James,

I appreciate your wise responses to my comments/critique. It appears we
have more in common theoretically than I anticipated. Thank you for the
clarifications and the rest of your contributions to this fascinating
dialogue.

Regards,

Nicholas G. Lattanzio, Psy.D.

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 5:19 AM Jamie D <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> *CAUTION: *This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links
> or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
> safe.
> ------------------------------
> @Glen,
>
> What is your opinion on the "meme" concept?
> It seems the trouble with the meme is a perfect example of your trouble
> with the finger and the moon.
>
> I argue that an actual fighter jet IS a meme (and a memeplex), as much as
> any word like "blue",  as well as any technology, because words and concept
> are technologies.
>
> Yet, what the actual fighter jet IS, is mere behavior....and there is no
> fighter jet but in the mind. So the meme concept rides the edge
> representing the finger and the concept if the moon, but as we aren't used
> to having to call the word "concept" every single time we say any word, the
> meme concept suffers. And because of that difficulty, rather than opposed
> to it, do I advocate the meme, because it makes one see how language is
> only a map, not the territory.
>
> I also argue that human minds are AI's,  because our minds are cultural
> and thus artificial....thus every person inadvertently programs an AI in
> deciding who to be as they grow up...yet, beneath the Cumulative cultural
> Tok (mind) of any individual, there is an analogue, infinite, or
> indeterminate process that's like the human to the cyborg (more ghost to
> mind).
>
> Lastly,
> The reason AI will never fully decommission humanity is the likely answer
> any philosopher of science will give in describing the history of
> inventions: inventions don't come from sheer intelligence, but the CCE of
> the individual, their surroundings, history, and various emotional and
> economic incentives.
>
> Also, are you familiar with Joseph Henrich's work on cultural evolution?
> From your writing, I can tell you've been exposed to it either directly or
> indirectly.
> One of his ideas I most appreciate is how humans aren't really that
> "smart", but that specific CCE enables us to adapt above the genetic level,
> as long as populations are large enough to cultivate know-how.
>
> I would add to this idea the following:
>
> The ONLY reason (that matters, politically) one person seems, for the
> moment, less smart than another, is stress, and mostly social stress. In
> other words, the only cause of stupidity is social stress.
>
> Our cultivating systems of know-how that make one person appear smart can
> change in a few days or weeks without chronic stress.
>
> All It takes to make a dull person smart is the encouragement to "be
> honest with their self", as that seems to be the primary difference between
> successful intellectuals and creative's vs the failures (who, due to
> stress, learn excessive self doubt into denying the obvious...they're
> fooled into selling their selves short, and this phenomena is SO powerful,
> that a person formerly regarded to be beyond hope could become a genius in
> a short time IF only this ONE factor could safely be reversed.
> Unfortunately, "dull" people find equilibrium in chronic stressful states,
> thus changing that could cause sudden egomania without support.)
>
> Jamie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 22, 2021, 2:03 AM James Gien Wong <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> *CAUTION: *This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click links
>> or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is
>> safe.
>> ------------------------------
>> Hi Jamie,
>>
>> See my reply below
>>
>> On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 8:42 AM Jamie D <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>>> *CAUTION: *This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click
>>> links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the
>>> content is safe.
>>> ------------------------------
>>> @Glen,
>>>
>>> Are you developing this yourself, or mostly theory, and planning to
>>> acquire the technical work after presenting to the peer to peer foundation?
>>>
>>> Have you done any work in machine learning?
>>>
>>
>> G: I've been mostly developing by myself off and on for the past few
>> decades but I am part of a number of different networks so in the last few
>> years have been connecting with a broad range of experts in these networks
>> one on one to develop it further....material scientists, linguists, AI
>> scientists, complex adaptive system scientists, circular economists,
>> commons theorists, sustainability engineers, philosophers, planetary
>> scientists, computer scientists, software developers, educators, cultural
>> anthropologists, mathematicians, social scientists, political scientists,
>> contemplative practitioners of various traditions, The project is so broad
>> and so many dimensions that it required a lot of diverse input.  Their
>> feedback has guided my development. I'm in the process of assembling an
>> inter-disciplinary project team right now. There are various teams of
>> scientists-developers-engineers-activists working in loose Digital
>> Autonomous Organizations around the globe on various permutations of these
>> problems. We all seem to be working on and converging towards the same
>> cybernetic-human systems to empower a bottom-up multi-solution. I work
>> closely with an AI scientist for the last few years at the intersection of
>> multiple domains that overlap my areas of interest, and he works with
>> groups of software developers architecting different aspects of this
>> system.
