The feelings which keep us alive

For every intelligent system, like us, like brain and soul, what really keeps us in motion are FEELINGS -- a kind of nonverbal direct sensory-like input to our mind. It is not words or mathematics, or even images or music, which keep us moving; these are very important TOOLS to help us understand and predict the feelings which come to us, but it is the feelings themselves which provide the primary motivation. Even at a relatively low level of self-awareness, we try to UNDERSTAND what these feelings are and where they are coming from, because whatever we SAY to ourselves in words, these feelings are what keep us moving. At higher levels of self-awareness, we pay more focused, intelligent attention to understanding these feelings.

One example: why get out of bed in the morning? 

In recent years, my wife and I have been having great discussions with a highly successful, focused and intelligent neighbor who, amidst the great complexities of his life, would return to the simple acronym -- FFF, Faith, family, friends. I would reply LLL, life love and light, an acronym I learned many decades ago from Rosicrucians. I have the impression that Yeshua has been using "I AM" in a similar sort of way. All three of these have some resonance in the minds of many people, whether they use these expressions or not. I find it natural and helpful to me, even more as I age, to keep all three in mind.

What does science say? B.F. Skinner does not represent the highest level which psychology reached in the last sentence, but he is worth understanding and considering, especially as people have built higher on what he started. (Some on this list!) His concept of "primary reinforcement" is one way of expressing and thinking about the kinds of very fundamental feelings, which drive the learning and behavior which emerge from all parts of the brain which are capable of learning. I prefer John Von Neumann's concept of cardinal utility U, which is more precise and is the foundation of "cognitive optimization" ( https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07579/nsf07579.htm ).  Precisely BECAUSE it is more precise, it requires that we pay attention to several related variables, but having a combination of connected variables is necessary to having a more definite and integrated understanding.

A more modern understanding of how brains work, based on the best real-time data available from neuroscience, was reviewed at:

Regular cycles of forward and backward signal propagation in prefrontal cortex and in consciousness

Unlike narrower local models, these models provide an integrated understanding of brains as "intentional systems," connecting the important pieces.

And so, when Camus decided to rise above the belief that "it does not matter" by getting out of chair, and going to the bathroom, he stayed alive because he responded to ONE simple easy clear signal of primal feelings. We do better if we understand better the whole range and power of all the primal feelings coming to us.

This applies BOTH to brain and to soul. And so, on most early mornings, before I get out of bed, FEELINGS which I associate with LLL flow strongly and come naturally to me. It is natural to associate these feelings with my wife, first, even when we are on opposite sides of the bed, and with the birdsong and sunlight pouring through our window. But as it flows... I can easily feel "qi," a feeling and an understanding which will energize our entire lives, brain and body and soul, enough to be active for one more day (albeit at a lower level in most cases for me as the day wears on). 

There are many weird theories out there about qi (or prana or vital life force or Freud's definition of "psychic energy or cathexis or whatever), but the FEELINGS are essential. As I see it, this flow is more clearly understood as an information flow in the intelligent system we are (or are part of), "designed" to convey "modulated backpropagation," information about value signals in our mind reflecting the U of our total larger mind or about the primary error signals calculated in the (nonverbal) part of our mind which tries to predict and represent the whole field of sensory inputs coming to us from all levels.

And so, with LLL, L for life and L for love are the primary fountains of U "energy" (feeling). L for "Light" stems from our cognitive prediction, mainly the thalamo-cortical loop in mammal brains. 

But where then is FFF?

In discussions with our neighbor... I come to see LLL and FFF as two sides of the same coin. They remind me of relatively well-managed agencies, where the guy on top interfaces with the larger world,

with a crucial deputy who makes it all work INSIDE the agency. The CONNECTION between the two dies of the coin are crucial to it working well. The LLL variables certainly permeate the follow-on, the FFF, foundation of the life of any mind. My neighbor certainly has worked hard for life, love and light in his FFF activities!

BUT-- where is I AM?

Yeshua may have something to say about that.

In a way, it has a relation to cognitive prediction: how do we reconstruct an image and feeling of who WE are, as we try to to make sense of the entire gigantic flow of feelings and nonverbal input in general, from soul especially, at times of peak soul connection? Can we see really deeper into the whole? And then, as in the Zen exercise, as we feel and become aware of all in front of us, can we feel back without looking back, seeing in a way without looking, on who is doing the looking?

But the LLL level has enough challenges, and issues we are called to face up to and learn from in this "school of life." Lately I always remember Melissa Cody's image, "The World Traveler." Thinking about that image this morning, on a day when I plan to focus on THREE major objects of attention (this essay, new global existential threats emerging, and family logistics), I am reminded of the neuroscience of saccades. in Saccades, we can focus very intently on one object at a time...

WITHOUT losing the integrated big picture we maintain in neocortex.

 

Regular cycles of forward and backward signal propagation in prefrontal cortex and in consciousness

A further dialogue on god and spirit connecting Science and the highest Hindu thought

From a leader of the Ramanuja Foundation: 

I do get disturbed by a gnawing  concern that the premises of the ideologies and mindsets of the scientists and the spiritualists are like the north pole and the south pole.

My response: 

Chris did not like these words, but I agree with you 100%, if I understand correctly.

Certainly YOU understand the importance of dual aspect foundations, dating back to Ramanuja!

