Reacting to Ben Goertzel on Langan’s “Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe” (CTMU Review)

Script for upcoming video

I have not watched the Mathematical Metaphysics video on this same blog post yet because I did not want to have any contamination of ideas, but I thought I’d take a look and share my thoughts on this, as well as Ben Goertzel’s general philosophy. That video will be linked in the description.

Ben Goertzel is a researcher in computer science, a pioneer in the nascent field of ‘Artificial General Intelligence,’ and a proponent of transhumanism and the tech singularity, which I’ve strongly spoken against. Nevertheless, I believe that Ben Goertzel is a prime metaphysical theorist and a genius, and I have enormous respect for his body of work. Goertzel calls his philosophy Eurycosmism, a derivative of the earlier Russian Cosmism, a 19th-century philosophical movement that inspired transhumanism. Goertzel’s philosophy outlines a quite ingenious system that combines morphic resonance (the theory that the physical universe has memory and consciousness baked into its structure) and nonlinear dynamics to provide a precise view of reality that describes the connection between mind and reality, much like the CTMU.

That, however interesting, is not the topic of this video (although I do plan on doing a video on that topic, but rather Ben Goertzel’s blog post reacting to the CTMU itself. Ben Goertzel is a legitimate genius, in my view, so it seems that he was able to understand the CTMU very well on his first parse, which is quite exceptional in my experience.

Goertzel writes that he agrees with the CTMU’s fundamental perspective, which is that reality is a self-processing, self-configuring language (SCSPL) and that time is the unified grammar of the reality system, which connects sub-language or parameters of the universe. He assents to the CTMU view of ‘metatime’ with time as a programmatic faculty of the universe that generates timelines that emerge in the terminal domain and that temporal procession is a result of the relationship between different algorithms that the CTMU describes using telic recursion, and the ‘later-ness’ of a certain event is because this process terminates at a different point in time, which is relative to the observer, thereby explaining away many of the problems with relativity, quantum non-locality, etc. with our ‘frame of reference’ being equivalent to the measurement event and establishing a firm arrow of time, ironically, by allowing time and telic recursion to flow backward. 

Goertzel understands telic recursion and the algorithms enacted thereby as a ’series of languages’ (which is a very advanced understanding) but disagrees with Langan’s assertion that this process can be “expressed as maximization of ‘generalized utility functions.’” 

However, he assents to the idea that “mind and physical reality are seen as part of the same set of networks of linguistic relationships.  Individual minds are connected with the universal mind, and with physical entities, via linguistic relationships.”

The fundamental critique, I believe, of Ben Goertzel on the CTMU is whether a linguistic system of meta-computational consciousness (which is quite like how Goertzel’s Eurycosmism describes reality, as well) can have a utility function or a specific intention. The key word here is ‘specific,’ and it seems that Goertzel’s background in artificial intelligence leads to in this article surprising understandings as well as troubling confusions. Goertzel sees teleology, or the insistence that SCSPL’s ‘utility function’ has a ‘central role’ as a limited perspective. However, the idea that the universe has a single recursive algorithm, which Goertzel seems to be arguing against, is not actually a feature of the CTMU but merely a shorthand for a more complicated process that does not appear in introductory CTMU publications. 

Goertzel suggests a model of ‘open-ended intelligence’ as some maverick AI researchers promote, which, when applied to reality’s mental system, would correspond to exactly the fundamental procedure of reality’s evolution in the CTMU, namely that reality adapts on the fly to freely changing internal conditions and thus has self-generative freedom in its evolution and no predetermination in either the programming or display domains. In fact, according to Langan, “intelligence and reality can not be separately defined.” Therefore, the reality system described by the CTMU could very well be called ‘Open-Ended Intelligence’, a phrase syntactically equivalent to the CTMU’s description of a ‘self-generative reality’ and thus this phrase is not neglected in the CTMU, but is in fact embedded in its two of its first and most fundamental principle — the Metaphysical Autology Principle (M.A.P.) and the Mind Equals Reality (M=R) Principle— which says that reality comprises a closed, described manifold that is self-generative and possessed a generalized form of intelligence. The CTMU combines elements (to use the analogy of machine learning systems) of open-ended intelligence and reinforcement learning to allow reality to intelligently respond to freely changing internal conditions and enact a true ‘creative evolution.’ ‘Teleology’ or ‘generalized utility’ are mere shorthands for the self-optimative procedure of SCSPL. This seems to be the main source of disagreement between Goertzel and the CTMU.

