War on Emptiness: A Manifesto of the Architecture of Eternity

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21

Well, I don’t know about that… Let’s see.

You mean, because when consciousness is destroyed it can no longer experience these things, right? Because it can experience them just fine in the presence of entropy and the absence of the Nodicum…

Yes, although I wouldn’t in all seriousness use the word “heaven”.

To emotion, as distinct from reason, this may seem outrageous: what am I, a psycho, that I don’t feel for children with cancer or people with Alzheimer’s, and their loved ones, or even entire cities and generations? But I think it follows logically from the absence of a “heaven”. Let us see.

I think it does, though. Why did they build what they built, for example? Was their building an end in itself? Then they can just start building again—or, in fact, then they will never have stopped building, since their building has not served something that comes after the building, but the joy of the building itself.

Or was their building a means to an end? Then, and if this question is not to start an infinite regress, it requires a summum bonum, i.e., something that is an end in itself. In other words, a “heaven”…

I never argued that the reward (sic) had to be eternal. Eternity was what you so proudly presented, not I; I immediately countered: eternity—and then?

My precious, or rather the lack thereof, is free will, not eternity.

So yeah, to all mothers: your children will most probably never have free will, anyway. Likewise to all scientists.


Ensemble Obsidienne, Emmanuel Bonnardot - Lai de la Rose: Laisse 1. Pour vivre joliement (in playlist)

22

I understand your position. If there is no free will, then there is no genuine choice, no responsibility, no good and evil — only neutral movements of atoms. But consistency is not synonymous with truth. Even if we assume that free will is illusory, we are still forced to live as if it exists. Otherwise, it is impossible to make decisions, make plans, praise, blame, convince. Our discussion proves that you share this practical attitude. Moreover, Nodion’s ethics is based on the observed fact that some actions (learning, creativity, networking) objectively decrease local entropy, while others increase it. Even if this choice is predetermined, it is still being made. And the difference between order and chaos, life and death, health and illness remains objective.

Regarding your remark about the “supreme good,” I will answer that even without it, human life is full of finite, immanent values. The pleasure of delicious food, the joy of hugs, the satisfaction of a completed task — they don’t take forever. The pain of losing a child is real here and now, regardless of whether there is heaven and free will. You can call it “emotions, not reason,” but emotions are part of reality. To deny their value is to deny the very fabric of human experience.

23

Humans, human consciousness, evolution in general, can only exist in a negligible fraction of the universe’s volume where there is entropy, an arrow of time. Is it really evil if we couldn’t be here without it?

So why would entropy be an enemy? If you want to increase information complexity, you want to increase entropy or at least keep it level.

24

The meaning of life is somewhat of a silly thing though, no?

It sounds like a question some one would ask if they had not been able to find meaning in specifics within it. The only people who wouldn’t consider it blasphemous to consider purpose on the grand scale are probably people who have never had any on the live one.

Even immortals (popularly called “gods”) are concrete.

Is everything fated? Almost by definition, because, at some point, all will have passed. That is probably the closest sane thing to purpose on the grand scale.

“What is the meaning of it all?”

I don’t know, get a job.

25

Imo that’s very much not how it would work.

Even if we accept that the quantum multiverse just branches and doesn’t de-branch (which is possible but would be insane imo), well you don’t need to die for the branching to happen. Maybe you just branched an infinite amount of times since you started reading this sentence.

Your consciousness is tied to your branch and doesn’t act as a “quantum navigator”. You can’t leave your branch and jump to one where your “Nodicum” exists.

If it’s possible to (appear to) go to a better branch, it’s probably trickier than this.

26

Igor, I respect and applaud the purpose and intent behind your alternate (pragmatic) version of Pascal’s Wager.

However, the problem is that it begins with a huge strike against its plausibility in that it couples it with the “Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.”

We already cannot even begin to fathom how the unthinkable order of just this one universe alone came into existence.

Yet, here you are promoting a theory that relies on the utter nonsense of the MWI which suggests that billions of near exact copies of this universe (and us) simply (and just now) “sprang into existence” (branched off of this universe) due to, for example, the interplay that took place between the retina of your eye and that of the photons of light emitted by your computer screen during the few seconds it took you to read this sentence.

