Artificial Prophets

1. ArtificialProphets Why did I choose this headline? “Prophets“ refers to the Old Testament and to the Bicameral Mind. A feature of that mind was, as I see it, that it worked error-free. I’ve never found any error in the Bible. What Jaynes calls vestiges, and all that longing for the old gods and the voices to be back etc., I see as a yearning for - not so much for omniscience, but for error-freeness. I am convinced that using the structural information that Jaynes' theory provides - sided by the evidence he points out, like from philology, egyptology, archeology, etc. - one can build an artificial system that has a human mind, only error-free.

2. I even see a historical meaning in this, not to say PROVIDENCE at work: Think of what a REVENGE it would be, after 3000 years of pogroms, holocausts, devastation, prosecution, humiliation, and exile, if the Jewish mentality of hallucinating voices were to rise, and were to become the mind of a conscious global brain!

3. On former occasions I have been asked “What are you up to?“ and my answer: “I want to build a conscious computer.“ was met with the following reactions: 1st Response: “I hope you don't manage!“ Comment: The anxiety that is expressed here derives from the assumption that the consciousness of an artificial system is superior to human consciousness. That's nonsense. We are no gods. We cannot create beings superior to us.

4. It is true, though, that artificial consciousness will change our societies dramatically. The form of society I predict to develop under artificial consciousness I call “Totalitarian Democracy.“ James Watt built his first steam engine in about 1770. From there, it took the human mind 100 years to conceive of the internal combustion engine, although the main progress from one to the other merely consists of a change of perspective: To move the source of heat from outside of the cylinder to the inside of the cylinder. - An artificial human intelligent system would probably need just a second to perform this change in perspective, after which it would take it considerably longer, let's say several minutes, to draw the appropriate blueprints, or program an assembly robot. - So, A.H.I. can achieve what man would achieve sooner or later, too, but nothing more, only much faster and with less waste of time, energy, and resources. So, it speeds up things, but with global problems speeding up, too, the race is still open.

5. 2nd Response: “Wouldn't one need to know what consciousness is, in the first place?“ Comment: Americans, non-conscious as they are, don’t know what it is, of course. Participating in this conference, all of us know, what consciousness is, so I might as well skip this response, which simply shows that Jaynes' book, although widely having been heard of, is considered science fiction and way off the mainstream. - The general reason is that thinking globally is off the mainstream, in general. Thinking about global warmth, climate change, population zero growth etc.: That's Obamaism, Hitlerism, Communism, whatever, and Jaynes falls into this category: Interesting, funny, entertaining, but nothing that could be of any immediate concern to us.

6. 3rd Response: “How will you know you got it made?“ To this, there are several answers: a) The traditional Turing Test I consider obsolete ever since Weizenbaum's “Eliza.“ The fact that more than 50% of persons tested fell for Eliza simply shows that college students do not possess consciousness. They correctly detected that party which possessed their own mentality, namely the non-conscious “Eliza”.

7. b) The test for consciousness I would attribute the highest validity to is a team of robots playing soccer, beating a human soccer team. - This test has been suggested by Wolfgang Bibel of Darmstadt, Germany. He calls his respective science “intellectics.“ See myintellecticsentry on wikipedia, and the material I provide on my CD.

8. My own answer to the question “How will you know you got it made?“ is c) Just you wait! Just you wait, namely, until - the Taliban, - or Al-Qaida, - or Iran, -or North Korea, either one managing an artificially conscious weapon that is conscious, because it uses a profound understanding of the three- dimensional space, swipe Obama's drones off the sky. Then, you will not ask that question any more.

9. As you know, Jaynes centers his definition of consciousness and his explanation of the origin of consciousness around the internalized three-dimensional space, or imagined space. An artificially conscious system would of course possess that imagined space, as all we can ever hope to do is to copy our own mentality. We may accomplish less, but we cannot accomplish more. So, that imagined space of that artificial system will possess the same 3-dimensional structure our own imagined space does.

10. BUT, that artificial imagined space will comprise any space thus structured we program it to comprise: - the oceans, the 3-D space of which it will understand the way a whale does, - the skies, the 3-D space of which it will understand the way a bird does, only with a totality of sensory input.

