Cognitive Science – Lifeboat News: The Blog https://lifeboat.com/blog Safeguarding Humanity Mon, 10 Jul 2017 19:01:01 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Revita Life Sciences Continues to Advance Multi-Modality Protocol in Attempt to Revive Brain Dead Subjects https://lifeboat.com/blog/2017/07/revita-life-sciences-continues-to-advance-multi-modality-protocol-in-attempt-to-revive-brain-dead-subjects https://lifeboat.com/blog/2017/07/revita-life-sciences-continues-to-advance-multi-modality-protocol-in-attempt-to-revive-brain-dead-subjects#comments Wed, 05 Jul 2017 14:19:35 +0000 https://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=70608 Rudrapur, Uttrakhand, India — July 02, 2017

Revita Life Sciences, (http://revitalife.co.in) a biotechnology company focused on translational regenerative therapeutic applications, has announced that it is continuing to advance their novel, multi-modality clinical intervention in the state of brain death in humans.

“We have proactively continued to advance our multi-modality protocol, as an extended treatment before extubation, in an attempt to reverse the state of brain death” said Mr.Pranjal Agrawal, CEO Revita Life Sciences. “This treatment approach has yielded some very encouraging initial outcome signs, ranging from minor observations on blood pressure changes with response to painful stimuli, to eye opening and finger movements, with corresponding transient to permanent reversal changes in EEG patterns.”

This first exploratory study, entitled “Non-randomized, Open-labelled, Interventional, Single Group, and Proof of Concept Study with Multi-modality Approach in Cases of Brain Death Due to Traumatic Brain Injury Having Diffuse Axonal Injury” is ongoing at Anupam Hospital, Rudrapur, Uttrakhand. The intervention primarily involves intrathecal administration of minimal manipulated (processed at point of care) autologous stem cells derived from patient’s fat and bone marrow twice a week.

This study was inappropriately removed from the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) database. ICMR has no regulatory oversight on such research in India.

The Central Drugs Standard Control Organization (CDSCO), Drug Controller General of India, had no objection to the program progressing. Regulatory approval as needed for new drugs, is currently not required when research is conducted on the recently deceased, although IRB and family consent is definitely required. CDSCO, the regulator of such studies, clearly states that “no regulatory requirements are needed for any study with minimal manipulated autologous stem cells in brain death subjects”.

Death is defined as the termination of all biological functions that sustain a living organism. Brain death, the complete and irreversible loss of brain function (including involuntary activity necessary to sustain life) as defined in the 1968 report of the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School, is the legal definition of human death in most countries around the world. Either directly through trauma, or indirectly through secondary disease indications, brain death is the final pathological state that over 60 million people globally transfer through each year.

“We are in process of publishing our initial retrospective results, as well ongoing early results, in a peer reviewed journal. These initial findings will prove invaluable to the future evolution of the program, as well as in progressing the development multi-modality regenerative therapeutics for the full range of the severe disorders of consciousness, including coma, PVS, the minimally conscious state, and a range of other degenerative CNS conditions in humans,” said Dr. Himanshu Bansal, Chief Scientific Officer, Revita Life Sciences and Director of Mother Cell.

With the maturation of the tools of medical science in the 21st century, especially cell therapies and regenerative medicines, tissues once considered irretrievable, may finally be able to be revived or rejuvenated. Hence many scientists believe that brain death, as presently defined, may one day be reversed. While the very long term goal is to find a solution for “re-infusing life”, the short term purpose of these types of studies is much less dramatic, which is to confirm if the current definition of brain irreversibility still holds true. There have been many anecdotal reports of brain death reversal across the world over the past decades in the scientific literature. Studies of this nature serve to verify and establish this very fact in a scientific and controlled manner. It will also one day give a fair chance to individuals, who are declared brain dead, especially after trauma.

About Revita Life Sciences

Revita Life Sciences is a biotechnology company focused on the development of stem cell therapies and regenerative medicine interventions that target areas of significant unmet medical need. Revita is led by Dr. Himanshu Bansal MD, who has spent over two decades developing novel MRI based classifications of spinal cord injuries as well as comprehensive treatment protocols with autologous tissues including bone marrow stem cells, Dural nerve grafts, nasal olfactory tissues, and omental transposition.

