fractal derivation of π!!

This is astounding, in my mind at least.

Basically, the table shows an approach to the point (-0.75,0) from above, that is (-0.75,X) as X tends to zero. It’s the bit of the Mandelbrot Set that connects the main bulb to the circular bulb on the left. The bizarre bit is, as we approach this point from above, the proximity to it derives π. That is, as we zoom in to this point, we get a more accurate enumeration of π itself.

I’ve been wondering about this for years, and was about to insert it into the book as a potential future result — and it has already been done.

Check out the original post, which records the history of it. Not sure what the purpose of contacting him is, but on the back of a conversation with Mariana Soffer, I’m thinking of periodicity of coding structures, conflating code processes into dynamic code elements; think animated gif or animate icon, but applied to code language itself.

nen and the hall of mirrors

While reviewing my experience of math and buddhism, an interesting guy named Brendan used ‘nen’ to evaluate where I was in terms of my understanding of mind. I admitted I hadn’t heard of the term, and he then sent me a pdf of this book, Zen Training Methods and Philosophy. Here is my initial and immediate response of my live reading of Chapter 10, ‘Three Nen-actions and one-eon Nen’.

Generally, wrt nen… reflections, meta, the hall of mirrors, and stabilising a third stable state. Ie, not getting lost in the reflections.

compounding temporal experience

The writer is talking about this in terms of sequential time, hence the level of complexity that quickly arises as observations compound reflections. It is this compounding across a period of time that gives rise to higher levels of mind, or consciousness. I am not sure if the nen that are talked of are these ‘compounding’ mental functions, or a complete and artificial simplification of the model of mind, something we tend to do when modelling mind.

I haven’t thought about this ‘compounding’, or more inaccurate though perhaps more resonant in the reader’s mind, ‘compressive’, function of the mind. When my mind echoes this response as I read, I am aware that I am not forcing previous thought onto this reading, but that whatever comes out changes in relation to what is read. This is live reading. I don’t go back chasing after the ‘accuracy’ or ‘truth’ of previous thought. I don’t have anything ‘fixed’ in my mind. It is all variable. My model of mind is plastic. It takes the shape of what whatever is concurrent, like most all of my interaction.

subjective calculus

From my limited experience, and going on a massive leap of intuition, I have applied calculus to subjective time. That is, meditation is the experience of subjective reality as time tends to zero, subjectively speaking. Thus, I have mapped arising and dissolution of thought to mathematical functions. This chapter is examining the thoughts that arise in the micro-second window in a mind which is at rest. That is, a rather sophisticated mind, like a calm lake, a flat horizon, and thus witnessing the arising of a thought/feeling/observation/stimulus-response.

Most of my experience is in the storm between people, and this level of sophistication of mind is seldom operational in presence with others. First Question: are you capable of this level of flatness or clarity of mind, when engaging others? I initially meant this as a question for Brendan, but it holds true for anyone reading this.

The article goes on to reveal this compounding effect, and the continuity of mind that is composed of previous states of mind and new observations as they happen, and the state of mind we have just mentioned which is to nullify observation and pacify mind through ‘mu’. Sweet.

It is next to impossible for a person who is not trained in zazen to throw himself voluntarily into the condition of listening itself.

Beautiful. The next wrt music, is lovely:

The sound itself has passed away, but it is held in this present instant in its living phase.

fractal consciousness

Can’t help but read this as an attempt to capture the fractal aspect of mind, first in its fractal compounding into the moment, and then as the releasing or decompression of the moment into memory and living presence.

An observation: there is still no mention of ‘pre-conscious’ and ‘post-conscious’ processes. The writer collapses back to a timeless description. Is this because of the nature of what is being talked of, or because our means of communication, the model of mind — in the act of verbalisation and representation — simplifies, reduces and thus we confuse the model for our own reality. Hence the need for the Reflexive Imposition.

Incredible attempt, though. Absolutely incredible. I am looking forward to more.

mapping subjective experience and objective experimentation

Mapping of nen and short and long term memory as understood by western psychology and objective experimentation. Because the writer is now weaving between internal subjective experience and external objective experiment, he adds a speculation, which is rather sensitive.

The feeling of the continuity of our ego is also brought about by the identification of mood, which continues to be felt at every moment and has been handed down to this moment.

I call this the momentum of mind, the various quanta of mind that persists through time, eg the personality of the person. I’m loving this. I think this material could be lip-jived onto music like the other material and can be very useful for long-term exploration. There is definitely enough substance here which should be verified by internal experience. Second Question: Have you validated this speculation, regarding the process of long term memory, mood, and self-identification?

half-way through and my mind is tired

This kind of material is enlightening, but tricky to sustain. There is freshness upon reading. A liveness, as mind reformulates integrates. The medium of a book is strange, amazing and yet dangerous. I am aware that my reading is occurring in the resonance chamber of my own mind. To keep up this level of freshness, is tricky.

