Someone once asked me if resonance in the brain implies a certain viability to a field of endeavor or a project.. My response is that all it implies for certain is a certain degree of viability to the functioning brain. That answer, though correct, is an easy out, neglecting all philosophical facets of from where resonance comes. Is there a morality to resonance? Does it imply anything with spirituality? Is there such a thing as spirituality? I am making this tiny post to open a new dimension to this blog — I will begin to look into the philosophical implications of static pattern engineering, as well as the more mechanistic, scientific, and technical dimensions of it (as the blog originally intended). These posts will fit into the ‘Philosophical’ category — this post merely qualifies as an announcement.
After a long writing drought (mainly due to busyness (business) but then the subsequent ‘I don’t have time to write a post’ excuses), this blog has appeared dead. Rest assured, active work is continuing. I’ll have some exciting posts coming up, but before then (see, I don’t have time to write currently), I am going to drop riddles and quick questions — I’ll call these ‘stub posts’ — that hint at future content or orient your mind toward an area I will soon discuss.
Today’s Stub Post:
What separates an Artist, an Artisan, and an Artificer in the expression of an Art into the world? How do resonance, operators, and transforms inform this process?
Accompanying thought:
“It is the job of the artist…to think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say.” — Howard Zinn
If that is the job of the artist, what is the job of the artisan?
UPDATE: The post that completes this stub post is PatternSmiths, Static Pattern Engineers, and Architects.
Over the past several weeks, I’ve returned to a lost concept and discipline that composed the core of SPE at one time and I have since realized is an essential part. This concept/discipline is called Dissolving and I will describe it in a later post. For now, I just want to give the essential synthesis I have done recently to show why a return to it is essential.
I’m going to redefine two terms from psychology for the means of making a simpler paradigm for discussion — these terms are ‘Reflex‘ and ‘Unconditioned‘. In classical behavioral psychology, we have conditioned responses and unconditioned responses. The unconditioned responses are innate to a species (e.g., human beings, geese, african or european swallows) [1a]. Conditioned responses are learned by ‘hooking attention’ (this is one of those ‘iceberg phrases’ I will use to signify that a massive structure of useful theory lies below the surface and will be a ‘complex to crack open’ (using one of my best friend’s favorite phrases) later) [1b].
So we have learned behavior and inherent behavior. Not only for linguistic purposes, but for a deep level of integration with core SPE theory, I like to call these behaviors and responses reactions (for now, just assume I’m using a linguistic sleight of hand). I am going to use the term reflexive reaction to define any reaction or behavior that has assumed some degree of automaticity — where the degrees of freedom have been yielded either by choice, by genetics, or subconsciously. Like most terms in SPE, I want to use the notion of ‘degree of’ to qualify and quantify how much this definition is true for a particular instance or event. Thus, for an innate reflex (e.g., if I tap your knee with a rubber hammer) there is an extremely high degree of reflexivity (with little choice) but for a learned behavior it can be considerably lower because a mental choice (a degree of freedom) still exists. Note that at the point of learning a new reflex (those awkward moments of knowledge acquisition), the degree of reflexivity could possibly be nearly zero (unless the new behavior is a combination of previously reflexive behaviors, but even then it is much lower than the sum of the parts).
Now – the problem with observing behavior externally is the same as was addressed in previous posts: we are looking at the individual once action has taken place (a knee jerk, a survival reflex, job interview responses to practiced questions, a complex defense against a political coup). Just as I expanded the criteria for knowledge from ‘information with potential for action’ to ‘information with potential to produce effects’ (see the Towers of Knowledge, Part One post), I would also like to, as a first slice, define a reaction as a ‘response capable of producing effects’ (which may produce variable actions). To use a mundane and easily graspable example, I’ve learned that if I grow extremely tired, I can respond with a cup of coffee. This usually involves a quite careful choice (is it 11pm at night? how much coffee have I had today?) — if it doesn’t, and there is a high degree of automatization (a high degree of reflexivity), you could say there is an addiction at play. This example has both an observable action from a person (getting the coffee) and a learned effect from the response (increased alertness unless the coffee is decaf). What I want to stress is that the effect is of primary importance and it is only because the action is tied to the intended effect by some mechanism (in this case, the tie is pharmacological) that the action has any importance at all. If I were aware of about a dozen equally effective actions that spanned approximately the same amount of time, then really my action would only be a matter of choice.
