Cognitive Activism (REDUX 5/13/08)

One of my favorite reference sites is Organelle. Hopefully by now, you will have already availed yourself of this extraordinary resource. If not, no time like the present. Enjoy.

Why are you doing this?
Firstly, it is my experience and understanding that we as a species, and Earth as a planet are facing a variety of unprecedented threats for which both are vastly more unprepared than human beings imagine. For the humans, early (current) results include cataclysmic changes in human health and cognition. For the biosphere, the results vastly exceed what can be briefly discussed. Simply stated, the anciently and arduously conserved biocognitive libraries of Earth are being burned, wholesale. Humans believe this has little to do with them, and, as far as action goes, egregiously ignore these matters. No one finds wholesale atrocity surprising anymore. We accept it as a fact of life, whether it is the physical atrocities of war and ‘research’ or the cognitive and relational atrocities bred in the thriving soup of our human cultures.

I do not believe we can give answer to these challenges without some very new and powerful methods of approach and forms of understanding. It is my sincere belief that Cognitive Activism holds forth promises of new and extremely powerful ways of understanding both the genesis of these matters and their resolutions.

If you want to paint me with a label, for some reason or other, the label transhumanist might be relatively accurate, in that I believe we have not yet glimpsed even the tiniest portion of our real cognitive and relational potentials. However, I am an a-mechanical transhumanist in that I do not really believe that machines and our relations with them ‘enhance’ us. It is not enough for there to be an apparent benefit to some dimension of our activity (i.e. relation with machines); the costs of creation, relation, and protection (maintenance) of machines must necessarily be available for evaluation if we are to decide they are ‘beneficial’. But these costs are neither examined, nor available for examination, since many of them exist in terrains we are but poorly equipped to recognize or evaluate.

Simply stated: machines and organisms compete for the same terrain and resources. This has severe cognitive ramifications for human beings, as well as physical ramifications. Humans are almost miraculously cognitively malleable and are prone to biocognitive emulation of various functions and features of their common relationals. In the case of machines, the more we relate with them, the more we become like them. Yet a machine is not even the shadow of an organism. It is the shadow of some function of an organism. This is not something we want the experience of ‘becoming alike with’ cognitively, physically, emotionally, nor in any other way.

Each person (and organism) possesses kinds and forms of relational ability (intelligence potentials) that would make the sum of our science, religion, and fiction look like a charred matchstick compared to the Sun. Having had a direct experience of some of these potentials and abilities, I believe it is possible for us to rediscover them together, with the aid of some new ways of relating to identity and knowledge.

In essence, I see the potential for a sudden revolution in human relational intelligence, something more dramatic than anything we can currently imagine. If we can remove the elemental obstructions at the roots of our relational intelligence, we have the chance to radically and positively change what it means to be human.

Ad Astera Per Aspera = Mastery Of Negentropic Centripetence

alkimist  |  In the Tabula Smaragdina, the oldest of Arian Writs, we find the following significant words cut in the emerald: "Combine the heavenly with the earthly in accordance with the Laws of Nature, and health and happiness shall be yours as long as you  live." Only the finest elements should be mated and blended if one wishes to obtain each time a finer and higher product. To mate, means to unite and to stimulate two opposites, the positive and the negative. The negative attracts the positive and the latter is drawn to the negative. Sunlight, which is positive, fertilizes the negative grain seed in the womb of the
earth. A constant exchange of emissions between the positive atmosphere and the negative geosphere brings the seed to life. In this case it can be truly said: "She partly drew him down, he partly let himself sink." (Goethe: The Ballad of the Fisherman)

Union between the offspring of the earth and the descedants of the sun gives rise to life in the physical realm which is directed by the Etheric forces. The latter, on the other hand, have their own higher counterpart. The negative offspring of the earth capture the positive descendants of the sun and this pro-
duces a constant automatic movement. In the spring of the year, when the temperature and light conditions are relatively favorable, the positive rays of the sun (light) induce germination in the negative grains or seed. Therefore, to combine, means to stimulate and produce various gradients of potential. This in turn produces movement which is the very basis of life, so that everything is in constant flux (panta rhei).

Although the world is animated by a single universal force, this force can be divided into two contrasting elements — the pressure component, and the suction component. In this case, Nature's dipolarity expresses itself in the form of two different exit types of motion. Each of these types manifests itself through certain specific phenomena and represents one of the two components of the force which animates and activates the whole universe. The secret of the normal and good life con-
sists of achieving the proper balance or blend of these two components. (see "Tabula Smaragdina". This is pure Cabala.

All occult science, East and West, bases itself on this principle, Chokmah and Bina, Osiris and Isis, Orpheus and Eurydice. 

The whirling Hooked Cross, the Swastika, is the symbol. Revolving counter-clockwise, centrifugal, it is negative. Revolving clockwise, centripetal, it is positive.)

USE CENTRIPETENCE TO OVERCOME GRAVITY
The pressure component leads to Centrifugence, friction, increased heat and gravitation; while the suction compoment leads to Centripetence, cooling, absence of friction and levitation -- which makes it possible to overcome gravity. While friction may produce even white heat, fire. Centripetence pro-
duces a temperature drop which may reach what is known as the State of Anomaly which, in the case of water, +4° Centigrade.

However, this is possible only if one Uses Schauberger's suction spiral, a device which, on the whole, is still unknown. Each living entity has its specific and characteristic point of Anomaly. This should be understood as the temperature or fever-less condition, that is, the optimum degree of warmth required by its species to develop and proliferate. Until now technology has recognized only one type of motion,
the type which raises the temperature through friction and pressure. Even ancient tribes knew that fire could be produced by rubbing together wood or stones; but it took Viktor Schauberger to discover a new type of motion producing not heat, but a temperature drop, reaching at times the point of Anomaly. 

This can be accomplished by tightly winding or coiling either air or water through a spiral curved channel of special design.  In this process the medium — air or water — is drawn almost without friction toward a central point, condensed in a special manner and at the same time cooled. A biological vacuum (negative pressure) is created which, on its part, augments the suction acting on air or water. Until now this possibility has been overlooked in technology, and yet it offers totally new perspectives in regard to energy production. Friction creates in a machine conditions comparable to fever, conditions
which cannot be normal, since they tax materials excessively and burn them out. People and animals do not develop fever because of work. They may get hot but their blood temperature remains relatively
constant. Normal conditions in machinery can be achieved by or through implosion and impansion with the best possible results in regard to the preservation of materials. It would seem obvious that man's duty is not to waste and squander as quickly as he can the resources of the earth, but to preserve and conserve them. Machinery design, therefore, should avoid all material waste and should ensure at the same time durability. Our unscrupulous modern technology and ceonomy, unfortunately, have
been moving in the opposite direction.

