I am told the German translates like this:

Die Auslese war hart.
Doch jetzt ist sie da.
Die stärkste Technik aller Zeiten.
Gnadenlos günstig.
Saturn.
Wir hassen teuer.

Selection was tough.
But now it’s here.
The most powerful tech of all time.
Mercilessly low-priced.
Saturn
We hate pricey. (We don’t do expensive.)

An epic story about meeting god on a train.
Written by Harry Stottle @ fullmoon.nu

Talking to God

I met god the other day.

I know what you’re thinking. How the hell did you know it was god?

Well, I’ll explain as we go along, but basically he convinced me by having all, and I do mean ALL, the answers. Every question I flung at him he batted back with a plausible and satisfactory answer. In the end, it was easier to accept that he was god than otherwise.

Which is odd, because I’m still an atheist and we even agree on that!

It all started on the 8.20 back from Paddington. Got myself a nice window seat, no screaming brats or drunken hooligans within earshot. Not even a mobile phone in sight. Sat down, reading the paper and in he walks.

What did he look like?

Well not what you might have expected that’s for sure. He was about 30, wearing a pair of jeans and a “hobgoblin” tee shirt. Definitely casual. Looked like he could have been a social worker or perhaps a programmer like myself.

‘Anyone sitting here?’ he said.

‘Help yourself’ I replied.

Sits down, relaxes, I ignore and back to the correspondence on genetic foods entering the food chain…

Train pulls out and a few minutes later he speaks.

‘Can I ask you a question?’

Fighting to restrain my left eyebrow I replied ‘Yes’ in a tone which was intended to convey that I might not mind one question, and possibly a supplementary, but I really wasn’t in the mood for a conversation. ..

‘Why don’t you believe in god?’

The Bastard!

I love this kind of conversation and can rabbit on for hours about the nonsense of theist beliefs. But I have to be in the mood! It’s like when a jehova’s witness knocks on your door 20 minutes before you’re due to have a wisdom tooth pulled. Much as you’d really love to stay… You can’t even begin the fun. And I knew, if I gave my standard reply we’d still be arguing when we got to Cardiff. I just wasn’t in the mood. I needed to fend him off.

But then I thought ‘Odd! How is this perfect stranger so obviously confident – and correct – about my atheism?’ If I’d been driving my car, it wouldn’t have been such a mystery. I’ve got the Darwin fish on the back of mine – the antidote to that twee christian fish you see all over. So anyone spotting that and understanding it would have been in a position to guess my beliefs. But I was on a train and not even wearing my Darwin “Evolve” tshirt that day. And ‘The Independent’ isn’t a registered flag for card carrying atheists, so what, I wondered, had given the game away.

‘What makes you so certain that I don’t?’

‘Because’, he said, ‘ I am god – and you are not afraid of me’

You’ll have to take my word for it of course, but there are ways you can deliver a line like that – most of which would render the speaker a candidate for an institution, or at least prozac. Some of which could be construed as mildly amusing.

Conveying it as “indifferent fact” is a difficult task but that’s exactly how it came across. Nothing in his tone or attitude struck me as even mildly out of place with that statement. He said it because he believed it and his rationality did not appear to be drug induced or the result of a mental breakdown.

‘And why should I believe that?’

‘Well’ he said, ‘why don’t you ask me a few questions. Anything you like, and see if the answers satisfy your sceptical mind?’

This is going to be a short conversation after all, I thought.

‘Who am I?’

‘Stottle. Harry Stottle, born August 10 1947, Bristol, England. Father Paul, Mother Mary. Educated Duke of Yorks Royal Military School 1960 67, Sandhurst and Oxford, PhD in Exobiology, failed rock singer, full time trade union activist for 10 years, latterly self employed computer programmer, web author and aspiring philosopher. Married to Michelle, American citizen, two children by a previous marriage. You’re returning home after what seems to have been a successful meeting with an investor interested in your proposed product tracking anti-forgery software and protocol and you ate a full english breakfast at the hotel this morning except that, as usual, you asked them to hold the revolting english sausages and give you some extra bacon. ‘

He paused

‘You’re not convinced. Hmmm… what would it take to convince you?’

‘oh right! Your most secret password and its association’

A serious hacker might be able to obtain the password, but no one else and I mean

NO ONE

knows its association.

He did.

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The universe is a self-organizing theatre production.

