Gödel, Should, and the Laws of Form

 

An early articulation of Gödel's incompleteness theorem could be seen in the Tao Te Ching's articulation: The tao that can be told is not the eternal tao. (Got this from a talk by Schmactenberger).

When one uses the word should, there is often an implicit model of "perfection" what is being used to drive behavior / actions. From the incompleteness notion, since there is no "absolute" perfection, one can say that all "should's" are questionable for a deeper understanding of what is at play - mental models, agendas, ....

In Laws of Form Spencer-Brown posits the making of  distinctions in the context of the "background".  Taking the background as infinite / infinity, the attempt to create "perfection" will always fail as there is no way to include infinity in a finite set of distinctions. Perhaps not even in lower orders of infinity. Is there even an ultimate infinity? How can finite form even begin to comprehend  that level of infinity?

Perfection, in a sense, can mean that nothing needs to be added or removed. A "whatever" is complete in and of itself. How can that be? All forms that come into being have their roots in the infinite. Those roots cannot be severed since we don't know all their forms. Hence, no perfection in and of itself. However, with a different perspective, roots and all, each form is a perfect expression of the infinite.

Interesting Models

Here are some of the models for thinking that I find useful in understanding some of the complexity of our times:

• Integral Theory - 5 structural pieces:
  
  • Quadrants
  • Levels / stages of development (permanent)
    
    • simple model - egocentric, ethnocentric, world centric (body/mind/spirit)
  • Lines - show growth and development through the 3 major stages above
    
    • cognitive
    • interpersonal
    • moral
    • emotional
    • aesthetic
  • States of consciousness (temporary)
    
    • wake, dream, sleep
    • meditative states
    • altered states
    • peak experiences
  • Types - gender, personality, ...
• Spiral Dynamics 1
-Historical development is not circular but an expanding spiral. The spiral shows repeating patterns and there is a vertical dimension of development. At each level of development, a society / individual creates problems that can be solved only by regressing (to an earlier level) or transcending and including the current level. According to the spiral model, what is evolving is the values with which a level operates. There is a progression of values. One aspect of this progression is that greater and greater levels of complexity are handled / managed.

• System Dynamics and Systems Thinking
  This model applies control systems principles, i.e., feedback to model complex systems. Underlying are the presuppositions that we can create a causal loop structure of complex systems (including social systems). However, the behavior of such systems is very non-linear and the human mind is not adapted to deal with the implications of the causal structure that it surmises. This approach has grown to be applied to various organizational  development and change management processes.
  
  Systems thinking enlarges this model to include
  
  • personal development, 
  • mental models as a way of thinking (and evolving those models more consciously), 
  • seeing repeating patterns as archetypical underlying structures that are generating those patterns
  •  models show certain patterns
    
    • separation of causality in time and space
    • nonlinear behavior
    • short term pain can lead to long term gain
    • most  of the problematic behavior is endogenous to a system and not due to external causes.
• Moral Psychology - Jonathon Haidt's model of the psychology of morality in The Righteous Mind.
  Six foundations:
  
  • Care / harm cherishing and protecting others
  • Fairness or proportionality / cheating - rendering justice according to shared rules
  • Loyalty or ingroup / betrayal - standing with your group / family / nation
  • Authority or respect / subversion - submitting to tradition and legitimate authority
  • Sanctity or purity / degradation - abhorrence for disgusting things / foods/ actions
  • Liberty / oppression - freedom to do as one wants without restriction or domination
• Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP)
  Based on the notion that our selves are programmed linguistically through our neurology. Linguistic techniques can be used to program / reprogram our neurology. The boundaries between what is / is not programmable is variable. Discovery mode in NLP is used to discover some of those boundaries in different areas such as phobias, habits, competencies, disorders, ....
• Generational cycles in history (The Fourth Turning) by Strauss and Howe
  Generations are like the seasons (spring, summer, fall, winter):
  
