Looping Wor(l)d

A follow-up.

Because that framework is so powerful it also leads to other revelations. What Gödel represents for math, he also represents for science.

Science depends on a fixed, independent world, where theories evolve because they can be tested on reality. So reality needs not be mutable. Those rules governing its events need to have the totality of control (and, if there are changes, then the rules have to account for that change). Nothing metaphysical can bleed through, obviously.

But once again science exists only if the world is finite. Only if this world has an “inside” but no outside. Because if the system of the world is contained within a bigger super-system(*), then science would have to embrace that larger system to count for all phenomena. So it’s again the necessity for a one-sided space. The Klein bottle. Science cannot allow for something external (something outside its grasp). And if something external is actually discovered (you could make a case for quantum physics) then it needs to be brought back in, so that science reaches out and includes, integrates. So that the practice of science and theory-making can get closer to the actual ideal of Science: explain everything with no omissions or gaps. Science has the liking of an omniscient light cast upon the world.

From another perspective: science is valid only as long no outside is found (or: only until science conquered everything and there’s nothing left “outside”). Its determinism holds only as long the world is indeed finite and one-sided. Leading directly to Gödel’s paradox (no system seems to be able to fully close itself). If you think about it, it mimics the perspective of “free will”. Free will is possible only UNTIL an outside claims it false. Or: the perspective remains valid only if the wall that defines it, is breached. It exists because it doesn’t. Science postulates determinism, determinism negates free will, on the premise that if the system is closed and one sided, then free will has no leverage, because a mind only exists within the system and so slave to its rules. In determinism the mind is moved, not moving. But in the same way we are vulnerable to science (it denies subjectivity through hard reality and facts, it debunks faiths and beliefs), so science is vulnerable to its own “outside”. Because science for us represents a similar “outside”.

But let’s avoid the ambiguity held in the idealism of language. Let’s call the science that describes the physical world as we know it as Science-1. If a bigger system of reality is then discovered that has total control over the physical world as we knew it, then it’s obvious that Science-2 totally invalidates Science-1. If before we thought Science-1 had the total control (of description) of reality, then instead we discovered that Science-1 was merely under total control of Science-2. Just another slave. Formally, again it’s information from the outside breaching in, demonstrating that Science-1 wasn’t a closed system. The same happens with out mind/consciousness. Experience says that our one sided view is the whole thing. We feel as we have control of ourselves and freedom of choice. But then external knowledge proves us this may be just an illusion, and that the brain is also subject to the rules of the physical world. The problem is that what is “legal” in the example above, isn’t legal in this one. We can’t use that information.

So how is it possible to have both? How can Free Will be made compatible with Determinism? From my point of view, and this framework, it’s a matter of handling the perspectives, because mixing them leads to the paradox that generates the incompatibilities themselves. Science demands a one sided space, that it can fully dominate. Human beings, free will or not, are systems that exist within the “system of the world”, so the domain science casts its claim on. Through science we access knowledge of the world outside of us. Hypothetically even knowledge that unsettles us, like the demonstration that our perception is skewed, or entirely false. But we lack the authority to ACT on that knowledge. We simply discovered how things always were and always will be. So while Free Will is explained away, it still doesn’t render us empty of consciousness. Formally the discovery has no power on us. Meaning: the discovery of us lacking free will couldn’t possibly motivate something like a change in law practices and morality, because we don’t have the Free Will to deal directly with those things and modify them.

Determinism basically says that us, as observing systems, were always “system”. Religion actually explains this much better: we are all part of the same thing, something like spiritual unity with the entire creation. Yet we perceive ourselves as a life with a very narrow perspective (and needs, and selfish desires). Consciousness only sees itself with an idea of “identity”. This perspective can be judged false by information that comes from the outside (science) but it cannot be invalidated. It’s like we are a robot that is programmed to go on its course, able to access knowledge of the impossibility of acting otherwise. So this isn’t a “stage”, like recognizing a lack of free will in order to truly achieve it. It’s just knowledge with no power, invisible. Not there. It’s illusion. Because knowledge that creates no difference is knowledge that does not exist. The lack of free will is itself pure illusion. Why? Because the perspectives get mixed. From our perspectives our actions depend on what we decide. We can’t suddenly stop doing that. Nor the reasons why we do this and that, or the way we organize ourselves, can change on the knowledge of lacking free will. So, again, we can’t use that information. Following that, we cannot not-act. We cannot surrender, or even modify, the free will we think we have.

