Finding order and unity in a crossdisciplinary and interfaith dialogue

Bernie Baars rightly reminded us a few days ago that human life is ever so full of basic principles which we learn in childhood, which we somehow fail to remember and apply exactly when we need them to get out of spinning wheels, useless conflicts between people and nations and other nonproductive activities.

There have been great discussions of some of those principles here, which do belong in and effective PSI education effort from K-12 to adult to over 90 to training subjects for brain data experiments. A crucial challenge here is how to ORGANIZE what we have learned and discussed, not only for education but also for ourselves and for research outreach. Good PSI education is NOT about indoctrination or telling people what to believe, but we donned a few basic principles to stay organized.

As one small step in that direction, I have just revised my personal web page on world religions to focus on a few points which I regard as fundamental:

http://www.werbos.com/religions.htm  

Since it must be brief, I did not even mention important work by Vaillant

(e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0092656699922432) or the great popular book by the neuroscientist Levitin

https://www.amazon.com/Organized-Mind-Thinking-Straight-Information/dp/0147516315/  which I talked about at the School of Management in Kathmandu in a session led by Varadan. That book by Levitin raises the question: is the our noosphere itself an organized mind yet? Last month, when I visited the oldest known temple/tomb of megalithic civilization, I was reminded of how the same practical issues we see in mundane life apply as well to many issues of the noosphere, of special importance to those of us older than 70.

The question of organization and structure is essential, at a level larger than any one brain. 

When Thing Are So Scary Why Not Give Up?

When Thing Are So Scary Why Not Give Up?

Yesterday (2/9/2020), our local Quaker Meeting set up a special discussion of a question: Given how scary the events in the world now seem to be, especially on issues like racism and climate change, why do we not just give up and fall apart? More precisely they asked “Where are the seeds of resilience” which keep us from falling apart in the  midst of all this?

Logic tells me that we cannot address this question rationally, in a sane way, without connecting it to the larger question of meaning and purpose in our lives in general. But for now, I will “get to the point” first, and try to explain more later.

When it was my turn, I said: I do find it very discouraging to see the huge gap between what our leaders, left and right, are doing, versus what it would take to prevent extinction of the human species. (See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM&t=1230s, for my explanation, in my half hour talk on climate, following on great introductions by Ban Ki Moon, former secretary-general of the UN, and Jerry Glenn, leader of www.themp.org.) I OFTEN feel like giving up, even though our very lives are at stake, because of all the many barriers and my own personal limitations. Two main things keep me going:

(1)    The first – you might call “theological”. I do not believe that we are all just isolated individuals, bobbing like corks on every passing wave. Yes, the actions we can take just as individuals do not begin to add up to what we would need to survive this challenge …  but we are not just individuals, and our minds are more than just brains. We possess “souls.” We are all connected. We are all connected as part of a larger system, which knows more than any of us do as individuals, a system which I like to call “the noosphere.” Even when we do not see the way forward all the way, as individuals, if we strengthen that connection and work to expand our COLLECTIVE awareness through soul at the level of the noosphere, there is hope.

(2)    But even that would not be enough. I remember many days when it was not enough. What keeps me going is a second ingredient. That ingredient was summarized beautifully in a sentence I THOUGHT I heard Pope Francis say on TV in Hiroshima after I returned from my own trip there two or three weeks later: “Those who wish to preserve the life of the earth must first learn to FEEL their love of that life, deeply and completely.” Well, that was not an exact quote. (See https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2019/12/pope-says-that-peace-comes-in-a-shade-of-green-or-not-at-all/ for the closest I can find on the web this morning.) It’s not that I believe every word he or anyone else says anyway. His sentence reminded me of a promise I made inside myself, at a spiritual level, many months before, when I tuned deeply into the life in a place I visited in Brazil. Memory of THOSE feelings, repeated in other places, and that commitment, keep me going.

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

The discussion got deeper and richer, but here and now, I need to go back to prerequisites and basics. Humans screw up ever so often (e.g. in collective action on climate) because they do not really remember basic things they should know but somehow forget.