So, I shall leave it for now. This material is high quality and dense. There is primary understanding, and as with any modelling of mind and its representation, we can slide too easily into what we think, object of mind. To remain fresh, in such a medium of writing, is demanding. I look forward to following up the second part of this, though it may be some time before I can return to it. I may benefit from engagement with live mind, eg Brendan’s. I hold more stock in live mind, in the space between, than in the medium of words caught in books, regardless of how incredible this book is, and undoubtedly, the mind that composed these words.

Incredible book, and gratitude to the author and to Brendan, to the accident of self that enables my mind to appreciate even 1% of this, and to those who make progress in this exploration.

not good

There’s good, there’s bad, and there’s not good.

When someone does something good, we may appreciate this. We can map it with the positive number +6 say.

When someone does something bad, intentionally, we may ascribe a negative value, -6 say.

There is, however, a grey space, when it is ‘not good’. We might represent this with ~6.

What does this mean? To do something which is ~6 intentionally. That is, they are doing something in ‘negative space’, in absence. It is not that they are doing anything to you directly, but there is a detrimental concurrent effect. Eg, giving a biscuit to one daughter and not the other. The kid who gets the biscuit is happy, the other is not. It is not that the parent did anything wrong, it is that they simply did not do something with the second daughter — did not give them a biscuit, in this case. Not bad, but certainly, undeniably, not good.

what’s the problem?

The chances are, most actions going on in the world, at the inter-personal level, are not meant badly. People do not set out with negative intent. Very often, they set out with positive intent. They start out with a +6 intention.

Same could be said for scientific solutions, and indeed most of social evolution. Most people mean well, and seldom is there negative intent.

What is characteristic in our social dynamics is that this ~6 is interpreted as -6. The ‘not good’ is interpreted as ‘bad’. This induces what I have called over the years, ‘oppositional state’. When two people seem to be on opposite sides of an argument, or a conflict, when there was no original intention of negativity on either side. And, sadly, it is oppositional state that grounds most of our institutions, from politics and law, to science and religion. And it is also at the basis of most of our internal mental problems.

So, this ~6 is interpreted as -6, and then this escalates until we have a breakup of our relationship, brothers estranged, fueds between families, and even international wars.

War, or inability to communicate, is not the problem. Obviously -100000 is not a good situation, but these explosions result from sparks. The problem is the mis-interpreting of ~6 as -6.

what’s the solution?

The obvious solution is multiply by -1.

This is a mental trick described in XQ elsewhere. Basically, it means reframe. A broken leg may enable a period of peace where you can get all that reading you’ve been postponing over the year. Raining? Good for the plants.

In terms of inter-personal dynamics, it is a matter of translating a negative intention towards one, into a positive one. The multiplication by -1 can occur when one is in rather aggravating circumstances, such as in math classes while doing supply.

The best place, however, is to convert the negative that arises in the mind. So, it is the interpretation of negativity that is multiplied by -1. So, when I got a feeling that my friend was doing well and there was the hint of jealousy, by thinking of the positive version of this, I managed to ascribe a positive result to this feeling.

So, when one perceives an apparent -6, simply multiply it by -1, think the opposite of it, and you are good to go. What was +6, initially interpreted as ~6 and then -6, gets converted back into +6.

Basically, it works.

the problem with the solution

Multiplying by -1 works with simple negatives. It doesn’t really work on ~6 directly. So, when faced with something that is ‘not good’ but we haven’t taken this to be ‘bad’, what is the appropriate conceptual/emotional response?

If we borrow from math again, we might consider multiply by i, the square root of -1. Something I have been hovering around for a few years now. But what does this mean?

So, when we have some situation where we don’t understand someone else’s behaviour, and it may appear to be ‘not good’, what is our response?

My basic response is to ask, in order for the other person to confirm that it is indeed +6. If I establish that actually there is an aspect of their behaviour which is detrimental, ie -6, to others in the classroom or myself, then we have an opportunity to think of something else that does not have these negative concurrencies. Ie something other than +6, perhaps +9 or +4.

If they insist on going ahead, then they are willfully perpetrating -6, knowingly.

Another response is humour, I guess, to play with the ~6. Or ignore it, and see what the result of the +6 activity is.

the subtle problem with the solution

This is the real problem, when someone insists on perpetrating what they think is +6, when they know there is danger of taking a -6 interpretation, ie it is ~6.

Now, the emotional response is to something that did not happen. It is not rightly -6, because there is no negative intention behind it.

