OBJECTIVES:
(a) To define meta, information, network, critical, advanced, technique, and context.
(b) To suggest that the idea of "unity" is questionable.
(c) To stress the importance of critical examination of information.
(d) To communicate the idea of context.
(e) To coin a new word: "Holdcept" (what keeps you stuck).
(f) To coin another new word: "Jumpcept" (what allows you to escape).
(g) To explain Edward de Bono's concept called "Po."
Meta: Occurring later or in succession to; situated behind or beyond; more highly organized or specialized; changed or transformed; more evolved or comprehensive, transcending; used with the name of a discipline to designate a new but related discipline designed to deal critically with the original one. (Example: If psychology is the subject that deals with "why humans behave in certain ways," then meta-psychology would be the subject that deals critically with psychology.)
Pondering over the significance of the prefix "meta" had a very powerful effect on me; I realized that about ten years ago, after reading Edward de Bono's books on "lateral thinking," I had started going beyond my fixed and habitual ways of thinking and behaving. This "meta-", with its profound significance, is probably one of the most important words of the English language.
You may like, from time to time, to return to the above definition of "meta" and reconsider it. You may also find it illuminating to look up words starting with "meta" in a good dictionary: "metabolism," "metamorphosis," "metaphor," "metaphysics;" maybe "meta" is the "pearl in which all else is reflected..."
Information: Messages received or communicated; sense perception impulses or impressions; concepts, ideas, symbols, words, beliefs; meaning, significance, relationship, form, pattern, association; data, facts, lies, knowledge, feelings, emotions; interpretations, categories, abstractions, perspectives; intentions, purposes, goals, values, principles; conditions, characteristics, dimensions; number, rank, degree, formula, attribute, quality; mental representations of "external reality;" mental images, intuitions, visions, dreams; inclinations, prejudices, predispositions, conclu-sions, decisions, predictions, instructions.
What constitutes information? Reflect for a minute on the extent or scope of information: Philosophies, belief systems, music, paintings, newspapers, books, slogans, battle cries...
(Information is, in fact, a very difficult concept to define. It can be described, but only in a circular, self-referencing manner - whatever description or definition you create consists of words, which constitute information itself!)
Broadly speaking, we can say that information consists of:
(a) The way information is held (or "context," defined below;
(b) Biological predisposition (how the body is programmed to function);
(c) Concepts;
(d) Symbols (including language);
(e) Relationships between concepts and symbols (premises, assumptions, beliefs, wishes, principles, formulas, plans for action).
Information can be classified as:
(f) Data (what things are, how they are, what is happening, how it is happening - information about things, processes, events, conditions);
(g) Values (how things should be, what should happen, and when);
(h) Operating principles and instructions (what should be done, how should it be done, when should it be done, who or what should do it);
From another point of view, information can be grouped as:
(i) Information we alrady have (stories of the past);
(j) Information newly perceived (new stories from the senses);
(k) Information generated by the mind (new dreams and inspirational stories);
(l) Information extrapolated from the past to predict the future (fortune-telling stories);
And, as we have seen in the introduction (Section 1), from a certain perspective, information can be classified as:
(m) "Hard information;"
(n) "Soft information."
What is information? How is information possible? What does infor-mation consists of? What are the elements of information?
Impulse?
Perception?
Conception?
Recognition?
Identity?
Meaning?
Similarity?
Difference?
Discrimination?
Relationship?
Decision?
Representation?
Metaphor?
Quality?
But what are these? The fundamental "particles" of consciousness? Are we perhaps venturing into a "dimension" beyond space (length, breadth, height) and time? Could it be that "meta" (beyond), "context," and "quality" are the keys to this "dimension"?
What is information? What is knowledge? How do we know? Can we really know anything? What is "truth"? I have been asking myself these questions for some time. This is one way of defining knowledge: "Any hypothesis that gives the intellect the greatest feeling of identity (power), security (familiarity), and stimulation (satisfaction)"...and "truth"?
