main point here) does this reflect on the Free Market. We celebrate choice. But this freedom means arbitrariness and non-necessity. If the Left Wing have one argument with the Right it is over this feature of necessity. There are some things that are necessary, that we don’t chose. These therefore do not belong in the free market. This is where Capitalism as a paradigm has its limits… at the limits of choice. That which we don’t chose can’t be funded by private capital. That seems to be the rule. The problem is exactly what is necessary. I’ve recently argued here that there is no limit. We can (and do in time of war) chose death. So maybe we can extend the free-market to everything and realise our the trivial choice in create everything.

Are Women Really Attractive?

 

The beauty of a woman is actually in the mind of a man! And vice versa. I’ve noted this before but just now realised that it lies behind my growing disinterest in women. Actually I am interested in my own experience of beauty… the belief that this is identical with the woman who causes it has been growing more unbelievable. “My Muse” didn’t behave like the beauty that I thought she was, she didn’t know. SRH we can’t know our own beauty. So really I am better pursuing my own conception of beauty and not confusing it with material objects.

Virtual machines and SRH

This blog update is written in the editor running on Google Chrome running in Windows XP. But that is being run in a virtual machine running in windows 7. And that is being run in my "real" Dell motherboard and chipset. This is the Kleene's Universality Theorm (I think) in action.

So regarding the SRH isn't it true that whatever we think is the Truth and Ultimate at least in one sense can be simulated by a more Ultimate system?

However this blog update is working pretty much like the one on my windows 7 so there is another level of Truth that transcends the layers of mechanism namely the way that this webpage is written and the way the IEEE standards are implemented.

So different "systems" can create the same results. I think SRH is making a larger statement that just questioning mechanical superiority.

Need to think about this (+ I'm not supposed to be doing that at the moment... back to the speech)

not yet!!! Wow here it is!!!

If two different mechanisms can produce the same results then they have no ultimate explanation (since either mechanism will do). By the universality theorem in computer theory we are assured that this is always the case for any computable function.

Ergo: there is no ultimate explanation!!

This is where Materialism is wrong - it takes a single level of explanation as "true" when a virtual Matrix like simulation of Materialism/Science would produce exactly the same result!! and that is where Matrix was wrong because the Matrix, as we saw, was simulated in a film ;-)

The Theory of Theories does defeat itself!

Separating results from mechanisms is quite a bizarre result… need to think about this. Opens up emergent properties however and creates the lever for getting “outside” mechanical systems!! Blimey eureka!! SRH here we come.

Today about 3pm will be 10 years since I last saw “My Muse” and turned my back for the last time… except it wasn’t how bloody ironic. I guess I did that to preserve the memory of what was… and that I have done too well :-( I should have stayed and soon enough I’m sure I would have got my distance :-( Is this thought what has quickened my mind today or just serendipity that has brought progress in answering my most cherished question above? Or maybe the fact that I have sat to write this speech which isn’t happening ;-)

Love, My Muse, SRH

Do we really “make love”? Traditionally, actually, yes we do. The bible speaks of lying with a woman and then loving her. I always assumed this meant following up the conception of a child with the duty of being faithful to her. More accurately, and following the analysis in this blog, it is the seeking to limit her offspring with any other men so that the efforts to support her and her children are efforts toward ones own children and not the parasitic children of other men – in true neo-Darwinist style. Finding oneself in marriage means the male finds himself bound by the same rules of extra-celibacy (i.e. we are celibate to other women)…. at least in theory. Marriage is not for the benefit of the woman only the male who as argued is never sure whose children he is bringing up – a problem a woman never has. In a nut shell the more practical reasons for the “abuse” and “inequality” that feminists build their case upon and which I have felt is more derived from personal anger at men than rational investigation. Anyway the point here is that we do “make love”, but it isn’t the love of which I seek… maybe here is the problem.

Women do seem to conform to the above analysis. This is a surprise as I have spent my youth taming my own passions in line with a different romantic conception. Maybe because my first experience with a girl aged 6 was that she fled in terror crying hysterically at my advances to undress her which left me feeling guilty by the age of 7 (when obviously that part of the frontal-cortex had developed) and vowing never to harm another person ever. Maybe also because of deeper understandings…

