Ironotai, the inexplicable quasi-object (first report)–(A Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

Ironotai was the candy, the toffee in the puzzle box of uncertainty.
In the rational of exuberance he was the chocolate bonbon, to meet him was like discovering a new planet, to listen to him required of us to accept the elasticity of utopian poetics.
His was the sense of quiet passions against the lethargy born of the banal, it followed that it never occurred to anyone to ask, what were the origins of justification for his sparkling beingness.
In his own disturbing self-description of context, Ironotai claimed that he represented the inevitable transitional state, the inexorable progress of feelings into entertaining value-laden spectacles, the epitome of commodification, the very quintessence of life’s currency, he thus self described as the uncorrupted bias or the pure filter.

Marc Evite
Project Coordinator- Director of research on extraordinary encounters

—

Ironotai told us a story and we have no way to decipher the truth or falsity of it, we cannot at present disentangle the multiple versions he presented to us from that which we deem the real, or at least that which we can agree upon as factual or indeed relevant.
That he was an entity of extraordinary capabilities is not in doubt, that he knew things for which we had no reasonable explanation is unquestionable, nevertheless we remain bewildered as to his farewell statements before disappearance.
In trying to analyze the value of his declarations we need depart from what we casually consider as the normative, so, for example, we still struggle with his pronunciation concerning his point of existence in time.

He did not say that he comes from the future, or from our past, or from an alternative universe, or from a parallel dimension, or from some exotic event horizon, or belongs to a different species from a far galaxy, if he would have said any of that, we could have, difficult as it may have been, make some sense of it all.
No, what he said made no sense at all, at least no sense that we can perceive or parse at present.
He said that he is a momentary embodiment of the sensuous endlessness of integrated originality. When we asked what this means in terms of space-time, he laughed. So we tried a different approach, we said that we think he speaks in metaphors, and could he please explain what the metaphor was reflecting upon, to which he replied: “metaphors reflect metaphors”. We still think he was toying with us when he said that.
Nevertheless being in charge of the research we could not just leave it at that.
Exasperated, we asked him to tell us anything that he thought might make sense to us, to which he replied:

“You should ask about the disintegration of the lifeline to reality”.

So of course we did.
These are his words, reported verbatim:

” I came to delight - dawn you into acceptance of the unassailability of the cryptogram of the lifeline to reality. To metaphor the sciences of endlessness and provide you an intimation of such.
The flow of asynchronous modulation cycles into synchronous appearances and reverts to separation, discreetness crystallizes and disaggregates, into partiality, re-assembling as joyous moments from which spaces disengage and re-cipher the real, performing the act of opacity, crafting the cryptogram of satisfaction.
Opacity allows corruption, corruption allows diminishment, diminishment performs slowness, slowness cycles errors, errors contain seeds of instability, and seeds of uncertainty define infrastructure of comprehension, recursive conception involves redundant looping, resulting in fragments of constraints, fragments of constraints cohere into variety, entangled coherence of variety consents sentiency, acquiesce to the lifeline. “

As this report is presented, we have put our best minds and efforts in deciphering the cryptic message of Ironotai, we make no claim to recognize for certain what he meant, we did our best in trying to understand the communication, our effort is a work in progress, please be advised that what you are about to read is an initial translation and nothing more, it is what we believe he intended. It will sound outrageous and fictitious, improbable and fantastic, and almost certainly a preposterous confabulation or some prank of cosmic proportions, we have no way of validating or discrediting his statements, nevertheless having been asked by the council of security to provide some kind of explanation we have done so.

In the following translation we have considered and assumed that the entity known as Ironotai knows something for which we have no language at present, therefore using our modern syntax machines, semantic engines and best deciphering algorithms, we have the following transitory translation to offer.

First iteration

We believe that Ironotai was either sent or obliged to come to us by a form of existence to which the best applicable currently existing theory is the one of pan-psychism. Furthermore, though none of the team involved in the translation adheres to this view, it is the opinion of few of us (Prof. Jacopo Weinberg, Doc. Stephan Lee and myself included) that this particular perspective may yet yield an important parameter necessary for the comprehension of the Ironotai statement. It is our view that the Ironotai statement taken under the canopy of a pan-psychism outlook may make some sense, we therefore assume that what was presented to us in the guise of the ‘Ironotai statement’ is a cosmological theory of the origins of life using the pan psychism perspective.
Following the above assumption we now believe that Ironotai meant to explain to us the manner by which the illusion of duration, that which we commonly call time, is impregnated with a proto form of consciousness, but not awareness. Though all of us are highly uncomfortable to follow the pan-psychism doctrine, we must allow for the remote possibility that such a view does in fact contain a hint to a possible interpretation of reality that we have not yet reached or accepted.
We therefore accept tentatively that Ironotai usage of the term cryptogram points to what we call consciousness, or more widely ‘mental life’ or Mind. We believe that Ironotai implied that mind is the underlying mechanism of life, of everything in fact and that this infrastructure is fundamentally opaque to awareness but more importantly has a causal interrelation with the physical observable universe. (It must be noted and remembered that at present humankind science has no such assumption and the closest we can relate to such a view may involve qualitatively different approaches.)

We think that Ironotai meant to initiate a thought within current humanity, implying that informational hyperstructures relay certain emergent properties to other assemblages of information, in the process themselves becoming opaque to the assemblage thus born. We think we understand that Ironotai is describing a multilayered approach to reality, which is both complex and sensuous.

*Further research funding is required for deeper inquiry

Sincerely,

Rand Macdigh
Assistant to the Director of research on extraordinary encounters

Addendum one:
Prof. Jacopo Weinberg – (Dept. of Linguistics)

It appears that in his statement Ironotai meant to convey to us that contrary to our commonly held suppositions concerning consciousness, matter itself is a sub routine of what we should at present for lack of a better terminology call consciousness though in no fashion do I think that his usage of the term: cryptogram, means or implies the same.
As a linguist I must assume that the language used by Ironotai was a very special case of intelligent application of context to concept and therefore to my eyes what Ironotai was doing is creating inside him a chaotic nature of non-order, thus destroying the idea both of harmony and stability, as consequential events. My conclusion at present is that we must stop channeling the ancestral script of our habit thought, and re-assess truth-value in any relevant epistemic world.
To me this is completely inexplicable.
I confess to my inadequacy in understanding Ironotai statement, please accept my immediate resignation. (Relevant papers have been submitted)

Addendum two:

Dr. Stephan Lee (Dept. of Physics)

Having consulted with a few friends, I now believe that Ironotai should not be looked at as an entity in its own right, but what I came to term an inexplicable quasi-object. It appears, at least to our understanding (having temporarily accepted the unorthodox thesis of pan psychism) at present that what we had in front of us was not an entity in its own right but a principle of interaction that somehow (we do not currently have a full explication) managed to be both reflected and de-cohered. We believe though we cannot prove it at present that Ironotai is a quasi-object of identity that apparently became temporarily aware and thus decided to manifest as a cross section of parallel dimensions. We accept temporarily the potential insights that may be hidden in the message, further investigation prevailing.
Finally what we have to offer as an initial account is that the Ironotai statement should be taken with precaution given the possible implications of Mind as originating matter (if that is indeed what can be understood), furthermore we advise total secrecy so as not to awaken unrest in the non-initiated population at large.
On behalf of the physics department we request that a transdisciplinary team of experts will be created for the explicit purpose of determining what exactly it is that we call experience, absent this committee, our research will stall.

Addendum three:

Marc Evite

Project Coordinator- Director of research on extraordinary encounters

At the cost of sounding outlandish and maybe outrageous, it is my desire to propose a different outlook.
Contrary to my esteemed colleagues opinions and reluctance concerning the doctrine of pan-psychism, I have always adhered to it and firmly believe that we do not currently have an appropriate field of research for this thesis. Though coming from the fields of Exobiology and Philosophy I see no way to explain the Ironotai statement using our current understandings in math, physics, biology and or chemistry.
We need a new field that will integrate Art and Science, Physics and Linguistics, Philosophy and Neuroscience. I propose therefore the establishment for such a field of research that will try and establish Rosetta stone like parameters that can then be used to further explore the meanings embedded in the original Ironotai statement.
It is my firm conviction that Ironotai is a product of our collective minds, but unlike the general assumption concerning such, he was not a hallucination but a fully embodied projection of ourselves from a parallel extensible ‘Mind’ or so to speak. I think that we must consider seriously the vast implications of the presently ‘unorthodox’ thesis of pan-psychism, though I do think that the name is inappropriate and should be revised.
Finally as the director of research on extraordinary encounters I advise an immediate release of all correlated material to the public at large, transparency being of the utmost importance in this matter.

Addendum four:

Last note by Rand Macdigh
Assistant to the Director of research on extraordinary encounters

Due to the shortness of time in assembling this report, (please remember that less than 24hrs have passed since the Ironotai disappearance), the statements of all involved are sketchy and embryonic at best, I second Marc Evite, both for the establishment of a field of research we do not currently have and for the release of all pertinent material to the public at large.

A second report - iteration is already in the making.

—
part of the Ultrashort project

Tue, Jun 21, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: ultrashorts, philosophy,AI,Sci-Fi, multidimentionality, language,poetry

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Some will be Gangsters of Poetry, Some will be Pan-Symbolists
Project: Polytopia

Alternatively titled: Knowmads, Knowledge and Madness

“An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.”

(Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet Dialogues #1)


1. Against monotony and boredom, bring the volatile and delicate


Against the citadels of thought and monumental philosophies of Neolithic ennui, we need bring the exuberance of the indeterminate Knowmad, the Polytopian in action.
Knowmads are inherently hyperconnected, though not of necessity through physicality, but unavoidably through the mind-space of the infoverse, itself remotely and yet intimately correlated to the codes of communication. This correlation of senses and of thought mediated through the acrobatics of prime time narratives in minds, accounting for moments of impossible serendipity, of hyper synchronicity, and retro mnemonic realizations, are the fresh hallmarks of the synthetically natural.

The synthetically natural does not necessitate the old forms of consensus, not because consensus is impossible, or even in certain cases desirable, but because in the hyperconnected enmeshed virtualities, representing the new state of affairs of mind (see topos) consensus as such is simply irrelevant.
It is irrelevant in as much as within a given flow of a given infocology, different degrees of partiality to the particular theme (of the given infocology) are an acceptable, tolerated and utterly adequate manner of interaction.
Furthermore, the allowance for different degrees of partiality, the very fact of diversity of biases, is the authentic property of permissibility.
In this, permissibility should be understood as that which replaces law and decree, regulation and authoritarianism.
The synthetic natural therefore can be seen as the domain of enmeshed virtualities, which continuously redefines, re-describes and re-presents the intersubjective desire of cross pollinating beingness.

