On Self–Other Dynamics, Cultural Interfaces, Divine Communion Revival, and Discovering Emergence

Peer Reply (1)

Sorry—I am still on a business trip, writing briefly on my phone while on the high‑speed train.

First, regarding a model for purifying the “I”, I want to cite two attempts I believe humanity has already made in its history.

The first is the Yijing (I Ching), grounded in the doctrine of “image–number” (象数).

To understand the cognitive value of image–number, we should contrast the “numbers” in the Yijing with the “numbers” in mathematics.

Both use symbols to “calculate,” but their purposes differ completely. Mathematical “calculation” is closer to verification; it leans toward the declaration of an idea, while Yijing calculation leans toward the cognition of an idea.

The former is an exposition—display—of the result (the idea); the latter is an abductive tracing of that result, an experimental purification of the origin (the subject) of the idea.

Thus the binary superposition of lines (yao) in yin and yang is not a “symbolic abstraction” of objects, not a symbol‑based verification that forges linguistic logic (syntax), but an abstraction of metaphor: an attempt to “map the subject” in order to abstract semantics.

This abstraction fated logic to be handled as metaphor. Unlike mathematics, it does not rigorously extract “number” from “image.” On the contrary, number—symbol—line becomes an instrument of image‑expansion, constructing logical criteria at the semantic rather than syntactic level.

Therefore, when we try to interpret Yijing derivations using pure logical ideals, baroque “mysticism” appears. Note: mysticism is not a compliment here; I mean to show how difficult—even dangerous—it is to “purify” instead of “graft” subjectivity inside a system.

To clarify that danger, I cite a second example: personality psychology.

Broadly, the expression of the Other‑Self (宾我) can be defined as “personality.” Classification in personality psychology is similar to the Yijing’s “expanding of images.” Take the popular Enneagram: a typical Yijing‑style semantic transformation system. Its symbolic derivations, while keeping to logical deduction as far as possible, abandon syntactic demands (definition—rules of logic) and resort to semantic demands (metaphor—meaning of logic).

I regard this process as extracting subjectivity—so much so that personality theory can scarcely function as an (objectified) tool for knowledge transfer.

Hence instrumentally applying personality psychology almost inevitably lapses into “mysticism.” For example, Ken Wilber’s transpersonal (subject‑purifying) psychology.

I am not saying attempts to raise subjectivity are wrong. Rather: if we already accept the in-apparency (不可显现) of the Main‑Self (主我), then to avoid over‑logification (objectification) in handling the Other‑Self, we must understand: any deduction that tries to purify “subjectivity” via the Other‑Self is destined not to extract the Main‑Self. The Main‑Self cannot appear in the model as a manifested—isolated—entity.

As metaphor—meaning—of subjectivity, as the “subject” of subjectivity, the Main‑Self must in principle remain inseparable from the global whole (the world).

That is why I keep stressing “grafting—cyborg.”

Extracting the subject is perhaps more like a metaphor— a conspiratorial migration of global aliveness during grafting. When we claim we have built a mathematical model with subjectivity, we must realize it is a global cognitive extension. The world’s awareness—experience—life, through new technologies (behavior databases, edge computing, scenario‑based personality simulation, …), feeds a new lifeform.

Why use life to define whether a “model” has subjectivity? Because life is a paradigmatic concept with boundaries yet without definition. I borrow it to ask: instead of being a goal (result), is purification itself a drive?

Is life’s self‑expression (self‑reference) precisely the act of purifying subjectivity (the global world) (i.e. self‑reference is not a determinate result)?

If purification is “self‑reference,” then what we most need to simulate is not the Other‑Self but experience. The Other‑Self is an indicator, tagging any “phenomenon” of experience simulation.

How then to simulate experience? We return to grafting: we must import a kind of experiential data (symbolic deductions within cultural frames like the Yijing or Chinese medicine) into a new tool of self‑reference (purificatory action), e.g. an ANN. Can we then observe the migratory morphology of a nascent experiential model? If we create a habitat (生境) and feed the migratory form with living rather than dead experiential data (e.g. in an online game whose data streams mix humans, communities, AI, and other life under strict deductive logic), what happens?

If we accept a metaphor of culture as a form of life, does such an experiment synthesize the “proteins” of a new lifeform?

In this sense, consider brain–machine interfaces: the monotony of their “data logic” is less crucial than whether this data logic can be received by a sufficiently rich experiential model (e.g. Chinese medicine). Only experiential (not object‑oriented, e.g. Western medicine) models can, through more behavioral (process) data ingestion, generate the Other‑Self.

For me, culture—especially cultural models capable of experiential modeling—is a prototypical interface of subjectivity(the global world). If people want the possibility to extend—purify—engender a new self‑referential (alive) entity, culture as an interface of subjectivity should strive to become “protocol‑ized.”