>>
>>>
>>> This is exciting, largely because I haven't come across anyone with such
>>> a similar range of understanding combined with a similar philosophical
>>> approach that 1. reconciles domains few people at willing to bridge
>>> (nonduality, futurism, linguistics, philosophy, and the harder sciences)
>>> and clearly sees things systemically, and can talk about it to people who
>>> speak different languages.
>>>
>>
>> G: We all travel different roads to arrive at the present. I was deeply
>> influenced by Douglas Hofstaeder's Godel, Escher Bach, An Eternal Golden
>> Braid many decades ago. That book entangled reductionlist, logical and
>> mathematical methodologies with the nondual approaches of the East in a
>> whimsical, entertaining and thought-provoking way. One of those chapters,
>> with Escher's print of Two worlds, set me off on my explorations into Zen
>> Buddhism. His theme of infinite loops still deeply resonates with me to
>> this day, as I see the 1st person / 3rd person views as entangled in such a
>> loop. We're able to discern patterns in the world through observations, and
>> we use our symbolic prowess of culturally learned language to represent
>> those cognized patterns, making them accessible to others through the 3rd
>> person perspective. We feel ourselves to be a psycho-biological being
>> (Jourdain & Jourdain) and our experience of "mind" is 1st person
>> consciousness while our body grounds us in the common language of
>> materiality which the rest of the non-human universe speaks. Our senses can
>> sense the non-human materiality and our own individual, human body in the
>> same way, constituting our 3rd person perspective. So as we interact with
>> our common, objective reality and discern patterns, and share those using a
>> common language, we learn about the world out there, but we also learn
>> about ourselves, since our bodies are composed of the same stuff as the
>> stuff outside our bodies.
>>
>> So as individuals, we are forced into cumulative cultural evolution (CCE)
>> at birth. We have no choice. Our parents impart CCE upon us as neonates
>> have no choice in the matter. So we are conditioned to these cultural
>> patterns from before birth. Please don't misconstrue my choice of words. I
>> make no judgment on this, but merely state the existential conditions of
>> our introduction into reality. Our early exposure to those patterns
>> conditions profoundly for the rest of our life journey, putting us on a
>> particular trajectory with which we will experience reality, especially
>> through language and abstraction filters which cause us to parse reality in
>> a specific way. We become agile members of the symbolosphere, and symbolic
>> usage becomes second nature to us. The net of symbols internalized in us
>> affects every aspect of how we experience reality. We discern patterns in
>> reality, and we apply those patterns back to us, the individual, living
>> human being inhabiting its environment. The pattern is encoded in language
>> and we assign truth value to it. But whether it is true or not, is a
>> transient thing that varies with the accumulation of knowledge stemming
>> from CCE. The (symbolic) knowing does not affect the fundamental
>> phenomenological experience of reality. Yes, progress does alter the
>> permutation of things that exist. New patterns of knowledge can allow us to
>> emerge new forms of materiality, such as new combinations of genes, or new
>> arrangements of atomic structures at nano-scale. New biochemical
>> relationships may come into being, such as when human activity caused the
>> corona virus to leave its natural wild ecosystem and form new relationships
>> within a new ecosystem of modern technological humans. The impact on human
>> civilization is new and frightening and science seeks to discern the
>> patterns of the pandemic spread so that it can develop technology to
>> mitigate it but nature is simply following "its laws" to unfold
>> phenomenological behavior.
>>
>> We see the world through the eyes of pattern detectors. And we create
>> symbolic objects out of the patterns we detect, and once consolidated in a
>> popular, socially used word, that pattern takes on a concrete existence. In
>> this sense, I see the hard problem of consciousness as a clash between the
>> 1st person experience of reality, and the 3rd person, quantitatively
>> described world of patterns of "objective reality". Here I agree with
>> philosopher Philip Goff on the point he made in his book "Galileo's
>> Mistake" but I have begun conversation with Philip to interrogate him on
>> his ideas of the details of his panpsychic theory of reality. In Buddhist
>> philosophy, there is the phrase "the finger that points to the moon" with
>> the simple instruction of "don't mistaken the finger for the moon". The
>> finger pointing is a symbol directing our attention to the moon. But the
>> finger is not the moon. Likewise, the description of the world, including
>> an aspect of the world called "human beings", and an aspect of that called
>> "consciousness" are fingers that are pointing to some aspect of reality.
