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Here's a starting point for some ideas about the Self that have been percolating in my skull for a while. This is a first pass at articulating some of these ideas...
What is the Self? The common understanding is that the Self is the psychological construct built up around the ego. It is the point of self-awareness, the image we have of our selves, and the surface on which we reflect the world around us. Trying to simply define the Self is difficult without using the word "self" - an example of it's recursive and slippery nature. We can say that it is the focus of I, or me. It is how we differentiate between the world of nature and the world behind our eyes. As a representation of biosurvival instincts bound up in the reptilian hind brain, the Self evaluates things & events and determines how they will affect us as individuals. In the human organism, instincts are abstracted up into the forebrain and bound to mental and emotional constructs. These abstractions into emotion, memory, and anticipation define the Self more completely but also make it more difficult to pin down. It is no longer simply the director of biosurvival but now ranges in the heights of cognition and the depths of psyche. All of our accumulated experiences contribute to our unique individual identity. From the Self we evaluate our past, direct the present and plan our futures.
But so far this examination of the Self neglects the true mystery and namelessness inherent within each of us. Yes, the Self is our uniqueness, our individuality, and the point of reflection, but what of the deeper, less tangible levels? It seems that as we drill further into the Self, it becomes less and less defined. The nearer we get to its root, the less we actually are as individuals. This is exhibited in the eastern meditative states of nirvana & satori where individual identity is sloughed off as the Self merges into the plenum of unity. At it's core, the Self seems contradictory to identity. Or rather, it becomes identified with something far greater and much smoother than the individual. It's like a raindrop falling into a pool of water. As it falls the drop is singular among many, distinguished from the other drops nearby. Striking the surface it is absorbed into the pool and its individuality as a drop is dissolved while simultaneously expanded to encompass the whole pool. Instead of reflecting the world from the outside of a small sphere, it reflects from the entire surface of the pool. As one delves deeper and deeper into the Self, more and more of creation is reflected on its surface.
Another way to look at the Self is as the initiator of free will. When you choose to move your arm across the table reaching for a glass of water, where does the initial impulse come from? This is the big stumper for neuroscience because we can only see the action potentials induced by the initiation, but there seems to be no recordable signature of the initiation itself. We can only measure the results of free will, not the impulse of will itself. The words I'm typing draw upon the contents of my memory, reflecting ideas and emotions, trying to converge on some greater meaning than just the sum of their parts. But what of the intangible inertia driving these threads of inquiry? What is the source of novel thought and ideation, the spark of creativity drawing something out of nothing? The Self, it seems, has its fingers in the quantum plenum, dipping its ladle into the stew of chaos to draw out the impulse of action.
If we accept the notion that the Self is a gradient moving between individual self-identity and unknowable unity, then we can examine the notion that it might be a direct link into the quantum plenum of probability. Our brains are, for all intents and purposes, finite. Our reductionist science has shown that thought and action are reflected in the firings of an innumerable array of neurons, differentiated and specialized to handle various tasks. This same science often suggests that the Self is an epiphenomenon of this vastly complex monkey brain. But the scales in which neurotransmitters function are nearing the quantum. The average vessicle of serotonin, for instance, is on the order of 400 angstroms across - a scale that begins to be affected by quantum uncertainty. Esteemed neurophysiologist John C. Eccles has noted that such a scale incurs an uncertainty of about 50 angstroms per millisecond. "It is therefore possible that the permitted range of behavior of a synaptic vessicle may be adequate to allow for the effective operation of the postulated 'mind influences' on the active cerebral cortex" (Eccles, 1970). In other words, free will may lie in the quantum uncertainty of neurotransmitters and their effects on neuronal firing. The brain is a malleable quantum device which may act as the conduit through which the Self creates. Whether the Self is an epiphenomenon of this quantum device or merely acts through it would seem irrelevant to this discussion. It is enough to say that there is a Self and it manifests within the quantum fields of neural networks.
Undeniably there is a Self and it does appear to exercise free will. Furthermore, the Self is creative and perfectly at ease drawing novelty out of a seemingly endless source of potential. So where is this endless source? It is the quantum plenum, the singular field of probability underlying all matter. It is the hologram of creation. All matter arises out of this field. At the subatomic level we understand that matter is formless, simply a dense soup of potential contained within a boundless point - a quantum wave function describing the probability of an event's occurrence. Heisenberg showed that observation is necessary to collapse the quantum wave function and cause possibility to undergo the formality of occurrence. The Self is clearly an observer capable of manifesting intent into reality, and it seems likely that it does so by tapping into the field of quantum probability.
The deepest function of the Self is, thus, as an interface with the quantum plenum. It is the locus of consciousness poised on the edge of the quantum wave function. Like Shiva, a blink of its eye can create and destroy worlds in an instant. Inversely, the Self might be likened to a valve through which the chaos of the Absolute flows into the mind, percolating through neural nets up into conscious awareness, modified by psyche and channeled through the human organism into action. Humans, it would seem, are indeed vehicles of god. Perhaps the margin between the Absolute and the Self is the residence of the Soul - the moment that divinity steps into matter, the wet grass of the Nile caught between the toes of Osiris...
If the Self is informed and driven by some link into quantum hyperspacetime, is it possible that hyperspace can be influenced by the Self? In other words, is it a two-way street? Clearly there seems to be some path of communication through such a portal. Telepathy, precognition, predictive dreams and psychic phenomena all seem to find explanation through quantum effects. The problem has traditionally been that neuroscience refuses to accept that quantum behavior can be extrapolated up into the classical realm. But clearly quantum effects go propagate upward otherwise there wouldn't be any matter at all. The complexities of a human brain could not exist without its quantum foundation. In our model thought itself is born out of the wave function and shaped by the higher levels of mind. Perhaps seemingly magickal, non-local events, influences, and communications between minds or between mind and matter might simply be a tunneling back out through the deep Self into the quantum plenum. Recent research has demonstrated non-local information exchange between paired particles. Mind is clearly capable of affecting brain chemistry on a very discrete level, so perhaps it can even encode spins for subatomic particles, given the appropriate conditions. At some point deep within the brain boundaries between Self and other dissolve into the field of quantum probability. When these boundaries fall, non-local effects could readily propagate throughout the entire universe.
