Nice to meet you. I value your contribution. The dichotomy between cosmic consciousness and Techno ontology is narrow and ill suited to understanding our interstellar context. A better model can emerge considering the idea of Consciousness Assisted Technology versus Technology Assisted Consciousness. if we place that on one horizontal continuum and cross it with a vertical axis then we can place another continuum of Material Form versus Forms without Mater. This vertical axis is coherent with our mystical traditions and has no recognition in our current physics. This idea servers to describe visitations and encounters that can be both sensorial /material and conscious/ nonmaterial ( or both ) This conceptual plane can be complemented by a third axis as necessary. For example Intent to exploit versus Exploration communication. Kastrups Ultra terrestrials or "Crypto terrestrial". The Earth crust is thick enough to hold many mysteries. If galactic travelers have known of this planet for millions of years, why have they not settled here before? and if so who of right mind would settle the surface of a planet prone to glaciating, catastrophes and invasions? It's not the form or content of the messages that validate theirs extraordinary origin. It is the medium used to establish and carry communication that matters. Ideas are conveyed by signs and symbols in written or spoken language. These are all indicators to meaning. Meaning exists before and above language. the statement recalls the nominalist vs the realist scholastic debate. The commentary oriented the reader to mind to possible mind communication. Intellectual thought needs witness that inactively. There is no need for subtractive hermeneutics.
"...The tendency to favor either onto-techno theories or cosmic consciousness theories at the expense of the other is understandable." The UAP phenomena is poorly constrained; it's an experience by untrained observer of something beyond his world view. A "Planetary wide spiritual event" does not exclude onto technology, nor onto technology exclude Planetary wide Spiritual event. Know how of interstellar inter dimensional or trans temporal travel can include the context of spirit experiences as described in mystical literature. The uncannyarrises when the onto technological finds its clearest language in the mystical traditions of humans. Cultural advancement and spiritual realization may be a necessary ground to comprehend the interstellar context of our planet. Our current conscious culture may need to leap, not onto a higher material technology but onto a clear and comprehensive understanding of the cosmic character of consciousness. an ontology beyond the current medical material and causal conventions. and I read on. . .
A very thoughtful presentation of Kastrup's essay, and a provocative suggestion for subtracting the human contribution to any non-human communication, in order thereby to allow the non-human element to be more readily detected.
On this theme, I am reminded of Cave of Bones on Netflix, detailing a very recent discovery, I believe in the northern part of South Africa.
Spoilers, the non-human Sapiens (I think they are sapiens) are exhibiting human behaviour, comparable with our oldest fossil and cave findings, but 150'000 years before these examples from our own species. I should state they are not our ancestors, they are a separate branch that split off much earlier.
So, A) We already have proof of non-human intelligence on Earth. Peer reviewed etc.
And, B) Imagine for the sake of Kastrup's Ultraterrestrial theroy, they remained 150'000 years ahead of us.
It's a great documentary anyway, but as a companion to the topic of UFO's and NHI I think it's very important.
P.S, Towards the end it has a supernatural/Psi/experiencer moment in it, that they leave in, but scoot over, because its a a serious documentary. Proceeded by a protocol of fasting to boot.
Cheers for the article and yes I will buy a book thanks.
Maybe you address this point in your book -- which I'm thinking about somehow acquiring, maybe by asking my sister to order it for me -- but a couple of things bugged (heh) me about your comparison, in Kelly Chase's Youtube interview with you, of the UFOids' relationship to us with ours to a tick.
First, assuming for a moment that the disparity between their intelligence and ours is really that huge, I don't see why we should assume that we're the ticks; maybe they are. For example, in the above essay you link to a Twitter poster who posts supposed photographs of what seem to be airborne mats of algae or colonial bacterial. If these invertebrates automatically mess with the brains of organisms in their vicinity, maybe as an evolved defense-mechanism, in a hallucination-inducing way, then most although not all UFOID-encounters are explicable in terms of our encounter with tick-minded or sub-ticked-minded organisms that have evolved a peculiar defense-mechanism.
Even if those Twitter-posts in fact show nanobot-clouds rather than floating algae or bacteria, there's no reason to assume to assume that these nanobot-clouds are doing more than what I've suggested that those things would be doing if they were floating algae or bacterial colonies -- defensively inducing hallucinations.
