Essay: The Most Important Law in Physics: the Purgatory Principle

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I will be editing this over the next few days, but I wanted to get it up today

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The Most Important Law in Physics:  the Purgatory Principle

 

The most important law in physics bridges the chasm between the fundamental laws concerning how our universe works and actual states of being.  On one side of this bridge, you have mathematical tools like Maxwell’s equations, the thermodynamic relations, such as entropic drift, and the mass-energy equivalence of e=mc2.  On the other side, you have the mental foundation of lived experiential reality, that is, the realm of psychology, meaning and mind. 

I call this law the Purgatory Principle.  Because it bridges the physical and mental realms, it isn’t technically physics.  Nor is it strictly mathematical, though it is logical.  The Purgatory Principle, however, makes a statement about the fundamental nature of the universe, one that derives from its physical aspects. 

It can be stated in the following expression:

 

(U & M) x T ==> (G) v (E)

 

The notation is a hybrid derivative from mathematical, Boolean and computer languages.   A simple way to put it is as follows:  as technology increases, one of two paths will be taken, a vector toward either Good or Evil. 

It will discuss the variables much more below.   U stands for the universe.  M stands for mind, the mentality of the persons controlling the technology.  The operator “x” indicates that greater technology tends to have an increasing and overwhelming effect on the type of government taken, that is, whether Good or Evil is chosen.

 

The U:  Big Bang, interactions, particles, life, evolution

 

I use our own universe as a prototype for the U variable.  In accord with current understanding, the genesis of our universe was a Big Bang phenomenon.  An initial faster-than-light expansion occurs.  Then stars coalesce to burn and ultimately die, that is, go nova or supernova.  In the process, they churn out the elements that combine to create life.  This churning takes place in the heart of shrinking stars, and follows a fusion process that merges single protons into larger units.  Dust clouds from the death of the stars condense, via the pull of gravity, to form planets, which are the potential breeding grounds for life, seeded as they are with the essential elements.

 

More details on the nature of U (skip if you aren’t interested)

Various sorts of particles and interactions are part of the process of bringing about life.  In addition to gravity, there are other ‘glues’ or force/energies in our universe, such as the electromagnetic and strong (nuclear) force.  In addition to the protons, neutrons and electron shells that make up the elements in the atomic chart, there are smaller, subatomic components, such as quarks. 

Essentially the universe starts from scratch and proceeds to set the conditions for life.  When life emerges, it proceeds through the process of evolution, which is both cooperative and competitive.  However, it is important to note that evolution, in large part, is brutal and vicious.  It requires, for instance, that many living organisms hunt and devour each other to survive and breed.

 

The M:  language-rich, tool use, intergenerational build up

 The essential trait of any U under the Purgatory Principle is that life will emerge from a cocktail of chemistry and physics.  Moreover, following evolutionary routes, life eventually reaches  an M-state.  M stands for mind in the sense of a language-rich, tool-using species, one that can transmit knowledge from generation to generation and build up increasing technology, which is represented by the T-factor.

“Language rich” is meant to differentiate between various kinds of language, such as advanced  communications used by bees and ants, by crows, whales and elephants, from language use of another magnitude, say, the english language.

 

We are M

 

Human beings are M-class creatures and what we have done is astounding.  This universe is about 14 billion years old.   In the last couple hundred thousand years, give or take, we have proceeded from basic stone ‘tool kits’ to more advanced stone working, including arrowheads, and onward up through iron, steel, gunpowder, advanced chemical and nuclear tech, computers, the internet--and much more is coming:  AI, robots, precision genetics, nanite (molecular) machines and onward, ad astra, literally, to the stars. 

 

It has been theorized that a fusion-powered spaceship could accelerate to 50%-80% of the speed of light (orion project, wiki).

 

Accelerating rate of tech advance

 

The tech (T) increase is accelerating rapidly here on Earth.  The shift from basic stone tool kits to arrowheads took maybe a hundred thousand years.  Way back when, the hunting bow was a world-changing invention.  Now, in merely 250 years or so,  the Industrial Revolution has taken us from steam power to being on the edge of mobilizing fusion power.