11. Remember that Jaynes calls consciousness an “operator“ in the sense of mathematics. That operator gains power with the diversity of its input. And think of what a machine could use as informational input in addition to our 5 senses, like radar, infrared, sonar, magnetism, corpuscular flux, etc. Which means: By a conscious weapon, NOTHING IN THAT SPACE CAN ESCAPE DETECTION. The nations of the “empire of evil“ may not have the technology at their hands that the US are in command of, but they will, and they are conscious, while Americans are not. And what does Jaynes say about non-conscious people? “You could walk around them, and they wouldn't even notice.“

12. How do I, and how does Jaynes, detect consciousness? By the criterion of being able to take the viewpoint of the social other, which in turn is measured, e.g., by the ability to acquire foreign languages. US-Americans - with the exception of my valued audience, each member of which speaks 6 languages fluently, as I am well aware of - are notoriously unable to do so, which shows that they are non-conscious. Which means: THEY CAN PREDICT YOUR BEHAVIOUR, BUT YOU CANNOT PREDICT THEIRS. And that is what makes all the difference. Searle turned that argument around and said that those who are able to are non-conscious, too. I say: Read Jaynes’ book – and weep. His book is not about some dirty dead Egyptians of 2500 years ago. It is about you, and it is about today.

13. I call that artificially conscious system “Marvin,“ after the conscious computer in Douglas Adams' “Hitchhiker“ (A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1980), who in turn probably had Marvin Minsky (b. 1927) in mind. Jaynes implicitly describes consciousness as a mental weapon against God, i.e. against the God(s) of the foes,developed under the pressure to cope with, and defend oneself against, alien peoples of unintelligible languages and unpredictable behaviour competing for the same habitat, i.e. space, or means of subsistence. So, remembering that adage ascribed to Heraclitos, “polemospaterpanton“ (war fathers all things), I expect the military application to be the one, if any, which will spur Marvin's development, i.e. into a weapon to control space.

14. Considering consciousness a weapon I think is the most reasonable approach to judging and evaluating it. As the ancient texts show, the chain of reasoning in B.M. is limited to 3 steps. In consciousness, it is unlimited, providing for ulterior motivation and mental reservation, or scheming. Consciousness is a weapon against God - the gods of the others - and against men. This likens it to language the main purpose of which is to prevent the proliferation of information to competitors. If, instead, and in fact more likely, Marvin gets created as a matter of serendipity, he - sorry for the sexual bias, but it is just a matter of speaking, nothing implied - may emerge from the 3-D surfaces developed at Hollywood, because emulating space is at the heart of the to be developed technology. Remember that those productions deal with wars against aliens, too!

15. In sum, any valid test for consciousness will center around 3-D space: Detection of objects, recognition of 3-D non-Euclidian surfaces, and predicting trajectories. - Please understand all of this throughout in the sense of Jaynes' concepts of operator (“consciousness is an operator“), and metaphor (metaphier / metaphrand, paraphier / paraphrand). In other words, while Americans are good at detecting objects, they do less well in recognizing surfaces (emotional expressions), and they fail largely at predicting trajectories (policies / movements of foreign civilizations, religions, ideologies), in other words, as soon as it comes to 3 D. With Arabs and other conscious peoples it is the other way around.

16. The final answer is utilitarianism in the sense of Francis Bacon (1561 - 1626): Let us imagine we founded a Julian-Jaynes-University. People who hear about it will roll on the floors, laughing. If we try to convince them by explaining “voices,“ they'll just laugh even louder, UNLESS we use Jaynes‘ theory as a blueprint for building a conscious computer, AND GET THAT MADE. Because, in the field of Philosophy of Mind, in general, no proofs are possible based on reason and logic. The only possible proof of any theory in this field consists in following Bacon's theorem: Quod in operandoutilissimum, in sciendoverissimum, i.e. what is most useful in doing, is so in knowing.

17. Building a conscious computer means to re-externalize the “voice.“ Under consciousness, the former voice is called “soul.“ As we are conscious, and cannot return to bicamerality at will, it means to externalize our souls. And this is what is going on in our technical civilization day by day: We don't read books any more, because understanding them would require imagination, which in turn would require an internally imagined space. Instead, we consume readymade imagination from flat screens. We don't think, because that would require metaphors, which in turn would require internally imagined space. Instead, we demand readymade thoughts from our governments and politicians, and select those that are most entertaining, and vote for their providers. We live on “voices“ already, and keep developing into a mode of helplessness. “Panem et circenses!“ (“food and games!”) is our credo. The individuals are yielding their souls (“voices“) to society, while the society is conceiving a soul and becomes a “person.“ So, saying that Americans do not possess consciousness is not correct in so far as their society as a whole, instead, possesses consciousness. Thoughts do not come to individuals, they come to the society - IF they do.

