Forms of life, forms of mind

9 responses to “Ali Hanson: studying the baseline thoughts of Hydra and beyond”

1. 

   Matt Smart

   August 30, 2024

   Mike, your first question, and the answer, seem to relate to the difference between Complex, and Complicated. (Though the answer briefly stumbles over this distinction)

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2. 

   Boris

   August 31, 2024

   fun 😉

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3. 

   Kine Hieldnes

   August 31, 2024

   Maybe an answer to the second question could be that the guiding universal principle is conservation of energy so that «conflicting» dynamical histories, in terms of what was where when etc., can coexist because both respect conservation. And the objective perspective is all those stories that can exist because of respecting the same conservation laws. In that regard we can have a common coherent model, but of course not say much about what are possible outside it. Also, it might be possible to expand the model and discover deeper principles if we discover how to hack the “larger” system if there is one.

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4. 

   Wayne Enos

   August 31, 2024

   Thanks to Dr. Hanson and thanks to Dr. Levin for the talk and introducing Dr. Hanson to me . She has an expanded consciousness and way of thinking just like you. I believe you both should belong to the great Explorers Club for the journeys you have taken realizing the smallest agent has some choice to be made and the capability of making it where others just saw a piece of hardware following it’s programming. I know this is true from dealing with my own body. I recently watched a class on Gut Microbiome. I eat a super food diet and the only meat I eat is chicken. I skipped the chicken the next day after being in a hurry. The next morning I woke up and first thing I thought of was how I don’t want to eat chicken ever again. It was like a decision had been made overnight and it was not my brain that made it and not my tongue. My gut put chicken in the same category of the ribeye steak I used to love. As a no go and nothing that my gut wants to deal with again. I had a similar thing happen while exercising and the muscles in my arms. I know all of our cells are little agents with little consciousness. Just like Star Trek. To boldly go where no man ( and, or woman) has gone before! They had spaceships and you have new tech that can dive deeper and analyze the faintest signals that will eventually help end sickness and aging! Thanks again ! Live long and prosper1

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5. 

   Maggie Ciskanik

   August 31, 2024

   I appreciated her description of the different perspectives she had to recognize and adjust to depending on what discipline she was studying. It is so simple and obvious on one level but how easy not to see it on another!

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6. 

   Tony Budding

   August 31, 2024

   Thanks for posting this Mike. I love what you all are doing. Now, what happens if we combine Ali’s answer to the second question with your discussion about the first?

   As Ali said, it seems like we experience objects like a computer, a bookshelf and a self as real things, but as the mind quiets down in extreme states of meditation, we realize that these objects are functional constructions of the mind that are not actually what they originally seemed to be. Of course, there is some form of reality to the computer and bookshelf since both can be used by different people who don’t know anything about each other (and thus can’t be co-conspirators of that reality).

   How does this apply to the questions of whether there’s a single underlying reality or if we can fully resolve an explanation of any single phenomenon?

   Somehow, we have to separate our knowledge and experience of phenomena from the phenomena themselves. This is incredibly challenging because all we have access to is our knowledge and experiences. (FWIW, knowledge and experiences are synonymous because we can’t have knowledge without experiencing the knowledge and we can’t have experiences without knowing the experience.)

   What you all are beginning to establish beyond a reasonable doubt is that all knowledge, experience and intelligence is modular (which is consistent with several ancient metaphysical traditions). Human metacognition is arguably the highest stage of modularity that we know about, but it’s based on uniquely cooperative agencies that operate at simpler stages of modularity alone. Learning about and optimizing these cooperating processes seems like an incredibly fruitful endeavor.

   Concepts like computers and bookshelves are only possible with metacognition, and yet they have no cohesive, autonomous reality outside such metacognition. This applies to any aspect of life in the universe. What we experience are mental constructions about perceivable phenomena. By what means can we separate mental constructions from underlying realities if we can only know mental constructions? Many of our mental constructions are highly functional, so this isn’t a criticism of the process, just a statement of the conundrum.

   Another conundrum is dimensionality. Human modular intelligence is structured to process phenomena in three dimensional space and a unidirectional sequencing of causes and effects (time). It seems extremely unlikely that our puny brains and bodies (relative to the scale of the known universe) are equipped to process all the realities that exist “out there.” Can a two dimensional creature understand a three dimensional reality?

   Ali made the statement that it’s awareness itself that underlies all the experiences of life. Indeed, experiences are the awareness of content. Now, can there awareness without content? And if there can be, what does that imply about the source of experiences and life? Unfortunately, we could never know or prove that awareness can exist without content because all knowledge is content and content can’t explain the absence of content.

   I personally suspect that human knowledge is structurally incapable of a comprehensive understanding of reality, but that we have enormous room for improvement over what we functionally understand and can influence today.

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7. 

   Elisabeth

   September 18, 2024

   Hey …if you’re seeking a new perspective then DMT will confound you – it’s beyond language (noises made with vocal chords) it’s language is purely visual – the interface between this reality and DMT reality is where insight is gained.
   From my own experiences I can only say it was like stepping back into the garden of eden ….
   The real garden of eden……and I’m not the religious type …

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8. 

   Ian Todd

   June 17, 2025

   Maybe we’re thinking about this wrong. It’s not “why does the organism produce the oscillation?” It’s “why does the oscillation produce the organism?”

   Oscillations exist before organisms — abiogenesis starts from oscillating chemical reactions. They get entangled to each other, and experience group selection via Price equation dynamics.

   Peter Turchin does a good simplification of the Price equation in Ultrasociety: (between group variance / within group variance) > (selection strength on individuals / selection strength on groups)

   Which is to say, genes are just very slow oscillators. And the slower the oscillator, the lower its energy consumption, increasing the likelihood that it persists. That which can persist, does persist; the group only expends energy to eject oscillations that reduce collective fitness.

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   1. 

      Mike Levin

      June 19, 2025

      I think that’s reasonable and this idea (that the agents are the patterns, not their physical embodiment) is described in https://iai.tv/articles/patterns-are-alive-and-we-are-living-patterns-auid-2919?_auid=2020 and a bit in my Platonic space preprint. Also some relevant ideas here: https://thoughtforms.life/whos-the-data-implications-of-thoughts-are-thinkers-continuum-for-developmental-bioelectricity/

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