Creativity Schizophrenia and Information Processing

There is a fine line between genius and madness.

[Upon running a search on memetics in the codification of art, this passage surfaced, lending very little in the purpose of the search that found it.]

Highly creative "normals" also tend towards over inclusive or "allusive" thinking and, as pointed out by Albert Rothenberg, demonstrate a capacity to conceive and utilize two or more opposite or contradictory ideas or concepts simultaneously, without being disturbed by this simultaneity of opposition, as is also the case with schizophrenics.

taken from:
Creativity, Evolution and Mental Illnesses.
Antonio Preti and Paola Miotto
CMG, Psychiatry branch
via Costantinopoli 42, 09129 Cagliari, Italy
http://cfpm.org/jom-emit/1997/vol1/preti_a&miotto_p.html

mentioned reference:
Rothenberg A (1971). The process of Tunisian thinking in creativity. Archive of General Psychiatry, 24: 195-205

Information Loves Us, But…

…A report has recently been released that declares a certain law enforcement policy or program was initiated without a sufficient information-collecting apparatus in place. Years later, the program has no way of analyzing its own performance…

A report asking for more information.


insert partially unrelated image

The speed of memetic iteration rendered genes impotent. The rate-of-change of genetic transmission, or more correctly the speed of its iteration cycles, is dependent on the reproduction of its organism-host.

Memetic iteration, in contrast, if it relies on the ‘speed’ of a periodicity of anything, is limited only by the physical limits of the brain (i.e. – the speed of neuronal transmission).

Now,

Though we capably understand that a micro-processor expands well beyond these limits, memetic transfer is subordinate, still, to something human.

Humans, as the organism-of-choice to deal the death knell to the gene, turned the transmission of information (if that is what unites genes and memes) into a non-physical thing. This is what allows its speed of iteration to perform beyond the previously absolute limits of the physical world, after all. Did life intend for humans to make its own info-propagating mechanism obsolete?

At this level of inquiry, can we ask instead – Did life intend to produce a form of itself that would render itself obsolete?

And then: Would humans intend to produce a form of themselves (the computer is a ‘brain’) that in turn makes them obsolete?

It seems, that in order for technology to continue its role as the accelerator of meme-propagation, it needs to rid of the us in it.


[Note: It seems that an assumption is being made here that the ‘technology’ meme is the paragon-analogue of the ‘human’ gene, what Susan Blackmore would call the advent of ‘temetics’.]

Susan Blackmore on memes and temes. TED2008. Filmed Feb 2008, Posted Jun 2008.
http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes.html

[Also note: Memes do not need life to propagate; the written word (if it can be separated from the subjective-reading human), for example, is not alive in any biological sense. The final question, not articulated very well above, is this: What world will supplant the non-physical mindspace of the human?]

Memetics in Building Systems User-Interface

The User

The topic of user-interface doesn’t come up much between architects and designers. And it’s no wonder why. To quote from another text:

Blueprints and regulations are complex, but people are all the more. The planner draws straight lines and geometric shapes. The architect uses energy-efficient systems and strategies. Then people come in. They cut corners; they walk on the grass and right through the bushes. They turn off the automatic light sensors. “If only there were no people to complicate things and reveal the flaws in my design…”

-Crowdsourcing Reform, 2010

Yet, the implementation of energy efficiency in buildings comes down to the user. Design all you want, the user will tear that up. Automate? Override.

The building is, both phylo- and ontogenetically, a Dawkins’ Extended Phenotype, in direct contact with the user.

Buildings vs. Building and Users vs. User

Building systems need to be easy-to-understand for the user, and that need is not overshadowed here. However, the kind of user-interface that can be affected by such ‘educational’ characteristics of building systems is for the individual user. What is now deemed a manipulable component of this interface, by the rising attention to memetics, is the attitudes and beliefs of the user-at-large in regards to what a building is and what it does, and especially what their place is in the relationship between them and the built systems.

The Communicability of Building Systems

A “self-propagating” meme is one with high visibility; photovoltaics and fashion trends are examples. “Cast iron cookware is awesome” is not a self-propagating meme; it is much less visible. Surely this has been proposed before, and the Pompidou pays the price, but it must be recontextualized in our current social and physical infrastructure: Building systems must make themselves more visible, while clearly communicating what it is they do and what should be done with them.

It must be noted, it is not being said, for example, that the 'wiring' needs to be visible, just the 'light switch'. And perhaps not even that, but some-thing that communicates what particular part of the electrical system it is and what is to be done with it (depending on environmental and user conditions alike).

See also Architectural Semiotics

Class of 2007

In the school year 2006-2007, I gave my students a test. Their task was to recreate a black and white portrait that I had cut into squares and rearranged. They had to draw each square individually, not knowing what the complete portrait looked like until they drew all the squares.

I offered extra credit to anyone who could name the person in their portrait.

One student wrote: Ted Kaczynski.

