The Intelligence Paradox

46 Comments

1. Thanks Steve for another challenging article.
   A number of points arise from the article which I have taken the liberty to summarise for convenience’ sake only:

   • For the sake of this discussion, (and not meaning any offence), I am happy to accept that information is perhaps the ‘stuff’ of the Universe; we are surrounded by it – are immersed within it; in essence it is what we are.
   • Perhaps this nascent state is another way of describing our individual but latent consciousness.
   • Matter is but a tangible (comprehensible) form of information.
   • Intelligence is the causative factor in the transformation of one form to another.
   • The process cannot occur without input from us – without our cooperation as it were..
   • Intelligence must inform cooperation, else the process is aimless and without purpose.
   • Perhaps life then is simply the expression of that intelligence at increasingly complex levels – by us, and more importantly, within us.
   • Clearly while intelligence is required to interpret and use information, there remains at least one question: from whence comes the intelligence we speak of? We may speak of it as life, but what sparks the impulse or the desire to utilise information; what prompts the desire to create? What is the source of inspiration?
   • If intelligence is innate (to the person), what prompts its development and subsequently its considered use? If on the other hand it is acquired during one’s lifetime, how is that done, how is it absorbed into one’s being and, critically, how does one learn to apply it, and know when to apply it for an optimal result – whether that be applied individually or collectively?
   • If our creative ability lies in the transformation of information, then that requires at the very least some contemplation of not just what to do (and when), but also the desired result.
   • Consequently, if the transformative process requires our mental energy, how does that energy mesh with information to produce matter? Clearly there’s a process at work, but what is it?

   This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive Steve; it is simply the result of extended rumination.
   Cheers.

2. Julian, that’s a great comment that deserves a considered response, I’ll do my best.
   This will take hours, perhaps days. 🙂

   In the meantime, there’s this that appeared yesterday on my Bing feed — you can run from the algorithm, but you can’t hide.

   Physicist Brian Cox in a recent interview– “You could say that life is just — it’s about information…it’s really computing, is what life is…biology, the nature of the physicality that we think of as life, we think of biological systems with DNA and all those things, but you can argue that that’s not the really interesting bit, that’s just the way that it’s realised…”

   I found a better version here — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f83oLwltr24

3. Julian, here goes;
   “*Perhaps this nascent state is another way of describing our individual but latent consciousness.**
   Straight into the deep end Julian!
   I might leave that until last.

   “Intelligence is the causative factor in the transformation of one form (of information) to another”.
   Possibly, but we run the risk of confusing intelligence with consciousness. I’ve been dealing with intelligence at the biology level, that is, as being equivalent to life and cooperation. This is in line with your following point — “The process cannot occur without input from us – without our cooperation as it were…”
   If we accept the idea that intelligence is life, that cooperation is life, we cannot then imply or attribute transformative powers to something that is basic, simple, not magical or mysterious. More on that later.

   “Intelligence must inform cooperation, else the process is aimless and without purpose.”
   The process is aimless. Evolution itself is without purpose.
   But you raise a good point that I refer to later.

   “Perhaps life then is simply the expression of that intelligence at increasingly complex levels – by us, and more importantly, within us.”
   I hope I’m reading you correctly here. You seem to suggest a gradual awakening of consciousness. To avoid confusion, I would re-word that to replace “life” with “our lives are ”.
   We are all given the basic processes associated with life, but the way we manage those is determined first by our environment, which varies from person to person, and also our learning.
   I don’t want you to think that I’m being overly critical in regard to confusing life and consciousness.
   We all do it. I believe this tendency is holding back biologists from any serious enquiry into the nature of life. They assume that it will involve an enquiry into consciousness. You know, scary stuff.
   This article is a merging of two earlier ones from 2012, the second of which was mainly a discussion of how our urge for short-cuts in language has led to us to confuse “life” and “life forms” — two totally different concepts. And of course consciousness gets dragged into that as well.
   So powerful are our bad habits with language that when I was writing those earlier ones, explaining the problem, I found myself making the error I was writing about!

   “Clearly while intelligence is required to interpret and use information, there remains at least one question: from whence comes the intelligence we speak of? We may speak of it as life, but what sparks the impulse or the desire to utilise information; what prompts the desire to create? What is the source of inspiration?”
   First, “the intelligence we speak of” is operating at the biology level, so your follow-up question can also be seen as operating at that level. Those of a materialistic bent will say, with some justification, that we see purpose in nature where there is only random evolutionary events taking place.
   But that view overlooks our universal tendency to look for purpose. Not just purpose in regard to survival and reproduction.
   We want answers.
   Answers to the big questions.
   Organisms that are totally a product of random evolutionary events that take place at the material level would never ask the questions you asked here.

