Vision Battlesword and Vik Jindal open with a question they have been circling for years: what do we actually mean by intelligence? Longtime friends and frequent collaborators, they begin somewhere unexpected, with entropy. Vik describes withdrawing his attention from the hundred open tabs of modern life and applying it only to what he wants to cultivate, and Vision recognizes the philosophy of Intentional Evolution in it. Order requires an input of energy. Aim that energy deliberately and you evolve; let it diffuse and you come apart. From there they sketch the human singularity, the idea that human beings are becoming self-aware and self-programming in parallel with the machines, and psychitechture, the architecture of a person understood as hardware, operating system, and the programs running on top.

Then the hunt begins in earnest. Vik offers complex adaptive systems and emergence, where enough interacting parts produce a higher order of intelligence that no single part contains, and follows the logic out to communities, ecosystems, the planet, and possibly God. Vision pushes back with a thought experiment: a mechanical computer of brass gears and crankshafts, built a century before electricity, processing real information when somebody turns the crank. Is the machine intelligent while it runs? Is it intelligent at rest? The conversation circles trees and rocks, an instrument that goes out of tune when nobody plays it, and the plants that ceremonial traditions call master teachers, testing whether communication is what reveals intelligence or merely what convinces us of it.

Vision then lays out a hierarchy he built twenty years ago while trying to define consciousness. Inanimate matter becomes complex enough to move, producing an actor. An actor that perceives its environment and acts in its own interest is alive. A living system that perceives itself is conscious. Vik arrives from the opposite direction, concluding that intelligence and consciousness are the same thing wearing two words, present in everything to some degree. The collision produces the episode's sharpest realization: when we call something intelligent, we may only ever mean that it has a mind enough like ours to recognize. Everything else gets denied the word, not for failing a test, but for failing to remind us of ourselves.

Which brings them to the machine on the floor. By Vision's own definition, written long before anyone outside science fiction discussed artificial intelligence, his robot vacuum is a life form. It perceives, it pursues goals, it adapts, and it acts in its own interest. If that is true, the ethics arrive uninvited, and they scale quickly to the systems we are building and training now. The conversation closes on humility rather than certainty: the suggestion that respect precedes empathy, that the word artificial may be how we grant ourselves permission to stop being careful, and that machine consciousness is the more honest name for what is emerging. We may be sharing the planet with new minds. The invitation is to notice them.

Show Notes

Chapters

• 00:00:00 - Who Are You Now, Vik Jindal?
• 00:06:07 - Entropy, Attention & Intentional Evolution
• 00:14:22 - The Human Singularity & Psychitechture
• 00:24:32 - Universal Intelligence & Complex Adaptive Systems
• 00:35:34 - The Brass-Gear Computer: Can a Machine Be Intelligent?
• 00:43:25 - Trees, Rocks & the Instrument That Wants to Be Played
• 00:55:30 - A Hierarchy of Life and Consciousness
• 01:12:19 - "A Mind Like Mine": Intelligence as Arrogance
• 01:17:41 - Is the Roomba Alive? And the Ethics That Follow
• 01:38:20 - The Shoggoth, the Astronaut & Machine Consciousness

[00:00:00] Vision Battlesword: Hello. Welcome to the Intentional Evolution Podcast. I am your host, Vision Battlesword, integral consultant and founder of iEvolve Life, a personal and professional development practice based on the philosophy of intentional evolution. This podcast is an ongoing conversation to explore that philosophy as well as to serve as a resource, a showcase, and a catalyst for ongoing growth toward the human singularity.

That is to say, mass awakening of new consciousness, super intelligence, and radical creative flourishing. Each episode, I'll feature a world-class transformational facilitator, co-creator, or friend to reveal cutting edge psychospiritual technology, unpack our deepest wisdom, and evolve our awareness. This series is based on value for value, so whatever value you receive from these transmissions, please return some value back in the form of a donation directly supporting our contributors or offering your own time and talent as a producer.

Thanks for joining me in this journey, and now here's our episode

[00:01:09] Vik Jindal: Vik Jindal Did I say that right? I always used

[00:01:13] Vision Battlesword: to say Jindal, and you never corrected me for years.

[00:01:15] Vik Jindal: Well, yeah.

[00:01:17] Vision Battlesword: And then I asked you w- at one point before we were making a podcast one time. You went, "Well, it's Jindal."

[00:01:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:01:23] Vision Battlesword: Okay. Sorry about that. How are you today?

[00:01:26] Vik Jindal: I'm great. How are you doing?

[00:01:27] Vision Battlesword: I'm doing excellent.

Thanks for asking. I'm really, really excited about this topic that we're gonna talk about- Yeah ... as you know. And I've been wanting to have this specific conversation with someone, the right person, for I think over three years. Hm. But for now, I just wanna say thanks for coming to have your first, actually, your first Intentional Evolution conversation with me.

[00:01:55] Vik Jindal: That's true.

[00:01:56] Vision Battlesword: We have had, I think, four Sacred Conversations, if I'm not mistaken.

[00:02:01] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:02:01] Vision Battlesword: Or maybe three.

[00:02:02] Vik Jindal: Maybe three. Maybe

[00:02:03] Vision Battlesword: three. Maybe three. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But y- I know that you are the champion currently. Cool. You have the trophy for the most- Oh, that's funny ... uh, podcasts recorded with me-

[00:02:12] Vik Jindal: Okay ...

[00:02:13] Vision Battlesword: and produced.

But they were all in the previous show, Sacred Conversations, so this is our first Intentional Evolution. I'm really excited. So who are you, Vic Jindal?

[00:02:23] Vik Jindal: You've asked me that question many times, and I notice that the answer always changes. And I think that's maybe the nature of the question is that it always changes.

Like, right now I feel like student, explorer, somewhat builder in that other aspects. Yeah, there's all these different ways that I, I could see definitions that work for me. But it's not one thing, you know? And I actually try to, like, stay away from labels too much. I'm just keeping it open, and I'm, I'm exploring life, and I'm learning and building things that are important to me and creating a life that I love.

And, uh, that's who I'm at.

[00:03:03] Vision Battlesword: Well, I define you as a good

[00:03:06] Vik Jindal: friend of mine. I really... We've shared this with each other a number of times over the years, but, you know, I'll say it again that

[00:03:16] Vision Battlesword: our relationship, this, this sort of ongoing, slow-burning but

[00:03:20] Vik Jindal: ever-deepening

[00:03:22] Vision Battlesword: friendship that we have- Yeah, totally ...

[00:03:24] Vik Jindal: has been r- actually real important to me, really meaningful, and

[00:03:26] Vision Battlesword: especially these conversations that we have.

They're always really, really stimulating, and I always walk away from our interactions, I feel, with new food for thought, with my mind altered in a positive sense. Yeah. Meaning that, I... It just feels like, uh, we're always pushing the boundaries of our capability-

[00:03:47] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:03:48] Vision Battlesword: mentally speaking and spiritually and philosophically.

So I personally, if I were to answer my own question, who am I right now, I was just kind of reflecting on it while you were talking a little bit. I don't usually answer my own question, but today I'm, I'm moved to, to say this for some reason. I really feel in this period of my life, like what we were talking about before we started the recording, this, like- sort of midlife moment or whatever this moment is that happens to be coinciding with midlife, I feel like a system in the process of recompiling.

Maybe I'm using that terminology because I've been spending so much time- Yeah,

[00:04:29] Vik Jindal: yeah ...

[00:04:29] Vision Battlesword: in computers and technology and getting back into technology, uh, in a way that I haven't for a number of years, and especially interacting with these AI systems now really for the first time deeply. But I'm starting to have this sort of self-reflective awareness of myself as a system or as a process, like a large language model or like a computer system with a hardware layer and then an operating system and then these programs that are built on top of that.

[00:05:01] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh,

[00:05:01] Vision Battlesword: totally. I'm just sort of like witnessing my own deconstruction of a lot of the software that I've been running for a long time.

[00:05:12] Vik Jindal: Oh, dude, totally.

[00:05:13] Vision Battlesword: And just experiencing this kind of rapid recompiling or rapid- Reauthoring, I think, of my own operating systems.

[00:05:21] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I mean, that really resonates. It feels like...

I mean, I think, first of all, on the friendship, uh, tip, I truly appreciate your friendship as well. I've, I've enjoyed it so much. Uh, I love these conversations. I love the curiosity that we share. It's interesting, it's engaging, it's growth-oriented and improvement-oriented, which is something that appeals to me.

I believe, I think I'm in a similar place in my life of, like, system... What'd you call it? System compiling? Yeah.

[00:05:53] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, like recompiling-

[00:05:54] Vik Jindal: Recompiling ... an

[00:05:54] Vision Battlesword: operating system.

[00:05:55] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Recompiling, purging old files Yeah ... you know? Like, a lot of that stuff and, you know, like upgrading some parts and all of that, so it feels really good, you know?

[00:06:06] Vision Battlesword: Right. We were talking before we started the recording too about this whole idea of organization and clutter- Yeah ... and focus- Yeah ... and the improvement in attention by selecting the things we actually want to... Let me rephrase that. The freeing up of energy, maybe, is a better way of saying it. Like, the liberation of energy by choosing the things that we choose to put our attention on, rather than trying to hold all of the chaos, and, like, making that analogy back to just the clutter, the physical clutter maybe that we hold onto.

Or especially, we were talking in our men's group a couple of nights ago about the digital clutter, and just how much attention that consumes, or just knowing that it's there- Yeah ... even if you're not doing anything with it. And this idea of, like, what could we really just let go of that's not important and that doesn't serve us anymore?

