Comment on Deepak Chopra's video on what reality is

First I thank Heiner for drawing my attention to Deepak's recent effort to make sense of what reality might be, after the many discussions on this list:

https://youtu.be/9_A_JQmuGs8

Deepak and Menas Kafatos have recently discussed their collaboration in addressing this subject. For those of you who do not know about Menas, I draw your attention to the book he put together years ago, based on a major world-leading conference he put together on Bell experiments and the Foundations of quantum physics:

 Kafatos M, editor. Bell's theorem, quantum theory and conceptions of the universe. Springer Science & Business Media; 2013 Mar 9.

When I looked this up in scholar.google.com this morning, I was amazed that there were only about 100 citations! ONE of the many important chapters in that book was by Zeilinger's group, the first seminal paper on what we call GHZ states in Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuIST). If I search on Zeilinger, I get more than 5000 citations, but even that understates how important his work has been in leading the most advanced mainstream QuIST on earth today. (For example, the world's first quantum secure "phone call" by satellite was from China to Austria, to Zeilinger's lab.) In general, Menas's conference really brought together the most important work in that area, for very deep and important dialogue... but then the people who had that dialogue went on to publish the same ideas elsewhere. Certainly Karl Pribram valued his interactions with Menas, as Menas has said before on this list.

I was also surprised how google scholar showed just ONE version of Menas’s book available for free online, but what it showed was just one chapter in the book, mine! Another related paper it showed was: http://www.choprafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Cosmology-Time.pdf, a joint paper with Deepak and with Kak, one of my Facebook friends who also spoke at the important QuIST meeting in Baltimore in 2015…

So now: what do we make of this new effort to bring it all together?

In my own recent papers trying to dig deep into these questions (links posted at www.werbos.com/religions.htm), I mention "Cosmic Mind Idealism" (CMI), a theory about how reality works, which I tend to associate with Deepak (though of course the idea is much older). Deepak's video ... seems to me the mental side of "monism," the notion that there is only one reality, really, and that that reality is consciousness. The mind.

In ancient times, when I think of the ancient leaders of India who wrote part of the ancient Upanishads as people more like my wife than like today's brahmins... I imagine even then a debate: is the cosmos like a "great machine" (like the Fock space Schrodinger equation, in spirit) or  Great Mind?

monists could agree that everything which exists is ONE or the OTHER, but which? Dualists could suggest that "both of you are right", that there is one realm obeying the mental kind of reality, and ANOTHER which is like a great machine. 

When Ram talks about "dual aspect monism," it is important to remember he is echoing a VERY ancient stream of thought. So far as I know, the major thought leader in India who created that stream was Ramanuja, and we are honored to have the presence here of Vardan Chandar who represents the modern Ramanuja Foundation. From my limited reading of Ramanuja, I have the impression that he essentially said: "AT THE FOUNDATIONS, the Monists were right. Maybe it is a great machine, or maybe it is a great mind, BUT EITHER WAY, it has those two ASPECTS, both of which are important and real to US in our practical life." 

And so, we naturally ask: is Deepak right, and Mind in some form the basic fabric of reality, of the cosmos? Or is all governed by something LIKE the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch vision of a Schrodinger equation operating over something LIKE the modern version of Fock Space? (I owe Alex Hankey a caveat: "something like" could be over a 4D extension of Fock Space, or a finite dimensional geometric manifold ala eiinstein.) I see little basis for BELIEVING it might even be something else altogether,  but proper quest for truth should make room for other possibilities as well, even though these two are what I find most compelling.

Long ago, Stan Klein on this list asked: "Does it really MATTER whether it is a great consciousness or a great Fock space cum Schrodinger equation? Is it not possible that BOTH theories of reality are equally useful and equally valid in helping us cope with OUR humble level of existence in this tiny solar system?"Furthermore, mathematics of mind are fundamental to US as we use our minds to try to understand the whole of our experience, but we still have grounds to expect that our minds may be just emergent brain phenomena (remembering that noospheres and computers can have a kind of brain) emerging in a cosmos governed by something like a Schrodinger equation? 

To me, this is the real dual aspect monism. The mind aspect and the Schrodinger aspect are equally fundamental to US, and we simply do not know which is fundamental to how reality itself actually works. WE DON'T KNOW, and any human who pretends to know for sure which of the two is the ultimate reality is not telling himself the truth. Yet we can USE both viewpoints, and we will understand more, in principle, if we learn to use BOTH of therm to make sense of experience. And we can hope SOMEDAY to be like true scientists here, finding experience or evidence which SOMEDAY might give us a clue about which is the ultimate reality. (yet could we not ALWAYS imagine a deeper level yet, no matter how deep we go?).

==========

But these considerations are all just prerequisites (reflecting what I already said in www.werbos.com/religions.htm). I do take the great mind (CMI) concept very seriously, and I keep trying to make sense of what it tells us. If people USE the CMI concept as an excuse for not learning math, and for screaming at mechanical repairmen or Western scientists trying to fix their furnace (I have seen behavior a bit like that!), it does not help. If they use it as a defense mechanism (See Vaillant's great longitudinal study, or Trungpa'sbook on the stages of spiritual growth), it may be inferior to the more honest defense mechanisms they talk about. 

There was a time when I did not take the CMI as seriously as I do now. 

My first problem with CMI as a theory of reality was that it is a large FAMILY of possible theories. The same is true of the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch (EWD) theory; in ANY version of quantum field theory (QFT), it is a DIFFERENT theory – often very different – depending on what function one uses for the Lagrangian or Hamiltonian H in the theory. However, in QFT we have many different explicit CHOICES for what H might be. By exploring these choices in depth, we can get a better idea of which one is true. EACH ONE is concrete enough that it gives us a pathway not only to experiments but to design and to study of what we see across the domains of life. For me, it leads to the concept of a noosphere of noosphere species; in the papers at www.werbos.com/religions.htm, I can then USE this point of view, by connecting noosphere and other concepts to very concreate realities of life, all the way to real issues of life, policy and technology. WHAT DOES CMI offer to add to that in any way?

It is OK for believers in CMI to say “oh yes, human bodies do exist, and I will even feed mine today.” OK, for those of us who experience noosphere level life, it should be equally OK to say “OK, I will live with and in the noosphere as well.” Exactly as I would if I had not even heard of CMI.