   “If intelligence is innate (to the person), what prompts its development and subsequently its considered use? If on the other hand it is acquired during one’s lifetime, how is that done, how is it absorbed into one’s being and, critically, how does one learn to apply it, and know when to apply it for an optimal result – whether that be applied individually or collectively?”
   Again, that’s just natural selection at work on a feature of living organisms. But it does raise the matter of memory.
   I’m not qualified to say that memory is something physical stored in the brain, or if it’s an aspect of consciousness. No-one is, I think.

   As for knowing when to apply intelligence, we must keep in mind that evolution, while appearing to be a history of success stories, is more accurately a history of failures. We just don’t know what most of them were.
   Which reinforces the fact that intelligence at the biology level is not something of great power necessarily. It’s often just the ability to see options. After seeing the options, the next step can be disaster, even though intelligence played a role.
   This covers your next point about “contemplation of not just what to do (and when), but also the desired result.”

   “Consequently, if the transformative process requires our mental energy, how does that energy mesh with information to produce matter? Clearly there’s a process at work, but what is it?”
   As I said earlier, we cannot attribute transformative powers to something that is basic, simple, not magical or mysterious. However, as you say, there is a process at work, but what is it?
   This takes us back to your first question that I dodged. 🙂
   From the little I’ve read about mental processes, memory, problem solving and so on, there seems to be no agreement as to whether these have a “physical” element at the quantum level or not.
   So where does that leave us? I see two options. We can go down the path of quantum arena speculations, which I’m not knocking, or the higher consciousness path of Eastern philosophy, which I’m also not knocking.
   I find the “spooky action at a distance” concept from quantum mechanics intriguing, along with the observer/phenomena effect.
   But equally intriguing to me is the enquiry into higher consciousness of Advaita etc.
   Then there’s the bombshell remark from Brian Cox that I mentioned in my previous comment — “that’s not the really interesting bit, that’s just the way that it’s realised…”
   If we are all realising, perceiving, the information of which matter is comprised in the same way, as indeed we do, then there is no individual consciousness.
   If the universe manifests itself identically for all of us, we must be sharing the same consciousness.
   Although now, out of respect, we should refer to it as Consciousness. 🙂

   As Science News Today says in an article on recent developments — Or perhaps it’s another reminder that in the quantum world, the more we know, the stranger it gets.
   https://www.sciencenewstoday.org/spooky-action-at-a-distance-is-real-even-without-entanglement

   Which takes us back to Fritjof Capra and the link between quantum mechanics and Eastern philosophy.

   Julian, I hope I’ve read your points correctly.
   Many thanks for giving my brain a good workout and provoking a deeper look.

4. Steve, it was kind of you to reply. There is nothing in your reply to which I can take substantial objection, although I do take your point about confusing consciousness with other phenomena.

   One matter however greatly intrigues me; allow me to quote from your reply:
   “If we are all realising, perceiving, the information of which matter is comprised in the same way, as indeed we do, then there is no individual consciousness.”
   “If the universe manifests itself identically for all of us, we must be sharing the same consciousness.”

   I have long felt/intuited this to be the case, so after reading your comment I was immediately reminded of the pioneering work of the biologist Rupert Sheldrake and his “Rat Experiment”. See for example this one page reference:
   https://forestsanctuary.org/the-mind-blowing-implications-of-morphic-resonance-unleashing-the-collective-human-consciousness/

   Quite possibly this is the path to that future you envisaged earlier: “Now, try to imagine a world in which cooperation and intelligence are the highest values of society, and are nurtured and developed for the benefit of the community as a whole…”

5. Steve, there has been a glitch with my posted reply at 6.14pm. It did not show up on the list of recent postings and has only just now appeared. As a consequence you may not have been aware of it.

6. All good Julian.

   I think I have a Sheldrake book, so want to check.

   Will get back to you, thanks.

7. You may or may not be aware of this:

   Rupert Sheldrake and the African Grey

   Nkisi, the African Grey and his human

8. Kanga, thanks for that — just amazing!
   And I’ve only watched the first video.

   I did a search to see if there has been criticism of the experiment.

   I found one that was a cheap satire, which means that nothing of substance was said.

   The other was from a sceptic site, was more thorough, tried to give the appearance of neutrality, it was actually quite well written, but bias always comes through. In several places in fact.

   The upshot was, So, we’ll just have to wait and see whether further study of N’kisi supports the telepathic hypothesis.
   That conclusion should have been the final sentence, instead, it was slipped in mid-article with no elaboration.
   The final sentences were — However, unlike that editor, my devout wish is that when such studies as these are published in the future, responsible journalists continue to ignore them and recognize them for the rubbish they are. On the other hand, if you happen to think your parrot is psychic, drop Dr. Sheldrake a line. He’s set up a page just for you.
   In other words, he had nuttin’.
   https://skepdic.com/nkisi.html

9. Julian, from your linked article — This work has revealed that as individuals learn and progress, the entire human species benefits from their experiences, resulting in a collective consciousness that grows smarter and more capable with every new thing learned by anyone.

