Ontological Math Snigglets # 3
On Mike Hockney
Mike Hockney: the ultimate OBFH *1.
* 1 Opinionated Bastard from Hell.
Quotes
Desperation is the world's worst cologne.
- Debbie HuntI'm not afraid of the day a computer passes the Turing test. I'm afraid of the day it intentionally fails it.
- From the internetI like to drink moderately. As a matter of fact, I have a case of the stuff backstage right now.
- Dean MartinYou cannot reason someone out of something they were not reasoned into.
- Johnathan Swift
Metcalfe's Law
Metcalfe's law says that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of nodes in the network. So a network that has twice the number of nodes, doesn't merely have 2x the utility, but 4x. Not only that, consider a network of 7 nodes that goes to 8 nodes. The utility of the first network is 7 * 7= 49, and of the second 8 * 8=64, for an absolute utility gain of 64 -49= 15. Now consider a network of 1000 nodes that goes to 1001 nodes. In this case, the utility of the first is 1000 * 1000 = 1000000, and of the second 1001 * 1001 = 1002001, for an absolute utility gain of 1002001 - 1000000 = 2001. So adding a single node on a larger network increase the absolute utility by a much larger amount than on a small network -- kind of like exponential growth on top of an exponential growth. Imagine the absolute gain on Facebook, with 2.85 billion nodes (users), when they gain a new user.
In fact, mathematicians have a word for growth that is beyond exponential: hyperbolic growth. While exponential growth will reach infinity (or a singularity) in an infinite amount of time (in other words it will asymptotically approach infinity), hyperbolic growth reaches infinity in a finite amount of time. Hyperbolic growth is caused by positive feedback and is highly non-linear. Square laws are considered to be non-linear by mathematicians, thus it's reasonable to consider them to be hyperbolic.
This of course explains why we have only a few dominant social networks such as Facebook or YouTube -- their utility gain becomes commanding over smaller competitors. It also illustrates the potential harm of splitting these networks up, because if it follows that adding users hyperbolically increases the net value of the network, then removing users hyperbolically decreases the value. This is something that Facebook and Google should absolutely fear.
Let's say the government decided to split YouTube up into two. Then, according to Metcalfe's law, you would have two networks with 1/4 the utility of the original, for a total utility value of 1/2 the original (assuming utility is addable, which it probably isn't since there's presumably some redundancy between the two). The first point to make is that literally half of the utility of the previous network is now basically "gone" -- vanished into thin air by the properties of Metcalfe's law. That's something that will not benefit society (for now, we'll ignore the desirability of people watching videos all day long)
Then, let's say China's "YouTube" (if they have one) currently is at 60% the size of YouTube. Compared to the original YouTube, it has 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.36 the utility. But now compared to the split YouTubes, each of which has 0.5 * 0.5 = 0.25 the utility of the original, the Chinese company has significantly better utility, and thus more users will join it, and thus improve the network further, and thus become even more dominant. And as bad as YouTube is about censorship, think about how bad it would be with a Chinese-based company becoming dominant, especially since the CCP makes no bones that ultimately all companies in China are accountable directly to the CCP, IOTW private ownership in China is an illusion.
After all, TikTok, a Chinese company, has now become the dominant social media hub, and gives them a lot of control over the collective mind of Americans.
Careful how you tread: the law of unintended consequences may strike at any time.
EMF and VR
Since we're on the subject of square laws, the big thing that worries me the most about VR (as a VR programmer and enthusiast), is the potential for over-exposure to electric and magnetic fields (EMF radiation) on the brain. VR goggles are essentially mobile phones. And they are pressed right up against your face for potentially hours at a time. If the multiverse ever does take off, then people would be in their VR goggles for possibly eight hours a day.
Think about the recommended practice of having your phone down by your waist as you talk into a headset. That's about 3 feet away from the center of your brain. Now move the phone to right over your eyes. This is about 6 inches from the center of your brain, or 6x closer. The intensity of the radiation goes up as the square, so you're now getting about 36x the intensity of radiation on your brain than when the phone was at your waist. If you want to consider your frontal lobes specifically, the most common region of injury in traumatic brain injury, the phone is now arguably about 3 inches away, so twice as close again, or 4x more powerful, for 36 x 4 = 144x the radiation vs by your waist.
