Things

things defined

things

a slow return to our segments on things, with some more gaita from the northeast. this is mestre angelo arribas playing, the same craftsman that fixed my pipes the first time.

we will begin by formalizing what things are and then proceed to generalize them up until we reach minds and beyond.

$t_{l_x} = \{ t_{l_y}, \dots , t_{l_z} \} , x, y, z \in N_0^+$ , where $l_x$ is the label or layer some thing belongs to.

so, if a thing has no properties (or things in it), it is atomic, and has only one quality to it, quantity: $t_0 = \{ \}$ . a thing that’s not made of anything is therefore our simplest layer. the study of quantities and properties thereof is mathematics, and it is the simplest form of the analysis of things. for this reason, i chose mathematical notation for it and will use it from now on.

this means that any mathematics that bases itself on quantity as the main axiomatic (most of them do), would be studying the properties of unlayered things, or things with no properties. there is no spin, color or smell in a number. once we get to minds, we will understand why this is so useful and so universal as a language. it also shows why mathematics itself requires minds to exist, since, as far as we can tell, there is no known particle without properties (the mathematicon ?). though simply defined, mathematical things require complex minds to exist.

from now on, $t_0$ will be our number 1, and we will use whatever currently accepted axiomatic is used by scientific standards as the mathematical standard. note that since things are more than numbers, some issues that property-less numbers have will not occur in this framework, but must be dealt with if we restrain our study of things to $t_0$ .

so by using only $t_0$ things, we can produce the formula above. again, we started with an axiom which produces its own definition. any sufficiently knowledgeable mind can produce the above formulas just by having a concept of quantity. it can be arguable whether quantity is the most fundamental concept or not, but in our case, it is by axiomatic definition, therefore, i will not approach it further. any simpler concept can replace it, but you must make sure you are not explaining it in terms of this theory and failing occam’s razor.

for example, let’s say you choose “nothing” as your most fundamental concept. to create “something” out of nothing, you’d need the concept of “quantity” and also of “symmetry”, for example, since in order to have a thing with more than 0 properties, you’d have to say “nothing” is “something” “cancelled” (i.e., $0 = 1 - 1$ ), which in turn requires you to use the very idea of “quantity” we were starting with, plus some others! instead of being simpler, it was more complicated. we will see this in all layers of things. some things might seem simpler, but if broken down, they will have to be explained by the very same concepts they were trying to simplify. since we’re following occam’s razor, whenever this happens, we discard the more complex definition (the one that requires more things).

to formalize occam’s razor, thing $t_a$ is simpler than $t_b$ if and only if $t_a \in t_b$ . we will be using this definition in every kind of thing, and it will be our validation criterion whenever decisions between different formulas must be made.

also, things of the same layer may not be the same thing. this would be like saying if you have 5 marbles, all of them are the same marble. quantity is the essential part of distinguishing things, if they have the same properties. each of the 5 marbles, even though observably the same in every way, may be physically apart. this is a problem that comes from imagining property-less things.

another example on what i mean, because i know it is hard to grasp at first. if we could represent a human being entirely by the color of their hair (let’s say that there is such a hairy miniverse). if i had black hair, and someone else had black hair, were we the same person? observably, yes. but essentially, no. i was physically separate from that somebody else, and even though we were indistinguishable, we would’ve led different lives in different spacetimes. again, physical quantity gives us the answer.

so now that we have our simplest thing, we can proceed into greater things. i’ll write more about it in our coming posts.