Where does Wealth come from?

Awesome video. Capitalism is usually associated with the growth of wealth. But it seems much more likely that it was the explosion in machines in the 1700s that changed human productivity.

Capitalism then rode on the back of this huge explosion in productivity and wealth. But wouldn't you expect the opposite? When wealth is scarce you would expect individuals to fight for control of it. But when wealth suddenly becomes plentiful you would expect control to be relaxed.

Wrong! Control is about class. The most significant thing about the explosion in wealth wasn't that it provided plenty, it was that it challenged the social order. Class is about getting access to resources. This is true in animals where "top dogs" get to eat first, or lower dogs eat the scraps from under the table (see Jewish culture in Bible and Prayer of Humble Access). When machines started to create abundance this ancient social order threatened to crumble. So Capitalism was invented to ensure that wealth all flowed to the establishment, who then handed it back in controlled wages. And the vast surplus was free to circulate in banks and stock markets and essentially within the ranks of what had been the landed gentry, that is aristocracy, of the previous system.

So why do Socialist countries fail and people in Capitalist countries enjoy such lavish life styles. One thing to observe is that the West is politically stable. Its revolutions were in the 17th and 18th centuries. It has also commanded a global empire for several centuries. Meanwhile the "socialist" countries are in most cases not even a century old, and in the case of Russia, Vietnam and Germany were utterly devastated by wars when they were trying to get established - the West doesn't tolerate competition! I keep hearing that Hitler had planned a truce after pushing back the borders of the Versailles treaty. There is little doubt WW2 could have peacefully ended in 1942 before any serious fighting and before the Holocaust - but the Imperial West would have struggled with sharing power with a powerful neighbour. Israel would have been formed as it was anyway and 80 million people could have kept their lives. But the West doesn't do deals with those who get in its way - most recently there was Hussein. Never-the-less all these "socialist" countries made spectacular transitions from feudalism to modern machine productivity in just a generation. While compared to the West--which is hundreds of years further down the line--they look impoverished, for the common man, compared to what he had before, things are stratospheric. And why did the Soviet Union fail? Pretty much the same reason that the European Union will fail: people want freedom from bureaucracy. This is nothing to do with economics and wealth.

I would suggest that any system which adopts machines to replace human labour will prosper. Machines are cheaper to run and fix (no salaries, insurance, health costs, no unions), machines are more precise, more reliable and more uniform. For a growing number of tasks they are easier to train. They are easier to reproduce - once you have a blue print you can mass produce machines.

The problem that emerges for economics is then how to get this productivity into peoples' hands. You can't just give it because that would overturn the human class system of privilege. At the moment a system of employment and salary keeps the owners of capital in control and at a distance from the non-owners.

Capitalism isn't all bad. Its great contribution is in "information" flow. When you buy something money finds its way back to the capitalist who made it. This encourages more production. The system has a feed back mechanism that ensures that the system makes the right things. Well "right" from the perspective of the consumer... but the main consumers are the wealthy who are the owners of capital. It may take a smart business man to create a business empire, but he borrows from a bank and it them that own him and who truly prosper. A businessman may declare bankruptcy, which is ultimately covered by the tax payer, but a bank as we have seen will be supported by the tax payer to a far greater extent.

In this modern age of information machines however, where every mouse move and every letter I am typing is being streamed through computers in google and the intelligence services there is no need for markets any more. People know already what the public are thinking and wanting before they even get out of bed. If free-markets were a machine themselves to manage the flow of information about what people could afford to buy, that machine has now been replaced by the internet... and the battle of who takes control of that (whether by a ruling class, whether egalitarian or other) is being fought as I write.

Certainly though it is machines that have caused the sudden massive growth in human productivity and wealth.

SRH thought experiments

Some progress at last with SRH.

Let us invent an "intelligent agent" an IA. Put them in a sealed box with a letter box to feed information. Load this onto a truck and drive it somewhere, before setting it down again.

Imagine this box is in a field. Take a photo of the box in the field and post through the letter box.

The IA receiving the photo, and wanting to know where they are, may assume that the box in the photo is their box. They may then deduce that they are in a field. But this only works on the assumption that the box in the photo refers to the box they are in. They do not actually know for sure whether this is not just a photo of another box. However this illustrates the basic SRH argument that a "structure" that contains an isomorphism with itself (a picture of itself) also contains an isomorphism of what is not itself, and what is therefore greater than itself (the field in which the box lies). So if we complete the identity and make the correspondence between the entity and its isomorphism, then we can make this deduction.

Note that the process of making this correspondence lies outside the "structure." A structure cannot represent itself and the iso-morphism between itself and its representation. Suppose the box was transparent and the photo was really a tablet so that the image from the camera was being sent wirelessly in real time to the IA. They would see an IA looking at a tablet in the box, and on the face of the tablet would be the image they were looking at. They might also recognise the IA as themselves. It seems like the correspondence between the box and the image of the box on the tablet is being encoded within the image. However you could create this image like a fractal and really the box is on a beach. So even if the IA realised that indeed they are looking at a tablet on which is a picture of themselves in a field in a transparent box looking at a tablet, they cannot reliably deduce that they are really in a field. Indeed in the style of the film "Matrix" they might even be having this image transmitted to their brain and they are not even in box and looking at a tablet.

