Author: Maslyayev Alexander , published: 04/2017, https://habr.com/ru/post/403225/

Spring is an interesting time of year, and it should be celebrated properly. A deep, heavy, multi-part debate about the essence of information is, in my opinion, a pretty good way to celebrate spring on GeekTimes.

I apologize in advance for the fact that this will be quite lengthy. The topic is extremely complex, multifaceted, and remarkably neglected. I would love to condense everything into a short article, but that would inevitably result in a shoddy piece with glaring logical gaps, vague questions, and truncated storylines. Therefore, I invite the esteemed audience to be a bit patient, get comfortable, and enjoy a thoughtful and calm exploration of issues that have long been shrouded in mystery.

Introduction

Right now, as this text is being written, a rather amusing situation has arisen. Society has rapidly entered the information age, but the worldview used to understand what is happening has, at best, been inherited from the early industrial era. There is currently no widely accepted way to incorporate the concept of “information” into our worldview in a manner that does not contradict the phenomena we clearly and universally observe.

We have become quite adept at gathering information, storing it, transmitting it, processing it, and utilizing it. To be fair, we all know very well what information is. However, this knowledge is implicit. Implicit knowledge is an understanding that is taken for granted, which is fine for internal use but inadequate for productive collective use.

The tasks of the philosophy of information:

1. Identify and eliminate the obstacles that hinder the translation of “information” from implicit knowledge to explicit knowledge.
2. To create a metaphysical system that can organically and coherently incorporate the informational processes that have already become a part of our daily lives.

In my further exposition, I will proceed from the idea that philosophy is primarily a tool for shaping conceptual frameworks and the rules for their use. This differs somewhat from what is typically meant when the word “philosophy” is mentioned. It is often believed that philosophy should provide answers to questions about the existence of things and clarify some of the most general laws of the universe. However, it often turns out that before we begin to ponder the nature of the universe, it is useful to develop a language that ensures these reflections are not inherently meaningless.

It is precisely the task of forming language, rather than the search for Truth, that will constitute…the basis of the methodI will try to adhere to this in the following narrative. To clearly demonstrate this method, I will provide several examples, including those from related areas of philosophy:

• Does God exist?
  The question is methodologically incorrect (according to the applied basis of the method). The correct formulation is:How should one think about God in order for those thoughts to be meaningful?
• Are there objective laws that govern the world?
  Correct wording:How should we talk about the existence of the laws of the universe so that it doesn’t become a waste of time?
• What is primary – matter or consciousness?
  Correct wording:How should we talk about primacy, matter, and consciousness so that our words are not just a meaningless pastime?
• What is information?
  Correct wording:How should we think about information so that our reasoning makes sense?

We should assume that the philosophy of information should become the adequate linguistic tool that meets our needs, allowing us to avoid logical dead ends every time we discuss the nature of information, consciousness, management, system formation, complexity, and other topics that have become heavily mythologized.

To vividly demonstrate the power of the instrumental approach, it is appropriate to provide the following historical illustration. Long ago, the question of whether the Earth revolves around the Sun or the Sun revolves around the Earth was a highly contentious dilemma. It even reached the point where physical reprisals against ideological opponents were common practice. Now, having learned to reason about motion and understanding that the key aspect of these discussions is the choice of the observer’s position, we have the opportunity to use the heliocentric system for our convenience when discussing the structure of our planetary system, while in our everyday affairs, we can rely on the geocentric system. When we say that the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west, we implicitly suggest that the Sun is moving, even though from the heliocentric perspective, this is false. The difference between what was and what is now lies only in the fact that we have acquired a conceptual framework that allows us to reason about motion more adequately. The ability to channel discussions into a constructive direction, thereby reconciling opposing positions, is not the only useful function of the instrumental approach. Another valuable function is the enforced closure of those problems for which it becomes evident that there are no meaningful ways to reason about them.

The instrumental approach to philosophy certainly has its limitations. In particular, the question of how to distinguish productive reasoning from unproductive reasoning must remain open and subject to discussion. One could emphasize logical consistency or practical usefulness, but both are rather vague criteria. It seems to me that we can only hope that discussions about the usefulness of things are usually much simpler and more productive than discussions about the existence of things that no one can confirm or refute. After all, usefulness is precisely the kind of thing that lends itself best to a vote with one’s feet.

I do not want to suggest in any way that the instrumental approach is my invention. It has been described in a vast number of philosophical texts and is used productively in even more. This, in itself, is an obvious point that had to be highlighted in the introduction simply because if we do not emphasize it beforehand, much of what follows may seem wild and at times self-contradictory. The specificity of the task is such that it is impossible to remain within the bounds of basic truths and familiar logical constructs. I will reiterate: we will not be searching for eternal and unchanging Truths-with-a-capital-T, but rather we will attempt to find a language in which discussions about information, systems, and management do not lead us into a logical dead end at every turn.

A brief history of the issue

This section does not aim to systematically present the history of global philosophical thought. The goal is merely to provide some context for the subsequent discussions, as they cannot be understood or accepted without it.

Plot one: materialism vs. idealism

Materialists have believed and continue to believe that only physical reality truly exists (in Democritus’s words, “atoms and void”). Accordingly, what we can observe as ideas is merely a movement of atoms in the void that occurs in some mysterious “special way.” The nature of this “special way” is usually not specified, and when there is an attempt to clarify this question, at best, a clumsy quote from a school physics textbook is provided.

Idealists believed and still believe that only ideas truly exist, while what we perceive as the surrounding coarse physical reality is either an illusion or the result of sorcery.

Arguments for and against these viewpoints are numerous, diverse, and all extremely weak, even though in the 20th century materialists have experimentally confirmed millions of times that if a person is kept locked up and not fed, they stop thinking about ideas and start thinking about food.

There is an opinion (particularly expressed by Merab Mamardashvili in “Introduction to Philosophy”) that true philosophers have never seriously considered the question of whether consciousness or matter is primary. If we approach this so-called “fundamental question of philosophy” from the perspective of the instrumental approach to philosophizing that I described in the introduction, an interesting point emerges. For either a discussion of the existence of matter without implying the presence of consciousness, even in the form of an implicit observer, or a consideration of the functioning of consciousness without its material realization to have any meaning, we must be able to find ourselves in a situation of either the absence of consciousness or the absence of matter. Both scenarios are impossible, and therefore no discussion of primacy can be meaningful. Thus, when applied to the question of primacy…“How should one think about…?”receives a response“Not at all”Текст для перевода: ..

For our purposes, perhaps the most valuable outcome of the discussion between materialists and idealists is the very framing of the question regarding the existence of material and immaterial entities. In particular, the division of the world into extended things (res extensa) and thinking things (res cogitans), introduced by René Descartes, has proven to be quite useful and productive. As long as humanity focused its practical activities on studying and creating extended things separately, and on operating with thinking things separately, this division of the world did not pose significant inconveniences and was merely a theoretical issue that could be resolved later when the opportunity arose. With the advent of the information technology era, we have learned to create material (res extensa) things that are entirely designed for manipulating immaterial (res cogitans) entities, and thus the qualitative integration of these divided worlds has become a task that philosophy of information cannot afford to overlook.

Plot two: the search for the foundations of reliable knowledge.

The search for the foundations of reliable knowledge runs like a red thread through all of European philosophy. From the perspective of practical utility, this theme has proven to be the most fruitful, providing the basis for the scientific method and, as a consequence, giving rise to all the technological wonders that we have the opportunity to enjoy.

The central idea underlying the justification is the concept of objective reality as perceived by a perceiving subject. Each time we discuss the existence of something in objective reality, it is necessary, for the sake of methodological accuracy, to define the subject that perceives this reality.

The topic of the “perceiving subject” has been thoroughly explored by existing philosophical traditions and could serve as a good starting point for the philosophy of information, were it not for two significant points:

• The perceiving subject is a passive being. It perceives objective reality and acquires reliable knowledge.information) about it, but in discussions about what information is, the concept of the perceiving subject cannot serve as a starting point, because it already includes the concept of information. Essentially, “information” turns out to be a concept that we have jumped over in order to move forward. Therefore, we need to dig a little deeper, and we should build subjectology not from the perceiving subject, but from something else. In particular, we will further introducea purposefully acting subject, which does not just “reflect” objective reality, but lives within it, and information is needed not just for the sake of “reflection,” but for some purpose.Text for translation: purpose.By setting aside the topic of “the subject’s goals” and considering the presence of goals as something self-evident and not up for discussion, it becomes impossible to talk about the meaning of information. And meaningless information is not information at all.
• The perceiving subject is an infinitely lonely being. The entire world surrounding the perceiving subject is an objective reality for them. Even those objects with which the perceiving subject senses a fundamental affinity are not subjects to them, but rather objects about which they strive to gain reliable knowledge. From the perspective of information philosophy, such a neat yet sad picture of the world is completely unacceptable, as it does not allow for communication between subjects. Communication requires at least two subjects, but in a worldview divided into two parts—the perceiving subject and the reality perceived by them—the subject is, by definition, alone. We are simply forced to move away from the old, cozy concept of the thinking (and therefore existing) perceiving subject. Let us try not to get lost.

Having lost the usual way of deriving the foundations of reliable knowledge from the concept of the “perceiving subject,” we will be forced to find an adequate replacement. Otherwise, the resulting metaphysical system will lack justification and, therefore, will not be suitable for use.

Plot three: determinism vs. free will

It so happens that from the perspective of the philosophical foundation of natural scientific knowledge (epistemology), objective reality is structured in such a way that there is no room for free will. The most that exists is randomness (in particular, quantum uncertainty), from which free will cannot be derived in any way. On the other hand, for moral philosophy (axiology), the existence of free will is a necessary condition. Moreover, the existence of free will can be quite easily derived directly from “I think, therefore I am,” which adds a certain piquancy, since the foundation of natural scientific knowledge is also derived not from nowhere, but from the very same primary fact, “I think, therefore I am.”

In short, we will try to extricate ourselves from the resulting true antinomy by eliminating the passivity of the perceiving subject. By acting in the world, the subject will inevitably become a part of it, which will allow us to have determinism in those aspects that the subject does not influence, while maintaining free will in the nature and outcomes of their actions.

The problem of “determinism vs. free will” is a good opportunity to discuss the nature of causality, as determinism is the predetermination established by the rigidity of cause-and-effect relationships.

When discussing a purposefully acting subject, it is impossible (and unnecessary) to overlook the conversation about how it is even possible for causal relationships to exist in our world.

Plot four: Turing machine

In the second half of the 20th century, philosophers were given a fascinating toy—the Turing machine, which can perform any computable calculation. Since brain activity is viewed as information processing, or computation, it follows that either a Turing-complete computer can be taught to think in a truly human way, or we must accept that there is some unexplored secret component in thinking, which inevitably leads to mysticism. This could be traditional mysticism (God), non-traditional mysticism (information fields), or pseudoscientific mysticism (attempts to latch onto quantum uncertainty).

Mysticism is an attempt to explain the unknown through the inherently unknowable. It’s pure trickery. We won’t do that. But we will also demonstrate the unfeasibility of human thought as a Turing-complete computation. For this, we just need to learn to think a bit more adequately about information and its processing.

Chapter 1. Dualism

The metaphor “book”

Examining a book, a regular paper book, which is still a fairly common item in our daily lives, will help us understand how the material and the ideal intertwine into a single whole.

From one perspective, a book is a physical object. It has mass, volume, and occupies a certain space (for example, on a shelf). It has chemical properties, and in particular, it burns quite well.

From another perspective, a book is an immaterial object. It is information. When talking about a book, one can discuss the plot and the relationships between characters (if it is fiction), the accuracy of the facts presented (if it recounts real events), the depth of the theme explored, and other aspects that certainly have neither mass nor chemical properties.

Let’s take the tragedy of William Shakespeare, “Hamlet,” as an example. Imagine you have this book in your hand. Naturally, you are holding a physical object. The plot of “Hamlet” cannot be grasped in your hand. The book isn’t very thick, and it doesn’t weigh much. The pages have a pleasant smell. You could conduct a chemical analysis and find that this object is primarily made of cellulose, with traces of ink, glue, and other substances. In a solid state, it doesn’t differ much from a pulp novel sitting next to it on the shelf. But it is quite clear that this object contains something beyond atoms. Let’s try to find it. We take a microscope and look closely. We see the interweaving of glued wood fibers and their connection to bits of ink. If we use a more powerful microscope, we will see many interesting things. But all this interesting stuff will have nothing to do with “to be or not to be,” nor with the idea of revenge for betrayal and murder. No matter how much we investigate the material component of the book, we won’t find the informational aspect. Just atoms and emptiness. Yet, it is absolutely accurate to say that “Hamlet” contains a plot, characters, and the famous “to be or not to be.” And to discover this, you don’t need a microscope at all. You just need to open the book and start reading. Interestingly, from an informational perspective, the material layer fades into the background so much that it doesn’t matter whether the book is made of paper or, say, parchment. After all, “Hamlet” can also be read on an e-reader, where there are definitely no wood fibers with bits of ink stuck to them.

So, we have two ways of looking at the book “Hamlet”: a materialistic approach, where you can see everything except the idea, and an idealistic approach, where the interweaving of fibers is completely unimportant, but the interweaving of the plot is what matters. And yet, the subject remains the same. The only difference is in our own approach to it. That is, in what we intend to do with it – weigh it or read it. If we plan to weigh it, then we have a completely material object before us, but if we plan to read it, then we are dealing with a completely immaterial essence.

A reasonable question arises: is it possible to somehow manage to look at this subject in such a way that we can simultaneously see both of its aspects? Yes, it is possible and necessary, but I can’t say that it’s easy. It’s very challenging. It requires significant effort and the use of a whole arsenal of tools and techniques, which I will try to explain further. This is important at least because the ways of reconciling the objective and subjective into a unified whole form the metaphysical foundation of the philosophy of information. However, before we start merging the aspects of reality, it will be useful to understand the depth of the problem.

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The totality of physical reality

The concept of “material” can be defined in various ways. For example:

1. Everything that exists objectively. This interpretation is directly or indirectly used by the classics of materialism. For example, Lenin wrote that objective existence is a function of matter. For the philosophy of information, this approach is unsuitable primarily because it either immediately materializes informational entities or deprives them of the right to objective existence. In the first case, we fall into the trap of reification (which we will discuss below), and in the second case, we find ourselves at an impasse when faced with the simplest, easily observable phenomena. For instance, try to add a happy ending to “Hamlet” in such a way that it no longer ceases to be “Hamlet.” Or, as another option, change the thousandth digit in the number “pi.” Both are ideal entities, but something overwhelmingly strong keeps them anchored in objective reality.
2. Everything that is different from the mental and spiritual. This definition is inadequate because we still do not know what the mental and spiritual are. In other words, informational. At this point in the narrative, we are not yet able to reason about information, and therefore we cannot make decisions about what constitutes an informational entity and what does not.
3. Everything that exists in physical space. That is, what Descartes defined as “res extensa.” Bodies are extended. If you take a closer look at what physics studies, it becomes clear that all entities described by it are, in one way or another, tied to the painfully familiar three-dimensional physical space. When talking about mass, it is impossible to abstract from its location. When discussing a field, one cannot avoid talking about the distribution of its characteristics in space. When speaking of energy, it is impossible to remain silent about what exactly possesses this energy – a physical object (something localized in space, at least as a wave function) or a field, which also cannot be conceived apart from space. There is a certain temptation to tie ourselves not only to space but also to time, but we will refrain from doing so, if only because there is a wonderful section in physics called statics, which manages perfectly well without the concept of “time.”

Thus, localization in physical space serves as a one-to-one method for defining the materiality of an object.

Physical space is an omnipresent thing. Everything we deal with around us exists within it. Simply because it is, by definition, all around us. Space is infinite in all directions and has no gaps that we could stumble upon.

Wherever you go, wherever you look, whatever you touch – all of this exists in an infinite physical space, both in width and depth. Even if things like teleportation or, say, interdimensional travel become a reality, it won’t change anything. A teleported brick still needs to occupy a space in order to exist after it has arrived “from nowhere.” No matter what fairy tale we come up with, no matter how we spur the horses of our imagination, if there are any tangible objects in that tale, our omnipresent physical space is always present.

Even when discussing the curvature of space or the idea that it actually has more than three dimensions, it doesn’t change anything. It merely clarifies the properties of the “grid” within which we must localize the existence of objects. The amusing fact from the theory of relativity that the “grid step” depends on the observer’s speed also just adds a correction to the methodology of using the “grid,” without negating its necessity in any specific case.

Thus, we can only acknowledge that material reality is total, and there are no ways to escape from it. There are no loopholes, not because we haven’t found them yet, but because any newly discovered effect, no matter how fantastic or incredible it may seem at first, is inherently part of that very reality. Miracles do not occur, not because we are stubborn, narrow-minded materialists, but because the concept of a “miracle” contradicts itself.

The totality of informational reality

A discussion about the totality of material reality would be incomplete without adding a similarly valid consideration that we do not live in a material reality, but in an informational one, from which we cannot escape even a step or half a step.

The world consists of things we know and things we don’t know. We can only operate with those things that we have at least some understanding of. What we know nothing about lies entirely outside the boundaries of our world. By learning something, we acquire things within our world. We expand the limits of our world. Whatever we consider a knowing subject, the very fact that it engages in knowledge (pushing the boundaries of the known) implies that the world of that subject is limited. Regarding the things that exist within the subject’s world, the subject can think (if, of course, it is capable of thought). However, concerning the things that lie beyond the subject’s world, it cannot think at all. It simply has no inkling about them. Interestingly, the boundary of the thinkable itself is also unthinkable. As Ludwig Wittgenstein rightly noted in the “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus,” in order to think about the boundary, one must think about things on both sides of it, but the things on the other side of the boundary of the thinkable are, by definition, unthinkable. Thus, it turns out that everything we can think about has already become information.

Let’s take a brick, for example. It exists. But it only exists for us if circumstances have aligned in such a way that it has become information for us. For instance, we saw it. Or we stumbled over it in the dark. Or someone told us about it. Ultimately, we are familiar with the concept of “brick,” and therefore all bricks exist within our world, including those we will never personally encounter in our lifetime.

All we can say about what lies beyond our world is this:

1. It undoubtedly exists. In any discussion about existence, the key question is “where?” and in this case, there is an surprisingly simple and comprehensive answer to that question: beyond the conceivable.
2. It is inexhaustible. That is, as long as there exists a knowing subject, the fact of its functioning clearly indicates that what lies beyond its conceivable understanding has not yet been fully explored.
3. It has no properties other than the fact of existence and the fact of inexhaustibility. Any property can only be attributed to what is thinkable (attributing properties is one form of thinking). Attempting to assign any property to the unthinkable immediately introduces internal contradiction into the reasoning. In fact, even the properties of existence and inexhaustibility are derived not from knowledge of the, by definition, unknowable, but from the properties of the subject.

I call it a concept.information spacesuitEverything we have has already become information for us, obtained from the inner walls of our informational spacesuit. All our thinking (and only thinking, nothing more) that builds assumptions about the external world occurs inside the spacesuit, and the only way we can influence the undeniably existing, inexhaustible reality outside is by applying efforts (naturally, informational) to the inner walls of our spacesuit.

The picture turned out to be a bit frightening. It could even trigger a bout of claustrophobia. In reality, there’s nothing scary about this concept if we remember in time that inside our information spacesuit lies everything we know, value, love, aspire to, and even everything we hate. The whole world as we know it.

Thus, the informational reality is also total, and we know nothing of what is not information. At least because any knowledge is information that we possess. Naturally, this is within the informational spacesuit.

It should be noted right away that discussions about the limitations of the follower may initially seem like a meaningless collection of clichés. They are indeed meaningless only if a thinking and existing being is considered strictly as a singular entity. However, if there are at least two beings, the areas of the follower increase to more than one, and it turns out that:

• In the realm where worlds intersect, beings understand each other, and it is in this (and only this) realm that communication between them is possible.
• It can be assumed that theoretically, there could be a situation where the worlds of two different beings completely coincide, but one can probably only seriously expect to discover such a phenomenon in artificially created beings.
• From the perspective of any being, the world of any other being appears as a subset of its own world. A being is unable to grasp the boundaries of its own world, but the limitations of another being’s world are easily recognizable. For example, concepts such as “food,” “pain,” “joy,” “interesting,” “play,” and a vast number of others are common to both humans and dogs, but it is clear to us that the situation of “I can’t remember my email password” is entirely outside the dog’s world. The illusion of the boundlessness of one’s own world, combined with the obvious limitations of other beings, creates a fertile ground for all theories of superiority without exception.
• No creature can know anything about that part of another creature’s world that lies outside its own. One can only assume that this part exists. Or does not exist. Nothing is known. Nothing can be asserted about what lies beyond the realm of thought.
• Any activity of a being, justified by considerations that lie outside the framework of another being’s world, appears to that other being as unconscious activity. For example, when observing the quirky interactions of dogs at a dog park, we tend to interpret what is happening as a manifestation of instincts. However, if we think about it carefully, we can also attribute our own activities (including the most conscious ones) to the expression of instincts. The concept of “instinct” is one of those mental “crutches” we use to give a scientific veneer to discussions about things we do not understand.
• Beings that do not intersect with each other’s worlds appear to one another as inanimate phenomena of nature. This, of course, does not imply that everything we consider inanimate is actually animated. The “if” does not work in reverse.

The image of the interaction of worlds shown here is something we, humans, cannot observe, as a significant part of it lies beyond our human realm. Dogs cannot observe it either for the same reason. Perhaps a cat might perceive a similar picture, but of course, it does not fully observe either the human world or the dog world. If you thought that I was mistaken in depicting the dog’s world as a circle the same size as the human world, it only means that you have not yet fully grasped the understanding that it is impossible to make any assertions about things that lie beyond the limits of the conceivable.

Reflections on creatures and the worlds they inhabit are valuable to us not only for their own sake (they lead to quite valuable conclusions) but also as a way to practice applying the concept of the information spacesuit. This is the very concept that suggests that the informational reality is total, and there is no way for us to escape it.

The totality of the indivisibility of realities

Thus, we have obtained two total realities – the physical and the informational. It may seem that two is too many. One might want to reduce it to just one. For example, one could align with materialists and try to prove that everything boils down to matter. Or with idealists, to reduce everything to consciousness.

Take a look at the picture:

Like any schematic representation, the image should not be taken too literally. It is merely a visualization to aid understanding. Let’s say the object depicted in the picture is the book “Hamlet” in all its fullness and inseparable unity. But imagine that we have forgotten how to see this thing as it truly is, and we can only study projections. If we examine the material aspect (that is, the projection on the horizontal axis), we see atoms. When we shift to the vertical axis, we see a different projection—the intricate web of the plot—but at this point, the material aspect falls out of consideration. It becomes perpendicular to us. Of course, this may create the illusion that the world is divided into the world of things, which we acquire on the horizontal axis, and the world of ideas, which we acquire on the vertical axis. But this is, of course, just an illusion. The world is one. The differences arise only because we are unable to grasp the object in all its fullness.

In principle, it would be possible to do without an image. The total inseparability of realities automatically follows from the fact that both realities under consideration:

a) total
b) different

In fact, there are a number of objects whose informational aspect does not interest us, and therefore, when we think about them, we only consider the material aspect. For example, when I’m thirsty, I’m only concerned with the material aspect of the water I’m about to drink. And when I need to calculate the length of the hypotenuse using the two legs, I don’t even try to find that specific geometry textbook where I learned the Pythagorean theorem. It’s not always necessary to try to see every subject in all its complexity. That would be too costly. We need to be prepared for the fact that in the overwhelming majority of situations, a one-sided perspective is exactly what we need. However, while practicing this one-sided view, we must always clearly understand which “axis” (the vertical informational or the horizontal material) we are on.

The picture, of course, turned out to be clear and beautiful, but it still raises the curiosity of whether any of the axes is a descendant of another axis. It just can’t be that, long ago, at the beginning of time, two scales emerged simultaneously. Logically, something must have come first, and then the second must have crystallized from it. So here we are again, caught in the trap of discourse about first causes. It was mentioned earlier that there is no productive way to reason about the primacy of matter and consciousness, so let’s allow an instrumental approach to free us from having to engage with this question.

So, we have no choice but to honestly admit to ourselves that it makes sense to talk about two realities – the material and the immaterial. How they intertwine is a separate question, and we will learn to address it. For now, it is enough for us to understand that the immaterial aspect does not exist without the material, and the material without the ideal entirely falls into the realm of the unimaginable “something.”

Reification

Reification is a logical error that occurs when we forget that the projection we are considering is a projection onto an informational “axis,” and we attribute to the elements of this informational projection properties that are only found in elements of a material projection. The reason for this is that our experience of interacting with material objects is incomparably richer than our experience of interacting with thoughts, ideas, and concepts. Our eyes look into the material world. The sounds we hear are produced by material objects. The things we touch are material. Therefore, when contemplating a non-material subject, we often try to visualize it in our mind’s eye, “feel” the argument regarding its stability, and figure out what the statement “smells” like.

Reification is such a common logical fallacy that it is rarely discussed. There isn’t even a specific word for it in the Russian language, and different texts refer to this issue using various terms. For instance, in the translation of Immanuel Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” that I have, it is referred to as “hypostatization.” As of the time of writing this text, there is no corresponding article on this topic in the Russian-language Wikipedia.

What happens during reification can be illustrated with this image:

Instead of learning to work with abstract concepts, we wrap the informational aspect in material reality and end up with something concrete, visual, and easily digestible that is ultimately meaningless. Nothing good can come from attributing the existence of an object to a totality in which the object does not exist.

The main technique that can be used to avoid reification is to train yourself to pay attention to the existence of objects right away when reasoning about them.where exactlyThe object exists. So where is it?takes placeIf it is possible to clearly associate an object with physical space, one can confidently assert that it is a material object (that is, a projection of the object onto material reality). However, if answering the question “where?” requires some twisting and leads to strange responses, it is likely that we are dealing with an informational aspect.

