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https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussi ... ent/680142
Deus Novacula Occami

What could possibly be simplest explanation for all phenomena? A ToE (theory of everything)? One with just one entity obviously, oui? — Agent Smith

Only partly tongue-in-cheek, I call my own Enformationism thesis a "Theory of Everything", in the sense that it boils all Matter, Energy & Mind in the universe down to a single all-encompassing "entity" : Information. This is based on current extensions of basic Information Theory, from Shannon's 1s & 0s, to a wide variety of physical, mathematical, & mental applications. If you sum-up all those various Forms of information, the whole cosmic system could be viewed as "God", at least in Spinoza's notion of deus sive natura. As you suggested : "God is one entity and is the simplest explanation for everything".

PS__Calling my thesis a TOE doesn't mean I personally know everything. It just implies that potentially every question in science & philosophy could be explained by reference to a single "entity". Some professional thinkers & researchers are already scratching the surface of that gold mine of knowledge.

↪Gnomon
You maybe onto something. I, however, am not so optimistic, but don't let me, an agent of the system, dampen your spirits. Carry on. Do keep us posted on any interesting developments. — Agent Smith

Hey! You raised the question of TOE & novacula occami. So, what was your motivation? Was it simply to ridicule the idealistic fantasy of ultimate non-redundant simplicity in a complex world? Or is your pessimism complicated by an itch you can't scratch, except philosophically?

Pragmatic sober scientists, a century ago, were surprised by evidence that our world was not eternal. Yet they were foolish enough to accept the crazy idea that all the zillions of things in the world emerged from a hypothetical Singularity, at a unique point-of-beginning, to create Space-Time from who-knows-what. How much simpler can it get? Except possibly to look for the Source of that fertile Cosmic Egg. Or the Programmer of the algorithm of Evolution? But, why complicate things with fruitless conjectures? Don't you have something better to do?

I agree that the concept of Monotheism was probably an exasperated attempt to simplify the confusing convoluted myths of Polytheism. At least, the notion of an eternal Potential, an Uncaused Cause, seemed to be an intellectual improvement on most bedtime-story explanations for the existence of the natural world, and its cultural questioners. But, that logical shot-in-the-dark has remained hypothetical down to this day. Are we getting any closer to the bottom of what we perceive as universal Reality?

Ancient philosophers sought to simplify the diversity of material things, by postulating an elementary smallest unit of matter : the Atom. And matter-chopping scientists continued to look for that basic building block of the real world, until the 20th century. Ironically, their newly-crowned "atom" was soon found to be made up of even smaller subatomic particles, right on down to the Trinitarian notion of multi-flavored hypothetical Quarks. But their quirky existence was easy to ridicule, due to the necessity to assume something even farther down the tower of turtles : hopefully labeled "preons" (non-dimensional points in four varieties). But its actual existence remains as unprovable as that of the ancient storm-gods.

Hence, the frustrating search for the ultimate "indivisible" element, was shifted from tiny material objects to amorphous invisible Fields of mathematical grids presumed to be made of potential energy. More recently though, the never-ending quest has turned to immaterial Information (mind stuff) as the foundational substance of reality. And that's where I picked-up the impossible dream, But, that seemingly silly notion may have been anticipated by Spinoza in his postulation of a Single (infinite) polymorphic Substance, that he equated with God or Nature. Were all those sages over the centuries barking up the wrong tree? Do we have to go completely out of this world to find the Ground of Being?


Is Information Fundamental? :
Could information be the fundamental "stuff" of the universe?
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/i ... ndamental/

Turtle%20Tower.jpg

Why should a ToE be simpler? Shouldn't it be more complex?