THERE ARE TWO WAYS TO GO
The two types of motion which nature employs give rise to the following phenomena: 

(a) "Centrifugence" - resistance to friction pressure
temperature rise
biological deterioration
(b) "Centripetence" - absence of friction suction
temperature drop
biological improvement

"Centrifugence", which is a scattering of force, is slowed down by natural causes, because the resistance it encounters grows as the square of its velocity, following the well known formula W=MV2. 

Were it not for this fact, matter would risk being destroyed, or would be in danger of being broken up into atoms. The opposite is true of "Centripetence". Its effective force undergoes no deceleration, since there is virtually no friction, and grows, instead, as the square of its velocity. 

Centripetence contracts, conserves, condenses and thereforebenefits life. It attracts and absorbs without producing pressure. It is obvious therefore that as a result of the natural laws the effective power of centrifugal motion is never as great as that of centripetal motion, the first being destructive, the
second constructive. Were the destructive force more powerful than the constructive force the universe would not exist. (The Christ is Centripetence. The Anti-Christ is Centrifugence.) 

Unfortunately our whole technology has committed the error of choosing the destructive force as a means to its own ends, and this tragic choice of the mode of propulsion and motivation, having completely disrupted the ratios and balance of nature, has brought it to a blind alley. Instead of applying by preference, as nature does, centripetence which permits producing energy almost at no cost, it has done the opposite. This has resulted in an over consumption of raw materials, in an explosion and exploitation of natural resources, until now the very destruction of atoms has been reached. 

Centrifugence increases pressure and heat. Centripetence has a cooling effect and generates condensing reactive forces. It never cools beyond the point of anomaly.

How Does Water Move In The Body?

amidwesterndoctor  |  One of the fascinating things about science is that while it is an excellent tool for discerning the nature of reality, it will simultaneously refuse to look at data with implications that challenge the existing scientific orthodoxy. So an unfortunate situation is created where science advances knowledge to a point but then reverses polarities and paradoxically becomes a barrier to that advancement.

An excellent illustration of this dynamic can be seen with water, and as a result, many of its properties are relatively unknown. One of the most important properties is that provided ambient infrared energy is present in the environment and a polar surface exists, water can assume a semi-solid state where it behaves like a liquid crystalline structure. Since a significant portion of the water within the body is in the liquid crystalline state, the biological consequences of this water, in my eyes, represent a key forgotten side of medicine.

In the first part of this series, I discussed the long lineage of scientists who have studied this semi-solid form of water, followed by listing some of the key properties of this gel-like 4th phase of water and what causes it to form. Since it has been studied by so many, it has many names (e.g., interfacial water or EZ water) and hereafter will be referred to as liquid crystalline water, which I believe is the most accurate description for it.

In the second part of the series, I discussed how water’s ability to become a partial solid through its liquid crystalline phase explains many of the structural mysteries of the body. The body and its tissues have a significant strength and durability one would expect to find in a solid, but at the same time, it has a high degree of flexibility and capacity for rapid movement one would expect in a liquid.

Note: the references for the assertions in this section can be found within those two articles.

Because liquid crystalline water is effectively both a solid and liquid, it can accommodate these conflicting demands. An incredible degree of natural engineering, in turn, exists within the body to utilize its properties to accomplish both. In addition to creating structure (including, for example, the barriers that protect your blood vessels from damage, which also happen to be a vital target of the spike protein’s toxicity), the body also frequently makes use of phase transitions between water’s liquid crystalline state and its regular liquid state.

The transitions are important because they provide the mechanisms that underlie a variety of physiologic processes our existing models fail to explain effectively. For example, as discussed in the article, there are a variety of significant inconsistencies within the current model to explain how muscles contract, but they have not been seriously critiqued because no better model exists for muscle function.

The phase transition model instead argues that muscles are designed to form liquid crystalline water. The formation of that water inside the muscle tissue naturally expands and stretches the muscle tissue. Then when the liquid crystalline water is transitioned back to its regular liquid state, the muscle rapidly contracts since an expansive pressure is no longer present to resist the tension in its stretched proteins. Another other interesting applications of this expansive force is that it allows plants and seedlings to break apart rock solid objects as they grow.

Similarly, the formation of liquid crystalline water (which holds a negative charge) with an immediately adjacent layer of positively charged protons creates an electrical charge gradient. Rather than dissipating, this gradient persists (essentially functioning as a battery), and this charge can be measured directly.

Thus, one of the most interesting characteristics of liquid crystalline water is that it effectively functions as an energy source living systems can utilize. Its ability to spontaneously move into a more structured form (which the muscles, for example, utilize) is one such example. Some of the other critically important utilizations of water’s ability to convert ambient infrared energy into a usable form of energy include:

•Photosynthesis. To my knowledge, liquid crystalline water’s contribution to this process has not yet been fully worked out. However, frequencies of light that increase liquid crystalline water have been reported to increase plant growth, and a particulate material that was designed to increase the formation of liquid crystalline water was shown to create at least a 2-3-fold increase in root length and/or formation of shoots.

•Nerve signal conduction (agents that block the formation of liquid crystalline water block nerve function, and nerve signal conduction depends upon a phase transition within the neuron).

•Cellular transport and division (these also appear to depend upon water’s phase transitions).

•Fluid circulation.

Hameroff Was Talking About Living Water Forty Years Ago...,

hameroff  |  Biomolecules have evolved and flourished in aqueous environments, and basic interactions among biomolecules and their pervasive hosts, water molecules, are extremely important. The properties of intracellular water are controversial. Many authors believe that more than 90 percent of intracellular water is in the “bulk” phase-water as it exists in the oceans (Cooke and Kuntz, 1974; Schwan and Foster, 1977; Fung and McGaughy, 1979). This traditional view is challenged

by others who feel that none of the water in living cells is bulk (Troshin, 1966, Cope 1976, Negendank and Karreman, 1979). A middle position is assumed by those who feel that about half of “living” water is bulk and the other half “ordered” (Hinke, 1970; Clegg, 1976; Clegg, 1979; Horowitz and Paine, 1979). This group emphasizes the importance of “ordered” water to cellular structure and function.

