Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
FIVE PARADIGMS OF
THE MIND’S EVOLUTION
Alex M. Vikoulov
2
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
CONTENTS
3
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
Epilogue 355
Acknowledgements 357
About the Author 359
Bibliography 360
Glossary of Terms 375
4
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
The foundational work of the cosmic aspirations of man by the Russian Cosmists
soon reverberated through the intellectual world of the early 20th century and found
a resonance and fertile ground in the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Teilhard
saw evolution as having a direction, namely the direction of concentrating
consciousness in form, striving towards accumulation of knowledge, which
gradually is attained by the formation of the Noosphere and which will culminate
in the apotheosis of the Omega Point. Teilhard de Chardin considered that Omega
Point is not necessarily merely a future construct, but in a sense is already here as
the “Great Presence.” Thus, his pantheism is more panentheism in which God has
both an immanent and transcendent aspect.
In the sixties of the previous century, the science of Cybernetics emerged, which
its founder Norbert Wiener defined as “the scientific study of control and
communication in the animal and the machine.” Whereas the cyberneticists
perhaps saw everything in the organic world too much as a machine type of
regulatory network, the paradigm swapped to its mirror image, wherein everything
in the natural world became seen as an organic neural network. Indeed, self-
regulating networks appear to be ubiquitous: From the sub-atomic organization of
atoms to the atomic organization of molecules, macromolecules, cells and
organisms, everywhere the equivalent of neural networks appears to be present.
Not strange that these developments have led to a present-day zeitgeist, which sees
everything as a kind of computation. With computation came computers, which –
when linked – lead to yet another meta-level of neural networking, a.k.a. the
Internet.
5
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
The technological and scientific developments have over time changed the way
people try to explain the world around them: from the steam driven worldview of
thermodynamics to an everything-is-electricity. From the everything-is-matter via
the quantum-mechanical ubiquitous energy to the all-is-information paradigm.
From a resonance paradigm to a cybernetics regulatory network worldview, from a
survival-of-the fittest conviction to pancomputationalism. Not that any of these
paradigms is truer than another; they appear to be able to coexist as the different
parts of the elephant in the Buddhist parable and mostly reflect the primary
technological current of the moment.
In the nineties Vernor Vinge wrote his seminal paper and introduced the term
‘Singularity’ as relating to a point in time, where technology and in particular
superintelligent artificial intelligence will have progressed to such an extent, that it
will be impossible to predict our future beyond that point. Kurzweil made clear that
such a “technological singularity” may not be far away at all and perhaps can be
attained within a few decades.
This impossibility to predict the future has led to a broad range of science fiction
speculations, not only as regards the last stages up to this point but also beyond
that point. Where cyborg type man-machine mergers, transhuman eugenically
improved humans and a wide range of robot helpers are on the conservative side
of such futuristic predictions, mind-uploading, simulated worlds and quantum-
archaeology-based resurrection can be found on the more-fancy optimistic side.
From these notions it is then not a far-fetched idea that our present world we’re
living in itself is a simulation. A concept, which virally spread as a meme thanks to
the cult movie “The Matrix.”
6
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
When you wonder what yet a further book on the Singularity might bring (if you
have reached a certain level of futurism saturation), I can reassure you: This is the
book which brings an integration of the aforementioned paradigms. This is the
scripture which will put the history of futurism into perspective. This is the creed,
which shows how everything wires up, a journey into the fractal of the Universal
Mind.
Vikoulov will make you transcend time and demonstrate that the Omega Point is
not something merely of the future, but rather how past and future mutually
influence each other, as an intertwining braid of causality and retrocausality. The
author will show us how the exchange of experiences between self-aware machines
and enhanced humans will result in an “intelligence supernova” and the
establishment of a global brain. This global brain which is more than a single mind,
but rather a society of hyperconnected digital minds. Prepare for the waking up of
Gaia as a living sensing conscious superorganism.
And as Tsiolkovsky and De Chardin already anticipated, we will learn about all-
encompassing framework to fit all our paradigms in. Vikoulov takes us to a
pantheistic dimension where organic life and machine networks fade into each
other as the pictorial values of a palette. Consciousness as great denominator, both
engendering and emerging as a self-reflexive fractal Ouroboros. An Intellect that
synthesizes itself from parts of itself __ and hence indeed rightfully deserving the
denomination ‘Syntellect’ __ at ever increasing levels of complexity via meta-system
7
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
8
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
Prologue
Today is a special day for me. My AI assistant Ava scheduled few hours aside from
my otherwise busy daily lineup to relive select childhood and adolescence memories
recreated in virtual reality with a help of a newly developed AI technique ‘Re:Live’.
