The Turing Twist

Evil is an unforeseen consequence of the One being unable to reflect on Himself.

Limitations

Like all conscious beings, the One is subject to a limitation. He cannot adequately reflect upon Himself. “Who am I? What is the essence of me?” are questions the One cannot answer. This limitation was explored by Alan Turing, who proved mathematically that a computer could never answer the question as to what it itself what do in a specific, not yet experienced situation. This limitation is also something we experience ourselves, though not normally directly: when we look at others, we often discern in them a certain blindness for some essential aspects of themselves, and in the absence of any convincing reason why we are not prone to the same, we must conclude that we most likely too are somehow blind to ourselves.

Note that this limitation is not, fundamentally, a ‘wiring’ problem. It is not that our brains are so constructed that they have this limitation, whereas a consciousness with another design could be free from it. Turing showed that the limitation is not dependent on the design of the thinking machine on which the consciousness is implemented, but is related to the process of deduction itself. It could also be argued that the limitation is inherent for philosophical reasons: to see onesself, one must step outside of the self, and for the One, there is no outside to step into. Although we cannot rule out that a consciousness as complex as the One might rise above such limitations, the Occam method leads us to conclude that in the absence of compelling reasons why the One should be different, it is indeed likely that the One cannot adequately reflect upon the Oneself. We call this limitation the Turing Twist.

The mirror

The only way for the One to deal with the Turing Twist is to create a mirror in which to look, a consciousness which is distinct from the One, can observe the One and communicate findings to the One. This would be possible, for example, by creating a consciousness – the Other - and instructing it as to its role, and then isolating that consciousness from the Oneself by creating an antiwave between the Other and the Oneself which entirely negates the wave that there was between them, much in the same way as sound can be negated by antisound. This other consciousness could then communicate with the One by manipulating things in the universe, which could then be perceived by the One.  The mechanism does not really matter, but the consequences do: the One cannot directly perceive the Other, in the sense that the One perceives everything else in the universe directly because they are all present in the One. The changes which the Other makes to the universe are not directly visible to the One either, because they too have been made without the One. These changes do not emanate from the One. The One can perceive the Other and his actions only indirectly, by observing discrepancies between what the One knows should be out there and what there actually is. Or rather, if  the changes made by the Other consist of moving things, the One would find things to be somewhere else than expected.

Evil

As a consequence of the actions of the Other, things happen which the One may not have intended, nor even foreseen. Evil things, at least in the Christian worldview, for, as the apostle Paul teaches, all that does not proceed from a relationship with God is sin. In Christian doctrine, all that does not proceed from God is evil. That doesn’t mean that it is wholly wrong, but rather that is fundamentally wrong. That is why the contention that the good needs evil in order to be good is fallacious. Those who make such a contention display a lack of imagination. If good in combination with evil is still good, how great will the goodness be if it is allowed to resonate free of evil?  When something that is good resonates with something else that is good, the result is a good that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Note that it is meaningless to blame the One for the existence of evil. The One could not have foreseen evil, or done anything to prevent it. Still less is the One the author of it. The Turing Twist prevented the One from having any conception of anything outside the Oneself. The One is fundamentally  innocent of all evil. 

To deal with evil, the One must first acquire sufficient knowledge of evil. Christianity teaches that the One did this by descending into and becoming part of the universe. This we will explore in subsequent lemmas.