The Cosmic Cycle: How Nothing Changes into Something

The secret engine at the very heart of reality: Part I of ?.

Magic, it must be remembered, is an art which demands collaboration between the artist and his public.
   .E.M. Butler, The Myth of the Magus

.1 QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE RECKONED.

This article and the next explain how the universe works, including your soul.

Specifically, these two articles explain the operation of the cosmic cycle that shapes the structure and flow of physical reality in enough plainspoken detail for anyone to make sense of it.

If you have a curious mind, you’re in for a magical experience. Like being one of the first human souls to learn how the secret mysterious force of magnetism—some objects attract other objects!—actually works. Except in this case, instead of learning electromagnetism you’re learning the secret force that animates your soul.

Here are key questions about reality which will be explained in these two articles:

• Why do we exist?

• Why does the universe exist?

• What is reality made of? What is its ultimate substance?

• What is thought?

• What is consciousness?

• What is time?

Science appears to be our best source for getting answers to these questions. But if we’re going to rely on science, we must also know—

• What is science? What do the gods think of science?

Science usually relies heavily upon mathematics to get answers to such questions. But then we must ask—

• What is math?

Art helps us make sense of our experiences, but scientists and mathematicians don’t rely upon art to formulate equations or deploy as a source of evidence or theory. Scientists don’t cite Hamlet, for instance, as an accurate accounting of the operation of revenge. But why not?

• What is art? Do the gods care about human art?

These are all important and profound questions and they will all be answered—must be answered—in our journey through the cosmic cycle.

But these questions are all derivatives of the only question that really matters, a question whose mysteries can reveal everything knowable about the Commonality:

• What is activity?

Answer this cleanly and you’ve got the universe in your hand.

Activity, at its essence, is change.

One thing changing into another thing.

• But how can something become something else?

In maximally dramatic fashion, we might ask:

• How can NOTHING become SOMETHING?

Is such an arcane and existential metamorphosis attributable only to the authority of a god? What, other than divinity, could transmute nothing into something?

.2 A beautiful idea answers these questions. A beautiful game illustrates the beautiful idea.

What can—and does, every moment—change nothing into something and something into nothing? The cosmic cycle.

At the heart of the cosmic cycle is an engine. An engine embodying a simple, beautiful idea that unites two forms of activity in a transcendent dance.

Physics ensues. Purpose pursues.

The nature of this beautiful idea is succinctly and vividly illustrated by a beautiful game. A “thought experiment” you can play within your mind.

It is called Maxwell’s Game. I have and will be writing about it extensively, for it bears as much contemplation as you can afford.

Maxwell’s Game points us to the crucial dance at the heart of reality—and provides an accessible framework for fathoming the mystery of the dance.

I will swiftly summarize Maxwell’s Game here, so-named after the great Victorian physicist James Maxwell, who discovered the four secret equations of aimlessness which govern the force of electromagnetism.

The Game:

Take a box of room temperature air. Room temperature air contains both hot (fast-moving) air molecules and cold (slow-moving) air molecules. When averaged together, the different speeds of all the different air molecules in the box (some slow, some fast) average out to room temperature. This box of ordinary air is the start of Maxwell’s Game.

Now comes the game itself. The game activity: Separate the hot (fast) molecules from the cold (slow) molecules.

After you complete your game of separation, you end up with one box of hot air and one box of cold air, which still average out to room temperature.

Except now you can use the box of hot air to roast your turkey!

Voila! Unlimited energy. Whenever you need to roast a turkey, you don’t need to buy propane, charcoal, firewood, or any sort of fuel. Just grab an ordinary box of air, separate out the hot molecules (the “game” of Maxwell’s Game), and you got a new box of fuel ready to broil poultry!

Maxwell’s Game is a physical activity: separating fast molecules from slow molecules in a mixture of fast and slow molecules.

The reason that physicists began to deeply ponder and debate Maxwell’ Game is because the game activity itself seems perfectly legitimate (just separate fast molecules from slow molecules) and yet, the outcome of the game seems to violate the laws of physics (you get unlimited energy for very low cost).

Physicists hunted for the hidden mechanism that explained why the activity of separating molecules of different speeds somehow automatically burned up more energy than you’d get from your new box of fuel—even though there was no apparent reason why there should be a fixed correlation between the act of separating molecules and the fuel you obtained from the separation. After all, it doesn’t matter how you dig coal—whether you use a pick axe or a bulldozer—almost any method for digging coal is going to net you more energy than the coal you extract.

