Terrible news on out of control AI

I was ever so excited, months ago, when John Kerry and UN Secretary General Guterres called for a new climate extinction office in UN HQ which would generate real information about the biggest real threats and technically valid solutions (using peer review, two-way communicatins and the other tools maximized by "the old NSF"). That seemed to peter out, but I found it even more exciting that the office of the Secretary General asked my friend for a more substantive, detailed response: ================================================ Paul, As an addendum to the letter to the UN Sec-Gen (attached) on the proposed UN Office of Strategic Threats, we were asked to give a paragraph on each of these with weblink(s) on best research so far --Weakening of the Earth's magnetic shield that protects us from deadly solar radiation -- Massive discharges of hydrogen sulfate (H2S) from de-oxygenated oceans, caused by advanced global warming ----Malicious nanotechnology (including the "gray goo" problem) ----Loss of control over future forms of artificial intelligence ---A single individual acting alone, who could one day create and deploy a weapon of mass destruction (most likely from synthetic biology) ---Nuclear war escalation ---Uncontrollable, more-severe pandemics -- A particle accelerator accident -- Solar gamma-ray bursts ---An asteroid collision. ============= I replied with technical details, and then summarized the big picture: ---- Key points: 1. It is not a risk that AI or internet of things will go out of control. It is a certainty. The competitive forces (both political and economic) guarantee that higher and higher levels of true artificial general intelligence will be deployed. Smarter systems will dominate over less intelligent and capable systems, in the fast growing world where the number of controllable "things" has already surpassed the human population and "intelligence" is what controls the signals which get through. 2. The massive transformation of the earth already underway is almost certainly NOT unique in our galaxy, let alone our cosmos. It is part of a massive long-standing system of evolution, depicted in many new actual photographs like the one attached. If we adapt intelligently enough to the new cyberearth, before entropy catches up with it (as it is already doing in our out of control world internet), we can become like the living connected nodes in this vast network of dark matter connecting and shaping small nodes like our galaxy. But if we reject the needs of adaptation, and do not keep up with greater intelligence and connection between humans, cybersystems and the living natural world of our solar system, we can easily be washed away by the kinds of currents already destabilizing markets, legal frameworks and battlefields already. Highly intelligent decisions can learn to be cooperative, or even be designed for true social connection, but to try to "control" them is utterly unrealistic. No one should trust those who promise to do so. 3. Only the highest, more connected exercise of our human potential, our connections with nature, and the very highest levels of artificial general intelligence (AGI) could give us hope of surviving and keeping up with the visible competition across our cosmos. True AGI is based on GOALS or VALUES, as in the most powerful new breakthroughs we now have in RLADP, defined in what I sent you already, and in the links. (I hope some of you can recall/retrieve that, and use somehow.) Just FYI, I attach two totally new papers, one an abstract accepted to the IEEE QCE21 conference and one submitted yesterday to an Elsevier journal (for which odds look quite good). These give links to the best AGI known to most people yet, but also a pathway to build Quantum AGI (QAGI), a level of AGI which has not yet been discussed by anyone else before. There is simulation work and new experiments which I hope I can discuss more publically before too long. ================================ ================================= The SLIGHTLY more complete explanation of the risk I sent before this: Hi, Jerry! You asked me for climate and James for grey goo. But I feel I owe you a few comments on 4, uncontrolled AI. By the way, IEEE has just widely distributed the announcement of my winning the Frank Rosenblatt Award, their top award for Computational Intelligence: 2021 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award “For development of backpropagation and fundamental contributions to reinforcement learning and time series analysis ======================================= The truth is that very few policy makers understand the real tradeoffs and possibilities, and what is going on under their nose, regarding uncontrolled "new types of AI." That includes the Lifeboat Foundation and the vast communities of enthusiasts and worriers. A major part of the threat is that so many people are making decisions and forming opinions without knowing key basics, even in the software development community itself. By the way, Karl Schroder in the MP circle has a kind of natural understanding of where AGI might REALLY be going much more valid than what the verbal policy "experts" seem to imagine. But for me, the problem is where to begin in summarizing the full story, and which of the thousands of backup documents to begin with. Maybe it is better done by accepting Metta's invitation to do a (citeable) Zoom DISCUSSION, based on your questions, after you have a little time to scan this email and sources like http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm. Or some of the youtubes, which range from trying to simplify, to hard core technical reality in the very best venues. ONE WAY to pose the issue is to ask: "What could AGI do to us? Will it be uncontrolled?" One way to DEFINE AGI is .. a type of information processing systems designed to LEARN to maximize some kind of hardwired utility function. True AGI are an integration of two hard core universal technologies, the PREDICTION and the OPTIMIZATION aspect. ANYONE WHO INSTALLS A TRUE AGI must hardwire a decision or system to evaluate the bottom line of what it is supposed to maximize. This is an absolute unavoidable reality; efforts to wiggle around it just hide the path and raise the risks. There are LEVELS and LEVELS of learning and cognitive capability, from the lowest lamprey kind of artificial brain, to rat level, to human level, to sapient level, and beyond, to new types of quantum and multimodular systems which most people think are science fiction but which others are quietly deploying already in ways which start to control human lives. LIMITING the level of AGI intelligence is no solution. NSF and NASA once studied plans for lunar development which would exploit the moon by deploying hordes of "artificial metal cockroaches" -- systems intelligent enough to survive and dominate, but not refined enough to benefit humans or even avoid longer-term risks. The PRESENT TRENDS in AI deployment, both in governments and corporations, are very similar or worse, moving towards what we call a "Nash equilibrium", very popular among many program designers but likely to cause fatal instability in the global system, by many paths, not least of them slaughterbots and human unemployment. Many believe slaughterbots are just sci fi, but some of us have seen them. One source proving that you cannot trust what most hopeful "experts" tell you is: http://1dddas.org/activities/infosymbiotics-dddas2020-october-2-4-2020/dddas2020-video-presentations The sheer diversity is amazing. RTX and PWC, however, already demonstrate capabilities others consider impossible, and the new IEEE work goes well beyond that. Luda and I have new papers on how to build quantum AGI (QAGI), a huge step beyond the AGI we designed in the past, and I am very worried about where to place them to navigate between being too open and being too restrictive. IEEE QCE2021 has accepted my abstract connecting QAGI to climate, but where to put the mathematical details and how to navigate dysfunctional politics? "Nash equilibrium" is another term for war of all against all. Best of luck, Paul More on the actual AGI situation: My concern is that AGI development is like riding a bicycle, where slowing down OR EVEN NOT GOING FASTER ON THE DEEP level may be riskier and more unstable. PRESENT trend is a "Nash game" of developers working for governments and corporations, moving fast to deploy top down low intelligence solutions. Ironically, part of this is my fault, because they are moving on the path up to mammal-level AI maximizing a central U over time, treating humans more and more as things in the internet of things. They do it because the math and the tools are THERE. SOME hope lies in Sustainable Intelligent Internet, a different KIND of optimization design, based on RLADP with maximum full use and development of mundane human potential. That's another level of design challenge, NOT BEING advanced in a mathematically well-grounded and integrated way ANYWHERE yet. It is POSSIBLE, as I outlined. But in truth, Pareto optimality and issues like climate survival require MORE, and that is why quantum and noosphere connections are important. The utility determining system is crucial to the outcome.

