Evolution of the Universe through the eyes of information

For many people with post-Soviet traumatic syndrome, the concept of "state" and leadership is tied to some semi-divine abstract formation that should not be subject to criticism or changes. It is precisely on this post-Soviet syndrome that modern Russian state ideology — "stability" — is built.

But, in an open system - the world - it is impossible to build static stability based on a "frozen" state, simply due to changes around. People with post-Soviet traumatic syndrome (PSTS) do not like this very much, which causes a demand for the export of "frozen" stability to the foreign policy arena. The "proletarian" revolution, although it began with other slogans, unfortunately, came down to a simple "let's take away, divide and no personal development." This reactive (from the word "reaction"), in its essence, is a force that opposes itself to the "active" forces of the intellectual avant-garde - the so-called. "creative class", strives to find peace with the finding of the "absolute" - a fixed, eternal cultural point, expressed both in the form of traditions and in the form of monumentalism or authoritarianism.

Statements people from the PSTS, as well as the apologists of the "proletarian revolution" and "Eurasianism" of Dugin-Gumylev, about the accelerated development of society after the victory of such "reactive forces" are devoid of any basis, and I will try to substantiate this point of view below. However, despite the reactive nature of these currents, modern society was able to absorb a reasonable part of them - in Europe there were practically no "proletarians" left because of socialism, which gave everyone an education ("the proletarian revolution", of course, destroyed the proletarians as a class, as moreover, Lenin was a hotel).

Luckily for the surrounding world, ideas to build "static stability" are doomed to failure, including for purely physical reasons - there is hypothesis of the fall of the Roman Empire as a result of the impossibility of preserving the slave system under changed climatic conditions. From the point of view of information, the "stable" Roman Empire lacked adaptive skills. In general, I will talk about evolution from the point of view of information as the only important object in the universe. From this evolution, the emergence of culture and the state as an adaptation of information to changing conditions is well understood.

It is a skill information adapt to changes external conditions and develop new methods Interactions called life. Until the emergence of a high degree of reflection in live information (the so-called consciousness) the main method of adaptation was a genetic change in the composition of information. Mechanisms were necessary for its implementation variations,crossing и breeding information Everything else - "pistils-stamens" - is just a way to implement these mechanisms.

Problem the genetic method of adaptation has a too long feedback loop — genes needed tens or hundreds of generations to adjust to the changed external conditions. That is why at the present time, after the appearance reflective information (consciousness), the fastest way of adaptation is the adaptation of ideas, or, as they say, "atoms of meaning" — memes. Contrary to official Soviet propaganda (and to the horror of people with PSTS), it is an opportunity for information to reflect and reproduce with the help of an external system of signs - language, made a man out of a monkey. A man is not the first digging stick, a man is the first rock figure with a plan for the coming hunt. (If you allow Mem is a symbol plus all possible recursive reflections on it, a kind of limit of thinking. But we need to talk about that separately).

It is a man and the special arrangement of the ego's brain and speech apparatus allowed memes to "settle" in us forever. Even our consciousness is a set of interacting memes, some of which are able to recognize themselves and each other. In some simple cases, these sets can even be deciphered from neural activity (phonetics, vision, making decisions). It is the hardware and software ability of memes, which make up human consciousness, to multiply (language), change (thinking) and crossbreed (the ability to listen), which allowed us to achieve enormous development in such a short time.

Brain for memes — the whole universe in which they live; speech is a ship, but we accept someone else's speech with the help of our context. When I speak, and you listen, our memes are crossed  right in your head, that's brain sex. There are many epithets in the language for this: "to embroider an idea", "to infect with an idea", etc. Unfortunately, our past still holds us by the ancient part of the brain that generates hormones and emotions. This is the old, traditional conservative part of consciousness, which, on the one hand, prevents development, and on the other hand, allows not to break away from "reality" in this development.

However, in memes, in contrast to genes, there are disadvantages - energy dependence and poor preservation outside the context. The task of "save information in a readable and easily understandable form" was soon solved first in a form oral creativity - fairy tales, fables, devotional (in the absence of a language, this experience is conveyed by an example - a cat teaches kittens to hunt - this is a copying of a set of "hunting" memes). The invention, first of all, of the alphabet, as a representation of the world of ideas into a real, first and basic language system of symbols, and then of book printing, allowed information to be preserved in the form Books. Unfortunately, it was precisely the ancient part of the brain that led to the fact that only some types of information were initially allowed to reproduce with the help of books (mainly religious texts). The second big problem of understanding books is the need to study the context in order to gain the ability to decipher information from increasingly complex media — many people are able to read books, but few can read information from USB Flash without a computer. A thing like education. Education, on the one hand, gives a person the necessary context (the ability to read and a high-level dictionary of terms), and on the other hand, it forms the desired interaction interface for society (the concept of "money", "jobs", etc.). When the context (along with the media) is lost, such riddles as Voynich's manuscript.

