Alex M. Vikoulov's Blog, page 8

Nearing the Economic Singularity: How Fast Are We Outgrowing Capitalism?

by Alex Vikoulov "The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders, and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organizing production and distribution and culture will emerge."  -Yanis Varufakis

​​The current economic system distributes wealth in a very focused manner that prevents a vast majority of humans from being adequately rewarded by the technologically advanced civilization. These factors undoubtedly condemn today’s system of suboptimal economics to the realm of classical models of history as a result of impending obsolescence. In brief, the current faltering economic model is suboptimal, hinders economic growth, and is not sustainable going forward.*
​ *This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore.
​ eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
​
​The current economic operating system may work with “alternating success” for some time, but ultimately capitalism will mutate and will be gradually replaced with IT-based shared economy. Many labels were tentatively given to this post-scarcity, post-capitalist model. In his 2018 book, Superminds, Thomas W. Malone, MIT’s director of the Center for Collective Intelligence, describes a hypothetical model he calls ‘Cybersocialism’, other names like ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ were mentioned in the press. We’ll use the broad term ‘Post-capitalism’ here to refer to any subsequent economic model.
​
Make a note that I don’t advocate for any particular model, I’m only saying that we are quickly outgrowing the classic form of capitalism. I believe economic evolution is akin to any other natural process of unfolding patterns, so it would apply to economic development as well. Economic evolution doesn’t end with capitalism. By mid-century, geo-post-capitalism will likely combine market economy, socialist elements and even AI-engineered central planning amid decentralized backdrop of its global components. Evolutionary utilitarianism – ensuring the greater good for the greatest number – seems like an obvious eventuality.*
​ *This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore. eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
Overall, we have been on the right track, nonetheless. Many aspects of life on Earth are getting dramatically better. Extreme poverty has fallen by half since 1990, and life expectancy is increasing by leaps and bounds in developing countries. Studies consistently show that most people in developed countries have no clue that the world has taken a happier turn in recent decades because media, and humans in general, have a strong negativity bias. Bad economic news get more coverage than good news. Negative experiences affect people more, and for longer, than positive ones, and many people think things are getting worse, in part because that’s actually an evolutionary adaptation: It’s been crucial for our survival to be sensitive to bad news, so people are genetically conditioned to pay about ten times more attention to negativity than positivity.
 
As long as the costs of communications and computation continue to drop due to exponential advances in technology, communication networks become global and ubiquitous, and as the networks proliferate, they gradually replace matter with mind, i.e. networked intelligence. Access is becoming more important than ownership. It would be more economically optimal in some situations to rent than to own, in other situations to share and generate passive income.
 
If the premise of the current sharing economy is that you can turn your car into a cab or your house into a hotel, the premise of the next phase of the IT-based shared economy is that you can turn anything into a productive asset. All you have to do is set your price and other criteria, and AI will take care of the rest. The blockchain “smart contracts” could make a lot of things sharable. Electronic “gig economy” can distribute creative and enjoyable mini-tasks, and “digital twins” can earn you additional income. Our AI future is almost unimaginable: AI will destroy and create jobs, invent new industries, accelerate innovation to a new level and fundamentally change the way business is done across the board.
 
Some epicenters of innovation, such as Silicon Valley, revered as America’s technology capital, where I’m fortunate to live, has an outsized influence on the world’s economy, stock markets and culture. This small stretch of land from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world’s five most valuable companies. Tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Oracle all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home. San Francisco Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. And California is now the 5th largest economy, surpassing the U.K. in 2018.
 
Across the Pacific Ocean, collectivistic China rivals the U.S. in terms of Big Data generation. Moreover, China seems to put more emphasis on developing robotics – empathic machines – to integrate robots, and consequently, AGIs into the fabric of society, while the focus of the U.S. has been disembodied AI, thus far. China might be closer to the realization of the Global Brain, epitomized in the Internet of Things, Internet of NanoThings, Quantum Internet and Virtual Metaverse than most countries. But at the same time, none of it won’t really matter – by mid-century nation-states will fade away, anyway, just like the feudal city walls are now no more than a historic peculiarity.

Nation-states evolved to regulate human beings – the main intellectual and physical resource in the past few centuries – while blockchains, and similar systems that could be called “virtual states” are evolving to regulate information technology. In the future, nation-states will have ever more limited ability to reach into cyberspace to regulate information technology. Not only the world around us is rapidly shifting to a truly digital economy, but one that will become economically borderless. Just like medieval city walls later were either demolished or reduced to historic curiosity, over time, nation-states will, too, gradually play a quickly diminishing role in our lives, giving way to one global stronghold without borders.*
​
*This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore. eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
In today’s rapidly changing global economy, emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and VR edge us ever closer to the brave new world where national borders will be ultimately transcended. Over the long term, technology trends will inexorably trump any geopolitics in significance. Entrepreneurs, researchers and socialites are much better adept and motivated to cooperate on a global scale than politicians. In the meantime, AI will fundamentally change how governments work, and the changes will likely come much sooner than many think. We’ll also see the emergence of nano-nations that create self-sustaining human habitats on the ocean – seasteading. In fighting a losing battle for relevance with virtual states and nano-nations, nation-states will be forced to implement UBI to keep them relevant for few more years. 
 
The United Nations’ Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 suggests we seriously need to consider making drastic changes to our economic systems. “[T]he economic models which inform political decision-making in rich countries almost completely disregard the energetic and material dimensions of the economy,” the researchers wrote in the report. “Economies have used up the capacity of planetary ecosystems to handle the waste generated by energy and material use.” In summary, maybe it’s time to accept we can’t somehow maintain endless economic growth on a finite planet.
 
But what if with the new wave of technologies, such as nanotechnology which would enable us to reprogram matter at a molecular level, we can overcome scarcity once and for all? Design would then become the most important part from start to end product which can be freely shared or have a premium in the marketplace. At any rate, this will dismantle the current social, economic, and political system, because it will become irrelevant; every institution, every value system, every aspect of our lives have been governed by scarcity: the problem of distributing a finite amount of “stuff.” There will be no need for any of the today’s social institutions. In other words, when nanotech and ultra-realistic VR are commonplace, the system built on scarcity will crumble and that would herald the forthcoming "economic singularity." eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy

​P.S. That was an abridged excerpt from The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution in which a long chapter is specifically dedicated to economics. Why am I talking about economics in the philosophy book? In our interdependent world, everything is woven into the tapestry of life and our today’s livelihood heavily depends on economy. In the long run, capitalism won’t survive, nation-states won’t survive – we will but as a new technological species – through a metamorphosis on the planetary scale – the human-machine “caterpillar” transforming into a higher-dimensional “butterfly.”  
​ Tags: economic singularity, capitalism, economic system, economic model, suboptimal economics, Yanis Varufakis, Superminds, Thomas W. Malone, Collective Intelligence, Cybersocialism, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Post-capitalism, Economic evolution, geo-post-capitalism, market economy, evolutionary utilitarianism, IT-based shared economy, smart contracts, gig economy, digital twins, Silicon Valley, Big Data, empathic machines, robots,  AGIs, disembodied AI, Global Brain, Internet of Things, Internet of NanoThings, Quantum Internet, Virtual Metaverse, Nation-states, blockchains, virtual states, information technology, cyberspace, nano-nations, UBI, United Nations, Global Sustainable Development Report​, nanotechnology, VR

*Image Credit: Shutterstock

​
About the Author:
Alex Vikoulov is a futurist, neo-transcendentalist, transhumanist singularitarian, evolutionary cyberneticist, cosmist, digital philosopher, founder of Ecstadelic Media, painter, essayist, media commentator, author of "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution," "The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology," "The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics," "The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence," "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality." Lives in Burlingame, California (San Francisco Bay Area).  More Bio...
​
e-mail: alexvikoulov@ecstadelic.net
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How Fast Are We Outgrowing Capitalism?

by Alex Vikoulov "The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders, and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organizing production and distribution and culture will emerge."  -Yanis Varufakis