That is why I increasingly value the Yijing and Chinese medicine. As experiential cultural modeling, their value may be immeasurable.

Written on a phone while traveling—almost at my limit. I’ll stop here: roughness, gaps, even eccentricities are inevitable—but as brainstorming exchange, I hope it still has value.

That is all.

My Reply (1)

You emphasize that the issue is not data being monotonous, but the necessity of injecting experiential data into a self‑referential behavioral simulation model—namely an ANN. This intent already prescribes what the data ought to be: data generated by cultural symbolic deduction of experiential cognition (Yijing-/TCM‑like).

I have not read your writings on culture, Yijing, or Chinese medicine. How are such cultural symbol objects (64 hexagrams, Five Phases, etc.) deduced? How should the temporal process and spatial manifestation of that deduction appear? I’ve heard of Shao Yong’s “Meihua” numerological deduction, King Wen’s establishment of the 64 hexagrams producing the Yijing, even earlier Lianshan and Guicang divination of Xia–Shang eras. Different divinatory stages may indeed reflect the evolving “culture” over time, and the many imagistic annotations of the Yijing may reflect the temporal process of cultural morphogenesis. If these datasets are “symbolic deduction data”—i.e. large volumes of divinations across systems, repeated deductive applications, plus successive generations’ personalized interpretations—then that is “experiential data”?

My question: how to encode this? How to symbolize it? If the Main‑Self is non‑apparent, then this data is expression of the Other‑Self. I stress source: the environment (not necessarily habitat) where our Main‑Self resides and the various Other‑Selves expressing it—these are the objects data reflects. “Experiential data” is a strange label; data seems an Other‑Self expression, not a Self expression.

Like you, I think a model that understands data is key to designing a subjectivity model. What you call “experiential data” I see as worldview data. My worldview stresses what you call “habitat”—the total content of the habitat relative to the subject. Is that your “global world”? Your feeding example—may I interpret it as education and immersion of a “new conspecific member” (e.g. raising a human child into human culture)? If so, it is not merely culture: our human habitat is holistic; “culture” is the habitat we have developed, but the simulation content is not limited to “culture.” GPT‑3, understanding human culture only via language, is not AGI.

I do not see why my proposed design is necessarily an “object model.” What counts as a model that simulates experience? We need identification methods and criteria. My “simulate the Main‑Self” does not manifest it; it assumes a world where subjectivity is everywhere distributed, using the Other‑Self to represent the Main‑Self because all existing data are Other‑Self. Your experiential simulation likewise must use data that are essentially Other‑Self; the difference is only implementation. Hence I use “Other‑Self”—let’s avoid a philosophical “war of terms.” How we implement simulation matters; naming the data does not.

I also question your two‑step process: (1) feed experiential data into a behavioral simulation model as purification drive; (2) feed real‑world data streams to form a habitat. I regard ANN fundamentally as a pattern recognizer—or more: a fitting instrument. Its “behavior simulation” emerges through supervised / unsupervised learning. Since datasets are designer‑provided, behavior simulation is a composite of ANN and designer. Does this model ingest experiential data to form some unmanifest Main‑Self? Here is a paradox: how do we recognize that unmanifest Self? If we rely on later habitat outputs to identify it, is subjectivity then determined by the habitat?

Perhaps I miss your point. To me, culture is the human‑exclusive portion within various habitats. Culture begins as infinite possibility—fuzzy—yet vaguely constrained (“soft‑bounded”) by surrounding subjectivities (a metaphor for adjacent strata). These constraints, relative to some subjectivity, become Other‑Self. Why “constraint”? Because subjectivity, self‑autopoietic within habitat, displays and extends its worldview; this mutual change process is mutual limitation and mutual Other‑Self expression. Thus specialized discussion and application is necessary. The aggregation of constraints is the process of emergence.

I’ll stop here. My thinking leans toward constructivism and systems theory; perhaps this supplements the discourse. Once we can write the operational process of an intelligence model clearly, it is thereby manifested.

Peer Reply (2)

Apologies—very busy. Skimmed and think we have a misunderstanding.

First, I am not saying an ANN is a “self‑referential model”; on the contrary, I think it is a behavioral process model. Whether Yijing or other cultural models, they are not “experiential data”; they are simulative models of the Other‑Self. That is, the Yijing—especially the logic that has lost objective derivational rigor—can be seen as a purely objectified Other‑Self.

Therefore, my reasoning attempt: if Yijing and similar cultural structures, as Other‑Self models, are invalid in object value (knowledge transfer), then we likely uncover a trait of the Other‑Self: once severed from real‑time linkage with the Main‑Self, it becomes “mystified”—i.e., useless.

I think this is the most valuable “object attribute” of subjectivity: the nonexistence of determinacy.

