From 4/21 to 4/27 2014, Tuscon, AZ was host to the 20th annual Towards a Science of Consciousness conference hosted in Arizona for the 10th time. This place is seriously amazing. Not that I have been to any other conferences but according to those in attendance, there is no place in the world quite like it.
The week was full of incredible speakers from many walks of life: philosophers, physicists, biologists, computational neuroscientists, psychologists, engineers, brain-computer interfacers and psychedelic researchers. And a good number of lay people like me. You would be hard pressed to find a place with more interesting hallway conversations. Up and down every corridor of the University Marriott Hotel could be overheard facts about the quantum nature of reality, debates over the mind-body problem, ideas about how meditation might work and in (slightly) more hushed tones, stories of psychedelic consciousness expansion.
The conference started early each day: 8:30 or 9:30 and talks were being presented, the breaks in between only long enough to quickly grab food, coffee, and have a quick conversation about who or what god was, whether or not free will exists, and how long it would be before the mind could be uploaded. In the afternoon there were concurrent talks: people split in to different rooms depending on what research they wanted to see and afterward swapped stories with their new friends and connections. In the evenings were more artistic presentations: Deepak Chopra led a group meditation, a few films were shown, and the less famous people gave poster presentations. On Friday a few very talented individuals did hilarious standup about consciousness and philosophy (believe me it can be done)! And every night there was an open-bar party for the VIP's in the hotel's hospitality suite. Even though I wasn't a VIP, it was never hard to find a way in.
I will do more posts about the conference as I reread my notes. I highly recommend the next one in Sweden and Tucson every other year after that. If you like interesting people and want to understand the world a bit better this is the place for you.
Future Consciousness
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Questions on the Edge of the Apocalypse
In my previous post I review the book Conversations from the Edge of the Apocalypse and here are some of the most common questions asked in that book. In addition to these, Brown asks the interviewees specific questions related to their work but usually asks them most of these questions as well.
What is your perspective on telepathy, psychic phenomena,
and synchronicity (coincidences that seem too good to be true)?
What are your thoughts regarding the possibility that people
can communicate with extraterrestrial or extradimensional intelligences while
in certain altered states of consciousness?
What do you think happens to consciousness after death?
What is your perspective on the concept of God?
Do you see any kind of teleology in evolution?
How has your experience with psychedelics influenced your
writing and your perspective on life?
How do you integrate your psychedelic experience with your
religious upbringing?
Do you think that the human species
is going to survive the next hundred years?
What do you think is the biggest
threat to the human species?
How do you envision the future
evolution of the human race?
What gives you hope?
It is certainly interesting to hear the responses of so-called Mavericks of Mind, but these are questions I'm sure many people have asked themselves from time to time and are worth taking a few minutes to think about yourself.
Thursday, March 6, 2014
Radical Abundance: Book Review
In the book Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization, K. Eric Drexler explains how the accelerating pace of technological progress will lead to massive benefits through the field of atomically precise manufacturing (APM).
One of the first things he does is to zoom in on molecules by a factor of ten million and try to explain what this world would look like if scaled up to macroscopically sized objects. In one example he states that if atoms were about 3 mm in diameter, the size of a capital O in medium font, then basic molecular machines and proteins would fit in the palm of your hand but a white blood cell would be the size of a football stadium and a human hair would be a kilometer in diameter. It is certainly an interesting perspective to picture.
Another point that is continually made and which carries incredible importance, is the acceleration of progress. He compares the coming APM revolution to three previous revolutions, the Agricultural revolution that occurred thousands of years ago at the end of the last ice age, the Industrial Revolution that only occurred hundreds of years ago and the Information revolution which only took a few decades. At this rate the next revolution is set to bring monumental change on a scale of months to years.
Throughout the book he mentions several of the impressive technologies that this new way of manufacturing will bring. Higher quality photovoltaic solar panels will revolutionize the energy industry and breakthroughs in energy storage will finally be made in the form of atomically precise hydrogen fuel cells. At one point he states that computers will have, "memory storage densities in the range of a billion gigabytes per cubic centimeter" (Drexler 168). A billion gigabytes would be a million terabytes, all in the size of a flash drive. We don't even have to look back very far to realize he is right. The challenge, it seems, will be developing creative uses for storage spaces this size. Already it seems like an external hard drive of a few TB is all that we will need for the foreseeable future. It will be fascinating to see how computers this capable will be used although one can certainly imagine they will enable some of the brain cell-computer interactions mentioned briefly in my previous posts.
