psychegram
The Living Force
Not having seen any threads or even references to Christopher Langan's work on the Forum, I thought I'd start a thread to introduce everyone to his work ... because it's really interesting and something which, I think, is highly colinear with the aims of this community. In fact, I would argue that Langan has rigorously developed many of the insights and themes the Laura has explored in her own philosophical work, independently arriving at the same conclusions.
Christopher Langan is often referred to as the world's smartest man, or at least the smartest man in America. His IQ is measured to be in the 190-200 range. Despite this, or rather perhaps because of it, Langan is not associated with academia in any way; he never even went to university. Nor does he remotely resemble your typical nerdy academic. He's a bodybuilder, a very large dude, a bit fat in his old age but with huge arms; he worked as a bouncer when he was young, and currently lives as a rancher in the midwest. His personality is best described as blunt and even combative; he speaks his mind directly and isn't afraid to get into confrontations. That's how the bodybuilding started: Langan grew up in a rural poor family, and his mother's boyfriend would beat him up ... so Langan started working out, and one day put a stop to the abuse. As you might imagine this personality profile left him very ill-suited to academia.
It's also worth pointing out that Langan is very conservative. If you look up him up on Facebook or on Twitter you can see that he is very outspoken about his support for Trump, his opposition to globalism, his disdain for the plandemic, etc. This is how I first became aware of him: Langan is something of a meme on 4chan, where screencaps of his very politically incorrect writings circulate on occasional threads devoted to him.
What's most interesting, however, is Langan's life's work: the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU). This is an attempt to craft a complete, mathematically grounded system in which all aspects of reality - physical as well as mental - are self-consistently accounted for. I absolutely won't be able to do it proper justice here. A primer can be found at the CTMU wiki. Before getting into it, it's important to emphasize that the CTMU offers (or claims to offer) a mathematical proof for the existence of God, consciousness (going all the way down to the quantum level), and teleology. At the same time, broad features of the physical universe, such as quantum entanglement, cosmic expansion, and general relativity, also emerge as logical consequences of this framework.
Returning to politics, Langan's opposition to the globalists emerges as a direct and logical consequence of the CTMU. He explains this at length in his essay Metareligion as the Human Singularity (pdf here), in which he describes how the Earth is, at this point in historical time, perched on the edge of a phase transition into one of two irreversible attractor states: the global hive/technological singularity, and the global network/human singularity. In the first, humans are reduced to soulless appendages remote-controlled by a tiny class of overlords, who become the permanent rulers of the planet in a process he refers to as 'parasitic divergence'. In the second, humanity wakes up, takes control of its destiny, and utilizes the network technology as tool for distributed, horizontal self-organization in which each node of the network has full autonomy. In other words, a world in which free will disappears, vs. a world in which free will is foundational. Beyond the obvious hellishness of the global hive, Langan points out that the teleological principle means that God prunes those branches of creation that fall out of harmony with God's teleological goals: while each part of creation has free will, implying the freedom to act contrary to God, those parts which act in this fashion are removed in order to maintain harmony. Therefore, one way or the other, if parasitic divergence is successful and the world becomes a global hive, since this is diametrically opposite of the universe's telic utility, God will destroy the world.
All of that sounds a lot like what has been found here, regarding the universe's propensity to smash misbehaving planets with comets; the coming phase transition into 4D associated with the Wave; and 4D STS plans (which the Cs assure us will fail) to enslave the planet on the other side of the density transition. The distributed society Langan describes as the alternative is furthermore very similar to the STO networking concept, which the Cs have suggested is fundamental to societal structure in 4D.
The essence of the CTMU is that reality is, at root, a language - what Langan refers to as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language, that is, essentially a language that speaks itself. From the wiki:
Clearly, there's immense overlap with the concepts from quantum information theory that the universe is a sort of giant computer.
