The basilisk that must not be thought dovetails nicely with the Solid State Intelligence. Artificial super-intelligence, or malevolent extra-terrestrial? You decide.
On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0952695119872094"As Lilly began to explore his cybernetic spiritualism further, the belief in extraterrestrial controllers appears to have become a source of both comfort and concern. In The Scientist, he describes a realisation that modern communications technologies have become more intelligent than humans. During one session under ketamine inside the tank, Lilly begins to envision the future of computers and information networks. As he explains, the human biocomputer consists of organic matter and water, and relies upon the balance of a controlled ecosystem. But around the mid-20th century, he writes, man conceived of solid-state computers, beginning the creation of a new form of intelligence, at first in communications networks and then in computers that could do ‘self-programming as man himself does’. At first, Lilly explains, ‘these networks were ostensibly the servants of humans’. Over time, however, man’s control of what happened in these machines became more and more difficult to maintain, and eventually the solid-state systems began to assume control over the planet and the human species, eventually removing the conditions necessary for organic life (Lilly, 1978: 147–50).
Written in the 1970s, The Scientist conveys a worldview that incorporates emerging environmental concerns prominent amongst much of the West Coast counterculture. Lilly claims he saw his experiences inside the isolation tank as a warning that if humans ‘advanced the solid-state entity any further man would eventually become obsolete’. Within this belief system, he came to believe that extraterrestrial solid-state civilisations were trying to manipulate communications networks on Earth, and began to see evidence for this everywhere he went. ‘He finally understood’, he explains, ‘the killing of whales by humans as part of the programming of solid-state intelligences’. The preservation of biological life, he claims, relied upon the reconnection of advanced biocomputers such as those of man and dolphins and organic extraterrestrials. Lilly describes watching a broadcast by former US Attorney General Elliot Richardson during the Watergate scandal, writing,
That man I see on television is a direct agent of the extraterrestrial reality controlling all human life. He is giving a public speech on television to the human species in order to program them into believing that he is not an extraterrestrial agent. In reality, he is controlled by the solid-state life forms of the civilization of another place in our galaxy. It is obvious that what he is saying is to hide his real mission. (Lilly, 1978: 183)
At this moment, the electricity cuts out, which Lilly sees as a sure sign that the solid-state entity is trying to control his own realisation."
Both his words and manner of speech seemed at first totally unfamiliar to me, and yet somehow they stirred memories - as an actor might be stirred by the forgotten lines of some role he had played far away and long ago.
Been a fan of Charlie Brooker since he did TV listings mag spoof 
