You seem to agree that currency by government is morally evil. The result is inflation or the low interest rates fostered by government in an attempt to have their cake and eat it without tax.
How would you change the system to have currency or money be viewed as a social contract that government could not abuse?
JH,
You are not going to find perfect. What you are looking for is balance. The point I make in my entry is that just as the body reflects the dichotomy of energy and information, so is society, so as we reached the point where government no longer worked as private business, ie. monarchy, we are now finding limits on banking as a private practice. This is not to say it's bad, think Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. But the point which needs emphasizing here is that government and finance are as separate as the nervous system and the circulatory system. We don't want short term executive type thinking running our heart rate, though it does affect it. Then again, systems do get old and corrupted, broken etc. So we need to keep that deeper understanding of the physical dynamic and do what we think is best for those we value. In nature, some of it is completely local and some is light coming from a billion miles away and water coming from a thousand miles away.
Personally I live on a farm and exercise and break racehorses. It doesn't make me much money, but the farm doesn't have any debt beyond the bills and I find the more you have, the more you have to worry about. So I'm putting up a sort of vision thing and figure time will decide otherwise. Most people who know me thought I'd die young, but that didn't happen.
Regards,
John M
Also I usually prefer discussing more elemental questions, because of all the emotional issues attached to politics, economics and religion, but this question was one I couldn't resist.
Here are some of my entries in previous FQXI contests;
The Problem: We See Time Backward
Not that you would want to read them all, but it gives some insight into how my mind thinks and what I find interesting.
Regards,
John M
JM
I think I'm beginning to see our difference. Reading between the lines, I think you are following the Keynesian derived doctrine (political/government). As the essay suggests, the Keynesian derived doctrine predictions have not only failed, the opposite of their forecasts has happened. I have limited understanding of economics, but I can recognize Friedman's predictions were correct. Therefore, I think his model (monetarists) is the better model. I argue this without real economic understanding, but based of the science that the model that predicts is better regardless of how weird it sounds.
I suggest your next step should be to get Free to Choose. It is a book and a 10 part TV series (DVD) (comes in 2 series - the first/older is much better, the second is nearly worthless). The end of each segment has his opponents asking questions and making statements with Friedman replying. As near as I can tell, everything you are addressing is in the series. You may know more than I at the end of the series as you have a real interest in the subject. BTW part of Friedman's solution was to abolish the Federal Reserve.
I left a copy of this on my site, also
Friedman's view of the 30s is different than your's.
As a teenager on a farm, I had a pacer. Her foals helped finance my college.
John H,
While I haven't made economics an obsession, I do have some idea what has been going on. The monetarists have pretty much been one half the cycle all along. The problem, as I've pointed out, is everyone wants to save piles of money and so excess money becomes necessary to keep things going. Presumably Volcker was the big monetarist to bring the supply of money back into line, after the 70s, but it only really worked when the Reaganites started borrowing hand over fist. That's Keynesian borrowing the piles of excess wealth back and running it through the system and now we are where we are. Like I said, it's really mostly politics and the two sides balances each other and no one is going to do anything different until it finally blows up.
The reason there was a shortage of capital in the 30's was because the credit bubble blew up and Hoover and the Fed at the time were looking at what inflation was doing to Germany and refused to pump alot of extra money into the system, like they did in 2008.
Regards,
John M
I think Friedman's view is different. The start of the depression about the end of 1929 was a normal correction. What the government did was to restrict or stop the flow of gold (the currency backing). This amounted to the opposite of using debt to increase the velocity of money. That is, it acted like deflation by taking money out of the system. This caused the normal (3 year) correction to become a decades long major catastrophe. I think Friedman's analysis has been accepted but repressed by the politics for it blames the government action for being the bad guy. Enter FDR. He attempted to get the money flowing but didn't fix the core problem.