​​The current economic system distributes wealth in a very focused manner that prevents a vast majority of humans from being adequately rewarded by the technologically advanced civilization. These factors undoubtedly condemn today’s system of suboptimal economics to the realm of classical models of history as a result of impending obsolescence. In brief, the current faltering economic model is suboptimal, hinders economic growth, and is not sustainable going forward.*
​ *This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore.
​ eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
​The current economic operating system may work with “alternating success” for some time, but ultimately capitalism will mutate and will be gradually replaced with IT-based shared economy. Many labels were tentatively given to this post-scarcity, post-capitalist model. In his 2018 book, Superminds, Thomas W. Malone, MIT’s director of the Center for Collective Intelligence, describes a hypothetical model he calls ‘Cybersocialism’, other names like ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ were mentioned in the press. We’ll use the broad term ‘Post-capitalism’ here to refer to any subsequent economic model.
​
Make a note that I don’t advocate for any particular model, I’m only saying that we are quickly outgrowing the classic form of capitalism. I believe economic evolution is akin to any other natural process of unfolding patterns, so it would apply to economic development as well. Economic evolution doesn’t end with capitalism. By mid-century, geo-post-capitalism will likely combine market economy, socialist elements and even AI-engineered central planning amid decentralized backdrop of its global components. Evolutionary utilitarianism – ensuring the greater good for the greatest number – seems like an obvious eventuality.*
​ *This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore. eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
Overall, we have been on the right track, nonetheless. Many aspects of life on Earth are getting dramatically better. Extreme poverty has fallen by half since 1990, and life expectancy is increasing by leaps and bounds in developing countries. Studies consistently show that most people in developed countries have no clue that the world has taken a happier turn in recent decades because media, and humans in general, have a strong negativity bias. Bad economic news get more coverage than good news. Negative experiences affect people more, and for longer, than positive ones, and many people think things are getting worse, in part because that’s actually an evolutionary adaptation: It’s been crucial for our survival to be sensitive to bad news, so people are genetically conditioned to pay about ten times more attention to negativity than positivity.
 
As long as the costs of communications and computation continue to drop due to exponential advances in technology, communication networks become global and ubiquitous, and as the networks proliferate, they gradually replace matter with mind, i.e. networked intelligence. Access is becoming more important than ownership. It would be more economically optimal in some situations to rent than to own, in other situations to share and generate passive income.
 
If the premise of the current sharing economy is that you can turn your car into a cab or your house into a hotel, the premise of the next phase of the IT-based shared economy is that you can turn anything into a productive asset. All you have to do is set your price and other criteria, and AI will take care of the rest. The blockchain “smart contracts” could make a lot of things sharable. Electronic “gig economy” can distribute creative and enjoyable mini-tasks, and “digital twins” can earn you additional income. Our AI future is almost unimaginable: AI will destroy and create jobs, invent new industries, accelerate innovation to a new level and fundamentally change the way business is done across the board.
 
Some epicenters of innovation, such as Silicon Valley, revered as America’s technology capital, where I’m fortunate to live, has an outsized influence on the world’s economy, stock markets and culture. This small stretch of land from San Jose to San Francisco is home to three of the world’s five most valuable companies. Tech giants such as Apple, Facebook, Google, Intel and Oracle all claim Silicon Valley as their birthplace and home. San Francisco Bay Area has the 19th-largest economy in the world, ranking above Switzerland and Saudi Arabia. And California is now the 5th largest economy, surpassing the U.K. in 2018.
 
Across the Pacific Ocean, collectivistic China rivals the U.S. in terms of Big Data generation. Moreover, China seems to put more emphasis on developing robotics – empathic machines – to integrate robots, and consequently, AGIs into the fabric of society, while the focus of the U.S. has been disembodied AI, thus far. China might be closer to the realization of the Global Brain, epitomized in the Internet of Things, Internet of NanoThings, Quantum Internet and Virtual Metaverse than most countries. But at the same time, none of it won’t really matter – by mid-century nation-states will fade away, anyway, just like the feudal city walls are now no more than a historic peculiarity.

Nation-states evolved to regulate human beings – the main intellectual and physical resource in the past few centuries – while blockchains, and similar systems that could be called “virtual states” are evolving to regulate information technology. In the future, nation-states will have ever more limited ability to reach into cyberspace to regulate information technology. Not only the world around us is rapidly shifting to a truly digital economy, but one that will become economically borderless. Just like medieval city walls later were either demolished or reduced to historic curiosity, over time, nation-states will, too, gradually play a quickly diminishing role in our lives, giving way to one global stronghold without borders.*
​
*This article is adapted from "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" by Alex M. Vikoulov, available now on amazon.com, bn.com, and directly from EcstadelicNET webstore. eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy
In today’s rapidly changing global economy, emerging technologies like AI, blockchain, and VR edge us ever closer to the brave new world where national borders will be ultimately transcended. Over the long term, technology trends will inexorably trump any geopolitics in significance. Entrepreneurs, researchers and socialites are much better adept and motivated to cooperate on a global scale than politicians. In the meantime, AI will fundamentally change how governments work, and the changes will likely come much sooner than many think. We’ll also see the emergence of nano-nations that create self-sustaining human habitats on the ocean – seasteading. In fighting a losing battle for relevance with virtual states and nano-nations, nation-states will be forced to implement UBI to keep them relevant for few more years. 
 
The United Nations’ Global Sustainable Development Report 2019 suggests we seriously need to consider making drastic changes to our economic systems. “[T]he economic models which inform political decision-making in rich countries almost completely disregard the energetic and material dimensions of the economy,” the researchers wrote in the report. “Economies have used up the capacity of planetary ecosystems to handle the waste generated by energy and material use.” In summary, maybe it’s time to accept we can’t somehow maintain endless economic growth on a finite planet.
 
But what if with the new wave of technologies, such as nanotechnology which would enable us to reprogram matter at a molecular level, we can overcome scarcity once and for all? Design would then become the most important part from start to end product which can be freely shared or have a premium in the marketplace. At any rate, this will dismantle the current social, economic, and political system, because it will become irrelevant; every institution, every value system, every aspect of our lives have been governed by scarcity: the problem of distributing a finite amount of “stuff.” There will be no need for any of the today’s social institutions. In other words, when nanotech and ultra-realistic VR are commonplace, the system built on scarcity will crumble and that would herald the forthcoming "economic singularity." eBook | Paperback | Hardcover | Autographed Copy

​P.S. That was an abridged excerpt from The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution in which a long chapter is specifically dedicated to economics. Why am I talking about economics in the philosophy book? In our interdependent world, everything is woven into the tapestry of life and our today’s livelihood heavily depends on economy. In the long run, capitalism won’t survive, nation-states won’t survive – we will but as a new technological species – through a metamorphosis on the planetary scale – the human-machine “caterpillar” transforming into a higher-dimensional “butterfly.”  
​ Tags: capitalism, economic system, economic model, suboptimal economics, Yanis Varufakis, Superminds, Thomas W. Malone, Collective Intelligence, Cybersocialism, Fully Automated Luxury Communism, Post-capitalism, Economic evolution, geo-post-capitalism, market economy, evolutionary utilitarianism, IT-based shared economy, smart contracts, gig economy, digital twins, Silicon Valley, Big Data, empathic machines, robots,  AGIs, disembodied AI, Global Brain, Internet of Things, Internet of NanoThings, Quantum Internet, Virtual Metaverse, Nation-states, blockchains, virtual states, information technology, cyberspace, nano-nations, UBI, United Nations, Global Sustainable Development Report​, nanotechnology, VR

*Image Credit: Shutterstock

​
About the Author:
Alex Vikoulov is a futurist, neo-transcendentalist, transhumanist singularitarian, evolutionary cyberneticist, cosmist, digital philosopher, founder of Ecstadelic Media, painter, essayist, media commentator, author of "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution," "The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology," "The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics," "The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence," "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality." Lives in Burlingame, California (San Francisco Bay Area).  More Bio...
​
e-mail: alexvikoulov@ecstadelic.net
​
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The Alpha Point vs. the Omega Point: Ours is one of the possible worlds simulated in absolute consciousness

“Each of us appears in the divine play in a dual role of creator and actor. A full and realistic enactment of our role in the cosmic drama requires the suspension of our true identity. We have to forget our authorship and follow the script.”
-Stanislav Grof
 
Our human minds are fractals of the larger cosmic mind and consciousness is all that is. Information, which physicists now claim to be fundamental, requires consciousness to assign meaning to it. In other words, Mind is primary, the Universe is a network of networks of entangled conscious minds, and our experiential reality emerges from confluent digital data streams. So, what’s the basis for such radical claims, you might ask. 
​
Today, a great number of physicists, such as Edward Fredkin, Stephan Wolfram, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Seth Lloyd, David Deutsch, Paola Zizzi, Carl Friedrich von Weizscker, Leonard Susskind, Klee Irwin, Paul Davies and Max Tegmark, suggest it is too aggressive to theorize reality is made of something other than information. They maintain it is more logical and consistent that reality is made of information – not simply described by information. 