   That’s like something from quantum physics — at first contact it seems outrageous — but the sentence that follows has some serious support in my view. The sentence reads;
   Now, that may not seem the case on the surface, but for those looking for ways to help humanity when everyone’s sense of futility is high, this new frontier offers a view out of our predicament.

   The great teacher of Advaita, Ramana Maharshi, was often asked by visiting devotees for advice on how to improve the world. He invariably stated that rather than improving the world, the best service they could provide for others was to first improve themselves.
   Which is in line with the sentence I referred to.

10. Steve, since your response earlier today I have had cause to re-consider some of the matters under discussion – particularly the notion of mass-consciousness.
    Shall reply further in due course.

11. Ha haar.
    When I was about 5, for being ‘naughty’, I was sent to my room (which I usually shared with my older brother). There was no chair in the room, so I just sat on the bottom bunk (his preferred bunk). I couldn’t escape, as the door knob was too high for me to reach. So I just sat, dwelling at first on who would open the door and when, and then, only on the door knob.

    It came to pass that I began contemplating (with x-ray imagination) the workings of the knob and latch – seemed a relatively simple mechanical device, which even a 5 year old could figure.

    Then my dreamings took a turn for the weird… What rule was there that whatever one saw (or imagined) was the same as what anyone else saw (or imagined)? I appeared to have time on my side, so I adopted full repose on the bottom bunk, and allowed the weirdness to run.

    I concluded that there was no rule. And rather, that for all things, it was simply a never ending iterative process of observation, co-operation and language (marks, glyphs, runes & grunts) constructing or deconstructing.

    That being thought, I accepted I couldn’t readily open the door, but I felt certain, given the energy, I could demolish it, and yet again be found to be naughty… What punishment ought I expect then?

    I opted to stay within the horizon, and keep shtum.

12. A great story Clakka.
    You revealed some valuable insights that were spot on for one so young.

    At some point in our lives, the thinkers among us, (and that is everyone, because when it comes to consciousness there are no grades of competency) begin to question reality as it has been presented to us, and to which we are forced to conform.

    But this raises the question — why does this even arise within us?

    I pointed out to Julian that an organism this is totally a product of evolution at the material level would not ask the questions he listed, would have zero interest in such questions, and the same applies to your examination of reality.

    And your young self did what it had to do at the material level to survive — to remain sane in a weird world — you put the questions to one side.
    As do we all.

    But they never go away, as other childish fancies tend to do.
    Why?

13. Indeed, the questions get set aside, but they never go away.

    I am reminded of CG Jung’s story of when he believed he died and came back. He said as he (his consciousness) traversed the cosmos (before he came back), the abiding ‘thought’ was humans’ endless proclivity for categorising / pigeon-holing.

    I had a near-death experience. At high speed flung out of a car, me hurtling head-on through the air towards a very large tree trunk, and imminent death. I must have twisted in mid-air. The next physical reality was being on the ground unable to gain a breath. For how long I do not know, but ultimately, of course I did gain breaths – I had averted hitting the tree head-on. The abiding memory between hurtling towards the tree, not hitting it, then ‘awakening’ on the ground, was ‘light-speed flash-backs’ of perhaps all near-death experiences of my existence up to that time.

    The CG Jung story, and my experience beg a few questions:

    Are those flashes of (perhaps weird) consciousness from our own immutable storehouse of essential memories that could help us avert / survive death (or should that be cessation of consciousness)? After all, we certainly do not forget life-important things. For example, even though there might not be flame, don’t put your hand on a hot stove as it will get burned, and there will be great pain, suffering and debilitation – an iterative extrapolation of what may be a primordial boundary.

    Do all other living entities have, in their own way, the same sort of mechanisms? Be they animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, viruses, the components of our own flora and fauna, molecules and proteins.

    It would seem so, as they all seem to cooperate and collaborate within their kind, and globally – including for transformation as for food and humus – there would seem to be nothing of no use. Albeit we may not like the possibility of being ousted as the ultimate beneficiary. And within those not liking, there are those playing ‘God’ (or ‘Devil’), named ‘insane’, who press to obliterate themselves and ‘others’ rather than entertain transformation.

    Do all act out from states such as moribundity, sterility, hunger, sublimity, enlightenment, fear, confusion or anger? Or are the actions of all down to a simple and essential binary?

    Even in cosmology, physics and chemistry, there seems to be no ‘original’ thing. No ‘something’ or ’nothing’, just endless transformation, an endless movingness. A yin yang continuum. Surely, for every ‘yes’, a ’no’ is considered (and vice versa).

    As for intelligence, we can choose to ‘drug’ our reality to check it, it would also seem that we can choose to allow (or not) our consciousness to be the arbiter. Whatever the argument or case, it would seem that time will make its demands.

