Chapter 44: The Blog and Blogging

 

I have received a significant number of queries on the subject of starting a web-log/ website and also on the subject of how I find inspiration to write blogs, so the time has come to weave this theme into a chapter. Blogging is NEW, because Academia, books, journals etc are designed for, and cater for the specialist (in the main) and the time has come to put all that information together and send it out into the world in a new form by a new means of communication, and that is the World Wide Web.

There is a place for everyone to contribute: ‘the manner in which Berger discovered the EEG shows that the development of science, far from being an objective matter practised by groups of like-minded individuals, is often thrown forward dramatically by isolated, marginal and quite dysfunctional individuals nursing ideas, which on scrutiny, may not be scientific at all, but quite subjective and romantic.’ (The Exceptional Brain and how it changed the world, Robert M. Kaplan, p 180)

The invention of the printing press brought reading to the masses and our civilization blossomed out of books, journals that were peer reviewed etc. as people worked at specific problems and our fund of knowledge grew and grew until today we have such a vast amount of knowledge that we have become trapped. We need ‘generalists’ (or polymaths) to suggest linkages between the disciplines that cannot be done effectively by Academics (in the main), but like the old-time ‘naturalists’, they will probably come from ‘interested’ amateurs and the conditions are right for this to happen.

 

The world is ‘wired’ together by the web and practically everyone has access to it. The information is there, courtesy of the search engines and easily accessible. The ‘amateurs’ are there in the millions and the publishing availability is there through the blogs or web-sites. The proof of this statement is that I am getting questions asking how to set up and find material for setting up peoples’ own blogs. Reality has changed with the coming of the web and we must change with it or, if we don’t, we will risk losing relevance, which is equivalent to being ‘eaten’ (from previously on reality).

 

Many people have asked about ‘how to get started on a blog?’ and we can start with the formation of creativity that is the quantum mechanical induction in the brain of the ‘wires’ (dendrites) linking ‘facts’ together. We first need facts, which means learning from books etc. and ‘mental training or life in enriched environments increases brain weight by 5 percent in the cerebral cortex of animals and up to 9 percent in areas that the training directly stimulates. Trained or stimulated neurons develop 25 percent more branches and increase their size, the number of connections per neuron, and their blood supply. These changes can occur late in life, though they do not develop as rapidly in older animals as in younger ones. Similar effects of training and enrichment on brain anatomy have been seen in all types on animals tested to date.’ (The Brain that Changes Itself, Norman Doidge, p 43)

 

Creativity comes from learning ‘facts’ and the reading of the newspapers, novels or television will not do it. Facts have to be ‘linked’ into a network of knowledge and reading factual books creates a ‘factual’ story that fits in and can be remembered, as we have seen previously. The connections in the brain form a computer, but not an ordinary computer, but a computer with wiring that allows induction to occur in other circuits and this creates creativity/consciousness. Given the correct inputs (state of mind, nutrition and exercise) the mind/brain should get better and better as we age. I say this because new bloggers have to learn ‘across the board’ and that takes time and work. If you hope to talk to academics about their subject, that they have spent a lifetime working on, you will have to ‘know your stuff’.

 

The warning, above, does not stop you practicing the science of blogging if it is done appropriately, and I am trying to show you some methods that work for me. Authors present their work to the world in the form of books, peer reviewed articles etc. and they can’t change them. The blog is not ‘set in stone’. Books are like mathematics and are exact and unchangeable, whilst the blog is like the mathematics of concepts and cannot be exact because everything is linked together. This mathematics of concepts is the Mathematics of the Mind and we will see that the mind uses it in its construction, and also, like the brain, a blog can be changed. Of course, every effort should be made to make the blog accurate, but you can add to it at a later date or use ‘postscripts’ as I do.

 

So, there is no reason not to start, but realize that you will get better with time and knowledge. So, how do I do it? Every book that I read is factual and presents knowledge that fits with what I know and allows me to add attractors or concepts to other linked concepts. The Mathematics of the Mind is a means of moving among related concepts called attractors because Chaos theory is used as a concept as in the Logic of the Half-truth where Chaos/ indeterminacy is needed to make a reality (see earlier). Again, I stress that I am reasonably old, or I should say that because of mental state, nutrition and exercise, I am young, but have been around a long time!

 

So, there is no reason not to start, given the above, and we can use the ‘gems’, attractors, quotations from books, internet, journals etc. provided that we acknowledge the scholarship of the authors, as I did above. We are doing what the authors want us to do and increasingly, the authors provide web addresses for comment or the author’s websites can be found by putting their name into a search engine. They ‘stand behind’ their quotations in their books and this gives the blogger legitimacy, and is achieving the aim stated above of ‘fitting’ their book into a wider ‘scene’.

