What does God* want**?

Any normal sane person seeing this subject line will immediately start to worry. Even I remember a woman who burned herself in front of a local pregnancy advice clinic because she thought God wanted her to sacrifice to that cause. (See below for discussion of the meaning of * and **). 

There are many people who have deep and irrational attachments to beliefs which are internally inconsistent who ask this question. People like myself usually would not talk about this question in public, any more than they would talk about their sex lives in public. Yet I agree with Freud that some of the things which are the hardest to talk about really need to be discussed, by some people in a calm and rational way. Failure to discuss and examine what is most important to us makes it possible for incoherent and costly mistakes to stay alive and even grow in the dark.

Whenever we try to face up to a question like this (similar to “what is consciousness?”), it is important to begin by analyzing the question itself before suggesting an answer. This is the first time I have ever written down this question or discussed it in public, but in fact my wife and I often raise the question in the privacy of our house.

Why haven’t I raised it before? Mainly because I avoid using the word “God,” knowing that people have so many wild knee jerk reactions when that word is used. Even the word “consciousness” is hard to work with in normal conversations, because people are so attached to different definitions and theories, and they tend to hear themselves and their stereotypes and their personal imagination instead of what I say when I talk about it. With the word “God,” that difficulty gets multiplied a thousand fold. Long, long ago, I heard how ancient Jewish mystics refused to utter the name of God in public, and I instantly resonated with many reasons.

So what are we really asking when we ask ourselves “what does God want?”, and does the question really make sense in the end?

In our natural consciousness, before we start to become verbal or formal or philosophical or scientific about it, we have a feeling that there is a greater mind around us or even in us somehow, and that our actions in this world are not like pushing meaningless mindless toys around. We sense that we are interacting with some kind of intelligence – and any real intelligence normally has thoughts and values of its own, which we need to account for. When we ask ourselves “What does God want?”, we are initially just trying to be realistic about what to expect from our great and mysterious environment. (Many times in control engineering, I have looked at little flow charts showing “system” and “Plant” (environment), and smiled to myself about just how huge “plant” really is for us. Like Yggdrasil? )

But then, when we follow nature and try to make sense of the word “God” when we ask the question… we next ask ourselves what the word really means to us. Here, it is not a matter of semantics, but a matter of asking ourselves just what larger “hidden” intelligence do we think is really out there (and here).

My new paper coming out in Cosmology and History addresses that question to some degree, building on the general framework of my new paper in Activitas Nervosa Superior (available online for the past month, coming out in hard copy soon). The Activitas paper begins by remembering that WE DON’T KNOW exactly what is out there, but I personally feel there is a 70% probability that the noosphere species theory (presented in detail in the new paper) is correct. (It is a coherent picture, but leaves certain questions open. By analogy, it would be a coherent picture to say that our cosmos is a Minkowski space governed by Lagrange-Euler equations, even if one leaves open the question of which Lagrangian function it implements.) In that picture, I translate the word “God” into a fuzzy combination of three different interacting intelligences:

(1)     OUR noosphere, the emerging intelligence of our solar system, of which we are part.

(2)     “Pater galacticus”, more mature intelligence from the immediate ancestor(s?) of our noosphere

(3)     The Lagrange-Euler equations of our cosmos as a whole, whether it be a curved Minkowski space or something like Fock space.

It is amusing to ask what relation this trinity has to the older one of Son, Father and Holy Ghost, but with 2/3 probability I think that this is the real one, and that the other is just a fun house mirror reflection of the real one. (Didn’t Jesus talk about seeing through a foggy mirror, and say that he had to speak in parables because people didn’t have the prerequisites yet?) Another reflection of this same reality is the old idea of (1) as dearth mother (pachamamma) and (2) as sky father (pachatatta), and the old dualism of people like Kurds from before power-seeking demagogues twisted it into Zoroastrianism. Likewise, the words “want” and “telos” and “purpose” are reflections of U, of cardinal utility function as defined by Von Neumann.

[A reader rightly told me this last sentence was a little too glib. OK, when we ask what God wants, intuitively, we are usually asking about the values, lambda sub i, which that intelligent system would place on variables like our behavior or other things we decide on.]

In a way, these three form a hierarchy. (3) is the most absolute; (2) emerges from it, and has all the approximations and imperfections one expects from emergent phenomena; and (1) emerges from (2). Our main spiritual challenge as individuals is to establish a better “alchemical marriage”, a better relation between our brains and the local noosphere. But we and our noosphere must also relate to (2), and then ultimately to reality itself (3). I am reminded at times of my first government job at DOE, where pleasing the boss raised questions about our relation to HIS boss and the boss about that. Talk about game theory!!

