Thinking as deciding

variation 9/2000

Please send your comments (even in the form of a crushing criticism) to these address:
O.Prokopius, Czech Republic
ondrej.prokopius@seznam.cz

Dedicated to my chief inspirations Sigmund Freud, Martin Buber and Albert Einstein

In the world based on the connection of regularities and rules with the uncertainty determined by the character of the micro-world and also the uncertainty determined by the intertwining of specifying factors on the level of the visible world, we are, when deciding, limited also by poor knowledge of the present, even less knowledge of the past and minimal ability to predict the future. Yet – ”blindly” enough – we decide and therefore think. And not only us, human beings, but also other inhabitants of the world . This work offers a hypothesis about the process of deciding.

The roots of deciding, and consequently thinking, are in the social action. An individual, when clashing another individual, evaluates two and two reflective values. One reflection, termed ME, has the values ”life” or ”death”. The other reflection, termed YOU, has the values ”rivalry” or ”tolerance”. These four values are processed by an individual in relation to another individual in the speed of light in such way that the time-shift between the reflections ME and YOU occurs, which leads to the identification of the reflections ME and YOU and consequentially to the illusion of identity of a thinking individual with another individual. The relation of the four original values, however, boils down to two identified values: either to ”life and tolerance” in the positive reduction, or to ”death and rivalry” in the negative reduction – in other words to ”love” or ”hate”. Thinking, to all intents and purposes, is the piling up and combining of individual reductions, which are at the same time the basic unit of the memory. (The illusion of identity is hardly possible with different sections of reality at one time – the breaking of the unity of time creates the illusion of identity immediately - see the well-known example: 1+1=2.)

The scheme of the two and two reflective values , which are consequentially reduced to two seemingly identified values , is preserved even when revulsion and wild development in acting and thinking occurs owing to the intertwining of controversial reductions. Undoubtedly, more efficient thinking is based on the intertwining of many thousands of reductions of a seemingly simple relation of ME and YOU and due to its abstractness it can be – from the view of the human egocentrism – placed higher than deciding and thinking of other individuals. Yet the basis of any kind of deciding is the same in thinking and any kind of deciding, even the simplest one, is thinking at the same time, though on the primary level, regardless the fact that the reflective values , after their moving away from the primarily social deciding, can rather be called couples ”1” or ”0”, and ”0” or ”1”. Then the positive reduction can be termed ”1 + 1”, the negative reduction ”0 - 0”.

The positive reduction evokes an illusion of exclusiveness by means of the time-shift in thinking, the negative reduction raises the feeling of inferiority in the same way. Both of them lead to the rise of ideologies and religions. The arguments in this field are therefore arguments concerning mere side-products of our decisions or antagonisms in which belief and ideals do not matter at all.

X X X

Is it still turning?
September 28-30, 2002

Among laymen I am certainly not the only one who ceases to understand the substance of the world´s existence when he learns that it is not a problem for quantum physics to surmount the light speed and that it is possible to achieve such speed even in improvised conditions with 500 dollar equipment.
People have always been fascinated by the possibility of the existence of a reality "behind the mirror", time travel etc. if only in a mathematic-model microworld. To me the existence of parallel worlds seems unreal. If I imagined these worlds as two bottom-to-bottom turned plates or two parentheses:)(, then I do not doubt that our world limited by the light speed really exists and can be termed "us)".The world which is beyond the light speed limit and can be termed "(them" exists in real as well. These two worlds exist in reality but never symmetrically as two parentheses: "us)(them", only asymmetrically as "us)them" or "us(them".
The parenthesis or the "bottom part of the plate" always includes the whole world "them" or "us" and forms a kind of stripe or mirror which encircles our whole world /or the world "them"/. The fact that the world "them" is only our reflection, allows for uncertainty / "us" represents the same for the world "them"/. If the world "them" did not really exist in the mirror - the bottom part of our "plate" - all possibilities of our world would be only mechanical alternatives - as if you have 30 tins for 30 days; the first day you can have any of these 30 tins but the last day you have nothing to choose from. Thanks to the existence of the "mirror" of our world, a famous cat can be dead and alive at the same time - once "on the plate" and at the same time it reflects on the bottom part of the "plate".
Our world "us" with the reflection "them" in the shape "us)them" or the world "them" with the reflection "us" in the shape "us(them" would not be conditioned by uncertainty if these worlds existed as parallels in the shape "us)(them" because the reality would only double mechanically and uncertainty would be in the situation "60 tins for 60 days".
The mirror "them" for us - "us" exists in reality as well as there exists the mirror "us" for the reality we are separated from by the light speed. However, these worlds are not symmetrical - their relation is similar to that of "wrapping" and "contents". This is why, to my opinion, it is impossible to use the same characteristics of processes in the transition from one world to the other - it is not like driving 100 kph in a town instead of 50 kph. It is not possible to jump through the mirror "without breaking the substance of the material".
P.S. It remains to add that the world "us-them" with the parenthesis like this ) or like that ( has been described as a "two-storey cake" - in fact the world "us" is totally interpenetrated by the mirror "them" /and vice versa/ and its borderlines are only observable where enormous masses of energies fight. We can presume that in the world "us(them" time flows in the opposite direction than in our world.