CMI AS A WAY TO LIVE LIFE, as an ASPECT, can also be used to adopt an attitude of freedom and creativity. That’s useful, exactlh as Stan Klein said here before. But we can do that from the viewpoint of noospheres as well. Yes, it is a useful ASPECT at time, especially if it is well integrated with what we learn form ALSO knowing the other aspects, but what does it add really? What does it add as a theory of reality that we cannot get from the EWD version of noospheres and human life?

This question should be approached very seriously, and with humility, because if CMI DOES make a difference, in some form with some extension, it could make a huge difference in our lives. And that is why I started trying to probe the possibilities of CMI many years ago, before Deepak’s video.

Many decades ago, I was impressed by a light little story book, What Dreams May Come, by Matheson, which presented a VISION of what CMI might actually mean, MORE CONCRETELY AND MORE SPECIFICALLY. (By the way, Deepak also wrote a story book decades ago, about Merlin, which also provides badly needed depth to a CMI viewpoint. The movie for Matheson’s book was not as good as the book, but 3D and color do add SOMETHING, despite a few provincial biases.) I later learned that this was basically an echo of the view of Swedenborg, who was viewed as having demonstrated HIS PSI gifts (aka “siddhi”) very strongly. This book portrays the creative power of consciousness as something very strong and very vivid, but I asked myself “Now how does it work? Where is the PURPOSE here? Where is it GOING?”

Knowing the mathematics of intelligent system (even now, more than other humans on this planet do), I did not really see so much directly within this view of reality by itself, unless augmented.

The most concrete, meaningful POSSIBILITY I could make out in this part of mental space was the idea of life as a school, linked to the idea that “People are Real, World is Not” (PARWIN). It is also linked to the Rosicrucian Order in the West, whose long history I once traced in the large stacks of Harvard’s Widener Library. (It was amazing to see one book on the shelf declaring that group A did not exist, shelved next to a book published by group A in France in the nineteenth century! But they too, like India, went through many centuries of ferment and rethinking.)

When I first heard that theory, I asked quite sincerely: “OK, if life for us is a school, what is the curriculum? What do we have to learn in order to graduate (and not flunk out)?” The two most DIRECT and CONCRETE answer I have read on that question comes from Trungpa,

 https://static1.squarespace.com/static/53e40e48e4b01763844865ff/t/5c5b9e2b419202c2a4d04597/1549508141909/Styles+of+Imprisonment+from+The+Myth+of+Freedom+and+the+Way+of+Meditation.pdf  

(which I learned about from his book Born in Tibet), and from Joel Whitten of the University of Toronto. As I check the links for this post, I am amazed that his lesser book Life Between Life, now sells for $1000  on Amazon! (https://www.amazon.com/Life-Between-Joel-Whitten/dp/0446347620/). Deep in my computer files, I think I have a copy of his unpublished manuscript which goes much deeper into the question. Joel did serious neuroscience and psychiatry and PSI exploration which goes much deeper than anything I now see on the web.

Still, as I type this, I have to admit that “life as a school” IS an important aspect. The belief that we might be learning SOMETHING important, even if our entire planet may be exploded sooner than we think, adds a certain kind of resilience, and changes our game somewhat to the extent that we think it might be the ultimate reality here. But WHAT should we learn? The hard for EWD version of noosphere ALSO puts a value on what we learn AT THE SOUL level,

Which persists in the noosphere, but this version of CMI adds a possible dimension of value beyond that. But could it just be joke by the noosphere, helping us not fall apart when we are discouraged by things which would not be discouraging if we could see everything which the noosphere sees? 

But I never got SO deep into that. The EWD+noosphere possibility spelled out from www.werbos.com/religions.htm seemed powerful enough, and what real justification could I find for believing anything else (DISCOUNTING what people believe because they want to believe they are gods of the cosmos or whatever, obvious ego bias).

As Donald Trump started to pick up momentum, I heard many intellectuals tell me: “I used to just laugh at that idea that life is just a dream, like a dream of that sleeping Vishnu whose shrine you saw in Kathmandhu. But the more I watch the news this year, I begin to wonder more and more seriously: IS THIS REAL???? Maybe it COULD be a dream..”

That didn’t really affect me that way, directly, but I HAVE seen some things harder and harder to really explain.. fully…

And then, this morning, in meditation…

If you ask “what WOULD knowledge of CMI add, IN CASE IT WERE TRUE..”… well, if **I** take the viewpoint of consciousness

Looking at everything else… much as Trungpa wants us to learn… it suggests that I actually DO have degrees of freedom which I SHOULD take more account of. And such degrees of freedom do connect with what I find it hardest to make sense of.

So OK, that’s an aspect.

Is it too dangerous an aspect to say anything about? (Aside from obvious social dangers, for folks who would be terrified EITHER by CMI or  by hard core Einsteinian physics.) Ah, but if we see more form the noosphere viewpoint, thinking of it as the property of just one human personality would

Imply a wrong attitude. So that is why I type this crazy thing, because even if THESE roots will not go far in most soil, I cannot justify just locking them up.

Amanda might say: “If your best hard core scientific logic is in danger of locking us up, in a world which is so rigid, like the Ventus world which makes Karl himself uncomfortable, don’t we have the FREEDOM at some deep level to aim instead for BALANCE?” Well, even noospheres can evolve to be balanced (as do mundane biological organisms). But it may help for us to understand as deeply as possible that we DO have some degrees of freedom more than what a mundane attitude would suggest.

But do they extend to living more of a PARWIN kind of life? Well, for balance for me, it may be time for more of that right now.  

Energy conservation and the real foundations of physics, for the bright philosopher

An Indian mystic recently asked: "Do you folks still believe that energy is conserved absolutely? Doesn't the modern Feynmann path version of quantum  mechanics show that there is some probability of energy NOT being conserved, opening the door to MANY possibilities?"

My reply: 

In the 1970s, Feynmann proposed a new formulation of quantum Field theory (QFT), different from the CANONICAL QFT which won the Nobel prize for him, for Schwinger and Tomonaga.. for work in the 1950s. The new formulation was called "Feynamann path." It is described clearly in Weinberg's authoritative text on Quantum Field Theory.which gives equal time to Canonical QFT and Feynmann path.

