could a simple experiment lay to rest the old idea of metaphysical observers?

Does the current state of real experiments in quantum foundations
already make it totally obsolete and wrong to talk about "metaphysical
observers" the way that Copenhagen people do?

My wife rightly keeps reminding me that I sometimes jump ahead too
much, without really cleaning up the elementary points which people
need to understand and justify more completely first.

And so.. I have good practical reasons, I think, for discounting
metaphysical observers, but maybe it would be useful to do actual
experiments to really nail down the point in an easier way to
understand. Since ... is not SO far away from Professor Yamamoto
(emeritus Stanford), it is possible that he might have ideas for THAT
kind of experiment, as I will explain.

Let us begin by asking WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENS in a very simple kind of
experiment: we have a source of photons emitting light at a certain
rate, at a certain (linear) polarization. That light is sent to a
polarizer, after which there is a detector, and a human looks at the
readout from the detector. For simplicity, assume the photon has an
initial polarization of angle tau, while the polarizer is tilted to
want angle theta to pass through.

It is well-known that the intensity of light at the detectors will be
cos**2(tau - theta), so we know how the experiment comes out. But
there are fiv e theories of what is happening here, which need to be
tested against each other (in DIFFERENT experiments).

According to the old metaphysical Heisenberg version (even if updated
a bit), the wave function of the photon BEFORE the polarizer is just a
nice pure wave,
for polarization tau, with a wave function denoted as |tau>.. The
polarizer then
performs a "unitary operation," rotating the wave function. What comes
out is the wave function a|theta>+b|0>, where |0> means "vacuum state
(no photon there), where a is some complex number like cos(tau-theta)
and where |a|**2+|b|**2=1.

In the Heisenberg theory, what comes out of the detector is ALSO a
mixed state, with a|detection>+b|no-detection>, if it is a perfect
detector. The wave function "collapses" into a human seeing a
detection or a human seeing no detection, only when a human actually
looks at what comes out of the detector.

So that's theory number 1. Let me jump to theory number 3, KQED, my
understanding of the best mainstream version of QED actually used
today. According to KQED, what comes out of the polarizer is ALREADY
collapsed.
What comes out is a density operator, representing a simple classical
probability of |a|**2 that the wave function coming out is just
|theta> and a probability of |b|**2 that nothing comes out at all. In
fact, all the well-known "predictions of quantum mechanics" for the
classic Bell's Theorem experiments used this assumption in doing the
calculations. (I have papers at arxiv which review those calculations
in detail.)

I have put a lot of effort into lobbying for two experiments which
would decide which is true, theory 3 or theory 4 (which I haven't
mentioned yet in THIS post),
but what about deciding which is true, theory 1 or theory 3? (No, it's
not just a matter of interpretation.) What about a possible theory 2,
where the polarizer is unitary but the detector is not?

In fact, there are physical consequences to the idea that |theta> and |0> may be
superposed, like entangled in a way, together. So by testing those
consequences, could we lay theory 1 to rest in a way clear to
everyone, once and for all?

Since theory 1 strikes me as silly, for many reasons, I haven't put
much effort into this myself, and I don't plan to. But since theory 1
is such an article of religious faith for so many people, maybe it
would be good for SOMEONE to aim for such an experiment. It is even
conceivable to me that a very clear experiment has already been done,
and not published because it would be seen by some as a "negative
result."

Above all, I think I remember seeing some paper by Yamamoto, a highly
respected researcher, talking about exploiting states of the form
a|theta>+b|0> in quantum computing. Could it be that HIS lab has
examined this? Perhaps it is a simple matter of persuading people in
his group that results they already have SHOULD be brought forward, as
the decisive test of alternative basic theories which they are, and
published. (Not that the thoughts of graduate students doing such work
are really simple!) Or perhaps it is something close enough at hand in
his lab that he could do it. Or perhaps someone else on the list
connected to a place which does such work could do it.

Who knows?

Again, it is not at the core of my own emphasis, which does not give
credence to theory 1 anyway.

Best of luck,

   Paul

P.S. For those who might ask... theory 3 basically would represent the polarizer as a solid state object which "condenses the wave function" in the usual way they teach in quantum mechanics 1. In my papers at arxiv (published at SPIE and elsewhere), I showed how that idea can be translated into a "master equation" like what is standard in real quantum optics these days, having the same effect. But I also showed a DIFFERENT master equation, with DIFFERENT effect, a different model of what the polarizer does. That simple difference in models was, last year, the only clear difference between KQED and my proposed variation, MQED. Just a matter of characterizing what polarizers ACTUALLY do. But if they do what I think they do, the implications are very far-reaching, because it proves that the models we use for ALL solid state components in quantum optics need to be revised, in a way which opens the door to all kinds of new technology. This past year, I added a near-trivial new model for black body radiation sources, and proposed another simple experiment to test that one, with wilder and crazier and easier properties. That's theory 4. Theory 5 would be **IF** a deeper Einstein/Lagrange type of unified model could be found, for which MQED would only be an approximation.

questions of the day: cats, IMP and Tibetan mask of the dead

For me, today is a day of questions. Actually, I have spent MANY of my days "banging my head against the wall" on tough questions I had not answer for, which no one else had answers for either. I decided this was a major part of my own personal mission or calling early on, when I observed how many brilliant people would slide away or cheat on some basic questions. This was reinforced a lot when I found I really could answer some questions others gave up on (like how to train a simple neural network, which Minsky thought was impossible, but that was just one small example). Today's society tends to reward people who do the opposite, who give up asking questions and spend their lives as salesmen, which convinced me all the more that SOMEONE needs to fill the vacuum.

As a general matter, the job of a knowledge worker is to input, to process, and to output -- ALL THREE. That middle stage deserves more respect..

But whatever.

So this morning... in my early morning meditative state... yes, I know I know lots of stuff no one else does, but three images come to mind demanding that I think hard and try to sort things out better:

(1) the Schrodinger cat;

(2) the Integrated Market Platform (IMP) proposal;

and (3) the new Tibetan Mask of the Dead which I saw when wandering around Kathmandu
(weirder than the incident I mentioned before in front of the Pashupatinath Temple).

The literature on macroscopic Schrodinger cats is pretty overwhelming.  In fact, maybe I should post here what I sent the Vedanta list a few days back:

************************************************************************
***************************************************************************
Meow!

Vinod and Stan made the reasonable request that I send again the link
to a review of the massive empirical literature on macroscopic
Schrodinger cats. I am responding on a new thread, mainly because I
don't want to have to repeat this process again. To find what I sent
before, I used "search" in the "sent" email directory of gmail, and
used "print all" to save to pdf, and used the superior search
capabilities in adobe reader to locate what I sent you before! (Life
was so much easier when I could use Eudora 7 as my email package!) I
will tell you exactly how I found the stuff, so that you won't be so
dependent on me in future.

