Maybe everyone on the West Coast wearing sunglasses is just trying to deal with their HPPD? ;<)
I would also say there’s a definite chance of a link between devouring psychedelics and hallucinations, including of rainbows!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t on psychedelics before, during, or after the experiences I just related here. I had been doing some Buddhist meditation, including down to the zen states. My personal zen meditation has induced temporary minor lens flare, say 2-3% of the intensity in the picture linked to in the article, and focused on a single object, while fully awake: https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/hppd_town.jpg However, this is minor and transient compared with what I’m describing.
Okay, so what happened next was I got hit with a literal barrage of a 4x8 grid of electric blue lights, from lucid dreams all the way down to ‘real’ dreams. So, this was a recurring dream, literally dozens of times. The blue lights could flare in intensity as a grid. Of all things, it made me think of a phased array communication system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
Now, what would happen was that I would go to sleep, then I would dream of the grid, then I would transition to a lucid dream where i was in the presence of whatever the phased array was communicating with. I got the feeling that the other end of the grid had a grid of its own, a big, and old, white one, and that it was large, intelligent, powerful, and far away.
This definitely meant something important, like an attempt at communication, and it recurred for months before going away.
Now, a whole bunch of stuff happened after this, but the above is basically what I wanted to go on the record about on lesswrong.
If you have any questions, I can answer them.
If not, I will try to compile the above experiences as a brief for a lie detector company. As I said earlier, I’m trying to create a protocol that’s useful for other people working on AGI/ASI-related issues to go on record about re acausal Hail Mary potential cookie-like experience.
Whoops, I missed once experience I wanted to investigate via lie detector and psychiatrist. So, I emailed myself to say I was happy to have my mindstate read so that whatever it was that was doing all this could know who or what it was. That same night, I’m awake, eyes closed, and it feels like something jacks something using electricity directly into my brain. So, most of us have had an electric shock, and it kind of vibrates, and it hurts. But, the brain feels no pain. So, this electric vibrating in my brain was happening for about 3 seconds, but I suspected what it was, so I just told them in my mind to ease off for a second. So they did, and I felt fine, so I told them in my mind it was okay to do it again. Then, the phenomenon continued for about two seconds, and it was done. Then I relaxed and went to sleep.
Going back to the hallucinogens, one difference has been that what I’ve been experiencing is equivalent to photographic resolution material, or high-res video, and overall just high-granularity experiences.
Anyway, ask any questions, then I’ll boil all this down for the lie detector company brief.
Well, this is where we regress from the rum and uncanny to normality. If I were in a position to be able to reproduce atypical brain states involving the appearance of electrical input or output that just blew away the technology being used to monitor it, that would be one heck of a result. It could also be a dangerous result, personally and politically.
But, to take that point on board, first we test my veracity (lie detector), then we test by sanity (psychiatric eval), then we test whether I can replicate any of this using something like an MRI (objectivity). However, the latter does not rely solely on me if I’m not generating these phenomena.
Alright, I’ll draw up the brief for the lie detector company this week based on the above events, then I’ll draw up a list of five of these companies, put that all together at the end of this week, and you can randomly select a company.
Just because I’ve always wanted to, I’m going to thrown in some questions about meeting aliens, my own humanity, whether I’ve ever another planet, etc. Basically, if I’m going to pay for someone to lie detector me, I want my Keanu Reeves moment
Okay, so below is an attempt at a brief, one that could be tailored, hopefully, for other people. Any suggestions before I hunt around for quotes from lie detector companies?
Completed Template Brief for Hail Mary Cookie Experiences
Overview
The brief is to establish the veracity of a subject regarding a series of extraordinary claims about experiences. The brief is not to establish the subject’s sanity or to investigate the claims at some kind of philosophical level. The brief does include the requirement to establish veracity of claims according to the granularity of the experiences (see special vocabulary and terms below).