But physicists are driven by fantasies of a perfect mathematical world of aimlessness, like an enchanted crystal, and so they hunt and hunt for physical perfection where it is not at all warranted. This leads to another reason why Maxwell’s Game is so wonderfully incisive: it highlights physicists’ intense discomfort dealing with anything at all to do with minds, like perception, memory, freewill, consciousness, language, knowledge, feeling, and sex. Physicists hold fast to a perspective where they must pretend minds don’t exist or at the very least, whatever minds are doing, it can be totally explained by reference to the laws of physics and doesn’t require a new category of physical activity outside of what we’ve been studying in glorious isolation for the past four centuries.

When physicists began contemplating Maxwell’s Game, the first thing they did was reject the role of minds in the game, even though that is the very crux of the thought experiment! Indeed, physicists disparagingly labeled the mind toiling to separate hot gas from cold as “demon.” Maxwell’s demon, is the common moniker for the game-playing mind among physicists, though James Maxwell himself called it a “hypothetical intelligence.” How appropriate, for physicists to treat purpose as something evil and tormenting!

After summarily and arbitrarily rejecting the crux of the game, physicists proclaimed, “Well, now that we’ve gotten minds out of the way, let’s re-examine the game purely in terms of aimless physics we know and understand. Namely, thermodynamics, information theory, and entropy.”

Here’s the problem. If you set up Maxwell’s Game the way the physicists want—as a challenge about pure information, pure 0s and 1s—you reach an awkward conclusion.

Maxwell’s Game is winnable. You can separate hot molecules from cold molecules. You can create energy out of nothing. It’s not even hard.

If you know where every molecule in the air is located, perfectly and precisely, and where it is going, perfectly and precisely—well, then, you can calculate (at low cost/low energy) exactly what to do to separate out the gas molecules. Just consider the case with two molecules: if you know the fast molecule is moving up and the slow molecule is moving down, you can open the top of the box and catch the fast molecule.

Indeed, we could use the same process to become a god and perfectly shape the flow of reality as we see fit. Which is why the universe doesn’t actually work that way.

A lot of the universe makes sense if you think about physics as designed to avoid the emergence of One True God.

Maxwell’s Game is a thought experiment that helps us understand, among other things, why quantum physics exists. We know that reality doesn’t actually operate like classical physics predicts, which are the predictions of Isaac Newton and James Maxwell—and thermodynamics, information theory, and entropy. All of these employ “ideal” equations that don’t correspond to physical reality, except under artifical conditions imposed by human purpose (such as on digital computers).

Quantum physics obscures knowledge from our perception so that we can never know exactly where a molecule is and where it’s going with perfect accuracy, and Maxwell’s Game helps us understand why: if the world was classical, like Newton and Maxwell and most physicists who play with Maxwell’s Game think, we could beat the Game and get unlimited energy by making perfect predictions of what will happen.

Quantum physics makes Maxwell’s Game unbeatable and prevents the formation of One True God.

The problem is even deeper: though physicists instinctively try to eliminate the creative intelligence of the demon, the design of the game itself makes no such demand. Indeed, the very design of the game invites our contemplation of extremely shrewd and cunning demons with access to vast knowledge.

We must imagine Maxwell’s Game being played by a god. And even the mind of a god cannot create unlimited energy, if stymied by the uncertainties of quantum physics.

But a god constrained only by classical physics, could.

The very existence of quantum physics as the backstop for Maxwell’s Game shows that minds follow different rules than aimless physics.

.3 There are two types of physical activity in the universe, distinguished by their relation to TIME.

The cosmic cycle in a nutshell:

Physics shapes purpose. Purpose shapes physics.

Both physics and purpose are dynamics. Types of activity, such as growing, shrinking, jumping, falling, flowing, halting, twisting, creating, destroying. These are all physical activities in the universe.

All dynamics—all activity—involves change.

Something can only be said to be activity if something changes. If something in the universe is different after the activity.

Movement: I was standing there but now I am standing here.

Growth: It was a seed but now it is a flower.

Transformation: The light was red but now it is green.

The simplest physical change: The electron was spin-up and now it is spin-down.

