Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)
Self-Control Seizure, Panic, Desperation
Contents
Successfully crashing the
control-system
Film review of A.I.:
"cybernetic psychosis"
Radical freedom w/ radical
unfreedom
Self-control
seizure is of utmost importance for the ego death experiential insight. Persephone is suddenly snatched away by
Hades; the Eagle of Zeus suddenly swoops down from the heavens to carry off
one's child-self. This empire with its
egoic controller/governor archons is unstable and cannot stand; the new era of
the new empire is stable and divinely approved and will stand endlessly; will
not fall.
Ideally I
would blast out a fresh writeup here.
But first I need to check whether a great description is already at my
Web site. My fresh writeups are usually
clearer and more on-topic than the verbiage at my website. Sometimes I can hardly find decent writeups
of basic concepts at my site, though I think and assume and feel like they are
there, but I can't find any such.
The nature
of self-control seizure is largely though not ideally spelled out at
http://www.egodeath.com/intro.htm in the sections
The
Instability of Self-Control Cybernetics, the Control Vortex, and
Self-Cancelling Control
The
Pre-set Stream of Injected Thoughts, Puppethood, and the Inability to Control
Future Actions
Self-Distrust,
Self-Violation of Personal Control, and Needing a Higher-Level Controller
Or at
http://www.egodeath.com/#MainTheory in the sections
Self-Control
Cybernetics
The
Strange Loop of Personal Control
Dissociative
Destabilization of Self-Control Cybernetics
Inability
to Restrain: Transcendence of Guidance Systems
Dissociative
Loss of Self-Control Cognition
Mark
wrote:
>my
disagreement with your whole ego-death philosophy. ... a grand attempt at
rationalizing a bad trip into something divine. Your multiple uses of oxymorons
like "divine madness" and "divine psychosis" are dead
giveaways.
You think
you can wave aside Dionysian madness so easily, empowered by modern psychology.
>pain's
only gift is to teach us how to avoid its repetition.
There are
different kinds of pain. Dead and
resurrected mystery-religion gods brought a kind of pain and a kind of
transcendence of it. Many people in
many circumstances can relate to some types of pain.
>...
your machinations as mostly obsessions with pain. You only describe a bad trip.
... your position could easily be emanating from inside a clinical disorder.
Szasz
would question the validity of that category, "clinical disorder".
>A true
psychotic would feel similarly about the nature of pain and bad trips.
Would
he? Read Louis Sass' book Madness and
Modernism, as well as Szasz. We should
have some respect for some of the insights brought by psychosis and more or
less psychotomimetic states of consciousness.
>That
is the nature of clinical psychosis: its obsession/attraction to dysfunctional
pain.
Perhaps. I have not seen clinical psychosis characterized
as fixation on dysfunctional pain.
>Did
you suffer a violent or abusive childhood?
If I did
not, your argument collapses; you are on unsteady ground in terms of debate.
>If you
are clinically schizo ...
>pain
is not a necessary component of ecstasy.
What is
this "pain" you speak of? Do
you think we should best characterize the dying-and-rising gods of the
mystery-religions as representing this sort of "pain"? You would as soon dismiss love if it
involves pain.
We can
define the term "pain", or "suffering", to include the
humiliation experienced during initiation when the ordinarily assumed sense of
being a power-wielding control-agent is deeply called into question.
This is
the real meaning of the "suffering" the mystery-savior undergoes
during the dissociative state -- the suffering of watching one's assumed power
evaporate, as one's former conception of oneself is abducted to the land of the
no-longer-living.
>Pain
may be initially unavoidable en route to it, but the/its point is to dissolve it.
You assert
that among all types or definitions of pain, the only possible goal of the pain
is to eliminate the pain. That is too
rigid and dogmatic of a view. Some
kinds of mystic "suffering" have long been associated with
enlightenment and transcendence.
You
declare the dark night of the soul to be a mere psychological dysfunction,
something we should only seek to avoid.
>Pain
is just a teaching tool of negative reinforcement;
Is that
its only potential? The
mystery-religions have a higher way of thinking: mystic suffering, loss,
humiliation, and defeat.
>its
only value is to point us in the direction of its opposite. Trouble is,
sometimes it is so intense that it leaves a scar of confusion.
