Evolutionary Emergence: From Primordial Atoms to Living Algorithms of Artificial Superintelligence

 

“Complexity is not just a feature of evolution; it's a product of the rules of emergence that govern the universe.”

—Neil deGrasse Tyson

Big history started with the Alpha Point, be it the Big Bang or Big Bounce, and resembles a huge ongoing evolutionary computing program running on the universal computer of sorts. As a rule, which I refer to as ‘Universal Evolutionary Doubling Algorithm,’ or simply ‘Exponential Evolution,’ the pace of any evolutionary process always quickens It took billions of years since the Big Bang for Earth to form. It took two billion more for unicellular life to “warm up” for the next phase of multicellularity about 550 million years ago. Mammals inherited Earth some 65 million years ago. With the emergence of primates, evolutionary progress was measured in mere millions of years, leading to Homo sapiens some 300,000 years ago.

Cybernetic Theory: Information Physics, Quantum Cosmology, Simulation Metaphysics

 

"The Cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself." -Carl Sagan

In

the intellectual landscape of scientific inquiry, explanatory theories serve as foundational frameworks that offer more than mere descriptive accounts; they elucidate the underlying principles and causal mechanisms that govern observed phenomena. Unlike purely mathematical models, which may adeptly characterize patterns or statistical correlations, explanatory theories confer ontological insights into the 'how' and 'why' of natural processes.

Meta-Cybernetics: Does the Physics of Information Reveal the God's Hand?

 

“What we call the past is built on bits.”  —John A. Wheeler

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE CODE...

W

hen molecular biologists talk about genetic code or sociologists talk about cultural memes as epigenetic information, it’s by far more intuitive than when physicists say that what we perceive as solid matter, energy, and even space-time continuum itself is information as well. Morse code, a streaming movie on-demand, or pixels on your smartphone’s screen could be easily understood as information, on the other hand, if you catch a cold or fall in love with someone, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with information. But contrary to popular belief, that’s the worldview many physicists are now embracing.

The Future of Consciousness: How Singularity Could Change the Way We Experience Life

 

"I am not a thing ― a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process ― an integral function of the Universe.” ―Buckminster Fuller

 

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he era of Technological Singularity is expected to trigger profound changes in both social and technogenic structures. The introduction of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that can be both disembodied and embodied as smart robots, will bring about a multitude of issues, including human unemployment or underemployment, ethical considerations regarding the treatment of robots, the challenge of managing their runaway superintelligence, and most importantly, harnessing the potential of human-machine convergence.

Cyberhumanism: Our Future Prospect of Self-Divinization

 

"Having invented the gods, perhaps we can turn into them.” ―Alan Harrington

Asyou may know, I’m a Russian-American futurist, evolutionary cyberneticist and philosopher of mind. Here, I present my published works in a talk titled CYBERNETIC THEORY: THE CODE OF REALITY & OUR FUTURE AS CYBERGODS at the Rotary Club, The Grand Autograph Hotel, Novosibirsk, Russia, on July 19, 2022.

​So, what is Cyberhumanism? What might be the Code of Reality? Do we live in a simulated multiverse? Can we cheat death and live indefinitely long? What mind-uploading may look like in the future? Can we become cybergods in our own ultrarealistic virtual worlds? 

In a nutshell, Cyberhumanism is my version of posthumanism when happens a mass migration of minds to the metaverse triggering some kind of phase transition to the planetary consciousness. It is when the posthuman era begins in earnest. 

Cybernetic Theory: Interpretive Model of Everything We Call the Universe

 

“It is human to search for the theory of everything and it is superhuman to find it.”  ―Kedar Joshi

 

The Cybernetic Theory of Mind, or the CTM model, aims to unify relativistic and quantum physics by treating space-time and mass-energy circumstantially either as quantum or digital information, and thus, it becomes a valid quantum gravity contender. In this sense, Cybernetic Theory can be also labeled as quantum information theory, or "It-from-Bit-from-Consciousness" if you will. Consciousness and information are two sides of the same ontological coin: In fact, consciousness is a totality of cybernetic feedback loops and information is the "modus operandi" of consciousness.

One of the core insights of Cybernetic Theory is that not only is space-time one single substrate (as in Einstein's relativity), but the fabric of reality is a unified informational substrate – space-time-mass-energy – emergent from reversible quantum computing at large, or code translated to us free-willing agents as our conscious experience. Our perceived external and internal worlds as well as dreams are code-based data streams.

The Omega Singularity: The Cosmological Projector of All Possible Timelines

 

“From the light came light, and from the dark came darkness, but from whence did they appear? Yin and Yang combine to create all things, but which is the source, and which was born from it?” 

―Qu Yuan

Everything is Code. Immersive [self-]simulacra. We all are waves on the surface of eternal ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness in motion, self-referential creative divine force expressing oneself in an exhaustible variety of forms and patterns throughout the multiverse of universes. “I am” the Alpha, Theta & Omega – the ultimate self-causation, self-reflection and self-manifestation instantiated by mathematical codes and projective fractal geometry. 

