“Reality is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we can suppose.”
J. B. S. Haldane
Brains: The Infinite Novelty Engine
Introduction to whatever this stuff is!
The title of this document is “Brains: The Infinite Novelty Engine”, and it was created by a human brain referred to as Alif.
Historical Context
1.1. The Human Journey
1.2. Tools, tools, tools!
1.3. Invention of Language
1.3.1. Books Changed What “Everything” Was
1.3.2. Accumulate The Knowledge
1.4. Technological Catalysts
Computers
2.1. A Civilizational Shift
2.2. The Information Society
2.3. Internet; A Global Brain
2.3.1. DARPA Net
2.3.2.
2.4. Hyperconnected Digital World
2.5. The Algorithms that Connect Us
2.5.1. The Google Algorithm
Creativity & Imagination
3.1. How The Brain Works
3.2. The Nature of Learning
3.3. What is Creativity?
3.4. What is Imagination?
3.5. Abstract Scaffolding
3.6. Behavioral Complexity
3.7. Computer Imagination
Artificial Intelligence
4.1. Progress along the decades
4.2. Contemporary Real AI
4.2.1. Google’s Deepmind
4.3. Representation in Science Fiction
4.4. Ethics & Implications
4.4.1. Accelerated Misinformation
4.4.2. Internet Bots
4.4.3. Our Collective Fears
4.4.4. Responsible Usage
4.4.5. Bias & Hate Speech
4.4.6.
4.5. Accelerated Misinformation
4.5.1. Social Media as Pandora’s Box
4.5.2. Let’s Talk About TikTok
4.5.2.1. An Algorithmic Mirror For You
4.5.3. Facebook (I refuse to call it Meta)
4.5.3.1. Emperor Nero
4.5.3.2. Advertising
4.5.3.3. Your Data and You
4.5.4.
4.5.2. Right Here Right Now
4.5.3. Reality Tunnels & Echo Chambers
4.6. Synthetic Humans
4.6.1. The Turing Test
4.6.2. The Most Uncanny Valley
4.6.3. The Deepest Fake
4.6.4. Pretending To Be, Thus Mimicry
4.6.6. Infinite AI Television
4.6.7.
4.7. GPT-3; Large Language Models and Beyond
4.7.1. History of OpenAI
4.7.2. Attention Is All You Need
4.8. Near Future
4.8.1. GPT-4
4.8.1.1. Attention is All You Need
4.8.2. Multimodality in AI
4.8.2.1. Sensor Data Fusion
4.8.2.2. Mixture of Experts or Ensemble Learning
4.8.2.2.1. LIMoE: the Language-Image Mixture of Experts
4.8.2.3.
4.8.3. Neuromorphic Computing
4.8.4. Photonic Computing
4.8.5. Photonic Neuromorphic Computing
4.8.6. Hyperdimensional Computing
4.8.7. Robotics
4.8.7.1. Embodied Cognition
4.8.7.2. Enaction
4.8.7.3. Self-Awareness in Machines
4.8.7.4. A World Model
4.8.7.5. Industrial Robotics
4.8.7.6. Personal Robotics
4.8.7.7.
4.9. Far Future
4.9.1. Utopia; Why Wait For Heaven When You Can Invent It Here On Earth?
4.9.2. Dystopia; A Vantablack Mirror To Get Lost In.
4.9.3. Mesotopia; The greyest of greys!
4.10. Artificial General Intelligence
4.10.1. It’s Complicated!
4.10.2. Complex Networks
4.10.3. Principles of Emergent Self-Organization
Human AI Collaboration
5.1. A Roadmap
5.1.1. The Hyperreal; From Fiction to Reality
5.1.2. What should we expect?
5.1.3. Transdisciplinary Strategies
5.2. What Already Exists
5.3. Ubiquitous Computing
5.4. Smartphones
5.5. Immersive Computing
5.5.1. Virtual Reality
5.5.2. Mixed Reality – (AR/VR)
5.5.3. XRAgents
5.5.4. Universally Programmable Avatars
5.5.5. Virtual Agents in Virtual Worlds
5.6. Augmenting Human Imagination
5.7. Frontiers of Thought
5.8. Brain Computer Interfaces – The Seamless Machine
5.8.1. Non-Invasive BCI
5.8.2. Invasive BCI
5.8.3. Mixed Reality BCI
5.8.3.1. The Galea: A Technological Marvel
5.8.3.2. Synthetic Programmable Hallucinations
5.9. Hyperpersonalized Computing
5.10. Cyborgization
5.10.1. Posthuman Transhumanism
5.11. Emergent Complexity in Distributed Intelligent Systems
The Complexity of Human Civilization
6.1. Thought Perspectives
6.2. Tradition
6.3. Modernity
6.4. Post-modernity
6.5. Meta-modernity
6.6. A Systems Level Overview
6.7. Our Planetary Ecosystem
Summa Technologiae
7.1. Stanisław Lem: Who?
7.2. Summary of His Book
7.3. Evolution: Technological vs Biological vs Cosmic
7.4. Future Predictions
7.5. Virtual Reality
7.6. What Can We Learn From This?
7.7. Epistemological Collapse
7.8.
