Without going out of your door, you can know the ways of the world. Without peeping through your window, you can see the Way of Heaven. The farther you go, the less you know. Thus, the Sage knows without traveling, sees without looking, and achieves without struggle. — Lao Tse
( Not your everyday blog post, this one. More of a metacognitive landscape. )
Is there a way we can justify this procession of thoughts? Can it be done with the fast-paced production of relevance, another stumbling wordsong or one more creative counter to the infiltration of idea-killing realism? There may be a way. But sometimes it works that despite your best efforts to privatize your mind the world finds a way to reach you — much to your surprise. At that odd angle? In this clever way is it? At that wild time? And the whole of it is literally amazing.
And the last one of these chain link interrupters that got (pleasantly) interrupted was centered around the possibility of a kind of goo-like-supercomputing-material in its absolute incarnation — a maximally malleable, adaptable, and indestructible state-of-the-art technology with its roots in robotic airplanes or mechanical insects perhaps. So, I was going to imagine what those insect airplanes could look like because I like to write what I imagine, and I like to imagine that what and how I write will shift us all closer to acceptable outcomes. And that I may in fact allow others in this way to imagine acceptable outcomes fills me with pride and joy, acting as an initiator or writer for it all. Call it memetic enabling if you like…
SO IT HERE GOES.
The Israelis already make a remarkable robot jet — it’s a pilot-less spy plane, but if you think about it, it is also a very advanced calculating machine designed to enhance war plans and to increase their efficacy (it also carries bombs). Atrociousness aside, this line of products is rapidly gravitating up to sentient, god-like levels of intelligence. (or, one could say, down to demon-like depths…) The fact is we are sculpting many creepily powerful beasts. Not all we sculpt will be so atrocious; some will be good to the core or that is the hope. But the next machines to come, and ignore the amorality and asymmetry of the use of such devices in our stacked world for just a second, the next machines will …
And the chain of imagination continues, better yet, jumps to this new and separate text:
Whether you like it our not it is all around us. There are bits of it in the air and in the sea, spread amongst the flowers and lodged into the trees. There are bits of it even in your brain that form bonds with the rest of our corner of the galaxy. And yet, without any greater context this may sound so far like some of that new-age spiritual quackery, like the ubiquity-of-god type set-up. But please know that these are bits of physical matter, extremely dense and fine tuned for high complexity and intelligence. This now-ubiquitous stuff comes from Earthly unorganized matter, from rocks and stones and minerals under our feet, but it is in fact living and awake and it’s all around us now. It’s all around us now in 2084. It’s all around us in 2084…
AND THERE IT WENT.
Having said that, I do not find it an unjustified procession of thoughts — no, no, not at all.
Alright… Let’s hear it now for You Don’t Have a Clue!
Wu-wei is the principle of non-action. It is an integral part of Taoist philosophy and is a non-dualistic form of action; by choosing to not act, the Tao, or energy of the cosmos, flows unimpeded through you. This is a good state to be in. And this is why wu-wei is so important. One can be both true to his or her own nature and allow things to balance out accordingly, in their own time. This state of effortless equilibrium aligns the self with everything there is and hence opens pathways to new learning and joy.
From the University of Utah with an intuitive format. Try it!
It’s all newness. It’s all new.
Every letter of this sentence.
Every breath inhaled – what of any of this has happened before?
And is this significant?
Yes. But only when lived as newness.
When newness itself is lived it all gains meaning;
it all has to be new, because nothing is allowed to be old.
And yet our all-too-powerful brains jump to nonexistent past and future times,
all unreal, jumping simply because they can.
Whatever you have to do, make it real,
cause there’s no time but this one – and it’s never happened before.
And as soon as it’s over,
it didn’t.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it:
( Individually )
If you would not be forgotten,
As soon as you are dead and rotten,
Either write things worthy reading,
Or do things worth the writing.
( Equitably )
The constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness.
You have to catch it yourself.
( Absolutely )
He is able who thinks he is able.
( Increasingly )
A jug fills drop by drop.
With increasingly subtle moves, the players in Asimov’s epic Foundation and Earth are confronted with the daunting decision of whether to initiate an all-encompassing ethical framework, one which just might direct humanity into an acceptable future. The agents of change go unnamed for those who have yet to read it.
Dr. Isaac Asimov, in his Foundation series (also iRobot), first places these principles:
(Wording slightly adjusted for clarity. See the original if you wish.)
The Zeroth Law (0th) is added by another powerful mind (still some 20,000 years before the grand finale):
The Zeroth Law really puts everything into perspective, adding a new level of consideration and calculation; within this framework, every thought, word, and action for robot-kind needs exquisite justification. In Foundation and Earth, we see just how much extra crunching is necessary, evident in the many hardware updates Daneel Olivaw has to go through to keep up with the data produced by a galactic human civilization at a very tenuous place in history. So as not to spoil this epic 7-book series (by my count), I will just give you a recommended reading order, one which allows for ‘optimal absorption of foundational elements’ and also a thorough understanding of the elegantly intricate possible-future-history of humanity that Asimov has created. Here follows what should trump every other sci-fi reading list you may currently have:
How did you read this series? Please let me hear your voice!
Also: An updated version of Asimov’s Laws of Robotics has been drafted for approval in Japan to govern the actions of robots in the near-future.
Mind, through the long course of biological evolution, has established itself as a moving force in our little corner of the universe. Here on this small planet, mind has infiltrated matter and has taken control. It appears to me that the tendency of mind to infiltrate and control matter is a law of nature.
— Freeman Dyson
We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on Earth.
— Vernor Vinge
Self-organization and extropy are themselves fundamental principles of the physical universe, to the extent that the laws of physics themselves may have developed through a process of self-organization.
— Lee Smolin
The explosive nature of exponential growth means it may only take a quarter of a millennium to go from sending messages on horseback to saturating the matter and energy in our solar system with sublimely intelligent processes. The ongoing expansion of our future superintelligence will then require moving out into the rest of the universe, where we may engineer new universes.
— Ray Kurzweil
Technology expands data by 66% per year, overwhelming the growth rates of any natural source. Compared to other planets in the neighborhood, or to the dumb material drifting in space beyond, a thick blanket of learning and self-organized information surround this orb.
— Kevin Kelly
The universe might end in intelligent life (rather than as either a ball of fire or as scattered ice). Not life as we know it, but life that has acquired the capacity to shape the cosmos as a whole, just as life on Earth has acquired the ability to shape the land, the sea, and the atmosphere.
— James N. Gardner
The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. Recently, we’ve waded a little way out … and the water seems inviting.
— Carl Sagan
Dubious readers must see: reapplying entropy.
