Creative Speculation Requres Many Mistakes

I do most of my work to determine the truth of how the world works through a process I call Creative Speculation. I make up how I think things work, produce a model and then test it out by comparing what it says with the facts I can find that apply to it. This approach requires a high level of doubt in what I believe because invariably I end up believing my ideas. A high level of doubt simply means being willing to give up an idea if the facts don't fit well.

For example I have recently grabbed a map of 1300 AD from euratlas.com The idea I have is that the world is made up of little areas all about the size of Bohemia or less. The fun thing is the 1300 AD map on this site shows many of them. This idea will either put down roots and make branches, and make certain related facts clearer, or it wil not have much to do with anything. Once I see this trend over a long enough period of time, I will either continue to believe or stop believeing.

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Getting More Specific with History

I see turning my history theory into a game using Artificial Creativity as a process of getting progressively more specific with the model. My first attempt at specificity was to identify regions of the world in which certain ages were dominant or developed etc. But history ages can decline or advance and going specific on the events that are key to these declines and advances is also a useful step toward more specific.

I will start out by making it simple and having only two advances per age. One is at the decision point and one is at the revolution point. Decision points are one quarter of the way through an age and revolution points are three quarters.

My starting list will have a number of educated guesses. These could be wrong or right, but they are a good starting point. More recent ages will be more difficult to guess because:

1. We don't have as much perspective on them.
2. We are not sure they were actually successful.
3. Many earlier ages have failure as well as success examples which may be compared to each other.

I haven't talked about levels before. In the theory history advances and declines through levels. Each age is at one level. The next age will be either one level advanced or one level declined. If history simply advanced, there would be one age per level and they would be in practice synonymous. As it is, we have had two ages at the dark age level, three at the enlightenment age level, and two at the federal age level in old world history. In addition the New world has experienced two dark ages and two civilization level ages. In addition, at least a small group of Jews advanced beyond the old world level leading up to the ministry of Jesus. This advance beyond the main path of history started in 196 BC.

Here are eight levels (ages) and their decision points:

Age	Decision Point (1 age)	Revolution Point (2 ages)	Failure for Comparison
25. Agricultural	12K BC - supernatural	8942 BC - trade	none
26. B. Baal	6250 BC - Pharaonism	4456 BC - animal power	New World: no animal power (decline after 2 ages)
27. Civilization	3110 BC - writing	2212 BC - mass migration	New World: no mass migration?(decline after 1 age)
28. Dark	1540 BC - alphabet	928 AD - the zero	New World: no simple alphabet(decline after 0 ages), Old World; no zero
29. Enlightenment	1264 AD - science & truth	1488 AD - colonialism	Old World: bureaucratic Emperor Worship
30. Federal	1657 AD - balance of power & capitalism	1769 AD - power looms & steam engines	Old World: single empire conquers all - no balance of power
31. G-Industry	1853 AD - electricity & telegraphy	1909 AD - total war	none
32. Holocaust	1951 AD - computers	1979 AD - internet	none

Colonialism was essentially a size increase without conquering everything. I know it sounds bad but it is actually
an advance over the alternative, which is the conquest of the entire advanced world by one member. The
size of viable regions tends to increase over time. This is the base behind the four Europes theory. Why this is so, I don't know. I do know that world populations usually doubles during a single successful age. Maybe it takes twice as many people for an advance age to succeed because significant event are happening twice as fast.

The reason why the decision point says 1 age and the revolution point says two ages,
is that this is the number of ages that you might continue to advance if these inventions do not happen.

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Sentence Patterns

I have taken the idea of sentence patterns and started designing an engine to understand and generate sentences.

