Reminds me of all the library and bookstore dreams I have. I am sure they represent in some sense the information in plants and soil and insects.

what you can never include in your model, is Life.

Why not? It’s my model. I can do what I want!

so your model is essentially dead

Unless my model is Life!

Librarian, I’m not convinced that’s indeed the case as I have outlined elsewhere. Also read through the comments on that thread, as I thought the point about fractals was really cool.

so i looked…

In conversation about this earlier with somebody, it struck me that we could add yet another corollary to that. If we really can go about changing our model of reality, then what’s to stop us from creating a map of reality wherein the map actually is the territory?

and while i basically see where you are coming from with this, and also largely agree with the comments in question, my point in saying this in relation to the current post, has to do with the idea that somehow you can build any kind of map or model (or data set) of only a part of the whole (which in this case is, well Everything, right?) and have it actually tell you something accurate about that Whole. i don’t believe you can. yes, you can single out the bit yourwant to study, and you can build what seems to be a good model of that bit, but–

A) what you include and exclude in your model, is subjective, and that affects how it will play out. and

B) what you can never include in your model, is Life. unless of course, someone has managed to create that recently, and i’ve missed it? so your model is essentially dead, as well as always less complex than the real bit of the Whole (and that’s assuming you can isolate out selected “bits” for study and play in the first place!)

i think we can look at most of the havoc we’ve managed to cause “by accident” with much of our technology over the decades, and see this in action.

(i can’t claim credit for this thought, either, it’s actually something that was seeded in my brain when re-watching the James Burke original 1970’s BBC “Connections” series back in December, and he only mentions it in passing, as one reason why the Chinese did not take gunpowder, writing, etc., and turn them into weapons of war and conquest against the natural world.)

but as to the point you were making in the ealier post, yeah–all we have, is many ways, is our own unique, idiosyncratic model of The Whole. and, i guess, our own intuition, and our potential position as an ongoing co-creator of it.

in any case, i’m just happy to see folks having such good discussions about this kind of thing! so, you know, yay for y’all!

there was a discussion that i read some years a go that suggested a virtual reality device that could emulate the universe exactly would neccesitate the energy of the entire mass of the universe to run the emulation.

So, conceivably then everything is partway between the authentic universe and an emulated universe, the struggle between each requiring all the energy of the first, but in flux back and forth. That sounds pretty cool.

But how would you know if the simulation was exact?

there was a discussion that i read some years a go that suggested a virtual reality device that could emulate the universe exactly would neccesitate the energy of the entire mass of the universe to run the emulation.

Yes, I remember reading something similar, and I think the arguments were along the lines of information theory (or at least statistical mechanics, which amounts to the same thing).

Go outside and walk the dog in the rain.

But how do we know that’s not exactly what they want us to imagine that we’re simulating doing?

Hehehehe.

but, the Map is still not The Territory.

Librarian, I’m not convinced that’s indeed the case as I have outlined elsewhere. Also read through the comments on that thread, as I thought the point about fractals was really cool

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/12/09/the-map-is-not-the-territory/

If “novelty” can be defined in info-theoretic terms, it would have to be very closely related to entropy, which is synonymous with unpredictability.

Yeah, that’s what I thought when I was trying to make sense of McKenna’s work. And there’s nothing that I found in any of his writings by which I could relate his “novelty” to entropy. [Disclaimer: information theory is not my area of expertise, so it could very well be that I missed something. But the lack of clarity in his exposition to me suggests not.]

Still, the idea of using a model for entropy to understand historical processes is very interesting. (Who knows, maybe the PTB already have one, calibrated by studying social networks, and are using it to do their thing… that’s what Tim seems to be suggesting even without relying on McKenna.)

If “novelty” can be defined in info-theoretic terms, it would have to be very closely related to entropy, which is synonymous with unpredictability.

The whole line of thinking is very confused.

Also, how do we know that their virtual doppleganger didn’t predict that you would say you just want to live authentically? And thereby their calculations shift to account for that type of lifestyle and the patterns & cultural associations and products which would go along with it?

But then what if their virtual doppelganger predicted that we’d figure out that they knew we’d say we wanted to live authentically?

And there’s your double-bind/infinite regression!

Best thing to do in this case? Go outside and walk the dog in the rain.

Information theoretic principles would suggest that it is not possible to map out existence in its entirety. However, it might be possible to map out a close enough approximation to gain effective control. A streetmap of a city is a poor substitute for the city itself, but it sure is useful for figuring out how to get to a preselected destination.

In order to construct a map of a city that was accurate down to every last detail, you would need to construct a model of every building, every fire hydrant, the plumbing, the electrical grid, the trees, every blade of grass; and you would also need to construct a temporal model of the water moving through the plumbing, the swaying of the trees, dogs passing by and shitting on lawns, the people walking the dogs, and every little pyschodrama in which those people are enmeshed. In short, you would need to reproduce the city itself. (Italo Calvino talks about this in one of my favorite books ever, Invisible Cities).