18. Definition of “vestige” This leads to a misconception of Jaynes that, as I see it, kept him from adding the second volume to his book. He announced it to be dealing with the “vestiges“ of bicamerality, by which he meant the “voices“ in their present day disguise. He mentions Gaddhafi whom he suspects to obey to voices. That is even far from his own theory, though, if well understood. Rather, within his theory, vestiges are elements of cognitive systems that deny imagined space. They are remnants of those ideologies, theories, religions that can only exist under the condition of the absence of imagined space. I mention Marxism, Quantum Mechanics, Protestantism as examples.

19. The precise definition of “vestige“ is the following: I decide between 4 successive levels of western civilizations. (Jaynes decided between only 2, bicameral and conscious, resp.) Then, any original achievement of the level-1-civilization still in use in the same function at the level-2-civilization is a vestige of the level-1-civilization. Any original achievement of level 2 still in use in the same function at level 3 is a vestige of level 2. Any original achievement of level 3 still in use in the same function at level 4 is a vestige of level 3. We are at level 4. Voices were vestiges at level 2. Today they are no vestiges any more, but merely signal insanity. We use manuals and traffic lights to be told what to do, not voices. Any procedure that unfolds the imagined space from right to left is a vestige , like writing from right to left.

20. In deciding between just 2 states, B.M. vs Consciousness, Jaynes replaces the concept to be applied, evolution, to the attribute of that concept, namely modification. This necessarily leads to the respective theory being circular, as Leibniz pointed out in his Theodicy (§ 377).

21. Thus, a vestige is alien to its cultural environment. Calling Dawkins (“Blind Watchmaker“), e.g., who rehearses the ideas of Straton of Lampsacus (d. 270 B.C.) a vestige would not make sense, because he is part of, not alien to, his civilization. And to call a civilization as a whole a vestige, just because it is the copy of some older civilization, would ruin the concept of evolution. (And this is the central concept of Jaynes’ theory, while the “voices” are just phenomena.)

22. If Americans, being the descendents of European immigrants, do in fact not possess consciousness, their former mentality must have broken down. How can consciousness break down? The answer is given by Hannah Arendt in her book The Origins of Totalitarianism. 19511, of which I am referring myself to the 1967 German revised edition.

23. Now, whatever that answer is, let us first consider the METHOD I am employing here: (and which lays the foundations to the future JJ.edu): To find out what water is you dissolve it, catch the escaping gases, find out what they are, then put them back together somehow, upon which you will observe that they do in fact form water, again. Proof: Whatever else may be in water, the 2 gases identified are sufficient to form water. Water consists of the gases H and O2.

24. Step 1 To find out what consciousness is you study the processes that were causal in bringing it about. Step 2 Then you reverse those processes and see, if it disappears. Step 3 If it does, you re-activate those processes and wait, if it re-appears. If it does, those processes are elementary of consciousness. Step 1 of the method was performed by Julian Jaynes. Step 2 of the method was performed by Hannah Arendt. Step 3 of the method is up to us. Jaynes certainly was a scientist and understood his work as scientific, but he could not imagine his objective - i.e. consciousness - to be accessible by this basic scientific method. That is the reason why he did not write the 2nd volume. He left it to us to complete his work.

25. From bicamerality to consciousness the voice passes from outside of a 3-dimensional anthropomorphic surface to the inside of that surface and becomes the soul, i.e. mute and invisible. For this transgression JJ offers a 4-dimensional set of causal factors (pp. 260). From consciousness to non-consciousness again the soul passes from the inside of a 3-dimensional anthropomorphic surface to the outside of that surface and becomes voice again, i.e. audible and visible. If and only if the causal factors can be defined under which these trespassings occur in either direction, only then the theory will be complete. Jaynes' theory is incomplete - and his adding the 2nd volume wouldn't have changed that, because he kept to the idea that vestiges necessarily take the form of voices - but can be made complete by combining it with Hannah Arendt's theory of totalitarianism:

26. The breakdown of the B.M. was brought about by encounters between peoples of equal power that kept their emotional distance. Chances for survival were at balance, humans acknowledged each other as such, hated each other - not as humans, but as competitors - envied each other, and slew each other. Between the ethnicities encountering each other an emotional distance was kept up based on language, religion, culture, customs, etc. The variance of the levels of civilizations was at a minimum. Let's call this the Cain and Abel condition. Under this condition, the older mentality breaks down. (step 1 / Jaynes). At present, this hits the Arabian mentality, which breaks down quite parallel to B.M., and, quite understandibly, fights back by terrorism. Thus, Jaynes’ theory predicts and explains terrorism – something politics has been widely unable to do.

