Category Archives: oksimo software

WHAT IS LIFE? WHAT ROLE DO WE PLAY? IST THERE A FUTURE?

Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch

Changelog: Jan 17, 2025 – Jan 28, 2025

Email: info@uffmm.org

TRANSLATION: The following text is a translation from a German version into English. For the translation I am using the software @chatGPT4o with manual modifications.

CONTENT TREE

This text is part of the TOPIC Philosophy of Science.

CONTEXT


This is a direct continuation of the preceding dialogues since December 25, 2024 (see entries numbered 177 – 182).

INTRODUCTION


Ultimately, the path to today’s text leads from the first entries in the Philosophy Blog of the author (initially in 2007, then from 2009 onward) through all subsequent posts to the present day. The guiding theme, “Philosophy Now: In Search of a New Image of Humanity”, aptly reflects what has transpired. The posts on Philosophy blog document a search for those “images of the world and ourselves” that best illuminate the structures characterizing our existence over time on this planet, in this universe. For a long time, it was unclear whether an answer could be found. The many disparate images of humanity and the world seemed too fragmented: in art, in religious worldviews, in economics, in the natural sciences, in the humanities, and even in philosophy itself, which considers itself the “most fundamental perspective” from which to view and analyze the world.

It should not go unmentioned that among the many other blogs the author has filled with texts over the years, at least two more are worth noting:

First, there is the blog “Integrated Engineering and the Human Factor”, which began in 2003 with the publication of the author’s lectures. Over time, it became increasingly focused on specific topics closely aligned with computer science, engineering, and the philosophy of science—especially the relationship between humans and machines, including artificial intelligence.

Second, there is the blog “Citizen Science 2.0”. Launched in 2021, it explored the transition from “traditional citizen science” to “Citizen Science 2.0” in connection with an expanded concept of “empirical theory” into a “sustainable empirical theory”. The development of this theoretical concept ran parallel to the creation of an innovative software tool called oksimo, which allows users to describe complete sustainable theories in plain text (in any language) and simulate these theories at the push of a button. This new “view of things” emerged from applying the “Integrated Engineering and the Human Factor” theory to municipal processes in which citizens seek to understand and plan their world collaboratively.

While these three blogs with their different themes always seemed to be somehow interconnected, it was only in the past two years—since spring 2023—that these topics increasingly converged. This convergence revealed a single, overarching perspective in which all themes found a new “conceptual home”, where nothing seems insignificant, and a process is emerging with a force and richness that surpasses anything previously known in human history.

This expansive new perspective will be described in more detail below.

WHAT IS LIFE? First Steps.


There is a well-known saying, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” However, as the following example will show, when dealing with a highly complex subject, a single image is not enough. Still, it may provide the reader with an initial “framework” that can serve as a reference point, allowing the unimaginably complex concept of “life” to take shape in its first outlines. Have a look to the image at the beginning of this text.

The Complete Picture Consists of Four ‘Elements,’ Each Representing a ‘Logo’ and a Corresponding ‘Theme’:

