The Black Box

In engineering, there is a common entity referred to as "a black box". The black box is an often approximated and always generalized model of a chosen entity. It is composed of 3 fundamental notions;

1) Inputs (S)
2) Inner functioning (I)
3) Outputs (B)

Every entity that can be identified is identified by every mind as a black box wherein the inner functioning is seldom known, often speculated, but usually irrelevant. In electronic circuit design for example, the engineer very often obtains an integrated circuit, IC. The IC is quite literally and physically a small black plastic box with conducting pins sticking out of it. The engineer knows that any particular IC uses some of its pins for input signals and some for output responses. He knows that if he raises the voltage on certain pins, other specific pins will respond by either raising or lowering their voltage in accord with the internal functioning. He most often doesn't care what is actually within the box, how it works or why.

In reality, every mind, no matter how small, is always "thinking" in terms of black boxes. Every object identified whether given a label or not, is inherently categorized as an entity with an expected behavior relating to its stimuli.

Given stimuli "S" and an internal functioning of "I", a behavior of "B" is expected.

B = F{S,I}
Behavior = a Function of Stimuli and Internal responses.
Or
"I choose my Behavior in response to my Situation/Stimuli"

By noting in general terms those 3 qualities, every mind categorizing every object of thought, every word, every sentence, every construct, every action, and every object, endeavors to resolve what behavior to enact. The mind simply can't function without such an inherent model.

When deriving its chosen ontological view of its surroundings, the mind has no alternative but to classify subsets of its surroundings into such black box models commonly referred to as entities, objects, and actions.

Even when any person views another person, to merely identify the person, the mind must utilize the black box concept;

"Person A is that entity which behaves in B manner when given S stimuli."

All psychological categorizing of behavior is codified by such a scheme. All fields of Science utilize the black box concept so as to identify and predict behaviors within each field of study. Of course, people often don't appreciate being thought of as a "mere predictable black box", but the truth is that every mind has no choice but to use such a model if it is to think at all. Unfortunately, societal engineering, requiring generalizing designs, requires generalizing black box categories for all people from which political strategies, psychological media, economic designs are formed. A governing body is itself a black box assigning black box generalizations, rules, and reactions.

Even Life itself is modeled by every mind as "this general entity that generally behaves in this general way when given a general type of stimulation from a general type of situation and I don't know or often care how it works inside."

Every General that shuffles his small models of tanks, planes, and battalions around on his map, every religion or government in dictating its truths, and every philosopher constructing his world-view or perspective, instinctively, naturally, and necessarily assembles his ontology by choosing the black boxes within; the entities that regardless of internal method "I", always behave in "B" manner, given "S" stimuli.

Achieving Faster than Light Travel

I have often stated that absolutely nothing can ever travel faster than what we refer to as "the speed of light". But just as a minor interesting note, there are actually 2 exceptions.

My meta-particle tracking program monitors for anything with gimbal velocities and anything traveling faster than light, primarily to help hunt down any errors in the program. Recently, I found it triggering yet I could find no error in the program. I investigated the equations over and over and was a bit puzzled as to how a particular particle could have a velocity greater than the max possible.

Well, as it turned out, a bit of a philosophical thought came to mind and revealed what was happening.

A particle's location is defined by its center. By tracking its center, one knows at what velocity it is traveling. But in the case of particles, especially particles that are just beginning to form, an interesting effect takes place.

If a particulate is already traveling close to the speed of light, a common occurrence, and it runs up on a similar particulate running slightly slower, you would think the end velocity would merely be an average of the two. And it is.. sortta. But what happens is that the two particulates merge into a single particle and guess what happens to the center of the first? Quite suddenly the center of the "particle" went from position A to position B (a particulate width distance away) almost instantaneously.

Of course the reason was simply that the particulate was still in a growth stage and as it grows, its center can outrun all of its constituents. Technically speaking, that really is the same as traveling faster than light. So it can be legitimately stated that a growing particle can, for a short time at least, travel faster than light. Of course, that time is in the range of fractional pico seconds, but still, it is an interesting note.

