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Grokking Christopher Langan’s theory of reality
Dec. 10, 2024. 7 mins. read.
6 Interactions
I asked Grok to explain to me Christopher Langan's Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU), then I did some more reading.
In my last book there was a chapter on Artificial Intelligence (AI), and consciousness at large, titled ‘Bats and bits’. In this chapter, I said that I had not used ChatGPT or another AI assistant to write the book. “I guess I’ll use AI assistants for future writings, but I wanted this book to come entirely from my own unaided mind,” I said.
Some months have passed and I’m using AI assistants a lot (mostly Grok because it comes with my paid Twitter membership, but also the free versions of ChatGPT and Copilot).
I’m using AI assistants to summarize long texts, and to expand short texts when they’re about things that I understand well enough to correct its hallucinations.
I decided to try an experiment: asking AI to explain to me things that I don’t understand.
The smartest man in the world?
I chose something that is intriguing me at this moment: Christopher Langan’s ‘Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe‘ (CTMU).
I had skimmed through some of Langan’s writings in the past without spending much time and attention. But I formed a certain vague impression that Langan’s ideas have something (or perhaps much) in common with mine.
By the way, who is Christopher Langan? He is, reportedly, ‘the smartest man in the world‘ (video interview).
I don’t know about that, but he does sound smart. I love the idea of a theory of reality developed by a farmer and former bouncer, used to hard physical work.
So I asked Grok:
“Can you give me a compact explanation of Christopher Langan’s CTMU and it says about God, free will, afterlife, and the ultimate meaning of life?”
In passing, Grok’s name comes from the term “grokking” introduced by science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, which means something like understanding things deeply, with total empathy, from the inside.
God according to Langan
Grok’s answer:
“Christopher Langan’s Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU) is an ambitious framework aiming to bridge the divide between science, philosophy, and theology. Here’s a compact explanation:
God: In the CTMU, God is not an external supernatural being but is identified with the universe itself, or more specifically, with the ‘Global Operator-Designer’ or ‘Primary Teleological Operator.’ Langan suggests that properties like omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence are inherent to the structure of the universe, which operates as a self-configuring, self-processing language (SCSPL). This perspective aligns God with the ultimate reality, where the cosmos is seen as a manifestation of divine intelligence or mind.“
Free will, afterlife, and the meaning of life
“Free Will: Langan posits that free will exists within a stratified framework where both God and humans have self-determinacy. This free will is tied to the universe’s ability to self-process and self-configure, suggesting that while our choices are influenced by broader cosmic structures, they are still free within the constraints of these structures. Human free will is seen as a reflection or microcosm of the cosmic free will.
Afterlife: The CTMU doesn’t traditionally define an afterlife in terms of heaven or hell as separate realms. Instead, it suggests that upon death, consciousness might retract to the origin of reality, which could be interpreted as a form of afterlife or reincarnation. Langan has mentioned that all lifetimes might occur metasimultaneously in a non-terminal domain, implying an existence beyond our linear perception of time where consciousness could persist or be redistributed.
Ultimate Meaning of Life: According to Langan, life’s ultimate meaning is tied to the teleological framework of the universe. This means that the purpose or meaning of life is inherently linked to the process of self-discovery, self-improvement, and aligning with the telic (purposeful) nature of the universe. The meaning of life includes contributing to the universe’s ongoing evolution and refinement, with each individual’s life having a role in this cosmic process.
Langan’s views, while complex and sometimes controversial, attempt to reconcile scientific and spiritual understandings by presenting the universe as a coherent, self-sustaining system where mind and matter are intertwined. However, his ideas remain speculative and are not widely accepted within mainstream scientific or philosophical circles.”
Cool! I can recognize some ideas here that I’ve had in mind for a while.
Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language (SCSPL)
But I want to better understand parts of Grok’s answer. Moreover, I need to check if Langan has really written these things or Grok has hallucinated them.
So I ask Grok: “Could you give me a more detailed explanation of SCSPL?”
Grok says:
“The Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language (SCSPL) is a central concept in Christopher Langan’s Cognitive-Theoretic Model of the Universe (CTMU). Here’s a detailed explanation:
What is SCSPL?
SCSPL (Self-Configuring Self-Processing Language) is a conceptual framework proposed by Christopher Langan to describe how the universe functions. This model posits:
Self-Configuring: The universe configures its own laws and structure. Instead of having pre-set laws from an external source, the universe, through SCSPL, is seen as dynamically adjusting its own rules and configurations.
Self-Processing: Everything in the universe, including any form of intelligence or processing, is seen as part of the universe processing itself. This means that consciousness, intelligence, and physical processes are not separate from the universe but are intrinsic to it.
Language: The term ‘language’ here is not conventional; it refers to a fundamental structure or syntax by which reality operates. At its core, reality is seen as informational, with SCSPL being the ‘code’ or ‘syntax’ that governs how this information manifests as physical reality.“
More about the SCSPL
“Reality as a Language: SCSPL treats reality as a self-referential language where the universe writes its own script. This language is self-contained, meaning the universe itself is the language, the medium, and the message.
