Questioning Consciousness

[dada]

...in 1900, Max Planck writes: "After a few weeks, which were certainly filled by the most intense work of my life, I had a flash of light in the darkness in which I was debating with myself, and unexpected perspectives were opened."

This "flash of light in the darkness" revealed to him a concept—the elementary quantum of action ("action" as a physical quantity corresponding to energy multiplied by time)—which was going to revolutionize all of physics and profoundly change our vision of the world. This quantum is expressed by a universal constant (the "Planck constant") which has a well determined value and occurs by integer multiples.

The Planck quantum introduces a discrete, discontinuous structure of energy. Planck was fully conscious that in breaking down the old all powerful concept of continuity, the very foundation of classical realism was thus being put in question: "This quantum represented.… something absolutely new, unsuspected until then, and seemed destined to revolutionize a theoretical physics based on continuity, inherent in all causal relations since the discovery of infinitesimal calculus by Leibniz and Newton."

It is important to take into account that the "discontinuity" we are speaking of is a pure and firm discontinuity which has nothing in common with the popular usage of this word (the fork of a road, for example). To try to grasp the full strangeness of the idea of discontinuity, let us imagine a bird jumping from one branch to another without passing through any intermediary point: it would be as if the bird were to suddenly materialize on one branch, then on another. Evidently, confronting such a possibility, our habitual imagination is blocked. But mathematics can treat this sort of situation rigorously.

...Classical physics recognizes two kinds of objects that are quite distinct: corpuscles ( "Corpuscle" was the term used in the early days of quantum physics.) and waves. Classical corpuscles are discrete entities, clearly localized in space and characterized, from a dynamic point of view, by their energy and their momentum. Corpuscles could easily be visualized as billiard balls traveling continuously in space and time, and describing a very precise trajectory. As for waves, they were conceived as occupying all of space, in a continuum. A wave phenomenon can be described as a superpositioning of periodic waves characterized by a spatial period (wave-length) and by a temporal period. In the same way, a wave can be characterized by its "frequencies": a "frequency of vibration" (the inverse of the period of oscillation) and a "wave number" (the inverse of the wave-length). Waves can thus be readily visualized.

Quantum mechanics brought about the complete overturning of this view. Quantum particles are corpuscles and waves at the same time. Their dynamic characteristics are connected by the formulas of Einstein-Planck (1900–1905) and de Broglie (1924): the energy is proportional to the temporal frequency (the Einstein-Planck formula), and the momentum is proportional to the wave number (the de Broglie formula). The factor of proportionality, in both cases, is precisely Planck's constant.

This representation of a quantum particle defies all attempts to represent it by forms in space and time, for it is obviously impossible to represent something mentally that would be simultaneously corpuscle and wave. At the same time, the energy is changing in a discontinuous way. The concepts of continuity and discontinuity are reunited by nature.

It must be well understood that the quantum particle is a completely new entity that cannot be reduced to classical representations; the quantum particle is not a simple juxtaposition of corpuscle and wave. We can understand the quantum particle as being a unity of contradictories. It would be more correct to affirm that this particle is neither a corpuscle nor a wave. The unity of contradictories is more than the simple sum of its classical parts, a summation which is contradictory (from the classical point of view) and approximate (from the quantum point of view).

...The hegemony of technoscience in our societies no longer needs to be demonstrated. It is tied in an undeniable manner to the notion of "power."

But what does knowledge serve? In the name of what does the extraordinary development of technoscience function? These questions may seem useless, because the association between the words "technoscience" and "progress" is made automatically.

The word "progress," unhappily, is one of the most ambiguous and noxious words in our vocabulary. In the absence of a value system, the development of technoscience follows its own logic: all that can be done will be done. If we reflect for a moment, we can understand that this logic of technoscience is frightening. The disastrous consequences for our species can be innumerable and some of them are already present among us. Several philosophers have not failed to note the dangers of a technoscience which would exclusively follow its own logic.Thus, a philosopher such as Michel Henry is not afraid to say that technoscience is the cause of a new barbarism: "Life itself is affected, all our values totter, not only the aesthetic, but also the ethical, the sacred—and with them the very possibility of living each day."


