The Man Who Remembered the Future

  GEORGE TEMPLETON COMMENTARY  

By George Templeton 
Gazette Columnist

As we think, so shall we be.   Proverbs 4:23 

The difference between the past and the future is not about reality.  We have more information about the past.  That is what makes it different.  For us, information is not just data.  It is also intimate.  For our brains, remembering the past is the same as imagining the future.    But what we can dream has no limitations.

Our time is not just the clock’s regularity.  There are unconscious things going on, like bio-rhythms and jet-lag.  Time does not seem to have any single place.  Mortality gives our time a direction.

We know that space and time define location and motion.  Time cannot be separated from space.  The dimensions seem linear (a straight line and the shortest distance between two points in a flat universe), but we also know that they can be bent by mass and confused by motion.  But suppose that time is a circle, turning back upon itself.  Nothing would be temporary.  We would live our lives endlessly over again, not realizing it.

We are travelers in space-time.  Our happenings are uniquely personal because everything, including us, is in motion.  There is no fixed point of reference.  We are condemned to be self-referential and in our moment.

Old folks live in the past because there is more there.  Mature folks live in the present.  It has them.  Youth looks toward tomorrow.  The generations cannot live in each other’s time.  The past cannot be mixed with the future.  That would destroy cause and effect.  

The ability to imagine the future is more important than remembering the past.  It is more than personal fortune telling.  The faithful explain how they know the Old Testament writers were prophets.  It came true!  But Dr. Wayne Dyer’s book explains, “You’ll see it when you believe it.”

Consciousness is all about discerning reality, understanding abstraction, language, and symbols.  It is beyond complexity.  Cognition, armed with intensity of conviction, blurs the distinction between perceived fact, truth, and belief.  Intelligence mediates between consciousness and complexity.

Dyer writes that you are “transcendental immortal intelligence”, not what you do, or what you look like.  We are souls with a body, instead of a body with a soul.  In the near future, there will be intelligence that is not alive.  How will it know the difference between right and wrong?

Growing Intelligent       

Sometimes you choose to break the rules.  Will you risk running over the dog, gamble hitting another car, or possibly crash into a street taco vendor?  They are not just obstacles in your way.  It’s all about being conscious, seeing context, and judging probability.  It’s about decency, empathy, and feeling guilty.  Can a computer analyze this problem and generate the code to solve it?  Man writes the rules that computers follow.  There is no such thing as computer error.  It is always the unseen man hiding behind the curtain.  If he can make a mistake, so can his computer.

In the seventies, I built a home-made rig to send and receive Morse code.  It was too perfect, not like humans.  When receiving, the computer made errors.  It measured the length of the dits, dahs, and spaces, their timing, to guess at the letters.  When two computers talked to one another, everything was perfect.  Unlike humans, they consistently followed the same rules.  I received better than the computer could.  I could infer the message from its context, even when interference blotted the signal out.  The computer could not do that.

Have you ever encountered a jerk while driving on the highway?  When all cars become self-driving, the jerks will be gone.  They will be like-minded computers.

If the brain is just a mechanical device, there is no deep reason why transistors cannot lead to thought.  It requires neural networks, genetic algorithms, belief networks, fuzzy logic, cause and effect, and synergism between all these features.

Our brains evolved over millions of years, from countless “bottoms up” trial and error decisions until they were we.  We write computer programs to solve problems from the “top down”.  Reasoning combines combinatorial (choices) and sequential (history) logic.  Accurate conclusions depend on the “sensitivity conjecture”.  How many errors can you make before your conclusion is wrong?

All our experiences are thoughts. They determine our behavior.  We bring our reality to the world outside.  Bigotry, hate, and love are inside of us.  Will computers become like us?

Computers will program themselves and ultimately learn on their own.  Their Darwinian force is not slow biological mutation or adaptation.  It is financial.

Artificial intelligence will do more than drive our cars.  It will be in everything.  Empowered by free speech, internet connectivity, and your personal data, artificial intelligence armed with big data will decide how to best manipulate you (Netflix’s, The Great Hack).  It won’t be just big brother that wants to be your friend.  It will be big business, your credit card, web visits, GPS, and Russians that measure you, change your opinion, and help you vote.  Once facts are gone and lies are O.K. there can be no benefit from social conflict.  All our enemies have to do is get us to disagree.

Mind or Matter?

At first, the only things we knew about the brain involved its physical structure.  Scientists identified the Zonules of Zinn, the Obex, the Aqueduct of Sylvius, and the Tract of Goll, but they didn’t know how they functioned.

Conservatives mapped the brain of liberal democrats.  It included the moral relativity gray area, bleeding heart lobe, smarter than thou tumor, global warming panic center, and guilt for history hypothalamus.  They knew how the progressive brain worked better than they understood its topography.