 

In effect, this will give a ‘book review’ by placing the book, not in comparison with other books as is often done by reviewers, but by placing and, hopefully augmenting the book by incorporating it into other disciplines which achieves the aim as stated above. I say augment the book because I will only use a small part of it and (hopefully) enhance the book’s value to the reader. To give an example, the book ‘The Brain that Changes Itself’ by Norman Doidge is about plasticity in the brain, where the areas assigned to various parts of the body are represented in the brain and these areas change depending on the use given to those parts of the body. For example, a lot of use of the fingers by a pianist means a larger amount of brain/mind allocated to the fingers.

 

The earliest organisms used smell and touch to guide them to food because two nostrils gave direction and receptors determined the motivation for pursuing that food. This was a purely physical decision making, and it is still with us today (Rule of Life). The notochord provided an opportunity for nerves to create consciousness/creativity, and the brain formed at the head. The purpose of the brain was to remember and this it did by using circulating action potentials that require comparatively much energy, so the cerebrum formed using static connections and an iterative means of storing the (somewhat) correct action potentials. This is highly speculative and mentioned in earlier chapters.

 

So, what is the ‘form’ of this cortex? The Rule of Life says that the chemistry will be complex, but the logic simple, and there is no going back. The logic of the brain/mind is the simplest possible and is the mathematics/logic of concepts, that I have called it the Mathematics of the Mind and have mentioned it throughout the book. The concepts are attractors and they must be assembled into lobes so that creativity/consciousness is induced in the same subject area as the thought. A moment’s reflection will show that the creation of random thoughts is not creativity, it is noise!

 

‘The experiment demonstrated that if the median nerve was cut, other nerves, still brimming with electrical input, would take over the unused map space to process their input. When it came to allocating brain-processing power, brain maps were governed by competition for precious resources and the principle of use it or lose it.’ (p 59) This is an example of componentization, that all resources are used as much as possible to achieve the highest state with minimum input for breeding etc. (contained in the first and second Laws of Life, as stated earlier).

 

This quotation indicates that the mind/brain is a storage area that is continually changing its use of the scarce resources of neurons and by necessity, forms a ‘subconscious’ as it decreases the importance of past memories by decreasing the strength of neurotransmitters, also, the circuitry generates new action potentials in other memory circuits leading to creativity/consciousness. The subconscious is important to organisms because it provides a half-forgotton ‘memory’ that can be ‘reinstated’ with use, if needed, and thus could be considered similar to the seventh sense, see earlier.

 

Reiterating, the simple nose evolved to become creativity/consciousness and then on to the mathematics of concepts in the brain. This Mathematics of the Mind is a general and simple form and the mind/brain is built on its form as would be expected from the Rule of Life, but our mind/brain can apply the Mathematics of the Mind to problems that we wish to solve. This is a point that needs to be stressed, that our mind/brain is built upon, and at the same time becomes part of an operator, that I will call ‘progress’.

 

I think that everyone would agree that the success of technology/mathematics/innovation has fuelled ‘progress’ throughout the world and especially over the last few hundred years, but in chapter 2, it was shown that this ‘corner-stone’ of progress was a special case of a more general form: Logic of the Half-truth/Mathematics of the Mind/ prediction. The Logic of the Half-truth is a reality and continuous and includes technology. Note that ‘reality’ is our reality and does not , in my opinion (see earlier) exist. Mathematics is a special case of the Mathematics of the Mind – the ‘exact’ part, and innovation is a result of prediction. What this paragraph is saying is, if technology is so successful, how much more successful will the general formulation be?

 

I maintain that the ‘progress’ operator (Logic of the Half-truth/Mathematics of the Mind/ prediction) can solve anything we wish and especially social problems in the same way that the special case has boosted the technology that we all enjoy. In fact, we are investigating a ‘social’ derivation at the moment as you read this, as promised above, and I am setting up attractors that need consideration to produce a prediction.

 

The subject of this book is to consider the situation that the operator, Survival of the Fittest is an iteration, whereas the Survival of the Best uses the Mathematics of the Mind directed by a mind to speed up and target evolution. This ‘targeted’ evolution will accomplish the result very much faster because the search is guided by the application of a mind/brain, and this is in effect the ‘progress’ operator mentioned above. This is similar to the example given above that the application of a mind/brain to technology plus printing caused both to ‘explode’ in the past.

 

The internet uses a ‘tree’ structure with many computers connected together and it is a communication device, but with the application of a mind/brain, it becomes a ‘computer’ by using the Mathematics of the Mind. Thus, by using the blog, we have a ‘plastic’ view that changes as knowledge changes, directed by the minds of people and with books and journals providing the facts. This array moves a computer into a higher state, as mentioned previously, by introducing the creativity of the mind/brain. The idea has always been, in scientific thinking, that the mind is separate to the problem and this seems to have caused the refusal to consider that logic is a fifth dimension along with space-time and this has caused the (apparent) problem with quantum mechanics, as seen previously.