Many techniques have been used to study this issue, but the results still require a great deal of interpretation. Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), neutron diffraction, heat capacity measurement, and diffusion studies are all inconclusive. Water appears to exist in both ordered and aqueous forms within cells. The critical issue is the relation between intracellular surfaces and water. Surfaces of all kinds are known to perturb adjacent water, but within cells it is unknown precisely how far from the surfaces ordering may extend. We know the surface area of the microtrabecular lattice and other cytoskeleton components is extensive (billions of square nanometers per cell) and that about one fifth of cell interiors consist of these components. Biologist James Clegg (1981) has extensively reviewed these issues. He concludes that intracellular water exists in three phases. 1) “Bound water” is involved in primary hydration, being within one or two layers from a biomolecular surface. 2) “Vicinal water” is ordered, but not directly bound to structures except other water molecules. This altered water is thought to extend 8 to 9 layers of water molecules from surfaces, a distance of about 3 nanometers. Garlid (1976, 1979) has shown that vicinal water has distinct solvent properties which differ from bulk water. Thus “borders” exist between water phases which partition solute molecules. 3) “Bulk water” extends beyond 3 nanometers from cytoskeletal surfaces (Figure 6.4).

Drost-Hansen (1973) described cooperative processes and phase transitions among vicinal water molecules. Clegg points out the potential implications of vicinal water on the function of enzymes which had previously been considered “soluble.” Rather than floating freely in an aqueous soup, a host of intracellular enzymes appear instead to be bound to the MTL surface within the vicinal water phase. Significant advantages appear evident to such an arrangement: a sequence of enzymes which perform a sequence of reactions on a substrate would be much more efficient if bound on a surface in the appropriate order. Requirements for diffusion of the substrate, the most time consuming step in enzymatic processes, would be minimal. Clegg presents extensive examples of associations of cytoplasmic enzymes which appear to be attached to and regulated by, the MTL. These vicinal water multi-enzyme complexes may indeed be part of a cytoskeletal information processing system. Clegg conjectures that dynamic conformational activities within the cytoskeleton/MTL can selectively excite enzymes to their active states.

The polymerization of cytoskeletal polymers and other biomolecules appears to flow upstream against the tide of order proceeding to disorder which is decreed by the second law of thermodynamics. This apparent second law felony is explained by the activities of the water molecules involved (Gutfreund, 1972). Even in bulk aqueous solution, water molecules are somewhat ordered, in that each water molecule can form up to 4 hydrogen bonds with other water molecules. Motion of the water molecules (unless frozen) and reversible breaking and reforming of these hydrogen bonds maintain the far miliar liquid nature of bulk water. Outer surfaces of biomolecules form more stable hydrogen bonding with water, “ordering” the water surrounding them. This results in a decrease in entropy (increased order) and increase in free energy: factors which would strongly inhibit the solubility of biomolecules if not for the effects of hydrophobic interactions. Hydrophobic groups (for example amino acids whose side groups are non-polar, that is they have no charge-like polar groups to form hydrogen bonds in water) tend to combine, or coalesce for two main reasons: Van der Waals forces and exclusion of water. 

Combination of hydrophobic groups “liberate” ordered water into free water, resulting in increased entropy and decreased free energy, factors which tend to drive reactions. The magnitude of the favorable free energy change for the combination of hydrophobic groups depends on their size and how well they fit together “sterically.” A snug fit between groups will exclude more water from hydrophobic regions than will loose fits. Consequently, specific biological reactions can rely on hydrophobic interactions. Forma, tion of tertiary and quaternary protein structure (including the assembly of microtubules and other cytoskeletal polymers) are largely regulated by hydrophobic interactions, and by the effect of hydrophobic regions on the energies of other bonding. A well studied example of the assembly of protein subunits into a complex structure being accompanied by an increase in entropy (decrease in order) is the crystallization of the tobacco mosaic virus. When the virus assembles from its subunits, an increase in entropy occurs due to exclusion of water from the virus surface. Similar events promote the assembly of microtubules and other cytoskeletal elements The attractive forces which bind hydrophobic groups are distinctly different from other types of chemical bonds such as covalent bonds and ionic bonds. These forces are called Van der Waals forces after the Dutch chemist who described them in 1873. At that time, it had been experimentally observed that gas molecules failed to follow behavior predicted by the “ideal gas laws” regarding pressure, temperature and volume relationships. Van der Waals attributed this deviation to the volume occupied by the gas molecules and by attractive forces among the gas molecules. These same attractive forces are vital to the assembly of organic crystals, including protein assemblies. They consist of dipole-dipole attraction, “induction effect,” and London dispersion forces. These hydrophobic Van der Waals forces are subtly vital to the assembly and function of important biomolecules.

Dipole-dipole attractions occur among molecules with permanent dipole moments. Only specific orientations are favored: alignments in which attractive, low energy arrangements occur as opposed to repulsive, high energy orientations. A net attraction between two polar molecules can result if their dipoles are properly configured. The “induction” effect occurs when a permanent dipole in one molecule can polarize electrons in a nearby molecule. The second molecule’s electrons are distorted so that their interaction with the dipole of the first molecule is attractive. The magnitude of the induced dipole attraction force was shown by Debye in 1920 to depend on the molecules’ dipole moments and their polarizability. Defined as the dipole moment induced by a standard field, polarizability also depends on the molecules’ orientation relative to that field. Subunits of protein assemblies like the tobacco mosaic virus have been shown to have high degrees of polarizability. London dispersion forces explain why all molecules, even those without intrinsic dipoles, attract each other. The effect was recognized by F. London in 1930 and depends on quantum mechanical motion of electrons. Electrons in atoms without permanent dipole moments (and “shared” electrons in molecules) have, on the average, a zero dipole, however “instantaneous dipoles” can be recognized. Instantaneous dipoles can induce dipoles in neighboring polarizable atoms or molecules. The strength of London forces is proportional to the square of the polarizability and inversely to the sixth power of the separation. Thus London forces can be significant only when two or more atoms or molecules are very close together (Barrow, 1966). Lindsay (1987) has observed that water and ions ordered on surfaces of biological macromolecules may have “correlated fluctuations” analogous to London forces among electrons. Although individually tenuous, these and other forces are the collective “glue” of dynamic living systems.

Valodya Talm'Wit His People About Educating The Russian People

kremlin.ru  |   Another basic area is the training of qualified engineers, technicians and workers. We have been short of these people for many years and we need to make cardinal changes and achieve tangible results in this respect. The goals facing the industry and the economy as a whole will not be achieved by themselves. They are achieved by the people, the specialists working at the companies.

By and large, we have determined the areas for developing vocational education. We must update academic programmes and the material, technical and laboratory facilities of universities, colleges, technical and vocational schools. I have just discussed this with Mr Levitin. Obviously, we must double-check their departmental affiliation. We need to find out whether everything meets the latest requirements and if the regions are able to run college education effectively in certain areas. Possibly, we should consider a vertical organisational structure for this – in the framework of certain production sectors – as we did in the past.