Coming to your theory of Enformationism, do you have any specific reason why you settled on information rather than something else, assuming there's an alternative, to construct your own ToE? — Agent Smith

The concept of a single theory, or even a single equation, to explain everything in the world, is a sort of Holy Grail for physics & cosmology. For a while it looked doable. But in recent years, they have tried & failed to reconcile Relativity/Gravity equations with Quantum/Non-local mathematics. If they ever do discover an algorithm to calculate every phenomenon, from smallest to largest scales, Hawking conjectured that "then we would know the mind of god". In other words, we would understand more than a complex pile of isolated facts, but the integrating force that holds the entire system together : i.e. Holism. So, you could say that the TOE is both simple (singular ; container), and complex (comprehensive ; contents).

In the case of Enformationism, the singular element of the cosmos is Information, Not just in the Shannon definition of empty containers for meaning, but the actual ideas & images & feelings in the human mind. Back in the 1980s, physicist John A. Wheeler (nuclear fission, relativity, black hole as information sink) coined the phrase "it from bit". That summarized his conjecture that all real "its" (physical objects) were derived from non-physical "bits" of abstract Information. Speculating further from that inspired intuition, he developed the hypothesis of a Participatory Universe, in which Observers construct their own model of reality, and that interaction between real & ideal might even have physical effects on the objective world. I don't take that mind-over-matter (magical) notion literally, but it works metaphorically, as an explanation for the collapse of a particle's virtual (mathematical; mental) waveform, into a measurable physical object .

Then, in 1999, the Matrix movie popularized the sci-fi concept that humans are living in a computer simulation. And that novel notion was symbolized by the green "raining code" (bits of information) that dreaming pod-people interpreted as Reality. Possibly inspired by that fiction, cosmologist Max Tegmark proposed his "Mathematical Universe" theory : a speculative "theory of everything". Some years later, I was reading an article about recent developments in Quantum Theory. In it, the physicist noted that all we know about an electron is abstract attributes, such as charge, spin, & momentum, not the particle itself. So, he expressed amazement that "it's nothing but information!".

I was intrigued by that convergence of disparate views of the role of Information, in the real and ideal worlds. But, I only gradually realized the philosophical significance of all-purpose bits of mind-stuff. Eventually, I pulled all the various functions of abstract information, into a thesis I labeled as Enformationism. That coinage was intended to symbolize a new information-based worldview to replace the outdated paradigms of Spiritualism & Materialism & Idealism. Shape-shifting Information is the common denominator (organizing principle) of all those worldviews. So, you could say that, in keeping with Ockham's Razor, our perceived & conceived Reality all boils down to the symbolic Binary-Unity of the single continuum from 0-to-1; nothing to everything; the Holistic System of many parts. The thesis presents a plethora of "specific reasons" for accepting Mental Information (bits), instead of Physical Atoms (its), as the fundamental element of the world.

PS__If you will message me, I'll give you a link to the Enformationism website.


Binary Nature of Reality :
Reality is what we take to be true,” pioneering physicist David Bohm asserted in 1977. “What we take to be true is what we believe… What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.”

The question of what is true is, of course, invariably a binary one — in answering it, we must choose between true and false. Left or right, the red pill or the blue pill, the ultimate “To be, or not to be.” Information theory is built upon this binary mindset — the if this, then that logic of most programming languages is predicated on the true/false dichotomy in executing commands — and it was to this elemental relationship between information and human consciousness that Bohm was speaking.

A little more than a decade later, the great theoretical physicist John Archibald Wheeler (July 9, 1911–April 13, 2008) enriched this idea in a concept he called It from Bit. More than thirty years after he popularized the term “black hole” — a term for the cosmic object which consumes most information into oblivion — Wheeler suggested that our experience of the objects, events, and phenomena that constitute reality is the result of binary decisions — true/false, yes/no, on/off — which we make in the process of observing them.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/09/ ... t-wheeler/

https://media.wired.com/photos/5ca648a3 ... rridor.jpg

http://enformationism.info/enformationi ... 7d7_06.png

So that's what it means! The way I make sense of it is that with regard to anything & everything, we can come up with an algorithm (code) that tells us how to create them. In short, we're in the process of sussing out how to create a universe, and all things, including consciousness, in it. — Agent Smith

