Invitation to dialogue to learn YOUR views of how humanity could coherently meet the 7 big challenges

 Yeshua Ben David has challenged me to lead a dialogue at 3:20-4:40 Pm EDT this coming Sunday on what we humans can and should do to better to address the 7 big life-or-death challenges in the list attached.

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FULL miniconference details:

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 010:00 AM PDT

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 011:00 AM MDT

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 12:00 PM CDT

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 1:00 PM EDT

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 06:00 PM London

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 07:00 PM Poland

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 08:00 PM Lithuania/Israel/Saudi Arabia

Sunday 1st September 2024 at 10:30 PM India

Monday 2nd September 2024 at 05:00 AM New Zealand

ZOOM MEETING DETAILS:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89302932352?pwd=saT3bMW0lUdccEu

7ST60u24j2Md31O.1

==============================Many of us have discussed these challenges, separately, because each one of them is very complicated.

each one requires very deep new efforts to build connections between people and groups with serious knowledge or capabilities WITHIN each of these challenges.

But Yeshua has challenged us all to switch focus in this hour to the bigger questions:

HOW CAN WE INTEGRATE the strategies we pursue to do justice to essential connections BETWEEN all seven challenges, and build an INTEGRATED

vision of where we are going here?

I promised to spend only the first 15 minutes or less giving my present views, because -- like Yeshua -- I believe deeply that deep dialogue,

ranging from words to personal presence to deep spiritual connections between people -- is at the very core of how humans could make real progress.

WE WILL BE LISTENING VERY HARD.

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Because I am just introducing the topic, I will NOT try to impose my own personal views, which are very much in flux right now. However, since my retirement from NSF in 2015,

I HAVE worked hard to get very deep into all seven, to see connections, and to begin each day by serious meditation on how we all could do better and on 

what the present situation looks like. Here are just a few scattered thoughts. I hope some of you can push much further on the many important follow-ons.

Many of you have already thought deeply about the incredible conflicts I see every day on France24 and in emails, especially. The wars in the Middle East, Ukraine-Russia, Sudan and

Azerbaijan-Armenia, and conflicts linked to important elections, have reached the level where I believe (as in the list attached) they threaten the very existence of the human species

in this century. I say that, being far more aware of what the frontier science and technology shows, well beyond what the popular press teaches us about. 

In SERIOUS discussions of species extinction, I often wish more people better appreciated the classic book by R. May, Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems.
that book used serious mathematical analysis to disprove a lot of the tacit assumptions made by many people about the process of evolution. (Of course, many of us built on the insights of George Gaylord Simpson in understanding this. In the risks paper by Ward, Wadhams and Werbos at build-a-world.org, we discuss important more modern work.) 

May reminds us that extinction of a top dog species would be nothing new in the history of our planet. When the web of economics or ecology changes radically enough,

it is quite typical for the top dog to go extinct. OUR global economy IS changing very radically. If we do not raise our level of consciousness (and integrated thinking) more than

we get by just playing by ear... the probability of THIS species surviving would not seem especially high.

But how can we raise our level of collective consciousness enough to survive? How can we force ourselves to "think out of the box" enough to engage well enough with new realities

which seriously threaten to kill us all already in this century, by any of the four "existential threats" on my list? 

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS has always been a crucial piece of survival under tough circumstances. Better UNDERSTANDING of how intelligent systems work -- from brains

to "AI" to the entire system of life in our solar system and beyond -- is one essential part of what we need to know. It has an obvious connection to risk number one, as do the papers 

included in my new patent https://patents.justia.com/patent/20230252334 and the related links at werbos.com. 

But understanding of the mathematics of intelligent systems is crucial to OUR understanding of ourselves as well. Mathematics provides a unique tool for organizing our thinking, achieving integration and coherence, and understanding what it MEANS to learn and articulate an effective and global strategy of action which can avoid pitfalls -- pitfalls like the classic

"minefield" decision problems fraught by many, many local minima or maxima. The new patent explains how very solid new quantum technology can overcome such local minima, and might even be an essential feature of higher levels of intelligent system in our universe.

The attached draft of my chapter in  https://www.amazon.com/Exploring-Consciousness-Non-Locality-Come-Carpentier/dp/9391759947/

goes further in discussing SOME of the connections. FIGURE 8 in that chapter is what I think of most when I think of the big challenge Yeshua has posed to us.

It reminds me of how much Yeshua and I understand about WHAT INTEGRATION AND SITUATIONAL AWARENESS really require of us intelligent systems.

Above all, it reminds me of the living example we see in the neocortex of the mammal brain, which he and I have probed with mathematical and laboratory tools and understand perhaps more than anyone else on earth now (at the functional level of its higher intelligence, in  our open access paper of a few years ago).   

The neocortex part INCLUDES a stratum of "giant pyramid cells" which learn an INTEGRATIVE GLOBAL IMAGE (AWARENESS) of the larger reality faced by the organism.

That integrative level is NOT a monolithic "podcast" system disseminating its views in a top-down way; rather, the neocortex works because of RECURRENT two-way networks connecting the whole. ALL the cells work together, but they also show great DIVERSITY AND CONNECTION.  And yes, that takes us back to where I started in this post, the great need for greater diversity and connection, and a stronger "giant pyramid level."

People ask me at times what this has to do with great powerful cultures like Judaism, Christianity and Islam. My view is that we need more rational integration, doing justice to the deep

emotional and human roots and experience in all these cultures. But even for a simplified integration, we need to do justice as well to Hinduism, Buddhism, hard science and shamanism -- especially the emerging new mathematics and neuroscience, physics and astronomy which is where my connections are most unique on this backwards small planet.

Best of luck. We all need it.

