on humanism and environmental crisis

The implicit worldview and the explicit worldview

March 4, 2014

Explicit and implicit worldview,

The World is trying to define itself. We witness the paroxysms of the violence of the heroism , the faith and nihilism. But all of that is nothing else but the sum of each human personal struggle.
People define themselves by living their lives, and desperately trying to make sense of it.
For millennia some of them attempt to express this in literature, art and music.
The philosophers distilled that to several basic categories, represented by the infamous “Big Questions”.
This is the worldview.It is how you see the World, your opinions, your attitude and your guts. In the innate, experiential form, or implicit form- it is in the everybody’s bones.
In the modern times ,as more and more people, are educated, reflective, even obsessed with mindfulness and examining your own mind, the explicit (written down) worldview become more popular.
The domain of philosophers, religious doctrines and scientific theories become the object of the TED talks, self-improvement books or even party conversation.
In the Philozophy.com we are trying to encourage and help an ordinary thinking person to work on his or hers worldview. We think that the answer, or as Vidal call it-”position”, should be short enough to be easily digested and compared with others, but long enough to be meaningful and personal- yours. We arbitrarily decided on the wording of each question, but we included alternative wording or “sub-questions”.
These statements , if they feel yours and true, we believe, can be the very important signposts in your journey to live full and good life.
And if we put them together on the Philozophy.com – we’ll build a smarter planet.

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Evolutionary Reality, The Worldview Internet Game, Uncategorized

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End of Materialism on Philosophy Network

January 1, 2014

1.1.2014

The Evolution explains the origins and the function of the nervous system.

In the pre- NS world, the interplay between the environment and the organism determines the survival. With increased complexity of the organism, the repertoire of the adaptive reactions increased both in spatial and in the temporal realms.

In pre-NS world the changes of the environment and organisms adaptive reactions are random.

To relate these environment’s  changes to organism’s action you need the behavior.

The behavior includes the information about the environment’s changes (the niche) the ways to remember them , the organism’s action and the way to remember it. Intent/ reward system is also included very early. The evolutionary benefits of processing and of organizing these data, “ pushed”  the development of the nervous system.

So, as I understand this, the content of the organism’s nervous system are these information pieces or neural networks organised in systems  being actually behaviors. This is organism’s Universe with the intent/reward system unifying them into an agent, (in more complex organisms, it become “I” or consciousness).

These Universes overlap , as the experiences overlap, depending on the complexity and socialization  of the organism. This is so simple , especially comparing to the Quantum- everything world. Well, with the Human World it is slightly more complicated , as we are v.v. complex and v.v. hypersocial- so we created from those overlapping experiences  a “Nobody’s Universe”, we call real.

I do not believe such a thing exists.  Any animal’s Universe is perfectly real, and My Universe is real. Animal’s do not have any need to burden their nervous system with Nobody’s Universe, the evolutionary process would not allow for it, and I can’t think how the humans could have grown one.  Instead of Subjective vs Objective World, I have one, real My World, with some things more personal  , not overlapping  much, others- heavily overlapped.

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Evolutionary Reality, The Worldview Internet Game, Uncategorized

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Meditation 2014

December 27, 2013

The meditation becoming a delightful tool of my intellectual journey.

Most people, I think, see meditation as a spiritual practice, but I do not.

It allows me to be more mindful and more grateful.

It gives me peace of mind, new perspectives and new insights.

It is a lot.. and no signs of spirituality ( don’t you need to deal with Spirits???)

It helps me to demystify my mental functions, to see different shades of this function under the arbitrarily made subcategories- now  I am using my intellect, now the memory, now intent or soul or ego…

The meditation helped with my worldview, recently with the new name : intellicentrism.  It puts the reality upside- down and inside out, with meditating I feel that I am ok with it.

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Evolutionary Reality, Meditation, Uncategorized

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Evolutionary Reality

December 24, 2013

Evolutionary Reality

Only today I realized that it come not only from studying the evolution. I started to meditate daily about 5 years ago? and this practice, close to the Integral Practice is responsible for the creation of the concept of the evolutionary reality.

All I have, all what’s real for me is my Universe. It is almost tautology . But not completely, as this Universe include my knowledge of the Universes of others.  Obviously of My Mom and my Dad, the teachers, authors, and philosophers, inventors and explorers. Also the universes of my ancestors, cavemen, apes and fish. My Universe contain an evolutionary selection and distillation  of knowledge , of the experience, of beneficial behaviors of the countless organisms or complexity units.

I can not imagine Nobody’s Universe.  Certainly the fish  doesn’t know it. So a special Nobody’s Universe Detection System would have to sprouted  somewhere along the evolution?

I think we are the only species which believes that there is Reality beyond my Universe (Nobody’s Universe).

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Evolutionary Reality, Uncategorized

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Towards Evolutionary Reality. Basic concepts.

December 22, 2013

Towards Evolutionary Reality. Basic concepts

The TER is about my universe. So the first assumption is that your universe is similar enough to mine, so the concepts of my universe are relevant for you.

My universe is the one I created and built since my birth And I am still learning about that universe more and more and I am learning also about the process of building it.

I trust that what I learn is true- but to the degree, as the picture changes all the time.

Of course some parts change more, other less, still other seems to be “so true’, that they can not possibly change.

Also some parts are conscious, some not, some I know and remember about, others I do not know or I forgot  them.

During the process of figuring out my Universe I use my Mind.  It looks that this is the name I use to put together  all my figuring out faculties. This is all very vague and seem to be culturally and civilisation- dependant, but generally different parts of my universe correspond to different parts of my Mind. The Consciousness and Unconsciousness correspond to the conscious and unconscious universes of mine.

The perception usually attaches to the real, material world, the thinking produces intellectual universe, the soul- the connection to the divine and the immortal, etc, etc…

Most of my universe I learned from others-the ancestors,  the parents, the teachers, the books, and now- from Google. All this material has ultimately identical origin- from somebody else’s universe, which is built and structured very similarly to mine .

One of the most profound teachings I learned about my Universe is related to the evolution.

It helps me to understand such difficult concepts like energy, time and space.

I see myself as an evolution-created creature trying to figure out my Universe. I think it is an evolved form of the “attempt to survive”.

It is what all animals do , all the time. They are trying to figure out their  Universe in the attempt to survive. The behaviors promoting this goal have inbuilt pleasure incentive, doing otherwise produces pain.

Each of them has its Mind , which directs the behavior.

Now with going back in time, the discussion become linguistically tricky. We shift the names according to the animal’s complexity. For the caveman the”mind” is ok, but for the bat?

All it has (dr.Nagel, au secours!) is the perception, some memory and the instinct.

