As a child I wondered why cavemen were unable to invent the atom bomb and destroy the world a million years ago, which many think a somewhat curious question, but is related to the anthropic principle. Assuming there is no obvious divine intervention, then why does the universe appear to be so prearranged as to preclude even an intelligent species like humanity from wiping themselves out in short order? Why isn't it much easier to drive your own species to extinction or for humanity to become trapped in an endless dark age by our own mindless greed, violence, hubris, and sheer stupidity? Other than germ warfare which our immune systems have always been able to adapt to, why do the laws of physics require enormous populations, vast industries, and advanced technology to produce weapons of mass destruction such as atom bombs (instead of merely requiring crude digging tools for example) and why has the development of new technology continued to be so conducive to the rapid rise of civilization right up into the modern information age? Throughout the ages myriad cultures have speculated upon exactly when God or humanity might destroy the planet, while I've always wondered why they haven't done so already. Cavemen destroying the entire world with atom bombs they cobble together out of clay and rocks or becoming trapped in an endless dark age by their own mad inventions are the kinds of nightmare Planet of the Apes scenarios I might expect to arise in any number of arbitrary universes, begging the question of how humanity's incredibly diverse and rapidly evolving technology has remained so remarkably conducive to our continuing survival right up into the modern information age. If the earth had been much smaller or any number of other parameters had been significantly different humanity as we know it might never have survived to establish anything remotely like modern civilization. The only plausible explanation I could imagine as a child was that "infinite echoes in infinity" would normalize one another, or even each other out, preventing the worst extremes. Decades later I discovered that half the planet shares my views to some degree and these "echoes in infinity" are what are commonly known in Asia as yin-yang dynamics and what hippies like to call instant karma. Normally instant karma is thought of as the belief that, for better or worse, whatever we put out into the universe comes back to either haunt us or enrich our lives in one form or another with a trivial example being kicking something in frustration and stubbing our toe. However, so is contracting lung cancer after smoking for decades because the "instant" in the name merely serves to distinguish the concept from traditional ideas about reincarnation. Instant karma might sound like just so much easily dismissed superstitious nonsense or somebody's idea of a joke, but many of us have been keenly aware that the most interesting things can grow out of manure and have wondered why it has taken so long to establish instant karma as a law of nature... Upon accidentally discovering quantum mechanics, Max Planck begged his colleges to please explain the joke complaining that a sense of humor was never amongst his list of job requirements. What he could not have known, but still suspected, was that this particular joke would haunt the modern sciences for the next century. In fact, for decades afterwards a popular cocktail party subject among physicists was how to design experiments to discourage practical jokers. In his later years Planck's friends noted that he had made it a point to acquire a very agreeable sense of humor and, along with the enduring mystery of quantum mechanics, other physicists thought it prudent to do the same. More than half a century later a few bold physicists began cultivating a much more off-the-wall sense of humor with John Wheeler once famously declaring, "A black hole has no hair! Gravity without mass! Time is what prevents everything from happening at once! There is no law except the law that there is no law!" To which Richard Feynman was quick to add, "Some say Wheeler's lost his mind in his later years, but he's always been that way." More frequently Feynman is quoted as saying, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics you are wrong." The corollary joke being, of course, that if you believe you don't understand quantum mechanics then you most certainly do understand, because it never made any sense to begin with! Sometimes people frustrated with my arguments tell me I should not talk about quantum mechanics and should stop and, of course, I tell them all they have to do is prove that anything I say on the subject is intelligible. In spite of quantum mechanics making absolutely no sense whatsoever and experiments indicating for the better part of a century that its not merely a question of the tiny size of quanta, in recent years researchers in other fields have been equally astonished to come across nonsensical results in their own work. For example, Donald Hoffman is a Game theorist who spent ten years studying the neurological evidence and after running one computer simulation after another he finally had to acknowledge that, according to all the evidence, if the human mind and brain had ever resembled anything remotely like reality we would have become extinct as a species. Meaning that his own discovery can be considered more inexplicable self-contradictory bullshit just like quantum mechanics that, nonetheless, appears to be even more useful than any explanation possibly ever could. Recently, upon examining all of classical mathematics and physics, a