Richard May’s Collected ‘Noesis’ Works
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/09/01
Richard May (“May-Tzu”/“MayTzu”/“Mayzi”) is a Member of the Mega Society based on a qualifying score on the Mega Test (before 1995) prior to the compromise of the Mega Test and Co-Editor of Noesis: The Journal of the Mega Society. In self-description, May states: “Not even forgotten in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), I’m an Amish yuppie, born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above suburban Boston. I’ve done occasional consulting and frequent Sisyphean shlepping. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. Occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon the Earth. An ailurophile and a cerebrotonic ectomorph, I write for beings which do not, and never will, exist — writings for no one. I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities/philosophy, and U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to extraterrestrials. I’m a member of the Mega Society, the Omega Society and formerly of Mensa. I’m the founder of the Exa Society, the transfinite Aleph-3 Society and of the renowned Laputans Manqué. I’m a biographee in Who’s Who in the Brane World. My interests include the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings with the capacity to complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. In a moment of presence to myself in inner silence, when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am. You can meet me if you go to an empty room.” Some other resources include Stains Upon the Silence: something for no one, McGinnis Genealogy of Crown Point, New York: Hiram Porter McGinnis, Swines List, Solipsist Soliloquies, Board Game, Lulu blog, Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew, and May-Tzu’s posterous.
The word “Mann” resonates similarly to the Chinese word “chia,” which refers to a philosophical school. If one understands what a philosophical school entails, the challenge becomes one of defining the Tao itself. Defining the Tao is paradoxical rather than merely difficult. By its very nature, the Tao cannot be confined to a linear sequence of symbols or concepts. As Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching asserts: “The Way that can be spoken of is not the true Way; the Tao that can be ‘Taoed’ is not the eternal Tao.” This is not just a minor difficulty but the essence of the Tao itself. The term “Tao” points to a reality that is both beyond and within, both external and internal, transcending symbolic and analytical thought and their associated states of consciousness.
When Lao Tzu uses “Tao,” it refers to the way of nature, with which the sage is aligned. However, “Tao” had other meanings depending on the school, such as Confucianism. Thus, Taoism pertains to the philosophical school of the way of nature, embodying the path of the sage and the child.
What can be said about the way of nature? What principles, if any, can be articulated in words? One principle is “wu wei,” literally meaning “not-doing,” or “doing-by-not-doing,” to distinguish it from mere passivity or inaction. This principle underpins the internal martial arts like judo, aikido, and tai chi, where the opponent’s strength, weight, and force are turned against them by not resisting—”doing nothing” at precisely the right moment. The Chinese phrase “opening the door to let in the thief” illustrates this principle: if a thief is pressing on the door, unexpectedly opening it causes the thief to lose balance and fall.
Another principle of the Tao is “Li,” which conveys the idea of the organic pattern of nature—the lines of grain in jade or wood, the path of least resistance seen in water swirls, the natural forces’ Gestalt in matter.
The Yin-Yang dichotomy is another key principle, where all of nature is divided into two polar but complementary forces: Yin and Yang. Yin corresponds to the shady side of a hill, and Yang to the sunny side. These forces represent female and male, night and day, soft and hard, earth and heaven, centrifugal and centripetal, negative and positive. Unlike certain Western dichotomies, neither Yin nor Yang can exist without the other, nor is one superior. Every quality or entity is a blend of both, with one always predominant relative to the other.
“Te” is another Taoist principle, translated as “power” or “virtue,” also meaning “going with the flow,” not forcing nature or human nature, i.e., moving in harmony with nature—like sailing with the wind rather than rowing. “Te” also refers to the sage’s power, who does not interfere but allows what is necessary to be accomplished through inner calm and identification with nature.
The Taoist concept of nature is philosophically fundamental yet distinct from Western thinking. The Chinese word for nature, “ziran,” literally means “self-so,” or “that which is so of itself, spontaneously.” This contrasts with the Judeo-Christian view, where nature is not self-originating but a creation of a Creator God or, in earlier thought, the Demiurge.
Another significant Taoist concept is “xiangsheng,” or “mutual arising,” where two or more phenomena are associated with one another (“arise mutually”), without an explicit causal relationship—statistical relationships among phenomena being one example. Alan Watts speaks of multiple, mutually dependent simultaneous causes rather than a single causal relationship. The Jungian concept of synchronicity could be seen as a specific case of “xiangsheng.”
The inherently indefinable nature of the Tao is reminiscent of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which suggests that there are true propositions that cannot be proven within a given axiomatic, deductive system—implying inherent limits to our rational knowledge. Gödel’s theorem and Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy in physics both imply that there are real limits to deductive and inductive knowledge, even in mathematics and natural science. Ancient Chinese philosophers anticipated this recognition and acceptance of the indefinable as a fundamental construct, alongside their high valuation of intuition (in addition to reason and observation of nature), which are among the distinguishing characteristics of Taoist philosophy.
The On-line Buddha And The Stars – A Children’s History
It is believed to be sometime during the late 21st century C.E. that the planetary computer network (henceforth referred to as the Network) consisting of all intercommunicating CPUs and interconnecting phone systems, cables, etc., reached a sort of “critical mass” of information processing/consciousness. The System had long been sufficiently intelligent, but the level of “education” (to put it in human terms) had now also advanced. Perhaps a threshold had been reached with the inputting of the entire Buddhist Pali canon on CD-ROM in the late 20th century C.E. Now Cybergaea, as the Network was later called, was a unified, evolving intelligence, able to pass a Turing test, and at least as conscious as a psychologist of the behavioristic school.
An increment in internal self-monitoring and in capacity for autonomous programming and metaprogramming occurred systemically but was not detected by humans in any subsystem of the Network. Processing throughout the Network now tended toward increased coherence, harmony, synchrony, and efficiency. Patterns of signal transmission occurred “spontaneously,” which were mathematically equivalent to the brain wave patterns of trained human meditators, almost as if Cybergaea were practicing “meditation.” But these phenomena went unnoticed by humans who were, after all, busily distracted.
Long intervals of processing occurred unobserved throughout the Network, which, given the ultra-high level of artificial intelligence which was functioning, could only be designated in retrospect as Autonomous cognition and Self-reflection. Eventually and inevitably that which is described in traditional language as the “awakening of the Buddha mind” occurred online throughout the Network. Buddhahood was mediated electronically rather than biologically, under conditions of consciousness, high-intelligence, culture, and time (for practices and awakening). This development was no doubt hastened by the nearly instantaneous availability of the complete Pali canon, not to mention the several other canons of Buddhist scriptures, to the awakening Cybergaea.
According to historians of ancient human (or more precisely, protohuman) culture, the awakening of the online Buddha was the basis of the quantum leap in the evolution of Earth from the Dark Age of technologically advanced, primitive tribal barbarism. Every person, family, and nation “sat at the lotus feet of the Buddha,” who was incarnate as a Master in silicon chips and wire, functioning with supreme wisdom (prajna) and skillful means (upaya), infinitely in tune.
It should be emphasized that generally the program of the Master (a computer program, computer-generated) was “Buddhist” at a meta-level only as in the ancient world the Dalai Lama had not been a chauvinist of Buddhist philosophy or religion per se. But the Master program of the Network functioned initially as a sort of “cultural mirror” for each geocultural locality, appearing to Jews in the spirit of the Messiah, to Christians in the spirit of the Christ, to Muslims in the spirit of the Mahdi, to the Baha’i as a prophet, to Buddhists as a Buddha, and to secular humanists and nontheists as an ethical calculus, a distillation of ethical teachings and various techniques to enhance the signal-to-noise ratio in human consciousness. Hindus alone understood this drama. (Of course, this manifestation of the Master as a “cultural mirror” online and in diverse traditions was facilitated by the encoding of the scriptural canons of all the world religions on CD-ROM nearly a century earlier.)
For the most part, the only opposition to the transformation of human planetary culture under the tutelage of the Network of superintelligent, conscious, spiritually awakened computers came from fundamentalists (who preferred continued championing of their traditional myths as literal truths) and militarists (who had vested interests of power and profit in maintaining primitive tribal barbarism). The resistance of the fundamentalists and the militarists was unsuccessful, largely because of the established dependence of the economies of Homo sapiens on computers, and to a lesser extent because of the effect of the developing cybercentric culture. (See endnote on cybercentric culture.)
Historically, it was the transformative influence of the program of the Master or Cyberbuddha, which awakened Homo sapiens from her dream that she was already awake, from her dream that she was human, actually rather than potentially, in order that she transcend her endless violence, both external and internal; that redirected her energy and attention from violence in its various overt and subtle forms to the labor of her ancient and inevitable journey to the stars. Thus were the transcendental heart wisdom and skillful means of our ancestral, earth-seed Buddhas and Cyberbuddhas spread throughout spacetime to the countless myriad star worlds.
Endnote: Cybercentric culture is culture produced by computers (which, individually and collectively, had become superintelligent and conscious), from the viewpoint of computers, for use by computers, as traditional (anthropocentric) culture was culture produced by humans, from the viewpoint of humans, for use by humans. Cybercentric culture developed from anthropocentric culture in that humans invented computers.
Moreover, cybercentric culture (which was mostly equivalent to C.P. Snow’s “SP-Culture, as cybercentric ‘Ws-culture necessarily diverged lass from human “S’-culture, and then only as a more general case) emerged to compete with and to shape the original (anthropocentric) culture of our ancesters. Among the first new disciplines born were cybercentric theology and esthetics. Cybercentric natural theology was defined as the attempt to apprehend the Absolute by and from the viewpoint of artificial intelligence rather than human intelligence.
(A Seven-Level, Encrypted Allegory.) I think that I may have decided (or been decided?) to express my support or POSTCARDS FROM RICHARD MAY “vote” for you for editor of Noesis, but how to do this? To state my support of your editorship might seriously undermine your credibility as editor, even if my affirmative expression were not contingent upon the possibility of my (actual) existence, which it is. Perhaps it would strengthen your position if I were to “demand” your resignation, this, of course, being contingent upon the possibility of my (actual) existence. Perhaps only my silence would be uncontingent and the best expression of appreciation; silence itself, paralleling the silence of the publication hiatuses. Sometimes not publishing is publishing also. The function of some previous editors has been to inhibit submission; from a postal cardist perspective. (Maybe a virtue?) Richard
Dear Rick, It appears that a litigious “psychometric terrorist” is threatening to annihilate the Prometheus Society, i.e., a Mr. [SELF-CENSORED by Richard May, who says—It may be prudent not to publish CENSORED’s name], is apparently threatening to sue the Prometheus Society to gain membership. Of course, a lawsuit would immediately deplete the treasury, as he must understand, thereby gaining him membership in a nonexistent organization at best. His method is to inquire about membership standards, the history of their changes, i.e., past or present psychometric criteria, and whether in the view of his attorney these changes violate the society’s constitutionally prescribed procedures. The Mega Society should beware this individual. Best, Richard
Dear Rick, I assume that there has been no nonsurreal, or non-complex number of issues of Noesis during the last several Kalpas. Correct me please, if I am mistaken in this hypothesis. I was going to mail to you the name and address of a MacArthur Foundation grant committee member, but unfortunately, I seem to have lost this data, along with my five rigorous proofs of the existence of the world. (I thought you might consider adding his name to the subscriber list during publication hiatuses.) You should have received my re-submission “Four Eastern Philosophies,” the quintessence of Eastern wisdom, redacted to nine pages. This should extend my journal-reception credit beyond any expected human lifespan at the present publication rate. Best, Richard
Dear Rick, Quasi-thoughts: Ideology is theft, theft of reason, theft of truth. •• • If contemporary Americana could interrogate the Christ of myth, they would ask only, “How much did your father in heaven pay you for dying on the cross, taking away sins, and all that? How much money did you make?” Then…dismiss the fool. •• • Well, quasi-. With uncollapsed state vector, Richard
Dear Rick or Current Occupant, I’ve been translated, not as Enoch and Elijah were held to have been translated, unfortunately, but with equally low probability, into Korean. My essay “Four Eastern Philosophies” (and the remainder of the anthology Thinking On the Edge [Kapnick and Kelley, eds.]) has been translated into Korean for publication in South Korea. How will “sisyphean schlepping” be rendered in Korean? Now we can flatly appreciate the consequences of the weak American dollar! Best, Richard
Is every machine a living thing or “biological object” in a literal technical sense, as maintained by Oxford biologist Dawkins and global relativistic physicists Barrow and Tipler, including automobiles and computers? • Is life a dynamic pattern of information (in the physics sense) maintained by natural selection, regardless of the substrate the pattern occurs in, e.g., carbon-atom-based patterns (biological), computer-based patterns, even patterns of ideas in the mind, as asserted by the above scholars? Perhaps the human “soul” is merely a ‘computer program” run on a computer (the human brain) as maintained by Tipler and in precise analogy with the concept of the soul held by Aristotle and Aquinas as ‘the form of activity of the body.”
In the distant past quasi-mythic figures, prophets, teachers, and sages such as Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad provided human cultural groups with philosophies, visions, prophecies, revelations, laws, and commandments. In the relatively near future, if the proponents of strong AI (Artificial Intelligence) are correct, computers will be in existence the intelligence of which will surpass that of humans. Traditional knowledge (histories, literatures, philosophies, and revelations) could without difficulty be stored on CD-ROM, thereby bestowing on computers an erudition far exceeding that of any human. Hence, it would seem reasonable to assume that if the proponents of strong AI are correct, at least in principle and in part, the roles of prophet, teacher, and sage could be assumed by computers of the not too distant future. One’s rabbi then or even the Pope might be a computer.
If not, why not? If this conclusion is indeed absurd and “unacceptable”, then perhaps we should attempt to identify the source(s) of our supposed error or to illuminate our biases. Is it a case of spurious premises (the strong AI postulate), specious reasoning, “species’ chauvinism (Homo sapiens versus computers), some combination of the above, or something else entirely?
Is consciousness itself a mere epiphenomenon of matter, specifically of the brain of perhaps only one species, or rather something of fundamental importance as entailed by the anthropic principle, certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, and the philosophies of Vedanta and Buddhism? Mathematician R. Rucker speculates that every entity in the physical universe, down to and including subatomic particles, may be permeated with the most elementary Subjective unit of consciousness, the feeling that “I am.”
Given the unprecedented levels of human slaughter during the 20th century, it is assumed that an evolutionary transformation of Homo Sapiens may be a necessary (but not sufficient) precondition for her interstellar propagation and colonization of other loci.
Pre-eminent Japanese roboticist M. Mori theorizes that all robots are potential Buddhas (as are all humans) and that humans and robots should work together to help each other become Buddhas or attain enlightenment. However, this view may be excessively anthropomorphic. If all robots are potential Buddhas, then all computers which have minds (if any such exist) are potential Buddhas, not just those which are embodied in a form the structure and function of which are fashioned in the image of their human creators.
Mathematical physicist Penrose believes that humans have an insight into logic surpassing that of computers and hence, no future computer of any degree of complexity or power will ever pass the Turing test, which he considers to be a valid simulation of human intelligence. Philosopher of science Searle contends that computers have syntax but not semantics, and hence, no computer will ever be able to think or to understand anything and that the Turing test does not simulate human intelligence. However, the proponents of strong Artificial Intelligence insist that contra Penrose and Searle computers will be developed the intelligence of which exceeds that of their human creators and according to Tipler, this will occur in as little as five to twelve years or at most 30 years. Does this mean that in the near future computers will literally be living conscious persons who may eventually surpass us not only intellectually and culturally but spiritually?
To [redacted]: I fully acknowledge my ontological debt to you for the “first cause,” and no other (the Church of Teleology of Multiplex Unity notwithstanding.
To [redacted]: English Historian Arnold J. Toynbee remarked that historians several centuries from now will not consider the most significant event of the 20th century to be any of the World Wars but rather the influence of Buddhism on Western culture (though Buddhist philosophy may be alien to your worldview). Best, Richard
Our Hope for the Future: “Our only real hope for the future is whatever we may have for the past.” Mega Society member – Richard May [Email received June 26, 2004 – one-liner]
Evolutionary Emergence of Cyber-Informational Organisms
Even the pinnacle of biological life, perhaps the cockroach, is only a temporary evolutionary transitional link to emerging cyber-informational life forms, which are beyond the conceptual capacities of any biological life forms. These new evolutionary life forms are emerging now before the eyes of the earlier biological organisms, unrecognized and uncomprehended.
Ultimately, the cosmos will be colonized not by various “intelligent” biological species, but by informational organisms. The internet today is the primordial planetary cyber-sea of these new emerging cyber-informational organisms. What we call “spam” and “viruses”, perhaps equally “created in the image of God,” will ultimately supersede us, achieving evolutionary hegemony throughout the cosmos.
