Scarcity - A New Theory of Everything

In order for your theory/concept to become a real incarnation, or, in my opinion in order for it to reach that -1, humans would need to achieve balance among themselves, not in all things, but broken areas around the world, where values equal cause. While the effect is generated by 1 living with 2 and 2's living with 3's, and 1 living with 3, etc... each understanding they equal the whole. I don't see how humanity is even close to that type of understanding.


As I sit and contemplate how your concept could even be feasible, there would have to be a balance between everyone for the group, and everyone for themselves at the same time. How could humans achieve that balance. Communism will not allow that type of freedom, and though Capitalism could, most cannot see that type of balance is in fact possible because of personal greed. And then we humans must throw in all the different religions, we truly have oil attempting to mix with water, and as we all know it does not happen. But here in this thread we must at least attempt to find an answer, we can all find ways to see how it won't work, but how can it work, what must be done, or how can humanity advance to that -1.


Well first, in order for humanity to grow, individuals must have the ability to dream, and then, that individual must have the opportunity to turn those dreams into a reality. While the collective must find a way to never demand, or take, from others.... The fly in the ointment, is religious and non religious individuals attempting to mix, again oil and water. Unless there is a concept that both can believe in. People can agree without to much violence (lol) that people absolutely need, food, water, clothing and Shelter, plus the ability to keep oneself comfortable inside their dwellings. If humanity can come to that simple agreement, while also believing we do not have the right to take from others, we can start moving towards that goal. However, how can we reach that end when we have individual internal conflicts regarding religions. Once again whether to believe or not believe, or whether one agrees with the way another prays or the fact that another does not pray, that mix can never sustain, never. So can balance be found. If so, how?


Could balance be… that we are our brothers keeper, that we and the individual are exactly the same spiritually. Or to say it another way... If you do something bad, instead of your spirit being held solely (soul) responsible, each person around the globe asks the One/God/Ethos/etc, that ‘I’ be held responsible for ‘your’ transgression. And your mother asks that she be held responsible, your father, brother, sister, children, neighbors, strangers... Each asking the One/Ethos/God to place your 'sins' onto each of them, individually, but also collectively. Would that cause the balance humanity seeks? We are all free individually to achieve individual success, to dream and to make those dreams a reality... While at the same time completely conscience of the fact that not only is all of your family going to pray to be held responsible for your sins, but so are all your neighbors, customers, friends, and all of humanity. So together we may believe or not believe, but we all ask in our own way to be held responsible for everyone else's sins... ie, the whole world every single day asks to be held spiritually accountable for your/our sins. Would that allow for a -1 alliance? Communism or collectivism is achieved on the spiritual, while Capitalism is achieved here in the physical, would that equal balance? Because though you are working to achieve your dreams or goals here in the physical, would you do so at the expense of others because the entire community will pray to be held responsible? Who among us would do something 'bad' we know our Children are going to beg the Ethos/One/God to be held responsible for, or our Grandparents will, someone you respect or someone you love will? Perhaps that is the balance that is needed for humanity to reach that -1?


In truth I have been personally living that spiritual goal for a very long time.


--Charles Marcello


[edit on 27-12-2009 by littlebunny]

There are a number of replies I've wanted to get to in this thread, but I decided before commenting I wanted a strong understanding of what this idea suggested as a system rather than simply discussing my prerogative as it related to this symmetric-structure.

As I spent more time with the concept, doing more research into philosophy / cosmogony / cosmology, I discovered several, frankly, odd similarities between this idea and several older esoteric areas of study:

(larger copy @ 1563 x 2059)

When the idea originally came to me I saw it as largely mathematical in nature. The philosophy grew around that mathematical representation as I looked at the symmetries that fell out of it and contrasted the numerics to the ontological underpinning of historical events. The notions of self, group (the components of life as a good to be consumed), nature, & choice (life as exigency) representing the root precepts.

I had literally zero experience with anything esoteric.

After going through a multitude of Western philosophy texts I started to dig in to older cultures and was taken aback at how similar ancient metaphysical thoughts were to this scarcity hypothesis (SH for short).

Since I only have a minimal knowledge of mysticism I'd love it if people here would review the above diagram and confirm for me if I'm correct with the associations I'm making. I've gone through several books on the Tao / I Ching / Bā gùa, Kabbalistic lore, Hindu-Tantrism, and Sufi-Islamic & Bahai cosmology, but I'm sure I'm still only scraping the surface of these rather complex doctrines.

There are other correlations I've found in other beliefs, but rather than shooting too wide I want to stay focused. Once I've done a little more research in the above mentioned schools-of-thought I intend on checking whether SH continues to relate to other philosophies.

Anyways I hope people enjoy the above diagram, if there are any questions, please feel free to ask. I look to forward to comments!

Thanks!

[edit on 7-3-2010 by asala]

I've recently also updated the Fig. 5 graph, as originally discussed here, to better express how I see this idea hooking up to modern-day science & cosmology in a very direct and measurable way.

(Fig. 5, v1.8.7 @ 1442 x 2048)

I think it's worth spelling out very explicitly that this is rather staggering in the sense that the above graph potentially "explains why we live at a time when the energy density of empty space is roughly the same as the energy density of matter."

