[ExI] Man’s Greatest Achievement – Nikola Tesla on Akashic engineering and the future of humanity

[Anders Sandberg]

(Short version: I dig the panegyrics, but I don't think he is actually 
saying anything spiritual... despite trying.)

Is the word "Akashic" really doing any work here, besides denoting 
something all-encompassing? While I like Tesla's cosmist sentiments, I 
think there is a risk that one goes down a path of mythologizing things 
that are best understood in a non-mythological framework.

As an example, if I started to use the word "karma" to denote market 
outcomes, I could say things like "Labor karma is shorthand for worker 
(never employer) variables that are often considered endogeneous in a 
labor market regression." or "Market failure is a situation in which the 
karma is blocked." By using the same word as used in religion, I add an 
air of destiny and rightness to the market outcomes - clearly any 
ideology that tries to subvert them must be spiritually bad! But it is 
just a word. Many have of course criticized the concept of the 
"invisible hand" on these grounds, arguing it adds a religious bent to 
what should be a discussion of emergent orders.

When Tesla says:
> Long ago he recognized that all perceptible matter comes from a 
> primary substance, of a tenuity beyond conception and filling all 
> space – the Akasha or luminiferous ether – which is acted upon by the 
> life-giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never 
> ending cycles, all things and phenomena.
he is talking about something - the luminiferous ether - that we now 
know does not exist. We can of course transplant/save his statement to 
relate to the electromagnetic field, or more properly the universal 
wavefunction. But is that really the same statement any more? We may say 
the ancients had no clue about the ether either, so it is all metaphors 
for whatever the fundamental stuff of reality actually is. But then 
Prana/creative force just means "that which acts on the fundamental 
force", and we have no real clue to what it is, what properties it has, 
or whether it is anywhere close to the kind of creative cosmist 
engineering Tesla envisions. In fact, we do not have any evidence that 
we can manipulate the universal wavefunction in any way whatsoever. Nor 
do we have any reason to think that the Akhasha and Prana in this sense 
has anything to do with our own spiritual aims, just like few today 
think that electricity is inherently spiritual.

To me, it seems that Tesla is saying "we are learning to control these 
fundamental forces, and in the future we will do awesome things with 
them!" - which I totally agree with. But he is not saying much about the 
spiritual meaning by using his words. The most relevant spiritual thing 
is the brief mention of destiny near the end, which is the tie-in to 
proper teleology.


-- 
Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University