The Three Essences, Kurzweil Reimagined

May 1, 2010 to May 6, 2010

Bob Fiske

The Three Essences, Kurzweil Reimagined

I see the world in ways that are natural for me, yet unnatural for others.  It’s a sad story.  It’s a story of sacrifice, and ripping away of things we cherish.  Maybe.  It might not feel like that in the end because we might embrace it without reservation.

Essence One: Environ-mentalism.  This is a restructuring of human cognitive and social characteristics with the aim of permitting human beings to coexist in harmony with the global natural environment.

Essence Two: Species-purpose.  This refers to a reorientation of meaning and purpose away from self-gratification, family-gratification¸ regional-gratification and national-gratification, and toward global awareness that the parts must serve a higher-order, all-encompassing design.

Essence Three: Dying-accept.  This transformation asserts that one way of living is no better or worse than another way of living.  There is nothing wrong with pain, suffering, hunger, illness, aging or dying since they are all states of being completely alive.  This essence seeks a state of consciousness in which individual human experience reduces to trivial importance in light of the demands of Essences One and Two.

These essences forecast a redefinition of the constructs by which we assign value.  Some of our most cherished notions will be sacrificed in favor of the welfare of the total human genome.  Indeed, they will be sacrificed in favor of the welfare of the total terrestrial genome and the total bank of phenotypic characteristics that those genes produce in living entities.  In other words, preservation of diversity will overrule individual success.  This has always been life’s (nature’s) biological agenda.  Now—because of our numbers and our intellectual dominance—humanity will necessarily take ownership of nature’s agenda.

New values imply new currencies.  Already this is happening in the techno-sphere.  Here is a TED talk by Jesse Schell called “When Games Invade Real Life” (http://www.ted.com/talks/jesse_schell_when_games_invade_real_life.html).

This way of thinking allows me to view Kurzweil’s “singularity hypothesis” in new ways.  If the ultimately intelligent computer emerges (along with its incomprehensible artificial intelligence), it will take ownership of nature’s agenda and the development of Grand Design.  It would create the new currencies.  These currencies would take birth as expressions of a point system with such a complex underlying algorithm that humans would not be capable of understanding it and would require computers to even access it.

Already we see the early stages of this in complexities of the tax code and investment instruments.  At any rate, using the singularity’s algorithmic point system, the post-singularity AI would have the means to positively motivate human behavior, shape human values and engage in diversity-promoting husbandry.

Instrumental Directives

Bob Fiske

Instrumental Directives

Here is a little background, just to let you know how I arrived at this.  I was reading Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now for the second time.  I got up to the same chapter where I had stopped the first time—and I quit again.  It was driving me crazy!

Several days later, while visiting my parents, I went for a morning walk.  I needed to settle my brain, which was whirling around and around.  The brain, the intellect, does not submit easily to spiritual awakenings.  I walked, I grumbled, I asked, I moaned.  Why?  Why?  How does Tolle’s spiritual awakening help the world?  Why does this matter so much to me?  Why do I feel so alone?

Finally, a thought came that lent me some stability: What do you know?  I started to think about my writing and my journaling.  A picture was forming.  The picture was formed of words.  Not just any words, though.  Verbs!  Verbs flooded into my consciousness.

Verbs are important.  They represent action.  Moreover, a verb can stand for an entire sentence.  The shortest sentence is the imperative, the directive.  Run!  Jump!  Buy, buy, buy!

In fact, a well-chosen verb can stand for more than a sentence; it can stand for an idea.  Plant it, water it, explain it, and it starts to grow.  Yes, a verb can become an entire treatise, telling others why you chose it and what it means to you.

So, yes, these verbs began to paint a picture in my head.  It started with my deepest yearnings for humanity.  As I thought about it, I realized that my yearnings for humanity were not shared by most people.  At different stages of our adult lives, we choose where to focus our energies, what to call important.  So, I began to put myself into other people’s shoes.  The verbs began to arrange themselves into three “islands”.

The last island popped into my head, literally, as I stepped up to my parent’s front door.  No kidding!  I’m reaching into my pocket for the house key, and Bam!  The picture felt complete.  In the kitchen, I immediately grabbed some paper and sketched my work as a diagram.

Between then and now, I have thought about it and have “refined” it.  The three islands now have names and represent three levels of awareness and action.  Also, I polished some of the words.  The urge to look clean, I suppose.  For instance, the verb “conserve” was originally “use less”.  And, “replenish” was “give back”.  Maybe I should have left them alone, should not have tinkered with perfection.  Hah!

So here it is.  First the overview:

And now, the verb-y version:

Possibly, I am the only one to whom this is meaningful.  I guarantee you, that would not be the first time.  However, if you grasp this immediately—especially the earth directives—I would very much like to make your acquaintance.