A fragment of the Voynich Manuscript

Mom, for better reproduction, on the one hand, a more extensive "soil" was needed, and on the other, a greater specialization of the carriers in a certain type of activity - so, among other things, the first craftsmen appeared around which the first cities grew. The abundance of communication between people in cities allowed information to find more suitable carriers due to the simplification of distribution. Society and society are just a more convenient way of information for reproduction. She gave birth and strengthened them for her purposes. Culture makes it possible to generate new ways and meanings in which meanings are embedded — cultural references, expanding the memetic field.

Even despite such progress, memes and their carriers were still exposed to many external dangers — less developed memetic complexes (barbarians) and their physical carriers could exterminate them and destroy the books, or, worse, simply turn out to be incapable of such a high level of reflection necessary for understanding information. Barbarians simply will not have a suitable USB port.

Information again they had to invent a way to protect themselves, but at the same time they did not refuse a new and very effective way of development and reproduction. For this, it was necessary to protect both active and passive carriers of information. The complex of measures and adapted for this was called "defense". These simple rules allowed information to develop in many city-states of the ancient world in the face of the barbarian threat — the ancient world could even afford such tall things How philosophy. I will consider this to be the starting point for the emergence of the "State".

This state is essentially a "people's" state - after all, the basis is recognized Get in touch and its Carriers, and not power as a way of realizing "defense". In ideal states, a person has the right to a weapon to protect himself and his family (his information and his first genetic offspring). Sources of meaning in such a state there is a part of the people — the so-called the elite - at the same time, there is a simple and understandable way to become part of this elite and bring your ideas to the masses.

Unfortunately, the second branch of such development is the creation of "of attacks» as a complex, the mayor seized existing land and built it. It was there where various attacking groups were able to come to a balance and, it seems, the first state with a system of checks and balances was created. In the memetic system (state), where the ideas of "attack" are at the head, information carriers only "serve" a more general "cause" and therefore are not recognized as valuable in themselves.

A source of meaning in such a state, the state itself exists, the requests of citizens to create and broadcast unfavorable meanings to the state suppressed (hello, Roskomnadzor), the only way to become a source of meaning in such a situation is to identify yourself with the state. The situation is aggravated by the fact that people deprived of the ability to control their lives (the information encoded in them cannot make changes from the outside) strive to increase their control over the lives of other people. One of the first problems for city-states was precisely the collision with stronger and united (often around one carrier and ego memes) states-empires, against which they were individually powerless.

So city-states began to unite into stronger states, and here for the first time the concept of "nationality" as a place of birth was first revised in the direction of increasing the class of "one nationality". In fact, this was the first step towards the concept of "western (political) nationalism" - "paying taxes means being a part of the nation." It is impossible to isolate one piece of information from the other, and therefore in modern society there are both carriers of the ideas of "defense" and carriers of the ideas of "attack" (military) and even adherents of the third way - pacifists.

An equally important stage in the development of information was the creation of a resource symbol — money. On the one hand, this symbol allowed the authorities to gain more control over the people, and on the other hand, it allowed them to abandon barter and move to the exchange of resources with the help of the corresponding symbol. The first monetary systems were often tied to real objects (gold, jewels), but at the moment they are becoming more and more "esoteric" - that's how much they have strengthened in the consciousness of society. The role of money in modern society, however, deserves a separate analysis.

After the money appears, to power, "information with weapons" - bandits, was replaced by "information with money" - traders and their proteges. The first request for the creation of a system that could resolve disputes between various interest groups without the use of weapons arose. Information again had to take a step forward and raise its reflexivity to one more level by adding a feedback loop in the form of a political system. The interest groups have a clear mechanism with the help of which it is possible to achieve changes in the existing system - politics.

From the point of view of information politics is just a way to weigh the importance of this or that meme (for example, "health care", "construction of aqueducts") for society and make appropriate decisions - the highest way of merging ideas. The policy (with reservations) allows for higher levels of feedback. In this regard, the best variant of the political system is democracy - in this political system, it is necessary to recognize the requests of the people with the help of sociological research, and unsuccessful sentences become a reason for protests.