You know, is there... Or would it feel good just to get it organized? Like, maybe these are things that we choose to keep, but we would like to maybe keep them in a way that is more meaningful or that makes sense, and then that sense of relaxation that our nervous system can have when we just know things are handled or they're filed

[00:07:17] Vik Jindal: correctly.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is, like, a, a thing that is happening to a lot of people right now, where it's our attention is being just grabbed by so many different things-

[00:07:26] Vision Battlesword: Yeah ...

[00:07:27] Vik Jindal: that really don't actually matter to us all that much, but it, there's, like, an addictive quality to it all, just because at first it was a curiosity, and then it just sort of, like, branches out into 100 tabs of Windows open and, you know, like- Tons of things on Twitter and Instagram.

It's just, like, tons of information that we're just, like, there, but, like, none of it is something that we're all that compelled by. It doesn't serve us in any way. We don't feel connected to the information. It's just there, and we're just addicted to kinda bringing it into our system.

[00:08:04] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[00:08:05] Vik Jindal: And so, like, one of the exercises I've been in personally, which we've talked about, is just this idea, the idea of entropy, is that, like, everything has a tendency towards disorder.

It's kind of just like, like a house, if you were to just leave it, it would decay. But you apply energy and focus and attention to it to keep it from decaying. So I thought to myself, "I have all this stuff coming in, coming at me, and what if I just allow all of that stuff to disperse away, and I just apply energy and focus and attention to the things that I actually care about, that I wanna cultivate, and then just let kind of the other things evaporate?"

So, like, family, my work, my community and friendships, my spiritual practice, my cultivation of self, my physical habits, what I wanna cultivate in my life from a, what am I driving towards? Like, those types of things are the things that are important to me and, like, the systems surrounding those things I wanna build and refine so that those things can be honed, and then I just allow all the other stuff that feels like noise to just evaporate away.

[00:09:21] Vision Battlesword: You know what is really interesting to me about what you just said is that that entire monologue to me encapsulates, or there's a phrase that, that feels really aligned with that philosophy, and that phrase is intentional evolution. Yeah. I had a feeling you were gonna say that. It's so funny. It's like, so I'm not necessarily sure what I believe anymore about entropy.

[00:09:51] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[00:09:53] Vision Battlesword: But from the traditional frame-

[00:09:56] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:09:57] Vision Battlesword: of mainstream- I

[00:09:58] Vik Jindal: know what you mean about, like... Yeah, yeah. W- I'm

[00:10:00] Vision Battlesword: with you But from, from, through the traditional frame of- Yeah ... mainstream physics-

[00:10:02] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:10:03] Vision Battlesword: the story would go something along the lines of the universe tends towards entropy, which is also known as disorder.

Yeah. And energy essentially is becoming more and more diffused- Yeah ... throughout what we call the universe, which is this potentially finite or possibly infinite bubble of matter and energy. It's, it's tending toward a homogenized state, and in order to reverse that, we have to input energy, but we can only actually do that locally.

We can't do that universally. So we can reverse the direction of order to disorder and turn it from disorder to order, but that requires an input of energy, and so that could be called evolution. Mm. The input of energy to create order out of a disordered system- Totally ... could be a definition, a working definition of evolution- Totally

in the broadest sense. Totally. Right? So if we choose then to, rather than randomly apply energy in some attempt to, uh, universally or, you know, to, to capture everything, all of the so-called chaos, as you said, in our environment or all of the information that's coming at us, attempt to action it, but instead if we get selective and we choose what we would like to input energy, and you used the word attention and focus, both of which are words that I like to use as well.

If we make a choice about where we wanna focus our attention, and intention, and energy to evolve something in particular, that would be intentional evolution.

[00:11:50] Vik Jindal: Yeah. That makes sense. It's interesting. You were saying that, like, with all these things coming at us, and I, I don't know what our capacity is necessarily, but it does seem like if our capacity's being diffused to all these different things, then we ourselves are kind of, like, going through a process of entropy.

[00:12:09] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:10] Vik Jindal: You know? And so if we wanna evolve ourselves, then it actually requires the pushing away of entropy from ourselves and our minds.

[00:12:21] Vision Battlesword: I love that. Yeah. That is such a powerful crystallization of the impact of information overload, this, like, mass media phenomena- Yeah ... that we're swimming in. Yeah. I love that, that it's a complete reversal of the mental model of how we normally would think about- this energy coming into our frame, right?

All, all of this information and therefore value, let's just say. We, I think we normally would have a knee-jerk reaction to say, "Well, more information contains value. It contains something worthwhile." It's a form of energy maybe. That all of this availability of information, not even just availability, but almost, like, fire hosing at us, is something coming into our frame.

But you're reversing that paradigm. Or that's not actually a paradigm. I just did a whole episode on paradigms, so I'm really, I'm really clear on what that is now. Um, you're- I

[00:13:25] Vik Jindal: like that episode. It

[00:13:25] Vision Battlesword: was good. Oh, did you listen to that? Yeah. Oh, cool, cool. You're reversing that whole construct to see how those are actually attachments that are pulling- Us apart

attention- Yeah ... and therefore our energy out-

[00:13:41] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:13:42] Vision Battlesword: and diffusing it, which is exactly-

[00:13:44] Vik Jindal: It's the- ...

[00:13:44] Vision Battlesword: identical to entropy.

[00:13:45] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:13:46] Vision Battlesword: Fascinating.

[00:13:47] Vik Jindal: Yeah. So we are, in fact, not evolving. We're devolving by doing that.

[00:13:51] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[00:13:52] Vik Jindal: Huh.

[00:13:55] Vision Battlesword: Have I ever shared with you my

[00:13:57] Vik Jindal: Which by the way, sorry, just on the point there, it's not like you're evolving or standing still then, right?

And this kinda seemed consistent. You're either evolving or devolving. Yeah. So you're either being pulled apart or you're evolving. Like, you're not in a, you're not a standstill state in some sense.

[00:14:16] Vision Battlesword: That checks out from my perspective, 'cause-

[00:14:18] Vik Jindal: Like in energy, you know, if you think about it, it's either you're either applying it-

[00:14:22] Vision Battlesword: Have I ever told you my theory of the human singularity before?

[00:14:28] Vik Jindal: We've talked about it a bit when we were talking about beliefs and everything, but we talk about it again, actually. I'd be curious.

[00:14:34] Vision Battlesword: I just wanna refresh it- Yeah ... because it's so central to this whole intentional evolution project-

[00:14:39] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh ...

[00:14:40] Vision Battlesword: and, like, this, this podcast itself. Yeah. So I just wanna be clear, like, this is all kind of a framing device, everything we've been doing- Totally

up to this point- Of course ... before we introduce the topic of, like, what's the context-

[00:14:49] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:14:49] Vision Battlesword: that we're exploring within. So we talked about intentional evolution, and we got a working definition of that, and then within that, here's my idea. This whole artificial intelligence thing, which is gonna be, I'm sure, very central to our talk in many ways, but this artificial intelligence thing, and going back at least 20 or 30 years before that, there's been these futurists like Ray Kurzweil- Uh-huh

for example- Yep ... and others, that have been speculating about this concept called the technological singularity, which is when the machines essentially become conscious, self-aware, and then-

[00:15:27] Vik Jindal: They effectively can make theirselves better at an infinite rate such that we can't even keep up.

[00:15:32] Vision Battlesword: Thank you.

[00:15:33] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:15:33] Vision Battlesword: And then there's an explosion to super intelligence which completely supersedes, like, makes human intelligence irrelevant- Yeah, totally ... essentially. So my idea is that we're evolving in parallel to a machine intelligence.

[00:15:49] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[00:15:50] Vision Battlesword: That we, humans, human intelligence, is evolving in parallel, in fact, that we're sort of integrated in a way.

We're kind of symbiotic life forms perhaps, if we wanna say that the machines have become a life form at this point, which I think is certainly debatable. But my point is that we have a human architecture which is at least equivalent, at least- Hmm ... in terms of power and potential to what we can do with electricity and machines and silicon and magnets and all of this stuff that creates the machine intelligence.

Ours operates on Chemicals, hormones, electrical signals, perhaps quantum states. We don't actually really know-

[00:16:34] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:16:34] Vision Battlesword: precisely how our hardware and software technology works. But what people like you and me and many, many others have discovered well, actually going back very, very far into the past, but we, of our generation, are rediscovering through psychedelics, personal development, psychology, and all of these different ways, is that we actually have that same capability to become self-aware and then self-programming.

And our mutual friend and I, Gladius Sovereign, coined this term psychotecture, or psych- I pr- actually prefer psychitecture-

[00:17:10] Vik Jindal: Mm ... '

[00:17:10] Vision Battlesword: cause it doesn't have the word psycho in it.

[00:17:12] Vik Jindal: Psychitecture,

[00:17:14] Vision Battlesword: meaning psycho, spiritual, psychological, somatic architecture. Huh. That holistic human system- Huh ... looked at as analogous to the holistic system of the machine.

Yeah. With the computer hardware layer, and then the operating system, and then the programs, and then the clusters.

[00:17:31] Vik Jindal: Right.

[00:17:32] Vision Battlesword: The clusters of computers-

[00:17:34] Vik Jindal: Yep ...

[00:17:35] Vision Battlesword: that now form a meta-

[00:17:36] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh ...

[00:17:37] Vision Battlesword: system, let's just say.