Originally, Feynmann felt that all of physics could be represented by computing the probability amplitudes of POSSIBLE graphs of particles (their creations and annihilations) over space-time. This did not work. My own teacher in this field, Julian Schwinger, pursued a DIFFERENT approach, the "functional integral approach", which calculated probability amplitudes for possible states of continuous FIELDS over space time. We saw the story, evident in Weinberg's book, as "Schwinger won." More precisely, Feynmann REFORMULATED Feynmann path as a system to calculate probability amplitudes for states of FIELDS over space-times. In the book, you will see an integral over space time, up in an exponent, of iS(fields(xμ,t)). No more point particles.

And so, no need to ask whether particles conserve their energy from one moment to the next. They are not particles anyway. 

But one may still ask whether the probability is nonzero for a path which starts with one level of energy and ends with another. This is a rather technical issue. 

I would prefer the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch version of QFT, which is just as mainstream and credible now as either the canonical or (modernized) feynmann path version. Many philosophies of quantum mechanics are FAR LESS grounded in empirical reality (in experience!) than the two in Weinberg's book, but I would claim that the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch version is MORE grounded in experiment. Why? For a simple reason: the Deutsch version is the main foundation of modern Quantum Information Science and Technology (QuiST), which has probed what QFT as such REALLY tells us with high precision, more than others. Every time you hear of people mumbling stuff about "qubits", you should give credit to Deutsch's seminal papers proving theorems about the Universal Quantum Turing machine. As I recall, the Fermi prize honoring the discovery of QuIST elaborated on three people -- Deutsch, the real progenitor, Bennett (applying such ideas to communications) and Shor who developed a specific algorithm for use in a Deutsch machine. 

The Deutsch version says that the entire dynamics of the cosmos (multiverse) is governed exactly by the modern QFT "Schrodinger equation", dΨ/dt = iHΨ, where  Ψ (space,t) at any time is a continuous wave function describing the state of the multiverse at any time t, and H is the "Hamiltonian operator," the same operator H used in the old canonical version of QFT. H is also called "the energy operator." it is conserved exactly and absolutely, in any multiverse governed by this Schrodinger equation. 

Of course, this is not the final answer to everything. There will always be edges of uncertainty and new questions. 

The two most obvious cavdeats are:

 (1) Could energy conservation be violated AT THE MOMENT of observation? For example, Stapp refers to Von Neumann's discussion of "process one" and "process two" . One of these Stapp associates with the modern quantum Schrodinger equation, but the other he associates with a kind of deus ex machina Copenhagen measurement operator. Everett's seminal PhD thesis, formulating this multiverse view of reality, argued that quantum measurement is the EMERGENT OUTCOME of the Schrodinger equation, operating statistically on macroscopic measurement objects and observers totally governed by that Schrodinger equation underneath. 

In my 2008 paper in IJTP (where Feynmann published many of his breakthrough papers), I explained why the old Copenhagen theory of measurement could NOT be explained that way, and is not in fact consistent with Everett's idea. (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10773-008-9719-9.pdf is not behind a pay wall.) 

(This was a wee bit more rigorous than what some call "informal proof," but this was a physics journal, not a mathematics journal. Maybe I should have also published a more formal theorem/proof somewhere, but my time was unbelievably oversubscribed in those days.) I also spelled out the rules for a different way of modeling macroscopic measurement devices which IS consistent with the Schrodinger equations, and is consistent with all experiments trying to test whether the old rules and new rules are right. (But we need more experiments at high precision to nail this down.)

(2)  David Deutsch himself, being an honest creative thinker, has not restricted himself to just ONE POSSIBLE theory of how the cosmos works. In my own paper for the Stapp Festschrifft (one of three linked to at www.werbos.com/religions.htm), I express roughly equal support for THREE types of theory for how the Cosmos works -- Einsteinian realism, Fock space realism (for which Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch without observers is a subset), and "cosmic Mind Idealism," the idea that the cosmos in the end is really more like a great mind than a great machine. Deutsch too has explored such ideas, as Penrose has at times said he was trying to understand. (I first met him at a neural network workshop organized by Pribram, which he visited in hopes of learning more about that kind of mathematics. But he has been distracted by other things since then.) 

In physics, as in so many other areas, a deeply intelligent strategy for the way ahead would entail MANY steps, and not assume that the next big step we need should be seen as the ultimate answer to everything. Nor should we be such rigid cowards that we take no big steps at all. In my view, the most important next big step would be WITHIN the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch paradigm, using experiments in QuIST, to show that Everett was RIGHT in his PhD thesis, 

that a CORRECTED version of the observation models used in quantum optics, CONSISTENT with Everett's theory, fits experiment better than the old ones.

Strictly speaking, a new solid experiment was reported this week (that I saw), which does appear to demonstrate that 

the changes I asked for in my IJTP paper DO disprove the old Copenhagen model: https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/3221743347856060

Ironically, it was not in quantum optics but in EWT, the realm of electroweak theory, which is the modern EXTENSION 

of the Hamiltonian/Lagrangian used in quantum optics!!! (Weinberg's book is authoritative, in part because he got his own Nobel prize for EWT.) But lots of new work in quantum optics is still essential to solidifying this big step forwards. 

I have ideas about what is true beyond that, but if we cannot take a baby step successfully, it is silly to debate more difficult issues. Certainly a valid model of dark matter and energy, and what we need to understand PSI, is many steps ahead -- visible as a mountain may be visible in the distance. For now, they are still parallel threads, if in fact we humans DO make progress and not just kill off our entire species.

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

Indian mystic asked a further question about this:

Not sure if it makes any sense to talk about "state of the entire cosmos" and "wave function of the multiverse". I think science should stick to whats actually measurable.

Probably someone said that to Maxwell, when he modelled electromagnetism as the behavior or two or four basic vector fields, E(x,t) and H(x,t) over all space and time with only four differential equations, intended to describe everything in that realm. Can it make sense to formulate a theory of what happens at every point in the whole universe? How COULD that possibly make sense? There are many versions of machine learning in which that would NOT make sense, and their designs could never learn something like this. (I sometimes think of such folks as the DC policy Ai geniuses.) 

But it turns out that there is a simple symmetry principle, relativity, which VASTLY amplifies the information content of this theory, such that Maxwell's Laws actually are very powerful in making predictions of LOTS of testable phenomena. The ratio of successful predictions over number of parameters or terms in the model (including the symmetry principle as part of the model, basically just one more equation in the modern version) is ENORMOUS. 

