First axiom of Loginomy (Reality): To create a logical political system, we must first identify how society and its larger environment work, using collectively verifiable theories.PRELIMINARY OVERVIEW OF THIS CHAPTER A chronological taxonomy of Science (scientific theories): 1. Wave patterns. The environment of Earth is an emergence of patterns of higher order from simpler patterns, ultimately from wave patterns. 2. Simple systems (atoms & molecules). The conservation of wave energy in atoms, allowed the formation of solar systems as our own, and the geological and biological systems on Earth. 3. Biological systems (reproducing molecules). Some reproducing molecules adapted to their environment by forming multi-cellular organisms (animals, plants, fungi and some algae). Animals spread their genes through intercourse, meaning that the genes are naturally selected for the reproductive capacity of the animals carrying the genes. 4. Subjective information systems (brains). An animal is a multi-cellular organism whose behaviour is generally programmed with evolutionary beneficial strategies for the survival of its genetic material. In effect, its behaviour is governed by a subjective representation of its environment, where the pursuit of well-being aligns with what has been evolutionary beneficial behaviour in the environments of its ancestors. 5. Collective information systems (organisations). Cooperation has evolved because it is energy efficient. Power distribution in formal organisations has a natural tendency to concentrate. 6. Artificial physical systems (technology). Human technology is developing at an exponential rate. Technological evolution increases the degree which energy can be manipulated. Technological evolution increases the amount of energy available per person. 7. Artificial information systems (artificial intelligence). Our biology and technology are merging into an artificial superintelligence. A general model of systems: Reality unfolds in a causal sequence of events, where such patterns that are orderly, interrelated and repetitive can be identified as systems. Systems survive on the criterion of their survival, where failure to do so implies dissolution into a lower order of complexity. Higher order, adaptive systems seek to both align with their surrounding (internal change) and manipulate their surrounding (external change), to achieve equilibrium in their wider environment (other systems), a condition where competing influences on the system are balanced (energy efficiency). Conclusions of the first axiom: I. Nature follows generally predictable patterns. II. We live on one planet of scarce resources. III. Political power tends to concentrate, thus tends to primarily reflect the interests of power concentrations. IV. Humanity is on the verge of artificial superintelligence.
Prolog: Laws of Man versus Laws of Nature.
Before we begin our quest of finding a logical political system, let us travel back in time to China of 1958, where Chairman Mao Zedong was initiating the nation-wide campaign The Great Leap Forward. The goal was rapid collectivisation and industrialisation, where grain and steel production were key elements. At the Politburo (executive committee) meetings in August 1958, it was decided that people's communes would become the new form of economic and political organisation throughout rural China; and it was also decided that steel production would be set to double within the year, most of the increase coming from backyard steel furnaces:Huge efforts on the part of peasants and other workers were made to produce steel out of scrap metal. To fuel the furnaces, the local environment was denuded of trees and wood taken from the doors and furniture of peasants' houses. Pots, pans, and other metal artifacts were requisitioned to supply the "scrap" for the furnaces so that the wildly optimistic production targets could be met. Many of the male agricultural workers were diverted from the harvest to help the iron production as were the workers at many factories, schools, and even hospitals. Although the output consisted of low quality lumps of pig iron which was of negligible economic worth, Mao had a deep distrust of intellectuals who could have pointed this out and placed his faith in the power of the mass mobilization of the peasants. (Wikipedia)
At the same time, the Great Sparrow Campagin was introduced, which sought to kill off the 'Eurasian tree sparrow', which ate grain, seed and fruit. It was officially estimated that just one sparrow ate nearly 2 kg of grain each year. --But how successfull were these campaigns? Well, judging by the Great Chinese Famine that ensued in the following years 1959 to 1962, the campaigns were disastrous. Not only had too many peasants in agriculture been diverted towards the project of backyard steel production, but wholly unexpected effects came of the implementation of the Politburo's Laws of 1958:By April 1960, Chinese leaders realized that sparrows ate a large amount of insects, as well as grains. Rather than being increased, rice yields after the campaign were substantially decreased. Mao ordered the end of the campaign against sparrows, replacing them with bed bugs, as the extermination of the former upset the ecological balance, and bugs destroyed crops as a result of the absence of natural predators. By this time, however, it was too late. With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides. Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine, in which 20-45 million people died of starvation. (Wikipedia)
Let us leave the tragical history above for a little while, and move on to something more entertaining - a personal experiment:The Magical Boomerang Ball Find a ball (or similar object). Hold the ball with your preferred throwing arm, and prepare to consistently throw the ball approximately 3 meters away from you, somewhere it cannot hit something and bounce back. Throw under these variable conditions: - Throw, and imagine the ball landing 3 meters away from you. - Throw, and imagine the ball returning to conveniently rest next to you! - Throw, and expect the ball returning in mid-air to injure your toes! - Throw, and really feel that it's a great idea if the ball returns! - Throw, and really feel that it's a bad idea if the ball doesn't return! - Throw, and command the ball to return to you with an authoritative voice! What happened? Submit your results to a piece of paper, then curve the piece of paper, and throw it 3 meters away from you in despair! [End of experiment.]
Maybe you can already see where I'm going with this. Our environment here on Earth, which we will refer to as Nature (our geology, biology, and astronomical phenomena that affect us), seems to want to have it its own way. Even economies made of human behaviour unfold in ways we struggle to predict. The Chinese leadership in 1958 wanted a specific outcome, and created Laws to generate this outcome. But implementing these Laws in Chinese society had a negative, even opposite, effect than the one intended. This is, of course, not a critique of Chinese society; it is a critique of those abruptly trying to change societies. You can surely find many examples of flawed policies in any country; the Great Leap Forward is simply a pervasive example of implementing Laws without really knowing how they will affect society. If you had a go at "The Magical Boomerang Ball", you may have noticed that the ball in fact did not return like a boomerang, even if you wanted it to do so. This might surprise you a lot, but evidently, it's like Nature has a mind of its own, such that the ball follows a certain trajectory once it leaves your hand. You throw the ball, and the ball no longer cares what you think, as if following some independent natural laws instead of your wishes. And the same seems to apply with Law-making. Once we introduce a Law in society, sitting removed from the situation in our ivory tower, the Law will generate outcomes in society independently of what we think or feel about it. Our emotional investment in our Laws and the ideology behind it, is indifferent to Nature... The lesson learned is this - whatever outcome we would like in society, and no matter how well-meaning we would like to think of ourselves, we must still understand how society works to achieve our preferred outcome, or else it is down to luck! But remember, the Chinese politicians had estimated precisely how much grain a sparrow eats - and acted upon it - but were still ignorant of another factor sparrows had in Nature: how many insects they eat. Thinking we understand enough about Nature, may come back to bite ut; as Law-makers we ought to examine our complex environment as carefully and thoroughly as we can muster, before attempting to change it. The Laws of Man are simply a means of organising our behaviour. And we would like these laws to be congruent with the Laws of Nature, so as to experience a minimum of friction. Friction being the unnecessary labour and suffering from dysfunctional organisation.A collective method for a collective society.
