the Teh of Tao

- 13 -

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is a dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
you position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don't see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.  

stick no bills on Tao

black boxed Tao method

D: Daddy, what’s a black box?

F: A “black box” is a conventional agreement between scientists to stop trying to explain things at a certain point. I guess it’s usually a temporary agreement.

D: But that doesn’t sound like a black box.

F: No—but that’s what it’s called. Things often don’t sound like their names.

D: No.

F: It’s a word that comes from the engineers. When they draw a diagram of a complicated machine, they use a sort of shorthand. Instead of drawing all the details, they put a box to stand for a whole bunch of parts and label the box with what that bunch of parts is supposed to do.

D: So a “black box” is a label for what a bunch of things are supposed to do….

F: That’s right. But it’s not an explanation of how the bunch works.

D: And gravity?

F: Is a label for what gravity is supposed to do. It’s not an explanation of how it does it.

D: Oh.

Metalogue: "What is an instinct?"

Two are the methods that classical science has used with great success for simple and complicated systems. The question is wheter these methods can also be used for complex systems.

The first, reductionism and its inverse, constructionism, was rated inadequate by the work of Anderson.

The second is the black box method, historically derived from the theory of electronic systems, but widely studied and generalized in the first cybernetics, in particolare da Ross Ashby.

In the approach of the black box we know nothing about the interior of the system, we can only access it through the entrances where the introduction of in-put tand observe the outputs where to gather the out-put. This is a very common situation in physics, electronics, systems theory but also in biology, medicine and psychology, where the system undergoes a cause and effects are observed, reactions to a stimulus etc.. For example, an entire approach to psychology, the behaviorism, is entirely based on the black box, as well as medical drug testing procedures.

x	f	y
input	operation	output
indipendent variable	function	dipendent variable
cause	natural law	effect
minor premise	major premise	conclusion
stimulus	organism	reaction
reason	character	action
goal	system	behavior

A black box system is characterized by a input-output relation through an operator f which to any input x provides the output y: y=f(x).

trivial determined machine

If the operator f is known, by form or function or of the output/input relation for all inputs of interest, then the system is completely determined. Conversely, if f is unknown, and this applies in almost all cases, the way to determine it is to introduce input values to the inputs and observe the corresponding output values on output.

VonFoerster calls the black box "machine" and divides the machines into two categories, those without internal states and those with internal states, defining the first trivial and the second non-trivial machines.
In trivial machines one introduces a certain number of input values x1 x2 x3 ... and will collect the corresponding output values y1 y2 y3 ... If at an input value xn is always and only associated an output value yn, then the machine is history independent (it is a system without memory), is determined in a synthetic way, that is that machine has been designed to operate in that specific way and only in that way, it is analytically determinable, that is given a certain number of input values the machine is fully known and describable, and finally is predictable; that's why Von Foerster defines it trivial. In the example of figure if we give an input value A we get an output value B, if we give B we get C and so on, if we supply again on the first input A we'll get again B etc. In general, the machine is described by tables which associate with each xi of interest the corresponding yi.

If the machine has only one input and one output, then given an input value x1 with the corresponding value y1=f(x1) the machine is fully described for that value. If we have two inputs and two input values x1 and x2 to completely describe the machine is necessary to observe the outputs with the permutations x1x1, x1x2, x2x1, x2x2. In general, if N is the number of inputs (assumed equal to that of outputs) the number of input configuration to be calculated to completely describe the machine is N^N. For a machine with 4 inputs  and 4 outputs there are 4⁴=256 different configurations to compute, for a one with 10 input s and 10 outputs there are 10¹⁰=10 billions configurations; assuming that to compute one it is necessary one microsecond, one millionth of second, namely that any configuration is computable at any MIPS (million instructions per second), a 70s computer at 1 MIPS took 10000 seconds, namely little less than three hours to compute all the possible configurations, one of the 80s at 10 MIPS about 16 minutes, a Pentium III  less than  two minutes and a Pentium 4 about 1 second. The trivial machine seems to confirm the statement of Atlan that for a complicated system, having sufficient resources of time and money, you can come to have complete knowledge.

