(post to JCS-online @ 2010-07-03)
Applications of Consciousness Studies to Technology
Right now, consciousness studies do not have applications to technology. Psychology has, as do environmental sciences, but consciousness studies do not. They do not provide added value to technology, thus they do not lead the market and thus we have leaders in technology field, who do not care.
Anyway, it has a high potential - not an idea, but really a serious dream of mine.
Current ecology
Ecology is the study of living relations - http://www.thefreedictionary.
Currently, most visible work done about ecology is related to matter. We are trying to keep some status quo of everything on Earth - basically, as we understand nothing, we are strongly fighting for stagnation of our environment (probably trying to reverse any natural and necessary change if it's possible). We believe that by keeping such status quo, we are doing the best to soften any kind of negative impact we are having to things.
Another part of visible work is done on making our impact as small as possible. This means that we take it as granted that to live well, there must be some (rather not so small) negative impact, which we must have. We are trying to make it as small as possible. For example, we all know that production and use of cars makes our air less breathable. We want to make this impact smaller.
Now, we have the following possible targets:
1. To have actual positive impact.
2. To have no negative impact (human zero-impact).
3. To have not more negative impact than nature is able to fix (parasite zero-impact).
4. To have not more negative impact than we are able to tolerate for next few years (destructive zero-impact).
4. has it's obvious weak point - we can have such impact for a limited amount of time, but after that point, we eventually destroy ourselves.
3. has it's less obvious weak point - nature could need those resources in other areas we are not aware of.
2. has the least obvious weak point here - given that nature has some immune system, it could detect us as virus at any point of time even if it has let us evolve because of some good impact we have had (we should not think that evolution has nothing to do with reputation - it has more than business).
1. This has also it's very obvious weak point - we actually have no knowledge about what is "good".
Sidethought (jump over if you like it to be short): We have also the problem that what is mostly taken under consideration about ecology is only the topmost layer of earth with it's forms - anyway, we are generating sound waves and doing other things a bit deeper. The same "science", which has told us that living things consist only of matter and have no difference with other things, has also told us that Earth is not living and is, thus, different from us and should not be researched from that aspect. I did once read a news about that earth core consists of complex chemical and resonance reactions, not just pressures etc. as many popular scientists were thinking before. I see a slight analogous with humans having small creatures on their skin doing important things. This should be seriously researched - consciousness research and not simple mechanics is giving us an answer; simple mechanics could only possibly give an answer that an Earth is probably working like a simple mechanical system. Even that has taken a serious research to show that this must be, if this is the case, still very complex mechanical system. Anyway - we should think that Universe is more than we think, including small parts of it, not that it's less than many people think. This would just be a more probable hypothesis - if we were a few steps from total science and great ability, then it would be very highly probable (about the probability of dividing total mass of Earth with total mass of all Earth-like planets in almost the whole Universe) that someone would have done it before us and reached here - or that we would see a grand work of theirs from our telescopes. This directly implies that the probability of us being a few steps away from some kind of ultimate understanding of reality, is basically the same number. I mean - we are far from knowing all about everything, we are far from being superior in any way. We should consider that the reality around us is superior. And the consideration that it's a mechanical device is far from that - especially as it is not compatible with some experience that we, as part of it, are not.
Internal enemy - we care; it's implications
Phenoptosis is a programmed death of some animal - it's the complex structure to calculate it's value to it's surroundings and relatives, then make a decision about if it's needed and finally, if not, to destroy itself even if large parts of it's emotional and rational systems are still actively running life-keeping algorithms. I mean, against some habitual try and emotional needs to survive, an organism will destroy it. Starting from programmed cell-death, I have philosophized about that from early childhood, but now found that a large body of well-researched evidence supports that very well.
Now, if we are going to fight against an environment - or just work against it -, we have another form of programmed death. Programmed death of species. This, also, has some evidence supporting it, but taken the fractal nature of life into account, it's very much normal that even if it happens not so often, it happens. Given the lifespan of Earth and the lifespan of human it's normal to see evidences supporting this claim not so often in ecosystem. Anyway, programmed death of cell parts; programmed death of cells; programmed deaths of organelles and organs are all well-researched; programmed deaths of humans are considered scientific and something like programmed death of species is already observed several times. We would loose a fight against nature without neither side picking any weapon or coming out from it's supportive castle.
