Double book philosophy

Double Entry Philosophy

The power of double book accounting as applied to Ontlogical Mathematics.

Introduction

A while back I took a course on double book accounting, mostly because on my last job I interacted with the accounting team a lot, and was trying to get a grip on some of the terminology they were always throwing around like the concept of "accruals". I assumed it would all be a rather dry topic, but, when I properly understood it and generalized it as double perspective modeling, it turned out to be a powerful and insightful way of looking at things.

In this post, we will explore the power of applying "double book" to philosophy, or to ones worldview, esp. with regard to the power of having an Ontology (e.g. Ontological Math) complementing an Epistemology (e.g. Materialism/Science).

Aside from the beginning where I talk a little about double book accounting (or double entry bookkeeping), this will not be a writeup on accounting. So please don't tune out. I think you'll find this is a surprisingly interesting topic.

Double Entry Bookkeeping

Double Entry Bookkeeping involves keeping two separate set of books: one for assets and one for liabilities *1. The two books are not completely independent: they are related via their aggregate sums. That is to say they are united by a common invariant: the sum of both have to add to the same value at all times.

*1 Although it doesn't have to always be assets and liabilities: it could be something like summary and detail.

The entries in the assets and the liabilities are not necessarily one-to-one: A stapler, for instance, might be a single asset, but on the liability side broken out into the purchase cost and sales tax. The different perspectives naturally emphasize certain breakdowns, so the liabilities are not just assets with a negative sign in front in most cases. Also, things that might essentially be invisible on one side, may be glaringly obvious in the other. So for instance, when you see the cost of hiring expensive consultants on the liabilities side, it forces you to think about what assets they actually bring (or don't bring) to the table on the assets side, something you may not have previously considered.

Most people think the power of double book accounting is in the redundancy, and I did too. But really, you could achieve most of the redundancy of double book with a single book model if, for instance, you added up the sum with two different people at two different times. Double-book does make it easier to incorporate redundancy in that you're not simply adding up the same numbers twice, but that's not it's true purpose. And this is the real subtle distinction that you have to get with double book: it allows for auditing, not merely accounting.

Auditing vs Accounting

Accounting/Bookkeeping is a simple single book cursory sum analysis. It's looking at things from a single perspective and is "intra-spective". Auditing is a deeper double-book double sum and involves comparing and contrasting among two models. It's looking at things from two perspectives and is "inter-spective".

Let's look at some examples. Imagine someone who is overweight, doesn't exercise, smokes, drinks etc. decides to get a medical exam. Let's say however, that because they are sufficiently young, their "numbers", that is to say their blood pressure, cholesterol, BMI are within standard ranges. These numbers are like an accounting analysis. So according to a simple bookkeeping-level analysis, they're healthy. However, I think most people would say that from a lifestyle audit point of view, this person is rather unhealthy. Bookkeeping is skin deep, auditing goes down the bone.

Another example would the Enron scandal from 2001. Imagine if the Feds, upon hearing claims from whistleblowers that there is fraudulent activity, merely went to Enron and asked them for the their numbers. And if, when they added up these numbers, and discovered, lo and behold, that everything "checked", and thus proclaimed "all is good, nothing to see here", would that be acceptable to most people? Of course not. What they did instead was go in and do an audit. They didn't rely upon the numbers given to them to by Enron: they went to the source and challenged all the assumptions used in generating their original numbers. The accusation was that the numbers supplied by Enron either had phantom numbers in them that shouldn't have been there, and/or orphaned numbers that should have been in there but were not: sins of comission and sins of omission. The audit is what captures the deeper, true state of the system.

A third example is to look at the debate surrounding the voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential elections (Trump vs Biden). This debate between George Stephanopoulos and Rand Paul exemplifies the difference between a mere accounting analysis and an audit analysis. Irregardless, of your perspective on this topic, listen to the two people talk. Both sides are seemingly at loggerheads: one (George Stephanopoulos) saying an analysis has been done proving no fraud, and the other (Rand Paul) saying an analysis has not been done and if one was done it may or may not find fraud (but strongly suggesting it would).