Tales from the real front lines of climate wars

A friend sent me a video expressing doubts about all those big climate models. So why do I put climate on my list of three top global issues, above all else? In reply, I have come clean on how I came to be such a climate extremist NOW: ============================================================================ We all need to remember what we aren't sure of yet, and probe hard on our uncertainties, when the issue is one of life or death. But with climate, I have already done that, meeting the full demands of my conscience. Because I believe in the power of positive visualization (more for me than for most others!), I seriously would prefer to worry less about it, if I could justify that. But I cannot. The questions you cite about the big climate models are more than familiar to me. In actuality, in 2009, I started work in Senate Staff working for a Republican Senator on the Environment and Public Works Committee. I worked with the staff group under Senator Inhofe, who was THE leader of climate skepticism in the US. I attended all the hearings, and certainly listened carefully to all sides. I will never forget the day when I brought back to my cubby the full testimony of Prof. Happer of Princeton, who argued that CO2 only blocks SOME frequencies of light, and that failure to account for different frequency bands and absorption invalidated the big climate models. All of us serious professionals had studied the current IPCC reports on climate, but I remembered nothing form them to invalidate Happer's argument. For a day or two, I felt, "Hey, maybe I CAN join more completely with my friends on the committee!" I certainly enjoyed being a serious, honest outlier, as I have always been for my whole life in science. This was one of my most intense once-in-a-lifetime experiences. (Though it is weird how MANY unlikely once in a lifetime experiences I have had.) But my conscience then ordered me to consider what other evidence I might have. I remembered a computing conference at Argonne (held in Chicago) where I got to present a new mathematical algorithm, which I had developed, applicable to any differentiable big mathematical model. (I posted my ccapter later at http://www.werbos.com/AD2004.pdf.) At that conference, I was surprised to learn that my algorithm actually HAD been used by one and only one of the big climate models. Many people had told me that all the big climate models were basically just "airball models," never calibrated to hard core time-series data. This guy explained how he used my method (which he did not give proper credit for!!) to calibrate HIS climate model to real time-series. The same guy (Prof. Carl Wunsch at MIT) also appeared in a propaganda video a family member had sent me, attacking all climate stuff, in which this same guy Carl Wunsch appeared, attacking Gore. And so, to check my facts in an honest way, I called Wunsch out of the blue by telephone. (It is amazing how often phone calls from the US Senate do get answered.) I asked him whether Happer's story was true. I was VERY deeply surprised (quite a day!!) when Wunsch got very emotional. I forget when I checked his web page, which also made part of the story clear. The folks who mace the tape basically snookered him, deliberately quoting him out of context, deliberately giving a grossly wrong impression. YES, he did have serious gripes about other climate models, and YES he was a bit of a curmudgeon. (Why else would he give more credit to folks closer to him than to a nonmember of the club developing an algorithm?) But NO, he did not mkae the equally biased assefrtions in the video or inHapper's testimony. Happer made strong statements about what is IN the climate models. "Sorry," said Wunsch, "but MY model certainly knows what a frequency is! And..." But even after all that, my position was: "OK, I believe the IPCC story is the best we have for now. But it only projects 5% loss in the 2100 GNP, with 75% probability, in the business as usual case. That's real, and market theory justifies a MODEST well-calibrated carbon fee, but NOT the Obama bill. INSTEAD, we should give priority to the security of fuel for cars and trucks, a much bigger national security priority anyway." I even drafted a bill to that effect, got it through Senate General Counsel, and brought it representing Specter to the Senate Majority Leader Reid. Reid had made many promises to Specter of what he would do if Specter changed parties, but Reid was a liar. The bill ( based on an upgrade of a bill from Inhofe and of Bush's EISA law) is posted at werbos.com/oil.htm. When the heartland institute started to schedule speakers saying "climate is only a 5% issue," and after I attended some great meetings at the Marshall Institute (and even spoke at one of their meetings, albeit of space and defense technology, another Specter are)... well... whatever. BUT THEN CAME ANOTHER LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE. IN 2009, I was on detail from my home institution, the NSF. NSF invited a crowd of us, late in 2009, to a large public talk back in Ballston (where I still live). The head of the Geosciences Directorate of NSF introduced Peter Ward as the nation's number one real frontline expert on the subject of mass extinctions of life on earth. There were a LOT of technical details I will spare you (until/unless you ask), but most of it was about field study techniques and results and ancient history. But he did show curves of past concentrations of CO2 by ... millennium... across the great extinctions. At the end of his talk, he showed us the current numbers, and the similarity. "It is my gut feeling that if we get 1000ppm, it will be a simple rerun. We all die." I knew the energy economics VERY well, enough to believe we ARE on a path to 1000ppm now. In many talks after that (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvteE6smrF0), I recalled that day. "The SMALLER shock for me was what he said. The BIGGER shock was the way the rest of the audience reacted. Some like it, some hated it. Was I the ONLY one who seriously honestly wanted to find out whether we are all going to die or not? Is he right or is he not? What is the truth? What will decide the outcome, how soon?" I spent a lot of time probing these questions, updating my understanding every year. And now, I am not relying much at all on those models your URL talks about. We have a lot of real, current time series data on Arctic and Antarctic, and new information on past extinctions in sources like Ward and Kirschvink and like Hazen (who probably would get respect from Inhofe!). As of THIS WEEK, I have gotten new information, which adds a few questions which DEMAND NEW RESEARCH, but which make me more worried than ever before, on a closer time schedule: http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2021/08/new-information-on-what-we-know-about.html This isn't about left or right. It's about survival. Didn't Ayn Rand say something about survival? (I met a lot of "right" lobbyists who reminded me a lot of the Taggarts, especially in aerospace.) Folks who talked about reducing regulation, even as they jiggered FERC to try to impose MORE state monopoly and reduced competition! But Reid lied to Pickens as much as he lied to us. Best of luck,

New information on what we know about how soon and how climate change might kill us all