But let's suppose that these nanobot-clouds behave in a way that is comparable to GPT-4 -- imitating human behavior and responding to human expectations, to the point of temporarily assembling themselves into pseudo-aircraft, elves, and goblins. Again, I don't see why we should assume that they're more intelligently aware than a tick, if they're conscious at all. And if they're not aware then it makes no sense to see them as trying to communicate with us, because "trying" entails awareness.
Second, let's assume, perhaps more reasonably, that they are indeed intelligently aware. Why then should we assume that their intelligence so far exceeds our own that their relationship with us is comparable to ours with ticks? Their technological superiority doesn't entail this; the ancient Athenians and late-15th Century Florentines were as intelligent as we are, and while Australian Aborigines aren't as intelligent as the Japanese they can certainly converse with the Japanese about most of the things in which the people of either group are likely to take an interest. LIkewise, if the techboys realize their fantasy of amping the ruling class's average IQ up to 185 or whatever, this won't prevent the rulers from conversing even with un-amped Australian Aborigines about many things that interest the people of both groups.
Let's suppose, however, that the UFOids are super-intelligent nanobot-clouds. Well, these nanobot-clouds live in a world of bodies. Maybe there are also souls, and if so then maybe these souls are nonvoluminous and nowhere, but certainly there are stars, rocks, trees, tick-bodies, and human bodies -- and nanobot-bodies. So, if these UFOids aren't aware that there are bodies, then they're as dumb as ticks in this respect. And if they are aware that there are bodies, and they're at least as intelligent as Australian Aborigines, which we're assuming to be the case, then they can easily converse with us about all sorts of things -- about baseball, interior decorating, star-formation, and so forth. If they can do this but don't, then they're hostile, at least in the low-level way in which people who refuse to talk to you when you indicate a desire for conversation are hostile.
Let's suppose now that they have some ability, in addition to intelligence, that distinguishes them from us in a way that is comparable to our distinction from dogs or chimps, who can't imagine what it would be like to be intelligent (that is, to mentally depict various ways in which reality as a whole or large parts of it might be structured). That wouldn't diminish their ability to converse with us, just as we're perfectly able to communicate in an emotionally expressive albeit unintelligent way with dogs and chimps. But they don't converse with us -- the things that they supposedly say (according to dubiously "hypnotized" witnesses) are only banal slogans of the "stop littering!" and "no nukes!" variety, resembling what a primitive chatbot might be expected to generate. And if they're incapable of conversing with us, then, regardless of whatever other abilities they might have, they're either pitiably disabled (in the manner of stroke-victims) or as stupid as dogs and chimps.
It seems wrong that you'd withhold some of your essays, such as the one immediately below this one that begins with remarks about Jacques Vallee, from people who aren't paid subscribers. From your interview with Kelly Chase that appeared on Youtube today, which prompted me to find this site, I get the perhaps false impression that you're a full-time faculty member somewhere, not an adjunct like me. If this impression is true rather than false, then you don't really need the extra money from subscribers, and in preventing non-payers from reading your writing you give the no-doubt-false impression that you don't really care about your own thoughts. You might say, "Well, why don't you subscribe?" The answer is that I have no special reason to subscribe to any given affordable set of writers out of the many hundreds of interesting writers that are currently posting on Substack. And I'm sure that this is also true of tens of thousands of other people who might like to read your stuff but won't because after getting through the first three or so paragraphs they're told to F-off.
This essay is interesting, though, and I'm sure that the one that you don't want me and tens of thousands of other sub-middle-class people to read is also interesting.
Thanks for raising this problem, since it is a very vexed issue for me. I actually don't want to monetize this newsletter. I worry that's a way for a professor to "un-tenure" himself/herself by becoming financially dependent on pleasing an audience, and I don't like commodifying ideas. I'm not saying I'd never do that, but I'm just not sure about it. That being said, I put a few essays behind a paywall, because I used that material (after revision) in my book on this topic (along with quite a bit more newly written material). I was really torn between being fair to the people who paid for the book and also providing free access to ideas. I thought that paywalling the essays and keeping the price of the book reasonable (It's $9.99 on Kindle) was a way to split the difference.
So you can see that the point is not to withhold ideas from anyone, nor do I lack any series concern regarding my own work. You say as much in your comment, but please note that I'm precisely trying to avoid such an impression, while also doing my best to be fair to everyone in the audience. I'm just trying to figure out how to mange this sort of "space," which is quite new territory for me.