Still, the noosphere species theory gives a sense of what our local noosphere wants, not so different from what Teilhard de Chardin described -- to survive, to grow, to become stronger. A natural intelligent system. As individuals, we can choose to align with it or fight it or simply establish a mutual working relation. But fighting with the solar system is maybe even sillier and more dangerous than mindlessly throwing rocks at one’s boss in the government just because one is offended that another person exists in the world. And as one thinks about such questions, it may help to reflect on who is asking the question, and on how much one would be throwing rocks at oneself.

The same considerations apply as one moves to to (2) or (3), although (3) gets to the age old question of whether the cosmos is maximizing or minimizing its Lagrangian function or just finding a saddle point solution. In all three cases, it would be a mistake to underestimate it. It helps to remember that the cosmos described by Lagrange-Euler equations represents exact, perfect optimization, which “feels” more like perfect intelligence than no intelligence, depending on whether is aligned with what it wants.

But what does the universe want? When we write down equations for the possible Lagrange function of the universe (something I really have done), it seems weird to imagine “Is THIS what the universe wants?”

I often think back to the novel Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut. I never read that novel in detail, but I will always remember the final scene, where someone discovers the secret plan which has driven the flow of human history through the ages. It turns out to have been an effort just to send a simple message like “Hi!” from galaxy A to galaxy B. FIGHTING that plan would have been a path to self-destruction, but we as humans have other values and feelings and purpose and would not naturally dedicate ALL of our energies to something so remote from us. It is important to work for a good relation to the boss, but that doesn’t require suicide. (It does require some appreciation of what the specific boss wants and needs and so on.) Still, if the ultimate boss cares about a Lagrange function, it would be nice to have some idea of what it is and what it really implies in the complex emergent reality of our cosmos.

Obviously, your local parish priest or imam is not God. If you get that mixed up, you are in incredibly deep trouble. If he is aligned with God, he wouldn’t mind you trying to be also. If he isn’t, god help you… but actually you and he are both in trouble. This year, I am seriously happy that the current pope is more aligned than most, but I still go to Quaker Meetings which urge us to align directly as much as we can. But I also understand the need for a system of schools and teachers in all kinds of subjects, open to all kinds of students – a complex subject in itself.

OK: That’s a fist pass into what the noosphere species theory would imply. The new paper discusses why I give it a 2/3 probability of being true, and each of you gets to assign YOUR probability. That’s fine. But what if it’s not true? What is another possibility? Integrity demands that I pay some respect to other possibilities, even though I shouldn’t burden you with TOO much detail here and now.

Just for me, the next most credible theory is the “cosmic mind idealism” (CMI) idea, fuzzy as it is. (And then the “subset” idea, beyond the scope of this post.)

One version of CMI is an idea from kabbalah, the idea that we are all fragments or sparks of what was one great unified Mind/God, and that our spiritual mission is to reintegrate that Mind of which we are part. (I recommend Lindsay’s novel Voyage to Arcturus, which tries to give a more coherent version of that idea, related to Scottish Rite Freemasonry, for which George Washington was one of the teachers.)

When I first read this, I thought: “It starts out making sense, being coherent. If there was one great intelligent system, a mind, surrounded by nothing at all by itself, that would be like sensory deprivation and lack of a purpose beyond itself. Under sensory deprivation, it WOULD fragment into a kind of schizophrenia. But why bring it back to the same state to start the cycle all over again?” Where is the PURPOSE?

If one considers various CMI theories carefully (e.g. Ramanuja’s famous dual aspect monism in India).. the practical implication ends up being pretty much the same as with the noosphere species theory, with maybe more allowance for more degrees of freedom with (3). So maybe the next step is to get a little deeper into what that theory implies, as we try to address the big question here.

======================

Two next issues: what of “gods” and how does a better relation work?

(1)     gods

Down through the millennia, people have often worshipped a wide variety of bosses and “gods” plural, or at least tried to establish a relation with them. I have heard people talk about the ancient Hellenes, negotiating and juggling between gods in a way which helped them also establish a thriving market economy.

The key point here is: our noosphere, as a great mind, is not just a blob of amorphous goo. Any real intelligent system has a kind of great internal complexity. It has several different types of cells. It has assemblages of cells which work together but address different tasks, and its structure adapts as well as it learns with time, towards greater complexity.  Sophisticated people, like Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell, generally assume that the “gods” of the ancient Greeks or Hindus are actually just “archetypes,” specific current subsystems of the noosphere, with fuzzy and ever-changing boundaries. That begs the question of what the mathematics of archetypes is, but this post is not the right place to get into that. For now… it is enough to remember that all minds are like halls of mirrors, with reflections of models of models of models. (Karl Pribram talked about matching of matching of matching. In my chapters in the Handbook of Intelligent, I talked about fast feedforward networks trained to approximate slower recurrent networks, combine din a symbiotic kind of way for optimal overall system performance.) In India, one might talk about avatars of avatars, people channeling other people channeling others. This reminds me of some of my own experiences, but not for here and now. If you are interested in such experiences, Jane Robert’s little trilogy Oversoul Seven is well worth reading.