First, I have redone my list of (now 23) parts of speech. I discovered that what I thought was a conjunction was actually a preposition and what I was calling a join was in fact a conjunction. Here is the new rule of 20:

   Part of Speech       Examples
   -------------------  --------------------------------
A. Adjective/Article  - the, a, an, little, great, low, another, available, different, litle ...
B. Be                 - is, was, be, are, were, been, become, am, became, becomes, being, becoming
C. Conjunction        - and, or, but, than, because, however, else, therefore, nor, moreover ...
D. Do                 - do, did, does, done, doing
E. Have               - have, had, has, having
F. Subordinator       - if, although, unless, though, both, before, either, neither, together ...
G. Gerund             - using, following, going, including, working, making, creating, looking ...
H. Hedge              - again, never, often, really, already, almost, perhaps, ever, rather ...
I. 1st Person Pronoun - i, we, us, me, myself, mine, ourselves, ours, my, our
J. 2nd Person Pronoun - you (plural), you (singular), yourself, yours (plural), yours (singular)
K. 3rd Person Pronoun - they, them, him, he, her, she, someone, anyone, everyone, everybody ...
L. Interjection       - please, yeah, oh, hi, hello, ah, yes, okay, no ...
M. Adverb             - instead, along, quickly, slowly, suddenly, indeed, immediately, daily ...
N. Noun               - option, units, manner, plenty, occasion, mice, republic, notion, eggs ...
O. Object Pronoun     - it, this, these, those, one, there, here, something, nothing, anything ...
P. Preposition        - of, from, among, in, on, about, for, with, by, at, over, after, under ...
Q. Question           - how, why, when, who, whose, which, what, where, whether
R. Relative Pronoun   - that, whom, who, whose, which, what, where
S. (possessive form)  - her, hers, theirs, his, their, its, ones, things, tools, days, systems ...
T. To                 - to
U. Intransitive Verb  - look, come, live, came, differ, mean, went, looked, happen, listen ...
V. Transitive Verb    - like, make, see, get, know, take, own, say, got, tell, put, spell, ask ...
W. Will / Would etc.  - would, may, could, should, must, shall, can, will, might

And I have started building sentence patterns with these parts of speech. I have disovered something interesting in trying to do this. English is roughly built using a series of structures, each built on top of and using as its components the structure beneath. For example words are built of roots and additions. Roots and additions are built of letters. Each word is one or more parts of speech. Parts of speech are used to build phrases. Phrases are used to build clauses. Clauses either are sentences or are used to build sentences. The diagram is like this:

 sentence
  |   |
  |  clause
  |   |
 phrase
   |
 word
   |
   +------+
   |      |
 root & additions
   |      |
   +------+
   |
 letter

The parts of speech rule of 20 is for words. I also need to build one for phrases, and perhaps clauses. Here are the ones for phrases clauses and sentences so far. They use sort of a regex like syntax to show how they are built using the more primitive rule of 20:

   Phrase type                common   Possible Constructions using Parts of Speech
-  ------------------------   ------   ----------------------------
A  Adjective phrase         - A     -- H?A
B  Passive Verb phrase      - B|BG  -- BM?[AGV]?M?
I  Infinitive verb phrase   - TU|TV -- TM?[UV]M?
M  Adverbial phrase         - M     -- (M|MA|MG|O|PN|ON|PAN)
O  Object phrase            - AN    -- (([IJKN]S)?A*N|A*G|[IJK])
P  Prepositional phrase     - PAN   -- P?+(([IJKN]S)?A*N|A*G|[IJK])
R  Relative pronoun         - R     -- R
S  Subject phrase           - AN    -- (([IJKN]S)?A*N|A*G|[IJK])
U  Intransitive verb phrase - U     -- (U|W?E?M?UM?)
V  Transitive verb phrase   - V     -- (W?E?M?V|E|B)
Z  Subordinator             - Z     -- Z

R  Relative Clause          - RUP

Sentence Type                 Possible Constructions using Phrase Types
--------------------------    ----------------------------
Causitive Clause Sentence   - SVS(UP?|VO) or SVO(V|IOM?P?)
Conditional sentence        - ZSUSVO
Passive Voice Sentence      - OBP
Present perfect Sentence    - S(UP?|VO)M?
Relative Clause Sentence    - SRU
Simple Past Sentence        - S(UP?|VO)M?

As you can see, I am using a syntax very similar to regex (regular expressions) to show both how to recognize phrases/sentences of each type, but also how to construct them using Artifical Creativity.