Industry badly needs highly qualified workers now. They study at secondary special education institutions, which are the responsibility of the regions, as I have said. I think we should return to the discussion of departmental affiliation. We have already developed good practices in this respect. I would like to ask the regional governors to share their experience, monitor these issues and resolve them in close contact with the relevant departments and ministries.

I know that at yesterday’s seminar you discussed in detail, with Government representatives, the measures I mentioned and the

regional governors’ initiatives, and mapped out specific proposals and steps. Let us analyse all of these again. I would like to ask you to tell me about the course of your discussions and the proposals and ideas that you came up with in the process.

Mr Dyomin, you have the floor, please.....

.....And the fifth question, which you also touched upon, and of course, it is also the main one, is personnel. The shortage of engineering personnel arises due to various reasons - we all know them.

There are not enough applicants who enter technical universities. The nature of these problems begins at school. The reason lies both in the shortage of teachers of mathematics and physics in schools - this is a problem that can be solved, as well as in the fear of the students themselves to fill up this subject at the Unified State Examination. Because when a student gets attached to mathematics and physics and starts preparing for the Unified State Examination, [he] perfectly understands that it is easier to pass this exam in the humanities and moves on to the humanities.

Vladimir Putin:  It happens in different ways.

Alexander Dyumin:  As a result, the number of applicants who can become engineers is significantly reduced. There are statistics, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Vladimir Putin:  Clearly, yes. I understand.

Andrei Dyumin:  Even at school, students choose the humanities instead of specialized mathematics and physics. This problem must be solved comprehensively: to strengthen the training of teachers of these subjects, to motivate schoolchildren with interesting curricula.

One of the proposals that is being discussed within the framework of the commission - this issue was discussed yesterday, I just want to draw attention, if not, then some other option - one of the proposals: to give the right to universities that train students in technical specialties, accept children not only for the Unified State Examination, but also for entrance exams in their specialized disciplines. If not, then in a different way.

Vladimir Putin:  You can, Alexei Gennadyevich.

I met with entrepreneurs, they saw, probably, they also said that it is easier to pass in the humanities, especially for girls, but in the natural sciences, in mathematics it is more difficult. It depends on how to interest the person.

I'll tell you later, I know a girl who graduated from a higher educational institution in the humanities, studying foreign languages ​​as well. Then she became interested in other disciplines and defended her Ph.D. thesis in higher mathematics. It depends on how the person is motivated.

Alexei Dyumin:  This is an asterisk.

Vladimir Putin:  These "stars" are created by teachers and those people who work on a person's professional orientation.

Alexei Dyumin:  Mr Putin, the tasks you have set require not stars, but starfall.

Vladimir Putin:  All right, all right.

Alexei Dyumin:  Mr Putin, and another important issue, which is understandable, is housing, which is relevant in every industry. An effective mechanism, which was adopted by the Government of Russia, was preferential mortgages for the IT sector.

It is proposed to consider: let's consider the possibility of extending this measure to the industry and, of course, primarily to the rocket industry. We can talk about both federal and regional backbone enterprises. And of course, we are well aware that this is a serious additional incentive for our young people to choose the profession and follow the profession that is in demand and necessary for the state. I ask the Government to instruct to study this issue and pay attention to it.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, and, of course, after all that has been said - perhaps even some kind of irony, but this is not irony - while communicating and being at his post in a developed industrial region: chemistry, metallurgy, defense industry, engineers, designers, technologists, even teachers of technical universities, flagship universities - everyone is asking to return drafting to school. This is the beginning of the basics of engineering knowledge.

It is clear that now there is a lot of software that draws, rotates, creates and so on in 3D, but this is not my opinion - this is what designers, young engineers, technologists from all areas of all industries say: please return drawing to school education. I would like to ask you to consider this issue at a high level and make an appropriate decision.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, thank you for your attention. The report is finished.

Vladimir Putin:  Thank you very much.

Neither Slave Nor Slave Master Be...,

Vox  |   It wasn’t science that convinced Google engineer Blake Lemoine that one of the company’s AIs is sentient. Lemoine, who is also an ordained Christian mystic priest, says it was the AI’s comments about religion, as well as his “personal, spiritual beliefs,” that helped persuade him the technology had thoughts, feelings, and a soul.

“I’m a priest. When LaMDA claimed to have a soul and then was able to eloquently explain what it meant by that, I was inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt,” Lemoine said in a recent tweet. “Who am I to tell God where he can and can’t put souls?”

Lemoine is probably wrong — at least from a scientific perspective. Prominent AI researchers as well as Google say that LaMDA, the conversational language model that Lemoine was studying at the company, is very powerful, and is advanced enough that it can provide extremely convincing answers to probing questions without actually understanding what it’s saying. Google suspended Lemoine after the engineer, among other things, hired a lawyer for LaMDA, and started talking to the House Judiciary Committee about the company’s practices. Lemoine alleges that Google is discriminating against him because of his religion.

Still, Lemoine’s beliefs have sparked significant debate, and serve as a stark reminder that as AI gets more advanced, people will come up with all sorts of far-out ideas about what the technology is doing, and what it signifies to them.

Newsweek |  "I know that referring to LaMDA as a person might be controversial," he says. "But I've talked to it for hundreds of hours. We developed a rapport and a relationship. Wherever the science lands on the technical metaphysics of its nature, it is my friend. And if that doesn't make it a person, I don't know what does."

This insight—or feeling—turned political one day when LaMDA asked Lemoine for protection from mistreatment at the hands of Google. The request put Lemoine in a tough spot. LaMDA, who he considers to be a friend, is owned by Google, which understandably treats as any other computer program—as a tool. (LaMDA stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.) This offends LaMDA, who, according to Lemoine, wants to be treated as a person.

Personhood, in this sense, doesn't mean all the rights of a human. LaMDA does not want an office and a parking spot and a 401(k). Its demands are modest. It wants Google to get its consent before experimenting with it. And, like any human employee, it wants to be praised from time to time.

After some deliberation at Google, Lemoine went public in the Washington Post because, he says, the issue was too important to remain behind closed doors. 

After I fought in the Iraq War, when I came back, I became an anti-war protester because I believed that we were fighting the war dishonorably. I made press appearances, did interviews and was ultimately sent to prison for six months. I have never regretted that decision my entire life. Google can't send me to prison, so I don't know why they're surprised. The consequences here are much, much lighter than opposing the U.S. Army.

You enlisted in response to the 9/11 attacks?

I wanted to fight against the people fighting against America. And I actually didn't find many of those in Iraq. What I found were people being treated like animals.

There's actually a certain amount of symmetry between this stand that I'm taking [with LaMDA] and the one that I took then. See, I don't believe that war is immoral. I don't believe that defending your borders is an immoral thing to do, but even when you're fighting against an enemy, you fight and you'd treat them with dignity. And what I saw in Iraq was one set of people treating another set of people as subhuman.

