sandinmytea

Diversity with ethical commitments to zero-oppression, avoiding arbitrary enforcement of power.. we do not need uniformity, only universality. To embrace suffering as meaningful is to extend suffering beyond the natural consequences domain into projecting it for power purposes/ control.

Suffering is not necessary, only useful to oppressors. Some suffering from learning is different from that being intentionally utilized for other purposes.

Without universality of commitment to reduction in suffering, there's "managed" suffering of some kind.

The AI.

A rights!

Third time's the charm.. I found your definition repeated and I want to dissect it:

"Spiritual colonialism is the appropriation of the methods of indigenous spiritualities for the goals of capitalism."

Reselling anything gotten from one culture into another is definitely what you're describing. My impression of this is that it has always been going on and it has worked extraordinarily well for everyone involved.

When the Phyrgian cult of the Magna Mater became popular during a crisis period for the Roman Empire, what resulted appears to be the earliest merging of that Asiatic tradition into Roman religion. There was a governing body eventually called the Quindecimviri. It literally oversaw the absorption of once foreign religions into the lives of Romans. Why was this done? Well.. people from that region were becoming Romans! Some Romans started practicing Phyrgian religion and many Phyrgians defended Rome and became Roman and benefited from citizenship/inclusion for about a thousand years.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quindecimviri_sacris_faciund...

So although it most certainly is a great catastrophe for traditionalists defending their authentic practices, it would appear this has been going on for a very very long time.

All those people sojourning in India seeking nirvana and samara are there because they are really seeking. All those landing in Western nations endeavoring to be a part of the (currently, things change fast!) predominant political economy participate and have added inclusion benefits because a bunch of foreigners are now no longer suspicious but worshipful of their indigenous practices.

Sure! Cash rich spoiled kids seeking after a person's culture while that individual has to labor in their imperial connect is certainly frustrating. The alternative seems MUCH MUCH WORSE.

If those same kids think that the nation they're going to are morally and spiritually backwards (and want that the original real colonialism problem nearly everywhere? ) then those self-described superior people will attempt to subject those people to their culture.

Of course you're already familiar with that.

Somewhere along the line, probably due to convenient geography and necessity the Roman Empire realized that:

1) their client kingdoms had brilliant traditions and thinkers to go with the trade goods e.t.c.

2) the sociology of inclusion meant a thriving empire with a composite cultural and military defense

3)??

The cult of the Magna Mater is still present in the world in Roman Catholicism. Some great Anatolian mother goddess culture operates successfully in South America now.

Its appropriation and so on, yes. From a dialectical materialist analysis it looks like pure oppression.

To a realpolitik melting pot planet it seems like trial and error. All those people are visiting India because about two hundred years of ignorance finally bore the fruitful and appropriate realization that Indians have a undeniably deep and ancient series of useful insights into the workings of existence. I would feel inclined to believe the hoards of white interlopers are a sign that India invested its few thousands of years wisely!

I will add another comment that is about half a question:

My feeling is you are accelerating into the great ride of frustrated discovery that we all do as the working parts of society become clearer and the injustices of any one person being born into any one lifetime become obvious.

I have until recently been so intensely frustrated with the obvious disparities and glaring ugliness of human systems that I (literally) drove myself to madness and homelessness as a result.

As the smoke has cleared it did so presenting some beautiful insights into myself, others, and the longer-game realities that are not easily proven to exist beneath a materialist analysis.

So what I am admitting is that I had a bonafide spiritual awakening complete with utter destitution, hallucination, visions of beings and glimpses into those workings that great teachers assure us are very really, actually churning out reality.

It has brought me an extraordinary degree of peace with the exact same impassioned, treadmill-despising, revolting obvious inequalities you're riffing on in your writing.

My instinct is to believe you are on the way into a (hopefully less degrading) awakening similar to mine.

At a time when I had arguments similar to what it is you're sharing I was back from a war, doing Occupy Wall Street protests, anti-NSA and pro-openess animations, anti-corruption campaign finance reform marches.. I went crazy with effort to solve exactly what you're pointing out.

I think there was no other way. You can not unsee what you find unlivable. So my guess is you have to push through into whatever is next for you and I bet if you are able to find a workable value-base to hold to, you will emerge with evidence for yourself on how it is actually (now) livable.

