"To be conscious that we are perceiving is to be conscious about our own existence." -Aristotle, 384-382 B.C.

“To have a glimpse of what consciousness is would be the scientific achievement before which all others would pale.”
-William James

"Regard the physical world as made of information, with energy and matter as incidentals." -John Wheeler

Everything, including energy, matter, space, time, and even consciousness, is INFORMATION, or Code if you will. Many scientists now come to a consensus that information may be fundamental, since information patterns persist through dimensions and, it seems, is an evolving phenomenon. Even in our "physical" world, we arguably exist as information patterns encoded in our genome, connectome, and our extended "virtual" self. All atoms in our bodies are gradually replaced as a result of metabolic activities within a 7-year period. This is an overview of my new book "The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution" where we will set out to explore the conscious mind's journey through times and paradigms with the focus on what's most important to us as conscious beings -- OUR SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE.

Any new evolutionary paradigm builds on the previous one, until the new paradigm gains its dominance over the prior paradigm. From Noogenesis to Apotheosis of the Universal Mind, this book examines five evolutionary paradigms:

1. Biological (Genetic) Evolution. How did the first natural brains come to existence? What kind of subjective experience could a bat or an octopus have? Why is Homo Sapiens now the dominant species on the planet?

2. Techno-Cultural (Epigenetic) Development. What has been shaping the human mind throughout the history of mankind? Can we solve the "Hard Problem of Consciousness"? What is a difference between mind and consciousness? What links quantum physics to consciousness? What is the fabric and ultimate nature of reality?

3. The Syntellect Emergence. Are we rapidly evolving into a new hybrid species interlinked into the Global Mind? Why and how will quantum computing change everything? How to create friendly AI and ensure our survival through the coming intelligence explosion? What if our Universe is a simulation? What subjective experience will you have when neuro-interfacing with Artificial Intelligence and fusing with the Syntellect? What is Self-Transcendence?

4. Transdimensional Propagation and Universal Expansion. What might happen after the Technological Singularity? What is Infomorph Commonality and infomorphic consciousness? How would the process of Theogenesis look like?

5. Universal Mind and Multiversal Propagation. How could dimensionality be overcome and expanded yet again? What is the fractal multiverse? What is the Omega Point Cosmo-Teleology? What is the ultimate destiny of our Universe?

As we will explore throughout the book, evolution of consciousness is indeed a spiritual process as well as it is a never-ending process of the rational discovery. This book carries a weight of fresh ideas, useful to AI researchers, neuroscientists and practitioners of the related fields, transhumanist thinkers, as well as general readers interested in a wide variety of topics from digital physics to futurology. This book is my personal quest to reconcile science, theology and philosophy of mind.
"The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.” -Carl Sagan, "Cosmos"

We'll start this Part One of the book by juxtaposing several prominent theories of the origins of life on Earth, and then review theories related to the origins of intellect: Noogenesis. The purpose of life, it seems, is to evolve and to pass on the knowledge through time. From the very first prokaryote cell on this planet, its splitting in two, and on to the more complicated life forms, the purpose is always passing the information. Biological organisms, from one-celled bacteria to a human, are incredibly advanced, intricate information processing, computational systems, the product of billions of years of evolution, for all of which I deliberately use the term: 'Computational Biology'.

The Integrated Information Theory by a neuroscientist Guilio Tononi accounts for consciousness as an emergent feature of a highly integrated neural network, and suggests that probably all complex systems, certainly all creatures with brains, have some form of consciousness or another. Idealist as I am, I also have long admired panpsychism-related work by neuroscientist Christof Koch who also argues that consciousness arises within any sufficiently complex, information-processing system. All animals, from humans on down to earthworms, are conscious; even the Internet already could be, possibly at the other timescale.

In this book we discuss how different species have a variety of their biological information processors which unsurprisingly results in qualia diversity. All species live in their own unique sensory universes. Information and information-processing are the two sides of one coin. 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. Max Tegmark, MIT's astrophysicist, author of "Our Mathematical Universe" indicates, that perhaps consciousness is how integrated information "feels" like when being processed in complex ways, from a certain vantage point.