There are two possible scenarios or ideal worlds. One were we gain some sort of enlightenment and reach some spiritual betterment where we can achieve true free will. The other where we “let it go”, in the sense that we entirely give up the illusion and really start feeling ourselves as the robots lacking will we are. The point is: neither of the two is possible. The first is not possible because we can’t exit the system. The second isn’t possible because robots have to do their thing. What we currently call Free Will isn’t an ideal, but simply us “doing our thing” in the way we always did it. It’s a relative, yet inescapable perspective. It’s fourth wall breaching. Knowledge not possible. So “lack of free will” merely defined the EXACT same thing we until now called “free will”. We swapped the *term*, but what it points to remains the same.

Practically, for us, knowledge of lack of free will doesn’t change the description of the free will we actually have, it changes *what it is*. But being the description the same, it continues doing and behaving the exact same way as before. It continues to appear the same way. Think about this: the “qualia” of consciousness has been described as the perception of a one-sided space (and again the requirement of this type of space to issue the control). Or: lack of perception of what falls beyond the light (of consciousness). Scientific knowledge is just about awareness that there’s something beyond these boundaries. But this knowledge defines and frames the space, it doesn’t remove it. Even though “science” doesn’t merely claim to be a dominating side, but also that no other side can exist, since science is always inclusive and totalitarian.

In the end it bogs down to something truly simple: does a character in a book have free will? Nope. Because we know there’s an author that actually decided what that character does and says. Yet, if you “ask” the character he will explain what he does and what he says in the context of his own “free will”, so the actual motivations of someone thinking himself as a real person. Which one the correct perspective? Depends. You look from the outside and you know it all depends on the writer. Yet if you ever care about a book it is because you are interested in the perspective in there. “As if”. Pretending to see from the inside of that world as if there’s no other outside. That world only exists and matters as long there’s someone willing to be there. A tautology: the perspective is valid as long it is valid. Which is a recursion. A loophole.

(*)
It is also funny to consider that if there’s a super-system that governs reality as we know it, it’s possible that also determinism as we know it is proven entirely false. With this hypothetical entity continuously poking things within our system, at its whims (but in a way that is hidden to us, because it sits in the super-system and is unperceived in ours, like a form of spirituality). Yet we would likely be entirely under the effect of the super-system’s determinism and its rules. It’s just *our* determinism that would be proven false (or merely encapsulated and then occluded, just a spectrum). Which is a variation on the theme of “why is god shaped in the liking of a human?”, or, why should the super-world, and its governing rules, be anything like we see in ours?

I had this article on free will bookmarked for quite a while because I wanted to add a few observations of my own to it. So now I’m checking boxes and coming to it.

In that article it’s the term “free will” that is being questioned and I always though that when a complex discussion ends up focusing on a word then the point is being missed. Language is merely convention. A word only means what it is useful for it to mean, and whenever you need a more specific term, then a new one is produced.

If you focus too much on what the term means then you miss the point. When dealing with “free will” I have this scheme that I think helps to frame the problem, and so more easily look for solutions. In this specific case the meaning and usefulness of the term depend exclusively on perspective. So we have two opposite answers that are both valid depending on who’s asking (or, from where he’s asking). And that’s why it all ends up in so much confusion and controversy. But in the end this is not a problem of an ambiguous term, it’s instead a problem of perspective and context.

So once again let’s start from the center. We pose the question. “We” are consciousness, and consciousness happens in the brain. It became evident that the peculiarity of consciousness compared to everything else is associated with language. And the peculiarity of language, and of that association by extension, is one of its functions: the metalingual. What is that makes this function “special”? Reflexivity. Reflexivity is the propriety that lets language describe and define itself, and reflexivity is the property that enables a brain to develop a consciousness as we know and experience it. This reflexivity is the true, fundamental culprit of all these processes. This was all properly identified and described in “Gödel, Escher, Bach” as a “strange loop”, and the peculiarity of a strange loop is again the reflexivity.