  • Each generation has a particular character (archetype)
  • Each generation is circa 20 years. A full cycle take a saeculum (80-90 years)
  • Like the seasons, there is a sequence / order of repeating patterns. and like the seasons,
    • Sping / high -there is growth / flowering period (spring). Institutions are strong and individuals weak. Civic authority is rebuilt after the crisis of winter.
    •  Summer / Awakening - institutions are attached in the name of personal and spiritual autonomy - society is reaching its high tide of public progress
    • Fall / unraveling - opposite of spring, institutions are wek and distrusted, individualism is strong and flourishing.
    • Winter / crisis - an era of destruction - often involving war or revolution. Institutional life is destroyed and rebuilt in response to a perceived threat to the nation's survival.
  • These cycles can be traced back all the way to the Etruscans in pre-roman times.
• Laws of Form by Gordon Spencer-Brown
  In the infinite background, we make a distinction. The reason for making a distinction is for some intent / value. We can make distinction within distinctions, ad infinitum.
• Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson
  Meaning is developed through existential dilemmas -
  
  • life is a tension between chaos and order
  • chaos is also the source of creativity, of birth of the new
  • we note patterns occurring in our experience of life, patterns that lead to order and keep us from chaos
  • we codify these patterns in myths
  • these myths are the maps we have created over time to understand and deal with the overwhelming complexity of existence.
  • when we dismiss these myths as trivial or meaningless, we miss the deep encoding of human experience that these myths codify 
  • Meaning is critical for a healthy life, e.g., a basic universal income is not healthy unless a person has a meaningful life to which the income is provided.
• Yuval Harari's models of human development in his books Sapiens, Homo Deus, 21 Lessons for he 21st century
  Structural elements of his model:
  • in human evolution there occurred a cognitive revolution which allowed us to create myths
  • these myths allowed us the glue / binding to create groups of greater size (> 100 - 150) than other primates.
  • these larger groups evolved to create artifacts that kept increasing the capabilities and complexity of our societies.
  • Our growing capabilities allow our artifacts / tools (AI, data mining) to know us better than we know ourselves.
  • Entity / groups that know us better than we know ourselves allow us to be hacked. The antidote is to know ourselves better. 
  • The continuing growth of these capabilities will give us "god--like" powers along the lines of Kurzweil's singularity. There is a transcend and include evolution between our biology and our artifacts (bio, nano, ai, ...)
  • Biggest current issues are ecology, war, economy.
• Kahnemann and Tversky's models of human decision making
  Human decision making is flawed in predictable ways
  
  • departures from rationality can be anticipated and specified
  • people attitudes towards risks concerning gains may be quite different from attitudes towards risks concerning losses.
  • people give more attention to worrying about unnatural dangers and not enough to natural dangers or people spend a lot of time preparing for / worrying about situations that rarely arise.
  • Different modes of cognition - fast and slow thinking (foreground/background, reasoning (effortful) / intuitive (spontaneous),   ..)
  • Framing an issue / question determines which choice / path is more likely to be taken
  • 
    
• Dan Ariely's models of human decision making
  We make predictably "wrong" decisions.
• Stephen Wolfram's New Kind of Science and rules and automata
  In A New Kind of Science, Wolfram talks about wanting to study cellular automata (simple rules and the behaviors they generate). He wanted to study them comprehensively. The way he came up with was to create an 8 bit universe and study all possible rules in that universe. This led to some unexpectedly complex behavior. For me, this led to the insight / hypothesis that that is exactly what "infinity" is doing - creating all possible universes to experience all that is possible to experience - heavens, hells, and everything in between and much more than we can begin to articulate.
• Information Theory 
• The Big Five personality model
  