Remember your brain is essentially an electrical system -- much more so than any other organ of the body. Does it seem like a good idea to bombard this organ with high doses of electrical and magnetic fields for long, sustained periods of time?
The trend in VR is for standalone goggles. This means that the battery pack and all the visual display, image processing, and sending and receiving of wi-fi signals, and 5G transmission is going on right next to your brain. At least if you have a tethered VR system, one that requires a PC to do the actual image processing and uses the goggles for display only, a lot of the EMF radiation is going on at the PC and not next to your brain.
Imagine standing next to your microwave oven for 8 hours a day. It's safe to stand next to a microwave oven for a couple of seconds or minutes, but no one thinks it's a good idea to do it for 8 hours a day. I don't know if VR goggles equate to microwave ovens in terms of EMF radiation, but it's something to think (and worry) about.
One possible solution is to try to limit goggles to be display only. Then, if you want a portable system, have the main unit be attached to your belt and communicating with the goggles via a cable and not wirelessly. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like an option that most people will like.
Punk, Zen, and Atheist
Have you ever noticed how some people have to put on a big song and dance before they can do something that most of us take for granted? Take all the wine connoisseurs out there. Why can't they just admit they like getting loaded just as much as the next guy? Instead, they talk about the "nose", the aftertaste, whether the flavor is oaky, buttery, or nutty etc. They spout off about good years, and good labels and generally over-intellectualize the whole thing. They claim it's all about the flavor, but you know they would have zero interest in drinking flavored grape juice.
Same goes with all daily marijuana smokers out there -- they blather on about CBD oils, treating anxiety, restoring appetite, as if they really got their shit together because they get stoned everyday. They never mention anything about THC, or getting high. Most of the benefit that does come from marijuana is due to the CBD oils -- THC has comparatively little medical benefit, but it does get you high. And if you look at the concentration of CBD vs THC in marijuana over time, you'll see a slight increase in CBD, but a huge increase in THC. It looks pretty certain it's the THC that everybody wants.
As a programmer I notice a similar thing. Many people view programming as kind of a "nerdy" profession, and some people, who don't see themselves as being especially nerdy, need an "angle" in order to justify becoming one.
I notice three distinct flavors of personas that people adapt to do justify something they're otherwise not inclined to do: punk, zen, and atheist. I further assert that these basically map on to the three types of opposites: co-, -un, and -anti, respectively.
Punk is kind of a snot-nosed, bad-ass attitude. As programmers they may have long, colored, or spiky hair, with possibly lots of piercing and tattoos. Of course, this punk demeanor can be entirely attitudinal only. I say they correspond to the "co-" opposite.
Then there's the zen persona. These people like to be all cool and transcendent. They correspond to the "un-" opposite. There's an actual term for capitalists, and business owners who cop this attitude: zentrepreneurs. They are the transcendent non-businessmen businessmen. A good example are the purveyors of Ben & Jerry's Ice cream. They name some of their ice cream after guys in the Grateful Dead, and they give a lot of money to woke charities etc.
The Atheist is kind of the "un-", the true opposites. The black-hat hackers are the "atheist" coders of the programming world.
Really, more power to you if you have to adapt one of these attitudes to bring yourself to do something. However, after you've become established in the relevant field, please just drop all the pomp and circumstance and accept your true nature.
Sleight of Word *1
Words can deceive just like slight of hand can deceive in magic. Words, especially human languages such as English, can create all sorts of paradoxes, enigmas, and riddles that don't exist in reality, but only as an artifact of the limited nature of the language. For instance, Zeno's paradox, which creates the "paradox" about how it's impossible for Achilles to actually reach the turtle. In practice, of course, in the real world, which is presumably using the language of Ontological Mathematics, it has no problems "solving" this paradox -- Achilles quickly catches and passes the turtle. The whole paradox arises from the limitations, assumptions, and models of the language used to describe the system, and overall is an illusion.
