Core Concepts

This page introduces the core building blocks of the Paradigm of the Great Life. Each concept is short, operational, and designed to interlock with the others.

1. Dual Reality: Objective and Subjective

• Objective side (Metaphysical Realism): Energy — the conserved physical substrate of change. It underwrites what sensors can register.
• Subjective side (Metaphysical Anti‑Realism): Information — agent‑dependent meaning formed by Context. It underwrites what “matters” and why agents act.
• Claim: Every phenomenon has two sides. Explanations improve when both are made explicit.
• Read next: 📝Text–Context–Interpretation

2. Text–Context–Interpretation

• Text: Objective carriers — signals, traces, records, data streams. They exist regardless of who reads them.
• Context: An agent’s model — prior knowledge, expectations, values, purposes.
• Interpretation: The mapping from Text to meaning and action via the agent’s Context.
• Consequence: The same Text can yield different meanings for different agents because their Contexts differ.
• Read next: 📊Information: Objective vs Subjective

3. Information: Objective vs Subjective

• Objective information (Shannon): Properties of sources/distributions. Entropy $H(P)$ and surprisal $−log P(i)$ are defined on the world’s generative process.
• Subjective information (agent surprisal): “How unexpected was $i$ for this agent?” Computed as $−log Q(i)$, where $Q$ is the agent’s Context (its current beliefs).
• Bridge: When $Q ≈ P$, subjective and objective measures align. Learning reduces the mismatch (e.g., KL divergence) between $P$ and $Q$.
• Read next: 🧭Agency & Delegation

4. Agency

• Definition: The capacity to maintain internal order (homeostasis) by:
• Distinguishing “Me” from “Not‑Me” (boundary).
• Updating Context (model learning).
• Acting to secure goals under constraints (control).
• Two‑way organization: Life organizes Energy using Information (work, construction), and organizes Information using Energy (sensing, memory, computation).
• Read next: 🧬Hierarchies & Quasi‑Organisms

5. Delegation of Agency (Measurement as Closing the Loop)

• Idea: An “event” becomes decisive when an agent’s sensing–model–action loop closes around it (the Text is registered, interpreted, and acted upon).
• In quantum labs: choosing a measurement basis + registering an outcome is a concrete, operational example of closing the loop.
• Outcome: Potential alternatives collapse into one enacted history for that agent/system.

6. Hierarchies & Quasi‑Organisms

• Hierarchies: Agents exist at levels (molecules → cells → organisms → groups). Each level has a cognition limit (some texts from higher levels cannot be correctly interpreted below).
• Quasi‑Organisms: Stable collectives that share and reproduce common Context (species‑typical instincts, protocols, repertoires).
• Individuality vs uniformity:
• Learning → individuality (diversified Contexts).
• Info‑cloning → uniformity (shared Context).
• Diagnostic: More individuality in otherwise identical agents often signals a more advanced collective model.

7. Events and Discreteness

• Sensors and decisions are inherently discrete: agents register significant changes as “events” against thresholds and sensitivities.
• Continuous processes (objective) are experienced as sequences of events (subjective). This mismatch is where meaning and action arise.

8. Dual Thermodynamics (Sketch)

• Objective law: In closed systems, entropy does not decrease.
• Subjective/process view: Open systems can export entropy while building structure; agents locally decrease uncertainty using free‑energy flows.
• Cascade: Photon → chemical → neural/computational → artifact/organizational — increasing structure atop global constraints.

9. Complex Amplitudes and Context (Sketch)

• Modulus $|ψ|^2$: objective statistics of outcomes.
• Phase (arg ψ): context‑sensitive relations among alternatives that can be turned into observable effects by appropriate interventions (choice of basis, interferometry).
• Closing the loop (measurement): the agent’s setup chooses which relations become Text.

10. Operational Criteria (for specialists)

• Closed‑loop control: sensing → internal update → intervention → changed future data.
• Counterfactual sensitivity: actions that would have led to detectably different Texts.
• Model improvement: reduced predictive error/free energy over time under bounded resources.

How these concepts fit together (one sentence each)

• Dual Reality sets the two sides.
• Text–Context–Interpretation connects carriers to meanings.
• Information duality quantifies objective structure vs subjective surprise.
• Agency turns meanings into actions that reshape future Texts.
• Delegation of Agency highlights when potentials become enacted reality for an agent.
• Hierarchies & Quasi‑Organisms explain scaling and limits.
• Events and Discreteness explain why agents “see in steps.”
• Dual Thermodynamics explains how order grows locally within global constraints.
• Complex Amplitudes and Context show how choices expose different relations as facts.
• Operational Criteria make the whole story testable.

Suggested next reads

• New to this? Start with 🌓Dual Reality and 📝Text–Context–Interpretation.
• Want the math light? Read 📊Information: Objective vs Subjective.
• Modeling action? Read 🧭Agency & Delegation and ✅Operational Criteria.
• Scaling up? Read 🧬Hierarchies & Quasi‑Organisms.
• Specialist? Jump to🧠For Specialists and🔬Research Directions.

Citation and reuse

• Cite the book: Alexander Neshmonin, Changing the Paradigm of Life: New Answers to the Old Questions (EN edition), ISBN: 9798316199631.
• Site content: CC BY 4.0 with attribution.