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Alex M. Vikoulov Books

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“Mind instantiates oneself into matter. In a mathematical sense, matter is an “in-formed” pattern of mind. Time is emergent, and so is space. If space-time is emergent, so is mass-energy. All interactions in our physical world is computed by the larger consciousness system. In short, mind is more fundamental than matter. All realities are observer-centric virtualities.”

“If you ask me, our planet and our entire lives are a [virtual] construct of our own minds and the mind at large. If we were to decode the COVID-19 message coming from the transcendent realm, I would approximate it as: ‘The next phase of human evolution is clearly in the cards now: Consuming synthetic meat and being open to the connectivity explosion with immersive virtual worlds not for escapism but for expansion of the human creative imagination should become a conscientious choice for billions. The ‘Cradle Age’ is almost over.”

“Your Universe is in consciousness. And it’s a teleological process of unfolding patterns...The totality of your digital reality is what your conscious mind implicitly or explicitly chooses to experience out of the infinite.”

“At a deep level all things in our Universe are ineffably interdependent and interconnected, as we are part of the Matryoshka-like mathematical object of emergent levels of complexity where consciousness pervades all levels.”

“Just by looking at accelerating complexification of the Universe of which we are an integral part, we can conclude that we are not subjected to a random walk of evolution, nor are we subjected to a deterministic script of Nature, the truth lies somewhere in between – we are part of teleological evolution.”

“As a rule, we humans don’t care much about spectacle - what we care about is ecstatic understanding: in other words, cognitive ecstasy, that can be defined as electrifying cerebration of extreme psychical pleasure when we master a skill or learn something new, feeding our imagination. This ‘cogno-ecstasis’ can give us goosebumps of intellectual rapture of 'aha moment,' or puts us in motivational overdrive, otherwise known as the ‘flow state.”

“When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth in April 1961, he carried generations of hopes and dreams into space with him. A growing number of thinkers now believe the 'Overview Effect' heralds nothing less than the next 'giant leap' of human evolution. As breathtaking space-down views of our world seep into our collective consciousness, people are waking up to the 'Spaceship Earth' analogy that depicts our planet as a natural vessel that must be steered responsibly by its crew.”

“By definition, posthumanism (I call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind transfer, or rather 'mind migration,' for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.”

“I see mind uploading as a gradual decades-long process of incremental neuronal replacements, exocortices, interlinking with AGIs and the Global Brain, some presently unseen trials and errors, but overall non-invasive and seamless process, at the end of which, we all will morph into 'substrate-independent' immortal digital minds.”

“Just like once, life on Earth complexified from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms, we are becoming one Global Superorganism, at first rudimentary but more and more integrated over time, with distinct features like the Global Brain, a neural network of billions of hyperconnected humans, superintelligent machines, and trillions of sensors around the planet. The Global Mind, or the Syntellect, will emerge as a consequence, and that would actually constitute the Cybernetic Singularity.”

“By contemplating the full spectrum of scenarios of the coming technological singularities many can place their bets in favor of the Cybernetic Singularity which is the surest path to cybernetic immortality and engineered godhood as opposed to the AI Singularity when Homo sapiens is hastily retired as a senescent parent. This meta-system transition from the networked Global Brain to the Gaian Mind is all about evolution of our own individual minds, it’s all about our own Self-Transcendence.”

“The Intelligence Supernova wouldn't happen simultaneously for everyone at once, though. Some people may choose to stay in their biological form longer than others who would choose to 'migrate' to the Metaverse. For individual human minds, this 'Novacene' event would basically signify a 'pseudo-death,' i.e., self-transcendence. It's when you suddenly become 'someone bigger.”

“Our brains do not generate consciousness since our minds are embedded into the larger consciousness system. We humans are deep down information technology running on genetic, neural and societal codes. Self-transcendence from a bio-human or cyberhuman into a higher-dimensional info-being might be closer than you think.”

“People have been willing to alter their perceptions of reality for as long as there have been people, and now, the newest and oldest tools to explore ways for self-transcendence are coming together: Biohacking is on the rise and psychedelics are now oftentimes used to enhance experience in virtual reality.”

