Chaos and Form

[c0de]

Jimmy ate the quarter...

Jimmy's eatin quarters now???

Well, he's been crackin' corn for long enuff...

i say cut 'em sum slack

...what does me bein a girl explain?

the "meow"ness

Hey now... Don't make me call in my crocagator friends for a "favor" lol.

your crocogator friends???

excuse me, but they were MY friends
BEFORE they even knew who you were

 

[immortalitylost]

Ah, yes, the meowness. That it does, my friend. That it does...

 

[Penelope]

Everything in the universe moves from Chaos to Form and back again. Chaos being the stuff everything is made from before it is created and Form being everything that exists in the universe once it has been created. Once something has a form it can only move back to chaos, it is inevitable. A person will die, a star will burn out, and a pen will run out of ink. All forms are transitional. The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds true here, that an ordered system will always become more disordered over time. However, the ordered state’ mentioned here is what we often assume form is the product of, as order is the opposite of chaos ... Returning to the question of the existence of order, put frankly there is no order in the universe, there is instead a constant movement between chaos and form and back again, as I have mentioned. What is referred to as order is in fact the co-dependence of everything on everything else. Nothing could exist without this co-dependence, and it is precisely this that we mistake for order.

Hi TU. Welcome.

It's the pits, isn't it?:
Trying to put complex thoughts into clear, concise language ... ?

Try this ...

1. Throw out the classical concept "form." It is a meaningless word, scientifically.

2. Stop using the word "order" like a concept which describes reality (it does not), and use it in its more informal, everyday meaning - only. As describing an ultra-simple system which - at face value - appears to have a nice, clean linear organization.

3. Use "chaos" as a key concept, but in its modern (Chaos Theory) sense only, not as the opposite of "order."
(In Ecological Theory, "chaos" is a natural organizing principle {one of two} operating all "systems" in the universe {systems which have any degree of complexity at all}. Chaos is a kind of occult-order - describing nonlinear "systems" in their relatively-dynamic aspect. Chaos embraces randomness without being unstable. Chaos is neither stable nor unstable, so it is always open to change and to new directions. Indeterminacy is a positive part of its nature. It is how the human brain works, and how any complex reality is able to become more complex still, without having to field a larger quantity of data than it already has to process. {Chaos exploits entropy and counters inertia.})

4. You need to add to this equation the idea of "symbiosis."
(Though your word "co-dependency" is pretty close - if, and only if, you dissociate it from linguistic dualities. Think whole ecosystem, every part relying on every other part. {Symbiosis exploits inertia and counters entropy.})

& & &

How "systems" work:
(These modern concepts have been around at least 40 years. I ran into them in high school 30 years ago: Ramon Margalef, Perspectives in Ecological Theory.)

1. Every physical system in the universe, mineral or organic, must have both "matter' and "energy" in order to exist. All science starts there. But what most theoreticians miss, according to Margalef, is that ...

2. Matter and energy interact.

3. Doing so, they initiate a "system."

4. Within this system, matter and energy become "regulated" (to at least some degree ... the more complex the system is, the more it is self-regulating).

5. There are two kinds of overlapping (i.e. "global") regulators (two subsystems) - operating within any system:

a. homeostasis (symbiosis, or a network of negative-feedback loops),
​

b. asymmetry (chaos, or a stepwork of at least one - but usually multiple - positive-feedforward ratchet-catches).
​

 

[nitelite]

An interesting conversation going on here. As you suggest Penelope the leader post labors under some common assumptive errors. Chaos is not chaotic. Order is only apparent if you freeze time, something Thomas especially fails to grasp. There is no order and chaos (theory) describes only unfolding potential not certainty. How that potential unfolds is subject to variables that are unmeasurable. Our minds are used to working with the perceptions we evolved to survive as animals, not high-faluting concepts that we try to grasp here. It is very difficult. Super-reality is still beyond the horizon of even the most astute minds. Yet this quest to perceive the truth is beautiful in its own right. Perhaps excepting when some are not just wondering for the sake of wondering but to build bastions against the inconsistencies and doubts that haunt their subconscious battles of need V intellectual honesty.

