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February 19, 2006
Alchemy for the Braindamaged
I just discovered Alchemy for the Braindamaged which just posted an utterly brilliant piece on brain change. Most intelligent thing I've read on the subject in over a year. And it's only the most recent in a series of 16 posts on the subject. Here's a teaser:
This ability is a function of the frontal or conscious mind, as it deals with constructs of linear time. The subconscious mind cares nothing for time. To the subconscious mind only the present moment exists. Even when it draws experience from the past or future, that experience is considered to be in the present moment. It cannot distinguish between an image and the reality.
But anyway. It seems like this ability to project trends is growing in the human race, both as we develop greater skill in recognizing patterns and greater ability to abstract beyond the present moment and take in a bigger picture.
And here’s the funny thing: because we can use that ability to tap into wildly extrapolated future states, it provides the subconscious mind with an avenue for plausilby accessing experiences that we might otherwise not dare to do.
Technology not a sufficient cause for optimism? Extrapolate it forward twenty years and imagine yourself as a transhuman demigod exploring space. There’s a headrush for you, and because all you did was plug things that are really happening into your future conjuring algorithm, it must be true. your subconscious mind buys it.
Disenfranchised with the present? Track the rates of oil extraction, ecological destruction, and population growth into your curve generator and shudder in terror, or else gasp in ecstasy that the hated world that is, is on the way out.
Same function either way. You’re utilizing a hypnotic principle called time distortion. If you can trick a person into visualizing an outcome, then their subconscious mind treats it as it were already happening and they don’t resist it. All you did was provide the raw data and the timeframe. So if you carefully frame the data and the time frame you could make pretty much anyone accept pretty much anything.
With me so far? Now here’s the big whammy. If you’re really clever with this stuff you can generate what is known as a catastophic transition. You project some process so far into it’s future that it launches off the graph that use to measure it and into a completely unpredictable realm of behavior. The reason things like peak oil or the singularity pack such a punch is that they use mathematical trends to convince your brain that you’re going into a totally unpredictable transition state. You’ve been tricked into confounding your normal categories and definitions of things...
Later on it finishes with this"
You see how this works? First you have habits that involve no change, then habits that involve predictable positive change, then habits that predictably accelerate positive change, then habits that predictably accelerate the acceleration of positive changes, until the whole concept of time and change and scales of positive experience cease to bound your consciousness. Your personal singularity. Because, all due respect to Ray Kurzweil but we don’t need some fucking computer to jump the curve for us. We’ve got the equipment right now.
Posted by paul at February 19, 2006 04:00 PMhmm... was your finding this piece in your current dilemma pure coincidence?? HOPE!
Posted by: vegenaut at February 19, 2006 04:27 PM***VERY*** Interesting. See, Paul, *THIS* is what I mean...YOU, dear colleague, come-up with all this super-interesting and super-valuable stuff. Thanks for turning me (*us*) onto this...(more to come, after I read more of it sufficiently to comment intelligently...)
Posted by: MCP2012 at February 19, 2006 04:32 PMVery exciting and interesting read. Thanks.
Posted by: eventhorizen at February 19, 2006 08:43 PMMCP is hitting the nail right on the head man. As I am bringing people into contact with future technology on my own blog, you just enriched my life a little bit by showing me this.
I'm gonna have to reread it before it will make sense to me, I think. But something tells me I'll be just a little bit better off than I was before I got it.
Posted by: Jay at February 20, 2006 04:25 AMHot damn ! that was brilliant. Thanks for sharing, Paul.
Posted by: Upwinger at February 20, 2006 06:44 AMIndeed, very provocative. Thanks for bringing this site to my attention.
There is a magickal technique I've been toying with (as is often the case, it's also a powerful marketing/propoganda technique).
Essentially, you speak of the futre as if it's already real, framing your personal vision as it's own realization. Write your fiction as truth.
Example: "When nanotech is realized and every home has it's own fab assembler that churns waste substrate into food, clothing, tools, medicine, or any other substance one might need, the entire economy of scarcity and competition will completely disappear. Without scarcity peace will prevail, leisure time will be universal, and the human mind will be free to create its wildest dreams while hurtling through the cosmos at light speed, off to explore distant star systems."
Of course, this flies in the face of many materialists and rational types (Foools!) who insist that data and algorithms are necessary to effectively extrapolate future scenarios. But algorithms don't make the future, people do. If you can convince enough people to believe your future, than it will likely come true in large degree. (In fact, i'd argue that common sense and rationalism is exactly to type of thing that PREVENTS utopic futures from being realized, like when your parents told you to forget about being an astronaut and focus on something more practical and secure, like accounting).
Example:
Witness Gibson's cyberspace. IT WILL HAPPEN because the narrative was evocative enough and compelling enough to get enough minds acting to make it true.
Posted by: lvx23 at February 20, 2006 08:29 PMFrom the site:
Now change the exercise a little bit, because no human being is truly static. You are not a simple equation. As time goes on you do not simply continue at the same rate. Whatever you invest in right now is what you are getting better and better at. If you invest in negativity, rigidity, fear and toxicity, you can look forward to an exponential swirl down into the recycling bin. Life is cheap and the biosphere is never short of human beings. If you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem.
Posted by: lvx23 at February 20, 2006 08:45 PMwell thankyee kindly for the props. It's gratifying to to see different online scenes come into an enriching contact of this sort.
the series sort of grew out of wanting to explain magick and brainchange to a audience of conspiracy and parapolitically minded gnostic paranoids, and i felt sure it would reach a wider readership in good time. thanks again. I can use the traffic since my move to wordpress, but the old site reamins as an archive.
enjoy as you will.
Posted by: zac at February 20, 2006 08:51 PM