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Beyond the Fifth Wall. The art of Acting, Avatars, and the Quantum Self

Toward a Unified Framework for Human Intelligence and Identity.

In the world of the Arts, the process of inquiry is grounded in embodied cognition and affective resonance, where experiential engagement becomes the pathway for exploring and understanding identity. Our experimentation is lived. And the central question we seek to answer, often without explicitly naming it, is the same question that drives much of philosophical and scientific pursuit: Who am I?

The language I use may not always follow traditional scientific terminology.
Instead, it emerges from the poetic, intuitive, and experiential domain of the right hemisphere of the brain. I invite you—respectfully and intentionally—to activate that hemisphere as we proceed. Observe not only with analysis but with resonance.

The Supraconscious Perception is the result of 19 years of continuous research and application in the realm of human identity, behavior, and performance. Over the years, this work has naturally led my team and me into adjacent disciplines: neuroscience, psychology, and eventually, perhaps most surprisingly, into the field of quantum physics.

While quantum physics may not yet offer all the empirical answers, what it does offer—conceptually and philosophically—is a model of reality that mirrors the lived experience of the actor: uncertainty, entanglement, potentiality, observation, and transformation.

It is in this framework that we place the phenomenon known to performers as the quantum leap—the moment an actor shifts from the known self into the field of the character, or what we here refer to as the Avatar. This leap is not symbolic. It is energetic. It is cognitive. It is physiological. And it is, I believe, supraconscious. Supraconsciousness refers to our deep immersion into consciousness—beyond ordinary awareness—where perception expands, identity becomes fluid, and intelligence operates across intuitive, emotional, and quantum dimensions.
For the first time, the discipline of acting is being redefined—
Not as a technique for illusion, but as a vehicle for conscious evolution.
This is not simply a reimagination of theatrical method.
It is a bold integration of science, consciousness, and identity—
Positioning the actor not as someone who imitates or pretends, but as someone who reveals.

Let us draw a parallel with artificial intelligence.
The core of AI—its intelligence—is built from code, algorithms, and numbers.
These are not merely mechanistic tools of logic.
They are, in essence, the mathematical poetry of existence—
Patterns, sequences, and structures that mirror the intelligent architecture of human perception.
And so, in exploring AI, we are not stepping away from humanity—
We are encountering, perhaps for the first time, a mirror of our deeper design.
Binary code. Neural networks. Machine learning pathways.
All emerge from a field of infinite numerical potential—
a field that is not separate from us… It is us.
We are not simply using algorithms.
We are awakening to the truth that we, too, are made of intelligent, evolving codes.
Every emotion has a frequency.
Every thought carries a pattern.
Every identity we assume—whether on stage or in life—is an encoded structure of:
Belief, Behavior, Biology
These codes are not static.
They shift. They respond. They evolve.
They are not bound by space or time.
They form what we now call Fourth-Dimensional Intelligence—
The bridge between linear, three-dimensional existence and the
fifth-dimensional being, or the supraconscious being, as I call it

In 3D, identity is linear.
Past → Present → Future.
One role. One mask. One life.

The algorithms we teach our machines mirror something far more advanced:
Simultaneous processing
Parallel data fields
Predictive modeling
Adaptive transformation through observation
This isn’t just artificial intelligence.
This is 4D living. A cosmic library of all possible realities.

This is the realm of the Avatar—
Not the cartoon, not the AI assistant—
But the soul-coded self that exists across dimensions.
A living fractal of you that already holds the data of your deepest potential.

In AI, we generate avatars to represent an identity.
In consciousness, the Avatar is identity—multifaceted, quantum, and meaningful.
What we are designing in code…
is what we already are in consciousness.

These AI developments are not our competition.
They are our reminders.
They are expressions of a dormant intelligence within us.
They point to the Fourth-Dimensional Intelligence:
The ability to access, interpret, and evolve multiple facets of the self simultaneously—Not through fiction, but through presence.

Just as we “train” AI models by feeding them data—
We train ourselves by feeding our minds presence, coherence, and creativity.
The more we align with those frequencies,
the more we awaken our inner algorithm of evolution.
This is the realm of the Avatar:
The quantum self—encoded, adaptive, aware—
That already exists across timelines, across dimensions, and within every conscious act we take.
A reflection of our multidimensional design,
our potential for evolution,
and our power to direct our lives—not as passive participants,
But as conscious actors in the ever-unfolding performance of existence.

