Never been one to let the carrier drop

So, I thought it might be worth going over a few of the discoveries and postulates and thought patterns and what not that have led me to where I currently am, for those of you who haven’t been reading this and talking to me for years. For those of you who have, you may want to skip over this post, as there’s probably not going to be a lot new here.

As many of you know, about five years I set my mind world-readable. I invited anyone with the ability to read everything there is to read. Shortly thereafter I began having regular discussions with people I can’t see. Somewhat to my surprise, these people were *not* pushing me in the direction of mainstream religions all around the world, but instead wanted to offer me a introduction to how understanding the science of Earth could open the possibility of a amazing experience for me.

One of the first topics for discussion was the idea that our entire experience *is* information. While the universe may consist of mass and energy, our experience of it consists entirely of information. Everything we see, taste, touch, smell, hear, or otherwise experience (and there are senses beyond those 5 – both the network I am talking to my friends over, and a lot of less obvious ones like sensing acceleration, or sensing the position of your limbs) is information. If you’re a bytehead, you can look at it all as enormous numbers.. any experience you have, or want to have, can be found out there in raw infinity. Just like you can start at one and keep counting and eventually come to the number or pattern of bits that represents a MP3 of a song – or any digital encoding you care to name.. if you start searching infinity, you can find a set of information that represents a hug from a friend. Or even a infinite set that represents all hugs from friends.

So, most of us like to insist that this data is coming from a single monolithic reality – what we like to call “the real world”. Well, at least two separate things cast serious aspersions of doubt upon this idea. The first is in quantum mechanics, and I encourage anyone who hasn’t already done so to watch this video. The second is in neuroscience, or more correctly, in a understanding of what we are, from our best guesses and observations.

Now, as I’ve mentioned to many of my friends, various experiments I performed – some while I was actively trying to die, and others that just happened when I was a bit on the wild side, suggest strongly that we are hypervised. Dying before the owner or controller of the hypervisor wants you to is not really a option. However, that’s a subject for another series of posts. However, it’s worth mentioning that if we are hypervised, it is very likely by someone who wants us to be able to make meaningful experiments and observations, and so there is very likely virtualization that lets us accurately see, if only in a lies-to-children version, directly into the appliance that makes us what we are – the human mind.

And this is where the second argument against me experiencing “the real world” comes from. Our minds, scientists tell us, consist of 10^11 neurons. That’s well beyond what a high end desktop computer has for transistors – several orders of magnitude. And, those of you who play games like World of Warcraft can tell us, desktop computers can do a suprisingly good job of creating a convincing 3D experience of reality. Our minds, several orders of magnitude more powerful, can easily make up our experience of reality out of whole cloth, and in fact there is somewhat a case for them doing this at least somewhat while we are dreaming.

In addition, a neuron is not a transistor. It is a far more powerful device – comparisons can be drawn both to a op amp and a microcontroller. Also in addition, our minds use a far more efficient architecture than a modern computer – while most of the transistors in a modern computer only do one thing, during one active pathway, and the rest of the time are dead weight – neurons are often involved in many many different subnets and used for many many operations at once. In addition, while a modern computer has several bottlenecks that limit the flow of information, our minds allow parallel traffic between almost everything and almost everything else.

So, even if there is a “real world”, you will never ever know if you are seeing it. There’s no way to know. No way to know what the many many layers of neural network between your senses (‘the edge’, if you will) and your conscious experience (what I call “the ride”) are doing to the data streams. It’s unlikely that there *is* a single real world – there are very likely a number of entwined realities – and even if there was, you could never really know what it contained.

Now, why does all this matter? I mean, it’s a fun discussion for philosophers, but what impact does it have on people like you and me? Well, several different ones. The first one is, it becomes clear that the best way to experience a utopia (heaven, for you religios types) is to configure your neural network correctly. IN fact one of the first things I was taught once I started talking with people I can’t see is that the people in heaven and the people in hell inhabit the same physical space – the difference is in what’s happening in their minds. And in fact, as I’ve started studying both pushing my neural network with various exercises and deliberately and directly rewiring it I have seen a dramatic difference in my life in a number of ways. My dreams are getting better, I’ve experienced emotional states higher than drugs ever got me to, and I’ve experienced a general shifting more towards the experiences I would like to have of my emotional states.

