Chapter 32: Reality and the Mathematics of the Social Sciences

 

‘Existence’ and ‘reality’ are two subjects that have fascinated people for thousands of years. If you ask the person in the street about those two words, they invariably say that ‘I am real therefore I must exist’ and that is the same as Descartes said in ‘I think, therefore I am’. Unfortunately, I believe this statement to be wrong and it should be ‘we evolved reality from the possibility of existence’. Two proofs are given at the end of the chapter and are quite simple, but they would only disturb the flow if presented here.

 

Whether we exist or not is a debate that doesn’t immediately concern us, but that we do NOT exist is the simplest answer, but we DO exist in probability of (existence) space. The question of reality should concern us because it can have very important ramifications because I believe that we evolved reality and so have an intimate relationship with it. It will be shown that there is a link between Reality, Survival of the Fittest and Survival of the Best that forms one ‘pillar’ or solution for the future that is put forward by this book. These three concepts (Reality, Survival of the Fittest and Survival of the Best) are the over-arching story of Mankind (including the future) and have often been mentioned in this book, but not brought together before, as they deserve.

 

Why has existence and reality been such a difficult problem to solve for thousands of years? I suggest that it is difficult to handle because it contains logic, time and life, which are not amenable to mathematics and formal logic. I am using the Mathematics of the Mind to investigate existence and especially reality because it deals with time dependent concepts relative to ourselves. It will be shown that reality is actually one of the family of Half-truths and it needs to be considered as a ‘set’: real, not real, real some of the time and not real the rest of the time and chaos or indeterminacy (real and not real at the same time).

 

Reality is basic to all organisms and also, between all organisms simply because ALL organisms have to be able to coexist in a reality situation, and that is heritable. The simplicity of this statement belies its importance. Similar to that which I said about entanglement of particles, I believe, not only between two particles, but EVERY particle is inter-linked logically through the Law of Conservation of Energy/mass.

 

If the reality was not complete, a predator could attack a prey without being seen/heard/felt etc. and that prey would be wiped out quickly as it would be a new untapped readily available food source, so, reality is a precursor to the conditions that operate under Survival of the Fittest. Before Survival of the Fittest has a chance to work, reality has to ‘clear the decks’ of those animals with incomplete realities and this purging brings the system to a steady state when Survival of the Fittest (in its accepted form) takes over. Notice that we have an immune system for the very small, that it is to the parasites’ advantage to not un-necessarily burden the host, fish that live within (isolated) caves are blind etc.

 

From chapter 12, starting with the generalized schematic of a bony fish (which is more evolved in that they have (from our point of view) control of buoyancy) shows two olfactory lobes connected to the two-lobed telencephalon (concerned mostly with olfaction) (these are the forebrain) then to the two optic lobes (the midbrain) to the single cerebellum (the hindbrain) and the brain stem. Sharks and catfish that hunt by smell have large olfactory lobes and trout, which hunt by sight have large optic lobes.(Wikipedia, Fish, Central nervous system)

 

It is apparent that the previous brain, prior to the one described in fish was a ‘single cerebellum (the hindbrain) and the brain stem’. The brainstem keeps the body functioning autonomously and the cerebellum is an enhancer of movement but we see a growth of a ‘new’ addition to the brain with evolution in fish and the higher animals. I believe that the basic processes are to be found in the hindbrain, but the growth of this new style of brain was probably due to increased ‘schooling’ of fish and inter-relationships between members for mating etc.

 

Books tend to say that we evolved life only once, and that is why ALL organisms are able to use other organisms for food, and this occurred because of the difficulty of starting life. In other words, it was so difficult to start Life that it only happened once, but there are many instances of extremophiles existing in extreme situations. Or, is it that a ‘product’ of reality has given us one (apparent) form of life that can (eventually) be eaten by all organisms?

 

Considering the number and varieties of extremophiles, this is strange! There are many ‘fringe’ extremophiles, but the mainstream apparently either occurred once, or reality decreed one mainstream organism that was edible to all. A quick ‘thought’ experiment suggests that logic dictates that everything should be recycled because otherwise, life would grind to a halt. Everything eats everything else, apart from toxins, which slows predation until seeds are set or the animal dies. In the same way that logic produces entanglement, does logic demand that everything eat every other creature? In effect, yes!

 

Let’s formalize this thinking. The Law of Conservation of Energy/Matter dictates that the sum of the energy of every particle in the universe must always be 1 and requires logic entanglement to do this. In the same way, the Law of Conservation of Resources (and resources are energy/matter) dictates that the sum of the resources of every organism in the universe is 1,which requires that resources must be recycled and be always available to life-forms. Where there are no resources locally, the organism dies. This indicates that life itself is a consequence of the Law of Conservation of Resources (or Mass/Energy) AND reality. This means that even if the organisms live completely separate lives, upon death, there have to exist organisms or some other method to return the chemicals to atoms for reuse.

