For as long as I can remember I had periods of severe self-loathing, periods in which I’d rather not have been born. Even as a pre-teen, the weight of the world was unbearable. Somewhere around the 4th grade I became dissatisfied with my own mortality; unlike most children, and even some people my age now, who view themselves as indestructible, I had a pretty good grasp of death, and the means by which it could come about. This was also about the time when I first started to get into computers for reasons besides Oregon Trail.

Being a firm advocate of movies like Robocop, The Terminator, and The Lawnmower Man, I began to wonder if it would be possible to create a body from a machine and transfer a mind to within it. I wanted a new body, one that looked how I wanted to look, and would not age or die. I believed that the mind is ‘data’ that exists within the physical structure of the brain. I wondered if a brain could be virtually modeled within a computer program, then the mind transferred from the brain of a living body to the virtual one.

However, I quickly ran into a philosophical hang-up. On a computer, when transferring a file from one location to another, the data is not moved; it is copied to the new location, then the original copy is destroyed. I didn’t know much about computers back then, but I knew that much. The same, sample principle would be true when transferring a mind. Even if it were possible to virtually model a brain, a living mind could only be copied onto it, not transferred. There would now be two instances of the same person; the original living being, and the virtual copy, both of which would have shadow copies of the same mind. I never really came up with an answer to that paradox; but rather I decided to start learning about computers. I loved video games, robots, and artificial intelligence so computer programming was right up my alley.

It’s been roughly 12 years since then, making me about twice as old. I have a Bachelors Degree of Science, in Computer Science and I am an avid reader of philosophy. After my family’s considerable loses in the stock market due to the recent economic turbulence, I have begun work on a piece of artificial intelligence software to help tilt the odds towards my interests in the market. I have been reading my old notes about Neural Networks and Genetic Algorithms from my senior year Artificial Intelligence class to aid in developing this software. However, about a week ago, I began to digress into studying real neurological sciences; this has excited my old interests in the subject of modeling a brain, and housing a mind in virtual space. I now possess the knowledge, and the tools, to make a valiant effort in the subject.

I have run across the same paradox. How does one transfer a mind? Even if you could copy the neurological states to another brain or medium, the original person and mind would still exist. I believe that destroying that after copying would kill the original person and you are merely left with a copy, though mentally the same person, the original is dead. Instead of that, let us say the technology exists to replace one neuron at a time within the original brain with a new neuron. The replacement process is instantaneous due to a breakthrough in teleportation, teleporting the original neuron out and the new one in without the brain skipping a beat. Over the course of a few minutes we replace all the neurons until the brain is entirely new. We do this through the entire body, revitalizing it to it youth.  Have we killed the original person in this case? Is the pile of dead neurons and cells we teleported out of the original person, the original person himself?? I submit to you that it is, we just killed him one cell at a time, and the remaining person is another copy, built one cell at a time.

My final point, that I’m hoping, and fearing, may be the case, is that perhaps there is such a construct as a soul, external to the body. If this were the case, then we can create as many instances of the original mind and body, and destroy as many instances as we see fit, because one soul is shared between them and that is the person. It may be the case that only one body may be insouled at a time, but perhaps, as soon as the original copy is destroyed, the new copy is hooked to the soul.

It seems to take more than the right combination of parts and algorithms to create life. But perhaps we are merely the sum of parts, free to destroy, harvest, and replace as necessary. The latter would make eternal life possible, but would that really be the type of life we’d want to live?

Why does it take people years of drug use to come to this level of realization and philosophical enlightenment? Perhaps the loss of the higher level functionality of the brain bestows upon people a primal sense of the universe around us, a chaotic and frightening universe with few answers. Perhaps he was an intelligent man to begin with and he would have yielded more potential had he not damaged his neurons by constantly saturating his extra-neural spaces with excesses of neurotransmitters like dopamine. Rather than using religion, government or authorities as a source of answers and subsequent comfort, he used drugs as a source of answers and comfort, and was actually quite the hypocrite.

