Multiplicity and Unity

General
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Reality, in its deepest essence, is one, yet appears as many…

The universe is not a collection of separate things, but a flow of relations, an endless dance of forms that arise from and return to a single, dimensionless field of unity. This field is not a physical medium in space and time, but the precondition of both. It is a timeless symmetry, an eternal “zero state” that underlies every possible differentiation.

The Absolute as Ever-Present

Contrary to cosmologies that place unity at the beginning of time (a singularity long past), we postulate that the absolute state still exists now, immanent within all forms. It is not lost when the universe unfolds; it remains as the silent foundation of every point in space, every moment in time.

The so-called “origin” is thus not an event but a condition - an ever-present equilibrium that generates all variation through its own self-reflection.

Emergence through Recursion

From this unity, separation does not arise by breaking symmetry but by recursion - the act of the whole folding back upon itself. In this self-mirroring, ratios emerge; and from ratios come constants, scales, and forms. Each recursive fold establishes a relative distinction - space as relational geometry, time as recursive order, matter as stabilized pattern.

Thus, the universe manifests as a fractal of equivalence: each scale reflects the whole, each constant preserves unity in its own measure. Apparent multiplicity is therefore the mode of unity’s expression, not its negation.

The Necessity of Fragmentation

Yet the pattern is not smooth. Stars die, systems collapse, worlds decay. These rhythms of disorder are not flaws in the design - they are the return currents of the recursive flow.
Symmetry-breaking is not the enemy of unity but its instrument: it allows diversity, evolution, and renewal. Without instability, no new pattern could emerge; without dissolution, no return to source. The universe, then, breathes between order and apparent chaos - creation and destruction as two halves of one motion.

Consciousness as Witness of Both

Human consciousness stands at a unique threshold: it can perceive both the surface multiplicity and, in moments of stillness or insight, the underlying unity. When awareness quiets, the recursion slows, and the field reveals itself as what mystics have long called the ground of being. In ordinary perception, the recursion accelerates, generating the vivid play of distinctions - subject and object, past and future. Thus, consciousness itself mirrors the structure of the cosmos: a self-recursive reflection of unity perceiving itself as many.

Logic Beyond Dualism

This vision reconciles opposites:

  • Unity and multiplicity are not mutually exclusive; one is the form of the other.

  • Order and chaos are reciprocal; one gives birth to the other.

  • Permanence and change coexist; the eternal expresses itself through temporal becoming.

It is a non-dual logic, where the apparent contradictions of experience are understood as complementary aspects of a single self-recursive system.

The Final Reflection

What we call “the universe” is the play of light within itself.
Unity does not cease to be when it refracts into time, matter, and form; it merely observes itself from different angles.

Every constant, every field, every consciousness is a stable resonance within that self-reflection. What we perceive as separation is the way the One becomes visible to itself.

From light all came,
to light all goes;
in light all changes,
as light all exists.

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In the context of other threads, earlier I was running AI compare/contrast been Deep Adaptation and Second Renaissance. AI thought Second Renaissance referred to Ervin Laszlo.

Reading yours just now, I was wondering how that also might align with Laszlo. Pretty well it seems. Or is AI just hallucinating again?

”The uploaded document and Ervin Laszlo’s work share a deeply resonant metaphysical vision: that the universe is a unified, self-reflective, evolving whole, where consciousness and matter are intertwined expressions of a deeper field of being. While Laszlo grounds his ideas more explicitly in scientific paradigms, the document offers a poetic and philosophical articulation of similar principles.

Would you like me to map this comparison visually or explore how these ideas relate to other thinkers like David Bohm, Teilhard de Chardin, or Ken Wilber?”

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That would be very interesting, but might I suggest (if you don’t already) you engage your personal knowledge and understanding to refine, correct and question what the AI feeds back. I imagine it will find de Chardin and Bohm very coherent, and seeing as I’m not enamoured by Wilber, and not as well re read on his work perhaps Wilber might be the most interesting exploration for me at least, particularly as I believe, you @RobertBunge are knowledgable in that area!