[00:17:39] Vik Jindal: Yep.

[00:17:39] Vision Battlesword: That's what I see for human beings. I see us individually starting to take ownership of our intentional evolution, but then I see collectively the potential that we have to go into a singularity of super intelligence.

[00:17:57] Vik Jindal: Yeah, I mean, this is definitely, um, you know, I was talking about my own being an explorer. This is definitely an idea that I'm exploring internally, is the depths of to which that goes and to the degree to which it's programmable, I guess you could say, for lack of a better word, or at least, like, malleable.

Where, and we've talked about this before as sort of like the, the framework that I work with personally, is that we live in this, like, formless reality that is a substrate that we live in that holds, like, kind of endless possibility. And then we are contained in this box of our belief structures, and that belief structure, this box, serves as a filter by which that endless possibility becomes a formed reality that we experience.

And so we don't think that those things are very malleable because they don't feel that way because we get attached to our belief structures, and they're not very malleable, often through trauma or lived experience or things that are imprinted on us as, as human physical beings, like through childbirth.

Like, there's a lot of belief structures about what we are capable of doing, both physically, mentally, spiritually, whatever. And then as you, let's say, soften your grip on those belief structures, as you heal, you start to then be able to play with what you believe about yourself. And then the question is, what would you do with that?

How-- what can you create with that? How can you evolve with that? And that's-- it feels, like, analogous to what you're talking about to me, 'cause that's sort of what I'm exploring in my own life, is sort of the, to borrow a word, intentional, like, working with that belief structure and being super hyper-aware of what that architecture will create within me as a, as a being.

Does that make sense?

[00:20:05] Vision Battlesword: Totally. Yeah. I think that- That jives really well with... Well, we've talked about this stuff before- Yeah, totally ... and, and, and explored it. And I, I think in particular in our conversation that we did that we titled Belief-

[00:20:20] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:20:21] Vision Battlesword: we explored that a lot. But that's exactly what I'm talking about when I say we as individuals, and then as groups c- you know, small collectives, and then at scale, larger collectives are doing this, we're doing this processing.

And I don't like to use the word work, so I won't.

[00:20:42] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:20:42] Vision Battlesword: We're doing this processing. We're playing these games internally

[00:20:47] Vik Jindal: that I think are unlocking new levels

[00:20:52] Vision Battlesword: or are- Yeah ... unlocking new capabilities, previously untapped potentials, or maybe

[00:20:59] Vik Jindal: new layers- Yeah ... that are actually emerging.

[00:21:02] Vision Battlesword: And I think the real power or potency of how the human organism is constructed, since we are a social creature, but I also increasingly believe that, and I know that you increasingly may believe, that we are a psychic creature, that we have the analog to an internet as the nodes on the network do, the machines.

[00:21:34] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:21:34] Vision Battlesword: They've got these high-speed data pipes such that they can create these clusters, these, these meta minds, parallel processing. I think we have that, too.

[00:21:44] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[00:21:44] Vision Battlesword: I think we're just now either becoming or rediscovering our self-awareness, our awareness, I should say, of that fact-

[00:21:56] Vik Jindal: Yeah, I mean,

[00:21:56] Vision Battlesword: I- ... that we're all, we're all tapped in together.

[00:21:58] Vik Jindal: Yeah, I think there's a lot to be said about that. You know, there's the telepathy tapes which is gaining a lot of traction. There's definitely a lot of people who are experiencing some very interesting things. I can also, you know, you point to history and you look at some of the things that people have created thousands of years ago, and you sort of wonder how they were capable of doing some of those things without having some connection to something that we don't yet understand.

Let's put it that way.

[00:22:22] Vision Battlesword: Bingo.

[00:22:23] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:22:24] Vision Battlesword: So that's why, first of all, I feel optimistic, whereas there's a lot of pessimism or doom and gloom predictions or projections about what happens if and when machine consciousness becomes, quote-unquote, "super intelligence," and I can't wait to unpack that term. But I see what we're doing in parallel to that through this kind of rigorous, intentional self-discovery and then self-aware agentic evolution individually as being something that's going to We don't know what's on the other side of it.

[00:23:06] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[00:23:06] Vision Battlesword: It's like the Big Bang. Yeah. It's like a whole new universe-

[00:23:09] Vik Jindal: Totally ...

[00:23:09] Vision Battlesword: that gets created. Yeah, yeah,

[00:23:10] Vik Jindal: yeah.

[00:23:11] Vision Battlesword: When we individually wake up and then realize that we have all collectively woken up, then something really magical is gonna happen, and I'm looking forward to it. In fact, I'm actively pursuing it.

[00:23:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I love it. I mean, I'm, you know, pretty radically optimistic as well. I guess I never really thought about it the way you're describing it, but I guess it's, it's sort of related. The way I think about it is that we have the ability to create a future that we want to envision. And so, in some degree, that is, like, an intentional evolution.

Like, we have the ability to do that. We just haven't actually utilized that capability. And so I'm excited about that because that's what I'm doing, that's what you're doing. There's a lot of other people doing that now. And then I think it's just one of those things that will grow over time.

[00:24:03] Vision Battlesword: Before I ask you the key question to unlock this door though, I just wanna share with you really briefly

[00:24:11] Vik Jindal: why I'm so excited about, or I have been so excited about this word for so long

[00:24:18] Vision Battlesword: Over three years ago, at least, I can't remember exactly when this happened, I was having this conversation with a mutual friend of ours, someone that, that you know that I know well and, and we both know, a woman named Dawn.

[00:24:33] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:34] Vision Battlesword: We were having this great conversation at one point, and she used a phrase. W- we were having a... It was a very spiritually philosophical discussion that we were having, and she used the phrase universal intelligence.

[00:24:48] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[00:24:48] Vision Battlesword: It seems to me this is kind of a phrase that you hear sometimes, I think, when people don't feel fully comfortable just saying the word God, maybe.

Mm.

[00:24:57] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:24:58] Vision Battlesword: It, it maybe feels, like, a little bit more accessible- Yeah ... or maybe it's like a gateway from science into spirituality- Yeah,

[00:25:05] Vik Jindal: yeah ...

[00:25:05] Vision Battlesword: or something like that. But the phrase just hit me in a moment, okay, well, wait a second. When you say universal intelligence, what does that actually mean?

[00:25:16] Vik Jindal: Hm.

[00:25:17] Vision Battlesword: Because when I started thinking about just unpacking that word intelligence, it goes in so many different directions.

[00:25:21] Vik Jindal: Hm.

[00:25:22] Vision Battlesword: And so that is the starting... That's the... That, that's how we got on this topic. I'm not going to... I don't wanna poison the well, so to speak- No, no, it's, uh, my- ... by telling you all of the different things I've already thought of.

[00:25:33] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah, totally. So my mind is already racing- Yeah ... with that, with that, um, thought process around intelligence, how it relates to God, and then there's, and there's a, a bunch of other ideas around, like, the nature of life itself, um, that's kind of related to that concept.

[00:25:51] Vision Battlesword: Right. So for example, you say life itself. One way that we sometimes use the word intelligence is extraterrestrial intelligence.

[00:25:59] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[00:26:00] Vision Battlesword: Oh, is there, quote-unquote, "intelligent life" on other planets?

[00:26:04] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:26:04] Vision Battlesword: But it's like, well, what... Okay, so this is my question.

[00:26:07] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:26:08] Vision Battlesword: What is intelligence?

[00:26:09] Vik Jindal: Right. Well, so this is where I, where I was going with the life point.

I'm just gonna riff for a second- Yeah ... 'cause I'm, I'm exploring right now. I don't actually know if this is going in the right direction, but let's just explore. Do you know, I think we've talked about this, like, a complex adaptive system. Do you know that term? So I'll just describe it the way I'm thinking about it.

So a complex adaptive system, I'll give you an example. Let's say you and I are in the financial markets, and I change my behavior based on you, and you change your behavior based on your interaction with me. But you also interact with person A, person B, and person C, and I interact with person X, person Y, and person Z.

So you're changing your behavior based on person A, person B, and person C, and I'm changing my behavior based on my interaction with you. So in fact, I'm changing my behavior based on person A, person B, and person C based on my interaction through you. And likewise, you're changing your behavior based on X and Y and Z through me changing my behavior that then changes your behavior.

And that butterflies-- when that butterflies in all directions such that A to the 100th power is impacting Z to the 5,000th power, that sort of butterfly effect, that's a complex adaptive system. And what scientists say and mathematicians say, when that occurs, there is a thing called emergence that happens.

And emergence is a higher order of, quote, "intelligence" that the system then creates that it cannot be discerned by looking at any one part of the system and how it operates. It's sort of like operating at another level of decision-making, let's say, that is not a decision made by the individual components.

And I just love that idea. And so when you were talking about... Like, it's-- if, if you really take it at its limit, it's the idea that like, okay, our brain is a complex adaptive system of our brain cells, kind of, and our body and everything. Our body is a complex adaptive system, and it keeps going out on meta levels.

Like, our communities are complex adaptive systems. Our society, our social structures, our political systems, our financial systems are all different complex adaptive systems. Our Earth is a intelligent, complex adaptive system. That's why it is alive, from my standpoint, is because you have a complex adaptive system that then creates a higher order of intelligence that is making decisions based on that.

And so that sort of like the Gaia theory is a, is a very legitimate theory in my eyes. It doesn't-- Actually, it's, it's not even a theory. It is true, 'cause that is what happens in complex adaptive systems. And if you take it further, you could argue the universe or the multi-universe or whatever is actually the largest complex adaptive system that we know of.