Langan then defines reality as "the perceptual aggregate including (1) all scientific observations that ever were and ever will be, and (2) the entire abstract and/or cognitive explanatory infrastructure of perception". Thus, if any theory requires something external to reality to explain reality, the theory is incomplete as reality necessarily includes that thing. Furthermore, since mind is manifestly a part of reality, any theory of everything must be able to account for all of the properties of mind.
The CTMU then deploys three axioms (although Langan emphasises that these are not assumptions, but necessary truths):
MAP basically means that reality is closed in the sense that it includes everything needed to explain reality.
M=R follows from MAP, in that 1) mind must be a part of reality; 2) reality is experienced through minds; therefore 3) that which cannot be perceived by mind (that which is outside of mind) is not a part of reality. Putting it altogether, mind and reality at the deepest level are isomorphic.
MU is based on an interesting tautology: any two things that are different, are also similar, insofar as that in order to describe their difference they must participate in a common underlying framework that enables those differences to be expressed in the first place. For example, in order to perceive the difference between red and blue, both must belong to the underlying category of colour, and are therefore unified in this respect.
Regarding the origin of reality (why something instead of nothing):
This leads directly to the importance of teleology in the CTMU:
Thus, free will is a direct consequence of the self-configuring teleological kernel from which reality emerges, and goes all the way down to the most fundamental level. Reality also (in order to maintain internal coherency) automatically prunes those 'telors' (a term referring to any entity, such as a human being, possessed of agency) that detract from generalized utility i.e. act contrary to the will of God. Hence, misbehaving planets getting whacked by comets; hence, misbehaving souls getting 'smashed', losing coherency and returning to a previous level of development.
Interestingly, Langan posits that physical law itself is a direct consequence of teleology, since maintaining coherency of physical law across time requires, in effect, atemporal communication between states at different times; thus not only does reality configure itself moving from the past to the future, but it also configures itself by moving from the future to the past, simultaneously.
The expansion of the universe emerge from the CTMU in an interesting form:
So basically, rather than the universe expanding, the contents of the universe are in effect shrinking in synchrony with one another. A moment's thought suffices to demonstrate that, viewed internally, the two phenomena - expansion of space/time and conspansion of space/time - are indistinguishable.
Finally, regarding the properties of mind and, ultimately, God:
So, that's a quick introduction to Christopher Langan and the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe.
Christopher Langan is often referred to as the world's smartest man, or at least the smartest man in America. His IQ is measured to be in the 190-200 range. Despite this, or rather perhaps because of it, Langan is not associated with academia in any way; he never even went to university. Nor does he remotely resemble your typical nerdy academic. He's a bodybuilder, a very large dude, a bit fat in his old age but with huge arms; he worked as a bouncer when he was young, and currently lives as a rancher in the midwest. His personality is best described as blunt and even combative; he speaks his mind directly and isn't afraid to get into confrontations. That's how the bodybuilding started: Langan grew up in a rural poor family, and his mother's boyfriend would beat him up ... so Langan started working out, and one day put a stop to the abuse. As you might imagine this personality profile left him very ill-suited to academia.
It's also worth pointing out that Langan is very conservative. If you look up him up on Facebook or on Twitter you can see that he is very outspoken about his support for Trump, his opposition to globalism, his disdain for the plandemic, etc. This is how I first became aware of him: Langan is something of a meme on 4chan, where screencaps of his very politically incorrect writings circulate on occasional threads devoted to him.
What's most interesting, however, is Langan's life's work: the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU). This is an attempt to craft a complete, mathematically grounded system in which all aspects of reality - physical as well as mental - are self-consistently accounted for. I absolutely won't be able to do it proper justice here. A primer can be found at the CTMU wiki. Before getting into it, it's important to emphasize that the CTMU offers (or claims to offer) a mathematical proof for the existence of God, consciousness (going all the way down to the quantum level), and teleology. At the same time, broad features of the physical universe, such as quantum entanglement, cosmic expansion, and general relativity, also emerge as logical consequences of this framework.