Meditation, chanting, psychedelics, magickal techniques, and other methods can smooth out the gross self until the point of self reflection is at once non-existent and totally universal. In such states the interface between the individual and the universe nears identity, one mirroring the other. It is in such states when the barrier between the material plane of things and the subtle dimension of unity falls and information flows unhindered between the two. The creativity of the quantum plenum feeds the individual, and the energies of the individual feed the plenum. Like life and death, it is this flow, the oscillation between manifest and unmanifest, that pushes life ever forward into novel creations. The Absolute observes its Self through the eyes of creation. The human sense of self is a fragment of the universal Self, incarnate and bound within neural constructs. It is both the reason we've wandered from home and the path to return.
I've been a Trek fan since I was a little kid. Not those silly people that go bonkers over the show, but just a person who has enjoyed the show on many levels, with the Next Generation being my favorite incarnation of the franchise. Having said that, there are several problems I've always had with the Roddenberry universe, which ironically has a definite anti-transhumanist bent. I remember thinking how odd it was that 300 years in the future, people would still only be living to no more than a hundred years. George Dvorsky too has his complaints about the anti-technology trend that now dominates the new series Enterprise. I have yearned for sci-fi fare that capture a more forward thinking vision, and along the way came up with several concept tv shows. Below are some of the major shortcomings of Star Trek, and what I would change:
LONGEVITY
People are still only living to 100 years. With all the technologies available three centuries from now, why has there only beeen a 20% gain in longevity?? Just in the 20th century 60% gains in longevity have been achieved. Within 300 years people should be able to live as long as they want to. With cellular repair machines, there is no reason why people can't live for centuries.
TECHNOLOGICAL EQUIVALENCE
In a universe billions of years old, we know from the episode Birthright that there was a thriving intelligence species 4 billion years ago. Why is it then, that so many species the Federation encounters are at the same level of technological development? The odds against this are ovewhelming. The Vulcans alone have been spacefaring for at least a 1000 years before humans, yet it's the human federation that's pushing the technological envelope. You would think that the Vulcans would be way past the federation in capability. A 1000 year head start would entail technologies that would appear "magical" to the federation. As Arthur C Clark so eloquently said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Just from looking at our current pace of technological advancment, I expect the world 50 years from now to be unrecognizable.
SOCIAL UNIFORMITY
Although I like the vision that Rodenberry portrayed of a peaceful utopian federation, why is it then that most everyone seems so uniform? Not just officers in the federation, but people generally. It's as if the Federation is one big interstellar, bland suburbia. There is no "Burning Man" wildness. Any character that is outside of this bland standard is often portrayed as a criminal.
WHY, HOW, AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT
I think Star Trek has been with us long enough now, that it's no longer just a show, but a larger a part of our culture, an integral part of how people think about the future. Just look at how many scientists today pursued their careers because of the inspiration they found in Star Trek.
Because of that, I think opening a dialog on ST's shortcomings is worthwhile and ultimately inspirational, especially in the light that the present is catching up to the future awfully quick these days. Many of the technologies in Star trek are either already here, or will be shortly.
Therefore the aim of my opening this dialog, was to get people to think beyond the vision of Roddenberry, which is rapidly approaching obsolescence, and think BIGGER! More vision, more advancement, a greater, even more inclusive utopia. There are so many ideas I would like to see be a part of the star trek universe, but aren't do to an incredible lack of vision of the writers, and/or a strict adherence to Roddenberry original less advanced vision of the future.
It's time Star Trek began integrating these more advanced concepts to keep up with the changing times. If it doesn't, and apparently it isn't, Star Trek is in serious risk of becoming a has-been show. There is already talk of canceling 'Enterprise' with no replacement series in sight. This is tragic. With all that is going in the world today, such a visionary series is needed now more than ever!!!!
If only they could create a new series that took us to new heights of social, technological and utopian challenges like the first shows did when they first aired.
..If only I was in charge of Paramount.
Synesthesia is a mouthful. Or is it an eyeful? That's the beauty of it.
Synesthesia is a phenomena wherein you see audio, hear video. Your senses are confused, just like sentence this is.
Synesthesia often occurs under the influence of psychadelics. Acid, shrooms, your mileage may vary.
What I want to know is: can we invoke synesthesia while sober?
Well, help me guys. I'm trying this out.
Here, let me go through Jimi Hendrix's "Are you Experienced?" Let's work on just colors for now.
0:00-0:13
The scratching feels like slate, so I'd say some light slate gray.
0:13-0:17
The crashing of guitars and sounds feels like blood and flesh, so I'm going with dark orange, and a shine of hotpink, like orgasm perhaps.
0:17-0:40
There are multiple layers going on here, the bass guitar, the percussion (is it keyboard?), and hendrix's vocals.
The bass feels colored like chocolate, the percussion sounds like big drops of water, so like straight up blue, and hendrix's voice is a dark announcement, calling my name at night: indigo
0:40-0:47
"But first, are you experienced?"
The drop off of the ambient background sounds is an entrance out of the tunnel of sound. Let's label this with light, white colors, like azure, mintcream, lavendar blush.
0:47-1:10
(chorus)
Hendrix gets warmer, the early scratchy effect returns, and everything just has more energy.
I'd increase the hue on everything, throw in back the slate gray, and since hendrix is warmer, let's make this have more fireball red.
-------------
And on it on it goes. One could visualize all sorts of elements of design: lines, shapes, directions, sizes, textures, colors, etc..