Big History View
8.1. Big Bang(s) in Inflationary Cosmology
8.2. Evolution of Matter
8.3. Complexity of Matter
8.4. Self-Awareness of Matter
8.4.1. You. You’re self aware.
8.5. Is Consciousness Computable?
8.5.1. Emulating a Mind?
8.5.2. Emergent Computations in Distributed Neural Circuits
8.5.3. Multi-scale Collective Intelligence in Matter as a Unifying Concept
8.5.4. The Brain as a Complex System
8.5.5. Evolution and Self-Organization
8.6. Does Anyone Know What’s Happening Here?
8.7. A Hypothetical Technological Singularity
8.7.1. Arguments For
8.7.2. Arguments Against
8.7.3. Techno-Religious Optimism
8.7.4. Popularization
8.7.5. Physical Constraints
8.7.6. Vernor Vinge’s Science Fiction
Tutorials
9.1. How to “Talk” to AI
9.1.1. GPT-3
9.1.2. Phone Apps
9.2. Making AI Generated Images
9.2.1. Closed Source; The Black Box
9.2.1.1. DALL-E 2
9.2.2. Open Source; Where Innovation Happens
9.3.
Who am I?
10.1. Names and Aliases
10.2. The Transient Nature of Identity
10.3. Growing Up
10.4. The Suburbs
10.5.1. Historical Context
1.1. The Human Journey
Our ancestors survived in the trees while the dinosaurs were being wiped out 65,000,000 years ago. Our journey as a species over the past 200,000 years has been a fascinating tale. We’re a bipedal hominid species that are now the apex predator of the planet, and we’ve now created an entire civilization sprouting from our collective ingenuity and curiosity. All of the qualities of human beings give us the ability to adapt to a wide variety of environments and circumstances. From our humble beginnings foraging along the savannah hunting animals, to sending probes to different planets and even the Sun, we have a global internet, holograms, virtual reality, microwaveable meals, infinite entertainment.
Our species originally came out of Africa, several millions of years ago. We can see our genetic lineage from fossil evidence over the course of millions of years of development. It seems like we just really liked wandering and exploring, this is what eventually took our ancestors out of Africa towards the rest of the world.
“Genetics is really good at telling us qualitative things about the order of events, and relative time frames.”
“Just by looking at DNA from present day individuals we’ve been able to infer a pretty good outline of human history,” Akey says. “A group dispersed out of Africa maybe 50 to 60 thousand years ago, and then that group traveled around the world and eventually made it to all habitable places of the world.”
Joshua Akey, studies Human Genome at Princeton University
Read more about it here!
1.2. Tools, tools, tools!
Our ability to use tools is what differentiates us from many other species. But we’re not the only one that enjoys using tools! Tool use is broadly present within the animal kingdom. Besides humans, other mammals, birds, fish, cephalopods, and even insects find themselves using tools! Take a look around you, what kinds of tools make up your environment? What are the tools that compose your life? Tools allow us to take our intentions and make them that much easier to conduct upon the world. Tools make life easy, they solve problems, they are everywhere.
We use them to assemble and prepare food, to navigate our world, to listen to music, and much else of everyday life is a symphony of tool usage. Of course, in the current era humans have their most prized tool- the smartphone. It is a fusion of many previous tools into one super-tool, it allows us to communicate with each other from anywhere on the planet and hail any purchasable material onto our doorsteps. Tools allow us to do things that would otherwise be difficult or downright impossible! Tools can be used to hurt or harm, but it’s up to the intention of the wielder.
It’s as if a tool becomes an extension of your body when you’re using it, a newfound power to do new things upon the world. How will the tools of the future change what becomes of the present moment? Humans have been inventing, tinkering, and perfecting their tools in order to
1.3. Invention of Language
(To be continued.)
1.4. Technological Catalysts
(To be continued.)
2. Computers
2.1. A Civilizational Shift
(To be continued.)
2.2. The Information Society
(To be continued.)
2.3. Internet; A Global Brain
(To be continued.)
2.4.
(To be continued.)
6. The Complexity of Human Civilization
6.1. Thought Perspectives
//from Tomas Bjorkman’s book From God to Market
“The animist thought perspective: Emerged c. 50,000 years ago
during the Stone Age. Characterised by animistic and magical
beliefs, an occupation with a spirit world and no differentiation
between physical and mental reality. Still present among some
indigenous populations today.
• The religious or pre-modern thought perspective: Emerged c. 800
BCE at different locations across the central axis of Eurasia, in some
aspects as early as 2000 BCE in Egypt and Mesopotamia, but to its
fullest extent only blossoming after 500 CE with the consolidation
of the great moral religions such as Christianity, Islam or
Buddhism. Characterised by transcendental ideas of salvation,
divine law and the rationalisation of mythology in accordance with
universal theological principles. Still dominant in many developing
countries and in certain areas of the West.
• The rational or modern thought perspective: Emerged c. 1500 CE
in Europe during the Renaissance, but in some aspects in its protovariant as early as 500 BCE in Greece. Blossoming only in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Characterised by rationalistic
and scientific thought, notions of progress and material growth,
emancipation of the individual from arbitrary religious and
political control, and human rights and democracy. Remains the
most dominant thought perspective today.
• The postmodern thought perspective: Emerged in the twentieth
century in the West, though some aspects appeared in the late
eighteenth century. Characterised by a critique of rationalism,
progress and established power relations, concerns with issues such
as the environment, gender and race, and a highly relativistic and
pluralistic perspective. Yet to fully blossom and become the most
dominant, but highly influential in much of intellectual life in the
West today and particularly common among the educated classes.”