As  Von Foerster tells when we buy a any machine - a car, a blender, a washing machine - we expect, and the seller is ready to confirm, it's a trivial machine; then one day you turn the key and nothing happens, or press a button and floods the house, then go to a mechanic or technician and ask him to make the machine again trivial.

The black box model with trivial machine is and has been a successful tool in the analysis of simple and complicated systems, and its natural extrapolation is to add internal states in the machine to try to use it for complex systems. The presence of internal states within the system (with only one internal state we have the trivial machine) is one of the features of complex systems.

non-trivial internal states machine

In this case the black box system has no more one but two input/output operators: ithe first y=f(x,z) gives the output value as a function of the x and of the internal state z, the second one z=g(x,z1) gives the new internal state of the machine as a function of input x and of the previous internal state z1.

Proceeding as before with the trivial machine, providing an input x1 does not mean that the output is always y1, but can be any output y1z depending on the internal state z which at that time has the machine, state that can be modified by any of the input.

The number of configurations that must be calculated to provide a complete knowledge of the internal state machine is not great as in the trivial machines, neither astronomical, it is meta-astronomical. In the case of 2 inputs, 2 outputs and 2 internal states the possible configurations are 2¹⁶=65536, a number which is easily computable, but at the next step with 4 inputs, 4 outputs and 2 internal states the configurations  become 2⁸¹⁹²=10²⁴⁶⁶; to try to evaluate this number considering that the age of universe (around 13 billions years) expressed in seconds is about 10¹⁷ seconds and that to 2010 the most powerful supercomputer with parallel multi-processors (Tianhe-1A with 186368 core processors Intel EM64T Xeon X56xx at 2930 MHz with a 229376 GB memory) had a computing speed of about petaFLOPS, namely about 10¹⁸ floating point operations per second and assuming that an input configuration can be computed with 10 FLOPS we have that to compute the total number of 10²⁴⁶⁶ configurations is required a time 10²⁴³² times the age of the universe.

As Von Foerster says: "... I highly recommend you not to undertake such an enterprise ... you'll loose time, money ... everything".
The non-trivial machine is determined in a synthetic way as the trivial ones, it is dependent from history due to its internal states, it is analytically indeterminable, as clear from the example, and finally it is umpredictable, like all complex systems.

TRIVIAL MACHINE	NON TRIVIAL MACHINE
input-output stimulus-response	It has internal states that influence what it will do. When acting on it, it can change its internal state. With the same previous imput, not necessarily it will act in the same way.
It is determined in a synthetic way: when it was built, it was determined the way in which it was working.	Determined in a synthetic way: we can build it as we want
Analytically determinable: if analyzed, it produces a determined result.	Analythically indeterminable
Independent from history: whatever is the applied input, it does not remember it following the previous laws.	Dependent from history
Predictable: when given a certain input, we know wht the machine will do.	Unpredictable

As Von Foerster tells Ross Ashby had built a machine of this type and used it to assess students who applied to work with him. It was a machine with two inputs, two outputs and four internal states and was presented as an innocuous small metal box with two switches (inputs), two light bulbs (the output) and was powered by batteries.

During the interview, Ashby casually suggested to the student: "Why not see to understand how this box works?". The student was not very impressed - two switches, two lamps - and began to work and take down input /output tables. Let's say this happened at three in the afternoon. Ashby came home about six o'clock and returned to the office the next morning at seven. If the student was not there, was then asked "What happened with that problem?" and if the student told him he worked until midnight did not understand anything and was gone bored Ashby thought "It's not my man". If the student was there exhausted, sleepless, with a greenish color, surrounded by hundreds of tables he would say, 'You're tough, interested, but let me give you a hint: you'll never solve this problem ".

The simple Ashby machine is perhaps the most concrete physical object that can represent the abstract mathematical concept of infinity. In general, the definition of infinity is represented through the concept of limit, but in the physical reality, even considering astronomical numbers such, for example, the estimated (uncertain) total number of atoms in the visible universe, that is  10⁷⁹  - 10⁸⁵ , or the estimation of the computational capacity of the entire universe calculated by Lloyd in 10¹²⁰ elementary logical operations with an accumulation of information as to 10⁹⁰ bits, one does not get the meta-stronomical numbers of the simple Ashby non-trivial machine.