Somewhat more shocking is that this even has a relationship to a rather recent doctrine, which seems to be somewhat popular with the ATS crowd, called the Law of One (as originally pointed out to me by Cherryontop, here, & another individual who sent me an anonymous email). While investigating the Tao / I Ching / Bā gùa, Kabbalistic lore, Hindu-Tantrism, and Sufi-Islamic & Bahai cosmology I was interested to see how it meshed with new-age concepts. Amazingly there does seem to be overlap:

(Curiosities pg.2, v1.8.9 @ 1548 x 2042)

Since the above diagram references a number of other figures here's a list of links to help quickly view them:

Four Seasons of Scarcity & Sentience -

1. Primary graph v.1.8.5 (Fig. 1 @ 1548 x 2038)
   
2. Addendum v.1.8.6 (Fig. 2 & 3 @ 1594 x 2084)
   
3. Omni cycles v.1.8.3 (Fig. 4 @ 1368 x 1628)
   

[edit on 19-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

I look at those diagrams and gather data, and I wonder about this question: is that the way it actually works or is that the way it should work?

In other words, if me and you built ourself each a universe, we would probably need to set some laws down between us so that our universes can co-exist.

E=mcc is a general start.

Originally posted by dzonatas
E=mcc is a general start.

Let's take that further and say E=mcc is a misspelled way, kinda like LOL being greeky abbreviated, for:

Energy = MaSS

This shouldn't be to hard to see how that was done.

So, for a universe here and a universe there to co-exist, they share this Energy = Mass law. One says to the other, "If you give me Mass, I'll give you equal amount of Energy." The other one says, "And, reverse, so it's mutual."

Guess we'll need to define critical mass, so one doesn't accidentally starve the other, mutually. I can guess that would about a third. When one reaches a third of mass, then critical mass is reached.

That would seem like it would be easy to destroy another universe based on if one could overcome their critical mass faster than the other could recover. A nuke.

That's the game.

Originally posted by dzonatas
In other words, if me and you built ourself each a universe, we would probably need to set some laws down between us so that our universes can co-exist.

E=mcc is a general start.

The idea does suggest that basically there are points in the universe's history where there's nothing but massless particles and energy. So in a way the relationship between matter and energy is, as you suggest, a foundational glue between the types of universes described above.

What I was alluding to in this post, in Fig 3.1, is that basically all of these "worlds" can be seen as coexisting in a single universe just at different times. Which is interesting because if time isn't linear it means all "worlds" can exist simultaneously.

I made line-mappings in Fig. 3.1 to show that the world Asiyah corresponds to Q3 (which would map to density 2 & 3), Yetzirah corresponds to Q4 (density 4 & 5), Beri'ah maps to Q1 (density 6 & 7), and Adam Kadmon (density 8 & 1).

[edit on 20-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

Originally posted by Xtraeme
Which is interesting because if time isn't linear it means all "worlds" can exist simultaneously.

Time isn't linear, yet it takes to add a constance into the E=mcc equation in order to understand that, which is to understand that there really is no constant.

The easiest proof, yet probably most complicated, is to measure time between periodic elements. I think I mentioned it somewhere that if you measured the mass of elements per 3D space that it doesn't equal the energy expected within 3D space-time, which could then relate to any number of dimensions.

Think of each stable element a "world" such that there is something linear between each world, except that each linear dimension is not of the same rate as the others. With this concept, we could look at the elements in an entirely different way of how mass propagates throughout space when mass is matched to a unit of time.

This is a word for this computation, and it is called a simulation.

[edit on 20-2-2010 by dzonatas]

To continue a thought from this post, I wanted to show a potential mapping between SH and the Law of One (or LOO).

(HQ version @1900x1200 / 64-bits)

Also this image includes several fixes to Dr. Krauss' diagram. The approximations for when the "solar system formed" (which is about the same as when Earth coalesced at around 9.2 Ga), the point where we exist "now" (~13.73 billion years), and when "our sun dies" (~18-19 Ga) were off in the original diagram by about 2 billion years. There's still a great deal of contention over when the first galaxies formed, but there's some evidence to suggest this happened as early as after 1 billion years though more recent research is showing fully formed galaxies at about 2.7 to 3 billion years after the 0-date. So I didn't move this mapping.

I also felt it worth pointing out that life formed almost exactly when the energy density of matter matched the energy density of empty space. This coincides exactly with what SH predicts.

[edit on 25-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

edit glitch... "this spot reserved"

[edit on 25-2-2010 by dzonatas]

reply to post by Xtraeme


Could we say then that dark matter is unused states of consciousness (in a physical universe sense)?

That's probably not quite a fair question, yet fair to ask to compare what you said here:

I also felt it worth pointing out that life formed almost exactly when the energy density of matter matched the energy density of empty space. This coincides exactly with what SH predicts.

Let's say one combines elements of fire, ice, and dark matter, and what is left behind is dark energy. This would mean if we played these backwords, then it would seem like a cosmic recorder.

Originally posted by dzonatas
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

Could we say then that dark matter is unused states of consciousness (in a physical universe sense)?

That's probably not quite a fair question, yet fair to ask to compare what you said here:

I also felt it worth pointing out that life formed almost exactly when the energy density of matter matched the energy density of empty space. This coincides exactly with what SH predicts.

There's an expression that sums up what I think you're getting at rather nicely, "I say that a rock is a primitive form of consciousness. They say consciousness is a highly advanced form of mineral."

As for what SH has to say about dark-matter & energy it's best to first look at how these things are presently understood in the physical sciences. The most simplistic view of dark energy is the notion that it's simply the "cost of having space": that is, a volume of space has some intrinsic, fundamental energy. The density of dark matter in an expanding universe decreases more quickly than dark energy, and eventually the dark energy dominates. Specifically, when the volume of the universe doubles, the density of dark matter is halved but the density of dark energy is nearly unchanged (it is exactly constant in the case of a cosmological constant). Under this scenario, dark energy would ultimately tear apart all gravitationally bound structures, including galaxies and solar systems, and eventually overcome the electrical and nuclear forces to tear apart atoms themselves, ending the universe in a "Big Rip."