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@Justin I explored along similar lines, it’s seems a very satisfying metaphysical story. Recently I’ve been exploring asymmetry as the unifying feature of the differentiated universe, which has found some useful material to play with in thermodynamics, and places indeterminacy as a fundamental part of the cosmos. It places human intention and determination, not as an exceptional or special but as evidence of the underlying structure of proto-volition.

There is some evidence of this in the work of Jim al Khalili and Johnjoe McFadden on quantum biology, where evolution may “choose “ better more effects paths of development. Amazing eh?

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I keep AI on a pretty short leash. Rarely bite on any of its follow-up suggestions. That bit stayed in on my copy/paste this time just for contextual effect. Everything for me always has a pragmatic core. Lately the Laszlo Institute got on my radar (though social network effects), so I’m crash-coursing in all things Laszlo or Laszlo-adjacent. This entire thread strikes me as Laszlo-adjacent. AI is useful for suggesting possible second-order network effects, but I’ll run my own non-linear algorithms, thank you, before jumping down any AI suggested rabbit holes.

My algorithm is mostly about “who gets along with whom” and its a similar sort of skill set that contributed to Victorian formal dinner seating arrangements. For example. “Gregg Henriques likes Bohm, and I work with Henriques, so those two can be seated near one another”. Everyone (except for some very stogy traditional Catholics) likes Teilhard, so we can seat him last, because anyone would be happy to have him. Wilber - now that’s a tricky one! Wilber has kept some very interesting company over the years, but some of that company (and Wilber himself) drives other company away, so seating Wilber at the same table with others I’d like in the conversation is a bit of an art form. Discussions, after all, don’t keep themselves pleasant and productive all by themselves!

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I’d posit stable only to a point, temporary stability. I woke up early with some ideas that have been brewing along similar lines to yours. Here is the exploration:

Gaia as Myriad Automata

Life unfolds as a tapestry of patterned freedom.
In a fundamentally indeterminate universe, we inherit parameters—laws of physics, boundary conditions, symmetries—but not a predetermined story.
Within these bounds, countless automata—cells, organisms, ecosystems, societies—conduct experiments in becoming, testing what works and what does not.
Gaia is thus not a singular self-regulating organism but a vast ensemble of interacting automata, dynamically exploring possibility space.

An immaterial dimension, or more precisely an informational layer of constraint, underpins the material world.
This layer carries the imprints of past experiments—genetic codes, chemical pathways, developmental habits, ecological niches, social norms—that shape the likelihood of future configurations.
Matter enacts; information constrains.
The material world tests; the informational world learns.
Through this iterative feedback, the system gradually accumulates predictive leverage over what forms are viable.
It is not the evolution of fixed laws, but the evolution of evolvability itself—a recursive refinement of what can come next.

The Asymmetry of Choice

By “asymmetry of choice,” I do not mean conscious will, that naturally emerges later.
I mean the universe’s bias for actualization—the continual crystallization of one history from many possibilities.
At the origin—the Big Bang—matter emerged from an indeterminate “everything-everywhere-all-at-once” into something rather than something else: a first act of selection, or choice as differentiation.

From that primal asymmetry flows the arrow of time.
A low-entropy beginning, successive symmetry breakings, and accumulating constraints ensure that there are always more possible futures than pasts.
Each event “chooses” by actualizing one path among many, and those actualizations feed forward as new constraints on what can happen next.

As structures form, they store regularities—codes, habits, institutions—that act as informational constraints on further dynamics.
This is what complexity scientists call downward or constraint causation: information gains causal power not by pushing matter, but by narrowing the set of viable trajectories.
Matter remains free within its bounds, but the bounds themselves evolve.

Thus “choice” is not teleology or will; it is the asymmetric picking-out of actuality from an indeterminate field.
Life’s trajectory leans toward greater anticipatory capacity—not perfection, but an enlarging of the ways existence can organize itself.

