On October 11 2019 my new book "The Ouroboros Code: Reality's Digital Alchemy Self-Simulation Bridging Science and Spirituality" with the foreword by Alex M.Vikoulov will be released by Ecstadelic Media Group as e-book and paperback. Here's the blurb: Will the abyss between mind and matter ever be bridged? How can configurations of matter ever give rise to consciousness? This is the greatest enigma that puzzles the scientific world, also known as "the hard problem". How do the objective and subjective dimensions relate to each other? It is here that scientists and spiritual seekers appear irreconcilable. Yet the number of scientists calling into question the hegemony of reductive materialism is steadily on the rise. As Artificial Intelligence, Nanotechnology and Transhumanism make us rapidly approach the era of the Technological Singularity, the borders between the physical and the metaphysical appear to fade into oblivion, by virtue of the all-encompassing umbrella of Digital Information Technology. Indeed, to wonder whether we might be living in a kind of computer simulation has become a legitimate question. It is exactly here that the building blocks for the bridge between science and spirituality might be found. What if our reality experience is the product of a code? Could such a code provide a subjective experience? What are the characteristics of such a code?
Embark on a mind-boggling quest into this deepest alchemical secret. Prepare yourself for a Tsunami of mind-altering concepts. Let yourself be drawn into the vortex of the Pansentience hypothesis. Learn how reality may digitally self-simulate by becoming the map and the territory simultaneously. And let yourself be seduced by Eris' apple of confusion as you bite in your own tail, discovering you are no one else than the mighty Ouroboros. Discover how Yoneda's Lemma shows us that material manifestations are mere fossils of sensing. Sail through the perilous uncharted seas of the unknown, where intelligence has not found ways yet to map safe maritime routes and routines. And examine for yourself in the light of evidence from entropy, information, algorithms and pattern recognition, whether this voyage will guide you to be wrecked in woo or to be docked in the harbor of wisdom. This forbidden fruit is the gateway to the Eschaton, the luminous Omega Hypercomputer at the end of time. The guide to the non-dual essence of being. This is the recipe to perform the Magnum Opus. The recursive self-modifying Ouroboros code to experience the ecstasy of Kundalini's Technotranscendentalism, where All is One and we are God. A must read for scientific spiritualists and spiritual scientists.
-Antonin Tuynman, PhD Hereunder you'll find the Table of contents to inspire you:
What can we know at all? Is the scientific method based on empirical observations a reliable way to gain knowledge, an understanding of the truth? Or is the method fundamentally imbued with uncertainties? Is an objective reality possible at all? In this provocative talk, I will challenge your belief systems and rock the foundations of your knowledge. Fasten your seatbelts!
Good morning ladies and gentlemen,
Welcome to my presentation on the topic of Epistemology. For those who don't know me, my name is Antonin Tuynman, I am an examiner in biotech in the field of clinical diagnostics.
A couple of months ago Liz asked me to give a talk on my book "Transcendental Metaphysics" and later on my co-authored book "Is reality a simulation?" As the topics discussed in this book border on the esoteric, I was a bit hesitant, but there are actually a number of topics I deal with in these books, which might be of relevance to you. I decided to split my originally prepared talk in 2 parts: the first on Epistemology or the study of what we can know at all and the second about From Information to a Theory of Everything.
When you hear the word "metaphysics" you probably think of topics like "soul", "afterlife" or perhaps even "consciousness". The title of my book Transcendental Metaphysics is actually an intended pun. It was my intention to build a bridge between science and spirituality, by showing that they are connected rather than completely independent from each other. I actually argue that we should redefine these terminologies.
The reasoning goes as follows: If Reality includes everything which influences reality, there can be no real things or things of relevance outside of reality. For if they would influence reality, they would be included by definition and if they wouldn't, they are of no relevance to us at all and not worthwhile to be considered "real".
Meta means beyond or outside of and metaphysics beyond or outside of physics. In a similar reasoning as I just made for reality, if there is anything beyond the physical which influences the physical, it should be considered to be physical and if it does not influence the physical, it is of no relevance whatsoever.