This, for me, gives some evidence that we are needed. I also think that technology etc. are needed as such growth is very normal part of nature - we only see it as different, because we are in it. First animal learning to truly fly was probably even happier than we were after building a first airplane.
Internal obstacle - latent inhibition
Latent inhibition is a personality trait actively permitting an animal to learn things, which do not matter obviously. This is personality trait as it's different for different people.
Historically, lack of it was being connected with tendency for schizophrenia. Later, it was found out, that best students of Harvard (I think) also have this trait very low. It was, then, connected with ability to process data or go into overflow. As less latent inhibition, as less data flowing in (to consciousness):
- Low LI and low IQ - schizophrenia
- Hight LI and low IQ - normality
- Low LI and high IQ - creativity
- High LI and high IQ - narrow-mindedness
Latent inhibition prevents us seeing the whole and seeing far. Anyway, even if whole and far have low direct impact, they have extremely high long-term impact. Being ready for big changes in world makes us more efficient over long run (when we get the war or financial crisis). Direct-impact things have low impact.
Some fields of psychology are actively working on theories to make human more ready for globalization. When in tribes of ancient times, the level of latent inhibition we are having now would have been even too high - they had actually many nearby problems - they still had people, who had zero-latent-inhibition experiences, like shamans and later prophets, doing their efficient and necessary work to cope with the whole. There is another dimension of latent inhibition - people having it low can not cope with spiritual things, which have less visible direct impact.
Some meditative states directly lower latent inhibition. Also we get some free attention by removing our awareness from outside world - this free attention effectively raises our ability to process this stronger flow of data. This is important to get this data in process of meditation simple enough to use it later - we should make some important decisions in occasional or self-caused higher-awareness moments and then, later, faithfully follow such decisions. We can not keep high awareness all the time and thus, we would even not easily believe such experiences of us later. Anyway, this is better to have such little inner conflict with realities we can not easily join than to just ignore such things in our practical everyday life.
The question thereof: how to build an interest?
Higher ecology
To design a new ecology, which has purpose to involve consciousness studies, we have to study the properties of things, which make they feel more pleasant, deeper or more natural. We could make thing with heart and soul.
We have technology and mass production. Some ecologists have some resistance against those things - consume less, create less, stop consuming. Usually, they see that they themselves can not stop consuming. Some see this as conspiracy against them - media, politicians and social standards force them to consume. It's more and more important to become aware that having some kind of synergies with other forms of matter is good; the fact that things move, change and are in constant fluctum is a fact, not a decision. The life on earth is related to constant economic process, where each creature shapes the matter and mind surrounding it so that the mechanics of evolution becomes, in fact, finding the best paths to avoid conflicts of interest living in such reshaping environment - the process to find ways to spend less energy in the process.
As an environment itself is shaped by our peers, organics similar to us, we can actually trust and join the effort - and we should. Making the difference for better is sustainable and self-powering as in such case other organics is not just mutating to adapt and change back, but they will mutate to catalyze our doings. We should be able to insert our technology into environment, to integrate it, to make it survive on it's own. We should sell it to nature. We should support the parts of nature, which are supportive to us, such that they become more dominant; we should support them with technology, which they can, after a few iterations of themselves, mass-produce themselves.
What is most critical in relation to consciousness studies - given that those also include studies about awareness and experience, qualia - is the question of developing technologies, which are supportive to surroundings (and us) in terms or raising the levels of awareness, being supportive to our spirit or emotional well-being.
Say, we have a computer. It has the following properties:
- Does fast calculations - plus, must-be.
- Takes energy - minus, might-be.
- Transforms energy into forms not directly usable by surroundings for more good - minus.
- Has energetic field patterns surrounding us, which are bad to our spirit and emotional well-being - strong minus.
- Production process spends our natural reserves without giving anything back - strong minus.