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Christian Astronomers https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/09/christian-astronomers https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/09/christian-astronomers#comments Sun, 02 Sep 2012 00:49:57 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=4717 “The more anxiety one produces, the more the discussion there would be about how real and how possible actual existential threats are.”

John Hunt recently queried me on what steps I might take to form an organization to advocate for survival colonies and planetary defense. His comment on anxiety is quite succinct. In truth the landing on the moon was the product of fear- of the former Soviet Union’s lead in rocket technology. As we as a nation quelled that anxiety the budget for human space flight dwindled. But the fear of a nuclear winter continued to grow along with the size of our arsenals.

Interestingly, at the height of the cold war, evidence of yet another threat to human existence was uncovered in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico in 1981; Chicxulub. But even before the dinosaur killer was discovered, perhaps the greatest threat of all to humanity was born in 1973 when Herb Boyer and Stanley Cohen created the first genetically modified organism. The money to answer both of these threats by going into space continues to be expended by the military industrial complex.

Mile wide rocks in space and microscopic organisms on earth are both threats to our existence, but the third and undoubtedly greatest threat is our own apathy.  Why do we expend the tremendous resources of our race on everything BUT keeping it from going extinct?

The answer to this important question is our own fear of death. As I have written previously, we are as individuals in the predicament of a circus freak on death row. It is a bizarre yet accurate characterization. None of us expect to live forever, but then we do not expect to die tomorrow either. We are in limbo between certain death and temporary life and cannot face the reality of the first while obsessing over the banalities of the second.

Examples of our determination to stay distracted can be found in the babbling of gravity modifiers, CERN doomsday prophets, and various other fruit flavored contributors to this blog. We desperately want to believe in UFO’s, conspiracies and fantastical solutions so we do not have to face the disquiet we experience whenever we pass a funeral home or graveyard. I am happy to pummel these idiots with the harsh language they deserve- especially when they destroy the credibility of sites like this which are trying to accomplish something worthwhile.

So I am thinking there is so much anxiety being monopolized that there is little market left for me capitalize on. Something different is required; as Bill Gates advised young entrepreneurs recently, “Don’t do what I did.” It has all been done and no clever marketing or deceptive advertising is going to build cities on other worlds. Space tourism is not going to save us- if anything it is a dangerous waste of time and money.

What is required is a popular culture renaissance that can focus the energy of several generations in a single  direction. The uniqueness of this crossroads in history can be found in considering the nearly unbelievable difference in the level of scientific knowledge today compared to a half century ago.  There is nothing more evident to the mature members of the western world than it’s age- our standard of living has brought about fewer children while the less fortunate parts of the world have accelerated their reproductive rates. Disparities in wealth and standards of living are stark evidence of the circus freak scenario. Very few of us are aware that there is a possible escape from this death sentence we are all born under. A standby of science fiction for decades has  been the freezing of human beings for space travel. To delay death indefinitely and be resurrected when a cure for a disease or old age is found is a familiar concept. The parallels with Christianity are unmistakable.

We, as in my fellow human beings who were born around 1960, are seeing the culture we grew up in fade away as no other generation ever has. We lived through decades of threatened nuclear holocaust only to see our hoped for space age future dismantled by consumerism and profiteering. Personally, I find the presence of skulls everywhere to be the most poignant and disturbing portent of things to come. The veterans who fought in World War II and were everywhere when I was a boy would never have allowed this emblem of the Nazi SS to become so popular.  It was the symbol of ruthless and murderous force as being the only meaningful feature of reality.  60 million human beings were killed in the fight against the evil it represents. And now it is back.

To counter to the present lack of vision I would like to introduce an agent of change in the form of a idealized past age. What better ideal than the movement that conquered fascism originally? Christianity did in fact conquer the Roman Empire- and as it is said we are all children of Rome, then we are also children of the carpenter from Nazareth. A technological analogy that can be discerned when considering the original Christianity and the modern world is the Gladius and the Atom Bomb.  The Romans learned the fine points of using their infamous short swords by watching gladiators fight to the death- a funerary tradition they inherited from the Etruscans  they assimilated. The training of professional gladiators was applied to the military and made “Drill a bloodless Battle and Battle a bloody Drill.”

