31 July 2013

How do I know who you are?

Quote from von Foerster's 1995 article Ethics and Second-order Cybernetics
(emphasis mine):
However, we do not need to go to Russell, Whitehead, Godel, or to other giants, to learn about in principle undecidable questions, we can easily find them all around.
 For instance, the question about the origin of the universe is one of those in principle undecidable questions: nobody was there to watch it. Moreover, this becomes apparent by the many different answers that are given to this question. Some say it was a single act of creation some 4 or 5,000 years ago; others say there was never a beginning and there will be never an end, because the universe is a system in perpetual dynamic equilibrium; then there are those who claim that approximately 10 or 20 billion years ago the universe came into being with a "Big Bang," whose faint remnants one is able to hear over large radio antennas; but I am inclined to trust most Chuang Tse's report, because he is the oldest and was therefore the closest to this event. He says:
Heaven does nothing; this nothing-doing is dignity;
Earth does nothing; this nothing-doing is rest;
From the union of these two nothing-doings arise all
action
And all things are brought forth.
I could go on and on with other examples, because I have not told you yet what the Burmese, the Australians, the Eskimos, the Bushmen, the Ibos, etc., would tell us about their origins. In other words, tell me how the universe came about, and I will tell you who you are.