The Cast (in order of appearance): King Physics, Joker Chaos, The Queen Emergent, Biology Jack, Intel Ace.

The Crew: Quantum Gods (producer), Accelerando (director), The Last Question (stage manager)

THE QUEEN EMERGENT: ACT ONE

singularity
boom, expand
goo, stuff, particles, waves
elements, gasses, suns
boom, elements, gasses, suns
boom, rocks, suns .. boom, rocks, planets

“Lovely start.”
“Yes, very nice. Love the goo.”

ACT TWO

planets, radiation, shift, plates
comet, water, comet, water
elements, oceans, chemistry

chemistry, chemistry, lightning
compounds, compounds, proteins, lava
death, rocks, rocks
death, rocks, rocks

“Hmmm.”
“Yeah… Seems a bit formulaic.”

ACT THREE

oceans, oceans, oceans
chemistry, lightning, compounds, proteins
proteins, rocks, life
death, rocks, death, rocks
oceans, oceans, oceans

“Interesting.”
“Lots of death and rocks, I see.”

ACT FOUR

chemistry, life, life, biology
evolution
diversification
extinction, diversification

“Alright. Here we go.”

ACT FIVE

diversification, intelligence
intelligence, tools, culture

agriculture, tools, towns
language, culture, tools, math

towns, culture, society,
science, industry, science
technology, technology, intelligence explosion

“Love the dancing in that number…”
“Indeed.”

ACT SIX

intelligence explosion, network, network
intelligence explosion, greater mind

collection of elements
collection of energy
unification, contraction

unification, contraction
unification, contraction
contraction, contraction, collapse

THE END

“Over already? What a shame!”
“BRAVO!! Bravo, I say!”

The universe is a self-organizing theatre production.
Will it collapse into nothingness, or be reborn like a phoenix?
Or are there more productions going on all the time in a grand theatrical ecology of sorts?

All we know now is that it looks as if science is the foundation,
and everything else is dramatically emergent;
everything else is the result.

“Am I part of the cure, or am I part of the disease?”

Don’t Fear the Singularity

By Ran Prieur, 2005

“The Singularity” is the biggest idea in techno-utopianism. The word is derived from black hole science — it’s the point at the core where matter has contracted to zero volume and infinite density, beyond the laws of time and space, with gravity so strong that not even light can escape. They apply the word to the future to suggest that “progress” will take us to a place we can neither predict, nor understand, nor return from.

At least they have their metaphors right: that our recent direction of change is about contraction, not expansion, and leads inescapably to collapse and a new world. Their fatal pride is in thinking they’ll like it. Basically, they think computers are going to keep getting better faster, until they surpass biological life, and we’ll be able to “upload” our consciousness into immortal robots or virtual reality heaven. The engine of this fantasy is the “acceleration,” which supposedly includes and transcends biological evolution, and is built into reality itself, destined to go forward forever.

The weakest part of their mythology is the part they take for granted. If civilization is part of evolution, it’s not like birds getting wings — it’s like the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global catastrophe that prunes the biosphere down to the roots so it can try something different. Civilization has been a great evolutionary event for bacteria and rats, who are leaping forward through human attempts to kill them. But it hasn’t been good for humans. We can only guess how people lived in the stone age, but most primitive people observed in historical times enjoy greater health, happiness, political power, and ease of existence than all but the luckiest civilized people. Even medieval serfs worked fewer hours than modern people, at a slower pace, and passed less of their money up the hierarchy. Even our medical system, everyone’s favorite example of beneficial “progress,” has been steadily increasing in cost, while base human health — the ability to live and thrive in the absence of a medical system — has been steadily declining.

Conversely, the strongest part of their mythology is where they focus all their attention, with careful and sophisticated arguments that there are no technical limits to miniaturization or the speed of information transfer. This is a bit like Easter Islanders saying there is no physical limit to how big they can make their statues — and since the statues keep getting bigger, they must be an extension of evolution, and will keep getting bigger forever. Meanwhile the last trees are being cut down…

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Thank you Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and of course Alan Watts, for this epic short film.

It is a film that touches on: Evolution, the nature of intelligence and the self, and the hoax of our modern success-centered lives.

It is a video meant to put us in our places, and also ask us to evaluate what we have built for ourselves.

Is this what I wanted to be doing?
Am I missing out?
What is my focus?

And hopefully we can, with honest answers, begin to shift our trajectory or maybe just dance a little more in life; have some fun, eat drink and be merry, that’s where I see the value in this film.