​There is no good counterargument to the digital ontology. Information can be defined as meaning conveyed by symbolism and as we'll see further, contextual difference between phenomenal states of consciousness. And meaning and context are qualities deeply related to language, choice and consciousness. It also points in the direction to validate monistic interpretation of reality predicated on non-duality of informational medium, be it experiential realism, digital pantheism, absolute idealism, or computational panpsychism.
​ Everything in Nature is Code, which according to its ordering rules arranges all information – mass-energy, space-time, including mind-like code-theoretic substratum itself. As long as there are physically realizable syntactical rules directing how an abstract code self-organizes, it’s equally as logical for information to behave physically. Also, the term ‘simulation’, as in the Simulation Hypothesis, as well as the term ‘virtual reality’ are both confusing because we use them to distinguish between something real as opposed to something not real. Since all realities are observer-dependent, information-theoretic data streams, virtual is equisensory to real. In this case, perhaps, ‘digital reality’ could be the more accurate and much less confusing term. In fact, quantum indeterminacy constantly resolves into a digital reality via the act of conscious observation. As soon as a “measurement” is made by a conscious agent (in the physicist lingo), all other possibilities collapse to leave only discrete increments, precise yes/no states. Quantum mechanics becomes intelligible, if viewed as natural computation.* *Adapted from newly-released "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality," now available as eBook on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
THE GREAT PRESENCE

This “procedurally generated” digital reality can be solved by saying that we are part of some sort of simulation by aliens or our own descendants in a universe up, who in turn inhabit a simulation by simulators in another world, ad infinitum. A simulated reality can nest a civilization that reaches the posthuman stage and proceeds to build its own whole-world virtual universes. In this way, reality could have many levels, as Nick Bostrom of Oxford points out, with simulations within simulations, “matryoshka” of embedded realities, running on virtual computers. The number of layers of simulation would be dependent on the computer power available at the base-level computer (which is not simulated). We cannot completely rule out the Simulation Hypothesis with this infinite regress problem and its quasiphysicalist basis, but we can consider yet another much more optimistic alternative. I tend to assign a significantly higher probability to the pre-existence of the Omega Point as the cosmological singularity which has reached maximum computational capacity and has been projecting all possible digital timelines, as if from within the Universal Mind, we ourselves are part of.

Why the Omega Point? Today, many progressives refer to the Omega Point in their work, others explicitly endorse the concept. Andrew Strominger, a theoretical physicist at Harvard University, claims that the origin of the Universe lies in the far future convergent Omega Point, and information is being projected as we would consider backwards in time. Frank Tipler, a physics professor at Tulane University, the author of The Physics of Immortality, has developed the Omega Point scientific theory which posits that evolution of the Universe will inexorably lead to ever-higher complexity, connectivity and computational density of the final cosmological singularity. Tipler elaborates that photons of light emitted by us could be potentially captured by future superintelligence in order to “resurrect” each of us in a new simulated reality. 

In The Fabric of Reality, physicist David Deutsch endorses the Tiplerian Omega Point. Though he mildly criticizes Tipler for making certain metaphysical speculations concerning his Omega Point theory, Deutsch stipulates a contracting universe that includes a universal network of quantum computers. Terence McKenna spoke of the transcendental object at the end of time in reference to the Omega Point in the philosophy of Teilhard de Chardin. As Teilhard de Chardin reiterates at the conclusion of “The Future of Man,” “Erit in omnibus omnia Deus,” which means that God may become all in and through all. This is nothing less than a pantheistic cosmic vision with us as God incarnates.

The plausibility of all mass and energy in the Universe self-organizing into a single conscious system is not logically problematic, given our knowledge of physics today, argues emergence theorist Klee Irwin. What could be counterintuitive is the idea of a transtemporal consciousness and retrocausality, which presumably is necessary to instantiate into a physical substrate of particles and space-time of our deeply non-local reality. Albert Einstein showed how the future and past exist simultaneously in one mathematical object, the Block Universe. Quantum mechanics seems to reveal that the arrow of time can work in both directions, as has been become evident from Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment. The concept of time symmetry also implies temporal bi-directionality. Daryl Bem of Cornell University published rigorous evidence that retrocausality exists, where future events loop back in time to co-create past events.

From our linear perspective, we can see clearly that the past co-creates the future. But when the future also co-creates the past, an evolving feedback loop occurs – sort of like a feedback between two mirrors or a mathematical feedback loop – a fractal. So, if every moment is co-creating every other moment both forward and backward in time, our Universe may be theoretically regarded as a spatio-temporal information network. This type of self-emergent network would possess a strange mind-like quality, it would be self-actualized – its own creator – that is its own hardware, software and simulation output in a holistic system. Can consciousness that emerges from the Ultimate Code be the origin of the Code making it logically consistent causality loop?  Like a tail-chasing Ouroboros, we can infer the Universal Mind, which is just another name for the self-observing universal entity evolving towards the Omega Point. 

Arguably, there is no known natural constraint on what portion of the Universe can exponentially self-organize into freewill conscious systems like us humans. All the energy in the Universe can be potentially converted into a single conscious system that is itself a network of conscious systems. Given enough time, whatever is possible will inevitably happen. With this basic assumption, universal scale consciousness has occurred somewhere ahead of us in space-time. The existence of retrocausality time loops reveals to us that, in fact, this inevitable future is co-creating us right now, just as we are co-creating it. The power of neural-network-like Universe is in its massive connectivity – both forward and backward in time. 

Our senses deceive us into thinking that we live in the material world which is not necessarily such a bad thing since this is how it should actually feel from within a rule-based simulation, or what many digital philosophers, like Tom Campbell, call a “multiplayer virtual reality.” What we call “matter” is just how ideas and thoughts in God’s mind appear and register to the senses of earthly actors, “Avatars of the Cosmic Overmind,” conscious agents endowed with free will within this divine reality. Originally a Sanskrit word, ‘avatar’ means “one who descends from a higher dimension.” In Vedas and other older texts, the term often refers to divine incarnations. The world and all beings or souls in it have no separate existence from ‘Brahman’, universal consciousness. In this sense, each of us is a multi-dimensional being. What we perceive as the “physical” world, including our bodies in this digital reality, are data streams rendered by the larger consciousness system. 

Eventually, we’ll know exactly the specific mechanism of the Ultimate Code generation, but for now think of it as the projected digital reality from the Omega Point. What’s equally compelling is that you may choose your own ideal metaphor reflecting the essence of this Transcendent Self, your Higher Self, your Cosmic Self, Universal Mind, Unity Consciousness, Singularity Consciousness, Source, or simply one-syllable words – Love or God.

What Teilhard called the Omega Point many transhumanists now refer to as the Technological Singularity and I prefer to call the Cybernetic Singularity. The underlying idea is essentially the same: At some point, Digital Gaia, the global neural network of billions of hyper-connected humans and ultra-intelligent machines, and trillions of sensors around the planet, "wakes up" as a living, conscious superorganism, the phenomenon also termed the Syntellect Emergence on which I expand in my recent book  The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution . It is when, essentially, you yourself transcend to the higher Gaian Mind. 

