The Domains of I, M and R

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Quick and dirty definitions, to be clarified as we go along:

• R Refers to the "real world". Accepted wisdom is that we have no direct access to R.  It turns out that we actually do have quite a good access to the R domain - the M/R interface, also known as "Science". For the individual, the I domain is tiny compared to the vastness of both M and R. However, with effort and training, it is possible for the individual to open a tiny peephole into R - at least so far as to put to rest the notion that R does not exist at all - that it's all an illusion.
• M refers to "meme space" or the entire set of ideas, actual and possible. For example, all of Science exists in M, uncomfortably with all religions, past, present and future. It is everything we know, could know, or think we know, possibly including all those things that may be conceivable by some alien intelligence or even "God." M happily accommodates all the wrong ideas and the opposite of every idea.
• I Refers to memes that can be called to working memory. These may be considered a subset of M but it's more fruitful to regard the I/M interface as closely analogous to the M/R interface. "Calling up" memes to working memory involves a meme translation. We say we "get" the idea if our translation from a meme m from M to I leaves m unchanged somehow. Or we could say that m will translate to an isomorphic version of m no matter who calls it to working memory. This is a kind of symmetry, which the theory is all about. 

I call the theory that links all this together IMR Symmetry or IMR for short. At bottom, IMR is an extended analogy, asking us to visualize three worlds and ask questions about their interfaces. Much of the work consists of cleaning up or ideas about these three worlds and how we imagine that they communicate.  Advanced warning: many of these ideas will seem counterintuitive unless you "do your homework" and check the references liberally referenced in the text.

• The ideas of "self" and "consciousness" are disassembled and reassembled into something very different from the common understanding of these ideas.
• The "modern" concept of the "mind" as an epiphenomenon of something happening in the neurons of our brains is also discarded.
• Many of the big philosophical questions, such as "Idealism vs. Realism," are implicitly solved by a new picture of the mind and reality, which will annoy professional philosophers.
•  Physicists have more to say about this issue, resulting from examining the world rather than just thinking about it.
• IMR brings aesthetics, art and science under the same umbrella. This rows against the current fashion of considering such things as fundamentally incompatible ways of experiencing the world. For example, we can find "truth" and "beauty" in all three worlds using similar criteria.
• My view of the self and consciousness is deeply informed by Zen. By this I don't mean that Zen is "right" but only that Zen is free from many of the misconceptions and fuzzy language that underpins the way most of us talk about the issues under discussion here. Readers not familiar with Zen (or its cousin "mindfulness") may find it worthwhile to take a detour to "wake up" to what they are actually experiencing day to day (the I world).

In line with Frank Wylczek, I take symmetry to be the key to usefully describing the "machinery" in all three domains -- an important criterion for what "works" and what doesn't "work":

• In the I domain, symmetry saves a lot of work by allowing us to work with "chunks" of ideas that don't change when we make "irrelevant" transformations. For example, we have an idea of our house which is the same house from any angle and over a long period of time.
• In the M domain, symmetric ideas have a unique appeal. For example, we like ideas that apply everywhere and at all times, like Newton's laws of motion. This illustrates the fact that an idea (meme) may be a "good" one (persistent) if it is symmetric but not strictly "right" in that it doesn't always map perfectly to the corresponding phenomena in the R world. "Good" ideas tend to spawn fruitful analogies - that is, they retain many of their essential features when they undergo the "like" transformation.
• Wylczek goes to great lengths to point out enormous real symmetry in the R domain ("real world). In fact, he proceeds by assuming this symmetry then going out to find out if experiments agree with what such symmetry concepts (M world) will predict. A Scientific theory is valid if and only if predictions of the theory is isomorphic with results conducted in the "Real" world.

Dennett helps to free ourselves from thinking that someone must "have" ideas (M domain). As Plato suspected, the world of ideals has a life and existence of its own. We can thank Wylczek for drawing a clear line from Pythagoras to the Standard Model of Physics, illustrating the persistent idea that the world of memes (especially mathematics) is somehow real. For example, the number 321,534,332 has definite real properties even if nobody has ever thought of that particular number.  

Many authors have concentrated on the concept of "working memory" or "attention" as a surrogate for what we call "consciousness". However, when we read about this idea, the impression is created that the contents of "working memory" are somehow conjured up from what is sitting around in the brain (or possibly on the "live" channel to the outside world - the sensations). Here, we take a somewhat more dynamic and open-ended view. For example, 321,534,332 can be conjured up in the brain of the reader as a "chunk" to be divided by two, squared or verified as non-prime. This illustrates that the "chunks" of working memory (consciousness) are constructed on the fly. The brain helps with this process by providing all kinds of tools (What Dennett would call installed subroutines) but it is not correct to say that the mind is entirely an "epiphenomenon" arising in a few billion neurons. If it is an epiphenomenon at all, it arises from M and R through to a process in the brain.