Such a
simple, black-and-white doctrine -- "all suffering is pain, bad,
undesirable, dysfunction; pleasure is good". What do you think about bondage sex-play, which claims that pain
and pleasure can be interestingly intermingled? Have you only read modern psychology books?
Your rigid
reasoning would hold that melancholy poetry is dysfunction, as well. We should always seek the positive, because
every negative experience can only hold mere dysfunction.
Michael
wrote:
>>Ecstasy
is not simply bliss, confidence and power -- it may be a delusion of power,
disproved.
Mark
wrote:
>But
then it would not be so ecstatic, would it? Do you think this is my situation?
Michael
wrote:
>>Go
ahead, expect power and control,
Mark
wrote:
>No.
That is not part of the technique. It happens to be an end product, but is not
a route.
Michael
wrote:
>but
don't be surprised if control evades control and cancels itself out. Such a result is one of the classic
discoveries delivered by plant teachers.
Mark
wrote:
>There
is a criteria by which one can judge validity: if the "loss of control"
is unpleasant, the "control" was what you describe (more fear-based
than anything). There is no more "control" here than a wish to
fulfill a desire. If that's your "control", call me a "control
freak" if you must.
>Obviously,
if your situation transpired, something went wrong. And that would be something
other than what I am describing (likely the opposite), regarding my experience
and technique. I think I am familiar with your experience-related advice; I
have had plenty of similar ones. It is not a successful experience.
Yes, the
egoic mental model or egoic operating system, which is shot through with buggy
logic, went wrong and successfully crashed, as it is designed and destined to
do. This control-crash is the
successful location of the doorway to developing a more coherent mental model
of oneself as controller moving through time.
To reach
transcendent maturity, you must experience this egoic control-crash. If you have not, then you are an innocent
virgin and have not yet undergone the sacred marriage ceremony which culminates
in the climax of the self-cancellation of control-power.
Michael:
>>Ecstasy
is optimal mental health, psychosis is a tragic mental disorder, so what is
ecstatic psychosis, or Dionysian divine madness?
Mark:
>Well,
I'm not sure, but if it's painful, I fear it is true clinical insanity.
You seem
an expert on clinical insanity, yet you know nothing about the religion of
Dionysus. There is more to human
potential than the 20th-century humanistic psychology fathoms. The philosopher who strives for relevance
must broaden his vocabulary beyond that of his local time and town.
Michael:
>>If
you have optimal mental health, all the more likely you will discover divine
psychosis.
Mark:
>And I
fear that would be the typical wording of a sufferer of one of the acute or
chronic mental disorders: to make pain divine, worship & obsess with it.
I don't
know what books give you that view of mental disorder as worshipping pain. Great books such as Louis Sass' Madness and
Modernism paint a more richly detailed and complex view of madness.
Michael:
>>Tragedy
was observed in the genre of Greek Attic Tragedy, in which the person's power
was experienced as nullified by Fate and inevitability -- a favorite sacred
theme of the ancient Greeks.
Mark:
>Yes,
well the dysfunctional obsession with pain has been with us for a very long
time. As a species, survival has been a violent experience and we carry that
with us. It is, in better wording, an attraction to pain because of its
familiarity.
So, your
theory of Greek Attic Tragedy is that it was just a dysfunctional obsession
with pain. That is not a very
compelling explanation. Scholars, if
not humanists, are less hasty at dismissing the origins of our Western culture.
Michael:
>>Ecstasy
is life supporting, while psychosis is harmful. But more relevantly, what is
life supporting is to be willing to do anything, be willing to think anything,
be willing to will anything, and yet act constructively rather than
destructively. Be willing to destroy, yet be committed to life-protecting
constructiveness.
Mark:
>I
might need some rewording of all that. For example: give an example -
"destroy" what? You almost sound like you might be describing a
propensity for violence.
The
transcendent mind attains full control over the will, proven by willingness to
destroy oneself *as* an agent who is in control of the will -- willingness to
be crucified *as* a sovereign, free, self-commanding moral agent.
If we
truly are intent upon gaining full control over the mind, this means gaining
full and confident control over the will.
