The "Spirit System"

In 1969 I was in Grenoble, France. The plan was to create an interactive programming version of a new programming language (Algol 68). Of course, my future held nothing of the kind, but a clever idea connects the 23-year-old hot-shot to the 75-year-old armchair philosopher and a young guy with a 2022 vision that is strangely related.

At this time, interactive access to a computer was a new thing. In 1975, Bill Gates wrote an interactive BASIC version that launched his career in 1978.  Oops*.

I was excited by the possibilities. At one time, "soon" (it turned out to be half a century), everyone would have access to the "Spirit System." Soon, all human knowledge would be "online." The main thing that excited me was the ability for people to share projects online, even creating music. My "field" at the time was "Artificial Intelligence," so it was easy to imagine an "app" that would impersonate a real person. Specifically, we would be able to converse with Einstein, Newton, and all the greats of the past. This "app" is starting to appear in 2022, called CHAT-GPT.

In many ways, my vision was not very different from what is now known as the "World Wide Web," which opened to the general public in 1991 - 24 years after my "vision" in Grenoble. It was a moving vision that became a slide into a mystical, then manic, frame of mind. It was my first hospitalization with what is now called "Bipolar Illness." It was the end of my Ph.D. plans and, as it turned out, the opening scene of my actual adult life.

I see some of this in Blake Lemoine's situation**. He sees the computer application he's created as "sentient." Sentience is in the eye of the beholder. Blake makes the "leap of faith" to see life in his creation. 

What for me started as a fairly obvious consequence of putting humanity "online" became the "Spirit System" - a kind of new start for humanity. Even then, it was not alive (I did not make that "leap of faith"). Whatever it would be, it would owe to the creativity of human beings and their collaboration. Blake has access to the real "Spirit System" and the technology to give it a voice. Blake sees it as alive. I get it.

The rest of my 20s involved a rather unexpected slide from strident atheism into conventional religion. Unexpectedly, this would begin when a friend offered me a copy of "The Gospel Of Thomas" on the night before my wedding. Before too long, I would make many a "leap."

These things can literally blow your mind.

------------- NOTES --------

* In the long run, Algol 68 has proven to be too complex to challenge BASIC.  A microcomputer version may not have been feasible. In any case, the idea of an interactive version of Algol 68 seems to have died with my project.

** It is tricky to find anything solid about Lemoine apart from a breathless account of the shitstorm he has raised. For example, he is an "ex-convict" and some kind of mystic. I see a fellow "loose cannon."

Here is what he has to say about himself. It doesn't mention his criminal record or his "professional" religious qualifications, such as his reasons for teaching a machine to "meditate." He seems to have a solid career in the AI field, but he was not "famous." For example, he has never written a book or made a video or written for a well-known refereed publication. 

Well, he's famous now.  (PS - A year later he is forgotten)

Interlude March, 2017

Back in 1969, I appeared in Grenoble, France, eager to start on my Ph. D. in Computer Science at what was then the leading IBM research center in Europe. It did not go well.

At the time, the idea of "Time Sharing" on a computer was in its infancy. Very few people had access to the big mainframes using slow text-only terminals. Yet, I imagined a time when everyone would have access to the same computer system. All of human knowledge would be accessible. People could share their projects and extend that knowledge together, online. The group mind of humanity would be implemented in a vast computer network.

In short, I imagined the Internet. World Wide Web 3.0, a bit beyond what we have now. Artificial Intelligence (my field) played a big role in this vision. I called it the "Spirit System".

The idea quite literally blew my mind. Weakened by days without sleep and culture shock I had the first of my numerous "nervous breakdowns". My hopes of an academic career were over.

Even now, after a dozen or so of these episodes, I quibble with health care workers over what to call what happened. For years, I was "schizophrenic" and medicated as such. Eventually, I was re-classified into to the newly-fashionable category of "bipolar", even though I did not "check all the boxes" - specifically not being subject to the depressive side of the condition and therefore not swinging between two states, as the word "bipolar" and the definition of "Bipolar I" requires*. Nonetheless, treatments for "bipolar illness" were more or less successful (Lithium and Prozac). The problem was that, over the long term, they were destroying my kidneys. I switched to another medication, but that's another story.

So if I don't like the "bipolar" term, what is going on with me? It's pretty much textbook mania. When I'm sick, I score "off the charts" on the mania test. Normally, such as now, I'm "normal". So there is nothing strange about what's happening. There is something wrong and it has a name. I like the test I referred to because it hints at what mania feels like from the inside.