Nice to meet you. I value your contribution. The dichotomy between cosmic consciousness and Techno ontology is narrow and ill suited to understanding our interstellar context. A better model can emerge considering the idea of Consciousness Assisted Technology versus Technology Assisted Consciousness. if we place that on one horizontal continuum and cross it with a vertical axis then we can place another continuum of Material Form versus Forms without Mater. This vertical axis is coherent with our mystical traditions and has no recognition in our current physics. This idea servers to describe visitations and encounters that can be both sensorial /material and conscious/ nonmaterial ( or both ) This conceptual plane can be complemented by a third axis as necessary. For example Intent to exploit versus Exploration communication. Kastrups Ultra terrestrials or "Crypto terrestrial". The Earth crust is thick enough to hold many mysteries. If galactic travelers have known of this planet for millions of years, why have they not settled here before? and if so who of right mind would settle the surface of a planet prone to glaciating, catastrophes and invasions? It's not the form or content of the messages that validate theirs extraordinary origin. It is the medium used to establish and carry communication that matters. Ideas are conveyed by signs and symbols in written or spoken language. These are all indicators to meaning. Meaning exists before and above language. the statement recalls the nominalist vs the realist scholastic debate. The commentary oriented the reader to mind to possible mind communication. Intellectual thought needs witness that inactively. There is no need for subtractive hermeneutics.
"...The tendency to favor either onto-techno theories or cosmic consciousness theories at the expense of the other is understandable." The UAP phenomena is poorly constrained; it's an experience by untrained observer of something beyond his world view. A "Planetary wide spiritual event" does not exclude onto technology, nor onto technology exclude Planetary wide Spiritual event. Know how of interstellar inter dimensional or trans temporal travel can include the context of spirit experiences as described in mystical literature. The uncannyarrises when the onto technological finds its clearest language in the mystical traditions of humans. Cultural advancement and spiritual realization may be a necessary ground to comprehend the interstellar context of our planet. Our current conscious culture may need to leap, not onto a higher material technology but onto a clear and comprehensive understanding of the cosmic character of consciousness. an ontology beyond the current medical material and causal conventions. and I read on. . .
A very thoughtful presentation of Kastrup's essay, and a provocative suggestion for subtracting the human contribution to any non-human communication, in order thereby to allow the non-human element to be more readily detected.
There is a place for the hermeneutics of suspicion in UAP studies!
On this theme, I am reminded of Cave of Bones on Netflix, detailing a very recent discovery, I believe in the northern part of South Africa.
Spoilers, the non-human Sapiens (I think they are sapiens) are exhibiting human behaviour, comparable with our oldest fossil and cave findings, but 150'000 years before these examples from our own species. I should state they are not our ancestors, they are a separate branch that split off much earlier.
So, A) We already have proof of non-human intelligence on Earth. Peer reviewed etc.
And, B) Imagine for the sake of Kastrup's Ultraterrestrial theroy, they remained 150'000 years ahead of us.
It's a great documentary anyway, but as a companion to the topic of UFO's and NHI I think it's very important.
P.S, Towards the end it has a supernatural/Psi/experiencer moment in it, that they leave in, but scoot over, because its a a serious documentary. Proceeded by a protocol of fasting to boot.
Cheers for the article and yes I will buy a book thanks.
Maybe you address this point in your book -- which I'm thinking about somehow acquiring, maybe by asking my sister to order it for me -- but a couple of things bugged (heh) me about your comparison, in Kelly Chase's Youtube interview with you, of the UFOids' relationship to us with ours to a tick.
First, assuming for a moment that the disparity between their intelligence and ours is really that huge, I don't see why we should assume that we're the ticks; maybe they are. For example, in the above essay you link to a Twitter poster who posts supposed photographs of what seem to be airborne mats of algae or colonial bacterial. If these invertebrates automatically mess with the brains of organisms in their vicinity, maybe as an evolved defense-mechanism, in a hallucination-inducing way, then most although not all UFOID-encounters are explicable in terms of our encounter with tick-minded or sub-ticked-minded organisms that have evolved a peculiar defense-mechanism.
Even if those Twitter-posts in fact show nanobot-clouds rather than floating algae or bacteria, there's no reason to assume to assume that these nanobot-clouds are doing more than what I've suggested that those things would be doing if they were floating algae or bacterial colonies -- defensively inducing hallucinations.
