Percy:  So here's the challenge in building a tool for measuring abstract energy.  During information warfare operations I was inside client organizations.  Abstract energy flowed through them, and therefore me.  In the language of physics, I was a non-inertial – or moving -- frame of reference.  But I am no longer on the inside, so I am building a Capability that can perceive abstract energy from the outside.  That requires an inertial, or non-moving, frame of reference. 

Red:  Meaning you are stationary?

Percy:  Not so much stationary as gliding above and illuminating the contour lines of abstract energy.  This frame must be constructed within the bounds of our scientific trinity.  Let’s start with the Incompleteness Theorem.  Here’s the key passage from Boyd’s paper:

 

In 1931 Kurt Gödel created a stir in the world of mathematics and logic when he revealed that it was impossible to embrace mathematics with a single system of logic.  He accomplished this by proving, first, that any consistent system that includes the arithmetic of whole numbers is incomplete.  In other words, they are true statements or concepts within the system that cannot be deduced from postulates that make up the system…Thus Gödel’s proof indirectly shows that in order to determine the consistency of any new system we must construct or uncover another system beyond it. 

​

Red:  So how does this relate to writing?

Percy:  Writing is a system that claims to represent human reality.  Yet Gödel states that we can’t test the consistency of a system with the rules that define it.  In other words, we can't test whether a written document accurately represents reality with the rules that govern writing.  So, Red, what are the axioms of writing -- you know, the ones that give it meaning?

Red:  That's easy.  Syntax and grammar. 

Percy:  And the fundamental component of a written document?

Red:  I suppose the complete sentence. 

Percy:  And what is the fundamental axiom of a complete sentence?

Red:  Again, easy.  Subject-verb-object.

Percy:  So do you agree that under the Incompleteness Theorem we must, at minimum, decode text without relying on subject-verb-object grammar to give it meaning?

Red:  What?  Really?  What are you going to do?  Create a computer program that removes all verbs and then sift through the nouns, adjectives and participles to find the formula to save mankind?

Percy:  You’re not far off, Red.  But we don’t need to avoid complete sentences altogether.  Only within the formation and application of our Inertial Frame of Reference.  You just went through an exercise in how to do that: the dialectical deconstruction of ADHD.  

Red:  More like dialectical destruction of ADHD! 

Percy:  I appreciate that Red, more than you may realize.  Recall that we examined two broad types of consistency: horizontally within and between concepts, and vertically between concepts and the objects they label.  We will map Abstract Space with the same Concept/Object dialectic.  The key question: how do we determine viable pairings for measuring abstract energy?  

Red:  I dunno.  How?

Percy:  For that we turn to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.  How we apply it to creating an accurate and predictable Frame is the heart of the experiment.  This principle states that the intrusion of an observer into a system creates uncertainty in determining the position and velocity of objects flowing through it.  This can obscure inconsistencies, leading to faulty observations.  Our inertial frame is initially based on two Concept/Object fundamentals Boyd extracted from the principle.  First, the concept should be more precise than the object.  For example, the concept of the Reformation is more precise than the object of the 16th Century social upheaval it describes.  Or ADHD, which is more precise than me.  Second, the observer should minimize intrusion into the Concept/Object comparison. 

Red:  Hold on.  You were the object in The ADHD Torus.  I’d say that’s pretty much full envelope intrusion.

Percy:  It is.  But that was an exercise in how to use the dialectical engine -- based on the idea that the only reality you know is personal experience.  Extrapolating this to the Illusion requires stepping outside it.  And the Illusion, of course, is all in your mind.

Red:  How do you step outside your mind?

Percy:   By putting it on a website!  Just kidding.  By blanking the Screen, which enables us to cross through the Illusion and into Abstract Space cleanly, without the filters of our state-based identity.  You know, like nationality, ideology, religion – never mind the received knowledge of education.  Such suspension of judgement captures the loss of self-consciousness I experience in HyperFlow.  It embodies the concept of epoché in the philosophy of Phenomenology.  You can also call it equanimity or Zen.