Is it possible, that with persistent training with this kind of method, one could develop a knack for synesthesia?
I also tried listening to SomaFM's Drone Zone on high volume with headphones, and tried to scribble in photoshop the colors I heard.
Henyway, just a thought for you adventurers out there. And if you are an expert on this topic--I know you're out there--please, add some comments.
From the original article, via bird-on-the-moon.
There exists an abundance of evidence to indicate that mind-changing drugs have been used since remotest antiquity by many of the peoples of the earth, and have importantly affected the course of human history. The plant sources of these drugs - the visionary vegetables - have been worshiped as gods in many times and places, and the persons employing the drugs as a means of acquiring 'supernatural powers' have been the priests, prophets, visionaries, and other leaders of their respected societies. East and West, civilized and primitive, religious thought and all that flows from it almost certainly has been importantly influenced by the psychedelic drugs…
We often learn of hyperspace in books, TV shows, movies like Star Wars, and in the psychedelic literature of Terrene Mckenna who often talked about escaping history and entering hyperspace. So what Terrence was really saying was that this hyperspace was hypertime as well. I first heard the term of hyperspace from the orginal Star Wars when I was a kid, then within a scientific framework some 20 years ago. In all that time I always wondered about the possibility of hypertime, and what the implications of it were. When you think of the concept its even more bizarre and interesting that hyperspace. As part of my own psychedelic voyages, I've had several expereinces of hypertime, existing simultaneously in both eternity and what appeared to be endless dimensions of time and possibility completely indpendent of our own. On a couple of occasions, when I returned to baseline, I had no idea if an hour or a year had passed in my absence from consensus reality.
So what is hypertime and how would it work? All contemporary physical theories treat time and space as one thing - spacetime. At the so-called beginning of our local universe, spacetime was created in the first instances of the big bang, expanding outward, resulting in at least 3 macroscopic dimensions of space, and one of time. According to the latest Grand Unified Theories (GUT's), there are probably another 7 dimensions of space wrapped up in extremely convoluted shapes at extremely small scales. These types of GUT's seem to change and evolve weekly, so no one is really sure what an accurate theory would be of our local universe. One of the nifty things that have come out of all these theories is the increasing likelihood of an endless number of other universes representing every mathematical property and variation. Our universe being an arbitrary one among an infinite number of possibilities. Concepts like space and time, which to us seem innate to existence, are probably entirely foreign concepts to intelligences living in these other exotic universes.
Buts lets just stick with universes similar to ours - ones with 3 dimensions of space and one of time. Most people automatically assume that these other universes are operating and moving along at the same speed as ours. This is the intuitive way of looking at it. When we hear tales of other universes, we think that they are going about their business just like ours... a day passes here, and a day passes there. But how could this even be? Our timeline is completely and internally self-consistent only within our universe. All those other universes with their own timelines should be operating completely orthogonal to our timeline. In other words, each of these timelines of these other universes are all operating within their own independent dimension of time. If there was a way that we could go from one universe to another, this would also imply that we could hop into these others universes at arbitrary points in their timelines. If for example, large rotating black holes, such as the one in the center of our galaxy were gateways to other universes, for all intents and purposes these gateways would take us to an arbitrary point in their universe. And if we traveled around one of these universes and found another black hole back to our universe, the chances are extremely likely that we would end up in an entirely different point in our timeline, possibly billions of years in the past or future.
If an artificial means were ever found to leave our space-time continuum then there is no reason to think that we couldn't travel to other space-time’s, spend thousands of years in these timelines, then come back to ours at the exact moment we left. This would be equivalent to traveling at 90-degree angles to our timeline.
So how many dimensions of time exist in this super-set of all possible universes? Probably as many dimensions as there are universes with time as a property. Same goes for space as well. In other words, true hyper-space-time consists of an infinite number of space and time dimensions.
I can hear the train wailing through the valley maybe a mile away. A long, dark cry, drawing a line of deep blue night between the redwoods rolling down & out to the coast. This stroke of coal burn is the only echo of blackness on a beautiful sunny Sunday. Indeed, the train itself, if we believe the signs thrown up for this weekend outside of Roaring Camp, is none other than cheery educational steam engine Thomas The Train. Thomas, it seems, in spite of his happy exterior, knows well the loneliness of the rail.
The trees themselves seem to be steadily marching towards the sea, streaming down through hills & valleys, their rooty toes dipped in the cool soft waters of the San Lorenzo River and its myriad web of tributaries. They carpet these lands in fuzzy green shag. On this shaded porch I can feel the gentle breeze stirred up by their movement. With it the sun's force is diminished slightly sparing the garden flowers from certain dessication.
Wind chimes are dancing softly nearby, swaying against each other and gently intoning their musical identity into the fluid air. Their cadence advances and retreats, quickened one moment, silent the next. Washing away, the air brushes branch and shrub, like a chorus of sandpaper underwater or a thousand shakare milling about in a Brazilian rain forest. Birds chirp and tweet and occasionally warble, calling and laughing with each other, perhaps mocking the acrobatic squirrels leaping through the canopy as if they themselves were so fortunate to have wings.
Hyperdimensional electric insect drones cut buzzing through the soundscape. When I look I can see hundreds, if not thousands of bugs making their rounds through the lillys, echinaceas, and naked ladys, each resonant and sensual draped in color, dripping with nectar & pollen. I've read that many flowers have ultraviolet markings visible only to the insect eye. Like cryptic neon club signs they call out to those in the know, the initiated.
Sometimes when the breeze is soft and the air warm, time slows against the rising tide of the eschaton. The seeming acceleration of life reveals itself as a human creation, a byproduct of quicker minds and faster fingers driven towards reunion with the hologram. Days like this remind us that the sun will keep burning, the air will continue moving, water will flow and earth will crumble, long after we've left it all for the infinite eternity of afterlife.
