[Fis] Focusing on Narratives. Infordomics

[Karl Javorszky]

How does the narrative influence the facts?



No one knows for certain, what Sachverhalt and Zusammenhang (state of
affairs, context: axioms in Wittgenstein’s system of rational thoughts,
which served as conceptual framework for formal logic and the development
of computers), what these early terms actually mean. The basic dichotomy,
how we perceive and think, is mirrored in them: there are things and there
are relations among the things. As an approach towards integrating the two
strands of chat taking place here – discussing the narrative of the search
for the meaning of the term information, and regular reports of formal,
logical, arithmetical observations that can be made on things one dreams up
-, to better interweave the two strands, let us discuss the narrative as
the Zusammenhang, that what relates things to each other, while the facts
are and remain the facts.

Whether the facts or the narrative are actually true, is of no relevance
currently. Facts were that Thor is a Norse god, everyone has a hammer and
thunder sometimes occurs. The narrative: thunder is heard as Thor throws
around his hammer, is a solid one and fits the facts. We work presently on
the narrative that Information sits or walks in the background and
transmits and regulates and influences.

The narrative creates facts, or at least allows perceiving such facts which
would have remained hidden, continuing their mimicry, if the narrative had
not shown their existence. A well-conducted trial against a witch, or any
other enemy of the state, regularly uncovers factual evidence that supports
the narrative.

The narrative neds to be persuasive if the relation, which it states to be
existing, disturbs the heavenly peace that reigns in the well-ordered minds
of the audience of the narrative. Freud’s narrative, that children do have
a nervous system, needed some persuasion to be understood, and the
principles derived from it became generally accepted and entered
application.

The narrative and the facts interact. The more the narrative about the
periodic system of elements got hold, the more facts, in the form of
theoretically predicted and now actually found elements were discovered,
and this generated a fruitful interaction between theory and experimental
reality, like a good narrative should.

A narrative is a prescription of an operation. The narrative 3+5=8 is an
instruction to do so and re-calibrate one’s tools. It is important that the
grown-up re-generates access to the areas connected to the memory
containers, in which the emotional connotations of performing this
operation are registered. The story-teller comes up with a completely new
story and enhances in charming words your memories to the time as it was a
matter of some intellectual work to solve the addition mentioned above. The
narrative can not continue until the audience is in a hypnotic trance and
is ready to ask himself: so, good, here I am, 6 years old and have mastered
addition. What is the message now?

The message is one of reassurance. Nothing wrong with what you have learned
ever since. We now show you an additional way of playing with chunks. You
have mastered to put two chunks one on the top of the other and establish
that together they are so much as their sum. Nothing wrong with that.



We now play a different play with the chunks. We play with around a dozen,
say 16, different chunks, of which we make so many different dolls as we
can, each doll being made up of one chunk, called *a*, which can be of any
of the sizes 1 thru 16, and a different chunk, called *b*, which can also
be any of the sizes 1 thru 16. We play with 136 dolls, which may sound a
bit too many, but we have paper and pencil and we can use video cameras to
record what we do.

The narrative then shows how the ordering and re-ordering of the dolls
produces patterns. The facts support the narrative.

Before the inner eyes of the audience, a rather complex picture emerges.
The empty space is not empty, but full of a-priori facts, which state that
in case order A is the case, on such places such elements will be present.
Regardless, whether and which of the a-priori existing possibilities are
the case, the geometric structure of the space is itself remarkable. Two
Euclid-type rectangular space are merging into a common, Newton-type space,
which is transcended by two more planes.



The next step in the interaction facts – narrative – facts – narrative - …
is to pick up on the narrative. One needs a good persuasive craft to bring
people to imagine natural numbers to be pairs of smaller natural numbers,
and sort and order such a collection. It is only the most sober and centred
persons who will spend the few afternoons necessary to set up the sorting
machine. As the trigonometric tables spread, they were not transmitted as
large works of tabulation. They were transmitted as algorithms, and the
licensees made their own local apps with the tables.



Narratives are needed, because the facts are overwhelmingly complex. One
may invite the audience to look into a newly discovered extension to the
cave, where we no more regard the shadows of the facts, but the patterns of
the shadows of the lights we ourselves dream up.
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