  1. “Life@Work. It’s All Inclusive”
    This primarily represents biological life on planet Earth. However, as the discussion progresses will proceed, it will become clear that biological life cannot be separated from the other areas. The deeper we delve into the phenomenon of life, the more evident it becomes that everything forms a “dynamic unity” that is ultimately breathtaking.
  2. “SW@WORK. Expand Our Thinking”
    This intentionally does not refer to AI but rather to Software (SW), as all AI is, at its core, an “algorithm”—a piece of software capable of controlling “standardized machines” (computers). The fact that the “behavior of such standardized machines” can appear very human or intelligent to users (such as us humans) does not change the reality that this externally observable behavior is internally based on very simple computational operations. These operations lack almost everything that characterizes biological systems.
    Nevertheless, living beings can use such standardized machines in various ways to “extend their own capabilities.” It may even be argued that known life forms—particularly the species Homo sapiens—will likely be unable to face emerging futures without leveraging this technology. Conversely, these standardized machines alone will not survive any future, not even remotely.
  3. “EARTH@WORK. Cradle of Humankind”
    This represents planet Earth and everything we know about it. The existence of this planet was, in fact, a prerequisite for the development of biological life as we know it. Only in recent years have we begun to understand how known “biological life” (Nature 2) could “emerge” from “non-biological life” (Nature 1).
    On deeper analysis, one can recognize not only the commonality in the material used but also the “novel extensions” that distinguish the biological from the non-biological. Rather than turning this “novelty” into a dichotomy—as traditional human thought has often done (e.g., “matter” versus “mind”)—it can be understood as a “manifestation” of something more “fundamental,” an “emergence” of new properties that point to characteristics inherent in the “foundation of everything”—namely, energy. These characteristics only become apparent with the formation of increasingly complex structures.
    This new interpretation is inspired by insights from modern physics, particularly quantum physics in conjunction with astrophysics. It suggests a broader interpretation of Einstein’s classical formula e=mc² than is typically considered (summarized as Plus(e=mc²)).
  4. “PHILOSOPHY@WORK. Everything is Object”
    This represents the perspective through which the author of this text attempts to bring the complexity of the experienced world (external and internal) “into language” using the expressions of a particular language—here, the English language. The seemingly simple phrase “to bring something into language” belies the inherent complexity of this task.
    It will therefore be necessary to more precisely describe the act of “bringing something into language” to make transparent why the following content is communicated in the way that it is.

LITERATURE NOTE

(Last change: Jan 28, 2025)

Up to the above text (including its continuations), I have read many hundreds of articles and books, and of course, I continue reading all the time. 🙂

In doing so, I came across Fritjof Capra’s book again, The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems, completed in 1996 and published in 1997 by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, New York. In 2025, this book is (29)28 years old. And when you look at today’s worldview, this book still seems “revolutionary.” While “light texts” today spread like wildfire through social media, texts that require thoughtful engagement encounter an “invisible wall” that prevents these ideas from penetrating us.

This is not new in human history; on the contrary, it seems as if we, as humans, have a “built-in inertia mechanism” for the new, at least when “mental effort” is demanded of us. This has always been the great opportunity for “populists,” and it doesn’t seem to be any different today…

Continuation

For a continuation see HERE.

AN EMPIRICAL THEORY AS A DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 2.April 22 – 3.April 2022
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

BLOG-CONTEXT

This post is part of the Philosophy of Science theme which is part of the uffmm blog.

PREFACE

In a preceding post I have illustrated how one can apply the concept of an empirical theory — highly inspired by Karl Popper — to an everyday problem given as a county and its demographic problem(s). In this post I like to develop this idea a little more.

AN EMPIRICAL THEORY AS A DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

The figure shows a simplified outline of the idea of an empirical theory being realized during a development process based on the interactions and the communication of citizens as ‘natural experts’.

CITIZENs – natural experts

As starting point we assume citizens understood as our ‘natural experts’ being members of a democratic society with political parties, an freely elected parliament, which can create some helpful laws for the societal life and some authorities serving the need of the citizens.

SYMBOLIC DESCRIPTIONS

To coordinate their actions by a sufficient communication the citizens produce symbolic descriptions to make public how they see the ‘given situation’, which kinds of ‘future states’ (‘goals’) they want to achieve, and a list of ‘actions’ which can ‘change/ transform’ the given situation step wise into the envisioned future state.

LEVELS OF ABSTRACTIONS

Using an everyday language — possibly enriched with some math expressions – one can talk about our world of experience on different levels of abstraction. To get a rather wide scope one starts with most abstract concepts, and then one can break down these abstract concepts more and more with concrete properties/ features until these concrete expressions are ‘touching the real experience’. It can be helpful — in most cases — not to describe everything in one description but one does a partition of ‘the whole’ into several more concrete descriptions to get the main points. Afterwards it should be possible to ‘unify’ these more concrete descriptions into one large picture showing how all these concrete descriptions ‘work together’.