The same goes for the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch version of QUANTUM electrodynamics (QED), the modern generalization of Maxwell's Laws. (Or premodern, if you count EWT as the modern one. Here is an analogy: we usually still use Newton's Laws for predicting the effect of gravity on earth or even most solar system space work; it is rare that we need to pat for the extra precision we get form going to general relativity, in our local neighborhood. In the same way, QED is the foundation of what we do (almost always) in modern electronics, photonics and even QuIST and understanding the mundane brain. BUT: QED still needs some upgrades, in my view.) 

 

And when we talk of theoretical models which deal with actual measurements, we do have energy-time uncertainty relation, quantum tunnelling, and also virtual particles. 

We need enough precision to make actual predictions.  The modern Schrodinger equation, WITH the modern Hamiltonian operator H (spelled out in a lot of papers, including ones I link to at www.werbos.,com/religions.htm), is not really enough, because we ALSO need models of how the observation objects (like counters and polarizers) INTERACT with that universal wave function. We DO have models of that, which work well in simple experiments, but for trickier experiments we have COMPETING models of those solid state objects, and we do need to test them.

That is not about PSI. PSI is important, but depends on more advanced physics beyond QED, 

I remember someone once said to Dean Radin "Can;t you explain PSI by QED?" as I rec all, he was VERY emphatic (as am I) that NO, you can't. It is a bit more advanced than that. Vitiello has at times hinted that moving from QED to EWT might be enough, but I don't see that solving the problems. All the way to dark matter and dark energy, or further. But the existence of dark matter and dark energy is not speculative any more, and we know they have a lot of the needed properties. (A vast connected ocean of energy and matter, like the kind of ocean which can sustain the evolution of life.) 

Best of luck... and thanks for asking useful, solid  questions.

meditations on science and the spirit of truth

We had two great discussion by Zoom yesterday and Friday, which SEEMED to be on different subjects.What inspires me this morning is to see how the two fit together with each other and with related discussions.

On Friday, in Doug's Zoom, we began discussion of a crucial, concrete intellectual challenge before us (and especially for the few who can really focus their minds on it). This week, I call it "SIMaD", sustainable intelligent market design. This is only PART of what would be needed to construct a sustainable internet integration, but it is the core challenge for now. I think of it as "the brain" ... but remember that there is also need for "an immune system" (firm rules keeping out viruses" and better hardware (e.g., the real quantum stuff). SIMaD is PART of the larger challenge of Sustainable Intelligent Internet, which I also sometime think of as "E3" (etherium 3). Economic recovery from covid will depend a LOT on how well we do with SIMaD, or else how well we learn to live with E2, the version already coming to us from China which will invalidate what Trump hopes for from the Federal Reserve system he is relying on.

In discussing market design, a few of us actually know something about microeconomics. (Macroeconomics and mesoeconomics are also important, but they were more important to OTHER important Zoom discussions this week.)

It is a crucial fact of life that the efficiency of markets IN THE PAST depended on certain basic axioms, well known to any serious microeconomist, reflected in theorems proven by people like Ken Arrow (who, by the way, served briefly on my Harvard PhD thesis committee in 1971/72). Among those axioms were COMMON SHARED PERFECT INFORMATION, AND LACK OF UNCERTAINTY.

In our group, we certainly know about uncertainty, probabilities, Von Neumann, and the important PRACTICAL work in finance trying to address uncertainty. BUT WHAT OF THE MARKET DESIGN ITSELF?

A lot of the current problems exploding in the world run by internet are problems of information which is not true and not shared.  The term "fake news" and the growing problem of fake videos are part of it. In our discussion, as guy named David asked: "How does BIOLOGY deal with this? More precisely, how do BRAINS deal with the problem?"

Well, Yeshua and I do know how that works. (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00097/full ).

On the "cognitive" (information) side of it, there are THREE MAIN REPOSITORIES OF INFORMATION available, at some level, to EVERY part of the system. Roughly, these are: (1) the thalamus, a common repository of WHAT WE SEE out there at any time, from raw sensor data (lightly preprocessed); (2) the Giant Pyramids of the cerebral cortex, more powerful spiritually than any great pyramids of Egypt, giving a COMMON IMAGE of what we think the state of our world IS at the current time, based on a kind of universal integrated prediction system; and (3) the LOCAL information in interneurons, which are like bushes living in the shadow of those great trees (the giant pyramid cells look a bit like trees, with high canopies overhead and proliferating roots down at the output level). (To make the story complete, I would add comments about basal ganglia and temporal and spatial chunking,  but this is complicated enough for most of you, no?)

And so I claim: a PROPER, EFFECTIVE SIMaD design to free us from the growing dangers of fake news and growing oppression, MUST HARDWIRE certain mechanisms, analogous to thalamus and giant pyramids, providing a common open vetted repository of truth, provided by networks trained (incentivized) by the standards of TRUTH uncorrupted by conflict of interest (COI) effects biasing the outcomes. These must be a COMPONENTS of SIMaD. And, like the giant pyramid cells of the brain,  they must have DYNAMIC design, in the sense that the metrics of truth and current memory operate OVER TIME, in such a way that a FORESIGHT CAPABILITY is a basic part of the architecture. (But that does tend to require additional features mirroring capabilities of basal ganglia, which are analogous to mesoeconomics. In a way, the basal ganglia provide structures similar to corporations in the world of stochastic finance, EMPOWERED by the greater market of the cerebral cortex, but subject to a certain probability of failure as their specific goals may or may not be achieved over time.) 

OK, that was one conversation.

But in another conversation... I saw a later manifestation of deep dialogue of folks connected to a little place called UNESCO which all of us should know about, which ALSO has a role to play in deciding the future of the internet and the prospects for economic recovery.

Most of you should be quite familiar by now with WHO, CDC and even NIH in dealing with covid. UNESCO, a UN sister agency of WHO, has a similar mix of essential mandate, great accomplishments and great failings enough to drive a President crazy. The limitations of UNESCO were less serious a few years ago, when the US National Science Foundation (NSF), a sister of NIH or CDC, provided great leadership to the whole of world science. The Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), strongly supported by Jian Zemin and his people (who stayed in power until Xi JinPing changed the game) linked to NSF and mirrored it in many ways.

