Significance of new experiment showing entanglement ACROSS TIME

This morning, I received a message describing a new experimental result. My analysis: ================================================ Jumping ahead, you describe the issue as entanglement across time, with new empirical results However the experiment that I consider crucial and which sems to have been pretty much ignored was that carried out by of Eli Megedish and his team at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Phys Rev Letters 110 May 2013) 'Entanglement swapping between photons that have never co-existed)'. He is now apparently at Berkeley, and I really do not know why so little attention has been paid to this result? But there are so many experiments being carried out now on entangled photons and even larger particles it seems, by the cream of bright young physicists, that perhaps it is hard to keep up. I am also reminded of a paper just a few years ago by Wilczek et al https://arxiv.org/pdf/1502.02480.pdf which addresses similar issues. I actually thought I posted a photo of the experiment on Facebook after I visited it, but got tino deep trouble when it turned out to be something else. Ouch.We all make mistakes, but even so, the experiment was also important. I am not really able to grasp the full significance of this result and how it was arranged but the general implication that struck me is that entanglement is not only possible across space but also across time. This is the essence of my explanation of how memory results via a resonance of similar events/structures over time. I have wondered the same about my own paper in IJTP. In your example, even more than the others, the problem is with people's ability to UNDERSTAND and ASSIMILATE results so far from the assumptions they have been making. The old Copenhagen theory of measurement upset Einstein for more reasons than the ones we usually hear about (reality versus unreality, Cartresian dualism, metaphysical magic observers,Einstein's own words about EPR). But there were other problems. Above all, the usual Copenhagen model assumes an instantaneous action at time t, the time of measurement, changing the wave function of the cosmos (including all entanglements). It assumes an absolute division between before and after, with entanglement a property of the wave function ps(X), where X is a point in the THREE DIMENSIONAL Fock space across time. The use of 3D type Fockspace in defining wave functions does not even allow representation of the ideal of entanglement across time. It sounds like a reasonable idea, and empirical evidence should make it more so, but what happens when they can't translate it into math they can understand? Actually, however, a lot of these odd crosstime empirical effects CAN be allowed for (and tested for in OTHER experiments) if one gives up Copenhagen and uses a different measurement formalism, as outlined in my IJTP paper and elaborated on with examples in many sequels. It CAN be reconciled with the old type of wave function, if one simply adopts a new view of measurement. Unfortunately, most of the readers of that paper on the experiment in Israel would not be aware of that, including Aharonov whose efforts to get past his old Copenhagen views went only part of the way to catching up with what was known before those efforts. But...yes, I think that would be enough to assimilate and respect the experiment you mention, which may indeed be important. (Not having read the paper yet, I must be careful what I say about that aspect.) However, it ALSO suggests a further question: should we be trying to think beyond psi-dot = iH psi, for a psi over 3D Fockspace, or should we be looking for a reformulation in 4D Fock space or elsewhere, truer to Einstein's vision in special relativity? For example, by cleaning up the kind of approach proposed in the famous mainstream work of Streater and Wightman? In principle, yes. In past years, that is where I started. Much of my career, from "deep learning and AI" to this stuff, has been an exercise in moving backwards from where I was to what can fit into this very rigid set of cultures we live in. As of now, physics has a long way to go to appreciate the power of the simple vision of Hugh Everett (disseminated especially by John Wheeler and david Deutsch of Oxford), the idea that psi dot= i H psi for psi over 3D Fock space is THE law of everything (prior to gravity) has MUCH MORE to tell us, and deserves much more understanding and respect from the community. Everett was emphatic that there are no metaphysical observers,that "observers" themselves are just patterns in the multiverse; unfortunately, his PhD thesis (reprinted in https://cqi.inf.usi.ch/qic/everett_phd.pdf) made the error of trying to deduce the COPENHAGEN version of measurement from that viewpoint, as my IJTP paper explains. but leaving out that error, Everett's vision is what lies AHEAD of us, not behind. But: if only physics could be as rational as the NEC business plan I once read, showing a roadmap made of waves of technology, the next generation and the ones beyond, which should be allowed IN PARALLEL. I suspect that the guy who did the experiment you cite would agree with me (and with David Deutsch) "I don't believe it will turn out to be true in the end, if we survive to that point." Sabine says physicists pay too much attention to beauty, but in my view they do not pay ENOUGH attention; 3D Fock space is NOT beautiful. I have thought about types of experiments in quantum optics which would take us beyond that level of model (if more plausible models are true, in which entanglement of light across-spece time is an EXPLICIT natural possibility), but for now we seem to be stuck in preschool and need to learn the prerequisites. (Or, in a different reality altogether, as per Deepak Chopra and the Matrix.) As a practical matter, do I now go back to psi dot = i H psi? Unfortunately, this is one of the days when the news and the incoming zingers feel more like the Matrix, bleak as it is, and as great as the hope SHOULD BE that we can see through those kinds of illusions. For psi.. the difference between 3D Fock space and 4D is like the difference between coping with a firehose of information (squeezed along one t hose) or coping with an ocean. Many of us feel it is more like an ocean, but life is not quite so simple even if it is not so narrow in time flow.