group of mathematicians concluded that any number of simple metaphors can be used to describe all of causality. If you want, you can take your pick from among countless explanations to describe everything as merely consisting of black holes, whirling vortexes, bouncing springs, rubber bands, balls of string, or lotions in motion on vibrating rubber sheets for all I know! Another mathematical study along these same lines indicated that everything can also be causally described using only two dimensions which, in my poetry, I refer to as "Cartoon Logic" or the logic of small children who will adopt whatever plausible sounding explanation happens to appeal to them more or, at least, conflicts less with reality as, apparently, academics have done throughout history! Will Rogers once famously complained to his manager that audiences would only laugh at his stupid jokes if they contained the truth while, evidently, any joke that turns out to be outrageously more useful than anyone's silly ideas about reality is no longer considered just another stupid joke. At one time Bob Hope employed no less than 32 writers for his stand-up comedy routines, however, institutions of higher learning have always prided themselves on their reputations as no-nonsense workaholics and have never been famous for investing in their own slapstick explaining why both Planck, Hoffman, and so many others have been so disturbed by their discoveries. When you can no longer identify that you have identified nothing you have personal bullshit to deal with and for thousands of years, in the name of objectivity, academics have romanticized the idea that everything must make some sort of humanly comprehensible sense only to be repeatedly confronted with their own bullshit often in the form of a huge pie-the-face and the slowly dawning realization that they have succeeded in methodically transforming the art of denial into a modern science. As a result, one of the more fascinating things to grow out of manure in recent years has been the establishment of the first quantifiable theory of humor based on the simple observation that anything low in entropy can be considered funny. That's polite technobabble for the obvious fact that humor revolves around bullshit, or what's missing from this picture, with a cat not necessarily being funny unless you were originally afraid it might be a cat burglar or whatever. Along with the more prestigious arts, the "secrets" of Vaudeville are slowly succumbing to the intense scrutiny of academics who can now earn their degrees in comedy by merely spouting technobabble such as "low entropy". Many might assume this is merely someone's sad attempt at humor, however, giving pause to stand-up comedians everywhere, the US government has just announced that they have classified a few jokes as "Vital to the National Defense" and hinted that congress is investigating and, of course, they have no comment. Rainbow Warrior poetry, such as I write, commonly compares the ancient and widely venerated academic tradition of searching for a single causal explanation for life, the universe, and everything to meditating upon the Sublime Lime Jell-O and an infatuation with a seven foot tall inflatable Barbie doll. Despite even the federal government displaying more interest than usual in their slapstick and nonsensical results cropping up with regularity in disparate branches of the sciences, once a physicist frustrated with my arguments accused me of being a mystic and, of course, I replied that if he cannot distinguish humor from mysticism its an occupational hazard as far as I'm concerned. Another time someone rudely interrupted a conversation I was having and demanded an explanation for classical physics. I said, "What? A Barbie Doll?" To which he responded, "No! The Classical Motion!" And without hesitation I inquired, "A seven foot inflatable Barbie?" Sometimes you would swear Moby Dick is on your line and Vaudeville awaits but, most of the time, to quote Rodney Dangerfield, "I just can't get no respect!" In either case, the jokes are so bad I've come to sympathize with the Taoists who usually prefer to remain silent and let others figure out the punch lines to their own jokes. What quantum mechanics, instant karma, and jokes all share in common is their extreme context dependence due to their observable content being humble in comparison to their context. A black hole is another example in that it has no known surface and, yet, can behave like just another rock in space when abandoned deep in the empty voids of space or like a bottomless pit capable of swallowing anything. Modern electronics display these same two faces of Janus, or yin-yang dynamics, with engineers commonly shaking their heads in resignation when forced to discuss electron holes moving about by themselves without the electrons. As I mentioned in the last chapter, we are using nature to study nature and, evidently, that's just a serious limitation that prevents us from grasping the Big Picture and part of why life just ultimately makes no sense. Contexts and content being yin and yang, or indivisible complimentary-opposites that will inevitably transform into one another, can explain such profound mysteries as why its impossible to create a perfect vacuum, obtain absolute zero temperature, or achieve the speed of light. At the speed of light, for example, the smallest atom would become equal in mass and energy to that of the entire universe which, of course, makes even less sense than observing a context appearing to determine its own contents as if synergy were working backwards. A small child believing