  •  Openness to experience (inventive/curious vs. consistent/cautious). Appreciation for art, emotion, adventure, unusual ideas, curiosity, and variety of experience. Openness reflects the degree of intellectual curiosity, creativity and a preference for novelty and variety a person has. It is also described as the extent to which a person is imaginative or independent and depicts a personal preference for a variety of activities over a strict routine. High openness can be perceived as unpredictability or lack of focus, and more likely to engage in risky behaviour or drug taking. Also, individuals that have high openness tend to lean, in occupation and hobby, towards the arts, being, typically, creative and appreciative of the significance of intellectual and artistic pursuits. Moreover, individuals with high openness are said to pursue self-actualization specifically by seeking out intense, euphoric experiences. Conversely, those with low openness seek to gain fulfillment through perseverance and are characterized as pragmatic and data-driven—sometimes even perceived to be dogmatic and closed-minded. Some disagreement remains about how to interpret and contextualize the openness factor.
  • Conscientiousness (efficient/organized vs. easy-going/careless). Tendency to be organized and dependable, show self-discipline, act dutifully, aim for achievement, and prefer planned rather than spontaneous behavior. High conscientiousness is often perceived as being stubborn and focused. Low conscientiousness is associated with flexibility and spontaneity, but can also appear as sloppiness and lack of reliability.
  • Extraversion (outgoing/energetic vs. solitary/reserved). Energetic, surgency, assertiveness, sociability and the tendency to seek stimulation in the company of others, and talkativeness. High extraversion is often perceived as attention-seeking and domineering. Low extraversion causes a reserved, reflective personality, which can be perceived as aloof or self-absorbed. Extroverted people may appear more dominant in social settings, as opposed to introverted people in this setting.
  • Agreeableness (friendly/compassionate vs. challenging/detached). Tendency to be compassionate and cooperative rather than suspicious and antagonistic towards others. It is also a measure of one's trusting and helpful nature, and whether a person is generally well-tempered or not. High agreeableness is often seen as naive or submissive. Low agreeableness personalities are often competitive or challenging people, which can be seen as argumentative or untrustworthy.
  • Neuroticism (sensitive/nervous vs. secure/confident). Tendency to be prone to psychological stress. The tendency to experience unpleasant emotions easily, such as anger, anxiety, depression, and vulnerability. Neuroticism also refers to the degree of emotional stability and impulse control and is sometimes referred to by its low pole, "emotional stability". High stability manifests itself as a stable and calm personality, but can be seen as uninspiring and unconcerned. Low stability manifests as the reactive and excitable personality often found in dynamic individuals, but can be perceived as unstable or insecure. Also, individuals with higher levels of neuroticism tend to have worse psychological well being.
•  Whole Brain Living by Jill Bolte Taylor about 4 neuroanatomical characters that are in each one of us.
•  Generator functions as the source of the patterns we see in our cultures, societies, us, ...
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Moral Foundations and Developmental Psychology Integration

 Haidt's  Moral Foundations model lays out all the foundational criteria at the same level. However, we can looks at each of the criteria in terms of developmental psychology models. Let take Kohlberg's model:

Criteria	Model
1) Care/harm: stage 6 2) Fairness/cheating: stage 5 3) Loyalty/betrayal: stage 4 4) Authority/subversion: This can be assigned to Stage 1 and stage 4 5) Sanctity/degradation: stage 3 6) Liberty/oppression: Stage 2 this is a first pass at assigning developmental stages to the foundational criteria. Needs a bit more thought and narrative.

Fog of Self

 There is a fog that surrounds us and dims / transforms how we perceive others as well as ourselves. This fog seems to be made up from our own personal history - experiences, imprints, responses, .... This fog is particularly manifest in personal relationships - how we respond and react to each other, trigger each other. It is really difficult to see another clearly through this fog. We don't know what is in another's mind. Why are they doing or saying what troubles us? The signal that comes through our fog of self can invoke our trigger points. The density of the fog can be a measure of how easily we get triggered. Being able to lessen the opacity of that fog can be a lifetime journey.

Free will - an inappropriate question ?

The question of free will has been debated for quite a long time. I think there is a different way to look at the question. The notion of free will assumes a geometry of us existing in a universe / context in which we are separate from that context and have / have not some agency in that context based on criteria such as morality or efficacy or .... If we remove the separation / distinction between us and the universe / context, we are part of the universe / context. With this perspective, the universe is unfolding, emerging new capabilities. We are one of the manifestations of these emerging "features". What is possible to emerge, what is the direction or end point of that emergence? At a certain level of complexity in a system, the only what to know the end point of that system is to let it run its course / unfold. There is no "shortcut" to the final answer. It seems to me that we are in such a complex system. Where this unfolding leads is a "mystery" to be resolved when we / the universe get to that, if ever. Does one ever get to the end of infinity? Is there a final turtle on which all the other turtles are resting?