Special Vocabulary and Terms
The subject will speak about the claims using specific vocabulary, including mindjacking, which refers to using technological means to write to or read from a mind, as with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and granularity, which refers to the degree of reality of an experience. Granularity can be as follows:
Full consciousness = full granularity
Simulation while awake with eyes closed = high granularity, e.g., with one or more of the five senses (sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch)
Lucid dream = medium granulariy
Dream = low granularity
Specific Questions to This Case
1) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he saw an alien head at night, then woke up the next day seeing a neon heart, identical to one he later found that morning in his house.
2) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he had three nightmares over three nights, the first concerning a sniper, the second concerning a being in the same room, and the third concerning being in a corridor and opening a door, where the granularity became less distinct each time. Establish the granularity of the experiences.
3) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he asked the question by email to a third party, “May I ask you a question?” and received a reply in the form of a rainbow in his mind. Establish the granularity of the experience.
4) Establish whether the subject believes he has had a recurring experience where he saw a 4x8 grid of electric blue lights. Establish the granularity of the experience.
5) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he invited a person or persons unknown to read his mind by a mindjacking device involving a feeling of a mind being electrocuted, and how long the experience took. Establish the granularity of the experience.
General ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ Obligatory Questions for All Cases
1) Establish whether the subject believes he has ever seen another planet. If he believes he has, determine how many and what they look like, and by what means. Establish the granularity of the experience.
2) Establish whether the subject believes he has ever seen or met aliens. If he believes he has, determine how many species and what they look like. Establish the granularity of the experience.
3) Establish whether the subject believes his body is human. If necessary, use percentages.
4) Establish whether the subject believes his mind is human. If necessary, use percentages.
General Pharmaceutical Questions for All Cases
1) Establish what if any drugs, e.g., hallucinogens, the subject was taking prior to or during the experiences.
2) Establish what if any medication the subject was taking prior to or during the experiences.
Hmm. Let me try to restate this. What I’m trying to do is to create a protocol for reporting weird experiences as we close in on the Singularity. If I’m correct about a soft Zoo Hypothesis (basically a ‘leaky’ Prime Directive situation, with Contact contingent on creation of an ASI or a warp gate/drive), with several interstellar civilizations with mindjacking tech monitoring the planet, then attempts to influence human global development do occur, probably by the panhuman equivalent of special forces, i.e., ‘Special Circumstances’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture).
I assume the number of civilizations out there is small, technological development is broadly equivalent due to leveling up via aid/trade relationships, and philosophical positions are diverse, if only due to such basic differences as physiology.
If this is correct, Earth, going into the Singularity, will a battleground, not over territory, although Earth is an incredibly bio-diverse rich piece of real estate, but over spheres of influence, with fundamental philosophical positions coming into play, such as whether or not ASIs are even legal, whether Earth would ally with an imperial panhuman civilization versus a federation post-Singularity, and so on.
In my ‘soft’ Zoo Hypothesis, the curating civilizations could all get together and act collectively to intervene, pushing humanity in a certain direction. Alternatively, given the tech involved, no matter how good the regulatory system is that’s designed to prevent a free for all, there exists the possibility of competitive external interventions.
In this scenario, the results of these disagreements—or agreements—and the will and means to act—is that there will be ‘nudge points’.
The single most important concern I can see going into the Singularity is whether the world is at peace, because if it isn’t, a) warfare will drive AI development towards an ASI, and b) a warlike ASI could emerge. Alexei Turchin has made this very clear in his work:
And, whatever the galactic position on the legality of ASIs, warlike ASIs are almost certainly a no-no. Peace would also seem to enable the development of an interstellar civilization, if only 50% of Earth’s total military budget could be diverted to developing fusion, hybrid fusion-antimatter drives, and wrap drives
So, we go back to my original post and to the basic contention of whether any legitimate nudge points have arisen recently, i.e., since the setting up of the UN and the attempt to ban atomic weapons via the US-backed Baruch Plan in 1946, which would have diverted over ten trillion dollars from global nuclear weapon development to welfare development, if it had worked. It failed, BTW, because of the differences between two systems, but this boiled down to two people, Stalin and Truman.