Response to Deepak Chopras Argument That All We see is illusion

First, the post I agree with most definitely was Brian Josephson's, where he talks about turtles. His story about turtles is just one piece of what we are wrestling with, but it is a VERY important, very fundamental piece. Brian is urging all of us to deeply remember and engrave on our minds one of the fundamental limits of ANYTHING we humans (or even human souls or noospheres) can think we know, about the underlying laws of how our cosmos works: no matter how plausible a theory and no matter how good the fit, we can always imagine another level deeper, and we can never be CERTAIN that the best theory and level we know is the ultimate truth, There is no way that Deepak or jehovah or anyone else can rescue us from this fundamental limit. However, that does not prove that any of the theories which meets the usual tests of coherence and fit is FALSE, We cannot rule out the theory that eveyrthing which exists is just the emergent consequence of psi dot = i H psi being the ultimate law of everything, for some H. But we cannot rule out the many possibilities consistent with Deepak's assertion that we who post here are all fictional characters, and that the world of our experience is an "illusion," a surface level somehow of something deeper. But if so, what? If any human claims to escape this dilemma and know everything for sure, I conclude from long experience and logic with near 100% probability that such a human is just one more specimen of the many kinds of psychoneuroses one may find in the many handbooks of human mental... problems. We should never forget this, is we want to make what progress we can to becoming sane and somewhat more perspicacious. Likewise, there is a "chain of turtles" rising above us, possibilities for life beyond 100 billion years or light years. But Deepak is working hard to help support and "awaken" plain old human beings, as diverse as they are, in San Francisco to start, and that may be more important for us finite creatures than turtles at infinity. I have watched several of his videos. At times, I am reminded of Dr. Gupta on CNN, whom I respect quite deeply, who is centered on the challenge of helping other humans, a challenge deserving of full support. But: other, trickier issues have arisen here. I am not such a good communicator to the public as Deepak, in most cases, because I find it hard to confine myself to "life inside the box," inside the invisible walls or constraints of what Jung calls the spirit of the time." (His Red Book is also important to those of us who would want to help people of the 2020's, not so different from his experience in the 1920s, never to be forgotten.) Out of the box... Deepak mentioned being ejected from Sean's list. Actually, Yeshua was maybe next after Deepak, and I got attacked form Sean when I disagreed with that decision/ Sean expressed great loyalty both to Walter Freeman and to Ireland, and I mad eit VERY clear that I shared those affections, and that valuing the contributions of Yeshua and Deepak should be supported form that viewpoint. In the end, perhaps after I disagreed with Sarfatti on some points, he finally ejected me too (and Shiva). I made it clear I would not give up the right to contradict as gently as I could some extreme, grossly false personal allegations, but otherwise would still want to support as much as posisble the positive goals he had talked about. In the end, he replied by saying, in essence: Dont try to fool me. We know who you REALLY are." I was tempted to reply further by saying I wonder myself at some level who I really am (one of the greatest mysteries to myself), and would like to hear his version, but I did not want to create further negative energy and further insane anger. IN truth, I did not meditate too deeply on what his problem was. There was an obvious connection to Sarfatti and from there to Trump and Bannon (whom Sarfatti often claimed to represent, from there to THEIR theories about UFOs for which random circumstances sent me independent documents)/ But this month, if you do a google search on Qanon, more explanation emerges. Trump really has been working to create a new religion which worships him=Q as the one true God. Hell, Caesars really tried that before, and he has mimicked so many of the behavior patterns of Caesers I learned about through the years. I especially think about an ampitheater in Spain (in Caesarea I think) where Augustus arranged performances which sounded a lot like "making Rome great again and returning to great virtues (even as elected folks were held down) and where his beautiful daughter left a track which reminded me SO much of Ivanka... And so, Deepak, his followers want no room for strange gods, like the ones Yeshua might talk about. That is the tip of an iceberg, but enough for now here. Still, I have wondered. Basically, as I try to map out my own ignorance, the SET of possibilities... I still feel more than 50% confidence is what I call the noosphere species theory, the bare bones of which are spelled out in the complex papers I libk to at werbos.com/religions.htm. Forgive me -- the one true orginal nosphere species theory, a RELATIVE of De Chardin's and Verdansky's theory but distinctly different. That theory does NOT require that psi dot = i H psi; just as Darwin's theory is defined at a higher level of aggregation/form/pattern than the ultimate laws of physics are, this theory (and the neural network mathematics it assumes) allow for a RANGE of possibilities for the ultimate laws of physics, even including Einsteinian or some cosmic mind idealism possibilities. In many ways, the noosphere species theory (AND the neural network mathematics and theory of brain which I include in it) is much more relevant to OUR everyday human lives, and to the lives of folks in San Francisco, than theories about gluons. In that theory, we humans are all basically just like farmers in a small village we call our solar system. Yes, we know there is a very important larger cosmos out there beyond our solar system, but few of us live much of our lives beyond this solar system (other than looking at the sky). Our realm of action is HERE, even if we understand that the rest of it is a bigger deal. Making sense of THIS solar system, including its politics, noosphere and biological environment, is a top priority in what WE are called to make sense of and help with. So is Deepak's highest calling to help people awaken to our links to that noosphere, making the spiritual connections truly alive and MORE conscious? If so, it is very important that we all try to help, but that the message be enriched in ways which support more energy. Would Deepak be open minded enough to consider the possibility that the solar system and earth as we see them are basically not an illusion, expect to the extent that there is some distortion between what hits our retina and what reaches our brain, that we are macroscopic Schrodinger cats and that most of us do not see that spiritual or nosphere aspect as well as we could with more training? Are we hymans not exactky the "fictional characters" Deepak once referred to, but more like the characters in Zelazny's Amber series, characters whihch are similar to macroscopic Schrodinger cats (of varying probability strength)? (I do NOT mean to endorse the specific laws of everything implied in that series. No comment on that.) Yet, as a matter of fairness, if I ask him to be open minded, zhengqi demands that I do the same, by giving serious consideration to ONE possible embodiment of theories he has alluded to. Could it be that our mundane selves are... reflections of more real characters in another kind of universe (another turtle under our feet?)? One version of that is what I heard proposed by a Scotteich Rite Freemason from New Zealand many years ago. SIMPLIFYING his story, it would go like this: "We know all about the ordinary astral plane(s), how some levels are more labile and responsive to thoughts than others. They are ever more responsive to thought as you rise closer to higher levels, more truth. And yes, these are all just patterns within a kind of Great Brain. So why not consider the possibility that what WE call physical reality is not just another level of that astral system, a bit lower and less mutable so far, but possibly ready to change?" A high real yogin I once met (with an unmistakable huge aura) said: "As you evolve, it is not that you will reach higher places in astral travel, though that is part of it. Rather, the entire world around you, the apparent physical reality will start to change." Ever since Trump ran for his nomination, Ihave met more and more intelligent people who started to express the feeling that this kind of thing was happening, that the real world was becoming less real. So could it be that Trump is very sincerely trying to split our world in two, including one in which he becomes the god of a pocket world (there are many such out there!) and for all he cares the rest of us could all dissolve into goo? Ho worried should we be? Well, I give more probability to a different model of how things work. But there is a meta version of that last theory, in which OUR CONSTRUCTION of a different theory could be important to our protecting ourselves from Trump's theory. The idea that "this is just an illusion" would actually SUPPORT Trump's vision' And even if my more conservative theory is true, there is a lot of risk from the sheer craziness and incoherent spin out there in our "post covid, post IOT/AGI" world today. Just to make it more amusing (doesn't Deepak's view say it SHOULD be ever weirder?)... my best hope for human survival now includes a greater role for a woman named Kamala, which my wife says is an avatar or other name for Laskshmi, from San Francisco, even as my latest unexpected input comes from a guy named Vishnu who is serous concerned about disorder and war and actions needed to create a bit more order at some level. The shrine to the "Sleeping Vishnu" in Nepal comes with a very active warning to be more responsible and aware of our dreams. Added later: As Kamala may be closer to becoming President, I am reminded of what Krishna told Arjuna in a chariot in the sky in https://www.ancient.eu/Arjuna/ / He started with what Deepak said, but then adds a bit about dharma, which these extnded theories do offer. A rather important addition. I just hope that Kamala will go deeper and learn about the REAL climate changes and opportunities, so different form the poopular screaming matches n either side@

