The inherent unpredictability of events by natural means

There is no doubt that certain computer models of social and economic systems can be more useful than harmful as planning tools. On balance the best models have considerably more than an even chance of being correct  and enable us to plan housing, medical services, sewage systems, transport, long term financial investment and much else in as rational a way as practicable.

However, it also essential to recognise their limitations. They have to be quantitative in nature and many of the models are based on Game Theory, which assumes that human beings are rational machines who act only out of self interest and enlightened self interest. There is also often an assumption that past trends are a guide to future trends.

It is not just computer models that get things wrong. History proceeds through large, sudden, unpredictable changes – referred to by N.N.Talab as ‘black swan events’ in his recent book The Black Swan: the impact of the highly improbable . E.g. the Cambrian explosion of life forms, 540 million years ago, as shown in the fossil record; the power of the atom; the television; space travel; the Internet; the abolition of slavery in the West; the National Health Service; and the Arab Spring.

A good example of the folly of assuming that human behaviour is predictable and can be modelled on the assumption of selfishness is the Wikipedia. It requires the contributor to use non-intuitive editing software and spend a lot of time working for nothing. It also has no specialised refereeing teams yet achieves a high degree of reliability and is kept continually up to date. On top of this it is immeasurably more comprehensive than any ordinary encyclopaedia (for which, nevertheless, there is an important role, but that's another story) depending on paid referees. Anyone predicting the growth that actually happened in only a decade would have been dismissed as a naive dreamer.

The recently departed Steve Jobs was probably alone in having the vision to see that the iPhone would catch on. No focus groups, no user surveys, no trend projections. Just intuition and the resources to follow it up.

There are innumerable examples of great leaps forward in all fields of human endeavour and in the evolution of life. In fact the whole universe is like this when you examine what evidence we have of progress to date. The Big Bang was the first great leap forward. 13.8 billion years later, the creation of a human being from 4 embryonic stem cells in the biosphere was another quantum jump.

The term 'great leap forward' came from chairman Mao's atheist communist revolution in 1958 which set off a sequence of events leading, according to the latest data of which I am aware, to the death of 60 million people.

 see https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/maos-great-leap-forward-killed-45-million-in-four-years-2081630.html and others.

As Rabi Jonathan Sacks says in his highly acclaimed book and on a BBC radio programme called Start the week, the universe is creative, and creative events are by nature unpredictable.

The only aspect of reality that we can predict with certainty is that it will continue to be unpredictable.

John Sears

See also

Is there meaning behind random events?

Fighting fatalism

The doctrine of chance (Psalm 151)

John Sears

Author
2077:Knights of Peace, available on Amazon.
review copy paperback available on request

reach me on

cosmik.jo@gmail.com

  

Intelligence without brains

 Since the original posting in 2011 the  awareness of the ubiquity of intelligence, at least in the biological world, has grown faster than I can keep pace with. Quantum physics, in particular, appears to be at the root of this intelligence, or rather the equations within it partially describe the nature of God's creation of the stage we live on.

 It is no exaggeration to say that natural world has been imbued with computational features of a complexity and power beyond human imagination or even our power to mimic- even with the latest breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and deep learning. These must originate from before the Big Bang within a realm where time and space do not exist.


What is encouraging for me at least is that this phenomenon and the cosmic purposefulness of human's evolution from outside of space-time is beginning to be noted by mainstream physicists and biologists. Even the emergence of our unique planet and solar system appears increasingly to be goal-oriented, evolving in a way not dissimilar conceptually to the  path by which a human being develops from 4 embryonic stem cells.

I am republishing the 2013 version of the original post here and intend to add notes and links as  I come across and digest information in the science media. 

Over the last decade or so I have heard with increasing frequency of intelligent behaviour in nature; for example in primates, elephants, birds, dolphins and  whales

Example: a crow was confronted with a problem which many humans would not have been able to solve. A tall jar was filled to only a low level with water and a piece of food floated on the surface. It was far too low in the jar to reach. Yet the crow solved the problem by dropping stones into the water until the level of the floating morsel was within reach of its beak. In another experiment a crow could only reach a scrap of food by using a long stick. To do this it had to use a short stick to get the long stick because it was placed behind bars in a cage. See Clever New Caledonian Crows can use three tools.

 Cockatoos were not until recently thought to display intelligent behaviour but a team in Vienna observed that a captive cockatoo was able to retrieve a nut by making a rake, a process which involved shaping a twig with its beak.  See Cockatoo shows tool making skills.

Brain size and complexity does not seem to be much of an indicator of reasoning ability. Even more astonishing is the latest example of problem solving in nature: a single-celled organism (an amoeba, or slime mould, which under the microscope looks like a blob of jelly) is able to solve complex networking problems with no brain or neural network of any kind.

