Consciousness Framework

Highest Level Basics

I. Infinity is really big (zero is really small)
II. Perfect is really boring (so is Total Chaos)
III. Cogito ergo Sum
IV. I trust that there are others (Solipsism leads to nothing but degeneracy, so Other has to be all the way up here)

Baseline traits of Consciousness.

Experience — The whole “What is it like to be anything” thing. The Observer.
Preference — A desire, with no rules-based basis, for one Experience over another.
Cyberneticality — A Machine to house all the other stuff.
Agency — (Will) I can do things that violate rules-based pathways/actions.
Other — Other Consciousness exist. Pretty straightforward. the anti-solipsist.
Continuity — q.v. Descartes’ evil demon making arbitrary breaks in the flow of existence imperceptible to the Consciousness being targeted by the discontinuity.

So there can be nothing else without there being Experience first.
• Without Experience, Agency can only be rules-following action.
• Without Experience, Preference is the rule behind the action.
Next comes Preference.
• Without Preference, Experience exists as only an uninvolved custodian.
• Without Preference, Agency with Experience is a mechanistic action more like either a rule-following or a random act generator.
Finally Agency.


Now the consciousness is complete. Gosh, I hope this person has wisdom.
I added Cyberneticality late. It is a dated word, but covers the mechanistic processing that I believe must be present for a fully functioning consciousness.
But, I am a person who might have an obscured view of the thing. There could be other conceptualizations or the array might be totally different from what I just outlined. So I am a seeker.

Ideas

Ethically charged ideas

I consider Ethics and Morality to be isomorphic.

Pro Ideasanti ideas
Lovehate
Beautyperversion / sloth
Truth / Knowingobfuscation / believing
Sharingtaking
Actionstagnation
Collaborationadversariality
Compassioncallousness
Altruismselfishness
Empathynarcissism
Connectionisolation / tribalism
Discernmentobliviousness
Servicesacrifice
Abundanceprivilege / austerity
Freedomenslavement
Balancehoarding
Wisdomgratification

Less ethically obvious

IndependenceTeamworking
ProgressiveConservative
AbsolutistRelativist
CharitableProfitable
DurableDisposable
DecorativeFunctional
ExcitingMundane
AccommodatingCompetitive
InvolvedDetached


False Ideas

I assert the following are phantoms, and aren’t appropriate in wisdom teachings:
• Good/Evil – These imply universal motivators behind all people who do Pro things versus Anti things.
• Loyalty – Means you prefer despite it being not the best
• Deserves – Implies actors that aren’t natural or artificial consequence purveyors (I’ll say this better some day.)
• Faith – Demands trust in assertions that have no evidence of possibility. Not the same as Believe/Intend.
• Believe – Actually needs to be usurped by Intend in it’s useful version. Else it is just a synonym for Faith.

Combo Ideas

• Service – Action using Cooperation, Connection and then the rest.
• Justice – Action using Balance, Freedom, Discernment and then the rest.
• Art – Art using Beauty, Action, Connection and then all the rest.
• Fun – Action using Beauty, Abundance and then all the rest.
• Cooperation – Action using Compassion and Connection and then all the rest.
• Equality – Balance and Compassion enacted and then all the rest.

Logic Basis Functionality

There is The Logic, which is the uninstantiable ideology of understanding of relatedness.
There is The Physic, which is the un-ruled objects observed.

Cogito ergo sum — the one and only truth which is only necessarily true of the speaker.

After Gödel:

If a system is complete, then it must contain inconsistencies.
If a system is consistent, then it must be incomplete.
My own extension .. There is one and only one Complete system and that is THE ALL EVERYTHING including The Logic, The Physic, The Spirit, The Absolute and The Arbitrary

About Processing

Appeal to authority is not valid in any logical proof (if the authority isn’t THE ABSOLUTE but THE ABSOLUTE is not accessible in my definition thereof)
Obvious Linkage of ideas in building a Logic isn’t universally evident.
Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Consistent results are not proof of transcendent truth.

The Truth Hierarchy

Given it is acceptably proved, true is true, nothing else to say.
Likewise proved false.
The Paradox is a point where you are sure that the system must be consistent and yet one line of reasoning leads to an outcome that another line of reasoning forbids.
The Inconsistency is the point where you are sure (perhaps even have proved) that the two mutually exclusive objects must both be instantiable. e.g. the set that doesn’t contain itself as a proper subset.
… And an arcane sideline
Proved to be unprovable.

