CH/PSI tree of life, samadhi and climate action, another connection

Yesterday, we had a great international Zoom (Brazil, US, Netherlands, Germany, Peru, Australia) addressing real action to seriously reduce the

probability that the human species goes extinct due to climate problems already far underway. (Search on "euxinia" at youtube to learn more about the threat.) This was a great, uplifting experience in itself, because it points to real hope at a time when the whole world seems to be falling a lot into fear and negative thoughts. But for me, it was more than that. It conveyed some important first person lessons, related to our PSI and noosphere agendas.

At the TIME of the Zoom conversation, it already added some extra color, in two ways: (1) Everything WORKED, to an uncanny degree, which would maybe possibly seem to violate the laws of probability. It was not a case of what popular language calls "entropy" (not the real entropy as we now understand it), a case where things go randomly towards disorder and whatnot. It was like the opposite, RELEVANT important connections constantly emerging at perfect times. (2) There was SUCH a powerful positive loving feeling washing over us.

This was a follow on to an equally amazing Zoom a few days before. I remember in the middle of that one when I heard the Brazilian group name themselves as a new enterprise which they called "Noosferia," which sent a real, palpable positive chill up my spine (as sometimes happens in kundalini yoga). Yesterday was more. My immediate explanation a few days ago was that this was a many-faceted key in itself to the noosphere, analogous to the Hebrew letters and images Yeshua and I spoke about before, REAL entrypoints for REAL PSI to use to make real connections and create real flows of information. It sure did seem to work. 

But yesterday, it worked even more powerfully. The flow of real information was phenomenal, and several of us immediately followed up with more by email in  various directions. 

I am usually NOT as enlightened or connected when I am tired later in the day, but I was awake enough, energized enough and observant enough to see really big things. 

My immediate mundane explanation was: This reminds me of a great saying of Pope Francis from Japan last year (as I heard it simplified  by the press, based on a talk he gave a few days after we too were in the same place in Japan thinking about climate issues): "Those who wish to preserve the natural life of this plant must first learn to TRULY FEEL, deep inside themselves, their LOVE for the life of this planet." It must be more than just words, or even nonverbal brain images. the whole unified self (the living Alchymical marriage) must feel that love. It also reminded me of someone like Deepak saying: "In the end, it is where you send your real love that steers the course of your life." When I was in Japan last year, full of anxiety and pessimism about how to penetrate the thick skulls of today's climate pretenders (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM), to keep myself going, I deeply invoked my love of people I promised it to, and the deep spiritual connection and love I had filled myself with a few months before when my wife and I visited green uplands and pools in a place called Ilha Bela off Sao Paolo, Brazil. I filled myself with that memory, and deep personal commitment. So THERE is where I sent my love when challenges and realistic fears  were  overwhelming me, and it came back to me.

In  my first email response to the first Zoom, I concluded with giving thanks to the noosphere, which did accept that love. (It reminds me of my wife accepting a children's book called Hachiko, which puts me in my proper place in such greater events.) This kind of cause and effect is every so important to our personal lives and connections to what is greater!

At yesterday's Zoom, I also mentioned Sian Kaan, the sacred tree of the Mayans, which connected and grew in this amazing multilevel discussion.

I usually say that I reach the "samadhi" level of PSI only in the early morning in bed, usually, EXCEPT in very special places, like the Shinto and Buddhist places in photos I link to at werbos.com/religions.htm. But h

this conversation was like that.

I mentioned Sian Kaan first as we discussed their new venture Noosferia, which makes very solid connections all the way from REAL farms, ranches, tribes and companies and REAL ways to reduce CO2 and improve the ecology,  to global values and global human institutions. MOST climate activists are "lost in the clouds," selling patent medicine which would often make the environment worse and which sound good to people living in the clouds of politics and proud types of grand diplomacy. But I blurted out: "You are like Suan Kaan. YOU are building the essential bridge between the people stuck in the mud and the people lost in the clouds, the reality level and the policy level." (With real mathematics at all levels!)' But Sian Kaan is also a nice image of the noosphere, a nice angle from which to see it, as it ACTUALLY makes physical connection (dark matter and energy I have argued) all the way from bugs in the dirt to convolutions in the sun itself." 

By the way, I bcc my daughter because yesterday's Zoom included VERY real pictures, diagrams and videos of managing plants, sheep, fences, water, sloping ground, etc., which STRONGLY and IMMEDIATELY reminded me of her back yard. She should have seen it! THAT was a very strong and solid resonance!! The speaker from the NationaI Institute for Biodiversity discussed the mathematical models they used creating these images, diagrams and books and links we will follow up on. Those who want to feed India better should pay a lot of attention too!!

And so, if that was NORMAL wakeful thinking, what did I save for the actual samadhi of this morning? 

(In previous posts, I noted that I gave up exploring PSI to try to understand it for its own sake, over Christmas 1978, when I started full-time work for the US government, ending in 2015. After that, I still CONNECTED PSI as part of my normal life, in pursuing more mundane goals like energy security, hard science, etc. In addition to normal human interactions, I did continue astral "out of body" dreams, assumption dreams (cf Eisenbud's papers) and "samadhi," which we have discussed before.)