Liberals mapped the conservative brain.  It contained the Apprentice region where entertainment is real.  Up is down in the inverter region.  The justification region is where somebody else did it first.  The envy node found conservative persecution and unfair treatment.  The conspiracy area contained everyone who disagrees.

Scientists use magnetic resonance imaging to examine brain activity.  For example, the temporal lobe, located by your ear is involved with memory.  The occipital lobe at the back of your head dedicates itself to vision.  We have different kinds of empathy (emotional, cognitive, compassionate) corresponding to different regions in the brain.  To understand the brain, we examine how it functions to control our behaviors and mental states.

But what exactly is love?  What is racism?  Are they only behaviors?

Could there be something missing when we attribute complex behaviors to entire brain regions?  They “talk” to one another through more than 100 trillion connections.  Every act of man springs from the hidden seeds of his thought.    Phenomenal consciousness remains a hard, perhaps impossible, problem to understand.  Science now turns toward network theory in an attempt to understand why some brains are abnormal.

Profiles in Narcissism

One in 25 people are sociopaths.  Their brains are structurally damaged and irreparable.  They lie and cheat on their wives.  They sadistically punish, and humiliate others.  They steal your idea while taking credit for it.  It is in their heart, not just their rhetoric.  They cannot change.

The GOP would fix things by helping people to remember to take their psych-meds, but they can’t see the forest because of the trees.  They want to hold their base and retain power.  It is not about doing what is right for the country.

Robert Hare tabulated the key symptoms of sociopathy in his book, Without Conscience (additions are mine): 

1.  Early behavior Problems (military reform school)
2. Poor behavior controls (vindictive, angry, callous, nasty, cruel)
3. Impulsive (erratic, inconsistent, unreliable)
4. Need for excitement (craving attention, imprudent risk-taker)
5. Lack of responsibility (me first, me only, blaming others)
6. Antisocial behavior (hyper-individualistic con artist, impolite, lacking social etiquette)
7. Egocentric and grandiose (malignant narcissist, self-aggrandizing, lacking humility)
8. Glib and superficial (a too-easy solution, childlike, thin, ignoring nuance, uninformed)
9.  Lack of empathy (does not understand, learn or feel a need to)
10.  Shallow emotions (feigned love, false pride, cannot feel your pain, materialistic)
11. Lack of introspection, remorse, or guilt (The self is everything.  It is the opposite of statesmanship.)
12. Deceitful and manipulative (Toxic liar, it’s not flip-flopping when it’s only the self.)

Trump is the GOP’s Kwisatz Haderach (shortening of the way).  Unaccountable and opaque, they divorced the Tea Party and married him.  The truth did not deter them.  It was a marriage to power and money wherever it existed.  Party now!  Forget that we must repay our debts.  Let democracy go.  Never mind the cost of destroying the environment.  Empathy is bad for business.  Morality goes far beyond the use of bad words.  What will be the offspring of this marriage?

What Will Be?

In her 1964 book, The Virtue of Selfishness, Ayn Rand advocated a materialistic, optimistic cruelty, whose survivors would be happy in the end.

Joseph Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces courageously went forth into the unknown to slay the dragon.  Victorious, he returned to his community.

Riane Eisler, in her 2007 book, The Real Wealth of Nations, argues that a care-giving society will be the economic winner.  It involves the raising of our children, elder care, world peace, and the sustainability of our planet.  We have a choice between greed and violence, or creativity and generosity.  We can pursue domination or partnership.

The author and Democratic presidential candidate, Marianne Williamson, made this an issue in her campaign.  We have witnessed the death of facts, the decline of Democracy, the erosion of world respect, and a president who is beyond the law.   All of reality now requires a qualifying adjective, “us” or “them”.  The only thing that can defeat Trump is a moral uprising of the American people.

David Brooks takes a personal look in his TED2019 talk, the lies our culture tells us about what matters….  Most of us are lonely.  Individual joy does not last.  Value and happiness comes from connection with others.  His argument advocates a “relationist life” instead of living an “individualist life”.   His visual is the Native American weaver, who builds an interwoven rug.

Native Americans understood the bond between parent and child.  They created web-like dream catchers that would allow only good dreams to pass through to their sleeping children below.  Their world would not become a dark, fearful, hateful place.

The TV series, Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, played from 1968 to 2001.  It taught children about morality, social, and emotional skills.    It emphasized kindness over cynicism as the way to succeed.  Tom Hanks’ and Sony Pictures are bringing it back (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood) in November of 2019.

The National Geographic TV show, One Strange Rock, is about intention instead of copious memorization and wisdom over knowledge.  Watch it to better understand why we must learn to live in harmony with one another and nature. 

The future is our child.  Will you help to raise it properly?