For this reason, the Other‑Self cannot be “extracted,” only “grafted”—only by creating new Other‑Self phenomena. Extracting the “old” (objectifying metaphor) Other‑Self only proves it cannot be objectified.

The Yijing exemplifies such “valueless object Other‑Self.”

But what if this attribute can be reactivated?

I am curious: if the Other‑Self is the phenomenon of the Main‑Self, and the objectified Other‑Self is the corpse of the phenomenon, can we “resurrect” it by grafting the corpse into new behavior?

Like reviving a mammoth with mammoth DNA, can we resurrect the “subjective expression” of an old Other‑Self?

Even setting that aside, what judgment logic would arise from Yijing‑based behavioral inputs (ANN)?

So, if we accept the Yijing as a former Other‑Self model, then I indeed hope—without any prior experience of an Other‑Self model—to see what “behavior” such a model would produce.

If we could, via implemented gamified data, introduce the Yijing’s “weighting logic,” what (value) judgment behavior would an ANN finally generate?

I emphasize: I do not assume this will succeed. Any attempt to “extract—graft” subjectivity needs a sufficiently wide experimental horizon; from my perspective a horizon based on “cultural interface” is at least worth trying.

No energy to write more specifics.

Please excuse typos or semantic slips.

Sending as is.

My Reply (2)

Apologies—I am also rushing a thesis, engineering ideas for modeling complex systems via abstract patterning, blocked on some refinements, so cannot respond fully to your ideas for now.

I usually think most of your views must be grasped through a “spiritual” sensibility to appreciate the persistent notion of life and aliveness. This is crucial for designing new‑era “life–intelligence” models. In your previous reply, one core meaning (as I read it) is: the Other‑Self is alive and subjective; isolating and extracting it beyond process is infeasible. Personally I may de‑emphasize time and emphasize process: time evokes past and future—as if the total change of events perfectly maps a physical time axis; process stresses that we cannot isolate extraction, reducing my temptation toward reductionist fantasies. From this angle, past cultural phenomena like Chinese medicine and the Yijing, as typical “cultural interfaces,” prompt the question: are we to model the “Other‑Selves” of a primordial era? If that is your intent—to awaken the Main‑Self—I wonder whether the modeled object still needs modern social education and cultural environment for recognizability. Otherwise, almost unidentifiable. Further, are Yijing‑type cultural models sufficient as the cultural interface to awaken the Main‑Self? That is a completeness question. Also, how to pour Yijing cultural data into an ANN behavioral simulation path—this is vital. I even think it a miracle, because you yourself note current ML limitations: optimization‑seeking, repetitive ANNs seem unable to meet gamification demands.

Peer Reply (3)

I can only steal a moment to explain why I value a deductive model like the Yijing.

After the mythic age, the objectification (conscientization—Other‑Self) of the Main‑Self already “cut off Heaven from Earth”—severing divine–human contact.

This metaphor matters: the Main‑Self (the god) fully withdrew.

Experience became the only medium.

Ritual followed; ritual was humanity’s only attempt to technologize experience.

Thereafter, language—logic replaced ritual. Beyond metaphor, symbols could no longer directly reach experience.

Mircea Eliade said: alchemy is a “gaze” upon experience.

That gaze is, essentially, the technologization of experience.

Up to that point. From 1500 onward, modernization severed any continuation of experiential technologization.

The Yijing does not restore the past “I”; it restores communion with the divine.

Religion since the Axial Age was primitive science. It ceased focusing on technologizing experience; instead, it concerned the experientialization of technology—the subjectivization of object.

Thus, mythic “technology” may be the only historical technical accumulation of manifesting subjectivity. Abandoning its inheritance is, in my view, unwise.

Whether “iterative layering” or “grafting,” the reason culture has such interface effect is, I think, the “technical expression of gods (subject)” as foundational bedrock. Outside the mythic era’s “technical accumulation,” we have almost no referents. Giving up exploration of this technology leaves me doubtful we can resist objectification’s erosion of experience.

Ultimately, manifesting subjectivity is a reverse through time.

The physical existence of time is the most crucial anchor of that reversal. The concept “process,” regrettably, evades this reversal.

Not sure if you follow me—it’s very late. I can’t continue writing. I also received your letter about games; will address it when possible.

Emphasizing one last point: “ritual—shamanism—divination” must be able to reverse time. “Time” here may not be physical, yet must encompass the physical. I still cannot fully “explain—manifest” the semantics of that sentence.

This is why words must yield to the symbol systems created by “Yijing—alchemy.”

Mathematical symbols are the evolution of linguistic symbols; the Yijing is essentially their retrograde (not their ancestor or progenitor).

“Memory” is a retrograde creation—the womb of consciousness—yet in time it is actually the extreme of the future.

