Twitter Break and Update

For months I have been trying to build a metaphysic 14o characters at a time.

How do we synthesize Platonic Forms, Quantum Science, Fractal Geometry, Complex Emergence, Actuarial Science, String Theory, Healthcare Reform, Econometrics, CAPM, Hilbert Space and Schrodinger Waves 140 characters at a time?

Go to twitter.com, philosophize and see.

I've succombed to twitter, and have been neglecting blogger. Go to twitter-philosophize for daily thoughts and I'll continue to blog soon.

The AIG Debacle

Rome is burning and our leaders are stumbling over each other about $150 million in bonuses. These are the same politicians who have quadrupled the federal deficit since 1980. Reagan and the two Bushes produced three times more deficit than all prior President's (yes going back to George Washington).

$150m million is 1/10% of $150 billion. Politicians no longer even read briefs on $150 billion in spending. Does anyone believe they really care about AIG's bonuses?

Holistic Stimulus

It all should be done at once.

The idea of stimulus spending is to stimulate economic growth. Does anyone believe that will happen if we just dump money into exisitng systems which are failing?

That's why the President wisely wants to reform healthcare, education, lobbying, earmarks, and other dimensions of spending simultaneously with stimuli and bailouts.

When 5% of $ 1 trillion goes to "healthcare", it can have $0 effect, $50 billion effect, or $500 billion effect. It all depends on the microfoundations.

Similarly with infrastructure, energy, science and welfare. When we talk about $4 trillion in total spending, how it flows will make the difference between nirvana and doomsday. We could end up with a collapsed, unsustainable economy or a vibrant, sustainable one.

The choice is ours.

Are we willing to invest in models which will show how flows can best be directed to produce a sustainable economy?

Yes we are.

Lee

Beyond Economics

Kenneth Boulding wrote that economics like any science has a pure and empirical part. Economic models often throw light on the "...workings of the intolerable complex of social relationships...".

Max Weber wrote that the relationship between the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism was palpable.

Milton Friedman wrote that while the relationship between economic and political freedom is complex, it is real.

Galbraith broke the bonds between Adam Smith and economic theory, bonds which were strained by Keynesianism.

Now we are faced with a global economic crisis of unknown dimensions. yet we are still using analytical tools and databases more suited to the conditions of Adam Smith's time than our own.

When we begin to recognize that the same methods which physicists have developed to probe the mysterious activity in the nucleus of the atom are available to probe the mysteries of the global economy, we will be on the road to sustainability.

Then we will begin to incorporate population levels and demographics, resource levels and placements, quality as well as quantity of consumption, capital as well as income, and mind as well as body.

When an Obama official testifies that a $ trillion will matter in the long term health of the nation's economy, we will listen because it will be backed up with detail on the flow of funds through the global economy and impacts on employment, welfare, and output. It will be shown to be actuarially sound, probabilistically tested, temporally developed, and layperson coherent (transparent).

We can make the world better, safer, cleaner and happier.

Yes we can.

Lee

The Worldly Philosophers

Economists are on the hotspot regarding getting us out of the global economic mess.

Unfortunately, the profession as a whole is as clueless as they have been in all the crises of the past few decades. They refuse to ignore the power laws, cascades, feedback loops, adaptivity, demographics, Black Swan, Tipping Point, phase transitions, symmetry breaking, uncertainty, temporality, interactivity, multifractal, cluster correlation nature of global finance and economics.

As a result, when anything happens which hasn't happened in the same way before, such as mortgage derivative collapse, international turmoil, terrorism, natural catastrophes and so on, their models miss it and we all suffer.

This is a tragedy because models exist which can handle unforseen events, cluster correlations, demographic shifts, interactions, uncertainty, missing data, and so on.

Physicists have teased out of subatomic behavior the deep patterns which drive physical reality . These patterns involve vibrating particles with wavelike characteristics, clouds of fields connecting the energy patterns, dimensions which explain probabilistic behavior and other activity which transcends human understanding.

Shouldn't they be part of the team charged with helping us jumpstart the global economy?

If you say well, how does subatomic activity impact the global economy?

That is where complexity science comes in.

But, you say, what about social security, healthcare, finance, insurance, and risk?

That is where actuarial science comes in.

We can build a stimulus package which will truly transform the economy in a sustainable way.