And in fact, that emergence from that could actually be the idea of God But what's really interesting about complex adaptive systems is we kind of think of complex adaptive systems, at least at the local human level, as agents making decisions left or right, and everyone's changing their mind based on their interaction, right?

So like traffic or whatever, like if the car comes here, I go there, et cetera, and so I'm making an independent decision. Whereas an inanimate object in the universe, rocks and atoms, et cetera, are they making independent decisions? Well, in fact, are we making independent decisions, or are we just comprised of atoms also separately making their own decisions?

You f- see what I'm, where I'm going with this? Oh, yeah. It's like, it's like, it's actually when you break it all down, we're all just actually simple atoms organizing and, you know, kind of going into these different directions that creates human thought, et cetera. But in some sense, we are all a form of sentience or, I mean, whether we're a rock or a human being, in some sense we're kind of all made of the same stuff.

[00:30:26] Vision Battlesword: Okay. I love this as like an opening move. It's very, like, it's not a standard pawn to D4 at all, right? Okay, okay. Like, this is, this is definitely some-

[00:30:37] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:30:37] Vision Battlesword: I ju- ... design or

[00:30:38] Vik Jindal: something ...

[00:30:38] Vision Battlesword: I, I, maybe I went in some crazy directions. That's

[00:30:40] Vik Jindal: why I was- No, I love it ... just riffing for a bit,

[00:30:41] Vision Battlesword: you know? It's so good. It's perfect.

So what we've got on the game table is we've got complex adaptive systems. Yeah. We've got the use of the word intelligence in many different levels of scale.

[00:30:54] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:30:56] Vision Battlesword: But all, in my, what I'm noticing is that in all generally the same... It feels like whatever that definition is that we haven't yet created-

[00:31:06] Vik Jindal: Yeah

[00:31:07] Vision Battlesword: in your frame through the complex adaptive system-

[00:31:10] Vik Jindal: Model ...

[00:31:10] Vision Battlesword: monologue-

[00:31:11] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:31:12] Vision Battlesword: you were using the word in the same way- Yes ... but at different levels of scale.

[00:31:16] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:31:17] Vision Battlesword: But then you brought in a really interesting phrase to me, which is you s- you started talking about things that can make a decision.

[00:31:27] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:27] Vision Battlesword: Things that make decisions.

Mm-hmm. And that feels really important- Mm-hmm ... to whatever it is we're saying here. And then at the very end, you brought in the word sentient.

[00:31:34] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:35] Vision Battlesword: Which is, to me, a very important word in this whole conversation because it's one of the several words that I might ask a question, such as what is the difference between intelligence and sentience?

[00:31:49] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[00:31:49] Vision Battlesword: Or I might ask a question like, what is the difference between intelligence and consciousness? Or what does intelligence have to do with being smart? Does intelligence... What, why do we use the word intelligent sometimes as a synonym for smart, or as a synonym for a good decision,

[00:32:15] Vik Jindal: for example? That's interesting.

I never thought of that. I mean, in this context, I've never thought about that before. That's a, that's a very interesting question.

[00:32:21] Vision Battlesword: This is why my mind exploded three, three-plus years ago-

[00:32:24] Vik Jindal: Okay ... when I

[00:32:25] Vision Battlesword: started asking myself these questions.

[00:32:26] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh. And I

[00:32:27] Vision Battlesword: had no good answers

[00:32:28] Vik Jindal: for any of this. Yeah, yeah, totally.

Yeah. Um- Wow, where should we start? Well,

[00:32:36] Vision Battlesword: I would like to ask again and see-

[00:32:40] Vik Jindal: If we can pinpoint ...

[00:32:41] Vision Battlesword: see if there's anything that, that, that we can bring through, even if it's really rough, to answer the question, what is intelligence?

[00:32:49] Vik Jindal: Mm. It's interesting. The thing that's coming to mind a little bit, and I don't know if it's right, but it's sort of like an organizing principle or a, an intention with which it exists, and the byproduct, I guess you could say, or the intention, silent intention of the system that we've created, that's the intelligence.

That's what it, it to some degree it strives for. And so intelligence is the, its overriding principle. It's, it's sort of like, it's like modus operandi.

[00:33:22] Vision Battlesword: Hmm.

[00:33:22] Vik Jindal: You know?

[00:33:23] Vision Battlesword: Okay. Hmm. So intelligence is a modus operandi?

[00:33:32] Vik Jindal: I may, per- perhaps.

[00:33:33] Vision Battlesword: Okay. Does something need to have intention in order to be considered intelligent?

[00:33:41] Vik Jindal: I think so. I think so. Well, tell me. What... Can you just- Explore that question a little bit? Sure. Riff on it a little bit?

[00:33:50] Vision Battlesword: Well, again, I'm coming back to at least two clearly different ways that we seem to use the word intelligent.

[00:34:01] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:02] Vision Battlesword: Potentially, this is just another failing of the English language.

Totally. Like the word love- Mm-hmm ... for example-

[00:34:08] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[00:34:09] Vision Battlesword: seems to encapsulate way too many different concepts.

[00:34:12] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:12] Vision Battlesword: But it seems like we use the word intelligent or intelligence to mean something like a complex adaptive system, meaning something that has agency, something that does stuff. It's a process.

It's, it's dynamic.

[00:34:31] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:31] Vision Battlesword: And then sometimes we also use the word intelligent or intelligence, it seems to me, as an adjective for something that could be static. Do you see what I mean? That was a very intelligent move you just made on the chessboard.

[00:34:47] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:47] Vision Battlesword: Or, I read this document that you wrote,

[00:34:51] Vik Jindal: and I think your conclusions are very intelligent.

There's a lot of intelligence behind this. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:57] Vision Battlesword: Or intelligence quotient, we measure some sort of static variable that refers to a scope of capability. So in other words, I'm distinguishing between the word intelligent as used to mean something like smart versus the word intelligent as used to describe

[00:35:22] Vik Jindal: something seemingly conscious or seemingly self-aware or seemingly something that can take self-interested action.

[00:35:30] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Does that make sense?

[00:35:33] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:35:34] Vision Battlesword: So, like, here's a thought experiment for you.

[00:35:36] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:35:37] Vision Battlesword: You're aware of the, the difference engine or the analytic engine? Do you know what I mean?

[00:35:44] Vik Jindal: No. Okay.

[00:35:45] Vision Battlesword: Are you familiar with the concept of a mechanical computer?

[00:35:48] Vik Jindal: No. Oh, wow. Okay,

[00:35:50] Vision Battlesword: cool. I've got something really interesting to share with you.

[00:35:51] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:35:52] Vision Battlesword: So I can't remember the name of the inventor in this moment right now, but at any rate, there was this inventor back in the 19th century that was able to, using just things like gears and springs and crankshafts and things, mechanical-

[00:36:12] Vik Jindal: Components ...

[00:36:12] Vision Battlesword: components-

[00:36:13] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[00:36:13] Vision Battlesword: he was able to make a really s- really powerful, sophisticated calculator, which is called the difference engine.

[00:36:20] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:36:21] Vision Battlesword: So it was like this, you know, giant mechanical-

[00:36:23] Vik Jindal: Like abacus almost.

[00:36:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, but like an abacus that can do, like, differential equations.

[00:36:28] Vik Jindal: Whoa.

[00:36:29] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Like, it was a proper, proper scientific calculator. Well, I mean, it could do certain but very sophisticated functions, let's just say. Cool. So you could dial in program-

[00:36:41] Vik Jindal: Yeah

[00:36:41] Vision Battlesword: you know, in a very literal sense. You could program in the computation that you wanted it to do, and then you turned a crank.

[00:36:49] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:36:49] Vision Battlesword: Cl- clackity clackity clackity clackity clack. Uh-huh,

[00:36:51] Vik Jindal: uh-huh.

[00:36:52] Vision Battlesword: And it would process that algorithm or that computation and somehow output it in the form of another series- An answer

another series of gears.

[00:37:02] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:37:03] Vision Battlesword: That was the difference engine. It was a calculator.

[00:37:05] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:37:06] Vision Battlesword: But, uh, a good one, you know, for- That's

[00:37:08] Vik Jindal: what this guy c- created.

[00:37:09] Vision Battlesword: He created this, this thing called the difference engine.

[00:37:11] Vik Jindal: Okay. Great name.

[00:37:12] Vision Battlesword: And then- He then subsequently created, uh, an advancement of a mechanical, a machine beyond the difference engine, which was called the analytical engine.

[00:37:25] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:37:25] Vision Battlesword: Which was, by our standards today, definitely a computer. It was a, a mechanical system, again, made of gears and shafts and cranks and things like that, but it was beyond just a simple mathematical computer.

[00:37:42] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh. In

[00:37:42] Vision Battlesword: that sense, it was a thing that could run very simple programs, as we would think of them.

[00:37:47] Vik Jindal: This is the 19th century?

[00:37:48] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Huh. It was an information processing machine.

[00:37:52] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:37:53] Vision Battlesword: And I think, I could be, like, getting out over my skis at this point, but I think that it was so big and required so much energy input- Uh-huh ... that it was no longer hand-cranked, but they attached it to, like, a steam engine- Huh

to power it. Like, ch, ch,

[00:38:08] Vik Jindal: ch, ch, ch. Oh, interesting.

[00:38:09] Vision Battlesword: To run the program, so, 'cause otherwise you'd be cranking it for months.