Now, some of those are attributes. Anyway, we can not even measure the real environmental effect without taking consciousness into consideration. Actually it all starts from mind - only thing we are interested in, is getting and keeping some higher level of consciousness, awareness and emotional stability. Those things need material support, thus the material research about environment is proper subpart of that. Material sustainability is necessity for it, but it's not enough. Thus, if we say that we need to keep some higher level of consciousness, we have not to say that we need also some material stability - because in itself, we do not need any material stability. We need it only _because_ we need to keep our consciousness. This, in our self-psychology, is obvious. Anyway, we need to think in terms of the same concept both technologically and especially economically. Technology has it's goals in what is utility for some other field, so there we must just add those considerations, not replace the old; ecology, anyway, has this as it's main goal. Just thinking about how to save species, which are dieing out (whereas they probably won't care much - if 100 horses die, they don't probably think much if the whole population is 100 or 1000); how to turn-back some change our ecological environment is trying to carry on - this is stagnation. This is to stay to stop all natural evolution and immunity systems at year 2000. This has nothing to do with ecology or saving the nature. Nature, definitely, wants to learn, adapt, change and evolve - each part of it wants it and in this web of interest conflicts, some waves and flows are better matches than others.
Our goal should be to integrate into that change.
We should really consider our current technology somewhat low-tech. High-tech, definitely, has preferably no negative side-effects and has _necessarily_ stronger positive side-effects, than negative ones. And the need for positive side-effect is essential here. Every small widget of technology, every little conductor producing fresh air or better emotional field is a great victory.
I would make an example about McDonald's. Some think it's problem is that it's fast - fast is good. Some think it's problem is that it's cheap - cheap is good. Some think it's problem is that it's soulless and that is a better match. We need to mass-produce, we need to use more and more efficient tools and to seed things instead of doing them one-by-one. But, even if having very high standards about some machine-measureable quantitative properties, we never know the emotional condition of that food. We do not know if it is the kind of food, which - to be materialist - is obtained so that hormones, proteins etc. inside have the exact pattern, which is good to eater, or if it's the kind of food, which is actually bad to our spirit. Sometimes it might happen to be one, other times another. And that's not because it's mass-produced or because people behind it are bad - that's simply because such thing is never measured there, never standardized or never even tried. Field surrounding the food of McDonald's might not be good to our mind-state.
Now, computers. We know that looking some older screens 10 hours in row would sometimes create delirious state. It has happened with me a few times about 15 years ago - after looking the screen for few days and doing something especially interesting, I had some emotional afterclap. No aches, no distortions of vision, no health problems - I just felt extremely odd things. I went into emotional condition, which might be interesting experience a few times, but if I knew that I have 1% of such thing in me anytime if I have used computer in last few days and 10% if I use it many hours in row, I would not be happy. And I actually think that it is so. I actually think that we do not know, what is good to us.
We could have 100 different materials, which all have similar properties under some conditions we are interested in. Or 100 tiny things done from those materials. Each of those things is able to do some basic math operation - but would we concentrate a lot of this physical pattern waves and electricity, surrounding it, we would find out that 99 of them are toxic and 1 of them is good for our health. Not neutral, but good. Or if we knew that most of them give us bad dreams, but one of them gives us good dreams. Those are things we wont mention ...but we have those devices all around us. And most of them are obviously radiating something, which does not do good to how we feel, to how we think, to how concentrated we are and how free is our spirit. They just drain our life force.
And, to reverse that process, we need to know, what an awareness is. We need to know more. But we can make some experiments about how things feel and created applied studies of consciousness - probably those start up pretty much on their own, from some basic experiments and some practical work. But this work would soon join with the rest of our effort ...we really need to surround Earth, from all sides, with field, which is good to us. Matter, in this process, plays a significant role. Matter should join us, make up a synergy as much measured from different aspects as we are ourselves.
Creating a computing system, which feels good
So, any piece of matter is:
- Having it's own small consciousness.
- Positioned inside some bigger consciousness field, affecting it's wellbeing.
- Having it's own pattern field, which changes a wellbeing of it's surroundings.
These three are probably rough categories, which cover some of it's interesting properties. As it's visible, those three are probably if not equal, then very much interrelated. To name an evolutionary reason for that - whatever is reacting here, must, if it wants to be in synergy, somewhat reflect the emotional state of surroundings. Even if surroundings have different goals - probably even we are trying to kill someone - we will emotionally reflect it. Also, everything is, to some degree, supportive - in case we kill someone, we will probably show some respect and be somewhat more helpful than we normally would. Like making a dinner if we are secure enough. But in other cases, we are doing it too - all matter, to some degree, does computations for other matter and helps it in it's goals. This starts from very small subcellular level and goes up to complex structures. We, just, must have been evolved like that. All things are trying to change exactly that parts of surroundings, which are not supportive - so, surroundings, if they do not want to change too much, are supportive. I include death in set of possible changes here. So, having surroundings with high well-being level, we are actually doing good for our own wellbeing.