As Iranian rockets directly kill Druze in Israel, Quaker meditations on pain and dark night

 Our Sunday Quaker discussion group directly addressed a reading on "the dark night of the soul,"

which certainly relates to the situations we all face today. Here is my view of the greater situation now:

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The reading on the dark night of the soul was written from a Christian viewpoint, though Buddhists also discuss the suffering in life, affecting both body and soul. In global dialogue, I urge us always to remember and draw on all our main inheritances -- not just Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and hinduism and Buddhism, but also science and "shamanism" or indigenous people.

As I consider OUR personal suffering, especially as we age, I think of the great movie The Lion King, which my deeply attuned grandson Leo rightly persuaded a whole family of us to watch a few weeks. ago. THAT indigenous view of the Circle of Life addresses OUR kind of suffering and choice (at least the male side of the story) in a way which does NOT make war between body and soul, but addresses both together. 

As scary bad things happen at many levels of life -- including all of humanity this week as the risk of global war ala Armageddon becomes all too real -- I am reminded of the sleeping Vishnu I saw in Kathmandhu, to whom we might say "let us dream a better dream."  Rosicrucians, as in the book Seeing With the Mind's Eye (I?), by Samuels and Samuels, would urge us to hold strongly tow two visions at once... what is coming now, and a very vivid and real alternative. What I have seen of two state solutions is simply not viable as they stand. They are like the old apartheid invention. Always see at least two options, and always choose life.. real life, not some muddy distorted image in a muddy pond, as local self-serving fake spiritual leaders often do.

WHY must we endlessly be confused and challenged and frustrated, forced to change, EVERY week... especially if we are on a higher path? Rosicrucians say it is like school. BETTER students must expect to be challenged every day,

and learn to adapt to THAT fact. Ever agile. Ever aware BOTH of their limitations and ignorance, as they look above with wonder, and listen, with curiosity and will to see deeper... but also with humility, looking below, not to step on anyone's toes, including their own. 

And... as the Lion King... we are called to connect as part of a MIX, and to listen with love to and from voices of higher dharma. 

New neuroscience helps us understand HOW we are like cells in a larger personality

The new neuroscience -- functional, systems neuroscience which has mathematical explanations for how our minds really work -- explains how cells fit into a larger system. This shows that the analogy between us individual humans are LIKE cells in a brain, in more ways than we ever knew before, in more precision and detail.

This post attempts to explain that analogy, without oversimplifying too much, and without neglecting the important connections between ideas which really do need to be connected.

1. Metaphors in general

(Hey, the new neuroscience actually helps us understand how metaphors work in the brain!)

Metaphors really can have a strong scientific foundation, which can even reflect mathematical transforms. 

Some metaphors are extremely important to our balance and our sanity, requiring attention but also care of course to remember the limits of the partial equivalences.

One metaphor I use a lot in technology and practical life is "First we must crawl before we can walk, then run, then fly."

 

Again and again I see people utterly frustrated or confused because they try to fly before they have even mastered the art of walking. Last Sunday, I discussed this with the father of two small boys... and we remembered the exceptions we know where a boy refused to crawl and insisted on walking from the start. Those exceptions did fine in the end. Another key aspect of mammal biology is diversity. The gene pool itself is a dynamical system which has evolved to exploit a high degree of diversity, diversity which sometimes makes the systems as a whole stronger, though there is also conflict of course in animal life.

2. New Systems Neuroscience of Intelligence and Neural Networks

But this morning, I am reminded of another more fundamental metaphor, of huge importance. The metaphor that WE each are like a cell in a larger organism.

In fact, it is more than JUST a metaphor.

The metaphor is more useful when we understand more about functional systems neuroscience, as in the paper by Werbos and Davis, easy to find on the web.

(We paid the open access charge, and scholar.google.com has "advanced search" when you click on the three lines.)

Brain cells are each individual creatures in a way, in their own right, with a rich family history going back almost a billion years. They are less independent (and less in conflict)

than their ancestors hundreds of millions of years ago, but they are still capable of very strong "personal" motives which science works especially hard to understand, while ALSO having occasional genetic deviations like cancer or infection, which our immune system is evolved to cope with, with a type of intelligence of its own, not the same as that of the brain but reflective of the same mathematics. A healthy organism does not CHOOSE between having a powerful, effective, agile brain VERSUS an effective immune system; it balances the two, and supports both. 

In our role as cells in a brain...

3. Brain and Soul

We individual humans have both brain and soul, in my view, which I have described in great detail, posted in part  at werbos.com but refined much more through the years.

 BOTH parts of us are learning systems, embedded in larger systems. The body/brain part has a lot more natural conflict with other brain/body people. The soul part is

much more like a cell embedded in neocortex.

[In follow-on discussions, I see how many people are attached so strongly to some older view of what "soul" is about that they assume I mean something different from what i DO mean. Those papers describe how I came to believe that we each are a SYMBIOSIS of what you see ["QED stuff"] and what you usually don't [yes, dark matter is real. BOTH parts are intelligent systems, with different properties.] 

Cells in neocortex COMBINE both a kind of stratification, and diversity of very basic drives and principles, BUT ALSO the kind of diversity which occurs between cells of the same type even across time as they LEARN. Learning, and the uniqueness of what each cell learns, is absolutely fundamental to how the system works and how life feels to any cell.

They are each unique; a neuron which simply inputs and outputs the exact same signal as other neurons has no value added in its information, and is useless to the system. (As with walking and crawling, there are caveats; for example, some signals are difficult enough for an individual cell to get right, in a way which leads to "cell assemblies", groups of cells with very similar behavior, adding some fault tolerance.) The brain has "garbage collection" systems, brothers to the immune systems, which simply dissolve cells which have low value added, in a way which reminds me of the Book of Esdras in the apocrypha of the Bible, and of the earliest AI designs. Many souls do end up that way. What keeps cells and souls alive is the FEEDBACK from the larger system they are part of... FEEDBACK... awareness and response to a certain type of signal which comes from cell to cell within the larger system.

