Will This Change Anything?

Marcus T. Anthony (PhD)

Email: mindfutures at gmail dot com

You can also read this article on

www.22cplus.blogspot.com

I have often written about the way that mainstream discourses tend to marginalise discussions
about subjects related to intuitive perception and spiritual experience. Here's an extract about
exactly this problem, from a journal paper entitled "Entanglement: The idea that changes
everything?," which I recently wrote for Foresight. I know many journal articles are about as
fascinating as observing rocks erode, but I do try to make my papers personal, interesting and
readable. I hope I have succeeded with that goal here. If interested, you can find the rest of the
paper here, including relevant citations. (BTW, Brockman's This Will Change Everything is
actually a very readable volume, and chock full of fascinating ideas for anyone interested in
science and the future).
 ***

I recently received my copy of John Brockman’s This Will Change Everything: Ideas
That Will Shape the Future. No self-titled futurist could not be excited by the prospect
of reading such a volume, which contains a collection of short essays by more than one
hundred of the self-described brightest and most influential scientific and philosophical
minds on the planet, including Daniel Dennett, Paul Davies, Richard Dawkins, Steven
Pinker, Freeman Dyson, and Rupert Sheldrake. Contributions are taken from
the Edge website (www.theedge.org). Edgewas formed by Brockman in 1991, and each
year a volume is produced outlining some of the most provocative and innovative ideas
emerging from the world of science (although a few philosophers and figures from
popular culture are also included).

Every year the question changes. In 2010, the following query was posed:

“What will change everything? What game-changing scientific ideas and

developments do you expect to live to see?”

Such questions are perfect fodder for the imagination of futurists. So it came to pass that
I put in my order for This Will Change Everything via Amazon.com and waited
impatiently for the volume to arrive. That took about one minute: whereupon my Kindle
alerted me to the “delivery” of the volume.

Over the next few days I read the volume, and was stimulated by the wide range of ideas
put forward. J. Craig Venter writes of the impending arrival of synthetic biology; Sherry
Turkle enthuses about the benefits of robotic companions—and the dangers; James
Geary talks up “the brain-machine interface” and how controlling machines more
intimately will make for a better quality of life; Donald D. Hoffman gets excited about
the prospect of quantum computing; John Tooby and Leda Cosmides believe that
artificial intelligence will assist humans in reaching their intellectual zenith; David
Eagleman argues that consciousness will be downloaded onto computers, guaranteeing
immortality; Gary Marcus predicts that we will soon decode the brain, comparing the
development to Crick’s decoding of DNA; and Rodney Brooks, Paul Saffo, and Douglas
Rushkoff discuss the implications of discovering alien life forms.

Yet I was disappointed to discover a general absence of two of my domains of

“expertise”: the philosophical questioning of the way science is practiced; and the
expansion of human cognitive development to embrace intuitive ways of knowing. These
two domains are related, because the present narrowly defined scientific “rationality”
implicitly rejects the intuitive mind.

In the remainder of this paper I am going to refer to several of the contributors in This
Will Change Everything, and use their thinking as examples of a delimited
conceptualisation of the future of the science of mind commonly found in mainstream
scientific thinking. The reasons for such unnecessarily shallow thinking will be outlined,
specifically via reference to theory of knowledge. I will also state why I think
entanglement, a concept taken from modern physics, is potentially an idea that will
change everything. I am then going to discuss how entanglement might expand thinking
about the limits of mind and consciousness, and in particular the idea of the extended
mind: consciousness that extends beyond the confines of the brain, and transcends
space and time. The discussion will include thinkers not found in This Will Change
Everything.

Entanglement and deep connection

Given my predilection for Deep Futures, my perspective on This Will Change
Everything should not greatly surprise. Not a single practicing futurist was invited to
contribute to the volume (which immediately indicates one level of the knowledge trap
[i]). So I thought I would invite myself to the party. If I had been asked to make a
contribution to the volume, my idea that would change everything would be the wider
acceptance of the concept of “entanglement.” Entanglement has been acknowledged in
quantum physics for many decades. It first came to light in the famous EPR thought
experiment (published in 1935 by Albert Einstein, Nathan Rosen, and Boris Podolsky),
which established the theoretical reality of so-called “spooky” connections between sub-
atomic particles. Entanglement incorporates the concept of non-locality, as the
observation of one of a pair of sub-atomic particles which were once connected results in
the immediate “establishment” of certain properties of the other particle, regardless of
the distance between them (Clegg, 2006). Later, in 1981, the so-called Aspect
experiment in France established entanglement as an inviolable part of quantum
physics (Clegg, 2006), an experimental finding which has been confirmed numerous
times since.