Anthony Judge mentioned his article The Isdom of the Wisdom Society. Anthony is one of the smartest people I know of, and his enormous site and his articles are somewhat intimidating to approach. Certainly clear enough to read, but he covers so much ground that it takes your breath away a bit.
Many studies explore the importance of the distinctions in the sequence from "data", through "information", then on to "knowledge", and finally to "wisdom" [more]. At each stage there is a much-studied challenge of "management" (as in "information management" and "knowledge management"). Arguments are also made for the importance of a corresponding "information society" or of a "knowledge society" -- perhaps expressed as a "knowledge-based society". But clearly it is easiest to argue the case for an "information" focus, especially to hardware, software and information vendors -- hence the title of the UN World Summit on the Information Society. It is more challenging to make a case for a "knowledge society", especially since "knowledge management" is in process of being disparaged as a fad term lacking any real content -- notably in those corporate environments that claim to practice it. And yet it is precisely the transfer of knowledge, in the form of "know-how" that has been a preoccupation of the United Nations over many development decades.But knowledge is a troublesome thing to get a handle on. If I know one thing, and you know another, and a lot of knowledge is hidden in the library or on the net - what do we really know? Is it knowledge if we put it all in the same database? We so easily end up scattering both our information and our knowledge about, and apart from ourselves. Maybe splitting something apart that really isn't apart. Like ourselves.
The distinctions between data, information and knowledge are increasingly problematic as is to be seen in efforts to give content to "knowledge management". It is perhaps helpful to see the sequence as a progression from more objective to more subjective -- namely an increasing dependence on judgement, cognitive ability, experience and the capacity for synthesis (see Evaluating Synthesis Initiatives and their Sustaining Dialogues, 2000). Whilst software can be provided to manage information, those packages designed in support of "knowledge management" are far more dependent on the knowledgability of the user. Similarly, whilst data and information can be readily explained, this becomes more of a challenge in the case of knowledge. This is exemplified in the case of appropriately ordered information on a food recipe. Although the recipe may be followed, it is only in the light of the knowledge acquired through past learning and experience that there is any guarantee that the result will be tasty.OK, we need to understand wisdom better. Wisdom involves subjectivity, and it isn't easy to just break it down and explain it. It can't easily be transferred.
Paradoxically, as one might expect with respect to a "timeless" quality, its uniqueness derives from a way of "being in the present". This focus on the present is echoed in many sources of wisdom -- as the key to appropriate action in the more extended framework of space and time. Its proximity is for example stressed in various religions. Judaism and Islam recognize that the separation between Heaven and Hell is but a "hair's breadth" -- echoed by Zen in the acknowledgement that the separation between enlightenment and ignorance is again just one "hair's breadth".Well, that's very refreshing. The Zen of the moment. Again, hard to take apart, by its very nature, but it can be hinted at, maybe a bit poetically.
It is for this reason that -- playfully -- it is suggested here that the domain of wisdom might usefully be recognized as "Isdom". This might be seen as corresponding to terms such as "Kingdom", "Dukedom" or "Fiefdom" -- except that the focus is on the domain of "is-ness" in the present.
As the domain of the present moment -- the present instant -- Isdom is a place of being characterized by a quality of appreciating that moment, and sustaining that appreciation. It might be understood as the mode of expression and interaction in the instants before conventional exchanges occur. As such it resembles a kind of existential foreplay -- in part made of glances and understandings that are global in their quality -- an interplay of being. For example, one international event focused on The Butterfly Effect as the "coordinates of the moment before discovery". It is the sparkle on a pool -- or in a person's eyes (or those of any other animal).Well, I'm not going to go on and quote the whole thing, but Anthony goes on to explore how we might possibly "contain" the is-ness. It so easily gets spoiled and reverted into banal normalcy. So hard to hold on to. It is like the plasma needed to create nuclear fusion. The hardest part is to keep it together without it being messed up by the stuff that isn't it. How can the present be reified - made more real? How can we recognize and tap into FLOW? We might have to look for answers in quite different places than what we normally use to take things apart and analyze them. Indeed the addictive "normality" of our habitual world is exactly what keeps us from understanding the zen of the present moment, from tapping directly into the consciousness of wisdom and becoming more fully alive. The things we need to *get* easily border on craziness when seen through the eyes of our collective normalcy. The things we can neatly describe and categorize are not it. From the Tao Te Ching:
The moment may be imbued with a sense of incipient knowing or of intuitive re-membering -- of re-cognition. It may be understood through the anticipatory quality of "happening" -- a sense of in potentia -- as when encountering a significant other (perhaps for the first time). It is, for example, the instant before any process of falling in love -- "at first sight" -- namely before intentionality or action of any conventional kind.
The Tao that can be described is not the eternal Tao.To really BE in the present moment, and to be in touch with our inherent wisdom, we need to get beyond most of what we can think of putting a name to. Yet, the world is made of the stuff that is observed and named. Ah, delightful paradoxes.
The name that can be spoken is not the eternal Name.
The nameless is the boundary of Heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of creation.
What is a "polymath"? Dictionary.com:
A person of great or varied learning; one acquainted with various subjects of study.You could also call it a comprehensivist. Waldzell:
Polymath is from Greek polymathes, having learned much, from poly-, much + manthanein, to learn.
A polymath, as defined here, is a person with the knowledge and expertise of a specialist in several, usually non-overlapping, domains of knowledge or expertise. A comprehensive polymath, or comprehensivist, is a polymath with the ability to synthesize knowledge and expertise from any combination of domains.Some definitions describe it as some kind of genius, but that is not necessarily the point, even if the most famous polymaths probably have extraordinary genius. Think Leonardo da Vinci. But the point is probably rather a wide range of interest and general knowledge, and a certain urge to tinker with different things. Polymath Society:
The dictionary definition of a polymath is a very learned person, of encyclopedic knowledge. There is also the connotation of having an understanding deeper than that found in an encyclopedia, that is, an expert in many fields.I haven't really used the word polymath much, but I've often said that I'm a comprehensivist. As mentioned, one sign might be one is skilled in several apparently unrelated areas. Which might seem puzzling to others, but which usually fits together as facets of a bigger picture, even if it might be invisible to anybody else but that person.