Other reasonings are of different kind and probably find less support. When we die, all this matter in us - which we, probably, love to some degree -, including whatever pieces contained in us into this matter, will start flowing around. In highly ecological environment, it will probably feel as good as it did - it will journey around a bit, find some nice comfortable place in ecosystem and stay there. Probably the same pieces have some attraction to each others and come back again, eventually - but maybe not, this is totally out-scope speculation here. When we look it all as a flow of matter, we naturally want to do things, keeping some bigger time frame and context in our minds. We will want to create a large body of matter and spirit around us, which has some equal-possibilities and awareness properties everywhere. We all - our cells - have joined some grand organization for a while, our body and humankind, but eventually we will go back. And back there, we will experience what we did quite differently - we could find out that it's meanwhile got very much worse there. Given, of course, that we remember the last time - probably we more like just vibrate like zzzzzz and brrrrr and shshshshsh in some awarenessless mode for a while - at least those subcellular parts of us - until we eventually flump again into something more meaningful, like a bee. Anyway, I think we naturally want those vibrational stages, as they might take quite a long time, to be in some more or less good harmonics and give us a meaningful and nice experience. In this context - actually everything in us will, with big probability, get stuck in some field generated by things we create here for a while. And this, obviously, is a very strong argument for anyone, who has got to similar conclusions. It should be a good argument even for just spending some time of our life wondering and researching about it's truth value ...after all, it does not take a piece away from us to just selectively choose products with similar prize and quality, which would ground this very real risk a little bit.
Growing technology
Part of this all is the fact that whatever grows, has a free will and still does not make any real effort to destroy itself, probably feels better than things, which do such effort or do not have much chance. Also, things, which integrate into nature in the wild and survive there, probably are good at that aspect - they are liked by other things, like trees and plants, if they can survive those evolutionary needs.
Thus, as we have genetics and much more organic technology, we should start thinking about making our technology grow. We should analyze all kinds of motives and strategies it could get - as otherwise we could find us fighting against angry parasite technology as in some movie -, which once again involves strong consciousness studies. Any kind of genetic manipulation does that - but we have already gone into it. We are changing the nature and to deny the fact is to randomize the result. If we leave that to useless people, whose main effort is to sterilize their seeds (referring to a lot of problems with organizations currently specialized to GMOs), we will, in fact, very much make our environment unnatural.
I would like if I could grow a house, which is warm, feels good every time I get home and give me few glasses of fresh drink and some fruits each day (and, of course, does not let tree-ants in). I would feel like living in nature, I would feel fresh every morning I wake up and I would have a friend for a lifetime, probably. Currently I live in some kind of house, where even a plant would not get enough nutrition to survive. When I go outside, I will get some breath of fresh air, have a completely different feeling and go into mindstate, which is not so simple to achieve indoors. Shortly, I live in a cage. This is warm, keeps rain away and has everything to keep primary life processes going on and on, but it's clearly using very small amount of a real potential of some better environment.
I think that this is worth considering, what could be grown. Even dead things, if they have grown, feel better than dead things, which have not grown into the form they have. Before taking a form, nature should have reasonable time of relative free will to take this form in way it likes. Maybe it should even know and accept, what's going to happen, so that it can take that into consideration.
Connecting with our cellular level
We, multicellulars, are a relatively new technology. Our cells are old, time-tested forms, which have obviously taken their very much optimal forms. Our cells have a powerful and stable organization - bigger than we ever imagine -, they have ages of wisdom in them. We have intelligence and consciousness, maybe some past-life wisdom, but as a structures, we are highly stupid. Not stupid as opposite of intelligence, but stupid as opposite of wisdom. This is one part of a game.
Second, our consciousness structure has organized a lot of cells, but it's somewhat a master-slave organization, not decentralized intelligence force. It's far from optimal.