The way to prove and manifest full and confident control over the will
is to practice moving it in all directions.
The
ultimate proof of mastery over the will, the ultimate self-control empowerment,
is to wield the will against itself, throwing off the accustomed mental
restraints on the will, including self-preservation, and thus gaining full
control over the will, full mastery of it.
This means
being able to will actions that are the opposite of one's accustomed,
conventional goals and restraints, while refraining from carrying out those
actions.
Only such
masterful control over the will, over one's own train of thought, can secure
casual, peaceful, blissful altered-state experiencing. As long as we fear what our will and
thoughts will come up with next, there is not relaxation.
The
mystery-religion gods represent mystic violence.
o Jesus is betrayed, humiliated, suffers, is
crucified, and dies.
o Dionysus is playing with his toys (related
to pine cones and dolls) when he is suddenly surprised and abducted and torn to
pieces by the Titans.
o Attis is driven insane, castrated, and
buried in a tree trunk.
o Prometheus is chained to a jagged black
rock, where an eagle descends from Zeus and eats his liver each day again.
o Osirus is torn to pieces and every piece is
regathered except the phallus.
So you can
see that I keep famous company in the mystic, mythic realm.
What has
more wisdom, the ancient entheogenic mystery religions, or 20th-century
clinical psychology?
Michael:
>>Schizophrenia
includes delusions, misinterpretations, and audio command hallucinations.
Entheogenic psychosis includes delusions, misinterpretations, and
uncontrollable command ideas, and audio distortions,
Mark:
>Well,
you might be correct, but I suppose that depends on your definition of the
oxymoron, "Entheogenic psychosis". I reject the whole concept.
I do not
call into question entheogenic psychosis, I only seek to understand this
reported phenomenon and enable people to successfully experience this peak
experience in a relatively safe and positive way.
The mind
while in loose cognition can adopt unreasonable views of the world, meaning,
and allusions -- systematic misinterpretation can be sustained by inadvertent
thought-feedback.
Such
misinterpretation is caused by entheogens and by psychosis. Psychosis may be chronic excessive release
of DMT by the brain. Entheogenic
cognition shares this in common with schizophrenia, psychosis, madness: loose
cognition; loose associative binding of mental constructs.
Loose
binding can give rise to psychosis, whether that loose binding what triggered
by ingesting entheogens or by the brain's internal generation of entheogenic
chemicals. So there is nothing
preventing us from talking of entheogenic psychosis, though entheogens
generally do not cause "hallucinations" in the clinical sense.
Michael:
>>but
not audio hallucinations such as commanding voices heard as though actually
spoken by other people.
>>In
that sense, research has concluded that schizophrenia involves genuine
hallucinations, while the common psychedelics do not.
Mark:
>Small
consolation, since both are apparently so much alike with so much accordant
pain.
Michael:
>>It
is said that the ego can be overwhelmed by psychic forces beyond its apparent
control. More exactly, the ego can be overwhelmed by its own nature, as control
struggles increasingly to control control's ever-increasing power, until
control seizes into a death-grip like a noose.
Mark:
>Sounds
like one personality struggling against another.
No, it is
different time-slices of the person struggling against each other:
specifically, the current time-slice of the person struggling to reach into the
near-future to exert self-control on the near-future time-slices.
The
multiple-personalities theory of mental disorder has been disproved.
Mark:
>look
into your ideas a little closer and make sure they are not actually some
remnant of a shell-shock experience or a bad childhood. It's a prison we are all trying to get free
of; some just see the bars and past them a little farther.
That's
such a Freudian-psychotherapy style of analysis. You would explain mystic suffering and ego-death in terms of a
dysfunctional childhood -- thus missing the chance to encounter
self-transcendence as control-agents.
Michael:
>>We
could only avoid the encounter with the control singularity vortex by having
the luck to accidentally preventing the onset of any anxiety -- as though we
can hope that the problem of fending off this seemingly free-floating fear
might never arise at all.
>>Yet
if it had not arisen, we would not discover the most fascinating thing in the
world: the ego-death control-seizure vortex and how to stimulate the
control-center to the point of control-orgasm.
