Diversity, University and Information

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

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

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

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

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

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

Youths n Violence UK

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=== Update 17/10/09

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

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

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

Relativity, Self, wave function & Quanta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Of Nothing, Uselessness and Pointlessness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love & Child

From my enquires, but not experience, the greatest love is reserved for our children. Buddha certainly noted this about his son Rahula.

Obviously this makes sense genetically. We have no genetic relationship with our partner (for genetics requires mixing) so we have nothing to gain from their survival. However our children is the real purpose because they survive our own death and continue this behaviour onwards.

So does it then follow that the "love" we experience for our partner is actually the seeing the partner as the necessary condition for our children? I need this person, we instinctively think, before I can reproduce so they are the missing factor in our producing children, they are thus imbued with the nature of our children and thus we love them.

This is not the true love which is a duty, but that feeling of attraction and unity with. We do both metaphorically and literally bond with our partner since they offer half the genes and in the case of the woman the egg.

Love is different then between men and women. In women who need only the small ingredient of the sperm to kick start the process which otherwise occurs within them love for the man is more shallow but longer lasting since the female will need some support during gestation. The male on the other hand has only a short involvement with the process but therefore owes more to the female for his children - his experience of love ought to be greater I would hypothesise.

Noumenon, NULL, Difference

The previous post is actually really basic... How rich am I? If I look at other people then I can say whether I am more or less rich than them and I can place myself in the pecking order. If I look at myself however then I am as rich as I am - there is nothing else to say. This sounds informative but actually it disguises the NULLness of answer. It is also always true that I am as rich as I am no matter how much wealth I have by comparison with other. So based upon myself I can never feel wealthy or poor... so if I do it is because I am comparing and that is something that wealth or poverty can't cure because no matter how much we have or how much we don't have there is always someone above and below us.... ergo poverty can only be solved in the mind... and this is true for all other things as well!

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This goes for shopping as well. We have a conception of ourself. We place ourself in the ranking. Depending upon our state we may wish to rise or sink on tha ranking so we have desire. Yet having moved we are still in the ranking so the desire hasn't been satisfied. The experience of discovering underneath it all that we are still me.

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n linking to Western Philosophy the point is that noumenon neither exist or do not exist they are NULL to all attempts at knowledge. To my knowledge that counts everyone in the west from Plato to the 1800's out of the game!! Then Hegel (1804) figureheads the escape...

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So when Plato discusses the process of knowledge (via Socrates) he likens it to an impression in wax matching an object. In one way this is very revealing because it shows that knowledge is a negation of the "real" thing. But Plato's error in this analysis is to then match the object and the wax tablet to their own wax tablets and give us knowledge of them too! In his scenario we only have knowledge of the thing known, not the wax tablet and the "real" object as well ... these things are NULL in the event of knowledge. Thus we always escape the third man fallacy because, like Russel and Whitehead's theory of types in Principia, there is a strict control of what is in-context and what is out-of-context, and that which is out of context is NULL.

Its ok then to use the analogy of measurement of things because we are not implying a thing and a meter as separate entities from the measurement - if we try to measure the metre we get NULL.

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Modern philosophy in Structuralism and more recently Strawson has this ideas of difference being the founding force of things - a network without nodes. But I always found this difficult to comprehend because it doesn't address the foundation problem that we are instinctively looking for concrete ontology and noumena. We are told of a network and then that the nodes are secondary - so we just negate the nodes that we already imagined. It seems easier to consider the idea of measurement of things and then the impossibility of measuring the standards.

Relativity, Self-Reference, Subject/Object

So it's back (after a 25 absence) to the conviction that "All things are relative" (or conditional in Buddhist speak).

But we can measure things. Being relative we can say where things lie relative to one another. So it is true that we can say that one person is richer than another, or has a bigger house or car etc. However this alone is not logos. To become logos we need to mix in a "standard" against which all things become relative. So we have the "metre" as the standard of length. Now we can say how things are relative to the metre and we have the practice of measurement we are familar with. Now we feel we can get the "absolute" length of things. Blue whales have been measured at 30 metres long ... fact!

Two things from this: 1) What is the metre, for example, of wealth? 2) How long is a meter?

Taking Q2 first: Because measurement depends upon relativity and comparing, when asked how long is a metre we try and compare a metre with itself (this is both habitual and a logical implication of the practice of measurement). What does our mind come up with? It's a blank. Suddenly a metre loses its solidity - it becomes a blank space with disconnected ends. When we try to put a start and an end on that space we still don't understand how "far" we have travellend between those ends - what sort of answer could be give? What logos is this? This blank is the same blank we get when trying to think about ourselves. This blank is NULL.