Note what happens when we split "information" into "in formation"! Think about it. What significance would you attach to this?
Will to truth is a making firm, a making true and durable, an abolition of the false nature of things, a reinterpretation of it into "beings" [reinterpreting "becomingness" or "change" into "existence."] "Truth" is, therefore, not something there that might be found or discovered, but something that must be created and that gives a name to a process or, rather, a will to overcome that has in itself no end - introducing truth as an infinite process, an active determining - not a becoming-conscious of something that is, in itself, firm and determined. It is a word for the "will to power."
Life is founded upon the premise of a belief in enduring and regularly recurring things; the more powerful life is, the wider must be the knowable world to which we, as it were, attribute "being." Logicizing, rationalizing, systematizing are expedients of life.
Man projects his drive to truth, his "goal" in a certain sense, outside himself as a world that has being, as a metaphysical world, as a "thing-in-itself," as a world already in existence. His needs as a creator invent the world upon which he works, his needs anticipate the world; this anticipation (this "belief" in truth) is his support. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
Network: An interconnected, interrelated, mutually supportive linkage of individuals and groups, characterized by common or overlapping interests.
In the province of connected minds, what the network believes to be true either is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the network's mind, there are no limits. - John Lilly ("The Human Biocomputer")
The meta-information network is not intended to be a "flock" of birds who all fly together for safety, who all share the same beliefs, who cannot tolerate divergence, disagreements, and inequality. In this, we take our cue from the Belgians, who understand it very well - their "national slogan" is "L'unite fait la farce," meaning "Unity is a farce."
George Sarton observed: "I believe one can divide men into two principal categories: Those who suffer the tormenting desire for unity and those who do not. Between these two kinds an abyss - the 'unitary' is the troubled; the other is the peaceful."
As Sarton suggests, the truly troubled people of history have been those who have refused to resign themselves to the inevitability of apartness and who have been driven on by a tormenting desire for unity. The central dynamic of philosophy has been the impulse to connect. The hope has always been there, but it has not overcome the intrinsic fear of being close, of losing oneself in another... - Thomas A. Harris ("I'm OK - You're OK")
Critical: Involving skillful judgment as to validity, merit, or value; pertaining to judicious and meticulous inspection and examination; exercising careful and thorough analysis, testing, and evaluation; neither automatic or rigid acceptance, nor automatic or rigid rejection; a questioning or skeptical attitude towards all information.
I have observed both in myself and in many of my friends a tendency to operate either in "acceptance mode" or in "rejection mode." When in "acceptance mode," we accept the value or truth of information too readily; when in "rejection mode," we reject the validity of information without sufficient consideration. These "modes" constitute an orientation or bias towards or against a particular "subject" or "area of information." "Acceptance mode" and "rejection mode" can both be quite rigid and emotional.
While reading so far, were you, perchance, at any point tempted into "rejection mode"? You may like to observe yourself while reading the rest of this paper (if you do, indeed, continue) to see whether you are in "rejection mode" or "acceptance mode" - or, of course, in some other "mode:" "objective mode," "enjoyment mode," "critical mode," "evaluation mode," "angry mode," "ridicule mode," "justification mode," etc.
You can go wrong by being too skeptical as readily as be being too trusting. - Robert Heinlein ("Time Enough to Love")
Of course, there are pearls and "pearls"...the following is taken from the back cover of a very interesting and worthwhile magazine - "The Skeptical Inquirer:"
The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of The Paranormal attempts to encourage the critical investigation of paranormal and fringe-science claims from a responsible, scientific point of view and to disseminate factual information about the results of such inquiries to the scientific community and the public. To carry out these objectives, the Committee:
- Maintains a network of people interested in critically examining claims of the paranormal;
- Prepares bibliographies of published materials that carefully examine such claims;
- Encourages and commissions research by objective and impartial inquirers in areas where it is needed;
- Convenes conferences and meetings;
- Publishes articles, monographs, and books that examine claims of the paranormal;
- Does not reject claims on a priori grounds, antecedent to inquiry, but rather examines them objectively and carefully.