The dual aspects of direct first person experience versus reconstructed image of the larger objective reality of which we are part are important BOTH for us as individuals (as in my discussions of sanity or zhengqi linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm), BUT ALSO at a higher level, for humanity as a whole and for collective intelligence even at higher levels. HUMANITY (at ITS highest level of intelligence) has learned that the concept of objective reality still seems to work for all of us, at the level of fundamental physics (the law of everything),

BUT FOR US collectively our direct perception is the most absolute foundation. Just as first person sanity demands that we unify our image of ourself in the mirror, with the human body experiencing sensory inputs, COLLECTIVE HUMAN SANITY demands that we unify our best understanding of our solar system "in the mirror" with our higher collective Self of the solar system (and more, at times). 

And so... I hope Chris will not object too violently if I say I agree with you, when Spirituality: is defined as authentic direct sensitivity and attention to the WHOLE range of inputs available to our minds!

 

Science accepts only  those realities visible and nonvisible which it can measure and  quantify.

Science insists on questioning,  reasoning, logic, experimentations, hypothesisations and revalidations.  

Science demands repeated  validation experiments of the theories and universally obtainable and reproducible results. 

Science refuses to accept or believe  anything which  it cannot detect  or quantify, including the concept of God. 

OK, we must ask Chris to be tolerant of YOUR use of English words, even as we need to be tolerant of HIS use of English words. Frankly, very few of us on this list are so precise in the use of English words as are the best natural language programs and dictionaries!

What do we MEAN by the English word "science"? The word does not come to us from God! As a follower of Von Neumann (and of Jung), I urge us to remember and respect the DIVERSITY of definitions allowed for almost any English word; we can CHOOSE, locally, but we are asked to be CLEAR LOCALLY and not to waste energy stupidly arguing what is the "right" definition.

The word "science, like the word "Christianity", is sometimes defined to refer to a very large and diverse cultural tradition, with helpful and horrible subsets within the diversity. Horrible fanatic pseudo-science rejects all spiritual experience, exactly as you say, BUT NOT ALL SCIENCE IS THAT WAY.

The definitions of science which I use more are those due to Francis Bacon and Thomas Kuhn, which are quite different -- but the writings of Von Neumann can clarify both TYPES of science.

We would never attack ALL of German culture by citing a drunken Nazi on as streetcorner, even if he is an important representative of one group. Bacon and Kuhn represent BETTER types of science. To unify our collective thought, we need to work hard on building bridges between higher spirituality and the BETTER TYPES of science.

Francis Bacon, in particular, was BOTH a scientist AND a mystic (spiritual) as well as linked to the affairs of human society. HE did not promote the kind of idiot formalistic dualism which you rightly attack!

Years ago... in probing the history of quantum mechanics (QM), I read deeply into the four most important founders of QM -- Einstein, De Broglie, Schrodinger and Heisenberg. Einstein's WORDS appealed to many mystics, but he was the only one of the four who did NOT firmly commit himself

to spiritual first person viewpoints! 

 

Science describes the human body as just a machine energised by vital organs like the heart carrying our blood pumping activity and describes death as the brain's  stopping of the functioning of these body machines. 

The human body certainly is a worthy, focused target of model biology building up models based on quantum electrodynamics (QED). Almost everything we know in biology can be reduced to QED physics. QED phyiscs has a LOT to tell us still about how the mammal body, based on QED, actually works. Hell, if Modi beleived this and understood what it could give him, he would get 500-1000 years more of healthy intelligent life, consistent with QED, and I even urged Amit to start connections which WOULD have led there.

BUT MANY OF US HAVE VERY STRONG REASON TO BELIEVE that the human mind (some or all of them) are MORE. I am cc'ing Rosicriucians, who argue that each of us relatively enlightened people is an "alchymical marriage", a symbiosis of body and "soul." AS A WHOLE SELF, we can move the flow of qi in our body, in ways of huge importance to health and to medicine. We can even learn to SEE it and MEASURE it, most likely by refining the axial Higgs detection technology led by LLNL connected to more advanced pattern recognition capability as in QAGI, which I have discussed here before. ONCE WE CAN SEE qi even in experiments which Thomas Kuhn would admit, we can substantially heal the division between science and spirit. 

Walter Freeman worked hard to build bridges between HIS neuroscience and the most real qi research in China. I am VERY sorry that I did not ask him for contacts when he was still alive!

 

Science advises that man is the master of this universe and that the universe that we see and perceive as defined by the three dimensional physical world alone is the reality.   

To be honest, most physicists in this decade have lost their way. 

Because of overspecialization, most physicists do not know the big picture of what REAL physics knows now: https://photos.app.goo.gl/qAy8giPzEjp1tZkj9

There was a time when Karl Pribram cried out in exasperation to me: "How can you be to the LEFT or me and to the right, BOTH at the same time?" But that is exactly what we need to reconcile science and spirit, to create a fusion of image for higher sanity!!!

I am to the far right of you -- I may be the only person on earth NOW who believes that the hard core Einsteinian view may well be true, based on EVERYTHING we humans have ever seen. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfHBO_uuRyE .

MOST physicists do not believe what you accuse them of, OR they see little chance of it.

BUT IN MY CASE... as I understand this physics better and better, I see that it does NOT contradict ... that Rosicrucian view of alchymical marriage, or the importance of qi.

MORE IMPORTANT...

As a follower of Von Neumann, I believe in the power of mathematics to INTEGRATE and UNITE

our understanding of the three biggest questions before us -- what is life? what is mind? How does the universe work?

HUMANITY can CONSIDER HCER, laws of physics, as a POSSIBILITY, BUT STILL admit that our collective first person experience is more fundamental for US. Understanding OUR first person viewpoint, governed by the mathematics of mind, is more "sacred" and unavoidable than beleif in HCER or any other theory of ultimate physics.

