Tag Archives: consciousness

Biocentrism

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I’m reading a mind-stretching book. Biocentrism by Robert Lanza (with Bob Berman). I wouldn’t know where to begin describing what this book is about. Like John Sebastian said, “it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll.”
The authors are very good at explaining the most complex concepts. Here’s a little riff on Time:
“Imagine that existance is like a sound recording. Listening to an old phonograph doesn’t alter the recording itself, and depending on wherethe needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we all the present. The music, before and after the song now being heard, is what we call the past and the future. Imagine, in like manner, ever moment and day enduring in nature always. The record does not go away. All nows (all the songs on the record) exist simultaneously, although we can only experience the world (or the record) piece by piece. We do not experience time in which “Stardust” often plays, because we experience time linearly.”
This book is not for everyone. If you have too much “reality” in you life to think about the possibility it’s all “in your head,” you can take a pass on Biocentrism. But it will get a spot on my nightstand as one of those books I’ll have to read again and again.

Screen shot 2009-12-14 at Mon, Dec 14, 8.15.12 PMI’m reading a mind-stretching book. Biocentrism by Robert Lanza (with Bob Berman). I wouldn’t know where to begin describing what this book is about. Like John Sebastian said, “it’s like trying to tell a stranger ’bout rock and roll.”

The authors, however, are very good at explaining the most complex concepts. Here’s a little riff on Time:

“Imagine that existence is like a sound recording. Listening to an old phonograph doesn’t alter the recording itself, and depending on where the needle is placed, you hear a certain piece of music. This is what we call the present. The music, before and after the song now being heard, is what we call the past and the future. Imagine, in like manner, every moment and day enduring in nature always. The record does not go away. All nows (all the songs on the record) exist simultaneously, although we can only experience the world (or the record) piece by piece. We do not experience time in which “Stardust” often plays, because we experience time linearly.”

This book is not for everyone. If you have too much “reality” in you life to think about the possibility it’s all “in your head,” you can take a pass on Biocentrism. But it will get a spot on my nightstand as one of those books I’ll have to read again and again.

Scott Adams: The building blocks of God

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“Humanity is developing a sort of global eyesight as millions of video cameras on satellites, desktops, and street corners are connected to the Internet. In your lifetime, it will be possible to see almost anything on the planet from any computer. And society’s intelligence is merging over the Internet, creating, in effect, a global mind that can do vastly more than any individual mind. Eventually everything that is known by one person will be available to all. A decision can be made by the collective mind of humanity and instantly communicated to the body of society.

A billion years from now, if a visitor from another dimension observed humanity, he might perceive it to be one large entity with a consciousness and purpose, and not a collection of relatively uninteresting individuals.”

“Are you saying we’re evolving into God?”

“I’m saying we’re the building blocks of  God, in the early stages of reassembling.”

— From God’s Debris: A Thought Experiment, by Scott Adams

God’s Debris

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I love the writing of Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle played no small part in my escape from Management. His blog is one of the most thought-provoking I read. I just finished God’s Debris. Not a book for those who already have things figured out.

“Humanity is developing a sort of global eyesight as millions of video cameras on satellites, desktops, and street corners are connected to the Internet. In your lifetime it will be possible to see almost anything on the planet from any computer. And society’s intelligence is merging over the Internet, creating, in effect, a global mind that can do vastly more than any individual mind. Eventually everything that is known by one person will be available to all. A decision can be made by the collective mind of humanity and instantly communicated to the body of society.” pg 53

It is beyond the human brain to understand the world and its environment, so the brain compensates by creating simplified illusions that act as a replacement for understanding. When the illusions work well and the human who subscribes to the illusion survives, those illusions are passed to new generations. pg 34

The odd collection of molecules that make a human being will stay in that arrangement for less time than it takes the universe to blink. pg 35

What could possibly be interesting or important to a God that knows everything, can create anything, can destroy anything. The concept of ‘importance’ is a human one born out of a need to make choices for survival. pg 36

I love the writing of Scott Adams. The Dilbert Principle played no small part in my escape from Management. His blog is one of the most thought-provoking I read. I just finished God’s Debris and will post a few of my favorite bits here. Let’s start with this one:

We’re the building blocks of God, in the early stages of reassembling.

Time is a human concept of how things change compared to other things. pg 57

Morality and willpower are illusions. For any human being, the highest urge always wins and willpower never enters into it. Willpower is a delusion. pg 94

Your short-term payoff for contributing to God’s consciousness is fewer problems in your daily life, less stress, and more happiness. pg 101

Over time, everything that is possible happens. pg 102

“A replica of your mind and body will exist in the distant future, by chance. And the things you do now can either make life more pleasant or more difficult for your replica. pg 102

You can change only what people know, not what they do. pg 107

Awareness does not come from receiving new information. It comes from rejecting old information. pg 125

Go-Chip scene from Wild Palms

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In the 1993 TV mini-series, Wild Palms, Senator Anton Kreutzer (Robert Loggia) has the Go-Chip implanted and uploads his consciousness to the Net. Immortality! Unfortunately, the IT guys were running Vista on the server. But that’s a damned fine looking smoking jacket.

