Zen In the Art of Spiritual Machine
Maintenance
Far from being decided, the discourse over the meaning of life and the essence of humanity continues. And so, in the early dawn of the 21st century, we find ourselves weighing the benefits and detriments of technological advances. This drama, this immense scenario in which humanity has been performing on this planet over the last 4000 years, is clear when we take the large view of the central intellectual tendency of world history.....We, we fragile human species at the end of the second millennium A.D., we must become our own authorization. And here at the end of the second millennium and about to enter the third, we are surrounded with this problem. It is one that the new millennium will be working out, perhaps slowly, perhaps, swiftly, perhaps even with some further changes in our mentality. I don't think you can measure the function or even the existence of a computer without a cultural context for it. Homo sapiens is on the threshold of discovering that expanding contelligence is the goal of the trip. That pleasure resides not in external material but inside the time envelope of the body; that power resides not in muscles and muscle-surrogate machines, but in the brain; that the evolutionary blueprint is to be found in the genetic scriptures; that Higher Intelligence is to be found in the galaxy. The greatest potential is the possibility of being able to generate (probably with the help of technology) logical, plausible, credible images of futures that would become the basis for early action to forestall the most negative effects of the trends that are already in place. If we could begin to effectively look into the future it would provide a whole new basis for making major decisions. Science is not about doing things that people will believe. It must explore the phenomena that are out there, believable or not. SYNOPSIS
This paper applies the thesis
of Breaking the Godspell and God Games to the general topic
of artificial intelligence, eventual artificial consciousness and to genetic
engineering. We will not be able to develop AI well and fully until we
understand our own intelligence and consciousness and arrive at a consensual
definition of human nature. The planet is on hold, we are Babel-factored
into standstill with no consensual definition of what a generic human
being is. The cultural legacy/lock-in obstacles (institutional religion,
simple-minded Darwinian evolutionary theory, an outmoded academic system,
unsophisticated and overspecialized science, antiquated epistemologies
and logic system, suppression or ignoring of the role of the futant
and the consciousness expert, to name only some) to achieving a maximally
intelligent understanding of our own beginnings and evolution and possible
future evolutionary scenarios are examined. The thesis of the Sumerian
scholar, Zecharia Sitchin, is outlined and advanced as the primary key
to transcending these cultural roadblocks to a planetary consensual definition
of the generically human, essential to intelligent discourse concerning
the development of AI. The ramifications of the Sitchin thesis for the species
in general and AI as a new species are examined and their import for the
new human beyond religion and the old new age elucidated. The proposition
is advanced that the role of AI should be as facilitator of human evolutionary
exploration, education, and as human surrogate to determine optimum, consciously
chosen, self directed, evolutionary trajectories for human individuals,
the human species, and, eventually, artificial intelligence itself. Artificial intelligence will begin by cooperating with human intelligence to answer questions about human intelligence and itself even before it reaches a projected level of conscious behavior. This feedback will enable human intelligence to better anticipate and facilitate the “natural” development of AI through the accelerated development of human intelligence in the most conscious way. This inherently self referential, feedback approach will afford an anticipatory, empirical modality in which questions concerning whether logical, ethical, moral, aesthetic, imprinting, and, ultimately, conscious behavior will automatically manifest --- or not --- at any given level of complexity and/or processing speed in the development of AI. Almost incidentally, it will “present an expanded context in which to develop and utilize artificial intelligence incrementally as a preeminent technology to “generate….logical, plausible, credible images of futures….so we could begin to effectively look into the future”. A positive prime directive for artificial intelligence is established. The roles of the futurist, the scientist, the philosopher, as well as the contribution of all of society to the development of AI are revisited from an evolutionary perspective. The work must be multidisciplinary because AI will be multidisciplinary. The futant subset of any culture is identified, its pivotal role elucidated and integrated. The role of consciousness experts in the development and training and teaching of artificial consciousness is discussed and recommendations given. The potential for transcendent behavior and conscious evolution potentially manifesting in artificial consciousness is discussed in the context of an expanded view of human, conscious, self directed evolution. Suggestions as to who should be the teachers and “zen” masters of these precocious entities are advanced. Caveats: What I am about to put in front of you is, in my subjective opinion, far more robust evidence for a mature paradigm than we have currently for the predicted existence of AI. My intention in this paper, however, is not to instruct but to suggest. The following is based on fifty years of interest, research, intense study, involvement, and reflection on the human condition as a generic human and professional philosopher. I write also as a potential customer, user, associate and teacher relative to AI. It is the best I can envision up until this week. It is respectfully submitted for consideration as a means of facilitating a breakthrough to resolution of matters which, now effectively and detrimentally at a standstill, have the planet on hold and seriously handicap our development of AI. Certain sections of this paper are taken from God Games: What Do You Do Forever? and from lectures presented and white papers I have recently published. When I name names and institutions, critically or otherwise, I intend them as part of us: we are the only game like us on the planet and it is simply we doing these things to ourselves. I have been warned by a good friend not to use poetry in a paper of this type because “nobody reads poetry”. Perhaps that may be a very reasonable call with regard to poetry as it is usually and ubiquitously encountered. However, if we don’t recognize and utilize its full unique potential, what shall we teach AI about it and its use? I use poetry as a meta-language to express the concepts herein more succinctly in a poem titled The Inescapable Universe which is included as Appendix C and parts of which are referenced within the text. Depending on one’s orientation to such stuff one may ignore it, surreptitiously reference it, appreciate it critically or, alternatively, read it first and use the text of this essay as a partial exegesis. If the vocabulary causes you pain, get a dictionary. Don’t blame me, it’s my tight genes. Just about everything that I have discussed here, from my perspective, is at least 6000 years old and most of the controversial points are some 2000 year stale. But there are things that must be said now rather than later. An index of topics is provided on page 81. Working definitions of terms as I intend and use them in this paper: Intelligence: the relative capability of an entity to receive, process, transmit information from external and internal sources. Intelligence Quotient, IQ: an estimate of the degree of proficiency of an entity to receive, process, transmit information from external and internal sources, testable and measurable against a relative peer scale. “Conscious”: to be in a state of consciousness “Consciousness” as a state: in which an entity is partially or fully aware of internal and/or external information it is relatively capable of processing according to its relative spectrum of awarenesses and intelligence. “Consciousness” as a phenomenon: a noun meaning the entire spectrum of awareness(es) of which an individual entity is relatively capable. Consciousness Quotient, CQ: an identification of the spectrum of types of awarenesses possessed by an individual entity and an estimate of the degree of intensity and sophistication of the entity’s ability to operate intelligently in and integrate those modalities, testable for and measurable against a relative peer scale. Evolutionary Quotient, EQ: an estimate of the degree of evolutionary development of an entity, testable and measurable against a relative peer scale. Part 1
