Earth As The Possible Genesis Of Universal Collective Consciousness

Humans will expand to the rest of the universe. The sun will rise tomorrow. Both statements are more than 50% likely but not guaranteed. Another 50%+ likelihood is that we'll discover how to exploit zero point energy by the end of this century.  This will allow space vehicles to travel to nearby star systems in about 5 years on average. The current diameter of the universe is about 15 billion light years. In 10% of the age of the universe, mankind could spread all the way to every star system in the current universe. Like a billion fireflies radiating away from a lamp at 99% the speed of light, the spread of humans over various star systems across deep time would turn each "firefly-like" group into species as different physically and socially as we are from owls. 

If this migration does happen then, according to Special Relativity, all of these children of ours who spread to the ends of the universe exist NOW concurrent with our present, but simply "forward" in the fabric of eternally existing spacetime. All of these species will have one thing in common.  Ultrahigh levels of consciousness that enable the exploitation and rapid self evolution of technology and non-synthetic technique. With this, humans and our down-line species will merge technology with instant non-local psychic communication.  This will eventually result in non-local universal computation. Take binary computation as an example.  Let's say that person A exists here on Earth in 10 years and person B exist four light years away on a teraformed satellite of our nearest neighbor star, Alpha Centauri.  Let's say that we have evolved techniques, physiological alterations and mechanical and computational devices that allow telepathic information to be exchanged at high resolution and massive bit rates.  Picture an imaginary merging of technology and psychic ability.  Now imagine that we establish this instantaneous non-local psychic but technologically enhanced link and begin exchanging a enormous torrent of binary data between us that cannot be processed or perceived by our conscious minds.  This exchange is not moving at the speed of light.  It's instant.  Person B's local technological interfaces would then compute the data received from Person A on Earth and then send the new data back via the telepathic instant connection four light years away.  Now imagine 1 billion of these psychic-techno nodes on every star system of the universe in the deep future.  We now have a universal "neural network", a universal scale instantaneous processing computer (if the computation at the local sites is also instant). 

All this may be possible. Imagine that if you took a survey of 1 million humans to rank its plausibility on a scale of 1 - 10, the results would track linearly to age.  The older someone is, the less likely they will rate the plausibility of the above story.  What does this mean for those of you who rate the plausibility high?  Well, for one thing, it means that you need a broader definition of what life is.  If the universal instant computational system above had the ability to be creative and to think and had free will would it be alive?  And of course, the very word "alive" is based on old paradigm definitions and different scientists have different opinions on its exact meaning (although there are consensus views).

And finally, if 1 billion highly conscious evolved species on each one of 10^32 planets in the universe acted as computational nodes and gateways on such a strange instantaneous computational system, could they interface directly with the highest order level of computational awareness, creativity and knowledge that mentioned above?  Could they interface in two general ways:  (1) full submersion interface, where they literally become (for those chosen moments) the collective consciousness of this universal computational intelligence. And (2) partial submersion, where they spend moments interfacing with the collective intelligence while synthesizing it with a portion of their own biological and/or synthetic intelligence.

Of course, some believe there already exists a universal computational intelligence and that we interface with it to differing degrees throughout the day and to differing degrees from person to person.  There may be no reason that we cannot use technique or synthetic technology to make full 100% full submersion interface with this collective consciousness. It's for our future. The inevitable advancement of non-synthetic technique and synthetic technology will bring us to this point.

The most logical source of this collective consciousness is may be staring us right in the face.  It's humans.  If this happens like mentioned above, it started someplace first.  It could be Earth first.  That doesn't mean it can't start somewhere else afterwards or that it hasn't already started somewhere else.  But there's an eerie enigma... As far as we have seen, about 100 billion species have existed on Earth in 3.5 billion years.  And only once has one gone "techno-exponential" and obtained the ability to hijack its own biological evolution, colonize other star systems and question the origin of the universe.  Modern SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) experiments have been going on non-stop since 1960.  And we have not heard any peep of intelligent life anywhere in the universe from this slice of spacetime where we are back to just after the Big Bang.  And we've looked all the way to the end of the universe at the edge of the 15 billion light year horizon.  However, we DO know that exponential high technological life exists in the universe starting right around the year 1900 or 1968 when we went to the moon or right around the time we invented the Internet (you pick a point).  We can now leave the planet and the enabling technologies to do so are exponentially increasing. 

An interesting and logically self-consistent possibility of the source for a universal collective consciousness could be us as the Genesis event that spreads into deep spacetime and then loops back non-locally to connect and interact with us and perhaps even act as the substrate or ground of all reality. Ponder that for a while.

Many Possibilities, Many Realities?

