Chasing Consciousness

• THE 4th PHASE OF WATER EXPLAINED - Gerald Pollack #79

  What are the implications of the discovery of the chemical variation of water, nicknamed “The 4th phase”? What does the new structured chemical composition mean for the storage of energy and information? What can we learn from the discovery that electrical charge plays a role in the way water moves and transports other molecules?In this episode we have the fascinating new science of water to get into, particularly the research around the discovery of the gel-like chemical variation of water, nicknamed the “4th phase”. It occurs when water gets close to water friendly surfaces, and as it changes chemical structure, it separates into positive and negatively charged components. So we find out how this particular form of water is used by nature; how its structure can be ‘charged’ by infrared energy from the sun like a solar cell, becoming an energy source that can do work. We also separate the wheat from the chaff on the controversial ‘memory of water’ claims of Maseru Emoto and Nobel prize winner Luc Montagnier; and we discuss why there is so much resistance to this research despite the ubiquity and importance of water in biological systems.Fortunately to navigate this cutting edge research and avoid wishful thinking, we have the director of Pollack Labs at the University of Washington, one of the most established lab’s studying water in the world, Bioengineer, professor Gerald Pollack. He is the author of over 300 scientific papers, and four books for the general public including ‘Cells, Gels and the Engines of Life’, ‘The 4th Phase of Water’ and his new book just out ‘Charged - the unexpected role of electricity in the workings of nature’. What we discussed:00:00 Intro.10:00 The role of electricity in nature.15:25 The Earth has a negative charge & the ionosphere positive.19:00 The old consensus on water.23:00 Gilbert Ling - cellular water is charged and so the molecules stack.26:15 The transition of chemical structure when in contact with hydrophilic surfaces.27:45 Exclusion-Zone Water = Liquid Crystal Water.32:45 Changes chemical structure and electrical charge.35:00 Add light or electrons to build EZ Water.37:30 Grounding - is there any evidence?38:20 It’s an energy source, a battery charged by infared light.42:15 The difficulty raising money for ideas that go against the consensus.46:15 The threat to an old world view.48:30 The Brownian motion criticism of the data.49:00 Electrical energy generation in cells.56:00 The cardio vascular, blood flow energy issue.01:05:45 We’ve misunderstood membranes.01:13:00 The gel itself might be a barrier.01:14:00 Purification of water using the exclusion process.01:19:00 Difficulty getting business funding for the applications.01:24:00 Cancer cells have a lower negative charge. Perhaps a lack of EZ water.01:26:00 How information is stored in structured water.01:31:00 Luc Montagnier - water claims confirmed in 3 studies.01:39:00 Jacques Benveniste - dubbed ‘water memory’.01:40:30 Masero Emoto - Dean Radin confirmed his result.01:44:45 Non-verbal communication.References:Gerald Pollack, “Charged: The Unexpected role of electricity in the workings of nature”Gerald Pollack, “The Fourth Phase of Water”Earth’s negative charge, Richard Feynman Volume II, Chapter 9 of The Feynman Lectures on Physics, titled "Electricity in the Atmosphere”. Gilbert Ling - Polarised-Oriented Multilayer TheoryHarold Hillman - ‘A radical reassessment of the cellular structure of the mammalian nervous system’

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• THE MIND BODY PROBLEM & THE PANPSYCHISM SOLUTION - Galen Strawson PhD #78

  How can consciousness emerge from non-conscious material? If there is only one type of stuff, how is the potential for consciousness encoded in the building blocks of the universe?In this episode we have the ancient philosophical mind-body problem to get our heads around, and the ever more popular solution, panpsychism: That is, the belief that everything material, no matter how small, has always had a component of consciousness in it. We get into what consciousness is, why it’s not an illusion; into subjective experience; we cover the rich history of the mind-body problem in philosophy, and we also confront the apparently magical emergence of consciousness from non-consciousness by exploring the arguments for panpsychism, and how new understandings from the last 100 years of science might change preconceptions about a panpsychist solution.Fortunately, to understand this we have the hugely experienced author and analytical philosopher of mind, for many years at the university of Oxford and now at the university of Texas, professor Galen Strawson! Alongside over 140 papers, he has also written 12 books including “Consciousness and its place in nature”, “Things that bother me: Death, Freedom, the self etc” and his new book “Stuff, Quality and Structure”.What we discuss:00:00 intro05:30 ‘Naturalism’ as a position.07:00 Qualia explained.09:30 There’s only one kind of stuff: identity metaphysics.12:00 A criticism of life as narrative story.14:30 what is the self?17:20 There is no mystery of consciousness.19:15 Locke’s Primary and Secondary Qualities clarified.21:45 The history of the mind-body problem.27:30 The interaction problem VS the combination problem.30:30 Radical emergence of consciousness from non-consciousness is impossible.32:30 The arguments for panpsychism.34:00 Psychophysical laws - David Chalmers.35:00 The rise of panpsychism.36:30 Different types of panpsychism.41:30 Separating between conscious stuff, and subjects of consciousness.48:30 Cosmopansychism - patterns of excitation in the quantum field.50:00 Cellular cognition - Agential behaviour is not proof of experience.54:00 ‘Matter is energy’ assists panpsychist intuitions.56:15 Who demands evidence is begging the question.01:02:30 “A Global Replace” of consciousness in matter.01:03:30 How would a world of panpsychist science look?01:06:30 Neuroscience: neural correlate reductionism.01:09:30 Feelings evolved before reasoning.01:11:30 Being is energy; being is becoming; being is qualititivity; being is mind.01:13:15 A cosmological mind.01:16:15 Teleology and Meaning.Quote:Lee Smolen, “Qualia must be understood as aspects of nature, that is our commitment to naturalism, the philosophy that asserts that all that exists is part of the natural world science studies.”References: Galen Strawson, “Mental Reality”, 1994Galen Strawson, “Against Narrativity” paper. 2004Galen Strawson, “Realistic monism - why physicalism entails panpsychism”, 2006Galen Strawson, “Mind and Being, The Primacy of panpsychism”, 2017

