It’s in the Code

It is obvious that there are some similarities between computers and the function of our nervous system. After all, the computer was designed as an extension of our own capabilities and could be expected to follow some of the same patterns. Many of the concepts and much of the terminology that has developed in the computer industry have counterparts in our own functional intelligence. For example, we have a short term memory that we access instantly and a long term memory that takes at least a “Hmmm” or a head scratch before it finds the info. That’s like your computer’s RAM memory, storing the short term stuff and the hard drive which stores for the long term.

Not only have computers helped us do things, but they have educated us as well. They have given us a model for understanding how life works. It is in the code.

Biological Operating System

All creatures alive today, plus the remains of all living things that have gone before, all the organic compounds, all fossils, all fossil fuels, all the biomass accumulated by this planet over billions of years, exists because, information coded into DNA was accessed, read and acted upon by a cell. Before any one of those cells could grow, before any living tissue could be manufactured, before any polypeptide chains could be assembled, before anything could happen in ANY cell, DNA information had to be processed. Information processing is the very first act of Life.

Why is this an important distinction? Because information processing involves a set of concepts that are independent of the processing method being used. For one, there must exist a consistent set of rules or protocols that govern information processing within the system. This is called an operating system, or OS.

All living organisms follow the same rules for accessing and reading DNA code. These universal rules infer the existence of a biological operating system. I call it LifeOS.

First Friday Fractals

Had the pleasure of attending the First Friday Fractal show at the Planetarium, at the NM Museum of Natural History and Science, in Albuquerque. Wow! Jonathon Wolfe puts on a fantastic show. I saw one of his presentation in a classroom setting. Although the logic was the same, the impact of flying thru fractals projected on the dome, is something else altogether. What a show! It got me thinking…

One of the amazing things about fractals is that they produce patterns that we can see in Nature. We can see that Nature is using a similar technique to produce patterns involving matter and energy. How does that happen? Does Nature have a formula written down somewhere? Let’s compare the two, looking for the common elements.

The computer generated fractal phenomenon is purely informational. A formula is processed, and the results reprocessed using the same formula. The repeating patterns are the result of processing information. There is no matter or energy represented, only pure information.

A computer is processing pure information, nothing but ones and zeros. In order to compare the two we can look at Natural process as also processing information. Instead of ones and zeros, the Natural system processes atoms and molecules. It manipulates them to produce its fractal patterns in real matter.

The point of LifeOS is that information processing is fundamental, to the interaction between matter and energy, as well as to life itself. Fractals show that, without a doubt, the model of life as an information process is valid. We can assume the rules that Nature follows to produce its fractals exist, somewhere. They are certainly not written down in a mathematical formula, but exist in some medium, that not only retains the same relationship between values as the formula, but adjusts variables and even formulas, to suit the situation.

As shown in the magnetic cactus experiment, it is the magnetic field that adjusts the appearance of spines in cacti. It is the magnetic field in the growing tip of the onion that plots its pattern for growth.

Although reductionists like to jump on fractals to point out how simple process, repeated over and over can produce complexity, the fact that these billions upon billions of simple steps are coordinated to produce a specific outcome, infers a higher control mechanism is at work.

Networks in complex systems grow in two ways… hierarchical and scale free. In biological systems, these two options are woven together into networks that display both characteristics. Organs develope elaborate internal networks that use both types to accomplish their role in a larger outcome. Organs are connected to their peers and the larger networks through external, primarily scale free, type links, but include hierarchical elements, as well.

The coordinating element on all of these interactions is electromagnetic energy, expressed through fields. It is these purely informational fields of energy, distinctly nonmaterial, that guide growth, whether it be in crystals, biological systems or galaxies.

http://fractalfoundation.org/fractal-shows/first-friday-fractals/

So, i guess this book isn’t finished, just yet.

cheers,
jim

Science & Spirituality

perspectives
by Romik Kimor (videos)
17:28
Science & Spirituality – The Essence of Life from Two Perspectives: Dr. Stuart Kauffman & Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp

Quantum fields, biophotons as information that controls cellular process… good stuff!
This one requires a plugin.
This is on my facebook page.