Let’s practice a little:

1. Where is my chair? Right under me. There is a clear spatial connection. Therefore, considering this particular chair as a material object is not reification at all.
2. Where is the number 2? It’s a strange question. Essentially, it can be anywhere, depending on how you apply a ruler. You could go a bit crazy and assume that somewhere behind high fences lies a repository of mathematical truths, and there exists a standard for the number 2, but that’s not even funny. In despair, one might even suggest that the number 2 doesn’t actually exist, but that would be quite odd as well. We can find the correct solution to the equation “x + x = 4,” but what we found, according to our assumption, “doesn’t actually exist.” Of course, the number 2 does exist, and we can even say where it is: neatly positioned between the numbers 1 and 3 in the sequence of natural numbers. For the chair I’m sitting on, its container is physical space, while for the number 2, its container is the natural number line. Any other attempt to place the number 2 somewhere (for example, in some “world of ideas”) might provide a charming visual, but it wouldn’t make any sense. The natural number line (and so what if it’s also an abstraction?) is sufficient to answer the question “where does it exist?” in relation to the number 2.
3. Where is my home? I can give two correct answers:
   • There is an address. Exact geographical coordinates. When talking about a house in this context, we have a physical object that sometimes needs to be repaired with quite tangible tools – a hammer, a screwdriver, a spatula, and other household items.
   • My home is where I am loved and awaited. Interestingly, such a place doesn’t necessarily have to have geographical coordinates. If I am loved and awaited in an online forum, then that is also my home. The response has become detached from physical space, and therefore we can state that in this case, we are talking about the projection of an object onto the informational axis.
4. Where is Wikipedia located? Of course, there are data centers with servers where this thing is hosted. But for the vast majority of us, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever find ourselves at that exact location to access Wikipedia. It’s much simpler and faster to find it at the address “ru.wikipedia.org.” It seems to me that this string of characters bears very little resemblance to spatial coordinates.
5. Where is “Hamlet”? It’s right there on the shelf. Yes, of course, but that’s only half the truth. There are other copies as well. Moreover, if any radio station is broadcasting a radio play of “Hamlet” right now (which is quite possible), then “Hamlet” can be picked up through the antenna.from any point in space“Any point in space” is not a spatial localization at all.
6. Material objects exist in physical space. Okay. But where is physical space itself located? It cannot be located within itself. Perhaps it exists in a higher-order space? Maybe, but this assertion still doesn’t solve the problem, as it immediately raises the question, “Where is this hypothetical higher-order space?” The only honest option is to acknowledge that physical space is an abstraction. If you thought I was providing proof of the primacy of the ideal over the material, you were mistaken. I remind you that the question of primacy is entirely meaningless, as there is no situation in which it can be productively discussed.
7. Does Harry Potter exist? And if so, where? Yes, he exists. In the story of Harry Potter. He is one of the central figures. You could say he is the main character, although opinions on that may vary. But physically, of course, he doesn’t exist anywhere.
8. Does God exist? And if so, where? The naive child’s answer of “on a cloud” is obviously false, and almost any believer would confirm this. It turns out that any somewhat worthy answer to this question (“in the souls of the faithful,” “everywhere good is done,” etc.) bears little resemblance to spatial localization. Mystics of ancient times seemingly understood that the urge to reify God would be extremely strong, and thus they introduced a direct prohibition against any attempt to depict God in a physical form in the religions they created. Judaism and Islam have managed to maintain this prohibition, but Christianity, due to certain inherent characteristics, has not been able to avoid slipping into unrestrained reification of God. However, both Judaism and Islam have not completely escaped the reification of God. In both of these religions, God is subtly reified in the texts of their sacred scriptures. For Jews, this is most vividly expressed in their amusing “G-d,” while for Muslims, it manifests in the incredibly reverent attitude towards copies of the Quran and the direction towards Mecca.

The topic of “reification” requires a detailed discussion because “information” is one of those subjects that has been most heavily distorted by reification. We have become so accustomed to “transmitting” information from person to person, “storing” it on a disk, “keeping” it in our heads, and “processing” it on a computer that it appears to us as some kind of “subtle substance” that condenses somewhere, is stored somewhere, and travels from one point in space to another. This metaphor is so strong and obvious that it is difficult for us to imagine how we could do without this gross reification. Let’s return to our example with a book. If information is some kind of subtle substance condensing inside a book, then the printing press that produced it must have some devices that inject this “subtle substance” into the product. But we know exactly how books are made. Moreover, we know exactly how the machines that produce books are made. The printing press does nothing but arrange molecules of ink on the fibers of the paper. There is simply no “subtle substance.” If we want to learn to talk about information in a meaningful way, we must learn to discuss it without resorting to reification.

Chapter Summary

The first task that information philosophy must tackle is to eliminate the most insidious logical traps that hinder any productive dialogue about the existence of immaterial entities, namely:

• meaningless discourse on the primacy of matter or consciousness;
• the underdefinition of the concept of “matter”;
• habits of reification that immediately strip away any discussions about the immaterial.

The model object “book,” introduced at the beginning of the chapter, not only allows for a separate consideration of the material and immaterial aspects of reality but also offers some hints on how these aspects can be combined into a cohesive whole.

Key concepts and ideas:

1. Material worldlike the world of things that exist in physical space.
2. The immaterial worldlike the world of things, the localization of which in physical space is a logical error.
3. Reificationas a logical error that involves attributing material existence to immaterial things.
4. Reception.“Where does it exist?”This allows for a quick understanding of which aspect of reality is being discussed. If the conversation is about something that exists in physical space, then that thing is material. If the thing does not occupy space, then it is immaterial. In particular, the informational spacesuit mentioned in this chapter is a mental construct, and therefore, attempting to draw a line between the thinkable and the unthinkable somewhere in space is, in itself, a logical error.
5. Information spacesuitThe subject is the totality of everything conceivable by the subject.

Chapter 2. The Existence of Information

Signals and Contexts

we must understand that the information itself is not contained within the book. Instead, it exists in the interaction between the reader and the text. The book serves as a medium that facilitates the transfer of ideas and knowledge, but the essence of the information is created in our minds as we engage with the content. Thus, while the physical object is necessary for the process, it is not the source of the information itself.to containA physical object cannot contain information within itself.

Let’s carefully analyze what happens when we read a book. Undoubtedly, there is a physical process involved, and some stages of reading a book are best described in physical terms. In particular, when we read a paper book with our eyes, it must exist as a physical object, and there must be an acceptable level of lighting. The optical system of the “eyes” must also be present and functioning properly. Using other methods of reading (Braille, text-to-speech programs) doesn’t significantly change the situation, and in these cases, it also makes sense to talk about a material component that must be present as well.

We can attempt to discuss what happens in our brains as readers after content is delivered in some way using physical terms, but this approach is not very promising. Something certainly occurs. The material component undoubtedly exists, but we currently lack the means to translate something as simple and obvious as “being surprised by an unexpected plot twist” into material terms. It’s possible that we may never have such a means. This is partly because the mechanism of being surprised by an unexpected plot twist may be realized differently in different minds.

The specificity of informational processes, unlike material ones, lies in the fact that the same informational process can be realized in fundamentally different ways “in matter,” while still remaining itself. For example, the sum of two numbers can be found using an electronic calculator, an abacus, counting sticks, a piece of paper and a pen, or even in one’s mind. The meaning and result of the action will remain the same. A book can be received in paper form by mail or in electronic form via email. The method of realization certainly affects many nuances, but the essence and meaning of what is happening remain unchanged. Any attempt to “ground” the informational process in a material component (“surprise is…nothing else“like the internal secretion of dopamine,” “ecstasy –”nothing else“like the internal secretion of endorphins” is akin to saying that the addition of two numbers is…nothing else…like the movement of wooden pieces along metal tracks. Material reality is total, so any informational process must have a material aspect; however, it cannot and should not be reduced solely to that, otherwise, the addition of numbers would have to become the exclusive prerogative of wooden counters. When we shift our focus to the informational aspect of what is happening, we need to be able to abstract from the material aspect, while, of course, understanding that it undeniably exists, but the specifics of it are not particularly significant to us.

Let’s continue examining the process of reading a book, abstracting from the details of the material realization of what is happening. For a reader to successfully read the text delivered to their receptors, a number of conditions must be met. First, they must know the language in which it is written. Second, they must be able to read. Third, they must understand why this activity is currently preferable to all others. It is not difficult to notice that all the listed conditions pertain to the reader’s possession of information, as “knowledge,” “skill,” and “understanding” are all synonyms for the concept of “information.” Thus, for reading a book, we have two sets of conditions for the successful progression of the process: the presence of a text delivered in some way and the reader’s prior preparedness. We will denote the condition of text delivery as the requirement for the presence of…signalWe will define the condition for the reader’s preparedness as the requirement for presence.contextТекст для перевода: ..

What’s important is that these same two sets of conditions are observed in any process we can identify as information acquisition. Even when considering something as simple as a remote-controlled car, it can only receive commands if, first, everything is in order with the delivery of the radio signal (the antenna isn’t broken and the car hasn’t rolled too far from the remote) and, second, the car’s control unit “understands” the commands sent by the remote. This means that even though everything seems to happen in a reliably deterministic “hardware,” a crucial component that ensured the successful reception of data by the receiver from the transmitter was the knowledge that the receiver’s designer gained from the transmitter’s designer. It is this knowledge that ensured that the receiver became a material object, where the atoms are arranged not randomly, but in a very specific way.in a special wayThe radio wave that reached the antenna is by no means all the information that entered the receiver. There may have also been an email received by the developer of the car’s control unit from a colleague working on the remote control.

Both components – andsignal, and.context“We can consider it from both a material and an informational perspective. However, while it is sometimes possible to abstract from the informational aspect of the signal (especially when the channel bandwidth is clearly excessive), it is impossible to abstract from the informational aspect of the context, which is essentially the ability to interpret the signal.”Context is the information about how to interpret a signal., and therefore we must consider it as an immaterial entity.

It may seem that transferring the mysterious immateriality into this enigmatic “context” involves a certain element of trickery. However, it is not difficult to notice that the information we perceive and the information that makes up the context are…differentInformation. The plot of a book and the knowledge of the language in which it is written are two different kinds of knowledge. If the resulting recursion of the structure (the existence of a second-order context requires a third-order context, and so on ad infinitum) raises some concerns, I would like to point out, just to jump ahead a bit, that this is not a defect of the signal-context structure, but probably its most valuable property. We will return to this topic in the fifth chapter to prove an extremely useful theorem through the recursion of the signal-context structure.

The significant advantage of considering information as the result of the interaction between a signal and its context, in addressing our metaphysical challenges, lies in the fact that this construct serves as the very bridge between worlds that we have been lacking. If, in a specific situation, we manage to abstract from the informational aspects of the signal (which is often not particularly difficult), we gain the opportunity to discuss the involvement of material objects in the informational process. If we also manage to examine the context in all its dual nature (which is quite common in our age of information technology), we end up with a full-fledged bridge between the material and informational worlds for that particular situation. It should be noted right away that the existence of this bridge still does not grant us the right to reify information. A signal, when viewed as a material object, can be reified (for example, a file saved on a flash drive, and the flash drive is in the pocket), but the context, meaning the ability to interpret the signal, cannot be reified.

When considering a classic situation of data transmission from the perspective of information theory, we have a transmitter that “places” information into a signal and a receiver that “extracts” information from it. This creates a persistent illusion that information exists within the signal itself. However, it is important to understand that interpreting a specially prepared signal is far from the only scenario for acquiring information. By paying attention to what is happening around us, we receive a great deal of information that no one has sent us. A chair does not send us information that it is soft, a table does not send us information that it is hard, the black ink on a page does not send us information about the absence of photons, and a turned-off radio does not send us information that it is silent. We are capable of understanding the material phenomena around us, and they become information for us because we already have a context that allows us to interpret what is happening. Waking up at night, opening our eyes, and seeing nothing, we extract the information that it is not yet dawn not from the presence of a physical phenomenon, but from its absence. The absence of an expected signal is also a signal, and it can be interpreted as well. However, the absence of context cannot serve as some special “zero” context. If there is no context, then there is no place for information to arise, no matter how much signal comes in.

We all know very well what information is (for beings living in an informational suit, it can’t be any other way), but we tend to consider only that part of it which is referred to here as “signal.” Context is something we take for granted, and so we habitually set it aside. By doing so, we are forced to confine all “information” solely to the signal, and in this way, we mercilessly reify it.

There’s nothing complicated about getting rid of the reification of “information.” You just need to learn to remember in time that, besides the signal, there is always context. The signal is merely raw material that gains meaning (value, usefulness, significance, and yes, informativeness) only when it enters the appropriate context. And context is something that must be discussed in non-material terms (otherwise, that discussion will definitely lack meaning).

Let’s briefly revisit the topic of “properties of information” and assess how these properties fit into the two-component structure of “signal-context.”

1. Novelty.If the reception of the signal adds nothing to the informational aspect of the existing context, then the events of signal interpretation do not occur.
2. Authenticity.The interpretation of a signal by context should not provide false information (“truth” and “falsehood” are concepts applicable to information, but not to material objects).
3. Objectivity.The same as reliability, but with an emphasis on the fact that the signal may be the result of another context’s work. If the context trying to obtain information and the intermediary context do not have mutual understanding (primarily regarding their goals), then the information will lack reliability.
4. Completeness.The signal is present, objective, and reliable, but it is not enough in context to obtain complete information.
5. Value(usefulness, significance). There is a signal, but no suitable context. All the words are clear, but the meaning is not grasped.
6. Availability.Signal characteristics. If a signal is impossible to obtain, then even the most wonderful and suitable context won’t help the information to emerge. For example, anyone could easily come up with ideas about what to do with accurate data on how tomorrow’s football match will end. But, unfortunately for many, this signal will only appear after the match is over, meaning its usefulness and significance will no longer be the same.

In my opinion, the properties listed above resemble more of a list of potential malfunctions than actual properties. Properties should describe what we can expect from the subject in question, as well as what we cannot rely on. Let’s try to derive at least a few obvious consequences from the “signal + context” construct, which will represent properties not of a specific piece of information, but of information in general:

1. Subjectivity of information.A signal can be objective, but context is always subjective. Therefore, information by its nature can only be subjective. We can only speak of the objectivity of information if we have managed to ensure a unity of context among different subjects.
2. The informational inexhaustibility of the signal.The same signal, when placed in different contexts, conveys different information. This is why, by revisiting a favorite book from time to time, one can discover something new each time.
3. The law of conservation of information does not exist.It doesn’t exist at all. We like it when the objects we work with strictly adhere to the laws of conservation and are not prone to appearing out of nowhere, and even more so, they don’t have the habit of disappearing into nothing. Unfortunately, information does not fall into this category. We can expect that only signals can be subject to the laws of conservation, but within a signal, there is no information, nor can there be. We just have to come to terms with the idea that, in normal circumstances, information indeed comes from nowhere and goes nowhere. The only thing we can do to retain it in some way is to ensure the integrity of the signal (which is not a problem in itself), the context (which is much more complicated, as it is a variable thing), and the reproducibility of the situation in which the signal enters the context.
4. Information is always the complete and exclusive property of the entity within the context in which it occurred.A book (a physical object) can belong to someone, but the thoughts generated by reading it are always the sole property of the reader. However, if we were to legalize private ownership of other people’s souls, we could also legalize private ownership of information. That said, this does not negate the author’s right to be recognized as the author, especially if that is the truth.
5. A signal cannot be assigned characteristics that apply only to information.For example, the characteristic of “truthfulness” can only be applied to information, meaning the combination of a signal with its context. The signal itself cannot be true or false. The same signal, when combined with different contexts, can convey true information in one case and false information in another. I have two pieces of news for the followers of “book” religions: one is good, and the other is bad. The good news: their sacred texts are not lies. The bad news: they do not contain truths either.

To answer the question “where does information exist?” without using a two-component signal-context structure, one has to employ the following popular approaches:

1. “Information can exist in physical objects.”For example, in books. When this approach is taken to its logical conclusion, one inevitably has to acknowledge the existence of “info-essence” – a subtle substance present in books beyond the fibers of paper and bits of ink. But we know how books are made. We know for certain that no magical substance is poured into them. The presence of subtle substances in the objects we use to acquire information contradicts our everyday experience. The signal-contextual construct functions perfectly well without subtle substances, while still providing a comprehensive answer to the question of “why the book itself is necessary for reading.”
2. “The world is permeated by informational fields, in the delicate structure of which everything we know is recorded.”It’s a beautiful and quite poetic idea, but if that’s the case, it’s unclear why a volume of “Hamlet” is needed to read “Hamlet.” Does it function like an antenna tuned to a specific Hamlet frequency? We know how volumes of “Hamlet” are produced. We are certain that no detection schemes, set up to receive otherworldly fields, are embedded in them. The signal of contextual construction doesn’t require any assumptions about the existence of parallel invisible worlds. It manages perfectly well without these unnecessary entities.
3. “Information can only exist in our minds.”A very popular idea. The most insidious and resilient variant of reification. Its insidiousness is primarily explained by the fact that science has yet to develop a coherent understanding of what happens in our minds, and in the darkness of this uncertainty, it can be convenient to hide any shortcomings in our thinking. In our large and diverse world, it sometimes happens that a person writes a work and then, before they can show it to anyone, dies. Years later, the manuscript is found in an attic, and people learn about something none of them knew all that time. If information can only exist in minds, how can it leap over the period when there is not a single mind that possesses it? The signal-contextual construct explains this effect simply and naturally: if the signal (the manuscript in the attic) has been preserved and the context has not been completely lost (people have not forgotten how to read), then the information is not lost.

Let’s take a look at how the idea of signals and contexts fits into what happens during the transmission of information. It seems that something remarkable should occur: on the sender’s side, there is information, then the sender transmits a signal to the receiver that contains no information, and on the receiver’s side, the information is present again. Let’s assume Alice intends to ask Bob to do something. It’s important to note that Alice and Bob do not necessarily have to be real people. For instance, Alice could be a business logic server, while Bob could be a database server. The essence of what is happening does not change. So, Alice has information, which is, of course, a combination of signal and context within her. With this information, as well as knowledge of what signals Bob can receive and interpret, she makes some change in the physical world (for example, writing a note and sticking it on the refrigerator with a magnet, or if Alice and Bob are servers, utilizing the network infrastructure). If Alice is correct about Bob, then Bob receives the signal within his existing context and gains information about what he should do next. The key point is the commonality of context. When we talk about people, this commonality is ensured by having a shared language and being involved in joint activities. When we talk about servers, the commonality of contexts is realized through compatibility of data exchange protocols. It is this commonality of contexts that allows information to seemingly leap over the segment of the path where it cannot exist and appear on the receiver’s side. Generally speaking, information does not actually leap anywhere. The fact that Alice possesses…the sameThe information that Bob can only be discussed if they have indistinguishably identical signals and indistinguishably identical contexts. In human life, this never happens. To see the color green.alsoIt is impossible to see him as another person does, but it is possible to come to an agreement between ourselves that…Text for translation: such.We will denote the color among ourselves with the signal “green.”

The signal-context construction is not entirely new to world philosophy. Even 250 years ago, Immanuel Kant wrote that “our knowledge (information?) although it stems from experience (signal?), but it is completely impossible without the presence of a priori knowledge in the knowing subject (context?)»..

Measurement of information

Measuring information in bits is a favorite pastime. One cannot resist the pleasure of pondering this, while also applying the counting method to the signal-context structure that has become familiar to us and, hopefully, understandable.

If we recall the classical theory of information, the generalized formula for calculating the amount of information (in bits) is as follows:

where.n.– the number of possible events, andp._n.– probabilityn.Let’s consider what each part of this formula means from the perspectives of the receiver and the transmitter. The transmitter might report, for example, on a hundred events, where the first, second, and third events each have a probability of 20%, while the remaining 40% is evenly distributed among the other ninety-seven events. It’s not difficult to calculate that the amount of information in the report about one event from the transmitter’s perspective is approximately 4.56 bits:
I.= — (3 × 0.2×log_2.(0.2) + 97 × (0.4/97)×log_2.(0.4/97)) ≈ — (-1,393156857 — 3,168736375) ≈ 4.56

Please don’t be surprised by the fractional result. In engineering, it’s common to round up in such cases, but the exact value is often interesting as well.

If the receiver knows nothing about the distribution of probabilities (and how could it?), then from its perspective, the amount of information received is 6.64 bits (this can also be easily calculated using a formula). Now let’s imagine a situation where the receiver is only interested in events number 1 (“execute”), 2 (“pardon”), and 100 (“award an order”), while everything else is just uninteresting “other.” Let’s assume the receiver already has statistics from previous episodes and knows the probability distribution: execute – 20%, pardon – 20%, award an order – 0.4%, other – 59.6%. Calculating this, we get 1.41 bits.

The variation turned out to be significant. Let’s look for an explanation for this phenomenon. If we remember that information is not just a single objectively existing signal, but a combination of “signal + context,” it becomes quite clear that the amount of information generated when receiving a signal should also be context-dependent. Thus, we have a good alignment between the signal-context concept and the mathematical theory of information.

Magnitude“I”.The value calculated using the formula discussed is typically used to solve the following problems:

1. For constructing a data transmission environment. If the coding task is formulated as “give everything you have, but do it as efficiently as possible,” then when solving it for the case described in the example, one should aim for a value of 4.56 bits. This means trying to ensure that, on average, a million transmission cycles fit as closely as possible into 4,561,893 bits. One should not expect to compress it into a smaller volume. The math is unforgiving.
2. To understand how much the uncertainty of the receiver decreases upon receiving a signal, it is assumed that the arrival of information reduces the informational entropy of the receiver by the amount of that information. If we consider the amount of information in this sense, the correct answers, depending on the properties of the receiver, will be 6.64 and 1.41 bits. The value of 4.56 will also be a correct answer, but only if the receiver is interested in all events and their probabilities are known in advance.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, when we talk about bits, bytes, megabytes, or, for example, gigabits per second, we are referring to the first interpretation. We all much prefer using broadband Internet over a sluggish dial-up connection. However, there are times when we find ourselves spending half a day online, reading a mountain of texts and watching a ton of videos, just to finally get a simple binary answer to our question in the form of “yes or no.” In this process, our uncertainty decreases not by the dozens of gigabytes we had to download, but by just one bit.

The entropic interpretation of the nature of information raises more questions than it answers. Even from a purely everyday perspective, we see that the least uncertainty is found among those citizens who have never read a single book, and whose cognitive interactions with the outside world are limited to watching TV series and sports broadcasts. These respected individuals exist in complete, blissful certainty regarding all conceivable questions of the universe. Uncertainty only arises with the broadening of one’s horizons and the acquiring of the detrimental habit of pondering. The situation where acquiring information (reading good, intelligent books) increases uncertainty is impossible from the standpoint of the theory of information entropy, but from the perspective of signal-context theory, it is quite a common phenomenon.
Indeed, if the result of receiving a signal is the creation of a new context, then we need more and more signals to sustain it, which will satisfy this context but may also inadvertently create a new, originally hungry context. Or even several of them.

The discussions about how information might be related to order are equally surprising (if entropy is a measure of chaos, then negentropy, or information, should be a measure of order). Let’s consider the following sequences of zeros and ones:

1. 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000An ideal order in the “dream of a hostess” style. But there is no information here, just like there is none on a blank sheet of paper or a freshly formatted hard drive.
2. 1111111111111111111111111111111111111111Essentially, the same thing.
3. 0101010101010101010101010101010101010101It’s already more interesting. The order remains perfect, and there’s still not much information.
4. 0100101100001110011100010011100111001011I didn’t hesitate to toss a coin. 0 – heads, 1 – tails. I tried to throw it fairly, so we can assume that it resulted in perfect randomness. Is there any information here? And if so, what is it about? The answer seems to be “about everything,” but if that’s the case, how can we extract it in a usable form?
5. 1001100111111101000110000000111001101111Similar to a coin, but using a pseudorandom number generator instead.
6. 0100111101110010011001000110010101110010It also seems like the same kind of random nonsense, but it’s not. I’ll explain what it is below.

If we remove the text comments and pose a riddle about what could result from flipping a coin, the first three options would be immediately ruled out. The fifth option is also suspicious because there are more ones than zeros. This reasoning is flawed. With a fair coin toss, the probability of all these outcomes is the same, equal to 2.^-40.If I continue to flip a coin without sleep or rest in the hope of reproducing at least one of the six presented outcomes, I can expect that if I’m lucky, I might succeed in about a hundred thousand years. However, it is impossible to predict which specific outcome will occur first, as they are all equally likely.

The sixth item, by the way, presents the word “Order” in eight-bit ASCII code.

It turns out that information is neither in perfect order nor in perfect chaos. Or is it? Imagine that a perfectly chaotic sequence of zeros and ones (No. 4) was generated not by me, but by an employee of the enemy army’s encryption center, and is now being used as part of a secret key to encrypt messages. In this case, those zeros and ones immediately stop being meaningless digital junk and become super important information for which codebreakers would be willing to sell their souls. It’s no surprise: the signal has gained context and, as a result, has become quite informative.

I have no desire to claim that the entropy theory of information is completely incorrect. There are several specialized applications where it yields adequate results. It is important to clearly understand the limits of its applicability. One possible limitation could be the requirement that the received signal does not lead to the formation of context. In particular, most communication tools meet this criterion. It is indeed possible to discuss the separation of signal from noise as a struggle against entropy.

The measurement of information has another aspect that is worth remembering. The result of any single measurement is a number. In our case, this is bits, bytes, gigabytes. Once we have a number, we typically expect to manipulate it in familiar ways. We compare it as “greater/less,” add, or multiply. Let’s consider two examples of applying the operation of “addition” to quantities of information:

1. There are two flash drives. The first one is 64 GB, and the second one is 32 GB. In total, we have the capacity to store 96 GB on them. That’s right, everything is fair and accurate.
2. There are two files. The first one is 12 MB, and the second one is 7 MB. How much information do we have in total? One might be tempted to add them up and get 19 MB. But let’s not rush. First, let’s feed these files to a compressor. The first file was compressed to 4 MB, and the second to 3 MB. Can we now add the numbers and get the total?trueWhat is the volume of the available data? I would suggest not rushing and taking a look at the contents of the original files. We see that all the content of the second file is present in the first file. This means that adding the size of the second file to the size of the first file doesn’t make any sense. If the first file were different, then the addition would be meaningful, but in this particular case, the second file doesn’t add anything to the first.

From the perspective of the amount of information, the situation with quines—programs that have the ability to output their own source code—is quite interesting. In addition to this function, such a program can contain something else: a useful algorithm, texts, images, and so on. This means that within the program, there is this “something else,” and on top of that, it contains itself, encompassing its entire self once again along with that “something else.” This can be expressed with the formula: A = A + B, where B is not equal to zero. Such an equality cannot exist for additive quantities.

Thus, the situation with the amount of information is quite strange. One could say that the amount of information is a conditionally additive quantity. In some cases, we are allowed to add the existing numbers, while in others, we are not. When it comes to the capacity of a data transmission channel (in particular, a flash drive can be considered a channel for transmitting data from the past to the future), addition is valid. However, when “weighing” a specific signal, we obtain a quantity whose ability to be added to other similar quantities is determined by external factors, the existence of which we may not even be aware of. For example, we can talk about the informational capacity of the human genome (DNA can be viewed as a medium for data transmission, and as far as I know, there are research groups trying to construct storage devices based on DNA), and it is approximately 6.2 Gbit, but any answer to the question“How much information is specifically recorded in my genome?”It would be meaningless. The most that can be asserted is that, regardless of the counting method used, the result cannot exceed those 6.2 Gbps. Or, if reality is such that we need to consider not only the sequence of nucleotide bases, then it might. However, if we talk about the total amount of information contained in a living cell, it seems that the answer to this question cannot be obtained at all, at least because the cell itself is a living organism, not a medium for data transmission.

In conclusion to the topic of “measuring information,” I would like to introduce the concept of “information class,” which allows us to assess the volume of information, if not quantitatively, then at least qualitatively:

1. Final informativeness– a situation where all the necessary contextual signals can be encoded in a discrete sequence of finite length. It is precisely for such situations that measuring information in bits is applicable. Examples:
   • The text of “Hamlet.”
   • All the texts that have ever been created by humanity that have come down to us.
   • Information in the genome.

   The current information technologies work specifically with finite informational capacities.

2. Infinite informativeness– A situation where a discrete sequence of infinite length is required to encode a signal, and any limitation (“lossy compression”) to a finite length is unacceptable. An example: data about the positions of balls that need to be preserved for perfect billiard simulation, so that if the process is later run in reverse, the original position is restored. In this case, the speeds and positions of the balls must be recorded with infinite precision (an infinite number of decimal places) because, due to the strong nonlinearities present, any error in a single digit tends to accumulate and lead to a qualitatively different result. A similar situation arises when numerically solving nonlinear differential equations.

   Despite the seemingly outrageous nature of this idea, there are no fundamental reasons why, with the advancement of technology, we shouldn’t acquire means to work with infinite amounts of information.