Drexler describes how APM will spur a new type of arms race since the ability to manufacture extremely advanced weapons for a thousandth of the current cost will be incredibly desirable. However, this is not quite the doomsday scenario it appears to be. Since the use of the most deadly weapon ever in the 1940's, the nuclear bomb, the trend has actually been towards less lethal forms of warfare. Drones take out individual people and buildings and attempt to spare as many civilians as possible. Additionally, the reasons for much of the conflict may be taken care of by APM as well. Today, resource scarcity continues to be the leading cause of international tension, but when the entire world's energy supplies can be met with a 200x200 km array of solar panels, these causes will become obsolete.
In this book, Drexler touches on some of the questions we should be asking and vaguely describes some of the changes we can expect to see. However, given the sheer number of times he says radical in this book, he actually keeps his imagination quite restrained, and his enthusiasm to a bare minimum. In fact, at one point he even speaks directly to the readers and asks them to keep their enthusiasm to themselves as well. He does have a good reason for doing this, which is that some of his own ideas were ironically part of the reason that the field of nanotechnology both got its start and suffered a major setback.
In 2000, enthusiasm for APM and "building atom by atom" was high enough that Congress established a billion dollar federal program, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The founders of this program supported many of the ideas in Drexler's revolutionary 1984 book Engines of Creation and at that point defined nanotechnology as, "the ability to work at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create large structures with fundamentally new molecular organization" (Drexler 205). Drexler states that he was not personally consulted regarding this definition but he would have approved. However, only a few years later, Congress had completely redefined nanotechnology as, "the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1-100 nanometers" (Drexler 206). Nanotechnology was now only defined by size alone and the emphasis was gone on building AP structures. Anyone from any field could now get funding so long as what they were working on was small and they called it nanotechnology, but the people who wanted to work on atom by atom assembly could not because atoms are substantially smaller than 1 nm.
The reason for the redefining of the term was not explicitly clear but an article published in Wired magazine by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems probably had a lot to do with it. In the article, Joy describes how he had recently met Ray Kurzweil and listened thoroughly to ideas by him and Hans Moravec. He was amazed that people as smart as them had such wild and potentially dangerous visions of the future, visions in which uncontrolled, exponentially self-replicating machines could turn the planet to “grey-goo” in a matter of days and computers could reach levels of intelligence vastly exceeding the entirety of worldwide human intelligence. Ironically, both Kurzweil and Moravec cite Engines of Creation as a source of inspiration and the ideas they based on it scared Bill Joy so much that in his article, he called for a ban on nanotechnology research. Although rightfully scared of a few dangerous scenarios, Joy did not realize that by banning something you surrender all control over it. Of course nanotechnology research is going to continue and if not in this country than somewhere else. If not through the widely published world of science than in the confidentiality of corporations. Public outcry threatened to upset politicians and rather than missing out on a billion dollar program, nanotechnology was quietly redefined to placate the public fears.
Drexler states several times that APM does not mean swarms of highly intelligent or conspiratorial “nanobugs,” he simply means a more efficient way of manufacturing. The threats of increasing artificial intelligence may derive some of their power from the ever more powerful capabilities of computers but this is not something that Drexler ever comments on. After having his name dragged through the mud and inadvertently causing damage to a field he helped give birth to, it is not surprising that Drexler asks his audience to contain their enthusiasm. He does support the creation of an institution that would discuss the future of this technology in a calm, conservative way and hopefully bring the meaning of nanotechnology back to what he meant when he originally coined the term, Atomically Precise Manufacturing.
Drexler, K. Eric. Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013. Print.
One of the first things he does is to zoom in on molecules by a factor of ten million and try to explain what this world would look like if scaled up to macroscopically sized objects. In one example he states that if atoms were about 3 mm in diameter, the size of a capital O in medium font, then basic molecular machines and proteins would fit in the palm of your hand but a white blood cell would be the size of a football stadium and a human hair would be a kilometer in diameter. It is certainly an interesting perspective to picture.
Another point that is continually made and which carries incredible importance, is the acceleration of progress. He compares the coming APM revolution to three previous revolutions, the Agricultural revolution that occurred thousands of years ago at the end of the last ice age, the Industrial Revolution that only occurred hundreds of years ago and the Information revolution which only took a few decades. At this rate the next revolution is set to bring monumental change on a scale of months to years.
