Gently floating, cradled by the waves, he slowly flows down under bridges towards the sea, towards the sea he goes. Who could it be, who could it be, that man in a tailcoat? Adieu, adieu, farewell world, farewell to memories of the past, to a dream never dreamt, to an instant of love that will never come back. (The man in a tailcoat (Vecchio frac), Domenico Modugno, 1955, retrieved from lyrics translate.com)

Hi Tommaso, I like the way you have used the tale of the man in the tailcoat to add interest and cohesion to your presentation. Rather than being goalless, I think with the organisation and structure of his mammalian brain he can imagine a future outcome and plan to bring it to fruition. The same specialized structure providing motivation to act. Though his act may seem contrary to the imagined goals of all life, I think he may be seeking to escape the entrapment of his circumstances or escape from physical or psychological pain. He can imagine an end to his suffering that is better than his current state.These can be regarded as closely aligned to basic emotions.

I do like that in your essay you have explained that what are described as goals (in nature) are alternative descriptions given from an external point of view after the outcome, and can be anthropomorphism.( Sorry if I have not paraphrased that well, I don't have your essay open at the moment.) Perhaps the man in the tail coat can be regarded ironically as breaking the tyranny of goalless, purposeless outcomes, with his purposeful goal directed act. Thanks for an enjoyable essay.

Hi Georgina,

thanks for posting part of the lyrics. I was tempted to put the whole translation of Modugno's magnetic short story as an appendix, but I feared that it would distract too much attention from the technical issues of local entropy decrease in interacting, algorithmic mechanisms...

(On the psychological side, I do agree with you that those desperate acts may be motivated by the hope to somehow improve one's condition.)

Tommaso

    You were right not to include the lyrics. I really like the epilogue as it is "... must have triggered a deadly flow of neural microstate changes in the head of the man, with visible consequences on the macro-variables characterizing both his facial expression and his precarious equilibrium on the parapet." (T.Bolognesi), is lovely. I like how epilogue fits so well with the prologue. Not showing the lyrics makes it intriguing. No need for the details.

    I did read the essay entirely. I like the description "a narrative trick" when goals are used for externally considered outcomes.

    Lots of very good, accessible descriptions along with the technical writing. Kind regards Georgina

    Dear Tommaso,

    I'm glad to find you here again!

    I read with great pleasure your new essay and, although I need to read it again to fix some details, I have appreciated the usual originality, elegance and great scientific competence. I share, although from a different perspective and with different motivations, your point of view that the existence in nature of purposes and intentions is unprovable.

    Of course, like any Italian, I couldn't not know the song by Modugno, one of the most beautiful and poignant of our Twentieth century. I did not know that it was inspired by the story of Raimondo Lanza di Trabia, a Sicilian (although born and died elsewhere) of which you have led me to learn about his incredible life.

    Grazie e un caro saluto,

    Giovanni

      Thank you Tomasso! This was a pleasure to read. There are a few other essays I have enjoyed all of which have broadly made similiar points to my own, but yours is unquestionably the most well-written and moving. You have a wonderful sense of timing and pace to your writing, and you write not just to communicate the technical points of the reasoning but also to illuminate the consequences of your thinking for our real, lived experience. Ines called it tragic, and it is perhaps, but I think the appropriate word is beautiful. Simply beautiful work!

      Joe

        Thank you Stefan!

        about the distinction between the perspectives of Physics and Computer Science: under the hypothesis that the physical universe is an algorithmic mechanism, or a collection of interacting algorithms, the two perspectives might in fact coincide!

        More than unprovable, I meant 'illusory'. In particular, the mother of all goals in the biosphere -- reproduction -- is there because a subsystem that accidentally happens to be very successful in reproducing itself will eventually take power, in a population of non self-reproducing and transient (non eternal) subsystems. As Rovelli puts it: "what functions is there because it functions".

        In light of these facts, the notion of 'goal' loses its magical essence and tends to become, in my view, illusory -- just a convenient narrative trick to summarize the described mechanism.

        Thanks!

