Refresher
Context is exactly weaving together things into a common framework.
I thought it would be better to invite a group of college students to help compact the ground, so to speak, for the GOD --> G0D change that Father Totti needs to make and justify in order to explain the mysterious burning of the Venn diagram.
The change from a letter to a number is a change like any other changes. The problem is that changes can occur randomly, or they could be perceived as being random; or they can be justified as being a consequence of some mechanism at work. Changes have also a magnitude -- there are big changes and there are changes that are too small to be even perceptible, but they can morph into the butterfly effect. And so, we ask the students to comment on this particular change:
Before: Milk, Cheese, Hammer
After: Milk_Cheese, Hammer
The change is the replacement of the comma with the underscore and the question is whether the change was likely random or not.
There is no way of telling unless there are more results. So after repeating the same Before/After change ten times, the result turned always the same: the underscore had replaced the comma between Milk and Cheese. This is statistically very significant outcome, and that means the choice for that particular replacement shouldn't be regarded as random. That also means that there is a very good reason to look for a cause that would justify the choice. That's also why we have those college kids on standby.
The general agreement among the college students was that the underscore had a function of connecting two words. In this particular case, the underscore pondered two options to make the change and based its criterion of choice on a relationship between words according to their meaning. For example, milk and cheese are dairy products, but the hammer is not; milk and cheese are usually found in the fridge, whereas the hammer likes to live in the toolbox. In other words, Milk and Cheese have more things in common than Cheese and Hammer.
But differences may not be always apparent. Let's test the 'comma --> underscore' change once again:
Before: Milk, Cheese, Yogurt
After: Milk Cheese_Yogurt
The ten times repetition showed that on each occasion the underscore connected Cheese and Yogurt. But that's strange, coz all three items are dairy products that also share a common place: the refrigerator. Of course, all three items look different, but does the difference warrant the same result as it was the case with Milk, Cheese and Hammer? In the previous example, Hammer was excluded 10 times, mainly because it is not a dairy product. How come that Milk has been also excluded 10 times from the population of dairy products? That doesn't figure. That's why we have the college kids on standby to provide the necessary assistance in the figuring.
After some inconclusive deliberation involving molecular characteristics of fermentation and so on, Natasha suggested to take the three dairy products from the fridge and do some lab tests. But the fridge was empty. What happened?
What happened to the Milk?
Someone has DRUNK it.
Where is the Cheese?
Someone has EATEN it.
And where is the Yogurt?
Someone has EATEN it too.
It became clear what the consistent choice was based upon. A
host took over and became the criterion of choice when the dairy products characteristics were not clearly separable to warrant a near-consistent choice. The host took on the form of VERB_NOUN association: Drink Milk, Eat Cheese, Eat Yogurt. Through this association, the characteristic of the dairy products has been extended non-locally and became the criteria under which the choice has been made:
Before: Milk, Cheese, Yogurt
After: host(Drink, Eat_Eat) => Milk, Cheese_Yogurt
The role of the host is to provide a comprehensive extension of the properties so the differences necessary to tell things apart become apparent. ( Drink<>Eat=Eat.)
The term "host" may have a synonym in "a reason that is not apparent but logical to become the criterion of choice."
In order to get closer to the monastery and Father Totti, we can use the host to explain a hard-to-account-for difference between a sample of students from two colleges. We randomly select 100 students from college A and the same number of students from college B. The null hypothesis says that there will be no difference in the performance of both groups when they be presented with the "Underscore Test." Their task is to replace one period with an underscore, which has a function to relate the expressions:
Before: I am Alpha and Omega, I am the First and the Last, I am the Beginning and the End.
After: ?
Let's make an example of what is being meant by using a related example:
Before: I am Alpha and Omega, I am the First and the Last, I am the Walrus.
After: I am Alpha and Omega__I am the First and the Last, I am the Walrus.
(There are lots of quick choices made that are intuitive and correct as well . . .)
The result from the students that attend college A showed that the choice leaned toward 'I am Alpha and Omega__I am the First and the Last' with no statistical significance in the difference, and we expect no statistically significant difference in the result provided by the kids from college B. But there was a huge difference: 87 respondent out of 100 chose the 'I am the First and the Last__I am the Beginning and the End' option.
Those 87 students from college B had to use a pretty clear criterion of choice to make the result statistically very significant -- something that the students from college A couldn't see. But what was it?