Gurdjieff ironically refers to the "scientist of new formation:" who serves only knowing, and especially in Western culture, it is considered that a man may possess great knowledge, for example he may be an able scientist, make discoveries, advance science, and at the same time he may be, and has the right to be, a petty, egoistic, caviling, mean, envious, vain, naive, and absent-minded man. It seems to be considered here that a professor must always forget his umbrella everywhere.…

And they do not understand that a man's knowledge depends on the level of his being. If knowledge gets far ahead of being, it becomes theoretical and abstract and inapplicable to life, or actually harmful, because instead of serving life and helping people the better to struggle with the difficulties they meet, it begins to complicate man's life, brings new difficulties into it, new troubles and calamities which were not there before. The reason for this is that knowledge which is not in accordance with being can never be large enough for, or sufficiently suited to, man's real needs. It will always be a knowledge of one thing together with ignorance of another thing; a knowledge of the detail, without a knowledge of the whole; a knowledge of the form without a knowledge of the essence.… A change in the nature of knowledge is possible only with a change in the nature of being.

- particle physicist Basarab Nicolescu

http://gurdjieff-bibliography.com/Current/18_nicolescu_g-philos-nat_2004-07-03.pdf

Just some ideas, contradictory and approximate.

If you ask me, I think the goal at this point is just to hold off the mass extinction for a few hundred more years, until we figure out how to travel at ftl speeds. Then, humans of like minds can group together and get the fuck out of here, go our separate ways. Our birth world, I'm sorry to say, I believe is doomed.

It's not anyone's fault, it was just the necessities of evolution that caused this. We wouldn't be here without nature's method of experiment and diversity giving us such a rich variety of humans.

[dada]

Since I'm Gurdjieffing, here's another one:

"Science tells us that our senses are curiously limited in perception. There are many sounds which our ears do not detect, while our eyes respond to less than one trillionth of the vast spectrum of electromagnetic waves known to science; and there are other influences not perceived by the ordinary senses. Hence it is clear that the world we know is merely a tiny fraction of a vastly greater unmanifest world. This idea of an unmanifest world is of enormous importance. It is, in fact, the essential key to the mystery of the Universe. But this invisible background is not just an extension of the physical world. It is a realm containing vibrations and energies of an entirely different order from those perceived by the senses."

"We usually interpret materiality in physical terms; but we know that this is an illusion of the senses. The familiar substances are really loose assemblies of tiny disturbances of the void called electrons separated by relatively enormous distances. These interfere with the passage of light waves and so create the appearance of solidity and colour. Within this virtually empty space there is clearly room for vibrations of a finer quality, which will not be detected by the ordinary senses but may have a significant influence on our behaviour."

"Human beings have quite well-defined limits to their perception of the passage of Time. We do not register a flow of Time when the cosmic phenomena are taking place at speeds or frequencies that exceed our nervous system’s ability to register them. In these contemporary times, we are embedded in micro- and radio waves of photonic energies that reflect processes (cosmic phenomena) that are taking place so briefly, that we have no receptors that can register them. There are a host of processes within us that complete themselves (go through a cyclical exchange of energies and forms) which, for us, have no subjectively measurable Time. Neither do we experience a flow of Time when we consider the gradual wearing down of a mountain range (that occurs over many millions of years). Nor do we experience a flow of Time when we flip a light switch in a darkened room. We cannot experience Time passing when an electron is knocked out of its orbit by an ultraviolet photon or when the photosynthetic process is taking place in a leaf. We experience a flow of Time only with respect to the cosmic phenomena occurring at our level."

http://www.gurdjiefffourthway.org/pdf/THE%20RAY%20OF%20CREATION.pdf

and so on. I quoted selectively, the piece is actually all over the place. I think it's great shit. Think of it as metaphor, a mythology. You may disagree with/misunderstand the notions of a 'creative intelligence' explicating the manifest universe, or any number of things in it. That's alright, I won't take it personally. It isn't my place to prove anything to you, teach you anything, sell you on anything, or cite reliable secondary sources.

"Think you of the fact that a deaf person cannot hear. Then, what deafness may we not all possess? What senses do we lack that we cannot see and cannot hear another world all around us? What is there around us that we cannot know?" - OCB

[82_28]

Yes. "Great shit". Thanks, dada.

[Sounder]

Dr. Evil wrote...

Huh, this is weird. That's the exact same thing I've been saying all along. I also heard cats and dogs are now living together.

Yes, but you seem to be coming from a monism that considers that the mind is an artifact of the brain, whereas I think that the brain is an artifact of consciousness.

