“Truthful understanding” within the wider eco-system of reality.

• As just discussed, “Truthful understanding” provides the ability to alter the relatedness between self and environment using technology. It’s utilization can however produce environmental fluctuation which is non adaptive in and of itself. To the extent to which this occurs it is clear that understanding must not be complete.

The reason that it occurs is that “truthful understanding” is a strategy which, like everything else has to evolve as a manifestation of reality via the related functioning of reality.

It proliferates or not within reality in the same way as any strategy according to it’s effectiveness at mediating relatedness between the functional adaptive unit – the DNA expressed “self” – and environment. This environment includes other occurrences of the belief strategy.

Truthful understandings and their influence over the flow of reality can therefor be thought of as one strategy within a wider ecosystem. As with relatedness within any ecosystem, the range of possibilities for interactions between any aspect such as “truthful understanding” and other forms of fluctuation is highly varied.

There can for example be benefit for individuals or groupings of individuals in terms of attracting beneficial flows of resource by defending untruths, or grossly neglecting aspects of truth.

Or in feigning truthful understandings: As has been previously stated, “beliefs”, true or false, tend to direct interactions with reality resulting in flows of resource and benefit thereby becoming a source of perceived safety within the fluctuations of reality.

Because of this, “belief” tends to be perceived as a tool for the provision of safety. Fears regarding the potential disruption of flows of resource and benefit may motivate a mind to place belief “beyond” question and examination.

These efforts can be thought of as aimed at maintaining existing equilibrium for a local system within reality (the given individual or group), but usually come at the expense of the equilibrium creating efforts of other sub – systems within the same system of reality (including the wider society and environment).

They are a major limiting factor to the spread of truthful understandings, and are ultimately “self” defeating.

In other cases, efforts to create equilibrium for a “local belief system” within reality through competitive, offensive and defensive relatedness with other systems often seems justified, pragmatic and necessary in order to defend truth from false belief.

Putting aside the question of whether this kind of group activity is currently necessary or was in the past, the question of whether it is ultimately necessary depends upon the effects that closer approximations of truth ultimately have upon the relatedness of reality.

These have the potential to shift the relative cost benefit ratios of selfish and cooperative behaviors, making cooperative behaviors relatively more beneficial, and selfish ones more costly.

One aspect of improved truthful approximations in general is that they appear to facilitate greater communication between aspects of reality as they advance. This facilitates the spread of truth itself.

An environment in which it is commonly understood that dogmatic defense of belief is irrelevant to investigating or grasping truth, represents an ecosystem within which such dogmatic belief cannot easily thrive at least not as an effective relational strategy.

In other words, this change to the nature of environmental fluctuation changes the requirement for adaptive response to one of greater open mindedness.

This must ultimately result in a clearly and commonly held understanding that our various actions are simultaneously the movement of our “self” and environmental fluctuation for other aspects of the “self’s” own reality (i.e. that they are a movement within the communicating medium of one reality).

This must alter strategy since it becomes clear that our interests cannot be separated, and that “we” also have the potential as “parts” of reality (which interact via the communicating medium of reality) to interact in a fashion which is greater than our sum in similar fashion to the way that the bones in an arm do.

This equates to an expansion of our sense of identity to include the totality of reality,  which also generally reinforces motivation towards cooperative interaction.

The extent to which it is not understood that we are connected via the communicating medium of reality is the extent to which “mind” must continue to experience conflicted interaction with it’s “environment” – consisting of the interventions of “other” minds. This is true regardless of how advanced truth approximations become in other respects.

Police, army, security, locks, immune systems, antibacterial anti viral medicine, food hygiene, sanitation. All this is directed at defending against examples of “self” ish strategy within reality. Not to mention the cost of fear associated with all this activity.

The costs of defending against other examples of “Self” ish strategy in other words are extraordinarily high.

In this sense cooperative strategy based upon truthful understandings have immensely greater efficiencies. Increases in the cooperative nature of informational exchange and interaction enables a proportionate reduction in the expression of such costly defenses.

“Truthful” understandings are powerful in the sense that any truly “true” understanding once it gains a degree of “success” (i.e spreads as an aspect of reality), represents an aspect of strategy which cannot be made “truly redundant” by any “competitive” effort directed against it.

Therefor, the only way to deal with environmental fluctuation embodied as the truthful understandings of others in any “ultimate” sense is through a strategy of “alignment” between it and one’s own beliefs.

These then may be the only two strategies with ultimate adaptive fitness: The grasping of truthful understandings of relatedness within this one reality, and alignment with these truthful understandings.

As understanding develops, it points to a possible pathway towards ending the production of conflicted environmental fluctuation by interventions with reality produced by the belief component of group strategy, by producing allegiance to a single category of thought: that of truth.

If this were to happen, it would represent the ultimate transformation of the generalized adaptive feedback loop into a purely truth-seeking one.

The ultimate truth is that we are one. Each of us is an aspect within the unbroken “communication medium” that is reality, and the strategy of truth is a united one.

• The relatedness of reality is increasingly beginning to be directed according to the understanding which reality has of itself embodied as the human mind.

In other words it’s influence over the flow of reality is becoming a more significant aspect of “environmental fluctuation”, and therefor a more significant source of adaptive pressure, and a more significant source of adaptive response, via the action of the generalized adaptive feedback loop.

Strategies such as dogmatism and closed mindedness which may be of benefit as components of “self” ish strategy are ultimately mal-adaptive for the purposes of utilizing either component of truthful strategy, and are therefor seemingly maladaptive in an ultimate sense.

It does seem a logical possibility that the “self” ish parasitic response, at least over the long term, may find proportionately smaller and smaller niche environments in which to persist.

As stated however, any strategy only occurs within the totality of all strategies because it has been successful at mediating it’s relatedness to the remainder of reality, and only persists to the extent that it continues to be successful.

For the time being at least, the various strategies still interact within an ecosystem of relatedness.

Yet we are still in the very early stages of the development of truthful understandings.

The dogmatic and selfish aspects of strategy compete amongst themselves and with truthful strategy both within the beliefs of the organism “self”, and in the relatedness between these selves and the groups in which they participate.

Truthful strategy creates, shares and aligns with understanding while being non defensive of it – practicing the letting go of temptation to utilize other strategy and reserving energy for going straight towards truth.

One of it’s most effective strategies is the promotion of transparency in the course of relatedness between aspects of reality. This too represents a massive environmental shift in favor of cooperative strategy, since selfish strategy cannot thrive in ecosystems where this is present.

The potential to utilize positive “feedback loops” as discussed by Jason Silva and Richard Doyle within social relationships are the action of the “Generalized adaptive feedback loop” at the personal level of social interaction:

We have the potential to create a satisfying experience within reality by choosing cooperative interactions with satisfying environmental fluctuation.

This requires us to equally weight the benefit of our actions to us “personally” against the environmental fluctuation it transmits to “others” through the communicating reality, mindful of the fact that this environmental fluctuation must inevitably provoke adaptive response in some form.

2013 Peter Sillifant