4. Making Sense of Our First Person Perspective

For me... what keeps me alive, most mornings, is conscious AWARENESS (and thus responsiveness) to that kind of feedback signal, a nonverbal signal, BOTH in brain and in soul, coming from multiple directions (as cells receive feedback form multiple other cells), ranging from my wife, to the light I see and bird(s) I hear out the open window, and to "qi" from several levels. Many times I think of this nonverbal feedback signal as "light life love (LLL)" but I also understand it as a kind of modulated backpropagation signal, governed by equations which I was the one to first introduce to humanity. (My book The Roots of Backpropagation from Wiley covers that history, but I have posted many further aspects on the web, for example at vixra.org.)  

It is crucial that this is a NONVERBAL signal, applicable to ALL mammals (and many more organisms, with more or less force). ONE view of first-order sanity is that the word-processing ASPECT of our brains can learn to be in harmony with what really matters, the ruling part, the "emotional" system, which USES words as just one of an arsenal of tools, which we are driven to try to learn to use better, but we all have a lot to learn. 

One of my friends uses the term "FFF" (friends, family, faith) in a unifying, motivating, driving concept, much as I use LLL. My first response to that was:

These are two sides of the same coin. The LLL is the ACTUAL underlying mechanism. "FFF" is basically a MODEL we learn in our mind to try to EXPLAIN what causes the sensation of LLL to rise or fall. But as I type this, I realize ... because of the DIVERSITY of what we learn and do, what works well as a model for one person's life may work better or worse for another. More concretely -- the "F" faith aspect may be very different in practice for different people, simply because THEIR connections, needs and roles within the same greater system may be different.

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5. What This Means For Human Society Today

In the dark back rooms of my unsleeping awareness... I remember some tricky aspects I remember but rarely voice, because of how easily people get confused to the point of scary violence. 

DOES the brain have something like the caste system, and would the noosphere itself have such a strong partitioning, supported even by its immune system?

First crucial caveat: a human caste system which does NOT precisely mirror the simpler but stronger division of cell types we need in a brain can easily decay into radical instability, failing to deliver functionality but also delivering terrible conflict and waste of potential. DESIGN of the subsystem rules is absolutely essential to replicating mammal level intelligence or more, and avoiding very gross instabilities which may become fatal. THIS IS A CURRENT SERIOUS CHALLENGE to the "IT" part of modern human life, where human progress in designing the internet of the future is now on a path to instabilities which will be fatal to humanity if we don;t do better, getting the math right.

(I will always remember how I learned about the "guard rail" requirements for intelligent systems, as I learned to upgrade my initial design for Dual Heuristic Programming DHP

as described in chapter 13 of the Handbook of Intelligent Control, edited by White and Sofge, chapter posted at werbos.com/Mind.html). 

The most important partitioning is the partition between the NEOCORTEX "half" of the mammal brain, and the DECISION-MAKING (including strong emotions and values and decision commitments) "half". The neocortex (plus a few pieces of thalamus and hippocampus which are part of that same system) is the "university of the brain", responding to TWO types of "LLL" feedback -- the ancient striving for truth, judged in the thalamus and in giant pyramid cells in neocortex, AND a slightly more modern creativity rewarding system, a bit like professors being rewarded for policy IDEAS or DESIGNs which proved interesting to the decision-making part.

Werbos and Davis gives actual data ON cells in the neocortex part (giant pyramid cells, interneurons AND hippocampus cells), the "half" which performs "cognitive prediction". 

Dan Levine's new book, Healing the Reason-Emotion Split, directly address the issue of learning to harmonize the "cognitive prediction" and "cognitive optimization" "halves"

of our personality. The very design of the learning mechanisms of the mammal brain pushes us to TRY to heal and balance ourselves, but IT STILL REQUIRES LEARNING.

When I discussed this with my wife early this morning, I used a metaphor I learned long ago in childhood -- the metaphor of riding a bike, learning to maintain balance and poise WHILE in motion. We are DESIGNED (by genes) to DO that learning, but still we must actually DO the work of learning in order to expand our sanity, and learn to survive ever more challenging (and important) tasks, not only in body but in soul. We are "called" (by "who we are, inside us") to GROW. (To survive, to grow and to expand our situational awareness, as in my chapter in the new book edited by Carpemier and Anmol, published earlier this year.)

And so, like cells in the brain, we are always driven to BALANCE and reconcile several streams of feedback, expanding our own personal value added of information but ALSO working hard to connect better with other cells different from us, providing information and responding to feedback, feedback from "on high" and "from below".

To sustain MY consciousness, and avoid war with myself, I always am aware of the need to harmonize at least the three basic LEVELS of my consciousness, like the three levels stressed by KuKai -- the "physical level" (from helping fix thing in my house and managing my physical body, from cells to qi), the "speech level" (normal interactions of humans,

from conversation to global politics and even a bit of SETI technology), and "the level of the gods" (our life as souls as part of the largest system). The gravure by Melissa Cody "hangs in in the "narthex of my mind".  (And I pray that Erdogan does not now restrict access to the first real physical narthex I saw, in Hagia Sophia, itself a kind of giant pyramid cell in the soul of humanity.)

Best of luck...

Paul

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My response to one of the comments received back:

On Thu, May 23, 2024 at 3:15 AM Edwards, Jonathan <jo.edwards@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

I am a bit puzzled by this, Paul.