The sword made the Roman Empire and Christianity inherited this prize. The Atom Bomb has kept modern civilization from  World War for over a half century- but so far there is no great social movement that will inherit this mighty construct before it falls into a new dark age. The Fermi Paradox points to the possibility that this empire could well be the last; there will be no more cycles of civilizations rising and falling if we become extinct. If so then this really may be the end of the world- with no need to throw away reason in favor of the Book of Revelation.

What is most curious is that while the sword had no utility outside of murder, the Atomic Bomb holds the power to transcend this arena of earth and allow humankind to populate the galaxy. If this civilization can survive to travel to new worlds then the last empire will have risen- the last because it can never fall again.

So, to form a society of believers in life, in the future of the human race, the goals must be clear and easily understood;

If the human race is to survive, the individual must have some hope of surviving. The immediate need is a way to delay death and that procedure is practically a reality with advances in cryopreservation.

If the human race is to survive, new worlds must be found and colonized. The immediate need is for survival colonies off-world and atomic spaceships to establish those colonies and defend the earth from impact threats.

If the individual and the race as a whole is to survive, action must be taken. The immediate need is an organization to take money in and distribute it to the corporations and politicians that can direct the massive governmental resources necessary to accomplish a great rescue with cryopreservation and to construct spaceships to establish off world colonies and deflect impact threats.

Figuratively, metaphorically, the Christians conquered the old empire and the Astronomers who harness the power of the sun will inherit this empire. Since the more catchy titles have been taken by religious cults, I suggest the organization that will initiate action be called,

The Society of Christian Astronomers

My first call is for the money to copyright the title of the society and a brand I have in mind.

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The Truth about Space Travel is Stranger than Fiction https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/08/the-truth-about-space-travel-is-stranger-than-fiction https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/08/the-truth-about-space-travel-is-stranger-than-fiction#comments Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:58:01 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=4674 I have been corresponding with John Hunt and have decided that perhaps it is time to start moving toward forming a group that can accomplish something.

The recent death of Neil Armstrong has people thinking about space. The explosion  of a meteor over  Britain and the curiosity rover on Mars are also in the news. But there is really nothing new under the sun. There is nothing that will hold people’s attention for very long outside of their own immediate comfort and basic needs. Money is the central idea of our civilization and everything else is soon forgotten.  But this idea of money as the center of all activity is a death sentence. Human beings die and species eventually become extinct just as worlds and suns also are destroyed or burn out. Each of us is in the position of a circus freak on death row. Bizarre, self centered, doomed; a cosmic joke. Of all the creatures on this planet, we are the freaks the other creatures would come to mock- if they were like us. If they were supposedly intelligent like us. But are we actually the intelligent ones? The argument can be made that we lack a necessary characteristic to be considered truly intelligent life forms.

Truly intelligent creatures would be struggling with three problems if they found themselves in our situation as human beings on Earth in the first decades of this 21st century;

1. Mortality. With technology possible to delay death and eventually reverse the aging process, intelligent beings would be directing the balance of planetary resources towards conquering “natural” death.

2. Threats. With technology not just possible, but available, to defend the earth from extinction level events, the resources not being used to seek an answer to the first problem would necessarily be directed toward this second danger.

3. Progress. With science advancing and accelerating, the future prospects for engineering humans for greater intelligence and eventually building super intelligent machines are clear. Crystal clear. Not addressing these prospects is a clear warning that we are, as individuals, as a species, and as a living planet, headed not toward a  bright future, but in the opposite direction toward a dead and final end.

One engineered pathogen will destroy us forever. One impact larger than average will destroy us forever. The reasoning that death is somehow “natural” which drives us to ignore the subject of destruction will destroy us forever. Earth changes are inevitable and taking place now- despite our faith in television and popular culture that everything is fun and games. Man is not the measure of all things. We think tomorrow will come just like yesterday- but it will not.