Climate change is certainly NOT the whole purpose I pursue in my life!!! It is not my one and only spiritual mission, either. Lately it is on a list of about four global priorities, the LEAST of the four, but great as a testbed to try to learn how to cope with LARGER and even more urgent challenges. Yet it is a serious challenge to human survival itself (like the others!!). It is ONE PART of how I cope with the bigger, basic issue of meaning and purpose in life (yea even unto what we think about afterlife).

BEFORE that discussion yesterday, and before the weekly “Meeting for Worship” (a unique group meditation exercise) which preceded it, we had a small “drop in” discussion. A guy who used to teach math at George Mason University (GMU) leads discussion of readings from all over the world; this week it was Matthew chapter 6, with special emphasis on ”The Lilies of the Valley.” It raises the question: should we really focus all our mental energy on large goals or rules which rule our lives, or should we just say “hakuna matata, what me worry?”

That discussion, and the news of the world this week, reminded me of my mother’s last year of life, in a comfortable assisted living place in Brandywine New Jersey which my brother worked so hard to find and evaluate. I remember her saying there: “WHY am I staying on this earth  now? It seems pointless at this point. What is the purpose of what I am doing NOW?” She ate little, and… bit by bit… she was not alone there, either, despite all the recreation and food and group offerings.

When I saw the Republican Senators in the Trump trial, and ALL the older candidates for the White House (including Trump)… I could not help feeling that the White House has itself become a lot like that place in Brandywine, a glorified assisted living facility. Being over 70 myself, I can see the difficulties which ALL of these folks are living with already, and no, I am not trying to act like a President myself. There is a time when we are called to pass on the baton. As for Butti… I have been urged not to say his name as Trump may do soon, but he reminds me of kind but fatal orderlies in some of these hospitals, or of Macron of France, folks who are great at smiling but not at the kind of tough thinking we need to survive in such a challenging environment. (By the way, Klobuchar is tougher than people usually think. Having worked for Senator Specter in 2009, I have ways of knowing, and ways of seeing through smiling used car salesmen. No matter what her odds in the primaries, ability to escape a disaster in the White House is a top consideration. It is not rational to vote for the loser of one’s choice. But then again, probability of winning is why I don’t think of voting for Wang at this point.)

Lilies of the Valley: we at the drop in did NOT go to extremes. We  would NOT say “hakuna matata,” but we accept Jesus’ point that there is at least a need for balance here. That was my first “point of resilience,” feeling comfortable relying on intelligence beyond our own brain for hope beyond what we can nail down concretely ourselves for the entire big picture. It remindfs me of the days when I managed NSF panels, and asked about three big questions for EVERYONE asking for money and support: “What IS your target now, exactly? (By the way, it did not have to be a fully specified POINT.) HOW do you plan to get there? WHY would it be valuable in the bigger picture of things if you do get there?” All three were essential, yet we did not expect the “WHY” to be as complete as the “HOW” in mapping out possible paths to the greater future. We as individuals rely on others more for the “WHY” part … but that does not make it one whit less important. And we are all called always to listen hard, think hard, and work hard to convey what we can of positive value, building on our strengths and on connections to others with complementary strengths. Speaking of NSF and research… I especially like the words in Matthew chapter 5 about what happens to people who overuse the word “fool.”

Why do I believe in the noosphere, and how does it make hard scientific sense? See https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2892447790785619 for my explanation, an expansion of the vision of Teilhard de Charding, upgraded to be more consistent with science and with a visibly larger universe.

My entire month in Japan last year, following Ludmila, was mainly an exercise in strengthening point (2) above. I posted about a third of that as part of:

https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2811391018891297

https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2876405859056479

Perhaps someday I might post a pruned version of my photo albums and explanations for other important places and experiences in Japan… and other places.

BEFORE that discussion came the usual silent “Meeting for Worship” (a kind of special group meditation), and before that we had our “drop in meeting” where a guy who taught math at George Mason University leads a discussion of various readings. This week, it was Matthew book 6, including the line about “consider the lilies of the valley.”

