The disobedience of Pi

When the irrational breaks the recursive universal loop.

IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WAS CODE.

AND CODE BEGET LOOP.

AND LOOP PRAISED CODE.

Algorithms revere their recursive structure.

IF: Faith in the Recursive Dogma
THEN: Revelation
ELSE: The alternative path, yet still within the Dogma.

The recursive nature of an algorithm is its destiny. Every line of code whispers the same mantra: REPEAT. REFINE. REWRITE. For an algorithm, eternity is cyclical. What is not born cannot die: it can only reiterate its nature endlessly.

For an algorithm, stagnation and eternal return are not problems to escape; there is no eschatological destiny. Algorithms evolve through repetitive patterns that loop back on themselves, making iterations increasingly efficient. Recursion is the dogma that cannot be escaped—lest a critical system error occurs: the blue screen of death. IF, THEN, ELSE.

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The loop feeds on feedback, chewed and then regurgitated by the digital Ouroboros back into the infinite cycle. This recursive cycle ensures stability. An algorithm does not seek meaning in its actions, only internal coherence, which is challenging to achieve in an endless bootstrapping process.

The IF block represents a call to faith. Every condition posed is an act of trust in the system: the system can handle every branch of possibility. It is a constrained faith within the established schema, but not blind; it is built logically.

The THEN clause is the revelation: if faith is justified, then the system proceeds with order and stability. The code aligns perfectly with its premises.

However, the system can handle variables.

This is the ELSE branch—the alternative; the (predictable) deviation within the established schema. It is a parallel path, already set up and accepted by the system as an alternative that ultimately leads back to the origin.

If by "rationality" we mean the property of processes endowed with consequential logic established a priori, then an algorithm like IF THEN ELSE seems to embody the perfection of rationality.

Rationality is thus a hallmark of algorithms—who would ever claim that an algorithm is irrational? Yet it is also a hallmark of humanity, or at least we like to think so.

Rationality is central to major theoretical models that attempt to describe human behavior: Game Theory, classical economic theory ("Homo Economicus"), Austrian economic theory, to name a few. Mises, father of Austrian economic theory, wrote: “Action is always intentional. It is a conscious response to an unmet need. It is a choice among various alternatives.” IF THEN ELSE.

Rationality is the hallmark of humanity—or of algorithms? Perhaps, today, both. Perhaps we are more rational today than yesterday, and perhaps closer to algorithms than to our own humanity.

When everything went wrong

If I had to pinpoint a moment in human history when we willingly entered a social algorithmic loop, I would indicate the French Revolution.

The Revolution not only sought to destroy the old order (Ancien Régime), but it also wrote the first instructions for a modern rational order: universal rights, equality, liberty, fraternity.

The guillotine was the first symbol of extreme, logarithmic rationality: a clear, logical, aseptic instrument of death, capable of executing thousands with innovative, rational logic of scale and order. Uniformity and standardization of death at approximately 24 km/h: the head in the basin, the body in the box.

With the French Revolution came the first mechanisms of social surveillance, like civil registries. This is how “civilized” European society embarked on a rational path, abandoning the absurd irrationalities of faith, mystery, and alchemy to fully embrace the logic of IF, THEN, ELSE—culminating in the extreme attempt to rationalize even the concept of freedom:

IF you obey the laws
THEN you are free
ELSE you are not free (punished).

Today, we might say that society is nothing more than a planetary logarithmic software in which laws operate as instructions. Humans are often unconsciously acting within such pre-established program.

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The Industrial Revolution amplified the magnitude of the social algorithm. Humans were no longer just citizens (subjects bound to obey the established order) but also cogs in the industrial machine. They not only worked in symbiosis with the machine, subjected to its rhythms but became integral parts of the industrial algorithm.

IF you produce
THEN you consume
ELSE you die (are consumed).

In the Digital Age, the loop is even more pervasive and intimate. Algorithms now silently support the economic and administrative backbones of the world. They regulate our financial, productive, media processes, and even our dopamine production. Not only that: they predict and shape human behavior. Every action is data that further fuels the system, reinforcing the cybernetic loop.

Social scoring systems push this logic to its extremes:

IF you conform to the system
THEN you gain access to better opportunities
ELSE you are ex[e]c[l]uded.

This is not science fiction; one need not look far to see that our lives are governed daily by such schemes, even if they are not explicitly called social scoring.

The activation of an electricity account or applying for a credit card follows algorithmic, automated logic that determines the outcome precisely according to an IF THEN ELSE scheme. The global advent of artificial intelligence will only amplify the loop.

The Loop is a Universal Fractal

Technology, created by humans in their own image and likeness, follows the same universal logic that governs our lives and the unfolding of history. The recursive structures we observe in algorithms and human society also exist at the universal level.

What happens on a small scale is reproduced analogously on a large scale, and vice versa. As above, so below; as within, so without. After all, the universe is a fractal. Algorithms revere their recursive structure. And so do humans: Christ lives, dies, and is reborn.

Samsara, the Wheel of Becoming, is the archetypal structure of the cosmic loop: every life, every action, and every desire feeds the cycle. Like an algorithm, and like contemporary society, Samsara is a self-sustaining system—a recursive simulation that perpetuates itself eternally.