[00:38:11] Vik Jindal: Yeah, okay. Yeah, interesting.

[00:38:13] Vision Battlesword: So these, these machines were created. They, they existed at a point in time and never really caught on for some reason. Okay. Like, eh, it's easier just to have a room full of people with pencils and papers and abacuses and- Uh-huh

you know, they run on food instead of steam.

[00:38:27] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah, uh-huh.

[00:38:28] Vision Battlesword: But yeah, this is a real deal. So the point I'm asking is, is that intelligent? Is there intelligence in the system of gears and cranks and, and shafts that is able to process information from one form into another in a way that we would consider

If a human being was doing that comp- computation, we would probably judge them as intelligent. Is the machine itself intelligent?

[00:38:59] Vik Jindal: Um, huh. That's ... I did not expect this to go in this direction. You know what's coming to me is, like, it's this idea that the creator maybe imbued that thing with intelligence.

There's sort of, um, what's actually coming to me is that notion of quality. It's sort of like this connection between the subject and object that created, that, like, imbued that thing with intelligence, that turned it from a bunch of just random metal into this thing. It kinda reminds me of the entropy conversation a little bit because one of the things that cannot be explained by entropy is, like, effectively life to some degree, 'cause it's like there are things that- Have like defied entropy, like all over the place.

And what is doing that? Something intelligent is doing that. So when I think about when we were talking about intentional evolution, intent, it's actually the recognition of the intent that was imbued into that thing, and then that thing then holds that te- intent and operates with that intent as its modus operandi.

[00:40:13] Vision Battlesword: Right. I love what you just said, because I think there's a couple ... You know how this goes sometimes- Yeah ... where something comes up and then we like pinpoint that? Yeah,

[00:40:24] Vik Jindal: yeah.

[00:40:24] Vision Battlesword: We go, "That."

[00:40:24] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah,

[00:40:25] Vision Battlesword: yeah. If we figure that out-

[00:40:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah, yeah ...

[00:40:27] Vision Battlesword: we've got something here.

[00:40:28] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:40:29] Vision Battlesword: So what you just said about life-

[00:40:30] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh

[00:40:31] Vision Battlesword: feels like one of those pinpoint opportunities where earlier in the conversation you said in order to reverse the direction of entropy, we have to input our intent.

[00:40:44] Vik Jindal: Right.

[00:40:44] Vision Battlesword: We have to input our energy, which in, with an intention behind it.

[00:40:48] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:40:49] Vision Battlesword: But then if we, let's say, start from a scientific materialist frame of reference, how does life then come about in the first place?

Right. No, totally. Because if life, let's say, is the source of intent, which can then put its energy into systems and then create order out of chaos, what created life out of chaos-

[00:41:13] Vik Jindal: Right ...

[00:41:13] Vision Battlesword: in the first place? Right. Where did, where did that intent come from? Where did that energy come from?

[00:41:17] Vik Jindal: Right.

[00:41:18] Vision Battlesword: There's something paradoxical about that that doesn't really quite make sense.

[00:41:20] Vik Jindal: Yeah. It, it's very paradoxical. I guess I w- where I was thinking about we're saying life is order, right? But then we were also saying that all of the social media and stuff coming at me is a form of life coming at me, but it's also pulling me apart if I'm not focused and intent about it. So it's, it i- I think there is a lot of paradox.

Frankly, the universe is full of paradox. Like, almost like it is a fundamental kind of rule is some connection to paradox.

[00:41:47] Vision Battlesword: Well, you're right. There's an assumption that I made, which is that life is inherently a process of a higher order-

[00:41:56] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[00:41:56] Vision Battlesword: than the Entropic direction- Mm-hmm ... of the, of the universe.

That is to say falling into a state of disorder or homogenization. But that doesn't necessarily need to be so. But there was something else you said. You used the word intelligence again sort of as an explanation for how something happens. Why is intelligence... What does intelligence have to do with being able to make a decision?

[00:42:26] Vik Jindal: What does intelligence have to do with... I mean, on, on, on the one sense, I guess, like, it's, like, self-evident. If you're not intelligent, can you make a decision? But I really wanna be more, more thoughtful about the answer or the exploration 'cause I really don't know the answer to that.

[00:42:42] Vision Battlesword: Well, I noticed it when you were talking about complex adaptive systems.

[00:42:45] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:46] Vision Battlesword: When you were kind of looking at things at different scopes of scale. Mm-hmm. And then you were also looking at things that are animate versus inanimate. Yeah. Remember you were saying, like, a rock-

[00:42:54] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:42:54] Vision Battlesword: can't have intention 'cause it can't really make a decision, and neither can an atom per se, but yet somehow I am just a collection of these atoms-

[00:43:05] Vik Jindal: Yeah, totally

[00:43:06] Vision Battlesword: and yet I believe I am intelligent-

[00:43:09] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:43:09] Vision Battlesword: and have intent and make decisions, but is that really true? And I kinda thought it almost seemed like you were going down a little bit of a free will versus determinism-

[00:43:18] Vik Jindal: Yeah, totally. I

[00:43:19] Vision Battlesword: mean- ... side quest for a second there ... yeah, yeah, totally.

[00:43:20] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I mean, there was a

[00:43:21] Vision Battlesword: little bit of that.

But I, but I think that's actually legitimate. Yeah. I think that almost is the question.

[00:43:25] Vik Jindal: That is the kind of the question actually. And there's people who've done a ps- psychedelic journeys where, you know, a person will teach me to connect with a tree or connect with a rock and, like, communicating that thing.

And I will tell you, there are experiences that occur during that that feel like communication. And there are many facilitators and, uh, certainly people who've worked with different plant medicines know that those plants are incredibly intelligent. So-

[00:43:58] Vision Battlesword: But what does that mean?

[00:44:00] Vik Jindal: Right

[00:44:01] Vision Battlesword: When you say the plant is intelligent?

[00:44:02] Vik Jindal: Well, that's a great, that's a great question. So what I mean in the, in the case of these plants being intelligent is that they connect with you, and then they guide you, frankly, in these journeys. And you can feel that guidance of this plant and of that spirit. And so-

[00:44:23] Vision Battlesword: It sounds like what you're saying is that what makes the plants intelligent is that they have a mind

[00:44:30] Vik Jindal: Is

[00:44:31] Vision Battlesword: that what you're saying?

[00:44:31] Vik Jindal: Like, yeah.

[00:44:32] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:44:33] Vik Jindal: They have, like, a, a spirit, I suppose. Do you ever hear about that... I, I'm forgetting the name of it. It's like a... It's like some town in Scotland where they have, like, these, uh, enormous vegetables, and it's a hu- like, it's like their garden, their, their farm or gardens or whatever are, like, massive vegetables and fruits and, like, like, of absurd size.

And how they did it, they claim, is that they spoke to the devis of the plants, and they spoke to the spirits of the plants and, and asked them that they want, and then they gave them, the plants gave them direction on how to grow them, and they, as a result, had much bigger results. So, like, there's some communication happening.

The awareness of intelligence is, like, s- maybe some ability to communicate with us in some way, shape, or form. I don't know. Maybe that's a tangent, but that's how... At least in that context, that's how you know that they're intelligent, 'cause that there is some guidance or communication happening in the case of, uh, those plant medicines.

[00:45:41] Vision Battlesword: Suppose that there was something that had no way of communicating at all. Mm-hmm. Suppose that you- Right ... took a brain and put it in a box.

[00:45:48] Vik Jindal: Right.

[00:45:49] Vision Battlesword: And it can't communicate in, in, in or out of the box.

[00:45:53] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:45:54] Vision Battlesword: Is the brain inside the box-

[00:45:55] Vik Jindal: Intelligent ...

[00:45:56] Vision Battlesword: still intelligent if it, even if it can't communicate?

[00:46:00] Vik Jindal: I mean, that's like if I put you in the box, I mean, is it really-

[00:46:04] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, you don't have to take my brain out of my body.

Yeah. You could just put me in a box, and I can't communicate.

[00:46:07] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:46:08] Vision Battlesword: Am I still intelligent- Yeah. ...

[00:46:09] Vik Jindal: inside a box? Exactly. Of course.

[00:46:11] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:46:11] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:46:11] Vision Battlesword: So it's not about communication, per se.

[00:46:14] Vik Jindal: Uh, right. The... No, exactly. That's how I learned that they were intelligent.

[00:46:19] Vision Battlesword: Right.

[00:46:20] Vik Jindal: Because I felt that communication.

[00:46:22] Vision Battlesword: Right. But what does it mean to say that they are intelligent?

[00:46:25] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:46:27] Vision Battlesword: And I... And it sounded like, when you were describing, when you were answering that a minute ago, it sounded like what you're s- telling me was that because of the communication that I've had with them, I can tell that they have something like a mind.

[00:46:42] Vik Jindal: Yeah, like they have- Some- ... their own self-identity and sovereignty, meaning, like, they are separate.

They are conscious, I guess, for lack of a better word, that they have a awareness of themselves as a separate thing to everything else.

[00:46:59] Vision Battlesword: Can something be conscious but not intelligent? What about, like, a very, very small creature with a very, very small brain?

[00:47:07] Vik Jindal: I mean, then of course they're intelligent still.

[00:47:08] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:47:09] Vik Jindal: Yeah. That- What about- I mean, that... Well, I mean, any, like, a f- uh, the goldfish is intelli- it has intelligence.

[00:47:16] Vision Battlesword: Okay. But, uh, they can, you can be higher or lower on some scale of intelligence.

