LastThursday

@pablo_aka_god there's definitely a lot of noise in threads. Normally I read or partially read the longer comments, and see if anything gets my interest. Learn to discern who is interesting and who just creates noise and mischief. One line answers or toing and froing between users is usually noise. Also, I just read threads with more interesting titles. If it reads something like "I have become god" or "I opened a set of 1000 women" I roll my eyes and move on to something else. Be ruthless, your time and attention is precious.

@Carl-Richard the YouTube algorithm is conscious, this dropped today, could be of interest to this thread: Ask it? In my opinion it boils down to whether consciousness is just an epiphenomenon, in which case it has no utility. So, it wouldn't have been biologically evolved for (assuming consciousness is only for biology). If consciousness does have utility, then by definition it must affect the system it inhabits - even if subtly - and this could be probed for scientifically. You set up an experiment such that the only way it could pass, is if it had consciousness. In short, what difference does having a useful consciousness make to a system?

@Nercohype I'm half way through. I've never been much bothered about the wrapping, I'm more interested in the candy.

I continue The Process, as I'm calling it. Whilst I've barred myself from documenting the mechanics of it, I'm bending my rules slightly by documenting some of the things that have come up - more as a means of keeping the record. Today it's getting older. Consolidation I've identified what I like to call The Spark. This is what makes me me and there is a sense in which this spark is the one and only constant in my life. I had it when I was a six year old, a nineteen year old, and now a nearly fifty four year old. I'm obsessed with age and mostly the consequences of it. I think I inherited this obsession from my mother who would very often reiterate that she still looked young. To her it was a kind of death to be old. Her outlook was understandable to me because her identity was based in both being a mother and being attractive; she was a peacock (I know wrong sex). She always did her hair, plucked her eyebrows and wore make up even into her seventies, she was very proud of her appearance, unlike her more sloppy son. However, there was no denying that she looked old eventually, and she knew it, but would still fight it. My Spark is an ineffable indivisible point residing nowhere in particular. It seems to be aloof and detached from the workings of the real world where entropy and destruction and death are rife. More than anything in my life that thing has retarded my ageing process. I've come to realise that even if The Spark is detached it is not a passive observer. It modulates my very being in subtle ways. Like my mother I never thought I would get old. I'm watching myself age in real time and it's distressing. I've had many people tell me that I'm young in presentation. My barber thought I was 35, my uncle was surprised when I told him my age (although he should know better, bad uncle!), an ex thought I was under forty when I was 45 (I could see the disappointment lol), my nephew is surprised at how young I am compared to his 55-year-old father. Much like a beautiful woman gets indirect feedback about her beauty, I have to accept the feedback of people around me: I am young still. But I know why I'm young still. Because I've actively worked at staying that way mentally. I have matured in every way and yet I can still pull out youthful energy and excitement when I want to and I'm allowed to. In fact some of the misery I'm wallowing in is that that youthful side of me is not allowed out any more, I'm supposed behave like a wrinkly 53 year old. No. No. And NO! I won't allow it. It is that Spark that has kept me youthful. I've always been very aware of it and it often pulls me back to being a kid and young again. I'm blessed with a very good visual memory and many of my memories of being very young are still there. I believe every time I go back there my physiology responds accordingly retarding the ageing process, if not physically, then mentally and in appearance. My whole life is compressed and scrunched up into that Spark and I feel the entire weight of it at once. I feel that if I at once stopped identifying with it I would suddenly become old and rigid. What to do though? If I am to change through The Process then should I be consciously dicking around with that idea of youth? To some degree youthfulness is immaturity, and as much as I hate to admit it to myself I am immature in some ways for precisely the same reason I am still youthful in some ways - the two are causally connected. Is it maturity I want? Do I need to disconnect myself from youthfulness in order to progress? Does a drug addict need to give up coke to move on? Maybe that's an unfair characterisation of myself. But there is a kind of fear of age and a fear of loss of youth that I'm addicted to. Should I be playing around with my Spark at all in this process? I need to go through death but how much needs to die? The issue is one of holding on to things that don't serve me any more. But the weight of that Spark holds on to everything at once, something needs to give somewhere in order that something else better can replace it. It's an extremely delicate process of cutting where every thread joins on to every other thread - and maybe it's actually impossible to do without collapsing the whole thing. What to do? Do I remove the Spark entirely.

@AION this has happened to me a lot when I was younger. Some older women are more relaxed about flirtation and have greater self confidence and just more experience overall than young women - they were young once themselves. They may also just like younger models, much like some older men do. There's nothing inherently good or bad about it, just because you're older doesn't mean you lose interest in attraction. If you're not interested, then just be polite, enjoy the flirtation for a bit and move on. Don't overthink it.