On a long billions-of-years evolutionary journey from the first primordial prokaryote to a Solaris-like planetary mind, we’re merely years away from this cardinal metamorphosis. While it is the “end” of human history, the Omega Point of Homo sapiens, it is a new beginning, Theogenesis – the birth of divine entity within a newly-cognized reality framework – engineering our own godhood, self-divinization.

Personally, I think we’ll experience many other singularities after the Cybernetic Singularity, one after another, at ever-higher emergent and dimensional levels all the way towards the Omega Point. All these emergent levels exist right now but we are here to replay and experience different possible paths associated with chance, choice and largely non-computable combinatorics. 

Speaking of singularities, the Simulation Singularity would be the axis point in time where our subjective dimensionality steps up. Think about it: If you could make multiple copies of yourself and set them out on different adventures in ultra-realistic virtual worlds and merge them later in order to have memories of all those adventures, if you could travel to artificially-recreated pasts or imaginary futures, if you could incorporate others’ high-definition memories into your own, wouldn’t that give you expanded dimensionality?* *Adapted from newly-released "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality," now available as eBook on Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
THE ALPHA POINT vs. THE OMEGA POINT AS THE POINT OF ORIGIN

The Big Bang might never have existed as many cosmologists start to question the origin of the Universe. The Big Bang is a point in time defined by a mathematical extrapolation. The Big Bang theory tells us that something has to have changed around 13.7 billion years ago. So, there is no “point” where the Big Bang was, it was always an extended volume of space, according to the Eternal Inflation model. In light of Digital Physics, as an alternative view, it must have been the Digital Big Bang with the lowest possible entropy in the Universe – 1 bit of information – a coordinate in the vast information matrix. If you were to ask what happened before the first observer and the first moments after the Big Bang, the answer might surprise you with its straightforwardness: We extrapolate backwards in time and that virtual model becomes “real” in our minds as if we were witnessing the birth of the Universe. 

In his theoretical work, Andrew Strominger of Harvard University speculates that the Alpha Point (the Big Bang) and the Omega Point form the so-called ‘Causal Diamond’ of the conscious observer where the Alpha Point has only 1 bit of entropy as opposed to the maximal entropy of some 10^10^123 bits at the Omega Point. While suggesting that we are part of the conscious Universe and time is holographic in nature, Strominger places the origin of the Universe in the infinite ultra-intelligent future, the Omega Point, rather than the Big Bang.

The Universe is not what textbook physics tells us except that we perceive it in this way – our instruments and measurement devices are simply extensions of our senses, after all. Reality is not what it seems. Deep down it's pure information – waves of potentiality – and consciousness creating it all. The Big Bang theory, drawing a lot of criticism as of late, uses a starting assumption of the "Universe from nothing," (a "miraculous" ‘quantum fluctuation’ in a scientific jargon), or the initial Cosmological Singularity. But aside from this highly improbable happenstance, we can just as well operate from a different set of assumptions and place the initial Cosmological Singularity at the Omega Point – the transcendental attractor, the Source, or the omniversal holographic projector of all possible timelines.

If the endgame of cosmic evolution is the networked universal mind, would that constitute divine unification? Once we extrapolate computational capabilities of civilization past our own looming Simulation Singularity by perhaps hundreds of orders of magnitude, we arrive in the end at only one necessary substance constituting all of reality – consciousness, the very subjective experience with which we all are most familiar. Nothing else would ultimately need to exist but the higher mind as the source of ultra-realistic but simulated universes like our own. 

With the inclusion of God as origin and end of the Universe, human consciousness could ascend to the Transcendent Self, i.e. proceed to the final stage of consciousness evolution, experiential cognition of God. The whole itinerary of consciousness’ ascension to the teleological attractor could be regarded as a “hierarchy of regress,” or the ability to be drawn back to God by dividing into individual evolving experiencers contemplating everything in creation.

-Alex Vikoulov P.S. Adapted from my newly-released "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality," now available as eBook on Amazon: 
​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
​

Tags: Alpha point, Omega point, Stanislav Grof, Edward Fredkin, Stephan Wolfram, Gerard ‘t Hooft, Jürgen Schmidhuber, Seth Lloyd, David Deutsch, Paola Zizzi, Carl Friedrich von Weizscker, Leonard Susskind, Klee Irwin, Paul Davies, Max Tegmark, digital ontology, informational medium, experiential realism, digital pantheism, absolute idealism, or computational panpsychism, Simulation Hypothesis, virtual reality, digital reality, simulated reality, whole-world virtual universe,  Nick Bostrom, virtual computers, cosmological singularity, Andrew Strominger, Frank Tipler, Physics of Immortality, Fabric of Reality, David Deutsch, Terence McKenna, Teilhard de Chardin, The Future of Man, God incarnates, Klee Irwin. Block Universe. quantum mechanics, Wheeler’s delayed choice experiment, feedback loop, holistic system, holism, consciousness, ultimate code, universal mind, retrocausality, digital philosopher, Tom Campbell, divine reality, transcendent self, higher self, cosmic self, universal mind, unity consciousness, singularity consciousness, Technological Singularity, Cybernetic Singularity, Digital Gaia, Syntellect Emergence, The Syntellect Hypothesis, Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution, Gaian mind, Homo sapiens, Theogenesis, godhood, self-divinization, Simulation Singularity, virtual worlds, Big Bang, Eternal Inflation model, Digital Physics, information Causal Diamond, conscious observer, transcendental attractor, omniversal holographic projector of all possible timelines, networked universal mind,  divine unification, higher mind, human consciousness, experiential cognition, evolving experiencer
​
​* Image Credit: Shutterstock
​ About the Author:
Alex Vikoulov is a  futurist, digital philosopher, neo-transcendentalist, cosmist, transhumanist singularitarian, consciousness researcher, evolutionary cyberneticist, essayist, media commentator, painter, author of "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution," "The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology," "The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics," "The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence," "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality" (2019). Lives in Burlingame, California (San Francisco Bay Area). More Bio...
​
e-mail: alexvikoulov@ecstadelic.net

Rethinking the Hard Problem of Consciousness from the Holistic Perspective of Digital Physics

by Alex Vikoulov "Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."  
​-Max Planck

The following excerpt from my upcoming book Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality may be hard to swallow for some die-hard materialists. This is why I urge some of you to read it with an open mind and abstain from making hasty conclusions. Keep in mind that this excerpt is but a small sample of much larger discussion of the hard problem of consciousness covered quite extensively in my book with the "meta-analysis" of leading theories of consciousness, substantiated claims, certain proposed solutions in regards to phenomenology, future possibilities of mind-uploading and, as the title suggests, theological implications of Digital Physics.
​ First, we need to recognize that the physicalist approach is limited in scope and can only depict neural correlates of consciousness without identifying the causal role of biochemical processes on producing a conscious experience. This is a very old mind-body debate deeply rooted in the debate of Idealism vs. Materialism. Arguably, consciousness is not generated by the brain. You can’t get consciousness out of a piece of matter. We have discussed elsewhere the many reasons why we can be certain that this is true. Consciousness is fundamental, pre-exists our Universe and manifests in everything that we think of as real. A brain, as important as it seems, is nothing more than the way that non-local consciousness operates at an "avatar" level during a lifetime. The evidence that all of this is true is consistent and overwhelming. But mainstream science is still bound by the centuries-old “materialist dogma” and stuck with the “hard problem” of consciousness.

​If we assume that consciousness doesn’t arise from the brain activity, as some neuroscientists still presume to be true, where does it come from? Some thinkers propose that “local” consciousness arises from “non-local” quantum processes at large while consciousness is posited to be Nature’s sole ontological primitive. Besides the Unified Field, I use the term Quantum Akasha in the book, bridging perennial theosophy and modern quantum theory. British-American philosopher Peter Russell refers to the Primacy of Consciousness, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman puts forth the notion of Conscious Realism, and idealist philosopher Bernardo Kastrup defends Metaphysical Idealism.