If we imagine cutting with a sharp knife right into time-reality - into that "is" in "happen-is-ing" /The Theory of Time-Reality, see ref. on Thinking as Deciding https://www.angelfire.com/ab/timereality/, then by this cut we get a mutual reflection of the being, in which co-exist the possibilities as existing in their non-identity, and above that, there is the reflecting of possibilities in the world "us)them"; i.e. touching the light speed /and lower speeds/ but also a multiple reflection in two mirrors creating the world in many dimensions and systems / "us)them" see text Is it still turning in Thinking as deciding/. Then immediately time-reality flows its own way / or it keeps "coming back" to the moment "is" but in the shape given by the former "is"/ i.e. it is not possible to step into the same river twice; time-reality is the coming back of the already-non-identical into the point of cut. The possibility is the position of what happened to the further existence in time, i.e. in the repeating shape or the shape exceeding the given - in the sense if identity. Each set of possibilities entering the "is" in the observed system is unrepeatable, often not only because of the scale of possibilities but because of uncertainty allowing these possibilities to work. The reflecting in time-reality is, in speeds close to the light speed, the reflecting of the same, while, paradoxically, the result is the realization of only one possibility of "the same". The rate of identity of the reflecting one falls down with the falling speed of the mutual movement of elements. The world us)them and us(them, thanks to this, resembles a river - regardless the speed of individual influxes-systems the time flows in one direction /one of both directions/. Really existing non-identical objects do not move towards each other. The world us(them is indispensable for us but we do not know and we will never know what really goes on in it - this is its sense, not imperfection. I presume that for many of us this statement will be the confirmation of the existence of global God who integrates in himself something which is inconceivable for us mortals without thinking - the world us)them and us(them in parallel existence. The identity of a realizing possibility/realizing possibilities is given by the extinction of possibilities in time in such a way that in "is" the possibilities are "re-rolled" by repeating or exceeding. In the case of "material" subjects there is a kind of "winning" in which the other possibility does not necessarily end; it only just "did not manage". /So a layman can finally understand how matter can - in certain conditions - "evaporate" into energy - it is simply too slow to be realized by repeating and at the same time, in the world "after" there is no space for it. In our thinking, the moment "is" contains the positive and negative reduction - they create a reflection again and it is a reflection of 2x2 dimensions, i.e. even multiple dimension if we do not consider parallel processes/systems. In the moment "after", these reductions stop co-existing. Either one of them ends or they exist in a parallel form and they are not a part of the same system in the narrowest sense of the word. The possibilities of a system or a metasystem enriched with reductions as memory units come back to "is". It seems that by using the terms "now" and "after" in this text I reduced the term "happen-is-ing" to a mere "is-ing". But it is not so because "happen" and "ing" expresses the term "after=before" - a relation in which the past and the future keep changing places. Reflection in thinking is not reflection of the same even though the result is also the realization of one of the possibilities - along the lines that an observer is "present" here that participates in one of the possibilities/reductions and at the same time in the other possibility/reduction. By the participation of an observer, non-identity in reflection comes into being and on the contrary, here occurs an illusion of identification of "me" and "you" /in contrast to "us" and "them" which cannot become identical because in their own special way they are "identical", i.e. they do not exist in a symmetrical and parallel way. Thinking differs from reality in the way that here on a model as an instrument of control sharp borders of a system in which "is" functions are created. So thinking pre-defines a problem and then it considers it as a model. The language of thinking is a complex of axioms which we confirm during the further process of cognition. The last thing is to explain how the illusion of identity is created in reduction and how the feeling of exclusiveness or inferiority which follows reductions is created. It is an illusion of diverting time. Two subjects, when put into diverting time, lose their individual identity and gain a new identity - a common one. The best example of positive reduction are lovers who hold each other's hand, kiss and think that the other person is a miracle compared to other dull people to whom they are not bound by reduction. It is a state when the observer perceives himself as aiming forward /excluded/ and the observed one is seen as aiming backwards in diverting time. In the negative reduction, on the contrary, the observer sees himself in diverting time as aiming backwards /inferior/ and the observed one is seen as aiming forward. As a weak comparison of this view I would use a situation when, doing a mountain hike, you keep walking at the back for a few days. It seems that you do not have enough energy and you keep trying to catch the others all the time. Thinking is real being /being of the object/ and at the same time inside-out being /being of the subject/. Along with this a certain form of deciding is proper to all elements the world consists of; where we could hardly speak about thinking, we have to speak about exceeding and repeating the given and this always anticipates deciding of its kind. We always speak about exceeding and repeating the given within a particular system. /The system is formed by two and more elements which have the character of subject or object - even if one of them was a mere reflection of the other./ The moment "is" of a particular system could be expressed by speed in which two elements moving in opposite directions pass. The interval in which the elements pass is the time "is" for the given system. In the being of the object, the movement is the exceeding of the given; in the being of the subject, the movement is the repeating of the given. In the moment "is", the object and subject join. The reverse subject/object probably happens in two moments - when the mutual speed reaches the light speed and when two elements change the direction or the speed of their mutual movement. We have cut this time period in this text in two halves, which is a proof of nonsensicality of these speculations; could something which is /in the light speed/ the smallest be cut in two halves? Time, however, is "cut in two halves" because such is the sense of its existence. What we have been measuring and calling "time" is a relation between the individual "is's", i.e. the relation between two intervals specified with difficulty. Time by its character is not a mere dimension of reality but the base of time-reality. In reductions, on the contrary, time creates absolutizing relations. What in thinking is termed a positive or negative reduction, in reality has its analogy termed centripetal and centrifugal forces. And the other way round, reductions can be considered analogy of centripetal and centrifugal forces. The relation between object and subject is the relation between antagonistic powers which are realized in time. It can be shown schematically that in reductions, time flows observer as positive reduction, and observer as negative reduction. In time-reality, time flows either in the world us)them this way ) or in the world us(them this way ( /see text Is it still turning in Thinking as deciding/. Without the existence of the world us)them or the world us(them, no movement would exist, nor gravitation, nor will. Time-reality is the world ) or ( /the world us)them or us(them/, which are open and uncompleted systems which are neither together nor individually conceivable by an outer observer; if we do not presume the existence of global God who would be the sense of these worlds. In thinking as deciding we create the illusion of co-existence of these two worlds by reductions. This results in a definition of an element as object/subject which is marked by unified changes of the direction or speed of the movement towards other elements of the system. In the light speed it is not possible to determine if the element moves in mirror ) or in time . By the harmonizing of different directions and speeds of movement a wave occurs, in which the qualities of subject and object - of centripetal and centrifugal forces - are joined; e.g. a billiard ball, a water wave, a movement of a wing, walking, cycling or a karate stroke. A wave is a form in which time reflects in both directions. Waves create fields in which as if "us" and "them" co-existed. Thinking is joint creation of waves and fields. Despite all cogitation about the "relativity of time", it is clear from the text above that in the world we can never exist against the direction of the time-flow. In positive and negative reduction and clearly also in gravitation etc. we are placed in the flow of time which is not one of a few dimensions of the world but a basic dimension.