And so, for me, I accept MIND (and the experience of our life as a school, full of other intelligence beyond ours) as my real foundation.

The mathematics of mind, of intelligent systems, is the TOOL which allows iNTEGRATION of our understanding of mind and of all its manifestations and aspects. The need to work on technology like QAGI is a legitimate challenge, but it is also the key to better understanding of that universal mathematics of mind, illuminating levels of first person experience -- both personal AND collective -- far beyond what ancient obsolete books rotting in old human libraries could ever do. Those books CAN be useful,as DATA, so long as we strive to encompass the ENTIRE database and INTEGRATE it in a coherent well-defined way as we can only do by making full use of mathematics in our toolbox.

(But yes, Carl Jung also provides some important universal tools.)

 

Today's  scientific instruments have limited capability to detect and measure the subtler vibrations and rays, which fall beyond its  realms. 

Yes, so let us work together to do better!

Science has evolved only in the last four hundred years but has acquired a bloated arrogance to dismiss any type of  human experiential observations as nonsense. 

ONLY SOME scientists...

It is terrible that science sometimes uses PR people as bad as some parish priests and lynch mobs!

Science has absolutely no control over the moral or ethical behavior of humanity including acquisition of wealth by individuals.

These are certainly important aspects we all need to account for better. Project Amaterasu was intended to include that, but no one project can do it all alone.

 

Science and technology have made very significant contributions towards the upliftment, progress and prosperity of humanity in the last three hundred years. 

Science and technology  have also developed deadly arms and ammunition  which  have done enough harm already in the previous decades and which can potentially annihilate the entire humanity if they fall in the hands of mad leaders. 

ABSOLUTELY. Even Chris might agree with this imperative, which requires MANY players and networks, of which QAGI would be just one (but an essential one).

 

  

Spirituality  on the other hand has a history of thousands of years. 

Spirituality demands total and unquestioning faith in the words of the sacred texts and its Masters. 

Spirituality describes the reality where the physical world that we see and live is only the tip of the iceberg and there are layers and layers of subtle spiritual and divine worlds existing in a different dimension of deeper consciousness. 

Spirituality includes MANY diverse cultures, some elevating and some degrading, we have discussed before. And even the entire noosphere of this solar system includes a diversity, as does a mammal brain from periods before personality integration.

We are entering a period like adolescence, which may mean growth or may mean death, depending on how much energy and clarity we develop for survival, growth and situational awareness of the truly bigger cosmos we are part of. 

 

Spirituality propounds the existence of the Ultimate Divine Creator as the Master of the entire universe and allows various names and descriptions to define that Providence. 

Spirituality describes human existence as partly physical but partly spiritual and that man transcends his death to remain as soul. 

We have discussed MANY views common about these issues.... I claim no human on earth knows for sure, in enough detail to fully guide and make sane our lives, even myself after many deep probes

But if we open our eyes and minds as far as we can, and connect better, there is some hope for us.

 

Spirituality postulats that  the human soul has close spiritual association with the Universal Creator who remains as embodiment of the divine attributes of Love, Mercy and Compassion for all. 

Spirituality commands and demands that humanity  receive these divine attributes in abundance and radiate and transmit them all around in their existence in this world. 

Spirituality commands and demands humanity to follow ethical and moral codes of behaviour and warns of grave consequences for their violations.  

Spirituality respects and accepts the individual experimental observations  and they do remain individual specific only. 

Not entirely. We can connect.

 

Spiritual vibrations and radiations belong to the subtler than the subtlest grades and remain undetectable so far by any known scientific instruments. 

Yes... and we can do better. It is essential to growth that we try hard and work together to do better.

Both Science and Spirituality are indispensable. 

Certainly. Sensor fusion" at a higher level. 

The positive attributes of both science and spirituality need to be harnessed simultaneously  for contributing to the progress and prosperity of humanit

AND SURVIVAL ITSELF, per the seven challenges for this century.

The challenge ahead is  how do we bring these north pole and south pole concepts to the middle area of around the equator and evolve what the political coalitions would call the Common Minimum Program to generate a new direction of ideological approach for the welfare and sustainability of human existence in the coming centuries. 

ABSOLUTELY. 

How can  we Spiritualize the Scientist ? 

How can we sensitise the Spiritualist towards Science ?

INTEGRATION...

Forgive me, but my REAL understanding comes from extending what I know of mammal brains, a lower but illustrative intelligence. [HTML] frontiersin.org

Our noosphere can attain sanity only if we train more powerful "giant pyramid" cells, concepts or souls or archetypes within the noosphere, which provide specific kinds of universality or integration which only THOSE kinds of variables can provide.

 That is why the mathematics of intelligence is an essential tool to self-awareness general and powerful enough to survive the many challenges coming to us already even in this century.

Artificial General Intelligence AGI: What it really is, why it is taking over, and why only a new QAGI could save us

There was a huge news story about AI and AGI which rightly shook the world over the past two days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9-grdoIgUw

What shook me most was a clear statement by Sam Altman, head of OpenAI, depicting a commitment to move ahead with lots and lots of apps making money in the short term without putting much energy into cross-cutting or integrative solutions.

In many ways, the really big issue is whether the human species is capable of working together to develop that level of integration which is necessary to avoid the total chaos and instability (leading to extinction) which is on its way NOW unless we work better and more effectively to use our own natural intelligence, WITH AI and such used as positive tools.