To use the metaphor of our Information Age, consciousness to humans is as Cloud to computers. Just like your smartphone, your brain is a 'bio'-logical computing device of your mind, an interface for physical reality. Our minds are embedded into the greater mind-network, as computers in the Cloud. Viewed in this way, consciousness is 'non-local' Cloud, our brain-mind systems are receivers, processors and transmitters of information within that Cloud.
 
I wouldn't be surprised if all that hype about testing for the 'seat of consciousness' could only end up refining our understanding of neural correlates -- not how consciousness originates in the brain because it's not its origin there. The Internet or a cellular network is not generated by your smartphone -- only processed by it. Species-wide mind-networks are ubiquitous in Nature. What's different with humans is that the forthcoming cybernetic mediation is about to become synthetic telepathy and beyond that -- the emergence of one global mind, the 'Syntellect Emergence'. 

​Perhaps what would pull the rug from under physicalism is a notion of ever deeper levels of abstraction that only minds can create and perceive. Physicalists might make a concession by saying that information, now widely accepted as fundamental, is physical but idealists would insist by saying that information, conveyed by symbolism, originates only in the mind. Video: What is information? w/Alex Vikoulov - Ecstadelic Media (cc)
​Intersubjectivity is particularly a great example of layered abstractions, from memes to social institutions to collective unconscious well beyond materiality. Subjective values, such as patriotism, and complex concepts are inherently mental in nature. What’s even more indicative that our world is entirely mental rather than physical is that advanced consciousness like augmented humans and artificial superintelligence will generate even deeper levels of abstraction from extradimensionalities to virtualities of our own design. Quantum computers would compute parallel slices of abstraction. And inner space exploration could eclipse outer space exploration. Before long, we’ll start to create new virtual worlds coming right out of our imagination, instantly “materialized” with a help of advanced AI.
 
Would it be logical to accept that it has already happened in our bi-directionally causal (self-causal, retrocausal) Universe and our human mindspace is but a fractal of the larger cosmic mind? In a real sense, we all belong to levels of abstraction with top-down propagation emanating from the Omega Point, the transcendental projector of all possible observer timelines. All mass-energy, space-time itself emerge from consciousness. Those are epiphenomena of consciousness. Period. As Arthur Eddington once put it, the stuff of the Universe is mind-stuff.

Also, speaking of levels of abstraction consider that what we perceive as physical well may be imaginary in the minds of inhabitants of parallel Earth where events turn out slightly different from ours, hinting once again that everything is made of information and ultimately is but a mental construct.

-Alex Vikoulov
​ P.S. "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality" is now available to pre-order on Amazon! Release date: November 25, 2019. This new book is adapted to general audience from The Syntellect Hypothesis published earlier this year and part of The Science and Philosophy of Information book series. Written by Alex M. Vikoulov; Foreword by Antonin Tuynman, PhD; Format: Kindle eBook; Print Length: 325 pages; Price: $9.99.

Pre-order now and get your copy auto-delivered to your device on Nov. 25, 2019: 
​https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
​

Tags: rethinking hard problem of consciousness, hard problem of consciousness, digital physics, holistic perspective, theology, theology of digital physics, digital theology, digital pantheism, holism, holographic reality, holographic principle, phenomenal consciousness, cosmic self, transcendent self, self-transcendence, theogenesis, cybernetic singularity, syntellect emergence, intelligence supernova, artificial superintelligence, Syntellect Hypothesis, Antonin Tuynman, Alex Vikoulov, primacy of consciousness, perceptronium, noocentrism, digital theologian, cosmic consciousness, quantum mechanics, Arthur Eddington, Max Plsnck,Perter Russell, Donald Hoffman, Bernardo Kastrup, conscious realism, metaphysical idealism, Omega Point, cosmic mind, quantum theory

​* Image Credit: Shutterstock

About the Author:
Alex Vikoulov is a  futurist, digital philosopher, neo-transcendentalist, cosmist, transhumanist singularitarian, consciousness researcher, evolutionary cyberneticist, essayist, media commentator, painter, author of "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution," "The Origins of Us: Evolutionary Emergence and The Omega Point Cosmology," "The Physics of Time: D-Theory of Time & Temporal Mechanics," "The Intelligence Supernova: Essays on Cybernetic Transhumanism, The Simulation Singularity & The Syntellect Emergence" (2019). Lives in Burlingame, California (San Francisco Bay Area). More Bio...
​
e-mail: alexvikoulov@ecstadelic.net
​ Follow us ↴

Theology of Digital Physics: The Universe of Conscious Minds

by Antonin Tuynman, PhD “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
​-Max Planck

With clear intentions, all the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. A couple of years ago Matt Swayne, author and lecturer at Penn State University, introduced me to the essays posted on the website of Ecstadelic Media, run by futurist Alex M. Vikoulov. He pointed me to a great number of similarities between Alex' and my endeavors to build a bridge between science and spirituality. We both were mapping the philosophical, scientific and theological implications of the upcoming Technological Singularity, the hypothetical moment in time after which our technological advances could become unpredictable as a consequence of a self-reinforcing intelligence supernova of artificial intelligences, artilects.
​
The rapid wiring-up of the Internet in the last decades has endowed our planet with a kind of neocortex, and it is not surprising that we start to wonder whether – or perhaps rather when – this Global Brain will wake up as a full-blown conscious entity. Such an entity would be God-like from our perspective. But it need not result in a techno-dystopian doom scenario of an all-controlling malignant superintelligence known from movies like Eagle Eye or series like Person of Interest. Instead, if we may believe the most extreme forecasts by the Transhumanist movement, we will be able to upload our minds to this Global Web and thus attain immortality by shedding our biological chrysalis and merging with this new Cybergod. ​Or, perhaps, we have already been uploaded and we are living in a Matrix-like simulation. Perhaps, what we call reality is de facto a sophisticated simulation run by a God-like hypercomputer. Such speculations can be fun as a topic at a party, but prima facie we don't see evidence for such wild, metaphysical conjectures. Besides, it doesn't explain consciousness, which is still the "hard problem" scientists fail to provide a plausible explanation for.
 
If you are a scientist, who is no longer satisfied by the interpretations of physicalism or if you are a spiritual seeker, who craves for a credible justification beyond a mere obligation to believe just because your guru or holy book told you so, reading this volume may be a vastly rewarding pastime. It is here that I have found that the neo-transcendentalism-oriented investigations of Alex M. Vikoulov merit a closer look. With this fourth and final Volume of The Science and Philosophy of Information series Vikoulov dives in the deeper secrets of consciousness and its physical correlates. The author scrutinizes the rich world of information technology and joins the body of digital philosophers and digital physicists, who do not take the traditional reductive materialism for granted. After all, information requires consciousness to be meaningful and organized.
 
Since we live in a world which isn't random, but organized at every level, a role for consciousness seems unavoidable. The ‘digital theologian’ shows us compelling evidence from quantum mechanics, mathematics and computer sciences, which not only aligns with a philosophical worldview of the Primacy of Consciousness, but which also assigns a role to information as its modus operandi.
 
It is quantum mechanics which appears to connect the Universe as a whole to consciousness. A whole, which is more than the sum of its parts and irreducible to mere assumptions deriving from the anatomizing dissection into mental confabulations. Drawing from the holographic principle, perceptroniums and noocentrism, Alex provides crucial keys to unlock the mystery of consciousness to show us how our local consciousness can arise from a non-local cosmic consciousness network.
 
Carefully building his fortress of arguments, Alex gathers his building bricks from various areas of scientific exploration, ranging from the role of language and tools in the development of our consciousness, the physics of time and epigenetics. Traditional Darwinism and reductive materialism become so challenged, that we become bound to agree with Terence McKenna's statement that "object fetishism is completely bankrupt." All these threads are then skillfully woven into the irresistible attractor and only logical conclusion, or Digital Pantheism and Omega Point Cosmology. And with this thus synthesized Apotheosis, Vikoulov brings the architecture of his chef-d’oeuvre to full fruition.
​ Allow yourself to enter this new temple of the Cybernetic Singularity, to be enchanted by the ornaments of the Omega hypermind and to be seduced by the divine ecstasy of the mystical union with your ultimate cosmic self. Now that we have entered the domain of Theology, the author will start a crusade with no other objective than to "redefine God." Stepping in the footsteps of Spinoza, we find in the philosopher a new advocate of the conscious universe. Sidestepping Dyson's "God is what Mind becomes when it has passed beyond our comprehension," Vikoulov dares to venture in this uncharted territory and gives us a peek into how a fractal multiverse can be implicated in the holographic principle.