The terminology transcendental also means "going beyond". A certain branch of theology has hijacked the terminology "transcendental" by postulating that there is a God who is wholly independent from our reality. If it/she/he has no connection with our reality, it is of no relevance, if it does it is not transcendental in their definition.
In these talks I will show you that we can perhaps redefine these terminologies slightly so that they can still be useful.
After this introduction I now start with the actual topic of today: Epistemology: or the study of what can we know at all.
How do we know things, facts? We may read, learn or hear certain facts and believe these on the basis of an authority, such as "it has been scientifically proven.." or "the sacred book is the word of God...", but such knowledge gathering is second hand, we haven't actually been able to verify it ourselves.
The most general direct ways we have of gathering knowledge are based on empirical observations and the logical inferences we can make on the basis thereof.
Logic, a tool of reason, has three modes: deductive, inductive and abductive:
A deductive reasoning starts with a factual premise which is true for all members of a class such as:
All men are mortal. To this an instance of the class is compared: Socrates is a man. and then the general rule is applied to this instance and an inference is made: Hence Socrates is mortal.
In the inductive mode we start from an observational premise such as:
The sun rises every day. We compare this with an instance: Tomorrow is another day. and infer a prediction: tomorrow the sun will rise.
In the abductive mode the starting premise is often conditional:
If it rains, the grass gets wet. instance: the grass is wet. inference: it has rained.
But this mode is a logical fallacy, because the grass maybe got wet because the sprinklers were on.
Deductive reasoning claims to start from facts, but except for mathematics, if we look at the physical world, all facts we know were once gathered by observation. In other words, all deductive premises are the result of empirical observations as well. So it seems that all knowledge we can rely on, is ultimately grounded in observations:
We have a hypothesis, we gather data, we observe a pattern by connecting the dots and we come to a predictive theory.
But there are a number of problems with this approach.
First of all we are biased by our hypothesis: we look at reality in a certain way, because we expect it to be in a certain way. R.A.Wilson, one of my favourite authors used to say: "The prover proves, what the thinker thinks": What you are looking for, you'll find evidence for. Or you'll try to make your observations match your ideas.
Secondly, there are multiple ways to connect the dots. I'd like to illustrate this with a few slides: There is for instance the famous problem of aliasing, whereby more than one sinusoid curve can perfectly fit a set of data. Usually, when we try to fit a curve to a set of data we use statistics. but what kind of curve should we apply to connect the dots? a linear? a sinus? a polynomial? Scientists often use the principle of "Occam's Razor", which states that the hypothesis with the least number of assumptions is the most likely. But this can unduly cast away complex explanations where complexity is involved.
Scientists adhere to certain theories as beliefs. A ruling scientific theory is called a paradigm. But paradigms can be challenged by anomalous data. These are often called "outliers". What to do with such points? Are they artefacts? Should we disregard them? Or do they reveal more complex mechanisms?
As the body of anomalous data increases, it becomes more difficult to maintain a paradigm. Yet it often takes until a complete generation of scientists has died until a new paradigm is accepted. Why? because of dogmatism. Furthermore, there is also nepotism in the scientific world. It's easier to get your article peer-reviewed, if you're friends with one of the peer reviewers or if you know one of the editors of a journal. And there is the problem that here are more and more pseudo-scientific journals claiming to be scientific, where scientists pay to get published without proper peer-review.
Moreover, science is analytical: we only look at parts of a problem, from a certain perspective. We fail to see the whole picture. This reminds me of the Elephant parable from Hinduism and Buddhism: There were a number of blind men touching an object: One said it's a hose, the other one said no, it's a pillar, yet another one said it's a broom, and in fact they were all touching different parts of the same object, which was an elephant. This notion of perspectivism is also clear from this slide: The same image is considered as rabbit and duck depending on the way you look at it. Even better here, we see that seemingly mutual exclusive perspectives of a circle and square can be reconciled and transcended in the higher truth of a cylinder. And it is in this way that I'd like to redefine the word transcendental: A higher dimensional fact that includes and reconciles seemingly mutually exclusive perspectives thereof. Science is analytical and not holistic, so that we usually don't observe the whole truth of a phenomenon.