From "what is the self" to new mathematical principles for designing and managing it

From HIS meditations on consciousness, Ram recently asked: "WHERE is the self in all of this?" He cited hundred of concepts of the self (see below). This is actually a useful entry point to issues of importance in designing advanced computer networks and real mathematical understanding of conscious or intelligent systems.

I did not respond immediately to Ram;s question, because a certain level of mathematics would be threatening to people who depend on thinking in words.

But my wife showed me a video and book by a prominent Buddhist thinker, teaching at Princeton, Robert Wright. (https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-God-Robert-Wright-ebook/dp/B002AKPEHW/). He says: Buddhism says that there IS no self, that it is totally illusory. He backs this up with lots of work in neuroscience, pushing a "modular theory of the brain/ Prior to deep meditation, are we just a COLLECTION of very cacophonous little selves?

In fact, large parts of computational neuroscience take that viewpoint, consciously or unconsciously. Long before I read Wright;s book, I was well aware of Grossbergs seminal attenmpts to map out module after module in the adult brain, circuits to detect edhes, circuits to do X y and z. A vast collection of particular things. The question then becomes: how are these things INTEGRATED? As Walter Freeman asked: what is the underlying principle of MASS ACTION, which applies learning in a way which really integrates these pieces into an effective, unified whole?

Kozma, Davis and myself have written many dozens of papers on the mathematics and principles of how mundane brains actually do that, but this month I see a bit further into now that mathematics actually works, not just in tiny brains but in the general case. The details are important, but there are a few very basic principles which are very powerful if fully understood and implemented. 

In just a few cryptic words, I would refer to CONDITIONAL CONGRUENCE of active modules, interfaced by stable but growing PARTIAL GATING. And I see how this connects both to noosphere mind dynamics, possibilities for more advanced internet systems (which we are not yet ready for, really), and for understanding a decently approximating the grand canonical Boltzmann density operator for our entire cosmos (which the mathematics of intelligent systems can be applied to).

Perhaps I will finish writing a partial draft which will really explain part of this. But for now... 

somehow I feel called to mention a practical little example, on the outskirts of intelligent systems, which was crucial to me in really seeing how partial gating works. It seems like a simple piece of engineering, but again and again I have been amazed at how simple pieces of GOOD engineering can manifest very important general principles.

The example comes from the field of energy system modeling. ONE of the primary (mass action) roles of cerebral cortex, after all, is to predict or model the environment of the organism as it appears on the "movie screen of the brain," the thalamus. Prediction or modeling is a very fundamental component or aspect of any intelligent system.

From 1979 to 1989, I worked in a place charged with developing and using the main official models of the US and world energy economy in the US government, EIA/DOE. We spent lots of energy studying and advancing the art of how to build good predictive models of any system described by streams of time-series data. But we ALSO spent time on INTEGRATION, how to build a system which could COMBINE multiple models of multiple subsystems, to work together effectively. (https://www.osti.gov/biblio/6288212/ Many of the techniques we studied are actually more powerful and general than any of the data analytics and policy models we ead of today. It is really sad to see models of covid and of coming eocnomic changes which fall far short of the quality we once had.)

Back in those days,the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) created a vision of a new, future type of modeling system, which would be far more powerful and agile than what we had in those days, In a way, it entailed developing a whole ECOLOGY of modules.

WHY spend hours of (then expensive) computer time running the most precise, detailed model possible of X, when, for a given application, it would be good enough to use reduced form mirror of that best model? PARTIAL GATING, in essence, is the relation between the big X and the reduced form, to be connected of course with modules which integrate through multiple gates in a larger system of integrated modules.

It is ever so simple, in a way.

The mathematics of deciding whether two modules are CONGRUENT with each other, where one module can effectively approximate another, is very fundamental. For many years, people working in practical neural network engineering (back in the days when computer scientists mostly felt there is no such thing as a general learning neural network) paid special attention to the approximation theorems of Andrew Barron of Yale, showing how ANT smooth function can be approximated at bounded cost by a certain simple type of neural network, That type was not powerful enough to approximate the kinds of mappings or relations we encounter in making decisions in life, like how to navigate a cluttered space, but with Kozma and Ilin I later showed how to train a more powerful type of neural network. At www.werbos.com/Erdos.pdf,

I eventually provided a whole LADDER of worlds or primary functions we kight try to approximate, and more complex types of neural network capable of approximating them.

And so... in an ideal world, I feel we may be ready to take that further, There are more general approximation theorems possible, which could unify this whole area, and also incorporate simultaneity ACROSS time, as in the kind of equilibrium between past and future which the Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch formulation of modern quantum field theory (QFT) assumes.