Matrix Caveat: however Matrix is wrong about one thing: you would remember the world in which you learned to speak and live. If indeed you learned to live and speak in the Matrix then actually the Matrix is reality, and the red pill actually takes you into a new reality. Matrix tries to suggest the true reality is the world of people being farmed by machines. For this to be true peoples' upbringing would have to be done in this world, and they would have a memory and legend of being captured by machines and plugged into the Matrix. You cannot just rewrite the whole of history because our very language and thought processes are historical. This is the weakness of this type of thinking.

But once the identity is made either by machine or by the mind it is recursive. Because looking at the photo of the box the IA understands that inside it is itself looking at the photo. This enters an infinite regress like when a camera outputs to the screen it is pointing at.



In theory this regress is also an infinite progression going the other way. But in the real world there is a time delay to process and display the image so to go backwards would involve going back in time.

This raises questions about what "reality" is in fact. A computer can simulate itself. You can emulate anything. So if an Intel chip emulates itself, it can run programs that were written for the chip, on the software, which is running on the chip. So you can load the emulator, into an emulator. You can do this to any depth. Once you have some depth you can unpick it, this is running on a emulator, which is running on an emulator.. all the way up to this is running on a real chip and then the progression stops. Why? What is the difference between a simulation and the real thing? In this case the emulator only emulates the chip logic, it doesn't emulate the electronics. The emulator can run on the chip, but the chip cannot run on the emulator. Instead the chip is run on physics with cleverly designed electronic circuits that simulate logic. You could write a physics simulator to simulate the chip. Then you run the physics simulator on the simulated chip. But in reality physics starts to become very non-discrete as you get into more detail. Before long you would be simulating quantum processes using a random number generator. Indeed perhaps the quantum world has to be non-discrete in order to close off the possibly of infinite progress. So sooner of later in the logical world you must have a top to the simulator stack: a mother machine on which things ultimately run.

So identity is impossible to prove in information theory. You can never be 100% sure that the accused really did the crime. It might always be someone else who is either protected, or who very cleverly set up the defendant. But in physical systems you can do this. Consider a crane lifting a large metal plate. The system works. But now move the crane so that it stands on the metal plate and try and lift it. Suddenly the crane's motor is not longer using the crane structure to fight against the force of gravity, instead the crane motor is fighting the cranes structure: the crane is fighting itself. Probably either the motor will fail or the structure will fail, but we can be 100% sure the plate will not lift. The reason is to do with SRH. What the crane does is take its stable foundation and transfer that rigidity to the plate which is only linked to the ground by gravity and so it lifts it. However once the plate is connected to the crane they share the same stable foundation so there is nothing to transfer. A system relies upon what it is not in order to work. If it relies upon itself it will achieve nothing. This in spiritual terms in the problem with the ego. It is a mental construct which believes it can rely upon itself. Just like the crane lifting its own plinth, the ego can never achieve anything, and worse in trying to achieve things it puts the structure of the self under enormous strain. Worse still when things do happen, as they always must, the ego tries to claim that the source of the change came from within. All change comes from what is not, that is to say: what is outside the self. The self can only ever be just itself, it cannot change, it is impotent. But since it is not separate from the world, the world will change it whether it accepts this or not.

I have other things to do now but some progress. The SRH may not be able to prove God now, given that the proof relies upon a 100% certain identity between the things and themselves. But there are physical systems that certain do seem to have 100% correlation between themselves and themselves. So while the IA in the box looking at the tablet can never be quite sure whether this is a clever dynamic simulation of an IA in a box in a field, looking at a tablet, there is 100% no way that a crane can lift itself.

And, obviously in logic we can just define identity. This makes logic a different world from reality. When Godel numbers the statements in predicate calculus there is no doubt that each statement has a number associated with it, and the "computer" (in Turing's usage of human thinker) thinking through the proof can make certain correspondence and identity between numbers and statements. Though I note again: the original 2007 statement of the SRH was this: that the "computer" of a logical proof cannot be themselves the subject of the proof. Just like a crane lifting itself, were the proof itself to embody the "correspondence" then we would have no solid platform on which to make the identity between systems that is required for self-reference. In other words self-reference cannot be based on itself. There must be a system outside the proof (the computer for Turing) that thinks through the proof and upon which correspondence (identity) is formed. Without this Godel's Numbers are just ordinary numbers and have no correspondence with statements at all.

n ∈ K ≡ ~(Bew [R(n); n])

Only works if we, the Computer, interpret R(n) ... and I need read that proof again to be sure this is correct.

The Ghost of the Table

Continuing the magic trick from the last post.



Suppose we had a table in a room. We invite a spectator in to see it. We then ask them to leave and we break the table up into a pile of wood splinters.

We then invite the spectator back, with another who did not know what was in the room.

We ask where did it go?

The two spectators will give different answers obviously not based upon what they see but upon what they know.

The original spectator will probably point at the pile of wood and say that this is the table, and that you have broken it up.

To this spectator you can say this is all true, but you might ask them to use their eyes and observe that there is no longer a table in the room. The table did not leave room. So the table has vanished.

But the new spectator will ask you what you mean by it? All they can see is a pile of wood. To this spectator you might give them some information by telling them there was a table in the room before, and they will work out the same as the first spectator.

What is to be closely observed here is how important what we know is. The "table" that we think is so solid and permanent is actually something created by our minds. So strong is this belief in the table, that even after it is broken up its ghost continues to inhabit the pile of wood. When spectator one is asked where the table is they point at the wood, not just indicating that the wood "was" the table, but believing in some way that the spirit of the table still inhabits the wood. This way they are not so surprised that the table has ceased to exist.

