It was fun to finally talk to Dan after I proposed this conversation months ago. We’ve both been busy navigating our ontographs.
After this awesome conversation, he asked me some follow-up questions in a Facebook message. Here they are.
First, what are the implications of having this model of ontographics?
The most dramatic, actionable implication may be that this model makes it so we can dimension/measure the human mind. I spoke about the “angle of relationship” between a person and his mother. I spoke about the emotional distance between people. Angles and distances are the fundaments of geometry.
So if I could make an ontograph of the way I feel about people in my life, and you could, too, then we could compare them. We could make a survey of thousands or millions of very basic ontographs that only addresses one tiny part: how people feel about their relationships with people they know. Then if we see that someone has a very different take, perhaps we can see whether that increases or decreases their agency. Maybe it makes them more marriageable and we can learn from that and tweak our ontographs by spending more time with the right people. Maybe we can prevent acts of violence when we see that someone is too emotionally distant from the people they depend on most.
That’s just one tiny fraction of the ontograph, but an important one. Then again, importance is subjective. So another way we could measure the ontograph is we could have people rate what’s important to them and then if they don’t spend time on what’s important to them, they could change their life around so that they spend more time on what’s important. We could then see if that makes them happy. If it doesn’t, perhaps they could try pursuing what other people consider important, or what happy people consider important.
When something is measurable, it is addressable.
Now here’s a question about a fairly lofty possible implications, but simple enough to understand. In computer terms, how can we import/export ours and others’ ontographs?
In computer terms, you just did that using Facebook. You had a question in your ontograph that wasn’t in mine. You used the data compression capabilities of the English language to write it out and send it to me on your computer. I read it and reciprocated with this answer. This has been possible since the invention of the modem… or even the floppy disk. Making the process more efficient is already happening at breakneck speed. So rather than answer with speculation I hope I’m not being cheeky to say “we do it the way we’re doing it, but incrementally better for the indefinite future.”
In gospel terms, does this relate to the “convincing power of the Holy Ghost”?
I don’t expect my conceptualization of God is exactly the same as anyone else’s, so hopefully I’ll zoom out on this question not too little and not too much.
If a being with unerring perception of the objective world were to communicate pure objectivity about something to others, it would be a disclosure of capital-T Truth. People who believe they have experienced this often call it revelation. Some people nevertheless question their revelations. If the Holy Ghost were to tell you Truth and it was beyond your power to sincerely deny it, that sounds to me like the convincing power of the Holy Ghost. And in some theologies denying revelation from the Holy Ghost, even though you know with perfect certainty that the denial is a lie, is the unforgivable sin. (I know the implications and interpretations of that vary widely among sects, but that’s my impression of the majority interpretation among Christians.) That seems like rebellion against reality itself, and reality isn’t going to stop scraping against your ontograph, so you’ve chosen endless punishment as your hubris chafes your unprogressing soul forever. Humility is when you allow for the truth instead. If you pretend you can change objective reality just by saying it, that positions you as a Creator God in your own mind, one who speaks one’s imagination and the objective world conforms to it. Humans can’t speak simply any truth into being. Many have tried and it doesn’t end well. Best to keep humbly learning what’s really there. At some point, if you were to live forever, perhaps you’d know what was actually true and can humbly communicate that.