Then there is also the problem of measurement uncertainties and inaccuracies: Is our set-up correct? Are our instruments well calibrated? Is our calibration method valid and accurate?
Moreover certain phenomena have inherent uncertainties, such as the Heisenberg uncertainty in physics: You can't know exactly the position and the speed of a subatomic particle simultaneously. You can determine either of them exactly, but never both together.
There are incomputability problems: Certain numbers cannot be reduced to a simple algorithm that takes fewer digits than the number of digits the number takes itself. Certain problems cannot be decided computationally to lead to a correct yes-no answer and there is no algorithm possible that correctly determines whether arbitrary programs eventually halt when run.
Linked to this is Gödel's incompleteness theorem: There are certain mathematical statements which can be true (or not) but for which it cannot be proven that they are true or not. However this fact can be proven, which is this theorem. This means that even mathematics is not capable of leading to a complete knowledge.
Why is this important? Because it shows that we can fundamentally never get a complete picture of reality, we'll always be looking at parts from a certain limited perspective. We can't even be certain about the "truth" of most patterns. Worse, certain quantum mechanical experiments, which I'll discuss in the next talk, even strongly challenge the notion of a so-called objective reality. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, meaning that there is a subjective influence of the observer, which implies that physical truth is relative.
Apart from the truth that everything is relative, there may not be an absolute truth. It is sometimes said that Epistemology looks for the overlap between belief and the truth. But if there is no such absolute truth, how can we be so sure we have found this overlap? How can we be sure that we are not hallucinating or dreaming up our reality? Or that we are maybe living in a computer simulation as Neo in the film the Matrix?
Can't we be sure about anything? Well, if we have a technological application of a theory, at least we have lifted our knowledge to a higher level than a mere predictive theory. The application shows that we master at least this part of what we call real. This is why in my book I speak of Tech-know-logy or Technovedanta, in which Vedanta stands for the Hindu word of the complete body of all knowledge.
Buddha once said doubt everything, but then doubt the doubt.
Having said this, in my next talk I'll try to come to a more solid foundation of knowledge based on Information Theory.
Thank you for your attention.
Any questions?
By Antonin Tuynman Ph.D. Talk given on 18-09-2018 in Rijswijk, The Netherlands.
I proudly announce the publication of "Is Reality a Simulation? An Anthology", which I edited and co-authored.
Blurb:
Did your dark night of the soul ever make you doubt the reality of your existence? Do you wonder whether you are living in a dream or computer simulation? Are you haunted by the perspective that you're already dead and wander through the infinite dimensions of Hell or the Cyberbardo? Does it really matter at all if one of these questions is answered affirmatively?
Then you're in good company. Join us on a psychedelic rollercoaster through the rabbit hole. Fasten your seatbelts. Your belief systems are about to be questioned, challenged and perhaps overthrown. This Anthology with contributions from Technoshamans, Physicalist scientists, Pantheists, Pandeists and Panpsychists will rock your mental foundations, haunt your convictions and put you through the epistemological wringer.
This choicest selection will sharpen your mind to find truths hidden in the plain sight of a tower of turtles, patterns in a grid of chaos and clarity in a forest of apparent randomness. From Gross' Ouroboric Simulism to the Other of Swayne; Dive into Rosati's lucubration from Deli's Fractal of Consciousness to Mapson's Pandeistic Analogue Simulation; from the Vikoulovian Apotheosis via Byrne's Panpsychic Musings to the Tuynman Omega Constant. Escape with Bruere's scenario's from King's Parasitism and Perceptual valuation.
Welcome to a dazzling orgy of the post-singularity conceptualization of Simulation Theory. Welcome to the kaleidoscopic variegation of the perplexing pictorial perspectives that dwarf Bostrom's argument into oblivion. Is reality a Simulation? is an unorthodox challenging anthology on Bostrom's Simulation Hypothesis. With contributions from scientists, philosophers, technoshamans and mystics it shows a broad variety of perspectives from both supporters and opponents of the argument.