I suppose that the main reason of the low understandability of the text you are reading is /beside the complicated determining of the uncertain and probability character of the world/ the insufficient definition of the hypothesis of deciding mechanism as a social phenomenon towards a general hypothesis about how the common deciding and thinking and generally the acting of an individual in his wholeness work.
In the reflexive relation ME and YOU, /life-death-rivalry-tolerance/ whose impact in the social level is presented in the text, there is the basic scheme in which deciding is in progress. This scheme is common to both hypotheses.
The particular content of deciding and consequently of the reduction which has arisen - adjoining by identification - is happening when processing more complicated tasks in "sets", "chains" of reductions which then pile up. The result of deciding is therefore made up of the intertwining of a series of reduction results, the values of which always keep the relations like in the basic scheme demonstrated graphically in the further text, regardless their specific content.
If we call the values contained in sets and chains of reductions 'couples "1" or "0" and "0" or "1" ', we also cast doubt on the values "life" or "death" and "rivalry" or "tolerance" used in the description of deciding as a social phenomenon. In "current run of reductions" according to a general hypothesis, however, not the values definable by such complicated terms are the point, but relatively simple "sensors" structured in their mutual relations as "life-death-rivalry-tolerance".
Sensors participate in the formation of a reduction as a two-in-one "information impulse", which probably starts previous set-up reductions as memory units and also following, newly created reductions and genetically /biologically/ set-up formulas. The flow of impulses is the input as well as the output of every reduction.
Sensors in the text presenting the reduction as a social phenomenon are called values life-death-rivalry-tolerance, which may come from the real content of social behaviour, but at the same time they are misleading because the content of even one of these terms defining the given value regulates undoubtedly the whole complex of processes in an individual. To understand the mechanism of a reduction, this vulgarization has been necessary for the author, and perhaps appropriate for the explanation of social behaviour. When modelling thinking, the question is whether to begin with observing the social processes and behaviour of the individuals or with exploring tissues under a microscope.
The idea of reducing the four values-sensors to a two-in-one reduction-impulse resembles the knowledge of genetics. It is not possible to make a deduction that thinking is identical with genes nor that the work "thinking as deciding" has been written to combine a kind of mystic speculation with genetics and profit from it. On the contrary, the author has finally realized the need to combine - at least in an outline - genetic /biological/ information chains with what can be called - in the widest sense of the word - deciding or thinking. The hypothesis on deciding and thinking as a social phenomenon contains constituents of a general hypothesis. This note is an attempt to single this general hypothesis out.