Love I am thinking once again this morning should never be declared. I am writing a best-man speech for a couple whose trigger for getting together was a declaration in a beer festival that love, above all other things, must be declared…. I still had a chance then to say things to “my muse” but the possibility of things was over by then in my mind. My reason for thinking it shouldn’t is that love doesn’t belong to us! In Kantian terms the condition for the possibility of love at all is clearly not something we decide. I have toyed with the idea that it is, and we can indeed make some choice about who our hearts are attracted toward – but even if we master this the very activity of falling in love is something we are born with, and innate function of our being, something that originates in that world outside ourselves. This is the whole point about destiny. I felt in the genuine arising of this experience with “my muse” a sense of wonder at the origin of it. It came from outside me. This is why it should remain silent because it is not mine to declare. Now whatever is outside me that originates this function, does it not also operate amongst my fellows? So if I developed love for my muse that was of extra-soul origins then so could she – in which case there is no declaration to be had in true love – there is no work to do, no construction and no game to play. This is why she never knew how I felt – at least directly. I hid it in the letters and poems I sent her, and which she acknowledge in an odd way accepting that it was teaching her a new meaning to the wor(l)d love but never giving it a name. If I had ever encouraged the seed of love in her, if I had ever made love, then I would simply be loved by my own creation. Love must be from outside to be true, and so can never be declared.

Yet there is this “real world” of imperfections, competing outcomes, game playing. Had I played my cards at all I feel there is no doubt that things would have been entirely different from how they are. Maybe she wouldn’t even have died since I would have been able to alert her to the extreme negative energies that she was subject to, and the sense of dread at her fate I felt from 6 months before her death. It is very possible she was the victim of black magic now I have learned some more. But this is the contingent world. I have been playing chess a lot recently and yesterday from a terrible losing position I engineered a stale-mate. It has never been something I have pursued before but in true Samurai tradition (my interpretation of Tarantino’s interpretation after watching Kill Bill last week) there is always the possibility of victory even in what seems like a losing position. This I see as the misuse of Buddhist wisdom, but it is true – if we wish to play games in the contingent world for us transcendent creatures there (unlike for a computer) always the chance of a win. A computer can never think outside the “box”, can never reengineer its own framework, can never reconfigure a problem and set of rule so that it can win. Men with the help of gods can. (Saw Clash of the Titans last week – rubbish in 3D but retains the good philosophy).

This is all very much SRH. Someone somewhere has to find the paradox in this. I will settle for a paradox rather than a proof. What the liar paradox had Godel formalised. What Berry’s paradox had Chaitin formalised. the SRH ought start with a contradiction or paradox. That Love cannot originate with the person who loves is the key to what I sought in love – yet it is dazzling how few seem to comprehend this. It seems it is a much more basic process in most, about possessions and game playing, and winning and outcomes. How can we forget that without love in the first place we wouldn’t even be here to play these games! How can any system forget that without itself it couldn’t even play those games?

Have I forgotten in all the SRH analysis that were a system to examine itself it would become a new system? If this process can be proven then the infinite (unresolvable) regress is assured. On Saturday it is 10 years since I last hugged my muse and dismissed her tears as fake; I’ll always remember her feeling me through my shirt wondering what she meant by that, but now 10 years later I have the same thought in my head as I had on that day kneeling before Guan-Yin - “what do I do about this girl?”

The Third Sex

So I’m in the pub a few beers down revising GCSE poems for my students. Why should I of all people be getting what I wanted before, namely a knowledge of poems; my muse could have taught me perfectly well altho I it is true was paying then! And, I get to eternally think about her again. In an odd way drink does not affect the mind – I have sat here programming quite intricate programs on far too much drink, it does get hard, but emotional thinking, poetic, seems unaffected. I will see whenever I read this sober! The girl my heart set itself upon had no sexual interest in me. We were friends, but you would have to be a monster for someone not to want to be friends, best-friends apparently ( I never knew what that meant – I don’t have best friends believing in some kind of democratic egalitarianism). No she never fancied me (well she did but before she discovered how I’m built). So a drink seems to have progressed this thought along. I am instantly reminded of this guy I met over a beer in a pub in the Lake District in 2002 that I had dropped into to watch a world cup game.Neither of us really watched football so we ended up talking. I was supposed to re-contact him: I never did. He observed a problem: I like many men he knew appeared to resent the power that women had over us. This thought is now relevant. Knowing that the girl of my dreams never had sexual interest in me opens up a huge vista. It means that sexuality is not enough to have sexual liaisons. This is obvious because I had already “chosen” her, while she didn’t “chose” me. The basis of this “choice” is thus non-sexual (although it is conditioned by sexuality). In an Hegelian way (master/slave dialectic) my future happiness was thus entirely dependent upon her choice (after my decision was made) – me being a man was not enough.

