31/10
lost in spime - for today a wander through the archives...
The Fourth Wave: A Normative Forecast for the Future of "SpaceShip Earth" is so clear even a Bush could grok it; and if we do not heed it's implications, the Gore will be beyond measure.
"When one species attains a position of dominance over all the other species in the
ecology of its planet, if it is both egocentrically greedy, and has a powerful set of
technologies through which to amplify the expression of that greed, then unless that
dominant species can find a way to limit or to transform itself and its greed-based
systems into something more wholesome, it will foul its planetary nest as surely as the
night follows the day ... perhaps even to its own extinction."
a statement synthesized from the writings of ecologist Gregory Bateson and visionary
science fiction writer Olaf Stapledon |
Sometimes anthropological work is best done with anecdotical style and an empathogenic substance. Immersed in a sympathetic set, Gyrus describes the setting On Prehistoric Rock Art
& Psychedelic Experiences.
| "Even mild trance states can make the life of a rock plainly visible." |
Roberto Assagioli, M. D. enlightens us with Smiling Wisdom, reviewing the manifest ways in which transdichotomous release (ha!) frees the soul.
| "There are, above all, three things which modern man must learn in order to become a sane and complete being: the art of resting, the art of contemplation, the art of laughing and smiling. Here we shall briefly consider the latter, and primarily its superior and spiritual aspects." |
An Exodus Into Infinity yahoooooooo....
30/10
If there be a journalist reading this, and that dear info-forage masticater has access to the ear of a Candidate, perhaps a singular question could be posed. Such as... "Given that there is considerable scientific consensus regarding the increasing speed of technological and sociological development leading towards a Singularity-type event, what policies would you support to enable this transition, or to disable these developments?" I can hear Shrub's Newtonian brain-gear grinding. A Critical Discussion of
Vinge's Singularity Concept
"While current widely published
predictions of population size, weather, sports results, or oil prices may be
somewhat accurate, these indicators no longer reflect the progress of
modern civilization. This development is determined by intricate interplay of
semantic patterns and techno-social architectures, of whose state nobody
has a relevant model."
Alexander Chislenko see ya there Sasha...
"What would the universe have to look like in order to maximize the total amount of pleasure?
What would the hyper-blissful experiences feel like that would exist if the universe were pleasure-maximized?"
Nick Bostrom
"I see no sharp horizon, blocking all view of things beyond. Instead, our
vision just fades into a fog of possibilities, as usual."
Robin Hanson |
Multiply-failed businessman that he is, the Oily Executioner of Texas (GWB) may make an otiose attempt to examine the idea from an economic perspective. Robin Hanson performs this feat with an adroit air, followed by open peer commentary. Is a singularity just around the corner? What it takes to get explosive economic growth.
| "The bottom line is that this model does allow for an economic singularity under certain circumstances." |
Nanotechnology - the Great Transformation by Charles Ostman telescopes our view so that we may see forest, trees and....
| "The boundaries between the realms of the organic and the synthetic, the virtual and the real, are in fact not boundaries at all, but diffuse gradiants, zones of transitional cognition." |
Radical Destabilizing Effects of New Technologies
| "The examples described in this article suggest that new technology is evolving much more rapidly than anything in our collective experience or imagination." |
What role will the military play through this unfolding event horizon? Engaging Power for Peace is a full scale strategic assessment by the Powers That Be. Accepting the blame and saluting the lame, duty comes first.
| "Responsibility for any errors found in this document rests wholly with the editors. Credit for all insights belongs to the able team of analysts who contributed the various chapters." |
29/10
William H. Calvin is a theoretical neurophysiologist, but here is nothing hypothetical about his ability to convey to an interested non-specialist ideas that actually physiologically neuro-energize. The Cerebral Code - Thinking a Thought in the Mosaics of the Mind
| "The Cerebral Code proposes a bold
new theory for how Darwin's evolutionary
process could operate in the brain,
improving ideas on the time scale of
thought and action. Jung said that dreaming
goes on continuously but you can't see it
when you're awake, just as you can't see
the stars in the daylight because it is too
bright. Calvin's is a theory for what goes
on, hidden from view by the glare of
waking mental operations, that produces
our peculiarly human consciousness and
versatile intelligence." |
A short essay by Calvin before leaving his wide-ranging and erudite site. Climate instability and hominid
brain evolution
| "The rapidity of the climate change would appear to
be more important than its magnitude." |
Immersed in the current bitter climate of the war on ourSelves, it is nigh impossible to do serious research without a media glom-on finding a sensational glum-on. Charles Grob, M.D. elucidates: MDMA Neurotoxicity Research: Methodological Concerns.