The other 79 students wrote the following:

Wierd Al Yankovick

Micheal Jackson

Eminem

The Ghost from Scream

EZ-E

An Alien

Bruce Springsteen

OJ Simpson

Howard Stern

Network Address

A note to the reader, or to those at least who are looking to understand this.

The tag “Mass Transference Device” is a reference to a book, still being written, by the same title. Log entries tagged with this name are excerpts from the book. It is, or seems to be, understood by the author, that all of these things, excerpts and entries alike, are stand-alone, and can thus be understood in either context, those being that of the book itself, or that of a single entry, a single point or idea.

The relationship between log entry and book excerpt (entry as individual, stand-alone; and excerpt as part of a whole, part of a larger idea) is one yet to be fully understood by the author, and so, if any confusion as to the lineage of causation emerges, it is being noted here at least some basic explanation. But, as from confusion emerges clarity, so from clarity contradiction. We end up only facing once again, confusion.

One of the overall purposes, it seems, of this all, both the book and the log entries, is to facilitate the development of a resistance to sustained confusion, thus yielding…something…

Comments are welcome.

Artificial Projection

Geese don’t try to find a placid lake to spend the afternoon in. They are just following instructions, from the conscious-human perspective. Animals don’t try to do anything. Our tendency to project consciousness into animals reveals this basic understanding of evolution: Animals are a direct result of genetic activity, genes, in themselves being pulled forward by some force. They give some instructions that the animal “unknowingly” executes. But alas, they cannot know, and thus, their execution of genetic operations is a complete subservience to the will of their genes (although even ‘submission’ implies conscious activity). There is a subtle distinction in perspective offered here. Are animals slaves to their genes, evolving eventually to liberate themselves?

Consciousness, of course, is this liberation. But then we must ask, referring to the same relationship between animals and their genes: What “mindless” operations do we undertake? We are conscious, intercepting genetic fulfillment, yet we may be performing under the illusion of self-control. Will we, if we will still be able to call us that, will we look back on us now and see the absolute subservience to evolution once again, in this new phase, now under the soft-formed authority, the chaotic maelstrom of memetics and artificial selection?

And so, as the goose glides in to settle down for a warm autumn day on the water, are we in the same way going forth into the world, our world, the mindspace, with the same absolute fidelity to instructions whittled down by the sands of time, albeit a time of post-biological magnitude. Is this mindspace not a wild frontier that we have yet to fully explore? Is not our world, the one that sits atop the ‘wild’, not just as wild? As those sands of time become a shower of meteors, carving out a place on this earth, who will we become, and where will that be?

and then there's this:

This Aeon article is a must read for anyone interested in just about anything:

When we peer into the fog of the deep future what do we see – human extinction or a future among the stars?

-Ross Anderson, Aeon Magazine, 2013

http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-human-extinction/

Prompted by a recent article in Aeon Magazine warning of the threat posed by advanced artificial intelligence, Kristin Centorcelli of SF Signal put together an impressive panel of renowned science fiction authors to get their opinions on the subject.

Mind Meld: The Future of Humans and AI

Kristin Centorcelli, SF Signal Fanzine, April 10th, 2013 http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2013/04/mind-meld-the-future-of-humans-and-ai/

-via io9

http://io9.com/science-fiction-authors-decide-is-artificial-intellige-472478094

Some notes on Steven Pinker's Words and Rules

Fortunately or Unfortunately

It has been decided.

The recent increase in the use of the words ‘fortunately’ and ‘unfortunately’ signals a shift in the collective paradigm. In using this new relationship between the diametrically opposed terms as a way of describing an event, there is a distinction between chance and causation. When a certain outcome or mode of behavior or operation is categorized as ‘fortunate’, it denies causation and, hence, renders the operation incapable of being rationalized.

To refer to anything as fortunate renders the logical human mind powerless to analyze it, manipulate it, predict its outcome, or prevent its onset. It exists entirely in another realm as a function of randomness.

So, in the current collective paradigm, instead of referring to something as a problem that can be solved, it is instead a phenomenon, the true nature of which we can not understand by way of the rational mind.

When certain political or social issues are not recognized as a problem, then there is no fault, and there is no need for direct action. Surely, this seems like a most unfortunate context in which to address major issues of our time. However, fortune, by its illogical nature, removes the moral compass, the universal right-and-wrong. And in this vacancy, perhaps, there is room for a recalibrating of that compass. All of the sudden, the fortune now becomes ours for the taking, for those of us who wish to see it in this way.

[note a contemporary article relating to this subject]

Candidates for "Genius" tech support staff undergo more training in facilities world-wide, then are certified and regularly tested on their skills. Training extends even to language. Former Geniuses say they were told to say "as it turns out" rather than "unfortunately" to sound less negative when they are unable to solve a tech problem. People familiar with the matter say Genius appointments are often triple booked, so they are always swamped.