A rational approach to politics - the purpose of Loginomy - is not against spirituality or religion, per say; it should rather be accepted that spirituality and religion serves a purpose since it exists. This author is himself intrigued by the mystics of the past, reveres the complexity and vastness of the cosmos, and is mindful on the limitations of human knowledge. However, that being said, there are over 7 billion different "spiritual viewpoints" here on Earth, and which of them should we use to create a logical, political system for all of us? I will contend that a political system for all people must rely on a model of reality that all people can make sense of; that is to say, we must ground our system in knowledge that anyone can potentially verify! Once we assume that we live in a reality shared with other people, only knowledge that is collectively verifiable can be considered as collectively true. We must therefore use the scientific method to harvest our knowledge. And so, by the conclusion of the existence of natural laws, and by our intent to objectively understand them, we can formulate the very first axiom of Loginomy: To create a meaningful political system, we must identify how societies and their larger environment work, using the scientific method.After crawling up from the oceans, and climbing down from the trees, our ancestors faced a multitude of complex challenges, and developed advanced intuition and language to model and mold their environment; in the process we have awoken to find ourselves in a grand, natural world. However, modern neurology tells us that the brain creates an internal representation of the world, and that accurate versus imagined neural representations of reality are indistinguishable without feedback from our surroundings. Not surprising, then, that we developed rigorous methods in the attempt at verifying a shared cognition of our mutual reality; collectively verifying phenomenon that are at least partially independent to each individual: Interlude: A short history of the scientific method.
5th century B.C.: Socrates' invention of Doubt as the founding scientific principle (even doubt in human words). 4th century B.C: Euclid's Elements, applying deductive reasoning to mathematics. 4th century B.C.: Aristotle's invention of Logic in the Organon (which put words onto how Euclid's method worked). 3rd century B.C.: Archimedes' invention of Experimentation as the fundamental criterion to ascertain the validity of ideas considering reality. 13th century A.D.: St Thomas Aquinas applying Logic to Theology, laying the groundwork for the scientific revolution. 17th century A.D.: Descartes' Discourse on the Method, compiling previous works on epistemology and the scientific method. (We still speak of 'cartesian rigor' to define how the scientific method applies to different fields.)
Are we humans part and parcel of Nature, or have we become so advanced that we are governed by our own creativity? Even those who respect and adhere to the teachings of Science, might want to disagree looking at Man as simply a subject of it. However, this author will argue that there is no reason not to study human behaviour like we study other animal behaviour. There are reasons why dogs and monkeys behave like they do, and there are reasons why humans behave like they do. I will leave this question hanging a little, since we will look closer at what Science might reveal about us below. But I invite you to shortly contemplate this question: Interlude: Is Man Nature, or beyond it?
Sociologists report that in societies of high inequality (for whatever reason), poor areas are riddled with more criminality - if variation in culture and intelligence was adjusted for, how would you explain this?
A: Some choose to be criminals, and they often end up poor. B: Inequality & poverty, thus stress, breeds criminal behaviour.
What is Reality?
So we are situated in this rather confusing wilderness, but find ourselves living in large societies in the company of other people, and we would like to organise ourselves meaningfully in these societies. We already assume that we live on a planet called Earth, and we will identify the entire environment of this planet, including our societies, as Nature. And by our first axiom, we want to understand how stuff on this planet works; how Nature works, or generally: how Reality (anything & everything) works. So what the heck is Reality? Seems like a god damned, paradoxical mystery:
- We cannot fathom how reality could have a beginning, or how it could not have one.
- We experience a physical world that does not seem to require consciousness,
yet at the same time our own conscious experience is all we know. - If neurological patterns result in our thinking, does it not follow that ego and will are merely potent illusions on a canvas?
- Billions upon billions of factory animals are imprisoned and suffering, but no divine entity is stepping in to save them from the evil humans...
A chronological taxonomy of Science
1. WAVE PATTERNS
Modern physics says the universe consists of energy that is not created or destroyed, but that it only changes form (thermodynamics). And, although we don't quite know what they are, there are laws of Physics guiding this energy in a universal way (under the same conditions, energy behaves the same regardless of time and place). Energy exists in a spacetime continuum, and travels 'forward' in time. Also, energy moves through spacetime in a pattern - a causal sequence of events. But what is energy? Well, we don't really know, except that it all behaves like waves.
Interlude: Emergence.
Emergence are phenomenon whereby larger patterns arise through interactions among smaller or simpler entities such that the larger entities exhibit properties the smaller/simpler entities do not exhibit.Interlude: Systems.
You're riding on a train through a green field, and see a beautiful, brown horse running alongside the train. You want your companions to look at it, but what do you tell them? Do you say "Light is reflected this direction from a massive cellular structure which organs of transportation is moving the sum of connected organs in our parallell direction!", or do you simply say "Look at that horse!" ...? There are many complex patterns in Nature, and our human brains are already very good at distinguishing them. We don't call a horse "a bunch of moving colourful things". And we neither call a horse "trillions of cells", or a cell "trillions of atoms", although that is what it can be said to be. No, when we understand that phenomena are significantly integrated or interconnected, we identify them by nouns. We do not identify a cat or a car as the parts of its sum, but as the sum of its parts. And, similarly, it would be helpful if we formalise this, and describe the "connectedness" of many types of patterns as systems. When we identify various phenomenon as systems of "connected" patterns, then we can begin to understand what these phenomena are, and how they come about. And in this taxonomy of Science, we will define a system as orderly (referring to the causal sequence of events patterns unfold), interrelated (to themselves), and repetitive patterns of energy. This makes most things part of systems. Even a rock on the ground is a system, as it consists of a continuation of an orderly, interrelated arrangement of minerals / molecules / atoms / quarks / wave patterns. And like serveral rocks can make up a mountain, the interaction of humans can make up a social group - a system of humans. There are also many odd systems: A farm may be a system of humans and animals. The weather system consists largely of air and water being shoved around by rising and falling temperatures. And then there are ecosystems of flowers & bees, or animals & bacteria. Et cetera. But notice that the definition above includes repetition. If you urinate once in the ocean, it's not useful to call this incident a human-oceanic system. However, if rain gathers in a lake, vaporises, floats to the sky, cools off, and becomes new rain - and this happens repeatedly - then we could well describe this as a system.2. SIMPLE SYSTEMS (atoms & molecules)