Computational capacity of the universe

Seth Lloyd

Phys.Rev.Lett. 88 (2002)

Merely by existing, all physical systems register information. And by evolving dynamically in time, they transform and process that information.The laws of physics determine the amount of information that a physical system can register (number of bits) and the number of elementary logic operations that a system can perform (number of ops). The universe is a physical system. This paper quantifies the amount of information that the universe can register and the number of elementary operations that it can have performed over its history. The universe can have performed no more than 10^120 ops on 10^90 bits

The W. Ross Ashby Digital Archive

The Heinz von Foerster Page

i feel good, i feel bad, i feel Tao

is a matter of quality
or a formality
I do not remember well, a formality
  like to decide to shave the hair
to eliminate coffee, cigarettes
to do away with someone
or something, a formality formality
or a quality issue
I'm fine I'm sick
I do not know how to be
I do not know where to stay
do not study do not work do not watch TV
I do not go to the movies do not sport
I'm good I'm bad I do not know
what to do I do have nor art nor part
I have nothing to teach
is a matter of quality
or a formality
I do not remember well, a formality

the number of Tao is not the quantity of Tao

NUMBER IS DIFFERENT FROM QUANTITY

This difference is basic for any sort of theorizing behavioral science, for any sort of imagining of what goes on between organisms or inside organisms as part of their processes of thought.
Numbers are the product of counting. Quantities are the product of measurement. This means that numbers can conceivably be accurate because there is a discontinuity between each integer and the next. Between two and three, there is a jump. In the case of quantity, there is no such jump; and because jump is missing in the world of quantity, it is impossible for any quantity to be exact. You can have exactly three tomatoes. You can never have exactly three gallons of water. Always quantity is approximate.
Even when number and quantity are clearly discriminated, there is another concept that must be recognized and distinguished from both number and quantity. For this other concept, there is, I think, no English word, so we have to be content with remembering that there is a subset of patterns whose members are commonly called "numbers." Not all numbers are the products of counting. Indeed, it is the smaller, and therefore commoner, numbers that are often not counted but recognized as patterns at a single glance. Card-players do not stop to count the pips in the eight of spades and can even recognize the characteristic patterning of pips up to "ten."
In other words, number is of the world of pattern, gestalt, and digital computation; quantity is of the world of analogic and probabilistic computation.
Some birds can somehow distinguish number up to seven. But whether this is done by counting or by pattern recognition is not known. The experiment that came closest to testing this difference between the two methods was performed by Otto Koehler with a jackdaw. The bird was trained to the following routine: A number of small cups with lids are set out. In these cups, small pieces of meat are placed. Some cups have one piece of meat, some have two or three, and some cups have none. Separate from the cups, there is a plate on which there is a number of pieces of meat greater that the total number of pieces in the cups. The jackdaw learns to open each cup. Taking off the lid, and then eats any pieces of meat that are in the cup. Finally, when he has eaten all the meat in the cups, he may go to the plate and there eat the same number of pieces of meat that he got form the cups. The bird is punished if he eats more meat from the plate than was in the cups. This routine he is able to learn.
Now, the question is: is the jackdaw counting the pieces of meat, or is he using some alternative method of identifying the number of pieces? The experiment has been carefully designed to push the bird toward counting. His actions are interrupted by his
having to lift the lids, and the sequence has been further confused by having some cups contain more than one piece of meat and some contain none. By these devices, the experimenter has tried to make it impossible for the jackdaw to create some sort of pattern or rhythm by which to recognize the number of pieces of meat. The bird is thus forced, so far as the experimenter could force the matter, to count the pieces of meat.
It is still conceivable, of course, that the taking of the meat from the cups becomes some sort of rhythmic dance and that this rhythm is in some way repeated when the bird takes the meat from the plate. The matter is still conceivably in doubt, but on the whole, the experiment is rather convincing in favor of the hypothesis that the jackdaw is counting the pieces of meat rather than recognizing a pattern either of pieces or of his own actions.