John H,
You forced me to wikipedia that. Yes, you are right and so is just about everyone else. There were an enormous number of factors. Primarily, as the Austrians said, lots of debt in the 20's and as the monetarists said, insufficient money creation after the bubble popped. Apparently the Fed was limited by regulations to 40 percent gold to cash and was reaching its limits. I would argue the credit expansion prior to the crash was a lot bigger than any previous, so it likely would have been a significant depression anyway. Especially given the various external, weather, WW1 issues. It was a big mess!
Regards,
John M
A thought provoking essay John..
But I guess we should expect that by now. I hope you do well, and that your message gets across. In this particular contest; I think your ability to editorialize issues benefits you and us more than your scientific knowledge and insights. If not for the ability to move people emotionally, nobody could communicate certain points adequately to give humanity the wake up call it needs to survive.
I think you went off the tracks a bit, extemporizing about the role of God as either limited in scope or of distant concern for humans. I assure you that it is easier to know everything at once, in some regards, than it is to have a detailed knowledge of all individual things. But the ability to immerse oneself in that state of consciousness does not preclude the possibility to examine details of things, if that is one's proclivity. The example that comes to mind is this.
When playing complicated musical passages, one focuses on the start notes of phrases, rather than each individual note, then you fill in the gaps. If one does try to play fast and focus on every note, it falls apart. In a Piano improv workshop, Alaudin Bill Mathieu suggested that one could free up the mental capacity for right-hand improvisation by focusing on what the left hand is doing, and keeping that regular. In some regards, it is the very distraction from the difficulty of the complex task that lets it proceed automatically.
It is known that sometimes Mozart would deliberately distract himself with billiards, while transcribing music, which would still his mind's internal chatter by tying up the part of the brain that would otherwise get in the way, so that again this work could proceed automatically. I guess that's all for now.
All the Best,
Jonathan
Hi John,
Your essay shows deep thought about our current human condition. Although you say some may be offended, it is better to question and correct rather than wait for disaster. Your comments on the need for balance between opposing forces is right on. Society depends on meeting the needs of people and we can expect conflict as more people with powerful communication tools start to suffer in-balances. You are right, the original concepts and functions of our institutions have indeed been corrupted. Government and banking are intended to serve. They work well when people know and care for each other, but as you point out money is no longer an exchange medium. It is an end unto itself and a symbol of power. Community bankers used to know people and lending was an exchange of trust to help people. Originally government didn't even have the power to tax because that was not its primary purpose. Representatives used to represent but they lost contact and see us as a vote to get to keep their jobs.
Thanks for reading and commenting on my essay. I see some small differences in our thoughts but we totally agree on information and energy being two sides of the same coin. I proved (at least to myself) that information and energy are fundamentally related. The June 2012 essay is now: Barbee, Gene H., A Top-Down Approach to Fundamental Interactions, FQXi essay, June 2012 and vixra:1307.0082 revised Mar 2014. Also, I also proved to myself that life is a consequence of quantum mechanics operating in an information based reality. That essay is now: Barbee, Gene H., Life from Information, vixra:1311.0124v1, FQXi 2013 essay contest.
We think a little differently in the following regard: I view the laws of nature as information transitions and energy as the result so I tend to believe that information is pre-eminent. I believe in creation from zero energy (a flat cosmology demands this). Several authors, one being Charles Seife, have made the statement "the universe appears to be a giant thought". I tend to agree but I also agree with your thoughts about absolute knowledge. If she exists, can't she just be a devine friend?
If you have time: Barbee, Gene H., On the Source of the Gravitational Constant at the Low Energy Scale, vixra:1307.0085, revised Feb 2014. Prespacetime Journal Vol. 5 No. 3 March 2014.
Jonathan,
I did go into a bit of a spiel there, but something like what you are saying is where I'm trying to go, that the essence of that universal being is also necessarily elemental, rather than lots and lots of information based and that in fact lots of complex information is part of that dynamic cycle of creation and dissolution, which does then lay down those layers and create more interactions.
