karbytes_ontology

This web page outlines karbytes’ conceptualization about how reality works. Those conceptualizations take the form of ontological statements instead of ethical instructions.

karbytes’ worldview can be explored in more technical depth at the following Uniform Resource Locator: https://karbytesforlifeblog.wordpress.com/the_cosmos_as_fundamentally_digital/

NIHILISM: the belief that purpose and ethics are arbitrary thought processes which are generated by (and subjectively experienced by) “sufficiently complex” information processing agents instead of immutable and ubiquitous properties of nature occurring independently of and outside of any and all subjective frames of reference.

(For contrast, karbytes posits that mathematical rules describing how one number, X, is related to some other number, Y, are immutable and ubiquitous properties of nature given that they pertain to purely abstract and immutable objects (i.e. numbers) rather than to more nebulous and transient structures such as specific non-fungible arrangements of matter and energy).

karbytes claims to hold a nihilistic worldview (which means that karbytes thinks that purpose and ethics only take place within the context of partial frames of reference (held by material information processing agents) as personal (and mutable) preferences.

SOLIPSISM: the belief that the only knowledge which is available to any information processing agent (whether that agent observes reality through a partial frame of reference or through an omniscient frame of reference) is the information which that agent’s constituent physical hardware renders as emergent software (and that no other forms of information count as being part of that agent’s self-hosted and self-directed software).

As a solipsist, karbytes believes that karbytes only knows what occurs inside of karbytes’ own personal frame of reference and that karbytes lacks the means to determine whether phenomena exist beyond that scope which is localized to karbytes present-moment field of awareness.

karbytes refers to itself as a “relative solipsist” instead of an “absolute solipsist”.

If karbytes is an “absolute solipsist”, then karbytes believes that the only phenomena which ever occur throughout all of nature are the phenomena which occur as qualia inside of karbytes’ own subjective frame of reference (in the present moment especially, but possibly also at times other than the present “frame” of karbytes’ experienced timeline (which is conceptulized as being a linear continuum of successive “frames” arranged in exactly one chronological order)).

If karbytes is a “relative solipsist”, then karbytes believes that there could be phenomena other than what karbytes personally experiences at any point in time and, because such phenomena are not currently being experienced by karbytes, karbytes’ defaults to taking a relatively indifferent attitude towards such “phenomena” (which are, hence, hypothesized by karbytes to be indefinitely “noumenal” (from karbytes’ perspective)).

As a “solipsist”, karbytes acknowledges that only what karbytes personally experiences (in the present moment) is ever relevant to karbytes (in that moment) and that such is the case whether the qualia karbytes experiences take the form of (a) “raw incoming” sensory input (in what karbytes thinks is “the present”), (b) as recalled memories (from what karbytes thinks is “the past”), or (c) as “abstract” conceptual thoughts and hallucinations (beyond what karbytes remembers of “the past” and beyond what karbytes experiences in “the present moment” as sensory or psychosomatic inputs/throughputs).

COMPATIBILISM: karbytes believes that “free will” (i.e. agency) is an emergent property of relatively low-level (i.e. concrete) and deterministic processes rather than merely an illusion.

Note that karbytes’ use of the term “free will” is potentially misleading due to the fact that the term “free will” contains the adjective “free” (which, in this context, typically implies that whatever thing, X, that adjective describes is not limited by anything which is not X (and possibly also that X is not limited by X)). The noun part of that term (i.e. “will”) is assumed to imply consciously desired and consciously directed effort (towards the fulfilment of some goal which that desire points to) by some information processing agent. A more precise alternative to the term “free will” (according to karbytes’ ontology) is “relatively free will” (which is justaposed to “absolutely free will” and to “zero free will”). The more precise wording implies that agency exists in varying degrees (and the degree to which an information processing agent exhibits agency (i.e. experiences “free will”) is the degree to which that agent (a) has apparent options (i.e. count of options (per specific decision)) for how it can “choose” to behave in a given “decision-making” instance and (b) the degree to which that agent is able to successfully direct its efforts towards accomplishing its goals (i.e. cumulative goal-attainment success rate)).

karbytes refers to itself more as a “compatibilist” than as a “hard determinist”.

If karbytes is a “hard determinist”, then karbytes believes that free will does not exist and that all processes occur in a manner which could be said to be pre-determined (which means that, if it were possible for an information processing agent to know the state of the entire universe at any point in time in the relative past (as an informationally complete snapshot of that universe at that exact point in time), then that information processing agent could infer from that snapshot exactly how that universe would evolve from that point forward in that universe’s evolutionary timeline). That means that all future events would be inextricably controlled by past events (within the respective encompassing universe).

If karbytes is a “compatibilist”, then karbytes believes (a) that the universe in which any information processing agent operates is fundamentally deterministic (and so are all of the internal mechanations of that information processing agent) and (b) that “free will” exists as an emergent property of “sufficiently complex” information processing systems (and that “free will” is the ability of a “sufficiently complex” information processing agent to observe itself intentionally and successfully directing the flow of energy within that information processing agent’s internal hardware and in that information processing agent’s encompassing environment to effect outcomes which that information processing agent experiences itself desiring).

It could be said that, in this context, a “sufficiently complex” information processing agent has a necessarily informationally incomplete knowledge of its encompassing reality. Otherwise, the information processing agent would observe that it has no internal decision-making capacity and that all of its behaviors are the result of how its entire encompassing universe is configured. “Free will” is ultimately an illusory phenomenon experienced by the respective “sufficiently complex” information processing agent. The “purpose” of such an illusion is to enable that information processing agent to conserve its energy instead of wasting it on keeping track of (and being aware of) many of the lower-level physical processes which cause all of that information processing agent’s behavior.

The difference between events which occur “as a result of” an information processing agent’s “free will”, X, and events which occur as a result of purely deterministic processes, Y, is that X occurs at least partially in conjunction with the respective information processing agent consciously observing itself exerting effort towards the attainment of some goal that information processing agent has while Y occurs without any consciously felt effort towards Y’s emergence by that information processing agent.

(The previous paragraph distinguishes an information processing agent’s scope of awareness rather than claiming that there are any fundamental differences between how X and Y each transpire at the most granular level of causation. Ultimately, X and Y occur by the exact same laws of physics. X just includes the special case of an information processing agent experiencing an abstract sense of self and the illusory sense of that self being the originator of causal chains).

karbytes upholds the belief that it might be possible for a phenomeon to arise absolutely spontaneously (i.e. in ways which objectively violate the premise that all events occur in accordance to immutable laws of physics and as a result of something prior to that event (i.e. phenomenon)) though karbytes thinks that such genuinely spontaneous emergence is extremely unlikely. If that were actually possible then there could also possibly be actual cases of absolute free will.

This web page was last updated on 31_JULY_2025. The content displayed on this web page is licensed as PUBLIC_DOMAIN intellectual property.