However, the implications of entanglement have yet to be fully realised in other

domains of knowledge beyond physics. This is most likely due to the fact that non-local
connectedness not only defies everyday physical reality, but it also contravenes the
dominant mechanistic paradigm of modern science.[ii]

Entanglement and the psi taboo: not changing anything

Despite the vital importance of the subject, discussing the full implications of
entanglement and mind is effectively off limits in dominant mainstream science. This is
because it traverses the similar ground to what Dean Radin (2006) calls “the psi taboo.”
Discussions in the volume This Will Change Everything provide further evidence for
this taboo. Here I will simply mention a few examples.

In his essay entitled “A Change in Who we Are,” Paul Zachary Myers, associate professor
of biology at the University of Minnesota, writes that one major shift

…is coming from neuroscience. Mind is clearly a product of the brain, and the old
notions of souls and spirits are looking increasingly ludicrous. Yet these are
nearly universal ideas, all tangled up in people’s rationalisations and ultimate
reward or punishment and in their concept of self… (Zachary Myers, in
Brockman, 2010, italics added).

Yet ironically, it is entanglement which threatens the idea that mind is merely a product
of brain. At the very least it muddies the “clear” presuppositions upon which Zachary
Myers’ worldview and modern biology are founded. Further, the belief that the brain
produces mind is a metaphysical presupposition of modern neuroscience, and has no
direct evidence (Grof, 2000; Sheldrake and Smart, 2003). Zachary Myers goes on to
write:

This will be our coming challenge: to accommodate a new view of ourselves in the
universe that isn’t encumbered by falsehoods and trivialising myths. That’s going
to be our biggest challenge: a change in who we are. (Zachary Myers, in
Brockman, 2010).

Zachary Myers’ statement may represent a further possible irony because entanglement
and the extended mind threaten modern biology’s founding presupposition of the
mechanistic/
materialistic nature of life, which in turn may in time be shown to have both mythic and
“false” elements. The mechanistic paradigm, like all paradigms, can be seen as a
pervasive and invisible narrative which mediates the perceptions of those affected by
that paradigm. Entanglement of mind, if shown to be a reality, will most certainly
challenge who we think we are.

The irony does not end there. Conceivably, mainstream science may only finally
embrace entanglement and the extended mind when a machine informs those who have
forgotten how to intuit that deep connection is real. A quick look through This Will
Change Everything is fully suggestive of this. Of the few scientists willing to discuss
ESP, all prefer to hide behind a machine interface as an explanatory mechanism.
Kenneth W. Ford, for example, believes that we will soon be able to read signals from
brains—but only with machines.

We can probably safely assume that the needed device would have to be located
close to the brain being read… We could let Mind Reader, Inc, make and market
it (Ford, in Brockman, 2010).

Such conceptualisation appears to be mediated by a “money and machines” mentality,

and is suggestive of the way that science has become embedded within, and restricted by
the commoditisation of science and education.

Similarly, Freeman Dyson, in an essay entitled “Radiotelepathy,” sees telepathy

operating via mechanical means, assisted by microwave signals penetrating the flesh of
the brain and detected by a mechanical device outside. Freeman writes, “A society
bonded by radiotelepathy would experience human life in a totally new way” (Freeman
Dyson, in Brockman, 2010). He continues:

We will feel in our own flesh the community of life to which we belong. I cannot
help hoping that the sharing of our brains with our fellow creatures will make us
better stewards of our planet (Freeman Dyson, in Brockman, 2010).
Such an argument, in yet a further irony, has long been posited by mystics,
philosophers, and thinkers with a mystical bent. Only they see such a connected mind as
being a natural, innate expression of human intelligence.[iii]

The psi taboo seemingly makes many mainstream thinkers almost terrified to be
associated with the ideas related to the extended mind. Throughout his essay, “Slippery
Expectations,” Corey S. Powell rates the likelihood of various groundbreaking
developments happening in his lifetime, given his age of sixty-two years. The end of oil
is given a ninety-five percent probability. The discovery of dark matter is rated ninety
percent likely. He also believes that there is an eighty percent chance that he will live to
see genetically engineered children.