    Maybe within the observational and linguistic fruit salad, naming anything a ‘paradox’ is a cop-out, and like it or not, we know it and it presses like eternal long division full of remainders.

    Since long before the coining of the term ‘intelligence’, we have been calculating and computing, and before that there was awareness as distinct from the base of reaction. It seems to me that in an effort to remain atop the concept of existence, and being or not being, we are inspired (or not) to the reductive process of eternal long division full of remainders, and naming all the parts along the way.

    Yet for many, great trouble abounds when seeking to be reductive in the matter of desire and the inverse / obverse; love / hate… Aye, and there be the rub.

14. Clakka, you raise many interesting points, but the one that sticks out for me was Jung noting our “endless proclivity for categorising / pigeon-holing.”

    By categorising, we form a bond.
    It’s a form of control.
    We’ve put an object in its place.
    We’ve turned and idea or object into something to hate or to love. But the bonds can become overwhelming, as you imply with “great trouble abounds when seeking to be reductive in the matter of desire…”

    So ultimately, we end up being slaves to the bonds we ourselves created. They become limits to our thinking.
    The bonds are in control.

    By categorising, we narrow our outlook and distort reality.
    Henry David Thoreau wrote a passage that demonstrates not only this narrowing, but also his acute awareness of pitfalls not readily apparent to the casual observer.
    “I fear that the character of my knowledge is from year to year becoming more distinct and scientific: that in exchange for views as wide as heaven’s cope, (cloak) I am being narrowed down to the field of the microscopic. I see details, not wholes nor the shadow of the whole. I count some parts and say, ‘I know!’”

    That misperception still plagues science, particularly in evolution studies where the “details, not wholes” and “the shadow of the whole” are deliberately misrepresented, by some, as being of supreme significance.

    Perhaps this urge to misrepresent by biologists lies in envy of the “hard” sciences — chemistry and physics — fields where mathematics is king, where mind-bending calculations can be made and verified, where discoveries are set in stone.
    (But that’s just a digression to indulge a little attachment of my own. 🙂 )

    The collective illusion of science lies in the widespread belief that the ultimate nature of reality can be determined by the examination of ever smaller particles and waves. That by dissecting the brush-strokes we can see the big picture.
    But this is just a variation of the more general attachment to ideas and objects.
    All the principal schools of Eastern philosophy postulate that only by eliminating attachment can we see the big picture.

15. Organisms that are totally a product of random evolutionary events that take place at the material level would never ask the questions you asked here.

    Why not?

16. Why not?
    Because organisms that evolve totally at the material level have a limited number of priorities.
    First they want to survive, then they want to survive long enough to reproduce.
    Their priorities for survival are based on finding food, keeping warm, and avoiding predators, so their mental development grows to accommodate those factors.
    Their survival chances are not enhanced by an inclination to consider abstract notions about wanting to change the world, or the beauty of a sunset for example. Their mental processes will reflect that because their mental world is focused on survival.

    Can you see where this is heading?

17. I can see you constructing an argument backwards from your assumption.
    Civilisation is a not illogical result of a social animal achieving a certain level of intelligence. Civilisation – more specifically the social co-operation that builds it – allows specialisation and a degree of leisure time for some. What we call the arts, plus philosophy and other forms of abstract thought, fill in that leisure time.

    From here, it all sounds like ego and arrogance, but taken beyond the individual and even the species, to say that existence must be more than the result of chance.
    We don’t know. We can’t know. We can think and hope and dream and hypothesise and believe, but nothing that comes from that is fact. What you state as certainty is no more than your own rationalisation.

18. What you state as certainty is no more than…

    Exactly what have I stated as certainty?

    In my response to you I’ve made a few general points about evolution.
    Are they incorrect?

19. Steve, regarding your post of 01 May 2026 at 8:17 am, I would agree with the teacher – the best work one can ever do is with the Self. I regret however that I am presently unable to quantify that statement further other than to say that WE are the greatest mystery we shall ever encounter.

    In fact as a result of my encounter with a stranger, which I mentioned here: https://theaimn.net/what-if-plato-had-a-smart-phone/#comment-2563 I began to seriously question my understanding of who and/or what JulianP might be.

    Your responding reference to “…the importance in Advaita of the internal silent witness.” also got me thinking and after a while I concluded that perhaps there really was ‘an observer’, if only because I had in the past more than once found myself gazing upon one or more persons seemingly trapped in a fraught situation or hearing querulous conversations but not feeling any compulsion to intervene or comment, but rather to simply look-on. I hasten to add that these were not life-threatening situations, but seemed rather the ebb and flow of ordinary life.

    As a result tho’ I began to wonder what it was that allowed me to observe as it were at a distance, and do so without conclusion nor any compulsion to act. As a consequence I began to wonder if it might be possible to somehow detach myself from my own traumas. Further reflection indicated that although having been born with a ‘short fuse’ I concluded it would be better in the short term to pursue a policy of discernment as a matter of prudence. In time, and after further study, I came to realise that the ‘still, silent centre’ might be possible to achieve, but the discipline was then beyond me, and remains so.