Even though I have requalified with an emphasis toward effect, my example of learned behavior does however manifest in an action that interacts with the ‘outside’ world [2] (drinking the coffee), but I used this to make it more tangible. To truly extend the notion of what a reaction is to the bounds required for SPE analysis later, I want to show that a learned reaction need not result in any external action whatsoever [3]. If instead the scope of the system that is affected by the reaction is only the mind of the learner, then we have a reflex that has little or no outside manifestation/action whatsoever. A good example of this is the ‘self-calming’ behavior we often learn on our own in childhood (which may have language structure or not, may have overt action if it calls attention or not).
As an aside, this is a good opportunity to talk about human minds as ‘idiosynchrasies’ or private mixtures of thought, knowledge, and reflexes. From the pragmatic side of human affairs, we often talk about thought, knowledge, or behaviors that serve a common useful function — a sort of ‘agreed to’ matrix of thoughts + actions that forms a common system of thought [4] which you will continue to internalize throughout your life (and which goes through its own evolution as all systems do). What I want to talk about now are the unique ‘survival’ behaviors we invent, concoct, or learn on our own from the moment we begin to interact with the environment. Please note that in doing so, I am flying squarely in the face of the reason why behavioral psychology (or behaviorism) sought to exclude the subjective abstractions of personal mood, emotions, and reflexes — what really mattered was observable behaviors (which I am calling ‘actions’). Let me start by saying that this abstraction started by Watson over a century ago was extremely useful at the time — an idealization that allowed for a tremendous amount of early results. The field has since moved toward a belief that internal and external stimuli influence behavior (reactions) — but the line I am delineating is one in which internal effects (which may lead to present or future observable behavior) change the internal state of consciousness.
So, why am I taking you through this tortuous and careful journey from focusing not on just observable behavior (and therefore action) toward a paradigm of focusing on the reflexive reactions that produce internal or external effects as well as internal or external actions (behaviors) [5]? Quite simply, it is easy to have awareness of one’s observable behavior but to become aware of internal reflexive behavior opens up another realm of possibilities, which I am going to address in the second part of this set of posts: Unconditioned consciousness. This is actually a recent, complete reworking of the theory of resonance that is core to SPE theory. To be honest, I want to postpone discussing it until I’m completely refreshed and ready to write about it… but basically, let me talk narratively and freely about it. I love when this happens in life: Unconditioned consciousness was my ‘first’ slice at resonance a few years back — I considered it too unrefined and coarse at the time (not enough to define it) and thus took a different approach. It was an intuitive flash, however, and my early notes on it describe perfect what I have come to realize after a long and careful approach toward this realization. As happens often in insights, the first glimpse was full and correct, but it would take years to properly qualify it. That side of creativity, to me, is refreshing and fulfilling. The glimpse gives a large blast of energy that can sustain one on an endeavor for months or years of intense concentration — if this didn’t occur throughout my life in different contexts, I doubt I would have taken up half of the projects I have.
FOOTNOTES
[1a] These ‘unconditioned responses’ are often called reflexes (a single operation or response) or fixed action patterns (this is a series of behaviors in a sequence that goes to completion). An example of a reflex which is common to both animals and humans is the natural withdrawal in the opposing direction from a source of pain (i.e., fire, a stab wound, etc). An excellent example of fixed action patterns in female geese: If the female goose sees an egg outside the nest (key stimulus), it will repeatedly drag the egg toward the nest with its beak and neck — this movement will continue until the goose is back in the nest whether a researcher removes the egg or not.
[1b] I do not want to open a can of worms on this one yet, but if interested in further research, google for ‘classical conditioning’ and then ‘operant conditioning’ as a starting point. This thread of discussion will be essential to return to later.
[2] Part of the requalification of SPE will be to do away with the ‘subject-object’ boundary except where absolutely necessary, thus terms like ‘outside world’ will vanish.