Throughout the book he mentions several of the impressive technologies that this new way of manufacturing will bring. Higher quality photovoltaic solar panels will revolutionize the energy industry and breakthroughs in energy storage will finally be made in the form of atomically precise hydrogen fuel cells. At one point he states that computers will have, "memory storage densities in the range of a billion gigabytes per cubic centimeter" (Drexler 168). A billion gigabytes would be a million terabytes, all in the size of a flash drive. We don't even have to look back very far to realize he is right. The challenge, it seems, will be developing creative uses for storage spaces this size. Already it seems like an external hard drive of a few TB is all that we will need for the foreseeable future. It will be fascinating to see how computers this capable will be used although one can certainly imagine they will enable some of the brain cell-computer interactions mentioned briefly in my previous posts.
Drexler describes how APM will spur a new type of arms race since the ability to manufacture extremely advanced weapons for a thousandth of the current cost will be incredibly desirable. However, this is not quite the doomsday scenario it appears to be. Since the use of the most deadly weapon ever in the 1940's, the nuclear bomb, the trend has actually been towards less lethal forms of warfare. Drones take out individual people and buildings and attempt to spare as many civilians as possible. Additionally, the reasons for much of the conflict may be taken care of by APM as well. Today, resource scarcity continues to be the leading cause of international tension, but when the entire world's energy supplies can be met with a 200x200 km array of solar panels, these causes will become obsolete.
In this book, Drexler touches on some of the questions we should be asking and vaguely describes some of the changes we can expect to see. However, given the sheer number of times he says radical in this book, he actually keeps his imagination quite restrained, and his enthusiasm to a bare minimum. In fact, at one point he even speaks directly to the readers and asks them to keep their enthusiasm to themselves as well. He does have a good reason for doing this, which is that some of his own ideas were ironically part of the reason that the field of nanotechnology both got its start and suffered a major setback.
In 2000, enthusiasm for APM and "building atom by atom" was high enough that Congress established a billion dollar federal program, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The founders of this program supported many of the ideas in Drexler's revolutionary 1984 book Engines of Creation and at that point defined nanotechnology as, "the ability to work at the molecular level, atom by atom, to create large structures with fundamentally new molecular organization" (Drexler 205). Drexler states that he was not personally consulted regarding this definition but he would have approved. However, only a few years later, Congress had completely redefined nanotechnology as, "the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly 1-100 nanometers" (Drexler 206). Nanotechnology was now only defined by size alone and the emphasis was gone on building AP structures. Anyone from any field could now get funding so long as what they were working on was small and they called it nanotechnology, but the people who wanted to work on atom by atom assembly could not because atoms are substantially smaller than 1 nm.
The reason for the redefining of the term was not explicitly clear but an article published in Wired magazine by Bill Joy of Sun Microsystems probably had a lot to do with it. In the article, Joy describes how he had recently met Ray Kurzweil and listened thoroughly to ideas by him and Hans Moravec. He was amazed that people as smart as them had such wild and potentially dangerous visions of the future, visions in which uncontrolled, exponentially self-replicating machines could turn the planet to “grey-goo” in a matter of days and computers could reach levels of intelligence vastly exceeding the entirety of worldwide human intelligence. Ironically, both Kurzweil and Moravec cite Engines of Creation as a source of inspiration and the ideas they based on it scared Bill Joy so much that in his article, he called for a ban on nanotechnology research. Although rightfully scared of a few dangerous scenarios, Joy did not realize that by banning something you surrender all control over it. Of course nanotechnology research is going to continue and if not in this country than somewhere else. If not through the widely published world of science than in the confidentiality of corporations. Public outcry threatened to upset politicians and rather than missing out on a billion dollar program, nanotechnology was quietly redefined to placate the public fears.
Drexler states several times that APM does not mean swarms of highly intelligent or conspiratorial “nanobugs,” he simply means a more efficient way of manufacturing. The threats of increasing artificial intelligence may derive some of their power from the ever more powerful capabilities of computers but this is not something that Drexler ever comments on. After having his name dragged through the mud and inadvertently causing damage to a field he helped give birth to, it is not surprising that Drexler asks his audience to contain their enthusiasm. He does support the creation of an institution that would discuss the future of this technology in a calm, conservative way and hopefully bring the meaning of nanotechnology back to what he meant when he originally coined the term, Atomically Precise Manufacturing.