    At one point I did eventually realise (in a flash of inspiration I think) that the only sensible response to the silliness of much human behaviour was to laugh and think myself an audience at a play, and when emotions ran high, not to rush to judgment. It did however set me to speculate about what caused emotions and what their purpose might be. An interim conclusion was that whatever their origin or cause, they appeared not to require a corresponding (emotional) input from another person as a trigger; and while the ‘effect’ upon the person was wholly internal, I concluded that one or more of the body’s autonomic systems must play a part in the physical effects one can experience as a response to the energy of a strong emotion.

    One factor I did think important was that the injection of emotion into a situation did directly cause a change, both in the person or persons present and in the situation itself. This in turn led me to speculate whether the raw energy of emotions acted as a type of catalyst that changed both the behaviour of persons and the outcome of situations. It is something that continues to intrigue me as I discovered that one may induce an emotional response within oneself by the employment of one’s concentration, or more correctly one’s imagination upon an object or situation. From there it is but a short leap to say that this process is inherently creative for it is the individual will that guides (or impels) it. Our own experience informs us that the outcome can be negative or positive depending upon the desired outcome – but whether or not this individual enterprise affects others remains open. Overall one may say that as between persons it is the expression of the so-called negative emotions that register the quickest upon the individual – and in the case of a group, can quickly cause unruly behaviour.

    To be continued.

20. Exactly what have I stated as certainty?

    The line of yours that I quoted in my first post.

21. Steve & Michael Taylor.
    I attempted to post the remainder of my comment (about the same length) but was blocked:
    “A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site.
    Your access to this service has been limited. (HTTP response code 403)
    If you think you have been blocked in error, contact the owner of this site for assistance.
    Block Technical Data
    Block Reason: A potentially unsafe operation has been detected in your request to this site.

    Where to from here Michael?

22. leefe, rationalisation means “to give a rational explanation”, which I believe I have done.
    However, it can also mean that the logic is not appropriate, which seems to be your point.
    So you need to point out the lack of logic, or the inconsistency.

    Keep in mind, the social development humans have undergone, which is important to you and rightly so, is not inconsistent with my position.
    I specified “Organisms that are totally a product of random evolutionary events that take place at the material level.”

    The fact that humans have an inclination for abstract thought and reasoning, (some might call it a compulsion) suggests that we are not totally a product of random evolutionary events.

    Of course, that raises a whopper of a question — if we are more than products of evolution, then what’s the full story?

23. Julian, tech glitches like that pop up from time to time for no apparent reason.

    But hold back anyway, because you’ve given me enough to chew over! 😉

24. Steve:

    The logic is lacking when you make a bald statement that “Organisms that are totally a product of random evolutionary events that take place at the material level would never ask the questions you asked here.”
    That is assumption. It is not science and it is not logic. You are contravening one of the most basic precepts of logic, which is that you cannot prove a negative.
    It is true that we do not understand how or why Homo supposedlysapiens developed the capacity to appreciate physical beauty, or for abstract thought; all we know is that it happened. The how and why are pure speculation.

    This is, perhaps, a stylistic issue between us. You tend to present your way of thinking as fact. There are no qualifying terms and no change in tone to say “this is my opinion” or “this is hypothesis”; you simply say “this is”. Like, no, mate. It may be and it may very well not be.

25. Julian:

    The first part of your last comment echoes my own inner experience. Probably far better said than I could manage, however.
    Yet I fail to completely disconnect and, for all its benefit, quite possibly do not really want to. And can we, while still retaining our basic humanity?

26. Michael Taylor.

    Michael please refer to my earlier post yesterday at 8.36pm which details problems in further posting a comment.
    Would greatly appreciate your advice and assistance when convenient.

27. leefe, the position that organisms are totally a product of random evolutionary events that take place at the material level is the position of the gene-centric followers of Dawkins and others.

    That is the illogical aspect to this.
    I explained the lack of logic.
    So if my position that such organisms would never ask the questions Julian asked is merely an assumption, as you claim, then refute it.

    My position is an assumption, or speculation, or whatever term might be best, but I gave reasons that to this point have not been questioned.

    I get the impression that your position on this is that we are in fact merely a product of evolutionary events at the material level.
    If so, come out and say it.
    If not, what on earth are we discussing?

    You say the how and why of the development of abstract thought are pure speculation because all we know is that it just happened.
    That’s a cop-out.
    The same evasion Dawkins hid behind, when writing a best seller based on the ridiculous idea that we are purely physical machines run by brilliant but devious fragments of DNA.
    Dawkins — “We are survival machines, robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”
    If you want to vent about speculation or assumptions, that notion would be a good place to start.