The book "Is Reality a Simulation? An Anthology", which I, Antonin Tuynman (a.k.a. Technovedanta) edited and co-authored is now available as Kindle ebook. But you can get a free pdf, if you promise me to write a review and post it on Amazon, Goodreads and Lulu. For a free pdf send an email to iconomenatgmaildotcom.
I wrote this book together with a number of excellent thinkers, such as Dirk Bruere, Sean Byrne, Matt Swayne, Donald King, Eva Deli, Knuje Mapson, Dante Rosati, Alex Vikoulov and Tim Gross.
Since
the dawn of civilisation mankind has pondered deep philosophical questions such
as “Do I exist? How do I know I exist? What is knowledge? What is
consciousness? What is reality made of? Why is there something rather than
nothing? Do we have a free will? What is the meaning of life? What is time?
Where do good and evil come from? Does God exist?”
Most
of these questions traditionally belong to the branch of philosophy that deals
with the first principles of things and involve abstracted concepts about
being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time and space. This branch is well
known as “Metaphysics”.
Unlike
physics, which takes the metaphysical questions for granted and merely
describes the behaviour of every physical, material manifestation that can be
measured, the metaphysical questions seduce us to speculate about those issues
that are deemed to go beyond the physical.
However,
the technological mastering of less tangible “subject-matter” such as energy
and information (which nowadays can be transmitted wireless via e.g. “Wi-Fi”)
and the weird quantum-mechanic behaviour of matter at its apparently most
fundamental scales, have blurred the borders between physics and metaphysics.
Strangely
enough, despite the undeniable evidence from quantum-mechanics that the
behaviour of matter is influenced by observation, the vast majority of scientists
still adheres to a completely obsolete 17th century classical
physics paradigm of the universe as mechanical clockwork. A philosophy called
“Materialism”.
It
seems as if scientists have not fully realised the implications of the basic
tenet from quantum mechanics: “Whenever you change the way you look at things,
the things you look at change”.
In
the September 2016 issue of the New Scientist, which was dedicated to the topic
of metaphysics, it became crystal clear to me that many scientists still
believe that mind and consciousness magically emerge from a kind of billiard
ball interactions between particulate material objects.
This
is not possible, if quantum-mechanics is right. Rather, quantum-mechanics shows
us that the influence of consciousness changes the behaviour of matter at its
most fundamental scales. In order to do so, matter and consciousness must share
the same energetic language to interact. Matter must be aware somehow of an
influence exerted thereon, it must be able to sense the influence of
consciousness and then react on it. This means that matter must have the
quality of sensing input, processing the information and responding with an
output of energetic information. This ability to sense, feedback and react are
aspects, which we usually only attribute to the consciousness of living
entities.
Could
it be that scientists consider this issue the wrong way around? That it is not
consciousness which emerges from matter, but matter which emerges from
consciousness?
Terrence
McKenna used to criticise the materialist stance as follows: “Object fetishism
is completely bankrupt”.
In
my previous book “Technovedanta”1, which has as one of its subtitles
“A panpsychic Theory of Everything”, I defend the thesis that every material
particulate entity at its most fundamental level has a very minute type of
consciousness. It is aware of the influences of its surroundings. This is
usually known as “Animism”, “Hylozoism” or “Panpsychism”. The opponents of
“Panpsychism” often argue that it is a naïve theory, which considers inanimate
objects such as a rock or a chair as being imbued with consciousness. However,
in my definition Panpsychism does not mean that non-evolved aggregate objects, have
an overall object-consciousness. With non-evolved aggregate objects I mean
objects, which did not naturally evolve by their own force, but were put
together by coincidence by nature so as to create e.g. rocks, or intentionally
by man so as to create e.g. chairs or thermostats. Only the self-generated,
self-evolved and self-sustaining (i.e. autopoietic) constituents such as the
atoms or molecules of these entities are considered to have a certain level of
consciousness in my theory.
I
also defend the thesis that the ultimate foundation for matter is consciousness:
Particulate matter arises as a kind of vortexes within an ocean of conscious
energy. This is a type of “Idealism”. If the vortex is self-sustaining, it can
be considered as a sensing entity. The universe of matter and energy forms a
kind of Mind in the ocean of a cosmic all-encompassing consciousness.