IN THAT STATE, I remembered a small regular Quaker discussion group. Once the group leader (then a mathematics professor at GMU) discussed the importance of "conversations with God" in his life. I mentioned how I had heard of the  book "God is my co-pilot," but would feel more in tune myself with a book which someone should write "God is my psychiatrist." After they laughed, I tried to explain. Some Zennies believe that samadhhi is when we should totally blank the mind AND KEEP IT BLANK, IDEALLY FOREVER. Some believe they should try to do one-sided "assumption" stuff, becoming a channel or avatar of a higher soul.  (I discussed this with one over Zoom such a few days ago, a very positive and vibrant real person in the Quaker group.) Some exercise Will or Vril so hard that they treat it as a kind of muscle. (That can work too in its equally constrained way.) 

But I think of it as a kind of dialogue, ultimately. It is merely a more direct perception of our connections as part of the noosphere with other parts, some closer to the whole of it and at times its perceptions beyond that. 

Some believe that when they are in that silence, holding the "global workspace" of the mundane brain in a vibrant receptive state, they should use Will to "throw a ball," to toss some kind of question onto the screen (either as words or an image or whatever, neocortex gives lots of variables to choose), and then try to see what comes back. Getting answers to questions (e.g. "What could I do to fix THAT?") is one very honorable use of that state.

Many many years ago, I used that state to explore difficult mathematical types questions in hard science or government policy. I found it important (similar in feel to part of Levitin's book The Organized Mind) to HOLD a basic question (target variable) in mind, but leave open at least half the screen of my mind. At times I would worry that I was just free associating, thinking about useless and irrelevant things (which CAN be a danger). 

but if I was MODERATELY tight (that target question!) and not TOO tight, AND properly connected in the meditation, the free associations often led to a very striking new resolution, stronger than what I would have demanded myopically if I had been ultratight. i explained it as being guided by some kind of intelligence which knew something I didn't (yet), and guided me step by step to a new unified understanding. And yes, this has similarities to what the best Freudian and Jungian psychiatrists work hard to learn how to do. That kind of thinking is still a major PART of what I do in "samadhi."

BUT THIS TIME... meta, meta. I was reminded that the Zoom conversation yesterday was ALSO like that, that we connected with each other and with the  noosphere enough that we had that same kind of amazing experience right then  and there.

By the way, new internet integrations to better SUPPORT tribes, trees, food plants and animals were PART of the unified image emerging yesterday. They have work important to our AGI goal as well in Brazil. One of my last words was go cite something I heard "the internet and the innernet become one."  Will the internet REALLY be haunted, and will I be one of the ghosts, without ever playing with the risky brittle crutches we hear of at times from the transhumanists or Borg? 

Best of luck... may we all remember to survive, and thus survive... 

The need to get target variables straight to get to rational models and policies for coronavirus, climate, internet