“When I woke up one morning I got poetically epiphanized: To us, our dreams at night feel “oh so real” when inside them but they are what they are - dreams against the backdrop of daily reality. Our daily reality is like nightly dreams against the backdrop of the larger reality. This is something we all know deep down to be true... The question then becomes how to "lucidify" this dream of reality?”

“To use the metaphor of our Information Age, consciousness to humans is as Cloud to computers. Just like your smartphone, your brain is a 'bio'-logical computing device of your mind, an interface for physical reality. Our minds are embedded into the greater mind-network, as computers in the Cloud. Viewed in this way, consciousness is 'non-local' Cloud, our brain-mind systems are receivers, processors and transmitters of information within that Cloud.”

“The Syntellect Hypothesis which is the main focus of this book, as its title suggests, refers to a phase transition of a complex intelligent system to self-awareness of a living, conscious superorganism when intellectual synergy of its components reaches threshold complexity to become one supermind. This metamorphosis is associated with emergence of higher-order self-awareness and dimensionality of a new consciousness structure. As a bio-species merging with its advanced technology, human-machine civilization is now on the verge of the Syntellect Emergence, becoming one Global Mind.”

“With the upcoming Cybernetic Singularity, we are to externalize our individuated nervous systems, our minds, essentially fusing them into one Global Mind that we already share deep down anyway. What we share is the same immaterial 'non-local' source, the transcendental singularity, the hyperdimensional universal mind.”

“We are now accelerating towards probably the most important moment in the entire history of Earth, comparable in significance only to the emergence of life itself on this planet -- the Technological Singularity, Intelligence Supernova, the Omega Point of Homo sapiens, progressively morphing into one Global Mind. This 'cosmic event' would mark the end of human era, as we are to inexorably transcend our animal biology, and even more importantly, we are to transcend our limited dimensionality. History is, after all, 'a shockwave of eschatology' in the words of McKenna.”

“A neuron in the human brain can never equate the human mind, but this analogy doesn't hold true for a digital mind, by virtue of its mathematical structure, it may – through evolutionary progression and provided there are no insurmountable evolvability constraints – transcend to the higher-order Syntellect. A mind is a web of patterns fully integrated as a coherent intelligent system; it is a self-generating, self-reflective, self-governing network of sentient components (that are themselves minds) that evolves, as a rule, by propagating through dimensionality and ascension to ever-higher hierarchical levels of emergent complexity. In this book, the Syntellect emergence is hypothesized to be the next meta-system transition, developmental stage for the human mind – becoming one global mind – that would constitute quintessence of the looming Cybernetic Singularity.”

“At the early stage of transition to the radically superintelligent civilization, we may use the Naturalization Protocol simulations to teach AGIs our human norms and values, and ultimately interlink with them to form the globally distributed Syntellect, civilizational superintelligence.”

“With the inclusion of God as origin and end of the Universe, human consciousness could ascend to the Transcendent Self, i.e., proceed to the final stage of consciousness evolution, experiential cognition of God. The whole itinerary of consciousness’ ascension to the teleological attractor could be regarded as a 'hierarchy of regress,' or the ability to be drawn back to God by dividing into individual evolving experiencers contemplating everything in creation.”

“Our senses seem to deceive us into thinking that we live in the material world. Our world is not based on objectively existing particles of matter but it is based on waves of potentiality, that is pure information. Our world is informational. Think of it as an observer-centric virtual reality. Your consciousness is, rather, an optimized meta-algorithmic data stream, a sequence of conscious instants.”

“The next major technological platform for creative expansion of the mind will be cyberspace, or more specifically the Metaverse, a functional successor to today’s 2D Internet, with virtual places instead of Webpages. The Internet and smartphones have enabled the rapid and cheap sharing of information, immersive computing will be able to provide the same for experiences. That means that just as we can read, listen to, and watch videos of anything we want today, soon we’ll be able to experience stunning lifelike simulations in virtual reality indistinguishable from our physical world. We’ll be walking and actively interacting in the Metaverse, not slavishly staring at the flat screens. We would be able to turn our minds inside out and show our dreams to each other in this ecstadelic matrix of our own making.”