Preventing an arms-based Cold War would have been interesting because we could have nearly perfected medicine or cracked fusion by now with the kind of money involved. I mean, it’s a no brainer that if there are panhumans out there, they would have gotten pretty excited about the Baruch Plan. The temptation to nudge it along would have been extreme.
It’s fascinating because the suggestion crystallized global conflict down to a single node, a concentrated moment in time, with the futures of quarter of a billion children, those in conflict zones, at stake. It’s even more interesting because it failed due to US-Russian antagonism, i.e., differences between two people again, Trump and Putin.
Its failure has serious implications for whether the effects of global warming, which likely will not appear crystallized in a single event but which will instead be like a combination of a juggernaut and a train wreck, will be able to unite humanity behind global peace. Given COVID-19 could not do it, I doubt global warming will, or at least not in time for the Singularity, which, like I said, has massive implications going forwards.
Unfortunately, the UN Secretary General is a) unlikely to be willing to explain where the idea came from and his interactions with e.g., Macron over the proposed truce, which would be confidential, b) very unlikely to admit to anything weird happening to him along the way, and c) extremely unlikely to lay it all out here on Less Wrong.
Now, the only other potential nudge point is the upcoming fusion burning plasma breakthrough, which has real validity given how close the Baruch Plan came to success. This may, in fact, given the COVID-19 nudge point failed, be the last feasible nudge point going into the Singularity.
I have looked at fusion from this perspective really, really hard, basically made myself the world’s expert on this issue, and my bottom line is that it will take an awful lot of nudging to get it to work as a nudge point for global peace. The Baruch Plan stood a chance because we were coming out of a global war, the UN was being set up, a brave new world was deemed possible, the A-Bomb had just been dropped twice, demand for global peace was high, and what became the Washington Consensus had a lot of legitimacy.
Now, what I’m reporting to this community, which I respect because it does care about what kind of future humanity faces going into the Singularity, is that I, myself, may have been nudged.
If all the above holds, there are somewhat significant implications to this, for example the fact that a British person was nudged rather than an American or a Chinese may be significant, but only if veracity and sanity can be established.
One significant implication is that we could be in very serious trouble going forwards into the Singularity. For instance, we may not be allowed to develop an ASI out of fear that we would weaponize it. That could certainly get interesting.
Another implication is that we are in a Zoo/Lab/Prime Directive situation, with multiple civilizations competing for influence over us, fascinated by our inability to establish a global peace when all their civilizations managed it. We could be the galactic dunces, in other words, or a fascinating case study of a ‘failing planet’.
The Prime Directive can break down, however, from two directions. You can ‘Captain Kirk it’ and justify some kind of external intervention, or, someone on the planet can do a Toto, and pull back the curtain.
Or, theoretically, you can work it from both ends, if a Captain Kirk decides he likes Toto the dog.
So, let’s assume I’m a human Toto. Let’s assume that, any conversations with Captain Kirk put aside for one moment, I’m at least mainly human. I mean, I’m a public figure, a titled academic, I have three kids, etc. I am very likely to be at least mainly human.
And, let’s assume I care, care enough to lobby for global peace, to explain why I think it matters, to explain how it could be done.
And then something happened on the way to Thor’s Hammer.
If I’m human, or at least mainly human, I am arguing that the rational thing to do would be to fight to establish the truth about what happened, not because I am that important, certainly not alone, but because I at least suspect that I am a piece in a puzzle, part of a counter-counter-factual Hail Mary cookie, and that going into the Singularity, working out that puzzle may become humanity’s greatest and most challenging endeavor.
There is, for instance, just a chance that, in considering the conditions for public Contact, which comprise at a minimum an ASI or a warp gate/drive on our part, the panhumans take into account what our own civilizational conditions for contact would be. In other words, in part, they may be reflecting back to us the Prime Directive, the closest we have to a global ‘popular’ consensus for how Contact should be managed, especially as we come closer to meeting a Contact trigger point. It should not be forgotten that Gene Rodenberry was this planet’s greatest popular philosopher on interstellar relationships.
