A few things I would like to share, including why Trump, why Modi and why Brexit?

For the last few months, I have been on a strange trip to uncover the true nature of reality. I do not know why I am doing this -- rather did this because even though I cannot say I haven't found the true nature of reality, I have not changed in any way.

Anyway, I thought I would share my conclusions with all for knowledge is to be shared. Also, I erred -- there has been one change in my life, viz. I meditate now. I do not know if meditation helps -- I have just started it so it might be too early to tell. I will merely reproduce the a few posts I made to a friend via email while discussing my conclusions. They are self explanatory. It is a bit long but perhaps worth it (which is why I post!). It won't change you I think but it might make you wiser. I also want to thank Max for nudging me in the direction of QM.


(you can skip this blue portion)
I believe fiction (and poetry) is a study of patterns, like mathematics, in a way that is so abstract that it transcends the highest of mathematics. I believe it transcends because in order to study, store and recall the images, or patterns, that we create in these arts, our brain requires unimaginable mathematical computation -- one of a scale that mathematics isn't yet sure of how to perform. This is just my personal opinion. 

What Chaitin says is that were it possible for us to distance ourselves from mathematics, and observe the big picture painted by the whole of mathematics, we would see that the picture is neither linear nor homogeneous (Chaitin does this using a cantor set and a prefix free universal Turing machine). The painting would appear to be totally chaotic with no logic whatsoever. This is surprising, for, of all sciences, we had expected this the least from mathematics. So mathematics isn't as logical as we think. This painting would be rubbish actually, were it not for the fact that at the bottom of the picture is scribbled the name of the painter -- Man. What was man thinking, it makes you wonder, when he painted this -- and suddenly the painting becomes invaluable.

So the connection between the author and his art is not always obvious (to say nothing of the connection between mathematics and art). It is not so easy to determine these boundaries. But, this is just a construct, for even though this picture ought to be thought of as existing (as his proof shows), it remains that we cannot recede and see the big picture mathematics creates. 

The connection between the artist and his art, thus remains an open question. We can have prejudices about how the two are connected, but never an objective reason.








(this portion also you can skip)
i never found fractals beautiful. For that matter, I never found leaves, forests, mountains, beach lines or any of nature beautiful -- and they are all fractals of nature. The fact that you do perhaps suggests your brain uses fractal patterns in a special way to store, process and recall images (memory) -- a type of synestheisa (Vladmir Nabokov had this gift). But I might also be exaggerating -- you will have to investigate this on your own.  

I want to comment on your impressions of the physicist Goswami and Hagelin. No one can prove them wrong. There is a hypothesis in Physics that we are Boltzman brains, namely that we are just brains hallucinating the universe. There is another that says the universe is a simulated reality. All these are conjectures that are no different from the ancient thought called solipsism that questions if anything at all exists other than our mind? These cannot be proven wrong for there is "no way" to assert or deny them. But, since Descartes and his cogito ergo sum we have decided to participate in a shared reality. This is a metaphorical way to put things because there was never a baptism to this effect and nor are we periodically quizzed if we still believe in cartesian duality and there is nothing binding to the effect that we cannot question it (after all Descartes questioned his existence only after he had learned how to exist and Science, even today, questions its own and our existence).

My whole point is that everyone is free to reject cartesian duality and embrace unscientific ideas like "Hindu OM is the sound of the universe grunting and grinding" or "we are all thoughts of God." But, in my opinion, rejecting duality and embracing monism is as bad as the converse. The only benefit of embracing duality is that you get to fly in planes without fear. The downside is that we can become accidental benzo addicts. You can even scientifically argue there is no difference between dualism and monism -- true. I regularly rationalize to myself that I want to participate in the psychosis that the maximum subscribe to and even if my instinct is to stand apart from the crowd, I would rather stand apart in that participative reality. Nevertheless, it is true that you can believe Goswami is right and still be a highly participative member of the shared reality -- Steve Jobs was! 

To quote the mathematician-physicist-philosopher Gregory Chaitin (and it is what i believe is the true reality), "things are true for no reason; they’re true by accident. And that’s why you can never find out what’s going on, and you can never prove what’s going on." And I tell myself -- nobody in the world knows what he is doing or what is going on.