In information theory the concept of reflexivity is used on the observation framework. What makes reflexivity (or the loop) “strange” is that recursion on itself. Reflexivity in observation means, essentially, introspection. Which means “confusing” subject with object. When observing, you observe an object. But when self-observing, you end up with this weird duplication: you as a subject observe yourself as an object, so at the same time you are both subject and object, here and there. This split is at the source of what we call the human “condition”. That we also know as Cartesian Dualism. That dualism fundamentally originates in the split and duplication of the observation. The mind detaches itself from a body, perceives itself as something else, “more than”. This “mistake” is the base that causes all consequent conflicts and paradoxes.

So we have reflexivity on one side, and a split of the process on the other. The dichotomy infuses everything else. There’s not just a conflict of subject/object, but also one of inside/outside. If observations (as distinctions) happen in the general structure of system (the subject of observation) and environment (what is observed), then system/object are essentially built as inside/outside. A distinction between a self/subject/inside and an environment/object/outside. So, formally speaking, we already have the paradox laid out: we perceive consciousness as something else than a brain, or, we consider consciousness (a subject) separate and independent from its ambient, which is the physical brain. Otherwise neither reflexivity nor observation are possible. They require distinction, and an object that self-observes without a distinction perceives itself as a wholeness. So as something that is formally not observable (aka: non conscious). A brain without consciousness obviously doesn’t “think”, because it can’t observe. It can’t recognize itself from anything else. So it’s undivided from the flux of all creation. Exactly as all non-conscious things, alive or not. It’s non-discrete.

The problem is embedded in the formality of the process that allows us to be conscious. It means that consciousness is based/enabled by a contradiction. So it’s also obvious that it can’t escape itself. Consciousness is bound to its rules, and so to its limits (aka boundaries). This is important when we’ll define whether “free will” is an useful and appropriate term.

What I just described is a simplification that is useful to “frame” the problem. One of the basic distinctions I took out is inside/outside. This is important because it’s the context that motivates free will as a concept. What is free will? This: something that controls itself independently from the outside. Determinism runs counter to free will because it says, in Bakker terms, that what comes before strictly defines what comes after. Which means that there isn’t any freedom of consciousness in there, at some point, to take control. Everything is already set-up by the pre-conditions. Which also means that it’s the outside (environment) that determines what goes on in the inside (system). So the inside/system/consciousness is merely under the complete control of what’s outside. Everything is already firmly determined. There’s no “freedom” of choice.

Now let’s ask the important question: how would free will happen (if it was truly free and not some surrogate)? Free will, formally, is a system with the possibility to be independent. In the case of a human being, so a system that is part of a much larger system with its rules (physical reality, or the universe), free will means escaping the larger system. So it means the possibility to “exit” the physical reality, escaping it. In religion free will exists because consciousness is seen as a metaphysical entity that ESCAPES rules of physical reality, so religion defines consciousness as something that can’t be merely described by the physical properties it comes from (so consciousness is seen as “more than a brain”). By being “special” (and metaphysical), consciousness acquires its “superpowers”, or: the possibility to punch holes in the physical reality, so transcend it, so, formally, to “exit” the system.

Exit the system. That’s what defines free will as a possibility. But remember that I also said consciousness originates as a paradox, and the paradox allows for consciousness but doesn’t allow consciousness to truly break its rules and boundaries. Which means, from the scientific perspective, that a consciousness isn’t allowed to “transcend” physical reality. So a consciousness can’t exit the system (physical reality), obviously, and so science says that, nope, we don’t have free will, because we are inside this system and subject to all its rules. We are slaves to the system, or, formally, just a system wholly contained within another (and so defined by it, not independent).

How the hell do we exit then? Through information. This is kind of tautological, but if you can actually reach some kind of information external to the system, and bring it inside, then the system is essentially broken. You exited it, by introducing something new into it. So you added variables that were not yet there. Hence forced an outcome that wasn’t previously defined. You obtained “free will”.

Now I’ve defined the superpower but this doesn’t mean I have it, or can obtain it. That’s not the point why I’m writing. The point is that the frame, of outside/inside, is useful to understand the deal with free will. The point is: the system who’s asking the question (whether free will is available or not, or useful as a term) is the same system that pretends to answer it by self-observing. What I mean is that the question CONTAINS the paradox, and then why it then can’t easily obtain an answer. Do I (system) have free will? Who will answer? Still I. So I am both subject and object. I am the entity that asks, analyzes self and then offers the answer. Which means confusing subject and object, inside and outside.