It may not be necessary to reach the speed of light to evoke the illusion of identity in our thinking. What is necessary is the condition that thinking is a mechanism in which "we observe our latter me /YOU in the text/ from the position of our former me /ME/ and at the same time we observe the former me /ME/ from the position of our latter me /YOU/, while the former me/ME/ and the latter me /YOU/ move in the opposite direction". The speed of the movement and thus the degree of identification in the positive or negative reduction may probably change. And as it is customary with the guileful physics, the changes of speed are probably discontinuous.
The demonstration of violence of one ideology or one religion prove the scathing potential hidden in every form of particular ideology or religion. Without the shared belief in the continuance of the human life on Earth and after the doom of this planet, mankind cannot exist any longer. "The Global God = continuance" is surely a heavy stone but it gives us hope.

In 2000 I sent a reference to the text „Thinking as deciding“ to Mr. Roger Penrose. A few days ago Mr. Stanislav Reinis draw my attention to other authors who were thinking and are thinking about the mechanism of thinking from the point of view of quantum physics – Mr. Werner Heisenberg (Mr. Robert Barton) and Mr. Robert G. Jahn. Even if I am not absolutely sure if „the cat is dead or half dead“ I would recommend you to try to find the answer in „Prokopius decides“, opinions of above mentioned authors and other specialists who deal with this issue. I should have mentioned Mr. Werner Heisenberg together with Mr. Sigmund Freud, Mr. Martin Buber and Mr. Albert Einstein at the beginning of this text. I am sorry.
PS: As a layman in physics, I will probably forbid myself to use the word speed.