If I’m at least mainly human, rationally, I would fight to establish the truth because the alternative, if I do suspect the truth, is to go along with a farce, to distract Dorothy and her pals so that they do not see the Wizard, to replace the curtain, and to trust that the global geopolitics will work themselves out.
Given what I suspect/know, I choose not to sit this one out. Instead, I choose to fight to pull that curtain back further, perhaps in the hope that I can encourage a panhuman Captain Kirk (realistically it would take at least one interstellar civilization’s leader) to step out from behind it and just say, “The heck with it, we’re going to help these guys, if only for the quarter of a billion children being affected by conflict zones and by the fact that biodiversity loss on this beautiful blue marble will only exacerbate this, because their political systems aren’t up to it, maybe due to no fault of their own given the Baruch Plan catastrophe, and because I don’t want Science Officer Spock here to spend the next few decades just studying a train wreck while we poke the damn thing with a stick occasionally and do these ‘nudges’. Let’s roll out the Sagan Contact protocol. Or, should we just go full throttle with ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’? Whaddya say, McCoy?”
In other words, I am arguing that it is my duty, as a human, to go on record.
Humans are really not so dissimilar compared to what’s probably out there. I had my moment in the desert where I was asked, ‘What do you want?‘, and the answer was ‘Global Peace’. To a certain extent, I wish I had your life. But then, I wouldn’t have my three kids, and I wouldn’t have had that moment where something said back to me, “Global Peace? That old chestnut? Seriously? Oh, you are serious. Okay, this is what you have to do...”
Let me go find out more about lie detectoring companies in London.
That’s a fascinating link you supplied there! I have no doubt that Hallucinogen Persisting Perceptual Disorder exist. Sunglasses and talk therapy seems to be of use: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucinogen_persisting_perception_disorder
Maybe everyone on the West Coast wearing sunglasses is just trying to deal with their HPPD? ;<)
I would also say there’s a definite chance of a link between devouring psychedelics and hallucinations, including of rainbows!
Unfortunately, I wasn’t on psychedelics before, during, or after the experiences I just related here. I had been doing some Buddhist meditation, including down to the zen states. My personal zen meditation has induced temporary minor lens flare, say 2-3% of the intensity in the picture linked to in the article, and focused on a single object, while fully awake: https://slatestarcodex.com/blog_images/hppd_town.jpg However, this is minor and transient compared with what I’m describing.
Okay, so what happened next was I got hit with a literal barrage of a 4x8 grid of electric blue lights, from lucid dreams all the way down to ‘real’ dreams. So, this was a recurring dream, literally dozens of times. The blue lights could flare in intensity as a grid. Of all things, it made me think of a phased array communication system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array
Now, what would happen was that I would go to sleep, then I would dream of the grid, then I would transition to a lucid dream where i was in the presence of whatever the phased array was communicating with. I got the feeling that the other end of the grid had a grid of its own, a big, and old, white one, and that it was large, intelligent, powerful, and far away.
This definitely meant something important, like an attempt at communication, and it recurred for months before going away.
Now, a whole bunch of stuff happened after this, but the above is basically what I wanted to go on the record about on lesswrong.
If you have any questions, I can answer them.
If not, I will try to compile the above experiences as a brief for a lie detector company. As I said earlier, I’m trying to create a protocol that’s useful for other people working on AGI/ASI-related issues to go on record about re acausal Hail Mary potential cookie-like experience.
Whoops, I missed once experience I wanted to investigate via lie detector and psychiatrist. So, I emailed myself to say I was happy to have my mindstate read so that whatever it was that was doing all this could know who or what it was. That same night, I’m awake, eyes closed, and it feels like something jacks something using electricity directly into my brain. So, most of us have had an electric shock, and it kind of vibrates, and it hurts. But, the brain feels no pain. So, this electric vibrating in my brain was happening for about 3 seconds, but I suspected what it was, so I just told them in my mind to ease off for a second. So they did, and I felt fine, so I told them in my mind it was okay to do it again. Then, the phenomenon continued for about two seconds, and it was done. Then I relaxed and went to sleep.