Anyone can be a polymath as long as he or she has the right motivation. A polymath is not necessarily a brain. In fact, a polymath usually does not think of his or herself as being particularly smart, only curious. Curiosity and interest are the true motivation for work, both intellectual work and the nitty gritty of hands on inventing. Thomas Edison said that genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. He had a passion for getting his hands dirty, for tinkering, for inventing through trial and error. The polymath makes lots of mistakes. This is how new sciences are created.
* Generalist / Polymath learning exists, contributes knowledge and helps the horizontal distribution of knowledge;OK, so we need people who go around combining things, poking into different fields, trying to connect things up. Agents of Emergence, I suppose. Looking for synergies, looking for things that might be possible. Or maybe just fluttering about and cross-polinating things by accident.
* The public, linked, asynchronous nature of blogs and related technologies both exposes conversations to a wider pool of people and helps the ideas start to flow before any face-to-face meeting;
* The benefits of any specific piece of knowledge are not always forseeable until the right combination of circumstances and other people arises – in other words unpredictable emergent behaviour;
Future Hi pal Tyler Emerson has just launched 3 Laws Unsafe with the opening of I, Robot staring Wil Smith.
From the Press Release:
Atlanta, GA – In anticipation of 20th Century Fox’s July 16th release of I, Robot, the Singularity Institute announces “3 Laws Unsafe” (www.asimovlaws.com). “3 Laws Unsafe” explores the problems presented by Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, the principles intended for ensuring that robots help, but never harm, humans. The Three Laws are widely known and are often taken seriously as reasonable solutions for guiding future AI. But are they truly reasonable? “3 Laws Unsafe” addresses this question.
Tyler Emerson, Executive Director of the Singularity Institute: “The release of I, Robot is a wonderful chance to engage more people about the perils and promise of strong AI research. The constraints portrayed in I, Robot appear extremely dangerous and excessively lacking as an approach to moral AI. The Singularity Institute’s detailed approach, by contrast, utilizes advanced technical research for creating a mind that is humane in nature.”
“3 Laws Unsafe” will include articles by several authors, weekly poll questions, a blog for announcements and commentary related to I, Robot and the Three Laws, a free newsletter subscription, and a reading list with books on relevant topics such as the future of AI, accelerating change, cognitive science and nanotechnology.
The Singularity Institute’s Advocacy Director, Michael Anissimov: “It is essential that more considerate thinkers get involved in dialogues of AI ethics and strategy. Although AI as a discipline has a dubious history of false starts, the accelerating growth of computing power and brain science knowledge will very likely result in its creation at some point. In the past few years, technologists such as Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy have been informing the public about this critical issue; but more awareness is now needed.”
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) was founded in 2000 for the pursuit of ethically enhanced intelligence by creating humane AI. SIAI believes the ethical and significant enhancement of intelligence will help solve contemporary problems, such as disease and illness, poverty and hunger, more readily than other philanthropic causes. SIAI is a tax-exempt non-profit organization with branches in Canada and the United States.
I fly a lot in my dreams. Most of the time when I'm flying I'm doing so completely free like some kind of super advanced UFO capable of flying in any direction, in any curved trajectory, at any speed and any orientation, and able to change all of these variables by merely thinking about it. But last night, I had a different kind of flying dream.
I was wearing some kind of suit that could be inflated with helium or hydrogen that allowed me to reduce my weight to less than 10% of normal. So instead of weighing my usual 150lbs I would weigh less than 15 pounds. The result of this change in gravitational and atmospheric buoyancy is that it would be equivalent to walking around a planetary body with less than 1/10ths Earth's gravity. Wearing such a suit would make us twice as light as if we were on the moon. Since we would still retain all of our normal strength, this would give us a whole new level of freedom.
For example, if we could jump 18" high now, with this suit on we could jump over 50 feet high. If we were to go running and then jump, then it wouldn't be that difficult to jump a couple of hundred feet. Imagine donning one of these suits on, then start jumping all over town, from one roof top to another, or from one street to another? Your rate of ascent and decent would be one tenth of normal, so there would be little harm of landing hard. The biggest challenge then would be to avoid getting hit by oncoming vehicles. Probably best that you jump in an open space somewhere.
When I woke up from the dream, I sat down with pen and paper and tried to figure out the practicalities of making such a flying suit. Several obstacles remain in the way of doing this. First is the choice of gas used. Hydrogen would be the most ideal for weight and minimizing the volume of the suit. If the suit gets to bloated it wouldn't give your body much room to maneuver. Otherwise you'd have to place more volume above your head into a traditional balloon like structure, and the more you do this, the more drag you have during your jumps. Chances are such a suit would be impractical with today’s material technology. However, with the right nanomaterials it's possible to create a balloon suit that has no air at all - a vacuum suit. The suit would be inflated by the material form itself, displacing air with vacuum. This would result in the most gain with the least volume of displacement, possibly resulting in a suit that if cleverly designed would allow its user to hop around the planet as if she or he were only 1/10 their normal weight. Oh the possibilities could be fun. I could imagine a whole new range of sports evolving out of their use. Some for of Harry Potterish Quidditch perhaps?
Humanity is going to survive. Already we are undergoing rapid technological change, becoming more modular, flexible and adaptable. In a very real sense almost every human alive today is in the process of becoming transhuman.