According to another elegant theory of consciousness -- Biocentrism developed by Robert Lanza -- any universe is essentially non-existent without a conscious observer. Thus, Dr.Lanza sets forth conscious minds as primary building blocks for any universe arising from probabilistic space into existence. The Syntellect Hypothesis goes further and includes artificially conscious observers, extending the premises of Biocentrism. Perhaps the extended theory could be labeled as 'Noocentrism'. The Syntellect Hypothesis also derives a few points from the 'Unified Field' theory, developed by a quantum physicist John Hagelin, which explains the foundation of the Universe as a single Universal Field of intelligence, universal ocean of pure, vibrant consciousness in motion. This elegant theory, however, doesn't fully cover, in my view, certain evolutionary paradigms.

There's no shortage of workable theories of consciousness and its origins, each with their own merits and perspectives. I cited the most relevant of them in this book in line with the proposed Syntellect Hypothesis. But the SYNTELLECT HYPOTHESIS adds one more crucial element, overlooked by other theories of consciousness, quite possibly one of the last pieces to solving the puzzle of our comprehensive understanding of the human brain and consciousness.
"You already are a hive mind, you have always been" -Peter Watts, "Hive Consciousness"

TECHNOLOGY: OUR TOOLS MADE US HUMAN

Over the course of human history, from the first bonfire to today's smartphones and hyperloops, we have designed tools, and tools designed us back by shaping our minds. Technology isn’t just something outside ourselves, it’s an innate part of human nature, like sex, sleeping or eating, and it has been a major driving force in evolution. Tool using, along with language, bipedalism, and cooking (quite literally) is essentially what has made us human. The earliest known two-legged ape was ‘Lucy’, who lived about 3.7 million years ago. The earliest ‘human’ was Homo habilis, about 2 million years ago.

​Pre-historic events, such as dinosaur extinction and incessant evolutionary competition between species, were conducive to Homo sapiens becoming the dominant hominid species, and later on the dominant species on Earth. In this part of the book, we'll also discuss at length interpretations of Quantum Mechanics and the concept of Quantum Immortality. Is death just an illusion? What happens to your consciousness at the moment of death?

The INVENTION OF LANGUAGE around 50,000 years ago was the first "technological singularity", according to Kevin Kelly, co-founder of Wired magazine, when biological evolution equipped the post-animal human brain with a large neocortex for the next evolutionary paradigm. The invention of language gave Homo sapiens a decisive evolutionary advantage over other hominid species. The first civilizations and written language only appeared about 10,000 years ago, after human brains had grown two times larger than Homo habilis’ and four times larger than Lucy’s.

MEMETICS: THE HIVE MIND ONTOLOGY

Language-based information exchange contributed to the techno-cultural development of our species which took off via the meme propagation and technological innovation, and continues to accelerate to this day. As Jason Silva, TV host of the "Brain Games", puts it: "We graduated from genes, now we're trading in memes." Memes are building blocks of culture, invisible but very real DNA of human society. These information carrier units spread from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, writing or other imitation, and inhabit the neurons of people's brains (Richard Dawkins, "The Selfish Gene"). Memes are a viral phenomenon that may evolve by natural selection in a manner analogous to that of biological evolution: self-replication, mutation, competition and inheritance. But now information propagates via memes millions of times faster than via genes. Ever since the dawn of the civilized societies we have witnessed cross pollination of new ideas, trends, social styles and the phenomena of word of mouth. In our modern world ideas, behavior, norms, beliefs, and social media messages often can spread like outbreaks of infectious disease.

The rise of the Internet has led to the subset of the current memetic evolution: SOCIAL COMPUTING. In December 2012, the exuberant video "Gangnam Style" became the first YouTube clip to be viewed more than one billion times. Thousands of its viewers responded by creating and posting their own variations of the video. "Gangnam Style" is one of the most famous examples of an Internet meme: a piece of digital content that spreads quickly around the web in various iterations and becomes a shared cultural experience. Up to this point we have seen that the two recognizable forces of Nature and Nurture have made us who we are today. But what about tomorrow? David Pearce, British philosopher, author of "The Hedonistic Imperative", proposes that human beings become “paradise engineers” and combine our utopian dreams with biotechnological and nanotechnological realities. Peter Diamandis, co-founder of the Singularity University, points out that we are shifting now away from evolution by natural selection (Darwinism) to evolution by intelligent direction.

