Problems with understanding sameness and difference

[StarStruck]

I get the general understanding. Already contemplated about it for several hours. Where I get stuck is when I apply sameness/difference to systems. Why do systems exist? The purpose of a system is to differentiate itself from its environment but how can I apply sameness on systems? All systems are connected to each other so is the universe just one big system? If no, this is the point where I’m stuck. If yes, does a system not require it to be rational?

[PlayTheGame]

This is my theory:

It is an Infinite system, but every system has inputs and outputs.

Reality as a system is its own input and output. <- This statement is an irrational statement. So no reality is not rational.

[Leo Gura]

Of course reality as a whole can be thought of as one system, but it's also made up of an infinite number of smaller sub-systems. You can compare different sub-systems to find commonalities which helps you understand them.

[Hello from Russia]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Of course reality as a whole can be thought of as one system, but it's also made up of an infinite number of smaller sub-systems. You can compare different sub-systems to find commonalities which helps you understand them.

I double this. I found it super fruitful to contemplate common things between different systems or just things in abstract.

For example, I used to be super good at competitive (and non-competitive for that matter) videogames when I was young ( I don't play anymore). To make it more relatable, some examples are I was 2800 2x2, 2700 3x3 in WOW Arena (1-2 years of playing), 0.01% of ladder in euw League of legends (d1) and challenger in my local server. Legend rank in heartshone, and was competing on a high level generally in many other less known games (I love Civ5 multiplayer a lot!). I sort of cracked the code and was able to become one of the best players at any games I decided to play very quickly. I learned super fast. 

So, i made an analysis of what made me so successful and interconnected it to how I can transfer these things into now my business life and other career (as a designer). And that helped me a lot there. I think that I learn 5-10x faster both in design domain and in business domain than most people. So here is an a beneficial example.

P.S. If you're curious, one of the most important factors for me was creating good environmental and mental systems for myself. I really cared about keybinds, ergonomics and ui a lot, so everything is super convinient (So I have a nice infrastructure). Then I really cared about my mindset and what mental models\framework I used to play and improve in the game. Also I really cared about learning from the best players, not just some random dudes. Then, when I had more focus - things were a lot faster. Now, even though, I achieved pretty good achievements in those games (top 0,01% and so forth), I actually regret not being more focused in my pursuits. I think if I had more focus I could go to even higher levels and become even more top. That is what was my bottleneck, I think (although, I'm sure I still was focusing better than most people in games, don't get me wrong). Then - focusing on fundamentals. When you focus on fundamental elements of your skill instead of wasting your time on things that don't matter - you grow really fast. It's basically the theory behind fast-learning in a nutshell, which I am a huge fun off. Also, I've almost always had a sort of humble attitude and a "beginner" mindset, always open-minded to learn something new, even when I already achieved a top 1% status in the game.

So, these skills help me a lot in what I do now. Interestingly enough, bad things transfer too. It's all psychological, really. Basically, what made me NOT go even further than 0.01% a lot of times hold me back in my current activities as well. The biggest one is focus, really. I used to dabbble in various niches of design which costed me a lot of time and missed opportunity, because in business it's not how it works. You have to become an expert and leverage your very focused positioning, not being the master of all trades, so to speak. So, now again, when I focus my efforts, I see almost exponential results and everything starts to go very smoothly, opportunities come, etc. Now I am much more aware of all this, so I have more control. Also, there are various emotional problems, which I don't want to far into here because the post is already very long. Basically, at this point, I am convinced that what stops the most people from getting to their goals or getting to a higher level in life (or in a certain aspect of life) is their psychology and mindset. Not opportunities, meta, politics or any stuff like that. There seem to have a lot of layers to it, because, for example, in games, I think I had a pretty good psychology compared to most people. But my psychology wasn't really the psychology that rank 1 people had. No way I could become the same or better than them with the same belief systems\mindset. So, here is what I mean by layers.

P.S.S I hope my post will help some of you to see the practical possibilities of contemplation and maybe get some more motivation to do it. Contemplation is a really powerful tool, it is super high leverage for what it does, meaning it yields super asymmetric returns (less effort => more effect, compared to other techniques\methods).

Edited April 7, 2020 by Hello from Russia

[StarStruck]

There are requirements to call something a system:

1. Every system has a purpose

2. different sub parts and elements have an inter connection, and move towards a common purpose 

3. System operates in a context/external world (which creates duality) and has boundaries 

So is the universe a system? We can tick of the first two boxes but the last box we can’t tick off. The universe is non-dual.  The universe simply doesn’t meet the requirements to be called a system.

I mean we still can use systems thinking to make sense of the smaller parts but if we want to integrate every sub part, look at the big picture, the system becomes the context (Environment) and the context becomes the system. I don’t know if you still can call it a system. According to literature that is not a system. 

It is a loop and that is what the universe is, and what it makes infinite. It means it has no boundaries. I think if we call it a system we do it injustice by creating a duality.  

Edited April 7, 2020 by StarStruck

[StarStruck]

@Hello from Russia

That is funny. I had the same thing with a very simple game called slither io.

It is a multiplayer game, in the game you are little snake, and eat food to become bigger. 

There are other snakes who want to cut you off and kill you so they can feast on your body. 

One technique you can use is to make a loop (infinity) with the snake’s body so nobody can cut you off. But you can’t stay in that loop for ever because you need food. 

I think meditation is like doing infinite loop as a snake so the outside environment can’t cut you off. I used this technique to stay concentrated.