Fred’s Cozy Little Nook

I have long held that evolving systems may subsume each other. For instance, social evolution may subsume genetic evolution. Or memetic evolution may subsume genetic evolution. It is clear that social evolution subsumes memetic evolution. But is it possible that memetic evolution also subsumes social evolution?

If that’s the case, we may even have co-emergence to talk about as well. But this probably sounds like crazy-talk. I mean, how can you possibly have A emerging from B at the same time B emerges from A? Is that not a chicken-egg problem?

I say that not only is this a possibility, in in fact goes on all the time. Let me see if I can present an example.

There is a genera  in the media call Manga (and Amime is closely related) . If we consider Manga to be a meme-complex or memeplex, then it is clear that this memeplex has been evolving over time. It has given rise to a cult following where fans read Manga  and talk about it, blog about it, do art about it, and even have conventions on it. This is the Manga social-comple, or socialplex, that has taken on a life in its own right.

But wait! Didn’t I just say that these Manga fans, due to the socialplex, give rise to new memes in the memeplex, which obviously affects the socialplex?

This all becomes very complicated very quickly, trying to deal with two highly dynamic systems subsuming each other in this manner. But the key to understanding this is that both share a common host, both influences host behavior, and so it’s not so surprising that co-subsumption and even co-emergence can arise in this situation.

Obviously, I need to give much more thought to this issue.

If there is one qualifying thing about humans, it’s one thing: They love to communicate.

Witness the births and rapid development of communication technologies, from smoke signals (well, they did travel at the speed of light!) to the Gutenberg Press to telegraph to telephone to mass media systems like radio and TV to now the Internet.

Now, you can find others that share your interests, no matter how obscure, anywhere and everywhere on the planet.

You can hook up with old high-school and college chums you haven’t seen in 30 years. You can find those local with your common obscure interests and meet them in person. You can sell objects of limited interest — or find them. You can conduct business with others around the world that you have never met in person.

You can even work from home in a “virtual company”. Or you can make money selling ads on your web sites. Or find other creative ways to make money. Even find jobs and the like.

Information abounds from Wikipedia to every college and university that have cared to put up free courseware and research papers  on the web. Or you can get the goods on a person by hitting aggregate data services and track a person’s every address, job, and other activities going back decades.

Governments also have the goods on you, secretly monitoring your communications and bank transactions for whatever purposes they see fit…

My point here is that we now live in an age of hyper-connectivity. Not just instant communication, but for each and every individual being able to reach hundreds if not thousands with ANY information for ANY purpose at low to no cost.

With all this hyper-connectivity, some emergence is inevitable. The question is, of course, can or has that emergence organized itself to be a thinking, throbbing entity all its own? Is this possible? And if so, how would we mere “neurons” know it’s happened?

Keep in mind, as well, that this “mass mind” might operate — and most likely would — on time scales much different from  our human time senses would recognize. What if it took a day to complete a “complete thought”, whatever that would be? A week? A year? How would we know?

I do think this question is answerable — in time. And wouldn’t it be ironic that, in our searching and yearning for discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence, that is emergent intelligence was with us all along sitting right here under our noses?

Well, what would we call such a thing? What would a neuron call the brain? I’ll leave you with that thought.

From article: Can the Auto Industry Retool itself to build rails?

1. Today is not anything like the economic system that existed during the last Great Depression. Completely different world. It is almost unhelpful to draw too many parallels between then and now.
2. Today’s economic system is much more global than it was back then.
3. Chaos Theory and Complex System Dynamics needs to be applied to the global picture we have today. For any number of reasons. And I have yet to hear any economist speaking of today’s world in such terms.
4. The principle of Self-Organized Criticality is definitely apropos here. The market organized itself to a critical state, where nearly any shout in the mountains from anyone would bring the whole thing down.
5. I have my own variation of this principle — let’s call it the Evolutionary Humpty-Dumpty Principle. A Complex Dynamical System (CDS), if of the right character, has a tendency to organize itself to a critical state such that your typical control points will simply fail to function. The Feds always attempt to control the market through interest rates and the supply of money; other major governments around the world employ similar controls, and others as well. The details, after a fashion, are not all that important so much as the fact that the market will “build up a tolerance” for such artificial control artifices. Hell, our own bodies do it with drugs constantly taken all the time. Why not the global market?
6. There are many aspects of this economic system that is predicated on the fallacy of “infinite resources, infinite growth”. Yet any 7-year-old can tell you that the system is NOT infinite. So what do we have? Many free-running Ponzi schemes, like Social Security and the Stock Market. Yes, boys and girls, those gaining money out of those systems do so at the expense of others.