>>
>> Living at such a level is hard core, as the vision is so broad it's hard
>>> to fit snugly within most other groups.
>>>
>>> I checked out the websites you put at the bottom of your email, and
>>> they're similar to the kinds of projects I've worked on. The thing is, I've
>>> grown to be what some might call cynical (But I don't see it that way
>>> anymore either).
>>>
>>
>> G: My websites are in a poor state of messaging. I haven't done anything
>> to upgrade them for years. I hope to upgrade them soon.
>>
>>>
>>> The way I see it, humans deny their ego, present ourself as without ego,
>>> yet cannot find motive in life without ego. We really don't like our minds
>>> to be naked even more than our bodies, thus we can never openly know
>>> ourselves unless forced upon us by the web, or in very intimate
>>> situations..... and it's only for this latter cause (collective intimacy
>>> and space) that I leave room to hope for a truly ego-transcendent culture
>>> of the future....something that I believe happened only every now and then
>>> in more indigenous communities.
>>>
>>
>> G: Can you elaborate a bit more on this, please. I catch bits and pieces
>> of what you are saying but missing the big picture. Perhaps illustrate with
>> some examples.
>>
>>>
>>> Even "saving the world", or saving anyone is so motivating by the
>>> opportunity for dividends in moral power. It seems like everyone wants
>>> moral power these days, but moral power must be backed by a population that
>>> can't possibly know the whole truth, and for that reason, I'm
>>> reconditioning myself to ditch the grandiose aspirations and live for
>>> myself, as the whole universe has equal value to any single person....
>>> (even if the future will look back and see that if I wanted to, I could
>>> have gone all-in towards saving lives with crowd epidemiology)....i just
>>> don't trust anyone would believe me, so I'm going for the smallest product
>>> that some specific group will love  (Zero to One).
>>>
>>
>> G: Yes, I think I get what you are saying, Jamie. Some environmental
>> scientists have countered some arguments like yours with statements such
>> as: "even if you go and live in the mountains by yourself for the rest of
>> your life in a completely offgrid manner, the impacts of a runaway climate
>> system will catch up with you". But I also understand what you are saying
>> about value. I would hate to be in a position to decide moral relativity of
>> who lives and who dies, weighing tradeoffs between numbers of living
>> beings. I think its a quandry we are in as a species and everyone has to
>> make the best choice they can. Some will choose one way, and others
>> another. I suppose for me it's about finding out what I as an individual
>> can do with my own life that is both meaningful, and can have optimal
>> leverage. There are only so many hours in a day. Creating a better world
>> for all starts and ends with our own personal growth as well. If we can
>> improve ourselves each moment, by shining our light to the world, we can
>> also improve the world of others. The spiritual journey of the individual
>> seems to be one of expanding oneself to the rest of the world, finding
>> oneself and the world to be connected in some deep way. In this sense, our
>> world seems to be the way it is partly because we have collectively not
>> succeeded in our journey and have collectively alienated each other and the
>> natural world. In this sense, generating our authentic empathy with others
>> is a way of discovering our greater self.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Jamie
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Apr 21, 2021, 11:12 PM Jamie D <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Yes, but such a web infrastructure (which I believe to be
>>>> inevitable...or something along these lines) would further bring us
>>>> together in ways that human nature would select.
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Apr 17, 2021, 8:24 PM Waldemar Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> *CAUTION: *This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click
>>>>> links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the
>>>>> content is safe.
>>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>> So, we have more in common than that which serves to seperate us?
>>>>>
>>>>> *Waldemar A Schmidt, PhD, MD*
>>>>> (Perseveret et Percipiunt)
>>>>> 503.631.8044
>>>>>
>>>>> *Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. (A Einstein)*
>>>>>
>>>>> On Apr 17, 2021, at 2:34 PM, Jamie D <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> *CAUTION: *This email originated from outside of JMU. Do not click
>>>>> links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the
>>>>> content is safe.