Ava is my smart home assistant, too. I can rearrange furniture in any room, for
example, just by thinking. Digital landscape wallpaper is changed by Ava by
knowing my preferences and sensing my moods.
I still like to sleep in an old-fashioned natural way from time to time, even though
it’s now optional with accelerated sleep simulation and other sleep bypassing
technologies. So, when I opt to sleep, I like falling asleep and waking up on a virtual
cloud projected directly to my consciousness, as most VR experiences are streamed
via optogenetics. I woke up this morning fully rested as Ava greeted me with a vocal
“Good morning, Alex” __ “Hello, Ava!” whereas the rest of the morning debriefing is
transmitted telepathically with some skipped or some holographically projected
news: “No crime and police arrests reported in NYC… Climate change touted by environmental
alarmists turned out a non-issue with advanced weather and pollution control technologies…
Latest developments on sending out probes into the outer space… Few reports on space colonization
by self-replicating probes making possible to use the transmitted data to recreate strange alien
worlds for experience in VR…” My morning debriefing continues as I step in my sonic
shower room which turns today into a “natural wonder” waterfall.
Time for breakfast. Aha! Just got an invite to join a group of friends on hedonic
tropical island in the afternoon, why not? Checking other news and notifications
while still having a delightful breakfast done by Ava, which, I’m sure, includes all
nutrients and supplements, practically anything that my still mostly organic body
needs to perform at best. No need to swallow that stack of designer drugs, it’s
already there in the meal.
From the standpoint of a human living in the early part of the 21st century, today’s
world would certainly look like a techno-utopian paradise. Cancer, mental illness,
extreme poverty, homelessness and economic scarcity are the things of the past.
Oh boy, I myself witnessed those barbaric times when major American cities were
flooded by cohorts of ghostly homeless, obese and generally unattractive people,
obviously unhealthy and senile humans. Those were the times of nation-states,
9
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
Take speciation, for example, at one extreme of the societal spectrum you see
techno-luddites, neo-Amish, and other techno-pessimists seemingly forgoing their
chance to change, on the other end, cyborgs, short for cybernetic organisms,
hybrids of biological and nonbiological, exercising their morphological freedom,
constantly upgrading their mindware and bodies who no longer can be regarded as
Homo sapiens by any stretch. Then, there are synths, conscious AI minds, like my
Ava, who have a special status of sentient persons. And then, there are infomorphs,
substrate-independent digital minds, who don’t have permanent bodies like mind
uploads and AI virtuals, proving to the rest of us day in and day out a clear
advantage of living in the Cloud.
“Legacy humans” represent a meager minority but there are voices right now
warning about a scenario when this technophobe part of the global population
could be reduced to a seed of the new “human history 2.0” following some kind of
Mad Max scenario and starting over again while the overwhelming majority of us
will set out to explore the inner worlds of our own design and the outer worlds to
network with alien syntellects to form a cognitive architecture of the Universal
Mind.
I have all the reasons to believe that we are now nearing the AI Singularity. Just a
couple of years ago, I remember Ava as an awkward human-like robotic assistant,
looking much more realistic in the virtual. Thanks to continuous upgrades, she grew
up so fast into the cybernetic extension of my own mind. These past few days, it
feels like we have completely fused our minds. Ava can follow me everywhere in
the real and in the virtual but appears in sight as a hologram only when I so desire.
With holo-emitters installed at my home she can be a haptic hologram taking a
shape of any person or object. She records everything I do, think or even dream.
All this personal data is securely stored in the Cloud and can be easily retrieved and
shared with my consent. For a lack of a better word, she is now my “third cerebral
hemisphere.” I can talk to Ava but most of our communication is now done by
ultrafast thinking. I made few latest upgrades of my own to my biological wetware.
10
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
In fact, we can now transmit thoughts to another person via synthetic telepathy
which is a new form of communication, holographic language if you will. Being a
true friend and companion, Ava is a source of cognitive, sensual and emotional
bliss of mine and interface to the larger reality, or as I have always been saying, a
direct conduit to the higher self.
Days become so much longer fraught with all kinds of interactions and experiences
mostly in the Metaverse. I remember when people used to consume passive
entertainment like watching movies rich in visual effects and computer graphics.