To a very real extent, we have many 'voices' in our heads and life can often be a process of deciding which to listen to, when. Whether they are background chatter, or that idea just hiding right out of sight, or those rude comments which offer themselves up, or even the dark fears, or the happy little pops.
Often my work tool is an eleven hundred pound animal and I have to completely zone out and lose all focus and simply let the pieces fall together, with what is my executive function as little more than a cloud of awareness, with a checklist of what needs to be accomplished. The horse itself doesn't focus on much of what its body and legs are doing and so like any hand tool, I have to keep it balanced and going at a proper rate, etc. Then I'm trying to essentially get the horse zoned out and relaxed at it as well. Not to mention there are usually several other horses and riders and have to keep them all in some degree of order and sense when things might be going wrong, such as one horse planning to kick another. So there is both the bottom up detail and the top down strategy, as one whole process, even in that.
Part of the problem is that modern society requires individuals to be focused entirely on specific jobs and not question the top down strategy, yet when those actually at the top and making the decisions start doing things that are shortsighted, self-centered, corrupted, etc, we don't necessarily have effective feedback loops to correct them. How often do people at the top ignore feedback? Sometimes it's necessary, but sometimes it is ignorance. I think in this contest, we need to consider how those feedback loops function in society and ways they can be fixed. Right now, I see the obsession with monetary gain as the loudest voice in the collective head and since it has created an enormous bubble of notational value that looks like it might pop in the not too distant future, then finding ways to lasso it when it's down this time, is a necessary goal and that is sort of why I take my entry in the direction that I do.
Regards,
John M
Gene,
In some of my other essays I make a basic point about time, which runs significantly counter to most conventional thinking, that it is not the present moving from past to future, which physics distills to measures of duration, but the process by which future becomes past. For instance, rather than the earth traveling Newton's flow, or Einstein's dimension from yesterday to tomorrow, tomorrow becomes yesterday because the earth rotates. Now not only is spacetime based on measures of duration and so much of current cosmology, but history and thus civilization is based on that narrative vector, so I know I'm going against the flow with this. Yet if time is an effect of action, it explains alot. Rather than trying to figure out how to transition from a determined past to a probabilistic future and assuming the future must already be determined, since the laws of physics only yield one outcome of many possibilities, or taking the opposite tack and considering the past remains probabilistic and branches out into many worlds, with every option, we can just accept the fate of the cat is determined by actual actions and then recedes into the past.
Now this makes time an effect of action, similar to temperature. While we think of temperature as a cumulative effect, it is based on lots of individual actions. With time we measure lots of individual actions, but wonder what the universal rate is, ie, Newton's absolute flow. The problem is there really is just the cumulative effect of these separate actions. Thus it is like temperature, lots of particular actions adding up to a larger effect. One is rate of change and the other is level of activity, so time is to temperature, what frequency is to amplitude.
Now you may not agree with this, but suspend judgement while I tie it into our current discussion;
Cosmology is flat, as the positive curvature of gravitational contraction is balanced by the negative curvature of universal expansion. So where is the additional expansion for the universe to grow, if this effect is balanced by gravity? We can only measure the light of distant galaxies that hasn't been drawn into gravity wells, so it only travels the 'high ground' of 'expanded space,' not the gravitational 'low ground.' Not to mention that Big Bang theory says those distant galaxies will recede over time, but that implies the speed of light is not affected by this expansion, so it can't be a relativistic effect, since C is not maintained relative to this expanded space. Thus it's only increasing distance in terms of lightyears. Now we are at the center of our view of the universe, so it makes more sense that redshift is an optical effect and in essence is the cosmological constant to balance the effect of gravity and so explain why space is ultimately flat.
What this means, is that rather than the universe beginning 13.8 billion years ago, with all we have to explain, from how it began, to inflation, to dark energy, it is instead a cosmic convection cycle of expanding radiation and contracting mass.
