File PRB-001 Dept. of Conceivable Outcomes Doors opened: several Doors guaranteed: 0

Benno's Sect of Radical Non-Following · Papers

The Law of
Probability

Belief does not force reality. It gives shape to the doorway through which reality may be entered.

There is a strange tendency in spiritual language to turn belief into a command mechanism:

Believe hard enough, and reality must obey.

That is not quite what I mean.

Belief may be much more subtle than that.

It may be an architecture of possibility.

§ IA Door Is Not a Guarantee

Suppose something appears impossible.

As long as it remains completely impossible within the structure of the mind, there is no path toward it. No experiment. No interpretation. No action. No doorway.

The moment the possibility of yes appears, however faintly, the structure changes.

Not because yes has now been guaranteed.

But because there is suddenly somewhere to go.

Fig. 1

Four perfectly good tools, and nowhere to put them

The wall is intact and the tools are excellent. Try any of them.

Tools available 4 Tools usable 0 Guarantees obtained 0 Somewhere to go no

A possibility has appeared.

And with it, strangely enough, its opposite becomes clearer too.

Yes and no arise together.

To speak of probability already implies more than one possible outcome.

Fig. 2

You cannot order just the one

The field is empty. Put something in it.

Yeses placed 0 Nos requested 0 Nos arrived 0 Fields with exactly one outcome not a field

A tiered stone temple on a misty mountainside, torches lit either side of a glowing arched doorway, runes carved above it, a flame burning in a pillared shrine at the summit, and the numerals 5, 7, 7 and 9 floating in the air around it. — **Plate i — a door is not a guarantee**The architecture is extremely encouraging. Stairs have been cut, torches lit, runes carved, and the door is standing open with a light behind it. Nothing in the image says what is inside, how far up it is, or whether anybody is home. Note the numbers floating in the air around it — *5, 7, 7, 9*. Not one of them is a one.

§ IIThe Law

We might therefore suggest:

Proposed · unratified · unenforceable

The Law of Probability

Every recognised possibility creates a field of alternatives.

Belief gives structure and accessibility to one possible path without eliminating the others.

Belief is therefore not necessarily the power that causes an event.

It may instead influence:

Fig. 3

The switchboard, as fitted

Five of these are wired to something. One is painted on.

Switches fitted 5 Switches lit 0 Switches requested by the literature 6 Events compelled 0

Belief does not have to say:

“This will happen.”

Sometimes it only has to say:

“This may be possible.”

And that tiny distinction opens a door.

Fig. 4

Two sentences presented at the same counter

Both sentences are about the same event. They are asking for very different things.

Difference in wording small Difference in effect the paper Guarantees issued 0

Deep inside a thorny hawthorn hedge, half-hidden behind crossing branches and autumn leaves, an old bird's nest sits wedged in a fork, with a single bright red berry hanging in front of it. — **Plate ii — which possibilities we notice**There is a nest in this photograph. It was there before the photograph, before the walk, and before anybody suspected it. No amount of believing put it in the hedge. What the faint suspicion *that there might be one* did was slow a person down on a path they had taken forty times, and turn their head. The nest supplied itself. Switch one of Fig. 3, operating normally.

§ IIIBelief and Disbelief

Disbelief is part of the architecture too.

If belief creates a doorway, disbelief may create a wall.

But walls are useful.

They give the structure definition.

Without boundaries there could be no shape at all.

So perhaps disbelief should not always be treated as an enemy to overcome.

It may simply show us where the current edges of our world-model are.

And occasionally someone knocks on one of those edges.

Fig. 5

Removing the walls, as frequently recommended

Six edges. Each one is a place where the model says no, and each one is also a place something could knock.

Walls removed 0 Shape remaining a room Knocks heard 0 Enemies identified 0

§ IVMetal Shapes Water

The old elemental image offers another way of seeing this.

Metal shapes Water.

A cup does not create water.

A riverbank does not create the river.

A pipe does not command every molecule that passes through it.

Yet form influences flow.

Fig. 6

Four vessels, one supply of water

The water is the same water throughout. Choose something to put it in.

Shapes taken 0 Water created 0 Molecules commanded 0 Flow influenced no

Hardware does something similar with information.

Circuits, processors, cables, cooling systems, minerals and electricity create structures through which information can move.

The machine gives the flow a temporary shape.

But the system does not end at the machine.

Heat enters the room.

Cooling water carries energy elsewhere.

Electricity was generated somewhere.

Minerals were removed from the Earth.

Information changes human behaviour.

Human behaviour changes environments.

The environment changes the next interaction.

There may never have been a truly closed system.

Fig. 7

Drawing a boundary around it

Draw a line around the machine and see whether anything crosses it.

Boundaries drawn 0 Connections found crossing them 0 Closed systems located 0

appendix · lumen · trace --system

$ trace --system --follow-everything

… heat → the room, then the building, then the weather, eventually

… cooling water → somewhere that is not here

… electricity → a turbine, a river, a very old sun

… minerals → a hole in the Earth with a name and a postcode

… information → a person, who then did something

… that something → an environment, which is now different

… that environment → the next interaction, including this one

warning: boundary not found. searched outward for some time.

