Part 1: The Search for a Stable Orbit and the Mathematics of Human Survival

The fourth article in the European Reckoning series. Following on from:

The Rape of Europa: Sovereignty, Security & The Ethical Tech Opportunity

Overview

The era of American security guarantees, which formed the bedrock of European stability since WW2, has transitioned into a “three-body problem” of unstable unpredictable gravitational interactions between Washington, Beijing, and Brussels. The war in Ukraine has accelerated Russian decline and it has been drawn closer to the Chinese geopolitical mass.

[code] Are Large Language Models anti-poets? [/code]

If great craft in poetry was predicated on plausibility, LLMs would outshine most humans. However, to be better at poetry, LLMs would need to be programmed with rewards for useful unusualness - for finding unlikely pathways across the linguistic landscape. They would need to understand the value of friction, the feeling a poet gets when something unresolved works its way through and out of the subconscious demanding attention and exploration.

Really Useful Engines

Continued from Part 1:

What is Entropy? – Part 1

1. The Grammar of Entropy
2. Algorithmic Information Theories of Life
   1. Life as a Demon: The Cost of Information
   2. The Algorithm of Survival
   3. Coding for Diversity
   4. Life-Forms Must Be Efficient
3. The Mathematics of Efficiency
4. Universal Really Useful Engines
5. Compossibility: The Thermodynamic Case for Diversity
   1. The Ethics of Aliens
   2. Does Time Stop for A Sufficiently Knowing Being?
   3. The Final Cycle
6. Footnotes

The Grammar of Entropy

“**But entropy, heat, past and future are qualities that belong not to the fundamental grammar of the world but to our superficial observation of it. ‘If I observe the microscopic state of things,’ writes Rovelli, ‘then the difference between past and future vanishes … in the elementary grammar of things, there is no distinction between “cause” and “effect””**1

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“you cannot step into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing"1

Entropy is a fundamental concept representing change and flow in the universe. It reflects the transformation of usable energy and the complexity of information uncertainty navigated by life-forms.

In a recent article on inequality I incorporated the concept of entropy, so it seemed worthwhile explaining this much misunderstood concept:

In this article I want to break down some key concepts about wealth and income distribution utilising concepts from thermodynamics and entropy to show how gamed current economies and societies are and, more importantly, how we can undertake long term policy changes to fix it.

The G20 recently released the Global Inequality Report,1commissioned by the G20 South Africa Presidency in November 2025 and led by Joseph E. Stiglitz. It characterises global inequality as an “emergency” and a “policy choice,” asserting that the negative trends can be reversed. The report finds that 83% of countries globally exhibit high income inequality encompassing 90% of the world’s population. This crisis is primarily driven by wealth concentration, which is far higher than income inequality.

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I have created a public notebooklm as a resource to provide people with an accessible way to learn about AI as a technology and its ethical implications for humans. It includes most of the existing International AI laws, guidance and standards.

Aim: I hope it is a useful tool for analysts, technologists, AI developers, journalists, students, policymakers and anyone with a general interest in AI Law & Ethics.

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. AI Video
3. The Atlas Network: Shaping the World Through a Global Web of Free Market Think Tanks
4. A History Rooted in Free Market Ideals
5. The Stated Goals: Promoting a Free Society
6. Funding the ‘Freedom’ Movement
7. Activities and Strategies for Influence
8. Global Impact and Effectiveness
9. The Driving Ideology: Neoliberalism and its Critiques
10. Controversies and Criticisms
11. Impact On Politicians, Laws & Law Enforcement
12. The Deeper Ideology Driving The Atlas Network
13. A Powerful Force In the World

AI generated image

“As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. Whatever differs from this..is no democracy.”

(Abraham Lincoln) August 1, 1858

Table of contents

1. Introduction
2. AI Is Natural
3. The Singularity
4. Greater Risks of Increased Inequality
5. The Optimist’s View
6. Human Hybrids or Separate Sentient Beings?
7. Neither Masters or Slaves
8. Anger, Fear & Ignorance
9. So Why Am I An AI Optimist?
10. Ethics of Life
11. Greed has poisoned men’s souls
12. The Rise of Intelligent Machines?
13. Further Reading

Introduction

AI generated podcast version:

Table of contents

1. AI Podcast Version
2. Introduction
3. Towards an invariant foundation of ethics for life
4. Compossibility is key
5. Building axioms, laws and principles
6. Direct decentralised democracy
7. The Consensus Engine and DAO
8. Modern democracies are largely symbolic

AI Podcast Version

I have created an AI podcast version with additional information from my article ‘Direct Decentralised Democracy’:

Continuing the previous article:

The Limits Of Language & Logic

1. Gödelian Incompleteness and Turing’s Halting Problem
2. The Limits of Logic & the Influence of Entropy
3. Non-Duality
4. The Limits of Language
5. Footnotes

Gödelian Incompleteness and Turing’s Halting Problem

Hui Yang, “Nursery of New Stars”, University of Illinois, Wikipedia, NASA, 1995.

A kingfisher in a shaking flight over the river Berkel in Vreden / Germany / NRW, Joefrei

“…As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell ’s

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

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A Fragile Living Skin

Continued from:

Free Will Or Freedom? - Part 1

1. Introduction
2. The Free Will Tyrant
3. Free Will T: Mammals, Human
4. History Is Led By Outliers Of A Group
5. The Impact on Concepts Like Justice
6. The Interplay of Individual and Collective Freedom
7. Footnotes

Introduction

The distribution of steam molecules in a room, how the molecules will change location and how long it will take for them to become water again are all potentially determinable. However, at the most fundamental scale of where each molecule is exactly and where it is moving from and to, it becomes increasingly difficult and fuzzy – in fact, at the sub-atomic level, certainty becomes impossible. [1] Certainty (determinism) at any scale is only approximate – the smaller the scale or the larger the field (including space-time) in question, the more difficult it becomes to measure and to calculate all the variables. [2] Entropy is the universe’s way of ensuring we are all honest players when it comes to knowing the future, though some may know more than others.

1. Free Will
2. Freedom of Action
3. Degrees of freedom
4. The Twin Thought Experiment
5. Measuring freedom of action in writing
6. Measurable unusualness
7. Footnotes

Vincent van Gogh, “Landscape with Snow”, 1888, Wikipedia, public domain.

“Be melting snow, Wash yourself of yourself”
(Rumi)[1]

Free Will

The laws of physics are wonderful, not least because they show us some of the magic formulas behind the seeming mystery of life and the universe. They are also good and proper ‘laws’ – that is, they are intended to be equivalent across space and time.

Table of contents

1. AI Podcast Version
2. Introduction
3. Economics and the Use of Resources
4. The Global Financial Crisis (GFC)
5. Equality is not a useful aim
6. Freedom of action and inequality
7. Thomas Piketty
8. Useful vs Inefficient Inequalities
9. The Physics of Freedom
   1. The Optimal Equality Target: 0.5 (Gini 0.5)
   2. The Life-Time Analogy
10. Participatory democracy
11. Further reading
12. Footnotes