Thinking is hard. It is really hard to form or modify pathways in the mind under normal conditions. It takes lots of repetition, and that repetition is usually not fun. Most of the masses would rather breathe through their mouths as they drool in front of the TV while their microwavable dinner heats up in uneven patterns after an 8 hour thoughtless, mundane work day; rather than read philosophy or try to force their mind into performing actions that it has never performed before. Drugs are a lazy way for mouth breathing dropouts to force their minds to change patterns. Drugs usually work by causing the mind to incorrectly release neurotransmitters which stay longer and travel well beyond their originally intended destination neurons, causing the mind to act in undefined and never experienced patterns which some people mistake as ’expansion’ of the mind. However, the excess presence of neurotransmitter chemicals for extended periods of time is often detrimental to the neurons themselves; they become damaged and eventually die. Though someone on drugs may stumble across new concepts, they also kill brain cells. Subsequent uses will yield less and less concepts as the mind becomes more damaged on each iteration. As the cliché goes, drugs kill your brain.

So, how do we expand our minds without destroying them? Use your brain and don’t do drugs! Don’t believe ‘facts’ just because your parents, church leader, president, or college professor may proclaim them. Most importantly, don’t think that you know everything. With an infinite universe, and with a finite mind, the math works out to us knowing [constant / infinity * 100 = 0%]. As soon as we come to the realization that we have a void of knowledge, we can begin filling it and truely expand our minds.

Imagine if you will, the paper has a graph on it, one dimension of this graph is a position unit, the other dimension is a time unit; a typical graph in math class. When you fold this paper over on itself, any give point in space-time can be ‘near’ any other given point in space-time. Meaning, as seen from the surface of the paper, two points may be very far from each other, but as seen from the hyper-dimensional space, any two points can be very close.

The current theory is that a person’s mind is an electro-chemical computer. It is made up of components that transmit electrical signals through nodes in nervous systems internal to the brain in thought, and external to the brain in an input output system. If you believe humans have a soul external to the body, you may be right, but at some point our actions come down to physical signals internal and external to our brains. These signals may be induced by some exterior soul by means we have yet to understand, but that is inconsequential to the point of this paper.

All electrons (the basis of electricity) emit an electric field. This electric field propagates through the three spatial dimensions infinitely in all directions, degrading in amplitude at a quadratic rate with respect to distance from the electron; this is observed behavior known for roughly a century. Furthermore, any change in an electric field induces a magnetic field; again, observed behavior known for about a century. A changing magnetic field induces an electric field, and the cycle continues in the form of a perpetual wave of electric and magnetic fields inducing eachother. As you can infer, once a moving electron starts the chain-reaction, the electro-magnetic wave will propagate in a specific direction. People call this electro-magnetic wave light when it has the specific frequencies our physical receptors can perceive. Other frequencies have neat properties like the ability to travel through physical objects; we call some of those radio waves. There are an infinite number of frequencies of E.M. waves and they all have their own unique properties. Furthermore, an electric or magnetic field will always apply a force to any electron within it. Through amplifiers and modulators, the forces applied to the electrons within the metal of your car’s antenna by radio waves, are eventually translated back to sound waves your ears can feel.

When hanging out with a good friend or family member, you eventually start to think like each other. You gain the ability to finish the other’s sentences or infer what the other is thinking without saying a word. This is most likely due to the fact that you have both given each other background knowledge about yourselves and you both share many common experiences over time. Though each person is different, we are all built with a similar physical structure, similar sensory input channels and mechanisms for translating raw input to mental concepts.

Psychic phenomena are most often noted between close people. Future predictions or feelings about current events miles away generally occur between good friends or family members. One half-baked concept I just came up with and had to write down; is that perhaps there is more to knowing your close friend than just having data about them. The electrons that move in your friend’s mind and nervous system define his or her thoughts. These electrons also emit E.M. waves in exact frequency and proportion to their motion through the mind and nervous system. Depending on their frequencies, these EM waves propagate through the the body and out into space. This propagation irrefutable if you believe in electricity. The E.M. wave then applies force to the electrons in your mind, causing your thoughts to be subtly manipulated. Under normal circumstances these subtle changes in thought may not be noticeable or they may be so minute that they are not even measurable. However, over time, your mind may be able to recognize these subtle changes and from them, know what your friend is thinking. Your minds are quite literally wirelessly networked together directly and you understand one another’s thoughts once you infer each other’s protocols.