Going back to the hallucinogens, one difference has been that what I’ve been experiencing is equivalent to photographic resolution material, or high-res video, and overall just high-granularity experiences.
Anyway, ask any questions, then I’ll boil all this down for the lie detector company brief.
.
Well, this is where we regress from the rum and uncanny to normality. If I were in a position to be able to reproduce atypical brain states involving the appearance of electrical input or output that just blew away the technology being used to monitor it, that would be one heck of a result. It could also be a dangerous result, personally and politically.
But, to take that point on board, first we test my veracity (lie detector), then we test by sanity (psychiatric eval), then we test whether I can replicate any of this using something like an MRI (objectivity). However, the latter does not rely solely on me if I’m not generating these phenomena.
Alright, I’ll draw up the brief for the lie detector company this week based on the above events, then I’ll draw up a list of five of these companies, put that all together at the end of this week, and you can randomly select a company.
Just because I’ve always wanted to, I’m going to thrown in some questions about meeting aliens, my own humanity, whether I’ve ever another planet, etc. Basically, if I’m going to pay for someone to lie detector me, I want my Keanu Reeves moment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2l0RjZvOI
!
Okay, so below is an attempt at a brief, one that could be tailored, hopefully, for other people. Any suggestions before I hunt around for quotes from lie detector companies?
Completed Template Brief for Hail Mary Cookie Experiences
Overview
The brief is to establish the veracity of a subject regarding a series of extraordinary claims about experiences. The brief is not to establish the subject’s sanity or to investigate the claims at some kind of philosophical level. The brief does include the requirement to establish veracity of claims according to the granularity of the experiences (see special vocabulary and terms below).
Special Vocabulary and Terms
The subject will speak about the claims using specific vocabulary, including mindjacking, which refers to using technological means to write to or read from a mind, as with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, and granularity, which refers to the degree of reality of an experience. Granularity can be as follows:
Full consciousness = full granularity
Simulation while awake with eyes closed = high granularity, e.g., with one or more of the five senses (sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch)
Lucid dream = medium granulariy
Dream = low granularity
Specific Questions to This Case
1) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he saw an alien head at night, then woke up the next day seeing a neon heart, identical to one he later found that morning in his house.
2) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he had three nightmares over three nights, the first concerning a sniper, the second concerning a being in the same room, and the third concerning being in a corridor and opening a door, where the granularity became less distinct each time. Establish the granularity of the experiences.
3) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he asked the question by email to a third party, “May I ask you a question?” and received a reply in the form of a rainbow in his mind. Establish the granularity of the experience.
4) Establish whether the subject believes he has had a recurring experience where he saw a 4x8 grid of electric blue lights. Establish the granularity of the experience.
5) Establish whether the subject believes he has had an experience where he invited a person or persons unknown to read his mind by a mindjacking device involving a feeling of a mind being electrocuted, and how long the experience took. Establish the granularity of the experience.
General ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’ Obligatory Questions for All Cases
1) Establish whether the subject believes he has ever seen another planet. If he believes he has, determine how many and what they look like, and by what means. Establish the granularity of the experience.
2) Establish whether the subject believes he has ever seen or met aliens. If he believes he has, determine how many species and what they look like. Establish the granularity of the experience.
3) Establish whether the subject believes his body is human. If necessary, use percentages.
4) Establish whether the subject believes his mind is human. If necessary, use percentages.
General Pharmaceutical Questions for All Cases
1) Establish what if any drugs, e.g., hallucinogens, the subject was taking prior to or during the experiences.
2) Establish what if any medication the subject was taking prior to or during the experiences.
.
Hmm. Let me try to restate this. What I’m trying to do is to create a protocol for reporting weird experiences as we close in on the Singularity. If I’m correct about a soft Zoo Hypothesis (basically a ‘leaky’ Prime Directive situation, with Contact contingent on creation of an ASI or a warp gate/drive), with several interstellar civilizations with mindjacking tech monitoring the planet, then attempts to influence human global development do occur, probably by the panhuman equivalent of special forces, i.e., ‘Special Circumstances’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture).