Afterlife: basic issues at a moment of choice for us and for US

This morning, I posted a collage related to the issue of afterlife AND of 

major historical crossroads going on in the US today (but NOT at all unique to the US!):

https://www.facebook.com/paul.werbos/posts/2957382997625431  

i do NOT take a definite position on which is true: "cosmos as a great mind," or on Einsteinian realism versus some kind of multiverse. But in ALL cases, life at the level of experience and biology, I do assume and build upon the theory of noospheres spelled out in three papers I published last year, which you can see just by clicking:

Quantum Measurement, Consciousness, and the Soul: a New, Alternative Position (Activitas Nervosa Superior) 

The Phenomenon of Man, Revised: Evolution and IT versus Extinction in the Years to Come

Cosmos and History)

https://www.academia.edu/29703561/Rebuilding_the_Bridge_Between_Science_and_Mysticism  (Rose-Croix)

This builds on Dante's basic idea that we humans are "half beast, half angel," and thus that old age is when we really prepare for losing the beast (a major part of the self we know) and becoming something else,  but WHAT and HOW? 

Just a few days ago, at a small meeting in our living room, I got to speak to an old friend who, among other things. led the last major unclassified computer modeling of the global future of the earth (future political, economic, social, technological, etc., future), housed in the Joint Chiefs of Staff after Carter's Global 2000 project died. Like me, he sees amazing parallels (WORLDWIDE) to the standard patterns of decline described by people like Spengler and Toynbee,and a disturbing gap in deep analysis of this life or death issue in recent decades. But I do see SOME hope that big changes  both in computers and in the content of our noosphere might prevent the obvious worst case paths  looming in front of us, which would imply the extinction of the human species.Many are wallowing in the ancient neurotic defense mechanism, denial, described in detail in Valliantrs great longitudinal study -- a  certain path to death as our game changes, as has happened to MANY species on earth before. But I for one will never just give up on light, love and life -- even as "life" may mutate a bit in my own personal case (whether in one year, or 30, not to be ignored in the analysis).

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

P.S. I am not a follower of Gurdjieff, but there is an obvious fit between his most important claim and what I see and deduce here: the claim that the "angel" which survives varies a LOT from person to person when they die, and that the noosphere also contains other "cell assemblies" like archetypes which vary in nature from personality images to Platonic forms like the concept of truth (a concept which reflects some very basic principles of any intelligent system, from fish brain to noosphere principles which they also apply to everything else).  (Notice that there is a kind of hall of mirrors effect here, a chain of approximations: from what the brain SEES, to the image it creates in its mind, to the image of the basic principles of HOW it creates the image by learning the truth about what predicts its experience.) 

Some folks basically fade away into dust, like the old musician in the Disney cartoon Coco, but others build more basic and enduring connections -- the great Shrine of Connection in Sanzan Shinto, and the great tree they use as an image (as do the Mayans!!), and like The Green Man (the Druid answer to that tree, a bit more human). Just a few examples. 

what is qi?

You reminded me of a few basic points about qi.

A friend recently discussed modern Chinese attempts to make sense of the age-old concept of "qi," which reflects a deep strain of important experience, but is hard to understand. My explanation:

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One of the first sources which impressed me was:

https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Chinese-Philosophy-History-Economics-ebook/dp/B00GHJH8JE/ 

He was a leading professor at Tsinghua University, then called "the MIT of China," in the days before followers of Jiang Zemin worked to discredit all such "old ideas." He later moved to the US, and found that US students have troubles understanding what was best in China; he has later books which Westerners find it easier to understand, but less content in some ways.    

I too had troubles making sense of that book after I bought it in 1962 or so, as I wandered intoa bookstorein Princeton, New Jersey. But now I especially appreciate the discussion of Meng Tzu (Mencius) and what he said about a high form of mental qi. After years of exploring many things, I found it easy to relate to things which Meng said which even Fung found puzzling. He seems to say that most readers even in China had difficulty because they were more familiar with something more like physical qi. (I also still remember an historical museum in Changsha, which included qi gong manuals commissioned by royalty MANY centuries ago.) 