It is worthwhile to develop a temporary vision of the M domain. It's vast. it includes:

• Every book could be written in any language past present or possible.
• Every word in every language, along with their definitions
• All of Science, including all possible Science and all incorrect theory
• All of Religion
• Every possible sensation
• Every possible inference from sensation or theory (the result of any possible experiment)

As the name suggests, I'm temporarily trusting M to be the world of "memes", but I will have a lot to say about memes. They are not created equal. In a way, they fight for survival. In the language of IMR Symmetry, what they "fight for" is the ability to survive through time and through translation (installation) in many different brains (I-worlds). This is a form of symmetry - a form underlies "evolution" in the M-domain, just as Dawkins suspected in 1979 when he coined the term. Hopefully, our discussion of the M-domain will contribute to the field of memetics - an attempt to nail down the "meme" concept with some semblance of rigour. 

In Surfaces and Essences, Hofstadter and Sander make a heroic attempt to show the key role of analogy in structuring human thought - in other words, a key role in the structure of M. They show how analogy plays a fundamental role in human language but also more complex structures of ideas, such as Scientific Theory. Our commentary on M will always keep this insight in mind: "Surfaces" provides powerful insight into the kinds of transformation that memes (ideas) can undergo through the process of analogy. Sometimes when we say A is like B, we are saying that A and B are isomorphic - for all intents and purposes, the same thing. This is another way of saying that the analogy transformation from A to B is symmetric. Other analogies are not so "powerful", extracting only a few properties common to A and B. In fact, we can put A and B in the same "category bag" arbitrarily without them sharing any properties at all. "Surfaces" is well worth reading as a brave attempt to map M. Is there more to say about M? I would say, yes. "Surfaces" is about one kind of transformation we can make on a meme. We are left asking about where memes come from in the first place and whether there are other kinds of transformation - especially transformations that claim to be strong mapping to R or "ideas" that can pop up in working memory (I).

As a career systems analyst, I have been particularly interested in the problems we face when mapping "real world" problems into the M-domain of the computer. We need to build a "model" of the real world situation in order to "computerize" decisions that ultimately have effect in R. One key insight in the last 50 years of the discipline is that our models should be, as far as possible, isomorphic with the entities we think exist in R. Strictly speaking, we have a conceptual model m in M that is usually thought of as "being" real. We need a machine version m*of m that is as isomorphic as possible (symmetric) to m. To do this, our model has entities corresponding to "real" things like "persons", properties of persons and transactions between persons. In the early days of computing, our models consisted of thinly disguised pictures of machine operations like "decisions", "calculations" and free-floating "data" such as integers and text. Today, all this is summarized by the Universal Modeling Language (UML). UML itself is a giant meme, which, when installed in the brains of human analysts, allows them to construct conceptual models in M that can be isomorphically mapped to real models in physical machines operating in R. Such models can turn out to have real impact on real people and other objects in R, such as the ability to drive cars in the real world or land real robots on the real planet Mars.

As a computer geek, I think of I-domain as a "virtual machine" simulating in M in the R-world "hardware" of the brain. "Chunks" of M (memes) are called into working memory either directly out of the brain (buffer to M) or "calculated" by programs installed in the brain from M. We can think of the dynamic aspect of I (he flow of consciousness) as a continual calculation - producing on set of "chunks"after another at a rate of a few cycles per second  For those of us who inhabit the "google sphere", we are familiar with the fact that we can "think" about "chunks" that can be instantly called up from the entire universe of human knowledge. In a profound sense, we swim in a world of information that is not somehow encoded in our heads. What I "know" and what "we" know is becoming more and more difficult to sort out. In fact, my model has no place for what "I" know - only what "I" am able to bring to mind at any particular moment. "I" am a virtual machine running in R, simulating M. I don't think of M as static either. Millions of people are churning away in M to bring new ideas to the surface. As Dennett has shown, ideas can float to the surface and acquire a life of their own even if nobody "has" the idea. Ultimately, the "affordances" of R (what is possible) strongly effect what "bubbles up" in M, so ultimately R has a strong influence on what happens in M. In particular, the process of evolution is a result of R "thinking" or conducting a program of R&D without anyone "having" the ideas behind life itself - ideas we find in "M". I and M also have their "affordances". Wittgenstein said that what cannot be said must be passed over in silence (commenting on what can arise in the language domain - part of M). We know that the brain cannot deal with more than a limited number (less than 10) of "chunks" at any one time.

In subsequent postings, I will flesh out the ideas of the I, M and R domains along with the idea that we best understand the relationship between these worlds in terms of symmetry. The analogy is with the success that such projects have had in reconciling the part of M called "Science" with experiments that confirm that our "Scientific" ideas map very well to the real world. The flagship example of this mapping is the Standard Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which so far maps to the real world to a precision of 12 decimal places or more. The success of this model has come in large part from the concept that the most useful ideas ("laws" in M) are the ones that are symmetric in some sense because it turns out that reality itself (R) is governed by symmetric principles. I claim that the most useful "chunks" to hold in memory are those that are in some sense "symmetric" and that the most useful ideas in "M" also have this property.