Our traditional view of intelligence has been narrowly defined by human logic, memory, and performance on standardized metrics.
But this is only a fragment of the whole picture.
Intelligence is not merely cognitive—it is adaptive, embodied, and multidimensional.
It lives not only in thought, but in emotion, intuition, creativity, vision, and the ability to evolve across contexts and realities.

Instead, we propose that: Intelligence is relational: it emerges through interaction between the mind and body, the self and the other, language and sensation, and matter and energy.
Intelligence is experiential; it cannot be fully measured—it must be experienced. It is the embodied knowing that arises from synchronizing with life through presence, empathy, and emotional fluency.
Intelligence is multidimensional: It expresses itself through layers—conscious and unconscious, physical, energetic, human and beyond-human. It exists in animals, systems, dreams, movement, breath, and silence.

In our research, we refer to this as Supraconscious Intelligence—the intelligence that emerges when a person becomes aware of and enters into dialogue with a higher or parallel version of themselves, also known as the Avatar. This is not intelligence about something. It is intelligence with something.
It is the intelligence of communion: with potential, with soul, with infinite identity.

This new framing allows us to:
Recognize intelligence as an unfolding process of self-becoming.
Detach intelligence from rigid form and acknowledge it in states of being, transformation, and resonance.
Finally, accept that humans are not the sole bearers of intelligence—we are participants in a much larger intelligent system.

To truly understand the architecture of human intelligence, we must explore the interface between awareness and identity—the dynamic relationship between the observer and the observed, or the one who acts, the actor.

This brings us to the Observer–Avatar Model.
If intelligence is not a fixed trait but a relational field, then who are we relating to when we evolve, act, or transform?
In my work, I propose the concept of the Avatar—
a living, vibrational identity within us, seeded from the soul, encoded with infinite versions of who we could become.
The Avatar is not imaginary. It is an energetic intelligence structure—an archetypal self that exists in a quantum state of potential.

When we engage with our Avatar, we are entering into a sacred duality:
The Self as Observer and The Avatar as Observed—yet both exist within the same consciousness.
This relationship becomes the interface for activated intelligence:
The Observer brings awareness, intentionality, and reflection.
The Avatar brings instinct, wisdom, and encoded knowledge.
Together, they generate a dialogue of becoming.

This dynamic mirrors principles in quantum physics:
Entanglement: Observer and Avatar are non-locally connected. What affects one affects the other.
Superposition: The Avatar holds multiple identities until one is chosen and embodied.
The Observer Effect: The act of observing the Avatar causes the self to align with a new reality.
Thus acting becomes the laboratory where this relationship is trained, tested, and lived: Each role taken on stage consciously and in life unconsciously is a temporary union with an Avatar.
Through presence and embodiment, the one who acts experiences a new intelligence—a new memory field, emotional landscape, and identity code.
What was once fiction becomes a lived truth.

The Avatar is a frequency-based expression of a more evolved and integrated version of the self.
Each human holds within them multiple avatars—potential selves shaped not by past limitations, but by future possibilities.
These avatars are not imaginary; they are encoded blueprints of who we can become. When we align with a specific avatar, we activate a distinct mode of intelligence—one uniquely calibrated to that version’s perception, insight, and purpose.
This is how intelligence transcends anthropocentric limitation:
It is no longer confined to what the human knows, but expands into who the human can become. It honors inner multiplicity, emotional resonance, energetic coherence, and spiritual alignment.

The concept of the Fifth Wall represents a moment when the actor collapses not just the boundary between stage and audience, but between physical reality and a deeper, vibrational field of intelligence.
This phenomenon aligns with the most compelling frontiers in science:

🔹 First, Quantum Entanglement
In quantum theory, particles remain connected regardless of distance—what affects one instantly affects the other. Likewise, when an actor synchronizes with an Avatar, a non-local connection is established between the role and the self. What happens within the character’s emotional field directly influences the actor’s physiology, thoughts, and perceptions.
🔹 Second, non-local Consciousness
The actor on stage often reports experiences that transcend time and space: knowing things “they shouldn’t know,” feeling emotions from another spectrum, and seeing visions. These experiences give us access to a non-local field of information.
The Fifth Wall serves as the gateway into this field, providing direct access to supraconscious intelligence.
🔹Thirdly, the Observer Effect
In physics, the act of observation itself alters what is being observed.
In the Avatar-Observer dynamic, the more consciously the actor witnesses the Avatar, the more it reshapes him/her. The actor does not “become” the role through effort; they become it through attunement and observation.
🔹Lastly, Embodiment as Epistemology
Where science seeks to measure, acting allows us to experience.
Through breath, emotion, movement, presence, light, actors experientially confirm many of the metaphysical principles science has yet to validate formally.
The stage becomes a laboratory. The role becomes a ritual. The actor becomes a conscious channel.