Goertzel writes, “Other than that, the overall framework he posits makes sense to me.” Goertzel disagrees with Christopher Langan (not the CTMU) as to why the CTMU has not been widely accepted despite its obvious bulletproof logical structure. Whereas Langan believes that the reason that the CTMU has been largely ignored is because of scholastic collusion between academics to exclude the works of outsiders or any genuinely novel views or opinions, Goertzel believes that the CTMU has not been considered simply due to a lack of interest in advanced formal metaphysics by nearly anyone in either science or modern philosophy, which is why the CTMU has little momentum or popular support.

Goertzel writes, “As Langan himself affirms, what he’s putting forth is a philosophy, not a scientific theory.  It’s not really a new kind of “theory of everything,” it’s a mathematically semi-formalized metaphysics.” This is true; the CTMU does not fit the conventional description of a “theory of everything” in the sense of a unified theory of physics (I have written two papers showing the CTMU application to this very topic, however) but a consistent theory of metaphysics. It is not, however, ‘semi-formalized’ but is actually so formalized that, by comparison, other formal systems seem not to be formalized. This is why the CTMU is called a ‘metaformal system’, because it is logically backed by supertautology and is thus closed, consistent, comprehensive, and generically and replicable applies to the entire of reality.  Goertzel, however, correctly acknowledges the shallowness of current science, culture, and even popular spirituality, writing, “Current culture focuses mainly on practical things; and those concerned with metaphysics are generally new-age and experientially-oriented, not formalism-oriented.” 

Goertzel continues, “Most of what occurs in Langan’s theory has been said before, though with different terminology and sometimes in different forms. The idea that the universe can be formulated as a language that is talking to itself, about itself, has been said many times before, and I wrote about this myself in my book “Chaotic Logic” and later in “The Hidden Pattern” (including references to others discussing these concepts). The “telic recursion” aspect he discusses is not laid out in enough detail to really understand what he means.” This is a valid point, but it actually affirms the significance and importance of the CTMU as tying all of these disparate insights, which great minds have arrived at before, into a unified logical framework. As I’ve said before, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and I am no longer surprised when I find ideas similar to the CTMU in philosophy or ideas from any place or time in history. Telic recursion is not fully explicated in the CTMU: ANKORT paper, but I think that I’ve satisfactorily gone through it, and Langan has as well. 

Goertzel comments, “Langan says “everything essential to reality, including everything needed to describe it, is contained in reality itself.” But this assumes “everything” is contained within the realm of description — i.e. it rules out Peircean Firsts and Seconds.  This is implicit in the “everything is language” approach.  Langan may well see this as a feature; I see it as a bug….” This is not true, in my opinion. The CTMU does not restrict its characterization of the CTMU to third-order intensional categories (roughly corresponding to model theory, which is the — to Goertzel’s point — most important part of the CTMU), but also extends over first and second-order Piercean intentions (roughly corresponding to propositional and relational logic). However, I would bite the bullet on this particular point as well and say that the CTMU’s emphasis on ‘thirdness’ in terms of Piercean categories is a feature, as the triadic (sign-object-interpretant triality) is a key feature of the self-dualization of logical systems and the reference to an interpretant, thereby extending standard logic to embody the metaphysical syntax of reality itself and defining triality or ‘piercean thirdness’ as the relational nature of reality itself, consisting of a medium, an expression, and a self-dual relationship connecting the two. 

