Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

PART 2 – REVIEW OF CHRISTOPHER LANGAN’S CTMU

**Hello.** I’m analytic philosopher. This is Part 2 of my walkthru of Chris’ CTMU paper. The Introduction.

Chris’ text in italic, mine in normal font.

*Bucking the traditional physical reductionism of the hard sciences, complexity theory has given rise to a new trend, informational reductionism, which holds that the basis of reality is not matter and energy, but information. *

Beginning at least with Hayek’s paper in the 30’s in the social sciences, if not well before that in physics, and during the failed operational movement (Brouwer in Math, Bridgman in Physics, and Mises in Economics, and arguably Hayek in Law) the general consensus was that ‘information necessary to change state’ was a superior model to physical forces when modeling phenomenon, as a way of preventing us from making errors and assumptions. So yes. That transformation occurred early in the 20th century. This fact has simply been more commonly adopted since then as it has spread through colloquial literature.

We do NOT claim that the universe consists of information, but that information is the best model we have to work with, since it has no mass, and therefore will lead us to fewer errors of reasoning. Every few centuries the model changes. In the past we saw Computers, Machinery, Steam, Blood, Airs and fumes, Water, ‘Essences’ and Plato’s forms. The purpose of each evolutionary step in our use of analogies when describing nature (that which has no intention) has been to reduce the cognitive biases present in our priors.

*The relationship between physical and informational reductionism is a telling one, for it directly mirrors Cartesian mind-matter dualism,*

Correct. The rest of the paragraph suggest we are repeating the retrenchment to the mind body problem, and I think that’s false. It’s pretty clear that at this point we understand (or at least I do and others do) how consciousness is created from fragmentary information combined with fragmentary memory over a few seconds.

*Mathematically, the theoretical framework…* * the mathematics of probability must be causally interpreted to be scientifically meaningful,….*

I don’t think anyone of any significant understand would say that. No one buys the ludic fallacy. I think we merely state that probably provides suggestions on the one and and falsification of errors and biases on the other. Either we solve for operations (changes in state) and states, or we are just making excuses. Probability does not tell us causality. It tells us where we might look for causality. If you can’t explain something causally, then you’re just ‘making stuff up’.

*…because probabilities are therefore expressly relativized to specific causal scenarios,*

Well, all that means is that probability fails us at high causal density. We know this. Particularly in economics, where it appears that a single regression analysis is about as sophisticated as you can get without introducing more error than you remove ignorance. We have the same problem in physics because we simply can’t afford to conduct the experiments necessary to test our theories.

If we instead talk about the content of our ideas, fantasies, and free associations, it’s pretty obvious from intellectual history that we have been increasing precision over the millennia, and that we keep increasing the complexity of our frame, with socrates, copernicus, smith/hume, darwin, maxwell, and einstein’s innovation largely reducible to providing a new frame. I think in retrospect Turing/Chomsky will be thought of in the same terms. It’s too bad Brouwer, Bridgman, Mises, Popper and Hayek will not be.

*…of an evolutionary state ultimately entails the specification of an absolute (intrinsic global) model with respect to which absolute probabilistic deviations can be determined.*

Well sure, but… don’t we already know that model sufficiently, but that the possible transformations and combinations at even genetic levels of complexity are simply beyond what we call MATHEMATICAL models, and require SIMULATIONS…. I mean. That’s what Wolfram has been saying for many years now. We need a new math. A math of operational combinations. And our current math is still taught like it’s a supernatural construction rather than a tediously simple grammar of positional relations.

…with a language…

Yes, but what constitutes a language other than a deflationary grammar the iteratively reduces ambiguity, and a set of semantic terms **limited to the dimensions of the constant relations that we seek to test across states?**

*Furthermore, in keeping with the name of that to be modeled, it must meaningfully incorporate the intelligence and design concepts, describing the universe as an intelligently self-designed, self-organizing system.*

Sorry man. That doesn’t follow. Period. It follows only that if we wish to describe this reality that can evolve complexity from a fairly small number of forces (rules), that we must produce a deflationary grammar and semantics limited to the production of categories (referents, relations, and values) and the information necessary to change state of those categories. The fact that entropy and conservation of energy produce complexity with a few forces, or that biology can be constructed of a few elements, or that the complexity of a sentient and cognitive mind can be produced by a four bit instruction set in large numbers, is simply tedious physics all the way up.