When the universe cooled off after the Big Bang, a lot of the wave energy became bundled in atoms, which are the tiniest systems we know - electrons "circling" a heavier proton/neutron core (so far as we can identify protons and neutrons to be composed of quarks, we may even call a single proton or neutron a system in its own right). The conservation of energy in atoms created a universe with large quantities of interstellar gas. And upon the gravitational collapse of these gas clouds, the first generation of stars were formed, consisting mostly of hydrogen and helium (the simplest forms of atoms, having respectively 1 and 2 electrons). But in the life and death (by explosion) of a star, new elements are synthesised through nuclear reactions, which may create "metal-rich" (in cosmology having the special meaning of atoms other than hydrogen and helium) molecular clouds. Our own solar system is thought to have been largely created by such stardust. More precisely, solar systems are formed through a process called accretion, where gravitation is causing matter to spiral inward in the shape of a disk. Most of the matter end up in the core, forming the star. But not all of the gas cloud is accumulated in the star, and end up collapsing onto itself, potentially ending up circling the star as cool rocks (with exceptions like our own Saturn which still consists of mostly gas). And here we are, living on a fancy rock orbiting a great ball of fire. The Sun consists of mostly hydrogen and helium in the form of plasma, and is burning bright because of a fusion reaction in its core, where hydrogen is converted into helium. The mass of Earth's crust is composed of 46% oxygen, 28% silicon, 8.2% aluminum, 5.6% iron, 4.2% calcium, 2.5% sodium, 2.4% magnesium, 2.0% potassium, 0.61% titanium, and only 0.15% other elements. Our oceans are obviously mostly water - hydrogen and oxygen (H2O). Our atmosphere is 78.09% nitrogen, 20.95% oxygen, 0.93% argon, and only 0.04% of the precious carbon dioxide (CO2) that our plants need for its photosynthesis. It is also worth noting that carbon, which is vital for organic life (19% of the mass of the human body), is relatively scarcely abundant on Earth (although not in the universe). The above are the atoms that our Nature largely consists of, and they mostly appear in the form of molecules - bundles of different or alike atoms. However, the conditions of our early Earth were quite different than today. The hypothetical condition of the Earth's surface before the emergence of life is called the primordial soup. Certain chemical compounds, in the form of simple molecules, may have been concentrated at locations like shorelines and oceanic vents, where they were exposed to lightning and ultraviolet light. Here, complex "stable" molecules emerged from simple ones. And, evidently, life began.
Interlude: Tendencies.
I would like to introduce the concept of tendency as a distinct feature of humans and other animals. Understanding tendencies will be important for this further investigation of our reality. To use a banal example, we have a tendency to prefer food that tastes good (whatever that means). Other things equal, if we have the option of eating either good-tasting or bad-tasting food, we will always choose the good-tasting food. However, we carry thousands of preferences and instincts, and they all enforce and inhibit each other. We have the tendency of not eating food that we perceive as unhealthy. We have the tendency of eating bad-tasting food that we perceive as healthy. We have a tendency to share good-tasting food with family and friends. And we are silly enough to eat bad-tasting food in social contexts to impress others. Now, we should expect our general tendencies to be reflections of evolutionary beneficial strategies, but the point I'm here making is that while tendencies can be absolutes in themselves (always prefer good-tasting food to bad-tasting food), they are not absolutes in a complex environment (under certain conditions prefer bad-tasting food).Interlude: Energy efficiency.
I need to point out the perhaps most fundamental tendency of complex systems like animals - energy efficiency (sometimes commonly known as lazyness). To survive, a system must acchieve some form of equilibrium with its environment - a "resting position" where the system spends less energy maintaining its survival than the energy it is able to accumulate. We can imagine a gazelle on the savannah. It runs around looking for grass, and also have to stay away from predators. If the gazelle gets more energy from the grass than it spends finding it, the gazelle survives. If the gazelle spends more energy on finding grass, than it receives from the grass, it dies. Whatever system, it must always accumulate as much of the form of energy as it uses to maintain itself, or it will eventually dissipate and return to the soup. (Where not reproducing is a form of dissipation.) Energy efficiency is vital in a world of scarce resources, and we should expect systems to put as little effort as possible into achieving their goal, as wasting resources can be detrimental. Wolf mothers systematically train their cubs to be obedient, as constant quarrel and unrest in the pack is detrimental to their success. We might phrase it as such: biological systems tend towards their continuation in the most energy efficient manner. This might seem erroneous in the human world when we observe some guy with a big yacht, but not upon closer inspection: Beyond physical comfort, buying a yacht also buys influence in a status hierarchy, which might attract several females. By the evolutionary traits bestowed on him, the yacht owner feels compelled to purchase the yacht, but will still pay as little as possible for it (unless that's also part of the game).3. BIOLOGICAL SYSTEMS (reproducing molecules)
4 540 000 000 +/- 0.04bn years of planet earth. >3 700 000 000 years of simple cells. 3 000 000 000 years of complex cells. 1 000 000 000 years of multicellular organisms. 600 000 000 years of simple animals. 200 000 000 years of mammals. 2 500 000 years of apes. 200 000 years of modern humans.
Copies upon copies.
An enormous variety of organisms have evolved on Earth, and we will identify them all - animals, plants, fungi and unicellular organisms - as biological systems. And we remember that systems are orderly, interrelated and repetitive patterns. Now, systems are here for a reason - because whatever patterns they are composed of have survived. The same goes for biological systems. Whatever sum of traits kept the ancestors of todays animals and plants alive and reproductive in their environment, continued. For instance, physical pain is a horrific evolutionary trait, but efficient in keeping animals out of harm's way and making them tend their wounds, and it turns out that only suffering breeds of animals have survived. The criterion for the survival of systems, is survival itself. But how did we really go from the primordial soup, where we left off, to the animal kingdom? The study of chemistry shows how easily atoms form bundles of atoms we call molecules, and we also know how complex molecules like amino acids can emerge from simpler molecules - we can reproduce such events in labratories. The only missing link is in understanding how one complex molecule can turn into two identical complex molecules. And the answer might not be as mystical as we think: In the primordial soup, there was trillions upon trillions upon trillions of molecules. Like some atoms attach to each other, some molecules must have had the property of attaching to similar molecules, where under certain conditions it was no longer stable, and split. And if only an encumbered molecule split into two equal parts similar to its original form, then the process could be repeated indefinitely. Suddenly you would have a swarm of similar, complex molecules in the soup. And if by some slight variation a molecule showed a miniscule benefical difference in copying itself, in regard to speed, accuracy or longevity, then there naturally would become more of these fittest reproducing molecules.DNA - the blueprint for our general behaviour.
It is easy to forget that humans and other animals in our apparent complexity, are largely made of just one tiny cell. Yet somehow that one cell allowed the formation of the gigantic and vividly conscious creature that is you. That one tiny cell that conceived you, enabled your capacity to learn, think and act, all coming to frution after making trillions of copies of itself. Quite a feat! And today we know that this process is crucially steered by a very special molecule called DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid), a descendant of the early reproducing molecules we discussed above. The DNA molecule is a long string made of pairs of 4 smaller molecules, either A-T, T-A, C-G or G-C. And in a staggering complex manner that is beyond the comprehension of this author (or anyone), different combinations of the smaller molecule-pairs along the DNA-string enable the cell to "code" the production of various chemicals, like proteins and RNA, in turn creating other chemical reactions, ultimately programming the general behaviour of our bodily functions.
