I recall constructing a time machine as a child. I had a cardboard box, across which I had printed the words, “Time Machine” in thick black permanent marker. I had constructed a flux capacitor and mounted it to the back, and I had drawn out a control panel for the selection of dates and times. Obviously my time machine did not function as I had hoped. Children often construct machines and devices that fall quite short of functional. My understanding of the universe was, and continues to fall short of what is needed to travel through time. This example outlines the basic concepts that is ‘Ideophysical Dynamism’.

Previous to the physical construction of an idea, there is a fairly extensive amount of mental simulations that take place in any one person’s mind. Such mental simulations can vary wildly when it comes to one’s understanding of the physical world.

So why is this important? Why do we care? We know that if something isn’t built correctly it’s not going to work. So what’s the point of all of this?

Ideophysical Dynamism

Ideophysical Dynamism is the dynamic interplay between mind and physics. When one lacks a proper understanding of the physical world, we can expect consistent failure. Failure, paired with testing and analysis, has always been the tool through which a better understand the world is gained in order to refine navigation, interaction, and the ability to create useful machines.

Scientists and engineers employ the scientific method which is exactly this process of refining our understanding in order to aid navigation, interaction, and creation. Through this process, knowledge is gained about the world we live in.

Sometimes, however, the failures are so small that they go unnoticed and don’t fully impact the creation’s functionality. So the failure sneaks its way into mass production (both literally and figuratively), and we all use a product that is either prone to breaking unexpectedly or is not functioning optimally.

This variance in the scale of how well we understand the restrictions and mechanics of our reality is the definition of ‘ideophysical dynamism’.

When something which was created by minds that have a keen understanding of the physical world as it relates to their creation, the creation can be said to have a high ideophysical coupling. Occasionally, their understanding of what they want to create is so high that the very first prototype works perfectly.

On the other hand, a creation like my childhood time machine has a very low, practically non-existent ideophysical coupling. The mental simulations I had run in my head as a child lacked the understanding required to fabricate a functioning system.

Applications of Ideophysical Dynamism

From here on, we will refer to Ideophysical Dynamism as IPD.

So why is this important? Why do we care? We know that if something isn’t built correctly it’s not going to work. So what’s the point of all of this? Well, let us take a closer look at IPD systems and their implications.

IPD applies to more than engineering projects and inventions. It applies to the meta-physical world of rules and instructions.

Board games, card games, and field games all require rules to play. There are rules for video games and software as well as rules laid out by laws or through common agreements. Each one is fascinating to dissect and consider from an IPD perspective.

When a rule, or a law, or some symbolic utility has a low IPD coupling; it becomes extremely malleable; easy to twist, bend, manipulate, and ultimately abuse. Unfortunately, when something is easy to abuse, it will be abused. The problem is that whether a friend keeps cheating at chess, or whether an international treaty allows for the invasion of a smaller country based on vague and biased data; the resulting dysfunction always leads to disadvantage, suffering, and literally increases systemic entropy just by the simple fact that a new possible state has been introduced.

Let us take a quick look as to why this is. Consider gravity for a moment. Even if we could manipulate gravity, it would be in accordance with the knowledge and principles necessary to do so. Any attempt to abuse gravity would simply result in adhering to other fundamental principles.

For instance, you can build a ditch and cover it with sticks and leaves to make a trap and think that you’re abusing gravity; however this is utility, not abuse.

But what if gravity had a low IPD coupling? What if it was a rule that we just made up. And if you wanted, you could fly off to wherever you wanted to go. What if we only stuck to earth because if you were caught flying about you would get a ticket for breaking “The Law of Gravity”? Now it becomes something that has no real-world mechanism behind it.

During a football game, the skilled cheater could break this law to catch a throw that would normally be out of reach. The criminal would use flying to flee a crime scene. And the hero, the person who only breaks the law to help others; would eventually get caught and charged. Hopefully you can now run through your own scenarios and evaluate this for yourself.

Man-made rules that have a low IPD coupling can be extremely dangerous when a deviant chooses to do their own thing after everybody else has agreed to follow them.

Traffic Laws, Board Games, And Money

To further elucidate the reasons why IPD is an incredibly important, yet utterly overlooked piece to the puzzle of human culture, creation, and advancement; I will detail a few interesting cases which we all routinely adhere to, and routinely break.

Traffic Laws

Among the vast sea of current laws, traffic laws have an unusually high IPD coupling. Traffic laws must, by their very nature, have a high coupling. If they did not, the physical mechanics of what happens when two massive, speeding bodies collide with each other; would cause such destruction that people would probably stop driving altogether.

The systems of roads and the vehicles that navigate them both are systems with an incredibly high IPD coupling. The engines really run, the roads really do make driving easier, and the lights really do change color. These systems were designed by engineers who know the physical world extremely well.

You can, however, run a red light and get away with it. Why? Because traffic laws are not coupled 100% with the reality of the system. Which also means that running a red light carries a very significant chance of colliding with another vehicle and getting seriously injured.

Traffic laws are routinely broken according to the driver’s mental calculation of the cost/benefit ratio given their current circumstance. Drivers do this even with the knowledge that breaking a traffic law can, and often does, hurt others as well.

Board Games

Let us now consider board games. Board games are an interesting example. If you break the rules of a board game and get caught, you’ll likely get booed and lose trust with others. The skilled cheater often walks away without a hitch. But because there is no real-life benefit (unless your gambling; but if you’re gambling, the consequences can quickly materialize physically) there is usually very little incentive to cheat other than to inflate one’s own ego.

Money

Finally, let us take a look at money. Money is unique in that it has an extremely low IPD coupling. Money is constantly and extravagantly abused despite the fact that it has been intimately intertwined with everything we do as humans. It controls everything we do and think, and it is intimately connected to social status and self esteem.

Previously, money had a somewhat higher IPD coupling under the gold standard. However, because money is no longer backed by gold, and due to the fact that the difference between $10 and $10,000,000 is a simple flip of less than a kilobyte’s worth of binary digits; the IPD coupling of money has been driven to nearly nothing.

The repercussions of abusing money have so drastically fallen from the immediate effects of devaluing a high priced item (breaking an expensive vase, for instance), that abusing money has become an attractive endeavor for a large majority.

It could very well be to everybody’s benefit if we went back to the drawing board and rethought money. If we were to find some way of raising the IPD coupling of money, and thereby lowering its propensity for abuse; the effect would echo across the world, potentially solving a large majority of the problems of today.

The deconstruction of money and the conception of IPD was a peak revelation for me. These ideas were the catalysts that started me down the road to the founding of Phobos Technologies LLC and the planned development of The AI STEM Drive.

I would recommend looking at life through IPD colored glasses. After sufficient experience and analysis, it will become vividly clear that there are several areas in our day to day life that are just screaming out at us to be optimized and fixed.

Thomas Wright
Owner / Phobos Technologies LLC

Originally published on Medium: https://creationtribe.medium.com/ideophysical-dynamism-48736704591d