 

The communication scene, throughout the world, is following the Rule of Life and is simplifying, and this is indicated by the state of the modern computer. The original computers were used for word processing and spreadsheets, whereas the modern computer tends to have a multitude of files for photos, apps, emails etc. This transition in use shows the Rule of Life in action as the original computer has become more complicated machinery-wise, but simpler in logic, heading towards the Mathematics of the Mind. Note that new models still allow older technology to be used, for a while, at least. This paragraph has ‘laid to rest’ the question that I have asked myself many times as I wonder where all the strange technology is coming from and taking us. The answer is surely to follow the Rule of Life and assume that communication will tend to the Mathematics of the Mind where all these strange computer/phone files form attractors, and it is they that we are moving around as we use them.

 

This is the reason that technology is so successful, because mind/brains are directing its progress, and as mentioned previously, the Mathematics of the Mind does for social problems what mathematics does for technology and will give solutions that are long over-due. To restate this, the success of technology/mathematics/innovation is well-known, and the printing of books brought these methods to the world. Now the Mathematics of the Mind, the internet and a large number of participants can do the same for social problems, bearing in mind that the aim is to provide a solution that everyone can agree on. This is illustrated in chapter 38: Stopping Terrorism – a General Solution.

 

In conclusion, this analysis has shown that specialists are necessary, but so are generalists and that different skills are needed and this is a gap that ‘naturalists’ can fill better than academics. There are safeguards for bloggers to quote published material and the internet is particularly suited to rapidly disseminate information with variability (plasticity) to handle a mathematics of concept.

 

A computer is formed from the internet with one or more mind/brains, increasing in creativity with time, as they learn facts. The blog is necessary and extremely valuable as an adjunct to Academia and there is the possibility of consultant fees or the writing of articles. There appear to be no downside, and contributes significantly to continual study which is in line with the Survival of the Best.

 

In other words, mathematics (which is exact), the rise in printing and distribution, and peer reviewing (to set one theory above others) has been with us for hundreds of years and started the world on a path of accelerated innovation through the progress operator (technology/mathematics/innovation). The mind/brain seems to stand outside of the system and not affect it, but his leads to the problems associated with quantum mechanics that are solved by the ‘measurement’ process (see earlier) that involves the mind/brain (and the fifth dimension).

 

The blog is different in that it is modelled on the brain and uses the mind/brain in the solution and like the mind/brain, is plastic (changeable) and recognises that everything is linked and anything that we use, is an approximation. The process operator (Logic of the Half-truth/Mathematics of the Mind/ prediction) is more general and changes the focus from the exact/specific to the linked/general. It could be construed that the value of the blog etc. is (perhaps) an order of magnitude ‘better’ than the book etc. in understanding and ‘coning to terms’ with the world, if for no other reason than it opens up the social sciences to solutions of the world’s problems.

 

The existing system has set the world back when it is considered that peer reviewing and the large cost of printing and distributing books has produced a ‘voting system’ to promote popular scientific theories, whereas blogs are small, easily distributed and quickly give the author’s thoughts and make alternative theories available, in line with the requirements of a general mathematics of concepts. A well-known example of the limitations of the present system is, that it was considered ‘appropriate’ for millennia that the sun rotated around the earth. In the ‘light’ of the above, it is not difficult to see what should have been done.

 

This chapter has tried to show the way that I blog and why, but it also tells why we need to blog. It illustrates that this chapter is ‘out there’ in three days, not three years if it were in a book and feeds will direct this chapter to people’s emails as soon as it ‘goes up’. Just as important as speed is content and I am continually being surprised by what turns up. A good example is chapter 37 ‘Hark the Herald Angels Sing’ that makes the realization that there is a single world-wide ‘religion’ already in place that satisfies the reality operator and that is government and the judiciary.

 

In this chapter, we have seen that the communication devices are evolving to computers with a creative mind behind them along with rapid communication, and this is the ‘highest’ state that humankind has reached at this time and parallels the working of our mind/brain. This is a logical progression, but a prediction becomes apparent from this derivation that again shows the power of this type of investigation. I suddenly realized that quietly and unrecognised (at least by me) the communication industry is creating a ‘machine’ that is orders of magnitude better than anything that existed in the middle ages. This combination of mind/brain/phone/computer/internet/emails appears to tick ALL the boxes, except the addictions that are occurring with ‘unlimited’ calls and text loads.

 

Finally, mathematics has its theorems that are like pretty seashells on the beach, interesting and sought for themselves, but the Mathematics of the Mind demands a prediction, otherwise there is no reason to use it because it is incomplete and could change tomorrow. So, if we consider that mathematics, that is a small part of the Mathematics of the Mind, has been so successful in promoting technology, it could be that that small part unbalances the derivation that the whole Mathematics of the Mind would give and so lead the world into problems. I believe that this has happened and the world has global warming, depleted rainforests, over-population etc. as a direct result of technology.

 

I must admit that the general mathematics, that I have called the Mathematics of the Mind is new and presented in this book, but, if the FULL mathematics is not used, the prediction is that global warming, depleted rainforests, over-population etc. will worsen and we will not be able to control it! The FULL mathematics CAN handle it, if we want it, and the internet and blog is the key to ‘having your voice heard’.