Order vs. Randomness

[Mudhammam]

I'm actually not familiar with it (I found and skimmed through the Wiki article after you brought it up) but it's interesting for sure. Still, I can't help but see, even if I grant you what you want, that there is order or symmetry or that it is a mathematical structure, that all this somehow necessitates a grand intelligence, a massive astronomical brain, if you will, running the show. Why couldn't order and math just be fundamental properties of our metaphysical Universe, that create the possibility for consciousness and intelligence but are themselves devoid of any? Call them God if you must but realize this is basically just pantheism.

[Alex K]

If mathematics can capture the essence of everything that goes on in the universe, does that mean that reality itself is a mathematical structure?

If the answer is yes, then that would mean that math is just as real as reality itself.

Does mathematics capture the essence of everything that goes on in the universe? If yes, then I'd agree about your last statement, but I don't see how we can ever find out whether it really does.

[Tonus]

That being said, what is your take on this?

I think that the human brain seeks out patterns and tries to make meaning of everything around it. It's probably a survival skill or a social skill, but it means that we don't like randomness and we don't like disorder. We want everything to have a reason and a simple explanation that we can follow and understand. I think that our brains impose a level of order and forethought to the universe and to the things around us that are not always there.

That said, it seems as if the simplest explanation for any kind of order we might find in the universe is gravity. It's not random and it tends towards order and predictability on certain levels. Seeing so many spheres and discs floating around in space might make it seem as if there is more going on behind-the-scenes than there really is, at least before astronomers and physicists began to get a better understanding of what is going on.

[Rayaan]

Does mathematics capture the essence of everything that goes on in the universe?

Perhaps it doesn't, but I think that many people (especially physicists) believe that to be the case, i.e. that the essence of the universe can be best explained by mathematics. That's why they toil with complex equations and things like M-theory and all that kind of stuff in hopes of being able to find a "Theory of Everything" (TOE). The more they study physics, the more they discover mathematical regularities, which are essentially patterns in a mathematical realm.

But I think that these patterns themselves are real, and I equate them as only vague aspects of a universal "mind" or "intelligence" behind everything since even our own self-aspects such knowledge, understanding, self-awareness, and emotions are essentially nothing but specific patterns unfolding in spacetime, while spacetime itself is a mathematical structure.

And these networks of patterns which create our self-awareness are probably already embedded everywhere at the most fundamental level or reality (or maybe in a mathematical realm only), and if so then perhaps we don't really "own" our consciousness, as we think we do. The consciousness is everywhere, and we are just receiving some of it through our own patterns in spacetime.

I think that the human brain seeks out patterns and tries to make meaning of everything around it. It's probably a survival skill or a social skill, but it means that we don't like randomness and we don't like disorder. We want everything to have a reason and a simple explanation that we can follow and understand. I think that our brains impose a level of order and forethought to the universe and to the things around us that are not always there.

That's interesting, and I really agree with you. I'll think about this for some time and then I might have some things to say about this later on.

Thanks for your thought-provoking answer.

[Whateverist]

I'm actually not familiar with it (I found and skimmed through the Wiki article after you brought it up) but it's interesting for sure. Still, I can't help but see, even if I grant you what you want, that there is order or symmetry or that it is a mathematical structure, that all this somehow necessitates a grand intelligence, a massive astronomical brain, if you will, running the show. Why couldn't order and math just be fundamental properties of our metaphysical Universe, that create the possibility for consciousness and intelligence but are themselves devoid of any? Call them God if you must but realize this is basically just pantheism.

Yes. It sure looks like order determined by patterns of underlying or interactive order is the most prevalent thing we find as we begin to explore the cosmos.

If there was one thing a god might bring to the table it is randomness. Such a rare commodity.

[FreeTony]

I think that the human brain seeks out patterns and tries to make meaning of everything around it. It's probably a survival skill or a social skill, but it means that we don't like randomness and we don't like disorder. We want everything to have a reason and a simple explanation that we can follow and understand. I think that our brains impose a level of order and forethought to the universe and to the things around us that are not always there.

A good article on this:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/articl...-patterns/

[Rayaan]

I think that the human brain seeks out patterns and tries to make meaning of everything around it. It's probably a survival skill or a social skill, but it means that we don't like randomness and we don't like disorder. We want everything to have a reason and a simple explanation that we can follow and understand. I think that our brains impose a level of order and forethought to the universe and to the things around us that are not always there.

That is very true, in my opinion. The human brain seeks out and finds patterns quite naturally, even in places where none exist. And it's amazingly good at it.


Here's a relevant passage I came across in a book review of Michael Shermer's "The Believing Brain." (Emphasis mine).

Shermer proposes that our brains are "belief engines" that "look for and find patterns" quite naturally, and it is only following this that our brains assign these patterns with meaning. It is these meaningful patterns that form what Shermer terms “belief-dependent reality.” Additionally, our brains tend to gravitate towards information that further reinforces our beliefs, and ignore data that contradicts these beliefs. This becomes a self-reinforcing loop where beliefs drive explanation seeking behaviors to confirm those beliefs which are further reinforced, and drive further confirmation seeking behavior. In fact, the human brain is so adept at looking for patterns it "sees" them in places where none exist. Shermer calls this "illusory correlation". Birds do it, rats to it; humans are masters at it. B.F. Skinner’s groundbreaking experiments on partial reinforcement in animals shows this "patternicity" exquisitely.