LOGICAL INFERENCE BY SIMULATION

A very useful property of empirical theories is the possibility to derive from given assumptions and assumed rules of inference possible consequences which are ‘true’ if the assumptions an the rules of inference are ‘true’.

The above outlined descriptions are seen in this post as texts which satisfy the requirements of an empirical theory such that the ‘simulator’ is able to derive from these assumptions all possible ‘true’ consequences if these assumptions are assumed to be ‘true’. Especially will the simulator deliver not only one single consequence only but a whole ‘sequence of consequences’ following each other in time.

PURE WWW KNOWLEDGE SPACE

This simple outline describes the application format of the oksimo software which is understood here as a kind of a ‘theory machine’ for everybody.

It is assumed that a symbolic description is given as a pure text file or as a given HTML page somewhere in the world wide web [WWW].

The simulator realized as an oksimo program can load such a file and can run a simulation. The output will be send back as an HTML page.

No special special data base is needed inside of the oksimo application. All oksimo related HTML pages located by a citizen somewhere in the WWW are constituting a ‘global public knowledge space’ accessible by everybody.

DISTRIBUTED OKSIMO INSTANCES

An oksimo server positioned behind the oksimo address ‘oksimo.com’ can produce for a simulation demand a ‘simulator instance’ running one simulation. There can be many simulations running in parallel. A simulation can also be connected in real time to Internet-of-Things [IoT] instances to receive empirical data being used in the simulation. In ‘interactive mode’ an oksimo simulation does furthermore allow the participation of ‘actors’ which function as a ‘dynamic rule instance’: they receive input from the simulated given situation and can respond ‘on their own’. This turns a simulation into an ‘open process’ like we do encounter during ‘everyday real processes’. An ‘actor’ must not necessarily be a ‘human’ actor; it can also be a ‘non-human’ actor. Furthermore it is possible to establish a ‘simulation-meta-level’: because a simulation as a whole represents a ‘full theory’ on can feed this whole theory to an ‘artificial intelligence algorithm’ which dos not run only one simulation but checks the space of ‘all possible simulations’ and thereby identifies those sub-spaces which are — according to the defined goals — ‘zones of special interest’.

OKSIMO (RELOADED) SOFTWARE

eJournal: uffmm.org
ISSN 2567-6458, 15.March 2021 – 1.April 2022
Email: info@uffmm.org
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

This post is part of the theme called ‘Oksimo Software Structures‘ which in turn is part of the overall uffmm.org Blog.

OKSIMO SOFTWARE APPLICATION STRUCTURE from March 2021

oksimo software general outline
This shows the general outline of oksimo applications

Seen from the users

Eveybody, who has a device, which can be connected to the internet and which owns a browser can address the URL of an oksimo server. There can be multiple users from around the world which can act as a ‘virtual user group’, as a ‘team’.

Seen from smart devices

Every application which can interact with the internet can connect to an oksimo server and send measurment data to the server or can even interact interactively within a simulation acting as a smart actor.

This feature of being capable to use empirical data in real time during a simulation allows  an oksimo application also to function within a smart city environment.

USER – SIMULATIONS

Users can start a given simulation by loading either a simulation presented as an HTML-page or by loading a simulation from the server login.

In case of a simulation as HTML-page the user needs a simple simulation application on his own device.

In case of a simulation by server-login the user can simulate and while doing this all additional sources (smart actors, external data-sources, …) can be used.

User editing & simulation

A user can edit a new simulation with his local device, if there exists a text editor. The edited simulation can be handed out to the local oksimo-server app and can be simulated. In this case no team-work and no usage of external sources is possible.

Being logged-in a user can work together with other users while editing a new simulation. The edited simulation can be started to run every time. Additional external resources can be activated, if these are freely callable. Depending from the osimo server a set of ‘standard smart actors’ is located in the oksimo database and can be activated.