I believe, that all three are forms of the behavior.

The instinct contains the behaviors genetically and epigenetically selected by evolution, these neural networks should include the metabolism, motor patterns, neurotransmitters flow (“feelings”) and perception system settings and data.

The memory has behaviors from the past, successful and not- the learning history.

The perception has the same behavioral content except it is connected with the neural network denoting “present time” and “near future” combined with “positive planned outcome”.

If we look deeper into, say, bacteria- the same pattern will work, but simpler.

So simple, that maybe can be tested and proved or disproved.

This is an interesting way of thinking – kind of evolutionary form of

cartesian reductionism.  Instead of breaking the matter into smaller and simpler pieces in order to understand the whole thing, one goes back in the evolutionary time examining simpler and simpler organisms.

It uses our understanding of the evolutionary process.

1. the evolution improves efficiency with tiny steps, it can not shift/exchange a principle or a basic mechanism.

2. all we see are winning behaviors, losers died away, if we see “loser” it means that the evolutionary behavior boundaries were poorly understood.  The behaviors go across the organism, organs or the culture. These are our boundaries invented by us to help to understand, not the evolution’s .

3. The time, the evolution, the complexity and the entropy has the same “arrow”, why?, our process of the understanding has the opposite. These concepts helped us to understand and organise the universe, while reaching further and further in space and time with our science.

The biocentrism postulates that the life created matter. This is revolutionary, this is fantastic. What is most extraordinary that Dr. Lanza and others before and after him, developed the idea on the base of the understanding of quantum physics.

I got it through the understanding of the evolution.

Heylighen, Clement and Gershenson with their complexity science and systems theory are very close to it.

Goswami and Meher Baba with their spiritual paths are practically saying the same.

Still, it is so preposterous, nobody pays any attention.

Basic concepts of the TER are biological. Not philosophical( like Kant’s) not mathematical or physical, not thermodynamical or experiential or spiritual. Biological and secondarily- social.

I am me, and not you, but your experience is like mine. This is this and that is that. And not otherwise around.

And this is my Universe, not yours, not my Mom’s, not my grandson’s.

It is not  the Universe I saw as a baby, or as an embryo. Not the bat’s Universe.

When I and a bat are in the same cave , we both see real cave, completely different,  two perfect, hard realities in the same time, the same place.

Do we need to worry that when we both (the bat and I) leave the cave , it disappears? And which one is left as Nobody’s cave.

It looks how I see it. It lays inside my understanding. It is true, it is one, it is real.

It is not an illusion, the illusion implies the existence of the second world behind , the real one.

So, it is similar to the biocentrism, but not exactly the same.

It is not that the life crated matter.

Neither life , nor the matter are independent or even prominent entities in my understanding,

The matter of scientists it is just play of words, you can not touch it, the relationships between the forces, complexity and the energy.The matter of normal people is the trick of the senses invented 400 million years ago , somewhere  about the Cambrian Explosion.

The evolutionary algorithm works independently of the matter and life.

When I was conceived,  the complexity, the time and the energy/space started as me.

I guess, the same happened to the first one- my imagination sees this process extended and stretched for billions of years- more and more of the first one, of the first live organism , of the first conscious one, of the first me.

So there is my universe, and I believe there is your universe, but I do not think there is Nobody’s Universe.

It is not the life that created it, not the consciousness, these are biological concepts.While the basic assumptions of the TER are biological.( or “organic”) the “flip” is not biological, I am not discovering any biological properties, this is philosophical, it is my understanding that created it. So my universe is not in my head, it is conceptual, it is everywhere, reaching back to the immobile, pre- time, pre-energy the mathematical universe of possibility.

It is preposterous , but the implications are practical. (see: “TER- how to act”).

1.1.2014

The Evolution explains the origins and the function of the nervous system.

In the pre- NS world, the interplay between the environment and the organism determines the survival. With increased complexity of the organism the repertoire of the adaptive reactions increased both in spatial and in the temporal realms.

In pre-NS world the changes of the environment and organisms adaptive reactions are random.

To relate these environment’s  changes to organism’s action you need the behavior.

The behavior includes the information about the environment’s changes (the niche) the ways to remember them , organisms action and the way to remember it. Intent/ reward system is also included very early. These information processing “ need” “ pushed”  the development of the nervous system.

So, as I understand this, the content of the organism’s nervous system are these information pieces or neural networks organised in systems  being actually behaviors.This is organism’s Universe with the intent/reward system unifying them into an agent, (in more complex organisms it become “I” or consciousness)

These Universes overlap , as the experiences overlap, depending on the complexity and socialization  of the organism. This is so simple , especially comparing to the Quantum- everything world. Well, with the Human World it is slightly more complicated , as we are v.v. complex and v.v. hypersocial- so we created from those overlapping experiences this Nobody’s Universe, we call real.

To summarize:

As a “modern human” I automatically divide the experiences into two types.

One world is my subjectivity, my inside World. There, my mental faculties can distinguish different  parts : my perceptions, my feelings, my memories, my beliefs, my consciousness.

The other world is the outside World .

The animals  have mostly outside world- their reality. The higher animals have more memory and emotions, but a simple worm- only outside, real, true, worm- independent World. Of course our worm is deeply wrong- her primitive nervous system tells her : eat, stop, go, eat- what kind of world it is?

Well, as a 2 week old embryo, I was not much smarter, even as a baby, the world was simple and unified : eat, stop, sleep, cry…

Then my mental faculties, around 6 to 8 month of age made the split: inside vs outside.

I believe it is only one world. My universe- real, and perceived  by different mental faculties like pictures in a kaleidoscope-the dreams, the forests, the angels, the angers, Plato and my daughters- then my brain will ( partly unconsciously) sort this out. It will use multiple filters- usability, reliability, probability, categories, personal experience etc.

I believe your Universe is similar, and Sox’s my cat’s and the simple worm’s.

And there is no Nobody’s World.

The consequences of this theory I described in “TER how to act” in my blog.

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Evolutionary Reality, Uncategorized

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My Thoughts on Worldview: 2013

October 15, 2013

People on Beach Doing Tai Chi

What is?

The world around me and me, my body, are made of matter. I experience this real world through the perception produced by my nervous system. When I think about the origins and the mechanisms by which this experience was produced the things become more interesting.