| "Although
demonstrations of minor cognitive deficits and suspect personality traits
have been variable, little can be concluded because of the variety of drugs
used and the poorly matched controls." |
Prior to the train leaving the MAPS megawebolis I manage to catch Dale Gieringer, Ph.D., who enlightens my load with the Medical Cannabis Potency Testing Project. A table of THC and CBD Test Results shows that at present the subjective, experiential, and anecdotal evidence scales a more accurate weight.
| "A total of 47 different samples of medical cannabis were submitted by
over a half dozen different providers and patients' cooperatives ranging
from California to the East Coast. Included were 42 samples of sinsemilla
bud, three samples of hashish or resin; one liquid sample of a milk-based
cannabis drink ("Mother's Milk"), and one capsule of an oral whole leaf
preparation." |
For a telling glimpse into the world of millennial moonshiners, here is the tale of The Hive Chemist.
| "First, it is rather apparent from my interrogation and the investigation thus far that the DEA either *does not know about a.d.c.* or they *do not care*. Yes, friends, hard as it may be to believe, outside of the "did you get the recipe off the internet" question, they didn't ask me jack shit about the net." |
28/10
Stuart Moulthrop accurately portrays the state of mid-nineties uncertainty that surrounded the blossoming of trees on Hypertext Blvd.
Traveling in the Breakdown Lane - A Principle of Resistance for Hypertext
| "We must understand hypertext as an information highway in which every lane is reserved for breakdowns, a demolition epic in which the vehicles always and constantly blow apart." |
I can accept my role of energy flux modulator for the delicate biology that is *me*, but viewing
Life as a Manifestation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, while instructive, ultimately bombs.
| "Emergence of coherent self-organizing structures are the expected response of
systems as they attempt to resist and dissipate the external gradients that are moving them away from equilibrium." |
At first I laughed myself silly, then Mary Jane left the room and I really did put full attention into grokking this, um, theory. EAIMC Internetional Ptd Lty (This publication is in the process of being copiously righted. All rights deserved.)
| "This quirky and often tongue-in-cheek delivery, or in parts deceptively odd
presentation, of actually/basically rather apt concepts, is part of a not totally deliberate "strategy of psychological buffering" (or ditto smoke-screening) against even worse "associational whiffs" of an aspect of "What Is going on" [alt. "how things are", or "Truth"] that "stink" seriously psychologically (so to speak)." |
I think I'll take this course in Time Travel for Beginners and come forward to my senses.
| "Quantum time waits for no cosmos." |
27/10
Nick Bostrom performs the calculations and we read the benefits with these Investigations into the
Doomsday Argument. ...back to regularly scheduled programming after these important bulletins...
"Definitions are like belts. The shorter they are, the more elastic they need
to be."
S. Toulmin |
In the interest of nodding acknowledgement to those of beatified bent, here is Stream of Halloween-Anthropic Consciousness
by Tom Moore.
| "First off, I went to 6th Street for Halloween with the express goal of
pissing off the stupid xians who have nothing better to do than try to
ruin a perfectly good party. This year's pair was particularly vile.
Both wore sandwich boards: one plastered with a list of "sins" (among
them adultery, homosexuality, masturbation--fascinating how an
omni-omni-omni deity can be so fascinated with penises), the other with
a quote from what I refer to as "that book:" "The wages of sin is
death," with the letters A I D S picked out in red capitals." |
The forecast is for snow and cooling temeratures, which will encourage our seasonal population to head for happy hibernation. Bye, bye, bears! By way of interest in long-term sleepies I ran into the inevitable line of expiration, and where to draw it. Max More tests the quill in Chapter 4 of The Diachronic Self: Identity, Continuity, Transformation - The Terminus of the Self.
| "Though we can think of death as a matter of degree, the legal system is not
good at handling spectra." |
Have we been in a sort of cultural torpidity, lulled by the stores of consumables wrapped in the sweat-blood of others? Tetsuo Kogawa reviews Adorno's "Strategy of Hibernation"
"All culture after Auschwitz, including its urgent critique, is garbage. While restoring itself after the things that happened without resistance in its own countryside, culture has turned entirely into the ideology it had been potentially."
T.W. Adorno |
The creatures featured in the Oceans of Kansas might have benefited from adopting an aptitude for lassitude. This is a large site chalk (sic joke) full of paleontological wonders.