 

Either Good or Evil wins, once Technology reaches a certain point

 

This is the crux of the Purgatory Principle.  Increasing power means increasing might.  From our current vantage, an admittedly primitive one, there is no hard limit in sight for how much technology could reshape reality.  For all we know, there may be no limit to technological advance.  Total omnipotence may be possible.  We just don't know.

Ideas shape behavior, which in turn shapes the world.  The strength of the basic ideas to alter reality and the world increases as technology gains might.  As technology reaches more godlike levels, the ideas driving the technology become determinative.  

If you can grant your own wish, without a catch, your self-fulfilling prophecy, becomes guaranteed.

In terms of value systems, there are two mutually exclusive ideas that can fuel the behavior that alters the world:  Good or Evil.

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Side Note

For those willing to stomach another expression, the above explanation can be written out as follows in this “Mind-World Lemma”:

I ==> B (+T) ==>W

Ideas affect behavior, which in combination with tech level, affects the world.  An example is  the idea of carving the faces of four US Presidents into the side of a mountain.  This manifests in behavior, coupled with the know-how, to bring about a massive change in the face of Mount Rushmore.  Another example, one centered in ethics, is the idea of Manifest Destiny or the idea of Black people being  Children of Ham.  Both of these ideas, backed by the necessary power, led to genocide, slavery, and generally massive slaughter, cruelty and atrocity.

The Purgatory Principle is an expansion of this basic formula: that the foundational ideas in our heads change our environment. 

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Good and Evil seek to eliminate each other

 

Ultimately Good or Evil will win out, in any given universe, if the T factor (technology) becomes powerful enough.  Why?  They are incompatible idea sets, diametrically opposed.  Good, for instance, seeks truth and education to facilitate flourishing, health and virtue.  Evil, on the other hand, relies on deceit and ignorance to keep people oppressed, close-minded and obedient.

Good and Evil seek to eliminate each other.  Which of the two will emerge as victorious?  It depends on the M factor, that is, the maturity of the people who control society, energy, AI, education, robotics ...  and so on.

What worldview, what foundational ideas, will those in power embrace, when technology allows them to optimally bring out those ideas and instantiate them in perpetuity?

 

What is Good?

I have discussed the nature of Good and Evil extensively in previous blog entries.  Both are empirically verifiable and measurable by tangible effects; that is, they are definable by scientific standards. 

For instance:

A good management style, one that brings good effects, is adaptive, rational, science- and psychology-inclusive, and centers on flourishing of both human and environment.  Given our rising tech powers and related knowledge of brain and ecosystem, the result could be a relative utopia, a world where humans live in relative security and edification (1).

 

Good is, furthermore, associated with real democracy:  a truth- and compassion-based government system that embraces equality and human rights.  Equality is an empirically measurable standard, verifiable by common sense (the Golden Rule), by jurisprudence (equal justice under law) and by science (the Human Genome Project and many other studies). (2).

 

I say “real democracy” because it is a common tactic for a country to claim it is a democracy when in fact it is not.  An embrace of lies and deceit is part of an Evil government.  So is co-opting beauty as a façade.  An example would be taking beautiful music and playing it before a dictator gives a speech that is full of hate-mongery while claiming to promote freedom.  This kind of twisted, specious and vile rhetoric is the norm today across much of our primitive, barbaric world (circa early 21^st century).

 

What is Evil?

 

As with Good, Evil as fully and scientifically measurable by its effects:

An evil management style fosters … wanton disruption of global pillars of environmental stability, such as weather patterns and ocean currents, as well as toxicity, both physical and mental, and wanton potential for extinction of species, including our own.  Such effects are brought about by a management style that is irrational and nonadaptive; a style that is myopic and disordered, driven by insecure ego; one that fosters ‘lemming effects’ whipped along by obsessive fear and greed (1).