(These are the main ideas)
There is a problem the moment we have a "belief," ha ha. This is what Godel Incompleteness or Tarski theorem (Godel rephrased) says. Because we now know, through Math, that our system (logic) is broke and if Physics thinks, "that means dualism is broke... that means monism is correct," then it is again wrong. It does not matter where we start from (as in consciousness creates the universe as opposed to the converse) because we will still end up back where we started (or its logical contradiction cloaked in complex grammar -- same thing really). Godel theorems and Chaitin theorem say that our axioms will be challenged at every step in math and as its grammar gets complicated, we will sometimes except the same axiom rephrased, and sometimes reject it -- there seems to be absolutely no logic as to when we accept and when we reject. And if we change the first axiom (Peano arithmetic is not true OR solipsism is true OR the pen that I hold is the universe and I am its ink), we will still end up where we started, because our grammar (logic) hasn't changed and it cannot change. And if we are always moving in circles then something is horribly wrong because the universe, or our consciousness, is suggesting to us that superdeterminism is real and that, when taken to its logical end, suggests that nothing at all is ever happening in the universe because it can't (think snake eating its tail -- Ouroboros). And if nothing is happening, then yes consciousness is hallucinating. And if consciousness is hallucinating, then where is this consciousness located? So we are back to there being something in nothing, or, as physics says today, a random perturbation in an ocean of tranquility (which is, if you think about it, "something in nothing" rephrased in very complex grammar). BTW, it is not possible for us to deconstruct our propositions to understand its grammar and its first axioms because it requires infinite computation -- but because Chaitin construction is perfectly random, sometimes it is possible to deconstruct, as in the last proposition and in "consciousness creates matter" (rejection of or tautology of first axiom, solipsism is false, depending on the way you read it).  




Math only says that we do not know and we cannot know. If you feel that the poor man on the street exists then he does and there is pain else there isn't -- be suspicious of reason, says Math, to infer that the poor man is a collateral damage of democracy, or the steep end of a binomial distribution and that you have no obligation to help him (our theory of democracy might be returning us a contradiction and we don't know).  Yes, after 52 years I am very angry at myself and at reason for lying to me but I have now come to forgive myself. It is just that my tomorrow will no longer be the same. Reason might lie, but it is the only friend we have in this universe, says Math --  if and only if the universe exists that is. It is just that we should not surrender blindly to our friend. And the way I see it, if I have to trust anyone at all, I will trust only Math. Math will find the truth, and that too using logic, even though it might seem to be taking infinite time. You might find this mathematical model of reality interesting (note: real numbers are amenable to being discrete and continuous, both, in Math): banach-tarski paradox




Quantum computers use electrons and positrons to compute. They, you can say, rock back and forth in time and use 2^n states to compute using n integers and output n integers. They are a frightening concept (as are we because we are, probably, quantum computers too, and we both can create the most elusive thing in physics, time). Because of their lightning speed, QC might be able to compute the Chaitin number for the first few digits at every fork. But then the problem is that the universe is finite whereas our brain is computationally infinite. Even if we use two electrons to compute, we need a huge house to house them in (Physics says the further we go down to observe and manipulate, the more energy we need as per the equations -- example Large Hadron Collider). So we will quickly run out of matter in the universe as we compute more and more digits of Chaitin number using QC. Even speed, it seems has a limit and the limit is our brain! We can exceed the speed of light but not the speed of our brain it seems. Anyway, a Chaitin tomorrow will find a solution I believe. 




By the bye, Chaitin did approach Wheeler to enquire if uncertainty was incompleteness and Wheeler approached Godel and Einstein spoiled the party in Wheeler's opinion, LOL. The anecdote is googleable. Chaitin did not persist after that -- he was a small fry among big fish -- but then Bell's theorem is the equivalent of Godel theorem in Physics I think and I am sure Chaitin the Physicist must have had this at the back of his mind and which might be why he did not persist. Chaitin did speak to Godel once, on phone, but about his own theorem, and Godel gave him time, but, as fate would have it, Godel did not turn up on the appointed day because it was snowing in Princeton.












This reminds me... as the story goes, Einstein and Godel were great friends. Einstein accompanied Godel for his citizenship interview in Princeton (or NYC),  and when the immigration officer asked Godel what he thought of America, Godel started saying that he had found a contradiction in the American constitution, that could be exploited to usurp power. Einstein had to jump from his seat to shut Godel up and the immigration officer, pretending to have heard nothing, went about routinely stamping the documents. So, it is inevitable that the executive will keep adding laws to the constitution that contradict the constitution, from time to time. If the constitution says all men are born equal, then it is a matter of pages, before we run into an article that follows it, or is incorporated centuries later as a bill, that states, some men are not born equal (they are born with billion dollar inheritances) and after that, yet again, that even such men are equal (90% estate tax). When the contradictions or tautologies will be adopted is never known -- they appear to follow no logic... just as they follow none in the theorems and postulates man adopts in mathematics from time to time. It is so random that it is possible that the next set of theorems and hypotheses might come from Sub Saharan Africa, and in a dense bundle, as once did from the areas of Auschwitz (Godel, Einstein and several others). 




