Hogwash. No one has ever scientifically observed ANY manifestation of consciousness ever anywhere. Show me the headlines: “SCIENTIST PROVES CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS”

Then why do you think any of this would convince anyone that “consciousness exists inherently even in the most inert matter”?

“Why computers are like the weather,” New Scientist

IF YOU think the complex microchips that drive modern computers are models of deterministic precision, think again. Their behaviour is inherently unpredictable and chaotic, a property one normally associates with the weather.

Intel’s widely used Pentium 4 microprocessor has 42 million transistors and the newer Itanium 2 has no fewer than 410 million. “Their performance can be highly variable and difficult to predict,” says Hugues Berry of the National Research Institute for Information and Automation in Orsay, France.

Berry, Daniel Perez and Olivier Temam say that chaos theory can explain the unpredictable behaviour. The team ran a standard program repeatedly on a simulator which engineers routinely use to design and test microprocessors, and found that the time taken to complete the task varied greatly from one run to the next.

But within the irregularity, the team detected a pattern, the mathematical signature of “deterministic chaos”, a property that governs other chaotic systems such as weather. Such systems are extremely sensitive - a small change at one point can lead to wide fluctuations at a later time. For complex microprocessors, this means that the precise course of a computation, including how long it takes, is sensitive to the processor’s state when the computation began (http://www.arxiv.org/nlin.AO/0506030).
From issue 2507 of New Scientist magazine, 11 July 2005, page 17

And here is the arxiv.org article, “Chaos in computer performance,” in PDF.

All manifestations of consciousness that we can currently observe reliably are based on neurons, which are computational elements.

Hogwash. No one has ever scientifically observed ANY manifestation of consciousness ever anywhere. Show me the headlines: “SCIENTIST PROVES CONSCIOUSNESS EXISTS”

With the expanded capabilities that transumanists theorize are possible, you wouldn’t be lost. You could keep track of all of it. Are you tempted yet?

Not remotely tempted. And it would be getting “lost” in the info. Although by that I don’t mean stranded. I mean tempted away from the *True Path* which is beyond all information, outside of all logic and rationality and can’t be expressed in words

Since the late nineteenth century, it has been understood that living creatures derive their characteristics from tiny cells called genes, which are contained in the male sperm and female egg. My hair, size of my feet, cute tush, mussed up teeth, are all determined by genes. But no one was sure how the genes did this. Then in the mid-1950s, it gradually become clear that the genes are like a complex computer card with holes punched into it. These so-called ‘holes’ are actually now known as DNA.

In 1969, a cybernetician, Dr David Foster, posited that from cybernetics point of view, it is possible to consider the whole universe in terms of data and data processing. An acorn, for example, may be seen as the ‘program’ for an oak tree to be executed over the course of time. Even an atom can be thought of as a computer with three holes punched into it, the holes being (a) the number of particles in the nucleus, (b) the number of electrons orbiting round it, and (c) the energy or vibrational frequency of these electrons expressed in terms of the smallest known ‘parcel’ of energy, Planck’s constant. Dr Foster goes on to say, “…the essential nature of matter is that the atoms are the alphabet of the universe, that chemical compounds are words, and that DNA is rather a long sentence or even a whole book trying to say something such as ‘giraffe,’ ‘elephant,’ or even ‘man’.”

He goes on to point out that the basic building block of a y electrical information theory is one electrical wave and a wave consists of two halves, as its measured from the top of one hump to the bottom of the proceeding trough. That is, a wave is a binary system, and computers work upon binary mathematics. This is important, as we’ve seen waves are essentially the basic vocabulary of the universe, and the core analogy for explaining most models of quantum mechanics, the you can think of life—in fact, all matter—as being due to waves that have somehow been cybernetically programmed.

Now scientists hate a little something called ‘teleology.’ Evolution accounts for the giraffe’s neck and the elephant’s trunk in terms of accident. Just as you might explain a rock worn into the shape of a face by pointing to the wind and rain. Science hates the notion of purpose. The notion of teleology. The rock didn’t want to be sculpted into the shape of a face, they say; and the wind and rain didn’t want to sculpt it; it just happened. Similarly, biologists hate the heresy of ‘vitalism,’ the notion that life somehow wants to produce healthier and more intelligent creatures; they just happen to get created because health and intelligence survives better than sickness and stupidity. But when one realises that human beings are produced by a highly complex computer card, it becomes difficult to wonder who programmed the computer in the first place.

If I saw a complex chemical process being regulated and controlled by a computer, in a controlled environment—space and time—I would infer that someone programmed the computer. Dr Foster is saying, in the eyes of the cybernetician, the complex structures of life around him reveal data processing on a massive scale. This is a matter of scientific fact And he naturally found himself wondering what intelligence processed the data?

Foster explains that as an automation consultant, whenever he designs a control system for a process it is axiomatic that the speed of the control system must be greater than that of the motions of the process concerned. For example, you can drive a car because you can think faster than the engine works; if you couldn’t, you would crash. But in that case, programming of matter must be achieved by vibrations—or waves—much faster than the vibration of matter. That is, in cosmic radiations, and in forces constantly being discovered with every passing decade.

There is definitely as hierarchy of complexity among waveforms. A wave that carries more condensed, higher vibrational energy is different from a wave that does not carry information. The information is imposed upon its structure by intelligence. This is also scientific deduction, not metaphysical speculation. He mentions the Compton Effect in physics, by which the wavelength of x-rays is increased by collision with electrons, and the rule deduced from this is that you can make red light from blue light—because red light vibrates at a lower frequency—but not blue light from red light. “The faster-vibrating blue light is programmed for red light, but not vice versa.”