Saying the same thing again in a different way doesn't make it true. The fact is you don't know. It is not. A human zygote doesn't not represent the organism we descended from for example. Every cell division is a chance at something new. Life is balanced between repetitive order and chaos. Who cares? As I said. Consciousness may arise in more than one way. We don't know. An argument via similarity whilst superficially convincing, doesn't hold water. You would have to assume that all similar things are conscious, but we ultimately have no way of knowing that. But even if it holds, maybe life produces consciousness ever more efficiently through the structures those organisms build. You missed my point. Both a termite mound and AI are natural in that they are produced by life itself. they are inseparable from it, a continuity. Maybe consciousness extends into everything life produces also, assuming all life is conscious, as your argument by similarity implies. The bottom line is you don't know and I don't know enough about consciousness to conclude anything.

@Majed there's humility in knowing what you've shared. It's good to recognise when to quit something that doesn't work for you, and put your energies somewhere else. It's also good to always have in your thoughts "this may not work for me, but I'll see how it goes", it's a much gentler way to go about things.

@Carl-Richard Is a termite mound a natural part of evolution? It is not to do with silicon itself, it is the arrangement and construction which matters. In fact it is more to do with modulating electrons, and more abstractly computation: AI is the leaf in that great information processing tree. It is a product of the human mind, but the human mind is a product of evolution. You argument makes the assumption that the only way to produce consciousness is to have that long history of information processing, but it doesn't necessarily follow. There may be other ways. Indeed it is, but it is only one way to cut the whole.

You're confusing the finger and hand. The entire evolutionary process includes AI, it is the culmination of that process not a tiny part of it. The error is to think of AI as a separate entity, it isn't, it's AI and humanity. A leaf is not the whole tree, but it is the tree.

@Nercohype watching that first video now. Man it's a Leo length monster will get popcorn. The second I've come across before! Good recommendations.

Don't forget that humans and their machines are still the product of that evolution not separate from it. Seen in that light the quest for AI might just be the glimmer of a new thing in evolution. If there is an underlying force guiding things, then what we're producing is part of it, not separate from it.

I'm very wordy lately. It's like the tide coming back in. In my magical workings so far these things have come up: There's mostly a sense of loss as things stand and my current state is one of grieving. Some of the things which made me "me" eroded away over time. I can see the arc of that erosion in hindsight and it was mostly an organic natural process both in my control and out of my control. I think I can and should regain some of those qualities: energy, flirtatiousness (interest), creativity, love of people, humour, optmisism. My grief is making me withdrawn and inactive. There are many other qualities I feel like regaining. There are some things I should shed. I have an inherent almost neurotic neediness to be seen and heard. Being seen instead should just be a natural consequence of those qualities I need to regain - i.e. the motivation for being seen is different, no neuroticism. There is also a strong sense in which I don't feel worthy enough. What is strange for me is that this is at odds with my defiant sense of sovereignty. It's like deep down I'm aware of my inherent self-worth and always have been, but I doubt myself for expressing that with others. I need to shed that doubt. A more difficult thing for me is to have greater discernment in my relationships. I have tended to drift in and out of relationships (all types) very organically. Whilst on the surface that may seem like an ok way to go about things, it has meant that I've fallen into some very dysfunctional relationships. I think I learned to tolerate dysfunctionality and become blind to it from my parents ultimately: they were not bad people, but they were/are very dysfunctional people each in their own different ways. Some of my romantic relationships were dysfunctional in hindsight and yet I continued with them for years. I suspect I'm tolerant of it because some part of me believes I too am dysfunctional and am drawn to it naturally. I will need to be more ruthless about this in future: don't get into dysfunctional relationships, and if I do without realising, don't drag them out. What is dysfunctional in this case? Many things, but primarily lack of openness, bad communication or lack of it, mismatch in needs, aspirations or style (a bit more woolly that one). But also I need to shed this idea that I am dysfunctional at core, I'm not, and the pretence that a beggar can't be a chooser. That is what the Death stage is for in my rituals however: shedding. It's not all bad though. I have managed to keep my intelligence, general openness, and some of my good humour, all high on my list of values. And, my incessant knowledge that through constant change I can become the person I always wanted to be. I have stagnated for far too long.

Your anarchy is my absurdity, I'm in agreement with you. Out of that anarchy something does crystallise however and that is meaningful. You yourself couldn't be less anarchic in your posts there is a deep meaning there.

Some ideas from science

As I said in another post: I would add to that list: Freedom - to be able to express my true self without prejudice or conformity. Sovereignty - to be acknowledged as a being in my own right and not be torn apart. Clarity - to see things as they truly are, to keep on learning and expanding Empathy - to constantly try and understand others in deeper ways Humour - to understand the absurdity of being alive, to choose not to take it all too seriously, to show others "it's ok". Sounds like a company mission statement if you ask me.