This actually has a happy ending, MAYBE, if you read through to the end and take action different from what all the current climate activists are talking about. This is what I sent today to some folks I hope will be willing and able to do something: ============================================================ MOST URGENT: https://www.coasttocoastam.com/guest/ward-peter-6323/ The "Save the World" podcast just now, on ocean currents and the threat of human extinction by the worst types of climate risk, was a great dialogue, informative to all of us, even those of us who have worked hard to track these issues for decades with real science. NOTE THE URL above. I call it "urgent", not because it requires urgent action directly in the policy world. Rather... it is about an important radio broadcast COMING SOON. Peter told us that this is a national broadcast going out to millions of people -- with a heavy right-wing tilt, but that is one of the important audiences which needs to understand what is going on. They may also be a good venue for understanding how space technology could play a crucial role in averting these risks. Metta will probably be posting today's discussion soon on her general web site, https://youtube.com/c/ToSaveTheWorld Two main take away points hit ME hardest today: (1) Many people naturally assume that the scenario of death by H2S must be further off in time than sea level rise and whatnot. (Ward has a new book, published in German, on that issue.) "After all, if the PT extinction happened over millions of years, shouldn't we expect it to take a long time now?" No. Not really. At werbos.com/Atacama.pdf, I even have a slide on how it can be done overnight in an aquarium!!! Microbes can proliferate VERY quickly, once the conditions in the water cross a tipping point. (I think of it as a hypersurface in state space.) We all agreed that knowledge in all aspects of these threats are far less than what they could and should be, with even a moderate NSF-level focused effort on the right questions (though it would help to have Navy or NOAA data on more dimensions of what is happening, BOTH near Arctic AND Antarctic). In point 5 of my proposed action strategy, http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm, I include AQUARIUM LEVEL research to better understand exactly what the tipping point is. What are the conditions of regular chemistry (fertilization) and oxygen level (and maybe T and P, maybe) which separate conditions where the dangerous archaea go nuts and when they don't? And how fast do they go nuts when they do? We also agreed -- Peter can contact Lee Kump, one of the other crucial leading scientists on climate extinction, whose work is essential to all the issues we discussed today. We hope that he AND Peter can discuss these issues for Metta in a future podcast. (2) Stratified ocean is NOT ONLY about Antarctic/Humbolt/Pacific, what I have focused on the most. If the Gulf Stream conks out, it implies BOTH a freezing of Western Europe ("fimbulwinter") but ALSO stratified ocean in that region. Peter Ward, Lee Kump and I have all talked a lot about the "Great Dying", the Permian-Triassic mass extinction, based on H2S and radiation enough to kill every mammal on earth, based on H2S produced by archaea in the deep Pacific Ocean. But there was ANOTHER mass extinction, much smaller, based on H2S from the Arctic and North Atlantic, described in ANOTHER chapter in Ward's older book, Under a Green Sky. That was far less fatal. Large enough to wipe out all the LARGE mammals, but still leaving the mice and rats alone. (Or at least the aardvarks.) Such a small event, bad enough only to wipe out creatures like humans and cows, all over the earth. But since that is coming much sooner than what I have been talking about, maybe we should pay more attention. Most startling to me is how little we know about the TIMELINE for the cutting out of the Gulf Stream, to lead (immediately?) to fimbulwinter and stratified ocean in the local region. I was glad that Metta's guests expert in Arctic waters know that the changes in Gulf Stream due to fresh water pouring out more or less from Greenland is NOT the only (or even main ) effect we need to worry about, even though it was the dominant effect in the past. But when exactly will surface water temperatures, at the prevailing level of saltiness, cross the line to where heating does not increase the density of sea water any more? (That line is where the Gulf Stream conks out, a sharp tipping point coming soon.) HOW SOON? Is it decades or months? Or is it months for part of the year and just a few years for the whole year? We really need to know the exact timing, and control factors. ======================= =========================== By the way, we did discuss timing of what happens when H2S poison starts outgassing. I was very relieved for a few days when I first started reading this literature years ago, and learned that H2S outgassing from the oceans comparable to that of the worst mass extinctions in the past would still take a few thousand years to reach the level deemed as poisonous to humans. But as Peter Ward noted in the discussion today, people like Lee Kump worked out these aspects in some detail many years ago. The FIRST effect is a massive production of H2S byproducts in the atmosphere, some rising to the stratosphere, causing massive acid rain and radiation, within just a few decades, starting immediately. It is no coincidence that books depicting the Great Dying typically show drawings of barren muddy landscapes, trees mainly burned out and washed away. Phenomena like blindness and reproductive behavior disorders usually occur at H2S levels far less than outright death. Coming first to Western Europe? Best of luck. We really need it. Current COP26 work will do nothing to stop this, and the ocean economy mitigation efforts will either make this happen sooner (to EVERYONE) or have little effect; we do not yet know. See the R&D proposed under POINT 4 of http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm. But better market design and other types of new technology could prevent these problems at no cost or even a profit, if only the right information could get to the right place? (See points 1 to 3 of http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm, the kind of areas NSF actually hired me to work on from 1988 to 2015!). ============================================ Just for this blog post: I still believe that threats from bad syndromes on the emerging Internet of Things are even bigger and more imminent, but as I think over the Gulf Stream issue, I do start to wonder.Both might even come to a head in my own lifetime, old as I am!! Still, this was a break from new work crucial to the internet side, which requires science much harder than climate. After all, we had convection currents and aquaria in eighth grade science class! It amazes me how little our species seems to have digested that!! But getting the internet straight requires intelligent systems and quantum math beyond what they could teach me even in the Harvard PhD program in Applied math in the 1970s!!

Faith Versus Practice is like Theory Versus Experiment

 General Principles

Yesterday, on a discussion list, I wrote about the huge gaps I have seen between theory and practice in physics. Specifically, I talked about the type of physics called "QED," which addresses how quantum effects work in the realm  of electrons, protons, neutrons and electromagnetism. When I ran the "QMHP" research area at NSF, I had a chance to observe the greatest empirical work in the world in experimental research into those areas, but now I see huge gaps between that realm and the beliefs about quantum mechanics and physics which most people assume today. Based on what I saw at NSF, I believe that better understanding of QED physics is the most important challenge open to rigorous, fundamental physics today

In the realm of soul and spirit, I see a similar gap. Many people have talked about the gap between people's BELIEFS and people's ACTIONS. Many of us believe that prayer or meditation are important ACTIONS they take in their spiritual life. This  morning, in my own daily morning meditation, I see more clearly how we need to state and remember some basic principles.

Faith and Practice In My Life
Forty years ago, I decided to join a local Quaker Meeting, affiliated with Baltimore Yearly Meeting (BYM), which has strong ties both with Friends General Conference (FGC) and Friends United Meeting (FUM). To create a kind of social contract or agreement, to allow diverse people to work together, they agree on an official document (updated at times) called "Faith and Practice." Some people come because of what they believe, their Faith. Others, like me, come because of practice. We all try to work together, positively, for many reasons, but I came for practice.

