Can we ever reverse-engineer our thinking? This is one of the questions addressed in my new cinematic documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind making a splash around the world. The film is now available for viewing on demand on Vimeo, Plex, Tubi, Social Club TV and other global networks with its worldwide premiere aired on June 8, 2021. This is my take on the nature of consciousness and reverse engineering of our mental faculties in order to create AGI. Enjoy!

#Consciousness #Evolution #Mind #Documentary #Film #Introduction

A new documentary film Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind is now available for viewing on demand on Vimeo, Plex, Tubi, Social Club TV and other global networks with its worldwide premiere aired on June 8, 2021. This is a futurist’s take on the nature of consciousness and reverse engineering of our thinking. Hosted by the author of the book upon which the film is based ― The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution by Alex M. Vikoulov.

[Transcript} Hi! My name is Alex Vikoulov, I’m a futurist, evolutionary cyberneticist and philosopher of mind. In this film, you’re about to come across certain novel ideas and concepts that go beyond conventionality and some views of mainstream academia, so I urge you to keep an open mind! In this documentary I report my own findings and research along with certain logically consistent metaphysical extrapolations.

In search for a unifying quantum gravity theory that would reconcile general relativity with quantum theory, it turns out quantum theory is more fundamental, after all. Quantum mechanical principles, some physicists argue, apply to all of reality (not only the realm of ultra-tiny), and numerous experiments confirm that assumption. After a century of Einsteinian relativistic physics gone unchallenged, a new kid of the block, Computational Physics, one of the frontrunners for quantum gravity, states that spacetime is a flat-out illusion and that what we call physical reality is actually a construct of information within [quantum neural] networks of conscious agents. In light of the physics of information, computational physicists eye a new theory as an “It from Qubit” offspring, necessarily incorporating consciousness in the new theoretic models and deeming spacetime, mass-energy as well as gravity emergent from information processing.

In fact, I expand on foundations of such new physics of information, also referred to as [Quantum] Computational Physics, Quantum Informatics, Digital Physics, and Pancomputationalism, in my recent book The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution. The Cybernetic Theory of Mind I’m currently developing is based on reversible quantum computing and projective geometry at large. This ontological model, a “theory of everything” of mine, agrees with certain quantum gravity contenders, such as M-Theory on fractal dimensionality and Emergence Theory on the code-theoretic ontology, but admittedly goes beyond all current models by treating space-time, mass-energy and gravity as emergent from information processing within a holographic, multidimensional matrix with the Omega Singularity as the source.

There’s plenty of cosmological anomalies of late that make us question the traditional interpretation of relativity. First off, what Albert Einstein (1879 — 1955) himself called “the biggest blunder” of his scientific career – t he rate of the expansion of our Universe, or the Hubble constant – is the subject of a very important discrepancy: Its value changes based how scientists try to measure it. New results from the Hubble Space Telescope have now “raised the discrepancy beyond a plausible level of chance,” according to one of the latest papers published in the Astrophysical Journal. We are stumbling more often on all kinds of discrepancies in relativistic physics and the standard cosmological model. Not only the Hubble constant is “constantly” called into question but even the speed of light, if measured by different methods, and on which Einsteinian theories are based upon, shows such discrepancies and turns out not really “constant.”

I’m so thrilled to present to you my debut work in documentary filmmaking! You can now watch my new film Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind in its entirety on major networks, such as Vimeo on demand, worldwide.

*Based on my recent book The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution. Enjoy!

https://vimeo.com/ondemand/339083

Guys! I’m so thrilled to present to you my debut work in documentary filmmaking! You can now watch my new film Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind in its entirety on major networks, such as Vimeo on demand, worldwide.

From a purely scientific frame of reference, many quantum phenomena like non-local correlations between distant entities and wave-particle duality, the wave function collapse and consistent histories, quantum entanglement and teleportation, the uncertainty principle and overall observer-dependence of reality pin down our conscious mind being intrinsic to reality. And this is the one thing the current physicalist paradigm fails to account for. Critical-mass anomalies will ultimately lead to the full paradigm shift in physics. It’s just a matter of time.

With consciousness as primary, everything remains the same and everything changes. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology are unchanged. What changes is our interpretation as to what they are describing. They are not describing the unfolding of an objective physical world, but transdimensional evolution of one’s conscious mind. There’s nothing “physical” about our physical reality except that we perceive it that way. By playing the “Game of Life” we evolved to survive not to see quantum mechanical reality. At our classical level of experiential reality we perceive ourselves as physical, at the quantum level we are a probabilistic wave function, which is pure information.

No matter how you slice it, reality is contextual, the notion that immediately dismisses ‘observer-independent’ interpretations of quantum mechanics and endorses the Mental Universe hypothesis. But we have to be careful here not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak. I’d like to make a very important point at this juncture of our discussion: Mental and physical are two sides of the same coin made of information. Both should be viewed as the same substance.

Our physical space-time reality isn’t really “physical” at all, its apparent solidity of objects, as well as any other associated property such as time, is an illusion. As a renowned physicist Niels Bohr once said: “Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” But what’s not an illusion is your subjective experience, i.e., your consciousness; that’s the only “real” thing, according to proponents of Experiential Realism. It refers to interacting entangled conscious agents at various ontological levels, giving rise to conscious experience all the way down, and I’d argue all the way up, seemingly ad infinitum. It’s a “matryoshka” of embedded realities: conscious minds within larger minds.

#ExperientialRealism

So, why Experiential Realism? From the bigger picture perspective, we are here for experience necessary for evolution of our conscious minds. Our limitations, such as our ego, belief traps, political correctness, our very human condition define who we are, but the realization that we largely impose those limitations on ourselves gives us more evolvability and impetus to overcome these self-imposed limits to move towards higher goals and state of being.