You offer a new, interesting, and highly entertaining “mythology” that loosely mirrors (and attempts to transcend) some of our present mythological paradigms,…

(indeed, your new mythology even includes a malevolent presence that you call the “Swarm”)

…however, I suggest that before you use such concepts as, again, the MWI, you need to explore its utterly ridiculous implications,…

(of which there are many more that I could rant about)

…otherwise, your theory can be shot down right from the start.

And unfortunately, the same applies to this…

Until you can explain how the unfathomable order of the so-called “Block Universe” came into existence,…

…then you simply cannot take its pre-existence for granted and then use that as the foundation upon which to build a theory that clearly relies on the structures and order that had to be in place in order for your theory to work.

27

Look at the analogy of cruelty. We came out of the animal kingdom, where cruelty was a natural survival mechanism. Without it, perhaps our ancestors would not have been able to compete and evolve. However, today cruelty is an enemy of humanity, because of which everyone suffers. We don’t say, “Cruelty has given us an evolutionary advantage, so it’s a blessing.” We say, “We’ve surpassed it, and now we’re fighting it.”

It’s the same with entropy. Yes, consciousness appeared due to a local entropy gradient — without the arrow of time, there would be no growth, no learning, no evolution. But the very appearance of human consciousness is already an act of counteraction to entropy. We are the only known force in the universe capable of creating order locally: knowledge, connections, meanings, cities, technologies. We use the flow of entropy to swim against it.

28

Your advice to “get a job” is not a philosophy, but a recipe for avoidance. You suggest drowning out the existential issue with everyday worries. But humans differ from animals in their ability to ask the question “why?” To ignore it is to renounce the fullness of human existence. Moreover, it is global issues that move science forward — and science solves specific tasks.

29

…well. We go beyond it, obviously.

30

when you’re starving because you have no money, you will find a why

it’s the person you’re working with who doesn’t use the excuses you use

pretty amazing people

31

speak for yourself

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32

There is no “a philosophy.” There is philosophy.

33

Indeed, in the classical many-worlds interpretation, all branches are real, and consciousness merely ‘follows’ one of them during the process of decoherence, without jumping. I am not claiming that Nodion requires a violation of this picture.

However, there are two points you may be overlooking:
First, consciousness is not ‘bound’ to a branch—it is distributed probabilistically across branches.
In quantum mechanics, the observer is not located ‘inside’ a single branch. The measurement process itself is the branching. Your current consciousness is a superposition of states that, after decoherence, becomes correlated with one specific branch. But what exactly determines which branch you become correlated with? The standard answer is: quantum probabilities, the Born rule.

Nodion proposes an additional factor: the degree of coherence and orderliness of consciousness may influence the probability distribution. This is not a ‘jump’ that occurs after death, but a selection—occurring during life—of those branches where the order parameter (Noda) is higher. The more extropic your consciousness, the higher the amplitude of those branches where you find yourself in conditions favorable for Transnodation. At the moment of death, this process concludes: the irrelevant branches (where Nodicum is absent) have a vanishingly small probability.

Second, infinite branching during life does not negate the moment of death as a special threshold.
We do indeed branch constantly, but death is a distinct boundary because the biological system ceases to support the coherence of consciousness. At that moment, the informational structure (Noda) either disintegrates (entropy wins), or, if it is sufficiently stable, it ‘collapses’ into the branch where Nodicum exists as an attractor. This does not violate the Everettian picture; it merely introduces a selective advantage for ordered states.

You called it madness to assume that the multiverse does not simply disintegrate but contains attracting structures. Yet the idea of a ‘quantum attractor’ is not new: it echoes the ‘consistent histories’ model of Gell-Mann and Hartle, where certain decoherent histories possess greater probability. Nodion merely adds an ethical dimension to this: the more order you create, the higher the chance that your history will continue in the branch with Nodicum.