It is interesting to look at the biological world in terms of this question: Should the various instances in which number is exhibited by regarded as instances of gestalt, of counted number, or of mere quantity? There is a rather conspicuous difference between, for example, the statement "This single rose has five petals, and it has five sepals, and indeed its symmetry is of a pentad pattern" and the statement "This rose has one hundred and twelve stamens, and that other has ninety-seven, and this has only sixty-four." The process which controls the number of stamens is surely different from the process that controls the number of petals or sepals. And, interestingly, in the double rose, what seems to have happened is that some of the stamens have been converted into petals, so that the process for determining how many petals to make has now become, not the normal process delimiting petals to a pattern of five, but more like the process determining the quantity of stamens. We may say that petals are normally "five" in the single rose but that stamens are "many" where "many" is a quantity that will vary from one rose to another.
With this difference in mind, we can look at the biological world and ask what is the largest number that the processes of growth can handle as a fixed pattern, beyond which the matter is handled as quantity. So far as I know, the "numbers" two, three, four, and five are the common ones in symmetry of plants and animals, particularly in radial symmetry.
The reader may find pleasure in collecting cases of rigidly controlled or patterned numbers in nature. For some reason, the larger numbers seem to be confined to linear series of segments, such as the vertebrae of mammals, the abdominal segments of insects, and the anterior segmentation of earthworms. (At the front end, the segmentation is rather rigidly controlled down to the segments bearing genital organs. The numbers vary with the species but may reach fifteen. After that, the tail has "many" segments.) An interesting addition to these observations is the common circumstance that an organism, having chosen a number for the radial symmetry of some set of parts, will repeat that number in other parts. A lily has three sepals and then three petals and then six stamens and a trilocular ovary.
It appears that what seemed to be a quirk or peculiarity of human operation - namely, that we occidental humans get numbers by counting or pattern recognition while we get quantities by measurement - turns out to be some sort of universal truth. Not only the
jackdaw but also the rose are constrained to show that for them, too - for the rose in its anatomy and for the jackdaw in its behavior (and, of course, in its vertebral segmentation) - there is this profound difference between numbers and quantity.
What does this mean? That question is very ancient and certainly goes back to Pythagoras, who is said to have encountered a similar regularity in the relation between harmonics.
The hexago-rectangle discussed in section 5 provides a means of posing these questions. We saw, in that case, that the components of description could be quite various. In that particular case, to attach more validity to one rather than to another way of organizing the description would be to indulge illusion. But in this matter of biological numbers and quantities, it seems that we encounter something more profound. Does this case differ from that of the hexago-rectangle? And if so, how?
I suggest that neither case is as trivial as the problems of the hexago-rectangle seemed to be at first sight. We go back to the eternal verities of Saint Augustine: "Listen to the thunder of that saint, in about A.D. 500: 7 and 3 are 10; 7 and 3 have always been 10; 7 and 3 at no time and in no way have ever been anything but 10; 7 and 3 will always be 10."

No doubt, in asserting the contrast between numbers and quantities, I am close to asserting an eternal verity, and Augustine would surely agree.
But we can replay to the saint, "Yes, very true. But is that really what you want and mean to say? It is also true, surely, that 3 and 7 are 10, and that 2 and 1 and 7 are 10, and that 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 and 1 are 10. In fact, the eternal verity that you are trying to assert is much more general and profound than the special case used by you to carry that profound message." But we can agree that the more abstract eternal verity will be difficult to state with unambiguous precision.
In other words, it is possible that many of the ways of describing my hexago-rectangle could be only different surfacings of the same more profound and more general tautology (where Euclidean geometry is viewed as a tautological system).
It is, I think, correct to say, not only that the various phrasings of the description of the hexago-rectangle ultimately agree about what the describers thought they saw but also that there is an agreement about a single more general and profound tautology in terms of which the various descriptions are organized.
In this sense, the distinction between numbers and quantities is, I believe, nontrivial and is shown to be so by the anatomy of the rose with its "5" petals and its "many" stamens, and I have put quotation marks into my description of the rose to suggest that the names of the numbers and of the quantities are the surfacing of formal ideas, immanent within the growing rose.

winter Tao

double physics Tao

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign