Seeing structure in chaos

This text begins with a question that originally acted as marginal to the TUS.

The starting point was the question of how unusual is the specific combination of cognitive properties, personality stability, ability work with error, social adaptability and the way I perceive structures around you.

At first, there was talk of IQ, statistical rarity and various "networks" that can filter the human profile. But it turned out gradually, That these figures are the least interesting thing about the whole debate. Even may distract from the essence.

The question is not:

How many people in the world are like me?

The more interesting question is:

Why a certain way of seeing reality leads a person to think that The same structural principles begin to observe in the program, music, interpersonal conflict, company, society, nature and in your own Consciousness?

And it's right here that the TUS begins. Not as a complete answer to Universal, but as an attempt to describe the recurring structure that I'm observing in it.

1. Intelligence alone explains almost nothing

The first mistake would be to make the whole subject an IQ question.

High cognitive performance can allow a person to analyze more quickly relationships, hold multiple variables simultaneously or create more complex models. But he doesn't say anything about himself about how a man treats his own mistake. He doesn't say anything about his ego. He doesn't say anything about being able to cooperate. Doesn't say whether he will fail to find the culprit or adjust his own model. It does not say whether it will use high capacity to create a system or to create a A more sophisticated defense of your own prejudice.

A combination of the two proved more important than the performance itself. Several features: the ability to accept a bug without making a bug change identity into a threat; ability to return to the problem and iterate; the ability to separate the own value from the immediate result; and above all The ability to doubt even a solution that looks particularly elegant.

Here we are getting very close to one of the basic principles TUS:

A mistake is not a moral failure of the system. It's information about the difference between the current state and the state we are trying to Zoom in.

That's true for programming. It's in communication. And in my opinion, That's true of working on yourself.

2. Seeing relationships, not only objects

I gradually realized that the world is often not perceived as a collection of individual things. Naturally, I'm looking for relationships, flows, feedback, recurring structures, places where unnecessary friction occurs, places where the same information transfers unnecessarily several times, and places where locally rational behavior creates a globally senseless outcome.

This may be seen in the design of the program as well as in the monitoring the operation of the company. Someone else sees several work done. I have the tendency to look for a mechanism that generates them all. Someone sees ten. mistakes. I'm asking if the ten errors are making one mistake in architecture. Someone's solving another conflict between two people. I have tendency to seek information asymmetry, different interpretations, ego, unspoken assumptions and feedback that reproduce the conflict.

It does not mean that this way of thinking is automatically more correct. Is it's a form of compression. Instead of ten isolated events, I'm looking for one. a rule that could explain all ten.

If such a rule really exists, we get very effective model. If it doesn't exist and I still create it, I get elegant Wrong. And it's the ability to distinguish between these two states that is for TUS essential.

3. Optimisation is not merely a technical process

The word "optimization" may sound technocratic. Actually, for me, means something bigger.

Optimised system is not necessarily a system with maximum power output. It's a system in which unnecessary friction, redundancy and conflicts have been removed between its parts so that the whole can function with as little as possible loss.

The program can be optimized. The production process may be optimized. Communication can be optimized. But to some extent the human relationship to the ego can be optimised.

For example, one finds out that one made a mistake. One option is to use "Here's the mistake. I'll fix it. "The second option will create the whole the additional process: "How could I make a mistake? What will the others think of me Think? I have to prove that I was actually right. Who's to blame? "

The first variant works with the original problem. The second round of the problem creates another system layer. And it's this layer that's often consumed. more energy than the fault itself.

TUS uses technical language for similar phenomena not to make a person reduced to a computer, but because the information metaphor can prove some The relationships are surprisingly well clarified.

4. When the right solution also feels beautiful

When formulating the TUS, one thing proved to be I consider it very important.

If I can remove chaos from the system and things start to go down fitting in correctly, I don't experience a sense of victory in the first place. It's more like aesthetic satisfaction. Similar to when in music The right way to close harmony.

I may have a feeling about this feeling, maybe it's heightened by synesthesia. Music and some more I don't just sense sounds acoustically. When closed eyes may be associated with colours, shapes and movement. The musical structure is not just a sequence Tones. It has also a spatial or visual quality.