The Committee is a non-profit scientific and educational organization. The skeptical inquirer is its official.
(For more information, write to: The Skeptical Inquirer, Box 229, Central Park Station, Buffalo, New York 14215, U.S.A.)
Advanced: Moved forward, improved, or evolved; accelerated growth, development, or progress; raised to a higher level, state, rank, order, or quality.
Technique: Method or procedure based on practical knowledge, experience, and/or scientific notions.
The most valuable insights are arrived at last; but the most valuable insights are methods. - Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Will to Power")
You may find it a worthwhile exercise to review what you have read so far and to make a list of the meta-information techniques or methods referred to. As you continue reading, you may like to extend this list.
Note, also, that this paper can be read at several levels. On one level, it could be ready simply for content; on another level, it could be read with this question constantly in the background: "How can I apply any of this in my life?" On a third level, the background question could be: "How did the author arrive at this information?" And on a fourth level: "What techniques or methods does the author employ in attempting to communicate his message?" Finally, on a fifth level: "What advice can I give the author to improve his performance?" We are talking here about the "context" in which this paper is being read.
Context: This is, together with "meta" and "quality," the most important "notion" in this paper. It is used here in a much wider sense than the definitions in the usual dictionaries. "Context" cannot really be defined because it is beyond any definition of itself. We can attempt to describe it - or point to it - as long as we realize that "context" is bigger than, and includes, any description of itself. "Context" is beyond, and includes, any "notion" of itself;
The parts of a discourse that surround a word or passage and can throw light on its meanings; the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs; the act, process, or manner of weaving parts into a whole; the delimiters, boundaries, or limitations of consciousness; the perspective from which something is viewed, described, or depicted; examples of aspects of context: Language, knowledge system, epistemology, world view, self-view, frame of reference, paradigm, mind-set, mental model, "ground of being," "gestalt," "morphogenetic field," and "meme" (Section 2).
(The problem with "understanding" "context" is that it is very difficult to "understand" bercause it is not easy to express "context" in familiar language - the nature of "understanding" will be covered in Section 4.)
Context is like a bowl which includes itself and the hands holding it! Context is not really a concept; concept includes concepts. The creation of context is probably a right-brain function, which cannot be understood by the left brain. Context can be thought of as a "field of possibility" or a "mental or a "mental background or playground within which mental activity occurs" or "mindspace" or "mindscape."
Conscious context can be thought of as a very wide, all-inclusive focus of aware intention - that includes the act and manner of intentional focusing itself!
A crude way of illustrating context: If you live your life with your head up your ass, the world will seem like a shitty place!
Is my student tearing his straw in piece-meal, swearing and blaspheming, biting his grate, forming at the mouth, and emptying his piss pot in the spectators' faces? Let the right worshipful the commissioners of inspection give him a regiment of dragoons and send him into Flanders among the rest...
What a compleat system of court-skill is here described in every branch of it, and utterly lost with wrong application! Accost the hole of another kennel, first stopping your nose, you will behold a surly, gloomy, nasty, slovenly mortal, raking in his own dung, and dabbling in his urine. The best part of his diet is the reversion of his own ordure which, expiring into steams, whirls perpetually about, and at last re-infunds. His complexion is of a dirty yellow, with a thin scattered beard, exactly agreeable to that of his diet upon its first declinations, like other insects who, having their birth and education in an excrement, from thence borrow their colour and their smell. --Jonathan Swift ("A Tale of a Tub")
"The Hunger Project," initiated by Werner Erhard, illustrates "context." A basic idea of The Hunger Project is that there are three unconscious, fundamental assumptions that hold the problem of hunger in place: (a) scarcity; (b) inevitability; and (c) no solutions. These basic assumptions "behave" as pervasive influences or forces that affect all attempts to solve the problem of world hunger. As long as people act out of (or come from) a context of scarcity, inevitability, and no solutions, no matter what they do to solve world hunger, won't work. In order to resolve the problem, the context (of scarcity, inevitability, and no solutions) has to be transformed or transcended. For information contact: "The Hunger Project," P. O. Box 789, San Francisco, California 94101, U.S.A.