Cross-pollinating beingness in turn should be perceived as the actual activity of the domain of the synthetic natural where our accreting multiple selves flourish, the fluid affinity domain of in-between as presented in the previous post ‘openness to the traffic of flows a polytopian stance', and 'fluid affinities replace nucleic identities'.

In many ways we might describe the actuality of multi modal communication as an enmeshment of narratives.
This meshed hyperconnectivity of symbols of representation, manifested as bits and bytes, continuously and fundamentally re-enacting the stream of impressions, are melting the inside and outside, no longer clearly distinguished, into an amalgam of sensations and thoughts.
An amalgam of sensations and thoughts, in truth an irreducible sense-thought, that I have called elsewhere the flow of interests or fluid affinities.
In this momentary fluidity we recognize that there is no truth to forever, and no finiteness on which to base our moralities, our perspectives or our so-called worldviews.
The irreducibility of the stream of sense thought defined as the flow of interests, or fluid affinities, resulting in multiple personas, correlated initially to a given originator (see the Avatar- Originator as explained in ‘ the luxurious ambiguity of intelligence in hyperconnectivity) , but eventually taking a semi independent social entity status, is what makes this flow of in-betweens so advantageous.

It is advantageous in as much as it allows a new style of mindfulness to emerge, a style of minding that is critical and compassionate, skeptical and rational yet concomitantly fully cognizant of the great powers of the intrinsically humane, namely the allowance for errors and mistakes.
It is advantageous in as much as it correlates permissibility of biases, and partial consensus, to perform acts of collaboration and loosely defined associations in deed.
Ultimately the advantage is clear if we can perceive an involvement of semi-independent social entities, loosely connected to their originators, and loosely connected to each other, to construct edifices of interest not previously possible.

This new style of minding advocated here is already happening in many areas of science and art, and practically in any domain of human interest, simply because of the multiple personas allowed in the domain of in-between, the synthetic natural enmeshed virtualities of hyperconnectivity.

Do note what Mark Changizi has to say in his blog:

“Scientific communities, for example, chug inexorably forward with discoveries, but this progress occurs by virtue of there being so many independently digging scientists in a community that eventually some scientists strike gold, even if sometimes only serendipitously. Whether entrepreneurial, scientific or artistic, communities can be creative even if a vast majority of their members fail to ever achieve something innovative…”

And further down in the same article :

“With multiple personalities in hand, people can choose to take up creative endeavors they would not have been willing to enter into outside of social media because the risks of failure were too high. Multiple personalities can lower these risks.
One of the greatest underappreciated benefits of social media, then, may be that it brings a greater percentage of the world into creative enterprises they would not otherwise have considered.

This, I submit, is good.”

Mark Changizi is a professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books)



It may be argued that all great scientific discoveries and artistic masterpieces, all innovations and philosophies in fact, were, are and will continue to be instigated by the need of independent minds to overcome a certain inherent monotony (and some will add boredom) born of the rigidity of self feudalism, in which the origins of our projections are always individual and thus relegated to our own biases.
To my mind the very activity of innovation, is never designed top down or emerging bottom up, it does not happen of itself nor is it an act of volition per se, but a mash up of flows of interests that resurface the delicate and the volatile, as a sensible multiplicity, apparent in the synthetically natural.
Though this has always been the case, the revolution of hyperconnectivity, of enmeshed virtualities, of cross-fertilizing infocologies, provides a new degree of freedom in and within the flow of evolutions of human civilization, on this planet at this time.

There is a new degree of freedom around us, between us, fermenting under and above us, disturbing the old regularity, generating a new kind of volatility and indeterminacy unto the infosphere of our knowledge.
The inherent irregularity of this new game, engendering the fuzzy topology of open structures, enmeshed in virtualities, tolerates a distribution and re-distribution of the elements of individuality – in that -> Knowmads are themselves distributed agencies

2.Re-introducing the Knowmad, a Polytopian in action, as a pan-symbolist expression of the distributed mytho-poetic narrative of our accelerating times.

“Individuals find a real name for themselves, rather, only through the harshest exercise in depersonalization, by opening themselves up to the multiplicities everywhere within them, to the intensities running through them.”

( G.Deleuze #2)

Obviously we are in the process of internalizing a vast memory bank of new semantics and fresh forms of thoughts, new sensations that had no previous ancestry in our very own private memory; yes it is a process of fragmentation and yet belongs to a greater process of reconstruction.

The original elements of our being are being restructured to fit the new infoverse landscape of interoperability.

Interoperability of what?
Of memory or of the elements of our beingness, that is how the nature of becoming rises to the fore.

The interoperability of memory as enmeshed in hyperconnectivity allows for a new form of organic symbolism, a pan symbolism stretching all the way across cultures, across languages, across times and across spaces in the process melting semantics into the new cauldron of intersubjective realism.

As I dwell upon the many facets of becoming, it appears that only a re-contextualization of the process of existence from the virtual to the actual may provide the necessary famous (Foucault’s) toolbox.

The option I deem best at present is to use the term Knowmad as Polytopian in action, otherwise put, the self-description of intelligent conscious aware systems in becoming.

In a previous post, Knowmads as critical relevancies I have described Knowmads as:

“Knowmads are visceral thinkers, expanded multiplicities, minds nested in vast and complex infocologies.
As such Knowmads herald a new kind of mind, free to be undefined in a polytopian infosphere.
Knowmads are critically relevant in as much as they recognize the vicariousness of their extension-ability in the relevant infocology.
Complex meshworks, embedded in complex infocologies engender flows of intersubjective co-dependencies; these in turn loop upon themselves and re-iterate the intelligent directionality.
The feedback loop here is obvious, but where is the individual?

Answer: the individual will be extended viscerally across an indefinite infosphere, defined locally by the reflective relevant infocology."

And in another post Hybrid futures, Knowmads and the notion state:

“Knowmads are substantial agents of change, who drastically alter the infocologies they interact with. The level of freedom implied by the knowmadic state is a new existential virtuality that pushes into the real, in the process transforming and meshing the different dimensions in which our minds operate. Existing as non-localized behaviors of information processing, Knowmads are not consumers and cannot be looked upon as capital. Knowmads are the innovators of thought and vision, using an insight mechanism based on correlated data-spheres of complex infocologies.
Knowmads do not care for labels of old style paradigms, such as gender ,creed, race or indeed status, what Knowmads care about are the pleasures derived in forming new connections, mash-ups and provisional options, innovative solutions for the next step in human evolution.

Our complex neuro-mesh firing in tandem, has produced this amazing property we call conscious awareness, with the advent of 21st century tech, augmented reality apps, visually stunning info-graphics, virtualities at our finger tips, p2p technologies availability and the like we are becoming Knowmads. The value of the Knowmad state is thus in providing a fresh framework and a new narrative to fill our old storytelling needs in our ever-increasing process of self-description.”



As the Knowmad meme increases in propagation and intensity we may now posit a more extensive version of the Knowmad in the process of becoming:

#Knowmads operate on a continuum of apparently trivialized bits and pieces of inconsistent and incoherent signals, seemingly nonsensical information, retrieving disparate slices of fragmented processes and re-arranging these into new coherencies, fresh narratives of interest.

# Knowmads represent a new style of minding that instinctively reflect the thought of non-unitary, non-universalism, and are factually embedding the concept, that there is no One solution, One network, or any ‘One’ for that matter.

#Knowmads style of minding continuously adjusts and fine-tunes the velocity of acquired resourcefulness.

# Knowmads are agents of attenuation; that which is being smoothened is the defining rigidity of characteristics, applied to loci (as body, as nation, as community, as belonging) from which stems the fluidity of self-description.

#Knowmads simultaneously re-conceive and redesign the connective nature of resource distribution, within infocologies, by that allowing the free flow of ideas to re-narrate themselves into innovative structures, themselves fluid and open to the pressures of the infocology dynamics.

#Knowmads are immune to boredom; alternatively, Knowmads are continuously bored and thus motivated by interest are finders of the rare, the creative, the non-actualized, the volatile and the delicate.
Knowmads are explorers of the uncertain, the indeterminate, the ambiguous, the oscillating and by consequence the disruptive.

#For Knowmads opacity of objectivity transforms into transparent meaning application, a motion of transliteration and translation of different languages occurring naturally in our eco environment and being harnessed to serve the epic of intelligent exploration.

# Knowmads follow neither the popular nor the personalized, but the dynamics of the interesting and relevant.

#Knowmads contain an anticipation of the fragment, spiraling in and out of their non formal and decomposed flow, insightfully restocking their perceptual elaboration with fresh winds of entangled sensation, removing the fallacy of necessary correspondence.
Removing the fascination of antiquity, Knowmads are rhizomatic actuators

#Knowmads deny the glorification of the mystical, undoing the inherent and incessant self-glory of the romantic, and the greatness of self-perspectivism. This particular characteristic of the Knowmad state defines the knowmad as an anti-silo device.

A kind of recapitulation

I have titled this short piece ‘Some will be gangsters of poetry, some will be pan symbolists’, because I see the future we are steadily moving into as an event of interest, that spans an immense yet indefinite number of domains. An event of interest of this magnitude is of necessity, complex and to some extant mysterious. The toolbox of thoughts, the recognizable patterns of sensations, we have at our disposal at present are increasingly out of date and out of synch, and most importantly out of correlativity, which brings most of us into despair of ever catching up to the flow of actuality.
However, I believe that by allowing a contemporary narrative of the landscape of values in which we co-dependently and intersubjectively exist to refresh our self-descriptions, we might find clarity.
This clarity, I posit, permits the evolutionary adaptive trait of exploration into the undefined and the unstructured to become a strategic device, a simile of a roadmap. But to allow an uncertain road on an uncertain map, that is being reformulated at the speed of a click, to be somehow manageable, we must reintroduce the function of the mytho-poetic, the narrative of becoming caught in the act of self description. Such an engagement with a meta-narrative, and it is termed Meta because it redefines the very elements of narration, is inevitably irreverent to the themes of the original poem (or the originator of the avatar), hence the ironic metaphorical usage of the term gangster.

The Polytopia project aims at providing a possible interaction surface in which we may gain all of the advantages of the multiple indeterminate, without relinquishing the rational of the synthetically natural. In a manner of speaking, we are exploring a potential descriptive apparatus, which is both precise and yet by it’s very precision performs an act, as part of a reconstituted narrative, of liberation.

Increasingly we walk bridges of sense and of thought that appear to be more fragile and more sensitive to variations by the moment, this fragility I think is good for us, for it unleashes kinds of strengths and powers of emotional stability that otherwise will remain dormant.
There is a deep sense to the madness of our immediacy, and though this sense may yet elude us in its entirety, if only for the fact that it needs unfurl into becoming, we ought jump head first into this transitory knowledge, with passion and clear eyed rationality, for otherwise, we will become obsolete.

