Monday, October 5, 2009

The big picture

What if science not only took a tolerant view of belief systems, but saw them as an important part of the physical structure of communities. Indeed nature has been telling us for a long time that subsystem correlations are a key physical part of the world around.

For example science already recognizes the ordered energy that powers our vehicles, our appliances, and even ourselves. It also recognizes the mutual information associated with species diversity on our planet.

The next step may be recognition of layer-multiplicity in niche-networks as just one more ad hoc measure of subsystem correlations (i.e. net surprisal or KL-divergence with respect to ambient) that we'd like to nurture as best we can. Work that each of us is doing to support correlations looking inward/outward from the physical boundaries of skin, family & culture fit into this picture.

This is one way that science might provide us with a picture so big that all residents of our solar system could enjoy making it better, and more quantitative, over time.

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