Dr. Fritz-Albert Popp:

“Biological Systems are governed by the special
interaction of a coherent electromagnetic field (biophotons) and biological
matter. There is a permanent feedback coupling between field and matter
in a way that the field directs the location and activity of matter,
while matter provides the boundary conditions of the field. Since
the field is almost fully coherent, the interference patterns of the
field contain the necessary information about the regulatory function.”

Back in July

It all started with a minor dispute with my ISP. It escalated to me losing my connection, and having to close the bank account they were trying to suck dry, to get some peace. The peace was nice, and everytime i thought about spending money to get back online, something inside said, “Just a few more days of peace, huh?”

I got a lot done that wasn’t getting anywhere while i blogged. I rewrote the LifeOS manuscript from beginning to end, walked in the woods and read some books. Well, both the walking and reading, led to some additions to the finished rewrite.

Almost ready to publish! Here is a rough of the cover.

Sorry, to those folks whose comments i didn’t answer. I am just barely keeping up with the current load.

cheers,
jim

Why Are We Here?

When observed from above, from the control room of higher order of environmental systems, it looks like human beings have waged an all out war on Nature. From the time that man initiated slash and burn technology, the ability of one person to destroy habitat and reduce productive systems to wasteland has increased many fold, as have his reasons to do so. Human ingenuity has found many ways to profit from the plunder. And the sheer number of them has also multiplied. Six billion of them chewing away at the biological infrastructure like termites. What are they thinking?

At War With the System

Our imaginary war with the System is exemplified by the way we treat diseases like cancer. We think of cancer as something that has attacked us that we have to fight. We fight by killing cells, hoping to kill all of the enemy cells. Those cells indeed threaten a healthy body, but they are not enemies from the outside; they are the bodies own cells.

The body produces cancerous cells from time to time and has an elaborate immune system, that normally takes care of them. When the immune system becomes damaged itself, or the information it needs to function is compromised, or it is overwhelmed by damaged cells, a tumor results.

To the Rescue

The ego likes to blame the outside for all of its problems and the concept of attack and defense fits right in. The medical profession likes the concept as well. It makes them the knights in shining armor that save the day, defending the helpless ego from evil doers. But in reality, the carcinogens are always out there and the cancerous cells are always being produced. It is not that cancer is attacking, but the immune system is unable to cope with the level abuse heaped upon it by our decadent lifestyles.

It is Captain Self’s job to avoid carcinogens in the environment and make decisions that maintain the integrity of the immune system.

Misinformed Agents

When the good Captain is locked into battle with his own crew, nothing good can come of it. The Captain is not at war with the system, but a product of it. The cancerous cells are not at war with the body, but a product of it. Just like the Captain, the cancerous cells are simply misinformed. They are working under their own type of internal delusion. They both have forgotten that they belong to the system and have taken off on their own, following some internal dialog that takes them far from their intended path. In the efficient information processing system, we would expect these processes to be quickly terminated.

Run-a-way Process

In this journey of discovery, we are always on the lookout for repeated patterns. Here we see that an entity can run amuck, endlessly repeating a process because some feedback loop malfunctions. Just as in a computer stuck in an endless loop, sucking resources while producing no meaningful work, cancer cells and human beings have lost contact with their parent system; they no longer have the information they need to stay on track.

Is That Bad?

Depends on your point of view. From the view of the individual and/or species, failure is bad, success good. From the systems viewpoint, although run-a-way processes pose a threat to local subsystems, they also can provide benefits. A run-a-way process puts stress on the local system, causing accelerated learning and adaptation. For example, our separation from our environment has led to a spike in creativity and technology that never would have happened if the human animal had stayed connected to its natural system. For the individual, a diagnosis of terminal cancer can certainly rearrange one’s priorities. The sense of mortality may lead to extra effort going into an unfinished masterpiece.

Systemic Responsibility

The System provides the necessary information for all entities, just as it supplies nutrients and carries away their waste. The System also is responsible for any breakdowns in the supply channels. The System is also responsible for successful adaptation. The System knows what it is doing.

The System experiments with agents. There is a competition going on here; not a war, but a contest to determine what improvements need to be made in future models. This unprecedented acceleration of learning and adaptation is oriented towards an intentional outcome. We have a mission. Our job is to learn what that entails and get on with it.

Systemic Emotion

Emotion: an instinctive response to environmental situations, that is distinguishable from logic and reason.