This means that regex can be used to write artificial creativity programs. The problem being that no one has implemented it yet. Another problem being that the syntax has no internal notation to show which possibilities are more probable than which others. That is why I have included the 'common' column.

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41 Possible Futures in the Next 65 Years

I may have given the impression that there is one possible future ending in a tribuation in 2042-2049. There are many possible futures. My theory says that between now and 2072 there are 41 possible courses that history may take. The black squares indicate successful tribulation periods. Green indicates enlightenment. Blue indicates organization. Red indicates chaos, distribution, and communication advances, and yellow indicates material advances.

The way to read the diagram is that each colored rectangle is an age, which has a width indicating its range in time. The rectangle to its left is the age that happened before it, and the two colored rectangles to its right are the two ages which may happen after it. The black squares are successful tribuation periods ending in the first or second coming of Christ (depending on your religion). Note that Jesus returns in only 13 of the 41 possible futures in the next 65 years, so calcuated that way there is a 32% chance that he will return within 65 years. Of course each possible future is not equally likely so a much more sophisticated analysis is needed to get a good number. I think it's probably higher. Our futures are numbered for convenience. The numbers mean nothing in particular. A true history numbering system would probably be based on binary since possible histories exist as a binary tree.

Just for fun, I included the Star Trek future. We have alread missed having advanced in 1993 rather than declined as in the Star Trek universe (The Eugenics Wars and all that).

Of course the challenge for Artifical creativity is to take these possibilities and turn each of them in to plots, story lines, detailed histories, events, regional focus and interaction, characters and dialog. A tall order, and I don't see how to do it yet.

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The Eternal Region of Israel

Israel exists and has existed for most of history. Starting at least with Abraham Israel began to exist as an independent entity. I call it an eternal region because my history theory implies that it is one of those regions that will continue fo a very loing time.

I have four categories for regions in my theory. Some regions are primary dominant regions. They act as the central regions for development during a historic age. Then they rise to diminance. Then they decline and collapse, usually to be incorporated into a larger region. The second type of region is the secondary region. These regions become as advanced as the primary ones but do not become central or dominant. The third regions are the eternal regions which rise much more slowly, and are extinguished much more slowly or not at all. The forth category are those regions that do not participate in the advancment of the world they are part of.

Israel is one of the eternal regions. It strengthened until 868 BC, then weakened until 1937 AD, and is now strengthening again.

Here is my diagram:

Link

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A Couple Of Changes

I have discovered that I can not use the name Time Travail for my Time Travel Game. Time Travail is a book written by Howard Waldman and the name fits his book better than it does my game. I'll have to think of some other name.

I have also made a few changes to my rule of twenty (now 22) for parts of speech.

Letter	Part of Speech	Examples	meaning
A	Adjective / Article / Complement	a, an, the, six, intelligent, large, red, marble, car	-
B	Be	am, are, be, became, become, becomes, been, being, is, was, were, will be, would be	being is played down in western philosophy (so we have trouble understanding God's name 'I am that I am'). A proper understanding of being will make a better AC model. So I want to play it up.
C	Conjunction	between, by, for, from, in, into, of, over, through, to, toward, upon	-
D	Do	do, doing, did, done, does, will do	-
E	Have	had, has, have, will have, would have	-
F	-	-	-
G or (G)	Gerund (-ing)
H	Hedge	partially, partly, perhaps, personally, possibly, practically, precisely, presently, previously, primarily, probably, purely, some	either an adverb that can be inserted into a string of adjectives, or a word a speaker used to 'hedge her bets'
I	Speaker Pronoun	I, me, we, us
J	Join	additionally, after, and, as, also, although, because, but, for, furthermore, however, moreover, nor, only, or, otherwise, since, so, then, therefore, though, when, while, yet	combines two clauses by going between them
K	Subordinator	after, all, although, as, before, both, each, enough, fewer, here, less, little, many, much, more, must, since,	combines two clauses by going in front of the first
L	Interjection	oh, yeah, um, yes, no, indeed, boy, wow
M	Adverb	forth, overnight, perfectly, quickly, simply, sooner	any adverb except an adverb used as a hedge
N	Noun	box, car, milk, courage, sleeping	All noun forms except pronouns
O	Object Pronoun	all, any, each, every, few, here, it, many, more, most, much, one, only, several, some, such, that, there, these, this, those
P	Personal Pronoun	he, she, they, them, him, her
Q	Question	how, ought, what , when, where, whether, which, who, whom, whose, why, would	Used to create/start a second, dependent clause in a sentence
R	Relative Pronoun	which, who, that, whose, whom
(S)	Possessive / 'Present' verb	-s, America's, cat's, her, his, its, my, our, your, runs, builds	designates possessive form or a verb with -s added
T	To	to	just the word 'to'
U	Intransitive Verb	jog, walk, speak	-
V	Transitive Verb	move, push	-
W	-	-	-
Y	Second person pronoun	you, you-all	-
Z	-	-	-

