In this wide-ranging interview, one of our favorite scholars, Patrick Harpur, discusses the fundamental role of the imagination in human history, the human mind, and reality at large. He also discusses the daimons, those elusive, contradictory figures who inhabit minds and the world, but who appear only to those with the eyes to see. Harpur’s extensive, extraordinary, life-transforming body of work is one of the most criminally underrated in modern scholarship.
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If you were able to create an immortal version of yourself, would you? Until this decade, that question was the stuff of science fiction, but now experts in the fields of artificial intelligence and robotics suggest it will indeed be possible.
This cinematic documentary explores the latest technological advancements in AI, robotics, and biotech, and poses the question: what is the essence of the human mind, and can this be replicated? Or even more unsettling, could we one day meet cloned versions of ourselves – clones that are better, smarter, and immortal?
This film explores these questions with visionaries including Nick Bostrom, author of Superintelligence, Hiroshi Ishiguro, developer of his own uncannily realistic clone Geminoid; Douglas Rushkoff, author of Team Human; Ben Goertzel, founder of Singularity.net who coined the term Artificial General Intelligence; and Deepak Chopra, who is creating his own A.I. mind twin. These visionaries see humanity advancing toward a new age of post-biological life, a world of intelligence without bodies, immortal identity without the limitations of disease, death, and unfulfilled desire. As scientists at the forefront of technology show that a world where humans and machines merge isn’t so far away, we have to ask ourselves will AI be the best or the last thing we ever do?
Professor Hugo de Garis is an expert in robotics and artificial intelligence, a distinguished author, and now-retired researcher, best known for his work on developing artificial brains and advocating for the creation of “artilects” (artificial intellects) – machines capable of intellectual achievements rivaling or surpassing humans.
Brenda Dunne explains how she began to work at the PEAR Lab (Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research). This institute was conducting formal research in psychokinesis (the effect of the mind over matter), and in remote viewing. It was founded Robert Jahn, former dean of the school of Engineering at Princeton University. She presents the results of their studies, and how it implies that consciousness is a fundamental aspect of the reality we experience.
Brenda Dunne served for 28 years as laboratory manager of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) program. With Robert G. Jahn, she is coauthor of Margins of Reality: The Role of Consciousness in the Physical World, Consciousness and the Source of Reality: The PEAR Odyssey, Quirks of the Quantum Mind, and Molecular Memories. She also served as coeditor of Filters and Reflections: Perspectives on Reality and Being and Biology: Is Consciousness the Life-Force. She currently serves as president of the International Consciousness Research Lab (ICRL). Her website is http://icrl.org/
Here she suggests that the complementarity and uncertainty principles of quantum physics can be thought of as metaphors for the operation of the human mind. The term “metaphor” should not be thought of as trivial — as metaphors are always necessary when endeavoring to describe direct internal experience. All of the observations and thoughts that created quantum physics as we know it today are, in fact, products of the human psyche. The discussion focuses additionally on the experimenter effect in parapsychology.
Although consciousness-correlated physical phenomena are widely and credibly documented, their appearance and behavior display substantial departures from conventional scientific criteria. Under even the most rigorous protocols, they are only irregularly replicable, and they appear to be insensitive to most basic physical coordinates, including distance and time. Rather, their strongest correlations are with various subjective parameters, such as intention, emotional resonance, uncertainty, attitude, and meaning, and information processing at an unconscious level appears to be involved. If science, by its most basic definition, is to pursue understanding and utilization of these extraordinary processes, it will need to expand its current paradigm to acknowledge and codify a proactive role for the mind in the establishment of physical events, and to accommodate the spectrum of empirically indicated subjective correlates. The challenges of quantitative measurement and theoretical conceptualization within such a ‘‘Science of the Subjective’’ are formidable, but its potential intellectual and cultural benefits could be immense, not least of all in improving the reach, the utility, the attitude, and the image of science itself.
Professor Tallis—a philosopher, poet, novelist, cultural critic, retired medical physician and clinical neuroscientist—discusses the relationship between mind and brain, as well as the big questions about the nature of reality.
Is consciousness a fundamental aspect of reality? This documentary follows and the recent return of “panpsychism” as a respectable theory in philosophy and science. Part of the Waking Cosmos series.
Why is love the answer? Watch Tom give a logical explanation on why love is the best solution to our evolution. Consciousness is a social system, and the best way for a social system to interact is through caring about other.