 
When I travel to Asia, I often say: "If I lived in your nation, I probably would affiliate with a different religious institution. This wasn't a declaration of what my beliefs are, which I state in my papers. It was a choice of practice. Practice usually requires that we connect with other people. There are churches in the US who follow great practices, but with FGC Quakers I am not making a false declaration about my beliefs." At http://www.werbos.com/religions.htm and http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm I discuss what my beliefs were in 2019 and in 2021, but I also give links to photos of temples and shrines in Japan which I connected to in 2019, which I would connect with more if I lived there. In India, I actually accepted basic initiation into one of the orders of yoga. (Some others in our local Meeting have done the same.) The first of those Shinto Temples was called the Temple of Connection  by some.

 
LCD: A Core Practice
Yesterday in our local Quaker "Meeting for Worship", I summarized what the three real pillars are of our practice: an emanation of light, like an "LCD" light. (It is OK to smile in Quaker meetings, and many did at this point.) L for Listening, C for Connection, and D for discernment.
None of these are things we just hear about in kindergarten, and then forget. None of these are things any human can claim to have mastered completely.

[Exactly after I typed that sentence, and settled down to a breakfast of Dahi yogurt and blueberries, I decided to listen to the background. What popped was a video on eco India. That fits my message and practice so well I have to add it!!! But it appeared directly on DW,

and this nay not be exactly the right choice: Eco India - The Environment Magazine | Eco India | DW | 02.07.2021]

All of us humans are challenged to learn better and better how to do better on these three keys, the L and the C and the D. "This year," I said yesterday, "C is especially prominent. Many of us have been challenged to upgrade our skills in making spiritual connection. Our very lives are powered by those spiritual connections. We depend on C for our very life! " [No, the life in our physical body will not just disappear if that cuts out, but I for one expect I would suffer from "failure to thrive" if the daily infusion of light, life and love should be cut off.]

 
In all three areas, we are called to push as hard as we can, but no harder, to strengthen and exercise the skill. If we push as hard as we can, as in strenuous physical exercise, we will feel some pain, some growing pains and some confusion. Thus we are also called to learn more and more self awareness and self control to prevent negative irrational reactive emotions which could confuse and misdirect us. We are all called to do this, here and now....

 
[This was our first "hybrid meeting", with many of us in the meeting house and many shown as Zoom images on the wall. I did not comment on that example, visible in plain sight, but after the silent period we certainly discussed it.]

I was very silent before I stood up and spoke that message. I had hoped others would voice the thought (as they often did at previous times, with previous thoughts). In silent meditation, I had tried to reach out to higher intelligence and ask for explanations of some points.... including many aspects and examples of connections on my mind.

MORNING AFTER
Almost every day, I begin by trying to attain the highest level of "meditation" I am capable of, trying to connect better with the noosphere, the cosmos, the Spirit of the Deep. This was when I was more able to listen to the response of higher intelligence to the questions I projected out there so hard at Meeting yesterday.

As always, the complexity of what came from higher intelligence, and my own brain and soul, and the other inputs we have access to, is far too great to do justice to even in a long blog post. I remembered how I now have to get used to the idea that many of my most important thoughts can only be voiced at that level, going to the noosphere and others that way, simply because there is too much and too many to fit in narrower channels like this computer.

 
An exercise

As part of this session, I was reminded of a very great Zen exercise (a Practice!), which I performed often and respect deeply even though I am shocked by some of the dangerous false Beliefs of Bodhidharma.

 
That exercise begins with a type of exercise familiar to many schools of Western mysticism and yoga: focus your whole awareness in this part of your body. (Foot? heart? Solar plexus?Upper head? A few inches above it? A cloud a few feet away?) BE there in that place. Feel what you feel when you locate your whole awareness there. Then shift...

BUT THEN the Zen script asks: "WHO is doing the focusing? Who is looking first to one place and then to the next? No, do not just turn around, keep looking forward but FEEL back, and feel deep, to WHO is doing the looking."

 
This morning, it became like the same thing at a higher level. I can meditate and feel awareness from my personal viewpoint, my own personal self or soul. I try to gate with higher intelligence, to try to share some of what it offers in the gating activity, and see what life feels like from its point of view more than I do in normal everyday life. And then suddenly: I can see through my own self soul... and the other within limits... but there is value in coming back to the... Self?... which can switch perspectives.

 
More thoughts

There are practical concrete schisms between parts of our noosphere, the cosmos and our very best efforts to understand the ultimate truths. These were major themes this morning.

One theme was LCD, and prayer. Some friends are very serious about listening (to perceive) and praying (to send out a request).

 
Some would meditate hard on the question: "What does "God" (higher intelligence) really want, and how can I  make sense of and fit with his or her plan?"

 
So look at it visually. We can try to exchange information, to input (listen) or output (request or articulate), either to our external environment or to our body. These are all important aspects of practice. But there is also information to the buffer, to a shared information space between us and higher intelligence, essential to our hope of seeing an honest answer to the very tricky kinds of questions I was posing yesterday.

I also remembered the good old oracle of Delphi: a practice where people did not only request favors, but requested insight or information. Failure to ask the right question often leads to endless confusion, at all levels of life!!!

Long, long ago, I understood that the "plans" of a higher order intelligence would be too complicated to state clearly and reliably to lower levels of intelligence. Even in good Quaker Meetings, we expect some people to be guided in one direction, and others in others. The Meeting urges people not to confuse personal, current leadings with guidance which everyone  would benefit from. But if we develop our intelligence, our arsenal of universal concepts and representations, and our flexibility, we can serve as better channels of a more accurate understanding, updated every day, and thus be more energized. 

This does not require that we give up our personal human values and feelings, but by working with the bigger tide we have a much better chance of getting where we really prefer to go: a Pareto optimum. (This has some relation to the old Rosicrucian version of Alychymical marriage.)
When they asked me "Are you a person of the book?", I still say, "Yes, the book by Von Neumann and Morgenstern" (as interpreted and explained on my web pages, as best I can, always in need of update and explanation).

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Later that day:

In yesterday's message, I stressed that we are called to reach out more and better, but NOT to erode our own core spiritual connections and foundations.

For example, when we reach out to the left of us, we can also reach out to the right of us, and even help improve connections between left and right! After all, we are all part of the same noosphere. That is who we really are, even when we try to listen to the cosmos and the night sky!

Like neurons inside a brain, we, inside the noosphere of this solar system, live or die based on our connections to others in that noosphere, and to the noosphere itself. 