I have defined hedge although the meaning is still amorphous. And I have split the verbs into iintransitive and tranistive.

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21 Parts of Speech

I've been studying parts of speech preliminary to using artificial creativity to create sentence dialog for the characters in my Time Travail game. Here is the Rule of Twenty system I have developed.

Letter	Part of Speech	Examples	meaning
A	Adjective / Article / Complement	a, an, the, six, intelligent, large, red, marble, car
B	Be	am, are, be, became, become, becomes, been, being, is, was, were, will be, would be
C	Conjunction	between, by, for, from, in, into, of, over, through, to, toward, upon
D	Do	do, doing, did, done, does, will do
E	Have	had, has, have, will have, would have
F	(see V)
G or (G)	Gerund (-ing)
H	Hedge	partially, partly, perhaps, personally, possibly, practically, precisely, presently, previously, primarily, probably, purely, some
I	Speaker Pronoun	I, me, we, us
J	Join	additionally, after, and, as, also, although, because, but, for, furthermore, however, moreover, nor, only, or, otherwise, since, so, then, therefore, though, when, while, yet	combines two clauses by going between them
K	Subordinator	after, all, although, as, before, both, each, enough, fewer, here, less, little, many, much, more, must, since,	combines two clauses by going in front of the first
L	Interjection	oh, yeah, um, yes, no, indeed, boy, wow
M	Adverb	forth, overnight, perfectly, quickly, simply, sooner
N	Noun	box, car, milk, courage, sleeping
O	Object Pronoun	all, any, each, every, few, here, it, many, more, most, much, one, only, several, some, such, that, there, these, this, those
P	Personal Pronoun	he, she, they, them, him, her
Q	Question	how, ought, what , when, where, whether, which, who, whom, whose, why, would
R	Relative Pronoun	which, who, that, whose, whom
(S)	Possessive / 'Present' verb	-s, America's, cat's, her, his, its, my, our, your, runs, builds	designates possessive form or a verb with -s added
T	To	to
V	Verb	run, jog, walk, speak, move, push
Y	You	you, you-all

As you can see these are not the standard set. I have added the hedge type and split the personal pronouns into three groups. Tense and pluralism will be handled as another dimension. S will be added to another part of speech. Articles and such will be handled through an additional adjective order mechanism.

This approach will allow me to gather a nice stable of sentence patterns for example:

• I have come to change your mind about certain aspects of our situation (IEVTVYSNCANCISN)
• These are the times that try men's souls (OBANRVNSN)
• The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (AAANVCAAN)
• What do you want me to do with it? (QDYVITDCO)
• Hey, what did we do yesterday? (LQDIVM) - do is both a do and a verb
• Do you want me to fill one out for you? (DYVITVOCCY)

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Time Travail - Time Travel Game

I have just realized that I have been working on a time travel game. My recent posts all seem to have been about history. I have also been grinding through my list of about 5000 English words identifying when each of them was invented in history. Time travel needs artificial creativity. A player can go back into the past and change something, thereby chaning history. The game has to reconstruct a new history based on the changes. That's artificial creativity.

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