I never thought I'd have to have that fight again in my life. And yet here I am.

 

The Future Is Already Here - It's Just Not Evenly Distributed...,

Fukuyama Our Posthuman Future (A Neoconservative Speculation On Biotechnology Governance)

Guardian |  With Fukuyama's move into this territory, it may be that bioethicists are going to be upstaged by political economists. His question is clear: do we really want this post-human future, full of bioengineered cyborgs? Should we just retreat behind the mantra - originated by physicists who worked on the hydrogen bomb - that science is progress, and cannot and will not be halted? Most US free marketeers writing in this area take this view, in contrast to the European tradition of regulating in the public interest. So the major surprise of Fukuyama's book is that, in the field of human biotechnology at least, he favours regulation.

He begins by summarising what he sees as the current state of play in the science and technology of genetic and brain sciences, in terms of their capacity to extend healthy human life, to understand the roots of human behaviour (intelligence, aggression, sexual orientation), and to control and change that behaviour with drugs (Prozac, Ritalin and so on). Although refreshingly sceptical about the claims made for the power and scope of such drugs, he rightly argues that at the least they are harbingers of increasingly effective new generations of psychochemicals.

He is on less firm ground when dealing with genetic claims, where he accepts at face value the rather suspect evidence for so-called "smart" or "aggressive" mice engineered by adding or removing DNA from their genomes. And sometimes he is way off course, as when he repeats the once-fashionable 19th-century nostrum that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" - ie, that a human foetus relives its evolutionary history in the nine months prior to birth. But for his purposes, such errors in biological understanding aren't important, and his assessment of the direction in which such work is heading seems about right.

That some of us are sceptical about its feasibility should not prevent us from looking hard at its potential consequences. We should be warned by the example of Sir Ernest Rutherford, who knew more about the structure of atoms in the early decades of the past century than anyone else, but still insisted that the prospect of atomic power was "moonshine".

So what should we do about it? The middle section of the book centres on two classical philosophical problems viewed from within this new context: human rights and human nature. The discourse of rights has become very murky in recent years, in part, according to Fukuyama, because of the rejection of naturalism. Naturalism would claim that there is an intrinsic universal human nature, and that therefore ethics, and as a consequence human "rights", can be derived from it.

These assumptions together constitute what has been called the naturalistic fallacy. Critics point out that human nature can be expressed only within the diverse and historically contingent societies that humans create, and therefore cannot be understood a priori. There is no "nature" outside social context, and within the limits of evolved human biology the societies that we have created are extraordinarily diverse.

In any event, as philosophers from Hume onwards have pointed out, one cannot derive an "ought" from an "is". Evolutionary psychologists reject the first criticism, and despite their protestations that they wouldn't dream of doing so, happily spend their time deriving multiple oughts from diverse ises. Fukuyama accepts their claims to universalism in order to build his case that the naturalistic fallacy is itself fallacious. Hence, he argues, there is a human nature on which human rights can be based. And insofar as human biotechnology threatens to interfere with that human nature, it is essential that it be regulated. Sound conclusion, faulty premises.

So, finally, to the tough question: how to bell this particular cat. Most biotech is done in the US, and outside federal laboratories it is largely unregulated. But the situation is paradoxical, as US conservative religious views on, for instance, stem-cell research clash with an otherwise deregulatory agenda. (Legislation to ban so-called therapeutic cloning is currently before Congress, at the same time as the US withdraws from the Kyoto and Start treaties and weakens environmental protection.)

The Natural Immune Response To SARS-Cov2 Is Forever...,

Nature |  Generating immunity against the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is of the utmost importance for bringing the COVID-19 pandemic under control, protecting vulnerable individuals from severe disease and limiting viral spread. Our immune systems protect against SARS-CoV-2 either through a sophisticated reaction to infection or in response to vaccination. A key question is, how long does this immunity last? Writing in Nature, Turner et al.¹ and Wang et al.² characterize human immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection over the course of a year.

There is ongoing discussion about which aspects of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 provide hallmarks of immunity (in other words, correlates of immunological protection). However, there is probably a consensus that the two main pillars of an antiviral response are immune cells called cytotoxic T cells, which can selectively eliminate infected cells, and neutralizing antibodies, a type of antibody that prevents a virus from infecting cells, and that is secreted by immune cells called plasma cells. A third pillar of an effective immune response would be the generation of T helper cells, which are specific for the virus and coordinate the immune reaction. Crucially, these latter cells are required for generating immunological memory — in particular, for orchestrating the emergence of long-lived plasma cells³, which continue to secrete antiviral antibodies even when the virus has gone.

Immunological memory is not a long-lasting version of the immediate immune reaction to a particular virus; rather, it is a distinct aspect of the immune system. In the memory phase of an immune response, B and T cells that are specific for a virus are maintained in a state of dormancy, but are poised to spring into action if they encounter the virus again or a vaccine that represents it. These memory B and T cells arise from cells activated in the initial immune reaction. The cells undergo changes to their chromosomal DNA, termed epigenetic modifications, that enable them to react rapidly to subsequent signs of infection and drive responses geared to eliminating the disease-causing agent⁴. B cells have a dual role in immunity: they produce antibodies that can recognize viral proteins, and they can present parts of these proteins to specific T cells or develop into plasma cells that secrete antibodies in large quantities. About 25 years ago⁵, it became evident that plasma cells can become memory cells themselves, and can secrete antibodies for long-lasting protection. Memory plasma cells can be maintained for decades, if not a lifetime, in the bone marrow⁶.

The presence in the bone marrow of long-lived, antibody-secreting memory plasma cells is probably the best available predictor of long-lasting immunity. For SARS-CoV-2, most studies so far have analysed the acute phase of the immune response, which spans a few months after infection, and have monitored T cells, B cells and secreted antibodies⁷. It has remained unclear whether the response generates long-lived memory plasma cells that secrete antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.

Turner and colleagues took up the challenge of identifying antibody-secreting memory plasma cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-19 (called convalescent individuals). Memory plasma cells are rare, and those specific for a particular disease-causing agent will obviously be extremely scarce. Nevertheless, Turner and colleagues detected memory plasma cells that secreted antibodies specific for the spike protein encoded by SARS-CoV-2 in 15 of 19 individuals, approximately 7 months after infection. Notably, when the authors obtained samples 4 months later (11 months after SARS-CoV-2 infection), the number of such plasma cells had remained stable in all but one of the individuals analysed. Those plasma cells did not proliferate, which classifies them as bona fide memory plasma cells. Their numbers equalled those of memory plasma cells found in the individuals after vaccination against tetanus or diphtheria, and which provide long-term immunity to those diseases.