Drexler, K. Eric. Radical Abundance: How a Revolution in Nanotechnology Will Change Civilization. New York: PublicAffairs, 2013. Print.
Thursday, February 27, 2014
The Acceleration of Global Paradigm Shifts or: The One Poster Everyone Should Have
In my first post I made reference to a graph that clearly shows the exponential growth of not only technological progress but information technology and evolution in general. Allow me to explain why this is the most important image in the world right now a few of the implications of truly exponential growth.
This graph shows the time between significant points of change in human history or paradigm shifts according to not just one source but fifteen different sources. These sources include notable historians, the American Museum of Natural History, Encyclopedia Britannica, Carl Sagan and more. Each of them has compiled a list of significant events of great change such as the big bang, the formation of Earth, arrival of single celled organisms, first eukaryotes, first mammals, first humans, widespread use of stone tools, invention of fire, rise of agriculture and finally the widespread use of science and the proliferation of the internet. The graph is plotted on two logarithmic axes showing the time to the next event versus the time before present.
The conclusions of this trend are inescapable. If I were to turn this graph into a poster I would put a trend-line on the part of the graph that clearly shows a trend and have that line coming out the back of a rocket which would be placed in the lower right corner with a little one of those signs that say, "You Are Here." If this graph were not logarithmic it would not be possible to fit everything on one page because the events at the beginning of time took billions of years to take place. However, billions turn to millions, turn to thousands, turn to hundreds. In recent years we have seen massive global changes take place in a matter of several dozen months. For instance, a modern American child can barely fathom a world without texting, an invention that has only been around since 2006. (In fact the program I am using to write this says that texting is not even a word, yet it seems impossible to picture a world without instantaneous global connection from a device in my pocket that I can barely function without).
Technological progress is accelerating and if we extrapolate this graph it leads to some truly profound conclusions. We are going to see the Time to Next Event approach zero as the Time Before Present approaches zero as well. Try if you can to picture a world where world changing paradigm shifts on the scale of the invention of fire start occurring every day, then ten times a day, then one hundred times a day, etc. However the fact of the matter is we won't even get a chance to see ten shifts, or one hundred shifts in a day, the shifts will just take a tenth of a day, then a hundredth of a day to occur. That means after the event that only takes 2 hours and 24 minutes to occur the next one should only take about 14 and a half minutes, the next less than two minutes and so on. It will be a day to remember, to put it lightly.
The nature of progress can be seen as occurring in steps like this only when evaluated objectively several years after the fact. Real progress consists of a million little steps that transition smoothly from one stage to the next. These paradigm shifts will probably not occur in all one field either but they will build off one another and complement each other. For instance, completing the Human Genome project will likely be an event that goes on this graph some day and that would not have been possible without the rising power of the internet and the ability to share massive amounts of data across the planet in less than a second. We can see this trend continued very vividly in "Moore's Law" the observation that computational price-performance doubles every year and grows by a factor of billions over a few decades. In the next twenty years we will see another billion-fold increase in price-performance and computers that once cost millions and took up the size of a building will go from something that now costs a few hundred dollars and fits in your pocket to something that costs pennies and fits in your bloodstream or the space between your neurons.
This graph shows the time between significant points of change in human history or paradigm shifts according to not just one source but fifteen different sources. These sources include notable historians, the American Museum of Natural History, Encyclopedia Britannica, Carl Sagan and more. Each of them has compiled a list of significant events of great change such as the big bang, the formation of Earth, arrival of single celled organisms, first eukaryotes, first mammals, first humans, widespread use of stone tools, invention of fire, rise of agriculture and finally the widespread use of science and the proliferation of the internet. The graph is plotted on two logarithmic axes showing the time to the next event versus the time before present.
The conclusions of this trend are inescapable. If I were to turn this graph into a poster I would put a trend-line on the part of the graph that clearly shows a trend and have that line coming out the back of a rocket which would be placed in the lower right corner with a little one of those signs that say, "You Are Here." If this graph were not logarithmic it would not be possible to fit everything on one page because the events at the beginning of time took billions of years to take place. However, billions turn to millions, turn to thousands, turn to hundreds. In recent years we have seen massive global changes take place in a matter of several dozen months. For instance, a modern American child can barely fathom a world without texting, an invention that has only been around since 2006. (In fact the program I am using to write this says that texting is not even a word, yet it seems impossible to picture a world without instantaneous global connection from a device in my pocket that I can barely function without).