A few weeks ago, one of the BLM people urged us to resist "perfectionism." Yes, we need to connect better with people who cannot afford to spend energy on details we might feel obliged to address ourselves. But many of us also need to remember the need to connect better with people like those who truly appreciate higher mathematics. This week was especially challenging for me personally, as I learned to respect more fully their need for connection, as we need to work out workable details for challenges like the internet of the future. Without getting those details right, we might well all die. I am very deeply grateful to them for their patience as I struggle with this.

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

Next day: (Tuesday, 7/13/21)

From the voice of Loki: "Ask not what God wants. Ask how much he is willing to pay for it." Wild as this sounds, it may have a lot more truth in it than most people are willing to face up to. ALL intelligent systems, from brains to noospheres to systems of collective intelligence -- even universal optimizers based on Lagrange-Euler equations -- are governed in the end by tradeoffs. Some of us have seen things which might be viewed as miracles, but they are never free, even if the price is in a different level of economy. This is an aspect of what it means that our souls are parts of a larger system.

It reminds me of how I adapted to working at NSF, learning to live within budget constraints as painlessly and efficiently as possible, still focusing on the big goals at stake.

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

And next: 7/14/21

In morning meditation, as in Quaker Meeting, some messages are really meant for everyone (to be transmitted and discussed later by whatever mix of channels works). The one today was mainly for a few people, like me

and part of my family, though logically it has some connection to everyone.

In the 1970s and 1980s, when I lived in Maryland with children in the house, I often thought of "This episode of Sesame Street is brought to you by the letter..." Different morning meditation periods, and different days seemed to have different themes, fitting the old image of this whole world as a school.

This post started with LCD, letters important to all of us. EVERY soul in this noosphere connects to others, like neurons in a brain, and our very lives depend on the exchange of "energy" and information with other neurons, connecting us to all different parts of the noosphere. But, just as different cells in the brain tend to learn different pieces of information, and develop different connections (some longer-distance, some shorter), some of us put special weight on one aspect of C which I glossed over quickly above:

the aspect of learning universal concepts or representations which strengthen connection and strengthen our value to higher intelligence (noosphere, cosmos, spirit of the deep). 

So for me this morning, the letter U for understanding or unique plays a central role. [oops: TODAY these ae the "U" in play. But there is another U, Von Neumann's cardinal utility function, which is just as important. For another time of day.] 

My experiences as a program director at NSF 1988-2015 are still of such great value to me in expanding and organizing my own understanding! For example, in my first week, as I set up a review pane to do justice to certain advanced proposals and thinking, I felt a huge reaction which I will never forget: "I have been worrying so much about the world having too many people. [Yes, it still does, in numerical terms.] But when I need to find the people who can really understand THIS aspect, and THAT aspect, and THIS central issue of global importance... it seems as if there are not enough of us! People with unique understanding (UU) are so essential to the health of science, of truth, and of the noosphere itself! I often feel I can "see" a kind of hidden tree or network of those very special souls, past and future, connecting key ideas and insights necessary to really integrate anyone's understanding. Lately, those people are often unknown to 99% or 99.999% of humanity, or grossly misunderstood if known, but important to integrate.

But this blog is not the time/place to name names, even though they figure prominently in my last few days. Even though I woke up from an assumption dream where a powerful and enlightened person had to revise plans (we all do!!) do to a U U aspect he had not really known or accounted for, not about me... 

But I CAN repeat a useful lesson I learned at NSF, which I often recall and relive.

"In this information economy, many of us are knowledge workers of one kind or another.

There are three essential duties of ANY knowledge worker: to input, to output, and process or add value in creating new knowledge. ALL THREE are ESSENTIAL and NECESSARY for everyone, and the total value is roughly the product of the three." Some were better at

one of the three than others; diversity was crucial, such as connections between those creating new ideas or technologies and those better at education and passing them on. 

That applies both in our mundane information economy and in the noosphere itself!

What We Really Know and Need to Learn about Climate and AI Threats to Human Existence

What do we REALLY know today about threats to the very existence of the human species, and where do climate and AI fit?

Quick summary: there is important news about climate, well documented, worse than before, but as a true devotee of truth, I will explain why, and what we should be doing on this and other threats to human species existence. There is also news about AI you will not see elsewhere yet,

HOW CAN WE ORGANIZE AND BE SURE OF WHAT WE KNOW?

Example of a Best Practice: IEEE

Most of you know that issues involving electricity and electric power are not just something to wire up at random after a great conversation in the local bar. Many of you even know that there is a great coordinated world organization, https://www.ieee.org/, which connects, evaluates and maintains what is known all over the world on these issues. It offers a two-way system of communication, essential to prevent people at the top from turning members into useless parrots.

Because the production of electricity is one of the two biggest sources of greenhouse gasses, we should be considering the best information available to IEEE on how to fix that aspect at minimum cost, as effectively as possible.

I was delighted this very morning, as I started to type this, to see an email from the President of IEEE, announcing that I will receive their Frank Rosenblatt Award , for outstanding contributions to biologically and linguistically motivated computational paradigms, with the following citation: “For development of backpropagation and fundamental contributions to reinforcement learning and time series analysis.” That came from an extensive review I did not even know about until this morning!

Example of Another Best Practice: US NSF

Some of you know that the National Science Foundation of the US has often been the world leader in the pursuit of truth in science, engineering and education, following the great vision and charter of Vannevar Bush, a man we should never ever forget or take for granted. As with IEEE, two-way networks of communication and review, and high strategic goals, using the best computer technology available for management, have been crucial to the high level of success often achieved.

In a recent podcast, the man who created the IEEE Neural Network Society in the 1980s (at a time when the lead textbooks of computer science and AI assured us that neural networks like deep learning could never do much) asked me for my views of how NSF has achieved such great success, despite inevitable human imperfections. I have seen NSF at times as the greatest true temple of truth in human history so far. There is no way that any government in our world, including the UN, could cope effectively with the new existential threats before us without working hard to reinvent, expand and build on these unique examples.

Today’s Best Practice for the Future of Humanity Including Threats to Our Existence

I wish more of you knew about another best practice, created by another visionary whom I have had the privilege to work with, Jerry Glenn, who is to futurism what Vannevar Bush was to basic science. He created the Millennium Project, the greatest two way international network of communication in existence, developing, analyzing and integrating scenarios for the human future, cutting across all the major sectors. That includes threats to the very existence of humanity, but also includes other important issues. Jerry and I have learned what we can from many other very serious efforts to understand threats to human existence, but we agree that humanity needs much more than anything which exists yet. That is why we and others with the Millennium Project have been working hard lately to try to propose and grow a new system of networks, ultimately like IEEE and NSF, focused like a laser on the issue of the survival of the human species.

Here is where we stand now on those efforts, especially regarding the possibility of climate change so serious what it would kill all humans, and regarding emerging threats with the internet which are even larger and more urgent.