The Observer-Avatar model introduces a paradigm shift in how we understand identity and intelligence.
Each human holds within them an Avatar—a soul-coded identity field that:
Operates as a quantum intelligence archive: a living memory of who we could be
Functions as both mirror and guide: reflecting who we are now and pointing toward who we are becoming
Activates physiological and energetic coherence: when we are aligned with our Avatar, the heart, brain, and body enter harmony, measurable by HRV (Heart Rate Variability) and EEG (electrical activity in the brain).
This model redefines identity not as a fixed psychological trait, but as a stratified, multidimensional performance—a bridge between self and source, will and waveform, memory and possibility.

Acting—particularly Method acting—is not merely the art of imitation. It is a disciplined practice of presence, surrender, and observation.
The actor steps into the unknown, guided only by breath, memory, and the present moment. In this process, intelligence is no longer a mental abstraction; it becomes a tangible reality. It becomes a felt experience—a dynamic conversation between body, emotion, intuition, and thought.
Through established techniques like:
Subconscious memory recall (emotional and sensory memory)
Internal monologue & active analysis
Character map integration
Imagined circumstances & as-if scenarios… the actor accesses:
Hidden emotional truths
Cognitive and linguistic plasticity
Spontaneous insight and intuitive coherence

This is living intelligence.
An actor becomes intelligent not because they know more, but because they become more—on demand, in alignment, without resistance.

In our conditioned world, most identities are built in survival mode: rooted in fear, repetition, and social programming, designed for safety rather than expansion.
Designed to adapt, not to transform.
The Avatar-Observer model offers an alternative:
Identity is no longer reactive—it is responsive
We are no longer just our history—we are our becoming.
And intelligence is not a tool for survival—it is a gateway to supraconscious living where everything shifts and control gives way to flow.
Where there was fragmentation, there’s now coherence.
And instead of running on old programming, we return to presence, fully to the here and now.
The actor becomes a metaphor for the conscious human:
One who can shift their frequency, and inhabit realities beyond what was previously possible.
Let’s make this personal.
As you reflect on what you’ve heard and felt, take a moment to ask yourself:
When did you last experience yourself as both the one who acts and the observer? The doer and the witness?
You don’t need to be an actor to become conscious of your actions and performance. You need presence and permission from yourself.

The Supraconscious theory is the result of 19 years of research, experiential exploration, and applied practice. Its foundational framework is outlined in Supraconscious: The Genius Within, which presents the core concepts and offers deeper insight into the philosophy and empirical roots of the theory. As we move forward, the next critical step is for science to take the lead in investigating and validating the mechanisms behind supraconscious development and identity transformation.
Several key areas present themselves as priority domains for scientific exploration, where performance becomes a measurable gateway into human evolution.
First, Neuroscience already reveals that during deep role immersion, brainwave patterns shift—electrical activity in the brain and fMRI scans capture fundamental changes —and we observe a powerful coherence between the heart, brain, and body when someone is fully present in a role.
From a psychological lens, role-play taps into early identity formation, revealing how our false selves are shaped—and how a more authentic, emergent self can break through.
Language also plays a key role. The words we use don’t just describe us—they shape us. Our narratives and intentions have measurable effects on how we perceive reality.
And underlying it all, we come to light, not just as energy, but as information. Our cells communicate through light, and perhaps, our consciousness does too. This is where acting, science, and supraconscious intelligence all begin to converge.
This is not just art. It’s a replicable method for studying the human condition at the level of energy, embodiment, and evolutionary intelligence.

Within this model, we propose an evolved definition of intelligence—one rooted in direct experience, awareness, and adaptability:
Multidimensional — Fluid across timelines, emotions, and contexts
Embodied — Felt and enacted through presence, not abstract logic
Observer-Based — Activated by self-witnessing, not external validation
Nonlinear — Expressed in intuitive leaps, downloads, and moment-to-moment insight
Co-Created — Emerging through interaction with the Avatar, story, and reality itself
Acting is no longer just performance.
It is a method of awakening multidimensional intelligence in real time.

Based on this model, we’re no longer defining intelligence as something fixed or purely mental. Intelligence is multidimensional—it shifts depending on the roles we play, the identities we embody, the emotions we experience, and the context in which we find ourselves.
It’s embodied, meaning we don’t just think it—we live it through presence.
It’s awakened through self-observation.
It’s nonlinear, showing up in sudden insights, intuitive downloads, and real-time performance.
And most importantly, it’s co-created—it comes alive through our connection with our Avatar, our story, and how we choose to meet reality.