Holdcept:
I have found the need to coin a new word: "Holdcept." A hold-cept is anything that keeps one stuck in a problem, a habit, a fixed way of thinking, a rigid behavior pattern, a system, a theory, a fixed point of view, a particular context, or a given paradigm.
Definitions, decisions, answers, and solutions can easily become unconscious holdcepts.
The notion of "law" is a prime example of a holdcept.
Holdcepts are the elements of context. In the crude example of the person who lives his life with his head up his ass: Shit is the holdcept; ass is the context (if you'll excuse the expression!); and to become enlightened, he would have to take his head out his ass!
In the example of The Hunger Project: Scarcity, inevitability, and no solutions are the holdcepts that describe the context which holds the problem of hunger in place.
Pervasive emotions can also be holdcepts. For example, someone lives her whole life in a climate or context of negative emotions: Sadness, anger, jealousy, fear would be holdcepts for her. Similarly, one or more of apathy, euphoria, grief, curiosity, resentment, loneliness, antagonism, contempt, pity, arrogance, vanity, disgust, boredom, guilt, suspicions, enthusiasm, or friendli-ness could be a holdcept that permeates one's entire life.
Consider a person which is primarily motivated by fear (or hiding fear), a search for identity, a constant need for stimulation, and a lack of security. These four factors would be holdcepts that describe the context in which he lives his life.
Holdcepts may be beliefs that are so widely shared by almost all human beings that anyone who questions their validity might be considered crazy. Maybe the notion of "flock" is a holdcept that imprisons all the birds who share it. Generally, holdcepts are more or less arbitrary concepts not derived from sense impressions. Holdcepts tend to be difficult to recognize as such. They often represent something invisible. We have invented them to give meaning and integration to our sense impressions. The philosophically inclined may want to speculate on whether or not "space" and "time" are the two most fundamental worldcepts.
Jumpcept:
A jumpcept is a key or a trigger that you utilize in order to jump out of or escape from: A problem, system, theory, point of view, context, paradigm, fixed way of thinking, rigid behavior pattern, belief, or habit. A jumpcept is an antidote to a holdcept.
Examples of jumpcepts are "meta," "exit the system!," "key," "the door," suicide, anarchy, "bullshit!," a zen koan, the option process, an intuitive leap, and po...
What is Po?
Po is a trigger word invented by Edward de Bono. He has written a book about it called "Po: Beyond Yes and No." Edward de Bono is well-known for his work in the area of creative thinking, particularly what he calls "lateral thinking."
De Bono distinguishes between first-stage thinking and second-stage thinking. The traditional yes/no system is utilized to apply judgment and logic to relatively fixed concepts and ideas in order to arrive at conclusions or answers. This is second-stage thinking.
Whereas the yes/no system is based on reason, logic, and judgment, first-stage thinking is based on creative movement out of fixed habits and patterns. Po thinking (or first-stage thinking) is the perception stage, which entails creating new concepts, novel ideas, and original ways of looking at things.
No is the basic tool of the logic system. Yes is the basic tool of the belief system. Po is the basic tool of the creative system. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
Why There Is a Need for Po:
Po is not a substitute for any other method of thinking. It is an additional thinking tool. Whatever creative concepts or ideas are arrived at through Po thinking, their validity and usefulness have to be tested by applying judgment, logic, and reason.
The reason why there is a need for Po is that there are many problems in the world (like "unemployment" and "war") that we seem incapable of solving by applying logic to our current notions about these difficulties.