 

Message on climate and AI extinction threats I sent to the Millennium Project international coordinators this past week (lightly edited):

 

We have often discussed two great threats of extinction of the entire human species --

Threats related to Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), for which Jerry rightly pushes for a new comprehensive study (with plans to connect to the UN General Assembly), and "climate extinction", for which John Kerry and Guterres appeared a few months ago before the UN Security Council to push for a new effort there. Personally, I will do what I can to support both efforts, because they SHOULD support and reinforce each other in the end, and because I know enough to feel sure they are the two biggest threats to the continuation of human life. (Misuse of biotech and of nuclear tech are next biggest, in my view, but climate and internet are big enough to discuss in one email.)

 

I strongly support Jerry's AGI effort, for many reasons. First, it is the area where misinformation is most extreme, in advising policy. New studies and networks of information are most essential there, exactly because the information now flowing to policy makers is so far from what is known. Second, it  builds on your work on the future of work, which is one of the essential areas where changes in the internet (including Internet of Things and human-computer interaction and cybersecurity and quantum technology  COMBINED with AGI, which integrates it all) seriously threaten our very existence, if we do not get it right. It can also be a great ennobler of human life, but only if we push even harder in expanding our understanding of fundamental realities.

 

BUT:

 

The climate future is ALSO a rightful, important part of futurism, where decision makers and stakeholders need better information.

 

I was very happy to learn yesterday that that essential part of futurism IS being covered in an integrated way much better than I would have thought from world policy debates (including even the recent G7 discussions):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Jq23mSDh9U

 

They put a lot of money and research into organizing and mapping the key issues, and they have started to get into key points which most of the world does not know yet. It is a huge step forward. They should be congratulated for STARTING a discussion which needs to be expanded and fixed. 

It reminds me of when I worked at the US National Science Foundation (NSF), where special support was always needed for the people who START settling a whole new continent, even when they get about half of it wrong on the first cut.

 

In the video, they clearly and explicitly state the need for a new office under the UN Security Council, just as Kerry and Gutteres asked, and for it to BUILD on what they have started but GO FURTHER. 

 

Unlike Greta Thunberg (whom they show and support), they work hard to explain WHY and HOW it is really about the extinction of the human species, and WHAT WE NEED TO ADDRESS to reduce the risks. 

 

I was especially happy to see their discussion of the importance of human land use (our sources of food!!) and of fertilizers. They even mentioned nitrates and phosphates. But they were not aware of the VERY best new, hardest core scientific information:

See chapter 12 of https://www.amazon.com/New-History-Life-Discoveries-Evolution-ebook/dp/B00OZM4AN2/

That book, only $12 on kindle, gives the most definitive overview now available of what science really has learned about the history of life on earth. (Also a guide to the future and related issues.) Chapter 12 reports on really crucial new work by Professor Lee Kump (https://www.ems.psu.edu/about/who-we-are/meet-dean) demonstrating that PHOSPHATE CONCENTRATIONS IN THE OCEAN predicts and explains the biggest extinction of life on earth far better than earlier theories favored by the oil industry. Still, the youtube video cites phosphates AND nitrates, which is probably what really drives the threat to humanity, when combined with "stratified ocean", which Ward has told us about in the past. 

 

The video does repeat the old mantra that "1.5 degrees C" is the key warning flag, or thermometer, for the risk of human extinction. It's a nice goal to keep in mind, but it is not the most definite warning of extinction risks (and of things we need to change to improve our chances). For now, I see ocean stratification (best guess about 30 years off) and fertilizers in the ocean as the best warning signal we have now, but more and better focused  research is possible and essential to get it right; see "point 5" of  http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm. (Thanks again to Youngsook and Jerry for the invitation to their TV session in 2019 which was a great start at the time.)

 

The discussion of ocean acidification is a worthwhile issue, but NOT so important to extinction as they thought, based on those parts of Ward's earlier book which now appear out of date. 

There are also important CONNECTIONS between climate extinction and the bigger AGI issues:

  http://www.werbos.com/How_climate_extinction_and_internet_connect.htm

 

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

Regarding AGI, the recent Putin-Biden discussions after G7 were VERY encouraging for those of us who view cybersecurity (and quantum technology and AGI, which are closely linked to it) as one of the most urgent key pieces we all need to get right, and need to learn how to cooperate on. But I see no way we could get it right, and avoid real extinction of the human species, unless we also connect it to deeper and broader collaboration with China. In the case of climate, the "extinction" threat should be clear enough to anyone honest enough to look at the new solid information from science, but with AGI/IOT/new-internet the threats are actually larger and more imminent; the problem is that they are obvious and glaring only to those who know how they work, with real technical roots.

Best of luck to us all. We all need it.

 

Should You Believe It? Important Follow-ons on Climate and AGI

There have already been some important follow-ons, starting to build new bridges to very important players.

For example, Hector Casanueva, editor of the  Chilean Council of Foresight and Strategy magazine, is publishing the message I sent. He provides a focal point for important work on climate and AI all over South America, which is proving out real world technologies meeting much higher standards than some of the stakeholders funded in the existing climate efforts around the world.

There are also climate skeptics who wonder whether chapter 12 of Ward and Kirschvink really is the best up to date story. In fact, I am deeply impressed by the quality of work I have seen led by Robert Hazen of the Carnegie Institute in DC, just a few miles from my home where I am typing this. HIS more recent seminal work points to volcanoes as a cause of mass extinctions in the past. However, even though Hazen is a truly great leader in his field, and I have often wished to meet him (and Kump and Ward) some day, there is no single human on earth who knows all aspects of all the sciences in play. Hazen’s recent videos and books include strong praise for Kirschvink, and do not argue against the great recent book by Ward and Kirschvink. I do not agree with everything in that book, but I HAVE sent messages urging organization of a new, fair workshop with leadership from Ward, Kump and Hazen to discuss some of the extinction threat issues (and required future research) in more detail. I even cc’ed people I know in NSF and DOD, and folks working with Warner’s Senate Intelligence Committee, urging world class honest scientific organization of the workshop, following what we learned from the very best success stories we had at NSF.

 

But… when a skeptic friend asked me about this, I did a quick web search on more recent work by Kump:

Using scholar.google.com, advanced search (triple hamburger),

I see:

https://www.pnas.org/content/113/9/2360

https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/bitstream/handle/10871/39268/Combined%205-14.pdf?sequence=1

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/2018GB006061

No reason here to change the definitive story in that book!

 

 

On the AGI side, I certainly paid a lot of attention to Warner’s support of new funding to “strengthen US leadership in three key new strategic priorities: AI, cybersecurity and quantum technology.” If we interpret “AI” to mean “AGI” (the most powerful general AI), it hit me that two of these are areas I led at NSF before my retirement in 2015!