        Wow! Thanks so much! Between 'tragic' and 'beautiful', my idea was to write an ending that sounded mainly humorous: maybe it is not completely clear, but the responsibility for tragic fall of the man from the parapet is mainly ... mine!

        8 days later

        Hi Tommaso

        What a brilliant idea to open and close the essay with this strange meeting.

        I agree with you that it is all ontological and basically assessing the potential information that exists in the relation between particles.(See also my essay: "we are together, therefore I am")

        Thanks for your interesting and challenging essay

        All the best

        Yehuda Atai

          Hi Yehuda,

          thank you for you message. I am indeed not too sure that it was a good idea to add the fantasy ingredient. I imagine that some readers may regard it as a distracting element, and having the title directly refer to it rather than, say, to the idea of local entropy reduction being achieved by the interaction of cellular automaton mechanisms, was perhaps an unfortunate choice. Good lesson for the next contest! Anyway, I am starting right now to read your essay... Regards

          Tommaso

          Hi Tommaso

          Well, it did worked for me and it caught my attention to zoom in.

          I saw your great and challenging questions in my essay and I will answer them shortly.

          Thanks again

          yuda

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          • Post #19

          Hi Tommaso,

          Your art and physics is a nice mix. I appreciate it, particularly when contrasted with the "bland determinism" dominant in this contest. I imagine the man in the tailcoat is a mathematician, since they have a well earned reputation of tragic endings.

          This essay reminds me of Heinz Pagels who was rumored to have ended his life mountain climbing (no one knows for sure), after his son's death. In Heinz's last book "The Dreams of Reason" he develops the "in Theory" vs. the "In Practice" dichotomy of "reality".

          You Say:

          In practice, however, as the mechanisms (IN THEORY) become more and more complicated, a compact logic formula (IN PRACTICE) is much more preferable for concisely characterising the process at hand, and for referring to it in human-to-human communication.

          I do not think you are as much of a determinist as your essay suggests!

          Please visit my essay where I tried my hand at...(art?)

          Good to be in another contest with you!

          Don Limuti

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            • Post #20

            Hi Don,

            interesting remarks.

            I would be curious to know what gave you the impression that I am not much of a determinist as my essay suggest (all the examples in the essay are indeed deterministic).

            As you write, the dualism theory/practice is perhaps another way to look at mechanisms vs. goals, although I still prefer to look at them in terms of ontology vs. epistemology.

            Thank you!

            Tommaso

            P.S. You say that mathematicians have a well earned reputation of tragic endings. I don't know the exact profession of the person to which Modugno's story was inspired - Raimondo Lanza di Trabia. I know he was a noble and a dandy. In my setting, though, his suicide is somehow linked to that of a great physicist (Boltzmann).

            Hi Tommaso

            Here is my long answer I wrote to you in my essay site, and I decided to paste it here so you get a notice.

            I am glad to remind you some ideas of Teilhard De Chardin which I don't know him well @ deeply. It seems, that he was both Dualist - body vs spirit and held to the principle of Causation, and the Cartesian belief in the total existence of perfect God.

            I am a philosopher that relate more to phenomenology of consciousness; Building a philosophical "floor" on the works of Husserl, Bergson, Ponti etc. My philosophical work is a positive cosmology, (not deconstructionist) a general work in all aspects from ontology through phenomenology to ethics. So I also address to the whole cosmos but in this restricted essay I limit myself to 25000 characters.(it seems I was not clear on that)

            My view is ontogenic and with it when I zoom into the nano level into the Movement-phenomenon itself (regardless whether it is a particle or a wave) I found that the subjectivity, the uniqueness of each movement whether its a grain of sand or a person or galaxie is in the quality of the movement in each of them. The movement (non movement is also an option of the system that consume energy) has attributes like "character", "memory", "structure", "material" etc, and the sum total qualities of the attributes are unique to each movement-phenomenon.

            In this essay I tried to show that reality is continuously being ratified to us internally and externally. Without this ratification we would not possess the assurance that we are unique though we change continuously.