Now I have put a paragraph in place here to enjoy the extraordinary nature of this situation that opens up. After making my choice in her I was actually pushing out my future happiness into a boat that might never return. It didn’t. Even if it had, it would have died: she died. What kind of reckless insanity is this? Am I a gambling man?

So this brings me to my current musings and wallowing. In the face of endless criticism for not being married actually there is logic in this. My beer apparently helps me understand. I am not a complete human being. That completeness has been broken and shattered for I sold it down the river and waved it good buy not knowing whether I would ever see it again. I have heard that this boat was tragically sunk and all life aboard was lost. I wasn’t there to see it sink, I have only word being sent up river that this was the fate of my voyage. I am no longer a complete person.

I feel like Adorno and the Jews lamenting the Holocaust (though in microcosm obviously). They spoke of humanity having been fractured; a flaw so great that it couldn’t ever be reconciled. How can Man live proud and self-identical after what He has done within Himself?

Now if I accept that “my muse” had the power to reject my sexuality and through this my happiness I am admitting a very big thing. I am admitting that my happiness is conditional upon the outside world. I am letting go of the adolescent belief that I am a superman who can determine his own future and status. I am no longer indestructible. I am no longer immortal. How can I enter into a relationship now and at the same time know that my happiness is but an arbitrary whim of the world. It is like the weather. Would I marry a sunny day? Joy on joy until the day turns and the weather is rain and cloud. What happiness can there really be when what I am is simply the beauty in the eye of a beholder? Yes I can chose You, but there is no assurance you will chose me. If you do it is good, but you never had to, so I become an accident, just a lucky dice throw, all that could have been with “my muse” actually could never have been, not really. If she had said yes herself it would simply have hidden the truth until she herself became victim to the roll of the dice. No! The Dream had to die!

How can I be enjoying the vista that has opened up? It is because it shows that I am not these things. It frees me from “relationships”. Oh yes I could have, and I could not have, and I might have happiness and I might have happiness not; but it is all just ripples on the pond. I believed they were the pond! Wrong. In a way I feel more male to have accepted rejection – I am that third sex who is not female but neither the desired sex in the eyes of your beloved. It is that male who is free from the gaze of the female. My friend in Lake District was right in a way we men struggle to escape the gaze of the women who we love.

Am I bothered?

Recently I have noticed that I can’t be bothered with most things. When angry I simply can’t be bothered to continue the fight. In terms of lust and relationships yes I would like them but it no longer creates a violent desire to possess: I simply can’t be bothered. Been an avid watcher of films in the last few weeks (most probably a displacement from writing this best man’s speech)… I am growing progressively more tired of films and narratives in general. Blood Diamond was excellent but you can’t help thinking as it unfolds – so what was the point again? Then I saw Pearl Harbour and again what a waste fighting a war when people seem to have it so good. Does the fact that the men and women prove themselves as war heroes… again what exactly was the point again? It makes the blood run and the testosterone pump through the veins and it is stimulating and exciting fighting a war … but we see the war being fought in that love triangle as well and there are winners and losers when we fight … as I have always felt instinctively and certainly: if someone has to lose then no-one can be a winner. So what is the point? Japanese fighting Americans fighting Japanese fighting Americans… not bothered. Harry Potter films are for kids and again one wonders what is the point. Goblet of Fire had some more depth in that Harry has to face an inner struggle within himself – was he bad? That is a fascinating question because if we are bad then we are hardly a good judge of our own character! This way once evil has taken root there is almost no escape. My mother makes me angry yesterday. She was saying that I should have a job. Everyone of my age has a job etc. I wanted to fight, and said some harsh things as you do when arguing, but inside I couldn’t really be bothered.

So I take a walk. Have I gone too far? I don’t feel depressed. I actually feel a deep sense of ease and happiness. I am getting free from the struggles of the world and simply don’t want to be involved anymore. I have always struggled with my parents view of duty that are we just machines that perform our duties without rhyme or reason? This was my view of life for a long time because this seems to be how people behave. Do we really want to work, build businesses, fight wars? Maybe some people do to which I say go ahead (as long as you don’t destroy the planet in the quest for your uncertain goals). But if they don’t and they are doing it out of blind duty then maybe I should join their ranks. But what is the point? If no-one actually wants to do all this stuff then why do we do it? I’m making my stand. It is worthless in my eyes and so I won’t do it. Simple. Yet the question remains is this the right path? Is this what Buddha meant? I thought this on my walk.