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• MEMETICS IN THE AGE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE- Susan Blackmore PhD

  What are memes and why do some replicate while others disappear? Are the memes selected for always for the benefit of the host culture? How are our new technologies changing the way memes feedback into our cultural evolution?In this episode we have the slightly disconcerting ideas of Memetic theory to get our heads around; as we learn how successful ideas and information are replicated by humans before being re-transmitted back out into world. We’ll see how these memes evolve our culture and minds over time, similarly to how our genes evolve through natural selection. But concerns will arise when we realise that this replication is not only selected for memes that are good for human evolution, and so memes seem to take on some type of evolutionary survival of their own. So when we now find ourselves in an internet era, with AI algorithms replicating ideas in an artificially amplified feedback loop with our own human memes, we get a cultural run away train, in which we are not really in control of our own culture and ideas.So fortunately, to get our head around this tough topic we have one of the inventors of the field, author of the 1999 book “The Meme Machine”, and by now, in her third appearance on Chasing Consciousness, our in-house sceptic - psychologist, philosopher, broadcaster and author Susan Blackmore. She’s best known for her books "Zen and the Art of Consciousness, Consciousness: An Introduction", and "Seeing Myself". Susan’s work spans across hundreds of publications in over 20 different languages, making huge contributions in the fields of psychology, memetics, religion, philosophy of mind, supernatural experiences, and anomalous experiences.What we discuss:00:00 Intro.04:00 Using Natural Selection to apply to the imitation and thus survival of ideas.06:35 Successful imitation of behaviours came first.07:35 The ideas that get copied more, for whatever reason, survive longer.08:40 Language allowed better copying and feedback.12:10 Memplexes: an analogy of co-adaptive gene-complexes.14:20 Sue’s scepticism of quantum theories of consciousness.14:40 Ideas are memes but experiential knowledge is not.19:05 Concern: Memes themselves are the beneficiary of selfish replication, not the host culture or minds.22:50 Human rights memes run against genetic replication needs.26:05 The taboo around memetic theory.32:40 “Tremes” - technological imitations independent of humans - a third replicator.40:00 Social media algorithms as super-treme replicators.43:50 Too fast turn around of ideas, hyper vigilance and negativity bias.47:50 Over stimulated, fast societies - Negative mental health outcomes.48:20 The implications of artificial general intelligence in terms of Tremes.53:05 Technology as an extension of our culture.57:40 Max Tegmark’s “Moloch” allegory.References: Susan Blackmore, “The Meme Machine”.Richard Dawkins - “The Selfish Gene”

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• AI SAFETY - A SCEPTICAL VIEW - Stephen Wolfram PhD #76