 It is able to construct a matrix of pathways between pieces of food which allow transportation with maximum economy. In fact it is so efficient that researchers have proposed using it as a model for rail and road networks.

Each amoeba is able to negotiate mazes, remembering dead ends, choose the healthiest food from a diversity of options, and anticipate change. To quote from the Scientific American blog source

‘In other words, the single-celled brainless amoebae did not grow living branches between pieces of food in a random manner; rather, they behaved like a team of human engineers, growing the most efficient networks possible. Just as engineers design railways to get people from one city to another as quickly as possible, given the terrain—only laying down the building materials that are needed—the slime molds hit upon the most economical routes from one morsel to another, conserving energy.’

The molecular systems within a cell nucleus and the surrounding cytoplasmic structures also behave in ways which can only be described as intelligent.

In 2013 I came across an example of plants doing mathematical calculations in order to conserve starch throughout the night. It involved feeding in data from the plant's biological clock and the number of starch molecules.

 See  The fittest survive: but how? 

Somehow intelligence moves into our universe at a quantum level from ....somewhere. At one point the whole universe appears to have been a single quantum system and the events within that system are instantaneously connected to events happening now, in the past and in the future via quantum entanglement throughout all the universe.

Time does not come into it. This phenomenon leads to some worldview-shaking-conclusions  e.g. the 400 year old assumption that mind and matter are separate no longer holds.

 Intelligence is a powerful evolutionary tool and appears to have been present from the beginning of life, some 3.5 billion years ago following the late heavy bombardment of Earth by asteroids, comets and meteors. There can be no doubt that this plays a crucial role in the ability of an organism to adapt, compete and cooperate with the living world around it and that this capacity was conferred on life from the start. The emergence of cognitive behaviour in organisms in captivity indicates intelligence levels beyond those needed for survival in their present environment. Perhaps organisms somehow tap an undetectable source of intelligence to help them adapt as the environment changes. This must also be the source which somehow allows totally new species to originate (e.g. as in the Avalon and Cambrian explosions c.550 billion years ago).

Evolution is the subject of much debate. What is beyond doubt is that it is not a random process. To quote the  mathematically brilliant astrophysicist Fred Hoyle(who had been referred to as an atheist) at the end his final book Cosmic Lifeforce (1988): 

The Creator has been given many shapes and names in the diverse cultures throughout the world...the general belief that is common to all religions is that the Universe, particularly the world of life, was created by a being of incomprehensibly magnified human-type intelligence...as if we are creatures destined to perceive the truth relating to our origins in an instinctive way (my italics).

As the Christ said:
 "And I will ask the Father, and he will give you ...the Spirit of Truth, for it abides with you and will be in you."
John 14:16-17

And as the mathematical logician Kurt Goedel proved by formal logic, in his Theorem of Incompleteness (c1930), truth cannot be reached by logic alone: there must be assumptions from outside the logical framework within which a conclusion is arrived at.

See also

consciousness without a brain

 John

reach me at cosmik.jo@gmail.com

2077:Knights of Peace. Summary of chapter 18:Amelia

Followed by.,. excerpt from Beginning of Chapter 18.

Amelia 

Roscoe returns from Grasmere to Cambridge, parking his transpod near the Theatre of War, a large arena in which international disputes are vicariously settled by battles between soldier robots. In this case he watches a bloody robot conflict between Egypt and Sudan over rights to water in the Nile. After the battle he walks via Trumpington Road to the Lion Yard, and visits a reproduction coffee shop, the Grecian, based on one of that name built in 18^th century London. Here he encounters a girl studying music at Emmanuel College. Amelia has already experienced Enlightenment as well as Life Extension. They separate without exchanging contact details but meet again before Roscoe sets off for Grasmere in his transpod . He is still thinking about Isla and her strengthening bond with Eric after his recovery from the struggle with a  Puma but finds himself falling in love with Amelia. He discusses this with his mother Tina in Grasmere, referring to the Oath of Bonding, a successor to engagement, and the Kinship Circle, a successor to the family, made necessary by Life Extension (typically to 300 years) in what has become a largely Christian society.

Link to Amazon pages of the book  (paperback and digital versions)

2077: Knights of Peace by J.L.Sears (Amazon UK)
This is a link to the book's page on UK Amazon, which has two reviews but at present there is no option to buy. Also, there is no sample text. However, you can buy it and sample text through the US site  below.

2077: Knights of Peace by J.L.Sears (Amazon USA)
This is a link to the book's page on the US Amazon which has an option to buy  but there are as yet no reviews. Sample text is available online.