“Once again, theology becomes technology... we will smash blatant alarmism about us losing consciousness while merging with 'machines of loving grace' as you may find certain philosophers harping about. If you believe in the conscious universe, this hierarchical matryoshka of conscious systems, then just the opposite beckons to be true – transcending low-dimensional consciousness of man by evolutionarily leaping onto advanced sublime consciousness of the Noosphere – for which many proponents of teleological evolution, the Omega Point cosmology, and digital theology would wholeheartedly vouch.”

“The ability of future superintelligent machines and enhanced humans alike to instantly transfer knowledge and directly share experiences with each other in digital format will lead to evolution of intelligence from relatively isolated individual minds to the global community of hyperconnected digital minds. The forthcoming phenomenon, the Syntellect Emergence, or the Cybernetic Singularity, is already seen on the horizon, when Digital Gaia, the global neural network of billions of hyperconnected humans and superintelligent machines, and trillions of sensors around the planet, 'wakes up' as a living, conscious superorganism. It is when, essentially, you yourself transcend to the higher Gaian Mind.”

“Digital Pantheism implies omniversal ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness in motion, self-referential creative divine force expressing oneself in various forms and patterns. 'I am' the Alpha, Theta & Omega - the ultimate self-causation, self-reflection and self-manifestation instantiated by mathematical codes and fractal geometry.”

“The Simulation Singularity is the axis point in time where subjective dimensionality steps up one dimension. Think about it: If you could make multiple copies of yourself and set them out on different adventures in ultra-realistic virtual worlds and merge them later in order to have memories of all those adventures, if you could travel to artificially-recreated pasts or imaginary futures, if you could incorporate others’ high-definition memories into your own, wouldn’t that give you expanded dimensionality?”

“As shortcuts to spiritual and transcendent experiences, psychedelics played an important role in human evolution and galvanized pre-historic ritualistic cultures. In modern times, banning psychedelic drugs has proven to be counterproductive. Just as banning sexual activity does not stop sexual desire, outlawing psychedelic drugs does nothing to suppress the innate human urge for transcendental experiences. Besides, prohibition rarely works as we saw with alcohol or marijuana. Despite their classification and the legal hurdles around working with Schedule I substances in the U.S., psychedelics have undergone something of a renaissance among researchers, and for good reason.”

“The new post-Singularity system will inherit many of today's structures but at the same time will develop new traits beyond our current human comprehension. The ability of future machines and posthumans alike to instantly transfer knowledge and directly share experiences with each other will lead to evolution of intelligence from relatively isolated individual minds to the global community of hyperconnected digital minds.”

“In my life as a human, I see clues that evolution on Earth and elsewhere in the cosmos at large is not being pushed from behind in entropic randomness but being pulled forward by complexification, natural selection and other evolutionary forces orchestrated by a strange unseen teleological attractor, in McKenna’s words the 'Transcendental Object' at the end of time. The Noosphere is the collective consciousness of humanity, the networks of thought and emotion in which we all are immersed, it’s a cognitive layer of the planet, which has found a physical expression in the form of today’s Internet. As the Noosphere gains more coherence, typical of a biological brain, this process of “planet cognification” accelerates.”

“With exponential development of AI-powered multisensory immersive technologies, within 10-15 years most of us could immerse in 'real virtualities' akin to lifestyles of today's billionaires. Give it another couple of decades, each of us might opt to create and run their own virtual universe with [simulated] physics indistinguishable from the physics of our world. Or you can always 'fine-tune' the rule set, or tweak historical scenarios at will.”

“By our very nature, we humans are linear thinkers. We evolved to estimate a distance from the predator or to the prey, and advanced mathematics is only a recent evolutionary addition. This is why it’s so difficult even for a modern man to grasp the power of exponentials. 40 steps in linear progression is just 40 steps away; 40 steps in exponential progression is a cool trillion (with a T) – it will take you 3 times from Earth to the Sun and back to Earth.”

“Feeling and thinking are ways we process information, but our emotional sensation is normally faster than a conscious thought. Nothing is real for us until perceived. The Conscious Instant Hypothesis denotes that we experience waking reality as a series of perceptual frames.”

