In response the the topic raised by another poster, the evolution of man stands central in a series of ideas about the nature of chance. I will start by putting forth a proposition.
The first proposition is that probability is a predetermined way of calculating truth; because it has beforehand been established that the highest numbers count.
The second proposition is that chance, randomness, leads to unpredictable dynamics within a predetermined, probability based organization. Once such a dynamic is activated, the system will have to pull new resources to surivive and reestablish balance. It can do so by either eliminating, averting or incorporating the maverick factor. In all these cases the sytem transforms, and evolution takes place.
As you see, I separate chance from probability. I open up to the possibility that probability is not dependent on chance, and assume that it is predetermined to survive, and overcome compromises of it’s integrity, by energy and intelligence.
The third proposition is that the poetic, the scientific and the criminal genius are the only chance-factors in a predetermined system.
Milikowskian I like all your propositions immensely especially number three.
To “ostracize” the criminal is a sure recipe for ossification in any social system…
The criminal type is the type of the strong human being under unfavorable circumstances: a strong human being made sick.
He lacks the wilderness, a somehow freer and more dangerous environment [Natur] and form of existence, where everything that is weapons and armor in the instinct of the strong human being has its rightful place.
His virtues are ostracized by society; the most vivid drives with which he is endowed soon grow together with the depressing affects—with suspicion, fear, and dishonor. Yet this is almost the recipe for physiological degeneration.
(N Dawg - Twilight of The Idols - Aphorism 45 - Kaufman trans)
Your theory makes no sense. You say that probability is a way of calculating truth, and then you say that an organization can be probability based and as such act to reestablish order… a way of calculating truth is not a basis of anything except calculations, and it certainly isn’t what makes a system stabilize itself. i think you’re trying to use the chance/probability distinction in a way that it totally doesnt work and doing it with unclarity. chance vs probability can not equal instability vs stability in a system.
but i do agree with the idea that a system can be naturally stabilizing while certain agents act as destabilizers, which is kind of obvious, and seems to be all that’s necessary for your ultimate point. as for your ultimate point, well, i think it’s a big dynamic system and lots of things change it, usually in unseen ways. in a chaotic system everything is or is potentially a ‘chance element’. poets definitely do bring in new energies though, by being good at expressing themselves. science is ultimately responsible for modern life, for 6 billion people, and for the raping of the earth, all of which happened relatively recently. of course, there were chance factors before poets, science and crimitals too. there may be other classes of people we’re not thinking about that influence things a lot, like philosophers (karl marx? jesus?). the category i disagree most with is criminal geniuses. they make some people unhappy, they get caught, setn to prison with a million other criminals, life goes on as usual. and certainly more disruptive thinsg happen than criminal behaviour. i think it’s just idealized that it’s ‘a peaceful life’ vs. ‘the criminals’ (which btw are products of society)
Thank you for this highly relevant quote. Nietzsche has elsewhere written that nature puts all geniuses in a prison. In the case of the criminal genius, this is a social prison, or a prison of social boundaries intended for weaker humans. In case fo the scientist, this is a prison of darkness, by which I mean a lack of understanding of the world. In the poetic genius it is a spiritual prison: a world where banality rules. At least, these are my thoughts.
I am aware that this is the common opinion. As you see, I disagree with it.
I hope I can assume there is some reason behind this statement. If so, please put it forth. It might be interesing to see if you can construct an argument.
What do you mean by ‘naturally stabilizing’? How do you suppose this stabilizng tendency come into being? If you adress this problem, you will perhaps see that there is a little more to my points than what you got out of them at first glance.
‘Chaotic system’? Do you not feel the need to explain this contradictory phrase?
Energy is constantly being regenrated, this is a property of the Earth. I was not talking about energy.
Both people fall under one or more of the categories I proposed.
Perhaps you would benefit from thinking crime through a little more thoroughly. It is a highly ambiguous subject throughout the history of political and social economy.
