[ExI] Sick of Cyberspace?

Sat Dec 19 20:16:42 UTC 2009

Hi Natasha,

Yes!  Thanks for asking this.  I am sooo sick of 'cyberspace'.  Virtual 
simulated 'realities' are not consciously real, and not really worth 
much, until they are represented by our brain in our conscious 
awareness.  Everyone seems to be talking about mechanical vs chemichal 
vs bioligical... but still all everyone is talking about with all this 
is just cause and effect behavioral properties of such.

When light reflects off of the surface of a strawberry (or anything, 
whether it is mechanical, chemical, biological...), that light is 
behaving in a way that can be mapped back to the causal behavior of the 
surface of the strawberry.  In other words, the light is an abstracted 
representation of this causal property of the strawberry.

Though the light is an abstract representation, it is not fundamentally, 
and especially not phenomenally anything like the surface of that 
strawberry or whatever was the original cause of the perception 
process.  Cause and effect detection and observation (cyberspace is 
still limited to this kind of communication) is blind to any properties 
except causal properties of matter and abstract representations of such.

This ever further abstracting cause and effect chain of perception 
includes the light entering our eyes, the detection of such by the 
retina, and the processing of such by our optic nerve and pre cortical 
neural structures.  The final result of this perception and brain 
processing is our conscious knowledge of the strawberry in the cortex of 
our brain.  The 'causal red' on the surface of the strawberry is very 
different from the 'phenomenal red' which is what our conscious 
knowledge of such is made of.  'Causal red' is a causal property of the 
surface of the strawberry and is the initial cause of the perception 
process, and phenomenal red is a categorically different ineffable 
property of something in our brain.  Phenomenal red is the final result 
of the perception process.  Though 'phenomenal red' is surely a property 
of something in our brain that we already know causally and chemically 
everything about, its phenomenal nature is blind to our cause and effect 
observation.  Though the reflected light is detecting the causal 
properties of the surface of the strawberry, it is completely blind to 
any phenomenal properties such may or may not have.  This fact is 
comonly refereed to as the 'veil of perception', and why we refer to 
such properties as ineffable.

If you have some virtual reality or cyberspace abstract simulation of a 
strawberry abstractly representing only the cause and effect behavioral 
properties, it will forever be lacking this phenomenal red, until a 
brain like ours perceives it as such in a unified conscious, phenomenal 
world of knowledge.

Surely, whatever it is in our brain that has these invisible phenomenal 
properties that we are consciousnley aware of, that our brain uses to 
represent our conscious knowledge with, has a lot to do with chemistry.  
All we know about chemistry today, is what is causally detectable.  But 
surely there is much more to just these causes and effects.

You also brilliantly asked about 'communication', and that is another 
critical part that ignorant people always ignore when they think about 
virtual realities, cyberspace, and so on.  If the theory described in 
the consciousness is representational and real camp (see: 
_http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/88/6_) turns out to be THE ONE, we will 
soon be able to communicate or 'eff' these ineffable properties.  This 
theory predicts and describes how the conscious worlds of awareness in 
our brains will be able to be merged and shared and how effing will work.

When I hug someone, today, I only experience half of what is 
phenomenally happening, and I am blind to the rest of the phenomenal 
knowledge.  In the future, I'll be able to merge my world of conscious 
awarenss, with the person I am hugging, and both of us will be able to 
comunicate, share, eff and experience 100% of the phenomenal 
representations, not just half.

Cyberspace, virtual reality, and everything is, and will forever be, 
nothing of much interest, without that.   I don't want to be uploaded 
into some phenomenally blind 'cyberspace', I look forward to when my 
phenomenal 'spirit' (unlike the most of the rest of my phenomenal 
knowledge, does not have a referent in reality) is able to peirce this 
phenomenal veil of perception, and is finally able to escape from this 
mortal prison wall that is my skull.

I look forward to breaking out into an immortal shared phenomenal world 
where we will finally know not only much more about nature than causal 
properties, not only will we finally have disproved solipsism, solved 
the problem of other minds, and so on and so fourth, but we will finally 
also be able to share what everyone else is phenomenally like and 
experiencing.

Fuck cyberspace, and all the primitive idiots still completely blind to 
anything more, I want effing phenomenal worlds.

Giulio Prisco (2nd email) wrote:
> The mainstream is certainly more open to the concept of
> post-biological life than it was, say, 20 years ago, and this is a
> good outcome in which our combined efforts played a part.
>
> I see the _possibility_of post-biological life as compatible with the
> current scientific paradigm, so I am confident (not certain, but
> confident) it will be achieved someday. Perhaps not as soon as some
> predict, but someday. And I think it is not only doable but also good.
>
> However, we are going to remain stuck with biology for many decades at
> least, probably some centuries, and of course we should try making the
> best of it.
>
> G.
>
> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 5:34 PM, Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc> wrote:
>   
>> This is what I have thought as well, for 20 years, but I am thinking that it
>> is has become just a bit dogmatic.  This could be because it has now gone so
>> mainstream, even folks at TED are discussing it and now there is a
>> university to pomote a watered-down version of it.  BUT, that does not
>> change my view that it is wise to avoid sticking so firmly to an absolute
>> and to always question our premises and consider alternatives as
>> transdiciplinary ideas and new insights.
>>
>> **The chemistry of communication has been crucial for human evolution.  I
>> simply wonder what its future will be.
>>
>> Best,
>> Natasha
>>
>>
>> Nlogo1.tif Natasha Vita-More
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org
>> [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Giulio Prisco
>> (2nd email)
>> Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 2:04 AM
>> To: ExI chat list
>> Subject: Re: [ExI] Sick of Cyberspace?
>>
>> In the long term I see humans merging with AI subsystems and becoming purely
>> computational beings with movable identities based on some or some other
>> kind of physical hardware. I don't think there is any other viable long term
>> choice, not if we want to leave all limits behind and increase our options
>> without bonds.
>>
>> But this will take long. In the meantime there are many other stepping
>> stones to go through, based on improving our biology and gradually merging
>> it with our technology.
>>
>> On Fri, Dec 18, 2009 at 12:19 PM, Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     
>>> 2009/12/17  <natasha at natasha.cc>:
>>>       
>>>> Are we totally locked into cybernetics for evolution? I thought this
>>>> next era was to be about chemistry rather than machines.
>>>>         
>>> I come myself from "wet transhumanism" (bio/cogno), and while I got in
>>> touch with the movement exactly out of curiosity to learn more about
>>> the "hard", "cyber/cyborg" side of things, I am persuased the next era
>>> is still about chemistry, and, that when it will stops being there
>>> will be little difference between the two.
>>>
>>> In other words, if we are becoming machines, machines are becoming
>>> "chemical" and "organic" at an even faster pace (carbon rather than
>>> steel and silicon, biochips, nano...).
>>>
>>> --
>>> Stefano Vaj
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>>>       
>>
>> --
>> Giulio Prisco
>> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Giulio_Prisco
>> aka Eschatoon Magic
>> http://cosmeng.org/index.php/Eschatoon
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>>     
>
>
>
>   