I had read many beutiful articles in this Competition and this one is included in them. I hope that FQXI choose a writer and make a book with the most beautiful and consistant articles. Really I won't loose those articles.

    Congrats for your essay and the analysis of how we approach and consider the datas, the determinsitic known sciences and the possible extrapolations and assumptions in function of our philosophies. I liked your essay , we need to have this creativity and imagination in trying to respect a determinisn . The actual problem is our limitations , we have difficulties to reach some scales and to measure and observe deeper parameters , so this creativity is important and the generality of models to try to have hierachies converging , regards

      Steve Dufourny thank you very much for your kind words and your positive feedback! I agree that we have to take our own limits more into account, this is something often neglected in theoretical models, in my opinion. The idea did not come out of thin air but is actually a process that I actively practice in my own work with very positive results.
      Sometimes, I have the impression that our abductive way of reasoning is a bit of a self-deceit, pretending we could reach any level of understanding within our life time if we just get some "lucky inspirational ideas". But more scientific humility and putting things into hierarchical relations may actually bring is further -- at least it was key for my own success...

      Best wishes,
      Beige Bandicoot.

          Alaya Kouki Thank you very much!! I am happy to publish my essay after the competition is over anywhere where it is welcome.

            Jenny Wagner

            Do you know of Edward Moore's “Gedanken-experiments on sequential
            machines” paper from 1956? It states that every finite deterministic machine that is considered a kind of black box (like our universe?), the latter being probed only by input- output experiments to figure out its inner mechanics, is equivalent to an arbitary number of other machines that have the same input-output behaviour.

            So definitely determining what goes on under the surface of an assumed-to-be deterministic world is an impossible task from a strictly logical point of view, regardless of how many people figure out some of such a machines' possible inner mechanics (because there are many possiblities that can be determined, but no such possibility can be found to be the one-and-only necessary one for such a black box).

            What you describe in your well-written essay as the hierarchical approach seems to me to be an instant of approximating a solution to a so called “SAT”-problem. The latter is an NP-Complete problem and may not be solvable in general by any deterministically working algorithm.

            Nonetheless, good essay with some interesting twists and turns. Especially your elaboration on addictive behaviour, which in my opinion has some really good explanatory power.

                Jenny Wagner you are welcome, wish you all the best in your researchs. I agree totally about this humility , after all we have deep unknowns and deep limitations philosophical, physical, ontological, mathematical. I believe strongly also that a kind of complementarity could be weel instead of our competitive global system and tooi much isolated thinkers , it is probably due also to our normality accepted in this econnomical system, more this vanity and the bad habits, but the hope exists lol, regards

                  Stefan Weckbach Thank you very much for this great inspiration with your comments!
                  I haven't been aware of Moore's paper but find it very helpful. It interestingly alludes to the ergodicity theorem, which is often required for some robust knowledge gain, but not fulfilled for all processes in nature, e.g. gravity, the most relevant on largest scales, is unfortunately one of them.

                  Indeed my hierarchical knowledge gain idea has to be elaborated in more details in its algorithmic process and it cannot be more than just an approximation as it still contains abductive reasoning steps and our limited resources to gain knowledge as human beings. In my view, becoming aware of the (current) limits of our knowledge gain is also an important insight to gain (e.g. as long as there is no evidence for faster-than-light signal propagation, this is a horizon we cannot cross but should take into account when doing research on information transfer or interstellar travel). There are not too many theories actually taking into account the technological limits when setting up new ideas.

                  While it's true that we cannot guarantee to find a good solution for an NP-complete problem, I personally still prefer a more systematic approach to tackle the problem because, based on a random walk of abductions, we may get lucky but, what is your impression, how likely is that and what results can we use from the path towards success if we fail along the way or don't get further funding to pursue it? How many people unaware of already pursued and failed attempts repeat them just to fail again?
                  But...my guess why hierarchical knowledge gain is not so popular despite its advantages is that it takes the fun and the addictive power to continue out of the process and this is also a major driving point for science: Curiosity and the pleasure of finding things out.

                  Best regards,
                  Beige Bandicoot.

                      Jenny Wagner

                      Hi BeigeBandicoot,

                      thanks for your reply. I think we are pretty much in consent. My comment was merely to highlight that the long awaited “theory of everything” might be out of human reach due to human limitations of understanding and mathematical issues of provability. In my own essay and my remarks on other essays I argue against such a “theory of everything”, but that does not mean that I know for sure that such a theory is out of reach. So, as long as your hierarchical approach is aware of both possibilities, I think it will work (since otherwise beliefs will creep into the hierarchical mechanics and present themselves as secured knowledge – what would bias the whole enterprise).

