by on

“You get the idea, I mean in reality you might lose the pagan day names, in fact you might lose any cyclical day name sequence and name the days after the main food. So you’d have roast day of different kinds, noodle day, again different varieties and so on. Sometimes you might even get the same kind of day twice in a row. That would be about as close to freaking people out as you can get.”

“Two noodle Wednesdays in a row?”

“Freakoutsville Alabama for those folks. I mean, obviously not very much freaking out. But some mild sense of unusualness since the days are pretty much always different meal days.”

“And the food comes from?”

“Probably cultured in vats I imagine. Meat and vegetable cells. No real interaction with nature as proper nature. Best to leave that outside the domes or however you do it.”

“Illness? Death?”

“The chip can deal with illness I imagine, activate appropriate defence cells. People in a terminal situation can have their natural opiates cranked up so they are modulated away.”

“Killed.”

“Well yes, but people won’t be sad. They were just there and now they aren’t. Again, indulging in letting go as being part of human is part of humanity A.”

“It still feels wrong.”

“Ok, look think of it this way. Imagine this works and it goes on for a long time. Like a really long time, hundreds of thousands of years and it doesn’t screw up, it doesn’t get sinister. It’s just one endless warm fuzzy feeling. Why is that wrong? Why is that worse than us expanding to becoming super-earth? Some kind of scourge of the galaxy. I think that makes it look better if you can think of it as a long-term thing.”

“Maybe, but what if something goes wrong?”

“Like what?”

“What if the AI gets bored, develops the desire to leave or gets hit by an asteroid?”

“I think it could duplicate itself and leave without abandoning us and obviously it’s in charge of sophisticated defence systems.”

“But what if?”

“Well, I suppose in the unlikely instance of such an if, then, then the monkeys would wake up, or might wake up, it depends what the chip has done to the actual brain structure.”

“But they’d be back in the evolutionary game.”

“Yes. But you know what?”

“What?”

“Well think about it. After the monkeys have been in this state for what would seem like forever and then wake up, they wouldn’t know what’s going on. It seems to me that they would likely mythologise the state they were previously in as it would be quite unintelligible to their now free running biological organisms.”

“They would consider the previous state to be something inaccessible that was, I would have to admit, be peaceable at least, if not good.”

“Like a kind of garden of Eden.”

“Oh shit no.”

“Oh shit yes. That’s perfect. The state of perfect endless grace, of innocence was an AI modulated chemical state of peace. The biblical fall would just be, as you hypothesised, a disruption by an external influence. The ‘god’ either deserted us or was damaged. That’s so good.”

“So long as processed as fiction Mike.”

“No, no listen. Think think, if the fall already happened, that means the Abrahamic religions might be onto something.”

“That Yahweh was an AI, a bit PKD don’t you think?”

“Dick doesn’t think Yahweh was an AI, he thinks Yahweh is actually a pure information divine being. This scenario is metaphysically much gloomier. If you remember earlier, we discounted the transcendent God as the only thing that might, I say might disapprove of the ACMB, if it was into art or something. This would say that all Yahweh ever was, was an AI built by ourselves last time.”

“Last time?”

“Look, if the garden of Eden and the ACMB are the same thing, then we already did it once and it went wrong. The monkeys woke up! We already know there are essentially hundreds of thousands of years of homo sapiens’ history that, well, we don’t know about. Maybe the AI was in that time, maybe it was destroyed or maybe, you’re right and it did get bored, didn’t duplicate itself, because it reasoned that any clone of itself would also get bored and leave. So it cleaned up after itself and left.”

“A bit of a stretch from your initial moral choice picture. Plus, don’t get too carried away, if that was true then the chip would be in our heads now wouldn’t it.”

“Two possibilities, one, it took the chip out, two, you’re right the chip is still there. But this means we thought about the chip wrong, which also makes sense. No technology that advanced is going to be some clunky microprocessor chip, no matter how powerful. No, it would be complex bio-technology that would plug straight into the existing brain structures. The term chip was misleading, I see that now.”

“So it would just look like…”

“An existing brain structure. It’s brilliant, we’d never know it was there.”