Now, I have dreamed about technology, which could read our minds and translate it to, say, commands for computer. This is slowly becoming a reality, but upside-down reality - those chips, really, are not communicating with us. They are simply reacting; it's us, who are communicating (Intel has promised to come out with those chips in a few next decades). This, again, is a shortcoming of current technology. It's senseless, soulless crap. I mean, it's evolutionary beneficial, it has won the battle - and thus it's good. It's better than before; people using it are stronger. It has some very strong sides, which overweight all the problems. But it's one-sided and it's not integrated into it's surroundings. Leave it to forest and alone, it looses the battle very fast.
I dream about chips, which are programmable not as computer, but as something real. Whatever we connect to us, must be very simple thing - it must have no purpose. It must have no program, which makes it do this or that. It must just be a piece of matter worked out to be highly responsive to thought; second version should be able to divide, to propagate, to have children when we need so. It should have strong connection with both our cells and our consciousness. It should be just a piece of matter, which we can sense well, which is microscopic and which has some trivial ability to do some work down there.
Such chips would be high-level technology ...all we need, all our genetics and research is about, is how to make an evolution truly conscious. Every scientist doing research in genetics is supporter of intelligent design - not an intelligent design theory, but intelligent design itself.
This technology simply _has_ to feel good. It must be such piece of technology, which is not technology anymore, but magic. It has to be something so integrated into nature that plants will steal it, animals will steal it and insects will steal it and use for their own purposes.
I mean - we won't care if it will be some chaos for a while. We won't care if it will destroy humankind - death is not an end. We should have some bigger vision to spread consciousness, to put it all together. Have read Solaris? It's a planet, which is alive. A big mass of alive and conscious matter. This _is_ the future. Whatever we do, it will end there. And it's the best end. We should think further ...humankind is a form. We should care about an essence. Essence is us, the matter, the souls.
I trust evolution. I trust that the changes are creative, that the means to make choice are good and take each side into consideration as more as more strongly it reacts. I believe that just spreading consciousness, just spreading ability and just making it free will be a step to larger organism, a step to join it all together, a step leading to creative chaos and eventually to a highly synergistic life form with rapidly changing and moving parts. All biological matter would always be reused in something organized and nice, not in an oil used to move cars. Ok, maybe there would be some slavery of matter and some ineluctable needs to create something, what feels bad, for a good purpose - anyway, this would be the whole. And more wisdom, more intelligence, more good will has always an advantage, a dominance - it would spread and it's the direction this kind of composition would have.
What we do, here, should be very well thought-through - if it's possible, it should be connected with planetary consciousness (given that there is such thing as consciousness of Earth or ecosystem), it should be connected with any layer of consciousness ever thinkable. It would be an ideal. Anyway, just a thoughtless piece of matter our body is able to use would be a good step - it's because we don't need to work it out. We should just give our body a capability to use our high-level intelligence (communication means), an utility or many to change it's structural form itself and all kinds of powers to make itself into whatever it wants to be. We should also give it some resources of different kinds of molecular structures to use. We should trust our body intelligence to work it out.
We don't need to go back. We need to go further and to join our current efforts with natural world view. To make our technology organic in the best sense of this word.
Communication with an ecosystem
Next problem studies of consciousness has to answer: has our planet a consciousness?
I know that materialists say: no. But if you ask - does human has it? - they are also forced to say no. Thus, it's nonsense if they even try to force their views. Our question is - does ecosystem of Earth have this, what we human have, which is denied in both humans and ecosystem by those materialists. They should just shut up, because they do not know. If their logic is that we humans do not have it, thus ecosystem does not have it - they haven't even touched the question if we could communicate with ecosystem.
I know that if we ask them if it has intelligence, they say: no. Because they think that intelligence is an ability to think theoretically? Or to find creative solutions? Ok, our ecosystem has solved things too complex for us to understand, it's highly responsive and adaptive. We could call that an evolution, something senseless - but so what? Evolution is explanation, ability to respond is a fact. We care about the fact - to communicate, we are interested if it's able to respond. And _how_ it's able to respond. Because we have a few questions right now.
If it does have - and, remember, only people knowing something about consciousness can reply that question -, we should create a means to communicate. This might mean a medium, some oracle, or simply a technology, which could form some patterns big (or strong or whatever matters) enough for that consciousness to become aware of those; then, to detect answer patterns. We need systems and infrastructures, which would allow us to send e-mails and get replies, using normal internet. We should be able to cooperate - and we should be able to create technology allowing that cooperation, whatever this actually means.