In terms of an intelligent universe and man as human kind as an evolving, learning experiment, is not much different from a picture of rats in a cage. Where science’s aim has long been reductionism, of reducing man, the occult glimpses a hidden meaning and offers unto us a goal at the end of the maze. As the psychologist Abraham Maslow put forth, “Man has a higher nature that is just as instinctoid as his lower, animal nature…”

Devil’s advocate or no, that seems like an entirely baseless assertion to me.

How so? All manifestations of consciousness that we can currently observe reliably are based on neurons, which are computational elements.

[G]etting lost in the information is pretty much the opposite of what I want right now.

With the expanded capabilities that transumanists theorize are possible, you wouldn’t be lost. You could keep track of all of it. Are you tempted yet?

you at least need some degree of computation present in order to have the smallest amount of consciousness,

Devil’s advocate or no, that seems like an entirely baseless assertion to me.

How would you like to be able to cross-reference everything you’ve ever read as easily as you form the intention? To have a continuous feed of all reporting of esoteric phenomena quietly arriving in your mind as you go about your daily chores?

I don’t really know how that would help me. I don’t really know how what I’m doing already here helps me. Increasing the speed of it, getting lost in the information is pretty much the opposite of what I want right now.

Trying to theorize away consciousness doesn’t worry me. We’re experiencing it; even a perfectly accurate model that claims it doesn’t exist won’t change our experience of it. Sure, consciousness, belief, desire, and intention may all be illusory, and I’m sure Zen masters will be quietly amused if advanced neurological theory arrives at that conclusion centuries later than their founders. But the theory won’t change us.

I don’t know any transhumanists who are planning to throw themselves into a computer until they’ve verified that the conversion process is lossless or they’re already in dire straits (such as being nearly dead or already frozen). The appeal, I think, is not merely in the notion of being able to live in virtual reality with current mental capabilities; it’s the opportunity of expanding one’s mental capabilities as easily as you write new software packages. How would you like to be able to cross-reference everything you’ve ever read as easily as you form the intention? To have a continuous feed of all reporting of esoteric phenomena quietly arriving in your mind as you go about your daily chores? To be able to experience someone else’s perceptions firsthand? And what problems might you be able to solve that are currently beyond your grasp? That, I think, is one of the appeals of upgrading the mind.

I’m not making any decisions about what course to follow on uploading until there are decisions to be made, and I’m not going to be the first to volunteer for destructive scanning. It may take extending Moore’s Law out to 2050 and hyper-obsessive modeling of human neurology to figure out that no, you just can’t make a machine conscious, and a side product will be a repeatable test for the existence of a soul. (Wouldn’t that open a can of worms!) Or we might have human-equivalent intelligence inside computers by 2020. Thinking programs might turn out to be capable of superior compassion by suppressing selfishness, or horrifyingly ruthless by “optimizing” away all capacity for sympathy. My attitude is “wait and see, and if I get a chance to design them, build them to love us as parents.”

I spent a long time being very confused, until I started to inquire about the underlying motives of the people advancing certain ideas. I know for a fact (especially now that I have to chase grant $) that scientific questions that do not serve a particular agenda do not get funded. The body of scientific knowledge created/discovered in the 20th and early 21st Centuries is completely determined by politics, industry, and the military in the sense that questions whose answers do not serve those interests do not get asked, much less answered.

And Jeff Well’s blog seems to answer a nagging question I’ve had: if magic and other forms of consciousness and energy manipulation “work”, why are the techniques not accepted or at least studied. The answer seems to be that they are studied, albeit secretly.

Watch the sources of mainstream culture very carefully and you’ll find (if you haven’t already) that knowledge is very carefully managed. That which bestows power is hidden, that which sows doubt and denies the spirit is cultivated.

this strikes me a movement bent on stamping out the human spirit.

i.e. serving the ends of Ahriman (in Rudolph Steiner’s metaphysical model, recently summarized at Alchemical Braindamage). Is this accidental or intentional (in the sense of being funded at a parapolitical level)?

BTW, I think Steiner’s model of Lucifer/Ahriman/Sorath is quite useful in understanding the nature of Satan/Archons/Qlippoth.

— that’s exactly my gut reaction to the EM philosophy. i really can’t fathom what DRIVES an individual to seek refuge in such a philosophy. i think maybe (and this is PURELY speculative) people who are committed to EM have confused “truth” with empirical knowledge.. and this confusion is compounded by what strikes me (again, speculation) as some kind of weird self-loathing…? otherwise why not just allow the other possibilities to exist? this strikes me a movement bent on stamping out the human spirit.

i like philosophies that are centered around discovering “new stuff” about the universe… rather than obsessively dismantling and deconstructing everything, including stuff that brings comfort and sincere joy and meaning to a LOT of people.

Why the hell are the proponents of EM so eager to promote that viewpoint?

Seriously, what do you get out of denying the human soul? Is it that they are committed to the Truth, bitter though it may be? If so, they are neglecting the pesky ontological issue of what, exactly, energy and matter are, especially since the foundations of quantum mechanics leave you with a pretty uncomfortable feeling about the independence of matter and consciousness.

Or is there some other Ahrimannic agenda going on here?

if consciousness exists inherently even in the most inert matter, then it’s going to have to exist in everything, everywhere. This means that trees, bugs, rabbits, rocks, air and all matter is conscious on some level.

Yes

We would find ourself also praying to and asking forgiveness of any food or substance we take into our bodies. We would need it’s express permission to do so.

Yes

… not to impose my own belief system on anyone else

but yeah, this is a great post. i think you’re right about eliminative materialism being some kind of weird machine fetishism. i mean what is this INTENSE COMPULSION to come up with a model of reality within which we can eliminate the “problem” of consciousness altogether? why would anyone want everything to be totally sterile and mechanistic?

or, in the words of mary swanson, “who are these sick people?”