 

[Penelope]

& & &

Back when my grandfather was 86, I remember him at Christmas as being as spry as he was at 70. Back straight, head high, walking with a confident stride every day to the Boulevard and back, working half-an-hour each morning in the yard, straightening the kitchen immediately after meals. If you saw him fixing a martini before dinner - rather than pouring a glass of water or red wine - you knew it was Friday. Gramps wouldn't have been Gramps without these routines.

That March, I got a call from my cousin:
You seen Gramps lately? He looks awful.

Sure enough. His back was slumped, he sometimes walked in baby-steps, and there were other little things. When the family gathered that summer, Gramps was even worse. Ignoring the yard, leaving the kitchen till later to clean. Now walking fulltime in baby-steps, and walking to the Boulevard only on days he feels "up to it."

We took Gramps into his doctor. Battery of tests. Doctor tells us:
Find nothing wrong with him.

We know Gramps, and we know better. Got to be something. Something the doctors missed. Four years pass. We celebrate Gramps 90th birthday.

Back still slumped, walking in baby-steps, Gramps walks to the Boulevard only on nice days, works rarely in the yard, leaves the dishes in the kitchen till later to clean. But Gramps still makes a martini for himself on Friday.

Gramps health, at 90, is fine. What took us, in the family, four years to realize ... is that Gramps is an old man. He did not age gradually from age 70 to age 90. But his system was aging, invisibly, all along. Then, in his 86th year ... Gramps visibly aged from age 70 to age 90 - just like that - over a four-month period.

Apologies, Gramps, for depicting you as a "system." But this is how "systems" work. They do not follow nice clean linear laws.

& & &

Homeostasis

a1. Think: thermostat of a furnace. Set at 70-degrees Fahrenheit. When room temperature falls to 68-degrees, the furnace turns on - blasting warm air into the house. When the room temperature reaches 72-degrees, the furnace shuts off.

a2. Negative-feedback loops. Think: sonar. Send out a ping. If you get a ricochet-ping back, you know some object is in front of you.

a3. This regulatory subsystem promotes relationships, interdependency. It utilizes inner and outer stimuli to fashion elemental negative-feedback loops in order to regulate the internal climate of the whole system. And to generate and maintain a symbiosis between all parts of the system. Like a hologram or a stem-cell: within every part, there is a map of the whole.

a4. This is a relatively-static subsystem.
("Relatively" because there are internal changes going on, all the time, but they are slow to develop. But when change does occur - when critical-mass is reached - then bang! Change happens super-quick. {Remember Gramps.})

a5. This is a relatively-determinate subsystem.
("Relatively" because most days the whole system appears to be totally balanced. Harmonious. There is minor flux from day to day, which in-and-of-itself is insignificant. Random forces disrupt the stasis, all the time, in minor and controllable ways. What happened yesterday, you can reasonably predict as something that will also happen today. Yes, until some critical-mass is reached and something unpredictable transpires ... {Gramps, again.})

a6. What is a negative-feedback loop? Negative-feedback produces information. Like the sonar. A negative-feedback "loop" is ... the system actively seeking more information - rather than passively accepting only what data it gets by accident. Sending more signals out, to get more signs - more traces of what's out-there - bouncing back. The subsystem does this to fine-tune adjustments to the environment. In short, this subsystem seeks "intelligence" about its environment. This is what "intelligence" is, at its most basic level. The production of more and better negative-feedback loops, more and better information.

a7. Why negative-feedback and not "positive-feedback"? Positive-feedback is like a domino-effect. Send out a signal: it trips something in the (inner or outer) environment, which trips something else. This starts a cascade, a contagious action (like an epidemic), a physical hysteria. It destroys, rather than preserves, produces no intelligence because nothing feeds-back to the system. And this epileptic-type fit - the domino-action it triggers - is stopped only by entropy. Positive-feedback leads to entropy, negative-feedback leads to intelligence.
(Negative-feedback promotes synergetic behavior. Symbiosis.)

a8. Think: Einstein's Relativity Theory. Think: Deep Ecology. Think: James Lovelock's "Earth-feedback Hypothesis" & Lynn Margulis' "Symbiotic Planet." Or checkout this NewScientist article or Wetware by Dennis Bray, or an earlier post of mine.