One of the catch phrases of OM is "Once you understand nothing, then you understand everything". This is actually a very deep statement, if you can see past the absurdity of the literal English statement, and understand it from a mathematical perspective. The basic problem is English really only has one type of "nothing", which is essentially a true void. In practice, you never can have a true void, while at the same time you have several types of "nothing" that are in fact "something". You thus have to be very careful about which flavor of "nothing" you're referring to. And all of these "nothings" are in fact "something" -- they may tautologically add to zero, like 0 = 1 -1, but the right side of this equation is still something namely 1 and -1.
The universe uses a language that is completely unambiguous and thus has no paradoxes. OM claims to be that language.
*1 Thanks to Joseph Postmas' book "Planet Wars" for this one.
The Second Amendment
The second amendment is there just in case the first one doesn't work out.
- Dave Chappelle
In other words, the right to bear arms gives people the leverage to enforce all the other amendments.
As Antonin Scalia says in this video, if the constitution of your government does not prevent the centralization of power, then it's game over as far as the bill of rights is concerned -- they're literally just words on a piece of paper at that point.
I've never been a gun nut and I personally don't own a gun. However, over the years I've slowly come to appreciate the logic of the second amendment.
The two arguments for citizen gun ownership are:
- It allows for self-protection against criminals.
- It can be used as a check on either the United States Government, or a foreign government invading the US.
I think the first argument is basically a push. Criminals with guns probably kill as many people as are saved by the self-defense due to guns, probably even more. But it's the second argument that over the years has slowly made me appreciate the wisdom of the second amendment.
I say every standing army should be offset by a distributed non-standing army. Right now, for most nations their standing army is only offset by standing armies of other nations. This puts a check on the ability of any nation to participate in inter-nation conquest.
But what about intra-nation conquest? What is to prevent a complete authoritarian takeover by the current government (or the "totalitarian tiptoe" as David Icke says)? That's why I say every standing army should also be offset by a distributed citizen army. A distributed army is one that is not united under normal circumstances. But if the aforementioned national standing army sufficiently antagonizes the population, then the distributed army will become unified and cohesive, in effect becoming a dynamic, ad-hoc, counter standing army and presenting a credible check on tyranny. Just the foreknowledge that the people have guns I believe proactively and preemptively decreases the likelihood of tyranny .
The left *2 cannot stand the second amendment. The elite left hates it because of point two. However, they know that this a much less defensible counter-position to take, so they try to convince their followers, the hoi-polloi of the left, that it's all about point one. The elite power left knows that the second amendment is a big check against them ever gaining absolute power, and they will do absolutely anything to try to get rid of it. Asking people to register their guns may seem innocuous, but it's just the first step to the government eventually seizing arms by force.
*2 More accurately and surprisingly, the authoritarian left cannot stand it. It's tempting to simply say "all authoritarians cannot stand it", since there are authoritarians on the left and the right, but authoritarians on the right I think are a little more comfortable with guns, and are less threatened by the second amendment (they'll just have more and bigger guns, and they won't be afraid to actually use them). The libertarian left, oddly, is still anti-gun, mostly because of perceived gun violence. So, since the authoritarian and libertarian left don't like guns (for different reasons), the statement "the left cannot stand.." still holds.
Guaranteed, one of the first things a meritocratic government would do is to seize private arms. Because they know the next thing they would do is seize all the capital, and they definitely don't want to do that against an armed citizenry. If you think otherwise, you're just totally naïve. After you give up your guns, you'll then find someone showing up at your door, sticking a gun to your head (maybe even using one of the confiscated guns) and giving you orders about what they want from you or where you need to go. If you refuse, they will either kill you, or detain you in a cell. Those are the two "reduction base" powers any government has: the ability to kill you, and the ability to throw you in prison. Both powers effectively flow,as Mao liked to say, from the barrel of a gun. He who has all the guns, wins all the arguments.
Also, isn't it interesting that the people who most want to restrict or seize guns, always intend that it be a unilateral disarmament? They want you to give up your guns, but not theirs. All the politicians are protected by a private armed militia, and live in gated communities. If guns are so bad, so evil, why don't they give up their guns? How about a bilateral disarmament: I'll give up some of my guns if you give up some of yours? But of course this will never happen: they know what will happen to the people who are not armed, and they intend to start doing it as soon as the other side relinquishes.