This is an issue I’ve thought about a long time – the future, the future of humanity, of life and intelligence. It would be fair to say it has been my life long obsession. For almost that entire time, this obsession has taken its toll on my ego, resulting in times of joy, optimism and delight, as well as grief, sorrow and crippling paranoia. I’ve delved deep into both science and mysticism, inner and outer space, looking for answers, clues to where life is heading. Some would say that life is heading nowhere in particular, that it is nothing more than a product of blind evolution and random mutation meandering its way through time. But yet, there is evolution. Although perhaps on the microscopic scale random mutation reigns supreme, over time there is a clear movement from simplicity to complexity. From homogeneity to diversity. From entropy to extropy. Now life has filled every niche, even niches that no scientist could ever have thought possible less than a decade ago. There is life in the bottom of the ocean, in high pressure boiling water, and miles deep below the Antarctic ice shelf. Humanity with our intelligence has steadily moved from cave dwelling hunter gatherers, barely surviving from one generation to the next, into a global species capable of surviving everywhere, even in the cold vacuum of outerspace.
There is a vector then to this march of evolution through time. And it hasn’t come without its fair share of bruises. Solar Storms, tectonic shifts, cometary and meteor impacts, global atmospheric poisoning, super-volcanoes, ice ages and global warming – resulting in at least 5 major extinctions in earth’s history.
And now we have our modern era. One that for most people is filled with fear and gloom, and what some scientista are now saying is earths sixth great extinction. Throughout history humanity has had its own fair share of bruises - starvation, disease, famine, wars, plagues, cultural clashes, and mother nature. Yet we have survived every manner of both environmental assault and human folly. And now in our present era we are experiencing the most rapid change our planet has ever seen, due almost entirely to a feedback loop in which we are directly amplifying and being amplified by. Depending on who you talk to, and more importantly how you interpret the overwhelming amount of incoming data, we are either heading for extinction or transcending into something altogether new and spectacular – a quantum evolutionary leap equivalent or exceeding in magnitude all evolutionary leaps before it.
At this point almost every intelligent person has weighed in on the subject. Technologist like Bill Joy thinks that our chances of survival are slim. The astophysicist Martin Rees and the technologist-inventor Ray Kurzweil are putting our odds at around 50/50. And the Singularitarians are saying that unless a super intelligence can be created soon, are odds of making it are less than 1%. So who’s right? One thing is for certain, the means of our destruction are multiplying and falling into ever greater numbers of hands. As Mark Pesce says, we are rapidly approaching the day when, for all intents and purposes, every child will have tactical nuclear weapons.
Yet, despite these alleged facts and expert pontificated probabilities, I’m placing my bets on the survival and prosperity of intelligent life. And it won’t be just survival that is life’s inheritance, but abundant, glorious, diverse and ultimately supremely happy life expanding rapidly out into the universe towards infinity.
How did I come to this conclusion? First and foremost life has always made it, and the historical evidence continues to mount. But more importantly - despite every major new piece of data that says we shouldn't be here, we shouldn't have survived, our existence is testament that we did! The fact that anything exists at all is pretty miraculous. And according to inflationary theory, our universe teeters on the edge of zero-point vacuum fluctuations that could wipe us all out in an instant. Yet we are still here! But something more than just scientific evidence moved me to this conclusion. Not long ago, for a few precious moments I slipped the bonds of my ego long enough to see that life is doing just fine, despite my own ego’s particular problems or worries to the contrary. All my life, I have in some manner placed my ego at the center of what is important, what constitutes what is ‘good’ and ‘bad’, what will improve our odds of survival and/or diminish it. Like most people, I deeply feared death in some manner or other. Yet, as I look around at all that is happening, my ego, and probably yours too is under assault from constant accelerating change, information anxiety, unpredictability and increasing uncertainty as to whether we as individuals will survive. Because I placed my worldview within the context of my ego, I increasingly came to the conclusion that life will not make it. When it is more accurate to say that any one individual life, including mine is faced with greater uncertainty. In turn I placed my ego in line with humanity and life as a whole, mistakingly placing the odds of my survival in line with that of the whole species. Having transcended my ego long enough to see this, I no longer despair at what has always been true anyway, that my ego will not survive even if my physical form remains intact. The changes are too drastic for my ego to remain intact. Each day our ego's go through almost imperceptible little mini-deaths and rebirths. Every so often, a traumatic even results in a larger death and rebirth of our worldview. Hopefully this rebirth results in a more positive and life affirming mindset. As the world goes through more change, our ego has to evolve, and transcend itself more and more if it hopes to stay in the game, amidst increasing novelty and unpredictability.
In every sense the world politic has never been more unstable than it is now. Those in power are feeling this change even more than we are. While we experienced the ups and downs of economic cycles, those at the top lived under relative stability. But now the degree of change is so rapid, that even their cocoon of stability is under direct assault. Their long used habits of maintaining the status quo are failing, and they are having to constantly re-think new ways of maintaining control. As a friend reminded me recently quoting Star Wars, "The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers". This fact is scaring the hell out of them, and so they are rapidly making attempts to bring the entire resources of the globe under their direct control. The evidence is all around us. The question is will they succeed? No. They may come close, but things are moving way too fast now. Change is so great that all their models of control are obsoleted before they can ever become policy. In the time it takes them to think up a new method of control, life and change have evolved past their model. Unfortunately these people are really desperate. Think of them as drug addicts who have become long accustomed to having absolute power, or at least sufficient power to maintain their way of life. They are now loosing that power to the decentralized forces of the network. More and more power is falling into the hands of more and more people, at ever cheaper costs. Al Qaeda may be a convenient boogeyman for them, but it is also symbolic of this decentralization that is scaring them so much.
Bruce Sterling has speculated that this decentralization of power is going to make for one very crazy ride, where thugs of every variety will be committing atrocities all over the globe. A complete breakdown of nation states into tribal feuding thugs, duking it out for control of markets and territories, while the rest of us are caught in the middle. I have no doubt this is one likely possibility. Unfortunately, this acceleration of technological savvy and networked intelligence will continue to increase, and those thugs in turn will find it increasingly difficult to maintain any kind of control.
