Paradigms to break before denial

Paradigms

A lot of people tell that theories about systems are just silly. In my experience, most of them change their point of view after a long talk, where they just connect some wires. But in fact they don’t get to understand or change opinion. What they do is just break some paradigms that were blocking their reasoning. Such is a very common problem. After breaking such paradigms, people start to get amazed with new ideas.

So, if you want to learn the new ideas of the present, you need to crack some old paradigms. Here they the new paradigms and the ideas each one breaks:

1. Wrong paradigm: The theory of systems deals about the behavior of things. Fact: The theory of systems describe how objects behave… as understood by a subject. Systems are just ideas. As such, they don’t really exist in nature. There is no frontier between the paw of a dog and the tail, unless it is subjective. The same happens, but just at a different scale, between the borders of a rock and the air: both are made by quarks, and only a subjective definition of the mean distance between quarks in a subjectively predefined space, under certain subjectively defined condicions could help delimiting the borders between a rock and the air. Systems —things— are ideals. Not realities. Now, we are built to act subjectively. We can pass through some elements of a rock until a certain subjective limit. Such limit has not been defined by nature. Such limit is what we understand, upon the things we subjetively believe, about what we are. Out there, things just behave. Nature has no rules. We are the ones creating an understanding, and granting such understanding of behavioral rules.

2. Wrong paradigm: Math is the way to describe nature. Fact: Math is just an idealization of reality and only helps to describe ideals, not nature. Not even a real free fall event can be described with math. Math is just a way of expressing rules, that are ideals, not facts. Rules are the way by which we understand nature, rules are not part of nature. In order to express the rules of a real free fall system, or a ball-rolling-down-the-hill system, kilometers of formulas would literally be needed. Probably you know that you can’t feel the breeze generated by the wings of a butterfly. But we all agree that a distant storm can literally be influenced by the flight of a butterfly. That’s an example of the chaotic behavior of most natural phenomena. Formulas are helpful to understand… our understanding, but that doesn’t mean they describe reality. The Theory of Interaction (TOI) changes the paradigm of the description nature, because they it doesn’t focus on the object (the ball-rolling-down-the-hill system) and the low-level, microscopic and essential facts, but on the subject (the observer), using his language, his high-level understanding concepts, the whole system of existence.

3. Wrong paradigm: Objectivity is always good. Fact: Objectivity is impossible. Strictly, the larger objectivity is asserted, the most the subject is negated. We commonly believe that objectivity is good, subjectivity is bad. But that does not mean that acting subjectively is bad. We act subjectively in order to survive. Scientists can write a objective books about plants, but birds give a damn about books and scientists, they can’t share humans’ objectivity, they just act subjectively. If plants provide seed and oxygen to birds, then plants represent just air filters and food sources for birds. Being objective is a rational effect; it is approaching the whole. But natural entities are busy enough trying to exist so they just understand and use the stuff that could represent a benefit for them. For long centuries science has tried to be objective, to understand systems as a whole. Now is the time to understand systems as the relationship between subjects and objects. That means an amazing approach: trying to learn as nature does.

4. Wrong paradigm: This is a three-dimensional universe. Fact: Only if we consider space (or space-time, if we speak of four dimensions) as the whole of existence, negating matter. And only if we consider that everything that exists is a dot, plane or solid existing in such context, which is equivalent to say that a dog is a bunch of sand. But systems exist to generate new dimensions. This is probably the toughest paradigm to break, but why wouldn’t we? In simple words, anything you can measure about a thing is a dimension, including its beauty. Dimensions just express states. Measuring does not mean you should use the metrical system, measuring does not even mean being objective! Formally, any property of a system is a dimension. In fact, hyperdimensional spaces are normal in math. In order to understand nature, we should understand how does nature measure things, how does any system approaches the value of another, even what is the subjective value of a seed for a bird. Natural systems use not objective dimensions. They measure other systems subjectively, meaning that they use compound dimensional sets to evaluate properties of other systems. For us, for example, the price of any good is a compound dimension: includes the value of the good, the proximity of the store (you will not travel 10 miles to buy a cheaper apple), the mood of the people selling it (you might pay more if you get a nice service technician), etc. Nature works the same way.

5. Wrong paradigm: Only some complex stuff can be considered as a system. Fact: Everything that can be named is a system. Everything that exists –even on your mind– and you can name on this universe is a system. That is not difficult to understand. But this idea is amazing, let your mind fly: this concept is completely compatible with the Systems Theory (system=group of parts acting together as a whole with some purpose). An equation is a system… of course! Fire is a system. It is difficult to delimit, but interacts on its internal spaces, its parts act together (despite they are only energy, like atoms) and the whole system have an homogeneous effect on other external systems. The same occurs with two lines on a plane, a hand, a tree, a web chat group… etc. Why is this important? Wait to see how this elements interact.