We can test and monitor the flows over time and make adjustments as needed.

Yes we can.

Lee

Cosmic Symphony

The world is a symphony of energy, playing out at the subatomic, human, social, and cosmic levels.

The fields, waves, particles, quarks, strings, electrons, photons, and dimensions which dance in and out of existence in the atom are like notes, tones, beats, rhythms, melodies and harmonies, all blending into an elegant and beautiful song called reality.

Jusy as we experience music on different planes of understanding, so it is with life. Our senses, minds, bodies and spirits all react to different aspects of reality in different ways.

Music resonates within the genetic structure of all life. Pitch may be encoded in our DNA.

We are all part of the orchestra of reality which plays from the subatomic to the cosmic level.

Music and mathematics are intimately related. Just as mathematics can tease out patterns of subatomic interaction, it can identify patterns of harmony.

The Music of the Spheres drives heaven and earth in a symphony of beauty, truth, justice, love and harmony.

All of art contributes to this cosmic song. Art and science give us visions of reality. Just as scientific theories emerge from the sweat of scientific research, aesthetic treasures emerge from the sweat of artistic exploration.

Language often fails both in the description and depiction of scientific and aesthetic truth. Metaphors are used to approach an understanding of the meaning of subatomic interaction and aesthetic result.

Philosophers have eternally struggled with distinctions of reality and appearance, subjective and objective, mind and body, particle and wave. Only with the advent of modern science and art can we see that all may be complementary, and at its core everything may be part of a cosmic holism.

In science we use terms like entanglement, symmetry, non locality, fuzzy and probability wave to approach an understanding of an interconnected, multi-dimensional subatomic world. Art uses words like abstract, surreal, absurd, and non-Euclidean to describe the frustration of attempting to reach an aesthetic vision of core reality.

Space, time, matter and energy are no longer the background against which reality plays, but integral parts of reality itself. Artists must revert back to their sense of childlike wonder to capture this new vision of reality.

We are all part of an interconnected web, interdependent and virtual. From Plato to Kant, Shakespeare to Sartre, philosophers have probed the mystery of reality which science is now unveiling.

Cosmic consciousness, web of nature, harmonious universe, song of the heavens, all ways of articulating the new vision.

What a wonderful world if we only let it be.

Lee

Harmonious Bibliography

Any book owes a large debt to all books which preceded it.

In my case, Harmonious Universe emerged from my immersion in:

Affluent Society by Galbraith
Silent Spring by Carson
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Pirsig
Lila by Pirsig

The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant
The Dancing Wu-Li Masters by Zukav
The Tao of Physics by Capra
The Art of Mathematics by King

Chaos by Gleick
Complexity by Waldrop
Fire in the Mind by Johnson
Quantum Self by Zohar

Superforce by Davis
The Elegant Universe by Greene
How to Know God by Chopra
Shakespeare and the Common Understanding by Rabkin

Quantum Theory by Bohm
A Mathematical Bridge by Hewson
Tao of Chaos by Walter
Consilience by Wilson

Art & Physics by Shlain
Hyperspace by Kaku
The Self-Aware Universe by Goswami
The Philosophy of Physics by Torretti

The Quark and the Jaguar by Gell-Mann
At Home in the Universe by Kaufmann
Would be Worlds by Casti
Universals by Armstrong

The Theatre of the Absurd by Esslin
Free to Choose by Friedman
The Prophet by Gibran
Synchronicity by Peat

Complementarity by Plotnitsky
Metapatterns by Volk
Microfoundations by Weintraub
A First Course in String Theory by Zwiebach

Among others

Lee

The Obama Budget as an Agent Based Structure

The Obama Stimulus/Bailout Proposal is in trouble...for good reason...no one knows how it will work.

The tragedy is that there are analytical tools available which could tell us how various scenarios would play out. From the labs and universities of our country have emerged data mining, analytics, data visualization, computer processing and statistical models which can take the most complex issues and make them manageable.

The American and Global economies are complex systems. Their performance depends on complex interactions among a number of complex networks and webs.

Standard economic and financial models of the type still used in Washington have continually failed to address real world problems. The economic models, for all their apparant sophistication, still incorporate assumptions which have not been seriously updated for decades.

Financial models are largely based on the same Portfolio Theory structures which gave us Enron, Long Term Capital, and the recent global economic collapse over mortgage derivatives.