Secrets From Apple's Genius Bar: Full Loyalty, No Negativity

By YUKARI IWATANI KANE And IAN SHERR, JUNE 15, 2011

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304563104576364071955678908.html

Intermental <> Intramental

All references below are found in this publication edited for the 30^th anniversary of Jaynes theory: Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited, Marcel Kuijsten, 2006

_____________

“Religion was born the day the gods retreated into the heavens.”

Marcel Kuijsten, “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: 3 Decades of New Research”

Found in Chapter 4, p114

_____

During this bicameral transition, we see an expansion of the role of consciousness in decision-making to avoid seeking authoritative sources to guide actions.

Marcel Kuijsten, “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: 3 Decades of New Research”

Found in Chapter 4, p132

_____

Julian Jaynes inferred that the sense of self awareness emerged about four millennia ago when the experiences from the right hemisphere attributed to external agents such as gods and deities, intercalated with the linguistic properties of left hemispheric function. Language, Consciousness, and the sense of self [the analog ‘I’] may have emerged as synergistic products of culture.

Michael A. Persinger, Foreward

_____

The bicameral world is a continual present (no memory).

Julian Jaynes, 1986, “Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind”, Canadian Psychology, 27, 128-148

Found on p191

_____

Brian McVeigh, “The Self as Interiorized Social Relations: Applying a Jaynesian Approach to Problems of Agency and Volition”

Found in Chapter 7

>>>

The self is composed of two parts:

1. Active, in control, the spirit, self

2. Passive, under control, body, virtual self

>>>

Consciousness as culturally informed authorization

p208

>>>

Consciousness as Shortcut:

Consciousness permits an individual to navigate the environment, both social and natural, in a more efficient manner. For example, before actually executing a behavior, we can “see” ourselves “in our heads” carrying out an action, thereby allowing us to shortcut actual behavioral sequences that may be time consuming, difficult, or dangerous.

p210

>>>

The self is a personal toolkit of command and control “inside a person’s head”.

p214

>>>

Madness

Madness is “resistance in coping with impulses from the individual unconscious”.

Introduction, Jose Barchilon, M.D., pviii, author’s footnote

[This statement, in that it implies the individual unconscious requires coping, brings forth the related idea that the individual unconscious rose out of a preceding transpersonal/collective unconscious].

_____

Madness is manifestation of the “soul”, what became known after Freud as the unconscious.

Introduction, Jose Barchilon, M.D., pviii

_____

Madness was an “undifferentiated experience” for the person living prior to the Age of Reason.

Preface

_____

In the Middle Ages, the legions of animals symbolically bear values of humanity.

In the Renaissance, the beast is set free to acquire a fantastic nature of its own.

Animality has escaped domestication by human symbols and values; and it is animality that reveals the dark rage, the sterile madness that lie in man’s hearts.

Chapter 1: Stultefera Navis, p21

_____

…The forbidden limits of knowledge, so inaccessible, so formidable, the Fool in his innocent idiocy, already possesses. While the man of reason and wisdom perceives fragmentary and all the more unnerving images of it, the Fool bears it intact as an unbroken sphere.

Chapter 1: Stultefera Navis, p22

[There is a great parallel here between Jayne’s Bicameral Man and Foucault’s Fool in that they both have access to an ancient wisdom that becomes inaccessible in the era of matured concsciousness (The Age of Reason)].

_____

No doubt, madness has to do with strange paths of knowledge.

Chapter 1: Stultefera Navis, p25

_____

Madness is the punishment of a disorderly and useless science.

Chapter 1: Stultefera Navis, p25

_____

The tragic experience of madness in a critical consciousness [during the Medieval to Renaissance transition] is abolished.

Chapter 1: Stultefera Navis, p25

_____

“I can imagine a man without hands and feet, but not one without thought.”

Pascal, Pansees

Chapter 3: The Insane, p70

[Also resonant with Julian Jaynes, see his thoughts on the misinterpretation of ancient texts, http://networkaddress.blogspot.com/2011/07/julian-jaynes-bicameral-breakdown-on_16.html].

_____

On the insane and physical stamina and disease:

Madness afforded man an invulnerability, similar to that which nature, in its foresight, had provided for animals. Curiously, the disturbance of his reason restored the madman to the immediate kindness of nature by a return to animality.

Chapter 3: The Insane, p75

_____

[Jesus was ‘mad’, and look at us now…]

Jesus crucified…was the scandal of the world and appeared as nothing but ignorance and madness to the eyes of his time. But the fact that the world has become Christian, and that the Order of God is revealed through the meanderings of history and the madness of man, now suffices to show that Christ has become the highest point of our wisdom.

Boussuet, Panegyrique de Saint Bernard, Preamble

Chapter 3: The Insane, p75

_______________

Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason

Michel Foucault, 1961.

English Translation Richard Howard, Random House, 1965

Nothing to See Here

When you think about life, when you used to see the buds of the acorn, and then the acorn – the little triangular pieces thrusting upwards, outwards, overlapping in a distinct pattern. And you could see the relationship; when you would think about the on-off switches, set by infinite variables, you would bask in the glory of it, the glory of life.