My worldview developed through my infancy,childhood and the adulthood, starting from the moment I was born. Very soon after the birth , the personal experience was augmented by sharing others’ experiences: initially mainly the mother’s, then the family, then many , many others. I think, that this distinction of personal and shared experience is extremely important, even if, except for early infancy, those two are mixed and intertwined. Only mine is real for me, yours is real for you, but yours or anybody else is not real for me. The real universe, my universe is 66 years old and it will die with me, with my body, my mind, my soul, my house, my country and my stars. The same with you and with every life form. Practically I live my life with personal and shared world completely mixed and treat it as more or less real, as  the social animals do. This experience of the reality is produced by our nervous system. To understand this production, this our experience of the universe, we will have to understand the workings of our nervous system. We need to understand how it handles the concept of outside of the body, inside of the body, its dealing with perception data of ourselves and data of others. Also, we need to understand its origins – I am talking about my nervous system- how similar is its structure and function – to yours, to apes, to fish or to bacteria. The instrument I have to do it with…..is the very nervous system , I am trying to understand. And this is boot -strapping par excellence. Unfortunately, the boot-strapping thinking is inherently an illusion of the insight or success- it is like meeting the mafia boss- there is always one above him you have not met…

I think, real  help comes from the analysis of the evolutionary process. Lets , briefly, look at some less obvious elements and consequences of this process  , relevant to the evolving of the nervous system and worldviews in animals and humans.

1. The tricks of the brain.

2. The evolution as a special case of the broader worldview.

3. The evolution is like an onion.

4. The evolution of the nervous system.

5. Integration of the entropy, complexity, time ,space and the kitchen sink. ( sorry, I meant ‘ consciousness )

6.The complexity engines

7. Subjectivity rules

8. The metaphor of the tapestry.

The tricks of the brain.

The other name for them is “counter- intuitive” . The intuition is the advice of your old brain, thousands or millions years old notions, the snakes are bad, the earth is flat, there is no limits of speed, the objective is solid, the subjective is wobbly etc, etc. These days we are bombarded by the surprises from the science, different cultures, life styles, and generations. We should have become immune to the trauma of the magic trick explained! The mixture of excitement, and annoyance and shaking the head.. It is just a matter of time: the roundness of the earth becomes slowly intuitive? When it comes to the worldview .. it is tough, we fight it. Well, my worldview is somewhat counter-intuitive..

The evolution as a special case of the broader worldview.

The evolution has to be seen as a special area of our understanding of the universe. There are no laws of evolution other then the special application of the broader laws of nature. The concept of “broader” is operative here. We discover new and new laws of nature, many of them are broader or inclusive rather than really new. It is like relativity  over newtonian physics, or the yungian concepts over freudian concepts. So, the hierarchy of laws and concepts is almost

all-deciding creator of the worldview. What is on the top, where do I start.

On the other hand : our brain is a master in shifting – the hierarchy , the dimensions- different in the work days and other ones for the weekend, also our brain is the master of keeping completely incompatible and self-contradicting partial worldviews in the same time with surprisingly little headache or nausea.

The evolution is like an onion.

During the “DNA” period of the evolution- circa 4 billions years ago to about 1 million yeas ago- the timing interplay between the changes in the organisms and the changes of its niche were very peculiar. The niche was relatively stable, so the new trait or behavior was “tested” for fitness advantage over many generation in unchanged niche- to stay or die out. That situation favored hugely small changes versus large and adding new function (duplications) versus  replacing functions. So, our body and brain and behavior and mind is build like onions – tiny changes from the archaic bacteria time added and added relentlessly, each coming from a successful animal, a winner, better adapted than the siblings, but very slightly , and only in one tiny area of functioning. Of course the slow changes in niche and the expansions into the new niches allowed for the diversity- there were many temporary winners, some onions were better than others…

 The evolution of the nervous system.

Many before me thought about our brain as an onion, so I think we are ready for the next step. I see complexity of my universe, with the science, philosophy, cultures and worldview being multiplied by complexity of my own mind and experience . I am overwhelmed and lost, and I am not only one. The anthropology and sociobiology attempt to use the laws of evolution to figure out the ways of our ancestors (and ours). We do not know their worldviews but we know that they, as us now, were trying to understand. Their instrument, the nervous system was not much different than ours, just fewer data. I imagine that their goals were much closer to survival than ours (except for academics-they have to publish or perish) but the process was the same. To navigate the world , they used the inherited structures and abilities and they were combining them with personal experiences, building their worldview from birth to death. When I think about more primitive animals, farther removed ancestors, I think about worldsense rather then worldview. All of them had perception systems, memory, the drive to survive and the abhorrence for death, all of them have a wolrdsense, a coherent system of neural circuitry which allows animal to make decisions, to act. Can we look at these simpler organisms and learn from the observations and experiments  about the basic mechanisms of of our nervous systems? We have to assume that there is no mechanisms which would have suddenly replaced their “primitive and animal-like” way of seeing the world into “our modern, advanced, true, human way”. Thus, the survival related perceptional skills/data, for example ”run from the shark” were encoded as the reality and/or law. The failures like” play with the shark” or “smell the shark” or” ignore things with fins” were never played, smelled or ignored again.

The integration

When I think about my worldview, as hard as I try to avoid it, my dimensions shift all the time. I am asking the question  about the objective world, and the answer comes back with the annoying appendage:”it is how I try to understand it” . It means that it is a personal experience trying to be objective. Subjectively I see the world with my nervous system and it works in time and in space. Remember the evolution of the nervous system: the  time and the space were the tools of the animal’s budding nervous system devised to describe behaviors. Time and the space were located within , or inside the dimension of consciousness( for the lowly ancestors we can use the term -”awareness”-if it make us feel superior). The principle of the objectivity tells you just the opposite, it is intuitive, it is what the animals were trained for eons, see the world as true, as objective so you can act and succeed- we live inside time and space, this is what 6 month old baby learns: the permanence of the objects. I guess it is the time to unlearn this like flatness of the earth.

For the longest time people noticed : every two moments differ that one is closer to birth- or ”earlier” the other is closer to the death -”later”. the observations of the closed system, the earlier moments had same or more energy/potential than later! On the other hand in the evolutionary thinking things have the tendency to improve/strengthen with time.