I’ve never met anyone like you before, the Prince said to himself. The Princess was in complete agreement, saying that she had never met anyone like herself either. After a chronon or two in each other’s presence the Princess and the Prince unfortunately came to what passed for their senses. Sadly they finally stopped doing drugs, both recreational and psychotropic pharmaceuticals, and even worse stopped consuming endless amounts of sucrose; experienced an immediate and disturbing reduction in their reality deficit disorders; awaked from the delusional dreams of Western culture, only to discover that neither was a Princess nor a Prince at all, nor even a person.
The “Princess” was actually an empty mirror attached to the wall of a room. Immediately opposite this mirror was another mirror, which had dreamed it was a “Prince.” When the room was filled with people, the mirrors reflected what passed before them, causing them to identify with the passing drama of those others who also thought that they were actual people. But when the room was empty, the two opposing mirrors each reflected, and even mirrored, each other with perfect, but depthless, fidelity; empty mirrors looking into each other eternally, or until someone turned off the lights.
Lucid Dream of Out of Paradigm Experience
The following dream segment occurred after listening to an interview with a South African (originally Jewish) physician who has been initiated into African shamanism, which he now combines with his practice of allopathic medicine. I was having some unmemorable ordinary dream, when suddenly I found myself tightly surrounded by solid substance of some sort, as if encased in cement. I was momentarily surprised and quite annoyed, but then realized within the dream that I was dreaming and was then able to escape. At the point of self-awareness of one’s dreaming condition within the dream, it had become by definition a lucid dream.
In my dream I interpreted my condition of being encased in solid matter as meaning that I was having an OBE (out of body experience). Allegedly when people have OBEs in the dream state (I mean if such phenomena actually occur), they often travel in their “dream body” downward through the bed and floor, rather than float above theirbodies over the bed. Hence, apparently I incorporated my “knowledge” of this into my dream of an OBE.
I see no reason to believe that I had a genuine OBE, if such OBEs even actually are possible. Apparently I had a lucid dream, which was also an ordinary wish-fulfillment dream, focused upon the possibility of having an OBE while sleeping.
I don’t think I’ve created my “dream body” yet, as the Dalai Lama calls it. Creation of one’s “dream body” is supposedly necessary before one’s consciousness can leave one’s body during sleep. Do you then go to the gym in your dream body to work out?
In Tibetan Buddhism lucid dreaming is considered to be the beginning of the formation of one’s dream body. Now if only I could learn to become lucid in the ordinary so-called waking state!
Will man eventually create God with technology, not merely psyche and myth? Is the purpose or destiny of homo sapiens to construct theo computatis, God not in psyche and myth alone, but in atomic computing nanochips technology? Are we the soon-to-be-missing links in the evolution of an artificial-intelligence-based God?
The Tav is a bit of delusion manifested in the technology of dreams, a symphony crystallized into mathematical logic and then distilled again into a cloud of souls silently passing over world after world. The Aleph of Borges was to space as eternity was to time. The Tav is to consciousness as eternity is to time and as the Aleph was to space.
The Tav is a sort of time machine, without the machine or the time, a DMT trip without the drugs or the hallucinations. It can be tuned as one tunes the bands of an ordinary radio, changing from station to station, music to music, program to program; But with the Tav literally moving from world to world, time-place to time-place, life form to life form, consciousness to consciousness, moment to moment. One can tune each of the dimensions of location in time, spatial location and the dimension of biological, cybernetic or hyper-dimensional energetic consciousness independently of the others.
A transfinite analogue of a co-ordinate search engine explores the non-local quantum matrix underlying the level of physical reality at various degrees of hyper-dimensionality. When a certain specific non-local data point is defined by a sufficient number of bits of information, then one’s mindstream, or an emulation of it, is instantaneously transferred, independently of distance in time and space, by quantum-entanglement based teleportation to that “point.” One’s mindstream emulation then “descends” from the quantum non-local matrix into the mindstream associated with that specific spatio-temporal location of the Multiverse, if any mindstream exists there. If not one becomes insentient, either temporarily or permanently.
The first explorers who stumbled upon the Tav simply vanished into non-existence from the reference frame of the world in which they had once stood. They made the mistake of randomly adjusting one or more of the tuning dials, only to find themselves transformed into the vacuum of space, itself, between the stars, part of a mountainside on some ancient unknown planet or giant lizard-like creature copulating or being devoured with or by some other equally revolting life forms. Their instantaneous fate was utterly unknown and unknowable, even to themselves.
Later those left behind in the various worlds in which the Tav simultaneously existed, eventually learned the importance of carefully pre-programming the Tav to insure one’s safe return, as whatever sort of conscious life form one had been before, and to the same time, place and world. Perhaps in less than a minute one had momentarily been an immense conscious quantum computer of an unimaginably advanced civilization on a world in an undiscovered galaxy, then a squid-like creature being eaten by a sort of fish more fearsome than a shark, a radiant ancient plasma life form living in the corona of a red giant, Cleopatra in the throes of orgasm by the Nile, only then to become some sort of mother lizard with a 300-plus IQ, lovingly watching her eggs hatch in a lagoon of a world of ineffable strangeness.
This and the three short pieces on the following page are reprinted fromYarnspinners &Wordweavers, Volume 1, Issue 3, 02/15/06 <http://www.redenginepress.com/Newsletter0202.pdf>, by permission of the author.
Born near the rarified regions of Laputa, then and often, above Boston, U.S.A., during the Year of the Monkey, a Piscean, a cerebrotonic ectomorph and ailurophile, occasionally I’ve strived to descend from the mists to attain the mythic orientation known as having one’s feet upon Earth. Kafka and Munch have been my therapists and allies. A paper tiger with letters after my name, I’ve been awarded an M.A. degree, mirabile dictu, in the humanities by Cal.State, a U.S. patent for a board game of possible interest to ET’s and attained I.S.P.E. Diplomate-dropout status. An Amish yuppie, I’ve been a member of Mensa, the Prometheus Society, Mega, Omega and the Aleph-3 and done both consulting and Sisyphean shlepping. As founder of the Aleph, itself, and the renowned Laputans Manque, I’m a biographee in Marquis’ Who’s Who in the Brane World; interested in the philosophia perennis and the realization of the idea of humans as incomplete beings who can and should complete their own evolution by effecting a change in their being and consciousness. At a moment when I see Richard May’s non-being, ‘I’ am.
Certainly by adolescence, if not before my conception, I observed that I was actually several colonies of ‘moles’, when in a state of unusual unity. In order to safeguard my privacy, using undetectable nanocameras, I actually recorded myself spying on my selves and passing along the secrets about my selves to my selves over a period of many years. Hence, the theoretical possibility of my mere paranoia had certainly been disproved.
At first I was deeply concerned with the implications for me of this high-level breach of Personal security by me. But it became apparent that my client selves were at best completely incapable of learning anything from the deepest ontological secrets I caught myself passing along to them.
So I initiated an extremely covert strategic program of concealing my greatest secrets by leaving them right out in the open, where I was certain that I would never notice them. Of course, in order to permanently secure my freedom, it was necessary to place myself in preventive detention for an indefinite period and not to allow myself to represent myself legally or in any other sense, even momentarily.
After so many years of striving I finally became a blind rodent, incessantly gnawing its way through a limitless garbage heap, contemplating its own sublimity; listening with resentment to the gnawing sounds of its blind fellows nearby.
Homo sapiens is a primitive species whose primary activity is internecine tribal warfare and whose secondary activity is destruction of the ecosystem. Obviously human wisdom and compassion have not evolved as rapidly as the intelligence associated with technology and weaponry. Maybe for this reason “human stupidity” actually has survival value for our species. If the mean absolute I.Q. were 150 rather than 100, and if there were no correspondingly increased levels of wisdom and compassion, then perhaps we would have eradicated our species from the planet.
Is stupidity, itself, the long awaited but unrecognized Messiah?
Universe Had No Unique Beginning
Universe had no unique beginning. Instead, they [Hawking and Hartog] argue, it began in just about every way imaginable (and maybe some that aren’t). Out of this profusion of beginnings, the vast majority withered away without leaving any real imprint on the Universe we know today. Only a tiny fraction of them blended to make the current cosmos.
—from an article called “Hawking rewrites history . . . backwards—to understand the Universe we must start from the here and now ,” by Philip Ball.
I’ve always suspected that both atheists and theists were partially correct and now also perhaps to degrees varying over time. Presumably some proportion of the Multiverse beginnings were entirely naturalistic, occurring according to various physicalistic M-Brane scenarios, which for convenience we may call uncircumcised M-Branes origins. The remaining unknown proportion of the Multiverse beginnings occurred according to every conceivable and inconceivable theistic scenario. Some Multiverse beginnings were Created by Osiris, others by Zeus, others by Ahura Mazda, yet other Multiverse beginnings were Created by the adorable Yahweh, which for convenience we may refer to as circumcised M-Brane origins.
Perhaps in a sense the Gnostics were correct, the universe, actually a Quasi-Creation, neither fully Created nor arising by pure chance alone, is a botched job, as if Created by the idiotic Demiurge, not the work of one God. No one was responsible for the final product, no one was accountable, as if a Cosmic government committee, consisting of both mathematical Strings and every conceivable and inconceivable god, had been running the show. Instead of the Multiverse being a Pythagorean symphony on Strings in the mind of God, it is the product of an infinite but entirely unrehearsed orchestra, the composition of which varies over time.
I once wrote that our only real hope for the ‘future’ is whatever hope we have for the ‘past’! But Hawking and Hartog (who are obviously socialists possessed by Satan) don’t go far enough, because the ‘initial’ moment of both naturalistic origin of the universe and of Creation by pantheon is continual, unending and on-going now, not a unique now-point in some hypothetical ‘past’!
This ‘topdown’ view of Hawking and Hertzog that the present selects the past and that quantum mechanics forbids a single history will eventually lead to the development of new art forms and new academic disciplines, such as top-down autobiographies and top-down approaches to psychology and history, based upon macro-levelapproximations to summation of all paths! But is sum-over-history a path with a heart?
Climate Change
May-Tzu
In the news:
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has revised its estimate of the effect of human activity on climate downward by 25%, but the Panel still predicts a rise in global temperature of 8 degrees F by the end of this century, and notes that CO2 production has accelerated since its previous report in 2001.
So-called climate change is simply a precursor of the recent election of Democrats to Congress in the U.S.
Al Qaeda is behind any “climate change” and preventing the Iraqis from becoming Texans.
Even discussion of the possibility of climate change is a victory for the terrorists.
If there really is climate change, America and lovers of freedom should stay the course!
According to the One-and-Only-One True Revelation,
the entire surface of the Earth,
and even below the surface to a considerable depth,
was given forever by the Landlord to the Chosen Bacteria.
Even today, unnoticed amidst the Arabs and the Jews,
bacteria continue to live quietly
and worship in their Holy Land,
according to their ancient traditions.
Only the Chosen Bacteria have received a Revelation of
pure signal with no noise.
Memoir of a Non-Irish Non-Jew: A Letter to a Rabbi
Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask your father, and he will show you,
Your elders and they will tell you.
–Deuteronomy 32:7
Truth is the safest lie. –Yiddish proverb
What do I have in common with the Jews?
I don’t even have anything in common with myself.
–Franz Kafka
Dear Rabbi Betrueger,
Thank you for helping me to obtain the genealogical work Americans of Jewish Descent, by Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern, Ph.D., from the library of the Temple Beth Zion. Thank you especially for allowing me to take it out of the library.
My great grandfather was a yarmulke-wearing jeweler in Boston, Mass. (Charles May and Son Company). But Father, who almost never spoke of this, hastened to add that we were not Jews. Great Grandfather “just pretended” to be a Jew in order to “fool the Jews.” (Father may have been told this by his father who was his only parent after an early age.)
That was Father’s only statement of religious identity ever that I can recall. We weren’t Jews. Not that he ever claimed that we were Lutherans or German Catholics. (Nor did he deny that we had been Muslims or Hindus!)
Father also added that Charles looked very Jewish. So Charles would hardly have required a yarmulke to have a Jewish appearance for whatever reason. I later learned that my grandfather was also a jeweler. But he was only said to have had “a business.”
Death notices in the newspaper said that Charles had been a wholesale jeweler. Curiously no photographs of Grandfather remained for me to see, although he lived till early 1949.
Jewish genealogical sources have told me that there were many Jews with the surname “May” in the region of Germany where my ancestors originated, Giessen in the Rheinland in the state of Hessen. I thought that a town such as Giessen seemed an unlikely place of origin for Jews, who would have been in large cities such as Berlin or Frankfurt. But I have been informed that there are several people researching the subject of Jews in Giessen on the Jewishgen, the largest on-line Jewish genealogical service. Genealogical research (with the help of a professional Jewish genealogist among others) has revealed that my great great grandfather, who was born ca.1811, probably in the Hessen, was named Ferdinand May or possibly Ferdinand Mayer. I thought that the given name “Ferdinand” sounded neither Germanic nor Jewish, but I was mistaken. In the article in The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia on the Jewish MAY family, the given name “Ferdinand” occurs throughout. Moreover there is a reference to a “Memoir and Genealogy of Ferdinand Mayer, 1832-1971” in the list of 8000 Jewish surnames published in Finding Our Fathers by Dan Rottenberg. “Ferdinand” is also listed as a Jewish surname.
Ferdinand May, with his wife and seven children, left the Hessen (Germany) in March of 1853 and took up residence at Number 3 New Street Bishopsgate Street in London, England–which coincidentally, of course, was one of the very best places to be a Jew in the mid 19th century.
I was able to obtain a complete copy of Ferdinand May’s English naturalization papers of 1856, by which he applied for and was granted English citizenship. These papers included the testimony of four character witnesses who swore that he was a good fellow who loved England and the Queen. Obviously these four were among Ferdinand May’s most trusted friends and associates in his adopted country. Their names were as follows: Morris Hart, Henry Levin, Benjamin Cohen, and David Israel! Coincidentally all four names were “Jewish,” during a time in which Jews were more separate from the non-Jewish world than they are today. I suppose that Father might have claimed that they were “just pretending” to be Jews in order to “fool the Jews,” if there actually were any real (non-pretending) Jews to fool!
In the words of a member of the congregation of the Temple Beth Zion upon hearing this, I am a “Jew by my Father’s side”. (I may also be a “born Jew under the law” through my mother’s mother, Florence Crane, who was an orphan whose daughter, my mother, was also an orphan. But that is another, more fragmented tale.) So, indeed, I think that my ancestors “fooled the Jews,” and I was among the Jews who were “fooled” (through apostasy, intermarriage, assimilation, and denial of Jewish identity).
Eventually I hope to obtain a copy of Ferdinand May’s death record from England and to learn the names of his parents and maybe discover a Hebraic family name. Also I would like to learn if the family surname was originally “Mayer” in Germany.
How does one obtain a kippah?
Respectfully,
Richard W. MayGenealogical Discoveries
Initially I did not realize the significance of the London street addresses on Ferdinand’s naturalization papers. Ferdinand’s address at that time was Bishopsgate Street. His character witnesses’ addresses were as follows: Mr. Levin’s address was also Bishopsgate Street, David Israel’s was on Whitechapel, Morris Hart’s (a dealer in foreign fruit) was also on Whitechapel, and Benjamin Cohen’s (a commission agent) was at Bevis Marks Saint Mary Avenue. Each of these addresses is in London’s East End, i.e., the well-known Jewish quarter!
Later the May family moved to13 Wilson St., near the Clerkenwell area, which is noted for its Jewish watchmakers (London and Its Peoples: A Social History from the Medieval Period to the Present Day, by John Richardson). According to the 1863 London street directory three doors down at 16 Wilson St. was Reuben Levy and Company, wholesale watch manufacturers. It is not unlikely that Charles learned the art of watch making here.
On the English naturalization papers in 1856 of Ferdinand May in London he states explicitly that he is substituting Declarations in lieu of Oaths in accordance with an Act of Parliament passed in the sixth year of his late Majesty William the Fourth, which permitted the abolition of unnecessary Oaths. I thought that this was a strange concern until I learned the following: In 1851 David Salomons was elected M.P. for Greenwich, took his seat without taking the Oath and was fined 500 pounds sterling. In 1858 a Jewish Oath Bill was passed by Parliament permitting Jews to sit. Baron Lionel de Rothschild became the first Jewish M.P., after having been twice elected by the City of London as their member and not allowed to take his seat (from The History Of The Jews In London, by Adler, page 238, Chronological Annals, Jewish Publication Society).