Then it occurred to me that every particle is actually growing and shirking at the same rate all the time and is thus stable. But what if I were to cause it to grow faster on one side and shrink faster on the opposite side? Again, as it turns out, for short times, that can actually happen and no doubt in space, it does happen.

The requirements for causing such an event involves a charge gradient which of course cannot continue for very long, but it could lead to much greater durations of exceeding the speed of light for non-growing particles than the growing particles mentioned before. And an ideal place to find such a naturally occurring situation would be the famed black hole. I can safely say, that some of the particles speeding into a black hole, especially one with a significant charge field, will in fact rush to their demise even faster than the light rushing along side of them. For how long that might be, I couldn't venture a guess.

The shifting center would not actually add to the momentum of the particle, so no common energy equation theories get violated. The particle merely shows up at the destination and its demise before its photon partner.

..just an interesting observation.

_________________________________________________________________________________

Oh Hell..

Very shortly after posting that OP, it dawned on me how one could theoretically keep a particle experiencing a positive gradient and thus continue to travel faster than light. It would be extremely difficult to arrange, but theoretically possible.

Let's say you had an electron orbiting its nucleus and had the technical means to increase the charge (or mass) field in front of the electron while reducing it behind the electron. By arranging to do that sequentially, much like a stepper motor or an alternator, the field changing constituents would not need travel or change faster than light for the particle to never be able to catch up to the changing field in front of it. As the particle passes, the field in each location would be reduced back to a lower level.

The electron would be in a state of constantly growing more in front and shirking behind and thus its center would be shifting forward faster than its constituent mass could possibly travel. For as long as the device was operational and kept sync with the orbiting electron, the electron would achieve and maintain faster than light travel.

I really hate it when I outwit my own proclamations of impossibility.. sigh

_______________________________________________________________________________

Continuing even further...

Again theoretically, a linear accelerator and relay could be arranged such that a particle could carry the information of an event in a straight line.

As the particle either traveled linearly itself, or relayed its effect to other particles inline, even though its own charge field could not grow faster than light such as to have affect as it passed, it could reach the end of a line and begin having its field effect upon the terminal detecting device before a photon had a chance to get to the detector.

Information traveling faster than light... gees.. it must be bad news.

The Society

It has been said that God has no respect for the individual, not a totally accurate statement, but close enough.

People gather so as to accomplish what the individual could not accomplish alone. But to agree to such an arrangement indicates that the individual sees what it is that he needs to accomplish. And little piece by piece, he does. Thus for sake of this piece or that piece of his needs, he agrees, a society is born.

But in all the variations of need and want, who if any, have seen and agreed to the entirely of their need? Without understanding the whole, each particular is over or under-focused. Infighting breaks out as agreements are stressed and needs are exaggerated or forgotten. One individual against the many. Many against the few. Many against the many. The need of all within rises, a greater need for the gathering merely to handle the new needs caused by the struggles of the gatherings. Nations are born, born by war, in war, for sake of war. The individual loses all importance. The need of the war is supreme for sake of the needs of the individuals, the very individuals who have lost all significance save in their numbers for sake of the war against the other society, the others disregarding all but their war against the first.

So what happened? How is it that the gathering proposed to serve the individuals relents to ignore the individual as it gains its own agenda and need, its own being, foresight, and cognition? Is society to be a gathering of the living, or is it to have its own life within which the individuals are but cells of the body, insignificant save for the service to the society, the "real life", the "important life", above those needs of the insignificant particulates.

At what point after a society has acquired its own consciousness, can it proclaim that it should not be, that it should not have consciousness or life above those who banned together to create it? To whom does life belong, the cells, or the body, or perhaps to that ethereal consciousness itself free to disregard the entire body and all within.

From the seed of the men who knew not the whole for what they sought, society is born to seek beyond any need of those very men and yet still having too little intellect to wholly comprehend for what it truly needs as well.

Society, merely a higher wave in the turbulence and noise that life is as it seeks what it can yet comprehend yet determined to fight for the right to obtain it.

Should it end or merely continue the strife, struggle, and crushingly and selfishly blind pursuit for it knows not what?

Definitional Logic

Logic ≡ the recognition of association between definitions and/or axioms such as to reveal an associated truth.
Definitional Logic ≡ the recognition of association between definitions such as to reveal an associated definitional truth.