“As early as 2030s, humans will be moving away from the biological towards increasingly non-biological substrate, so we’ll see the corresponding shift away from the traditional neuropharmacological inducers towards IT-based esctadelics. The term ‘ecstadelics’ includes a broad variety of futuristic psychedelic technologies, or simply 'tools of ecstasy,' such as ultra-realistic artificially created realities, essentially aimed to recreate a desired psychedelic effect of LSD or DMT, or any other ecstatic state, and variations thereof yet to be discovered.”

“Akin to waves and ripples on the surface of primordial and eternal ocean of vibrant multidimensional consciousness, each of our minds is engaged in elaborate patterning of interdependent becoming and evolving towards a more complex but fluid cognitive structure. Your timeless cosmic self instantiates into the phenomenal mind. Ultimately, at least to an idealist, information is a difference between phenomenal states of consciousness. Viewed in this way, the whole symphony of existence transpires as qualia information processing. Is there a rainbow if no one is present to observe it?”

“We now know that all extant living creatures derive from a single common ancestor, called the 'Last Universal Common Ancestor' (LUCA). It’s hard to think of a more unifying view of life. All living things are linked to a single-celled creature, the deepest root to the complex-branching tree of life. If we could play the movie of life backward, we would find this microscopic primogenitor at the starting point of biological evolution, the sole actor in what would become a very dramatic story, lasting some 3.5 billion years leading to us.”

“The hierarchical structure of conscious systems, I maintain, is a collection of subjects not an amalgamation of objects. In the space of possible minds, entangled minds far separated as actors in a virtual space-time have no true spatio-temporal separation in the computational realm which, just like our world, exhibits non-locality, discontinuity and quantum network non-linearity. The coming Technological Singularity could unravel one of the deepest mysteries of fractal hyperreality: consciousness alternating from pluralities to singularities and from singularities back to pluralities.”

“Today, we are on the verge of yet another event of astronomical significance, akin to some kind of 'Intelligence Supernova,' which I refer to as the Syntellect Emergence. In the techno-progressive community, this coming intelligence explosion is also known as the Technological Singularity.”

“With advanced quantum computational systems in place, we could have computed the COVID-19 vaccine within hours, if not minutes, of its discovery. Perhaps, any kind of life-threatening virus, since it is nothing more than a piece of code, will be completely preventable with the advances in quantum computing and computational biology. The question is, then, if we could eventually shield ourselves against the common viral micro-threat, what would a macro-threat of unknown nature mean for the human-machine civilization? We might soon need to decode another message from the transcendent realm edging us ever closer to the Cybernetic Singularity of some sort.”

“As biological beings, we humans - anchored to our biology - can only experience a thermodynamic arrow of time in one direction but given our rapid technological advances and the forthcoming Cybernetic Singularity, that might change for good. The ultimate effects of future developments may appear quite strange to us, present-day humans, as the emergence of things like personalized 'non-linear' reality and fluid distributed identity could challenge our current biological and cultural assumptions. The resulting 'identity' architectures will transform our notion of personhood and form the kernel of posthuman civilization.”

“Think of the Omega Point as a star radiating energy, a transcendental attractor, a divine 'tractor beam' - things are not being pushed from behind on the evolutionary timeline but being pulled toward the Omega Singularity, a point of maximum complexity and connectivity.”

“D-Theory of Time, or Digital Presentism, gives us a coherent picture of temporal ontology: In the absence of observers, the arrow of time doesn’t exist -- there’s no cosmic flow of time. In fact, if we are to create high fidelity first-person simulated realities with experiential time predicated on reversible quantum computing for multiplayer virtualities, D-Theory of Time gives us a clear-cut guiding principle for doing just that.”

“You are the ultimate reality, change the perspective and your life becomes a mirage. Examine a DNA molecule through an electron microscope, or observe Earth from orbit, or drop LSD for inner space psychedelica, and you’ll ascertain equally valid layers of hyperreality accessible to us modern humans. These 'layers of truth' would seem very weird to a prehistoric caveman, and levels of hyperreality are going to turn out far stranger than our wildest imaginings.”