I get that people on the left won't be swayed by anything I just said. The only take-away I can hope to make is that, for at least some supporters of the second amendment, it's a principled position, even if you don't agree with it. Not everyone who backs the second amendment is some in-bred, blood-thirsty, tobacco chewing, redneck who likes "killin' vermin". I don't like guns, and gun violence, any more than a pacifist. Unfortunately, the gun violence and to a certain extent the mass shootings, is just an unfortunate price that has to be payed for a larger freedom.
For people on the left, I would remind them that the tyranny might come from the right as well. There is nothing the authoritarian right would love more than to take away all the progressive rights gained over the last 60 years, like anti-discrimination laws, gay marriage etc. If a Hitler-like regime were ever to attempt to take over the US, then I would think it would be the progressive left who would be grateful for the citizen army.
Boson and Fermions
Bosons correspond to epistemologies: they both can have multiple superimposed "truths" at the same time. Fermions correspond to ontologies: each allows for only one reality at a time.
We can also distinguish between answers and solutions. A solution is what solves a problem, while answers can be thought of as potential solutions. That is to say, you can have multiple answers but generally only one solution.
Thus, bosons and epistemologies are the realm of truth and answers, while fermions and ontologies are the realm of reality and solutions. Bosons, epistemologies, and answers allow for many superimposed possibilities. Fermions, ontologies, and solutions allow for only one possibility.
Randomness and zero are two possible answers to the question "why existence?". But only one is the solution. OM says zero is the solution, and science says randomness.
Phenomology and levels of Being
After I finished reading the God Series, the AC stopped publishing books for close to a year. At this point, my metaphysical sophistication, while still pretty rudimentary, was much higher than it was before. And to boot, science "faction", my prior main source of reading material was no longer "getting me off". I started reading up on other philosophies and TOE's including CTMU, and a theoretical philosopher called Kent D Palmer to fill the void.
Kent Palmer is big on what's called continental philosophy, as well as phenomenology. He's very mathematical, and just about as "out there" as OM is. He turned me on to Martin Heidegger and especially levels of being (pure, process, hyper, and wild). To go into any detail about any of this is way beyond the scope of a snigglet, but the question I always had is why did OM rarely, if ever, talk about phenomenology and levels of being, in particular?
It took a while, but I think I basically figured out that phenomenology is all about the phenomena domain of metaphysics (as opposed to the noumena). That is to say phenomenology is about epistemology and phenomena, and OM, being ontological Math, is about ontology and the noumena.
So that's the reason why OM never talks about it -- it's outside of the purview of an ontological system.
Embedded Zeroes and Transfinite Numbers
What happens at one end of the number line has to happen at the other end of the number line, by symmetry. At least for a truly linear number system (as opposed to a circular number system).
On the infinite side, you can never actually reach infinity. While you can have an infinite amount of potential, you can never have an infinite amount of actuality. There are several reasons for this. One is some things cannot exist: factors of prime numbers, for instance. Another is just practical: where would it all go? Also, would you need to have an infinite amount of the given thing or would you just need one instance of it? Is an infinite amount of bubble game, say, something different than a finite amount of bubble gum, or do you need just one instance of bubble gum to represent that one tiny aspect of infinity? Also it's just intuitive to really think of infinity as a concept, not an actual number. I won't carry on about it anymore, just to say that it's intuitively "obvious" that you can never actually get to infinity.
However, most people seem to think that the notion of zero, or nothing, is entirely possible. Of course, it all depends on what type of nothing you're talking about. The statement "There's nothing in the refrigerator" can mean:
- There's nothing good to eat in the refrigerator, even though it's loaded with food.
- The refrigerator is empty, that is to say no food or jars, but still has air in it.
- The refrigerator somehow contains a vacuum (which can only be approached BTW, and which physics says has lots of virtual particles still)
- .... (leave out lots of ever more stringent examples of nothing)
- A "true void".