But obviously the table has ceased to exist because the second spectator does not see a table. They also do not have any knowledge of what the wood was so they do not invent a belief in a table. They see what is there: a pile of wood.

This is how important our minds are in creating the world. The imbue what we see with a narrative of what is and what is not. And this narrative is very powerful, so that it continues to add subtitles even after things have changed.

In Buddhism the cause of suffering is seen as the mind not accepting reality. Sadness is not suffering, emotions are not suffering. Suffering is an existential state of longing for what is not, or rejecting of what is. When we see the broken table, we do not see the pile of wood but rather a table that is broken. If we particularly liked the table then the pile of wood will carry a strong ghost of the table, and we will continue to see the table long into the future. But at no point here does the table really exist, it is all to do with our minds. Our minds are truly powerful!

And the real surprise when we realise how strong our minds are is to see that even when there is a table in room, it is not really there. Spectator 1s mind that gives a ghost to the pile of wood, also gives a ghost to the wood before it was broken up! In deep meditation it is possible to separate the experience of the table in our sense (the rupa) from the ghost of the table in our minds (the nama). When we have our minds under control with this understanding we can rid our life of all the hauntings that cause suffering.

Matter vs Spirit

Is universe built from matter or compassion?

(1.1) Some say matter, but then they have to argue that human consciousness is an illusion (e.g. Daniel Dennett)
(1.2) Pre-capitalist we say spirit and it is matter that is illusion.
(2.0) So how can matter be illusion when it is so obviously there?
(2.1) Look again: what is there is always a sense "i see the cat", "I hear the cat"... 
(2.1.1) The illusion is the jump from sense to definite thing "there is a cat."
(2.1.2) This jump occurs in the mind not in reality, just as the mirage we see on the desert horizon becomes definite "water" to the thirsty, how writing becomes things, and how pictures in a cinema become people.
(2.2.0) So what if two people go into a room independently and write down that they see a cat. How can the 2 pieces of paper agree if the cat is not real?
(2.2.1) They both think and use language normally. we cannot tell whether they understand their experience as a separate entity (the illusion) or a transitory experience (the reality).
(2.3.0) We can do a magic trick with this understanding.
(2.3.1) After having lunch on a table we can ask people to leave the room for 5 minutes sealing the windows and doors. If we dismantle the table into a pile of wood we can say when they return there is no where to have dinner! We have made the table vanish, yet nothing has left the room. Where did it go? (2.3.2) They will say it's there, pointing at the pile of wood. But look again: it isn't a table. The table has definitely been magicked away into thin air. This is possible because of 2.1.2 the table never existed permanently in the first place, it was only in the mind. Show the pile of wood to other people and they will not remember the table, so they won't be haunted by it. So things are easily seen as illusion, and spirit and human experience and compassion are easily viewed as reality. Unfortunately in this view all economy, labour and possession is illusion... so its not sold widely in capitalist countries... or Capitalist countries indoctrinate people in view 1.1

SRH fractal nature

Suppose we make a statement S that entails a distinction A and its necessary corollary B: in that anything which defines a region A also defines another inverse region B.

And suppose that this statement S is isomorphic with A. Then we can deduce that the corollary B is isomorphic with an unknown statement S'

Thus when a statement (or system) make a division, into which it itself maps, the statement can be used to make a distinction about itself.

Now is the "self" a problem?

Suppose that instead it wasn't S itself that was isomorphic but a statement T. Then the corollary would be T'.

T' may be a contradiction which is what we tend to look for in these situation.

But with S' it is more convoluted since S is the source of the distinction. So we are making a deduction about the statement upon which the deduction is based which is much more precarious.

It is this loop, the possibility of infinite regress, and of contradiction which makes self-reference so interesting.

Of course if T was the basis of S then we can generate the same thing. "self" must be taken to mean not direct but ultimately derived from.

Dialectics & Contradiction & Existence

In Predicate Logic when we make a statement we also ask whether that thing exists. So if we say that "unicorns have a horn" it is written:

Ax : (x is a unicorn) AND (x has a horn)

Which reads For All (A) x such that (:)  x is a unicorn and x has a horn. In other words all unicorns have a horn.

Many things (x) have a horn, but none of them are unicorns. So we actually say this sentence is false. This solves the ontological problem that were we to agree that unicorns have a horn we are also implicitly suggesting that unicorns exist, which they do not.

Such a sentence also entails other statements such as:

-Ex : (x is a unicorn) AND -(x has a horn)

(where - means not)

reads: there does not exist x such that x is a unicorn and x does not have a horn.

So even if unicorns existed, if it doesn't have a horn it can't be a unicorn. Crude (since you might cut the horn off a unicorn) but for arguments sake let us assume all unicorns have horns for this piece of logic.

So our single statement actually says quite a lot. It means if we capture something with a horn, it may be a unicorn but is also says that if we capture something without a horn we know it is not a unicorn. We are immediately familiar with Unicorns and Not Unicorns.

We also know that the statement Ex : (x is a unicorn) AND -(x has a horn) is false. "If it is a unicorn and it doesn't have a horn" must be false.

So this means that were we to say of something X that it was a Unicorn and then say of Y that it didn't have a horn then X cannot be Y else we have a contradiction.

When I first learned Dialectics I initially argued that opposites have nothing in common. Something is either X xor it is Y you can't mix different things without getting contradictions. Black most definitely is not White.