It is not the ideas we do not have that block our thinking, but the ideas that we do have. It is always easier to find a new way of looking at things if there is no fixed way already established. That is why children are so much more creative that adults. I have, on several occasions, asked groups of professional designers to draw a dog-exercising machine. The have never come up with the variety of ideas offered by children. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
The Functions of Po:
Po is, basically, a de-patterning device. It is a tool that is used to escape from our usual thinking and communication patterns, which may be somewhat rigid. Our strongest patterning system is language. Language is, basically, a communication device. For this reason, it is very important that words have fairly inflexible rules of grammar that state how verbal communication should be structured. But we also tend to use the words of language as our basic thinking units. Po is a tool to enable us to escape from the rigidity of words and the structure of language.
1. In the yes/no system, you must be right at each step; but in the Po system, being right is not important.
2. In the yes/no system, you consider only what is related to the situation; but in the Po system, you can bring in random material from the outside.
3. Po is used to protect an idea from the sharp judgment of the yes/no system so that it can act as a stepping stone to further ideas.
4. Po is used to challenge yes/no judgments and classifications that have been made in the past.
5. Po is used as a bypass to ask for different ways of looking atg things without having to reject the current way first. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
How Po Is Applied:
A serious conversation can be interrupted by saying, "I am now going to tell a joke..." This is a tool for switching from "serious mode" to "humor mode." (Po is, in fact, closely related to humor.) Similarly, one could say, "Po..." to indicate a switch from logic mode to Po mode. It indicates that whatever follows is an attempt to break out of the fixed way of looking at whatever issue is being discussed. It indicates that yes/no judgment regarding some random interpolation should be suspended - for a while, at least.
Most people look at a new idea only in order to see what is wrong with it and how quickly they can reject it. Engineers are always telling me that their instinct with any new idea is to find out why it is not worth considering. But this attitude is not confined to engineers. Administrators, teachers, politicians, business executives, all have the same attitude, with rare exceptions. I remember once sitting around a table with a group of very senior engineers, and someone put forward a good new idea. Everyone around the tqble gave some reason why it would never work. Only creative people are free from this immediate-rejection instinct, although even they often apply it to someone else's work out of rivalry. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
De Bono has identified three specific Po techniques:
(a) Po-1: the "intermediate impossible;"
(b) Po-2: "random juxtaposition;"
(c) Po-3: "Put it on one side" or "bypass it."
Po-1 allows the use of an "intermediate impossible" as a tool for problem solving. Po-1 protects the idea from immediate rejection. Suppose, for example, we are trying to solve "the transport problem." Someone suggests the intermediate impossible "Po: Chop people into little pieces." This is obviously absurd and, according to the no-system, must be rejected immediately. Yet such an interpolation can serve as a stepping stone to creative ideas...
1. Instead of rejecting the idea at once, you look at it a bit longer and find good points that you would never have noticed had you rejected it right away.
2. Judged within the framework of your current views on the subject, the idea may be wrong; but if you hang on to the idea, you may find that it is right and that your current framework may need changing.
3. The idea is definitely wrong and will always be wrong, and yet it can act as a stepping stone to new ideas that are right. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
The first principle of creativity, according to de Bono, is the surmounting of the no-barrier. Po-1 is specifically intended as a tool that facilitates jumping the no-barrier so that apparently absurd ideas can be used as stepping stones to more creative and fruitful ideas.
Traditionally, we put things together because we believe they belong together (like teacher and school). The idea of Po-2 is to put things together for no reason at all. This is called random juxtaposition. The purpose is to create a new experience that can stimulate new ideas. For example, we are trying to solve the "war" problem: Someone suggests "Po: Cabbage." This can set off a train of thoughts: "Why don't cabbages fight each other?"; "What would be necessary for cabbages to kill one another?"; "Do green cabbages regard red cabbages as their natural enemies?"; "Should cabbages attempt to be equal?"; "Or should some cabbages tell others what to do?"; "Should cabbages obey other cabbages?"; "Can peace be a meaning-ful concept to cabbages?"; "Cabbages don't wage war because they have their feet firmly planted in the earth;" "How can we use cabbages as a resource in preventing war?"; "Maybe we should elect a cabbages as king?"; "Can a cabbage king make laws?" etc., etc.