Meanwhile, the chances of accidental or intentional release of a nasty bug that wipes out a large percentage of humanity is becoming more likely. The question is how will humanity respond to all of this? If there is one thing people hate it is despotism. Every chance people are given a chance they always choose democracy. Despite ever increasing stupidity of the US government in attempting to lock down the internet, the world is wising up to this. I have no idea how any of this will shape up or shake out. My guess is there is going to be a lot of death and destruction. I would not be surprised at all if 80% or more of humanity is wiped out ever the next 20 years. Some have even said that is in fact the agenda of those in power. That may be so, but their biggest mistake will be thinking they will control this new world in the wake of so much death and destruction. Although 80% of humanity might be dead, the remaining 20% are going to be extremely motivated. And even though the technologies of control will be unprecedented, so too will the power of technology be in the streets. The collective power of the network made possible by ever smarter social software will allow collective action like the world has never seen. The balance of power is already shifting in this direction at rapid pace, and desperate attempts to tip that balance back will be temporary at best.
So after every major catastrophe, despotism, global war, nuclear attacks, biological virus, there will be survivors. Because if life has learned anything is that it wants to survive. And humanity being the intelligent edge of this evolutionary life force will use all of its drive to survive. Through the massive collective action of individuals powered by decentralized networks, people will build new communities and move forward past all of these horrible atrocities. We/They will look back at all the mistakes that were made that led to such devastation and vow never to repeat them. We/They will be deeply grateful to all of us alive today who lived right now doing our best to sort it all out, and who were alive as humanity and all of life enters the coming bottleneck. Life and in turn humanity will go on to prosper, evolve into transhumanity, post-humanity taking the best of everything and shedding the worst as it moves out into the cosmos. Our ego's have no choice.
Life flows ever forward in a myriad of shifting forms, feeding back on each other like eddies in a stream. Iteration of structures evolves morphology as life literally feeds upon itself, the unified hologram of creation expressing itself through an infinitude of shapes and affiliations. Creation, it would seem, is playing in the field of time, like a harlequin dancing with itself in hermaphroditic meiosis. Life begins through asexual reproduction of clone populations, exposed to cosmic rays and radiation, environmental scalpels capable of the most minute alterations of DNA, breaking the genotype and altering phenotype. Over millions of years these variations, so dependent upon the random interjection of exogenous events, gave rise to sexual differentiation and the mechanism of meiosis critical to sexual reproduction. Organisms seized control over the random updating of genotypes by environmental factors and, instead, crossed genetics with each other, pushing evolution of the biota radically forward as genotypes mixed and matched to create a myriad of natural forms. The garden of Eden began to bloom as patterns established themselves along germ lines giving rise to plant populations, invertebrate sea life, fish and sea mammals, amphibians, reptiles, small land mammals and on up to apes and chimpanzees and humans, all reflections of life's compulsion to create novelty in morphology and function.
What is the reason? What is the impetus for this ever-marching evolutionary process of novel morphologies? Our cities and emperors rise and fall with the turning of the heavens. Our very civilization is merely a blink in the eye of Shiva, a momentary footnote in the galactic record, a spark in a Universe that remains to us quite empty. Our struggles and conflicts, our preoccupations and distractions, are like grains of sand swirling in the tides, slowly and steadily grinding away at the rocks. Over a thousand years they may leave their mark on the shoreline... But in a hundred thousand years that shoreline will be gone, erased by much greater forces. For all of our creation and destruction the Universe simply watches as the tides ebb and flow, carrying life into ever new harbors.
The glory of life is that it allows the Absolute to play, to interact with itself, to step into time and observe its creation through the sensorium of the kingdom, iterating the hologram through fractal dimensions and involutions into the material world. This creative process is mirrored in humanity, so capable and adept at manifesting its dream into reality. The material world is malleable to us, given to extrusions of objects and technologies. The glory of the human species is its ability to extend the creation of the Absolute, to imagine forms and give them life, to create symbols and ideas and stories that only exist as information unbound to material constructs. We make fictions and turn them into living beings. We read the Mind of God and make offerings in accord.
Through us the Absolute observes itself and imagines what dreams may come, remixing creation into ever more novel forms given life by the hand of humanity. We are servants of the harlequin, symbiotes of the Absolute, gaining life and Self for the chance to bring infinity closer to Creation.
The aeon is a child at play with colored spheres.
I just found this new piece by Kurt Vonnegut called Cold Turkey (via Bruce Eisner). Vonnegut has been one of my all-time favorite writers and in this new article he delivers his rare and insightful wit in abudance:
My government’s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was 41, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.
Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb? Try doing long division with Roman numerals.
We’re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought Christianity to the Indians, what we now call “Native Americans.”
How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.
So let’s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That’ll teach bin Laden a lesson he won’t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a perfectly enormous debt that you’ll be asked to repay.
Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the Senate, the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, has forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I’ve been a coward about heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn’t seem to do anything to me, one way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit. No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.
But I’ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine could match. That was when I got my first driver’s license! Look out, world, here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs of all: fossil fuels.
When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won’t be any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn’t like TV news, is it?
Here’s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey.
And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we’re hooked on.
As you may have noticed Future Hi is back. We were down for over 3 weeks. In that time I had lots to write but not outlet in which to express it. And as blogging tends to go, unless you write it while it's hot it's can loose it relevance. No matter, I'm really happy to be blogging again, it's just that I'm a bit rusty having not written a single word in almost a month.
While Future Hi was down, the last few weeks have been amazing for me personally. I met some wonderful new friends and had a uniquely powerful experience which is inspiring me in all sorts of new directions.
Big kudos to LVX23 for his prolific and colorful contributions.