their favorite toy is the meaning of life itself will, nonetheless, grow up to embrace bigger and better things due to nonsensical synergistic-normalization or the greater context synergistically diminishing its own content. No matter how a child may struggle to hold onto their attachment to their toy the collective synergy of all of their thoughts and feelings constantly growing will inevitably diminish their own individual impact noticeably until even their attachment to their toy will eventually become lost like a drop of water in the ocean. Instant karma ruling the universe means logical, physical, metaphysical, and emotional extremes of any kind are excluded because yin will always transform into yang and you just can't have an up without a down. We might have an ecstatic experience or whatever, but that requires an unsustainable burst of endorphins the brain has to replace and there are simply limits to what we mortals can sustain emotionally. However, the most common example of context dependence that I give is that from the ground the earth can look flat, from orbit round, from far away a dimensionless point, and from the other side of the universe its as if it had never existed. Normally we tend to think of this as merely an illusion of scale, yet, everything being context dependent means even whether we perceive this as merely an illusion of scale would always depend upon the context. At least theoretically, due to the continuing expansion of the universe, for all practical and demonstrable purposes the earth may as well not exist for aliens living on the other side of the universe who would have to travel faster than light just to catch a glimpse in a telescope. Shadows provide an everyday example of how the issue isn't merely one of scale or any other plausible sounding explanation, but extreme context dependence that produces metamorphic or emergent effects or whatever the hell anybody wants to call yin-yang dynamics. You can take your pick of what to call instant karma which can also be described as bullshit logic or a metaphoric emotional-logic that can examine the Big Picture or any greater context for what's missing from this picture. What we might call a shadow in the daytime can become a faint spot of light in the dark and, you could say, the shadow is but the eternal memory of the light. Even in a sealed vacuum chamber virtual particles will appear out of nowhere and the human eye is sensitive enough to detect a single photon ensuring that nobody is ever left completely in the dark. Physics itself can be considered merely another metaphor and, mathematically speaking, photons appear to experience isomorphic space-time, where they cannot distinguish between forward or backwards in either space or time, just as we might say a shadow experiences neither space nor time because it has no independent content. Similarly, as far as anyone can tell, photons are instantaneously emitted and absorbed just as any shadow appears and disappears instantaneously and photons merely convey energy and information with perfect fidelity just as we might say a shadow conveys the lack of energy and information with perfect fidelity. The famous wave-particle duality of quantum mechanics can therefore be attributed to their extreme context dependence because even whether quanta exist or not simply depends upon the context and they can even be said to somehow simultaneously exist and not exist. Whether a shadow forms a small blob or is spread out like a wave just depends upon the context and the same is true for photons because one without the other is simply a contradiction in terms just like having an up without a down or front without a back. In technobabble, both shadows and photons have magnitude, but no preference for any particular direction making them metaphorically scalar and express bandwidth as well as juxtapositions. The same can be restated as the identity of anything will change in extreme situations displaying a Conservation of Creativity and Efficiency and making everything resemble both the creative impetus of the Big Bang and the anonymity of a Big Crunch. The particle-wave duality of quantum mechanics describes the infinite things emerging from within the void only to vanish again excluding any metaphysical extremes in the process such as a universe where God might create a rock even he can't pick up. Because of instant karma's yin-yang dynamics its impossible to create a context without any significant content, and vice versa, explaining why its impossible to create a perfect vacuum, achieve absolute zero temperature, or attain the speed of light. Instant karma can also be thought of as a universal recursion in the law of identity, the paradox of our existence, or where infinite dimensions and universes converge within the singular void to form a nonsensical singular-infinity that is simultaneously infinitely divisible and indivisible. Metaphorically, everything that exists can be described as the original creative impetus of the Big Bang or acceleration of the universe still expanding into the void and, simultaneously, the anonymity of a future Big Crunch or heat death because everything that exists revolves around what does not. Even the principle of synergy would appear to sometimes work in reverse simply because everything must always remain context dependent. For example, no matter how strongly attached to their favorite toy a child might be they will still grow up to embrace bigger and better things due to the collective synergy of all their constantly acquired thoughts and feelings diminishing the impact of their own individual