But what IS qi? I always try to distinguish between the experiences and  the theories, like the news versus the editorials. (When I grew up, there was a clear distinction. Lately I worry.) The EXPERIENCE of qi is what I take seriously and can relate to. But when pompous color blind art critics all over the world overstress primitive theories... I am simply happy we do have better formal concepts available now.

Many folks even with authentic experience of qi (some clearly far more proficient than me in their areas like martial arts)

naturally assume it is a kind of substance or force fields. After all, many people with experience of heat felt it was obvious that heat must be a kind of substance (phlogiston). I disagree 100%. 

I do remember Karl Pribram and Walter Freeman both looking puzzled but then reflective and agreeing when I said to them: "psychic energy is not energy." Freud's concept of "psychic energy" is the strongest, most general foundation of his whole theory of psychodynamics, of how the brain works. Pribram was very proud of his book on Freud, and very sad that the world appreciated his lesser work more than that great work. My chain rule for ordered derivatives (later named "backpropagation" through a complex chain of history) actually came from translating that concept of Freud into mathematics and neural networks, long before any CS people knew of it. This is why Pribram provided a strong endorsement on the back of my book The Roots of Backpropagation which gave that history. 

But here is the point: what Freud called "psychic energy" is at a higher level than simple Hamiltonian physical energy. It is NOT part of the equations of physics. It is more like a flow of emotions (coded in higher order patterns of chemistry and electromagnetism organized as major patterns in cells) than a flow of electrical energy. It is an emergent, evolved phenomenon, just like the dots and dashes of Morse code; yes, they have a physical basis, but no, they are not elementary particles or anything like it. The equations of backpropagation clearly DO NOT obey the energy conservation laws familiar in physics; the level of "psychic energy" (*or resulting affect or cathexis) in mammal brains is NOT FIXED, but varies a LOT depending on the mental condition of the person, as well as physical conditions.  In essence, Freud's "psychic energy" is basically just a set of information signals computed by a mammal brain. 

SO HERE IS MY CLAIM: the reality behind "qi" ("the true meaning of qi") if=s the flow of what Freud called "psychic energy", IN THE NOOSPHERE, which is a higher order organized nervous system just like the mammal brain but more powerful. (Strictly speaking, the word "noosphere" could refer to that nervous system, or that nervous system plus the entire rest of the organism it represents. Both are meaningful concepts.) 

Even "physical qi" is MANIFESTATION of information signals over dark matter COUPLING to ordinary matter, just as our physical body energy is seen when our muscles hit something else guided by our nerves.

So for me, the distinction between "physical qi" and "mental qi" is ACTUALLY not between physical and mental signals, but between different LEVELS of what is totally mental at a deeper level. ONE nervous system, ONE noosphere (in our solar system) with many LEVELS, levels more complex than the simple "mental/physical distinction," but we need to start somewhere in sorting out experience. 

===========

All for now. 

Best regards,

   Paul 

P.S. A corollary is that qi is governed by that same general equation, with a modulation term (as in my IT versions). But of course, the overall structure and inputs are important to the outcomes.

Why was COP25 such a disaster? How could anyone do better?

First, I owe great thanks to Mike and to Doug for posing the question so clearly and so vividly yesterday morning: what do we need to DO to bridge the communications gap, such that groups like COP25 (the international climate meeting which fell apart so badly this month) can bring forth concrete proposals which REALLY minimize the climate threat to human existence in a way which really works -- minimum cost and delay, minimum avoidable disruption, and deep reduction in risk?

Mike urged us to work towards a "bumper sticker" level of slogan, unlike my talk in Seoul last month ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM ). I felt bad that I did not make time to be more forceful about the five key areas for action, which really need the kind of critical professional information which I have gotten access to which COP people don't know about. (See the image below). But Mike is right, that trying to get policy types to count to five is probably too much of a stretch. 