1.It is very difficult to imagine an individual who is ”able to speak all the languages of the world”, i.e. not to také something for his own and something as foreign since the beginning of his life. Therefore it is quite natural that we have to overcome the barriers of the foreign and our own. We have to learn not to reject what is ”naturally” strange to us. We are not globalists since our birth. We are afraid /or we show our fear as aggression/ of our father, then our aunt and finally our own brothers and sisters. It is natural.

We are overcoming this fear-aggression at the time when there is no deep-rooted complex of fears-aggressions in us yet. If we avoid the creation of it or later we get rid of our complexes, after a certain time we even get rid of the fear-aggression of ”strange” other nations, races, religions, political creeds, by knowing these better and by realizing what we have in common and what is different for us. But let us not be afraid of the period of being absorbed in what we consider the only and our own. It is a natural period in seeking the sense of the world.

The sense of our existence, which we have in common, does not mean that we will be unified creatures - which is simply unreal, but yet such image of the world´s unity can exist in the minds of ”benefactors”. Such people become the preachers of another particular ideology, because they oversimplify the global idea to a ”bulldozer” which liquidates the naturally arising differences. Tolerance as coexistence is not the accepting of something completely foreign but the accepting of the ”extraneous” for our own, i.e. the realizing that our own substance is not really ”our own” - it is the substance which consists of the heterogeneous and sometimes seemingly incompatible.

It is the deliverance from the complex of exclusiveness and at the same time avoiding the ”way” of inferiority. Coexistence is the way of natural dignity which does not require identification always and everywhere. Aversions from the past will be recalled in the memory; there is no need to see fatal importance in it, just as the excited memory sees a false meaning of symbols which it does not understand. Coexistence is not a way to be taken at the cost of one´s suffering - we certainly have the right to defend ourselves against anything that harms us at the real time. It is enough for coexistence that we do not transfer ”the memory of the wrong” from one subject to another because of a common feature.

2.On the other hand, it is necessary for us to také account of the fact that if somebody writes a work which is strongly aimed against all forms of fanatism and his effort has sense and becomes popular, it will undoubtedly cause hate of the fanatics.

3.It is not possible to identify time as a measurable interval characteristic of a certain systém, with streams and tributaries of time which are the forms of the existence of time-reality and which create relations of the subject and object among systems. So it is not possible to simply assert that here or there ”the clock is slower”, this is the relation of the controlled and the controlling one.

4.Riding a motorbike or flying bear the risk of shortening or narrowing one´s life. At the same time these say a lot about the transition between the subject and the object. By the way, I have always wished to win a dance competition.

5.When reading Heidegger I realize how important for thinking the language is which we use when building our view of the world.The language provides a space where both the writer and the reader can get lost. If I were able to respect authorities, my spiritual father would probably be Augustinus who I got to know /very late/ thanks to Heidegger.

6.I do not conceive reductions and the complex of exclusiveness from the psychological point of view /except for point 1 in this note/ - I do not speculate on when the individual decides to act aggressively and when he decides to run away and hide. This is the problem of piling up and combining reductions and the cooperation of genes. Nor do I deal with the question of ”entries” from outside into the mechanism of thinking, only with the principle of thinking as deciding.

7.The terms ”love”, ”hate”, ”exclusiveness” and ”inferiority” , used in this work, are not identical with with these terms used somewhere else. Within the work ”Thinking as deciding” they rather have the meaning ”score - identity”, ”score - negation of identity”, ”score - sense”, and ”score - negation of sense”. ”Score - identity” or ”score - negation of identity” probably functions within the reduction, ”score - sense” or ”score - negation of sense” very probably functions outside and it influences the score in further reductions. /Score - as mentioned before: ”1+1” or ”0-0” for individual reductions; here also in the meaning of piling up and combining reductions and cooperation of genes./

P.S. Considering that I cannot speak English and I do not know how to make www pages, I thank my friends for help.

