Many of the "Matrix" ideas can be seen as just a slightly different angle on ideas presented elsewhere in this blog - especially here , where I summarize "progress to date". Art is a useful species of simulation. It allows us to imagine different worlds using no more hardware than our senses and our brains. The result can go beyond what we usually think of as "metaphor" - even extending into the realms of myth and religion. The Matrix movie series provides a challenging dramatization of metaphors that are so commonplace that they have become tropes for empty speculation and dead-end philosophy. The movie updates some old ideas in dramatic new ways: Many religions, including the "Abrahamic" and Hindu traditions, regard reality as some kind of dream, with the "real", important reality being the realm of the gods. The "soul" is separable from the body and travels on after death into the more important realms of the gods. In such ...

good piece. Sooooooooooo, do we build our own matrix, or is built by others and the way they interact with us? Is this a simulation or is it and illusion? ...and how do we when our matrix comes in touch with reality. Is the matrix our physical body or only partly (your reference to surgery while awake) How does the illusion relate to our spirituality? Stuff for another blog.  1. We build our own matrix with the constant help of others - mostly indirect. Through language and the man-made environment, for example. A city may be regarded as a matrix. It exists through wide agreement on what it is, why it exists, the rules it enforces (walls, laws, roads). The city is called into existence because we all agree on what it means . To see this, imagine what a city is to, say, an e-coli bacterium or a crow. 2. It's a simulation that employs illusions sometimes. For example, we have the illusion that our eyes look out on the world constantly and smoothly. The brain allows us to miss bl...

The Matrix is one of the most successful, popular and lucrative movie franchises of all time.  I will assume the reader has watched at least some of the shows in this series, perhaps more than once. Quite apart from its entertainment value, the Matrix has provided a new "meme" for bar room philosophy: the idea that reality itself is a kind of "matrix" - that we are all living in a simulation. This has struck me as a rather stupid idea for a long time and I have occasionally bent my "back of the napkin" analysis tools to showing how ridiculous it is. But it's true . We are living in a simulation. Realizing this can be a big leap forward in our quest to understand ourselves and the universe we inhabit. How can this be true? Well, quite simply. Everything we experience is presented to our minds due to an amazingly complex set of sensations and brain processes. We never experience reality directly. We are born, live and die inside the simulated universe of...

This review may or may not be published by Amazon for an interesting reason: The book is an instant best-seller. I don't think I'm the only one who read it straight through as soon as I could get my hands on it. Amazingly, it seems that Amazon is being swamped with reviews ! For what it's worth, here's my take ... Portrait of a Malignant Narcissist Woodwards's book comes as no surprise for those who have been watching this sick man spiral dangerously into a fantasy world as he violently casts off all who attempt to challenge his delusions.  Woodward provides dozens of examples of this, along with the assessment of those closest to Trump: that he his a professional liar and a moron. Nothing new here. What we need to notice is how crazy and detached from reality this man really is. He is perfectly willing to explicitly risk World War III because he is unhappy with the real estate South Korea has granted to the US MIlitary.  It's all about money and projection of...

See this TED talk about AIDA We saw this kind of program back in the 1960's. It pumped out endless Bach fugues. Nobody claimed it to be intelligent. It was clever. The cleverness belonged to a human programmer, not a machine. AIVA is a musical instrument being presented by a musician and a guy who sells musical instruments. It's more like a piano than a Beethoven. Speaking of it as somehow being "creative" is a serious error logical error. It's a sales pitch by a thief who wants to sell you the work of other human beings. Anyone who plays a musical instrument knows how they seem to have a "life of their own", but nobody seriously thinks of a Stratovarius violin as being creative or alive in its own right. We know that a composer can be sued for copying a single phrase or chord progression from another composer and claiming it as his own. But if the composer copies hundreds of thousands of pieces, has he created a creative MIND? Or just a big pile of loot...

These are troubled times. Even if it weren't for Trump, we'd have climate change and nuclear weapons. If we could somehow deal with that we have pollution, genocide, overpopulation and endless war. How do we deal with this personally? I'd say the first thing is to realize that we do have a problem dealing with it personally - this is not at all the same as just worrying about world affairs which, admit it, we can't do anything about. Most of us feel helpless and depressed about all that, but fail to deal with these feelings separate from the endless bad news that causes them. It is these personal feelings of despair that we need to deal with. Most importantly, we need to see that these feelings have real-life consequences. In what follows, I tell you about how I build a personal "air raid shelter". I think of it as a "home base" where I can go at any time. From a foundation of peace and security, I am able to "keep my shit together" in spit...

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.  T. S. Eliot - Little Gidding I have been writing for a long time about the concept of "supermind" and the "dragon". Groups of humans - armies, governments - have a life of their own and thrive at the expense of the humans that oppose them - even their own members.  These groups steal our identity and prevent us from thinking for ourselves. It's all true, of course, but what is new is the total acceptance of the situation. Comfort almost. This is the human condition. Our "minds" function as part of a whole. It may be a mistake to "analyze" - to break things down into pieces, but indulge me for a moment while I describe things that make up our "minds" that are usually regarded as something happening between our ears. The brain, especially considered as part of the body (Damasio). The functio...