You could predict a long term probability in a system, but probability is a way to figure out what will usually happen without all variables being known. to say probability is a driving force to what happens is circular. it’s saying what usually happens is the driving force behind what usually happens. well, i should put it this way. probability is a model that tries to match actuality with calculations. the claim is that the model that tries to roughly and imperfectly match actuality is the driving force behind the actuality, but the model was designed after the actuality. so the model was designed after itself.
and i think it’s like saying calculus is what makes motion possible. calculus is really just something we invented forunderstanding motion.
further evidence that probability and chance cant be mapped to stability and instability is that if you know enough about the instability you can even draw probabilities about the processes within the instabality to any detail or immediacy you want. it’s just a matter of scale… you can also place chance into the stability line because instability will affect the future of the stability, branching timelines, and also because the system may have an overall state ‘determined by’ probability, but its specific details will always be up to chance. for example society might be be having stably but chance says whether the dog moves right or left as someone’s walking him. so again, it’s just a matter of scale, and chance vs. probability can slide quite independently of stability vs. instability. or maybe you could say that chance details are unstable and the probabilities within the instability are stable, but then dogs are just as much agents of chance as criminals are so that doesnt work.
wel i’ve been up for way too long to figure out how stabilizing works, but some thoughts are
it has to do with the dichotomy between stasis and motion that has everything to do with what makes time as we know it possible in the universe. some things move more slowly than others. the stabilizing energy comes from the ‘heavier’ things and the destabilizing energy comes from the ‘lighter’ things
the information of the stable state of the system is embedded holographically in all of its components. after a breach in the larger scale, the information contained in the smaller scales seeps back into the larger scale.
it’s about competition of stronger and weaker patterns, like in darwinism. the instable force may have a lot of pure energy, for an initial strike, but the self-replicating patterns, or pattern, of the stability runs all over it in time.
probability is not a real thing because it describes a distribution of possible outcomes and in reality only one outcome happens, so it’s merely intellectual and to say that why something happens is based on how it will probably happen is to say it’s everything that it’s not (all those alternate possibilities). maybe there is something to what you’re saying, along the lines of physical calculations emulating the processes of stability will mirror the ones used to predict it, but strictly speaking it seem strictly circular to me that an outcome is determined by ways of imprecisely speculating what the outcome will be, which are themselves shadows of the actual system
i just mean a system like, for example, the weather, or any cellular automata used in chaos theory
new patterns, new wavelengths, new colors, new perspectives, new feelings. but i guess i meant something more subtle. they’re a spring for novelty that was actually already waiting there in a different form.
there are so many types or functions of people though, it’s staggering to try to think of all the ones that might introduce instability… what about artists of types other than poets, like painters, musicians and architects?
i just see it as ‘business as usual’, it may be disruptive on a small scale, but on a larger scale it averages out. kinda like rain drops. but i guess you could argue the megacorps, which alter the course of history, like the oil companies who suppress other energy technologies, or those companies who lobby for political change, must use crime among their vices. that reminds me another other sect of people who add instability–politicians. they make the decisions. i would also say terrorists and people who take control of a country by force, but those could be considered criminal geniuses.
I will hereafter write a full resonse, but first I would like to put forth the proposition that crime is only buisiness as usual until one has been on the receiving end of the phenomenon. I do not refer to petty theft, but compromise of one’s life for which no recompense is possible.
In such a circumstance it is no longer possible for the individual to look at life without crime as a determining factor in it. This means not at all that one must become pessimistic - but certainly more realistic. And realism and optimism together are not far off from what many would see as immoral, evil; inclined towards crime; compromise of others with no power or will to recompense.
I see the United States of America in such a situation. You perhaps now begin to see that, from the perspective I wish to discuss, criminal genius can very well be seen alongside, and in even cooperation with, poetic and scientific genius.
The more values are known, the more probable the predicted behaviour becomes. Very much depends on what kind of factors you include in the calculation, especially as the scale of experiment grows finer.
precicely. That is why it is exactly as valid as the other way around. What I am proposing in this part of the equation is to take the second perspective of two instead of the first.
Almost, but no; rather that the driving force is a result of what happens. The apple falling from the three on Newtons head, causing Newton to think ‘something must be doing this!’
This assumption that there is something behind an event, he called gravity. Other than by what it causes, the cause is unknown. (In the case of gravity, light, and probably some other things, like time or space)
This should give you a look at what the reasons could be for this reversal of the cause-effect loop, and perheps even the abolishing of a cause for now.
Exactly.
I’m not saying that calculus makes motion possible, but that the probability of things to exist are the reason they probably exist. The fact that we can calcultate this is merely a result of numbers and our human desire to take advantage of the situation, and not of the probability of something to happen itself.
further evidence that probability and chance cant be mapped to stability and instability is that if you know enough about the instability you can even draw probabilities about the processes within the instabality to any detail or immediacy you want.
