Category Archives: Philosophy

A different level of consciousness

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“Today’s debate between today’s religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo sapiens . If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness that we cannot even conceive), it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organisation could be Communist or capitalist, or that their genders could be male or female.”

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Scott Adams: The illusion of Free Will

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“I could ignore any advice coming from my technology, but why would I? My human-made plans work out great about 75% of the time. But a computer-made plan that knows all of my preferences, and everyone else’s too, could make decisions that pay off for me more like 90% of the time.”

“As the trend toward machine-made decisions accelerates, your sensation of free will is going to erode to zero. You will have no sense of making decisions in your life. All you will be doing is agreeing with the excellent decisions made by machines. A baby born today will probably never drive a car or make navigation decisions because cars will handle that on their own. We will come to trust the machines more than we trust our friends or our own bad judgement.”

 

Silicon Valley is more important than the Middle East (Daniel Kahneman)

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I’m a few chapters into Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, a really interesting book by Yuval Noah Harari. He’s an Oxford Ph.D. whose current research focuses on macro-historical questions: What is the relation between history and biology? Does history have a direction? Did people become happier as history unfolded?

Today I found a link to a conversation between Harari and Daniel Kahneman that was packed with interesting ideas. Here’s one:

“In terms of history, the events in Middle East, of ISIS and all of that, is just a speed bump on history’s highway. The Middle East is not very important. Silicon Valley is much more important. It’s the world of the 21st century … I’m not speaking only about technology. In terms of ideas, in terms of religions, the most interesting place today in the world is Silicon Valley, not the Middle East. This is where people like Ray Kurzweil, are creating new religions. These are the religions that will take over the world, not the ones coming out of Syria and Iraq and Nigeria.”

Like feeling warm or cold

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“Don’t try to get rid of the ego-sensation. Take it, so long as it lasts, as a feature or play of the total process — like a cloud or wave, or like feeling warm or cold, or anything else that happens of itself. Getting rid of one’s ego is the last resort of invincible egoism! It simply confirms and strengthens the reality of the feeling. But when this feeling of separateness is approached and accepted like any other sensation, it evaporates like the mirage that it is.” — Alan Watts

Panpsychism

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The dizzying notion that everything in the universe might be conscious, or at least potentially conscious, or conscious when put into certain configurations. […] It is the argument that anything at all could be conscious, providing that the information it contains is sufficiently interconnected and organised. The human brain certainly fits the bill; so do the brains of cats and dogs, though their consciousness probably doesn’t resemble ours. But in principle the same might apply to the internet, or a smartphone, or a thermostat.

This is one tiny part of a longer, broader look at The Hard Problem (Consciousness). If this is your thing I recommend this piece by Oliver Burkeman.

Pick a line

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There’s an image in my head of two long lines of people, stretching off in different directions. In one line are the people who believe torturing our enemies is okay. And that police officers who shoot unarmed black men are just doing their job. The people in the other line — let’s call it the Sob Sister line — think differently.

Few things in life are black and white but it seems I can only stand in one of those lines so here I am in the Sob Sister line and as I look around, I don’t recognize most of the people in this line. But there are so many familiar faces in that other line. People I grew up with. People I worked with. Of course I think I’m in the “right” line, but so do all those people in the other line.

Up and down the line people are shouting back and forth, pretending to have a “conversation.” (Boy, I hate that word) But that’s not what’s really happening. Here’s what I think is really going on.

If the people in the Other line are right, then I must be wrong. Being wrong about really important stuff like torture and shooting people goes right to the core of who I am. Scary stuff.

Here’s my dilemma: I’m having trouble meeting the gaze of people I know in the Other line. They want to talk. To explain why I’m in the wrong line and persuade me to join them. But I smile awkwardly and look away, convinced nothing good can come from such “conversations.” Ideas, and the words we use to express them, are losing their power and meaning for me. They’re just sounds. Like those dogs whose owners think they can speak or sing. I’m focusing more these days on what I do. Actions seem like real things to me.

Am I being cowardly? Maybe. And I haven’t pefected my Stand Mute strategy yet. It’s difficult to be silent. To be still. But here I am in the Sob Sister line, hands in my pockets. Lips tight, eyes straight ahead.

UPDATE: My analogy is flawed. We need more than two lines. Not a third line, maybe, but a place for people to stand who aren’t comfortable in the two lines I described above. Picture that big infield area at the Indy 500.

These folks believe there are times when a police officer might have to shoot (12 times) an unarmed suspect. You have to look at the facts of each case and try to put yourself in the shoes of the officer. And clearly there are time when torture is justified. If a kidnapper has buried your family alive out in the desert and the only way you could save them was to torture the guy, wouldn’t you do it? Of course you would. So, see? You have to take each case on its merits. I don’t belong in either of your lines. Life’s not that cut and dried. Now. What did I miss?

Still the Mind by Alan Watts

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Screen Shot 2014-10-07 at Tue, Oct 7, 10.59.49 AMExcerpts from Alan Watts’ Still the Mind (An Introduction to Meditation)

We fail to distinguish between the way things are and the way they are described.

One’s actual organic being is inseparable from the universe.

I found out that unless one has something to give people, there is nothing one can do to help them. Just because I thought I ought to help, it didn’t mean that I had anything to give.

The whole energy of the universe is coming at you and through you, and you are that energy.

You can only know what you can compare with something else.

What we call the past is simply the traces, the fade-outs trailing away from the present. Continue reading →