 

I believe that mass and energy are two states of probability (and dark energy/dark matter might be another state) that produce our system. These two states move backwards and forwards (frictionlessly) between themselves and create the heavier elements in suns, eventually cause planets to form, continental drift recycles the continents through volcanoes. In fact, I can’t think of anything that is not recycled through suns or volcanoes. Why not use the phrase Conservation of Resources?

 

This is a serious question. The experimental fact of entanglement between two particles shows that logically, every particle in the universe must be linked together. If this logic did not apply, we would have ‘spooky’ action at a distance or in a volume. We know that every particle varies its energy as it moves through potential wells, so is there an over arching logic that does the accounting or is there a mechanistic accounting by each particle?

 

In formulating the three Laws of Life, I used the ‘logic machine’ componentization in the first Law and the second Law. An example of the concept, which is basic to life is, in the first Law, the atom, and in the second Law, the ability to breed. Neither of these examples could be called ‘simple’, and yet they exist in what I maintain is a universe that is a probability space with five dimensions, but one ‘dimension’ is not (currently) recognised, and that is logic. Is a logic ‘machine’ merely a ‘string’ of logic or a mixture?

 

This paragraph answers the question posed in the paragraph above that it MUST be logic doing the accounting, because measurement is a product of intelligence and affects the universe. Why would measurement affect quantum mechanics? Because our mind/brain uses logic (iteration is logic) and that interacts with the logic of the universe (entanglement).

 

Take as an example, the dinosaurs that were wiped out by a meteor 65 million years ago, though I have heard that some researchers think that the dinosaurs were under stress before that date. Our ancestors, the mammals comprised shrew-like insectivores living underground and hunting at night. Looking at the following quotation: ‘the corpus callosum is found only in placental mammals (the eutherians), while it is absent in monotremes and marsupials, as well as other vertebrates such as birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish (other groups do have other brain structures that allow for communication between the two hemispheres ….). (Wikipedia, Corpus callosum, Species differences)

 

The question is, how good was the reptile brain compared to the mammalian brain 65 million years ago. Could one of the mammals have conceived the idea of rolling away a dinosaur egg to eat it in safety and taught others to do similar? This example of an innovation could have had the same impact as the impact of a huge meteor or asteroid, in killing off the dinosaurs, so what is the difference between Survival of the Fittest and reality.

 

Survival of the Fittest describes evolution, but it is a ‘backwards looking’ indicator and explains after the action is completed. The tiny shrew-like mammals (could have) killed off the huge dinosaurs! Who would have anticipated it! The concept of reality is a forward-looking indicator and can be used as an attractor and become part of the computation in the Mathematics of the Mind and form the prediction. Is this important?

 

From above, the ‘three concepts (Reality, Survival of the Fittest and Survival of the Best) are the over-arching story of Mankind’ and humanity has been stuck in a ‘rut’ for the last nine thousand years since the advent of agriculture. Our genes change slowly, epigenetics faster, but not as fast as our society. This book is basically about anti ageing and bringing our food, exercise and state of mind to align with our genes and at the same time, carrying this into a logical future using Survival of the Best.

 

Survival of the Best is a prediction that will solve humanity’s problems by applying the Mathematics of the Mind, but a ‘backward looking’ indicator needs to be replaced by a ‘forward looking’ indicator and possibly reality might join Occam’s razor as an attractor that should always be kept in mind to influence specific solutions.

 

So, what have we done? Conservation of Energy/mass is the same as Conservation of Resources and there exists a logical entanglement of each particle in the universe to their potential energy. Reality is what we have created out of the possibility of existence. I believe that we used a probability space (of existence) that had 5 dimensions that allowed us to create our space-time reality and not realize that logic is the fifth dimension. The statement 1+1=2 is not space-time, it is a logic dimension (true) and the number of dimensions MUST include everything if it is to be complete. Reality has to be complete otherwise magic appears and that is apparent when we look at the very small (quantum mechanics) and the very large (relativity, existence) and find that they cannot be adequately described by space-time.

 

How can we solve humanity’s problems unless we use a mathematics of concepts and logic to plan ahead for the future and we will need concepts like Survival of the Best, and for that, we need a forward indicator, such as reality, instead of a backward indicator, such as Survival of the Fittest. The Mathematics of the Mind turns indeterminate patterns into awareness through the Logic of the Half-truth then into predictions, but, from above, that is what reality is doing! Reality is taking life and forming it into a composite that runs smoothly in the aggregate (as Survival of the Fittest) and when using the Mathematics of the Mind, reality produces a prediction.

 

So, it appears that our mind can influence the universe through logic and that logic operator is some mix of truth/existence/reality. I used the Half-truth in the Mathematics of the Mind for the parts of the book on fundamental physics, existence in the proof below and reality in this investigation. It isn’t a big step to realizing that this can be generalized to include any group that functions under Law and Order, and this indicates that the Mathematics of the Mind is suitable for the Social Sciences because they operate under natural laws and man-made laws. This is another way of determining, as asserted in chapter 2, that the Mathematics of the Mind IS a mathematics that is able to ‘handle’ the softer sciences.