 

Evil is associated with totalitarian systems such as Hitlerism and Stalinism.  It invokes an ignorance- and fear-based form of government that relies on ‘Big Lie’ loyalty tests.  Fear is essential to control and cower the populace, and also to provide scapegoats, which take the form of abhorrent scourges like racism and sexism. 

There is no equality in an evil governmental system, whether in law, society or economy.

Plutocracy and kleptocracy are twin pillars that support a grossly unfair and imbalanced pyramidal hierarchy of wealth, atop which sits a monarchic, charismatic dictator who is emotionally immature (god king complex), deeply insecure (narcissism), cruel and unconscionable (psychopathy) and who, as well, seeks total control of the population via the thrasymachian infliction of might-makes-right.

These kinds of rulers are common in our day and age.  We call them “strongmen” which is a euphemistic misnomer.  A better name for them is enervators.    The reason is that they are, in effect, a kind of parasite, sucking the wealth, health and vibrancy of a country into their own bloated, dysfunctional scheme for self-aggrandizement [APP ref].

 

The complexity of the T factor

The Purgatory Principle allows that technological power can increase to the point where an entire universe can come under the sway of a Good or Evil governmental system.  This is an ultimately scary thought.  Given the lack of limitations on T’s potential,  a single civ, in theory, can colonize the entire the cosmos, starting on its original planet and expanding from there, as tech increases to allow it.

It may turn out, though we are not certain at this time, that technology has limitations that cannot be exceeded.  Full domination of an entire universe would require speeds of communication and travel that we cannot comprehend in the early 21^st century--and which maybe are impossible to attain, given the makeup of our universe (limitations in physical laws, chemical and cosmogonic phenomenon, etc.)

However, at our current and increasing level of understanding of how things work, we can begin to see how an entire planet could be taken over by a single Good or Evil regime. 

The following scenario illustrates the danger.

 

The Darkcraft Scenario:  Evil triumphs once and for all

 

For evil to ultimately triumph on Earth, a few conditions need to be met.

(a) One Evil country becomes completely dominant other others.  Let’s call this country Dominot.

(b) Dominot controls and monitors every citizen so precisely that rebellion is impossible and obedience is guaranteed.

 

Bringing about (a) and (b):  robots, AI, and brain implants

 

Military robots invade and subdue a resistant country.  With blanket surveillance (aerial drones, insectoid drones, aquatic drones...) and ‘hunter’ sensors, no one is able to hide.  Human body heat is targetable even through thick walls and dense foliage. 

Once everyone is rounded up, the next step would be to force an implant directly in every human brain.  This allows for constant monitoring and punishment.  Coupled with perfected techniques of propaganda and indoctrination, a carrot and stick approach, optimized by highly advanced psych ops, total assimilation could be achieved. 

Be aware!  It is likely that the level of technology required for the Darkcraft Scenario will be developed, give or take, within two hundred years, maybe less.

 

Reflections on the threat

The point of the above scenario is this:  even if the Purgatory Principle is hampered by limitations in technology, which would restrict its ability to apply to an entire universe, it still applies at the planetary level.  Our whole planet, Earth, could be irrevocable turned Good or Evil.

The Purgatory Principle should make us think very carefully.

Our tech level is accelerating fast.  Very soon, the tech level horizon needed for Good or Evil to ultimately and irrevocably triumph on our planet will be passed.  As of this writing, narcissistic dictatorial leaders have assumed the throne in the most powerful countries in the world, including China (Xi) and the United States (Trump).  Other countries with nuclear weapons, and who also have dictators or enervators, include North Korea (Jung Un), India (Modi) and Israel (Netanyahu). 

As technology advances, it will, if these sorts of leaders are in power, they will use it to prioritize control.  They will use surveillance (AI), police power (robots) and propaganda (future-tech psych) to create a totalitarian system.