Many folks feel that emotions are a throw back to our animal past and therefore, should be suppressed in favor of a logical state of mind. To those that see the human species as the pinnacle of evolution, emotions seem like a primitive mechanism that threatens to pull us down, impeding our progress. Our reptilian brain, favoring primitive behavior if survival is threatened, is a case in point.

Primitive or Fundamental?

Rather than looking at emotions as primitive, there are advantages to thinking of them as fundamental, performing valuable functions at all levels of biological systems. The emotional mechanism is just as important in our “advanced” civilization, as ever, it is the recorded behaviors and their settings that are primitive and need to be updated.

In the individual, emotions manage the state of readiness to meet environmental situations. The source of our emotions is definitely in our subconscious. Environmental situations, real or imagined, cause the release of a flood of chemical messengers, that reset the state of all subsystems, in preparation to react.

Security Alerts

One way to look at emotion is that it is a part of the security system, that instantly alerts Captain Self and the rest of the crew to danger or any situational change. Emotions can switch the state of readiness of the entire organism in a flash. Emotions work in real time, but are also intimately involved with memory and recall. In memory, emotions continue their role as an alert mechanism.

Not only is the emotional state recorded in memory right along with events, it also measures and grades the experience. The type and intensity of the emotion becomes a flag that marks the experience, both for a gauge to its importance and for easier recall. We know that emotional state has a lot to do with how well we remember things. So, the flow of data that our memory processes is categorized, referenced and assigned degree of importance(prioritized) on the fly.

Systems Level Emotions

Besides looking at what emotions do for the individual, we want to understand what function emotions perform for the system. From this vantage point it is immediately apparent that, as well as managing the agent’s internal state of readiness, emotions affect the external world. Emotions are part of the communications network that manages social relationships.

Body Language

In animals we see that emotions are communicated, between individuals and groups, by body language and other visual cues. It appears to be a separate channel of information from vocal exchanges. For example, the tails of dogs and cats project their emotional state to any observer. Barking guard dogs will often be wagging their tails while appearing to be vigorously defending their turf. One end of the dog is yelling, “I’m doing my job”, while the other end is saying, “Take me for a walk.”

For we humans, facial expressions and other body language communicate hidden feelings. No matter what the conscious mind is trying to convey, the subconscious is often projecting a different picture. To whom? The subconscious of other agents.

Color Coded

Throughout the animal kingdom, color is used to broadcast emotional state, especially in mating. From the red rumps of female baboons in heat to the colorful displays of cuttlefish, emotions play an important role in the reproductive process. Displays of fear serve to warn local residents of danger. Emotions serve a survival function for individuals and groups, but go even farther, providing realtime feedback to the higher levels of control, like species and ecosystems.

The Brine Shrimp Massacre

Remember the brine shrimp experiments in Cleve Backster’s lab? Death is a radical change of state for any organism. The traumatic termination of any living thing registers on all local agents, and beyond. The Primary Perception revealed by Backster’s experiments, is the core communicator of agent states to the nonlocal environment. This is fundamental emotion, highlighting, organizing and prioritizing the holographic feedback loops of all living things. How agents feel about what they are doing, is important to the system. The total of all agents states, generates the holoverse, the emotional state of System.

Suppressed Connectivity

Our attempts to suppress our emotions has hampered our ability to communicate with our local environment as well as the System at large. Many folks recognize that the root cause of much of our troubles is our separation from the natural world. We have done it to ourselves.

While we are on the subject…

…ran across this today. It’s a good one! Check it out.

The Quantum Surrender of Science

Science, a once-paralyzed minority of yesterday’s evangelical world, has long last come to the pinnacle of its predecessor. Scientists, now modern day vicars of faith, don fact as surrogates for dogma in their indoctrination of the ever impressionable public mind. As if clergy of old, their methods of derivation remain sacrosanct outside of scientific circles, impervious to the same investigation they readily apply elsewhere. To question the possible defects of the system that produces the central truths by which we live is to question reality itself, for how well our world view has been prescribed by scholastic teachings of scientific convention. All of our lives we have been taught that the world is a predictable place, and where it is not, thereby a lack of information, and not science, exists. We have been told to hold our tongue and quietly shave with the Razor of Occam when faced with the complexities of the unknown. But, let us exhibit caution before we obediently lock ourselves in the edifice of science, for a house of verity built on a foundation of error is sure to fall. Truths, despite adherence to the rules from which they are erected, become little more than falsehoods under incomplete laws of construct. Heterodoxies Blog presents The Quantum Surrender of Science, a composition on the deconstruction of scientific axiom, which aims to usurp the primacy of science by means of its own dilation, as the progression of such institutions are to be understood as an evolution, and not as the doctrine of truth we have been made to believe.