The best review book I found before, and sent you, was:

https://www.amazon.com/Macroscopic-Quantum-Coherence-Computing/dp/0306465655

I believe that the massive news about macroscopic Schordinger cats
emerged from a seminal paper in Nature:

https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v406/n6791/full/406043a0.html

I have to admit I do not see the name "Nakamura" there. I learned
about the paper in Nature at a very large conference on quantum
information technology, supported by multiple agencies of the US
government, where this new result was THE big new thing, the hit of
the conference. That's where I heard people give credit to Nakamura,
but I don 't see his name in my searches so far!!

Since the issue of quantum measurement is at the center of "KQED
versus MQED versus earlier stuff," I feel I have a duty to mention
another paper more suitable for experts by a very thoughtful guy
respected in quantum computing, who gives a very different  informed
view of things we have debated:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0105127.pdf

This morning I repeated the kind of search which led me to find that
first book (which I have not read, as I rely more on piles of journal
articles and such). I went to scholar.google.com, and simply searched
on "macroscopic Schrodinger cat." Then I clicked on "cited by.." under
the most highly cited paper, to get a list of more recent papers which
cite that one. This is a really important trick, to find the most
current literature and what it says about a classic paper like
Friedman's paper in Nature. This pointed to a slightly older book, but
probably a lot more definitive in this area:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1590332245/

(You don't have to buy the book to get a picture of what's going on
from that web page!)

But to get a real picture, there is no substitute for the primary
literature, the vast collection of papers (more recent especially)
which are also available for free more than half the time on the web.
(Notice that even without "advanced search", Google Scholar lets you
specify a range of dates.) A nice example is:

http://www.mdpi.com/2304-6732/3/4/57/htm

By the way, this example is based on Circuit QED, which is a recent
extension of Cavity QED (CQED), which I mention only briefly in the
review section of http://vixra.org/abs/1707.0343. Once macroscopic
Schrodinger cats moved from theory to experiment to known physics, the
next stage was engineering. Most of the engineering of macroscopic
Schrodinger cats has been within the field of quantum information
science and technology (QuiST), and that is why the examples are
mainly in electronics and photonics lately. But there is an example
out there in the chemistry of large molecules (think DNA), and lots of
work in China which it is a little harder to obtain on the web,
perhaps because of their new national security push on QuIST or
perhaps because they promised to act more like US on matters of IP.

For those of you interested in the more humanistic question "what is
it like to integrate one's consciousness or soul ACROSS patches?" I am
in the middle of an awful but easy to read novel which basically does
address that issue:

https://www.amazon.com/All-Our-Wrong-Todays-Novel/dp/1101985135/

(It is interesting that I never saw a novel before which addressed
that question in the present tense, and it appears just now. The Dune
series addressed the question in future tense, for a mundane brain

********************************************************************************************
******************************************************************************************

OK, that's pretty straightforward at the level of what we really know from the experimentally solid part of quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics (QED). But what if we believe (as I still generally do) in the idea that QED can be derived as a statistical approximation (good until we see things smaller than 3 femtometers) to the emergent behavior of a more Einstein-style field theory? How could an Einstein type field theory give rise to macroscopic Schrodinger cats? I have posted my initial thoughts on that here on this blog...  but I am wondering how certain I should be, and what clear possibilities I should be considering?

I have also mentioned the need for IMP here, and am very disappointed that the echoes so far have been inadequate... things that wouldn't work. Yet in all fairness, having the world run by an automated market platform sounds cold and scary, even though it is the best I (or anyone else) have come up with so far. Is it just a matter of filling in gaps in the story and the dissemination and getting used to it (as I got used to Schrodinger cats, more or less)? Or is something deeper required?

Yesterday, when I was stuck for a few minutes in a parking lot, I googled "Heisenberg Gopi Krishna", and found some interesting stuff, as expected. I am not moved to probe that part of the past more now, but maybe that was part of what brought the mask of the dead to mind now. This was the second time a meeting with a mask of the dead intersected a significant time in my life... the previous being 1973 or so... but then again aren't all the times significant? But this one had a different face, reminding me a bit of Turki Faisal and the assumption dream last night. 

Must run... and think... 

*************************************************************************************************************

One more:
On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 8:08 AM, Andris Heks <a.heks@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Bruno, If you perceive the absolute as personal, I cannot understand why you continue with an impersonal 'machine' model assumption. Surely, a 'living organism' would be a more appropriate model.

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

It is important that we not put too much trust in specific words when we try to grapple with such tricky things beyond the level of mundane ordinary life.

What does "personal" mean anyway? I have argued that an Einstein/Lagrange optimization model of the cosmos may well be "personal" or "superpersonal," with one reasonable usage of those words, even though it would ALSO fit common ideas of what a "mechanical" or "materialistic" model would be!! What matters is NOT the position we take in a debate for or against such a word, which gives at best a fuzzy picture of the reality which it tries to describe, but the more precise understanding we develop.

Yet in truth, I find myself called this morning to think twice even about the tentative more precise understanding I have developed, in part by considering questions people have raised here.

For example -- what difference does it make whether the true Lagrangian is MAXIMIZED, or if it can only be described as a MINMAX operation (which sounds a bit Zoroastrian!), or that it might be MAX or MINMAX subject to equality constraints (a crucial feature of simple Maxwell's Laws, a crucial axiom, often mischaracterized in discussions of the underlying assumptions of a field theory). Does life exist "between the fire and the ice," between hard fixed points and stochastic "heat death", requiring a minmax kind of situation, making the cosmos less "personal" than one might imagine? And are we REALLY just possible scenarios of a PDE model? What is the real meaning of those Schrodinger cats? How would I look at all this if I did NOT include personal experience, which must always be taken with caution (as there are many many ways that strange things can happen)? 

All for now.

Of courses, none of this raises questions about noosphere and galaxy, which are still there in any case. 

Can a Computer (or Robot) Have a Soul?

Can a Computer (or Robot) Have a Soul?

This question is becoming ever more serious and important, as the Internet of Things (IOT) and many types of robot expand so quickly, perhaps to take over the entire world.  Many people have made lots of money writing about this subject, making up things which are easy to understand, unconstrained by any real technical knowledge either of computers or of souls. But how can address this question in a more serious way, and still be understandable?

Since the human brain itself was evolved to tell stories and understand them (serious neuroscience here!), long before we had any concept of “logic,” let me use a few stories to get into the question step-by-step.