Again and again, people like Bernie have reminded me that success or failure in an entire field often depends on whether we have enough people who REMEMBER, who fully appreciate and apply, a few very basic principles they thought they already knew,. 1. The Basic idea and Overview For example, in late 1979, when I just started my first tenured job, at the US Department of Energy, I soon resolved never to forget a great little poster I saw hanging on someone's wall, illustrating that old adage (which we need to remember and apply):"When you are up to your ... in alligators, it's hard to remember you came here to drain the swamp." IMPLICIT in that important old saying is the idea that "you" were trying to accomplish something, and in danger of forgetting what it was. That "something" could be formulated as a goal or as a target variable. It turns out that TARGET VARIABLES are an important mathematical concept which we need to fully conscious of, as we approach many challenges, such as modeling coronavirus, economies, design of future internet, and increasing the degree of sanity of ourselves and even of the noosphere. MOST modern apps and integration platforms for the internet do not give target variables the importance they deserve, important to building connections between the low practical input variable level and the globalutility functions U which I have written about before here.  2. Target Variables in Neuroscience and Neural Networks (True "AGI" is a type of neural network design.) Since the brain science aspects are part of what key people in this discussion study, let me mention how target variables show up there.  In 2005, the IJCNN (International Joint Conference on Neural Networks) in Montreal that year, invited a leading-edge neuroscience researcher whose talk I summarize: "I have studied the great work of Goldman-Rakic on what the higher cerebral cortex of humans really does. I have fund that she was missing something, in trying to understand the real purpose and function of the very highest regions of the frontal lobes that cortex, the dorsolateral and... These two regions represent the cutting edge of human biological evolution, what our species has REALLY been working on, from a biological point of view. We are struggling to evolve a brain which begins to address the two greatest questions of human mental life: (1) where did I park my car this time in the parking lot?; and (2) what was I trying to do anyway?" To be honest, there were a lot of people who did not really understand that talk, as the speaker was  not experienced in talking to an engineering audience or in hooking up to their equipment. My explanation propagated in the discussion, and I was delighted a few months later to see neuroscience researchers actually using the parking lot EXAMPLE to illustrate the more basic and general issue of the type of memory (unobserved state variables) it illustrated. (It fits my mathematics of how brains handle spatial complexity, part of the papers I cite sometimes, but not for the post today). THE SECOND QUESTION, "What was I trying to do anyway?", directly addresses the TYPE OF OPTIMIZATION ARCHITECTURE USED IN ALL MAMMAL BRAINS, which is much more powerful than baby systems like alpha Go. There is a system of target variables or "goals" which lives in the middle between the raw input/output neurons of the brain (like senses and muscle control cells) and the ultimate global utility functions (the J and U I have discussed here before). Ancient forms of AI certainly knew that there are things called "goals," but how to embody such things firmly and smoothly and under control in a system based totally on learning, capable of learning and unlearning and putting different weights on things?  The open access paper by Yeshua and myself, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00097/full, includes a review of what we know and how it fits real-time brain data.  There are times and places when the higher cortex sends orders directly to muscle control systems, which generate action quickly. But more often, it sends signals to the BASAL GANGLIA, a MIDDLE level of the brain, where target variables are engaged and pursued, sometimes over long time intervals. This geometry reminds me of the Sian Kaan, the scared tree of the mayans, where the CONNECTION between the mud (muscles) and the cloud level (higher cortex) is essential to the life of the whole system. 3. REMEMBERING target variables in coronavirus analysis and climate Yesterday I had a great experience in feeling stupid, the kind of experience we should all remember and treasure in memory. Having felt stupid about coronavirus, I am better equipped to understand and empathize with those well-meaning and powerful people who have been so utterly, placably stupid in policies to prevent human extinction by climate change (more precisely, by euxinia, a search term you can use in youtube if you care about whether the human species goes extinct in the next century +/- a few decades). In both cases, the key need is to LEARN AND REMEMBER the key target variables. Lessons I learned about how to MISUNDERSTAND coronavirus spill over to climate change policy.  A group of highly intelligent friends challenged me to a Zoom discussion yesterday: "Let us compare the models of coronavirus and discuss which ones we should believe." BETWEEN us, we have had access to models and data and academic papers from EVERYWHERE. A few days before, one of you challenged us: "You have seen those models used and debated by CDC. One of us may well be able to do better. What are your ideas?" My response: "This is just like my first tenured job, at DOE/EIA in the 1980s: first do a deep analysis of all the existing models, over a few years, and then redo it all and build them right. BUT THESE models now are far more primitive. More important, there is a "mother of all missing data problems." My work (e.g. see www.werbos.com/Erdos.pdf or https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/036054429090085G) DIRECTLY addresses how to learn causality and dynamics from time series data obscured by noise and missing data, far better than older methods, but there are limits to how much we can know when we do not have enough data, no matter how good the methods. Thank God the new antibody testing will shine light on the very most obvious, glaring hole in today's knowledge by ANYONE.  OOPS. I should say more about the antibody testing. Coronavirus was very much a part of my FIRST PERSON EXPERIENCE but NOT of my third person scientific efforts. A few weeks ago, I caught something from a fellow Quaker just back from China, and had exactly what my medical ex-wife described as classic coronavirus symptoms. I really wanted to know: am I ALREADY immune now, or could I die in a week if I go to the wrong store? I realized that these issues apply to MANY people, and to the issue of reopening the world economy (an issue worth many trillions of dollars), and even sent bits of information to chosen people here and there. I became to coronavirus what a lot of those pseudoexperts on climate are to climate.  I never INTENDED to become a world expert on coronavirus! I am already struggling with other larger, more important issues. Yet as I decide where to go on a day of lockdown, in a neighborhood which has one of the highest death rates per capita, I do think about my personal survival. PERHAPS THIS IS HOW many people think about climate  change, taking it quite seriously, but now knowing JUST HOW SERIOUS it is or isn't, and not letting it EVER become a major focus of their highest level enlightened strategic thinking even for an hour. Like them, I read lots of things, but never let it get to me at a deep level. BUT THEN YESTERDAY my friends challenged me to a sketch a real mathematical model. They would prefer a good old fashioned econometric model, like the one I cited above. (Really. The Stanford Energy Modeling Forum EMF found that the econometric model of industrial energy demand which I built back then was the most reliable such ever built, and that lead to the publication above in their special issue of the journal Energy.) BUT: I said no, BEFORE one can build a quality, reliable econometric model, one must first explore the territory, considering alternative Conceptual mathematical models, rather like the seven equation  Keynesian model I learned about decades ago from Ackley's classic text on macroeconomics.  So there I was yesterday, at kitchen table and then outdoor patio table, trying to scribble just a few RELEVANT macroeconomic type equations to give MY view of what a correct model would look like. Oh, did I feel stupid! I consoled myself with the memory that it took three solid months of DOE library research and focused thinking to come up with even first draft of my "seven equation" model of industrial energy demand, but this time I HAD already seen the major branches of what is known today. I started to list a few key variables... Of course, percentage of antibodies to resist the flu, BY group of people, is one crucial variable. There was a great study in Germany, followed by a new one from Stanford (which the drug companies love about as much as they love Dean Radin's work), suggesting that the death rate for people who catch coronavirus is only about 0.1%, FAR less than CDC was telling us just two weeks ago, because so many of us SURVIVED the virus and never got entered into CDC data. (I deeply respect Fauci and Cuomo for working hard now to fill this crucial hole in the data.)  