It is clear that even without the mechanism of the collapse of US and THEM, each area satisfies different kinds of people and it depends just on the extent of satisfaction and on the willingness to admit such agitation of one’s mind. Much more serious, however, is the fact that at the moment of divergence of time, the whole scheme deforms and a "sense" which can be called a reduction of the relation ME and YOU forms.
We can differentiate between positive and negative reductions:
Positive reductions – anticlockwise in the graph. ME connected with the adjacent half THEM-US gains the only dimension – love. YOU connected with the adjacent half US-THEM gains the only dimension – tolerance.
Negative reductions – clockwise in the graph. ME connected with the adjacent half US-THEM gains the only dimension – hate. YOU connected with the adjacent half THEM-US
gains the only dimension – rivalry. In these cases tolerance seems to be love, and hate seems to be rivalry. And so the identification of ME and YOU which illusively happens, brings a very intensive pleasure.
In positive reductions I perceive myself "in the front" and my partner "at the back" in diverging time. This leads to my feeling of exclusiveness. By contrast, in the negative reduction the partner is set "to the front" and me "backwards", so I feel inferior. From this special viewpoint an illusion forms that two different beings are identical. In this illusion we feel oneness with our "Siamese twin”, or counteraction. Our acting in such a situation issues from "truths”, "justice" and "the good”. This illusion of identity leads in our acting to a boundless devotion or, alternatively, a boundless heartlessness.
In our heads the positive or negative reduction may occur parallel to our consciousness, or on its own. Or normal consciousness ceases and both reductions towards different partners coexist, or besides one of the reductions, an apathy towards other partners lasts. There exist many alternatives of "piling up" reductions and normal consciousness, while each level (layer - deciding shell) is meant for different partners and it need not occur in a "pure" form but also in a combined form. The "jumble" may be so antagonistic towards one partner that we alternate "in jumps" love, hate and normal evaluation within a few seconds.
The singular representatives of reductions are envoys of Heaven or Hell. But we meet with a reduction as a matter of course during motherhood or infatuation or when rescuing human lives. Also calling for capital punishment is a reduction. Gangs, terrorists, sport fans, consumers of popular culture, sects, nations and races are subject to reductions. Reductions towards other animal species, natural objects and man’s works are omitted here. It is tragic but usual at the same time if a dominating positive reduction towards oneself is attended by a negative reduction towards people or things around. But even quite normal thinking about oneself attended by a negative reduction towards the surrounding world can bring catastrophic results. By contrast, an all-embracing positive reduction very easily becomes a false consciousness and under its flag negative reductions grow wild.
A rising self-consciousness can probably not do without reductions. There would also be no sense in trying to eliminate reductions in extreme life situations, such as defence against a deadly attack, or violently suppressing the right of the majority to demand the condemning of brutal murderers to death. It would also be foolish to protest against partners’ or parents’ love.
The biggest danger for a modern society is a reduction as ideology, because reductions lie in the basis of all totalitarian movements and regimes. Negative reductions – racism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism, the superiority of powerful states etc., have brought the worst evils to the world. At their summits conquerors and creators stand. On the other hand, it has been implied that much harm can come even from positive reductions which in ideology quickly turn from the founders’ "good intentions" to "an opiate leading to hell”. And it does not really matter very much if it is a religion, a scientific world outlook or morality – all these terms should have inverted commas, if not even antlers.
The forming of reductions brings forth many psychic disorders. The projection of ME and YOU by means of identification and elimination of part can cause sexual deviations – the masochistic proclaiming of boundless Tolerance or sadistic Power. The preserved ME and YOU together with a time shift can be the cause of manias and depressions etc.
It remains to try to answer the question, how reductions come into existence. We can assume that our thinking and memory make use of the motion of light and of the motions of compounding light beams, most probably in the shape of the number eight, which are at a certain moment set in an opposite position. Thus an illusive turning of time "inside out" and its divergence occurs.
In the positive reduction we perceive ourselves "in the future" and in the negative reduction "in the past”. Of course we can substitute the values in the presented graph for other ones, but the principle remains the same every time we speak about thinking.
Even normal thinking probably creates the "positive" and the "negative" of any relation and by comparing them, it comes to a normal conclusion. In some cases, however, the "positive" or "negative" collapses and only an opposite pole is committed to memory.
On the way from the relative and uncertain, this text has got from an "objectively possible" world to a "subjectively real" one, perceived in a time non-identity of the coexisting. If the author has contributed to the conversion of at least two or three fanatics, all his (and your) suffering has been justified. It will not be of any loss if the superiority of man to other animals comes to harm at the same time.