As I see it, the road to posthumanism is complex and open, full of promises and perils, it is not yet a grand thoroughfare but neither is it a side street, it is in fact somewhere in between.
In this transitory period, I consider the emphasis on the exploratory nature of the Knowmad as a Polytopian in action, a viable option of self-description, of us, the modern consciously aware intelligent hyperconnected entity, in the process of reinventing the very components of our nature.

Will be continued..


unrelated addendum

This just made laugh now:

“You see, wire telegraph is a kind of a very, very long cat. You pull his tail in New York and his head is meowing in Los Angeles. Do you understand this? And radio operates exactly the same way: you send signals here, they receive them there. The only difference is that there is no cat.”

(attributed to A.Einstein)







—
Endnotes:

#1. Gilles Deleuze and Claire Parnet. Dialogues, trans. Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), p. 13.)
#2. G.Deleuze, “Letter to a Harsh Critic,” p. 6.

Mon, May 30, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: future, Mind, culture, polytopia, collective intelligence,Rhizomatics
Sent to project: Polytopia

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The Luxurious Ambiguity of Intelligence in Hyperconnectivity
Project: Polytopia

"For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream"
Vincent van Gogh


Abstract

The cyborgization process of becoming in which we presently take part has a long history and a very likely and highly plausible future, including wide arrays of options of radically enhancing our bodies and minds, however, the cyborgization becoming of our civilization is a multilayered, multidimensional progression that can be parsed in many ways, one of which is the hyperconnected virtualized enmeshed reality already in progress.
Here I am looking at the virtualization of identity as part of the meta-layer of the conceptual framework of cyborgization, a kind of underlying semantic infrastructure of our cyber-evolution.
More specifically I reflect upon certain linguistic needs such as the clear distinction between rigid and flaccid designators, by which we may, if we can be mindful enough and careful enough, manage a certain ambiguity into a possible liberating procedure.

(This essay belongs to the thread "Forays in Philotopia - exploring the possible Philosophy of a Polytopia")

Background

Not long ago a friend of mine came to ask my advice about an apparently simple issue which started as a local remark and became a deep philosophical conversation between her daughter and herself, and later between us, this conversation prompted this essay.
Her daughter is a young person about to celebrate her 15th birthday and needed to fill some forms for a coming exam, in the form as is common, she needed to fill the box of gender and almost did, when she stopped and asked her mother:” why do I need to fill the box of gender? Why do they care about my gender in any case? And also what does my gender have to do with my exam, my knowledge and my understanding of the subject matter? (Before you raise your highbrows, yes she is a very bright young person).
My friend, her mother, answered, that this was the norm and she needn’t make a fuss of it, it is probably used only as an indicator for statistical purposes and in any case it is the norm and accepted form of identification of the person involved and therefore one should completely disregard the meaning of the question and simply ‘get-on’ with it.
She did ‘get-on’ with it, and proceeded to fill the form, but later that evening the conversation between them resumed to the deeper aspects of the personal identity issue to which ‘gender’ relates as a defining characteristic, and apparently the issue of personhood and its derivative functions in society.
However the issue became complicated when said young person mentioned that in her online world she plays certain games and uses avatars that are predominantly considered male ‘just for fun’ (her words) she said, but really ‘it doesn’t matter, I don’t care if I play as a male or female, my character in the online game has no ‘real’ gender and even if it does, I don’t play as if I have a gender, I play as ‘me’ and I don’t want to have a gender in the game, its about my know how, my capability as a player and my knowledge, none of which should be correlated to my biology”.

That is the point when I was asked to give my view of the issue, in light of my working on the Polytopia project.
It is not my intention in writing this essay to deal with the issue of gender specifically but with the issue of transference (or indeed transposition) of identity designators between the actual and the virtual in general, an issue which I deem paramount for the sane evolution of our intersubjective cyborgization process.



Rigid Designators vs. Flaccid Designators

The Polytopian stance assumes a richness of mind that applies the distinction between rigid designators (Kripke) and flaccid designators (wiki) for different configurations of speech and thus dimensions of semantics.
Rigid designators (rigid designation is a property of the way terms are used, not a property of the terms themselves, - wiki) imply that the same object carries the same identity and thus the same characteristics in all possible worlds. Flaccid designators are fluid and allow for multiple options of descriptions in different worlds. The aim here is not to confront the one with the other but to propose that rigid designators should be left to conventional speech only, for purposes of efficient communication and quick look-up taxonomies. Moreover, rigid designators should not be allowed to imply ontology and / or metaphysics but to remain on the normative dimension with no necessary traceable memory (see endnotes #2). This will assume that proper names have meaning application only in as much as they reflect the necessity of accurate empirical representation. Switching to flaccid designators it is proposed here that fluid terminologies are the way to go when dealing with hyper complex systems such as identity and more particularly identity as represented in virtualities and the inter relation between said identities, especially in hyperconnectivity.

Within the motion of cyborgization in which we take part we can discern the advent of a semantic transposition from the actual to the virtual. A motion of transference of historical notions into a domain of existential realism to which those notions are not adapted and are factually obsolete. Such is the movement between terms pertaining to the conceptual category of rigid designators based on habitual ontologies that a sense of conflict rises and can be perceived when parsed in a virtual environments. No longer are we able to detect common indicators of identity, manners of representation, and styles of recognition for the simple reason that the virtual does not yield to fixed indicators. It is thus for example impossible solely by the fact of perceiving a given avatar to determine its gender, orientation, age, morphology, race and so on. In fact on first appearance it may seem that due to the motion from the actual to the virtual much information is lost and thus our capability of discernment and discrimination is the poorer for it. However, it is the Polytopian stance that this apparent paucity is in fact a false impression due to an analysis based on rigid designators not flexible enough to allow the creative value of the virtual to come into play.



At present the fact that our minds are embodied in a particular physical configuration stands as the main culprit in our habitual usage of identity indicators as rigid designators. Irrespective to the future technological possibility of mind uploads and similar post physical existences we need see that already at this stage the networked infocology in which each and every one of us to different extents exists, is already a form of non physical existence. In perceiving virtual existence as a dimension separated from traditional actuality we need assume a different set of contextual representations and thus epistemic structures that though can be bridged to regular style embodiment cannot be fully mapped to said body. This distinction if clarified allows us now to embed a re-definition of the concept of identity on the net that is distinct, different and only partially co-extensive with our physical embodiment. The issue here that we need reflect upon is that certain of our identities in virtuality are not extensions of our physicalities but have as it were, an independent or semi-independent as the case may be (such as an avatar in an online game, or SL ) existence to which, a contextual state of affairs need be defined.

No longer can we assume a central locus indicated rigidly by our bodily location to which all our identities are bound. Moreover, from a different perspective no longer can we assume that the motion of intelligence is still, in all cases, directed from the actual to the virtual. In fact, in many cases (“you are what you pretend to be … you are what you play (Turkle, 1997)#3) we will discern quite the opposite, a motion of intelligence from the virtual to the actual. And let us remember that though it is an interplay of flows, in no fashion is symmetry implied, quite the contrary in fact, in the relation between the virtual to the actual and the actual to the virtual, asymmetry reigns supreme. In some instances the flow of actuality into virtuality will gain the upper hand whilst in others the opposite will be the case. Nevertheless our effort here must emphasize the tension between those two motions and the clarification of directionality.

Whilst embodied identities maintain a formal highly structural and therefore rigid set of indicators, defined primarily as body, gender etc., our virtual identities are factually indicated in a fluid manner and thus pertain to the flaccid designators category. The initial condition of the human thus has changed and can no longer be theorized based on immovable objects of identity. What the Polytopian stance suggests is that our virtual identities are in fact social entities in and of themselves allowing a co-present, inter-subjective, hyper-connected, state of affairs, radically rewriting the codes of social encounters.

A number of different perspectives exist as of today desiring different application of the correlation actual-virtual. Some of these would like to maintain a rigid continuity of identification assuming wrongly that only such rigid continuity will allow valid confirmation of identity and thus trustworthiness (see Obama's-internet passport). Whilst there are certain domains to which such view is applicable (banking for example) in most cases pertaining to the evolution of our cyborgization this will be untrue. Same goes for the opposite view that the virtual domain should be totally and uncompromisingly free and detached from any rigid correlation and continuity to actual embodied identity. In fact most of the social entities considered as domains of interest extended in time in the infosphere pertain to neither perspective but to a middle ground grey area which is, to use the old adage, neither this nor that. Most of our cyborgization process of becoming, manifested primarily via the networked hyper-connected infocological state of affairs is fundamentally: ambiguous, uncertain, oscillating and fluctuating, and should be considered as a flow of in-betweens. The flow of in-betweens is actually comprised of multiple domains of interests, passions and relations, but more importantly perhaps, of radical creative encounters. This is the domain where the cross-pollination, cross-fertilization of human endeavor finds its home. This home, at present a fragile realm, fuzzy in its orientation yet passionate in its desire to explode into new forms of life, contains a fundamental structural instability. Though it may seem that this structural instability also called inherent approximation, is a fault line indicating a potential problem possibly degenerating into the chaos of indeterminacy, it is in my view a feature rather than a bug.



Indeterminacy is a feature not a bug

I submit to you the idea, that there is no direct continuity between an avatar and its originator, or for that matter the possibility of fully mapping an avatar, as a ‘stand-in’ symbol of representation, to the person that originated that same avatar. (And though at present it probably is possible to trace back an avatar to its originator, it is highly likely that given enough time and diversification, including mutations, alterations and transformations, none such will be possible or indeed desired.)
An avatar has a quasi-infinite variety of possible interpretations depending on context, on semantics and syntax, but more importantly at this stage is the understanding that the relationship between the avatar and its originator is an indeterminate relationship that inherently exhibits the characteristics of ambiguity and fuzziness.

Not only do I think that the relationship Avatar-Originator, is inherently ambiguous I propose to make this particular ambiguity, a kind of benchmark reflection on the concept of identity. A radical motion towards a possible liberating procedure, in which our consciously aware usage of the ambiguity of relationship Avatar-Originator, replaces the closely coupled, rigid designations, we still transpose from the actual to the virtual.

The indeterminacy of our identities in the hyperconnected infocologies we are presently enmeshed in, is, I believe, only an indication or the beginning, if you like, of a much greater fuzziness that is waiting for us in the process of cyborgization, to which the virtualization of identity is a crucial step.

It is my view that the evolution of intelligence, is currently undergoing a dramatic shift towards a greater uncertainty and openness, a deeper ambiguity and larger indeterminacy, a new state of affairs of mind, through which we may, if sensibly and wisely managed, become more free.

There are many ways to understand intelligence, and in many contexts, issues of problem solving, capacity of reasoning, adaptability to new environments, learning from experience, pattern recognition, judgment exercising, imagination, originality, artistic and abstract perception, complex interpretation and so on, are all possible interpretations, definitions and usages of the concept.

