November 15, 2024 • 11 mins
The brilliant and generous Michael Garfield took the time to chat on the phone about many subjects relatively quickly.
Slices of this conversation can be heard in S5E11: Whispers of the Infinite: Uncover Your Core Motivation.
This bonus mini-episode includes just those slices... because it's Thanksgiving.
Paleontologist-Futurist Michael Garfield helps "Rewild the Singularity" – restoring soul to the philosophy of technology, midwifing new myths for transition, and helping cultivate the curiosity and play we'll need to thrive in our accelerating age.
Emerson Dameron's Medicated Minutes is LA's #1 avant-garde personal development program and the only good podcast.
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Emerson Dameron's Sophistication Nation - April 4th - All major music-delivery platforms
It's OUT! Sophistication Nation: Brief Interviews with Women I Pretend to Understand: https://emersondameron.hearnow.com/sophistication-nation
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
Thank you.
How screwed are we.
That depends on who we are, andif you mean the species, I
would say now there is one humanspecies, but we decimated a
number of intelligent hominidsin our past.
For most of human history wehave not regarded ourselves as a
single unified entity.
The enormous gap in access andavailability of certain
(00:57):
resources and conveniences leadssome people to think that we're
actually talking about that.
We've already kind of undergonesomething like a shadow
speciation, especially if youthink about certain definitions
of species that base thecategorization not on anatomical
features but on the willingnessto reproduce in laboratory
(01:22):
environments.
You know, even then I would saythat I think humankind is very
likely to live through even theworst case scenarios that people
seem keen on forecasting.
On the other hand, I think thesort of modernist, humanist idea
, you know, humankind has alwaysbeen on somewhat rather tenuous
(01:47):
footing.
I like to maintain that we aregoing to find new ways to pull
it together, you know, and notjust find better ways of
identifying as a species, butfind better ways of
communicating interspecies, youknow, with others.
(02:16):
A big piece of the pushback,again, evolutionary thinking,
was because it attached the ideaof the human as an ontological
category, emergent andprocessual and we can't really
ask how screwed are we withoutfirst asking the question of how
well can we identify with theother?
(02:37):
Because if we regard ourselvesas separate from the rest of the
living world, we're part of theproblem.
But regarding people who seethemselves as separate from the
living world as a problem, youknow a tumor to be irradiated or
whatever is also part of theproblem.
We're not seeing evolutionoperating only on individuals or
(03:05):
only on genes.
These are somewhat arbitrarypartitions of information
flowing through environments or,you know, through time and
space.
The same applies to cyberneticconsiderations, where you're
asking you know where decisionsare and are not being made.
You know natural selection issomething that people do.
(03:26):
Right?
This whole thing started as aquestion of animal breeding,
humans are.
You know?
Up until very recently, humanswere not actually generating the
mutations that they wereselecting from.
You know you can see animalhusbandry as a kind of
prototypical instance of a humanon the loop process, where you
know we see a variety of optionsand we're selecting.
(03:48):
We're saying no as much aswe're.
You know it's like the questionof like.
Are we saying yes to thepropagation of certain breeds?
It it's like I think you know,my emphasis on the loop over in
or out of is an attempt tobridge the perspectives of
people who feel like they arecompletely out of control in
(04:08):
these incredibly vast and opaqueand, you know,
multi-dimensional technologicalinfrastructures that we find
ourselves, and also sort ofpopping the balloon of tech
barons who are, in one sense,you know, validly recognizing
themselves to be some of themost highly agentic entities
(04:30):
that have ever existed on theplanet, completely incapable of
actually controllingcivilization or controlling the
biosphere.
(05:05):
Bill thompson used to talk aboutthe, the intellikey of like
human being, definedfundamentally as a, you know, a,
a like a permacultural guild orconsortium of animal, vegetal
and mineral intelligences.
And so you, you know, like mesitting here with my laptop
computer, surrounded byhouseplants, is the unit, that's
(05:27):
the self that we're operatingat here.
And so, like, how do we teachpeople to wield power that's
sort of beyond the scope ofindividual understanding in a
modernist sense, responsiblyLike?
