

DigitalXprocess / Cyborg RING

Originally uploaded by KOUJI FRAMINGO.

Just finished reading the Guru and the Pandit transcript of Ken and Andrew’s Integral Naked dialogue: Immortality and Enlightenment. (via numinous dawg)

The best part of the dialogue was when Ken and Andrew differentiated the notion of immortality, from body, mind, soul, to spirit. Awesome. I agree with them when they pointed out people’s confusion with immortality — "when you want the finite realm to be infinite." Props to them for doing that. They should’ve stopped there and explored ways on how to best embrace life extension technology and merge it with 2nd-tier thinking. But NO, they didn’t. The dialogue degenerated into the classic Spirituality vs. (materialistic) Science game — "…breaking some fundamental law of the universe—tampering with natural structures in the creative process". Jesus Jones! Do you guys really believe this crap? Don’t you guys think that maybe, just maybe, that technological advancement (including life extensions) IS an expression of the "creative process"? Where’s the fluffy love?

The dialogue had obvious bias towards spirituality and the interior

domain. The lack of imagination was obvious when they touched on the

subject of consciousness downloading. Assuming this technology will be possible, yes, the level of consciousness of the person is still the same when it’s downloaded to a machine — garbage in, garbage out. BUT, BUT, BUT, the Law of Accelerating Returns,

will make it possible for that consciousness to "develop into higher

levels" at an "exponential" rate. Even hyper-speed doesn’t quite cut

it. We’ve all seen Dark City, and The Matrix where Neo learned all the cool stuff in

one sitting. What if, in the future, Ken and Andrew, will be part of a

computer program where they would continue to do their pointing out

instructions, evolutionary imperative injunctions, and boring

philosophical jargons? What if ILP ver 2045 is packaged as a download

program instead of a long and tear-jearking 1-2-3 shadow workout? Heck, it

would probably only take 90-minutes of practice instead of 90 days of inebriation. Wouldn’t this technology help accelerate the consciousness of Humanity 2.0 into integral-aperspectival levels and beyond?

A better theme for the dialogue should be: What ways can 2nd-tier thinking embrace technology to ensure that they only cause self, culture, and nature the least amount of suffering?

As for Andrew being afraid of life extensions, I have one word for you sir: Singularity.

The singularity challenges us to redefine our notion of EVERYTHING,

even enlightenment itself. Brush up on that and transcend and include

it in your evolutionary imperative model.

And c’mon, Ken. At least in Boomeritis you posited a race between carbon-based and silicon-based consciousness: "…development

in the world of Carbon is heading toward a great Omega point, then when

Silicon becomes conscious, it will also start heading toward this

ultimate Omega point. So he becomes obsessed with the thought: Who will

first discover God on a widespread scale: Carbon or Silicon? Now that is more, shall we say, integral.

Those are just some of the reasons why, IMHO, the dialogue, as

valuable as it was, was very partial. It avoided flatland but somewhow

got stuck in "wonderland"

— collapsing the exteriors in favor of the interiors. That’s why I

think that instead of just the Guru and the Pandit, when it comes

controversial topics on the exterior domains, they should’ve included fluffy scientists in the discussion. The discussion would’ve been more interesting if Ray Kurzweil, and Aubrey De Grey were invited and the four of them went at it on All Quadrants regarding radical life extensions. Now that would be pay-per-view material.

There. I think I could use a sponge bath in my favorite spot.