Somewhere in between the 'many worlds' view of, say, David Deutsch, and the idea of a single collapse of the quantum wave function lies my view of the fabric of reality, in which I will elaborate on here.  My gut level feelings were very attuned to the historic story I learned about in the book, "Symmetry and the Monster" by Mark Ronan.  It helped me to get an intuitive feel for abstract possibility spaces in a large orderly base system, such as the Monster or E8. By "possibility spaces", I mean the higher order graph theoretic pathways or even just straight forward random walk pathways that can exist using the confines or "rules" of the nodal relationships of the base system.  It seems that with a large enough base system, all the possible paths and combinations to produce a 'many world's set of possible realities does exist but only as possible "realities", not "realities". 

I believe everything in the universe is purely abstract information, and the highest order emergent systems are consciousnesses.  By applying a fundamental of evolution and self-guided evolution to consciousness itself, once it emerges on a planet, I see it expanding indefinitely.  I see the possibility for many subtle consciousnesses different than how ours (humans) works, and even a type of planetary intelligence, like Gia.  Somewhere in the system over all of spacetime, there would exist a consciousness which is the highest level emergent system of all.  Chances are, this relates to nodes or the amount of base information available to compute itself into existence. For example, the possible pathways available for computing a consciousness in, say, a triangle are less than the intelligence that can emerge when confined to the nodal pathways of E8.  But the largest possible "nodal" set in the universe would be the universe itself across all of spacetime.  And here, I'm not talking about the nodal set of just a symmetric abstract geometric object, like the Monster.  I'm also talking about the set of higher order graph theoretic observed sets emerging from the nodal pathways taken by every other "observer based" information system.  That would be an enormous base information set from which a collective intelligence could emerge. 

So in my view, this highest consciousness is the best candidate for the "substrate" in which the simplest informational objects and algorithms exist.  The simplest abstract objects would be equilateral triangles or even just points.  And these would exist within this collective consciousness in much the same way that you can think of a triangle now and it exists in some abstract thought space.  So it's like the snake eating its tail. The simplest objects, such as the hyper diamond lattice, E8 or an equilateral triangle or tetrahedron are the "tail".  The collective consciousness is the head.  The tail exists within the head but the head itself is an emergent information system that results from the higher order combinatorial information systems that emerge from the tail (the triangles and point like viewing vectors) up to progressively higher order emergent systems. All systems are embedded within one another and influence one another.

Now let's talk about what "is" and "is not" in terms of "reality".  Let's say that before us there exists a 2 x 2 square grid. And you and I, two conscious beings, agree to each observe or imagine a unique pathway that uses each square once.  There are 16 choices in this possibility space.  We each observe one possibility from the 16.  So two realities exist.  In my example, I'm relating reality to one of the axioms that I have at the core of our model, "All that exists is that which is seen".  The simplest seer is the unit of quantized collective consciousness, the viewing vector, which makes co-orchestrated vector choices with the rest of the viewing vectors to form harmonious higher order pattern through the possibility space. 

Now, every human is a higher order seer living on top of an ocean of lower order seers starting with the viewing vectors.  And every human is observing his/her own unique reality or world.  But we're connected and act like a neural network across many humans, like the invisible world wide web global connectivity.  So we're operating both individually in some sense and as a whole in another.  Therefore some of us have very similar realities.  For example, if we were both in the same room, the two of us could navigate through nearly identical reality pathways (assuming a different reality in each Planck moment) by agreement.  But could it be more "scifi" than that? Could the world divide into generally two interesting path groups, where many minds navigate through nearly identical realties by subconscious agreement?  Nothing stays the same.  Socially, things either get a little better or a little worse.  Let's imagine that the world is divided into generally two opinions, those who want to subconsciously navigate through possibility spaces that have turmoil and those Age of Aquarius type folks, who want to navigate into a more utopian set of possibilities.  Again, no two individuals will ever navigate the exact same path through reality space. But these days, we have this tremendous potential for change maybe due to technology or maybe due to an underlying thing like astrology theories.  Or maybe to ideas like Carl Jung, where members of the human species are polarizing into two collective mind camps. They're choosing sides as they coordinate their world views via media and email, etc.  They're forming their expectations and imaginations to choose which group path to take. The Hopi psychic seers envisioned a fork in the road (around now?) of these two pathways. 