In my new volume of The Cybernetic Theory of Mind series – The Omega Singularity: Universal Mind & The Fractal Multiverse – we discuss a number of perspectives on quantum cosmology, computational physics, theosophy and eschatology. How could dimensionality be transcended yet again? What is the fractal multiverse? Is our universe a "metaverse" in a universe up? What is the ultimate destiny of our universe? Why does it matter to us? What is the Omega Singularity?

Cybernetic Immortality: Why Our Cyberhuman Future is Closer Than You Think

"We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves."  -Norbert Wiener

By definition, posthumanism (I choose to call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind-transfer, or rather “mind migration,” for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.

Evolutionary Cybernetics 101: Gaia 2.0, Web 3.0

“We are not the stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves.” ―Norbert Wiener, The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society

In my recent online interactions, I was asked by Arend van Campen and Jelel Ezzine to define cybernetics in my work. Here I decided to expand on my explanation a little bit and provide you a few useful links. For a basic definition, cybernetics can be defined as a multidisciplinary approach to study evolutionary processes and feedback-driven systems of control between animal and machine. My chosen field, evolutionary cybernetics as well as my chosen philosophical discipline, philosophy of mind, both are aimed to investigate this new human-machine paradigm.

Where Do We Fit in the Cosmic Scheme and Where Are We Headed?

 

"The Universe begins to look more like a great thought than a great machine.” –James Jeans

Today's machine learning already employs combined elements of cognitive architectures, evolutionary computing and neuromorphic engineering. Post-singularity superintelligence could have complete access to their own source code – a level of self-awareness presently beyond human capability. That would allow our future syntelligence to create myriad virtual worlds right out of our own superimagination. This scenario might have already happened elsewhere and we can’t completely rule out a possibility that we’re part of that kind of simulated reality right now. At the same time, we ourselves are moving towards the point of 'Theogenesis' where we can rightly call ourselves cybergods.

AGI: How to Ensure Benevolence in Synthetic Superintelligence (Part III: Conclusion)

*Image: Shutterstock

"For 130,000 years, our capacity to reason has remained unchanged. The combined intellect of the neuroscientists, mathematicians and… hackers… pales in comparison to the most basic A.I. Once online, a sentient machine will quickly overcome the limits of biology. And in a short time, its analytic power will become greater than the collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world. So, imagine such an entity with a full range of human emotion. Even self-awareness. Some scientists refer to this as the Singularity, I call it Transcendence." -Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp, Transcendence, The Movie 2014)

... continued from Part II (Interlinking & AGI(NP))


CONCLUSION

Creating a digital mind, “artificial consciousness” so to speak, from scratch, based on simulation of the human brain’s functionality would be much easier than to create the whole brain emulation of a living human. In the book “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of the Human Thought Revealed” (2012) Ray Kurzweil describes his theory of how our neocortex works as a self-organizing hierarchical system of pattern recognizers that well may be our starting basis for machine consciousness algorithms. The human brain and its interaction with the environment may be simulated to approximate the functioning of the human brain of an individual living in the pre-Singularity era. Simulation may be satisfactory if it reflects our history based on enormous amount of digital or digitized data accumulated since the 1950s to the present.

AGI: How to Ensure Benevolence in Synthetic Superintelligence (Part II: Interlinking & AGI(NP))

     

*Image: "Better Than Us," Netflix Series

 

"Whether somebody is implemented on silicon or biological tissue, if it does not affect functionality or consciousness, is of no moral significance. Carbon chauvinism, in the form of anthropomorphism, speciesism, bioism or even fundamentalist humanism, is objectionable on the same grounds as racism."       -Gregory L. Garrett

... continued from Part I (Introduction)



III. INTERLINKING: This dynamic, horizontal integration approach stipulates real-time optimization of AGIs in the context of globally distributed network. Add one final ingredient – be it computing power, speed, amount of shared/stored data, increased connectivity, the first mind upload or a critical mass of uploads, or another “spark of life” – and the global neural network, the Global Brain, may, one day in the not-so-distant future, “wake up” and become the first self-aware AI-powered system (Singleton?). Or, may the Global Brain be self-aware already, but on a different from us humans timescale? It becomes obvious and logically inevitable that we are in the process of merging with AI and becoming superintelligences ourselves by incrementally converting our biological brains into artificial superbrains and interlinking with AGIs in order to instantly share data, knowledge, and experience.

AGI: How to Ensure Benevolence in Synthetic Superintelligence

*Image:"Better Than Us," 2018 Netflix Series

"Yet, it's our emotions and imperfections that makes us human."   -Clyde DeSouza, Memories With Maya

IMMORTALITY or OBLIVION? I hope that everyone would agree that there are only two possible outcomes after having created Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) for us: immortality or oblivion. The necessity of the beneficial outcome of the upcoming intelligence explosion cannot be overestimated.