A "true void" is about the closest thing to pure nothing that most people can conceive of: absolutely nothing existing, forever, for all time. But wait, guess what, this definition of a true void is in fact, you guessed it, something: a definition or rule being in fact a something. Also, from an empirical point of view, you can no longer ever have a true void simply because we're here already, not to mention the existence of eternal things like the properties of numbers and the concept of circles, both of which contradict the "forever, for all time" premise of a true void. For instance, if you ever had a true void, I posit to you it would still be true that 17 is a prime number, and circles still exist. They exist in the being domain and are eternal, so there's always something outside of a true void of becoming.
The funny thing is, you have to intellectualize and think about all these things in order to understand that you can never have zero of anything, but it's really easy to see how, on the other end of the line with infinity, you can't have infinity. By symmetry, what follows for infinity should follow for zero. So you can easily see how zero can never be reached by substituting infinity.
Now let's look at something that's intuitively easy with zeroes but not so obvious with infinity: that a zero can have a zero embedded in it. In other words, nothing can be inside nothing. The equivalent notion on the other side is that of transfinite numbers: infinities embedded in higher infinities. Transfinite numbers are very hard for most people to wrap their heads around, yet the equivalent concept of embedded zeroes is very easy. If you equate zero and infinity as being the same thing, you can substitute one for the other. After all, you can consider infinity to be zero nothingness, and zero to be infinite nothingness.
In short, if you ever have a hard time visualizing a concept, or question about one side of the number line try substituting the opposite and see if the answer is more intuitive.
This is just a heuristic, of course, not a law. Zero is not identical to infinity and vice-versa, but zero and infinity are at least "equal" to each other, certainly in an inverse dual kind of way. Alternatively, you can think of them as two aspects of one thing : zinfinity, kind of like two sides of a coin.
The deep insight that zero and infinity are deeply related and intertwined is what initially drew me to OM. I always suspected as such, and they spend a large amount of time in the God Series really exploring this duality, and giving me the language to help me understand it. I've only touched on the surface of this topic in this snigglet, but it's still one of the most important, insightful, and foundational ideas I've taken from OM. I think about zero and infinity often, like when I'm running or just having a quiet moment in the car. It's one of the most powerful, and at times scary, notions ever.
It's scary in the sense that if something has a finite probability of occurring, even if it's one in a google-plex (1 in 10^googol power), then, given an infinite amount of time, not only will it happen, but it will happen an infinite number of times. There is a little bit of get-out-of-jailness to this in that if the probability approaches zero over time, that is to say it decreases linearly as a function of time, then it may actually never occur, or occur only a finite number of times. In addition, Leibnez has the concept of compossibility, which they talk about in their books, that also gives some relief from the sheer power of infinity. Compossibility says something along the lines that only things that are possible within a given context can actually happen. It's kind of a dampening effect on raw possibility, which is good because there are scary situations you would never want to happen ever e.g. having your arm stuck in a fire with no way to remove it for a thousand years and having to suffer the pain the whole time. Of course, low probability wonderful things can happen too, but the other side is more disturbing to think about and doesn't compensate for the potential terror, esp. on those late lonely nights when you have a tendancy to think about such things.
Money and Pheromones
Insects use pheromones for simple signaling and coordination. Humans use money and culture for the same purposes.
On the subject of money, it's a weird thing. It can be accumulated to excess, and I mean way beyond excess. If we traded directly in goods or services only, you would rather quickly run out of room or time. For instance, a lot of men are motivated to succeed so they can, in an ultimate and reductionist fashion, have sex with as many women as possible. If their "pay" was literally being able to have sexual intercourse with attractive women, there's only so much physical sex you can have in a day. But with money, you can just keep accumulating it, and never really know that you have too much. This is good in a way because it keeps certain highly-productive and successful individuals producing beyond their natural desire. Ultimately, this helps the rest of society. This is a contrarian to the view that the over-accumulation of wealth is a bad thing. I'm not saying that overall the concentration of wealth is good, just that this is at least one point in favor of it.
Further Links
Kent Palmer - Theoretical Philosopher: website
CTMU (Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe)
History
-> Internal Note: Snigglets 3 primarily based on notebook 32.
-> Update History:
2022-11-11: first publishing.
2023-03-04: Minor grammatical and spelling fixes.
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