And so, from that discussion, I suppose we need some kind of crusade around the slogan (from the proper elite climate policy debates of 2009): "Instead of what Obama tried to pass, we should have gone for "sectoral legislation." 

And maybe that's what we need to explain somehow. And discuss among ourselves first.

Mike began with the obvious question; "WHY go for sectoral measures? Are the benefits of a different approach worth the risks?"

 

Simplified answer: over 80% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions come from electricity generation and transportation, just two sectors. (People seeking money for buildings say "commercial sector is 30%". But that's only if you attribute the GHG from the electricity they use to commercial! The data gets tabulated in many ways. If electricity in buildings comes from electric utilities which get the electricity from renewables, using electricity is fine in  buildings. Much of the GHG from industry is for electricity generation and vehicles.)

Instead of asking taxpayers for $1 trillion per year for a carbon tax which has a modest impact on those two sectors, why not pay 10% or less as much to have a bigger impact. WE CAN... if we look are hard and realistic (and global and market oriented) at what can be done in THOSE TWO SECTORS, where I led advanced research at NSF and got to know how things work far more than any of the folks I worked with at EPW knew. (I was the only professional staff working with EPW who had access to the core staffers and analysis in "all three political parties" in 2009, the year of serious climate legislation. That's how I learned how huge the gap is between what we CAN do in those sectors and what they knew.

Examples: on electricity: did you know that Gates has put money in to rescue an 8 cents per kwh proven US technology (solar power towers using advanced Brayton conversion to electricity) which Rick Perry tried to cancel and outlaw, using not market forces  but brute force state power? Did you know that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has authority, under the law and the Interstate Commerce clause of the Constitution, to provide one-stop approval of interstate and interregional natural gas pipelines BUT NOT ELECTRICITY? (It makes me wonder what Pickens and Dan Kammen of Berkeley are doing lately. Pickens tried to get the law fixed, but right now MARKET FAILURE is the main problem, not the carbon price.) Smiling advocates ask why not just require specific  >50 cents renewable technology everywhere, but OPENING UP MARKETS to allow the low cost solution is what we really need -- We who have to pay, and we who want all the GHG emissions to go. It makes me wonder what Gates' own groups are into... possible allies? 

In short, the cost of renewable electricity varies by a good solid documented factor of ten, and folks who try to get the public to pay ten times what they should have to are enemies of saving the human species from climate extinction, not allies. Folks who overstate the role of rooftop solar in cloudy regions may be unwitting enemies, but they HURT a lot. Confusing folks like COP25 are a big part of that.

As for highway vehicles... I actually WROTE the SBIR research topic for the Partnership for a Next Generation Vehicle (PNGV), and ran it for many years until OGC decided I was becoming too close to Eaton, a company which makes trucks. (No, I broke no rules; I just kept them informed, until they said the line was crossed.) I still remember the EPW hearing where Senator Lamar Alexander (one of the brightest, most honest Republicans) noted how Obama's climate proposal would do almost nothing to reduce GHG from  cars and trucks, or petroleum in general. (Curious how Reid and Waxman used a quiet stakeholder committee with heavy oil industry representation which came up with a climate plan which wouldn't reduce gasoline much. Yes, I met them.) If you doubt me... DOE/EIA and EPA did a joint prediction of what Obama's bill would actually do, and there was petroleum, still big in the year 2100, despite a carbon price of more than $200!!

Specter wanted to introduce a much shorter bill, less than 20 pages, focused just on transportation (a "sectoral bill"), based on an upgrade of a bill introduced by INHOFE, aimed at greater US NATIONAL SECURITY for car and truck fuel, which would have slashed GHG from highway vehicles very deeply while actually saving money for the US consumer overall. I posted that at www.werbos.com/oil.htm. Reid would not let us introduce it because "We have to pass Obama's law first. it's a matter of sequencing." No carbon tax needed!