The Truth about Space Travel is that there are no stargates or warp drives that will take us across the galaxy like commecial airliners or cruise ships take us across oceans. If we do wake up and change our course, space voyages will take centuries and human expansion will be measured in millenia. We will be frozen when we travel to distant stars. And this survivable freezing will mark the beginning of a new age since being able to delay death by freezing will completely transform life. The first such successful procedure will mean the end of the world as we know it- and the beginning of a new civilization.

Though unknown to the public, the atomic bomb and then the hydrogen bomb marked the true beginning of the  Space Age. Hydrogen bombs can push cities in space, hollow moons, to some percentage of the speed of light. These cities can travel to other stars, such as Epsilon Eridani with it’s massive asteroid belt. And there more artificial hollow moons can be mass produced to provide new worlds to live in. This is not fiction I am speaking of but something we could do right now- today. We only lack the procedure to freeze and successfully revive a human being. It is, indeed, stranger than fiction.

In Beam Propulsion we have the answer to bending the rocket equation to our will and allowing millions and eventually billions of human beings to migrate into space. Just as Verne and Wells made accurate predictions of the decades to come, we now are seeing the possible obvious future unfolding before our eyes.

But the most possible and probable obvious future at this moment is destruction. The end of days. Unless we do something.
You and I and everyone you know is involved in this. Let’s get started.

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Artilects Soon to Come https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/08/artilects-soon-to-come Mon, 20 Aug 2012 02:53:42 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=4576 Whether via spintronics or some quantum breakthrough, artificial intelligence and the bizarre idea of intellects far greater than ours will soon have to be faced.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120819153743.htm

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The Electric Septic Spintronic Artilect https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/08/the-electric-septic-spintronic-artilect Tue, 14 Aug 2012 00:17:44 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=4497 AI scientist Hugo de Garis has prophesied the next great historical conflict will be between those who would build gods and those who would stop them.

It seems to be happening before our eyes as the incredible pace of scientific discovery leaves our imaginations behind.

We need only flush the toilet to power the artificial mega mind coming into existence within the next few decades.  I am actually not intentionally trying to write anything bizarre- it is just this strange planet we are living on.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813155525.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120813123034.htm

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GadgetBridge — Taming dangerous technologies by pushing them into consumer gadgets https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/04/gadgetbridge-taming-dangerous-technologies-by-pushing-them-into-consumer-gadgets https://lifeboat.com/blog/2012/04/gadgetbridge-taming-dangerous-technologies-by-pushing-them-into-consumer-gadgets#comments Sat, 07 Apr 2012 22:06:14 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=3543 GatgetBridge is currently just a concept. It might start its life as a discussion forum, later turn into a network or an organisation and hopefully inspire a range of similar activities.

We will soon be able to use technology to make ourselves more intelligent, feel happier or change what motivates us. When the use of such technologies is banned, the nations or individuals who manage to cheat will soon lord it over their more obedient but unfortunately much dimmer fellows. When these technologies are made freely available, a few terrorists and psychopaths will use them to cause major disasters. Societies will have to find ways to spread these mind enhancement treatments quickly among the majority of their citizens, while keeping them from the few who are likely to cause harm. After a few enhancement cycles, the most capable members of such societies will all be “trustworthy” and use their skills to stabilise the system (see “All In The Mind”).

But how can we manage the transition period, the time in which these technologies are powerful enough to be abused but no social structures are yet in place to handle them? It might help to use these technologies for entertainment purposes, so that many people learn about their risks and societies can adapt (see “Should we build a trustworthiness tester for fun”). But ideally, a large, critical and well-connected group of technology users should be part of the development from the start and remain involved in every step.

To do that, these users would have to spend large amounts of money and dedicate considerable manpower. Fortunately, the basic spending and working patterns are in place: People already use a considerable part of their income to buy consumer devices such as mobile phones, tablet computers and PCs and increasingly also accessories such as blood glucose meters, EEG recorders and many others; they also spend a considerable part of their time to get familiar with these devices. Manufacturers and software developers are keen to turn any promising technology into a product and over time this will surely include most mind measuring and mind enhancement technologies. But for some critical technologies this time might be too long. GadgetBridge is there to shorten it as follows:

- GadgetBridge spreads its philosophy — that mind-enhancing technologies are only dangerous when they are allowed to develop in isolation — that spreading these technologies makes a freer world more likely — and that playing with innovative consumer gadgets is therefore not just fun but also serves a good cause.