From this point forward I am making complete theory. This might explain physically close instances of psychic phenomena, but how can one explain feelings of future events or events across the globe you may ask. My argument here is that there are more dimensions than just the four we perceive, the fifth dimension allows for any point in the first four to come very close to each other, even though they appear distant. This means a friend who is distant in time and space can be near in the universe, as can the E.M. waves emitted by their mind. If you have a future prediction about a friend it is because a point in which they exist further in the future is near you, perhaps due to traumatic events or great physical forces dilating space in the future position near to space in which you currently exist. It is not known if E.M. waves propagate through all dimensions or just the three spatial ones. This theory is shot if the latter is the case, but if the former is the case, then it is possible. At least it could be a plot for a movie

Uncle Stuart: Well Timmy, I’m glad you asked. However, I must warn you that there is no simple explanation nor is there a single answer to this quandary.

Little Timmy: You don’t know what my sister should do? But Uncle Stuart, I thought you were smart? Didn’t you go to school for like… a million years?

Uncle Stuart: Ha-ha, Oh silly Timmy, school doesn’t make you smart. School merely educates you in currently accepted social constructs and gives you the mental acuity by which you may expand on those paradigms and even manifest your own.

Little Timmy: Ok… what is a paradigm?

Uncle Stuart: You are a sharp kid Timmy, that’s why you’re my favorite nephew. You’re asking the right question. A paradigm is a way of perceiving the world.  Every human being sees the world in a unique way. People even see the world differently at different times in their life because paradigms evolve with society (inorganically) and with age (organically). Do you remember when you were really little and you thought that being a grownup would be so cool?

Little Timmy: I’m still a little kid and I still think being a grown-up would be cool! You guys get to drive cars! And make lots of money! And stay up as late as you want! and eat candy whenever you want! And..!

Uncle Stuart: Whoa there Timmy, that’s enough. All those things are true, but we also have all sorts of responsibilities as grown-ups that we didn’t have as kids. These responsibilities placed upon us by ourselves and by society inorganically make being a grown-up kind of suck. Our physical bodies change organically as well, we can’t stay up so late and eat as much candy as we used to without repercussions. You hear grown-ups talk about these things but you don’t understand because you are young. When you experience the paradigm shift yourself, or think really deeply about it, then you will understand and perceive what it is to be an adult. A current state of mental perception is a paradigm. The change in that state is a paradigm shift.

Little Timmy: I think I understand. It’s like when I thought that I really wanted to play the electric guitar, but then when I got one because I cried at my parents, I didn’t want to play anymore. I suppose if I had really thought about what I wanted instead of just acting on emotion then I would have known that before my parents spent all that money… but then again, you never know until you try.

Uncle Stuart: You really are wise for your age Timmy, but I would have advised renting the guitar to see if you liked it rather than buying it.

Little Timmy: Yeah-yeah, ok, my mistake, so what does all this paradigm stuff have to do with my sister voting?

Uncle Stuart: Just wait, I’ll tie it all together. Not only can a paradigm apply to a single person, it can be shared throughout a society. A common idea or belief becomes more common and accepted as more people believe it.

Little Timmy: That’s stupid, if more people believe something because people believe something, then won’t everyone eventually believe the same thing? A certain point of view will just spread like the chickenpox that Brian Scrash brought to school did.

Uncle Stuart:  Precisely Timmy! People are very stupid in large numbers. It is the same concept as stampede; however, instead of cattle running from a loud noise, it is people becoming infected with a paradigm, or way of thinking, about the world. People in the marketing fields know this very well and there are even math formulas to model these sorts of patterns in human nature. One such formula I have encountered is the Zipf Curve. It is used for many Peer-to-Peer networks to systematically decide which files to replicate across the strategic machines in order to keep up with changes in demand due to changes in perceived popularity.

Little Timmy: Wow, Uncle Stuart; you’re making me think that being a kid might be better than being a grown-up after all.

Uncle Stuart: There you go Timmy; you are experiencing a small Paradigm Shift through thought and self-reflection without actually having to experience being an adult. But again, you never truly know until you try it. Be careful though because some paradigm shifts cannot be undone. Though, I personally enjoy my perception of the world more as adult than I ever did as a kid, so there is hope for you yet.

Little Timmy: ok… I’m bored.

