Sunday, 21 July 2024

Why 'common knowledge' is uncommon nonsense

Alexander Pope, in 'Essay on Man' asks us the question-

Is the great chain, that draws all to agree,
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or thee?

Pope, whom the Germans considered a philosopher rather than, as we do, a gifted versifier, was thought to be expressing the Newtonian- or, later, Kantian- orthodoxy re. the existence of 'naturality' (non arbitrariness) or 'categoricity (having a unique model) such that Nature and God were as but the same Book in which all might read and, save by reason of stupidity or a myopic type of self-love, arrive at the same coordinating or prescriptive conclusions.

This was not Pope's own view. God allots each creature a place in His plan. The 'untutored Indian' is condemned to no inferior fate (though 'Christian thirst for gold' may claim otherwise) if the humble Heaven granted him is one his dog is welcome to follow him into.

But, this is what happens when Yuddhishtra- the 'Just King' who must learn Statistical Game Theory to overcome 'vishada' (mental illness)- gets to Heaven but refuses to enter unless the dog 'Dhruva' too enters with him. 

Sadly, neither Hindus nor Germans nor lovers of English Literature have understood what Pope actually said. I have. But then, I was born in 'Benares on the Rhine' and had to study a bit of Statistical Game Theory when I was sixteen or seventeen (after which I devoted myself to drink). 

To be fair, Pope didn't say what I said he said. But that's because Pope was a genuine poet and thus remained 'untaught by the wisdom he had uncovered, the laws he had revealed.' The Hindu does not expect his faithful dog to accompany to Human heaven. But if a dog, or any other creature, attaches itself to a man arduously climbing to that destination, it deserves an equal admittance to what lies beyond the gates even if the man himself, like Yuddhishtra, decides its comforts can't justify the horrible shit show that is life on Earth. 

Obviously, for Pope's readers there were two types of 'Indian'- some were noble and 'Red', some 'Black'. Notoriously, the 'Black' retained an ancient belief in metempsychosis. They had no use for the type of Christian Heaven which Christian 'greed for gold' could buy entry into. Thus, Pope's admonition-  "Go, like the Indian, in another life / Expect thy dog, thy bottle, and thy wife"- means the opposite of what Bolingbroke- the Alcibiades, or Petronius, of his age- would have received it as. The fact is, your wife- whom you oppressed in this life- will be your husband in the next life unless you are her puppy dog because your dog attained the state of God and decided this was a sweeter way for you to discharge your karmic debt. 

The bottle, however, it is my fervent hope, is the impossible, perhaps because wholly Eucharistic, 'fixed point' of all Creation's 'eigenform' such that Landau's problems forever remain unsolved- or rather, not properly posed. What I mean is that the 'merit' of prime gaps may themselves offer a superior encryption such that all revealed language remains its own Pascalian cypher. Obviously, when I say 'what I mean is' what is meant is that I'm drunk off my head. 

In Game Theory, Common knowledge is stuff everybody knows everybody knows everybody knows. Sadly, everybody also knows that nobody knows what they know or, at least, are not able to act as if they do.

This is because Man knows that Alexander Pope- not some unreadable shithead, like Marx- was right.

 Even if there are no 'accessibility' or 'computability' problems, strategic considerations, resource or endowment diversity, etc, etc there is a fundamental mathematical problem with 'Common knowledge' viz. if knowledge is finitary, and has a language, 'Common Knowledge' can't be a well defined formula in it because it is an infinite conjunction. The workaround is a 'fixed point' theorem. The problem is 'singularities'. If the universe is full of black holes and white holes, why should 'knowledge' be different? Following Chichilinsky (but also, I believe, D.G Saari) we can equate singularities with Arrowvian dictators or just departures from 'naturality'- i.e. arbitrariness. This is related to uncorrelated asymmetries which in turn are related to costly signals. In other words, 'Knowledge' is a type of information which is biologic or arbitrary & Popean. What it can't be is mathematical or represent indefeasible propositions from the STEM subjects. 

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