6. Wrong paradigm: I need to understand thermodynamics for understanding order. Fact: Thermodynamics is incomplete and does not deal with order. The 2nd law of thermodynamics deals more with the dissipation properties of energy along time and space. Entropy study deals with the probabilistic laws that govern the transition from one dimensional state to other with more probability, and the irreversibility of the new state. In other words, you can broke an egg, but it is impossible to get back to it after it’s break. There is no definition of order in thermodynamics, just states with probability values.

7. Wrong paradigm: Order is when some group of objects follow a physical pattern. Fact: Order is related to interaction in one specific dimension. Three balls can be in order if they are aligned over a straight line, so they have a positional order, but if they have different temperatures they are in chaos respect to absolute temperatures. Two molecules can be in order if they have the same kinetic energy. In final terms, order is related to interaction.

8. Wrong paradigm: Systems perform limited reactions to stimulus. Non-living systems don’t react at all. Fact: All systems react to all stimulus. You’ve been said -and you have tested it- that rocks are dead, that they don’t react to stimulus. What? A rock is a dead object? Beeep!!! If it would be a dead object, it should dissipate as sand as soon as one touches it. But it is alive. It is moving inside, all the time, alleviating tensions, keeping its parts together, communicating, reacting to pressures with deformation, at the end, fighting for existence. This is a beautiful subject to think on: when does something gets broken? After reaching a limit on its flexibility. Rocks do bend. Crystal does break when it cannot bend anymore. The more rigid the crystal, the more fragile. Think of a rock as a beach ball. You kick it, and it does not break; instead, it deforms, absorbing part of the energy, and reacting by increasing the pressure on your feet when recovering its shape. Part of the energy is converted by its elementary particles into kinetic energy, part in heat, part in chemical reactions, and part in a bouncing reaction. Amazing, hah? Rocks are alive because its internal parts interact actively. Rocks can deform, and even if there is space between atoms, they try to keep aligned in some order, at some precise distance. When the distance changes, they apply forces that will cause a resistence to the deformation. But after keeping the order, they still have to deal with the kinetic or potential energy that each molecule has absorbed, slowly and organized, they get back to order. You can extend the idea to clouds, fire, equations, etc., but just at different scales. In order to understand how nature behaves, one have to be creative without leaving reality. Why does a cloud tries to keep limits (yes! they do it by establishing electromagnetic interactions between charged drops!)? You will talk about pressure. Think on this: why does a low-pressure system keeps its limits? Another way of proving that systems react is due to their effects on the environment. Put a rock on a table and speak to it. Now imagine that you did the same action without the rock. The sound pressure waves would have changed. Wow! That is the rock answering you! One

9. Wrong paradigm: The laws of attraction are quite weird. Fact: Attraction is the most relevant result of interaction. Attraction cause dimensional attraction (positive or negative), and attraction might lead to repetition. Imagine this: you get to know a girl. You talk to her. She likes such action. You like her reaction. So both of you mutually attract. Why? In order to repeat the interaction. And the next time, you don’t only talk. You also laugh. You continue interacting for some days, in a growing number of dimensions. An then, you kiss. This is a beautiful way to describe how a molecule is created –in this case the molecule is named a couple–. Real molecules form the same way. Two atoms get close by chance, they interact at a certain distance, getting some form of stability due to the presence of the counterpart, and they change positions in order to keep or increase the interactions (that is physical attraction). They form a molecule. In formal terms, constructive interaction (interaction that provides internal order) may cause attraction, attraction may cause repetition, which means existence. But two systems may also get chaos from an interaction. That will cause repellence, increase of the dimensional distance and then, dissipation of the system into two or more subsystems, usually to allow them to keep stability.

10. Wrong paradigm: Bad paradigm: man descended from monkeys. Fact: Man descended not from monkeys, but from rocks. The mechanisms described above allows understanding that nature can create a huge chaos, and inside that chaos, order is produced in some isolated areas. A difference of chaotic masses which tends to instability and dissipation, ordered systems tend to existence. With time, space and a lot of chaos, ordered systems follow the dynamic of organization and dissipation until strong structures are formed. Stable structures will just get more complex with time. Darwin was not wrong at all, he just established the next link. We are made of mineral atoms, we came from the sand of this universe following the mechanism of systems interaction. We descend from rocks.

Now you may be ready to start with some basics.