3. Unresolvable informativeness– a situation in which the required data cannot be obtained in any way due to fundamental limitations, either of a physical or logical nature. Examples:
   • It is impossible to know what happened yesterday on a star that is 10 light-years away from us.
   • It is impossible to know both the momentum and the position of a particle with absolute precision at the same time (quantum uncertainty).
   • In a decision-making situation, the individual cannot know in advance which specific alternative they will choose. Otherwise (if the decision is known to them), they are not in a decision-making situation.
   • A complete deterministic description of the universe cannot be obtained in any way. This is countered by a whole range of fundamental limitations—both physical and logical. Additionally, there are effects related to the barber paradox.

   If there is still some hope regarding physical limitations that clarifying the picture of reality might allow us to translate some seemingly insurmountable informational constraints into finite or at least infinite ones, then logical limitations cannot be overcome by any advancement in technology.

“Information” in physics

Historically, the connection between the themes of “information” and “entropy” arose from discussions about Maxwell’s demon. Maxwell’s demon is a fictional creature that sits by a door in a wall separating two parts of a gas chamber. When a fast molecule comes from the left, it opens the door, and when a slow one comes, it closes it. If a fast molecule comes from the right, it closes the door, but if a slow one comes, it opens it. As a result, slow molecules accumulate on the left, while fast ones gather on the right. The entropy of the closed system increases, and with the temperature difference generated by the demon, we can delightfully operate a perpetual motion machine of the second kind.

An eternal engine is impossible, and therefore, in order to align the situation with the law of conservation of energy, as well as with the law of non-decreasing entropy, it was necessary to reason as follows:

1. When the demon is at work, the entropy of the gas decreases.
2. However, since the molecules interact with the demon, the gas is not an isolated system.
3. The system “gas + demon” should be considered as an isolated system.
4. The entropy of an isolated system cannot decrease, so the entropy plus the entropy of the demon does not decrease.
5. This implies that the demon’s entropy is increasing.

So far, everything makes sense. But what could “the demon’s entropy is increasing” mean? The demon receives information (let’s stick to traditional terminology) about the approaching molecules. If information is negative entropy, then the demon’s entropy should decrease, not increase. Let’s assume that the demon makes a simple mental effort and, through the mechanism of the door, transmits information to the flying molecule (or, alternatively, does not transmit it). Negative entropy returns to the molecule, thereby reducing the entropy of the gas. But why does the demon’s entropy increase? Why do we only consider the outgoing information flow from the demon and not the incoming one? What would happen if the demon did not immediately forget the signals it received from the incoming molecules but instead remembered them? In that case, can we say that the demon’s entropy does not increase?

Norbert Wiener, discussing Maxwell’s demon in “Cybernetics,” writes that it is impossible to build a perpetual motion machine based on this concept because, sooner or later, the increasing entropy of the demon will reach a critical limit, and the demon will break down. This is logically sound, but it is unlikely that the demon’s breakdown should be explained by the idea that it will impart its original wisdom to the molecules and thus become foolish. From an informational standpoint, the demon’s work is very simple and tedious. There is no basis for talking about a “drain of mental energy.” Similarly, we do not say that, for example, each file processed by a compression program increases the entropy of the compressor and thereby gradually reduces its ability to compress data. Most likely, the impossibility of a perpetual motion machine based on Maxwell’s demon should be explained not by informational or technological considerations, but by the fact that the energy gain from manipulating a molecule cannot exceed the energy costs of determining the parameters of the incoming molecule plus the costs of manipulating the door.

The formulas for calculating thermodynamic and informational entropy are generally similar. Thermodynamic entropy (compare with formula (1) above):

where.p._i.– probabilityi.-state, andk._B.– the Boltzmann constant. However, this formula is inevitably tied to the existence of a subject who has classified the states and identified a finite number of groups of interest. If one attempts to eliminate the interested subject, it may become apparent that there is a high risk that the expression should be correctly written as follows:

At the same time, the total probability equals 1 (the system must be in one of the states):

An infinite number of possible states is much closer to the truth of life than a finite one. It is not difficult to show that if the percentage of states in the system does not approach zero…x., which have a probabilityp._x.is not equal to zero, the integral entropy approaches infinity. In terms of formula (2):

Thus, if the assumption that the operation of integration is appropriate here is correct (and it is sufficient for at least one of the physical quantities to possess the property of continuity), then the “informational” capacity of almost any (i.e., except for degenerate cases) material system turns out to be unlimited. This undermines any meaning in equating informational entropy with thermodynamic entropy. The similarity of the formulas can be attributed to the fact that there are many fundamentally different things in our world expressed by similar formulas. There are also other arguments in favor of the correspondence between thermodynamic and informational entropies, but, as far as I know, they have either never been subjected to experimental verification or (like Landauer’s principle, for example) are themselves derived from the assumption of the equality of the entropies.

When discussing the connection between the theme of “information” and physics, one cannot overlook the concept of “quantum information.” The laws of quantum mechanics are such that, in some cases, it makes sense to use informational terms to describe what is happening. For example, according to Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, we can know either the momentum of a particle or its position with precision, but not both. This gives rise to the illusion that by taking a measurement, we can obtain no more than a certain maximum amount of information. From this, it seems to follow that there may exist information within the particle, and that its volume is strictly limited. I cannot comment on the productivity or counterproductivity of such usage of informational concepts, but there is a strong suspicion that bridging the gap between the strictly physical concept of “quantum information” and the information we deal with on a macro level (for example, “Hamlet”) is not just difficult, but entirely impossible.

To convey our macro-information, we use not only physical objects and phenomena but also their absence. The text in a book is encoded not only by the ink but also by the unprinted spaces (you can’t read anything from a uniformly colored page). It’s also easy to come up with many situations where a very important signal is transmitted not by an energetic impact but by its absence. I can even imagine that within a particle there exists some mysterious substance that constitutes information, but to imagine that…inside the absenceParticles also contain information – this is something quite contradictory.

At the current level of understanding of how our world works, I believe that the concept of “quantum information” should be treated somewhat like the concept of “color” when applied to quarks. In other words, yes, “quantum information” can and should be recognized as a valuable concept, but it is important to clearly understand that the “information” we refer to in all other cases may only have an indirect relationship to it. Perhaps the conflict can be resolved by considering that physics can productively study the material basis of the transmitted signal (in particular, providing answers about the maximum possible capacity of a data transmission channel), but the presence of a signal—while necessary—is not a sufficient condition for us to claim that the object in question contains information.

It is essential to understand clearly that we do not have a physical basis for information (a sort of equivalent to the phlogiston theory, but applicable not to heat, but to information) not because we still do not know everything, but because it cannot exist in principle. One of the most significant requirements of the scientific method, most clearly and consistently applied in physics, is the exclusion of the acting subject endowed with free will from the phenomenon being studied. The subject (the so-called “implicit observer”) must, of course, be present with the phenomenon in question, but they have no right to interfere in any way. The mechanistic nature of the phenomena being studied, that is, the total absence of purposeful activity, is what makes physics physics. However, as soon as we start talking about information, we cannot escape the fact that the signals received by the subject serve as raw material for decision-making. The implicit observer of physical phenomena should not care what they are observing, while the acting subject, who exists simultaneously in both the material world and the informational reality, cannot be indifferent in principle. From this diametrically opposed set of requirements placed on the subject within the phenomena being studied, it follows that the phenomenon of “information” cannot be reduced to any physical phenomena, including those that have yet to be discovered.

What is particularly surprising is that materialists and idealists have reached a remarkable consensus on the necessity of a fundamental physical “information.” For materialists, this is advantageous because it allows physics to achieve a total description of reality (nothing remains that is not part of physical reality). Idealists celebrate this victory because it officially recognizes their “spirit” as the foundation of the universe. Both historically opposing camps are rejoicing, but not so much over each other as over common sense. Both materialists and idealists react quite aggressively to any attempt to connect the material and ideal worlds in any alternative, simplistic reification manner.

Data

As mentioned earlier, a signal can be viewed not only as a material object but also as an immaterial one. According to the principle of the totality of physical reality, a signal must, of course, have a physical embodiment, but there are many situations where the physical aspect of the signal does not interest us at all; we are only concerned with its immaterial component. In such cases, we completely abstract from the physics of the signal, and as a result, we are left with a rather strange subject for further discussion. We have discarded the physics, and we still cannot say that there is information within this subject, since it is merely a signal, and for information to arise, it needs context. We will refer to such objects as data. Data is an immaterial signal. It is immaterial not because it has some otherworldly nature and travels through subtle astral entities, but because, in this particular case, it turns out that how it travels is not important to us. For example, a volume of “Hamlet” in a beautiful binding, or a rare edition of it, is a signal in which we are interested in both the material and immaterial components. But if we simply need to refresh our memory of the “to be or not to be” monologue, we look for…текст., and we don’t care where we find it. A paper book, a file on a flash drive, or a service from an online library will do. The text of “Hamlet” is data, but a copy of a gift edition of “Hamlet” is more than just that.

A particularly interesting case is that of an object for which not only the physics is irrelevant, but also the appropriate context is missing. Imagine a text in an unfamiliar language (I don’t know Chinese, so let’s say it’s Chinese). I want to find out what this text means, so I take a piece of paper and carefully copy the characters. I simply replicate all the strokes and squiggles. To me, they are just strokes and squiggles. The meaning of what is depicted will only emerge after I show this piece of paper to someone who knows Chinese, and they translate the text into a language I understand. Until that happens, I have an informational object on the paper that is definitely a signal, but a signal without the context that is currently absent.

In the case of copying Chinese characters, I wouldn’t have to bother with redrawing them.data(this is exactly the data) on a piece of paper, and then take a photo with my phone and send it to a friend via email. During the journey of this signal to my friend, the lack of context for interpreting this note would be evident not only to me but also to the phone’s software, the email program, and all the wonderful Internet protocols that would be involved in transmitting the data. One might say that understanding, in general, is a trait exclusive to us, highly complex beings made of flesh and blood, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. For example, when transmitting an image with hieroglyphs, the network’s transport layer would supplement the transmitted data with its own metadata, whichunderstandable(that is, they will be correctly interpreted) the mechanisms that implement the transport layer of the data transmission network. If we assume thatunderstandingIt doesn’t necessarily have to be something mysterious and lofty, perceiving the very essence of phenomena with an insightful gaze; it can simply be the presence of an adequate context (in the case of the transport layer of the network, this context is shaped by the fact that network infrastructure developers respect the TCP protocol). Thus, we can confidently say that technical systems are also endowed with the ability to understand. Yes, this understanding doesn’t quite resemble our own ability to grasp the essence of phenomena from within ourselves, but that doesn’t change the matter.

The concept of “data,” while not introducing anything fundamentally new to the metaphysics of information, proves to be remarkably useful from a practical standpoint. The two-component structure of “signal-context,” although complete (a third component is unnecessary), presents numerous inconveniences when applied to everyday life. The source of these inconveniences lies in the fact that the term “signal” is clearly associated with the material aspect of the process, and when the material side has to be ignored, the “grounding” force of the “signal” becomes quite obstructive.

Imagine your friend is planning a trip to Bremen and asks you how he can learn more about the city. The first thing that comes to mind is Wikipedia. After checking various language sections, you notice that the Russian article, while good, is very short, and the English article, although significantly longer, still falls short compared to the German version (which is hardly surprising). Now you need to tell your friend that the English article contains more information than the Russian one, but then you remember the philosophy of information and realize that there is no information in any of the sections. The Wikipedia article is a signal that becomes information only when it is placed in context. The problem.“The signal recorded on the hard drives of English-language Wikipedia servers, when it enters the context of your perception…”– Ugh, how creepy. How can a friend get to those hard drives with their context?“The signal delivered via Wi-Fi from English-speaking servers…”– Something’s off here too. What does Wi-Fi have to do with it, if the person can just as easily go to Wikipedia using mobile internet? When you replace the term “signal” with the synonym “data” (which is indeed a synonym in this case), all the inconveniences disappear.“You can check Wikipedia, but keep in mind that the English and especially the German articles have significantly more information about Bremen.”We took advantage of the fact that, as we now know, there can’t be any information in the article, but the data is essentially the article itself. The signal, the physical realization of which is not important to us in this particular case.

In my experience, I can say that after experimenting with switching to correct terminology in everyday life and professional activities (information technology), I have never encountered anyone noticing that something has changed. The only thing I now have to pay attention to is whether we are talking about data or information. For example, a database now stores not information, but specifically data; however, users entering this data into the database are exchanging information. The system still remains informational, but it operates based on the accumulated data.

With the development of transmission networks, we now have a fairly simple criterion that allows us to determine whether we can completely abstract from the physics of a specific object and, as a result, talk about it as aninformation object(that is about)dataThe criterion is as follows:If an object can be transmitted over the Internet, then we have every right to refer to it as an informational object.Текст для перевода: ..

Examples:

• A cutlet is not an informational object, as it is interesting to us (tasty and nutritious) precisely in its physical form.
• The recipe for making a cutlet is an informational object. It can be transmitted without loss over the Internet, complete with all the details and nuances, along with pictures and even videos.
• A coin is not exactly an informational object, especially if it has numismatic value.
• Money is an informational object. Many of us, including myself, have had to make payments online. In general, money is an extremely interesting object from the perspective of information philosophy. You may recall the earlier point that information does not adhere to the laws of conservation, but for money to function, it must comply with the law of conservation. Therefore, for the informational object “money,” an infrastructure has been artificially created that deliberately maintains the balance of “if something increases somewhere, then something else must decrease by exactly that amount.” We will return to the discussion of the phenomenon of money when we talk about subjects and system formation.

For the sake of clarity in terminology, it would be better to speak not of “informational,” but of…immaterial objectBut the term “informational” is much more convenient, as it lacks the particle “not.”

I would like to point out that the simple empirical rule for identifying an information object has an “if-then” structure, and therefore works only in one direction. That is, just because we cannot transmit something over the Internet does not mean that the object is not informational. For example, we cannot transmit the number pi in “live” form (that is, as a sequence of digits). We can share a recipe for making this “cutlet” (that is, a program that sequentially calculates the digits after the decimal point of pi), or we can send an image with a label, but we cannot transmit the “cutlet” itself.

Information in the number pi

Since we are talking about the number pi, it makes sense to discuss an interesting case related to this concept.

It is said that among the digits that make up the infinitely long tail of the number pi, one can theoretically find any predetermined sequence of digits. To be precise, this is still just a hypothesis, neither proven nor disproven. There are real numbers that have the property of containing any finite sequence of digits (they are called “normal”), but the hypothesis that pi is a normal number has not yet been proven. In particular, a normal number that contains any sequence of zeros and ones can be obtained by sequentially appending all combinations to the tail after the decimal point, gradually increasing the number of digits. Here’s how:
0, (0)(1)(00)(01)(10)(11)(000)(001)(010)(011)(100)(101)(110)(111)(0000)… and so on.

In decimal form, it will yield a number slightly greater than 0.27638711, and this number will definitely contain the contents of any file from your hard drive, even those that you haven’t saved there yet.

But we will overlook the fact that the normality of the number pi has not been proven, and in our reasoning, we will consider it to be normal. The number pi is surrounded by a wealth of stories, mysteries, and misconceptions, making it more interesting to discuss than some straightforward algorithmic output. If the mathematical inaccuracy bothers you, just consider that from here on, I am not talking about the number pi, but about any number that is normal with respect to base 2.

It creates a rather majestic picture. Imagine that in your later years, you sit down to write your detailed biography and save it in a file. Well, it turns out that among the digits of pi, this sequence of zeros and ones already exists. There is also a similar sequence, but with the exact date and circumstances of your death added. Truly, it becomes a book of destinies, doesn’t it?

The beginning of our book of destinies (the whole part and the first 20 characters of the infinite tail) looks like this:
11.00100100001111110110…

Let’s think about how one might read such a book of fates. Suppose I wrote my biography up to the present moment, took a fantastically powerful computer, and made it find the existing beginning of my biography among the digits of pi. It would be foolish to expect that the first occurrence would have a meaningful continuation. Most likely, what follows would be a nonsensical jumble of zeros and ones. After tinkering with the computer’s algorithm, I taught it to not only find occurrences of the known part of my biography but also to analyze whether the continuation is a coherent text written in a similar style. Finally, my computer found such a fragment. I don’t know whether it will bring me joy or sorrow, but I won’t stop the computer. Let it continue its work. After a while, it will overwhelm me with a pile of versions of my future biography found in the digits of pi. Some will be quite ordinary (“worked, retired at such-and-such time, grew old, suffered from this or that, died at such-and-such time”), but others will be much more interesting. For example, one version might say that tomorrow, neither sooner nor later, a global zombie apocalypse will occur, and I will be torn apart by bloodthirsty corpses. In another, it will definitely (since the digits contain all combinations of zeros and ones) say that I will gain immortality and omnipotence and become the ruler of the Universe. And an infinite number of other variations, endlessly crawling out of the computer. Which of these versions should I believe? Perhaps the very first one? But why that one in particular?

To make things easier for myself, let’s try to guess using the number pi in a simpler way. I’ll ask it a straightforward binary question. For example, will it be profitable for me to buy the stock package I’ve been eyeing today? If the first digit in the fractional part of pi is a one, then the all-knowing oracle has answered that it will be profitable. If it’s a zero, that means I should wait. Let’s take a look. A zero appeared right in the first position, while a one is way over in the third position. Oh, something tells me that with an oracle like this, I won’t be buying any stocks in my lifetime. It would be nice to have an additional oracle to suggest which position I should be looking at.

It turns out that for extractioninformationиз.dataWe lack just a tiny bit when it comes to the books of fate – a key that would indicate from which specific perspective we should read this book. Without that key, the only information we can glean from the endless string of digits in the number pi is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter. It’s a bit sad, really…

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, through the two-component structure of “signal-context,” we learned not only to eliminate the reification of “information,” but also gained a tool that allows us to bridge the material and immaterial aspects of reality without resorting to mystical practices.

The main concepts and ideas discussed:

1. Informationas a combination of signal and context.
2. Signalas a circumstance that can be interpreted.
3. Contexthow information about how a signal can be interpreted.
4. The connection between information and entropy exists, but it should not be absolutized.In some situations, acquiring information can be seen as a victory over chaos, while in others, it can be the opposite; in yet others, it may even be impossible to identify what kind of ordering is being referred to. The connection to entropy is most clearly observed in the task of transmitting data through a noisy channel, but this task is far from everything we do with information.
5. Every time,measuring informationWe should ask ourselves whether we are obtaining an additive quantity as a result. If the result is not an additive quantity, it’s better not to combine it with anything or multiply it by anything.
6. Class of informativenesshow to qualitatively assess the prospects of obtaining the required information. Three classes: finite informativeness, infinite, and undecidable.
7. Information cannot have a direct physical basis.Any attempts to find a physical basis for information can and should be viewed as metastases of reification. The connection between physics and information should only be made through the concept of “signal.”
8. Dataas a signal, from the material component of which one can abstract. The concept of “data,” while lacking independent philosophical value, allows us to avoid the inconveniences caused by the materialistic orientation of the term “signal.”
9. Instrumental technique“Can it be transmitted over the Internet?”for a quick determination of whether the item in question isinformation objectТекст для перевода: ..

Chapter 3. Grounds

Ideally, I should have started the narrative with the foundations. Without them, the previous reflections feel a bit suspended in emptiness. However, if I had begun with the foundations, it would likely not have been clear to the reader why such a peculiar horror was necessary, and as a result, this crucial material would have gone ungrasped.

What are foundations, and why are they needed?

Philosophical foundations are a tool that allows us to assess statements for their reliability and, consequently, their applicability when the cost of error is too high.

Everything we can assert can be clearly divided into three classes of statements (for details and justification, see Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”):

1. Tautologies– statements that are always true regardless of any circumstances. The peculiarity of tautologies is that the scope of their absolute truth is tightly confined to their own domain of definition. For example, the statement “it will rain or it won’t rain” is always true, but it doesn’t tell us anything about whether we should expect rain today. Tautologies are not necessarily useless. For instance, all logic and all mathematics are essentially tautologies, but when non-tautological statements are added to them, they become invaluable working tools.
2. Self-contradictions– statements that are always false regardless of any circumstances. They also cannot be used on their own to determine whether it will rain or not.
3. Facts.– statements that can be both true and false. If (that is, when) a fact is true, and we know it, we can use it productively, especially if we enhance it with some useful tautology like logic or mathematics. If (that is, when) a fact is false, but we believe it to be true, we incur losses.

The situation is quite dramatic. We can indulge ourselves in pure tautologies, reveling in their truth, but this will bring us no benefit beyond self-satisfaction. We can entertain the audience with self-contradictions, but they will provide us with no useful information. All our useful knowledge about anything consists of facts that, in principle, do not possess the quality of being absolutely reliable.

It turns out that all our useful knowledge is unreliable, while all our reliable knowledge is inherently useless, becoming useful only when we add something unreliable to it? Yes, it seems that way. This situation is decidedly unsatisfactory for us, not least because the assertion that all our useful knowledge is unreliable is tautological, and any productive application of it occurs only when we add a “applying” fact. Adding a fact gives the assertion that useful knowledge is unreliable the property of a fact. That is, the ability to be both true and false.

If we formulate the task as “finding a way to identify the situation in which the claim that useful knowledge cannot be reliable is false,” then this will be the task of searching for philosophical foundations.

The most popular methods of obtaining bases:

1. Achieving consensus. If everyone agrees that water is wet and the earth is flat, then we consider these reliable facts. This is a shameless exploitation of human conformity, particularly “effective” when combined with violence.
2. The acquisition of an authoritative source. This approach can be particularly illustrated through the example of “book” religions – Judaism (the Torah and other texts, the truth of which is not disputed), Christianity (the Bible), Islam (the Quran), as well as other similar ideologies, including communism (the works of the classics of Marxism-Leninism). The weakness of this approach lies in the fact that the more facts are accepted as a foundation, the lower the overall reliability becomes, leading to a pressing need for interpreters, whose activities further inflate and complicate the foundations. The accumulated contradictions usually have to be resolved through violence.
3. The acquisition of a compact primary fact. The experience of such an acquisition is particularly well described by René Descartes in “Discourse on the Method…”. Boldly plunging into total skepticism, Descartes discovered that the only indisputable fact he had was “I think, therefore I am.” Building a vast and majestic structure of reliable knowledge on this seemingly ridiculous foundation was an extremely delicate, complex, and exhausting task, but it must be acknowledged that world science has managed it quite well. Interestingly, this was achieved without resorting to violence to reach a consensus.

Before moving on, I can’t resist the pleasure of demonstrating that Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am,” despite its obvious truth, is not a tautology but rather a fact that could be false. Let’s suppose I’ve created a little device that tracks whether I’m still alive or not. As soon as it recognizes that I am definitively dead, it will send emails from my address book with the following content:“Hello, dear friends! It is with great sadness that I inform you that I passed away on <insert date and time>, and from now on, I definitely do not think or exist. With respect and wishes for a long life, A.M.”The existing technologies are already sufficient to create such a device. If everything had gone as I would have arranged it, then when my end came, my correspondents would have received a letter from me (specifically from me, because the device is merely a means of delayed delivery) stating that I do not think and do not exist. And in this particular case, that statement would be true. The fact that my action (creating the device) reaches into a future that I cannot reach in person is not strange at all. Reaching for something in space (for example, through a phone) or in time is quite ordinary for us. Thus, “I think, therefore I am” is a fact that can be both true and false. However, this fact is always true when it is declared by a subject in their own “here and now.”

Unfortunately, not everything we need to justify the tenets of information philosophy can be derived from Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am.” Some individual concepts can be derived (for example, the concept of the information spacesuit and the related reasoning about the limitations of one’s own world), but that is not enough for us. Even the construct of “signal-context” cannot be derived from “I think, therefore I am,” as the very act of thinking encompasses the existence of all contexts within that thought. Excluding contexts from the reasoning (in “I think”) leads to the phenomenon of information being entirely relegated to the signal, where it becomes hopelessly reified. This, by the way, raises some thoughts about why the search for the material foundations of consciousness has become an unsolvable problem for the current scientific paradigm. Furthermore, the statement “not only I think” cannot be derived from “I think, therefore I am,” which is necessary even for considering the act of communication. We have no choice but to invent a different principle for seeking the foundations of reliable knowledge in place of the familiar and comfortable “I think, therefore I am.”

A simple test to check the reliability of the premises can be the so-called “crazy argument.”“Crazy argument”I propose the idea that everything happening around me—my entire life, all the events, everyone I interact with—is merely a product of my severe mental disorder, and in reality, I am nothing more than a completely deranged indescribable being strapped to a bed in a psychiatric hospital in a universe structured in a way that I cannot even begin to imagine. If the justification holds up even under such a monstrous assumption, it is reliable. Descartes’ “I think, therefore I am” withstands this “madness argument,” and therefore, any theory directly based on it also holds. In seeking an alternative way of justification, we simply need to achieve the same result.

Situationally dependent grounds

The main idea that I will apply to derive the foundations of the philosophy of information is to abandon the search for Absolute Truths. Instead, it is proposed to start from the task at hand and derive sets of foundations each time, the reliability of which will be strictly local, confined solely within the framework of the task being solved. This approach is nothing more than the implementation of an instrumental approach to philosophy, applied to the problem of finding foundations. The price we pay for this pleasure is that, as foundations, we will not obtain a single perfect product worthy of being immortalized on tablets, but rather a tool that allows us to produce, according to our needs, products whose perfection will also be present, but this perfection will always be strictly local. Using a common analogy, we abandon the search for the ideal fastening tool, and in a situation where we have screws, we will be able to justify the suitability of a screwdriver, while if we have nails, a hammer will become the appropriate tool.

Imagine you’re at the supermarket, having gathered your groceries, and now you’re standing in line at the checkout. While you have the chance, you might ponder the illusory nature of what’s happening. For instance, consider that the supermarket, the cashier, and the products you’re buying are nothing more than a combination of signals reaching your brain through your visual, auditory, and other nerves. You could also reflect on the idea that money is merely a convention and, from the perspective of the true nature of the universe, is a rare absurdity. But the line is moving, and instead of abstract musings about the illusion of money, a much more pressing question arises: “Did I forget my wallet at home?” When we find ourselvesinside the situationIn a buying and selling situation, the general question “do money exist?” receives a clear answer of “definitely yes” and is replaced by a more specific question “do they exist in my pocket or at home?” Thus, within the context of a transaction, we can add to our always true statement “I think, therefore I am” another equally indisputable fact at that specific moment: “money exists.” Of course, we can continue our metaphysical inquiries and, ignoring the questioning look of the seller, choose not to engage in the buying and selling situation, which would ultimately result in us going home without any groceries.

Imagine that you are participating in a chess tournament. If you are truly there to compete and not just to troll others with convoluted metaphysics, then the condition for entry…inside the situationThe “chess tournament” will be an acknowledgment of the existence not only of one’s own “self,” but also of the existence of chess and the rules governing the game. It will also recognize the existence of the tournament and its rules. You might quietly try to break the rules (a powerful smartphone with a good chess program can instantly elevate your level to that of a master), and perhaps you might even get away with it. However, this in no way negates the existence of the rules or the fact that you attempted to break them.

The principle of situationally dependent justification is thatIf in a certain situation we are trying to talk about it and aim for that conversation to make sense, we can confidently include in our set of primary facts the existence of the situation itself, the fact that we are within it, the act of speaking (or thinking) about it, and the existence of those entities without which this situation would be impossible.Текст для перевода: ..