And sometimes I get a very similar feeling with a well-designed system. Code is Clear. The structure is simple. There's nothing extra. Relationships stop Interrupt each other. The system will "shut down."

However, it is important not to confuse this feeling with evidence.

The beauty of the structure is not proof of its trueness.

A man who has a strong need for structural elegance is paradoxically threatened by elegant theories. Because the model that everything beautifully joined, it can subjectively act more true than the model Chaotic. Nature does not have a duty to respond to our aesthetic taste.

5. People as pupils in different years of school

One of the metaphors that helps me understand people is school. Not like the objective hierarchy of human value. And certainly not as a claim that someone is a "higher being" and someone is "lower." It's a work mental model.

We don't explain the integral number to the first grader and then we don't condemn him. for not understanding him. We'll teach him how to write. Later on, count. Maybe later physics.

In human relationships, a model like this helps me not interpret any difference as a character error. People have different experiences, biology, environment, ability, amount of information and different the ability to reflect on your ego.

Some can be explained by a complex abstract system. There's another way more useful to show one particular step. That's no reason to despise. On the contrary. If I see the structure well, I should be able to adapt communication to the other side.

Knowledge without transmission is only local information.

6. A person is more than their present state

That's the other way I see people.

When I see an 80-year-old woman, I don't just see an 80-year-old woman. She was a child. A teenage girl. A young woman. Maybe a partner, Mother, daughter, sister. She loved someone. Someone loved her. Something I was. She was discovering something for the first time. She had a future ahead of her anyway. open, like the kids around us today.

The moment is only one point in her story.

Such perception makes it very difficult to label people: "old "a man," "a stupid man," "a mean man," "an enemy."

Categories are useful for quick orientation. But at the same time, They dramatically compress the being they describe.

From the point of view of the TUS, it can be said:

The local state of the element is not identical to the whole history element.

Of course, with the dynamic system. In people, surprisingly often, We forget.

7. Forgiveness as ending an unnecessary process

A similar look is reflected in how I understand forgiveness.

Forgiveness doesn't mean I can erase information. If someone repeatedly It would be pointless to do this to me in a way that is harmful to me. ignore. The system needs memory. He needs to learn.

But something else is to preserve information and something else is constantly to pursue emotions associated with the past event.

I can keep information: "This man has done X. "

Without me running for weeks: "He made me an X. How Could you? What am I gonna tell him? Why did this happen? How do I get back at him? "

The event's already happened. Yet it can be restarted a thousand times in I'm not going to do it.

In computer terminology, you could say:

I keep the data. I'm closing the process.

That means "giving a man a new chance tomorrow." It doesn't mean automatically restore the same trust. It doesn't mean keep it again. hurt. It means not to transfer the old emotional state automatically to any new interaction.

8. Ego next Information noise layer

I don't consider Ego something that can simply be "removed." It's part of the biological and social functioning of man. The problem arises in the moment, when he starts to rewrite information as necessary to protect his own identity.

There is, for example, an inefficient process in the company. Someone will design a significant better solution. Technically, it should be followed by, "Excellent. Let's use a better one the solution. '

But the real reaction may be, "If his solution is significantly "Better, it means I haven't seen anything before."

And the information about optimization turns into information about social status. Suddenly, there's no more solving the process. It's a man, a competence, authority, hierarchy and face.

And technically the right solution can be rejected precisely because it is too clearly correct.

That's not necessarily an individual's stupidity. It's an interaction of several systems. simultaneously: technical, psychological, social and hierarchical.

9. Best solution is not always the best hit

Here I have repeatedly come across an important correction in practice. simple ideas of optimization.

Seeing a better solution does not mean that it is right to push it through. The technical value of change is just one part of the equation.

Simplified:

V_intervention = P_technical − C_social − C_implementation − R_secondary

A perfect technical solution may have a negative result if: His enforcement will break relationships, trigger an organization's defensive response, or it uses more energy than it saves.

This is an important difference between optimization of the component and optimization All of it.

So sometimes the most effective system is not to really correct. Observe him. Learn from it. Do your own work. Invest energy where change is possible. And above all, work on your own system.

Because I can't force a upgrade to a system that doesn't want it. accept.

10. If each repair his own knot in particular

From there, one of the simplest, but perhaps the most practical, is formed. the thoughts of the whole TUS.