My 11 year old son had a psychic experience once where he saw a vision of the Earth splitting into two Earths, like the mitosis of a cell. This is a wild idea. But, if this all is like a sort of group dream, where we don't know we're dreaming as we create this reality and where each individual's dream is similar to the group average dream, then maybe we will create two general styles of group dream, a fun one and a less fun one.  As I said, I think what's happening now is a polarization event, where people are starting to coalesce into groups of the Aquarius reality type and the Apocalypse reality type.  And following the Axiom, "All that exist is that which is seen", these two general reality types will literally exist because they are observed path types in possibility space.  If so, this will be very analogous to my son seeing one Earth become two.  The Age of Aquarius type reality sets will have a very different interrelation or feedback loop with the minds that created it versus the relationship between the Apocalypse reality sets and the seers that create it. The former could be said to be more multidimensional and exist with more harmony and synergy.  More net information will exist, due to the principals of harmony and synergy (simple mathematics).  So like the New Age folks say, it will exist at a higher vibratory level, I suppose. 

This is like the Enoch story.  We will literally go to a different group reality.  In fact, we're all constantly going to different group realities and individual realities. But the polarization of the iron filings will start to look more extreme until perhaps we could even physically not be represented in the Apocalyptic reality.  It would be like we left "that" world.

The invisible neural network between us

Metaphorically speaking, all of physical reality is rigged as a neural network and the collective consciousness is the current of electricity running through it.  Just as an analogy, imagine that within a neural network of three computers there is a yottahertz frequency (1,048,576 x exahertz) that contains an otherworldly volume of information, perhaps the information of a very large system.  But let's say that the logic gates and circuits of the three computers are running at fantastically lower processing speed than the yottahertz frequency because something like a slow-light soliton is moving through them.  The slow-light can carry different packages of information without destroying the yottahertz information way, way beneath it.  Now, let's say that the neural network of the three computers is invisible, i.e. no wires and no wifi type frequency in the domains our technology is capable of measuring.   So now, mysteriously, these three computers are connected and can process information together (secretly and silently) via their neural network, perhaps even using the atomic lattices in the various materials of the slow computers as a computational substrate.  It doesn't take much imagination to speculate on an interface, where the high frequency yottahertz information can be stepped down and where the low frequency information can be stepped up.  Roger Penrose and Stuart Hammeroff invented a cascade process for this purpose in their orchestrated object reduction theory of quantum consciousness.  It is intriguing that the pitch to diameter ratio of the helices in the microtubules is the Golden Ratio.  The Penrose/Hammeroff model theorizes quantum computing within a 3D Golden Ratio geometric object.   Very interesting.

As conscious beings, we're constantly tuning into one another.  Maybe if we open our hearts and minds to what each other is saying while trying to be in tune with their point of view, we will create a psychic bridge, where we better activate the invisible neural network between us and also better access the collective consciousness.  If that were the case, one's syntax and the flow, content and order of ideas might be subconsciously designed to connect with the other so that through us, the universe ends up creating a higher order combinatorial thought or compromise or connection. Just a thought..

Our Past, Present and Future Always Exist Across Space-Time

Here's an idea that you might find thought provoking:

If we could explain for a layperson exactly what mind blowing revelation that Einstein gave the world and is most famous among scientists for, it would go like this:

Einstein proved that the future literally exists now.  And he showed that the past continues to exist.  Space-time is like a loaf of bread where each slice is a different still freeze frame of the universe.  The whole loaf exists now, but we are observing our way through just one slice at a time, so it seems to us like the slices ahead of us do not exist yet.  Einstein also proved that time travel is possible (although he didn't believe likely).  He and his collaborators developed the concept of the wormhole.  There are no theoretical physicists today who would dare to say that the future does not exist now.  They will admit that reality exists all at once across all times.  It's more similar to a DVD of a movie, where you can skip to chapter 11 and it will seem as if the characters are really moving in real time and that their future and past also do not exist.  But of course, it's just a DVD, so your knowledge tells you that their future and past do exit on the DVD.  But a primitive man of 120 years ago would be convinced that he is peering through a strange window that you have shown him so you can spy on people in real time.

So what is so very profound and interesting about this discover of Einstein?

Well, now combine the ideas of Ray Kurtzweil, who believes that in less than one more generation, we will actually have the power of StarTrek technology and beyond, since that show is so old and didn't even predict key technologies we already have.  Specifically, in 40 years, Moors' law could increase computer processing capacity 3.2 million times past the level where it's at now.  Let's say a new consumer CPU today computes at 3 Ghz per second.  3.2 million times that level is just mindboggling.  Will Moors' law hold?  It doesn't matter because it can slow down and still be mindboggling.  And it's not just computer capacity that is behaving exponentially.  The exchange of information in science and the rate of new inventions and scientific discoveries are behaving similarly. 

Now, one of the most intriguing ideas of StarTrek level technology in our lifetimes is the inevitable merging of synthetic creativity, intelligence and learning with our biological intelligence, leaving evolution in the dust.