And so, “archetypes” .from a kind of level (0) in the system of (1) to (3) above. We are all of us directly part of our noosphere (1), but we live in a complex, changing society, and must learn to interact constructively with other people and other “souls,” including archetypes.

It is important to remember that certain archetypes, like “Jehovah” and “Allah” (as they live in the minds and souls of many people), are imperfect avatars or reflections of the real things they try to represent or reflect or channel, like our noosphere or Pater Galacticus. THE SYMBOL IS NOT THE REALITY. The refection is not what it reflects. There is a relation between the reflection and the reality, and the refection itself can have great power simply because of the people who out their energy into it. And so, as Jung warns us, it is a very tricky and serious business how we relate to the archetypes, even though they are not the ultimate reality.

It is so hard not to be more concrete here… until I look at the clock right now. But I am reminded today both of the Merlin archetype, and of advice to look up the BBC series on discussions with Jung by van der Post (godfather of one of the British royals). 

(2)     Better relations

Though I only give 20-30% probability to the CMI theory, I highly recommend the novel Vita Nostra which brings out certain core ideas of CMI (ala Plato or Gurdjieff) related to life in the noosphere as well.

How can one better channel a higher level of intelligence? Many people would rebel and become reactive about this question, but when I am facing a really difficult challenge to my intelligence (e.g. “what IS the Lagrangian of our universe?”) I try to channel as high a level of intelligence as possible. Usually in the early morning, before I even get out of bed. (Yes, it is good to focus emotional energy onto QUESTIONS the night before, but for answers and far-seeing clarity… the early time is best.) But at any time…

There is a kind of Zen exercise where one first exercises one’s mind, focusing ahead here, and then there… seeing further and further ahead. And then the teacher asks “so now focus on who is doing the looking.” Who is looking? He is not asking you to turn your head and look around. Yet as you look forward you can “walk backwards”, moving deeper back to see a wider range forward.. moving one’s vantage point back deeper but not LOOKING back, just moving back. Sensing more who you are as you do that…

And ever more levels of complex dialogue, an ocean not a firehose.

Vita Nostra also uses the metaphor of tacking with a sailboat. That certain fits the situation above, especially with (3). Much as I disagreed with Ronald Reagan on many things, I really liked the way he would try to keep asking "What is the moral highground here?" (i.e. path to Pareto optimum consistent with the complex realities of the "game".) 

All for now. Best of luck…

Spirituality and ruminations on cosmic mind idealism (CMI)

The webmaster for some discussion lists on brain and consciousness wrote:

With yeshua now being a member we are going to have a lot more discussions about religion and spirituality. 

My response:

But do not fear -- we do not intend to dilute the focus of these lists on basic questions of mind and how it works, and what that implies for all that we do. 

[The webmaster's] post reminds me that our culture often encourages a knee-jerk reaction, that spirituality and hard core science must be antagonistic to each other. That is certainly not true for Yeshua or for me; we both think independently. When I was younger, there was an ideological schism between emotional values and reason; at least that has attenuated somewhat. Those old beliefs are in my view important but mild examples of "fake news" or "hallucinogenic groupthink", a very important phenomenon we need to understand better (https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2435634566466946).  At one time we may emphasize one aspect of the greater whole more than another, but Yeshua and I at least agree on trying always to be grounded in the larger context, not disrespecting one aspect of reality when discussing another.

Speaking for myself, however, I would say that it's not really about religion. I basically view religion as an aspect of politics, in which many people try to come to terms with spiritual life while others do other things. Somehow this reminds me of the old saying "I am not a member of any organized religion. I am a Quaker..."

But on to topics more like the core foci of these lists.

Again and again, I have tried to hammer home the fact that consciousness is not a binary variable, that there are levels and levels of consciousness, whether we talk about consciousness qua mind (https://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0311006) or "consciousness of x".

Much of my life has been dedicated to trying to understand THAT LEVEL of consciousness which can be fully understood by using mathematical methods applied to the mundane brain, the electrons and neutrons and protons and electromagnetism of the brain. 

I see no need for religion or even spirituality to explain that level of consciousness, the level which is what we really see in most academic discussions. (Shaw's play Back to Methusaleh captures that reality of life so vividly...). But Yeshua and I also agree that our cosmos and our mathematics do allow for a higher level of consciousness, and that we humans can connect to that level; based on personal experience and further thought, we agree that this is not merely a theoretical possibility but a 99% likelihood, from our point of view. (Since it is a subjective probability estimate, conditional upon information available to us, we can have some level of respect for those who would have other assessments.) Trying to understand and live with that spiritual level of consciousness is another major part of our lives.