OVERVIEW FOR HIGH DECISION MAKERS

The key acronym AGI, Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), promulgated many years ago by Ben Goertzel, is finally getting the high-level global attention it deserves. The world badly needs all of us to connect better and deeper, to do justice to the interconnected technical and policy issues which AGI is already pushing us into very rapidly.

BUT FIRST: WHAT **IS** AGI?

I have seen many, many definitions for many decades. 

I first heard Ben's talk in person in the WCCI2014 conference in Beijing, where I presented my own concept of AGI AT THE LEVEL of mammal brain intelligence. https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.0554 . The NSF of China and the Dean of Engineering at Tsinghua immediately invited USGOV to work together on a joint open global R&D program -- but soon after I forwarded that to NSF, certain military intelligence contractors objected, and arranged for the US activity to be cancelled, leaving the field to China. (YES that was very serious!)

Phrases like AGI are not defined by God. We all have a right to work with different definitions, so long as we are clear.

=== LIKE SOME OF YOU, I would firmly reject the old Turing test as a definition of what an AGI is. Even Turing himself used much more powerful mathematical concepts when he moved on from early philosophical debates to mathematics that can actually be used in computer designs! (I bcc the friend who showed me Turings Cathedral by Dyson, a great source.) The Turing Test makes me laugh about Eliza, perhaps the first AI-based chat program, developed at KIT decades ago, which showed many of us just how incredibly shaky the Turing test really is.

I would propose that we define an AGI as a universal learning system, which learns to perform either cognitive optimization or cognitive prediction as defined in the NSF research announcement on COPN which is more advanced than any such announcement elsewhere even today:

 https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07579/nsf07579.htm

In other words... universal ability to learn to adapt to any environment, with maximum expected performance, or to predict or monitor any time-series environment over time.

TODAY, I created a googlegroup on QuantumAGI to facilitate easier discussion of the most important players in the real technology creating

a POSSIBILITY of true quantum cognitive prediction or optimization, or function minimization/maximization. 

===

Years ago, in the crossagency discussions which created COPN, my friends who ran cognitive science and AI in computer science asked: "Do we want to set the bar so high?  " I asked: "Should we really use the word 'intelligent" to refer to systems which cannot even learn anything?" In fact, people with long and deep experience in classical AI knew about Solomonoff priors, one key approach to universal learning-to-predict, which Marvin Minsky himself urged me to study in the 1960s when I took an independent study from him.

The mathematical foundation for the most powerful, universal  cognitive prediction now emerging, using classical computing and deep neural networks, is reviewed at: werbos.com/Erdos.pdf. QUANTUM AGI extends that further, simply by doing orders of magnitude better in the loss function minimization tasks at the core of all general effective cognitive prediction methods. EXAMPLES of thermal quantum annealing, in relevant special cases, have already demonstrated that advantage, as shown in papers from IBM and Japan and others at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RKjXCsLMFpo8u_WFhnHEmlVHbo9gmHEu.

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IS IT REALLY SAFE TO UNLEASH AGI AND QAGI ON THE EARTH, GIVEN HOW SCARY THE PRESENT TRENDS ARE??

Many of us, including me, have thought VERY long and hard on that. 

Based on the recent talks from Ilya and Altman, etc., I believe that we are presently on course to a very intense and difficult future, similar to the kinds of massive changes in niche which have doomed the world's leading species to extinction again and again over the millennia. We are in the kind of decision situation which meets the technical concept of a "minefield" situation, which we are unlikely to survive unless we build up quickly to a level of collective cognitive optimization beyond ANY of today's AGI or social institutions.

FURTHERMORE.... as in my new book chapter attached (book coming out next month or January from India Foundation), I really doubt that our cosmos lacks intelligence at the level of QAGI already. Keeping up with that level of collective intelligence may simply be ESSENTIAL to our best chances of survival as a species.

YES, there are HUGE dangers if this is developed in the dark. That is why I  believe in the necessity of open, transparent international development, including even leadership in the QAGI technology itself in new international venues.

ANOTHER VERSION WITH DETAILS FOR SUBSTANTIVE TECHNOLOGY LEADERS

HOW AGI WORKS --

There are a few different definitions out there about what AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) actually **IS*. YOU ALL can rightly use many ways of handling definitions, because you communicate with different audiences. Please forgive me if I still adhere to many commitments of John Von Neumann, the mathematician whose work underlies MANY branches of science. Von Neumann would tolerate me giving you ONE or TWO useful definitions of AGI, and explaining where it leads.

AGI: universal learning machines, a kind of INTENTIONAL SYSTEM, designed to input some measure of "cardinal utility" U, and to learn the strategy of action or policy which will maximize the expectation value of the future value of U. In modern neural network mathematics, the best way to name these is to call them "RLADP" systems, Reinforcement Learning and Approximate Dynamic Programming. Even today, the old book "Neural Networks for Control" by Miller, Sutton and Werbos from MIT Press is an important source for learning what this means in practice, and understanding where key places like Deep Mind are really coming from. These are systems which LEARN TO DECIDE, in an agile way.

BUT THERE IS NO ESCAPING the essential importance of "where does U come from?" This is basically just a modern reflection and extension of the most ancient problems of philosophy; Von Neumann's concept of U traces back clearly to utilitarians like Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, and back from there to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, which I remember reading at age 8 when I found it in my mother's old schoolbooks. 