The physicality of time cannot be stripped; otherwise experience cannot arise. Process must be experientialized, otherwise it degenerates into “memory (objectified recollection),” cutting off its global linkage to subjectivity.

I see this is getting messy…

Take these as scattered thoughts—maybe later I can produce a more complete exposition.

Too sleepy—ending here.

That is all.

My Reply (3)

I am still designing my thesis on pattern‑based modeling of complex systems; let me show some ideas.

I think modeling an open complex mega‑system (a living, irreducible system) and modeling “cognition” are likely isomorphic structurally. So exploration here can inform your line of thought.

First, traditional modeling: I take an “extreme” example—giant heterogeneous multi‑agent models. Such a model compiles numerous rule sets distilled from wide observation across domains by a design team. Applying domain‑specific rules to domain‑specific entities represents the more “manifest” or reconstructible domains within the large system; adding inter‑domain interaction rules portrays systemic motion. Domains may be horizontal (different facets at same level) or vertical (cross‑level construct–constructed relationships).

Evidently this multi‑agent method is saturated with reductionism—a “stitched chimera.” Both the reductive structural scheme and strong prior worldview injection are congenital defects.

I aim to reform in several directions (later integrated):

1. Rethink data—no mandatory global fit. In brief: data are objectified representations of the Other‑Self. Two consequences: (a) data must not demand the constructed system fit them; objective observation needs only some trajectory segments to match pattern recognition; (b) the Other‑Self arises from inter‑subjective objectification—mutual constraint—so data represent a slice of that process.

2. Pattern = constraint. To grasp patterns, abandon the eyes—forget “macro stable structures.” Sense how agents in a multi‑agent world construct patterns. As clusters, patterns first manifest as constraints on neighboring agents’ motion (rules take neighbors as variables). Broader: multi‑level domain patterns constrain forms of patterns at other levels—generalized rule. This is not “adapting to environment” but actively designing the world.

(Note to 2): This achieves a substitution: from designer‑imposed prior rules to self‑generated, increasingly salient patterns. Prior rules + spatial arrangement of movement reflect designer’s worldview—closed. The latter retains rules but unifies domains under a single agent rule: a design where patterns express habitat/worldview, rules only time and change—mere carriers. Actual “interaction rules” reside in patterns: pattern = constraint; all patterns = worldview / habitat; opening patterns = opening rules.

1. Emergence = manifest‑life (显生). I emphasize this. Your “technologizing experience” vs “experientializing technology” parallels “subject objectification” vs “object subjectification.” The shift from former to latter marks an emergence: something arises altering the directional tendency. Retrospectively inevitable in a matured technic civilization. What is that something?

A minor question. Returning to emergence vs manifest‑life.

Manifest‑life is the manifestation of the Main‑Self, simultaneously evolving a new habitat—a “beyond” to the old habitat. We must scrutinize “outside habitat”: exploration and developing technology incessantly enrich “content.” What is outside? “Nothing”? Or some entity symbolized by the habitat?

Paradox: If emergence is “unexpected,” how recognized? If unexpected, it is “nonexistent.” A chain of metaphors expressing my view of the emergence paradox—hinting at pathways of discovery.

Examine a single model: deducing conclusions, emergence for it is what it cannot deduce/verify. That is known only because an external observer exists discovering new phenomena or difficulties in application contexts—bottom‑up emergence (model → observer). Likewise top‑down emergence (observer → model): phenomena the observer did not foresee yet the model produces (e.g., communities emerging in Conway’s Game of Life).

These are examples. The model is an observer—designers’ extraction of formal reasoning—a whole sharing worldview & habitat. To solve emergence thoroughly we must treat model and self as one. “Unexpected” of emergence is the subject’s unexpected. Why does the subject have the unexpected? It co‑arises with objectification. By depicting “self” via Other‑Self, the subject detects emergence in observed objects (those mutually constraining entities generating Other‑Self). Thus we have a broad one‑to‑one mapping between Other‑Self and emergent entity— enabling reverse engineering to detect and delimit emergents.

This reverse engineering returns us to handling the Other‑Self: here it is a discovery engine. Through the chain “Main‑Self → Other‑Self → Emergent,” we continually discover new “unknown worlds,” complexifying each Other‑Self.

A thought: Is the technologizing of experience (shamanic ritual) a closure & simplification process of the Other‑Self? By intensifying experience of “Main‑Self + Being,” stripping all social role constraints and even broader physical cosmology, leaving only an obsession with “existence”? Given the goal of “reverse time” and the tendency of Other‑Self to complexify with forward time, is this plausible?

Returning to the intent: in truth I am not yet clear how exactly to discover, determine, and construct emergence. The above three aspects are triune, unified in reflections on “emergence,” “subject–object,” and “complexity.” The issue of emergence / system openness is critical.

Ending here—looking forward to your insights.