Scarce resources.
All the biological systems we know live atop or within the geological surface of this Earth. Basically, multi-cellular organisms draw energy from the sun, or consume each other, to survive. Confined to the surface of one planetary system, biological systems often live at the expense of each other.Interlude: A general model of systems.
Explaining every aspect of how Nature works is beyond the scope of this walk-through (and perhaps beyond the reach of Science). But it's time to establish a general understanding of why the systems of Nature are here. Somehow the distinct patterns that systems display - the dynamic of systems - must relate to how Reality works, or - what can survive in Reality. In that occasion, I'll share an exercept from the pamphlet "Toward a General Theory of Systems" (1987) by historian Win Wenger Ph.D.:The strategies which have thus evolved on Earth, apparently will have evolved in much the same general directions elsewhere in our universe. Happily, all of these strategies, for resisting dissolution, may be sorted usefully into a small number of classifications, such as in this arrangement: 1. Running away we might characterize as not being there when the axe falls; ducking. 2. Rigidity must be effective up to a point or we would not find so many examples of it in nature, such as hard-shelled molluscs and turtles. However, Maginot Lines have disadvantages as well as advantages. Where does firmness leave off and brittleness begin? 3. Redundancy - one of the reasons for having two eyes, two ears, two hands, two legs, so many more brain cells than we use, back-up modules and lines of communication. If one goes the other is still there in use. 4. Reproduction - the first key breakthrough in the emergence from chaos. One way for 'X' to duck the axe of entropy is to create a lot of other 'X's' running around. If some 'X' or even several 'X's'return their elements to the soup, some 'X' still survives to continue the game. Reproduction might also be subsumed under Redundancy, above, but as a special case is a lot more fun. 5. Reduction - keep a lower profile, a simpler system in which not so many things can go wrong. 6. Redirection - divert the attack onto someone/something else. We find a great deal of this strategy manifested in our social systems. 7. Negative feedback - clearly the most successfull strategy, since homeostasis whether simple or complex is a characteristic of every long-lasting system, living, social, or mechanical. Every disturbance of equilibrium is automaticallly offset and cancelled, else that system either disintegrates or changes into another system defined by other equilibria. Every system without such a strategy fairly soon yields its elements back to the soup. 8. Selection - the only possible match for #7 as a successful strategy, and on several levels. On one level you have the ability of a system to select a few elements from a larger array for its sustenance and growth. On another level you have the selection of systems in favor of those systems with superior strategies, superior organization.
This author would add the basic survival strategy of Conservation (as distinguished from Rigidity), and perhaps Cooperation (as distinguised from Redundancy and Selection). The reader might have minor issues himself, but the list is nontheless good food for thought for contemplating the set number of strategies that systems around us (and ourselves) can exhibit. However, as an overall model of systems, we will try this definition: Reality unfolds in a causal sequence of events, where such patterns that are orderly, interrelated and repetitive can be identified as systems. Systems survive on the criterion of their survival, where failure to do so implies dissolution into a lower order of complexity. Higher order, adaptive systems seek to both align with their surrounding (internal change) and manipulate their surrounding (external change), to achieve equilibrium in their wider environment (other systems), a condition where competing influences on the system are balanced and canceled out (energy efficiency).4. SUBJECTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS (brains)
Modeling the universe.
As reproducing molecules evolved in ever greater complexity, some eventually found it convenient to wrap themselves in waterbubbles, and continue cooperating after duplicating. They became cellular lifeforms. The end result was big, multi-cellular organisms with several different organs performing separate tasks - all for the sake of mindless reproduction. But slowly, they evolved neural networks to better detect and move around in their environment. An organism that can sense and interpret, and even remember and predict, its environment, may have a better chance of not returning to the molecular soup. And so we evolved brains - the organ of thought. We became information systems, having an organ that continuously sense and process the information in our environment, adjusting our behaviour concordingly, which importantly includes adjusting our behaviour by the feedback of our own actions. Why reality allows us to be conscious at all is yet beyond the grasp of Science (and might be the wrong question), but we can say something about another peculiar aspect of our thinking: our genes can only change our thinking at one opportunity - when we have sex. After conception, your DNA blueprint is set. By default, your genes do not change themselves after this point. It follows that the general programming of your brain is already determined upon conception. What does this mean? It means that your DNA must have programmed you with a very broad skillset enabling you to adapt to whatever environment you fall into. Your DNA blueprint in effect says "Assess the situation and do whatever you think is best, based on these preferences." And the way we are kept on the right track is through our emotions: Explained simplistically, when we do something bad or unsavory for our continuation, we experience the negative feedback of suffering; to reward seeking, or remaining in, a beneficial situation, we experience joy and comfort. (We are not satisfied simply by having accomplished things in the past, because this is not productive.) Of course, as we move around our environment, we do not know everything about it. We are modeling the world subjectively. And therefore all animals act according to how they perceive their environment to be, not how it "really is". This is also true for humans. Thus, human society is entirely made of biological systems with each their own subjective model of the world (including about politics). And in the following we shall hone in on our own organ of thought. [To simplify, I will neglect how we humans think and feel with our whole bodies, and rather concentrate on the brain.]What has DNA programmed the human brain to do?
It is easy to generally answer why our brains are programmed like they are: the criterion of survival is survival itself; whatever composition of segments of a DNA molecule made its multi-cellular creation survive and reproduce in its environment, survived. If a DNA molecule carried traits that turned out to be detrimental to survival, that DNA molecule disappeared. For example, if some recombination/mutation of genes made an early man have too much testosteron, making him attack a big bear all by himself (falsely assessing the situation), this might not be a good idea and his DNA might disappear from the gene pool. Precisely explaining how our brains are programmed for survival should be a very complicated endeavour. It takes a lifetime to figure out ones own psychology. However, we can say something about how we must be generally programmed, since the patterns we carry is what made our ancestors survive.Neural hardware: Manipulation, communication & imitation.
Ancestral brain size (in cubic centimeter): >4 million years ago - Australopithecus afarensis. 400-500 cc brain (a bit larger than a modern chimpanzee). Walked upright. {2,5 million years ago - Global cooling transforming much of Africa's lush forest into woodland and then into grassy savannah.} 2,5 million years ago - Homo habilis. 600-750 cc brain. Could chip stones into specific shapes to use as knives, choppers or scrapers. 1,8 million years ago - Homo erectus. 800-900 cc brain. Taller than H. habilis. Could harness and use fire. Some traveling out of Africa. 0,5 million years ago. Branches of now archaic Homo Sapiens. 1200-1400 cc brain. 45 thousand years ago - European early modern humans (cro-magnon). 1600 cc brain (!). Could make advanced tools, and elaborate works of art. Today - Homo Sapiens Sapiens. 1350 cc brain. Can develop a world wide network to communicate with each other and share information at the speed of light.