My paper in the Activitas special issue (https://rdcu.be/bxnjY ) includes a quick summary of my position on that level of consciousness; the next issue of Cosmos and History will get much, much deeper and more concrete. Crudely, I assign 2/3 subjective probability to the idea that our spiritual or psychic experiences are mostly a product of a kind of symbiosis between us and the "noosphere," in a theory similar to that of Teilhard de Chardin or Verdansky but fixed up to better fit both science and experience. In this concept, the cosmos is still totally governed by partial differential equations over curved Minkowski space or some kind of Fock space; much of the paper argues for observer-free quantum field theory, a kind of hard core realism, too realistic for those physicists who float like corks on the water between "mystical" solipsism and contempt for real mysticism which tries to understand first person experience. 

But what of the other 1/3 possibility, which I called "ultraweirdism"? What of cosmic mind idealism (CMI), the specific type of ultraweirdism which seems most interesting to me, which is also the type which Deepak Chopra has been trying to push? Can we really make sense of it?

(Caveat: there are many other forms of ultraweirdism out there. The second most interesting form for me, right now, is the "subset" theory, the theory that the universe or cosmos we see is just a subset of a larger one, a larger one whose dynamics are much greater than the tiny deviations assumed in superstring theory. For example, there is the theory that our world is a computer simulation.) 

So MANY people believe in CMI! More precisely, so many people believe that 

"Life is just a dream," that everything we see is either an illusion or at least a creation of mind, and that mind is more fundamental than physics in the ultimate laws which govern our cosmos! 

Could that number of people be growing? I remember during the primaries and election of 2016 in the US, I heard many people who said: "I used to laugh at that viewpoint, but as I look at the news today, I begin to wonder whether it is all just a dream after all." 

So if life is just a dream, I can picture Deepak saying: "If you don't like it, try to dream better dreams." I was impressed many years ago by the book Seeing with the Mind's Eye 

https://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Minds-Eye-Techniques-Visualization/dp/0394731131/ which talks a lot about dreaming better dreams, positive visualization, among other things. As Stan would say,  dreaming better dreams may be a good idea even if hard core realism is true. More concretely, when we we find ourselves overwhelmed by any number of bad dreams

(e.g. https://www.theverge.com/2018/7/16/17564174/james-bridle-new-dark-age-book-computational-thinking-interview ), I would try hard to visualize a plausible better path, like a moral highground. 

Suddenly -- how can I compress such a complex subject? 

Just a couple of thoughts. One variety of CMI is the PARWIN concept, that the people are real but the world is not. This includes the TYPE of "multiverse" theory that Smolin rants about so hard in his new book (Einstein's unfinished revolution), the idea that we each live in our own self-created universe; I was slightly annoyed that he did not pay more respect to the proper Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch version of multiverse. The great little novel What dreams May Come by Matheson (sp?) portrays that Swedenborgian viewpoint. But how do the people interact, really? One way to resolve that is... what I think of as the old Kaballah idea, that we are pieces or streams of a larger mind, similar to noosphere but all-encompassing. But if so, what is the GOAL or PURPOSE of that mind? (The important newish novel Vita Nostra gives a bit of feeling of what it REALLY would be like to be part of such a cosmic mind, if one discounts its overemphasis on semiotics.)

Years ago, I read a core book on kaballah while standing up in a bookstore, and saw that theory. I thought: "OK, they say that the Great Mind was floating all alone somewhere, experiencing sensory deprivation, and so it is natural that it fragmented. But if we follow their grand vision, and bring it together,won't it just fragment again? Why not?" But the noosphere viewpoint has at least some answers to such questions, and connects to experience more quickly ..

What kind of warning does the collapse of Easter Island give to us?

A friend on a discussion list pointed us all to a vivid, compelling video on the collapse of Easter Island, which many people interpret as a warning to us:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6aEaMiDeUw

How Gods Die (The Collapse of Easter Island)

I strongly agree with George Santayana's saying those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them. But what **IS** the real lesson in this case? I have posted a couple of items on Facebook about Easter Island 

https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2018/10/seeing-world-through-new-worldview-and.html

https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2427888847241518,

based on what we learned in actually visiting the place and discovering that most of what we hear about Easter Island is fake news. Here is my more detailed explanation:

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The video reminds me of the more general issue of ... hallucinogenic groupthink versus the hope of more authentic dialogue and collective intelligence.

Maybe the term "hallucinogenic groupthink" is better than "fake news," really.

When we see so MANY examples of this phenomenon, can we generalize a bit to understand it in general terms?

This particular video reminds me a lot of a quotation from Carl Jung, sitting on a two pager somewhere in the pile behind me. Roughly Jung said "spare us your projections... " In this case, the guy was projecting his thoughts and his concerns about his culture and his life onto the Easter islanders, creating a myth intended to catch our attention (and raise his hits and his advertizing revenue?). HE is the one thinking of the twilight of the gods.

