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Jason Silva's The Mirroring Mind

Jason Silva

In The Mirroring Mind by Jason Silva, he offers his interpretation of strange loops of self reference, recursion, and the emergence of consciousness and self-awareness. It is inspired by the ideas of Douglas Hofstadter explored in the book GODEL, ESCHER, BACH: An Eternal Golden Braid.

Comments

Yawn

Submitted by Brave New World on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 11:51.
I'm amazed that people take Silva's superficial and redundant ramblings seriously. You could put audio of chimpanzees talking over these images and music and it would be just as profound.

Even Bigger Yawn

Submitted by Matches on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 21:40.
Nobody believed Plato when he suggested the earth was round...and guess what? Turns out the earth was round. The point is, open your mind to possiblity. Accept the fact that we don't know everything there is to know and stop making judgement against people who have even the most ridiculous, mind-fucking theories. In the end, everything is energy and endless possibility so never rule anything out. Shit, this reality may just be all one big computer simulation. How can we ever know...

Really really big yawn

Submitted by Brave New World on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 10:45.

Are you suggesting that Silva's information here is as important as the idea that the earth is round? lol

This issue isn't as much me not being open to mind-fucking theories, as it is that Silva is a vapid philosopher whose trendy soundbytes don't give much food for thought after you've tasted them.

This is a regurgitation of Jacques Lacan's mirror stage with more info-tech. Like all of Silva's videos, his "ideas" could be reduced to a simple sentence. "We mirror each other and nature to develop personality and interconnection." Sounds way more profound with those outer space images though, doesn't it?

It's obvious that Silva will be successful with this schtick though, as it seems that peoples' attention spans are decreasing by the day. Cosmology for the Myspace generation.

OK, let's take him seriously

Submitted by Brave New World on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 11:15.
Let's try to take Silva seriously and deconstruct a tiny bit of his words here.

"When we become aware of the cybernetic feedback loops that describe the whole, baseline reality dissolves, and a new reality emerges in its pixelating wake. Much more beautiful, and much more satisfying."

First, how is it even possible to become aware of feedback loops that describe the whole? Which whole? The whole universe? The whole world? The whole of humanity? It's debatable whether or not something like a perfect sphere even exists in external reality, or only in our internal conceptual reality. Perceiving the whole takes much more of an effort than you might think.

Why does baseline reality dissolve? Wouldn't reality merely become more comprehensible when a "cybernetic feedback loops that describe the whole" is understood?

How would a new reality emerge? Wouldn't it just be the same old reality but your point of view is different?

Why would this new reality be pixelated? That makes no sense whatsoever, unless you happen to be a computer. Last I checked, humans aren't computers.

Why would a pixelated reality be much more beautiful and much more satisfying? Pixels are tiny, blocky, and not very aesthetically pleasing.

Does everything become more beautiful and satisfying the more that you're aware of it? What about the bad, ugly, terrible things in life like kids in Iraq being murdered by drones? Does that become much more beautiful and satisfying when you become aware of its cybernetic feedback loops?

And so on. I submit that Silva's emotionally-charged ranting dissolves into pixelated mess when you analyze it at any level of coherent, challenging discourse.

hey jason

Submitted by Trevor Smith on Mon, 03/11/2013 - 12:25.

Very well made and provocative video. But as with your other video, I really have to disagree with the gross oversimplifications and giant stretches made.

While there is plenty to be said of this mirror "metaphor" (or intelligence studying intelligence as Leary and RAW used to riff on), its really odd when someone feels the need to take something like this- or reproduction/sex, as with the other video- and extrapolate it as The Big Answer that explains consciousness, buddhahood, imagination, and basically everything in between... as if it all can be boiled down neatly into one little overarching conceptual umbrella that explains it all.

There is so many provocative and profound things to be said about existence already...that this sort of thing just is not necessary and in some ways is very misleading.

 I don't mean to offend or for this to be taken personally. Just my 2 cents. 

Why not?

Submitted by Matches on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 21:30.
But why can't everything be boiled down neatly into one little overarching conceptual umbrella that explains it all? Perhaps we just don't yet understand or use our capabilities to see how simple everything really is? Our egos like to complicate things. The ego likes to scale everything relative to what it can perceive and understand. I don't think it is misleading at all, simply inspires questions which leads to discovery, then to knowledge, then to wisdom. :)

Conceptual umbrellas are too small

Submitted by Brave New World on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 10:57.

"But why can't everything be boiled down neatly into one little overarching conceptual umbrella that explains it all?"