The sun was setting and I came to stand and watch the ball of embers reaching sunbeams out from behind the cage of clouds. It was mesmerising. First thought was how far I have travelled to see this before and here it is on my door step. Isn’t that a metaphor for life’s struggles! Another thing I have always felt deeply: everything we need for existence is right here, right now – there is no struggle, there is no journey. That which we need to posses and travel for we don’t need and worse is just a mirage which up close reveals its true identity as what we had before we moved.

A random quote from myself: Property is exactly like the offside rule in football: it only makes sense when you are playing football. That feeds back to everything discussed last year, but shows up the foundationlessness and conditionality of what we do. Which reminds me that last week I was realising that it is hugeness of the world, the fact that whatever undertaking we frame and pursue is itself framed by larger and larger frames of reference, each bring a new perspective upon our endeavour and undermining the reasons for it. For example I write this blog in my own little world, but I am sure someone else has perfected already what I write – why not just read what they have already perfected? Is the realisation that there is no underlying fixed reality the arrow that kills the demon of attachment and eternalism? Once we see all things as existing in their own little world, conditioned by whatever local events and conditions unfold, aren’t we freed from locality?

Returning to yesterdays walk. I felt as I was absorbed into the sunset that I was myself manipulating the clouds and almost reaching with my soul into the flames. Not a particularly profound experience I don’t want to give the impression it was a big deal. It made me analyse though the relationship between myself and the world. I have desires for this to be like this, or that to remain like that etc. The world has its own ideas – it just goes about its business as the world does. When the world goes my way I am happy. When it goes against my desires the force of those desires creates a sense that the world is actively going “against” me with a force. Like Newtons second law of motion however that equal and opposite force is all generated in my internal motion. I wish to go swim along the river bank but if the river is flowing against me then I feel a malign force in nature that is making things hard. If on the other hand I wished to swim the other way then I would see the river as being benevolent and I would be happy. Yet the river has no intention of its own. It being good or bad is created in the world by my own energy and motion. So I came to see the world as neutral and the sun setting just a simple event. Instead the up and down and coming and going I saw all originated within myself. Isn’t this half of the issue of karma? If I was blessed with the ability to desire that which was happening I would be always happy and peaceful! Alternatively if my desires were malleable and changeable, if they could not be bothered to fight the neutral world then all problems would cease. This is when I suspected that I have been living wrong. I do struggle. I do war with the world around me. This is my culture: both in the West but also within the family. Things are got by heroic struggle is the belief, against odds, through the power of one’s own self. This is the mythology that I have lived by. Yet actually as the saying goes the strongest reed bends in the wind. Some people think that this is insincere and weak. To simply go with events is for weak and slippery men. How can you trust someone who will sway when the going gets tough?

While I criticise the new approach something else. I lost all my emails for the last 5 years. Posted it in Facebook and a friend replies “impermanence”. True but I have a problem. If I just accepted impermanence then I probably wouldn’t have kept the emails in the first place. Indeed I probably wouldn’t have kept the friends. If we just accept the changing of the world then I would be dead by now, just accepting the fact that I am impermanent and will come and go. All that work my parents did to raise me would be wasted (my mums argument against me) and I would simply sit back and point out that they were too attached to me and they should realise that I was always going to die, just a bit earlier than they probably expected.

It is not that this stuff is profound but that it is exceptionally hard to know how to use it all.

Based upon yesterday however I at least felt I had an understanding. Being at ease and bending with the wind is not about giving free reign to evil. One does not obey the orders of an evil person. One’s life may actually become very hard in doing this. So it is not about being easy. It is rather not desiring things that one cannot have, or better desiring things that are extravagant, exotic, unusual or difficult to come by. There is humility in desiring what is ordinary. In so doing we free ourselves from struggle.

Now I still don’t get it. But just (re)-logging a stage for future reference. I say re because nothing is really new, I keep looking at the same thing “life” from different angles trying to work out what it is.

SRH -

Said I wouldn’t update just a quickie … my Uncle gave me The Principles of Mathematics for my birthday – by coincidence but quite spooky…

Just going through the contents and looking at the number of times Russel discusses indefinability and undemonstrable reminded me of the starting point of the SRH…

It states that a system must have some form or existence “quid primum” (what at first) from which, and by which, the system can be the foundation of other things. It is the magnitude of this “quid primum” existence which the SRH alludes to. How could a system refer to its own “quid primum”, or at least be aware of its own “quid primum”.

We know that the system has a starting point by implication of the “evolution” rules. Logic is by deduction, and natural systems by causation. So using this relationship between system states we can imply a start. And the start cannot be created by application of the rules on the system.. unless there is some circularity … an ouroboros.

Tragedy of the Commons

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons