Making the familiar strange

In the synectics pdf they mention that

"to make the familiar strange is to distort, invert, or transpose the everyday ways of looking and responding which render the world a secure and familiar place."

We make the world a secure and familiar place by the concepts we hold and cherish, the content of our consciousness, that finally make meaningful our selves, the people around us, the whole world. Concepts are abundantly provided by family, neighbourhood, town, city, nation, country, school, workplace, religion and so on.

You distort, invert, transpose the concepts upon which your consciousness is based. It is a mental exercise where single or multiple concepts are questioned. Their correctness and validity is doubted. It can also be connected to a particular problem seeking solution.

In the same document it is mentioned

"It is a conscious attempt to achieve a new look at the same old world, people, ideas, feelings, and things."

Such an exercise is bound to change our consciousness conceptual content. It could lead to a new viewpoint. We might see our selves, the people around us, the world in a new light.

Redundant concepts? What for?

I read in a website:

"First, I will give some putative examples of A-consciousness without P-consciousness. If there could be a full-fledged phenomenal zombie, say a robot computationally identical to a person, but whose silicon brain did not support P-consciousness, that would do the trick. I think such cases conceptually possible, but this is very controversial. (See Shoemaker, 1975, 1981)"

A case that is conceptually possible. It gives a clue about the act of arguing a case. To describe nature you employ concepts. You built a structure, a conceptual structure used to explain the phenomenon. The concepts used should bear a direct relationship with what is observed in the phenomenon. If you use more concepts than are necessary, you built a cumbersome conceptual structure which exceeds the conceptual capacity of the phenomenon itself. Redundant concepts? What is their use? The thought caries on, I would say gets carried away. A construct. I would say an artificial construct. As if language has assumed a life of its own. It can go on and on.

What was that I came across just earlier on, in another website?

"Most successful explanations explain complicated phenomena in terms of simpler ones."


It is like maths. The mathematical language which it can go on and on, as it should satisfy hundreds of clauses and conditions, which are deemed necessary. With ifs, as ifs, and ifs and ifs and iffs ....., it can continue on and on to infinity. It has to be rigorous. I wonder. What for?

The same goes on in other disciplines too. New concepts are invented daily. Such disdain for simple, robust concepts. To add on to already existing concepts, by enriching their content. Depth and not girth. In a quest to conceptualize more and more obscure ideas, which instead of clarifying a field it makes it muddier than ever. End up communicating to each other in ever smaller circles.

The fractal reality concept combined with the concept of multiple universes. A thought.

Researchers abiding to the branch of process physics, in a paper titled "Process Physics: Modelling Reality as Self-Organising Information" they put forward the concept of three-dimensional fractal process-space.

Reality being organised as a fractal development, visualized as a Mandelbrot set of self-similar objects as you descent down to smaller scales, with ever increasing detail, a trademark of chaotic system developments.

Fractal dimensions using up space as efficiently as it can ever be. Giving another scope in thinking about the concept of time?

From the number 0 to the number 1 you can fit an infinity of numbers. An infinity of fractal dimensions? And in the midst of these fractal dimensions an infinity of fractal worlds, an infinity of multiple universes?

Each of the fractal worlds a universe? The whole fractal construct the entire reality? And all this development materialised from a simple self-referential equation? Reality a result of the development of a self-referential function?

Taking a journey to another fractal world, a universe in itself hidden right next to our own familiar world among the multiplicity of myriad fractal dimensions. Disipating energy as you delve deeper into reality's fractal development?

Thoughts about reality, a process space

Reality as a field of processes with the processes in living organisms being part of it. A mathematical bed where the living organism unfolds its life cycle as part of the processes undergoing.

It acts as a unit, a unit made out of processes. At each particular moment the processes that determine its behaviour are based on the neurons. The neurons have the ability to communicate and co-ordinate the responses of the unit to the surrounding processes. A particular response is one of a repertoire of responses the unit has already laid for. As the neurons respond to any changes in the physical quantities, variable quantities, that drive processes, in and out of the living unit. Variable quantities that their values fall within the range, of other processes that monitor their outcome, picked up by an allocated group of neurons, connect processes together. Trigger sophisticated calculations. Mathematical processes at work.

Processes bound to act together. They are in accord with each other. Conjugated? Coupled? Connected? What is the significance of that? Each of the processes involved is affected by another. A function connection. An dependency connection within the unit, and not only, as it is also connected with the surrounding processes.

If there was not a connected network of processes in the unit then any effect exerted by the surrounding processes would meet with a passive response, a result of inertia by gravity, or electromagnetic transaction or other.

But the living unit reacts energetically, is responsive. It is not a passive reaction it is an energetic reaction. It is a conscious reaction? How else can we describe this concerted action of processes working together?

May be we can get to name them by mentioning what it can be accomplished by this concerted action of these processes in living things. Or do we have to look at the processes at lower levels as well, even to quantum levels? Looking at it in a hierarchical perspective. Lower and higher levels.

Our neurons chart the space we unfold our actions in

I read in New Scientist magazine, the "Guess what I'm calculating ... Simple genius" cover story of 20th of June 1998 edition, the research of Bill Kristan and John Lewis on the neurons of simple organisms. They concluded that a leech, using only 40 or so neurons,

"can add and subtract, compute sines and cosines and manipulate trigonometric identities ..."

So, in accord with nature, neurons, the unit that builds up the structures of our awareness, consciousness and every mental ability we possess, are able to do complicated procedures, our conscious mind is ignorant of.

And it goes further

"Using neurons with overlapping receptive fields allows you to process space as a continuum",

So neurons collectively chart our surrounding space. Their collective activity, the collective firing patterns of populations of neurons encodes the information about the space we are in, even before that information about their enclosing space is even used. The collaborative nature of the neurons makes it possible to collate all the information that individual neuron groups gather, in the manner described above, overlapping. Each neuron group records space from co-ordinates within the range of presumably adjacent group of neurons.

Our neural arsenal have already built a chart of the space and presumably some element of time and it is there for our consciousness to use and guide our awareness. Is that a way to explain the phenomena of gestalt and blindsight? But even if our consciousness is unable or unwilling to, it would make no difference, things will be taken care off. The concerted efforts of all the neurons in our brain will find a solution. The problem is when our consciousness interferes and meddles with the careful approach our neurons concerted efforts have provided.

And that

"go a long way towards explaining why so many creatures seem to have an almost hard-wired sense of trigonometry."

Bill Kristan says.

Mach's principle provide the foundations of a unified whole where consciousness is embedded in

"Mach’s Principle can be viewed as an entire universe being altered by changes in a single particle ..... or perhaps more aptly, the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in Peru causing rains in Kansas".

I have been thinking about Mach's Principle as having a connection with the way I picture consciousness in my mind, but other issues were competing hard their case, muddling up the landscape and as a result from the whole argument developed in my mind what was left was just the name, Mach's Principle, connections once there cut. However its glimpse is still there, tiny for that matter, but still a seed capable of causing hurricanes.

It is what I thought about the uncanny ability of our imagination traversing the universe,(or universes alike) reality. In an instant. What is behind our nurtured notions of ego, to be the world, our very own world, the beginnings of our consciousness in our infantile minds, the inner workings of a solipsist mind. Mach's principle portraying that notion. The single particle altering the entire universe, the infinitesimal flapping of the butterfly's wings in a deep connection that surpasses the furthest boundaries imagined.

I read about "autism, stems from an inability to project outside one's own head ... yet autistics ... often display exceptional talents at math and pattern recognition". Has the mind of autistic individuals still embedded, deeply connected to a world, as described by Mach's principle, in that huge bed of processes that mathematical substrate from which consciousness springs out of? Their prowess at math and pattern recognition show the connections consciousness has with the processes weaving the fabric of reality? Showing us what lies around us? What do we have to pay attention to? And at the same time hint to where we should focus our efforts to understand consciousness?

