GNR: Use Your Virtual-Illusion

Spent the last week reading up on the future of technology--especially bio and nanotechnology.

A List of the books on this subject I've finished:

Understanding Nanotechnology--a series of articles from Scientific American.
Nanofuture Josh Storrs Hall
Life Script by Nicholas Wade , the NYTimes resident expert on issues genomic.
More Than Human by Ramez Naam
Singularity by the (in)famous Ray Kurzweil
Why the Future Doesn't Need Us long, famous, dire article by Bill Joy
Radical Evolution by Joel Garreau --personally my favorite of the bunch.

Needless to say this is a ginormous topic. I'm going to spend, I think, at least 4 or more posts on different angles of this all--genetic therapy/enhancement leading to the possibility of massively increased life spans; nanotechnology as the 2nd industrial revolution (according to Hall); the possibility of further speciation on the planet (a huge issue), either between humanity and (conscious?) robots or within homo sapien sapiens itself between the genetically enhanced and the "regulars" and the poor to impoverished to afford enhancements whether they want them or not; bioterrorism, nano-terrorism, if speciation warfare between the different species or intra-species warfare (civil war between robots for example); given the nature of this blog, theological issues involved (particularly what incarnation might mean in a scenario with genetically enhanced, mind-machine interface, will robots have consciousness and therefore souls, if so, are humans then the creator? Will the robots perform worship to human engineers, if so would they accept? What does idolatry mean in such a context? What constitutes an idol, if anything, in this future scenario?).

This is wide open territory. So any thoughts here are intrinsically experimental.
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For this entry, I'm going to focus on the Kurzweil-Joy-Garreau triad.

Specifically I want to focus on the Issue of the so-called Singularity.

In math and physics a singularity is a point at which the natural scientific laws that we have discovered cease to make sense. A good example is a black hole. At a black hole, the laws of physics (both Einstenian General Relativity and Quantum Physics) break down.

Or take the reciprocal of fractions less than 1. 1/10=10, 1/100=100, 1/1000=1,000

If you graph that of course you get an exponentially increasing line coming closer and closer to the y axis.

Now, that serves as the metaphor for the Singularity as used in the discussions of technology. This exponential curve represents the soon to come (depending on who you talked to 20-40 yrs.) spike in technological process. This upsurge in technological power will be so fast as to be mind bloggling. The 20th century, from horse and buggy at the start to text messaged power swarming protests, the Internet, flying planes--that degree of technological advance will occur within the first 20 years of the 21st century. The whole of last century will be like 20-25 yrs. And the rate increases faster and faster.

The three most important pieces to this puzzle are Genetics, Nanotech, and Robotics. GNR.

The Singularity it is argued will be so beyond our capacity to imagine it currently, that it will be, as a Singularity is in physics, outside the normal frame of reference. Our current "laws" of imagination are literally incapable of conceiving of this soon-to-appear world.

What Kurzweil and Joy agree on is that the technological change will be exponential. As Kurzweil says, at a recent conference he attended, only he and Bill thought in exponential terms.

So, first off, it may be that the change will not be exponential. Consensus, as in "everybody else thought in linear (non-exponential) terms", does not necessarily mean anything. The consenseus is just as likely (probably more likely given the history of science) to be wrong as right. But I want to note, that the notion of exponential change is not quite controversial.

I, however, on balance, agree with Kurzweil and Joy. That the rate of technological expansion could in fact hit an exponential curve.

Now, to really simplify things (please read their writings for deeper analysis) once this Singularity hits Kurzweil sees a glorious, almost heavenly outcome: diseases are cured, humans live forever theoretically; pollution is eaten by nanobots. An utopian in other words. With a catch I should note. Kurzweil thinks that the possibilities of evil done through biotech terror will be thwarted by nanotech., and the nanotech terror possibilities thwarted by strong Artifical Intelligence. Then he notes, interestingly, what will guard us against Strong AI? Answer: He doesn't have one.

Joy, on the other hand, sees the same basic evidence (technologically) and thinks rather of hell. He sees the human race wearing a giant bullseye, just waiting for someone(s) to fire. One of the darker scenarios is the so-called grey-goo scenario, where nanobots (nano-sized robots) are loosed on the atmosphere, self-replicating until they inhabit everything. Everything becomes grey-goo.

Now the largest downside to both these men (as described by Garreau, sees his fascinating conversation with Joran Lanier) is they are technological determinists. That is, in integral-speak, they have reduced everything to technological processes of the Right-Hand Quadrant (mostly Lower Right).

For example Kurzweil speaks of hardware and software. Hardware would be a human body, software being our intelligence. So, we create a robotic form (new hardware) where we simply implant our minds (software). Kurzweil also discusses reverse-engineering the brain. With knowledge comes power, and the knowledge of the most complex structure--that we know of--in creation is bound to be tied up with extremely deep power. The power in fact to re-do the brain (and the body for that matter). His evidence for the brain comes from the field of cognitive neuroscience.

