The Way the World Works

This subject will be a recurring topic in the blog on and off for awhile, as I've been pondering aspects of it.

People seem inclined, whether genetically or by education, to see "things" as either A or B, not some A and some B. For example, when causes of the Panic of 2008 are discussed, most arguments degenerate into bipolar conflicts of (A) greedy Wall Street did it with overleverage, or (B) the government did it by mandating subprime housing finance by banks.

The World does not work as "A or B" in either its most microscopic level or the macroscopic level of humanity. People should stop trying to see the world as "A or B" - it's the wrong concept at the deepest philosophical level. In simple American language, the World is almost always "some A and some B". So stop thinking "A or B" - it just wastes time and leads to errors.

Another thing - the world is complex - literally. It involves complex numbers. Using complex numbers to explain phenomena forces one to bifurcate the phenomena into two dimensions - named the real part and imaginary part. Those are just names. But the math forces one to analyze the phenomena as "some A and some B", and not "A or B". That saves a huge amount of work and gets the answers right.

A famous physicist, Richard Feynman said once [paraphrasing from memory] that education should just teach what's right, and not to waste so much time on metaphors, analogies and simplistic models to try to "explain" the phenomena. I agree and would greatly expand that to all human endeavors, including political speech. All these endless metaphors and slogans are a waste of time and convince no one and lead to nothing.

The ancients knew this in some manner. Plato's theory of Forms involves the recognition that an object has two different dimensions, its matter and its form. A house is made of matter, the wood and nails, but is much more than a pile of wood and nails. The rules that combine the wood and nails - the architecture and construction plans - are the form.

The bifurcation of the World actually goes a lot deeper than even Plato knew. The matter itself is not one thing - "state", but is a combination of many - even an infinite number - of states. And even the form is not unitary. Matter does not follow the rules of a "wave" or a "particle", but is inherently at its deepest level both simultaneously. To be correct, one must abandon "A or B" thinking.

I'll write more about this subject soon.

Actions

I am doing nothing. Whether beefer selling or short selling, or a lack of real buyers higher, morning gains vaporized and the market ended lower by about 1%. Ms. Market stopped dancing and sat down yesterday; perhaps she needs a rest. Or needs some news to motivate her ? A good jobs number might induce her to dance the jitterbug again with some Bulls again.

Word of the Day

"Hylomorphism" - noun [$10]
Hylomorphism means the theory that physical objects are composed of matter and form. More extensively, hylomorphism is the theory that every physical object is composed of two principles, an unchanging prime matter and a form deprived of actuality with every substantial change of the object.
Sentence: [from "Great Ideas in Philosophy", part II notes, page 41] "On the question of human nature, [Aquinas] adopts the hylomorphic thesis: Man is a composite of body and soul."