content. Synergy in reverse is yin transforming into yang as the greater context excludes any metaphysical extremes such as God creating a rock so big that even he can't lift it. The result is what can be colorfully described as Homogenized Heaven and Hell where mother nature's great beauty is rivaled by her wicked sense of humor and life itself is often a bit more cartoonish than would otherwise be the case in a metaphysical universe. As I mentioned in the last chapter, we are using nature to study nature and, apparently, science is reaching the limits of our ability to make clear distinctions just as the ants climbing the Empire State building can never hope to grasp the reality of their situation no matter how high they may climb. Instant karma is always gonna getcha baby and, as I mentioned in the introduction, its usually counterproductive to give away the punch lines to jokes, however, if nobody says anything now academic slapstick might require centuries to make significant progress. For example, the science writer Alastair Clark discovered that humor and pattern matching could describe how the human mind and brain work and began, systematically attempting to uncover the underlying systems logic it implied. His attempts are so dry he could make a camel drink and reminiscent of watching someone banging their head against a wall when they don't get the punch line to a joke. To his credit, Mr Clarke is well aware of the irony of the situation and freely admits he just can't begin to imagine who might actually be capable of accomplishing the same task differently. If a politician, religious leader, academic, or any other recognized authority were to insist that a "humorous logic" revolving around meaningless bullshit can describe the world better in some ways than traditional logic and science they would be summarily censured and promptly escorted to the nearest available rubber room. That's where I come in because, never joining any clubs that would have me as a member, quite often I prefer bouncing off rubber walls than listening to all their tedious jokes anyway. Which is why I also just happen to know how to elevate their sad comedies a notch or two. Believe it or not, infantile nursery rhymes and potty humor contain the secrets to life, the universe, and everything that academics and so many others have been obsessing over since the dawn of civilization. Not that potty humor is unique in that regard, however, everything being context dependent can be considered the great equalizer that makes everything all that much more symmetrical, equivalent, and egalitarian with potty humor also being more organic and personal making it all the better suited. What I'm describing is an analog systems logic that is self-assembling and which must be equally as artistic as it is rigorous because even its own logic must inevitably disappear down the nearest rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. Another advantage is that people have been writing these jokes since the beginning of time and its still a popular tradition in many countries and, being able to treat every word as a variable, means next generation computers should be capable of accomplishing the same task with ease. Rejoice all you adorable clowns, Vaudeville is getting the high tech treatment and neither academia, comedy, nor the world will ever be the same again. These are the kinds of jokes the US government has classified as top secret because the mathematics they contain can be so complex their punch lines can go right over the average person's head but, like I said in the introduction, primitive tribes have often noted that civilized people tend to have a stunted sense of humor. A systems logic that can describe a universal recursion in the law of identity could, among countless other things, predict every future pie-in-the-face that academics will encounter from their own work. Treating every word as a variable is exactly what is required to express context dependence in everything and merely by shuffling all the metaphors in this book for any humble and elegant simplicity, humor and beauty, I can theoretically produce a self-organizing systems logic for a metaphorical Theory of Everything and Nothing! Besides endlessly shuffling and reshuffling and figuring out what metaphors are required next, the hardest part is that you first have spend decades mastering the Tao Te Ching and you have to know quite a bit about all the applicable metaphors, physics, and philosophy before having a real chance of putting the countless pieces together within your lifetime. Asians are famous for their attention to detail and the 12,000 year old Pakua formalized the metaphoric logic of this style of poetry, philosophy, and potty humor which was later perfected in the I-Ching, while the much more recent Tao Te Ching expresses how formal logic revolves around what's missing from this picture because beauty and humor, logic and the irrational, will always transform into one another. Some of the poems in this book are well known for being quite beautiful and, equally, hilarious when read in specific contexts. Mother nature's great beauty is rivaled by her warped sense of humor making reality as we know it a bit more cartoonish than would be the case in a metaphysical universe. Homogenized Heaven and Hell is a colorful cartoon metaphor for the overall impact of yin and yang synergistically-normalizing one another and preventing any metaphysical extremes such as God creating a rock so heavy that even he couldn't pick up. Every classic work of art has turned out to express a Fractal Dragon equation