TheoGenesis Awakening | Review of The Syntellect Hypothesis
by Oberon Zell
​"Evolution of consciousness is indeed a spiritual process as well as it is a never-ending process of rational discovery." ―Alex Vikoulov
Following is the review of The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution (2020) by Alex M. Vikoulov
This is a brilliant and complex book with a vast scope, and consequently a challenge to review in a few paragraphs. It's an entire graduate University course in 525 dense pages! I found myself taking copious notes and copying many paragraphs I may wish to quote in my own books on these topics. Indeed, I discovered herein quotations from my own writings of over 50 years ago!
2022: The Gateway Year to Transcension
"The only journey is the one within." ―Rainer Maria Rike
As part of my New Year's message to family, friends and followers, I made a short video recording right from my smartphone on New Year's eve on Union Square in San Francisco that you can watch on YouTube (link below).
Video: 2022: The Gateway Year to Transcension - Ecstadelic Media Group (cc)
What is Consciousness? A New Documentary Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind, Part I
by Elizabeth Titovskaya
​"Life is a state of consciousness." ―Emmet Fox
Life is an integrated flow of quantum computational processes giving rise to our conscious experience. Based on the ontological model, the Cybernetic Theory of Mind by evolutionary cyberneticist Alex Vikoulov that he expands on in his magnum opus The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution, comes a new documentary ― Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind.
​This film, hosted by the author of the book from which the narrative is derived, is now available for viewing on demand on Vimeo, Plex, Tubi, Social Club TV and other global networks with its worldwide premiere aired on June 8, 2021. This is a futurist's take on the nature of consciousness and reverse engineering of our thinking in order to implement it in cybernetics and AI systems.
Consciousness: Evolution of the Mind, Documentary (2021), Official Teaser Trailer Released
"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." –Max Planck
The study of consciousness needs to be lifted out of the mysticism that has dominated it. Consciousness is not just a matter of philosophy or spirituality. It's a matter of hard science. It's a matter of understanding the brain and the mind – a pattern structure made out of information. It's also a matter of engineering. If we can understand the functionality of the brain, its neural code, then we can build the same functionality into our computer systems. There's no consensus on what produces consciousness, but everyone regardless of metaphysical views can agree what it is like to be conscious. Given that consciousness is subjectivity, what consciousness is like is what consciousness is.
Self-Transcendence beyond a Mere Human: Our Extended Mind
​"It matters that we recognize the very large extent to which individual human thought and reason are not activities that occur solely in the brain or even solely within the organismic skin-bag. This matters because it drives home the degree to which environmental engineering is also self-engineering. In building our physical and social worlds, we build (or rather, we massively reconfigure) our minds and our capacities of thought and reason." -Andy Clark
The mind isn't locked in the brain, it extends far, far beyond. When we outsource our cognition to our technology, be it a smartphone or a notebook, our mental constructs entail patterns of thought and reasoning beyond our capacity to formulate them solely with our brains. In writing, for example, we are not simply recording our thinking but doing the thinking "on paper," so to speak. ​
Evolution of the Mind: The Transcendent Planetary Superorganism
​"The concept of Singularity envisages a technology-driven explosion in intelligence... the resulting superhuman intelligence will not be centralized in a single AI system but distributed across all people and artifacts, as connected via the Internet. This Global Brain will function to tackle all challenges confronting the 'global superorganism.' Its capabilities will extend so far beyond our present abilities that they can perhaps best be conveyed as a pragmatic version of the 'divine' attributes..." -Francis Heylighen, The Global Brain Institute
When Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit the Earth on April 12th, 1961, he carried generations of hopes and dreams into space with him. A growing number of thinkers now believe the "Overview Effect" heralds nothing less than the next "giant leap" of human evolution. As breathtaking space-down views of our world seep into our collective consciousness, people are waking up to the "Spaceship Earth" analogy that depicts our planet as a natural vessel that must be steered responsibly by its crew.
Nearing the Cybernetic Singularity: What is the Syntellect Emergence?
​"Evolution is a process of creating patterns of increasing order... I believe that it's the evolution of patterns that constitutes the ultimate story of our world. Each stage or epoch uses the information-processing methods of the previous epoch to create the next." -Ray Kurzweil
"To understand is to perceive patterns." -Isaiah Berlin
About 542 million years ago, something weird and profoundly significant happened on Earth. Quite suddenly, life went insanely inventive, proliferating from simple, rudimentary single-celled organisms into myriad multi-cellular forms. Evolution discovered the idea of more sophisticated and specialized cells, and most of the basic body plans we know today. Biologists call it the Cambrian explosion.
Today, we are on the verge of yet another event of astronomical significance, akin to some kind of Intelligence Supernova, which I refer to as the Cybernetic Singularity, or the Syntellect Emergence. In the scientific community, this upcoming intelligence explosion is also known as the Technological Singularity. Surprisingly enough, most people are still simply oblivious of this rapidly approaching "galactic event" that so many of us are about to witness in our lifetimes.*