Because Godel did not have internet, he never could share what he thought of the social sciences (of course he was aware of the repercussions of his theorem -- as the above citizenship anecdote shows). And because he was a mathematician, he would never generalize as loosely as we do. The story goes that Wittgenstein wrote to him saying that his incompleteness theorems were rubbish because language contained epistemological truths. Godel angrily wrote back saying that his theorems were about a very specific area in mathematics called finitary number theory dealing with permutations and combinations and not about the philosophy of language! And he added that Wittgenstein might stop misunderstanding his theorems if he attempted to understand them first!

Typo: 

So, it is inevitable that the executive legislative will keep adding laws

I should also add that I imagine I am a bit different now. I realize that I cannot be different if I cannot imagine it. And even though I might be sitting in front of the computer as I type this, I imagine I won't be for long and it is also true that a week ago I was not here but there, in the fields, with little kids that are being denied education because of the failure of reason. If every person is "good" for only tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow will be a good day and then the future will always be good. But, like bitcoin, we might be still asking what this "theory" is backed by? Harvard? Amartya Sen? Mother Teresa? If it is not backed by something, it must be worthless. We forget that we are backed by our PRAAN which is backed by our BODY which is backed by our PRAAN... which is backed by God. Of course, God is backed by us and we are backed by our body which is backed by praan... everything has a backing in this world except those things we wish to ignore or that does not appear in the NYT headlines. Even Jesus was betrayed by his friends and when he realized his friends were also his worst enemies, it was too late for the crucifix was ready, and then does a world of living ever take a dying man's words seriously? 

Neuroscience says that experiments in humans show that the limb moves before the thought occurs in the brain. It seems consciousness is indeed a hard problem for everyone believes it exists but where does it exist if it does? Neuroscience says that because their experiments were conducted in a reality created by human brains, they cannot affirmatively state if we have free will. They feel we might as well toss a coin to answer that question. It is again a Godel limitation in work, this time in neuroscience. The way I see it, I am not going to wait till a last supper, as Jesus did, to find out if the neuroscientists are right. I will live with the possibility that my friend reason could lie -- it is still my friend though, as are my kids and family who always come first. But I am a bit wiser and only a bit willing to be good.

Good can only be defined by the democracy. The democracy must vote through a block chain and determine the boundaries of reality that we consume in the newspaper every day. If everyone does their job a little better, the world will be a better place.

The trouble with reason is that even if someone told me my future, in infinite detail, for the next one week, and challenge me to change my future, I would do the exact same thing for the next one week, but with full free will and reason instead and insist that the glass was half full when the soothsayer would insist it had become half empty. It is not possible to be but a man. If I think reality is inverted and I stand straight up, then it is not a question of who is right, but how can i know it isn't inverted and I am upside down? ROFL. 

“Religion and humor are incompatible. . . . Humor: the divine flash that reveals the world in its moral ambiguity and man in his profound incompetence to judge others; humor: the intoxicating relativity of human things; the strange pleasure that comes of the certainty that there is no certainty. -- Milan Kundera. 

It is hard, says science, to imagine that there exists no God. But, just because science says so, it does not follow that science believes God exists. 

The biologist says that it is impossible that man could have evolved without a divine ordering. Mere random probability is not enough to explain how chance favoured man's evolution. It looks as if the outcome was already envisaged in the rapid random mutations. Mere natural selection could not have created man. Or, else, there must be extra, unseen dimensions that hold the key to how evolution progressed. We have perhaps lost visibility, he feels, to 80 percent of the universe, as the physicists have, to dark matter (and energy) that we cannot query.

The neuroscientists too are bewildered. Says the neuroscientist Semir Zeki -- unless the physicists are able to demonstrate that the Big Bang and singularity, phenomenon that are not observable, are derivable by a logic different from ours but using our observations of the cosmos, it must be assumed that a significant part of the universe, as perceived by our brains, is constructed by our brains and not the universe. 

It is an eerie coincidence that an abstract subject, like mathematics, that uses entirely abstract objects and operators, with its own platonic heaven of abstract objects, follows the same trajectory that physics, which deals entirely with nature, does. There isn't a mathematical model that physics hasn't used (with small exceptions). The fact that physicists like Newton were also mathematicians, partly explains this. But mere random probability is not sufficient to explain how a major body of mathematics would invent exactly that, which physics would soon need. It seems Ramanujan was a string theorist who traveled back in time to seed the mathematical model of his own discipline.