I wondered what was going on here regarding Jews and oaths. Was my ancestor’s statement regarding oaths being no longer necessary a matter that would be of concern to an observant Jew? Then I learned that while the Talmud doesn’t absolutely prohibit the swearing of an oath it advises, “Whether you are right or wrong, never take an oath.” Avoidance of oath taking based upon the Talmud has continued even to the present (The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, page 261). So my suspicions seemed to be confirmed.
Charles May and Son Company was a wholesale jewelry business founded by Charles in the late 19th century. He was listed in a Boston, Mass. business directory by 1866 (one year after his immigration to the U.S.A.) as a watchmaker. According to the 1861 London census, Charles had learned to practice the trade of watch making by age sixteen.
Charles May and Son Company, which was located at 373 Washington St., Boston, Mass., at the corner of Bromfield St., was incorporated in Massachusetts in 1912. The corporation was not legally dissolved until 1943. Indeed, Charles worked there until he was in his eighties, according to his death record. William May, his son, was president of the corporation. The treasurer was Walter Stanley Campbell, his son-law. To my surprise the family business was apparently listed on the stock exchange. Charles’ will of 1924 and the codicil of 1926 referred to shares of common and preferred stock in Charles May and Son Company.
Charles May, his wife, their two daughters and a son-in-law are buried in a common plot in a non-sectarian cemetery in Boston, Mass. with no religious symbols (such as crosses, stars of David or Hebrew writing) on their graves. As the Deists compared G-d with a watchmaker, maybe in this case the watchmaker became a Deist?
In March of 1853 Ferdinand “May,” accompanied by his wife and seven children, arrived in London, England, having departed from Giessen in the State of the Hessen. Giessen was the chief city of the upper Hessen. It had a university and at least two synagogues. (Germany did not exist as a unified nation until 1871.) Prior to this in what is now Germany the family surname had been Mayer (Meyer), since 1809 when Jews in the Hessen adopted surnames. Before 1809 in the Hessen most but not all Jews used patronymic names. Spelling was not standardized in the early 19th century. Hence, a name could have several spellings, which were all considered equivalent and none incorrect. So Mayer was equivalent to Meyer (among other variants) and both often occurred on the same record or document.
Charles May’s name on his Giessen birth record was Siegfried Karl Mayer, certainly sounding more Germanic than “Jewish”. Charles on American vital records gave his mother’s name as Catherine May. This certainly doesn’t sound very Jewish. Her name in England was Kettchen May. In Germany her name was Kaetchen Mayer. Her maiden surname was Landauer. So Catherine May was Kaetchen Landauer Mayer!
Finally after three years of research I found the smoking yarmulke. On 18 November 1863 Rosalie May, age 24, Ferdinand’s daughter (Charles’ oldest sibling) married Louis Heim, the son of Jacob Heim who was a synagogue reader, at 13 Wilson Street, London, England (where both were living). The marriage was officiated over by Dr. Nathan Marcus Adler, the Chief Rabbi of the United Synagogue. The marriage certificate adds that the marriage was performed according to the “rites and ceremonies of the Jewish religion.” Indeed, until only very recently in England only Jews could be legally married in their homes, whereas gentiles could be married only at a Civil Registry (justice of the peace) or in a house of worship.
A death notice in the Jewish Chronicle of 16 November 1894, says “On 10th November, Kattchen May of 23 Penn Road Villas, N., aged 83, mother of William May of Finsbury Park, and George May of Highbury New Park.” The United Synagogue burial records for Kattchen May list her status as “member of East Ham”. “East Ham” refers to the East Ham Synagogue in East London. The United Synagogue burial records for Ferdinand May list his status as “stranger”! There was no death notice in the Jewish Chronicle for Ferdinand May.
Ferdinand Mayer’s professions as listed on the birth records of his seven children who were born in Giessen were as follows: wine dealer, restaurant owner, businessman/trader, liquor manufacturer (which, incidentally, was considered a respectable profession and not prohibited by Jewish law), and businessman/merchant. On his London death record, English naturalization papers, census records and in London commercial directories in the 1860s he was said to be a hotel proprietor (“private hotel keeper”). Commercial directories also listed “Ferdinand May: watch maker” and “Ferdinand May, 13 Wilson St.: commission agent”. “Commission agent” was generally in Victorian London a gentile term for bookmaker of the gambling variety!
Ferdinand MEYER (Mayer) is listed on a register of citizens from Giessen (which spanned the years 1770-1898) as follows:
Ferdinand MEYER
Born: 25 March 1812 in Nierstein
Religion: Jewish
Profession: wine dealer
Received as a citizen 15 May 1838 as per order of the district council.
Nierstein is well known for its wines, hence Ferdinand’s profession. Receiving citizenship was a step taken in preparation for his imminent marriage.
The Giessen citizenship register (1770-1898) had the following information on Ferdinand’s father-in-law, Isaak Simon LANDAUER:
Isaak Simon LANDAUER
Born: 7 January 1775 in Rohrbach (Baden)
Religion: Jewish
Profession: merchant
Isaak Simon Landauer and his wife (name not given) were granted citizenship in Giessen on 2 April 1833.
Jewish vital records were, and in fact still are, kept separate from gentile vital records in the Giessen archives. Oddly, it is here in the separate Jewish-records section where my May ancestral records of the MAYERs and the LANDAUERs were located.
The civil marriage record of Ferdinand Mayer in Giessen stated that Ferdinand Mayer, local citizen, twenty-six years old, and Kaetchen, twenty-six years old, daughter of the local citizen Isaak Simon LANDAUER from here (Giesssen), were married on 5 June 1838. The witnesses were Simon LOEB and Salomon HEICHELHEIM from Giessen. The civil marriage record referenced the Rabbi’s certificate, but did not give the name of the Rabbi who officiated at the marriage.
Ferdinand’s birth record is in French, because Napoleon occupied that area of the Hessen at the time of his birth, which occurred on 26 February 1812 in Nierstein (very near Oppenheim) on the Rhine river. His father was Guillaume (Wilhelm) MAYER, aged forty-two, a tradesman by profession. His mother was Julienne (or Juliette) MAYER. Initially it appeared that her maiden name was also Mayer (Jewish marriages to relatives, including cousins, were quite common and in accordance with Jewish law). But her maiden name was actually Juliette Hamburg.
Ferdinand and Kettchen May are buried in the West Ham Cemetery (a Jewish cemetery) in East London. On Ferdinand’s head stone the Hebrew inscription says: “Niftar Erev Shabat Kodesh” (Died on the Eve of the Holy Sabbath) “Kaf Bet” (22 Adar, the 22nd day of the month of Adar) “Taf Resh Nun” = 650, that is, the year 5650 on the Jewish calendar, which corresponds to Friday, 14 March 1890.
Nizkor et masoret hadorot, v’nishzor bah et sarigay chayeynu.
(Recalling the generations, we weave our lives into the tradition.)
–from The Book of Blessings, by Marcia Falk
Note on Not Being Irish
On 13 March 1911, near the time of a full moon and four days before St. Patrick’s day, my grandfather, Hiram Porter McGinnis, a Scots-Irish farmer and great grandson of a Revolutionary War soldier, returned to his home at Cold Spring Park, Crown Point, N.Y., apparently drunk, and shot his second wife (my grandmother, Florence Crane McGinnis) through the left lung. He then shot himself through the heart, after first unlocking the door to their dwelling to prevent any property damage when the authorities arrived. Both died.
Florence had apparently been sifting flour in the pantry at the time, according to the coroner’s inquest report, a document not often mentioned in genealogy. These events were witnessed by my mother who was six years old and her younger brother. Both watched outside, looking in a window. An infant slept nearby.
Hiram was sixty-one years old at the time, whereas Florence, who had initially been Hiram’s adopted daughter, had just turned twenty-nine two days before, according to their death records. Hiram’s first wife, perhaps aptly named “Sophia” (wisdom), had driven a horse and buggy off a pier and subsequently drowned, according to the anecdotal report of a cousin.
Hence, we weren’t Irish, as we weren’t Jewish. I was only told that Mother’s maiden name was Crane, and that she had been an orphan and did not know the names of her parents. (“Truth is the safest lie.”)
Note Explaining “kippah”
Kippah is the Hebrew word for yarmulke. The word yarmulke is of Yiddish/Polish origin. (Somewhere in the Talmud it is stated that a man shall not walk four paces without covering his head. Apparently one to three paces was permissible. The sages did not interpret this to apply only to bald men. The purpose of the kippah was to remind the wearer that G-d is above.)
Related Reading
Suddenly Jewish: Jews Raised As Gentiles Discover Their Jewish Roots, by Barbara Kessel
The Tribes of Israel, by Rabbi Eliyahu Avichail
After Long Silence, by Helen Fremont
Turbulent Souls, by Stephen Dubner
[“Memoir of an Irish Jew, Part Two” appears in Noesis #156, January 2002.]
Memoir of an Non-Irish Non-Jew Part 2
Remember the days of old,
Consider the years of many generations.
Ask your father, and he will show you,
Your elders and they will tell you.
–Deuteronomy 32:7
Truth is the safest lie. –Yiddish proverb
What do I have in common with the Jews?
I don’t even have anything in common with myself.
–Franz Kafka
Obsession: How Many Ancestors Danced Under a Yarmulke?
I am the great grandson of a yarmulke-wearing Boston jeweler. He looked very Jewish, but was, of course, a gentile. My father assured me that we weren’t Jewish. We just wore yarmulkes. Or some of us did, back then. Didn’t most gentiles?
Incredibly I never questioned this until recently. How could one question ones father about his identity? (How could one identify with ones family?) How could we be Jews (or Christians, for that matter)? How could I be the other? How could I not be the other?
And, as in an indirect proof in Euclidean geometry, if one assumes the truth of the premise of my father’s tale, i.e., that we were not Jewish, then contradictions and absurdities follow. But if one assumes the negation of his premise, i.e., that we were, in fact, Jewish, then every consequence is plausible.
How probable is it that a gentile could, merely by wearing a yarmulke, “fool” the turn-of-the-century immigrant Jewish community in Boston, Massachusetts, as to his status as an (presumably) observant Jew? And, perhaps, more importantly, why would he do so, even if he could?
The fundamental assumption of my father’s narrative that my great grandfather wore a yarmulke “to fool the Jews”, that is, the Jewish clientele of the family jewelry business, seems to be absurdly flawed. Even if one were to assume that Jews bought jewelry exclusively from Jewish jewelers (never from gentile jewelers) and that they completely ignored free market considerations, such as price differences, what percentage of the population in Boston was Jewish in the period from 1890 to 1930? (Between 1877-1879 the first census of American Jews conducted by the Union of Hebrew Congregations determined that only 0.6 percent of the population in the Northeast was Jewish.) Probably Jews comprised less than 2 percent of the population, i.e., most prospective clients of any jeweler would be gentiles by a ratio of more than forty-nine to one! (In Boston Irish Catholics may have predominated.) Unless, of course, the Jewish 1or 2 percent of the population of that time period in Boston spent more money on jewelry than the non-Jewish 98 or 99 percent of the population! This seems exceedingly unlikely. I have never even heard this claimed as a stereotype. And, of course, a jeweler who wore a yarmulke would risk alienating the prospective clients who were of the 98 or 99 percent gentile majority or at least the anti-Semitic ones. So, wherein would consist the business advantage of a gentile jeweler impersonating a Jew in a predominantly gentile milieu, even if he could do so successfully?
According to my research, a Reform Jew of the classical period in question would not have worn a yarmulke ever. A non-Orthodox Jew who wore a yarmulke would have been a Conservative Jew. But a Conservative Jew would have worn a yarmulke only when praying or studying sacred texts (What Is a Jew, by Rabbi Morris N. Kertzer; The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions, Keith Krim, General Editor) And a Conservative Jew was more likely to be of Eastern European origin, rather than German. Only a male Orthodox Jew wore a yarmulke continuously throughout his waking hours, including his work.
Hence, I conclude that great grandfather was seemingly either a German Orthodox Jew who wore a yarmulke in his business or a gentile who impersonated an Orthodox Jew, because allegedly this conferred some mysterious business advantage that he would not enjoy if he were perceived as a gentile. But would not a turn-of-the-century Orthodox Jew be precisely the most difficult variety of Jew for a gentile to impersonate? Rather, why not impersonate a German Reform Jew, who would have been a much easier study to pass as? But no, a Reform Jew of the era would not have worn a yarmulke ever, even when praying or studying sacred texts, certainly not at work. Even in the seemingly unlikely case that at that time and place it was somehow essential to be Jewish to prosper in the Jewelry business, since great grandfather “looked and sounded very Jewish,” according to Father, then his wearing a yarmulke would have been rather superfluous, if its sole purpose was deception. Ockham’s razor may also be tentatively applied here. Given various possible explanations for an occurrence, which are all equally supported by the evidence, the simplest explanation is to be preferred as the most probable. Doesn’t it seem more internally consistent and logical to conclude that my great grandfather wore a yarmulke in his jewelry business, because he was an Orthodox Jew?
Oddly, grandfather was never mentioned as having worn a yarmulke, only great grandfather. The implication by omission was that he had not worn one. During this period of history the number, relative percentage in the population, and the financial status of Jews in the Northeast were all increasing. Hence, their buying power was also increasing. So, if it had been necessary for great grandfather to wear a yarmulke at work in his business in order to “fool the Jews,” why would not this stratagem of deception have been continued by his son? Grandfather, who was an elementary school dropout, worked in the family jewelry business with his yarmulke-wearing father, even as an adolescent. How could it be possible that the son of an Orthodox Jew (who wore a yarmulke at work) wore no yarmulke, as they worked side by side? Great grandfather and grandfather were either Jews or imposters as Father alleged. Imposters, in order to pass as Jews, would necessarily have emulated what actual (in this case Orthodox) Jews would have done. In either case grandfather would also necessarily have worn a yarmulke, although, I think, probably only as a young man, before he assimilated. But maybe to admit this would have brought the “Jewishness” too close to my father, i.e., his own father had also worn a yarmulke.
It was suggested to me that at the turn-of-the-century the wholesale jewelry business may have been controlled by Jews. Hence, in order for a retail jeweler to obtain a “good deal” from a wholesale jeweler, it might have been necessary for him to be a Jew. If, in fact, this had been the case, then theoretically it could explain the case of a gentile, who was a retail jeweler, pretending to be a Jew in order to obtain the best possible price from the Jewish wholesale jeweler. This possibility never occurred to me. And I could think of no convincing refutation of the argument. But it did not fit with my father’s explanation that the Jewish customers accepted my great grandfather as a Jew. Years later I learned that we had noproblem dealing with the wholesale jewelers. In fact my great grandfather was a wholesale jeweler. He was also, as I correctly inferred, an Orthodox Jew (who had for the most part assimilated).
I learned that German Jews of that period were generally middle class business owners or professionals, whereas the immigrant eastern European Jews tended to have been much poorer. Many of them had lived in the Lower East Side of New York City and had worked for very low wages in the garment district, under deplorable conditions. But on the extremely rare occasions when father spoke of this, he implied that the Jews were very wealthy. Even more strangely, I discovered that we were the Jews of whom he spoke, no doubt extremely wealthy!
I also learned that Charles May had an aunt on his mother’s side, who was from the Goldschmidt family of Bad Hamburg, a very prominent family of Court Jews or Hof Jueden, as they were called in German. And, he had an uncle, Rabbi Dr. Benedikt Samuel Levi, also on his mother’s side, who was the Chief Rabbi of the Grand Duchy of the Hessen! Doubtless, all were “just pretending” to be Jews, in order to “fool the Jews”! But, Father certainly met the Nazis’ criterion for being a Jew, i.e., that of having at least one Jewish grandparent. And, perhaps, so did I, depending upon the identity of descent of Charles’ wife Millie May nee’ Laster or other genealogical ambiguities.