Then came the code, and it was like, oh, it’s just a code. Nothing to see here. That’s when we realized that life wasn’t about biology, but information. All of our concepts of life and its behaviors were now being conferred upon information, not matter, as its substrate.

The virtual palimpsest was a paradox at first. Copies upon copies of copies, pieces taken apart and put back together but having been exchanged with identical pieces of another. Put simply, though, it was just the concept of a thing – a thing as based in matter – becoming a non-physical thing, an idea. There were no more things, or at least not much that mattered. It was all ideas. And ideas don’t require a physical platform, they need only a mindspace.

How do you build a culture on that? There is no more ‘building’ in the sense we of timespace had known. And so our cultures as well dissolved and diluted, too meager an entity to compete in this world. Culture needs layers of age and decay; it mimics the biological even in that sense of growth-from-poverty. To the point, he who relies on his body to house his mind, his mind will always behave as a body and according to the rules of timespace.

Obscurity is the Refuge of Incompetence

-quote from Robert A. Heinlein's, Stranger in a Strange Land, 1961

Next Caller Please

"Someone's breathing into the phone. I'm not saying stop breathing, but maybe you could direct your mouth away from the phone."

-Emmanuel Goldstein, Off the Hook, WBAI 99.5FM, Apr 24, 2010

The Artificial Arena of Natural Selection

Society (with all its institutions and distinctions between class/race etc.) is the artificial arena of natural selection required for the continuing evolution of humankind.

Fresh and Clean

I wear black socks. Right now, I have two batches from two different brands. They look similar, but the thought of wearing two different ones makes me crazy, so I make sure to pair them correctly when folding my laundry.

It's hard to tell the difference between two of them, but I realized today, for the first time, that when you look at three together, it becomes very easy to tell the one that doesn't belong. I can basically do it at dusk with no lights on, using this method.

I feel like I've just made a personal discovery of one of the fundamental truths of logic.

Clean in the Front, Dirty in the Back

Companies Get New Tools for Calculating Emissions

LESLIE KAUFMAN, New York Times

October 3, 2011

article excerpts:

The creators of influential measures of greenhouse gas emissions plan to announce two new tools for corporations...to calculate the amount of climate-warming gases released through a company’s supply chain, as well as in the use and disposal of its products. A standardized way of calculating such emissions had eluded energy experts and statisticians for several years. The tool is known as Scope 3.

The second tool is for calculating the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and four other gases linked to climate change across a consumer product’s entire life cycle. With a toaster, for example, a company would seek to count greenhouse gases released in the mining of elements for its metal shell and the coal burned to make the electricity to power it — and even the fuel burned when the toaster is carted away.

In 2004 the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based environmental organization, and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development released a final standard for Scope 1 and Scope 2. Scope 1 covers emissions from direct operations like running a factory. Scope 2 covers emissions from energy-related, indirect sources of emissions like the coal or natural gas burned to make the electricity that powers the lights at headquarters.

In developing the new standards, the institute and the business council worked with more than 60 corporations to test the standards and solicit feedback. Dan Pettit, associate director of sustainability for Kraft Foods, said that his company learned while working with the new protocols that Scope 3 emissions — coming from activities like farming — accounted for 90 percent of the overall impact.

The company is now trying to work with a few high-emission areas for reductions, such as helping cocoa producers in Ghana increase crop yields while minimizing use of carbon-intensive fertilizer, he said.

Kraft has a financial incentive to make progress on that front, Mr. Pettit said. “Think of carbon as waste — somewhere there is inefficiency.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/business/corporations-getting-new-tools-for-calculating-emissions.html

>>>

Make sure you know how this works: Corporations are clean in the front, dirty in the back.

In order to appease stakeholders and potential customers, private industry now realizes their responsibility to the environment. However, on the back end, they continue to manipulate and exploit global government regardless of either environmental or social impact.

Our system of governance has become too complex for the intelligence of its population (but not for private industry as a collective). One can easily compare carbon ratings when buying a sofa. Comparing political candidates and their policies is another matter, and one which fails to support the far-reaching goals of such an environmental standard as mentioned above.

I Don't Get It

If I am here, and you are there, and you tell me that time doesn't exist, but space does, then how long does it take me to get there? No time? Then how do I get there?

If I have to go from here to there and so I have to go through space, then I refuse to believe that no time will have passed. If there is no time, there is no space.

If light travels so fast that time, for it, does not exist, then it must be everywhere already. I don't have to go where you are; I can't. I'm already there.

So where is light?

It's not in space.

If it is not in us, then it is nowhere.

Time Dilation as a Function of Knowledge

Time is relative to age. When you are young, time takes longer. Five years is a long time from 15-20 years of age. However, it is but one year for the 30-35 year old.

When you change surroundings, such as to live in another country for a few months, it will feel much longer than it actually is. Time - our perception of it - is a function of age, surely, but more centrally, of newness.