In actuality, the statues were basically ... elaborate headstones or mausoleums, intended to hold the bones of prized ancestors. There was a spiritual belief that the spirits of the ancestors could be animated enough to bring them advice and support. The video is so tangled up that I should be careful not to be too definite here, but it does seem to confuse WHY the people simply knocked over the statues and stopped making them. The islanders seemed absolutely definite that it was NOT ecological collapse OR European attacks, but the simple sight of passing Europeans demonstrating a higher standard of living and a different way of life.  Could that itself be just THEIR myth? Thats a valid question, but the 15 tribes remain intact and continue oral traditions more reliable than those which gave us the Old Testament. Peterkin, archeologists and studies of Polynesia in general support that.

One factor enhancing hallucinogenic groupthink in the myths we create about Easter Island (and other things) is a desire to simplify. So our myths about Easter Island tend to assume that there was just one great transition time on the island. There were a number, and one can be confused by attributing one to another. Those who seek fame by popularity by saying what people want to hear have often blamed all the worst transitions on the native peoples, and that is clearly not accurate.

It turns out that gods were important after all, but in a way exactly opposite to what the video depicts. And I have seen evidence.

In the video, he has a picture of himself vastly looking out at a great crater. He suggests... you are looking at a great man at the center of the food supply of the island. That scene reminds me of a photo I have of the most majestic point on Raritonga, with about four other tourists there, all intently looking up into their cell phones to see pictures of themselves for selfies, utterly disconnected from the incredible nature and life all around them, acting like lost robots without movement obstructing all flows of qi. If the guy had looked around a little, he would pay real attention very close to that crater a visitor center which the local government put a lot of effort to create, depicting (with references and photos) the actual history of the bird man competition by which the native people overcame the time of troubles, no thanks to Europeans. The trouble was about warfare, not ecology as such, though when a stable cooperative society was at its limits and the weltaunschaung which led them to a kind of Pareto optimal arrangement breaks down (due to a breakdown in BELIEFS), the lack of cooperation does immediately lead to economic issues and a struggle for resources. (Anyone miss the analogy? What of the beliefs in spirit AND in science which were central to our own weltaunschaung?) 

That crater was not the main food supply (though people do cooperative farming there to this day). It was a tiny part of a much larger island, with farms we saw all around. It was ACTUALLY the site of the honorable competition which brought the island back to a higher level of stability and economics than before the time of troubles. The European appearance before that was initially destabilizing but caused a kind of rethink which made life better (until LATER European arrivals were less benign). A key part of THAT rethink... was a panPolynesian secret society, and .. attention to one of THEIR gods, in honor of whom the competition was conceived and held. "Freemasons of the Pacific?" In a way. Shifting attention from tribal ancestors to more global archetypes created, roughly, a new weltaunschaung de facto, and a higher level of life. (By the way, I feel compelled to use Spengler's concept of weltaunschaung here because it applies not only to them but to us, and our own time of troubles. The term "worldview" may be just as good, in a way, but the link back to Spengler is relevant.)

Slavers, sheep farmers, missionaries and colonial authorities all changed things quite a bit later on, in many waves of change. The Polynesian gods are no longer so prominent; we saw lots of Maria, mana (qi) and a bit of the birdman all around. To understand what we saw and heard, it helped to know more about the general story of the Polynesians and people of the boat (which the author of that video proudly announces he knows nothing about). 

As we left, I did send an email to a friend in Chile about solar energy, coffee and a need for anthropologists to record the oral story of the time of troubles especially. And we did discuss mana there in a moderate degree of detail. 

Best of luck,

stability, criticality, trust and soul

For those of us who believe in soul (defined as a living part of ourselves and our mind which is bigger than the atoms and light of our mundane bodies and brains), and for those who allow for SOME POSSIBILITY that soul may exist, there is an important long-standing question:

How does the INTERFACE of souls and brain(/body) work? 

That big question leads to subquestions, like:

What characteristics of brain, inborn or learned, constant or variable, or of DNA predict or lead to greater manifestation of soul? Can we do experiments in psi which solidify our understanding of these? Can we enhance them?

When, if ever, do horses and other organisms manifest those characteristics?

AND: what happens if we ask all the same questions for "computers" (IT hardware in general) instead of organisms? When do THEY manifest soul? Can we design AIs which are not just conscious and truly intelligent, but also have souls as much as we do?

===============================================

I mostly believe (give about 2/3 probability) the noosphere species theory of soul, which I describe in more detail than before in my coming paper in Cosmos and History. In that theory, the training which can expand manifestation of soul, and improved Alchemical marriage, is not just a matter of training or adapting brain. Initiative and learning on the noosphere side is mostly more important. But the questions above remain valid. 