 

[Penelope]

Country-X and Country-Y each have a population of 1,000,000 people. This year, each country faces 3 major crises upon which it has to make serious decisions for the future - in April, in August, in September.

Country-X brings business and society to a halt for all of April and all of August and all of September. The whole one-million people spend each of these months studying the problem, at hand. And then they get on a million-person conference call to make a decision. Lot of new ideas emerge but are drowned out by majority conventional solutions.

Country-Y, each of these months, selects 1000 people. They study various aspects of the problem in committees of 20-persons each, then representatives from each committee get on a conference call to make a decision. During this time, business and society continue at near their normal pace. A couple new ideas get instituted.

Is Country-X or Country-Y going to be in better shape a year later after these crises have passed?

& & &

Asymmetry:

b1. Programmed imbalance in a system allows that system to adapt more quickly to changing circumstances.

b2. Chaos relies upon random events to spark change and keep the system open and flexible. The subsystem seeks a situation of controlled randomness regarding the number of stimuli which are processed. Relying on neither totally random event-processing nor absolutely fixed event-processing.

b3. This subsystem promotes communication. Via "self-organized criticality," the subsystem fosters the creation of a "small-world network." It sits on the tipping-point between order and disorder, between stability and instability. And puts more stress upon the system. But this is a stepwork. It adds a new processing-layer. It simplifies the system, relieving stress in other areas. Rationalizes the system, lubricating the system's moving parts, making it more efficient at processing data and responding to novel situations.

b4. This is a relatively-dynamic subsystem.

b5. This is a relatively-indeterminate subsystem.

b6. This subsystem is a "positive-feedforward" subsystem. (A stepwork subsystem.) Think ratchet-catch in a gear-system. You move forward one slot in the gear. But it doesn't slip back again to the previous position, because of the ratchet-catch. The subsystem is designed so it will only move forward (or upward), not backward. Even though it relies on randomness, this subsystem is not 100% unstable. It is only as unstable as the system will bear. It trades temporary higher stress for a quicker learning curve. Positive-feedforward is a "phase-shift" state. It is a syntropic subsystem.

b7. Why not feedforward of a "negative-feedforward" type? It is like asking one question and getting only one answer. Negative-feedforward is a "phase-locked" stable state (not a phase-shift state). It learns, but learns extremely slowly, in a plodding linear way. Inertia-driven. It induces repetition, not rationality. It utilizes old reaction-patterns when facing new situations. It is not a ratchet-catch form of communication. It drops new data into old pigeonholes. It creates pigeonholes within pigeonholes to store data, a dispersement/disbursement totalism. Supersymmetry. It starts communication afresh after each answer. There is no building process. No stepwork. Just an increase of more and more data to have to deal with, utilizing the same old mechanisms.
(Whereas, asymmetry and chaos accelerate the ability to meaningfully change and the ability to adapt to changing circumstances.)

b8. Think: Quantum Mechanics. Think: Chaos Theory. Think: Decision Theory. Or check out this NewScientist article on "self-organized criticality" & "small-world networks".

 

[Penelope]

Religion is a system ... regulated by the divine.

Strong regulators and weak regulators:

Think: estrogen and testosterone in human beings.

Women and men have both of these regulatory hormones in their physiological system. The adrenal glands, and other glands produce small quantities of estrogens within both women and men, and produces small quantities of androgens (testosterone) within both men and women.
(These are 'weak' - or natural - regulators. Epicene - the quantity and disbursement is shared by both genders, shared by both women and men.)

Women also produce a large amount of estrogen from their ovaries (but not testosterone).
Men also produce a large amount of testosterone from their testes (but not estrogen).
(These are 'strong' - or artificial - regulators. Artificial or segregative, because the quantity produced and its affect upon the organism is not share by both genders, not shared by both women and men.)