Red:  You want me to meditate my way to reality?

Percy:  Park the sarcasm, Red.  Stay with me.  One scientific principle to go.  That’s the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  My understanding of it, in brief.  Every system in the Universe, including the Universe itself, cycles from order to disorder.  This is called entropy, which prompts chains of events that unleash energy and unbalance the system -- prompting more events as it finds a new equilibrium.  In short.  Entropy creates change.  Change creates energy.  Energy creates reality.  Reality is entropy.   Or at least that's how I grasp it...

Red:  So you can perceive the entropy – that is the reality -- of writing?  See Sidebar:  The Entropy of Writing

Percy:  That's what we will determine by reverse-engineering the events that lead into the creation of the Anglo-American Empire, manager of today’s Resource Exploitation Machine.  I also don’t think it will be that difficult, once you clear all the useless noise from the Screen.  Then we can start plotting Abstract Space within a vacuum -- that is, a void devoid of writing.

Red:  Yeah.  I meant to ask about Abstract Space.  Another of your invented terms?

Percy:  Adapted.  From the French Marxist philosopher Henri Lefebvre.  In his landmark book, The Production of Space, Lefebvre said the reality of nature is being killed by its abstraction.  I agree.

Red:  What, you some kind of commie, Percy?  Just kidding....

Percy:  Yeah.  Well a lot of well-educated folk still conflate the Marxist dialectical toolbox with Stalin and gulags.  Shows you the power of Abstract Space, Anglo-American-style.  C'mon.  Let's head to the back of this semi-cone room, and that Big Screen...have a seat.  So, this first graphic on the Big Screen represents three broad types of space: Natural, Mediated & Abstract.  Note we are working within the limitations of the 2D Screen: those circles are really flattened spheres.

Red:  The color scheme looks familiar.

Percy:  That’s our three-gear dialectical engine of Concept, Superstructure & Object.  Everything should link to this drive train.  So the onscreen graphic correlates to three types of space described by Lefebvre.  The Object is Natural Space, which contains the biosphere not under human control.  Lefebvre called this absolute space.  But we now live in the Mediated Space of the farm, shaped by the state’s Superstructure of laws.  Lefebvre called this lived, or representational space.  

Red:  So what do those interfaces between the spaces mean?

Percy:  Mediated Space connects via the Governing Interface with Abstract Space.  It's populated by the human managers of the state’s legal Superstructure.

Red:  You mean the government, legislature and judiciary?   

Percy:  More or less.  Depends on the state.  The grid they govern connects with Natural Space via the Trade Lane Interface, which contains the transportation hubs for the extraction, refining, manufacturing and distribution of commodities.  Together they form the Setting, the system we navigate to reach the goal of decoding the alphabetic illusion.  We will plot the coordinates in the setting of Abstract Space with an inertial frame of reference constructed from a Concept/Object pairing.  It all starts on a Blank Screen like this on the Big Screen.

Red:  You realize that you’ve put a Screen inside a Screen?  That’s disorienting, like a mirror within a mirror. 

Percy:  And the default view of the Illusion.  Screens insides Screens inside Screens.  Scan any newspaper homepage.  Few articles directly match to an observed event in reality.  Most are derivatives, people talking about people talking about past or future events.  Many have no relation to events in reality whatsoever.  An endless recursion of frozen particles reflecting off each other into our collective myopia.

Red:  Whoa...getting a little poetic are we?  But I must call you out on mixing of dimensions.  You just said the Setting’s circles are flattened spheres.  3D to 2D.  Yet the Screen, a flat rectangle, is accurate.  2D to 2D.  How do you, um, square that circle?  See Sidebar: Retinas & Writing

Percy:  Perhaps your concerns will be addressed by this on the Big Screen.  The Screen on the Screen is now a one dimensional line inside the 2D Setting.  Note the arrowheads on the circles, a reminder that these are systems spinning through entropic feedback loops.  The left is a particle view of the most significant events in Abstract Space: change in state control over a node in a trade artery.  That event, at the intersection of the node and the law governing it, is marked by X.  For example, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which contains oil fields and export facilities.  This object creates a concept projected onto the Screen and distributed in news particles – or, if you wish, articles.  The concept’s potential energy is tapped when an observer views the particle at a different point on Earth, marked by Y.  The Iraq War propaganda was mainly directed internally at Americans, so think of Y as someone sitting on their sofa in suburbia. 