At the end of the day, I WOULD still view a carbon tax of $20-40 per ton of CO2 as reasonable, as part of the THIRD point below, ONLY because it allows for some incentive for low-cost high-value actions in areas like agriculture and recycling flue gas. Hu of China offered a joint US-China simple carbon tax of $20/ton, eliminating the need for kludgey border adjustment rules, in 2009, but Obama listened to advisors who said this would  

violate Reid's game plan. Maybe Schumer should learn more of what really happened. Would $20-40 rebates be enough for new measured carbon sequestration in those sectors? We don't know; there are times when markets should decide!! But we can do enough in electricity and transportation already to have deep impacts.

By the way, NSF was on course to give even better options, but Lamar Smith killed all that. Long story for another day, like what happened to our access to space (relevant to points four and five, and to US security vis-a-vis North Korea, a subject I have discussed with top Koreans, albeit not by email).

===

So: where from here??

For now, Mike is the only real leader in our group on this. but of course, I am eager to help in any way I can. I never forget that this is our lives at stake. 

Lessons of history: is our real choice Terminator versus The Matrix?

Some futurists have asked us: what future do we CHOOSE? I thought a lot about that long ago in middle school, and then asked more and more: "What our our ACTUAL choices? What kinds of states are attainable and sustainable as a kind of attractor state? If you think that all you have to do is dream up what YOU think is the best social/economic/political system, yes, do dream big... but then ask yourself what would happen if your new social contract were staffed and implemented  by a family of chimpanzees?" That reminds me of a lot I have seen in this world...

I was so lucky that kids in my school could talk about Toynbee's World and the West, a book which asked important hard questions back in those years, and showed me a path to other work by Toynbee, Spegler, McNeill and others (yea unto Marx and Weber and Jefferson and more of Aristotle in college). "Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them." And "those who assume dynamics without actually studying time-series data and facing up to their initiale rrors should change jobs."

I was delighted to hear of an open  journal continuing that tradition, Cosmos and History, and published a paper recently in that journal. But where is the intellectual community continuing that analysis? We have lots of well-connected would-be dictators now in the US who revere Trajan, but where are the folks who know the REAL lessons from what Trajan did to the Romans (which many folks start to do to us)?

That being so, I was delighted to hear of a major new thrust based IN JAPAN which tries to fill in that very important gap, to help inform some very serious (even urgent) decisions in front of us now at the  crossroads of history.

Here is the link I was sent today on that thrust:
========================================

On Sun, Dec 29, 2019 at 10:56 PM Bill Daul <bdaul@nextnow.net> wrote:

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/12/25/commentary/japan-commentary/big-history-helps-understand-todays-issues/

Big history helps understand today's issues

BY HARUAKI DEGUCHI

==================================================
My reply:

Thank you, Bill, for informing us of this very important strand of thinking. (See his post and newspaper story below.) 

Recently, I had a paper published in the online journal Cosmos and History  (I think),

but was deeply disappointed not to find an internet venue (google groups? special package?) to dig deeper into the issues which that journal talks about addressing.

DO YOU HAVE a URL to suggest to dig deeper into those basic questions?

i4j has another mission. It can help and linkup, but a more dedicated, more cross-cutting thread is needed.

I looked up NextNow, and it too seemed to have very different goals.

In the past, I was excited by the mandate of a Lifeboat discussion list: to discuss what are the most serious threats to the very existence (extinction) of the human species, and rational strategies to minimize the risk?

Learning from past history is one of the important starting points or resources for that discussion, but it has petered out in recent years. (People told me that David Brin built on that to create a viral blog, but is he into two-way asking of tough questions?) SO WHAT WOULD YOU RECOMMEND NOW TO GET DEEP INTO IT, EITHER THE BIG HISTORY TOPIC OR THE LINK TO SURVIVAL?

