Amerika

Western Civilization backed away from Plato because he pointed out the simple problem of democracy: because it was based in individualism, and therefore contrary to reality, it drove everyone insane over the course of its rampage. That was incompatible with the perceived need for a post-monarchist system.

However, we are rediscovering Plato because democracy is failing exactly as he said it would, in a cloud of individualism and correspondent narcissism. This does away with the political objections to Plato which not surprisingly were the same objections that got Socrates killed by Athenian democracy.

We are even rediscovering Platonic metaphysics, a type of Western monism that suggests an informational origin to all existence:

Today’s cutting-edge theory—quantum gravity—suggests that even space and time aren’t fundamental. They emerge from something deeper: pure information.

This information exists in what physicists call a Platonic realm—a mathematical foundation more real than the physical universe we experience. It’s from this realm that space and time themselves emerge.

“The fundamental laws of physics cannot be contained within space and time, because they generate them. It has long been hoped, however, that a truly fundamental theory of everything could eventually describe all physical phenomena through computations grounded in these laws. Yet we have demonstrated that this is not possible. A complete and consistent description of reality requires something deeper—a form of understanding known as non-algorithmic understanding.”

In other news, you cannot model a system from within a system because you would require complexity at the same level of the system, which would require omniscience as well as more data than the system can hold. However, the system is consistent, a.k.a. logical, and produces our reality as an effect created by it as a cause.

Some have pointed out that reality could achieve its logicality through a super-simplified principle like natural selection. The theory of cosmic Darwinism finds this sorting process inherent to all forms of data and matter as a part of the consistency of the universe:

Simply put, the hypothesis is that interaction between a physical system and its environment selects for certain kinds of behavior and rules out others, and that the kinds of behavior conserved by this “natural selection” are precisely those that correspond to the classical description.

Thus, for example, when someone reads this text, their eyes receive photons that interact with their computer or smartphone screen. Another person, from a different viewpoint, will receive different photons, but although the particles in the screen behave in their own strange ways, potentially producing images completely different from each other, interaction with the environment selects for only one kind of behavior and excludes the rest, so that the two readings end up accessing the same text.

This form of adaptation rewards complexity by selecting the few methods that work over the many that do not. It is a great filter on a constant basis, and it seems likely that biological intelligence serves a role in this process:

Smolin’s CNS seems to err, however, in identifying black holes as the aspect of the universal ‘phenotype’ that is most likely to constitute an adaptation for universe reproduction. The error stems from overlooking what could be considered the ‘first law of Darwinian adaptation’: aspects of a phenotype that exhibit more improbable complexity are more likely to be adaptations. Because intelligent life exhibits higher improbable complexity (and therefore lower entropy) than black holes, it is more likely than black holes to be an adaptation for universe reproduction. From this perspective, biological evolution would represent a developmental subroutine of cosmological evolution, and the ultimate function of intelligent life would be to develop the knowledge and technology that would ultimately enable the universe to reproduce.

In other words, lay back and accept that your gut instinct was right: there is a divine force, the universe tends toward good, there is something more than physical existence, and the blind unconscious process that does it all is fairer and more practical than any theologian could imagine.

Tags: cosmic darwinism, Idiocracy, platonism, quantum darwinism