*Even cognition and perception are languages based on what Kant might have called “phenomenal syntax”. With logic and mathematics counted among its most fundamental syntactic ingredients, language defines the very structure of information. This is more than an empirical truth; it is a rational and scientific necessity. *

Um. that is more than an abuse of language. Instead, semantic content and grammar are limited by the sensory inputs and associative capacity of the primitive brain regions and the cortical layers. Or said more simply, smarter creatures can create more combinations over longer iterations, with lower friction of neurological transmission.

Again, this is pretty well covered ground.

To say that it is an empirical, rational, logical, and necessary conclusion is obvious. However we need frames (sets of constant relations that allow us to recategorize existing knowledge) and a language to express them in, because we ARE LIMITED by the ‘jumps’(chains of relations) we can make.

Those of us with higher abilities make much longer jumps (chains of relations) and those of us with lower abilities (and general knowledge) can make fewer. Training can compensate for the challenge. Hence the generational problem of teaching the various means of calculation: reading, writing, arithmetic, mathematics, grammar, logic, rhetoric, physics, chemistry, biology, and economics (cooperation). Even history and fiction allow us to make general ‘calculations’ in the broadest sense.

*Of particular interest to natural scientists is the fact that the laws of nature are a language.*

Or stated more clearly, all language consists of grammars of decidability that reduce through deflation and disambiguation that which is incomparable because of overloading of relations, to that which is comparable and decidable because of limited (testable or at least identifiable) relations.

*The existence of these laws is given by the stability of perception.*

Um. I think that’s close. The existence of those laws is determined by the hierarchy of consequences made possible by opportunities for preservation of energy against entropy. We DISCOVER those laws because it is only POSSIBLE for a neural network to identify constant relations – everything else would be an evolutionary disadvantage since it’s simply too biologically expensive to do so – and would slow us to the point where reaction times were suicidal.

*…. they can be regarded as distributed “instructions” from which self-instantiations of nature cannot deviate; ….*

Correct. I would use OPERATIONS or TRANSFORMATIONS rather than implying intention to the universe by calling them ‘instructions’, but since wer’re talking analogies here I suppose it’s close enough. My problem is with this whole attribution of intent to that which is merely a necessity of the combination of forces without which the universe of space time could not (as we understand it) exist.

*…On a note of forbearance…*

Ok. Look. Now we are really getting into making excuses.

If you want to make the argument that it’s possible to construct a grammar and semantics limited to the dimensions of existential reality, expressed in terms of sense perception available to humans at human scale then sure. That’s nothing other than stating we can create an algorithmic model of the universe, even if we cannot create a mathematical one. And that such a model will be more analogous to genetic permutation of high causal density leading to infrequent but high returns in indirect concert, (so called, punctuated equilibria), then I mean, that’s pretty obvious.

This whole anthropomorphic projection though is still hanging over our heads, and while I can cut through the poetic and ASD speech, and I understand the benefits of poetic and aspie speech in certain circumstances, I am also cognitive the use of Abrahamic argument (Pilpul), whether jewish, Augustinian, Kantian, or french-Postmodern to overload even the best mind’s ability to test the constance of relations, and to be deceived thereby.

* “reality theory is wedded to language theory and they beget a synthesis”, has the advantage that it leaves the current picture of reality virtually intact. *

Well, there is the promise again, but so far I can’t find delivery on it.

We’ll continue with the next section….

CHRISTOPHER LANGAN’S CTMU THEORY – PART 1

**Hello**. I’m an analytic philosopher specializing in truthful (scientific and testimonial) speech. I’m going to just walk thru 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.