As we try to understand early universe, we see the place with minimal granularity, high energy, and low complexity. As we organize our observations(in the dimension of consciousness)  along the time, the entropy rises: with it the energy dissipates into matter, creates expanding space and increasing complexity.(the matter in our universe occurs in granular, uneven way and it occurs in space)

The Complexity engines

With time increasing and the amount of matter increasing the probability of creating the areas/moments of complexity increases. Then the entropy pushes them mercilessly back to chaos. When we look at these areas of higher complexity we  can discern special mechanism which might prevent loss of complexity. These “chaos busters” or “complexity engines(CE} “ work differently at each stage of universe history. Most primitive CE were just “dense “areas” with a lot of matter in small space ,also uneven distribution of energy helps differentiation of the matter( i.e. makes more likely to be more complex than the other area). The special cases of that process  would be stars and planet with “energy supplier’ and “energy receiver”. If some of energy receivers are also the “time receivers”, then probability , together with the relative niche stability, fosters complexity. The subatomic and inter atomic and intermolecular bonding forces are typical  CE’s. Then come all the stuff of the primordial soup: the sun, the lightnings, the tricarboxylic acid circle, the nucleotides zipping and unzipping, the bubbles of pre-membranes etc., etc.  Some of these complexity engines seem almost magical, pulling the rabbit out of the probability hat- like the planet with the right distance from the sun, right size, crust, density,  and more.. others are “no big deal” like electron, proton attraction, but I guess this is our perception only,  and everything what happened had probability of 1. It is just how we try to understand it…

Subjectivity rules

As I am approaching the question about my vision of the universe the strange feeling overwhelms me. Its tenderness and warmth and awe directed towards us humans and our ancestors. This the paradox: the more magnificent and heroic are human attempts to understand the universe, the more the answers make him small, irrelevant and peripheral! The size and the ambition of his ideas make him divine, but the results of these investigations turn him to dust. What I see is a real world. But I know that it is made of the ancient descriptions of ancient behaviors of bacteria and fish and cave man all piled up and adorned with bells and whistles of our culture. My mind immediately responds:  so, where is the real world our ancestors were reacting to , with these behaviors? There is none. Remember: it is subjectivity, trying to be objective. This illusory “real world” for which we have no senses , no instrument to investigate, never needed one, never asked for one, has all attributes of god. We live inside him, his children, he knows all, has all mercy and the omnipotence.

Remember a strange feeling of being followed? you have three options: first, like most of us: you are not sure, (evolutionary!)- “probably nothing”, but from time to time you suddenly jerk your head- “nobody”-you shake your head and go do laundry. The life goes on.  Clinically this is the chronic anxiety. Spiritually , there are most of the believers. Second option is for the wise and strong guys: “a trick of the brain” ,”pretty common” they say, and they never flinch. Clinically this is the sanity, spiritually- atheism. The third option- make the predator real, his voice, his menace- clinically this is the psychosis, spiritually- fundamentalism.
The metaphor of the tapestry.

In summary: do not be mad, be glad about the tricks of your brain. Enjoy and celebrate paradoxes. Understand that the only worldview is subjective, but act as it would be objective reality. So do not expect dragons, stories, gods and aliens to be really real, but pray and love hard.

My image of the universe is five-dimensional. Our brain works intuitively with images and the metaphors containing geometry and the tridimensional space concepts ( the world in the grain of sand,  the turtle over the turtle, multiverses or string theory) .We are much more awkward and slow (filo- and ontogenetically) with time and consciousness- the other two dimensions.

My image of the universe includes an observer, or the bunch of them , or… all of them, living in or looking at the sort of canvas or a tapestry. On the top it looks like our world, underneath you can see that it is made of mathematical equations or an other form of the information. Accordingly, remembering what is underneath,  the appearance on the top changes with the observer’s intention, capacity or wisdom. The changes involve shifting of dimensions. For us humans (the homo historicus), the universe , as our life, is organized along the dimension of time. As we are using our ancestors’ ancestors brains , we can observe the parade of dimensions as we go from birth to death, from the birth of nervous system in bacteria to  the consciously evolved post-human specia, and from the early universe to the end of it. Close to the observer the image is sharp, all dimensions at his disposal work great. The bacteria knows almost only the distance- one dimension only- the sober human – all five. The further away you look the picture will be dimmer- unevenly though- some animals and humans have some special ability- the bat into the land of ultrasounds and astrophysicists in radio-waves, and the pediatrician can empathize with the newborn. But nobody should be worried about  the edges . They are too far, not real,  but foremost not true.

Unlike the guy in 14th century picture sticking head through the canopy of stars, we worry about only two edges of the “tapestry”- early universe and THE END…

The further from the observer and closer to the edge the situation on the top become similar to the underneath. At the beginning the endless energy, without any complexity, make the concepts of time and space mute and our limits can be seen both by mathematics and physics. At the other extreme we can dream of maximal complexity created by each of us being able to be conscious of all the universe and being able to share it with the rest. There would be no need for energy with nothing more to do, nowhere to hurry.

What ought to be?

My axiology- the theory of values and the praxeology -”how to act”- are pretty simple, obvious and uncontroversial.

The intelligence- figuring things out- personally and evolutionary is the job number one.

Everything else, other values,  follow logically- the wisdom, the cooperation, the empathy and the beauty.

It doesn’t take rocket scientist to see that we are alone on our heroic and beautiful earth. Yes, we are in the center of the universe , and there is the trend. Going with the trend sooner or later will make me satisfied – in peace, happy or fulfilled- going against the trend , probably not so.

No chance for help from gods or aliens, no excuse that “we are insignificant speckle”, no hope in previous or future lives.

You have free will, you live on the top of the “canvas,”( see part I) and it is all what counts.

The information underneath (in my leviathanish metaphor for the Universe, the underbelly was made of the mathematical equations )do not mean” everything has already happened”, this would be the determinism , which occurs in time- an excuse for the lazy or fearful. The information or equations “underneath” is a metaphor and, again, metaphorically means “ everything is happening now”.

Therefore we are witnesses, actors and the originators of this exciting, magnificent complexity march. With the social and environmental doom looming,  we need to get together our wits and possibly squeeze away rapidly through the perils of probability, as it happened before and will happen again. Remember these few rag-clad bands of hominids escaping the drying and overheating Africa?

Epistemology

Again, if you swallowed my schizoid  “what is” , you’d sail happily trough subjective knowledge, trying to be and acting -justly- as if it was objective. In my thinking I find useful the division of the worldview’s content into – personal experience and shared experience. The personal experience is- structured consistently and identically since early life forms around the description of behavior beneficial for survival, with the perception, memory, interpretation and the behavior itself getting more complex with the evolutionary progress. The social animals developed incredible evolutionary tool, multiplying adaptability and diversity by the ability of the exchange of information between other mostly same species animals. The worldsense of the social animal consists of it’s personal experience -( the data inherited from all the tiny evolutionary steps of the ancestors and the  personal development since birth) augmented by data shared with other animals’ sharable part of it’s worldsense/worldview.

. All these sources are jumbled together, as all work the best as “objective truth”  rather then positioned as a constellation of more or less probable hypotheses.  I mean until recently, until human found beneficial for the survival to find the truth. Like with many other areas of the human quest, to understand his folly, we need to go back and unscramble these sources of knowledge..Evo-devo ,child development research and primatology help with that.

