Thoughts on TE1: This thread was often hard to read because I had so many reservations about the experiment. It started out as sci-fi but gravitated toward an ill conceived understanding of the brain-in-a-vat scenario. Brain-in-a-vat is a modern variant on Descartes' clever demons argument. It is the idea that our experience is being manipulated by some external agency for purposes of its own which may or not be in harmony with our own.
If this were the case then what Squonk's TE1 proposes is that we skip the middle man and become the clever demons. The point of the experiment, as I understood it, was to somehow increase the power of the "dynamic function" through the forced mysticization of neonates. I can't see much benefit in this. Who are the beneficiaries of this manipulation; the neonates or the demons? Moral duty was invoked. It seemed like the kind of morality that justified genocide of native peoples on five continents under the guise of Social Darwinism. It works for collectivizing farms and purifying races but it's rash to think that you can "force" the dynamic force or that if you did "betterness" would result. Larry Niven did a series of short stories that put an interesting twist on creating DQ from the experience of bliss. In Niven's world there were wireheads who had electrodes planted in the pleasure centers of their brain. Many of them sat in rooms pushing a button until the batteries ran out or they starved to death. It might be a little messy but certainly less coercive that TE1. I would submit that the quality of the imagined DQ jolt ought to be about equal and it avoids Wilber's pre-trans fallacy. Much is made of the supposed pure state of the newborn. Squonk and gav wax poetic: [gav] babies are pure like animals; they are fully present, free of the reification that passes for reality in the adult world. [Squonk] What fascinates me?is the extraordinarily Dynamic function of a blank slate human brain: This fine isthmus between biological patterns and the whole mythos seems way more powerful than any evolutionary development?before it or after it. A whole mythos could be erased because of it. Nice but not right. The newborn's brain is neither blank nor pure. It is incomplete in form and function. It weights less than a third of an adult brain. It has lots of growing to do. Much of its growth will be determined by what happens to it. The nerve cells will mylinate and sprout dendrites. More will sprout than are needed and by puberty they will begin to thin out. Infants are totally self centered focusing on achieving their own physical and biological satisfaction at the expense of others around them. Where is the "purity" and fascination in this? As to the question of the effect of disconnecting a newborn's sensory input, I suspect all that would happen is that the babies would die. It's called failure to thrive. Again you could accomplish this more efficiently with adults like Teri Shaivo, who are simply kept alive artificially. If your infants did survive in industrial quantities more Shavios is what you would get. There is ample evidence from studies of Romanian orphans that sensory and social deprivation has devastating effects of children. Some just waste away. Back in the 60's and 70's Harry Harlow showed that even infant Rhesus monkeys require base levels of maternal stimulation to thrive. At a purely theoretical level even a disconnected nervous system has neurons firing randomly. The newborn brain grows in response to stimulation from the environment. One might speculate that in the absence of sensory experience even the random firings of neurons might be shaped into a world of sorts but it seems dubious that any "betterness" would result. The Matrix used VR style technology to provide sensory stimulation to the "coppertops". This circumvents death by boredom both to the infants and the audience. Stories about how clever demons manipulate perception allows a host of techniques, from misunderstandings, ala "Three's Company" through the schemes of ancient orders in the "Da Vinci Code" or "Left Behind". Principalities and powers can be envisioned exploiting any toe hold to control or enslave us. But TE1 seems to advocate becoming the demon not being demonized. This from Squonk seems to be the "justification" for the enterprise: [Squonk] I asserted that some patterns are more dynamic than others: 1. The moq states that DQ is real and moral. 2. Static patterns regarded as being 'more dynamic' maximise DQ and potential for further evolution. 3. It is therefore a moral imperative to promote 2. Your?reply has been to consistently insist that the hierarchy of levels determines which patterns are more dynamic: Ok well I insist the some patterns are more static than others. 1. The MoQ states that DQ is an adjective for a kind of Quality and that morality is more highly expressed at higher levels. 2. Some dynamic patterns might be regarded as more static than others; thus in a better position to latch and to bring stability into evolution. If evolution has a goal, stability is it. 3. This is all too wacked to determine morality of any sort much less moral imperatives. Much rests on the whole "Dynamic is good" fallacy. Dead babies ought to be enough to show most how silly that notion is. Krimel -----Original Message----- From: Ron Kulp [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, July 03, 2008 12:48 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [MD] moq thought experiement 1. squonk: I've not seen Altered states so i can't comment of that i'm afraid. Very very interesting you introduce spaciotemporality, because it could be argued these are patterns of the mythos, and this ties in with the notion of putting them to sleep in order to remove their shadow from the pure aesthetic state. What do you reckon? Ron: The patterns of the mythos are pushed to the point of meaninglessness. This is what relativity theory suggests by placing spaciotemporality with perception. in a way, we can conceive of existence as DQ aware of itself. Whatever the heck that may mean. s: Perhaps we may explore things a bit more? Ron: always open for business squonk, fire away. 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