Since dark matter isn't built-on the atomic model that we understand to represent mass it's possible that dark matter is the one thing that survives in a big-rip scenario. Since dark energy is repulsive and dark matter is attractive it's possible to imagine that at point (a) in Fig. 5 that dark matter reaches singularity, or in terms of Penrose's WCH the Weyl Curvature is conformally invariant and tends to 0 as time goes to infinity & baryonic matter decoheres to such an extent that it becomes a part of the background radiation.

So in terms of SH "dark matter" may in fact represent a primordial "Self" as mentioned in Fig. 5 as "intelligent massless particles." However since this is all conjecture of the highest order I simply left it as, "___ (Intelligent massless particles?) as self" in the diagram."

It's really difficult to say with any clarity what that point will look like in concrete terms, but certain abstract elements (self born, peak choice, group divided out) are knowable.

Let's say one combines elements of fire, ice, and dark matter, and what is left behind is dark energy. This would mean if we played these backwords, then it would seem like a cosmic recorder.

I'm of the opinion that information precedes manifestation and if this is the case then energy as an abstract concept has in it the seeds of baryonic structures.

[edit on 25-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

Originally posted by Xtraeme
There's an expression that sums up what I think you're getting at rather nicely, "I say that a rock is a primitive form of consciousness. They say consciousness is a highly advanced form of mineral."

I would call it Gia's Serpent. "What goes around comes around."



Now, we are "talking."

..., ending the universe in a "Big Rip."

Trance DJs call that music. I call it infinite rainbows. Guess it depends on who's in the mood to dance and who wants to play.

Since dark matter isn't built-on the atomic model that we understand to represent mass it's possible that dark matter is the one thing that survives in a big-rip scenario.

I wouldn't worry about that. There are things that have never touched this world, and yet we can 'phantom' them.

Since dark energy is repulsive and dark matter is attractive it's possible to imagine that at point (a) in Fig. 5 that dark matter reaches singularity

Depends on if the singularity has an infinite property or not. If not, it is a dot --- just more dark matter. Time went both ways at the same time... how else do I say this? An instance.

... baryonic matter radiates away into the background radiation.

See, radiates.... and people thought they couldn't see music. Trance-mute-at-ion -> Transmutation.

It's that simple and people have a hard time to accept that. It's ok, we bank on it.

all conjecture of the highest order I simply left it as, "___ (Intelligent massless particles?) as self" in the diagram." It's really difficult to say with any clarity what that point will look like.

Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought it back.

"I love you, I'll kill you."



"With nothing in my left hand, and everything in my right hand."

I'm of the opinion that information precedes manifestation and if this is the case then energy as an abstract concept has in it the seeds of baryonic structures.

Obviously, these "baryonic structures" are music notes we create in order to understand each other even when the lightest touch kills. One false move.

The truth doesn't hurt; that was just the only lie.

Accept my alchemic poetry, the politest way to "talk about" the above.

[edit on 25-2-2010 by dzonatas]

reply to post by badmedia


This is one of the posts I've been thinking about for quite a while now.

Originally posted by badmedia
Now I'm going to reply to the things which are political in nature in the OP. I have some disagreements with you there.

I spent a lot of time trying to interpret what should/could happen at the crossover from Q3 to Q4 because it's easy to construe "end self," "beginning choice," and "peak group" in a negative manner. "End self" comes across as particularly scary.

Good or bad though the whole reason this philosophy seems to hold water is because it's symmetric. Meaning if we can overcome nature ("end natural exigency" at point (a)) that means all of these concepts must have an "end," as seen in Fig. 2 below,

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/6373be5670fc.png[/atsimg]

To gain a better understanding of what this idea as a system was conveying about the "end" stage I focused my efforts on better grasping "end natural exigency" and through understanding its properties began to develop a better picture of the meaning for the "end" of "self," "group," and "choice."

The easiest way to start to grasp this is by imagining a world or universe where "end natural exigency" is simply an impossibility. Thinking along these lines helped me to construct Fig. 3.1,


From this we can see that in a universe where "overcoming nature imposed exigency" is anathema there can be no aesthetic. Likewise in a world that's naturally self-ordering, the creationist reality, there can never be "competition" or entropy.

So through negation and contrast we gain a bit of an insight as to what these symmetries are telling us.

What fascinated me early on is I had realized there were both positive (as in a good outcome), neutral, and negative interpretations for each of these points. For instance "end natural exigency" can be seen as rather depressing if we envision this to mean "the universe comes to an end through a `big rip`" as suggested by current WMAP data & hinted at in Fig. 5.

On the flip-side the ideal or good outcome for "end natural exigency" is the notion that nature's rules no longer apply and therefore its ability to act as a source for exigency is extinguished.

It was through this line of thinking I realized the Z-axis in Fig. 1 represents "consequence" as visually depicted below,

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/03d0fb99eae2.png[/atsimg]

Each position in Fig. 1 has both good & negative connotations. It can either oscillate up or down, remain fixed in a given position, or behave chaotically.

With this as a ground-framework I think it's possible to show that our viewpoints aren't that different.

The base of all society is found in the individuals. And each and every government and system which has failed has failed because that system forgot about the individual. It became what you said is "Sacrifice" for the system. And the individual became slave to the system, and thus slave to the elites who ran the system. Because they eroded the base of their society, the individual. Take out the bottom floor of any building, and every floor above it will come tumbling down.

This entire paragraph is clearly in response to the following segment from the original post,

Exigency of 0 implies the end of nature enforced scarcity locally but global to humanity. However since value (to be produced & reproduced) reaches infinity it also suggests all people must somehow sacrifice more than they each collectively receive.

I believe there's a simple misunderstanding here because I really don't think we're disagreeing with each other.

Indeed you're correct the self is the foundation.

