`` As if - the explanation of Emergence

TLDR - Short Answers for The Questions


History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it - Winston Churchill


What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare. - William Henry Davies - Leisure


Index


  1. TLDR; because who has the time anymore?

    2. Existence

  2. Are they legitimate questions?

  3. Why is there anything?

  4. Where do the Laws Come From?

  5. What is Fundamental?

  6. How do we know that there is a World out there?

  7. How do we know what is real or illusion?

  8. What kind of Truth?

  9. Does the Answer help explain other problems?

  10. Waves or Particles?

    11. Consciousness

  11. Is there a self?

  12. Do we have Free Will?

  13. God and Free Will?

  14. Moral Responsibility?

  15. What difference does it make?

  16. What happens next?

  17. What is love, actually?

  18. What choices are to be made when it comes to sex and marriage?

  19. What is all the weird stuff about?

  20. Astrology - How?

  21. Astrology - Fate or Destiny?

Because so few have much spare time, or patience, these days, hence therefore many will not wish to read every last word, here I will provide some short answers to the questions, the big questions, the hard questions, asked previously in this book/website.


TLDR, because who has the time anymore?


If even this page is too long for you, the shortest precis I can make is that:


    Emergence

  1. All things are emergent, even numbers - and numbers are still emerging.()()()

  2. Emergence is driven by paradox, and by possibility.()()

    3. Reality

  3. Space emerges as relationships of difference between clusters of numbers.

  4. Only Now is real, because things that are real have 3D position.

  5. All of Now is real, because everything real changes when anything real changes.()

  6. Mass is a property of clusters of numbers with more than 3 dimensions.

  7. Higher dimension objects are smaller than their 3D object components, and so are inside them.()()

  8. Anything with mass is rotated somewhat into a fourth dimension, by its internal higher dimensions.()

  9. Individual change occurs as a quantum subtraction from Alice [A] and addition to Bob [B], it is always instantaneous and immediate.

  10. Gravity is a universal, Machian, response to individual change anywhere changing the virtual fact of Dave, the whole and heart of everything real.

  11. Time is the trail of facts that fall away from the present Now, as each change occurs and everything real responds.()

    12. Consciousness

  12. Consciousness evolved so that we can find lunch, and avoid being lunch.

  13. The nature of consciousness gives us the possibility for wisdom, the ability to predict.

  14. Any sentient being has the ability to recreate objects as icons within itself, and icons are somewhat like original objects.()

  15. Icons are the building blocks of consciousness, and they emerge as abstract patterns of brain activity.

  16. The brain's activity is geared up to fill in icons with detail by connecting them to other icons.

  17. Mind is qualia, is like things, because icons are like things, they are facts, even when they are mistakes.()

  18. Icons may be shared because icons are also memes, and the more sharing the brighter they are.

  19. We may not have many opportunities for doing as we want, but a still mind can make free choices.

  20. Each new thought, each new icon, is shaped and then coloured in by past experience. Choosing what that experience is gives us whatever freedom we can have.

    21. Spirit

  21. The facts of our being are eternal, nothing can make facts demerge; only realities can demerge, in order to avoid paradox.()

  22. Shared facts, being brighter, create love and make eternity brighter.

  23. When some future moment is abstractly like us, then we can enter the lottery to try to get reborn.()

  24. Birth is an immense privilege.

  25. Astrology is the only source of measurable evidence for spirit.

That may be it in a nutshell, but becoming convinced will probably take a lot of effort, discovering what these fully mean, fighting off the demons of doxastic anxiety, becoming a new person yourself. So read on, and don't be hesitant in asking for clarification, or questioning whether I am correct.


Are they legitimate questions?


Each and every thing, and each arrangement of things, presents something to be understood. Therefore, it follows that all questions are legitimate; they may not be well formed, they may be uninteresting, but each stands for its own meaning. My contention is that all questions are in some way valid, but that philosophy helps form better questions, even if it cannot answer them [immediately].


Why is there anything?