and the Tao Te Ching is a minimalistic version that would require some 4,430 poems to express in excruciating detail. Thankfully, only 430 are required for a good representation of the equation and should be enough to provide a good overall representation of the intrinsic self-organizing systems logic capable of, in turn, describing anything including how to reconcile Relativity and quantum mechanics. Mathematically the metaphorical emotional-logic can be expressed as Intuitionistic mathematics and should resemble a multifractal of a strikingly classical Fractal Dragon within a broader Mandelbrot pattern, thus, expressing both the assertive and receptive, masculine and feminine. Another drawback is, in the 2,500 years since the Tao Te Ching was first published, the best I know of anyone managing is roughly 150 close to word perfect and complete poems with, perhaps, another 80 that still require significant work. Some of the lines of these poems are duplicates due to the fact nobody has all the metaphors yet because its all recursive logic and we don't have the rest of the poems that express those metaphors. For example, one poem I'm eager to write is "Chain Reaction" which is a great metaphor, but beyond the scope of what's necessary to complete this first book which provides all the clues for how to write the second. Each successive poem must express a summation of all of the poems that come after it and the better your philosophy the better your poetry which is often considered the best reflection of an individual's philosophy. They say the Tao Te Ching only requires half an hour to read, but a lifetime to master and, although it might sound like I'm bragging about mastering it, anyone can master the text contextually if they simply dedicate enough time and energy to absorbing it through osmosis and figuring it out for themselves. The mystics or whatever might see it differently but, for what I'm doing with the text, its more like learning to ride a unicycle or whatever where someone giving you too many instructions can quickly become counterproductive and you just have learn how to ride through osmosis as much as anything. That's also why I use a more agnostic primitive tribal interpretation that can better express how formal logic revolves around what's missing from this picture. A Rubik's Cube is another good analogy because small children actually have a better chance of solving it than adults simply because they have fewer biases and preconceptions. Treating every word as a variable the entire text revolves around what's missing from this picture making it self-assembling which is why you have to absorb the fuzzy logic and philosophy through osmosis because there's just no rushing some things. At least, that's my best guess, that everything including the laws of physics revolve around what's missing from this picture. Metaphorically you can think of life as embodying both crap rolling downhill and poetry in motion because the two will always transform into one another in extreme contexts. It is the classic tale of "The Emperor's New Cloths" where only the smallest, least experienced, most vulnerable, and naive among them was able to see what was missing from this picture. To put this in perspective, chickens are considered only modestly brighter than any one of their individual neurons because what really makes the world go round is each neuron humbling looking for what's missing from this picture without a clue as to what it is actually examining or doing. In this manner our neurons can organize in unimaginable numbers to convey any mass, energy, and information with highest efficiency possible for anything their size, which, also happens to describe a black hole. Everything should be capable of being described as both integrals for content and differentials for what's missing from this picture with exactly where our conscious mind ends and our unconscious begins always remaining context dependent. Ironically, in the century that followed the introduction of the first half of the Tao Te Ching, the second half is believed to have been written by over a hundred academics who all wisely chose to publish their work anonymously. Part of the beauty of the text, that even many academics appreciate, is the fact that it must be just as logically rigorous as it is artistic allowing it to describe a metaphorical emotional-logic that can be incorporated into Intuitionistic mathematics. This book lays down the dramatic cartoon foundations, while its sequel based upon the I-Ching will provide more of the subtle artistic impressions and fill in the curves sweetly one hopes without becoming too sacrine. Sometimes I compare it to a hippie tribal version of "Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, World" and Jim Henson's, "Dark Crystal" both expressed as adult potty humor, but we'll have to wait and see how it turns out because it is what it is and will bes whatever the mathematics say it bes. The more poems and metaphors everyone contributes the easier it becomes for everyone, including mathematicians, to see the Big Picture and then retrodict to learn more about what we do not know and cannot know, while leaving it up to the individual to supply their own content. You could call it a type of bullshit logic or metaphoric logic that systematically determines what's missing from this picture, while classical logic attempts to determine any content with the combination of the two being more useful than either approach alone. Everything being more context dependent than we might even imagine means you can describe the applicable systems logic any