However, I don't agree with Shermer's opinion that this pattern-seeking behavior even where none exist is by itself completely an "ilusory correlation." On the contrary, I think that it is very real because it is something which is self-ingrained in us; it's what we do without even thinking about it.

And I believe that there is an underlying inclination in us that causes our brains to seek out patterns: this is an innate inclination for seeking an "ultimate unity."

In Islam, the idea above is embodied by a concept called "fitrah."

Fitrah is commonly understood as a type of innate, spiritual quality that inclines every human being towards the belief in the existence of an ungraspable Oneness ("tawheed"). There are also some slightly different but complementary meanings of this term. For example: Fitrah is the primordial state of belief in God; it refers to an innate knowledge of the oneness of God; it is an ingrained God-consciousness; it is an internal compass that is implanted deep in our souls and it can either flourish or get corrupted. And, as wikipedia puts it:

According to Islamic theology, human beings are born with an innate inclination of tawhid (Oneness), which is encapsulated in the fitra along with compassion, intelligence, ihsan and all other attributes that embody what it is to be human.

"Fitrah" has a deep-rooted connection with the concept of "tawheed" which is really the core of Islam; these two concepts are linked. "Tawheed" linguistically comes from the word "wahhada" which means "to make one," "to make whole," or "to unify." The word "tawheed" extends to incorporate more practical applications as well (in a technical/Islamic understanding of the word), but, fundamentally, it means "to make one." See the definition below:

Literally TAWHEED means: "To make something one, or to assert the oneness of something, or to call it one", and it comes from the Arabic verb وحد (wahhada) which means to unite, unify or consolidate. However what we are concerned about here is the technical or Islamic meaning of Tawheed which is: "To single out Allah Almighty alone for worship, love, and submissiveness to Him by complying to His commands and submitting to them"

http://www.subulussalaam.org/2013/02/Wha...vCUcfvv7O8

* * * * * * * * * *

My point is, believing in the existence of a "unity" or a "oneness" behind all the worldly phenomena is a pattern-seeking behavior that we all possess; that is the ultimate pattern-seeking behavior that characterizes each and every one of us. And I believe that is what constitutes the base of our "fitrah" (or our "innate inclination") as I explained above.

Every human being possesses within themselves a latent desire for seeking an unknown unity because they, deep in their hearts, somehow "know" that it exists. We naturally find pleasure and happiness when we contemplate on the unity behind the multiplicity, or the oneness behind the manyness. Our hearts and minds naturally likes to make everything in reality into One (tawheed). And such an inclination (or "fitrah" in Arabic) exists inside everyone - whether they are atheists or not. Some people may deny that they have such an inclination, but it exists. It is hardwired deep in their psyches, but they just suppress it from their awareness.

So, an ingrained knowledge that there is a unity (or oneness) behind everything - that is what I think primarily drives our brains to seek out patterns. Our search for patterns is a sign that we have an inner knowing that everything we see is interconnected, that they are united, at a fundamental level of reality. I don't think that's just an "illusory correlation," as Shermer might say.

And the more amount of order we discover in the cosmos, the more satisfaction we feel because we get reminded that there is a fundamental unity behind everything, even though it exists on a scale beyond our comprehension.

[FreeTony]

However, I don't agree with Shermer's opinion that this pattern-seeking behavior even where none exist is by itself completely an "ilusory correlation." On the contrary, I think that it is very real because it is something which is self-ingrained in us; it's what we do without even thinking about it.

Having read up a bit on this, it is thought to be the result of evolution. Pattern recognition is very useful for a species. For example trying to see a tiger in amongst a grassy plain. If in fact your pattern recognition has been too active and you perceive a tiger, and there isn't anything there, then nothing has really been lost. Far better that than an animal that doesn't recognise the possibility of a tiger being there and you get eaten.

At Uni I did some information theory, which was really interesting. It was all about pattern recognition/information entropy/data loss etc etc. A small change in a parameter of pattern recognition can make the difference between detecting something that isn't really there, and not. The brain can't be perfect at this. This is why, for example, people see faces of jesus in their toast.

There's a good page here showing an optical illusion, which is again caused by our overactive brain. Also a cat is seen to be experiencing the same delusion.

http://drpballen.wordpress.com/2013/04/2...y-of-mind/

[Rayaan]

Agreed. Pattern recognition is a vital part of our existence. In a sense it seems that pattern recognition has become like a second nature to us.

But, one additional thing that I believe in is that our minds themselves are patterns, not just something that we use to recognize patterns. The mind as a whole is a patterned system of patterns that evolves over time. This idea is known as the patternist philosophy of mind (see the quote below). Patterns are foundational to intelligence. And this patternist view of the mind (i.e. that the mind is made of patterns) is in total agreement with my argument that there is a correlation between order and intelligence at a fundamental level of reality - i.e. that order/pattern = mind/intelligence.