Even now, I often walk by the old NSF building near the Ballston Metro station. I remember a day in 2014 or 2015 when I had an intense feeling of spiritual connection, recalling what I had felt before in places like Hagia Sophia and pyramids on Latin America (and later in Ireland, in the temples which predated Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt). HERE I felt, inside that building, really is in its way the greatest true temple of Truth in the history of humanity! The vision of Vannevar Bush had guided us to a level of authenticity, consciousness, intelligence and focus far beyond anything else before it. Yes, it was imperfect (as good Otto engines "waste" most of the fuel energy poured into them), but if we focus on the actual motive output, it was staggering. UNTIL, in 2014 or so, the dark shadow of political corruption, spearheaded by Congressman Lamar Smith, turned out to be far more serious and debilitating than any of us imagined possible. 

Quick bottom line: in the market, one company's lapse creates a hole which is another one's opportunity. Could UNESCO become that other one? it would certainly not be easy, but as science and truth are under pressure at all levels, all over the world, it would be VERY important to explore what hope there is of filling the hole. 

This is about TRUTH, a very basic universal principle, visible both in intelligent system design and in the realm of Platonic forms. (Did I mention the novel Vita Nostra? That and Schroder's novel Stealing Worlds are the only two works of fiction I have brought myself to read for almost two years now, the only ones real enough to hold my attention at this point.) Certain SIMPLE principles, like the utility function which a global brain learns to maximize, are crucial to making things work.

What's more, the best run review panels at NSF did become real exercises in noetically connected collective intelligence, a tool for the pursuit of truth far beyond the pie slinging contests and groupthink I see in so many other institutions. That kind of tool for STRENGTHENING connection and truth and relevance when HUMANS are part of the network is an important clue to SIMaD design!!

After Smith did his thing... every time I walk by that gleaming but decaying  building in Ballston... it feels me with the same kind of sadness I felt in the archeological district of Rome, where the greatest forum of dialogue and democracy of the time... well, decayed. When I walked by in this covid period... I am reminded of the passage in the Book of Revelations, where they talk of decay... a hill beset by vultures and emptiness. (Actually, vultures DID descend on that building at about the same time as Lamar Smith appeared!! Really. they even tried to descend on my own house a mile away, but our friends the hawks really dive bombed THEM away! Still, a few of them did move to the house of a neighbor, who died of cancer shortly after.) 

When I mentioned this with sadness to a friend at a local Quaker discussion, he compared it to the great destruction of the temple of Jerusalem in 70AD. "It seemed like a disaster at the time, but that destruction was actually one of the greatest good things which ever happened to judeo-Christian culture. That old temple was powerful, but only WITHIN CERTAIN limitations or barriers of deep importance which needed to be transcended. And so a NEW church was created, a virtual and international organization for centuries (held together in part by letters from Paul? I think Yeshua enjoyed that joke.. ) BEYOND the bedrock constraints which limited the old place. 

So: more concretely, by analogy: could UNESCO somehow be morphed or expanded to fill the hole left behind by the old NSF, BUT CLEARLY OVERCOMING THE CONSTRAINT OF NOT GIVING DE RESPECT AND ATTENTION TO THE NOOSPHERE? Whatever else the noosphere is (I disagree with the fine points of the model of de Chardin and Verdansky), it gives FULL RESPECT AND ATTENTION to the spiritual or PSI side of human experience. It entails CONNECTION beyond the mundane level, which can be fostered in a way which DOES NOT obey all the diverse religions of the world BUt IS CONSISTENT with a basic principle striving to connect us all in a relatively harmonious way. (As in a market, there is still always some competition, and NO requirement for uniformity or homogeneity, but a few respected boundaries.)

=========

Last night, I also read Chogyam Trungpa's little book on meditation, which I downloaded for free on the web. That too was interesting, but perhaps this email is too long as it is. For later.

=======================
===================
My response to a follow-on question I received:

Dear Paul What do you think of Pope Francisco efforts to build a new economic paradigm? Is is compatible with your views of UNESCO and the noosphere?

I do not know the DETAILS of those efforts.

Lately, I have often thought about how people like Trump, Sanders and the Ramanuja Foundation have a complicated relation to their BASE, which they have to work with to achieve their goals (though in all cases they could have taken more advantage of help from beyond their base). (Maybe what we really need here are new connections, and your post may be important to that.)  I do not know what the collaboration of Pope Francis and of bis base have created so far, but i DO know a lot about the basic VALUES and GOALS of Pope Francis, at a relatively deep level. I do view him as an unusually bright light in the world of world religions. I even visited the church in Buenos Aires which was once his base, and... many connections.

The NOOSPHERE is the most important of these connections.

But: NO NEW economic order can be relevant UNLESS it can be connected to the changes in the internet which will be administering any new economic arrangement. To be sustainable, the new arrangement has to be BALANCED, not oppressing the people as much as E2 and other new internet designs are on course to doing, BUT NOT creating false hopes of infinite consumption for no work. Strongly resisting strict left AND strict right. 

It reminds me of a movie I once saw (Being There), and of yesterday, in our dialogue with the deer. Yesterday, a deer came to our back yard, showing us her new born (Bambi?). It was so important to project  BOTH sides of our message to them. yes, we love you folks, yes we are fighting to defend your whole world and your way of life, and the plants you love. BUT NO,  we don't want you to "eat from the fruits of the wrong tree." Not my wife's flowers! not from the juicy things which should grow up to provide much more than the quick pleasure you would get form just eating the flowers now. SEE that imaginary glowing wall between your forest and our garden. We love you and would be happy to see more of you ON YOUR SIDE of that glowing wall... 

I once saw a grief piece on pope Francis on TV, a week or two after we returned from our own trip to the exact same place in Japan. The TV quoted him as saying: Those who would preserve the life of this planet should first begin to truly feel love reaching out to the life of this planet (direct and personal and tangible spirit of love). We have been in regular dialogue by Zoom with people in Brazil and Peru, VERY SERIOUS about manfesting that spirit of love, and the noosphere, and new enterprises designed to INCLUDE the health of nature (By metrics much better than COP25 kludges) . We are doing what we can to take FULL ACCOUNT of noosphere values, from nature to human connections, in internet design, though it is tricky to REALLY do it. 

If Pope Francis wants us all to REALLY attain/manifest these goals,  we really should be doing that in alliance.