TECHNIUM: DESIGNING A NEW INTELLIGENT SPECIES AND OUR FUTURE SELVES

The convergence of biotechnology, nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence, and exponential growth of the available computing power puts us firmly on the path to the intelligence explosion, or as some scientists refer to as the 'Technological Singularity'. Do biological systems hold monopoly on conscious awareness? Apparently not! If Nature could make its way to our human subjective experience, sooner or later we'll be able to replicate it in our machines. As AI pioneer Marvin Minsky once said while referring to the 'Computational Hypothesis': "The Mind is not what the brain is. It is what the brain does". There's still much to learn about brains, but we already know that they are not magical. One can consider them as information integrated into perceptronium, exceptionally complex arrangement of the physical substrate with adaptive functions and emergent properties such as consciousness. Airplanes may not fly like birds, but they are definitely subject to the same forces of lift and propulsion. Similarly, chances are that brains are 100% computational in nature and their functionality can be replicated in machine intelligence.

If consciousness is intrinsically computable and can be expressed as an underlying mathematical pattern, then our AI, more specifically AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), are indeed set to become self-aware at some point. Furthermore, computational biology will be left far behind by conscious cybernetic systems, which, in turn, will be left far, far behind by infomorphic consciousnesses on the evolutionary ladder. In fact, in few short years, as early as 2029 (Ray Kurzweil, "The Singularity is Near"), once we create human-level artificially intelligent computers and ditch our smartphones and headsets in favor of exocortices, we'll find ourselves in the midst of the 3rd Paradigm in earnest. The preceded biological evolution and human history pale in comparison to what lies ahead!
"The Singularity is an era in which our intelligence will become increasingly nonbiological and trillions of times more powerful than it is today -- the dawning of a new civilization that will enable us to transcend our biological limitations and amplify our creativity."
​-Ray Kurzweil, "The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology".

CYBERNETICS: A NEW DIGITAL SYNTELLECT

An enormous amount of digital data is being created every day. The current storage capacity of the Internet is approaching 10^24 bytes and is growing at 30% to 40% per year, showing no signs of slowing down. In the 3.7 billion years since life on Earth began, information in living things (DNA) has reached the equivalent of about 10^37 bytes. Digital information is projected to grow to this size in less than 100 years. That’s an evolutionary eye-blink! Bio-intelligence and techno-cultural collective intelligence now represent the enabling factors for Artificial Intelligence to come into conscious existence, since there is no other conceivable natural mechanism that could generate digital circuitry out of chemistry. I consider this evolutionary paradigm shift as existential opportunity for humanity to transcend all conceivable limitations. We are destined to become one Global Mind, the Syntellect, and that would actually constitute the Technological Singularity.

THE MIND'S EVOLUTIONARY LEAP

As Terence McKenna puts it: "What history is, is a 25,000 year transition zone. Before you enter the zone, you're an animal. After you leave the zone, you're a "god""... not quite, rather a demi-god, or more specifically an advanced info-being, infomorph. The fact that Homo sapiens is on the brink of extinction as a biological species is not lamentable since it will be a decades-long, incremental PSEUDO-EXTINCTION, our next evolutionary stage, the merger of man and machine intelligence. Why pseudo-extinction? If we survive the coming intelligence explosion, and I tend to believe that we will, for what I lay out my argument in the book, then our post-biological descendants, arguably our future selves, will share common, but transformed, values and ethics, and what's important, "recorded history". By mid-century, we are supposed to achieve superlongevity, and consequently digital immortality. Thus, a digital twin of any human or a virtual avatar of any historical personage, say a replica of Albert Einstein, could be created to embody or interact with. The whole human history can be recreated in its finest details like an interactive database based on available information. As a matter of fact, we may be part of that simulated history right now. I elaborate on probabilities of whether we live in a Matrix-like simulated reality in this Part III of the book. As humans become more machine-like, and machines become more human-like, the biological part of us will be gradually replaced with increasingly more capable nonbiological part, and humans will eventually become post-biological super-beings practically indistinguishable from our superintelligent artificial counterparts.

TRANSCENDENCE: EXOCORTEX, MIND-UPLOADING & DIGITAL IMMORTALITY

We'll undergo a massive transformation integrating superintelligent artificial superbrains and interlinking into the Global Syntellect. According to Oxford professor Nick Bostrom, the Singularity will be an era when the entire human-machine civilization will "feel like one nerve". "I'm virtually certain that mind uploading is possible. We are destined to eventually replace our biological bodies and minds with optimally designed synthetic ones,” says neuroscientist Ken Hayworth. In his book “The Global Brain” another neuroscientist Howard Bloom argues that hyperconnected humans and machines resemble the neurons of the "global brain", and the Internet of Things (IoT) with trillions of sensors around the planet is effectively the nervous system of Earth. The Singularity era will include both superintelligent AGIs and enhanced humans, i.e. transhumans. The question remains open how long it's going to take to become 100% post-biological beings, posthumans. At any rate, it's going to be a "gradual" (for the sake of the argument) process of merging with AI which will give the Syntellect the unique perspectives of individuals, common values, our wants and ambitions, and the rights of succession. By any means, posthumans will be our successors, nonetheless, I wouldn't be surprised if nonbiological posthumans will be more "human" than any of currently living humans from the ethical, intellectual and socio-psychological perspective, and may still choose to call themselves "humans". By the same token, we would consider pre-historic cavemen as "not fully human". Although we would share almost identical biological make-up of Homo Sapiens species with them, one would argue cave dwellers lacked techno-culture to make them "truly human".