Spirituality

In the beginning was the word. “I love you” said between my Mom and Dad. Sounds cheezy but in my daily meditation I think about the gratitude toward them. And towards other people who gave me so much. When I am worried about my kids or other loved ones I pray to God. Which? Some kind of mixture of Catholic upbringing with recent involvement with Buddhism. The Heart God, my Guardian Angel. Sometimes it is (when things are not so serious) Medicine Buddha all Lapis Lazuli Blue with the strange oriental face. I believe this is next for humanity- befriend the stranger, go beyond  relationship with family, nation, religion, race, beyond fear or charity – with the stranger you share only consciousness, nothing else.  There is no small chat about the soccer or the weather, just he or she is as you are, and what shall we say to each other?

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Humanism, nature of reality

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Evolutionary Algorithm

April 25, 2013

I have been talking to Peter Brown about Beinhocker book “The Origins of Wealth” . They say “variation, amplification, selection”.

Amplification is first and only premise, variation and and selection are computer settings, in vivo they are the results of the evolution.

    Amplification means that you get more and more of the same thing.

“The same thing” concept clarification is absolutely crucial.

19th century England was all about “species” and “organisms”, and 20th century computer models followed.

The TEO (Toward Evolutionary Objectivity – this is my theory, you can read about it elsewhere ) drops this, it sounds slightly Buddhist, but the substrate of the evolution is a cluster of attributes which “amplify” together.

Additionally, and this is not Buddhist any more, this cluster or aggregate, or system is not “out there”, is not part of the “nature”. In our evolutionary process of understanding the world, our ancestors ( animals ) created these clusters In their perception brains, according to usefulness- so now we ( humans) named them- for example- “fish” or “finger” or “weather” or “anger”.

In TEO they are called behaviors. The behavior can have elaborate description, like what was the princesses’ dress made of and who was the taylor, or simple description, like “bacterium swims towards the sugar gradient”. Every behavior consists of its components- the simpler behaviors- down to the subatomic spin.

Now: Any cluster of behaviors which amplify /multiply, makes more of the same thing- is the subject of the evolution. It veel evolve!

In our universe ( our understanding)  the amplification means “in time”.

“In time” means, increase entropy, means it follows II law of thermodynamics.

Would the system be perfect it would amplify endlessly.

But not in our Universe. We are granular, energy-uneven .

Most simply- the cluster will cease to amplify together- fine- it dies- it breaks down- entropy is up with time, complexity’s down- more chaos.

But, against all odds- other systems will continue- then- not being perfect- one of the components will occur in two  versions. The one which amplifies better- will slow down the energy gradient- will be smarter, more complex- soon the other one is bye bye gone.

Of course, the greatest invention of the evolution is the system which keeps amplifying -nearly perfect- the nuclear acids’ code- leading to the organism.

So, the algorithm is simpler than I thought, just keep amplifying.

The variation and the selection are the results , are inevitable, not a part of the evolutionary algorithm, but needed to be programmed for the computer model to tick…

The amplification, to be evolutionary relevant, has to have a substrate which is able to continue the process of multiplication. The examples are : simple carbonic acid cycle, the crystals in the oversaturated solution. Girls Preparatory School.The substrate contains the information to continue the production of the more of the substrate.

But this is not enough.

The substrate has to contain the information how to make a new factory of the substrate. Or at least a part of it. Examples ? simple strain of the nucleic acids. Mating rituals in animals. Storytelling behavior in humans. Parenting.

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Evolutionary Reality, The Worldview Internet Game

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Veritas Institute, Worldview Internet Game

April 4, 2013

Dear Board Member,

 

I wanted my friends and family to play my Veritas Worldview Game, but nobody seemed to want to, until cajoled mercilessly.

To play one needs to answer 14 questions, by doing so creating your personal worldview.

The questions you are answering to build your worldview are somewhat philosophical and by that they are surprisingly “safe”.

It is not easy to openly mess with received opinions and conventional wisdom of the people around you, your family and friends, colleagues, neighbors, etc. Do not anger gods, bosses and social opinion.

But when you deal more abstractly in terms of your world view, expressed in your own words, you somehow get around these constraints.

You exercise your thinking and creativity, while keeping safe your spiritual values and social position.

 

The intellectual inquiry into your philosophical worldview, while not so easy , in the same time is so natural and safe and accepted. It is almost like figuring out what this shape of a cloud reminds you of.

You can argue and argue but your “elephant” is still the best for you…. And in two minutes it may be “a bear”.

The answering these questions turned out to be much less fun than I expected , and many people did not want other people to know what they think…

 

So I thought that they need to be on the advisory board , so they couldn’t refuse…

But advisory board of what? A LLC? , may be a corporation or a “center’ for something? Eureka!

Veritas Institute.

It started as as joke, but after more talking and thinking it  became an idea on its own.

The idea that everybody deserves to experience his/her individuality as an essential part of freedom. This way “my own worldview” should be a way to inquire about your own truth – opinions, emotions, your own self.

 

So, “long live”, for the Institute, there is so many forces which can be focused and cooperating there. The people for “critical thinking”,”worldview” philosophers, like Vidal , Heylighen and others,  the Bowen Center from DC, the Evolutionaries from California, the world peacemakers, the mindfulness promoting people, all kind of thinkers and dreamers etc, etc…

You are invited to be the board member.

Responsibility? Plan to attend the Board Party once a year, breathe deeply, do the good work, stop when you’re done.

 

Please create your explicit worldview by answering the questions below.

Answer should be between 20 to 200 characters long .

There is the spreadsheet with the existing answers on my Google Drive, if you are ready to add your answers, please let me know. I will share with you this spreadsheet and you will be able to browse and write your stuff in.

Very soon the game goes live on internet, and anybody will be able to play.

Veritas Institute

Tomasz and Sophia Voychehovski- co-founders and co-directors

Financial adviser – David Levis

The Board:

Linda Voychehovski literary adviser

Lucas Prater- art adviser

Peter Brown- customer’s psychology adviser

Dosia Boron- European philosophy specialist

Richard Barrali – mindfulness and sales

Jan Sabbo – friendships and surgery

Leslie Bloom – feminism and multicultural adviser

Zibin Guo- Eastern anthropology

Luke Lea and Pat Lea- American Culture and Landscape

Andrew Warner- physical wellbeing

Tom Cable- medical wellbeing

Craig Kronenberg- architecture

James Friedli – real estate

Ron Whitmire- marketing and business adviser

Jann Sullivan – Center for Mindful Living liaison

William Dwyer – Bowen Center liaison.