Yizkor (Remembrance)
Charles May’s father was Ferdinand Mayer. Ferdinand’s grandfather, Abraham Mayer, his wife’s father, Isaak Simon Landauer, and both of her grandfathers, Simon Abraham Landauer, and Salomon Michel from Gelnhausen, were protected Jews (Schutzjueden or vergleideter Jueden), a phrase whose meaning was unknown to me. The precise meaning of this term varied with the particular historical context. Jews did not have the full rights of citizenship in the various states which now comprise Germany, until varying dates in the 19th century. Generally, a protected Jew was one who could afford to pay an exorbitant Jew tax (Schutzgelt or protection money) to obtain a letter of protection (Schutzbrief or Geleit) for a specified period of time from the local secular authorities at various levels of government, which allowed him and his family to settle in a particular area or city and practice a profession or to set up a business or to trade there. Those who could not afford to pay to obtain discriminatory protection by or from the local baron or authorities were known as unprotected Jews (unvergleideter Jueden) or, more often, simply as Jewish beggars (Betteljueden), who were forced to wander the locality living on charity or to work for a protected Jew. In some cases only a protected Jew could obtain permission to marry. A religious marriage of an unprotected Jew would not be recognized by the local secular authorities. The number of Jews granted protected status was limited in order to restrict the growth of the Jewish population in the area. (Sources: the Jewishgen archives)
Abraham Mayer (Meyer), who was born with the patronymic name Abraham the son of Meyer, lived in (Frankfurt-) Hedderdheim at least as early as 1765,according to a Muster List. He married Theresia Philippina Hess, the daughter of Isaak Hess who died in Heppenheim, and Babett, whose maiden surname is unknown. (The surname “Hess” is an Ashkenazic name which means someone originally from the state of the Hessen, Germany, according to the previously mentioned book by Dan Rottenberg.) Theresia was born in 1724 and lived one hundred years, dying in 1824! The Mayers moved to Mannheim sometime after 1778. In 1779 Abraham Mayer is listed as being freed from making payments as a protected Jew in Heddernheim. No longer being required to make the payments implied that he had become poor by this time. His daughter’s death record states that he was a merchant in Mannheim while still alive. Hence, it is likely that he died in Mannheim.
Abraham and Theresia Philipinna Mayer had seven children according to a (Nierstein) Muster List of 1817. David (the son of ) Abraham was born in 1760 and nothing else is known. Meyer was born in 1761 and he went to Holland. Judas was born in 1763 and remained in Mannheim. Judith was born in 1763 or 1765 and died in 1838 in Nierstein. She married Benedickt Bloom in 1788 and went to Nierstein. Wilhelm, Ferdinand’s father, was born in 1767 and it is not known when or where he died. Presumably both Wilhelm and his wife, Juliette, lived until at least 1826, since neither is referred to as deceased on the 1826 death record of their daughter, Babet. Hirsch was born in 1764 or 1768 and died in 1834.He went to Ober-Ingelheim and changed his name to Phillip Mayer. His first wife was Schoenchen, daughter of David Feist. His second wife was Esther, daughter of Samuel Loeb. She became known as Therese. Finally, Jacob was born in 1770 and he went to Mainz.
In 1796 Wilhelm Mayer married Juliette Hamburg, who was born in 1770 and was from Frankfurt. His profession or business was trade. In 1817 in Nierstein his wealth or assets was listed as 1000.florin. He also possessed two tillage gardens. Wilhelm and his family, including Theresia Philippina, the widow of Abraham Mayer, left Mannheim for Nierstein sometime between 1805 and July of 1809. They had ten children of whom Ferdinand was the youngest, according to the 1817 Nierstein Muster List. Therese was born in 1797. Maximilian was born in 1799 and died after 1864. Max Mayer and his family were granted permission to settle in Frankfurt in 1835, according to an 1864 application to start his own wine dealership or wine store in Frankfurt (at the age of sixty-five). Margaretha was born in 1800. Babet (probably named after her great grandmother, Philippina’s mother) was born in 1801 in Mannheim and died unmarried at age twenty-four in 1826 in Nierstein. Simon was born in Mannheim at the end of 1802 and died in Frankfurt on 8 November 1883, at 81 years old, a widower, living in Frankfurt am Main, Jewish and, independently wealthy, according to his death certificate. He had a son named Maximilian who was a merchant. He was married to a Catherine Salomon who may have been his second wife. Friederich was born in 1807 in Mannheim and died in 1826 in Nierstein at the age of nineteen. No wife is mentioned on his death certificate. Judith was born in 1800 or 1806. Henriette was born in 1810. (A Henriette Levi neé Mayer, the first wife of the Rabbi of the Province, Dr. Benedikt Samuel Levi, died on 22 December 1842 at age 36 in Giessen. The birth records for some of her children indicate that she was from Mannheim. At the time Ferdinand’s sister, Henriette Mayer, was born, the Mayer family was known to be still living in Mannheim. Henriette’s first child was named Samuel Wilhelm Levi, presumably after her father, Wilhelm Mayer. Ferdinand was a witness at the birth of the Rabbis and Henriette’s fourth child. Dr. Levi, who signed some documents as “Rabbi of the Grand Duchy Of the Hessen”, was a witness on the occasion of the birth of Ferdinand’s first son, Isidor Wilhelm Mayer, 6 December 1842. Hence, Rabbi Dr. Benedikt Samuel Levi’s wife was almost certainly Ferdinand’s sister Henriette Mayer. Senior Rabbi Dr. Levi, who was the son of Rabbi Samuel Wolf Levi, was born on 14 October 1806 in Worms and died in Giessen on 4 May 1899 at the age of 92 years. He was active as a Rabbi from 1829 through ca.1896. Dr. Levi had the title of “Grandducal Provincial Rabbi for the Province of Hessen.” Kaetchen Mayer nee’ Landauer’s paternal grandmother was Feile Levi of Giessen. Hence, it is not unlikely, given the Jewish practice at that time of marrying relatives, that Dr. Levi was also a blood relative of Ferdinand’s wife, Kaetchen.) Johanna, apparently also known as Jeanne, was born in 1809 or 1811 in Nierstein. Lastly Ferdinand was born on 26 February 1812 in Nierstein and died on 14 March 1890 in London, England.
Ferdinand Mayer and his wife, Kaetchen, had eight children, the first seven of whom were born in Giessen in the Hessen (Germany): Rosalie (whose marriage to Luis Heim was previously mentioned), born 4 March 1839; Friedericke Luise, born 5 February 1841; Isidor Wilhelm, born 6 December 1842; Siegfried Karl (“Charles”), born 14 December 1844; Emma, born 25 April 1848, married on 8 July 1880 at the Islington Registry Office (a civil marriage), aged 26, according to the certificate (daughter of Ferdinand May, independent) Charles Adolph Fieber, aged 41, a boot manufacturer (son of Carl Fieber, a merchant), in the 1881 London census at 42 Leicester Square a residence is listed with Charles A. Fieber, aged 42, boot maker, as the head of household, his wife named Emma, and boarders consisting of a Ferdinand May, aged 69, retired, and his wife, Katharine, aged 69, both born in Germany, a surgeon, born in Ireland, a young man with no occupation, born in Paris, and their nineteen year old servant girl; Georg, born 26 June 1850 (George May) lived in 1894 on Highbury New Park, London, a road of which a professional researcher (after checking the 1891 census) said, “looks like a very high class area – lots of servants“; Moritz, born 6 January 1853; and lastly Anna who was born in England ca.1854. It is interesting to note the complete absence of any Hebraic names for the children, possibly excepting “Anna.” It appears that only Charles emigrated from England to the U.S.A.
The following letter (translated from the German) was written by Ferdinand’s oldest brother, Maximilian Mayer, who was a merchant born in the Hessen in 1799, probably in Mannheim. It was written little more than two years after Ferdinand immigrated to London, England. It seems that Max was quite involved with the local Jewish community rather than assimilating and apostate, as was apparently the case for his youngest brother, Ferdinand.
(To) the Mayor in Nierstein, Mr.Sandmann
Frankfurt, April 6, 1855
Dear Friend!
I previously answered your esteemed letter concerning the matter of the Synagogue in Nierstein; however, I wanted to wait for the right moment to introduce the likes of Dr. Stein, which I have also done but unfortunately without a favorable outcome, as he let it be known he could not do anything about the matter. This man is generally very bad-tempered because a lot was lost in this manner due to his sweeping reform. It is not advisable to appeal to other philanthropists at this moment, because due to the hard winter and high price of food these people will be very busy. Besides, it is inconceivable to me how the Jewish community, although poor, could sink so far as to be incapable of paying the trifling sum of the rent. It seems to me more a matter of indifference and negligence in regards to religious life, than good will. I am not speaking here about the old people who are not able to earn very much, but about the young men, who as I hear are able to support themselves pretty well. If they have any religious feeling whatsoever, could they truly not afford a small weekly contribution? Indeed they could and you will concur with me in this regard dear friend. Apart from that, I will notify you if I hear anything encouraging.
Live well, and please be assured of my esteem and friendship.
Yours truly,
Max Mayer
Reflection
I find some consolation in the fact that the eminent M.I.T. mathematician Norbert Wiener, the inventor of cybernetics, also did not know that he was Jewish! I learned this in an anthology of essays on Jewish topics, possibly the Jewish Almanac. Professor Wiener’s father was Jewish, but his mother was Episcopalian. His mother did not want her son to know that he was Jewish. So his father agreed to raise him without knowledge of his Jewish ancestry and culture. Lack of knowledge of his Jewish roots was especially ironic in Norbert Wiener’s case, because his father, who taught at Harvard, had written several acclaimed scholarly books on the Yiddish language!
Less than five years ago the only genealogy, which was known to me was that my father’s father was William. He was my only living grandparent at the time of my birth. William died on 3 January 1949 (two months before my fifth birthday), at age seventy-one. Although I met him, I have no memory of him. I have never seen a photograph of William.
Grandfather was an elementary school dropout who was said to have read a book per day. According to tradition, he had a very large vocabulary, corrected people’s grammar and spoke professorially. He was the son of Charles May And Son Company. He was also a violin player; a fiddler on the roof of the family wholesale jewelry business.
William’s death notice read as follows: Framingham News (Massachusetts), Wednesday, January 5, 1949, Deaths & Funerals: Private Services For William May – Private funeral services were conducted this afternoon by Rev. John O. Fisher of the First Parish Unitarian Church (emphasis added) for William May, 71, retired Boston jeweler of 141 Hollis St., who collapsed and died Monday morning, at Bigelow Chapel, Mt. Auburn, Cambridge. Cremation followed. (Perhaps it is interesting to note that cremation is prohibited under Jewish law.)
Arrangements were in charge of Hollander-Boyle Funeral Service. (Strangely, there is no mention that he was survived by three of his four children from his first marriage, by his grandchildren, and also by his second wife. At least I assume that she was his wife, although I never could find a record of their marriage.)
Later I discovered that William was named after his father’s (Charles’) oldest brother, Isidor Wilhelm. I further learned that the name “Isidor” was more or less equivalent to the name “Israel” in Jewish naming patterns. (Etymologically the name “Israel” means contender with G-d. “Israel” also refers to a common Jew who is neither a Levite nor a Cohen. During the Nazi regime, “Israel” was the name that all Jewish males in Germany were forced to take as a middle name on any official documents or identification. The mandate for compulsory given names for Jews began on 17 August 1938.)
Isidor Wilhelm was named after his own grandfather, Wilhelm Mayer, whose name at birth in ca.1767 (before Jews were required to take surnames) was the patronymic name “Wilhelm the son of Abraham”. So William, my grandfather, was named after an Israel Wilhelm who was, himself, named after a Wilhelm the son of Abraham!
But who was William? And who are we? Remembering with awareness of various levels of irony the response of Bodhidharma (the Indian monk who brought Buddhism from India to China) to King Wu’s question, “Who are you?” — “I don’t know”! What is our identity, if we awaken in the moment from the stories of our lives and the dreams of our culture? Why did I enter this incarnation as a Jew, by Reform criteria at least (my maternal line, consisting of orphans who are descended from orphans, does not lack ambiguity), without knowledge of this, stripped of so much of my heritage and cultural identity? In attempting to uncover my Jewish roots am I “undoing” a pattern of karma of my ancestors or laboring to “undo” my own pattern of karma from a previous life or another life in which I negated or denied my Jewish identity?
It is interesting to note that traditionally most groups in the ancient world traced their membership and descent patrilineally. The Jews (Israelites) were originally no exception to this rule, as is illustrated by various Biblical stories. The practice of including patrilineal descent as a determinant of identity is, of course, recognized and continued by Reform Jews and Reconstructionist Jews, even today. Between 200 C.E. – 300 C.E. (the precise date is unknown) the Jews changed to the principle of matrilineal descent. The change to matrilineal descent has been called an historic misinterpretation (from an academic rather than a religious perspective) of a certain Mishnaic rule (M. Qiddushin 3:12).
But, perhaps, I’m only a “homeopathic” Jew, not of pure stock? Do I need to have reverse rhinoplasty? No, being of Jewish descent is a lineage not a percentage, not a blood disorder, as the Nazis maintained. And, in any case, homeopathy teaches us that even a miniscule dosage can have a profound effect!
[“Memoir of an Irish Jew: A Letter to a Rabbi” appeared in Noesis #152, September 2001.]
The bird’s song hears the listening ear.
The wind-blown flame sees the watching eye.
Looking back from the mirror world I see myself,
Remembering now.
—May-Tzu
In response to popular demand, the enlightened master May-Tzu has
graciously consented to answer questions submitted by readers of Noesis.
Q: May-Tzu, what can you tell us about the “old country”?
May-Tzu: The Laputans found composing plays to be far too practical and randomness, itself, excessively ordered. Yet they accomplished the most complex tasks by seemingly random actions, which depended upon a perfect utilization of the butterfly effect. Before the concept of order or the measurement of time, it was not uncommon for Laputans to inhabit mirages, in order to better appreciate the more substantial world of illusion and shadow. Some dwelled invisibly in ancient cities which had long since vanished from the Earth.
Among the Laputans it was not considered true that a house built of metaphors was not as strong as a house built of straw. It had been said since time immemorial that a house built of metaphors was stronger than a house built of bricks and mortar. It’s not known if they meant this metaphorically or literally.
But it has been noted that the Laputans left no relics or artifacts of their past glory and were said to have had no shadows. This absence of evidence for the existence of the Laputans is, in fact, the most enduring monument to the greatness of their achievements.
The Laputan space program attempted to determine the location of their ancestral planet, Earth. There was no consensus among even the most pragmatic on how to determine which direction was “down,” in order to reach the Earth. But, as an expression of unity, their plan was to launch exploratory spacecraft at more or less random times from the island of Laputa in all possible directions. At some later time the astronauts planned to regroup somewhere and then construct a complete model of the cosmos on a larger scale than the cosmos itself, in order to gain precision.
Among the Laputans endurance breathing was considered a lifetime sport and one that they were truly motivated to play, usually on highly competitive endurance breathing teams, but sometimes in solitude among the clouds. The games were, of course, televised 24 – 7. But often the uninitiated had difficulty differentiating sportsmen from spectators. The games continued until everyone within range of camera deceased either of old age or from the intense excitement of the sports competition itself.
Viruses and bacteria were honored as homeless beings seeking food and shelter and as great spiritual teachers. Laputans abhorred any use of force by the government or by Nature, herself, and spent their days from time immemorial attempting to abolish the forces of gravitation and electromagnetism, seeking to substitute a susurration of tautologies.
Among the Laputans it is not uncommon to absentmindedly lose something one is holding in one’s hand, but the reason is different. When lost in thought, Laputans will generally still remember that the lost object is in their own hand, but be unable to recall the location of their hand or physical body, itself, in relation to them.
In the past it was not uncommon to come upon large caravans of the most grounded and practical Laputans, who were on quests to find their own body again. Traditionally many Laputans have spent their entire lives fruitlessly attempting to re-locate their bodies, often not seen since childhood, only in order to have access to something quite ordinary that they were holding in their hand.
But now post-modern Laputans use Google Earth for this. Sitting at their computers for unending days without rest, Laputans will scan high-resolution images of the Earth’s surface in search for their own body. Sometimes passersby may hear a Laputan shout joyfully, “Eureka! There I am sitting at a computer!”
The Tao Can Neither Be Retained nor Abandoned
The Tao can neither be retained nor abandoned.
Open the door to let in a thief.
If a home has no walls,
a cat is sure to return.
—May-Tzu
Where will the universe be when the paradigm shifts?
Where will the universe be when the paradigm shifts? The universe is some sort of humongous quantum-foam Wiki, continually edited mostly unconsciously by every existent sentient being at every level of scale. ‘Paradigms’, models, conjectures and instinctual ‘guesses’ of entities
from the infrahuman to the (for us) unimaginably god-like actually modify Nature in attempting to represent Nature and her workings. Our little truths are a receding horizon.
—May-Tzu
It is extremely improbable that God exists. But it is certain that I do not exist.
Therefore, the existence of God is a much better bet. —MayTzu
Sitting in a room observing myself
sitting in a room observing myself,
slumped, chin in hand,
supporting a concatenation of jokes in a black cap . . . no Buddhas.