way you like including using metaphors such as instant karma, pattern matching, emergent effects, synergistic-normalization, singular-infinity, potty humor, the hand of God, or Doctor Doolittle's push-me-pull-you if you prefer so long as the law of identity itself goes down the nearest convenient rabbit hole or toilet of your personal preference. Potty humor just happens to work really well because its something everyone can relate to and incorporates contextual vagueness using words such as bullshit and crap and the more personal and organic the metaphors the better. People have been collecting these jokes since before agriculture was invented and my friends and I consider potty humor to be among our more priceless pearls of wisdom. Precisely because they are so mathematical, everyone who writes them usually recognizes right away what works best so its just foolishness to attempt to use them to sway anyone's opinions. By explicitly avoiding both mysticism and metaphysics it becomes much easier to simply allow the yin-yang dynamics to express themselves and leave it up to individual to interpret it however they want. Humorously enough, I've had women ask me to write more sexy poems only to have to inform them that I'm just a philosophical hack crunching the numbers of well known popular poems and nursery rhymes like some sort of biological computer that takes decades to program. Playing the Chinese game of Go is similar in that, no matter how intelligent you are or whatever, it requires twenty years of practice to even be considered competent by the masters. The metaphors are the crucial ingredient of the poetry that can express the more agnostic and egalitarian character of a universal recursion in the law of identity where reality without dreams is just somebody's nightmare and dreams without reality are a contradiction. Stay awake too long and you'll merely hallucinate, I believe, because nature forbids any logical or metaphysical extremes which means crap rolling downhill will eventually transform into poetry in motion and vice versa. In technobabble, this implies an unusual metaphorical scalar variation of John Wheeler's "Participatory Anthropic Principle" where who or what appears to be doing all the creating or being created simply depends upon the context. Knowledge and faith, humor and beauty, will transform into one another in different contexts making awareness possible. Whether science can ever prove there are higher dimensions or not, there must be a four fold symmetry applicable to everything even if the universe is to merely keep that a mystery and this simple fact can be considered part of the metaphorical logic of existence. In a metaphorical universe even every dimension must cease to exist in some contexts and everything would appear to organize around what's missing from this picture such how much we might be able to guess about our own future or any apparent lack of energy or information. Among other things, in physics it would explain the mass of the Higgs Boson as reflecting the fact that symmetry and asymmetry are so fundamental it will require cosmic ray energy levels to observe symmetry vanishing into indeterminacy. More humorously, it means that, if you prefer, philosophy and physics can be described as the study of Metaphorical Fuzzy Factual Metaethical Bullshit Values because more comical analog yin-yang logic rules the universe. For example, my father has what's known in many countries as "The Gift of Sparkling Laughter" which is the infectious kind nobody can resist. My sisters and I will sometimes yell at him to stop laughing because we want to continue arguing amongst ourselves and, of course, he just laughs all that much harder. One sister describes him as "Santa laughing at the elves being silly again" and his is the infectious laughter of a small child in an adult. In his case, what's missing from this picture is any ego or judgments in his laughter and his inner child merely expresses itself better by laughing at the funny naked man in the parade. Our jokes and laughter can say so much without ever having to really say anything specific and I proudly stand upon the shoulders of countless giants of potty humor who all felt compelled down the ages to contribute their own two cents worth. For me personally, when the journey is its own reward a rose is a rose by any other name and would still smell just as sweet, if you careful to use just the right amount of manure. Two computers have already been constructed that produce better than average jokes and, very soon, the reality of what's actually funny and also beautiful will become all but impossible for people to deny. Within twenty years computers capable of easily crunching the kinds of numbers our brain can routinely play with will be spitting out jokes that reveal more than many might care to know or dwell upon. Rejoice all you adorable clowns, comedy is about to get the high tech treatment and the next scientific revolution will ensure neither Vaudeville, academia, nor the rest of the world will ever be quite the same again including, most especially, politics and humor!
This is the revision of the third chapter of my book and if anybody wants to delete the old one please feel free. Its all recursive logic and takes forever to write because you have to write five versions that all make sense in their own rite, with the fifth one simply making more sense out of all the previous ones. Five times, because its a Fractal Dragon equation and that's the symmetry. Beethoven's music is a good example of a fractal dragon with the last five notes slamming home the symmetry.