I think we're looking at the same thing from (very) different vantage points.

No doubt.

I'm not sure recognition of the problem will open any new and novel worlds of possibilities though. It will just be one more data point in a sea of competing data points. It might lead to new insights and progress in various aspects of human existence, but ultimately we're still human, and that usually ends with dead people and children crying.

Data points in one framework can produce different implications in another framework. Yes, we all die and we all suffer, still we could at least learn to do it with more dignity.

We're already straining at the limits of what our nature will allow.

Within this framework yes, but who can really say what nature (reality) will allow? There may be vast potentials, as yet untapped.

We're seeing the backlash right now with the rise of the new right wing and their yearning for "traditional" values which is threatening to drag us all back down to the good old days where things weren't so confusing and scary.

One does not have to be a traditionalist to balk at the technocratic innovations of modern society. (Can Google save us from the 'right wingers'?)

[Burnt Hill]

Chris Crawford -
"The headline is misleading. The Arc gene sequence is involved in neuronal behavior in ALL animals. If it lies behind consciousness, then doesn't that mean that all animals with the Arc gene are conscious? Does that mean that fruit flies are conscious?"

"This is a very significant discovery; it might be crucial to learning".

An Ancient Virus May Be Responsible for Human Consciousness

https://www.livescience.com/61627-ancient-virus-brain.html

By Rafi Letzter, Staff Writer | February 2, 2018 12:18pm ET

You've got an ancient virus in your brain. In fact, you've got an ancient virus at the very root of your conscious thought.

According to two papers published in the journal Cell in January, long ago, a virus bound its genetic code to the genome of four-limbed animals. That snippet of code is still very much alive in humans' brains today, where it does the very viral task of packaging up genetic information and sending it from nerve cells to their neighbors in little capsules that look a whole lot like viruses themselves. And these little packages of information might be critical elements of how nerves communicate and reorganize over time — tasks thought to be necessary for higher-order thinking, the researchers said.

Though it may sound surprising that bits of human genetic code come from viruses, it's actually more common than you might think: A review published in Cell in 2016 found that between 40 and 80 percent of the human genome arrived from some archaic viral invasion. [Unraveling the Human Genome: 6 Molecular Milestones]


00:2101:17
That's because viruses aren't just critters that try to make a home in a body, the way bacteria do. Instead, as Live Science has previously reported, a virus is a genetic parasite. It injects its genetic code into its host's cells and hijacks them, turning them to its own purposes — typically, that means as factories for making more viruses. This process is usually either useless or harmful to the host, but every once in a while, the injected viral genes are benign or even useful enough to hang around. The 2016 review found that viral genes seem to play important roles in the immune system, as well as in the early days of embryo development.

But the new papers take things a step further. Not only is an ancient virus still very much active in the cells of human and animal brains, but it seems to be so important to how they function that processes of thought as we know them likely never would have arisen without it, the researchers said.

The Arc gene
Shortly after a synapse fires, the viral gene known as Arc comes to life, writing its instructions down as bits of mobile genetic code known as RNA, the researchers found. (A synapse is the junction between two neurons.)

RNA is DNA's messenger and agent in the world outside the cell's nucleus. A single-strand copy of code from DNA's double helix, it carries genetic instructions to places they can be useful. (And, interestingly, viruses tend to store their genetic code in RNA, rather than in DNA.)

Following the Arc RNA's instructions, the nerve cell builds "capsids" — virus-like envelopes — around it. Those envelopes let it travel safely between cells, and it does just that, entering neighboring neurons and passing its packet of genetic information along to them, according to the studies.

It's still unclear what that information does when it arrives in a new cell, but the researchers found that without the process functioning properly, synapses wither away. And problems with the Arc gene tend to show up in people with autism and other atypical neural conditions, the researchers said.

In a companion article, two experts who were not involved in the 2018 papers (the same two experts, in fact, behind the 2016 review) wrote that this process offers the best explanation yet for how nerve cells exchange the information necessary to reorganize themselves in the brain over time.

"These processes underlie brain functions ranging from classical operant conditioning to human cognition and the concept of 'self,'" they wrote. (Classical and operant conditioning are simple forms of reward and punishment-based learning in animals and humans.)

Bizarrely, Arc seems to have made the jump from virus to animal more than once. The researchers found that Arc genes in humans and other four-limbed creatures seem to be closely related to one another. The Arc genes in fruit flies and worms, however, seem to have arrived separately.

