Ambivalence

RMCM^© - The Rational Model of Complex Mechanisms^©

 

Preface

Along with the method of empiricism as the source of all knowledge goes a definition of cause that is widely accepted today. The cause of any event is a preceding event without which the event in question would not have occurred. This is a mechanistic view of causality popular in scientific circles. All the previous events would constitute the complete cause.

1.      Causality and Causation have been treated philosophically by great minds. Fortunately, for me, presenting a model obviates argument. The model either works or it doesn't work. Herein I merely try to explain the model, and I do so presuming this model can be tested. Everyone is free to accept or reject the definitions and the explanations I present. I predict that as we approach implementation the arguments that will arise will be exuberant. This model, when implemented, I predict will encapsulate organic intelligence within an inorganic metabolism.

2.      The definitions and the descriptions herein just came to me. Realizations or epiphanies that arose in groups as I contemplated my ambivalences following a disaster that I was blessed to have survived. Initially I understood ambivalence from its dictionary definition as a polarization of feelings. I began to see this definition as wholly inadequate as a description of what I had been through, and what I was feeling afterwards. I agree that ambivalence tends to disable action. I agree that ambivalence can be confusing. The ambivalence of the young tends to be cleaner than the ambivalence of the more mature. My ambivalence was a cluttered thing. To sort through it required that I encapsulate the experiences mechanistically (functionally). Everything I reflected on (thought about) was a mishmash of likes and dislikes. Some of this can be attributed to the debris from a life long battle with clinical depression. Apparently a problem with my serotonin that was brought under control at midlife with Paxil. I had six years of wonderful clarity and coherence terminated by a disaster. Now I have clear moments that punctuate the noise. The only thing that keeps me whole is prayer. The images surrounding the disaster haunt me in my sleep as well as during my waking hours.

3.      To survive I had to make things simple. One room apartment, simple meals, lots of prayer, plenty of music, film, and reflection modest wardrobe basic laundry, no women no kids. Sometime between the beginning of 2003 and the end of 2004, I began to encapsulate everything in ever simpler terms. It became clear to me that there was a profound difference between complicated and complex. Things began to stick in my mind as I gingerly bound the before and after into a new reality.

4.      I remembered a course I attended at The University of Waterloo. I was never enrolled as a math student there; my formal education ended half way through grade eleven. The course was run by IBM. They were introducing their Visual Age software IDE they had just ported from Small Talk to Windows NT. I was using (learning) Borland's Delphi at the time, and this of course was in Object Oriented Pascal programming language while Visual Age was in the Object Oritented C programming language "C++". So what I really wanted was to know what these well educated people could tell me. I don't "do exams", never have never will. So I attended all the classes; I just never wrote the exam. But the course and the instructor were great and worth every penny I had spent. I asked for and was provided with a list of books that would help me understand OOP. I didn't get the whole Object Oriented thing at the time. It took about six months of my full attention before it clicked. But click it did. And when it did it was like someone had opened the blinds. Significant here is that during the course on IBM's Visual Age was the first time I had heard the phrase "over inherited". What an encapsulation! Never forgot it or the almost off-handed way it was delivered, encased in a directive to focus on the Standard Template Library, as a remedy. Seems as though inheritance is over rated and not as helpful as it first appeared to be. It seems as though templates were far more productive.

5.      If inheritance is problem at 2 or 3 gigahertz, then what of inheritance at the paltry speed of the biological operating system? The speed of water and chemicals propelled through water is comparatively slower than the speed of a micro processor.