The anatomy of error: What is logic?
What is Logic?
Logic is when there is only one path forward and a million paths back. From a million paths forward, logic asks you to choose only one path. Logic is deciding while pondering all the known instances in the system.
As a parenthesis, I advocate for the change of AI (Artificial Intelligence) into Artificial Logic Systems (ALS), LS, or LM (M from machine), because intelligence includes information and predictions that are not available in a pure logical scheme machine.
Let’s take a Rubik’s Cube; the goal is completing all six facets with only one distinctive color on each. There are many ways to complete it, but just completing a face without having the ultimate goal in mind will logically give you a short, coherent result, but an incoherent one in the long term. It is like in chess:
“Should I take the pawn now, or later, or not at all?” The response depends on your ultimate capacity to see the whole logic of the game and knit your winning strategy little by little. Then, in the course of the game, what could be a 10-move strategy can be resolved faster using a 2-move strategy because of some error made by your opponent.
The Anatomy of Error
Error is the contrary of logic. Error can be caused by an incoherent pattern deduction when an element is overweighted in the decision, and the ultimate coherence with the ultimate goal is used over its real weight. Error can also be the result of a very fine adjustment with systemic consequences on the whole logical architecture.
Let’s say the base of your building is not perfectly level; then, when you build the 10th floor, you will see the consequences of a small factor that does not align with the ultimate goal: having a vertical building.
In this sense, logic can be tight or loose. Meaning, the logic that aligns the best to the ultimate goal is the ultimate logic—the minimum path of decision, the one that demands the least energy overall.
Finally, any decision contains some logic in itself, as it can be the perfect path if aligned with the ultimate desired design. If the logic is to generate random numbers, then $2 + 2$ is better not to be equal to $4$, but to $5$ or $555$, so no logical link is logical when you want to exclude coherence from the system. Ultimately, even in this randomness exercise, there is a logic because the next decision must be a number, which limits the possible paths. Then we look for a positive real integer, which reduces the number of paths too. Finally, any decision where the results are still linkable to the former step is part of a logical ensemble of paths. We can see that logic is just a wire in a bouquet of wires that diverge one from another in an ordered set of steps.
The Observer and the “Miracle”
From an outside conceptual observational system, we say that the observed system is coherent when we notice that the transformational step of the system follows a pattern that is not random. We understand this system by having an interiorized referential model which reflects the observed system, and when our internal prediction detects no contradictions, we say:
“Yeah! It’s logic.”
That’s why when we see an illusionist breaking the logic circuit by obscuring and misleading our perception, we are stunned, and questions arise:
“How did he do that?” * “Is there a trick?” * “If I don’t understand the trick, maybe there is magic involved—a sui generis creation of a new path without interfering with the existing system, a deus ex machina.” From there, I dare to affirm a lot of believers acquired their belief by seeing Jesus walking on water, changing water into wine, and performing other “miracles.” They recognized the “out of machine” nature of the guy, his “supernatural property,” because he breaks the logic of the system.
I should say that people believed Jesus because of his miracles before the cross, but not out of love but out of fear. One feels like a mosquito in front of a flip-flop ready to slap when one sees a miracle. Actually, believers are just the most diligent people out there:
“You never know, maybe it’s real.”
All this makes no logic, but fear is real and has its own logic.