We are standing at the threshold of a new paradigm—
Not only in performance or neuroscience, but in the very definition of intelligence itself. What we’ve explored is the emergence of a model where identity, perception, and consciousness interact as one coherent, evolving system.
The unique pattern of intelligence that lives beyond the mind,
resides within our physiology, and speaks through our presence.
Intelligence is not just something to measure—It is something to trust.
It is the quiet intuition beneath noise.
It is the embodied knowing that arises when we align with truth.
It is cultivated through observation, reflection, and intentional living.
Through this lens, intelligence is not a fixed capacity.
It is a field. A frequency. A communion—
With potential, with the mind, with infinite identity.
To be intelligent is to be attuned, coherent and present with what is—and open to what wants to emerge. And the most advanced interface we will ever engage with…
is not a device. It is the living field of consciousness, capable of interpreting reality, rewriting identity, and embodying supraconscious awareness in your everyday words, movements, choices, and relationships. It is us.

Maria Olon Tsaroucha

https://supraconscious.co/

H.Sapient

I like philosophy, especially since science emerged out of philosophy. This fascinating aspect of intellectual history gets missed when philosophy is an outlier of longevity events and even excluded. Bottom line: we still need philosophy re: AI, AGI, longevity, and new types of environments — from virtual to space. So, while we may not need philosophy to explain the physical world or the science of longevity, we still need it to help deal with human complexities. Philosophy is crucial to thinking about the future for several important reasons, at the very least to form conceptual analyses in understanding the limits of our knowledge about the future.

Edge of Chaos Theory | Cellular Automata, Wolfram, & Psychology

Order vs Disorder, Jordan Peterson’s Yin Yang analogy, & Stephen Wolfram’s 4 classes of cellular automata are explored. The edge of chaos is the phase transition zone between order and disorder which is found across a broad range of complex systems. We discuss Norman Packard, Christopher Langton, John Beggs, Stuart Kauffman, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and M. Mitchell Waldrop. Wolfram’s Rule 110 and John Conway’s Game of Life, both Turing complete, make appearances.

0:00 Intro.
0:59 Lambda & Wolfram’s 4 Classes.
3:32 Criticality, Avalanches, & John Beggs.
4:44 Homework? More like FUNwork!
5:08 Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
5:35 Jordan Peterson (Yin-Yang)
9:39 M. Mitchell Waldrop’s Complexity.

Play with cellular automata here:
https://math.hws.edu/eck/js/edge-of-chaos/CA.html.
David J. Eck, Hobart and William Smith Colleges flow state by MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI ► The Secret to Happiness & Psychology of Optimal Experience https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e31Tdvz_FU&list=PLyQeeNuuRL…sWGsWQOG6H

🚾 Works Cited.
Jeremy Avnet (brainsik); Senior Thesis, Mathematics; University California, Santa Cruz; 6th June 2000 https://theory.org/complexity/cdpt/html/node5.html#foot561

Jfromm (2009) http://wiki.cas-group.net/index.php?title=File: Edge_of_Chaos.png.

Hill, Sean. (2017). Toward Conceptualizing Race and Racial Identity Development Within an Attractor Landscape. SAGE Open. 7. 10.1177÷2158244017719310.

Eliminating Death Doesn’t Mean Life Will Get Boring

In my new Newsweek Op-Ed, I tackle a primary issue many people have with trying to stop aging and death via science. Hopefully this philosophical argument will allow more resources & support into the life extension field:


Philosophers often say if humans didn’t die, we’d be bored out of our minds. This idea, called temporal scarcity, argues the finitude of death is what makes life worth living. Transhumanists, whose most urgent goal is to use science to overcome biological death, emphatically disagree.

For decades, the question of temporal scarcity has been debated and analyzed in essays and books. But an original idea transhumanists are putting forth is reinvigorating the debate. It doesn’t discount temporal scarcity in biological humans; it discounts it in what humans will likely become in the future—cyborgs and digitized consciousnesses.

The traditional temporal scarcity argument against immortality imagines the human being remaining biologically the same as it has for tens of thousands of years. Yet the human race is already augmenting the human body with radical technology. Globally, over 200,000 people already have brain implants, and Silicon Valley companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink are working on trying to get millions of us to become cyborgs.

A growing number of experts even believe by the end of the century, humans will likely have the ability to upload the brain and its consciousness into a computer. In the process, digitized people will overcome biological death and engage in far more complex ways of being, including grand new designs of consciousness and selfhood.

