Quantum Resonance 2 - Causality in Human Psychology

It seems that we do not have to ask anymore if nature is a complex adaptive system (CAS) as we can see it at work every day. The faithful in some form of Intelligent Design will attribute creative emergence to their Deity of choice but that we can respectfully position that as willful ignorance. ‘No sir, it is too stressful to consider that I may have been wrong so I rather stick with my story before I loose my face.’ Strange, that faith and face have nearly the same phonetics. Enough said.

If we now consider that maybe the universe as a whole is a complex adaptive system that creates itself through non-causal emergence you will find many scientists opposed. For them the discovery of THE (causal mathematical) LAWS has become their faith. But even the invention of probability calculations cannot describe the phenomenon of emergence. There simply seems to be no probability to emergence because it does not allow reductionism. Scientists can and do not want to loose FACE, much like those religious nuts. They fight back by ridiculing people who cannot understand the complex and utterly artificial language of mathematics that they created. They have no proof that this language is in any way related to the way the universe works. They claim that because it can probably approximately correct describe some phenomenon that this must be so. They push philosphers like my into the laughed about arena of Esoterics. Well, this is another act of willful ignorance and no different to religious believers.

Let me take one more step back. Why do people exhibit those traits of searching for causality? You may be surprised, but the human ability to recognize patterns and link them causally to our well being is a drive not much different to nourishment and replication. Therefore the essence of human rational thought is linked to causality. It is a much more energy efficient form of survival than genetically transmitted fear of unsafe situations or dangerous animals. Biochemical emotional steering works a lot better if it is linked to repeated patterns. You only feel fear in certain situations and not all the time. Large sharp teeth equals dangerous! Even if you never saw exactly that animal before. We unconsciously are continuously at work to discover those causal patterns of life that make us feel safer. While in our younger years happiness is much related to learning, over time it is replaced by the feeling that the world around us makes a lot of sense. We start to oppose change, we start to ignore and deny change and propose that those who do it differently must be wrong because it all worked well before. Sounds familiar? A young university graduate who sat on my table in a discussion about the causes of the current financial crisis was listening to my explanation of a complex adaptive system with interest but a worried face. Eventually he said: ‘What you explained makes a lot of sense, but the staggering complexity and our inability to control it is deeply worrying.’

The whole concept of education and teaching is related to transmitting those learning experiences to the next generations. Our ability to learn would however be completely useless if there would not be some drive that makes learning a pleasurable experience. Therefore evolution (!) gave us a biochemical reaction to a positive learning experience in that the emotional center produces dopamine when we succeed in something or understand something. When we search for a solution to a problem we trigger brain areas that are emotionally linked to dopamine excretion. It is a much more effective form of search than hash tables, Btree or RTree on abstract terms that then have to be interpreted. The current problem situation patterns excites the neural memory network and the dopamine lights up the patterns that were successful. Therefore our ability to solve problems is not related to learning but solely to our own positive experiences. Therefore you will find that university graduates with a lot of abstract knowledge have no idea how to use it until they run into a learning experience themselves.

Even our own knowledge emerges from the background of patterns and experience. If the learned pattern is not exposed to a receptive environment it is meaningless. The reason for my excursion into psychology and neurology was necessary to make you aware why we are searching for causality. I propose that this is however a fallacy. There is no ultimate causality that can be expressed in formulas and logical Boolean rules. There are patterns that are related to certain other patterns appearing in a certain sequence on a classical physical level, but that is just a small fragment of chemistry and physics. We can try as hard as we want but we can not build an aeroplane that will CERTAINLY not crash. Building a safe airplane has to do with making it just light enough so it will still get off the ground and just complex enough so it will not fail during the time it should be in the air and pilots can still control it. That is related to probability but has no certainty. If an airplace crashes the TRUE cause can never be identified, but certain causal patterns can be used to reduce the crash probability to some extent.

As a next step we need to look at causality in complex adaptive systems.