===

By the way, we also had a discussion: could India be part of it? Well, they have had a great biochar experiment, but they also have many anti-human would-be oppressors, and people sitting on the fence not yet decided. The old Harvard Vedanta Society was a great ray of life, but the hard cold basements near Princeton are a different matter altogether. Abdul Kalam was a great partner, but died of old age, like so many people I worked with. For now, we put energy into places where people have a clear will to make positive contributions, and I do see Pope Francis as one of us. 

How can each of us concretely connect with the nooosphere?

Amanda recently asked a few of us: "We can try to understand the noosphere intellectually, but how can we make a stronger direct personal connection?" 

I start from the assumption that WE individual humans are a symbiosis of the mundane brain and body we see so easily, already connected to another part of us which in my view is a PART of the noosphere. The BOUNDARIES of that part within the noosphere are not so crisp or unchanging as many of us believe, but even so they are real enough that we could use the word "soul" or "personal soul" to refer to that part, the part in close symbiosis with our mundane brain and body.

This view is a lot like what Dante said, when he said we are each of us "part beast, part angel." **IF** the two parts are well integrated, and work together, it fits the old Rosicrucian concept of "Alchymical Marriage."  (By "well integrated," I mean some level of "second order sanity" as discussed in detail at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41470-019-00038-z, the special issue organized by Stan Klein and his collaborators.) 

And so, if we try to set up a SCHOOL to train "PSI" as PART of the curriculum for everyone, we need to analyze harder what the elements of PSI really are. Here, I think of PSI as the collection of skills connecting US (our personal brain, body and soul) to the rest of the noosphere, resulting in many skills of positive value. In actuality -- if our personal "soul" is like a part of a brain, it is mainly an INFORMATION system, defined by its inputs, outputs and what it does with them (but the outputs may be a combination of outputs to other parts of the "brain" of the noosphere and of external actions, what we call general PK). 

Has anyone ever actually TRIED to set up a school which teaches students the SKILLS of body,brain and PSI, with the absolute minimum indoctrination and a maximum of real practice, including the full range of brain skills from history to mathematics and so on? Actually, I have visited two such schools. One was very successful new Quaker School (FCS) which I helped set up in Maryland when my three oldest children were small. Another was West Point, the lead university of the US army! I was amazed when I visited their museum a few years back to see that skills of mind, body and soul WERE the founding principles, inserted by Thomas Jefferson, a rather interesting person from this part of Virginia. I tend to believe that FCS got a lot further on the PSI part, but the world could do better still, and SOMEHOW SOMEWHERE we need the kind of dialogue and research which makes that possible. 

But what ARE the range of important skills in PSI, or for intelligent information systems in general? (Yes, we are systems.) 

Again, input, output, and "thinking". There are many specific skills WITHIN each category, and integrating them, but if we focus on one at a time, we can avoid being lost in chaotic stuff which sounds like taking drugs. 

So: this time, "INPUT," the first skill in PSI. 

This Sunday, our Langley Hill Quaker meeting by Zoom revolved around the theme of "listening," the specific type of PSI input skill which Quakers have worked hardest historically to cultivate and express. 

One of the great successes of FCS (which other Quaker schools have tried, and which belongs to the whole world) is the course in CONFLICT RESOLUTION. A major PART of how that course works is teaching children to REALLY LISTEN as deeply as possible to other children they are involved with. And FCS also used silent meditation, like proper Quaker meetings themselves. (These two aspects are common to all true (FGC) Quaker schools, but FCS went much further, including yoga, sufi dances and other approaches. Hey, the kids also ended up doing better in getting into good colleges!) 

**BUT HOW DO WE LEAN TO LISTEN? WHAT **IS** THAT SKILL?"

That's a big subject in itself, with examples from all of human history. But in general, the hard core mystical versions all include a phase of QUIETING THE MIND. Western mystics would talk of SEEING (as vividly and tangibly as in a lucid dream) the "VISUAL SCREEN" of the mind, as a kind of blank screen. Stage one is to damp out the noise or distractions making that screen less than blank or clear. One holds it in a state like what Alex Hankey talks about, a state of "criticality". One can even measure such states nowadays, in principle, using brain state data to see whether the giant pyramid cells of Bernie Baars' "global workspace of consciousness" appear to be in a state of criticality. If this can be done using inexpensive EEG caps, it could even be used in schools as a kind of biofeedback to help kids learn they are entering such a state, just like my little incentive spirometer which can strengthen the power of breathing exercises (also on the curriculum).  

(Hey, even kids who breathe can get into some colleges. They do not all REQUIRE that the student be a corpse or a zombie.)

BUT STILLING THE MIND (BRAIN AND SOUL) IS NOT ENOUGH.

What APPEARS after that, on the screen of consciousness and in inner hearing (all senses at times), DEPENDS ON CONNECTION.

And this is a very important universal prediction of the mathematical theory of intelligence expressed in the paper by Werbos and Davis (Yeshua) (see scholar.google.com, all open access).  It is DIRECTLY linked to what we dicsussed before re Olshausen, Pribram and Freeman... AND yehsua's Hebraic symbols!

THERE IS NO UNIVERSAL AUTONOMOUS RULE TO DETERMINE WHAT APPEARS IN THAT INNER SCREEN OR INNER HEARING, EVEN AFTER ONE IS THOROUGHLY CENTERED IN ONE'S SOUL. 

Stilling the mind (or simply Bernie's GWT) is NOT ENOUGH to give you what you WANT to appear on that screen. In a way, it is like turning on the little TV monitor which hangs in my kitchen as I type. Turning it ON does not determine what you SEE.

YOU (brain+soul) have a certain degree of natural free will, which is essential to good proper use of that screen.

if you decide to DO NOTHING (hoping that God the Father will jump in here)... well, it's VERY rare that you get THAT lucky,

and wishing won't do it. Generally, what happens is that YOUR PERSONAL SPIRITUAL/ NOETIC CONNECTIONS DECIDE WHERE THE INFORMATION COMES FROM. For example, if you have a deep spiritual connection to a local nunnery (because you once visited and felt real deep love when you did), your mind will tend to fill up with whatever is emanating from THERE that day. In fact, most people on earth probably have such a fixed, invisible but strong net of connections which always drive into their feelings and assumptions even if you don't know it. (THIS month, coronavirus disease and economics have created SUCH a palpable surge of fear and such which people OUGHT to be able to see, but then agian they think it is just THEIR feelings of fear and loneliness!). 