                      “How many people unaware of already pursued and failed attempts repeat them just to fail again?”

                      Very good point of which I think that it should be considered with more rigour in the scientific community. You are one of the people that work on that (or the only one, I don't know) and I think this work is of huge logical importance for making progress.

                      The addiction-problem is another hugely important aspect in my opinion. Maybe people with a lesser potential to such addictions could work on your hierarchical approach, while people with more potential to these addictions could remain working on their pet models. This would be a double-tracked procedure for eventually coming closer to truth. The third group, people that weren't aware of already failed attempts, may then also join one of the already mentioned paths – if they are convinced that they reached a death-end.

                          Stefan Weckbach Hi AquamarineTapir,

                          yes, it very much looks like we agree and yes, in my hierarchical approach I would love to include our limitations explicitly. Otherwise there is no way to know where the uncharted territory of knowledge lies. Guess that is another good point that should become more explicit: if we cannot clearly point to the regions in the landscape of knowledge that we cannot explore (yet) or haven't explored yet, we may as well go on an abductive path just to end up with an insight that we already knew before!

                          I am waiting for summer to see the clear names, as I guess we could already know each other if you write that you know an entire community tackling the limitations of our knowledge process. Happy to connect as this cannot be over-emphasised.

                          And agreed, people should be able to choose the path they want to go and we can have a hybrid knowledge gain process based on maximising their interests. (From a psychological point of view, I think that maximising people's will to work on these challenges could also maximise our insights!) That is what is currently done to some extent, e.g. by giving money to a lot of individual small-scale projects to look for any groundbreaking discovery but also to make long-term investments into larger systematic projects, e.g. in flagship projects like the "Blue Brain project". I just wish people on the smaller-scale projects could get more sustainable funding as you cannot expect groundbreaking work on a short-term basis...

                              Hi, BeigeBandicoot. I agree that

                              Jenny Wagner The role of science is thus deeply entangled with the role we attribute to ourselves.

                              Science is a human endeavor and its development is attached to ours. In my essay I comment on the importance of considering human development and interaction in order to make science different, and better. I invite you to take a look: "More diversity and creativity for a different science".
                              https://qspace.fqxi.org/competitions/entry/2330#control_panel

                                  5 days later

                                  Jenny Wagner

                                  Yes, I agree. I think the reason is not because there is no rational basis in one or the other part of the communication participants, but there are combinations of people whose communication habits simply do not fit together and this then produces major misunderstandings and leads to death ends. I guess there are many things implicit in our lines of reasoning that we should try to make explicit when communicating about scienctific “facts and fictions” for the goal of clarifying how we came to our statements.

                                  In my own essay I tried to push the reader to the fact that we often confuse beliefs with knowledge. An interesting question would be whether or not this also works the other way round cognitively: confusing knowledge with belief, means doubting things that are considered secured scientific knowledge. This surely would necessitate to make auxiliary, yet unproven assumptions about reality, what is not per se forbidden by the scientfic method. I write this because I read your very interesting comment on the essay site “the geometry of counterfactual science” and as you wrote, the question is indeed how far one should go with such auxiliary assumptions, especially when they are not provable experimentally in principle. Or stated differently: where should we establish the line between facts and fiction?

                                  By thinking a little bit about that question, it seems to me that at least a – yet to be discovered? - fundamental theory of “all there is” is doomed being unable to logically derive its fundamental base assumptions unambigously. Here your essay's approach gets most interesting for me, since for that case (maybe in the future, who knows) we are then faced again with the epistemological question about whether or not these fundamental assumptions are merely auxiliary assumptions – because by their very nature they will not be provable or disprovable by any means!

                                  Now let's suppose we cannot find such a theory of everything (due to arbitrary reasons). Then the question still remains, and more pressing, where we should draw the line between facts and fiction. Moreover, one instant of that question is surely whether or not such a theory of everything is at all implicit and hence allowed by what we call reality. The only answer I have found to that conundrum is to always differentiate between temporary, secured knowledge and mere beliefs. I cannot imagine how it could be other than that for human beings trapped in a world that only allows the frog's eye perspective. I think a way out of that problem could indeed be to rediscover the “God of the gaps” as it occasionally was termed by some people. Without applying a certain religion to that assumption, I would call for re-examining this old-fashioned idea again on the basis of the human conditions and its lack for a true bird's eye perspective. And especially on the basis of the above mentioned epistemological gaps, gaps that obviously are an inherent part of the reality we live in.

