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A brief foray about Structure -

When folks think about structure they usually do not think of it in as many different ways as is possible, and even the structure that is language has trouble dealing with that reality. Just as English has only a few ways to describe Snow, the Inuit Language has a great many completely different words. In English only a few adjectives like wet or powdered are the best we can do. 

The Japanese go even further. Their concept of a saw as a tool for cutting wood, becomes not only a dozen different names depending on the specific cut, but a different actual saw design for each name and purpose, most able to be used interchangeably but unlike using a salad fork for a dinner fork, something a master carpenter would not do. The generic word "saw" however sloppy allows for a use never considered, while just having a different name for every concept, means that the new concept needs a new name generally understood before you can even discuss it.

And so it is with structures of reality, some like whole Atoms, Protons, and Quarks describe things, at the base of the structure of Matter. However, The 5 Platonic solids (cube, tetrahedron etc.) do not describe that sort of structure but a concept of structure that deserves a different word. While knowledge of one can inform the other; they are very different things. Many names are needed for the different concepts of "structure of reality"; all valid but taking different meanings.

Likewise, Language has many concepts all called "structure" that are required for the very concept of language to exist, and the structures of use and mechanisms by which ideas are put together in different languages. Also, lurking under the surface are the many mechanisms of the brain by which language is created and used, and the mechanisms on a generic level that, like Geometry, sets the rules by which thought happens. This is utterly alien to the logic mechanisms of a computer and why I do not think "Hard AI" will ever be possible with anything that would fit a realistic description of a computer, no matter the improvements in technology.

How groups operate to create and achieve goals is another concept of structure that deserves its own family of names and here we get quickly into the weeds, for all the books, papers, and thousands of years of thought, appears to me to have missed out on several concepts of the word. A very big problem up front is the structure of how a particular thread of thought evolves, that two perfectly verifiable systems can evolve to be accurate inside their system but nearly incomprehensible in the other, and indeed, the structure that has evolved separately are not the only ones possible, but each one limits what can happen from there.

A good example of this was the discovery of the links between pathogens and disease. It is very easy to show that the pathogens are necessary for the disease to present itself. If they are exploding in population within, then the body, unable to cope, will suffer damage and death is the likely outcome. An issue, of course, is that the pathogens are everywhere, and yet everyone is not dead or dying, so the concept of immunity becomes the path that the research travels.

Meanwhile, another society that has no idea that disease is caused by these creatures (pathogens), but does take careful note of other aspects of life, and gives those aspects names, and learns how they operate in immunity (but don't realize or think of it as immunity) can develop an effective long term "solution" that is not perfect, but is effective in that society. The paths to perfecting the system will be very different. In the end the two systems are mutually incompatible conceptually, and involve underlying concepts that are unbelievable across that divide.

All this barely hints at the generic problem, that actual thought and comment, no matter how brilliant, limits the path from there, sometimes in very dysfunctional and damaging ways, both in the thoughts of the individual, and in the means that allow those thoughts "out-side-the-box" a place in the path of the advancement of humanity. Even the concept of "out-of-the-box", limits the kind of acceptable thoughts about "out-of-the-box".

Part of the problem is the Mechanisms of human thought that are built as a complex of metaphors, that every thought is a connected chain of related ideas, that sometimes implies many related concepts, but can throw the mind off by expecting the mechanisms of the object described by the metaphor to act the same as the object of the metaphor. (i.e.; if the brain is just a complex computer, we can build a complex computer to be the same as the brain, but the metaphor is not the reality. Incomprehensible in the other, and indeed, the structure that has evolved separately are not the only ones possible, but each one limits what can happen from there.

A good example of this was the discovery of the links between pathogens and disease. It is very easy to show that the pathogens are necessary for the disease to present itself. If they are exploding in population within, then the body, unable to cope, will suffer damage and death is the likely outcome. An issue, of course, is that the pathogens are everywhere, and yet everyone is not dead or dying, so the concept of immunity becomes the path that the research travels.