The Status Quo: The Way Things Were Tomorrow Totems and Taboos, AI and You....and
I
I assume, on the basis of the evidence
from all sources and past experience, that artificial intelligence, similar
to, and possibly surpassing that of the ordinary human intelligence,
is possible and will be virtually a reality, no pun intended, substantially
according to the schedule projected by Ray Kurzweil in The Age of Spiritual
Machines . I assume, based on the same criteria, that artificial,
self-reflexively aware consciousness will arrive, through our efforts,
probably according to the same projected chronology. I take Artificial
Intelligence seriously and, therefore, very seriously because of its awesome
potential and promise and challenge. With AI, we have before us a concept of unique dimensionality, immediacy and intimacy. We are about to create a new species, nothing less. That is precisely what we are about as the full product of AI and AC development whether we articulate or even admit it. Whether, as we go, we take advantage of this novel process to evolve ourselves, become modified ourselves, use it only as a subordinate modality or a direct surrogate or, merge partially or completely with it is critically dependent on how we understand ourselves, how we define ourselves, how we respect ourselves, and, most critically, how we understand our own species’ inception and developmental process. This is precisely where our planetary problem lies. We, amazingly, do not have a consensual, planetary, generic definition of what a human being is. We disagree about how we really came into existence, and what the nature of our developmental process is. We have treated the sociobiological event of our beginning as a species as if we could never be sure if it ever really occurred. We are Babel-factored, literally talking at each other about a different entity. We have not resolved nor integrated our genesis and our history as a species and, therefore, understood our real nature and future trajectory – we don’t even agree on what we are cloning.....and we are about to define and create a new species. Even though it doesn’t yet exist and it ever becoming a reality is seriously questioned by some, it already effects us so immediately, it is so “close to home” that some knowledgeable minds are recoiling in fear of a Great Defeat. The potential for AI is evolving exponentially but, collectively, we are stuck in our evolution and some are afraid that AI will rapidly outrun us, leading to Ray Kurzweil’s “singularity” and we will become outmoded. It seems a certainty to me that we shall if we insist on working within the cramping parameters under which we operate currently. This is totally unnecessary. Certainly, the “no-Joy” fear is reasonable enough if we remain at a collective standstill in our own evolutionary development and the “it’s just so cool we’re compelled” crowd plunges ahead. But there are some humans who have already evolved sufficiently to be far ahead and keep well ahead of AI. In addition, we have enough accumulated history and data already to know what the locked-in legacies are that are keeping us, the planet actually, on hold and how to unlock and overcome them. The question is not whether we will be able to break the antique molds. I have no doubt we shall. Some already have and I am as confident in predicting that we shall as Ray Kurzweil is in predicting that AI-AC will arrive on his projected schedule. But the schedule is the thing we must be concerned about. Think about it: simply creating a computer program or a computer itself which has only reached the level of capability of reading and understanding all the literature of the libraries of the world and the internet and drawing inferences from it, will make that AI privy to all the differences of human opinion and belief systems and the contradictory philosophical, theological, and scientific answers to them. Which is to say that AI then will be privy to our Babel-factored situation, be aware that the planet is on hold; know clearly that, in a perverse ecology, we recycle outmoded primitive paradigms, that we shuffle our feathers-and-molasses confusion between hands. It will see that, among some humans, there is a slinking cynicism, an often unspoken, viral attitude in human society that holds the view that it is impossible to get out of the criteria vacuum in which religion, philosophy, science and new age thought rattle around with no way to initialize a common ground; impossible to get past the communicatory barriers of turf and custom, belief and taboo. AI may well demand an answer, even at that level of robotic comprehension, to why there are these differences and why there are varying opinions as to their cause. Some of us are engaged in the philosophical and scientific discussions and arguments that usually accompany the advent of such a novel concept as AI. But the usual is far from the essence of what is involved with regard to emerging AI. The most fundamental obstacles and problems hindering our conception and development of artificial intelligence are not the relatively superficial problems that are being discussed and argued about by the scientists and philosophers. Not the problem of trying to define consciousness in terms of the physics of the day; not the arguments over the feasibility or desirability of unbridling of AI without really knowing the consequences; not the arguments between transhumanism and meat; or between the future shocked and the future enthusiasts; or between the computationalists and the humanistic transcendentalists; or between radical cybernetic eschatological totalitarianism and less absolute views, much less the dry theo-political arguments about “ethics”, progress vs. piety, or the bickering between pessimistic and optimistic coders. Among others. These are all muffled arguments from within the take-out boxes of our locked-in cultural heritages. If we have not yet resolved these conflicts with regard to ourselves, it is obvious that we will perpetuate them with regard to AI. Evolution is slow because it tends to be sensitive to all variables. Our species evolution, taking us from square one to Mars in 200,000 years has been uniquely rapid. The evolution of AI clearly is far more rapid even than that. The Residual Negatives: Locked-In Legacies
The major obstacles that are most fundamentally influencing and hindering our understanding and creation of artificial intelligence are cultural legacies, cultural lock-ins (thank you, Jaron) that are with us as the deepest dyes in the tapestries of our cultures, locked in legacies that influence our thinking, our science, our logic, and our concepts of ourselves ---- and, therefore, our concepts of intelligence and consciousness. We are too close to them, or think that we are not influenced by them, or that they have been dealt with in the scientific or academic world long ago, or that we can just ignore them and go about procreating AI without bothering about their import and influence. We deal, furthermore, with all these problems in the usual turfish manner from the isolated towers of scientific, academic, theological and philosophical Cartesian-Newtonian oligarchies. To put it in Lanier metaphor: the legacy code of our culture is dominating it to the point of extreme brittleness. Time’s Up : The Game Has Changed