Definitional Truth ≡ a statement wherein a portion or portions of reality have been identified by definition as that portion of reality.

 



Definitional logic is based strictly upon defined concepts and entities, void of presumed axiomatical truths. In the process of thinking and communicating, it is critical to maintain consistency in word-concept association.

Logic is a process wherein cross associations are discovered that must be true due simply because of the defined concept consistency involved. When the defined concepts are then firmly associated with physical reality, relevant “truth” is revealed.

An error in the use of logic or in a belief in a truth is discovered when there is a conflict, a disharmony, in the assigned concepts; when something has been inadvertently associated with its contradiction.

Above all else, Logic is defined by its lack of contradiction.

When the only axioms involved in an argument are definitions, all proper conclusions are true “by definition”. Usually such is a simple and obvious association, but sometimes the arguments, even though merely based on definitions, can become complex and surprisingly revealing.

A simple example would be the proposal that an infinite line has no end to it. If the word “infinite” has been defined to mean “no end associated”, then it can be stated with certainty that “by definition”, an infinite line has no end.. end of discussion. Whether that conclusion is significant or relevant to anyone is another matter.

Realize that an axiom is a statement of proposed truth. A definition is not. A definition is merely clarifying the concurrent language for the moment. Definitions are not true or untrue. They are declaration to be accepted for the duration. If they conflict with standard or common definitions, the arguments might be pointless, but not incorrect or invalid, merely a wast of time.

Another simple example is the recent issue of whether “1+1 = 2”.

Since the symbol “1+1” represents the same conceptual definition as the symbol “2” and the symbol “=” is defined to mean “the same quantity as” (in this context), the statement of “1+1 = 2” is really saying that:

The definition of concept A  is the same as  the definition of concept A.

"1+1" == two individual entities
"2" == two individual entities.
"=" == the same as

Therefore,
"1+1 = 2" is correct.

It is no longer an issue of ether semantic manipulation nor of presumed and debatable axioms. Legal documents are often done in similar manners, much like the license agreements that people so often sign for software without reading.

Another outstanding example was that of Thomas Aquinas in his five proofs for God. In four of the five, he stated an axiom as an obvious truth, most of which turned out to not actually be true. He was not using definitional logic and thus failed in his effort to actually prove anything, whether it was true or not. Although at the time, he was very convincing.

And thus the conclusion is true “by definition”:

“1+1 = 2” is true by definition (not by experiment or presumed axioms).

Definitional proofs are always merely about how the words have been defined to represent their associated concepts.

In contrast a more common type of argument might be that “cars are manmade”. Typically, one would presume that any car would be made by man. But a car is not defined as an entity made by man, it is defined by its form and function. Thus the conclusion, whether true or not, is not the product of definitional logic, but rather axiomatical logic, requiring that all parties agree on the axioms involved.

In any one definitional logic argument, there can be no disagreement as to the definitions involved (assuming that they have been stated) although there can easily be dispute as to whether the definitions are meaningful or useful in common language.

The significant difference is merely that a declared definition for the duration of the author's argument can't be disputed. If a thousand year old argument begins with, "since we define a circle as..., then... ", the argument cannot be defeated by the claim that "but that isn't what the word 'circle' means" or "but we have discovered that circles aren't really round in the physical universe." The conclusion made by the author might depend on his assumptions that his defined circles apply to a physical world in a manner that turned out to be incorrect, but that is another matter relating to extended axiomatic truth assumptions after the definitional argument.
__________________________

Using Definitional Logic is a means of absolutely knowing that ones conclusions are beyond doubt. The conclusions are not subject to misperceptions, relative measures, or presumptions.

Stemming from a more complex example of definitional logic is the revelation of exactly what causes all of the laws of physics to be what they are; why mass attracts, why particles form, why some particles are positive, neutral, or negative, why opposites attract, and why they don’t merely collapse into each other.

The results of the logic, once verified for properness, are incontrovertible as they are true “by definition”. Of course ensuring that such conclusions exactly relate to the physical world, not merely a conceptual architecture, is critical before issuing any conclusion concerning truth.