I assume the number of civilizations out there is small, technological development is broadly equivalent due to leveling up via aid/trade relationships, and philosophical positions are diverse, if only due to such basic differences as physiology.
If this is correct, Earth, going into the Singularity, will a battleground, not over territory, although Earth is an incredibly bio-diverse rich piece of real estate, but over spheres of influence, with fundamental philosophical positions coming into play, such as whether or not ASIs are even legal, whether Earth would ally with an imperial panhuman civilization versus a federation post-Singularity, and so on.
In my ‘soft’ Zoo Hypothesis, the curating civilizations could all get together and act collectively to intervene, pushing humanity in a certain direction. Alternatively, given the tech involved, no matter how good the regulatory system is that’s designed to prevent a free for all, there exists the possibility of competitive external interventions.
In this scenario, the results of these disagreements—or agreements—and the will and means to act—is that there will be ‘nudge points’.
The single most important concern I can see going into the Singularity is whether the world is at peace, because if it isn’t, a) warfare will drive AI development towards an ASI, and b) a warlike ASI could emerge. Alexei Turchin has made this very clear in his work:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322791491_Military_AI_as_a_Convergent_Goal_of_Self—Improving_AI
And, whatever the galactic position on the legality of ASIs, warlike ASIs are almost certainly a no-no. Peace would also seem to enable the development of an interstellar civilization, if only 50% of Earth’s total military budget could be diverted to developing fusion, hybrid fusion-antimatter drives, and wrap drives
So, we go back to my original post and to the basic contention of whether any legitimate nudge points have arisen recently, i.e., since the setting up of the UN and the attempt to ban atomic weapons via the US-backed Baruch Plan in 1946, which would have diverted over ten trillion dollars from global nuclear weapon development to welfare development, if it had worked. It failed, BTW, because of the differences between two systems, but this boiled down to two people, Stalin and Truman.
Preventing an arms-based Cold War would have been interesting because we could have nearly perfected medicine or cracked fusion by now with the kind of money involved. I mean, it’s a no brainer that if there are panhumans out there, they would have gotten pretty excited about the Baruch Plan. The temptation to nudge it along would have been extreme.
Given all this, I would say there has definitely been one recent potential nudge point, i.e., the suggestion by the UN Secretary General, in the face of a disastrous global pandemic, to try to declare a global truce: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/19/us-and-russia-blocking-un-plans-for-a-global-ceasefire-amid-crisis. This is the first suggestion of this kind ever, in the 75 years of the UN.
It’s fascinating because the suggestion crystallized global conflict down to a single node, a concentrated moment in time, with the futures of quarter of a billion children, those in conflict zones, at stake. It’s even more interesting because it failed due to US-Russian antagonism, i.e., differences between two people again, Trump and Putin.
Its failure has serious implications for whether the effects of global warming, which likely will not appear crystallized in a single event but which will instead be like a combination of a juggernaut and a train wreck, will be able to unite humanity behind global peace. Given COVID-19 could not do it, I doubt global warming will, or at least not in time for the Singularity, which, like I said, has massive implications going forwards.
Unfortunately, the UN Secretary General is a) unlikely to be willing to explain where the idea came from and his interactions with e.g., Macron over the proposed truce, which would be confidential, b) very unlikely to admit to anything weird happening to him along the way, and c) extremely unlikely to lay it all out here on Less Wrong.
Now, the only other potential nudge point is the upcoming fusion burning plasma breakthrough, which has real validity given how close the Baruch Plan came to success. This may, in fact, given the COVID-19 nudge point failed, be the last feasible nudge point going into the Singularity.
I have looked at fusion from this perspective really, really hard, basically made myself the world’s expert on this issue, and my bottom line is that it will take an awful lot of nudging to get it to work as a nudge point for global peace. The Baruch Plan stood a chance because we were coming out of a global war, the UN was being set up, a brave new world was deemed possible, the A-Bomb had just been dropped twice, demand for global peace was high, and what became the Washington Consensus had a lot of legitimacy.