The next step for this research, the outside experts wrote in the companion article, is to bring experts in neuroscience and ancient viruses together to work out the mechanisms for just how Arc arrived in the genome, and exactly what information it's passing between our cells today.

[DrEvil]

Chris Crawford -
"The headline is misleading. The Arc gene sequence is involved in neuronal behavior in ALL animals. If it lies behind consciousness, then doesn't that mean that all animals with the Arc gene are conscious? Does that mean that fruit flies are conscious?"

"This is a very significant discovery; it might be crucial to learning".

...snip...

Peter Watts has some of his usual cheerful speculation on this. Short version: the virus still contains all it needs to act like a virus, so how long until someone creates a new payload for it and weaponizes it? A virus that literally spreads by the power of thought.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=7875

Arc Weld

“Language is a virus from outer space”
—William S. Borroughs

Chest-thump to start off the year: Last year’s “ZeroS”, appearing in Jonathan Strahan’s Infinity Wars, made it into a couple of (late-breaking update: into three!) Year’s Best collections: Neil Clarke’s Best Science Fiction of the Year (Vol. 3), and another couple I hesitate to name because they don’t seem to have been announced yet. So that’s cool.

But this is way cooler:

There’s this gene, Arc, active in our neurons. It’s essential for cognition and longterm memory in mammals; knockout mice who lack it can’t remember from one day to the next where they left the cheese. It looks and acts an awful lot like something called a gag— a “group-specific antigen”, something which codes for the core structural proteins of retroviruses. Like a gag, Arc codes for a protein that assembles into capsids (basically, shuttles containing messenger RNA). These accumulate in the dendrites, cross the synaptic junction in little vesicles: a payload from one neuron to another.

Pastuzyn et al, of the University of Utah, have just shown that Arc is literally an infection: a tamed, repurposed virus that infected us a few hundred million years ago. Apparently it looks an awful lot like HIV. Pastuzyn et al speculate that Arc “may mediate intercellular signaling to control synaptic function”.

Memory is a virus. Or at least, memory depends on one.

Of course, everyone’s all over this. U of Utah trumpeted the accomplishment with a press release notable for, among other things, describing the most-junior contributor to this 13-author paper as the “senior” author. Newsweek picked up both the torch and the mistake, leading me to wonder if Kastalio Medrano is simply at the sloppy end of the scale or if it’s normal for “Science Writers” in popular magazines to not bother reading the paper they’re reporting on. (I mean, seriously, guys; the author list is right there under the title.) As far as I know I’m the first to quote Burroughs in this context (or to mention that Greg Bear played around a very similar premise in Darwin’s Radio), but when your work gets noticed by The Atlantic you know you’ve arrived.

Me, though, I can’t stop thinking about the fact that something which was once an infection is now such an integral part of our cognitive architecture. I can’t stop wondering what would happen if someone decided to reweaponise it.

The parts are still there, after all. Arc builds its own capsid, loads it up with genetic material, hops from one cell to another. The genes being transported don’t even have to come from Arc:

“If viral RNA is not present, Gag encapsulates host RNA, and any single-stranded nucleic acid longer than 20-­30 nt can support capsid assembly … indicating a general propensity to bind abundant RNA.”

The delivery platform’s intact; indeed, the delivery platform is just as essential to its good role as it once was to its evil one. So what happens if you add a payload to that platform that, I dunno, fries intraneuronal machinery somehow?

I’ll tell you. You get a disease that spreads through the very act of thinking. The more you think, the more memories you lay down, the more the disease ravages you. The only way to slow its spread is to think as little as possible; the only way to save your intelligence is not to use it. Your only chance is to become willfully stupid.

Call it Ignorance is Bliss. Call it Donald’s Syndrome. Even call it a metaphor of some kind.

Me, I’m calling it a promising premise. The only real question is whether I’ll squander it now on a short story, or save it up for a few years and stick it into Omniscience.

(Thanks to Bahumat, btw, for showing me the link.)

[dada]

Peter Watts has some of his usual cheerful speculation on this. Short version: the virus still contains all it needs to act like a virus, so how long until someone creates a new payload for it and weaponizes it? A virus that literally spreads by the power of thought.