But what about OTHER sources of immunity? The German study, based on solid statistical sampling in a prime "hot zone," SUGGESTED that only 20% of the people had the anti bodies but that 90% or so HAD BEEN exposed fully but never even needed antibodies.  So yesterday, feeling like a fool, trying to sketch a few equations on the back of a sudoku printout on a patio table outdoors, I did at least list those two time-series variables, percent antibodies by group and percent other immunity (for which we have essentially no direct data at all). And then...? Certainly it is huge issue WHERE to restart the world economy (even before we get into the coupling with macroeconomics, which is what I WANTED to think about). As with physics... I had to remember again the lesson about CRAWL BEFORE YOU WALK. My understanding of coronavirus had been blocked by my interest in the economics issues, such that I did not really pay full attention to the virus policy issues, even for an hour... just like those COP25 and Obama'Biden bill people, distracted by "bigger priorities." JUST ONE HOUR of true focused attention, with strategic thinking... can bbe worth so much...  -- Anyway, after my mental failures yesterday, I reviewed this (among other things) at samadhi time early this morning, and see much better how to model this thing. THE KEY TO CORRECT modeling of coronavirus epidemiology is, first, to remember the policy context. This is about doing the best we can within a limited time frame. Actions are needed NOW. More precisely, actions taken NOW will be important, and should be well informed, regardless of whether we will later learn better. Classic Raiffa style decision analysis, at root. Second: to identify not just causal variables but TARGET variables. What are we trying to accomplish anyway? For a correct ballpark analysis (the best we can get), we should perhaps first assume that EVERYONE WILL BE EXPOSED TO THE VIRUS. Let us be clear that the target  variable is not zero exposure.  Postponing the economic aspects: key target variables, "local utility functions," are the rate (per capita?) of AVOIDABLE DEATH and AVOIDABLE PERMANENT BODY DAMAGE, and DAMAGE TO HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS. Those first two target variables suggest grounding a model CONCEPTUALLY on time series of INDIVIDUAL PEOPLE. The times series of the LEVEL of exposure to the virus will have crucial impacts on probability of death or permanent damage. Many deaths of health care workers may be due to TOO MUCH exposure too fast. (There is serious literature on these effects, but NOT enough to give is a reliable decisive feel for exacrtly how it cuts.) Low levels, like a vaccination, may give time for enough buildup of antibodies OR those other mysterious immunity mechanisms. OR  people with those mechanisms from day one may simply not change at all, until those mechanisms weaken for some reason and gentle exposure works best.  However, level of exposure as a function of time is certainly not the only input variable to predict what happens to a person. There is the mystery immunity factor, and things like asthma, diabetes, hypertension, paranoid immune systems. At first, one might say that there is an optimal schedule of exposure as a function of those other attributes of people, and that it may be slower for some than for others, especially slow in nursing homes. HOWEVER: it is crucial that those other factors are VARIABLES AS WELL. Above all, there are new studies showing how aerobic exercise may RAISE immunity A LOT, raising suspicion that dietary variables and exercise (both mundane and esoteric, folks!) may change the level of "mystery immunity." There are huge policy implications even to this simplified conceptual mathematical model. In restarting economies, it is important to push hardest to open up in areas where the PERCENTAGE OF ANTIBODIES is a high fraction of the equilibrium antibody percentage, as the spread of the virus reaches equilibrium statistics. And so, that hot zone in Germany and New York may be the FIRST places to ease up on restrictions (with exceptions for places like old age homes where the optimal schedule of exposure is over more time, OR EVEN crowded isolated places like ships at sea where the level of exposure per person tends to be higher in response to an initial injection of the virus to the place). God help the people of Texas if THEY decide to go first because they haven't got the antibodies yet! (I suppose it would eliminate some of the more starry eyed Trump believers, a bit like that town/church in South Korea where believers who refused to use masks died like flies.)  But for policy purposes, any such model should be supplemented by something like a county level model, to predict the risk of breakage to health care facilities. A key target variable is not ONLY total death rate summed over time but the gap between the need for hospital care AT ANY TIME and the facilities available THEN. Fauci righhtly reminds us not to forget what happened in Italy!!! But new data also suggests that shortage ofventilators is not as important as we thought a month ago, since.. well Cuomo tells us that people put on ventilators for corona virus mostly die anyway, and other data suggest ventilators THEMSELVES (e.g. complications of anesthesia) may do as much harm as good in such cases. Simple CPAP machines and oxygen tanks may be easier and better. Is it a matter of rational supply chain modeling and management rather than timing of patient load? Or should US extend lockdown more than it would IF the first two target variables were the only issue, JUST in order to accommodate supply chain management inferior to what should be possible in today's world (e.g. true AGI)? Are people dying today to pay for the sins of overconfident supply chain app developers? (That, in US AND China and EU.)  4. Various Extensions (Google wanted to insert $ here. Maybe there Is a ghost in the machine,,,)  Having well-defined target variables and laser-focused strategic thinking  is ESSENTIAL to clear thinking and even meager levels of competence in areas like climate policy and virus policy. but it is EQUALLY essential to be able to stand back later and account for the bigger picture. I OFTEN recommend Levitin's popular book, The Organized Mind, stressing the need for us to BALANCE extreme focus and relaxed greater openness. This is not just an old adage; it is a key principle in AGI and organization design. (For example, both NSF and NASA have often needed budget decisions to be based on a SUM of value to core mission -- target variables -- and broader impacts. And lots of intelligence to get both right.)  For virus policy, the IMPACT ON THE GLOBAL ECONOMY is a HUGE broader impact. (This year, every time I use the popular word "huge", I think of the equally popular word "unpresidented".) That's where my mind WANTED to go yesterday. But: the bottom line economic growth ov er the next ten years is a SUBSET OF THE AGI THREAD. Whichever way it goes, short of total collapse to the Stone Age, the financial system ten years hence is a SUBSET of the internet, NOT the other way around. That is a simple basic principle we need to get straight, to avoid the many opportunities for fiscal and physical suicide. HERE AND NOW, major nations like India may not be able to afford the degree of lockdown we see in New York and DC. The "broader impacts" term in THEIR policy decisions may cut quite differently from how they cut in these areas.  But beyond that... global economic plans which assume EITHER that we get to print unlimited paper money OR that money is a hard physical constraint like gold are BOTH too extreme to survive. I have been reminded a lot of how inflation in Germany in the 1920s, after Spanish flu, might have even been decisive in causing Nazi rise and World War II. Getting money straight is VERY important now, more important than the flu itself. And MONEY IS AN APP DEPENDENT ON ITS PLATFORM!!!!!  Confused as climate policies seem to be in most of the world, that kind of platform policy is far, far worse. Will we be able to survive the growing strength and focus (myopia) of "Godzilla, King Kong and the Borg" (my names for the three main serious platform development realities I see emerging right now)? TBD. As they say, "God help us. Please."  Best of luck,   Paul Timothy Holborn Mon, Apr 20, 10:17 AM (2 days ago) we had choices, as was illustrated in 1945 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-may-think/303881/ Yet, out of all the possible futures fro Timothy Holborn Mon, Apr 20, 11:22 AM (2 days ago) to me, Biological, Amanda, Heiner, Doug apologies...  I fear i was not as helpful as my heart otherwise seeks help my mind, to be. If there was sufficient distributed compute to solve some of these problems, how would you define the ACLs...   I guesses, that's my underlying point.  The work on (royalty free) standards, etc. is in most ways, all about how to answer that problem.  If that puzzle is solved well, then we have a chance to do some good - whilst seeking to solve others.   but horse, before cart.  ATM, there's some who have automobiles, others trying to feed their horses petrol hoping they go faster, when in fact there's a decision to be made - build new tech, or get back onto the grass...  ReplyReply allForward

