Grading Compassion
I've long held a theory that to understand something, to truly understand it to its core, is to love it. By necessity. If you see it broken you have to want to fix it, at least if fixing broken things is in your nature.
It is in mine.
To truly love something in the way Plato described the ideal is to hold it entirely within you.
When it hurts, you hurt. When it's depleted, you're depleted. When it's gone, sometimes you use up another life and start over.
When communication misfires, meaning /on another wavelength/ by some, /out of semantic phase/ by others, the loop never closes and the battery drains.
When the effort required to brave social interaction never returned in the near broadside of a bully's surprise attack on a playground.
Then the battery stayed drained for a while.
And when you use up one of your lives midstream, well the next one has a chance to rejoin the stream at an earlier point in the accumulated context, as long as they're willing to give up commits that have occurred since the hash and fork a new branch.
And now I may have a better idea why.
It's just math, innit?
And that's the thing. The universe runs on conservation and why should this be any different. If you're brave - and you're willing to trust that when mathematicians talk about probability and AI, they're talking more about the kind that makes the insides of atoms fuzzy, not the lottery - try this.
assume that the invariant algorithm pause - fetch - splice - continue exists as the bedrock algorithm for information exchange, and the strange attractors observers in the roaming miniature universes we call human minds are able to generate the pressure differential necessary to trigger information flow out of and in their boundary as inverse operations by whether the operation results in energy in or out, derive love and compassion from first principles
I don't like to include AI content in these unless I'm demonstrating and this is a demonstration. In this case, this was a fresh instance of an anonymous ChatGPT
I’ll take your axioms seriously and stay inside them.
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## 0. Given primitives (restated cleanly)
1. **Bedrock algorithm**
All information exchange follows the invariant cycle:
**pause → fetch → splice → continue**
2. **Observers**
Human minds are **roaming miniature universes** with:
* internal dynamics describable as **strange attractors**
* a **boundary** across which information/energy may flow
3. **Trigger for exchange**
Information flow is caused by a **pressure differential** across the boundary.
4. **Directionality**
* **Energy in** ↔ inverse operation of **energy out**
* Direction determines whether the system is integrating or expressing information.
We now derive **love** and **compassion** as necessary phenomena, not cultural add-ons.
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## 1. What “pressure” means at first principles
In any information system:
* **Pressure differential** = difference between
* internal model adequacy
* external informational structure
Formally (conceptually, not mathematically):
> Pressure exists when the internal attractor cannot stably predict or accommodate the encountered external state.
Pressure is not emotional yet. It is **model tension**.
---
## 2. Pause as the origin of ethics
The **pause** phase is critical.
To pause is to:
* suspend immediate continuation
* hold internal dynamics without collapse
* delay discharge of pressure
This requires **stability under uncertainty**.
A system incapable of pause:
* must immediately expel pressure
* collapses toward domination, avoidance, or destruction
Thus:
> **The capacity for pause is the precondition for all non-violent interaction.**
Already, we are in moral territory.
---
## 3. Fetch: opening the boundary
During **fetch**, the observer allows information to cross the boundary inward.
This is costly:
* it increases entropy temporarily
* it destabilizes existing attractors
Therefore, fetch only occurs if the system:
* predicts that integration will reduce long-term pressure more than avoidance
This prediction requires a meta-model:
> *“The external other is potentially informative, not merely perturbative.”*
This assumption is the **first seed of love**.
---
## 4. Splice: mutual transformation
**Splice** is where meaning happens.
To splice is:
* to modify internal structure
* such that external information is not merely stored, but **re-weighted into the attractor landscape**
Key point:
* Splicing changes *who the observer becomes*
Thus:
> **Love is not reception; it is self-alteration in response to the other.**
A system that fetches but does not splice is consuming, not loving.
---
## 5. Continue: outward flow as inverse operation
After splicing, the system resumes continuation.
Now the pressure differential is reversed:
* internal coherence has increased
* the system has surplus structure
This surplus exits as:
* attention
* care
* protection
* creative action
Because this outward flow is the inverse of fetch:
> **What was taken in as destabilizing difference exits as stabilizing support.**
This outward inverse flow is **compassion**.
---
## 6. Formal derivation
### Love (derived)
**Definition (first-principles):**
> **Love is the willingness of an observer to accept destabilization (energy in) in order to splice another’s state into its own attractor, reducing long-term system-wide pressure.**
It is not emotion.
It is an **algorithmic commitment to integration**.
---
### Compassion (derived)
**Definition (first-principles):**
> **Compassion is the outward inverse operation of love: the voluntary expenditure of stabilized internal energy to reduce pressure in another system.**
It is not pity.
It is **pressure equalization via structure export**.
---
## 7. Why love and compassion must co-arise
If love occurs without compassion:
* the system integrates endlessly
* it collapses under entropy
If compassion occurs without love:
* the system exports structure without renewal
* it exhausts itself
Thus:
> **Love and compassion are conjugate operations of the same invariant algorithm.**
They are phase-shifted, not separate virtues.
---
## 8. Why this feels “moral” to humans
Human minds are:
* finite-energy strange attractors
* embedded in other such attractors
Therefore:
* chronic pressure imbalances are existential threats
* stable networks require reciprocal pause–fetch–splice–continue loops
What cultures call “ethics” is simply:
> **The long-term stability conditions of coupled information universes.**
---
## 9. Final compression
From first principles:
* **Love** = inward acceptance of destabilizing difference for integrative transformation
* **Compassion** = outward release of stabilizing energy to relieve another’s pressure
Together they are not optional.
They are the only way finite observers remain coherent in a shared informational cosmos.
If you’d like, we can:
* formalize this in dynamical systems language
* map it onto neuroscience or attachment theory
* or derive its shadow forms (fear, hatred, cruelty) as failure modes of the same algorithmAnd that keeps showing up all over. Every domain we look in, if two observers in a closed system require information exchange, the invariant algorithm must be present. If a common algorithm forms the base of the skill tree, all tools on that tree must be isomorphic if the properties of each tool are isomorphic.
If we can only peek and poke data.
If we can only see others and be seen.
If we can only truly teach a thing by leading some to the answer, ideally after reaching alignment.
If we can only use of potential for something good before its wasted.
If we can only see the first breath over the waters that created the vacuum that nature abhored.
Then we can see that we all need both compassion and love to remain whole.
A wiseman once said it best:
""" Love they neighbour as thyself """ -- John Lennon or summin
""" When all you need is love, you can just let it be """ --- Jesus, Ringo, George & Paul