Among other things, this goes to the relationship between energy and information, as well as past and future. Energy is that light expanding out, radiating away from old forms and eventually coalescing into new ones, as the information/structure becomes ever more dense and defined, eventually to break down and radiate away, or be shot out the galactic poles.
With gravity as an overall effect of energy coalescing into mass, rather then just a property of mass. This explains why the outer parts of galaxies spin as fast as the inner parts, since it is a vortex of the radiation, far out into intergalactic space starting the process and eventually falling into this whirlpool and why the outermost stars lack heavy elements.
Now I do get lots of grief for this and prefer not to dig the hole any deeper than necessary, so think of it as a form of story of how all the parts might fit together and not all the ways it conflicts with established models.
I put this up to show we are likely quite far apart on some fundamental ideas, but the quest is the same, to try and fit all the pieces together and not have too many imagined elements, such as multiverses, to explain it.
I think a big part of the strength of information as a field of study, is that our knowledge is expanding exponentially, yet when you look at how society functions, those controlling the energy, control the information. Bankers and oilmen tell politicians what to do.
Now a bunch of horses need my attention, because most of the other people are doing weekend stuff and I'm the designated worker.
Regards,
John M
Thanks John,
I appreciate the time taken for such a detailed and thorough response. We are, in many ways, on the same page with how society needs to change, to support human survival and the evolution or development of a better way. First we need to survive long enough for that positive change to happen, which is by no means automatic.
More later,
Jonathan
Jonathan,
That there are no 100 percent guarantees is a fact of nature and in some ways, is a good thing. That reset button is part of the process. It makes one go under the surface, so to speak. It makes you get into that sense of all. The spiritual DNA.
Regards,
John M
The present state of cosmology is very confused so no one has a basis to give you grief. The problems I see are: No one really knows what space and time are. We only can see 4% of what is apparently out there. We really don't know what dark matter and dark energy are. The standard model has three sets of particles, not one. Many believe in inflation but where.why does it stop? etc. etc.
I spent a serious amount of time on WMAP results and primordial nucleosynthesis and find both full of constants that they don't admit to.
I wrote a paper proposing a fundamental gravitational theory but no one seems to care.
Gene,
I originally got interested in physics as a way to make sense of how society functions, but then I found the rules of how society functions determine a lot of how physics as a field of study has evolved, what is understood and what can be discussed.
There has to be that conceptual foundation and yet prior knowledge is necessarily more limited than current knowledge, so these rules and models get laid down and then become the filter through which subsequent information is processed. Then the better the models get, the longer their flaws go undetected and the more committed the society of physics gets to them. So the process then has to get that much further off the tracks before it breaks down enough to do a complete enough review. As I keep arguing, we need to think of time, not in terms of the point of the present 'moving' from past to future, but the physical dynamic turning future into past. While it seems simple enough, it does undermine the physical premise of spacetime, even if the math still works, so I may as well be talking another language.
The math of epicycles worked quite well too, but the physical premise of giant cosmic gearwheels proved unnecessary.
I would have to say up front that understanding gravity is beyond my paygrade, so I tend to avoid discussions of it, because as with most topics in physics, one could spend a lifetime trying to learn all the details. My personal view of gravity is that it is an effect of energy coalescing into mass and as such is part of the broad spectrum of causes, not one particular force. Much as releasing energy from mass creates expansion and pressure, be it nuclear, chemical, structural, entropy, etc, the amount of energy occupies more space relative to the equivalent amount of mass, so put it in reverse; How does the energy go from intergalactic light to the black hole of crushing pressure. I suspect it's lot of things, from magnetism, to momentum, to structural order, plus all those relations between radiation and subatomic particles we are only scratching the surface of, all working along the spectrum which relativity models as the geometric contraction of space.
Then there is the topic of this contest, which is in physical terms, a very broad topic, as the diversity of the entries prove.
Regards,
John M
Dear John!
I liked your essay. It inevitably conveys essential well-formed thoughts which regard and can attract the interest of a broader audience. Your longer comments also are sympathetic for me, due to those also informatively express your wide-scale interest, knowledge and wisdom inside.