When you wrap your mind around all of this — and more — you will begin to understand how truly frelled we really are. Where you should focus your view is not on what the “talking heads” babble to you every day, but on the flow of money and the structure of the system, noting where assumptions are made without basis. Noting the points where the lack of transparency exists. Noting all the zero-sum instruments in finance that is billed as something other than what it really is. Noting that when governments print money, the actual value of the overall picture has a tendency to stay constant. Printing money is a panic reaction to a situation that our leaders have no understanding of. Printing money will only buy a short-term advantage, with a much bigger drop later.

Look for the lie in anything you hear over the major media outlets with regards to the market. They are most likely not telling you the truth so much as they are trying to influence and manage your behavioral dynamics in hopes they can stitch Humpty back together again.

Take what I state here with a grain of salt if you wish. Or do your own research and come up with the same conclusions that I have. And doing the research will not be easy because many of the players in the financial world actually believe the lies they spout on a daily basis. You must reach behind them to see the circuit boards for yourself, and follow the actual layout, not what they tell you what it is.

And most of all, embrace complexity, because the world is far from simple!

It occurred to me this morning that Memes have the greatest successes for existence if they can do two things:

1. Program for their own retransmission (Thought Contagions, Lynchian Memetics)
2. Quell or Obliterate competing memes.

The two above are not new ideas to the field of memetics. However, what interest me is how memetic evolution can influence genetic evolution. That is to say, how can memes direct the biological evolution of their hosts? Those meme sets that can accomplish the above 2 and also improve on the biological reproductive rates of their hosts whilst at the same time leveraging parthenogeneic transmission, will be especially virulent over time and become solidly entrenched.

Such successful meme sets are usually referred to as “culture”.

A principle for memetic success I will put forward is that it also induces “clumping activity” in its hosts. Normally, we refer to this as “clans”, “city-states”, and “countries”. We also refer to this as “race”, “ethnic identity”, “feminism”, etc.

Indeed, any of the “isms” can be construed as a set of memes that strongly induce clumping behavior among its hosts.

The Global Financial Picture and its Antecedents

In these tumultuous times, one looks at the stock market with dread. Titanic shifts in wealth occur on a daily basis as the players in this zero-sum game battle it out for the challenge of a lifetime. What is really sad is that many of the players do not ever understand that this is a zero-sum game; that the stock market is nothing more than a wealth-exchange system. That’s right. Wealth is not created by the stock market, but is exchanged among the players. To be in that market without realizing that very fundamental fact is, in my opinion, rather foolish.

Many have their life’s savings and their retirement tied up in the stock market, and it amuses me even more to hear all of the talking heads giving the exact wrong advice about what to do. They all say “stick it out”, “hang in there”, and “you don’t want to miss that uptick”, etc.

But many of these naieve players have been listening to this very wrong advice as they watched their portfolios cut in half or worse over the past year. Many are actually getting hit by margin calls and thus are seeing their holding sold by their brokers to cover themselves. This is part of the drive in the titantic moves being seen daily in the market right now.

I tell all my friends these days to *be in cash*, but they get so many mixed messages they don’t know if they should listen to me or listen to the idiot financial advisers. And I can fully appreciate the emotions involved. Moreover, many are in complicated financial instruments tied to the market carrying tax consequences and other hits for an early pullout. This is really sad, because it only complicates the picture even further for them.

I still stick to my mantra: BE IN CASH. You can always jump back in when the smoke clears. And so what if you miss the “initial uptick”. At least you would’ve limited your losses.

But where did all of this come from? Where did all of the bad advice on how to deal with the market generate? This is my take on it.

During the 20th century, we saw something incredible — the stock market always seemed to go up in the long run. The thinking of that times was to “be in it for the long haul”, without any thought or consideration as to how a zero-sum game can always keep going up indefinitely, and what was driving it. No one was interested since it seemed to be going up forever.

Now, I invite you to click the following link:

Big Charts of NYSE

Now set the time frame to “All Data”, and the frequency to “Yearly”. Yes, I am too lazy to past a picture of the chart into this blog, but I think it’s better if you play with these charts for yourself.