Good Razors and Maxims

• Either Everything is a miracle, or nothing is a miracle. – Einstein.
• As Above, So Below. Hermes T.
• The variety of beings should not rashly be diminished. – Kant
• Things should be as simple as possible, but no more simple. – Menger/Einstein
• You can’t have it both ways. – Catraeus

Medium

• Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity. – Hanlon.
• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. – Sagan

Bad

• Given two proposals that are equally plausible, the simpler is more likely to be the true. – Occam.
• That which has be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. – Hitchins. (but I get it, there is a difference between asserted and merely proposed.)

Don’t Know

• If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate. – Alder
• What “ought to be” cannot be deduced from “what is.” – Hume.
• For a theory to be considered scientific, it must be falsifiable. – Popper

Definitions

Mind – interface between The Spirit and The Physic
Spirit – Yes, I nail it down here. It is the thing behind The Physic and The Mind that does the inconsistency part of Agency, Preference, Experience
Abstract – Only mind can express Abstract into Tangible, but abstract are objects not of consciousness (e.g. Maths) rather do exist independently of being consciously conceptualized. Tree/Forest/Sound If there isn’t a mind to calculate it then does 5 + 7 still equal 12. YES Dammit!
Tangible – the physical objects that are overwhelmingly unable to be modified by consciousness except by mind and only then through ultra-restrictive rules. The Physic. Some day Magick might be proved and show Intention to modify The Physic.

Ego IS the Demiurge?
The best manager looks like they are doing nothing.
Universe is everything, complete. Therefore, if there is a dualism, then the word dualism is instantly defeated because whatever the “other space” that consciousness exists in must be part of the complete set, perhaps even with inconsistencies. Daniel Dennett is thus simultaneously stricken down and vindicated.

Where can Consciousness Reside

Classes of people (I refuse to say “Being” or “Entity” and only grant that all are people. There is a lot of wisdom teaching behind the idea that the real original sin is spiritual elitism. Both Being and Entity imply that Person is a derived class of this super-class and therefore
demands separation between people. Again, lots of esoteric teaching asserts that the “angels” highly respect the “humans” for our bravery to incarnate. But this is far too unprovable a body of knowledge for this treatise except as an example.

The Absolute. Yes, the Complete thing discussed above. This has an inconsistency. The Absolute is everything, The Logic, The Physic, The Spirit. BUT it is at infinity, so nobody who can “attain” it. AND It is a Person.
The Arbitrary. As Above, So Below … If there is a The Absolute, then there might very well a The Arbitrary. No clue why I wrote this. Perhaps it would be defined as the one and only existing thing that has no differentiation, action, desire experience. Deeper than simple Chaos. Benign as opposed to Evil.
All of Us. The bounded/distinct people who Cogito, connect, have lunch, spirit guide the people
on their Spirit Guide ToDo List, That paramecium over there.

Consistent-Rules-Spaces forbid Free-Will
There must be an inconsistent space for there to be Free-Will. A Non-Consistent Space, or call it a Space of Consciousness.

RANDOM RAMBLINGS

All observations confirm:
• The universe of the body (Physical Reality) is consistent and (therefore) incomplete. (Schroedinger and Heisenberg be damned!)

Total guess, please consider the following:
• There is a Space of Consciousness.
• The Space of Consciousness overlaps/interacts-with Physical Reality
• A finite-measure Universe is absurd. q.v. Topology/Manifold maths.
• Consciousness contains (mathematically strict subset) Free Will.
• Consciousness, The Spirit and The Soul are homomorphic. The fact that there are multiple words for the same thing is trivial.
• The Universe of Consciousness is inconsistent and incomplete. (1)
• I am an instantiation of some form of Consciousness Object embedded in a Physical Reality.
• There are Others and they are different instantiations of some form of Consciousness Object. (The Cogito ergo sum extension to other people I meet. No, I am not a Solopsist)
• The Space-Time Minkowski space is a consistent-rules-space.
• The Space-Time Minkowski space is a proper subset of all consistent-rules-spaces.
• There are other systems of consistent-rules-spaces which permit arbitrary Affine movement in Time.
• The Space-Time of the Soul can interact with Consistent-Rules-Spaces.
• The Space-Time of the Soul can interact with this (our beloved Minkowski) space.
• The Space-Time of the Soul has access to arbitrarily many Space-Times, thus allowing arbitrary distance (time or space) movement. Instantaneous relocation. Arbitrarily large distance-span. Doubly infinitely high speed so as to allow infinite distance taking zero-time (in any consistent-rules-space framework.)