Because life is more irreducibly complicated than that. Thankfully.

battle royal a la expresso drinkathon

Submitted by mateo6148 on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 04:36.
i hereby daftly challenge Jason de Silva to an Andalucian style expresso pounding battle royal, the culmination of which will be our imminent cardiac arrests and rescue via timetravelling nanobat rescue machines or possibly a warp into extra 11-th dimensional string theoretic mind fuck existence. (sorry for the f word) seriously... i am only a daft (repetition within a recursive system) New Orleanian college dropout travelling the globe randomly controlled by the Illuminati eyephone mechanism for your intergalactic entertainment purposes... but i think if we went tit for tat you'd kick my ass and as i blasted into post heart attack euphoria i'd laugh and realize this is all an obviously simple mathematic equation postulated by superior beings and then we all have a shit contest in Valhalla over my grandmother's rotting corpse. on Canal Street. right up the streetcar line from Delancey and Bowery in the 145,348,458,943th dimension of possibilities limited to 3dimensional experience. i know... i'm a moron. Jason. Please? i will only be in Manhattan two more days and it is year 27 after all, what better time to do battle royal expresso? but definitely take a ride on the gyroscopically powered monocycles to the solar powered airships and hop over to Mumbatumbagwatanalong for lunch after cardiac arrest recovery. DP, Talat... i love this shit. Green Bitch was amazing. Can we work something with my laser holographic global flotilla gypsy art shows marketing this for free in trade for favors with the Chinese mafia in San Francisco?

You're on the right track

Submitted by Brave New World on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 10:51.
You should start a video series about how consciousness is a hard drive. After 30 shots of espresso, anything that comes out of your mouth will be pure conceptual gold.

Kerouac was a sad alcoholic

Submitted by mateo6148 on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 04:39.
i started writing 2 minutes ago. ego is so hilarious? is that part of the egoic reflection? i promise not to be a pompous ass, this is just lots of fun. promise promiese (crap, repetition within a recursive system of feedback ouroboric looping again) dontttt blow up laptop! gah i hope i get any response. 9857056111 or hack me at mattheu.jeffrey@gmail.com, password disclosed only to top level Mossadian rednecks in Missouri

My heart goes out to Silva

Submitted by MysticalPain on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 12:14.
I really like some of the videos this man has created and his ambitious desires to spread the ideas of science and technology to people everywhere. He's helping spread the ideas of innovation to a younger generation, and for that I support him a great deal. However, some of the questions posed in this video can be answered very simply, one has to turn to the works of Alan Watts, or any eastern philosophy for that matter. This "oscillation" as Watts called it, is simply the Ego attempting to find itself and going on an endless loop. The entire process is an illusion and he even uses the example of pointing a camera at what it is recording which then causes the image to shake and the sound to screech. It is the source of much human suffering, this endless loop, at an attempt to grasp something that is not there in the first place. Sadly, such a question seems unanswerable using science, all it does is shove us further down a repetitive cycle. A person who is able to go further in these "loops" does not know himself more, on the contrary he is sinking further into the illusion of the "Self" and it has no relations to the "Buddha Mind" as he mentions it. I watched an interview with Silva where he talks about how he believes in the future, we will be able to "reprogram" our brains to be able to feel "pleasure" all the time... Thinking such as this worries me a great deal. As much good as he is doing, he may be spreading unwise desires among our youth, and for that we must watch him and others in similar positions.

Living in the pleasure bubble

Submitted by Brave New World on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 11:39.

"I watched an interview with Silva where he talks about how he believes in the future, we will be able to "reprogram" our brains to be able to feel "pleasure" all the time... Thinking such as this worries me a great deal. As much good as he is doing, he may be spreading unwise desires among our youth, and for that we must watch him and others in similar positions."

Silva resides in the camp of Tranhumanists who believe all our problems, physical, emotional, spiritual, will be solved by machines. Nevermind all the damage that machines and technology are doing to us and the environment, right now, as you ready this, just trust that in the future some new and better machines will come along to replace those, and through the infallible application of binary computer logic, everything will be solved. Sounds great, huh? This is the feel-good inspirational technobabble that sells books and lectures. How that scenario actually stacks up to reality, though, is a more thorny issue.

Does an iPod free you or enslave you? If it frees you, does it only free you in a specific guided direction? If it enslaves you, how? Why? I look around and see pre-teens waiting for the bus with their earphones on. It's now a rarity to see someone at that age without some sort of device that they're fixated on. Time that ten years ago would have been spent thinking about stuff, talking to people, or enjoying nature is now spent being fixated on increasingly smaller and smaller bite-sized preoccupations with superficial data.