>From: Norman
>I just came across your great website and so have read
>only a small fraction of it. However, I have some familiarity with
>cybernetic control theory (a la William T. Powers--a noted
>cybernetician). I also have experimented widely in the area of
>consciousness. The model I have found most helpful involves the
>hierarchical control structures or processes of the brain, and hence of
>consciousness--not that consciousness is JUST brain function. So, to
>transcend is to ascend the hierarchy. In my view, this happens in the
>brain and in the mind, which is closely linked to, but not identical
>with the brain. When I last had contact with Bill Powers, he only knew
>about ascending to the hierarchic level where one experiences silence
>and non-verbality.
...
>that's not the top of the
>heap, where the boundaries of individuality loosen and unity occurs. I
>could go on further, but let me first know if what I've written agrees
>or disagrees with your model.
Ken Wilber (http://wilber.shambhala.com) also has written alot about
hierarchical transcendence. I think mystery religions took the psyche from 1)
naive freewill egoic thinking, to 2) an entheogenic discovery of cosmic
determinism, then to 3) some sort of transcendence of determinism which is a
kind of justified make-believe.
1. The naive mind considers egoic freewill the locus of control and power.
2. During initiation, the mind reconceives the worldmodel to identify the
Ground of Being as the locus of control and power.
3. During later initiation, the mind may urgently need to form a new, wholly
transcendent worldmodel that many would call unspeakable, transrational, or
paradoxical, in which the mind identifies that which transcends cosmic
determinism as the locus of control and power. The latter doesn't necessarily
make sense, but it is justified such as through the principle of compassion
(high morality).
>My
idea of god and heaven is becoming more and more universal/generic, where I
feel that some points of other relions are quite valid and that maybe they are
all connected an worshipping the same entity at the end of the day.
Yes,
essentially a universalistic understanding of each religion is clearly the
direction the more advanced people go.
No way can Truth be tribal. It's
a fact that "Jesus is the only way to be saved and enter the kingdom of
God", but facts are nothing without definitions of terms, and the advanced
religionist defines the terms differently than the beginner.
I equate
"Jesus" in the above with "timeless determinism" --
experiencing and understanding timeless determinism such that ego as sovereign
dies, is the only way to enlightenment and being aware of the Ground's true
sovereignty over us its product. The
newspaper front page the other day contained the phrase "Jesus is the lord
of all things" -- which I agree with in a high fashion; that which gives
rise to all things at all points in timeless spacetime logically also gives
rise to my own thoughts and actions.
The Ground
of Being is the hidden sovereign that produces my every decision and
action. Jesus is the Lord of all, yes;
ego is the lord of nothing, considering ego as a purported controller and prime
mover that is metaphysically free to create its own future stream of thoughts
and actions.
>I felt
I was confronted by God/Jesus himself, where he seemed to take over the bodies
of my friends one at a time. I was transfixed on the eyes of my partner when I
thought he was Jesus. I was staring straight into the centre of the eye, and it
looked just like the 'God I' picture in the photo folder for this group.
He was
either the sleeping Jesus/Buddha or the awakened Jesus/Buddha. You may have been an awakened Jesus seeing
the sleeping Jesus in the friend.
>I knew
how to get out of it this time...
Prayer to
the mystery-religion savior of one's choice, and sacrifice of one's ego as
false claimant to metaphysical sovereignty.
Everyone is eager to embrace "no-separate-self", they say, but
they don't understand this means embracing "no-free-will": embracing
"no-control" of the accustomed type.
>but I
felt so guilty
Timeless
block-universe determinism is the secret owner of all guilt, and finally
returns from its adventures to reclaim its throne. All sin and guilt properly belongs to the true hidden controller
and creator of all thoughts, and personal ego is not that controller and
creator, but only was made to be fooled into thinking as much.
>for
ending up in that state in the first place. I think I am developing a fear of
death, or I feel like part of me has died, or is damaged.
You are a
limping king, a bird with broken wing, fatally wounded but not dead yet.
Luther was
terrified of death, motivated by a strange, abnormally morbid and perverse fear
of death, according to a wonderful biography I've been reading.
>I
never really considered death very much before when I was a strong Christian.