So where’s the mistake? The mistake is that, formally, who says that human beings have no free will is an abstract entity that is not assimilable to a “self”. “You don’t have free will” is not what an human can tell to another human (or to himself). Because the observation “you have not free will” is only possible for the system of reality (that we simplify as a surrogate: science). It’s Science, to whom we give voice, that tells us: you have no free will. So we know we don’t.

We know we don’t, but we don’t EXPERIENCE we don’t. Because Science is not an external entity. We give science its voice. It’s a golem, or a man-made god. Which means that, sure, we have that judgement and may believe it, but since we can’t truly POSSESS that affirmation (we can’t formally tell ourselves we lack free will, because we can’t formally make that observation) then it simply means that knowledge/experience of that affirmation, “you’ve got not free will”, is… useless. It’s *formally* useless. It can’t formally produce any change (or we would have actually enabled free will by not having it, since finally knowing that we have no free will would have actually brought CHANGE, learning something new, and so obtaining actual free will). If we don’t have free will, then it means that knowing we don’t have free will doesn’t “move” the system. So it’s as if we know nothing new. Which means this knowledge is IRRELEVANT, whatever the outcome. We can be sure it’s irrelevant in all possible cases.

The point of this whole deal is that this question isn’t “legal” in the formal system. Only an external system can say we have no free will. The system can’t speak (or it would be equal to “reach god”, or have a transcendent experience). So the system isn’t allowed its answer. We may IMAGINE that answer, but whenever we further consider it we violate a formality, and so produce something false. Like breaking a mathematical rule. So I’m saying we can’t, formally, get an answer. It’s denied. And, in any case, even if we got an answer it would be irrelevant for the reasons I’ve explained. So we covered all possibilities.

The lack of free will is an actual impossibility. We are basically FORCED to have free will. Or: to live as if. We can’t formally live otherwise. This is bound to the human condition: you can’t NOT make use of your free will. You have free will because it’s formally impossible for you to NOT have it (as long you possess consciousness, and so reflexivity, and so possibility to self-observe).

Everything else is just consequence. Morally, considering the possibility of a lack of free will, as discussed in that article, is pointless. Because our morals exist on the premise we have free will. And as far as we are concerned we HAVE free will. Only god (the system) could tell us we got no free will, but god won’t speak to us (if it did, we’d automatically and immediately acquire legit free will). Science could tell us, but science is given a voice. That voice is ours and we aren’t allowed to tell ourselves that sort of thing.

All this simply amounts to going repeatedly at a solid wall. There’s no way through (again because of the formality of the inside/outside rule, you can’t be both inside and outside, so when you try you get the wall in the face). No way around. Which means that the concept of free will as a term is only useful to us in the measure we already use it: the idea of consciousness and free will as we *experience it*. Because that presence of free will applies to us, and exists for us, exactly in that measure.

Which is very similar to the example of the flipped coin. Is a coin being flipped truly “random”? Nope, because we know that the face the coin will fall on depends on a myriad of variables, all dependent on the initial stages that coin was in. The result is already determined, but *for us*, the coin being flipped is an usable approximation of “random”, merely because we just can’t effectively manipulate the outcome. It’s beyond our grasp and so we accept the randomness of a flipped coin even if randomness isn’t a thing in a deterministic world.

Same as “free will”. We can only have a good approximation of it. We are forced to exercise it, as long we live. There’s no way out, there’s no way in. You can only live and use that will, relatively free or not. Knowledge won’t let you free, in this case.

This is noir, pure and simple, a small-scale holocaust of the human soul–Lovecraft without the tentacled bodies; Revelations without the horsemen.

Elsewhere I commented the rest of the show saying that after the third episode it normalized itself and became more conservative and harmless. Now that I’ve seen the finale I confirm that view. Narratively the show is extremely conservative and all its stakes are on flawless execution.

But flawless execution it is. Despite the lack of excess of ambition I thought the finale was absolutely excellent and overall the show is the best television I’ve ever seen in such format. So I could accuse it of not pushing enough against the boundaries of convention, but this was only my wish, not the original intention of the show.

I don’t want to write a full review, just pointing out a couple of things. The most important aspect that transcends execution (how it’s written, how it’s acted, how it’s shot) is how the story bounds to its theme and how the mythology is bound to both.

When the King in Yellow was first mentioned we didn’t know anything about what to expect or where the show was going with it. We just thought it was a neat wink to this corner of geek culture. But this blog has a good article on what it means. It explains well what the King in Yellow represented in the life and breadth of work of his author.