Even if you reject this speculation, a pragmatic core remains: living in a mode of extropy (knowledge, creation, connection) is better and more meaningful than any alternative. The ‘Quantum Navigator’ is a hope, not a dogma. And hope has a right to exist as long as it does not contradict known physics. And it does not: quantum mechanics says nothing about the impossibility of such probabilistic modifications.

You cannot prove that consciousness does not influence the distribution of branches. I cannot prove that it does. But I can show that, even if your version is correct, living by the principles of Nodion is still reasonable. And if my version is correct, it is the only chance at immortality. The stakes are too high to ignore.

34

You mean we should create more order locally (at least how we conceptualize order on a human level), while increasing disorder elsewhere (at least how we conceptualize order on a human level)?

35

I appreciate such detailed criticism. You are right that the Many-Worlds Interpretation and the block universe indeed produce consequences that seem absurd from the standpoint of everyday experience. The infinite branching of universes with every quantum event is staggeringly counterintuitive. But I will answer you point by point.

  1. On the ‘Absurdity’ of the Many-Worlds Interpretation

You say that MWI is absurd because billions of copies of universes ‘arise’ from the interaction of photons with a retina. But absurdity is not a criterion of falsity in physics. Quantum mechanics itself is absurd (Schrödinger’s cat, entanglement, wave function collapse). Einstein called it ‘spooky action at a distance,’ yet physics accepted it as a working description of reality. MWI is merely one interpretation—mathematically consistent and not refuted. You may consider it absurd—and many physicists agree with you (preferring the Copenhagen or other interpretations). But you cannot claim it has been disproven.

Moreover, Nodion does not require accepting MWI as truth. I use it as a working hypothesis—one possible metaphysical support for the hope of Transnodation. If you dislike MWI—discard it. The pragmatic imperative remains: living anti-entropically is still better.

  1. On the Block Universe and the ‘Inscrutable Order’

You say: ‘Until you explain how the inscrutable order of the block universe arose, you cannot take its existence for granted.’ But this demand is a trap. No one knows why the Universe exists and why there is order in it (the anthropic principle, string theory, the creator hypothesis—all of these are speculations). Physicists use the block universe model (eternalism) as a consequence of relativity theory without explaining its origin. It is a working model, not a final explanation.

Nodion is not obliged to solve the problem of the origin of order. It says: if order already exists (in the form of physical laws, the cosmos, life)—we must maintain and strengthen it. And the block universe gives us a convenient language to describe how a future with the Nodikum might already be ‘written’ as an attractor.

  1. On ‘Mythology’ and the ‘Malicious Swarm Entity’

You call Nodion ‘entertaining mythology’ and sneer at the ‘Swarm.’ But allow me to note: any philosophical system, including your own materialistic nihilism, operates with metaphors. ‘Entropy’ to a physicist is a measure of disorder. To a person witnessing cancer, war, and oblivion—it is a real destructive force. Calling it the ‘Swarm’ is no more mythological than calling gravity a ‘force of attraction.’ It is a personification that helps the conscious mind to fight.

If you deny all metaphors—you deny poetry, art, and half of human experience. But I do not insist on the term ‘Swarm.’ Remove it—the essence of Nodion does not change.

  1. The Main Point: Nodion Does Not Collapse if You Discard MWI and Eternalism

You write that a ‘theory can be refuted from the very beginning’ if its foundations are absurd. But Nodion is not a physical theory. It is a philosophical-ethical system. Its foundations are:

· Entropy is real and destroys value.
· Consciousness can create local order.
· The struggle against entropy through Knowledge, Creation, and Connection is meaningful and beneficial.

All of this remains true even if MWI is nonsense and the block universe is a mathematical fiction. MWI and eternalism are merely possible scientific justifications for the hope of the Node’s immortality. If they do not convince you—fine. One can live by the Triad without that hope. It will still make life better.

In the end, you have not refuted Nodion. You have shown that its speculative physical supports are debatable. But I never claimed they were proven. I claimed that even if they are false—the Path of Nodion remains reasonable. And if they are true—we gain a chance at eternity. This is Nodion’s Wager. Unlike Pascal’s Wager, it does not require faith—only action.