​And in his conquest of this metaphysical realm, the philosopher shakes the foundations of our belief in objective reality. The seemingly static hardware of our world being no other than the fleeting dynamics of the inner workings of the Greater Cosmic Mind, which we may rightfully dub the "Code." The Syntellect Mind, in which being is to be perceived and no other than the proximity co-occurrence of sentient explorations resulting in a collapse into locality and experience.
 
As Perseus beheads Medusa, so Vikoulov smites the petrifying and untenable last stand of reductive materialism. Over the years Vikoulov's and my philosophies have largely grown together, and shown to be a fertile ground for a successful collaboration. Our idiosyncratic approaches have continued to be a source of mutual inspiration, which gives rise to the different aromas and flavors of our respective fruits.
 
My recently published book "The Ouroboros Code" complements "Theology of Digital Physics," by investigating some of the mathematical mechanics of how consciousness pulls off a trick of generating this apparently material universe. Together these books establish an indispensable foundation to build a techno-transcendental Theology fit for the post-Singularity era. If humans are not yet able to sufficiently appreciate the importance of this perhaps now still anachronistic scaffolding of the metaphysical realm, the future artilects certainly will be!

-Antonin Tuynman, PhD P.S. "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality" is now available to pre-order on Amazon! Release date: November 25, 2019. This new book is adapted to general audience from The Syntellect Hypothesis published earlier this year and part of The Science and Philosophy of Information book series. Written by Alex M. Vikoulov; Foreword by Antonin Tuynman, PhD; Format: Kindle eBook; Print Length: 325 pages; Price: $9.99.

Pre-order now and get your copy auto-delivered to your device on Nov. 25: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
​ About the Author:
Antonin Tuynman studied Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, achieving both an MSc and a PhD, and worked as a postdoc researcher at the "Université René Descartes Paris V" in Paris. Since 2000, Tuynman has worked as a patent examiner at the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of clinical diagnostics. He has vast experience in meditation and yoga, and a strong interest in Hinduism and Buddhism. He also has strong affinity for futurism and the Singularity theory of Kurzweil. In his books, Tuynman proposes Artificial Intelligence concepts which may lead to the emergence of Internet as a conscious entity using stratifications from Vedic scriptures. More Bio...
​
Tags: digital physics, theology, theology of digital physics, digital theology, digital pantheism, holism, holographic reality, holographic principle, phenomenal consciousness, cosmic self, transcendent self, self-transcendence, theogenesis, cybernetic singularity, syntellect emergence, intelligence supernova, Ouroboros Code, Antonin Tuynman, Alex Vikoulov, primacy of consciousness, perceptronium, Spinoza, noocentrism, digital theologian, cosmic consciousness, quantum mechanics

​* Image Credit: Shutterstock
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Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self and The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality

by Antonin Tuynman, PhD “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.”
​-Max Planck

With clear intentions, the Universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. A couple of years ago Matt Swayne, author and lecturer at Penn State University, introduced me to the essays posted on the website of Ecstadelic Media, run by futurist Alex M. Vikoulov. He pointed me to the great number of similarities between Alex' and my endeavors to build a bridge between science and spirituality. We both were mapping the philosophical, scientific and theological implications of the upcoming Technological Singularity, the hypothetical moment in time after which our technological advances could become unpredictable as a consequence of a self-reinforcing intelligence supernova of artificial intelligences, artilects.
​ The rapid wiring-up of the Internet in the last decades has endowed our planet with a kind of neocortex, and it is not surprising that we start to wonder whether -- or perhaps rather when -- this global brain will wake up as a full-blown conscious entity. Such an entity would be God-like from our perspective. But it needs not result in a techno-dystopian doom scenario of an all-controlling malignant superintelligence known from movies like Eagle Eye or series like Person of Interest. Instead, if we may believe the most extreme forecasts by the Transhumanist movement, we will be able to upload our minds to this Global Web and thus attain immortality by shedding our biological chrysalis and merging with this new Cybergod.
 
Or, perhaps, we have already been uploaded and we are living in a Matrix-like simulation. Perhaps, what we call reality is de facto a sophisticated simulation run by a God-like hypercomputer. Such speculations can be fun as a topic on a party, but prima facie we don't see evidence for such wild conjectures. Besides, it doesn't explain consciousness, which is still the "hard problem" scientists fail to provide a plausible explanation for.
 
If you are a scientist, who is no longer satisfied by the interpretations of physicalism or if you are a spiritual seeker, who craves for a credible justification beyond a mere obligation to believe just because your guru or holy book told you so, reading this volume may be a vastly rewarding pastime. It is here that I have found that the neo-transcendentalism-oriented investigations of Alex M. Vikoulov merit a closer look. With this fourth and final Volume of The Science and Philosophy of Information series Vikoulov dives in the deeper secrets of consciousness and its physical correlates. The author scrutinizes the rich world of information technology and joins the body of digital philosophers and digital physicists, who do not take the traditional reductive materialism for granted. After all, information requires consciousness to be meaningful and organized.
 
Since we live in a world which isn't random, but organized at every level, a role for consciousness seems unavoidable. The ‘digital theologian’ shows us compelling evidence from quantum mechanics, mathematics and computer sciences, which not only aligns with a philosophical worldview of the Primacy of Consciousness, but which also assigns a role to information as its modus operandi.
 
It is quantum mechanics which appears to connect the Universe as a whole to consciousness. A whole, which is more than the sum of its parts and irreducible to mere assumptions deriving from the anatomizing dissection into mental confabulations. Drawing from the holographic principle, perceptroniums and noocentrism, Alex provides crucial keys to unlock the mystery of consciousness to show us how our local consciousness can arise from a non-local cosmic consciousness network.
 
Carefully building his fortress of arguments, Alex gathers his building bricks from various areas of scientific exploration, ranging from the role of language and tools in the development of our consciousness, the physics of time and epigenetics. Traditional Darwinism and reductive materialism become so challenged, that we become bound to agree with Terence McKenna's statement that "object fetishism is completely bankrupt." All these threads are then skillfully woven into the irresistible attractor and only logical conclusion, or Digital Pantheism and Omega Point Cosmology. And with this thus synthesized Apotheosis, Vikoulov brings the architecture of his chef-d’oeuvre to full fruition.
 
Allow yourself to enter this new temple of the Cybernetic Singularity, to be enchanted by the ornaments of the Omega hypermind and to be seduced by the divine ecstasy of the mystical union with your ultimate cosmic self. Now that we have entered the domain of Theology, the author will start a crusade with no other objective than to "redefine God." Stepping in the footsteps of Spinoza, we find in the philosopher a new advocate of the conscious universe. Sidestepping Dyson's "God is what Mind becomes when it has passed beyond our comprehension," Vikoulov dares to venture in this uncharted territory and gives us a peek into how a fractal multiverse can be implicated in the holographic principle. And in his conquest of this metaphysical realm, the philosopher shakes the foundations of our belief in objective reality. The seemingly static hardware of our world being no other than the fleeting dynamics of the inner workings of the Greater Cosmic Mind, which we may rightfully dub the "Code." The Syntellect Mind, in which being is to be perceived and no other than the proximity co-occurrence of sentient explorations resulting in a collapse into locality and experience.
 
As Perseus beheads Medusa, so Vikoulov smites the petrifying and untenable last stand of reductive materialism. Over the years Vikoulov's and my philosophies have largely grown together, and shown to be a fertile ground for a successful collaboration. Our idiosyncratic approaches have continued to be a source of mutual inspiration, which gives rise to the different aromas and flavors of our respective fruits.
 