It may seem that by opening the door to situationally dependent primary facts, we are giving the green light to intellectual laxity, which will inevitably lead to the justification of anything. Yes, situationally dependent primary facts are a dangerous tool, but they only become dangerous when used ignorantly. There are two simple rules that make the use of this tool both useful and safe:

1. When a primary fact is successfully accepted and used very productively in one situation, there may be a temptation to slightly absolutize it and apply it to discussions about other situations. This should not be done. A primary fact should not extend beyond the situation or set of situations for which it was derived. For example, even if a chess tournament has a cash prize fund, incorporating the concept of “money” from buying and selling situations into this context is incorrect, as in the situation of “playing for money,” that money plays a completely different role than it does in a buying and selling context. Even though they are essentially the same paper currency. However, if there are contractual paid games in the tournament, then the buying and selling aspect emerges within the tournament situation, and at that point, discussing “that very” money as one of the primary facts becomes relevant.
2. Not to consider as primary those facts that, while desirable within a situation, are nonetheless not essential for the situation to exist. For example, I can discuss a person’s date of birth in terms of zodiac signs (for this, I must take them as primary facts), but this in no way prevents me from considering the entirety of astrology, from beginning to end, as merely a literary genre, the essence of which lies in the creation of meaningless pseudo-prophetic texts.

Careless handling of any methods of philosophical justification yields a repulsive result. Even the conceptual beauty and ideological purity of the statement “I think, therefore I am” did not prevent René Descartes from immediately introducing several assumptions that were obvious to him but quite distant from soundness, resulting in a “proof” of God’s existence that is far removed from beauty and purity.

Despite the wealth of situations and, consequently, the primary facts derived from them, this methodology proves resilient to the “mad argument.” After all, my existence within the situation of “supermarket, groceries, checkout, money” implies the existence of the primary fact “money,” regardless of whether I am actually physically in line at the supermarket checkout or if it is all just a figment of my troubled mind.

Tied to the idea“inside the situation”The method of philosophical justification is a logical consequence of the instrumental approach to philosophy, which is the foundation of the method mentioned in the introduction. If our reasoning were aimed at establishing absolute truth (“the most general laws of the universe”), then a situationally dependent justification would indeed be completely unsuitable. However, if our activity is focused on developing tools that are useful for solving specific problems, we have every right to start from both the existence of these problems and our need for effective tools.

The use of situationally dependent justifications

Each time, starting from scratch to derive the foundations and build all the chains for every specific situation is too burdensome. Especially considering that situations tend to change almost every minute. Therefore, it makes sense to develop a set of techniques that allow us to derive statements that, while they may not claim to be absolute truths (we had to give up on that as soon as we got tied to the situation), will still be applicable quite broadly.

Fact extraction

Let’s assume we’ve determined that a certain fact is primary for a specific situation. This means that if we dismiss this fact and decide to consider it “nonsense, it doesn’t actually exist,” we automatically close ourselves off from being able to adequately address that particular situation for which this fact is primary, as well as all similar situations. The next time, we might dismiss something else, then another thing, and eventually, we will find that the range of questions for which we can have primary facts has shrunk to a point, degenerated, and effectively ceased to exist. And all of this happens because, for the primary fact identified in one situation, we simply found another situation in which that fact cannot possibly be primary.

Let’s consider the following two statements:

1. “The fairy turned a pumpkin into a carriage for Cinderella.”
2. “The fairy turned the stepmother’s head into a carriage for Cinderella.”

In order to say anything about these sets of letters, we must accept the existence of Cinderella, fairies, and other rather dubious things as primary facts. On one hand, we certainly remember that all of this is fiction, but on the other hand, we can accurately state that the first assertion is true while the second is false. But how can the fact of interaction between two non-existent entities be true? Yes, of course, in the world we call real, that very Cinderella who rode in a pumpkin carriage never existed. But is that a sufficient reason to categorically deny Cinderella’s existence, thereby completely closing off the possibility of discussing the plot of this rather good fairy tale? That would simply be unreasonable. It would be wiser to recognize that there are a number of situations (which we can tentatively label as “the world of the Cinderella fairy tale”) in which the existence of that very Cinderella and her friendly fairy is a primary fact, while outside of this world (even in the world of the three little pigs, for example) this fact is not even a plausible hypothesis.

The matter, of course, is by no means limited to Cinderella. The knife of denial described here easily cuts through concepts such as the soul, life, thought, meaning, purpose, freedom, love, and a long list of other topics that it would not only be far from useless to discuss properly, but would be absolutely vital.

The extraction of primary facts operates according to the following algorithm:

1. We are considering a situation in which we need to be able to construct meaningful statements.
2. We calculate the primary facts that are present in this situation.
3. We learn to operate with these primary facts without reflecting on the idea that “in reality, none of this exists.” There is no single, eternal, and unchanging “reality.” There are situations that we find ourselves in, and within those situations, we must be able to navigate.

Well, of course, it’s very desirable to be able to avoid dragging in Cinderellas, fairies, devils, gods, and even freedom, thought, goals, and meanings into situations where they don’t belong.

A separate and quite serious nuance is that from the essence of a situation, one can extract not only primarily reliable facts but also primarily unreliable facts. That is, those that must logically have the possibility of being both true and false within the situation. For example, let’s consider a situation where I am trying to find out what the weather will be like tomorrow. Specifically, whether it will rain heavily all day. The primarily reliable (true) facts in this situation would be “tomorrow will definitely come” and “some kind of weather will definitely occur.” However, primarily reliable facts are not everything I have within the situation I am considering. My activity in searching for an answer to my question revolves around the fact that while I am in this situation, I…unknownWill it rain tomorrow? The existence of the question and the uncertainty of the answer are logically necessary conditions for being in a situation where one is seeking an answer.

Thus, the situation can be attributed a set of primarily reliable (true or false) facts and a set of primarily unreliable facts. The criterion of “reliability” allows for a clear and unambiguous division of the sets of facts within the situation. A fact within the situation is present either as a necessary statement or as an open question.

Open mathematical problems present a very interesting case. In general, mathematics is essentially a tautology, where all statements are either absolutely true or absolutely false. However, there are a number of statements for which we do not know whether they are true or false. For example, one such problem currently is the Riemann Hypothesis concerning the zeros of the zeta function. Due to the tautological nature of mathematics, the answer is certainly out there, and there is only one. But it is currently unknown. This is why the best mathematical minds in the world are grappling with this mystery, searching for the answer. They would be satisfied with either outcome – “yes, it is true” or “no, it is false.” In the situation of “search for proof,” the hypothesis about the zeros of the zeta function is an open question, but as soon as a proof is found, the hypothesis will cease to be a hypothesis, and the statement will either become a proven theorem or its negation will become a proven theorem.

Searching for situations

Let’s assume that through the process of fact extraction, we have obtained a certain statement with the mandatory note “primarily reliable” or “open question.” Now we can reverse the process and identify the situations in which this fact is present. If we have learned to work with the extracted facts, it means we have learned to reason adequately in all situations where this fact is relevant. By moving from facts to situations, we can even find not just individual situations, but entire classes of situations. As a result, any theory that is substantiated by the identified primary facts will be reliable within any situation that belongs to that class.

I find the practice of artificially constructing primary facts to search for situations in which these facts are present exactly as specified quite intriguing and not without its uses. For example, I followed this approach in the previously described case with the device that alerts me to my death: I took our familiar, fundamentally reliable true fact “I think, therefore I am” and devised a situation in which this fact becomes fundamentally unreliable. The unreliability in this case is ensured by the fact that I cannot guarantee that the device won’t give a false alarm, and therefore, in the prepared letter, it would still be prudent to add a note stating that the reported fact should be double-checked for reliability.

In principle, when operating with artificial facts, it may turn out that the sought set of situations is empty. For example, for the statement “Harry Potter exists,” there is a class of situations in which it is a primarily true fact (the world of the Harry Potter story) and a class of situations in which the statement is primarily false (beyond the world of the story). However, I cannot come up with a situation in which this statement is an open question.

It can be argued that if we learn to skillfully navigate between situations and primary facts, and vice versa, between situations and their classes, we will be able to develop theories with the highest reliability.

Objective reality

When we start applying situationally dependent justifications, something strange begins to happen with objective reality. That very reality that must exist apart from our fantasies and desires. The reality that we dream of understanding and want to influence.

First of all, objective reality ceases to be a unified whole. When we find ourselves in a particular situation and derive a set of primary facts from it, we obtain a reality that does not necessarily have to correspond in any way to the worldview derived from the primary facts of another situation. The classical notion of a single, indivisible eternal Being stops being a fundamental concept and becomes more of a historical curiosity than a practical tool.

Secondly, very strange entities begin to infiltrate this oddly fragmented objective reality. Entities that we certainly did not expect in objective reality. For example, Cinderella with her fairy and pumpkin carriage. Of course, all these strange entities are securely locked away in the reservations from which they cannot escape, but the very fact of such oddities penetrating the reality we so carefully protect cannot help but shock us at first.

The rigidity of the concept of a unified and indivisible objective reality has already led to entire layers of the most pressing philosophical questions being cast into the murky swamp of agnosticism. Lacking the ability to assert the objective existence of the objects we deal with every second within the framework of an indivisible Being, we have witnessed a monstrous surge of obscurantism and intellectual laxity. It brings to mind the image of a woman who is willing to commit her life only to a perfect suitor in every respect, and while such characters are inexplicably absent, she finds herself entangled with every passerby.

In the following chapters, we will have to learn to operate with quite unusual entities, the existence of which in a unified Being would be simply impossible to assert. The concept of “context,” which is highly debatable from the standpoint of total objective reality, was just the beginning. While materialistic science can somehow (though it’s clear that it’s getting worse every year) find some satisfaction in the Procrustean bed of a single Being, a metaphysical system that claims to be a philosophy of information cannot afford the luxury of ignoring the whimsical and sometimes contradictory world of immaterial objects. In such conditions, the only alternative to abandoning the indivisibility of objective reality would be a complete detachment from any reality and an unconditional surrender to mysticism. There will be no surrender. Instead, there will be a fragmented objective reality that we will learn to work with.

Review of what has been done

Now that we have the justification methodology, it’s time to go through the two previous chapters (I’ll skip the introduction and the brief history of the issue, as there’s nothing to justify there) and, with the utmost degree of pedantry, nitpick the questionable statements presented.

Dualism: the metaphor of the “book”

1. What right did I have to speak of a book as a material object? How could I know that all these “mass,” “volume,” some mysterious “chemical properties,” and so on, actually exist and aren’t conjured up by malevolent demons or mad creators of virtual worlds?

   If I need to move a wardrobe but don’t have the strength to lift it along with the books, I need to physically take the books out of the wardrobe. In this situation, the books are considered material objects that have mass and occupy space. Regardless of whether reality is real or virtual, I am in the situation of “needing to move the wardrobe.” Thus, the fact that “a book is a material object” holds true at least within this one situation, and therefore we have the right to discuss it.

2. By what right did I decide that a book is an immaterial object? A book is, after all, an exclusively material object! It has an objective existence that does not depend on our consciousness and knowledge of it. “To exist objectively” is a property of matter, and only of matter; everything else exists only subjectively, meaning it is unreliable, unprovable, ghostly, and unworthy of attention. (I apologize, this is just me reproducing the standard line of thought of dialectical materialists.)

   To uncover this fact, we won’t have to look far. You, dear reader (yes, you personally in your “here and now”), are in the situation of “reading a book.” This very book. Let’s examine what primary fact is an integral part of this situation. My existence—definitely not, because it is self-evident only to me, but for you, it doesn’t withstand the “madman argument.” And in fact, maybe right now (in your “now”), I am deep in sleep and therefore not thinking. Or I might already be dead, and as a living organism, I do not exist at all. Perhaps the primary fact could be the existence of the surface from which you are reading the letters? It is certainly desirable, but not essential. If you are listening to this book, then there is no surface at all. So we can discard that as desirable but not necessary. Maybe your ability to understand this book? Of course, but that’s not enough. We need something more. We need the text of this book. The very text you are reading. Without it, it’s not reading a book at all. Thus, we can confidently add something like the text of the book to the list of primary facts you currently have. The text of the book may exist or may not exist, but right now, it exists in the most objective way possible.

   The need to operate with non-material entities arises not only in the context of reading a book but also in any situation where we need to learn something about matters that we cannot currently reach. Even if I look out the window, see falling raindrops, and decide to take an umbrella, that umbrella will not protect me from the drops I just saw (they will have already fallen) but rather from other drops. Water molecules are material, but when I looked out the window, I was not interested in them; I was concerned with the non-material object “the answer to the question of whether it is raining right now.”

Dualism: the totality of physical reality

Why did I tie material reality exclusively to physical space? What about time?

Space is a very convenient container for objects that are “not me.” Even for such a special object as “my body.” Time, on the other hand, is a poor container. Objects that belong exclusively to the past no longer exist (only their traces exist in the present), and those that belong exclusively to the future do not yet exist (only intentions or forecasts exist in the present). While I can move through space and place my “here” next to the location occupied by an object of interest, I am firmly locked in the “now.” Time is an extremely interesting entity from a metaphysical perspective, and we will definitely discuss it within the framework of information philosophy, but for now, what matters is that, in terms of being a container for the existence of objects, it is a very unfortunate option.

Dualism: the totality of informational reality

In discussions about the worlds of subjects, I boldly postulated that besides me, there are other beings, and my informational spacesuit does not match theirs. Isn’t that reckless? Perhaps there is only one informational spacesuit for everyone?

When we find ourselves in a situation of “communication,” we must acknowledge as a primary fact the existence of the person we are communicating with. In many situations, it can be difficult to have any reliable knowledge of what the interlocutor “really” is (the interlocutor “linda” with a cat in their avatar could turn out to be a bearded man or even a software bot), but the very fact of having an interlocutor in the situation of “communication” is undeniable.

The hypothesis of the unity of all informational spacesuits is refuted by the fact that we can find ourselves in a situation where some entities present within our spacesuit are present, while others are not present within the spacesuit of the being we are communicating with (the “communicating with a dog” situation). Moreover, the assumption that a dog’s spacesuit is a subset of ours is neither provable nor disprovable, as both proving and disproving would require stepping outside of one’s own world, which is not possible.

Dualism: the totality of the inseparability of realities

The image with two axes (material and immaterial) logically follows from the totality and distinctness of the two realities. We seem to have figured out the totality, but why must they be distinct? Perhaps they are not distinct after all, and if we cleverly introduce a third axis, it could encompass everything we need at once?

All situations we can find ourselves in can be conditionally divided into those where the existence of objects in space is significant and those where the specifics of space are not essential. When we need to find the key to our house (“Oh God, which pocket did I put it in?”), the spatial location of the item in question is crucial. Therefore, within such situations, the existence of physical space is postulated exactly as the “material” axis is drawn. This immediately gives us the necessity of a material axis in the form it exists. Even if we cleverly draw another axis, there must still be at least two axes. And since there are two, they must be different.

In general, a diagram with two axes is flawed precisely because it has only two axes. Ideally, there should be more, as the same subject can often be viewed from different perspectives. The material (spatial) aspect is indeed singular, as we have one unified container for the existence of matter. However, there can be as many non-material aspects as our imagination allows. This includes cognitive value, monetary value, aesthetic value, and anything else. All this richness has to be reduced to a single conditional “informational” scale solely to represent it somehow in a two-dimensional drawing.

Dualism: reification

Well, why should we be afraid of this thing? Perhaps reification, especially when done skillfully, is exactly what we should be dreaming of?

Similarly to the previous point, we consider situations where the presence of physical space is not required. In such cases, postulating the existence of physical space as a container (and, consequently, the requirement that the objects in question must exist within it) would violate the principle of “not introducing anything into primary facts that does not stem from the essence of the situation.”

The existence of information: signals and contexts

1. What about information without a signal?

   If a situation contains only primarily reliable facts, it is fully defined, and no additional “inputs” are needed. Unfortunately, such a situation turns out to be tautologically self-contained. There is neither an entrance nor an exit. It is an isolated system and holds no practical interest. Practical interest arises when there are open questions within the situation. When an open question appears, there is a need to understand what can happen with it and how. A signal is something received from outside the situation that leads to changes in the open question. It can either provide a definitive answer, thus concluding the situation and transforming it into another one where the fact that was previously an open question becomes a primarily reliable fact, or it can provide clarification without fully closing the question.

   When considering any situation with open questions, we must assume the existence of signals that influence the openness of those questions.

2. What about information without context?

   In a situation with an open question, this very open question serves as the context, which, since we have posited the openness of the question, must necessarily exist.

3. Maybe, in addition to the signal and context, we should add something else?

   Maybe. The signal-context construction is just a tool. If it can be improved, then why not?

The existence of information: measuring information

1. Who said that Shannon’s formula is correct?

   The formula cannot be wrong. Its application can be.

2. Maybe the determinists are right, and all the information about the entire past, present, and future of the Universe objectively exists somewhere?

   Let’s assume that’s the case. We’ll take the existence of this information (or rather, data) as a fundamentally reliable fact and try to imagine a situation characterized by this primary fact. The first thing to note is that the subject in this situation knows their entire future with absolute certainty. Therefore, the decision-making process is impossible for them (all decisions have already been made and are known in advance). The resulting situation is completely devoid of open questions, and thus the context for the subject becomes null. In other words, the subject has a comprehensive signal but lacks any context for interpreting that signal. This hypothetical all-knowing subject, while it exists (as we constructed the situation around it), is categorically incapable of thought. From this simple reasoning, it follows that the assumption of the objective existence of a universal deterministic book of fate is in irreconcilable contradiction with the fact that “I think.”

   Don’t be surprised that starting from the idea of pandeterminism, we immediately arrived at the concept of an omniscient being. Just as easily, one could start from the idea of an omniscient being and arrive at pandeterminism. In essence, both vulgar materialism and monotheistic mysticism are two sides of the same absurdity.

The existence of information: “information” in physics

1. What gives you such confidence that the law of conservation of energy cannot be violated with the help of Maxwell’s demon?

   When we talk about the law of conservation of energy, we must understand the term “energy” in the sense that it is defined in physics. In physics, energy is, by definition, what is conserved during any transformations. The very validity of the concept of “energy” in physics is a hypothesis, but so far we have been fortunate that whenever a discrepancy in the total of known forms of energy was discovered, a new form of energy was always found to account for the difference. In the realm of “theoretical physics,” a discovered violation of the law of conservation of energy is a signal to search for a new form of energy. Hypothetically, it is possible that in the case of a detected imbalance, a new form of energy may not be found, but that would mean we would have to abandon the concept of “energy.” In any case, to raise an alarm, a physical experiment is needed, and as far as I know, no one has yet succeeded in creating a working Maxwell’s demon.

2. What gives you such confidence that the progress in physics won’t finally lead to the discovery of the infon?

   See above about the futility of reification. Surely, time and again, something will be found that one might hastily want to consider as the material basis of information. In this situation, I would suggest remembering that we already know thousands of ways to embed a signal in matter, and we can view the newly discovered phenomenon as just one more of these methods.

The existence of information: data

Is defining the concept of “information object” by referencing “the Internet” a bit too much?

This is not a definition, but merely a criterion that can sometimes be useful.

Chapter Summary

The degree of madness will only increase from here. The only way to stay grounded in reality and avoid a pointless flight of unrestrained thought may be to cultivate the useful habit of holding on tightly to unshakeable foundations.

The main concepts and ideas discussed:

1. Philosophical foundationhow to distinguish reliable concepts from detached fantasies.
2. “Crazy argument”as a tool for testing foundations for reliability.
3. Primary factas a non-tautological statement, the truth of which is accepted as a given. There are various approaches to the problem of acquiring primary facts, and situationally dependent justification is one of them.
4. Essence.situationally dependent justificationIn considering any issue, we can either accept the very existence of that issue as a primary fact, or we must acknowledge that our activity is devoid of meaning.
5. Primary facts can be clearly divided intoprimarily truefacts andinitially unreliablefacts.
6. Rulessituationally dependent justification (they should be memorized and strictly applied):
   • Rejection of absolutization. Situation-dependent justification is unsuitable for the search for Absolute Truths. Everything derived from situation-dependent primary facts is justified only within the context of the examined situation (or class of situations).
   • In the list of primary facts, only those that are absolutely essential for understanding the situation should be included. A correct primary fact must withstand the test of the “crazy argument.”
7. Instrumental techniques, useful when applying situationally dependent justifications:
   • Fact extraction. A primary situationally dependent fact cannot be dismissed solely on the grounds that there are situations (other situations) in which it is definitely false.
   • Searching for situations. Constructing a scenario in which a predetermined statement (or a set of statements) is the primary fact. This is useful for clarifying the boundaries of the situation being examined and for identifying interdependencies among the primary facts.
8. Objective realityhas ceased to be unified and indivisible. When situationally dependent justifications are applied, it becomes a norm of life for circumstances to arise where things that are undoubtedly real in one situation are necessarily absent in another.

Chapter 4. Systems

To take the next step and approach the topic of “why information?”, we need to learn to think about purposefully acting subjects. For this, we must learn to think about systems. But first, let’s consider a rather intriguing topic of “objectification,” which interests us not so much in itself, but as a way to correctly arrive at the concept of “system.”

Objectification

It just so happens that we struggle to discuss the Universe in all its many aspects. To be more precise, we can’t do it at all. We have to take fragments from the all-encompassing reality and examine them separately. To operate…right away to everyoneIt’s also not possible to operate with reality in our own interests. We have to work with separate fragments. The result of this piecemeal approach, which is the only one available to us, is an extremely persistent illusion that the world we live in is inherently made up of objects. When we go outside, we see buildings, trees, people, animals, cars, stones, and other objects. In the mirror, we see ourselves, and we also consider ourselves one of the objects that exist in the world. It seems to us that the division of the world into objects, which we are accustomed to using, is an inherent property of objective reality. It seems, how could it be otherwise?

Of course, it could be different. Let’s say there’s a stone lying in the road. We can see it, we can talk about it with a friend, and even, if it’s not too heavy, we can pick it up and throw it off the road. But still, the stone’s separateness is, in a way, an illusion.

We can identify two closely intertwined families of reasons that lead us to believe that stones exist as separate objects:

1. We often find ourselves in situations where we need to scatter or collect stones. In scenarios where we need to pass and something lying in the road is obstructing us, it is quite useful to acknowledge the fact that “stones exist.” Thus, the existence of stones can be easily justified by situational reasoning.
2. We ourselves are beings capable of operating with pieces of reality that possess such scales and properties, not only making it useful but also possible. A stone is an object that is stable enough for us to see and comprehend it, and solid enough not to crumble in our hands. Moreover, it is safe enough for us to hold it without the risk of instantly burning or dying from contact poison. It is no surprise that, probably in all human cultures, there is a special word for such objects.

It seems self-evident to us that the objectivity of solid pieces of reality is natural, especially when they can be easily separated from their surroundings. The situation is much worse with liquids, gases, and fields, where it is only very conditionally possible to determine where a specific object begins and where it ends. The situation is even more problematic with the objectivity of immaterial objects, such as types of income, categories of offenses, genres of musical works, and other similar concepts.

ObjectificationI will further refer to the process that results in declaring a certain piece of reality as a separate object.

Objectification is always a process that depends on both the subject and the situation. The dependence on the subject is due to the fact that a subject can only perform the type of objectification for which they are suited, while the situational dependence arises from the fact that depending on the situation the subject is in, they can highlight different objects from the same reality. My favorite example is a glass of water. If I ask someone to bring me a glass of water, I expect to receive a vessel filled with liquid. However, once I drink the water from the glass, the glass of water now refers only to the liquid. I have neither the desire nor the ability to consume the glass itself. In just a few seconds, the boundaries of the object “glass of water” have changed, yet for some reason, this doesn’t surprise me at all.

On its ownThe world is not made up of objects. Objects in the world “appear” only when a subject enters the world and, based on its tasks and capabilities, carries out objectification.

I would venture to suggest that objectification is one of the most fundamental operations performed by the brain. Until we identify an object, we cannot make any statements about it, and therefore objectification precedes any logic. When there is no object, we have nothing to attribute properties to, and based on those properties, we cannot include the object (which does not yet exist) in a classification. Thus, objectification must precede any mathematics based on set theory. Objectification is somewhat similar to the task of pattern recognition, but it is not the same as pattern recognition, since before we can begin to recognize anything, it is preferable to objectify that “something.” Even for making the simplest decision, such as “to chase after…”this.“Or crawl away further,” preferably “this” should be objectified first.

An interesting question arises as to whether objectification is an essential condition for any information processes. On one hand, it certainly gives information…objectivity(Information becomes “about something”). On the other hand, objectification does not necessarily follow from the “signal-context” framework, and therefore nothing prevents us from considering, in informational terms, processes such as simple regulation, where the introduction of “objects” is either unnecessary or even detrimental.

A centrifugal regulator that works but doesn’t provide any objective measurements.

If we pay close attention to our own interaction with the surrounding world, we can easily notice that we do not objectify everything. For example, if you place a stone in your palm and hold it up without letting it fall, you might observe that while all the components of this situation can be described in words (the stone as an object, the hand as an object, holding it up as an objectified action, etc.), it is not necessary to do so. In our everyday lives, we perform many actions quite meaningfully, but objectification is not required for their execution. Moreover, the attempt to consciously break down what is happening into its components and to “verbalize” it internally can become an unnecessary burden that spoils everything. Perhaps when we are learning to hold a stone up, it is useful to recognize the angle of the hand as a separate measurable object, but once we have learned to do it, our already trained internal regulatory mechanisms begin to handle the task perfectly well without any objectification.

The topic of “objectification” clearly demonstrates a serious problem that we must not overlook. By initially defining philosophy as the search for a language suitable for use in various situations, we immediately find ourselves in a situation that requires the application of objectification. We have no way of verbal communication that does not presuppose prior objectification, and this introduces a significant distortion. For example, if we discuss the centrifugal governor shown in the picture above, we first have to break this system down into its individual components and then describe how they interact. Even if we abstract from the details of implementation, we will still be forced to consider how the rotational speed of the steam engine’s shaft is stabilized by feedback through the steam supply regulation mechanism. In this case, “rotational speed,” “feedback,” and “steam supply regulation” are all quantifiable, albeit abstract “informational” objects. With ourexternalIn relation to the system of human perspective, we have a set of objects, but if we try to look at what is happening…from the insideIn situations involving the regulation of steam supply, we may find that there are no objects inside this small information suit. Or there might be, if the damper control is implemented using a microcontroller, with the program written in an object-oriented programming language.

In discussing various matters, let us try not to forget that besides the perspective of the thinker, the one reasoning and, consequently, objectifying their existence, there may sometimes be a much more adequate viewpoint that deserves recognition.from the inside, and there may be no objects left there. The example given in the previous paragraph with a control program written in an object-oriented programming language illustrates the ideological trap that arises from a misunderstanding of the differences in positions.“from the outside”и.“from the inside”The information technologies we currently have are in play. It is still believed that information systems will be effective if they are as accurate as possible.reflectwhat is happening in the real world. Since we know no other real world than the one we perceive through objects, it seems logical to us that a computer should operate with the same concepts we use ourselves. Thus, we perform the objectification ourselves and present its result to the computer in a ready-made form. After that, any system developed using object-oriented technologies becomes an embodiment of the specific situation the designer was in when creating the object model. When the situation changes (not “if,” but “when,” because situations are constantly changing), the mountain of code that was developed under the now inadequate model either gets thrown away or becomes a source of constant headaches, patched up with numerous problems. As a result, we are surprised to see how impressive advancements in hardware are more than offset by the increasing heaviness and clumsiness of software. The same tasks that once lagged on a Pentium-100 now lag just as much on a Core i7, and explaining this by the growth of software functionality is not always possible, because in many cases, the functionality has remained visibly unchanged. It can be very difficult to explain why it is not at all necessary to try to drag…insidethe systems in their pristine form the logic that we expect to observe laterText for translation: from outside.Пожалуйста, предоставьте текст, который вы хотите перевести.

