Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum
Deep Laziness - Printable Version

+- Scivillage.com Casual Discussion Science Forum (https://www.scivillage.com)
+-- Forum: Science (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-61.html)
+--- Forum: Alternative Theories (https://www.scivillage.com/forum-130.html)
+--- Thread: Deep Laziness (/thread-5188.html)



Deep Laziness - C C - Apr 13, 2018

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/06/deep-laziness/

EXCERPT: Imagine a person who is very lazy at work, yet whose customers are (along with everyone else concerned) quite satisfied. It could be a slow-talking rural shop proprietor from an old movie, or some kind of Taoist fisherman – perhaps a bit of a buffoon, but definitely deeply content. In order to be this way, he must be reasonably organized: stock must be ordered, and tackle squared away, in order to afford worry-free, deep-breathing laziness.

Consider this imaginary person as a kind of ideal or archetype. Now consider that the universe might have this personality.

There is intense laziness apparent in the natural world (which one might come to understand simply by watching household pets). Christopher Alexander (in The Nature of Order, Volume II, pp. 37-39) notes many disparate examples of natural “laziness” that hint at an underlying principle (in history of science, the “principle of least action”): a soap bubble minimizing surface area, Ohm’s law, the shape of a river’s meander. “Many systems do evolve in the direction that minimizes their potential energy,” he says. “The deeper problem is that we are then faced with the question, Why should the potential energy be minimized?”
The Theory of Structure-Preserving Transformations

Underneath the universe’s apparent laziness is a deeper laziness: a manner of generation that preserves existing structure. A “structure-preserving transformation” does not impose arbitrary (conscious, legible) order on the system, but takes its cue from the existing structure, and elaborates and strengthens it. One of Christopher Alexander’s terms for this is “the unfolding of wholeness” – but here a picture will do better than words....

MORE: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/04/06/deep-laziness/


RE: Deep Laziness - Magical Realist - Apr 13, 2018

The universe is like a zen clown, lazily performing its deadpan tricks but occasionally, with a burst of laughter, sparking forth its green life magic.