    And what was his explanation for the complexity of human nature?
    That it just happened.

28. Julian, Ramana Maharshi would say, I believe, that the solution to your quest for self-knowledge is to be found in considering this passage from you —
    Further reflection indicated that although having been born with a ‘short fuse’ I concluded it would be better in the short term to pursue a policy of discernment as a matter of prudence. In time, and after further study, I came to realise that the ‘still, silent centre’ might be possible to achieve, but the discipline was then beyond me, and remains so.

    The problem you outline there, formed the basis of his teaching.

    He taught that the “Who am I” question is the key to rising above these problems.

    But he also advised variations of the question, and this is relevant to your “short fuse” issue.
    He taught that the way to calm emotions was to ask as soon as they arise, “Who is it that’s angry” or “Who is it that’s worried about such and such?”
    By doing this we soon see that angers and fears and worries exist only at a superficial level.
    We reach the ‘still, silent’ centre you referred to.

    There’s plenty of Ramana’s teachings available online, extremely cheap.
    Search him out, it will not be a waste of time or effort.

29. Thank you for your comment leefe.
    Re ‘disconnection’, I understand your position and essentially agree.
    I now feel that it’s not possible to be both observer and actor at the same time. Nor is it possible I think to go through life as some sort of disinterested onlooker.
    Life simply has to be lived and that requires, nay, it demands an emotional input – a commitment if you like, on your part simply because you are surrounded by the emotional energy of others and are always responding. Exactly how you respond is a function both of what you observe and your own resources.
    How do you learn not fly off the handle at the first opportunity?
    One’s body can react so quickly to the emotional punch of another that it seems there’s no time to contemplate a leisurely response.
    Deep breathing helps.

30. Steve:

    I get the impression that your position on this is that we are in fact merely a product of evolutionary events at the material level.

    That’s all I can say with any confidence, because there is no solid evidence otherwise. I think, I speculate, I question. But I don’t presume to know.

    So if my position that such organisms would never ask the questions Julian asked is merely an assumption, as you claim, then refute it.

    You made the claim. You prove it. That is how debate is supposed to work.

    It can be neither proven nor disproven, because to do so we would have to prove conclusively whether or not our nature is purely due to “evolution on the material level”, and my contention is that we Can. Not. Do. That.

    This can be argued back and forth for eternity, and achieve nothing. Enjoy your circle-jerk.

31. Thanks Steve.
    I’ll get to Ramana eventually.
    Trouble is, there’s a few others in the queue.

32. leefe — “You made the claim. You prove it.”

    The claim is speculation as I said.
    I gave reasons for the claim.
    If you don’t like the reasons, refute them, because “That is how debate is supposed to work.”

    Basically, all you’ve said so far is “NO”.

    That’s fine, we’re all entitled to an opinion, but why get worked up over a difference of opinion about something that is speculative?

33. The posture of meditation to find the ‘still centre’ might be difficult to attain for those preoccupied with ‘finding’. It may be that a device such as sitting cross-legged facing into the naughty corner, wearing a pointy hat, may be sufficient to allow one to observe one’s wild horses gallop off over the horizon.

    Speculation is such a wonderful thing that opens a door for debate, and perhaps further testing of the weird and unresolved.

    All in good time, maybe.

34. The Guardian, today, has a Dawkins article, to thicken the ongoing talks and scribbles. AI will tend to devour much of the old, challenging…

35. Clakka, thanks for your ongoing interest.

    From what I’ve read, meditation, while helpful, is not a pre-requisite.

    The overall purpose is to stop the flow of “chatter” thoughts that we are all prone to, as these are merely expressions of the ego.
    Meditation can help with that.
    But apparently an accidental or unintentional complete stoppage of the flow takes one to the ‘still centre’, even those who deny its existence and significance.

36. Phil, I saw the Guardian article, but all that became clear from it was the hubris of those who wish to appear knowledgeable about the nature of consciousness before establishing the nature of life itself.
    I suspect that for some, the two are conflated.
    It’s fine to speculate as that can trigger insights, but an element of logic is needed for this to be productive.

37. I couldn’t consider much of value or further indications on knowns in the Guardian article, seemingly a cautious journalistic nod using names…but some chain or line in consequences may develop.

38. I have, thus far, refrained from comment. As to why, the inevitable muddling of subjective and objective mitigates against any clear position; disinclined to argue for or against any of the commentator’s views in the knowledge that such objections will be resisted and contrapositions will be posited, whether gainfully or otherwise. A can of worms hardly begins to accurately describe the matter at hand.