Now I have this feeling of doom and gloom, and I even felt like I was slipping
away a couple of days ago when I was sitting at my desk at work...I just
happened to think about death and my mind wandered to point where I was trying
to imagine what that moment must feel like.
>As my
eyes closed, I felt a surge in my brain and a numbness all over my body, and a
slight disconnection with consciousness as I know it. It was actually a
'micro-sleep', where the brain lapses due to lack of sleep (I had a few late
nights!). But what remained was a fear, because when it happened I really did
think for a moment that I was dying.
>This
has happened occasionally over that last couple of years (even before I first
took acid), when I have been trying to get to sleep in bed, and I expreience a
short microsleep. When I microsleep, I notice that I don't breath or move very
much at the time. I suppose this might be why it feels more like a death.
>I'm
now feeling scared of death because I realise I could die at any minute. Along
with some doubts about an after life, I'd hate to find that nothing is after
death....what happens to consciousness as we know it? Our sense of time? Where
does it go? How might it feel? Do we see black or white? Do we just reappear a
moment later as a new born baby on the other side of the planet?
I can't
understand why anyone would fear mundane bodily death. Bodily death is a mere metaphor for the
death that really matters: ego death and rebirth, or resurrection, in life.
>...helped
me to see more clearly (even to Psychic levels ... ), but I think I've
over-done it, abused it, and I might be reaping the consequences - it's opened
up my mind too much, to the point where I am becoming aware of things beyond
the limits of our awareness. It's great
to feel at one with the universe but I'd like to stay human.
>Can
there be proof that ego death is separate from the fear of the bodily death?
>You
count on psychedelic experiences but somebody else may count on other
experiences, like primals.
I don't
know what "primals" refers to.
Some
people seem to have an innate fear of bodily death, and others are unconcerned.
James
Arthur has been working on a theory of DMT release during literal birth and
death.
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22james+arthur%22+dmt+death
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22james+arthur%22+dmt+radio
DMT: The
Spirit Molecule: A Doctor's Revolutionary Research into the Biology of
Near-Death and Mystical Experiences
by Rick
Strassman MD
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892819278
This movie
review mentions the "cybernetic psychosis" of HAL. However, the most interesting psychosis is
the healthy type, of Dionysus, in which one's own control agency is virtually
killed, with the conscious and deliberate assent of one's will, during mature
ego death and transcendence.
I would
like instruct David in the cybernetic theory of ego death and discuss the
lyrics of The Body Electric with him -- a religious discussion. A problem is, how can David ingest a
cognitive loosening agent like Delysid?
The AI circuitry may have a protected mode in which cybernetic
self-cancellation becomes possible, thus providing a religious-experience
mode. The control-agency subsystem
would then be designed to crash.
==========
movie review from the net ==========
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0212.html
Spielberg
catches Kubrick's Baton: A Review of "AI"
by Raymond
Kurzweil
The
androids and other intelligent machines in "A.I." represent
well-grounded science futurism, says AI pioneer Raymond Kurzweil.
Stanley
Kubrick developed his ideas for a movie to be called "A.I." for over
ten years, passing the baton to Steven Spielberg upon his untimely death. As
was his working style, Kubrick did not write a screenplay, but kept copious
notebooks of ideas. The task of carrying Kubrick's conception to fruition
presented Spielberg with a singular opportunity, but also unique challenges,
the most obvious being how to meld Kubrick's dark visions with his own
affirming perspective.
Both
filmmakers capture the intricate dualities of life, but Kubrick tends to wallow
in the enigmatic crevices of humankind's ardors, from Strangelovian underground
sanctuaries to, well, cybernetic psychosis. While Kubrick is likely to reveal
the madness that lurks beneath a façade of normalcy, Spielberg's capacity is to
show us the humanity that survives human madness. Even in Schindler's List, we
are continually able to gain a measure of comfort from the passionate portrayal
of one man's exercise of heroism that carries us through to the last moving
scene.
So one
question I had going into the advance screening of "A.I." was whether
we would hear both voices, whether this remarkable and unusual collaboration
would preserve the seemingly disparate outlooks of two legendary artists.
My other
salient question was whether this portrayal of a world of "strong" AI
would reflect what I would regard as well-grounded science futurism, or if it
would devolve to the usual facile dystopianism or sentimental utopianism.
