Though early, grossly Orientalist, commentators*
described Jnana Yogi Swami Cosma Rohilla Shalizi in terms similar to
Descartes, it is clear from the historical
record that Sw. Shalizi wrote his works in robes of saffron and kermes.
As a small contribution to restoring historical reality, this paper is
demonstrates how the recent publication by Carnegie-Mellon of Sw.
Shalizi’s deutero-canonical writings throws
new light on one of the canonical Shalizi texts in the Cornell Canon.
Some
historical background is necessary. It is well known that Sw. Shalizi
was a controversialist in the school of Guru Josiah Gibbs, opposing the
faction led by Adhyapakah Edwin Jaynes. Gershom Scholem’s wonderful
essay on the politics of saints “Religious Authority & Mysticism” gives a wonderful examination of how Sw. Shalizi
likely felt about his work.
Adhyapakah
Jaynes proclaimed, in seeming harmony with the tradition from Laplace
to Schopenhauer, that the so-called “thermodynamic functions” - heat, pressure, etc. - had a mere conventional existence.
Reality - the microstate - is something much stranger.
Against
this preaching, Sw. Shalizi proposes that the true tradition would
affirm the existence of heat even when there was no observer present.
There seems to be an error in transcription in the Carnegie-Mellon text,
as sometimes the text seems to be implying that without thermodynamic
functions there would be no history prior to consciousness. But evolution of the objective microstate is not a
function of the subjective macrostate. Fortunately, examination of the
Cornell Canon is sufficient to demonstrate that Sw. Shalizi was aware of this.
Sw.
Shalizi’s objection was much more subtle. Adhyapakah Jaynes essentially
denied Mahapandita Ludwig Boltzmann’s claim that large numbers of
particles play a role in thermalization, arguing that subjective
ignorance is sufficient. Of course, Sw. Shalizi could not stand such a
rejection of tradition.
We
now move to the main text, Sw. Shalizi’s controversial article “False Jnanachakra”. In it, Sw. Shalizi imagines a contest between a mighty asura
Andhaka and Bhagvan Shiva. The Mahayogi bets that if Andhaka can turn
the Jnanachakra then Andhaka may have a night with Parvati. Of course,
Andhaka cannot resist such a carnal opportunity. The price he pays is
this: if Andhaka cannot but Shiva can, then Andhaka must die and live
the rest of his lives in non-violence and celibacy.
The
Jnanachakra is a weightless Jade wheel with a single needle along it’s
rim which may be lowered or raised. It has no effect on the pendulum. The Jnanachakra, as its name suggests,
is merely a metaphor for the player’s knowledge.
Beneath the Jnanachakra is an n-ary pendulum whose fobs beyond the first
are invisible. Based only on macroscopic observation, the
player attempting to turn the wheel must raise or lower the needle which
will be pushed by the pendulum in the correct direction.
The
observable state space of a single visible fob is a cylinder with one
axis, up-down, as the velocity of the fob and the the other axis,
around, as the velocity of the fob. The same for the Jnanachakra.
Holding the current velocity of the Jnanachakra constant gives us a
circle around the phase space. We want the needle down only when the fob
is above the current circle in phase space.
Andhaka’s
strategy is to lower the needle in front of the fob when the fob is
swinging right faster than the Jnanachakra. He believes this will allow
him to rotate the Jnanachakra counterclockwise. For a short time, this
works. But the hidden fobs cause the visible fob to bounce randomly on a
long timescale - a timescale which can be calculated from coupling of
the fobs (cite pg 44 Chaos & Coarse Graining In Stat Mech).
Eventually, Andhaka’s predictions of will be no better than chance.
Therefore Andhaka’s strategy will fail in the long run.
Now
the Mahabuddhi goes to the wheel. He follows a similar strategy. At
first the Jnanachakra seems to thermalize - bounce randomly. But soon
the wheel begins turning counterclockwise. Why? Shiva can *learn* the
motion of hidden fobs by observing the system at large. Since the state
space of the system is fixed, in the long run Shiva learns the whole
system perfectly. Following the teachings of Guru Shannon, Sw. Shalizi
calculates the rate at which one may learn and finds it is either 0 (for
Andhaka) or exponentially rapid (for Shiva).
Now Sw. Shalizi makes his attack. Nrityapriya’s
dance requires only learning a finite state space and converges
rapidly. Why cannot Andhaka do the same? Sw. Shalizi challenges the
anti-Boltzmannian to explain without reference to the enormous size of
the state space. If he cannot, then the anti-Boltzmannian has admitted that an objective
property of reality - the dimension of the state space - plays the role
Adhyapakah Jaynes has denied.
The
case for Bhagavan Shiva and against the asura Andhaka can be made
explicit. Start by recalling that the rate of learning is either zero or
exponential.
Andhaka’s capacity to learn is constant. As dimension of the state space - the number of fobs - grows large large, one soon finds that the asura cannot converge on
the true state because he doesn’t have enough memory to hold the state
in his mind. Therefore his learning rate is zero.
But Akshayaguna is different. His
capacity to learn grows large holding the dimension of the state space
constant. Therefore his learning rate is exponential.
There
is no denying that Sw. Shalizi’s logic is absolutely sound. But before the publication of Three Toed Sloth, the full extent
of his argument couldn’t be appreciated. Sw. Shalizi's implicit claim is that subjective arrows of time must have a consistent direction only if the state space of possibilities is much larger
than the capacity any relevant learner. But Sw. Shalizi’s Cornell Canon
piece doesn’t explicitly argue that why the learning capacity of a mere asura is insufficient.
Only
now are we learning that Sw. Shalizi intended this work as part of a
campaign of Arhat Ashby against the Jaynesians. Sw. Shalizi intends to
use Ashby’s Law Of Requisite Variety, showing
that a model of a system must be as complex as the system itself. This
demonstrates that nobody but one who is unified with Brahman may have a
backwards arrow of subjective time.
In
sum, Carnegie-Mellon’s publication of Shalizi’s deutero-canonical work
has opened new fields for scholarship. Already his brief note has been
revealed to be more than a mere grumbling of a lover of controversy. His
is a philosophical distinction between the monotonic subjective arrow
of time of an ordinary being and the free arrow of time of an
extraordinary one. All philologists of this canon must take note.
*In case it isn't clear: this is written as a parody of Western commentary on Eastern religion - thus all the Sanskrit jargon despite none of the figures speaking the language. Why? Well, it seemed funny at the time. Of course, this blogpost shouldn't be considered scientific, much less serious theology.