When someone perpetrates -6, and they know it, then you have to suffer it. Someone means harm. They don’t care, they are going to continue. In a good world, it may be a surgeon making the required cut, or a parent who is aggressively pulling the child away from an on-coming car. The results will have to prove whether the action in the end is good or not, even if they are not perceived. In the first case, the abscess has been removed, health is restored; in the second, the car is gone and the child does resents the aggressive pull.

When someone insists on perpetrating ~6, knowing there is a good and a bad side to it, things get more complicated. The child observes the parent who is giving the biscuit to their sister. They balance on the knife-edge. They do not fall for -6, and they know it is not +6 at least with respect to themselves. Here is the opportunity for the mind to jump to an other level. And we have the response of suppression, ie resentment, or celebration, ie trust.

That’s all I’ve got at the moment. Still not clear. But definitely in the ballpark.

mandelbrot set as addition squared

I think this makes sense.

disappearing dimensionality

I’ve been staring at this for a while. Looking at how 1 has the same value as 1 squared and has the same value as 1 cubed, etc.

1^n = 1

At least in terms of integers. IF we ignore the dimensionality of it. But that’s what’s annoying me. Since, obviously, a line of length one is different from a square which is different from a cube. 1^billion is a pretty dense multidimensional space. But when we just look at the integer value, it is just one.

When we multiply it, even by a tiny amount, the power function takes our number to zero if lower than one, or infinity if higher than one — both at an incremental rate.

eg x2: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16…

eg x1/2: 0.5, 0.25, 0.125…

But look at what is happening. I can understand that if I double a length, I get four times the area, eight times the volume. When we half the length, we get a quarter of the area, and eight of the volume. But don’t you think that an eight of the volume of anything has got to be bigger than half a line? Surely half a line is smaller in some way than a quarter of a square?

When we pull the same trick of forgetting about the dimensionality, by reducing the multiplier, we simply get smaller integers.

I sit and stare at things like this for a while. I stay awake in bed, thinking about this.

mandelbrot set

The Mandelbrot set is defined by the following iterative function:

z -> z^2 + c

It should read z_subscript_n+1 = z_subscript_n_^2 + c. That is, the next value of z will be the last one squared with c added to it.

I re-examined this, because it is somehow related to the mystery of disappearing dimensionality.

Let’s take c to be 1 (on the complex plain, c = 1 +0i).

We assume that we start with z = 0, so our first z = 0 + 1. Actually I am not sure if this is the first, or not. But after this, it get’s easy.

first z = 0^2 + 1 = 1

second z = 1^1 + 1 = 2

third z = 2^2 + 1 = 5

fourth z = 5^2 + 1 = 26

And so on… rapidly escaping to infinity. Which is why we don’t see much around the point (1,0) on mandelbrot set.

what’s the function again?

What are we actually doing in the iterative function that generates the Mandelbrot set?

It looks like we square then add to get each new version of z. This is how the transformation is written. But is there another way of looking at it?

Well, we add c (the original number) to a square of the previous addition.

The original script emphasises the function of squaring then adding. But in iteration, it doesn’t really matter what order it is, since it is squaring and adding, squaring and adding, squaring and adding and so on.

We could just as easily say that we are adding and squaring, adding and squaring, and so on.

This gives a slightly different sense, and can be written as follows:

z_subscript_n+1 -> (z_subscript_n + c)^2

The numbers that come out of this transformation are:

first z = (0 + 1)^2 = 1

second z = (1 + 1)^2 = 4

third z = (4 + 1)^2 = 25

fourth z = (25 + 1)^2 = etc

Notice our answers from the other way of parsing the operation are hidden in our calculations within the brackets, ie 1, 2, 5, 26…

So what, you might say.

Well,  the Mandelbrot set is the set of complex numbers that do not escape to infinity, and gives us the nice shape on the complex plain. We focus on the static numbers. Does 1 escape? Yes, so it is not in the set. Does 1+i escape? Yes, and so on.

However, in our alternative way of parsing the iterative function, we see that it is not the static number which is iterated, but the addition. It is the operation of ‘addition’ that is being squared repeatedly. Without that little addition being iterated, we wouldn’t get the fractal quality.

This is how the fractal is created. Without the addition, we simply get a unit circle. I think.

conclusion

There isn’t much of a conclusion in these explorations. Perhaps only the pleasure of coming up with an alternative interpretation of something I have been looking at for the last twenty-five years. That’s a buzz in itself. And the fact I don’t think anyone else on the planet is poking around this material in this way. Applying XQ scrutiny to math.

The implications are… well I don’t know. We will see if there are any.

It’s like teasing apart a structure, and by doing so, a little at a time, over the years, we have enough flexibility, enough alternatives, that new associations are made that depart from a path that math has taken us historically.

What would I like to see?

