Wednesday, October 24, 2007

The Prometheus Project

"To refuse this challenge of providing something entirely new in the world would be to fall somewhat short of our full humanity."

[ASIDE: Several months ago I googled Gerald Feinberg to see if he had ever written a follow-up piece to The Prometheus Project: Mankind's Search for Long-Range Goals (1969). Sadly, I learned that he had passed away in 1992, and I was unable to locate any follow-up to this optimistic vision of man's potential to shape his future.]

But on to business... that being, the ongoing search/struggle for a formula/mathematical model.

Let me just say that strange thoughts about matrix manipulations have now returned to plague me at odd moments. My search for a workable model of 5-dimensional navigation devolved some years ago into a struggle to master and manipulate matrix mechanics. But I never succeeded in creating a model of anything more than a single aspect of what I felt needed to be represented. I don't remember how I decided to use matrices and matrix operations for these representations, save that I was not familiar enough with anything else (say, set topology) to be able to use it for what I needed.

Anyway, as this progressed, I got further and further into the intricacies of matrix mechanices, and farther and farther from the big picture I was trying to capture. And I was never really sure a matrix representation would work at all. There were too many things I still didn't know how to represent using matrix mechanics... How could I model degree of correspondence between representations? How could I model forward flow of information, and feedback, and priming? Was it possible to model emotion or conviction or attention as operators with differing effects on the mental representation's position in determining the final outcome? Can you use matrices as members of a zero-sum set? (And so it went.)

Eventually I decided to table the model-creating until after I had achieved some brilliant insight that would enable it to go much faster. (Translation: This isn't working.)

Staring in the mirror this morning, I came to the moderately depressing realization that I was probably not going to be the recipient of such a gift of sudden insight. If I want to create a working model, I am probably going to have to model (independently) all the various aspects of 5-dimensional navigation as I believe I understand them, and then hope a more global model can somehow be synthesized from the results. (Oy.)

Which brings me back to the thought - "This would be so much easier if someone else were here in Smearland with me!"

"The Prometheus Project cannot be an effort of one man, or a small number of men, since no small group can encompass the total wisdom or feelings of mankind. I am writing in the hope of stimulating enough interest in these questions so that eventually a sizable fraction of the human race will take part in the discussion..."

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

A Shortcut Through Time (Pt III)

"It seems to me quite likely that the risks of plunging every day into the unconscious without a tether are considerable... it is too easy to become overwhelmed by ego after successful trials. I do it very well and it scares me. So I don't do it in general."

After the training exercise that produced The 5th Dimension: Channels to a New Reality, I didn't push too many other boundaries for awhile. (Yep. That book is still sitting on the bookshelf, waiting to be read... someday.)

One day though, in the afterglow of some surfing, I wondered briefly if I could task to an object that represented information about an event whose outcome I had not yet observed. Just a very vague, half-formed thought. Couldn't be considered proper protocol for any type of training exercise. But then there was an object, right in front of me, commanding my attention. 'Alright, I'll study the object', I thought, with no particular expectations about what parameters, if any, of the object would contain significant information.

Once I had observed the outcome of the event, I began to analyze the object in light of the event. That analysis morphed into an experience that must be one of the closest things I have ever had to a mystical experience. (I don't really know what a mystical experience is, so I'm guessing here.) I could see connections between almost every element of the object, and the event - concepts, words, symbolism, connections between ideas. That experience became so disconcerting that I soon had to stop thinking about the whole thing.

But it did make me seriously think about the nature of information, time, and reality in general. For awhile, anyway. Then self-preservation kicked in and I went to find some coffee. ;)

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

A Shortcut Through Time (Pt II)

"I had become a [scientist] in large part because I considered science - pure science, the search for knowledge for its own sake - to be the noblest and most meaningful of human endeavors. We are here to figure out why we are here. What other purpose is worthy of us?"

I like puzzles. I played Set until I mastered it. (Nineteen seconds was my personal record. Pardon me if I brag a little bit. ;) Some might say that I get a daily paper primarily for the Sudoku puzzle. And then there is the word scramble...

LYRCIAT

Normally you solve this puzzle by systematically re-ordering subsets of the letters to make recognizable pairings. EX: 'LY' is commonly seen at the end of words. You keep doing this until you recognize where all the letters fit to form the unscrambled word. ('No kidding!' you are thinking.)

The point is, that solving this puzzle usually involves 1) a serial set of tasks, 2) which are performed consciously. You are aware of the process that results in the solution. Well, usually...