But Logic is built on a "model of existence." We might call it the Discrete Model of Existence (DME). In this model things have absolute boundaries.

John Donne in his Meditation 17 might have a problem with this. "No man is an island" meaning that we are all connected and when one man dies we all lose something, just as an island loses something when even a clod of earth is washed into the sea.

Likewise the paradox of the Argo and many other problems have troubled proponents of the DME. In this paradox Jason and his Argonauts (meaning the sailors of the Argo) set off in a boat called the Argo. During their voyage every piece of timber is replaced at least once. So the question is what ship returned home. It can't be the Argo cos the Argo is wrecked in scraps of timber around the Black Sea, and if it isn't the Argo then Jason didn't return with any Argonauts. It is as though the Argo went through a slow ship wreck and a new ship was built. And however we think about it, even if the new ship is renamed the Argo at what points was the Old-Argo scrapped and the New-Argo launched? The point is it isn't discrete.

If we propose the Interconnected Model of Existence it solves all these problems. But we can no longer apply logic and contradictions so absolutely.

SO to take the classic of light and darkness. If there was never any darkness then when was the light switched on? There is actually no light in this world, cos it can never be switched on or off. Likewise if there was no light then where are the shadows in which to hide from it? There is actually no darkness. And what is bizarre is that a world with only light is indistinguishable from one where there is only darkness. Perhaps I stepped into the deep end there.

More simply consider a step ladder with its legs parted ready to be climbed. As we climb the step ladder it is worth remember that neither the side with steps on nor the supporting legs on the other side are enough to support our weight. The ladder works because the forces are balanced in the middle. If you remove one side it will collapse, and if you remove the other it will collapse also. The whole depends upon the unity of opposing forces. Now at no time is the force pushing one way the same as the other, it is because they are opposite forces that the step ladder stands up at all. This is an excellent example of opposing and quite separate things unifying in a balanced whole.

And the more you look at the world the more it is always in balance between opposing forces. Democratic politics is not stable because any particular party wins, but that the balance of power is shared between competing forces. This is the original meaning of dialectics in Ancient Greece: the search for truth through competing points of view in argument and dialogue. It is why Plato took up this form of writing.

The Yin Yang not only shows the coming together of opposing forces in a whole, but the fractal nature of this that within in opposing force is it dependence on the other opposing force. It is not that we can take a part of the whole and say well this at least is something, and it just happens to be in opposition to that other part. The deep realisation is that even this part owes its existence to what it opposes. When you push against a wall you see that the force the wall pushes back with is equal to your push, and it grows as you push. You are creating the opposing force as you push. This is the essence of our lives, our desires to push and move around the world creates the very forces that oppose our movement. In Daoism seeing the unity of the whole and the competing forces means that we do not get stuck on one side of the step ladder pushing aimlessly against the other. Just as the wall creates an opposing force as we push so the unenlightened create an ego which is either black or white and which sits on its side and directs are efforts against the wall, creating more and more counter forces until something yields and a new set of oppositions are created. But as the yin-yang shifts the ego leaping from one black to another white will always be in opposition to something. Being aware of these forces means we can escape the illusion of crude oppositions and be part of a much greater cosmic energy that exists beyond oppositions. People who add their weight behind war "efforts" are simply ignorant of this. Just like the step ladder the war exists only as long as people push on both sides. And when they stop pushing the war evaporates into nothing, like the force of the wall pushing against us when we stop. All these struggles come from no where and end up going no where.

So in Dialectics nothing exists "as an island" but always interconnected and in opposition to other things. One cannot say absolutely that something without a horn isn't a unicorn or be sure that something with a horn is a unicorn, it could after all be a horse with some surgery. In reality none of these entities exists absolutely and is fluid and changeable with other things. This is the source of magic and illusions as we are misdirected to think that one thing is really another. Yet DME persists in our thinking, perhaps because it is a neat short cut to using words which are discrete, and we are reluctant to let go of the idea that something or someone is exactly and only who they are. In Buddhism this resistance to allowing things to change and become what they are not, like the Argo, is the source of suffering and in personal existence is the illusion of Atta - the fixed discrete soul. In reality we are momentary and always changing, our boundaries and affiliations uncertain and in our heart there is no fixed identity. But that doesn't give us licence to be duplicitous and two-faced, lack integrity and be whimsical and uncommitted: on the contrary The Vow is the path to wisdom. Being straight and definite is the sign of a person who has stepped above the vagaries of conditional existence. The problem of Atta is when we confuse the changing with ourselves, when we allow our vows, intentions and purpose to be swayed by what is not us. In Hinduism this is taken to extremes with the story of Harishchandra who even keeps a vow that ultimately leads to executing his own wife. Perhaps I wonder in reality whether there was a more peaceful solution to his situation, rather than the dogged determination to remain strong in his vow. But in the story the gods who set the test up eventually felt pity for him and released him from his vow. But he did prove that he was not to be distracted by the uncertain dialectical world of opposing forces and change.

What is Socialism, What is Communism, dialectics

Right now there seems to be a huge amount of obfuscation and misinformation about this. I imagine it is fuelled by party politics and socialist is equated with Labour in the UK and Democratic Social Justice Warriors in the US. This is like being a fan of football in general versus supporting a team. Socialism is a lot more than just supporting a team, it is a theory with a history just like football itself.

