LJIdol Home Game Week 27 - Values are like fingerprints...
(Full Topic: Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ’em all over everything you do.)
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“Elementary, my dear sir.”
> That seems a simplistic thing to say, given such a complex situation.
The most complex systems are merely large numbers of simple ones combined together.
> Perhaps. But what of probability, and chance?
Is there really such a thing as chance? Take a man at a craps table. In his hand he holds two dice. In front of him is a walled oval table, the far end of which he is required to throw the dice against, and his bet is based on what those two dice will land on when they finish moving. To him, and to the outside viewer, this seems to be pure chance, with probabilistic outcomes. We say that rolling snake-eyes, a pair of ones, is far less likely than to roll a combination seven, for which there are twelve times as many potential combinations. Yet, it is not as if the dice are not predictable. They have a weight, a mass, a density, a particular shape including divots and any scratches that have been made on it, and a particular elasticity. It will react under very precise specific rules to being accelerated with a particular force and vector and spin, moving through a gravitational field and coming in contact with other objects similarly definable.
Each of the dice has, in fact, an inherent core value, which can be represented as a series of numbers. This numerical value controls its response to any external stimuli. Once we know that value, we know how it must respond. And if we properly calculate all of the stimuli, we can predict without fail the outcome of the dice being rolled. The difficulty is merely in determining those stimuli.
> Merely? That is impossible, so what is the point? If the stimuli are indeterminate, then so is the outcome, and thus we get probability and chance.
No, thus we “see” probability and chance. What we experience is completely predictable, with the complete information. What I am trying to show you is that all of that information is not only knowable, it is already known. Even if we personally can’t see it all yet. Let’s take a more complicated example.
An acorn provides all the information it will ever need to make decisions as it grows, hopefully, into a tree. It is its true nature. If we could quantify the information within, we would have the value of the seed. The pure core of its existence. And with that information, we could determine how it would respond to rain, drought, animals that want to turn it into their home, or humans who wish to harvest it for firewood.
> But those things that the tree must come into contact with will affect it. They will change the course of its life. There is no one single path determined by just the acorn.
No, but everything that happens, every change in that tree’s fortunes, is marked by that original seed. When it bends away from the shade of a building, you can see the influence of the original seed in its reaction. When a limb shrivels and dies because of bugs eating its core, that seed directed the tree to handle it in that way. When you visit this tree after thirty years, it will look nothing like the acorn it started as. But everything you see, from the shape of the leaves, to the bark that is falling off, to the hollow knot-holes, is all determined in relation to the values stored in that original acorn. To borrow a phrase from the King, “Values are like fingerprints. Nobody’s are the same, but you leave ’em all over everything you do.”
And humans are no different.
> Of course we are different. Are you trying to say we are like dice or acorns?
Of course we are. At the nuclear level we are all just atoms. And below that, electrons, protons, and neutrons. On a larger scale, the study of human DNA and genomes is really just an attempt to determine our individual seed values. The arguments about “nature versus nurture” is a way to separate the inherent value of one’s innate self and the things outside of us that cause us to react in a certain way. But that reaction is based on the seed we already carry. That value we are born with, that we come into existence carrying in our very being.
> What of free will?
Free will is a most useful illusion that we provide ourselves with, based on our own innate value. We are programmed to believe in it (either internally or in response to external stimuli) because of what we cannot change about ourselves. Let me give you an analogy.
When computers were first asked to create random numbers, they struggled to generate a truly random sequence. Why?
> Because they are merely programmed.
Right.
> But we are not programmed.
Aren’t we? What is DNA then, but a programmed set of instructions?
Back to the point, computers have a few different ways of emulating randomness. As we have found a need for encryption, this need has increased a hundred-fold, but our ways of “programming” randomness are limited to mere emulation (also called pseudorandom number generation), often with disastrous results. It is why early so-called “random” encryption was easily broken by hackers who had some skill and a little time. Patterns emerged.
If you played older computer games and decided to restart a section after a bad beat, you may have noticed that the same bad beat often reoccurs, even though the game is supposed to be random. This is due to what is called a “seed” value and the way random events are commonly calculated buy a computer. While the initial seed may be apparently random (based on the exact millisecond you pressed a key, for example), the next so-called random number is generated by doing a calculation on that number, and then a calculation on that calculated number, and so on. Well, often times, these calculations force any starting number into a consistent loop pattern that is short enough to be recognizable even by humans.
There is a parallel here to what we call “predestination”. No matter where one starts, eventually the results turn out to be the same. We can’t avoid the end result no matter the starting seed value. If the path is short enough, and we know the equations, we can see it coming.
> But we don’t really see things coming.
No, but that is a limitation built into our own core values. We are not programmed to be able to.
External influences are like the pseudorandom number generator calculations. They interact with our core values and create an outcome, determined by the value and the equation. They must provide the end result that occurs.
The concept of encryption naturally leads to the concept of decryption. We decrypt a message by knowing one of the parts of the formula that created it. If we know the original message and the encryption method, or the equation, we can determine the final encrypted sequence. If we know the original message and the encrypted sequence, we can determine what the encryption equation is. And if we know the encryption equation and the encrypted sequence, we can determine the original message.
Similarly, if we can figure out any two of the real world factors, we can determine the third. A person’s core value, the external influences that they have come into contact with, and the final outcome. Give me any two, and we can determine the third.
We can know the outcome by observation. We need only determine one of the others to completely understand the equation. If we determine the outside influences carefully enough, we will be provided with the core value of the person in question. And once we know that core value, we can use it to determine everything about how they will respond to anything.
> And you have done all this? You have… figured it all out?
Indeed, I have.
> So, then, what have you determined?
That you, sir, are the killer.
> You understand all the equations so clearly that you figured out they point to me?
Yes. Well, no. But, you are holding a literal smoking gun right now. The one you just pointed at me this very moment, in fact.
> Ah, yes. Well. Then you should also be able to see where this is headed.
Sadly, yes.
> Whether I commit one murder or two instead, what does it matter in the grand scheme, right?
I suppose that is the way these things are programmed.
> I suppose so. Goodbye, my good man.
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“That was a close one. We almost had to stop the whole experiment, again.”
“No worries, I think we got the programming right this time. I inserted a lot of violence and egotism into the code this time. Anyone who becomes smart enough to figure out too much won’t survive long enough to make it known.”
“Good. I really am tired of having to restart things over and over.”
“You sure you aren’t just still sore about watching the dinosaurs fail again?”
“I liked them, but they seem unfixable. But that’s why we have meteors.”
“There’s still a little time before the next one.”
“True. Let’s see if the humans manage to make it past it this time, shall we?”