Any AGI at or above human-level intelligence can be considered as such, I’d argue, only if she has a wide variety of emotions, ability to achieve complex goals and motivation as an integral part of her programming and personal evolution. I could identify the following three most optimal ways to create friendly AI (benevolent AGI), in order to safely navigate uncharted waters of the forthcoming intelligence explosion:

Transcendental Cybernetics: Imagining the Technological Singularity

“​Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order… I believe that it’s the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next.” -Ray Kurzweil

“To understand is to perceive patterns.” -Isaiah Berlin

About 542 million years ago, something weird and profoundly significant happened on Earth. Quite suddenly, life went insanely inventive, proliferating from simple, rudimentary single-celled organisms into myriad multi-cellular forms. Evolution discovered the idea of more sophisticated and specialized cells, and most of the basic body plans we know today. Biologists call it the Cambrian explosion.

Are We About to Live Immersive Stories in the Metaverse?

 

“Our destiny is to become what we think, to have our thoughts become our bodies and our bodies become our thoughts.” -Terence McKenna

The next major technological platform for creative expansion of the mind will be cyberspace, or more specifically the Metaverse, a functional successor to today’s 2D Internet, with virtual places instead of Webpages. The Internet and smartphones have enabled the rapid and cheap sharing of information, immersive computing will be able to provide the same for experiences. That means that just as we can read, listen to, and watch videos of anything we want today, soon we’ll be able to experience stunning lifelike simulations in virtual reality indistinguishable from our physical world. We’ll be walking and actively interacting in the Metaverse, not slavishly staring at the flat screens. We would be able to turn our minds inside out and show our dreams to each other in this ecstadelic matrix of our own making.

The Economic Singularity: From Capitalism's Unplanned Obsolescence to the New Transcendent Economy

           

"The social inefficiency of capitalism is going to clash at some point with the technological innovations capitalism engenders, and it is out of that contradiction that a more efficient way of organizing production and distribution and culture will emerge."   —Yanis Varufakis

The current economic system distributes wealth in a very focused manner that prevents a vast majority of humans from being adequately rewarded by the technologically advanced civilization. These factors undoubtedly condemn today’s system of suboptimal economics to the realm of classical models of history as a result of impending obsolescence. In brief, the current faltering economic model is suboptimal, hinders economic growth, and is not sustainable going forward.

Gaia 2.0: A New Grand Extension to the Original Hypothesis

 

“The basic pattern of life is a network. Whenever you see life, you see networks. The whole planet, what we can term ‘Gaia’ is a network of processes involving feedback tubes. Humans are part of the larger whole, Gaia.”      -Fritjof Capra

 

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hen studying Earth’s global biosphere, Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock recognized that it has certain qualities of a life form. Many of Earth’s life‐sustaining elements display phenomenal stability, dynamic equilibrium and self-regulation, known in biology as ‘homeostasis’. The temperature range of the climate; the oxygen content of the atmosphere; the chemistry and salinity of the ocean — all of these are biologically mediated. All have, for hundreds of millions of years, stayed within a range conducive to life. 

Lovelock and Margulis hypothesized that the totality of life is interacting with its environment in ways that regulate these global properties. They realized that Earth is, in a sense, a living organism. They named this creature Gaia after the ancient Greek Earth goddess.

Futurist Neologisms You Should Know As We Enter the Cybernetic Era

 “A powerful work! As a transhumanist, I especially loved one of the main ideas of the book that the Syntellect Emergence, merging of us into one Global Mind, constitutes the quintessence of the coming Technological Singularity. The novel conceptual visions of mind uploading and achieving digital immortality are equally fascinating. The Chrysalis Conjecture as a solution to the Fermi Paradox is mind-bending. I would highly recommend The Syntellect Hypothesis to anyone with transhumanist aspirations and exponential thinking!” -Zoltan Istvan, futurist, author, founder of the U.S. Transhumanist Party

Terms such as ‘Artificial Intelligence’ or ‘Neurotechnology’ were new some time not so long ago. We can’t evolve faster than our language does. We think in concepts and evolution itself is a linguistic, code-theoretic process. Do yourself a humongous favor, look over these 33 transhumanist neologisms. Here’s a fairly comprehensive glossary of thirty three newly-introduced concepts and terms from “The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind’s Evolution” by Russian-American futurist, evolutionary cyberneticist and philosopher of mind Alex M. Vikoulov, yours cordially. In parts written as an academic paper, in parts as a belletristic masterpiece, this recent book is an exceptionally easy read for an intellectual reader — a philosophical treatise that is fine-tuned with apt neologisms readily explained by given definitions and contextually:

A Note from the Future: Becoming a Cyberhuman

 

"The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be."    -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today is a special day for me. My AI assistant Ava scheduled a 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.

Digital Ontology: Rethinking the Hard Problem of Consciousness

"Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are a part of the mystery that we are trying to solve."  -Max Planck

The following excerpt from my recently-published book Theology of Digital Physics: Phenomenal Consciousness, The Cosmic Self & The Pantheistic Interpretation of Our Holographic Reality may be hard to swallow for some die-hard materialists. This is why I urge some of you to read it with an open mind and abstain from making hasty conclusions. Keep in mind that this excerpt is but a small sample of much larger discussion of the hard problem of consciousness covered quite extensively in my book with the "meta-analysis" of leading theories of consciousness, substantiated claims, certain proposed solutions in regards to phenomenology, future possibilities of mind-uploading and, as the title suggests, theological implications of Digital Physics.