karbytes_ontology

This web page outlines karbytes’ conceptualization about how reality works. Those conceptualizations take the form of ontological statements instead of ethical instructions. (A list of karbytes’ personal values (which constrain karbytes’ decision-making accordingly) is available at the following Uniform Resource Locator: https://karbytesforlifeblog.wordpress.com/karbytes_primary_values/).

An older version of this web page exists at the following Uniform Resource Locator: https://karbytesforlifeblog.wordpress.com/karbytes_ontology_31july2025/

To view hidden text inside of the preformatted text box below, scroll horizontally.

HEDONISM: the propensity of some types of sufficiently complex information processing agents to always attempt to minimize the degree to which the respective information processing agent suffers and to maximize the degree to which that information processing agent experiences pleasure.

Hedonism can be thought of as the most basic heuristic which determines the priorities of sentient information processing agents (especially if “suffering” is generalized as being the subjective experience of pain (however rudimentary) and/or damage to the respective information processing agent’s hardware or essential software while “pleasure” is generalized as being the subjective experience of reward (especially related to the attainment of goals) and/or the fortification of the respective information processing agent’s hardware or essential software).

COMPATIBILISM: the worldview that “free will” (i.e. agency) is an emergent property of fundamentally deterministic factors and that “free will” exists only within the context of the respective information processing agent’s mental model of reality (which means that, to some extent, “free will” is an illusion which obscures the deterministic and unconscious processes underlying conscious behavior).

The degree to which an information processing agent experiences itself as having agency depends on how that information processing agent’s constituent hardware, internal software, and external environment are configured. Basically, “free will” is a continuum value ranging from “absolutely no free will” (such as in the case of machines which lack internal representations of themselves and their encompassing environments) to “absolute freedom to do anything” (such as in the case of a hypothetical god-like being with omniscience and omnipotence).

In order to model “free will” quantitatively, “free will” can be defined as a function describing the “degree of freedom” the respective information processing agent has within the context of a specific decision-making instance. Specifically, the inputs to that function are (a) the number of discrete options which that information processing agent is capable of mentally generating before selecting exactly one of to implement as an action and (b) the degree to which its cumulative actions (up to that particular decision-making instance) have resulted in that information processing agent successfully attaining its goals.

agent.degree_of_agency(decision) = decision.option_count + agent.cumulative_goal_attainment_success_rate

Determinism is the causal relationship between successive events. Indeterminism is the occurrence of events which have no prior cause.

MATHEMATICS: abstract logical relationships between numbers which are immutably and ubiquitously true (throughout all of space, time, matter, energy, and even pure nothingness). Mathematics describes physical reality in precise ways (especially in the form of (contestable yet well-established) physical laws which describe patterns in observed empirical data) while also simultaneously existing in the realm of pure potential independently of physical phenomena.

This web page was last updated on 02_SEPTEMBER_2025. The content displayed on this web page is licensed as PUBLIC_DOMAIN intellectual property.