Another realistic idea is the fact that an entire human mind and awareness can conceivably be transmitted digitally from one location to the next at the speed of light and then reconstituted molecularly.  Does this seem farfetched for us?  Yes, but not as farfetched for a 20 year old nanotechnology and mathematics PhD candidate. And of course, for us it's less farfetched than it would be for our parents.  And it will be less farfetched 10 years from now, that's for sure.

So why bring this up?  Well, because once you can move a mind at the speed of light, like I'm talking about, you are literally changing that mind's position in time, not just space.  That's the mindboggling thing Einstein proved about space-time.  How about faster than light travel?  Well, there's a well known and completely unexplained phenomena in physics experiments called particle coupling.  Basically what happens is that a particle that is coupled with its partner behaves in tandem with that partner, regardless of the distance between them.  I'll use a macro scale example to make it more simple.  Let's say that my watch is a particle and I synchronize it with your watch.  Now let's say that I move your watch to the next galaxy and I change the time on my watch from, say, 12 pm to 3 pm.  According to well confirmed experiments, your watch would simultaneously change to 3 pm.  This doesn't occur at the speed of light, though, it's instant!  It's as though the two watches are communicating instantly, like they're the same watch.  The most well agreed upon theories on how this could be possible say that space-time is not as "local" as we are led to believe by our senses and logic.   As a side analogy, remember the movie The Matrix?  When Neo was fighting  Morpheous in the training simulator at a distance of two feet away from the fists of Morpheous, how much actual space was there?  Of course zero.  It didn’t' exist.  Or did it?  Was anything there at all?  Of course there was.  There was the INFORMATION of two feet between Neo's face and Morpheous' fist.  And that information is completely 100% real.  In fact, some physicists, like MIT professor Max Tegmark believe that the universe is actually made of information, i.e., mathematics, and that there is no magic stuff of "energy" or "space".   He says mathematics doesn't describe space and energy.  It is space and energy.  This is our belief too, and it's held by many other heavy weights besides Prof Tegmark.

Your future literally exists now.  You don't know how to access it and neither do we.  But there is a hyper-intelligence-augmented or at least wiser and older version of you that literally exists in the universe across this space-time continuum of Einstein, if you don't die tomorrow. 

We believe that the undiscovered solution to what really lies at the heart of quantum physics and the true fabric of reality will reveal a completely scientific explanation for well documented phenomena of remote viewing (the CIA admitted to using it), telepathy, the 100th Monkey Effect phenomena, etc.  The published studies on this stuff in well respected journals is voluminous.  These studies verify the existence of psychic phenomena but of course don't offer any explanations on how it could possibly work.  That is the job of quantum physics.  But physicists need not attack the problem of explaining the phenomena directly.  Our species simply needs to discover exactly what the deepest fabric of realty really is and how it works.  The answer to some of these seemingly spooky questions will simply come out in the process and will no longer be voodoo.

Here's a provocative question:  If it turns out that the universe is made of information and not some magic "stuff" of space or energy, then can information be destroyed?  It turns out that information cannot be destroyed.  For example, the original 1950's broadcasts of I Love Lucy are still transmitting in 100% original fidelity about 50 light years away from us now.  As discussed, the future and the past exist concurrently with what we call the present.  So those units of space-time cannot be destroyed.  Now, here in what you call your present, there's a high level set of dynamic information that we call "the mind of (insert your name - yes you, the reader)".  That information group is what you call your consciousness.  But how does your consciousness at this instant right now connect through space-time to your consciousness two minutes or two decades from now?  Space-time is connected, that's not voodoo science.  But is there a coherent system of consciousness of You that exists across space-time and is made in part from some of the dynamic systems that you continue to call your "now" then a moment later you call your "past"?  It is logical that there could be a synthesis of these different "nows" in the information-sphere of space-time?   And if "networked" higher aspect of your consciousness could exist over multiple units of space-time as a sort of super-consciousness, what would it be like?  Is it smarter than the one you're familiar with?  Do you inter-resonate with it all the time?  And does its existence require the existence of the You in a physical body?  Does it continue to exist in space-time like those broadcasts of I Love Lucy?  And if so, does it continue to self-organize with new emergent behaviors just the way your littler dynamic system of consciousness does down here on chapter 11 of the DVD of space-time?   

Discovering the substructure of reality and the link to consciousness

We recently attended a conference called, "Towards a Science of Consciousness", that was filled with physicists and consciousness researchers.  There's a nut to crack at the crossroad of quantum theory and consciousness. We've reached the point where retro-causality and premonition studies at ivy league universities have pretty much proven that these two things exist as an established phenomena.  It was amazing to see all these heavyweights from major Universities at the conference talking about how this is a proven fact and trying to grapple with the explanation of how and the implications.  An undiscovered "revised quantum physics" was evoked over and over as an explanation.