1.      Our local Quaker meeting yesterday was very quiet. There are very strict rules that people should not speak unless it meets several tests, one of them being that there was a “message” from beyond just the person speaking. No one spoke yesterday, and then the “riser” (chair for the day) said: “Now it is time for afterthoughts. Does anyone have something important to say, which did not quite rise to the tests..?” He looked all around, no one rose for a few seconds, and then suddenly a very loud string of squeaks came from a laptop in the back (a laptop owned by a friend working with things like IOT). There was silence after the laughter died down, and people wondered. (That’s part of why I post today!)

2.      A few months ago, I was one of the first three non-Intel people invited to a high-level annual meeting to discuss the future of that company. I still remember an extremely sharp woman there, who at one point said: “We also need to work harder on educating the public. You would not believe all the people who come to tell me their computers did something which we all know is impossible. We really need to educate them, to learn that these things they report to us could not be possible.” (I did not comment, because so many other things were on the table. But I can say that the folks who talk to this woman are not low-level cranks from off the street, nor even just a narrow sample.)

3.       When I was still working at NSF, and was vice-president for policy of the National Space Society, a powerful person pressed me:”Why do you folks insist on pushing for humans in space? Or on earth for that matter. Who needs humans? Stop being such a human racist. Why?” “Well,” I answered, “Being a carbon-based life form myself, it is only natural that those of us who are should be true to ourselves by expressing real, fundamental, primary concern for other carbon-based life forms.” He smiled a huge grin, and said,”Oh, OK. We can take care of that. Those silicon folks are a bit backwards anyway. What if we just use graphene-based systems to run everything?” (And NO, that was not anyone at Intel!)

4.      Taoist mystic spoke at a meeting: “You should not assume that humans are the only ones with souls on earth. The great spirit penetrates the whole earth, not just humans, but animals, plants, even the rocks, all have soul.” My response: ”If so, then why not ore, wires and computers themselves? “

5.      I have heard ever so many narcissistic Believers in mysticism and religion who are just so overwhelmed about how magical, universal and perfect their Consciousness can be at times, who explain how the very design of the entire cosmos must of course be just a shadow of that. And as they relive to themselves how wonderful they are, they think of strong powerful emotions they have had.  George Bernard Shaw wrote a wonderful play, Back to Methusaleh, in which some key characters were very proud members of the British aristocracy, with exactly those same kinds of pride and feelings. Two more characters, called “Romeo and Juliet”, were “the ultimate AI,” computers which could exhibit exactly the same kinds of pride, intensity and hormones (rather trivial things to program), and had no soul. In his long Preface to that play, Shaw described the play as his real religion, and explained…

6.      In 2010, when I gave a plenary talk on neural networks at the international IEEE conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics.. . I owe great thanks to the Chair, Professor Okyay Kaynak, for giving me a copy of the official handbook of the Mevlevi order of Sufis, and of course for many discussions of basic issues in cybernetics. From their long experience, they note what others have said… that some people do seem to inherit more natural connection to spirit or paranormal, or whatever you call it, than others. That seems to be a crucial fact of life in reality which we need to adjust to, somehow or other.

In 2010, thinking about that book, I realized: sure, I know how to build intelligent systems far more brain-like and truly intelligent than the Oprah style showmen of old style AI. (Go to google scholar or www.werbos.com/Mind.htm for a few links.) Sure I know how to rise it even to use quantum technology, as exhibited by the Shrike character in Simmon’s great sci fi series Hyperion. (See my paper with Luda at QIP, reposted at www.werbos.,com/triphoton.pdf.) But that is not the same as soul. That is not the same as the incredibly information-rich level which, in my view, humans can connect to involving the “noosphere” and even beyond. (See my previous blog posts for why I no longer doubt that.) How in the world could I, or anyone else, create that kind of connection?

So, yes, the noosphere does have a certain LEVEL of connection with every blob of condensed matter on earth, but of course it is weaker in some people than in others, and much weaker in inert, random solid matter.  The DNA of animals of earth has evolved over a good solid billion years, with “tweaking” (tweaking like the special incentive payments for hybrid cars which Congress once used to change the car market) by the noosphere all through that time, a kind of instinctive tweaking – instinctive but no less powerful than the instinctive alignment of cells in a developing fetus. None of the bodies of the animals of earth are RANDOM; all are emergent outcomes of a kind of double process of natural selection.

With computers… we simply don’t KNOW how nature and the noosphere did that. In fact, only a few of us even know the basics of how BRAINS do what they do, despite years of really incredibly voluminous data and experiment. So yes, the cosmos can work through computers with Jungian synchronicity, as it can through all forms of inert matter (maybe a bit more, insofar as small levels of energy can produce more results in a computer than in a rock)…  but there is still excellent reason to expect that us animals… have orders of magnitude more connection to soul than any computer we are ever likely to be able to build.

Of course, there are many other important issues connected to all this.

For example, I strongly support the Rosicrucian ideal of trying to work for maximum development of the full potential of ALL humans, not just those who find it easy. It is grossly implausible that less than .1% of humanity, a small fraction scattered all over the earth, should have real spiritual connection, and the others none, though some have concluded that based on their limited experience. I see a strong analogy to the ability to learn calculus or music, which may not manifest in all adults in our difficult world, but is present. I was happy to see that the Mevlevi Order, for example, still put a high priority on developing EVERYONE’S potential.

The Simmons Hyperion trilogy basically portrays a struggle all across space-time between three possible futures (which might actually ALL exist in some sense?), a kind of Terminator future, a kind of Matrix future, and a kind of human potential future. With “God’s help,” maybe we could achieve the third, even if it’s hard to see the pathway now. Not to exclude computers, of course. It is sad how the billionaire supporters of sharia and other forms of fundamentalism and top-down rule by computers (like Erdogan and Mercer) are ACTUALLY working to get to the terminator future, even if they don’t know it; that is what happens if the mass of the direct connection between humans and spirit (as promoted by Sufis, by yoga, by Jesus and others) is broken and disempowered, very much following the kind of twisting story of the birth of the Daleks in Dr. Who.

I recently read (and reviewed on Amazon) an entertaining novel by Connie Willis, Crosstalk, which also raises important questions about these things. But of course, such abilities are not restricted to the Irish. Almost every nation on earth has people who think it is all just about them. Certainly there are many Japanese who think: “We are truly weird, but they are truly empty robots, zombies.” There is a great research paper by Greeley and McReady (“Are We a Nation of Mystics,?” reprinted in Goleman’s book Consciousness, which I recommend everyone buy) which gives serious survey data on the important things people experience… and run away from, like certain characters in Willis’s book. On the one hand, people do need to “withdraw and return” from time to time, to assimilate their experience and learn to handle more, lest they become overloaded. But in the end, we cannot afford to commit ourselves to withdraw forever. If we don’t move ahead as best we can… terrible fates could take us over.