You will notice that the NYSE, a composite of all the stocks on the New York Stock Exchange, has shown a steady increase from 1970 till 2000 or so. Then you see a very sharp decline. Then you see it rise again from 2003 till now, where you see an even bigger decline knocking its levels back to where it was back in 2002. You will also note that since 1970 where the data starts, there has been no such titanic shocks before on that scale.

Now, look down beneath the price chart to see the volume chart. Look at how the volume increases corresponds with the rise of the NYSE, and look what took place from 2000 till now. This, my friends, tells the true story about the markets. Charts don’t lie, and what you see here is the real truth about the market. But how does one interpret this truth?

Think for a moment. The stock market is a zero-sum game. It does not create money; nor does it destroy it. Money simply shifts hands. Every dollar you make on the stock market *must* come out of someone else’s pocket, and every dollar you loose *must* going into the pockets of another. That is the inherent nature of a zero-sum game.

Now, look back again at the volume chart and you will start to understand what is really happening. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, there was a big push to get more and more average people involved in the stock market — either directly, or through some derivative instrument, like mutual funds, 401Ks, IRAs, and the like.

My “Greater Fools” theory on the stock market: in order to make money on the stock market, you need greater fools to take the stocks off your hands at a greater price than you paid for it. Therefore, the only way the market can continue that growth curve in the 20th century is to have an ever increasing number of “Greater Fools” to keep flocking into the market, and this is marked by the steady volume increases you see from 1970 till 2000.

The problem is, of course, is that the supply of Greater Fools is limited. You eventually hit exhaustion. Then the prices stop rising. Then panic ensues and everyone starts selling off, generating even more panic which leads to ever more sell-offs. Those fools caught at the top of the market then give up their dollars to those whom they bought from. Yes, my friends. Those fools at the top of the market are left holding the bag for the wealth the rest of us have managed to extract from the market before the fall.

Fun stuff, huh?

What does this mean for the greater financial picture overall?

Implicit in many financial policies and financial instruments is the fallacy of “infinite growth” — that is, the markets will continue to grow forever without bound. Because of the fallacy of that assumption, anything based on that fallacy must fail eventually.

And now to introject some chaos into your understanding of the markets.

In systems that grow beyond a certain “magical rate”, the growth become chaotic. It does not matter what the system is — it could be populations of bacteria or players in the financial world –, it’s almost a “law of the universe” from the standpoint of chaos. Click the next link:

Feigenbaum Logistic Map

You will note the simple recurrence equation for growth listed, and the map of what happens when growth rates are too high. The numbers bounce around chaotically. Why? Because you have growth that depends on finite resources. If you grow faster than your resources does, you hit a ceiling and — well — chaos ensues. No pun intended!

What we see going on in the marketplace is a similar story, though more complicated than this simple formula. Humans with a stake in the game will do whatever they can to keep the party going even when it’s quite evident that the party must end eventually. We see this in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco going on right now. Since the greater fools ran out of their normal market, they kept it going higher artificially by seeking out riskier and riskier investments, which themselves came to a head as we have seen. It merely delayed the inevitable. If you go back to that NYSE chart, you see after the big drop in 2003 the market go even higher, but without the matching concomitant increases in volume. The NYSE figures were pushed up artificially higher by something, and since the markets are so interconnected, my guess is that it was pushed up higher by all the bad loans that were made.

You see, I am as guilty as the next guy here, because not only did I benefit from the financial boom in the 90s, but I also — after the so-called “dot-com” crash — managed to re-fi my home twice without any real income!!! Now admittedly, it helped tremendously in keeping my home and thus a roof over the heads of my family in those times, but really and honestly I should not have received those two loans without a solid financial basis.

Well, these days I am on better financial footing, but many were not able to make that transition and had to default on their loans, and thus began the “shout in the mountains” that lead to the avalanche in the financial markets we see today. Yes, my friends, another aspect of Chaos Theory: Self-Organized Criticality:

SOC Link

The language in this link may be beyond some, but basically what it states is that dynamical systems have a tendency to organized themselves to a critical state that can then undergo a “phase transition” — a drastic change of state — almost spontaneously. Basically, a fancy way of stating that “what goes up, must come down”, at the risk of oversimplification.

I am basically stating that all the current efforts to blame the fall on the last administration, on the CEOs of AIG, Meryl Lynch, and Lehman Bros, etc. is all a wash. Once that critical state was hit, a little girl going “BOO” on Wall Street would’ve triggered the avalanche. And no, I am not kidding.