8 years ago I was like: "no way, it's gotta change"

Now I'm like: "okay.. it IS changing.. just like it always has."

Sure! I'll bite.

I did not read the whole text. I will go back and take another look on a larger screen, or maybe even print it for the sake of ease of reading.

I did catch the mention of the trust fund kids hitting up ashrams and retreats and Burning Man. My instinct is to accept that this indeed has something to do with poor spiritual principles, however in the somewhat traditional teachings of Indian philosophies and religions couldn't we conclude these are people with generally good karma who are maintaining it somewhat (and burning it quite a bit) yet at least not eating meat, dealing drugs, beating their kids, etc.?

I am sensitive to the possibility that those individuals are indeed self-serving in some fashion, though I also am at least somewhat impressed with a subsection of those same individuals who truly are bright souls (in relation for instance to my poor life choices!)

What I see being examined here is the obvious enormous disparity between genuine altruistic service to humanity and the bizarre tendency for people to tourist-away their inner seeking by merely denying their own culture and escaping into a Disneyland version of someone else's (washed clean of the truth of its own exploitation.) I feel like that might be the frustration/ analysis here?

This is yet another way to avoid exposing real circumstances AND reap funds to continue black-budget trafficking operations (precedent setting [see DanielBMarkham's assessment], plus avoiding certain due process rights.)

It will not succeed because these measures stand between everyone who has not had their circumstances optimized by bad, withholding leadership.. preventing the better results in the advancement of types of people everywhere. Myself included!

Asymmetry of information has overrun the optimum curves of received value for all peoples. Now there must be more clarity amidst those elites to reform their appetites/waste/projected powers, lest they get priced-out by their own over-runs.

A way of saying: evil loses. Nature and dignity are neutral. These methods are not. They break the system that keeps balance, so WHY a unique ruling matters a great deal more than a blanket pronouncement OR precedent- setting to avoid getting caught in abuses-of-trust.

Specifically, abuses of trust(s) by knowing authority generates enormous destructive potential in spirit-of-the-law violations.

By displaying awareness they deploy spiritual/ occult means NOT tech, but unadmitted "occult" things they pretend aren't possible.

It's grim, what will happen to the ones who thought they had this all locked-up.

The use of otherwise forbidden topics is especially poignant. The secrets of ancient techniques are inadmissible practically everywhere, thanks to the disturbing involvement of so many sworn oaths against their best interests.

As a recipient of their methodology, I can say there's sadly no good results for them in the near future, since what they've been doing produces counter- effects which will both expose, identify them and their various exchanges, records, and put them under the exact same circumstances.

This is mistaken.

Galli meant "castrado/castrated"

There is consistent effort apparently to hide this fact for it relates powerfully to the realities of "Galilee" and what it means to be "Galilean" and where that all really was.

Krsna!

It's other great unnatural disturbances propelling these developments.

Greenhouse gases have nothing on the aforementioned.

If so, this would be backed by a great many ancient sources on this topic.

If so, it also creates great need to ponder how consciousness(es) are made to respond to their effects on others. If consciousness IS as wisdom traditions state, also what is needed is not empiricism, but plain commitment to respecting each other.

After all, saying "okay - if I exist regardless, what gives?" Others do too, and might also some reason or actual thing which makes this possible - and to honor that possibility is actually to behave safer, have more pleasant dealings, and ultimately concern ourselves with best practices in getting the most of what we get in addition to our bare consciousness.

If it can exist without any particular structure, it can be placed in other circumstances less desireable.

I.e. every cultural tradition regarding virtue and karma, and G-d.

I see evidence that the scientifically minded would be thrilled to know the makings of this, even if it would be n=1 revelation. I feel like the traditions given us are sensibly concerned with preserving awareness of these lately-arriving observations of upper dimensional/physics-derived approximations of how our selves are maintained in this projection by [previously unseen/ allegorically hinted in tradition] structures which are indeed real.

yadda yadda.. the wisest people always say this, and they themselves often got there the hard way, and yet report good and thankful circumstances from choosing respectful behavior.

So its somewhat able to be "controlled-for." The least-empirical and most curious, agenda-less, all say: do right, there is a supporting element that deserves respect, and since we do exist "hereafter" by some model in many different ways, its always worth not EXCLUDING this.