One of the most important basic skills in PSI is the skill of CONSCIOUSLY moving your mundane eyes, your mundane inner attention AND your soul focus of attention in the noosphere AT WILL, so that you KNOW where you are looking and can SHIFT attention consciously. In the School of Management in Kathmandhu (thanks to Varadan for making that possible!), I urged people to study Levitin's book The Organized Mind, which describes this issue of conscious focus at a mundane level, TOTALLY APPLICABLE to PSI as well.

And so, when I mention Sian Kaan and yeshua mentions special letters (ACCOMPANIED by meanings), and others mention mandalas or other images, these are all CRUCIAL PARTS of how we focus attention in the soul, so as to connect it to the kinds of information/input AND OPTioNS to speak as well. It is right at the center of the GENERAL ability which unites so many of the specific skills.

Strictly speaking, it is not a case where the WHOLE MIND is blank. In a way, it is like one part doing input, the other holding an "address" image (like the letters yeshua mentions). 

And yes, did I not mention that CHOOSING to send love to a nunnery or another place (like the world of nature) is ANOTHER very crucial element of this skill?

By the way, Yeshua emphasizes love. It is also true that sending hate to a region of the  noosphere is ALSO a way to strengthen one's connection to it.  .If you let yourself hate Donald Trump deeply and truly enough, you will become deeply connected to him, but you might not enjoy the consequences of making that choice. I have often see this kind of effect at work, very concretely, when observing some phases of Israel-Arab conflicts, but that gets into many large subjects.

All for now?

Well, there is one more important general basic principle I should mention. If a GROUP of souls in the noosphere (or hell, a group of folks connected to each other on the internet) fill themselves with energy and life because of their connection to each other... BUT ARE NOT CONNECTED WELL TO THE REST OF IT... the total "psychic energy" or "qi" (modulated backpropagation) flowing into THE WHOLE GROUP of them may dry up, giving feelings of inner emptiness, loneliness, affect-free drifting away (with perhaps nothing but an empty delusion of bliss and dissolving into nothing in the end, a rictus like the "Crystalman grin" of Voyage to Arcturus). The only remedy is connecting from the group or people in the group to the greater 

source of energy. Visualizing the noosphere as a great tree (just a model/metaphor) stretching from archaea in the mud of the earth and Mars to the high light of the sun and sky... the connections of the WHOLE SYSTEM to both earth and sly are essential to its very life. Those parts which are not connected to that grand flow of information and qi (which is NOT physical energy or entropy) are deadwood..

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

For many years, the US government funded practical R&D into "psi," starting from the fanous book by Puthoff and targ, but going much further. I received a comment from one of the instructors of that later work:

In response to your below comments, I don’t claim to fully understand the concept of a “noosphere” in the sense in which you use it.  It appears under the traditional definition to be the ultimate embodiment of “reason” and “rationality” which I am sure is tremendously appealing to scientists.  However, in my view rationality alone does not encompass the full capacity of the human mind and spirit.  I have been teaching my method of TSP Remote Viewing for several years.  I call it “next generation” remote viewing.  My mentor was Ingo Swann who created (along with Puthoff and Targ) Controlled Remote Viewing which, in my view, has not been essentially changed in over 50 years.  TSP utilizes a number of other methods/protocols to tap into the larger pool of consciousness. 

I teach a 6-week very intensive course (TSP Remote Viewing Basic Level One) which always includes an operational case so my students can practice the skills I have taught them.  My students vary in terms of training and professional background.  Most have told me they were astounded to learn they had abilities they never knew they had.  Their backgrounds have included: nurses, surgeons, cyber security experts, massage therapists, military, FBI, PhD students, real estate investors, economics experts, etc. Some have been trained up to advanced levels in classical remote viewing, some trained in mediumship, some trained in psychic/psychic detective work, some with no training at all.  I am currently wrapping up two courses this week.  I have students in 7 countries around the world in my current class – Turkey, Israel, Canada, England, Canary Islands, France, and in all time zones in the United States.  Their native origins are even more diverse. 

I teach my students how to perceive differently.  This involves significantly unlearning what they have learned throughout a lifetime.  This process of unlearning in order to see/experience more is fully described in my book “Psychic Intuition: Everything You Ever Wanted to Ask But Were Afraid to Know” (2012).  It involves a certain degree of surrender to the unknown.  This is extremely difficult for academics and intellectuals.  It feels uncomfortable and highly counterintuitive.  However, once you allow your brain and mind to reorganize and perceive differently, you will actually see and experience more of the world as it is – literally.  This also opens up what I call a “superhighway” of the mind.  It’s the opposite of “rational” and so most rational folks come from a starting position that it can’t possibly work.  But it does and it has applications.  New data about the world is discovered to exist.

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

My reply to that one:

In response to your below comments, I don’t claim to fully understand the concept of a “noosphere” in the sense in which you use it. 

It is not a trivial concept. Since my understanding, and theory, of noosphere is a bit different from the authoritative previous work of Verdansky and Teilhard de Chardin, should I have coined ANOTHER word for my definition? 

Well, I worry that that would introduce confusion. At www.werbos.com/religions.htm, I have posted links to three (no pay wall even on the paper in the Springer journal) which use a LOT of words to explain what I really mean when I refer to noosphere, by my definition/theory. Here I will not repeat those words, except to say it is close enough to teilhard and to Verdansky that I HOPE it still makes sense...

 

NT: It appears under the traditional definition to be the ultimate embodiment of “reason” and “rationality” which I am sure is tremendously appealing to scientists.  However, in my view rationality alone does not encompass the full capacity of the human mind and spirit. 

PW: In my view, the esoteric "brain" of the noosphere includes ALL of the capabilities we see in a human brain and more. 

That includes ability to "reason", to feel, to see, to move the muscles and so on. Anything a mundane brain can do, the brain of the noosphere can also do. but some PARTS of the noosphere (even some souls) are closer to motor output and external input parts of the noosphere than others. Some have physical impact DIRECTKLY, some only VIA their influence on other souls or other parts of the matrix of the noosphere brain.

 

NT: I have been teaching my method of TSP Remote Viewing for several years.  I call it “next generation” remote viewing.  My mentor was Ingo Swann who created (along with Puthoff and Targ) Controlled Remote Viewing which, in my view, has not been essentially changed in over 50 years.  TSP utilizes a number of other methods/protocols to tap into the larger pool of consciousness. 