A part of it is, you know, thisquestion of like, how
collective intelligence comesinto the foreground of esoteric
(06:00):
cultures that are suitable foran age of generative ai, or what
you know again, like ko lottomcdowell called more broadly
neural media, which wouldinclude, like brain machine
interfaces and so on.
But like, we get somewhere byaccepting Arthur C Clarke's
third law, that any sufficientlyadvanced technology is
(06:22):
indistinguishable from magic,and then asking the question
that rationalists don't reallyseem to enjoy, which is, where
is magical thinking useful inthe, you know, the digital,
meta-modern or meta-industrialenvironment?
Frederick Hodolin said poetry isthe beginning and end of all
(06:44):
scientific knowledge, and it'slike well, we are, you know,
it's becoming more and moreevident that you know we are,
you know our technologies are.
These networks of semanticassociations, like latent spaces
of statistical correlations,which is very much based on and
reflective of the way that ourown brains work to cut paths
(07:10):
through that thicket ofassociations and encode them in
narrative structure, areprerequisite for the derivation
of causal, mechanisticframeworks in science.
And then science itselfgestures toward levels of
complexity that it's constantlybreaking itself against the rock
(07:33):
of, you know, complexity thatexceeds our ability to cognize
or to narrativize.
So like, I'm excited that wemight, basically that I get to
play some small part in theformation of cultural norms and
of relationships whereby, youknow, primavera de Philippi
(07:56):
called the institution, which is, you know, not an institution
in the classical sense but, youknow, groups of people that come
together out of a sense of youknow, affinity or a sense of
shared possibility.
We find better ways of movingthrough highly automated,
incredibly powerfultechnological environments, with
(08:20):
the integrated insights of thehermetic tradition and the full
inheritance of our highly pluralwisdom.
What I'm excited about isseeing how Fran's rationality
(08:41):
takes root in built wildernesspopulated by strange machinic
intelligences and augmentedhumans and people in
communication with the entireecosystem, various kinds of
non-human intelligenceDeliberately choosing to inhibit
(09:10):
some sort of response that hasbeen proposed by an autonomic
process elsewhere in the body.
You know, if you have likeunusually strong executive
function this is kind of a weirdexample tantric practices of
you know, retention or justsimply like Buddhist
(09:30):
unattachment.
You know from like.
I'm not going to react to this.
At first I thought this wasseriously a setup.
(10:03):
She seemed really into it.
Then I thought maybe she lovedtaking my disappointment and
also was using sex for power.
I don't know if that blew mymind, but it blew something
Steamy, dreamy and way too hotfor radio.
Crimson Transgressions, abite-sized erotic thriller by
Emerson Dameron.
(10:23):
Find it before it finds you.
Thank you.
How screwed are we.
That depends on who we are, andif you mean the species, I
would say now there is one humanspecies, but we decimated a
number of intelligent hominidsin our past.
For most of human history wehave not regarded ourselves as a
single unified entity.
The enormous gap in access andavailability of certain
(00:57):
resources and conveniences leadssome people to think that we're
actually talking about that.
We've already kind of undergonesomething like a shadow
speciation, especially if youthink about certain definitions
of species that base thecategorization not on anatomical
features but on the willingnessto reproduce in laboratory
(01:22):
environments.
You know, even then I would saythat I think humankind is very
likely to live through even theworst case scenarios that people
seem keen on forecasting.
On the other hand, I think thesort of modernist, humanist idea
, you know, humankind has alwaysbeen on somewhat rather tenuous
(01:47):
footing.
I like to maintain that we aregoing to find new ways to pull
it together, you know, and notjust find better ways of
identifying as a species, butfind better ways of
communicating interspecies, youknow, with others.
(02:16):
A big piece of the pushback,again, evolutionary thinking,
was because it attached the ideaof the human as an ontological
category, emergent andprocessual and we can't really
ask how screwed are we withoutfirst asking the question of how
well can we identify with theother?
(02:37):
Because if we regard ourselvesas separate from the rest of the
living world, we're part of theproblem.
But regarding people who seethemselves as separate from the
living world as a problem, youknow a tumor to be irradiated or
whatever is also part of theproblem.
We're not seeing evolutionoperating only on individuals or
(03:05):
only on genes.
These are somewhat arbitrarypartitions of information
flowing through environments or,you know, through time and
space.
The same applies to cyberneticconsiderations, where you're
asking you know where decisionsare and are not being made.