The Obama Win and what that means

What about the [ast election and the overwhelming win by Obama, who has now become the nation’s “Great Black Hope”? (There are reasons I use that phraseology, but I will go into that in a future blog.) I am not convinced that He nor his team he’s assembling has a clue on how to halt this avalanche. He seems to be picking everyone who is from the “old school” understanding of economics. No one has yet to mention the very plain fact that most of our financial infrastructure is predicated on a fallacy. I suppose to mention that fact would really cause the panic to amplify even more. You don’t want to spook the poor saps left holding the bag too much or they would all want to dump their bags at once driving everything to zero.  And yet, the governments around the world pulling money out of thin air in their vain attempts to “shore up” the banks will only trigger a devaluation of currency that will send the market down even faster.

There is the spectre of deflation which would seem at odds with creating money out of thin air which should trigger inflation. Fun stuff huh? But I have come up with a modification to the self-organized criticality theories with special regards to the financial markets and how governments try to manipulate them:

The dynamical system so conditioned will see to organized itself to a critical state that will thwart any and all of the usual attempts to control said system. Basically, the dynamical system will evolve itself to the point of ignoring the usual control points. Basically, what I am saying is that “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men could not put the financial markets back together again!” Could there be hidden wisdom in a simple tale for kids? Hmmmm….

And yet we see that very thing taking place. Of all the coordinated efforts of many governments to inject money into the broken Humpty-Dumpty market, nothing has really worked. If that doesn’t scare the willy out of your pants, it should.  I am basically saying that we are in for some “interesting times” the likes of which have never been seen before in the history of the world. I dearly hope my prognostication is dead wrong, but I see no reason to assert otherwise. I predicted this 2nd financial shock about 8 or 9 years ago; I just wasn’t sure when it would happen. It’s actually happening earlier than I had anticipated, and we’re just seeing the beginning, folks. Now GM is talking about needing a bailout, and perhaps a couple more US auto manufacturers will be sucked into that downdraft as well. And the cascading cacophony of failures will continue for years to come. No market will be immune. Attempts governments make to stop it will only either make the problem worse or delay the inevitable.

Will when this avalanche stop? I do not know. Will the stock market ever “fully recover?” I don’t think so. I cannot see beyond the current mess because the picture has become chaotic that there is simply no way to know what will emerge “on the other side”.

But I will say this: We are in for one helluva ride!

So what does poor “Joe the Plumber” do?

Well, actually, if you are in the plumbing business, I wouldnt’ worry too much. For starters, your job can’t be outsourced. And as long as people continue to use pipes for their water supply and flush toilets to get rid of their shit, there will be a demand for you. They may pay you a bit less, but you’ll get by.

If you are “Joe the Hedge Fund Manager”, it was nice knowing you. Time to start thinking about a serious career change and possibly relocation. You really don’t want to be in an area with 10s of thousands of out of work people in your field all competing for the same scant handful of alternative jobs available. Do your research well and get the hell out of New York NOW.

If you are “Joe the Software Geek” working in IT, especially on a hot money producing website, stay exactly where you are. If you are thinking about hopping jobs,think carefully about whether or not the company you hop to can weather the impending financial firebomb headed our way. Even think that about the company you are with currently, and make the necessary adjustment in your short-term career goals.

If you are “Joe the Nurse”, stay put. Or better yet, consider relocating to Florida or California, or any place where wealthy seniors like to flock to. There’s still a shortage in the nursing field, so mop it up.

If you are “Joe the Entrepreneur”, think creatively yet realistically about your plans and goals. There may be hidden opportunities to capitalize on the firestorm to come. Drink in information from many sources about the global and local marketplaces, and try to understand how one relates to the other. Then POUNCE.

If you are “Joe about ready to divorce Jane”, this may be a wonderful time to file if you can kick Jane out of the house first. Especially if your mortgage is below water due to no fault of your own. You may be able to get rid of Jane and keep the house too. But be sure you keep the kids as well, because if Jane leave with them you are still screwed.

If you are “Joe the Homeless Beggar”, expect to get a lot of competition in the upcoming years. Expect also your begging clientele to become increasingly tight-waded as this burn-down progresses. You might actually consider this a golden opportunity to do something more meaningful with your life. Hop to it.