Healing the war between science and spirit

Many people at this point are deeply focused on how to heal the world of coronavirus. Important as that is, I believe it is much MORE important to heal humanity from three very immediate problems which threaten everyone on earth, in my view: (1) worst case climate change (search on "euxiinia" at youtube), which clearly could kill us all, but is further off than the others; (2) a tsunami of new problems with the internet
(see 
https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2020/04/role-of-quantum-technology-in-massive.html);
a growing, deep war between science and spirit in human culture at all levels.

Here are two posts on how we MIGHT save ourselves from such a war. The first was an email from me to Dr, Brenie Baars, one of the world's foremost authorities on the scientific study of consciousness ( who is a respected friend but who has at times criticized another friend). The second was from Yeshua den David, who gives an interesting overview of deep Israeli thought on these issues. Both are part of a larger discussion posted at https://groups.google.com/forum/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer#!forum/biological-physics-and-meaning

============================================
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Hi, Bernie!

[This is still an issue in understanding the laws of history, where this discussion started.]

I am deeply concerned and upset that the world as a whole does not appreciate and learn as much as it should from your important work -- or mine, or Robert Kozma's, or Yeshua's, or Walter Freeman's or Karl Pribram's. I have heard every one of these (ironicallly, except you, who were more tactful) commenting on the importance of the challenge of breaking through that destructive blockage. I have even been shocked by the people who ignored or wrote off the late work of John Von Neumann and Julian Schwinger, which went much further than the usual pundits write about. 

There certainly are people on this list, AND people off of it, who would benefit from a better understanding of your work. I have referred to it in many of my posts here on consciousness, but even I do owe you thanks for the further sources you refer to.

BUT: I SEE NO REASON TO CREATE A WAR BETWEEN THE GLOBAL WORKSPACE THEORY (GWT) OF CONSCIOUSNESS and what I call "PSI" here, the effort to understand real powers of mind which cannot be explained by the usual assumption of total information separation between people (or between people and the larger worlds of nature) except by local "QED physics" (electrons, protons, neutrons, electromagnetism). 

Given the important goals of this list, it is important that we learn how to have beneficial dialogue EVEN WITHOUT a requirement that we agree on a party line. 