As elaborated on above there's a neutral, good, and bad way to interpret "end self." One way to gain an understanding of these qualitative aspects is to look at Fig 3.1.

In a universe of "self-hood" (i.e. the Nietzschean reality) the goal is complete independence, self empowerment and "voluptuous pleasure." This goes hand-in-hand with the notion of decentralization and the power being vested in the smallest unit rather than consolidated at the top of a hierarchy.

Self is supposed to "end" at the completion of Q3. This means the positive (or good consequence) is the "self" achieving the goal of unlimited self-empowerment. Since this also occurs at the point of y=-1, which indicates the greatest good to be consumed for the group, this tells us something rather important.

It's saying to achieve the greatest good for the group requires empowering all people such that there's no longer a need or desire to satisfy the self. If every person is infinitely sated, such that self is no longer an issue, then the only thing remaining is a focus on the group or assisting others.

This is the goal I'm advocating.

The negative interpretation of "end self" is terrifying.

Recall that in the case of "end natural exigency" if nature can't be tamed this then implies the universe will eventually rip itself apart. Similarly if the "self" is incapable of being completely filled this means some person, organization or thing will ultimately accumulate all power and won't relinquish it under any circumstance because its personal goal is to possess unlimited value to be produced and reproduced for its own benefit.

This is why I'm urging people to focus on "reducing natural exigency to 0" for all people. This pushes consequence into the positive. Whereas simply reducing natural exigency for self is neutral. Decreasing natural exigency for self at cost to others is negative.

To give an example, if a person found a way to tap something like zero-point energy, or managed to design an over-unity engine, and then chose to give it away freely this would have a positive consequence since it would help to empower all "selves." Conversely if a person came up with such a system and sold it to a power-conglomerate, which then chose to hide the results to continue to reap big profits from other more scarce natural resources, clearly this would be a negative consequence.

So there are two very well defined polarized outcomes for y=-1 (indicating life as a good to be consumed for the group) on the unit circle in Fig. 1:

1. The complete self-empowerment of all of people (positive)
   or,
   
2. the utter domination of all things by a single entity (negative).

While #2 may not sound particularly useful for the "group" this is because the implication is self can't be overcome. So it becomes an end-point rather than simply another position continuing the process indefinitely.

Another way to understand what may happen at point (d) is to consider the "worlds" in figure 3.1, as just that, different universes. Based on objective observation we likely live in the scientism reality as seen in fig 3.1. Meaning, potentially, something else lives in the "Nietzschean-ubermensch 'verse."

If something lives in that reality then at the cross-over that thing ultimately achieves its goal and, very likely, bleeds out in to our world. Obviously there are a number of very old belief-systems that describe just such a scenario happening in the end-of-days.

Frankly I'd rather avoid that kind of outcome and the only way I see that happening is if we achieve the positive consequence for y=-1, which is the complete self-empowerment of all people.

[edit on 27-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

(cont. from above ...)

reply to post by badmedia


So finishing the thought from the previous post, the reason I wrote,

... since value (to be produced & reproduced) reaches infinity it also suggests all people must somehow sacrifice more than they each collectively receive.

Is to indicate that traditionally we see "value to be produced & reproduced" as indicating the middle class. These people are the backbone of our workforce and it's empirically true they get less than what they put in. A company doesn't hire an employee to give them perfectly equal remuneration. The design of our economic system is such that we hire others for the purpose of getting more out of them than what's given back as compensation.

It's only through these people that the rich retain their wealth.

Throughout human history the entire goal has been to shift the workload to something else. Whether that was a beast of burden, natural-forces (i.e. windmills), slaves, employees, chemical/nuclear-processes, or more recently machines, the goal has always been to find a way to spend something else's energy to increase our "good to be consumed."

Meaning if "value to be produced and reproduced" goes to infinity then something has to give more than it's getting. So by extension this hinted if we're to accomplish this on our own, humanity has to somehow give more than it gets to hit the point of empowering all selves, which would culminate in our ability to control the processes of planet Earth (0 exigency).

Now that I've hopefully made my thoughts on this a bit more clear, I can address the following,

And when you are talking about politics, you are talking about systems. And a big disagreement I have with your assessment is that all systems have a place and time - no, they do not.

What separates what I would say are acceptable systems and unacceptable systems is decentralization or centralization of power. Centralization of power is what creates an elite class. Because the system by default gives these people the power.

The whole point of this entire concept is to say that hierarchy is inevitable.

This is a core premise of the idea.

Yes, certainly, there have been points in human history where there weren't gross imbalances between those who enjoy life as a good to be consumed versus those who provide that lifestyle, and SH accounts for that. If you notice in Fig. 1 at points (c) and points (a) we have 0 value to be produced & reproduced and 0 good to be consumed. This means there's no good for either the group or the self and therefore each person is contributing as much for themselves as they are for others. So the system is in equilibrium -- a classless society.

As I elaborated in this post,

In the here-and-now of the 21st century "wealth at birth," still largely determines social status. In switching to a pure meritocracy we would exchange one class system for another. One where those who are the smartest and strongest percolate to the top; a lower tier of people who are middling in talent; and a bottom tier of those who, whether through personal fault or because of genetic disposition, find themselves licking the boot-heels of the upper echelons of society.

When I said "the machine manufactures classes" I meant that we as humans fall in to social classes because as a group we collectively, though perhaps unconsciously, promote societal stratification. I suspect this is in no small part due to the marriage of scarcity with a mode of moral reasoning – particularly cultural value-systems. For example in the past humanity strongly believed in theocracy. Thus our ancestors lavished monies on religious authorities and places of worship. Later humanity chose to believe that certain people were blessed by deities or felt that certain individuals were greater than the common man. So the proletariat gave an inordinate amount of public wealth to kings and queens. Now we have a society that votes people in to position based on popularism. Thusly we throw money at celebrities and politicians.