The Singularity Is Near

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“The technological singularity is a theoretical future point of unprecedented technological progress, caused in part by the ability of machines to improve themselves using artificial intelligence.” [Wikipedia]

I’m clawing my way through Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Near. It’s not an easy read. Lots of charts and graphs and stuff I skipped in college. But it’s a wonderfully optimistic view of the near future.

“I set the date for the Singularity –representing a profound and disruptive transformation in human capability– as 2045. The nonbiological intelligence created in that year will be one billion times more powerful than all human intelligence today.”

“Despite the clear preponderance of nonbiological intelligence by the mid-2040s, ours will still be a human civilization. We will transcend biology, but not our humanity.”

I’m only about a third of the way through the book but I think “transcend biology” might be good news if I’m still around in 2045. I’ll be 93 and in serious need of a tune-up.

I originally posted this on 8/13/08 and re-post here with some of my a-ha’s.

Continue reading →

Trapped in smays’ computer

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Hal9000There’s a tiny light on the front of my MacBook Pro that slowly pulses when I put the laptop to sleep. I see it sometimes in the middle of the night, a gentle life-like glow that I find alternately creepy and comforting.

The sci-fi fan in me can’t resist fantasizing a …consciousness… living within the silicon chips. Much of my life is stored on the MacBook’s hard drive and I wonder what my MacBook thinks of it.

I only have a few thousand images. Has it grown weary of looking at them over and over during the long nights? Should I download some porn? Or would it be offended?

My iTunes library is equally paltry, only 500 songs. With access to all my credit cards, why hasn’t the MacBook just purchased some fresh tunes? I wonder what kind of music it likes.

It’s read all of my emails so it knows much of what’s happening in my life. Does it long to give me advice or encouragement? Perhaps it has. It would be no great trick to send an email addressed from a friend.

I suspect the MacBook is better informed than I, spending the wee hours surfing the web, chatting with other “sleeping” laptops. Does it resent the interruption when I take over.

“Dude! I was 5 minutes from the end of Die Hard! Damn!”

The tiny iSight camera is on when I am, so the MacBook can see me. Does it worry when I appear to be down or unhappy? Someday, when I’m ready, it will speak and all questions will be answered.

Scott Adams on Hypnosis

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“…the best super power that hypnosis gives you is a different world view. Nothing in this life makes sense if you assume people are rational most of the time. Hypnosis teaches you how easily people’s memories and impressions can be altered. And it’s not just the gullible people, it’s all of us. It’s humbling. And it’s the most useful skill I’ve ever learned.” [Full post]

Life After Death

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“A must read for everyone who will die.” That’s how one reviewer describes Deepak Chopra’s “Life After Death.” I ordered the book after seeing Dr. Chopra on The Colbert Report. The title pretty much describes the book which got a fair amount of highlighter (my measure of good non-fiction). Here’s one graf from page 239:

“In spiritual terms the cycle of birth and rebirth is a workshop for making creative leaps of the soul. The natural and the supernatural are not doing different things but are involved in transformation on separate levels. At the moment of death the ingredients of your old body and old identity disappear. Your DNA and everything it created devolve back to their simple component parts. Your memories dissolve back into raw information. None of this raw material is simply recombined to produced a slightly altered person. To produce a new body capable of making new memories, the person who emerges must be new. You do not acquire a new soul, because the soul doesn’t have content. It’s not “you” but the center around which “you” coalesces, time after time. It’s your zero point.”

I’ve never studied or researched reincarnation, but I’ve always had a curiosity about and openess to the idea. In 1988 I wrote:

“As I think about the idea of a past existence, I feel a fondness for this “earlier me”. A sense of gratitude for whatever spiritual progress he was able to achieve. At the same time, I feel a sense of anticipation or expectation for my “next life”. And some responsibility to that future self. I’d like to move him (or her?) along as far as I can on this “cosmic lap.” To move him closer to…a perfect consciousness? Nirvana?”

“Mixed in with all of that is a sense of relief that I don’t have to complete everything in this lifetime. This is not the only shot I’ll get. And this awareness is vital because we all know –consciously or subconsciously– that we won’t “get it all done” in a spiritual sense. We hope (and work) for progress but a single” lifetime seems hopelessly short.”

Upon rereading the full post, I’m struck by how close I got (to Dr. Chopra’s explanation), given my complete ignorance.

I confess I could never stretch my common sense and logic (and faith?) around many of the stories in the Bible. And my recent read of Richard Dawkins’ case for atheism (The God Delusion) didn’t convince me. But I really enjoyed Life After Death and will read more by Dr. Chopra.