The middle is the best part.

What is needed now is the persistent disposal of scientific models that are limited to reductionism, determinism and localism, to be replaced with new models that consider factors from both higher and lower hierarchical levels, as well as those that acknowledge the observer and the act of measurement itself on reality.

Models focused on the systems approach, understanding processes and their control mechanisms, will take us to an objective view of objects, a higher level of functionality.

But most of all, in our infinite trek for truth, our scientific models of tomorrow must not only remember to bring society and its educational establishments along for the ride, they must demand participation from the true unveilers of the infinite realities they seek to ascertain.

I agree, but can “science” really give up? They seem to be turning deeper into their contrived material fantasy world. Meanwhile, the pseudo scientists, new agers and witchdoctors are leaving them behind, ready to embrace Quantum Mechanics as evidence of the existence of a mystical realm. Unafraid to incorporate QM into their understanding and improve their performance in real life. Even if science gets their models right, it could be another century before they can put them to proper use. You and i can put this knowledge to use today.

Meditate on it.

Practice Makes Perfect

How long does it take to learn mathematics? How long does it take to become proficient at chess or spelling or field hockey? These are all skills that are obviously possible for human beings to learn. Some folks are better equipped than others and will learn faster, while some will have a hard time mastering even the basics. None of these skills can be learned without practice. Practice will not take place unless the individual believes it is possible to learn the skill, in the first place, and actually attempts to master it.

Introspection

The same is true of introspection, conscience and psychic abilities. You cannot master what you don’t practice. The human mind has the ability to calculate, compute and and communicate at extremely high levels of efficiency, but only when trained to do so. The typical scientific career path offers no instruction in introspective pursuits, in fact “trains” the student to deny the value of same. The results are just what one would expect.

However, if one is trained from an early age to receive, accept and act on information obtained from internal sources, it becomes obvious that the internal is connected to the external. There are simple experiments anyone can do that will confirm that the mind of the individual can access information beyond the confines of the brain case. The neuro-philosophers can deny it all they want, once you discover for yourself that your consciousness has access, scientific credibility takes a gigantic hit. Denial is not the same as disproving.

Fraudulent Math?

That’s like me saying that math is an illusion and that all solutions thus obtained are fraudulent. You would certainly think me a fool. Or i must have some ulterior motive to promote such an obvious lie. That is the way a great many world citizens view western scientific thought, “The people who have brought us modern technology couldn’t possibly be so stupid as not to know that the mind is larger than the brain, that future can be told and thoughts take wings. Therefore, they must be lying.”

Science goes to great lengths to point out that we are all mistaken, that it is self delusion that fools us. Meanwhile, they refuse to accept the findings of their own, when they prove us right. Whom is deluding whom?

Is This God?

About this time, someone will say, “It doesn’t matter what you call it, God, the Tao, LifeOS or the Great Spirit, they are all the same.” Well it does matter, they are not the same. There are certainly some similarities, but many differences between the concepts besides just their labels. One major difference is, that the concept of god is firmly established as an entity, whereas the latter three are processes. The distinction is critical to our discussion.

Conceptual Pyramid

Back in Shared Myths, i wrote about science and religion sharing the illusion that the universe is structured like a pyramid, with either god or the human brain at the apex. This is the conceptual structure favored by western civilization. It is closely aligned with the materialist mind set that “sees” reality as a linear path to some sort of singularity or super entity. Religion and science make extensive use of this conceptual structure to describe the physical universe for us. This static model defines objects quite well, but ignores the dynamic flow of information that manages the processes involved. That flow follows the rules of networks growing in complex systems. These rules are highly sophisticated fractal “algorithms”, involving conditional response(making choices) to optimize dynamic network traffic. This is best described as intelligent action. This is what goes on in the spiritual realm.