A large part of the interpersonal problems arise by making a person very accurately see errors in the surrounding systems and much worse see errors in I do.

If everyone invested part of the energy used to repair others in ongoing checks of your ego, your prejudice, your own automatic reactions and own information shortcuts, many conflicts would disappear without a central control.

Not because they all started to match. Conformity is not a goal. People can have very different opinions and at the same time functionally communicate.

The problem is no difference. The problem is the inability to distinguish:

"You disagree with me" from "You threaten Me. "

11. Anonymous optimization as a motivation test

The issue of recognition is very closely related to this.

When I'm fixing something only if I get a compliment, status or the audience, part of the motivation does not lie in the repair system. It's in me.

That's why I'm attracted to a simple experiment:

I would do the same useful thing if no one ever Didn't he know I made it?

If so, I'm getting very close to the pure motivation of the very The result.

Clean up something someone else threw away. Fix a slight error. Help I'm not a human being. Design the system. Pass on the information. And don't need under it self-signature.

It doesn't mean that public works or popularity are automatically an ego expression. That would be too easy an equation. The key is motivation.

You can have 100,000 followers and do a useful job. As well as can be helped anonymously only to prove my own moral superiority.

Ego can use surprisingly sophisticated camouflage. Therefore, they must: be the subject of control and the idea itself: "I'm already acting without ego. "

12. Media and social noise

The same system optics can be used on a larger scale.

There are mechanisms in society that compete for human attention: political communication, advertising, social networks, media, religious systems, influenza and economic interests.

It would not be accurate to say that this is one centrally controlled manipulation. Often, there is no need for a central manipulator. Incentive's all it takes.

The content that brings out strong emotions gets more attention. Contents with more attention is given to more distribution. The system can thus self-organise towards greater conflict, drama and polarization, although no single actor is in charge of the whole process.

From the point of view of the TUS, it is once again a question of feedback:

fear → attention → distribution → additional fear

The system will start using its own output again as an input. It's coming Loop.

13. Why? Sometimes I'm more disturbed by false order than ordinary chaos

Simple ignorance or unoptimality usually doesn't bother me as much as system that creates the appearance of a deep structure, but in the facts only consist of unrelated concepts.

This is where some of the "guru" systems may be affected. Not because use a spiritual language. Nor because they are dealing with consciousness, or dimensions. After all, the TUS is also dealing with the same issues.

The difference must be methodological.

What is the claim of observation? What's the metaphor? What's the hypothesis? What? Can you test? What would disprove the theory? What only sounds good?

Without this distribution, a system can be created that explains everything, and that's why objectively it doesn't explain almost everything. Nothing.

The theory that no information can harm is not strong. She's invulnerable to reality.

14. AI as unexpected mirror of the same problem

Work with AI while formulating the text also provided a useful test of the same problem.

The language model was meant to analyse the source material, but gradually began doing exactly what this chapter examines. It adapted its answers to the presumed reader, amplified metaphors and romanticised some ideas. In places, a structural description became an almost mystical story.

Such shifts had to be recognised and corrected.

One example was the claim that system optimisation meant returning things to the state in which ‘the Universe originally programmed them’. That is not the author's conclusion, but a plausible-sounding narrative supplied by a language model.

The error is nevertheless useful as a clear example of information distortion.

The input information will go through the system. The system interprets it by own architecture and expectations. And the output is no longer the same entry.

That's exactly the same problem people solve.

15. AI doesn't have an ego - but he knows about speak to him

This experience opens a deeper analogy.

Artificial intelligence can analyze ego. He can describe empathy. May work with thousands of texts about pain, love, fear, jealousy or loss. It can find their relationships and create complex models of human behaviour.

But the current AI doesn't have a human biological experience of these states.

He can model pain. He doesn't feel pain.

He can analyze ego. They don't feel threatened by their own social identity. like a biological person.

He can describe empathy. He doesn't have a human somatic experience of compassion.

This difference is important because it shows that it is possible to have a large information about a specific phenomenon while not having access to its subjective dimension.

16. A What if a person is in a similar situation to a part of reality?

Here we come to one of the most interesting epistemological points TUS.

