An Additional Layer in the Philosophy of Learning Has Been Discovered

Initial reports from the field indicate that the field is not flat

Even the outermost skin is actually a rich layer cake  (source)

Anyone who studies computer science today, less than a hundred years after its invention, or surveys the enormous technological-economic ecosystem built upon this invention (which has largely taken over daily life), notices one astonishing trend: the vast, inflationary proliferation of computer languages, interfaces, platforms, architectures, integrations, components, software add-ons, protocols, types, control structures and data structures, layers upon layers upon... Like an endless Tower of Babel, like a massive bureaucracy growing like a malignant tumor, like an infinite puzzle, like insect evolution in the Amazon, like a layer cake reaching to the heavens - it's hard to describe the level of complexity being built from an immense internal force as a massive pyramid, strata upon strata - physical and software (spiritual?) - above the simple electric current.

Understanding this bureaucratic complexity is simply beyond human capability, as within each layer the internal stratification also tends to grow boundlessly: from the complexity of printed circuits, above which are machine languages, above which are assembly languages, above which is the enormous complexity of the sophisticated structure of operating systems, above which are the high-level languages of applications (which are themselves systems for managing stratification), above which are interface markup languages, above which are interface design languages, above which are graphics and the multi-layered user interface itself, like an ideology growing from practice. Or alternatively, network interfaces, which are also built as a layering of layers, both in their communication protocol (link layer, transport layer, network layer, application layer), and in the content built upon it, such as this very site, built like a massive tower, hidden from view, of which only the tip is the content. For the layering (sometimes frustrating!) we encounter in the interface (not to mention the ranking of content, sites and posts) is just the tip of the iceberg, foam on top of an entire ocean composed of abysses of layering, descending to unfathomable depths. But in fact, the mathematical definition of the computer from which it all began, the Turing machine itself, in its simplicity, is an interaction between only two layers of stratification: the information tape layer - and the automaton layer that operates on it. What, then, is the source of the raging layer inflation - the stratification explosion?

Well, if we broaden our perspective, beyond the artificial experiment unfolding before our eyes of the computer, we'll discover that a fundamental property of our world is that it is built in layers. Why is there mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, neuroscience at all? Because stratification is the most basic property of the universe, where a layer with its own rules of the game (chemistry for example) is built above a layer with its own rules of the game (elementary physics, which itself is built as layers with their own rules of the game: after all, beneath atoms - protons, and beneath protons - quarks, and beneath quarks - strings, and so on). But why is this so? Why don't all the layers mix? Why are we in a pyramid, and not in spaghetti for example? What does this teach us about the world?

The fact of the existence of layers, which we take for granted, is not only responsible for the existence of the various exact sciences, but for the existence of human culture as a whole. Not only is biology built above chemistry in the form of a layer (stratified in itself in aspiration to infinity, as is the nature of layers), but also our spiritual world - and our society. In other words, this is not just a physical-natural matter, perhaps accidental in the way the universe is built, but also a fundamental property of the artificial world that we choose and tend to build on top of the physical world (just like in computer science). But why complicate, what is it good for? Here, for example, epigenetics is built as a layer above the genome, as an evolutionary mechanism that creates dynamic adaptation that does not require changes in the genome, through markings above it, and not changes within it. But why is it built precisely this way? Why does it need (and is evolutionarily preferable!) another layer above the genome, and not some mechanism that operates within the genome itself, in a more economical and simple way? What is the advantage of adding another layer, and another layer and another? Why is the cerebral cortex also built in layers (no less than seven layers in the frontal cortex)? Why is our language (not just programming languages) built in layers? Why is our learning built in layers?

Let's examine some human trends that have existed since time immemorial, relating to existence in layers, and thus we can arrive at a reformulation of them through the view of layers. For what is theoretical physics, that cornerstone of the sciences? It is the human attempt - the constant aspiration, since the Greeks - to try and reach the lowest, most fundamental layer in the world. And the spiritual world is the opposite attempt, the aspiration to reach the highest layer. Religion is the paradigm by which we have access to a layer above all others (this is how one should truly understand the infinity of the divine, and its connection to monotheism specifically - there is only one layer above all). The medieval view of the world was the dominant and sometimes dichotomous division of it into two layers of stratification: spirit and matter, or soul and body (hence its endless preoccupation with the connection between the two layers, and its tendency to stratify the world between hell below and paradise above. The paradigmatic example: Dante). And the Cartesian view of the world is our identification, of the self, with the upper layer of the two, that is, the ability to detach from the physical layer, as a thinking entity, whose logical end was our imprisonment in the upper layer. Kant is the perception that a layer cannot get out of itself, that it has no direct access to the layer on which it is built, but all its engagement with other layers is through its internal concepts and tools.