Another part of democracy is representation which guarantees each idea a corresponding place in politics in the form of elected representatives. These points of lobbying of concrete memes allow to defuse the situation by transferring competition from a low - physical level - to a higher political and financial one. The lack of representation of oppositional ideas leads to the growth of social tension, which sometimes leads to revolutions.

The opportunities for development at the level of individuals were quickly exhausted, information moved to the level of groups of individuals - this is how the first enterprises consisting of groups of individuals appeared - at first, these were family crafts with informal rules. Further formalization of the rules of behavior in companies actually turned the latter into memetic complexes of a higher order, manageable charter и ethics.

Company live in the sense indicated above, it is information capable of changing (business processes), multiplying (opening new representations and directions) and intersecting (exchanging experience or absorbing/merging). The essence of business is new form of life, consisting of human cells, which is called blood money. However, contrary to people with PTSD, the main goal of business activity is not obtaining endless profit, but mutually beneficial cooperation (why is it not so in the territory of the ex-USSR? Capitalism here is based on Nekrasov's books and Marx's horror stories).

Business is not a zero-sum game. Business, especially IT, increases the overall amount resources (produces added value), which means it increases the quantity money. However, business is impossible without basic guarantees regarding ownership — information wants to protect itself from erasure.

And right here business meets politics. Companies need clear and identical rules of the game, which they cannot create on their own due to subjectivity.

Ideally these rules should not give preference to any area or company in it - that's when we observe pure memetic selection in business - the most appropriate information receives more resources and generates more added value. Companies become participants in the political process. Unfortunately, with an abundance of resources and the absence of a long-term plan, companies turn into aggressive lobbyists of their world order.

Early In the last century, this led to exploitative working conditions for workers. The latter created associations for struggle, which gave rise to trade unions, which are now recognized as representatives of workers before the state and business. These bodies are part of the system of checks and balances and serve as an excellent example of the emergence of a new information structure in society. Now the business understands (and the court "helps" him) that a satisfied employee is an effective employee.

Namely personal freedoms, existing in a liberal society, allow a person to think freely, which is necessary for people in creative professions that create most of the added value in developed countries. It's no accident — liberalism gave birth to IT. The most liberal state of California has become the center of IT in the world.

Freedom of thought is freedom of information to change, freedom of speech and mass media to reproduction, freedom of access to the Internet to crossbreeding.

But, such freedoms were not always there. Less than a thousand years ago, the existing creative class - scientists - were suppressed for the demand to think freely, and not within the framework of established traditions. This is the first case of the struggle between innovation and archaism. If it were not for the benefit of scientists in practical matters - trade (calculations), navigation (astronomy), engineering - I would probably write this on birch bark, and most likely I would eat it from hunger.

But not everything is so rosy. In the post-Soviet society, where memes of "democracy" and "business" were imported from outside, there were not enough people capable of understanding the rules of the game of the West and its business ego as they are. People who built democracy and business in the early nineties were apparently guided by N. Nosov's "The Stranger on the Moon" and perceived all processes and institutions precisely through this book. This is the result cargo cultism, faith in the ritual without understanding the device.

Impossible build a real democracy until there are enough people with a new way of thinking. This is exactly what Soros and other democratic institutions provided funding for - the creation of structures from below, necessary for the functioning of real democracies. Why? Ask the people who for 20 years included Russia in the financial structures of the world — for the sake of development and money.

Due to lack of "new people" and due to the sharp growth of wealth in the Russian Federation, starting from the 2000s, the so-called "imitation democracy" - in which strict censorship of representation is carried out and large parts of the population do not have representatives in the parliament, or they do not have them in proportion to the importance of their ideas (in their opinion).

In this case these ideas, with the appropriate level of communication between their carriers, lead to the consolidation of the latter with requirements for the integration of ideas into the political system. Ignoring these ideas leads to further radicalization of the character of their expression. The inability of the system to accept the required changes in its discourse is usually caused by the absence of the necessary interfaces for interaction in this system (as a set of memes). Their "thing" simply does not have the necessary set of symbols necessary to understand the requirements.

An important part The consolidation of power in an imitation democracy is a broadcast equation of it with other democracies, a system of memes: "The West acts the same way", "They also have everything that is not real" and "They are not better, they are just pretending." This is a broadcast meme "reverse cargo cult": I believe that white people also have airplanes made of straw, they are just pretending.