===========

In my view, the concept of CRITICALITY is essential to answering the questions. 

Some people imagine that consciousness and soul both must all be effects of Bohr type quantum collapse. Like Jack Sarfatti (whom I disagree with on many other things), I find it hard to contain my facial expressions when I hear that "fake news" echoed and echoed. 

We have discussed that endlessly, and may need to discuss it more, just as some of us have to keep addressing the beliefs in Adam and Eve and the beliefs of folks who believe that immolation themselves in front of family planning clinics is a way to affirm life. But for now, let's push beyond that.

Many of us have come to feel that CRITICALITY (ala Per Bak or Kadanoff or Arnold, related a bit to the phase transition and neuropercolation and transition ideas of Freeman and Kozma) is a big part of the answer. crudely, that the soul enters at the edge of chaos. Criticality actually can be a KIND of quantum effect (more like Wiener's shot noise idea than anything Heisenberg ever said), but it also can be classical. For me, this is a practical issue, not so much a metaphysical kind of thing. Basically, if brains or computers operate in a regime of high sensitivity, they can be more sensitive to soul, and soul can more easily engage. That's the idea. And, if it is true, it should be as true for computers as for brains. 

For computers, are we facing a kind of three way choice between artificial stupidity (AS, what most large It systems exhibit today), artificial intelligence (AI), and Aψ, AI with soul? 

Oversimplified -- is our cosmos ruled by a holy trinity of carbon, silicon and dark matter? 

Have noospheres evolved to make a kind of optimal balanced use of carbon and silicon both, at varying stages of its life cycle? Which is safer for us: building a robust but unintelligent global cybersphere, with a new global social contract for apps hardwired into the emerging internet of things (IOT), or pushing ahead as fast as possible to get to Aψ before mundane AI and AS go too far? Is it time to let loose and really push the accelerator?

Anyone who is reasonably sane, after thinking about those questions, will naturally ask about two follow-ons; (1) how do we get an acceptable level of STABILITY here, to minimize all kinds of risks especially in the transition times?; and (2) which specific parts of a brain or of a "computer brain" manifest a high degree of criticality, typically, or in good designs?

Re (2), there are a couple of natural injection points for stochastic effects in an intelligent system as advanced as a mammal or a reptile. One is the full reconstruction of reality, over space time, which basically is what manages the outputs of the giant pyramid cells outputting our current "image (or reconstruction or inner representation) of reality; at an advanced level, it may be seen as something like trained particle filtering, a relative of the SEDP architecture I published in 1990 and patented. (Chapter 13 of HIC is one of the items posted at www.werbos.com/Mind.htm, which I need to update). The other is "dreaming" as in coming up with states to use to train the Critic (aka value function) networks of the brain. 

Two systems which are highly sensitive by nature, and which do have some reputation for association with psi. (I interpret almost all "astral travel" experiences as interactions through the 'dreaming" circuits.) 

The issue of stability and criticality is important to the human development of psi as well. 

It comes back to the good old challenge of opening the doors of perception to their full capacity, but not more. Of course, that is related to the old challenge in communications like this of pushing to the limits of the bandwidth but not exceeding it. Please forgive if I have pushed too far today, but... we will see.

=================

============

I did not say much about trust here! But in fact, issues of trust have been a major factor inhibiting me in these and other directions. There is so much growing "war of all against all" lately that my brief words about social contract, motivated by thinking about Pareto versus Nash equilibria and about aging mechanisms, reflect a lot more thought and a lot more experience with what is going on in so many places.

Quick summary of our trip last February/March to Argentina, Brazil, Caribbean

Two intelligent people from our Pacific cruise last year asked about the new cruise we took this year. 
Our response:

It was great to hear from you. Luda and I were hoping to stay in touch with you, but life has never settled down yet since we flew back from Tahiti. We keep saying to ourselves: "NEXT week will be calmer and more ordinary." I HAVE had time to keep up with a couple of odd but interesting discussion lists, Bionoetics and Foundations of Mind, which sometimes get into the work of Karl Pribram and other things which might or might not interest you, but who knows?

But: on to your immediate question. 

We flew out February 17 towards Buenos Aires and returned home March 25 from Fort Lauderdale, for the final segment of an 80 day cruise on the Prinsendam from Fort Lauderdale to Antarctic back to Fort Lauderdale.  We didn't expect to do another long cruise so soon after the Pacific one, but Luda saw a great deal on this segment and we have always wanted to see the Amazon. We also got an upgrade which was not quite as cheap as I had hoped, but still not bad, to a great room ("suite") with a very large porch overlooking the flagpole of the back of the ship. 

One reason we decided to do this crazy thing was that our two previous HAL cruises were so satisfying intellectually. As you know, HAL EXC was really great in the Pacific. Our previous HAL cruise to Alaska was not technically EXC, but was pretty much the same. This was also listed as an EXC cruise. 