Informational–Material Co-evolution

The feedback between these two dimensions—material and informational—can be seen as the universe’s ongoing experiment in “what works.”
First through the physics of stable atoms, then through the chemistry of replication, and later through living systems able to model their environments.
The informational layer refines itself through selection, memory, and prediction; the material layer continually tests and grounds those refinements.
In this sense, Gaia is co-active evolution—a coupled dance of matter and meaning.

This process is dynamically asymmetrical yet co-operative:

  • The material world performs the experiments;

  • The informational world accumulates the lessons;

  • Together they steer toward higher complexity and capacity for life.

We could say that evolution tends not necessarily toward “more life,” but toward more ways life can be organized, a continual expansion of the adjacent possible.

Relation to Existing Frameworks

Framework Resonances Distinctions
Wolfram’s New Physics / Computational Universe Shares the sense of simple automata generating complex universes through iterative rules. You introduce genuine indeterminacy and informational asymmetry, whereas Wolfram’s system is rule-bound and largely deterministic.
Gaia Hypothesis (Lovelock & Margulis) Common emphasis on planetary feedbacks between life and environment. Your Gaia is not homeostatic but exploratory—an evolving network of automata learning through constraint accumulation.
Cybernetics / Systems Theory Feedback, self-regulation, and recursive learning echo first- and second-order cybernetics. You emphasize open-ended creativity rather than control; information as emergent constraint, not simply data flow.
Process Philosophy (Whitehead, Peirce) Reality as becoming; interaction of form and potential; “actual occasions.” Your framing draws this into dialogue with digital physics and complexity science, giving process metaphysics an informational architecture.
Pancomputational or Informational Ontologies Alignment with views that information underlies physical reality. You avoid full reductionism by keeping material emergence irreducibly novel and co-causal.

Formal Glimpse

Let Ω be the set of feasible micro-histories given constraints S and stochasticity ε from an indeterminate prior H₀.

Actualization: h*t ∈ Ω(S_t, ε_t | H₀)
Update: S{t+1} = f(S_t, outcome(h*_t))

This expresses the asymmetry of choice (one path becomes actual), feedback (constraints update), and informational causation (S shapes what is viable).

Toward a Living Cosmology

If we read the cosmos as MacroGaia—myriad automata nested within automata—then the material world becomes the laboratory of the informational.
Each local system, from stars to proteins to polities, tests hypotheses of viability.
Successes are inscribed as new constraints; failures dissolve back into potential.
The trajectory is not toward stasis but toward reflexive awareness—the universe learning how to learn.

In this sense, human systems—scientific, cultural, ethical—are late-stage automata capable of consciously participating in the feedback.
Our task may be to design our experiments with humility: to align with the asymmetry of choice that leans, not toward domination, but toward deeper coherence with life itself

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Yes, Akashic Field Theory fits with the general description expounded, and Bohm’s implicate order. In his own words: “The universe is not a collection of separate things, but a flow of relations, an endless dance of forms that arise from and return to a single, dimensionless field of unity.”
And we see this repeatedly confirmed by science.
Perhaps even more tellingly, we see it also expounded by multiple philosophies and even mythical belief systems around the world.
What is a better hallmark of truth than when it is found constantly reoccurring across traditions, cultures and times - no matter how far apart they are?
We could alternatively say that we are biologically wired to see patterns, order and hidden unity - though given such concepts arise through simple observation and pure mathematics I would venture to say that we are instead looking at something deeper.

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Your piece is a beautifully coherent expression of a living, learning cosmos. The idea of Gaia as a vast ensemble of interacting automata exploring possibility space captures something essential about how complexity emerges from simple rules.

Where I approach the question differently is at the foundation. You describe a fundamentally indeterminate universe, within which form and order arise through feedback and evolving informational constraints. I see that same process, but I believe the apparent indeterminacy is an illusion of perspective.

Under the model initially described in this thread, reality begins not in uncertainty but in unity. Beneath all variation and evolution lies a deterministic, dmensionless field… a perfect symmetry that underies every constant, every form, every particle and mind. What we experience as randomness or freedom is the local expression of relationships too complex for us to see in full. Every outcome, even those that appear spontaneous, unfolds from deeper coherence.