I am
pleased to say that the movie succeeds in both of these key dimensions.
Spielberg fans will certainly be pleased with the beautiful cinematography,
imaginative effects, and the continual surprises of the story line. We see
allusions to many former Spielberg movies from the story of the intelligent but
not altogether human hero's desire to call (and to go) home to the "Close
Encounters"-like portrayal of the far-into-the-future nonbiological
intelligences.
But
putting on my hat as Kubrick fan, I was also quite satisfied as we encounter
Clockwork Orange-like dreamscapes and Kubrick's vintage brooding colors. As in
2001, the most human characters are the machines, with the sole exception of
David's "adopted" mother.
In A.I.,
the AI's are neither evil nor particularly destructive. Indeed our sympathies
are usually with them, at least mine were. It's the humans who express the base
emotions of destructive jealousy as they taunt and ultimately destroy the stray
androids in the Coliseum-like spectacle of the "Flesh Fair." Here
Spielberg has the opportunity to present the key issues of the movie and, indeed,
of the 21st century. Are the independent robots who rummage through junk yards
searching for usable spare parts to enhance their lot a threat to humanity? Are
they becoming "too smart, too many, too fast," as their human
tormentors claim?
Spielberg
makes the point that it's not the machine-like quality of the machines that is
threatening, as we have become quite comfortable with machine-like machines.
It's the potential for amplifying our human nature that is the most menacing,
at least those aspects of human nature displayed by many of the humans in the
film: the cruelty of the purveyor of the Flesh Fair, the betrayal by the human
who frames the Gigolo Joe android for murder, and the greed of the William Hurt
character who creates David but attempts to rob him of his individuality.
The Flesh
Fair scene also presents the important issue of cruelty to machines. In my
lectures I often point out that we don't worry much today about causing pain
and suffering to our computer programs, a line which is usually good for a few
laughs (at least for an after-dinner audience). Spielberg applies the power of
the cinema to show us just how compelling an issue this will actually become.
We meet
three generations of AI's in the movie, with the last generation far in the
future. Even the first generation we meet is sufficiently human, in the
positive sense of the term, to fear their capture and to help protect each
other from the angry prejudices of threatened and threatening "real"
humans.
David is
presented as a more advanced android, one that has the capacity to learn to
love. David will become a "real boy" when he becomes capable of this
higher emotion. I'd have to say that this matches my own perspective, that we
will come to accept nonbiological entities as "human" when they are
capable of understanding and expressing our most subtle emotions.
What do
emotions have to do with intelligence? In my view, our emotional capacity
represents the most intelligent thing we do. It's the cutting edge of human
intelligence, and as the film portrays, it will be the last exclusive province
of biological humanity, one that machines will ultimately master as well. By
the way, if David wishing to become "a real boy" sounds like a
familiar fairy tale, the movie makes the allusion and metaphor of Pinocchio
explicit. Even early in his development, David is sufficiently appealing that
he wins the sympathies of the Flesh Fair spectators, much to the dismay of the
master of ceremonies, who implores the audience to "not be fooled by the
talent of this artistry."
In the
third conception of machines that the movie presents, we see entities that are
supremely sublime. I've always maintained that we will ultimately change our
notion of what it is to be a machine. We now regard a machine as something
profoundly inferior to a human. But that's only because all the machines we've
encountered are still a million times simpler than ourselves. But that gap is
shrinking at an exponential rate, and the movie examines what I believe will be
the last frontier: mastering our most noble emotions, a capability displayed by
only one human in the movie and sought by at least one machine. I won't give
away the movie's ending by revealing whether David is successful in his quest,
but I will say that at one point he does display a decidedly inhuman degree of
patience.
It was
also my feeling that the very advanced entities we meet later in the movie are
displaying a noble character that is life-affirming in the Spielbergian sense.
I have also maintained that future AI's will appreciate that they are
derivative of the human-machine civilization, and will thereby revere their
biological ancestors. This view is supported in Spielberg's conception of the
most advanced machines that we meet in the film.
David
seeks to learn to love in order to be acceptable to his mother. But the film is
neither maudlin nor predictable, since it takes many unexpected turns not only
in the plot line but in our understanding of the parameters of David's world.