If you are “Joe the Civil Servant”, stay where you are. Rest assured that the government you work for will find newer and more creative ways to rip the rest of us off in order to maintain their power-base, of which you are a part.

If you are “Joe the Student”, you’ve got some real issues to think about. You have to do the hard thing of thinking about where the world will be when you graduate and whether or not a market will exist for your hard-won skills. Never-mind whether or not you’ll be able to afford it or not. Coming out with your sheepskin and a $100K debt just to take up a career of taxi driving is worse than skipping the whole affair and just jumping to taxi driving. Or consider the career of being a beach bum. Or leech off your parents for as long as they will let you. Forget joining up with the Armed Forces unless you have a death wish. Talk to some old vets first — especially from the Viet Nam War era — to get a good picture  of what to expect before you do something foolish. Trust me; it’s better to be a beach bum or a continual headache for the old man.

The Upshot of all this?

Unless you pay attention to what is REALLY going on (as opposed to what all the talking heads are babbling) and plan according to your own personal situation, you will be screwed. Plain and simple. It’s going to be tough enough even with the best laid plans of Mice, but really you don’t want to leave your future to “Fate”. Now is NOT the time to be believing in all that “God” hogwash. Now is the time to consider No. 1 your primary importance. Understanding instead of “Faith” is what will save your ass. Let the fools do as they will. Let them burn in their own self-created hells. YOU, on the other hand, must look and think in ways that are extremely non-traditional if you are going to come out of this alive. Don’t take my advice; don’t take anybody’s advice. Understand the situation for yourself and TAKE ACTION. Do this and there’s a good chance you will emerge victorious. Listen to the idiots on CNN, Bloomberg, and your Nice Friendly Government to your own peril. Understand why they say what they do, and what’s in it for them vs. what’s in it for you.

Back when I was much, much younger, I veered off the path of my intellect and became “a believer” of Christianity. Not only was this a mistake but a great waste of 4 or 5 years of my life. But it did a lot of damage — all that stuff about heaven and hell and “god’s chosen” and what not. Oh man.

It took me another 3 or 4 years to return to my place of intellect. I had to re-examine all my beliefs, and later I would come to question the very nature of belief itself. I did not leave any stone unturned. I questioned everything and sought answers.

And this was an amazing time, because I did get answers, and I was made better for them. I saw the world — indeed, the entire universe — through new eyes, the eyes of Knowledge and Understanding.

I called this period of my life “The Reconstruction” — but really, it was more of a Renaissance than anything. I mean, there was so much I learned. Fractals opened up my eyes to new possibilities. Indeed, Fractals was very key in helping me understand how complexity can arise out of simplicity. That gave me a very powerful basis for being able to assert — to my own tortured brain — that “god” was not required for the existence of the Universe, contrary to years of the lies I had been fed by the Christians.

I went on to learn more and more — about Complex Dynamical Systems, Artificial Life, Self-Adaptive System, and the like. For the first time in my life, not only could I understand that a “god” was not only not required, but also extremely unlikely.

I then learned about Memes and Thought Contagions from the seminal book published by Aaron Lynch. I began to understand the underlying mechanisms behind “beliefs” and how they are transmitted and themselves evolve to retransmit themselves. This put not only religion in a new light, but politics, the media, and many other things about the human social animal.

This forever changed my perception of the human — basically, human beings are little more than hosts for completing memes, some of which also influence behavior , and the memes that program for their own retransmission tend to crowd out those less successful at doing so.

Wow, most humans are little more than Mindless Vessels of Beliefs. This makes for a very dim view of the human-nodes out there, a very frightening view, one that I wish were not true, but I cannot deny my own reasoning on the matter.

And so, such more or less concluded my First Renaissance. As the Star Child in 2010 said, “I used to be Dave Bowman”.

Many years spun by, many challenges, many attacks, many triumphs, and a couple of darling girls along the way. Both girls make me very proud.

And now, once again, I find myself at the crossroads. But this time it’s entirely different. This time, it’s not a wasted flirtation with religion and other frivolous beliefs, but one of misplaced trust that has betrayed 15-16 years of investing in the emotional and material well-being of another. You know, marriage. But it goes beyond that, really.

I also find that science and mathematics has progressed much in the intervening years, and I’ve fallen behind a bit. There are new sets of “terrible secrets” yet to be uncovered. There are the futures of my kids. There’s my own future, and those I care about. And there’s the future of the entire Human Race to consider, and how I might be an influence there.