A quick aside: (the Religion people are just plain wrong)
• Ethics is only meaningful if there is Free-Will.
• Ethics is only transactional, never canonical.
• The Faith-Proof, we must always be wary of.
• But It Just Makes Sense That … , we must always be wary of.

This Existence can be/have:
• Constructed vs. Natural – and this is a spectrum, since there can be Constructed sub-systems inside a Natural system. (This is the Simulation/Matrix hypothesis.)
• WYSIWYG vs Hidden. (Spooky action at a distance AND Hidden Variables.)
• Slave-Crop
• Prison-Torture
• Training-Corrections
• Testing Ground-Nursery
• Zoo-Museum-Gallery
• Non-Ulterior (none of the above)
Don’t forget the razor of the Fermi Paradox! It is a great test.
Don’t forget the razor of “everything/nothing is a Miracle due to Einstein.
Beware Occam’s Razon, it leads to a profit-only approach that legalizes personal definition of “simple.”
Scientific: Natural, WYSIWYG – Non-Ulterior
Religious: Constructed, Training, Testing, Zoo, Crop – Ulterior.

Hiding Mechanisms: (how the reality of This Existence might be hidden, if hidden it is …)
• Fear (the Human Slave machines we’ve seen over time)
• Sequestration (a few examples of perverse religious sects, some aspects of Sovietism, one proposed Alien conspiracy theory, the Religion explanation of This Existence)
• Propaganda/True-Believer (Soviet, Nazi, McDonalds, Religion, Manufactured Consent)
• Alteration (drugging, consciousness, mutilation e.g. lobotomy)

The Death Thing:
• One thread insists that there is no information from trans-death.
• One thread waves hands at reincarnation trans-death.
• One thread pounds books at heaven/hell trans-death.
• One thread has amassed a significant (statistically) body of observations in support of reincarnation trans-death.
• One thread insists that there is abjectly nothing trans-death.

For Me as an Artist:
First, I have to get over the following incontrovertible facts:
• No single object can be forever.
• No production can be perfect.
• No production can be done without context. (There is no “eternal” work)
Second, I must grow the following forgivenesses:
• Very very simple is most attractive.
• Imperfect tools are a fact of life.
• Stop worrying about who likes it. Check! I’m there.
• Stop worrying about who doesn’t like it. Check! I’m there.
• It’s OK to wish some to like it.
• It’s OK to wish others to not like it.
• It’s OK that some just couldn’t care less about ANY of it.
• There is so much more that is really truly great than you think.
Third, I must push back on the following imbalances:
• The Joker (safety mechanism personality trait) is too quick to assert itself.
• The Brick Wall (process perfection desire) is too quick to be thrown up.
• Flop, Give Up and Run (failure protection mechanism) comes out too much (but is much better now (2017) than 15 years ago.)
Fourth, I must cultivate the following growth:
• Join the community.
• Do a little bit, do it more often than I currently do.
• Help those who can be helped.

Cantor gave us the possibility that an infinite span space can have no exactly repeated instances of any object. e.g. there is only one number 7 in both integers and reals.
Gödel gave us that there must be inconsistencies in the complete set. I PROPOSE that there is only 1 complete set and that is the set of everything. No context, no domain, just everything all contexts + domains.
THEREFORE, UNIVERSE is inconsistent.

For us, time is an immutably proceeding universally binding sequential continuum.
IF time is random access for some class of people, then lots of the above become much more complex.

About the Simulation

Mathematicians and Physicists have very precise meanings for most of what they talk about. The Simulation, however, has sloppy meaning even among the pros.

Often, the layperson will have a complete understanding of what a thing means. Length is a good example of a broadly agreed upon term. In a Euclidean space it is pretty intuitive. A 2D or 3D space, anyone can put a ruler up to a pair of points and measure the Length. When the Mathematician or Physicist goes all-in on length, though, they lose the layperson. The non-uniform measure of a Minkowski Space (the (3,1) Pseudo-Riemann Manifold with Einstein’s Gage Invariant Metric Tensor imposed) completely loses the Layman and they believe they can travel in time when they try to understand. But no Physicist or Mathematician ever gets lost in this concept.

The Simulation, however, has wildly varying ideas. As an Engineer, I would like to shed some light on this.

At one end of the pool, a simulation is a non-real world. It is fake, evanescent, and even malevolently run by some maniacal computer nerd who wants to Get Neo. At the other end of the pool, it is more simply a set of rules, run by an outside machine, that constrains the simulated entities. In Engineering, a Simulation is a very precisely defined thing.