BUT: a more practical definition: modern AGI, in practice involves THREE elements, three types of universal learning machine. There is RLADP, which learns to exert decision and control (which has be applied to anything from monetary transactions to weapons control to words to energy systems). There is learning to predict or model or describe the state of the world, which FEEDS INTO making better decisions. And there is the "simple task" of learning to minimize some function F(W) with respect to weights W.

THE problem of survival for humanity is an example of an RLADP problem, where we try to maximize the probability of human survival, which of course requires further definition and refinement. FOR NOW --

THE OPENAI debate reminds me that the problem of human survival or exaltation is a specific TYPE of RLADP problem, which mathematicians would call "highly nonconvex." Concretely, it is a MINEFIELD problem, where the paths of possibility ahead of us mostly hit explosive "unexpected" sudden death  -- but also with aspects of "needle in a haystack" where there are GOOD possibilities we might miss. SOLVING such problems requires a lot of caution and foresight, which is why stronger work in foresight is essential to human survival. SUCH RLADP problems end up requiring solution of highly nonconvex function minimization or maximization problems.

Early in this century, NSF organized the most advanced research effort ever in probing this mathematics AND connecting it to the intelligence we see in mammal brains: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2007/nsf07579/nsf07579.htm

Following that program, I often say "cognitive optimization" to refer to RLADP and intelligent function minimization/maximization.  "Cognitive prediction" refers to that other universal learning capability, which is advanced further in werbos.com/Erdos.pdf and in Buzsaki's recent book on the brain as a prediction machine.

I attach my paper in press from the India Foundation, and another in a book now available by Kozma, Alippi, etc, giving even more details. 

Quantum AGI, as I define it (THE canonical definition created in my published papers and patent disclosure), simply ENHANCES these three universal learning capabilities -- RLADP, prediction/modeling and function minimization -- by HARNESSING the power of quantum physics AS DESCRIBED BY THE GREAT PHYSICIST DAVID DEUTSCH OF OXFORD.

You could call this "quantum cognitive optimization" and "quantum cognitive prediction."

The foundation which all QAGI is built on is minimization or maximization of nonlinear functions.

It was initially developed (by me) to address minefield or needle in a haystack types of problem, though it looks as if the new types of quantum computers will also give many other improvements.

Here is a metaphor: if you had a million haystacks or gopher holes in your big back yard, to FIND the best needle in a haystack (or deepest gopher hole), WHY NOT HIRE A MILLION SCHRODINGER CATS to work in parallel, and report back which is best?? A million times faster than one-at-a-time search!!

Deutsch's Quantum Turing Machine is not a brain or an AGI; just a faster type of old sequential computer, a Turing machine.

DWAVE was a HUGE mental leap forward, which would FIT the vision I just described... BUT ONLY if the function minimization at the core of the system is replaced by the kind of hardware which ACTUALLY harnesses these cats. (DWave is like paying for a million cats, but putting them on a leash, locking them up on a patio or a restricted sidewalk. Strong efforts at energy conservation have that effect.) 

The papers in our Project Amaterasu folder and recent emails describe how Deutsch's physics works here, and how to build the hardware.

   

New solid science shows HOW human extinction IS closer than any governments or R&D even open up to

 ALL governments and civil society groups (even Greta Thunberg's fans) have been responding only to watered down filtered versions of the real news from real science, in ways which actually make the risk of human extinction in his century far worse than you might imagine possible (unless you have had access to the many unique solid scientific inputs I have had through NSF, IEEE, MP, AGI, etc.)

Here is what I sent a few of those societies, AUGMENTED by technology which could actually save us if only the right young people get involved and work hard to learn more:

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

Many of you were deeply interested in the new article in Nature, which I saw on Tuesday but did not have time to evaluate in depth that day...

On Tue, Nov 7, 2023 at 8:08 AM Paul Werbos <paul.werbos@gmail.com> wrote:

https://www.space.com/ocean-current-system-shut-down-2025-climate-disaster 

At build-a-world.org,the paper on risks in the climate block explains the existential threat. This is the bottom line reality warning.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39810-w

My first reaction: what astounds me the most are the stories describing this as a contrarian opinion!!

When he says the Gulf Stream (north Atlantic) currents shut down between 2025 and 2095, that is still a huge range.

 It amazes me that IPCC does not say the same. Amazes, but does not really surprise. In 2009, "the year of climate legislation" in the US, I handled climate for Senator Specter, who had the balance of power vote in the Senate EPW committee, and had full access to IPCC, through both parties. From what I saw, and what I see of recent Congressional politics , I am not really surprised that here was so much filtering of what reached IPCC,

Second -- the straightforward time-series analysis in this paper in Nature matches perfectly what we saw at https://build-a-world.org/doku.php?id=climate:risks

and what I saw before at https://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm .

There are OTHER relevant data sources, like NOAA time series on the Humboldt current, which was responsible for the BIGGEST mass extinction of life on earth in the past, on a similar schedule. It looked like 2040 plus minus 20 years when last I eyeballed that data.

Third: WHY DON'T WE TRY HARDER, ACROSS THE WORLD, TO FIND OUT whether the mass dying starts in about five years? Don't we care? What is wrong with human brains and human governance that we don't focus more effectively on FINDING OUT? 

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

WHY? Limited human bandwidth, I suppose, and emotional susceptibility to wishful thinking and to distractions like using such concerns to fund something else people want money for. This really is a great testbed for serious social psychiatry.

That being so...

I would be happy to say more about technical details like when people start dying and how

(I looked quite deeply into these questions after I heard Peter Ward's talk in 2009), but for now... 