- Contributors make suggestions for new consumer devices based on the latest brain research and their personal experiences. Many people have innovative ideas but few are in a position to exploit them. Contributors rather donate their ideas that see them wither away or claimed by somebody else.

- All ideas are immediately published and offered free of charge to anyone who wants to use them. Companies select and implement the best options. Users buy their products and gain hands-on experience with the latest mind measurement and mind enhancement technologies. When risks become obvious, concerned users and governments look for ways to cope with them before they get out of hand.

- Once GadgetBridge produces results, it might attract funding from the companies that have benefited or hope to benefit from its services. GadgetBridge might then organise competitions, commission feasibility studies or develop a structure that provides modest rewards to successful contributors.

Your feedback is needed! Please be honest rather than polite: Could GadgetBridge make a difference?

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More on Problems of Uploading an Identity https://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/08/more-on-problems-of-uploading-an-identity Sat, 20 Aug 2011 10:39:07 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=2042 The vulnerability of the bio body is the source of most threats to its existence.

We have looked at the question of uploading the identity by uploading the memory contents, on the assumption that the identity is contained in the memories. I believe this assumption has been proved to be almost certainly wrong.

What we are concentrating on is the identity as the viewer of its perceptions, the centroid or locus of perception.

It is the fixed reference point. And the locus of perception is always Here, and it is always Now. This is abbreviated here to 0,0.

What more logical place to find the identity than where it considers Here and Now – its residence in Space Time.

It would surely be illogical to start searching for the identity where it considers to be Somewhere Else or in Another Time.

We considered the fact that the human being accesses the outside world through its senses, and that its information processing system is able to present that information as being “external.” A hand is pricked with a pin. The sensory information – a stream of neural impulses, all essentially identical — progress to the upper brain where the pattern is read and the sensation of pain is felt. That sensation, however, is projected or mapped onto the exact point it originated from.

One feels the pain at the place the neural disturbance came from. It is an illusion — a very useful illusion.

In the long slow progress of evolution from a single cell to the human organism, and to the logical next step — the “android” (we must find a better word) – this mapping function must be one of the most vital survival strategies. If the predator is gnawing at your tail, it’s smart to know where the pain is coming from.

It wasn’t just structure that evolved, but “smarts” too… smarter systems.

Each sensory channel conveys not just sensory information but information regarding where it came from. Like a set of outgoing information vectors. But there is also a complementary set of incoming vectors. The array of sensory vectors from visual, audible, tactile, and so on, all converge on one location – a locus of perception. And the channels cross-correlate. The hand is pricked – we immediately look at the place the pain came from. And… one can “follow one’s nose” to see where the barbecue is.

Dr Shu can use both his left hand and arm; and his right hand and arm in coordination to lift up the $22M Ming vase he is in the process of stealing.

Left/right coordination — so obvious and simple it gets overlooked.

A condition known as Synesthesia [http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/sight-synesthesia-what…be-rewired ] provides an example of how two channels can get confused — for example, being able to see sounds or hear movement.

Perhaps the most interesting example is the rubber hand experiment from UC Riverside. In this the subject places their hands palm down on a table. The left arm and hand are screened off, and a substitute left “arm” and rubber hand are installed. After a while, the subject reacts as though the substitute was their real hand.

It is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93yNVZigTsk.

This phenomenon has been attributed to neuroplasticity.

A simpler explanation would be changed coordinates — something that people who row or who ride bicycles are familiar with — even if they have never analysed it. The vehicle becomes part of oneself. It becomes a part of the system, an extension. What about applying the same sense on a grander scale? Such a simple and common observation may have just as much relevance to the next step in evolution as the number of teraflops per second.

So, we can get the sensory vectors to be re-deployed. But one of the fundamental questions would be – can we get the 0,0 locus, the centroid of perception, to shift to another place?