I have never read Marxism, but I read his predecessor Hegel who I consider superior. The key thing to grasp is Dialectics. Dialectics is nothing to do with Socialism. It has its roots in Ancient Greece, is present in Chinese Daoism (yin-yang) and in Indian thought too. In a sentence it is the unity of opposites, which sounds absurd at first glance.

IN non-dialectic (dualistic) logic you have things that are true and things that are false. This coiled thing in the shadows is either a snake or it is not. The defendant is either guilty are they are innocent. The man in the film is either a good guy or they are a bad guy. The dice is either a six or it is not. It is a simple world divided into black and white.

Quantum physics says the world isn't like this. The dice can be both 1 and 6 at the same time, the cat can be both alive and dead. This is not dialectics however.

In the film Heat (which I haven't seen) you have the Good guy (De Niro) and a Bad buy (Pacino). I imagine the reason for the famous scene is that actually they are identical people. They are both tenacious, smart and out to win. It is less a cop and a gangster and more a boxing match. De Niro has good qualities, but so does Pacino. De Niro has bad qualities and so does Pacino. But to be real dialectics De Niro's good qualities should be there because of Pacino Bad qualities and vice versa. Not having seen the film I cannot comment. But suppose Pacino had made a vow to avenge the death of his brother who was killed ruthlessly by De Niro. De Niro may have been a cop, the good guy, but his lack of compassion led Pacino into a situation where he had to take revenge (assuming revenge and honour are ever a good thing). The result is that look one way De Niro is good and Pacino the gangster, look the other De Niro is ruthless and Pachino the devoted brother. And the more they struggle the more they get intertwined, the more the coffee and cream mix until they are inseparable. But if either side quits the whole things disintegrates into nothing. This is dialectics. But coffee never blends with cream in dialectics it is always opposites pushing against each other. A simpler example might just be a suspension bridge where the weight on both sides of the tower keep it balances. If either side fails the whole thing fails. Opposite forces in equilibrium, while opposites, there is no winner, no right one and if either fails the whole thing fails. A famous examples is light and darkness. No light then there is no shadow, but no darkness then how can you switch the light on. Light is married to Darkness they are inseparable. Indeed looking at darkness you can almost see the light they are so interdependent. I once had an absorbance trace where I entered into a ring of light from an over head lamp. I forgot about the darkness that must have been there to make it into a ring. But when I suddenly became aware of the ring shape of the light my mind stepped over a threshold and absorbed into the infinite darkness, which was however fully illuminated. Impossible to describe unless you experience it (Jhana 6 - there are books on it). This is ultimate profound dialectics.

So what has Dialectics to do with Socialism. Most socialism is based upon a Historical theory which describes the progress of mankind from primitive to advanced and the process is dialectics. It is a beautiful theory, because it employs dialectics, and gives great insight into history. In Hegel the key highlight is the transition from Master/Slave to Absolute which in Marxism is the transition from Capitalist to Communist. Dialectics ends at this point in both versions. I personally don't believe that Dialectics ever ends. Following Buddhism Dialectics never ends because it never started, it is an illusion caused by ignorance. Unlike Hegelianism I believe the Absolute is always available, and the path is not a prescribed as it is in these Systems. Never-the-less the broad ideas are of great interest. Master/Slave is the transition of mind from Kings and Servants where Kings are entitled and Servants look up to their master to Servants taking that freedom they saw in their Master for themselves. This fits the historical events of the C18th revolutions where the mass no longer tolerated having a superior class and took freedom for themselves which we call Capitalism.

Capitalism however has its flaws and the freedom of the revolutions was soon seen to be limited. Wealth grew as once humble servants moved to cities to make a life for themselves, taking up home in houses built by factory owners and increasing their wages. But there was a down side because it meant a whole class giving up their traditional lifestyles and lands and becoming dependent on the factory owners. Redundancy became a constant fear. Once you lost your job you had nothing and you couldn't return to farming because your land was all sold up and machines were now farming it. Economics was against people also as capitalist classes knew how to keep wages down and increase their profits. Poverty rather than going away became worse.

And so Socialism was born. The reaction to the poverty that emerged from Capitalism. From the Hegelian and Marxist theories people expected a Communist revolution to overthrow the wealthy capitalists just as the C18th revolutions had overthrown the Kings and Aristocrats. But it never came. Russia and China being very late to the party tried to skip straight from Feudalism to Communism missing out Capitalism but the theory never said this was possible, and they ended up going toward Capitalism anyway. But despite all the propaganda that was touted around, both Russia and China did successfully liberate their people from the oppression of the aristocratic system just as England tried in the C17th and France in the C18th. Even America had to overthrow its Aristocratic rulers in an Independence struggle. And many other countries followed suit in a wave of revolution from Imperial Aristocratic rule after the war. A problem for the British is that while most of the world has now been liberated from Feudalism and Imperial rule there is the possible fact that the British still remain governed by a ruling aristocracy. Perhaps here in UK, the mother of Socialism, we still haven't made it to Capitalism!

So Socialism is a complex mix of ideas, including a view of history and social change and human evolution. It is a reaction to the poverty and injustice of Capitalism and Industrial Revolution and not a single political movement that sets out to oppose other movements dualistically. It does at its heart have dialectics anyway, so that for its own perspective it sees humans intertwined in an historical struggle of progress. What a far cry this is from the dualistic view that is common at the moment which sees Socialism as the Red Corner in a boxing match with other systems. I've always felt this view is a hang over of the cold war where the US Pentagon hatched a propaganda campaign to justify its hostility to competing post war powers.