Extract from beginning of chapter 18 ...

Chapter 18   Amelia

 The disused railway line slid beneath the transpod, occasionally marked by a small group of wind turbines, a relic from the days before abundant nuclear fusion technology was used to power most of the world. He was flying quite low and could see that the turbines, although not derelict, were obviously in the early stages of decay. In the distance, even from this low height, he could see a stretch of sea glinting in the sun and recalled that only a few decades ago there would have been dry land as far as the eye could see.

He had approached Cambridge from the north west having followed old motorways and main roads from Cumbriana, then picked up the rail line which skirted the city’s northern and eastern boundaries. Before the line he was following reached the station, now converted into a museum of transport, he turned right and dropped the transpod into a parking area.

Parking space was limited. He had anticipated this because he knew that the Theatre of War would be a popular attraction, even with the reduced population, because transpod ownership was common and the availability of high capacity, three-dimensional routes across the country together with almost unlimited controlled fusion energy meant that owners used them even more than owners of automobiles in the old days of fossil fuels.

The population of Britlandia was down to only forty million after peaking at nearly seventy million before the birth rate declined, net emigration increased and the Plague took its toll.  The average age had of course increased but the revolution in ageing research had enabled people to stay healthy, both physically and mentally, for much longer, even without Life Extension. 

He walked along Trumpington Road. It was busy with throngs of pedestrians, many of whom he presumed were making for the same destination as he was. This was confirmed when he came to a grass expanse which had previously been a golf course and in which stood a large white canopy towards which moved a continuous stream of people. As he approached he could see a floating image above the entrance, three words with their silver letters revolving. Periodically the letters would stop rotating and the phrase ‘THEATRE OF WAR’ would be spelled out.

Inside was a large amphitheatre in which the battle would be conducted. Roscoe regretted that any type of battle was still necessary within GF jurisdiction. Yet if a battle had to be fought this was the only type acceptable in the modern world.

This was a symbolic battle. The Theatre of War was where disputes between ethnic groups or geographical territories could be fought without mass carnage or destruction.  Only countries within the Global Federation were culturally endowed to resolve quarrels in this way and it was unfortunate that there were still areas of the world, such as Ovoskotia, Essonia and Ogrenia, which did not belong to the GF and where ethnic tensions often erupted into violence.

Today’s conflict would decide on a victor in a fight over water rights between Egypt and the Sudan, both countries through which the River Nile flowed with a diminishing volume of water. The two sides had not been able to negotiate an agreement and the only recourse they had as members of the Federation was to be represented by two small armies of life-sized robot soldiers equipped with a variety of weapons. Not weapons lethal to human beings. These were of course illegal under GF Law. They were designed to destroy only the simulated humans which fought in the Theatre of War, albeit in a realistic way which reminded the spectators of the wretchedness of real war. Knights occasionally liked to witness simulated battles since it strengthened their resolve to eliminate the technology which allowed real war to reap its harvest of death and offend against Yahweh.

Roscoe stood leaning against a waist high pillar, waiting for the first robot fighters to appear on the stage below. Then a gleaming red armoured figure appeared and walked around the large expanse of the stage. The audience applauded.

The robot held or had strapped to it a variety of lethal weapons, including a sheathed sword and a repeat action rifle. It managed to convey to the audience, in its stance, mannerisms and appearance, a sense of irony. All were about to witness the settlement of a real quarrel over resources yet no human being would die or be injured. It would be an entertaining spectacle, the battle would be skilfully executed, there would be finesse and skill in large measure; but above all it would convey the futility and inhumanity of war.

A large cascade of applause filled the arena.

A second robot walked calmly and with dignity into the stage area, this time from the right. It was equally well armed but dressed in a long purple cloak.

There was more applause.

Similar robot soldiers entered the arena, each dressed or designed in some way to be distinguishable to the crowd as an individual and each eliciting its own raucous applause, unheard by the humans who operated them from their control stations in Egypt or Sudan or, if they were hired from outside the two nations in dispute, other parts of the world. Despite the highly individualistic appearances the two sides were distinguishable by colour – red for the Egyptians, purple for the Sudanese.

When each side had seven fighters the applause stopped and the whole amphitheatre fell silent. The combatants moved and climbed into their starting positions on various boxes, high platforms and protrusions from pyramids around the arena. They all stood still and the lighting dimmed until they were barely visible. A solid gold ball descended slowly into the arena, coming to rest on a pedestal in the middle of the stage. A voice announced that the engagement was to be fought to agreed rules, that it was a war game, the object being to capture the ball. The rifles each had only ten bullets each. It was also emphasised that the outcome would have real consequences for the two countries involved....