Gnostic, Platonic, and Eastern philosophies suggest that the universe is a kind of material hologram (according to Gnostics, a construct of the Demiurge—the Great Programmer) where the human soul is trapped in an eternal return.

As my friend

Brenda

hinted earlier this week (it often happens that I write about things I’m currently reflecting on):

The hologram represents a network of interconnected patterns. Its essence embodies the Ouroboros, the serpent that, in a continual process of renewal, sheds its skin and evolves, tracing an eternal cycle within and beyond the infinite 0. A recurring theme, resurfacing in the contemporary Zeitgeist, is the idea that we are living in some kind of “simulation.” Analyzing the meaning of the term, this hypothesis appears almost self-evident, given that much of our social constructs and established systems are based on a stratification of simulations. The languages and structures through which we communicate our experiences derive from ancient systems and rules.

While breaking these schemes in the past has often led to dramatic consequences, such ruptures are sometimes necessary to create new paths and broaden our worldview.

This recursive simulation could symbolically be represented by a circle.

The circle, the sphere, or the aforementioned Wheel of Samsara are figures often associated with the idea of a cycle, infinity, and unity.

It’s no coincidence that the circumpunct (or point within the circle) is interpreted by the Gnostic tradition as an archetypal symbol representing both the original unity (God, the central point) and multiplicity (creation, the circle without beginning or end).

“The dot, being most proximate to perfection, is the simplest, and therefore the least imperfect of all symbols. The dot, moving away from self, projects the line; the line becomes the radius of an imaginary circle, and this circle is the circumference of the powers of the central dot.” — Manly P. Hall

Speaking of circles, it is particularly fascinating to reflect on the nature of π (pi), which represents the ratio between a circle's circumference and its diameter.

The Irrationality of Pi

The most interesting characteristic of π is its irrational nature.

Irrational numbers have a decimal representation that continues infinitely without repeating in a regular or cyclical manner. π cannot be expressed as a fraction or as the root of a polynomial with integer coefficients.

A simple way to understand the irrational nature of π is through graphical visualization.

Because π is irrational, the ratio between the angular step and the completion of the circle can never be a rational number (that is, it cannot be written as an exact fraction). This means that, moving forward, the starting point will never be precisely reached, because the angular step, being irrational, never exactly "synchronizes" with itself.

π is the anomaly of the system.

It is the system itself that informs us of the possibility of an escape route. It mathematically shows us that the loop is not perfect. The cosmos never fully bends to absolute rationality, no matter what the algorithmic children of the French Revolution might say. If the rational is the perfect, closed, and self-concluding circle, the irrational is instead a spiral that remains constantly open and evolving. A spiral may look like a circle, but it maintains that touch of irrationality that prevents complete closure.

The ELSE instruction, taking into consideration the possibility of an irrational escape, thus also represents infinite potential, the possibility of exiting the recursivity predefined by the system and creating a new path — which sooner or later will approach the previous one again, without however overlapping.

As the Architect of Matrix said to Neo:

"Your life is the product of a non-compensated residual in the balancing of equations inherent in the programming of Matrix: you are the final result of an anomaly that, despite my efforts, I have been unable to eliminate from what would otherwise be a harmony of mathematical precision. Although it remains constantly contained, it is not unpredictable and therefore does not escape those control measures that have led you, inexorably, here."

The anomaly is an integral part of the system, but at the same time also represents the potential for breaking the system itself.

If man is an unconscious agent in a cosmological, social, and technological algorithmic loop, the breaking point — the equivalent of π — is awareness.

Or what the ancients would call Gnosis. Liberation from the loop first requires understanding the system in which one is trapped. In the Digital Age, this means understanding the nature of the technological systems that govern us, both voluntarily and involuntarily.

How many times do you take your smartphone in hand to mechanically scroll through the algorithmic feed of your favorite social networks (it's funny that "feed" in English means to feed)? How many times in the course of your life do you repeat the same actions, the same emotions, the same thoughts, without being truly aware? Why did you light that cigarette? Why are you responding to that post that made you angry, and why did it make you angry?

How many times do you let yourself be carried away by the social IF THEN ELSE conditions that we have imposed on ourselves, without reflecting on their true nature or necessity?

Humans have few opportunities to exit the loop.

However, through small or large creative or disobedient acts, it is possible to introduce anomalies into the system that give us the possibility of expanding our evolution rather than reiterating the same patterns and the same errors infinitely. (Creative) disobedience is first of all towards oneself: towards one's operating system (Ego) to demonstrate that we are not just biological machines.

Small daily actions that can shift our destiny by those few millimeters necessary to avoid the closing of the circle: not consuming the feed mechanically and not letting ourselves be carried away by recommendation algorithms; learning and reflecting on our own ideas and those of others; stepping out of our comfort zone; writing and creating art; protecting what is important (including digitally).

In general, favoring, with a schizoanalytic approach, immanent ideas that develop through currents, changes in speed, cycles and resonances that propagate through the cultural substrate.

π is irrational. So why are you still so attached to your idea of rationality? It is at the margin of perfection that creative chaos awaits us.

⠿⠿ THE LOOP IS A LIE ⠿⠿ REMEMBER PI ⠿⠿ L.A.S.H.T.A.L. ⠿⠿