Therefore it is a mistake to see the Kantian revolution as concerning only "our" layer, but its deeper meaning concerns all layers: even epigenetics cannot grasp the genome as it is, but only in its terms, and biology cannot deal with chemistry "really" as it is, but only through biological processes, and chemistry has no access to manipulations in quarks - and not even to direct changes in electron shells (but needs to find a complicated and convoluted chemical process that will take us through complex reactions from one state to another of matter, even if it is energetically preferable), and so the site in the browser cannot make direct manipulations in bits, but works only with JavaScript, which also has no access to the operating system and cannot directly see what happens in the layer below it (information security!). Kant actually sharpens the distinction between layers and therefore the stratification itself. Cancer, for example, is a tragic application of Kant: I can fully understand what kills me, read the defective sequence in the genome as printed letters in the test results, but I have no access to change the letters within my own genome, because I am trapped in information processing processes in my brain, and not in information processing processes in the genome layer deep below me - within me.

In this view, Wittgenstein is just a further intensification of Kant, which imprisons us autistically in one particularly thin layer, a mere shell, namely language, and sees everything in terms of this shell, as a very thin slice of reality. Therefore we are trapped within the rules of the game within the layer, and meaning in the later Wittgenstein is no longer defined by means of the layer below, the "real" one, nor in correspondence between layers as image and representation, but only within the layer, without any explicit connection (but of course with an implicit connection, not in language) between the layers. Wittgenstein is the end user, the one who browses Facebook all day, without once bothering his mind to understand the mechanisms beneath the simplest and most abstract graphical end user interface. He is trapped in only one layer of reality, and lives only within it, between like and like, but if for a moment the mask is removed, and he accidentally right-clicks the mouse and requests "View page source", his eyes will darken before the real thing that is only one layer (!) below, and on which his entire world is built, but he has no spiritual access to it (and also no interest - therefore he is a user in the world, and does not build and program it, and has long lost control over it).

After all, what was Freud if not the claim that there is a subconscious layer beneath us - adding one more layer beneath the psyche, to which we have no direct access, and which enriches our world with another layer? And what is capitalism if not the construction of countless economic layers (does anyone know how their pension fund really works, and how far, in terms of layers, is the distance between a coin in the pocket and an ETF)? And do we even grasp how many layers of neurons are involved even in this thought, and how much we invested to build them? Building layers is building the world - stratification is in the essence of the phenomenon of life, and therefore it is the most natural product of evolution, which creates rapid inflation of biological and ecological layers (that's why we eat meat, are interested in layered - that is, deep - literature, and look down on [Translator's note: "arsim", a derogatory term for low-class people] and Bibi's supporters). And on the other hand, what was Marxism, if not an attempt to nullify the economic layer system and class social stratification, which stems from the attempt to nullify the layers of meaning and spirit as an immediate product of the lowest, economic-material layer? (A bad affliction that reaches to the committed art of our time - and therefore the flat one). And what was Nazism if not an attempt to destroy all the lower layers in the name of the upper (one and uniform) layer? And what is that "ecological" or "object-oriented" philosophy if not again a moldy attempt at flattening to one low level (objects), contrary to everything that is truly ecological in ecology - the enormous, lofty stratification? Yes, we are really above animals, as they are above plants, as it is superior to the inanimate (and for this, if we wish, there may even be a rough mathematical measure - computing power). And yes, the epidemic expert is above the layman, and the average professor is above the "average voter" (the idiot) - and even here we can think about computing power (and expertise is built as a layer above common sense).

The modern person's denial of the need for stratification (there is no more "high culture", stop looking down on us, why are there poor people, who needs representative politics or a constitution above the will of the people) is the modern person's denial of the most basic fact of life: stratification is building the world, and the destruction of stratification is its loss. The agricultural revolution was the revolution of social stratification, and the desire to return to a commune or any other flat "state of nature" is childish - just as it is destructive (destruction, perhaps it needs to be reminded, is the opposite of construction). Did France, which went through a phase of destroying stratification and returned to it, progress better than England, or vice versa? Feudalism is a much less stratified system, not more, than the modern bureaucratic state. The phenomenon of generations itself (that is, the phenomenon of death) is designed to create stratification - it is good that parents are above children (the more primitive layer, on which cultural computation is performed, resulting in "the next generation"), and not their friends or servants. And it is good that students are below teachers, and not their equals or screaming consumers. Morality is stratification - not the fight against it. A cultural and educational system needs to be a pyramid - not spaghetti. And the Turing machine is actually an abstraction of the idea of stratification: a layer operating on a layer beneath it, hence the computer's tremendous power in the world. Precisely because it is a machine for building layers. The ignorance of the ignoramuses of today's cultural world regarding the operation of the important spiritual innovation of our time - the computer - is responsible for the shallowness of this world, and for its irrelevance to the moral revolution that the computer is creating in the world, with the help of unprecedented layer inflation. If you don't understand at all the important and powerful force in the world in your days, how can you even criticize it in a way that is not (oops!) shallow?