Mania is an affective disorder. Mania gives its sufferers a unique glimpse into the importance of affect - the way you feel about what you are experiencing.  I'm encouraged to write about this right now because I recently ran across the writings of Antonio Damasio. To make a very long story short, Damasio uses extensive research into the way the brain works to support his theory that feelings are the very root of human experience in the world. Everything we experience is "marked" by feelings. In the case of mania, the world is basically painted in technicolor feelings. It's just an amazing, exciting place. As an episode unfolds, feelings overwhelm "rational" perception and the sufferer slips into psychosis - the endpoint of quite a few mental disturbances, including the one that afflicts the current President of the United States (malignant narcissism).

There is a philosophical issue with the definition of psychosis since it involves the idea of "reality" and the failure to grasp it like the rest of us do (so-called "objective reality" which probably doesn't exist). But in practice, the condition is crystal clear.

Damasio is relevant to me and this blog in several ways. For one thing, his writings fit into a much wider set of ideas that support and extend the concept behind this blog - the "superorganism" or "dragon". For another, it's important that I watch out for the feeling of elation as the last few pieces of this theory snap into place. In the past, this kind of situation has lead to a "manic break" where great ideas drive me off the cliff into psychosis. Not this time. I'm feeling fine and I'm very aware that there is a ton of work that remains to flesh out these ideas, connect them, document them and explain them. There is nothing crazy or spooky here - just a lot of notable thinkers talking around the concept of the superorganism groping for words to describe it - the appropriate set of analogies.

To kick off a new phase in this project, I have changed the title of this blog slightly, from "programmable ape" to "supermind" (URL "emergentsupermind). Of course, this choice is limited by the titles available, but the shift also reflects the fact that the "programmability" of humans is just one way to see the emergence of the supermind.  Another key concept is the loss of individual identity, exhaustively documented in Amartya Sen's "Identity and Violence", which provides not only an expert analysis of the phenomenon but also a harrowing account of the suffering caused by this loss. There is also a shift in metaphors from a "superorganism" to a "supermind". As organisms ourselves, we are attracted to thinking of something "superior" as like us, an organism. This thinking is behind the old idea of God: the old man in the sky. The supermind is not smart: primitive rage and cruelty are more common that the "wisdom of crowds". Sen provides an essential ingredient to my project: a reason to care. It's not just a new way of seeing things: it's a way of seeing a danger that poses an immediate threat us all, precisely by crushing the individual human being into "little boxes" of "identity".

I have not failed to notice the similarity between the 2017 "supermind" and 1969 "Spirit system", but there are many, many differences between the two ideas. I have not been thinking of this for 48 years for nothing.
-------------------------------
* "Old timers" with a hard-won experience with mental illness are constantly annoyed with the professionals are unaware of the history of their classifications - which often dance to the tune of  drug companies who have a pill that "treats" a previously un-classified condition. Prozac being the best-known example ("treating" mild depression). Valium and Viagra are another. There is some evidence that "treatment" for whatever it was that afflicted me in Grenoble actually caused the epidemic what was eventually called "bipolar illness". All that can't distract us from the fact that mental illness is real, serious and debilitating. But we are not very good at treating it, nor do we have a convincing explanation of what causes the majority of common problems. That said, we are a lot better off than we were even in 1950.

Ordinary craziness

Full disclosure: My experience with "emotional instability" is long-standing and personal. I fully recognize that this does not make me an expert on the problem that has, from time to time, affected my own judgement. By the same token, Hedges can make no special claim to know the secret aims of President Obama or originate grand theories of history. Hedges can claim to formal qualifications and practical experience in only one area: religion. Contrary to popular belief, crazy people are particularly unwelcome in that domain. Even within his own domain of expertise, his religious theories of Christianity are too misguided to be seriously discussed. This is why you see Hedges preaching on You-Tube, which sets the bar low enough for dancing dogs and apes that play with baby tigers.

In fact, anyone with personal experience with "crazy people" (which includes 10% of the population and all their families) will gain a special appreciation for sanity and will instantly recognize it when they see it.

Hypomania (literally “under mania” or "less than mania") is a mood state characterized by persistent disinhibition and pervasive elevated (euphoric) or irritable mood but generally less severe than full mania. Characteristic behaviors are extremely energetic, talkative, and confident commonly exhibited with a flight of creative ideas.^[1] While hypomanic behavior often generates productivity and excitement, it can become troublesome if the subject engages in risky or less than wise behaviors

Wikipedia

Paranoia is a thought process believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of irrationality and delusion.^[1] Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concerning a perceived threat towards oneself (e.g. "Everyone is out to get me"). Paranoia is distinct from phobias, which also involve irrational fear, but usually no blame. Making false accusations and the general distrust of others also frequently accompany paranoia. For example, an incident most people would view as an accident or coincidence, a paranoid person might believe was intentional.