And so the need for my “2nd Renaissance” is at hand.

I couldn’t live in a better area for it — Greater Boston — where I have contact and access to some of the finest libraries and minds in this country. I have many Very Big Goals for the future. They will by no means be easy to accomplish. But then, what’s life without a challenge?

And so I go forth into the desert…

I wish to comment on the blog — or rather the comments added to the blog — about teaching your kid how to program.

 

Being a parent of 3 kids myself, I have quite a bit to say about this, actually.

 

Many of the comments on the “teaching your kid how to program” article were very down on the idea, suggesting it would be better to teach your kid all about sports first.

Now, I though that was rather odd. I mean, why one over the other? What is so damned special about sports? One respondent claimed that it was “imposing your dreams on your kid” to teach the kid programming, but it was “OK” to teach sports instead. How is that any less “imposing your dream?” I hear of many stories how some kids actually dread the whole sports bit, little league and all, but do it anyway because their parents have “high expectations” of them to hit a silly ball across the field.

I have two daughters. Being an ardent hacker myself, I introduced both daughters to the computer early on. One of my daughters took to the computer especially well at the age of 2, where she enjoyed playing around with a painting program to make beautiful patterns and abstract art. I also taught her number theory a year or two later, where I gave her a basic understanding of prime numbers, multiplication, and division. I manage to do this cleverly enough with pennies, and showing her how a prime number of pennies could not be arranged into a rectangle other than 1 x n, where a composite number of pennies could be. Then, the height and with of the rectangle represented multiplication of those two numbers, etc.

Today, that daughter is 15. When she was 7, she built her own robots, and programmed her own websites in PHP around 9 or so. Today, she loves art and can draw at a professional level, as well as still harboring a love for math and science. She plans to go into architecture some day, so I’d better scramble together lots of cash so I can send her off to college!

The younger daughter, now 10, also loves science. It is pure joy to see her curious about the world around her.

Both daughters are wicked intelligent, and that’s not just me saying that. Everyone who knows them say that about them as well. Now, imagine what would’ve happened to their aspiring minds if I had tried to force them into sports. They would’ve been bored and resentful. Sports is just not their thing.

And my point is?

Simple. It’s all a matter of knowing your kids. You expose them to a bit of everything, and see where their interests lie. You then make it possible for them to pursue those interests. Eventually, as they get older, there interests become more refined and individual in nature, and they are almost always never exactly what the parent “hopes for”. But a good parent will continue to support the kids in their pursuit of knowledge and wonder, anyway.

Do I have a problem with my kids being into sports? Not at all. One kid loves to ice skate, which I think is great. The other kid loves martial arts.

So, as you see, I have nothing against sports in general. However, I do think it gets over-emphasized by our culture. I took a visit to my daughter’s high-school and had a look at the news articles they had posted on their billboard. More than half of those articles had to do with sports in some form or fashion. Maybe one or two had anything to do with academics.

This was very telling.

It is clear that there is much anti-intellectualism in our country, even in the schools that are charged to teach our young. This is particularly sad, considering that the rest of the world at large tends to value education more and as a result their students are so much further along than our students in the US.

I don’t know what to do with the problem at large, but I do know what to do for my own kids. Be the right example for them as far as intellectual pursuits go, and make them feel proud for their intellectual and academic accomplishments. They will be able to compete with the rest of the world in the 21st century where many US kids will wind up working a McJob.

I move forward with an idea so simple and yet so profound it could rock the universe itself.

You see, I think I understand — finally — what makes emergence tick. The answer is right in front of our faces and we miss it completely, and we miss it in exactly the same way gravitation was missed before Newton. It’s a very deep symmetry that exists on all scales of the universe and in nearly every possible system. It is there at once hiding from us and also making our world work.

Am I being deliberately evasive? Yes. Because I could be wrong, I want to rigorously check it out first before announcing it to the world. In time, all will know.

All I am saying about it now is that it has to do with the violation of ying-yang.

Hello, world!

Had a bit of a nasty dream this morning, and now I lie awake. Silly, I know, except not. Some good things have transpired in my divorce proceedings, and yet I can’t help but feel a sense of frustration. Perhaps it’s the slow pace of the law — I wish it were over already. Lawyers are getting fat and happy — they are the only winners in a divorce.

But, I’ve been through much worse and have emerged victorious, and this too shall pass. Just got to hang in there for a bit longer and all will be OK.