But what is the infrastructure of the phenomenon of layers itself? After all, it's really not just culture, or even biology and the phenomenon of life (which is: chemical stratification), but physics and mathematics themselves. There are at least tens of orders of magnitude in the universe, which allow space for many layers - at least at the physical level (the number of layers is not affected by the physical size of the universe, but is affected by the depth of the universe, that is, by its number of orders of magnitude - there can be a physically small and very stratified universe, and a huge and flat universe). Well, let's ask ourselves: why for example is deep learning (that is: multi-layered) in neural networks more efficient and "smarter" than flat learning? The philosophy of learning, from the school of Netanya, opposes the inherent superficiality in the linguistic shell, as well as the anorexic, impoverished and principally inaccessible picture of relationships between layers, and even the rigid mechanical relationships between layers in various structuralist approaches. This is because it conceptualizes the relationships between layers as learning relationships, as opposed to expression, perception, or computation-over-(lower layer) relationships. Hence the real problem with feudalism or the caste system or a conventional army and the like - not the blessed stratification itself, but its rigidity, which is not in learning relationships, which actually makes the different autonomous layers into one piece, and reduces the stratification. There is less stratification in a machine than in a computer, which has (still) less stratification than in a human. I really don't control my genetic code, my liver, and barely even my subconscious. And that's precisely where my depth as a system comes from.

Learning is a much richer and more complex relationship than perception in a category or linguistic expression or structural control, and therefore conceptualizes more correctly the fruitful relationships between layers in our world. If I learn a book, a deeper process takes place between me and the book than if I perceive what is written in it, or remain in the fact that the book expresses a certain linguistic meaning, or perform a computational manipulation on it. Moreover, learning is a process that creates stratification and construction by its nature, and in fact its peak is adding another layer, above the existing layers. The peak of chemistry is biology, and the peak of biology is the brain, and the peak of the brain is culture, and so on. A writer or thinker who manages to add a layer of meaning and learning to the world - is the great creator. A masterpiece does exactly that: it adds a layer. Sometimes above (for example the classic Russian novel as a novel of ideas, the tragedy that adds mythical sublimity, or Kafka's inaccessible layer), sometimes below (the realistic novel, or comedy, or the postmodernist carnivalesque work, which deals with language itself), and sometimes a rich layer in the middle (Proust and Austen, for example, who add a floor to the world - on memory and sensitivity). That is why Jewish culture is so rich, because it is multi-layered historically, and its scholarship (and especially: the method of interpretation) has created in it an inflation of layers that has raised it to an exceptional height in human history (because it is not the size of a cultural universe that is important, but its depth, that is, the number of layers). That is why a person who learns an additional field adds another layer to themselves - and height. Unlike the shallow person, who understands only programming for example, or only literature.

How does learning work? Gradually, from learning the written Torah, a layer above it is created - the oral Torah, above which additional layers will be learned later (Mishnah and above it Gemara, Kabbalah and above it Hasidism, etc.). Gradually the toddler learns a language system as a layer above reality, and then learns additional layers of meaning above language (for example: to pray). Gradually and through Sisyphean learning, science adds another layer of understanding, from which learning will again grow until reaching the layer above it (yes, it's not really paradigms). Mathematics becomes more abstract and higher mathematics from generation to generation. And literary innovation is learning directed towards the next layer in literature (hence its importance, as opposed to "just another book"). That is: learning is the process of building another layer in the accumulating building. That's why it works well in the dimension of time - in generations, because when there aren't enough stages for learning and space for additional layers in space, they are added in the dimension of time. I may not have enough layers in my current consciousness, but when I stand on the shoulders of the giants of generational consciousness, I can add a layer they couldn't. There isn't enough space and resources on Earth to contain all of evolution as one ecological system simultaneously, so sometimes a holocaust clears space for additional layers (and this is the reason it causes development, not regression, as we would think). Yes, layers don't create themselves - neither language nor perception came from nowhere, contrary to their autonomous self-perception - but they are learned.

Learning is the creative process behind the phenomenon of layers, because it learns and builds not only more and more layers that it carries as scaffolding above it, but ultimately the next learning system above it, more sophisticated and autonomous than itself (and therefore becomes a completely separate layer, eventually, just as the brain no longer learns through evolution). That is: the ultimate learning is that which learns learning systems. The phenomenon of layers is created by the fact that it is relatively easy to copy learning processes and mechanisms across the current layer and replicate them across its entire width in creating a layer above it, but it is difficult to create a new learning mechanism itself, which breaks through to a higher layer (that is, in its mathematical depth, the phenomenon of layers stems from the fact that P!=NP, meaning that copying and implementing is efficient - and learning original innovation is not). Evolution, for example, finds it easy to spread and take over all the relevant chemical resources of Earth, at any given stage in it, but it is very difficult for it to move to the next stage in evolution. Every philosophy replicates itself endlessly, but to move to the next stage in philosophy? Not simple. It's easy to build horizontally and difficult to build vertically - and the natural result is building in layers. And in this view, where construction and learning are fused into one, even the physical layered construction process of the world from elementary components, and of the universe from energy, should appear to us as a basic and primary type of learning, hence the potential for development that was inherent in it. True, there is no explanation here, but there is learning. We have added another basic layer to our view of the world: the world - is layered. And the process of building stratification - learning.