Following in the wake of the sleeping, the dying and the quite dead, it is a pleasure to run into Daniel G. Emilio and be aroused to A Shifting Theory of Gravity. A prediction:
| "if photons carry
additional gravitons from the source, a star such as our sun
would emit a larger graviton flow (and hence, larger
gravitational force) than a normal non-light-emitting body with
the same mass. If that is the case, then phenomena such as light bending near the Sun, or Mercury's perihelion problem would be explained." |
Black Holes on the Loose may cause some concern, but exactly what is G? A spot-on measurement has proven elusive, with the fine physicists at the University of Washington obtaining the most accurate-to-date: Precise Calibration of the Intrinsic Strength
of Gravity and Measuring the Mass of the
Earth
| "Even though we are still running a number of tests in order to confirm our final number we are already confident that we know the mass of our home planet Earth now more precisely than it has ever been known to mankind. Combining our value for G with data from the orbits of the Lageos satellites gives a mass of Earth of about 5.972 quadrillion cantaloupe-sized ball bearings." (erk) |
25/10
Contained within The Psilocybin Solution - Prelude to a Paradigm Shift are, among many other fungophilic delights, pointers to the point. Simon G. Powell puts it this way: The mystery of the mutable human mind is
cracked open and served up on a plate of profound implications.
| "This is like a faerie tale in the best of English traditions. If we genuinely wish to
gain self-knowledge and realise our ultimate place within Nature's endlessly creative agenda, then we must deliberately seek out and consume the 'truth'." |
If you journey with Java enabled you can participate, or would that be precipitate, in RetroPsychoKinesis Experiments Online.
| "We neither accept nor dismiss the existence of retropsychokinetic effects -- instead we make experiments available to anybody with access to the World-Wide Web in order to discover if there is anything genuinely there." |
I don't remember planning to be here now, but when I run my life in reverse it is obvious that I must be. Running Backward Into The Future - Some Considerations About the Nature of Time and Memory.
| " "Time" and "being" exist in a complementary fashion; those entities that are "timeless"
don't "exist" (as entities), those entities that "exist" are subject to the rule on time (i.e.,
entropy). The "proof" of this is that, although we don't experience any "gaps" in the
flow of time, for some mysterious reason we have no "memory" of the future." |
Gyrons gimble in the wabe, uncertain whether to behave, Why is all this ignored?, ethereal physics has not soared...
"And the Aristotelians gave the Name of occult Qualities, not to manifest Qualities, but to
such Qualities only as they supposed to lie hid in Bodies, and to be the unknown Causes of
manifest Effects: Such as would be the Causes of Gravity, and of magnetic and electrick
Attractions, and of Fermentations, if we should suppose that these Forces or Actions arose
from Qualities unknown to us, and uncapable of being discovered and made manifest."
Newton |
24/10
Michel Chossudovsky and Jared Israel recently wrote about The International Monetary Fund And The Yugoslav Elections, in which our governments and bankers are armpit deep in the drug cabinet, and are giving a sick patient Lethal Medicine.
"This is not simply a group of economists. It is a network. The International
Monetary Fund and World Bank are using this network to impose their
policies on Yugoslavia. Meanwhile they tell everyone the fiction that G-17 is
a home-grown alternative.
The National Endowment for Democracy (a sort of CIA spin-off) controls
and pays for the Center for International Private Enterprise which in turn
funds the G-17." |
Within You and Without You - Enchantment and Enlightenment in the Age of Science is a work in progress by Dale Cotton that progresses very nicely from historical underpinnings to Outrageous Conjectures. This is fun reading, and sweet relief from godmatic tripe .
| "We can reasonably predict the eventual arrival of another momentous theory, as revolutionary as the Copernican model of the solar system or General Relativity – one that defines the actual mathematics of the geometry required for our Outrageous Conjecture 1. Until this arrives, lacking the support of an already existing theory to define the nature of the relationship between awareness and the physical world, we will have to do our own groping around in the pre-dawn darkness." |
He has seen the future, and it is murder. Eight years on, and Leonard Cohen's words and music still urge us to feel. The following snippet is from Democracy, and is most apt at this time of democracy's test.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A |
Robert Theobald, an economist, reminds us in Toward Full Unemployment that we should put down the tool when we've finished the job.
| "We are now at the point where we need to understand the concept of wage slavery. Failure to do
this will bind people to employers just as firmly as chattel slavery bound slaves to their owners. It is
our responsibility to open this debate in ways which do not lead to the same level of anguish and
bitterness as started the civil war." |
Pig Vision offers research with a difference. The interactive Porcontrol unit provides porcine perambulations by allowing a switch thrown by a pig in Australia to control a traffic light in Germany.
