Autocorrelation & Addiction

Life Circles & Self Similarity

Self-similarity

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The basic unit of life is a circle, something that repeats itself, either across time like a familiar chorus, or across space like a homogenous texture. Indeed, any phenomenon stable enough to be noticed and named must at some level be a repetition, some vibrating equilibrium between opposing forces.

In nature we see that things like to cluster together. When it rains, it pours. Children look like their parents. Trauma reoccurs and history rhymes with itself.

There's an efficiency gain from this partial repetition, this spiralling tension between the novel and the habitual. It’s a lower energy state, a local minimum, pooled water, home to insects and tadpoles.

In terms of algorithms, loops can both make code much shorter as well as express things otherwise inexpressible. The lattice structure of crystals forms an invisible blueprint that stray atoms may rest within, and so the crystal feeds and grows without hunting or farming.

In statistics, autocorrelation is a measure of the self-similarity of a series of data points. Does moving in one direction make it more likely to move in that direction again? Or is it more likely to snap back, to reverse?

In the brain, neurons that fire together wire together. At some abstraction layer, this is precisely what it means to have a positive autocorrelation. And at another layer, a set of neurons that forms a loop will also imply some sort of positive autocorrelation, as the signal may wind around many times before fizzling out.

And how many loops there must be in the brain-mind! How many habits, intentional or unconscious, fill our days, even as the planets and stars circle about!

Our daily rituals may be intentional or not, but create them we must, as life’s ways find recurring solutions to recurring problems. But what of addictions, those hypnotizing loops that leak our life energy and suck our blood, all while offering smiles and promises? If we wish to be masters of our lives, we must be able to create as well as destroy these circles, these elements of life.

The symmetry of circles tells us we may break them at any point to end the cycle. One leak may destroy a dam, and one stray part may send a helicopter to its death. Typically one attempts to break an addiction by either reducing the reward received or increasing the punishment incurred, but these strategies often backfire as the living loop of addiction finds new ways to feed itself, new shapes to flow thru.

To stop water sloshing about, one may attempt to reverse the waves, as with noise-cancelling headphones, but this requires very precise control and can backfire if the timing is not accurate. The easier, slower method is to simply stop new energy coming into the system. Sit still in the bathtub and the water will settle by itself.

Let us therefore cleanse our lives with the pure waters of consciousness! Let calm meditative presence still the waves of the world, as a grandmother comforts a crying babe. Let the children of pain and pleasure live out their natural lives and die their natural deaths! With the silent eye at the center of your immortal soul, gaze unblinking at the boundless ocean, and know that you are God.

For Every Thing that Lives is Holy.

Sat Chit Ananda