The patternist philosophy of mind is a general approach to thinking about intelligent systems which I (Ben Goertzel) have developed during the last two decades (in a series of publications beginning in 1991, most recently The Hidden Pattern). It is based on the very simple premise that mind is made of pattern.

Now, pattern as the basis of mind is not in itself is a very novel idea — this concept is present, for instance, in the 19th-century philosophy of Charles Peirce (1935), in the writings of contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett (1991), in Benjamin Whorf's (1964) linguistic philosophy and Gregory Bateson's (1979) systems theory of mind and nature. Bateson spoke of the "Metapattern": that it is pattern which connects. In a series of prior writings (Goertzel, 1993, 1993a, 1994, 1997, 2001) and most recently in the philosophical treatise The Hidden Pattern (2006), I have sought to pursue this theme more thoroughly than has been done before, and to articulate in detail how various aspects of human mind and mind in general can be well-understood by explicitly adopting a patternist perspective. This work includes attempts to formally ground the notion of pattern in mathematics such as algorithmic information theory (Chaitin, 1986; Solomonoff, 1964, 1978) and probability theory, beginning from the conceptual notion that a pattern is a representation as something simpler and then utilizing appropriate mathematical concepts of representation and simplicity. In prior writings I have used the term psynet model of mind to refer to the application of patternist philosophy to cognitive theory, but I have now deprecated that term as it seemed to introduce more confusion than clarification.

In the patternist perspective, the mind of an intelligent system is conceived as the set of patterns in that system, and the set of patterns emergent between that system and other systems with which it interacts. The latter clause means that the patternist perspective is inclusive of notions of distributed intelligence (Hutchins, 1996). Intelligence is conceived, similarly to in Marcus Hutter's (2005) recent work, as the ability to achieve complex goals in complex environments; where complexity itself may be defined as the possession of a rich variety of patterns. A mind is thus a collection of patterns that is associated with a persistent dynamical process that achieves highly-patterned goals in highly-patterned environments.

http://wiki.opencog.org/w/Patternism


Ben Goertzel, who has published many technical papers that explain connections between artificial intelligence and cognitive science, believes that the same reasoning holds for the universe at large: the universe is a complex environment of patterns - patterns emerging from patterns emerging from patterns and so on - and the patterns altogether constitute a "universal mind" where our own patterned minds are embedded in. He discusses this interesting but no-so-novel idea in his book The Hidden Pattern: A Patternist Philosophy of Mind.

You can read it online for free at the link below and the notion of a universal mind (or "pattern theology" as he calls it) is summarized in the book in chapter 3, specifically starting from page 35.

http://www.goertzel.org/HiddenPattern_march_4_06.pdf

[Alex K]

Does mathematics capture the essence of everything that goes on in the universe?

Perhaps it doesn't, but I think that many people (especially physicists) believe that to be the case, i.e. that the essence of the universe can be best explained by mathematics. That's why they toil with complex equations and things like M-theory and all that kind of stuff in hopes of being able to find a "Theory of Everything" (TOE). The more they study physics, the more they discover mathematical regularities, which are essentially patterns in a mathematical realm.

Being one who works in related fields, I would agree that this is what some colleagues feel, especially the more they are related to the mathematical faculty. I also know some string theorists who would not insist that the Superstring is the ultimate theory which is one with the universe. I don't see a reason why the Superstring, even if it should at some level be a correct theory of quantum gravity and fundamental particles and interactions, should be the absolute end point any more than other currently testable theories such as the Standard Model. Historically, such hopes were always unfounded.

But I think that these patterns themselves are real, and I equate them as only vague aspects of a universal "mind" or "intelligence" behind everything since even our own self-aspects such knowledge, understanding, self-awareness, and emotions are essentially nothing but specific patterns unfolding in spacetime, while spacetime itself is a mathematical structure.

Ok, I don't know whether they are real (on some days I'm a mathematical Platonist, on other days I'm not) but let's say it is so for the sake of argument.
Why then intelligence? Even with scare quotes, what justifies it?

And these networks of patterns which create our self-awareness are probably already embedded everywhere at the most fundamental level or reality (or maybe in a mathematical realm only), and if so then perhaps we don't really "own" our consciousness, as we think we do. The consciousness is everywhere, and we are just receiving some of it through our own patterns in spacetime.

I get that idea, I don't think it is so. We know many examples where we control the rules of a "game", and choose them to be extremely simple, and can observe emergent complexity. Think of the game of life with a certain size field. There is complete control over the rules, and they are just two instructions. Would you say that all possible resulting life-like complexity you get out of it if you start with all possible initial conditions (*) is encoded in those two simple algorithmic rules to the extent that these two rules are identical with these complex "worlds" which can result from them? I just don't think it is sensible to equate the two.

(*) I consider the union of all these games, thus eliminating the information content in any specific initial condition from the argument, reminiscent of many worlds QM