Moreover, by inputting the objectification we have already completed into the computer, we deprive it of any chance to perform this basic operation on its own. After that, we shouldn’t complain that there is no…understandinga computer is fundamentally unable to demonstrate to us. Following traditional approaches to building information systems, we are doomed to explain everything in detail to the computer.what and howHe should do it. A certain initial approach to qualitatively new technologies that allow for programming goals rather than sequences of actions can be found in the rapidly developing field of “deep machine learning.” It is there, in the inner layers of artificial neural networks, that something occurs which can already be confidently referred to as its own objectification.

Systematic approach

When we talk about systems, we usually emphasize the following points:

1. Systems are composite objects, meaning they consist of objects into which they can be decomposed.
2. Within the system, the elements interact. This means that we can talk not only about the components but also about the connections between them.
3. The system as a whole has at least one property that is absent in its individual elements (a phenomenon known by various names such as “integrative property,” “synergy,” “holism,” “emergence,” and “systemic effect”).

We will move through this list from the bottom up, as what is captivating about it is the systemic effect. My favorite example to illustrate this phenomenon is an axe. A regular carpenter’s axe, which, as we know, consists of a sharp iron part (also called an “axe”), a wooden handle, and a wedge that secures the iron part to the handle. The axe as a whole has the property of being “convenient for chopping wood.” If we look at the individual components, the iron part can certainly be used to try to chop wood, but it is extremely inconvenient—monstrously so. Don’t even try it. The wooden handle cannot chop wood at all. And I don’t even want to mention the wedge. However, when all the parts are assembled correctly, the resulting tool is very convenient for chopping wood. Where does the property of “conveniently chopping wood” reside when the axe is disassembled? It seems to be nowhere. It simply doesn’t exist. Where does it go when the axe is taken apart? It appears to vanish into thin air. One could try to apply the law of conservation to this situation (“nothing comes from nothing and nothing disappears into nothing”), but the outcome would be dismal. We would have to assume that somewhere in the world there exists some twilight repository from which, during the making of the axe, one of the lingering “souls” of axes is infused into the nearly finished product (and then, after the axe is disassembled, it returns there). This leads to such wild esotericism that even the most reckless mystics would hesitate to voice it. And this is all despite the fact that we know exactly how an axe is constructed and works. It operates very simply, and to fully understand what is happening, we do not need to invoke unnecessary entities. The only entity we must not forget is the subject for whom it will indeed be convenient to chop wood. As long as the subject is forced to consider the individual components separately, they cannot obtain the useful integrative property from the disintegrated set of parts, but once the tool is assembled, it is objectified with the existing (“emerged”) systemic effect in the object being considered.

One can entertain the idea that the functioning of our thinking (consciousness, mind, soul, etc.) can also be discussed as a systemic effect arising from the combination of the components of our brain. If this is the case, then reasoning about a soul that exists separately from the body makes as much sense as discussing the convenience of chopping wood as an independent entity residing in a manufactured axe. Furthermore, it becomes clear why the great mystery of thought eludes us—not due to the limitations of the microscopes we use to study the structure of nerve cells, but because we have not yet sufficiently learned to reason about systemic effects. If consciousness is a macro-effect, then by delving into the micro-level, we inevitably exclude the macro-effect from consideration.

Some philosophers prefer to talk about the transition from quantity to quality instead of systemic effect. I think there is a certain ambiguity in this. A systemic effect does not necessarily imply a transition of quantity, nor does it necessarily lead to quality. For example, if we take a thousand metal axes, we won’t be able to create an object that is convenient for chopping wood. Apparently, the emergence of quality sometimes requires not quantity, but something entirely different. The final point of transition does not necessarily have to be quality either. From the perspective of a lumberjack, assembling an axe results in quality, while from the perspective of an accountant at a factory producing axes, assembling an axe merely adds +1 to the debit of the “Finished Goods” account.

Let’s consider the next point in order (moving up the list from the bottom), which is usually emphasized when examining systems: the fact that the elements of a system interact with each other. There are many examples of systems where the parts do not interact. For instance, a word consists of letters and has an emergent property (the meaning of the word) that is not simply the sum of the meanings of the letters. In this case, it makes no sense to say that the letters in a word interact with each other in any way. One might argue that we observe systems whose elements do not interact from an “outside” perspective. And if a system is objectified and observed from an “outside” perspective, one can always say thatactuallyIt is not a system and represents an illusion that has formed in the subject. There are two counterarguments to this:

1. If the existence of a system in a specific situation is a primary fact (situation-dependent justification), then what about“actually”What could be the topic of discussion?
2. We can observe a system that is not connected by interactions not only from the outside but also from the inside, being a part of it. For example, a security guard may perceive the security system as a whole even if he is clearly aware of the lack of interaction between its individual elements. After all, interaction is only possible between objects of the same nature. The elements of the security system can include grilles installed on windows (material objects) and the regulations for changing door locks adopted by the organization (informational objects). Interaction between these objects is clearly impossible.

The concept of “system” emerged at a time when it referred to assembled physical products. When discussing a material product that is brought together as a whole, it is indeed difficult to avoid acknowledging that the parts must be physically connected. However, when it comes to an immaterial system (such as natural language as a sign system, legislation as a system for regulating social relations, or the monetary system as the foundation of market relations, etc.), it is entirely possible to do without the requirement for the parts to interact with each other. If analyzing the connections between the elements of a system aids in understanding what is happening, then it can be recommended; but if it hinders understanding, there is no need to worry too much about violating one of the central tenets inherited from the great cyberneticians of the past—the “systemic approach.” After all, there are many interacting objects in the world that do not form systems simply because there are no situations in which their objectification as a whole would be useful to us. Let us not be troubled again if we find that the elements of some system we are examining do not interact with each other. This often does not prevent the emergence of systemic effects.

The last significant point (if we consider it from the bottom up) is that systems are composite entities. In this regard, it makes sense to prove two statements:

Statement 1:If we have observed the emergence of a systemic effect in the object, then the object in question is composite.Just by definition, a systemic effect is a property inherent to the whole but absent in its individual parts. If an object is indivisible, then it is impossible to speak of any systemic effects.

Statement 2:If we have established that the object is composite, then a systemic effect must be observed in this object.This follows from the fact that if we find ourselves in a situation where we need to objectify a set of components as a whole, this need can only be articulated in terms that denote the systemic effect emerging from the forming whole.

Thus, the decomposability of systems and the emergence of a systemic effect are a pair of properties that are mutually necessary and sufficient conditions for each other. Therefore, they are different formulations that denote the same phenomenon. For clarity, let’s call itsystematicityТекст для перевода: ..

Interestingly, statements 1 and 2 remain valid not only when the system is objectified from an “outside” perspective, but also when it is objectified from an “inside” perspective.

Sometimes, when discussing systems, a significant aspect is highlighted.hierarchyIn other words, if something consists of components, those components can also be decomposed and thus considered not as objects, but as subsystems, which in turn consist of sub-subsystems, and so on. This seems logical, but it is useful to remember that the mechanism of objectification, through which we have both the system and its components, is situationally dependent. This means that when we begin to decompose subsystems into sub-subsystems, we have already moved beyond the situation of the initial objectification of the system and its original decomposition, and we now find ourselves at the mercy of the choice we made back then. The criterion for decomposition applied in the first step cannot be used in the second, as it has already been fully exhausted. In the second step, we have to apply a different criterion, and as a result, the two-level hierarchical decomposition inevitably becomes a product of the mixing of two disparate principles, burdened by the fact that the second criterion is arbitrarily subordinated to the first. Based on my extensive and diverse experience in practical work with hierarchical structures, I can say that I have never encountered a hierarchy free from logical inconsistencies and the serious inconveniences associated with them.

Hierarchical structure is a deceptive property of systems, appearing in about one hundred percent of cases as a result of logical errors, and in roughly the same number of cases leading to various troubles. The emergence of hierarchy in any discussion about systems is a good reason to first look for mistakes. Even with the tree-like nature of trees, things are not as straightforward as they seem. Those who claim that trees are definitely tree-like have simply never seen their roots.

Not systems

It may create a misleading impression that anything in the world can be considered a system, since the decomposability of any object is merely a matter of having the right cutting tool. If that were the case, the property of “being a system” would apply to everything, rendering it completely vacuous. Poets are allowed to make universal statements like “everything is vanity and a striving after wind,” but in rational discourse, we must understand that we can only use the term “vanity” if we somehow manage to find something that is not vanity. Only then can we rightfully examine the vanity of vanity in contrast to the non-vanity of the non-vanity. The same goes for the concept of systems. To properly consider the nature of systems, we need to find objects that are not systems, as essential as air.

In the material world, searching for such objects is pointless. In the material world, everything can be divided into parts, and the question, as mentioned above, is merely about having the right tool for the job. Even things that cannot be physically separated can be logically divided. Truly indivisible (atomic) objects are those that have zero size. In other words, points. Nothing can fit inside a point, which is why a point cannot be divided. Since it cannot be divided either physically or even logically, there can be no discussion of systemic effects (properties that are present in a whole point but absent in… what?). Examples of points:

1. A geometric point in space. For example, vertex A of triangle ABC. Or the center of a circle. Or the intersection point of two lines. Interestingly, a point, despite having zero size, can possess properties. For instance, the property of being equidistant from all points on a circle.
2. A number. It’s also a point, but not in geometric space, rather on a number line. For example, the number pi. One might argue that pi is an infinitely complex thing, containing an infinite tail of decimal places. But that’s not the case; the tail only appears when we try to express it in decimal notation. In base pi, the number pi is written very simply as “10”. Yes, numeral systems do not have to have an integer base. Again, numbers have properties, even though they are points of zero size.
3. In general, any.identityhas the property of indivisibility. As soon as we objectify something (regardless of what it is), we may want to include that object in discussions that use the operators “the same” and “similar.” The use of the operator “the same” involves manipulating the identity of the object, while “similar” involves manipulating its properties. “Here is Aunt Masha,the very one“Masha, the one you noticed in the school yearbook” – is an example of operating with Masha’s identity. “Our new janitor.”the same“Drunkard, like the previous one” – an example of operating with properties.

The examples with geometric points and numbers were only meant to demonstrate that the search for atomic elements is not as hopeless a task as it might have seemed at first. The real interest, of course, lies in identities. Let’s take a closer look at them.

There are situations that require the use of identities. “Call him to the phone.”that.“your employee who came to us yesterday,” “bring”that.a little piece of paper on which I wrote,” “he is originally fromthe same“the cities, just like me,” “write off the expenses for”the same.the article I was copying from last month.” Replacing the operator “the same” with “similar” in these statements completely distorts the meaning. There are situations where identity is not important, but properties are. In the phrase “let’s have someone come to us tomorrow,”the sameA competent employee, like the one from last week, can have “the same” replaced with “the same one,” but that would be an unnecessary limitation, narrowing the range of possibilities. There are situations where operating with identity is impossible. In the phrase “buy…the same“Tomatoes, like yesterday” cannot replace “the same” with “those.” “Those” tomatoes have already been bought and eaten, and there’s no way to buy them again.

When examining any system during the period of our attention to it, we inevitably note its identity. If at every subsequent moment we consider that what is before us is not…the sameThe object that existed just a moment ago leaves us only to gaze in astonishment at a kaleidoscope of unrelated frames. Even if the object is changeable (for example, a stream of water, where the water itself changes every second), this does not prevent us from stabilizing it through identity, allowing us to discuss this object. For instance, we can say that the stream of water is too strong and should be turned down a bit. In this situation, we are not at all bothered by the fact that the water molecules are constantly changing. The object “the stream of water” turns out to be something we can interact with and control using a faucet. The identity “this stream of water,” which we attribute to the objectified piece of reality, is essentially a logical point, an object of zero size. The stream of water is a constantly changing system, while the logical point assigned to it, “this specific stream of water,” is a stable non-system.

There is no mystique in the concept of identity. Mystique arises as soon as we try to reify identity. Where does a stream of water exist? Right here, it flows from the tap and goes down the drain. Where does the identity of “this stream of water,” which has the properties of a point of zero size, exist? Uhhh… At the center of the cross-section of the pipe’s exit? Or should we place it at the center of mass of the stream? Both options are completely unnecessary voluntarism. Perhaps it’s better to place the logical point in the observer’s mind? Maybe, but in whose mind will we place it if two people are looking at the stream? In general, a logical point is logical precisely because it doesn’t need to be located anywhere in space. We can easily operate with logical points without having to place them in physical space.

Operating with logical points means using them to construct statements. We know that the Volga River flows into the Caspian Sea. To express this, we took the logical point “the Volga River” (the river itself is certainly not just a point, but a vast system; however, the identity “the Volga River” serves as a point) and connected it to the logical point “the Caspian Sea” with the logical (predicate) connector “flows into.”

Systems: Volga and Caspian Sea

Logical points: the Volga River and the Caspian Sea

We cannot use the objects themselves in our statements. Only their designations. Logical points. Identities.

Identities have no specific physical embodiment. Any physical embodiment implies a non-zero size and, consequently, internal content. A logical point has no size. This is precisely what makes it valuable to us. All attribution of properties to an object fixed in this way is carried out through predicate relations.

When we classify an object or phenomenon, we are essentially constructing a connection that links the identity of the object to a set. This apple is delicious; it belongs to the set of delicious things. Angelina Jolie is beautiful; she belongs to the set of beautiful beings. Socrates is a person (just like Angelina Jolie); he belongs to the set of “people.” There is no reason to believe that the nature of a set, when it is used in a predicative connection, differs in any way from the nature of the object on the other side of the connection. Thus, each set is not only something large and complex but also a logical point to which the ends of connections are attached. An instance of a connection, in turn, is a composite entity (a point at one end, a point at the other end, the meaning of the connection), but as soon as we want to characterize this instance with some attribute (for example, “this is true” or “this is false”), we do so again using a predicative connection, at one end of which we have the instance of the existing predicative connection, and at the other end, the value of the attribute. The most interesting and frequently used values in this regard are “truth” and “falsehood.” Naturally, in such usage, they are logical points. Identities. “What is truth?” philosophers ask. I do not know what truth is, but I do know what “truth” is. It is a logical point to which predicative connections that characterize the reliability of statements are attached.

It may seem that identities, due to their inherent emptiness, are completely useless things in practical terms. After all, we might be interested in the Volga River itself, rather than some abstract, internally empty logical point called “the Volga River.” However, there is value in being able to operate with the concept of identity, if only because as soon as we try to assert anything about the Volga River, we are already, in fact, using this strange point-like object. The very fact that identities are widely used in predicate constructions allows us to assert, through situationally dependent reasoning, that identities do exist. Of course, not as material entities (that would be reification), but as immaterial objects.

There are a number of phenomena that cannot be adequately discussed without invoking the concept of “identity.” For example, love. True love, which endures through the years, circumstances, and the changing qualities of the beloved, is an intention directed at identity, rather than a mere collection of attributes. An intention focused on a set of attributes is simply a fleeting combination of consumer preferences, and such a desire is certainly not what we would call love. No matter what kind of love we consider—be it a man’s love for a woman, a woman’s love for a man, a parent’s love for a child, a child’s love for a parent, love for one’s family, city, nation, country, or even a dog’s love for its owner—this seemingly empty logical point, which may appear useless, must be regarded as the primary object of love. Otherwise, the directly and reliably observable facts do not coalesce into a coherent system and present themselves to us as some kind of absurd phantasmagoria. One might argue against accepting identity as the object of love by saying that a loving mother does not contemplate abstract concepts like logical points of zero size or the applicability of predicate calculus, and the same goes for a dog loving its owner. Of course, this is true. But it is not important. Planets also have no inkling of masses or the squares of distances, yet this does not prevent Newtonian mechanics from providing an accurate and adequate description of their motion.

We are particularly interested in our own identity, which we refer to as our own “self.” Can we consider this “self” as an inherent self-identity that belongs to each of us? I see no obstacles to this. If we are to speak of the “self” as a logical point, a number of rather amusing implications arise, the most intriguing of which seem to me to be the immortality of this “self” and the resolution of the problem of self-awareness. If we view the “self” as a logical point, then this point does not cease to exist with the destruction of the organism. The predicate connections change significantly (the predicate “died” is added, while a number of predicates, such as “can be invited for tea,” fall out of use), but the logical point itself remains untouched. The logical point is indestructible.

When it comes to self-awareness, if we consider the “self” as identity, nothing prevents us from viewing self-awareness as the ability of a subject to operate with the concept of their own identity. This immediately removes the lofty mystique surrounding the problem of self-awareness and shifts the discussion into a purely constructive framework. Are there any beings besides humans capable of operating with the concept of their own identity? Clearly, yes, since having an understanding like “this is me, and this is not me” is useful for organisms in a variety of situations, including something as mundane as eating. Are there beings that lack self-awareness? It’s hard to say, but if the operation of one’s own identity is of no use in the functioning of a particular system, then it is quite possible that it lacks the mechanisms for it as well.

Examples of technical systems that operate and do not operate with the concept of self-identity:

• The Wi-Fi adapter knows its MAC address and, by listening to the airwaves, only accepts packets that are intended for that address. This demonstrates a not insignificant manipulation of its own identity.
• A desktop calculator. To perform calculations, it doesn’t need to operate with its own identity at all. If the calculator’s identity is ever required for some reason (for example, for accounting purposes), the accountant will stick on an inventory number. This little piece of paper, while it adds identity to the item, won’t be recognized by the internal mechanisms of the calculator. An external identity will emerge, but the calculator will not operate with its own identity.

It’s really a shame to reduce something as sacred as our precious self-awareness to just a couple of lines of code (I’ve done that myself more than once), but it’s even worse when a simple and useful solution gets drowned in a verbal swamp of mystical reasoning.

Borders

So, we are beginning to see a rather interesting picture. At the output of the process of objectification, we have systems (for example, the Volga River), which are immediately assigned identities (specifically, “the Volga River”). We immediately have two in one. At the core is a logical point, but all operations involving this point consist of manipulations with the predicate links attached to it. There are also predicates tied to the responding parts of the original predicates, as well as predicates that characterize the links. The forest of links grows, and if we don’t stop in time, it will consume the entire world, because already at the second step we arrive at the logical point of “truth,” from which, through the question “what is truth?” we risk going anywhere at all. And what can we say, even at the first step, through the question “why do I need this object?” we arrive at our infinite and all-encompassing “self.”

If we logically expand each object to encompass the entire world, it inevitably leads to a dead end. We must stop somewhere. But where? In the most minimal case, we have the identity itself, but identity is not a system. A system only emerges when something else is attached to a point. Perhaps we can consider only the set of predicates directly linked to the identity in question as a system? That doesn’t work well either. Why only those? Why not consider the chain “A-B-C” as a connection “A-C”? In general, finding a clear and definitive boundary for any system turns out to be a problem that has no solution from the outset. Fortunately, the process of objectification usually yields not only identity but also a wealth of clues about how we should draw the boundary in a given situation. This is a good moment to remember that objectification always functions as a subject- and situation-dependent process, and just because we have clearly and correctly drawn the boundary as we have now, it does not follow that in a slightly altered situation a minute from now, that boundary will remain equally valid.

Let’s consider a system like the cat Murka. First of all, it has a fluffy body that occupies space in the physical world. If we simply want to pet her and she doesn’t run away, then that’s all we need to do. Here’s the cat, we approach and pet her. If we want to feed her, we need to focus not on her body (which might be wandering somewhere, and it doesn’t really matter where), but on what kind of food is suitable for cats. If we have the desire to take her in, we should first be interested in whether the predicate “stray” applies to this cat. And, of course, there are many other predicates to consider, such as her personality, health status (worms!!!), litter training, possible pregnancy (do you want to deal with kittens right away?), and so on. Bringing a cat into your home is not just about moving a few kilograms of living weight across the threshold. It’s about entering into a symbiosis, possibly not just with the cat, but also with toxoplasmosis. To limit ourselves in this case to the mere presence of a physical body would be an unforgivable oversight.

If you ever come across a headline in popular science news that says “Scientists have created a model of a cat,” be sure to ask whether this model takes into account relationships with humans, mice, dogs, the symbiosis with microbiota, the development of the cat food industry, advancements in veterinary medicine, and, to avoid any surprises, the specific legal regulations regarding pet ownership that exist in some countries. After all, without considering all of this, any model of a cat would be significantly incomplete. And if you read in the same news that “in 50 years it will be possible to create a model of the human brain,” just laugh. A brain detached from its environment—its habitat—is meaningless. And the habitat of the brain encompasses the entire world as we know it, including the brains of hapless experimenters.

Now I will consider myself as a system. Naturally, I will take my identity as the basis, that is, the logical point denoted by the word “I.” I have a physical body. An interesting question immediately arises: what should I consider the physical body of my “I”? In some cases, one might limit it to the brain, or even just the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres, since it is believed that the apparatus responsible for my thinking is located there. It sounds nice—signals through the nerves in, signals through the nerves out—but something is missing. For example, if I say, “I was sitting in a chair, and then I moved to the sofa,” it would be nonsensical, because I was sitting in a warm, dark, and sturdy bony box, and I continued to sit there. In the situation with the chair and the sofa, I need to expand my definition to the size of my body. I leave the house and walk down the street. A passing truck splashes mud on my pants and coat. Now I am dirty. Or am I, or is it just my clothing? No, it’s still me. I want to look presentable, so I need to clean myself up. Unnoticeably, I have included my clothing within the boundaries of my “I.” After cleaning up, I get into a car, drive, and park poorly. I dented my bumper. Wait, but I don’t have a body part called a bumper. Nevertheless, I did dent it as if it were part of me. It turns out that when I am driving, I include the car within the system that I identify as “I.” Why not? And if, while hammering a nail, I miss and hit my finger instead, it wouldn’t be right to say that the hammer, that nasty thing, hit my finger. I hit my finger. Yes, the physical contact was with the hammer, but at that moment, the hammer was an extension of my hand and thus was part of the system identified by the identity “I.”

As expected, the boundary of my “self” is situationally dependent. Let’s see how far it can stretch. Essentially, depending on the situation, I include everything I refer to as “mine” within the system of my “self.” My body, my clothes, my home, my family, my friends, my enemies (yes, that’s right), my city, my country, my planet. My world. My notions of good and evil. When I feel pain, it’s my pain, and when I’m hungry, it’s my hunger. I recognize some flaws in myself, and those are my flaws, and I feel troubled about them because of my beliefs that it would be better if they didn’t exist. My beliefs about the harmfulness of my flaws, of course, can and should also be considered part of me. It turns out that there are no limits to the expansion of my “self.” In different situations, I do draw the line, saying, “here I am, and over there is not me,” but sometimes it’s useful to remember that the conversation about me and the world I live in is essentially a discussion about the same subject. And it’s certainly not just about me. You, the reader, and the world you live in are also one and the same subject. However, this is hardly news. The essential unity of the subject and the world in which it exists is a key point of a very ancient philosophy known as “Zen.” We have stumbled upon this ancient truth not through meditation in a high mountain monastery, but through reflections on objectification, systems, identities, and the situational dependence of boundaries.

Chapter Summary

The main concepts and ideas discussed in this chapter are:

1. Objectification– a process whose result is the declaration of a certain piece of reality as a separate object. The operation of objectification precedes (is implicitly understood as the “zero” operation) any logic.
2. Objectification is always a process that depends on the subject and the situation.There can be no single correct way to divide the whole of reality into separate objects.
3. System– anything (an objectified piece of reality) that has the property of being systematic.
4. Systematic approach– Merged together by logical continuity (“two in one”) are two properties: decomposability and the presence of emergent properties. If the object in question can be decomposed, it has at least one emergent property. Conversely, if there is a property that can be defined as emergent, the object can be decomposed into components that do not possess this property.
5. Hierarchical structure– a fictitious property of systems. Our habit of establishing hierarchies is a consequence of a defect in perception.
6. Objectification, in addition to distinguishing the system from its surrounding reality, results in identity.Identity– a logical point. An internally empty (zero size) immaterial entity used to denote an object.
7. Self-awarenessIt can be defined as the ability of a system to operate with the concept of its own identity in a meaningful way.
8. It’s important to remember that there can be at least two perspectives on any given subject: from the position of“from the outside”and from the position“from the inside”All the concepts discussed—objectification, systemic thinking, and the use of identities—are applicable from both of these perspectives.
9. The subject and the world in which they live are essentially the same thing.In the overwhelming majority of cases, it’s convenient to forget about it, but there are situations where it’s necessary to remember.
10. The essential unity of the subject and the world makes it impossible to fully model any subject.

Chapter 5. The Purposeful Acting Subject

Global philosophical thought has become deeply entrenched in the theme of the “cognizing subject,” but we must move beyond that and consider the acting subject. Cognition is undoubtedly a necessary component, but its value only emerges when the knowledge gained is applied to achieve goals.

The consideration of knowledge in isolation from its application made sense only as long as we had the habit. reify information. As long as knowledge was considered a “subtle substance” stored somewhere within the subject, we could talk about the intrinsic value of knowledge. However, now that we have figured out that no such “subtle substance” exists (see Chapter 2 ) and that there is no single objective reality that applies to all situations (see Chapter 3 ), we, armed with the idea of the essential unity of the subject and the world (see Chapter 4 With the right set of tools, we can approach the discussion of some previously unresolved issues.

One of the hopeless philosophical questions is the question of the existence of causality, which can be formulated as follows:“What is the reason that causal relationships are observed everywhere in our world?”It is easy to notice that the question itself is logically circular. Causality in it has become a phenomenon viewed through the lens of the category of “causality.” Nevertheless, this question exists, and without addressing it, there is no way to understand how the knowledge acquired by the knowing subject can relate in any way to the goals that the acting subject is trying to achieve.

“Why” and “how come”

When asking about the reasons for a particular phenomenon, we can start the question with the word “why” or the word “for what purpose.” Sometimes, the question “for what purpose” makes no sense, while only the question “why” is relevant. Other times, it’s the opposite. There are also cases where both “for what purpose” and “why” are correct, but in this case, they imply fundamentally different answers. Let’s practice a bit:

• Question:Why is it raining?
  Response:A cyclone has arrived.
  Question:Why does it rain?
  Response:… no need.
• Question:Why is the light bulb on?
  Response:I want to read.
  Question:Why is the light bulb burning?
  Response:The voltage drop across the incandescent filament with a given electrical resistance causes the release of thermal energy at a power equal to U.^2./R..
• Question:Why is water running in the bathroom?
  Response:I wash my hands.
  Question:Why is water leaking in the bathroom?
  Response:Because the faucet is open.
• Question:Why are raspberries sweet?
  Response:So that animals would eat them and spread the seeds throughout the forest.
  Question:Why are raspberries sweet?
  Response:Because the glucose produced during photosynthesis is transferred to the fruits and accumulates there.

Questions in the style of “why” imply a teleological answer, meaning one based on the purpose of an event. A natural science approach rejects teleology or, if that’s not possible, requires that any “in order to” ultimately be reduced to a mechanistic “because.” And this is correct. It will become clear a bit further down,Text for translation: why.That’s how it’s done.