Technological progress is accelerating and if we extrapolate this graph it leads to some truly profound conclusions. We are going to see the Time to Next Event approach zero as the Time Before Present approaches zero as well. Try if you can to picture a world where world changing paradigm shifts on the scale of the invention of fire start occurring every day, then ten times a day, then one hundred times a day, etc. However the fact of the matter is we won't even get a chance to see ten shifts, or one hundred shifts in a day, the shifts will just take a tenth of a day, then a hundredth of a day to occur. That means after the event that only takes 2 hours and 24 minutes to occur the next one should only take about 14 and a half minutes, the next less than two minutes and so on. It will be a day to remember, to put it lightly.
The nature of progress can be seen as occurring in steps like this only when evaluated objectively several years after the fact. Real progress consists of a million little steps that transition smoothly from one stage to the next. These paradigm shifts will probably not occur in all one field either but they will build off one another and complement each other. For instance, completing the Human Genome project will likely be an event that goes on this graph some day and that would not have been possible without the rising power of the internet and the ability to share massive amounts of data across the planet in less than a second. We can see this trend continued very vividly in "Moore's Law" the observation that computational price-performance doubles every year and grows by a factor of billions over a few decades. In the next twenty years we will see another billion-fold increase in price-performance and computers that once cost millions and took up the size of a building will go from something that now costs a few hundred dollars and fits in your pocket to something that costs pennies and fits in your bloodstream or the space between your neurons.
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Conversations on the Edge of the Apocalypse: Book Review
In the relatively quick read Conversations On the Edge of the Apocalypse: Contemplating the Future with Noam Chomsky, George Carlin, Deepak Chopra, Rupert Sheldrake, and Others, an author by the name David Jay Brown interviews twenty-one brilliant thinkers and asks them questions about the future of humanity, the ways in which psychedelics have shaped their views on the world and how they see consciousness evolving over time. It is in some ways a follow-up to his previous book Mavericks of the Mind which features interviews with Terrence McKenna, Timothy Leary, John C. Lilly and more.
Two of the best passages are the back-to-back interviews with Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. Kurzweil gives a fairly good summary of his observations of reality and describes how neural implants are right around the corner that would give one the ability to temporarily, "shut down the signals coming from our real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were in [a] virtual environment, [and] these can be as realistic, detailed and compelling as real reality." He describes the acceleration of evolution which is something worthy of its own post but can be almost entirely explained with this one graph.
Kurzweil and Moravec both discuss what they think consciousness is and acknowledge that even though there will be a philosophical question to whether or not you can believe the computers of 2030 when they claim that they are conscious, you will have to interact with them like they are so the question of whether you believe them or not will not really matter.
Throughout the next several years, Ray says, "We're going to reverse-engineer our own intelligence and understand in detail how it works. We're going to re-create it then in our technology. We will, in the process of doing that, greatly amplify it and merge with it. We will basically re-create who we are-both our bodies and our brains-through nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and vastly expand human intelligence."
Although Ray is optimistic, he does acknowledge that there is a lot of dangerous possible outcomes of exponentially growing technology but the fact humans have had the ability to nuke ourselves off the planet for more than fifty years and haven't yet is a good sign that we're not as foolish as we seem.
On the question of what he thinks happens to consciousness after death, he asks if he is even the same consciousness that Ray Kurzweil was a year ago. Sure he looks the same but nearly every cell in the human body is replaced every several months and even though brain cells live much longer they have their molecules swapped in and out meaning everyone is a completely different person every few months. The only thing that really stays the same is the pattern and a pattern is information. And information cannot be destroyed. In a few years it will be possible to upload that pattern to the internet which will extend our lives to lengths that we cannot yet imagine.
Dr. Hans Moravec is a professor at Carnegie Mellon where he directs the world's largest robotics research program. In his section he discusses robot consciousness and the nature of subjective experience. He has written two fantastic books called Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence and Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. I have currently only read Robot but would recommend it to anyone who's willing to finish it. It may start slow but it is necessary to build a foundation in the history of robotics in order to truly understand the incredible heights that technological progress will reach within just a few decades.