Some folks on this list have been raised to believe in many fundamentalist religions, such as the belief in cartesian dualism and "god in a [pair of sunglasses (yje Copenhagne model of measurement from the 1920s which remians very influential in tribes which have yet to learn modern mathematics let alone mathematical physics or engineering).  In truth, I do not really believe that the modern "Schrodinger equation ( psi dot = i H psi) is the total dynamic law of entire cosmos or multiverse, but it is the best basis we have right now to make better real sense of the emergent phenomena we have around us, on all scales of human experience. To ignore what it can tell us is just neurotic avoidance behavior. (Yes, we see a lot of that kind of behavior lately in very high places, but that is no justification for imitating it.) 

The more general approximation theorems with partial gating would not only fit the kind of "matching which we see in the mundane brain (beautifully described in Pribrams bopk Brain and Perceptio) but also the capabilities of fifth generation analog quantum computing learning systems (previewed in the paper by Werbos and Dolmatova in Quantum Information Processing). Ordinary Darwinian evolution is basically a slow, feedforward process to reach an equilibrium thermodynamic distribution, but quantum evolution is the time-symmetric equivalent, much faster, and one way to try to understand not only the evolution of noospheres but of the patterns in the larger canonical Boltzmann distribution which is full of its own type of "matching" or "reflection." 

It is not just a poetic accidnet that the words "mirror" or "reflection occure over and over again in the deepest mystical literature as well. I cannot help recaling "the  mirror or Ameraterasu" for which I posted a photo link at werbos.com/religions.htm.

Of course, the degree of congruence is always approximate in brains (and even in themrodynmaics at a cosmos level). Great work on neural networks and on consciousness osmetimes seems like a hall of mirrors. The less evolved system of policy intelligence we see even in the best of governments and human organizations is sometimes more like a hall of fun house mirrors, where the imperfections can be devastating. A lot of the "fake news paranoia left and right has that kind of flavor, and is truly dangerous to the survival of all of us. Perhpas we need more of a a different kind of mass action, more like Freeman's than like the left or the right or other such dogmas negligent of the need for truth, science ande yes, mathematics.  I really applaud the person Robert and I know, who put a huge statue of Von Neumann in the center of her living room (and did friend me on Facebook).

Best of luck. We do need it.

On Wed, Jul 29, 2020 at 4:17 PM 'Ram Lakhan Pandey Vimal' via Scientific Basis of Consciousness <scientific-basis-of-consciousness@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi all,

From various disciplines/investigations, so far, there are 48 facets/sub-aspects/notions of the self, which are listed below.

 

As per (Strawson, 2000, p. 39) “[1] the conceptual self, [2] the contextualized self, [3] the core self [(Damasio, 2010)], [4] the dialogic self, [5] the ecological self, [6] the embodied self, [7] the emergent self, [8] the empirical self, [9] the existential self, [10] the extended self [(Kim and Johnson, 2014)], [11] the fictional self [no-self (Metzinger, 2003) because the self is a construct of the brain that can be easily modified], [12] the full-grown self, [13] the interpersonal self, [14] the material self [objects and cultural artifacts: (Woźniak, 2018)], [15] the narrative self, [16] the philosophical self, [17] the physical self, [18] the private self [and [19] public self], [20] the representational self, [21] the rock bottom essential self, [22] the semiotic self, [23] the social self [human beings: (Woźniak, 2018), (Moutoussis et al., 2014; Friston and Frith, 2015)], [24] the transparent self, and [25] the verbal self (cf. e.g., James, 1890; Stern, 1985; Dennett, 1991; Gibson, 1993; Neisser, 1994; Cole, 1997; Butterworth, 1998; Gazzaniga, 1998; Legerstee, 1998; Gallagher and Marcel, 1999; Pickering, 1999; Sheets-Johnstone, 1999) [Strawson (1999b)]”.

 

In addition, [26] proto self and [27] autobiographical self: (Damasio, 2010) or continuous self (Newen, 2018)], [28] “the self that enjoys self-consciousness, which includes the sense of body ownership (‘this is my arm’), the sense of agency (‘this is my action’), the sense of authorship of thoughts (‘this is my thought’)” (Newen, 2018), sense of self in agency and perception (Hohwy, 2007) [29] “working self [=contextually relevant part of the self-model] must still involve explicit as well as implicit information if we want to describe the embodied self adequately concerning all its behavior, its behavioral dispositions, and its explicit autobiography (as expressed in narratives in a situation)”.

 

[30] “the phenomenal self (reflecting self-related content of consciousness)” (Woźniak, 2018) [the self-as-object (me-ness) or objective self?: “My arm is broken”, “I have a bump on my forehead”: (Wittgenstein, 1958)]

 

 [31] “by limiting ourselves to discussing conscious content representing one’s body one can speak about the bodily self” (Woźniak, 2018), self as sense of bodily ownership (Apps and Tsakiris, 2014) [32] “by imposing limits to conscious experience of one’s possessions one can speak about one’s extended self” (Woźniak, 2018), , [33] perceived self, and [34] free-energy self.

 

As per (Gallagher, 2013) on <A pattern theory of self>, “we may want to add [35] “the neural self,” [36] “the synaptic self” (LeDoux, 2002); or what we might call [37]  “the midline self” [in reference to self-referential processes in the cortical midline structures (CMS) (Northoff and Bermpohl, 2004); “the midline theory of self (or for short, the midline self)” (Gallagher, 2013)]. […] Many of these concepts of self were developed in the plural. James (1890), for example, distinguished between the physical self, the social self, and the private self. Neisser (1988) discussed five types of self-knowledge corresponding to [6] the ecological self, [38] the interpersonal self, [2] the conceptual self, the extended self, and the private self. Despite the terminology suggesting a plurality of selves, however, Neisser (1991) carefully refers to them as aspects of self – e.g., the ecological aspect of self.” [39] Experiential aspects of self (Gallagher, 2013), [40] affective aspects of self (Gallagher, 2013), [41] situated aspects aspects of self (Gallagher, 2013). [42] spiritual self (Poll and Smith, 2003), “self-as-object” as mental processes and content (Woźniak, 2018)).