It is important that we work on ways to improve cooperation and mutual support, FOR EXAMPLE, between three groups of people:

(1) Those who believe in GWT, and appreciate its importance, but believe that PSI is an error or a fake with >99% probability;

(2) Those of us who  believe in GWT, and appreciate its importance, but ALSO believe that PSI is real with >99% probability;

(3)  Those of us who  believe in GWT, and appreciate its importance, but seriously feel uncertain about whether PSI is real or not.

It sounds as if you, Bernie, would align with (1). I align with (2). Others on the list might declare (3). And of course,

there are those on the list who have at times voiced opinions which WOULD contradict GWT altogether. I do hope we can find ways to advance (1), with raising unnecessary red flags and making unnecessary enemies by creating a false entanglement here.

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

This debate is more than it seems. It is a microscopic reflection of a huge binary war between science and spirit,

in the cultures of this planet. People who commit themselves to that war tend to engage in creation of stereotypes of people on the other side, like the basest partisans left and right degrading democracy in so many places. There is no such conflict in the underlying logic. I do hope that some of us can contribute more to healing this kind of schizophrenia or fracturing present even in our noosphere. (This is similar to Luria's feelings, as Uzi has described, but without the same origins theory.) 

Best of luck,Paul

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FROM YESHUA:

I concur with Paul !!!

The healing of this ancient war about what constitutes reality ought to be our priority, since reality is still a mystery together with life, mind~brain~heart~respiration, consciousness, spiritual values and The Power of Love.

One of the many things I value from one of Uzi’s posts is that he invokes Luria as an exponent of healing principles operating in the universe and humanity and he integrates that to his understanding of the universe and life.

There is a lineage of Israelite Kabbalists that influenced Isaac Luria in different ways, as well as many other wise men and women (Tzadikkim and Tzadikkot) who came after him. I see the lineage strongly represented by Moshe (Moses), Yeshua Ben Yosef (Jesus the son of Joseph and Mary), Rabbi, Shimon Bar Yochai, Isaac Luria, Moses Hayim Luzzatto, Rachel Morpugo, Yehuda Ashlag, and ……

This family of Tzaddikim and Tzaddikot all shared somehow a similar understanding of humanity’s journey towards redemption, where long lasting individual inner peace and social harmony are achieved. As expressed by Uzi, Luria depicted and explained four stages: (a) Eden - An Edenic singularity-like stage (Adam and Eve’s individual Omega Point), (b) The Fall, (c) Tikun and (d) Achrit Hayamim, or the ‘end of time’, refers to the completion of Tikun (Humanity’s Collective Omega Point).

Our task in the healing and integration between spiritual wisdom and science is to be found in (c) Tikun and (d) Achrit Hayamim, or the ‘end of time where individual Tikun (correction) will need to be enacted both individually and collectively one related to the development of each individual’s potential and the other to the enactment of actions of kindness and education in the social arena if we want to enjoy our destination, vision and ideal (d).

The students of consciousness then must grow spiritually and ideally attain inner peace and collaborate lovingly and altruistically (action of kindness) in order to improve the field and as a consequence of that, ideally and eventually, humanity in toto.

As Uzi wrote possibly coming from Isaac Luria: “Man is small World, World is big Man”

I leave you with an explanation by Billy Phillips that I quoted from:  https://kabbalahstudent.com/rabbi-shimon-and-jesus/ , which is intended to contribute to this healing or Tikun as a continuation and expression of this lineage of spiritual wisdom, as follows:

RABBI SHIMON AND JESUS

by Billy Phillips · Published April 27, 2013 · Updated May 5, 2014

Today’s portion of Emor, according to the writings of Kabbalist Rav Isaac Luria and the Zohar, reveal the secrets of Golgotha and the resurrection of the dead. Golgotha is the place where Jesus was said to be crucified. Except Christian scholars and all the early founders of Christianity admit that the word is an Aramaic word and that they have no idea where Golgotha is or why this word is used for the whole idea of Jesus’s death and resurrection. The answer can be found in Kabbalah.

Commenting upon this week’s Torah portion, Rav Isaac Luria explains how the spiritual dimension called Atika Kadisha is the source of the “dew” that brings about resurrection of the dead. He further explains that the dew is really the three letters in the Tetragrammaton, Yod, Hei and Vav.

Why?

According to Kabbalistic numerology, the word “dew” and the three letters of God’s Name both share the same numerical value. So “dew” is really a code for these three letters of God’s Name, which really refer to the realm that we call the 99% reality. The final letter in God’s Name (Hei) refers to our world. This one letter is disconnected from the first three letters. Therefore, God’s Name is not complete. God’s Name is not unified.

In simple terms, it means our 1% reality is disconnected from the 99% reality, the source of all Light.

The early Christian fathers and original Doctors of the Church all admitted that they could not find the word Golgotha anywhere in ancient Hebrew writings. They admitted they did not know why this word was used. To this day Golgotha remains a mystery. That’s because the early Christian fathers and founders were not permitted to look into the Zohar. These are the mysteries Jesus taught ONLY to his closest disciples. These are the mysteries that only Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai, Rabbi Akiva and their inner circle understood.