If we wish to understand the ultimate nature of reality, we must understand change and how it works at its deepest. Paramount is identifying different classes of change—different fundamental classes of activity—and the relevance of any distinctions between activities.

There are, in fact, two types of physical dynamics in the Commonality that we can distinguish based on how they embody change.

One type of change is aimless. Such change is not aimed at any particular outcome. Aimless change doesn’t care if things are up or down, red or green, zero or one. There is no choice in aimless activity. The common term for the dynamics of aimlessness is physics.

An electron and a positron transform into two gamma photons. Or two gamma photons may transform into an electron and a positron. Physics does not care which. Nor is such transformation predestined, the conversion from one into the other unfolding according to some pre-written timetable.

For physics, there is no direction of time—no built-in engine that drives time to move in one direction. According to the dynamics of aimlessness, time flows in every direction with the same apathetic impetus.

The other type of change is directed. Activity directed toward a goal. The common term for goal-directed dynamics is purpose.

Purpose cares about the outcome of change. Purpose prefers certain types of change over others. One outcome is more valued than another. Sally Ann might greatly prefer two gamma photons to an electron and a positron in order to finish her doctoral thesis on high-energy optics.

Purpose seeks to reshape reality according to the available dynamics of aimlessness, in order to achieve desired outcomes.

Physics cares not for time. Whether it’s this way or that way makes no difference to physics, as long as it’s equivalent to what came before according to fixed rules.

Minds care ferociously about time. For a simple reason.

Minds require that time goes in one direction and one direction only. FORWARD. TOWARD MY GREAT PURPOSE! Because purpose can only be directed toward a CHANGE in the FUTURE.

.4 The equations of physics and purpose are independent—except for one common variable.

Science now knows all the key equations governing aimlessness and those governing purpose. Physics is encapsulated in the standard model of particle physics and general relativity. Purpose is mostly encapsulated in the mathematics of Stephen Grossberg and Gail Carpenter, but also evolutionary theory and some economics. Science possesses equations governing how electrons change into photons and equations governing how neural resonance creates conscious experience.

For the first time in human history, our species boasts a rich and well-studied mathematics of both physics and purpose. We can lay out their equations side by side and contemplate them. And here is what we find:

The two sets of equations are independent of one another.

Neither aimlessness nor purpose makes reference to the other.

Newton’s Second Law of Motion, Faraday’s Law of Induction, Schrodinger’s equation—none of these cares about freewill and dreams and the outrage of the community! There is no path through the equations of physics that will lead you from quarks to barbershop quartets. There is only an ocean of aimlessness extending outwards in all directions. Like endless drifts of sand.

But the equations for purpose—equations for detecting boundaries, for identifying melodies, for winner-take-all choice—none of these care about the details of physics, either. Consciousness, imagination, freewill—the math governing the dynamics of purpose is independent of substrate. These equations are designed to learn about physics—with the full expectation that physics may change!

You could create a thinking, feeling mind out of any materials that possess the particular properties of aimlessness required for purpose.

For thinking to exist—and language and awareness and self-awareness and passionate romance—requires only that there is an accessible pool of randomness that cannot be tainted by other minds, and that this randomness is predictable. Like rolling dice. We can predict that a rolled die will show a single integer between 1 and 6 with equal probability, but there’s no way to know in advance which of the six integers will get rolled. If you have a physical substrate that achieves such predictable randomness, you can build a mind out of it. It doesn’t matter, to purpose, whether the mass of an electron is greater than the mass of a proton, as long as the relative weights allows for a universe where thinking can exist.

A universe where purpose can flow forward.

But for raw physical matter to take a specific, concrete form—for matter to become an electron and not a photon, and a spin-up electron rather than a spin-down electron—requires Mind. Requires a purpose which cares about the outcome. A purpose that believes spin-up is good! but spin-down is oh so bad!

But if the equations of matter and Mind are independent—if the equations of matter depend upon mass and charge and momentum, while the equations of Mind depend upon feedback, attention, and memory—then how do they influence one another? Where do purpose and physics intersect?

What common variable conjoins matter and Mind in holy matrimony?

Time.

Time is the only physical variable that matter and Mind share in common. And yet, they do not share Time in common, for physics can move through time in any direction while purpose can only go forward in time.