New things require processing. For survival, the objective is to learn, and thus to put as much potentially ‘new’ information as possible into unconscious processing, freeing up brainpower for other things.

And so it [the perception of time] is also dependent on knowledge and experience. The more knowledge you have, the less things are new to you. And this is what speeds up time. It takes you less time to sift through the incoming info [enabling an automatic response instead].

Furthermore, it is then apparent that the more you know, the faster ‘time’ seems to fly by. As we enter the future, and we know more every day, and we are sharing information in greater amounts everyday, it seems logical that eventually, we will know ‘everything’ and time will speed up to the point of non-movement.

Phylogenetic vs. Ontogenetic Time Dilation

Species (over 100,000 yr period)

Vs

Individual (over 100 yr period)

Telescopic Evolution

Eamonn Healy Monologue

Waking Life, Richard Linklater, 2001

TRANSCRIPTION

“If we’re looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life perceived through the hominid coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you’re looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological — development of the cities — and cultural, which is human expression.

Now, what you’ve seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that are involved here — two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, 100,000 years for mankind as we know it — you’re beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you’re looking at 10,000 years, 400 years, 150 years. Uou’re seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it’s gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself within our lifetime, within this generation.

The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external.

And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human, okay, with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until we reach a crescendo in a way could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space.

And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That’s the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It’s sterile. It’s efficient, okay? And its manifestations of those social adaptations. We’re talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These will be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. And that is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.”

>>>

VIDEO EXCERPT

due to copyright issues, any currently posted video will not last long enough to make a direct link useful, so instead just execute this search:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=waking+life+evolution&aq=f

>>>

COMMENTARY

An important aspect of this idea of telescopic evolution is to consider the rate of change relative to a single human life cycle. If we take some basic values, such as information transfer as measured in bits, successive iterations of a novel idea/machine/device, or even just the lifespan of the structure of a typical single family-unit residence, and plot these as they change over time, we would probably see the following behavior:

However we measure the 'rate of change' either of technology or culture, we should see that we are approaching a point in human progress where that change is coming close to a threshold relative to humans. The ratio of the rate of change versus the length of a single human life cycle is approaching a significant point in the trajectory of progress.

Perhaps some threshold has already been crossed, making biological evolution secondary to the evolution of the mind. Regardless, it is not a difficult task to imagine the speed at which ideas were generated, combined and mutated in the 1700's as compared to the 2000's. Human civilization, the anthroposphere, digested over a century the transformation of culture and technology due to the advent of the printing press. However, we have had only a decade to assimilate from internet-infancy to global connectivity.

The telescopic nature of evolution supports the idea that biological evolution is no longer an effective means of sustainability - it can no longer wait for successive generations; the transformation/mutation needs to happen within a single human lifetime.

We are approaching the point at which it is not our offspring that propogate the human race, but our thoughts.

Tiny Neutrinos May Have Broken Cosmic Speed Limit

DENNIS OVERBYE, New York Times, September 22, 2011

The physics world is abuzz with news that a group of European physicists plans to announce Friday that it has clocked a burst of subatomic particles known as neutrinos breaking the cosmic speed limit — the speed of light — that was set by Albert Einstein in 1905.

“The correct attitude is to ask oneself what went wrong.” -Alvaro de Rujula, theorist at CERN

John Learned, a neutrino astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said that if the results of the Opera researchers turned out to be true, it could be the first hint that neutrinos can take a shortcut through space, through extra dimensions.

The Opera results will generate a rush of experiments aimed at confirming or repudiating it, according to Dr. Learned. “This is revolutionary and will require convincing replication,” he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/23/science/23speed.html?_r=1&hp

The replications of this experiment alone, convincing or not, will create a disturbance in the world of science that will be severe and unpredictable.

Teilhard’s Evolution

Man’s thinking enables him to intervene in the course of his own evolution [and in fact is the sole determinant].

On Teilhard’s Phenomenology:

In classic ontology the consequence can never be more than the cause (as man comes from animal, he can never be more than animal).

Geology was not a historical science until ~1850, when it was evidenced that the earth was not static, but in a state of becoming (this leads to paleontology, fossil-studying). By 1900, astronomy also becomes a dynamic subject. Where does biology intersect?

[astronomy à geology à biology à anthropology à sociology/psychology]

How can life spring from no-life?

There is no such thing as no-life; it is all pre-life. All matter has the germ of life in it (thus the germ of consciousness as well).

On Entropy and Meaning:

Energy is neither created nor destroyed only transfered, and in the transfer, some of it is rendered purposeless (random/disorganized) thus tending to entropy.

Change arises from purposelessness.

Change, however, also arises from purpose.

Purposeless - entropic dispersal

Purpose - anti-entropic concentration

But meaning also is neither created nor destroyed, only transfered.

What is this relationship?

Absolute manifestation vs cold, conscious universe.

The Consciousness of Thunder

To refer to the bicameral man as having consciousness is to give an animal consciousness. It is the same as assigning to the lightning and the thunder a knowing of their own whereabouts and happenings. (Earlier I struck a tree in the forest, and then a house on Main St. …My thunder at around six o’clock this evening was tremendous). It’s not like that.