But what of telepathy? Once again, the key for this thinker is whether there are
machines involved. Powell gives a full seventy percent chance that synthetic telepathy,
mediated via “rudimentary brain prostheses and brain-machine interfaces,” will be a
reality within the next thirty years. He writes:

Transmitting specific, conscious thoughts would require elaborate physical

implants to make sure the signals go to exactly the right place—but such implants
could soon become common anyway, as people merge their brains with computer
data networks (Powell, in Brockman, 2010).

It is interesting to compare these estimates of Powell’s to some other controversial

domains of science to which he refers. He writes that the development of “conscious
machines” is fifty percent likely while he is still alive. Communication with other
universes is given a ten percent chance, and there is even a five percent chance of the
development of an anti-gravity device.

What, then, are the odds of the verification of actual human ESP? According to Powell
there is currently:

…nary a shred of evidence to support the idea—unless you count reports of dogs
who know when their owners are about to return home and people who can “feel”
when someone is looking at them… Everything I know about science and human
objectivity says there’s nothing to find here (Powell, in Brockman, 2010).

While Powell does concede that this is the one discovery that really would change
everything, he then goes on to give the chances of its verification in his lifetime as being
precisely half a percent.

Given that several meta-analyses of studies into telepathy and other of psi-related
experiments have delivered significant results against chance in the millions and even
billions to one (Lloyd Mayer, 2008; Radin, 2006; Tressoldi, et al, 2010), it is reasonable
to query why Powell feels the need to give the odds of its verification a full fifty times
less than the chance of the development of an anti-gravity device, the next lowest rated
item. As pointed out above, the mechanism for the existence of gravity itself is not
currently understood, let alone that for an anti-gravity device. Further, to my knowledge
no human being ever experienced an anti-gravity device, nor does anti-gravity inform a
legitimate experience for the majority of human beings. Compare this to the widespread
belief in and experience of psi-related phenomena.

Further, we can note Powell’s assessment that the development of machine

consciousness is five hundred times more likely than the chance of concrete evidence for
telepathy emerging. This is despite the fact that the emergence of consciousness from
brains remains a mystery (Grof, 2000), and that there is a complete absence of any
adequate explanation (mechanism) which might explain how a non-conscious,
mechanical system might become conscious. Why, then, is Powell five hundred times
more confident of the development of the artificial replication of mind in his lifetime
than he is of the confirmation of telepathy?

Clearly, the comparison of Powell’s attitudes toward these three concepts reveals a
mindset which is not “rational” in any sense of the word.

Perhaps the most revealing statement made by Powell is his admission that “everything
I know about science and human objectivity says there’s nothing to find here.” Beyond
the likelihood that Powell simply has not done much research on the subject, his
ignorance indicates that he has simply never gone to the inner spaces, nor explored the
ways of knowing that make mystical insights and the connectedness of minds
understood at a personal level. For it is in inner, meditative, and mindful experience
that direct insight into the extended mind and integrated intelligence is commonly
experienced (Anthony, 2008).

Limited discussions of telepathy, such as these found in This Changes Everything, and
the seeming incapacity of modern mainstream thinkers to envisage its existence without
mechanical mediation, make it clear that the psi taboo is still deeply entrenched in
dominant science and academia. Even scientists exploring the vast frontiers of scientific
Futures are reluctant to risk their academic reputations by seriously considering the
idea. Perhaps most revealingly, not one of the more than one hundred writers within the
volume makes any reference to the experimental data.

Marcus

_________________________________________________________________________________________
[i] “The knowledge trap” is a term used by lateral thinker Edward de Bono (1986) to describe the way
that knowledge becomes delimited by preexisting concepts and ways of thinking. Being a self-
organising system, the mind tends to sort data into preexisting schemas.

[ii] The mechanistic paradigm is the overriding, implicit, and thus unconscious model pervading modern
scientific thought, one which sees the cosmos as being essentially machine like, and operating
according to causal and unchanging deterministic laws.

[iii] This idea is almost pervasive amongst mystics and those influenced by mystical insight. I also have
put it forward many times (e.g., Anthony, 2005; 2008, 2010a,c). Others with a similar mindset include
Lloyd Mayer, 2006; Radin, 2006; Sheldrake, 2010; Wilber, 2000).

* * *
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