One of the things I was astonished to discover, although in retrospect it is rather obvious, is that what you believe affects what you experience. I had thought our beliefs were built out of our experiences, but in fact it is a two-way street. Your beliefs control the neural wiring that filters out the data coming from whatever is out there (and unlike some of my friends I do not believe I am the whole universe, so clearly there is something and someones out there). We have far more data coming at us, all the time, than we can handle, so our beliefs form filters to help reduce the data stream to something we can handle. In addition our beliefs can directly translate one chunk of data to another, acting more like a CODEC layer than a filter, or amplify certian barely-present signals like a resonant filter will.

Another thing that I was astonished to discover is that my beliefs were all wrong for having a good experience. I suppose this isn’t that suprising.. I mean, you don’t end up being suicidal at age 10 from having good neural wiring. At this point I have no way of knowing how many of the negative and disturbing experiences I have had throughout my life were the results of my beliefs.. i.e. my neural wiring.. but I do know I have memories that I am fairly certain never happened. I still have to figure out what to do with them insofar as they are things I experienced and at times took damage from – at times tried to repress the emotions generated by, etc.

However, constantly being aware of the fact that my conscious experience is happening in my mind rather than in the “real world” is extrordinarily helpful. Among other things, it makes sense of some otherwise very nearly incomprehensible things that I experienced happening. One frustration I deal with is, rather like my discussions of money vs. value, I see a world out my eyes and wander around in a world where people are not discussing these things and don’t seem to realize they exist or that they are important. It seems to me that studying how neural networks behave, especially surrounding the questions of perception and generated reality, would be one of the most important branches of science. It seems to barely get a footnote, even though *all other scientific discoveries are having their results colored by the fact that the scientists themselves are neural networks and can not possibly get away from the fact that the experiments they are doing are, if not happening in their minds, at least having the results interpreted by their minds”

Anyway, I think that’s a good overview of where I’m at and how I got here. A few other things I’d like to mention in passing before closing this up. First of all, one of my major tasks to accomplish in order to reach my #1 goal is to remove all the inhibit wiring in my mind that is preventing me from being able to do lucid dreaming and dream control. There’s a particular set of experiences I want to have that I don’t seem likely to have on Earth, and beyond that, this gives me the holodeck. Who wouldn’t want the holodeck, especially knowing that it’s something they already own the hardware for and all they have to do is develop the software for it? I can’t fathom why everyone on earth who doesn’t already have it isn’t searching for the holodeck.

A second thing I’d like to mention is that because I can’t really know what’s outside my CE, I can’t really know what certain religions actually look like. From where I sit, most religions are bad things. They are collections of information that seem very unlikely to describe the actual higher powers that there are, seem very likely to obscure those higher powers through a series of very bad ideas, and through said bad ideas make direct communication with a higher power very difficult. They look to be self-replicating information – viruses – that in a number of ways disempower us and burn computing capacity we could better be using elsewhere. For a long time, I was very angry at Christianity for lodging in my mind and refusing to either compile and run or unload and get out of my way. At this point, with the help of my friends, I have been able to dislodge it and begin the process of deconverting. Anyone who can offer any support in the process of deconverting, especially places where the bible makes claims that are clearly absolutely false, please pass your strength along.

So, last night, on our way to the U2 concert, we were accosted by a couple of Christian trolls. I say they were trolls because Kayti approached them and offered to be converted, and they couldn’t come with any concrete suggestions to her on how to get saved. (They weren’t, in other words, out there trying to save souls. It was actually pretty funny.. they were yelling things like “You’re behaving like your old daddy Lucifer.. he invented music, you know! Rock music leads to sex and drugs!” – to which we all cheered. Yes. We certainly hope so.)