“The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time.” — Freeman Dyson

THE MEANING OF LIFE IN A DEVELOPING UNIVERSE

John Stewart (source)
Member of the Evolution, Complexity and Cognition Research Group
The Free University of Brussels

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Abstract: The evolution of life on Earth has produced an organism that is beginning to model and understand its own evolution and the possible future evolution of life in the universe. These models and associated evidence show that evolution on Earth has a trajectory. The scale over which living processes are organized cooperatively has increased progressively, as has its evolvability. Recent theoretical advances raise the possibility that this trajectory is itself part of a wider developmental process. According to these theories, the developmental process has been shaped by a yet larger evolutionary dynamic that involves the reproduction of universes. This evolutionary dynamic has tuned the key parameters of the universe to increase the likelihood that life will emerge and produce outcomes that are successful in the larger process (e.g. a key outcome may be to produce life and intelligence that intentionally reproduces the universe and tunes the parameters of ‘offspring’ universes). Theory suggests that when life emerges on a planet, it moves along this trajectory of its own accord. However, at a particular point evolution will continue to advance only if organisms emerge that decide to advance the developmental process intentionally. The organisms must be prepared to make this commitment even though the ultimate nature and destination of the process is uncertain, and may forever remain unknown. Organisms that complete this transition to intentional evolution will drive the further development of life and intelligence in the universe. Humanity’s increasing understanding of the evolution of life in the universe is rapidly bringing it to the threshold of this major evolutionary transition.

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1. Introduction

Until recently, a scientific understanding of the natural world has failed to provide humanity with a larger meaning and purpose for its existence. In fact, a scientific worldview has often been taken to imply that the emergence of humanity was an accident in a universe that is completely indifferent to human concerns, goals, and values (e.g. see Weinberg, 1993).

Humanity has had to supplement a naturalistic understanding with beliefs in supernatural beings and processes if it wanted a worldview that includes a meaningful role for humanity in a larger scheme of things. But recent advances in evolutionary science are beginning to change this. In particular, we are rapidly improving our understanding of the evolutionary processes that have produced life on Earth and that will determine the future evolution of life in the universe. While it is far too early to tell with certainty, it is possible that the universe and the evolution of life within it have been shaped by yet larger evolutionary processes to perform particular functions that are relevant to these larger processes.

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In my view one of the most freeing and individual human-centered takes on the development and potential of the mind was this dialogue from the movie Waking Life:

The main character is what you might call “the mind”.
It’s mastery, it’s capacity to represent.
Throughout history, attempts have been made…
to contain those experiences which happen at the edge of the limit…
where the mind is vulnerable.

But I think we are in a very significant moment in history.
Those moments, those what you might call liminal,
Limit, frontier, edge zone experiences…
are actually now becoming the norm.
These multiplicities and distinctions and differences…
that have given great difficulty to the old mind…
are actually through entering into their very essence,
tasting and feeling their uniqueness.

One might make a breakthrough to that common something…
that holds them together.
And so the main character is, to this new mind,
greater, greater mind.
A mind that yet is to be.
And when we are obviously entered into that mode,
you can see a radical subjectivity,
radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is,
opens itself to a vast objectivity.
So the story is the story of the cosmos now.

The moment is not just a passing, empty nothing yet.
And this is in the way in which these secret passages happen.
Yes, it’s empty with such fullness…
that the great moment, the great life of the universe…
is pulsating in it.
And each one, each object, each place, each act…
Leaves a mark.
And that story is singular.
But, in fact, it’s story after story.

My Summation
| What does he mean to say? |
Can I say it less nebulously?
| Unlikely, but worth a shot… |
Here we go:

In the modern period our minds are freer, the sphere of mental activity much wider, while before the nail that stuck out got hammered down hard. We find we have more opportunities, more cognitive liberty nowadays; still we can get lost as individual exporers, but… Diversification is an effective strategy overall for humanity to break down previously invisible, previously unconsidered barriers.

So while individuals dig deep into an inner space, humanity as a whole proceeds to thin out the slabs of ignorance that have compressed and contained our minds for so long, like frenzied ants carving out new tunnels in an ever expanding hill.

In coming to know ourselves, digging our own tunnels, we are coming to know the cosmos all the better, that thing that connects us all. And despite the grandeur of our gradual enlightenment, the cosmos we know is but one, with a singular story, amongst many others — each with their own tales to tell.