One thing I have dreamed about is creating a system to communicate with dolphins. One dolphin should, by some brain-body weight and other calculations, be nearly as intelligent as humans. Anyway, dolphins have a lot more powerful communication organs than we do - they can send low-frequency sound waves over extremely big areas, they can communicate talking all at the same time, they have big number of separate sound organs, which they can use independently. If one dolphin is nearly as intelligent as human, herd is much more intelligent than human herd (which is told to be somewhat less intelligent than human). We have no conflict of interest - they are in sea, we are on Earth. We have some common interests - to make this planet better place to live. We should give them technology and get back some resources, which they can find or create in water.
New advertising
Edward Louis Bernays is a man who, in response to crisis of economics and because of governmental order, worked out current advertising technologies based on male-female attraction. Freud thought that sexual energy is our primary driving force - checkably, advertising of today makes it so that it really is so in many instances. Freud thought that other motives are so much weaker that they do not exist.
Today, we have new crisis. I think that we should switch to Jung - that there are many driving forces and spiritual needs are one of the strongest. Spiritual needs are instinctual - you do not need church, you do not need believers, you do not need anything like that to make people make choices based on spiritual needs.
Advertising of today should do a lot of research in that area. Of course, this changes products themselves - products have extremely strong connection with their advertising.
This would be third-generation advertising.
- First generation: Advertising on quality. [to create competition of quality and thus get better products for cheaper price]
- Second generation: Advertising on sex. [to create some means to make people buy unusable products to raise their libido]
- Third generation: Holistic advertising. [to create stronger competition of ethics and real quality]
Holistic advertising would not be holistic, because it is made up from spiritual symbols. It would be holistic, because it is connecting all - quality, libido and spirit. With, of course, prize and thus more effective production.
We really need to join those ideas - mass-production, getting it cheaper, making it more sexy and giving it some ethical and spiritual qualities. We see that people really _urge_ for that - all advertising really selling today, creating new waves, has something to do with ethics, ecology or spirituality. Those are not often connected, but people go for them even without any strong campaigns. Companies around the world do not really compete to produce strong feeling of them being ethical and having high spiritual means.
Anyway, we can use the symbolics - and we can work out the strategy for a good advertising campaign contain all elements. To connect, as much as possible, some dimensions of spirituality (the symbols, not faith), some dimensions of sexuality (because otherwise there is something missing for many) and some dimensions of ethics and ecology. It should be innovative, but not only innovative - telling some nice-sounding joke -, but innovative in means that people feel that company putting that slogan everywhere, suggesting this idea through it's campaign and etc. has done something good only if that was all, even if there is no product to be sold.
And, this gives some competitive edge to people, who really understand those symbols. I mean, like advertising today - it's subconscious. It's manipulation. There is nothing wrong in that - such manipulation often plays with human wisdom, which is not conscious. We do not let us to be manipulated, but we have some things we want to know, which can not be easily communicated and which we do not want to tell out. Spiritual needs, by the way, fall into that class - as sexuality does. And people working out best such symbols are usually those, who are really in contact with things. We give them a competitive edge if we start a new wave like that.
I mean - having a lot of advertising with new qualities will make it so that advertisements without some quality will seem lacking something. First-generation advertising told us about quality, but it itself was poorly developed and thus some advertising genius had all means to destroy it. Now, current advertisement is of much higher quality, but only if we look one side of it - but it lacks a lot. People are today doing all those ecothings, buying fair-trade stuff and paying for different things than libido. They are doing it even without advertising companies having strong methodologies for that. But such kind of advertising, actually, would have another effect - it would make people slowly aware that they care about such things. They would start trusting advertising if some of us could do it right.
And, creating such new qualities to fight for - when we have reached some top of libido qualities - would create much more work. To really work out things, which are spiritually designed - because a thing itself is big part of advertisement, if they differ, it would not sell - means going through really large body of scientific work. It would mean redeveloping nearly everything - and it could give us many new goals. What I describe here is not 180-degree turn, but something like 10-degree or 20-degree turn. I would like to still have all qualities we have today, with current technology - and talk we what we talk, but as long as we create visions lacking those qualities, we do not actually do anything to reach them. But I need something more - I need it to feel good.
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