 

[43] cognitive self (Strawson, 2000, p. 39), [44] the self-aware, independent, eternal/immortal, passive invariant self (PIS) is from the non-interactive dualism-based Sankhya, [45] transcendental self (Chris Nunn), and  [46] “Pure Consciousness” or “Pure Self-Observing System” as in Advaita Vedanta (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Alex Hankey, and (Boyer, 2018), [47] In the IDAM (inseparable dual-aspect monism), the “self” is the experiencer/cognizer/actor as a non-physical (np) aspect of a self-as-subject-related state of a subject’s midbrain system with respective neural-physical basis (NPB) as the inseparable physical (p) aspect. Let us call it <the IDAM-based individual dual-aspect-self>. [48] Metaphysical self ((Searle, 2005), (Woźniak, 2018)).

 

We can categorize all notions of the self in two groups:

 (I) James’ “Me” (self-as-object in the sense of Phenomenology (experience of self, phenomenal self): Wittgenstein’s “I” (‘I see me in the mirror’) and/or Wittgenstein’s “Me” (‘I see me in the mirror’); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of self as in [1]-[42]. In other words, “Me” (self-as-object) is the SE of self, i.e., self-experience/consciousness/awareness, which can include Damasio’s core self (np aspect) and the self (np aspect) that has neural-physical basis (NBP) = Northoff et al’s CSMS-NN and its activities = the p-aspect of a self-related state of a mindbrain system in the IDAM framework.

(II) James’ “I” (self-as-subject, metaphysical self: “The self as a metaphysical fact that consciousness is subjective: ‘the Thinker that does the thinking’) in the sense of metaphysics (existence of self); this includes the notions/meanings/definitions/sub-aspects/facets of the self: [43]-[48]. In other words, “I” (self-as-subject) is experiencer/cognizer/thinker/actor; it is NOT the SE of self. In the IDAM, it is the experiencer/cognizer/actor(performer of actions) as a non-physical (np) aspect of a self-as-subject-related state of a subject’s mindbrain system with respective neural-physical basis (NPB) as the inseparable physical (p) aspect.

 

First, I thank Alfredo of the Cosmic Realism group0 for drawing my attention to:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1896877083875852/permalink/2705282733035279/  

I was very discouraged this week by a debate between two friends, one of whom criticized the other for advancing a theory of life and mind which  "is not complete," which does not explain everything. That is a very high standard, which no one of earth is close to meeting.

Can ANY theory "explain everything?" MAYBE an Einsteinian theory, like general relativity plus a Lagrangian which MIGHT happen to match the reality of our cosmos, as a "law of everything." I still view this as a serious approach, but

it would NOT explain or help us understand higher order phenomena like ordinary vision, feelings of hope and fear, psychic phenomena or the rick kinds of authentic spiritual experience described in Jung's Red Book. e humans have a lot we could learn which is not a "theory of everything." 

In fact, we can often feel more confidence (legitimate subjective probability) in MIDDLE level theories than in proposed "laws of everything"!!

I have generally been giving about 30% probability to each of three FAMILIES of "law of everything", from Fock space realism (like Everett/Wheeler/Deutsch quantum theory, or something smoother of the same general type). Einsteinian realism or "Cosmic Mind Idealism. But at a MIDDLE level -- I strongly believe that the paper by werbos and davis (easy to find at scholar.google.com, open access journal) gives us the basics of how intelligence (aka "consciousness") works in the mundane brain. It is not COMPLETE (lots of details to fill in), but more complete in its way than special relativity is.

BUT WHAT OF EXPLAINING OR UNDERSTANDING HOW PSI WORKS? 

From the lab to the vast database of human spiritual experience? 

A week ago, I would say: "Of course, it's not dumb ideas like the idea that Copenhagen collapse is how we do remote viewing! It's more mental phenomenon than a physics thing, even thoughn eurons and PK do build on

a physical foundation. 90% probability that PSI as humans have experienced it is mainly an emergent property of the noosphere, of a kind of superorganism which we are part of. NOT the exact verdansky or de Chardin theories, which have a huge logical gap, but the noosphere species theory as pointed to in the papersI link to at werbos/com/religoins.htm. real reconciliation of science and PSI." An explanation to engage what Nancy wanted to engage with, and more. 

Crucial to the logic of that theory is the assumption we are surrounde dby a ruly vast ocean of life in our cosmos, powerd most of all by dark matter and dark energy. (Most of the cosmos, after all, and OBSERVED to form a very impressive network.) I have often seriously asked myself: is there ANY other equally complete/coherent explanation of this span of experience? I really have tried, but this one seems to be a logical path.

Even if we do not know what lies beyond and underneath our "tiny village" (our solar system), basic situational awareness of what's going on in our village would be EXTREMELY important for us, in so many ways. Lack of that awareness is putting us into bigger and bigger risks, and also pitting us in a kind of war against nature --not only the nature we see in mundane biology (a serous enough issue!) but also in our deepest human souls, going through increidble distress right now. (Though Jung's Red Book recalls some of the same.)

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But: Ward's new book says "Sorry folks, it'sj ust us mundane apes on earth in this entire cosmos."

I've heard claims like that for decades, most biased by silly ancient dogmas (like "of course earth is the center of the universe; we have known that for a long time, under the authority of all the ancient books".) 

But THIS WEEK, three things came together for me at exactly the same time.

(same day.)  Ironically, one was a more serious discussion of what we could do to communicate what our noosphere and noosphere species rae about, all the way to real life, and human connectedness and morale. The other was my realization that the grand canonical "Boltzmann" ensemble ( a density operator) 

gives rise to much more interesting properties than even I had realized, the kind which could provide a DIFFERENT explanation for PSI much richer and more complete than I had realized, not requiring separate intermediate brains.

And then, Peter ward himself is a uniquely important (though human and imperfect , like the rest of us) source of :VERY empirical hands-on work; I am very glad I bought gtwo of his books, Under a Green Sky" and "Life as we do not know it." (I Bought the latter to meet Amazon's minimum order for free shipping; am so glad I did.)

In the end, could the noosphere species model be as valid as Newton's laws of gravity were? A great and practical apprximation for us at a local level, but inferior to a bigger trickier model?

