1-0

Every process we know can be boiled down to data and transformation (which can be represented as data), and once you allow the transformation-and-data to work on itself, you have the core of a processor that can do anything known.

Feedback. Iteration. Recursion. Growth.

This process can even create and split dimensions. See infinity categories. See fractal geometry, geometry that results from these feedback (growth) processes, points and lines and planes branching out to cover more dimensions than just their own. A fractal is a pattern with fractional dimension: it's somewhere between one solid number and another solid number of dimensions. It's 2.473D, or similarly not a whole number. It's stuck growing, what you get in between the one and the other.

If "stuck growing" isn't demented or plain wrong, it sounds a little like time...

When people talk about "seeing into the matrix," that isn't a bad analogy. A matrix is an excellent example of data and process in one bucket. A matrix can be seen as a data dump. It can also be seen as a thing you multiply by in order to change a system. And we already know this idea: code is data (1s and 0s) and it does work (changes 1s and 0s). 1s and 0s aren't just practical icons or a false dilemma. Almost a century ago, it was shown mathematically that 1s and 0s can do everything that 0-9 can do, and moreover can do everything math symbols and any information can do. That's heavy simplicity. It was shown shortly afterwards that this applies just the same with quantum mechanics and non-deterministic systems. Amazing when you think about it? Your experience of thinking and feeling could be representable as 1s and 0s, even if the world isn't deterministic.

Information, in fact, is defined most basically as "surprise." If you fully expect it, it doesn't surprise you and isn't informative. If it isn't what you expect, you're surprised and may learn something. Information. It's a measurable quantity, not just subjective. I would even argue that information, surprise, the feeling that we didn't expect this, is the best proof we have that the outside world and other people exist. We often say it can't be proven logically that the outside world of objectivity exists, we have to take it on faith, and maybe so. But for me, surprise works. If I'm surprised, I definitely didn't come up with it all myself in this moment. Information tells me there is reality outside my present self. And if there is reality outside my present self, there is reality outside myself.

Multiplying by a matrix doesn't do everything that the process up top does. The real "matrix" is both more than and less than a matrix. Simpler but harder to understand.

For all that laptops/phones/etc are elaborate devices that no one person fully understands anymore (really truly, and I think this should still be kind of shocking even when you "know" it), this piece inside, what you do with the 1s and 0s, is amazingly powerful and elegant. It's complex in the best sense: simple yet intriguingly very difficult to fully wrap your head around. And that isn't because you aren't smart. It's because it's mathematically proven impossible to fully wrap your head around it. Just like we can't write out π in a finite number of digits. And, similarly, like mathematics tells us we can't predict the weather for long: we have a brief window of decent approximation (2 days currently), and beyond that, our best calculations (and the best possible calculations) rapidly get far worse. It will still be true with quantum computers, and our brains aren't besting this either. We expect our AI to surpass our intelligence in all areas eventually, but not to predict the weather much better. Barring a colossal shift, we will never be able to predict the weather in a year well, unless the weather transforms to something else, something like very still water, a frozen atmosphere. This isn't because our algorithms, processors, programmers, or meteorologists suck. It's because, well, math. The chaos mathematician in Jurassic Park explained it: you can't predict which way the water drop will go.

If we knew all that first paragraph above meant, I don't think we'd need the universe or evolution or our lives to find out. We're here because it can't be fully known to anyone what that process will be like in advance. It has infinitely many potentials, infinities of infinities. We are just a few of the experiments that result.

Obviously there are unknown unknowns and this could all be tossed into turmoil by some new discovery. (Information. That would mean the outside world exists ;) But we already knew that.) And the idea I started with here probably covers more than any of us appreciate. It covers anything we can simulate, much of which we won't be able to follow ourselves. It covers all known laws of physics and science. It's a lot. And maybe I haven't phrased it well or perfectly, but I'm trying to share what I hope I do understand at least a little. The basic thing above is the insight I got from an assignment long ago simulating a simplified CPU in C code. It was a great assignment, and I was very lucky and privileged to be given it. The insight I thought I got from it was in fact the intended point, what the assignment was supposed to teach, but it took me years to fully realize that. And that's the first paragraph. It's what all computers, computation, and known processes can be boiled down to: data, structure, and process are one. Or at least they can be interconverted by energy in an instant. That's what a CPU is. It converts these things into each other instantly when powered with electricity. And when that idea swirls in on itself, when there's feedback (like microphone feedback) that results in some kind of growth or regulation process (think of the piercing high pitch from the speakers which nevertheless levels out at a certain painful volume), which it can in a CPU, you get Frankenstein lightning, or something a lot like it.