Well, there is something about dimensionality appearing in the Mandelbrot set. The increased detail, with a Mandelbrot zoom, indicates something about dimension. And this zoom is performed by increasing the accuracy of the initial number, the number of decimal places. What appears to be in the Mandelbrot set at 0.5 + 0.3i or whatever, turns out to be actually not in it at 0.55 + 0.30i. The precision, gives us the interesting boundary.

This fractal boundary is in the depth of the number of decimal places. There is uncertainty there. We don’t know after 1,000 decimal points for some points, whether it will be in the Mandelbrot Set or not. This is remarkable. It is like saying there is depth between 0.5 and 0.6, and it is not regular. Peaks and troughs of depth. Between numbers.

I am more interested in the movement through a Mandelbrot Set, rather than a straight dive, which I shall cover in another post. Movement beyond arithmetic iteration, or scale. Movement ‘across’ the set. I am thinking about the bulbs on the set, and the ravines.

The Mandelbrot set is too… static. I think there is something that we may find that is dynamic in it. And I would like to tease this out.

Why?

Because I think it is related to the shape of consciousness.

therapeutic math

Recently, I have had the opportunity of experiencing hell. My previous offerings (2020worldpeace, eco^2) seemed abstract or detached, but they weren’t, they just weren’t down and dirty with emotional problems. Now, I might be able to provide a means which may actually prove directly useful in our daily lives. Transforming negative emotional states, as well as dealing with psycho-active agents which cause us so much internal and social turmoil.

When I first explored XQ way back in 2008 in Thailand, I wrote a section which suggested that if the premise is correct — that there is a subjective side to math — then the act of performing certain math actually performs certain processes in the mind which may be useful to us within our internal mental space. I think I am approaching a time where this exploration is now possible. Surviving hell has its benefits.

I have finished (messily) three movements of a book I am writing called GIFT, and approaching the final movement. As with all my books, there is always something dramatic at the end. I set up up the book as I write, and create a mental space at the end which is entirely empty, hoping that inspiration will provide a fitting conclusion. Not so much a logical conclusion, but an emergent one.

With GIFT, the narrative is about an older man who is living in a period of time where society is approaching a massive global transformation, of which he is part. I do not know how this is to be written, the content, the drama. I do not know what format, first person, third, whether to write more dialogue, or to simply describe. I simply do not know.

However, because of my personal relationship, the hell I have been going through, I have undergone a form of transformation, and though math has been partly responsible, it is not entirely clear. I have had some projections into the verbal field, noticing how our mental environment matches our ecological one, or how self-denial matches our social-denial. But when I start to describe them, because of their nature, they tend to multiply in word and story. Hence, the desire to capture it in concise mathematical form.

Funnily enough, I started to write an article which goes into multiplying by negative one as well as multiplying by i, the square root of negative one, but I thought this material was too much for my 2020worldwalk blogpost and transferred it here. I continued writing it, but got bogged down in detail and have not returned to it yet.

I simply wanted to write this post to indicate where I am at the moment. Midway between a social, verbal description, and an XQ mathematical description.

XQ — a rigorous path to personal and social happiness!

And if I manage it, then not only will it align to my current mental trajectory, but it will fulfil my intuition of a therapeutic maths, as well as provide people with direct testable material which will not only improve the quality of their own lives, but will naturally lead to us all improving the quality of our lives collectively, globally.

But these are just words, not fitting for this blog. What is needed is math.

actual serendipitous alignment

Having met Alan Raynor through Leon (who wrote this post) on an email engagement only a few days ago, and getting a fortuitous recommendation from John Wood of Metadesign to learn about Alan’s Inclusionality theories, Alan kindly shared his ideas on relativity which, as far as I can tell, is an attempt to include consciousness in the frame of reference.

As I write this, I have got as far as reading Newton’s famous equation, which Alan uses as a natural culmination of Parmenides’s discrete world view.

F = ma

and I simply translated this in terms of money rates as defined by mttp. That is, acceleration, rate of change of distance over a duration, as rate of change of money over a duration, for example, £100-day per week. Think of a bundle of people who are engaged with these different rates of moneyflow, multiply them by the number of people, and you get some notion of the force of a social movement.

(Why movement? Because my mind has just got off the back of engaging Indy with respect to Jeremy’s work with Purpose.com, who happens to be co-founder of avaaz. This video is a rather good example of the level of self-disclosure required for our new global “leaders”.)

Of course, the math of real cases is more complex than F=ma, and so is one where eg 50 people were working at different rates. F, in this case, would still give some idea of the “force” or “momentuum” of the movement. So far, the momentuum for ecological economics is around £10-hour per week, and it ends in a season. That’s barely a pulse. We were almost close to £100-day per week for a season, which starts to become reasonable, and ideally, and healthy, when it is five £100-day’s per week — for one individual.