Is Socialism still relevant as the world progressively becomes richer, poverty is reducing and happiness indexes increasing. Is there a need for any criticism of Capitalism? Isn't everything okay?/ And was Marx wrong that actually there is nothing after Capitalism?

In two words who knows. But such an argument could have been had at any point in history. After we discovered fire we could have just sat back and been happy. There remain big problems with Capitalism that cannot go away because Capitalism is flawed. Whether we work to fix those problems, or not is up to us. Marx and Hegel say that History will inevitably move toward perfection. I'm less deterministic. But I do think that things never stay the same for long, and change will happen.

The key problem with Capitalism is that no matter how wealthy we become, no matter how cheap things become and no matter how efficient our machines are some people will be owners and some people will not. And under the rules of Capitalism is you are an owner then you can rent things to those who are not owners. This means that under Capitalism some people who do not have, will be paying money to those people who do have. This is the same aristocratic system of entitlement by some over others that we fought to end. Nothing has actually changed. If we are happy with things now, then why were we not happy under Feudalism giving 50% of our produce to the land owner? Capitalism is in its heart is unequal and flawed and simply cannot survive indefinitely. The only way we can tolerate this is by apathy. Obviously those who benefit from the system will encourage apathy, which is what I believe books like "End of History" by Francis Fukuyama are really motivated by. If we really seek progress, and we adopt the thinking of Socialism, we will be looking toward a future where all humans are respected by a system which does not from the outset create division and inequality. This is not to say that we each get given 1 potato and a cup or water each morning by a central state as some satirists like to suggest, but it does mean that we do not apathetically accept a system like this where those with plenty to excess can exploit those who have only a little.

I'm not one for bloody revolutions. This is why I like Hegel more than Marx and why I prefer Buddhism to both. Revolution happen in the mind, not on the battle field. People have always been fighting (since the farming revolution anyway) but it is what they have been fighting about that has changed, and not everything they fight about is hatched in battles. Battles are for show, but the battle for ideas is quiet and far more wide reaching and powerful. Leave the battles to the duellists (dualists)... unlike Hegel and Marx I do not think History is written in blood. Lasting history is written in pubs, and over dinner tables and cups of tea (or coffee if you are Georgian or American). So the challenge still exists to solve the problems in Capitalism that were first noted in the late 1700s and which remain largely unresolved...

It is probably worth addressing one of the great Pentagon pieces of misinformation: Socialism's body count. In particular Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot. The first thing to note is that civil wars and revolutions tend to be bloody regardless the politics. Probably the bloodiest revolution in history was the English Civil War where 1 in 6 people lost their lives. This was long before even Capitalism had been thought of let alone Socialism. And Iraq is a recent example of how civil wars, even moving toward democratic capitalism, are costly: 1 in 18 died in that war. If Stalin, Mao and Hitler are to blamed for their body counts then so must George Bush for Iraq, the various presidents behind Vietnam and Oliver Cromwell who presided over the biggest body count of all. Obviously China and Russia are massive countries and you don't compare death per death, but rather the chance of dying during the crisis. And then there is Hitler. The fact that the Allies waged a war of total destruction against Germany always seems to be forgotten. I think Germany could have been running the most successful democratic capitalist country at the time and the body count would have been exactly the same given total national destruction. This is the elephant in the room of those war statistics. The allies refuse to acknowledge the impact of the 1942-45 invasion period and the millions it killed. Now this is not to say that the Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot's killing fields, French Reign of Terror, Stalin's 2 years reign or terror were not complete disasters, but it is to say that they were not much to do with Socialism and a lot more to do with revolutions and civil wars.

18/10/2018 update

In the account above I completely ignore aufhebung. Where the East and West diverge is in the meaning of contradiction. In the East it is suffering: the dualistic divided mind is in a state of instability and suffering, but like the West this state of suffering keeps the mind searching endlessly for salvation. That perfect peace comes with Enlightenment and Liberation from dual conditional existence (either this or that, self and other) and is a return to the centre of the wheel upon which mundane existence and suffering turns. In common with the West the soul is endlessly restless until it finds peace. However in Hegel and Marx this struggle becomes a powerful and violent force that drives progress and history, taking individuals and mankind from primitive to greater and greater states until opposites are all overcome and a grand Absolute is achieved that subsumes all that has previously been troublesome and in conflict. In Hegelian and Marxist Dialectic this struggle between conflicting ideas resolves in aufhebung and the dramatic reconstruction of the rules of the game into a new world where the previous problem is now in harmony: the dawn of a new era which can be, and is, on a personal and global level... altho personal vs global is itself an ancient dialectic in need of resolution. So while the West almost justifies its violent and bloody history as a path that leads to perfection, in the East suffering is of no value and does not lead to any path except in so far as to motivate the suffering ignorant soul away from self-satisfaction. True we cannot rest until we are enlightened, but the goal is the ending of suffering rather than soldiering through the suffering as tho it is laying down a stairway to heaven. To return to the post question directly: Socialism includes all this enquiry and is a continual path, it is far from the straw-man that is popularly burned by masses who are brainwashed by an elite to believe that they already exist in utopia and whose minds are dulled by such mental opium.

Anatomy of a song - how the Divine enters the world

This incredibly simple folk tune illustrates something about the human mind that is central to art and communication: context.