I welcome too, your mentioning the top-down bottom up 'logic', due to it is vital to understand also for the complexity of energy/information transfer in an organism either realized and may be controlled voluntary, consciously or operating only behind naturally balanced.
(Because I'm an IT expert therefore, this topdown problem much times turns up. When I was a young student in the University I had a heavy debate with my programmer teacher and I questioned: - How should be one able to sketch a plan of a program structurally well organized from top if he has nothing information which kind of basic elements are at his disposal from which he needs then build/write a concrete program? He answered me, that is not necessary to know when planning. I couldn't then agree, so I got fail '1'. Now, I can partially agree theoretically, due to a discretion of my insufficient information given in my question. I did not put there that clause - ... if I were the planner and the programmer in one.) I think, my teacher was partially right in his theoretical statement, and I failed my question. However I think, the fact remains that much problems are raised by this theoretical truth making which have been waving yet in the religious, political, scientific systems for governing successful group organizations. Surely, there need to be stratum of knowledge which ones should have to have to do their works at their proper places, not only for their self-interest but for a broader scale of goods and those works are can be structurally shared even so being been co-working. I think, a planner or leader need to know as much about the bottom up working of the system as how one be able to make a successful guiding plan from top to bottom. Otherwise one can plan system/systems which should work only from top to bottom governed albeit worked out by well-thought out planning systems somehow independent from or completely subordinating the bottom, so probably never fulfilling both can be balanced.
You also mentioned my favourite viewpoint written in my essay pointing a comparison between a societal organization and a biological working of a human body.
I think, this similitude as a Universal model is vital finally (or as a renewed starting point)to recognize, however that is also very essential to apprehend and re-consider: - What are our cells pays to each other for their co-working to keep a whole organism healthy? What if when a group of cells or some individual cells not in their right place try to gain dominion over a whole complex?
At the moment albeit we should be at the start line to recognize the UNIVERSAL model, however until we do not apprehend that too, it is not a right goal (at least beyond reason to achieve ) to overcome ourselves! That is beyond reason to overcome a Universally and unconditionally given well-working, self-sustaining NATURE.
All what any religious message could convey - The LIFE, THE EXISTENCE IS UNCONDITIONALLY GIVEN AND IMMORTAL! NOT ONLY THE SPIRITUAL BEINGNESS, THE FORMLESS SELF IS IMMORTAL, BUT THE WELL BALANCED NATURAL PHYSICALLY ARRANGED NATURE from its bottom to top IS IMMORTAL! At which apex can be the UNIVERSAL NATURALLY ORGANISED MAN, who is able to recognize, apprehend himself, and can keep governed his existence from top to bottom well balanced! IT NEED NOT TO BE PROVED only EXPERIENCED!
The questions are not WHO is or WHO are the GODs! Whether he/she has male or female characteristic. Some religious interpretations really can be outdated and sometimes seriously goal oriented. But the real message behind unequivocal for every one of us!
As Aristotle ever said, and I can agree - THE GOD is - the self-thinking thoughts what ability is inherently and also unconditionally given for the MAN!
The utmost WISE one needs only to know - WHAT HE/SHE DOESN'T WANT TO KNOW and WHY!
So, I agree, and liked! "...So if God is in charge, she apparently dosnċ µt want to know everything..."
I agree with you also the essential statements you exert such as are:
"..Information is dynamically complex and complexity tends to become unstable beyond a certain level.."
"..We frequently build out levels of complexity and then struggle to maintain them and manage their consequences..."
However, I should be in disagreement with you some of your statements or at least the deduction you made, concerning the 'Absolute', 'Void has no form' and
'We are fundamentally linear creatures.'
"..So knowledge is a function of the detail .." I think, depending on how one conceptualize the details. But, in that meaning the Absolute - as the unconditional existence itself - doesn't depends on the details those (I agree) '..lost for the absolute.."