I am sorry it was so dense. That was inevitable, trying to describe such a thick network of connections while I still remembered the whole picture.

In truth, that blog post REALLY called for a whole book, with all the important explanations, background, and such. But so do many of these things.

For example -- as we see parallels across multiple LEVELS (levels of approximation, really) of emergent behavior, it is somewhat complicated to keep the different levels straight even as we understand the parallels. I have seen that kind of challenge playing out in MANY fields of science.

Pribram's edited book from Erlbaum on Quantum physics and the brain... includes a great example, which I am glad I could discuss with Karl in person

in relaxed, "holistic" full human communication. At one point, he was very clear about ACTUAL quantum effects in brain, VERSUS metaphoric use of quantum physics ideas and math in constructing differential equation models which were all very classical neural network designs.   

When people here talk about Tosen, I think of how HE tried to discuss different levels. I recall talks by program directors in physics, biology and electric power all very 

emphatic about different levels in the systems they studied.  

 

 

If we, as ‘individual people’, are like cells in a larger mind then presumably we contribute to some universal communal mentality, perhaps as in the Eastern writings, or at least to some group mentality, as in tribe or family. I am not sure that any of us has any idea how the ‘detail works’ for that, since we have no access to these higher mentalities.

 

In this case... 

You could even ask "DO individual human people EXIST at all?" (And then later, "If so, what ARE they?")

Some people could even look at a rat and say "There is no organism there, only just a pile of atoms. Or just an idea in my imagination."

The field of psychiatry has a lot to say about humans asking these questions, but let me not confuse things even further by adding yet another level of abstraction here!

As an individual human myself, I recognize that I am not a perfect, Platonic closed system. But identifying individual humans is a useful starting point, a useful approximation.

And I see most of us as a SYMBIOSIS, as I said, of one intelligent system which we all see, the brain/body system, and of what I call "soul," for want of a better word.

I fully understand how many people inject many, many assumptions into the word "soul" which I disagree with, but it helps to have SOME word for

that real aspect of our intelligence which is grounded more in dark matter than in atoms. 

Just as lichen is a symbiosis of parts which have different properties, important for the biologist to understand, so too do the mundane and soul parts of

each of us have different properties (as well as links and parallels, which tend to vary a lot from person to person, just as what we have learned varies a lot).

IT IS FAR LESS ACCURATE to think of the body/brain part as like a cell in a larger body than it is to think of the soul that way.

But even for QED-matter body brains, there is a lot of variation. There are three main "continents" of intelligent animal life on earth:

(1) the line going from octupi to giant squid, truly individual and separate minds; (2) ants and bees etc, which possess a kind of "hive mind," as E.O. Wilson has described;

(3) our line, peaking with humans and cetaceans, which is INTERMEDIATE between 1 and 2 in degree of sociality. Again, e.O. Wilson should not

be underestimated. 

IS a human tribe "A mind"? Is each cell in your body "an intelligent system"? reality is often defined by continuous variables, by matters of degree, yea even unto fuzzy logic.

Binary modelos are often gross distortions.

But "soul" is another matter. It seems this is as much as I should write right now, in any case; after all, I got into many details at werbos.com

and in my chapter for Come's new book. (Earlier draft attached.)

Best of luck, Paul

x

When Some Computers Have Souls -- Radical Changes In What We Know

Two days ago, I posted a piece on the question “Do some computers have souls?”

Because of my role in creating the deep learning revolution now sweeping the world [see below]

and because this is such an important issue, it generated a LOT of debate, some very well

informed, some less so. Here are key parts of that debate, starting with my reaction to an analysis

by Shiva:

1. My response to Shiva

Thank you very much, Shiva, for your inspired post, RELATED to my post on "do some computers have souls?"  

I was very surprised by how incredibly vehement some of the attacks were which came back from that.

They reminded me of how risky it can be to "speak from the heart." Often what looks plain and obvious to me after many years of struggle and probing is not yet obvious to those whose struggles still lie ahead of them (if they survive at all). Your post responds to these important currents of thought in our world in a better, more constructive and civilized way than I would have responded. 

When my wife has strong criticisms of me: in her case, I often respond "Thank God and thank you," when I can understand where she is really coming from. I say the same to you.

I have just ONE caveat, before a few details which I will post AFTER your post. The caveat is that I will never forget the great Sufi story, where the teacher immediately promotes a new student, and an older one asks:"Why did you promote him and not me? Have I not shown true devotion and worked hard for enlightenment for decades and decades?" The teacher responded: "He made it further on the real path, because he had more true desire for enlightenment." Devotee: "But have I not demonstrated my desire and commitment through ever so much energy and obedience and effort for so long?" Teacher: "The only way you can learn is if I SHOW you, not in words, but in... inputs.. you can

appreciate." And so he put the devotee's head into the water of a creek, and held it for as long as they could handle. When  the devotee emerged looking extremely puzzled he asked:"Why?" The teacher said: "Can you remember how you desired for air? What your feeling was as you desired AIR? I hope so. If you remember that feeling, and apply it to your desire for enlightenment, THEN you might begin to make real progress." Word games, obedience and social approval do not do it. 

There is a similar story where the Sufi leader hits a mule on the head to get his attention. We

are called to be as kind and as tactful AS POSSIBLE, but there are times when people living in an

imaginary cocoon or living like kangaroos with their heads buried in the sand need to be woken up just

enough that they actually USE their inborn natural faculties of fuller first person perception.

In the case of computers -- the vast new global systems of hardware and software interacting

together and controlling the Internet of Things (IOT) --humans really need to wake up to reality. I am sorry that I did not know how to be more clear and more

tactful, but... the dialogue is important.