  1. The Simulation is specifically created to reproduce, as precisely as desired, some Real thing.
    1. One corollary is that the “Real” thing might be only potentially real such as the “Life” game that John Conway created.
  2. The Simulation must be Run by some Simulator who cares about the simulated entities. Otherwise it wouldn’t be Run.
  3. The Simulation must run in an environment that is absolutely nothing like the simulated Real thing. If it was exactly like the Real Thing, then it would be … well … the Real Thing, just replicated.

What I’ve seen is a conversation that flouts these principles. For example, the Tom Campbell narrative proposes that the Simulators are Us, who exert Consciousness to modify, very subtly, the “Underlying reality that is more real than the Simulation”.

The movie, “The Matrix” et. al. propose that the Simulators are a (perhaps evil, perhaps merely opportunistic) mechano-computational lot who manipulate the “Real” beings with mistakes, glitches, in the Simulation.

The Physicists propose that The Simulation is a not-run-by-anyone set of rules that are a backdrop to the Apparent Illusion of a Physic. Einstein’s quote about Reality being a Persistent Illusion comes to mind.

I now propose to dump all of the above in “The Simulation” argument land and declare that Simulated or Not, reality is Reality whether “Simulated” ore “Real” and the differentiation between the two is pointless for the entities in the simulation.

  • Either the Simulation is infinitely precise, or it is imprecise.
  • Either the Simulation is run by an intentioned Simulator Entity or it is … well … just … Running.

If Infinitely precise, the it is totally indistinguishable from a Physic. I define “A Physic” as a system where the “Rules of Physics” are truly at the bottom of all behaviors.

If it is imprecise, then there will be glitches. Miracles could be glitches. Then, if there is a Simulator Entity who might insert non-rules behaviors then that would be would be, by definition, a Miracle.

If it is not intentionally run, then it is isomorphic to a Physic with those rules at the bottom of everything being the program of the Simulation. Those Simulator Engine rules are the “what’s at the bottom” below the quarks, electrons, gluons, photons etc. Once again, the Real vs. Simulation dividing line evaporates.

“Cogito ergo sum” is true, I am me, I think, I exist. Descartes hit it on the head that Simulated in a vat or not, he was real. I am real. Simulated vs. Real is pointless in this sense.

Unless you wish to escape the Simulation.

The Reality behind the Politics

We have this pair of labels in the US, Conservative (almost always Republican) and Liberal (almost always Democrat.) There are libertarians and communists, but those are fringe here.

I SAY that there are Relativists and there are Absolutists. Democrats are conservative Relativists and Republicans are conservative Absolutists.

The Absolutist believes that there is a God-defined best practice for all things in the universe. The Relativist believes that best practice is what we agree upon. Absolutists believe that following rules is a good thing. Relativists believe that judging every situation on its merits without looking to the law is a good thing.

A quick aside for Anarchy, Leadership and all that. Anarchy has been given a bad name by conflating it with Chaos. The Absolutist’s greatest nightmare is Chaos. The yin of that yang is Conformance vs. Fascism. Conformity has been given a bad name by conflating it with Fascism. The Relativists greatest nightmare is Blind-Following.

The cruelty of Absolutists is that non-conformists are marginalized. The cruelty of Relativists is that the over-achiever is penalized. The autistic, the artist, the one who doesn’t believe in consumerism is dis-incentivized. So now my position is revealed.

One perfect world would be the hive or colony. All members are identical, therefore there is never dissent. Dissent is uncomfortable, and in the hive it is perfectly acceptable to eat the dissenter. Voila! The discomfort of dissent is quickly gone.

There are a few hallmarks of Fascism:

  • Following the leader is paramount.
  • Simplifying the list of goals is highly valued.
  • Goals at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy are considered most truthful.

Countering these points, we resort to the philosophers of history.

  • Think for yourself
  • Things should be as simple as possible, BUT NO SIMPLER.
  • Transcendent achievement is the ultimate goal.

There is another dividing line amongst the talking head pundits. That of practical goal setting. The practical bloke says … “well … that will never happen, so let’s set our sights on the achievable.” While the dreamer says … “I know it’s currently possible … but never lose sight.”