That's why Lisp, a programming language invented in the early 1960s, is still trendy (in its many modern dialects). It's the language that most clearly depends on and exposes this "simple" aspect of all computation. Is it the best language to write an app in? Maybe, maybe not. Probably not, to be honest, though it'll work and some people prefer this way (and Clojure in particular gives you access to everything that has been built in Java, easily, from within the language, so it's very viable currently). Even the AI crowd have kind of given up on the vision that immersing themselves in this level of purism will help them create a sentient being or something. An entire commercial operating system popular with AI researchers in the 70s-90s (Genera, aka the Lisp Machine) was built in and for this language that constantly shows you how data and process are one. You can't write a single line of Lisp code without staring at that. The system functioned and still does. It does everything any computer can do. Just because a thing is true doesn't mean it'll show you the next step on your path. But will it teach you something? Yes.

What maybe amazes me most is that such a simple idea can also handle non-determinism. When we say "every process is computational," we are not necessarily saying "every process is deterministic."

Do I understand what I just said? Not really.

But my core interest is in choice. Games are the art form of and about choice. That's what got me into the idea. What is choice? What is will? Does a choice mean anything out of context? (In my opinion: no.) How does context affect choice? Where does an element of choice that does not come from context come from? And so on. These are interesting questions when you want to communicate with choice as a central idea. Everything we say or do involves choice. Even everything we sense hints at choice. It's what we are. So what is it?

If the universe only went one way, I personally don't believe I'd have any business being here and going through with this. In my opinion, my presence does something other than give one of the characters in a movie their own predefined internal dreams which are actually felt. The actually-feeling is somehow instrumental. It's necessary. It has to be here. It does something. For every force, there is an equal and opposite force. The universe applies all these experiences to me. That's imposed on me. I cannot escape experiencing, and most of what I experience follows all the regular laws of physics. So what's my role? What is the equal and opposite force? Does the entire universe outside me feel in some way comparably to me? If this is going to be equal and opposite, and the universe is so much bigger, then where is the balance? What do I have that the universe doesn't? How are we equally matched?

The universe informs me: gives me a signal, one from many possibilities. And I inform it: give a signal back, one from many possibilities.

Maybe Newton's equal-and-opposite idea doesn't apply to everything. Maybe this is in no way equal or opposite. And maybe I'm predetermined, a spectator, a seat in a rollercoaster moving, allowed to feel but not to change the path.

And I use Pascal's Wager on that. If so, then whatever my opinion is, it's the opinion I was always going to have at this moment. And so I haven't done anything wrong, couldn't have done any differently. In this case, there is nothing I can lose by adopting the wrong opinion that I wouldn't have lost anyway (by adopting the same wrong opinion). If this is the correct view, the total risk of making a mistake versus any other possibility I'm considering adds up to: 0. There's only one path.

On the other hand, if this is not all mapped out in advance, if there are choices given to me, if I can reach different endings from here, and by different paths, then I stand to lose everything I could possibly lose by ignoring that reality.

Pascal's Wager was originally applied to God and the Devil and Heaven and Hell and belief and doubt. In that context, I do not believe it works. There are a number of criticisms, including that you could alter the form of the reward/threat to pretty much whatever you want, and thereby get people to do whatever you want. It ends up being a bad argument that doesn't work as intended.

However, I believe the use of the same basic structure of an argument in this case does work. It isn't that I know I have free will, or that I know the world is non-deterministic. It's that there is everything to gain from making the bet that it is, everything to lose from mistakenly declining it, and nothing to gain or lose from making the other bet if it does win the day. So unlike Pascal's original wager, it doesn't take the form of a threat, a carrot and stick that could be tweaked to manipulate. It's just point-blank reason.