Narcissism, ethics, and adeles

The recent situation in USA and in the World - we cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world - forces to ask questions about ethics and moral. Are Good and Evil only illusions as materialist would say and propose to stop worrying about Trump and to concentrate on business. Materialistic could make this more precise by continuing in slightly irritated tone that there are no free choices - this is against laws of physics. Non-materialist like me would however continue to ask whether the choices between Good and Evil are real after all so that we are responsible for our deeds?

Narcissism and Good and Evil

This comment evolved from a discussion about narcissism as one particular personality disorder and explanation for the behaviors of Mr. Trump. Psychiatrists tell that there are people suffering from personality disorders, and this explains why they can behave in so asocial manner. History is full of examples of this kind of persons - consider only Stalin, Hitler, and later dictators. And almost as a rule people react too late to what is happening. Narcissist as a leader of a nation is the worst thing that can happen (even for the narcissist himself) since people in crisis situation take care only about their own survival and turn their coat to survive. Also the typical portrait of terrorist might be a person with personality disorder: terrorist/ psychopath/ sadist/ narcissist has not received love as a child and decides to revenge. This seems to be true quite often. This view is humane in that it sees these persons as patients.

But is narcissist only a victim of brain disorder or of childhood abuse or can he actually choose between Good and Evil? At this age one has encountered this question several times. Furthermore, if one builds something, which one might call a theory of consciousness, one cannot avoid questions about Life and Death and Good and Evil.

These questions are encountered also in TGD framework and have gradually transformed to mathematical questions so that it becomes possible to propose plausible answers. So: Do we live in best possible world or not? And is the world becoming better all the time - or in the long run at least - as both biological and cultural evolution would suggest? Compare only the life at middle age to our life. Something positive has definitely occurred.

What the roots of N:th order order polynomials have to do with ethics?

In TGD view about Universe and consciousness conscious information plays a key role. The problem of consciousness theorist is that in standard physics there is no direct measure for information, only entropy has a measure and second law provides a rather gloomy future perspective: even the existence of life seems to be impossible and is seen as gigantic thermodynamical fluctuation - perhaps the most implausible hypothesis proposed in the documented history of mankind.

The good number theoretic news is that in p-adic and adelic physics one can speak speak about negentropic entanglement (NE) as a correlate for conscious information and entanglement negentropy measures the amount of NE. Could this bring ethics and moral to the realm of mathematics? Good deed would increase NE and bad deed reduce it. NE would be also a correlate for love and positive feelings so that good deeds would be done from love.

The basic principle would be Negentropy Maximization Principle (NMP) stating that the amount of coscious information measured by negenropy increases so that Universe evolves becoming gradually a better place. But there are two options. NMP could be true in absolute sense so that negentropy gain in quantum jump would be always maximal: we would live not only in the best possible world as Leibniz believed but in a world becoming even better quantum jump by quantum jump! This looks too good.

NMP could also true in statistical sense only. Although there would be drawbacks, situation would improve in the long run. This option looks more realistic: NMP would be analogous to second law but consistent with it. This option would allow to speak about ethics and moral. NMP in this sense would allow us to do also stupid and cruel things.

The statistical view about NMP is probably correct in TGD Universe and can be formulated number theoretically in terms of adelic physics, which is fusion of real number based physics describing matter and physics of physics based on p-adic number fields describing cognition. One can also speak about evolution and actually reduce to the growth of the complexity of extension of rationals determining given hierarchy level in the hierarchy of adeles defining evolutionary level of the system.

A simple concretization of given extension of rationals is in terms of roots of polynomials of degree N with rational coefficients. There are N roots and so called Galois group maps rationals to rationals and permutes these roots with each other. Let n denote the order of Galois group (number of its elements). Since n is positive, it necessary increases in statistical sense quantum jump by quantum jump: this is like random walk at positive half-line and leads gradually farther away from origin. In the long run the extension and therefore also classical and quantum Universe would both become more and more complex. This would be evolution. NMP would follow from adelic physics, it need not be postulated separately. This was a rather recent pleasant surprise in the middle of unpleasant surprises from the world of politics.

So: ethics and N:th order polynomials seem to have something in common! The world is full of surprises and this is especially true for the world of mathematics!

Adelic physics explains also dark matter

Evolution would be reduced to a statistical increase of maximal possible NE - quantum jump by quantum jumps things are bound to get better. Also a connection with the hierarchy of Planck constants central in the TGD inspired physics of living matter emerges. The action of Galois group on the number theoretic discretization of space-time surface consisting of points with preferred coordinates in an extension of rationals defining the adele defines space-time surface as n-sheeted covering. From the beginning it was clear that the effective Planck constant h_eff/h=n must correspond to the number of sheets of a covering defined in some manner. In adelic physics h_eff/h=n labelling the levels of a hierarchy of dark matters as phases of the ordinary matter corresponds extremely naturally to the order of Galois group of the extension. Dark matter would be the basic prediction of adelic physics! One also understand favored p-adic primes in the framework of adelic physics but this requires more information about p-adic numbers and extensions of rationals.

For a summary of earlier postings see Latest progress in TGD.

Articles and other material related to TGD.