More precisely, the “new AI” came from work I did and funded (https://mindmatters.ai/podcast/ep139/ ). I created and led another new area  https://arxiv.org/abs/0709.3310 which got deeper into the quantum theory used in advanced electronics and photonics than any other program on earth, pointing to new opportunities in Qunatum Information Science and Technology (QuIST) far beyond the Quantum Turing Machines which dominate almost all research funded now by the US government.

See the many links at the bottom of http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm. Also see the new unification I posted on youtube this year (see the slide below). For a more intuitive picture of what this means, see this recent interview discussion in Canada.

 

Will the folks supporting Warner’s new directions actually fund work beyond the narrow limits of current US efforts in QuIST?

I felt strong support for a statement by Preskill this morning, stressing the need for new directions to be guided by people who really know the math. That’s absolutely right. But in THIS area, there  are crucial new directions in the math which have not yet reached “the usual suspects” in the US. Many in China and even in electric power know many crucial aspects of this and cybersecurity which have yet to flow to US policy. I hope Jerry’s UN efforts will provide a venue for the same dissemination of this technology to nations now lagging so far behind they don't even know how far… like the US.

 

 

 

 

 

 

One More Experience of Higher Consciousness With Age

This morning -- I worry whether my blog posts on higher consciousness may have been misleading, and in need of correction. As I look at what I said from a distance... the errors they might encourage are actually quite subtle, from the viewpoint of logic, but in real life, they seem important. They do affect my PSI plans/strategy, and all of us should have SOME type of PSI plan or strategy, informal as it may be and in need of continued updating.

I have described the time "from age 70 to 90 or death" as an "age of uncertainty". Is it smooth sailing until a sudden easy transition, or.. unpredictable jerky changes in life, like an old car losing parts in a way hard to predict? 

A positive view: is it Death on the Installment Plan (DOIP) or Duality on the Installment Plan? I have written here about various types of "cosmic consciousness" (CC) experience which I MAINLY had in bed when fully conscious in the early morning. 

I mentioned something my little sister told me she read, a long time ago: "Am I Li Po who just woke from a dream of being a butterfly, or am I a butterfly who just started a new dream as Li Po?" Am I one level of life in CC, and a lower level more and more late in the day? Does DOIP mean I am becoming a bigger "butterfly" at CC times, but a lower human later in the day, a kind of division of states, moving slowly from alchymical marriage (me as union of "beast and angel") to alchymical... not divorce, as the beast will simply die even if I take reasonable care of it?

AT ALL TIMES of day, I still remember the important "Scylla and Charybdis" challenge which all sane humans should always be aware of and try to manage, at "all times" like never swaying so far to left or right that we fall over. THIS challenge is -- not to overestimate or underestimate what one could accomplish, with what one has now. Not too much overestimating one's powers or strengths, but not falling into false helplessness as an excuse for not living up to one's natural .. whatever... dharma?

At normal times of day, memory of CC and times of greater capability should support thiskind of balance. You remember you can do much better, but also remember not to overglorify the limited perceptions one has at the time. I do not do Irish Cream any evenings any more, but this kind of "staying balanced by memory" was especially notable on such days when I did.

But at CC times... as that evolved and grew until this morning... slowly humility required me to remember the principle of "partial gating" I have described here before. I can gate to a level of consciousness which is much higher than my normal best, AND YET IS ITSELF finite. A kind of "spirit of the deep" connection, extremely important. The challenge is to strengthen and manifest that connection, even as becoming more clear that the individual person side of that (the "me" more or less, noetic as it is) is NOT identical to what it is channeling.

This morning, a small mundane but real experience forces me to focus a little differently, and adds just a little to the requirement for humility not as a social gesture but as part of truth and sanity. 

The small thing -- a friend called this small thing "a pain in the butt."

Earlier this year, the "old car" had more and more problems seeing, then tooth problems, and then a terrible A1C blood test result just on the day before a covid vaccination shot I thought would start a more normal life. The eyes are back to normal, thanks to posterior capsulectomy (a complex story, and thanks to especially good doctors). Teeth close enough (likewise). HOWEVER: just a few weeks, when my wife Luda suggested how I might help her clean walls of a room in our house (as she prepared a bigger restoration).. I bent over, and suddenly felt a pain in right hip. I decided to rest a bit (not the worst pain in my life!).. but it seemed to be a discrete change, a bad one, not yet over despite all kinds of normal approaches to cope with it.

The story of that groping.. not yet over... would not interest most people (except those facing the same). Bottom line: THIS early morning... lying in bed... sheer physical pain sure affected "the beast" and affected even how well I could link to the spirit of the deep or CC. To REDUCE attention to physical pain, it is more realistic now to get put of bed, and get into a more sustainable sitting position, a position controlled by the awareness habits I have been trying to learn more and more lately. No total CC now. Now the best I can do... I can do right now, in a sitting position on a firm chair in front of the laptop where I am typing this. 

Even before I gently moved out of bed (at 540AM, when I would usually be starting an hour of deep CC activity)... I did remember bits of a video Luda showed me ... months ago... of a Japanese Buddhist who alternates between zazen type of meditation, aiming at CC with no inputs from the mundane body, and a moving kind of meditation, still aiming as high into CC as possible WHILE ALSO maintaining a balance and coupling to mundane activity. 

Where does this lead? PART of CC has been activity DIRECTLY on PSI levels ... levels which connect us after all to other people and to the rest of the universe, and even to some PK connections to it. (A little gentle qi to try to ease the muscle sensitivity and pain? That has value, but does not make me an immortal. If I had THAT level of skill, I would not be down here in the kitchen chair right now! I think. Unless it was called of me, here and now, to write THIS?) 

Another part of CC has been planning and linking... usually a list of things I can or should do after I get up... and some links to help. And ways of looking to stay as positive as I can, which I deeply want to do. Our neighbor says it is "faith, family, friends FFF" which keeps him motivated enough at a deep level to stay positive (and to WANT to stay positive, for all their sake).

I tend to really the old Rosicrucian mantra "life light love (LLL)," and of course draw energy form that realization. In either case, I recall the saying "To integrate or disintegrate, those are the choices." To flow positive as best one can, while one can.

But now... no great plans for this day, except a very small Quaker Meeting in the evening where FFF and LLL are easy even for a late night fuzzy eyed mortal to see.

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

Six days later: That day was unusually bad for me health-wise. On Tuesday, I talked to my new GP, and

then read: https://www.spine-health.com/conditions/herniated-disc/lumbar-herniated-disc

Maybe I had one or even two more days when pain in bed kept me from my usual "Cosmic Consciousness" (CC) hour in the early morning. I am so glad that came back and seems likely to stay! Glad because there is so much of that unique work which needs to be done, which requires a two way partnership between my old but full old brain and Higher Intelligence. Lately, when I try to discuss it with Luda, I find it more comfortable to use the simple phrase "Higher Intelligence". This morning I said: when and if we connect better, we can connect like two eyes to better see what is there. 

