Meaning and the World exists in the Gaps

I am evolving a genetic algorithm to find a machine to play the stock market. What is remarkable about the inputs is that it doesn't matter what the numbers are. All that matters is that my machine makes lots of money, and it doesn't matter how it does it. It is a black box.

What is extraordinary about black boxes is that the inside is meaningless. Analogous to Schrodinger's Cat and exactly like Structuralist Philosophy what doesn't matter to the observer doesn't have any meaning.

So I have a SELL and BUY signal which I have set arbitrarily to 0 and 1. When the machine produces a 0 it sells, and when it produces a 1 it buys. There are millions of machines in the population and none of them actually know what a 0 or 1 is. As a result I could use any number. But which ever number I use, the genetic algorithm will gradually evolves a population that uses that number well to make money. Importantly without knowing what a 0 or 1 is. 0 and 1 is the meaning that we outside the black boxes assigns these characters. In the machines they have quite different meanings.

However regardless what number I use the winning machines will be isomorphic. That is to say that were the SELL/BUY signals equal to 100,150 then I could take a machine that responds to 0/1 and replace the 0 with 100 and the 1 with 150. Now if 100 and 150 were symbols already taken then I would need to carry on swapping symbols until every unique symbol was replaced by a unique symbol. The point is that 0/1 and 100/150 are just symbols and their meaning comes from their position in the system. The symbols do not in themselves have meaning, but only in the relation to the other systems symbols. The meaning is in the gap, not in the actual entities of the system.

This reminds me of Searle's Chinese Room argument. He is right that the meanings attributed to the symbols coming out of the room belong outside the room to who ever is reading the output. Meanwhile the meanings inside belong to the history of that machine--especially meaningful in the case of a machine produced by a genetic algorithm, but equally to a machine designed by a computer engineer with all their knowledge and expertise. A computer is a meaningless black box to anyone not involved in that history and training.

Were one take two Searlean Chinese Rooms and make them isomorphic by simply translating symbols we can see patently that the symbols themselves do not carry meaning but rather the way that they are used. Wittgenstein take a bow. But this extends then beyond any particular structure itself be that symbol, character, word, sentence. In Chinese a whole sentence of English might be expressed by a single symbol. The point is to entirely shift understanding away from seeing the units of a machine as meaningful in themselves but to see their meaning coming from their position in the system. Meaning exists in the gaps.

SRH can pop in here. The gaps cannot become new symbols! For then just move the meaning into the gaps between the new symbols. Gaps are not symbols, they are relationship between symbols in a dynamic and tight system.

This is the general problem with traditional Western Thought that it is materialistic and sees the world existing in "things" that are made from "atoms". Yes there are "things" and "atoms" but the world exists between them. That World is what in Buddhism is called Mind and in Hinduism is called Om and in other religions is called Abrahamic religions is called God. This is where energy, people, society and consciousness enter the picture of the world, which all seem oddly missing in the materialistic view.

It is an odd things that while academically the world is made from things we don't live like this. We live primarily in a world of people: what a sad empty existence it would be if we really lived in a world of things. The problem with Capitalism is that gradually this materialistic view is gaining ground and people are starting to live in a world of things. It is a very slow change tho, and for the most part we live in a world of people. Capitalist at the end of the day while dominated by property is still a system made of people and people exist in the meaning and the vast gaps between the things of this world.

Returning for a second to posts on the dark part of humanity it occurs to me with psychopathic killers that while they report having no care or empathy for other people and appear to live in a world of just themselves this is actually a self deception. Killers report the huge sense of power, satisfaction and achievement in killing. If they really lived in a world of just them then why not kill a tree or a stone? The killer understands fully that they live in a world of other people that is why killing is such a big deal to them, they fully understand what another person is. The problem arises in that they relate to other people unequally - they seek to dominate the other person. And this because they, ironically, perceive themselves inferior and feel the need to address that imbalance. So the darkest humans exist in the gaps as much as any person, but they do not see this themselves... which will annoy them hugely as they tend to be quite intelligent people. The brightest human beings also live in the gaps, but in contrast to the darkest they can fully let go of the "things" and enter that infinite space between things.

I once asked a Buddhist what meditation was and while I still don't fully agree with what they said it is very illuminating: if you slow your thoughts down and enter the gaps between them, in there are wonderful things. And so it seems to be: a fixation on the things of this world blinds us to the source of meaning that lies between them in how the world and God moves, and what we do with our time. Which at the moment is blogging and not exploring genetic algorithms.