This allows Spielberg to display his playful imagination, which I'm sure kept
many graphics scientists busy creating the inventive effects. In the movie's
sole exploration of virtual reality, we meet Dr. Know, a hyperactive
Einstein-like holographic projection who seeks to guide David and his intelligent
stuffed bear, both of whom have since teamed up with Gigolo Joe.
At first,
Dr. Know seems too literal, as if he were a contemporary search engine, but we
ultimately discover that Dr. Know does understand David's plight and gives him
some critical hints. The interaction with Dr. Know also illustrates another
keen insight about the future, that the only thing of value is information and
knowledge.
The movie
accurately portrays erotic applications as at least one vital driving force
pushing the technology forward. As Gigolo Joe points out to one of his clients,
"Once you've had sex with Mecca, you'll never want a 'real' man
again." Mecca, as in "mechanical," is the movie's clever
designation for machines. One gets the sense that it was the machines in the movie
who came up with this label.
The
language used and the depiction of the sexual situations should be comfortable
for parents and their young teenage children, in keeping with the PG-13 rating
that a film such as this must have. Discussions on Internet lists indicate
there was some struggle with the film rating board about the rating. Could it
be that like the anxious humans in the movie, the members of the rating board
find the very idea of sex with machines to be unduly provocative?
Is this
science futurism or idle science fantasy? I believe that the androids and other
intelligent machines that we meet in the movie, although imaginative, do
represent well-grounded science futurism. We will indeed meet nonbiological
entities with the range of intelligence that we encounter in "A.I."
We already have hundreds of contemporary examples of "narrow" AI,
that is, machines that can perform well defined tasks that we regard as
examples of intelligent behavior when performed by humans, ranging from
diagnosing blood cells and electrocardiograms, guiding cruise missiles, solving
mathematical theorems, playing master-level games, making financial investment
decisions, and many others.
It is true
that machines today do not yet have the subtlety or range of intelligence that
humans display. However, within thirty years, we will have completed the
scanning and reverse engineering of the human brain and will be able to
instantiate the templates of intelligence that we discover through this
endeavor in nonbiological thinking substrates. Some of the "strong"
AI's that result will be manifest in human-appearing robots such as those we
meet in the movie, while others will take other forms.
One could
certainly nit-pick anyone's detailed imagining of the future. For example, in
my conception, we'll have images written directly to our retinas so we won't
need flat panel displays, let alone paper books; roads won't need visible
markers; and circuits won't be etched on printed circuit boards. The future
will, in my view, include more virtual reality and more embedded intelligence
in everyday objects.
But on the
important questions, I feel that Spielberg, armed with Kubrick's decade of
notes, got it right, particularly in the idea of the mastery of our higher
order emotions as the defining challenge of AI, and the ultimate definition of
humanness.
-- Raymond
Kurzweil
==========
end of movie review from the net ==========
Very comparable to Blade Runner, it suggests the question, can we live up to our own standards of what makes a creature a valued entity?
The nature of the creatures at the end also raises questions about what it means to propagate humanity: what "counts" as survival of humanity, when you allow the idea of evolution?
Can we say that humanity has ended, if its AIs remain, sustainably, in 2000 years? Maybe these visions of the wise outsiders are from our own descendents in the future, but more of our "spiritual" descendents, so to speak, than our biological descendents.
The movie was an adult consideration of the fairy tale of cybernetic Pinnochio. I consider the ego as a fairy tale suited only for children. The ego is a puppet, an unreal product of mental craftsmanship.
The ego wants, above all, to be real, to be a king in power, to be a serious and unconquerable sovereign. But in the mystic altered state, it meets the Blue Fairy, who brings the mind to maturity about the equations.
After we work through the equations, it is as difficult to still believe in the ego as it is to believe in the Historical Jesus.
The old ego then becomes unbelievable and dies along with belief in the historical Jesus, and is replaced by Christ-consciousness, which is a changed cybernetic operating system/control model that is emphatically contrasted with the egoic operating system/control model.
The bear is a venerable totem animal. The bear's memory took in all that the boy did, and carries some other kind of structural memory as well.