                                  Now comes my main point: in my opinion, I we want to make progress on all these issues, we at first must intuitively find a consistent scheme about whether or not reality allows for a transcendent realm of existence. A realm where those gaps do not exist. This is surely a religious, philosophical, or better termed, a metaphysical task, but I think not doomed right from the start. I think it critically hinges only on whether or not one is willing to accept that logics can transcend itself such that it logically infers that reality cannot have been emerged out of some illogical assumptions, like for example “absolute nothing”, “chaos”, “randomness”, “miracles”. The latter, namely “miracles” is what some people think is what led to reality. Either it existed forever, or it emerged from some reduced “reality”. It is clear that there are no other, more “rational” options if one wants to explain “it all”. But there seems to me to be one exception: for explaining all these miracles we can also assume an intentional creator who is superior to causality and to any logical systems (at least to all humanly knowable systems). That's what my essay is about. I would like and be happy if you could comment on what I wrote there – since I am interested in your feedback!

                                    4 days later

                                    Hi BeigeBandicoot,
                                    I highly appreciate your work, which is very close and understandable to me:
                                    “Yet, too frequently, Nature ploughs up our promising guesses and lets many an idea go awry”.
                                    My essay is devoted to the key facts that lead to new key laws that are not noticed by the generally accepted concept. But these laws may form a new science of studying reality without studying abstractions. I think you will also be interested in the elements of the deterministic functioning of the quantum solar system on the new laws that are given in the appendix, and which are similar to the quantum laws of the functioning of the Hydrogen atom.
                                    I wish you success!

                                      Vladimir Fedorov

                                      Thanks a lot Cerulean Jackal,

                                      interesting points that you raise. Will have a look at your essay. I am curious how to study reality without abstractions because someone once said that "a 1:1 map is no use for a traveller".
                                      All the best for you in the contest as well!

                                      Bests,
                                      Beige Bandicoot.

                                          typically when a conversation happen is like a zipper of turn taking of replies , i could imagine a scheme that include the one you sketched /teached Jenny Wagner for all kinds of interacting situations (between people and programed interfaces)

                                          for example i'm not sure i have rated your essay properly i may have done it three times already
                                          the same when people speak loudly or via chat sms, there is a specific, rithm : tiiiic taac tiiic taac at equal paced , the same with giving a grade i press the link complete the reasons and send rating accepted .
                                          the message communication goes straighforward , regarding of consequences ,
                                          an other example editing a file "do you want to delete this file?" -"yes" - "are you sure?" - "are you really really sure ?" - "yes!!", -"it is going to be deleted permanently" - "definitely yes- who programed this interface?!"

                                          the same with a conversation between two people,
                                          A-"hello"
                                          B - "you have greeted me with the word hello i'm not sure i've heard it right" ,
                                          A -"yes i've said hello you ears functions properly"
                                          B - so "you want to start the conversation with the word hello" ,
                                          A - "yes hello is the first thing i speak"
                                          B - "hello is recieved now is my turn to say something " -
                                          A - "go ahead i'm preparing to listen "
                                          B - "good day"
                                          A - "you have made an answer containing two words"
                                          B - "yes there are two words indeed- good day"
                                          A- " it is your final decision to settle for this reply"
                                          B -"yes i'm pretty sure i want to answer with good day"
                                          A - "good day recieved,now is my turn to make a reply"
                                          B - ...

                                          here the timing is still tiiic taac, maybe ideally should happen a lot of fast checks than going at the next step .the same with learning/science: is this the right evidence?, yes, there are little issue here - they have this and that potential solutions- have you verified the corresponding cases, yes , than this is an acceptable evidence- however with a dose of skepticism , in case this and that happen.

                                              cristi marcovici
                                              Dear Amaranth Lion,

                                              thanks a lot for this inspiration! If I understand your idea correctly, this to-and-fro questioning could be a suitable way to implement the hierarchy of models that our knowledge is based upon. And yes, depending on our current wisdom, there is a time dependence in the system as well that I did not address in my essay. Refinements of categories is possible and even a generalisation of the most fundamental layer in case we want to question the very basics.

                                              Bests and good luck for your essay as well!
                                              Beige Bandicoot.