Our neighbor Ed includes "prayer" a lot in his regular spiritual practice. Is "prayer" when we speak to Higher Intelligence (or Intelligences??), or is it when we listen? I expect it should be a balance of both.

"Why should God listen at all?"

Well, I remember meditating deeply in a sacred onsen (hot bath) in the center of Shinto, thinking about how my foot is to me as I am to our noosphere. Yes, I do push it around a lot, and should, but I should also be aware and sensitive and learn from it to, and consider its needs. This week, I think more about my hip and my lower spine, but TWO-WAY awareness is essential. That is the path of nature and it is what my new four-fold vision of reality predicts. (That vision does include our local noosphere of course, and more.) 

The deepest and most complete attunement (or "assumption" or "avatarhood") state.. helps each side of the connection be more fully aware of the other, and connected, yet also aware that it is CONNECTION, not an identity. Like two "persons" within a larger symbiotic mind. 

But this week, it seems I must do more deep connections with parts of my body, in order to maximize CC hopes for the future of my (admittedly short) mortal life. (Twenty years is short by those standards, but it is not as if I know the number.)

Image of nature in our solar system as a giant whale

1. Why we Need Images of Nature 

Recently I updated my web site to reflect my new understanding of how four levels of reality work and connect with each other: 

(1) the Einsteinian level which I now understand as most fundamental; 

(2) the David Deutsch level, the best mainstream quantum field theory, the version which has passed many experimental tests in the realm of Quantum Information Science and Technology; 

(3) Von Neumann's approach to explaining consciousness, mind and life as we know them in mundane life as the result of emergent statistical patterns embedded in Boltzmann and Bellman equations; and 

(4) the spiritual level, from PSI to cosmos. Minds, Brains, Souls in a unified new mathematical viewpoint explaining what seem like contradictions between objective reality and first person experience.

 I have never claimed to have a COMPLETE understanding of level 4. That would be worse than a biologist claiming to know every species possible on earth and elsewhere! But if we look hard at all the evidence before us, we DO seem to know SOME things. And so, I believe that 

--  we ARE part of a "solar system noosphere," a connected organism reaching at least from deep mud under the oceans of the earth all the way to the sun, and maybe some more in our area  

--  AND that this organism has a "brain," a nervous system, making heavy use of ordinary matter (electrons, protons, neutrons, and photons, whatever these are) AND of "dark matter" (which we can now see in photographs at a scale of many light-years, which includes both "particles" and "force fields").  

--  And that most or all of us are in a state of symbiosis with that "solar bra in." 

--  And finally, that Carl Jung's Red Book  includes an excellent first person account of HIS conscious awareness of his connections with that brain, and more. 

All is in the updated webpage (except for two slides which have yet to upload). BUT: what do we know of OTHER minds beyond us mundane earth animals and the solar brain? That is an area of huge ignorance. And what do we know about the DETAILS of our solar system brain, what is its spirit of telos, and how it connects to our level of life? There is so much we do NOT yet know, which may become easier to understand, bit by bit, if we clear our vision by at least looking at reality here. By using both science and first person observation, integrated together. 

 Jung tells us a lot about how to achieve integration. He shows how greater consciousness of ourselves, of our connections with our own preverbal mind as well as the noosphere, depends a lot on how well we use not just words but images, analogies, feelings, and even music. There is not just one true image we can use, but many, which can blend together like photographs of a 3D object taken from different angles. 

 2. The whale: one good specific image or analogy to represent our local solar system organism 

 My favorite images of our local solar system noosphere brain are a tree (a special type of tree) and an image of the sun which some Shinto associate with Amaterasu. (It helps that I see both of them most of the time on most days through our back doors and windows. No, I don't confuse any tree with the whole noosphere, but most of them ARE alive, and can be used as gateways of the mind.) I have also mentioned the Jewish star and the kabbala of Luria. 

But yesterday I was reminded of the value of ANOTHER image or analogy, our local noosphere organism as something like a great whale. My thinking started in a Quaker Meeting by Zoom, where someone talked about climate: "We should not underestimate the power and intelligence on Nature on our planet, which may help us survive problems which we humans seem unable to solve ourselves." Then two people spoke of the Netflix video "My Octopus teacher." 

We humans are the peak intelligence of a whole mountain range full of species with intelligence on earth, but there are two other whole mountain ranges of animal brains on earth: (1) brains of octopi and beyond, like giant squids; and (2) hive minds of ants and bees (and beyond?). The giant squids reminded me of earth history, and of the giant sperm whale, whose brain is an interesting example of how complex brains can evolve and work. 

 The sperm whale has the largest brain on earth. But how INTELLIGENT is that whale? Scientists debate that, and study that, but do not truly know how to integrate what they know. (Most scientists do not even know how mammal brains work; the upgraded link on my web page above points to very recent explanation of that. Pilot whales are not the same as sperm whales, but are studied more because it is easier. ) 

YES, the whale has a big brain, but it also has a huge body. How much of that huge brain is really just coordinating small pieces of a huge body, lots of neurons, but at what LEVEL of mind? And so, what of our noosphere? It has a huge nervous system, but how much is restricted to local boring tasks? Hazen's book the Story of Earth suggests that Amaterasu is like a brilliant woman who just spent a billion years (1.8 to 0.8 billion years ago) cleaning out the stinkiest, most poisonous giant toilet within lightyears. How do we strike up a relation with HER, and what kind of mood is she in? (Ward and Kirschvink give a similar picture, all backed by very hard science.) But then I think of the sperm whale. It too spends ever so many years just eating and metabolizing. 

But there are also those whale songs, which many say can reach thousands of miles, a very complex social system requiring and displaying intelligence. Lack of hands is a serious limiter, but solar noospheres do not have that problem. It took a long time to de-sulfur earth's oceans (in 1.8-0.8 billion years ago, "the boring billion"), but that does prove that nothing else was happening. 

 It amuses me to remember I published a paper in an obscure place, the Rosicrucian Digest, in 1977 or so, before I even knew about dark matter. Based on recent discussions with Schwinger and his TA Chaikin, I considered how particles like tachyons with negative mass-energy would not only fit their models, but would predict a kind of cosmos-wide ocean of energy and matter, where big organisms would evolve, analogous to whales. I even received a letter from Tryon  saying that this paper inspired his own next thoughts about how things work in our universe. But now that I think of it, sperm whales are carnivores, which is how they evolved brains bigger than what other whales have. (Humans and wolves have a similar relation to cows and deer). We really have no idea what mix of species exist on that scale of length in our cosmos. And how does the Spirit of the Deep change the picture?