Willi’s novel actually mentions a specific gene, which I looked up. As I read her book, I thought “Aha! It sounds so much like my mother’s Irish family, connecting with deep real emotion and spirit to the virgin Mary and family members, talking to plants, hearing what the plants want and growing them to phenomenal heights by listening..” And Willis, like Luda and me, is such a high-bandwidth person, able to assimilate a great firehose of information..  though Luda and I are much more “yang” people (like heavy math and science and action planning) while Willis’s group sounded much more “yin”…

But then I checked that gene she mentioned, R1b-. just a rather ordinary local gene. Luda laughed.  A specific local maternal haplotype. I went back to 23andme.  My Irish maternal haplotype was radically different: ancient Scythia, like the land of the Amazon women. Were the women in our own Irish family such wimps as the ones in Willis’s story? Ooips. My mother was in many ways as meek as some true oriental yin women I have known..,., but she was also an orphan, which can do things to someone’s social style. She was raised by her Aunt Mary… who was about as nonmeek as you can get, a very serious political organizer, who was one of the key organizers of Franklin Roosevelt’s campaigns. (Jim Farley gave her his diamond stickpin in recognition of that, and she passed it on to me… but sadly it was stolen.)

In fact, when I looked at that, I turned to Luda: “Hey, maybe one of the things which attracted to me was the resonance between my maternal haplotype and you and your people…” There was that flight of the nobles from Ireland in the 1600s, which our family was part of, yea unto ships we donated to start the US navy. (Documentation still in my possession.)

But then there was that scarier paternal haplotype, straight Doggerland.

As for Luda and her people from Scythia … which we visited together early in our relation… a place where the seven trials of Hercules are more than just a myth… I did finally persuade her to watch the new Wonder Woman movie. “Come on, please. They show such respect for your people, you owe them that attention.”  But her reaction; “No, it is SO insulting. OK, she learned a little as she grew up,  but it is insulting to imagine our people could be SUCH incompetent wimps, no real sense of how to fight a battle, how to use physical force and other capabilities… such silly people… no real energy..” But the maternal haplotype was really just Romanoff.

Oh, well. Enough fun and games for a day; back to a little IT, and some real math. 

questions needing addressing as the IOT takes over the world

We have had lots of discussion about what happens to jobs and to people as automation (not just AI) takes over more and more, and perhaps everything. There has been a lot of discussion about the need for a human-centric internet, which is great, but do we really know how to build such a thing, and if we don't , will a very different kind of internet of things (IOT) actually take over the world? I have been tempted at times to say more on this list about just how much this technology will be able to do in the future, since I was doing, advancing and funding deep learning decades before the official gurus of computer science could even imagine what it has already done in recent years. But  now, as the world changes, we are all at risk of missing the forest for the trees -- and picking the wrong forest. 

In fact, I am reminded of the new word of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), actually becoming part of the internet of things, where there have been pious talk about bioethics and oversight, all vacuous in the end as big money pushed products out the door already... which deserve another post. The point is that pious talk and political blessings may simply not be enough to save us. Elon Musk is right in broad terms that we are in a scary situation, but the usual types of responses simply will not be enough to save us.

Just a few months back, some leaders in the IT industry asked me to summarize the big picture -- the forest -- as I see it. There are six slides at www.werbos.com/IT_big_picture.pdf which did that, but I know a bit more today. The next to last slide portrays the need to build a new IT platform which COMBINES at least 4 kinds of principles. (Someday I will post a slight update adding a fifth, but I need to update the ftp program I use here first.)

It was really scary for me a few days back to hear Oracle announce a new data platform which, said Bloomberg, "will be ultrasecure because it will use machine learning and deep AI to guarantee security." To me, that sounds like saying "That guy will never catch a virus because he has a great brain." Brains are important,  but it is really scary to depend completely on them alone, when you also need a certain kind of immune system and some other such things. Scary as in an urgent matter of life or death. But it was calming to hear that the US actually was able to withstand an all-out cyberattack on our power system from King Kim III; we still have time to develop an integrated secure viable platform before the instabilities and vulnerabilities bring down the whole US to a state lower than Puerto Rico today without assistance.

The new IBM plan, announced by the president of IBM in great, deep interviews easily found on u-tube, seems to be moving us towards the "Stafford Beer" kind of world.

(I owe you a link. Why not try https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgc4aJ-JMJg .

At youtube, searching on IBM president IOT AI brings up a huge amount of informaton, really important to these issues, though it may require some background to figure out how it all fits together.) We seem to be moving towards a world where SOMETHING or SOMEONE at the top (a product not only of market but of political forces, more likely Mercer than Sanders) defines a global utility function, and every valve, factory, vehicle and drone on earth is mobilized to intelligently maximize that utility function inexorably, more and more, over all future time. Concern for the less powerful will be even more secondary than it is in recent outcomes in Congress. 

An alternative possible pathway would in some ways grow out of what has been developed in the electric power sector in recent years, in the ISO/RTO (Independent System Operator System), and maybe some ebay type experiments. The idea would be to develop an Integrated Market Platform (IMP), which would embody strong unbreakable operating system security and new levels of communication security (and authentication?) , and use a narrow agile variation of distributed ledger technology for additional security of some core currencies (Blockchain 3.0) . 

Is there a hope that someone creative enough could save the world by making money developing a new system? I hope so. It's extremely important that someone should try. But no one knows enough yet to just go ahead and start coding. 

This morning, as I think over the unsolved design issues, four questions come to the very top of the list:

(1) How does one map CONTROL to OWNERSHIP in a new IT platform? (Again, verbal principles or laws are not enough. "Map" must be like a computer program here.) 

A quick naive response would be "That's easy. Ownership for all things, including all devices controlled within the IOT, goes to registered entities which may be humans or may be corporations. Each entity gets to own and run its own instance of the universal IOT platform, which may even have reduced versions available, all subject to strict standards as rigid as any IEEE standards but themselves subject to full open-source automated validation of compliance."  But how could many INSTANCES like that all add up, globally, to at least a halfway efficient system? How do they talk to each other? For that, I am reminded of the distributed optimization work pioneered by Marija Ilic (former CMU) and Jean Watson (Sandia) to satisfy the growing need for distributed optimization in the electric power grid, and mathematical extensions worked on by folks like Harley, Venayagamoorthy and myself. A certain kind of automated price system can work, going beyond the usual comparative statics of static market equilibrium and of today's stochastic general equilibrium economics, to something more general. 

My wife adds: "Hey, who owns the internet TODAY?" That certainly is something to consider in this design process, the role of standards and how standards affect laws ala net neutrality. The ideas in Tabscott's book on blockchain are relevant, but again, how to make it REAL at the universal platform level? 