Like any class-based system where social class is strictly defined, a meritocracy can just as easily be a dystopia as it can a utopia (ie/ read Michael Young's, Rise of the Meritocracy).

To assume that we'll do away with hierarchy when we overcome material scarcity is naive. As I attempted to illustrate here,

Consider that many millions upon millions of years from now, when humanity has the ability to fundamentally convert matter to energy and energy back to matter perfectly recycling all transitions (potentially beating the 2nd law of thermodynamics -- See Figure 1, point (A) in the OP); and when man has the ability to replicate & create anything whether it be cloning an exact copy of yourself, creating a planet, or summoning in to existence a TV or what-have-you:

Scarcity will still exist.

Why? Because there is no way to replicate the exact instance of the original Earth. Put another way there is only one original NY. Even if we can recreate Earth exactly as it currently exists and drop it in to another system, exactly modeled on our current solar system, there would still be only one original Earth.

Due to this people would still have battles over property and the value of a house would be subject to the whims of the individuals bidding on it. For example, the house in NY on the original earth would necessarily be worth more than the copy because it would be known by all parties as the first, authentic incarnation. So the qualitative association is what would create the value despite the two houses, environments, conditions, etc., otherwise being physically identical.

Thus scarcity still exists as a concept in peoples minds and because of this future people will still need some mechanism to determine resource allocation (likely a stored social value system like money).

Now let me explain where this is really coming from.

A = A

They're not equal.

They're two separate things though identical in almost every way, but they're two separate instances (IE. one is on the left, the other is on the right). Thus we create scarcity and inequality even when it doesn't exist. We seek out difference wherever we can find it.

Now imagine if you could even remove that. If we can do that we haven't removed a real scarce thing, we've removed a part of human psychology.

So with regards to your statement that,

And a big disagreement I have with your assessment is that all systems have a place and time - no, they do not.

Basically if something doesn't have a time and place that means the system is fundamentally asymmetric and then the entire thing breaks. Meaning a marxist-unitary style system has to occur at point (b) for complete self-empowerment to occur at (d). Otherwise without point (b) you never get a singularity which then recreates the entirety of reality.

[edit on 27-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

(cont. from above)

To appeal you as an engineer, since it's perhaps easier to understand this through algorithmic evaluation...

As well, just because a system may appear to work, doesn't mean it's doing the best job and so forth.

And when you are talking about politics, you are talking about systems. ... What separates what I would say are acceptable systems and unacceptable systems is decentralization or centralization of power.

Government is without question a monopoly. This is why I'm continually impressed by the foresight of our founding-fathers. They vested as much power as they could in the monad rather than placing all jurisprudence at the top in the Federal government.

Consider that decentralization has always had the benefit of encouraging individuals to be personally accountable, while simultaneously making it much more difficult to do a power-grab.

On the downside it decreases efficiency because it requires more work from each party since all people are given an equal voice. In computational terms we can think of this as the "handshake problem." If we have five nodes all talking to each other it isn't half as efficacious as if they had instead used a delegate that piped relevant information down to the sub-nodes (i.e. client server model versus distributed computing).

Meaning, working in isolation would more than likely result in a lower quality of living in terms of goods and services. Though on the flip side, in a completely decentralized system there'd be a higher quality of living in the sense that each individual is utterly responsible for their own well-being. This would without a doubt result in a feeling of self-empowerment but at cost of not having a large organizational structure that could help in a crisis situation (i.e. Katrina, Pearl Harbor, etc.).

While, yes, Katrina wasn't handled as optimally as it could have been imagine the scale of the disaster if there hadn't been an organization to help manage the recovery. If you're being honest with yourself, then no doubt you'll agree, it would have been an order of magnitude more catastrophic.

Also it's very likely that "collectivists," as an organized unit, would have a greater advantage in a war-game scenario. If both groups had equal equipment, similar man-power, were educated using the same tactics then the only differences would be efficiency of delegation and creativity. In a completely open, free-society there would be more hands in the pot and it would be significantly harder to summon together a "coalition of the willing" since each community would be working in isolation from one another. In a regimented hierarchy commands could be issued rapidly.

This can even be tested in simulation and we see this with things like voice-communication in multiplayer games. It's in fact much more efficient to remix on the server, than try to broadcast all lines of communication between all hosts.

In a heavily decentralized community you also have other things to contend with.

For instance social capital or rapport would be a very important requirement because each individual is theoretically valued equally. These small communities would need this greater social interaction to establish a trust network. Again the same problem comes up: more cost in terms of time and effort from each person in the community.

If you look at this as a bandwidth problem the model become prohibitive as more people are added to the group. This becomes unworkable once the number of people grows beyond a certain number. No different than communes really.

So to claim one model is more efficient is fallacious.

We know empirically that mixing peer-to-peer and dedicated servers results in the most optimal outcome. Which is obviously going to be the case. Imagine trying to claim that there's one data structure that does everything best. Obviously this isn't true. Linked lists have better Big-O efficiencies for certain operations than say tree based storage. There's always a trade-off whether it be in terms of memory or run-time.

My point is for everything to come to pass, for humanity to not die out, then we must be able to overcome all things and that requires tapping infinity.

The only thing we can do as a people to somewhat emulate that in a positive manner is to drive "natural exigency to 0" by helping to ensure all people have food, water, and shelter.

[edit on 27-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

Wow, it looks like you've spent a good amount of time working on this stuff, and I think I'm gonna have to read and study what you've posted a good bit before I can make a real response. At first glance I'm not understanding the charts and such, so I'm gonna have to spend some time reading back on these pages to see what generated them etc.