Returning to politics, Langan's opposition to the globalists emerges as a direct and logical consequence of the CTMU. He explains this at length in his essay Metareligion as the Human Singularity (pdf here), in which he describes how the Earth is, at this point in historical time, perched on the edge of a phase transition into one of two irreversible attractor states: the global hive/technological singularity, and the global network/human singularity. In the first, humans are reduced to soulless appendages remote-controlled by a tiny class of overlords, who become the permanent rulers of the planet in a process he refers to as 'parasitic divergence'. In the second, humanity wakes up, takes control of its destiny, and utilizes the network technology as tool for distributed, horizontal self-organization in which each node of the network has full autonomy. In other words, a world in which free will disappears, vs. a world in which free will is foundational. Beyond the obvious hellishness of the global hive, Langan points out that the teleological principle means that God prunes those branches of creation that fall out of harmony with God's teleological goals: while each part of creation has free will, implying the freedom to act contrary to God, those parts which act in this fashion are removed in order to maintain harmony. Therefore, one way or the other, if parasitic divergence is successful and the world becomes a global hive, since this is diametrically opposite of the universe's telic utility, God will destroy the world.
All of that sounds a lot like what has been found here, regarding the universe's propensity to smash misbehaving planets with comets; the coming phase transition into 4D associated with the Wave; and 4D STS plans (which the Cs assure us will fail) to enslave the planet on the other side of the density transition. The distributed society Langan describes as the alternative is furthermore very similar to the STO networking concept, which the Cs have suggested is fundamental to societal structure in 4D.
The essence of the CTMU is that reality is, at root, a language - what Langan refers to as a Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language, that is, essentially a language that speaks itself. From the wiki:
Clearly, there's immense overlap with the concepts from quantum information theory that the universe is a sort of giant computer.
Langan then defines reality as "the perceptual aggregate including (1) all scientific observations that ever were and ever will be, and (2) the entire abstract and/or cognitive explanatory infrastructure of perception". Thus, if any theory requires something external to reality to explain reality, the theory is incomplete as reality necessarily includes that thing. Furthermore, since mind is manifestly a part of reality, any theory of everything must be able to account for all of the properties of mind.
The CTMU then deploys three axioms (although Langan emphasises that these are not assumptions, but necessary truths):
MAP basically means that reality is closed in the sense that it includes everything needed to explain reality.
M=R follows from MAP, in that 1) mind must be a part of reality; 2) reality is experienced through minds; therefore 3) that which cannot be perceived by mind (that which is outside of mind) is not a part of reality. Putting it altogether, mind and reality at the deepest level are isomorphic.
MU is based on an interesting tautology: any two things that are different, are also similar, insofar as that in order to describe their difference they must participate in a common underlying framework that enables those differences to be expressed in the first place. For example, in order to perceive the difference between red and blue, both must belong to the underlying category of colour, and are therefore unified in this respect.
Regarding the origin of reality (why something instead of nothing):
This leads directly to the importance of teleology in the CTMU:
Thus, free will is a direct consequence of the self-configuring teleological kernel from which reality emerges, and goes all the way down to the most fundamental level. Reality also (in order to maintain internal coherency) automatically prunes those 'telors' (a term referring to any entity, such as a human being, possessed of agency) that detract from generalized utility i.e. act contrary to the will of God. Hence, misbehaving planets getting whacked by comets; hence, misbehaving souls getting 'smashed', losing coherency and returning to a previous level of development.
Interestingly, Langan posits that physical law itself is a direct consequence of teleology, since maintaining coherency of physical law across time requires, in effect, atemporal communication between states at different times; thus not only does reality configure itself moving from the past to the future, but it also configures itself by moving from the future to the past, simultaneously.
The expansion of the universe emerge from the CTMU in an interesting form:
So basically, rather than the universe expanding, the contents of the universe are in effect shrinking in synchrony with one another. A moment's thought suffices to demonstrate that, viewed internally, the two phenomena - expansion of space/time and conspansion of space/time - are indistinguishable.
Finally, regarding the properties of mind and, ultimately, God:
So, that's a quick introduction to Christopher Langan and the Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe.