“It is very difficult to suspend the habit of projecting consciousness in thinking about ancient civilizations or even animals close to us or even in newborn infants.”

-Julian Jaynes. 1986. “Consciousness and the Voices of the Mind”, Canadian Psychology, 27, 128-148.

-found in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness, Jaynes Revisited... . M. Kuijsten (ed.), 2006.

The Street Man

(A man in the corner of the Port Authority, relatively kempt above 35):

Voices? I hear all the voices. But they don’t tell me nothing I don’t already know. You see, I know everything. My thoughts are always ahead of everything. What voices do you want to know about? Cosmoligian, terrestrian, solarian, universalian…? You see, it’s the psychology. Yes, listen, when everything started the earth was made and god did it. I know all that. Jesus knows it. I already know everything even if they’re yelling. I know what’s wrong and what’s right. You see, I’m always trying to catch up with my reality. I don’t even try anymore. It’s always so far ahead of everything. I can’t keep up with it. …No one can ever know me or understand it.

---

-Interviewed homeless person in NYC on the subject of auditory hallucinations

-Conducted by Michael Rosenberg, student of Julian Jaynes

-Presented by Julian Jaynes at a conference of Harvard U. Dept. of Psych., Oct. 1989

-Published in Philosophy and Psychopathology, M. Spitzer and B.A. Maher (eds), 1990

-Found on p81 of Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited, Marcel Kuijsten (ed), Julian Jaynes Society, 2006

On Corporations as Super-Individuals in The Evolution of Civilization:

What is more intriguing, the consistency of the pattern of civilization, or the relative simultaneity of transition for factions along different locations of the trajectory?

At the outset of the 21^st century, the nations of Middle East/North Africa transition from the religious to the secular, as America, crown of the West, manifests the next stage after democracy, that of the corporate controlled populous.

-in reference to “corporation as person”, and Murray Hill Inc. running for Congress

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murray_Hill_Incorporated

Subtle Suggestions

So I saw this printed on a wall in a cafe in Frenchtown, NJ:

"Children left unattended will be given espresso and a free kitten."

Also, I was crashing at a friend's apt along Old River Road in Frenchtown NJ, and his landlord, an old, single, retired man, had placed a tricycle on the very edge of the lightly trafficked dirt road alongside his house, in a deceptive attempt to get people to slow down while they drove past (it only worked sometimes).

Anyway, people tend to be jerks when seen in the greater social setting. I found both of these examples to be quite refreshing as a means for behavior modification. I wish I saw more things like this.

On the Self-Replicate

[Sunday February 13, 2011]

People no longer interact in the way they were designed to by their physical evolution. During the transition from physical evolution to mental, the human body ceased to evolve (by its naturally selective definition), experiencing instead a change in mental constructs and eventually in collective interaction. Having developed the self-replicate, people could experience omni-spatial presence. They work while, at the same time, playing. The total separation of self into multiple entities allowed for unimaginable developments in energy use, while at the same time encouraging interpersonal interaction to increase to the point of full integration. Everyone can interact with everyone else all the time, at the same time – in fact, outside time. Experience, in a way, is shared rather than lived, in the ancient sense of the word.

This great system of human life is managed by the Exogenerational Body. This limited group is responsible for the maintenance of our collective life form. They redesign the anthropic network and redistribute its nodes as necessary. They also create vast diversions for the spiritual health of the people. Collectively, these diversions are called The Illusion. While many self-replicates perform the work necessary to uphold our way of life, others can at the same time commune in the warmth of their own chosen groups of conscious entities. The composite of all one’s choices within and between these networks and throughout all of one’s self replicates, is called one’s life – the people you’ve met, the things you’ve done, all of those are offered to you and either acquired or non-preferred, attracted or repelled. Technically, there are no new experiences offered within this illusion, only shared experiences endlessly redistributed. People come and go, in unifying cycles called Generations, but their self-replicates will always be bound within the anthroposphere, sharing the Great Experience. The only difference is that choice is not available – there is no acquisition or non-preference – existence simply sways to and fro throughout the sphere, riding on the currents of the universe that have been focused by the collective purpose of humankind.

The Anthroposphere

[Sunday, February 20, 2011]

Around the year 2000, humans began their exploration into the use of a digital network of interaction. Within 10 years, all humans existed simultaneously in both the conventional world and the digital world. This was, as stated, mostly exploratory in its developments. Humans had never experienced the simultaneity that came from the digital network, but soon, the entire spacetime structure of their collective existence became surmounted by a mind-shattering theory of non-time, which was itself brought on by developments in energy use, distribution, and storage of the early 21^st century.

When, in 2040, humans, collectively, in a sense, formed the anthroposphere, non-time began, paving the way for the self-replicate. Human existence, from that point on, is categorized into two parts – before the anthroposphere, or in time; and after the anthroposphere, or outside time.