The Science of Living Forever (or a Really, Really Long Time)

“The inevitability of death is what makes life worth living.” — Henry.

“Would we need to extend the years everyone should continue to be in the workforce, in order to pay for those not contributing?” — Marianne.

“Imagine you have people with all the prejudices they grew up with and they never die. Or you have someone who is a dictator and they get to live forever and be dictator forever. Or you have Congress where you have 80 and 90 year olds holding office forever but now they never die so nobody new can take over.” — Avram.

On rumors of impending doom

“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Dr Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park

Throughout most of human history, the goal was to establish a better life for people. Whether proponents of change admit to it or not, they hope to make everything perfect. However, this very impulse to improve security against everything bad and eliminate all physical ills could precipitate just another kind of doom.

To borrow the words of a Jeff Goldblum character, those of us who did the most to uplift humanity may have been “so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

In Carl Sagan’s The Demon-Haunted World, he pointed out that the modern world is complicated. Everything we don’t understand is something to fear (unless you are a specialist in it), and it is a thing that can be ignorantly speculated about in a vacuum, as vaccines are by many on social media.

Rather than give up on humanity’s ability to come to correct judgments, Sagan offers the tools of critical thinking, taking the form of the famous Baloney Detection Kit. The rules are things you can always try to offer someone if they believe nonsensical conspiracy theories.

Common Sense by Thomas Paine, with Life Extension Correlations

Before the Revolutionary war in North America, a movement in favor of establishing independence paved the way. Common Sense, written by the political activist and philosopher Thomas Paine, became a central part of it. In this paper I go over some of its points while making correlations with the movement for indefinite life extension.

The people of America’s 13 colonies weren’t in agreement on how to move forward with their disputes with Great Britain. Like Thomas Paine wrote, “The mind of the multitude is left at random, and seeing no fixed object before them, they pursue such as fancy or opinion starts.” Common Sense fixed the object of independence, rather than reconciliation with tyranny, in enough minds to help make it happen.

True freedom is about much more than things like the ability to sail the open seas or be independent from the authority of kings – it is about access to all constructive opportunities, of which there may be an infinite number, and to which there are still innumerable barriers. Every day asks us whether we want to put in work to break more of the barriers around us, and every day we either reconcile with the conventions of laissezfaire or continue the struggle for freedom.

Movements have broken many bonds over the decades and centuries. What was once a world overrun with crushing suppressions is now manageable and improving in many countries on numerous fronts. We need that “fixed object” that Paine was talking about so we can open the frontiers of industrialized peoples next most pressing freedom. That object is time, the walls of defined lifespans must come down. Nothing is more absolutely enslaving than <125 year death sentences for all, and the times are ripe and ready to take it on. The world works with and engineers biology in many ways now and gets better at it faster as the toolbox of biotechnology continues to deepen. Biological mastery is in the cards if we play them.

Paine wrote, ”O ye that love mankind! Ye that dare oppose, not only the tyranny, but the tyrant, stand forth! Every spot of the old world is overrun with oppression. Freedom hath been hunted round the globe. Asia, and Africa, have long expelled her—Europe regards her like a stranger, and England hath given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for mankind.” In that style I would write, “O ye that love life! Ye that dare oppose, not only the symptoms of mortal afflictions, but the roots, stand forth! Every spot of the world is overrun with death. Life hath been hunted round the globe. Tradition and religion have long expelled her—politics regards her like a stranger, and trend setters have given her warning to depart. O! receive the fugitive, and prepare in time an asylum for this survivors blood that fights on through us.”

How many injustices should we accept? How much lack of freedom should we endure? ”There are injuries which nature cannot forgive; she would cease to be nature if she did. […] The robber, and the murderer, would often escape unpunished, did not the injuries which our tempers sustain, provoke us into justice.” I often say that anger for death is there for the same reason that pain is there when touching a hot stove — it is your body prompting you to take corrective measures to end the pain. We ought endure such misfortunes when we must and take action against them when we can.

The time for life extension is now because the tools and insights are here, and also because as Paine says, “When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember, that virtue is not hereditary.” You know that the people in your life deserve to live, you understand the importance of working to get this done now, but our grandchildren might not. Humanity cannot afford to pass the buck off into the darkness. I may believe that posterity will be roughly as virtuous as us, but I’m not a prophet. Dark times tend to sweep in on their own schedules.