| "Paul Feyerabend, a foremost twentieth century
philosopher of science, became known for his
claim that there was, and should be, no such
thing as the scientific method." |
23/10
A couple of days respite from my dear Arachnophilia in particular and nexus collation in general has re-enlivened my inquisitorial soul and so, with no ado at all, I will suggest a visit with the Blueberry Brain Institute & Chaos Cooperative. Host Frederic David Abraham is seen to say The attractors of the mind may also undergo subtle bifurcations among various stable fixed, periodic, and chaotic possibilities. in this mindbender for a Monday morning. Chaos, Bifurcations, & Self-organisation: Dynamical Extensions of Neurological Positivism & Ecological Psychology
| "Psychology has two basic missions. One is the better understanding of human nature. The second is the nurturing of that nature to fulfill its potential. This is the humanist mission." |
The ideals and passion of truly humane revolution always appear to be near, but the veneer that protects the finish of a userous world view also rejects novelty. Cyberculture in the Age of Dotcom.mania by Geert Lovink is an accurate, succinct and frightening precis of our age (or lack thereof).
| "This makes Margaret Wertheim to ask "what is it about our
time and our society that is reflected in the "heavenly" appeal of
cyberspace? In short, what does all this cyber-religious dreaming tell us
about the state of America today?" My answer would be: that it still is a
deeply religious 18th Century society, full of secret societies, rivaling
schools and tribes, with little or no public intellectuals and debates, in
short, a public space, which would perhaps be better equipped to analyze
the superstition a la Moravec and Minsky, and at least distinguish it from
the no nonsense business agenda of the New Economy generation." |
A few Words of powerful imagery and we are immersed in saline technologia where all is evitable by mutability. Global Algorithm 1.6: Memetic Flesh in Cyber-City
| "Memetic flesh as a floating outlaw zone where memes fold into genes, where the delirious spectacle of cyber-culture reconfigures the future of the molecular body. In Ars California, memetic flesh is neither future nor history, but the molecular present. Pure California Gening." |
Ben Goertzel alights, lays a golden egg of understanding and applies balm to our memetic dicomfiture. Unification of Science and Spirit - Chapter 1 - Science, Wisdom, and the Hierarchy of Being
| "If I had to sum up the diverse contents of this book in a a single phrase, it would be this:
computational reality is spiritual reality. The whole book is an expansion of this idea in various directions." |
I can't place who among the fine 'blog community led me to A.K. Dewdney's Neoteny but I can readily attest to our juvinilization (erk). I suggest an analogy between human domestication of wolves by choosing for dependant behaviors and the technomemesphere's imposition of the same on it's biospheric (ab)users.
| "Under the influence of a culture that provides all of life's necessities with a
minimum of personal investment, modern (i.e., western) humanity is in the
process of adopting a neotenic or juvenile culture. The life of the child has
gradually expanded, especially during the last fifty years, until it has
thoroughly penetrated adult life." |
Roger Penrose and Quantum Consciousness
19/10
Flatland, by E. A. Abbott
| "I CALL our world Flatland, not because we call it so, but to make its
nature clearer to you, my happy readers, who are privileged to live in
Space." |
We Live In The Past, Salk Scientists Discover
Werner Heisenberg and the Uncertainty Principle
Cosmic Ancestry - Life comes from space because life comes from life.
quelle heurre et il?
Present Attention brought me to a piece that I could not let slide by without comment. Moral Misunderstanding and the Justification of Markets by Paul T. Heyne attempts to assuage capitalist guilt by removing economics from the moral equation entirely. In short, because we are not omniscient. Well, I don't know about you, but I'm a know-it-all.
| "Running a society by the Golden Rule requires comprehensive social planning, and that just cannot be made to work except in very small societies, societies not much bigger than a family." |
18/10
We are impelled to find a middle ground that allows for peace officers to intercede for victim prevention while also ensuring that individuals and groups have strongly protected rights to privacy. Taking all victimless "crimes" out of the criminal code would go a long way to finding this happy land.