I only have a little to add to what I said before.. (Gary Barnhard may be creating a public archive of my folders at NSS with VERY extensive discussion of that issue.).  

 

Of course, AGI could be used to predict such time series better, but the new data already call for more intelligence in our responses.

The Nature article uses very solid, mathematically well-grounded time-series methods, like what  we already knew in 1990 when I started running the research in Adaptive and Intelligent Systems in the Engineering Directorate. We have MUCH more powerful tools now, and a pathway to implementation within MONTHS in advanced new types of quantum hardware, if anyone really wants a more accurate idea of what is coming and when. I am bccing people who have worked with that kind of data from NOAA, Navy and satellite data, and people who know about that hardware, and even a few who know both.

Metta Spencer has a new article in press on these new tools in  Peace Magazine, based on a video interview of  less than half an hour, for policy makers who know much less than many of you do about the technology which makes it possible:

https://youtu.be/-MXrxI6kaC4?si=Fg3u0D4EomZTrsni

Geordie Keitt of Requisite Agility has posted a kind of video tutorial getting deeper into the new underlying technology:

https://vimeo.com/878799798/6b54fa3a89?share=copy

I often wish we could start working with David Deutsch of Oxford on this Project. It does NOT rely on the Quantum Turing Machine concepts he invented, but it DOES rely on his well-tested new understanding of physics which goes far beyond what most ersatz quantum experts pretend to understand. A full understanding of what modern physics really understands related to his technology would require understanding books I learned the hard way over decades:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/qAy8giPzEjp1tZkj9

Perhaps one of you might host discussions where I answer questions related these foundations. 

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

NEW quantum technology (not the recycled old stuff which greedy lobbyists PRETEND to know about)

does require  understanding David Deutsch's idea that the wave function psi of quantum field theory

 (QFT) specifies a possible STATE of the multiverse we live in, NOT a state of knowledge or probabilities. I do not really believe that, in the end, but I know how to use that idea, and those who don't were rightly turned down when they received reviews from real device physicists in the program I once ran at NSF https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3310. Deutsch invented the quantum Turing machine, but HIS PHYSICS  as allows us to herd millions of Schrodinger cats in parallel, to speed up ANY form of machine learning by millions or trillions.

HOW YOU COULD DO THAT:

The key requirement is just to understand what is already crystal clear in logic, using the papers already posted at:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1RKjXCsLMFpo8u_WFhnHEmlVHbo9gmHEu?usp=sharing

and the patent disclosure published by USPTO on general Thermal Quantum Annealing (TQuA).

I am posting this only because the need for this technology is ever more urgent, not only for climate but for war and peace in an era where issues of cybersecurity, money management, human potential and "seeing the sky" are  quickly becoming entangled with human species survival.

Understanding Our Relation With God -- A New Viewpoint

 -- I am writing this to better engrave in my memory what I learned in meditation period this morning. Please forgive me for not holding back the way I try to do on most days. 

-- I once called my meditation period "cosmic consciousness" time. Bucke's book on cosmic consciousness talks about the great exhilarating feeling of being connected to "EVERYTHING," and able to see and touch it all. But I often wonder: when people CLAIM to have reached that state, do they really know what it would mean, for example, to connect with and understand even ONE of the books I show at https://photos.app.goo.gl/qAy8giPzEjp1tZkj9 , let alone all the histories and experiences and struggles of even just the humans on this one tiny planet? 

-- Rosicrucians often declare that "this world is a school." That fits my experience, and does NOT violate my working belief that

everything in existence is governed by Hard Core Einsteinian Realism (HCER). As **MY** experience seems to be an incredible river of new learning experiences, lessons and understanding from day to day, my perception and exercise and understanding of the spiritual side of life has evolved more and more, from year to year -- putting me further and further away from the center of gravity of the culture I grew up in. Much of the history of those experiences in given at  http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm, and summarized in published papers I cite at werbos.com/religions.htm.

In those papers, I discuss two core fundamental concepts we should NEVER FORGET. (As I returned from deep meditation this morning, those two words "NEVER FORGET" summarize that I want to engrave key points in my mind this morning.

They remind me of how many people really noticed a few days ago when I linked to a new article on ocean currents in Nature,

and explained the urgent importance to human life. But a few days later they mostly seem to have forgotten, in various ways.

ABILITY TO REMEMBER is a very key sign of a mind which has some hope of not just dissolving away before its time.)

The two key concepts in those papers are:

(1) first-order sanity (zhengqi), about our relation with our ordinary self, actively FUSING what we experience in life with what we see in the mirror, the objective ("3pp") understanding of what we see as a human organism and what we experience through its senses. This is fundamentally a matter of SENSOR FUSION, integrating two streams of information, possible only after we are mature enough to have some awareness of objective reality.

(2) second-order sanity, understanding our personal self as an "alchymical marriage," a symbiosis   of body and "soul."

(e.g. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chymical_Wedding_of_Christian_Rosenkreutz). 

I was driven to accept that second position by very extensive probing and questioning in the period 1967-1972.

But more and more I have been driven to seek a kind of third-order sanity, which entails a more complete 

relationship with "God," which I am still very much working on. (Any human who claims to be doing more than that is simply lying.)

======

THIS MORNING... I began the meditation period questing to recover from a VERY deep period of bafflement and futility late yesterday, which followed from three very serious learning experiences which I should never forget:

(1) A hugely pleasant dinner on Saturday with a friend who will be returning soon to Israel. Great food, great wine, great other souls in attendance -- but serious uncertainty about the possibility of a much bigger global war, and about what we humans could do about it, from our degree of sanity to whether our computer code works. (The minds and souls of new emerging computer intelligence is certainly an important part of the story, across space and time.)