Let’s consider how the concepts of cause and effect relate to the questions of “why” and “how.” The action of an acting subject involves assembling a set of causes that will ultimately lead to the desired effect. First, I reach for the switch, and then I enjoy the light from the bulb. At that moment, when I reach for the switch, the bulb is not yet lit. And when it is lit, I no longer need to turn it on. When I turn on the faucet, there is no stream of water yet. When I bring my hands to the stream, my hands are still unwashed. Once my hands are washed, I no longer need to wash them. When a raspberry bush accumulates glucose in its berries, they have not yet been eaten by animals. Once the berries are eaten, the bush no longer accumulates glucose in those specific berries. In teleological “why” causality, the effect always occurs later in time than the cause (congratulations, we have stumbled upon the concept of “time”). Spatially, the cause and effect can also be located in different places (the switch on the wall and the bulb on the ceiling).

In mechanistic “why” causality, the cause completely coincides with the effect both in space and in time. The power dissipation of a light bulb is expressed by the formula P = U.^2.In this phenomenon, the point in space and the moment in time where power P is dissipated is precisely the same point in space and the same moment in time where there is a voltage drop U across the electrical resistance R. What is the cause and what is the effect here? If we control the supply of voltage with a switch, and the release of energy is the desired effect, then let the voltage be the cause and the power be the effect. If there isn’t enough light, we will replace the bulb with a more powerful one. More powerful means it has a lower electrical resistance. The cause of the increase in P will be the decrease in R. However, an electric generator works in the opposite direction—there, in order to obtain voltage at the output (which will be the desired effect), we apply effort (mechanical power) to the generator’s shaft.

The well-known formula from mechanics, F = ma, which relates force, mass, and acceleration, always pertains to the same area of space and time. Similarly, depending on the situation, we can designate force (for example, the strength of our muscles) as the cause, and the acceleration of a ball as the desired effect. Conversely, if our muscle strength is insufficient to drive a nail into a piece of wood, we can create a sudden acceleration (deceleration is also considered acceleration in physics) of a hammer, thereby achieving the desired force.

In physics, the arrow of time is reversible. The only place in physics where time is irreversible is in the law of increasing entropy. However, if we take a closer look at the concept of entropy, it becomes clear that it is closely tied to the existence of an observer who cares about which of the many equally probable states a thermodynamic system is in. From a negligibly small (compared to the total) number of states, the observer can derive benefits (including financial ones), while from the others, they cannot. This “caring” introduces teleology into the consideration of the system, resulting in the emergence of the unidirectionality of physical time.

In teleological causality, the arrow of time is irreversible. The cause is a tool that we have.there is here and now, and which we can use, while the consequence is something that does not yet exist at the time the action is performed. The irreversibility of time in teleological causality is due to an insurmountable logical difference between “exists” and “does not exist.”

Predeterminism vs. controllability

Despite the fact that in mechanistic causality cause and effect are temporally aligned, time (usually denoted by the letter t in formulas) still exists in physical reality. Let’s try to reconcile teleological time with physical time.

Let’s say I throw a ball into a basketball hoop. My task in my “here and now” is to give the ball the right speed and direction so that it ends up in the hoop after a certain period of time. While the ball is in the air, I have no influence over its movement. When I throw the ball, I try to create a predetermined outcome for a few seconds ahead, in which the probability of the event “ball in the hoop” is maximized. If I manage to create a rigid, unavoidable predetermination, I can say that I am reaching from my “here and now” to “there and then.” The desired “there and then” transitions from a state of “does not exist” to a state of “exists,” which is characteristic not of the future, but already of the present. From the perspective of physical time “t,” this future has not yet arrived, and for now, I am merely observing the flight of the ball, but logically, the predetermination has already taken shape, and the event “ball in the hoop” is already part of my “here and now.”

Since the result of any purposeful action is always in the future relative to the moment the action is performed, it makes sense to say that this very extension of “now” forward into the future is what a purpose-driven subject does with teleological time. I put the kettle on — I created a certainty that there will be boiling water in a few minutes. I got groceries for dinner — I made it more likely that I will be full until morning. I fixed the roof — I eliminated the unwanted certainty of being flooded during the rain.

The more reliable our knowledge of the surrounding environment, the more confidently and with a longer horizon we can build chains of predeterminations. Knowledge is information. Primarily, it is information about which levers we can pull in our “here and now” to achieve the desired “later.” This, in fact, is the answer to the question of “why information.”

Let’s consider some significant natural determinism. For example, the Earth’s movement around the Sun. This process is stable enough that we can calculate the mutual positions of these objects with a very high degree of accuracy, for instance, a thousand years ago and, if nothing extraordinary happens, a thousand years into the future. We currently have no real ability to influence this process, and I suspect there isn’t even a desire to have such an ability. Let’s consider it a complete determinism, if not a million years into the future, then at least for the coming year. The Sun rises and sets, the seasons change, day after day, year after year. The event “tomorrow’s sunrise” can be considered a future event, but we can also think of it as a kind of stretched present. The Earth rotates, and this is our present, stable over a very long period. The Earth moves in its orbit—and this can also be viewed not as a change in position over time, but as a stable state of “being on an elliptical orbit.” If someone (like the god Ra?) were to decide whether the Sun would rise tomorrow, then tomorrow’s sunrise would not be a determinism, and if we want morning to come, we would probably need to ensure that we offer a generous sacrifice to the god Ra.

Understanding and accepting physical time as a stretched-out “present” is greatly hindered by the intuitive notion of the passage of time that we (all of us, including myself) have been accustomed to throughout our lives. Time appears to us either as an axis along which we travel (yesterday we were at the point “yesterday,” and today we have moved to the point “today,” as Emmett Brown illustrated in “Back to the Future”), or as a stream of events rushing toward us from the future and flowing into the past (like in Stephen King’s “The Langoliers”). Both of these notions cannot have any relation to reality. They are logically nonsensical. If we assume the truth of the first notion, we have a point moving along a time axis, and since this is movement, it must have a speed. Specifically, one second per second. If we reduce the seconds, we end up with a dimensionless quantity that is always identically equal to one. This results in complete nonsense. As for the second notion, in this case, we must talk about the speed of the incoming time stream, which also turns out to be equal to one second per second. Thus, for the hands of clocks to move, cars to drive, and children to grow, time must remain steadfastly unchanged and stable as “always now.” It is easy to realize that time cannot flow, but it is much harder to figure out what to do with this understanding and what more accurate representation to use instead. Personally, I don’t know what to do with it right now. The only thing I can suggest is not to worry too much if these logically nonsensical notions contradict what we happen to be discussing.

It would be interesting to talk to professional theoretical physicists about whether physics could be reformulated in such a way that it is not speed that is a useful construct derived from distance and Δt, but rather Δt that is declared a useful construct defined in terms of the speed of light. In other words, to eliminate the need for the logically nonsensical background process of “the flow of time at a rate of 1 sec/1 sec.”

I must apologize to fans of fantastic stories about time travel. Since time does not flow, there is no…places.…to which we were supposed to be delivered by the time machine. “A place in time” is the same now, a million years ago, and for eternal receipts later—it’s all the same: “now.” The time machine has nowhere to go.

A particularly interesting case of determinism is unmanaged random events. Tossing a coin, playing roulette (but not in a casino, as we need a fair roulette), radioactive decay, quantum reduction—these are examples of how an uncertain (non-existent?) future seems to become a definite and existing present. One might feel inclined to find the source of future uncertainty specifically in random events. In doing so, we will encounter a blending of two types of uncertainty—teleological (as long as I haven’t decided whether to go right or left, both options are possible, and my task is to fulfill… probably, by analogy with quantum reduction, this could be called teleological reduction) and mechanistic. To prevent these fundamentally different types of uncertainty from mixing, I propose that when considering the lifestyles of purpose-driven subjects, mechanistic uncertainty be regarded as a form of determinism, distinguished from other forms of determinism by the fact that the acting subject cannot know what will happen and how it will unfold. Thus,We will consider everything that is not predetermined as manageable, and everything that is predetermined as unmanageable., including even what happens according to the laws of pure chance.

Thus, a purposefully acting subject has, at every point and in every aspect of their intentional activity:

1. Цель..Even if a subject cannot clearly explain why they did something specific, it doesn’t mean that there was no goal. The deep structures of our being do not always report to the cortex of the large hemispheres about the decisions they make. Moreover, there is not always a single goal, and often different aspects of our essence engage in a tug-of-war, which does not help us to be consistent and logical. When what the subject is doing is not subordinated to any goal at all (for example, when someone falls out of a window and accelerates towards the sidewalk at 1g), such “activity” can only be viewed as the realization of mechanistic determinism. A goal is information about what one “wants” and what one “does not want.” Through the existence of a goal, we realize the remarkable fact that any living organism cares about what will happen, while any non-living system is completely indifferent to everything.
2. Opportunities.From an informational standpoint, an individual must have knowledge of the levers available to them in their “here and now,” as well as information on how these levers are connected to the fulfillment of desires. Essentially, this is not two separate pieces of knowledge, but one; however, sometimes it is appropriate to focus on finding ways to exert influence, while at other times it is important to understand the consequences of specific actions. The main charm and civilizational significance of the development of natural sciences, which study the mechanistic world, lies in the fact that they provide us with knowledge (information) about the functioning of predetermined outcomes. By using this knowledge, we can launch increasingly longer and more predictable sequences of events from our “here and now,” thereby reaching out to a more distant and intriguing future. This was the answer to the question,Text for translation: why.The natural sciences diligently ignore teleological causality.

Interestingly, the presence of relevant goals is a necessary condition for understanding possibilities. A goal creates the context for the signal “physics textbook,” and without context, the signal cannot become information.

The amount of knowledge that the natural sciences provide us should be viewed not only as a set of constraints imposed on us but also as a collection of recipes that expand our possibilities. The total mechanistic determinism espoused by determinists does not follow from any physical law. Once again: there is no and cannot be any physical law that prohibits the assertion that it is I, in my “here and now,” who chooses whether to go right or left.

Calculations

In the theory of algorithms, computation is defined as the transformation of a set of input data into a set of results according to a specified algorithm. At the start of the computation, both the set of input data and the algorithm must be fully defined. This is the interpretation of computation referred to in the famous Church-Turing thesis.

The functioning of a Turing machine from the moment it starts to the moment it halts is an unmanaged process, as it is entirely predetermined by the set of initial data and the algorithm. Within the computation process, there is no variability of the future that is necessary for the functioning of an acting subject. Therefore, such computation cannot in any way be considered a realization of the activity of a purposefully acting subject, particularly that of human thinking.

Introducing an element of randomness into the operation of an algorithm or the input data (such as using unreliable equipment or a random number generator) does not give us the right to consider such computation a realization of thinking. Mechanistic uncertainty has been discussed above as a specific variant of mechanistic determinism.

The topic of machine intelligence could be considered closed if it weren’t for one small observation. It just so happens that what our current computers can do doesn’t fit into the classical concept of computation. Most programs for modern operating systems, in their core, do nothing but register event handlers in the system. An event-driven program is open to the world, and its overall functioning is no longer a single computation. The operation of the text editor in which this text is being written can no longer be reproduced by a Turing machine. To reproduce it, one would first have to include myself in the model, and eventually, the entire universe. At the lowest level, at the level of each event handler algorithm, everything still remains Turing-computable, but as soon as we start to consider the system as a whole, we immediately encounter systemic effects, one of which is the impossibility of reproducing what is happening with a Turing machine.

At its core, a purposefully acting subject can indeed be realized as an analog of a Turing machine. However, since it is open to the world and its functioning is not a single computation, no contradiction between theory and practice arises.

Theorem on External Goal Setting

Formulation:The source of goal-setting for any system in which the concept of “information” is applicable is always completely transcendent in relation to the system.

In other words, whatever we consider as a system, its activity as a whole is defined by goals, the source of which is always entirely outside of that system.

When applied to a person, a similar statement about external goal-setting, formulated in the mid-20th century by Viktor Frankl, became the ideological foundation for his developed method of treating existential crises, known as “logotherapy.” Here, I generalize this statement to any systems related to the concept of “information” and attempt to prove this assertion.

Proof.Let’s consider a system that contains a process fitting into the scheme of “information = signal + context“As we remember, context is also information, and since it is also information, it must be broken down into its own signal and its own context.”
Information = signal1.+ context1.
Context1.= signal2.+ context2.
Context2.= signal3.+ context3.
And so on. By substituting the context detail 1 into the first formula, we get:
Information = signal1.+ signal2.+ context2.
By substituting the context detail 2, we get:
Information = signal1.+ signal2.+ signal3.+ context3.
Since signals are merely circumstances whose significance arises in context, they can be combined and considered as a whole:
Information = signal123.+ context3.
The operation of removing contexts from consideration while simultaneously collapsing signals will be referred to as the context reduction operation.

We can consider three options for how the resulting infinite chain of signals and contexts can be organized:

1. It can be looped if at some point the context for the information is “context.”_n+m.“will not become a new context”_n+m+1., and the previously covered context_n.Текст для перевода: ..
2. There may be a degradation of contexts within the system as one progresses along the chain. In this case, having at least a somewhat distinguishable context…_n.we find that the context following it_n+1.has become negligible and can be disregarded.
3. The chain of contexts can extend beyond the system. That is, for example, the context…_n.is still internal information of the system, while the context_n+1.it no longer belongs to her.

No other options are apparent. In order to prove the theorem of external goal-setting, it is necessary to demonstrate the impossibility of options 1 and 2.

The impossibility of looping. For the looping option, we have the following sequence of reductions (let’s assume that instead of context 3, we return to context 1). Given:
Information = signal1.+ context1.(expression 1)
Context1.= signal2.+ context2.(2).
Context2.= signal3.+ context1.(3).
First step (inserted context detail 1):
Information = signal12.+ context2.(4).
Second step (inserted context details 2):
Information = signal123.+ context1.(5).
The third step (once again, we provided the context details 1):
Information = signal123.+ context2.(6).
The signal has not changed, as the signal_2.already taken into account in the totality of circumstances referred to as “signal”_123.From expressions (5) and (6), it follows that the context_1.equal to the context_2.. Substituting the context_2.instead of context_1.in expression (3) and context_1.instead of context_2.In expression (2), we get:
Context1.= signal2.+ context1.(7).
Context2.= signal3.+ context2.(8).
It follows that signals 2 and 3 play no role and can be excluded from consideration. Thus, contexts 1 and 2, having lost the signal, cease to be information, and the information with which the discussion began loses its context.
Information = signal1.+ NULL   (9)
Without context, information ceases to be information. Therefore, although from a topological perspective the situation of contextual looping may seem meaningful, it is incapable of providing the context necessary for information to exist.

The impossibility of context fading within the system. Let’s say that at some step n, the informational capacity of the context has become negligible:
Information = signal1234..n+ contextn.
, where.contextn.0.
As long as we can still trace the context, the information we have can be complete because, by moving along the chain, we have accumulated a strong signal. But as soon as the context becomes indistinguishable, the entire set of signals loses its context and ceases to be information. Therefore, the situation of context fading within the system to zero does not allow for the emergence of information.

The situation of context going beyond the system.
Information = signal1234..n+ contextn.
, where is the context?_n.it is not detailed further due to going beyond the scope of the system under consideration. For context clarification_n.we would have to provide context_n+1., but we cannot do this because it is transcendent to the system. Accordingly, the logical connection “context_n.— context_n+1.“for the system is transcendental (that is, cross-border).”

Thus, the essence of manipulating signals 1, 2, 3, and so on up ton.It can only be determined by what was taken outside its boundaries during the objectification of the system. This is exactly what needed to be proven.

Note that it is not at all necessary for the power of the transcendent context…_n+1.was grand. The main thing is that this transcendent context is not null. Even a small, but not negligible, amount is enough to generate an avalanche of contexts, which will ultimately provide quite significant information.

Before I start productively using the theorem of external goal-setting, I can’t resist the pleasure of running through a little amusing reasoning. I will consider my entire world as a system, meaning all the contents of my informational spacesuit (I hope you haven’t forgotten what that is). Essentially, my info-suit is the whole world as I know it, including even what I don’t know but am capable of learning. Myself, my family, my friends, as well as everything around me, including cities and countries, the Earth, the Solar System, the galaxy, quasars, and black holes—everything is somehow known to me, so it all exists within my info-suit. Concepts of good and evil, of “right” and “wrong”—they’re all there too. Even abstract notions like the Pythagorean theorem, the number pi, and yes, the theorem of external goal-setting—these too exist nowhere else but within the system under consideration. Within this system, information exists; after all, it is an informational suit, right? This means that the source of the meaning of all this magnificence exists, and according to the theorem just proven, it is entirely outside the system being considered. I will designate the entirety of what serves as the source of goal-setting for my world (my informational suit is my world) with the word “God.” Why not? It fits the meaning quite well. So, what can I ultimately say about this God? Well, first of all, He is beyond my world, and therefore I cannot ascribe any properties to Him. He cannot be good or evil, powerful or just, ancient or newly arisen. He is nothing. There are no properties. Yet, nevertheless, He exists necessarily (yes, it turned out).the proof of the existence of GodOf course, he exists alone.the proof of the uniqueness of GodSecondly, it cannot be an intentionally acting subject, as it has already encompassed the entire collective meaning, and as a result, it remains without any external goal-setting.proof of the non-existence of GodThirdly, from my experience, I know that in the world, besides me, there are other beings, and their info-suits, while overlapping with mine, do not match it exactly. As a result, what is transcendent for other beings is not transcendent in my info-suit, and vice versa. It turns out that there are as many beings as there are Gods.proof of the multiplicity of godsAny communication that concerns God is devoid of meaning, as the communicating subjects inevitably talk about different things. The result is astonishing: God necessarily exists, yet is not a subject, and cannot be the object of any meaningful discussion. The question “how should one reason about God so that the reasoning makes sense to someone other than the one reasoning?” has a proven answer: “In no way.”

In real life, we almost never consider our entire world as a system. It’s such a strange system—one whose boundaries are impossible to conceive (to think about a boundary, as Wittgenstein said, you need to think about things on both sides of it, but all conceivable things are already within). In any practical activity, the boundary of the subject is drawn somewhere within the world by the subject itself. Here I am, and over there is no longer me. The boundary is situationally dependent, but nonetheless, each time we want to use what is designated as “I” to act on the “not-I,” it must be established. And each time, the source of meaning for what is left inside when the boundary is drawn must be something that remains outside. Establishing the boundary of one’s own “I” within one’s own world allows us to talk about our own external goal-setting.

Free will

In the lives of purpose-driven individuals, a serious problem can arise: they may cease to be purpose-driven individuals. I won’t discuss the obvious option of “death,” which is linked to the breakdown of the system, not because it’s frightening, but because it’s uninteresting. Death is already well understood. The other two options (let’s denote them as“loss of subjectivity”) much more interesting:

1. Loss of external goal-setting.A terrifying thing. An existential crisis. Subjectively experienced as “I don’t want anything,” “nothing can be changed,” “there’s no reason to live,” “there’s no hope,” “now it doesn’t matter anymore.” One of the typical causes of suicide. A person without external goals cannot act purposefully, and so even if they fear leaving life voluntarily, they quickly turn into an empty shell that simply exists like an inanimate object. Fortunately, external goals can be restored, and then the person regains the ability to act purposefully and becomes themselves again. Or not themselves. It all depends on luck.
2. Slavery.When the only source of all goal-setting for a subject is another subject, the unfortunate individual becomes an instrument of their master. They are treated as property, completely owned. It doesn’t really matter who or what the subject has become enslaved to—there’s no need to consider them as an independent being anymore. When interacting with such a being, which is essentially no longer a subject, one must understand that the real subject of interaction in this case is the master, while the slave is merely a technical detail that either simplifies or complicates the interaction. The greatest tragedy in a slave’s life is the loss of their master. In this case, they find themselves in a situation of losing external goal-setting, thus losing even the illusory subjectivity they once had.

Slavery in our enlightened age is not often complete among people. More commonly, we encounter temporary slavery, where a person sells their time for a means of survival (essentially, a part of their life, since time and life are one and the same) and becomes a cog in the system. “We don’t make any decisions here,” “I’m just following orders,” “When making decisions, I must strictly adhere to job descriptions and the letter of the law” — all of these are characteristic signs of slavery. Yes, after the workday ends and the cap is taken off, the slave ceases to be a slave and becomes a loving husband, a caring father, a wonderful friend, and a concerned citizen. However, this in no way negates the fact that while “on duty,” they are not an independent, purpose-driven agent, but merely an executing mechanism of their master.

A purposefully acting subject, whether a person, an animal, or even a blade of grass, is always a being that stretches from its “here and now” into the future by creating predetermined outcomes, transforming the nonexistent future into an existing present. In fact, we can speak of a global flow of acts of creation that constitute the essence of each “here and now” of every being. However, the transformation of the nonexistent future into the existing present only occurs if the subject’s activity is not already a created predetermined outcome. An executive mechanism that “simply follows orders” or “exactly adheres to the instructions” does not produce any creation. It merely serves as a means of realizing an already initiated mechanistic predetermined outcome. Thus, free will is not just desirable for a purposefully acting subject; it is an absolutely necessary condition for a being to be considered a subject. We are truly ourselves only to the extent, in the aspects of our existence, and only when we build our own future. In other words, when we are free.

It may seem that the need for freedom is in logical contradiction with the theorem of external goal-setting. This is not the case at all. After all, the loss of subjectivity through slavery or complete loss of external goal-setting, or slavery itself, is fortunately far from being a complete list of the life states of subjects.

Let’s consider the situation of a “servant to two masters.” Imagine a woman’s life is entirely divided between her job, where she is a loyal servant to her boss, and her home, where she is a loyal servant to her husband. She experiences servitude both at work and at home, with breaks only for sleep and commutes on public transport. Does the situation change when the subject has two masters instead of one? In both cases, our unfortunate subject is merely an exploited tool; the sessions of exploitation are just divided by time. As long as our model is simply going through the motions like a hamster on a wheel, no freedom arises. But as soon as she starts to take the reins of her priorities even a little (if there’s a crisis at work, then…resolvesto stay for an hour, and if there’s a deep cleaning in the evening, then…resolvesAt work, if you relax a bit, a small loophole opens up through which our charge gains her own free will. Her husband is, of course, shocked that his slave dared to take an entire hour of his property. The boss also frowned, but for now, he doesn’t know whether to threaten with divine retribution for the drop in productivity or to hold off for a while. Yes, the sources of goal-setting are still the same, there are still two of them, and they continue to function as before, but the management of priorities has ceased to be rigidly defined. A slave who has begun to manage the extent of her belonging to her master is no longer entirely a slave.

A fully realized individual, whom no one would dare to call a slave, is not someone who lacks external goal-setting (which is impossible according to the theorem), but rather someone who has dozens or even hundreds of sources of goal-setting. The need to constantly navigate complex, interfering priorities creates the illusion, including for the individual themselves, that they determine all their goals solely on their own. There is a considerable amount of truth in this, as the master of the process of managing priorities can only be the individual themselves. Thus, the necessity of freedom does not contradict the theorem of external goal-setting in any way.

Now let’s consider the situation not from the perspective of the slave, but from that of the slave owner. The motivation to acquire a slave is simple and obvious. Observing the interesting things that free-willed individuals can create through their purposeful actions, a potential slave owner desires for all of that to happen for “me, the beloved.” By monopolizing the goal-setting of these individuals, the owner gains not just a primitive, soulless mechanism, but an instrument of unimaginable complexity that has just demonstrated wonders of creation. However, almost immediately after acquiring a slave, the newly minted owner receives a “surprise”: the wonders cease to occur. The transformation of a non-existent future into an existing present is a function of free will, and when all goal-setting of the subject is confined to a single source, free will ceases to exist.

In dreaming of creating artificial intelligence, we envision a technology that reaches such a level of development that we can have artificial beings at our complete disposal, capable of independently solving complex and unconventional problems. Not just executing a predetermined program, but also making decisions in challenging situations. Approaching the task of satisfying our insatiable need for comfort with creativity. However, a being whose source of goal-setting is entirely dependent on its master cannot create a future, nor can it make decisions. The task is self-contradictory. Either we end up with a creature capable of purposeful action, but not the sole source of its goals, or we get yet another version of a programmable calculator. It’s a difficult choice. When discussing the problem of creating artificial intelligence, we cannot overlook this unexpectedly revealed aspect.

Chapter Summary

In this chapter, the most complex philosophical categories intertwine — causality, time, predestination, and free will. It makes sense to revisit the logical structure that has emerged:

1. The concept of “causality” has been divided into two interconnected but fundamentally different types of causality:
   • Mechanistic causality, functioning according to the laws of inevitability. It is characterized by the fact that in this type of causality, the cause completely coincides with the effect in both space and time. The markers of mechanistic causality are the phrases “why…” and “because…”.
   • Teleological causality, generated by free will. In this type of causality, the cause always precedes the effect. The markers are phrases like “why…” and “in order to…”.

   The distinction of the concept of “causality” into two types is justified through situationally dependent reasoning: there are situations where, regarding the same phenomenon, a response is required in the form of “because…” or in the form of “in order to…”, and these are fundamentally different answers.

2. The way a functioning entity operates.— to influence the complex causes in your “here and now” to create the conditions for achieving goals in the future.
3. The direction of the arrow of timeThe transition from the past to the future turned out to be a consequence of the logical difference between existence and non-existence. The time referred to as “now” is the sum of what exists, while the time referred to as “future” is the sum of those things that do not yet exist.
4. Time does not flow.This is logically impossible.
5. The relationship between controllability and determinismWhat is controllable is everything that is not predetermined, while what is predetermined is everything that is not controllable.
6. Manageability is impossible without a subject and the availability of information to them.about causal relationships of the mechanistic type. This statement contains answers to two questions at once: “What is the purpose of information?” and “Why should the natural sciences ignore teleology?”
7. A purpose-driven entity cannot exist without having goals.
8. The theorem of external goal-settingThe source of goal-setting for any system in which the concept of “information” is applicable is always completely transcendent in relation to the system.
   When applying the theorem, we must remember that we can consider any objectified piece of reality that possesses the property of systemness as a system. Chapter 4 ) with the sole exception that in this case we should not consider the entire content of the information suit as a single system.
9. Waysloss of subjectivityThe loss of external goal-setting and slavery. And, of course, physical death.
10. About oneselffree willOne can and should talk about the subject when it is impossible to identify a single source of external goal-setting. That is, in a situation that can be described as “a servant of two masters.” The more sources of external goal-setting, which contradict each other, are realized through the subject’s activity, the greater the degree of their own freedom.
11. With the loss of free will, a subject ceases to be a subject.

Chapter 6. Creatures

Until now, when talking about subjects, we have implicitly referred to ourselves as thinking beings with free will, representatives of the biological species Homo sapiens. However, if we take a closer look at the material covered, we can see that none of the arguments suggest that a subject must be a human. A system can be anything (as long as it exists). systematicity Combination signal and context — an abstract construct that does not require being necessarily embodied in the form of a human brain. Even the situation of “the servant of two masters,” which generates its own dynamics within the system. free will is not necessarily limited to people.

Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when considering the search for our brothers in free will is animals. But that’s too simple of an exercise for us. Let’s try to look for more exotic beings.

Mice.

I will allow myself a small linguistic exploration.