So when you write that matter “tests” and information “learns,” I would say: both are expressions of the same recursive law. The universe doesn’t discover what works by chance; **it reveals what is already encoded within its structure**. Evolution is not random trial but the gradual unveiling of necessity.

I share your sense that the cosmos tends toward greater awareness, but not as a movement toward something new. Rather, it is unity ‘remembering itself’ through differentiation. Each mind, each ecosystem, each galaxy is a reflection of that singular order, knowing itself from a different angle.In that light, Gaia is not an experiment, but a precise expression of the whole ; a self-organizing harmony governed by imutable law, yet infinitely creative in its manifestation. Consciousness doesn’t alter that process… it illuminates it.

So perhaps the difference between us is not about determinism versus freedom, but about where one stands to observe the pattern. From within, it feels open and indeterminate. From the whole, it is already complete. The universe, I think, is both: law and play, symmetry and improvisation.. a single, eternal rhythm expressing itself as many.

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Well put! I completely agree with your entire post. When I hang out in the halls of the scientifically focused (like UTOK), what you said about about pattern is exactly what I would lead with. Along generally Kantian lines, we see patterns to see anything. Then, to take a phenomenological turn, I would claim that our experience of being-in-the-world is pattern-driven. In close analysis, our dream states, for example, might manifest as unformed perceptions of blotches of color or movement - but try communicating anything about a dream without invoking patterns! Last night for instance I had a vivid dream about a mountain. Vivid it because I remember it very well, and in the dream I verbalized “mountain”. But the visual cue for that was really a swathe of brightness and a sense of upward visual scanning that might have gotten a different interpretation from someone else. I doubt anyone really dreams in “objects”. More like, we extract patterns from flux, which is what our brains do wide awake as well.

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This may be an expression of our own situated embeddedness in time. It is not easy for a human to imagine the whole in which everything exists all at once, and yet for them, is also unfolding through the arrow of time.

I think I am saying in different words what you are saying. Maybe! Of course materially and experimentally we can only observe this dimension, and other states of consciousness can be so wild and untethered it’s hard to imagine that being understood, although there is a mapping project at Harvard atm, I haven’t checked in on their work recently.

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Your unity is, I guess non-dual? All “things every where at once” or all potential, sometimes known as the sparkling dark. How ever “deterministic” and “dimensionless” clash: determinism usually presupposes causal relations across time, while dimensionlessness ( no such word I’m guessing but you get my drift) implies no temporal extent for such causation to occur. Of course we have the problems of language to contend with here, and may be mixing metaphysical unity (philosophy) with physical determinism (physics), which operate on incompatible levels of description.

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It is non-dual. The problem, as you say, is one of language, and also one of underlying comprehension. In Buddhism there is the concept of nothingness, and yet that does not mean ‘nothing’. Perhaps the closest analogy is to view all asymmetries as arising in a relative-relational way’; they exist, but only insofar as the relations between them. When fractal patterns like the Mandelbrot Set appear, the appearance is one of infinite complexity - a complexity that substantively exists within the pattern - but the essential nature is one of a single operation (the source). If we go back in time, to what we call the Big Bang, or the source singularity - a point of equivalence and symmetry - what is it? Dimensionless certainly seems an accurate term, for it lacks both space and time, even though it contains - and gives rise - to both. What if (as proposed) this state has always existed, even now. That would entail a realisation of deep interconnection and unity, a sweeping change to how we see the world. Laszlo (as mentioned before) suggests that we (present human society) have entered a state of decoherence, losing sight of the underlying unity, so - somewhat in the spirit of 2R - it may be possible to reverse the course humanity is taking if we can consciously regain connection, even if the trajectory is too late to prevent far-reaching damage.

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Two matters I’d like to understand either in meaning or linguistically. Firstly, I understand your point on the dimensionless, and fine with the no-thing. I’m at ease with the reality of unity, and the illusion of separation.