Uncle Stuart: All right Timmy, stay with me here. Let’s go over a few common paradigms of American society today. First, there is the meaning and goal of life; second, there is money and economics; third, there is the role of government in society; finally there is the rest of the world. The meaning of life is hard to button down. Nobody knows the answer to it, but the founders of the United States had a pretty good idea when they scribed down, “Life, Liberty and The pursuit of happiness.” That pretty much covers what everyone wants in a generic fashion, but how do we interpret this and make it happen in a literal sense?

Little Timmy: Um… our parents do it for us? So, the government decides for adults?

Uncle Stuart: Oh no, no, no, Timmy my little commie. Don’t you think that you are the best judge of what is best for you? Well, maybe not yet, but when you are my age, and you have done the reflection that I have done, you will know, and you will continue to accrue a clearer picture.

Little Timmy: Ok, so by what means can I decide my fate, and still get what I want from other people without mom, dad, or the government telling them to give it to me? They certainly aren’t going to do it out of the kindness of their heart. I wouldn’t either.

Uncle Stuart: Perhaps they should have made you read up on Adam Smith and David Hume in public school. They were a couple philosophers of disestablishmentarianism about 200 years ago, and you may have read my mention of Hume in prior blog postings.  But then again, why would an establishment facility such as the public school system, teach students about disestablishmentarianism, the basis of the beliefs on which United States was originally based.

The word disestablishmentarianism was originally defined as going against the church, but it also refers to going against the established order, as the church and government were one in the same at the time of Hume and Smith and before the United States. The ultimate idea is that, rather than following some government, church, or illusory god’s idea of what is best for us as individuals, we are the ones who know what is best for us as individuals.

However, with personal freedom comes a whole new set of problems.  Because there is no central system of governance, dealing with the inherent greed in humans, the intrinsic lack of empathy for those not within one’s social circle, the coordination of what needs to be done in society, are all new vexing elements to the equation. A radical concept when proposed, but the ultimate solution for distributed self-governance, is a meta-value that humans put on everything.

Little Timmy: ok, what are you talking about?

Uncle Stuart: I’m talking about barter Timmy. I’m talking about free trade in the free market. ‘Free’ means that there is no interference from any central government. It can even mean ‘free’ in the sense that it does not cost anything, but I will get into that later. The beauty of the system is that you decide the value of something to you. If you do not believe that one cookie from your classmate is worth one of your juice boxes, then you don’t trade. When the other student realizes he really wants juice, and no one will trade him a juice box for his cookie, then he may offer you a second cookie if he feels your juice box is worth it to him. Finally, if you feel that two cookies is worth one of your juice boxes, you make the deal, and both of you walk away happy. The established value of one juice box is two cookies in this free market. However, if everyone in the classroom had lots of juice boxes, then the other student may be able to find a juice box from someone for less than two cookies… therefore, as the supply of a resource increases, the value of it decreases. The inverse is also true.

Little Timmy: That is pretty cool, I never really thought about the value of resources to individuals other than myself; I guess the combination of our perceived values establishes the true value in the classroom system. But I have a friend named Greg who said he is a communist and that he believes we should go back to the barter system. Isn’t this what he is talking about?

Uncle Stuart: Wow Timmy! You’re going to have your doctorate in economics before you know it! However, your friend is greatly mistaken. A communist society is one in which everyone owns everything equally, meaning, someone can eat your cookie and drink your juice box if they so please because they co-own it. There is no bartering involved as there is no system of individual ownership. Generally, in a communist society (like a church or community organization) an established government decides who gets what and who needs to produce what. It might work out ok in a system of 20 people, but who can keep track of 300,000,000 people’s desires and capacities to produce? There is no super-computer in the world that could handle that, let alone a cabinet of human leaders. Make no mistake about it; any form of barter is a primal form of capitalism. 

Little Timmy: I thought capitalists use money? And my teacher says capitalism is bad. She says that rich people keep getting richer and poor people keep getting poorer and the government should redistribute the wealth to the people who really need it.

Uncle Stuart: I’m glad that you are bringing all of this up Timmy, let’s start with the money and I’ll move into the subject of wealth.  Money is a Meta value between items. Let’s say your juice box isn’t worth exactly two cookies, let’s say that, to you, it is worth a little more than one cookie and a little less than two cookies, but the other kid says he won’t break one cookie in half? We use money to create a linear value system by which everything can be compared on a continuous value basis. If the other kid doesn’t want to trade 1.5 cookies, he can trade you 1.5 cookies worth of Meta units (we call dollars) and you can find another kid who will either sell you 1.5 cookies, or will sell you two smaller cookies that are worth 1.5 larger cookies. Get it?

