Notes from the inner-underground

What is the variety?

What is the variety of your

thought?

Are there flower gardens of thought?

Are there thoughts like brooks,

or meadows of thought?

Does your thought

have clouds

and wind

and rain?

Are there daring thoughts

and daring deeds of thought?

Are there forrests of thought,

and in those forrests,

are there living thoughts?

Are there mountains

of thought, and lakes, and valleys, and plains

of thought?

Is the extravaganza of it

in there,
with you?








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Forty years in the underground -


We live in a world of thoughts. We pretend that this isn't so, but we are always thinking. We decide to go to the bathroom at a certain point, we decide to take a bite of potato now, or brush our teeth for this long. We make thousands of decisions each day, possibly each hour. "Who we are" is a set of decisions about beliefs including values, perceptions, and so on. What we want is based on rational expectations, we don't decide to become an olmpic gold medalists at 80 or nobel prize winner at 7. We are constantly trying to figure out theories of who we are and why we feel like we do.

So, let's just accept it; no pretense of "I like to just turn off my mind and listen to music." No mind....no music. Or, I don't want to overthink my life, as if overthinking is even possible.

Let's also stop saying, "it's only words", no matter what the words are. Yes, someone conning you or themselves can say things that don't mean anything. Lots of people can. But lots of people haven't. Is, "I have a dream.", just words? Or Principia, or Zarathustra or the Brothers K? But they are different, you will say. In the hands of a master, we would never say that.

And to the lowliest poet writing for his lowliest wife, the simple, trite words that she can understand; is she forgiven for saying "it's only words".

Beyond that, in the wilderness, where no poetry exists, only instructions, they are still not "only words". "I am somebody" - "I am somebody" - "I must win" - "I am a winner" - "The trick to this task is...." - "No one likes me" - "I am a loser" - "Life has no meaning" ......

It depends on the words and sometimes on who is saying it.

Words and thoughts entangled - Entangling is a nice metaphor for this. There, see, I am pleased with the thought and the word itself......entanglement.

One of the fundamental laws of Cybernetics is the "Law of Requisite Variety". Like all fundamental laws, it doesn't seem to say much until you start applying it to keep from losing your way in the intricacies of what you are studying. One way of stating it is that the solution to a problem has to be at least as sophisticated as the problem. You can substitute complex for sophisticated or go back to original and talk about variability. This is actually the most illustrative way of "thinking" about it. Here are the words:

Variability is the number of different ways a thing can behave. To control something, the controller must have as much variability as the thing to be controlled. The variability of a car is a perfect example. Out of control, it can go left, right, slow down (going up hill), speed up (going down hill), run into things, etc. So, the controls have to have as much variability, aka, steering wheel, brake pedal, gas pedal, gear.

One of the things that is ironic and poignant about our current collective predicament is that the variability that is being "dealt with" all of the time is economic, social, physical, etc. This is not where the maximum variability is for a human being. We can think all sorts of thoughts; imagine complex tapestries of absurdities, impossibilities, possibilities, and beyond, to new ways of imagining. Thought-world is where the real action is. What controls thought world is something inside of thought-world.

Does your "working theory of the world" have the variability of "thought"?

If I show you a pattern like so: 1,3,5; you might see the rule: "add two".

But if I tell you I have left out some of the numbers from:1,1,2,3,5,8,13, 21, ...

Now you say, it's Fibonacci, each the sum of the previous 2, except the first two.

When we make hypotheses, we are in essence controlling a hypothesis process, unless it is a trivial hypothesis, that is, minimal or no uncertaintly, few or no stochastic variables, etc. The hypothesis should have as much variability as the phenomena. If your hypothesis doesn't have the right number of variables, then it is probably wrong. I'm not talking about the conclusion, it may be boolean, but how did you get the conclusion, that's what counts.

Tolstoy depicts this in the "Kreutzer Sonata".

If the right level of variability doesn't exist, you get cynicism: the simplest and most negative explanation. In general, complex phenomena have complex explanations.

You could say, wait, Wolfram has these cellular automata exhibiting very complex behavior from simple rules. Yes, that's true, but that doesn't explain it, it just says where it comes from. Complex systems have lots of variability and the requisite variety is in thoughts.

What is the variety of your thought?