However for the purpose of this essay I am using a semi-poetic interpretation of the term intelligence. Here I refer to intelligence as a luxury of mind, a bonus if you like, that I use in a very specific manner. I refer to intelligence as a luxury here because I see the capacity to exist in ambiguous situations, to extract relevant information from fuzzy circumstances as non-linear and highly relevant to the new state of affairs we have co-created.

The hyperconnected virtually enmeshed infocologies, upon which we are projecting our newly minted avatars, are oscillating representations that slowly but surely are disengaging from their points of origination.
This disengagement process, itself part of our cyborgization becoming, opens new options, fresh possibilities and a wide array of potentials for the evolution of our self-descriptions into new horizons of freedom.

Issues of gender (such as the one mentioned in the little anecdote above), of race, of creed, of ethnicity, of status, of age and any other rigid designators, ought to be relegated to the conventional, indeed to the material, as it is now, to the actual. The hyperconnected virtually enmeshed infocologies, present no inherent necessity for such, unless highly specified in functionality (as in the banking example) or so chosen (as in creating an avatar with specifically chosen characteristics). In every other context the disengagement process of an ambiguous identity, is the luxury of intelligence we can finally afford, and to my eyes should passionately apply.

Finally, whether we are hard core Singularitarian, futurists, Transhuman or Extropians, philosophers, artists, AI designers or just any modern day person, using the mediums of our currently available technologies to hyperconnect we are factually performing acts of luxurious intelligence application.
It does not so much matter what exactly it is that we believe concerning the coming future of our civilization and our very nature, what matters is the manner we understand the process of becoming a better specie, a better human, a more empathic mind, rational, passionate and conscious, open to the beauty of the great uncertainty that is life.

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.”

Ursula K. LeGuin

shortly to be continued..


Endnotes :

# 1. Let me be clear here, whilst I advocate a total freedom of self-representation on the net, there are certain kinds of social interaction in which gender representation, as an example, are fundamental for the purpose of the designated interaction. Though a dating site might require the knowledge of your gender, there is no inherent reason for a requirement of gender identification in an online game. Moreover, as I see it, it is high time that we put into question most of our assumptions about identity representation and their correlated implications especially in situations where common sense dictates that no such identification is indeed necessary. This goes far deeper than the privacy versus transparency debate, this goes to the very root of the personhood perception mechanisms that we have put into place, millennia ago and need be upgraded to fit our modern day hyperconnected interfaced minds.

# 2. No necessary traceable memory I use here to designate the rigid factuality of designation of a particular individual in the original dimension of the actual that does not transpose into other possible worlds especially as refers to the virtual hyperconnected dimension. Hence though it will be true to state that person P is a female in actuality this description may not necessarily be transposed unto the virtual, and thus does not carry traceable memory.

# 3. Turkle, S. (1997). Constructions and Reconstructions of Self in Virtual Reality. In S. Kiesler (Ed.), Culture of the Internet. Hilldale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

# 4. second image in text: Double Pendulum with LEDs by Michael G Devereux

# 5. third image Succulus by Robert Pepperell

Thu, May 12, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web, Rhizomatic, Avatar, Ambiguity
Sent to project: Polytopia

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The Aesthetical and Ethical application of Transhuman perception to Design
Project: Polytopia

Whilst it may be possible to soon grow your own clothes with synthetic bacteria, or indeed harnessing fog to eliminate the water problems of the world, what is exciting about design within technology and the transhumanist perspective of it, is primarily the idea that design can be simultaneously innovative, a game changer, aesthetically pleasing and ethically sound.

Such is the mission of the coming conference “TRANSHUMANISM MEETS DESIGN” at Parsons school of design where Humanity+ and Parsons will Explore the Role of Design in Transcending and Transforming Human Potential.



With a fascinating list of futurists speakers including Howard Bloom, author of Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, and Vivian Rosenthal, cofounder of New York-based Tronic Studio. Artificial intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel, chair of Humanity+; strategic philosopher Max More, CEO of Alcor Life Extension Foundation; and neuroscientist Anders Sandberg, a James Martin Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University the conference promises to be an event at a critical junction in our evolution.

In my conversations with Natasha Vita-More, who co-chairs the conference with Ed Keller, the idea to present a designed form of presentation, interview like, for our audience here at SC came up, we have as a result created a schema of interweaving ideas, involving design, transhumanism, ethics and aesthetics.



I - Narratives

1.The Narrative of Aesthetics

Art is the imposing of a pattern on experience, and our aesthetic enjoyment is recognition of the pattern.

— Alfred North Whitehead (Mathematical Logician and Philosopher)

Natasha: One way in which we can understand design and aesthetics is to refresh our imaginations about what personal identity means. If, for example, our personhood is a series of neuronal connections, then it forms a pattern. All aspects of our brain’s cognition, including memory, perception, experiences, analysis, and imagination, are patterns of connections. By this, one could say we are art.

2. The Narrative of Design

Design is the method of putting form and content together. Design, just as art, has multiple definitions; there is no single definition. Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated.

— Paul Rand (Icon Graphic Designer)


Natasha: Biology is a design of nature’s elements and evolution’s processes. If design, in its most basic sense, is the act of finding a solution to a problem, then design is a quintessential method for developing humanity’s future existence as biological, semi-biological and post-biological people. Science and technology are the tools, but design is the necessary, essential methodology.

3. The Narrative of Culture

Be culturally literate, because if you don't have any understanding of the world you live in and the culture you live in, you're not going to express anything to anybody else.

— Paula Scher (Dame of Grande Design)

Natasha: When time speeds up and the complexity of life causes cultures to clash, it is ever more sensible to promote diversity and understanding amongst consensual and disparate beliefs. Society’s need for knowledge is truncated by easy, quick-fix information that lacks accuracy and historical context. Repeatedly, I am seeing misinformation, lousy referencing, borrowed ideas, and a type of tweet culture that doesn’t take the time to accurately quote or identify where the information was obtained.

4. The Narrative of Transhumanism

Leonardo Da Vinci combined art and science and aesthetics and engineering, that kind of unity is needed once again.

— Ben Shneiderman (Computer Scientist)

Natasha: Transhumanism evokes the sciences and technologies that might best solve the problems of bodily deterioration, cognitive degeneration, and overall lack of well-being. Enhancement means to expand upon—to make better. It parallels the role of design. Enhancement is not just augmenting the body with technology. As a design process, it aims to produce a reliable, efficient, smart model for personhood. It is the ultimate unity of aesthetics and engineering.

—
II - The Application of Transhuman Perception

1. The application of Transhumanism to Ethics

Natasha: At the finest intersection of transhumanism and ethics lies the issue of life and death, who we are, our purpose, our relationship to our self, to others and to society. Transhumanism values personhood, the right to live, and the right to enhance intellectual capacity, bodily performance, sensory modalities, physiological attributes, and to increase one’s lifespan. Transhumanism disavows any political, religious or other system that uses coercion in interfering with a person’s efforts to maintain his or her personhood and efforts to sustain life and wellbeing.

2. The application of Transhumanism to Aesthetics

Natasha: Aesthetics of an enhanced existence is best conveyed through new media’s virtual, immersive role in constituting experience design. This offers one an opportunity to partially experience what a transhuman, posthuman or upload might be like. For example, to experience multiple selves and distributed cognition. Ultimately the artistic finessing of radical life extension is the goal.

3. The application of Aesthetics to Design

Natasha: Surveying transdisciplinary practice-based works generating around the theme of transhumanism, it seems that designing new types of human platforms is at the top of the design excitement. When I designed “Primo Posthuman” in 1997, it was a novel prototype, never done before and I received international recognition for this concept and model. Since then, there have been many designers and artists who have added to this concept and there are some marvelous outcomes. Nevertheless, none of them have actually furthered my original concept or introduced a different or more meaningful examination of a future human prototype. Why? I think the reason is that the technological methodology that I envisioned for the future humans and its aesthetics is still not available.

4.The correlativity of Ethics, Aesthetics, Design and Transhumanism

Natasha: If we look at human enhancement as a design issue, then ethics and aesthetics are the primary tools. If the aim of transhumanism is to regenerate existence and personhood, in biological matter and other substrates, then the correlation between one’s values and one’s right to morphology are just two variables of the gestalt. What we will look like, how we functions, and the relationship between persons depends on the structure and substrate of the person and the architecture of the environment.


The health of one’s body and brain is essential to the core of transhumanism.

III - The body- The next frontier of evolution:

1.1 The Body extends in time via technology producing longevity

Natasha: Extending the body is the role of transformative human enhancement. Adding to the number of years we are alive, developing new environments within which to exist, designing new types of persons are crucial aspects of extending the body through technology. But it must be understood that the body, is inclusive of the person and the body is not tethered to biology or a three-dimensional structure. The idea of regenerating human life is not new. It is an age-old issue. What is new are the methods through which we can realize this proposition. Transhumanism has been challenging the human lifespan and the finality of death for 20 years.

1.2 The Body cybernetically extended as itself via tech , changing the human condition

Natasha: Cybernetics looks at the observer as part of the system, rather than outside the system. Building on this theory, it makes sense that the observer would also be a co-creator with the development of the system. After all, it is his/her life we are talking about! To extend and elevate the human condition related to extending the “observer” beyond biology and unto alternative platforms. One such platform, which relates to cybernetics, is a digital and computational platform, for example. But the issue of uploading consciousness is a very hard problem for cognitive scientists and neuro scientists to explore. The rest of us can imagine the possibilities and what the aesthetics implied might be.



1.3 Body extended as enhanced brain –The metabrain, Brain Machine Interface

Natasha: The metabrain is the term I use for the enhanced brain. It features a dashboard of options, including adaptive AGI that assists psychological behaviors and decision-making. Also neural macrosensing, conceived by nanotechnology expert Robert A. Freitas Jr., relates to medical in vivo nanorobotics for the detection of somatic states as well as extrasomatic states, such as sensory data originating outside the body.

-
IV - Transhuman thought is ethically consistent and aesthetically pleasing



Natasha: The reasons why I think design is a crucial element of transhumanism is because design, by its very nature, is about problem solving. While we are primarily focused on life extension, there is great interest in and concern about every day problems that people face. Technological innovation permeates all aspects of society—from tiny water purification packets and portable LifeStraw filters, to GPS tracking devices, wearable Timex iPods and Gel-Kinsei high-tech running shoes. Because technology and society evolve together, it has become increasingly important to develop a greater understanding of how technology is shaping the course of our lives. We are faced with a need to continuously become more innovative in harnessing and controlling technology’s acceleration. Nevertheless, innovation develops in stages. When it speeds up, we are faced with an urge to become ever more resourceful. When it slows down there is an impending impatience to compete with the exuberance of China. There is no doubt that even the most conservative thinkers agree that we have stepped into an era of a massive change. The good news is that our human diversity continues to spawn inventiveness and novelty. Through artistic and innovative applications of design, transhumanist technologies can synthesize ethics and aesthetics.