Our environment, the environment we live in, is made of perception. Outside there may be rocks and rivers and rain and wind and thunder… but not in the head. Outside this “theater in the head,” there is a world of photons and particles and energy and radiation — reality — but what we see is what is visible, what we hear is what is audible, what we feel is what is tangible … that is our environment, that is where we live.

However, neurones do not emit any light, neurons do not make any sound, they are not a source of pressure or temperature so what the diddly are we watching and listening to?

We live in a world of perception. Thanks to powerful instrumentation and a great deal of scientific research we know that behind this world of perception there are neurons, unknown to us all the time working away providing us with colors and tones and scents….

But they do not emit colors or tones or scents – the neuronal language is binary – fired or not fired.

Somewhere the neuronal binary (Fired/Not Fired) language has to be translated into the language of perception – the range of colors, the range of tones, the range of smells … these are each continuous variables; not two-state variables as in the language of neurons.

There has been a great flurry of research activity in the area of neurons, and what was considered to be “Gospel” 10 years ago, is no longer so.

IBM and ARM in the UK have (summer 2011) announced prototype brains with hyper-connectivity – a step in the right direction but the fundamental question of interpretation/translation is side-stepped.

I hope someone will prove me wrong, but I am not aware of anyone doing any work on the translator question. This is a grievous error.

(To be continued)

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The Nature of the Identity, with Reference to Androids https://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/08/the-nature-of-the-identity-with-reference-to-androids https://lifeboat.com/blog/2011/08/the-nature-of-the-identity-with-reference-to-androids#comments Sat, 20 Aug 2011 09:58:16 +0000 http://lifeboat.com/blog/?p=2040 I have been asked to mention the following.
The Nature of The Identity — with Reference to Androids

The nature of the identity is intimately related to information and information processing.

The importance and the real nature of information is only now being gradually realised.

But the history of the subject goes back a long way.

In ancient Greece, those who studied Nature – the predecessors of our scientists – considered that what they studied – material reality – Nature – had two aspects – form and substance.

Until recent times all the emphasis was on substance — what substance(s) subjected to sufficient stress would transmute into gold; what substances in combination could be triggered into releasing vast amounts of energy – money and weapons – the usual Homo Sap stuff.

You take a block of marble – that is substance. You have a sculptor create a beautiful statue from it – that is form.

The form consists of the shapes imposed by the sculptor; and the shapes consist of information. Now, if you were an unfeeling materialistic bastard you could describe the shapes in terms of equations. And if you were an utterly depraved unfeeling materialistic bastard you could have a computer compare the sets of equations from many examples to find out what is considered to be beauty.

Dr Foxglove – the Great Maestro of Leipzig, is seated at the concert grand — playing on a Steinway (of course) with great verve, (as one would expect). In front of him, under a low light, there is a sheet of paper with black marks – information of some kind – the music for Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, no. 2.

Aahh! Wonderful.

Sublime….

But … all is not as it seems….

Herr Doktor Foxglove thinks he is playing music.

A grand illusion my friend! You see, the music – it is, how you say — all in the heads of the listeners.

What the Good Doktor is doing, and doing manfully — is operating a wooden acoustic-wave generator – albeit very skilfully, and not just any old wooden acoustic-wave generator – but a Steinway wooden acoustic-wave generator.

There is no music in the physical world. The acoustic waves are not music. They are just pressure waves in the atmosphere. The pressure waves actuate the eardrum. And that in turn actuates a part of the inner ear called the cochlea. And that in turn causes streams of neural impulses to progress up into the higher brain.

Dr Foxglove hits a key on the piano corresponding to 440 acoustic waves per second; this is replicated in a slightly different form within the inner ear, until it becomes a stream of neural impulses….

But what the listener hears is not 440 waves or 440 neural impulses or 440 anything – what the listener hears is one thing – a single tone.

The tone is an exact derivative of the pattern of neural impulses. There are no tones in physical reality.

Tones exist only in the experience of the listener – only in the experience of the observer.

And thanks to some fancy processing not only will the listener get the illusion that 440 cycles per second is actually a “tone” – but a further illusion is perpetrated – that the tone is coming from a particular direction, that what one is hearing is Dr. Foxglove at the Steinway, over there, under the lights – that is where the sound is.

But no, my friend….