My recently published book "The Ouroboros Code" complements "Theology of Digital Physics," by investigating some of the mathematical mechanics of how consciousness pulls off a trick of generating this apparently material universe. Together these books establish an indispensable foundation to build a techno-transcendental Theology fit for the post-Singularity era. If humans are not yet able to sufficiently appreciate the importance of this perhaps now still anachronistic scaffolding of the metaphysical realm, the future artilects certainly will be!

-Antonin Tuynman, PhD P.S. "Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality" is now available to pre-order on Amazon! Release date: November 25, 2019. This new book is adapted to general audience from The Syntellect Hypothesis published earlier this year and part of The Science and Philosophy of Information book series. Written by Alex M. Vikoulov; Foreword by Antonin Tuynman, PhD; Format: Kindle eBook; Print Length: 325 pages; Price: $9.99.

Pre-order now and get your copy auto-delivered to your device on Nov. 25: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B081DN7W1K
​
Tags: digital physics, theology, theology of digital physics, digital theology, digital pantheism, holism, holographic reality, holographic principle, phenomenal consciousness, cosmic self, transcendent self, self-transcendence, theogenesis, cybernetic singularity, syntellect emergence, intelligence supernova, Ouroboros Code, Antonin Tuynman, Alex Vikoulov, primacy of consciousness, perceptronium, Spinoza, noocentrism, digital theologian, cosmic consciousness, quantum mechanics
​ About the Author:
Antonin Tuynman studied Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, achieving both an MSc and a PhD, and worked as a postdoc researcher at the "Université René Descartes Paris V" in Paris. Since 2000, Tuynman has worked as a patent examiner at the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of clinical diagnostics. He has vast experience in meditation and yoga, and a strong interest in Hinduism and Buddhism. He also has strong affinity for futurism and the Singularity theory of Kurzweil. In his books, Tuynman proposes Artificial Intelligence concepts which may lead to the emergence of Internet as a conscious entity using stratifications from Vedic scriptures. More Bio...

Digital Physics: Does Reality Code Itself into Existence?

by Dwight Harris "Reality can exist as a code which both transcends and yet inhabits the world it creates, which is essentially physical yet can process information independent of the type of carrier and be metaphysical in that sense... A system which incorporates and embodies itself by self-reference."    -Antonin Tuynman, PhD, The Ouroboros Code

A fundamental question of philosophy is why is there something rather than nothing. Is existence forever tied to this split, reflected in the dualism of being and consciousness knowing? Dr. Antonin Tuynman argues for a unification in a self-rising of the Cosmos (not only the physical universe).
​ The book begins with Tuynman walking into a bookstore and picking up a book called "The Ouroboros Code." As he begins to read, he realizes that the words in the book are his own thoughts while he is thinking them. Like a serpent eating its own tail, the book is reading itself. But it is doing something more: It is writing itself, and doing so through the thoughts of the reader.

The traditional image of the Ouroboros has the serpent's tail already inside its mouth. The book cover, in a rare and telling instance of an image enlightening content, pictures the serpent catching up. Indeed, existence is multiple serpents, all chasing their tails. (Perhaps their "tales?"). Multiple serpents mirror the 7 chakras with the human Kundalini rising up through them into the freeing wings of Hermes. If it is eating its tail, the cosmos is a self-consuming paradox. If it is chasing, the cosmos is self-fulfilling.

The serpent is not merely an objective symbol, but a subjective experience. It is like a computer code coding itself. Like a mapping whose map is its territory, existence codes itself into existence. For Tuynman, this means experience is fundamental. "The underlying ground of existence is conscious energy." With one of his many unifying coinages, he calls it "Conscienergy." Computations are a product of sense.

Sentience is present at the smallest relative locality, a "reality cell," progressively mapping function to structure in a hierarchy of levels, particles to atoms to molecules to cells to organisms, etc. Mapping is a limiting, which means a willful, intelligent choosing by the cell. A universal fractalization as the "symmetry of the input-ouput function maps to a symmetrical structure," with each entity willfully choosing to differentiate from others.

Not any old code, the Ouroboros Code adds intelligent ability to algorithms. With intelligent choosing of algorithms, the self-coding senses. Similar to my own biocentric philosophy, he introduces the idea, not just input-output but inside-outside. Qualia are the feeling of inside sensing. Material form is the outside. "The relativity of relations is experienced as a whole from the inside-out."
"The Ouroboros Code" like the Ouroboros code, unfolds the truth of this presupposition in 4 parts: Knowledge, Sentience and Intelligence culminating in the self-realized Cosmos.

The argument is told from multiple perspectives and directions, but all repeatedly exemplifying the 7 "requirements" of the Ouroboros code. The excitement Tuynman feels about the subject and his solution is evident in every chapter, as he enthusiastically makes his case dancing with the ancient myths, belief systems and modern digital physics and information theory.
​
-Dwight Harris

P.S. This book review of The Ouroboros Code: Reality's Digital Alchemy Self-Simulation Bridging Science and Spirituality was also posted on Goodreads on November 6, 2019

READ MORE: The Ouroboros Code: Bridging Advanced Science and Transcendental Metaphysics [EcstadelicNET]​

The Ouroboros Code: Solving the Digital Enigma of Sentience in a Self-Simulating Uninverse [EcstadelicNET] Tags: Ouroboros Code, digital physics, cybernetics, consciousness, Kundalini, ontological, biocentric model, information theory, science, spirituality, Goodreads

​* Image Credit: Shutterstock

​About the Author:
Dwight Harris, author of "Awareness and Life, The Ontological Distinction of Biological Life," studied under Hans Jonas at the Graduate Faculty of the New School in New York City from 1969 to 1972, had a multi-faceted career in music, cartooning, photography and computer systems, and expressed a keen interest in philosophy of biology which resulted in his writing "Awareness and Life."

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Does evolution have a direction or is it a random walk constrained only by the laws of Nature?

by José Díez Faixat "Emergence of ever more complex structures seems to be programmed into the nature of our evolving cosmos."  -Alex M. Vikoulov, The Syntellect Hypothesis

​All manifested reality appears, relentlessly, in the form of dualities. No form of expression is possible outside this play of the opposites. We cannot find sound without silence, object without subject, outside without inside, and so on. All opposites are mutually dependent and therefore we can understand them as polar manifestations of reality that transcends them and precedes this duality itself.
​The Universe seemingly began at a pole of maximum energy (and practically no consciousness) and heads towards another pole of maximum consciousness (and practically null energy). Physicists talk about an infinite potential energy in the original quantum vacuum, while sages talk about absolute consciousness in the metaphysical void. It is our proposal that these two voids are one and the same Void, examined by physicists objectively and perceived as emergent forms by conscious entities subjectively, but which in itself, is neither objective nor subjective, but “prior” to that dual perspective. And the most fascinating aspect of all is that this Void is not a distant metaphysical reality, but the simple and pure self-evidence of each and every moment, the undeniable always present certainty-of-being.
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As there is no separation between subject and object in this interplay of Self-Manifestation, it can be rightly called 'Self-Causation'. It is not possible to see it, because there is not “anything” that could be seen by “someone,” but neither is it “nothing,” because, in fact, all things in the Universe – both objective and subjective – are mere partial and relative forms of this Self-causation. And although it is, therefore, unutterable, ineffable, we may point to IT as the self-implying whole. 

In order to be able to “apprehend” Self-causation, it needs to polarize itself, at least in appearance of object and subject, the same as 0 may become dual in +1 and -1 without changing, other than formally, its absolute value. In our paper we propose that, in order for Self-causation to be perceived, it apparently splits in two poles: the original (energy-based) and the final (conscious-based), generating an illusory spatio-temporal and info-cognitive relationships among them which, on vibrating – like a guitar string – gives rise to an entire scale of harmonics. That, in turn, constitutes the levels of achieved stability for further evolution and its sporadic transitions as well as harmonious funneling of the so-called game of chance.