On the surface this sounds like a paradoxical situation: both can't be right. One person is either lying or misrepresenting (and they both accuse each other of doing this). However, if the appropriate language is used and instead of "analysis/investigation" you substitute "level 1 bookkeeping analysis" for George Stephanopoulos and "level2 audit analysis" for Rand Paul, then there's no conflict. In fact, they're both correct, and are simply talking past each other because they're talking about two different things: the difference between accounting and auditing.

Single Book Systems

Like most of accounting history, most of society's world-models as well as most personal world-models are single book. That is to say, people have a single model for something and only compare (intra-compare) amongst that model.

Science is a good example. It literally measures itself with itself. If the size of the universe doubled overnight, you might say science wouldn't notice, since the measuring sticks they use: length, time, etc. would also double. So something that is five meters long would still be five meters long. This is sort of a metaphor for one way Science is so consistent -- it literally and figuratively measures and compares only against itself.

Double Book Systems

Here are some examples of double book systems/models:

1. Left brain vs Right brain.
2. Self and alienated Self.
3. Jedi and Sith.
4. Electrical Power vs electrical information.
5. Epistemology and Ontology.

The main example we wish to consider here is the double book of having a well-formed ontology complementing an epistemology. Note: every epistemology has an ontology, but most ontologies are accidental. Even science has an ontology: it's based on randomness, empiricism etc. But it's not an intentional, well-thought out one. We need to make sure the associated ontology is independent of the epistemology as much as possible.

However, the ontology also has to be dependent on the epistemology as well. An important distinction is that any arbitrary system grafted onto an epistemology does not necessarily make it "double-book". Remember, double book has to have a common invariant among the two models. If an ontology doesn't have some invariant in common with the epistemology, then arguably it's merely a second epistemology, not an ontology.

If two models don't have a common invariant they are just two different models. If they do have a common invariant then you can more accurately describe them as being two different perspectives on the same thing, kind of like having a front view and side view of a given object. Another way you can describe this is as a dual-aspect monism.

In the case of the brain, we can consider the corpus collosum to be the invariant: so we can possibly consider the corpus callosum to be the patron saint of the double book invariant.

So a partner double-book ontology of an epistemology has to be complete, consistent, independent (and yet, paradoxically, dependent) on the epistemology: a first class citizen, with a common invariant.

Ontology vs Epistemology (vs Gnosiology)

Ontology and Epistemology are subtle words that have been surprisingly difficult for me to form intuitions about. Syntactically, they're well-defined: ontology is the study of being, and epistemology is the study of knowledge. But what does that really mean?

One can even distinguish between absolute and relative ontologies: the ontology is an absolute ontology (something that OM claims to be) and presumably some form of absolute epistemology as well: the epistemology (although it's less clear what an absolute epistemology would be like). But the terms can also be used relatively too i.e. an ontology, an epistemology. And there can also be overlap among the two: one man's epistemology is another man's ontology.

I never really understood the difference between the two until I heard them described in the following way:

Ontology is what is real.
Epistemology is what is true.

Now, you may say, isn't what's true real, and what's real true? Most people regard "real" and "true" as terms that, if not quite exactly the same thing, are terms of at least equal importance. But the subtle difference is that reality is more fundamental than truth: reality is the commander in chief to truth's four-star general, so to speak. Epistemological truth is an important consideration but is ultimately trumped by ontological reality.

Ontology has the final say: it's the reduction base. Epistemology is one step removed from reality in the realm of perception, typically, and can be considered potentially illusory. For the vast majority of things however, what is ontologically real is epistemologically true -- that is to say they align, so there is no conflict. This is not always the case, however, as we shall see later.

Things get a little more complicated if we add in Gnosiology to the mix *3. To me, gnosiology is to epistemology as epistemology is to ontology. Gnosiology is a "weaker" form of truth than epistemology: if epistemology is collective objective truth, then gnosiology is individual, subjective truth. However, since it's individual and subjective, to the subject experiencing it, it may feel like a stronger form of truth: just ask any alleged alien abductee who is, in fact, probably having a waking dream. The key tipoff is they regard the experience as typically hyperreal (but sometimes surreal e.g. foggy, dream-like). Actually, if anything is experienced as either being hyperreal or surreal, then it's likely a subjective truth, because objective truth is always, well, real -- not hyper- or sur- real.

*3 An alternate third is Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics has to do with interpretation. It's different, but similar to gnosiology. A content-container-interpretation triad lines up better with ontology-epistemology-hermeneutics.