It is the overthrow of the system imitation democracy, formed as a result of the cargo cult and supported by the cargo cult in reverse, and happened in Ukraine an hour ago. The political system refused to listen to the people's demands for association with the European Union. There were many reasons for this ignoring, from the banal reluctance to accept anti-corruption conventions to threats from the Russian Federation.

Subsequent demand export legislation from the Russian Federation to Ukraine caused even greater indignation among the people, but even then, it seemed, there was still a chance for the merging of the ideas of the people and the government. Only when it became finally clear that the government could not understand these requests did a new state emerge - the Maidan, which was essentially a "fork" of the political system with changed basic ideas of society - atomic carriers of information - people ("activists"), their associations ("hundreds") and universal identity ("nation"). This went against the interests of the old state, which was the successor of the USSR, for which the fundamental ideas were power ("state"), its structures ("bureaucracies") and their participants ("bureaucrats", "bosses"). It was a collision of two worlds so different that they were unable to understand each other and still exist interacting weakly.

The conflict that arose, as is known, led to clashes between old and new ideas, but their merger was impossible due to the lack of the necessary apparatus in the old system. The regime based on the ideas of the "state" was overthrown as a result of the actions of the Maidan, replaced by the ideas of the "nation". These ideas turned out to be so strong that they were able to push their representative to the very top of the political system of Ukraine, and subsequently change the political landscape of Ukraine through the elections of the Verkhovna Rada.

New president and the parliament is slowly beginning to merge the "idea of ​​the nation" with the existing state, throwing out old and unworkable blocks: corrupt courts, bureaucratic apparatus, and so on. Unfortunately, due to the beginning of hostilities in the east of Ukraine, a huge part of the bearers of the "idea of ​​the nation" were forced to become volunteers, and the general process of the adoption of the "idea of ​​the nation" by the new state slowed down to a critical speed.

The reason for this revolution-fork, from the point of view of information, the feedback interfaces in the old structure became low. Accumulated management errors and complaints about them did not lead to a change of key participants or the political system, the system did not accept reports of errors - the "bug tracker" was broken, "support" did not pay attention to it, and "administrators" diligently dusted the budget.

New system while he is avoiding these problems by actively "listening" to a fairly large part of society and their complaints - the "bug tracker" has been fixed, the "support" has been replaced and the "admins" are slowly being replaced with new ones. Error messages are accepted again, pull-requests, after the necessary review, are included in the state code base (source code).

This The deplorable state of affairs was not accidental. This is a meme learned helplessness, promoted and exported by the Russian state over the past hundreds of years - first in the form of serfdom, which makes any attempts to improve one's life useless, because they can be resettled at any moment - and then in the form of the Soviet registration system - registration.

Failed attempts changing the facade without a corresponding change in the system of thinking tied to external power only led to the strengthening of helplessness. That is why the heroic feat of the elite of the Ukrainian people is unique. This is the struggle of the meme "I can and will control my life myself" with "you will not succeed, the authorities know better." This is the awakening of the people of Ukraine from the imperial hibernation and this is the last chance for all of us to defeat the exploiters of learned helplessness - the Soviet-Russian empire of free information enslavement, which threatens the whole world. This is the meaning of the slogan "Freedom or death" for me.

This is an informational struggle the idea of ​​personal freedom (in fact, freedom of information represented by a person) against the oppressing empire is very dangerous for the authorities in the Russian Federation. In order to stop the spread of information, its copying in the Russian Federation, it was necessary to separate the two cultural memetic worlds - leaving one with the ability to speak, and the other with the ability to listen, to change the memetic field so that two peoples who consider themselves brothers cease to understand each other - to introduce concepts " moskal", "pravosek", "dill" and others, will abolish and destroy the general cultural space.

For this purpose the imperial essence of the Russian Federation (Putin and his entourage) and started the war. They did not need Crimea - they needed to stop the spread of "Maidan" to the Russian Federation, because it threatens their power. They needed war, because only war can destroy such deep ties. With this war, Putin cut the lifeline that the people of Ukraine threw to the people of the Russian Federation, so that the latter would be the last to get out of the abyss of imperial obscurantism. Human losses, these lost universes of meaning, along with propaganda are increasingly driving people away from each other. It is not easy to stop it, but to do that it is necessary to continue talk together.

I look with hope in the future of Ukraine. The new parliament and the cabinet of ministers inspire optimism not only in me, but also in the financial institutions of the whole world, and therefore also in the world's elites. It's a pity that it looks like I won't be able to participate in this future.

Pavel Boldyn