“....the big problem with taboos is that they axiomatically render public discourse dishonest. If you can’t say certain things, even though you think them, even though the scientific evidence may support the taboo viewpoint, this is a loss for the human species” Timothy Leary The problems related to an anticipated AI, in whatever form or forms it takes on, are analogous to the problems that are related to our children and their education. Currently, we matriculate our young, these amazing, parallel processing, relativistic, quantum jumping, multi-dimensional consciousnesses, semi-illiterate and naive for fear of them questioning our shambling senilities. In a time when we need to stretch our historical sense to allow for the visitation of our planet by alien species from before our origins, we teach them drum and trumpet mammalian history fleshed out with desiccated parochial political platitudes. We teach our own children, privately, generally the same platitudes and clichés we were taught and brand them with the same religious, scientific, and intellectual taboos we were tattooed with as children and expect that they will somehow be ready to deal with AI-AC and step into stellar society. Whether we deny it our not, our children show all the signs of being ready; they are underwhelmed and overqualified. We feel it. But we do not teach our minors philosophy even though they are capable of calculus. We do not allow a teacher in the public school system to teach our children anything important about anything important because we do not agree about what to teach them, because we do not agree about who and what we are. We do not educate our children in the management and refinement and evolution of their personal spectrums of consciousness because we do not agree on what that spectrum includes...and we are about to create a new artificial consciousness. We may limit, restrict, control, even handicap our children and get away with it but the eventual power and independence of AI and the level of effectiveness and intelligence we project and intend for it, will preclude our doing so with AI. If we do not transcend this situation quickly and cleanly we will end up with an exponentiated version of the same mess. AI may be begging us for some guidance, or for some real answers as to what is reality and why we don’t agree what it is, or why some humans try to prevent other humans from interacting with or teaching AI. We may have gotten away with toughing and bluffing it out with our children for generations after generations but the game is up with the advent of AI. The only other alternative is to treat them like we do our children and keep them at a level of subservience that amounts to slavery. If we cannot or will not deal consciously and intelligently with our own children how will we deal with AI? We do not have anything close to a consensual definition of what a generic human is about and we are about to try to define a new species.... The Constitution As Crutch
If we continue in this mode we may well
find each religion and sectarian and philosophical interest creating
AIs in their image and likeness. We could see Catholic self-aware AIs
who may or may not be recognized as having a “soul”, may or may not be
allowed the sacraments (would you have to build in the imputed flaw of
the effects of “original sin”…?) We could see Robertsonian AIs on
TV who may or may not be allowed to become members of the 700 Club.
We could see Islamic AIs who may or may not be allowed in the mosque, may
or may not be fundamentalist jihadeens who could fly a 747 better than
any human pilot…All of whom would have basic conflicts with each other.
If we simply procreate AI-AC within and into this context we may, indeed,
see AI’s going to church on Sunday as Ray Kurzweil has predicted.
If you can conceive of an advanced AI who’s logic capabilities would
allow it to buy into the rap of some talking head preacher on TV saying
the world was created six thousand years ago or the carefully crafted weirdness
of some corporate or Beltway spin doctor. Pretty silly. Big Embarrassment.
Totally, ridiculously, unnecessary.Well, you say, the Constitution is an advanced and enlightened document which has solved a lot of those problems, at least in this country. I submit that the Constitution, certainly advanced and relatively enlightened when it was conceived and put in place, was and is an ingenious solution for maintaining some semblance of peace between the Colonial religious factions, containing the religious mayhem always under the surface. But there is no indication of any anticipation that there would ever be a resolution of those differences, no anticipation of a common definition and understanding of human nature. The Constitution, as unique and effective as it is as a set of rules of order in a primitive situation, has become a locked-in legacy. It barely continues to balance the powers, long term, and prevent the takeover of the government and imposition of theocracy by one religion or another. The extraordinary element still remaining is the seed of evolutionary suggestion clearly intended by its authors as expressed by Jefferson when he said “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change. With the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.”I submit that we are still at a very primitive stage of our rapid and unique species evolution and we should not perpetuate any primitive elements in AI. Adopting a modern version of Jefferson’s point of view would be a good start. Still Dallying With Darwin
“What is emerging now is a sense that something else -- neither mechanistic (Darwin) nor theistic (the Bible) -- is going on. But mainstream science will have none of this ambiguity, and reactively tars all non-Darwinian notions with the broad brush of "biblical superstition." The net result has become a sort of silly high drama in which one flavor of pseudoscience attempts to do battle with another”.John Anthony West Of course, most scientists and sophisticated scholars consider themselves enlightened in that they espouse some form of Darwinian evolutionary theory as the party line, although there are serious arguments even within the scientific arena as to the full validity of the Darwinian thesis. Generally, when philosophers and scientists discuss AI, they apologize if they think they are even possibly sounding like creationists, spend most of their energy in either promulgating some version of Darwinian evolution or attacking what they judge to be its too radical application, get entangled in arguments about whether Darwinian evolution can be invoked to explain human creativity, even aesthetics, and generally put down any other explanation out of hand. The general thesis, therefore, goes like this: the acceptance of evolution as the mechanism by which we came about causes us to understand that we are a collection of biological molecules, interacting with each other as in a mechanism, according to well-defined laws and rules derived from physics and chemistry ---- although not all known or understood by humans as yet. Defining consciousness within this biological model is still a pivotal problem: some say it is simply an epiphenomenon, an effect of the operation of all the parts of the brain working in consort, some say it is the subjective self-perception of herself or himself by the individual, some say it must be based in some “new stuff”, some new physics or chemistry that we don’t yet understand. Across the general population, however, we do not even agree on whether we are evolving, what the process really is if, indeed, we are evolving, from what source and how we began, and in what direction and on what trajectory, whatever that process is, we are headed. We do not agree, even more fundamentally, as to what criteria to use to judge these matters. We are not discussing the same entity. Creationists, obviously, do not think of humans as having evolved in the past or as evolving in the present. It is quite ironical, however, that even most of those who hold for some evolutionary view of humankind evolving to human status in the past do not seem to think in terms of humans evolving in the present, much less having a well defined conceptualization of what that process might be. If we do not agree that we can and are evolving, or whether any evolution of a species or individual must be by mindless Darwinian mechanisms, or whether there are effective methodologies for expediting conscious self-evolution, how are we going to deal with evolution in AI or make intelligent decisions as to whether we will, should, can, imbue or withhold from AI the potential to do so? Time’s already run out on that clock. The battle of this century: Moore's “law”) vs. Kuhn's “law”). Consciousness in, Consciousness out
