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.

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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.)

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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.

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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.

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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..

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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.

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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. 

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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... 

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Economic recovery will depend on changes in internet design

In a discussion of big changes coming in the Internet, a group of us agreed "The BIGGEST question, not just for a new internet design we come up with but for ANY design for integration of the emerging global internet of things and of people, is GOVERNANCE."

That is not just hypothetical. For example, the number one question worrying policy makers here in the DC area is: "How will we all recover from the economic impact of  covid?" A few weeks ago, some were saying "Don't worry, the US can maintain demand and employment because the Federal Reserve can print all the money it wants, and we can maintain full employment no matter WHAT we spend money on." But I gently pointed out that China is far along in developing a new cybercurrency (secure but not exactly the old kind of cryptocurrency) which will eliminate the old assumption that DC simply rules all the money of the world. Will China accidentally do to us what the US did to Germany in the 1920's, encouraging excess or error in printing money (after the previous pandemic), followed by hyperinflation, followed by economic problems which led to events in the 1930's which were terrible for BOTH nations? Economic fear is growing, but where is the new system? Well, it's on the internet... but what will we CHOOSE it to be? And how intelligent will it be in managing economic conflicts, for example?  

Regardless of what apps exist on the internet, the world WILL develop or evolve an INTEGRATION system, if only to reconcile conflicts and mediate the relations between the apps. **IF** that integration system is truly intelligent ("AGI"), it will have a combination of RULES (constraints) and a UTILITY function U, what it tries to maximize over future time subject to those constraints.

GOVERNANCE is simply the set of constraints and the choice of utility function. 

We cannot get away from the need to analyze WHAT utility function the global system should be designed for. It is a classic case where we need to FACE UP to a crucial, unavoidable question, more than any of us have yet.

In the key slide of my AGI talk, it LOOKS as if I found a way to bypass that question:

Instead of asking WHERE we get the global utility function U from (as in Stafford Beer's experiment), we can try to build a MARKET type system, like the DSOPF (dynamic stochastic optimal power flow) being developed for electric power system controls. NO global utility function, just a market.

IN FACT, a dumb static integration system would ALSO be a market, but without intelligence, without foresight. 

What an INTELLIGENT market system offers is a better ability to arrive at a PARETO optimal resolution of the conflicts between the major player, major market participants:

https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2020/03/reformulating-game-theory-mathematics.html  

That is especially important in those situations ("games") where clever manipulations in the dark by intelligent player systems can lead to modes of instability (like war) which end up destabilizing (destroying) the entire system, like the entire species. 

Constraints (rules) matter. For example, a rule that all humans get full access to the new integrated market, with  certain 

hard transparent rights, would matter a lot. A rule that OTHER entities must be represented as transparent computer systems (e.g. corporations must be instantiated as master apps), which also follow computer-verified compliance rules, would also be important. 

But the global U is crucial in the end.

EVEN A MARKET SYSTEM PERFORMS VALUE AGGREGATION. That's a very hard fact of life which I haven't faced up to enough. For example, even today's ISO computer markets DO MAXIMIZE a single measure of system surplus. Yes, it is BASED on an aggregation of value or surplus for all of the players, PLUS some measure of environmental impact in some systems. (The higher governance is now done by PUCs, Public Utility Commissions, which need to approve the choice of value measure.)  

I am intrigued by how the new Brazilian proposal, Noosferia, should include an ENVIRONMENTAL measure of value into the basic system, and how they MIGHT even connect with people in USDA who have worked hard to get solid measurements of carbon sequestration and soil quality. 

If the integration system uses cybercurrency market valuation in controlling all decisions including the Internet of Things (IOT), would that be sustainable or fair ENOUGH, given the complex game implicit here? 

But I have a bit of a radical perspective on all this. After decades of life changing experiences, probes and so on, I see us as part of a real "noosphere," a kind of hard-to-see but very powerful connecting intelligence, connecting all of us from the microbes under the ocean floor to the convolutions of the sun. If we try to fight it or fight each other, bad things will happen to us. COULD we design an internet which is highly RESPONSIVE as well as INTELLIGENT, fostering a steady (albeit stable and sustainable) push upwards in HUMAN potential and empowerment, as part of the noosphere and not ONLY as part of some company's local bottle packing task? Instead of defining U as the sum of yes/no votes cast every year by humans, could it be based on a more real time aggregation of human responses on more .. definable... yet inclusive.. variables? While AVOIDING systems which tend to drug people (like LSD or like a lot of political propaganda) into being less intelligent and responsive themselves?

The design question here is difficult, but unavoidable. If society tries to avoid it, it will just turn things over to power seekers without compunction, who could easily create a game which does kill us all, sooner than most people think possible. (Hey, I have seen some of those autonomous weapons and two-way BCI helmets.) 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

this conversation was like that.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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