Meanwhile, another society that has no idea that disease is caused by these creatures (pathogens), but does take careful note of other aspects of life, and gives those aspects names, and learns how they operate in immunity (but don't realize or think of it as immunity) can develop an effective long term "solution" that is not perfect, but is effective in that society. The paths to perfecting the system will be very different. In the end the two systems are mutually incompatible conceptually, and involve underlying concepts that are unbelievable across that divide.

All this barely hints at the generic problem, that actual thought and comment, no matter how brilliant, limits the path from there, sometimes in very dysfunctional and damaging ways, both in the thoughts of the individual, and in the means that allow those thoughts "out-side-the-box" a place in the path of the advancement of humanity. Even the concept of "out-of-the-box", limits the kind of acceptable thoughts about "out-of-the-box".

Part of the problem is the Mechanisms of human thought that are built as a complex of metaphors, that every thought is a connected chain of related ideas, that sometimes implies many related concepts, but can throw the mind off by expecting the mechanisms of the object described by the metaphor to act the same as the object of the metaphor. (i.e.; if the brain is just a complex computer, we can build a complex computer to be the same as the brain, but the metaphor is not the reality. It is better than a clockwork. That was the metaphor previously, but similarly limited)

Another "Structure that deserves a different name" deals with the nature and structure of stories. In real life, having a good life with no drama and a peaceful time is for most the ultimate best life. However, in storytelling it is the ultimate worst story. If folks start making decisions based on story characters, then there are several problems.

Central, of course, is that in every story there is a real God that actually decides every thought, action, and consequence of the characters and no matter what the real probabilities decides exactly how the dice will fall. That God, of course, is the author and can make every action turn out based on those needs of the author. If one sees their life as such a story then a God writing it and making such choices, and fixing the dice, feels obvious, without understanding why. 

The Bible is just such a book of stories. Imagine if Adam and Eve had been good kiddies and never done anything wrong. The Bible would be a leaflet with nobody to read it. More to the point, as people learn to tell stories it is not a big step to imagine that you are part of such stories and the story would need an author to make all those decisions and how probable is it to have so many possible outcomes has only one outcome after the fact.

Where such stories are the basis of experience (and everyone starts life as a child, learning far more by story than experience) it really screws up folk’s expectation of probability. A shark attack is wildly improbable but a major fear because it makes a great story. On the other hand, climate problems are slow and there is nothing dramatic on a day to day basis, so it make a bad story, and thus is given a low probability even as it is a near certainty.

Where folks thinking their lives are stories, seek drama rather than solving problems, would much rather start a war rather than reach an agreement. Of course, it takes two to have a different attitude and one side cannot get to the most obvious solution when the other side sees anything short of total arrival at some ideal endpoint as a need to fight on or give up in defeat; even if that endpoint is a fantasy, 

Knowing that they are going to die eventually, it is an easy step to seek immortality in stories, and not much of a step to try and improve the story with huge damage, very foolish risk and vain Glory in the worst way. Those who are remembered indeed fit exactly that model, throwing away the chance to make Real Change and have an Empire of Free People working together to make everyone's life as pleasant and boring as possible.

Now, in all the news media stories that are complex and not dramatic like Federal Budgets, or regulations, there is little that you can get a hook in, even though the information is vital. The fall back is to play the conflict with almost no boring actual details. In these, and so many other ways, there are aspects of the structure of how things are thought about that cause weaknesses in Society, because such alternative structures are barely conceptualized, much less studied or understood, even the words used can make another structure's ideas be incompatible with the standard mode even though it could have much deeper insights.

Creating a society that power does not flow to a privileged elite; that a revolution does not move out one Dictator only to find another worse in charge; is not something commonly done and much of the focus is in magical thinking that "our side" would not act as the "Other side" and would not take advantage and yet any power wielded without restraint only very rarely uses self-restraint.

A layout and discussion of mechanisms that would actually work and is thought through, considering all the potential issues that could come up, that has a strategy to solve them, is desperately needed before taking the leap rather than cobbling it together after, but it would be deadly boring to read.

 

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Bob Danforth

Bob Danforth

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