  What are the benefits and risks of developing advanced AI? What kind of safety precautions could we take? Could we risk never making future discoveries, by over-limiting today’s AI in pre-emptive safety regulations?In this episode we get a sceptical evaluation of the complex debate that’s currently raging on artificial Intelligence safety, aiming to get a balanced view of the extremely useful applications versus the currently hugely publicised existential risks, and evaluate the safety measures and legislative frameworks that are being considered to help avoid risk to humans. To do this we trace the path from today’s artificial intelligence right up the ever steeper curve towards artificial super intelligence; we risk risk assess the unpredictability of emergent properties of such systems; we assess the future of work, and the potential loss of control of our culture as AI starts to outnumber us and generate more and more of the media we consume.My guest today has a unique take on these issues which took me by surprise, as he disagrees with the alarmism and call for harsh regulation, whilst openly predicting that emergent properties will more or less guarantee safety hazards. The fact that he has been at the cutting edge of computer science for over 40 years, creating computer language and Ai solutions, makes him well placed to provide a counterpoint to the AI safety campaigners calling for collective action. He is of course physicist, computer scientist and tech entrepreneur Stephen Wolfram. In 1987 he left academia at Caltech and Princeton behind and devoted himself to his own computer systems at his company Wolfram Research. He’s published many blog articles about his ideas, and written many influential books including “A new kind of science”, “A project to find the fundamental theory of physics”, and “Computer modelling and simulation of dynamic systems”, and most recently “The Second law” about the mystery of Entropy. What we discussed:00:00 Intro. 06:30 Stephen’s first forays into neural nets in the early 80s.09:30 Cellular Automata.11:00 Can you make the knowledge of the world available via computers?13:00 Wolfram Alpha: A non-AI AI. 17:45 Can AI solve science?22:00 AI is great at rough answers, worse at the detail.33:00 Artificial General intelligence, A.G.I.42:00 The pros & cons of super intelligence.47:40 Chat GBT’s unpredicted peculiarities.54:00 The spread of mistruth. 58:00 AI and the future of work.01:05:20 Businesses leading automation push.01:09:00 AI will outnumber us and network, changing our culture.01:11:00 AI will follow a banal ‘mean’.01:16:30 The AI Safety debate.01:21:00 We have no choice, it will be developed anyway.01:22:00 Ai systems may have feelings, we don’t know.01:25:00 Stephen’s non-interventionist safety approach.References: Stepehn Wolfram, “A project to find the fundamental theory of physics”,Stephen Wolfram, “The Second Law” The History of “Neural Nets” since 1943, (Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts paper)Stephen Wolfram, “Can AI solve science?” article

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• OUT OF BODY EXPERIENCES: THE ANTHROPOLOGY - Samantha Lee Treasure #75

  What are the contents of Out of Body Experiences? How closely do they map the actual physical world? Is it possible to induce them purposefully? How do modern practices compare to indigenous shamanic ones?In this Episode we look at the scientific, religious, cultural and historical contexts of Out of Body Experiences, also known as astral projection - so the experience in which an individual appears to leave their body and be able to travel around the world and into other dimensions, often meeting other worldly entities, similarly to DMT psychedelic experiences, (see Episode #73, “DMT Entity Experiences”). So, we get into the phenomenology- the various things people experience; potential neurobiological explanations; and the possibility of inducing the experiences on purpose and of exploring alternate realities; we get into indigenous traditions of ‘Shamanic flight’ and which people might be predisposed to these alternate states of consciousness; and we end up talking about a potential connection between OBE, sleep paralysis and ludic dreaming.To discuss this slippery topic, we have a researcher who is also a lifelong experiencer, who has devoted her career to trying to understand these phenomena, the medical anthropologist and author Samantha Lee Treasure; she has an MA in Medical Anthropology from SOAS university in London, has been a brain science research assistant at the University of Liege, and has just released her first book on the topic, “Out of Body experiences”, the release of which this episode is timed to coincide with.What we discuss:00:00 Intro.11:30 What is medical anthropology?16:00 OBE entity research.22:15 Samantha’s New Book - getting beyond preconceptions.25:50 OBE vs Astral projection - bypassing the taboo.30:00 Common reported OBE experiences.33:00 Mental body schemas and projected models of the world.37:00 Do OBE’s map the real world accurately?45:00 Olaf Blanke - the Temporoparietal junction discovery.48:45 No sense of smell during OBE nor processed by the TPJ.49:40 Techniques to induce OBE’s intentionally.53:45 Bob Monroe’s perspective switching technique.55:30 Shamanic flight practices in Tuva, Siberia.59:35 The sonezen - the perceiving mind self.01:01:00 This is not for everyone, it can be scary.01:05:00 The predisposition for some to have these experiences.01:10:45 Crossovers between NHI Contact and OBE entity experiences.01:14:20 Genealogical predispositions.01:18:25 “Reality Shifting” and the role of intention in OBE.References: Samantha Lee Treasure, “Out-of-Body Experiences: Explorations and encounters with the astral plane”.Stephen Le Berge, “Pre-sleep treatment with Galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming” paperOlaf Blanke, “Linking out-of-body experience and self processing to mental own-body imagery at the temporo-parietal junction” paper. Charles T Tart - 6 Studies of OBE.Graham Nicholls, “Navigating out of body Eperiences”.Yurgan Zeiwe - “Multi-Dimensional Man”.RosalieYoga, Monroe Sound science guided meditations,You tube channel. “Out-of-body experience in vestibular disorders – A prospective study of 210 patients with dizziness” paper.Celia Green & Charles Mc Reery, “Lucid Dreaming: The Paradox of Consciousness during Sleep”.Anthony Peake, “Near Death Experiences”.

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