Claiming that there has always been something is no explanation at all. It is asking for a 'Free Lunch', in mucch the same way as claiming an unnatural god created everything. We can legitimately demand to know who or what created God? The notion is foolish in the extreme because it demands infinite regress, a complete impossibility. Nothingness has to be explained away, or else we have no explanation of anything.()


Nothingness is a paradoxical state that bootstraps Existence into being, because nothing at all is necessarily complete, i.e. whole, a unity, so it is also a something - it is a fact. Being a fact it is also a relationship between two things, nothing and something. It is therefore both unity and duality, and thus are numbers born, slicing the first dimension of Existence into ever more pieces. This is the vital concept of Emergence, which I claim is driven by paradox, i.e. whenever two immiscible things are held together, then some novelty must emerge. In fact, we witness emerging phenomena all the time, so it should be little wonder that Emergence is the explanation of all things - we just need to understand how and why things emerge.()


(External Website) Answers to questions about Existence


Where do the Laws Come From?


Like everything else in Existence, the laws that apply to the way anything behaves emerge along with the things that emerge, and according to the nature of the things that emerge. This is very Existentialist, but cannot be any other way. Howeverr, as mucch as the emergent whole must govern the parts, it must also originatte from the parts, hence is never entirely free.


(External Website) Answers to questions about Emergence


What is Fundamental?


If we are asking what came first, the answer is Nothingness. But if we are asking what are the smallest building blocks then the answer is the Natural Numbers. Not the numerals, but the number that is One, as in unity and wholeness, followed by its various partitions, giving Two, Three, and so on. All numbers, being numbers, must have a partially identical nature for mathematics to function, and must behave according to their nature, and that in itself creates all the Rational Numbers, i.e. integers must be rational. Square, Cubic, and other numbers are very different beasts from linear Natural Numbers, yet can still be linear. The nature of numbers is that of relationships, and the paradox that brings them into existence, I say, makes the full set of numbers constantly grow with a ticking that both increases their quantity and their detail. ()


Leibniz' Law - The Identity of Indiscernibles - is really the only fundamental law. It says that if there is no difference between things, then they are identical, i.e. one and the same thing. It may seem obvious and facile, but within it resides a great truth; not only are all electrons identical, and so behave in the same manner, but all numbers are identical and behave in the same manner. Therein lays the clue to understanding everything that exists. That is, being identical is relative. Identity is a proportion, a percentage, it ranges from 0 to 1. Knowing this makes it easy to see that a virtual relationship of identity exists between all things. Furthermore, these relationships are what facts are composed of. This is the most crucial point to understand, without which it will be impossible to comprehend anything fully.()


Relationships emerge from and with the differences between existent objects. Relationships can only be of four types that are derived from two categories - that of the whole/part, and that of the objective/subjective. These categories could be described alternatively as the factual/real and the inner/outer. Combined they produce relationship types of sameness = true facts, reality = real differences, mentality = inner parts, and emotion = the heart [centre] derived from the inner whole. This last is an important concept, that all objects have a wholeness that defines a centre or heart, but crucially, the subjective whole cannot be everything, so it must always embody an emptiness of that which it is not. I say that these four possibilities equate to the Platonic elements; Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. ()


Truth emerges from the sameness between objects - facts are facts purely because they are in some way identical with the thing that they are factual about. This is why Leibniz' Law is possible. Leibniz' Law is an important pillar of Virtualism, because it is making the point that a fact that is identical to another fact is in truth the same fact. This speaks volumes for the nature of truths, and of facts, being virtual things, i.e. ideal things, rather than real things that require what philosophers would call 'truthmakers' - real things that make the truth true. ()


Space emerges from the differences between real objects - real objects are object with properties that are 3D differences, perhaps even 4D or more. A number such as 8 can be reconfigured as a 3D object, and therfore enables space to be.


Change emerges from the necessary transfer of values that we interpret as Quantum particles. For instance, for an object with square properties to be lost by one object, i.e. subtracted, it must also be gained by another object, i.e. added. One is a negative, the other positive, but they are the same coin, or photon rather. The photon is nothing else, which is why it has no intermediate position, and can be thought of as bothe wave or particle, when truly it is never either.