Once the anthroposphere was officially stabilized, all living humans were grouped, by age, among other less important variables, into Generations. These are the Generations proper, as the Proto-Generations refer to the population born in time. Shortly before the first of the protogenerational population was set to expire, it was discovered that they could continue to exist within the anthroposphere as virtual entities. Though the expired generations could no longer interact, their presence could be felt by others still living. Henceforth, all humans living and otherwise have gained access to the self replicate, a virtual entity that can exist simultaneously with the living human, while technically interacting at another geochronological position. The only difference between the self-replicate of the living and those of the expired, is that expired self-replicates are more like the phantoms, or ghosts recorded in the old stories of human memory.

By around the year 2040, all humans being born were done so into the anthrocentric world of the human network. Humans had come full circle by this time, so that, by the modified evolutionary product of human conjoinment, their offspring was designed to interact within the anthroposphere only. The social engineering apparatus was thus complete, and, by 2070, the whole of human existence, active and extinguished, could be safely controlled.

Relative Truth

"It’s a little unfair, I think, to criticize a person for not sharing the enlightenment of a later epoch, but it is also profoundly saddening that such prejudices were so extremely pervasive. The question raises nagging uncertainties about which of the conventional truths of our own age will be considered unforgivable bigotry by the next."

Broca’s Brain, Carl Sagan, 1974-1979, Ch. 1, “Broca’s Brain”, p11

The Phenomenon of Man

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Written in Rome 1948, published in Paris 1955, eng trans 1959

INTRO

By Sir Julian Huxley

Cosmic Evolution as an Infolding upon Itself

Self Complexification = Convergent Integration (p15)

Linking Evolution of Mind w Concept of Energy:

2 forms of manifestation of energy

--Physicists energy – measurable

--Psychic energy – increases w the complexity of the organized units (p16)

The brain alone is not responsible for the mind, though it is a necessary organ for its manifestation. (p16)

Definition of mind – receiving, synthesizing, processing and organizing data from both within and without and using it to direct action (p17)

Referencing Teilhard:

The earth’s roundness, the sphericity of man’s environment, was bound to cause the intensification of social activity, as opposed to outward diffusion/expansion, where idea encounters idea, organized by the web, increasing tension. (p17)

The evolution of life is an anti-entropic process (p26)

GEOGENESIS (Pre-Life)

All matter has pre-life within it.

Irreversibility and Indivisibility:

As the crystalline structures of the earth become indivisible from each other, so do the biospherical counterparts; they cannot exist apart from all other biospherical counterparts [next after biogenesis comes psychogenesis and eventually noogenesis]. (p74)

BIOGENESIS (Life)

--Tangential growth – ‘leading shoot’/external energy

--Radial growth – expansionist/spherical/tidal/internal energy

Insects and Consciousness:

It is undeniable that certain qualities [Cephalization] are only capable of being manifested above certain quantities [organ size relative to body structure]. (p154)

ANTHROPOGENESIS (Humans)

Instinct is not canalized but flexible in mammals – it plays…an aura of freedom begins. The mammal is no longer a slave to its phylum. (p156)

Primates – freedom re limbs (p159)

“The orthogenesis of primates coincides w the axial orthogenesis of organized matter (urging all living things towards a higher consciousness).” (p180)

“Man came silently into the world, already speaks, lives in groups, already make fire…as we know, each time a new living form rises up before us out of the depths of history, it is always complete and already legion.” (p184)

“…the first man is, and can only be, a crowd, and his infancy made up of thousands and thousands of years.” (p184)

NOOGENESIS (Thought)

The Individualization of our Planet (p72)

The Noosphere is the terrestrial threshold of the planet, a transformation affecting the state of the entire planet [in the same way that biogenesis affected earth, comprehensively and simultaneously]. (p180)

The brain meets its organic limit

The Birth of Thought:

We already know that everywhere the active phyletic lines grow warm with consciousness towards the summit. But in one well-marked region, at the heart of the mammals, where the most powerful brains ever made by nature are to be found, they become red hot. And right at the heart of that glow burns a point of incandescence.

We must not lose sight of that line crimsoned by the dawn. After thousands of years rising below the horizon, a flame bursts forth at a strictly localized point.