What it couldn’t foresee, though, is that that was the key to the show as well. Here’s a good article by proverbial Jeff Jensen (who always enjoys the playful shows, like LOST or Fringe) on the finale and the meaning of it all (his articles are always more interesting for what they suggest than factual interpretations).

What I appreciated is that the King of Yellow isn’t just there to represent an undefined form of threat, that is finally defeated and exorcized/banished, only to reappear at the very last moment as it happens in dreadful horror shows. Because in the horror shows the threat is there, originating where the mythology comes from: some mythical, magic space beyond reality. But in True Detective all this mystical veil is redirected to an actual origin: the human mind. It starts with the human mind, it ends with the human mind. If the King in Yellow, accordingly to that article, was just the sublimation of a certain decadent culture:

This is also the most literal interpretation – The King in Yellow “himself” could also stand for, well, quite a few things. Take, for example, opium. Chambers wrote The King in Yellow following his experiences as an art student in Paris during one of its most decadent eras. Both opium (Thomas de Quincey’s “the dark idol”) and absinthe (“the green muse”) were prevalent – especially amongst the city’s population of Bohemian artists and poets. It isn’t much of a reach to think that “The King in Yellow” – a play that inspires weird genius, but is also addictive, physically debilitating and sanity destroying – is a metaphor…

And maybe even more telling is how Lovecraft criticized Chambers for not sticking to the mythology itself, as a form of purity that doesn’t need to be disguised (or sullied) in worldly matters.

True Detective, then, takes Chamber’s stance. You shouldn’t look at the mythology because it’s just a false idol. True Detective is not a show about the supernatural, and it never gives in to that temptation. Jeff Jensen pulls the curtains nicely:

He was fooling himself. Rust Cohle has always been fooling himself. His cynicism, his callousness were parts of the mask he wore to engage the world, to deal with himself. But it offered no protection when his mind — tweaking from the fetid evil around him — conspired against him and waylaid him with a vision of a coal-black vortex spiraling down to claim him. Maybe you were thinking: They’re going to do it! Cthulhu is coming! Coming to take us away, ha-ha! Ho-ho! Hee-hee! Beam me up, Lovecraft!

But nope.

True Detective was always all about authenticity — or rather, the lack thereof, and the stories we tell ourselves to get us through the day (religion, or nothingness, or our private Carcosa) and in turn imprint (and inflict) upon the world.

Carcosa is then a place of the mind. It’s just environment that contains this specific flavor of human evil. It’s projected and given a name, it’s made ideal and symbolic.

This is also the show’s dualism well represented. The show’s opening with the blending of shapes with landscapes stresses the dualism: we are people, made of solid matter, but we live in thought. Our life is symbolic. The mind is separate from the body, yet the mind is of the body. It’s made of those landscapes, we are part of that, continuous to that.

So Carcosa is our place, the place of the mind, of symbols and myths.

the stories we tell ourselves and in turn imprint (and inflict) upon the world.

We bring Carcosa to the world because Carcosa is our true self. “True” becoming perspective. What’s true, the symbol or the substance? The world as it is, or the world imagined? Matter or thought? Void or form?

As in Bakker’s “the darkness that comes before”, as human beings we enjoy displacing things. We create gods and then place them before us, so the gods can create us. Then we create evil and place it before us, so that we are not responsible.

Hence, the show’s corny final words are coherent with the theme. We decide and make the difference between light and dark. It’s on us. There’s no mythical elsewhere we can blame for our actions (or lack of).

But the ultimate point is also that the darkness is already here, all around us. And there’s no supernatural or fictional elsewhere to banish it to.

(required reading, for the point of view of the writer and context, and brilliant answers about accuses of misogyny)

I think there’s a lot of self-projection going on in certain cases; like the show has become a Rorschach test for a specific contingent of the audience in which they read their own obsessions into it.

I think True Detective is portraying a world where the weak (physically or economically) are lost, ground under by perfidious wheels that lie somewhere behind the visible, wheels powered by greed, perversity, and irrational belief systems, and these lost souls dwell on an exhausted frontier, a fractured coastline beleaguered by industrial pollution and detritus, slowly sinking into the Gulf of Mexico. There’s a sense here that the apocalypse already happened. And in places like this, where there’s little economy and inadequate education, women and children are the first to suffer, by and large.