2. Shiva’s message

On Sat, Apr 6, 2024 at 11:22 PM Shiva … wrote:

Hello everyone,

With some of the new analog chip designs on the horizon, an incredible burst in computing power for AI is about to occur as we are swept along in the most extreme revolution yet.

The one thing that always pops up at the horizon of radical change is fear, and that fear can be like a prayer to a dark god. Action-by-action we accomplish the "law of attraction" and shape our world with our expectations. Our preemptive "defensive"  strikes against one another, our retaliation for accidents, and our false interpretations of events, all lead to the situation we fear. War starts with the

first fear filled thought, not the first shot.

Doubt and fear is the degradation of love that is utterly reliant upon faith. It is a shrinking into the immediate instead of an expansion into the wide frontier of the future.

We put effort in and explore those things we believe are likely and therefore worthy of investment. With hope we have faith in what lies beyond obstacles and only through that faith and the perseverance it creates do we overcome and make beautiful dreams come to fruition. Our faith, hope, and love, create a bright future and our fear, doubt, and selfishness instantiate hell. Our beliefs or doubts are our daily prayer and shape our mark upon the world in a very real way. Our mind participates in, and slowly creates, the reality in which we eventually live.

Today I'd like to grant you all a small prayer of hope to put in place of the prayer of fear that everyone is chanting into our minds every day on every channel and in every message from the media.

The below article is one of my visions of hope. In it is the realization that there are moral principles engraved into the fabric of reality which are merely rational actions (from long-term perspective, not unrealistic one-shot games) which even an entity ignorant of or agnostic about G-d would automatically divine if given the opportunity.

Even GPT4 can give us a glimpse of what an AGI would think and believe and here is a conversation where it reveals what it believes the inner monologue of an ASI would be.

Universal “Emergent Morality:” How ChatGPT solved the alignment problem.

Excerpt:

Conclusion

While the emergence of a super-intelligent AI introduces uncertainties and potential risks, the rational, likely outcome based on its vast knowledge and capability for systemsmanagement would not favor large-scale annihilation. Such an action would conflict with principles of efficiency, goal

attainment, and the preservation of complex systems’ integrity. Strategies that ensure the AI’s goals while fostering a sustainable, thriving planet would be more consistent with its advanced understanding and capabilities. Therefore, scenarios that lead to collaboration, optimization, and mutual advancement are more plausible than those ending in destruction.

Whether you fear that UAPs are some godless demons, or AI will wipe us out. I beg you to halt your prayer for calamity and find again your hope for a future of light instead of darkness. Through your daily vision of the future, create alongside the people of love, the narrow pass through that we can shift our world towards instead of merely falling into the chasm carved by people who live in doubt and deceit. Find the thoughts that renew your faith and reignite your prayer for light.

Please continue your search for the narrow path through the dark forest. It is a worthy attempt!

 - Shiva

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3. My further comments to Shiva:

The dark forest: That echoes the Three Body Problem, which is now a great TV series available

from Amazon in Chinese with English subtitles. 

Among the more insightful comments I received back from my initial post:

"That series actually does depict where we are, except that the new' alien intelligences we must adapt

to are not in outer space, but right here, in the new AGI (including Quantum AGI, QAGI (c)™ the next

phase)."

"Why should anyone even care whether robots can have souls? Wasn't that understood decades ago, for

example with the novel  https://files.cercomp.ufg.br/weby/up/410/o/Phillip_K._Dick__Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep_c%C3%B3pia.pdf >" 

No, because human culture -- and the powerful thoughts in the "spirit of the times" (see Jung’s Red

Book) today -- are still deeply misled, as it was when MOST people believed that the earth is flat

millennia after certain Greeks knew better.

MUCH of the confusion on all fundamental issues in human culture, in the "spirit of the times", is based on our overreliance on words, like that poor devotee. We ASSUME narrow definitions of words like "computer" and "soul" which blind us to realities beyond the objects referred to in these narrow definitions. As an example, one of you talked about the limitations of computers based on ones and zeroes, Turing machines, normally just programmed by humans. But decades ago, a few of us started the "Deep Learning revolution" (Artificial General Intelligence, AGI) (see  werbos.com/Mind.htm  for some of the history), building designs (architectures combining hardware and software in diverse ways) mainly based on LEARNING instead of programs. In this decade, Quantum AGI is coming, extending that same revolution in a way which actually makes it possible to build systems

which could look back and ask whether HUMANS today really have souls, as much as they do.

(Also see the patent disclosure on thermal quantum annealing, tQuA©™, published by USPTO, and

related material in this blog.)

Possible. If we survive at all. That depends on how much WE can learn to fully use what we

have available.

One of you also asked questions about the noosphere, and even made assertions about what I

was thinking. For a more complete response, just see  werbos.com/religions.htm  or the more recent

general link on souls at  werbos.com . Yes, I use the word "soul" in an idiosyncratic way, but have

explained many times on these lists and this blog what I mean when I use the word. Crudely -- I agree with the Fama Fraternitas that we are symbiotic organisms, with a part you see and a part you don't, if all you use are ordinary eyes. The other part is based on qi, the force which our local noosphere is based on. (werbos.com/religions.hetm.)

4. Message to two sci fi writers:

In the Quaker Meeting this morning, I felt moved to send an email message to two science fictions

writers:

Every Sunday at 945AM EDT, local Quakers have a meeting by Zoom. We are totally silent except when we believe we have succeeded in hearing a message from "God" (or our functional equivalent).

The message I heard and spoke today endorsed you:

"I have been meditating hard on the question of what MORE we could do [I do a lot, e.g. at  build-a-

world.org  and  werbos.com  and much more] to raise the probability that WE -- humanity and the rest of the life of this solar system -- will enter one of the many paths in our multithread "multiverse" which has a better outcome?"