By his science fiction logic, wouldn't it be possible to create a payload to some positive end? Does weaponizing always have to be to some destructive end? Maybe this destructive tendency of thought has something to do with training your mind to think of catchy ideas that will sell stories. Which would imply that not only are memory, language, and even thought itself viruses, but consumerism behaves similarly. Catchy ideas. Perhaps it would be illuminating to look at many human processes and behaviors through the virus framework.

It's difficult to imagine constructive weapons, isn't it. Destructive comes easy for us. The infection must be very advanced.

Although, difficult means a challenge. And I find challenges attractive. Perhaps there's hope in that.

Somehow this brings to mind Terry Riley's repurposing of factories so the smokestacks belch incense instead of smog.

[Burnt Hill]

Thanks for that DrEvil.
Weaponized memory viruses, I already have a few that I created myself, I think.....

[DrEvil]

Peter Watts has some of his usual cheerful speculation on this. Short version: the virus still contains all it needs to act like a virus, so how long until someone creates a new payload for it and weaponizes it? A virus that literally spreads by the power of thought.

By his science fiction logic, wouldn't it be possible to create a payload to some positive end? Does weaponizing always have to be to some destructive end? Maybe this destructive tendency of thought has something to do with training your mind to think of catchy ideas that will sell stories. Which would imply that not only are memory, language, and even thought itself viruses, but consumerism behaves similarly. Catchy ideas. Perhaps it would be illuminating to look at many human processes and behaviors through the virus framework.

It's difficult to imagine constructive weapons, isn't it. Destructive comes easy for us. The infection must be very advanced.

Although, difficult means a challenge. And I find challenges attractive. Perhaps there's hope in that.

Somehow this brings to mind Terry Riley's repurposing of factories so the smokestacks belch incense instead of smog.

Consumerism is definitely a mind virus, possibly even more so in the context of this story. Perhaps memes are literally viral in nature. Religion being an actual virus does have some appeal to it; there might be a cure!

You could probably come up with positive payloads to spread, like increased altruism or reducing the impact of negative memories, but then it would probably backfire spectacularly, people becoming altruistic to the point of starving to death because they don't want to eat living things or can't stand the thought of children starving in Africa while they themselves eat, or the reduced impact of negative memories makes people incapable of learning from their mistakes.

I think people's tendency to think negatively is a survival trait. Imagining a happy outcome is nice but won't do much else, while imagining a bad outcome might help you prevent the bad outcome from happening.

To paraphrase Watts: The guy who assumes the rustling in the grass is a tiger will run away and have children. The guy who assumes it's just the wind won't.

[dada]

Weaponized memory viruses, I already have a few that I created myself, I think

Homebrew memory viruses. Now we're sliding from scientific into alchemical territory. ha

Treating memory like a mechanical system might provide some answers to some questions, but it may fail to address others. Different contexts, even different scientific ones, reveal different aspects.

Besides that, memory is a word that covers a complex of subjects. An actor memorizing Shakespeare, or Kyrgyz Manaschi reciting a five hundred thousand line epic poem may be using a different type of memory than remembering what I ate for dinner on Wednesday.

There's the stroll down memory lane, there's Proust's involuntary memory, there's unconscious memory. All are subjective, selective; we assign significance to a small fraction of what we actually perceive with our senses. And even that we can get wrong. It may not be a matter of failure of memory, it could be distraction, where we place the focus of attention. What we assign as significant memories is bound up with our sense of identity, personality, ego, along with whatever we currently have swimming around in our subconscious. All of which can change. Nostalgia narrows our view. There may be ways to widen it. Just some thoughts.

You could probably come up with positive payloads to spread, like increased altruism or reducing the impact of negative memories, but then it would probably backfire spectacularly, people becoming altruistic to the point of starving to death because they don't want to eat living things or can't stand the thought of children starving in Africa while they themselves eat, or the reduced impact of negative memories makes people incapable of learning from their mistakes.

I think people's tendency to think negatively is a survival trait. Imagining a happy outcome is nice but won't do much else, while imagining a bad outcome might help you prevent the bad outcome from happening.

To paraphrase Watts: The guy who assumes the rustling in the grass is a tiger will run away and have children. The guy who assumes it's just the wind won't.

All true. But I'm thinking positive payloads like ways to speed up the healing process. Heal a cut, increase white blood cell count, knit bones faster just by thinking about it. Clearly the mind influences the body, maybe we could enhance that. When we think we see a tiger, adrenalin courses through the body. When we realize it's a shadow, we relax. Perception drives the chemicals.