Yet again, in integral terms, we see the reductionism. Both hardware and software "ex-ist" in the Right-Hand, 3rd person perspectives. Software, cognitive neuroscience is describing the brain as if from inside (hence the term intelligence), but is treated in a 3rd person point of view. Does anyone talk to the brain, er person, while scanning? Do you ask this brain how it feels? Of course not, so cognitive neuroscience is the inside of the outside perspective.

Kurzweil also, correctly, shows a graph of human technologies from the earliest stone tools to the most advanced of today, plotted against a timeline. And it is in fact a line of increasing capacities. Now, this graph is simply evidence, in integral terms, of Eros, of a Kosmic Push, through all perspectives, in this case the 3rd person plural ones, each later technology transcending and including the former--the hand-held hoe, to the animal drawn plow, to the steam engine, to the computer, etc.

Kurzweil unfortunately does not understand interiority-consciousness. In fact, just about no one in the field (or about any so-called educated person these days) does. One of the sub-sub-themes of Boomeritis by Wilber is if silicon-based machinery were to become self-conscious--see how more important that question is than whether they will have faster computational software than humanity...which is a given--would they re-tread the evolutionary morphogenetic worldspaces of humanity--going through a robotic form of the Spiral?

Now if bring back a developmentalist point of view to the discussion, I find something very intriguing. In Spiral, for example, there is not just an emergent leap between green and yellow (genuine novelty occurs in the move from any level to another), but what Graves called a "momentuous leap." 2nd-tier cognition-values-morals whatever. I know I'm conflating lines here, just doing levels/center of gravity, its just a broad sketch.

The cognitive lines, as we know, develops without pathologies. Either you can "see" the answer or not. You can either take three nickels laid out flat, stack them one on the other, and then say you have one stack with three nickels, or you can't. Children under 3 can not. They can count three, but not make the distinction between a class (stack) and the members (3 nickels). They will be able to do that later. But by the time they reach the cognitive capacity to correctly say 1 group, 3 nickels, they won't do so in a dis-eased way.

Now technology increases rapidly because it is mostly powered by cognitive experimentation. Politics, self-identities, morals, culture, are all way behind of course because these do develop with innumerable bumps, pathologies, and bruises.

Now we already have "2nd-tier" (used as a shorthand for a general wave of consciousness across lines) science-technology. Things like cybernetics, chaos theory, biofeedback, and all the rest, not to mention the Internet, open-source, and all the rest. We don't have the corresponding cultural (Lower Left) wave on a wide scale, nor therefore legal-political institutions recognizing such cultures.

Now the technology-science of the 20th century was deeply transformative, and yet sadly human morality-consciousness did not rise to an equally strong level on the whole. These technologies were used for horrific purposes.

We might say, that the 20th century science-technology was "momentous" in its leap, paralleling the degree to which the movement into 2nd-tier lines of development.

The Singularity then represents the fact that the science-technology of the 21st century will be exponential (even greater than momentous by a long shot). In other words, I would argue that the Singularity is the 3rd-person plural name for 3rd-tier existence.

The exponential curve, then, I surmise (this is extremely hypothetical thinking on my part) would parallel--technically tetra-evolve--in the interior perspectives.

Again, piecing together wild things together, Andrew Cohen--once described his vision of a conscious evolutionary portal. Now that is certainly out there, but I strangely got to thinking what might be the relationship between such a "portal" and the Singularity

A consciousness exponential curve in other words.

[Sidenote: I'm going to avoid weighing in on Andrew and the community and all the controversies therein. I'm just developing an idea I find very revealing and for now bracketing from whom this idea sprung. That's a whole other can of worms that would be posts unto themselves.].

Evolution is currently the context, not a context of other contexts. The entire notion of transcend and include, prehending predecessor, is itself not contextualized, as many have noted. Evolution is the context (from a certain developed point of view) and not a context amongst others because we have not evolved injuctions-worldspaces-communal fact checking for 3rd-tier consciousness. Evolution, I would say, is the meta-truth of the 2nd-tier. Saying it is the context and not a context among others, is like Einstein saying the universe expands. Our minds can only conceive of the universe expanding into some priorly existing empty space. But the expanson is from itself, into itself, as itself. It is Evolution.

As Wilber says, every holon-perspective creates an IOU to the Universe. It can never pay-back this IOU, therefore eventually that level/truth loses its aboslutizing quality, is transcended, neegated, (exclusively) dies, and out of its ashes, arises a newer, fuller meta-paradigm which itself creates another IOU. The IOUs arise from the fact that no relative truth (pre-evolutionary, evolutionary, pre-Singularity, post-Singularity) is the Absolute Truth (Universe in this context).

That evolution is currently the context and not a context among others is its IOU.

Another integral maxim is: The subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next.

Evolution, in the second-tier is the subject, the horizon. Only the third-tier will objectify evolution in some post-evolutionary worldspace. Once evolution is objectified, only then will humans (presumably) be able to effectively handle co-evolution. Once it is no longer absolutized.

Cohen called this an evolutionary portal, and interestingly, he described as like a take-off of conscious development....almost like an exponential curve I'd say.

