The best ideas are simple.

=

That equals symbol, the bane of every student in every class room over the world.

Vikid grew up hating it, because usually it meant something hard had to be solved or something harder had to be understood.

You probably saw this one in high school. If you’re lucky, you got a chance to understand it.

The next one, undergraduate level, describes how fluids (liquids and gases) flow:

Vikid had to wrestle with these during his college years. They’re called the Navier-Stokes equations and the reason why pretty weather girls are able to tell you if its going to rain tomorrow or not.

He is not sure he ever understood them, he only got 41% in that particular exam. True story…

How about the nature of reality?

Also known as Schrödinger’s Mind Fuck.

It involves Complex Numbers in Hilbert Space. It explains our understanding of atomic structure. Much of the technological world, including the mobile phone in your hand right now, is built by people who know how to wield this or similar equations.

Vikid supposed that not many people actually enjoyed looking at equations like this unless the were, what’s the modern term for it?

Neuro-Divergent.

But what is the “ = “ actually saying?

It’s doing a lot of heavy lifting.

What does it mean and why is it vitally important for you to understand it right now?

Before we dive in, Vikid would like to introduce you to another topic that you’ve probably never thought about unless you too are Neuro-Divergent.

One of the first full fledged computer programming languages invented in the 1950’s was called Lisp. When people first started programming they also had to wrestle with the idea of equality.

Here are the various type of equal in Common Lisp:

• Use = for numbers only

• Use char= for characters

• Use string= for strings

• Use eq when you care about object identity.

• Use eql for general equality in sets, hash tables, etc.

• Use equal for lists and strings when you need exact match.

• Use equalp when you want a “fuzzy” but practical comparison.

that’s quite a few ways of describing the idea of equality and there are more if you go further in.

It appears that not all equals are actually equal.

Why does this matter?

We will get there but have a little more ground work to do.

Equality is a type of abstraction, which is another word for generalization.

Which is a type of idea that can be applied to many different types of situations.

Think,

Same idea → Many situations.

Take the idea of an apple, a bunch of apples.

Are they equal?

Is each apple equal to the other apple?

It really depends on how you look at it.

Certainly each apple is a different object. I could eat one apple and you the other. They are definitely not the same apple.

They may have different weights, differing levels of firmness or sweetness.

You can have a Granny Smith while I have a Gala.

Yet… at some level they are all apples, and we can count them and say,

“I have a dozen apples”.

That grouping together, that act of making them the same, and naming the resulting group into a class, a class we call apples is an abstraction. That’s what abstraction means.

Idea “Apple” → Applies to many different objects, each of which we call apple.

Equating them in a sense by creating a “Class of Apples” and ignoring the differences between the Apples.

The act of Ignoring being an extremely crucial part of the operation.

Now, you dear reader have some Oranges. A dozen also, let’s say.

So I have 12 apples and you have 12 oranges.

Most definitely not the same.

But…

We have an equal number of fruit, don’t we?

You have 12 and I have 12 too…

So context is very very important. What we ignore is equally important. No pun intended.

Now imagine two very pious men. Equally pious in every way, in their dedication and sincerity etc…

Just wonderful. So very equal in the piety.

Later we find out that one is a Buddhist, the other a Satanist…

Does that change anything? What was ignored?

Vikid contends it does.

So we take this idea of equality used in Math and Science, which has a very particular context, in which it assumed that all objects in a class, such as electrons, are indistinguishable for one another, that space is transformationally symmetric, etc… we look at its success and apply it where it makes no sense at all.

Take the statement “All men are created equal”, and let’s assume you don’t know where it comes from but it kind of makes sense. It means I am not greater than you and you are not greater than me. But then you think,

“Hey! What about women?”

Then we add some context:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.

which comes from the American Declaration of Independence, drafted by Jefferson in 1776.

We look around…

That billionaire here and that one over there. This one got his riches manipulating technology, the other inherited it, oh one more over there, stole it.

We look around some more, and notice a lot of poverty. We notice that billionaires are a very small minority.

We look around some more and notice that there are not only men but women, girls and boys as well.

And things look decidedly different.

If we’re created equal, then somewhere along the way, something went horribly wrong, to have so much inequality.

Do you see how equality as an abstraction is being used here?

So we put on our thinking hats and add some the historical and linguistic context.

In the context of the English language, ‘men’ here actually refers to ‘humans’. It’s just sounds odd as a native English speaker to replace “humans” for “men”.

I leave the reader to parse the rest of the quote.

But can it be seen how misunderstandings on how equality is used can lead to radically different conclusions? With massive consequences?

Equality isn’t the only form of abstraction. There are many similar and dissimilar ones that can be misused and abused.

Here are some in the Zeitgeist:

“Diversity is our strength”

Diversity = Strength

Think of Steel (Iron plus carbon). Does simply adding more carbon to Iron result in stronger steel?

Please think, create your own equation and check the context of the abstraction. How and when does the abstraction fail?

“A Trans-man is a Man”

“Men and Women are equal”

“All religions are the same”

“Vaccines are Safe”

“Education is Good”

“The Law is Moral”

“Government Data is Trusted Data”

“More Regulations are needed”

“Guns are unsafe”

“Capitalism causes inequality”

“Societies with lower Inequality are more stable”

“Socialism is for the people”

“Hitler was far right”

“Solar Power is Clean Energy”

“The Economy should be Net Zero”

“A calorie is a calorie”

“Words are violence”

“There is violence on both sides”

“Justice is blind”

“The Brain is a Machine”

“Scientists are objective”

“War is evil”

“One dead guy is the same another”

“A dollar is a dollar”

“1 + 1 = 2 “

“Artificially Intelligent machines are thinking”

“Donald Trump is Corrupt”

There are so many more, one practically cannot avoid it any second of the day, even in our own thoughts.

Most are at best true in a very narrow context and scale.

These statements are not meant as a passive aggressive way to convince you of following one world view or another, one political regime or another.

They are intended to highlight how the abstraction of Equality is used or misused. How and when to equate things, when to notice the differences and why it matters.

It is Vikid’s contention the Equality is actually more of a Tyranny than anything approaching equal, a colonization of your mind and that is why it is successful. It’s a shortcut that allows for faster and easier thinking.

A simple yet powerful idea. And just like a sword, it has two blades that can be used for good and evil with extreme effectiveness.

And that’s,

The Vikid Truth