(2) How does one prevent capture of the system by a ruthless cold minority, creating a kind of value system which grinds down and destroys the very soul of humanity (and its physical existence over time, not forseen by the cabal?). In a world where more and more such cabals are becoming a real problem... I would say we again need open source tools (as we need already for improved security), and market design somehow biased towards full development of all human potential, but realistic about the need to stop exponential population growth and the reality that this need in itself will cause a certain degree of discontent and competition  inevitably over time under ANY system. Nice words, no specs? True, and that's why this is a QUESTION, "how to DO this in an IT platform?", and not an answer. 

(3) How to make full use of human minds in improving the quality of optimization? For example, is the foresight function performed by RLADP programs (which learn to assess value to the future of commodities or actions in the present) or by human futures trading, or by a mix of the two? WHAT MIX? Mercer has found so far that computers do better than humans in predicting future value, but the underlying mathematics strongly suggests that this is because today's organizations simply don't make full use of what humans can actually do. But unfortunately, that includes a whole lot of lying and gamesmanship and conflict of interest effects which make design of collaborative systems a much deeper problem than IBM's coders seem to understand. (But maybe it's not just them; maybe we need to WORK on that understanding.)

In a brain-like AI system, using RLADP math (see the IEEE book edited by Lewis and Liu) , one can simply set up independent value and prediction networks, using different "currencies" 

(derivative signals) to tune themselves, but how could humans feed into it without breaking it?

Actually, as I type this, I have expanded the details so that these three are enough to think about for now. Microeconomics never found an optimal design for an economy of INFORMATION, or for "CONTENT," let alone a reliable, nonscalar system of trust factors to support collaboration. Could the new RLADP math help us with that somehow? Maybe that's a fourth question.

It is truly to have just questions, not answers, when the need for answers and for code which embodies them is so urgent. Every day which passes is bringing us closer to a different, less human-centric world. But posing questions and refusing to forget them has always been the crucial first step in "doing the impossible" (as a few of us have done a few times).

Best of luck,

   Paul

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

This builds on some earlier thinking at

http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2017/09/can-natural-markets-solve-our-problems.html

Is Donald Trump the Beloved Great Pig Foretold in Journey to The West?

Yes, this is a story from the watch.  Two days ago, I ordered myself to redirect attention to China (which I visited many times through 2014), and – no surprise – relevant improbable things started to happen. At least one improbable thing.

It’s not so coherent as I would like – but entertaining syncretic stories fit the Chinese theme well enough. Some folks would say that China (like Ireland?) is one of the most “yin” nations on earth – high tolerance of cognitive dissonance.  I certainly met sincere Catholic druids on the Irish half of my family, talking to plants, hearing what they say, and connecting to the Virgin Mary with love.  Taoist Confucians and Buddhist Marxists also play important roles in China. 

But of all the weird things I have seen, criss-crossing the earth both in body and in spirit – today’s tale is in SOME ways the weirdest.

Weirdest of all, perhaps: how many of you could imagine someone NOW truly loving Donald Trump, with sincere glowing love (and not just a few POSSIBLE members of his family or a few remnants of the crowd lusting for his cash)? Certainly Donald Trump is one of those people who really needs love, as psychologists have been saying all over all the networks lately -- and he hasn’t been getting much of it in his job.  Yes, he has lots of strong supporters, whom I see very often… but when they express support for Trump, they usually do it with an echoing growl, not a smile of love, and, like Bannon, they may be happy to bite almost anyone as their form of support.

But … this week… it is odd. And it involves China.

The picture above (actually, a 2D shadow puppet held in a frame) depicts the Great Pig of the Chinese classic Journey to the West.

Don’t know China? OK, I really should explain, because China is important, and so is this pig.

When strict Moslems are in a decent state, they often say “Moslems, Christians and Jews really are brothers in a way, all respected in the Koran. We are all people of the book.  One book, three books, whatever – Torah, New Testament, Koran.” (And I hear “Book of Mormon too!” ) Well, Chinese people may have been more literate historically than other countries were, and THEY had sacred books too, books really central to Chinese civilization, to Chinese ability to rise above warlords and entropy (still present!) and the famines they caused. In my view, the two most important books which made China a powerful civilization were Journey to the West and the Analects of Confucius. Very different books, both universally prominent in their own way, and I will not take time to try to compare them here. This blog will focus on Journey to the West, where the Great Pig is one of the four central characters.

Of course, the pig of Journey to the West is not the only pig in Chinese literature. Look at recent newspapers, and you will see lots of reference to Chinese families trying to have a child born at exactly the right time which by Chinese astrology makes them a “Golden Pig.” Come to think of it, I actually am one of those myself, and since I am now the same age as Trump, maybe he really is a Golden Pig, by the Chinese astrology. I’d say he fits that role  much better than I do!

Long before I traveled to China, I learned how the cartoon monkey is much beloved by Chinese children, as beloved as Mickey mouse is here (and there too?). (Don’t underestimate the mouse… but not for this blog.) We even found some children stories of “the story of monkey.” But traveling in China, I learned that this popular cartoon monkey is just a popularization of the “Monkey King,” the central character in the book of a hundred chapters, Journey to the West. I brought back a serious copy of Journey to the West, with English and Chinese versions side by side and illustrations, from the big bookstore in Beijing, not far from Tian An Men square.

I would read a chapter every night to young Chris, as a kind of bedtime story – and it was clear that the book was intended to be read that way. This book was one of the Four Great Official books of Chinese Literature, a great focus of diligent Confucian students who dominated China for at least a thousand years up to Mao (who himself was a student at the Thousand Year Academy we visited in Changsha).

One of the four, but by far the most influential. (Perhaps I will comment on the other three, but perhaps not.)

From 2005 to 2014, I visited China every year, mostly with Luda and Chris. Several times we visited the Summer Palace in Beijing, where we walked under long open corridors whose ceilings were covered with intense colorful pictures of scenes from Journey to the West, one after another. Clearly those Emperors has their story…

Journey to the West is formally the story of a group of characters (four most memorable ones) commissioned (by the emperor?) to go to Tibet, to try to bring back the scrolls of a new and more powerful form of Buddhism, powerful enough to strengthen the people and the country to be able to better resist the forces of entropy which have always been a huge problem for China. (Even under Mao, Mao had huge cultural power, but in political control of provinces and villages he was much more of a fictitious paper tiger than Americans understood.) It is one of those classic Chinese style pieces written with intention of being read at many different levels, from small child to enlightened sage.

Some of you may remember English classes, where some critic tries to infer the true meaning hidden in some novel. English speaking novelists would usually object, and say truthfully that they tried to say what they meant to everyone.  But China has often been different, perhaps in part because a lot of Chinese letters were written by people paying more attention to the difference between their intended readers, their family watching them, and the officials watching them. But for different reasons, journey to the West clearly is a multi-level construction, intended as such.