The reasons standard models don't work any more, if they ever did, is that they are not robust enough to respond to the real world. The real world is messy, uncertain, interconnected, and labyrinthine.

Traditional models postulate smooth patterns, rational behavior, and independent actions.

What the advanced models which exist in places like Los Alamos, Ann Arbor, Boston and Santa Fe do is to allow nature and the real world define itself. Using the latest data organization, analytical and visualization technology, they take raw data from the environment and let it sort itself into logical categories. They then adapt analytical structures to the patterns which emerge.

What his leads to is information for policy makers which is:

1. Holistic: All interconnections, emergences, cascades, fractal structures, and power laws are tested before conclusions are drawn.

2. Probabilistic: Various scenarios are run, and results are tabulated not just on an expected value basis, but with expected ranges of results by time frame.

3. Actuarially Sound: Demographics, credibility, homogeneity, risk and time value, are all incorporated into the model.

4. Emergent: When networks and webs result in projections where emergent structures transcend preliminary ones, those more robust projections are utilized.

As a result, the bailout and stimulus proposals can be blended with conventional government activity to produce scenarios by sector and in total. These scenarios will include probability ranges by time frame by sector.

Healthcare is a good example. In the U.S., healthcare is a complex web of patients, providers, corporations, government, employment, demographics, and administraton. Randomly injecting money into the systems will result in random welfare impact.


Only by following the money through the complex web of activity, and directing it at the micro level where possible is there a chance of having optimal impact on welfare, wellness, jobs, the deficit, and gdp.

Historical transformations in the eras of the automobile, computer, electronics, and so on have shown definite patterns. The need now is for a sustainable transition which is envoironmentally friendly and resource efficient.

Future blogs wll provide additonal material on models which respond to the landscape of the twenty first century.

Lee

Glass Bead Game

Hesses's novel posits an imaginary world in which spiritual values emerge dynamically as a game with musical and mathematical elements is played. The rules of the game draw from the sciences and arts, and express interrelationships among all areas of knowledge. As a result, it encompasses all aspects of culture and can lead to a full understanding of reality.

That sounds remarkably close to the basic premise of Harmonious Universe where developments in particle physics become the structure of the game. The metaphors of particle physics, waves, particles, fields, dimensions, entanglement...create a vision of a transcendent world where the mysteries of life are resolved.

The deeper we penetrate the atom and its nucleus the more fuzzy the core of reality seems. Electrons which orbit the nucleus are not "things", but are more like clouds of virtual reality. The quarks which make up the protons and neutrons in the nucleus may be stringlike objects whose vibrations in dimensions beyond our own create the elements of our world.

These particles may not exist at all, except as part of a web of connections made manifest by fields of virtuality.

In The Music of the Spheres, Jamie James starts out with a "Great Theme", "Picture to yourself, if you can, a universe in which everything makes sense. A serene order presides over the earth around you, and the heavens above revolve in sublime harmony.

Everything you can hear and see and know is an aspect of the ultimate truth: the noble simplicity of a geometric theorem, the predictability of the movement of the heavenly bodies, the harmonious beauty of a well-proportioned fugue-all are reflections of the essential perfection of the universe."

James goes on to demonstrate, through a journey through Western thought, how a loss of transcendence in the Industrial Revolution and Romantic movement dulled our sense of wonder and awe at the sheer power of the universe.

Harmonious Universe puts the sense of wonder back into our souls. A physical universe of mystery and beauty evolves into a mental and spiritual universe of unlimited possibility.

A convergence is now occurring. In the late 18th century, a group of amazing intellects created a country which has been a beacon of hope for all peoples for centuries. In the 1960's, developments in the sciences, arts, and politics were pointing to a new age of truth beauty and justice.

In 2009 a new Administration entered Washington on a wave of hope that mirrors that in the sciences of finding deep truths.

We are beginning a process of transforming the American economy into one which will provide hope for centuries to come. We will need wisdom, courage, strength and integrity.

We can move our society forward in a way that assures that future generations will have the opportunities we have had.

Yes we can.

Lee

Dimensions of Science

This is my science blog, and it is a good time to put out some ideas which can be explored more deeply in the future.


In Fire in the Mind, George Johnson explores the search for order as reflected in scientific and religious speculation. He compares and contrasts views of the scientific and spiritual communities, particularly in the area around Santa Fe, New Mexico.