Thoughts about the origins of imagination?

Depending on the difference in speed between the observer and the object under observation, space starts to either shrink or expand and time starts to slow down or speed up.

Why this statement stopped me in my tracks? Is it because I realise that this is something new. A new experience which I have to assimilate and fit in and at the same time re-arrange what is already there so I will accept what I regard as new?

Do I see something relevant to consciousness? This interplay of shrinking and expanding space as well as slowing down and speeding up time, as it is affected by the difference in speed between the observer and the object of observation? If somehow the fundamental forces, consciousness relies upon, are delicately influenced by speed differences. What would be the implications on the way the mind perceives phenomena? As these will undergo space shrinking or expanding actions or slowing down or speeding up time actions?

And that notion I thought about consciousness as a being a force? Is that notion relevant with the thoughts you develop now? These changes implicated by speed differences will distort the view of reality, as both space and time are influenced by. Shrinking to the quantum level, expanding to cosmos, slowing down to Planck time speeding up to eons, journeying back and forth to the beginning and the end of time? The foundations of imagination? Are there no bounds?
In relativistic terms?

"Local reality is violated in the quantum world". What does this mean?

Past thoughts unearthed form where they were buried.

local reality is violated in the quantum world, what does this mean? What are the implications of such a statement? The glossary entry ( see Reference?) refers to realism1 as

"the idea that a particle has properties that exist even before they are measured",

and consequently observed. We refer to the world around us as reality, we say the real world. That means the world has properties that exist even before they are measured, observed by us. That the objects, that make up the world, have properties that exist even before they are measured, observed by us. What is the connection between properties and existence? Does existence requires properties to assume itself , to manifest itself? The attributes of the objects that existence is made up of, that together make up the concepts, the information.

Consciousness-existence, as defined by Kaufman, the whole which through the myriad yin-yang like processes has produced the diversity of existence we experience, observe.

If realism is violated literally that means either that

"a particle has not got properties that exist before it is measured, observed"

or that

"a particle has properties that do not exist before it is measured, observed"

or put in other words,

"particles do not have properties and they attain properties only when they are observed, we observe them"2,

from the 'either' statement;

and

"particles properties exist because they are observed, we observe them",

from the 'or' statement.

Both versions accept that there are particles. The first version says that particles do not have properties, they do not have size, no dimensions, no form and they acquire dimensions form size when we observe them. The second version says that particles have properties, they have size, dimensions and form but these properties do not exist, and they are only brought into existence after they are observed, we observe them. Is there any difference between the two statements? Particles without properties acquiring them later and particles with properties that do not exist. Exist for whom? For us? Is existence a fabrication? Something that has been invented to nurture our cherished ego, to signify our importance in the world, among its other objects? May be all these boils down to observation. As when observed either, particles, without properties, acquire properties, or, particles, with properties, are brought into existence. What is observation? What is measurement?
#

1 while reality, in the example of entangled particles which allow Alice and Bob to obtain the same result when they both measure independently the polarisation of their photon part of the entangled photon pair, requires that there must be some element in the physical world that allows Alice to know Bob's results. The element, required by reality, is the carrier of the process, the reality aspect; and the process, by which the entangled photons arrange their quantum states, refer to the locality aspect where the speed of light provides the basis for the process, as it entails that no physical action can instantly go from Alice to Bob.