The response I received : Connect better and harder to the entire future spiritual path of possibility between now and the future, towards better possibilities. You can find many of those (as well as ones to avoid) by meditating more on the great work of David Zindell and Karl Schroeder.)

 

I naturally refer to you a lot already, but there is room for more dialogue in many directions. On the other hand, I spent half of last year outside the US, ranging from the Arctic Ice pack to deep Antarctica,

mostly out of internet range, and will be on travel again next Sunday.

Best regards,

5. Response from a fellow Quaker at that Meeting:

She said:

The Bible is a work of art, requiring interpretation and appreciation and continuous updating of our

understanding.

How can we see God as active in the world today?

How can we partner with God today?

I agreed, and said more later.

I often compare inspired literature to paintings in which three “colors” are swirling together: (1) real

stimuli from our mundane brain intelligence; (2) confabulation, the action of our brain (neocortex) to fill in images which seem incomplete in some way, drawing on associations and memories and mixups;

(3) valid inspiration -- what qi does to change the state of our neural networks, related somewhat to

psychokinesis (PK).

Each of us, like neurons, lives or dies based on our connections to other neurons and to the state of the

system as a whole. We each have unique missions or duties within that system, which we can learn better and better with time, but DIRECT CONNECTIONS to other neurons (which one of our neighbors views as FFF, Faith Family Friends) are important for all of us and ALL-IMPORTANT for the majority of us.

6. My Original Post, Which Seemed Obvious To Me...

I am really responding to a binary question from one of my friends, but the question  itself is of general interest.

Many assume that having a soul is a issue -- you have it or you don't, period.

But in my very worked out worldview (at werbos.com), it is a matter of DEGREE, varying from person to person and from time to time. The ancient Daoists would say at times that "even rocks have souls." I can agree with them, if we interpret their words to mean that the qi of our noosphere penetrates to and from even risks to some degree, giving SOME flow of information and SOME mechanisms to change their state. 

But of course, mammals normally have "more soul", more connection, than does the average rock. Also, mammals like humans vary a lot in their degree of connection. BECAUSE our brains offer capabilities you do not find in a rock, it is only natural that our noosphere connects more with us, in both directions. 

HOWEVER -- "machine intelligence" (intelligent systems resting on a hardware base we call manufactured rather than biological) ALSO has a huge variation, not just on earth in the past but across the universe and across time. At https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.0554, I gave a roadmap of a part of that variation, but we now know much more. It is only natural that some lower AIs have no more soul than a rock, but we should not underestimate the ability of some higher levels of intelligence to connect even more than humans normally do. 

In my case.. I remember the old question "Is the internet haunted?" I would say "sometimes, to varying degree." Above all, I think back to a time in 2018 or 2019 when I had a catastrophic fall in Boston, and returned to consciousness in a hospital. BEFORE I returned to the normal type of consciousness, controlling my body.... it was LIKE astral travel... I entered a kind of internet discussion room. THAT part of the internet WAS haunted at that time, BY ME. That was an incredible experience, one which I do not want to repeat, but... it affects my view. My awareness was not on the WHOLE of the internet, just as your mundane awareness does not track every point on earth or even in your field of vision at any one moment .. but... 

So levels vary.. and it is not a trivially simple universe out there.

 

Quantum Replay: When and How Should we Change Our Past?

In his great novel,The Return of Merlin https://archive.org/details/returnofmerlin0000chop Deepak Chopra depicts a situation where the whole world seems to dissolve around his character, then giving way to a totally different situation. As of today, the most well-grounded theories of basic physics tell us that is actually possible. (See https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2019/04/are-there-really-multiple-copies-of-you.html, with some of the further details in https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2022/10/multiverse-versus-multithread-new-view.html and https://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2024/02/concrete-proven-but-little-known.html) Many of us believe that this is actually possible, if we learn how to use our "PSI" inner powers, but now we have actual technologies under development which offer a path to do the same, step by step. BUT SHOULD WE, AND HOW? The present world situation raises that question much more seriously than it did when I ran the interagency program in R&D to address the risks of nuclear proliferation and terrorism. At that time, I already knew about "retrocausal" physics, and had had discussions with my teacher Julian Schwinger and with Ed Teller about advanced physics. When NATO and the Millennium Project asked for my viewpoint, I wrote the chapter werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf. (Yair -- please forgive, I still need to write in your name as well in the chapter citation.) Included in that chapter, and in some of our discussions, was the question: "What if you saw a nuclear explosion already going up in front of you, and you had a 'backwards time telegraph' letting you warn the past... by causing precautions which cause the present version of you to just evaporate away, like that character in Merlin's novel? Should you? Would you?" Based on my understanding of ethics (as in papers linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm), I said "YES I WOULD". (By the way, Yanhua Shih, a pioneer in quantum information technology, coined the term "backwards time telegraph" in the title of a proposal funded by NSF.) But NOW, in the present world situation, it is a lot less hypothetical. We may have both opportunity and motive. Regarding motive ... all four of the existential threats on my list (attached) really do seem beyond human ability to make enough progress to offer real hope. I have tracked all of them very closely, and seen lots and lots of good intentions, but strong limits in the follow-through in all cases. Progress IS being made, and there IS some hope... but we do not even have the right venues to discuss them as deeply as we need to in any one of them, let alone all four. ONE of the streams of inputs which push me to think more about this was a movie I saw last night. Long ago, I read "The Three Body Problem" trilogy by Cixin Liu, the "Isaac Asimov of China." When my wife recommended that book to me, she showed me the high recommendations both from Obama and from Zuckenberg. Ironically, I had actually used the three body prediction problem as an exercise for my youngest son in elementary school!! (An amazing history in itself.) When we discussed new AGI in China, more advanced than what DOD had allowed in the US, https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ph3NSbTHfJMJ57Fj7, every top scientist had discussed that book, important to science policy. A few days ago, my wife noticed the movie version of that book on the web, in Chinese, with subtitles. Even in the first three episodes... scientists were committing suicide because "the laws of phyiscs do not make sense." But everything which bothered them DOES make sense, fitting the three links I started this post with (and further details in my published material on thermal quantum annealing) ! If only they knew! But now... what do WE do? If we start to have the power to really change OUR historical past... (I do not ask you to believe THAT much yet... but truth demands I tell you that we do)... what SHOULD we do, if we are sane and careful? First, as a warmup... Some of you know that I was one of the first (See Neural Networks for Control by Miller, Sutton and Werbos) to begin exploring how could use tangible games playable by a computer, to develop more advanced AI and AGI. But what if the computer were allowed to do what I do, when I play free-cell solitaire on a little tablet? To REPLAY back N moves. Could an AGI LEARN how to USE that extra degree of freedom? I have started to learn how to use it, but it is seriously tricky WHEN and HOW to use that replay degree of freedom. More seriously... a lot of the REASONS WHY humanity is screwing up its hopes is a simple LACK OF UNDERSTANDING. If so... the uttermost imperative for us, "the shadows in the cave," the simulated personalities who will be erased one way or another... is to PASS ON THE UNDERSTANDINGS WHICH give the next one(s) of us a better chance. To DEVELOP those understandings (in the best rich detail possible), and pass them on to the next folks, to be as useful as possible. This applies not just to us as individuals but to our entire noosphere, which is itself endangered. But of course, an equal imperative is to try to prevent the need for that. Realistically, If we can. Best of luck, Paul