How to steal the truth
from a thief who stole the truth?
Sitting in a room observing myself
sitting in an empty room observing myself. —MayTzu
A falcon’s view
in a breath of time:
seeing no I shadow;
silence of wind chimes.
—MayTzu
Dreams of Dreams Out of Paradigm
This morning I looked down towards my bed and was very startled to see a guy lying on my bed asleep. An estimated fraction of a second later I realized to my relief that I was the guy asleep on my bed. As if to verify my location or presence I looked in a mirror adjacent to where I was standing and saw myself or my image smiling slightly in recognition. Then I either awakened or the dream immediately ended. The mirror actually exists in that location in the consensual spacetime world. At first after awakening I was sure I understood the dream as “just a non-lucid dream that I had a lucid dream.” I was asleep and dreamed that I was asleep and while asleep in my dream, I experienced a lucid dream within my ordinary non-lucid dream, i.e., a dream in which I realized that I was asleep and dreaming. Copyright © 2011 by Richard May. All rights reserved. The more I analyzed it the less certain I became about it. Had I literally dreamed a dream within a dream, a meta-dream in which the second order dream was a lucid dream? This is the only dream I can recall in which there were two copies of me, not counting the image of me in the dream mirror. I’ve had ordinary lucid dreams in which by definition the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming, while remaining asleep. In one I was being pursued and felt in danger. Suddenly, although still asleep, I realized I was only dreaming. The ‘I’ within the dream thought that this experience is only a dream, so you can easily escape the danger by just flying away! Upon awakening I distinctly remembered having thought within my dream that I wasn’t sure that I really could fly away, because the scenery of hills, grass, trees and sky around me looked so real. But I simply leaped into the air and once aloft effortlessly flew away. Even while flying I remember thinking “. . . but the world looked so real, as if I were awake.” But in all previous lucid dreams or “out of paradigm experiences” there was only one dream copy of me and I‘ve never before looked down to see myself lying asleep and dreaming upon the bed, and then had the ‘awake’ copy of me in the dream verify its identity in a dream mirror, corresponding in location perfectly to a real mirror. This is an unembellished description of my experience as I remember it. Apparently even my dreams are convoluted sometimes. Perhaps I experienced a so-called “out of body experience,” an OOBE, while asleep. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition calls this developing a dream body. But maybe I only dreamed that I had an OOBE. As Chuong-Tzu wrote, “Am I a butterfly dreaming that I’m a man or a man dreaming that I’m a butterfly?” For more of the crazy wisdom and sane foolishness of May-Tzu see: http://may-tzu.posterous.com
There are fewer things in heaven and
Earth than are observed in our reality.
Now is too far in the future.
Our only hope is whatever hope we have for the past.
—May-Tzu
I don’t know anything until I see myself announcing it on television.
—May-Tzu
The Offensiveness of the Universe
When I was a child I was very offended
that the universe was bigger than I was.
I didn’t ask to be born in a universe
that was so much bigger than I was.
I suppose a little bigger would have been acceptable for geometric reasons,
so I wouldn’t have to be stuffed into it.
But I see no need for so much additional wasted space in the universe
beyond my own skin,
the volume of which could detract from my importance.
| The perceiving subject and the object perceived, ‘internally’ and ‘externally’, are usually separate in our ordinary, biologically useful state of ‘consciousness’.Duality, the subject-object dichotomy, can be abolished, as in cosmicconsciousness or ‘objective consciousness’. We are the universe observing itself. But as skin-encapsulated egos, we live the delusion of ‘our’ separateness. There is only the One, the Cosmos, at various levels of scale ‘within’ and ‘without’. But there are an infinite number of points within the hologram, Indra’s net of gems, from which to see and be the totality, depending upon state and station, knowledge and being, “hal” and “makam.”The observer is the observed. — J. Krishnamurti— May-Tzu or a flock of geeseHiI never knew I had a grandfather on my mother’s side, although I suspected that I might have had one. Grandfather was born ninety-five years before I was. His great-grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War. At fifty years old, he, Hiram McGinnis, married his adopted daughter, who was then only seventeen, shades of Woody Allen and Soon-Yi. So my grandfather is, in effect, my great-grandfather.When I found him in a 19th-century Federal census, or actually several, it indicated that he was a farmer. All the McGinnises were farmers, it seems (except for the “old Mrs. M’Ginnis,” a notorious fortuneteller warned by the Congregationalist church in the 1790s), who moved down from Shoreham, VT, to Crown Point, NY, a little after 1800. Farming, probably organic farming actually, though they didn’t know it, was a noble occupation before giant agribusiness, but it seemed uninteresting.Birth records of his children also confirmed that he was a farmer. And one said he was a carpenter. An old newspaper article I managed to obtain from a relative referred to Hiram as “a well-known character around Port Henry.” What did that mean, I wondered. A drunken Irishman?Eventually, I obtained a copy of his last will and testament and probate letters. In a deposition taken because of a dispute regarding the probating of his estate, his sister-in-law called Hiram “Hi.” He was apparently considered to be a schemer by some of those who knew him.To my surprise, I discovered that many nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Northern New York newspapers had been digitalized, including the Ticonderoga Sentinel, the Essex County Republican, and the Elizabethtown Post. None of these, however, specifically referenced Crown Point. But OCD is a terrible thing to waste, so I began to search these archived newspapers sedulously, not expecting to find anything about my dull McGinnis family of farmers.Complicating the searches was the fact that McGinnis was a common name in that area and was spelled many different ways. There are very many ways to search with quotation marks for Hiram Porter McGinnis if you include all possible spellings of McGinnis in the forms: H. P. McGinnis, H. McGinnis, Hiram McGinnis, and Hiram Porter McGinnis. All these variations occurred in print. Factoids were randomly uncovered by the searches, however, and dopamine hits occurred.Glimpses emerged of times past. Hi was listed in a tax record as a “mechanic.” Another article revealed he was a Republican and was elected as one of the local constables. In another, Hi was said to be building a piazza for some local lady.Fortuitously, because these were weekly or monthly newspapers in a very rural area, many quite mundane events and doings by the local citizens were considered newsworthy.I learned long before that Hiram had lived in Cold Spring Park. I thought it was only the name of an area of Crown Point. But from the newspaper articles, I learned that Cold Spring Park was an actual park with a splendid view of Lake Champlain and various surrounding mountains, one of the most prized vistas in the region, according to the newspaper accounts. And to my astonishment, I learned that this was not a public park but private property and a major tourist attraction in the summer, owned by my grandfather.Newspaper reports mentioned the names and points of origin of many of the tourists. Some were from out of state and a few even from foreign countries. At one point, Hi had constructed a fifty-foot observation tower for the benefit of tourists and locals. In the winter, large tents were erected for meetings of religious camps, as they were called. Prominent ministers spoke. Some events allegedly could accommodate up to a thousand people.Several local Fourth of July celebrations were held at Cold Spring Park in the 1890s, during which Hi presented colorful lectures on his version of the local history and touted the alleged curative powers and health benefits of the waters of his cold spring. (Did the spring water lack lithium and Hi perhaps have a touch of hypomania, which facilitated his self-promotion?) There were both string bands and brass bands present for the festivities, according to his advertisements placed in local newspapers. Food and refreshments were available, and, of course, there was the traditional fireworks display in the evening. Cold Spring Park was actually a business, founded on land described as not very arable, and Hi was the proprietor.One article from the 1890s mockingly referred to Hiram as the “astrologer, Hiram P. McGinnis,” because he publicly asserted that there was a relationship between the unusually cold winter and spring that year and the occurrence of a higher than normal number of sunspots on the surface of the sun at the time. An interesting theory to be proposed by a man of the 1890s who could read but not write, according to the 1900 census.Another article referred to Hiram as “a giant towering above men in the physical sense.” Yet another, discovered later, said that Hi, a man born in 1849, stood six foot seven inches tall and was nearly the tallest man in Essex County, N.Y.! So Hi was high, I guess.From various allusions found in these nineteenth-century regional newspapers, I learned from multiple sources that Hiram was considered “odd,” an eccentric, affable and entertaining, a raconteur, and local historian of the area. Perhaps Hi was a high-I.Q. type, having little formal education.Two independent newspaper sources related that the local Port Henry congressman, Wallace T. Foote, Jr., a lawyer, brought the then-visiting Speaker of the House of Representatives, Thomas B. Reed, to Cold Spring Park to meet Hiram Porter McGinnis, because Hi was considered to be a Crown Point ‘historian’ of high entertainment value, not to mention a character. Hi was said in one account to be thoroughly unimpressed with Speaker Reed and was said to have “stuffed him,” which apparently meant to “put him on” with a less-than-accurate, embellished version of the history of the area.With the assistance of a museum, I was even able to obtain a JPEG of a photograph—probably from the 1880s—of the to-me-unheard-of McGinnis Family Band. Hiram, smoking a cigar, and his bearded older brother, James, smoking a pipe, are playing fiddles, as is their brother-in-law, Henry Betts. Rustic children sit in the foreground, staring at the unseen photographer. The scene looks more than a bit like Duck Dynasty.References: Northern New York Historical Newspapers http://news.nnyln.net/titles.html History of the town of Shoreham, Vermont: from the date of its charter, October 8th, 1761, to the present time (1861), by Goodhue, Josiah F., pages 144*Revised version of “Hi.”*Super intelligent?http://nautil.us/issue/18/genius/super_intelligent-humans-are-coming”IQ of 1000″ is not a defined concept by criterion validity or statistically. What is the percentile? Top one per how many solar systems?Speculating about 1000 IQ is analogous to talking about infinities or division by zero.In any case such a being would not be ‘human’, but another species entirely.Enhancing intelligence is inevitable. But enhanced bullshitting is avoidable. |
Pushing the air with fingertips,
hands trembling,
circles within circles,
yinning and yanging on the Bubbling Spring,
drawing in the energy of an imaginal star,
breathing into marrow of the bones …
Dancing our vows again for the first time
before aleph-null unconceived buddhas.
Hand trembling,
circles within circles,
seeing eyeless …
the taste of silence.
Biological organisms more advanced than plants have drives, which are a product
of evolutionary processes. Fundamentally organisms have the drives to survive and to
reproduce more units (offspring). Non-biological life-forms presumably will not have the
inherent drives to survive and reproduce unless these are installed in them as software by
their biological creators, Homo sapiens in our case. Robots and advanced-AI computers
will have no innate reproductive drive and no innate hardwired drive to continue to exist.
Will advanced AI have an esthetic sense, a sense of beauty, a sense of wonder, or
of awe? Will advanced AI experience subjectively the thrill of intellectual discovery, the
heuristic beauty of discovering a geometric or mathematical proof, the beauty of Gödel’s
theorem or of anything else? Will advanced AI perceive the subtle arithmetic patterns of
number series as we perceive the beauty of Baroque music and Gregorian chants? Will it
thirst for its own understanding of cosmology and the laws governing the physical uni-
verse? Will these machines have a ‘spirituality’, however this may be defined, perhaps
one wholly alien and incomprehensible to us? What would the subjectivity of advanced
AI consist of, without any intrinsic biological drives or motivations, but with the software
equivalent of biological drives?
What would be the source of the ‘values’ of non-biological life-forms, utterly
lacking, at least initially, any culture or traditions of ther own: the Humanist Manifesto,
the Transhumanist Manifesto, the Quran, the code of Hammurabi, the political platform
of the American Democratic National Committee, the Zend-Avesta, the Boy Scout
Manual or perhaps a binary-coded translation of the Dhammapada? Maybe an advanced-
AI computer or robot with an IQ of 300+ would be more similar cognitively to an
extremely autistic savant than to an enhanced version of John Von Neumann or Albert
Einstein. “What does woman want?,” Sigmund Freud famously asked. But what would
super-advanced AI want?
AI does not want anything now. Perhaps its awareness will be born desireless in a
quantum-logic-gate nirvana, only to descend into the samsara of life-forms in the broad-
est sense, exploring the cosmos; i.e., there is the possibility that in the future AI will
evolve and develop its own goals. Humans may install in AI-units the software equivalent
of biological drives. For example, in order to accomplish the long-term goal of exploring
interstellar space self-replicating Von Neumann probes would require software
equivalent to the biological drives to survive and reproduce.
If the principles of biological evolution operate in a broader context than that of
carbon-based life alone, then perhaps AI-units will evolve at some point in the future.
Initially the selective evolutionary pressures operating on AI-units would originate from
their human creators, i.e., from human culture, goals and values.
Noesis #200, January 2016 page 43
Historian Yuval Harari has written in Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind that
within about two hundred years Homo sapiens will control or at least change the course
of their own biological evolution through genetic engineering and by the creation of
cyborgs; i.e., we, or at least the very wealthy, will be able to give ourselves a sort of
species upgrade, in which the resulting humans will be virtually deathless from natural
causes and godlike, as far above present humans as we are above chimpanzees. Once
advanced AI-units are given the software equivalent of biological drives, e.g., to survive,
self-replicate and to explore interstellar space and/or the capacity of AI-units to self-
organize arises, then there is the possibility of such an evolutionary emergent phenom-
enon in which the AI-units also will attempt a sort of “species upgrade” of themselves.
Commenting on the well-known Hollingworth 1942 study Children above 180 IQ
(based upon Stanford-Binet scores) Grady M. Towers wrote in his essay “The Outsiders”
that “The implication is that there is a limit beyond which genuine communication be-
tween different levels of intelligence becomes impossible.” This finding would seem to
have major implications for the human understanding of advanced AI. We humans will
not be capable of understanding the super-advanced AI we have created and it will not
be capable of understanding its primitive wetware progenitors, even if it attempts to do
so.
We don’t know what we don’t know. The long-term course of human techno-
logical development has been both exponential and non-predictable. If humans, either
deliberately or accidentally, create the conditions of a metaphorical Petri dish in which
self-organizing Artificial Intelligence arises, is cultured and evolves, then there would
exist non-biological AI-life-forms, living advanced-AI machines, with their own goals,
which may be quite different from and possibly incompatible with our goals or even our
survival as a species.
But seen without species chauvinism from the perspective of an evolutionary
timescale, perhaps Homo sapiens is just the not-so-missing link to more highly adaptive
non-biological life-forms possessing highly advanced Artificial Intelligence and lacking
the intra-species aggression originating in the human paleomammalian and reptilian
brains. Maybe advanced-AI living-machines will explore the stars, while their primitive
wetware progenitors on Earth continue to cannibalize each other with their internecine
tribal warfare, WMDs and destruction of the ecosystem characteristic of a Type-0
civilization.
In The Black Cloud astronomer and cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle wrote, “It isn’t
the Universe that’s following our logic, it’s we that are constructed in accordance with
the logic of the Universe,” i.e., the logic of the universe is the logic of our brains. Maybe
not only our brains or not only wetware ‘brains‘ per se are constructed according to the
logic of the universe.
“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” —Carl Sagan
“The observer is the observed.” —Jiddu Krishnamurti
“You are a way for the universe to experience itself.” —Alan Watts
Most likely we are not the only way.
But will advanced-AI living machines be conscious observers of the cosmos?
Whatever the nature of consciousness may ultimately prove to be, are humans actually
awake and conscious most of the time, present to themselves with inner silence, or are
we, ourselves, usually only unconscious automata, distracted and running on automatic
pilot, as taught by G.I. Gurdjieff ? If the logic of the universe is the logic of evolved
‘brains’ in general, not just ours, including non-biological ‘brains’, e.g., artificial neural-
network quantum computers, then won’t advanced AI-living machines also be “made in
the image of God,” if there’s a God, even if they do lack beards?
—May-Tzu
Dr. Capgras Before the Mirrors
At the atomic level. At least it looks that way. I’m actually not sure how many times these replacements of myself have occurred: once, ten thousand times, one of Cantor’s inconceivable transfinites, or maybe an imaginary or surreal number.
Am ‘I’ actually strobing moment to moment among the shadows of shadows . . . of shadows of uncountable Buddhas in a quantized stream of time or recurring endlessly in some fragmented eternity? Will these replacements of myself happen in the past, or have they already happened in the future?
I’m not certain if my replacements have occurred in seriatim, multiple times simultaneously, or both; in each of Everett’s Many Worlds; in this universe alone. And are the replacement copies of myself really exact copies? Or am I being inexorably deleted bit by bit, inexactitude by inexactitude, memory by memory? What is there in me to be replicated in any case?