    Since, possibly, time immemorial, mankind has endeavoured to enable access to those who truly seek a passage towards enlightenment, higher degrees of understanding, comprehensive comprehension, an ‘all-seeing’ perspective. It’s not disallowed, in toto, that such an outlook is impossible. It’s also, in this scheme of things, not dependent on a highly articulated schemata of consciousness, brain function, degrees of attention, whys and wherefores of who knows what and who to follow or listen to, which guru is top dog or teacher ‘du jour’; all authentic teachers dissuaded their followers from slavishly following their teachings, insisting instead on the need to find one’s own path on this arduous ascent to the summit. Teachers, of course, are necessary, but perhaps not indefinitely. It’s argued that their necessity is a function of the difficulty of finding a way that suits… and there are many, each to their own, as it’s said. But utter reliance on the wisdom of one’s guru comes with limitations, as the Buddha observed, we all carry within us the divine spark of universal wisdom, and it’s our own personal obligation with this task to seek out and cognise this within ourselves.

    It’s acknowledged that many are called, but few are chosen. The majority of us in this quest are destined to fall by the wayside, such is the power of identification with ordinary life, when considered in the context of the exoteric, mesoteric, and esoteric circles of human existence. One teaching called upon its adherents to maintain a discipline of self-observation and self-remembering as fundamental tasks in this quest for awakening; it maintained that unless these two practices were religiously observed, nothing of benefit could be gained.

    We, poor humans, described by one avatar as ‘the poor ‘intellectual animal’ mistakenly called man’, are in an incredibly difficult situation, and there is, by and large, nothing in everyday life that can help us… to the contrary, everything in everyday life mitigates against this search.

    So, such is life, as our Ned said.

39. Kanga, many thanks for an excellent overview.

    Your concluding passage regarding the problems we face, while accurate, is offset by your earlier point that “we all carry within us the divine spark of universal wisdom, and it’s our own personal obligation with this task to seek out and cognise this within ourselves”

    For me, that’s a message of hope.
    As you correctly imply, there’s much in the everyday world that could lead to despair. Some would go so far as to say, to a state of permanent depression. Yet we are not permanently depressed or even permanently in a state of despair.

    More importantly, we do not let ourselves degenerate into sociopathic exploiters or thrill seekers, even though the state of the world and the management of the world pushes us in that direction.
    That worldly influence is immensely powerful and relentless, it confronts us all day every day, yet we resist it.
    That force of resistance is internal to us.
    And so widespread across continents and cultures that it’s clearly universal.
    It’s the reason that we’re here now, discussing this.
    So, more reason for hope.

    And so, when we from time to time feel great despair, as we all do, it’s clear that to “seek out and cognise” that universal aspect of our nature, our true nature free of ego, seems to me to be the most productive thing we can do for ourselves, and for the world.

40. Alan Kohler, writing in ABC online “news” has a go at this topic area, with Dawkins and his A I “romance” strongly featured, with some reserve and personal dissection. Interesting, amusing, enticing, worth many notes. Much may follow, and the navigation may generate opinion…

41. Phil,
    A great comment today on AI from Caitlin Johnstone.

    The more I see these arguments pop up, the clearer it becomes that very few of the people speculating about machine consciousness have put much energy and attention into examining what consciousness actually is.

    Examining consciousness is something that anyone can do right here and now, without any laboratory or test subjects or scientific background at all, and yet few take the time to actually do it.

    Going deep into the examination of your own consciousness turns up many surprises, because the average human psyche is built around many unfounded assumptions about self, perception and experience which don’t hold up under sufficiently close scrutiny. But one thing that becomes very clear very early on is that there’s a lot more to consciousness than thoughts and cognitive behavior. Those are some of the things we can be conscious of, but it would not be accurate to say that they are in themselves the quality of being conscious.

    Chatbots having the ability to mimic the appearance of cognitive behavior is not an adequate reason to believe they might be conscious, because no matter how many thoughts they appear to generate or how brilliant those thoughts appear to be, there’s no evidence that there’s any experience illuminating that behavior in the same way pain is illuminated in the experience of a cat whose tail has been stepped on. It’s just the movement of unliving matter, like lightning or the wind, without any subjective experience from the viewpoint it arises from. Computing power and consciousness are not the same thing.

42. It is, to this scribbler, a matter of surprise and puzzlement that the question of consciousness of machines is even being considered.

    As far as I’m willing to assume, despite some facile expressions of anthropomorphic association and affection, nobody a hundred years ago thought their Model T Ford, Austin Seven, or Renault had sentient qualities, nor indeed did that apply to any machine of any stripe until now, with the advent of LLMs and AI, and suddenly it’s become a thing among apparently serious wonks to ponder this question.

    Caitlin Johnstone is correct: the subject matter of consciousness is the human himself, proper enquiry lies in that domain, and apart from the ever curious question of what goes on in our animal cousins – which I suspect shall never be fully revealed – the real enquiry ought to be of ourselves, as so many brilliant exponents of this under-utilised task have so eloquently revealed. In that context, paying attention to the teachings and writings of Buddhists such as Matthieu Ricard, Robert Thurman, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mahasi Sayadaw, or Christians such as Hildegard von Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Merton, Thomas Moore, or Muslims and Sufis like Rūmī, Ibn Arabi, or Hafez, Indian teachers such as Osho, Meher Baba, Sadhguru, or others, Eckhart Tolle, Krishnamurti, Lee Lozowick, G.I. Gurdjieff, P.D. Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll, Boris Mouravieff can be of great help.