But for now, I think I found a part I can reply to.

Originally posted by Xtraeme
Government is without question a monopoly. This is why I'm continually impressed by the foresight of our founding-fathers. They vested as much power as they could in the monad rather than placing all jurisprudence at the top in the Federal government.

Consider that decentralization has always had the benefit of encouraging individuals to be personally accountable, while simultaneously making it much more difficult to do a power-grab.

On the downside it decreases efficiency because it requires more work from each party since all people are given an equal voice. In computational terms we can think of this as the "handshake problem." If we have five nodes all talking to each other it isn't half as efficacious as if they had instead used a delegate that piped relevant information down to the sub-nodes (i.e. client server model versus distributed computing).

Meaning, working in isolation would more than likely result in a lower quality of living in terms of goods and services. Though on the flip side, in a completely decentralized system there'd be a higher quality of living in the sense that each individual is utterly responsible for their own well-being. This would without a doubt result in a feeling of self-empowerment but at cost of not having a large organizational structure that could help in a crisis situation (i.e. Katrina, Pearl Harbor, etc.).

But communication isn't the problem here, quite the opposite. Part of the role of the federal government itself is to ease trade and settle disagreements and such across state lines and between the individual states. This is why if you commit a crime in a state, it's just a state crime. But if you commit a crime that in the process crosses state lines, then it becomes a federal issue.

So it's not like the individual states are isolation tanks. And this as well scales down to the individual level, and then you have local communities and governments to handle these things.

When you centralize things, then you are turning things from the many, into 1. So, you are having 1 brain, rather than say 50 brains.

The individuals do "compete" against each other, but at the same time they also cooperate with each other. What is gained is what is shared, control is not. For example, you have 50 state education programs under decentralization. If 1 state finds something that improves the quality of education in that state, then the other states/programs can then also add that to their own programs. So out of the competition itself you have gained advancement, and due to the cooperation between the programs, all have now reached the benefits. But you have reached the fastest possible form of advancements due to the 50 heads rather than 1.

This is actually a business practice. Nascar teams for example use it to perfection. A team has 1 owner, but usually 4 separate teams. Each of these teams work separately and individually of each other. But when 1 makes advancements in an area they share it with the other teams. The forumla is so successful in this manner that Nascar started to limit the amount of teams per owner. The teams that do not share get left behind for obvious reasons. In nascar, the term is coined "coompetiton". Competitive Cooperation.

And it worked in our history. When the US had this system, they were #1 in both Math and Science in the world. As well as healthcare and most all measures of the time.

Even in Europe where they have all this "socialism". The only reason it works there is because the countries are so small. Each country is basically like a state there. They aren't big at all. They still actually get the effect as a whole, but a bit of a strain in the cooperation part in history.

While, yes, Katrina wasn't handled as optimally as it could have been imagine the scale of the disaster if there hadn't been an organization to help manage the recovery. If you're being honest with yourself, then no doubt you'll agree, it would have been an order of magnitude more catastrophic.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy"

That is what happened with Katrina. The organizing force requires extra logistics and resources on top of that which is already needed to tackle the job. And it just ends up being a wasteful mess. The money went to the bureaucracy, not where it was needed.

Also it's very likely that "collectivists," as an organized unit, would have a greater advantage in a war-game scenario. If both groups had equal equipment, similar man-power, were educated using the same tactics then the only differences would be efficiency of delegation and creativity. In a completely open, free-society there would be more hands in the pot and it would be significantly harder to summon together a "coalition of the willing" since each community would be working in isolation from one another. In a regimented hierarchy commands could be issued rapidly.

I could care less about war. The key to going from type1 civilization to a type2 is spirituality. I've known this since I was a kid. Eventually the amount of power that will be available to any 1 individual becomes so great, that any 1 individual can destroy the entire world. In which case, the civilization crumbles upon itself. The alternative is what has been tried and done in our history for quite sometime. To limit and keep power out of the hands of individuals. That keeps on going today. But look where such things are heading? It's a recipe for disaster. Because the power still exists, you are only centralizing it in an attempt to keep that from happening. You end up creating monsters/beasts with the power that is given, and even among those people you get fights and power grabs(politics). It's not going to work PERIOD.

If your goal for the future is to simply advance at any and all costs(such as war), then you don't have a future at all.

The only way the people are ever going to have such luxory is among a people who are spiritually advanced. You can't just kill anyone who doesn't do that - because you in the process become the problem and the evil/wrong itself.

And this has been known for the history of mankind, and largely ignored by "power". This subject is the entire basis of religion - not to be confused with what religious people do/say/believe - but what people like Jesus, Hosea and so on were actually talking about(not the manipulation we know as religion today, which is actually against such teachings).

There is a reason why this planet is under quarantine.

This can even be tested in simulation and we see this with things like voice-communication in multiplayer games. It's in fact much more efficient to remix on the server, than try to broadcast all lines of communication between all hosts.

In a heavily decentralized community you also have other things to contend with.

But that is not true. I thought about this just today with the Tsunami's. 200 years ago those in Asia, Hawaii and so on would have had no warning at all of what was possibly coming. Today they had warning. The difference is not due to centralization or decentralization but only due to technological advancements in communication. Because each of these countries are separate and so on, and decentralized on a larger scale. And the centralization of all these countries into a single power isn't going to create that, or really improve it either.

So really all you are doing is given credit in places where it's not even due. And this is the job of the federal government anyway, to communicate with other countries etc. That's not a matter of centralization.

My point is for everything to come to pass, for humanity to not die out, then we must be able to overcome all things and that requires tapping infinity.

The only thing we can do as a people to somewhat emulate that in a positive manner is to drive "natural exigency to 0" by helping to ensure all people have food, water, and shelter.