The way we carve up the world determines how we perceive it. Physicists see quarks, electons, waves, fields, symmetries and fractals as part of the scaffolding on which our experienes are based. The more we try to contain reality within our perceptual structures however, the more it resists.


Like the scientists who labor in the New Mexico laboratories and look for clues about the existence of everything, so the Tewa labor and wonder. The Tewa "...have woven a tight web of concepts..." into a worldview as well.


We are all trying to make sense of a world which began in mystery and which is connected in ways we cannot yet grasp.


What the scientists in New Mexico and other places have found is that there are patterns which are common to simple and complex systems as well. This gives credence to the notion that there is an overall web of harmony in which all reality is embedded.

Since mathematics is the best tool we have for discerning these patterns, and since mathematics, even aided by advanced computer science, is very crude way of uncovering patterns of systems more complex than the atom, there has been uneven progress in the quest for an overall understanding of reality.

Can Schrodinger Waves be extended to apply to superatomic phenomena?

Can Heisenberg Matrices make the output of experiments on complex systems meaningful?

Can the universality buried in fractal structures explain social phenomena?

Is there a Dirac Sea from which social and economic phenomena emerge?

Certainly worthy questions at least.

In The Quark and the Jaguar, Nobel Prize winning scientist Murray Gell-Mann, gives us a glimpse of his ideas which build from subatomic structures like quarks to complex systems like jaguars.

Gell-Mann is the man who made sense of the "particle zoo" which had been vexing particle physicists in the mid twentieth century. He was also one of the founders of the complexity science movement in the 1980's.

Complexity science is a term which has come to be associated with a movement which brought together thinkers from all areas of thought to probe deep questions. In the process they found commonalities among what were thought to be distinct disciplines.

Economics had uncovered patterns which were also apparant in physics. Biology overlapped with chemistry and physics. Sociological patterns bore resemblance to physical patterns. Patterns of aesthetics often mirrored those of nature.

If we can build a metaphysics which can encompass all phenomena, not just physical phenomena, we will be on the path to a level of understanding which could lead to world harmony.

The tools are emerging.

We are ready to interpret their findings

Lee

Quantum Universe

The notion of a quantum universe brings into metaphysics the metaphors of quantum mechanics. This means that the fields, waves, quarks, dimensions, electrons, uncertainties, entanglement, complementarity, and spaces which pop out of the mathematics of particle physics can be put in a philosophical framework.

This is important, and largely unreported. The fact that Plato's Forms, Aristotle's Chain, Kant's Categories, Bacon's Idols, Hegel's Spirit, Shakespeare's Complementarity, Rousseaus's General Will, Smith's Invisible Hand, Newton's Mechanical Universe, Sartre's Existence, King's Dream, and Pirsig's quality can now be put into a mathematical and scientific framework allows us to transcend prior philosophical dead ends.

Much of the substance of recent findings in particle physics points to an interconnected, interdependent, unified world. The particles which become atoms which become molecules which become cells which become us are ethreal, probabilistic (in our three dimensions of space), fuzzy, connected clouds of virtuality.

As we move higher up the chain of understanding we find fractals, symmetries, emergence, and webs, which ultimately describe nature and humanity.

Plato couldn't have known of this structure. He didn't have the mathematical, scientific, technological and philosophical tools which have arisen in the last century. Neither did Newton, Kant, Nietzche or James.

All the musings about mind and body, permanence and change, universals and particulars, empiricism and rationalism, appearance and reality, idealism and materialism, classicism and romanitcism, chaos and order, skepticism and belief, and other dialectical pairs are transcended and superseded by the findings of modern particles physics.

Modern particle physics demonstrates with mathematical structure how reality emerges from its fundamental constituents. From that core evolves a whole new metaphysical structure which contains all prior structures.

The dualities of Quantum Mechanics transcend those of classical metapyhsics. Wave-Particle, Matter-Energy , and Space-Time all point to an ultimate reality which is connected, transcendent and holistic

When the mathematics of particle physics is combined with that of complexity and actuarial science, a full standard model of everything can emerge.

Lee

paradigmactuaries.com

The website noted in the title to this blog is complementary to the blog. They are vehicles for communicating a new vision of reality.

The book, Harmonious Universe, still to be published, describes a worldview emanating from discoveries in particle physics, complexity science, and actuarial science which provides a roadmap to unity.

