11 Comments

It seems like Bobby is the only person in media with ideas or a message about how humanity can safely move through this scary phase. Most never offer solutions, only commentary on how bad things will get. Please keep the posts coming Bobby and thank you for your work.

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Thanks Kat, I appreciate your support and general advice over the years! It has definitely shaped much of R2O.

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Heard recently that today is much harder to be optimistic rather than pessimistic without sounding naive.

You challenge that through science which is remarkable.

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That's an interesting finding and it makes sense. It's difficult to find the right balance, because the science loses people, but too much science and they can't see the big picture message. But I think it can be done, and I'm glad to hear you think my attempts are close to the mark. Looking forward to our meta-awareness discussion soon and telling the R2O audience about I-opener!

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Bobby, I wish you all the best for this endeavor. More and more scientists are persuaded that creative evolution plays a key role in physics.

Fundamental reality may well be a timeless eternity. But even if so, timeless eternity can only be the unattainable top of a tower of reality with infinitely many floors. The view from any floor is tensed, changing, and evolving toward good outcomes selected by creative evolution.

I can't wait to read Hertog's book. We likely won't know if the book really reflects the last thoughts of Hawking, but Hawking had been shifting in this direction for a while (e.g. when he argued that there must be a physical equivalent of Gödel's theorem, and therefore physics will always be open).

"A new scientific paradigm that suggests life has cosmic significance and a transcendent purpose" would do real good to the world.

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Love the way you summed up reality, Giulio. I do think it is a growing tower of levels (emergences) that stretches toward infinity. But not all possible trajectories of reality get realized — as you said certain outcomes are selected by a creative evolutionary process. That means the future is not random, but moving towards a great cosmic attractor (although as you mention, this is likely just another step in the open-ended evolutionary process).

I am really looking forward to Hertog's book as well, and just watched the first half of an interview that he just did with Michael Shermer. Very exciting so far. Do you remember where you saw Hawking make this statement about a physical equivalent of Godel's theorem? That sounds really interesting. If we can trust Hertog, which I think we can, Hawking very much changed his mind at the end, toward a view of reality that seems very close to yours and mind.

Would love to add you to the neuromantic roster--maybe you could be an advisor and could give me a bio to post with the others (Howard Bloom and Adam Safron will be listed, to drop a couple names I think you know)?

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Hi Bobby,

Hawking on Gödel and physics:

"...But we are not angels, who view the universe from the outside. Instead, we and our models, are both part of the universe we are describing. Thus a physical theory, is self referencing, like in Gödel’s theorem. One might therefore expect it to be either inconsistent, or incomplete..."

http://yclept.ucdavis.edu/course/215c.S17/TEX/GodelAndEndOfPhysics.pdf

I hope Hertog covers this in his book.

Re "Would love to add you to the neuromantic roster--maybe you could be an advisor and could give me a bio to post with the others (Howard Bloom and Adam Safron will be listed, to drop a couple names I think you know)?"

I would be most pleased and honored. Bio: Giulio Prisco is a theoretical physicist by training, a former aerospace professional, and a writer. He is the author of "Tales of the Turing Church" (2020) and "Futurist spaceflight meditations" (2021). [Links in https://www.turingchurch.com/about ]. He calls himself a futurist and a cosmist, and he is interested in the interfaces between science, future studies, and spirituality.

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The pandemic felt like an abrupt end to a daydream where we realized how vulnerable each of us are to the system. We benefit greatly from it but lose our independence and self-sufficiency along the way. I’m glad to see there is a lot to hope for in the future with more focus on self-resiliency.

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It definitely exposed a vulnerability that none of us knew existed, and I think that shifted people's mindset and created a greater awareness for the need for resilient systems, as you said. The goal is to get that mindset to go mainstream. If you're looking for optimism about the future, you've come to the right place!

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I want to be able to somehow contribute to this movement through Omega. How can I get involved?

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Interesting ideas here that I'm excited to read and think about more as you write/release them. I am skeptical, however, that knowing the universe/life operates through a Darwinian process of correcting errors and adapting will make "the future... much more predictable than we previously thought. The trajectory of our civilization would also be much more predictable than we thought..." Things like chaos theory, frozen accidents, the butterfly effect, first mover's advantage and the network effect all make prediction essentially impossible. Would you care to elaborate on how/why you think future/trajectory predictions should be more within reach?

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