I would suggest that a critical point in the development of true consciousness came when we moved out of the forest.  In the forest, the primary sensory mode was scent, the recognition and filing away of discrete molecules that conveyed specific digital meanings as to their source.   Moving to the open grassland meant that proto-humans had to shift dominance from scent to sight, rather quickly on the fly.  Sight is a completely different kind of processing from scent, requiri...

I've been intrigued for decades with the way that discontinuities might influence us in subtle - or not so subtle - ways.  Most of us ignore the fact that catastrophes happen.  We are shielded from death up close and personal.  We buy our big screens and SUVs while the future of life on the planet - including all the people we love and their kids and their kids, etc. - is in the balance, and a billion or so of us are on the brink of starvation while we who have a choice, ...

Check out O'Keans across the street from the Tustin library, OC CA US Oddly enough, this coffee shop is a kind of intellectual nexus for the area, one of several. At seemingly random times, some group - Christian intellectuals, Japanese families, Korean families, etc., college students, philosophers, gamers, digerati ... somehow arrive as a cohort and take over the space.  There is just enough room inside for 2 or 3 such groups to cluster with a few seats left.  O'Keans r...

Welcome back.  REM:  November 8th, Election...  November 25~27, LOSCON...   www.loscon.org I've done this sort of thing several times now, each time from a different angle. Why? I have a dream ... of a time when we have the credibility matrix that I suggested publically in 1999 at ICANN https://forum.icann.org/iana/comments/03oct1998-10jan2000/msg00298.html Then, everything of public significance that happens at a venue such as LOSCON wil...

There was a time when libertarianism seemed to make sense.  It explained so much, so clearly.  It was, briefly, the darling of the media and major politicians such as Reagan paid lip service and appointed officials based on their libertarian creds, long before the radical right of the Tea Party demonstrated how to leverage commitment into influence.  Reportedly, major corporate funding financed grants and college endowments aimed at proving and proclaiming the wonders&nb...

First, let's test the system.  OK...   Edit worked... What this is about: What we don't see on the web.  Who we don't hear on the web or in general. Censorship directly and by marginalization. The price of the truth and the profitability of deceptions. Who is responsible. Note: the room for storage in the cloud and elsewhere on planet Earth is currently estimated to be about half as big as the data submitted.  That means that 50% of all t...

Here we go: The universe is a whole.  No part can contradict that.  (thought experiment goes here) Dimensions of analysis: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Cybernetics, Decision Theory, Evil, Freedom, Justice, Limbic Resonance, Love, Perceptual Reaffirmation, Personal Trust, Perversion of Thought, Physics, Property Theory, Sex, Singularity, Social Contract, Sociopaths I'm using my algebraic analytics.  While I adopted this methodology in the mid-'70'...

Phil Osborn, February 27 th , 2008.  On Morals:*  (Restarted 10/02/2016 due to glitches) Overview and summary of “On Morals,” by Phil Osborn Wherein I present a new, independent and powerful reason why we would want to be "good," even when we would benefit otherwise from doing evil. ********************************************************************************************************** An aside - not intended for permanent inclusion: 06/12...

  Update: 10/04/16   My link to this from the Orange County Science Fiction Club has been taken down. For at least a couple of decades now, I have attended the monthly meetings of the OCSFC on a fairly regular basis.  What could go wrong at a science fiction club?  Murphy's Law rules, but recent meetings have clearly more to do with Murphy's estranged mother-in-law: https://www.meetup.com/Orange-County-Science-Fiction-Club/events/231893455/ I...

I recently developed a really great relationship.  My new friend has read so many of the same books, seen the same movies, enjoyed the same sf, thought the same thoughts that it often feels like talking to myself.  And, she has a great sense of humor. It looked like a dream come true.  We sometimes disagreed, but we both took the disagreements as opportunities for exploration and growth.  About time, damn it! Until she suddenly made a declaration to the effect that everyth...

In response to today's "Scholars' Circle" on KPFK - Sunday, 09/04/2016 12 noon: I wrote: Thanks for an XLNT program. I believe we met years ago at Chapman University at the Yu Torture Memo presentations. Regarding bird communication capability: I have informally studied crows and ravens for about three decades, and for several years I had a red-front Amazon parrot.  After several years during which my parrot had virtually no contact with any other parrots, I t...

So, I'm sitting at the public computer at the Tustin Library as usual, and there is the typical encounter of the hostile kind - gang-banger with girl with noisy baby.  Which primed me for a discovery. Sometime later, after the security guard once again intervened between me and the gang banger, I was watching the Fermi paradox video on the Kurzweilai.net site, trying to screen out all the noise from yet another kid who can't be bothered to shut up, more precisely a mother wh...