And this is to talk about money. If we shift to subjective enumeration, where people are giving values for each other’s contributions, what kind of calculations can we derive regarding the “force” or “health” of a movement? Will increases and decreases of subjective enumeration derive patterns that we can study with standard mathematical tools? Will new laws emerge that capture how realistic a movement (or a project) is, the required “energy” to manifest results? Undoubtedly, in my mind.

(John, as you can see from his metadesign article based on our event, has been considering the required parameters for synergy to occur, but I feel he is jumping the gun slightly. I need to have more obvious palpable results, like the results that Jeremy has produced. Or, more like action cycles that derive some numbers in terms of moneyflow and subjective enumeration. That is, I would rather base analysis on what works. Hence my customary call to ensure we have moneyflow while we examine these equations, rather than attempt to derive them sui generis.)

…

I have now finished reading the article, and it ends with with rather loud statement:

Space is an intangible presence, with qualities vital to the very possibility of cosmic evolution. SPACE HAS
INFLUENCE, which INDUCES ENERGETIC FORM INTO CIRCULATORY FLOW.

I am looking forward to reading Alan’s rather longer paper written with others, where I hope there are attempts to mathematise his thinking. I expect to find some material which relates to material I have dubbed XQ, observations on how math needs to change to capture the kind of thinking he is demonstrating.

And just in case anyone reading this thinks this is all pie-in-the-sky thinking, Alan has conducted courses at Bath University where the effects on his students have been quite remarkable; here’s a video of some “results”. That is, his engagement with real people is the proof of his thinking, much like my experience with kids has influenced my thinking. It is grounded in inter-subjective reality.

The application of this thinking may prove to be substantial in terms of global movements, ala Jeremy’s Avaaz organisation, but I am personally interested in getting proof of process not only in classes (something we have achieved already), but in business. I am specifically interested in getting proof at the bleeding edge of business, in sales, marketing and advertising. I have met with some remarkable people, like Ken Dixon from Newhaven Agency, and if we get proof there, not only will we unlock unlock a source of moneyflow from companies, we will provide companies with a new business methodology which will greatly accelerate all the good work being conducted by theorists, educationalists, entrepreneurs, environmentalists, and everyone attempting to avert the very real ecological disaster we are facing.

If I had a wish in my life, right now I’d use it. I wish that all the players mentioned in this post aligned sufficiently strongly to be able to… if we were mountain climbing, it would be putting in the effort to reach the next camp, higher than any of us have so far been. A stable point which may enable others to reach without too much difficulty. A vantage point that allows a clearer view of the terrain around, the socio-economic and historical-political position we are in. And a point from which we may progress onwards. It is as if this point is the first above the cloud-line. What might this mean in the real world? An algorithm? An operational model which enables a group of people to achieve something remarkable, the first manifestation of the “confluence model”? I do not know. This is what my wish might be.

math of social unity

An article was written back in 2004 or 5 entitled “the algebra of world peace”. It was a thought experiment which posited the psychology we must have should we achieve a global sustainable, environmentally sound, political and economically stable world situation — short-hand — world peace.

If one’s mind rebels against this term, world peace, consider the necessity for us all to be involved in a sustainable solution, like all members of a family need to be part of the running of a household (however useful or not any individual’s contribution is). That is, the following thought-experiment is predicated on the acknowledgement of social unity.

belief and probability of social unity

For social unity to occur in the future at some point in time, steps would have to have been taken. And for a step to occur, someone has to actually believe it enough to act. Does the state of belief in a future situation improve the chance of it happening?  Clearly the intention to write or read this article improves the chance of it happening, but for more complicated social events, it can get very easily become impossible to tell.

Applying numbers to this is tricky. Let’s say the chance goes from 0 to 1; 1 in the sense that the situation actually occurs by a certain date whether it is the year 3000, 2100 or even as early as 2030, and 0 before we had any idea and it was inconceivable. In a personal sense, 1 means that an individual now believes it enough to action it, and 0 in the sense the individual just didn’t think it was possible at all.

The experiment further examined who would recognise the truth of this mathematically, and those who believe because there are already thousands if not millions who believe by 2020.

The thought experiment took the direction of examining whether one’s belief influences the chance of it happening, and recognising that it does, the reason and logic (whatever any other aspect of the mind comes up with that is purely based on scathing scepticism or sheer disbelief!) to recognise the efficacy of belief. If we accept that sustainability occurs at some point in the future, then we must recognise the necessity to believe that it will happen. The probability might be incredibly slight to start with, with less than a fraction of a percent in 2000, but this must increase until it happens at the set point when it actually is attained. In this way, we overcome ego with reasoning. This is no longer a matter to argue, this is a simple matter of logic and probabilities.

thought experiment 2.0

The new bit to this thought experiment now is a calculation that gives us the estimate of 1 million believers by 2020. There are various ways this million might propogate, for example a simple doubling. Let’s say each person can invite one other person per year, say I invited you this year of 2012. The following year,  we could invite one each, thus there would be four people who believed for the next year, and so on. How long would it take before this simple doubling process could result in about 8 billion people being true believers, the required amount — the entire population of the planet — for the sustainable solution to actually work. With this doubling pattern, world peace would occur around 2045, hitting a million believers by 2022. So, with this pattern, we fall short.

