You know this phrase, right? But “relativity” is relative too. Maybe something is absolute.
But “relativity of relativity” is relative too. Maybe nothing is absolute after all… Those thoughts create an infinite tower of meta-levels.
If you think about the statement “truth = lie” (“you can go from T to F”) you can get a similar tower. (Because it also implies “you can NOT go from T to F” and “you can go from “you can NOT go from T to F” to “you can go from T to F”″ and so on.) It’s not formal, but still interesting. Informally, the statement “truth = lie” is equivalent to “everything is relative”.
Hierarchy of meta-levels is relative.
Imagine an idealist and a materialist. Materialist thinks “I’m meta compared to the idealist—I can analyze their thought process through physics”. Idealist thinks “materialist thinks they’re meta compared to me, but thinking in terms of physics is just one possible experience”. So, “my thought process = the most important thing” and “my thought process + physics = the most important things” are both meta- compared to each other, they both can do meta-analysis of each other.
Both materialism and idealism can model each other. Materialism can be modeled by meta-idealism. Meta-idealism can be modeled by meta-materialism. Meta-materialism can be modeled by meta-meta-idealism. And so on. (Those don’t have to be different models, it’s just convenient to think about it in terms of levels.)
The same thing with altruism and selfishness. Altruism can be modeled by meta-selfishness. Meta-selfishness can be modeled by meta-meta-altruism. And you can abstract it to any property (A) and its negation (not A), because any property can be treated as a model of the world. So, this idea can be generalized as “A = not A”.
Points and lines
Next step of the idea: for meta-level objects lower level objects are indistinguishable.
If you think in terms of points, two different points (A and B) are different objects to you. If you think in terms of lines, then points A and B may be parts of the same object. Or, on the other hand, the same point can be a part of completely different objects.
A universe of objects
Now imagine that some points are red and other points are blue. And we don’t care about the shape of a line.
Level-1 lines contain only blue (positive) or only red (negative) points.
Level-2 lines can contain both types of points. E.g. they can contain mostly blue (complex positive) or mostly red (complex negative) points.
So, you can get different kinds of objects out of this, somewhat similar to numbers. I guess you can do this in many different ways. For example, you may have a spectrum of colors. Or you may have a positive and negative spectrums. To me it’s very important, because it connects to my synesthesia: see here. The post is very unclear (don’t advice reading it), but sadly I don’t know how to explain everything better yet.
“Everything is relative.”
You know this phrase, right? But “relativity” is relative too. Maybe something is absolute.
But “relativity of relativity” is relative too. Maybe nothing is absolute after all… Those thoughts create an infinite tower of meta-levels.
If you think about the statement “truth = lie” (“you can go from T to F”) you can get a similar tower. (Because it also implies “you can NOT go from T to F” and “you can go from “you can NOT go from T to F” to “you can go from T to F”″ and so on.) It’s not formal, but still interesting. Informally, the statement “truth = lie” is equivalent to “everything is relative”.
Hierarchy of meta-levels is relative.
Imagine an idealist and a materialist. Materialist thinks “I’m meta compared to the idealist—I can analyze their thought process through physics”. Idealist thinks “materialist thinks they’re meta compared to me, but thinking in terms of physics is just one possible experience”. So, “my thought process = the most important thing” and “my thought process + physics = the most important things” are both meta- compared to each other, they both can do meta-analysis of each other.
Both materialism and idealism can model each other. Materialism can be modeled by meta-idealism. Meta-idealism can be modeled by meta-materialism. Meta-materialism can be modeled by meta-meta-idealism. And so on. (Those don’t have to be different models, it’s just convenient to think about it in terms of levels.)
The same thing with altruism and selfishness. Altruism can be modeled by meta-selfishness. Meta-selfishness can be modeled by meta-meta-altruism. And you can abstract it to any property (A) and its negation (not A), because any property can be treated as a model of the world. So, this idea can be generalized as “A = not A”.
Points and lines
Next step of the idea: for meta-level objects lower level objects are indistinguishable.
If you think in terms of points, two different points (A and B) are different objects to you. If you think in terms of lines, then points A and B may be parts of the same object. Or, on the other hand, the same point can be a part of completely different objects.
A universe of objects
Now imagine that some points are red and other points are blue. And we don’t care about the shape of a line.
Level-1 lines contain only blue (positive) or only red (negative) points.
Level-2 lines can contain both types of points. E.g. they can contain mostly blue (complex positive) or mostly red (complex negative) points.
So, you can get different kinds of objects out of this, somewhat similar to numbers. I guess you can do this in many different ways. For example, you may have a spectrum of colors. Or you may have a positive and negative spectrums. To me it’s very important, because it connects to my synesthesia: see here. The post is very unclear (don’t advice reading it), but sadly I don’t know how to explain everything better yet.