PART 1 – “THE ABSTRACT”
Hello. I’m an analytic philosopher specializing in truthful (scientific and testimonial) speech. I’m going to just walk thru Chris’ paper using my normal process of trying to understand a theory.
You might learn something from reading this analysis – even if not about Chris’s work, about what constitutes of truthful speech.
(Italics are Chris’s Text. Normal fonts are my notes.)
Abstract: Inasmuch as science is observational or perceptual in nature,
Science consists of the use of instrumentation, measurement, and logic to reduce that which is beyond our ability to sense, perceive, recall, and compare, to an analogy to experience that we can compare, such that we launder ignorance, error, bias, wishful thinking, suggestion and deceit from our thoughts, words, and deeds.
the goal of providing a scientific model and mechanism for the evolution of complex systems ultimately requires a supporting theory of reality of which perception itself is the model (or theory-to-universe mapping).
As far as I know the human mind is capable only of constructing a hierarchy of relations, through a process of continuous recursion. As far as I know, all speech consists of using sounds and grammar (organization) to cause sympathetic relations, and iteratively disambiguate those until recognizable (a contract for meaning has been established that is at the very least identifiable, whether agreeable or not).
As far as I know the universe consists of constant relations which, at various densities result in symmetries (consistent patterns) that are the optimum limits of the operations (changes in state) capable between the available relations.
In mathematics we call these symmetries “Lie Groups” (“lee’ groops”). In the physical world we call them the subatomic, atomic, chemical, biological, sentient, economic(cooperative), and ‘emergent’ disciplines – those steady states of horizontal expansion of an opportunity made possible by evolutionary complexity. As far as I know this hierarchical process of complexity exists in physical reality, in the generations of our brains, in the layers of our cortex, in the formation of categories(subjects, relations, values), the complexity of ideas we can identify constant relations between, and in all aspects of life.
Where information is the abstract currency of perception, such a theory must incorporate the theory of information while extending the information concept to incorporate reflexive self-processing in order to achieve an intrinsic (self-contained) description of reality.
Um. I would call this literary, poetic, postmodern or pseudoscientific language, but it’s a loose enough analogy that I think it’s a less sophisticated means of trying to say the same thing.
I’m going to rephrase it as “Any theory of perception, memory, sentience, awareness, cognition, action, and response, must use information as it’s cause of change in state.”
This extension is associated with a limiting formulation of model theory identifying mental and physical reality, resulting in a reflexively self-generating, self-modeling theory of reality identical to its universe on the syntactic level.
This is a very problematic statement, but I think I can disentangle it as “This continuous iteration and iteration of perception and accumulated, and increasingly complex networks of relations, results in a mental model of reality sufficient for our actions, and sufficient for our thoughts and imaginations unlimited by our actions.
And this is the problem. It’s increasingly hard and expensive to test those perceptions, categories, relations, values and theories that we cannot ourselves act upon.
By the nature of its derivation, this theory, the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe or CTMU, can be regarded as a supertautological reality-theoretic extension of logic.
Argh. I’m going to restate that as, the origin of that perception which we call logic – which itself consists of the test of the preservation of constant relations across categories, states, ideas, theories, and formulae – is the correspondence between our senses, memories, and actions in the real world. In other words, the universe consists of constant relations, we perceive and remember constant relations, and we perceive as logical and actionable constant relations between our ideas and our actions and the consequences.
Uniting the theory of reality with an advanced form of computational language theory, the CTMU describes reality as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language or SCSPL, a reflexive intrinsic language characterized not only by self-reference and recursive self-definition, but full self-configuration and self-execution (reflexive read-write functionality).
You know, we can describe the same phenomenon in various forms of measurement, from physical operations, to description, to narrative, to interpretation, to fiction(narrative arc), to fictionalism. A fictionalism includes pseudoscience(magic), pseudo-rationalism (philosophy), and pseudo-mythology (religion and mysticism). Each of these methods of analogy consists of a grammar that is increasingly imprecise, open to loading, framing, suggestion and obscurantism. Now, i understand that it takes VASTLY greater knowledge to describe something in operational language compared to describing it in the loose terms, but that it is possible to intuit a set of relations if one cannot explain those relations operationally. So at this point I’m going to say that this is very … postmodern … language, but that yes, we can use computational systems as an analogy to the means by which the human mind operates simply because it is the most advanced analogy we currently possess in the vernacular.