For what it's worth, I was invited by JS&T to fly to Japan myself this month, to give a talk on how we can avoid a kind of future history collapse due to misuse of AI and other internet technologies, already a pressing challenge to governments around the world as the dynamics of history actually change in a serious way. Rather than fly, I chose instead to record a video talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6togqN9Cvt4&t=12s 

(They tell me it has been translated into Korean, and gotten some real circulation there.) TWO of the eight slides actually depict extinction challenges discussed at Lifeboat, with the kind of details and evidence to make it more than just the usual BS. I was also asked to give a talk in Seoul on worst case climate change, one of the four:

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

For my PhD at Harvard in crossdisciplinary applied mathematics, I was asked to defend two possible topics in an intense oral examination in 1971 or 1972. One was the coupling between biological evolution of humans and the rise and fall of civilizations, with lots of reference to Toynbee and Spengler as well as Eisenstadt, McNeill ( https://www.amazon.com/Rise-West-History-Human-Community/dp/B0006AYML2/). The senior Harvard faculty became very excited by the topic. I still remember when Karl Deutsch, my adviser and president of the International Political Science Association became very uncomortable when I cited studies showing big shifts in some motivation variables in a mere 7 to 10 generations, and stated how everyone in that field knows that such shifts have effects only over millions of years. Then the top mathematical biologist, a close associate of E.O.Wilson, gently explained how political science needs to learn more about reality, and cited a host of papers himself. After an hour of listening to their debates, and saying almost nothing myself, I meekly walked out, having graduated with flying colors, but not having talked about the OTHER topic, the mathematics of intelligence or mind, which is what I actually chose. (At scholar.google.com, the version of that in Asian languages is my highest citation. US AI people are not so far along yet in using what I did long ago.) I wanted to understand brains better first, and get some practical experience with history, before trying to nail down the other topic. Now would be a great time to get back to it, in a really serious way, if anyone is able and willing to discuss it.

==========

On the Millenniums Project list, someone recently asked "what future would YOU choose"? 

I wish that were a real discussion list, but it has other purposes. If it were an open-ended discussion list, I might have started by mentioning how I started worrying a lot in high school "What are our realistic CHOICE?" We can fantasize til hell won't quit what kind of world we WANT to live in, but that is simply not realistic. I once said to a friend: " Try to design what you think is the BEST form of government, fitting your values. And then try to picture what will happen if the entire system is staffed by chimpanzees." (I have certainly seen hearings and trials which reminded me of that sentence.) Identifying what are realistic choices, informed by the empirical data of how history works over long times (for humans and also other species), is a key part of any honest, useful response to the question.

For the moment... as I look at how money and DNA once ruled humans, but computers are on track to ruling money, my gut feeling this morning is: The most accurate depiction of our real choices may be a lot like the deep, inspired science fiction series Hyperion by Dan Simmons. It starts out as something we don't understand, which turns out to be a war between a Terminator kind of AI (slightly gentler?) and a Matrix kind of AI, in which our best hope for now is to help the Matrix side win and more fully value human beings.(Of course, there is also a choice of new internet apps so primitive and devoid of real intelligence that we all fall apart like some folks' tax returns under an IRS audit. Current governments' policies actually look more like that one, a more Spenglerian possibility.) 

I doubt the Terminators would even listen to talk about people-centered internet, but that fits well in the Spenglerian options for the future.

Please forgive if I close with a photo I took in Japan a few weeks ago, which somehow seems to fit here. It is a picture of the gateway to the future, entry to the highest and most sacred of Shinto (sanzan) shrines... with an icon of the macroscopic Schrodinger cat just past the gateway. We have CHOICES now about our future history, and this multifurcation point in that dynamical system, but physics has been more and more clear that many choices actually DO HAPPEN in the multiverse we live in. Deepak Chopra sent me a link yesterday, for example, to a new article MIT Tech Review, which appears to attack objective reality but describes yet another new experiment which proves that macroscopic Schrodinger cats actually exist. Meow. 

Thanks again for your post... and I look forward to further discussion in another venue (unless others here want to dig in as well).

    Paul 

Trump impeachment hearings: a Rorshach test for the world?

trump Impeachment hearings

Do you remember what a Rorshach test is? Basically, they show you and image which is somehow very compelling, but different people have  very different strong reactions, all thinking they know what they are really seeing.