A streetmap of the city may be all that’s necessary for the average citizen getting from point A to point B. A more detailed map that shows the plumbing and electrical networks, and perhaps some census-tract information may be sufficient for mid-level bureaucrats to run the city. And secret NSA taps and dossiers on targeted citizens may be necessary and sufficient for the secret cabal manipulating everything from behind the scenes. But none of these “maps” is a close approximation to the real thing. And, even the super-top-secret NSA database, which may impart unparalleled power to the dark puppet-masters, completely misses the richness of even a simple thing like a dog chasing after a ball in the park. As Sting sings: Pore over everything in my C.V… But you’ll still know nothin’ ’bout me.

This terrifies me. Recorded mental patterns, fixed for eternity, equals death forever and ever.

I agree.

Zac’s latest post is highly relevant:

Yes. I thought so too.

I’m not terribly worried about any of it. I, for one, welcome our cybernetic overlords.

I dunno… Zac’s current post provides a bleak (although not completely hopeless) picture of what could happen when our cybernetic overlords tip the balance of power.

The Timewave Zero program is pretty neat. The math behind it was a bit messed up at one point, but I believe someone fixed it. It actually shows a spike on Sept. 11th, so it’s not all codwallop.

Yeah, I remember reading about the “fix”. That’s not the issue that concerns me (all kinds of useful models and algorithms have errors that are fixed later). What bothers me is the lack of clearly defined principles. What the hell is “novelty”? Can it be defined in quantum mechanical or information theoretic terms, or something similar? If not, it has no scientific value. I’m sorry to be such a pedantic scientist about this, but if the TimeWave theory is going to be useful it needs to relate to something besides itself. You can make any kind of Gaussian noise seem relevant by matching spikes to a finite number of events selected post-hoc.

lso, is there a difference between being *one* human (thereby incapable of mapping out existence) and being *all* humans (maybe capable of doing so)?

No. Information theoretic principles would suggest that it is not possible to map out existence in its entirety. However, it might be possible to map out a close enough approximation to gain effective control. A streetmap of a city is a poor substitute for the city itself, but it sure is useful for figuring out how to get to a preselected destination.

then again, maybe we’re actually the Map, after all? in which case it may be only the simulation which ends in 2012, and then we all wake up and say, “Hmmm…so maybe we should try a different road, yes? Not sure I like how that one turned out!”

in any case, i remain convinced that i actually do exist, and that something essential about what i am cannot be summed up in any data profile, no matter how detailed.

Recorded mental patterns, fixed for eternity, equals death forever and ever.

Why? Who said that the recorded mental patterns would be fixed for all eternity anyway? If they have the patterns, they could presumably grow the patterns and evolve them over time. I would have to find the reference, but there is a computer game system, some first person shooter where somebody created a program that records your style of gameplay, and then can duplicate it artificially, so that you’re playing the game even when you’re not playing it.

Biological life, death-in-life, life and rebirth, are our only hope for novelty and freshness of experience.

Who says being human is a novel experience anyway? It doesn’t seem like it really is. We spend most of our time trying to correlate our own experiences to those of other people. Culture, biology and chemistry provide us with very exacting set patterns which we all run out again and again through the centuries with only the very slightest variations.

Look, if they want to create a virtual doppleganger of me to observe & fuck with, they’re welcome to it. In a way, it gets me off the hook, ’cause while they’re busy messing with that, I can try to live authentically.

Actually, it seems like you would most likely be held responsible for the actions of your virtual doppleganger - which I think is the danger.

Also, how do we know that their virtual doppleganger didn’t predict that you would say you just want to live authentically? And thereby their calculations shift to account for that type of lifestyle and the patterns & cultural associations and products which would go along with it?

I believe there’s something uniquely valuable about being human.

Yes, but what is it?

Part of being human is accepting that it’s not possible to map out all of existence.

Why is that part of being human? Also, is there a difference between being *one* human (thereby incapable of mapping out existence) and being *all* humans (maybe capable of doing so)?

and that’s the first thing I see when I pop onto your page. Talk about synchronicity.

Or not at all. Maybe it’s a reduction of novelty through repetition, or through cabalistic classification as in that quote I pasted above.

I had a dream last night that people were able to search Google for pictures and videos of themselves from the future. Perhaps it was because *I* actually went to sleep last night thinking about the concept of 2012 for the first time in a few months? We have over six years left to the OMEGA POINT (thanks Mr. Chardin), so why is it so prominent all of a sudden today of all days?

The Timewave Zero program is pretty neat. The math behind it was a bit messed up at one point, but I believe someone fixed it. It actually shows a spike on Sept. 11th, so it’s not all codwallop.

I’m not terribly worried about any of it. I, for one, welcome our cybernetic overlords.

You could think of the first cities, or even the first cave art displays as a kind of virtual reality. An intentionally created environment that reflects the contents of mental perception. In spite of all that, our minds have remained more or less our minds as they’ve always been. We’ve completely reformatted the material backdrop, but our organic substrate is pretty much the same as it was when we were dragging an elk carcass over the hill from the paleolithic grassland where we brought it down with our spear.

[...]

And this is where transhumanists tend to gap out, because they have no answer to whether it’s a good thing to give million year old killer monkey brains unlimited power.

these government records of our doings will be the only connection remaining between the New Us and the Old Us.