In its simplest form removing the dropping scales embellishments the melody is just a fifth interval followed by a sixth interval. This is animated by a waltz skipping from the main beat onto two beats each bar and holding the last note of each phrase for a bar. How beautifully simple is that. But in this form it is also 1 dimensional and gets boring.

To add more character the flat bars are filled by a second phrase which runs down the scale from the fifth to the dominant. This second phrase works against the rising phrase to create a contrasting dynamic in the tune. But it also enables a piece of genius which takes the creation up to a critical sublime third level. All art should reach this level to liberate the audience. The "higher place" a dancer once described it to me as.

The pattern in the first 4 bars sets up an expectation and a context: fifth, scale down, sixth, hold but the repeat in the second part goes fifth, scale down, sixth, slow scale down. What happens is that the expectation is for a slow simple bar, but instead it gets the scale down phrase played simply. What is extra ordinary is that the scale down completely changes its character under these conditions and feels like a third phrase when in fact it is just a repetition of the scale down phrase. The sublime character comes from the magic way in which it changes it "spirit" or "character" simply from its role in the melody.

When art animates components in a well formed structure they gain an enhanced meaning, they gain life, they are embodied with a magical spirit that seems to come from somewhere outside. This is exactly as the ancient Greeks saw theatre, a religious experience where the heavenly realms brought mythological characters to real life upon the stage. So it is in all art that a shamanic possession appears to occur to characters that takes them beyond the mundane into the supra mundane. That setting of the down-scale in the closing 2 bars of the song does exactly this to just a sequence of four notes. Anything can be animated by the gods, and all arts, indeed all of life, is built upon this magic.

Looking for simple expression of SRH

I'm sure Taski has been here but recently looking at what I think are the two major proofs by contradiction isn't it built on something much simpler? Turing proves that a computation that sets out to determine whether computations in general halt cannot determine whether it itself halts. Or more precisely he generates a "spanner" in the works which does the opposite of what this function expects. Likewise Godel does the same thing using a function that declares the provability of statements, and a spanner that states that a certain statement is not provable, namely itself. All quite sophisticated logic. But consider this most simple version of the liar paradox:

If we suppose it is possible to list all possible functions (here we go the start of an Diagonalisation proof) and so give them a number that can be used to refer to them, then if f(x) is a function then #f(x) means the function at row f in the list.

A function Is0(x) is defined like this:

int Is0(x) {
if (#x(x) == 0) return 1;
if (#x(x) != 0) return 0;
}

What is the result of Is0(#Is0)? In other words does Is0(#Is0) == 0?

If it does equal 0 then it would return 1 and if it doesn't then it would return 0. We have a contradiction... however Turing steps in because it is infinitely recursive and would loop forever as indeed does the "I am a liar" statement. It never resolves to a fixed truth value and keeps looping forever. Is0(x) is thus provably a partial function and Is0(#Is0) is undefined: it doesn't halt. As SRH suggests the domain of total functions and numerical output is not enough once you get self reference and the meta domain of non-halting functions is opened up according to the +1 or Hamlet principle.

So then Turing makes a meta statement not about the numerical output but about the function operation itself... whether it halts or not. Godel does the same making a statement whether there is a string of statements that generates the statement.

Like Cantor infinitely exploding the types of infinity, doesn't diagonalisation suggest that the domain of computable functions also expands so that there are levels of Non-Halting function.. I believe that would mean an infinite ascent of Oracle machines.

Private Language

Home & Away today "What's up. Nothing. That doesn't sound like nothing, talk to me."

With language we can either tell people how we feel and think or we don't. Which means that other people are aware of this private space when we chose to remain silent.

Before language we had no way of suggesting this other world, there was no way to remain silent, it was non existent. People just did what they did.

So when language arose the possibility of being silent created the sense of a private world that was known only to us, but we didn't have to express it to others. This "private world" is the mirror image of the public quality that language has. Importantly however before language this private world did not exist.

So today a lot of thought goes into the sense of private individuality. Our existence which is unknown to other people. The private "me time" that is not available to others. Before language this was not a separate world, as we only ever occupied this world, and we interacted with other people in this world and they interacted with us in this world. We didn't have a second world of language to "speak to me" in.

Wittgenstein and Structuralists rather put it the other way around. We begin with language, and show that a private world cannot exist. But we can stretch the logic temporarily across an imaginary history and wonder what the advent of language brought to the party. Structuralists are right there is no "private world", but it is rather that language brought a "public world" which seems to entailed a "private world" split, and before language there was just one world which wasn't divided.

In Spirituality "silence" is central. People spend time being silent, stopping their thoughts, relating to the world in a simple non-linguistic way. Not reporting, not telling, not writing, just being way. But also in silence we do meditations on "all beings" and examine our experience in depth to discover a truth that is the same for all Buddhas but which is also our own. Kierkegaard would like this: a private truth that is the same for all i.e. which is universal.  So interestingly language opens the door to the spiritual world but raising awareness of silence. Perhaps I speculate it is not the silence of refusing to speak, but rather the silence that was there before language.

From Garden of Eden in Iraq to the Golden Emperor in China I suspect that much of our earliest myth actually recalls the time before the great technologies of farming and language. As Nietzsche I believe read into Genesis, the story is about the transition from animal to man, from the Dionysian to the Apollonian, from the silent to the rational. There is a substrate of the world that is neither spoken nor silent, neither public nor private, neither group nor individual, neither collectivist nor individualist, neither lawful nor beyond law, an undifferentiated original space on which all this was built.