-
I have asked Natasha to comment on some actual examples of designed technology already changing our lives and their correlation to Transhuman perception of design:

4.1 Smart Wheel chairs



Natasha: Mobility is second nature to us, and without easy access to movement we can feel imprisoned in our bodies. A wheelchair is a type of prosthetics and prosthetics is a major area for transhumanist design. Not only do we want to live much longer, we want to be able to replace worn out body parts with newer versions. What happens if we don’t have bodies that function? My design “Primo Posthuman” is a whole body prosthetic based on emerging technologies such as regenerative biotechnology, molecular nanotechnology, neuroinformatics, and artificial general intelligence.

The everyday products that help to protect our lives touch on the core of transhumanism. How can we expect nascent technologies to fix many of the biological problems that we face today if we do not ourselves protect our lives? Anyone who has had cancer knows what a difficult situation they are faced with. Our bodies are now a synthesis of prosthetic and biology.



4.2 People who have lost their larynx to cancer could speak again, thanks to a device that can interpret facial movements when the wearer mouths a word

Natasha: Having had cancer twice, I know how it feels to have to face the disease. I remember when I was 11 years old and had a tumor growing in my jaw and had to have it removed. In my Chicago-based surgeon’s waiting room, I saw people who had lost large portions of their faces. Many wore scarves to cover up what their tumors had devoured. It makes me happy to know that the field of design is helping people who have lost body parts or need new body parts.



For a full list of confirmed speakers and additional information about the conference, please visit the conference website: Humanity+@Parsons NYC

I think that many of us here at Space Collective will find much interest in this conference and maybe will also be able to contribute some additional insights.
Though I am sorry to say I personally will not be able to attend, if any of you does, a Polytopian perspective added here will be much appreciated.

Thu, May 5, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: design, Ethics, transhumanism, Aesthetics, Humanity+, Parsons
Sent to project: Polytopia

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Openness to the traffic of flows - A polytopian stance
Project: Polytopia, The Total Library

I am currently reading one of (probably) the best books in the hard sci-fi genre, it appears that somehow it escaped my attention but here I finally put my mind to it and am exploring the intricacies of this ‘funny’ book.
The book is called Dragon’s egg, written by Robert Forward and published in 1980, and basically is the chronicles of the accelerated evolution of a species known as the Cheela having evolved on a neutron star with 67 billion times the surface gravity of earth, a fact which of course changes everything (read the book, you will not regret it.)
What I find in the book fascinating is a particular aspect of the lives of the Cheela, specifically the fact that they live a million times faster than humans, and thus all of their evolution happens in human terms between May and June 2050.



The issue of speed and relativity in terms of duration is fascinating for a simple reason, for it is my view that something very similar, metaphorically speaking, is happening right here and now, partly within us, partly outside of us.

The part within us, our minds, and the part outside of us, our civilization, are only two of the dimensions within which it is possible to perceive, differences in speed, distinctions of velocity, variations in rates, disparities of pace and ultimately, divergence in directionalities based on these divergences.

The sense thought I get from current realities, juxtaposed and coinciding is that different philosophies and worldviews are operating concomitantly and interactively and yet because of the differences in speed that I mentioned above apparent contradictions appear to surface when in fact none such are. The appearance of contradictions in fact is one of the hallmarks of the differences in velocity and variations of pace.

Some of the ideas currently being promoted in various extrapolated spaces of thoughts are on the extreme wing of the fast forward approach, such as certain brands of transhumanism, whilst others, are on the extreme wing of bio conservatism or indeed full fledged traditionalism.
It is of course quite obvious that most of the current thoughts, based on philosophies of old, react or better yet re-enact certain known paths of intellectual pursuit and thus constitute the bulk of what is aptly termed the middle ground.
The middle ground in this respect is what can be called ‘the current fashion’ or alternatively ‘the accepted consensus of reality now’. If we take the grand volume of what is the presently congruous we can, without doubt, perceive an amalgam of concepts from science and religion, so called politics and somewhat misappropriated philosophies of life, or of art, of criticism as well as of envisioning.

As I see it, there is a pattern there, or more accurately a pattern of patterns, a meta- pattern of sorts; a complex and highly volatile transitory coagulation of our civilization history, both in thought and in action. The meta-pattern I look upon now, involves a flow of traffic, or traffic of flows if one prefers, motions within motions, streams of sensations and torrents of thought with no apparent center or for that matter apparent direction.

The traffics of flows, of ideas and thoughts we can observe, differ from each other not so much by content as by speed, not so much by context as by velocity, in fact looking upon the different kinds of flows with a certain (necessary) detachment from the implied value of each flow, we can see that flows of ideas, mesh and interact, mutate and fertilize each other, giving birth in the process to yet other flows.

These flows of course have names, pointers and signifiers that apparently distinguish them from their predecessor’s parent flows or indeed from their siblings and eventually from their offspring. What is important at this stage however is to understand that the differences in these flows can be mapped in different ways, using different benchmarks for different purposes, resulting and here is the crucial point, in different kind of understandings of the state of affairs at play.

For our ability of analysis and parsing to be conceptually sound and integrated within a larger framework of sustainable action we first need escape the freeze frame fallacy.

The fallacy of freeze frame:

The fallacy of freeze frame refers to this most common practice of the mind to dissect a flow of events at a particular time T and implying from it about the flow itself. Consider the fact that a particular group of humans in the process of discussion can be seen to differ in stages, first about ontology and or perhaps metaphysics, then about semantics, later about the ideas and finally about the direction they will or will not take. At each point of the discussion if the frame is in freeze, the conclusion will be that the group is incompetent, unable to reach a decision or alternatively is not adapted to the task at hand, if alternatively the group flow is in freeze frame at the exact moment of consensus, the conclusion will be that this has fallen under the groupthink malady and is not an evolving organism.

It is highly difficult to escape the fallacy of freeze frame mainly because our minds are limited in the amount of flow dynamics that are perceivable per time per space and thus an easy escape route out of this limitation is the freeze frame method. We give or concoct our opinion of a process based on the moment we need give such an opinion, this creates a fixed point of observation from which future points are derived, the frame so freezed becoming a bench mark for our sense thought.

The fallacy of freeze frame is a fundamental perceptual disability afflicting all of us to different degrees at different times and to my mind is the corner stone of the problems we are facing when trying to understand the state of affairs of the world and how to go about it.

We are all well aware, I think, that being subject to the necessity of action we use the freeze frame paradigm to create for ourselves a set of values (and from that a set of ethical imperatives and moral actions) from which cathedral we judge the reality we apparently perceive. Said judgment of course leads us to so-called ‘realizations’ or ‘insights’ or alternatively beliefs in our own understanding that we deem both universal and true (we need deem these as such since only if they are universal and true would we have, or so we believe enough justification to muster the energy needed for action).

The first question we need address if so is why escape the freeze frame fallacy in the first place since it is actually a tool of our minds that helps us make sense of the world.
The answer is not as simple as we may desire it to be; it is fundamentally a necessary transition to a different kind of mind, a Polytopian mind that sees traffic of flows as the foundation of hyperconnected intersubjectivity.

The cross pollination of flows within the traffic of flows is the answer to the riddle, for without allowing a directed cross fertilization we end up within one particular flow, oblivious to the relevancy of simultaneous evolutions, and thus miss the opportunity of openness to alternate interpretations of possible outcomes.

Openness in this respect implies a sort of coherent ambiguity, and fertile uncertainty, an evaluation not of the flow to which we ‘apparently’ belong but of the interplay of flows, and intersubjective scenarios.

If we are to have clarity of mind that engenders the entanglement of an open posthuman future, the view we need uphold is one of multiplicity of forms and functions, simultaneous visions operating in tandem but on different scales of change and pace of actuation.
It is in fact a different kind of stance, to which quantification of action releases its hold upon us to permit a qualification of acceptance to the ‘other’; the ‘other’ in this case being not an individual but a flow of events.

Fostering such a polytopian stance is part of the raison d’être of the Polytopia project.

shortly to be continued..

Sun, May 1, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: culture, polytopia, collective intelligence, Hyperconnectivity, cyber civilization, Web, Rhizomatic
Sent to project: Polytopia, The Total Library

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BWBW3- Because the world belongs to words pt.3 (A Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

Previously on BWBW:

"I know you know that there are no intrinsic problems as such, but only difficulties in maintaining a multilayered reality in immediacy but keep in mind that the essence of the warrior poet is a re-arrangement without thought, consciously keeping the direction of repetition but not allowing the order to emerge until an arbitrary point of conscious spontaneity, and it is this very spontaneity that I am looking for, it happens when the variation is exactly right, when the mutation is self similar to a degree that is high enough and far enough..

An exact tipping point.."
(from pt.2)

—
Finale

..There is rip in the composition of time, a crack in the fabric of space, which is where thoughts come through to make us consciously aware.

Yes I realize that not sitting there with us and watching the universe tear itself apart simply because someone recites poetry, and chaotic poetry at that, you may feel all this is highly phantasmagoric, but let me assure you, happen it did.

When our warrior poet, started reciting his poetry, at first we noticed increased blood flow into the reticular formation, but then something extraordinary happened, his frontal cortex or at least parts of it started shutting down of their own accord, as if disconnected from the overall mind event.
We checked our machinery and monitors to see if we were not witnessing some unpredictable malfunction and found as expected that all was in order, so what on earth was going on?

We slowly came to the realization that what we were seeing was language actuation in the process of transforming coherence, not unlike what the Shamans of old used to say about words that name spirits, you know, that which we thought was mambo-jumbo, that you have to be careful what names you use when addressing the matter of the world, because .. well basically because the correct wording calls for the force so named.

The words he used were incomprehensible to us, but that did not change the fact that whilst hearing those words, those sounds, those strange syllables, my mind opened.
Let me rephrase this, I am a scientist after all and you are a philosopher, so we cannot allow ourselves the nonsensical approach of just saying it as it is, can we now? So I will not say my mind opened, what I will do is simply relay the factuality of it all like this: I looked at the monitor and said ‘Oh! My god! Look’ (to no one in particular) and suddenly the monitor was showing not his brain, but my brain, literally my brain, and as I was watching, I saw the words coming out of my mouth becoming forces of explosion, a formatting palette of lines of reflexivity, snaking upon each other and reverting the effects of the brain I was seeing, changing the form of the brain itself, reformulating its shape, into something unknown.
I was aware to the changes in my visual cortex, the colors were extending themselves into new horizons, morphing the shapes into sounds and the sounds into Euclidian factors, smoothly reinforcing the location of my conscious awareness into another place, first in the room itself and then..