While CTMU meta-logic is quite similar in many respects to Charles Sanders Pierce's pragmatic logic, it extends it considerably in the manner described herein. This is why Christopher Langan describes the CTMU as a metaphysical form of logic. 

Goertzel continues, “Langan mentions John Wheeler’s desire to found physics on “It from Bit” and observation and related ideas.   Wheeler's ideas are indeed fantastically inspirational; and Langan wonders why nobody has done what Wheeler envisioned.  But actually, Langan has not done so either (at least not yet!).  Wheeler wanted to actually derive physics from these philosophico-mathematical foundations, not just formalize them as a mathematical metaphysics.”

This, I believe, is a fair criticism of the CTMU, but it is only a problem with resolution. There is nothing in principle preventing a technical explication of a theory of quantum gravity in the CTMU, and this is precisely what I personally am attempting to bring to bear, and Chris Langan has as well with past publications such as his paper “Introduction to Quantum Meta-Mechanics” and others. I agree with Goertzel that the ideal line for physics is “deriving quantum theory from various very abstract axiom sets (e.g., the relational interpretation).” Much of my current independent research is devoted to bridging the gap between Carlo Rovelli and Christopher Langan’s bodies of work and explicating the relational interpretation, physics without time, and loop quantum gravity in the CTMU. I believe that we can do something similar or related here, as well as — as Goertzel suggests — describing the physics of space-time with causal set theory and the CTMU model of set theory with topological and descriptive containment generating an intrinsic background for spacetime and an incoversive relationship wherein the structure and dynamics of space-time are locally realized at every instance. I am also working on a CTMU version of the Schrödinger and Wheeler-Dewitt equations, which would fully solve all of the problems laid out by Goertzel in this article and derive Quantum Field Theory and general relativity as a sub-theory in the linear ectomorphic semi-model of the CTMU. Much more to come, but I believe that Goertzel will be quite pleased with the solutions I find. 

Goertzel writes, “If there are connections of this nature between his metaphysics, and physics, that would be interesting….   Various others are engaged with attempting to derive quantum theory, essentially, from metaphysics. They haven’t quite succeeded but have “almost succeeded” in various interesting ways…  I hope this is where he aims to take his theory next….” This is very much, in my view, the next most promising avenue of explication for the CTMU Metaformal System.

I agree with Goertzel that the CTMU is more interesting as a theory of reality and as a proof of God and much of the instructional material in the CTMU (I’ll include myself in this camp) attempts to put God and theology in areas where it’s not strictly necessary. I don’t think Ben Goertzel’s reasoning here:

[show image of his depiction of CTMU's argument for God]

Is well-guided because while it is true that an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent reality would not fit the conventional definition of God, and perhaps the CTMU could then even be considered proof of atheism, what actually points to a Supreme Being as the ultimate reality is the fact that the ground and source of the reality system is personal, because it is attached by the MU-morphic grammar to each of its secondary images and thus exists, evolves, and experiences itself through the life and destiny of its sensor-controllers, meaning that we live in a fundamentally personal and personalizing universe in the codomain of each of those mappings from God to his creatures. Where God is implicitly defined in each of these relationships, God is our highest level of identity and more fundamentally personal than can be said even of human persons. When we ask the ultimate question, “What?” We might answer ‘the universe,’ ‘the metaverse’, or ‘reality’ but when we ask the ultimate question ‘who’, we must answer ‘God,’ who bears a certain anthropomorphism because of the bidirectional mapping wherein each of our highest level of identity is God and God’s lower levels of identity are secondary telors, aka human and human-like conscious agents and by adding the self-optimation and telic recursion aspects to the reality system, we do in fact arrive at a person Creator who is capable of designing the universe and with whom each of us can have a private and meaningful relationship, and therefore the “universe was designed by something carrying out reasoning or deliberative processes….” Intelligent design is not a flaw inconsistent with the rest of the CTMU, but rather, the CTMU is a theory of intelligent design.