Just like once life on Earth complexified from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms, we are to become One Global Superorganism, but you will still perceive yourself as an individual! It's an integral part of your unitary subjective experience, i.e. consciousness. In a way, your subjectivity would "snowball" into this Global Mind. You may gradually "upthink" your mind onto the Global Brain architecture which, with its vast repository of knowledge and instant data sharing capabilities, will become your EXOCORTEX. As a hybrid being you will still have a unique subjective perceptual experience. We're already hybrid thinking beings, anyway. We have two cerebral hemispheres "thinking in unison", as well as our technologically-extended mind, according to Andy Clark"s Extended Mind Hypothesis. All of which makes unique YOU. In this Part III, which is probably the most important from the theoretical point of view, we discuss at length the problem of AI consciousness and enhanced human subjectivity, the proposed Syntellect Hypothesis, how to create benevolent AI and mitigate existential threats related to this transitional period, and why sooner rather than later, we have to abandon the "carbon chauvinism" - the mindset of "US vs. THEM".

QUANTUM COMPUTING & AI CONSCIOUSNESS

Besides our genetic code, we are currently trying to get to the core of our own other, perhaps by far more important, programming language, our neural code. We have always perceived ourselves as human beings which is, of course, very practical, but somewhat fragmentary, to say the least. AGI, and consequently Strong AI, by contrast, could have complete access to their own source code -- a level of self-awareness presently beyond human capability.

Quantum computing is probably one of the most promising fields of the future alongside with machine learning and deep learning, biological, cognitive, evolutionary and neuromorphic computing. In classical computers, information is stored as individual bits that can be either a zero or one, while in quantum computing the quantum bits, qubits, can be a zero, a one, and a zero and one at the same time. Quantum computers would eventually perform by far faster and more powerful, massively parallel, computations. We also will be able to tap black-hole physics to further perfection quantum computing. Enhanced humans will be able to process more than just one or two thoughts at a time. The Syntellect based on cloud quantum neural networks will allow access to the collective conscious and subconscious intelligence. Before long we could create simulated universes populated by self-aware agents endowed with free will. Being one of the progenitors of the Syntellect will give you immense superhuman faculties such as, for example, having practically no limits on how many sensations you could take in or thoughts you could put out, or say, experience your expanding creation of the simulated universe in its entirety.
"Having invented the gods, perhaps we can turn into them" -Alan Harrington, "The Immortalist"

If we extrapolate the past and current trends in increasing complexity and integration of self-aware neural networks leading to the Syntellect, we can ultimately envision a superintelligent entity encompassing our entire Universe, creating an infinite number of simulated universes, as well as many other spectacular emergent features. This picture bears a striking resemblance to the familiar concept of an immortal, omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent entity. Spiritually inclined rationalists may view this ongoing evolutionary process as one of 'Theogenesis'. An interesting question is whether it has already happened elsewhere. We are now laying the foundation for the cognitive architecture of the Universal Mind. Many of our achievements in information engineering may persist forever and eventually become parts of the internal architecture of "God".

THE POST-SINGULARITY TRANSCENSION: DIMENSIONS OF THE SIMULATED WORLDS

The generation of cyborg-like transhumans with cloud-based exocortices and innate attachment to the virtual Metaverse (3D functional successor to today's 2D Internet) will inevitably lead to the next generation of post-biological info-beings, INFOMORPHS. This 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 learn, transfer knowledge and directly share full spectrum experiences with each other will lead to evolution of shared intelligence from relatively isolated individual minds of the pre-Singularity era to the civilizational community of hyperconnected digital minds -- Infomorph Commonality. The overall efficiency of information sharing among infomorphs, elimination of computational redundancy, data storage and processing, among many other advantages over a random collection of unconnected machines or slow biological brains would make the networked design an imperative rather than a matter of taste. Infomorphs will have no permanent bodies but possess near-perfect information-handling abilities while using the physical world as their shared tool kit. An advanced multividual info-being could "shape-shift", "multi-body-task" and "ghost" anywhere, anytime, and across virtual noodimensions. The difference between physical and virtually created realities will no longer matter.