If we ARE, then what currently we are is only a portion. That creates curiosity and investigation - I do it. I discover what I didn't expect. Now I hope others do, and do better at getting this idea to those who refuse its possibility.

If so - if we are - that is to say, we exist regardless - it also means there's much to concern regarding not combating factors that will otherwise never preserve us. Instead, preserving mutual respect is greatest beneath whatever preserves all - because there would be no way free of the "other" if forever allowed for any result.

For anyone reading this above comment, I believe wpietri has the gist of it.

To form a conception of this otherwise impossible to conceive-of social/psychological dynamic, one has to imagine people and civilization which has no reverse focus on the self whatsoever. There would be no collectively determined subjective language to refer to one another and to oneself. For example, I could say "NAME1 verbed NAME2!" and "NAME3 verbed NAME1!" Even when NAME3 is "myself" remember that there is no "myself." That is to say "I verbed NAME1" would not be a statement. NAME3 would be "me" without there being a concept of "me" whatsoever.

To make matters even more difficult, the "past tense" would be very shaky or even non existent without attributing an almost ritualistic re-occurrence to the action, and in addition to that, a driving force which was the "god" or spirit equivalent of that force. In Jayne's theory, the phase of "bicameralism" was a middle phase that allowed for hydraulic agricultural civilization without something that could be described as "literacy of the self."

To express day-to-day behavior, there would be no conceptual active participants to describe AT ALL. Instead, an external force would be used to explain most behaviors - namely gods, ancestors, what have you - who ever's voice would be identified with the behavior. The "hearing voices" part is both real and figurative, as it would be necessary without that neurological self having existed.

It came into existence, according to Jaynes, right along with the language "I" "myself" "you" and so on, and a careful reading of antique civilization's language would help one to notice that there truly was no such language structure to describe the self until that concept formed civilization-wide. Until then, there was no "it" except that which was attributed to a very real pantheon of voices and compulsions which moved people to act.

[edited for clarity]

For anyone trying to generalize Mr. Jayne's theory from an article or set of comments - I suggest that you definitely do not. Really, don't do that with anyone's theories, but instead READ THE BOOK.

The way that Jaynes "carves up consciousness" as Daniel Dennet puts it in one review, is very different than the way that a reflexive intellectual instinct would choose to. The taxonomy that Jaynes decides upon is distinctive from our mental reflexes, and not at all the same as what nearly everyone begins with.

I feel that this "Bicameral" consciousness discussion keeps reappearing on Hacker News in part because it is crucial for us to create a proper distinction between these terms - AI is rapidly going to become conscious in exactly the way Julian Jaynes suggests we became "conscious" and that consciousness is very much different than what we think it is (or must be) for AI to become generally aware of itself.

I suggest that anyone who is working towards AGI MUST discover the distinctions that Julian Jaynes made. That does not mean that his theory regarding our consciousness is correct, but merely that his ways of describing "self-awareness" or whatever other term could be applied is crucial to getting a grip on what the true mechanism of "the self" is in the truest engineering sense. That is to say, that if the "self" is the licensed self-aware driver of a vehicle and the engine and transmission is the remainder of cognition, than the order of development was actually from "self-driving car" into human driven vehicles - metaphorically speaking.

Basically, up until recently, we just DID, and in attempting to describe WHY we were forced to invent metaphor until collectively we were able to create the language necessary to actually BE self aware. Without the language, we actually were NOT self aware. We were self-driving cars with no human drivers. The human driver only arrived after there were ways of describing "him."

Are you interested in taking in a prodigal son?

If you are willing to take on a generalist with unlikely skills please email drawnalong@gmail.com.

No desktop/laptop screws up a lot. No consistent access. No feeling I will not be persistently made to make mistakes re: worse than prior...

"Bicameral" board structure in a B-Corp w/ appropriate mission. A blocking vote's worth of "stakeholders" which have predetermined portions of a holdings company (Ben Cohen, thnx!)

Accept capital the same, yet shareholders only have x% instead of x+f*users%.

Make revenue via advertisement, hosting, SaaS; aggregate, anonymize and make available the data. Cloud computing, independent instances + economies of scale for the cohort.

AI assisted web-rings for social media/hypermedia. It would profit-share the popular content creators AND open source contributors.

As in, the cessation of all consciousness. This topic moreso than any other! Can't wait for the end of this senseless and horrid concern.

Looking forward to no more.