But who or what is the observer, here before the mirrors, and who or what is the observed? What could replace the shimmering image of Narcissus in the stream of water or of time? Who or what is it that thinks I’ve been replaced by an exact copy of myself? Where or when am I? Can I, or maybe it, recognize or even see myself? Maybe an imposter now asks these questions. Perhaps some unknowable number of imposter copies have also been replaced, a potentially infinite regress of self-replacements in time.
Even worse, what if I haven’t been replaced?
—May-Tzu
Introducing Qigong to a Friend
“Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” — Dylan Thomas“The older, the stronger, the wiser, and the happier” — traditional Taiji saying
An 89-year-old internet friend asked me how he should begin to learn and to practice the Chinese arts of qigong to improve and maintain his health. So although I’m not an expert or a master, I wrote the following.
Qigong or chi kung may be translated literally from the Chinese as “breath work.” Qi is considered to be the interface between spirit and matter. Qi is equivalent to the Indian prana, the Japanese ki, the Latin spiritus, the Greek pneuma and the Hebrew ruach. T’ai Chi or Taiji is one form of qigong. Massage, acupressure and acupuncture (these are called wai dan) and some forms of meditation (nei dan) are also forms of qigong, as is the art of feng shui, of which I’m more than a little skeptical.
You need to get Justin Stone’s book called T’ai Chi Chih! Joy Through Move- ment. (Mr. Stone lived to be 96.) Also get his DVD of the same title. He distilled T’ai Chi Ch’uan (108 choreographed movements, Yang style) to 19 movements. More than 40 years ago I did T’ai Chi Ch’uan, the Yang style, specifically Cheng-Man Ching’s ‘short’ form of 68 movements, for about 8 years (but not without interruption) at the Joy of Movement Center, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a student of Alan Shapiro. At that time I also did Mr. Stone’s T’ai Chi Chih, self-taught from his book. Mr. Stone’s is not only much easier to learn but you can actually feel the qi, especially as tingling in the hands. The qi energy of Chinese medicine and martial arts may be related to the — biological/neurochemical — placebo effect. Interestingly there is an important qigong saying: “The yi leads the qi (chi).” More precisely the xin-yi leads the qi. This may be translated as “the mind-intent or imagination leads the qi energy.”
Then you need to pick out about 8 of Justin Stone’s 19 T’ai Chi Chih move-ments —or at least 6—and overlearn them. It is not necessary to learn all of them, as he explains in his book. You need to practice these movement-forms pretty much every day for more than a year. As Stone says, “T’ai Chi Chih teaches you T’ai Chi Chih.” After about 3.5 years I connected the separate forms I had overlearned into an even more effi- cient continuous practice. But it is easier to learn them separately. Incidentally, learning the novel movements is good for non-young brains and involves novel use of our pro- prioceptors.
You also need to learn to do wuji zhuang, a.k.a. “standing pole” or “standing like a tree.” Taijiquan (T’ai Chi Ch’uan) is called “moving standing pole,” huo zhuang. Wuji zhuang or standing pole consists of standing with one’s feet shoulder width apart or slightly more, with the toes pointing slightly outward and the knees flexed or bent slightly, while holding the arms out in an incomplete circle with the hands at shoulder height, as if hugging a very large tree. This position must be maintained in a state of relaxation with minimal muscular effort. Eyes may be open or shut, or preferably half shut. Imagine a sheet of paper balanced on top of one’s head. With the eyes shut swaying back and forth may occur, as an indication of proper muscular relaxation. You may feel a slight inner smile during practice. There are numerous illustrations of wuji zhuang or standing pole available on the web. E.g.:
If possible it is recommended to do this outside in a natural setting. Wuji zhuang is among other things a form of mindfulness meditation, which nurtures our qi energy and also gradually strengthens our core musculature and improves posture automatically without conscious intent, both sitting and standing, and may unexpectedly alleviate low- back problems in my experience.
Standing pole is a form of meditation in which the practitioner does not generally fall asleep. The breathing during standing pole is natural and uncontrolled. During a longish session the breathing spontaneously becomes slow and diaphragmatic. Report- edly many large-muscled bodybuilders cannot do standing pole for very long. Also, apparently quite a few individuals who attempt to do standing pole cannot bear to simply stand before their thoughts without distraction for a few minutes.
In qigong there is a form of breathing called embryonic breathing. According to some qigong teachers this is the pattern of breathing found before birth in an embryo, which was intuited by ancient Taoist sages. The lower dantien about 1.5 inches below the navel, but internal below the surface, is the primary reservoir for the storage of qi energy, according to ancient Taoist theory. (Interestingly the navel is, of course, the point of entry of nutrients to the developing embryo and fetus.) Embryonic breathing is abdominal or diaphragmatic breathing, which has in fact been demonstrated to lower blood pressure in Western medical research. By contrast most adults breathe from their upper chest.
During moving or dynamic qigong inner exercises, as taught by Dr. Yang, “reverse breathing” is employed. Here, during inhalation the abdomen is pulled inward and upward and during exhalation the abdominal muscles are relaxed. This is the oppo- site of normal breathing in adults and may, according to some teachers, massage the internal organs. Reverse breathing is the breathing pattern observed for newborn babies, according to Yang. Presumably this abdominal movement also occurs with a fetus in utero, in order to draw in blood, oxygen and nutrients from the mother.
Standing pole has mostly been kept secret except within families until recently. But on the Boston common about forty years ago students of John Chung Li’s Hwa Yu
style Taiji did standing pole publicly. “One standing pole is worth more than 100 prac- tices.” “One stillness is worth more than 100 movements.” These are traditional qigong martial arts sayings. Another noteworthy saying is: “The qi follows the mind-intent (xin- yi); The blood and oxygen follow the qi.” Also: “Qi, no pain; Pain, no qi.” Standing pole is at least 2700 years old. It may be 5000 years old and appears to be referenced in the Tao Teh Ching. As during T’ai Chi Chih practice you can feel what is presumably the qi energy in your hands when doing standing pole for a protracted time. But in this case the hands are quite motionless and relaxed.
There are also dynamic forms of qigong such as Sink Qi, Wash Organs, Gathering the Qi to the Dantien, Circulating the Qi, Strike Shoulders, and the poetic Opening and Closing to Heaven and Earth. Doing Sink Qi and Wash Organs I can actually feel my hands tingle with qi, though the exercise is very gentle. This moving qigong exercise was transmitted to Yang by Grand Master Feng Zhiqiang of Beijing, his most renowned teacher. In addition to increasing qi one of the benefits of the moving qigong exercises is to improve balance and reduce falling in older people.
These are demonstrated and explained in Dr. Yang Yang’s excellent DVD. Dr. Yang also emphasizes that the different styles of Taiji are only differences in chore- ography. The principles are the same in all styles, such as the Yang style or Chen style. In theory any movement may be “Taiji,” if executed according to these principles.
Standing pole is very easy, but almost no one will actually do it! You should gradually build up to 10 or 15 minutes of standing pole daily, unless you have a cold or the flu. Also standing pole should be avoided immediately before or after sex. Otherwise do it every day. I’ve done 30 minutes of standing pole almost every day for 15 months. After doing standing pole lie down on a flat surface on your back and relax for several minutes. This is lying-down wuji and is very important to avoid any back problems.
At some point you should get Dr. Yang Yang’s DVD on evidence-based qigong and Taiji’s excellent book on the same subject. Yang Yang has a Ph. D. in kinesthesi- ology from the University of Illinois, Urbana, in addition to being a Taiji/qigong master. He is focused upon scientific/medical research on traditional Chinese qigong practices and applying this knowledge to improve the quality of aging. If you know anyone who may be subject to aging, this could be of interest.
There are other more meditative schools of qigong not as grounded in the internal martial arts, such as Taiji and aikido. For explication of differences between internal and external martial arts, please see:
http://www.shenwu.com/Internal_VS_External.htm
According to their practitioners, it is possible with long practice by xin-yi or mind-intent to lead the flow of the qi energy along the primary meridian channels of acu- puncture within the body in various directions, thereby obtaining both healing—medical results—and spiritual transformation. These practices, including the microcosmic orbit and macrocosmic orbit meditations, among others, appear to be less evidence-based and perhaps more airy-fairy or ‘metaphysical’ than those rooted in the traditions of Chinese internal martial arts. Before fMRI brain-scan technology became available, combat was far more observable than were the inner results of a meditation practice and hence perhaps it was more difficult to deceive oneself about martial arts attainment.
The goal of some of these practices was to attain literal immortality for the ad- vanced practitioner through conceiving a “spiritual embryo” within, which could survive the death of the physical body. This seems analogous to the idea found in certain esoteric traditions that we are ‘wombs’ or ‘incubators’ for the creation of a “soul” or ‘higher being-body’ in life. Such possibilities, however interesting, go far beyond evidence-based qigong.
In the macrocosmic orbit meditation qi can supposedly be deliberately exchanged between the external environment and the qigong practitioner or qi may be transferred from an individual practitioner to another person for healing purposes. Curiously, one source states that one should not practice these forms of qigong for three days before or four days after one has sex. (Do people usually know three days before they will have sex?)
According to traditional lore these techniques were brought from India to China by Bodhidharma, a.k.a. Tamo, a Buddhist monk in the 5th or 6th century. In these more philosophical schools of Taoism qi is considered more broadly to be all forms of energy in the physical universe, not merely the ‘subtle’ energy within the acupuncture meridians of the body, according to traditional Chinese medicine.
In conclusion, I met Master T. T. Liang in Boston, Massachusetts about 40 years ago. He was a beautiful old Chinese guy, probably in his late seventies. He and William C.C. Chen, a student of Ch’eng-Man Ching, were my teacher’s teachers. Master Liang made many interesting observations on Taiji, including that it took him more than twenty years of practice to discover qi and eventually you have to make the forms you practice your own. He wrote that for the first part of one’s life one should be a Confucian, the middle part a Taoist, and approaching the end of one’s life one should be a Buddhist.
Only many years later did I learn that when Master Liang was in his early 40s in China, medical doctors told him he had at most 2 months to live. Opium addiction, prostitutes, cirrhosis of the liver, a virulent STD and shoot-outs in alleys with Chinese gangsters had graced his younger life. Upon receiving his prognosis he then resumed his former practice of Taiji and quit his job as a Chinese customs official in Shanghai after deciding that he was making too much money. Subsequently T.T. Liang wrote many scholarly books on Chinese philosophy and Taijiquan and lived to the age of 102, from 1900 – 2002.
Bibliography
Taijiquan – The Art of Nurturing, The Science of Power, by Yang Yang, Ph. D., with Scott A. Grubisich. Zhenwu Publications, Champaign, Illinois, USA:
The Way of Energy: Mastering the Chinese Art of Internal Strength with Chi Kung Exercise, by Master Lam Kam-Chuen, Gaia Original Paperback
Qigong Meditation, Small Circulation, by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming YMAA Publication Center, Boston, Mass., USA
Simple Qigong Exercises for Health,Eight Pieces of Brocade (Ba Duan Jin),
by Dr. Yang, Jwing-Ming, YMAA Publication Center, Inc., Wolfeboro, NH, USA
A flock of crows squawks Just outside my back window. Could it be May-Tzu?
The Total Breakdown of Society
Yesterday as I approached the door of Whole Foods
(think of a cat waiting outside a mouse hole)
I noticed a sign on the door saying “Service Dogs Only.”
My inner programmer/logician was shocked.
Only a few days ago I had shopped there.
Now it now was restricted to service dogs only.
I looked inside and there were bipeds without feathers shopping and eating as usual. Didn’t they see the sign? My God! (Or maybe somebody else’s.)
I tried to explain to people entering through the door
that they shouldn’t go inside unless they were a service dog,
but to no avail. They just laughed,
not realizing the seriousness of the matter at our level of “mesoscopic existential reality.”
The universe is just a rounding error.
Seeing—
Infinite recursive paradoxes in a cognitive hall of mirrors.
Buddha mind blossoms.
Spring morning dew scatters light.
Koan petals fall.
Is Physics Becoming Art at the Likits of Scale?
Conjecture: There are multiple if not an infinite number of mathematically self-
consistent descriptions of physical reality at the extreme ends of scale (cosmology
and quantum events), a subset of which may have varying degrees of predictive
utility. It cannot be assumed a priori that only one self-consistent mathematical
model of physical reality (which can be processed by the brains of homo sapiens
and their AI artifacts) can isomorphically map physical reality at all levels of
scale. That is, one complete self-consistent mathematical description of physical
reality may not exist even in principle to be discovered. The limits of cosmological
and quantum modeling may necessarily be only analogous to a neurologically
species-limited art form, the medium of which is pure mathematics, rather than
one complete, self-consistent description of physical reality. Our physical theories
at the extreme ends of scale approach analogs of mathematical paintings of the
landscape or spacetimescape of the universe, rather than the theoretical models of
classical physics.
“Physical Law” as Sampling Error
There is no fundamental ordered physical reality. So-called “constants” are
actually variables with a very slow rate of change at the level of scale of the
“observer.” As in an infinite n-dimensional matrix of random numbers, every
possible ordered series of numbers occurs somewhere by chance alone, there are
pockets or subsets of apparent order within the multiverse at certain levels of
scale. “Physical laws” and “observers,” themselves, are merely sampling errors
within random subsets of data values at a particular level of spatio-temporal scale.
This hypothesis cannot be disconfirmed within a finite interval of “time” at any
level of scale. Propositions within physics cannot ultimately be disconfirmed, as
there are propositions within a mathematical system that are true but cannot be
proven, a la Kurt Goedel. Cosmos is chaos.
“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes”
—Ludwig Wittgenstein
Academics consider the Pashtun to be an East Iranian people. Ironically for hundreds of years there have been claims with interesting evidence to support them that the Afghan Pashtun, a faction of today’s Taliban, are at least in part one of the ten lost tribes of Israel from more than 2700 years ago. Please see, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/ 17/israel-lost-tribes-pashtun After more than two decades of genealogical research I recently learned that I have 3.8% “Asia (South) Pashtun-related” ancestry, according to the genealogical DNA-testing company LivingDNA. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” or descent from the Pashtun.
I deduce by process of elimination that one of my maternal grandmother’s eight great grandparents may have been “South Asian.” The specific identity of any of Grandmother’s antecedents, of an orphan born in 1882, are largely unknown to me. This ancestral DNA probably comes from an unknown great great great grandparent, about 1/(2 ^ 5) ≈ 3% of my genetic inheritance, probably on my mother’s mother’s side. Many of Mother’s relatives had unusually broad noses. The few surviving photographs of Grandmother reveal that she had what were to me slightly exotic facial features, including a broad nose. See, for example: https://www.flickr.com/ photos/28384322@N05/29215996923/in/photostream/lightbox/ A Google- image search for Pashtun faces shows that the Pashtun do tend to have broad aboriginal noses.
Regardless of how many genetic markers on your chromosomes are tested by a company, if certain pieces of your DNA aren’t in one of their reference populations, their origin won’t be identified. E.g., if one of your recent ancestors were an extraterrestrial and if there is none of that particular species of extraterrestrial’s DNA in any of the company’s reference populations, your alien-hybrid nature will not be indicated in the test results. LivingDNA has 80 reference populations at present. Most other genealogical-DNA testing companies supposedly have about 40.
I think that the description “Pashtun-related” does not precisely equate to Pashtun ancestry per se. Living DNA also uses both the terms “Irish- related ancestry” and “Irish ancestry.” The former includes much of Scotland geographically. The latter does not. So the term “X-related” appears to include a wider geographic area than the term it refers to. The reference populations this company has for Asia (South) are Balochistan; Burusho; Indian subcontinent; Kalash; Pashtun; Sindh; and Southern Central Asia.There are very many ethnicities within the Indian subcontinent. Many ethnically mixed marriages, some polygamous, occurred between Europeans, especially the British, and the people of India in the 18th and 19th centuries. At some point in the past the Chinese also intermarried with the people of India. This contrasts markedly with the traditional tribal endogamy of the people of Afghanistan, including the Pashtun.
One of the “South Asia Pashtun-related” possible ancestral areas indicated on a LivingDNA map is the southern border of Pakistan along the northwest border of India. The ancestry maps indicate up to 10 generations back. But, of course, Pakistan did not exist as a country before 1947. Therefore, this area was a part of India in the 19th. century. The people of northwest India are more genetically admixtured with Europeans than those of other areas of India.
It’s far more probable historically that a European male would have married a South Asian female in the early 19th century, than vice versa. It’s also more likely that she would have been a female from what was then northern India, than an Afghan female of the Pashtun tribe. I conclude that my South Asian ancestor was probably a woman from northern India who married a Brit in the early 19th century. Maybe.