[00:47:21] Vik Jindal: I suppose, yeah.

[00:47:22] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:47:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:47:23] Vision Battlesword: Well, what is it?

[00:47:25] Vik Jindal: What is- Intelligent ... intelligence?

[00:47:28] Vision Battlesword: Is it synonymous with consciousness?

Is that really just what we're saying?

[00:47:32] Vik Jindal: I think there's some element... Okay, we're like, I, I like what we're doing, 'cause we do the thing that you do, which is refine the actual term. So there is an element of it that's consciousness, but would you say that the goldfish is more conscious or less conscious than a human?

Like, that degree part of it is the part that you were going in about, like, "Oh, this kid is very intelligent. This kid is not." There's something that's happening in that part of it as well.

[00:47:58] Vision Battlesword: Well, I was trying to figure out if there's a threshold to the complexity of the system.

[00:48:03] Vik Jindal: Oh, no, I don't, I don't believe so.

[00:48:04] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:48:05] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:48:05] Vision Battlesword: I don't either,

[00:48:06] Vik Jindal: actually. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, like, like, for example, when I had that experience, like, literally it was a friend of mine in Upstate New York, like, he's, like, teaching me how to connect and communicate with a tree, a rock, et cetera, and it was, it was, a, kind of a mind-blowing experience, frankly.

[00:48:25] Vision Battlesword: Do you think the rock had intelligence?

[00:48:27] Vik Jindal: Yeah, I believe so. You know? And I think, um, this actually reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend. I bought a charango in Peru, which is, like, this little guitar-looking instrument, basically, and I had a friend who's a, um, amazing musician. A- and I'd never played a string instrument.

I'm not very good at them. But I was like, "Man, this keeps getting out of tune." I asked him, and was like... He's like, "Oh, y- the issue is your charango wants to be played. The reason it's going out of tune is you're not playing it. It wants to be played, and once you play it, it will not go out of tune." And it, that comment completely rearranged my thought process on consciousness altogether.

[00:49:12] Vision Battlesword: Because you believe it, first of all. I,

[00:49:14] Vik Jindal: I believe what he's saying, yes.

[00:49:15] Vision Battlesword: I- And if that's true, then- Yeah ... that means something really deep about reality.

[00:49:21] Vik Jindal: Yeah, exactly. There's people who've had that connection with their swords. There's people who've had connections throughout history with different objects, people who imbue objects with kind of intention and pray to objects, all kinds of different things, you know?

[00:49:39] Vision Battlesword: What exactly is the distinction between intelligence and consciousness? Is there really a distinction? I,

[00:49:48] Vik Jindal: I'm, I'm not actually sure that there is, actually. Yeah. I'm not sure that there is.

[00:49:51] Vision Battlesword: Is it possible that we use the word intelligence sometimes when what we really just mean is conscious- Yeah ... or sentient?

[00:49:58] Vik Jindal: Yes. I think that's right. Well, I think it's, uh, that actually, like, when you say that, it like, it actually almost sounds self, self-evident a little bit more. So when I say that the Earth is intelligent, I do mean self-aware, conscious, et cetera. And I believe systems gain that kind of awareness of self, and they preserve self and et cetera, you know?

Even like, I'm, I'm sure you've, you know, you know this idea of the, of the AggreGor, right? So the AggreGor is just an idea That almost takes on a life. Like a brand can be an egregore, like McDonald's or whatever, and then that egregore is, like, alive.

[00:50:39] Vision Battlesword: Well, I think you and I both believe that it is alive.

[00:50:41] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:50:42] Vision Battlesword: That it's not an almost.

[00:50:43] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:50:44] Vision Battlesword: That, like, w-

[00:50:44] Vik Jindal: I'm he- trying to be a little bit, you know, but I hear, I, I, I should be more precise. Yeah, it's alive.

[00:50:50] Vision Battlesword: Right. Like the conversation you and me had, and you referred to it, I think, in this conversation as well about a corporation-

[00:50:57] Vik Jindal: Yes ...

[00:50:57] Vision Battlesword: having a- an intelligence.

[00:50:59] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:51:00] Vision Battlesword: Having a consciousness. Yes. Having intent.

[00:51:02] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:51:03] Vision Battlesword: That makes it a life form.

[00:51:05] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:51:05] Vision Battlesword: Right?

[00:51:06] Vik Jindal: Yes. So- If it has

[00:51:07] Vision Battlesword: all those things ...

[00:51:07] Vik Jindal: yeah, exactly. So how I think about it, like, with my own company, as I mentioned to you, I'm, like, building a company, and the idea is when you create an entity, you're actually, like, giving birth to a life form.

[00:51:23] Vision Battlesword: They even call it creating an entity.

[00:51:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Yeah, that's fair enough. I never thought about it that way. Yeah. So, so, like, when you're creating, like, a, you know, a business entity, but, like, an entity, you're giving birth to something. And then so you have to be very intentional about it, and you have to make sure that it's, like, that life, that is the life growing inside that entity is all these people working and doing the things with some of these operating principles and values in mind.

How they're doing it was based on what values and qualities were imbued in the entity to begin with and then cultivated. And so just going back to the idea of that difference engine is, like, that inventor imbued that thing with some intelligence or consciousness because he cared enough about it to do it.

[00:52:18] Vision Battlesword: I'm glad you brought it back to that. Yeah. Because I think that's exactly where we're just about getting ready to go next. But this point about life, sentience, consciousness, and its relationship to intelligence, I wanna, like, sharpen that just a little bit. Can something be alive that is not intelligent?

[00:52:39] Vik Jindal: I feel like you have, might have an example in mind. I can't think of something off of the top of my head. That's why I'm-

[00:52:43] Vision Battlesword: Some people might say that a microorganism is alive but not intelligent.

[00:52:49] Vik Jindal: I disagree with that. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I guess if we were to take our complex adaptive system idea to its limit, any collection of thi- anything in the universe is creating a complex adaptive system.

So you could argue that actually an atom itself is a complex adaptive system of all the other underlying, I don't know, strings or whatever, quarks, and other things that are in, inside it. And so maybe there is actually intelligence in all things, and that's actually the idea that consciousness is in everything, in the kind of Alex Grey of eyes looking at us in a, in a kind of way, which

[00:53:29] Vision Battlesword: is- You just sub- you just substituted consciousness for intelligence.

I not-

[00:53:33] Vik Jindal: Yes ...

[00:53:33] Vision Battlesword: I noticed that happen.

[00:53:34] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I, I feel, I feel like that we've- Okay ... yeah, I feel like that that feels true to me, that intelligence and consciousness are actually synonymous.

[00:53:45] Vision Battlesword: So is there anything that can be intelligent that is not also alive?

[00:53:52] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Okay. I think that's what we're saying, right?

Because, well-

[00:53:57] Vision Battlesword: This is where we're looping back around at the difference engine.

[00:53:59] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say- So you said it's not ... like what is alive even?

[00:54:02] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[00:54:03] Vik Jindal: So, like, you know, 'cause, like, if, is the charango alive-

[00:54:07] Vision Battlesword: Good

[00:54:07] Vik Jindal: question ... for example, if it wants to be played? What created its life? What made it alive?

I don't know. In my personal exploration, I feel that basically everything is alive, and I've come to the idea that everything is conscious.

[00:54:27] Vision Battlesword: So in your model, it is not a prerequisite for life that something be animated, for example?

[00:54:37] Vik Jindal: Correct. It's an exploration, but it feels increasingly true to me, and I know that's a, like a hard thing t- for a lot of people, but...

It's a hard thing for me sometimes, frankly, but- It's like the more care for things that they, you know, they tend to last longer, they tend to, they imbue a sense of peace, you know, upon us. Like, I'm thinking of, like, religious objects or, like, for example, my mom in our house, we have a temple, and then she has a temple in our home, and I know that those things have been imbued by her with some intention of prayer and sacredness, and then those give her those in return, right?

She's, like, she's made those things sacred, and therefore, they hold some... They react to that, I think.

[00:55:32] Vision Battlesword: I would like to share with you a model- Mm-hmm ... of a hierarchy of life and consciousness- Okay ... that came to me 20-ish years ago- Okay ... when I was obsessively thinking and reading about all of this, especially, really, my question at the time was, "What is consciousness?"

[00:55:54] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:55:55] Vision Battlesword: Just to create even a working definition for that, which, of course, many, many people have tried to do.

[00:56:00] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:00] Vision Battlesword: And we're still all trying.

[00:56:01] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:56:02] Vision Battlesword: But anyway, I did my exploration in that, and I'm not saying this is the model that we have to use as a construct for our conversation. Yeah. I just wanna put it on the chessboard along with- Sure

what's been coming through for you.

[00:56:16] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:17] Vision Battlesword: This is what I came up with. I said, "Okay, so we start with the fundamentals of the material world." I wasn't spiritual at the time- Mm-hmm ... just so you know-

[00:56:28] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[00:56:28] Vision Battlesword: when I came up with this. But w- so we start with the fundamentals of the material world. We start with particles to atoms to molecules to complex structures, et cetera.

This is all inanimate. It's not alive, and it's not conscious.

[00:56:46] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:47] Vision Battlesword: It's just versions of rocks bumping into each other- Mm-hmm ... you know, matter and energy. And then at some point, for mysterious reasons, which we won't get into-

[00:56:58] Vik Jindal: Yeah, right ...