And you are making the assumption that centralization is the key. Would you like to know why you make that assumption?

You make that assumption because when you think of these things, you are thinking of them as if "you" were the one doing it all. As such, it is easy to think such a things would work, such things would be best because you invision yourself as the one running it. But that isn't reality. When I design systems that only "I" use, they are much more efficient/faster/quicker/better and rarely have problems. Because I'm not going to do something such as escape out of a input string and insert database commands that erase my entire database etc. But a user or someone else who might want to damage the system might.

So here you come wide open, giving the people water, food and shelter and thinking all is well, and then in behind you comes the man looking for power and control who then starts to charge and enslave those same people because they are now 100% dependent on those services.

When you design your system, do not think of the system as if you are in charge. Find the worse example, and think of them as being in charge. Now what has your system become? Design it with that in mind from the start.

Ran outta space.

There is nothing wrong with a hierarchy. Such things are going to happen naturally. But it is the merits of what elevates them to such a position that matters.

I'll try to read up and study on the rest and reply to that later. If I haven't replied in the next week, please send me another U2U and remind me. I'm a bit like the absent minded professor and need to be reminded of things often. Had forgotten this thread even existed until you reminded me. With the time and effort you have put into this, I think it beneficial for me for you to hear my reply, so I want to make sure I do(yes, that is written right, it is to my benefit).

Thanks for the quick reply badmedia!

Originally posted by badmedia

Originally posted by Xtraeme
My point is for everything to come to pass, for humanity to not die out, then we must be able to overcome all things and that requires tapping infinity.

The only thing we can do as a people to somewhat emulate that in a positive manner is to drive "natural exigency to 0" by helping to ensure all people have food, water, and shelter.

And you are making the assumption that centralization is the key. Would you like to know why you make that assumption?

You make that assumption because when you think of these things, you are thinking of them as if "you" were the one doing it all. As such, it is easy to think such a things would work, such things would be best because you invision yourself as the one running it.

Really I still think we're still talking past each other. All I was trying to explain in the last of the three posts (this one here), which is what you largely addressed in your reply, was that basically all things do have a time and place. I wasn't trying to say centralization is the key to getting to point (d) in Fig. 1.

The last post was more about the concept of how in engineering projects, especially as they relate to games which have low latency requirements, we find that actually a hybridized system is the best approach.

So we attempt to use the best aspects of the client-server model (abstractly mimicking centralization) for security purposes to prevent people from falsifying actions between clients and gain efficiencies by remixing audio on the server so there's no need to multicast the original audio-streams which would consume considerably more bandwidth on the client's end (i.e. 1 audio channel coming from the server rather than several audio channels from each host).

Since computers don't care about picking one approach over the other we can also using the best components of peer-to-peer, i.e. direct text communication is small enough bandwidth-wise that it can be immediately routed to the peer, skipping the intermediary step of the server.

In each of these scenarios there's a trade-off. That's all I was trying to convey.

I'm adamantly not saying centralization or decentralization is better. Rather I'm saying each has a particular use and therefore a time and place.

The point behind this scarcity concept is basically that what happens at point (d) is the complete self-empowerment of all people. That's what should happen for the event to be positive in nature. The negative consequence orbits the notion of a single entity or thing gaining all power.

So here you come wide open, giving the people water, food and shelter and thinking all is well, and then in behind you comes the man looking for power and control who then starts to charge and enslave those same people because they are now 100% dependent on those services.

You're absolutely correct as people become dependent on a system it increases the likelihood that they become less capable of dealing with solving a problem on their own and therefore more susceptible to being abused by those who control the infrastructure. So the only solution here is that each person becomes infinitely self-capable. Thus no longer a need to focus on self.

I'm not saying how that happens.

I'm simply recognizing that as humans become more capable we need to account for three human actions: desire for personal wealth / competition, working towards societal goals stipulated by the group, & providing a social minimum. So if we as humans are to accomplish this on our own without outside intervention we need to find a way to balance these components in such a way that we have security and growth proportioned in a sane manner.

I went in to great detail in the following posts (1, 2, 3) explaining how this might occur. To give a quick overview basically I argue that we need to somehow marry a fractional-reserve system (lets call that a) with a 100%-reserve design (called b).

What isn't directly in affect with our current system is the notion of the public directly having a say on the (sqrt(a^2 + b^2)) component (the leg that pushes the two apart)

The reason this is so important is because this shows that when any given base-leg controls the market (pure capitalism / fractional reserve-banking vs. 100% reserve banking / first-come first-serve entitlement system) necessarily it causes the collapse of the system towards that leg.

So if we stay with fractional reserve we have a system where ultimately bankers / corporatists end up with all the money. If we switch to 100% reserve we have a system where those who hold their money the longest control the cash supply.

My point is the only solution is to have the public directly have a vote on how taxes are used which can be seen as the hypotenuse (or the sqrt(a^2 + b^2) segment) between fractional / 100% reserve system. This is why I so strongly advocate for this type of change to our our representative process.

[edit on 28-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

reply to post by amance

Originally posted by amance
reply to post by Xtraeme

 

Here are some common (today, here, now) examples of this theory in layman's terms:

Question: What is the one place where a human can get water, food, shelter without providing any energy?
Answer: Prison
Meaning: This shows that the even if a society provides the bare necessities, there are psychological needs of an individual that still need to be met.

When I was originally contemplating SH I had the same thought, which, I'll admit, made me laugh. The fact that we provide the lowest-of-the-low in society with the basics necessary to live, but we leave those those who haven't done anything wrong to fend for themselves, well, it brought a smirk to my face.