But let's suppose that these nanobot-clouds behave in a way that is comparable to GPT-4 -- imitating human behavior and responding to human expectations, to the point of temporarily assembling themselves into pseudo-aircraft, elves, and goblins. Again, I don't see why we should assume that they're more intelligently aware than a tick, if they're conscious at all. And if they're not aware then it makes no sense to see them as trying to communicate with us, because "trying" entails awareness.
Second, let's assume, perhaps more reasonably, that they are indeed intelligently aware. Why then should we assume that their intelligence so far exceeds our own that their relationship with us is comparable to ours with ticks? Their technological superiority doesn't entail this; the ancient Athenians and late-15th Century Florentines were as intelligent as we are, and while Australian Aborigines aren't as intelligent as the Japanese they can certainly converse with the Japanese about most of the things in which the people of either group are likely to take an interest. LIkewise, if the techboys realize their fantasy of amping the ruling class's average IQ up to 185 or whatever, this won't prevent the rulers from conversing even with un-amped Australian Aborigines about many things that interest the people of both groups.
Let's suppose, however, that the UFOids are super-intelligent nanobot-clouds. Well, these nanobot-clouds live in a world of bodies. Maybe there are also souls, and if so then maybe these souls are nonvoluminous and nowhere, but certainly there are stars, rocks, trees, tick-bodies, and human bodies -- and nanobot-bodies. So, if these UFOids aren't aware that there are bodies, then they're as dumb as ticks in this respect. And if they are aware that there are bodies, and they're at least as intelligent as Australian Aborigines, which we're assuming to be the case, then they can easily converse with us about all sorts of things -- about baseball, interior decorating, star-formation, and so forth. If they can do this but don't, then they're hostile, at least in the low-level way in which people who refuse to talk to you when you indicate a desire for conversation are hostile.
Let's suppose now that they have some ability, in addition to intelligence, that distinguishes them from us in a way that is comparable to our distinction from dogs or chimps, who can't imagine what it would be like to be intelligent (that is, to mentally depict various ways in which reality as a whole or large parts of it might be structured). That wouldn't diminish their ability to converse with us, just as we're perfectly able to communicate in an emotionally expressive albeit unintelligent way with dogs and chimps. But they don't converse with us -- the things that they supposedly say (according to dubiously "hypnotized" witnesses) are only banal slogans of the "stop littering!" and "no nukes!" variety, resembling what a primitive chatbot might be expected to generate. And if they're incapable of conversing with us, then, regardless of whatever other abilities they might have, they're either pitiably disabled (in the manner of stroke-victims) or as stupid as dogs and chimps.
Your thoughts are interesting.
It seems wrong that you'd withhold some of your essays, such as the one immediately below this one that begins with remarks about Jacques Vallee, from people who aren't paid subscribers. From your interview with Kelly Chase that appeared on Youtube today, which prompted me to find this site, I get the perhaps false impression that you're a full-time faculty member somewhere, not an adjunct like me. If this impression is true rather than false, then you don't really need the extra money from subscribers, and in preventing non-payers from reading your writing you give the no-doubt-false impression that you don't really care about your own thoughts. You might say, "Well, why don't you subscribe?" The answer is that I have no special reason to subscribe to any given affordable set of writers out of the many hundreds of interesting writers that are currently posting on Substack. And I'm sure that this is also true of tens of thousands of other people who might like to read your stuff but won't because after getting through the first three or so paragraphs they're told to F-off.
This essay is interesting, though, and I'm sure that the one that you don't want me and tens of thousands of other sub-middle-class people to read is also interesting.
Thanks for raising this problem, since it is a very vexed issue for me. I actually don't want to monetize this newsletter. I worry that's a way for a professor to "un-tenure" himself/herself by becoming financially dependent on pleasing an audience, and I don't like commodifying ideas. I'm not saying I'd never do that, but I'm just not sure about it. That being said, I put a few essays behind a paywall, because I used that material (after revision) in my book on this topic (along with quite a bit more newly written material). I was really torn between being fair to the people who paid for the book and also providing free access to ideas. I thought that paywalling the essays and keeping the price of the book reasonable (It's $9.99 on Kindle) was a way to split the difference.
So you can see that the point is not to withhold ideas from anyone, nor do I lack any series concern regarding my own work. You say as much in your comment, but please note that I'm precisely trying to avoid such an impression, while also doing my best to be fair to everyone in the audience. I'm just trying to figure out how to mange this sort of "space," which is quite new territory for me.