So, where did I get my estimate for a million for 2020? Well, instead of inviting just one person, what happens if we invite two in the following year, three in the succeeding, and reaching a maximum of eight people each, before descending until we all only invite one other again in our last year. In this last case, a year before we are all united in our belief (which is logically derived), this would be half the population of the world, let’s say 4 billion. If you run the calculation based purely on this basic pattern(and we forgo any potential detail of birth and death rates, and the number of people who are aware but who do not follow through and so on), we pass from about half a million to a million and a half during 2020. This means we’d reach the total population of the world by 2027. Which gives us all — everyone on the planet acting in concert — three years to sort out a sustainable global situation by implementing an agreed solution.

Forget about what the solution is, for now. That’s a whole other kettle of fish. What we can say is that the solutions will become more apparent as we progress, as more of us believe and work together, trying out various social and political and economic solutions. Or, we might be able to apply the same pattern above — we could say that it only requires one of us on the planet in 2012 to have the solution, and if only one other gets it this year, and then another two get it in 2013, and so on, until everyone has got it by 2027.

So this extension of the thought experiment is an improvement from the original. With this simple numerical pattern — based on people inviting only one then incrementing this until in 2019 we are inviting eight people each then back down to one — this one simple behavioural rule is more precise than when I first came up with the thought experiment in 2004 or 5. Things have got more accurate than at the turn of the millennium when I started thinking about 2020 in this way. That is, my mind is manifesting the truth that the solutions will become more apparent and accurate as we progress.

um… why is 2020 important?

Back then, I just intuited that the year 2020 will attract some attention as we get closer to it purely because it is associated with opticians 20/20 vision. We can hook all our visions of what we may achieve by 2020, and as we approach it, those visions that seem more accurate demand more of our attention. It is like an evolutionary improvement as our ideas fit the conditions — given the fact that our thinking and belief about it actually influences the outcome.

I originally thought we could have achieved the sustainable situation by 2024 once we got the conditions for 2020 right, the first of which was that everyone was aware that 2020 was the year for us to realistically change our behaviour as a whole species and sort out the environmental mess. For us to have got to consensus by 2020, we must have worked out quite a lot of the problems. Totally unrealistic, of course, given our current conditions in 2012 — but back then at the start of the millennium, it was just the start of the mainstream internet and we have seen massive changes in the world since then, just not enough.

Now, given the numbers we have come up with and revising our projections, we only need 1,000,000 people by 2020, and that is based on only one person reading this and getting it this year. Getting it logically. Getting it in a way which makes them equal with me, that we both see the logic and reasoning — though more like purpose. Normal logic is timeless, it is applied to statements and facts, whereas our application of logic has direction in the future, and we have reasoned that belief is a necessary function for sustainability to occur. This logic with future orientation is a vector. We can understand this vector as purpose, a very human quality, motivation and understanding.

why it gets better with time

The next improvement to this thought experiment will perhaps give us more accurate maths as we logically explore the space.

And while the maths gets more accurate, and the numbers grow, and more minds are aligning to solutions, and aligning to hit a million by 2020 on purely logical grounds, after that, there will be plenty of people who get it because the scale of the movement is so impressive. That is, they do not respond to logic, but more the enthusiasm of others.

As a consequence, there will be plenty of people who hear about it have not seen the logic of it. Thus, we must get even better at ensuring we present the best logic and the best case studies as the remainder of the population join in, until by 2027 the most sceptical of us, perhaps half the planet, are presented with incontrovertible truth (based on logic that is, and perhaps the social fact that half the population of the planet believe it which alone might be enough to turn the most sceptical of us). And so it will have been wise for us to have reduced the number we invite as the years go on so that we can concentrate more on the few left, so that we only have one and only one invitation open to each and everyone one of us in the year 2027. We have a year to convince them using all our logic, all our experience, and all the evidence that half the planet are behind it.