& & &

Western religions tend toward 'strong' - segregative - regulatory systems:

Symbiosis privileges neither matter nor energy.
Symbiosis exploits inertia and counters entropy.

'Paganism' (in its purist conception: 'strong gaia') privileges matter over energy. (Enhance 'life,' hinder 'spirit.')
Like symbiosis, strong-gaia counters (fights-down) entropy.
But strong-gaia surrenders to inertia (to 'phase-locking'). It actually champions inertia (it utilizes a form of archaic thought: 'eternal return').
Asymmetry, as a regulator, is nullified (via 'negative-feedforward'). There is only one regulator: strong-gaia. ('Goddess.') ('Matriarchy.')

Chaos privileges neither energy nor matter.
Chaos exploits entropy and counters inertia.

Monotheism (in its purist conception: 'strong-force-t') privileges energy over matter. (Enhance 'spirit,' hinder 'life.')
Like chaos, strong-force-t counters (fights-down) inertia.
But strong-force-t surrenders to entropy (to 'supersymmetry'). It actually champions entropy (it utilizes a form of archaic thought: 'fatalism').
Homeostasis, as a regulator, is nullified (via 'positive-feedback'). There is only one regulator: strong-force-t. ('God.') ('Patriarchy.')

& & &

Western religions (in their purest manifestations) are - by their nature (or by their 'unnaturalness') - excessive and self-destructive as 'systems.'

True systems utilize both regulators (are 'epicene'). And do so in a healthy way.

Homeostasis (symbiosis) is weak-gaia.
Asymmetry (chaos) is weak-force-t.

All healthy systems contain both weak-gaia and weak-force-t as subsystems.
As should any healthy religion.

 

[Radical_Reformer]

Everything in the universe moves from Chaos to Form and back again. Chaos being the stuff everything is made from before it is created and Form being everything that exists in the universe once it has been created. Once something has a form it can only move back to chaos, it is inevitable. A person will die, a star will burn out, and a pen will run out of ink. All forms are transitional.

Errr, not quite. Universal disorder is always increasing.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics holds true here, that an ordered system will always become more disordered over time.

You got this part right, but after that lots of confusion (you are increasing entropy ).

However, the ‘ordered state’ mentioned here is what we often assume form is the product of, as order is the opposite of chaos.

Okey dokey

This is how we think as a society, in opposites, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, right and wrong.

Nah, now you are going into the intangibles.

In fact to describe a object or person as something creates its opposite description.To say something is beautiful creates the existence of ugliness. If an action is good then there must be actions that are bad. This is how we make sense of the world, and by we I don‘t just mean people, I am also including animals in this. A predator understands itself as such because its prey exists as it does, we humans understand ourselves as such because there is a world of other forms for us to interact with and depend on.

You have moved from physics to psychology, often a dangerous path for drawing analogies.

Often our viewpoint of the world is divided into the subject (a person) and object (a chair, a pen, a car). We understand ourselves in relation to the objects in the world, and the objects exist as they do because we perceive them as such. As a result our understanding of forms is dependent on our perceptions of them. All forms are also dependent on chaos too, as without chaos there would be no forms, and without forms there would be no chaos, it is a cyclic system. But if we move beyond the dualistic viewpoint of subject and object and see things as only chaos and form then it becomes easier to see the best in things without creating the worst. To see all sentient beings as the same is to respect all life in a way that has no need for labels above nominal usage.

And now from psychology to philosophy.

Returning to the question of the existence of order, put frankly there is no order in the universe, there is instead a constant movement between chaos and form and back again, as I have mentioned.

if there is no order in the universe, how could the Second Law of Thermodynamics prove that disorder is always increasing . I love your logic.

What is referred to as order is in fact the co-dependence of everything on everything else. Nothing could exist without this co-dependence, and it is precisely this that we mistake for order.

Co-dependency, I knew we would be back to psychology soon .