A study example would be one where a quantum random number generator picks an image for a subject. The images vary, but three examples of the types would be a baby, a snake and a nude person.  Each would cause the subject's body to undergo a particular physiological response. It was found that, let's say, four full seconds prior to the computer randomly choosing an image, that the subject's body would display the particular physiological response associated with that image. So apparently, the human mind is continuously scanning information forward in time to process its next choices of observation and action.  The studies show that the effect does not drop off with time.  So it doesn't matter if it's four minutes or four weeks.  Plus, the mind is continuously interacting in a weird causal way with the physical environment.  Take another example, the double slit experiment.  There are other experiments they talked about at the conference that prove the phenomena of the mind constantly impacting the environment in weird ways not explained yet by traditional models.

We will imply that if our species discovers the true geometric mathematics of the interface between consciousness and reality at the very smallest Planck scale substructure of space time, it will change everything.  It will give us godlike control over spacetime and matter.  And this will free the species from the old habit of competition over resources and will help us break free of the limitations caused by our survival of the fittest competitive roots. 

So what will we do all day when we have such control over physical reality? Perhaps people will invest their time into a new form of dogma free spiritual exploration that is based on the science around the uncovering of the fabric of reality.  And then there'd probably be more people using artistic self expression since they'd have the time.  And then of course, people will have more time for the pure pursuit of knowledge just for the fun of discovery.     And the pursuit of knowledge will be combined with creativity and will follow the exponential rate that we see now.  So obviously, it's already started even before discovering the substructure of reality and the link to consciousness. 

Here's the kicker…

If the eclipse experiments and other tests of special relativity are correct, then it's a proven phenomena that this singularity of discovering the fabric of reality itself actually exists just forward somewhere in space-time.  It could be a year or it could be much longer.  But it literally exists, concurrent with this area of space-time.  One thing that quantum mechanics proves experimentally is non-locality being part of the core of reality.  So from what we know from these two incomplete but powerful theories (special relativity and QM) is that there's no law we know of to prevent exchange of information with your future.  Non-local effects are not mediated by photons and there's no issue with the speed of light.  In particle physics, the non local phenomena are instantaneous.  And if it's a big event in the road ahead of us in space-time, like the species going through a singularity, then our minds should start picking up on fuzzy intuitions about that event more and more as we approach it.

Exponential and Punctuated Evolution

This brief essay connects exponential technology growth to the coming changes in the level of bigotry in the world. We propose that the reason exponential technology is able to exist is because the human mind is capable of massive and overnight belief mutation. In fact, each evolutionary ratchet forward of technology requires a slight belief modification. And so far, there appears to be no upward bound on the rate of belief change that the human mind is capable of.

We sometimes talk about the possibility that the world can be a much better place in a short period of time. Some people believe serious deep rooted social change happens only gradually, as new generations of more tolerant young people take over the dashboard of government and business control.

While that slower process plays a major role in how society evolves, there are two other important factors:

Exponential Factors - With ever increasing frequency, our society is interacting in a feedback loop with our technology. Policy makers and public office candidates can take opinion polls in hours and respond to that data with modified policy proposals. We can organize political revolutions via the Internet in days, such as we saw in Egypt. Raw and uncensored news flows around the neural network of the World Wide Web so fast now that those in power often consider taking a fresh new approach… honesty, equity and transparency. Sure, if you're convinced that things generally stay the same or change very slowly, you can say that such positive behavior changes don't run deep and that we're merely seeing old behaviors dressed up in new clothes as selfish and bigoted people shift their behavior to avoid losing control. That's surely true in many cases. But something else is happening. Social scientists are now seeing evidence that social programming, such as learned prejudice towards gay people, is much more plastic and able to rapidly adapt than older social theories predict.

Punctuation Events - Of course, we know that biological evolution interacts with itself in feedback loops, two of which are long and short cycle loops. The long cycle loop is slow. As life competes for limited resources, it relies on genetic mutations to better adapt each new genus and species to slow growth environmental change, such as climate patterns, ocean water levels, salinity levels, tectonic plate movement, etc. The new genuses and species then act upon the slow evolutionary processes to further guide new mutations, ergo a "feedback loop". The short cycle feedback loop comes from abrupt "out of nowhere" environmental change, i.e., "punctuation events". For example, an asteroid impact can dramatically change the Co2 level of the atmosphere within 24 hours. Life rapidly responds, with certain species showing a higher propensity to adapt and change behavior without the need for genetic mutation. The rapid "overnight" behavior mutations in these groups allows members to survive. In other words, successful survivors of "punctuation event" environmental change tend to have more plasticity in their behavior patterns. There are many examples of this in nature. But humans are by far the most successful species at rapid behavior mutation (e.g., ice skating) without the need for physiological genetic adaptation/modification. We're literally built to change our behaviors and our minds… quickly. Yes, we're correlating behavior mutation to belief mutation.