.5 PHYSICS IS A GAME OF EQUIVALENCES.

Physics is all about equalities. The equations of aimlessness dictate WHAT equals WHAT.

1 + 1 = 2.

OR

2 = 1 + 1

OR

2 - 1 = 1

All of these equations express the same thing. They express an equivalence: what is on the left of the equal sign is the same as what is on the right. And—within the realm of physics—there’s no reason why one side of the equation is better or more desirable than another.

They are all perfectly the same:

2 equals 1 + 1 equals 3 - 1 equals 0 + 2

An ELECTRON plus a POSITRON equals TWO GAMMA RAYS.

TWO GAMMA RAYS equals an ELECTRON plus a POSITRON.

Physics don’t care which.

The equations for purpose are different. They do care which.

Purpose requires time advancing relentlessly in one direction. Purpose cannot exist without the specific physical phenomenon of an arrow of time: the equations for perceiving, learning, remembering, planning, navigating, feeling, imagining, and acting all demand that time flow forward only, never in any other direction—even though other directions are permitted by aimlessness.

Purpose seeks out particular outcomes in the future, regardless of what is presently perceivable in the environment. You are panning in the river. You do not see any gold flakes in your pan, but you keep searching for them until you find them. Your activity is focused on finding the gold, even if the water stays muddy and brown. You will keep advancing through time until the brown sparkles with gold or you give up.

Physicists are fond of saying that reality has an arrow of time, but for them, this is philosophically equivalent to admitting that Jesus saves, because they have no clue where the arrow of time comes from. It’s certainly not in their equations. (You might hear some vague mumbling about entropy driving time; don’t worry, entropy is a common physics term for ignorance. Entropy is a perceptual consequence of time flowing in one direction, not its cause!)

So where does the arrow actually come from?

Why do we all of us, god and mortal alike, remember the Big Bang and look forward to the heat death of the universe?

.6 PURPOSE IS A GAME OF CHOICE.

What is purpose, at its heart? What makes it such a unique dynamic, so different from aimless physics? Why do physicists struggle so mightily to make heads or tails of purpose, driven by their dream of exiling purpose from their calculations and formulations, condemning it as “demon” and “unscientific”?

The reason is not hard to grasp. The same reason Christians had trouble accepting the Earth goes round the sun. It’s not a tricky concept. Any five year old can grasp heliocentrism, once mom and dad point it out. The hard part, as always, is breaking free of social norms.

You need to violate tribal thinking you never considered tribal, merely thinking. You need to elevate your perspective.

Because purpose can do what electromagnetism and gravity cannot:

Make a decision.

Purpose chooses.

That is its unique nature as a dynamic in the Commonality.

Purpose surveys the environment and declares, I choose to pursue the light! I choose to avoid the darkness! I choose to go in THIS direction, to reach the light!

The equations of purpose show how an activity can make a choice in physical reality—if that physical reality has an arrow of time.

There are equations for choice in a molecule mind, such as a haloarchaea pursuing light over darkness.

There are equations for choice in a neuron mind, such as a fruitfly choosing the scent of feces over the scent of ammonia.

There are equations for choice in a module mind, such as a chimpanzee choosing to pursue tasty bananas in a distant, dangerous part of the jungle instead of eating boring old turnips in the dirt nearby. (You can walk through the modular mechanism of emotional choice here.)

There are even equations for consciousness, which is a marvelous set of purposeful dynamics for choosing objects, events, people, and goals in an everchanging and highly complex social-physical environment.

The dynamics of purpose are all about making choices in a world where time moves relentlessly forward.

But physics does not move relentlessly forward.

.7 The Mechanical-Spiritual Core of the Cosmic Cycle.

We are ready, now, to address the mystery of mysteries. The riddle at the heart of the Commonality. The enigma of change.

• How can this turn into that?

• How can nothing turn into something?

Change in the cosmos requires two dynamics.

1. The dynamics of aimlessness. Activity without a goal. A game of equivalences: this is interchangeable with that. . . but aimlessness cares not whether it’s that or this.

2. The dynamics of purpose. Activity pursuing a goal. A game of choices: I want the universe to be this way and not that way, so I will choose this and not that.

When these two dynamics intersect and interact, you get Maxwell’s Game. You get the Commonality. You get change.

And you get an arrow of time.