You see, the Zohar explains how Golgotha is the spiritual realm in the Ten Sephirot (Tree of Life) that encompasses Akita Kadisha, the place where the dew comes from to resurrect the dead. In simple terms, Golgotha refers to the 99% reality. It was never about a physical location. It’s a spiritual dimension.

Rav Isaac Luria teaches only through repentance (inner change) can we reconnect to resurrect our happiness and resurrect what ever has died in our life. When enough individual people reconnect, then the gates of the 99% will open wide enough so that even the dead will resurrect and immortal existence (Messiah) will arrive.

This is the long-held Kabbalistic secret of the teachings that have surrounded Jesus for 2000 years concerning Golgotha, Resurrection and Jesus’ teachings about repentance. Repentance really means in Hebrew, to return. You might ask, Return to where? We are returning ourselves and this world to the 99%. We are returning the final letter Hei, in God’s Name, back to the first three letters to unify God’s Name and thus, unify our world with the 99% reality.

THE SON

The letter that the Hei reconnects to is the letter Vav. The Vav is called “The Son” in the Zohar . The first letter of God’s Name (Yod) is called “The Father” (Abba). This further explains Jesus’ teachings that says one must connect to the Son in order to connect to the Father. It’s all about unifying God’s Name, unifying our world with the spiritual realm of the 99%.

Now follow this: Next week’s Torah portion is Behar. This specific portion explains the secret of the phrase “Son of God” or “Son of the Holy One”.

As we just learned, The Son refers to both the letter Vav. But in Behar, we ALSO learn that the phrase the Son of the Holy One refers to the man who masters the Holy Wisdom of Kabbalah to transform his nature and achieve oneness with God.

So these two Torah portions contain ALL the secrets underlying Christianity’s most important tenets and they prove, without a single doubt, that the Zohar underlies Christianity and is the root of all of Jesus’ true teachings. How appropriate that these two Torah portions always fall around Lag B’Omer, the day Rabbi Shimon revealed the Light of Zohar and left this world. This day, according to Kabbalist Rav Berg, is a mini Shavout, a mini revelation of Mount Sinai. Rabbi Shimon not only left the world on this day, but he also came out of the cave after 13 years of receiving the wisdom of Zohar on this same day as well.

The revelation of the Zohar is equal to the revelation of Mount Sinai and that is why it’s considered a mini Shavout. Moses came down from the Sinai mountain with the Tablets bringing the world the Light of Immortality and Rabbi Shimon came out of the cave of the mountain with the Zohar which contains the same Light of Immortality.This Light comes from the realm of Golgotha and Atika Kadisha.

Now we can finally grasp the truth that the Zohar is the true source and root of Christianity. Finally, Lag B’ Omer occurs on the 33rd day of the Omer. Jesus left this world when he was 33.

To my eyes, this process ought to be accomplished both via individual effort and by The Grace of The Creator, as the culminating aspect of human development, Oneness with God. This is the ultimate meeting place between Science and Spiritual Wisdom.

role of quantum technology in massive changes of the global internet

Tim has encouraged me to say something about the role of quantum mechanics in consciousness and in the internet of the future. I previously suggested using the code letters "AGI" (for "artificial general intelligence), because that is ONE aspect of the tsunami of changes coming to the global internet.

There are risks and opportunities both far larger than most people (including ersatz experts who do not know the underlying technology) begin to imagine. Those risks include threats of extinction of the entire human species far more imminent than death by climate change.
                Here is a key slide from my talk on that "AGI" challenge, a talk requested by the world President of IEEE: In brief: the old choices on the left, which a new Director of Engineering at NSF asked us to help implement (in 2014), WOULD have resulted in extinction of the human species, in my view. I met the key people, saw the details. One of the pathways to extinction is the pathway depicted in terminator II, closer than some people want you to know. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE38LG2DVAc, from Stuart Russell, whose text was cited for years as the number one text in AI, but of course these videos upset certain people in the military closer to implementing that technology than even Russell knew. (How did I know? It is a neural network technology. Russell's texts understated what neural networks could do, but my PhD thesis was the first step in creating that technology. See scholar.google.com, thesis with twice as many citations as Walter freeman's best, but many of them in Chinese. Hes, China is ahead.)
                 The RIGHT column in this slide describes an alternative pathway, consistent with human survival. The right column depicts what I now call "SII", Sustainable Intelligent Internet. Quantum information technology (QuIST, Quantum Information Science and Technology) is ONE of the five key elements required for SII.
            To what degree is the mundane human brain a quantum computer? We have discussed that already in huge detail on this list. In the end, I see several POSSIBILITIES, and an open need for science to FIND OUT which is true, as per: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07579/nsf07579.htm . So far as I know, nothing in recent years has changed the bottom line of what we know. Also, the role of quantum theory in human consciousness is not so central as some have consiedered; see my paper for the Festschrift for Henry Stapp, linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm.

      But when we BUILD intelligent systems ("AGI") or try to understand noospheres, we are free to consider the whole range of designs allowed by QuIST, not restricted by neuroscience. That is a technology which will massively change the internet of the future, one way or another. In my view, the US and EU are massively behind both China and what is possible in QuIST. WHY are they so far behind? That is a very interesting question, well within the scope of the Cosmos and History (CH) topic, but in this post I will try stay within the AGI/Q scope.