The idea of random juxtaposition is to generate fresh approaches, alternative entry points, new perspectives or contexts, novel pathways to potential solutions. (It is unhealthy to eat old cabbages.) The second principle of creativity (according to de Bono) involves opening up yourself to influences which have no connection with what you are doing. New experiences generate new ideas. Po-2, random juxtaposition, is the deliber-ate attempt to crate new experiences in the mind.
Po-3 can also be called "change without rejection." The idea is that we can pose a new idea, contrary to an old idea, and consider the new idea without having to reject the old idea. Po-3 says, "We don't necessarily have to be consistent all the time;" "We can consider a contrary idea without first rejecting the original notion." So what we do in Po-3 is to temporarily put the old idea on one side, without rejecting it, while we consider other ideas; we temporarily bypass the old idea.
In the traditional yes/no system, the old idea must be rejected before a new idea can be considered. The new idea is usually regarded not only as an attack on the old idea, but also as an attack against the person who holds the old idea to be true.
...having to go through this "rejection mode" in order to get new ideas is extremely inefficient, for three reasons:
1. There may not be enough evidence to reject the old idea.
2. The person defending the old idea may hang on to it even when there is enough evidence to reject it.
3. When you have rejected the original idea, you will have nothing to come back to if you do not find a better one. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
So Po-3 is an invitation to look at situations in other ways without having to reject the traditional ways: "The old way is fine, and let us seek other ways" (the "and" is very important); "That is a perfectly reasonable way of looking at the situation, and it does not exclude other viewpoints." A feature of Po-3 is to use "and" rather than "but." ("I would like to go with you, and I have a lot of work to do.")
A further advantage of Po-3 is that if numerous alternatives are considered, and all found wanting, then you can return to the original idea with an enhanced appreciation of its value.
...Po does not judge whether a particular concept is right or wrong. What Po does is to challenge the uniqueness of that concept, the necessity for looking at things through that concept. If you can show that the concept is not uniquely necessary, then by changing to a different concept, you can come up with new answers.
The older a culture gets, the more does it become cluttered with concepts. Since it is easy for a concept to come into being, but very difficult for obsolete concepts to die, we badly need a concept graveyard...Obsolete concepts provide "open blocks" because they make it impossible for us to look at things in a new way. We cannot destroy these concepts because they are too intertwined with the very fabric of our culture. That is why we need Po-3 to act as a bypass to allow us to step past these concepts to find new ways of looking at things. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
According to de Bono, the third principle of creativity is to look again at concepts - no matter how well they are established. The purpose of Po-3 is to provide an effective tool for overcoming the dogmatism and arrogance that go with "This is the only way." This is done by "change without rejection."
There are three stages in acquiring Po ability:
1. An understanding of the nature of Po and an acceptance of the need to change perceptions.
2. A willingness to try to generate new perceptions and a willingness to accept different ways of looking at things.
3. An actual skill in using Po as an attitude and as a tool. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
In addition to Po-1, Po-2, and Po-3, can we think of other specific Po tools? How about Po-4, "opposite"? This would entail that the exact opposite of any generally firmly-held opinion or view is seriously considered. For example, "Honesty is the worst policy."
The general attitudes of Po could be summarized under the following headings:
1. Exploring: Listen, accept other points of view, look for alternatives, look beyond the obvious, do not be satisfied with the adequate.
2. Stimulate: Fantasy, humor, the use of intermediate impossibles, and unstable situations as steps to new ideas, try things out, go forward in order to see what happens.