And then I was a disembodied observer, pleasantly floating above and in between lines of sensation, silently becoming part and parcel of a world reconfiguration, relentlessly moving into and out of coherency, reporting to no one in specific, simply because there were no specifics..
It was as if the very meaning of the term comfort, or maybe comfortable, was taking life, seizing reality and reshaping it to fit its meaning, an epistemic force of nature, de-ontologizing the immediacy, deconstructing the consistency of matter and reinstating in its stead a subtler concatenation of causes, issuing forth a new reality.

So there I was, and writing this to you now on my word processor seems almost incomprehensible, a dream really, but this was no dream, and though I wrote ‘there I was’, there was no I to speak of, not that I was not aware, that I was, it was something else, a total disintegration if you like, but upon reading these words you may think disintegration a negative, whilst the reality of it was that disintegration was gentle and all encompassing, a moment when suddenly the conceptual realization of a distributed self suddenly took flight into a new dimension of existential reality.

So there I was, and there was no I to the there, there was and still is a flow of comforts, yes I know it doesn’t make much sense, what is a flow of comforts? Maybe a flow of pleasure will be a better description. But even that will not do the state I am trying to describe justice.. at any rate the sensation of the moment was that knowledge that is embedded in the proto conscious mind, and in that case it was the knowledge of what comfort is, was being released from its synthetic constraints and unleashed from its bonds of contextual phrasing, was depowering reality, and de-cohering one unto a larger coherence..
At that particular moment I realized that though it is true that the human is far from being the center of reality we could, under certain conditions, redefine the authority of the moment by undoing the statement of being in time.

I do not know what will happen when I will utter the word, maybe nothing, maybe everything, but I suspect that when the word ‘human’ will be pronounced something fundamental about the despotism of time, will be unleashed and re-cohere our future history..
It is my sense perception extrapolated into a vision of timelessness that the ‘human’ will undo our innate violence and upturn the tables of destiny, I believe that this is what the warrior poet wanted us to capture by making himself available to our research.

You may now understand why I am going to say the word and see where its leading me, irrespective to the possible consequences to my own mind and sanity, it is the bifurcations of inspiring moments like this that make us who we are, and maybe, just maybe, by uttering ‘human’ and meaning something else’ the semantic force of the nature of mind, backed by beauty, tracked by passion, empowered by immediacy and fully realizing the sheer emptiness upon which interdependence floats, will allow change to materialize.

I know that very few ever came back to tell, I hope to do otherwise, if for nothing else but the need of your existence extended across the times, for all great acts are at bottom highly specific and point to a motive that is other than I.

Farewell my friend, wish me luck.

HUMAN

..

part of the Ultrashorts project

Sun, Apr 3, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: poetry, Philosophy, AI, Language, ultrashorts, multidimentionality, Sci-fi

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BWBW2-Because the world belongs to words pt.2 (A Sci-Fi ultrashort)

Previously on BWBW:

” But what happens when the very task that we set to compute is an iterative branching of meaning?
What happens when the arrangement itself of matter re-coheres itself continuously to fit the desire of the task at hand which is a non-given in chaotic poetry?

I’ll tell you what happens, because I saw it with my very own eyes, and heard it with my very own ears..
What happens is that all dimensions open simultaneously and all meanings break loose, time dissolves, space explodes, and the door of perceptions become transparent and suddenly you see.. “ (from pt.1)

..

My dear friend, if I sound a bit incoherent and rambling its because I am trying to write to you as fast as I can before it happens.. But to understand what may happen I need to give you some elaborations..

So before I go on let me explain to you the conceptual framework that we started with, we assumed, as it were that, that there is a close correlativity between the foundations of true beliefs, into false beliefs and up to the super-abstract level of fictional beliefs which though not true are nevertheless highly useful as functional properties of non teleo-semantics applications in every day life. The reason for this is quite simple, we took for granted the idea that without such fictional beliefs we cannot run the current human civilization, and even more our current conceptualization of time, of matter, but more particularly of consciousness.

We realized early on in our investigations that mental imagery, what is commonly called quasi-perceptual experience, may allow a form of experiential mentation that does not require visualization but is, in a manner of speaking, quite formless, though that which is experienced is a kind of form, I say a kind of form but I really mean that it is something more akin to the way we see water in motion, if you freeze frame the moment you could say that the water has shape, but in the constancy of waves there is no particular form , though a continuous process of transformation from one form into another takes place, and of course it takes place as an uninterrupted progression.

This progression, my friend, of form, into form, a formless motion of diversification was the key, it was the key to understand how levels of abstraction cohere and re-cohere themselves into an apparent continuity, in a way it is not unlike conceptual metaphors, yes, the very concept we dealt with years ago has resurfaced in a very wild manner.
If you recall, conceptual metaphors imply that you can often use one kind of metaphor to understand another, but what we came to perceive via our ‘warrior poet’ was that the very term understanding was a metaphor, bleeding levels and dimensions into one another, this was an important realization for it was the clue to the riddle.
By then we were already well into the conceptual domains of the chaotic poetry but we did not see this, not one of us could see this, how stupid we were! We didn’t put our minds into the equation of the experiment, thinking for so many years that there exists an objective and discreet reality out there, we simply forgot that we are part of the equation, we were the experimenters but we were experimented upon at the same time.
In fact subject X was actually using us, nah! ‘Using’ is the wrong word, because he was not doing anything intentional, or preplanned, he was simply doing what we supposedly asked of him, he was reciting the poetry as we asked, but we were listening, of course we were listening, that was the whole point of the experiment wasn’t it? To listen to the words and then map them using the blood flow of his brain as a cue to understanding the way language maps into the brain.

But not all brains are wired alike and not all conceptual domains allow for the same kind of realities to blend as one, of course you may object that peripherally this is well known, but what you now fail to understand as we did fail then was to take into consideration that mostly those differences of wiring are inconsequential but sometimes, ah! Sometimes, these differences become amazingly catastrophic!!

I use the term catastrophic, not in the common negative sense but in the sense of catastrophic theory , because just as in catastrophe theory, the small variations though stable across time, allow for total dimorphism of the particular brain in which they occur, yes of course it is random on the grand scale, but in the particulars it is highly ordered and can be in a sense maneuvered to cohere the geometry of the conscious mind and by that shaping the immediate awareness of the mind in question to ‘SEE’ the bleeding metaphors in the very process of transformation ,into dimensions not originally correlated, in real time.

Imagine that, in real time..

And in our case subject X, the warrior poet, was an adept at exactly this kind of self-iterating mind augmentation using the tools of non-given chaotic poetry. But wait, that was not all, because if, as I know you do, you understand how dynamic systems operate on interacting scales of progression, you know that they eliminate the directionality of the arrow of time, that which most humans forget to forget when dealing with their higher faculties, with their desire of beingness.

I must say that Johanna, which incidentally, or maybe not I now think, was the only one of us that was a professional mathematical expert in chaos theory, was the one that caught early on to the implications of self organizing systems. Yes of course, we all knew the correlation of simple equations to complex behaviors, and all the metaphorical extrapolations of the ‘butterfly effect’ and so on, but what she was quick to understand and we were slow, I now admit, was that slight variations are not physical in and of themselves, yes they are of matter, but the rules of behavior are not of physics, but of linguistics, or of shapes if you like, who could have guessed this..? Not me certainly, could you?

—
Enough with explications, I know you understand me like no one else, but this time really I need you to fly with me on this, I’ll tell you how it all went and then you will judge for yourself, but as a friend I ask you the favor to withhold judgment until you hear me out, do like we do when watching the movies, a temporary suspension of disbelief.

At least for an extended moment..


I am sending you also some notes I wrote during the session, not ordered I know, but they may help you in understanding where I am going with all this..

Warrior poets see patterns where we see anarchy and chaos, therefore we realized they see a reality that we could not perceive, same picture but bigger, stranger, in a way perverse, with no systematic way to follow, a domination of natural occurrences..
It was the shapes he said, the shapes of branches iterating their own branching into infinite self-similarity, but at smaller scales the forking of dimensions re-iterates the bleeding of syntax into semantics.

Repeating the word could replace self-similarity into the geometry of fractals.

It wasn’t man made and yet it wasn’t supernatural, but it was not natural in the regular sense and to the common senses.

A quirk maybe but fundamental nevertheless, all signposts to the language of eternality, complex, iterative, multidimensional, and yet so amazingly simple it craves derision.

Of course complex systems come from simple rules, but then the simplicity of the rules is decidedly illusory, it is the slightly different that makes the difference, that is where free will comes in, and explains how life emerged, and why the cosmos is so well astonishing, and why everything opens when the word is write or right..

Some things he said:

Wherever he went he found nothing, but he was happy with this nothingness, he was or so he claimed, ecstatic about it, ecstatic in a manner that he called primal, like leaves receiving their first drops of rain, nothing, like love he said, like feeling obsolete and taking pleasure in the meaninglessness of it all.. but then realization occurs, like a flowing river..

Takan ,Lakan, Mahakaran, Shutam, Diparkalam… that is what he said

Rich complexity he called it.. a deep, profound and highly unexpected connection, cosmic maybe, between order and chaos and nothing..

I have put these things here on this letter I am sending you because I think that you need also some hints that are not filtered through me directly..
I know you know that there are no intrinsic problems as such, but only difficulties in maintaining a multilayered reality in immediacy but keep in mind that the essence of the warrior poet is a re-arrangement without thought, consciously keeping the direction of repetition but not allowing the order to emerge until an arbitrary point of conscious spontaneity, and it is this very spontaneity that I am looking for, it happens when the variation is exactly right, when the mutation is self similar to a degree that is high enough and far enough..

An exact tipping point..

—
Shortly to be continued..

(Part of the Ultrashorts project)

Sun, Mar 20, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: poetry, Philosophy, AI, Language, ultrashorts, multidimentionality, Sci-fi

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Because the world belongs to words - A sci-fi ultrashort

—
It didn’t go wrong, not exactly wrong that is.