Now, I recognize that these two were just trolling for amusement value, but there are really people who believe that a: Some sort of day of judgement is coming and b: We will be judged based – apparently – on how little fun we had. No, really, God made a universe with a lot of entertaining possibilities, but we lose points for every one of them we indulge in, apparently. We’re supposed to be unhappy so we’ll be worthy of being happy in the next lifetime. No, wait a second, where does that end? Next lifetime, we’ll again be competing for how little fun we can have? Who signed me up for this, and how can I get off the list?

Now, normally I bash Christianity because I’m pissed off at the Christians – for a long list of reasons detailed elsewhere in this blog that I’m not going to go into here. But I did make a serious attempt recently to figure out how to wrap my head around the religion – and I just don’t think I can.

To explain why, I’m going to head over to a topic that Kayti has been studying lately – nonviolent communication, or NVC – I think they have a web site at http://www.cnvc.org/ – now, obviously me and Kayti had some pretty spectular communications issues and it’s really great that she’s studying this, and she’s been sharing some of it with me – and one of the mental models they use to discuss communication methods is Jackel vs. Giraffe. The basic theory is that jackels are very judgemental, very lacking in empathy for the other side of any given discussion, while giraffes, with the biggest hearts of any animal on earth, can hear the needs behind the judgemental (and sometimes, let’s face it, horrible) statements of the jackels and manage to communicate with them anyway.

So, how does this connect to religion? Well, it seems to be a popular thesis that humans can’t understand dieties. Not everyone claims this, but the majority of people say, God is too big, you are too small, God will not make sense to you. Therefore, it seems likely to me that we see only the parts of God that we believe in – just like I suspect we see only the parts of the world we believe in, at least to a certain extent. There are input filters between our senses and the parts of us that are us, and they filter out anything that is too far out of line with our beliefs – or perhaps the filters are before our memory, and so we can only remember things that match the things we believe – anyway, I’m suspicious that, since the world is full of contridictory religions, and people of all of them are equally convinced that their religion is the one true one, what’s happening is that people are filtering the available data based on their belief-set, and thusly seeing what they expect to see. Dear all adherents to religion everywhere, congradulations, you are bending your own reality. Now, that’s not saying God isn’t real – after all, people all see the Sheer they expect to see too, and I’m pretty sure I exist. But I do think you get the God you believe in, at least somewhat. This doesn’t seem too difficult to figure out..

But, I was talking about jackels and giraffes. I have this need – being the candy-raver kid I am – for God to be a giraffe. I just don’t want to live in a universe where *e’s a jackel – I’d rather not exist. But I hear these people talking – usually right after I’ve made a statement defending gay people – about how God is a “just God” and therefore “MUST punish people” for “committing sins”. Now, if some guys tell me they have this book that disagrees with what my heart says must be true about the divine.. I’m going to ignore the book and go with my heart – and I think I’d be an idiot not to. Anyway, we were talking of the concept of God I get presented including the plans for judgement this creature has.

Well, what a jackel this creep must be! In general, judging other people isn’t the best behavior to be indulging in, as most of us figure out sooner or later. Why would God need to be judge and jury – for that matter, why would anyone need punished at all? Earth already has too many ‘consequences’ for my tastes, and I don’t think I’m alone in this. Really what we need is a system to keep us from hurting each other – but there are many who would rather have a system where we can hurt each other, just so they can have the pleasure of punishing us for doing so.  And there I go Jackeling off again and judging them.. but.. read http://mindprod.com/livinglove/methods/nvc.html and consider how the statements in there apply to $DIETY.

To get somewhat off my original topic (I’ll come back to it, probably), what Jackel need is welling up in the Christians making these claims for God? A need for the universe to include some sort of punishment for behavior that they see as immoral, or possibly that just squicks them? Why would they need that? There really must be a valid answer to this, and I suspect it’s an issue of control. I haven’t really run my file-permissions universe by too many of these individuals, but I’m guessing they wouldn’t like it very much, because it removes any valid reason or even excuse for a ‘judgement day’. (well, I suppose you could have a time where you decided if the story-lines currently going on in your life were worth continuing..) – these people believe in this, presumably, because they want to! I certainly don’t seem to have any trouble not believing in it – and I’ve been just as convinced of having concious contact with the divine as any of the rest of you..