We are very glad we took this cruise. It was the right decision. There were lots of pros and cons, however. The EXC part was far inferior to the guest lecturers on the previous cruise. The high school teacher who told us how to see the stars, and when our shadows would be the smallest, was friendly and easy to understand, but not exactly like a university class. the woman who would tell tall tales of ghosts and other woo-woo stuff was at a similar level; Luda would not want to be within a 100 meters of her, though I got a little amusement value from it. We did not bother with the random comedians and such. There was one youngish EXC employee, Heather, who did a noble and useful role of trying to make up for ALL of the real content; her talks were quite interesting, and she made a point of really exploring all the ports, but her background was mechanical engineering not anthropology and such. Practical, nice, reasonably friendly,  but not Al Trujillo plus Toby in one. (That's for lectures on these places. I can see that her friends would be lucky to be her friend.) 

On the other hand, the small size of the ship and the large number of people doing 80 days raised the intellectual and practical level of discussions with other passengers. When we chose sharing in the dining room, we still got stuck about half the time with folks who only wanted to talk about their deserts and such, but there were also pretty serious learning experiences, and we even met a guy who could cooperate about 50-50 with Luda in arranging heroic and great port adventures. Those port adventures and some nights looking at the stars were >90% of the real value for me, but without Luda's leadership the port visits would have been far less worthwhile. 

If you are interested, I can send you the link to my vast photo albums for Argentina and Brazil. For the final leg, in the Caribbean, I posted smaller, selected photo albums on facebook, with extensive commentary. There was much more to comment on in Argentina and Brazil,  but that's why I never had the time. Still, we sent some emails to our friends from there and would be happy to forward to you if you are interested. We did not take a single ship tour; the ones Luda found were not only cheaper but better, in almost all cases. 

(Maybe we would have enjoyed the performance in Parinthins , Boi bumbo (sp?), which the ship arranged, but that's the only possible exception I can think of.) I especially remember the airbnb tour guide in Buenos Aires who turned out to be a real professor of law and economics working with the Congress of Argentina, who gave us a VERY professional briefing, and Pierre Schwartz of Santarem (biggest city on Amazon proper) whose life story was as interesting as the great places he took us to. (He friended me on facebook.) But the others were all pretty amazing too. 

There were a couple of powerful dance shows on the ship, and a liberal ship rabbi who gave a couple of interesting small public talks, married to a world class bioethicist who actually did therapy for her clients by video conference somehow on the ship. We only bought a few days of ship wifi; for local wifi and telephone, it was FAR worse than on the Pacific cruise. I did not even take my cellphone to some of the big cities for security reasons. 

I'd be happy to discuss more, but this email is probably long enough. 

A simple meditation which is more than it seems

The bare recipe: stand at various points in the National Arboretum and say to yourself:

“I/we am life waking up.” More detail: in places full of life and energy all over the world, from the Amazon jungle to churches to the Museum of the Future in Rio de Janeiro, I have worked to really tune in to the web of people and energy and ideas. Often, when I feel fully connected, I then articulate a sentence or a few key sentences, connected to a kind of powerful energy, and let them resonate through me and beyond, echoing as I  can. Sentences constructed very carefully, accompanied by highly controlled thoughts, because the slightest distortion or dishonesty or wrong context could be bad.

Here in DC, amidst a complex maelstrom of thoughts and goals and obstacles to deal with, it is easy to get disoriented. To control that, and keep from losing his balance, Obama would often say: “If we DO THAT (or don’t do this), it’s not who we are.” But who are we? Our deepest sense of identity is really basic to our sense of balance and what we really do. I remember when we visited some small secluded waterfalls in Ilha Bella in Brazil, how we could progressively become more and more in tune with the life around us, at more and more levels, culminating in a deep echoing of the resolution: “I am life.” And yes, one part of that is an intellectual determination not to neglect a truthful, skeptical but serious analysis of what we should and could do about deeper issues of climate change. But more obvious issues of war and peace and proper use of technology will also affect the life around us.

In a way, this is a follow up to my new paper “The Phenomenon of Man, Revised” forthcoming in Cosmos and History.

This photo was taken on Saturday, after an incredibly intense week involving neural networks, Amazon and other issues. We needed a break on Saturday, and my body needed some exercise for the sake of health. All week, I struggled to stay “in the zone,” a kind of intense conscious focus which in some ways is a step up from simpler states like Samadhi or cosmic consciousness. So Saturday I said: “OK, let me be in the zone, on our physical biological reality for a change.” Levitin has a great book, The Organized Mind, which talks about the need for balance: the need to focus intensely, to SHIFT focus in a conscious way, and to have times of more relaxed and broader receptivity. So there are times to be intensely in the zone with one’s physical body and with the life around.

