DigitalXprocess / Cyborg RING
Originally uploaded by KOUJI FRAMINGO.
Just finished reading the Guru and the Pandit transcript of Ken and Andrew’s Integral Naked dialogue: Immortality and Enlightenment. (via numinous dawg)
The best part of the dialogue was when Ken and Andrew differentiated the notion of immortality, from body, mind, soul, to spirit. Awesome. I agree with them when they pointed out people’s confusion with immortality — "when you want the finite realm to be infinite." Props to them for doing that. They should’ve stopped there and explored ways on how to best embrace life extension technology and merge it with 2nd-tier thinking. But NO, they didn’t. The dialogue degenerated into the classic Spirituality vs. (materialistic) Science game — "…breaking some fundamental law of the universe—tampering with natural structures in the creative process". Jesus Jones! Do you guys really believe this crap? Don’t you guys think that maybe, just maybe, that technological advancement (including life extensions) IS an expression of the "creative process"? Where’s the fluffy love?
The dialogue had obvious bias towards spirituality and the interior
domain. The lack of imagination was obvious when they touched on the
subject of consciousness downloading. Assuming this technology will be possible, yes, the level of consciousness of the person is still the same when it’s downloaded to a machine — garbage in, garbage out. BUT, BUT, BUT, the Law of Accelerating Returns,
will make it possible for that consciousness to "develop into higher
levels" at an "exponential" rate. Even hyper-speed doesn’t quite cut
it. We’ve all seen Dark City, and The Matrix where Neo learned all the cool stuff in
one sitting. What if, in the future, Ken and Andrew, will be part of a
computer program where they would continue to do their pointing out
instructions, evolutionary imperative injunctions, and boring
philosophical jargons? What if ILP ver 2045 is packaged as a download
program instead of a long and tear-jearking 1-2-3 shadow workout? Heck, it
would probably only take 90-minutes of practice instead of 90 days of inebriation. Wouldn’t this technology help accelerate the consciousness of Humanity 2.0 into integral-aperspectival levels and beyond?
A better theme for the dialogue should be: What ways can 2nd-tier thinking embrace technology to ensure that they only cause self, culture, and nature the least amount of suffering?
As for Andrew being afraid of life extensions, I have one word for you sir: Singularity.
The singularity challenges us to redefine our notion of EVERYTHING,
even enlightenment itself. Brush up on that and transcend and include
it in your evolutionary imperative model.
And c’mon, Ken. At least in Boomeritis you posited a race between carbon-based and silicon-based consciousness: "…development
in the world of Carbon is heading toward a great Omega point, then when
Silicon becomes conscious, it will also start heading toward this
ultimate Omega point. So he becomes obsessed with the thought: Who will
first discover God on a widespread scale: Carbon or Silicon? Now that is more, shall we say, integral.
Those are just some of the reasons why, IMHO, the dialogue, as
valuable as it was, was very partial. It avoided flatland but somewhow
got stuck in "wonderland"
– collapsing the exteriors in favor of the interiors. That’s why I
think that instead of just the Guru and the Pandit, when it comes
controversial topics on the exterior domains, they should’ve included fluffy scientists in the discussion. The discussion would’ve been more interesting if Ray Kurzweil, and Aubrey De Grey were invited and the four of them went at it on All Quadrants regarding radical life extensions. Now that would be pay-per-view material.
There. I think I could use a sponge bath in my favorite spot.
Comments (8)
Couldn’t agree with you more! I listened to the talk this morning expecting an eye opening discussion regarding what I agree are often rather positivistic approaches to technological progression. I was hoping for a enlightening glimse as to the inter-relationship of interior and exterior in a world of accelerating growth, or a look at how the integrally minded might view radical life extension or other progressive technologies to increase our level of interior awareness. And I agree with you–all we got was another exterior bashing with the power duo that seems more interested in elevating interior growth as the end all than at arriving at more encompassing/fluffy understanding of the universe. It’s funny to me, because while Wilber seems to be advancing in his written work with the absolutely brilliant post-metaphysical conception, in his interviews he seems to continually get bogged down in purely metaphysical arguments that he himself has so ardently fought against. I’m not sure what to make of it. Anyways, thanks for the insightful post. Love your work as always! Keep it comin’.