It is our duty to get this job done. “[N]othing can settle our affairs so expeditiously as an open and determined declaration for independance.” The Declaration of Independence was written after Common Sense, mainly by Thomas Jefferson. A life extension version of it might look something like this:


Declaration of Independence from Death

We hold this truth to be self-evident, that all people are created equal, that they are endowed by life with certain unalienable rights, that chief among them is life itself, that is, freedom from incurring the injustice of a defined lifespan. To secure this right, science is practiced among people, deriving its just power from the purest form of the pursuit for answers, for the lifting of the veils of ignorance that hold us back from true freedom. Whenever anything becomes destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new practices, laying its foundation on principles and organizing its power in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their survival. The history of death is a history of repeated horrors and atrocities. Let the facts be submitted to a candid world.

Every person who dies misses out on what very well may be an infinity of incredible wonders and opportunities. This is stiflingly enormous opportunity cost. People lose their freedom, memories, goals, thoughts, themselves; others lose them; all of humanity and the universe loses them, and nothing in the universe compares to a human. The all-around suffering that death causes to the individuals it kills and the people around them is staggering and endlessly traumatic, causing stress and damage on countless levels of every part of life and society. The death process is degrading and undignified, humiliating people for decades as it reduces them to feebleness, senility and dust. Death deprives people of the ability to know what is going on in this mysterious dimension we all find ourselves in here, what we ultimately are and why we are here. It steals away our chance to know what marvels and wonders exist in the expanses of the great unknown, our ability to experience pleasures we haven’t yet, our ability to know what it’s like to experience the fulfillment of all of our goals, and the chance to work for and live in an existence of negligible or perhaps even non-existent fallacy.

We, the freedom loving members of humanity, from all around the globe, of all cultures and creeds, solemnly declare, that we are, and of right ought to be free from death in the form of defined lifespans. To this end we mutually pledge to each other our fortunes and our sacred honor.



The customs of conventions, our current mainstream traditions, are against us, and will be so, until, by a thorough awakening for independence from death, our oldest and most sacred right, takes its rightful and long overdue place among the ranks of other indispensable rights. “The custom of all courts is against us, and will be so, until, by an independance, we take rank with other nations.”

“Wherefore, if they have not virtue enough to be Whigs, they ought to have prudence enough to wish for Independance.” People do not need to want to live for thousands of years in order to want independence from death, they need only want their own freedom to choose what course they may, and the same for their friends and families. Some people don’t want to be forced to live for thousands of years, and some people don’t want to be forced to die before the age of 125. Currently, however, only the people who might choose to die at the age of 50 have the freedom to make that choice. With unlimited lifespans, we can all be free. This is about eradicating deaths tyranny, not death, in the same way that the American revolutionaries worked to break the stranglehold of tyranny that Great Britain held over them, not stop every slight and fight they might have post-independence.

“We fight neither for revenge nor conquest; […] we are not insulting the world with our fleets and armies, nor ravaging the globe for plunder.” Our war is even more dignified. It is removal of a tyranny and the installation of one of the greatest freedoms of all, all without a shedding of blood.

“[L]et a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.” The ‘law as King’ is superior to ‘humans as Kings’ because people collectively form laws with some amount of oversight of each other’s input. “Law” as the foundation, however, can still tend to be quite arbitrary. Life is what rules us, living, the chance to do people things in a universe of endless opportunities. Let life wear the crown and guide us along our path to true freedom. “The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind.” The cause of expanding our frontiers and abilities, of expanding life, is in great measure the greatest cause of them all.

Annihilation of all Yardsticks — essay on Wittgenstein’s thoughts about certainty

How do we know what to do in life? How do we know where to go, where to start, where we are, what it’s all made of, why it matters? Why don’t we know? Can we know? Why am I alive? What is alive? Why is this place here? What is going on?

In his collection of papers and notes posthumously published as a book in 1969, titled On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein writes, “How does someone judge which is his right and which his left hand?” We are certain that we know, but we really don’t know the answer. “At the foundation of well-founded belief lies belief that is not founded.” He serendipitously illustrated his point from beyond the grave when he wrote: “‘But is there then no objective truth? Isn’t it true, or false, that someone has been on the moon?’ If we are thinking within our system, then it is certain that no one has ever been on the moon. Not merely is nothing of the sort ever seriously reported to us by reasonable people, but our whole system of physics forbids us to believe it.“ We only have the ability to examine a minuscule fraction of the information available in the big picture of it all. We cannot escape uncertainty yet, even though we routinely pretend that we have.