Noise and Guitar Pickups

OVERTURE

The noise of a passive, linear, single-port circuit is a very simple thing. Single port needs explanation. Simple is a relative term.
Single port means that there is no other input to the circuit. For the pickup this is tricky since the ambient magnetic field of the world is, in fact, a significant port into the pickup. The electric field is a source, but not as strong. That stray-field source will be assumed to be set to zero for this discussion, but I will bring it back and analyze it in another post.
Simple means that, to someone who knows complex mathematics and the Johnson noise theory, it is simple. The pickup will be modeled as either an impedance or a conductance that has a series or parallel voltage source or current source that drives a noise signal. The six words you need to know are Impedance, Admittance, Resistance, Conductance, Reactance and Susceptance. There is a pretty good write-up at All About Circuits


IMPEDANCE

So, it is obvious that you need to know the complex impedance, in detail, of the pickup. The real part, as proved by Shannon using Boltzmann, gives the noise source capability. It is an interesting footnote that it is called Johnson noise because J. B. measured the stuff. Then old Harry did the work to relate it to quantum theory. Along those lines and at roughly the same time, all this randomness was really important because Claude was really interested in how much telegraph data could be shoved through a wire over the background noise. It took 20 years from the resistor noise findings and the information part of the puzzle. But I digress.


MEASUREMENT

Measuring a pickup’s impedance is no small feat. The impedance can get as high as a few Mega-Ωs … it is polluted by the cable that comes out of the pick (or worse, some folks won’t let you hack their guitar apart and you have to measure with tone and volume in the way – how rude!) then finally it is infected with noise that it … well … picks up. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot … the impedance is non-linear due to the iron in the middle so we have to be careful of that factor. The cable pollution is known in the network analysis world as measurement plane management and is a little tricksy to fix up. I have done this by hand and using built-in facilities of an impedance analyzer. The noise removal is (I am boldly stating based on theory, but you know how that goes) easier to remove.


MEASUREMENT PLANE

Hewlett-Packard … er … Agilent … unh … Keysight have a really nice write-up on how to take the fixture plumbing out of a measurement. That plumbing is alternatively known as the test head, test adapter, harness. For a Guitar Pickup it isn’t much of anything, but we can also de-embed the hookup cable. How’s that for nice magic. The write-up correctly uses T-Parameter matrix mathematics to eliminate the effect-on-reading of the parasitics between the meter and the DUT. I mention that here so that you will know that I didn’t just hold my tongue right and fudge the numbers when I get around to presenting numbers.


NOISE

Did you know that at the end of time, nothing … I mean nothing … correlates. OK, so I’m a drama queen. Formally, in the limit as time approaches infinity, the correlation between two arbitrarily close, but still distinct, sine wave signals is precisely 0.0. When it comes time to measure any sine stimulus, as long as it is a little bit away from interfering noise, integrate the sine multiplication (AKA a Goertzel Transform, just multiply by the I and Q of the frequency being tested) and you have the best estimate of phase and frequency of the KNOWN frequency component in the sample. This is the theory part. The math is true, but the practical problem of noise is what I worry about. I am hoping that I don’t have to go to … like … an hour per frequency point.

Rules of the Garage … revisited

It’s been a few years, but hear-up! All that stuff about not locking up the tools (q.v. Fiorina, Carly c. 1999 Rules of the Garage) is real nice, I like it. Here are a few more:

EVERYONE’s system is somebody else’s SubSystem.
EVERYONE’s system is somebody else’s Component.

EVERYONE’s output is somebody else’s input. (like … think requirement, specification, source, intermediate, binary …)
EVERYONE’s input is somebody else’s output.

THERE IS NO WIP, there is only deliverables.

There is only working status and issued status. (NEVER re-open something that you published and call it the same rev)

There is no major or minor change. If the change doesn’t affect anything then don’t make the change. If it affects something, then it isn’t minor. (I know, I know, this one needs tempering with the practical reality of expectation. People love to dismiss change, they hate change, so go ahead and call it minor.)

Don’t mistake revision advancement with maturity. Maturity can go backwards and forward. Revision can only advance. So only make one revision mark. Numeric, Alpha. DON’T use character set to differentiate maturity level.

That’s all I have to say for now.

Today

I’m struggling with how to get a thing done. I’m not talking about mowing the law, I’m talking about dreams. I watched the story of Rick Hall … someone who wanted to be somebody.

He pushed really hard and got kicked out.  The guys who really succeeded (The Swampers) loved the music, but didn’t have some kind of chip to grind with an ax off of their shoulders.

So here I am.  Make it beautiful, don’t fuss too much about it, don’t worry about the mistakes.  But never settle.