Love recursion. Substack has conditioned me to reduce it in my writing, to make sentences easier for readers to follow. This makes for a more ‘conversational’ tone, but also feels like a capitulation to the Breakfast Question fumblers. After all, both Walt and Andrew naturally speak with a high level of recursion.
>given we are gestated and born without language but come into language, the vast evolutionary histories here described could be said to be mythologies of this singular process
100%
This is partly why I think that such a process could make it into a myth. Ontology recapitulates phylogeny. Individuals experienced the process of coming into language. In the uncanney valley, while humans were evolving, I think this happened later than it does now, and so could be observed easier, and weaved into myths. There's no way for an individual to observe evolutionary time scales. But they can observe themselves (or others) developing along the trajectory to language and recursive self-awareness.
>The gamifying transhuman solution will not give you more agency, rather it will outsource your agency to machines and their benefactors.
Yes, one thing I would have liked to bring up is that meditators such as Sam Harris will discuss becoming interested due to psychedelics. Still, eventually, it is a classic spiritual path that provides stable, long-lasting "returns."
>I like the conversation around different drugs and the types of agency and self they germinate. Interesting experiments are going on in this area. Though more interesting is how we then document the results.
One of my favorite papers in this area is a survey of DMT users where most believe the DMT entities they met were in some way real.
>I’m not sure Christ is a desirable synthesis. The positive contribution of Christianity is that actual birth re-entered the discourse; Christ was born.
IMO the positive contribution is close to how Jung described the snake on the cross (which Christ symbolizes). It is the principle of self-transformation. Just as the snake in the garden brought the ego into being, the message of Christ is in how to experience ego death and rebirth, which is the essential, ongoing, journey of life. So I stand with the myths on this one. One must die to be reborn. The mystery, is that in the process one finds life.
"Ontology recapitulates phylogeny". One of my favorite phrases! First heard it from Jordan Hall many years ago. One of my first writing pieces was about this phenomenon.
“How did you know he had a Substack?”
“Oh, he’s a data scientist who writes about the evolution of consciousness in early humans”
Love recursion. Substack has conditioned me to reduce it in my writing, to make sentences easier for readers to follow. This makes for a more ‘conversational’ tone, but also feels like a capitulation to the Breakfast Question fumblers. After all, both Walt and Andrew naturally speak with a high level of recursion.
>given we are gestated and born without language but come into language, the vast evolutionary histories here described could be said to be mythologies of this singular process
100%
This is partly why I think that such a process could make it into a myth. Ontology recapitulates phylogeny. Individuals experienced the process of coming into language. In the uncanney valley, while humans were evolving, I think this happened later than it does now, and so could be observed easier, and weaved into myths. There's no way for an individual to observe evolutionary time scales. But they can observe themselves (or others) developing along the trajectory to language and recursive self-awareness.
>The gamifying transhuman solution will not give you more agency, rather it will outsource your agency to machines and their benefactors.
Yes, one thing I would have liked to bring up is that meditators such as Sam Harris will discuss becoming interested due to psychedelics. Still, eventually, it is a classic spiritual path that provides stable, long-lasting "returns."
>I like the conversation around different drugs and the types of agency and self they germinate. Interesting experiments are going on in this area. Though more interesting is how we then document the results.
One of my favorite papers in this area is a survey of DMT users where most believe the DMT entities they met were in some way real.
>I’m not sure Christ is a desirable synthesis. The positive contribution of Christianity is that actual birth re-entered the discourse; Christ was born.
IMO the positive contribution is close to how Jung described the snake on the cross (which Christ symbolizes). It is the principle of self-transformation. Just as the snake in the garden brought the ego into being, the message of Christ is in how to experience ego death and rebirth, which is the essential, ongoing, journey of life. So I stand with the myths on this one. One must die to be reborn. The mystery, is that in the process one finds life.
"Ontology recapitulates phylogeny". One of my favorite phrases! First heard it from Jordan Hall many years ago. One of my first writing pieces was about this phenomenon.