We propose that the exponential growth of human technology itself will be viewed by future historians as the most significant punctuation event guiding belief mutation in human history. This exponential technology "thing" has a life of its own in many ways. For example, stock markets, fashion waves and the changing body of scientific knowledge in rapidly morphing fields, such as genetics, are examples of evolving systems that have a dynamical pattern, but which is not easily predicted. These emergent systems tend to be fairly autonomous and free of central control from any person or group. At an increasing rate, this emergent informational "life form" is relying upon and exploiting our natural evolutionary ability to rapidly change… i.e., our powerful survival skill of behavior and belief plasticity. Beliefs quickly come to mirror behaviors just as behaviors come to mirror beliefs. And every set of behaviors has a set of beliefs associated with it. So an individual or a society's belief plasticity and behavior plasticity both reinforce and mirror one another. Obviously, the rate of belief plasticity in such a system determines the rate of behavior evolution.

As an example of rapid dogma change, consider this quote from a May 20, 2012 article by the executive editor of Bloomberg News, Albert Hunt:

"…public opinion is moving inexorably toward greater tolerance. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll is instructive: In the middle of the 2004 presidential election, the public, by better than a 2- to-1 margin, opposed same-sex marriages. This year, in the same poll, on the same question, a plurality favored it."

Think carefully about that. The gay marriage issue is something emotionally rooted into the mesh of supposedly fast held American beliefs, most generally emanating from learned religious dogma. So then how is it that an issue so influenced by religion and so deeply "learned" can undergo such a dramatic public belief shift in just a few years? This is a brilliant scientifically controlled example of how humans are far more comfortable and capable of changing their deeply held beliefs than we give ourselves credit for.

So what's another way to think about all this? We like to talk about how our understanding of the universe is exponentially changing, along with our resulting technologies. But how about playing with words and wondering, "Could the human species be embarking upon an evolutionary punctuation event with regard to social tolerance? In less than one generation, will we witness an exponential rate of change of bigotry and intolerance, such that hateful views towards gay marriage in, say, five years will be as rare as it is today for people to believe that slavery or forcing African Americans to sit at the back of the bus is ethical?"

If you too conclude that the human skill of belief plasticity is the engine allowing exponential technology growth to exist (advances in science require rapid belief change), then you might also conclude that our new global network of minds connected via the Internet currently has us "locked and loaded" for a massive paradigm shift to be communicated… a large scale belief mutation. If in fact tolerance, service to others and equality were more advantageous for society and its emergent systems of behavior (such as technology) than survival of the fittest based competition for limited resources, then it's only a matter of time before a "best practices" paradigm shift of global behavior takes root via simple evolution. And when it does, it's fair to expect it to occur with blinding speed, due to the increasing tendency towards rapid change of all systems, which we have been exhibiting globally as of late. And those best practice behavior changes will be mirrored by belief changes and vice versa. So what about the ideas of emerging abundance, as outlined in Peter Diamandis' book, Abundance? How would that influence this evolutionary shift in beliefs? Clearly, this is a second contributing factor to the best practices paradigm shift we're talking about. Let us argue for inevitability. We propose that even without technology enabled abundance of resources, our species is capable of (and the system would inevitably evolve to) a shift to a less selfish and more tolerant society. It better ensures survival. But considering the fact that abundance is also virtually inevitable, such a paradigm shift of beliefs towards kindness and tolerance is a slam dunk.

The World is Changing Right Before our Eyes

One thing is for sure, the rate of change itself is changing, and in many cases exponentially. In such a state of unprecedented change, it's difficult to predict what will happen using old paradigms and previous patterns of behavior or current systems, economies and rules. One of the most serious unprecedented changes is the virtual democratization and cost elimination of communication via the Internet. Never before have so many conversations and exchanges of information taken place on such a delocalized level. It is this collective and free world conversation at the level of the poor and the average income person that is empowering. And we've only seen the beginning of where this is taking us. It will make it increasingly difficult for those in power to manipulate people. Anything is possible. But there are some wildcards due to the unprecedented nature of this change. Optimism and proactive choices are important, we think.

There is a book called Abundance by Peter Diamandis, who started Singularity University. Here's a two minute video about it by a fan of the book.