Nancy and Ram did talk about God or gods. humans have had so MUCH important experience in that realm,not to be disc arded, not to be trivialized or politicized. Even in the basic noosphere species model (which MIGHT be true, because ward's arguments do not account for what some of us know dark matter and energy can do), Jung's ARCHETYPES make sense as part of our noosphere. The extended grand canonical model basically extends the same principle, STILL resulting in entities emerging which are big enough and important enough for us tiny creatures, just relabeling some as another level of archetype in a larger system.

But reality does not make life simple, either at this level or at today's mundane politics.  So much we need to try to discern every day.

Best of luck,

   Paul

PSI/AGI/CH are humans building a world they cannot live in?

A few years ago, someone said: Don't worry about the horrible things the oil industry political apparatchiks are creating, where climate change will kill us all including them. That will change, as the new IT industry takes over the world, and creates a more progressive world which prizes human intelligence over bandit-like violent struggles for control of natural resources.

But how is that change of power actually working out, and will it be as benign as we thought? Will a new generation of IT leaders, trained in a culture which is highly intelligent, cooperative and powerful, nevertheless build a world which assumes that humans do not have souls, and more or less by accident oppresses and eliminates them (and, "OOps, ma, I accidentally demolished the entire human species?"). 

Now that I think of it, Jiang Zemin of China had a similar flavor. Xi Jinping is in many ways the Donald Trump of China, the result of the powerful nonverbal minds of China reacting against the power, clarity purity but dangerous narrowness of what came before. In that way, more Trump than Trump!

What happens when we build an entire world for someone, and discover we could not fit as that someone?

For centuries, the highest Western culture has tried to promote 

freedom (as in the famous book by Eric Fromm), individual self-awareness, and the idea that we can make rational choices as individuals even if society manipulates the rules to change what is rational for us. Can local police remember that they are humans first, before they are whatever job they identify with?

But what if the new world is designed by people who assume none of us have souls, and that there is no need to protect, preserve or serve them?

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All of that reminds me of two of the many real stories I come back to in my life.

Some people come back to verses in the Bible. There is a joke about two Bible people having a conversation, saying things like "Matthew 7:12" and "Job 3:3" to each other, filling in from memory and connecting smoothly to their present experience. that book is too limited, but I have often thought that it would be nice to have a list of the first person experiences which so deeply shaped my own life and understandings. So here are just two of those many stories.

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Ugly duckling redux: 

Once I was a PhD student at Harvard,finally on a path to really surviving and graduating, thanks to my thesis advisor, Professor Karl Deutsch, whose highest cited book happens to be:

Karl chose to work often in a simple desk in the corner of the library of Litauer Hall, the same building where Henry Kissinger had his office, which I visited very often that year.

Karl did not believe in PSI (which I define as that aspect of the human mind which cannot be explained by QED, the aspect which includes SOME FORM of what may be called paranormal, psychic or spiritual life). A few years before that, I was as definite as he was that PSI does not exist, based on exactly the same arguments that D.O. Hebb used in his introduction to The Organization of Behavior, one of the two great sources of the entire neural network field. But by that time, inescapable personal experiences had forced me to "open my eyes" so to speak. Deutsch had held on to the no-PSI view very fiercely. He was deeply committed to the scientific approach in all his work. 

Deutsch was also one of the real founders of the European Union (EU), then the EEC (European Economic Community). He worked tirelessly and effectively, not to attain power, but to bring peace to Europe. He was in constant communication with the people who did move power in western Europe, helping them to see the way forward. 

One day, when I visited him in his corner of the library (a strong visual memory!), I had an idea for how to make further progress in the EEC, a new policy tactic to advance the goals which Karl and I shared there. As I presented it to him, I looked carefully at his face, which became very thoughtful (not positive or negative but thoughtful, of the "I wonder" type). He then said: "Hmm. I wonder what the french would think about that." And then, I swear, I saw him look up and forwards, with a glowing ray of thought emanating from his forehead, moving up and connecting far away... and then, when something came back to him, him then turning and telling me what he saw.

My thought: "This man does not even believe in psychic powers, but what i just saw with my own eyes was incredibly real, visible and powerful."  I drew the obvious global conclusion, which TODAY I express as: "How many people out there think they are ugly ducklings, living their lives accordingly, when really they are swans? But conversely, how many people believe deeply that THEY are swans, when they are actually just ugly ducklings living their lives in formalistic or devout darkness?" (Suddenly I also remember epistles of paul, about opening of the eyes..and ears and heart and mind.) 

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Who do we think we are, worms creating a world where only worms can live?

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The other story from my personal life which came back to me is a bit less vivid.

When I ran the neural network area at NSF (one of my many strong front line jobs there), I often gave talks to the neural network community. (In fact, they told me that the following web site will soon be updated to link to my 13 minute talk on the grand challenges in research and government funding ahead of us in that field: 

https://wcci2020.org/panel-sessions/#panelsession-4 ).

One day, as I prepared a larger, longer and more technical talk I mused: "This preparation feels so weird. Here I am pretending to give a big public talk, pretending to be a great communicator when really I am just a humble mathematician/thinker, planning to put on the clothes of a great communicator pretending to be a mathematician when at that time I will be just a communicator." That was such a vivid and powerful thought, a powerful experience. 

In fact... another powerful memory emerges: final exam time, senior year at Harvard, taking crossdisciplinary courses, like an independent study with Marvin Minsky on AI, courses in economics, and another.

Memory: "TODAY, I must wipe my mind and become an economist. Yesterday I was a neural network person. Each day I have to make a sweeping change, and totally BECOME yet another role, some other viewpoint. " That felt VERY weird and unnatural, but I was glad to get used to it, to learn how to make such shifts. It reminded me of an important paper by Bitterman in Scientific American, about how SOME species of vertebrate learn to make pattern reversals more and more easily, even as others collapse. "I am a mammal," I told myself. (That was BEFORE I believed in PSI connections, but did the exercise help? Did deep listening to music, welcoming it into my deepest feelings, help? Perhaps they were part of the CAUSE of my later having experiences which forced me to change my mind about psi.) 

Some stories need to be engraved so deeply in our minds, to preserve our sense of reality, and keep us from making very dumb and dangerous mistakes. 