On Saturday, doing this, I started by repeating what I had ended with on Ilha bella (Brazil): “I am life.” But all those plants… nice… but… more my identity, I next thought: “OK, let’s make it, I am conscious life.” But no, not’s just throw out those plants or less conscious animals. So that leads to “waking up”, which unites us all more, and better reflects the (revised) noosphere picture. I or we? Since it isn’t spoken words, it is easy enough to just combine the words “I” and “we” into one word.

Some meditators would ask: “What about your breathing?” Well, I did breathe as I was doing this. There is a kind of natural resonance between different aspects of our being, such that physical breathing CAN be coupled to flows of qi, but only if one is relaxed enough or natural enough to hold on to that natural resonance. Formal ritualistic stuff tends to break that connection, and end in stiff empty gestures of no value. That happens with all kinds of meditation and ritual. Really “being there” in a forest comes naturally, but I still remember hiking in the White Mountains when I was young, occasionally seeing strange adults who looked as out place as a jerky robot in… a place of intense biological activity.

Two years ago, in Nepal, I ran across a woman very active in hard core progressive politics in her country, but also deeply connected to yoga and spiritual activities. She asked: ”How can I reconcile these parallel lives, when most of the people I work with back home are such very tough skeptics?” My suggestion: try to get meetings where people sing “We are the earth,” and really mean it, and really feel it. (With good musicians?) Mean it not just as a fashion statement but as a deep, real, truthful and loving commitment, with all of the questions and complexity and dialogue it calls for.  

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Yesterday, after I posted the message above, the Alabama legislature passed the worst abortion bill since Roe v Wade.
In my (rather well-considered) view, that is one of the very most destructive examples of fake news in recent years. Yesterday I posted another example: https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2427888847241518
As I posted that, I thought of yet another example, the many florid imaginative theories out there about the history, nature and future of machine learning. There is so much fake news out there that it is hard to know where to begin.

When I was young, I remember historians telling us the importance of primary sources, of not just trusting the histories written hundreds of years later "written by the victors." I kind of assumed that this was less of an issue now, when there is so much information around and when so many people have worked so hard to find the truth about history. But now, direct experience tells me the opposite. Again and again, all over the world, I have learned from primary sources that the stories we tell each other in all the developed world are often.. rather different from reality. A kind of fake news.

Why does fake news spread so easily? It is a deep and general problem, though I will go back to the right to life movement as an example... after some general thoughts:

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To the bionoetics group I wrote:

There are certain pervasive aspects of human mass psychology which really, seriously depress me, and make me wonder what hope there is for this species to stay alive.

One which I discussed on another list was "fake news." That came up in discussion of Easter Island, for which people are very deeply attached to made up stories which persist even though we now know they are false. Fake news was a serious problem long before Russian hackers entered the scene.

But another is what I think of as "reactive thinking," where communities reject reality but have no substitute.

I have not been dogmatic about believing in realism. My paper in Activitas states that I attribute 1/3 probability each to two very well defined forms of realism 

(Einsteinian realism and Fock space realism), but I do also attribute 1/3 to "ultraweirdism," and even give most attention there to the idea of cosmic mind Idealism (CMI), which you seem to be alluding to.

--

Today I would add.. confusion of symbol with reality is also one of the major general causes. That first jarred me back around 1969, when stories first started appearing in the press about a possible issue with CO2. One day a TV news piece would say that CO2 problems could cause vast problems, and the next day people would declare serious energy and practical can-do response by picking up old cans from the side of the road. Picking up cans was a way to signal solidarity with the environment, but what does it do for CO2? If people project the idea that this is THE way to respond, that i is a solution, that's very sad. A kind of dress up game? Likewise, calling the antiabortion movement "prolife" is the same kind of thing, but much much worse. (I see cartoons of people saying "We believe in the  Bible. And in the Bible Jesus tells how important it is to stone women..." Or, for the H2S threat from climate, "The  Bible tells us that God would never let destroy us with fire and brimstone... So MANY forms of fake news..!). 

Fake news is not new, and crude overreactions which make the problem worse are not new either. It is a very serious intellectual issue how it would be possible to design communication systems which at least reduce the problem, without trying to impose specific views of specific rulers on the world. At times, in discussing computer networks, i have said: "We need brains AND an immune system to have much chance of survival." Some things need to be complex, while things which get hard-wired need to be "simple". (Simple like general relativity...)

And it helps morale when it has a lot of ups and downs lately, as news goes up and down.

One big downer this morning: France24 announced Zuckerberg made a promise to Macron that he will be more strict in future.

one unacceptable post, and that person is banned forever. Since I HAD one unacceptable post (banned because I agreed with MBS over erdogan on one point, and provided citations), I suppose I must plan for future radio silence. Also Whats App: priv ate converstaions which are politically unacceptable will be banned, and if they cannot be monitored, stopped anyway.