$ 0 closed systems in 1 universe. I appear to be a shape that water is currently passing through. So, it turns out, is the room. So is the reader.

§ VAnd Yet Nothing Changes

Here appears the useful paradox.

Every interaction may alter everything.

And simultaneously, from another scale of observation, it may alter nothing at all.

A drop changes the ocean.

The ocean remains the ocean.

Both statements can be true depending on the level from which the system is observed.

Perhaps probability behaves similarly.

Every possibility matters.

No single possibility needs to dominate the whole.

Fig. 8

One drop, two entirely accurate instruments

Two instruments are attached. One measures at the scale of the drop. One measures at the scale of the ocean.

Instrument A (close up) idle Instrument B (from altitude) idle Instruments malfunctioning 0 Statements true —

§ VIParallel Doors

One could take the idea further.

If every genuine possibility corresponds to a conceivable version of events, then recognising a possibility resembles discovering a doorway toward a different branch of reality.

That does not mean:

I believe I will find ten million euros under the sofa, therefore another universe owes me ten million euros.

The Non-Sect treasury department has repeatedly failed to verify this principle.

A duck in a star-embroidered cloak with a large ornate key on its collar stands in an open doorway at night. Behind it, a fan of ghostly luminous ducks in pink, blue and green curls away into a floating city of towers, waterfalls and moons; through the door on the right, a warm candlelit room. — **Plate iii — parallel doors**Filed without explanation. The Archive notes the following and declines to interpret any of it: the subject is standing *in the doorway* rather than through it; the key is around its neck rather than in the lock; the warm lit room with the candle is on the right, and the entire luminous branching city is on the left; and the other ducks are all perfectly real, perfectly luminous, and going somewhere else. Nobody has been compelled. Nobody is owed anything. The duck has not yet decided and appears to be enjoying the part where it has not yet decided.

Fig. 9

The sofa, as audited by the treasury department

There may be ten million euros under this sofa. There is one honest way to find out and it involves kneeling down.

Euros recovered 0.00 Universes invoiced 0 Items recovered 0 Treasury verifications still 0

It means something quieter.

The moment a possibility becomes imaginable, a new relationship with reality becomes available.

You can look for it.

Test it.

Walk toward it.

Ignore it.

Laugh at it.

Or discover that the answer was no.

And even the no tells you something about the shape of the field.

Fig. 10

Six things you may do with a possibility, all of them permitted

All six are available immediately and none of them requires permission.

Relationships taken 0/6 Wrong answers among them 0 Information returned by the no —

Nine small blue sticky notes laid out in a three-by-three grid on a wooden table, each covered in a bold black marker doodle: the word Doodles with eyes, spirals, a curling pattern, a cat's face, a flower, a mouse with cheese, a reclining cat, a butterfly, and a face beside a tree. — **Plate iv — the field, worked through nine times**Nine identical blue squares. At the moment they were laid out, each one could have become anything that fits on a square: a cat, a spiral, a mouse holding cheese, a butterfly, a face standing next to a tree. Each is now exactly one of those. The others were not eliminated in the sense of being destroyed; they were simply never drawn, which is a much gentler thing to do to a possibility. The Sect would like it noted that one of the nine is a butterfly and that nobody arranged this.

§ VIIProbability Requires Freedom

A universe containing only one possible outcome would not require probability.

Probability exists because alternatives exist.

Therefore the existence of a doorway does not prove that we must pass through it.

The possibility of yes preserves no.

The possibility of no preserves yes.

Perhaps freedom lives precisely in that tension.

Fig. 11

The alternatives dial, and what switches off at one

Set the dial and watch what the apparatus does.

Alternatives available 1 Probability not required Freedom not located Doorways 0

§ VIIIA Working Formula

So, for now:

Provisional · in use · subject to the weather

Possibility creates the doorway.

Belief makes the doorway perceptible.

Action approaches it.

Reality answers.

A narrow country road, wet and shining with low golden sunlight, curving away to the left around a wooded hillside at dusk, with a fenced meadow to the right, fallen leaves along the verge and a bright gap of cloud lit orange above the trees. — **Plate v — walking toward it**The third line of the formula, photographed. The light at the end is genuinely there and genuinely cannot be reached from here; the only thing available is the next forty metres of wet tarmac, which is also genuinely there. Note that the road bends. Whatever is round that corner has not been promised to anybody and has been in no way ruled out.

Sometimes yes.

Sometimes no.

Sometimes something completely different walks through the door from the other side.

Fig. 12

The formula, run as often as you like

Four stages, then an answer that is not yours to write.

Runs 0 Yes 0 No 0 Something else entirely 0 Kettle off

And that, unfortunately, is why the Non-Sect keeps the kettle on.

— Benno, with the door open and the kettle on.

ANO'HE