 

What we can do now:  lightcraft

As I’ve written before, across several blog entries, ethics can and should be seen as a technology [3].  This is not so much different than seeing medicine as a technology.  Medicine used to be faith-based.  Now it is largely tech-based (although the anti-vaccine movement here  in the USA is taking us backwards a few steps).

Ethics as technology is grounded in science and reasonable philosophical thought.  The term I use for the practice of using ethics-as-a-technology is lightcraft.

As a technology, ethics can have higher and lower levels of effectiveness, the same as medical technology, which is improving all the time.  If we focused on improving ethics tech, it too could advance rapidly.

I like to describe the goal of lightcraft as getting home:  a society of honesty, mutuality, and equality.  Mutuality means mutually beneficial relationships.  This includes our relationship with our environments.  Both humanity and environments benefit, leading to thriving ecosystems and populations of diverse wildlife species.

 

Ethics advances by overcoming ignorance

Fear, hate, and greed, the core of evil, rely on ignorance.  They require keeping people harnessed in a culture of lies.  We live under the hobble of a mental virus in our brains, one that goes all the way back to the beginnings of the Agricultural Revolution.  The Agricultural Revolution initiated patriarchy, slavery and war.  This gave rise to despotism, the ‘god kings’ on thrones who rule through Big Lie loyalty tests, centered in fanaticism.  

This is the mentality that predominates in our civilization to this very day.

How does it continue to brainwash minds?  It exploits our ability to transmit knowledge from generation to generation, using this ability to infect each new generation with a corrupt cultural palette.  We are trapped in a negative, self-sustaining, generation-to-generation indoctrination loop.

I call this self-replicating, intergenerational virus the Ignorance Vortex.  For Good to win out on our planet, we must dissolve the ancient pattern of acculturation that traps us in crippling ignorance [ref].

 

Conclusion

 

Given the way the universe is set up, Evil is bound to get a head start on any planet.  A sentient species discovers farming, food amasses in silos, and the battles to own it begin.  Slavery, patriarchy and war show up, resulting in hierarchies that dominate culture and its transmission routes.  

Although must people don’t seem to fully realize it, human beings, circa 2025, live under incredibly barbaric conditions that hail back to original social control techniques used in ancient Sumer:  fanatic religion with obedience enforced by loyalty tests and the threat of torturous force.  The Assyrian kings tortured their enemies in the most hellish was possible, and bragged about it in stone, proclaiming themselves god.  

We’ve progressed somewhat from this, but how far we could go, if Good rather than Evil was predominant?

Much progress has been made in the last few hundred years.  In 1920, women gained the right to vote in America.  It was an astounding step, maybe the greatest moment in the history of civilization.  

Slavery was banned worldwide in the 19^th century.  Very recently, in 2015, gay marriage was made legal in the USA, a stunning change.    

It took the Romans 500 years to get rid of the utterly evil practice of crucifixion.  Today, cultural changes toward equality have, and are, taking place far more rapidly.

We could live much more wonderful, happy, flourishing, fulfilled lives.  This isn’t mythical mumbo-jumbo.  This is ethics-as-a-technology.  A method to advance to new levels of social and ecological planning, by marshalling the strengths of science and philosophy.  Better systems of education.  Better methods of acculturation.  More stable positive social systems and modes of governance. More psychological maturity.  More emotional competence.  It is all doable.  The knowledge and techniques, in fact, already exist. 

The main obstacle is that ignorance-based governance actively works to maintain ignorance.  Donald Trump, a wannabe dictator, infamously said, “I love the poorly educated.”  Why?  Because they readily reinforce and replicate the longstanding Ignorance Vortex.

 Now is the time to choose.  Impossible as it might seem, ethics needs to be front and center.  Social movements can vastly transform society.  Ten years from now, one thing is fairly certain:  the cultural scene will be significantly different from what it is now. 

Without advanced ethics tech, we cannot properly manage the godlike powers we are developing..  They will control us instead.  For those of you working on AI especially, I ask you: what will it be used for? How will AI and AGI look at us human beings?  At the world?

There will be only one victor, in the end:  Good or Evil.

 

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