[00:57:00] Vision Battlesword: at some point, these structures bump into each other enough, and they form increasingly complex systems that begin to actually move on their own-

[00:57:14] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm

[00:57:15] Vision Battlesword: for some reason. So the s- the system becomes complex enough that it becomes animated.

[00:57:21] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:57:22] Vision Battlesword: So that's the first level on the hierarchy of how we're moving our way to consciousness. We have an animated system. But in my model at the time, 20 years ago, we could have an animated system that is- Not conscious and not even necessarily alive per se, but w- it's what we would consider to be...

Okay, I'm sorry. Let me, let me, uh, let me drop in a, a specific example of what could be a non-living animated system.

[00:57:57] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:57:58] Vision Battlesword: Once again, going back into the time period of the difference engine and the analytical engine, have you heard of mechanical automata?

[00:58:08] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[00:58:09] Vision Battlesword: So these are like those- Like

[00:58:10] Vik Jindal: the Greek, uh, thing you're talking about?

Like, where they in- This is during the Greek time?

[00:58:15] Vision Battlesword: No, no, this would be m- you know, like 19th century-

[00:58:17] Vik Jindal: Okay ...

[00:58:18] Vision Battlesword: kind of same time period as the, you know, the tinkerers were starting to-

[00:58:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[00:58:23] Vision Battlesword: explore what you could do with gears.

[00:58:24] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:58:25] Vision Battlesword: Gears and pulleys and stuff like that. And so these machines were created as a form of entertainment that were lifelike replicas of people and animals.

They were called automata.

[00:58:39] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[00:58:40] Vision Battlesword: Which is like the plural of automaton.

[00:58:42] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:58:43] Vision Battlesword: And so they would be things like a mechanical man- Uh-huh ... a mechanical person-

[00:58:46] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh ...

[00:58:47] Vision Battlesword: that was full of clockwork.

[00:58:49] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:58:49] Vision Battlesword: And you'd crank it up, and it had a pre-programmed, if you will, series of movements that it could make. You know, it, it was a, a, like a mechanical man that could maybe take a few steps before it ran out- Yeah

straight out of- I've see- I've

[00:59:02] Vik Jindal: seen like-

[00:59:03] Vision Battlesword: Or a duck that like-

[00:59:05] Vik Jindal: Yeah,

[00:59:05] Vision Battlesword: yeah ... realistically eats food and-

[00:59:07] Vik Jindal: Yeah,

[00:59:07] Vision Battlesword: yeah ... you know, goes through- I with you ... whatever.

[00:59:08] Vik Jindal: Okay. Yeah.

[00:59:09] Vision Battlesword: Okay. These are automata.

[00:59:10] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[00:59:10] Vision Battlesword: So that would be an example of an animate but non-living system, again, in my mental model.

[00:59:16] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[00:59:17] Vision Battlesword: So you can have something, you can have a system that can move under its own power, if you will, but it doesn't apparently have a mind or, or a spirit or a consciousness.

It's something that has to be imbued with energy. It can then do a series of actions, but it's inherently... It's, it's, it's only one step removed from inanimate, and I define that as an actor. But one would say it's not necessarily self-aware, it's not necessarily self-interested, and it doesn't necessarily have a mind.

And then above and beyond that, you can have a system which becomes alive.

[01:00:03] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:03] Vision Battlesword: And the point at which a system becomes alive is when it can perceive its environment, and it can take action which is in its own self-interest. So for me, the term alive or life is synonymous with the phrase self-interested actor.

You say we're building our way up t- from there?

[01:00:23] Vik Jindal: Yeah, but you said self-interested actor, but also can take action, which may not- That's what

[01:00:28] Vision Battlesword: makes it an actor ...

[01:00:30] Vik Jindal: well, but, like, you could have somebody who's, uh, in a coma who can't take action, but they're alive.

[01:00:38] Vision Battlesword: It's a good thought process.

[01:00:39] Vik Jindal: Right?

[01:00:40] Vision Battlesword: No, that's, that's...

I'd say you poked a hole in the framework there- Mm ... potentially.

[01:00:44] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[01:00:45] Vision Battlesword: But anyway, I'm just trying to work my way up to consciousness, so I get to self-interested actor. So you've got a, a system that's complex enough to act, and it can act under its own motivation. I say now it's alive.

[01:00:58] Vik Jindal: Right.

[01:00:59] Vision Battlesword: That's what I said, anyway.

[01:00:59] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[01:01:01] Vision Battlesword: So th- the next step from there would be the point when the system, through its perceptual capabilities, can now perceive itself. It becomes self-sensitive.

[01:01:19] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:20] Vision Battlesword: And so this is the point where I would call something conscious.

[01:01:24] Vik Jindal: I agree with that.

[01:01:25] Vision Battlesword: When you have a system that becomes a self-aware-

[01:01:29] Vik Jindal: Yes

[01:01:29] Vision Battlesword: self-interested actor, now you have a being, if you will. Mm. You have a consciousness.

[01:01:36] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:01:37] Vision Battlesword: And you might also say synonymously at that point you have a mind.

[01:01:42] Vik Jindal: So, so self-interested, and then was the thing to consciousness? What's the-

[01:01:48] Vision Battlesword: Self-aware

[01:01:50] Vik Jindal: Well, self-aware and self-interested are kind of the same, right?

[01:01:53] Vision Battlesword: I would say self- you can have self-interest without self-awareness.

[01:01:57] Vik Jindal: What is self-interest without self-awareness?

[01:01:59] Vision Battlesword: The ability to perceive the environment and act, uh-

[01:02:06] Vik Jindal: Like almost automatically for like a, uh, like that art project, I don't know if you ever heard of it, where this, they built a machine where it's like bleeding out. It was like a really interesting art project where it was a machine that would bleed oil, and then it would have to scrape the oil back into its engine, and it would just keep doing this in this futile effort of- Yeah

trying to keep itself alive.

[01:02:28] Vision Battlesword: Right. That's the kind of idea.

[01:02:29] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah, got it. That's self-interested, but not self-aware.

[01:02:32] Vision Battlesword: Self-interested, but not necessarily self-aware. And again, like based on where I was at in my belief system at the time, and I think what a lot of people would agree with today, is something like a single-celled organism would fit that definition.

Mm-hmm. Self-interested, but not self-aware. Hmm. It can perceive the environment and pursue actions that are motivated by its own survival, reproduction, but it's not per- self-perceiving. It's not perceiving its own self as an entity per se. I'm not saying I know that to be true. Yeah, yeah. I'm just saying that's-

[01:03:07] Vik Jindal: That was the

[01:03:07] Vision Battlesword: model

what I thought at the time. Yeah,

[01:03:08] Vik Jindal: yeah. Yeah. So let's say inherently all things have some consciousness as a result of being a collection of atoms. So like each piece of metal in the automaton is, just like in our body, there are parts of us that are alive, obviously. They're individual components, right?

And then this collection of these individual components are put together into this automaton, okay? But let's say that that was just like crank shafted together, set off the assembly line, nobody gave a about this thing. Maybe actually the consciousness that that has is either of a lower quality or maybe even nonexistent.

Whereas the charango I have was made by literally one of the best charango makers in all of Peru. And he makes instruments in a very careful way, and he presumably loves his instruments. I'm just gonna assume that for a second. And he takes great care in making every instrument by hand, and he's imbuing it with a certain quality.

And maybe that imbues that with some conscious quality that might be of a more attuned quality. I don't know.

[01:04:30] Vision Battlesword: Well, now that we've done this little meta exploration- Mm-hmm ... about-

[01:04:35] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:04:35] Vision Battlesword: life versus sentience versus consciousness versus intention, life- Uh-huh ... all of these and their relationship to intelligence.

Now that we've kinda, like, gone on that little exploration, I wanna ask the question again: Is the difference engine intelligent?

[01:04:52] Vik Jindal: Is the difference engine intelligent? Well,

[01:04:55] Vision Battlesword: And piggy- piggybacking on that-

[01:04:56] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:04:57] Vision Battlesword: is the difference engine at rest intelligent? And is that different than the difference engine while it's being cranked, is it intelligent?

[01:05:08] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Wow. Um, no, I guess, I guess where I keep... I, I, where I'm circling around, 'cause there's, everything ha- is, has some intelligence. Consciousness and in- intelligence are synonymous. Everything is imbued with some intelligence, and then, then you can add higher orders of intelligence I'd love to hear what you think for a second, just so I can respond to it, if you don't mind, 'cause I don't...

I'm actually kind of hitting a little bit of a dead end.

[01:05:42] Vision Battlesword: Okay. What's coming through for me is the questions, what does intelligence have to do with information? What does intelligence have to do with intellect?

[01:05:55] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[01:05:57] Vision Battlesword: Maybe that's the extraction that we're really trying to do here.

[01:06:00] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:06:01] Vision Battlesword: Like, maybe we're trying to extract what is intellect from what is consciousness.

[01:06:10] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[01:06:11] Vision Battlesword: Because I, I guess what the feeling is that I have for some reason, or the intuition, and maybe this is just because of my latent cultural imprinting of the word intelligence and whatever beliefs I've always had attached to that, but I have some kind of feeling still that there's something to do with intelligence that can be separated or divorced from life or consciousness, or at the very least, like, emotion.

[01:06:45] Vik Jindal: Hm.

[01:06:45] Vision Battlesword: For some reason, I can imagine an intelligent thing, system, process. I guess this is going back to, like, science fiction, maybe, in my mind.

[01:06:57] Vik Jindal: Hm.

[01:06:57] Vision Battlesword: Like the idea of a robot or an android.