Gathering the food required to produce our brains, and continuously running them day and night, requires quite a lot of energy. So why did humans take this evolutionary path, as opposed to the tree-hanging sloths that developed smaller brains to save energy? What was the selective pressure in the environment of our ancestral apes, that made having larger brains so valuable? Much of the answer seems to be our own fellow apes... To understand why we became so clever, we might start by comparing ourselves to African apes that are of our similar size, but having brains three times smaller than ours. Part of what distinguishes us from these apes, is our ingenious ability to manipulate our physical environment, and our ability to understand and communicate about the world through a complex language. But there are also two other "overlooked" aspects of our intelligence: 1) We have an astonishing ability to imitate the behaviour and psychology of others, to the point of intuiting, or "mind-reading" what others are thinking (most animals can hardly understand what other animals are thinking, although we, as humans, might imagine that they do...), and 2) we have, through our ability to communicate and imitate, a remarkable ability of spreading ideas - memes - such that in today's modern society, some craze may spread across the globe in a matter of days. I will neither claim to fully understand what caused our overwhelming brain power, nor try to produce a theory for it here, but I will still suggest this: We must look at evolution holistically. Our ancestor not only developed in an environment with plants, prey and predators, but in the complex environment of other apes. Apes are social animals living in groups. Man is tribal. Both individuals and groups that were better at some or all forms of manipulating the physical environment, communicating, imitating others, sharing/adopting ideas, and more, would have an advantage in the social hierarchy and inter-tribal environment. No single factor can be determined, except that what has survived are the complex genetic molecules creating apes with the types of extra brain power that has been beneficial holistically.Neural hardware: Altruistic or selfish?
Biological system may surive on the criterion of being nice to each other, but this is not the ultimate criterion; we do have empathy, but we're also descendants of many a rapist and murderer. We should expect people to be altruistic in a way that in the past generally benefitted the type of DNA molecules that largely created them. Therefore we should expect a tendency of altruism towards our family and tribe (who carries our genes and protects us), and a tendency of hostility towards people that are most different to us (who are genetic competitors); a tendency of altruism towards animals that are useful to us (taking care of sheep), and a tendency of ignoring the suffering of animals where altruism is evolutionary rather meaningless (like compassion for fish). In human society, we may arbitrarily divide altruism into three categories: Self-sacrifice - where altruism represent a loss of personal energy/value, for the benefit of the 'collective self' (a mother nurturing her child; taking care of relatives or friends). Gentlemanship - sharing small favours without precisely keeping track of them; politeness that keep society running smoothly and energy efficient. Deceit - altruism that represent a distinct loss of energy/value, but that is not beneficial except for the negative repercussions of not behaving altruistically. (hidden charity - perhaps a form of spiritual/physiological cleansing, if seemingly not benefitting the individual socially or practically.) Note that this classification simply looks at altruism as a behavioural outcome, and disregards both whether this altruism is genuinely experienced, and how our subconscious morality is construed. Also, altruism should not be confused with trading goods & services in the market place at perceived equal value. The only point I'm making is this: The evolutionary benefit, and behavioural tendency, of altruism, is in a form that aids that which is behaving altruistic.Neural hardware: Subconscious structures.
As noted earlier, our DNA does not change after we are conceived. Then how does it know who its multi-cellular creature should relate to after birth, which people to bond with, which tribe to belong to, what language and culture to adopt? Of course, the DNA knows none of these things. DNA only offers a general platform that has proved evolutionary useful. For example, the maternal bond is especially strong, but whoever assumes the role of mother in the life of a developing baby becomes the mother in the child's mind. There is also some built-in bonding mechanism to the figure of a father, and probably to siblings, but whether other relatives are blessed with specific or general bonds, seems uncertain. Indeed, when we look at the vortex of our being - our ego & identity - it is quite evident that many of our specific affiliations in life have nothing to do with specific programming, but general programming. Why do people feel so strongly for a professional sports team, even one far from home? Perhaps our ancestral tribesmen hunting down prey in ancient times are most responsible for this phenomena, where special attention to these men and their activity was a very important group dynamic (especially kids idolising them). It's also peculiar to witness how many people are born into a society where the correct religion is practised, and how beautiful we find the nature where we were brought up. So, if we are running on pre-programmed hardware, what is the we that is running on it?Neural software: Memes - reproducing ideas.
Many thoughts appear in our consciousness - frankly any thought we have thought about anything. Being vividly conscious of the environment we move around in, is apparently useful. And while much of our human thinking is a more or less sophisticated version of that of other animals, we are additionally gifted with the ability of sharing memes. These are a special type of ideas - distinct ideas that can spread from person to person, including through mediums such as books or the internet. Because sharing a wide range of distinct ideas was useful, our brains were naturally selected for being a platform for such memes. We became programmed for being good at generally spreading certain type of ideas. This has had a somewhat "unintended" effect - similar to how complex molecules evolved in the primoridal soup, our collective brains have become a neurordial soup where memes follow the basic law of evolution - whatever survives, survives. As our DNA can only create a general platform for memes, this simultaneously allow any meme good at exploiting this platform to pervasively spread through our collective consciousness, regardless if it's particularly useful for its hosts. This has a lot of bearing on the reproduction of political ideas - they are not necessarily selected for being inherently rational of useful, but for having a knack for spreading! And this reveals why Loginomy is relevant - checking our environment and political ideas to find if they are truly coherent, before wandering any further with it.A short model of human behaviour.
In the next segment, we will look at systems that are composed of several humans - organisations. It's therefore important to leave this segment with a clear model of how the human elements of an organisation behave individually, according to Science. I will attempt this definition: A human is a multi-cellular organism whose behaviour is generally programmed with evolutionary beneficial strategies for the survival of its genetic material. In effect, its behaviour is governed by a subjective representation of its environment, where the pursuit of well-being aligns with what has been evolutionary beneficial behaviour in the environments of its ancestors.Interlude: Collective computation in biological systems.
5. COLLECTIVE INFORMATION SYSTEMS (organisations)
We have now reached the level of human organising, which is clearly relevant in crafting a rational political system. Frankly, the previous segments are mostly important because of realising what human organisation is: collective behavioural patterns emerging from the behaviour of individual humans, emerging through the general programming of reproducing molecules, emerging from atoms, emerging from wave patterns.Social systems.
Most mammals are social creatures (at least enough to reproduce). Humans form various forms of social groups, which we will all call organisations - interpersonal systems that command, influence or enable certain behaviours. We might label all social groups as organisations, like families, or a group of friends that exhibit some orderly interaction. However, we are most interested in formal organisations. All organisations exist through various social norms, but formal organisations have additionally explicit rules and goals that its followers adhere to. Examples of formal organisations are companies, non-profits, religious groups, and political organisations. We should also understand that even nation states are organisations (territorial ones), and that several international unions, agreements and institutions are forms of international organisations.What do we know about the behaviour of organisations?