If you investigate the ways Nature makes choices that cause changes, like the evolution of species, it won't reply to your questions -- you need to form theories. But in this case, we can ask those 87 students what was the reason for such surprising result that killed the null hypothesis of no difference.
There were only 7 students who gave a different reason for their choice. The rest -- 80 students -- used identical reasoning, which was this: The statement comprises three parts that form one category, namely a class called "Opposites." Unfortunately, the class doesn't have apparent subclasses, like the class of mammals does, and that makes it very difficult to spot a difference within the class. Under this condition, a statistically significant outcome is very unlikely. But the nature of the class -- Opposites -- may be favorable to the process of differentiation. Let's say that the choice to replace one comma out of those two by using a non-random choice is difficult. But the opposite of "difficult" is "easy." Is it possible to smuggle "easy" into the process of the decision making?
Actually there was a chance to do so -- there was a chance based on a comparison of opposites:
Right is to Difficult as Left is to Easy
Why is there this particular comparison and what would that accomplish?
Well, the statement that comprises three parts separated by commas always starts with "I am." That means someone can be credited with the statement. That someone would appear on the left side of the statement and serve as the
host
Host (said): I am Alpha and Omega, I am the First and the Last, I am the Beginning and the End.
Unlike the students from college A, the students from college B could make the necessary comparison to identify the host: The statement is very similar to what
Revelation 22:13 says. By defining the host as God, the statement now has two parts: one on the left(easy) of the colon and the second on the right(difficult):
God: I am Alpha and Omega, I am the First and the Last, I am the Beginning and the End.
It's apparent that the statement can be divided into three separate statements G, o, and d:
G: I am Alpha and Omega
o: I am the First and the Last
d: I am the Beginning and the End.
Having done that, the easy part is around the corner:
Before: G, o, d
After: G, o_d
As long as there is a difference between upper-case and lower-case letters, 'o_d' is justified. It will now "pass the reference" when we switch back from the parallel to the serial observation:
G, o_d: I am Alpha and Omega, I am the First and the Last_ I am the Beginning and the End.
And that concludes the example of the function of the host, which enables a group of respondents to make a strong (statistically significant) justifiable choice when nothing else works. The students from collage A -- The James Randi College -- obviously couldn't make any justifiable choice, unlike those bright kids from college B -- The Blessed Cloud College.
'Scuse me. Where can I find Father Totti?
I think he's in the garden.
This was all clear to Father Totti. But he had to go further and make more decisions. For example, does Revelation 22:13 works the same with Dio(Italian) and God(English)? It can actually work the same with Joe or any other host whose name has three letters . . .
God is said to be omniscient and that means He can't be at the same time stupid. He needed to resolve that problem before knocking on the island cave where John -- the dude who wrote The Book of Revelation -- lived.
Father Totti decided to turn the three-part statement in Revelation 22:13 into the "unlike any other" test. With the presence of the host, the text would look like this:
God: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.
Then he separated the "unlike any other" option from the rest and reorganized the lines:
G_________? = I am the Alpha and the Omega
Now it became apparent to Father Totti why God used the specific opposite as the first:
G(reek letters) = Alpha and the Omega
The true statement above rendered the Italian word Dio dysfunctional for the purpose, coz "Greek" means "Greco" in Italian, and 'D' doesn't equal 'G'.
The Heavens gave it a rest for a day but were planning a frontal assault on Father Totti's gray matter the next day. The Heavens still got a job to do: to bring to Father Totti's mind the awareness of the switch from a letter to a number; the GOD --> G0D switch. The strategy was simple and based on the whole enchilada called "context": Zero is a number, so in order to bring about the subject of zero inside G0D, Father Totti's mind had to be turned toward numbers. The context became available with the publishing of the Geneva Bible featuring numbered chapters and verses.
Before: (Revelation 22:13) = ( I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End).
After: Revelation 22:1(3) = ( I am the Alpha and the Omega), (the First and the Last), (the Beginning and the End.)
But would Father Totti be able to notice this 3=3 coincidence to get even started?
Well, his very ancient predecessors had been already roaming what is today Southern France before the "out-of-Africa" hordes invaded. So there is a good chance that he cracks the mystery of the burning Venn diagram soon.
Next: Just another text.