Hi Jamie,
See my reply below
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@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
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.
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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:
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############################--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.
A similar concept will be used to further integrate society into collective intelligence.
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.
-JamieTo unsubscribe from the TOK-SOCIETY-L list: write to: mailto:[log in to unmask] or click the following link: http://listserv.jmu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=TOK-SOCIETY-L&A=1
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