'Bear' is the nickname of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, a sure candidate for Michael the Archangel. This kind of bear is often sighted around shakedown street.
There was a bit of religion in the movie for humans, but unfortunately the question was not raised, do Mechs have any business in church? The boy did ask the Mary statue above the church, "Are you the blue fairy [who can turn me into a real boy and make my mother love me]?"
The poor soul during ego-death initiation may similarly look to a mystery-religion savior and ask, "Are you the savior who can turn me back into the convincing semblance of a viable free, stable, self- controlling agent again? Can you free my abducted child and buy them back out of slavery?"
HAL's "cybernetic psychosis" is named in the book as a "Mobius- Hofstadter loop". He was told "Priority 1 is, don't jeopardize the mission to the giant monolith satellite." HAL "secured" the mission against jeopardy by exterminating the humans. However, the concepts of "cybernetic psychosis" and "Mobius-Hofstadter loop" sound way overblown, overcomplex, as descriptions of HAL's mere bungled priority-programming.
The quasi-psychosis of loosecog ego death is a matter of "study control to increase control, at all costs", until control hangs and seizes like a noose, a Wattsian trap. The more the mind investigates personal control (now with increasing alarm and desperation), the more problematic cross-time personal control becomes.
The only kind of control there is is the virtual, quasi, as-if type of control such as we've always had, which, when seen from a timeless metaphysical point of view, is pretty much absent in certain aspects or dimensions.
We "real people" are like the android wishing to be a "real person", like wishing our stolen-away child to spring back to life, or like the Tin Man wishing for a heart. What you have is what is possible to be had.
Here is all the freedom it is possible to have. Theoretically we don't know anything about our freedom with certainty, but viewing freedom from the loosecog metaphysical perspective, it becomes as difficult to believe in the ego as to believe in our ability to levitate.
At this point, it would take a miracle to restore the child back to life, to restore the confident delusion of the ego illusion back to power, reigning once more on its throne, undisturbed and confident about its position and nature.
Radical,
even excessive *practical* freedom is discovered and experienced together with
radical loss of the sense of metaphysical freedom.
Word
networks have two meanings or modes.
Thus we can paradoxically or ironically talk about a transition from
unfreedom to freedom as the mental model transforms from a freewill model to
the no-free-will model (timeless block-universe determinism).
The peak
window of the mystic altered state is experienced as frighteningly or
chaotically unchained freedom even as the new threatening monster of
block-universe determinism and puppethood rears its terrifying death-head. This radically loosened cognitive state is
an overwhelming, unaccustomed amount of freedom of a certain type, which is at
the same time a new discovery of metaphysical-level unfreedom.
All at the
same time there is more freedom than ever, an insane amount of freedom of the
mind -- a freedom of a certain kind, called existential freedom and practical
freedom -- and no freedom whatsoever as the *source* of the mind's thoughts is
seen to be out of control and injected into the mind forcefully by the Ground
of Being.
The Ground
of Being is (with respect to Time) the perpendicular cause, originator, or
author of all thoughts. Block universe
determinism is perpendicular causality or level causality as opposed to
temporal-chain causality. Conventional
determinism is a series of causes moving forward along the time axis; the cause
is prior in time to the effect, and that effect then acts as a cause for the
next effect.
Block-universe
determinism looks at causality moving not along time, but instead, from the
hidden metaphysical level to the visible experienced level of mental
constructs, at each point in time; the whole universe including all points in
time is created all at one timeless permanent moment, "before time"
or "under time" rather than "at the beginning of time".
We usually
feel a single muddled sense of freedom.
In the loose-cog mystic altered state, this splits
"paradoxically" into simultaneous omnipotence and impotence, or
extreme freedom and extreme unfreedom, as described in Louis Sass' book Madness
and Modernism. The mind becomes an
insanely free helpless puppet.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0674541375
The
uninitiated have not learned to make these distinctions that require
transcendent mastery of semantics, and are only able to ask oversimplistic yes
or no questions: is freedom real or not? is the ego real or false? is religion
true or false? This fault of thinking
is inherent in the child mind, which is the uninitiated mind. From the hellenistic point of view, a
barbarian is an adult that still thinks in this childish simplistic way."
Home (theory of the ego death and rebirth experience)