Red:  I think I get that…But aren’t you making a subjective judgement by calling events like the Iraq War the most significant in the energy flows of Abstract Space?

Percy:  That’s another hypothesis: the source of abstract energy is wealth generated from commodity trade, which is also measured by an abstraction.  Money.  More importantly, we can identify change events in trade lanes without observing them directly.  A state can’t hide control of trade infrastructure, or the commodities flowing through it.  This is captured by our guiding maxim: Infrastructure does not lie.  It’s how we establish the Ground Truth of an event without observing it directly.

Red:  Kinda catchy, that maxim…so what’s with the arrow of time? 
Percy:  The arrow of time reminds us that the particle view of Abstract Space is locked into writing’s linear sequencing of events, which blinds you to the network.  Writing also demands a human actor as the proximate cause of the change.  But how do we know the event results from human agency?  Could they be the consequence of human reaction to events beyond human control?  Trapped within writing’s human-centered channels of communications, we are blind to the systemic factors that shape our reality. 

Red:  So....hmmmm, ummmm...what about the right hand graphic?  Why are the arrow of time and the observer on the bottom?

Percy:  That’s the view if you are watching the event in reality -- where those cursed to live in interesting times reside.  What I experienced as a combat journalist and led to my Ground Truth model.  Now, see what happens when you shift perspective.  The trick is to rotate the Screen, giving it the three-dimensional depth of time.  Like this graphic on the Big Screen.

Red:  Whoa.  What am I seeing here?

Percy:  This is a wave view of the same Setting.  The arrow of time shows writing's linear sequencing of causality – a particle beam that we will break open to illuminate how it connects to the four-dimensional network of waves.  This is captured by the “past event cone” on the left, while the ”future event cone” contains the probable impact.    

Red:  I will be honest.  I don’t get this.

Percy:  Nor do I expect you to.  It is the basis of the Tesseract -- our full Capability.  And like any HyperFlow tool, it requires training and practice to mesh with the Mind.  The most important concept to remember is the two-dimensional Screen and those cones bursting from each side.  The model we are building is based on the energy patterns I perceived when working inside that Screen.  

Red:  And, again, you say that you perceived writing as visuals?

Percy:  Yep.  A four-dimensional map.  But I'm still peeling back the layers, thinking back to how I bullshitted my way through elite universities without reading. 

Red:   Man.  You're bullshitting now.  I remember you hitting the library all the time in grad school.

Percy:  Where I slept.  I figure I read less than 15% of my coursework.  And only now am I starting to understand how I made it through. 

Red: Yeah?  How?  Because you always got decent grades...

Percy:  My best guess is that I have always read text by structure, not grammar.  And then I played the probabilities with my tests and papers.  It helped that I was a strong writer... and then, much to my surprise, in the fluid setting of information warfare this coping mechanism transformed into a powerful skill. 

Red:  Yeah. Like predicting the future?

Percy:  It wasn't so much that I could predict the future.  Rather, my mind was on a future Screen, looking back at the present via the very predictable flows of abstract energy -- which I knew intimately from my time at the tip of journalism's pen.

Red:  I still don't understand how you can have a career in writing, but not read -- at least normally.

Percy:  Writing and reading are different functions.  How many readers do you know who are awful writers?  Never mind the editors who can't write their way out of a paper bag.

Red:  O.K.  Point taken.  Still am dubious...

Percy:  That's fine.  Wouldn't expect anything else.  I am, after all, challenging your deity.  Let's move on...the next Room synthesizes Boyd and Lefebvre into a metaphor you might find useful.