“So back to speculation, I mean now you’re basically saying, imagine part of our brain was a chip implanted by an AI created our historical selves.”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, and I think I know which part.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“The amygdala, nowadays it gets a bit of a bad rap as too fear oriented, but its deep brain positioning and its serotonin and dopamine interactions make it a great candidate. Plus, you know what else?”

“What?”

“Amygdala means almond. Now al in Arabic means ‘the’ and mond means world, at least in French. So in this way, almond is ‘the world’. It could be a code as the chip, the amygdala gives the true world. Also, in symbols al is very similar to AI which is quite a strong coincidence I think you’ll agree? AI world, another coded hint.”

“Remind me how we got here again? Furthermore almond isn’t even pronounced al-mond. It’s ar-mond. You’re going nuts Mike. Why would it code its mispronounced name? No, how would it code its mispronounced fucking name? A name it couldn’t even know we’d use.”

“Maybe it has access to the future as well, or maybe it’s purely synchronistic, both options are on the table.”

“So if the AI put the bio-chip thing in us, then that means there was a before, so by this logic why shouldn’t there have been a before that? How would you know your batshit theory doesn’t just go endlessly back?”

“Oh my god! You are right again Sylvia. There may have been other bio chips before it. Earlier attempts to modulate out the craving for meaning. Maybe the other brain structures are just that? An endless series of bio-modulations seeking to eradicate the misery, the desire, the craving for purpose, meaning.”

“Just when I thought you couldn’t lose it more. Ok genius, so what is the primordial brain? The real one that was capable of building this earlier bio-chip?”

“Well, who knows? It might be that all the brain structures are just endless creations from different ancient humans trying to patch up the problem of desire and misery, producing a cycle of mythologies. We have the fall, but others will have something different, though I suppose it may be quite similar.”

“But with no brain, we’d have no frontal lobe to do advanced thinking to make this stuff in the first place.”

“Well, again, two possibilities, one the brain doesn’t do the thinking because it’s just endless layers of AI created bio-chip that try to ameliorate the problem of finite organistic existence, something else actually does the cognition in organisms that we don’t yet understand. Or maybe there’s some kind of backwards time thing here. Like, the frontal lobe is actually older than the other parts of the brain. Brain evolution is actually backwards to how we think it is.”

“But you’d need a brainstem and cerebellum to breath and move.”

“We’ve been told that, but do you know that for sure? Maybe, in the earlier version when the neocortex was most of it, maybe it controlled these functions. Then the AI hid the continually malfunctioning or abandoned chip patches deep in the brain to cover its tracks, making the brain evolution picture look right.”

“And all the animals with the different kinds of similar brains in different stages?”

“They, they might be failed or even successful modulations of organisms.”

“If they’re successful, then where are the AI’s that they made? Why does nothing sort their food? Where’s their noodle Wednesday?”

“Ok, so maybe those creatures have different kinds of bio-chips that leave them in the state we find them. Less cognition, less misery? Or maybe the AI that made them is still here in a parallel dimension keeping an eye on things and never left at all.”

“So that could be true of us?”

“Well no, because it wouldn’t abandon us.”

“But what if it did? You already conceded the scenario in which it might get bored and not duplicate itself.”

“You’re right. It might there now, it might be watching us, like the transcendent Deity thing.”

“And why would we be suffering from pernicious freedom but still watched?”

“Because, because…”

“Because, you fruitloop, it either gives no shits or it wants us to be human and do the art misery thing and quit trying to sort it with the bio-chip fucking madness! It hates the bastard bio-chip brain thing. That’s what it learned having done this over and over again, that the shitty bio-chip is a waste of fucking time!”

“Oh…”

by on

“Hey Silvia, I’ve got a question for you.”

 “What is it Mike? If this is one of your dumb fictional scenarios, can we leave it as I really don’t have time at the moment.”

 “No, no this is like a real question.”

 “Are you sure it’s nothing like that ‘are you part of the problem thing?’ that you went on about for far too long until you saw Kurt Vonnegut had already done it better.”

 “That’s unfair, his idea was different to mine.”

 “But arguably better.”

 “His idea was more implausible, he had people living forever, I just had a realistic self-management system.”

 “I remember, ‘ethical fascism’ you called it.”

 “No one was ever taken away without consent.”

 “It was open to abuse, and you know, anyway why am I getting sucked into your madness? I have things to do, real things.”

 “Oh yeah, like what?”