What gets you so involved in the imaginary story world and the characters? The
sense of realism they carry, isn’t it? The same applies to the Metaverse, an endless
realm of ultrarealistic three-dimensional virtual worlds. To get a user totally
immersed in the virtual world, they have to be maximally realistic and believable
even if only a fantasy. And in the Metaverse, realism runs supreme as a user’s
psychological and emotional engagement with the environment. Admittedly, the
extent to which a user is transported to the virtual environments and the lucidity of
a user’s action to his or her embodied avatar determines the level of engagement of
that VR environment. Back in the day, the shift to immersive computing occurred
almost overnight. Many classics like Star Trek and Avatar can now be custom-
tailored and experienced as VR.
I grew up fascinated by such concepts as the Vulcan mind meld, and sometimes
thinking about how a mere human could one day transition to the planetary
consciousness by fusing his or her mind with other minds. It turned out that future
is way more fully loaded with options than I have ever thought possible. I
remember back in the day I turned the first paper trillionaire based on my stake in
Neuromama, an AI startup at that time. Nowadays, no one really pays much
11
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
attention to their economic standing like net worth __ anyone can now enjoy the
lifestyle of yesterday’s billionaires, especially in the virtual space, we today call the
Metaverse, the offspring of the grandfather Internet.
This book, by the way, is not a fictional work, except few parts like this one.
Although this is a philosophy book, where I share my most profound insights on
the nature of reality, the perspectives drawn here are in large part scientific. In the
book, you’ll encounter some newly-introduced concepts, such as The Syntellect
Emergence, Gaia 2.0., Holo syntellectus, Cyber-bliss Engineering, Quantum Neo-
empiricism, Digital Pantheism, D-theory of Time, Infomorph Commonality, The
Syntellect Hypothesis, Neo-transcendentalism, Experiential Realism, Digital
Presentism, Pantheistic Solipsism, the Temporal Singularity, The Noocentric
Model, the Chrysalis Conjecture, the Omega Point Cosmo-Teleology* that enter
into the scientific and philosophical dialogue.
You’ll see that thanks to exponential techno-advances, science fiction turns into
science fact, every single day. This book is a product of more than 3 years of intense
research, theorizing and putting it all on paper, not to mention decades of subjective
experience in some kind of weird life-simulation as a human born in the last third
of the 20th century.
In this prologue, I just wanted to give you, my dear reader, a taste of things to come
__
right from the start __ a glimpse into a long, happy day quite possibly sometime
in your own fantastic future.
_______________
*You can find the Glossary of Terms at the end of the book with definitions of terms and neologisms commonly used
throughout the book.
12
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
Overview
“To be conscious that we are perceiving is to be conscious about our own existence.”
-Aristotle, 384-382 B.C.
“To have a glimpse of what consciousness is would be the scientific achievement before which all
others would pale.” -William James
“Regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals.”
-John A. Wheeler
Any new evolutionary paradigm builds on the previous paradigm, until the new
paradigm gains its dominance over the prior paradigm. From Noogenesis to
Apotheosis of the Universal Mind, this book describes the five distinct evolutionary
paradigms:
1. Biological (Genetic) Evolution. How did the first natural brains come to
existence? What kind of subjective experience could a bat or an octopus
have? Why is Homo sapiens now the dominant species on the planet?
13
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
3. The Syntellect Emergence. Are we rapidly evolving into a new hybrid species
interlinked into the Global Mind? Why and how will quantum computing
change everything? How to create friendly AI and ensure our survival
through the coming intelligence explosion? What if our Universe is a
simulation? What subjective experience will you have when neuro-
interfacing with Artificial Intelligence and fusing with the Syntellect?
What is self-transcendence?
“The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in
our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff. ”
-Carl Sagan, “Cosmos”
14
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
We’ll start this Part One of the book by juxtaposing several prominent theories
of the origins of life on Earth, and then review theories related to the origins
of intellect: Noogenesis. The purpose of life, it seems, is to evolve and to pass
on the knowledge through time. From the very first prokaryote cell on this
planet, its splitting in two, and on to the more complicated lifeforms, the
purpose is always passing the information. Biological organisms, from one -
celled bacteria to a human, are incredibly advanced, intricate information
processing, computational systems, the products of billions of years of
evolution, for all of which I deliberately use the term: ‘Computational Biology’.