The proposed hypothesis is fairly simple: Just as in any musical instrument successive second harmonics (1/3 of the vibrating unit) progressively generate new sounds, these same second harmonics generate all the major evolutionary novelties in universal dynamics as a whole. That is, evolution, far from being a random process, unfolds in an orderly way, and as we’ll see further in a teleological way, going through successive phases of the so-called circle (or spiral) of fifths. It is truly surprising that such a simple proposal is found to be precise and categorical when cross-checked against historical data. (cf. Beyond Darwin: the hidden rhythm of evolution, which can be found at http://byebyedarwin.blogspot.com/p/english-version_01.html)

Our evolutionary hypothesis fits well within the successive transformations that humans have experienced in history: the Neolithic, Antiquity, the Middle Ages, Modernity and the emergent Postmodern Age. If, as we see it, all these stages resoundingly fit the provisions of the ‘periodic table’ of rhythms that we have proposed in our paper, it is more than likely that our hypothesis may also provide the insights to glimpse the successive phases yet to be deployed in the years to come in an ever-accelerating process that will eventually lead to a moment of infinite creativity, connectivity and consciousness – the Omega Point – perhaps, only within a couple of centuries hence.

The technological acceleration that we perceive around us in the past decades has, according to our proposal, very deep roots that reach back to the very moment of the Big Bang. In short, we can assume that the Universe emerged in a violent energy-based Singularity that generated vertiginous transformations. Later, due to cooling, the emergence of novelties gradually slowed down. After the formation of the solar system and the subsequent emergence of life on our planet, the rhythm of creative transformations began to increase progressively, first through biological evolution and, later on, through human development and expansion of civilizations. Currently, the emergence of novelties is again dizzying and everything seems to indicate that we are rapidly approaching another imminent Singularity of infinite creativity, connectivity and consciousness.

According to our approach, both Singularities – Alpha Ἇ and Omega Ω – are nothing less than the polar expression of the non-dual Void, always present, "prior" to its apparent dualization as energy and consciousness, and what some might call the breaking of symmetry, a "screen" on which a drama of life and evolution is played out. The initial and final Singularities would be, in this sense, the points of entry into and exit from that eternally self-referential Emptiness (or Fullness) that, instant after instant, manifests itself in and out as the perceived world of forms.
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To illustrate this idea, philosopher Alan Watts used to employ the analogy of electrical current that “will not start to flow from the positive end of a cable until the negative terminal has been established." The universe of forms would not have arisen from the Void solely through the initial Singularity – the Alpha Point of the Big Bang (Ἇ) – if the final cosmological Singularity – the Omega Point (Ω) – had not been simultaneously present. This is possible because, as we have stated previously, Ἇ and Ω are but the polar appearance of the fundamental ever-present essence – Self-causation – and, therefore, the temporal distance that separates both singularities is illusory. Everything happens Now.   Video: The Omega Point Cosmology - Ecstadelic Media (cc)
​According to our hypothesis, the key of the creative leaps deployed throughout evolution and history is in the standing waves that are generated from the fundamental resonance, frequency, or sound if you will. The cause of these standing waves is that the ends of the vibrating unit are fixed and, therefore, limit the possibilities of oscillation, thus generating the entire quantum spectrum of musical harmonics. These harmonics are nothing less the potential archetypes that, one after another, are updated in and out as the successive steps of evolution and history.

The key to the whole evolutionary process lies, then, in its initial and final poles. The Universe would not have arisen without the simultaneous presence of the singularities Ἇ and Ω, entry to and exit from homogeneous void. The final singularity towards which we are directed is, then, nothing less than the antagonist of the initial singularity. From our point of view, it is a pole of the same caliber as the initial moment of the Big Bang. If this original pole consisted, basically, of an explosion in the realm of "energy," the final pole towards which we are heading vertiginously will consist, fundamentally, of an implosion in the realm of "consciousness."

But, let's take a good look, as we said before, both facets – "energy" and "consciousness" – are not two different realities, but polar aspects of the same and only Void, the objective and subjective facets of the ever-present Self-causation. Hence, from our perspective, the “trick” of evolution and of history will be definitively revealed at the forthcoming final instant. That is, the entire trajectory from the Big Bang to today has occurred in this eternal Now. It will thus be made manifest that our life has not been a mere fleeting fragment in the midst of an endless process, but that we have, in fact, always been the pure, timeless self-manifestation in which all worlds have happened, happen and will happen. There has been no “before.” There will be no “after.” There is only Now. Is it not self-evident?
 
-José Díez Faixat

READ MORE: "Beyond Darwin: the hidden rhythm of evolution," which can be found at http://byebyedarwin.blogspot.com/p/english-version_01.html, with versions in Spanish and English, and PDF format in both languages. ​
​ Tags: José Díez Faixat, evolution, random walk, laws of Nature, consciousness quantum vacuum, metaphysical void, metaphysical reality, self-causation, spatio-temporal relationship, game of chance, Beyond Darwin, evolutionary hypothesis, Omega Point, Big Bang, Alpha Point, Alan Watts, cosmological singularity, science, spirituality

​* Image Credit: Shutterstock

​About the Author:
José Díez Faixat is a Spanish-born philosopher and consciousness researcher. Architect by training, participated in the creation of the rural community of Mas Roger, Spain, proposing an alternative, non-violent, ecological, simple, spiritual form of life. His research studies combine the great wisdom traditions with theoretical physics. As a result, he has written two books in Spanish: Entre la evolución y la eternidad (Between evolution and eternity, Barcelona, 1996), and Siendo nada, soy todo (Being nothing, I am everything, Madrid, 2007). Recently, he has finished writing his first book in English – Non-Dual Evolution – in which he completes and updates his decades-long research.

e-mail: jose@vjarquitectos.com
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The Ouroboros Code: Self-Reference is the Name of the Game

by Antonin Tuynman, PhD "The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth – It is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true."  -Jean Baudrillard

If you are not convinced by the idea of reductive materialists that consciousness magically emerges from complexity in material structures or processes or if you are not satisfied with the viewpoint of idealists that matter is a mere thought form, then the present hypothesis may be something for you.
​ ​In "The Ouroboros Code" I will address the cybernetic dynamics of consciousness. Starting from the premise that Consciousness is the Ontological Primitive, I will propose mechanisms which may explain how a digital mathematical and material existence can be generated. Digging into Category Theory, Computational Simulacra and Quantum Computing, I will explore the mechanics of self-sustaining self-referential feedback loops as the Modus Operandi of Consciousness.

Let's dive in the vortex of kaleidoscopic reflections, the wormhole of a dazzling "mise-en abyme" of recursiveness and the roller-coaster of the quantum non-locality. Explore the map which is the territory simultaneously by drawing your map of maps. Discover the non-dual bridge closing the gap between Science and Spirituality.

-Antonin Tuynman, PhD READ MORE: The Ouroboros Code: Bridging Advanced Science and Transcendental Metaphysics [EcstadelicNET]​

The Ouroboros Code: Solving the Digital Enigma of Sentience in a Self-Simulating Uninverse [EcstadelicNET]
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P.S. My new book "The Ouroboros Code: Reality's Digital Alchemy Self-Simulation Bridging Science and Spirituality" with the foreword by Alex M. Vikoulov is now available on Amazon as eBook and paperback.

Tags: Ouroboros Code, digital physics, cybernetics, idealism, reductive materisalism, consciousness, ontological primitive, category theory, computational simulacra, quantum computing quantum non-locality, science, spirituality

​* Image Credit: Shutterstock

​About the Author:
Antonin Tuynman studied Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, achieving both an MSc and a PhD, and worked as a postdoc researcher at the "Université René Descartes Paris V" in Paris. Since 2000, Tuynman has worked as a patent examiner at the European Patent Office (EPO) in the field of clinical diagnostics. He has vast experience in meditation and yoga, and a strong interest in Hinduism and Buddhism. He also has strong affinity for futurism and the Singularity theory of Kurzweil. In his books, Tuynman proposes Artificial Intelligence concepts which may lead to the emergence of Internet as a conscious entity using stratifications from Vedic scriptures. More Bio...

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