    This abridged list omits many others, and many others would prefer to live in silence and solitude, such as the Greek Orthodox monks of Mount Athos, or the Buddhist hermit monks of the Zhongnan Mountains in Shaanxi province in China, as documented by Bill Porter in his book Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits”, and depicted in the 2005 film, Amongst White Clouds. Retreat from the everyday world of everyday people for this search for the inner truth is not absolutely mandated for all, but traditionally was seen as greatly assisting the task at hand. Accounts abound of Tibetans secluding themselves for years prior to their awakening and enlightenment.

    Monasteries themselves are purpose designed for these esoteric endeavours, whether in Europe or Asia. In China I encountered Daoist monks living in rooms hewn from the rock in the sides of mountains far from other communities. One of these men told us that he’d lived a fully secular life until his sixties – family, occupation – and then realised it was time to retire from the world and work on the creation of his immortal soul. Not such an easy thing to do in western countries where these traditions don’t exist and we are constantly saturated with impressions that drown out these more sensitive longings.

43. Finding abstractions such as ‘consciousness’, ‘intelligence’ and ‘enlightenment’ as an absolute would seem to be subject to eternal name games and inventions. After all, as is said, “There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip.”

    As one travels one’s weirding way, it might be posited that one’s destiny is always in a direct line in front of one’s path of travel, and therefore forever, by one’s distractions, ever shifting compared to the destiny of others or any ‘grand scheme’.

    It may be that we all do not wish to circumscribe our potential by attaining our ultimate destiny or perfection – per se death.

    AI corporations selling conventional computing abilities and powerful discriminatory information processing of AI is fair enough. But to pretend to governments, ‘control freaks’ and the naive that ‘stacks’ of networked computers and LLMs (and the like) have ‘anthropomorphic’ characteristics superior to humans is ludicrous, and just a ‘Silicon Valley’ rent-seekers’ con job with an investor / oligarch pile-on.

    The simple Red Button Blue Button Test puts paid to that BS.

44. And today, Mike Brock on Substack adds more, whether fog or glow…

45. Phil, no fog there old mate, you tossed up a beauty with that one!

    From the article — the intelligent human is the one whose reason guides them toward eudaimonia, the flourishing-life that is the human’s proper end. Intelligence is what does that guiding. Without the orientation toward an end, what we have is not intelligence. It is a capacity. The capacity may serve intelligence when intelligence directs it. It may also serve other things when other things direct it. The capacity is not the intelligence. The intelligence is what does the directing.
    Exactly!
    This is not a sentimental claim. It is a structural one, and it tracks with how every other instance of intelligence we have ever encountered actually operates in the natural world. Children orient toward flourishing. They learn what they need to learn because they want to grow into the kinds of adults their forms of life require. .. Animals orient toward flourishing. Their cognition is bent toward what their species’ form of life requires for them to live well. Adult humans extend the pattern…The trajectory of human intelligence is toward greater self-direction, greater independence from external instruction, greater thermodynamic efficiency in the work of cognition itself.
    Intelligence in the natural world has these properties because intelligence is what it is. It is the capacity that orients an organism toward its own flourishing, and the orientation generates self-improvement as a structural consequence, because the organism that orients toward flourishing learns from its failures to flourish.
    Exactly!
    And so close to a definition of life itself!

    The article then focused on AI, again with excellent insights.
    They (developers) do not need the systems to actually become intelligent. They need the public to believe the systems are about to become intelligent. The belief is what funds the next round of compute and the next data-center build and the next acquisition of the cognitive-labor contractors that produce the actual capability the marketing conceals…We have a marketing apparatus that has successfully convinced the public that the system is something it is not, in service of a political settlement that depends on the convincing being maintained.

    What we do not have is intelligence. We do not have systems that are oriented toward any end. We do not have systems that self-improve through internal motivation. We do not have systems on a trajectory toward general intelligence or recursive self-improvement or autonomous cognition. We do not have systems that will obsolete the humans currently being paid $35 an hour to train them, because the humans are doing the work that the systems are not doing, and the systems have no apparatus for taking that work over.
    Check it out: https://substack.com/home/post/p-196923316

46. Thanks Phil Pryor and Steve,

    I thoroughly enjoyed and very much related to Mike Brock’s article. All good, harrumph, except;

    the ‘intelligence’ marketing scam (reaching saturation point),

    the knowing recursive reliance on extraction from / exploitation of the young brains-trust at gig-economy rates,

    regardless, the investors / oligarchs buying in and hyping,

    various panopticons using it as a ‘control mechanism’.