Now, what I’m reporting to this community, which I respect because it does care about what kind of future humanity faces going into the Singularity, is that I, myself, may have been nudged.
If all the above holds, there are somewhat significant implications to this, for example the fact that a British person was nudged rather than an American or a Chinese may be significant, but only if veracity and sanity can be established.
One significant implication is that we could be in very serious trouble going forwards into the Singularity. For instance, we may not be allowed to develop an ASI out of fear that we would weaponize it. That could certainly get interesting.
Another implication is that we are in a Zoo/Lab/Prime Directive situation, with multiple civilizations competing for influence over us, fascinated by our inability to establish a global peace when all their civilizations managed it. We could be the galactic dunces, in other words, or a fascinating case study of a ‘failing planet’.
The Prime Directive can break down, however, from two directions. You can ‘Captain Kirk it’ and justify some kind of external intervention, or, someone on the planet can do a Toto, and pull back the curtain.
Or, theoretically, you can work it from both ends, if a Captain Kirk decides he likes Toto the dog.
So, let’s assume I’m a human Toto. Let’s assume that, any conversations with Captain Kirk put aside for one moment, I’m at least mainly human. I mean, I’m a public figure, a titled academic, I have three kids, etc. I am very likely to be at least mainly human.
And, let’s assume I care, care enough to lobby for global peace, to explain why I think it matters, to explain how it could be done.
And then something happened on the way to Thor’s Hammer.
If I’m human, or at least mainly human, I am arguing that the rational thing to do would be to fight to establish the truth about what happened, not because I am that important, certainly not alone, but because I at least suspect that I am a piece in a puzzle, part of a counter-counter-factual Hail Mary cookie, and that going into the Singularity, working out that puzzle may become humanity’s greatest and most challenging endeavor.
There is, for instance, just a chance that, in considering the conditions for public Contact, which comprise at a minimum an ASI or a warp gate/drive on our part, the panhumans take into account what our own civilizational conditions for contact would be. In other words, in part, they may be reflecting back to us the Prime Directive, the closest we have to a global ‘popular’ consensus for how Contact should be managed, especially as we come closer to meeting a Contact trigger point. It should not be forgotten that Gene Rodenberry was this planet’s greatest popular philosopher on interstellar relationships.
If I’m at least mainly human, rationally, I would fight to establish the truth because the alternative, if I do suspect the truth, is to go along with a farce, to distract Dorothy and her pals so that they do not see the Wizard, to replace the curtain, and to trust that the global geopolitics will work themselves out.
Given what I suspect/know, I choose not to sit this one out. Instead, I choose to fight to pull that curtain back further, perhaps in the hope that I can encourage a panhuman Captain Kirk (realistically it would take at least one interstellar civilization’s leader) to step out from behind it and just say, “The heck with it, we’re going to help these guys, if only for the quarter of a billion children being affected by conflict zones and by the fact that biodiversity loss on this beautiful blue marble will only exacerbate this, because their political systems aren’t up to it, maybe due to no fault of their own given the Baruch Plan catastrophe, and because I don’t want Science Officer Spock here to spend the next few decades just studying a train wreck while we poke the damn thing with a stick occasionally and do these ‘nudges’. Let’s roll out the Sagan Contact protocol. Or, should we just go full throttle with ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’? Whaddya say, McCoy?”
In other words, I am arguing that it is my duty, as a human, to go on record.
Does that explain why I should do this?
.
Humans are really not so dissimilar compared to what’s probably out there. I had my moment in the desert where I was asked, ‘What do you want?‘, and the answer was ‘Global Peace’. To a certain extent, I wish I had your life. But then, I wouldn’t have my three kids, and I wouldn’t have had that moment where something said back to me, “Global Peace? That old chestnut? Seriously? Oh, you are serious. Okay, this is what you have to do...”
Let me go find out more about lie detectoring companies in London.
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