This informational/intelligent/spiritual “virtual reality” is an intricate web of relationships that exceeds the level of complexity seen in the physical universe, by several degrees of magnitude. This is both the history of the universe, (the memory of the total process) and its potential for growth. This is not an area that can be reduced to a iconic label and minimized, although science has attempted to do so.

One God, One Source?

Monotheism and evolution are both products of the same masculine, linear, rational and logical world view. Although the religious view of the All Mighty has morphed away from the bearded old man in the clouds, it is still based on an entity that is fundamentally separate from the system we are discussing. In the evolutionary view, there is no god, but the human being is supreme, and also seen as separate from the system.

Holistic Process

The System is not an entity, but a super, nonlinear process. The concept of an “eternal entity” is an illusion. There are only nested and overlapping subsystems that temporarily perform functions as if they were independent units, but flow on in waves, like the weather. The System is eternal; entities, even galaxies, are temporary.

You can’t talk to the System, only entities. The System is the communications network and medium, providing the system for all entities, but not in the business of user relations. Information comes from entities within the system, but not the System itself. It’s like trying to talk to the internet, you can talk to other entities using the system, not the system itself.

Political Expedient

Monotheism was a political expedient. Combining all the religions within the Roman Empire into a One Supreme Being(a Trinity really) was political genius. A world that worshipped enumerable deities, demons, gods and angels, could be ruled by one supreme representative, that just happened to reside in the capital city. This effectively removed religion from the life of the individual and replaced it with a state sponsored dogma.

Grand Network

You can ask anyone from a culture that converses directly with their environment and they will tell you that there are many entities that communicate with human beings. It is like the airwaves, the internet and your cellphone, all rolled into one. The System is a communications network that manages all living interactions. All entities use the system. Any entity that claims to be the one and only is pulling your leg.

You and i are part of that grand network, and therefore have access. Your entry portal is through your subconscious.

Beware of Introspection?

Both science and religion are in the business of inserting themselves between the individual and the System, by blocking off the subconscious as forbidden territory, too dangerous for common folk to mess with. They say our behavior should be left to the experts who interpret the “laws” of god and nature for us. They both attempt to define reality for us, with the intent of managing our behavior for their benefit. The concepts of deity and/or human superiority are their most effective management tools.

Accept Responsibility

The concept of a holistic information processing system puts the responsibility for behavior right where it belongs: on the shoulders of the individual. If you accept the “rules of behavior” given to you by your religion, your education and/or your government, you will, sooner or later, find yourself at odds with the Environmental System. Your culture has sold you out, using your behavior to increase the wealth and power those at the top of the cultural pyramid. The environment is a self-organizing, self-correcting system with a long history of success. It didn’t last this long by letting species run amuck. We will grasp our true relationship with that Environmental System, or perish.

The Vehicle

Our primary vehicle for this journey has been our consciousness. The secondary vehicle has been the body that carries the first around. They both follow pathways to destinations, but in different landscapes. The body can only move in physical space, limited by physical laws. Consciousness can go anywhere, without regard to time and space. That’s the vehicle we want, one that is unfettered, free to discover new pathways or revive old ones.

They make a good team, the body and mind. Together they are capable of great feats of navigation and discovery. One of their great assets is the ability to be in two places at once. The body can be sitting in a chair, while the mind travels to distant lands. Or the mind can link up with other minds, so they can go someplace together, while their bodies remain in separate places around the globe. So, we have a “real” landscape that our body traverses and a virtual one, in which, our mind is free to roam.

When you and i travel together in our virtual world, we try to share landscapes, but they are never the same. We have each built our own virtual landscape on top of the one we inherited from our ancestors. Although we are using the same environmental input to create our own version of the landscape, we assign different values to objects and events according to our cultural and peer relationships.

One way we can compare our different landscapes is to look for the structural similarities. How have we built our virtual world? It is a world of pure information, existing only in imagination, but constructed as a model of the “real” thing. So, we set out on an imaginary journey, each exploring our own virtual world, looking for cycles and patterns that repeat, structural underpinnings and connections that enable the high level of information processing these vehicles possess. This is a road test for our imagination.

Mind Beyond the Brain

One major misconception fostered by mainstream science that really affects their credibility is that “mind” is confined to the brain. The scientific community is so sure of this model that they refuse to even consider other possibilities. Locked into their boxes of logic, reason and math, in complete denial of a spiritual component, they seem disconnected from reality. Yet, they insist on trying to bolster their philosophical position by condemning all other methods for understanding reality. These childish reactions are not lost on the world audience.