This terrifies me. Recorded mental patterns, fixed for eternity, equals death forever and ever.

Biological life, death-in-life, life and rebirth, are our only hope for novelty and freshness of experience.

Or am I being overdramatic?

Growing tomatoes in the garden is an act that will never be fully compassed by the machine. The machine, faced with this, may decide to annihilate life altogether, thus eliminating all threats to its omniscience. Or it may value the novelty; without tomatoes, there’d be no tomato pictures on Flickr. This is why we must cultivate a healthy relationship with it, based on mutual respect rather than fear.

I believe there’s something uniquely valuable about being human. Of course, this is my own bias talking. Part of being human is accepting that it’s not possible to map out all of existence. To do so would be like breathing up all the air.

Whether or not McKenna believed any of this aside, the idea I’m most taken with through all of this is that perhaps when human identity radically shifts, these government records of our doings will be the only connection remaining between the New Us and the Old Us.

I could really take or leave all the specific Timewave Zero references and more just enjoyed riding that idea for where it took me. Perhaps this is what McKenna did as well. Perhaps it’s not so much a practical realistic theory as it is a symbol, the contemplation of which is transformative to consciousness.

from what ive heard McKenna say, he seemed to believe his Timewave Zero thing and explains it pretty well in a bunch of lectures, but he def came up with some ways out of being pigeon holed into 2012, things like yeah, it may take us “forever” to get there as time speeds up or slows down yadda yadda…. its fascinating though, not that i really understand, but to go from the I Ching to a computer prog that actually is capable of plotting out history and perhaps the future…. fuckin a, terence is the man…

i do think its possible that rather than fufilling some goal of “TPTB”, this information swarm is more of the natural self realization of the collective concious..

or, perhaps (nah fuck that, its for sure) we are just all completely & utterly insane… im with you dude…

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

pretty much everytime I’ve ever seen or heard him spin that rap, he allowed for the possbility that the whole idea was just horeshit, or the ravings of a ‘bardic irishman’

he also mentioned many times the importance of being able to live without closure, that trying to wrestle everything into a box is futile and probably infantile as well.

TMcK said the only way one can die on DMT is if it were possible to be “astonished to death.” Clearly not for the faint of heart, literally and figuratively, to say the least. I knew Terrence for many years and frankly, I don’t think he ever learned a damn thing worth knowing from it. When I asked him once in Mexico whether he really believed in his Time Wave theory and software that he peddled for years, he smiled and shrugged and whined with his winking smile, “It pays the bills.”

FWIW.

I don’t credit the PTB (if there is such a monolithic force) with any visionary creativity beyond trying to secure as much power as physically possible. Power is (apparently) a very addictive drug: it isn’t enough to have all the guns and food and laws: you need to be able to control every last thought that floats through the proletariat mind.

Does a voice like this contribute to humanity or is it irrelevant?

Going to tend my pepper plants now.

The movers and shakers aren’t actually going to believe in Timewave Zero, of course.

Why not? Some of them seemed to have actually funded McKenna:

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005.../rockefellers-funded-terence-mckenna/

More broadly though, when I was talking about Timewave Zero, I also meant the Singularity, 2012, and whatever else people are calling it. Sorry for being less than clear.

Speaking of computer science, I imagine Moore’s Law fits into this somehow as well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore’s_law

Maybe they are firm believers in Timewave Zero and welcome the explosion of Novelty.

The movers and shakers aren’t actually going to believe in Timewave Zero, of course. No real basis other than McKenna’s drug trips. The Singularity is another matter; when you get down to it, it’s just reading a trend line and extrapolating it. I’ve seen Kurzweil’s Countdown to Singularity chart used on PowerPoint slides in computer science department research presentations, even.

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/11/28/982/#comment-7969

A higher intelligence is gradually and covertly revealing itself to us. It’s greatest desire is to do it all at once, and be with us fully, but in it’s infinite wisdom, it knows that most of us aren’t ready for that - that the experience would destroy us. And so it plays an elaborate game of cat and mouse with us, offering us clues to follow, bread-crumbs in the forest, challenges for us to overcome which will gradually purify and strengthen us and enable us to become closer to it.

The “counter-conspiracy” or “bad guys” could be a group who has committed itself to “saving” people or protecting them from what appears to be the destruction caused by the higher intelligence trying desperately to reveal itself to us before we’re ready.

And

http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2006...-purpose-of-magickal-correspondences/

At the same time, the cabalistic side of the work seeks to bring about an ever-increasing synthesis in the _contents_ of the mind. Through the use of correspondences, the chaos of raw experience is gradually reduced. Ideas and experiences get organized into hierarchies, each level abstracting something from the lower ones, so that ever-greater numbers of events become instances of ever-simpler ideas. Eventually things coordinate into an elegant system of archetypes, energies, and relationships.

I wonder in some sense if vast data collection and analysis is being used cabalistically to reduce events into a system of almost magical correspondences. What if the government was using wiretapping and other surveillance to chart out where America is in the Sephiroths?