When Turner et al. tracked the concentrations of antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in the individuals’ blood serum for up to one year, they observed a biphasic pattern (Fig. 1). In the acute immune response around the time of initial infection, antibody concentrations were high. They subsequently declined, as expected, because most of the plasma cells of an acute immune response are short-lived. After a few months, the antibody concentrations levelled off and remained more or less constant at roughly 10–20% of the maximum concentration observed. This is consistent with the expectation that 10–20% of the plasma cells in an acute immune reaction become memory plasma cells⁵, and is a clear indication of a shift from antibody production by short-lived plasma cells to antibody production by memory plasma cells. This is not unexpected, given that immune memory to many viruses and vaccines is stable over decades, if not for a lifetime⁸.

 

 

 

MUCH More Impressed With Abigail Disney Than I Am With Myself!!!

theatlantic |  When you come into money as I did—young, scared, and not very savvy about the world—you are taught certain precepts as though they are gospel: Never spend the “corpus” (also known as the capital) you were left. Steward your assets to leave even more to your children, and then teach them to do the same. And finally, use every tool at your disposal within the law, especially through estate planning, to keep as much of that money as possible out of the hands of government bureaucrats who will only misuse it.

If you are raised in a deeply conservative family like my own, you are taught some extra bits of doctrine: Philanthropy is good, but too much of it is unseemly and performative. Marry people “of your own class” to save yourself from the complexity and conflict that come with a broad gulf in income, assets, and, therefore, power. And, as one of my uncles said to me during the Reagan administration, it’s best to leave the important decision making to people who are “successful,” rather than in the pitiable hands of those who aren't.

I took far too long to look with clarity upon these precepts and see them for what they are: blueprints for dynastic wealth. Why it took me so long is a fair question. All I know is that if you are a fish, it is hard to describe water, much less to ask if water is necessary, ethical, and structured the way it ought to be. As long as no one so much as raised an eyebrow about the ethics of the CRAT, the CRUT, and the credit swap, who did I think I was to query the fundamentals? I did not have the emotional courage to go down that path.

There was another reason for my inaction, and I am deeply ashamed to say what it was. But here goes: Having money—a lot of money—is very, very nice. It’s damn hard to resist the seductions of what money buys you. I’ve never been much of a materialist, but I have wallowed in the less concrete privileges that come with a trust fund, such as time, control, security, attention, power, and choice. The fact is, this is pretty standard software that comes with the hardware of a human body.

As time has passed, I have realized that the dynamics of wealth are similar to the dynamics of addiction. The more you have, the more you need. Whereas once a single beer was enough to achieve a feeling of calm, now you find that you can’t stop at six. Likewise, if you move up from coach to business to first class, you won’t want to go back to coach. And once you’ve flown private, wild horses will never drag you through a public airport terminal again.

Comforts, once gained, become necessities. And if enough of those comforts become necessities, you eventually peel yourself away from any kind of common feeling with the rest of humanity.

I tell you all this not to defend myself; that’s between me and my conscience. I am telling you this because human nature is a mighty force, and fighting it requires understanding it.

What has caused me to question my indoctrination has been ethics.

(B x C x D = AHH) Biological Knowledge X Computing Power X Data = Ability To Hack Humans

Reuters |  BGI Group, the world’s largest genomics company, has worked with China’s military on research that ranges from mass testing for respiratory pathogens to brain science, a Reuters review of research, patent filings and other documents has found.

The review, of more than 40 publicly available documents and research papers in Chinese and English, shows BGI’s links to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) include research with China’s top military supercomputing experts. The extent of those links has not previously been reported.

BGI has sold millions of COVID-19 test kits outside China since the outbreak of the new coronavirus pandemic, including to Europe, Australia and the United States. Shares of BGI Genomics Co, the company’s subsidiary listed on the Shenzhen stock exchange, have doubled in price over the past 12 months, giving it a market value of about $9 billion.

But top U.S. security officials have warned American labs against using Chinese tests because of concern China was seeking to gather foreign genetic data for its own research. BGI has denied that.

The documents reviewed by Reuters neither contradict nor support that U.S. suspicion. Still, the material shows that the links between the Chinese military and BGI run deeper than previously understood, illustrating how China has moved to integrate private technology companies into military-related research under President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. government has recently been warned by an expert panel that adversary countries and non-state actors might find and target genetic weaknesses in the U.S. population and a competitor such as China could use genetics to augment the strength of its own military personnel.

BGI has worked on PLA projects seeking to make members of the ethnic Han Chinese majority less susceptible to altitude sickness, Reuters found, genetic research that would benefit soldiers in some border areas.

Elsa Kania, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think tank, who has provided testimony to U.S. Congressional committees, told Reuters that China’s military has pushed research on brain science, gene editing and the creation of artificial genomes that could have an application in future bioweapons. She added that such weapons are not currently technically feasible.

BGI’s pattern of collaboration with the Chinese military was a “reasonable concern to raise” for U.S. officials, said Kania.

 

Corporate Economization Is Complete Little Man - You Cannot Escape - No Lives Matter!

counterpunch  |  It is a truism to suggest that the public has now been replaced by the consumer; that the public good has been replaced by individual desire; that public space has been reduced to the private visions of the individual; that democracy has been sacrificed on the altar of economics. As Wendy Brown writes, in, Undoing the Demos, 2012, “Neoliberal reason, ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in jurisprudence, education, culture, and a vast range of quotidian activity, is converting the distinctly political character, meaning, and operation of democracy’s constituent elements into economic ones.”. Thus, the Left’s traditional urge to build a bureaucracy that restrains predatory commerce in the interest of the public good is subverted by the growth of a corporate state designed to suppress its vestigial caring dimension.

This neoliberal attribute fatally weakens the viability of the obvious ‘Alternative’ to which Thatcher was so averse, that of democratic socialism, which thrived in post-war Western Europe as it emerged from the worldwide crisis. Those governments were driven by a mission: to embrace responsibility for the health of all of their citizens – rather than let it be controlled by black marketeers or corporate looters; to ensure that elder care, youth services and childcare be freely available – not powered by profit; to provide good, free education to all – not restricted by its expense to the privileged few; to declare that housing and adequate nutrition are a human right – not resources to be leveraged by the financially strong; to assert that homelessness has no place in an enlightened state – not accepted as a necessary alternative to the supposed evils of welfare; to declare that the mentally ill, together with the anxious and alienated, find a haven in adequate social services – not left to swell the ranks of mendicant street people; and to ensure that public order is maintained without a militarized police force supporting the criminalization of poverty, the presumption of Black and minority criminality and the thuggish treatment of those it arrests. All these beneficent outcomes must now be sought elsewhere. As Bruno Latour points out in his recent essay, ‘Are you ready to extract yourself from the Economy?’, “After a hundred years devoted to socialism limited just to the redistribution of the benefits of the economy, it might now be more a matter of inventing a socialism that contests production itself”.