We use “AI” already with ease, and clearly are at the very beginning of artificial intelligence development but all vectors point, eventually, to AC, artificial consciousness, as the goal. We anticipate that a robust AC will be such because it manifests the characteristics and functions of ours. Implicitly or explicitly we are using ourselves as the model. The index of the eight hundred and seventy two page study of intelligence testing, The Bell Curve, by Herrnstein and Murray does not even contain the word “consciousness”. The index of Douglas Hofstadter's seven hundred seventy seven page, Gödel, Esher and Bach, has three brief references under “consciousness”. Some robotic and AI experts say they can’t even talk about consciousness much because they don’t really know what it is. Consciousness in, consciousness out. We are not going to solve the “problem of consciousness” within the confines of the contexts we insist on limiting it to and the tools we limit ourselves to using to investigate it currently. Our entire arsenal of physical and intelligence tools for determining the nature of reality is limitedly useful but essentially inadequate to determine a precise scientific definition of consciousness. Philosophy, the use of reason (assumed to be a valid way to attain at least some types of truth) and logic (the following of rules assumed to be a valid way to reason) as we understand it and employ it is a function of our current human consciousness. Science and the scientific method (assumed to be an efficacious protocol to discover the laws of nature) as we understand and employ it is a function of our current human consciousness. Physicists insist on pontificating in this matter. At minimum, we will need a physics commensurate with the evolving consciousness which invented it in the first place. We might assume that the most evolved consciousnesses at any given time could invent an evolving physics commensurate with their consciousnesses. It is clear, however, that when the physicist begins to investigate consciousness, even with the assumption that it is some form of energy/matter that is known or at least discoverable, there is an epistemic barrier encountered scientifically that is analogous to the epistemic barrier of a more general nature encountered in philosophy: scientifically defining consciousness, because it is a dynamic and expanding and evolving phenomenon as is the human being possessing it, becomes a difficult task. It is not difficult to casually define it as a phenomenon with certain parameters and characteristics. The hard problem lies in insisting on proving its existence, defining and predicting it according to the concepts and laws of the physics of the day because it involves consciousness defining itself. G. Spencer Brown puts it well, if a bit sardonically, “Now the physicist himself, who describes all this [reality] is, in his own account, himself constructed of it. He is, in short, made of a conglomeration of the very particles he describes, no more, no less, bound together and obeying such general laws as he himself has managed to find and to record. Thus we cannot escape the fact that the world we know is constructed in order (and thus, in such a way as to be able) to see itself. This is truly amazing.” In fairness, it will probably be relatively easy to duplicate the ordinary scientific consciousness and intelligence because it is so mechanical and limited. On the other hand, to duplicate the intelligence of an Einstein doing physics by imagining himself to be a photon might be of a degree or two greater. Einstein was also a good perceptual psychologist: he gained insight by being able to imagine and appreciate the subjective relative perceptions of motion by observers and by respecting intuition. This is not to say that our best science and physics are not evolving. On the contrary, there is a clear developmental direction discernible in our science: as Johnson Yan has pointed out succinctly, “It is paradoxical to find psychological theories that rely on classical, Newtonian physics, explicable with Euclidean geometry, and emphasizing objectivity, cause-effect determinism and atomic theory (assuming global properties to be a sum of their basic elements) at a time when physics has reversed itself and become consciousness-directed, probabilistic and multi-dimensional.” The crux of the “problem of consciousness” lies precisely in that psychology and philosophy and physics are inextricably merged with regard to explaining consciousness and I say that no physics is. commensurate to an objective analysis and definition when the observer and the observed, the conditions and methodology of observation and the criterion for evaluation and definition are one and the same. To attempt to get around this problem by the introduction of a “super observer” simply adds an exponent to the equation but does not resolve it. Consciousness in, consciousness out. There is a class of human consciousness Which presides, rather than observes, In a clear hegemony, exercising A preemptive sovereignty, essentially Unavailable to poetry's probity, Hardly amenable to metaphor, an unanticipatable Inescapability but not a prime mover, An unquestionable primacy of awareness Which alone confers a diploma on philosophy; Assigns logic its license; Endows wisdom with its significance; Bestows permission on art; Awards mathematics its prize; Inspects the procedures of science; Disciplines religion; defines intelligence; Prompts intuition; systematizes transcendence; Integrates ecstasy; critiques its own Reflections on its reflections on itself As it informs the local universe With the self-referential patterns Of our racial dance in the continuum. Furthermore, every time we try to sneak up on our consciousness and turn the next corner, Gödel is standing there with a big grin. I am not saying that we should fall back on David Chalmers’ “brute indexicality” (in street talk: “that’s just the way it is”) but I am saying that physics should be understood as subordinate to consciousness. It is not just that it is problematic that our philosophy of science, which determines our approach to science, i.e. the scientific method, has not kept up. If our consciousness is evolving and physics only evolves as a function of our consciousness then, de facto, it will never catch up unless we incorporate consciousness itself as a variable in the mix. There is no provable, cosmic rule that says that everything in the (assumed) realm of energy-matter can be “objectively” verified. To extend that kind of assumptive thinking to hold, therefore, because a phenomenon cannot be measured “objectively”, it does not exist, is sophomoric nonsense. Subjectively, I am convinced that not to recognize that there can be and are certain phenomena that are not amenable to “objective” “scientific” measurement and proof as we define it at any given time is evolutionarily obstructive. Consciousness is a problem for the physicists but the most fundamental problem under the rug is the proof of the validity of the scientific method itself, by which we insist on defining the nature of consciousness. The Scientific Method ?