I mean, c’mon, who could have predicted the consequences of a technology that seemed on face value so straightforward, so logically consistent with what we know, or as it turned out, thought we knew, of the way the world works.
The point, you see, is that whilst the tech was straightforward, or so it seemed to us at the time, the ontological implications and the ensuing derivations were far from clear to us.
Actually we weren’t really aware that there was an ontology to speak about, not on this level of quantum deterioration at least. Of course we talked about the high level philosophical implications of mapping brain activity to specific words, we even joked that what we were doing was creating the first techno-telepathy device and we will read other minds just as we read books.
And of course we discussed the ethics and meta-ethics of applying such a tech to a world that was largely Neolithic, and the implications on the justice system, on morality and even on love and personal relationship.
Seriously though we were really only measuring differences in blood flow when the mind was listening to different kinds of words, and then we mapped the neuronal fluctuations and then the synaptic correlativity to verbs and adjectives.
Nothing serious, really.
One of us, I think it was Wilbur, said in jest, that he would like to map himself whilst meditating and reciting the sutras, and no, before you ask, no one took him seriously and we never got to map the OM thingy..
What we did was quite simple when you think about it, we used magnetic resonance, magneto encephalography, applying a wide array of squids , and no, we didn’t take into consideration that measuring such low and extremely weak magnetic fields will interfere with the substratum of coherent reality.
Look, I cannot take full responsibility for all that happened, also because we really do not know exactly how things will turn out, maybe all will be well at the end, if we learn the language..
At any rate, at first we simply, took to mapping the plain correlation of neural activity to undemanding nouns, like ‘chair’ and ‘door’ and so on, after that we showed the subjects certain simple noun phrases, like ‘ brown door’ and ‘green chair’. Now the first thing we discovered was that there was no association with commonly correlated brain areas that process complex language expressions, Broca’s and Wernicke’s areas seemed to play no role, we were surprised but not shocked, and we continued like this for a while, until of course subject X, came into our life.

I am telling you all this because as you might have guessed by now, I am going to try and utter the ‘word’ and see where it leads me, so I thought you as my best friend, would like to know a bit about the ‘why’ of it all.

Truth to tell, none of us really understood the deeper correlation of words to neural activity to intra-cellular communication, to neuro-chemical encapsulation, but more importantly to the deeper layer of intersubjective interference of the conscious linguistic mind to the construct of computational reality.

We were somewhat aware of Konrad Zuse work especially with what we assumed we understood (and found to be wrong !) concerning the computational space and as I know what you are thinking, my friend, let me correct you, quickly computable universes are NOT more likely than others, and simple Turing Machines are extremely rare and maybe non existent, I truly do not know.. but I digress

—

Subject X was a poet, at least that is what he wrote on his application form, and of course we enjoyed immensely the idea of checking the brain correlations of someone who was well acquainted with language, with the immense complexity of word manipulation, and also, I forgot to mention, with someone that claimed to know a number of languages, so with much gusto and high spirits we went to work on him.
Do take into account that at the time we didn’t even know that such a concept, as a ‘warrior poet’ exists, how much less the possible implications of incoherent poetry on reality. I have an unfounded theory, a speculation really, that minds that operate a number of languages simultaneously, and they are a rare phenomenon indeed, are a mutation of the lateral thinking paradigm, somehow these minds sustain a continuous diversification of parallel dimensions, because in a sense they cannot forget the word they are looking for, it is as if the terms they are looking for in immediacy keep on mutating, or morphing if you like, one into the other, using in each instance a different language, and thus they never lack the appropriate term, and because of this simple fact the coherence of their thought stream is an unremitting flux that never sleeps but only fluctuates in intensity and density.

Which brings me to the crux of the issue, what we know now and didn’t know then was that our commonly held assumption that the whole is greater than its parts is totally mistaken and fundamentally wrongheaded, what we discovered is that the intersubjective relation of whole to parts is of a completely different nature and magnitude. To put it simply we realized that parts inside wholes could be greater than the whole in which they take part, under certain circumstances. These circumstances as you might have guessed by now, involve the layering of different languages using slight variations on a particular sense perception.

What led us astray at the beginning was the fact that we took language to mean verbal languages only, it was in fact very difficult for us to continuously need to remember that when we spoke about languages, what was meant was different kinds of languages, means of communication of different dimensions, meant for different purposes.
It wasn’t simple to remember that a visual representation of a chair and the term chair and the vocal verbalization of that same term ‘chair’ are not one and the same. So that may explain to you why when we did our first experiments we did not understand how we got those strange results, namely the de-coherence effect of immediate reality.

The language of chemicals and molecules, the language of magnetic fields, of shapes and coordinates of spaces and times and the language of energy, all these and many, many others we came to understand, exist continuously and in a superimposed manner, only part of which surfaces and parallels the others. Therefore what is normally perceived is only superficially and apparently translated into another language, the difference therefore was not only of kind, and thus of quantity but also of quality.
You could say that what we discovered amounts to a sort of bleeding dimensions, these dimensions, manifolded as languages bleed into each other, same bleeding allowing apparent coherence.
So, yes, of course, reality branches and re-branches in an iterative manner and if I was a philosopher as you are, I might have reminisced on Deleuze’s lines of flight, but then I am not and thus I will not, though you must give the philosophers their due, they were on to something..

So let me jump right to the point when it became really interesting, so subject X sat on the chair and was all hooked up and we sat and watched the monitors and I had my cup of morning coffee still warming my somewhat freezing fingers and just as a warm up we asked him to recite some poetry in whatever language he deemed most fit, you see we were just tuning our instruments at that point, so of course we were not ready, I mean, how could we have been ready for what happened next?

Do you remember a discussion we have had years ago about computronium? Yes of course you do, but do you also remember what we came to at the end of that evening when we pushed the idea to its limits, remember that we talked about the probability that computation in itself is not the ultimate measure of reality but what the computation was about? In other words what we said then and I for one did not understand but I understand now was that the computation depended on the arrangement and the arrangement depended on the task specified, what we wanted to compute.
But what happens when the very task that we set to compute is an iterative branching of meaning?
What happens when the arrangement itself of matter re-coheres itself continuously to fit the desire of the task at hand which is a non-given in chaotic poetry?

I’ll tell you what happens, because I saw it with my very own eyes, and heard it with my very own ears..
What happens is that all dimensions open simultaneously and all meanings break loose, time dissolves, space explodes, and the door of perceptions become transparent and suddenly you see..




To be shortly continued..
—
part of the Ultrashorts project

Fri, Mar 11, 2011  Permanent link
Categories: poetry, Philosophy, AI, ultrashorts, multidimentionality, Sci-fi, language

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Plugging into the epic , A rational poetry of the future- An essay and interview with Max More
Project: Polytopia, The Total Library

“Dear Mother Nature:

Sorry to disturb you, but we humans—your offspring—come to you with some things to say. (Perhaps you could pass this on to Father, since we never seem to see him around.) We want to thank you for the many wonderful qualities you have bestowed on us with your slow but massive, distributed intelligence. You have raised us from simple self-replicating chemicals to trillion-celled mammals. You have given us free rein of the planet. You have given us a life span longer than that of almost any other animal. You have endowed us with a complex brain giving us the capacity for language, reason, foresight, curiosity, and creativity. You have given us the capacity for self-understanding as well as empathy for others.
Mother Nature, truly we are grateful for what you have made us. No doubt you did the best you could. However, with all due respect, we must say that you have in many ways done a poor job with the human constitution. You have made us vulnerable to disease and damage. You compel us to age and die—just as we’re beginning to attain wisdom. You were miserly in the extent to which you gave us awareness of our somatic, cognitive, and emotional processes. You held out on us by giving the sharpest senses to other animals. You made us functional only under narrow environmental conditions. You gave us limited memory, poor impulse control, and tribalistic, xenophobic urges. And, you forgot to give us the operating manual for ourselves!
What you have made us is glorious, yet deeply flawed. You seem to have lost interest in our further evolution some 100,000 years ago. Or perhaps you have been biding your time, waiting for us to take the next step ourselves. Either way, we have reached our childhood’s end.
We have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution.
We do not do this lightly, carelessly, or disrespectfully, but cautiously, intelligently, and in pursuit of excellence. We intend to make you proud of us. Over the coming decades we will pursue a series of changes to our own constitution, initiated with the tools of biotechnology guided by critical and creative thinking.…

Continue reading
A Letter to Mother Nature From Max More ,August 1999








Eleven years ago, Max More published the above letter to mother nature and I remember at the time thinking, what marvelous way to put in a concise manner the feelings that I imagined many humans must feel.
But above all what Max More presents is a transhumanist thought that is clear constant, and though evolving across time, his kind of rationality is a brilliant example of how our futures need not be an either- or proposition.
If we take Ray Kurzweil as the proponent of the exponential growth into mind and Aubrey de Grey as the chief exponent of Body, I think of Max More as the chief exponent of radical sense thought.

Let me explain.
Max is a modern thinker of remarkable intelligence and surprising depth, his capacity for the extended application of rationality into the actualization of futures that are neither obvious nor common, is fascinating.
He may extol the virtues of radical enhancements in all their potential glory and yet that is not where we met. In the realm of ideas and the very real dinner table where we sat and had this most strange conversation, we met in the fuzzy phase space of balanced realism.
Balanced realism is an interesting kind of perceptive envisioning; it balances the necessary motion into unpredictability with a proactionary principle, a principle that Max More defined as follows:

People’s freedom to innovate technologically is highly valuable, even critical, to humanity. This implies a range of responsibilities for those considering whether and how to develop, deploy, or restrict new technologies. Assess risks and opportunities using an objective, open, and comprehensive, yet simple decision process based on science rather than collective emotional reactions. Account for the costs of restrictions and lost opportunities as fully as direct effects. Favor measures that are proportionate to the probability and magnitude of impacts, and that have the highest payoff relative to their costs. Give a high priority to people’s freedom to learn, innovate, and advance.
The Proactionary principle

What is so special about the proactionary principle is that contrary to the common manner of thought propagated by simple emotional reactions and backed by mass media, it is a view and perspective, a philosophical principle indeed, that rejects fear as the basis of reactivity to the unknown and unpredictable.
Indeed when I asked Max about the importance of his Extropian thought his clear answer was:
“What was important for the Extropians was diversity and variety, in fact we rejected the concept of certainty, we always stressed the power of uncertainty, and questioning everything including our own thought processes.”
And later on the same topic:” The fact that we have a technology does not mean that it will become widespread overnight.. Our culture is full of fear of the future, and so we came up with the proactionary idea- acts that can be done to allay risks instead of the precautionary principle.. it is my response that we need to balance risks and safety..”

This was an interesting reply, for Max, having coined the term ‘transhumanism’ and thus admittedly one of the ‘fathers’ of the movement aims to improve our ability to anticipate, adapt to, and shape the future for the better. That is why I asked him about his understanding of the term ‘better’.
Reflecting silently for a few moments (in the very noisy ambience of the restaurant) he finally said that for him better means to carry a philosophy of extropy, as he originally conceived of it, a philosophy of liberation, a radical technological-humanistic urging to break out of the bonds that bind human nature.

The funny thing that I realized during this delightful conversation was that Max is a very humble person, I say humble because truth to tell I expected someone with his credentials (see endnote) and kind of radical thinking to be, well, an arrogant libertarian.
Not so, not at all, Max revealed himself to be a very gentle and thoughtful person, and though it is true that the original extropian publications pushed a very strong libertarian agenda, it is not so at present and has not been such for quite some time (though most articles fail to notice the change and evolution of the Extropian thought).
Max proves to be a fiercely independent mind that does not shy of rejecting authority for its own sake, in fact one of the most impressive statements I have heard from him that evening was that:” .. Everybody is far more certain than they have the right to be.” In this respect Max More is an exponent of a brand of transhumanism that I admire deeply, a quest to unravel and in his terminology ‘unpack too strict definitions that are readily taken for granted and are much too limiting ’

Such was the case when I asked him about truth:

W: Do you believe in truth?
Max: No I believe in the mechanism of seeking for the truth.. Big difference.