OKSIMO SW – Minimal Basic Requirements

Integrating Engineering and the Human Factor (info@uffmm.org)
eJournal uffmm.org ISSN 2567-6458, January 8, 2021
Author: Gerd Doeben-Henisch
Email: gerd@doeben-henisch.de

CONTEXT

As described in the uffmm eJournal  the wider context of this software project is an integrated  engineering theory called Distributed Actor-Actor Interaction [DAAI]. This includes Human Machine Intelligence [HMIntelligence]  as part of Human Machine Interaction [HMI]. In  the section Case Studies of the uffmm eJournal there is also a section about Python co-learning – mainly dealing with python programming – and a section about a web-server with Dragon. This document is part of the Case Studies section.

CONTENT

In the long way of making the theory  as well as the software [SW] more concrete we have reached January 5, 2021 a first published version on [www.]oksimo.com.  This version contains a sub-part of the whole concept which I call here the Minimal Basic Version [MBV] of the osimo SW. This minimal basic will be tested until the end of february 2021. Then we will add stepwise all the other intended features.

THE MINIMAL BASIC VERSION

oksimo SW Minimal Basic Version Jan 3, 2021
oksimo SW Minimal Basic Version Jan 3, 2021

If one compares this figure with the figure of the Multi-Group Management from Dec 5, 2020 one can easily detect simplifications for the first modul now called Vision [V] as well as for the last modul called Evaluation [EVAL].

While the basic modules States [S], Change Rules [X] and Simulator [SIM] stayed the same the mentioned first and last module have slightly changed in the sense that they have become simplified.

During the first tests with the oksimo reloaded SW it became clear that for a simulation unified with evaluation  it is sufficient to have at least one vision V to be compared with an actual state S whether parts of the vision V are also part of the state S. This induced the requirement that a vision V has to be understood as a collection of statements where earch statement describes some aspect of a vision as a whole.

Example 1: Thus a global vision of a city to have a ‘Kindergarten’ could be extended with facts like ‘It is free for all children’, ‘I is constructed in an ecological acceptable manner’, …

Example 2: A global vision to have a system interface [SI] for the oksimo reloaded SW could include statements (facts) like: ‘The basic mode is text input in an everyday language’, ‘In an advanced mode you can use speech-recognition tools to enter a text into the system’, ‘The basic mode of the simulation output is text-based’, ‘In an advanced mode you can use text-to-speech SW to allow audio-output of the simulation’, ….

Vision V – Statement S: The citizen which will work with the oksimo reloaded SW has now only to distinguish between the vision V which points into some — as such — unknown future and the given situation S describing some part of the everyday world. The vision with all its possible different partial views (statements, facts) can then be used to a evaluate a given state S whether the vision is already part of it or not. If during a simulation a state S* has been reached and the global vision ‘The city has a Kindergarten’ is part of S*  but not the partial aspects ‘It is free for all children’, ‘I is constructed in an ecological acceptable manner’,  then only one third of the vision has been fulfilled: eval(V,S*)= 33,3 … %. As one can see the amount of vision facts determines the fineness of the evaluation.

Requirements Point of View: In Software Engineering [SWE] and — more general — in Human-Machine Interaction [HMI] as part of System Engineering [SE] the analysis phase is characterized by a list of functional and non-functional requirements [FR, NFR]. Both concepts are in the oksimo SW parts of the vision modul. Everything you think of  to be important for your vision you can write down as some aspect of the vision.  And if you want to structure your vision into several parts you can edit different vision documents which for a simulation can be united to one document again.

Change Rules [X]: In the minimal basic version only three components of a change rule X will be considered: The condition [COND] part which checks whether an actual state S satisfies (fulfills)  the condition; the Eplus part which contains facts which shall be added to the actual state S for the next turn; the Eminus part which contains facts which shall be removed from the actual state S für the next turn. Other components like Probability [PROB] or Model [MODEL] will be added in the future.