Witold Kapuscinski- vision adviser

Tommy Boron- youth liaison (East)

Robert Kronenberg – youth liaison (West)

 

Veritas Institute Spiritual Council

Piotrus Wojciechowski- film and Christianity (east), also liaison with the Podhale Wisdom Academy

Gregg Sullivan- legal and Christianity(west)

Kaukab Naseer- Islam adviser

Jonathan Cohen- Judaic adviser

tom kunesh- atheism and shamanism

Lenny Rubin- yogic adviser

Kittisaro and Thanissara –  Buddhist advisers

 

New , proposed, order of questions:

 

I. How do you find happiness?

II. Is there a free will? Can you make a difference?

III. What is the meaning of life?

IV. How do you find truth?

V. What is an origin of good, beauty and truth?

VI. What is an origin of evil?

VII. What is the role of the evolution?

VIII. How did the Universe begin?

IX. What is going to happen to humankind?

X. What will happen after you die?

XI. What about Extraterrestial Intelligence?

XII. What is the nature of the mind?

XIII. What is the Universe made of?

XIV. What question is missing?

12.27.13

I underestimated the difficulty of the creating and writing down a condensed (so others can compare) , but the personal, meaningful, interesting worldview.

Only few could do it.

Now I know that you need to study the psychology and the techniques of how to create a worldview and then you need to attempt to teach the “creating your worldview 101”.

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Towards Evolutionary Reality- How to act.

January 31, 2013

Towards Evolutionary Reality (TER)- How to act.

The Summary.

1. We are the center of the Universe. We are all important and all-responsible for it.

2. We are interdependent and interrelated. The relationships: friendships and love are our only chance to survive.

3. It is up to us, to create happy and meaningful life.

4. We live inside our evolutionary system. The story is all that is. Our meaning and fun is to listen and understand it.

5.Practice mindfulness

6. Be tolerant to other worldviews

It should be so simple. But the brain tricks us all the time. Piotrus, my brother, after letting me talk for an hour about the evolution and perception and the fish, asked me

So, what? or “ translate your TEO principles into a blueprint for living or the meaning of life”.

Everybody knows what is the right thing to do, to feel, to think, to say.

But how?

How to stop eating and share, when eating feels so good?

How to send money to Africa , when you need new i-phone?

And how to smile to your wife, when she blames you unfairly?

 

Can evolutionary reality help?

Sure! easily…

 

1. We are the center of the Universe. Mankind is the most complex system ever created by the thermodynamics and the evolution, a showcase, the best of the best. No excuse for sceptics, we are not “an insignificant speck in the one backward , one of a trillions galaxies”. We are the most important , only chance, for all the people we care for… and for ourselves.

And yes, as I said, “the only chance”- because we are alone (every evolutionary system is). No help (or an apocalyptic excuse!) from demons, gods, dragons, ghosts or werewolves.

No mysteries, magical origins or elusives justifying uncertainties about us. We are well built by the evolution mechanism, and we are trying to get to know ourselves/Universe as much as we can. And we will know more and more of incredibly fantastic and horrible things about us.

2. The friendship and the love.

I said we are alone, but actually we are not. Also, the presence, existence and messing with us by the above mentioned demons, gods, etc would not affect our solitude.

So, we are alone as an evolutionary system, but within this system we are interdependent.

I am not sure whether there is a consensus regarding the origins and mechanism, but have this thing called empathy and altruism.

It seems something happened during early hominids period 5 to 2 million years ago. Some weird feedback loop: the complexity of breeding (seen already in bonobos in the crude form) increased intelligence. This increased intensity of childhood learning which was making social system even more complex. Our mirror neurons went bezerk: for one it pushed us into hypersocial dance, on the top of that they got mixed with consciousness related neural pathways and puff! we can see a little bit of ourselves in the bird with broken wing.

That is great news that we have other beings to be with. To me this is the greatest achievement of modernity ( and postmodernity?) : the beauty, the variety and the diversity of the relationships modern humans can create.

Jane Goodall, sure, but not only, take such a diverse elements as symphonies, gay marriage, FaceBook, DNA mapping, Big Mind Meditation, Little Mermaid- it is all about relationships!

And loving our pets, and Izrael problem, and “I the Vortex”, etc etc…

And I am not saying it is easy, but it is crucial: friendships and loves and co-workers and artists..We are one big, big family, really.

Going bravely across the kinship and society and nations and religions.

Going across cultures is almost like going across the times and perception systems. We have and we need more relationship with the whole future generation!

We need to realize how strong is our relationship with our parents teachers and the ancestors.

As we reach further and further in our capacity to relate and care, across physical and emotional dimensions, including time- the evolution teaches us about our origins. The evolution connect us to the animals in much harder way than” I missed my pretty kitty”. We see the world in the same way, or, in other words, the world is as animals see it. It is possible to develop the mirror neurons, compassion and reflective thinking ( the consciousness). But you can’t develop the dualism, can’t develop the double reality, Plato’s cave can’t be real. Why? Because , while you can upgrade the wiring of the brain, you can not mess with what’s already in  there. You can change an acuity of perception,

and the interpretation but the evolution can not change what is perceived (ontologically).

Like medieval dungeon and the modern correctional facility. They are both prisons, serving the same function. Or the shaman and the surgeon with computer guided laser- still doing the same thing.  And the same argument goes through the comparison of every tiny level of the evolutionary change- from seeing just purple to seeing purple and magenta. Still the same sunset. The only way for survival is to be able to repeat that improved action ( like better recognition of the ripe fruit- for the animal, millions years ago it felt like “more good eat”- for the researcher- it would manifest like “more retinal discrimination”)

The animal’ brain is full of behaviors. Learned and inherited behaviors, the behaviors of the animal itself and its ancestors and the ancestors’ ancestors. Evolutionary , nothing else is worth knowing, and if it is not worth -the animal doesn’t know it. We do not know it either.

So, what?

Well, we need to work on the behaviors, i.e. on relationships.

 

The Behavior – compassion and gratitude. one directed towards the future, other towards the past. Both types related and attached to the person. Me and you.

3. You are all important.

Other problem with the modernism is that the modern culture shows us as an insignificant one- of the 7 billions. The God says : you are my child, you are special, but we do not hear it. Whatever are the moral rules , I am so small, I am below the radar, I can do anything because actually I can not do anything which matters ( except for serial killing , which is not for everybody).

Not so according to TER. Not only we are the center of the Universe , but the only world there is ( is real for you) is your world. And for me is mine.

We share many elements so it looks( and it works like) like it is our world , but it is just practical simplification and a shortcut. You bring it to the existence by looking, perceiving, there is nothing behind you, you are all important to do good.

From the birth to death you create your world , you learn and you live it and you die -accordingly. So, there is nothing more important to know what you doing and why.

You, as an individual, not a part of a mob. You are responsible and you have to train your reflective and critical thinking to know inside and outside of you.