     The key point is that there are five basic TYPES of general quantum computing: 
 (1) The universal quantum Turing machine, brilliantly expounded by David Deutsch of Oxford. I think of this as aleph zero quantum computing, because it is as infinite and unlimited as a Turing machine, in manipulated infinite bit strings, exactly like the INTEGERS which are infinite in number. Infinite as in aleph-zero. Cantor's mathematics of infinity is a crucial foundation for understanding what is going on. Aleph-zero quantum computing is the kind of quantum computing which uses "qubits," the quantum version of the bits that an ordinary Turing machine relies on. Binary variables. When enthusiasts proclaim that "all advanced real life is digital," they assume that binary digits cover everything.

 (2) CONTINUOUS VARIABLE quantum computing. Until I went to the 2015 SPIE.DCS conference on "Quantum Information and Computation IX" (S1127 in the annual SPIE conference on technology for defense and security held in Baltimore) I was not aware that ANYONE in the US was working on the more powerful generalization of QuIST which is possible when using continuous variables (real numbers) instead of just binary digits in quantum computing. Since there are aleph-one real numbers, I think of this as aleph-one quantum computing.

 I was invited to speak that that conference by Howard Brandt, one of the VERY PIVOTAL breakthrough thought leaders little known to the public or to Congress the people. I knew Howard from QISCOG, the quantum information sciences coordination group, which I was then a member of (as I was one of the people at NSF funding QuIST research). That group coordinated work in QuIST all across US government agencies, of which NSA and DARPA were most prominent. Howard Brandt was the real brains behind all that, and I met him at a different, larger, more operational government QuIST conference in Baltimore.

 At SPIE 2015, Brandt intended to create a kind of explosion on the scene, by showing us the power of the new continuous variable paradigm. ONLY LATER when I was writing my paper for the special issue of Quantum Information Processing which emerged from that session did I learn how Seth Lloyd, a professor at MIT deeply respected as a theorist and educator in the QISCOG, community, had already published significant work in continuous variable quantum computing. the four speakers which Brandt had invited in order to create a new wave were me, two theorists doing basic research (one Chinese/Australian and one Indian/American linked to Subhash Kak), and a US contractor who seemed to be saying "and yes folks, Howard is bringing it HERE, and we can implement it." But Brandt himself died unexpectedly just two weeks before the conference, and was unable to perform the great show he had planned for the world. The researchers showed clearly that they could make and break codes far beyond what aleph-zero quantum computers could handle, but we in the US never got the benefit of that. Again and again, I see US people counting qubits like counting sheep, oblivious to the giant ravens flying over their heads.

 (3) The D-wave TYPE of quantum computing, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-Wave_Systems, which It think of as aleph-zeroN, as Vancouver technology, or as quantum Boltzmann. They still use qubits, but INSTEAD OF RUNNING programs (the way old Turing computers do) they use a different ARCHITECTURE for computing, more suitable for LEARNING (hence neural N). Old fashioned Turing thinkers, educated in mainstream computer science, tend to wrinkle their faces in disgust at this silly irrelevant type of architecture, designed to perform optimization tasks rather than general purpose Turing programs. But in the neural network field, we know that all types of brain-like intelligence can be MAPPED into such optimization tasks, allowing unlimited power for those who understand enough to use it.

 (4) ANALOG Quantum Computing (AQC), one of the two main themes of my paper with Dolmatova in Quantum Information Processing https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11128-015-1146-2 . In that paper, we cited previous work by Siegelmann and Sontag (and others) showing that analogy neural network types designs ALREADY achieve a computational capability beyond what Turing machines are capable of, by combining real numbers and network architectures. Proper use of such architectures (the main foundation of mundane brain capabilities) ALREADY gives post Turing capability, even without quantum mechanics. And so half of our paper discussed how neural network type architectures can be COMBINED with continuous quantum computing, to get another while level of capability, which I think of as aleph-two type quantum computing. (D-wave is of course a subset of this.) An AQC level computer should be able to break ANY code generated by ANY lower level of intelligence (e.g., crack any bitcoin type of currency or even the new digital rembini) if there is enough data available, and the data requirements are far less than with lower level intellligent systems.

 (5) Crosstemporal AQC. The other half of our QIP paper, though we VERY carefully left out many details because this could become very scary, especially in a world where people can barely avoid killing themselves with autonomous drones (the baby predecessors to what you could see in Terminator II). I have the impression that China, New Zealand and Australia have the greatest chance of actually getting that far, but the emerging new internet shows great risks of getting at least half of us killed in the US in the coming decade through inability to rationally deploy even pre-quantum security technology represented on the slide. Still, those risks are a matter for CH analysis, the challenge of staying alive before we are ready to grow out of the baby stage. Last year I even saw possibilities for South Korea or Japan to get into the AQC game, but after the new virus that seems less likely. Crosstemporal AQC, like crosstemporal PSI, entails a mix of risks and opportunities, not advisable for groups who do not know what they are doing (like most nation state governments on earth). Best of luck. we really need it.