• mysterio448
    2
    Hello. Over the course of several years, I have developed a theory to try to explain the mystery of existence. I have actually published an ebook which explains the idea in detail. The explanation that I propose centers around a certain concept which I call "entasy." To introduce this concept, I will provide an excerpt from the book:

    Let me propose an analogy. Let's say you were very bored one day. Searching for a way to while your time away, you find a pair of dice lying around, so you decide to just roll them over and over. With each roll, you come up with various numbers between the numbers 2 and 12. There is never any order or sequence to the numbers you get – they are just random numbers. Now let's say that, after a while, you roll the dice at one point and you get a 2, you roll again and get a 3, then a 4, then 5, 6, 7, 8 all the way to 12 in perfect consecutive sequence. You find this very strange, as they are just a normal, un-rigged pair of dice, and you lack the precise muscle control to deliberately make the dice fall in this manner. Nevertheless, you keep rolling. As you roll again, the pattern starts again: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and so on. This continues to happen for roll after roll. You even obtain a different pair of dice but the same pattern still keeps happening. At a certain point, you will probably say to yourself "This is impossible!" or "How is this happening?"

    But why are you surprised by this event? It is probably because you understand the rolling of a normal pair of dice to be an activity that operates within the realm of chance. Chance is understood to be devoid of structure and pattern. Thus for a meaningful pattern to unfold immaculately through the random rolling of dice should be virtually impossible. But why? How can we impose restrictions or rules on chance? How can we dictate what chance can or cannot do?

    Here’s an additional thing to consider: Is this event just a strange coincidence or are the dice generating this pattern for some particular reason? Where exactly do we draw the line between a coincidence and a reason? Is there a line at all?

    One might think of the roll of dice to be something that conforms to laws of statistics. But strictly speaking, there are no statistical "laws" in the sense of something that explains what necessarily will occur. Statistics does not produce laws; rather, it produces models. The purpose of these models is to attempt to predict the unpredictable and understand the inscrutable. Statistics is not something that can stipulate what can or cannot happen; it can only map out the way things tend to happen given a large number of instances.

    How long, would you say, can this strange dice behavior last? Technically speaking, nothing in probability is impossible. The pattern could go on forever. But our everyday experience with random behavior seems to tell us that this will not happen. We know intuitively that, although randomness has no strict rules, there is still a certain regimen that we expect randomness to follow. The dice will generally yield a pattern-less progression in which there is no meaningful relationship between successive numbers. There may be occasional instances where you may roll a series of consecutive numbers (or even a series of the same number or a repeating sequence of different numbers), but you would expect such instances to be rare and short-lived. But exactly how many times are the dice “allowed” to yield consecutive numbers before they must return to their normal regimen of unpredictability? Exactly how much repetition is allowed before "random" is no longer random? How do we precisely measure the "pull" of randomness and the "pull" of structure?

    With this analogy in mind, consider the idea that maybe randomness and structure are not mutually exclusive or distinctly separate things, but are intermingled somehow. My belief is that the universe in which we live is a mysterious harmony and unity between randomness and structure, chance and purpose, between what could be and what is meant to be.


    This idea is the foundation of my book. Regarding things such as predictability, structure, meaningfulness, usefulness and so on, I group these together into a phenomenon I call "order." Regarding things such as unpredictability, randomness, meaninglessness, futility and so on, I group these together into a phenomenon I call "chaos." Order and chaos are cosmic forces. They are the opposite of each other, yet paradoxically they form a primal, inseparable union. I call this union "entasy." In a way, entasy is similar to phenomena such as spacetime, electromagnetism, mass-energy equivalence, and the wave-particle duality. These scientific phenomena are each composed of two things which are very different from each other, yet the two things are simultaneously the same thing, forming an inseparable union. Such is the same with entasy.

    I describe the relationship between order and chaos as a tension, like a game of tug-of-war. Regarding the dice-rolling analogy, the "pull" that causes the dice to want to produce random results is the pull of chaos, and the "pull" that causes the dice to want to produce an ordered sequence is the pull of order.