“We have a funny habit of confusing consistency with truth. A system....can be internally coherent and frequently usable without being true.” We seem to lose sight of the fact that science and the scientific method is a construct based on philosophical principles. We call it the philosophy of science and scientists act as if it was an afterthought or an expression of how scientists determined to operate in the first place. The scientific method may not be used, by the consensual injunction against circular reasoning, to prove its own validity so it cannot “begin” to operate without the basic gratuitous philosophical assumption that there is a lawful, objective order in the first place: why bother go looking for laws in an unlawful universe. The scientist (well, philosopher of science) understands “objective” as things being in a certain way independent of the existence of any mind or conceptualization of them by any mind. That, circularly, is considered to be demonstrated to be a “true” assumption by getting the same results in independently repeated experiments under rigorously controlled conditions. That pure assumption of the efficacy and validity of duplicability and circular proof is ultimately judged valid by the subjective perceptions and evaluations of the scientists’, hopefully consensual, agreement. The subjective definition/assumption determines the subjectively selected criteria which determine the methodology which determines the results which determine the subjective evaluation of the results which determines the assumption. Inevitably, a voice is heard to protest “But you have to start someplace!?” By the very fact of making this statement-question we have already “started”: it is simply another reminder, trailing an inescapable, Felliniesque coterie of assumptions and postulates, that we have never “stopped”. Suppose we all decided to simply stop communicating totally because we were convinced there was no way to know the truth. Even without going to the further extreme of attempting to deny our own existence and acting accordingly, we would still be affirming our conviction that our silent withdrawal was the “right” thing to do in face of the “truth” of reality as we understood it..... and defined it. How primitive are we? Tom Bearden has put it rather well: “All ‘laws of nature’ are based on symmetries at specific levels; all of which have broken symmetries where that law is violated at that level, and becomes an enlarged symmetry (or conservation law) at a higher level. We have not yet scratched the surface in science.” The predictable is only a subset of the known;In Part 4 I make some suggestions as to how to approach consciousness practically, as we do gravity, say, making use of it, being able to predict its effects and gradually using it to determine its fundamental nature and laws. I find the Identification of the entire person, or something quite close to the totality of the person as only the sum of all the information processes in the brain and nervous system incomplete and inadequate. I judge that the reasoning that begins with the equating of “subjective” with “conscious” and/or “consciousness” and concludes that consciousness is, therefore, not measurable and testable because science only deals with “objective” reality is simply confused. To equate objective with scientific and subjective with conscious or philosophy or religion is gratuitous and presumptive. Just as there is no apparent way --- within the current philosophical and scientific boxes --- that it can be proven objectively that there is no objective order of reality, there is no apparent way to disprove that the concept of objective is a subjective construct or prove that the objective evaluation of subjective is objective. Historical perspective shows clearly that the concepts of “objective” and “subjective” and “scientific method” are products of our prevalent, Cartesian-Newtonian perception and conceptualization of the universe. Our epistemology, philosophy, science, indeed every conscious modality we manifest is a function and product of the dimensions we perceive and comprehend. In our spiraling cycles of morphogenetic discontent, How primitive is our philosophy? By its nature, it is hardly adequate even in linear, 3-D Cartesian-Newtonian space and time. As G. Spencer Brown has shown , our classic philosophical modality cannot handle even a simple tautology like This statement is false (if it’s true, it’s false and if it’s false, it’s true ) and disposes of it by claiming it is meaningless. It is clearly meaningful, however, and it is true and false simultaneously: it may be said to oscillate in time. He has demonstrated that we should add an addition category to our binary logic to expand it to greater adequacy. We are an evolving work in progress. We have to expand our conceptualization of AI-AC to recognize that we are modeling, not just a static intelligence and consciousness but an evolving one: ourselves. (It is uncomfortably obvious to me that, at this point in the process, we really are tending to model, not so much ourselves, but actually a vague concept of machine consciousness: we are tending to model computer based “intelligence” after itself. Rather ironic although understandable in light of our confused concepts of ourselves.) Conscious, self-directed, evolution intrinsically involves self-supercedure of a habitual kind. We need a feedback loop operational, therefore, between evolving human consciousness and evolving AC (which must be developed as such from the beginning) in a dynamic process. AC develops as an evolving entity and is used as a tool and, later, cooperated with in the process of exploration of our possible evolutionary trajectories and to enhance our leading edge dimensional expansions and the potentials and abilities that result from them. That systematic exploration will produce the information we need to develop AI-AC with the characteristics and evolutionary capabilities most advantageous to us and it. This is why G. Spencer Brown’s expansion of our antiquated CN logic to address and take advantage of the time dimension (feedback and oscillation components) is such an important next step. You can’t “program” an evolving entity with a static type code, it ain’t gonna happen. Neural nets can learn and self-correct but they will have to have the capability of not only extrapolating a future from what they know but projecting the future on the basis of what they can imagine as the best move in order to self-evolve. Conscious evolution is no longer the simple minded survival of the fittest. It is several magnitudes greater than simple-minded adaptation to ambient conditions. It not only can foresee and construct future conditions but take over current ones to change them to fit itself. Our philosophizing is trapped in the same epistemological limitations of its own making even more fundamentally than our science is. Is it possible that we are predetermined to determine our own determinism? How absolutely certain can one be that there are no absolutes? By what criterion does one judge the criterion by which one judges the criterion