What the listener is actually listening to is his eardrums. He is listening to a derivative of a derivative … of his eardrums rattling.

His eardrums are rattling because someone is operating an acoustic wave generator in the vicinity.

But what he is hearing is pure information.

And as for the music ….

A single note – a tone – is neither harmonious nor disharmonious in itself. It is only harmonious or disharmonious in relation to another note.

Music is derived from ratios – a still further derivative — and ratios are pure information.

Take for example the ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg.

The ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg is not 2 Kg.

The ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg is 2 – just 2 – pure information.

20 kg/10 kg = 2.

Similarly, we can also show that there is no colour in reality, there are no shapes in reality; depth perception is a derivative – and just as what one is listening to is the rattling of one’s eardrums – so what one is watching is the inside of one’s eyeballs – one is watching the shuddering impact of photons on one’s retina.

The sensations of sound, of light and colour and shapes are all in one’s mind – as decodings of neural messages – which in turn are derivatives of physical processes.

The wonderful aroma coming from the barbecue is all in one’s head.

There are no aromas or tastes in reality – all are conjurations of the mind.

Like the Old Guy said, all is maya, baby….

The only point that is being made here is that Information is too important a subject to be so neglected.

What you are doing here is at the leading edge beyond the leading edge and in that future Information will be a significant factor.

What we away back in the dim, distant and bewildered early 21st Century called Information Technology (I.T.) will be seen as Computer Technology (CT) which is all it ever was – but there will be a real IT in the future.

Similarly what has been referred to for too long as Information Science will be seen for what it is — Library Technology.

Now – down to work.

One of the options – the android – is to upload all stored data from a smelly old bio body to a cool Designer Body (DB).

This strategy is based on the unproven but popular belief that one’s identity is contained by one’s memory.

There are two critical points that need to be addressed.

The observer is the cameraman — not the picture. Unless you are looking in a mirror or at a film of yourself, then you are the one person who will not appear in your memory.

There will be memories of that favourite holiday place, of your favorite tunes, of the emotions that you felt when … but you will only “appear” in your memories as the point of observation.

You are the cameraman – not the picture.

So, we should view with skepticism ideas that uploading the memory will take the identity with it.

If somebody loses their memory – they do not become someone else – hopping and skipping down the street,

‘Hi – I’m Tad Furlong, I’m new in town….’

If somebody loses their memory – they may well say – ‘I do not know my name….’

That does not mean they have become someone else – what they mean is ‘I cannot remember my name….’

The fact that this perplexes them indicates that it is still the same person – it is someone who has lost their name.

If a person changes their name they do not become someone else; nor do they become someone else if they can’t remember their name – or as it is more commonly, and more dramatically, and more loosely put – “cannot remember who they are”.

So, what is the identity?

There is the observer – whatever that is – and there are observations.

There are different forms of information – visual, audible, tactile, olfactory … which together form the environment of the observer. By “projection” the environment is observed as being external. The visual image from one eye is compared with that of the other eye to give depth perception. The sound from one ear is compared with that from the other ear to give surround sound. You are touched on the arm and immediately the tactile sensation – which actually occurs in the mind, is mapped as though coming from that exact spot on your arm.

You live and have your being in a world of sensation.

This is not to say that the external world does not exist – only that our world is the world “inside” – the place where we hear, and see, and feel, and taste….

And all those projections are like “vectors” leading out from a projection spot – a locus of projection – the 0,0 spot – the point which is me seeing and me tasting and me hearing and me scenting even though through the magic of projection I have the idea that the barbeque smells, that there is music in the piano, that the world is full of color, and that my feet feel cold.

This locus of projection is the “me” –it is the point of observation, the 0,0 reference point. This, the observer not the observation, is the identity … the me, the 0,0.

And that 0,0 may be a lot easier to shift than a ton and a half of squashed memories. Memories of being sick; of being tired; of the garden; of your dog; of the sound of chalk on the blackboard, of the humourless assistant bank manager; of the 1982 Olympics; of Sadie Trenton; of Fred’s tow bar; and so on and on and on –

So – if memory ain’t the thing — how do we do it … upload the identity?
(To be continued)

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