I don't want to go off too deep on this gnosiology tangent, since we wish to concentrate on ontology and epistemology, but here's a table summarizing the three:

level	heuristic	truth perspective
ontology	real	universal
epistemology	objective truth	global
gnosiology	subjective truth	individual

Reality is reality and truth is truth so you really can't compare them, just like you can't compare space and time. However, in the third column we attempt to normalize everything to truth, so ontology becomes universal truth (true everywhere), and epistemology is global truth (true only at the "world" level), and gnosiology true is only true at the individual level.

I think there are also levels of "lesser" truth beyond gnosiology, that parallel Heidegger's levels of being (pure, process, hyper, wild, ultra).

But the point is that, once properly understood, ontology and epistemology are powerful, expressive terms, and your goal is to explore and work them out to your own intuitive level of satisfaction. I don't think the terms are even meant to have exact definitions: they can definitely "float" a little. The examples I give above are some of my intuitions, and yours will probably differ.

However, as we shall see next, sometimes ontology and epistemology can diverge.

Dice and Probability

Typically, things agree ontologically and epistemologically. That is to say things that are ontologically "hot" are also epistemologically "hot" as well.

My favorite example that shows a divergence between ontology and epistemology is a pair of dice.

Is the throwing of dice probabilistic or deterministic? Most people would say probabilistic. However, let's say you throw some dice and they come up as 5 and 2. Now let's say you can somehow reproduce that throw down to ten digits of accuracy: same height, same spin etc. Then, if we ignore the question as to whether quantum mechanics is inherently random (and indeed assume a materialistic framework), most people would agree it will come up 5 and 2 again and again. So throwing dice is in fact, deterministic.

How can this be? It definitely acts probabilistic at one level and deterministic at another. This is not a paradox, however, but what I call a controlled paradox. That is to say, dice is ontologically deterministic but epistemologically probabilistic. Alternatively, we can (somewhat paradoxically because of the English language) say dice is truly random, but realistically deterministic. Thus, this is an example of a case where the ontology and epistemology diverge. And since ontology trumps epistemology (since reality trumps truth), you would say at the reduction base that dice is deterministic and the probabilistic interpretation is a form of illusion, albeit a very "real" one, indeed a collective illusion.

On a side note, It seems like a lot of the base holons of reality are controlled paradoxes: things that diverge ontologically and epistemologically. For example, a monad: it's physically zero, but logically infinite: A and not A. If hyper-realness is a tipoff that something is not real, then a diverging ontology and epistemology is a tipoff that this may be an important base quality of reality.

Funnily enough, on a gnostic level (subjective truth), most people believe in the re-emergence of determinism in the form of "luck". That is to say, they think the epistemological truth of probability is tempered once again with some determinism: e.g. "this time it's gonna come up snake eyes, I can just feel it", or "a six hasn't come up for a long time -- it's definitely due". Thus the subjective gnosiology echoes shades of the real ontology. However, "luck" is the farthest from the truth, and the least accurate model. In short, it's maximally alienated from the truth/reality. Gnosiology always has this danger because it's two hops removed the ontological reality. It's also interesting to note that at least with dice, the epistemological level of probability is the most accurate in the "real world". This is perhaps one reason why Science does so well vis a vis philosophy -- it's epistemological (not ontological), but a lot of times it seems the epistemological perspective is the most "accurate", because it is the most correspondent (vs ontology's coherent).

One last point while we were on this thread. I think in discussions about free will, it needs to be nuanced between ontological free will and epistemological free will, just like we do with dice and randomness vs determinism. For instance, when Sam Harris talks about not having free will, I think he's talking about epistemological free will. In effect, he's saying his (epistemological) free will "dice" is deterministic (non-free will). But when most people talk about free will, they are referring to ontological free will (even if they don't know it). And most people think their free will "dice" is ontologically random/probabilistic (e.g. have free will).

If Sam Harris simply said we have less epistemological free will than we think, but still have ontological free-will, I might agree with him. When OM takes on Sam Harris about free will, I think they're referring to ontological free will. So the two parties are kind of talking past each other, like in the George Stephanopoulos - Rand Paul debate: one side is talking about epistemological free will and the other is talking about ontological free will.