Are Feynman's advanced and retarded waves an answer to this dilemma? Do these waves demand an extension of the currently conceived boundaries of reality and locality alike? Is a re-think of the dimension of time, imperative in reaching a fuller understanding of reality and locality? Future and past, two concepts we use to comprehend time. By themselves abstract, in construction, defining the process, used from the aspect of processes and not of the carriers of processes. Though when referring to spacetime, time assumes qualities of "volume", acquires "substance", becomes "tangible", but as yet elusive. Can the advanced and retarded waves give a new insight to the concept of spacetime? To provide a basis upon which to build its infrastructure. The relationships inherent, in the spacetime level presumably underlying reality, our reality; which determine its build-up. Relationships that by themselves are non-local and non-real, but together (assembling in a whole?) give rise to local and real phenomena, to reality and locality. And the advanced and retarded waves, as they have been described by Feynman, to be used to define these relationships and as such the spacetime infrastructure. From the conception of a "frozen" universe with time loosely defined as another dimension in par with the other three spatial dimensions, the conception of advanced and retarded waves should be used to enhance further the "spatial" quality of time, the "dimensionality" of time. To explore possible implications in spacetime infrastructure.
#

2 Existence attains an anthropic quality. The concept is realised as a result of action, a re-action feedback input, of a subject. A subject brings about existence, by its actions.

The collapse?

So many new ideas coming across in these couple of pages of Julian Jaynes paper. Bringing along so many new thoughts. I need to let them time to settle in my mind, assimilate themselves, fit, adjust without bothering me. Bother my consciousness, my senses my awareness. Let them go about, and do whatever stuff they do, and let them come back to me,(M(m)y conscious self?), whenever they are ready. In the meantime let us amuse ourselves.

This thing about collapse was going around my mind. Let's see whether Schroedinger's cat is dead or alive. Collapse what? The quantum uncertainty? It is being some time since I bothered about quantum phenomena and it is harder to pull the relevant concepts. The memory loops, the synapses, have weakened, not as resilient as they used to be.

Och well, at least they are there.

The Fibonacci number sequence and space bound by hyper-dimensional objects

Volume is defined as "the measure of space taken up by a three-dimensional object". As for example the space bound by a cube which is three-dimensional and is measured in cubic centimetres (cm³) units. But what about the space bound by a four-dimensional object, a tesseract or hypercube. Can we use the same term, volume, to define the space bound? Since the space bound by a tesseract is four-dimensional and not three-dimensional falls out of the boundaries prescribed by the prevailing definition for volume.

In order to get an idea about the space bound by hyper-dimensional objects, we can apply the same simple rules we use to find the space bound by a cube, namely multiply the area times the height of an adjacent side, and for a unit cube you get,

                                           1 cm² X 1 cm = 1 cm³

the unit for measuring volume, the cubic centimetre (cm³).

By applying the same rule in a tesseract, which has six cube sides, we multiply the volume of one side times the area of an adjacent cube side, so the unit tesseract has

                                           1 cm³ X 1 cm² = 1 cm⁵

the quintic centimetre (cm⁵). The measurement unit of four-dimensional space?

By applying the same rule for a penteract, which has tesseracts as sides, we multiply the space bound by a tesseract (cm⁵) times the volume of the cube side of an adjacent tesseract (cm³), so the unit penteract has

                                           1 cm⁵ x 1 cm³ = 1 cm⁸

So centimetre to the power of 8 (cm⁸), the measurement unit of five-dimensional space?

Continuing on for a hexeract, which has penteracts as sides, the unit for six-dimensional space is (cm¹³).

By looking at the powers of the units of measurement from the known three dimensions to the hyper dimensions, namely length (cm), surface (cm²), volume (cm³) to four-dimensional (cm⁵), five-dimensional (cm⁸) and six-dimensional (cm¹³), …

the sequence 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 is the Fibonacci numbers sequence.

.. hyper-dimensions ..their evolution ..spiral ..

.. spiral systems .. that the longer they extend ..they become frail ..wither and die .. 

.. as they have been observed ..in nature .. (Goethe) ..

.. hyper-dimensions ..have limits ..do not exist beyond these limits .. may ..up to 5 ..penteracts ..

.. and these limits ..can be surmised ..by looking at the limits of ..nature's spiral systems ..