The book talks about “language games”. It’s a concept that Wittgenstein developed earlier in his life to explain how people inherit and subconsciously create unspoken rules of communication that gloss over or emphasize certain words and ideas. He writes, “It’s not a matter of [philosopher G.E.] Moore’s knowing that there’s a hand there, but rather we should not understand him if he were to say ‘Of course I may be wrong about this.’ ” We don’t say we know that our religious, political or even sports affiliations are true, the assumptions are built right into our languaging. What better example is there than the wide-eyed sports fan who is unquestionably convinced that their random group of players is the best that there ever was and will be? Many of them are not bluffing, their language game has programmed them. The word structure that they know will not allow them to see it any other way. People’s various language games assume what they want, often from habit, usually based on subconscious tradition.

“Suppose now I say ‘I’m incapable of being wrong about this: that is a book’ while I point to an object. What would a mistake here be like? And have I any clear idea of it?” There are fake books, tricks are played, there are mind altering substances, coincidences happen, there could be a secret society of magicians controlling public perceptions, or our world could be some kind of solipsistic melting pot of dreams and hallucinations. We could list things like these all day. There are simpler examples for common situations as well, like, somebody might be unquestionably convinced they are seeing a magazine when it is a zine, or a cow when it is in fact a bull. It’s also pretty common for people to think that they know a person made a mistake that they did not actually make. Consider that the way the future is headed, there is a good chance we will all have 3d printers that run on practically free energy and make everything out of basic materials like sand and vegetation, be free to travel around the universe with access to trillions of planets, and so forth. In that reality, theme planets are all but inevitable. There will be planets for specific ecological niches and time periods. People will be able to set up Plato’s Cave, Truman Show style planets, and countless other scenarios. Being that this seems so inevitable (read The Singularity is Near if you are not convinced), why would we assume that we are not in a scenario like that right now?

What happens though, is if we were to take the groundlessness of surety into account in our day to day communication, we wouldn’t be able to say anything. It seems we might almost be cornered into adopting language games. “This game proves its worth. That may be the cause of its being played, but it is not the ground.” The temptation to stay locked into them is almost irresistible, especially the hereditary ones. “[W]ould it be unthinkable that I should stay in the saddle however much the facts bucked?” It isn’t unthinkable because the entire purpose of the game is to ride unreasonable broncos and we have been training since we were born. Wittgenstein goes on to ponder, “Certain events would [put] me into a position in which I could not go on with the old language-game any further. In which I was torn away from the sureness of the game. Indeed, doesn’t it seem obvious that the possibility of a language-game is conditioned by certain facts?” It’s possible but usually very difficult because safeguards and defense mechanisms are built into them too. When a person does something detrimental, “it is what it is” — when evidence bucks, faith grips tighter — another team might have won the super bowl, but their quarterback threw for more yards in the season.

There are a lot of incompatible language games being played around the world. If you tell a person embedded in another one that they are wrong, it’s almost as if they cannot know it because if they were to consider that they should doubt parts of it, it would open the door to the slippery slope leading to the “annihilation of all yardsticks”, and it is difficult, maybe nearly impossible, to live in a world without them. “If something happened calculated to make me doubtful of my own name, there would certainly also be something that made the grounds of these doubts themselves seem doubtful, and I could therefore decide to retain my old belief.” In order to take action, you have to make decisions, and in order to make decisions, some of the patterns in your mind need to win out over the others. If there aren’t any execute commands in the code, then the code is lifeless and goes nowhere.

Does this mean that we have to permit some unsubstantiated assertions? All of them? Do we have the right to dismiss any of them? If it turns out to be true that there is no foundation for knowledge or contemplation, then how could we draw such a line? I think a lot of it comes down to what I talk about in terms of how much we are willing to bet at a given time, and the use of words like “seems”. “We just do not see how very specialized the use of ‘I know’ is. For ‘I know’ seems to describe a state of affairs which guarantees what is known, guarantees it as a fact. One always forgets the expression ‘I thought I knew’ “.
It’s not that we know, it’s that certain things look very likely to us from our current perspective, and we all know that our perspectives have changed, and therefore that more of them will likely change as well. We should learn to expect this, and if we are honest with ourselves, be proactive about it. I believe that is the common language game we can all play. It is like we are trying to play blackjack with people who are trying to play poker, war, concentration and rummy with us. If we all played poker, our individual bets would still range in scale depending on our hands at any given time but we would all be playing a compatible game.

