For the past 6 months I have been bull-dozing, rail-roading people into conversations about my personal philosophy. This reached a head when important people in my life strongly encouraged me to find an outlet for it.
So here we are. I don’t really want to publish anything about these thoughts until I feel they are complete and sound, but I think my relationship may in fact depend on me not being so selfish in conversation. I legit don’t know what’s gotten into me or why I’m so excited about these ideas. I swear I’m normally a good conversation partner. Well, except for when I’m talking about this.
Which is always.
One disclaimer about language: I don’t mind when people make up words, I think it’s fun. A friend of mine HATES when people make up words. They see it as a scummy attempt to gain personal notoriety on the back of a field of study. I’m not inclined to disagree. However, I am also a programmer, and we live and die by our variables (fuck off functional programming no one likes you). Variables allow flexibility in what is otherwise a very rigid logical order. I can define a function DrawACat that draws a cat, so that I don’t have to reiterate the code each time I want to draw a cat. In the same way, there are ideas that I will return to again and again in this framework, and rather than restate them in their entirety, I’m going to give them cool names.
But what about clarity and making sure layman understand you? Why don’t you use the terms that other people have called them in the past?
Ok friend, sounds like you just volunteered for some research! Have fun plugging abstract ideas into google and trying to figure out if they have an agreed upon name. Let me know when you’re done:)
In all seriousness, I want to communicate as clearly as possible and participate in a larger discussion, so if there’s something I should read let me know. I do a lot of research but the scope of human knowledge is now so large that you can only get so far alone.
ENGINEERING OUR SOCIAL VEHICLES
A PRIMER ON RADICAL GENUITY AND ANTIPARASITISM
Where to start? There are few core tenants of this framework:
Entropy/uncertainty/disorder/fear increases to a maximum.
Entropy disrupts the order and meaning of information.
If information loses coherence it dies.
The surest way of maintaining coherence against entropy is reproduction.
Any piece of information that is reproduced is alive.
There exist multiple informational mediums capable of supporting life. Not all are physically measurable. (The mere existence of ordered information in a space indicates the presence of life).
The existence of life necessitates the existence of competition, and therefore; selection.
All living things are subject to selection.
Solidarity seems to be an optimal adaptation (Information that exhibits cooperation improves its chances of reproduction).
The only branch of this massively expanded tree of life that this framework cares about is the one that has evolved through solidarity.
There exists a “Solidarity Ladder” by which this branch has bloomed: atoms in solidarity form molecules, molecules in solidarity form proteins, proteins in solidarity form organelles, organelles in solidarity form cells, cells in solidarity form tissue, tissue in solidarity forms organs, organs in solidarity form a body, a person. People in solidarity form groups which lead to towns and cities and nations and continents.
Solidarity can also be expressed as the likelihood that any member of a group exhibits the same behaviors as its peers. I.e. Solidarity is the measure of certainty of expression regardless of individual.
Solidarity and Entropy both measure the certainty that a piece of information picked from a group will be identical to the rest, or that a given subsequence of information is coherent and identical to the original template. They are inverse measures. Sort of like yin and yang.
Let’s break here for a second to run an experiment: voting. If you operate in solidarity as a group, you can expect an identical vote from each member of the group. The more members of the group that end up voting with the group as opposed to against it, the higher the solidarity, the lower the entropy. If you take a group of strangers, it’s next to impossible to predict the results: things are uncertain. If you take a church, perhaps, things start to seem a lot more certain. At least if the supreme court is any indication. Seriously, talk about solidarity, the left is getting its ass beat.
Ok back to it.
When we act out of fear, we act out of uncertainty. (I’m not hungry now but I’m not sure the pizza will still be there if I leave it.)
When we act out of enthusiasm, we act out of certainty. (I FUCKING LOVE PIZZA I WILL EAT IT ALL).
The characteristics and behavior of living things are emergent properties of the individual characteristics and behaviors of the rung below them on the Solidarity Ladder. Said conversely: Individual action in aggregate populates up to affect the next higher level. Genetic disorder is the prime example of this. None of your individual cells are dying because they can’t make insulin, holistically, they are all dying.
Solidarity is NOT strictly intraspecies. No selection occurs out of context. Rather than one species evolving over time, we should think of multiple species converging to a “Vanishing Point”. Think about chloroplasts and mitochondria- they are thought to have originated from outside the cell but now reproduce totally within it. [I’m not making a statement as to whether or not they are functionally the same organism, just saying if you zoom out far enough it doesn’t matter.]
A group’s Vanishing Point is the next step on the Solidarity Ladder. Chloroplast's vanishing point with the protocell was a Plant Cell. All it took was one successful individual and bam!
The essential effect of this is that living things wash up into living chimeric rafts of biology, culture, and technology. “The Singularity” is pretty on the nose here.
Aside - The Dipole
Ok, so one thing I want to emphasize here is that there are only two ways this can go: more organized or lesasdfag;dfslgdfivmszdf;zeordfigmertdbh! I’m serious though, that’s why I’m calling it “THE DIPOLE” and waiting for someone to tell me what a dumb name it is and suggest a better one. So the only two poles we care about measuring things are…. (maybe you can guess)
*Trumpets, fanfare*
Certainty and uncertainty. Fear and enthusiasm. Order and Chaos. Orderliness and disorderliness. Yin and yang. Is, and is not.
Individuals within a group can either influence the group towards a state of higher or lower entropy.
A state of lower entropy (higher solidarity) represents a step towards the group’s vanishing point.
A state of higher entropy (lower solidarity) represents a step towards dissolution of the group.
That’s it. That’s all there is. One line you can push up or down on. Think of it as progress on a goal. Sure, you can set an infinite amount of goals, but in reality there will only ever be a handful that you’re within reach of.
19. Groups can have multiple vanishing points with conflicting requirements.
20. We experience solidarity as directional when it is not. It is polar. Groups either move towards a goal, or away from it. Form, or dissolve
21. As a result, selection is zero-sum, movement towards one vanishing point is movement away from another. Anyone who isn’t with you is against you.
Think about it like cancer. If a group of cells suddenly decides to go off on its own, it can kill the entire organism. Cancer is the perfect example because if you set the zoom right, a tumor is winning. It’s a local maximum. It’s moving away from the solidarity of the body, causing chaos, but it is winning. It has its own solidarity at the cost of the body, increasing overall entropy.
So what happens when you have a million different subgroups within a group fighting for different aims? We’ll talk about that next time on:
DRAGON PAUL Z: THE SEVEN ANTHILL ARMY