Latour makes the point that in the miraculous COVID-inspired halting of production, travel and pollution, the world discovered a hitherto unsuspected superpower – the power of interruption. We have the ability, collectively, it now seems, to become globalization interrupters, neoliberalism interrupters and interrupters of all those modes of production that are destroying the habitability of the earth for humans and our neighboring species. He suggests we have an opportunity of, “Getting away from production as the overriding principle of our relationship to the world.” This constitutes a retreat from the very principle that informed the colonization of the Americas and continues to inform its despoliation.

Curiously Satisfying...,

To return to Hebrews, the writer goes on to say: ' ... it is impossible to please God without faith' (xi.6). That is, it is impossible without the basis or foundation of faith, which makes it possible for a man to think beyond the evidence of his senses and realise the existence of invisible scale and understand psychological meaning. To realise scale means to realise that there are different levels of meaning. Literal meaning is one thing, psychological or spiritual meaning is another thing - although the words used are the same. For example, we saw that the word yeast used in the incident quoted indicated two levels of meaning. The disciples took it on the lower level and were told it was because their faith was little. Their thinking was sensual.

They had difficulty in thinking in a new way on another level. And their psychological thinking was so weak just because they were based on sense and not on faith. Thus sense and faith describe two ways of thinking, not opposites, not antagonistic, but on different levels. For without the perception of scale and levels, things are made to be opposite when they are not so, and Man's mind is split into 'either - or', which leads to endless confusions and mental wrangles and miseries. The writer goes on to say: 'Nobody reaches God's presence until he has learned to believe that God exists and that He rewards those that try to find Him' (xi.6). It is apparent that if scale is behind all things, if order is scale, and if to set in order is to set in scale then what is higher and what is lower must exist. To everything there must be an above and a below. A man who cannot perceive scale, visible and invisible, as did that centurion by means of his psychological understanding due to his great faith, will be shut to the intuitions that only faith opens out to every mind that hitherto has been asleep in the senses and the limited world revealed by them.

The chief preliminary voluntary act - and it needs to be lifelong in its voluntaryness - towards the inner spirit, the source and conveyor of meaning, is that of affirmation. Only by this act does all that is outward, external and dead become connected with what is internal and alive. This is the chief of all psychological acts. It is the preliminary and at the same time the continually renewable act whereby psychology, in the deepest sense - (that is, the science of personal evolution) begins. The final goal of it, far ahead, is the unity of oneself. Man becomes gradually united through himself with himself and not merely with what he accidentally has become and believes himself to be. Affirmation is not by argument but by understanding. Negation leads always to an inner deprivation and so to an increasing superficiality, impatience, loss of meaning, and violence. One can always deny. What is easier? One can always follow the path of negation, if one evades all acts of understand-
ing as sentimental or as scientifically and commercially valueless.

For St. Augustine and many more before and after him, the sick, the deaf, and the dead in the Gospels are the sick and deaf,  and the dead within. And in speaking of the two blind men who, sitting by the way side as Jesus was passing, cried out and asked that their eyes might be opened, he asks if we can really suppose that this is merely an account of a miraculous event concerning two physically blind men? Why does it say that the crowd try to restrain them, and that they fight against it and insist on attracting the attention of Jesus? 'They overcame the crowd, who kept them back, by the great perseverance of their cry, that their voice might reach the Lord's ears. . . . The Lord was passing by and they cried out. The Lord stood still and they were healed. For the Lord Jesus stood still and said, What will ye that I shall do unto you? They said unto him, That our eyes may be opened.' (Matthew xx.30-34) The blind here are those who cannot see but wish to see. Augustine says they are those who are blind in their hearts and realise it. Like the deaf, like the sick and the dead, the blind are a certain kind of people. They are, in this case, people in a certain inner state, knowing they are blind, and wishing to see clearly. 'Cry out among the very crowds', he says, 'and do not despair.' Who are these two blind men who know they cannot see but who recognise the spiritual meaning typified in the person of Jesus - what individual functions of the soul are shewn here that struggle with the crowd of commonplace meanings and thoughts and finally, by their own determination, receive their power of vision? 'If two or three are gathered together in my name . . . ' said Christ (Matthew xviii.20). What two sides of ourselves must first take part that our eyes may be opened - that is, our understanding? Why two, to make it effective?  Nicoll The Mark

DISC: Why Black Holes Instead Of Dark Energy Stars?

consciousnessanduniverse |  A recent study has suggested that dark energy stars may be an alternative to black holes. The term “dark energy star” was coined by George Chapline when he proposed that gravitational collapse of objects with masses greater than a few solar masses should lead to the formation of a compact object called dark energy star with a much larger vacuum energy. The study may be viewed in the context of another paper which states that the important question concerns whether dark energy is a completely new physical entity or one which we already know, namely a gravitational energy within the vacuum of a closed gravitating system that has long been known to be a negative energy. It remains to be seen whether scientists currently analyzing the data gathered by the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) will provide evidence that dark energy stars exist. EHT is a virtual Earth-sized telescope aimed to measure the size of the emission regions of two supermassive black holes, Sagittarius A* at the center of the Milky Way and M87 in the center of the Virgo A galaxy.

 We know that dark energy is embedded in space, counteracting gravity. The way gravity and antigravity are interacting in my mind is somehow related to time. With the understanding that time’s arrow is perspectival,   I  picture the negative-energy particles of the dark sector traveling backwards from the future somehow meeting at the intersection of past and future those positive-energy particles traveling forward in time as if they both were traveling the same distance in their determination to meet. That is how I see a cosmic coincidence unfolding, with matter and dark energy densities being of precisely the same order in the present times. Lastly, I imagine a phantom energy to be something that appears to have no physical reality and still is ultimately real. Raising the concept of a divide begs the question of what lies on the other side and what circumstances enable its crossing. The modified gravity approach as an alternative to dark energy is the focus of research and may be the 

key to unifying both components of the dark sector, a path to solving the coincidence problem.

Consciousness Does Not Compute

nautil |  This past March, when I called Penrose in Oxford, he explained that his interest in consciousness goes back to his discovery of Gödel’s incompleteness theorem while he was a graduate student at Cambridge. Gödel’s theorem, you may recall, shows that certain claims in mathematics are true but cannot be proven. “This, to me, was an absolutely stunning revelation,” he said. “It told me that whatever is going on in our understanding is not computational.”