It is why the development of the personal and unique explicit worldview is so important.

 

4.TEO dispense with spirituality.

The spirituality is this wishy- washy term, the back door exit , “ we are too evolved to believe in the angels and devils, but the Universe is permeated with the divine , the oneness, the suchness…”

The mind is made by the evolution, and the details are coming in as we speak.

We are developing the language shared by evolutionary neuroscience and evolutionary philosophy.

The sooner we demystify mind’s elements and the building process (after saying bye to ego, soul, shadow and the likes) the sooner we stop barking at the wrong tree!

Our moral enemy is social materialism, not the atheism.

And the fundamentalists feel so holy, that the materialism is justified.

It looks to me that the church and synagogue and mosque going folks are the greediest, the most cruel and lazy bunch (the quintessence of materialism). Many of them are violent , intolerant , xenophobic, bigotic and self assured buffoons.

And the last but not the least:

No.5. The practice.

The task to understand , to deepen the wisdom takes work and mindfulness practice. We need to work with artists and musicians and philosophers and scientists and listen to the simple folks and to the ancient cultures.

We need to listen to the animals and to the forests. We need to walk the mountains and swim in oceans.

When we meditate we listen to ourselves, to our bodies and our memories from far, far away. Listen to the story, the story between me and you.

As I said , according to TER the only real world is your world. It makes subjective experience all important, it invites you to learn about yourself, be individual.

There is no “we” as opposed to “them”. Leave we to royal pluralis majestatis.

I have known a man-a buffoon- who loves to use “we”- it is not the pretty sight.

The beauty of learning about yourself is opening for the real relation with “you”.

Getting to know “me” through the meditative practice, beyond autobiography, beyond the judgment and the projects opens possibility to know in the same way- you.

And you and you and you. One by one. Beyond the time, to know past you’s and the present and future ones. To know your lover, your mom and dad, your child, the teacher, maybe God or Buddha.

This is the crux of the matter. This is our chance, for us humans to cooperate, be friends, love and maybe survive.

12.713.

6. All human actions and theories are just attempts to understand and we value them if they bring good to the humanity. The science will select itself from non science by more understanding and research.

We dismiss “turtles, all the way down” because it is blind alley concept. We question Big Bang theory because it doesn’t say” what was before”. If god (this or that) is unexplained – by definition- we say it is unscientific- again the argument of the blind alley.

Teo  tells us that the deepest structure/material the Universe is made of is our understanding.  My understanding built from the infancy and through eons of the evolution ,shows the Universe like… well, the normal, beautiful world. And I am trying to understand that it is also the content of the mind of each of us, shared to the degree. It consists of the units of behaviors evolutionary beneficial, inherited or preserved otherwise.

This means that “blind alley concept”  extends to all laws and all thinking.

Is it a relativism “all the way down?”

Yes and no.

We need to be humble ( yes) and practical :it is better to built on the rock than on the sand, even if we know that there is lava underneath both of them(no).

We need to try to understand how we understand the World rather than try to understand how the World really is, because it’s how it really is.

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Towards Evolutionary Reality II

November 27, 2012

Towards Evolutionary Reality II

The essay’s title “evolutionary objectivity” reflects my opinions about the nature of reality, or the answer to the primordial question- “what is”.
The basic premises of my concepts are contained within that term. I am actually amazed how few of these premises I need! No controversial new research results, no multiverses, no turtles…

The core of this theory are consequences of the theory of evolution. If the mechanisms of evolution are correct they couldn’t start and stop out of blue. They can’t apply only to some artificially carved out parts of mater.
These mechanisms are essential in all the universe, from the beginning to the end.
The understanding of the evolution is expanded in time and in space.

To explain better the above idea I need to introduce the second, much more difficult part of the theory’s name and theory’s premises.

The term “reality” is used to put me firmly in the scientist’s camp. I promise, it is where I belong. If you’ve detected my unusual  emphasis on this belonging, you are right.
I have been accused of opinions like “ it’s all in our heads” or “it’s all an illusion” or “a story, it’s all that is”.
But everything is interdependent, therefore all mechanisms and laws are really interdependent and therefore the things and stories are really non-dual. Well, ultimately non-dual. It means that you can be spiritual, until you are blue on your face, provided you agree that your “spirit” ( or whoever) is made the same way as the rock.
This declaration of interdependence is not some new age-y emotional pitch. There is no subjective rules and objective rules, the laws which created me, also created my worldview, and the same happened to you.

So ,when discussing the mechanisms of the evolution I have a choice of two beginning points of the story.

The first starts as the subjective experience and develops into objectivity. The second starts as the objective understanding of the world and within this understanding the subjective origins are revealed.