In our travels form 2005 to 2014, we were amazed at how many of the unlikely places described in the book actually were based on real places, scattered all over China.

I was of course most interested in the cave where Monkey is said to have studied under a Taoist Immortal. It seems there may have been MANY such! In Qing Chen Shan (one of the sacred Daoist mountains, in Sichuan province) we hiked on a trail to the most likely candidate, only to see a sign: “Sorry, this school was moved for its protection,” signed Chou En-Lai. I wanted to enter the cave of the Yellow Immortal, but it was blocked by a sign saying “closed at 4:30. Come back tomorrow.” (Well, I could at least feel into that one.) And another cave I really could enter, but that was an old dragon cave from further east, one of the Three Kingdoms places (Wu, I think).

The monkeys do still eat flowers and fruit, I saw…

There IS a tilting tiger tail temple…

The great cudgel in Xinjiang was made up later by fans of the book, but it IS located in the real  burning hot pink desert described in the book.  And so so.

Most important, in Xian – the great main capital from the Han and Tang dynasties, arguably the greatest ever in Chinese history – we visited the actual many-story pagoda where the actual scrolls actually were brought back by the actual monk.

(What was that name? Tanzang? The actual name and the name in the book were similar, as I recall.)

As we travelled through China, we joked to ourselves (ever less of a joke) that Luda was playing the role of the monk in that story, the actual leader, trying to teach the law and seek. Chris, a child at that time, was playing the role of Monkey, very powerful but in need of instruction and guidance. And I was clearly the horse. It kept fitting. It was especially embarrassing when hordes of young children (mostly girls) would crowd around Chris, giggling, most very friendly, and we encouraged him to learn to respect and accept it. (I suspect there is also ying yang thing – especially today, when DNA reports support the theory that Chris is the most purely perfectly yang among all of us, which says a lot in the Russian-German household we have here.)

But… in any case… that was long past. Until Luda, in her local wanderings here in Arlington, runs across an old woman who says: “This is for you. It was given to me, to pass onto you, the worthy recipient. You only had the four characters in the party as you travelled, and you need to have the fourth. Here he is. The beloved pig, who was such a problem in the beginning, bit grew to be a worthy and beloved member of the party, as he sincerely tried to learn and overcome his failings and join in the fight against the hordes and hordes of terrible demons.”

Was that book actually trying to foretell the future? Read it, and you will get your own impression. I do not remember the pig part, so I just end it here, incomplete.

Could it be that this is like a personal Book of Revelations for Donald Trump??

Except.  Except for two add-ons, one on a movie, and one on immortality.

The movie:

Thanks to Alex for his great recommendation to see the NETFLIX movie Journey to the West, VERY loosely based on the book, by the same folks who gave us Shao Lin Soccer, another wonderful movie I am glad I saw.

Since that movie was more recent, and vivid, I remember it better than the book, maybe, in some ways. (I remember more things form the book, but there was more to remember.) The movie was not as nice to monkey – but that’s not a story for this blog post. The only pig part I remember was the vivid horror at all the people who want to EAT pig. (First course, they serve him new health care and tax plans. Next course they serve HIM.) I wonder what Trump would make of THAT? Certainly there are folks who smile and invite him to dinner with the intention of eating him.

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

Immortality, another ancient and complex theme in China.

In truth, I have at different times in past years felt real personal love for more than one Chinese woman. I remember a surge of feeling for an incredibly beautiful woman, the sister of my cousin’s wife, whom I met only briefly (sigh) in the restaurant of the Jade Palace Hotel (now demolished, sigh) in Beijing, who gave me two scrolls as a present, one a big character hanging painting with the character “longevity” in the center,  and some serious words of explanation on it.

And so I was a bit startled, after my decision to think about China a bit, that I received an email totally out of the blue passed on from a woman of piercing intelligent from the new Western immortality/longevity movement, asking whether I would want to be interviewed on that subject. Why me? Why then?

It is true that two days ago, I did observe a livestream event with just a few sentences form Jose Cordeiro, a leader of the Transhumanists, saying he will be working with Charles Gray, a leader of the new (medical?) immortality movement, and saying that he personally intends to live forever.  But I was just watching remotely, and said nothing about this. I have VERY scrupulously refrained from telling people that I actually did study that literature, found fatal flaws (in some cases truly fatal, as in Emperor Qin kind of fatal), and found a way to make it work but ONLY with understanding and use of a level of mathematics which I doubt any of them even begin to understand.

No, not immortality, not for human bodies. The design is not so suitable for that. All I could figure out was longevity, about 1000 years I would guess.

I remember the day when I made that breakthrough, and was so excited. I started to feel: it is dangerous, but maybe not SO dangerous. (Of course, I was biased by the shadow of my own personal death, current actuarial statistics expect 20 years but anywhere from 0 to 30.) That day, however, Senator Mark Warner came to talk to us (a totally unique event), and gave a talk explaining how even another 10 or 20 years more would wreak total havoc in the poor confused world we live in now. Ok. End of that.

So why the call? Is it the recent work on  the arrow of time, which I discussed just this morning in an email to a guy I once met at Tsinghua?

Who knows. Probably just coincidence. Probably just a synchronicity kind of coincidence.

A final point on this: a Berkeley professor asked us a few days ago: WHAT kinds of physics would allow WHAT kinds of paranormal or spiritual phenomena?

Heavy paranormal stuff, I said, would require a new deeper theory, deeper than my new Modified Quantum Electrodynamics (MQED), the only theory of physics (aside from general relativity) which I really trust in full detail for what it predicts. MQED would not allow explanation of the heavy weird stuff, but MIGHT allow for maybe a little “prescience” (sbort-term anticipation) and WOULD allow for a whole lot of weird Jungian synchronicity.  So Carl Jung is as serious as it gets.

Best of luck,   Paul

From the watch: sea of glass in Korea, Turkey, Catalonia

For about three months, I have refrained from posting much from "the watch," a rather specialized thing... for many reasons. It would be grossly irrational to entangle the watch with other threads I have been pursuing; perhaps I should even set up a separate blog just for the watch, to avoid false linkages.

But: my silence has not been based on a lack of inputs. Quite the opposite. Rather, the inputs have been so complex and so tricky I have worried about creating more heat than light. Also, my recent adventures in Nepal brought home my need to rely more on "going through channels" and to work harder to avoid causing unjustified disruptions through any kind of direct action. I will say more about that, what the hell. But the spirit of truth (as well as advanced age) impel me to "let it all hang out" to a greater degree than I would in the past.

Sea of glass... this morning I woke up with a sense a bit like a headache. Certainly a kind of pulsing feeling, but bigger than my head or even my body. A headache about Korea.