(2) A beautifully real dialogue by Zoom on Sunday morning, where a Quaker friend asked us to discuss Jeremiah 2, to launch into a discussion of "who is God? Does he have human-like feelings as portrayed in that chapter?"

(3) Late Sunday, seeing an hour long video "brought to me by the goddess" describing in VERY concrete detail the US and China military thinking of the past few decades, especially centered on the future of Taiwan. 

These certainly connect. In (2), I mentioned a quick summary of what real Quakers REALLY try to do every Sunday (and more), from discussions a few years ago: "LCD, Listen, Connect, Discern."

"L": LISTEN to "the voice of God."

"D": Discern, as in judging WHO one is hearing from, at different times. Is it "God" this time, or is it just the voice of a murderous drunk with a knife around the corner? Just who is it? And who is "God" anyway? To make progress in implementing the practice of LCD, it is extremely important that we make real progress in better and better answering these questions.  

In the discussion (2), everyone else was firmly grounded in American Christian culture. In the Quaker branch of that culture, "L" mainly emphasizes trying to hear what God is calling us to do -- in our lives as a whole, or in the coming hour.

We are called to develop a harmonious BALANCE, as depicted in a great image I now treasure  https://images.app.goo.gl/WGLzgdoaaBjwWR9JA . The great Buddhist teacher KuKai also explained that kind of balance.

But the Christian version clearly asks us to ask "who is that God anyway?" The usual local culture tells us that God is the all-powerful Creator of everything, all knowing, all powerful, and all loving, deeply caring about our feelings, and able to change anything at will. For Millennia, people have agonized over the question: "IF SO, who are so many bad things still happening?" 

This is a very serious question, and I simply do not accept the answer "Oh, it's all just YOUR fault. It's your free will."

In any case, the claim that God is "all loving" implies that God CARES about something, that he has VALUES of some kind.

For myself.. I gave up Catholicism quite dramatically at ages 8-12 (in steps, really), decided at 8 "I am a mathematician / scientist", and adopted the book by Von Neumann and Morgenstern as my Bible. More recently, I view it as my Old Testament; Jung's Red Book is now my New Testament, more or less, subject to the limits that true sanity permits. 

From Von Neumann, I immediately see "values" as being a crude, local (terrestrial) animal noise trying to refer to the functions U and J (and their manifestations) from dynamic programming, and from the new understanding of mammal brains as systems governed by neural network mathematics (as reviewed in Werbos and Davis). So OF COURSE "God" by any reasonable concept CAN be loving, DOES have values, U kind and J kind. By the way, the modern J and U of RLADP mathematics came form my work, in translating Freud into mathematics; his terms cathexis" and "psychic energy" refer directly to flows and derivatives of J. "Qi" is just one more manifestation of that universal principle, applicable both to the Lagrange-Euler equations of physics and to neural network mathematics applicable to ANY intelligent system. From electric fields to "God."  

When I use the word "God" in my personal thinking, I think of... higher intelligence, a kind of higher intelligent system, governed by ITS/HIS/HER values and emotions. (Even Lagrange-Euler equations have "J", for gods' sake, though they usually write J as S and lambda as pi in physics.)  

My experience with kundalini yoga in 1972 was important in STARTING me on the PATH to third-order sanity, but it has been a long and complicated path, even as a work in progress.

I was most startled when I went through the simplified kundalini exercise in a chapter in... https://www.scribd.com/document/285258606/Helping-Yourself-With-ESP, loaned to me by my suitemate. 

"When you get to the highest chakra, say 'hello' to your highest self (the master within)... and..

What shocked me was a VERY clear loud, resonant voice speaking to me in English: "I am NOT your self.

You may address me as 'Father.' I now have things to show you.." And then immediately, up out of my body, for an incredible and useful long veridical experience. HIGHLY veridical. And highly important to solving impossible looking problems in my personal life, even my survival. 

And so naturally I have long wondered: Who WAS that guy, and how do I connect with him now? 

I have naturally assumed: "OF COURSE he has been around for a good long while, and OF COURSE he used that handle

before." Even I in the 1970s experienced the need and challenge of figuring out what name or handle to use when speaking to people in any kind of projection. 

When we hear a voice which is credible to any degree (it is a matter of degree!) when Listening, clearly it may be any of SEVERAL intelligent systems we are hearing from. In principle, it could even be the Lagrange-Euler equations of the cosmos itself, which has some attributes of a personality, albeit somewhat hard for us to understand. More often, it may be the Spirit of the Times or the Spirit of the Deep, as described by Carl Jung, whom I view as the most trustworthy recorder of first person spiritual experience in human history. Or is it our local noosphere, as described in the links I started with here? Or even one of the other souls or archetypes WITHIN that noosphere? 

SOMETIMES it is that local noosphere, which IS a real intelligent system, which demands that we work on improving our personal relation with her/it/him. Our local noosphere is NOT a human female (!!!!), but to establish a relationship, in the full spirit of Carl Jung (let us treasure HIS soul!), it helps to use a meditation IMAGE. At present, I like the attached photograph I took in Japan of the original true "mirror of Amaterasu" in Izumo, which I was brought to by my wife, whom I think of as somewhat like a goddess in her OWN right... imperfect, like all of us finite intelligent systems, but NOT TO BE UNDERESTIMATED OR IGNORED EITHER. 