So I argue that self-reference is impossible but I realise that it is possible, just not measurable. When something refers to itself it lies outside/inside the relative, comparable world of symbols and logos. The first rule of self-reference club then is that you do not talk about self-reference club - indeed you can't because what symbols could you use to refer or compare oneself to oneself? This is why they say in matters of this kind that there is One because the self measures itself in a ratio of One:One - but this is actually inaccurate. There is not One God for the same reason that 0/0 is not 1 and NULL/NULL is not 1. Self does not measure self - you can't talk about it. It isn't a rule either actually since "rules" are measurements. That is why rulers measure distance and justice!

So what is the standard of Wealth? It can be chosen and become a custom and norm and a rule - the UN has done exactly this. We accept a standard of wealth, but it is no more real than a metre. It is simply a socially accepted way of doing things, a custom, a bit of culture - a rule in the game of measurement that we do.

And, what is Absolute then in this view? I spoke already of God and NULL. These are the Absolute Judges the measures of all things in antiquity. What of them today in the world of different standards like the metre? Well objectivity is the world of "external" measures where things are put side by side to see how they rank. Subjectivity is the name we give to the "inside" where something tries to relate to itself - subjectivity is then a nullification of objectivity.

While objectivity gives the sense of knowledge in that we can give a symbolic expression of something, I know that Blue-whales can grow to 30metres but I don't actuallty know how big this is. Someone usually says that this is the the length of 3 double-decker buses, not because we wanted to know that a double-decker bus is 10meters long, but because we have stood next to a double-decker bus and so we can compare the whale to ourselves. So how big then are we? Protagoras once said that "Man is the measure of all things"; I prefer "each man is the measure of all things"; when Man is asked to measure himself with himself, Man gets the answer NULL.

Yet NULL is not zero and it is not something. When they say we will become Nothing after death this is neither a ceasing to exist nor a beginning of some other existence - it is NULL, neither up nor down, neither full nor empty. I realise that the translation of sunyata in Buddhism which is usually emptiness is equally fullness cos really it means NULL. When NULL comes to play objective measurement is completely thrown into disarray. What was big when compared to small is now small against NULL and vice versa because NULL is both big and small objectively. I am both big and small - against a mountain I feel very small, but I look down at the ant following its intricate map and suddenly I am very big. How big am I? The best we can say (inaccurately) is that I am "me" sized but its better to leave it as NULL. What is perhaps a suprise then is that after death we are NULL sized and before death we are NULL sized - that is exactly the path to the deathless and ever lasting life which the religions speak of and which the objective world of metres and worldly laws mocks and crucifies. It is not that we are the same before and after death it is just there is no comparison - that too is NULL.

The Logos, the Dao, the Dharma etc are ironic then which I hadn't quite appreciated before. logos with a small letter and dharma with a small letter actually mean the opposite. I don't know about dao (it means path or way usually I think). logos are the things which are measured. dharma is sanskrit of "things". Its a deliberate irony then to use these words for the Absolute because it is quite the opposite. Logos is NULL against which all things have no measure and when you try to measure of compare with NULL you get the opposite of what you expected - it dumbfounds the comparing mind - the mind which is not at ease with itself and NULL. The Dharma is everything but a "thing" - I never understood the deliberate irony before. The middle-way to enlightenment and liberation requires everything but things and measurements (Buddha is meticulous in warning us away from extremes without posing any new "things" like limits etc to measure against).

Now where I got stuck all those years ago was in question like "green". How do we measure green? Doesn't green seem to occupy a place all by itself. It is certainly a lot different from simple distances. Yet there are standard colours (7 at last count) and some extras and we speak about all others using these measures - blue-green etc. It is when we compare green with itself that it becomes NULL and we are left dumbfounded about what green really is. Because green comes in areas rather than a distance I think this is what seems to give the problem its extra piquance. And so of emotions and feelings do we compare how we feel from day to day? Do we try and measure these things to find out if we are happy or not? Do we read magazines to try and find out how to be "happier". Yes we measure these against the standards also. But what is sadness compared to itself? and what is happiness compared to itself? NULL. Mahayana Buddhism (unlike Theravada) says that they are then the same - this is another comparison and not strictly accurate - but then they aren't different either - there are incomparable as is God.