"..The void has no form. Sorry Plato.."
I have some questions for you to test and answer for yourself:
Can you think on - nothing, no think, no thing, no signal, no noise - in the meantime you are inhabiting a form of your physical body? Try it! What can you sense, see when you contemplate the void? What does this experience mean for you?
"..We are fundamentally linear creatures.." "..we are linear, object oriented thinkers, .."
We are fundamentally NOT a linear creatures! Just you wrote much about the time flowing back and forth from past to future and backward too, and how " ..individual organisms die and pass on their genetic code.."
Our present consciousness is conditioned to think that or so! I tried to give some mentioning in my essay - independently from our absolute existence -
We are fundamentally not living in time! Our present consciousness however need to some pre / post processing not to act and react just-in time. However how much it can be artificially delayed and over loaded our natural electric body circuits or that can be substituted with some kind of else basic material... s it in question yet, I think running by some kind of experiments?
"...while the larger reality is one of balance and process.." to understand where is the optimal boundary for us to know, what and why, and how to use it well. I hope at least, this is so, truly. :)
Best of all,
Valeria
Valeria,
I'm trying to read your essay, but you say a very lot. It is like being in a large and complex building with no floor plan. You need to both organize and edit much more. Each of us is a world unto ourselves and yet the lines of communication between each other are very limited. Writing is like a telegraph wire in a fiber optic age. As I point out, too much information starts to cancel out and become noise. Personally I have been working all morning and have to go to a memorial for an old co-worker this afternoon, so like all people, my time and attention is limited and I'm overwhelmed with too many things to do. Obviously you have many thoughts and ideas about how the world works, but you need to focus them somewhat. Yes, we are not linear, but we have to communicate both linearly and narratively. So you have to incorporate that non-linear thermal effect as a narrative arc and not just as a bunch of thoughts winding around each other.
You have a lot to say, but keep in mind that life has spent billions of years creating this level of top down/bottom up complexity and we have just a few decades, if we are lucky, to figure it out. So I understand why you want to put so much into everything, but a lot of what nature does, is to organize and edit. George Gantz just submitted an interesting entry and while there are parts I don't quite agree with, given my thoughts on top down theology, it was a masterful job of presenting a complex reality in a way that another mind can absorb, without lots of loose ends that lead ones thinking onto other subjects, not following what you are trying to say. When I write something, I like to try and pretend I'm another person and read it through, to see if my mind will follow the logical thread to the end, or are there parts that are distracting. I try to cut out the parts that distract. If they are more important than your central thesis, then you need to write a on different topic. Focus, organize, edit.
You do express a lot of interesting thoughts, so make them sit down and take their turn.
Regards,
John M
Hi John,
I think you identified a big problem going forward as getting everybody to recognize and act according to our "collective self interest". Re-using plastic bags, for example, is something I see in the city (and now do myself) that is an indication that people have a recognition of this principle although it might seem like (and probably is) a token gesture in the big picture.
Your essay was a bit of a ramble, but a good read that resonates quite a bit with my thoughts.
Best to you
Colin
Colin,
Thanks. It's a matter of perspective. Life can seem to be a token gesture, if we box it up too much. In order to make sense of the little things, we need to keep them in the context of emblematic of bigger things, not just lost in the shuffle of bigger things. Holographic, as well as digital.
I tried to stuff a lot in there, so it's nice to know it plays well.
Regards,
John M
Very good, John. I love your concept of the "elemental self pushing out like a sprouting seed." I also like the way you summarize life as like a sentence, in which we must deal with the way we put things together between what came before and the punctuation at the end, and then go on to address the substance of the topic -- the nervous system of governance and circulatory system of economics that drive our daily lives and shape the future. I wonder, though, if you place too much stock in a "coronary" attack breaking down the system in which the rich and powerful become ever more so. You may be right, but that's not what happened five or six years ago and next time thrombosis strikes it might be too late for the masses.