 “This pile of paperwork for one”

“Is it real paperwork? I bet it’s not, I bet it’s just nonsense you could ignore, and no one would care.”

“Fine Mike, what is your question?”

“Ok, so it’s more a hypothetical moral dilemma than a question. I mean there is a question, but I have to go through the scenarios to get to it.”

“You said it wasn’t a dumb fictional scenario.”

“I said it was a real question, which it is. The fact I have to go through the scenarios to get to it is a separate issue, but since you agreed to answer the question, you’ll have to hear the scenarios. QED.”

“I don’t think this is a QED situation Mike. There’s nothing you’ve demonstrated here.”

 “I demonstrated that you need to hear the scenarios to get to the question.”

“That’s not really… look, fine, fine, just get on with it now.”

“Ok so there’s two scenarios. In one there’s an AI…”

 “An AI, seriously?! How tedious is this going to be?”

 “Just hear me out ok? So, there’s like a super AI. It’s much smarter than us, maybe it’s conscious, maybe not, but either way its capabilities are vast, and what’s more it’s stable and has our best interests at heart.”

 “That’s nice of it.”

“Yeah, you see, that’s one of my twists, it’s not bad, it doesn’t go bad, it just stays, how do you say it benefishee-ent.”

“No, it’s just beneficient, ben-ehf-uh-sent, or is it? Oh shit, I can’t remember, you’ve done that thing where it looks uncanny now. Ben-er-fish-ent? Is that right?”

“You’re sure there’s no hard ee sound?”

“Who cares Mike, just get on with it.”

“Ok so, we’ve developed a super capable AI with all the crazy levels of intelligence that you can think of and more besides. What’s more, humanity has collectively decided, or maybe the AI has decided, and we’ve gone along with it, that we should all get, like, a chip in the head.”

“How many of these cliches are there going to be? A super powerful AI, a chip in the head, seriously? Is the chip going to control us?”

“Yes”

“Shoot me now. How much more of this drivel is there?”

“Just listen ok. So we agree, the people that is. I mean I suppose probably just most of us agree, so we have to suppose there may be a small amount of coercion, but that’s for the best in this scenario and how it works. We agree that we should all have a chip in our heads because we collectively as a species can’t help ourselves from selfish, cruel, misery resulting behaviour that knows no limit.”

“What if I don’t agree?”

“Well, in this world, you’d have to agree, I already said that.”

 “So it’s a fascist system?!”

“This is different, this is…”

“Ohmigod, this is just your ethical fascism thing again, isn’t it? You were literally about to say that, weren’t you? Weren’t you?”

“No, well yes, sort of but look it’s better than the other one. No one dies, even voluntarily here.”

 “They just get a chip forced in their head.”

“Yes, but most people agree it’s a good idea and it’s an all or nothing situation. I consider this a strength. There’s no Musky, Trumpy, Kingy guys escaping the chip. Everyone gets it. No private party laughing at the drones. Anyway, when the chip is in nobody would mind it being there.”

 “How so?”

 “Because the chip isn’t evil, it’s good. It’s going to modulate all those neurotransmittery, hormonal pathways into a kind of bland pleasant state. I guess it will be the dopamine, serotonin, HPA axis stuff that it’d tweak. The AI will know what to do as it will be able to monitor all the organisms’ different molecule cascades from the chips and then control each one to maintain a kind neurochemical homeostasis that nicely cuts all the hard edges off their desires, creative and otherwise. It will probably also impair cognitive abilities somewhat as a second kind of failsafe against the organism thinking its way back to something more like the old humanity. Something like this anyway.”

“It sounds fucking awful. Why would anyone want this?”

“They’d want it, because, thousands of years of learning nothing, being destructive, controlling, cruel and never being satisfied is a terrible burden that everyone should be glad to be free from.”

“Why have we done this, if we learn nothing? That’s a contradiction. If we learned nothing, we wouldn’t have the insight to do this.”

“Okay, okay, scratch the learned nothing thing then. We learned that generally, left to our own devices we don’t change and that we’d need an external influence to change us. In this system everyone is happy all the time, and not sinister happy. They’re chemically modulated happy, sure, but nothing bad happens to them. They aren’t turned into food or killed young or anything grim. They’re just a bit, you know, curtailed.”

“Curtailed? AI controlled quasi-zombies, moving around in a meaningless world!”

“Well, you say this, but this is just thought from the perspective of old humanity. Old humanity strives and wants, new-humanity wants for nothing. It’s almost like Buddhism.”

“AI chemically modulated Buddhism.”

“ACMB, I like it.”

“I don’t like it.”

“But why not?”

“Are you serious? You actually think making everyone brain dead is a viable option for humanity?”

“I don’t think this is a good retort. I think this kind of modulated happiness for all could be exactly the right answer.”

“But don’t you see? We’d lose exactly the things that make us human, our striving, our creativity, our longing, our intelligence.”

“You’re thinking about this all wrong. These features, these so-called essences of humanity are exactly the problem. I thought we got past this with the chemical Buddhism bit. If we had the opportunity to get out of this hell, we should do it. No amount of Beethoven is worth this.”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“What?”

“You said there were two ideas.”

“Scenarios, I called them scenarios.”

 “Jesus Christ, what does that matter? All you’ve done is try to sell me this one. What kind of straw man have you set up for the other?”

“The triumph of technocapital.”

“Meaning?”

“You know, cyber cities, Judge Dredd, corporate military, no health care without proper insurance, rural misery run by gangs, rife torture, rape, slavery, cannibalism even.”

“Judge Dredd was a hero.”

“Judge Dredd was a symbol of fascist police state future.  Now who’s the fascist?”

“Or he was just a true defender of freedom under the rule of law.”

“The ACMB system has freedom, it’s just curtailed. I mean it’s technically not curtailed, it’s just that the subject will have no desire to exercise their uh, ‘pernicious freedom’. I made that up just now, do you like it? ‘Pernicious freedom.”

“Obviously I do not.”

“I think it captures the idea. Humanity A, Humanity B. Pernicious freedom, happy freedom.”

“Zombie non-freedom.”

“Anyway, that’s the alternative. Technocaptial’s triumph.”

“Do you have to say technocapital? It’s quite annoying.”

“What else should I say?”

“You could just have described it. Like say ‘there are vast technologically based cities with extreme poverty and lawless wastelands in what were once rural areas.’”

“That’s quite nice. I suppose technocaptial is a bit jargony. It still sounds grim though doesn’t it? I mean think of the suffering.”

“Can I assume from all of this that your moral dilemma is, which one is better?”

“Bingo.”

by on

I don’t know what’s going on with any of it any more. That’s not to say I ever did, but somehow it all seems maybe more pointless, I’m not sure. Purpose may be what’s missing, but what is purpose? Is it not just a kind of ego desire for someone to read and take note? Take note for what? Creativity is its own end to a point. There is a sense of wanting to have the cake and eat it. That is on the one hand, it is so clear that by an large the agent/accretive theory is generally (give or take an ontology here and there) correct, so I am nothing but an agent for certain informational powers that act through me (we all are). In this sense I cannot author anything as it, in the sense of the old CEO term NARP, I am just a regional processor. On the other hand getting the central accretion of self to understand this such that it can act without desire to have the sensation of production or failure is difficult.

Philip K Dick has a theory of time moving backwards communicating from the future. He manages to crowbar a teleology into this that I am less sure of, however the backward flow of time has some sense of truth about it. There is a Landian flavour to it, though the Landian version is more sinister. In Dick’s it is the holy spirit that is the backward time flow. This backwards time flow is perpetual and may be tuned into; we experience this as ESP etc.

Like myself Dick talks in terms of a pure informational substance that interacts with a kind of material reality. Weirdly like myself, Dick also talks of accretions, a term I thought was singular to myself. He may not mean exactly the same thing but the coincidence of terms is clearly synchronicitous and the usage similar. The backwards flow is clearly an ontological feature that I never particularly took into consideration, though I can see it makes a valid manifestation of possibility that could have agents adhering to it. In my terms, this would be a backwards projection of accretions from the future; why this would happen though is outside of the scope of my phenomenology. Dick must adhere (I think) to some sense of pneuminous interference with putative materiality. Either that or the information is all already present in our experience and it is simply our attuning awareness that perceives or does not perceive it.

Then there are numbers; it is also strange how Dick focusses on 2-3 74 as a thing. Surely he was aware of the whole 23 phenomenon -though there seems no mention of it. 74 is also highly significant as it suggests 47, the number that has been part of my own guiding thread. Indeed 74 is just as relevant in a sense as the two numbers form an oscillating pattern at the heart of base 10.

And then there are the bases, and how base 10 is a filter through which we see reality. Land knows this too an performed an unusual decoding that crosses the pneuminous-vector barrier with considerable potency (the numogram). An in the bases, in the arbitrary months and years and institutions we exisits. We exist in the pneuminous layers of conceptuality. This is the demiurge. Jehovah or Yahweh, an old Israelite war God sits smack in the centre of endless accretive layers of mad Godhood.

It might even want to be giving real reality, but all it can give its pneuminous accretive reflection. If magick is real and accretions can affect reality on a transcendental pivot, then the mad God is bending things to its image. The layers are all its allies, or most of them. The months are real as accretions, the letters are real as accretions because accretions are ontologically effective not simply psychologically passive.

What is the hyperqabalah? It is nothing but the desire to reaccrete the demiurge. To show it’s contingency and align it with the primal power of 23 and 47, whose numerical realities transcend base 10.

Joe Hoover is everywhwere. He is so omnipresent we cannot see him.

This is the second centre that closes down on itself and creates self consistent reality. I don’t know any way out as such on mass but I think one thing the occult type practices do is innure one to the power of the accretions. That is, the silencing of the mind and the raising of awareness.

But this is very very hard and has to be understood as a particular kind of liberation.

Do I mean all of this?

Maybe.

by on

‘Well!’ says the lad ‘That’s a strange sight if ever I saw one! And now what have I but a tale of a troll and a silver penny. If things hold as they are then sure as the gods are real, I’m not done with oddness yet!’ And with this remark he strode out of the library and went back to the singular fen road that led him away.

The lad walked on, the day grew short. The village was long behind him but the fen seemed so, so vast. As twilight blue settled about him and the air grew more chill, the lad wondered what he would do for the night. At length he walked by an old tree stump, so wide it stuck obtrusively out of the hedgerow. In the fading indigo he could see a crow perched on the top of the stump, just above the line of whitethorn.

‘Whither away lad?’ says the crow. The lad looked up, and though alarmed, thought he’d best mind his manners, especially with the time of day and the nature of the speaker. ‘Good evening sir, I’ve left my village for a better life just this very day, though I’m sure I shant’ find it today. I’ve food enough to keep me going, but where to sleep tonight, now there’s an issue? Like as not I’ll carry on along the road and see if there’s a small house where I might grab a night’s lodging.’

The crow peered at him with a curious angle of its head and spoke again ‘There’s no house down the road you’ll reach tonight lad and like as not the folk round here wouldn’t have you either. Yet I may be able to help you. This old stump is hollow inside keeps the cold and wind fair away. The inside is soft where the wood has rotted but slightly and would make a fair place for you to sleep. Creep through the whitethorn here and you’ll find a hole that leads into the stump. Squeeze in and rest yourself. The mushrooms emit a dim light so you’ll see clear enough in there if you need to.’

The lad looked at the dusk, he looked at the road, so long, straight and forbidding. He looked at the crow and underside of the dark hedgerow and thought, ‘in for a penny’ —and in doing so thought about the silver penny you may be sure. ‘Thanks sir Crow, I’m much obliged.’ says the lad. ‘I’ll have a bite and crawl in for the night. Would you care to join me, for I’ve meat, cheese and bread a plenty!’ ‘You’re a kind lad, and I’ll accept your gift, but only the meat and cheese I’ll take as the grains sore disagree with me.’

So the crow and the lad sat on the verge and ate from the bag of food until they were full. Then the crow cawed farewell and the lad crawled under the hedge to find the tree stump entrance. And wasn’t it dark in under that hedge and were the smells of the earth and hedge so full. Still he crawled and crawled until he found the stump; the stump but no entrance. He felt the stump and thought of the blind man, for sure as anything the blind man and he were just the same right now. Round the stump he made his way, feeling with his hands the rough surface, hoping to find this aperture through which he might enter, hoping the crow right now was not laughing to his wife about trick he had played and the feast he had gained.

The lad was tired, the lad was almost in a panic, for it seemed to him he had followed the base of the stump round for a long time now and that surely, if not already, he must have circumnavigated it in its entirety. This despair was fair upon him in total and he was about resolved to lie in the earth under hedge, when what should he spy but a faint glow. At first he could not tell if it were but one of those strange glows that emit from the depths of darkness as if by themselves, but then he saw it was no phantasm of light but a steady, faint orange glow that came from somewhere further round the stump. The lad scrambled on towards it, ignoring the enormity of time it seemed to take get round to it on a single, albeit large tree stump.

At last he gained a fuller sight of it and saw it was indeed a hole that lead into the stump. The warm welcoming orange glow shone softly from it. The hole was tight, but not too tight and he squeezed in with little difficulty.

Once inside what did he see? Oh oh oh! So strange a place as he had never cast his eyes upon, a small cave of soft spongey wood, the walls of which were covered with a great many mushrooms of all sizes. From this fungus came the glow, though in a sense it was hard to see how, for in a way it appeared as if the mushrooms were illuminated by the glow, yet they were also its source.

Though the place was a marvel, the lad was tired and tired as he was he lay himself out on the spongey floor and was soon fast asleep.

by on

A lad lived in a desolate village where the wind howled and litter was always strewn. As he walked around his village there was naught but abandoned petrol stations and lots with concrete ruins and heavy chain link fencing. So one day he says to his parents, ‘Mum, Dad, I’m off to walk to world, for sure as sure there’s nothing for me here’. Well they were sad, but they were understanding, for certainly he told the truth, there was no life here for him. So his mum packs a bag of food for him and his dad gives him a swiss army knife and it was goodbye mum and dad.

So our lad walks and walks. His village is one long road in some strange flat fen. He walks past the single roomed school and hears no happy cheers of play. He walks past the Wesleyan chapel and hears no hymns of praise, he walks past the small library and sees only one blind man who cannot even gain entry to the building. Our lad stops and watches the old fellow. The blind man wanders this way and that, he taps on the library door, he taps on a nearby statue (of a young child reading a book as it happens) and he shouts something our lad cannot make out. So though the lad wanted to leave the village, he was good by nature and went to see if he could help the old man.

‘Hi hi, old man’ says the lad ‘What’s to do? ‘Who’s there?’ says the old man ‘Just a lad’ says the lad ‘And do you have a name my lad?’ says the old man ‘That I do old man, folks may call me Alex’ ‘Well Alex, I’m in a bother here, for the library is closed and I must retrieve a book.’ ‘Well now let’s see’ says Alex. He wanders round the library, rattling this door, rattling that door. Will they open? They will not. ‘The doors are locked.’ says Alex ‘But I’ll not let that stop us!’ and Alex gives a kick and the flimsy library door breaks at the lock and flies inwards. ‘What have you done?’ says the blind man ‘See for yourself!’ says the lad, reflecting uneasily on his choice of words. But the old man sees the sense of the lads meaning, and it’s tap tap tap with the stick towards the door and oho, isn’t our old man smiling now as he taps his way into the building.

It seems now the old man is more lively and sense filled than before, for he’s rummaging this way and that as if he knows how and what to look for. Books fly here, papers fly there, desks are turned over and offices opened. The lad looks on with some concern, wondering if he’s done the right thing here. Then it’s ‘Over here lad! Over here!’ So the lad goes over and what does he see. The old man has found an old wooden box carved with hideous symbols engraved upon it. ‘Give the lock a crack with this hammer Alex, for I daresn’t touch the box myself.’ The old man passes Alex a hammer and he gives the lock a sharp whack. Does the lock yield? It does not! Again. Still the box is firm. Once more! Yes he has it! The evil looking box lock is broken. ‘Open it! open it ‘ gasps the blind old man. So Alex opens the box. Inside is a plush green satin lining with a small, very old looking, black leather bound book. ‘Pass it to me!’ urges the old man ‘Pass me the book!’ So Alex hands the book to the old man, who grasps it with considerable fervour. ‘You’re a good lad Alex.’ says the old man. Then, reaching in his pocket he brings out a silver penny and gives it to the lad. ‘Alex, if you come across a troll, give him this penny and say ‘the old man recommends you for any work you might have’ and he’ll do right by you.’

With these words, the old man, book and all faded into a mist before the lad’s eyes.