Personal pronouns (“I,” “you,” “he,” “she,” and “it”) have plural forms (“we,” “you,” and “they”) that can be used in two fundamentally different ways:

1. To describe the personal qualities possessed by individuals (or not necessarily individuals) that belong to the designated set. For example, “we.“People generally have two arms and two legs” or “we…”нас.“Men, unlike women, start to grow hair in their ears as they age.” A variety of objects with certain properties are considered, and when we talk about these properties, we use a pronoun to refer to the plural. In this context, the pronoun “we” is an honest plural form of “I.” Nothing interesting.
2. For indicating group action.We.“We discussed and decided…”we.We played preference.нас.“A child was born.” This phrase indicates a certain action or event and emphasizes joint participation. If I say “I consulted,” the immediate question is “with whom?” It’s impossible to consult with oneself. If one is consulting oneself, it’s no longer “I consulted,” but rather “I thought.” There’s an interesting nuance with these collective “we” statements: the speaker doesn’t necessarily have to have personally participated in the action they attribute to their “we.” For example, I can proudly declare that “we were the first to send a human into space,” using “we” to refer to the once-existing community of the “Soviet Union.” At the same time, neither I nor anyone else is bothered by the fact that when Yuri Gagarin flew, I didn’t even exist yet.

From what we often have to denote as a group entity, without which the described events would not have even begun, we can use a technique… situationally dependent justification to conclude that group entities exist. And since they exist, it makes sense to be able to think about them.

The first thing to note about the composite beings we refer to as “we,” “you,” and “they” is that they are systems. There is a clear decomposability, and as a consequence, the presence of systemic effects. Sometimes the situation is such that the contributions of the participants simply add up. For example, Ivan and Vasily are pulling a boat out of the water onto the shore using a rope. Let’s assume that one participant alone does not have enough strength for this task, but together they can manage. We have a banal transition from quantity to quality, but upon closer examination, the situation turns out to be more complex than it seemed. We can start with the fact that Ivan will not go to the shore to pull the boat if he does not know that Vasily is also going. And Vasily will not go if he has no information that Ivan is coming. The participants must have the ability to negotiate with each other. They need to define a common goal, allocate roles, and plan the activity. It turns out that the initially observed simple summation of force vectors F_Ivan.and F._Vasilyis just the tip of the iceberg, beneath which lie quite non-trivial matters, including the ability to negotiate, the history of relationships, and plans for the further use of the boat.

The “1+1” topology is the simplest topology of a composite entity. Let’s say that Elena joins Ivan and Vasily; she won’t be pulling the boat but will take care of cooking while the men are busy with heavy work. The arrival of a third participant immediately complicates the situation. We have the group “I+V+E,” but the system “I+V” does not disappear (it is the one that went to pull the boat). Moreover, if Ivan and Elena are attracted to each other, it makes sense to talk about the system “I+E.” We also don’t want to overlook the system “V+E,” because anything can happen. Additionally, since the systems “I+E” and “V” exist, relationships may well develop between them, creating their own system. This means that the structure “(I+E)+V” is also valid, especially if a love triangle is observed. For symmetry, let’s add the systems “I+(V+E)” and “(I+V)+E.” In total, among the three friends who went on a picnic, we observe the presence of ten systems:

I, V, E, I+V, I+E, V+E, I+(V+E), (I+V)+E, V+(I+E), I+V+E

Let’s assume that Maria suddenly joins the friends. At this point, I won’t even attempt to list all the possible combinations. Then Nikolai arrives, and we have a combinatorial explosion, all with just five subjects. Let’s not forget that options like “(A+B+C)+(D+E)” (which represent the relationships of the composite subject “all boys” with the composite subject “all girls”) also make sense.

The example with five friends was presented solely to demonstrate the emergence of a complexity avalanche, which arises even with a relatively small number of elements that are carefully isolated from the outside world. The real situation, of course, is even more nightmarish. During the discussion of systemic issues, it became clear that for a composite entity to exist, it is not at all necessary for all participants to be in the same area of space-time. For instance, Elena’s relationships with the boys can be significantly influenced by a factor like “what will mom say?” In other words, the composite subject “Elena + her mom” is definitely part of the situation. Considering that all the picnic participants know Elena’s mom, it becomes rather disheartening. It might be time to stop adding people to the group. Unless, of course, we remember that Nikolai is a Muslim, Vasily is a Christian, Ivan is a fan of the Spartak club, and Maria is a fan of CSKA. Somehow, it has turned out that large composite entities like “Muslims,” “Christians,” “Spartak fans,” and “CSKA fans” have also joined the friendly company.

And so our friends have finished all the necessary picnic tasks, sitting around the campfire and chatting about seemingly nothing. But what does “nothing” really mean? In fact, we have a session of aligning goals, plans, and constructive solutions through direct interaction that is beyond even counting the number of individual subjects within the spontaneously formed group “I+U+E+M+N.”

A question may arise: can we do without composite subjects? It all becomes too complicated when combinatorics comes into play. Perhaps it’s enough to consider individual people and, based on their personal traits and motives, understand what’s happening? Reductionism insists on this approach. It’s possible, but then a large number of resulting effects will remain unexplained. Imagine trying to understand how a clock mechanism works, but deciding to examine each individual part separately, without considering how they interconnect. Excluding composite subjects from consideration will immediately break the holistic picture into inexplicably behaving fragments.

One of the striking inexplicable phenomena in this case is undoubtedly humor. Friends gathered around the campfire share funny stories and laugh together. From the perspective of an individual, humor is a completely absurd thing. Why is there a mechanism within us that drives us to seek out very specific information, which, once obtained, leads us to perform specific breathing exercises and experience a characteristic pleasure? If our body needs breathing exercises, it sends us deep breaths, hiccups, or yawns. Simple and utilitarian. Laughter is something entirely different. It can elevate, humiliate, purify, and throw us into the mud. Laughter can be used as both a deadly weapon and a remedy. A well-timed joke can make someone the king of the moment, while a poorly timed one makes you want to throw the joker out the door immediately. It’s clear that the situation is much more nuanced and complex than just performing breathing exercises.

The most plausible hypothesis about what laughter really is, it seems to me, is the suggestion that laughter is one of our innate natural communication mechanisms. Cows moo, cats meow, dogs bark, and humans laugh. If a resident of the Amazon jungle speaks to me in their language, I won’t understand anything, but if they laugh, it will mean exactly the same thing as it does for anyone from my culture. It will mean that they find something funny. We all have a clear implicit (self-evident) understanding of what “funny” means, but when we try to describe it in words, it becomes nonsensical. Funny is when you say “ha-ha-ha,” when you say “oh, I can’t,” when you say “I’m going to burst my belly.” An explicit description of the meaning of laughter ends up sounding somewhat ridiculous. Speaking of our innate natural communication mechanisms, we can also recall crying, screams of terror, screams of pain, and shouts. The purpose of these mechanisms is clear, and the meaning of the signals being sent and received is obvious (which means we have our own context for them). In this context, laughter, which seems to serve an unclear purpose, stands somewhat apart. If we don’t understand,Text for translation: why.Laughter is needed (“to have fun” is not an answer), which means we are not the direct beneficiaries of what is happening. But if it’s not us, then who? Our bodies transmit these specific signals, but our personalities are only partially their true senders and receivers.

Various authors have repeatedly expressed the opinion that the meaning of laughter exists not at the level of individuals, but at the level of groups. A group cannot exist unless its members have agreed on certain things, such as what behavior is considered unacceptable within that group. With each successful joke, the company becomes more cohesive, and our internal mechanisms recognize that we are participating in something very positive, rewarding us with good spirits. Positive reinforcement. An unsuccessful joke fractures the group, which is a bad sign, and the person who made the blunder is often met with hostility. If a group is filled with jokes and laughter, it means that the group is alive, healthy, and dynamically developing. If the group has completely stopped joking, it indicates that something monstrous has become the norm, and the group is likely doomed.

In the context of this narrative, the question of “why we need laughter” is interesting not so much in itself, but as an example of a system-forming mechanism. A mechanism that is implemented in the structure of the system’s components, but whose purpose is revealed only at the level of the system as a whole.

In general, a similar situation arises with money. It was mentioned earlier that money is an informational object, which is strongly suggested by the fact that it can be transferred over the Internet. However, we do not consider money as information, but rather as a material (?) resource. If there is a thousand dollars in a bank account, we perceive this fact as a certain volume of specific matter that can be exchanged for something. But money is not matter. It is information.

It may seem that all the informational content of money lies in the knowledge of its quantity, but upon closer examination, it becomes clear that the quantity of an item and the item itself are still different things. One can have information about the amount of water and even transmit that information over the Internet, but the water itself cannot be sent through the Internet. However, money can be.

If money is information, then there must be a context in which the semantics of the signal is revealed. We ourselves are not capable of viewing money as information (I want to emphasize again that we see it as a material resource), therefore, it is not our information. Similar to laughter, one could suggest that the informational essence of money is revealed at the level of intersubjective structures. Essentially, money is internal information within a market economy. The fact that we perceive it not as information but as a material resource is a very important element of the game we play when we act as economic agents.

In addition to laughter and money, we must certainly mention love. It is a wonderful thing that completely consumes a person with the sole purpose of forming a transpersonal system of two individuals capable of creating the miracle of birth and nurturing new life. The complexity, importance, and scale of this task are such that it is appropriate for our nature to employ the most powerful positive and negative reinforcements. The theme of “love” could have been discussed in the previous chapter when we talked about external goal-setting, but at that time we lacked one important component. We did not understand what could serve as the source of external goal-setting in this case. It may seem that a guy head over heels in love becomes a slave to his beloved, and a girl in love becomes a slave to her chosen one. But this cannot be true, as in that case, the most favorable outcome (complete mutuality) becomes an absurd and counterproductive closed loop. Everything falls into place only if we assume that the source of goal-setting is something third. It is clear that in this case, the only thing that can be considered third is the composite subject “guy + girl.” A family. Just emerging, but already a family. When we look at a couple in love, our eyes see only the individuals that make it up, and it may seem to us that there is no one else there. But this is nothing more than an optical illusion. The composite entity “family,” while lacking a separate physical embodiment, reminds us of the theme… “Reification” ), but it undoubtedly exists as a system.

In a normal state, each of us can be seen as a physical embodiment of an unimaginable number of diverse “we.” Even when we retreat into a completely detached self-contemplation, we do not narrow our consciousness to a point; rather, we expand it as much as possible, broadening our inner vision of the magnificence that can be called our world, and simultaneously, our own “self.” After all, we are not only parts of these amusing composite beings (let’s call them MYSHki), but when they collide within us, they themselves become parts of the system that we denote with the letter “I.”

A small remark before we move on: we are not necessarily part of the MЫshki only with those similar to ourselves. Inter-species symbiosis is a common phenomenon in nature. There is a strong suspicion that a significant part of the MЫshki is hidden within the depths of our own biology, and we are not even aware of their existence.

Mind.

A particular source of human pride is our precious human mind. Observing this amazing thing within ourselves, we boldly place ourselves at the pinnacle of the universe. We call ourselves “Homo sapiens.” Even though we are weak, slow, clumsy, and sensitive, we possess reason, and it makes us the masters of nature. All of it. Without exception.

Let’s calmly figure it out: is this really such a unique thing in the very nature that we have appointed ourselves as its masters?

Imagine astronauts arriving in a distant planetary system. They land on one planet. A picturesque desert under skies of strange colors, washed by seas of toxic liquid. The wind blows. Rocks take on bizarre shapes. We search for signs of intelligent activity. No remnants of buildings, no unusual objects that could be said to have been made for a specific purpose. We note in the logbook, “No signs of intelligent activity detected.” We move on. On the next planet, everything is completely different. Dense construction. Various automated factories. Ingeniously designed machines in quarries extract ore, and astonishingly complex plants produce something from it. There’s an incredible transportation system, both on the surface and underground, as well as in the air. Everywhere, something is being built. The old is being dismantled and sent for recycling. Nothing is clear; we can only guess about everything. The owners of this splendor (little green beings with big heads) are nowhere to be seen, and there’s no one to ask. What should we write in the logbook? Again, “No signs of intelligent activity detected”?

Of course, you don’t need to fly anywhere to see something like this. You can simply go into the woods and, removing the blinders of self-satisfaction, look around. You can examine a drop of swamp water under a microscope. You can look at a drop of your own blood through a microscope. Everywhere, there are unimaginably complex mechanisms, each clearly designed to perform a specific function. Where should we search for little green men with big heads, for whom a blade of grass pushes itself into the ground? For whom does a mosquito, that amazing flying marvel of engineering, assemble itself from the unimaginable junk it’s made of? Who is in charge of constructing the astonishingly complex structure that we see in the mirror as a hair that needs to be shaved?

If I were religious, I would answer all questions with “God,” throw in a couple of quotes from sacred texts, and that would be the end of the discussion. “God” is a universal answer to all questions of “how?”, “why?”, and “what for?”. The answer is meaningless, but universal. If your thoughts have reached a dead end and you need to provide an answer, just attribute everything to God’s will. As you may have already guessed, we won’t be taking such a simple route.

It turns out that on one hand, we undoubtedly have traces of intelligent activity all around us, but on the other hand, we cannot attribute this intelligent activity to ourselves or to any other humanoid beings. Thus, we have no choice but to relinquish our sole monopoly on intelligence. Humans are not the only intelligent beings in the universe. They are not even the only intelligent beings on Earth. Intelligent activity is one of the most ordinary things in our world, and we are merely one among a vast multitude of beings capable of engaging in it. Some may find this a rather sad fact, but personally, I see nothing gloomy about it. Moreover, the opportunity to feel like a part of the great process of creation, which is happening everywhere right now on all conceivable levels of reality, can be viewed as an inexhaustible source of inspiration.

In biology, it is commonly believed that all these wonderful phenomena I mentioned are the result of the evolutionary process. One could say that, but it doesn’t change anything. Overall, there is not much difference in the words we use to describe what is happening. What matters is that there is, in fact, intelligent activity that cannot be attributed to humans or any other anthropomorphic beings. The concept of “evolution” is extremely valuable to us, if only because it allows us to shift the discussion of the creation of living beings from the realm of fairy tales to a much more useful framework. However, we must understand that evolution is not some singular entity that takes the place of God, but is not God itself. “Evolution” is merely a general term for a set of principles whose large-scale and long-term functioning leads to the self-organization of systems that exhibit all the characteristics of intelligent activity.

It would be nice to define reason now, but since this topic is currently very mythologized, it would be wise on my part not to provide a definition. Instead, I will circle around the concept of “reason” and try to connect it with what we have already learned to discuss. The first thing to note is that reason is either a tool for any purposeful activity or, in fact, the activity itself. In other words, wherever the question arises not only…whyso?», but also “Text for translation: why.In this context, we have a mind that should be referenced when formulating an answer to the question. It is not surprising that when searching for a subject to which we could attribute rational activity, we immediately encounter difficulties. A rational subject existing in space as a whole may not be present. However, this should not overly concern us. We have only recently become acquainted with composite subjects through the example of human collectives, and it would be foolish to be surprised that we can also think of the collectives of other beings (including ecosystems and biological species) as composite entities. If some adaptive mechanism makes sense only in the context of a community, then we can speak of the community as an entity exhibiting rational behavior. Do such entities possess their own self-awareness? It is difficult to answer this question definitively. If a community finds it beneficial to operate with the concept of its own identity in order to carry out its rational activities, it is possible that it possesses some form of self-awareness. Is the self-awareness of other beings similar to human self-awareness? Generally, it does not have to be, but if the being is a localized organism leading a lifestyle similar to ours, then its self-awareness is likely based on the same principles as ours.

When it comes to contact with intelligent beings, it is important to consider that the communication we are familiar with has a structure for transmitting information, meaning it involves interaction through signals based on a shared context. If we have a common context with a being, interaction is possible. However, if there is no shared context, then informational interaction is impossible.

The less common context we share with another being, the more that being seems unreasonable to us. We consider cats, dogs, horses, crows, and dolphins to be very intelligent animals, but certainly not as intelligent as ourselves. We view fish and reptiles as quite stupid. Insects are seen as primitive automatons. We outright refuse to consider plants as living entities. When examining things like symbioses, ecosystems, and biological species, we are often unable to adequately objectify the being in question. It’s no surprise that, succumbing to this illusion, we position ourselves as the pinnacle of creation. It’s time to rid ourselves of this illusion. In the universe, there is no top or bottom. The universe is isotropic. Yes, undoubtedly, we know more than all other beings, but we know more than they do only about what exists within our informational spacesuit. From the perspective of our informational spacesuit, any other being appears limited, but it’s important to understand that the informational spacesuit of another being extends beyond our world, and we cannot say a word about that realm beyond.

Can we consider the composite beings of which we are a part as rational entities? That is, the “WE-ness”? Earlier, we established that composite subjects definitely exist. They can only exist as systems. Therefore, they possess emergent properties. If an emergent property is purposeful behavior for which the source of intention is not entirely confined to the subjects that make up the composite being, then the requirement… theorems on external goal-setting ), then a composite being can be viewed as a logically separate rational entity from the subjects that constitute it. Importantly, such a being can serve as a source of external goal-setting for the subjects that make it up.

The nature and mode of existence of a composite subject cannot be the same as those of the individual subjects that make it up. Therefore, it can be asserted that the inner world of a composite subject (the set of concepts that the composite subject operates with as a whole) does not coincide with the inner world of its constituent subjects. This implies that communication between a subject and the composite subject of which it is a part is impossible. We, as humans, can communicate with our kind. Best of all—with other people. However, we cannot communicate with groups of people. When addressing an assembled audience, we certainly take into account the characteristics of the audience as a unified whole, but our communication occurs specifically with individuals, not with the collective. Similarly, as composite beings, we cannot communicate with neurons, whose activity (communication among themselves) produces the systemic effect we observe as our own mind. It is not simply that an individual neuron is a simple, single-celled entity. The main reason is that the strange world in which a neuron lives and the world in which we ourselves live are entirely different worlds. Likewise, the worlds in which collectives (families, companies, societies, nations, humanity) exist and the worlds of us, individual human beings, are also different worlds. We can influence collectives. We can even create and destroy them. We can study them. But we cannot understand them as they understand themselves, nor can we communicate with them in the ways and languages they use among themselves.

Personal and public

My childhood and youth coincided with the period of aging and dying of the USSR—a political system that proclaimed the unconditional priority of public interests over personal ones. The spirit of collectivism permeated all propaganda, from the upbringing of children in kindergartens to the information policies of all media without exception. However, it is an obvious fact that despite colossal efforts, the result was a profound and widespread destruction of social institutions. In words, we were “all together,” but in reality, there was a monstrous atomization of society. Each person was on their own; man was a wolf to man. Understanding the reasons for such a significant deviation between what was desired and what actually occurred is interesting not so much from a historical perspective (the past is already gone) but because the logical errors that led to such a dismal outcome have not disappeared from the collective consciousness, including in those countries that have not experienced totalitarianism in the recent past.

Let’s consider the relationship between the individual and the society in which they live. Society, as we have established, can be viewed as a collective subject with its own reasoning. Since a person is part of society, they cannot be a source of goal-setting for society. The theorem on external goal-setting prohibits this. At the same time, society can and, it seems, should be a source of goal-setting for the individual. So far, our reasoning has been entirely consistent with the communist spirit, which has not stood the test of time. Since there can be no errors in calculating the direction of goal-setting (as per the theorem), this means that errors arise when attempting to derive and apply practical consequences from this reasoning.

The first mistake is the attempt to replace transpersonal intelligence with personal intelligence.

As has been mentioned repeatedly above, we can only recognize the presence of intelligence in beings similar to ourselves. We want, and not without reason, for social life to be organized rationally, but we cannot recognize the presence of intelligence in transpersonal entities. It greatly frustrates us when something that governs our fate lacks a head, and this immediately gives rise to our desireto head (or to lead)the process. We know (or at least think we know) how everything should be organized properly. We have science, which we have come to trust because it usually provides predictable results. We want to do everything scientifically, and as a result, predictably achieve the desired outcome. We hope to find among people the smartest, the most honest, the most just, the most noble one to lead society. To become its head, its brain, the point of making the most important decisions.

As a result, the source of goal-setting for the transpersonal entity “society” becomes its component part, which, from the perspective of the theorem on external goal-setting, is impossible. A society that has replaced external goal-setting with internal goal-setting ceases to be a purpose-driven subject. It loses its own reason. Ultimately, the external goal-setting that the new leader received from society also ceases to exist, and everyone is surprised to find that the wonderful human qualities observed in the candidate for the high position have somehow evaporated after they took office.

Once the inherent subjectivity of society is destroyed, it is no longer possible to speak of any mythical public interests that should take precedence over personal interests. A dead entity has no interests and cannot have any.

The effect described here was most clearly manifested in the economic collapse that occurred in the last few decades of the USSR’s existence. A country endowed with the richest natural resources for agriculture could not feed itself. There was no major war, no natural disasters, and not even any deliberate sabotage. The centrally managed economy simply ceased to be a living system that nourished its citizens with the fruits of their own labor.

Accordingly, the management architecture in which a part of the system defines the goals and objectives for the development of the entire system is viable only to the extent that it does not hinder the situation from evolving naturally. In other words, it is viable to the extent that the management system built on such architecture is not exploited.

It must be said that the very framing of the question regarding the priority of public interests over personal ones, despite its theoretical correctness, is remarkably flawed. As human beings, we can easily articulate our own interests, while the interests of a fundamentally different (and non-humanoid) entity cannot even be expressed in human language. Thus, it turns out that only a transpersonal system built on the principles of rational egoism is effective and vibrant: people pursue their own affairs, transpersonal systems pursue theirs, and the proper division of roles is never violated.

The second error is replacing system-forming mechanisms with mechanisms that are unsuitable for system formation.

Let’s assume we’ve figured out that sole command over transpersonal entities consistently leads to rather dismal outcomes. Down with authoritarianism, long live democracy. All power to the people. This time for real, not just a facade like it was under the communists. The first (and unfortunately, the last) thing that comes to mind when addressing the issue of collective decision-making is voting. Even if we understand that elections (the appointment of a ruler through a voting process) do not represent true popular sovereignty, but are merely a carefully disguised form of authoritarianism that effectively undermines the agency of transpersonal subjects just as much as any other method of distorting goal-setting. So, direct democracy. All significant decisions affecting society’s life are put to referendums. The procedure and technical support for referendums are structured in such a way that any manipulation is excluded. Will happiness ensue? Let’s try to analyze this.

The transpersonal entity is a system composed of personalities. Like any system, it is something more than just the simple sum of its parts. In fact, it is the systemic effects that arise in addition to the result of simple summation that make it a system. Any voting process is an operation of simple summation. Therefore, the outcome of any vote cannot be considered a decision made by a transpersonal system. Voting is a procedure through which a simple mathematical formula becomes the source of goal-setting for society. Thus, what is referred to as direct democracy undermines the subjectivity of transpersonal beings as effectively as authoritarianism does.

Voting can be recommended as a tool in situations where it is necessary to quickly and effectively dismantle a transpersonal entity. After all, transpersonal entities are not always benevolent, positive, and pleasant in every respect. Among them, there are quite repugnant entities that can only be described as parasites or even predators. If the built-in protective mechanisms of society do not respond in time and a large-scale inflammatory process begins with a significant risk of fatal outcomes, the application of direct democracy may become the means to dismantle the subjectivity of the parasite, after which it will be possible to quickly and painlessly restore the damage it caused in a calm environment. Voting is a straightforward and effective way to close public discussions. If a question needs to be abruptly settled, resulting in a decision that no one is particularly eager to implement (since the discussion is closed and archived), then voting is the most efficient mechanism.

If the goal is not to destroy transpersonal entities, but to cultivate them, then we should learn to work with mechanisms that do not disrupt systemic integrity, but rather foster it.

Freedom and society

They say that you can’t live in society and be free from it. This is not just a lie. It’s a monstrously twisted framing of the question, leading to an extremely destructive answer to an important issue.

Freedom is one of the most diligently slandered concepts. The lie about the unacceptability of freedom is based on a distortion of the essence and application of this concept. Every time freedom is mentioned, the emphasis is placed on the subject’s release from obligations. This is incorrect. The focus should be on removing obstacles to fulfilling obligations. Freedom is primarily not“freedom from…”, a.“freedom for…”There is no need to talk about the “liberation” of the subject by eliminating its sources of external goal-setting. The essence of free will lies in the competition of various sources of goal-setting within the system referred to as the “subject.”

The diversity, multifaceted nature, and creative power of society are based on the fact that it consists of individuals who, through their purposeful activities, shape the future. A being that has lost external goal-setting is incapable of creating the future. A worker whose entire goal-setting is entirely focused on a single source is also unable to create the future, even if that source is society itself.

Correct wording:You can’t live in society and…no.to be freeдля.него..

Chapter Summary

1. Composite subjects— not a myth. Their existence can be easily justified through situationally dependent reasoning. Every time we define our actions as part of a group, we necessarily introduce the intersubjective entity (composite subject) of “we.”
2. Even with a relatively small number of subjects, there is a combinatorial explosion in the number of composite subjects.
3. A composite subject is physically a simple sum of its constituent subjects, but logically it is not. The systemic nature of a composite subject lies precisely in the fact that the result differs from the simple sum of its individual elements.
4. In order to be parts of a composite subject, the subjects do not necessarily have to be present in the same area of space. When we talked about systems in… Chapter 4 The requirement for the system elements to necessarily interact with each other was deemed unnecessary.
5. There are a number of effects (in particular, humor, money, and love have been considered) that require a full reflection on the assumption of a composite subject.
6. A composite subject can serve as a source of external goal-setting for the subject that is part of it.
7. A part of a composite subject cannot serve as a source of external goal-setting for it.
8. Purposeful (rational) behavior should not be regarded as the exclusive domain of human beings and “higher” animals. Reason is a much more widespread phenomenon in our world than is commonly understood at a basic level.
9. The familiar concept of oligarchy (in any of its forms, from monarchy to electoral “democracy”) seemingly contains an irreconcilable logical contradiction.
10. The familiar concept of direct democracy, implemented through voting, seems to be extremely destructive for society and should be viewed solely as an effective tool used to dismantle suprapersonal systems.
11. One cannot live in society and not be free for it.

Chapter 7. System Formation

This chapter is purely practical in nature, and no fundamentally new concepts will be introduced here.

Self-organization

In short, the question of system formation can be formulated roughly as follows:What are the reasons for the emergence and successful functioning of purpose-driven entities?

Any question about the reasons, when translated from pure curiosity to practical interest, automatically breaks down into two specific questions about creation and prevention. In this case, the questions can be formulated as follows:

1. What needs to be done for targeted entities to emerge and function successfully in places where their presence is desirable for us?
2. What needs to be done to prevent the emergence and/or successful functioning of those intentionally acting entities that we find undesirable?

The first question is much more interesting than the second, as the answer to the first question largely contains the answer to the second.

It so happens that the examination of the problem of self-organization traditionally starts from a “zero” position, that is, with an attempt to find ways for the spontaneous transformation of dead chaos into a living self-sustaining order. There is certainly some theoretical interest in this, but upon closer inspection, it turns out to be not as significant as is commonly believed. This is primarily related to the fact that in questions that begin with the words…“What needs to be done in order to…”It is already assumed a priori that some form of living order has emerged from the original mechanistic chaos. At least in the form of us, here and now.

We create and maintain.

When discussing the creation of systems, we will start from the premise that there is already a subject (for example, we, thinking and existing) that has an external (as it cannot be otherwise) goal-setting, and there is a certain initial situation. The desired outcome is not directly achievable in a straightforward manner, like “just come and take it.” This can be schematically represented as follows:

Initial state for system formation

When it comes to information, “available” refers to a set of signals coming in through arrow (2), while “external goal-setting” refers to the context coming from outside through arrow (1). Together, they provide information, and this information is currently discouraging.

The constructive notation is structurally similar to IDEF0 notation, and this is not surprising. It also assumes that the result is obtained from a combination of input data, represented by an arrow entering the block from the left, and a control flow, represented by an arrow from above. Conceptually, this approach aligns quite well with the “signal + context” framework.