    One paradoxical fact about chaos is that it has the potential to produce order. This can be demonstrated by many examples. For example, take snowflakes. Snowflakes are beautiful, ornate, symmetrical designs that materialize out of random activity in clouds. Another example is gemstones, which are orderly-shaped minerals that materialize from random geological processes. The sphericity of stars, planets and moons is a product of the force of order emerging from the chaos of mindless astronomical activity. Another interesting example of this is in the phenomena of supernovas and black holes. Both of these are extremely destructive and chaotic phenomena, yet strangely they are also orderly. The intense temperatures and energy of a supernova explosion is capable of causing enough nuclear fusion to produce elements heavier than iron – something that a star alone cannot do; and supernovas also give off stellar gases that can accumulate into nebulae, which can eventually give birth to new stars. A black hole is also orderly in that it is said to be the ordering mechanism at the center of many galaxies, holding the galaxy's stars together with its gravitational pull; and a black hole also emits jets of particles which can lead to the production of new stars. Nuclear decay is a completely random and unpredictable phenomenon at the molecular level but is predictable and regular at the specimen level. Probably the most fascinating example of order from chaos is evolution by natural selection. Natural selection has created the diverse array of life forms that exist on Earth. These life forms all possess a distinct sense of form and design and functionality, yet paradoxically all of this hinges upon the chaos of genetic accidents called "mutations."

    We can see this harmony between order and chaos in the delicate balance between life and death, creation and destruction, that exists in nature. The survival of some members of a population often depends on the death of others. Some species emerge while others go extinct. We can see this harmony in our very way of life: in order to maintain our own bodies we must kill, butcher and dissolve the bodies of other living beings. We can see this harmony in our own bodies: some of our hairs die and fall off as others emerge, dying skin cells are replaced by new ones, internal organ tissues are likewise in a constant state of renewal. Death and life, destruction and creation cooperate together. This is all part of the harmony/unity between order and chaos.

    Sometimes in our lives, circumstances can play out in such a way that something useful or helpful occurs in a way that seems statistically unlikely. Other times, events can play out in a way that seems to be sending one a message that is meaningful and relevant to one's circumstances. When these kinds of things happen, it's like events are being orchestrated by supernatural forces. These phenomena are referred to as "serendipity" and "synchronicity", respectively. As utility and meaningfulness out of randomness, both of these phenomena are examples of entasy.

    This emergence of order from chaos is a result of something I call the "randomness paradox." The idea is this: the nature of chaos is to be unpredictable, but it would be predictable for chaos to be *consistently* doing chaotic things, so therefore chaos – in order to be chaos – must at some point do something non-chaotic, i.e. orderly. One example of this is the decimal number of pi. Pi is an irrational number whose decimal is an infinite, random number sequence. But interestingly, there are rare points in pi where the sequence briefly stops being random and transitions to a limited sequence of repeated numbers. One of these points is known as the "Feynman point"; it is a sequence of six consecutive nines (999999) occurring at the 762nd decimal point of pi. There are more sequences like this in the decimal of pi. One might think that such sequences are merely "accidents," statistically inevitable instances of randomness stumbling upon structure. But I think there is much more to it than that. I think it is the result of entasy.

    On the other hand, another important feature of entasy is that order has the potential to yield chaos – orderly things and orderly processes often have a tendency to fall apart. This is a phenomenon I refer to as "Murphy's law." Murphy's law is essentially the opposite of the randomness paradox. While the randomness paradox is often difficult to detect in practical, everyday life, Murphy's law is often readily observable. One obvious example is the fact that mistakes happen. Mistakes are a phenomenon that we just take for granted, but I believe they actually have cosmic implications. When we make mistakes or when plans don't turn out the way they are supposed to, this is an example of chaos emerging from order. Murphy's law also manifests in our own bodies; this is the reason that life forms are subject to various diseases, disorders, deformities, and defects. When we see people with things like multiple sclerosis, panic disorders, stuttering, blindness, retardation and so forth, we may just accept these things as simply endemic parts of the human condition, and we think no further about them. However, I argue that such ailments ought to be looked at in a different light – they indicate cosmic forces.


    This is a brief overview of the concept of entasy. I theorize that this entasy concept is the key to understanding why we exist, as well as why anything exists and why things exist in the way they exist. People often contemplate the reason for the universe's existence apart from the mundane details of reality which we observe everyday; however, I argue that the little details of this universe in which we live are actually crucial to understanding the *raison d'etre* of the universe.

    What are your thoughts about this idea? Any questions, comments, criticisms? Do you think that this explains our existence?

