On 8/18/22 9:47 AM, glen wrote:
Yeah. I'm not as concerned as you seem to be about the addictive
nature of alternative perspectives. Obviously, because my whole
schtick is about attempting to take alternative perspectives. The
addict has to admit they have a problem before treatment will work, eh?
My use of the term "addictive" was unfortunate. I didn't mean it
particularly perjoratively. I mostly just meant the awareness that one
can become "codependent" on substances/experiences which are not
otherwise organic to the nature of one's existence in-context. Tarzan
and his friends may have done something vaguely similar to bungee
jumping and skydiving (vine swinging and cliff diving), but those who
have made the high-tech equivalents of those experiences part of their
very persona have "given over" in some way that may or may not be
something to "worry about"... it is just in a practical sense a
"commitment". I have known plenty of people who have made "commitments"
to all kinds of things/substances (caffiene, nicotine, alcohol, thc,
gucose, lipids, parkour, etc) which they are virtually symbiotic with
(addicted to?). I have my own practical commitments to all kinds of
behaviours and consumptions which are effectively now *part of who I
am*. I might have been a somewhat different person today if I had never
become "committed" to alcohol, caffiene, earning/spending $USD, driving
planes, trains, automobiles, etc.
But if we adopt the perspective of the "longtermists",
"transhumansits", or similar, and believe that essentialist
computation is the limit point, the thing just over the horizon toward
which evolution works, then our *brain* is one of the first/best
instantiations of such computers. (Maybe I need scare quotes, there,
too ... "computers"?) Quantum comput[ers|ing] is a close second only
because too many people are ignorant enough of current computing to
think hard about its limitations.
FWIW I was just re-introduced to Bostrom's Astronomical Waste
<https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste> arguement in the context of
a New Yorker Article on Effective Altruism which I think you have
referenced a few times here. A more computationally/entropic framed
version of the Dyson Sphere <https://nickbostrom.com/astronomical/waste>
(or more originally the Stapledon Light Trap):
An excerpt from/Star Maker/which mentions Dyson spheres:
Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of
light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for
intelligent use, so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but many
stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and
rifled of their prodigious stores of subatomic energy.
So another form of Dave's argument, still metaphysical, is this
Smolin-esque (or even Schrödinger-esque ala negentropy?) concept that
our objective(s) is tightly coupled pockets of deep computation. And
*that*, given that our brains are fantastic computers, gives some
weight to the idea that deep and broad introspection gets one closer
to God, closer to the objective, closer to the real occult Purpose
behind it all in much the same way as studying quantum mechanics and
quantum computation.
My argument *against* that is that even if tightly coupled (coherent)
pockets of computation are a crucial element, so is the interstitial
space *between* the tight pockets ... like black holes orbiting each
other or somesuch. It's not merely the individual pocket/computer
that's interesting, it's the formation, dissolution, and interaction
of the pockets that's more interesting. Actually, then, the *void* is
more interesting than the non-void.
Tangentially:
Panic! At the Disks: First Rest-frame Optical Observations of Galaxy
Structure at z>3 with JWST in the SMACS 0723 Field
https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.09428
I appreciate having near-peers who are "peering" into the same general
(vaguely familiar) areas of the fractal abyss that I am...
On 8/18/22 08:03, Steve Smith wrote:
The experience *I* have (or the way I have mostly interpreted it)
with various ways of "playing around with my
interface/membrane/boundary" is that alternatively addictive to the
point of becoming "essential" and a "vertiginous stare into the
abyss" at the same time. I'm not talking particularly or
specifically about ingesting entheogens or any other substance known
to acutely adjust reality. There are (obviously) many other ways to
"play around with the boundary". For what it is worth, Pandora is
playing Denver's iconic "Rocky Mountain High" in the background as I
complete this paragraph.
I currently attribute this to the alone/all-one duality and the
flexibility (elastic and plastic) nature of self-other boundaries
(membranes?) as a conscious ego. (Sting - How Fragile we are on
Pandora now, segueing into judy Collins' Both Sides Now).