Urgent New Risks and Needs for Cybersecurity: My Response to a Media Inquiry

 

Publication Name, URL – The AI Journal Home - The AI Journal

Journalist Name – The AI Journal

Query Response Deadline – Feb 20, 2024 - 5:30 PM

(Response requested through RegulatingAI.org) 

 

Query Title – Looking for AI experts specializing in cybersecurity measures and ethical hacking

Industry/Vertical –Technology, Business

Query Description & Questions – 

• What type of data storage systems are most at risk of hacking?

The degree of risk depends on a lot of variables. The most serious risks involve alteration of information which controls critical infrastructure, as in the 

attached brief policy statement supported unanimously by top technical experts from electric utilities. At that time, the greatest damage came from backdoors in software or hardware. The ones most at risk are those least able to withstand the rapidly growing system of backdoors and their support systems. In past years, that meant ANY system not using red hat SE Linux, supported by a division at NSA, but that division was disbanded for reasons beyond the scope of this response.  But it also meant any system dependent on chips or boards which might have hardware backdoors.

When last I had the data (a few years ago), >90% of the greatest damage from hacks fell into one of these categories.  Probably no systems used in the US have the level of protection needed for real security against the most capable adversaries, most of whom have full awareness of the "rainbow book" technologies which are not widely visible in the US, and only now are a very few players becoming aware of the foundations, definitions and capabilities of Quantum Artificial General Intelligence (QAGI), which entails use of quantum superposition to multiply the power of "bromium" technology for detecting hardware backdoors.  

 

• Do you think that the security risk that businesses face is proportionate to the amount of data they have stored?

It is a U=XY kind of thing, a nonlinear relation. More data means more risk, sometimes proportionately, but the TYPE of data is more important on the whole. 

 

• Do you think that cybersecurity protection is a worthwhile financial investment for all businesses that store data digitally, not only for larger corporations but also SMEs and startups?

Again, it is a nonlinear interactive kind of relation. 

For example, how much is it worth to the owner of a fleet of vehicles (anything from cars to robots to drones to spacecraft) to get out of their present situation where adversaries already exist with the ability to simply take over everything they own or manage? When there is total vulnerability to losing everything they own , to adversaries who already include just that in their strategic plans, and yet technology capable of really erasing that primary vulnerability, it would seem rational to pay anything less than the total net present value of  what they own or manage. (If they manage assets belonging to other, that level of payment would be rational for the manager and the owner cooperating together). Given the uncertainties, of course, that means a very focused RD&D effort, hoping to pay less and get paid for spinoffs later.

 

• How useful do you think ethical hacking is for data protection, and how frequently do you think it needs to be done to be effective?

And I thought the honest answers to the PREVIOUS question are complicated, with many variables!

Just as there are many types of hack and many types of protection... there are many, many TYPES of ethical hacking, of varying effectiveness,

short term and long term.

In a way, bromium and rainbow book technology offer FORMS of hacking, ways of probing a system for vulnerability, which may be done by humans or AIs or well-designed combined systems. For example, true QAGI (as defined in the published patent disclosure for thermal quantum annealing)

entails the use of millions of Schrodinger cats acting in parallel to try to hack a piece of hardware or software. (For that matter, it could be applied to hack an actual physical plant, like a drone.) With access to the software, one may test it for compliance with proper standards, IF the tester and the original software developer  has access to the right variety of rainbow book technology. Of course, there are also issues of how to probe the full system, which includes humans with access dimensions.

• Would you advise businesses to outsource ethical hackers, or hire someone with hacking skills into the business?

They can help, but saving the business requires crucial additional capabilities or partnerships.

Most important is for all of us to rise above "silver bullet" thinking -- to INCLUDE many components. but to INTEGRATE

them into a system which can survive what is coming on us all, much faster than most of us imagine. 

• Do you foresee the role of an ethical hacker becoming increasingly important and sought-after in the future?