On this list... Deepak Chopra's fiction about Merlin is just a fictional story, but I found it more authentic than a lot of the later theory. In fact, some of my technical papers describe how human symbolic reasoning is basically just an outgrowth of a more fundamental part of the design of the human brain, the part which enabled people returning from the hunt to tell stories in a way which transferred the value of experience. This is part of the very core of mundane human brain intelligence and yes, there are specific circuits in the brain which support it. 

A Key Principle which needs more recognition: the sharp duality of states

This collage illustrates a very basic principle which people need to understand and follow up more in design of intelligent computer systems, in spiritual life and perhaps even in studying the brain.
  Do we have the kind of brain which can form and recall a BINARY dual image, so the we can get full advantage of understanding the two different states on theleft and tight above, or the duality of the top and the bottom?
  These images already give me two very important stories which I need to remember, from my own life, relevant also to the larger questions of life. On the upper left you see my mother happy and energetic, on a big rental ship in Avalon, New jersey, from her 90th birthday party. I am so grateful to my brother John and sister Suzie for arranging that party, which brought together so much of her family and friends, enough to fill a ship. At that time she was living with John in his house in new Jersey.
     But on the right, you see her in the Brandywine Haddonfield eldercare house, where she spent the last few years of her life because she did need special care. This photo is from a visit by me, Luda and Chris. Again and again she asked,"What I am I doing here, basically doing nothing? Where is my purpose in being here (on earth) at all?" Actually, I heard her ask that question intently in other places for years, but before then I heard her answer. This time, I saw her cut back on eating, and talk clearly about many problems and her past life (which she was still quite happy for). She died peacefully in bed with John's son Rob nearby, well before this year when many, many people in eldercare places died of covid. I wondered: was THEIR sense of lack of purpose a major factor in THEIR mind-body connection, and death? Purpose in life, telo, utility functions... that is a pervasive foundation we all need to know about more, from life to internet. See werbos.com/religions.htm and ,y earlier post on telos...
     So that is one important duality, our clear memory and understanding of the differencebetween the state on the left and the state on the right. Having them alli n one memory is not the samething; the duality is important in itself, for our best thinking at all levels.
   But what of the top and the bottom? The sharp contrast between the being on the top and the being on the left is also extremely important, and it's not just a matter of race or species.  We took this picture in Galway, Ireland, on January 18 2020. as part of my perpetual spiritual quest, I tuned into what i saw there and even opened up a little conversation with one or two of those creatures there.
"What about YOUR purpose? What do you think of YOUR future?" Response; "What a dumb  question. I am what I am, a cow sitting in the sun, happy to be where I am, to do what I am doing here and now, with no need and no point to ask questions beyond that. Yes, I will go to a barn again, and then back, and maybe not forever, but that is my life and I am glad of it." So different from my mother!!! Both both beings, and myself, have a natural, living connection to our noosphere(again, see werbos.com/religions.htm for my papers published in 2019 on this). Some are at higher levels of consciousness and connection than others, but we all connect.
     But: what of bigger implications? The meaning for computers of having such dual state records is clear and important, but it requires hevay prerequisites in subjects like RLADP. So let me address some human aspects.
   At a mundane level, I don't see this in the brain, sadly. we can LEARN to encode such memories and use them (two states at once), but it must be an act of will, a learned skill. that skill becomes ever more important, at the highest level of mental and policy challenges to humans, precisely because there are such stark choices before us. It is part of second-order sanity or Zhenqi, a larger topic which I discuss in those 2019 papers.
   At an esoteric or spiritual level, I remember a discussion we had a few months ago about a book called "The Technique of the master." That really is the core idea in that book, of great importance in that realm.
  And finally, I remember my own exercises or experiments with PK, in the period from 1972 to 1978. Living in Roxbury, in the slums, in late 1972, my suitemate loaned me a book which I would not have looked at before that: "How to Help Yourself with ESP." By then, I wondered very deeply what psychic or spiritual experiences mighht be based on, and I was attracted by the idea of getting first hand empirical data which would be a lot more persuasive to me than stuff I could read.
And so, I deciedd to play with a little mobile made up of plastic fishes. ("No harm in trying, to see what I can see," I thought. ) I started doing it as an exercise in trying to see more in the dark, and predict the movement. (See the discussion of Bootstrap training in my paper in Neural Networks 2012.) But as I looked and relaxed... in my mind I could somehow get a HOLD or GRIP on the entire present state... and equally clearly envision an image of a DIFFERENT possible state... and exert a little energy. That's really just an example of what that book was talking about. I haven't played with mobiles much at all since I joined the federal government in 1978 (not enough time to play!), but the sense of CHOICES BEFORE US has remained strong. But this year, 2020, I do not see what the choices really are so coherently. The elections remind me of Yeats' poem, where the bestlack all conviction and the rost are full of passionate intensity (like 1920's?).

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By the way, I should be careful not to rule out the possibility that something like this might exist evne in the machinery of the mammal brain. It DOES allow envisioning of goal states. Could the wiring between neocortex and basal ganglia actually allow an act of holding a present state and a goal state clearly in mind, clearly distinct, considered at one time as inputs? Could it be hardired? we don't know, really.

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Days later.. I was reminded that the duality is complicated, and cross species.
This morning, I went straight from bed (and a very detached state) to a comfortablechair in our study downstairs, overloooking nature therough big glass doors. And what did I see?

At first,it seemed that the same female deer who had laid down just past the edge of our land had returned, but without her Bambi. I made up a whole story in my mind, about a distraught mother deer joining the Deer Lives Matter movement (not a laughing matter), and that SHE had had s sense of purpose, not like those cows. But.. well, it all reminded me of Trungpa, the cycles ofs uffering out there. Then Luda looked and said:"No, I think that's Bambi himself, grown up, hurt (like broken leg?), here for a place of safety where there were some red berries to eat as well. That reminded me of an ancient British rock song, "Mother... I killed a man... I don;t have long.." Whatever.

