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Damon's sci-fi blog, and various ramblings. Full Post View | List View
A series of satirical short stories, disguised as science fiction in many cases.
- An interview with Timothy Leary
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Tim Leary Talks Future Tech and Neo-Paganism
Posted Jul 07, 2007
David Jay Brown: As machines are comprised of earth-based products, Terence McKenna made the suggestion that it could be that through technological advancement the planet is organizing itself into a self-reflective conscious entity. What do you think of this idea?
TIMOTHY: That's fabulous. I'm a great admirer of Terence McKenna, and what he's doing. I must put a caveat here. All of our language is suspect as we move from a mechanical factory society, which is state-controlled, into a much freer cybernetic society. Now, all of us who grew up in the sixties have a terrible bias against technology, because technology was what was polluting the air, and grinding down the soil, and making a parking lot out of our planet. Much of this understandable contempt for technology has flipped over into a contempt for computers.
But there's a great difference between mechanical technology, which uses oil, metal, concrete, and is in material form, and the cybernetic technology which is invisible. Within two or three years of the computers, instead of the mainframe's enormous bar and building it will be as small as a cigarette box. So that the basic virtue and ethical goal in the cybernetic society is no longer big is better, and more is better, but smaller. Throughout, the lesson is learned from Hermes Trismagistus: as above, so below, as in the larger, so in the smaller.
The greatest wisdom is always housed in the smallest package. I think I even said that in the Psychedelic Prayers twenty-eight years ago. Look at the DNA code. The DNA code is invisible, and yet the DNA code has enough information to build you an Amazon rain forest, or build a hundred David Browns. I mean it's there. The point is certainly obvious. We've now learned that the atom is not just a bunch of billiard balls going around Bohr's solar system. The atom, we have every reason to expect, is charged with enormous miniaturized information. The fact that we can't decipher it is not the problem of the atom. That's what quantum physics demonstrates.
See, matter and energy are frozen clusters of quarks. Matter is simply information which is frozen, and then it dissolves. So the smaller the information unit, the more efficient, and the more kindly, because you don't have to chop down a forest of trees to build books. It can just be put on tiny little silicon chip. See, we've gone from carbon to silicon, because carbon is much more precious. Carbon is organic, whereas silicon is cybernetic. You want to have the silicon do whatever you can to spare the carbon, because the trees, bees and flowers are carbon based.
DJB: How do you feel about scientific progress these days, and what do you think is missing?
TIMOTHY:There's been a wonderful surge of new and imaginative science in the last ten or fifteen years. Prigogine's system theory, for example. Sheldrake's morphogenetic resonance, and the notion of the hundred monkeys. Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis. Terence McKenna. I could go on listing. All of these wonderful intuitions growing out of science have been landmarks. There's just one little slip you have to add to it that makes it all click, and that is that all of these wonderful thinkers and prophets are talking about information. See, another thing I must say is that the key to information theory and quantum philosophy is the notion that there are no laws of the universe. That's such a typical Victorian British Empire piece of shit, because the Judeo God is up there--he's the judge, and he's emitting laws and commandments, of all things.
DJB: How do you see the process of evolution working?
TIMOTHY: The way that evolution works at the level of astro-physics, or at the organic level, and even the level of human knowledge, is that it's all based on algorithms. I won't go into the details, but algorithms can be summed up as: if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if, if--then. So, if the sunlight is such, if the temperature is this, if the water level is this, if the meteorological stuff is this, and if there is enough nitrogen--Click--then it happens in every island around, all the leaves turn green. See, they're programmed that way.
DJB: Have you thought about Bell's Theorem, how the mechanism of nonlocality occurs?
TIMOTHY: This notion of the non-locality of cause--Bell's Theorem and all that--seems kind of mysterious, unless it's all information, of course. If you program an algorithm, you don't set laws; you're the program, and if the program is if, if, if, if--then, the same thing's going to happen on the other side of the galaxy if it's going to happen here. That's the non-locality of cause. It's totally comprehensible and inevitable if you understand it's all information chains and codes, and they all pop up if, if, if, if--then. This is not in any way a reductionist perspective. Another one of the problems of a soft philosophy and hard philosophy is reductionism.
There's no reductionism here because if you've played around with algorithms, like fractals for example, you realize that you never know what's going to happen. They asked Fredkin--who's the great prophet of all this--"Are you saying that God is some crazed computer hacker in the sky, who's writing all these programs for stars, and atoms?" If there are two of you, and one of me, and you're hydrogen, and I'm oxygen, we get water, see? But, if that's the if.
Fredkin said, "Well, I don't know about trying to identify the intelligence that set these algorithms up; we're too crude right now to speculate, but I'll tell you one thing about it. Whoever he, she, it, or they were who wrote these algorithms, they're surprised as hell every time because?quick?oh my god?look what they're doing now!" If you've ever seen how a fractal program operates, you know that these incredible forms develop, and yet they always come back to the basic forms of cosines, which are like the linings of the esophagus, which are like the clouds.
See, coastlines and coast-like phenomena are wonderful, because they are a way of miniaturizing information. If you took a coastline and pulled it out, it'd be like ten miles long, but not if you crunch it together, like the DNA code is. It's a way of miniaturizing and packaging. Now, the notion of algorithms account for non-locality of cause. Whether it's Bell's physical experiments, or Sheldrake's hundred monkeys. It's so comforting to know that everyone is right. It's just that we can improve the theories, and make Sheldrake and Bell more precise and comprehensible.Sunday June 7, 2009 - 03:53am (CDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - To Further Debunk The Paranormal
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Shared Visual And Auditory Manifestations
In the case of multiple witnesses, of an apparition or auditory experience, we can still point to commonalities through consideration of human development from the beginnings of family and community units up to the present day. More recently shared cultural backgrounds lend more credence to this view of the subconscious gestalt, made no less convincing by the countless accounts of those who are closely and directly related within a limited or extended family group.
Where we have as many as a-thousand or more subjects who claim to have witnessed a supernatural manifestation-such as the accounts of the Virgin Mary having appeared to an entire gathering-the commonalities are reinforced by strong religious feelings, fanaticism, and other various neurosis. Thus, the number of people affected serves little to support claims of an extraordinary event taking place beyond known forms of causality.
Monday May 25, 2009 - 11:42pm (CDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Ghost Stories
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Here's my best guess about much of what people label as paranormal: states of consciousness persist in modern man which are leftovers from an earlier time. Regardless of our advances in technology and the sense of social responsibility the propensity remains to revert into a more primative state of awareness.Tuesday May 5, 2009 - 09:04am (CDT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment
- Hiding
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I am sorry, but at this time I am not answering my mail, or even the telephone. My meds have not kicked in yet and I am having a rough time of it. Such is the nature of a severe depression, that even my closest friends will not be granted an audience.Saturday May 2, 2009 - 03:28am (CDT) Permanent Link | 3 Comments
- Trying
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Trying to be more positive today, taking my meds, and holding onto the oh-shit handles while this roller coaster continues.Wednesday April 29, 2009 - 02:25pm (CDT) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
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