We will have got pretty good at it by then. We will be feeling more confident with ourselves. Our sense of trust will be something we feel daily, with the people we meet, the people we live with, our neighbours, our colleagues, our partners. A great sense of family will occur, much stronger than anything anyone has ever felt at such a scale — more than the communist revolutions, more than the muslim or christian movements. It is not based on religious belief (other than we recognise one another as equivalent human beings), or political belief (beyond recognising the necessary polity of “all of us on this planet” for our solution to be valid), or economic for that matter (though we have recognised on the path of ecological economics that it is the equal distribution of money that is essential not goods) — these qualities of belief may help, but essentially it is rooted  firmly in logic. And this logic is not based on words, but the minimal language that is number, arithmetic, mathematics.

seeking a reasonable economic projection

Turning our attention to economics, since this is a blog about ecological economics after all, then we might expect the next significant revision in accuracy will be the economics for this to make sense, financially. First psychologically (or religiously if one wishes to locate it there), second the mathematical limit (or politically recognising humanity as a unity), and now economically.

We do not wish to steal the thunder from some future genius, perhaps the genius who reads this article one day. Suffice to evoke from my mind at least, that we will have transitioned from money (an abstracted number, the entire current economy being based on this unidimensional, impersonal measure, and mistakenly coupled to things) to subjective enumeration. The future economy of 2027 has had its operating system radically rewritten; it is a mathematical experiment where “money” has become “well behaved” as it has been coupled to time.; the future economy of 2027 is based on subjective enumeration, with only relative values in play. And for this to occur, money has shifted from operating as it does in the current economy of 2012 (which we have evolved over the millennia), to be operating as it does in the future economy of 2027.

What about 2026? What percentage of the economy will be using money as we are used to now, and what percentage using it in this alternative way? Half? Could we apply the same math pattern as we have above? If we did (and I think this indicates how clumsy we are now, but hopefully in a few years someone smart enough will come up with a better set of numbers), and we use $18 trillion for global trade in 2011, how much would we need to be playing with in 2012?

Whatever our answer, it needs to be reasonable. What equation to determine the ratio of  “old cash” for “new credits” might be continuously reasonable from now till 2027? One early observation I had while exploring ecological economics is the turning point of 50% where half the trade on the planet is done through mttp and dmp and the other financial protocols, ie manifesting the new economic entity. And if this is not critical, it may at least be remarkable. Apple may be the world’s most volumous business in a few decades with $84 billion reserve, but it does not compare with the US or other major countries with $1.4 trillion exports and $2.2 trillion imports for 2011. For the economic entity to operate with 50% of global trade, perhaps $30 trillion by then would be… awesome!

Perhaps scary for some, but only if thought of in terms of competition and aggression — if we are thinking sustainable and peaceful, it means we are all involved, which means monopoly in a collaborative world is a good thing. Which makes world peace, and this thought experiment, and these number games, awesome!

All that we need to wait for is for people to recognise the logic involved, the math, and some time soon, the economics, in order to believe it.

how much belief is needed?

Looking back at our simple table, we start off in 2012 with a number 0.547. This is the number of people who need to believe it in 2012 to start it all off. What could this number mean?

Playfully, we could suggest that what this means is that a person needs to be 54.7% certain this makes sense. It’s not 0%, and its not even 50/50. A person needs to be more than 50% certain to act on it. So, if it makes more sense than not, and only by a little, that’s all that’s needed.

So, what do you think?

alignment

True horror is considering the negative implications of your actual course of action but from the vantage point of the future when those things have happened. Whether this is sexual decisions and behaviour or economics decisions and behaviour. That is, if it does impinge negatively on your children’ children, effecting intergenerationally perhaps seven generations into the future in a negative way as best you can see it — and you have looked at alternatives as they arise throughout your life — then now, how can one say one is doing the best one can?

Nope, because the best one can do, can not be compared to what one has been able to do.

(Breaking the negative, using a single stroke for negative “-“, and splitting it with a space “-  -“, a double negative?)

Socially, we have a lot to do if we wish to solve major global problems and that is through our individual, mature decisions and behaviours. It is not enough to be doubly negative, in the sense of trying to avoid making mistakes. Two wrongs – – doing what one is doing aware that it has negative repercussions, and trying to ascertain to the best of one’s abilities the course of action which has the least negative repercussions – – do not make a right.

Mathematically, if there are several wrongs and only one right given certain conditions, the probability may look small. Imagine a junction with a million paths and only one takes you to a happy world for the rest of our lives. We only get one pop at it and if we fail to manage this as a cross-generation engagement, the opportunity of the right path will pass and we end up on one of the many roads to disaster, environmentally, socially and so on.

The probability may look small but probability is not what we are interested in — we don’t want to make a blind guess. One sustainable solution out of a billion paths that end with disaster ——— that’s just way too stupid a way of looking at it! We need to increase the chances so that to all intents and purposes there is no choice but the one in front of us that happens to be the right one. Thus, the probability is 1, certain.

So, in order to get to that probability of certainty — that is, we’re doing it — we need the person reading this to take their reading seriously. Why? Because there is a similarity (perhaps fractally) between the “decision” made socially as a human collective in the future as the decision now made by a human individual while reading this.