Little Timmy: I kind of do, but how do I know what money is worth? 1.5 moneys aren’t always worth 1.5 cookies.

Uncle Stuart: Brilliant Question! The value of something is defined by the current social paradigm. How much members of society want cookies compared to everything else, and how many cookies exists to satisfy those members of society, defines how much money cookies are worth. People come to an agreement on a floating value that is based solely on supply and demand of everyone. This means, that people who can produce cookies will if they see that the price is high, and people will stop producing them if the price is low. Price of a resource directly reflects exactly how much society wants and needs that resource. Furthermore, something that is absolutely worthless to you may be worth lots to others; in this case, what you get in return for it is literally free. With this system, we don’t need any government to tell us what to make, or who to give it to, we can decide ourselves.

Little Timmy: That is pretty cool, but my older sister is pretty poor. She took a $20,000 student loan and bought a car with part of it, then totaled it. Then she moved out of our mom’s house into her own house and bought another car. She failed her classes because she didn’t have time to study and now she is on academic probation, out of money and $20,000 in debt with huge interest payments. I want a president that will take money from those greedy rich people in cushy office jobs, and will help her out. Capitalism hasn’t done anything for her.

Uncle Stuart: Whoa there Timmy! I believe that she is exactly where she should be with her behavior. Your sister needs to have foresight and needs to learn to govern her own actions, and not expect someone else, or society to take care of her. She needs to be an active party of society, and think of helping herself. The best way to help everyone succeed in life is to take care of oneself. If you can take care of yourself through diligence and foresight, and have a little left over for others, then everyone in the world will flourish. When your sister learns to control her behavior, then she will flourish as well. If your sister wants to continue destroying the resources of others; then she should consider moving to a nation with more socialist views. However, the resources of a social system come from somewhere, and if everyone contributes less than what they consume, the social system WILL fail.

Little Timmy: Uncle Stuart, my sister has had one baby that she gave up for adoption; she has a second one that she has kept; and she had a third one that was aborted; they were all from different fathers. I hear that one of the candidates for president is against abortion. I know she doesn’t want that one in office because she is worried her rights as a woman will be removed.

Uncle Stuart: Eweewheehhewwwgrrrooooossseeeeee… how do you know this? Never mind; gross. I have no idea, but I think that if she were more responsible in all aspects of life, then she wouldn’t have to worry so much about what the government decides on what constitutes murder. Many people who are anti-abortion are so because they believe that irresponsible people are using it more often than they should and are using it very late in the process.  But, again, I believe families and free markets should decide these matters, not governments. It sounds like your sister may not have received the moral principles and virtues by which to conduct her life from your parents.

Little Timmy: Yeah, my sister is a lot like my mom.

Uncle Stuart: That quite often is the case. It takes a strong person to rise above what they were handed in life by their parents. I believe that parents are most responsible for the mental health of society, next comes the public school system. Unfortunately, parents are often depressed themselves, or very busy working. Furthermore, the public school system merely teaches people to be sheep to the establishment; this is not an outrageous claim seeing as it is a part of the establishment. The establishment always promotes itself.

Little Timmy: So I should drop out of school?

Uncle Stuart: No Timmy, stay in school; but take what your professors have to say seriously, and then research it for yourself. I once had a philosophy of science professor that proclaimed that the reason you find more democrats in places of education is because people of educational institutions are more educated, and are more prone to using the scientific method, thus, naturally siding with the Democratic Party, which itself, generally sides with ideologies of more government control over society.

My field of study is Computer Science, and it is an exact science. There is no room for estimation, assumption, or prayer within these machines; they are based on exact algorithms that ensure the deterministic behavior of a balanced, efficient system. For computers, the most efficient solution is ALWAYS a distributed one. That is to say, for each machine that joins a network, the machine offers up its resources to help accomplish a common task of all machines on the network. This is counter to the traditional client/server model in which one very powerful central machine handles all processing and tells the clients what to do.