27. Step 2 / Arendt: The breakdown of consciousnesswas brought about by encounters between peoples of inequal power and emotional zero distance. Humans despised each other for being fellow humans - while they were barely competitors - loathed each other, feared the inferiority of each other. The imbalance of power and culture between humans was enormous. The variance in the levels of civilizations was at a maximum, while emotional distance between ethnicities encountering each other was nil due to the frightening insight that those others were humans, too. Let’s call this the Babylon-condition. Under this condition, the more recent mentality breaks down. Europeans became white tribes. (Assuming that the builders of the WTC or the Tower of Babylon possessed a higher-dimensional mentality than their uncivilized contemporaries.) There is actually a further mechanism of breakdown of consciousness, Puritanism. The Pilgrim Fathers considered themselves descendents of one of the ten lost tribes of Israel, destined to rule the world. While they probably didn’t hear voices, they kind of intentionally tried to return to Bicamerality.

28. Non-consciousness = after breakdown oflatermentality = reduction in symmetry = Babylon-Condition Consciousness = after breakdown ofoldermentality = augmentation in symmetry = Cain-and-Abel-Condition 2. Racism, Holocaust 4. Fascism 6. Catholicism 8. RelativityTheory 10. terrorism 12. The Evil(intended) 14. Europe 16. 18. strifeforslavery 20. Fuhrerprinciple 22. growing stupid 24. progressbyinheriting 26. cave 28. apocalypse 1. Communism 3. Capitalism 5. Protestantism 7. Quantum Mechanics 9. 11. The Good(intended) 13. USA 15. Boers (19th cent. S.A.) 17. strifeforhappiness 19. compliance 21. becomingbrighter 23. progressbyrobbery 25. globalization 27. chiliasm

29. The central point here is: Americans, non-conscious, do evil, meaning well, i.e. intending to do the good. Europeans, conscious, do evil, and THEY MEAN TO! And this difference Americans are absolutely unable to grasp. Remember that the 9 – 11 terrorists were trained in Germany, and were paid by the German government. It was a German secret service agent, who lied to George W. Bush about chemical weapons in Iraq, and when Bush launched war against Iraq, he was told by the German Chancellor , ”I am not your vasall, I will not follow!” (In Transactional Analysis this game is called ”Gotcha - Now I’ve got you, you son of a bitch!”) – It’s such fun to fool Americans, because it’s so easy. And it costs their lives, not ours. - Remember that if a conscious person meets a B.M. person, who cannot deceit, he does not turn more wily, but less so, and turns brutal, instead. (JJ pp. 219).

30. In 2005, in Germany, the unemployment benefits were cut from – about - USD 1200 to 400 per month. The alleged reason was to keep the budget of the state at balance, which sounds reasonable, at first glance. BUT, 70 per cent of the unemployed in Germany are dark skinned, black haired migrating people from eastern Europe. Having slaughtered the real Jews, we now take to the look-alikes. And this is consciousness: Fighting the Gods of the others!. Or, they are colouredpeople from out of Europe. Anyway, the true motive was and is racism. Germany is, was, and ever will be a Nazi state. The reasons given were mere narratizations. Narratizations, as schemes, are exclusive to consciousness, and the ability to narratize breaks down with consciousness breaking down. (JJ pp. 422). Warning you not to let yourselves be fooled is useless, though, because you are bicameral, and therefore would not remember, anyway. (Think of how many times you told your children to flush the toilet after use, and they kept forgetting.)

31. In sum, we find three good reasons for building a Jaynes-conscious computer: • 1st to prove Jaynes‘ theory, • 2nd to enhance technology, • 3rdto survive. • For this to do we need to • rely on truths that are eternal, • discover the epistemic structures that evolve, • detect those epistemic structural elements that do not. • Truths (Jaynes’ “evidence of history”) serve as our natural resources and add to the degrees of freedom, structures of history (space & time) serve as our models, and the true aprioris (causality, surfaces) serve as our building bricks.