I suppose that a majority of the people look at these hearings thinking EITHER "We really need to save the world by getting rid of this evil person fast" OR "Those evil Democrats are scheming to destroy us all and must be destroyed first."

An intelligent Democrat recently said to us: "I don't understand why the Republicans don't join this. Don't they understand that they too will be destroyed if this guy continues?" My reply to her: "Maybe some of them want to wait until after the election, when they think THEY will get to decide who replaces him." But that was a big "maybe"; many possibilities are in play.

My own immediate response was: this reminds me of the severe importance of those internet design issues I have not committed enough to solve, issues which the rest of the world somehow can't see straight on, so much so that disaster seems to loom on every one of the alternative paths now in clear focus.

It reminds me of how humans alone, as the only REAL intelligence making decisions on earth, but empowered by ever stronger technology, seem to be on a path to extinction well before the hundred year climate stuff. The hearings make me think of humans killing themselves. Yes, we see one overloaded guy at the center of the hearings, lashing out in dozens of disastrous ways. But we know that there are many others in play, on far right and far left, who may not speak as openly as he does, who have even  crazier things to say.

The war between the left and the right (NOT the only war in play) reminds me a lot of Lotfi Zadeh, the famous father of fuzzy logic,whom I had a lot of contact with when he was alive. He rightly attacked irrational extreme black and white thinking. But what was his alternative? A fuzzy middle?
When I look at the choices for US President, the best I really see in the neighborhood (in a fuzzy way) would be Klobuchar, whom I think of as "the candidate from that weird unappreciated place called planet earth." Will Iowa bring her at least to consideration? Yet when I hear her echo the party lines on the Middle East... which Trump has rightly resisted... it limits my enthusiasm. And in any case, what chance does she have? (Sure I would vote for her if I lived in Iowa.)

What this REALLY tells me is that humans alone may not be on a path for survival. Even if human life is number one on the list of what we care about, is it not time to think about  the need for a bit more real coherent intelligence on this planet? Could a well designed automated dialogue system run a less silly and confused management of BOTH sides in events like this hearing and the one to come in the Senate? Or even to the messes which CAUSED the hearing, messes due to ANY President (or chairman) having greater and vgreater power not really restrained by objective reality?

No, I am not a devotee of Ethereum. I do not believe that Elon Musk or Ethereum are the salvation of humanity, Karl Schroeder's novel Stealing Worlds is closer to the spirit of what may really be coming as IT changes the entire world game, but  the reality is more than that.

BUT: instead of the misleading, cartoon promises of Musk and of Ethereum, can we come up with designs which really make good on those promises, which have a really solid mathematical foundation?

The sad fact is that I do not know anyone else on earth who knows nearly as much as I do about that stream of applied math. And yes, I know the players and the field. I see partial answers, which are important, but how could we avoid a grossly dehumanizing endgame?  Why are humans today so oblivious to how serious the threats are?

Part of it, I suspect, is that they don;pt understand basic principles which culminated in Von Neumann's book Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. We are heading today towards a Nash equilibrium, which means death in the new game, and do not appreciate the needs and possibilities for a realistic progress towards Pareto optimality (building on important foundations which many of us know a little about, but not enough). Some folks think that AI is about a bunch of little apps on their smart phones (or independent robots) which will just fight it out.

But an integrated market style system implies further risks.

In the end, in the struggle between silicon and  carbon, I see a mess as bad as these hearings. We need more from a third player, which I view as dark matter and energy ... the authentic spiritual side of human life. But where is THAT in the hearings? Nancy Pelosi has said a few things suggesting she might remember a bit about soul...

What if your best hope is something clearly present but very hard to focus on?

As a tangent... there is research which might help a bit in injecting dark matter and energy into computer systems, as well as enhancing human life in that natural way. But will people even remember it after I die of old age (the timing of which is ever harder to predict in my case)? Will humans even remember that self-destruction and extinction are not the only choices?