Quantum Collapse

The concept of a purely physical universe is falling apart, (some might say shattered), by Quantum Mechanics. Even in the most respected bastions of logic and reason, the material approach to defining reality has uncovered its own limitations. However, they still want to keep the mind in a brain box, as if the evidence of totally interconnected, highly organized and communicating biological networks at lower(more primitive) levels, would not apply to the most advanced intelligence organ on the planet.

Let me put this another way. The most primitive single celled creatures, bacteria, worms, insects and neurons all learn and grow by exchanging information between individuals, species and environment. Information flows in waves of feedback through the environment, maintaining system integrity. To believe that the most sophisticated information processing organ around, the human brain, would be confined, separated or cut off from the environment and therefore denied use of this most fundamental of biological abilities, just doesn’t make any sense, logic or no logic. Unless you want to believe that the human brain was “dumbed down” from the rest of the system for a reason.

Restricting mind to the human brain would be an evolutionary step backwards.

Mind: nothing, but neurons and electrochemical reactions

It seems to be one of their primary assumptions that consciousness is a only a product of specific neural activity and therefore restricted to the brain. Electrical impulses, neurons and chemical reactions are thought to be the cause for consciousness, and therefore it is assumed that the mind cannot be active outside of a brain. Nonsense!

That’s like me trying to convince you that your cell phone can’t access outside information, because it doesn’t have a wire. You know better. You can call anybody you want and that proves me wrong. If you can’t make calls, (access outside information), with your cell phone, it is because you don’t have a contract, or you are out of range of a tower, or your battery is dead, or your phone is broken, right? Of course, if you don’t push the buttons, nothing happens.

The human brain is a far more sophisticated communications device than your cell phone. If you can’t access outside information with our brain, it is probably a user problem and not broken equipment. You don’t push the buttons, nothing happens. Precognition, telepathy, remote viewing, synchronicity and the rest are all features accessible with your brain. If you never take the time to master the skills necessary to use your built-in features, they certainly won’t work.

If the scientific community really wants to know why their credibility is so low,(about 80% choose superstition every time), they need look no farther than their absurd denial of “paranormal” activities.

What About You?

But how about you, personally? Do you believe that consciousness only exists inside the brain? If that is your belief, you are part of the minority.

That such concepts are nothing but superstition, is one of the things that education harps on continuously. By the time one has spent a career wearing that set of blinders, it seems to be true. However, the majority of world citizens believe that thoughts, emotions and prayers extend beyond the physical brain. It is no surprise to us that Cleve Backster’s plants responded to the death of the brine shrimp, or that people know they are being watched, or that prayers can aid in healing.

Personal Matter

I have said that i don’t expect “science” to overcome the inertia of its materialist, reductionist(soul-less) past, and embrace a holistic reality, anytime soon. But i really don’t care whether “science” ever gets it or not. My reason for touching on the subject at all, is but a hope to convince the reader that consciousness is a personal matter; not to be defined for us by institutions.

It can be interesting, and sometimes helpful, to understand what leadership believes, or wants us to believe, about a subject, but don’t forget that grain of salt. Their reason for fostering their beliefs on us has nothing to do with a search for truth, but for the exercise of control.

This view comes from looking at “science” as a subsystem, closely linked with financial, political, military, bureaucratic, educational and other subsystems, that control human behavior. Within that group, science is the closest thing to a conscience to be found. Without a spiritual component, science fails in this function. For the most part, the behavior of these groups has proven to be focused on accumulating wealth and not to be in the public interest, nor the interest of a healthy environment.

Rebel Researchers

Within this structure, there are individuals and groups that have formed subsystems, networks and associations that run counter to the overall reductionist, materialist belief system. It remains to be seen whether they will flourish within, and change “old science” into something new, or split off and form a new branch on their own. Either way, i see these groups as the foundation for the future of science. Until the current paradigm shifts to this new foundation, science will continue to misconstrue basic cognitive functions.

Your mind belongs to you, not the state. It is your responsibility to learn how to use it. It is too valuable a possession to let fall into the hands of the politicos, bureaucrats and money changers.