Chaos Theory and the Postmodern Internet
| "Those of us who
thought that the sheer bulk of internet traffic would preclude government
surveillance and enhance privacy and thus democracy and diversity of
culture, may not have been aware about the degree to which bandwidth is
increasing." |
Any time we must 'draw the line' we are faced with the problem of quantifying that which is inherently qualitative. R. D. Smith provides significant detail of how we may approach this dilemma. Social Structures and Chaos Theory
| "This paper attempts to show that such social- structural concepts as class, race, gender and ethnicity produce analytic difficulties so serious that the concept of structuralism itself must be reconceptualised to make it adequate to the demands of Chaos theory." |
What happens when a graphic artist is in need of a fresh idea for a rather particular client? He engages entheogenic aid. Performance of a Graphic Artist Under the Influence of Mescaline.
| "The miracle is that it came so easy and natural." |
Thought Contagion and Mass Belief by Aaron Lynch is probably a recommended read for an election year, and with our Dear PM about to dissolve Parliament Canada will be joining U.S.America in meme combat. This will be one big political erection, with the outcome of dubious fertility.
| "The idea that Jesus rose from the dead, for instance,
becomes less a question of objective fact than of personal safety." |
17/10
Everywhere a sign, yet direction unknown. Alexei Sharov goes where physics cannot and brings life to semeniotics (sic). The Origin and Evolution of Signs is a very comprehensive overview of biosemiotics.
| "The principal idea of biosemiotics is that life is communication, and the contents of communication is how to live, i.e., how to communicate. The history of life is characterized by increasing complexity of communication." |
It seems I have a penchant for literary criticism these last few days, as if to disabuse myself of the notion that a steady diet of positivist thought has sufficient cognitive roughage.
Nature's Destiny: From the impossibility of evolution to the inevitability of evolution : Anti-Evolutionst Michael Denton turns into an Evolutionist is a review that reveals a very real danger - a religious right that usurps selected scientific findings and weaves them into a political/social/religious polymemetic dogma with which to woo one. (at least I have this different font to slither off into when I get carried away like that; excuse me!)
| "The analogy of the lexicon with DNA space is severely limited because the biological DNA-protein system is a two-level system and language is not. On the level of DNA there is no 'meaning'. Meaning enters when DNA is translated into proteins. Language is a one-level system: words have meaning. There are no encoded words." |
Children intuitively know this, at least until their quizzilator is de-activated. "Why" is both the right question and the right response. Daniel Berger writes An impertinent resumé of the Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
| "While the so-called anthropic coincidences are at least arguably important, the Anthropic Cosmological Principle -- which attempts to answer the anthropic coincidences -- seems a failed enterprise. I will consider four statements of the Anthropic Principle, and reject all of them." |
16/10
Giving first word to the hypercritic, Bob Black doesn't just fling arrows at Murray Bookchin but rather hangs, draws, quarters and square roots the man. Imagine eviscerated ideology splattered all over the floor of the anarchist's post-modern abode, and visualize what's left of a Grumpy Old Man.
| "He had better things to do than come to the rescue of the
anarchist ideology he considers the last best hope of humankind. On the one hand, he was
consolidating his alluring academic career; on the other, he was making a play for ideological
hegemony over the Green movement." |
Now to see whether poor Mr. Bookchin, with gaping mor(t)al wounds lightly gauzed by Mercurochromic sensibilities, can convincingly rebut with his Theses on Social Ecology in a Period of Reaction. Scroll down a bit to Murray, or have a testy introduction by The Social Ecology Project as an hors d'oeuvre.
| "The roots of modern cultural devolution are as deep-seated as the ecological crisis itself." |
Philosophical warfare aside we are confronted, nay attacked, by the intentions of the memetic engineers. The micro-specialization of the market-to-order, attention-to-fit, fully constructed dramaturgical facsimiles of social reality, which gain currency by rote and whose currency gains 'value' by infection, conspire to comprise The Sociology of Fraud.
| "The case is
made that, in the last forty years or so, the use of the
technology of theatre in concert with social science
technology as well as mass electronics technology for the
exploitative management of workers, customers, students,
and voters has approached an art form." |
Hakim Bey to the re-skew with both despair and hope (dope?) for the Millennium.
| "The global machinery will never fall ripely into the hands of the insurgent masses,
nor will its single Eye pass to the people (as if to one of three blind Fates); there will be
no transition, smooth or bumpy, between Capitalism & some economic utopia, some
miraculous salvation for the unified consciousness of post Enlightenment rationalism &
universal culture (with cozy corners for eccentric survivals & touristic bliss) -- no Social
Democracy taking over the controls in the name of the people. The "money-power" (as
the old agrarians called it) is not in the power of an elite (whether conspiratorial or
sociological) -- rather the elite is in the power of money, like the hired human lackeys
of some sci-fi AI entity in cyberspace." |
On the other side of the point, or perhaps completely round the bend, lies the fertile imagination of the Leading Edge International Research Group - booksellers of mighty tomes on ether-real subjects.
| "The two-volume 1,900 page work called Matrix III is
perhaps the only work on the planet to this day that completely
investigates the motives, methods, aims and origins of the
technocratic society we live in today." |
|