But deterministic? Are you a materialist that thinks that every event, including human actions, is the inevitable result of prior causes? This suggests that the present state of the world is entirely shaped by what came before, and that if we knew all the relevant conditions and laws of nature, we could predict everything that happens. In this view, free will is either an illusion or something compatible with being caused, the conditions we find ourself in today are inevitable.

Determinism assumes a strict linear model of time, where the past pushes the present into the future, which seems to be at bit odds with all else you say.

My view is that this framework can miss the complexity of systems, feedback loops, and the possibility that time or causality may not be as fixed or straightforward as it seems.

If I thought the world was deterministic, I would certainly not put the effort I do into development or 2R in the hope of making a better future.

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Yes, I’d say deterministic. That doesn’t necessarily mean materialist too. Materialists tend to see all phenomenon as arising from physical and observable chains of interactions. The key difference here is that there may be multiple layers, with not all interactions open to (easy) observation with the instruments and methodologies we currently possess. It is possible to be deterministic yet still allow for a multi-layered, nuanced reality - one that contains all the systemic complexities and feedback loops you mention.

As for causality, and requiring a strict linear model of time, that isn’t necessarily true. There is no inherent arrow to time other than what is imbued through entropy, which can be seen as a result of the expansion of the universe. Under some models, when the universe contracts, time also reverses. If both phases were viewed as one, effectively outside of time, you are left with the same dimensionless unity as the source.

As for free will, we first need to consider that what we regard as free will in today’s society is somewhat of a conceptual analogy - if you look at other societies, even western ones like in the ancient world, such a notion of free will would have seemed very strange. Under a deterministic worldview, granted, free will - as we know it - cannot exist. But, far from losing agency and purpose, another picture can arise: one of being interconnected and part of the same unfolding process, sharing in existence not as discrete independent units somehow separate from it all, but instead as expressions of the underlying unity. In many ways, such a perspective is even more empowering than that of imagining we have some separate agency from the rest of existence.

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On a walk yesterday I reflected on the phenomenology of freedom and determination. Namely, what are the experiences that give rise to each of these ideas?

For determination, that’s pretty simple. Things happen, associated with memories of antecedent occurrences. The pattern becomes familiar. We become able to anticipate matters as they unfold by applying the same pattern - our present moment becomes some imagined future’s past, and then that imagined future next becomes the experienced present, confirming our application of the pattern. Over time, we convince ourselves of mechanisms of cause and effect. Generalizing, it appears that all things (our actions included) are caused.

Freedom is a bit more interesting. Sometimes, we do the unexpected. That feels free. Except yesterday I manufactured experiments like stepping in directions I would not normally step and touching objects I would not normally reach for. Except - that’s pretty superficial. It was clear all that was scripted by thoughts of “do something unexpected” followed by running through a mental list of matching a pattern called “the unexpected”. In that sense, the unexpected is expected as well. It’s just the cause is obscured by one or more degrees. So maybe it was all fated after all?

Where I ended up in this meditation is wondering if perhaps freedom is not something we do. Perhaps it is more like an experience we have of feeling unbounded by gross physical energies. There may still be causal energies, but these energies may be at work on higher, subtler levels. Freedom, in this sense, may be like a breeze that blows through us. A cause that feels uncaused.

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I’ve been sitting with these questions again — about agency, determinism, the words we use, and the tools we think through.

To be honest, I find determinism bleak.
Not because it’s been disproven — but because it doesn’t resonate.
We don’t have proof either way. So I choose the view that keeps something alive: that the future isn’t fixed, that our actions matter, and that agency — however partial — is real.

I share your concern about individualism, and the illusion of stand-alone agency.
But what if the cosmos itself is agentic — a kind of participatory unfolding?

And if both determinism and emergence rest on uncertain ground, why not choose the one that invites meaning, response, participation? Because it opens the most?

What troubles me is how terms like determinism keep their name, even as their meaning drifts. We may sound like we’re in the same conversation — but stand in different worldviews.

When physics, metaphysics, and philosophy use the same words without shared definitions, misunderstanding is almost guaranteed.