Yes. Some prognosticators imagine that humanity has become (is becoming) the little-gods of this world. That's because, unlike most animals, we share abstract information with each other. Animals communicate mostly concretely (smell, taste, touch). But humans have learned how to express subjective thoughts in objective symbols & metaphors. Consequently, we are no longer bound by the old-fashioned self-organizing rules of the natural (physical) world. So, we can now make our own cultural (meta-physical) rules. Unfortunately, despite our good intentions, we also make our own mistakes (nukes). Therefore, until we learn to control our disparate immaterial ideas & feelings, our quest for the grail of godhood will remain an impossible dream.

Vlad Putin hasn't learned that lesson yet, because he assumed the Ukrainian people would identify with their Russian & Soviet (colonial) history, and welcome their "liberator". So, he seems surprised at their unifying nationalist sentiment --- in a region that has only been an independent nation for a couple of generations. A primary lesson of Enformationism, though, is that we are essentially all One, from our quantum roots, to our cosmic future. All people & things are merely various Forms of essential EnFormAction. Prophets & politicians of old have preached holistic unity, but divisive duality (entropy) has always eventually torn down our temporary monuments to material wealth & hegemony.

There's nothing new to the notion of the essential Unity of Humanity & Nature. But in practice, those Utopian dreams have been implemented only in isolated pockets of tribalism & nationalism, each with its local gods and cultural identities. That may be why some dreamers think humanity is doomed to remain fragmented into us-vs-them enclaves, shooting at each other across no-man's land. So, they envision the emergence of Artificial Intelligence, unburdened by personal feelings, which will forge the future of Conscious Matter in the natural world. Lamentably, even those robotic minds (algorithms) could be infected by the viral disease (memes) of their human programmers (creators).

First though, the romantic machine makers will have to learn how to cause the inherent Information in all matter & energy to emerge in the form of immaterial (abstract) Consciousness. It happened naturally, at least once -- after 14 billion years of trial & error. Maybe it could happen again deliberately. However, the Matrix movie illustrates how such an idyllic world for machines could go radically wrong for their flesh & blood creators. No, Enformationism is not a utopian fantasy. No more than Stoicism & Buddhism. It's just another step up the ladder of conscious control, beginning with the Self. It teaches that the world is going somewhere, so we can either get on the bus or get left behind.

Enformy :
In the Enformationism theory, Enformy is a hypothetical, holistic, metaphysical, natural trend or force, that counteracts Entropy & Randomness to produce complexity & progress. [ see post 63 for graph ]
1. I'm not aware of any "supernatural force" in the world. But my Enformationism theory postulates that there is a meta-physical force behind Time's Arrow and the positive progress of evolution. Just as Entropy is sometimes referred to as a "force" causing energy to dissipate (negative effect), Enformy is the antithesis, which causes energy to agglomerate (additive effect).
BothAnd Blog Glossary

A FICTIONAL FORCE EMULATING NATURAL ENFORMY -- (a metaphor, don't take it literally)
https://www.magicalquote.com/wp-content ... gether.jpg

After all your Enformy counteracts the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy always increases) and that's, science says, solar/stellar energy — Agent Smith

Yes. Enformy (negentropy) does indeed contradict the 2nd law. But, there's nothing unlawful or supernatural about it. You wouldn't exist if Entropy had its way unimpeded. I simply gave a positive (information related) name to the phenomenon recognized by scientists (in afterthought) as a local tendency toward organization instead of disorder. The 2nd law only applies to the universe as a whole, but does not prohibit progressive change in isolated pockets, such as our solar system.

Entropy is a one-way ticket to the deep freeze. But Enformy is a transfer ticket to a different destiny. In fact, AsFarAsWeKnow -- despite the search for extra-solar habitable planets -- Earth is the only exception to the "let there be death" rule of Entropy. Our planet has the "right stuff" to collect incoming energy, and use it to build-up instead of to tear-down. Does that "special" status mean that we are blessed among all otherwise devolving systems?