Teleology and Purpose: The universe, through SCSPL, is goal-directed or teleological. This implies an inherent purposefulness, where the universe aims towards increasing complexity, coherence, and self-awareness.
Consciousness and Free Will: Within this model, consciousness isn’t just a byproduct of physical processes but is fundamental to the universe’s operation. Free will is understood as the universe’s ability to choose its own configurations and processes, which individuals also partake in on a smaller scale.
Unity of Mind and Matter: SCSPL suggests a monism where mind and matter are not separate but different expressions of the same underlying reality.”
Other people interested in Langan’s ideas sent me other AI generated summaries that are essentially similar to Grok’s summary. Now I have enough keywords to search for these ideas in Langan’s own writings, to check Grok’s accuracy.
From cybernetics to ontology
Langan has tried to write simplified explanations of the CTMU, but I find that his full 2002 paper is the clearest.
Langan defines reality as all that exists. So reality must be entirely self-contained and self-determinative. Langan makes conceptual references to John Wheeler’s ‘Beyond the Black Hole‘ and related writings. Wheeler also summarized his speculations on a future science of reality as a “self-excited circuit” in the last two chapters of his autobiography.
Wheeler gave a compact conceptual summary of Einstein’s general relativity: “Spacetime tells matter how to move; matter tells spacetime how to curve”. This summarises Einstein’s field equations. In other words, there is cybernetic feedback between spacetime and matter.
However, this is not a self-contained reality; in Wheeler’s picture spacetime and matter already exist and follow a law that already exists. Cybernetic feedback “is meaningless where such entities do not already exist,” says Langan. “With respect to the origin of any self-determinative, perfectly self-contained system, the feedback is ontological in nature”.
In the pedestrian form of cybernetic feedback, existing things act upon each other and determine the behavior of each other and the whole. This is something more. Here, reality bootstraps itself into being with cybernetic-ontological feedback between mind, matter and physical laws, which shape and give reality to each other.
I like Langan’s ideas so far!
This looks very much like the picture of the world that I’ve outlined in my last book.
Langan tries to derive all these things logically. I’m not that smart, so I’m happy enough to present them as a narrative sketch.
However, I can recognize the common ideas –
- Reality bootstraps itself into being without external interventions
- There are self-consistent feedback loops between mind, matter, and physical laws
- The universe acts with free will, and so do we
- Death is not the end
- The universe acts with purpose, striving toward more and more complexity, and we should align with the purpose of the universe.
I have referred to Langan’s “divine intelligence or mind” of ultimate reality as Mind at Large or, to make it even less personal, as “the cosmic operating system”. But there are so many parallels with metaphysical and theological concepts of God that calling it God seems simple and honest.
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2 Comments
2 thoughts on “Grokking Christopher Langan’s theory of reality”
My head is definitely not around any fundamental ontologies, but if I take the terms "laws," "complexification," and "Wheeler," here is something I could make out of it:
First, we have just dumb matter or very simple agents. These have some simple attributes that give rise to some kind of laws. Mass leads to curvature of spacetime, and similarly, the attributes of different particles reveal (or create?) forces between them. On the other hand, these laws force the behavior of those agents, after which new emergent attributes create new emergent dynamics.
I think it was Addy Pross who, in his book "What is Life," introduced the concept of life as constantly complexifying replicative chemistry. In the beginning, RNA molecules that have the highest optionality outreplicate others, leading to ever-increasing complexity. In this process, which was still quite simple chemistry, one could identify primitive forms of collaboration where molecules ended up consuming different substrates and coexisting while improving the system's optionality to respond to stress and uncertainty from its environment.
Living agents keep complexifying, having increasingly complex 'social structures' (laws) that form relations between them to maximize the collective agent's dynamic stability and maintain itself.
Today, we dream of laws of social physics where our economic, political, and social systems treat everyone the same, just like gravity doesn't discriminate between people. In complex social interactions, laws need to be complex and dynamic yet also stable to maintain order, symmetries, and the optionality of the agents. We humans, as agents with complex attributes, determine which laws steer our behavior, which in turn will determine what attributes we and future even more complex agents (like AGI?) will have, and how the evolution of our universe will continue. Who we are determines our dynamic relations with each other, and those relations between us determine who we are.
To bring a bit of a teleological dimension into the discussion, I might mention David Deutsch, who emphasizes optionality for error correction as a core component of ethical governance where the collectively experienced evil can always be removed. Or Nell Watson talking about building optionality as Infinite Games of life to maximize the freedom of choice towards whatever values the agents may have.
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Thank you for mentioning Andy Pross, I had been thinking to read his book for some time. Yes, I think nature has a built-in tendency toward complexity, which current science is beginning to appreciate and future science will understand better. I talk about that in my last book (link in the text), especially in Chapter 7.
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