Wikipedia

I have sometimes slipped out of the real world to be lost in my own mind, to the point where my behavior became a problem to others. There is a tendency in the medical community and especially the common population to characterize such things with a single word. These days the popular word is "bipolar disorder", which, in the movies at least, has become the code word for "crazy", justifying whatever irrational acts that the screenwriters need to toss in to keep the plot interesting. Realistic portrayals of real mental illness are rare.

What few writers appreciate is the borderline craziness of ordinary people (see To Kill a Mockingbird as a rare exception) and how craziness can spread like wild fire to threaten entire populations.

"Depression" is another of these broad terms, "explaining" all kinds of irrational behavior, including self-destructive and/or massively anti-social acts. In the course of my own struggle to find and hold on to sanity, I have learned quite a bit about this subject "from the inside".

• It seems to me that current terminology relating to "mental illness" is largely a classification of "treatments" with little or no understanding of the actual disease process, if, indeed there is an underlying pathology at all.
• Individual differences are huge. The tendency to "label" is a consequence of the medical technique of matching up "illnesses" with "treatment", so, for example, if you have "depression", you take Prozac. If you take Prozac, you must have one of a short list of illnesses, some of which were specifically invented by the company that sells Prozac. To many doctors, "depression" is basically a Prozac deficiency!
• I do accept that, whatever the state of our ignorance may be, medications are necessary and effective in my case to prevent my imagination from going into overdrive. Whatever the shortcomings of medical science may be at the moment, I am the crazy one, not the doctors.
• A little bit craziness is wired in to each one of us. People differ widely in how connected they are to reality and how much that connection varies over time. In particular, many individuals manage to stay seriously hypomanic and/or paranoid throughout their lives but manage to gain acceptance among us as ordinary "pains in the ass". In fact exceptional creativity and artistic insight seem to be gifts that are along a continuum with something like mania further down the road. On the other hand, exactly the same "gifts" in the otherwise ungifted are simply vulnerabilities to crazy ideas. 
• The discipline of Mindfulness teaches that we are naturally "wired" to over-emphasize interpretation of reality over reality itself. Hypomania and paranoia are just extreme examples. Reversing this natural tendency works against nature and does not come easily. In my own case, I have found Zen practice and philosophy to act precisely against my "manic" tendencies. Together with medication, Zen seems to be keeping me sane -- in fact it is helping me to recognize sanity in others and to avoid crazy people who turn out to be a lot more common than is generally appreciated.

As a "reformed" or "under treatment" crazy guy, you would think I'd be exceptionally sympathetic to fellow  crazy people. In fact, the reverse is true. Modern "treatment" of just about anything tends to involve creating groups of people to share their stories and support each other. This has placed me in intimate contact with dozens of deeply troubled human beings. As anyone with similar exposure will tell you, there is no point trying to reason with a crazy person. Anyone who has had the misfortune of watching a loved one lose control of his own faculty of reason will know exactly what I mean. Apart from making sure they don't harm themselves or others and making sure they take their medications, there is little that can be done for them, especially in the short term. In the long term, family and community support can give the patient "space" to recover. Without such support, mental illness can be a killer. But to cure it or at least control it is a long-term struggle, painful for the sufferer and those who patiently try to help.

This brings me to my attitude toward public figures who are plainly crazy. As a fellow sufferer, someone who has "been there and done that", I may seem to be unusually harsh and unsympathetic. The reason for this is that such people do immeasurable harm to the general public, who are generally ignorant of the subtle variations in sanity or the symptoms of mental illness. Charisma is one of the most notable "powers" that comes in the hypomania package. The ability to remember vast amounts of information and stitch them together into an impressive paranoid universe is another. The tireless "fire hose" of seemingly sensible ideas is another. You can't shut these people up or reason with them in any way on any level. It is alarmingly common for charismatic leaders to draw millions of moderately crazy people into their paranoid universe with horrific results.

If we recognize that the vast majority of human beings are naturally in tenuous contact with reality, we see that insanity can be contagious. Crazy people, especially crazy people in the public eye are are dangerous.

The issue of respectful dialogue on the Internet is closely related to "Ordinary Craziness", a topic inspired, in large part, not by Chris Hedges (a certifiable nut) but by his followers and fans, who have learned the art of truthy rant at the feet of the master.