Making History and the Bankruptcy of Tomorrow

Creative history writing works like creative economics.

History is the mathematics of reality. Oft times cross checking the math can be accomplished to ensure a portion of the formula is accurate. But regardless, any inaccuracies lead to the same bankruptcy of tomorrow.

When a lie is told, creating a history, sometimes cross checking can be used to reveal the lie. But whether verified or not, the sum of all prior reality must lead to the final conclusion of tomorrow. The objective of a lie is to alter that conclusion. But no matter what is omitted or added to one day's sum, the next day's tally must be compensated.

Proper Logical Presentation

Definitions (binding association of concepts to words within presentation)
Declaratives (scenario givens; for the sake of this discussion..)
Axioms (already agreed to be true and demarked as axiomatical)
Conclusive Premises (simple conclusions due to lack of alternatives)
Observational Premises (we have directly seen this...)
Conditional Premises (IF this is true, then..)
Arguments (because that is true, this.. must also be true)
Conclusions (because all of that has been true, this.. can be concluded)
Extrapolations (having concluded that, this.. can also be concluded)

Other than tpyos or other stupidities, such a presentation will be correct 100% of the time. The truth value will be 100% because NO presumptions are made (other than the notion that anyone cares) and all possible alternatives have been properly denounced. But note that each element should be demarked as to which type it is.

Depression

Depression comes in 3 basic forms; physiological, emotional, and cognitive. "Depression" is the label given to the "urge to give up", to not act even when actions are available. The medical world defines depression as a state wherein a person retreats from "normal activity" for that person (much less definitive). The underlying cause of depression in all cases is the futilization of positive response.

Oppression often leads to depression whereas suppression offend leads to aggression (opposite of depression). The depressive state neither loves nor hates, but rather stops caring and insists in not caring. Depression is not merely the loss of hope, but the acceptance in the hope of retreating, "shutting down", "giving up". The urge to withdraw completely is what leads to suicidal depression. Suicide is the overt act to withdraw from all life entirely.

Biochemicals and drugs can help most with physiological depression wherein the body refuses to respond normally under normal stimuli. Exercise, increased bodily fluid flow, and a medically clean environment help most against physiological depression. Proper levels of vitamins and minerals can help if they happen to have become abnormal. This level of depression is classified as "disease" (dis-ease) and is generally caused by invasion of toxins or germs. Physiological depression is almost never caused genetically despite family history. More often the family merely experiences the same invasive affects, often from the same sources (environmental or social).

Drugs effect emotional depression through a complex reaction process where the feelings and emotors are medically tweaked until they mask the cause of the depression sufficiently to simulate normal behavior (what is assessed as such anyway). A strong change in life situation can greatly effect a depressive state, but the person will seldom choose to pursue such a change. Strong love or hate interests can jar the emotional state into seeing new hope in taking action. But if such changes in life are introduced and do not succeed, they instead further aid the depression. Emotional and cognitive depressions are never caused genetically regardless of family history.

Biochemicals and drugs have no effect on cognitive depression unless they have positive (or negative) effect on mental functions such as memory, attention, focus, concentration, analytical response, and so on. Nootropics aid in that regard. The cognitively perceived situation of the person is the cause of cognitive depression thus anything that appears to the person to yield hope in the person's situation works against cognitive depression (winning the lottery for example if money is an recognized issue).

Signs of each type of depression vary from each other. Some people have various degrees of each type. Each type affects each other type, but does not directly determine them. People sufficiently skilled to properly diagnose depression (or just about any psychological ailment) are difficult to find. This is largely due to the attempt to over simplify the mental state and assign labels through symptomology rather than addressing causes.

Social and economic depression are additional depression types caused by analogous affecters. These are most often brought about (along with personal depressions) as governments change hands or restructure. Futilizing the people's effort to maintain their own safety is a critical part of re-ording a society, thus the people sense and often recognized the hopelessness of their situation. Suicides rise sharply as social demonism is injected so as to make clay by crushing the former statue for sake of the new statue. In the West, the more recent change ("paradigm shift") came about as Christianity was replaced with Judeo-secularism for sake of world governing.

In all cases, depression is the result of the actions of others and is seldom remedied except by the same.