eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 10.November 2022 – 27. February 2023
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

The English translation from the German source is partially generated with the www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version).

Main Text: oksimo.R Editor and Simulator for Theories …

(Last change: 27.January 2023)

Brief Description of the Book

(Last change: 6.November 2022)

When it comes ‘to the oath’, when it is the task of creating descriptions of the world which are ‘verifiable’ by others, and which allow ‘verifiable predictions/conclusions’, then there is so far in the cultural history of mankind only one format known that makes this possible, the format of an ‘Empirical Theory’. If you try to look up the term ‘Empirical Theory’ in the German or English Wikipedia, you will be disappointed: this term does not exist there (as of November 10, 2022). This should cause astonishment, because it is so far the only and hardest criterion for a ‘truthful theory’ found in the last thousands of years. There are endless articles and books on this subject.

However, it is also part of the truth that the formats of texts that have become known so far with the claim to realize a verifiable empirical theory ultimately work with a so-called ‘formalization’, i.e. the language of logic and mathematics is used. One consequence of this is that the amount of possible readers and users of such theories is severely limited by this language alone. This is a major disadvantage, since it effectively ‘locks out’ the majority of citizens in a society.

But scientists themselves have a problem too: for formalized empirical theories, there is no supporting software that allows the text of a theory to be checked ‘with the push of a button’ at any time in the form of a simulation. Although there are — partly highly complex — simulation programs for support, these are not theories as such, but only algorithms and have to be laboriously created alongside the theory itself. If the text of the theory changes, such a change must be transferred laboriously into the algorithm. In general: an algorithm is a ‘function’ which is neither true nor false; a theory is a ‘statement’ which as such can be true or false (or it can stay ‘undefined’ with regard to ‘truth’ or ‘falsehood’).

After many years of research — since about the mid 1980s and then experimentally for about four years — an approach has emerged which puts the concept of a testable empirical theory at the center, and takes as the starting language for an empirical description of the world the ‘normal language of everyday life’ (any is possible). This language can be ‘extended’ at will (which is common in science), but instead of virtually ‘throwing away’ the everyday language after the extension, in the new approach the everyday language is not thrown away but remains the main language.

This new approach — labeled with the acronym ‘oksimo.R’ [1] — enables the users — every kind of citizens — to write down a text which automatically represents everything known from — even formalized — theories. Above all: every citizen can read and understand texts written in the oksimo.R format normally. Every text in the oksimo.R format is automatically equivalent to a full empirical theory, even if the authors — arbitrary citizens — do not know exactly what an empirical theory is. Furthermore: at the push of a button, any theory in the oksimo.R format can be run as a ‘simulation’, where the term ‘simulation’ is very concrete here: the core of the simulation is formed by an ‘inference concept’, which computes the respective possible ‘continuations’ (= ‘inferences’) from given ‘world descriptions’ extended by possible ‘changes’, and this not only once, but ‘again and again’, until this inference process is stopped on the basis of a given criterion. Since every inference is linked to an empirical truth claim, every inference can also be checked for its empirical validity.

While up to now formalized empirical theories are very difficult to compare or even to ‘unify’, this is no problem for empirical theories in the oksimo.R format: one can unify arbitrary empirical theories in the oksimo.R format ‘at the push of a button’ to one text only and one can then directly view its effects by simulation. Of course, actual ‘interactions’ between the different ‘theory parts’ only arise if there are ‘linguistic points of contact’. But exactly this can be seen immediately with a unified simulation: Either there are no interactions at all or you detect some interactions. These ‘some interactions’ can be analyzed further with regard to the question, what interacts and how.

By the way, all forms of artificial intelligence (ai) in the format of ‘machine learning (ML)’ known today — which usually represent very simple algorithms and which are in addition extremely dependent on a formulated task — can be used fruitfully in the context of an oksimo.R theory text by using these AI algorithms to search the ‘state space’ of possible conclusions for possible optimizations.

Furthermore, one can arbitrarily extend the empirical references to the real world through appropriate sensor technology and data connections (e.g., IoT), all in ‘web real-time’.

Additionally, one can link any server with an oksimo.R theory to any other web application.

Instead of ‘only’ developing and testing theories, oksimo.R theories can also be used to control processes or as training and text environments. Even (online) games are possible.

This opens up interesting possibilities for a new level in people’s ‘collective knowledge’ that goes beyond mere ‘text sets’.

COMMENTS

[1] The acronym ‘oksimo.R’ points back to a language project called ‘oksimo’ (‘open knowledge simulation modeling’), which has been documented a little bit in the German wikipedia ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oksimo ). This project initiated by Gerd Doeben-Henisch had been 2009 stopped by him despite a great public awareness because of lack of resources. The ‘new oksimo’ as ‘oksimo.R’ means ‘oksimo reloaded’; it has somehow a similar intention but is designed with a completely different internal structure. It does not produce ‘algorithms’, it does produce ‘theories’.