And here's a 16 minute TED talk by Peter Diamandis on the book:

http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future.html


Singularity University is about the optimism we can look to as the human species goes through this exponential change event that we're just heading into now. Things that are costly today, will be made less scarce and therefore less costly due to exponential technologies. Energy is one great example. If our group doesn't make contributions there, others will. If a widespread easy to adopt low cost energy technology becomes free to all, then massive redistributions of power and wealth to all people can occur. This is exactly happening with information, which used to be for the wealthy who could afford it. Now it's virtually free. One by one, future technologies, such as nano-technology, will render things which used to be costly to the point where they're virtually free or orders of magnitude cheaper. And in such a new world, things such as cheap Chinese manual labor or high US wealth will become less important than they are now. The playing field of what is important will change dramatically.

What is happening right now with the human species is a grand and uncontrollable experiment that no one knows the outcome of and no one can control. Rich old men in cigar filled rooms will not control the future that we see.

Is everything made solely of information or is there some mysterious absolute energy or 'stuff' of space and energy?

There is an interesting scientific deduction that everything could literally be made of consciousness. It begins first with the easy question to think about: "Is everything made solely of information or is there some mysterious absolute energy or 'stuff' of space and energy." Many scientists, such as Max Tegmark, professor of physics at MIT, believe that everything is literally made of information. Remember the movie, The Matrix? That is a helpful analogy, where you can think about how in that reality, people invented machines, wrote poems, went to college, had kids, chose a life as a homeless person, etc. But all of those information events of life and space and energy happened in a one dimensional system of zeros and ones (binary computer code). There was never any actual space of, say, two feet between a man and the fireplace where he warmed his hands. There was never any actual energy of the fire. It was all pure abstract information. But it formed a perfectly reliable and realistic reality. Many scientists have come to this conclusion that that everything is abstract information by logical deduction. Now, if you reach that deduction, you can then acknowledge that one of the highest order or more complex systems of abstract information is human consciousness (it's the highest that we know of so far). Next, you can apply the principal of evolution, which does not merely occur in biological systems, it occurs throughout the universe in all information systems. So taking consciousness as one of those information systems, what is the upward limit of how it can evolve? Can group consciousness emerge, the way all the computers of the world created a collective mind in the movie The Matrix? There actually would be no upward evolutionary limit.

The Hameroff Penrose theory of consciousness emerging via a "quantum computing" process in the brain is very well known and nicely controversial with brilliant minds on both sides. Here is a video that explains it. This model speculates that consciousness can exist outside of the human brain, which of course begins to sound "spiritual". There is an interesting crossroads, where the issues of spirituality and philosophy converge with the answers being sought by theoretical physicists seeking an understanding of what the fabric of reality is like at the smallest scales.

The Massive Influence of Information Technology

Today, a back woods tribesman in Africa with a satellite connected smart phone has access to more information than the president of the US had 20 years ago. Today, the richest man in the world has about the same access to information and understanding of the world as a junior college student using the Internet to research in the school library. It obviously was not like that in the past, when rich and powerful men controlled access to information for their benefit. 

As material things themselves, via nano technology for example, move into the category of information technology, which is itself rocketing towards almost scary heights due to exponential evolution, you will see many examples of "aluminum" again. The front cover of Peter Diamandis' book, "Abundance", is an aluminum foil wrapper. A mere 100 years ago it was more rare and precious than platinum.  The King of Siam, for example, would have aluminum forks and knives, while his noblemen would use silver. And all the other people at the table would have to use a lesser metal. Then things changed and aluminum literally had the value of dirt as people discarded it in their kitchen trash cans. It was due essentially to information.  Science discovered electrolysis and figured out how to rearrange the molecules in such a way to produce aluminum for virtually free. As we look towards decentralization and lowering of costs of all things as, one by one, everything moves into the category of information technology. 

We're in the middle of a fundamental paradigm shift, where one by one, industries and sciences are being converted to or massively influenced by information technology.  The premise at company called Scanadu is that health care is turning into an information technology and as such, it now (1) rides the wave of exponential growth in processing speed and memory capacity and (2) it progressively moves towards being dirt cheap.  This trend is so powerful and picking up so much steam across all aspects of society and technology and science that you anyone interested should invest time to read Ray Kurzweil's "The Singularity Is Near" and Peter Diamandis' book "Abundance".  Both books are focused on hard trend data.

What is it all leading to?  It's leading to a titanic shift of economies.  Or put differently, the economic systems and control groups people are rightly complaining about are soon to be washed out with the tide.  It's hard to argue this clearly without getting some background research by picking up a couple books like the ones above.  Some of the smartest scientists and leaders in the world have come to these conclusions as of late.  It's a powerful new way to look at the future and act in the now.