I'm tough on science fiction writers, extra-critical. I think they have a great responsibility.

[Harvey]

Thanks for that DrEvil.
Weaponized memory viruses, I already have a few that I created myself, I think.....

Language. The medium of concept.

[Burnt Hill]

[DrEvil]

Weaponized memory viruses, I already have a few that I created myself, I think

Homebrew memory viruses. Now we're sliding from scientific into alchemical territory. ha

Treating memory like a mechanical system might provide some answers to some questions, but it may fail to address others. Different contexts, even different scientific ones, reveal different aspects.

Besides that, memory is a word that covers a complex of subjects. An actor memorizing Shakespeare, or Kyrgyz Manaschi reciting a five hundred thousand line epic poem may be using a different type of memory than remembering what I ate for dinner on Wednesday.

There's the stroll down memory lane, there's Proust's involuntary memory, there's unconscious memory. All are subjective, selective; we assign significance to a small fraction of what we actually perceive with our senses. And even that we can get wrong. It may not be a matter of failure of memory, it could be distraction, where we place the focus of attention. What we assign as significant memories is bound up with our sense of identity, personality, ego, along with whatever we currently have swimming around in our subconscious. All of which can change. Nostalgia narrows our view. There may be ways to widen it. Just some thoughts.

You could probably come up with positive payloads to spread, like increased altruism or reducing the impact of negative memories, but then it would probably backfire spectacularly, people becoming altruistic to the point of starving to death because they don't want to eat living things or can't stand the thought of children starving in Africa while they themselves eat, or the reduced impact of negative memories makes people incapable of learning from their mistakes.

I think people's tendency to think negatively is a survival trait. Imagining a happy outcome is nice but won't do much else, while imagining a bad outcome might help you prevent the bad outcome from happening.

To paraphrase Watts: The guy who assumes the rustling in the grass is a tiger will run away and have children. The guy who assumes it's just the wind won't.

All true. But I'm thinking positive payloads like ways to speed up the healing process. Heal a cut, increase white blood cell count, knit bones faster just by thinking about it. Clearly the mind influences the body, maybe we could enhance that. When we think we see a tiger, adrenalin courses through the body. When we realize it's a shadow, we relax. Perception drives the chemicals.

I'm tough on science fiction writers, extra-critical. I think they have a great responsibility.

I misunderstood, but you still have the problem of unintended consequences. How do you prevent people from getting cancer every time they're angry or depressed, and how do you prevent hypochondriacs from dropping like flies?

I agree completely on science fiction writers, but for me that also includes authors like Watts to show us the dark side of our potential futures.

So many of the people creating our future look to optimistic science fiction for inspiration, like Musk naming his drone ships after Culture ships, Google having the Star Trek computer as the design goal for their search/voice assistant and everyone into augmented reality poring over Rainbow's End that someone needs to play devil's advocate and say "hang on, this is going to end horribly, and here's why".

[dada]

..the problem of unintended consequences. How do you prevent people from getting cancer every time they're angry or depressed, and how do you prevent hypochondriacs from dropping like flies?

I agree completely on science fiction writers, but for me that also includes authors like Watts to show us the dark side of our potential futures.

So many of the people creating our future look to optimistic science fiction for inspiration, like Musk naming his drone ships after Culture ships, Google having the Star Trek computer as the design goal for their search/voice assistant and everyone into augmented reality poring over Rainbow's End that someone needs to play devil's advocate and say "hang on, this is going to end horribly, and here's why".

Good points. Even the best positive payloads run the risk of creating unintended consequences. Although, that's life in the big picture. Always a risky venture.

In the end, nervous system enhancements don't matter much if people don't have some semblance of control over their nervous systems. It's the ago-old problem of how to get people to (for lack of a better term) think better. Hell if I know. Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe that's one of the tasks of science fiction. Not only show us potential positive and negative futures, but get us thinking better.

I know I'm always bringing up Dune, but I think he hit on something beyond positive and negative there. Overturning the hero narrative. Confronting paradoxes and making difficult decisions if we're to do what it takes to keep humans surviving. Bene Gesserit witches and Mentats in a messy future.

[Gnomad]

Thanks, everyone. Best read today (all of the above)! Fascinating stuff.