I believe that you are astute and you will have noticed by now that this is a similar model to government/individuals. Bigger government with massive control is like the traditional client/server model in which a central established order decides your fate. Conversely, having individuals in control, as observed in a capitalistic culture is more like the distributed peer to peer model. The very same model on which your favorite P2P programs like LimeWire, KaZaA and SoulSeek are based.  I am not advocating stealing music; I am however, advocating freedom of your own fate, freedom to make your own decisions, good/bad, and being able to enjoy/suffer the consequences.

Little Timmy: Wow, so if I save my money and study hard, I’ll have a nice job and drive fun cars too?..

Uncle Stuart: Exactly Timmy, you will be able to choose your work; if you want to sell home-made items at a booth in Seattle, you can. If you want to have an office job and do research like me, you can. If you want to go beyond that, you can! We’re not quite done yet though, just one more small point; the rest of the world. You know how there are people at school that are mean no matter how nice you are to them?

Little Timmy: Yeah! That Ryan Spreck is always mean, he is spoiled and he tells other kids what to do and they do it because they are dumb-dumb heads.

Uncle Stuart: Well Timmy, kids of those personality types grow up, and when they are my age, they are the jerks who are mean to other people at work. Then those kids get even older, and they assume positions of power in many countries without the distributed system of power we have here in the United States. They think that they can treat people like garbage; they generally support centralized systems of government because it is easier to control the media and masses in order to make people do, and believe what the ‘establishment’ believes is best. Leaders such as these cannot be reasoned with, because of their nature, just like Ryan Spreck at school; and the people of the nations they control are difficult to reason with because they all subscribe to the paradigm forced upon them by their government. To believe that reason will always prevail is naïve; weapons wielded by bad people will always silence the most intelligent voices of reason. Anyone who has looked at the patterns of the world would realize this. My proclamation about members of the educational community’s political views is that they were born, and have always lived in, a society surrounded by like thinkers who cannot fathom an irrational foreign leader pointing weapons at them for no logical reason. It is sadly the case that those with the desire to conquer will conquer those who are not vigilant in their own self-defense.

Little Timmy: I’m tired… just tell me who to tell my sister to vote for.

Uncle Stuart: She needs to decide for herself. Trusting the media is like trusting the establishment, so just make sure she does her research before she goes changing any paradigms. Like any distributed power, the power to vote comes with serious responsibility because it affects everybody.

The United States has a wonderful structure in place that is designed to deal with the fundamental flaws of all individuals and invokes a system based on distribution of knowledge and responsibility. That isn’t to say the system can’t fail, it absolutely could fail if the responsibility and knowledge becomes homogenized, such as when one party composed of like thinkers obtains control in all positions of the distribution. Under this condition the system becomes unbalanced, and though more decisions can be made per unit time, more bad decisions can be made per unit time.

Republican, Democrat, Republicrat, it doesn’t matter. everyone wants happiness, security, life, liberty… you know the rest. No one wants to be ill and without medical availability, no one wants to see people die in war… no one who is a mainstream member of either party that is. So, if you’re following me on this, then you acknowledge that everyone is human, we all share the same basic needs, many of which are not quantifiable in words. How is it that we have annealed to two, disjoint parties, each believing the other is completely different in ideology? The republicans view the democrats as a communist Marxist fans, and the democrats view the republicans as war mongers chasing the oh-mighty dollar.

It is natural for humans to break problems down into two distinct items. That is the basis of most computer algorithms that can solve problems in a timely fashion. A problem may consist of thousands of pieces, but people can only really deal with two or three pieces at a time, so they simplify, solve, repeat. It seems, what we have here, is a situation in which people have incorrectly simplified the problem of, “what do we do next?” into two distinct pieces, republican or democrat. What does that even mean? Republican and Democrat are just words that represent a fundamentally flawed summation of a group of people’s ideas.

Let’s talk math here. Quite often, it proves fruitful to represent a state of affairs in real life on paper and look at objectively. It seems to me that what we have here is a hyper-dimensional space R(n) where the dimensions are possible opinions and the values plotted on those dimensions are the values people have. Let’s say N = 300,000,000 people, the number of people in the United States. So there will be N points on this plot, each point located in this hyperspace by their value on each opinion. If you sum up the opinions on every dimension and divide by the number of opinions then you will find the average opinion of everyone in the United States.