You know natural selection issomething that people do.
(03:26):
Right?
This whole thing started as aquestion of animal breeding,
humans are.
You know?
Up until very recently, humanswere not actually generating the
mutations that they wereselecting from.
You know you can see animalhusbandry as a kind of
prototypical instance of a humanon the loop process, where you
know we see a variety of optionsand we're selecting.
(03:48):
We're saying no as much aswe're.
You know it's like the questionof like.
Are we saying yes to thepropagation of certain breeds?
It it's like I think you know,my emphasis on the loop over in
or out of is an attempt tobridge the perspectives of
people who feel like they arecompletely out of control in
(04:08):
these incredibly vast and opaqueand, you know,
multi-dimensional technologicalinfrastructures that we find
ourselves, and also sort ofpopping the balloon of tech
barons who are, in one sense,you know, validly recognizing
themselves to be some of themost highly agentic entities
(04:30):
that have ever existed on theplanet, completely incapable of
actually controllingcivilization or controlling the
biosphere.
(05:05):
Bill thompson used to talk aboutthe, the intellikey of like
human being, definedfundamentally as a, you know, a,
a like a permacultural guild orconsortium of animal, vegetal
and mineral intelligences.
And so you, you know, like mesitting here with my laptop
computer, surrounded byhouseplants, is the unit, that's
(05:27):
the self that we're operatingat here.
And so, like, how do we teachpeople to wield power that's
sort of beyond the scope ofindividual understanding in a
modernist sense, responsiblyLike?
A part of it is, you know, thisquestion of like, how
collective intelligence comesinto the foreground of esoteric
(06:00):
cultures that are suitable foran age of generative ai, or what
you know again, like ko lottomcdowell called more broadly
neural media, which wouldinclude, like brain machine
interfaces and so on.
But like, we get somewhere byaccepting Arthur C Clarke's
third law, that any sufficientlyadvanced technology is
(06:22):
indistinguishable from magic,and then asking the question
that rationalists don't reallyseem to enjoy, which is, where
is magical thinking useful inthe, you know, the digital,
meta-modern or meta-industrialenvironment?
Frederick Hodolin said poetry isthe beginning and end of all
(06:44):
scientific knowledge, and it'slike well, we are, you know,
it's becoming more and moreevident that you know we are,
you know our technologies are.
These networks of semanticassociations, like latent spaces
of statistical correlations,which is very much based on and
reflective of the way that ourown brains work to cut paths
(07:10):
through that thicket ofassociations and encode them in
narrative structure, areprerequisite for the derivation
of causal, mechanisticframeworks in science.
And then science itselfgestures toward levels of
complexity that it's constantlybreaking itself against the rock
(07:33):
of, you know, complexity thatexceeds our ability to cognize
or to narrativize.
So like, I'm excited that wemight, basically that I get to
play some small part in theformation of cultural norms and
of relationships whereby, youknow, primavera de Philippi
(07:56):
called the institution, which is, you know, not an institution
in the classical sense but, youknow, groups of people that come
together out of a sense of youknow, affinity or a sense of
shared possibility.
We find better ways of movingthrough highly automated,
incredibly powerfultechnological environments, with
(08:20):
the integrated insights of thehermetic tradition and the full
inheritance of our highly pluralwisdom.
What I'm excited about isseeing how Fran's rationality
(08:41):
takes root in built wildernesspopulated by strange machinic
intelligences and augmentedhumans and people in
communication with the entireecosystem, various kinds of
non-human intelligenceDeliberately choosing to inhibit
(09:10):
some sort of response that hasbeen proposed by an autonomic
process elsewhere in the body.
You know, if you have likeunusually strong executive
function this is kind of a weirdexample tantric practices of
you know, retention or justsimply like Buddhist
(09:30):
unattachment.
You know from like.
I'm not going to react to this.
At first I thought this wasseriously a setup.
(10:03):
She seemed really into it.
Then I thought maybe she lovedtaking my disappointment and
also was using sex for power.
I don't know if that blew mymind, but it blew something
Steamy, dreamy and way too hotfor radio.
Crimson Transgressions, abite-sized erotic thriller by
Emerson Dameron.
(10:23):
Find it before it finds you.
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