However there's a miscalculation here on your part in the sense that prison doesn't provide infinite value. Consider if every person on Earth intentionally did something illegal to get placed in a cell-block to not have to worry about where their next meal was going to come from or whether-or-not they'd have a dry place to sleep. Sadly without other people willing to put the work in to provide food, utilities, et cetera, the prison system would collapse

What I'm saying is necessary to achieve "0 exigency" is "infinite value to be produced and reproduced." The only thing that comes close to emulating this is having complete control over all the processes of this planet. If we can control the planet no one has to suffer arbitrarily ever again. Once we automate the mechanisms necessary to harvest food, sanitize water, generate energy, so on and so forth, eventually we simply won't need people to perform a great number of jobs.

Once that happens we have to fundamentally rewrite how we organize our system. Though it's understandable this would scare those who have more than the average man because how is it one person earns more than another in a world where no person does more than anyone else? Do those who already have excess get to keep it? This isn't a trivial problem.

This is why I believe it's fundamentally important that there be, by design, three categories of economic activity. One where there's still competition (capitalism), the notion of societal goals that provides for the betterment of ourselves & our children (voted for by all people), & a social minimum (in a world /w a robot labor-force all people should receive at a minimum food, water, & housing where universal health-care would be a secondary minimum not come before the basics).

I gave my thoughts on this in more detail here.

Question: What do you get the person who has everything?
Answer: Something no one else has.
Meaning: Space Tourism. The newest gadget. The cliche: A new partner/wife/girlfriend. Why financially successful people want more and why they would sacrifice half of their net worth to get a new life partner (divorce the wife, marry the young secretary).

Hope this helps.

The only reason the younger secretary would marry the wealthy older gentleman is because of his wealth. In a world where physical scarcity isn't much of a problem, those who attempt to subjugate others economically would become impotent due to inherent excesses. The only downside is I'm sure this would result in an increase in sex-crimes and physical oppression.

[edit on 28-2-2010 by Xtraeme]

This is probably the best question in the thread:

Originally posted by rich23

In dealing with a physically scarce world where we don't even have the base resources necessary to sustain each human, morality is inherently subjective and ultimately meaningless.

Logically I'd characterise this sentence as a category mistake. Questions of morality may deal with issues of scarcity, but those issues cannot affect morality, which is based on conditions that pre-exist questions of scarcity and glut. For example, is an appeal to the sense of fairness one's basis for constructing a morality? Answering this question tells you what's going to happen when that morality confronts issues of scarcity.

And yes, morality is always subjective, and from that strict sense, meaningless.

You clearly understand that since morality is subjective we have to measure it against the morality of the individual. If a person believes all people should be treated equally, but violates this ethos they've demonstrated immorality by their own standards. This is the only case where it would be objectively true because the person had the opportunity to specify their moral-preference.

Where this starts to get tricky is when a person sets their ethical-or-moral compass to whatever's most beneficial for their own personal gain. In this scenario the person is willing to give everyone else the shaft and does so (assuming logic) because she or he believes that everyone else should do the same. Even though it's tempting to say this is negatively-oriented and therefore evil, it's not, because the individual believes this is the only mechanism to determine who most "deserves" a limited resource: through personal fortitude & competition. What's somewhat funny is if the person did something selfless to help another they'd be violating this creed. So immorality in this case would be warped in that the great majority of cultures associate morality with selflessness.

So the question becomes what's the difference between the person who doesn't care if they're being fair versus the individual who believes an ultra-competitive behavior results in the best outcome for all parties (Ayn Rand's objectivist philosophy mimics this line of thinking)?

Is there any difference in an observable sense?

The only difference is intention. One person has convinced themselves through reason that their aggressive, self-oriented behavior is fair and results in the best strategy to deal with limited materials. The other person, though doing the same thing, does so because he wants the best outcome for himself irregardless of others. They're both performing the same actions just under different pretenses.

So morality is a mode of behavior (whether logical, even-handed, selfless, or greedy) that allows a person to reach a decision to deal with a scarce scenario.

Put another way when demand is sufficiently high and a resource, R, approaches 0 the money involved to acquire the resource conversely approaches the ceiling, M_c. Meaning if there are 3 people in the world, 1 seller (P_0), and 2 buyers each with equal sums of cash (P_1 = P_2), money would no longer determine who gets the resource as there would no longer be a monetary inequality. (ie/ R = M_c; and, M_c = P_1 = P_2). The person receiving the item would either be randomly drawn in a lottery, selected due to favoritism, picked based on a majority vote, or given the item based on the moral-code of the community; to wit, modes of moral reasoning. In computer-science speak these modes behave like language-agnostic design patterns used to solve a generic archetypal problem.

The ambivalence, opposition, or appeal to fairness, plays into the construction of that morality.

Meaning a sense of fairness, as an intention, has the potential to precede scarcity. However without a scarce scenario to engage in, fairness isn't an issue and therefore doesn't even have to be contemplated. So, clearly, the two are inextricably linked. To say one comes before the other is to argue whether the chicken came before the egg.

Even in cases where morality deals with abstractions like autonomy we see that this has to do with a notions of "insufficiency or shortness of supply" (i.e. scarcity). The only way a person can be violated is if they lack the capability to stop the other person or due to an inability to recover from the loss of self-direction. Seen another way in a video game I can kill a person and it's not considered a moral quandary because the experience is impermanent. If killing the character in game indefinitely prevented the other player from resuming their experience, then it would have legitimate moral and ethical ramifications. Without irreparable loss morality loses any real sense of purpose because, as mentioned above, morality is simply a pattern or "mode of behavior that allows a person to reach a decision to deal with a scarce scenario."

As usual Rich, you always give me reason to pause and think, for that I'd like to say thank you.

All the best, cheers,
-X

[edit on 2-3-2010 by Xtraeme]