[‘Rev’ is one of the most interesting voices on Twitter, and states something very clearly and precisely here]
The classical Daoists were known for turning their attention to nature. Xunzi specifically condemns Zhuangzi for this.
(1) St. Rev. Dr. Rev ⏭️☯️🏴😻 on X: “This is a huge digression, but I want to expand something that I usually only hint at, which I think is very important. So bear with me for a minute. The classical Daoists were known for turning their attention to nature. Xunzi specifically condemns Zhuangzi for this.” / X
Key parts of the tweet thread for the record:
The classical Daoists were known for turning their attention to nature. Xunzi specifically condemns Zhuangzi for this. But the word ‘nature’ is connotatively misleading, particularly for modern westerners. If we translate it instead as ‘reality’, we can see early Daoism as containing a particularly relentless focus on empiricism.
“Empty your mind and turn to nature” sounds like hippie bullshit. Reframe it as ‘discard your preconceived model and just fucking pay attention to what’s going on without imposing what you think is happening’, and it’s something else entirely.
…
The point is, reality never stops spinning away from our beliefs about it. It’s a lesson that one has to constantly re-learn. It’s hard to hold onto it, it’s a lot of work to keep breaking out of one’s frame.
Reality doesn’t care. It will keep spinning away from you, forever. (There’s a technical sense in which this can be made somewhat precise: living systems should be expected to periodically move near fixed points with positive lyapunov exponents along undetected variables)
(Translated: as long as you’re alive, you should expect to be periodically surprised by blowups from directions you hadn’t noticed before — because a positive lyapunov exponent looks like a negative one in the rear-view mirror)
So if you want a long life, you must ‘attune yourself to nature’, in the practical sense of ‘fucking pay attention and don’t let yourself fall into the trap of imposing your predictions onto the data’
This may sound trite, but it’s really fucking hard. It is. Not forcibly interposing your beliefs between your eyes and the rest of the world is a constant struggle, but when you stop doing it, you start to die.
Reality doesn’t care one way or the other. “Heaven and Earth are not humane. They regard all things as straw dogs.” Reality will always spin away from you. That’s just what it does. Act accordingly.
Rev
Lyapunov Exponent
“In mathematics, the Lyapunov exponent or Lyapunov characteristic exponent of a dynamical system is a quantity that characterizes the rate of separation of infinitesimally close trajectories.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyapunov_exponent
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/lyapunov-exponent
And an Arxiv: Important Notes on Lyapunov Exponents – Keying Guan
Abstract: It is shown that the famous Lyapunov exponents cannot be used as the numerical characteristic for distinguishing different kinds of attractors, such as the equilibrium point、 the limit closed curve、the stable torus and the strange attractor.
Systems Community of Inquiry 