Do ideas pre-exist?

"Although it is widely conceded that the problems infants show in acquiring correct speech are primarily
motor control problems rather than perceptual problems, there has been little effort to develop a coherent theory of acquisition of speech motor control," excerpt from the announcement of a discovery of The University of Texas at Austin researchers about the origins of speech.


What does that mean? Is perception irrelevant to speech acquisition? If we accept that what separates correct from non-correct speech is due to differences in motor control mechanics than a developed perception of the environment, this might be taken as a hint towards the idea, that concepts and ideas, for which the speech among other forms of expression facilitate, pre-exist irrespective of the development of the particular mode of expression, the thought process included.

Ideas being transcendental. Plato's far-off realm where ideas exist independently of anyone who may have thought of them. The inheritance through reminiscence from a previous state of existence. If perception is dis-associated from acquiring and developing speech, this assumption points toward the thought that ideas are not the refined products of our sensuous or sensory faculties. We do not need to proceed via the percepts to concepts pathway. We might gradually acquire a grasp of concepts and ideas as our speech and other forms of exploring our surroundings develop, but ideas and concepts pre-exist. The mind which we develop being the product of the process to which our brain is engaged to, as it acts as the conduit that connects our consciousness with the transcendental realm of ideas.

We arrive to knowledge already there, which might have been there even before the dawn of humanity.

Brain, the conduit

The brain is the conduit tuned to these special kind of waves that confer to the carrier its special qualities. Evolution has produced in its development the human brain with the right size and the right structure that made possible the connection with a plane of existence alien with its surrounding world.

Introducing chaos into our lives. Its creative potential.

"The complexity increases when multiple copies of the basic mechanisms are allowed"
Post it as an incentive to pursue that line of thought. What can a basic mechanism be and how can this affect or bring chaos in an individual's life? A mechanism in an individual's life can be a habit, a norm followed, a routine. A prescribed reaction to a situation or circumstance the individual comes upon while at work or at home or during recreation. So if a routine is a mechanism, with its very own transition function, the algorithm that tells us what to do in each step of the mechanism adopted in the routine. The multiple copies of these routines is what defines our contact with other people in our surroundings, and become multiples as they are repeated in every encounter with other people. It builds an element of consistency and increases the complexity. Let's follow the thought. Increasing the complexity it means we have an extended substrate to respond to incoming inputs. That we have a ready made output for almost every input possible. To build multiple copies of a routine you would be required to open your circle and meet more and more people, with whom you will exercise your routine and multiply it. Get involved. Multiple copies then complexity increases.
Extracts from John H. Holland which will provide a lead to tackle this problem. I quote: p.128, "Within this setting, it is the interaction of the mechanisms that generates complex, organised behaviour." And "Still, the interactions provide possibilities not easily anticipated by inspection of the individual mechanisms." And "links can be made and broken ... changing the underlying geometry." On p.76 "Learning in complex environments requires a defined procedure from discerning early actions that set up later, obviously good responses" and "In multiagent environments, emergent phenomena often arise from the anticipation of the actions of other agents" and "This ability to generate extreme complexity from simple specifications is daunting because it assures that complexity will be pervasive in the world around us. At the same time, it gives hope that we can find simple rule-governed models of that complexity. Generated complexity is essential to emergence .." One thing to do is define the state space that encompasses all the states possible that has to do with an individual's personality and character. By doing so that will determine the available states as they are defined by the individual's traits, these be physical, mental emotional, psychological and will determine the trajectory of states in the tree of states. We expect to have more than mechanism that are responsible for bringing out the succession of states. Still we expect that these would be few and simple to describe.
A factor that should be considered as becoming potentially one of the mechanisms employed by an individual, and involved in the interactions allowed between the mechanisms are expressed as ulterior motives, which usually are alien to the traits of the given individual and compromises the fidelity of expression as demanded by he individual's traits and are detrimental in its conduct with other individuals.