Gravity emerges from the necessary repositioning of real objects that has to occur whenever any single change takes place anywhere in the entire Universe. Along with Gravity, all other repositioning takes place via the same rule, accounting for Momentum. See 'Alice, Bob, Charlie, and Dave' (go to page) for a more detailed explanation.


Time emerges from the changes to tha values of real objects that make them adopt new real positions. In doing so they leave a trail of facts about their prior positions, and these prior positions will be apparent to any object receiving quantum particles emitted from real objects with the apparent prior values of position that are truly in the past, i.e. they are no longer really there, but they factually were there. Only Now really exists. However, Time is no illusion. Time is a true, emergent phenomenon, there is no trumpery about it.


(External Website) Answers to questions about Time, Space and Gravity


How do we know that there is a World out there?


Is the apparent world just a Matrix? No it is not, and the reason that we know that is that we now have a coherent story that traces the major steps in the emergence of Existence and the Universe, and Life, and Consciousness. Consciousness is the internal modelling of an external reality [or even a remembered or imagined one], and by Leibniz' Law something special happens, consciousness and reality become one. Except properly speaking, it is consciousness and the earlier facts of reality that are one, reality will always have moved on, and even then only to some extent that depends on accuracy of perception and understanding. ()


(External Website) Answers to questions about Consciousness


How do we know what is real or illusion?


We can be sure that, within reason, our perceptions are the same as other people's perceptions, because we have all evolved to perceive with the same set of senses. We can agree on position easily enough, so we ought to be able to agree on colour, even though colour is not quite as real as is position. But, then the reality of position is only an emergent property.


What kind of Truth?


For the questions we have in mind here, the applicable category is that of coherence. Coincident truth may work for some aspects, but much of what is inferred in Virtualism is not verifiable by testing, so we are forced into relying on telling a coherent story that fits with what is known.


Does the Answer help explain other problems?


Yes, the quandary that exists between General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory is explained above, and Virtualism as a way of examining things is applicable to everything, just as everything must fit somewhere in the Mandala.


Waves or Particles?


The short answer, as above, is that there are no waves, and there are no particles. But if you want waves or particles, then just look at the World in the right way and you will get what you want. ()


Is there a self?


Iconism explains consciousness as the analogue modelling of objects as mental constructs, and goes further to say many of these are unconscious, so awareness is an important pinnacle of consciousness that arises due to any icons taking centre stage [although there is no actual stage] simply by virtue of being the current centre of the individual, through being the maximally connected icon among all the brain's activity. ()


The awareness of the peak of our mountain of icons is our self, and it is made bright by the busy brain, and that brightness is also our self, even when the brain moves on to other thoughts and new icons. The brightness is composed of facts, and to a greater or lesser extent those facts form part of subsequent quantum functions affecting future behaviour of the brain. i.e. we can recall memories, and even if we don't explicitly recall, the original memory still affects us to some extent, altering our being. Often we are too busy thinking about other things to register our own self, but much of the time we do have that Seventh Sense.


An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,

excerpt from Sailing to Byzantium - W.B.Yeats


For Yeats, age reveals the true nature of our being - no more than a thin line on which to hang experiences, so he advises to make them the best, hence his journey to Byzantium. This is not so far from the truth of life, as I see it. We are defined by our experiences, and it behoves us to make them something memorable.


Do we have Free Will?


As explained in the original question, the question of Free Will transmutes into 'What is the nature of the Self?


The short answer is that the material self drags around an immaterial self that is composed of the sum of all the present and prior facts of the Self. This includes as many previous lives as may have been lived, and any between life experiences. This abstract collection of facts has some small influence by addition to the many quantum wave functions that emerge from the activity of the brain and all of its associated appendages, including the spirit that is composed of just those prior facts.


Therefore we have a will, i.e. a spirit, but I would question how free it is in most circumstances. Although, that said, the potential is always there, but we can't expect freedom if we remain benighted in ignorance. ()


Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

excerpt from Ulysses - Alfred Lord Tennyson


As hinted at in Tennyson's poem, the will is that which we are when all else is shorn away, that which cannot yield even when beaten by time and life. It is our heart - defined by everything that we have been and done, and giving all of us a long road to travel.


