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The Nature of Reality - Part III

Sam Vaknin, Ph.D. - 3/24/2007

An Epistolary Dialogue Between Roberto Calvo Macias and Sam Vaknin

Dear Roberto,

I learned to like your vehement and passionate responses. To my mind, they are the hallmarks of a true intellectual. To me, the impassioned intellectual is an oxymoron. Curiosity is such an urgent drive, truth such a pressing need that the true intellectual is impatient which what is manifestly false and threatens to drive him off course.

The first four letters - my two and your two - have become a discourse of language and representation. This is a vast and deep ocean. Even dipping a toe in it should be done with trepidation. So, you did wisely to suggest to concentrate on some elements rather than on the whole. These are: context and meaning, idea and matter, reality and simulation (or natural versus artificial), part and whole. I accepted your agenda.

I started by studying two seemingly unconnected issues. I presented two cases where almost identical activities, involving identical entities (human organs) - give rise to totally different theories (for instance, moral theories) and resulting behaviours. A person who inherits genes is judged differently to a person who inherits a brain. A person who rents out his brain is judged differently to a person who rents out his (or, more often, her) genitalia. By studying these (worn out) apparent contradictions, I was actually demonstrating the over-riding importance of context, in this case, social context.

It was a direct response to your question about DNA. A strand of DNA is of course meaningless in the absence of amino acids which it can combine into proteins. We say that the DNA is "useless", "dysfunctional" or "non functioning". Thus, FUNCTION and MEANING are intimately linked and are emergent phenomena, dependent on the existence of the RIGHT context. It is the MATCH between context, operators and operands that matters. Whether there is a match or mismatch can be ascertained only by TRYING - in other words, through INTERACTION.

We, therefore, see a chain of being of sorts: interaction leads to the right match between context, operators and operands which leads to higher level (more complex, secondary, or derivative) interactions which reveal the function and generate outcomes. These outcomes, in a feedback loop, serve to confirm the right nature of the whole process and its components.

The set of all these contexts we call "reality". Every interaction and its outcomes serves as the context of yet another interaction. Philosophically, it is impossible to separate context from interaction, they are two facets of one and the same dual concept (like wave and particle). Take DNA and its context (amino acids). In the absence of interaction between them - they are both meaningless. It is through the interaction and its results that we learn anything about the DNA, that its essence is revealed. Moreover, the capacity to interact is an integral part of being a DNA molecule. A DNA cannot be defined or referred to without its interactive properties.

But if reality is the set of all possible contexts (read: interactions) - what is simulation? Isn't it part of reality? Isn't it a kind of interaction? It is, but it is unique in that it can serve as context only to another simulation. It is a closed-world or closed-circuit interaction. If we simulate the sun, for instance, this simulation will not participate in photosynthesis in a single leaf. But it can and will influence other simulations. It is a class of finite contexts / interactions. This rule is applicable to artificial intelligence (bad choice of words, should be: simulated intelligence). This is the very essence of the Turing test: that a simulation of intelligence can never convincingly interact with non-simulation ("real") intelligence.

Douglas Hofstadter Jr. in his brilliant book "Godel, Escher, Bach - An Eternal Golden Braid" describes a vynil record carried on a spacecraft. The latter explodes and the record lands on the surface of an inhabited planet. How will the inhabitants know if the record is an artificial (read: man-made) or "natural" thing?

The very distinction is, naturally, false. Man is part of nature and everything that Man does is part of nature. But even if it were valid, the dividing line would have still proven illusive. Assume for instance that the planet was made of polymers (=plastic) and contained numerous spheres and circles and balls (naturally recurring shapes). The record would have been regarded by the inhabitants as entirely "natural".

Hofstadter goes on to present a series of ever more intractable problems. Even if the inhabitants were to realize that the object was made by an intelligence, that it contains information, where this information is contained - how could they extract the information? And what if the record is John Cage's silence (4.5 minutes of it)?

To summarize this letter, we must distinguish between interactions (=contexts) which are universal (rather, omnipresent), spontaneous, immanent, inevitable, predictable and logical (=subject to the laws of physics) - first order interactions - and interactions which are the outcomes of the application of intelligence (itself a first order interaction) to first order interactions.

The second order interactions ("intelligence-induced") are either simulations (which can never interact with first order interactions) - or artifices (=artificial). The latter are derivative first order interactions. They should not be confused with simulations which are the only true type of second order interactions.

My contention is that second order interactions can never interact with - let alone give birth to - first order interactions. This is because a partial set can never be identical to the complete set from which it is derived (even if both are infinite). A human who builds a computer can never build a computer equal to himself and the latter can never construct a human equal to itself. But this is the subject of a whole new discussion of set theory.

I hope you enjoy this letter more than you did my previous one.

Sam


Dear Sam,

I am worried indeed: I am losing control of my actions. For in my last letter was written (that's what I believed) under the influence of the most serene and relaxed night. I was listening to the Blues and smoking good Caribbean tobacco. Moreover, I assumed that I was being humoristic with a little grain of cynicism. To my surprise, it seems that I was wrong (probably, I must improve my English).

Also I must confess that I have not understand your arguments very well, so, along with my letter, I ask you to present them from different angles - in order to get a clearer knowledge of your "vision". I am especially interested in your distinction between simulations and artifices (derivative first order interactions: you leave them in a no-man's land. Are they of the first or second type? Could they interact with first order interactions?).