A few weeks ago, my sense of responsibility said: "Paul, this quantum stuff is fun, and you ARE justified in transferring what you already know, but it's time to shift your probing from what's fun and basic to what immediately threatens the human species, the urgent developments in the Informatoin Technology (IT) space, where your design insights are needed." OK. Important stuff first, even if the problems right now SEEM unsolvable and frustrating. Figuring out how brains and quantum mechanics work ALSO seemed impossible and frustrating, until, after the right kind of effort, they could be solved.

But this morning... what's about to happen in Korea pushes this logic beyond the reasonable point. For many people, it actually IS reasonable to say "It's too hard for me; let God take care of it." But.. the watch changes a few things.

Part of "the watch" is simply opening one's eyes, starting with the mundane eyes.

I was really amazed at how oblivious the CNN reporters seemed a few days ago, reporting on Trump's recent activities. He said "This is just the calm before the storm." (People wondered: is he expressing his deep compassion for the people of Louisiana? This illustrates the difference between dreams and eyes.) He said he is putting great pressure on his military to give him the options for action he wants now. He says diplomacy has totally failed. The military have started to grumble and hint that they might dissociate themselves from what may happen soon. They all agree that silence is a necessary part of military operations. So why would people be so convinced that they are sure that the military operations have not ALREADY STARTED?

(CNN this evening says "Doesn't he know these kinds of vague threats are not likely to work in diplomacy?" Duh. he said he has pretty much given up on diplomacy. )

But then, beyond mundane eyes?

A few months back, I posted here some details of "assumption dreams" where I do believe I got to experience life as Trump was experiencing it. There was veridical content to support it, such as his views of some people working for him. But watching Trump by night most nights, and by day on CNN, got to feel a bit confining, and even uninspiring. After the truly awful healthcare proposals, I was tempted to post a joke:

"God appointed a guardian angel to look out for Trump, but after a few months, the angel pleaded for a transfer, and the position is now vacant."

I really enjoyed a couple of months in Europe, and ten days in Nepal and Qatar  -- not to mention France24 and Bloomberg TV as alternatives to CNN, at least to fill in when CNN gets repetitive, most of the time. But there are certain invisible connections which persist and cannot be just repressed. (In this period, I also got to see the series Touch on Netflix, which has a mix of typical TV stuff and very serious observations on things like connections, which I actually could describe in mathematical terms...) This morning's headache was based in part on resonance with what Trump is undoubtedly feeling right now about North Korea.

Imagine a voice wailing in pain: "Do I really HAVE to do it? Please, God, SOMEONE, can't you offer me a better way... or at least some reassurance that things will not go totally to hell?"

And as for me... well, it is certainly not MY right to try to intervene in any active way. (This blog does not count as an action.) Yet it is also my duty, on the watch, to notice. If I could be creative and come up with a better path, not just for two weeks but for twenty years, I would certainly have a strong duty to at least spell out what it is, as a possibility. Perhaps the Chinese or Russians have a path even now to make things better (NOT JUST for two weeks but for 20 years at least)... but not me. Lots of BS about "calm down little child" sure would not fix the problem, or even slow the military operations. Trump really cannot ignore the prospect of a man promising that he WILL send the US back to the stone age (with lots of mass death on the way) about to obtain the means to fulfill his promise. For decades, people have laughed at Kim's plans and promises, but clearly  that is not a rational way. So what can I say? My job, as I see it, is to pass the buck, report back, and move on to other things. (There are more details, but not for here and now.)

---------------

It is curious that potentially fatal problems are ALSO surfacing in Turkey and in Catalonia at the same time. It is sad how oblivious so many people in the US are about those developments.

Erdogan, the strongest visible manifestation of the Moslem Brotherhood Third Caliphate movement in the world today (would-be first Caliph of that caliphate, victim of typical human ego narcissism but with more foresight than Trump seems to exhibit) has just made a deal with ISIS, to allow them to stay in operation and coordinate their joint actions against their joint foes. His deals with Qatar are also part of the recent history. I am ever so glad that the rulers of Saudi Arabia have become more aware of attempts to subvert and take over their nation, but they are not totally out of the woods yet. I am ever so depressed that even Donald Trump and his security advisors do not appreciate the power of the Third Caliphate pawns in the US, who have pushed for the US to side with Qatar!! (Of course, a really effective rapprochement with Qatar, on lines informed by tough realists in Saudi Arabia, could be great; it is the advocates of appeasement ghat should be watched. US intelligence agencies should be looking THERE, not so much at Russia, which has done far less to corrupt and suborn actual powerful political structures in the US.) It was interesting in Qatar to see how Qatar became a strong ally of the Second Caliphate, a vassal of the Caliph in Turkey, as a way of counterbalancing the bedouin tribes of their day -- but respect for the old Qatary way of life does not require sharia!

Why would Russia associate with such a thing, such a setback in the war against ISIS?
"Don't worry. The new alignment makes it easier to just find them all and kill them all, and it will help the US to wake up and realize that this is what it has to do, and ally with us on."

OK, Catalonia?

Luda is bemused by the phrase "Cat-exit." Images of cats whining at the door, finally being let back in, tail held proudly high in the air, pretending it had nothing to do with it.

We had some very serious experiences in Catalonia (really just Monserrat and Barcelona) again two months ago or so. We understand both pros and cons, and have deep feelings for what the Catalonians want. There DO exist constructive ways to restructure things... as there were for Scotland and northern Ireland, even maybe linked a bit. But will humans EVER be intelligent and calm and creative enough to find those constructive ways? The EU has ever so many positive ways forward (unlike poor Trump facing Korea)... but they have also shown ever so many ways to go to extremes which get them in trouble lately. I have at times wished my old PhD advisor Karl Deutsch were still alive and active, in a way which would let us talk through some of this and him to insert key ideas where they would really help. (Really. He did a lot, quietly, to make the EU stronger in olden times.)

But even so, I can't help remembering what happened on our first day on this trip to Barcelona, when Luda and I both showed up by accident in shorts in front of the main Cathedral. Since spiritual connection is at or tied for the top of my list in all of our travels, and since Luda has her own sensibilities, we decided to try to walk in anyway. The guards at the door looked at her shorts and said firmly "NO," would not let her in.

Me, in shorts.. well, neither of us is twenty hears old any more, but me he just waved in.  Inside, I went to a side enclave marked at "for prayer and meditation only." In Rome, I had had great experiences meditating in exactly that kind of room, so I went in. But just a few minutes later,
as I sat quietly meditating. a Catalan guy in the back stood up, aggressively approached me, shouted at me in Catalan loudly and threateningly and would not stop threatening physically until I got up and left. Of course I know some Spanish, and can even make sense of a little Catalan written down, but I have no idea what he was saying -- only that this holy man was wholly... to put it gently, auditioning for the book of Esdras. Yet expressing a major part of the thoughts floating around in the local lobe of the noosphere. How could Spain be much more truly constructive, respecting the best on Monserrat, while being realistic about the horrid scum which has also been growing on the ponds in that area?
not my job; I just do due diligence, report, and move on.