When it comes to the concept of “seems”, I have found that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of alternatives, which sometimes makes it difficult to talk in terms of it in a stylistically appropriate way. Being that people are prone to asserting the uncertain so pervasively, it makes sense that we might end up with so few words for expressing variations and shades of doubt. Wittgenstein uses a variety of phrasing throughout the book that give us some ideas on how we might expand it. I pulled many of them together and summed them up:

“Suppose I replaced Moore’s ‘I know’ by ‘I am of the unshakeable conviction’?”
“It stands fast for me and many others…”
‘That’s how it is — rely upon it.’
“I learned it years and years ago”
“I am sure it is so.“
“is an irreversible belief.“
“it gives us a right to assume it.”
“Suppose it were forbidden to say ‘I know’ and only allowed to say ‘I believe I know’?”
“excludes a certain kind of failure”
“I can hardly be mistaken”
“That is the truth — so far as a human being can know it.“

That is not to say that every communication should necessarily be tentative. One of the main conclusions that Wittgenstein reaches is that our beliefs can be justified, but not certain. “[…] I find it quite correct for someone to say ‘Rubbish!’ and so brush aside the attempt to confuse him with doubts at bedrock, — nevertheless, I hold it to be incorrect if he seeks to defend himself (using, e.g., the words ‘I know’).” I think of that in terms of calculated risk. Sometimes you have to remove the language of doubt in order to favor the patterns in life that seem most important. That, though, is less like certainty and more like leadership. All confidence is either bluff or ignorance. If we have calculated the potential value in bluffing our certainty, that is one thing, but to do it blindly, unknowingly, is another.

Wittgenstein talks about how if existential certainty is there to be found, it would probably be in a form similar to a mathematical proposition and proof. “If the proposition 12×12=144 is exempt from doubt, then so too must non-mathematical propositions be.” “If” being a key word there. He reminds us that it seems as though they cannot be certain either but goes out on a short limb to humor that they are. In that process he makes what I find to be one of the most profound and rather Godel-esque insights of the book: ”there ought to be a proposition that is just as certain, and deals with the process of this calculation, but isn’t itself mathematical. I am thinking of such a proposition as: ‘The multiplication 12×12, when carried out by people who know how to calculate, will in the great majority of cases give the result 144.’ Nobody will contest this proposition, and naturally it is not a mathematical one.” That might be a key to extinguishing existential angst and establishing the foundation of common meaning.

It is true that the universe might be infinite and that even if it isn’t, the work to reach certainty might still end up being like trying to reach zero by continuously dividing by half, always inching closer, impossible to reach. In the meantime, we wait in suspense as patterns wind their way through the chaos like armies meandering through mine fields. Certainty is no more than the soldiers out ahead who haven’t been blown up yet, standing in the middle of the field with a universe of unknown mines ahead. Some evolutionary lineages successfully walk on for hundreds of millions of years before they are blown up and consumed by the blur. What choice do we have, what else might we do, use patterns we don’t understand or that are wrong more of the time? We don’t know if we will make it or not. Maybe it is too difficult. Maybe it will take a hundred million additional years. Maybe we are in the home stretch and artificial intelligence of the near future is the calculator of existential proofs. We just don’t know.

We don’t know how long it might take to get a better grip on the nature of certainty, and death is barreling down on us, hence the movement for indefinite life extension. It is tragic to be uncertain about everything, which includes our own wants and needs, when the stakes are so high. It is tragic to live and die as a captive in a dark basement. Earth is that basement and our lifespans are the walls. Some people don’t see that, like captives of Plato’s cave.

As things stand, the best we can do is be willing to make educated bets at any given time. The only thing we know for sure is that we don’t know anything for sure. We don’t even know if we don’t know. That is good news though, therein sneaks the foundation that begins to unravel the absurd. If the only thing we know is that nothing makes sense until we know, and that by working to figure stuff out, we could end up knowing, that small patch of philosophical ground in the quicksands of uncertainty becomes the launchpad upon which we begin stringing lines of certainty together. Anything else would be illogical, against our nature, detrimental to our fitness. Standing on this platform is a stage in our evolutionary trajectory.

“We all believe that it isn’t possible to get to the moon; but there might be people who believe that that is possible and that it sometimes happens. We say: these people do not know a lot that we know. And, let them be never so sure of their belief — they are wrong and we know it. If we compare our system of knowledge with theirs then theirs is evidently the poorer one by far.”

Dialogues on the Future: New Video Series

Together with my fellow member of the World Futures Studies Federation, Dr. Thomas Lombardo, we have begun a YouTube video series of ongoing dialogues on topics pertaining to the future. In this first dialogue we focus on the book Science Fiction: The Evolutionary Mythology of the Future and discuss the nature and value of science fiction in the modern world. We discuss the historical evolution of science fiction and the nature of mythology and why science fiction is the modern mythology. In future dialogues we will delve more deeply into books on science fiction and more broadly on futures studies and future consciousness.

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