This average point is where the layman (or laywoman) draws the line between the two major parties of the United States. Because we are dealing with more than two dimensions, it is actually a hyper-plane instead of a line, with a normal that faces in a direction such that the sum of the average distance from the surface of the plane is minimal. This is an ambiguous assumption however because there is more than one way to find the normal of a best-fit hyper-plane.

Now that we have the situation represented in a hyperspace (much in the same way eharmoney.com finds your perfect match… if you were ever curious) we can evaluate what is causing this disparity between the opinions of ‘opposite parties’. It seems to me that once the plot has been sliced in half by our hyper-plane and we dropped each person into two disjoint buckets, we would then take the average of the disjoint buckets to find the ‘opinion’ of the bucket (The bucket is a political party here). It also seems to me that the averages of the unique buckets would also be close to the average of both buckets.

Because I know you can’t picture what I’m picturing, I’m going to roll it up into a 3D graph of the plot of people’s opinions and plane separating the parties.

The blue dots in front of the green plane represent the Democratic Party and the red dots behind the plane represent the Republican Party. The plane runs through the average of these three opinions plotted on the three spatial dimensions we can comprehend. The opinions themselves don’t matter but for the purpose of example they are “National Defense”, “Abortion” and “Welfare”. As you can see, most members of both parties see eye to eye on at least one dimension or opinion. However, there are also a few outliers that are very far from the face of the surface, we call these people extremists in statistics and in politics. 

It seems to me that most people only look at one dimension (or opinion) at a time when making decisions in life. They look at the extremist from the other party on that sole dimension when looking at the opinion of the opposite party. This yields an incorrect assumption that all republicans are warmongers and all democrats want to tax your hard earnings and give it away to lazy people.

The fact of the matter is, we are all human, we all want and we all need the same things with minor variances across the board. My proclamation here is to drop the idea that some magical ‘party’ is the correct answer and take up the idea that we need to be vigilant in our actions, our decisions and our allegiance to the superset that is the United States of America; Not put all of our faith into some subset party that we artificially created out of the need to comprehend the incompressible state of affairs of our world in a binary fashion.

The previous ranting had little to do with actual implementation of current political players or policy, and I acknowledge this. However, I submit to you that there is no way to come to a rational accord between people, on what to do for people, without first understanding people.

If you enjoyed this little lesson in epistemology, then I invite you to leave me on the mailing list and furthermore, I encourage you to counter my opinions and give me yours. If this excerpt from my mind was unwieldy or otherwise offensive, then go ahead and make sure my email address doesn’t find its way onto a CC.

Respectfully,
~Stuart

                Do you remember back when you were a kid, and you proclaimed something such as, “I want to go to the store” and then your little brother or big sister would ask, “Why?” and this would begin a series of discussion as follows:

You:  “Because I want food.”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: “Because I’m hungry.”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: “Because I’m human and I need food.”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: “Because my body converts the energy stored in food into the ideas and actions that are me.”
Sibling: “Why?”

 At this point… your answers became a little shady and you start reaching for a reason, no matter how ridiculous …

You: “Because my momma said, mom said, God made us in his image….”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: “Because…”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: “I don’t know!”
Sibling: “Why?”
You: *Cries*

That is about the time in which the ‘brown note‘ plays and you realize that you don’t actually know anything. All your decisions in life seem to be based upon reasons that are based upon a hierarchy of other reasons that seems to be only a few levels deep. It seems to me that any concept that a person believes to be solid can be eroded with about five iterations of “Why?” This assumes that the person doesn’t loop around in a pattern of self-delusional circular reasoning, as most people do.

A natural model for a structure like this is that of a Graph in mathematics.

A person’s basis for an idea can be modeled by a Tree Graph subset of the complete graph that represents the knowledge of a person.

 Nodes furthest from the root of the tree are physically closer to the primal section of the brain, composed of absolute values as interpreted by the nervous system from our sensory inputs from the real world.  Moving closer to the root, nodes are abstracted from actual values and become more meta-facts about the real world. The root brings this hierarchy together into one, ill-formed idea on which other ill-formed ideas can be based.

                It is estimated that the human brain has on the order of 100 billion neurons. I’m just throwing this out there, but let’s say that each person can have around 10 million ideas floating around in their head at a time.  Each neuron is a node in this graph and each idea is a root node of a tree graph subset of the total graph.

More to come… I’m still thinking about it and I need to do my actual work for my job so I can get that fat money cake!