    (P.S. I don't know if I'm allowed to mention or give a link to the book on this forum. I will give it if anyone is interested.)
  • apokrisis
    6.8k
    I describe the relationship between order and chaos as a tension, like a game of tug-of-war. Regarding the dice-rolling analogy, the "pull" that causes the dice to want to produce random results is the pull of chaos, and the "pull" that causes the dice to want to produce an ordered sequence is the pull of order.mysterio448

    The idea that existence is a unity of opposites, the pairing of chaos and order, or flux and logos, goes back to the first metaphysical speculation of Ancient Greece. Check our Anaximander and Heraclitus especially.

    But I think where you run into problems is imagining the situation as two kinds of "pulls" as that puts you back into a reductionist metaphysics of causal forces. You have a literal antagonism of one thing against another thing rather than a complementary pair of things, each of which is essential to the other in a way that justifies talk of a resulting unity or synergy.

    So the complementary way of talking about this is constraints vs degrees of freedom. Order is the structure that emerges in development to regulate chaos or randomness, giving it concrete shape. You start with complete spontaneity - Anaximander's unbounded Apeiron. Then it begins to divide and get organised in intelligible fashions.

    Anaximander's version said first the hot separated from the cold, then the resulting dry separated from the moist. You wind up with the four elements - dry heat being fire, dry cold being air, wet heat being water, wet cold being earth.

    Anyway, this dialectical approach to metaphysics is literally how metaphysics got started. And it is now a well modelled concept in physics - especially in condensed matter physics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and other "order out of chaos" approaches.

    And does your dice story fly when there is no reason to expect a "pull" in terms of order at all. The point of a die is to design out the possibility of a correlation between outcomes. The goal is to make a "machine" that maximises our uncertainty by creating a symmetry among the alternatives.

    So nature is being constrained in a special way - one that conforms to a reductionist definiton of randomness as a defined or bounded ensemble of possibilities.

    It is actually a cartoon version of spontaneity or actual "pure chaos" when you think about it.

    This can be demonstrated by many examples. For example, take snowflakes. Snowflakes are beautiful, ornate, symmetrical designs that materialize out of random activity in clouds. Another example is gemstones, which are orderly-shaped minerals that materialize from random geological processes. The sphericity of stars, planets and moons is a product of the force of order emerging from the chaos of mindless astronomical activity.mysterio448

    Yep, these are all examples of the new physics. But the metaphysics is understood as that of collective and emergent constraints on local degrees of freedom. Spontaneous symmetry breaking.

    The theory exists.

    There are more sequences like this in the decimal of pi. One might think that such sequences are merely "accidents," statistically inevitable instances of randomness stumbling upon structure.mysterio448

    Or rather this shows that even "chaos" is bounded. The kind of chaos we can model statistically is not "pure chaos" as the very idea of statistics imposes constraints on uncertainty. If nothing else, we have to draw a boundary around a collection of events and say that is the system we are now measuring. So the structure arises from at least some kind of minimal constraints being imposed in a way that results in something to be measured.

    If 9 becomes a number that can be rolled, then strings of 9s must occur periodically in a fashion that is itself certain as a "sufficiently random excursion from the mean". You would start to suspect your random number generator if it failed to produce enough such sequences according to a formula you could calculate.

    Murphy's law is essentially the opposite of the randomness paradox.mysterio448

    Again, this isn't a surprise but a prediction if you adopt a metaphysics based on constraints of freedoms. If nature is inherently spontaneous, then that spontaneity only ever gets limited, never eliminated.

    So that is the power of a complementary approach. One thing already accounts for the other. Order includes these mistakes. Limits only limit them to being on the whole insignificant as perturbations. Disorder is suppressed to the degree that it can cause much actual disruption.
  • mysterio448
    2
    But I think where you run into problems is imagining the situation as two kinds of "pulls" as that puts you back into a reductionist metaphysics of causal forces. You have a literal antagonism of one thing against another thing rather than a complementary pair of things, each of which is essential to the other in a way that justifies talk of a resulting unity or synergy. — apokrisis

    I stated in the OP that there is a harmony/unity between order and chaos. The relationship between them is mysterious; they are contentious opposites but are also inseparable, like yin and yang.

    And does your dice story fly when there is no reason to expect a "pull" in terms of order at all. The point of a die is to design out the possibility of a correlation between outcomes. The goal is to make a "machine" that maximises our uncertainty by creating a symmetry among the alternatives. — apokrisis

    The dice story isn't really meant to be taken literally. It is just a thought experiment to make the reader think more deeply about what randomness really is.
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