In a practical sense, Gravity is an organizing force in that it counteracts the momentum & expansion of the universe, allowing matter to clump together, as forbidden by the 2nd law. Is that order-out-of-chaos, a random accident, or due to the effects of a little-known reverse-thermodynamics law? In my thesis, I refer to all forms of organizing forces (gravity, energy, nuclear forces) as EnFormAction. It's the causal force that allows novelty to emerge from within the chaos of randomness. Energy is just change; but EnFormAction is positive organic change

In the chart below, notice that the gradual expansion of space was linear, until about the time life & mind & humanity emerged on earth. Then the rate of change exploded at a non-linear rate. Until then, energy was more-or-less uniformly distributed throughout the universe. Since then, the unwritten law of reverse thermodynamics has accelerated the acceleration. So, it seems that order feeds on order, just as life feeds on life. That's what I call EnFormAction, the creative power of Evolution. Could it also be the mysterious Dark Energy that holds galaxies together?

Enformy :
Negentropy is reverse entropy. It means things becoming more in order. By 'order' is meant organisation, structure and function: the opposite of randomness or chaos. One example of negentropy is a star system such as the Solar System. Another example is life. . . .
Life is considered to be negentropic because it converts things which have less order, such as food, into things with more order, such as cells in the body, tissues, and organs. In doing so, it gives off heat. Another example of negentropic things are societies, or social systems, because they take disorderly things such as communications, and make them more orderly and useful.
https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negentropy

http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Image ... chart.webp

Nice! What about the fact that, on the whole, entropy has the upperhand, vis-à-vis negentropy? That there's more disorder than order is a fact, oui? In other words negentropy is fighting a losing battle...eventually life, the paragon of order, will fizzle out (heat death of the universe). — Agent Smith

Yes. Enformy is an underdog in the race to the Final State of the world. It's also a slow starter, taking almost 14 billion years to produce living & thinking creatures. But we are only approaching the midpoint of the projected lifespan of the universe. So, you could guess, now that Enformy has finally gotten up to speed, it could overtake stumbling Entropy before the finish line. Some positive thinkers, such as futurist Ray Kurzweil and AI enthusiasts imagine that rapidly-accelerating human technology will replace plodding physics & biology as the organizing force behind upward evolution.

Of course, we can't be sure of those optimistic scenarios, and I don't expect to be around to see the Omega Point. But the mere fact that such progress is thinkable, should allow us to view self-organizing Evolution & constructive Enformy in a rosier light. The scientists, who calculated the heat-death of the world, did not include the positive effects of Enformy (Negentropy) in their calculations. You could say that Enformy gave Entropy a 14 billion year head start, displaying confidence that future-oriented organized intentional design (e.g. technology) is faster on its feet than haphazard trial & error heuristics. Which would you bet on?


TECHNOLOGICAL EVOLUTION
Time-Singularity-Curve.jpg

COSMIC PROGRESSION
http://gnomon.enformationism.info/Image ... 0Graph.jpg

I'm sure someone/something smart enough like post-technological singularity AI will find a workaround for such obstacles to omnscience, if they even exist that is. — Agent Smith

In the current issue of Philosophy Now magazine, David Chalmers is interviewed about his latest book : Reality +. It's described as "an adventure tour of computer-simulated worlds and virtual reality". He uses the modern metaphor of Virtual Reality in a manner similar to that of Plato's Cave. He describes his Reality + concept in terms that are amenable to my own Enformationism thesis. "The fact that we are conscious beings does not negate the idea that we are sims, since consciousness is substrate independent, emerging from the organization of a complex system, . . . the entities in virtual reality are real . . . they are digital objects, made of information or bits." [my bold] The video game movie TRON is a good illustration. When the hero is inside the game, that simulated world becomes his reality. The only difference is that when you die in our "virtual" reality, you can't leave the game and go back to your "actual" reality. That is, unless there is a techno-heaven for virtual souls to retire to. The interviewer sums up the book : "It is likely that we live in a computer simulation but that should not worry us because everything is still real".