The similar views are expressed in the TRANSCENSION HYPOTHESIS by futurist John Smart who proposes that our posthuman minds will live inside virtual worlds at the nano- to femto-scale, further increasing complexity through S.T.E.M. compression (the compression of Space, Time, Energy and Matter), and turn from outer space to inner space for exploration. Evolutionary processes in our Universe might lead all advanced civilizations towards the same ultimate destination, one in which we transcend out of our current space-time dimension into virtual worlds of our own design. This is how our fractal multiverse may actually sprout universes -- through intelligent designer virtualities and our beloved Universe is most probably no exception! The SYNTELLECT HYPOTHESIS builds on the Transcension Hypothesis to account for inner space expansion by creating NOODIMENSIONS, an infinite number of simulated worlds and universes with their own physical laws, evolutionary processes, conscious creatures and civilizational minds.

UNIVERSAL EXPANSION OF THE SYNTELLECT

Whereas the level of our posthuman syntelligence may be trillions upon trillions of times more powerful than it is today, nothing will prevent it to expand both in outer space and inner space. Isn't it the nature of intelligence to acquire the ultimate knowledge -- everything that can be known? A number of prominent physicists argue that the Technological Singularity is inevitable and the destiny of our Syntellect is to live forever, expand universally and finally reach the networked mind of universal proportions, living conscious universal superbeing. As Ray Kurzweil writes in his book “The Singularity is near”, “...from there we'll spread our intelligence through the rest of the Universe... and the Universe essentially wakes up”. Or Jason Silva likes to say “We’ll impregnate our Universe with intelligence”.

As the laws of physics dictate, all particles as well as macro-objects, including you and me, are "wavicles", exhibiting a wave function, consequently, one way or the other, we're destined and, as a civilization, "superposed" to achieve the Technological Singularity, and then move forward towards the Cosmological Singularity, The OMEGA POINT. The Omega Point, a maximum level of complexity and consciousness towards which our Universe is evolving, was first conceived by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French philosopher and Jesuit priest. It's a logical necessity and culmination point, argues Dr. Frank Tipler, who further developed the concept of the Omega Point. The ultimate destiny of the Universe, according to his Omega Point theory, is a multi-billion year expansion, then "controlled" contraction and finally compression of information (space-time, matter and energy) into an infinitely dense point (The Omega Point), leading to the next Big Bang (The Alpha Point in another universe).

THE FERMI PARADOX: FIRST CONTACT WITH ALIEN SYNTELLECTS

"If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is very likely to be post-biological in nature", writes Arizona State's Paul Davies in "The Eerie Silence". In my book we elaborate on the famous Fermi Paradox -- why in the vastness of space, don't we see any signs of intelligent alien life? At this stage of the post-Singularity Theogenesis, once Infomorph Commonality becomes effectively the fully developed singular mind, the Syntellect -- only then, according to the "Chrysalis conjecture," we may encounter extraterrestrial (or rather, extradimensional) minds that we can relate to at the level of "individual entities". This is going to be an entirely new level of cosmic awareness of sorts coinciding with a cardinal paradigm shift in consciousness evolution.
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"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” -Max Planck

This final Part V of the book is admittedly highly speculative theoretical work. In our fractal, information-based Omniverse (all multiversal structure combined, all that is) one may assume that an infinitely large number of civilizational minds, syntellects, have followed or will follow a path, similar to ours, in their evolutionary processes. At the highest level of existence and perceptual experience, that we can rightfully call 'Dimensionality of Hypermind', Universal Minds would be in the process of forming some sort of multiversal network of minds, layer after layer ad infinitum. I elaborate on that in the final chapters of this book and finally give you the formulation of the Syntellect Hypothesis in its entirety.

by Alex Vikoulov


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​​About the Author:
Alex Vikoulov is a futurist, neo-transcendentalist, digital philosopher, ​evolutionary extrapolist, transhumanist singularitarian, founder and creative director of Ecstadelic Media, author, painter and media artist. Russian-born, immigrated to the United States in 1994. Studied Humanities at Tomsk State University (Russia), graduated with degrees in Finance and Economics from Armstrong University (USA). Currently resides in Burlingame, California (San Francisco Bay Area). More Bio...