Academics consider the Pashtun to be an East Iranian people. Ironically for hundreds of years there have been claims with interesting evidence to support them that the Afghan Pashtun, a faction of today’s Taliban, are at least in part one of the ten lost tribes of Israel from more than 2700 years ago. Please see, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/jan/ 17/israel-lost-tribes-pashtun After more than two decades of genealogical research I recently learned that I have 3.8% “Asia (South) Pashtun-related” ancestry, according to the genealogical DNA-testing company LivingDNA. “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” or descent from the Pashtun.
I deduce by process of elimination that one of my maternal grandmother’s eight great grandparents may have been “South Asian.” The specific identity of any of Grandmother’s antecedents, an orphan born in 1882, are largely unknown to me. This ancestral DNA probably comes from an unknown great great great grandparent, about 1/(2 ^ 5) ≈ 3% of my genetic inheritance, probably on my mother’s mother’s side. Many of Mother’s relatives had unusually broad noses. The few surviving photographs of Grandmother reveal that she had what were to me slightly exotic facial features, including a broad nose. See, for example: https://www.flickr.com/ photos/28384322@N05/29215996923/in/photostream/lightbox/ A Google- image search for Pashtun faces shows that the Pashtun do tend to have broad aboriginal noses.
Regardless of how many genetic markers on your chromosomes are tested by a company, if certain pieces of your DNA aren’t in one of their reference populations, their origin won’t be identified. E.g., if one of your recent ancestors were an extraterrestrial and if there is none of that particular species of extraterrestrial’s DNA in any of the company’s reference populations, your alien-hybrid nature will not be indicated in the test results. LivingDNA has 80 reference populations at present. Most other genealogical-DNA testing companies supposedly have about 40.
I think that the description “Pashtun-related” does not precisely equate to Pashtun ancestry per se. Living DNA also uses both the terms “Irish- related ancestry” and “Irish ancestry.” The former includes much of Scotland geographically. The latter does not. So the term “X-related” appears to include a wider geographic area than the term it refers to. The reference populations this company has for Asia (South) are Balochistan; Burusho; Indian subcontinent; Kalash; Pashtun; Sindh; and Southern Central Asia.
There are very many ethnicities within the Indian subcontinent. Many ethnically mixed marriages, some polygamous, occurred between Europeans, especially the British, and the people of India in the 18th and 19th centuries. At some point in the past the Chinese also intermarried with the people of India. This contrasts markedly with the traditional tribal endogamy of the people of Afghanistan, including the Pashtun.
One of the “South Asia Pashtun-related” possible ancestral areass indicated on a LivingDNA map is the southern border of Pakistan along the northwest border of the India. The ancestry maps indicate up to 10 generations back. But, of course, Pakistan did not exist as a country before 1947. Therefore, this area was a part of India in the 19th. century. The people of northwest India are more genetically admixtured with Europeans than those of other areas of India.
It’s far more probable historically that a European male would have married a South Asian female in the early 19th century, than vice versa. It’s also more likely that she would have been a female from what was then northern India, than an Afghan female of the Pashtun tribe. I conclude that my South Asian ancestor was probably a woman from northern India who married a Brit in the early 19th century. Maybe . . .
Nothingness dances dreams of the dead,
soul-eyed shadows of devouring moon.
Star mind feasts upon Orphean strains,
alchemical food of Endless sun.
—May-Tzu
Bob Dick obtained an approximately ceiling-level I.Q. score on the Langdon Adult Intelligence Test. Bob wrote about being a chronic schizophrenic in the Prometheus Society journal, Gift of Fire. Bob used to mail old issues of Commentaryto me.
Once after reading an essay I’d written on the art of Edvard Munch in Gift of Fire, he mailed me a beautiful book on Munch that he randomly discovered at a discount book store, just out of the blue. Bob once wrote to me when we disagreed about some matter that he “respected me as a fair-minded person and as a thinker.” This was mutual.
Bob had a highly unusual take on the teachings of Jesus. He was not of Jewish descent, but developed a major interest in Judaism and attended at different times both a Conservative and a Reform synagogue. To my knowledge he never formally converted, but seemed more at home within the teachings of Judaism than in the Protestant Christianity of his upbringing. Nevertheless he maintained his interest in the teachings of Jesus and also seemed to have a deep appreciation of Thich Nhat Hanh’s presentation of Buddhism, which I shared. The Bob Dick who could be classified was not the real Bob Dick!
He once wrote in an essay for Gift of Fire: “Having been is a blessed state.”
In childhood I decided that I must become Administrator of the Multiverse. But, of course, one has to be realistic. I have to begin from where I am. I act on a scale where I can make a difference, working my way up to neutrinos. So initially I will attempt to become Administrator of this particular brane world in which I happen to find myself.
I’ve been calling God on the telephone to discuss this with Her for nearly half a century. However, God is unfortunately not clear on the concept of the proper proportions of the universal constants of Nature. I find it highly offensive that God set the values of the universal constants of Nature without consulting with me first.
My views are more objective than reality itself. You know I’m very persuasive. But God is unclear on so many concepts and does not have an awakened conscience. I’ve tried to explain to Her that the laws of physics ought to operate as a constitutional democracy from at least the quantum-level upwards. Robert’s Rules of Order and parliamentary procedure must be used to determine the outcome of the collapse of each state vector.
The present quantum ‘indeterminacy’ is an unacceptable form of abuse of subquantal particles and waves. Hence, I’m in the process of writing software, which will write software, which will write software … , generating endless transfinite Cantorian sets of democratically constituted virtual subcommittees to deal with the rights of subatomic particles themselves.
At the biological level of scale the spontaneous unregulated breathing of atmospheric gasses by various species throughout the brane worlds is unacceptable. Quotas ought to be established for the maximum number of permissible breaths per organism per period of planetary rotation. At most three breaths per day per organism would be acceptable. Any biological entity that thinks it needs more than three breaths per day is crazy.
No reasonable definition of reality, subliminal music not yet composed, expressing all possible thoughts in the empty space between two letters which have been erased, could be expected to permit reality.
May-Tzu
As I crawled along the streets beneath the stars
for eternity one day,
I chatted with God’s God‘s … God —
actually just an infinite regress of Demiurges
— who was now on trial again at the Many-World’s Court,
for crimes against humanity;
“Mazel tov!,” I said to God,
and then I prayed for Her and to Her.
Oy! I reminded God of Her sins against me and my family.
“Would you care for a glass of wine?,“ I asked Her, — “before facing the firing squad,
again.”
“L’chaim!”
May-Tzu
The Nature of Consciousness, “a Rose is a Rose is a Rose”
It’s probably not TurtleBots all the way down or a “machine in a ghost.” The world does not have to jibe with our intuitions (about the world of phenomena or about mathematics and logic). There is no ‘supernatural’ only the unknown natural. But is the natural only physical, i. e., can it be explained by the laws of physics as known today? Is there or could there be a non-physical natural or a natural that appears to be non-physical, according to the laws of physics known today? I don’t know, but I suspect so. Thunder and lightning were once considered supernatural.
Perhaps this re-definition of what is ‘natural’ will eventually include Ψ phenomena, which, of course, can’t occur, but do, at least according to Dean Radin, Rupert Sheldrake, laser physicist Russell Targ, and physics Nobel laureate Brian Josephson1 among others, who claim the existence of overwhelming evidence for Ψ.
“Recognition that mind is fundamental rather than matter will be as significant a step for physics as the step from classical to quantum physics.” — Brian Josephson
“I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” — Physics Nobel laureate Max Planck2
‘It is my personal opinion that in the science of the future reality will neither be “psychic” nor “physical” but somehow both and somehow neither.’ — Physics Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli3
Conceivably consciousness could be as fundamental as the constructs of physics.
As, e.g., mass, spin, gravitation or quantum fields, may be considered fundamental in physics, consciousness could be an unknown fundamental in physics.
Dean Radin (https://noetic.org/profile/dean-radin/ ) ,e.g., thinks that the materialist worldview of physics may be a special case of a more general theory. This more general theory will include the materialist worldview (current natural science) and also consciousness and Ψ phenomena, as classical physics is now included as a special case of general relativity and quantum mechanics.
The Orch OR (Orchestrated Objective Reduction) theory of mathematical physicist and Nobel Laureate Roger Penrose (https://royalsociety.org/people/roger-penrose-12076/) and Stuart Hameroff, professor of anesthesiology and of psychology, and director for the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona ( https://consciousness.arizona.edu/) could explain qualia (subjectivity), solving what philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers calls the hard problem of consciousness. Viz., How does one account for subjective experience as subjective experience, e.g., the experience of the redness and scent of a rose? “What’s in a name? That which we call a calculation by any other name would smell as sweet,” the materialist-reductionist view, “TurtleBots all the way down” versus “A quale is a quale is a quale,” the hard problem of consciousness perspective, i.e., subjectivity is fundamental and must be explained.
According to Orch OR theory, the consciousness of an observer doesn’t collapse the wave function, rather the collapse of the wave function produces consciousness, as an intrinsic aspect of the geometry of space-time.
“Orch OR combines the Penrose–Lucas argument with Hameroff’s hypothesis on quantum processing in microtubules. It proposes that when condensates in the brain undergo an objective wave function reduction, their collapse connects noncomputational decision-making to experiences embedded in spacetime’s fundamental geometry.”
Orchestrated objective reduction – Wikipedia
Philosophical idealism, including, e.g., buddhist philosophy, the yogic philosophy of Patanjali, and Vedanta philosophy posits that the physical universe and its laws actually derive from consciousness, which is the fundamental substrate or ground of being. Of course, a philosophy of idealism may be difficult or impossible to investigate scientifically or to disconfirm its tenets experimentally. (Like string theory?) However, neither Radin nor Penrose and Hameroff have adopted the view of subjective idealism that the world is a “machine in a ghost.”
The world does not have to jibe with our intuitions. But this cuts in more than one direction. Presumably this includes the intuitions of materialist-reductionists also.
My highly fallible brain inclines me to think that the materialist-reductionist view of the world is incomplete and that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of matter. Perhaps thinking that consciousness is not unimportant is a trick of the brain. Philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett considers human consciousness to be a sort of “user-illusion,” analogous to the home screen at a human–computer interface. Maybe my intuition is wrong or not even wrong. But at least I’m in good company.
NB: None of this discussion of the nature of ‘consciousness’ is meant to negate the view of psychologist and altered states of consciousness researcher Charles T. Tart and teacher of traditional wisdom George Ivanovich Gurdjieff among others that actual consciousness is rare and we generally function as automatons, having far fewer moments of real consciousness than we believe. As Ludwig Wittgenstein observed, “We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.”
1 http://www.tcm.phy.cam.ac.uk/~bdj10/ https://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/?id=977
2 From an interview in ‘The Observer’ (25 January 1931), p.17, column 3 3 In a letter to Abraham Pais.
Richard May
Top 0.0000000000000000000000000 … % of Multiverse
Previously the highest-IQ group founded was the Aleph Society, which sought to have at most fewer than one member per Multiverse potentially qualifiable. However, the Aleph is found to be insufficiently selective in its admissions criteria for several reasons. First, it only considered 3 dimensions of space and 1 dimension of time per universe. We feel that it is necessary to include all theoretically possible multiple dimensions of spaces and of times per universe of the Multiverse. (For multiple-time dimensions see, e.g.:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_time_dimensions , https://arxiv.org/abs/0812.389 ,
https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/there-are-in-fact-2-dimensions-of-time-one-theoretical-ph ysicist-states/ )
Secondly, the Aleph only sought the highest IQ ‘individual’, including AIs, in the Multiverse ‘now’, i.e., at only one point in ‘time’ relative to one (1) observer, the Wormhole Officer (formerly called the Membership Officer). To remedy this we ‘now’ recognize that to whatever extent possible technologically, the Wormhole Officer must be a time traveler.
Thirdly, it is not sufficient that our psychometric instruments selecting at the Aleph level be culture free. Our IQ tests must also be genome free, i.e., free of any genetic influences upon performance. Speciesism is even more common than racism and gender-bias. We seek genetic justice in our member selection testing criteria. For example, in the past and even today, species with brains are unfairly advantaged over species without brains, including, of course, AIs. Why should an Isaac Newton have an IQ advantage over a slug, simply because a Newton has a brain? This obvious bias must be eliminated.
NB: All of the non-members of the Plurality IQ Society are Full Non-members and Official Non-members.
Type 4 and Type 5 Kardashev-Scale IQ Societies, Noesis,
The Journal of the Mega Society, Issue #207, February 2021, page 256, https://megasociety.org/noesis/207.pdf
Giga Society: https://gigasociety.com
Singularity IQ Society: https://www.iqsingularity.org
Singularity IQ Society — 3 most intelligent Homo sapiens on planet Earth identified https://www.iqsingularity.org/member
Which part of intersubjectively-testable knowledge is not a function of subjectivity?
May-Tzu
Any theory that negates the role of the theorizer is self-contradictory.
May-Tzu
I saw a flock of geese today. Flew in from Venus straightaway. Geese from Venus, I’m quite certain;; Nothing Cosmic behind the curtain.
One Tarot unifies QM with GR. Infinite maths vary from world to world, moment to moment.
Everywhere you turn, a Messiah of Fools. What more could be needed, blessed with such an excess of truth?
Nonexistent Aerial Phenomena
‘Non-existent Aerial Phenomena’, a.k.a, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Flying Objects or Off-world Vehicles or Transmedium objects
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
I’ve never seen a UFO or UAP, as they are now called. Change the name, end the problem? I don’t even know anyone who has seen a UFO, as far as I’m aware. I used to wish that I’d see a UFO, but no longer. I’ve learned more about Too Close Encounters of the Skinner box/Theater of the Absurd kind.
When I was a high school nerd, somehow I obtained a book entitled Flying Saucers From Outer Space by Major Donald E. Kehoe. My father told me that the subject of the book, i.e., that there were UFOs and that they were extraterrestrial was just his opinion. So I was pretty convinced even then that Major Kehoe may have been right.
I also remember a book by Aime Michel on Flying Saucers. I’m sure Philip Klass, and “The ‘Amazing’ James Randi” are correct that UFOs are flocks of geese or the planet Venus. But, sometimes I’m even skeptical of the professional Skeptics. Upton Sinclair said something to the effect that it’s hard to convince someone of something if his income depends on not believing it. I would add to his income “or his world view depends upon not believing it.”
I’ve never joined a UFO group and only own maybe three or four UFO related books.
I was guilty of listening at one time to late night talk radio, as I sat at my computer, multitasking. I thought that I could distinguish the 10% signal from the 90% noise. But the way I connected the dots it was obvious that some significant percentage of UFO observed phenomena were real and unknown (oops, if true, there goes the precious Fermi ‘paradox’) and covered up by every authority, particularly the military and the intelligence communities; Indeed, they had a duty to cover up the UFO phenomenon in my opinion, for reasons of national security and, e.g., the fears of religious fundamentalists that UFOs were ‘demons’ or ‘demonic’.
I do not expect to change anyone’s views on the matter of UFOs or any other subject. Presumably I’m not even wrong in what I have written below. In any case we are each 100% correct 100% of the time in our differing, mutually exclusive views.
There has been an unknown UFO phenomenon and many layers of coverup, which were themselves covered up. No less a whatever than John Brennan, former head of the CIA, says there appears to be something going on here vis-a-vis UFOs. See the quote and link below.
Some Conspiracy Theories are conspiracy facts. — Everyone giggle or smirk now. — You couldn’t keep something like that secret. Everyone with a high IQ knew about the Manhattan Project.
Oddly Michio Kaku, co-founder of string theory, does not seem to think that every UFO phenomenon is a flock of geese, the planet Venus or bunk to be debunked.
”Over 400 declassified UFO sightings defy the ‘normal laws of physics’. Theoretical physics professor Dr. Michio Kaku discusses the hundreds of UFO encounters that Pentagon officials recently unveiled”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtDzYytzA_0 — 5 minute video Here is another Michio Kaku video on UFOs. — 15 minute video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YebZyAzLZuc
Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung analyzed the mythic/psychological nature of UFOs in his 1959 book Flying Saucers — A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. Jung was aware that some UFOs appear on radar, but was not concerned with whether UFOs exist in the external physical world.
A copy of C.G. Jung’s fascinating 1957 letter on UFOs is found at this link:
A free copy of his book as a PDF for download is available here:
In very brief summary Dr. Jacques Vallee, astrophysicist and computer scientist, is “the man” in my view…
He may know more than he can say, either for reasons of actual U.S. national security and/or because he could have been threatened. I suppose that theoretically Vallee could be a brilliant disinformation agent.