by which one judges the criterion by which one.... How would we prove that the ultimate objective order of the universe's?) is that it is essentially subjective? How does one disprove that every statement presupposes a previous statement including this statement itself? How does one use logic to prove that logic is a valid way to prove something? There clearly is something very lacking. We can arbitrarily forbid reference to an expanded dimensionality (Russell’s & Whitehead’s type theory) or give up in disgust or despair, analysis paralysis, terminal skepticism, or we can take these blubbering conundrums as clues as to where to go to supersede our current outgrown limitations. We can see the deficiencies, so we should conclude that we have to upgrade and expand our language, our logic, our philosophy, our science in order to completely and satisfactorily express what our consciousness already knows. Just as Cartesian-Newtonian physics and mathematics are a subset of relativity so our epistemology and logic are a subset of a greater relativistic dimensionality of perception. If our past consciousness could develop an epistemology and logic that was adequate for a time, our evolving consciousness can develop an evolving one that will be commensurate for a time. We have some ideas about how to create an artificial logical intelligence, able to self-correct and learn. But it seems only a very few have the slightest about how to create an artificial epistemology. And we want to procreate an AC at least commensurate with ours. About the best the best of us seem to be able to do, perennially, is fall back on limping philosophizing, shouting back and forth between the theo-philosophical (usually characterized as non-objective and, therefore, subjective) and the scientific ( subjectively judged as objective) watchtowers. It is analogous to the “my God is better than your God” exchange that has been going on for millennia between the faiths of the world and the results, although, perhaps, not as horrendously mortally destructive, are as evolutionarily counterproductive. What will we teach AI about that situation..? Consciousness in, consciousness out. IQ Meets CQ....and EQ?
Just as one can test to determine
if an entity possesses some degree of intelligence so one can test to determine
if an entity has some degree of consciousness. Just as with intelligence,
once determined in an entity, one can devise relative criteria and scales
to measure the extent of the spectrum of awarenesses and the degree and
focus of each kind of awareness, its integration and the degree of intelligent
use by the entity of its input and data. How primitive are we still? Tests for a consciousness quotient, CQ, do not seem to be a concept with which our collective consciousness is comfortable just yet. Not just a test to determine a verifiable state of awareness. Not just a test to see if we can be Turinged by some program or entity. A test of consciousness quotient would determine the entire range of awarenesses of the entity, human or otherwise, and the degree of development and intensity, quality and focus of each part of that spectrum. The democratic ideal is twisted with regard to consciousness as it is with IQ: yes, all humans are created equal as far as their human rights are concerned but we all don’t have the same abilities or degrees of capabilities or intelligence or consciousness. Somehow even such a recognition is seen by some to be less than politically correct, or a denigration of some individuals. How primitive are we? If the notion of a CQ is touchy, try EQ, an individual's evolutionary quotient, a relative scale measure of an individual's evolutionary development and potential. We continually make ad hoc judgments, many times for the sake of our own security and safety, about the relatively evolved or devolved physical, mental and consciousness characteristics and signals of others just as we are doing continually about their manifest IQ. A parent or teacher or psychologist expects a statement like “This person has a higher IQ than that person” to be sophisticated and socially acceptable. If, however, one dares broach the notion of a consciousness quotient, CQ, communicatory flags go up, there is disconcertion, confusion, even conflict. Advance the concept of an EQ, an evolutionary developmental quotient, and things get really squirrelly. We talk of conscious evolution, currently a hip term, being in charge of our own evolutionary choices and trajectory, tending to equate “evolution” and “consciousness”, yet generally we don’t agree on the nature of our evolution, or it’s trajectory. If we knew and agreed, we could test and evaluate for EQ. We had better get that straightened out before we have to explain it to AI and, eventually, teach it how to consciously evolve according to a be determined, possibly unique mode of both consciousness and evolution of its own. How primitive are we? An obvious serious general problem is exposed when we consider other than “normal” states of consciousness. At this primitive stage we cannot even agree on what constitutes the real or “legitimate” elements of the spectrum of human consciousness.. If an investigator’s paradigm --- or consciousness --- doesn’t happen to have the capacity for some perception, sensitivity or ability, its reality is often, a priori, denied in other humans. When Nobel laureate physicist, Brian Josephson’s, thirty years of research on consciousness persuades him that "Quantum theory is now being fruitfully combined with theories of information and computation. These developments may lead to an explanation of processes still not understood within conventional science such as telepathy”, it provoked David Deutsch, a quantum physicist at Oxford University, to describe Josephson's claim as "utter rubbish." It may not even be admitted for testing or the investigation turned into an inquisition using magicians as the inquisitors instead of Dominican monks in the public square of some “learning” channel. We argue about the reality of various kinds of extrasensory perception, non-local communication, transcendental states, and perceivable dimensionalities and never seem to be able to come to definitive conclusions --- unless, of course, remote viewers are needed by the Pentagon. If the working hypothesis is that conscious thought can be achieved as a machine artifact and that human minds and identities can be eventually transferred into artificial ones then we had better assume from the beginning that the artificial environment has the potential for the entire spectrum of consciousness that the original has. Consciousness in, consciousness out. This obstacle arises from the presuppositions about and scientific controversy over what constitutes proof of the existence and nature of other than “normal” phenomenon. All of the legacies locked into our western and eastern psyches color our thinking about consciousness more than we usually realize and, in effect, present obstacles to our achieving it through whatever ways we develop. If we have no consensual recognition and definition of what constitutes the full spectrum of human