I use the phrase normalization a lot in my zoom calls, writings, and masterclasses, not in the least because adaptability to nature’s entropy, and thus the prolonging of human life on earth, is highly dependent on our best discovery and approximation of nature’s infinitely exposing truth.
Infinite Discovery
A discovery not just beholden to the anointed practitioners of science. In the words of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, science is merely the discovery of nature.
Anyone can be a scientist by that definition as long as you are “woke enough” to pay attention and ready to stumble on a discovery that leads one to question foregone conclusions of truth—not unlike Albert Einstein, a patent clerk at the time, discovering the theory of general relativity from detecting a change in the position of stars during a solar eclipse. Exposure to nature’s truth leads to a new comprehension of reality capable of inducing improved human adaptability, cleaning the slate of our imperfect past.
If you, too, want to improve humanity, start paying attention and begin to think about causation at all times. Or start by believing nothing you hear and believing everything you see. Ask the question why until the supposed experts run out of answers.
Define Normalization
A normalization is the highest order of nature’s probable cause. Of anything.
As described in Learn To Think (a must-read), the normalization of truth is a hierarchical construct of relativity, not unlike the root structure of a tree or any other fractal of your preference. And thus, an interpretation of truth by anyone is dependent on the allegiance to the said hierarchy by the interpreter.
As animated above, the best version of the truth evolves through endless discovery upstream. Meaning, that a current normalization is usurped by a new and higher normalization of truth derived from discovery and proof, rendering the old less relevant and offering new relative facts worthy of exploration.
While notably, belief is the downstream evolution from an existing normalization of truth into a myriad of consequences, descending into the sleep of reason.
Cause To Consequence
In the animation, the example I use to describe normalizations is a broad-stroke historical one anyone can relate to.
In the olden days, we believed the earth was flat as our highest normalization of truth. We derived some interesting consequences from that assessment, including how one could fall off the edge of the earth if one traveled far enough—the impetus for Christopher Columbus to start doing so. By discovery, we found and could prove the world was round. Soon after that, Galileo discovered the earth is not the center of the universe either, and the earth revolves around the sun instead. Then Einstein discovered, by observing the position of stars during a solar eclipse, the theory of general relativity around which everything in our cosmos (including our planet) appears to evolve. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.
New and higher normalizations of truth change the cause assigned to a foregone conclusion into a mere consequence, with the new normalization established as its unique cause. Confounding cause and consequence, in the words of Nietzsche, leads to grave depravity of reason and beyond mere semantic confusion, signaling a severe and dangerous misapprehension of human allegiance to nature’s hierarchical truth.
A confounding of consequence and cause also leads to the wrong path of asymmetry.
Asymmetry
As explained by the greats of science, nature’s entropy dictates one can only go from cause to consequence, not from consequence to cause, which means that even the elimination of all undesirable consequences does not resolve to infer or improve cause.
In simple terms, that means, for example, a country’s GDP is a consequence of human performance at its cause. GDP as a consequence, therefore, by asymmetry between cause and consequence, saying nothing about the composition of human performance that achieved it. In the same way, a score in a soccer game says nothing about gameplay, and no two games with similar scores are derived from identical gameplay. Therefore, comparing countries’ GDP is a nebulous indicator of consequence, not leading to any reliable inference to cause despite being widely used as such.
Another example is the dependence on data as the basis for artificial intelligence. Again a confounding of consequence and cause, confounding the direction of asymmetry. Data is a consequence of causal actions (that have already occurred). Actions produce data, and by the law of asymmetry, not data inferring actions. By the laws of nature, Artificial intelligence is therefore incapable of reverting to practical actions to break the norm.
I run into thousands of cases of how humanity systemically misjudges the direction of asymmetry, confounding of consequence and cause, with grave depravity of manmade reason and widespread human idiocracy to boot.
New-Norm Charlatans
A new normalization of cause can only be achieved through higher-order discovery substantiated by reproducible proof.
Yet, in the wild and omnipresent confounding of consequence and cause, it is not hard to imagine how ill-formed asymmetry is used and abused to sell people endless hierarchies of make-believe. One of humanity’s favorite ploys to subvert the innocent is selling downstream as upstream.
Like how Al Gore portrays, he can solve climate change by eradicating the undesirable consequences many “scientists” have studied. Or how a newly popular organization called Global Citizen, in a blizzard of confounding consequence and cause, attempts to do the same for all injustices in the world. Both are blissfully ignorant or cunningly aware of their faulty asymmetry described above. It pays to keep putting bandages on undesirable consequences innocent greater-fools can not distinguish between causal or consequential.
A new norm can only come from a new and higher normalization of nature’s cause and will not come from attempting to revert asymmetry, a process locked in by nature’s entropy. Belief as the sleep of reason and the denial of discovery leads humanity down a treacherous path of spiraling solipsism.
Up-up-up
New normalizations of nature’s truth fundamentally improve humanity’s ability to adapt to nature. Yet only when the discoveries derived from said normalization cause a change to the systems we build to manage ourselves. We must pay more than mere Nobel Prize homage to the geniuses responsible for those discoveries.
Albert Einstein discovered and proved the theory of general relativity, determining how everything in our universe, including humanity, appears to evolve. And yet, to date, one hundred years later, none of our constructs in policy, capital, or innovation determining the expansion of human ingenuity and capacity abide by the theory of relativity. A glorious missed opportunity we must correct.
Every discovery of a proven, new, and higher normalization of nature’s truth must be followed up by adjusting, using the words of Albert Einstein again, “the theory that determines what can be discovered.” Not in the least, because a new and higher normalization of cause delivers a closer and better proxy to and understanding of nature’s truth and offers an expanding plethora of consequences humanity can use to its immediate advantage.
New normalizations of nature’s truth offer incredible opportunities to expand the fractal of human ingenuity and capacity, which will improve human adaptability to nature’s entropy responsible for the prolonging of human life on earth or extraterrestrial.