Are contradictions the result of SRH?

Google Chrome stores its bookmarks in a json file with the hash key at the start. Does this hash include itself. Well obviously not, otherwise we'd be looking a very long time to find the hash that hashes the bookmark file that contains itself.

Self reference adds some very strict conditions on things. And we can see that these conditions lead very easily to contradictions: or where not concerned with True/False more broadly "schisms" where something is not what is should be. In the rules of chrome bookmark json files the hash "should" be the hash of the bookmarks.

So I learn from this post to relax the SRH a bit. The issue of self-reference is just the unique nature of the constraints that it adds: I need to understand this. But also that it is not a matter of True/False only but "schisms" in the rules of any system that includes itself, or a feature of itself.

Tho note that hash doesn't not enforce total self-reference: hash collisions means that we can find a solution to the google chrome bookmark self included hash problem. If hashs had a one-to-one relationship with what they hash we can arrive a problem with no solution: e.g. "I am a lie" where "I" completely encompasses the sentence so no refuge to escape the constraints.

Racial Identity

I was thinking back to seeing a Palestinian and an Israeli meet at a copy of the famous Israel West-bank barrier that was set up in London. It was a furious exchange and I remember the Israeli shouting to the Palestinian had he ever tried living in Israel under the threat there. It doesn't matter who was right or wrong, there was a lot of grief here to get around first, and it moved me to tears.

But this morning I was thinking what I would say argumentatively now that I have seen the Israelis moving in very dishonest ways over the whole Israel thing.

I would ask of the Israeli, where were your parents born. For the Palestinian there is a good chance they were indeed born in the region, so it is not a level playing field here (and I suspect the Israelis know this). We know they were not born in Israel cos it didn't exist then. So perhaps they were born in America. Now even better if the person at the wall was born in US too because we can say that they are American. What greater identity do you need than you are American. I for example am born in Nottingham and I consider myself English... even while having descendants from Scotland, Belgium, Poland, and Spain. What is an English anyway given that we are a mix of Celt (from Spain), Celt from UK, Roman, Saxon, French, Danish and many others. So why is this Israeli making so big a deal over Israel. Can't you just say: if Israel is so horrible then return to your mother country America (assuming they were born in America)?

But what if they were born in Israel. My friend was born in America but moved to UK and considers themselves an English now because their family is from England. Could not the Israeli whose parents were not born in Israel really consider themselves something else?

But then I know people from Malaysia who consider themselves Chinese, and people from England who consider themselves Indian even while in both cases it was several generations ago that a diaspora came from these countries. In their minds I guess there is a longing for this "homeland" that cements their identity, even while it is long gone. It is not exactly like I have a longing for Poland give my ancestor came from their over a century ago.

But there is something deeper. People who see themselves as "Chinese" look like Chinese. It is more than a country it is a look. Isn't it weird to call how people "look" after a "place" they are completely different things. It is like calling a plate made by a process "china" cos that is where the technique originated. It is not actually "China" there is nothing chinese about a bone-china plate: it can be made with locally sourced bone and clay and be made completely in another place. Just like Wedgewood made its copies of Japanese "willow pattern" inspired by Japan but nothing Japanese about it. So a "Chinese" person who was born and lives in England has no part of them that is Chinese. Every atom is from England. But perhaps they have inherited something from their parents. Sad fact is most Chinese in the West become "Chinesified" by being sent to Chinese school by their parents. It is an intention to make them Chinese rather than something that happens. Most Chinese if fact have lost any Chinese identity - they can barely speak the language let alone read it, and they have almost no knowledge of customs and rules. Any more than most English know anything any more about the Jewish custom of Christmas (Jesus was Jew). Anyone can learn Chinese, and be "Chinesified". But perhaps the point is the intention to hold onto this "identity." Who else but a "Chinese" would want their children "Chinesified." Well their are plenty of Sinophiles in the West who are better Chinese than most of the Chinese.

But i won't completely discredit identity. There are small details of culture that cannot be taught and come from being born of people who originated in China no matter how much they have adopted local customs. I bet somewhere in me is still legacy of my Polish roots... and then there is DNA. Well we are 50% related to the banana, and 95% related to Chimpanzees so this is something to ignore. All humans are essentially the same biologically.

So how is the Jew any different? Well there is just one difference: unlike the Chinese, Indian, African whose "homelands" still sort of exist (altho very changed in the last century) for the Jew the "homeland" is a myth that has been handed down over the millennia about escaping slavery in Egypt and being delivered to a "promised land." I find it extraordinary how many times that mythology is presented again and again in Jewish history. But then it happened for ultimate real with the Nazis, and the British actually did deliver them a "homeland." for real. So now the Jews have what the Chinese, Indians and Africans have always taken for granted: a real homeland. But as I hope I have begun to show it is a myth for all of them, just as I can't walk into Poland and claim it as a "homeland." Ultimately what makes a place yours is that you are born there, or your descendants or their descendants... but it grows weaker and more tenuous as you step into the mists of time.

I suspect once the Jews have savoured this new found reality of having a material "homeland" time will come when it returns once again to mythology and like all people in this highly mobile world with technology soon to make global travel a thing of just a few hours, and even space travel a reality the whole basing of identity on a place like Israel of China will become a thing of the Past. For now I suppose the Jews need to feel this reality, but one day the myth will begin to fade.