There is a powerful new physics which can be discovered mathematically and through imagination, just as Einstein did.  We realize that we're talking about particle physics now.  But we have a gut feel that the idea of using ultra expensive particle accelerators might seem barbaric by future scientists "on the other side" of the time divide between now and when our species discovers a deep fundamental geometry and algorithm of change at the Planck scale of reality.  If it is true that this discovery can be made purely through mathematics and creativity, then the question is whether or not there are experimental techniques that can be derived from that future understanding which are more elegant and far less costly than smashing together particles and watching the resulting ballistic patterns.  We'll go out on a limb and say that FOR SURE in the future there will be a more elegant and cheaper experimental way to probe these ultra small scales of reality.  

A New Source of Energy Could Allow Life to Spread to Other Planets

We predict that our species will seed intelligent life throughout the cosmos.  Whether we are the first to do it in our galaxy or even the universe is a matter of debate.  But the prediction that we will be the first to spread intelligent life throughout our solar system is, of course, generally agreed on.  With zero friction, there's no problem building up acceleration of a spacecraft to a significant fraction of the speed of light.  The problem is carrying enough fuel on a spacecraft to do that. 

An invention of an energy device that can support further space exploration, allowing life to spread to other planets, will greatly reduce the possibility that the human species can go extinct and will ensure our evolution.  Obviously if our species, and even significant transplants of other members of our biosphere, are seeded on a large number of other planets, it will be less likely that problems on one planet can completely eliminate the entire species across all planets.  There are suns with planets close to our solar system that can be reached in as little as four years if energy can be produced from the constantly changing structured vacuum. 

So extremely low cost energy and the replacement of carbon fuels and nuclear energy will turn out to have been just cute and nice and helpful by comparison to how an invention of this magnitude will impact space travel and the seeding of highly conscious life and ultra technology throughout our region of the cosmos.

If you believe in the basic tenants of special relativity, then you have to acknowledge that if our species does not destroy itself or our culture of modern science, then exponential technological evolution takes us to a place unrecognizable in 100 years and then 1,000 years and so on.  And per special relativity, each of those times and sets of events EXISTS NOW just forward in the preexisting fabric of spacetime.  It's a bizarre thought to realize that special relativity has been tested and the idea that the future exists concurrent with the now is agreed on by nearly all physicists.  What is far more debated is whether or not what little we know about quantum non-locality would permit communication with such futures.

So here is a link:

Peter D., Larry Page and a few others of the people who started Singularity University have announced a company that is going to mine space for resources.  Watch this short video. 

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/james-cameron-google-founder-billionaires-mine-asteroids/story?id=16186817#.T5Y0caumi5J

2012: Could our mere beliefs about the future create that outcome?

Our world is accelerating towards a big event... a major change.  Some feel this big event relates to 2012 cataclysms of a “Mad Max” world of ecological destruction, where mankind goes one step too far in the plundering of our planet’s natural resources. And still others foresee a tipping point, where the changes brought about the internet will be eclipsed by the power and speed of the next wave of technology, perhaps involving genetics, nantechnology and artificial intelligence.

But many sense that this coming change will be a new age of harmony for our species, like the Age of Aquarius. One thing is clear, though. The majority the 6.7 billion people on earth today sense that something big is about to happen.

So what do you think will happen?

And does it matter what you believe?

Christians say that mere belief or faith in something can make it occur. Buddhists believe that reality and our perception of reality are exactly the same. Is reality more like a dream where if you believe you can fly, you actually do? A growing body of scientific studies from around the world confirms that these spiritual ideas may have a firm theoretic ground in physics. For example, a “placebo controlled clinical study” means that the power of belief is proven in pharmaceutical drug test. The mind can actually heal the body if the patient merely believes she swallowed the pill with a drug in it. Even if there is nothing in the pill.

According to the most well tested theory in physics, Quantum Mechanics, your consciousness changes reality. In this theory, the phenomenon known as “the collapse of quantum wave function” is what brings reality into existence. This is a fancy way of saying that one’s conscious observation of small unseen waves actually causes those waves to “collapse” into matter. In other words, conscious observation materializes particles into existence.

So if we believe that we will experience 2012 cataclysms, could this tip the scale and cause such possibilities to occur? Is it possible that we can heal our planet and prevent such cataclysms? Could we visualize world peace into existence through massive pulses of belief transmitted by millions of people from around the world? The best guess from quantum physicists is, “yes, probably”. So it’s your choice. You can create your reality just like you subconsciously create your dreams every night. However, if you are oblivious to this ability, then your life is like a flag being blown in the wind…you’re like a passenger riding on a train going in circles. Imagine the whole planet being hit with the surprising understanding that reality is exactly like a group dream, where there are two ways to exist. The first way is how we’ve dreamed for eons; the lie in which we’ve relinquished our reality control and been pushed around by our nightmares and limitations. The new way will be to wake up and take control and fly together in a new fearless reality in a harmonious world that we all co-create like a beautiful group mosaic.