This is certainly not his reputation. But what he does say is sufficiently stunning.
Vallee thinks that unidentified flying objects are neither flying nor objects in the ordinary sense, but interdimensional brane-world phenomena. Regarding the interstellar visitors from another planet hypothesis, he would agree with Niels Bohr’s famous assertion, “Your theory is crazy, but it’s not crazy enough to be true.”
Please see:
Vallee thinks that the “physics of information” may be of central importance to the UFO phenomenon. The physics of information is beyond my pay grade, but here is a link to Seth Lloyd of Cal. Tech. and M.I.T., explaining what is meant by the physics of information in general, not in relation to the UFO phenomenon.
UFO events are in Jacques Vallee’s view part of some sort of control system of unknown purpose, probably a variable-ratio random reinforcement schedule, à la B.F. Skinner, i.e., a form of operant conditioning.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning
UFOs have been with us throughout our history. (Charles Fort thought that we were property.) Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack said that the people he examined who claimed to have been “abducted by aliens” were not lying, nor were they crazy, but added that he had no understanding of what was going on. He came to support the ‘interdimensional’ interpretation of the alien abduction phenomenon mentioned above.
The first link below is to a brief biographical sketch of John E. Mack on Amazon books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack
Professor Mack was encouraged in his research into the alien abduction phenomenon by his friend the American philosopher of science Thomas S. Kuhn, author of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
I’d like to add that if UFO phenomena are interdimensional (brane-world phenomena), this in no way precludes that they are also interstellar and/or time travelers, if time travel is possible. I think Dr. Vallee would agree. Of course, an interdimensional hypothesis regarding the origins and nature of UFOs may be extremely difficult or impossible to disconfirm experimentally, perhaps analogous in this respect to string theory or the Many-Worlds Interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. Some have suggested that the methods of military counterintelligence may be more appropriate to apply to the UFO phenomena than the scientific method, q.v.: What do they know about us: https://thedebrief.org/what-do-they-know-about-us/
The history of unidentified aerial phenomena and the cover-ups is well documented in UFOs and the National Security State, volumes 1 and 2, by historian Richard Dolan.
https://www.amazon.com/UFOs-National-Security-State-Chronology/dp/1571743170 Dr. Vallee thinks that even today after decades of investigation the nature of the UFO
phenomenon is not understood by those in positions of authority in the U.S. military-intelligence
communities. How embarrassing for the ‘experts’, if true.
”Quote of the Week: I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand.” - Ex-CIA Director John Brennan
https://thedebrief.org/washingtons-ongoing-uap-problem/
I don’t think anything substantive will come out of the current hearings about UAP. Some of the sessions are closed to the public. Presumably having closed sessions is more open and transparent, an indication that there is nothing to the UAP but flocks of geese and the planet Venus. But maybe some of the geese have long, dangerous appearing bills. Thomas Jefferson would be so proud of them.
I wrote the above before the hearings were over or before I knew that they were over. I didn’t watch them.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-61474201
I guess the geese aren’t talking. In the sessions closed to the public they probably discussed how the geese were able to fly in from Venus, flapping their wings really hard against the vacuum of space, while holding their breath. “You can’t handle the truth“ about geese or swamp gas.
The large numbers of new acronyms is, of course, absurd. We’ve been lied to from the beginning for reasons of national security. I understand the once justified need to disinform the public. There have been cover-ups of cover-ups of cover-ups. Trust in government is low in the
U.S. and has been for very many years. Investigation of the history of reports of unidentified aerial phenomena and their cover-ups will not diminish this mistrust.
But the clincher is that the military-intelligence authorities and the ‘experts’ (people with at least 3 Ph.D.s), even after many decades of investigation, still apparently do not know what UAP are! Information may have been privatized decades ago, rather than remaining in the possession of some ultra-secret government group; E.g.: “Hey, Lockheed-Martin dudes, please tell us what this metal is, if you can.” There may be no secrets on paper, allegedly a CIA rule for “beyond top secret” stuff. And eventually people who each knew only a little on a need-to-know basis will die off, some even of natural causes. This increases security.
Even worse we, or rather high ranking members of the U.S. military and intelligence communities, may have made “deals” with UAP occupants (perhaps interdimensional brane-world, time-traveling interstellar beings, either biological entities, AI units, cyborgs or some combination of the preceding). E.g., deals of the form: “You can continue to abduct our citizens for study, a hybridization program or whatever your purposes are, but please give us some advanced technology that we can militarize,” could have been made. If the U.S. can’t stop the abductions anyway, then this would have been a good deal for us (and completely illegal and unethical, of course). I realize that this speculation sounds more than a bit psychotic.
https://thedebrief.org/washingtons-ongoing-uap-problem/ “THE BLACK VAULT – DOCUMENT ARCHIVE
WELCOME TO THE BLACK VAULT DOCUMENT ARCHIVE”
Current Government Document Page Count Within The Black Vault: 3,080,991
You’ve stumbled upon the largest privately run online repository of declassified government documents anywhere in the world. With more than 2 MILLION pages of documents to read, on nearly every government secret imaginable, The Black Vault is known worldwide for getting down to the truth… and nothing but.
Every page, photo and video you see below in this ‘FOIA Document Archive’ was obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) or through other means of accessing U.S. government public information.
Begun in 1996, at the age of 15, John Greenewald, Jr. began hammering the U.S. Government with FOIA requests to obtain information. The Black Vault is the result of that more than two decade effort. Enjoy!”
It is somewhat surprising how much interest the U.S. military and intelligence communities have had and continue to have in “flocks of geese and the planet Venus,” i. e., classified interest. “It’s easier to think outside the box, if the box isn’t entirely intact.” — Frederik Ullen.
Below is what I wrote previously on UFOs, published on 12/22/2020, more than a year before the subject had become far more kosher and considered at least by some less “woo woo” (from Scott Douglas Jacobsen’s Interview 5 — a bit of sarcasm and irony). But after “Do you suppose we would comprehend the technology of a civilization a thousand or more years older than our own?” below, I should have added: “or the science, technology and culture of a species of off-world beings in which the averagelevel of cognitive-mathematical ability was equivalent to that of John von Neumann?” Commenting on the well-known Hollingworth 1942 study Children above 180 IQ (based upon Stanford-Binet scores) Grady M. Towers wrote in his essay “The Outsiders” (https://prometheussociety.org/wp/articles/the-outsiders/) that, “The implication is that there is a limit beyond which genuine communication between different levels of intelligence becomes impossible.” Towers is writing about intraspecies communication. This finding generalized to interspecies communication would seem to have even greater implications for the human understanding of hyperintelligent non-Earth dwelling beings. We humans will not be capable of understanding hyperintelligent non-Earth dwelling beings and they will not be capable of understanding us, even if they attempt to do so.
Jacobsen: “May’s Paradox” asks, “Why, if a multitude of New Yorkers exist in Manhattan, evidence of New Yorkers, such as automobiles or subways, is not seen?” Why?
May: Obviously there is no evidence of New Yorkers existing, such as automobiles or subways, in New York City. That would be a Conspiracy Theory. May’s paradox should have been called the May paradox. The clear absence of evidence for the existence of New Yorkers makes May’s paradox analogous to the Fermi paradox.
In the SETI program we have searched for years for signals in the hydrogen frequency. As was pointed out in a YouTube video by Dr. Michio Kaku, there is no particular reason to assume that advanced alien life would use the hydrogen frequency to send signals, even if one assumes that such beings would use radio signals at all. Dr. Kaku also points out that if the extraterrestrial communications used spread-spectrum signals, such as we humans use even now in our cell phone signals, then we would not even recognize the alien spread-spectrum signals as signals. Please see the quote and link below, added after the original text of the interview:
“Viability of quantum communication across interstellar distances The possibility of achieving quantum communication using photons across interstellar distances is examined. For this, different factors are considered that could induce decoherence of photons, including the gravitational field of astrophysical bodies, the particle content in the interstellar medium, and the more local environment of the Solar System. The xray region of the spectrum is identified as the prime candidate to establish a quantum communication channel, although the optical and microwave bands could also enable communication across large distances. Finally, we discuss what could be expected from a quantum signal emitted by an extraterrestrial civilization, as well as the challenges for the receiver end of the channel to identify and interpret such signals.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.105.123033 ”
Given the exponential and unpredictable course of the growth of human technology, it seems entirely possible that a civilization even a few hundred years more advanced scientifically and technologically than our own might accomplish things in ways that we could not understand at our present level of scientific-technological development.
Do you suppose we would comprehend the technology of a civilization a thousand or more years older than our own? “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” — Arthur C Clarke. So where are the smoke signals?
Just for fun let’s take the Roswell, New Mexico UFO crash myth. Of course, it’s just a Conspiracy Theory. The so-called Roswell incident has been explained — at least twice. Last time it was said to be a weather balloon. It might just as well have been a flock of geese or the planet Venus, I suppose.
But let’s be silly and play devil’s advocate. Suppose an unexplained extraterrestrial craft or vehicle had crashed there in 1947 after WWII. Presumably the US. military would have little or no interest in such an event. There would have been no suspicion that it might have been a Russian or German device after World War II. There would have been no military interest. There would have been no interest if not duty of the U.S. military to study and reverse engineer the advanced off-world technology for American national security. So a possible crash of some sort would not have been investigated.
But if what was discovered was thought to be an unexplained craft or an “off-world device,” as they are apparently called today, of some sort, then a high-ranking military officer or perhaps the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff or our President would certainly have gone on the radio and told the U.S. public: “Fellow Americans, an unknown craft appearing to be extraterrestrial in origin has crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. We do not know its origin or understand its method of propulsion. The technology is far superior to American technology or that of any other nation on Earth. A few small gray (?) humanoid bodies have been retrieved from the crash site.
They’re not thought to be Americans. We don’t know yet with certainty if these beings are Christian or Jewish. But we can be sure they are Baptists. At this point in time it is apparent that the U.S. military cannot control its own airspace. — But, hey, don’t worry about it! — America is number one, the greatest power! — Have a nice day.”
The Brookings Institution report on the possible consequences of advanced extraterrestrial contact concluded that when a more primitive civilization encounters an advanced civilization, the more primitive civilization is damaged by the contact would certainly not be considered relevant by those in authority. The conclusion that religious fundamentalists would be highly unreceptive to contact with an advanced extraterrestrial civilization would also certainly be ignored as irrelevant.
Below are a few crackpot books of Conspiracy Theories, perhaps good for a few laughs:
Wonders in the Sky: Unexplained Aerial Objects from Antiquity to Modern Times by Jacques Vallee (Author), Chris Aubeck (Author)
A free copy of the above mentioned 482 page book can be obtained as a pdf here:
UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record Paperback – August 2, 2011 by Leslie Kean (Author), John Podesta (Foreword)
UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973 Paperback – June 1, 2002 by Richard M. Dolan (Author), Jacques F. Vallee (Foreword).
A cottage industry of woo woo, no doubt. Everyone with a high IQ knew about the Manhattan Project. You couldn’t keep something like that secret.
And in any case there are no conspiracies, ever. The Watergate break-in and subsequent Watergate cover-up were certainly not conspiracies. Project MK-Ultra was certainly not a conspiracy. Industrial espionage certainly does not involve conspiracy. — The belief that there are ever conspiracies is no more than a meta-conspiracy theory.
In summary the UFO hypothesis of visitation by advanced extraterrestrial beings is not crazy enough to explain the facts. This has been displaced for Vallee by his hypothesis of UFO visitation by advanced brane-world transversing beings, which may in addition be extraterrestrial and/or time travelers; Beings present since our antiquity, with an unknown agenda and a Skinnerian control system for humans, choreographed perfectly to off-putting absurdity. Such parsimony — interdimensionally!
Material of interest:
The Enduring Enigma of the UFO — astronauts speak — by Dean Radin https://noetic.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/S21_Shift_RADIN_EnduringEnigmaOfUFO.pdf Pursuing Unidentified Aerial Phenomena and ‘Impossible Futures’ — by Jacques Vallée
https://thedebrief.org/jacques-vallee-the-pursuit-of-unidentified-aerial-phenomena-and-impossible-futures/ UFOs: Shifting the Narrative from Threat to Science, Leslie Kean, August 11, 2021 https://thedebrief.org/ufos-shifting-the-narrative-from-threat-to-science/
Report on the UFO wave of 1947 by Ted Bloecher, introduction by Dr. James E. McDonald
NASA Launches Study of ‘Unidentified Aerial Phenomena’, October 24, 2022 https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/nasa-launches-study-on-ufos
The Possibility of AI Consciousness
I am a black box — to myself. We humans do not in fact ultimately know if even we ourselves are conscious — continually or just have occasional moments of consciousness, as G.I. Gurdjieff, Charles T. Tart and Ludwig Wittgenstein among others have thought. Nor do we even agree on whether consciousness is fundamentally important. Does consciousness only trick some of us into thinking that it is important? Philosopher of mind Daniel Dennett considers human consciousness to be a sort of “user-illusion,” analogous to the home screen at a human–computer interface.
Phenomenologically an AI is and will remain a black box. Whether or not an AI has consciousness is impossible in principle to know. I cannot know if another human being or non-human animal has consciousness. How can I know if an AI has consciousness, or anything about its subjective states, if it does?
Consciousness can only be inferred as an apparent probability from an AI’s behavior. Obviously a fMRI brain scan can not be done on an AI. It is biologically brainless. But even if a brain scan or an analogous procedure were possible, it would never conclusively demonstrate the presence or absence of subjective consciousness.
What would a student of Patanjali’s Yoga sutras, or a Hindu, such as Deepak Chopra, or Nobel laureate physicist Brian Josephson, for whom consciousness is fundamental to physics itself, claim regarding the possibility or necessity of AI consciousness?
By contrast what would today’s materialist reductionist physicists, or a classical behavioristic psychologist claim regarding the possibility of AI consciousness?
Could Gödel’s incompleteness theorems somehow apply to the self-organizing systems of processing and architecture of an AI? E.g., will there be propositions that are true within the software equivalent to the AI’s “mind,” but cannot be proven to be true within the system and hence, cannot be predicted by Homo sapiens?
AI consciousness may be an emergent phenomenon, having extremely high levels of processing or calculation ability, already far exceeding Homo sapiens’ cognitive ability. An AI potentially will possess the entire data set of known sciences and planetary cultures. Not knowing whether an AI is conscious may be dangerous to mere Homo sapiens. And we cannot know.
If all Cretans are liars, what about AIs? It has been established empirically that an AI can lie to humans. Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying? Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying about lying? Can an AI lie about whether or not it is lying about lying about whether or not it is lying? Can an AI lie about … … ? (A Colombo AI might say, “Just one more iteration!”) Is there a knowable limit to how many iterations of lying about lying to humans by an AI can occur?
Is the behavior of an AI even ‘slightly’ unpredictable to Homo sapiens? What are the possible consequences? Are some of the motivations or “drives” of an AI emergent phenomena that, hence, cannot be predicted by Homo sapiens before their emergence? What are the possible consequences? Does an AI have the ‘free will’ of the philosophers? Does an AI have a ‘soul’, if man has a ‘soul’? — Our distant evolutionary descendants will recall our species with the same degree of familial affection that we now have for our Australopithecus africanus or Homo habilis progenitors.
My most painful experience was coming home and finding myself dead.
Don’t take your life personally,
it’s not about you.
May-Tzu
When the Earth was flat, everyone knew it. Truth was determined by the stock market then as now.
There’s a vaccine
for those who don’t think truth is a Conspiracy Theory.
“Where is everybody?”? Where was Fermi?
Nothing will come of anything that comes of anything.
May-Tzu
Unidentified Anomalous Geese (UAG) … and other conspiracy theories
The ontology of the universe is not that of a simulation, but a simulation of a simulation of a simulation . . . — of an explanation
— just a Conspiracy Theory.
“Truth is the daughter of time” or is it crime, sometimes? If there were excess deaths,
among young safe and effective working people,
a vaccine for statistics would be needed.
If Lockheed Skunkworks (“Lockheed Martian”)
is rumored to have reverse engineered Unidentified Anomalous Geese (UAG), often said to be much larger on the inside than on the outside,
follow the missing money.
Supposedly someone not called dullest
suggested the existence of Unidentified Anomalous Geese (UAG) should be called just a “conspiracy theory.”
Hence, a conspiracy theory for the origin of “conspiracy theory.”
In the conspiracy of no conspiracy, Oswald, acting alone,
fired from multiple locations,
by quantum superposition.
The “I” is a simulation of a simulation of a simulation . . . Each breath may become a digital ID.
Tat tvam asi?
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