As ancedotal support of this theory, I point to the practice of Enlightened Communication, the signature spiritual-communal injunction. I've been involved in quite a few of these. Basically the injunction is for a group to sit in circular formation and begin to speak about the arising moment-to-moment inter-subjective experience. There are a list of guidelines that support the main injunction. If done properly, that is if all members focus more on the inter-subjective space, inter-interiority, then there own process, then eventually the group will feel themselves having the same communal experience. They enter the same state (not stage) of consciousness.

Excursus: Obviously at this point, people are either free to believe or disbelieve my reflection. I would say, give it a try. I could be wrong, hallucinatory, it could all just be a commuanlly-induced experience where everybody says "We're all having the same experience." Fair enough. I would say its an experience neither more nor less open to questioning than any other. We could all be in alien vat made to have this sense of having experience. There is no way to prove or disprove that theory.

What I have never seen-felt occur is that once established in this communal state, there is an ability to take from that state about other issues. Many people like to term this experience "One Mind." I do not. The quadrants are all the way up, all the way down. And the intersubjective quadrant does not possess a dominant monad. There is no Giant "I" up above all of us. At least in that experience, focusing primarily on the Lower Left in a higher-state. There is only the regnant-nexus agency/communion of the words-actions-consciousness between the members. Calling it One Mind assumes there is someone Mind in addition to the members involved with dominant agency. An "I" with dominant agency over a collective is called totalitarianism--usually fascist or Stalinist, leader-cult. An "I" over a collective in a spiritual context, might just be spiritual totalitarianism (hint to earlier Sidenote).

I would prefer to call the experience One Network, or One Networked Mind. My vision is its more like a series of interconnected but transparent tunnels-synaptic connections-nodes linked up. And moment to moment in the experience, any individual can choose to focus on the Network (the arising inter-subjective space) or their own mind. People fall in and out of the experience constantly, which is another proof of why I think its not made up. There are innumerable times when someone has spoken when I realized they was "dissonance" like the wrong note. I'm not a musician, but I can a wrong note. And at the exact moment, prior to self-reflection or discourse with another I could sense that others had the same immediate reaction--oops, wrong note.

But this Networked Mind has yet to be channeled to say global poverty. I'm more and more of the opinion that this channeling-focusing of that insight to relative issues--i.e. speaking from the state, while holding it, not about it and about how wonderful it is over and over again intersubjective narcissism if you will--until the technology allows for trans self-reflective verbal consciousness. I also think that the human cognitive capacity to handle perspectives and multiple lines of development also will require telepathic-like machine-mind interface dependent technologies.

Someone says something and immediately in an intersubjective space, that action/thought/expression is parsed among 12 lines, levels in each line, states, types, whatever. Its far out I know. All experienced in real-time as fluid perspectives, morphogenetic tendencies.

I've always thought that whatever the so-called third-tier is about, it has to about actually being evolutionary. Evoultion in the 2nd-tier is still separate from us. I would say technologically this separation is evidenced by the fact that I am typing with my fingers. Once body-machine interfaces occur, our technology will be united to our biology. If human self-conscious is the universe aware of itself thinking and our technological exploits are products of this same movement, then biology, technology, and Nature must come together.
Now because I am not a technological determinist I am not bound by inexorable visions of heaven (Kurzweil) or Hell (Joy).

Every development has brought greater possibilites for both good and evil. What scares me the most is the increasing rate of cognitive-technological development (since it by definition is not held back by pathologies)--as that rate increases our moral-value-consciousness development is not developing as quickly, causing a bigger and bigger gap between the Left and Right Quadrants.

If we look at the four quadrants, it is already clear, in the second-tier that humans know possess the choice to co-evolve or not. The higher stages of consciousness in both the upper and lower left do not pre-exist. Technology of course (Lower Right) is a matter of human choice.

What then of the Upper Right? This is the most difficult and probably, to my mind, the scariest. This is what all the issues of trans-humanism, biotechnology, and nanotechnology-biology interface is really all about.

If we return to the Great Chain of Being: matter, body (life-force, biology), mind, soul, spirit. What was the mind level in the old scheme roughly calibrates to the 1st and 2nd tiers: beige to turquoise in Spiral color coding. What the 3rd-tier (indigo up) would be then is roughly the beginning of the soul-sphere. Physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere, then....psycho-sphere, theospehre? This Great Chain analogy is not all that spectacular and maybe muddies the waters.

Anyway, if the higher stages and the technologies that open the material possibility for them to be inhabited consciously, are going to be more virtual, then we have to ask about the corresponding, if any, change in the Upper Right.

We have the reptilian brain stem, the paleo-mammalian stem, and the neocortex, each transcending and including the former. Must the 3rd-tier, the Singularity-era, need a fourth brain stem? Will this brain stem be in the form of trans-humans, robots, and/or mind-machine interface?

If such a process takes place, will these four-stem brains be the coming of the Theosphere, an embodied angelic form in a world created more and more by trans-reflective thought and communal meditation? Will the good and evil capable in such a worldspace be that previously described to the angels--both those of the light and the demonic ones?

Will the negating, transcending element of this rise happen so quickly that we will not include: humans merging with machines, living in space or virtual realms?

I'll explore some of those questions in the next post I think.