(External Website) Answers to questions about Free Will


God and Free Will


Sorry folks, those of you that believe in a monotheistic, biblical or similar, God as creator and ruler; such an entity is a logical impossibility, and as much trumpery as Father Christmas. So, the question may arise, but it goes nowhere.


Moral Responsibility


The only moral that can be said to exist independently is that of destruction. When breaking things the ultimate destruction is death, it is a metaphysical rotation of 90 degrees, so as with the speed of light it is a limit, there is no greater destruction than complete destruction. This is why we have an injunction on killing.


The question of responsibility boils down to choice, could we have done any differently? So a lion has no guilt for killing, it is its nature to do so. We, as sentient being ought to know better. ()


What difference does it make?


Knowing who and what we are, and the kind of world we exist in is essential for making proper decisions in everyday life, such as who to vote for, and vote we must, because a non-vote is a vote for whoever wins - all those Americans who did not vote in 2026 effectively voted for Trump, and are as much to blame for everything that has ensued as those maggots who did vote for him.


The fact is that Nirvana is an impossibility. We cannot shake off our pasts, neither can we avoid rebirth, and we have no way of choosing or ensuring a privileged life - so we really should do our best for the whole planet, and the life chances for everyone, even if just out of self-interrest.


Also, ignorance may be bliss, but knowing prevents worry once we are aware of an issue.



Virtualism explains exactly what everything is, so it also describes what we can expect of death, and that casts light on all of the myths legends, and other stories that have accrued to the topic. This gives us reason to believe some and not others, and to realize that death can not be the end. ()


What is love, actually?


For all that can be said of it, in the final analysis Love is what we create when we share conscious awareness. Unshared awareness must also survive, but Love is what will prevent isolation in the afterlife. Sartre may have claimed that Hell is other people, but solitary confinement is a worse prospect, and Love is the key, and the more you make then the greater everyone's options in the hereafter. ()


Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

excerpt from An Arundel Tomb - Philip Larkin


As expliitly stated in Larkin's poem, the supposedly unintended display of affection exhibited by the stone effigies of the tomb stands as proof that in the final analysis it is love that survives death. I would not disagree.


(External Website) Answers to questions about Love


What choices are to be made when it comes to sex and marriage?


Who we choose to become involved with, and often create life with, is an important choice, although most of us are fools who rush in blindly. After all, 'Any love is good love, so I took what I could get' - Bachman Turner Overdrive. However, compatibility is important, so it is better to partner up with those who you can share awareness with.


What is all the weird stuff about?


The short answer is that religion does not serve humanity very well, and parapsychology has a long way to go before it attains the status of the other sciences. However, any weird thing that happens during our lives, and there will be many, if we pay attention, any of them can open the doors of our perception. So while I deny that God the creator can exist, I don't deny that gods exist, only that we understand them.


Astrology - How?


Astrology becomes an important topic, because Astrology is a bridge between Reality and Meaning - between the material and the spiritual. Astrology becomes evidence for the entire edifice of Virtualism, and as far as I can see is the only means by which we can take a step towards proving answers to the Hard Problem of consciousness.


Astrology - Fate or Destiny?


Astrology, I say, shows that we face a destiny in the way that a football team faces the fixtures of a new season. But 'The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley', and football is played on grass, not on paper. We can never know who will win, but even though Gandalf says 'Even the wise cannot see all ends', if we exercise what wisdom we do possess, then we can make a fair stab at guessing how things will turn out, and where and when to stick our oar in. Nothing is fated, unless we abrogate any responsibility and just let things happen.


(External Website) Answers to questions about Astrology


In Summary


By providing hundreds of examples, I reckon I have made my case hold water, but to understand why each example is excellent, good, or just about passable, you will have to learn how to assess an astrological chart, at least a little, or else you'll have to take my word for it that many of them are very compelling. It is not to say that things cannot happen without Astrology, as Larkin wrote 'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'



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