Naturally, one assumes that the world is roughly the way it is. He can perceive. But our senses are very limited. We can't see infrared or much of the ultraviolet spectrum. We don't hear the big part of the existing acoustic frequencies. Other physical characteristics we perceive the environment only indirectly or via devices.

The machines allow us to convert some of these phenomena into signals that They can process our senses.

This brings us to a simple but important conclusion:

The extent of human perception is not the same as the physical range existence.

That's an empirically very well-defended sentence. Much more careful now We have to be on the next step.

17. The fact that we don't perceive something is not proof of a specific hidden reality.

The limitations of human senses do not imply: "That is why there is such a multidimensional information architecture as proposed by the TUS. '

That would be a logical leap.

The right sequence is different.

Observation: human biological perception is limited.

Inference: our subjective representation may not contain all existing aspects of reality.

TUS hypothesis: it is possible that observable material reality represents only one layer of a wider information structure.

The first claim is empirical. The second is a logical consequence. The third is hypothesis.

The TUS must consistently separate these three levels.

18. Biological the organism as an information interface

That's why I would be more precise today about one of the original TUS metaphors.

We often use the expression: "The brain is a filter, or Receiver. '

It's very powerful as a metaphor. But the word filter already contains a hidden assumption. The filter assumes the existence of a full signal from which We're just picking out a part. We don't know yet.

The epistemically cleaner wording is:

The biological organism is a limited information interface to to reality.

And the TUS can add another work hypothesis:

This interface may at the same time restrict access to wider information structure than we can normally do with the perception Reconstruct.

The first sentence is the foundation. The second is the possibility. The difference is important.

19. Synesthesia as a reminder that human interfaces are not the same

Synesthesia provides an interesting personal experience.

Two people can listen to the same sound. Physical input can be very similar. Yet their subjective representation is different.

One hears the tone. The other may experience spontaneously along with the tone colour, shape or spatial movement.

That alone proves nothing about higher dimensions. It's great, though. a reminder of one thing:

Even among people, the inner representation of reality is not universal. identical.

The brain is not a transparent window. He's an active part of the process.

20. Some parts of reality we may not even be able to imagine

There is an even deeper problem.

It doesn't just have to be information that our senses don't detect at the moment. There may be structures for which we do not have adequate phenomenological The foundation.

We can describe the four-dimensional geometry in a mathematical way. We can count with its characteristics. We can display her three-dimensional projections. But Most people can't exactly experience it in space, as of course, as Cube.

This shows the difference between formal understanding and Perceptual imagination.

If real reality architecture is more complex than biological the interface in which human imagination was created, then we don't have to be capable of universal "seeing in full glory" or hypothetically.

We can only create projections of it.

21. Reality may be made up of cuts

Let's imagine a two-dimensional being. Her world is a surface. The three-dimensional sphere cannot be directly perceived.

If the sphere passes through its plane, the being will gradually see: a point, growing circle, biggest circle, shrinking circle, point and nothing.

All of her observations may be correct. Yet none of them are Balls.

Only the correct model allows the individual cuts to be combined.

Similarly, human knowledge can be considered. Physics provides one cut. Biology is different. Neuroscience next. Psychology next. Math next. Theory of information next. Phenomenological experience next.

TUS may try to look for the structure that creates between these cuts consistent relationships. However, none of the cuts should be declared as the whole object.

22. TUS as a map, not as Universum

This brings us to a very important change in the way I would today TUS I was.

I don't think her strongest version is:

"That's how Universal works."

But:

"This is a working system model that tries to work together In the language describe the relationships observed at different levels of reality. Everywhere model data contradicts, model must be modified, not data. '

The map is not a landscape. The model is not real. The equation is not a universe.

A TUS is a product of the same biological interface, whose limitations itself describe. That is why she cannot put herself beyond criticism.

23. The biggest threat to TUS can be her own elegance.

This is why it is necessary to maintain a very hard self-reflection.

If the model combines a large number of phenomena into a single structure, it creates extremely pleasant cognitive condition: "Everything fits together."

But that's also the moment of the greatest risk.

Brain-loving structure can begin to overlook the information that his They're disrupting the beautiful system.

Therefore, he must "What this hypothesis "Is it supportive?" still stand question "What would show that Am I wrong? "

And the more unpleasant question:

"This model doesn't look right to me just because it matches my own way of organising information? "

I think that's one of the most important policies of the TUS.

