When I took about organizational complexity I'm not talking specifically about human organizations and people constructs. I'm talking about mechanisms that are able to cope with the complexity of the universe and adapt to it; so in essence understand it. A perfect mechanism for this is indeed the human brain. But it is not the only one, and I certainly can't tell if it's the best one. Corporations and other people associations are also suitable for this description. They too have a drive to understand the environment they exist in and adapt to it in the best possible way to survive.
You see, although the meaning of being is to increase the organizational complexity of some constructs of the universe, these "constructs" don't actually know that their purpose of being is that. They are tricked by their "driving forces" into doing things that they fancy and in essence promote their complexity as an underlying goal. So people have bodily needs and to better serve them they need to understand and adapt to their environment (to be able to feed themselves for easily, for example). But by doing this, they increase their complexity of their own mind. Corporations have a "need" for better profits, so to achieve this they come up with better products, improved processes, better technologies, better offers, etc. These functions are more elaborate and thus more complex. So by trying to fulfill their needs, they are forced/tricked into increasing their complexity. This is a vicious circle that drives life/being into higher levels of complexity as years/millenia go by.
That's why I love the law of requisite variety (I haven't actually read it from the source, I'm using the interpretation as presented by our OB professor Dionysiou). It more or less encompasses the meaning of life! The universe is vast and complex. But it has a superb groundwork (the natural laws etc) that allows for constructs inside it to become more evolved/elaborate/complex as time progresses. So from the birth of the universe, let's say some billion of years ago (...although I don't believe in the Big Bang, I like Mayer's theory much more) till now and on to the future, the complexity inside the universe is gradually increased. The pinnacle of this ongoing effort is the human brain as well as the layers above it (e.g. I consider societies a layer above the human brain). This is the meaning of existence.
It doesn't have to be nice, it doesn't have to be understandable. We're not even supposed to be able to see a meaning, a master plan behind it. It is too complex for us to fully comprehend it. We can just realize this tendency and "go along" as it is the only certainty in life (even bigger than death!).
Btw, death is also a tool of this complexity progression tendency of the universe. E.g. the human society benefits by death, because the knowledge of all the good branches remain (it is written in book, taught in schools, passed from generation to generation) whereas all the bad branches is lost into oblivion. The universe has no law, no instrument to judge which "branch" is better for the purpose of increasing complexity, so it lets all branches grow and clips them at the end (by death), so that the crops from the good remain within the construct and others can built upon them. In other words, death is an instrument of the natural tendency of the universe for increased complexity.
So this is it. This is the meaning of existence. Caution, I'm not talking about the meaning of life. The meaning of life is very well known to me (and is answered by my Theory). It is the maximization of pleasure (and minimization of displeasure). But the meaning of life is only the "trick" the universe has imposed upon us (living beings) to fulfill its greater purpose of increasing organizational complexity.
We can't understand what's behind it. It's like trying to describe quantum physics to an ant. But this ant, as well as all other similar constructs in the universe, is striving to increase its own complexity to be able to fill the complexity of the whole universe in its own "mind".
Sunday 2 October 2011
Why giving yourself a massage or a tickle is much less effective!
Well, the idea is really simple: you expect it to happen, because you have decided that you will do it.
And I don't mean it a general action; I'm referring to every little move of your fingers. The current that begins from the driving pocket (let's say that you remembered the sensation of your last week's massage by your spouse and decide to do it to yourself. That's a driving pocket!) and travels to the action endpoints (to order your fingers to move) also goes through the inner loop and back to the pattern matching mesh part of your brain. This means that through the inner loop you "preview" or (prefeel) what the sense of your own touch will feel fractions of a millisecond later.
And this is exactly the problem. Since you have touched yourself a lot of times in the past, you know the sensation of your own skin, you also know how to control your fingers and how to touch your skin... this has the effect that the current that goes through the inner loop and back to the PM mesh is directed very accurately to the areas that the external stimuli will also arrive as a consequence of your actions.
And as we've said (we haven't actually, because I keep postponing explaining in detail what the DIFF mechanism does), our brain constantly does a differential "at the door", so that it negates any signals that it already expects. In other words, any signal that through the inner loop is "expected" to arrive at the PM mesh via the external stimuli will be reduced in power (or completely negated) the more we have accurately predicted it (seen it coming). This is a continuous process by the human brain that cannot be turned off. It has the effect of removing "redundant" information from all incoming signals ("been there, done that" stuff) and allows only out-of-context signals to pass into the brain and get processed.
It's like a secretary for a celebrity: it throws to the garbage all omg-I-totally-love-you fan letters that keep coming by the hundreds every day and only allows important letters that are out-of-context (e.g. a letter from the IRS :).
And I don't mean it a general action; I'm referring to every little move of your fingers. The current that begins from the driving pocket (let's say that you remembered the sensation of your last week's massage by your spouse and decide to do it to yourself. That's a driving pocket!) and travels to the action endpoints (to order your fingers to move) also goes through the inner loop and back to the pattern matching mesh part of your brain. This means that through the inner loop you "preview" or (prefeel) what the sense of your own touch will feel fractions of a millisecond later.
And this is exactly the problem. Since you have touched yourself a lot of times in the past, you know the sensation of your own skin, you also know how to control your fingers and how to touch your skin... this has the effect that the current that goes through the inner loop and back to the PM mesh is directed very accurately to the areas that the external stimuli will also arrive as a consequence of your actions.
And as we've said (we haven't actually, because I keep postponing explaining in detail what the DIFF mechanism does), our brain constantly does a differential "at the door", so that it negates any signals that it already expects. In other words, any signal that through the inner loop is "expected" to arrive at the PM mesh via the external stimuli will be reduced in power (or completely negated) the more we have accurately predicted it (seen it coming). This is a continuous process by the human brain that cannot be turned off. It has the effect of removing "redundant" information from all incoming signals ("been there, done that" stuff) and allows only out-of-context signals to pass into the brain and get processed.
It's like a secretary for a celebrity: it throws to the garbage all omg-I-totally-love-you fan letters that keep coming by the hundreds every day and only allows important letters that are out-of-context (e.g. a letter from the IRS :).
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