That is, how you are reading will determine the success of our future lives together on this planet in a sustainable way for a few millennia at least. You meaning anyone as an example of all of us. And to be specific, you, reading this article right now, today, right smack bang in the middle of your life.

“then we need the person reading this” which was you back then you now reading and the you at the end of this article — we need this person to hit 1, certainty, basically, so that you actually do something about it.

Further, this decision by the individual may increase the probability of getting us on the right path, starting from a very very low quantity, a quantity that most individuals are not capable of seeing. That is, most of us as individuals may not see the possibility, the tiny one as it stands in 2012, turning into a large enough probability let alone that probability hitting certainty for us as a social collective!

Shall we turn to faith, then? Or belief? And if this fails us… a pure guess?

Nope, I prefer to use mathematics.

The probability is 1 at some point in the future if that is the future in which we exist, that we manifest. From our perspective now — this demands attention! — the probability at their time is 1. For us to get from where we are now, which is zero and we can represent as 0, we must rely on something we do not yet know.

That is, this thought-experiment is based on something we do not know.

That is, we are not basing it on anything we know — we are basing it on what we don’t know.

That is, necessarily, basing it on my trust of someone or something else, whether that is god, nature, science, money, planetary motion, words in the scriptures. But this basis of our belief is insecure, it slips because the very foundations of christianity or islam, or democracy or capitalism or what whatever institution that has formed has been because people base their decision on words, images and so on.

Our only alternative, if we are to trust others, is to place our faith on people we know, on living people, in those about us. But the consequence of this is that we are more easily swayed. Can’t really say this is fundamentalist, since what is trusted in not a word, not money, not institution, but the person.

(Things get a little confusing if we think too critically. For example, our minds might come up with more complex cases such as trusting an individual in an institution (I trust my friend who is a *anker) or trusting an individual because of the institution (I trust the clergyman with my child because I believe in jesus).)

Note, negative negatives, or not negatives, or double negatives are not bad, they are just stuff of the mind, scaffold constructions, based on logic and reasoning, whereas we need to actually be imaginative and make up stuff and try stuff out. We can’t just look at the alternatives in a “negative-minimising” way. We must be courageous and do new things together — trust faster and deeper and thus make deeper decisions. For us all collectively, we must be positive, but only slightly so. Non-zero in a positive direction. Perhaps it is best to say it is simply experimental. Not positive, just willing to see what happens, allowing, enabling, being responsive.

Thus the decision is a test, a true test to our selves and our children and their children’s children because such a test will be asked of them for this system that we enable must be capable of existing for millennia. A sustainable planet and all that this entails means a living participation, which means wholesale consensus as we have seen. This is less to do with probability as we know it and more a way of dealing certainty in a subjectively integrated way. And for this to happen we need equal diversity in terms of behaviour and moneyflow

And, isn’t it true that money is probably the most influential factor on human behaviour? Which means, altering the basic math of money will generate a completely different effect on social behaviour? Part of which will involve introducing people who are following the money, to examine the thought experiments you’ve just read. And thus, to be invited by someone trusted and recommending to someone trusted. That is all, just one person.

The catch, if there is any catch, is that it must happen this year, and if that was fun, two invitations the following year and increasing by one each year (and this is related to another post which involves the math of social unity).

Given the info, your decision is all that matters. And collectively, your decision is all that matters. This is a test of adulthood, for us as human individual beings, and for us as a whole species since we have grown from civilised babies to young adults.

What shall your decision be?

What is your decision?

What is your decision to be?

social dimensions

Based on this image, the following thoughts occurred to me.

Multidimensional scaling means that an increase of the base means a huge collective result. That is, doubling length of a square, quadruples area, or doubling length of a cube multiplies volume by eight. Doubling length of a ten dimensional space increase volume by a thousand and doubling length of a thirty dimensional space increases volume by over a billion. This is interesting if a dimensional social space is defined by the number of people, if each person is going in a different “direction”.

The image comes from this post, which I read subsequently.

The post is interesting, and is nice composition of concepts. Still too much category thinking. Effectively, people need to be aware of their scale, and whatever inventions they make, it is wise to think about scalability issues sui generis. It’s not something to be tagged on, some social solution replicated across different spaces and cultures. Neither is it a goal or target, but rather a natural extension of a process if the social conditions are sensitively included.

What has this to do with math? Not much. It is mostly to do with organisational limits, solutions consultants come up with in order to fit into the organisational complexity that is the modern world.

how 1+1 can sum greater than its parts

I saw on a post recently how collaboration was equated to the equation 1+1=3. This is absurd. An obvious equivalence, and simple enough to understand by most people is (1+1)^2.

A potentially simple way to introduce the power of nonlinear thinking to collaborative groups.