Many times when I have played this puzzle, I have had the experience of looking at the scrambled word - not staring at it, mind you, but looking at it for a second or so - and then looking up to begin the systematic process of unscrambling the word. And before I can begin the process, the unscrambled word appears in my conscious awareness, before any conscious processing could take place. (And it's right.) This is a little bit disturbing to experience, for the following reasons...

1) There is only a matter of a second or two between the time the scrambled word was acquired for processing, and the time the solution appears in consciousness. This is not enough time to complete the serial set of tasks needed solve the puzzle in the conventional way.

2) I haven't played this puzzle so much that I could be familiar with all the possible words used and all possible recombinations of the letters of those words.

3) There is no context from which the word can be inferred. And these aren't words that you see every day, though the combination of letters in them are not usually unique enough to make the word obvious.

One day, after I had spent a few minutes thinking about that 'instant solution' experience, I had the thought - 'I wonder if this is what it's like to be a quantum computer.'

These experiences led me to ask the following questions...

Was I really bypassing the serial tasks involved in solving the puzzle? Or were they happening, but just at a much faster rate than what can be shunted through conscious awareness? And if that was the case, what does that say about the concept of time? Does it imply that our ability to consciously perceive time is drastically slower than the speed at which processing in our brain can/does occur?

My experience with the Set puzzle was an ongoing study in the process of pattern recognition. When I began to play Set, it took me 5 to 6 minutes to solve the puzzles. Eventually I broke the 60 second barrier. Then I was consistently solving the puzzle in less than 30 seconds. The sets began to 'jump out' at me. I had managed to train some part of my brain to recognize a very specific set of cues in a very specific setting. I was recognizing the sets more quickly each time I played the puzzle, despite the fact that the actually cards in the sets were not the same ever time, nor was I limited to searching for only one or two patterns. (Seriously, read the rules and try the game. It's fun!)

Had some similar kind of complex pattern recognition network been building all the while I had been playing the word scramble puzzle? If so, how did it get so fast?

Or, was I pulling the solution into awareness from a future point in time? Perhaps from a point in time after I had verified the solution? Hmm...

(Have you figured out the word yet?)

Monday, October 15, 2007

A Shortcut Through Time (Pt I)

"... what if expectation acts to focus our attention on our potential future states, and allows us to 'select' favorable paths to pursue? If gaining information from our futures were possible, then in principle we might be able to navigate through potential futures to achieve a desired outcome." - Radin and Lobach (2007) (here)

Reading that paper got me thinking... and remembering...

One of the first things I wondered about, after accepting that there was a correlation between certain states of expectation and the outcomes I actually observed, was whether or not this was some form of convoluted, inverted precognition (an effect of the actual outcome that traveled back in time), or whether my expectations were somehow the cause of the outcome. Somewhere along the way, I decide to focus on the causal perspective, and from then on I researched primarily from that perspective.

I don't have a whole lot of notes from that period, as it is generally easier not to leave crazy-sounding notes lying around when one has roommates. ;) But I do remember thinking that if it were more cause than effect, then I should be able to change my expectations mid-way to the outcome and see the corresponding results in the observed outcome.

Here's an illustration... Let's say I flip a coin. Prior to observing the outcome, I generate the expectational components that steer me towards the outcome 'Heads'. Then I change my mind. I now want the outcome 'Tails'. So I go about generating the various representations that will steer me to 'Tails'. Which outcome will I observe, and how will that outcome be determined?

What I found across repetitions and a variety of outcome situations boiled down to this ... Those expectational components and representations of the outcome that were more accurate, more vivid, more convincing, and which utilized more of my attention, determined the outcome I observed. If I were better able to generate the required representations after I had decided to steer towards a different outcome, then I was going to get the 'changed my mind' outcome.

This result also helped lock me into a causal mode of thinking about this effect. It really seemed like there was something (a forces model was helpful to me at this time) that was summing together, and the end result was rather like adding a positive and a negative number. Whichever number had a higher absolute value won out.

Needless to say, that is probably an overly simplistic representation of what is actually happening.

And now, among other things, I want to know... can the causal role (if any) of non-observational states upon the actual outcome be separated from the effect of the actual observation (traveling back in time) upon those same pre-outcome non-observational states? What would information traveling backwards in time from a future outcome feel like as an experience? Is it possible to enhance sensitivity to this type of effect as well?

Hmmm... must find more coffee now...