Ontological Math and science

So the main goal of what we've discussed so far is to explore the double book, synergistic coupling of one particular example: OM (the ontology) and Science (the? an? epistemology). To me they form a double-book pair that allows it to, in effect, audit itself, that is to say a self-auditing dual system, as opposed to either one individually which enables only a cursory bookkeeping level of analysis. Single book is self-reinforcing, but in a bad way -- reinforcing in the same way an echo chamber reinforces ignorance.

So let's drill down a little more on this example.

Information

One thing we want to examine is what is the common invariant between an ontology and an epistemology -- the models in our double book? The most obvious answer would be space-time. Space-time, the idealistic creation of broken light, from the common universal mind, can also back-propagate up into the mind e.g. the body communicating with the mind. I'm not going to spend a lot time explaining this, as I assume the reader is already familiar with OM as this is one of its central tenets.

I do want to explore deeper about what truly is the common invariant between the two, however. At an even deeper level, I think there are two more general candidates: energy and information. In particular, I think it's information that is the "corpus callosum" between OM and science in particular, and idealism and materialism in general.

Let's take the dice example. When a dice comes up either deterministically as 5 and 2, or probabilistically as 5 and 2, what is common is the position of the dice -- roughly proportional to space-time. But it's really the info: the numbers 5 and 2 that is the invariant. The information is the same in the ontology and the epistemology.

Another example is DNA: a materialist will say this is a helictical pattern of molecules, and idealist would say it's just an idea. But both would agree the true significance is the information contained therein. And information is not strictly material. Yes, it's encoded in material, but it's really like something else. So for a materialist to believe in information is technically a violation of his philosophy. However, transcendent materialists have no problem with this.

While information, intuitively, is closer to being an idea, and thus seemingly compatible with idealism, it's really not an idea either -- it something that's contained in an idea -- the semantics of the idea. So it's not really purely an idea either. However, transcendent idealists (who actually de-abstract down toward the concrete, that is to say toward materialism) have no problem with this.

Yes, I admit this sounds very convoluted. And I need much more space to really explore it and justify it. But what I'm suggesting is that information is kind of a third class of thing outside of a pure idea or pure matter, that is common to both an idealistic ontology and a materialistic epistemology. It allows a pure materialist, for instance, to introduce an element of idealism (or "mystery") into materialism, such that they can, to a certain degree, not feel the need to resort to idealism.

In this conversation @1:14:30 between materialist Daniel Dennet (DD) and idealist Keith Ward (KW), I think this is exactly what is happening

KW: let me put it at its minimum. I think it is possible to exist without this brain and this body.

DD: so do I.

KW: ah.. well then you can't be a materialist.

DD: no, no: that's the information. If the information in my brain were perfectly encoded and this brain died, it could be uploaded, and I would go right on living. It would still have to exist in some physical medium however.

Do you see how the Daniel Dennet (the hard-core materialist) is sort of using information as a proxy for mind, but in a purely materialistic setting?

Is this because information is the invariant that is common between the idealistic ontology and materialistic epistemology? If this is true, can the concept of information actually block materialists from fully appreciating idealism, using it a kind of get out of jail free card?

Conclusion

So to wrap up, we briefly explored how double-book accounting allows for audits of systems as opposed to mere bookkeeping with single books. We then explored some double-book systems, mainly concentrating on epistemological/ontological pairs in general and OM and Science in particular. We briefly came up with some intuitive notions of what ontologies and epistemologies are, namely truth and reality. We then explored a very interesting candidate for the invariant between ontology and epistemology, namely information.

My main point with respect to OM, is to clarify that the power of OM, at least to me, comes not primarily from OM itself, but in the double-book, self-auditing relationship between the interaction of OM and Science. OM is the Sith to Science's Jedi. The real message of Star Wars is not that the light-side is better than the dark side or vice-versa, but that the balance between the two is what's important *2. Science needs the power of OM to balance it out, to complete it. And OM, needs science to help guide it as it branches its coherent tentacles out toward its correspondent edges.

The proper balance between the coherent and the correspondent is the true power of the force. Use it wisely.

Live long and prosper.

*2 Of course the balance does not necessarily have to be 50/50. Maybe the ideal mix between idealism and materialism is 70-30, maybe it should vary dynamically based on the situation?