What kind of world would we live in, if everyone had electrodes in their brain to stimulate mini-orgasms all the time? Well, we certainly would be a lot more complacent about everything, wouldn't we? Why protest the government if you're having a mini-orgasm? Just up your dosage and forget about someone else's troubles. We can all live in narcissistic imaginary pleasure bubbles instead! The world may be imploding around us, but at least we can feel good right now.

 What about the people controlling your mini-orgasms? If they can give you a sensation of pleasure through your cybernetic implants, what else can they make you do?

Silva is misleading because he shows you the bright cheery side of emergent technology, without the necessary critical thinking that really, really needs to go along with the discussion of this kind of transformational techno-biological "progress", and how much techno-biological manipulation is appropriate, or wise for us as a species and in relation to the greater biological environment.

Completely agree... and

Submitted by MysticalPain on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 17:05.
Completely agree... and what's sad is, this is the general view of our society's "Intellectual Elites". 

Well said.

Submitted by CULTiE on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 12:20.

Silva's philosophy is all yang, despite it's complexity and enthusiasm. 

 

www.Cultie.com

Twitter- @CultieMagazine

https://twitter.com/CultieMagazine

The Dream Cannot Outlive The Night

Submitted by Michael Garfield on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 13:11.
You want some computer
to remember being you
for the fraction of a second
it'll take to decide
those memories are lies?
Why not just die?


You think being human
is something that continues
ever after once your soul
has taken flight?
The blink of an eye,
a shift in the light...


You expect the future
not to redefine you,
that the transformation
won't sweep this aside?
The higher mind enjoys the ride!


Through my brow I release the fight.
The dream cannot outlive the night.

Like An Ice Shelf

Submitted by Michael Garfield on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 13:12.
You wanna talk the erosion of privacy?
Any hill goes, you're bound to find
some bones in there
The holy mountain of the separate self
falls into ocean like an ice shelf.


None of it comes with any anomie
a bloom of novelty and sunlight,
not enemies
but as our skeletons become transparent
we would be scared
if we weren't sharing it.

http://michaelgarfield.net

Like An Ice Shelf

Submitted by Michael Garfield on Wed, 03/13/2013 - 13:13.
You wanna talk the erosion of privacy?
Any hill goes, you're bound to find
some bones in there
The holy mountain of the separate self
falls into ocean like an ice shelf.


None of it comes with any anomie
a bloom of novelty and sunlight,
not enemies
but as our skeletons become transparent
we would be scared
if we weren't sharing it.

http://michaelgarfield.net

this guy...

Submitted by VenusAsABoy on Thu, 03/14/2013 - 12:59.
so annoying...

Recursive loops

Submitted by Barliman on Thu, 03/21/2013 - 08:19.
Silva throws up some useful ideas here, and ones which I am sure are quite novel to the younger generation. However, I do not think his "recursive loops", lead to enlightenment. Those recursive loops lead straight to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, to Generalised Anxiety Disorder, to Bipolar Disorder, and probably also to Schizophrenia ( if we wish to use those labels, which are tools of my trade). I suspect that enlightenment comes in the process of being aware of these loops and seeing them for the fraud that they are.

Thought Experiment...

Submitted by Yeshua21 on Mon, 04/01/2013 - 13:04.
I enjoyed the video, but always scratch my head when people are content to assume that the brain is an accurate representation of that which represents reality to us. Try this thought experiment and see if it doesn't leave you scratching your head... http://jeshua21.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/a-spiritual-exercise/

A simple thought experiment.

Submitted by IJesusChrist on Tue, 04/02/2013 - 15:05.

A thought experiment:

A computer is created that can predict the future, including it's own effects on the universe. A man approaches the computer and ask's "How am I going to die?" The computer responds after some calculation, and predicts the man's death. Does the man die by the same causes as predicted? Of course not, he can avoid it if he so chooses, or in the most bleakest defiance - kill himself before the prediction comes true. Hence consciousness is beyond cause and effect alone.

Co-Creator; MNMLimpact.com - a place to discuss to learn and discuss [coming soon] what the f*ck is going on. 

Silva's Mirror (Daniel Pinchbeck & Jason Silva Evolver Event)

Submitted by CULTiE on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 12:15.

We wrote a blog post all about Silva's brand of mind exploration, which despite its expansiveness is decidedly materialist.

There, I said it.

See the post here.

 

Jason Silva and Daniel Pinchbeck Approach Singularity

 

 

www.Cultie.com

Twitter- @CultieMagazine

 

 

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