3. Liberate: Introduce discontinuity, escape from concept prisons, escape from old established ideas to better ones, cut through unnecessary complexity, escape from the domination of fixed ideas.
4. Anti-rigidity: Anti-dogmatism, anti-arrogance, against the uniqueness of a particular way of looking at things which excludes all others, challenge fixed ideas, a reminder that the validity of logic cannot go beyond the closed set of concepts to which it is applied. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
In my opinion, de Bono's books on lateral thinking are essential reading for anyone interested in a better future. Whether or not you already have all the answers, you fill find de Bono of great value. Even if you have already developed the "perfect blueprint" by studying de Bono, you will almost certainly find more creative ways of persuading others that you have the "ultimate formula." (And I most emphatically do not suggest that you accept any of de Bono's conclusions without careful consideration!)
Over the last two years, I have had the reaction to the Po concept from forty thousand people. It has been fascinating to see how the reaction to Po differs from group to group. The division has been as follows:
Those who see the need for Po: Poets, painters, sculptors, architects, designers, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, teachers (some), children, students, young people in general, journalists, photographers, bankers, business executives.
Those who don't: Politicians, philosophers, lawyers, academics, teachers (some), and literary critics.The division seems to be between those who are actually involved in doing something and producing new ideas and those who are too busy defending already established ideas to see the need for new ones. - Edward de Bono ("Po: Beyond Yes and No")
Points to Remember:
(a) The importance of "meta."
(b) The scope of information.
(c) Different ways of classifying or categorizing information.
(d) Nietzsche's "Will to Truth."
(e) The benefits that could stem from cooperating as a network.
(f) "Unity" is a farce (whether you agree or not)!
(g) Acceptance mode and rejection mode.
(h) "The Skeptical Inquirer" magazine: Example of meta-information.
(i) The importance of "critical."
(j) The meaning of "advanced."
(k) The importance of techniques or methods.
(l) The way an unexamined context can hold a problem in place.
(m) The idea of "holdcept" (what keeps you stuck).
(n) The notion of "jumpcept" (what enables you to escape).
(o) Po-1: Interjecting the "intermediate impossible" - "Chop people into little pieces."
(p) Po-2: "Random juxtaposition" - "War and cabbage."
(q) Po-3: "Put it on one side" or "Bypass it" - Consider alternative notions to "law" without first rejecting "law;" if all the alternatives prove useless, then return to the concept of "law" with an enhanced sense of its value!
Clarity Check:
(a) What does "meta" mean to you?
(b) What in the world is not information?
(c) How would you go about classifying or categorizing information or creating a hierarchical structure that depicts different levels and/or types of information?
(d) What does Nietzsche mean by "will to truth"?
(e) How would you describe or define "knowledge"?
(f) Why could networks be important? What about "unity"?
(g) Do you think it is possible to "know" anything? If so, how?
(h) What does "critical" mean to you?
(i) Have you noticed "acceptance mode" and "rejection mode" in yourself or in others?
(j) Could it be that rejection mode is a form of protest? And acceptance mode, a kind of "inverted form of protest"?
(k) Is your own thinking already perfect, or could it become more advanced? If the latter, how?
(l) Can you list the techniques or methods for improving the quality of information, already mentioned in this paper?
(m) Give your own description for "context."
(n) Can you think of an example of a hidden context that holds an important problem in place?
(o) Do you think there is a need for the word "holdcept"?
(p) What is the relationship between context and definition?
(q) And the connection between context and consciousness?
(r) From what context have you been reading this paper?
(s) Do you think that thinking of "information" as "in formation" has any merit?
(t) Do you think there is a need for the word "jumpcept"?
(u) What is Po?
(v) What is Po-1?
(w) What is Po-2?
(x) What is Po-3?
(y) Do you think there might be a need for Po? If so, why?
(z) What is your overall impression of this book so far?
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