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A Teutonic warrior, who has been in battle, and has been so heated up that they throw him in a tub of water, which immediately turns to steam. He is cooling down, but not that much. He has a few more things to say before signing off. This is what he says.
God created the Universe and willed that some of it shall be predictable and that some of it shall be unpredictable. The predictable part we call Material and Dead. The unpredictable part we call Live and Spiritual. He let these parts mix and called it good. There has been much Scientific study of the Material side of the Universe, with unimaginable success. This is the study of Dead Data Sets, which are predictable. This present study is all about Live Data Streams, which are unpredictable. The study of Dead Data Sets has yielded such fruits that its techniques have been applied unsuccessfully to Live Data Streams. This has been partly because they have confined their scientific attention to predictability and partly to do with assumptions of homogeneity and repeatability. These series of notebooks develop techniques for dealing with unpredictable, growing Data Streams. Predictability deals with Dead things. Unpredictability deals with Live Things. The study of predictable functions is doomed when applied to living things because one of the features of Life is unpredictability, (whether it's carbon-based life or not).
One feature of unpredictability is its resistance to replicability. Life responds to context. The context is always changing. Thus Life's responses change. Simply speaking Material does not respond to the context of experience. It responds to the content of the cause. Material does not modify its response based upon memory. Its response is immediate and based upon the physical laws of the universe. These laws are predictable and never changing. Hence replicability is a feature of the Material world while replicability is not a feature of the Living, unpredictable world.
Underlying the above paragraph is the assumption that Life is based upon unpredictability. Most scientists would argue this assumption. As stated before most scientists start with the assumption that all phenomenon are ultimately predictable. Most scientists believe in a god of predictable functions and spend their life studying His Nature, a worthwhile endeavor to be sure. We, here, believe in a predictable God but we also believe in the Unpredictable side to Mother Nature. Therefore we call her greater self, She. But if it bothers you to assume that unpredictability is a feature of Life, then take a step back and replace Life with Living Data Streams. Living Data Streams lack replicability because they lack predictability.
If our studies lack predictability and lack replicability then what can be said? There is no more scientific method. It has all disappeared before the God of Predictable Functions, Him. Don't Worry! He can't see us because we have turned sideways. We have disappeared into a line, when in actuality we exist in a dimension of which the line is but a crack into a multi-dimensional experience.
The study of Living Data Streams is the study of Process, not product. Although nothing can be said about the end, volumes can be written about the road there. We barely know that the end exists, as we are so immersed in the process of getting there. So we are studying Mechanisms not Laws. A law is absolute, unyielding. A mechanism is a description of the process, a tendency, an inclination, nothing absolute, however, because of the Unpredictability of the Subject, Life, (Living Data Streams, if you prefer.)
One of the byproducts of Unpredictability and Unreplicability is Free Will. The assumption that the God of Functions rules all, leads to the idea of Predestination. Conversely the idea of a spontaneous Mother Nature leads to the idea of Choice and Free Will. Within the Unpredictability lies the Choice. Beneath the Uncertainty Principle lies Decision-making. If you prefer Beyond Freedom & Dignity, this is not for you.
This Free Will foils the predictability and replicability of Laws but it does not foil the tendencies of mechanisms. Although this language sounds subatomic on some levels, it differs on one crucial point. Both deal with probabilistic tendencies, but the subatomic level is ultimately predictable, while Living Data Streams are by definition unpredictable.
Many modern scientists, philosophers and theologians discuss the issue of free will versus determinism because their underlying belief in the god of Functions, contradicts the notion of Free Will. Most of us experience choice, decisions and consequences on a day-to-day level. Practically speaking we all believe in free will. The enlightened view, however, has it that we are merely responding to hereditary, environmental, or divine influences. We haven't quite discovered the Laws governing human behavior, but we're working on them. Of course, God knows them already. And even if we don't respond to physical laws, we are surely governed by divine laws. Some hold that the Bible contains the divine law, which transcends this physical existence.
This rational view eliminates spontaneity from the characteristics of existence. However, as soon as spontaneity becomes a characteristic of Nature, then Free Will is automatic. Laws are out and Mechanisms are in. The ambiguity of free will and determinism vanishes. Matter is not spontaneous and hence behaves according to absolute, immutable laws. It behaves deterministically. Life is spontaneous and hence responds unpredictably to mechanisms. Modern thinking has merged Matter with Life. Matter responds to Laws while Life responds to mechanisms. We are made up of matter and life and hence are buffeted by a mixture of Law and mechanism.
We must stress again that many, if not most, enlightened, modern, civilized thinkers assume that Life is just Matter in disguise. They don't believe in Life as an orthogonal vector to the Material Plane, but instead believe that Life is merely a manifestation of Matter. These series of Notebooks assumes Not. We assume that Existence is an intersection of the Matter Plane and the Life Plane. The Matter Plane has been well studied. The Life Plane has been ignored.
We are reminded of the rece nt convert, the college sophomore, and the teenager, who in a rush of discovery believes that everything can be put under his umbrella of understanding. His parents, the past, everyone else are idiots, while he is enlightened. Can't everyone else just understand? It is so obvious. Flush with success in the Material world due to their recent discoveries (the last 3 or 4 hundred years worth) these scientists have denied Life itself.