In April of 1904 The Book of the Law was channeled by Aleister Crowley's wife of the time, Rose, under very odd circumstances. In trance she produced information that Crowley believed she had no way of knowing, confirming to him that she was indeed receiving something given by some intangible entity. This became the most profound experience of Crowley's life and essentially informed everything that followed in his work.
Many have no doubt experienced radically altering events which completely disrupt their views of reality. Some are driven mad by them, while others seek to understand and integrate the experience. Crowley was of the latter group and spent his life fleshing out his mythology, heavily influenced by the Golden Dawn, Kabbalah, Alchemy, Taoism, Yoga, the Sutras, and Tarot, among others. But it was the Book of the Law which became the center around which everything else orbited. It was, and still remains, the principle holy document of Thelema, viewed with near-religious awe and respect by many followers. Indeed, Crowley was arguably the most influential mystic of the 20th century.
Regardless of whether the text was given by a discarnate entity known as Aiwass, perhaps to inform humanity of the new age and christen Crowley as it's prophet, or whether it was simply the result of intense trance and ritual, welled up in the mind of Rose Crowley, the circumstances remain unique and intriguing and the cryptic document itself is certainly worth study. In 1904 the voice which spoke through Rose harkened a new age of warfare and violence, of great discovery and enlightenment, and of a great clash between the old ways and the new, personified by the Egyptian god Horus as the warrior-prince, child of the New Aeon. The century since certainly seems to have lived up to the predictions.
Einstein's Theory of Relativity rose to challenge the bedrock of mechanics, as Freud and Jung opened up the human mind. Soon after, WW1 broke out followed by WW2. Quantum mechanics began to take hold, and the discovery and identification of DNA revolutionized biology and medicine. The invention and use of the Atomic Bomb was mirrored by the discovery of LSD and its own cultural explosion. TV came in time to bring the Korean and Vietnam wars to millions of viewers, as well as the lunar landing and the Kennedy assassination. Individualism and relativism, political discourse, civil rights, religious & spiritual diversity, and all the struggles associated with these ideologies have lead us into the new millenium with the brilliant light of creation, and the brutal darkness of conflict. Wars of religion dominate the world once again while power hungry apes manipulate the zealots like puppet masters in the Great Carnival at the End of Time.
The Book of the Law is both a warning and a guide to navigate through the perilous times in which we now live, hurtling towards some vast incomprehensible Omega Point, carried along on the currents of civilization, but ever infinite and timeless within the silent center of consciousness.
1.3: Every man and every woman is a star.
2.9: Remember all ye that existence is pure joy; that all the sorrows are but as shadows; they pass & are done; but there is that which remains.
Author and infonaut Clifford Pickover presents an analyisis of the DMT experience as more than hallucination, but as a valid dimension of Reality. Central to this are the perceived "alien" or Other presences encountered in the DMT experience.
"The molecule DMT (N,N-Dimethyltryptamine) is a psychoactive chemical that causes intense visions and can induce its users to quickly enter a completely different "environment" that some have likened to an alien or parallel universe. The transition from our world to theirs occurs with no cessation of consciousness or quality of awareness. In this environment, beings often appear who interact with the person who is using DMT. The beings appear to inhabit this parallel realm. The DMT experience has the feel of reality in terms of detail and potential for exploration. The creatures encountered are often identified as being alienlike or elflike. Some of the creatures appear to be three-dimensional. Others appear to lack depth...Maybe this is why the ancients seemed so in touch with God and with miracles and visions. Maybe Moses and Jesus had a greater rate of pineal DMT production than most."These theoretical ponderings are followed by a whole bunch of fascinating responses contributed by his readers, reflecting the diversity of interest and speculation about this captivating chemical. N-N-Dimethyltryptamine exists naturally within the nervous system of most higher mammals. It bears a strong structural identity to serotonin and melatonin, both of which are vital to perception, cognition, sleep, and dreaming. Little is known about it's biological function and it remains uncertain why such a profoundly mind-altering psychedelic is manufactured by the nervous system. As a pineal modifer it could be affecting what Descarte's referred to as the "reducing valve of the Soul", tearing away the biosurvival filters to allow the kaleidoscopic spectrum of the Absolute to enter into conscious apprehension. As Pickover suggests it seems very possible that many mystical visions depicting angelic visitations bearing earth-shaking proclamations could have been driven by the endogenous production of psychoactive indoles.
Of course Pickover wields McKenna and Rick Strassman as his allies, but it's refreshing to see him cite rogue neuroscientist Julian Jaynes whose intriguing work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind suggests that concsiousness too evolved and that the emerging mind of early humans was a very different perceptual apparatus than it is now. The self-reference provided by the ego, the gallery of emotions and complexes, and the creative leaps of the enlarged cortex, might have intitially manifested as god-like whisperings or sudden possessions, hence the preponderance of mythologies populated by anthropomorphic dieties. DMT, or as Mckenna argues, it's cousin psilocybin, may have been the early catalyst to the emergence of the Self and the cataloging of our world by language leading to our technological evolution as tool makers and numerical wizards.
Paradoxically, it seems also to be the trail of bread crumbs back to the pre-linguistic interconnected web of nature within which humans were once intimately embedded; when the distinction between I and Thou was barely a murmur in the primal buzz of instinct and reaction. Did Homo sapiens long ago answer a distant call from hyperspace while perhaps scrubbing about the Savanah plain? But then just who are these entities, these "self-transforming machine elves"? Where do they come from, and what is their message? Telepathic Zeta Reticulans who monitor us through brain frequencies induced by tryptamine spin resonance? Our future selves popping in from the 5th dimension to harasas us for not yet figuring It out? Or more holy whisperings and angelic visitations manufactured by an over-excited pineal gland bent on religious fervor?
Whatever the source the visions always seem to deliver a profoundly real sense of contact with something very far away yet right next to us all of the time, seeming to say, "Look... we are all beings of light suspended in eternity dreaming this beautiful creation."