If I were trying to hear them in Giraffe, what would I hear? Fears about an inability to control the behaviors of others? Fears that if they don’t speak up for the Jackel nature of God, *e might turn out to be a big, tall Giraffe who doesn’t really care who we sleep with? The phrase ‘living in sin’ has always fascinated me – to this apparently huge group of people, there’s something inherently bad and awful about living with a lover unless you make a lifetime commitment to them – but I think the only reason they have for this is ‘this is how we’ve always done it’. Birth control and longer lifespans both change the rules in some fundamental ways, but religion adapts even more slowly than government. Human systems are not exactly light on their feet, and so little of our social systems seem to be optimizing for happiness.

Really, I assume there is some basic need in some people to control the behavior or happiness of other people. I just don’t understand why the need is there. Maybe some people only feel complete if they have power over others? Hm. That sounds like I’m judging them too. This nonjudgemental stuff is really hard, especailly when you’re talking about a subject that is fraught with oppertunities for unhappiness and the opposite of nonviolent communication.

Well, before the information age, I guess there wasn’t really any way we *could* be light on our feet in terms of idea structures – and now, we’re still learning how. So I’ll pat that jackel that’s over there in the corner bittering about how awful the world is on his furry little head, and continue about my original thesis.

From where I sit, the bible was written at least partially by forces that liked hate, darkness, and evil. Even Jesus doesn’t say ‘Yes, the people who came before me were at least somewhat wrong’ – even though the people who came before him seriously suggested stoning anyone who slept with another person of the same gender.. (for example). This is not a book written by love. I would dearly love to see what the bible *would have* looked like if it *hadn’t* been written by the forces of darkness. I suspect somewhere out there, maybe in some parallel universe or maybe in this one, is a “real” bible – a book of collections of ideas about love, written by people who actually know what it is and have felt it on a regular basis. For my own reasons, I suspect this bible would have more women then men in the list of authors. But.. Paul, for example, is the Enemy with a capitol E. Although I wonder.. if I heard Paul’s mysoginistic Jackel in Giraffe, what would I hear? ‘I’m frightened by women, because I feel they might be smarter than I am.. or because they’re so different.. and so I want them to stay quiet in church’? ‘I need to rig the deck of this religion to support my gender because otherwise I’m afraid we will all be overrun by the women’?

I’ve strongly considered the possibility that the book is both Giraffe and Jackel – that in fact it’s my own darkness that makes me unable to see the Bible as it truly is – I see my own darkness reflected in it, instead of the original message. However, if my nervious system is subbing out content from the world around me, there isn’t a lot that I can do about it. (Other than blog about it and see if it gets any reactions)

I suspect that I’m a jackel more often than I would like to be. Since Kayti discussed the course materials with me, I’ve been watching my words and thoughts to see how often they contain judgement – or pointless suggestions and advice – when empathy would be a more appropriate response. Anyway, if you are a Christian reading my blog – I know there’s at least a couple of you out there – ask yourself, why would you want God to be a jackel? Or, what need of yours does it fill to claim that you absolutely know what God wants, and that *e wants people to suffer if they (a: sleep with the wrong people or at the worng times b: don’t say one key phrase about accepting this one guy who got killed for trying to bring a message of hope and love c: whichever set of beliefs you happen to have). Are you sure there isn’t a better way to get that need met?

I just hope that God’s runtime behavior isn’t decided by what the majority believes about h*. That’s not a hard possibility to believe in.. if we’re each one neuron in a neural net that is God, for example, you’d expect behavior kind of like that. In which case, I should really be trying to convince everybody to have a happier view of the concept – perhaps as insanely happy as possible?