PW: Yes, this kind of real-world experience is VERY important to anyone who tries to REALLY set up the kind of school I mentioned. In a way, it is a shame that Thomas Jefferson did not know you when he was driving the foundation of West Point (for which football is the closest they come to PK). George Washington did a lot of weird stuff (I have visited his meditation room, and his Masonic Museum in Alexandria), but not so suitable for K12 as your efforts might be. 

 

COVID: what they haven't told you about recovery, medical and economic

The information you get from the media on these two questions does not go as deep as what we really know from the best science and the best econometrics. Here is what I see now on these two questions:

(1) HEALTH RECOVERY ***********

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 6:04 AM [the reali nventor of the internet, TCP/IP] wrote:

is there any evidence of immunity for COVID-19? I get the "mild cases" situation - that's my story too (although there seem to be reports of lingering problems unrelated to respiratory effects). But what, if anything, do we know about immunity? How long does it last and against what level of infection does it work?

Thank yo u.... for directly asking such an important and sane question. As I look at the world's discussions of covid, climate and the future of the internet, I have come to treasure real sanity more and more.  

What amazes me is how little ANYONE knows about some of the basic obvious questions. VERY late in the game, the Germans did the first real statistical sample study of a hot spot city. My memory is that that city reached equilibrium, suggesting "herd immunity", but there were only 20% of the people with antibodies. 

The follow up study in New York due to Cuomo was not as scientific, but also quite interesting: it was 20% antibodies among blacks and Hispanics (NOT due to anything unique about blacks here).

SO: WHAT LEVEL OF ANTIBODIES, in a normal general population, implies "herd immunity"? Is it 20%, with the 80% mostly having another types of immunity, or should we stand by for a second wave four times as big as the first even in those places? People have strong prior expectations, but there is plenty of room for rational differences of opinion today.

The medical mainstream seems to favor the "no special immunity school," expecting a huge second wave. 

When my own life might be at stake (here in a hot spot, not so far from that dangerous eldercare facility formerly called "the puzzle palace on the Potomac"), I act mostly as if the mainstream MIGHT be right. But my wife (who has two PhDs and once ran the deepest, crossdisciplinary lab in Russia for physiologically active compounds) explained how a certain tea she mixes has an effect on cell membranes rather similar to what works here, avoiding the NEED for antibodies. (I once thought it just boosted immune systems, but that would be bad for covid. She reeducated me a few weeks ago.) 

HOW LONG does the immunity work against what level?

I see LOTS of politically motivated speculation on this. We don't know. The most likely possibility, so far as I can tell, is that it will be like other viruses or flu, a few years. Deeper understanding of the mechanisms should narrow that band of uncertainty, but it is amazing what a small percentage of the R&D is truly scientific in that way. I heard a talk in 2013 in Singapore (SSCI conference) by a guy from Harvard Medical School which I really wish I had kept links to, which would give more insight on this question AND on the bigger question: 

what if this is the FIRST virus of a longer-term sequence, and what is ultimately POSSIBLE for medical responses? (Degrees of freedom of the human immune system are part of the issue.)

I still have friends who oversee covid research from NSF., and we have discussed the modeling issues. 

A REAL dynamical model of what happens to a human in this system would depend on the time-series CURVE of degree of viral pressure, and other variables. Viral pressure clearly matters a LOT, raising immunity but also risk and damage. The available relevant data is pathetically limited, even after the creation of new repositories of the kind of data which now exists. 

You can see that there is an overlap between this (and the economic recovery issue) and the next generation internet design issue [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6togqN9Cvt4 ]. The real question is: how to create networks of dialogue which make better progress on all these difficult intellectual issues, making fuller use of all levels of human potential but not succumbing to 

the psychoneuroses and defense mechanisms which help contaminate so many policy systems? 

(2) RECOVERY OF THE ECONOMY ********

Another person in that same discussion asked: whether we may see "another Great Depression" due to the impact of covid:

Basically all countries have 3 choices.

Save lives not livelihood 

Save livelihood not live

Muddle between those choices depending how late your government 

Started the process!.

My response: 

I see a STRONG analogy between this choice and the choice between Growth versus Austerity in the wake of the 2008 financial collapse. 

In the one year I worked on Capitol Hill, one of my closest friends was on the staff of the Joint Economic Committee, and we had LOTS of inputs on that issue, much deeper than anything I have seen on economic recovery from covid.

I was especially impressed by a study we were briefed on by a guy from the office of the President of Japan, where they worked out both DEBT implications and JOBS/DEMAND implications for a great variety of possible government actions. We still have a problem with what I call "scalar thinkers,"who focus on the tradeoff between TOTAL spending (or debt) and TOTAL demand, when survival de[ends on understnading that these things are VECTORS, ordered lists of mANY numbers. The Japanese showed how some programs would give three times as much debt per ob/demand, and others three times less. we didn't have to CHOOSE A and B. We would be better off by understanding the VECTOR, and getting the best of both worlds (understanding of course that extra demand needs to be phased out if and when we get closer to the full employment barrier). THERE IS NO WAY TO SURVIVE if we limit our thinking to scalar thinking.,

but things can be far better if we ever master vector thinking. 

But with econometrics in particular, I was one of a VERY few group of people who ever built, managed, understood a truly vector dynamical model. The Wharton Annual Model was perhaps the leader of the class of models, but DRI forced them out by selling what people like money seeking users who preferred a less empirical, more tweakable model which could show what they thought their clients wanted to hear. Mine, the PURHAPS model, showed the importance of industrial structural change EVEN in just a year, in the wake of oil shocks. (See https://www.osti.gov/biblio/5322851-statistical-analysis-what-drives-industrial-energy-demand-volume-iii-purhaps-model-documentation, and Marlay's paper(s) in Science.) 

Sadly, the challenge of economic recovery NOW is similar but more difficult. The opportunities for a trainwreck (like what happened in the wake of Spanish flu, hyperinflation, and what the Great Depression gave us) are all around us, and we would need new networks of dialogue to learn and apply enough advanced vector/internet economics to avoid that kind of very serious risk. 

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

Comment: the primary global financial system WILL be part of the internet (of things), MUCH sooner than people in general appreciate as yet. Getting THAT system to work, well enough to handle such deep structural change, would require a LOT more understanding than what I see in any of the big players today... 

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

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