If I take "the Uni/Multi-verse" to be nothing more/less than a single
complex adaptive system which can(not) be reduced to a system of
systems (only reduceable by an imperfectly isolated system (self)
which has a compressed "model" of the universe as a system of systems
of which it"self" is a perfectly isolated subsystem(self)) then the
experience of self-other and "gaining insight/parallax into
(R)reality" isn't all that puzzling (to this self's model of itself
within the universal).
This of course still leaves (for this illusory "self") the "hard
problem" of the fact (rather than the nature) of (subjective)
experience itself...
I have a feeling (in my subjective experience as a self) that the
"breath of consciousness" might be the compression/decompression
cycle itself? Talking (linearly) about this stuff is a
fractal/recursive minefield of rabbit-holes worthy of Alice tripping
on Entheogens?
- Steve
On 8/18/22 8:34 AM, glen wrote:
Parallax is an important technique for getting at things just
*beyond* one's current representational power. So, were I to try to
steelman your argument, I'd suggest that, yes, the process by which
our bodies refine/focus/hone-down our attention to a smaller,
compressed thing from a larger thing (whether the largess is "noise"
or not is a tangent) is important. And the entheogens permute that
honing down, that reduction, to create a different transformation.
It's reasonable to speculate that the transformation we execute
under the influence of an entheogen might be *less* reductive than
that we execute when "sober". But to argue that the transformation
under the influence is a more accurate match to reality is fraught.
Less reductive? Sure. More accurate? Well, that would require us to
go into that tangent. What do we mean by more accurate? Does
randomness exist? Etc.
So we might want to be careful with that crossing between relatively
tame statements like "entheogens alter the cross-membrane
transformation providing parallax toward the out there" versus more
metaphysical statements like "entheogens provide a better
transformation (or no tranformation) across the boundary to the out
there".
Thanks for clarifying. I think I have a better understanding of the
argument. Those of us who play around with our interface probably
*do* have a better understanding of reality than those of us
imprisoned by their one, sole interface. But we don't need to go so
far as to say a drugged mind is more capable of perceiving the real
reality.
On 8/16/22 17:16, Prof David West wrote:
If you assume, or believe, that the mind (body-brain-embodied
mind-Atman) naturally processes 100% of the inputs and
assume/believe that a survival enhancing mechanism filters that
stream to create the illusionary subset that we call Reality, then
entheogens work to dismantle the filtering mechanism and expose the
Real Reality.
Missing in my first post was a hidden premise, that any
augmentations (Neuralink, et. al.) are almost certainly based on
whatever we think we understand of the filtering mechanism, not the
Mind, and therefore would augment/enhance that mechanism and
therefore lead to results opposite of what is desired.
The missing premise is pretty much conjecture on my part but is
grounded in an advanced, but not expert, understanding of AI and
neural network technologies; so it should be taken with a
tablespoon (thousands of grains) of salt.
davew
On Tue, Aug 16, 2022, at 11:22 AM, glen wrote:
Opposite of what? I don't understand how augmentation is the opposite
of the entheogens (drugs or meditation). Are you saying that, e.g.
the
Mojo Lens or Neuralink further restrict, whereas the entheogens
lessen
the restriction?
If so, then my guess is you could do the same sort of restriction
modulation with any augmentation device. E.g. if there are 1 billion
possible data feeds you could receive, decreasing them is like an
undrugged person self-censoring and such, then increasing them is
like
taking a entheogen ... that is, assuming Church-Turing.
If we reject C-T, then it seems reasonable to argue that the body
"computes" something that any computer-based augmentation would
restrict, by definition, making it impossible to expand beyond
what the
augment provides. Computer-based augmentaiton would provide a hard
limit ... an unavoidable abstraction/subset of reality.
On 8/15/22 19:04, Prof David West wrote:
The hallucino-philia (and Buddhist epistemologists) would argue
that our brains (minds) already fully grasp / cognize / perceive
our physical reality. But, for survival purposes, it self-censors
and presents our consciousness/awareness/attention with a small
abstract subset of that reality—an illusion.
Drugs and meditation are 'subtractive' in that they dismantle the
abstraction/reduction apparatus that generates the illusion
hiding our 'full-grasping'.
If such a belief were "true" then "augmenting our brains" would
be the exact opposite, and exceedingly harmful, approach ...
... unless, the augmentation was a permanent [lsd |
psylocibin | mescaline] drip.
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