>>>>> ------------------------------
>>>>> Hey ToKers,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm working on a web prototype I hope to finish by August. It's a very
>>>>> basic version of a collective intelligence that integrates all user inputs
>>>>> into what I and my friends call "thought-demographics"...so like, "I drink
>>>>> Green Tea" would be a demographic, with a population of those who share the
>>>>> same expression....or any expression one might care to make.
>>>>>
>>>>> The following is some of the theory behind it that still blows my mind
>>>>> every time I bother to look deeply into it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Theoretic Limits of RealTalk.ai (not online yet)
>>>>> (Hint: there’s no limit. The concept behind the prototype IS the
>>>>> Singularity, the big one, the one TOO BIG TO SEE. While the prototype
>>>>> RealTalk.ai is intended to utilize well-known aspects of social networks,
>>>>> the concept of integrating symbolic expressions to form a collective,
>>>>> interactive representation of society is boundless, inevitable,
>>>>> mindblowingly valuable, and stunningly powerful.)
>>>>>
>>>>> *The closest thing I've found out there so far to the central concept
>>>>> is collaborative filtering, used for netflix recommendations.
>>>>> https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Collaborative-5Ffiltering&d=DwIFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=xgm3cWFkblLXaf7Cz_V1x7i7n4d0eAuk53NrFTyf8cw&s=MinL7hlvXnlkIrCupRfp8kqMmycJKkexBotfGN9pmMk&e= 
>>>>> <https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__en.wikipedia.org_wiki_Collaborative-5Ffiltering&d=DwMFaQ&c=eLbWYnpnzycBCgmb7vCI4uqNEB9RSjOdn_5nBEmmeq0&r=HPo1IXYDhKClogP-UOpybo6Cfxxz-jIYBgjO2gOz4-A&m=EfyDO0hrtTkCIvj7T2pCsryNmVoBNr5Elfv5iZ0g-Mo&s=wCu4tL4D6zRzBc5MOrD0Tqgx9khk09YZkSFlFj-TvQ4&e=>
>>>>>
>>>>> A similar concept will be used to further integrate society into
>>>>> collective intelligence.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>    - It is akin to the transition from kingdoms to democracies -
>>>>>    harnessing greater collective input for greater social union. This time,
>>>>>    everyone is president, ...at least somewhat...who knows?
>>>>>    - As you read this, try to think of a better way to protect the
>>>>>    future from AI tyranny, autocracy, idiocracy, or any other
>>>>>    existential threat to society.
>>>>>    - The principle will be the structure for entirely new economies
>>>>>    and social systems, and the entire internet a stage or two from
>>>>>    now.
>>>>>    - Ego and profit-motive are the causes of all problems in
>>>>>    medicine, science, academia, ..everything. EGO IS ALL.Yet, we are still
>>>>>    being domesticated by one-another, and the culture of egioc denial is
>>>>>    dying, as our nature so obvious on the media.
>>>>>    - The principle will radically augment the following industries
>>>>>    and more:
>>>>>    - Utilizing crowd epidemiology - potentially curing all diseases.
>>>>>       - It will be the greatest social science database of all time.
>>>>>       - It will replace the current political charade.
>>>>>       - Identity politics will be obliterated by egoic exhaustion and
>>>>>       the clear-seeing of the hidden values of other groups in the safety of our
>>>>>       homes.
>>>>>       - Once it gets a foothold, it will never end, but further
>>>>>       integrate towards, and as, the Singularity...but not like it’s been
>>>>>       conceived so far...
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> The concept:
>>>>>
>>>>> RealTalk.ai is a prototype collective intelligence in the works, based
>>>>> on the inevitable principles of cultural evolution and the integration of
>>>>> broader human intelligence.
>>>>> While RealTalk.ai is merely a prototype, the concept is inevitable,
>>>>> and massive.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> image 2:
>>>>>
>>>>> image 3
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Each user will have their own set of endorsed or created expressions.
>>>>>
>>>>> The only risk of privacy is triangulation and estmate.
>>>>>
>>>>> Users can research their society's values in depth.
>>>>>
>>>>> At least, small groups and companies can use this, but *my prediction
>>>>> is that the general idea is a leap in the evolution of culture. *
>>>>>
>>>>> Old news: Humans are cyborgs, and have been since our tool and symbol
>>>>> use began domesticating us.