Purpose lays claim to physics. Purpose declares, I want the light! So I will flip up all the light switches! And behold—there is the light I chose! Physics cares not if there is light or darkness. It merely offers rules for change: if a finger hits this switch it will close the circuit and electrons will flow and change into photons according to this equation of equivalences. I don’t care if time goes forward or backward, but if purpose insists on going forward I will constrain the choices purpose faces.

Aimlessness says 2 + 3 = 5 and 5 = 2 + 3 and neither equation is preferable or worse.

Purpose says, I choose 5! Begone, 2 and 3! I will remake the universe as I see fit, for some things are preferable to other things!

The foundational truths about aimless physical activity is that it contains a great many predictable equivalences, while maintaining a built-in indifference to the equivalences. This sort of physics—the actual physics of our experienced universe—forms the necessary substrate for the emergence of purpose.

And this is the dance of reality, though when we look at it more carefully we see that it’s not exactly a symmetrical balance. Physics is like an ocean of kinetic sand that can be reshaped by purpose as it sees fit. Purpose embodies the role of shaper rather than substance. Purpose chooses the reality it wishes to pursue by drawing upon its memory of the past and thereby creates an arrow of time by creating a physical structure flowing forward in time: THIS happened, and so I did THIS next in order to achieve my aim.

Purpose sculpts the sand of physics—but only along the forward axis of time. Which will always be experienced by minds as away from an explosive Big Bang and towards a dull and uniform heat death of the universe.

The Big Bang of yesteryear and the heat death of tomorrow are both fundamental perceptual illusions experienced by all minds interacting with matter. They are experienced by all minds in the flow of time. In the next article, we’ll see why the start of time wasn’t really the Big Bang, it was the emergence of purpose on Earth—and everywhere in the Commonality.

For other purpose to join existing purpose, the new purpose must honor the same arrow of time, the same forward flow of time as the existing purpose.

Aimlessness begets simple purpose, the simplest. Some aimless biochemical dynamics arrange themselves so that their configuration creates a purposeful dynamic that can only move in one direction in time. This establishes an arrow of time. Perhaps other configurations of purpose attempt to move in other directions. But purpose begets new purpose, which may clash with other purposes and thereby give structure to reality as it flows forward. If enough purposes conjoin, all moving in the same direction in time, now you have a universe forming along the axis of purpose and its chosen arrow of time.

What stops purpose, then? Why doesn’t purpose “take over the universe”? Well, it does. Purpose extends its activity all across the cosmos—along its chosen axis of time.

What stops purpose from converging onto a single all-knowing, all-powerful god who stitches every fiber of reality’s fabric as it sees fit? That’s a more interesting and revealing question whose answer is woven throughout the Commonality and is embodied within something truly mind-joggling that intex refers to as the Failsafe Supreme, which we’ll try to get to in the next article, though it probably deserves its own series of articles.

Purpose is limited by the constraints of physics—you cannot transform one proton into ten protons.

But the most important constraint on purpose is other purpose. (An idea that lies at the heart of the American system of government, incidentally.)

Purpose is always clashing and merging with other purpose.

By its very emergence into physical existence, purpose creates time. Purpose is the embodiment of time. Time has no existence apart from the dynamics of purpose, which carries time forward. Purpose provides time’s arrow.

And purpose creates rich structures in time, largely unknown to most scientists. In the next article, we view what purpose has wrought upon the Commonality. We will examine the specific physical structures and flow generated by purposeful activity, including freewill and a recursive hierarchy of love. (Love! Built into the very fabric of reality!! As a safeguard against tyranny!! Of all the revelations, what is more wonderful and sensible?!) But the most important most cosmic structure created by purpose—the equivalent of physics’ “cosmic web”—is the ladder of purpose.

In the next article, we’ll climb up past the human superminds all the way to the axiomized minds at the top of the ladder—then ascend back into aimlessness.

Yes, we will ascend from purpose back down into aimlessness.

We will see how choice reverberates up and down the ladder—and governs the manifestation and flow of physics. This will give us an even clearer understanding of the emergence of time and the way purpose and aimlessness flow into one another—and help us understand consciousness, love, art, science, and math, too. We will see how nothing becomes something through the crucible of matter and Mind.

It will also clarify why you exist and the very special role you have been granted in the Commonality, pilgrim.

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