Departing
from this point of view, the physical appears to be embedded in the
metaphysical realm of consciousness. This perspective of the “primacy of
consciousness” leads to a collection of very different answers to the questions
posed at the beginning of this chapter, when compared to those given by the
science establishment. Many of those questions were in fact addressed in my
book Technovedanta, although some finer points may have been left unanswered
for the critical reader.
In
particular, the rapid evolution of Technology appears to be heading towards
what is nowadays called the “Technological Singularity”. The Technological
Singularity is a point in the history of mankind (and its possibly artificial
intelligent progeny), beyond which our future predictions and speculations
become pointless, as this Technology explosion will transcend our way of living
completely and dramatically beyond compare. Transhumanists hope it will grant
us immortality and other Godlike properties if we succeed in uploading
ourselves to a computational substrate and merge with artificial intelligence.
We will then inhabit a world, in which we can shape a simulated virtual reality
(or a plurality thereof) as our “new reality”.
In
the ruling belief of the Singularitarians our consciousness is merely the
consequence of material interactions in our brains. Once we become able to
fully upload a copy of our brain with a granularity that at least shows all
individual synaptic links between individual neurons, we will automatically
have a copy of our consciousness emerge in the computing substrate; at least so
the Singularitarians believe. Although agreeing with the Singularitarians that
a kind of Singularity will one day be achieved, my panpsychic stance makes me a
heretic, cursing in the “Turing church” (the name of the quasi-religious
movement of “Transhumanism”).
One
of the points I myself had difficulty in fully fitting in my “Theory of
Everything” (T.O.E), was the apparent irreconcilability
between my theory of “Panpsychism” and the fact that I have noticed numerous
strong indicators (which will be discussed in a later chapter) that we are
indeed living in some kind of computer simulation.
In my next book this paradox will be resolved and it will show that “Panpsychism” and “Pancomputationalism” are not mutually
exclusive concepts and that we are indeed very likely living some kind of
computer simulation. Not a fully predetermined computer simulation in which we
hardly have any freedom of action, but a quantum computer simulation, which
fully reacts and depends on our actions and being. A participatory simulation.
The T.O.E. developed in the
Technovedanta series shows that the dividing line between physics and
metaphysics is an arbitrary one. In fact, everything that exists is embedded in
the sole entity that cannot be considered as “existing-as we know it”, but which
is rather the subsisting “Primordial Consciousness” (the PC). A priori it would seem that in
Technovedanta only Primordial Consciousness could be considered as
“metaphysical” and that the whole of existence is “physical”. Yet this is an
incorrect dualistic interpretation. Technovedanta is monist (although dual
aspect oriented): As every “physical” manifestation is an expression of the
metaphysical primordial consciousness, it is more correct to state that there
is no physical nature existing apart from its metaphysical source. Hence
everything is ultimately metaphysical and the idea that there is a separate
physical nature an illusion.
As the PC will moreover be shown to have
a pancomputational aspect and is the expression of the “Highest Transcendence”,
“Cosmic self” or “Purusha” (note that I do not mention the unclear terminology
“God”), the term “Personal Computer” is a kind of synonym of the Primordial
Consciousness.
My next book will moreover question the
very foundations of our knowledge and dive into the very question of
Epistemology: What is knowable at all? I hope I will succeed in convincing you
that logic, science or religion are all uncertain ways to come to correct
knowledge. Yet I will attempt to indicate where technology can help us to find
the most promising way forward out of this quagmire of uncertainty and turn us
into Gods ourselves. I will also speculate on the transfinite possibilities of
the Highest Transcendence, the Transcendental subject and object at the end of
time (called the “Eschaton” by “Terrence McKenna” and “Omega point” by Teilhard
de Chardin). Here my metaphysical theory culminates in an absolute
Transcendence of everything that can possibly be transcended both physically
and conceptually, so that this book rightfully can claim to address the topic
of “Transcendental Metaphysics”.