Rethinking racism

There is a lot of focus on racism these days. My sense is that once you make the racism distinction and then the awareness of that distinction and all actions that follow that awareness reinforce and strengthen that distinction and its harmful side effects.

Simple version of my perspective:

There is a lot of talk about racism these days. I think it is useful to think about what exactly is going on. My sense is that there is a great confusion between morality and biology. Biologically, we have had millions of years of evolution that makes us racist. One can think of racism as grouping with our own kind. What is our own kind can be a very narrow view or a wide view. Those with narrow views are often the ones that survived through our evolutionary history. Now, what is arising in us is a new moral sense. This sense seeks to take a broad view of ‘us’. Where, in the broadest view, ‘us’ is all that exists. When we call someone a racist, we are blaming a person for their biology. It is similar to blaming someone for the color of their skin.

Perhaps, a more useful way to think of racism is how do we find practices, education, rituals, etc., that will help us transcend our biology and allow us to be more in alignment with this new feature we are beginning to get - a greater sense of who “we” are and how we belong to this existence.

Slightly more complex version of my perspective:

One can look at the phenomena we are experiencing from a more systemic, historical, biological, and nuanced perspective. Whenever two groups that are at different levels of development, (e.g., a la integral theory, spiral dynamics, or developmental psychology), the more "advanced" group takes advantage of and "oppresses" the less developed group. This is particularly evident when the less developed group is easily identified - by ethnicity, skin color, language, ... This is a fractal pattern in nature and in biology. The "lesser" is "used" by the more "advanced". The lion culls the herd of the weakest, human societies assign less value (pay) to the less powerful ( minorities, women, ....), ... This is part of our biology. Guilt, shame, and other such responses to our biology miss the larger dynamic. Our moral senses / awareness is growing. My sense is that  a more effective use of this new feature (moral sense) arising in our species, we need to use our reason at a level we are not accustomed to. What is a fair, balanced, organic system? How do we go about creating such a system in spite of our biology ?  How do we get past confusing the familiar with the good and the true?  We are programmed /  imprinted in each of our personal development trajectories to prefer certain patterns of behaviors, tastes of foods, .... And if we are not mindful, we deem lesser that which is not familiar. And if the unfamiliar comes from a "lesser" group, we treat them as "lesser" in thought, if not in action. And we may be called "racist" because of this basic biology that we all have. And when we see these behaviors that may conflict with our newly arising "moral" / "ethical" feature set, we feel guilt for the past and perhaps shame for the society we have created that allows these behaviors. These are not useful ways to feel about our biology. If we want to create a different society, we need all our rational / cognitive capabilities. Guilt and shame, like stress, lowers our reasoning and cognitive capabilities. And we need all our rational capabilities to create a society / civilization that is in alignment with this new moral sense that is arising in us. We also need to keep in mind that our current sense of morality is not a final or absolute morality. It too is an evolving feature.

Here are some dynamics to keep in mind while traversing this dynamic:

• path of least resistance - the familiar, habitual pattern is the path of least resistance. However, it may not lead to good outcomes.
• free will / choice vs hacking - we are programmed biologically, culturally, linguistically, ... How do we begin to see past these programs and make better choices for the ecologies we exist in.
• specific instance vs the class of such behaviors / dynamics - we may think that color or ethnic based discrimination is an entity in itself and needs to be eliminated, while we may be discriminating on the basis of gender, economic status, other status, .... The specific arises out of our biology. This is what we do all the time. We don't yet know how to transcend these basic behaviors / patterns that arise out of our biology.
• flat earth (equal) vs 3d (stages of development) - there is a tendency to think that people are equal in the expression of their behaviors. However, the change / process needed for people at different levels of development is different. We are all at different stages of moral / ethical development and understanding. In addition, our precedences ( a la Haidt's Moral Foundations model) for what is important vary. In short, all "racist" behaviors are not equal. However, we may not have the capacity / capability to know how to handle this complexity.
• asymmetric relationships - we need to be careful where asymmetric power / status relationships may account for the behavior rather than "racism".
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