With love,

Bob

Dawkins Versus Collins: On the Things Which Spark Debate*

After being sick for three weeks, my mind is starting to click again.  (Poor you.)  Can I ask a question?  What is a “thing”?  As in my saying, “Buddhism is just a thing.”  What does it mean to call something a thing?

A thing is something that can be separated and removed from the other elements around it.  Thus, a stone lying on the road is a thing.

But this opens other avenues for drawing conclusions.  Something that is a totality, representing the superset of “wholeness”, cannot be a thing.  So, the universe cannot be a thing if, by the universe, we mean the sum total of everything.  Some people might say the same thing about God, seeing that God subsumes everything that is less than God.

I would say that the phenomenon known as conscious experience also qualifies as a totality.  We cannot directly “know” (or have direct awareness of) anything that falls outside the scope of conscious experience.  Elements within consciousness can be removed from the mix.  But consciousness itself cannot be removed (while we are conscious).  Therefore, conscious experience is not a thing.

Here is another distinction.  Some things can be described as “physical” things.  Other things have no physicality, but are, nevertheless, things.  Nonphysical things could be described as “mental” things.  They exist only in the mental environment of a conscious mind.

Example: I create a mathematical set that consists of the days of the week.  Each member of the set is a thing since I could remove it from the set and consider it alone.  And the set is a thing.  Why?  Because it is not the totality called “the set of all sets”.  (It can be removed from the set of all sets and can be examined on its own.)  Yet, we can recognize that all these are mental things and are clearly apart from physical things.

There is a special category of mental things: words.  A word is a constituent of the superset known as “vocabulary”.  What makes words interesting is that they have “correspondences” to other things.  Word correspondence can be representational: words stand for things.  Word correspondence can also be associative: word things can have similarities or relationships to other word things.  This permits classification, grouping and reminding.  In other words, word things have primary meanings as well as shades of meanings beyond the primary.

Word things can create confusion.  When I use a word I am using a thing, but do I mean the word thing or the meanings associated to it?

One area of word thing confusion might arise if the word thing refers to a rule.  “Rule X” is a thing that references a law or regulation that requires car drivers to turn on headlamps when continuously operating a vehicle’s windshield wipers.  If I invoke “Rule X” in conversation, am I making reference to the practical application of this rule on the part of a car driver?  Perhaps, I am in the legal or enforcement profession.  In that case “Rule X” refers to the word-for-word law that is recorded as the official wording of Rule X.  Or, maybe my use of “Rule X” in my speech would be a reference to the intent or the “why” behind the rule’s creation in the first place.

Many an argument has taken place precisely because the discussants were using the same word thing, yet conjuring in their minds distinctly different referential meanings.  The fact is that such debates happen and are given social importance.  To illustrate, we might step into a courtroom in which two law firms (and the parties they “represent”) are battling out a conflict to the point that one side’s meaning prevails over the other side’s meaning.

Here’s another example.  Suppose I use the word thing “God”.  Doing so, I might be referencing the word itself.  This is not a trivial usage.  Fundamentalist Judaism places strict limits on how and when words for God may be used.

Or, perhaps “God” refers to a specific religion’s understanding of a God-concept, and, indirectly, is a reference to that religion apart from other religions.  For instance someone who says “God” might be invoking the specific meaning “Christ”, which, of course, directly connects to a specific group of religions known as Christianity.

Alternatively, the word thing “God” could be indicative of a specific type of experience.  For instance, a person who says “God” might have in mind the entity to whom humans give praise and what it feels like to give praise.

Clearly, the experiential quality of praising is distinct and different from a specific God-concept, and both are different from a name for God.  Yet, unending arguments will burn because each participant is contributing a different sort of kindling to the fire of disagreement.  The debate happens because the participants can’t free themselves from the trap set by a word thing with different referents.

What this suggests is that we may need a new kind of language that can describe the use of things in multiple and different ways, thus freeing us from the confusion of “single thing, multiple correspondences”.  This new language (and the thought which accompanies it) would help us see past the confusions that arise when things enter the mind and take on form in conscious experience.

From such a language a new concept of things and meaning could arise, as well as a respectful understanding of the weaknesses that come with holding things such as words in consciousness.  From this new language:

A super-consciousness.

That renders consciousness as a thing.

A super-consciousness.

That transcends.

Words.

And.

Things.

*As I wrote this, I had in the back of my mind some of the great debates in recent years between believers and atheists.  One notable, and brilliant scientist, Richard Dawkins, has positioned himself to become a lightning rod for some of these debates.  For example, see the debate between Dawkins and NIH administrator Francis Collins that was arranged and published by Time magazine in 2006, “God vs. Science”.

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1555132,00.html