My middle way response to a debate about what happens when we die

Previous;y Ram raised the question: after ordinary mortal death, do we just disappear (as in the usual mundane "materialist" view)

or do we just stand there in some other world, as in many beliefs about reincarnation and afterlife? 

I replied that I strongly believe in the "noosphere species theory," which I explain at werbos.com/religions.htm. This idea implies that PART of us may live after

mortal death (the "soul" part in our local noosphere), but there is a huge variation from person to person, just as Gurdjieff tried to explain. 

For those of us over age 70, mortal death is a VERY inconvenient truth. For the few of us who try to be rational about it, It makes sense to try to understand what it is really about, and to ditch the obvious misunderstandings propagated by people trying to keep other people under control. (As I type this, I think of the story of a Celtic cross we saw in Ireland last january. The story of how a certain Saint Patrick had a meeting with the high king, telling him that fear of hell could be used to reduce the civil strife which was pulling the country apart. The message engraved on the cross was so simple: behave, and you get heaven. Rebel, and you get.hell. To this day, Irish priests are a strange mix of oppressive people who focus just on heaven versus hell but obedience, and others with deep sensitivity often in tune with Teilhard de Chardin. Some of them told me "they don't call us catholic for nothing." But all nations on earth have such political biases.)

So what does it look like from a more scientific view, grounded in noosphere species?

First, of course, we are all just guessing. I was so happy years ago, when certain folks echoed a cdrtain dualist Hindu party line, and Alex mengtioned Aurobindo: "Could it be that what survives are just SEEDS, lots of pieces of our former soul which scatter to the far winds?" Like Buddha's comments about how the water in a drop survives, but not the drop itself. There is also the Egyptian Book of the Dead,which says we actually split into two parts, ba and ka, which live on in different ways at different levels. Orson Scott Card wrote a simple enjoyable science fiction series 

https://www.amazon.com/Gatefather-Orson-Scott-Card-audiobook/dp/B0147CRJVY/  which gets deeper into the ancient Egyptian view, which makes sense in its way. Why should our traces in the noosphere be just one integrated lobe?

Long ago, the original Bible contained a book, the Book of Esdras (an Apochrypha), which suggested that some people basically just get burned away after death, llke the worthless chaff from some farms in Egypt. This idea horrified the political authorities, but logically, if a certain lobe of the noosphere contains useless information, wouldn;t the noosphere, being an efficient information processing system, contain a "garbage collection" subroutine which simply deletes useless stuff? Human egos naturally get horrified at the insult, but the logic of the evolution of noospheres strongly supports the idea, as do centuries of reports from before the political spin doctors calculated what worked better for control. After all, who removed that book from the Bible?

When does a lobe of the noosphere (like your soul) get dissolved by the garbage collector, and when does it get preserved, and when does it actually get energized and used? 

In a normal brain, what drives the garbage collector is what Freud called "psychic energy" (which I model as modulated backpropagation, something which really works and which fits the brain data reviewed in erbos and Davis). Basically, that which is useless for sure is simply recycled to other uses. So what brings psychic energy (at the noosphere level) to YOUR soul? What connections and relevance keep you from just dissolving away into nothing, as many older people do even before they die? 

FAMILY and PERSONAL connections are maybe the most common way for people and souls to be energized and stay alive. In my view, the Disney cartoon movie "Coco" demonstrates real spiritual sensitivity, grounded in Lagtin American cultures we would be idiots to underestimate. (Many Chinese traditions are similar.) BUT: those connections don;t last forever. The movie also depicts an old musician just dissolving away, like a Zen Buddhist monk I once saw in Korea, with a horrible rictus on her face which combined a smile of triumph and a horror of unnatural true death. If your soul survives because of feedback from X, what happens when X dies? 

In truth, there is an intermediate case, where instead of a b=garbage collector, one may be archived, like an old file. Many folks who do astral travel across levels and levels report the existence of a "causal plane," where there are "living statues," forms which are normally inert but may be temporarily activate dby others who can send energy. There is a movie about "Woland's basement" (in Master and Margarita) which seems to refect awraeness of that same kind of intermediate state.

So what is most permanent and useful and natural here?

In my view, our discussoins of "Triple Aspect MatherrmaticalMonism" (TAMM) point to a different way.

If we learn to "channel" the noosphere itself, to see through the eyes of that greater whole, we naturally connect more to the real, enduring source of energy. 

What survives is not the mundane first person eyes, or even the disconnected first person soul, but the soul which is fully connected,to be like an avatar of that soul. In my view, that is the truest "cosmic consciousness". -- but it extends even to awareness of what comes from beyond this large but limited local sphere.

Pope Francis was once cited as saying "Those who would preserve the life of this planet must first learn to truly, deeply feel the love of that life." 

Those who only have words and verbal beliefs dissolve quite quickly, like a dry parchment crumbling to powder, a sight I will never forget.  The inner connection to the noosphere is where that love can flow, if we fully commit to it and never forget.

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Clarification:

To maximize the quality of afterlife is basically the same as maximizing quality of spiritual connection here and now, but without dependence on what will be lost.

What yields the most positive feedback "psychic energy" from noosphere..is different for different people, and can be developed over time.

TAMM: the viewpoint of the noosphere as a whole is the most reliable basis. In a way, it reminds me of when I first worked for a large organization with a positive mission. It reminds me of hos it helped to understand the real missoin of the organizatoin as a whole, and how the department I was part of could contribute harmoniously to that. To survive, I also needed to understand the goals at intermediate levels, but in the noosphere or within a human brain,one is in a system where the learning rules have evolved to encourage harmony of the pieces. that has to be learned, and is not automatic, but one can draw on the learning process to connect things better. But in the end, the development of well-grounded noeic connections of some permanence, reflecting the noosphere as a whole, are the key issue. The novel Vita Nostra describes a Platonic school of development which is not exactlhy the same as this kind of connecton to basic things, but it feels similar to us.

Of course, the spirit of love and the spirit of truth (reflective of baisc lambda-U and lamda_e in a brain) are among the most permanent... variables... reflected in archetypes.. one can connect to.

hen I said "avatar" yesterday, I could have said "channel" or "gateway," which I have discussed before in discussing ordinary PSI in life today.