            I showed how the ever changing preset continuous, hold us as self organization and explain the inner self what Ponti or Heidegger and others did not.

            What makes the ever changing present? or in other words of Bergson : what makes the Ever duration, Homogeneous Duration works that Bergson did not solve? He sensed and wrote that Causality does not give enough explanation and could not find the answer.

            Causality is a special case in the occurrence of Phenomenon and in reality phenomena are occurring based on the natural language of Movements. The language of the attributes of Movements.

            As to your last question, since It is all potential information of the possible actions in the relations of each "existent" in the relation, there is a choice of actions (conscious or unconscious) for each of them. This choice I define as "natural choice" bound by the environment. Since each Movement-Phenomenon is finite, the relationships always change the potential choices of action. Once a potential action is chosen the relation change again, and in this way you get a perpetuum mobile of the duration of the ever changing present.

            I think that the Mathematics of physics needs a modeling breakthrough. Its Time to philosophy to challenge science and open our horizon. Maybe string theory will be able to calculate the existents of attributes to a movement smaller than 1 in power of -34 to ratify its existent. We today, ratify the existence of quarks at a nano level of 1 in the power of -24. So, there is a way we have to go.

            I hope I explained some of your questions and our essay are exposed to large (relative) potential readers through this relationship with FQXi.

            Thanks again

            Yuda

            Hi Tommaso - I enjoyed reading your essay - first because it started with a beautiful painting, and second because all your arguments were embedded in elementary Cellular Automata (ECA), a concept that is central to my Beautiful Universe Model . Moreover you start with a quote by Wolfram, one of my heroes!

            Having said that I must say that the mechanisms in my brain are not that well-versed in the actual mathematics you use, and the details (but not the conclusions) of your arguments were lost to me. Its OK - your essay tried to answer the essay contest Question and seems to have done so very elegantly.

            In my fqxi essay I also start out with a river scene, but one more joyful than yours! Poor Boltzmann. Cellular Automata do appear in the very last section, but they are not Elementary - rather than on-off or three-state 2D cells they are spherically orientable dipolar units that act as qubits acting on their adjacent neighbors. As I mentioned Gerard 't Hooft has just proven that Quantum Mechanics can emerge out of CA!

            Wishing you all success in your work and in the contest,

            Vladimir

            Tomasso,

            Good essay. But I'm not sure the man in the tailcoat didn't further confuse a rather complex construction of what is surely a very simple, if important, truth; 'The universe consists of (hierarchical interacting) mechanisms, and a 'goal' is just a convenient lower order description.'

            Does that not abridge the story? I don't criticize the hypothesis but agree entirely, including with it's central importance. But I felt that when clear analysis of how small scale mechanisms could produce the effect was about to emerge the dark and confusing fog, abundant in these parts, seemed to close in. Perhaps I missed some important other point?

            Does what we call an 'aim' not simply emerge as an upper level 'decision', or choice informed by running scenario's from (memories & imagination) giving feedback, with implications on lower level choices (all using the same feedback)?

            I anticipate you agree as it employs the "universal architecture of emergence" you refer to. But, if not, can you elucidate?

            None the less I think you hit some fundamental salient points, right on topic, and very nicely written in plain English. For me those points alone should put the essay rather higher than it is and my score should help.

            I hope you'll read and comment on mine which I see as compatible and complimentary. I link the upper problem of cognitive operations with the smallest 'quantum' scale, identifying a real classical mechanism able to reproduce the 'choice' complexity required.

            very best

            Peter

              Dear Peter,

              your essay is one of the very few left in my folder, and I will certainly read and rate it before the deadline of April 7.

              I am not sure I understand precisely your first remark, ending with: 'The universe consists of (hierarchical interacting) mechanisms, and a 'goal' is just a convenient lower order description.' (Looks like a quote, but I did not find this in your text, nor in mine.) What do you mean by 'lower order'?

              I first tried to understand the difference between 'mechanism' and 'goal' by viewing both of them as computations. A first attempt to discriminate between them purely in terms of computational complexity (they would compute the same function but with different efficiency) miserably failed.