[3] The interest in behaviors resulting from external action are simply legacy from our initial and crucial experiments while psychology was emerging as a field, examining both animals and humans. In other words, it was an experimental approach that developed into a theoretical framework.
[4] Here I am using David Bohm’s expanded redefinition of the thought system as explained by Lee Nichol: “The essential relevance of Bohm’s redefinition of thought is the proposal that body, emotion, intellect, reflex, and artifact are now understood as one unbroken field of mutually informing thought.” – this redefinition of the Thought System will be part of a large future discussion.
[5] The notion of internal action has not been described as of yet — let me just qualify it by calling it ‘virtual action’ for now. If you need examples, they are abundant: Visualizing or practicing an event long before it happens, observing behaviors in the outside world as an infant (thus internalizing them) before even attempting to produce or mimic them (this includes spoken language — which is an action in itself), planning/declaring/plotting an action, etc.. I am relegating this notion to a footnote even though it has intense interest for me and will for you later — it simply clouds an already complicated topic. But this will lead to the ‘in order to’ Operator and its associated Transforms later in discussions.
In Knowledge Management circles, Knowledge is often defined as “Information with potential for action”. Static Pattern Engineering used to share that definition; however, it has been refined in the last year to “Information with potential to produce effects” which is a larger net to qualify knowledge. The discussion of effects will be a much more longer thread this year in the blog entries — but for now I will just say that knowledge does not always produce action; however, a chain of knowledge components can be combined to produce a series of effects which causes action. What acts and what is acted upon is actually what defines which of the three domains you are analyzing or seeking to change: Physical, Cognitive, or Virtual.
This shift is essential to get to the level of granularity that SPE seeks to obtain, and this micro-level granularity leads naturally to a discussion of how knowledge is often organized. We will start with the Tower of Knowledge metaphor — to friends I have presented it a multitude of ways, but my goal on this blog is to express it in the most concise way. Therefore, I feel best it is best to use the metaphorical picture that produced it:
When you embark on a study of anything, you will find, whether to your delight or your dismay, that unless the field is entirely new (i.e., has just been created in the last five years) there will be a group of ‘seminal books’ that have been created on the subject. To find out if you truly enjoy this field, it will be suggested to absorb these seminal books, whether it is by the guidance of a curriculum (in an academic institution or any organized program) or the prompting of industry experts or gurus. Whatever the order of the books suggested to you, you can take these books and stack them on the ground. If chapters or sections are omitted, picture cutting those out of the binding.
What you have before you is a physical representation of the Tower of Knowledge your mind must conquer. If you conquer this tower and can demonstrate (whether by certified testing services or application in a field) you did so, you will have accomplished a great deal. In some curricula, you may vary the order of the floors you climb or the breadth and depth of the building may be changed such that the bottom floor is five books wide with one of your choosing (from an approved list) and the other floors may vary in arrangement. The floors or set of floors may carry different titles like ‘Apprentice’, …., ‘Master’, or they may have no title at all.
You may have a guide through these floors, as in an institution where someone professes the essence (hopefully) of the knowledge contained in these books to you, or you may be guiding yourself. All in all, no matter the case, the fact that your mind is climbing this structured tower is a worthy endeavour.
Yet, how will you know before you take the journey whether you will enjoy the knowledge that is interwoven into this Tower? Based on the previous post of Resonant Knowledge, how will you know beforehand if you will truly resonate with the knowledge contained in this tower? If these knowledge components will be what is used and executed throughout your daily life if this is for a vocation (or way of life), would it not be best to know beforehand that due to resonance there is a strong likelihood that your mind will be energized enough to produce extraordinary results/effects from that knowledge?
Looking at professors, it is easy to spot those who chose the right tower to climb because of the way that they resonate with the knowledge they transmit to students. It is equally obvious to spot those who at the very least are asked to transmit a section of the tower they do not resonate with, or at the very worst simply climbed the wrong tower.
The boundary case that has always been of interest in SPE is those who resonate with a high proportion of the knowledge of the tower they have surmounted. These individuals are especially valuable to us as a society — they are the consultant in a certain industry that your company must hire and who produces tremendous results, they are the professors in the university that everyone recommends to each other, they are the ones who fully immerse themselves in their vocation as if they were playing instead of working.