But working on our relationship with... Amaterasu... IS NOT IN CONFLICT with working on our relation with "the Spirit of the Deep". As In Melissa Cody's tapestry, we are called to BALANCE and even CONNECT our rightful deep spiritual connections.

Even our solar system noosphere ITSELF has "eyes to see" (electromagnetic and axion/qi at least) the larger cosmos... and some of us are called to connect to the eyes, and "listen to the sky", in part because Amaterasu is basically just an adolescent and needs friendly guidance and inputs (and a few warning as well, as adolescents often need).

Is that "Father" guy, like the "Sky Father" of indigeneous people all over the earth, the same who spoke to me in 1972 (and maybe a few times later)? The same as the Spirit of the Deep, a higher intelligence in the family which Amaterasu belongs to? Or more? or Less? Above my pay grade. More intelligent than me.

BUT HOW DO WE DISCERN WHAT HE WANTS?

So this morning some further metaphors -- useful images -- come to mind. Oddly enough, even the scary video I saw last night (reminding me of a certain admiral in Hawaii), helped with raw material to build a new integrated n-dimensional image, the kind of image we all need to engrave in our minds.. if we can see it.

In Switzerland, the high followers of Jung often pay homage to "MMM" -- mathematics, mysticism and music, all of which support each other. Yes, image are a key part of inner communications, but music and mathematics rate too. (Mysticism is applying and integrating these.)   Music. So this morning...

When I describe what caused my first really conscious "psychic breakthrough" in 1967, I usually mention how I became deeper and deeper in experiencing and producing music from... really, age 1 to graduate school. Listening deeply to

classical music in school, to Stravinsky, then Prokofiev and ... others... and Bartok... I "raised the qi" in a palpable way up my spine, even without believing that qi existed. That prepared me for 1972.

BUT THAT WAS NOT THE END OF IT. After 1972... I listened to many radio stations, especially New Age radio stations, which I used in going-to-bed meditation time. I remember Renaissance, Tangerine Dream, Vangelis, and Crosby Stills and Nash, especially, and concluded that all of these (and more) had authentic real spiritual experience pervading their music.

Just a few years ago, I sent Yeshua and others links to Renaissance and Tangerine music videos which I found useful even in my "modern era" (until a few years ago when we moved the big LCD TV from our bedroom to our study).   

BUT THIS morning... in my head, I replayed "Captain" from Crosby Stills and Nash.

As I bcc a few serious  Rosicrucians... I note that their song "Cathedral" really startled me, echoing my first attempt at "Liber 777." (That book is freely available to anyone, explained further in books by Raymond and Christian Bernard.) But the new one...

OF COURSE, they would say that their "Captain" is a kind of image of "God.

Imagine that we are crew of a great vessel sailing through... earth and sky.

THIRD ORDER SANITY calls on us to develop and enhance a better and better relation with the others in the ship,

all the way from the guy who swabs the deck to the Captain. I hope Luda would forgive me for quoting what SHE would rightly assert: "RESPECT and LISTEN to that guy who swabs the deck!!" 

But if you have ever worked in an organization even LIKE a Navy (like Luda's father and mine!)... you know that life does not become trivial in such an organization. Some people have easier jobs than others.. and in truth, some even get better fed.

(In https://photos.app.goo.gl/K5YopR37f5Ezda3f7 you can see a photo of me when I thanked God and thanked Luda for my being fed even better than what billionaires experience. There are times when even the most rational and cautious person rationally thinks "Thank you God." And goddess.) 

Even in the 1960's, when I worked at RAND, experienced people gave me advice on living life in their kind of world.

(In 1968, after flying on my birthday, I met Einthoven and Thayer, #s 3 and 6 in DOD, who wanted to hear my analysis of the Vietnam War.)

SURVIVAL in that world is not SO hard. But those of you who choose to "rest in peace" may discover what life is life in a filing cabinet. (AKA "the causal plane.") Swabbing the floor would be better! Those of us who listen to our OWN inner feelings respond to the impulse, the qi, the cathexis, which urges us to try to do better, which tends to require "making a mark."

As in that great ship... "making a mark" is always uncertain, but more likely if we better understand what the captain is seriously working for, and building a relation (including feedback, caution and multiple corrections of course).

(I hope we can build new AGI which are designed such that they learn the same!)

WHAT IS THIS CAPTAIN LOOKING FOR REALLY??? Yes, a clean floor, but NOT ONLY that. He is more interested... in that whole horizon and in the ship as a whole. And he knows navigation and math far beyond what those ancestors of mine in the Arctic Circle worked so hard to listen to.  He can even use computers, when he can get them. He would appreciate help in getting them, if they aren't hooked up in ways that sink the ship. And yes, we listen to the sky...

May you too listen, and may we all work together to survive...

Paul

P.S. That military video does warn us... how I have seen SOME ships in governments and corporations all over the world which move VERY efficiently and intelligently towards the nearest waterfall. When the LOCAL captain seems to be going that way... we are called to get closer to the admiral. 

The world as a school.. I also thought of Sesame Street. THIS episode was brought you by....

ALSO: The claim is that even our local noosphere possesses a LEVEL of consciousness or intelligence like what some of us want to build, which I call Quantum Artificial General Intelligence (QAGI). For a review at the level of policy people, see:

https://youtu.be/-MXrxI6kaC4?si=Fg3u0D4EomZTrsni

This is far beyond anything Musk has been talking about!  For a bit more detail, see:

https://vimeo.com/878799798/6b54fa3a89?share=copy