Starting with the fundamental constituents of nature, the waves, fields, particles, and other components of the atom, we build up to society and its institutions with mathematics and metaphor.

This is part of a conversation which began before Plato, and will continue beyond us. It is about the eternal notions of justice, truth, beauty, love, and being.

The website describes the book and some related thoughts. Included are descriptions of analytical stuctures which have been developed to better understand our economy.

We now have 36 blogs discussing various aspects of the new perspective. Some, like Republican Think Tank are satirical. Some, like The Science of Philosophy, are academic.

In all cases, the idea is the same, probe reality to discover truth from which justice and beauty can emerge.

In Abraham, Martin and John, we look at how Martin Luther King and Kahill Gibran probe truth and set the stage for positive aspects of the 1960's.

In The Edge of Chaos, we talk of an Economic Manhattan Project to get the US economy back on track.

In The Math of Reality, we consider how institutions like the New England Complex Systems Institute and the Santa Fe Institute are moving science toward more holistic modeling. By combining the new data mining, data visualizaton and analytical structures with those of actuarial science we see how traditional modeling relative to public policy issues can be enhanced and made more valuable.

The remaining blogs continue to expand the vision . The goal is to have the blog address all issues of Harmonious Universe and put them into a lasting perspective.

Along the way we hope to find some truth of our own.

Lee

Republican Think Tank

Now that's an interesting idea. What in the world do they think about? How their heroes, the Bushes and Reagan, have quadrupled the budget deficit in a mere 20 years of governance?

When Reagan came to power in 1980 the deficit wasn't even a trillion dollars. "W" has done that in a year.

By 1992, when Clinton came unto office, it had ballooned to over $4 trillion. Under "W" it grew another $4 trillion to $10 trillion.

The unpaid obligations run up by Bush will add at least another trillion. And that doesn't count the unfunded programs like Social Security and Medicare which continue to balloon out of control. The Medicare Part D disaster which came in under Bush will add billions.

Oh yeah, what about tax reform and regulatory relief for small business?

Of course, the $10 trillion figure often used for the debt is as phony as Groucho Marx's glasses. The true debt under reasonable accounting standards is probably at least five times as high. Much of the difference is in unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations resulting from benefit increases which were not offset by revenue increases.

Welcome to our world children. You must fund the programs we enjoyed in a global economy which will enjoy increasing population and declining resources.

Of course our "anti-government" Republicans are not content to take away our economic freedoms.They want government mandates to replace individual freedon in decisions about healthcare, religion, and speech.

What about the Democrats? Well they are complicit in out of control spending, but they don't preach about limited government and lower taxes, much less moral superiority (Can you say Larry Craig, Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole, Ted Stevens, Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay...?)

At least Republicans know the difference between Shiites's and Suni's. Woops. Hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives to replace one with the other in Iraq. Welcome President Al Sadr.

What about healthcare, science, the economy, the environment, foreign relations...?

Nice stewardship "W".

Well, we elected a President who seems to have intellect and compassion. He seems to want to return government to the people. He seems to appreciate the role of science, the arts, and education in Americaan life. He has a plan to transform the economy and put us back on the path of world leadership.

Yes we can.

Lee

The Science of Philosophy

In The Story of Philosophy, Will Durant said, "...philosophy only accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science...good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death...".

The fact is, science and philosophy have been converging for decades. With developmnets in relativity theory, quantum mechanics, and complexity science in particular, the line between them has blurred or even disappeared.

The objects of science are as ethereal as the traditional objects of philosophy. Mind, matter, waves, particles, subjective, objective, fields, spaces, all transcendent entities. Of course the mathematics behind the scientific ideas is more developed than that behind idas traditonally considered philosophical. But those very mathematical structures are themselves ethreal.

More importantly, mathematical structures are emerging which are bridging the gap between the mathematics of science and the mathemtics of philosophy.

What is a Dirac Sea? A Schrodinger Wave? A Fractal?

What is a Lagrangian? A Hamiltonian? A Fourier Transform?

Because Calabi-Yau manifolds break symmetries and compact topologies "properly"they are often best for some versions of string theory. Lagrangians may be invariant under an SU(2) symmetry or a U(1) transformation.

The Golden Rule is universal if we are all connected.

Lee