This is the same story, same reality, and its unity will be obvious latter.
Every story is told  by a person and this is my story.
In this version it begins with my conception. Physically and biologically , an exact moment is fuzzy, but philosophically it is crystal clear. I will carry this analogy or metaphor into the other version of the story, this “more objective” (pardon for this oxymoron), version. As I was growing as an embryo, the nature of my experience was changing rapidly. I traveled in my ontogeny along the 4 billion years old path of phylogeny. So even as this experience in the womb was always mine, ie subjective, the “scientific” description of this subjectivity would use different language.
The embryo’s self is limited to the intent built -in in the primitive neural tissue, there is no other elements of subjective experience like emotional identity or consciousness (whatever it is).
With the development of brain and sensory system the uniquely mine experiences began even if the majority of wiring was not unique. How did my body knew how to grow. It was in my genes and in my environment.
Let’s look very closely at the sources of this body of information which tells me (as an embryo )
what to grow and when. My past can be viewed as a line of ancestors. Their experiences (viewed by an observer as the behaviors) were validated by evolutionary mechanisms. Over the billions of years the winners were encoded, the “losers”  were eliminated.
Note that, “longer neck” or “larger memory” can not be the winner, or loser. Evolution doesn’t care how you look or what you think, you live or you die , that’s all… It’s subjective- experience, objective- behavior, which counts. If you can repeat it- you win, survive, multiply , yoopee!, if you can’t- you are not a subject of this story, you died out. To repeat it,  you need to remember, to remember across the generations you need to put it in the coding system (ie genes + stable environment- the genes would not reproduce same beneficial effect in the new niche). You need to be able to repeat “the suite” of beneficial behaviors. It include homeostasis, feeding, defending, breeding, all.
Note also that the evolution doesn’t care about separate organisms. The winner behavior can be related to the better enzyme in the liver (a body organ), better hunting axe ( a tribe), or abolishment of the nuclear weapons (a civilization).
The metaphor which comes to the mind: You read a text, then suddenly you notice that the words can be read not only horizontally but like in the word puzzle- also vertically, diagonally and backward.
Then , they also can be read out of the puzzle magazine’s page, into the page of your novel!
So, I guess, the information  encoded is purely relational?
And that’s it, you’re set, you do not need to know anything more, to be this or that, it is all included. The content  of this coding, it is animal’s worldsense. It is its implicit universe. It doesn’t play like a film in fish brain, fish is just doing it.
So was I, as an embryo, doing it. Then I was born and kept doing it.
Being a very complex animal, though, within this performing “my suite’ of beneficial behaviors, two discernments have to be added.
First, some of my behaviors become conscious. When it happened to me , I called this things “experiences”.
I felt what I was doing, I saw what I was doing, I started to understand what I was doing. Like in my brain, there was played kind of film of my doing it, the film played for me…The parts of my implicit animal worldsense become explicit. I could put these behaviors in language, think about them, dream, discuss, even write it down. And for a very good reason.
Explicit form of  behavior descriptions in our minds , shares better.
And sharing experiences is for the evolution like for the military , the nuclear weapons. Who needs trenches anymore??
Sharing makes (in terms of the evolutionary effort ) complexity cheap, fast, extremely effective, and with limitless future. It makes society out of the number of individuals.
So, secondly, since early infancy I indulged in sharing experiences. There is no benefit to keep them separate in the brain. I was exploring and learning with my experiences all mingled and mixed.
With all this formidable new tools at my disposal I was trying to figure things out.
And it is what I still do. My explorations extend in time towards the Big Bang, towards the Future of mankind, into space na into deep reflexion into myself. I (with your help) created my worldview.
And this is  the same story but told with the different beginning point.
That story merges mathematic and physics and the evolution.
These mechanisms have to be extremely potent and basic to be so pervasive.
And I believe they are.
Probability can be understood in time as a spectrum from existence to non-existence.
Existence can be understood in time as a spectrum from all energy to no energy.(minimal entropy to maximal entropy)
Energy can be understood in time as a spectrum from simple matter to complex matter.
Complexity can be understood in time as spectrum from perfectly simple maximum heat energy to minimum heat with perfect understanding.
Perfect understanding can be seen as the spectrum of the meaning of life and it starts at birth and ends with death.

Of course “understanding” is our modern metaphor for the ancient processes which we also know under other names ( survival fitness, life force etc) . In the Universe before the life the mater was getting more and more complex as if “ trying” to produce life. Then, as soon as the primitive life started, it was as this young life forms would embrace  the rule :”status quo will not do, try to be better or die”. The life from the  beginning ( and even before that!) was about the action, the intent, trying to be better.
Most of matter followed the rules of entropy, but the probability allowed the matter to be uneven.
So with time( or in other words, from the language of probability games, with  increasing numbers of trying) the parts of matter with energy supply kept organise itself, get more and more complex at the expense of others following the omnipotent entropy. Looking back on evolutionary successful animals , one can trace the mechanism working for them and for their niches, like a “complexity engines” similar to anthropic principle theory. The attempts to calculate the “odds” is flawed. One can always  say that Universe had “just enough” time or energy or space to make mathematical calculations correct.
Back to the second version of my story. This is how a 68 year old pediatrician and an armchair philosopher is trying to understand the nature of the Universe.
It started with the probability of existence. No time, no space no matter, no energy yet. Not even mathematics, just philosophy. The stories about the universes which did not happened are rather boring… But, luckily ( in the full sense of this word) mine universe happened. And all the laws of the universe had to click together, the happening had to extend from the beginning to now, smoothly, logically, and without interruptions. All the observations, all laws had to neatly fit to each other, everything had to had happened once, that were the odds. ( here you are – the anthropic principle) .My understanding of the universe is build up on the understandings of my peers and my ancestors, past the baboon, past the fish, down to the original intent to be better. Or more evolved, or more complex, more existing? probable?

One day I will correct, work on the above, now  new/ old thing about hierarchies.
I imagine that any function of the brain involve activation of the many pathways.
evolution (phylogeny) and maturation (ontogeny) should include  increase in adaptability.
This means more complex function, recruiting more pathways. But the cheapest way of this  would be the flexibility of the pathway hierarchy.
If the animal depending on the perception ( situation) had capacity make brainstem “in charge”, “submission” memory second and “vigilance for danger” third , then it could be able, in need, reverse the hierarchy . This would add immense complexity( advantage in survival) without any re-wiring or adding new pathways or synapses.
As this is a fantastic trick I think it was utilised over and over.
The more sophisticated the function is, the ability to shift hierarchies would be more beneficial and varied.
Also I am not a mathematician but my worldview mysteriously highjacks my vague notions of equations and the “hierarchy” feels on the right track..
In the primordial soup the chances to start life rellied on the condition in the area. “the behavior of the ocean “ etc. As soon as life started, first thing was done( and I know one can talk for hours about this “was done”, like – who, purpose or plan etc, forget this ) the “responsibility “ was divided or rather chances multiplied by creating the behavior and “survival” of the individual organism. This could lead to the old story about the behavior being the subject of the evolutionary challenge, not as customary is seen – an organism or species or civilisation( the last one actually smacks of the flavor of “behavior”)
But the hierarchy in the neural pathways is interesting when we look at the communication between the organisms.
In the primitive organisms the hierarchy is simple- warning call about a predator, works like  the sight of the predator. Then, an aggressive posture of the alfa male chimp gives quiet a spectrum of the possible response ( I suspect the flexibility in the hierarchies of the neural pathway of the response)
And then consider the brain activity when you see beautiful woman….
Our brain works by continuously creating stories. Some are long , some are short, most involve a huge number of brain systems. Some involve consciousness , some avoid it.
Actually, i think , that most them are not stories but cases – like in the court.
In the classical story the time and the place and the actor’s characteristics are veiled and removed: “far, far away, long time ago, there was a hero” In our brain it is who and what and when and where. And even more importantly: why (emotional and moral) and “what to do NOW “
These cases are the best example of the shifting hierarchies.
Depending of the brain, the attitudes, emotions, culprits and outcomes can change in seconds 180*
This is , as you would expect, the characteristic of the human brain, the ability or even propensity to rapidly shift hierarchies of our neural pathways. I say “as you’d expect” because we are product of the very special phase of the evolution. Incredible rapid changes of environment, material, social and interpersonal environment, the evolution marching from animal body to brain to mind to consciousness. The language environment, the place where most of the recent evolution occur, naturally reflects this characteristic.
We use: different approach
other aspect
in other words
the other side of the coin
alternatively
from the other point of view
on the other hand
You can think of other expressions addressing the shift in the hierarchy of the neural pathway. t

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