I should note right away that in this scheme, a subject is not necessarily a living being in its entirety. The existing initial premises, the goal-setting, and the desired outcome can all be just one specific aspect of the fullness that we refer to as our life.

The first thing that comes to mind in such a situation is to find some suitable soulless tool and solve the problem with it. A hammer, an axe, a shovel, matches, a calculator, a piece of paper, or something else. Depending on the task at hand. It turned out like this:

Acquisition of the tool

An extended subject has emerged, which is fundamentally no different from the original subject. A hammer as an extension of the hand, a piece of paper as an external memory device. The image not only strongly resembles the concept of “controlling subject / controlled object” accepted in 20th-century cybernetics, but it is that concept. The subject is the controlling system, the tool is the controlled one, arrow (3) represents the control signal, and arrow (5) indicates feedback.

Ideally, there should also be an arrow from the subject to the desired outcome (for example, while one hand is driving a nail with a hammer, the other hand is holding the nail), but it has been omitted to avoid complicating the diagram.

If instead of achieving a result through a soulless tool, we decide to solve the problem by enslaving someone, the picture will look like this:

Acquisition of a slave

To avoid any misunderstandings, I should clarify right away that a slave does not necessarily have to be a bipedal creature. A slave can be a quadruped, a plant, a unicellular organism, or even something incorporeal (like an ecosystem), or anything else for that matter. This does not change the essence of what is happening. Moreover, slavery can be not total, but temporary, from eight to five with a break for lunch.

The situation is generally similar to using a soulless tool, except that now we need to not only command our tool (arrow 3) but also motivate it (arrow 6). In other words, we need to provide it with external goal-setting. And we must not forget to block any external goal-setting it may have had by nature (arrow 7). If we leave even a little bit of the natural goal-setting of the tool, the desired result will be an interference of two goal-settings. We do not expect this from a tool that unconditionally executes our will and only our will.

If a slave is an artificial system, then it has no goal-setting “by nature,” and there is nothing to block.

Since the only active element in the resulting structure is our goal-setting, we cannot speak of the emergence of a composite subject, and there remains only an extended subject.

Similarly to the previous scheme, the arrow indicating the connection from the subject to the desired outcome is not shown, but it will always be present if the subject and the worker are collaborating on the desired result.

The scenario of “acquiring a slave” should not be confused with voluntary assistance. In the case of voluntary help, there is no need to block the existing goals of the worker, and therefore, although the situation of volunteering may formally resemble using a person as a tool, it does not constitute slavery.

One can notice that slavery is quite a burdensome endeavor. It’s not just about commanding a slave; you also have to engage in goal-setting for them. Perhaps there’s a way to automate the process? For instance, what if a well-trained and properly educated slave could independently understand our goals and execute everything correctly? A very good option would be to create either a completely artificial entity, meaning perfecting the automation of task execution, or to establish a transpersonal structure (the slave doesn’t necessarily have to be a living multicellular organism; it could very well be a well-trained “mouse”) that would ensure an acceptable level of need satisfaction for everyone. The result:

Delegating a task

A completely automated process. We worked hard, created the perfect servant, and now we achieve the desired results without putting in any extra effort. Life is beautiful. Or is it not quite? There’s a feeling that something has been sacrificed. Specifically, ourselves. We have transformed from a purposeful acting subject into a peacefully observing spectator. Perhaps it makes sense to remember that we are also capable of doing something, to grow an arrow on our right side and direct it… where? To the desired result — that’s unnecessary. We have a very good servant, and he manages perfectly on his own. Maybe we should direct the arrow at the servant? But why? He has all the necessary data, and he knows how to set goals too. We can’t add anything to what the servant already possesses. Our “valuable instructions” would only get in his way. By all formal indicators, everything is fine (we have achieved and continue to achieve the results we aimed for), but in essence, we have ceased to exist.

A slave, tired of fighting problems alone, hires another slave, and the result is as follows:

A police officer protects the peace of law-abiding citizens.

Yes, that’s exactly right. The police officer is there to protect the peace of ordinary citizens. In this scenario, the government we created plays the role of a slave, while the police officer is the slave of a slave. We delegated our safety concerns to the government and got what we wanted. Now, in terms of the goal of “security,” we have ceased to be subjects. What’s interesting about this scheme is that it depicts what the situation would look like if everything were done perfectly and reliably. In reality, the government, in addition to the delegated goal-setting, has a certain amount of additional goal-setting that can be conditionally called “corporate interest.” Moreover, the police officer’s own goal-setting is never completely blocked. As a result, we, the citizens, end up with something unknown, having paid a monstrous price for it.

It is worth noting right away that the formation of states, as far as I know, has never followed a “delegation” scenario anywhere. Wherever governments declare the so-called “service to the people,” there is a considerable degree of duplicity. The relationship between the people and the state is built on different scenarios, which will be discussed below.

The second interesting aspect of this image is that the “expanded slave” is structurally no different from the “expanded subject” in the image “The Acquisition of a Slave.” Consequently, the situation tends to evolve into task delegation, where the slave loses their subjectivity, and the only active participant becomes the slave of the slave. This results in a self-replicating structure. Enslavement is replaced by delegation, the interception of subjectivity, and a move to the next cycle. The system acquires new slaves and pushes yesterday’s masters out of the process, stripping them of their goal-setting. Some subjects are drawn into the system, while others are expelled. It can be assumed that the expelled former masters are the best candidates for the role of new slaves. Having not completely forgotten their lost goal-setting (1), they will more readily accept a new substitute goal from the new master (6) than any other beings.

I would least like to pass any moral judgment on what is happening. We simply need to understand that the scenario described occurs and is one of the quite common patterns of situation development. One could even suggest that we ourselves are largely the result of a complex, lengthy, and multi-stage chain of delegations, played out across many aspects of life. However, the logic of a self-replicating pattern is such that having been at the peak of the process and having made our full subjective contribution to it, we run a significant risk of becoming detached from the process, becoming former masters of life ourselves. From there, the prospects are either oblivion or servitude to former slaves. Residents of developed countries have advanced further than others on the path of task delegation. Food production, household management, the development of concepts of good and evil (which happened even before many other things), security provision, health care, and even child-rearing have all been delegated. From the original natural external goal-setting, only scattered remnants remain, temporarily unseized by the servants we have created. Sci-fi writers have frightened us with the idea that the artificial intelligence we have spawned will wage a war of annihilation against us. But such an outcome is extremely unlikely. A much more plausible scenario is that the Matrix will satisfy any needs before a person even has time to think about them, and Skynet will eliminate any inconveniences before they even manifest. This is cozy. It is convenient. It is fulfilling. One does not want to return to a place where it is hungry, cold, and dangerous. And it would be the greatest cruelty on my part to call for humanity to return to a primitive way of life just so that everyone could have the opportunity to entertain themselves with poverty, disease, and wars.

Fortunately, the strategies of “slavery” and “delegation” are not the only ways to create systems. Moreover, it is easy to notice that these strategies do not lead to the formation of composite subjects that include the subject that existed at the first step. The most that can be achieved with them is the emergence of an extended subject. A composite subject arises where cooperation occurs.

Let’s first consider a somewhat degenerate case — a situation in which the subjects work towards a common result, but do not interact with each other in terms of information:

The “if everyone…” strategy (or, alternatively, “if nobody…”)

In this case, the desired result cannot be achieved by a single entity, but it can be easily attained through the efforts of two entities. Entity 1, guided by goal (1) and what it has at its disposal (2), contributes (4) to the common cause and profits from it (6). Entity 2 acts in a similar manner. Everyone is satisfied, and the result is achieved. An external observer looking at the overall combination of “entity 1 + entity 2” may get the impression that a system is at work. In principle, they are not far from the truth. Such a “black box” definitely produces a systemic effect, and there is nothing surprising about that. Although the entities do not interact directly with each other, there is still interaction through the desired result and feedback. From the perspective of the entity participating in the process (either entity 1 or entity 2), the systemic nature of this arrangement is not so obvious. They know that each acts independently.

There are usually two problems with such an organization of affairs:

1. Such systems just don’t seem to come together. Subject 1, upon entering the field, realistically assesses their capabilities and concludes that the desired outcome is unattainable. If that’s the case, then their purposeful activity is meaningless. The same happens with the second subject. These systems can potentially come together when the scale of the problem gradually increases. Initially, the first subject manages the task, and then, when they can no longer cope but haven’t yet decided to abandon the effort, the second subject appears.
2. Such systems are unstable. As soon as the required contribution to achieve a goal starts to exceed the capabilities of one of the participants, they almost immediately abandon this hopeless endeavor, and the process of disintegration then accelerates rapidly. Another danger for such a “system” is a temporary decrease in the need for effort. As soon as someone feels that everything is working out fine without them, they go off to pursue other activities, and when they return after a while, they are surprised to find that their departure was in vain and that they have come back too late.

Every time we indulge in idle dreams about how wonderful it would be if everyone suddenly started doing the right thing, we are counting on a system to form according to the scenario described here. We are counting in vain. Even if it does happen, it is very short-lived. “If only everyone cleaned up after themselves and didn’t litter…”, “if only everyone followed the traffic rules…”, “if only no one stole…”, “if only everyone voted for the right candidate…”, “if only everyone worked for the common good…” — these are all dreams of a system forming without any actual system in place. It’s easier to acknowledge that such things don’t happen in real life than to waste time on meaningless hope for a miracle.

To make the scheme more stable, we need to ensure that the subjects start communicating with each other. We add data transmission from subject 1 to subject 2 and vice versa:

Established data transmission between entities.

Unfortunately, this innovation won’t give us anything at all. We have managed to extend the signal, but there is no context for it, and therefore the signal does not become information. The context that existed is inadequate because it is not about communication with peers, but rather about the desire for a result. Moreover, it is completely unclear what motivates subject 1 to emit signal (7) and subject 2 to emit signal (8). To address these issues, it is necessary to provide the subjects with additional contexts:

Added contexts.

Context (9) allows subject 1 to interpret signals (2) and (8) and not only emit signal (7) but also, possibly overlapping with context (1), influence the outgoing signal (4) that shapes the desired outcome. Context (10) operates similarly in subject 2. Contexts (9) and (10) may be the same context, but they can also differ.

The main difference between contextual arrows and signaling ones is that they are not something that comes from the outside. A signal is indeed something that affects the subject from beyond its limits, but context is not a signal; it is information that, in turn, is a construction of “signal + context.” Thus, the arrival of context from the outside is somewhat conditional. From the perspective of how the subject itself understands what is happening, the incoming context is indeed something that is “given” from the outside, but in reality, context is an element of the subject’s contraction. Since the entire construction must ultimately function coherently, it is necessary for contexts (9) and (10) to correspond to each other. Moreover, this must happen twice: the signal (7) generated using context (9) must be understandable in the context of (10), and the signal (8) generated using context (10) must be understandable in the context of (9). The functioning of the interaction between subjects is a systemic effect of the mechanisms that form contexts (9) and (10). Therefore, their totality can be viewed as a single system that is part of a composite subject:

Added a systematic approach to the contexts of interaction among subjects.

The added system could be presented without a dotted line, as the rigid boundaries of subjects and their localization anywhere are always a matter of convention.

Clearly, our communication system has turned out to be some sort of incomplete entity. There are outgoing signals, but where can they originate from? For the system to produce coherent signals, it needs to have a goal and initial data. The initial data is straightforward: apart from arrows (2) and (3), there’s nothing else. As for the goal, we could try to take the initial goals of the subjects, but that would lead to poor results. It would mean that for arrow (9), the outcome is the result of the work in the context of signal (2) plus, in some mystical way, the signal (3) received through subject 2. There can’t be any such mysticism, since to obtain signal (3) through subject 2, we already have arrow (8), but it won’t work without context (9). If the functioning of the communication system requires a context that cannot be derived from within the system itself, it means we will have to take it from the outside. The resulting scheme of collaborative work among interacting subjects towards a common result:

Collaborative work towards a common goal.

Interestingly, this scheme won’t fall apart if we completely remove the common goal-setting (1), shifting all the acquisition of external context onto the goal-setting of the communication system:

Valuable communication

Subjectively acting individuals will perceive the situation as one in which they really want to interact with each other. They might even come up with some logical explanation for this to reassure themselves, but that is not necessary and not important.

Let’s see what happens if the interacting subjects work not towards a common goal, but each towards their own individual result. The subjects remain, but each has their own objectives. The communication system stays in place. There are now two desired outcomes. The benefits for the subjects (the motivation to engage in interaction) can be realized in two ways:

1. The result of each participant’s work is not only their own desired outcome but also the desired outcome of their partner. It’s a situation of “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours.”
2. Everyone works solely for their own results, but achieving the desired outcome for each individual contributes to improving the quality (and, consequently, the usefulness) of what is available not only to themselves but also to their peers. The situation can be summed up as “the prosperity of all is the key to the prosperity of each.”

The combination of options 1 and 2 is characteristic of a well-established harmonious symbiosis.

Harmonious symbiosis

The results could only be two because each of the subjects had their own goal-setting, which is why instead of one arrow (1), there were two incoming bundles of arrows: (1.1) and (1.2).

Unlike the “If All” scenario, the “Self-Worth Communication” and “Symbiosis” scenarios are not particularly sensitive to temporary lapses in the ability to achieve desired outcomes. The subjects do not exit the process but continue to communicate (arrows 7 and 8). In principle, the system can remain stable for centuries, spanning the lives of many generations. For example, followers of certain religions wait year after year for the fulfillment of prophecies, diligently prepare for it, and do not worry too much about the fact that it has yet to come to pass.

The result of the symbiosis can (and should) be viewed as a composite subject, which has a complex of goals, a set of resources, and achievable outcomes. Furthermore, this composite subject can then function as an independent entity in further system formation according to any of the scenarios discussed here.

It is clear that the scheme turned out to be too complex to spontaneously arise in its entirety from nothing. However, the existence of harmonious symbioses is a universally observed fact in the living world, and we have no choice but to figure out how such complex structures can emerge from simpler ones. For example, let’s consider how symbiosis can arise from the interaction between a predator and its prey. At the beginning of the process, we have a potential prey and a hungry predator (the arrows are numbered so that we can later create an image similar to the “Symbiosis” scenario):

Potential prey and a hungry predator

Finding a victim, the predator takes the result from the prey:

The predator ate its prey.

Pure predation is not a very advantageous strategy, as natural selection works against potential prey remaining easy targets. The only way for a predator to turn off the unfavorable evolution of its prey is to stop killing them. In other words, to stop being a predator and become a parasite:

Parasitism

At this stage, the victim and the former predator face a jointly solvable problem—working together to ensure that parasitism does not revert back to predation. The only way to achieve this is to establish a communication channel through which the victim can signal to the parasite that their available resources have critically diminished. A signaling arrow (7) is formed from the victim to the parasite, along with the necessary context for interpreting the signal (10). Since one-sided information exchange is ineffective, a reverse channel (arrow 8) and its corresponding context (9) emerge. With synchronized informational contexts for both the victim and the parasite, we must acknowledge the formation of a communication system and a composite subject. The result:

Enlightened parasitism

The arrow, for which everything was ultimately initiated, is highlighted in red. Before achieving symbiosis, it is necessary to ensure that the parasite’s activities become beneficial to the host and/or to engage in collaborative efforts towards desired outcomes. When this happens, the participants in the process should no longer be referred to as victims and parasites. They become symbionts.

When examining the relationship between civil society and the state, it becomes evident that the state initially acts as a predatory gang of robbers, and only as the situation develops does the process shift into a more or less peaceful form of parasitism. Some of the currently most developed states have already managed to overcome their own greed and transition to a more evolutionarily advantageous model of enlightened parasitism with elements of symbiotic relationships.

In principle, the reverse process is also possible — from symbiosis to parasitism, and then to pure predation. However, it can be argued that, overall, the dominant direction of development tends to lean towards symbiosis, as it is more advantageous from the perspective of natural selection. In the long run, if the value of the desired outcomes becomes less obvious to the symbionts themselves, the “Symbiosis” scenario may evolve into a model of “Self-valuable Communication.”

In the diagrams provided, the most mysterious and therefore interesting entities are undoubtedly communication systems. Although they are physically realized as subsystems of interacting subjects, we still have every right to refer to them as systems that possess integrity. Moreover, there is every reason to believe that for communication systems endowed with the function of self-replication, it is common practice to recruit subjects into symbiotic relationships. Or even more than just recruitment, but rather intentional cultivation.

From the perspective of a subject participating in symbiotic relationships (that is, from within the system), the functioning of the communication system appears as the presence of an additional goal closely linked to the satisfaction of the original goal for which the system was created. A vivid example of symbiotic relationships is the market economy. When entering into commodity-money relations, a subject begins to desire not only material goods (the original motivation of the subjects) but also money, which cannot be considered material goods for the simple reason that they are immaterial (as previously emphasized, they can be transferred over the Internet). However, the informational nature of money eludes us, the participants in market relations. When we receive a one-hundred-dollar bill, we sincerely believe that we have acquired value, although, upon reflection, it becomes clear that the intrinsic consumer value of this artifact is approximately zero. A one-hundred-dollar bill is a material carrier of a signal, the meaning of which is that the holder of this item has a desire to dispose of it in a reasonable manner, and there are several other subjects who wish to acquire this item in order to then dispose of it reasonably themselves. This creates a familiar network of data transmission, in which we, the economic agents, play the role of the transport medium. But if signals are transmitted, it is evident that there must be senders (someone has to encode information into the signal) and receivers. It can be assumed that in this case, monetary exchange is an internal informational process of that mysterious transpersonal entity that can be referred to as “the communication system of the market economy.” For us, the economic agents, it is quite sufficient that we have an external goal expressed in the desire to obtain the money we do not have and to spend the money we do have.

Despite all the criticisms, a purely symbiotic system of market economy consistently proves to be more beneficial and humane than any other system based either on slavery or on a non-functional “if everyone” scenario. As a fly in the ointment in this large barrel of honey, there are, of course, instances of parasitism and even predation, which arise where, for some reason, the balance of mutual interest among the symbionts is disrupted.

In the context of social symbiotic systems, the worst issue is not the emergence of predation and parasitism, but rather that the element defining the essence and direction of the processes within such systems is not something concrete, visible, and tangible, but rather some vague, virtual, transpersonal entity. In this situation, we feel uncomfortable, and a natural desire arises to materialize the system-forming link. For instance, it is only natural to appoint a specific person as the leader of the process—preferably ourselves. Or, if this idea is not well-received by everyone, we might turn to a mythical anthropomorphic God and appoint ourselves as His chief prophet. If this succeeds, the scenario of “symbiosis” transforms into a scenario of “slavery.” If we do not want to enact the “slavery” scenario, we must learn to reject both the idea of usurpation and the idea of personifying communication systems.

Preventing and destroying

It can be useful not only to create systems but also to dismantle them. Even a seemingly idyllic system, like a harmonious symbiosis, can become undesirable. We might want to break it down, if only to make room for a different symbiotic system that better fits the changed circumstances.

When discussing system breakdowns, it can be helpful to immediately highlight whether we are acting from within the system or from the outside. The motivation for breaking from within is clearly rooted in the subject’s dissatisfaction with their involvement in the process. The motivation for breaking from the outside is more varied, but also evident.

The most radical way to dismantle systems is, of course, the destruction of the subjects involved in them. However, we will not consider this method, not so much out of humanitarian concerns, but because we have a different task: we are not talking about the destruction of the elements of systems, but about the destruction of the systems themselves.

Deconstruction of the “tool usage” scenario

Let me remind you of the scheme:

The motivation for deconstructing such a system may be that the use of a specific tool, while achieving a desired result for the individual, also has undesirable side effects. For example, if the desired result is to attain emotional comfort, and the tool is a syringe filled with heroin.

In such a situation, simply taking away the tool from the subject is not an effective deconstruction. Deprived of the tool, the subject experiences a deprivation of the desired outcome, and with their goal still intact, they find a way to regain a similar tool. An effective solution is to replace the scenario of “using the tool” with any other scenario that effectively provides the subject with the desired result.

Deconstruction of Slavery

Scheme:

The slave system operates through the hands of slaves, and therefore, the first enemies in a confrontation with such systems are the slaves themselves. However, it is important to understand that slaves in these systems are a renewable resource, and while the loss of slaves is unpleasant for the slave system, it is not fatal. After sustaining losses and retreating to pre-fortified positions, the system will recover and attempt to take revenge. This is why large-scale epic battles, while providing incomparable material for mythology, literature, and cinema, cannot be considered an effective means of deconstructing slave systems. A more appropriate approach would be the neutralization of the slaveholder subject, but the difficulty lies in the fact that, firstly, the subject is usually well-protected, and secondly, it is not always easy to correctly identify them. We have a tendency to personify the subject, traditionally assigning the role of the slaveholder to someone we can see with our own eyes—be it a king, emperor, dictator, president, or, alternatively, a small circle of individuals. Yet, even after achieving a decisive victory in war and removing the personified master, we may find, to our surprise, that this too has not dealt a fatal blow to the system. The surviving system successfully grows a new elite, replenishes its loss of slaves, and once again presents itself to us in a renewed and revitalized form.

The weakest point of slavery is not the slaves themselves or the clearly observable masters, but the necessity of blocking the slave’s own external goal-setting. Accordingly, the foundation of a method for escaping slavery can be the unblocking of this obstructed channel. As soon as a slave begins to understand that the meaning of their existence is not solely to serve the master, they cease to be an effective slave, and the system starts to crack. When the external goal-setting of the slaves is finally unblocked, the slaveholding system ceases to exist simply because the former slaves stop responding to controlling influences (signal 3 in the context of 6) and go their separate ways.

Interestingly, the situation of unblocking the goal-setting of a slave is referred to as “corruption” in our context. Nowadays, corruption is viewed as a strictly negative phenomenon that must be fought against with all available means. Tactically, corruption can be seen as something undesirable, but strategically, the corruption of slaves is precisely the tool that most effectively dismantles slaveholding systems. It’s worth noting that in systems where the “slavery” scenario is not employed, the concept of “corruption” becomes entirely inapplicable. After all, corruption is nothing more than the natural behavior of individuals in a situation where it is deemed unacceptable in the name of “the common good,” “age-old traditions,” or some other grandiose falsehood.

The key to understanding how a specific system of slavery can be deconstructed and transformed into something more suitable lies in finding the answer to the question, “What can be changed in the current situation so that the concept of ‘corruption’ becomes entirely inapplicable?”

Deconstruction of Delegation

Scheme:

It’s a rather sad situation, especially for the subject itself, which has transformed from an active subject into a passive non-subject. The only thing that can be suggested here is to grit your teeth and engage in the process, despite all the costs and the apparent absurdity of your own participation in achieving the desired outcome. If the created slave has effective protection against the interception of its field of activity, one might attempt to enter into a symbiosis with it, but not through the seemingly logical scenario of “the slave of a slave,” but rather through the correct natural path. For instance, starting with predation and parasitism.

Deconstruction of the script “If Everyone”

This scenario does not require deconstruction, as it does not exist in a functional form anywhere in the real world.

Deconstruction of symbiosis

Symbiosis is a good and positive thing. It’s almost a shame to break the idyll. But if we do need to break it, then we’ll need to know how to do it properly. Let me remind you of the scheme:

The key element of a symbiotic system is the communication system that establishes the contexts (9 and 10) for horizontal information connections (7 and 8). Accordingly, to destroy the symbiosis, one must ensure that the signals circulating within the system are no longer adequately interpreted. Once the symbionts cease to understand each other, the system quickly degrades into a far less viable form of predation or slavery.

The scenarios of “collaborative work for a common result,” “self-valuable communication,” and “enlightened parasitism,” which are specific cases of symbiosis, are deconstructed in a similar way, that is, through the neutralization of the communication system.

General remark on the deconstruction of systems

Any functioning system is a way to solve a particular problem. If, before we begin deconstruction, we haven’t created at least an equally effective alternative method to solve the same problem, our deconstruction will not be successful. Thus, a necessary component of the task “prevent and destroy” becomes the successful resolution of the task “create and sustain.”

Conclusion

The central idea of any philosophy of information, not necessarily just the one presented here, can be expressed in just three words:stop the reification of informationAs long as we try to talk about information as something that objectively exists independently of consciousness, we are not actually talking about information.

By forbidding ourselves reification, we immediately find ourselves in a rather difficult position, as, on the one hand, we can no longer ignore the need to learn how to talk about immaterial things, and on the other hand, we somehow need to restore the integrity of the world.

The instrumental approach to philosophy, mentioned in the “Introduction,” significantly contributed to solving these problems. Without its application, we would not have been able to move beyond the discussion framed as “does information (as well as systems, subjects, causality, time, etc.) actually exist, or is it all just an illusion?”

In the process of addressing the issue of rejecting the reification of information, we managed to:

1. Develop a methodology. situationally dependent justification , allowing for the establishment of reliable knowledge where it has not been practiced before.
2. Using the construction “signal-context” to bridge the gap between the material and immaterial worlds, thereby connecting them into a unified whole.
3. To specify the concept of “matter.” и. to expel “information” from physics There is hope that this will have a positive impact not only on computer science but also, in the long run, on physics.
4. Clarify the concept. “system” from unnecessary demands, thereby crystallizing the essence.
5. Learn to operate with the concept. “identity” and apply this skill to solving the previously impenetrable mystery of self-awareness.
6. Enjoy the beauty of the idea of essence. the unity of the subject and the world , in which he lives.
7. To my surprise, I discovered that there are functioning… two completely different causes in their essence Текст для перевода: ..
8. Learn to speak not only about the knowers, but also about… acting subjects.
9. To look at the mystery from an interesting perspective. time Текст для перевода: ..
10. Formulate and prove. the theorem of external goal-setting Пожалуйста, предоставьте текст, который вы хотите перевести.
11. Learn to reason about free will and to understand in which cases and how it arises.
12. Finally, we need to put to rest the rather annoying question about… reproducibility of thought deterministic computer.
13. Learn to reason about composite subjects Текст для перевода: ..
14. Discover that human mind. is not the only intelligence in the universe. To obtain a clear justification that any theory of superiority, without exception, cannot have any basis.
15. Reconcile the idea. personal freedom with the idea of the common good.
16. As an additional bonus, learn to think about the ways and methods of system formation of transpersonal entities.

Perhaps some expected the philosophy of information to provide a recipe for establishing total control over everything that happens. In the end, it turned out to be quite the opposite. It became clear that total control can only be achieved through the complete destruction of one’s own subjectivity. Understanding this circumstance may, in the long run, influence a shift in the direction of social development from a desire for maximum centralization to a pursuit of a properly and harmoniously arranged freedom.

What is especially valuable and truly uplifting is that in the resulting metaphysical system, everything that can be related to mysticism—gods, demons, subtle matters, otherworldly realms, and so on—has been relegated to the category of “superfluous entities that can and should be managed without.” In the ideas proposed as replacements—whether in the “signal-context” framework, in systems, in identities, or even in the alarmingly diverse transpersonal sources of external goal-setting—there is not a trace of the otherworldly. Everything discussed is accessible for observation, understanding, and productive use.

In my narrative, I have carefully avoided the moral and ethical aspects of all the issues discussed. This is not because the topic is uninteresting, but because mixing metaphysics with axiology is a surefire way to produce a product of unacceptable quality from both perspectives. Undoubtedly, from an axiological standpoint, the topic addressed here also deserves thorough exploration, but I would prefer that this be done by those who are more knowledgeable than I am in such matters.