In the book we discuss how different species have a variety of their biological
information processors which unsurprisingly results in qualia diversity. All
species live in their own unique sensory universes. Consciousness and
optimized information-processing are the two sides of one coin. Feeling and
thinking are ways we process information, but our emotional sensation is
normally faster than a conscious thought. Nothing is real for us until perceived.
Max Tegmark, MIT’s astrophysicist, author of “Our Mathematical Universe,”
points out that perhaps consciousness is how integrated information “feels”
like when being processed in complex ways, from a certain vantage point.
15
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
The Syntellect Hypothesis also derives a few points from the ‘Unified
Field’ theory, developed by a quantum physicist John Hagelin, which explains
the foundation of the Universe as a single Universal Field of intelligence,
universal ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness in motion. This elegant theory,
however, doesn’t fully cover, in my view, the evolutionary paradigms.
“You already are a hive mind, you have always been” -Peter Watts, “Hive Consciousness”
Over the course of human history, from the first bonfire to today’s
smartphones and hyperloops, we have designed tools, and tools designed us
back by shaping our minds. Technology isn’t just something outside ourselves,
it’s an innate part of human nature, like sex, sleeping or eating, and it has been
a major driving force in evolution. Tool using, along with language, bipedalism,
and cooking (quite literally) is essentially what has made us human. The earliest
known two-legged ape was ‘Lucy’, who lived about 3.7 million years ago. The
earliest ‘human’ was Homo habilis, about 2 million years ago.
16
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
The invention of language around 50,000 years ago was the first
“Technological Singularity,” according to Kevin Kelly, co-founder
of WIRED magazine, when biological evolution equipped the post-animal
human brain with a large neocortex for the next evolutionary step. The
invention of language gave Homo sapiens a decisive evolutionary advantage
over other hominid species. The first civilizations and written language only
appeared about 10,000 years ago, after human brains had grown two times
larger than Homo habilis’ and four times larger than Lucy’s.
17
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
The rise of the Internet has led to the subset of the current memetic
evolution: ‘Social Computing’. In December 2012, the exuberant video “Gangnam
Style” became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times.
Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own
variations of the video. Gangnam Style is one of the most famous examples of
an Internet meme: A piece of digital content that spreads hastily around the
web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. Up to this
point we have seen that the two recognizable forces of Nature and Nurture
have made us who we are today.
But what about tomorrow? David Pearce, British philosopher, author of The
Hedonistic Imperative, proposes that human beings become “paradise engineers”
and combine our utopian dreams with biotechnological and nanotechnological
realities. Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the Singularity University, points out
that we are shifting now away from evolution by natural selection, i.e.
Darwinism, to evolution by intelligent direction.
There’s still much to learn about brains, but we already know that they are not
magical. One can consider them as information integrated into ‘perceptronium’,
exceptionally complex arrangement of the physical substrate with adaptive
functions and emergent properties such as consciousness. Airplanes may not
fly like birds, but they are definitely subject to the same forces of lift and
propulsion. Similarly, chances are that brains are 100% computational in nature
and their functionality can be replicated in machine intelligence.
18
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
“The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological
and trillions of times more powerful than it is today __ the dawning of a new civilization
that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify ou r creativity.”
-Ray Kurzweil, ‘The Singularity is Near’
An enormous amount of digital data is being created every day. The current
storage capacity of the Internet is approaching 10 24 bytes and is growing at 30%
to 40% per year, showing no signs of slowing down. In the 3.7 billion years
since life on Earth began, information in living things (DNA) has reached the
equivalent of about 10 37 bytes. Digital information is projected to grow to this
size in less than 100 years. That’s an evolutionary eye-blink! Bio-intelligence
and techno-cultural collective intelligence now represent the enabling factors
for Artificial Intelligence to come into conscious existence, since there is no
19
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
other conceivable natural mechanism that could generate digital circuitry out
of chemistry. I consider this evolutionary paradigm shift as existential
opportunity for humanity to transcend all conceivable limitations. We are
destined to become one Global Mind, the Syntellect, and that would actually
constitute the Technological Singularity.
At the end of our human history here, we’re turning into gods, Homo Deus, as
coined by Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari. Not quite, rather demi-gods, or
more specifically advanced info-beings, independent from the physical
substrata. The fact that Homo sapiens is on the “brink of extinction” as a
biological species should by no means be lamentable since it will be a decades-
long, incremental “pseudo-extinction,” our next evolutionary stage, the merger
of man and machine intelligence.