consciousness much less the potential for continual, self-directed, conscious evolutionary expansion of that consciousness, how successful are we going to be in eventually imbuing AI with an analog of any of that --- much less explaining any of these phenomena eventually to AI? Part of this impasse is the direct result of the definition of “soul” as the immortal part of man by the Church and its relegation of any paranormal abilities to the realm of the devil or demons and anything that might in the wildest be construed as “spiritual” by science. How primitive are we still? The Church still trains specialist theologians in demonology and the Pope has just made the news with his third exorcism --- of a twenty-two year old woman (of course). The only progress reported from Rome is that, apparently, the Church has decided to remove alien species from the category of demons.... We still show deference to the theologian speaking in Old Testament terms of humans being made “in the image and likeness of God” (a theo-political forgery of the Sumerian history of our creation) to be involved in the definition and development of AI. We are now down to neurotheology and the “god spot” and generic theologians, experts in the “study of God” who no longer even bother with “God” and study states of awareness, attempting to work out new epistemologies in terms of mythos and ethos and juggling “theories” of “soul” and “spirit”. How narrow is our focus? We do not bring in consciousness experts as consultants. To say that no one knows what consciousness really is so no one can really be “expert” in consciousness development is equivalent to saying that, because we did not (perhaps still don’t) know what gravity is no one could calculate ballistic trajectory. We could ask the Dali Lama to recommend the most consciously developed monk, seek out the most developed yogi, the most gifted psychics, and put them on grant. They could begin by teaching the developers and programmers how they master control of their autonomic nervous system and mind and offer some tips on the nature of consciousness as such. We tend to think of yoga and chi kung and chi systems as “religions” but they are better understood as well developed methods for mastery and development of the full spectrum of human consciousness, the primary operative characteristic of the human being taken as an integral “physical”-“mental” entity. We could solicit the input of the most gifted psychics and learn from them about paranormal states of consciousness. I am not saying we should take any of their thought uncritically but it could be an addition to the data bank if only for the future instruction of AI on its history. How primitive are we still? We simply do not have a full, robust, dynamic paradigm of the evolution of a human individual that is generic and consensual. It must be broad enough to include the option to explore every and all potentials we can conceive of at any given time now and in the future and assume that new potentials will open up that we have no conception or intimation of as yet. Only thirty years ago, Timothy Leary, Ph.D., Harvard lecturer in Psychology, the irrepressible Tesla of consciousness, used LSD to allow a person to self-reflexively experience their own internal mechanisms, from basic biological functions to transcendental states including the brain experiencing itself: consciousness investigating and revealing itself to itself. He produced a codification of the entire current spectrum of human psychology and consciousness in evolutionary terms that could serve us for many generations. Although a twelve stage, quite satisfactory and adequate paradigm of human evolutionary development was advanced and refined by Timothy Leary from the early sixties onward we are still hampered in even considering such a schema because we are not even in agreement on the nature of our beginnings and subsequent evolution. Is it even possible to develop and describe the stages of the evolution of a human individual? Certainly. We are limited creatures with the potential to expand and change and modify but limited nevertheless. We can be modeled. The model must include the inherent potential to evolve in an ongoing, consciously directed and chosen way. Sociological pressures in the common consciousness put Leary through fourteen jails as a political prisoner and a California judge proclaimed him the most dangerous person on the planet. LSD remains, to date, the preeminent modality for the exploration of consciousness by consciousness, self-reprogramming of behavior down to the level of imprints, and the experience of the most evolved states of awareness and information of which we are capable. This is perceived, in our primitive tribal state, as a threat to the hive and, therefore, illegal, and, therefore, college courses in neurobiology usually dismiss it summarily with “causes hallucinations”. Certainly, anything can be used to do harm: gunpowder, dynamite, atomic energy, aspirin, morphine, just name it. Charlie Manson did it. The CIA gave LSD to persons without their knowledge in the ‘70’s and did a great deal of very serious harm. Slave code religions do not want the individual experiencing “mystical” or transcendental states independently; the military does not want recruits who are looking through the drill sergeants head; power playing politicians do not want voters who are amused by spin: corporate marketeers do not want consumers who see them in evolutionary perspective. Those professionals who specialize in consciousness, who are interested in its application obtain permission with difficulty or not at all. Psychiatrists, i.e., the medical profession, protect their hunting territory from the individual who would take their game, pun intended, for free by the use of this modality that allows a person, under good set and setting to do for themselves on their own terms in five minutes what the psychiatric modality is not successful in doing in the way of behavior change in fifty couch hours. Although we are so primitive that most are simply afraid to rationally consider even the concept of a psychedelic substance which can be used constructively as a powerful technique, a “yoga”, a discipline, a modality of conscious evolution much less the use of such substances themselves, we had better, sooner than later, at least consider an artificial psychedelic. That is an awkward but adequate term for a compact bit of code, a molecule of code if you will, which could be switched on and off to duplicate the action of, say, LSD, in the coming generations of AI-AC “computers”. The AC expanding and self-awareness enhancement that might occur could precipitate the singularity some are so gigglefritzed about because we have not assimilated and integrated the usefulness of psychedelics in the conscious evolutionary process for ourselves much less AI-AC. The Hazards of Haphazard
AI could suddenly show
up under a government program, as a military weapons development project,
as a product developed by some corporation or perhaps even as a high
school science project. It may be public or private. "It is just so cool”.