Thought is born. (p160)

Anti-Entropy:

Psychic Heating ß à Material Cooling

--Boiling point/phase change

--A tiny ‘tangential’ increase causes the ‘radial’ to turn back on itself and take an infinite leap forward

--Morphologically, nothing really changes [to the human body, as it has stopped evolving physically relative to the mind] (p168)

Agriculture and Animal Husbandry:

The diminishing availability of land concentrates humans, leading to civilization/socialization. The geographic/spherical limits of the earth are what cause this concentration. (p203)

Endomorphosis (a geological term) [anthrosynthesis?]:

--the assimilation of cultures

--”mutual permeation matched w significant interfecundity of psychisms”

--blending ethnic traditions and cerebral genes

America and Evolution:

“The principle axis of anthropogenesis has passed through the West.” [in the same way that no new species were ‘born’ after man, no ‘new land’ was found after America] (p210).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

“…the wealth of a nation which has almost nothing in common with their frontiers” (p212)

“The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting.” (p220)

“The social phenomenon is the culmination and not the attenuation of the biological phenomenon.” (p222)

“The spirit of research and conquest is the permanent soul of evolution.” (p223)

“Indeed time and space become humanized as soon as a definite movement appears which gives them a physiognomy.” (p227)

“Mankind has stretched a single membrane over the surface of the earth without breaking it.” (p241)

“Thought artificially perfects the thinking instrument itself.” (p25)

“…the hyper organic nature of social bonds” (p252)

“The mind is essentially just the power of synthesis and organization.” (p259)

“The exaltation, not merely the conversation, of elements by convergence: what, after all, could be more simple and more thoroughly in keeping with all we know?” (p266)

The creative value of synthesis in the evolutionary sense: There is more in the molecule than the atom, more in the cell than the molecule, the individual, society… (p168)

Since man, there has been a slowing down of the passive and somatic transformations of the organism in favor of the conscious and active metamorphoses of the individual in society. We find the artificial carrying out the work of the natural; and the transmission of an oral or written culture being superimposed on genetic forms of heredity (chromosomes). (p276)

[In the Noosphere] …”we are confronted with human vibrations resounding by the millions – a whole layer of consciousness collected and hoarded produce a million years of thought. Have we ever tried to form an idea of what such magnitudes represent?” (p285)

“…to abandon the organo-planetary foothold, the end of the fulfillment of the spirit of the earth…” (p287)

Evolve, Please

“…nothing is more unfair or a greater waste of time than to protest and fight against the increasing leisure towards which the machine is inexorably leading us. Without the very automatic processes whose business it is to make our various bodily organs work “on their own”, none of us, it is obvious, would have any “leisure” to create, to love, to think: the necessity to look after our ”metabolism” would occupy us entirely (p104-105).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man’s Place in Nature: The Human Zoological Group

Written 1949, Harper’s 1956, English trans 1966

The Noosphere – Ethnic Compression; Economic-Technical Organization; and the Simultaneous Increase of Consciousness, Science and Radius of Activity:

Teilhard and Cosmic Evolution Series, 8 of 8

Particularly since the Neolithic, the more mankind is compressed upon itself by the effects of growth, the more, if it is to find room for itself, is it vitally forced to find continually new ways of arranging elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space (p98).

[--Kevin Kelly, How Technology Evolves--

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/kevin_kelly_on_how_technology_evolves.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Technology_Wants

Kelly suggests that technology is the seventh kingdom of life; it evolves, evidences 'genetic' lineage and is distinct from biology in that certain 'species' can be traced to 'parents' that have gone 'extinct'. He calls technology a cosmic force.]

On increased psychic temperature/mental interiority and inventive power, under the law of complexity consciousness: it “increases each human element’s radius of action and power of penetration in relation to all the others” (p98-99) and “today, thanks to the single discovery of electromagnetic waves any man can immediately and simultaneously make contact” (p99, note).

[note: written in 1949, pre-internet]

Towards the Future – The Convergent World and the Limits of Socialization:

On the Teilhard’s “wave” and the “passing of the equator”: “…in earlier days, man’s consciousness could be revolutionized simply by the discovery of a new continent…” (p103).

More brain: collectivized cerebralization, the grey matter of mankind [not man, but mankind] (p100)

Man, taxonomically, is not just a family or genus but represents another planetary biological layer (p112, note).

Everything comes about in the course of cosmic convolution as though the superstructure (the psyche) more gradually replaces the infrastructure (the physical) as the consistent portion of the vitalized particles (p121, final note).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man’s Place in Nature: The Human Zoological Group

Written 1949, Harper’s 1956, English trans 1966

The Noosphere – Individuation:

Teilhard and Cosmic Evolution Series, 7 of 8

The Collective Co-Consciousness of Primitive Tribes in a natural way facilitates the cohesion and natural functioning of the group (p93).

[--Bicameral Mind Theory--http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicameral_mind]

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man’s Place in Nature: The Human Zoological Group

Written 1949, Harper’s 1956, English trans 1966

Civilization and the Noosphere – Effects of Differentiation and Orthogenesis:

Teilhard and Cosmic Evolution Series, 6 of 8

Differentiation:

In man, there occurred an unknown and peculiarly revolutionary type of mutation in the massive cross-fertilization of large ethnic groups (not the rearrangement of germinal particles within certain individuals) (p90).

Orthogenesis:

“Psychogenic” arrangement has replace cerebralization (the brain reaches its limit) (p91).

From one point of view, hominization seems to have slowed to a stop, but considering civilization a part of this evolution, we see only acceleration (p92).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Man’s Place in Nature: The Human Zoological Group

Written 1949, Harper’s 1956, English trans 1966