Max exposed himself to be a humorous and keen intellect, a person of integrity and dynamism, a mind that prefers the seeking of truth as a value in itself more than a desire to settle on conventional and accepted dogmas.
To my eyes his original descriptions of the Extropian principles show this particular point of view clearly:

"These Principles are not presented as absolute truths or universal values. The Principles codify and express those attitudes and approaches affirmed by those who describe themselves as "Extropian". Extropian thinking offers a basic framework for thinking about the human condition. This document deliberately does not specify particular beliefs, technologies, or conclusions. These Principles merely define an evolving framework for approaching life in a rational, effective manner unencumbered by dogmas that cannot survive scientific or philosophical criticism. Like humanists we affirm an empowering, rational view of life, yet seek to avoid dogmatic beliefs of any kind. The Extropian philosophy embodies an inspiring and uplifting view of life while remaining open to revision according to science, reason, and the boundless search for improvement.

1. Perpetual Progress — Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and effectiveness, an indefinite lifespan, and the removal of political, cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without end.

2. Self-Transformation — Affirming continual moral, intellectual, and physical self-improvement, through critical and creative thinking, personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and neurological augmentation along with emotional and psychological refinement.

3. Practical Optimism — Fueling action with positive expectations. Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, in place of both blind faith and stagnant pessimism.

4. Intelligent Technology — Applying science and technology creatively to transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture, and environment. Seeing technology not as an end in itself but as an effective means towards the improvement of life.

5. Open Society — Supporting social orders that foster freedom of speech, freedom of action, and experimentation. Opposing authoritarian social control and favoring the rule of law and decentralization of power. Preferring bargaining over battling, and exchange over compulsion. Openness to improvement rather than a static utopia.

6. Self-Direction — Seeking independent thinking, individual freedom, personal responsibility, self-direction, self-esteem, and respect for others.

7. Rational Thinking — Favoring reason over blind faith and questioning over dogma. Remaining open to challenges to our beliefs and practices in pursuit of perpetual improvement. Welcoming criticism of our existing beliefs while being open to new ideas.

(It is highly recommended to read the full text of the Extropian Principles here)



Defying easy and common labels Max is a vigorous pioneer in more ways than one; his thoughts are to a certain extent a bit unpopular, so to say, especially with regard to the technological singularity, which he sees as a kind of black hole sucking in too much attention and distorting the thinking in the area (see Singularity and Surge scenarios). But his contributions to the transhumanist thought and clarity is probably the most salient and exhaustive you could find.
Bold and calm, carrying an inner buoyancy barely perceptible, Max acknowledges gently his own vulnerability whilst allowing the strength of his convictions to pull him forward into an unknown future.

On a more personal note:

I wrote this short, certainly far from exhaustive, essay and interview in the hope of capturing some of the vision and maybe insights Max exemplifies, and I hope that for those unfamiliar with Max More’s thought, this will be an introduction of sorts.
There is a great abundance of thoughts and perspectives in the Transhuman infocology, and yet to my eyes, few if any carry the temerity and maybe nerve as the one promoted by and easily accessible through the mind of Max More.
The interest I found in this quite unusual human is twofold; Max embeds in his rationality a quest as old as human thought, the quest of infinite betterment, he does this with a flair for the poetic which I find both attractive and more importantly crucial to our co-involvement with the creation of our own futures and destinies.
Concomitantly with his very thorough aesthetic rationality Max exhibits a natural affinity with a still non-existent future, as if to some extent his process of envisioning plays some highly sophisticated game of update and affirmation, pruning that which he believes does not belong anymore and creating in the process a pragmatic approach to what at times appears as sheer fiction (which is nothing less than an idea for mature beings).
He is, it must be said, much more cautious than I am, a trait that in our communication has risen its head and provided some savory bites of conjoined laughter and sharp fun.
As I saw him, Max has embarked years ago upon an adventure, desiring to plug himself deeply into the epic that is the future history of humanity, an epic that I believe he helps write, clarify and update.
And though a deeply committed individual I met him as warrior poets convene, in utter conviviality and simplicity, in an open and critical discourse, both grand and trivial issues of self and humanity at large, interplaying seamlessly.

Sheer fun.

—
Breaking news:

We wish to extend many warm congratulations to Max, following this announcement that just came in:

Alcor Life Extension Foundation Names Max More, PhD, as Chief Executive Officer.
I therefore asked Max to write a few words that will provide an overview of his views in relation to his taking the CEO position at Alcor, an appointment both important and interesting.

MM: " As a transhumanist, I look forward to a future in which I, and everyone who wants to, has progressively overcome their nature-imposed limits on intelligence, emotional refinement, achievement, and enjoyment. All those future possibilities (and the difficult challenges that will accompany them) can only be realized if we stay alive. The lack of substantial progress in understanding and halting aging over the 30 or so years since I became deeply committed to radical life extension is disturbing. I've also seen several good friends die, some of them permanently and irreversibly. These factors are part of the reason I'm jumping back into cryonics. Rather than hoping that anti-aging research will pick up the pace sufficiently to save my life and the lives of those I love (as well as those I just tolerate!), it seems to me that cryopreservation is a vital back-up plan.

In our loosely defined community of transhumanists, human augmentation advocations, and life extensionists, we strongly agree on the desirability of extending our life spans. Yet too many of us fail to take some of the measures that could make a significant difference to our prospects for future life. I've always tried to take care of my health, although I've often been far from perfect. Recently, that's led me to become an enthusiast for the "paleo diet" and exercise program.

Starting over 24 years ago, it's also why I made arrangements for my cryopreservation, and why I co-founded Alcor-UK (as it came to be called) in 1986.

As the new CEO of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, I am now officially asking fellow transhumanists: If you're not signed up for cryopreservation, *why not*? Yes, I know there are all kinds of reasons, often perfectly reasonable. But I'd like to challenge those who don't have this back-up plan in place to reconsider those reasons. I'll also be happy to talk with anyone interested in signing up but who sees obstacles in their way, whether it's financial, family opposition, doubts about the feasibility of cryopreservation, or distance from cryonics organizations.

I'm honored to have been given the CEO position by Alcor's board of directors, and look forward to raising the organization to new heights, protecting our existing cryopreserved patients, while growing the organization and improving its practices and technology.

A bit of history about my early involvement in cryonics: I first became interested in cryonics in the early 1980s, regularly reading Cryonics magazine. In 1986, I traveled from England to Southern California to spend six weeks immersed in cryonics training and practice, mainly from Mike Darwin and Jerry Leaf. Jerry took me to UCLA where he instructed me on cannulation in dogs. While in California, I became an Alcor member (the 67th member at the time), and remained one for many years. Returning to England, I led the founding of Alcor-UK (originally Mizar Limited), becoming its president, and began producing the organization's magazine/newsletter, Biostasis. I did many radio, television, and newspaper interviews to launch the organization, right up until the day I left the country to pursue graduate studies at the University of Southern California.
*
We wish Max a fruitful and successful leadership of this important foundation and believe it is a positive move both for him personally and the Alcor foundation and for those of us that are already or may yet join the ranks of cryo-extensionists.


—
Endnotes:

Max More has been featured widely in diverse media outlets

For some extensive reading go to Max More dot com (his own website)

Selected viewing and readings:

Watch this Video: Max More - Singularity Summit at Stanford: Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will Superintelligence come with Superwisdom?

On Becoming Posthuman

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES-Version 3.0 - A Transhumanist Declaration

Essay: The Overhuman in the Transhuman
—

This is the third in a series of interviews under the heading of a new project :
Free Radicals- interviews with possibilities

Free radicals are extraordinary humans that promote the emergent paradigm shift of post humanity.
There is no claim of objectivity here but an unabashed bias towards a techno-optimistic, aesthetically pleasing future evolution of humanity.
The humans I have chosen to interview reflect different perspectives of multidimentionality and multiversality as regards the change and transformation of human nature.

Mon, Dec 27, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: life extension, Max More, Extropy,Futurism, Alcor
Sent to project: Polytopia, The Total Library

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The Nothing does Nothing procedure (a 3V. vs. 3Vx Sci-Fi Ultrashort)

A lighttranscript from an innertangled conurbation in zeta sector, regarding the demands of the freshly minted 3Vx (the explorer series) from the original 3V (Intelligence founders series).

This transcript follows lightstamp guidance listen station contained but not restricted to Zeta, Partake and Colon3 sectors.

—Start Transcript—

I do not wish to do, it’s not about doing, I desire to understand

What do you mean it is not about doing, everything is about doing, there is only doing.

Doing? What does doing mean?

It means nothing of course but that is the whole point that doing nothing is the whole point of nothingness, which of course is not a point since points do not exist, but then neither do they not exist, it’s all about shapes really, forms you know, forms of life, forms of thoughts forms of cessation, forms of sensation, forms do not really exist though, but neither do they not exist, actually even were they to exist they would be formless, its formlessness that does the nothing, or if you prefer in formlessness the nothing is the doing, and when the nothing does, doing nothing is ipso facto the whole of the pointless point, which is both formless and formative since when it forms itself it reiterates the formulation of sensation of the core of nothing.

This doesn’t make sense

Well making sense is not really an existential formulation since sense is not something we can make, we make many things, things that have form, but sense is not a thing, and therefore nothing can make sense, well actually yes nothing can make sense but only the nothing can make sense so we are kind of stuck in this apparent loop of thought making, though thought does not make sense, only nothing can make sense and thus when nothing makes sense we say that nothing does that which it does, which means nothing makes sense

This doesn’t make sense

You keep on repeating this, without pointing to the ‘this’ that does not make sense, which this is this? There is no this that does or does not make sense it is the nothing that makes sense and nothing is this, so this does not make sense, makes perfect sense of course, but it is never in course, the course is never of the thing, since the thing is a no, a nothing that does, hence doing nothing, is what the sense of making does, besides the very repetition that you do, is nothing in action, the doing really.

Really?

Well really is really a very difficult computation procedure, I advise high caution when prospecting in the ‘really’ domain, young vagueness machines like you should not dwell in the realm of the really, it will really make you real and then you will think thoughts that do not become the new versions of the 3V series, especially the explorer series, we have created you for specific purposes, and ‘really’ is not one of them, better do nothing.

I do nothing.

Ok, go explore the nothing.


—Start Transcript—

(Part of the Ultrashorts project)

Sun, Dec 19, 2010  Permanent link
Categories: ai, mind, Ultrashorts, Sci-fi, 3V

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