So yes, by analogy, we can describe the constant relations and plateaus (levels of high return on complexity), from the subatomic to the sentient to the contitive, using computational models, from hardware, firmware, operating system, etc.
SCSPL reality embodies a dual-aspect monism consisting of infocognition, self-transducing information residing in self-recognizing SCSPL elements called syntactic operators. The CTMU identifies itself with the structure of these operators and thus with the distributive syntax of its self-modeling SCSPL universe, including the reflexive grammar by which the universe refines itself from unbound telesis or UBT, a primordial realm of infocognitive potential free of informational constraint.
You know, as a member of the autistic spectrum myself, I have an extremely high tolerance for aspie-speak (and this paragraph is a great example). But the problem with it, is that he’s made a logical leap from the rather tediously physical process of the nervous system’s incredibly difficult task, of sampling and remembering just enough of the relations between relations in reality, and predicting future states, so that we can act upon them and seize the caloric opportunity, without costing so much in biological computing power, that sentience, awareness, and cognition are disadvantages luxury expenses.
And the end result of that logical leap is the anthropomorphization of the analogy. I have to read more to understand if he’s just being colorful, or using Abrahamic Pilpul in the tradition of Paul, Augustine, Aquinas, Kant. Marx, Derrida and Rory. (Liars all).
But I will translate this paragraph this way: as far as I know “there is no limit to the complex hierarchy of constant or semi-constant relations humans can imagine, nor limit to the language we can express it with.” Again, this is something we have known since at least Turing and formally since the late 50’s by Chomsky.
Under the guidance of a limiting (intrinsic) form of anthropic principle called the Telic Principle, SCSPL evolves by telic recursion, jointly configuring syntax and state while maximizing a generalized selfselection parameter and adjusting on the fly to freely-changing internal conditions. SCSPL relates space, time and object by means of conspansive duality and conspansion, an SCSPL-grammatical process featuring an alternation between dual phases of existence associated with design and actualization and related to the familiar wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics.
Well, again colorful analogy, but rather tediously obvious repetition of the previous paragraph’s idea.
By distributing the design phase of reality over the actualization phase, conspansive spacetime also provides a distributed mechanism for Intelligent Design, adjoining to the restrictive principle of natural selection a basic means of generating information and complexity.
Ok. Yes. He did it. He went into the domain of fictionalism( magic ) by the use of obscurantism to hide the conversion of a loose analogy to an operational possibility. Now, again, I have to be certain he’s not just using hyperbole, and really making that rather ridiculous claim. So let’s continue to dig into it.
Addressing physical evolution on not only the biological but cosmic level, the CTMU addresses the most evident deficiencies and paradoxes associated with conventional discrete and continuum models of reality, including temporal directionality and accelerating cosmic expansion, while preserving virtually all of the major benefits of current scientific and mathematical paradigms.
Well, that is a very nice promise. Although as far as I know, the only reason we can’t solve the remaining problems of the basic structure of the universe, is that it’s so expensive to do so, that we can’t marshall the energy requirements to perform a test.
To say physics is a bit lost is … perhaps an exaggeration with a grain of truth in it. There is something very wrong with our current model. But a scientists does not seek an axiomatic description of reality, and instead seeks only to improve upon the contingencies upon which the current theories and laws depend.
Ok, so, now I’ll continue until I can figure out whether this abstract is just colorful, or whether it’s full of analogies for the purpose of illustration, or wether he’s made the (usual) leap due to the natural human cognitive bias, of attributing intent to that which is merely deterministic consequence of opportunities to prevent entropy.
https://www.quora.com/Has-anyone-of-equal-ability-done-an-analysis-of-Chriss-work