>>>>>
>>>>> New news: Every Human Mind is a kind of artificial intelligence
>>>>> already, as we design our minds...but who designs the mind? I contend each
>>>>> human baby is a kind of AI cultural engineer, a loop between the body-mind
>>>>> and surrounding culture, who cultivates an emergent Tree of Intellect
>>>>> in both the individual mind and the community.
>>>>> Just as culture is inherently technological, so it is with our minds.
>>>>> New words, concepts, and ways are continually invented, internalized. And,
>>>>> hungry for info, the mind, like an organism unto itself, endlessly seeks to
>>>>> copulate with novelty to give birth to some prestige-offering
>>>>> thought-baby:  a trend that will offer or further increase status, a
>>>>> long-life of glory.
>>>>>
>>>>> The system of symbols in each human brain is an emergent Tree of
>>>>> Knowledge. Young children never know what they will learn or become, but as
>>>>> their Tree rises higher, they acquire a greater view of their landscape,
>>>>> their reality, whether they emphasize the physical, natural, or various
>>>>> social or other landscapes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Intelligence is evolutionary, systemic and emergent, but also, I
>>>>> contend, essential to our very being, our presence. Intelligence is
>>>>> already infinite, analogue, and combined with increasingly definable
>>>>> stuff.  For it is that ineffable whatever, the “I-Am-ness”, that’s
>>>>> behind all the mappable aspects of mind, and it’s like a bottomless white
>>>>> hole. And it’s YOU.
>>>>>
>>>>> *Personally, I’m confident the duality between the known / knowable
>>>>> and the unknown / unknowable will never end, yet the former will likely
>>>>> grow forever as it encroaches on the ladder, both infinite, but that’s too
>>>>> philosophical for this paper.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Now, about RealTalk.ai:
>>>>>
>>>>> Imagine each person on the planet copied their mind/memeplex to the
>>>>> web, (as we are already, just not organized, NOT YET INTEGRATED, but
>>>>> soon to be...) such that every shared meme bridged any two or more
>>>>> people into a tribe or “thought-demographic”.
>>>>>
>>>>> But first, some big-picture stuff on the evolution of culture and tech:
>>>>>
>>>>> The most constant trend in cosmic evolution, including culture and
>>>>> technology…
>>>>>
>>>>>  (other than the 2nd law of thermodynamics (entropy, or, according to
>>>>> the big picture, what I call the expansion of evolutionary possibilities)
>>>>>
>>>>> …..Is the accelerating integration of increasing complexity.
>>>>>
>>>>> Just LOOK:
>>>>>
>>>>> Earth was a molten rock…
>>>>> ...then hardly a biosphere,
>>>>> …then the cambrian explosion,
>>>>> ...then early hominids, bands, tribes, kingdoms, parliaments,
>>>>> democracies...
>>>>> …industry, phone and airlines, then the web, social networks…
>>>>> ...each stage both more complex and integrated than before.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> “Historically, we have seen an overarching trend towards the emergence
>>>>> of higher levels of social organization, from hunter-gatherer bands, to
>>>>> chiefdoms, city-states, nation states, and now multinational organizations,
>>>>> regional alliances, various international governance structures, and other
>>>>> aspects of globalization. Extrapolation of this trend points to the
>>>>> creation of a SINGLETON.” - Nick Bostrom.
>>>>>
>>>>> SINGLETON -   a world order in which there is a single decision-making
>>>>> agency at the highest level.
>>>>>
>>>>> It’s in Nick Bostrom’s interest to shout wolf. I would if I were him,
>>>>> and believe it too as that too would be in my interest were I in his shoes.
>>>>> But from where I look, the inevitable singleton must be collective
>>>>> AND singular at the same time.
>>>>>
>>>>> Journey into this concept and you will continually find more and more
>>>>> epiphanies, an endless resource for the practical dreamer. Your vision for
>>>>> the future will rise so high above your peers, you won’t speak their
>>>>> language anymore.
>>>>>
>>>>> I’ve written hundreds of pages on this idea, and feel like I’ve barely
>>>>> scratched the surface. It’s TOO BIG TO SEE. Maybe some people have more
>>>>> trouble visualizing the endless, accelerating integration of
>>>>> complexity, let alone come up with a prototype that harnesses the
>>>>> principles.
>>>>>
>>>>> One thing this has is moral power...but moral power is a popularity
>>>>> contest that only bends to the truth when it has to.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> -Jamie
>>>>> ############################
>>>>>
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>>>>>
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