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This is a very ill defined field of physics at this point, and to do justice to it in this context we would almost certainly have to involve the volatile nature of quantummechanics in the discussion and that is definitely not my intention.
(Nucleair physics has led to the H bomb. Let’s leave it at that for now. Let me just propose this; the closer you look, the more volatile things become. [note; physicists make almost the same claim:
The closer you look, the more volatile things appear.]
let me just say for now that there are much better ways of predicting the weather than calculus.)
Chance occurences are the cause of our approach to the future and the past. Stability as it occurs in nature, the seasons, the days and nights, the cycles, is always stability; it is itself without future or past. Future and past as in the seasons are within the boundaries of stability, but not the history of men, which is the history of chance occurences, men like Mozart, Napoleon, Newton, Einstein - anyway, let’s not get carried away here: My point, or angle, is this:
because we can determine the causes of many random events within the context of stability we have attributed the causes of these events to stability.With great success, it must be said. It has led to many discoveries - even if most often of a very different nature than what was sought, expected.
That has appeared to be false. When one looks at small particles, one imposes certainty on them. This is not yet understood but proven without exception in all experiments on the quantumscale.
If certainty can be attained by merely watching, probability should be a lot easier. I am proposing that it is the state of affairs an sich. Things ar egenerally probably so. Until there is an exception; a certainty.
this all relates to the interpretation of events and values attributed to them. I am of the school that says there are different values for different things. By this I mean that if someone’s daughter suddenly disappears and found dead in a container ont he other side of the ocean, the disturbance of probability is real, whereas of the dog moves right instead of left it is not.
Inconsequent, perhaps, but not arbitrary.
You seek for causes where they are not necessarily to be found. Neither gravity or time nor light or space have a known cause. Why would stability prove to have one?
Whichever way you choose to look at the cause of probability, the certainty you work from is that it works. When the numbers are high, the bank always wins.
This does not seem logical. Could you rephrase it?
The fact that it is circular only appears so because you make a cause-effect argument of it.
The weather is by far the most effective automaton for chaos theory to apply in the outside world, as it is the summary of all electrochemical systems in the atmospher, or even our part of the universe (starlight ionises a lot before it catches our eye) ; in the psyche it is perhaps a determining factor int he emotions. Yet neither the weather nor the emotions are chaotic when understood in general terms of what will probably happen. (for example, heat in the summer, humidity near water, thunder after a series of hot and humid days, rain after thunder, etc)
that’s what I’m talking about. A new perspective has to be incorporated by stability for it to continue to exist.
I will not hold to this exact division fanatically; I have chosen the three intuitively in the thought that together they roughly encompass all general traits of genius known to me. Of course this is ultimately difficult to defend. But a musicial genius can be seen as a poetical scientist. An architect equally. A philosopher, painter, or a playwright may well be a criminal in various moral systems. Genius often breaks laws.
Perhaps it is superfluous, but I recall to the mordbid example of the daughter in the container and the dog’s walk. But oy get the point:
Indeed. Corporate and political genius is often criminal, if thankfully not always. But there is another very influential type or group of people for whom crime is part of their genius - generally a type seen as benevolent and generous, by who’se hands we are all very strongly influenced in our image of the world.
I wonder if you’d guess what’s on my mind. - M
If you don’t meen scientists, I have no idea. I don’t agree with your ideas about causality and prbability yet but I completely don’t understand them. i think you’d have to explain all this in a dissertation. including the idea that time only exsts where there is instability. to me probability means human calculations. maybe it’s true that the probability of something existing is the reason it probably exists, but i’m not sure that’s anything more than a tautology. in that statement the probability of something happening refers to what humans know. probability is about knowledge. that’s why it includes so much more than the outcome that actually happens. the reason something happens can’t be the knowledge of what will probably happen. otherwise if nobody knew the probabilities it would happen completely differently. i guess you’re rihgt htat i’m thinking causally. but if you take causality out of it, i think taht saying the probability of something happening is the reaoson it probably happens is saying the probability of something happening (what we KNOW might happen) is the reason we KNOW it probably happens. and that IS a tautology. (i think there is a name for that category of ‘reason’ or ‘cause’ , concerning what why we know something, but i don’t remember it.) perhaps there is a third way, but i need progressive explanations of these epistemic outlooks on time, causality and knowledge. brief conclusions and brief responses aren’t working for me.