Lyon,
yeah, i was a little bit disappointed because Kurzweil was interviewed in that issue of WIE. it would’ve been cool if Kurzweil rebutted.
but anyway, in fairness to Ken and Andrew, i think what they’re trying to address here are the stereotypical mentality of flatland scientists and mainstream idea of “immortality.” like i said, their discussion pointed out the flaws of life extension very well.
also a friend had mentioned that, “you know how long Ken can spend on one point! Can’t include everything in a less-than-one-hour conversation!” and yeah i agree with that, that’s the reason i quoted Ken in his Boomeritis interview to point out that he is aware of the singularity.
ok. now back to being non-geeky
~r
Great post CM! It still was a worthwhile conversation about embracing both the relative and the absolute. And they discussed the idea of physical life extension needing to be done for the right reason, thus sort of addressing it being an “expression of the creative process”.
Hope I Die Before I Get Old
What always seems to be avoided in such discussions is any question of who will control such technology and how it will be distributed.
Mel-y Mel,
Excellent post moonfrere.
I think you should put forward another post (the next one maybe? wink, wink…) that would simulate the Kurzweil/Wilber/Cohen/deGrey quad-ralogue. Or just your views on the subject.
I think in terms of the WIE piece, a couple of contextualizers:
1. The reading membership of the magazine (present company excluded) is not always the best and the brightest, intellectually and philosophically that is (read: New Age Boomers). For proof of this assertion, note who pays advertising in the magazine—holistic, metaphysical spirit-guide this, Vedanta-cosmology that and so forth. Or maybe I’m being a little too harsh?
2. On a more general point, tangentically related to this particular article, I’m less and less convinced that Ken and Andrew’s thoughts/systems/worldviews, whatever you want to call them, really line up in anything more than a (mostly) superficial sort of way–hence the dialogues, as I see them, are (mostly) superficial. Or maybe I’m alone on that point?
3. I think the dialogues function as what they call in the PR world as a “teaser”–the WIE version of the free IN-clip o’ the week if you will. And as such, they are fairly effective within that bubble. Much more than that, is really not (in my mind) to be expected from that format.
Anyway, if you like bro, I’ll give the topic some thought and maybe write up something on the Singularity, consciousness, quadraticism, etc. I’ll send it to you. But either way, I (and I imagine others) would like to see your thoughts on the issue.
Peace. CJ
yo Chris,
thanks for the insightful comments. here’s my take on your points:
1. on reading membership… couldn’t agree with you more. so that makes both of us harsh
seriously, yeah i understand the predicament of catering to your audience and all that, but last time i checked, there’s no room for idiot compassion on the “LEADING EDGE.”
2. personally i see a lot of value on their models. it helped me to be less of an a-hole that i used to be. but as of this writing, my understanding is limited to the vision-logic domain as i haven’t had any “transcendent” experience i can fall back on to counter or approve their insights. but then again, their stuff makes a lot of sense to me.
3. teaser. exactly.
yeah, please do write up on the singularity topic. i would love to hear your thoughts on it. also, the “Kurzweil/Wilber/Cohen/deGrey quad-ralogue” is a great idea. but i don’t think i’m savvy enough to pull it off. i wonder.
be well,
~r
Just finished the singularity and I must say I was blown away. I haven’t had a book change my perspective of something this much since I read BHOE by Ken Wilber 5-6 years ago. I consider myself tech savvy and have always been aware of Moore’s law but I did not appreciate the dramatic changes that will come from the accelerating returns. It reminded me of that riddle/puzzle where you say give me a penny today and double it everyday for a month, how much will you owe me by the end of the month? When you tell them ~11 million bucks they are in complete disbelief. If you believe Kurzweil’s assumptions, which don’t seem that absurd, we are looking at taking our penny of technology today and having 10 million dollars worth of technology in 30 or so years.
I too hoped for more from the discussed conversation. It’s just that I have heard the interior side of this before. I am more curious in how this will play out. In fact, I would have loved to have KW 2006 added next to Ray in the conversations at the end of the chapters of Singularity.
These advances will lead to unprecedented changes in power and wealth and how will it play out? How will corporations (orange) and governments (blue??) control this? Will integral leadership rise to power just in the nick of time? Is this II greatest concern?
I heard a podcast about the new ‘many faces of terrorism’ book. I didn’t catch it all, but it sounded like a storyline that predicted the future and some reference to the role of the ‘integral’ population. Anyone know when this book will be out?
Manual Trackback. This post is cited in Blogmandu, Roundup for Feb 26 – Mar 4, 2006.