We are what we’ve experienced — the sum of our experiences define who we are. In this sense, as free will agents, we are co-creators within this experiential matrix. Non-duality is the essence of Experiential Realism — experience and experiencer are one. How can you possibly separate your own existence from the world, the observer from the observed? Today, philosophers and scientists argue that information is fundamental but consciousness is required to assign meaning to it. That makes consciousness (our experience in a broader sense) the most fundamental, irreducible ground of existence itself, while some philosophers suggest consciousness is all that is.

Experiential realism refers to interacting entangled conscious agents at various ontological levels, giving rise to conscious experience all the way down, and I’d argue all the way up, seemingly ad infinitum. It is a “matryoshka” of embedded realities: conscious minds within larger minds. Experiential Realism is a non-physicalist, monistic idealism. It is not to be confused with Naïve Realism, the idea that we see the world around us objectively, as it is. We don’t. Just the opposite is true. Experiential Realism is predicated on the centrality of observers and all-encompassing quantum computational principles. The objective world, i.e., the world whose existence does not depend on the perceptions of a particular observer, consists entirely of conscious agents, more precisely their experiences. What exists in the objective world, independent of your perceptions, is a world of conscious agents, not a world of unconscious particles and fields.

Consciousness remains scientifically elusive because it constitutes layers upon layers of non-material emergence: Reverse-engineering our thinking should be done in terms of networks, modules, algorithms and second-order emergence — meta-algorithms, or groups of modules. Neuronal circuits correlate to “immaterial” cognitive modules, and these cognitive algorithms, when activated, produce meta-algorithmic conscious awareness and phenomenal experience, all in all at least two layers of emergence on top of “physical” neurons. Furthermore, consciousness represents certain transcendent aspects of projective ontology, according to the now widely accepted Holographic Principle.

#CyberneticTheoryofMind

There’s no shortage of workable theories of consciousness and its origins, each with their own merits and perspectives. We discuss the most relevant of them in the book in line with my own Cybernetic Theory of Mind that I’m currently developing. Interestingly, these leading theories, if metaphysically extended, in large part lend support to Cyberneticism and Digital Pantheism which may come into scientific vogue with the future cyberhumanity.

According to the Interface Theory of Perception developed by Donald Hoffman and the Biocentric theory of consciousness developed by Robert Lanza, any universe is essentially non-existent without a conscious observer. In both theories, conscious minds are required as primary building blocks for any universe arising from probabilistic domain into existence. But biological minds reveal to us just a snippet in the space of possible minds. Building on the tenets of Biocentrism, Cyberneticism goes further and includes all other possible conscious observers such as artificially intelligent self-aware entities. Perhaps, the extended theory could be dubbed as ‘Noocentrism’.

Existence boils down to experience. No matter what ontological level a conscious entity finds herself at, it will be smack in the middle, between her transcendental realm and lower levels of organization. This is why I prefer the terms ‘Experiential Realism’ and ‘Pantheism’ as opposed to ‘Panentheism’ as some suggested in regards to my philosophy.

The Syntellect Emergence seems to be a cosmic necessity, and in the long run, any voices calling to resist the cybernetic fusion of the mind will be no more influential than the voices calling, right now, to eradicate civilization and return to the jungle. Nature’s tendency to build up hierarchies of emergent patterns, the heuristic law of evolution, supersedes the human race itself. We see it time and again, Nature is constantly trying to combine seemingly opposing forces, to assemble existing parts into the new wholes through the universal process of radical emergence. We are bound to transcend our biology, our human condition, our limited dimensionality, we are bound to transcend ourselves.

#TranscendentalCybernetics #CyberneticSingularity #SyntellectEmergence

Syntellect Emergence is hypothesized to be the next meta-system transition, becoming one Global Mind — that constitutes the Cybernetic Singularity.

The lives of infomorphs (or ‘cyberhumans’) who have no permanent bodies but possess near-perfect information-handling abilities, will be dramatically different from ours. Infomorphs will achieve the ultimate morphological freedom. Any infomorph will be able to have multiple cybernetic bodies which can be assembled and dissembled at will by nanobots in the physical world if deemed necessary, otherwise most time will be spent in the multitude of virtual bodies in virtual enviro… See More.

“I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the Universe.” — Buckminster Fuller

The term ‘Infomorph’ was first introduced in “The Silicon Man” by Charles Platt in 1991 and later popularized by Alexander Chislenko in his paper “Networking in the Mind Age”: “The growing reliance of system connections on functional, rather than physical, proximity of their elements will dramatically transform the notions of personhood and identity and create a new community of distributed ‘infomorphs’ — advanced informational entities — that will bring the ongoing process of liberation of functional structures from material dependence to its logical conclusions. The infomorph society will be built on new organizational principles and will represent a blend of a superliquid economy, cyberspace anarchy and advanced consciousness.”

The new post-Singularity system will inherit many of today’s structures but at the same time will develop new traits beyond our current human comprehension. The ability of future machines and posthumans alike to instantly transfer knowledge and directly share experiences with each other will lead to evolution of intelligence from the hive ontology of individual biological minds to the global hyperconnected society of digital minds.

This progressive trance set is labeled SYNTELLECTUS and is inspired by The Syntellect Hypothesis, a recent best-selling book of mine… If you remember, SYNTELLECTUS refers to a neologism Holo Syntellectus — a new hybrid species emerging as a syntellect, [phase-transitioning to] one global mind… Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/P8QQz3jzsxI (((Subscribe to EM Channel!)))