Navigating Consciousness with Rupert Sheldrake

1998, UC Santa Cruz

"In the same way that the daughter of Zeus sprang full-blown from his forehead, the AI may be upon us without warning."
- Terence McKenna

A discussion on the evolution of consciousness as it relates to machines. Symbolic logic, nanotechnology and the possibility of a synthetic superintelligence. Terence compares the advent of superintelligent AI to the advent of language. Virtual computers as a route for AI to escape controls. How much control do we have in the evolution of machine intelligence? Quantum computers as a superior medium.

Related Book
The Evolutionary Mind
https://sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/the-evolutionary-mind

Terence predicts virtual computers... children can now build virtual computers in Minecraft:
https://minecraft.fandom.com/wiki/Tutorials/Redstone_computers

No Linux? No problem. Just get AI to hallucinate it for you
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/12/openais-new-chatbot-can-hallucinate-a-linux-shell-or-calling-a-bbs/

Hollyhock, 2006

Andrew Weil, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, an approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. Rupert and Andrew had a series of conversations over eight years at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.

This is an extract from Rupert's workshop with Brother David Steindl-Rast at Hollyhock, Cortes Island, BC in August, 2011.

00:00   Brother David Steindl-Rast: Making a thing out of the soul; AI Sentience 
04:08   Rupert Sheldrake: Golem/Frankenstein myths and robot consciousness
07:07   Rupert: Analog computers as possible framework for machine consciousness
07:57   David: So it is possible?
08:23   Rupert: Promissory Materialism will "prove" that people are machines 
09:04   Rupert: The genome wager with Lewis Wolpert 
14:13   David: Science as limited faith, one without hope
15:00   Audience: if Science and Faith both seek truth, they must converge
15:41   Rupert: we all have implicit biases; materialists in particular have huge blindspots
17:31   Audience: Truth emerging like a flower
17:54   Rupert: Institutionalized science, grants, educational conformity
19:32   David: How can you do it?
19:36   Rupert: I was forced to work independently, not recommended
21:04   Rupert's excommunication by Nature Editor John Maddox
22:29   Rupert: Pluralism in politics, but not science "we know the truth"
24:13   David: Questioning establishment power
25:32   Audience: A rebirth of creative thinking?
25:43   Rupert: Trouble with the academic system; funding reform; medical system fatigue; alternative therapies
29:10   Audience: Morphic resonance, homeopathy, interpersonal neurobiology, setting science free
30:17   Rupert: Comparative effectiveness research, pragmatic medical systems, most scientists are from Eastern cultures (India, China)
32:35   Audience: What if you talked to a radical cosmologist?
32:48   Rupert: Mainstream cosmology IS radical, multi-verse theory, laws of nature must be fixed
34:58   Rupert: Martin Reese's simpler hypothesis "get's rid of God"
36:09   Rupert: Stars being conscious too much for Martin Reese
37:48   Rupert: Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, creation story, popularized science, natural philosophy

This is an extract from Rupert's workshop with Brother David Steindl-Rast at Hollyhock, Cortes Island, BC in August, 2011.

Hollyhock, 2005

Andrew Weil, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, an approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. Rupert and Andrew had a series of conversations over eight years at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.

Hollyhock, 2004

Andrew Weil, MD, is a world-renowned pioneer in the field of integrative medicine, an approach to health care which encompasses body, mind, and spirit. Rupert and Andrew had a series of conversations over eight years at Hollyhock, on Cortes Island, BC, Canada.

Rupert's appearance on the DemystifySci podcast. Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxOs8pDjnqk

Anastasia completed her PhD studying bioelectricity at Columbia University. When not talking to brilliant people or making movies, she spends her time painting, reading, and guiding backcountry excursions. Michael Shilo also did his PhD at Columbia studying the elastic properties of molecular water. When he's not in the film studio, he's exploring sound in music. They are both freelance professors at various universities. 

After more than a hundred hours of private conversations on Zoom, Rupert and physicist turned neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín meet in person to discuss some of their favourite themes.

In this new installment, Rupert and Alex reflect on the scientific enterprise itself. Starting by acknowledging that new paradigms are near but never quite seem to make it, they address some of the deep reactionary forces that oppose such changes. This leads beyond the naïve understanding that science is just about data; core assumptions can make evidence irrelevant. Science must then be observed also from a sociological and historical perspective – the politics of knowledge are at stake. Deeper roots may be found in The Reformation: the current dogmatic materialist worldview is a kind of amnesic Protestantism squared. The conversation then leads to the obvious but non-trivial point that scientific facts are literally made, involving a consensus amongst experts who share the same model of reality. Other models (and other experts) are excluded. In that sense, Science (with capital S) is probably too Catholic. The future scientist will not have an easy time. And yet, all those minority reports are of majority interest.

This conversation was held on December 8th 2022 at Rupert’s house in London.

Dr Alex Gomez-Marin, PhD, is a Spanish theoretical physicist turned neuroscientist. He was a research fellow at the EMBL Center for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. He is currently the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias de Alicante, as an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. He is also the director of The Pari Center in Italy. https://behavior-of-organisms.org

A three-way conversation, or trialogue, in two parts.

Part 2 Festivals, a calendrical reform and 'pharmacological intervention'. Oscillating models of chaos, creativity and the imagination. Eleusis as a great turning point. The Virgin of Guadalupe. The Faustian pact with the physical world. The cultural cul-de-sac of the dominator mode. Restoring partnership values, opening our lives to chaos and the world soul. Chaos as Gaian fury and as a moment of opportunity. A forward escape into technology? Included in Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness first published as Trialogues at the Edge of the West Chapter 3. 

This Trialogue and others are available in book form:
https://www.sheldrake.org/books-by-rupert-sheldrake/chaos-creativity-and-cosmic-consciousness

Ralph Abraham, PhD, is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, author, and pioneer in the fields of Chaos theory, computer graphics, visual mathematics and dynamical systems. 

Terence McKenna was an ethnopharmacologist, shamanologist, and author, known for his theories on plant hallucinogens and the novelty wave, and the bardic skill with which he conveyed his ideas. Sadly Terence died aged 53 on April 3, 2000.

After more than a hundred hours of private conversations on Zoom,  Rupert and physicist turned neuroscientist Alex Gómez-Marín meet in person to discuss some of their favourite themes.

In this installment, they address the problem of memory localization. Rather than taking for granted that memories are "stored" inside our heads and rushing to speculate about where and how, they instead entertain the idea that memories could be both everywhere and nowhere in particular -- memories are in time, not in space. To make such thoughts more thinkable, they discuss the recurrent historical failures to find actual memory traces in brains and bring forth some of the pioneering ideas of the French philosopher Henri Bergson in the context of current neuroscience. They also discuss concrete experiments to test such hypotheses and reflect more widely on the nature of form and the idea that the laws of nature may be more like habits than eternal edicts. They end by discussing the need for scientific pluralism.

You can listen to a former Sheldrake & Gomez-Marin encounter on The Future Scientist conversation series here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpr0QP4Qcvk 

... and a plea for a Bergsonian neuroscience here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQxNlot9SxU&t=9s

This conversation was held on December 8th 2022 at Rupert’s house in London.

Gomez-Marin’s site
https://behavior-of-organisms.org