The multiple copies of these routines, the basic mechanisms, as they are carried out by every individual, finally give rise to cultures. But the point is how to connect this with an individual's life. Each would probably follow a routine. That is right. And now what? you mean that this routine should be reiterated, multiple copies. Ye, you do that. So?

Thoughts about rules and their universal application

The following extracts from John H. Holland's "emergence, from chaos to order" book grabbed my attention and triggered thoughts in my mind. I quote from p.126: "translate the notion of rule (e.g. the rule of jumping in checkers, or Hebb's rule) into the notion of mechanism" and "as with rules for games, or laws for a physical system, mechanisms will be used as the defining elements of the system".
In a likewise manner rules and the mechanisms derived hold for the events that determine our lives. Rules that extend from the laws legislated in parliaments to the highway code, to codes of conduct in almost every establishment, companies, hospitals, universities, schools and even unwritten rules, the rules that define the conduct of individuals in respect to other individuals as well as their immediate environment. I feel compelled that I should find a guide to make sense out of them, analyse them, using techniques such as meta-knowledge, knowledge about knowledge as the definition prescribes, which I see it as an introspection on the effects each rule has on our lives and in the lives of other individuals around us and the surrounding environment. Questions to be answered would be 'Why did I do that?', 'For what purpose?', 'How did that affect me?', 'How did affect people around me?', 'How did it affect the place I live in?' Answers to questions along these lines, will help in defining our responses, the mechanisms we employ while we apply the rules that abide to the particular environment we find ourselves in. The end result would be, to avoid being a user, and the following states elaborate the term user; a feeling of being dragged along, helpless pawn, overwhelmed by the circumstances, caught unaware, left baffled, unprepared. Instead develop educated responses which will enable a better understanding of the motives behind our actions and the actions of the people that surround us.
An obstacle in such an attempt has to do with the enormous amount of information that we have to deal with, which is apparent to us as chaos and the situations as chaotic, we have to bear in mind that as John H. Holland proclaims "the mechanisms allowed are few in kind and simple to describe". So by continuously sorting out the rumble that we come across in our every day lives, we will be able to define the elements, the simple mechanisms that bide the systems we live in, our code of behaviour and conduct with other individuals in our surroundings, and become immune to ways alien to our character and personality, to adopt a coherent mode of life.

Raw ideas, grab them as they come

I was thinking earlier on, of what I have been exposed during the day before, all the pieces of information that entered my mind and the reactions they triggered within me. The German anatomist guy with the plastination of human corpses, though not about the plastination process itself but the establishment of the factory for plastinising corpses in, as it was called, a German (economically and otherwise) deprived area.

It struck me bad the existence in a flourishing Germany, of people that could not have jobs and as a result their neighborhoods were run down and the people themselves led restricted lives. No doubt the German economy as a whole is not run down and there are other areas which are flourishing and the people there lead better lives. These disparate effects, a result of what is driven into the minds of individuals about getting rich, to have more than you need, even if you do not know what to do with it, economies built on excess. Just put it into coffers and let it lie there.

Politicians flood our memory registers with messages about thriving economies. Economies based on deep-rooted structures of convergence-divergence; converging wealth to gradually fewer and fewer people and diverging misery to ever larger populations.

Growth in thriving economies introduce discrepancies in wealth distribution. Takings and people benefiting, follow opposite trajectories, while takings diverge, individuals benefiting converge. Less and less people enjoy the benefits of a thriving economy.

The radio blared in this unsolicited advert of a named company that promises their customers and whoever is interested on their wares, that it will create property millionaires. I find it disgusting, vile, they should not be allowed to. It is a disease and should be avoided and if not they should carry warnings, in the same way cigarette packs carry.

Like "Adhering to this message would cause serious harm to society, to the people around you, to your environment. It would push property prices sky high and would drive to misery thousand of your fellow citizens".

These kind of adverts should never be run, by any form of media.