Some of the other interviews that stood out to me were Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who has studied psychic (psi) phenomena and collected an astonishing amount of scientific evidence in support of it, Dean Radin, a psychologist and engineer who has studied psi phenomena at Princeton.
Another one that stood out was with Robert Anton Wilson, a philosopher and author of over thirty-five books dealing with themes such as quantum mechanics, the future evolution of the human species, weird unexplained phenomena,synchronicity, altered states of consciousness and the nature of belief systems. He earned his doctorate of psychology from Paideia University and some of his popular nonfiction includes Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology.
The late comedian George Carlin gives a fantastic interview with some witty and insightful points about society as well as the interviews with spiritual teacher Ram Dass, founder of the most highly praised medical marijuana collective in California, Valerie Corral, magician Jeff McBride and the visionary artist Alex Grey.
Overall this is a fascinating collection of interviews with amazing people that will hopefully be seen as a guidebook for those trying to ask the right questions and do genuinely interesting research into some of the greatest mysteries of our world in the twenty-first century. All of the uncut interviews can be found on David Jay Brown's website Mavericks of the Mind.
Two of the best passages are the back-to-back interviews with Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec. Kurzweil gives a fairly good summary of his observations of reality and describes how neural implants are right around the corner that would give one the ability to temporarily, "shut down the signals coming from our real senses and replace them with the signals that your brain would be receiving if you were in [a] virtual environment, [and] these can be as realistic, detailed and compelling as real reality." He describes the acceleration of evolution which is something worthy of its own post but can be almost entirely explained with this one graph.
Kurzweil and Moravec both discuss what they think consciousness is and acknowledge that even though there will be a philosophical question to whether or not you can believe the computers of 2030 when they claim that they are conscious, you will have to interact with them like they are so the question of whether you believe them or not will not really matter.
Throughout the next several years, Ray says, "We're going to reverse-engineer our own intelligence and understand in detail how it works. We're going to re-create it then in our technology. We will, in the process of doing that, greatly amplify it and merge with it. We will basically re-create who we are-both our bodies and our brains-through nanotechnology, artificial intelligence, and vastly expand human intelligence."
Although Ray is optimistic, he does acknowledge that there is a lot of dangerous possible outcomes of exponentially growing technology but the fact humans have had the ability to nuke ourselves off the planet for more than fifty years and haven't yet is a good sign that we're not as foolish as we seem.
On the question of what he thinks happens to consciousness after death, he asks if he is even the same consciousness that Ray Kurzweil was a year ago. Sure he looks the same but nearly every cell in the human body is replaced every several months and even though brain cells live much longer they have their molecules swapped in and out meaning everyone is a completely different person every few months. The only thing that really stays the same is the pattern and a pattern is information. And information cannot be destroyed. In a few years it will be possible to upload that pattern to the internet which will extend our lives to lengths that we cannot yet imagine.
Dr. Hans Moravec is a professor at Carnegie Mellon where he directs the world's largest robotics research program. In his section he discusses robot consciousness and the nature of subjective experience. He has written two fantastic books called Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence and Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind. I have currently only read Robot but would recommend it to anyone who's willing to finish it. It may start slow but it is necessary to build a foundation in the history of robotics in order to truly understand the incredible heights that technological progress will reach within just a few decades.
Some of the other interviews that stood out to me were Rupert Sheldrake, a biologist who has studied psychic (psi) phenomena and collected an astonishing amount of scientific evidence in support of it, Dean Radin, a psychologist and engineer who has studied psi phenomena at Princeton.
Another one that stood out was with Robert Anton Wilson, a philosopher and author of over thirty-five books dealing with themes such as quantum mechanics, the future evolution of the human species, weird unexplained phenomena,synchronicity, altered states of consciousness and the nature of belief systems. He earned his doctorate of psychology from Paideia University and some of his popular nonfiction includes Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising and Quantum Psychology.
The late comedian George Carlin gives a fantastic interview with some witty and insightful points about society as well as the interviews with spiritual teacher Ram Dass, founder of the most highly praised medical marijuana collective in California, Valerie Corral, magician Jeff McBride and the visionary artist Alex Grey.
Overall this is a fascinating collection of interviews with amazing people that will hopefully be seen as a guidebook for those trying to ask the right questions and do genuinely interesting research into some of the greatest mysteries of our world in the twenty-first century. All of the uncut interviews can be found on David Jay Brown's website Mavericks of the Mind.
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