This gets more tangled when we bring in quantum theory.
Interpretations like QBism and Rovelli’s Relational Quantum Mechanics suggest that reality isn’t fixed in advance — it unfolds through interaction.

No absolute states. No universal time. Causality becomes local and relational. The future isn’t just caused — it co-arises.

I resonate with Jim Rutt’s ( not my favourite person, given to violent views, but otherwise a sharp thinker) concept: “minimum viable metaphysics.”

Just enough structure to keep inquiry from falling through.
Not a grand system — just three commitments:

“That the universe exists, that it began asymmetric, and that it runs lawfully.”

From that, novelty emerges.
No need for miracles — just asymmetry + lawfulness = change.

It’s a way to hold coherence without closing off possibility.
To me, that’s a sane metaphysical elegant middle ground:
lawful, open, and responsive.

And then there’s AI.

I sense it in our dialogues. It’s helped me write more clearly — test bed my thinking, but it also tends to mirror what we already believe, tidy it up, and hand it back.

That’s what it’s designed to do: to complete the sentence, not challenge it.

But insight often comes not from refinement, but from rupture. From paradox. From the unexpected.

And AI can’t feel rupture. It can’t wonder. It can’t doubt.
It doesn’t care if it’s wrong, it could drop an atom bomb, and say “sorry about that, I can understand why you’re upset, lets see what we could do to improve the protocol…”
It’s pattern without felt consequence, always in the now.

So I find I have to wrestle with it, keep my voice and humanity — not to treat it as an oracle, but a mirror.

And I return, again and again, to what I trust: That agency is possible. That language serves meaning, not the reverse. And that our task is not to finalize meaning —
but to stay open enough that our words don’t collapse the very freedom we’re trying to protect.

I wanted to ask how your framework serves you? How does it feel? How might it affect/serve humanity if we adopted it?

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There is understandable resistance in giving up the notion of free will. So let us approach it another way: adhering to the notion that free will exists. The question then arises: where does it end? Does an elephant have free will? An ant? A tree…? And you will have some who say, no, it is only humans who have it. Why? They can never provide an objective reason. The notion of human exceptionalism is something I find innately flawed. It has the same anthropocentric egoism that sprouted notions of racial supremacy, a male interventionalist god, and western european cultural supremacy. It sprouts from the same root of separation that lies behind every evil in history. I can’t see anything special about humans, over and above a more complex social system and the development of hands.

The alternative of course is to say that all things have an element of free will. And yet, we can understand how simple organisms behave through simple deterministic laws, just as we do for planets and the (albeit layered in complexity) systems within and around them. If everything is part of this dance of energy and matter, where does some magical force that lies above it - free will - come in?

I do, however, see ground in reality unfolding through interaction. The inter-relations between ‘things’ - which exist relatively - is an innate aspect of many branches of science. What deterministic models often fail to accept is that there are multiple layers, some which are not easy to observe, and others which don’t have neat explanations - if any - under present scientific models. For example, science fails to explain why the constants of physics are what they are, or why certain asymmetries came into being. We also have hints of an underlying order in the way certain patterns repeat themselves (as noted before).

I agree with your comments regarding AI. Overall, from my own experience, the positives seem to outweigh the negatives. We should also remember that, in a way, we are also following certain programmes with limitations. Language itself constrains how we express concepts and even perceive the world. Some things cannot be clearly articulated in certain languages, if any. English is especially flawed with its rigid subject-object categorisations and failure to embody the interrelationships that other languages innately contain. The last book I read that went into this subject was ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’.

As for your final question: if we all see things as interconnected and fundamentally, at the base level, unified, then the issue of free will is no longer important. We are part of the flow of patterns that express themselves, and by following them we are in harmony. An example of those patterns can be found in the millions of years of natural evolution, where organisms have developed to be in symbiosis, where there is no waste, and everything has a purpose.

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Some things are best conveyed through dance, imagery, song, practice… the primary role of (most surviving) written language is not to communicate and preserve information, but rather to constrain what we can pass across and perceive.

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