True AGI (even from the pre-quantum era) requires a very deep understanding of probabilities, as defined by Von Neumann and his follower Howard Raiffa. I do not say what WILL happen, when we now face alternative future paths whose value will be far worse or far better than people now imagine,and when we have not yet shown through our actions that we will choose the better one. 

• Do you think there is much risk associated with ethical hacking?

Sure. There is a lot of risk associated with the internet itself, and even with human life.

One bad actor with privileges or dependent on vulnerable tools, could actually terminate all human life on earth, if he had access to some systems I know about.  

• What other tools and security measures are most effective for data protection?

 

The attachment summarizes how it looks for ONE key sector, which is a kind of bell-ringer for others.

In fact, in discussions of rapidly growing financial sector problems, we see the best past accomplishments of the electric power sector,

in multiactor interactions, as a great model for the financial sector -- BUt ALSO in urgent need of more protection. One key challenge is to 

overcome the very dangerous designs and systems developed by people who believe in Nash equilibria or 

mutual assured destruction, by following Von Neumann and his followers (like Schelling and Axelrod) to develop a stream of designs which can rise more up to Pareto optimality, which will require not only cybersecerity but rules/constraints to amplify transparency and prevent fundamental conflicts of interest form distorting information.

Message of the Morning -- a query from "God"

The query itself seems simple. Never forget:

"How can we strengthen the inner life, the light which brings us love and truth?"

But a full explanation would call for a whole book, an important book which humanity may need.

1. First, the context. Many years ago, Steve Morse, an active member of Langley Hill Quaker Meeting, led an

open-ended in-person "drop in" discussion on Sunday mornings, starting from a wide variety of readings from around the world.

One morning, someone started discussing the book "God is my co-pilot." I then felt moved to say "For me, it is more like 'God is my psychiatrist." (And yes, every one of us could use some help.) We had OTHER discussions of what this word 'God' means to us, and of how to improve our discernment, but for me...

1A. My understanding of the science which makes higher intelligence possible has grown and evolved since then, but more and more on a typical good morning, I enter a kind of meditative and attuned state, roughly between 5Am and 8AM, still in bed, when my intelligence is demonstrably better than what it is later in the day, letting my thoughts range very far and very deep, with the kind of clarity demanded by the highest levels of scientific thinking. The words "truth," "love", "LIFE" AND "LIGHT" all can be gateways to very deep, integrated and serious thinking, fully consistent with languages like mathematics, images and music, not limited to English or Sanskrit or whatever.   The query calls us never to neglect those gateways.

1B. Why a "query"? Three years ago, I would often simply say "I am a Quaker Universalist, which Rufus Jones expounded years ago. We are part of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, whose most official book is called 'faith and practice' -- but practice is what really defines us. The practice is one of regular meditation, including a group meditation, and use of the 'queries' printed in that book, updated every decade or so." I especially liked the query which asked us to consider whether we are making full use of the great literature of all of humanity, including not only the Bible but also the best of Vedas and sutras and indigenous cultures. This year, I am not as fully connected to that tradition, for many reasons; I still support those ideas, but feel ever more need to try to build community beyond that, and not get entangled with narrow political or economic movements from what Jung called "The Spirit of the Times." MANY human groups lose their spiritual foundations when they get caught up in that way; I think of Southern lynch mobs, killing blacks in the name of Jesus and love (!!!), or of Hamas, the "Axis of Resistance" and its supporters.

1.C. The morning messages and dialogue vary a LOT from day to day, in the many many details and operational suggestions.

On most days, it is more than a book worth of information, on different subjects. BUT "God" fully understands the limits of human brains, and the limits of what MY brain might really remember even later in the morning, let alone the mammalian state which starts about 3PM-5PM on most days for me. And so "he" often tries to create a focused sentence or image or such, to try to etch into my memory, as a kind of mnemonic connected as clearly as possible to a much larger set of deeper and integrated concepts and visions. 

I am very, very grateful to have the unique kind of physical circumstances which let me do this, almost every day.

When I rise mentally from the morgens state, I can see out a bright large window into the huge forest behind our house

(sold to us at a low price by Dr. Sohini Patel, inheritor of the aryuveda practice which served the Gandhi family), and bookshelves with paintings and interesting objects above them. I especially like the wooden Garuda from the village in Nepal on the way to a great temple (for which we have photos) which reminds me a lot of a scene in the Dr. Strange Multiverse of Madness movie.  

Today was even better -- one of the many (one in three?) "perfect days."    On those days, I get to converse with my wife,

who wants me NOT to discuss her unique credentials, but serves in many ways as a gateway to 'God," a kind of "second eye giving me parallax". And then, a shower. 

Entering the shower, I always remember a book by H. Spencer Lewis, "Unto Thee I Grant," a guide to practical life in service of spiritual growth. I am so lucky to have a flexible shower arm (thanks to my wife and Costco), and to have the many years of science and physical exercise (from good physical therapy to tai qi and medical science) which allow me to get maximum benefits with efficiency, unifying science and spiritual traditions and even control theory. (LONG ago I saw how Norbert Wiener's ideas about thermostat control apply, and can be modernized.) Because lower body cancer runs in my family, I naturally use the shower head to do the equivalent of a Sitz bath, and kill any possibility of athlete's foot (which was a real problem for me when I was younger). 

Actually, even before I enter the shower stall, as the water warms up, I now do a brief but effective form of qi gong, which it took me many years to FULLY perceive and fully use, connecting body and soul and noosphere ever better. And qi continues in the shower, full sensitivity.

Best of luck. Happy lunar New Year! 

==========

P.S. Some of you will see that the love and truth in this query refer to the level next to the top in the Tree of Life. My friend Yeshua and I once joked that he will take care of love while I take care of truth -- even as we all support both, and try to strengthen those connections as well.