In fact, it seems to me that we can reduce our discussion to three areas. We can invest our next efforts (letters) in clarifying them:

1. Is there a dividing line between reality and simulation? If so, what line?
2. What is the nature of time? what has to be time with a "realistic" nature?
3. More pragmatically: what are the consequences of that "presumed" blurring of the lines between the real and the virtual (provided by technology)?

Prior to stating my arguments I would like to define more exactly my position. My view is, as yours, dual, that is to say that I regard reality either as a figure or as an object. But my view is also stereoscopic, that is to say, I (try to) see in reality the whole and the whole in reality. This is the reason why I was dazzled when I first came across fractals. I was very confused: what was the void and what was the figure? What were these: disrupted lines or sinuous curves? How can something be infinitely big but also a closed space? The infinite within the finite? How could that be?!! Finally, and this is the most dazzling feature of fractals: are they real or virtual? are they in re, "de facto", or are they just visual patterns (simulations) - as Bohr's atomic model? Has this something to do with Tycho Brahe's (and Goethe's) aversion to all manner of optics? Was Tycho's attitude simply a case of false prejudice or was it a kind of self-limitation? What about the so called "altered states of consciousness"? and what about madmen? Is it, perhaps, that reality is democratic? Isn't this the motto of the Inquisition, a ridiculous (and terrible) defence of one's reality in front of others? Do we need victims to demonstrate our view of the world? Will daltonists be persecuted as heretics?:-) Don't you think that modern technologies (of video, post-production, effects, etc.) involve great dangers, such as medieval mass deliriums, post-modern persecutions and a whole awful catalogue of monstrosities?

On the other hand, it seems that I was, in some manner, anticipating your intentions, for in my last letter I intended to jump (save) two or three steps. I wanted to go directly to the jugular.

All your scholastic exposition, which, as usual, is of high level and purity, has been studied in depth throughout the last five centuries. All those distinctions, between first order and second order, between infinite or finite and so on, has been scrutinized to death. Our reader can refer to good old books written by the likes of Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Fitche, Fischer, etc. It is especially well explored in O. Spengler's writings.

With my reservations regarding your discussion of meritocracy versus aristocracy, I wasn't being vehement; on the contrary, I intended to be cold, serene, and not fall in the trap of an endless discussion of things that, like God, have been dead for a long time. That dualism, such a distinction between first and second order is always dangerous and delicate. For instance, on what basis do you make your assertions regarding the Laws of Physics? Who told you that they are immutable? Who says such a thing? What physical laws? I suppose you are not talking of the XX century, with its quantum chromodynamics and its time curves and its velocity c and all its metaphysics. By the way, to contemplate in a gedankenexperiment a pair of extraterrestrials, as Hofstadter does, is in itself the great oxymoron - never mind the excessive anthropocentrism).

It was in antiquity, before the Great War, when the philosophical problem was of that "knowledge". This is not our problem now. Post-modernism got the last link of that chain. If you see the line that goes from Kant to Nieztsche you will clearly see that philosophical values tend, in an irreversible manner, to converge on matters of character or destiny (what Spengler calls fate ) - that is, to theology again. It is no longer about what we can know or not, its about what we feel equipped with that "knowledge or ignorance".

Obviously, in this hyperdynamic world , it is precisely the dynamic side of aspects which attracts us. Schopenhauer was the first to put "will" as "the thing in itself". Nietzsche went a step further, he posited, as the real thing the "will to power", that is to say, the EXPANSION THROUGH INTERACTION (IN TIME).

Here we are. We know all that we could ever know about interactions, and nowadays we want, once again, to find the reason for those interactions.

Here we are. Does anybody dare to say something more convincing than the Old Powderhead theory?

And again this links with my last letter (it can be read twice, before and after yours). What are those artificial interactions, those "simulated simulations"? Are they not precisely technology? Doesn't your argument mean that technology is nothing but a fallacy? But, what if it were that technology can make better humans, that, for instance, have a wider vocal range, from infra-bass to hyper-soprano? Its to said, what would happen if nature were to be surpassed by technology? If this were to happen, wouldn't we have been justified in saying that technology is the long arm of creation? And that power of creation, is it not the divine itself? What is, then, the hand that rules "the long arm"? To summarize: what is behind technology? that "tech-geist" is of a first order interaction, or of a derivative, secondary order?

Your contention about the wall between first and secondary interactions was again anticipated in my last letter. In its post-data I asked for the definitions of prophets, visionaries, etc... its to said, of that realm where interactions work: Time. "Errors" being so intrinsic to nature, couldn't it be that the normal flow of time be prone to "errors" too, as a normal part of its normal functioning?

Moreover, our readers can feel disturbed, with all the reasons to, for we are discussing the nature of reality without any mention of time.

Is not the philosophy of destiny a philosophy of time, and vice versa?

Your distinctions regarding interactions work on a scientific time (a dead-time), that special 0 time where things are fixed in space.

But what about movement, what about life? For what reason is an interaction IRREVERSIBLE?

If the nature of reality is an oxymoron, what is, then, the nature of Time? a pure sarcasm?:-))

Wishing you the best

PD: I did like your letter - why do you think the opposite? You give a great and fair comparison between merit/aris. In fact I smiled several times when reading on the "brain-whore" - because I was listening to a part of you speaking truly (of your real life) in the monologue (and also a part of me: its "my Faustian problem":-)))

roberto

(continued)