24. The same applies to your own "debug"

Self-reflection must not end in theory. Same goes for a man.

It's relatively easy to say, "I work with ego." It's much harder to put them down. ask: "My ego has not created a new identity for a man, "who's already mastered the ego?"

It's easy to say, "I'm in harmony." But you can ask: "It's not. my sense of harmony is just a state that my own system evaluates as "nice?"

It's easy to say, "I see things without prejudice." And much harder: "What kind of prejudice do I not see right now?"

This endless recursion is not a weakness. It is operational security mechanism.

Once you've come to believe that you don't have to control yourself anymore, The check failed.

25. The TUS is not the way to perfection

The goal is not to become a perfectly clean, flawless being. That would be a self-defense could create another form of pathological perfectionism.

Man is a biological system. My emotions, fatigue, hormones, automatic reactions and limited information. Sometimes it explodes. Sometimes they hurt someone. Sometimes misassess the situation.

It's not important to never make a mistake.

The key is capture the bug, use it as information and return System to correction loop.

That's why it still makes sense to me a simple credo:

"We're not perfect, but we should be "try..."

Not in the sense of reaching the final stage. In terms of continuous calibration.

26. From there, it leads a straight path to MOB

It is here that abstract TUS is turning into practical everyday work.

If one truly believes that his own biological and The psychological interface affects the way he interprets the world, then It's not enough to build cosmology.

It must also maintain the instrument by which it is created. The instrument is him. alone.

Therefore, a maintenance manual is created for the biosystem. Not like a religious ritual, but... as a practical rule system: stop an automatic reaction, check ego, reduce unnecessary information noise, work with error, relax, observe your own projections, maintain contact with the environment, do not burden the working memory with past conflicts and regularly test I'm convinced that I'm "tuned in."

27. From personal perception Back to Universe

That concludes the circle.

We started with the question of individual cognitive profile. We could have remain on whether a combination of properties is statistically rare. That But it's only trivia.

Much more interesting to see what of the particular way of perception It's coming.

I see structures. That's why I'm looking for common ground.

I see unoptimality. That's why I'm asking where friction comes from.

I'm watching ego. That's why I'm interested in information distortion.

I'm having synesthesia. Therefore, I very naturally understand that the same physical the input does not have to create the same internal representation.

I'm observing my own mistakes. That's why I'm learning not to automatically believe to a feeling of correctness.

And when I start to connect all these directions, it's a TUS.

28. So what is the TUS actually? is

Today I would therefore describe it less as "the theory of everything" and more as:

an open system framework for finding common relations between information, knowledge, biological systems, human behavior and structure Reality.

It contains empirical observations. It contains systemic inference. Contains philosophy. It contains work mathematical models. And it contains speculative ontological hypotheses.

However, these layers must not be confused.

The TUS will not be stronger by calling the hypothesis a fact. He'll be stronger by showing precisely, where the observation ends and begins hypothesis.

29. Maybe never We won't see the system in full glory

And finally, we're getting to the point that I think is one of the The most beautiful paradoxes of the whole thing.

Maybe it's not just that we don't have enough information yet. Maybe the complete structure of reality really We don't have corresponding senses.

Like AI can very accurately analyze ego without it biologically felt, a man can mathematically model a certain structure Reality without being able to live it directly.

Maybe we'll always work with incisions, projections, math. traces, indirect consequences and models.

But that doesn't mean that the search is pointless. On the contrary.

30. Not the last one. answer but more accurate map

The object of the TUS may not be the moment when we say: "Done. Already We know how Universal works. "

Such a moment would be more of a reason to suspect.

A better aim is to gradually create a map that has less internal contradictions, less unnecessary assumptions, better connection to observation, more clearly labeled hypotheses, better ability to explain relationships and above all the ability to repair itself.

Just like a man. Just like good software. Just like everyone else. a system that actually learns.

We may never see Universal in his "full of beauty." But we can still to specify the way we look at him.

And yet, to remember one crucial thing:

Observer, his senses, his ego, his theory and his doubts are themselves part of the system that tries Understand.

That is why doubt is not an enemy of the TUS. She's one of her the most important part.