              But I could retain the software-engineering-inspired view that the (mechanism, goal) pair corresponds directly to an (implementation, specification) pair, with implementations expressed in a *programming language* and specifications expressed in *logics* - both potentially affected by undecidability limitations. More importantly: the mechanism exists, it is ontological stuff; the goal does not, it is epistemological baggage, created for convenience, as expressed in the opening quote by Wolfram - a high-level description. (The illusory nature of goals is then quite clear in darwinian evolution.)

              Do you imply that a compact logical characterisation of a mechanism is a 'lower order description' of it?

              In your subsequent remarks you hint at top-down causation. My familiarity with top-down causation in the context of simple computational systems (thus, outside the realm of traditional biology) is still poor, although I am convinced that this powerful trick could greatly boost the emergence of complexity in simulated digital universes, as already suggested by Ellis, much beyond what can be obtained by plain Wolfram-type experiments.

              Indeed, I wonder whether the system of six interacting Elementary Cellular Automata that I have presented, with their ability to locally reduce entropy, could not be seen as a possible rudimentary example of top-down causation, with the whole influencing the local parameters of the parts (as evidenced by comparison with the non-cooperative scenario).

              In conclusion, I may agree with you that the night was foggy, but the conversation with the man in the tailcoat gave me an opportunity to ponder on a number of issues reasonably related (I believe) to the Contest Theme, although I myself would not be able to choose and distill a unique take-away message, or answer (but, given the difficulty of the theme, who could?).

              Thanks, and keep in touch in your page!

              Tommaso

              Hello Tommaso - It is a pleasure to read another of your essays The most entertaining of the bunch, I have to say. Although, the apparently bad end of the object of your story may not bode well for the success of your theory.

              As I understand it, the all-in-all is driven by mundane mechanism, and grandiose goals are just algorithmic short-cuts. In the language of my essay (The How and The Why of Emergence and Intention), this would put you in the camp of those seeing meaning and purpose as epiphenomenal. I must be looking at this from the other end of the micro/telescope - where you see epiphenomenon, I see cosmic intentionality!

              I submit that we both have achieved "proof of concept" - but the fact that two mutually exclusive speculations are both plausible may not yield much wisdom. Before we make our final choices, perhaps you would be willing to dismount the parapet and join me at a nearby cafe for a cappuccino...

              Sincere regards - George Gantz

                Dear Tommaso,

                I finally got a chance to finish reading your very interesting essay. I enjoyed reading it a lot and also appreciated the poetic story around it.

                Is the fact that a random input fed into a randomly chosen algorithm tends to produce more orderly outputs a consequence of the probability distribution of possible algorithms? I.e. that algorithms with biased outputs are more likely than algorithms with maximum entropy outputs? For example there are 70 (?) elementary cellular automata with 4 outputs = 1 and 4 outputs = 0 (if I'm not mistaken), but, in any case, many more rules with an uneven distribution of 0s and 1s in their outputs.

                It's something I didn't really think about yet, but it makes a lot of sense. Thank you for making this point.

                All the best,

                Larissa

                Dear Tommaso Bolognesi

                I appreciate your essay. You spent a lot of effort to write it. If you believed in the principle of identity of space and matter of Descartes, then your essay would be even better. There is not movable a geometric space, and is movable physical space. These are different concepts.

                I inform all the participants that use the online translator, therefore, my essay is written badly. I participate in the contest to familiarize English-speaking scientists with New Cartesian Physic, the basis of which the principle of identity of space and matter. Combining space and matter into a single essence, the New Cartesian Physic is able to integrate modern physics into a single theory. Let FQXi will be the starting point of this Association.

                Don't let the New Cartesian Physic disappear! Do not ask for himself, but for Descartes.

                New Cartesian Physic has great potential in understanding the world. To show potential in this essay I risked give "The way of the materialist explanation of the paranormal and the supernatural" - Is the name of my essay.

                Visit my essay and you will find something in it about New Cartesian Physic. After you give a post in my topic, I shall do the same in your theme

                Sincerely,

                Dizhechko Boris