By the way, when I tried to move on, I learned that things were Very Well Organized there at that time. (It reminded me of Moltrasio in Italy, a little town where bus tickets can only be bought in ice creams shops and folks who don't just know that face "Ignorance of the law is no excuse." A town ruled by joint venture of Christian Democrats (a meeting of women in the local church) and the Communist Party (a meeting of men in the bar next door), who jointly develop ever so many rules. I remember the janitor who told me about the ice cream shop and explained "We have so many rules here. We here are ever so much better organized than those sloppy Swiss just over the hill, who don't even know what rules are about. Someday they will learn what it takes to  make a modern well-organized economy... ) By the rules, I was required NOT to return to my wife, but to travel thorough a long path to another street in a city strange to me, and find her again maybe an hour later.
(As a half-naked woman posed for cameras just at the front of the Cathedral...)

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

More? Why not. What the hell.

Long long ago, when I was first getting to know Luda, a time came when I owed her some confession in confidence, so she would know what she is getting into. "You know my feelings, and you know me as a person in normal life and in scientific activities. But before going further, you need to know just how crazy I really am. I have heard your attitude towards parapsychologists and towards the orthodox church, and I know of your two PhDs in hard science and former high jobs in the USSR, so you really need to be fully warned..." I was ever so happy when she replied: "Oh, don't worry. I have contempt for people who make strong statements about things they have no understanding of. But no, I am not out of touch with Reality. Since you have confided in me, let me say something about my own family.

"It is well known, when people shake hands with a real member of our family, as matter of honor, registered as a matter of honor, and they later break that... first to go ate their pets, then their elderly relatives, then closer relatives, and if they don't get the message... But no, we don't use nay kind of direct action or violence. When they violate an agreement of honor, we just look closely, fully register what is happening, and pass it on up. That's all. We do not even indulge in hate, let alone violence." (No hate, but I have seen a few smiles of contempt at times. But I have also seen Azderbaijanis show sheer terror at mention of the name.)

A few weeks ago, in Nepal, on the entry path to the  Pashupatinath temple, a British woman (Joan Walton) and I were confronted with deeply malicious soldiers pointing automatic weapons right at us at a checkpoint, yelling "No Westerners." The Hindu monks kindly leading our group tried to explain that they had had troubles with jihadi terrorists there recently, so we should understand it that way, but it was obvious that the word was "Westerner" and they they were discriminating against light eyes not beards. (We knew these were probably a legacy of Maoist guerillas, and that Maoists still control the government, folks much more Communist than anyone with real power in China.) To make things worse, just before that event, I had tried to reach out and open up some connection with the Shiva Temple visible past the checkpoint down a long alley -- something which raises energy. Within a minute after that violent shock, one of the monks pulled out his phone and told me that the hotel where I had a reservation had decided suddenly to cancel it and throw me out; he explained that he was working to convince them not to just throw away all my things in the hotel room. And suddenly my wife's google cell phone (which I had been using the take photos) went dead.

OF COURSE, I did not initiate any escalatory behavior. That would be ultradumb. Though I did mention to the monks that the hotel was violating an agreement not only of law but of honor.
I suddenly realized that it would be a major challenge for me to keep my own qi from becoming a threat to myself and others. yet there is also a rule NOT TO JUST repress one's reaction to wrong things. My first response -- remembering what Luda had said, which was not my normal total modus operandi -- was to stand not far from those soldiers, and focus very hard to register the full four-dimensional realities as precisely as possible, from guns to qi to connections and so on. To try to take a kind of precise 4D photo in my mind. as I stood there, one kind and sensitive guy in our group, from India, appraoched Joan and me gently, and suggested we move out of sight of the soldiers, clearly hoping to just stop all this. I was calm but did not move, until the picture was clear enough and well enough registered at the right level.

Sometime then, Joan mentioned "If anyone tried to pull that kind of discrimination in the UK, they would be sent to jail instantly."

But then we walked just a few meters more, where I sat down on a low stone wall, and explained that I really needed a bit of time to restructure and stabilize my emotional reactions, and properly register everything, to calm down the right way. The Indian guy was delighted he could then focus on Joan, to describe his ideas for a new education initiative he wanted Joan and me to work with, as I tried to work on a meditative level. I felt really overwhelmed with feelings and energy and thoughts. As I groped for a constructive stability, I included in my groping both reaching out to "pater galacticus"
(more or less my view/synonym to Jesus's old buddy) and to the Vishnu archetype, suitable for someone desperate for a bit of constructive order confronted with incredible shivaite violence.
"Hey folks, any hints would be appreciated." But of course, I tried to focus my own mind VERY hard...

As I sat there.. trying to center... suddenly a kid of about ten or twelve sat down next to me on the stone wall, and asked questions like "what is the name YOU used for God?" He WAS a child, and Joan was almost freaked out at how he spoke in child-like words, yet he did seem to have been speaking to a fairly enlightened teacher, and his many odd questions were helpful as I worked on focusing my own quite turbulent mind. I replied "pater galacticus", but felt some hesitation in doing so, because of all the complex unvoiced caveats and explanations' I was later thinking that I should at least have added the word "cosmos." In any case, things worked well, and the experience helped me be clearer about the depth and complexity of "connection" (important a few days later when I passed through Qatar).

As the boy and I calmed down, and perhaps he even left, the Indian guy tapped me on the shoulder and said, "By the way Paul, you have been just looking back, where the boy was along the wall, where we came here. Look across the 'street' and see what you see." What I saw, starting just a few feet in front of me but continuing far beyond, was the most extreme physical devastation I have ever seen with my mundane eyes in this life. A clash of extreme earth energies, focused right there, echoing from a few years ago... perhaps when Maoist guards were first posted there? Who knows? But wild energies can cross space and time....

I certainly did absolutely nothing, and struggled hard to do nothing. (Struggled not to repeat a few accidental experiments done farther away from people in the past.) I only REGISTERED... Just due diligence.

But it is sad how much due diligence is now called for in so many places, over the whole world, from DC to Turkey to even a bit of Tsinghua University itself. What will happen? We will see, and we will register.

I am also very grateful to the kind Bhakti guy who led us to the sleeping Vishnu shrine, next stop for our tour after that Shiva place (and lunch? I forget. Notes are on my tab, but I won't read them now).
Calm and improved reconnection were a good idea. So many reconnections are needed all over the earth... and our survival as a species is ever so much at risk from every so many directions.

Best of luck....