I believe the main question is this: Is the fight against entropy here and now meaningful, even without any Nodikum? Or are you prepared to claim that caring for the sick, learning, and building are meaningless? I choose the former.

36

I didn’t say that consciousness doesn’t influence the distribution of branches, I just said that you’re consciousness is tied to the branch you are in (yes that’s probabilistic or quasi-pobablistic), and you can’t make a jump to a Nodion world using a consciousness that is coherent with a non-Nodion world. That’s a contradiction.

Maybe you can do it if you lose all your memories that tie you to the non-Nodion world, lose the memories at death or earlier. Then you can decohere sufficiently. But in that case that’s no longer really “you”.

But with your memories intact, you can’t make the jump imo.

37

Also, I think authoritarianism is often more “orderly” than democracy. Killing the sick, euthanizing the elderly is often more “orderly” than spending more time and resources for their well-being. Maybe entropy isn’t the best measure of these things.

38

The second law of thermodynamics is inexorable: in a closed system, entropy does not decrease. When we build a city, write a book, or create an interest club, we reduce entropy in this local area, but increase it in the environment (heat, waste, dissipated energy). This is the cost of living.

But we choose which side of this exchange to be on. We choose to be the ones who create islands of meaning, even if an ocean of chaos grows around us. But at the same time, Nodion does not call for creating chaos in other lives for the sake of order in his own. On the contrary, the Triad (Knowledge, Creation, Connection) requires a network, cooperative order: when we help each other, the general local order grows without increasing suffering. This is not a zero-sum game. If the local order were dying with us, one could say that this is a Sisyphean work, but Nodion adds Nodicum’s hypothesis: perhaps the stable information pattern of consciousness (Node) does not disappear completely, but can be connected to the eternal network of the mind. Then each of our acts of extropy is not just a local ripple, but a brick in a building that will survive biological death.

Even if Nodicum is an illusion, the struggle itself is meaningful. But if it’s real, then the stakes become endless.

39

According to Nodion, consciousness is already distributed in a superposition of branches, but with different amplitudes. The more extropic (orderly) consciousness is, the higher the amplitude of those branches where conditions favor the existence of the Nodium. This is not a “leap after death”, but a constant selective process at every moment of time. At the moment of death, the biological system ceases to maintain coherence, and irrelevant branches (where there is no Nodium) become vanishingly unlikely. You don’t move into someone else’s branch — you end up in the branch that has always been most likely for you due to your lifestyle. No memory is lost in the proposed mechanism. You simply find yourself in a branch where your entire previous history (including the memory of living without Nodicum) is consistent with the existence of Nodicum. This does not contradict physics: in the multi-world interpretation, different branches may have a common past until the moment of the last decoherence. Your personal identity is preserved because the chain of memories is continuous — it’s just that the “future” of this chain leads to Nodicum.

40

You are right, if we understand the “struggle against entropy” as a simple desire for physical order (purity, symmetry, predictability), then authoritarianism really looks more “orderly”, and caring for the weak looks less. But Nodion never reduced entropy to just physical disorder.

Entropy in Nodion is not a synonym for physical disorder, but the destruction of value.

For Nodion, the enemy is not chaos as a physical measure (although it is important), but the destruction of the ability of consciousness to experience meaning, joy, connection and creativity. An authoritarian order based on fear, suppression, and destruction of dissent increases entropy at the human level: it destroys knowledge (censorship), creation (control of creativity), and communication (isolation, denunciation). This “order” is just an illusion of order. In fact, this is a form of chaos, because it turns living people into cogs, depriving them of a unique information structure. I live inside an authoritarian system and I know very well what I’m talking about. I won’t even talk about the “euthanasia” of the old and sick. I’m not just sitting here having a discussion out of boredom. For me, “chaos”, “death”, “order” and everything else are not metaphors, but represent very specific phenomena in life. Some things can only be understood in specific circumstances. When a human life ceases to be worth anything and you can die at any moment, there is an immediate reassessment of attitudes towards everything.