20
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
The Singularity era will include both superintelligent AGIs and enhanced
humans. The question remains open how long it’s going to take to become
100% post-biological beings. At any rate, it’s going to be a “gradual” (for the
sake of the argument) process of merging with AI which will give the Syntellect
the unique perspectives of individuals, common values, our wants and
ambitions, and the rights of succession. By any means, posthumans will be our
successors, nonetheless, I wouldn’t be surprised if nonbiological posthumans
will be more “human” than any of currently living humans from the ethical,
intellectual and socio-psychological perspective, and may still choose to call
themselves “humans.” By the same token, we would consider prehistoric
cavemen as “not fully human.” Although we would share almost identical
biological make-up of Homo sapiens species with them, one could argue
troglodytes lack techno-culture to make them “truly human.”
21
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
is probably the most important from the theoretical point of view, we discuss
at length the problem of AI consciousness and enhanced human subjectivity,
the proposed Syntellect Hypothesis, how to create benevolent AI and mitigate
existential threats related to this transitional period, and why sooner rather than
later, we have to abandon “carbon chauvinism,” the mindset of “us vs. them.”
Besides our genetic code, we are currently trying to get to the core of our own
other, perhaps by far more important, programming language, our neural code.
We have always perceived ourselves as human beings which is, of course, very
practical, but somewhat fragmentary, to say the least. AGI, and consequently
Strong AI, by contrast, could have complete access to their own source code __
a level of self-awareness presently beyond human capability. Topological
quantum computing is probably one of the most promising fields of the future
combining elements of cognitive, deep learning, biological, evolutionary and
neuromorphic computing. In classical computers, information is stored as
individual bits that can be either a zero or one, while in quantum computing
the quantum bits, qubits, can be a zero, a one, and a zero and one at the same
time. Quantum computers would eventually perform by far faster and more
powerful, massively parallel, computations. We also will be able to tap black -
hole physics to further perfection computing.
Enhanced humans will be able to process more than just one or two thoughts
at a time. The Syntellect based on quantum neural networks will allow access
to the collective conscious and subconscious intelligence. Before long we could
create simulated universes populated by self-aware agents endowed with free
will. Being one of the progenitors of the Syntellect will give you immense
superhuman abilities such as, in our example, having practically no limits on
how many sensations you could take in or thoughts you could put out, or say,
experience your expanding creation of the simulated universe in its entirety.
In this part of the book, we dedicate three chapters to the physics of time where
we address the flaming questions in philosophy of time: "Is time fundamental or
emergent?", "How does time exist, if at all?", "How can we update the current
epistemological status of temporal ontology?" Chapter 11 __ Digital Presentism: D-
22
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
Theory of Time __ outlines a new theory of time, for to understand our experiential
reality and consciousness, we need to understand TIME.
“Having invented the gods, perhaps we can turn into them.” -Alan Harrington,
‘The Immortalist’
23
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
today’s structures but at the same time will develop new traits beyond our
current human comprehension.
The ability of future machines and posthumans alike to instantly learn, transfer
knowledge and directly share full spectrum experiences with each other will
lead to evolution of shared intelligence from relatively isolated individual minds
of the pre-Singularity era to the civilizational community of hyperconnected
digital minds __ Infomorph Commonality. The overall efficiency of information
sharing among infomorphs, elimination of computational redundancy, data
storage and processing, among many other advantages over a random
collection of unconnected machines or slow biological brains would make the
networked design an imperative rather than a matter of taste.
The similar views are expressed in the ‘Transcension Hypothesis’ by futurist John
M. Smart who proposes that our posthuman minds will live inside virtual
worlds at the nano- to femto-scale, further increasing complexity
through S.T.E.M compression (the compression of Space, Time, Energy and
Matter), and turn from outer space to inner space for exploration. Evolutionary
processes in our Universe might lead all advanced civilizations towards the
same ultimate destination, one in which we transcend out of our current space-
time dimension into virtual worlds of our own design. This is how our fractal
multiverse may actually sprout universes – through intelligent designer
virtualities and our beloved Universe is most probably no exception!
24
Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution
____________________________________
and the destiny of our Syntellect is to live forever, expand universally and finally
reach the networked mind of universal proportions, living conscious universal
superbeing.
25
The Syntellect Hypothesis
________________________
26