Contrary to what Goertzel says here: [show quote on screen], His theory is all about the universal mind carrying out a design process, which is also a very evolutionary sort of cognitive process. I don’t see why, when we speak about design, we must confine the design to the way we think about intelligence and creativity when it would be, of course, impossible to circumscribe the ability and power of God’s mind from within reality. But I do sadly agree with Goertzel that focusing entirely on God can have deleterious consequences for a reality theory that covers all essential aspects of human knowledge, which are sometimes negatively impacted by shifting the focus from interpretation in the CTMU metaformalist program rather than being made to fit with a preconceived notion of religious theology. 

I greatly appreciate Goertzel’s ability to engage with Langan as a genuine theorist and to evaluate the CTMU on its own merits. This is the best review I’ve seen of the CTMU written by an outsider, and it is clear from this and his life and research that Ben Goertzel is a genius who has great understanding and intelligence. Arguably, Ben Goertzel’s most important insight is the path forward for the CTMU. Despite the obvious shortcomings of academia and the allure of being an independent researcher, Goertzel points out that “one thing academia DOES have is a time-honed set of mechanisms for propagating ideas beyond the individual to the community.  And Langan does seem to be missing this — his maverick ideas are deep and intriguing, but they don't seem to be getting followed up by a community of others.  Which is too bad, because they're interesting and could likely benefit from the sharpening and expansion that a community of minds focusing together can provide….”

This is what we are working on with Compatriot Academy. We are building a community of like-minded individuals who are trained with weekly live instruction, offering courses to achieve Full-Spectrum Dominance in CTMU Knowledge, leading to integration within our network that will ultimately be the community that is working most so on explicating and disseminating insights from the CTMU and supporting independent and collaborative researchers. Working from the Plan of Chris Langan on Our Own Initiative, We have partnered to Bring an Academy into Being that teaches the CTMU and Challenges the University System in the Depths of Metaphysical Education. Our academy can be thought of as ‘Academia 2.0’ as outlined above, based on the CTMU Metaformal System and ‘Institute of all Science’, which is to be a disciplined body of researchers working together on meaningful contributions to the CTMU. 

All of this can be yours starting at $10/month, almost one-thousandth the monthly cost of elite universities, which focus on social engineering and indoctrination almost as much as on high-quality education. With this long term vision, Langan’s insights and all of his publications will be getting followed up by a community of others, becoming sharpened and expanded by a focused community of minds. All links are in the description.

Langan himself acknowledges the need for such a class who are hyper-intelligent, highly educated, and fluent in the foundational language of reality (the CTMU) and put their minds together to truly bring out what the CTMU has to offer, which is the widespread understanding of our task and purpose in reality, clarity on science and metaphysics, and a roadmap for the New Earth, a human singularity that will transform the world, beginning with our body of researchers and then beginning to elevate the world over time and protect against its excesses and evils, acting as a sort of ‘immune system’ until it is able to become a real dominant power and has said that if he had a billion dollars, he would create a CTMU university system. 

I agree with Goertzel that the CTMU can find its greatest influence via passing ideas along to more conservative academic types and the more conventional mathematicians generalized to the nascent field established by Langan of Mathematical Metaphysics. Langan is more honorable, Goertzel points out, which means that he is not engaging in self-promotion or anything to bring attention to himself and is very reluctant to agree to interviews, public appearances, etc., to my knowledge, which makes it very difficult to pique popular interest in metaphysics and formal theology.

I also concur that politics, quibbles with academia, etc., are not as interesting or important as modeling the nature of reality! I have a generally more positive view on the CTMU than Goertzel, especially given what I know about its community direction and perhaps grasp its content at a slightly higher resolution than even a genius like Goertzel could do on a first parse, but I think that Goertzel was very sensible, fair, and balanced, and I commend him on that! His open-mindedness and intelligence made this article a very pleasant read!

Thank you! Let the light shine forth in the darkness. May the peace of our Father in heaven be upon you. Like and subscribe. Peace.