Don’t know what my “profound thought for the day” will be yet — I usually have one every morning, but this morning started way too early. I really should go back to sleep but, I AWAKE. Yep, you get it.

As far as the politics and horrors that are going on in the world, I have more or less tuned out on them. Hearing more about how the apes are apes has no appeal to me whatsoever. It’s all rather pointless after a a fashion. Same crud, different mud. You know what I mean. The teachings of Transcendental Sets have told me to not worry over such things, and so I won’t. Human-nodes will be human-nodes.

If you are still reading this, now you must be scratching your head going, “what???!” Don’t worry, I will explain all at some future date. You see, I have learned a great and terrible secret about the universe. And you want to know what that secret is?

My god, it’s full of Transcendental Sets!

Now do you understand?

Am I nuts? Maybe. But I think I’ve come up with a true Explanation for Everything. Well, maybe not an “explanation” per-se, but a description. Something that would explain the Universe and everything in it, in mathematical terms. The name for it is “Transcendental Sets”, though I may eventually call it “Hypercells”. But here I will refer to it both ways, interchangeably.

Transcendental Sets is a “new” mathematical system I am creating. It hopes to be able do describe Emergence in a general way that has not, to the best of my knowledge, been done before. It encompasses the entire system from the elemental constituents up to the macro levels of ontology.

Let me explain before you decide I am a complete crank!

Consider, if you will, quarks. Quarks interact by exchanging gluons. 3 quarks comprise baryons, and 2 quarks comprise mesons. The grouping of quarks into baryons or mesons is what I refer to as a “hypercell” — which is a type of set in which its constituents interact in some way. Here, the quarks constantly exchange gluons amongst themselves.

Now, the next level of organization — for baryons, at least — is organization into nuclei of atoms as is the case for the neutrons and protons. These bayons do interact via the “strong nuclear force” (really just the quarks and gluons interacting). But clearly the nucleus is a different thing from quarks and from the baryons — nucleons — that constitute them. Thus, the nucleus represents a new order hypercell.

Now, the nucleus forms a hypercell with electrons to make an atom. Thusly, the atom is a hypercell. It is distinct from the electrons and the nucleus that comprises it. It has emergent properties of its own that its constituents does not possess apart.

So, now we have this ascending levels of order — quarks –> nucleons –> nucleus –> atom. Each level represents something distinctly different with emergent properties the parts do not possess alone. Also note that a level of order depends, in part at least, on the emergent properties of the levels beneath it. That is to say, emergence of one level sets the stage for emergence to take place on the higher levels.

And so, let’s continue. Atoms interact to form molecules. The details of those interactions has to do with the way the electrons, bound to the nucleus as a part of the atom hypercell, now has new emergent properties that allows them to interact with other atoms in such a fashion to form what is called “chemical bonds”. The chemical bonds are an emergent phenomenon of atoms — something electrons would not do on their own, and neither would the nuclei. And so now we have molecules — hypercells of a new order.

Needless to say we can continue. molecules can themselves group together to form higher levels of order, as do the amino acids group together to form polypeptide chains. Or the sub-units of DNA group together to form DNA. Polypeptide chains fold in ways that give them unique properties that we call proteins or enzymes. Groupings of these units form organelles. Organelle groupings form the biological cell. Biological cells form organs, and organs form organisms. For the human organism, humans group together to form families and clans/societies, and societies group together to form countries. Atoms and molecules organize in many other ways besides the biological path, such as forming planets and stars, and planets and stars form planetary/star systems, and those group together to form galaxies. Galaxies form galactic clusters, and those, of course, form the whole of the Universe.

And to trace this chain or order, we have quarks –> nucleons –> nucleus –> atoms –> molecules –> molecular chains –> organelles –> biological cells –> tissues –> organs –> organisms –> families –> societies –> countries. Or a different branch: molecules –> planets and stars –> stellar systems –> galaxies –> galactic clusters –> universe. (This is not perfect nor complete, of course, because stars are too hot for individual molecules to make much of a difference, for example. Also, there were many levels left out when we went from molecules to planets.)

At each new level of order, you have new hypercells or transcendental sets forming. The formations are dependent on emergent properties of the levels beneath, yet in most cases the emergence is “unexpected” — one would not be able to directly predict or infer the emergence from the basis of the properties of the lower levels.

More to come later…