Political organisations are certainly organisations, and so we would very much like to know if organisations exhibit any universal patterns or tendencies. This ought to be a fair expectation, since our organisations are made of the same ingredient - humans. In studying organisations, we are trying to describe various, orderly forms of human interaction. And in understanding that organisations are the collective, behavioural patterns of biological creatures, we can begin to understand how they behave. For instance, as shown in the interlude just above this segment, we may study animal organising as collective computational systems, using mathematical models, which this author thinks make a lot of sense. It means looking at animal organising as a collective process that over time is finding better ways to solve the problems of its environment.Universal darwinism as a solution to the study of organisations.
A short-cut to the study of organisation is through universal darwinism. As with the wisdom embedded in human traditions (complex patterns that work), organisations with a decent lifespan are categorically displaying the patterns revealing the ways organisations can and do function. By finding the traits and tendencies of "successfull organisations", we should simultaneously find organisations existing by a limited arrangement, governed by what can possibly survive. By this line of thinking, we can ask - why does Nature produce humans in organisations? Why has this been evolutionary beneficial? Why do people cooperate? Let us remind ourselves that we live on a planet of scarce resources. To survive, humans need to extract several of these resources, and certainly as much resources as they need to sustain themselves. In this endeavour, cooperation is energy efficient. And what energy efficiency specifically means in regard to human organising, is that the return of energy is overall greater than the energy put into the effort of organising. We might put it as such:Human cooperation (organisation) has evolved because it is energy efficient.
In the perspective of universal darwinism, the very purpose of organisations as phenomena is to amass surplus energy in struggle of survival, where those of contending organisations that do not meet this requirement will eventually dissolve, one way or the other. Below I will try to outline a more refined (but basic) theory about organisations, which maybe also summarise what they are. Science is, after all, a collection of theories, and it will be very helpful and enlightening for Loginomy to establish the distinct theory below. (I'm having the audacity to call it a theory, as I consider it a construe of scientific knowledge.)A theory on the natural concentration of power in formal organisations.
Human behaviour has a clear biological underpinning - the genetic material that has programmed the platform of our general behaviour was also present in our ancestors, who survived because of it. Since all our ancestors survived, this must mean that our behaviour has a fundamental tendency to reflect the self-interest of ourselves and our own "genetic family" (in however complex manner, including altruism). Apparently, evolution has selected humans with a strong tendency to cooperate because it has been energy efficient to do so. What is less apparent is what kind of organisations our individual behaviour will manifest. The theory put forth here tries to make general sense of this, in describing a fundamental tendency of human organisation: that the nature of our individual patterns generate an increasing concentration of power in (collective) formal organisations. We will examine why this is so. For this theory to be valid, one must be able to detect an increasing asymmetrical power distribution in a wide range of formal organisations, whereas in the case of an actual symmetrical - or at least stable - distribution of power, there should be an identifiable counterforce negating the tendency of concentration / further concentration.What are formal organisations, and what is power?
We can distinguish formal organisation from other social groups, by the existence of an explicit contract that its members adhere to. The contract is formal rules that come in addition to the cultural norms that are otherwise present in the given environment (including the cultural norms that may evolve because of the organisation itself). We will define a formal organisation as a means of organising behaviour for the purpose of generating surplus energy. All human activity is made of human behaviour. Power is the ability to use or influence the behaviour of others to serve your own (perceived) interest. Regarding formal organisations we might sometimes be more technical, and describe power as the ability to command labour. In modern society power is often associated with monetary wealth, but we should keep in mind that money is just one form of power (a potential exchange for labour). The power of money can be traded for goods and services, which are products of labour, but power also exists through recognition and admiration of our character, talents or achievements. Power does not only exist as wealth to our name, but also as the perceptual recognition of our ego, honour, status, reputation or nobility, in dimensions ranging from physical attractiveness, to virtues like kindness and wisdom, to ingenuity and brute strength, to our social or professional network.Everyone seeks power.
For power to concentrate, it must necessarily be sought, but why do we seek it? The general programming of our DNA represent not only that surviving among plants and predators, but that simultaneously surviving in a social environment. Not only did our ancestors have to amass natural resources, but they also had to aquire them in a social setting. Man therefore has a natural proclivity of seeking influence, to be accepted by his similarly selfish tribesmen, and to keep his share of resources.Unevenly distributed skills as initial hierarchies.
In any given environment, people with a better matching skillset (and a bit of luck) will do better than others. In a past environment, running down deers might be a particularly useful skill. Today, being good with computers is a particularly useful skill. Some people will be better than others at making money, whether through honest labour or usury. In professional sports, some athletes excel and win more competitions. Some girls are more attractive than others; some boys are tougher than others. Some leaders are more admired or feared. On a general note, we can claim that some people will be better at attaining power than others, forming hiearchies of power within organisations. However, this alone does not explain a tendency of increasing concentration. Cause let us imagine two fishermen unequally gifted in the art of catching fish - one catches 10 fish per day, while the other catches 15 fish per day. After 10 days, the former has catched 100 fish, while the latter has catched 150 fish. Here, the distribution of energy after 10 days is the same as after 1 day, which seems like a stable dynamic. However, we shall see that once power is distributed unevenly, other dynamics also come into play.Most everyone yield more power to the powerful than the powerless.
We have come to the source of power concentration. First let's define everyone with a level of power less than average, as vassals, and everyone with a level of power above average, as lords. Now, if we assume that everyone would like more power (for whatever purpose, including the ability to "use it for good"), we can produce this model:concentration <------(lords| attaining power |vassals)------> equality
oligarchy <------(lords | attaining power | vassals)------> democracy
When lords attain more personal power, they are by definition making power concentrate; when vassals attain more power, they are by definition seeking equality. In a modern economy, this model alone may explain some concentration of wealth in that lords have more surplus income they can invest, compared to vassals spending most of their income on their basic household. However, the more fundamental reason for power concentration is expressed through this model:lords <------( lords | yielding power | vassals )------> lords
What much or little power individuals possess, they tend to rather send it toward power concentrations than to the powerless! Why? The explanation is two-fold: The favourable vassal. We must remember that power is influence. Our personal power resides in the ability to influence others - and - choosing who will influence us. And to remain influential within a power hiearchy, individuals have an ingrained tendency to seek the favourable light of power (not bowing to power can make us outcasts, or can even be immediately lethal). We want to surround ourselves with popular people, popular ideas and popular products (aligning with the environment / internal change). Hence, most everyone will let lords have more influence over them than vassals, yielding their capacity to be influenced toward the vortex of power. Lord of self-interest. Although individual lords have to align with the larger vortex of power themselves, they, like people in general, will preferrably use their power to serve their own self-interest more than they serve the interest of others. Thus the vortex of power will tend to manipulate the environment to benefit whichever lords the vortex of power is composed of. This external change of the environment happens through 1) manipulating the structure of the formal organisation, and 2) a manipulation of how vassals perceive the organisation. By these means, the vortex of power is outsourcing cost & risk (energy expenditure) to vassals. --In effect of the above, if individuals want to maintain their personal power while living under the sphere of influence of a power vortex, they will be forced to adhere to its dynamic, whether they like it or not. The consequence being that power tends to float toward the vortex, increasing its concentration.
A piece of data.
If we look at statistics for some of the largest organisations we have - nation states - then we see power indeed having concentrated the last several decades. The below image shows the income of lords within some of the largest economies of the world (note that the percent-axis starts at 5%):
Counteracting the tendency of power concentration.
As mentioned, it is integral to this theory that one can identify dynamics in symmetrical organisations that have counteracted the tendency of power concentration. I'll use nation states to describe the exceptions I find: INITIAL LEGAL LIMITATIONS When power is limited through collectively instituted law. As with the tripartite system of western democracies, where power is divided into legislative, excecutive and judiciary branches; a rather successfull invention. However, it is not a given that legal limitations will stand the test of time. A good example would be the American Constitution that is today severely circumcised through such legislation as The Patriot Act (which among other things enables the US government to kill American citizens without trial). We may say that the Law that is the American Constitution was a failure in preventing the lords of American society to gradually destroy it. VASSAL UNIONISM When power is concentrated and poorly reflects the interest of vassals, we see that vassal are sometimes able to organise a union from their common interest, creating a dual power vortex. While this might offer some temporary equality in redistributing power to the powerless, it is important to understand that this is not in itself a solution to the natural tendency of power concentration. According to the theory here proposed, power in all forms of power vortexes tend to concentrate, including vassal unionism, and to support this claim we can refer to the dreadful examples of totalitarian communism, which is the swift concentration and corruption of power by the vortex of vassal unionism. --We might also notice that the "labour" and "bourgeois" parties of European democracies have by now turned into one power vortex. INNOVATION The distribution of power can be shifted through various sorts of technological development and improved organisation & production. I will also include reform through enlightenment, making this a very broad category that I will label as innovation. --As vassals outnumber lords, innovation yielding equally more power to the general population will shift the balance of power toward vassals (less concentration). Let us imagine that one lord has a power in the magnitude of 10, while five vassals have each a power in the magnitude of 2. Then let us imagine that technological development give each person more surplus energy, in the order of magnitude of 1. Before the lord had an equal amount of power as the vassals combined , but after the innovation took place vassals now have 36% more power than the lord. 10 + 1 = 11 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 1 = 3 2 + 1 = 3 10 / 10 ==> 11 / 15In the popular book Capital in the Twenty-First Century (2013), French economist Thomas Piketty points out that when the rate of return on capital (r) is greater than the rate of economic growth (g) over the long term, the result is concentration of wealth. (He adds that this unequal distribution of wealth causes social and economic instability.) In viewing economic growth as innovation, Piketty's theory harmonise with the theory here put forth, as well as innovation being a counter-force to the tendency of increasing concentration of power.
ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE If the ecosystem where the organisation operate significantly change, it could force the organisation to restructure or readapt to the new environmental pressure created, which may change the hiearchy of power in the process. And even more so if the evironmental shift is great, like in "a journey across the sea". --The dynamics above are inhibitions to the fundamental tendency of power concentration. We shall keep them in mind, and make good use of them down the road.Comment.
If this theory here outlined is true, then we may view the world in a clearer light: looking at the concentration of power in formal organisations as a natural, fundamental tendency - not something that might occur, but as a force of nature that is to be expected! If we understand this difference, then we will realise that, as power always tends to concentrate, we must always counteract this tendency, and diligently so, in the shaping of a political system (given that power concentration has negative concequences).Hypothesis: Heteronomous power concentrations are collectively energy inefficient.
Although cooperation is ideally energy efficient, what happens if an organisation is largely influenced by a small minority (with more or less diverging interests)? My hypothesis is that when a certain level of power concentration is surpassed in assymetrical (hierarchial) organisations, collective energy efficiency will start to decrease. I call this type of organisation heteronomous. I define the treshold of heteronomy as occurring when the minority interests of a power concentration are more influential than the common interests among all the people of the organisation. Since this is a hypothesis, I have excluded it from the chapter, but I have written more exstensively about it here. However, whether or not this hypothesis is valid, it's nontheless true that humans are designed to serve self-interest (of their genetic material across individuals), and that we should always expect concentrations of power to serve their perceived self-interests more than serving the interests of vassals.6. ARTIFICIAL PHYSICAL SYSTEMS (technology)
We have now reviewed fundamental aspects of what Nature and Man is. Lastly, we come to our man-made tools - technology. Using tools to manipulate our environment can increase energy efficiency, which increases our chances of survival. From our interaction with the natural world, by trial and error (heuristics), and by our scientific enlightenment, we have developed advanced physical systems to accommodate ourselves. Technology has been a huge factor to human organising since the beginning of civilisation, and we might even view society as organising on the basis of its technological paradigm. It seems, as opposed to enlightenment itself, that technological know-how is allowed to spread rapidly through society without too much resistance from cultural norms. The following charts look at scientific enlightenment and the evolution of technology in a grand scope, perhaps yielding some insights.Some milestones in our scientific enlightenment. Prehistoric times: Lunar and solar calendars monitoring and predicting the cycles of heavenly bodies. Prehistoric times: The extraction and manipulation of metals from minerals. 1543: Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (mathematical heliosentric model) 1687: Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (classical mechanics) 1839: Theodor Schwann's Mikroskopische Untersuchungen über die Übereinstimmung in der Struktur und dem Wachstum der Tiere und Pflanzen (recognizing the common cellular foundation of animals and plants) 1859: Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (theory of evolution) 1878: Willard Gibb's On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances (thermodynamics) 1900: Planck's law of electromagnetic radiation from black bodies (quantum mechanics) 1915: Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity (along with quantum mechancis forming the advent of modern physics) 1973: Candace Pert's Opiate Receptor: demonstration in nervous tissue (molecules of emotion binding to brain membrane; modern neuroscience) Technological evolution, emphasising information-technology. 50 000 years of stone tools. 7 000 years of advanced agriculture and the wheel. 6 000 years of writing (recording information). 576 years of modern printing (large-scale distribution). 250 years of industrial machines. 66 years of electronic machines (computing binary information). 56 years of industrial robots. 39 years of microprosessors. 31 years of digital 3D-printing (printing information-technology). 20 years of robots on Mars. 19 years of public internet (readily sharing information across the globe at the speed of light). 14 years of Human Genome Project (our biology an information-technology). 8 years of 3D bio-printing (printing human tissue and organs). 3 years of CRISPR human gene editing. 2 years of widespread use of artificial neural networks. 1 year of universal quantum computers. Technological evolution, emphasising destructive capacity: Prehistoric: Bow & arrow, daggers. 1600 B.C.: Swords 9th century: Gunpowder 12th century: Trebuchet 13th century: The handcannon (early �musket�) 1867: Dynamite 1899: International law ban the use of chemical weapons 1912: Aircraft bomber 1945: Nuclear weapons 1957: Intercontinental missiles 1972: Biological weapons convention 1980s: Nanotechnology
I believe we can confirm that, as biological systems before it, technological systems have become increasingly complex. We have more ability to manipulate energy, and synonymously more energy to our disposal. Our biology itself has become an information technology, having entered the realm of scientific research and manipulation. Several companies are now not only using robotics and automation, but artificial neural networks.7. ARTIFICIAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS (artificial intelligence)
Through the advancement of our artificial tools, and by the progress of understanding our own bodies scientifically, it seems we are reaching the next stage of evolution: one where human intelligence can be enhanced artificially, or even be created independently in our machines, towards some sort of artificial superintelligence. This sounds far-fetched at first, but once we understand how rapidly technology is developing, we will realise that this scenario is not far away. Because the evolution of technology does not happen linearly, but exponentially. Exponential growth in technology is most popularly witnessed in Moore's law, which is the observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years:
And while the density of the circuits of our ordinary microchips is reaching a physical limit, standard microchips are being superseeded by more advanced forms of computational power - quantum computers, and possibly processors with artificial synapses emulating how the brain works. If we indeed assume that the exponential growth of the last several decades continues, it might look something like this:
Conclusions of the first axiom.
To create a meaningful political system, we must first identify how society and its larger environment work, using collectively verifiable theories. After a fresh exploration of Science, we have a quite different impression of what society is, than if we were to simply rely on our everyday sociocultural impressions. The intention has been to first examine the thing we want to make changes to. If your car is not working, you take it to someone who knows cars. If your body is not working, you take it to someone who understand bodies. But if society is not working, we give it to people who may not understand the Science behind it. Probably we should be well aquainted with epistemology, physics, biology, sociology, psychology, and general systems theory, before dealing with the complexity of human society. And I hope I have visited relevant avenues of Science in above exploration, as I will now try to draw general conclusions from it.Conclusion I: Nature follows generally predictable patterns.
A lucid political system must acknowledge a world that can be collectively identified. Creating complex verbal structures that personally sounds and feels right based on subjective values and interests does not cut it (although I would say this has historically been the tradition of political philosophy). Science represents the surest knowledge we have of our shared reality, and Science says Nature unfolds as orderly patterns. To the degree we understand how patterns unfold, we can adjust our behaviour to fullfill our purpose. We do this intuitively in our every day life, but we also have the opportunity to do this systematically in our political organising - by understanding how humans, organisations and our wider environment work, we can make the appropriate systemic changes to fullfill a collective, altruistic purpose. What we found about the evolution of patterns, is that the criterion of survival is survival itself. This reveals that also political structures survive on the criterion of their own continuation, not necessarily offering prosperity and long-term survival for the global village that is humanity. Cause everything is patterns, including people's affiliation with political ideologies. A change in the state of politics must not only represent a rational system, but a careful manipulation of prevailing political culture. It's not very useful to demand that the world must change and be offended if it doesn't; we must look for potent ways to alter it. If you want to teach a child something, the problem is your ability to make that change happen. When I want to convey this idea of Loginomy, I must present it in a clear and readable manner. If we want to reduce crime in society, we cannot simply insist that people should be nicer � we must make systemic changes. Of course, everyone's behaviour, including my own, is a subconscious pattern, which ridicules the idea of manipulating the course of the world. But then again, something is writing this paragraph, something part & parcel of the fabric of Man. Our knowledge is prone to evolve, making us more aware of our patterns, which in effect alter them.Conclusion II: We live on one planet of scarce resources.
While there is a lot of space in our solar system, billions of stars in the galaxy, and billions of galaxies in the universe, we are currently situated on the surface of one single planet. Technology is now at a level where we can arbitrarily blow up our one planet, which makes major conflicts of interest over scarce resources especially disconcerting.Conclusion III: Political power tends to concentrate, thus tends to primarily reflect the interests of power concentrations.
Complex molecules form cells, cells form men, men form organisations, and organisations form civilisations; a colossus trampling wide and far on the backs and whims of mortals. On the surface of this planet of scarce resources, the larger scheme of things are run by the power concentrations of international organisations, more or less cynically pursuing their conflicting, minority interests. Power has a natural tendency to concentrate, as we for various reasons (discussed above) yield more power to the powerful than the powerless. This means that organisations tend to reflect the interests of lords more than vassals. In the production of value, lords will seek to outsource cost & risk to vassals (if they can get away with it). While large organisations does sometimes find mutual interest and peaceful equlibrium, we see that various leverage over one another occasionally turn into severe conflicts of interest. Power concentrations are minorities not necessarily exposed to the detrimental concequences of conflicts, and sometimes even personally benefitting from them. If perceived shielded from the negative concequences of their endeavours, concentrations of power are more likely to disregard the borders/interests of other organisations in pursuing their self-interest. In politics, we can expect the hierarchy of governance to serve itself, where altruism is officially advocated, but really a secondary or tertiary force. Since power has a natural tendency to concentrate, we must counteract this tendency in developing a political system that seeks to optimally serve our common interest.Conclusion IV: Humanity is on the verge of artificial superintelligence.
As we are always heading into the future, we would like to know what challenges lie ahead of us. Reality is too complex to simulate, but as patterns are orderly and generally predictable, we may look for the larger pattern of our global society, and try to peek a little into the future. Since there is structure and repitition in surviving patterns, we can analyze the larger patterns, and make general predictions about the future. (Explained plainly, we may predict the general movement of a hurricane, although we cannot pinpoint the precise future wind at any given location.) Well, we live on a planet of apes where the rate of technological development is exponential, therefore increasingly transforming our society. If we extrapolate the current exponential, technological growth, we can expect the emergence of an artificial superintelligence within a few decades, which is an event horizon we cannot see beyond. The technological singularity is the end of human society as we know it. This definitely matters to how we conduct ourselves. So it is important to have in mind that we are trying create a political model for the last transformative years of our humanoid civilisation.I believe this has been a fair walk-through of the wilderness around us. To summarise, we ought to look at our tangible nature (energy not dissipated) as our verifiable theories reveal it - as patterns repeating themselves, or emerging in increasing complexity. We can trace these orderly patterns into a vaguely foreseeable future, thus having the capacity to stake out a sensible political path onward. So in which direction are we supposed to be heading?
II Purpose
Note: I consider the above to be an uncontroversial rumination of Science and society. However, the idea of Loginomy is to establish a political system based on the best possible knowledge of our shared reality; this refers directly to the yet unchallenged theories of Science, and not to my own incomplete knowledge of them.