Interior Dialogue

II. Change, interaction and observation Friday, 26 March, 2010

As argued elsewhere on this site, once one accepts the fact that nothing that we have so far known (ideas) or observed (objects) is outside of time, once one accepts that change is the one truly universal feature of our world, then there is no way to avoid coming to the conclusion that whatever the mechanisms underlying our experience, they are, one way or another, mechanisms of evolution. The debate may then be formed around the question of how, or even, perhaps, why things evolve. That they evolve, is evident.

As the various thinkers, philosophers, scientists, have investigated the various phenomena, another remarkable fact has come to light. Change requires interaction. When some simple object undergoes a change, it is because it has come into interaction with some other object. When some isolated composite object undergoes a change, it is because its components are interacting with each other. No object has been observed that may change without some interaction being involved. And conversely, no object is observed that may interact without changing. Change and interaction seem to be inseparable.

This holds elegantly together. It is consistent, for observing something requires interacting with it, which leads to change, so we can never observe something that does not change, which explains why time is a universal feature of our world. Here, “world” is defined as everything that is observed.

So far so good. Let us summarize. We have here a trio of ideas which seem to be so closely related as to be completely interdependent, dare I say symbiotic? Change, interaction, and observation. Obtaining knowledge requires interaction, which inevitably leads to change. Thus everything we know changes.

But we can add more concepts to this dance. For instance reciprocity. It has been observed not only that change and interaction go together, but that both participants in an interaction are changed. No interaction has been observed where one of the participants is changed, while the other is not. Thus change, interaction, and therefore also observation, are reciprocal. We now have a quartet of ideas in symbiosis. Moreover, observation is in the eye of the beholder, so to speak, and just as the state of the observer is changed by the observation, so the state of the observed is changed, in a reciprocal fashion. So, strictly speaking, which of the two is designated the “observer” and which the “observed” is quite arbitrary, and basically comes down to a convention.

This is an example of a memeplex, a set of ideas which rely on each other, which shed light on each other, and which evolve together. Once our understanding of one of them changes, the others must change immediately as well. Once again, this is consistent, and goes to show that these ideas are so general as to be illustrations of themselves! “Interaction”, “change”, “observation”, are memes which are themselves subject to change, interaction, and so forth. This is meant as a heads-up to GEB fans (Gödel-Escher-Bach).

The importance of the memeplex idea comes from the fact that the correct view of any given concept hinges fundamentally on the memeplex in which it operates, and the role it plays therein. Analyzing a concept in itself, outside of its conceptual “environment”, so to speak, is like trying to understand the anatomy, physiology, and biology of a fish independently of the fact that it lives in water. It is an utterly meaningless exercise.

In the following entry, I will consider the concept of change through the lens of the successive memeplexes in which it played a role, or rather, the successive memeplexes that humans have built around it. This will lead to a more coherent and clearer view of other related concepts: predictability, uncertainty, information processing and finally computation (the most recent memeplex we have built around change). The fact that our modern understanding of change is becoming increasingly interwoven with the concept of information processing, or computation, is what lies behind terms such as “computational universe”, “the physics of information” or “emergence”. Shedding light on these ideas is the main motivation of this series of posts.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Alexandru Ioan Căbuz 2010.

I. Memeplexes and other plexes Friday, 26 March, 2010

This is the first of a series of posts which will discuss time, science, mathematics, computation and emergence. Since I will make reference to historical aspects, I will begin by giving some of the terminology associated with intellectual and cultural evolution as I see it: my particular version of memetics. I will illustrate with the memes of “time”, “change”, “interaction”, “observation” and “predictability”. These, and other memes, such as, in particular “predictability,” will be important in the subsequent posts.

A meme is any concept which may be communicated between human beings. Since communication is never perfect, and since the thought processes of each human often modify received concepts before recommunicating them, memes mutate and evolve with time. The rate of evolution may change from extremely  fast (bad ideas – they quickly disappear, this is the fastest kind of evolution) to moderate (ideas that seem good at first, but eventually change, or are abandoned) to slow or very slow (ideas that change little over long periods of time – such as the numbers).

Other authors have tried to define memes in various ways, in order to distinguish them from other ideas. However, I believe that any such distinction is artificial. All abstract concepts may be communicated, to some degree. Those that are hard to communicate simply have higher mutation rates than those that are easy to communicate, and which mutate slower. Any concept that may not be communicated at all is not really a concept, but a state of mind. A state of mind is a concept only to the extent that it can be communicated. Biological evidence suggests that abstract thought and language co-evolved in the human brain. Consequently, any distinction between memes and other concepts is artificial.

But memes are not moving through intellectual space independently of each other. They interact. When two or more ideas “collide” in a single mind, they are modified, or sometimes one may disappear (be abandoned), or they may give birth to new ideas. Rereading the previous sentence it also becomes clear that memes interact in ways exactly analogous to physical objects. This is not accidental. Abstract thought evolved, in part, because it enabled humans to put together and take apart physical objects according to their needs. Stone+rope+stick=hammer. Thus, it makes sense that mental objects may at first have been designed by evolution to mimic physical objects. In modern science there is a technical term for such mimickry: modeling. Mental objects (i.e. memes) originally evolved as models of the external world.

And just as physical objects, memes form aggregates, which may, under the right conditions, evolve together. In the physical world these are known as natural cycles (the water cycle, the carbon cycle, the gas and dust cycle which sustains star formation). In the biological world, these are known as metabolisms, or as symbiotic, or interdependent cycles. In the mental world these are known as memeplexes (the differential calculus, Tibetan Buddhism, the natural languages, etc.).

But in most presentations of memetics, one aspect is overlooked. Memes interact not only with each other (via conscious thought) but also with physical objects (via action and perception). Consequently, the notion of memeplex must be enlarged to allow aggregates or cycles containing both mental components (memes) and physical components (objects). This enlarged notion I will call a “plex”. Technologies are typical examples of plexes, since they involve mental objects (physics, math, design concepts, fabrication techniques) as well as physical objects (the physical realization of the respective technologies). The design concepts may be said to co-evolve with the physical realizations because each imposes constraints on the other. They are interdependent via processes such as fabrication (mental > physical) or reverse engineering (physical > mental). Other examples of plexes are political systems, religions, scientific theories, and clothing fashions. Their respective physical components are guns and voting ballots, icons and other objects of worship, experimental apparatus, and billboards and TV ads.

In the following posts, I look closer at change and related memes in the context of their plexes.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Alexandru Ioan Căbuz 2010.