 

I would like to state that I think that reality, in the light of the above, is a ‘co-existing’ with those around us. Not so much a predator/prey situation, but a ‘getting on with the neighbours’, which is basically the same. This is the basic problem of the world today –‘getting on with the neighbours’, that encompasses all of the family, the townspeople, countywide and internationally.

 

PROOF 1: Descartes was both right and wrong in stating that ‘I think,

therefore I am’, which makes his remark a half-truth, and perhaps he should have said, that ‘we evolved reality out of the possibility of existence’. That we evolved reality is simple (until we delve into it), but the ‘possibility of existence’ needs explaining.

 

Occam’s Razor states that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one and has been around for centuries. It is not logic because it is imprecise, but it has staying power and must be true to a certain extent. It is actually a solution in the style of the Mathematics of the Mind and is a half-truth and not precise, useful most of the time, but not to be relied upon but should form one pillar of a solution. In other words, ‘that

we do not exist’ is the simplest proposition, but we are real, as we know, but we are real in ‘the possibility of existence’! In other words, probability space! To simplify, existence is a half-truth (we may or may not exist), but the probability of existence is a truth because it is continuous and all-embracing.

 

The Multiverse has been suggested to hold the infinity of universes with all the different combination of ‘natural constants’, and it is considered that ours is one of them because all of the constants are ‘right’ for our existence (in probability space). Whilst this is un-provable, a moment’s reflection suggests that this is possible, and likely, because all of these universes are in probability space and do not exist! But, Life (on earth) has evolved a reality out of this probability space.

 

PROOF 2: Previously, it was derived that ‘we evolved reality from the probability of existence’ by using the Mathematics of the Mind. The derivation of the probability of existence, is strengthened by approaching it from another direction. The more directions from which something can be derived, the larger the number of predictions that can be made from it and the ‘better’ the theory.

 

Our universe is a closed system and we would consider that the Law of Conservation of Energy, would apply and indeed it probably does, but what is this law? ‘In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that the total energy in an isolated system cannot change – it is said to be conserved over time’. (Wikipedia, Conservation of energy) Also, it has one dimension, which is time. (Wikipedia, Conservation law)

 

It is strange that under this law, our universe would have one dimension (time) and this presumably reflects the logic that we cannot ‘see’ inside that universe and that it is, thus, indeterminate to us because any sampling would change the system (compare quantum mechanics). Current thinking is that our reality operates under space-time and we have to logically live in a ‘conserved’ universe, else it would run out of something eventually. So, where do we find a theoretical model for a conserved space that has the dimensions of space and time?

 

On the other hand, ‘in quantum mechanics, the probability current (sometimes called probability flux) is a mathematical quantity describing the flow of probability… It is a real vector’. (Wikipedia, Probability current) This isn’t very helpful, but shows that it is used and the dimensions of the Conservation of Probability are ‘total probability always = 1, in whole x, y, z space, during time evolution’ (Wikipedia, Conservation law, conservation of probability, number of dimensions)

 

This Conservation of Probability aligns with our universe in that we have ‘in whole x, y, z space, during time evolution’. Its not quite space-time because ‘time evolution’ is the same as the ‘time passing’ that I have used previously, and it is not an interval of time. Time interval is man-made, as is space interval in ‘whole x, y, z space’. I want to point out here that we have found a ‘complete’ mathematical ‘statement’, and our world appears to satisfy part of it, but I maintain that by Occam’s razor the simplest and most logical system will probably apply ‘best’, and that is the mathematical system, and is a Truth. So, how does our view of the universe (world O) compare with the mathematical form, and if it differs, why have we complicated things?

 

The ‘total probability always = 1’ aligns with Conservation of Energy, plus has the logic that every point in the space contributes to the sum and it must do so instantly to avoid local violations. So, every point is ‘entangled’ with every other point in the space constantly and instantly to provide a constant sum of energy. How can this be? The answer is, as we derived previously, what we call gravity, which affects EVERY particle-particle, particle-energy and energy-energy reaction in the universe according to the Law of Conservation of Energy because of a simple attraction that must exist for us to exist (out of the multiverse).

 

To logically satisfy the law, instantaneous accounting must be kept, and that is done automatically because there is only a constant amount of energy/matter, and photons and matter continually change their energy, as we have seen (Pound-Rebka experiment) to keep the total energy at 1 to satisfy the Law of Conservation of Energy.

 

So, gravity is the mechanism to provide a universe that we can live in, and that attraction of gravity (between matter, energy etc.) provides a source of energy which is part of the limit 1, Conservation of Energy sets the Conservation of Probability limit of 1, and a set limit of 1 requires instantaneous velocities to be attainable, so that the limit equals 1 at all times. This effect is ‘entanglement’.