The opposite case is something we’d like to avoid for all involved for obvious reasons. Usually a crisis will invoke abandoning that tower via a career change or otherwise, but that is often painful for the individual undergoing this journey.
Continued in Part Two….
Static Pattern Engineering was originally called Knowledge Engineering — fortuitously, there was already a field with a similar title that seeked to be a strict discipline that took Knowledge Management further and dealt in classifying the exact domains [NOTE: This is going off of recollection -- I never became an expert in the field and that is the point]. Nonetheless, SPE has always centered around the core aspect of knowledge as the main structure of all SPE operations. The cognitive operations on that knowledge are the primary providers of energy for all further operations.
At the time, we were investigating an interesting aspect of human cognition which has many analogues in the physical world: Resonance. I intend to discuss resonance at length in future posts, but for now let’s just qualify it by saying in a resonant state of consciousness an amplified amount of energy is available for present operations. Every human mind is an idiosynchrasy, or private mixture, of knowledge components; however, even if every single human mind had a completely identical mixture of knowledge components (analogous to an identical computer deployment in a corporate environment before a user personalizes it with their own data), I propose that the energetic landscape in relation to that identical mixture would vary from individual to individual. Measuring the energy induced as chunks of knowledge were held in the attentional space of each individual would provide the degree of resonance with those combinations of knowledge.
Central to SPE theory is the assertion that once truly resonant knowledge is discovered, interesting system effects arise in consciousness. One interesting system effect is that a new synthesis created with resonant knowledge will continue to resonate with the creator even though it is in a new, transformed form.
[NOTE TO READERS: I'm playing with a new format for the blogs for a few weeks -- as mentioned in the first post, I am going to sometimes give out complete and coherent monologues on entire topics, while other times I am going to publish cryptic chunks of material. Over the next few weeks, I am going to publish more rapid chunks of information and build them together into larger synthetic posts as I go along. Feedback, as always, is appreciated - privately or publicly.]
Several years ago, led by intuition and instinct, I embarked on an intellectual journey to carve out what I believe will be one of the more important, nascent expansions of the field of engineering. For hundreds of years, we have honed our understanding of the physical laws that govern phenomena in nature into mathematical constructs that could be leveraged by individuals (engineers) to bring about constructed, replicable creations in reality. Throughout the last century, our understanding of two other realms have increased in breadth and depth[1]:
- During the last century, our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that govern the human mind began to emerge, and…
- During the middle of the last century, we were finally able to leverage our partial grasp of those laws to create a virtual working model of those mechanisms where we could recreate, persist, and thereby automate the very products of our thoughts — this was the advent of the computer.
These three domains — the physical, cognitive, and virtual realms — have fascinated me since childhood and attracted me into differing but complementary provinces of knowledge. This study eventually educed a proprioception of the underlying patterns that lie across and between these three domains. I began to get the sense that a new branch of engineering that concerned itself with these underlying patterns would ultimately enrich all other branches of engineering (this complex sequence of thinking will be expanded in greater detail elsewhere). This new branch of engineering would operate with and on these patterns in their abstracted form (apart from their domain of manifestation) and transform them within and cross the respective domains (i.e., physical, virtual, and cognitive) to bring about constructed, replicable creations that span or cycle through these three domains as they evolve. The new branch of engineering would be called Static Pattern Engineering.
[1] Footnote added 01/01/2006: My colleague Galtenberg wisely points out in comments (see comments below) that I made it sound like the virtual and cognitive realms arose during the last century — I appreciate his catch of a possible misunderstanding. From conversations we’ve had in person, he knows I define the virtual realm as existing as soon as human thought could be embedded onto or into physical matter — thus hundreds of years before the 1900s, so he calls me out on that (thank you sir). Please note that I am showing how advances in our _understanding_ of these realms increased asymptotically during the last century, thus making it possible for the emergence of fields like SPE. Anyway, I’ll be talking in depth about the virtual realm/domain and the degree of virtuality that defines it. Also, that the three domains intermingle at the boundaries (as their interconnection makes the obliteration of the subject/object artificial line possible) is central to the thesis that static patterns in fact are transportable between all three. Thanks again Chris for the catch!