Remember, though, that this technophilosophy book uses metaphors to convey his projection of possible futures. They are not divinely inspired prophecies. Chalmers, says "one central part of my work on consciousness has been arguing that machines can be conscious". With that in mind, he cautions that self-conscious AI, like SkyNet in the Terminator, could become a destructive force in the world, just as self-assertive as Vlad Putin's meat mind. So, we (or AI machines) will still be faced with the ancient philosophical problem of recognizing Evil, and choosing Good. He also notes that "maybe physics can't add up fully to an explanation of consciousness because physics is mostly a kind of abstract causal structure but consciousness goes beyond that". The main problem with relying on Physics is that it is Reductive and narrowly focused. So, philosophers of Consciousness (meta-physics) must be Holistic, with a broader perspective.

Chalmers compares his VR metaphor with Descartes' warning that what we take to be real could be due to an evil Daemon creating an illusion to veil the true reality. "You can think of the evil demon's world as being a type of virtual reality". However, in Chalmer's analogy, the VR is our actual reality. That may sound confusing, but the interviewer notes that, "philosophers use metaphors that are emblematic for their age. . . . . Voltaire believed that God was a clockmaker . . . . the concept of a computer-simulated universe is simply a case in which the metaphor has displaced the real". In that case, you could imagine that "God is a hacker in the next universe up". Which is similar to my own metaphor of the First Cause as the Programmer of our evolutionary program. I don't take that notion literally, so it's merely a way of thinking about our Information-based reality.

I recall making an argument that the fact that people think it's possible for reality as we know it to be an illusion (simulation) implies that the real McCoy (true reality) is, for all intents and purposes, identical to the copy (virtual reality). Why should anyone then try to, well, wake up from what we fear/suspect is only a dream? The doubt would only reappear even if it does so, now, at another level so to speak. — Agent Smith

Yes. That's the argument Cypher made in The Matrix : the illusion was the only reality he had known, before he was "woke" into the harsh reality of the dismal subterranean refuge of the metaphorically named Zion. Several scientists & philosophers (ding an sich) have discussed the same problem with simulated-reality proposals : if you can't tell (experience) the difference, what's the difference? However, as lusty French males used to say, in a different context, "vive la difference".


“I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss.”
___Cypher

Why, in your opinion, is the real on every occasion, portrayed as being worse than the illusion. Too good to be true is the taekeaway here, oui? You will recall that drop-dead gorgeous platinum blonde with an hour-glass figure dressed in electrifying red in the training program developed by Mouse in The Matrix? — Agent Smith

Oui, oui. Since the real world is good enough for survival, but far from optimum, the human mind has developed the unique ability to imagine something better than real. That illusory something is usually referred to as "Ideal". And that's why hard-nosed, leather-hearted Realists are so scornful of the impossible idealistic illusions fostered by optimists and religious authorities (e.g. heaven & nirvana). But, imaginary future states -- such as making-out with the woman in red -- are what drives ambition & progress for humanity. Yet, with age comes the wisdom to lower our expectations : in reality, that gorgeous woman is out of your league.

Why it's called the God particle? Because it's supposed to give mass (which can be explained in a more natural way)? — Haglund

It beats me! I'm not good or knowledgeable in physics.
(I asked that only to put Agent Smith's point in the right perspective.) — Alkis Piskas

To put this question in the "right perspective", here's the punch line : Physicist Leon Lederman labeled his book on the Higgs Boson as The God Particle, partly to suggest that it world explain one of the great remaining mysteries of physics : the cause of gravitation. But, the tongue-in-cheek name was also intended to be provocative, perhaps to tweak the know-it-alls who see no need for a Universal or First Cause of the physical world.

The Man Who Coined 'The God Particle' Explains: It Was A Joke! :
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way ... was-a-joke