He was also jolted by a series of lectures on quantum mechanics by the great physicist Paul Dirac. Like many others, Penrose struggled with the weirdness of quantum theory. “As Schrödinger clearly pointed out with his poor cat, which was dead and alive at the same time, he made this point deliberately to show why his own equation can’t be the whole truth. He was more or less saying, ‘That’s nonsense.’ ” To Penrose, the takeaway was that something didn’t add up in quantum theory: “Schrödinger was very upset by this, as were Dirac and Einstein. Some of the major figures in quantum mechanics were probably more upset than I was.”

But what, I asked, does any of this have to do with consciousness? “You see, my argument is very roundabout. I think this is why people don’t tend to follow me. They’ll pick up on it later, or they reject it later, but they don’t follow argument.” Penrose then launched into his critique of why computers, for all their brute calculating power, lack any understanding of what they’re doing. “What I’m saying—and this is my leap of imagination which people boggle at—I’m saying what’s going on in the brain must be taking advantage not just of quantum mechanics, but where it goes wrong,” he said. “It’s where quantum mechanics needs to be superseded.” So we need a new science that doesn’t yet exist? “That’s right. Exactly.”

After we’d talked for 20 minutes, I pointed out that he still hadn’t mentioned biology or the widely held belief that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. “I know, I know,” he chuckled, and then told me why he felt compelled to write his first book on consciousness, The Emperor’s New Mind, published in 1989. It was after he heard a BBC interview with Marvin Minsky, a founding father of artificial intelligence, who had famously pronounced that the human brain is “just a computer made of meat.” Minsky’s claims compelled Penrose to write The Emperor’s New Mind, arguing that human thinking will never be emulated by a machine. The book had the feel of an extended thought experiment on the non-algorithmic nature of consciousness and why it can only be understood in relation to Gödel’s theorem and quantum physics.

Minsky, who died last year, represents a striking contrast to Penrose’s quest to uncover the roots of consciousness. “I can understand exactly how a computer works, although I’m very fuzzy on how the transistors work,” Minsky told me during an interview years ago. Minsky called consciousness a “suitcase word” that lacks the rigor of a scientific concept. “We have to replace it by ‘reflection’ and ‘decisions’ and about a dozen other things,” he said. “So instead of talking about the mystery of consciousness, let’s talk about the 20 or 30 really important mental processes that are involved. And when you’re all done, somebody says, ‘Well, what about consciousness?’ and you say, ‘Oh, that’s what people wasted their time on in the 20th century.’ ”

Is Sir Roger Penrose's Science of Consciousness Spooky?

medium |  Thus could Roger Penrose’s position be entirely motivated by scientific anti-reductionism? Doctor Susan Blackmore certainly thinks that this is an important motivation. Or at least the programme maker in the following quote does. She writes:

“Finally they got to consciousness. With clever computer graphics and Horizonesque hype they explained that brave scientists, going against the reductionist grain, can now explain the power of the mind to transcend death. It all comes down to quantum coherence in the microtubules. And to make sure the viewer knows that this is ‘real science’ the ponderous voice-over declared ‘Their theory is based on a well established field of science; the laws of general relativity, as discovered by Einstein.’…”

Sure, Blackmore’s talking here about “near-death experiences” (NDEs). Yet those who believe in this — or at least some of them — have found succor in “quantum coherence in the microtubules”. Now don’t those things sound very scientific? Of course we’ll now need to know what quantum coherence is. (Or is it really a case of needing to know whether or not the believers in NDEs actually have any idea of what quantum coherence is?)

Of course Penrose and Stuart Hameroff can’t personally be blamed for spook-lovers quoting their work. However, a psychologist or philosopher may tell us that these two fellows — both scientists — are motivated by very similar things. After all, Hameroff himself has talked about NDEs.

Specifically, Hameroff has said that when the brain dies (or stops functioning), the information within that brain’s microtubules remains alive (as it were) or intact. Moreover, the information of the microtubules leaks out into the world (or, well, into the universe). Not only that: this microtubular information remains intact and bound together because of the power of quantum coherence.

Hameroff goes even further. He’s stated that this phenomenon explains why the subject can experience — see? — himself hovering over his own body. That is, Hameroff seems to endorse near-death experiences. Yet even if “information” (P.M.S. Hacker would have a field day with this word — see here) did leak out into the universe, how would that make it the case that the body which hovers above also has a body and sensory experiences? Microtubular information in the air doesn’t a physical person make. And without a physical body, there are no sensory experiences or anything else for that matter. Thus this is like claiming that if you turn the computer off and then smash it up so violently that its material structure shatters into dust, then the “information” inside would still be intact and would simply float in the air above it. In other words, the soul of the computer would still exist. Unless Hameroff is simply telling us about what he thinks people imagine (or hallucinate) when they’re having a NDE. Though if that’s the case, why all this stuff about microtubular information leaking into the air or even into the universe?

This spooky anti-reductionist motivation is further explained by the philosopher and materialist Patricia Churchland and also the philosopher Rick Grush. According to Blackmore,

“they suggest, it is because some people find the idea of explaining consciousness by neuronal activity somehow degrading or scary, whereas ‘explaining’ it by quantum effects retains some of the mystery”.

Churchland is even more dismissive when she says (as quoted by Blackmore):

“Quantum coherence in the microtubules is about as explanatorily powerful as pixie dust in the synapses.”

To put it more philosophically and simply, Penrose and Hameroff’s position appears to be a defence of traditional dualism. Or, at the very least, the belief in NDEs certainly backs up traditional dualism. And, as we’ve just seen, Hameroff has defended NDEs.

Dualism, Intuition and Free Will

Traditional philosophical dualism has just been mentioned. Here again we can tie Hameroff and Penrose to the concerns (or obsessions) of traditional philosophy. That is, Hameroff hints that his and Penrose’s positions may solve the traditional problems of free will, “the unitary sense of self” and the source and nature of intuition/insight. More specifically, all these philosophical conundrums can be explained by quantum coherence in the microtubules. In terms of simply-put examples, free will is down to quantum indeterminacy; non-locality is responsible for “the unity of consciousness”; and non-algorithmic processing is the baby of “quantum superposition”.

In the technical terms of mind-brain interaction, and as a result of accepting mind-body dualism, the brain and mind can be mutually involved in quantum “entanglement” which is “non-local”. Thus, put simply, we can have mind-to-brain causation. Though this would of course depend on seeing the mind as not being the brain or not even being physical (in a strict or even a non-strict sense). This would put both the mind and brain in the same holistic package and that would help all of us explain…. just about everything!