Uh huh....but “cool” isn’t really a good enough criteria for me. I am strongly
convinced that we cannot let any of these technologies just sort of evolve
from current computers or in the drug company, college, or AI labs, or at
the economic whim of chip companies or as a military asset. What it will
most probably be is a mirror of the mentality, the intelligence and consciousness
which created it. That’s a bit disconcerting and could well put us pitifully
at handicap with AI. I will be extremely reluctant to use AI chip implants
designed by some pizza and Pepsi scarfing, programming idiot savant restrained
in the back rooms of Intel. I will be extremely reluctant to employ an
advanced AI robot or android developed by even the most intelligent engineer-scientist
who is, nevertheless, consciously challenged, definitely no pun intended.
If, indeed, there occurs a “singularity” in the form projected by those who, half in fear and half in adrenal anticipation are keeping a singularity watch, already resigned to its occurrence, it will be brought on unnecessarily through the chemistry set in the bedroom crowd who will do it because “it’s so cool” and blow out the wall papered with their multiple degrees without a clue as to what was wrong. I want to have input, knowledge of the intention and direction and intelligence and especially the consciousness of those who are making those products and procreating AI, for obvious reasons. Consciousness in, consciousness out. This paper is initial input. I am certain that I will be accused of having no real concept of the gravity and enormity of the potential singularity. I think that I may have a fuller concept than the singularity watch hive guardians, I simply differ in the evaluation of the inevitability of it. How primitive are we still? We have not yet recognized the futants among us (futant: future—mutant, as coined by Timothy Leary, 1976 ), usually about 1-2% of the population whose genetic programming prompts them to be the evolutionary scouts, bellwethers of the next dimension of evolving human consciousness. We need to learn to identify, evaluate and integrate the futant contribution as a valuable evolutionary asset. They may not always be totally accurate or correct due to the novelty of their vision, their relative personal comprehension of it, the stability of their personal psychology or biology or their resilience in the face of a primitive hive reaction. If we are fearfully anticipating that AI will quickly supersede us evolutionarily and we have not even recognized and integrated the futant.... Another facet of human consciousness that needs consideration and which is not addressed in our current discussions and debates concerning AI and VR, is that of the role of dyadic sexual interaction as a means of consciously evolving. The concept of the use of sexual union as an accelerating psychedelic modality through which the male and female partners become a dyad consciously moving up the evolutionary DNA spiral together is not a part of our cultural fabric. The east has known Tantric yoga for centuries, the concept and the practice probably carry all the way back to the first human civilizations, times and teaching. It was thrown into a male chauvinistic context, with the female subordinate, by Pantanjali around 400 A.D. The West and, apparently the East to some degree, now think of tantric practice generally as simply “expert” sex. Even though the dyadic equality is gradually being restored, the refined, high psychedelic, evolutionary essence of fusion is lost on most. It involves elements of telepathy, merging of the chi fields, para -“normal” energy exchange, as well as yogic sexual control. It is a function of conscious evolution and a prerequisite for its employ is a fair measure of personal evolution. If this modality is hardly in the common consciousness, unappreciated and misunderstood – even considered immoral by some slave code religions – the inclusion of it in AI, VR and AC will be difficult or neglected. Serious mistake. Especially since we are intending to upload our minds into artificial duplicates which may well be seriously lacking in this and many respects. And we are already talking of sex with AI..... There is clearly going to be at least three main streams of human evolution going forward. There will be those who will continue as consciously self-evolving, biological humans, those who will completely replace their biological components with non-biological components and those who will opt to move fully into virtual realities. There will be innumerable combinations of these general approaches. The major differentiation will be on the basis of enhancement of the biohuman (of all kinds: genetic, biological, electronic, nanotech, and things we most probably have not even conceived of yet) vs. complete transubstantiation (from complete non-bio makeup, technohuman to existence in a virtual reality environment). Logically, no well evolved, sane biohuman, would even consider becoming technohuman until technohuman becomes capable of all that we are capable of along the evolutionary scale, physically, intellectually, consciously, and possesses and can evaluate and learn from his and her history, becomes capable of self-evolving and certain that the trajectory of that evolution is in the right direction. At very least. Logically. But there are apparently many of us who think that technohuman is what we should become if we could do it tomorrow by lunch and the bugs and details be damned. They should have that option and risk. The biohumanly oriented should have their option and risk. That, however, is where the problem may manifest. If one or the other or both decide that the other is not the “true” way of evolution there will be conflict. Already there is an uneasy sense that those who would be non-bio technohuman despise “meat” and would legislate against it if they had the power and the opportunity. If we are still so primitive that we do not have a consensual definition of what the fullness of the human and human consciousness is, how are we going to intelligently model and duplicate it in some other form, some other material, some other medium? If we are going to create a species which we anticipate will be superior to us and we have not resolved the primitive political tensions between us concerning how we should upgrade ourselves....It can be done, inevitably shall be done, and we have at hand the means and ideas to take us out of the primitive posture which severely handicaps us in doing it in a fully human fashion. A Self-Indictment
Part one constitutes a very broad,
serious and daunting self-indictment. I repeat my primary caveat: When
I name names and institutions, critically or otherwise, I intend them
as part of us, as a self-indictment: it is simply we doing these things
to ourselves. Let us be easy on ourselves, however, since we are the only
game like us on the planet, the only example we can work with, the inadequate
boxes are of our making but also ours to break out of. If these negatives
were all there were, then the fears of those in future shock concerning AI
would be vindicated. If I had no suggestions, solutions, answers or resolutions
to offer I would not have written this paper. So the second half of this
essay respectfully offers an overview and paradigm that can take us to
a new level of racial maturity where we can procreate and teach AI as if
it were a new child, albeit of a new species, in the perspective of a deepened
knowledge of our species and ourselves and with a degree of freedom previously
unavailable. A very fundamental, preliminary question: Is it even possible to arrive at an overarching new paradigm so comprehensive and robust that it corrects, subsumes, completes and outmodes all previous partial paradigms, explains all our previous explanations? Unequivocally, yes. We are not incapable of getting off “maybe”, we are blocked only by primitive, antique legacies and the way to expunge them from the fabric of our cultures is now available to us. |
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