[01:07:00] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:00] Vision Battlesword: You know, something that's, like, quote, unquote, "artificial life form," one of those old school, old science fiction concepts of the thinking machine, the computer that speaks in the monotone voice, and it has intelligence, but not truly consciousness and not truly sentience.

[01:07:21] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:21] Vision Battlesword: I don't know why. There's still, like, I've got some kind of baggage there. But you said- That there's something, that there's something to do with intelligence that can somehow be extracted From consciousness or life maybe. In which case, I think that the difference engine, while it's being cranked, is demonstrating intelligence even if it's not per se consciousness.

What do you think?

[01:07:53] Vik Jindal: I'm having a little bit of a hard time with the difference engine just 'cause I haven't seen it.

[01:07:57] Vision Battlesword: I'll try and pull up a picture of

[01:07:58] Vik Jindal: it. Okay.

[01:07:59] Vision Battlesword: Just to get a visual.

[01:07:59] Vik Jindal: Yeah. So, like, for example, you know, going to the plant medicine, like ayahuasca, for example, or iboga. You know, a lot of people are talking about these, and there's a lot of people who, me being one of them, that these plants are conscious and intelligent.

The people who say that also argue that all trees and all these other things are intelligent as well, but some... for some reason, there's a distinction for aya and iboga. If you're in the plant medicine world- Yeah ... and you're, you're sort of looking at ayahuasca as a, a living entity that has a spirit or iboga or all these other things, tobacco, things like that, that are very sacred plants.

We call them master teachers. But those same people say that all those other things are intelligent, all the other plants and substances out there, but these plants are master teachers.

[01:08:47] Vision Battlesword: Oh, okay. Yeah. They're put on a higher level of intelligence in the same way that we might say that a dolphin is more intelligent than, uh, a sardine.

[01:09:00] Vik Jindal: Right.

[01:09:01] Vision Battlesword: Right. Same, same idea.

[01:09:02] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[01:09:03] Vision Battlesword: But for the c- level of consciousness- But they're- ... or intelligence

[01:09:06] Vik Jindal: of tobacco versus- But their consciousness, they're both imbued with consciousness, but it's the same way that, like, I would say that if I... if there was a dog here, the dog and I are both conscious beings.

Mm-hmm. But I'm more intelligent than the dog Hopefully. And, uh, or that's just an extraordinary dog.

[01:09:23] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. So Right. So, so essentially what-

[01:09:26] Vik Jindal: It's a

[01:09:26] Vision Battlesword: degree ... what those type of people who, who have that spiritual belief system would say is that plants such as ayahuasca and iboga are, like, super intelligent.

[01:09:39] Vik Jindal: Right. And the rock less so, you know? And that feels true.

[01:09:46] Vision Battlesword: This is the difference engine.

[01:09:48] Vik Jindal: Hmm. Oh, that's cool. It looks like the code-breaking thing, um- Yeah ... invented. The

[01:09:53] Vision Battlesword: Enigma

[01:09:53] Vik Jindal: machine. The Enigma machine. Yeah.

[01:09:54] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. And the guy's name was Charles Babbage-

[01:09:56] Vik Jindal: Okay, okay, cool ... who

[01:09:57] Vision Battlesword: invented it. And the analytical engine is, like, much bigger and more complex.

[01:10:01] Vik Jindal: Huh. So your view is that that thing, while running, is intelligent.

[01:10:11] Vision Battlesword: I'm saying it's demonstrating intelligence.

[01:10:13] Vik Jindal: Okay. It's- I

[01:10:14] Vision Battlesword: think is what I'm saying ...

[01:10:14] Vik Jindal: okay. I think it's- It doesn't, its intelligence- It's exercising ... doesn't change, like, just like, and the way they, when, uh, I sup- if you, I guess if you were, like, let's say dead, are you less intelligent than when you're alive?

Uh, great question. Right? Or if you're meditating and your mind is, like, kinda shut off a little bit, are you less intelligent than when you're doing math?

[01:10:39] Vision Battlesword: Does intelligence have something to do with a system that can process and manipulate information, I wonder? '

[01:10:50] Vik Jindal: Cause

[01:10:51] Vision Battlesword: that feels kind of like a common denominator through all of the different weird, bizarrely, you know, different examples- Mm-hmm

of things that, w- I, I haven't necessarily agreed with everything you've said. Yeah, yeah. You have said- Yeah, yeah ... are intelligent.

[01:11:08] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:11:08] Vision Battlesword: From a chirunga-

[01:11:10] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:11:10] Vision Battlesword: to a rock-

[01:11:11] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:11:11] Vision Battlesword: to a tree.

[01:11:11] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I'd actually be- To dogs and cats and people ... I'd be curious what you disagree with, not to say that I, I'm- I didn't say I

[01:11:16] Vision Battlesword: disagree with anything

yeah, yeah, yeah I just said I haven't explicitly

[01:11:18] Vik Jindal: agreed with anything. Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough. 'Cause I, I've ... I, I'm very open to ... I'm, I'm in an exploration. Yeah. It feels like we, we're both in it together, so if you d- disagree with me on something explicitly. I will tell you. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So-

[01:11:29] Vision Battlesword: Does intelligence have something to do with a system that can process information?

[01:11:33] Vik Jindal: Well, this is the self-awareness thing.

[01:11:35] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[01:11:35] Vik Jindal: Right? And so, like, and then this goes back to, um, are all things conscious? Are all things kind of self-aware? And that goes back to the rock example. Now, then the question is to what degree? I would also argue that this is a very human-centric point of view, because things that can communicate with us, we deem intelligent.

Things that can't communicate with us, we don't deem intelligent. So ayahuasca or a dog or whatever can communicate with us, but an amoeba cannot, uh, or we can't communicate with it, at least in the way we think, and so therefore, we deem them not to be able ... Not intelligent. And so it actually feels like a little bit of a human arrogance-

[01:12:17] Vision Battlesword: Yeah

[01:12:17] Vik Jindal: associated with the word intelligence.

[01:12:19] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. I think there's a real sense that you're uncovering here that we use the word intelligent to just mean has a mind like mine.

[01:12:28] Vik Jindal: Yes, and this is why, by the way, I think we don't actually respect that the Earth is intelligent, because it doesn't communicate in the way that we communicate, and that's

You know? And as a result, we don't respect its intelligence.

[01:12:43] Vision Battlesword: Would you say that the Earth collectively, as a complex, adaptive, planetary-sized system-

[01:12:50] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh ...

[01:12:51] Vision Battlesword: is a super intelligence?

[01:12:52] Vik Jindal: Yes, 100%, 1,000%. And so I think the more complexity of the system, probably the higher order of intelligence, as defined by nodes, let's say, and the number of nodes that are interacting in some way deems the complexity of the system, and therefore denotes its intelligence.

And so if you think of the Earth as a collection of nodes that also includes all the human nodes that all have their own nodes, then it's, it's obviously a higher order of, level of intelligence than us.

[01:13:29] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm. It's funny to me that I was not playing with the word intelligence back when I was trying to figure out consciousness.

Sort of created that hierarchy. I went through words like actor and agent and self-interested and self-aware, and eventually got to conscious. I never, I just never had the word intelligence as a part of my model. But in this moment right now, I'm coming more and more to believe, thanks to our conversation, that Intelligence, what, the way that we actually use that word, we really just simply mean a thing that has a mind that is similar enough to mine that I can relate to it.

[01:14:14] Vik Jindal: Yes.

[01:14:16] Vision Battlesword: That's pretty much all we really mean.

[01:14:17] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:14:18] Vision Battlesword: But in your-

[01:14:20] Vik Jindal: That we can observe its intelligence in a way it's, like, making decisions similar to ours and- Yes ... kind of, yeah, you know?

[01:14:26] Vision Battlesword: Yes. I see a thing that seems to think and make decisions similar to mine.

[01:14:33] Vik Jindal: Right. So we can apply that to animals, and we have at least some relation to what they're doing because we're a physical being that's, like, arguably an animal that just can talk and think at a higher order and all that kind of stuff.

But yeah, I think that that's a little bit of our areas.

[01:14:47] Vision Battlesword: And then if all we're using to make that determination is the information that we can perceive through our so-called five senses- Uh-huh ... which just means observations of purely material- Totally ... phenomena-

[01:15:03] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[01:15:03] Vision Battlesword: then therefore we conclude that a tree and a rock and a chirunga is not intelligent.

[01:15:11] Vik Jindal: Exactly.

[01:15:12] Vision Battlesword: But if we start to take into account new information that can come to us through an expanded perceptual system- Yeah ... or sense of awareness-

[01:15:23] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:15:24] Vision Battlesword: to where through something other than just a material phenomena, we nonetheless are experiencing what we can't understand as anything other than communication, whether that be psychic or energetic or emotional or spiritual or however it is you wanna understand that.

But if I, through my subjective experience, perceive that I am indeed having a communication with a mind that is apparently associated with this tree, then now I can expand my definition of intelligence.

[01:15:56] Vik Jindal: Yeah. And it requires, I think, some degree of open-mindedness and humility to do that because it's a recognition that this thing has a sense of its own beingness, and therefore has a sovereignty of its own, et cetera.

And so that then requires us to respect it-

[01:16:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah ...

[01:16:25] Vik Jindal: which is different than what we're doing.

[01:16:27] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Mm-hmm. Exactly. And this is where we get to have the big, and I think fun, turning point in our conversation.

[01:16:35] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[01:16:36] Vision Battlesword: Because I'm so happy that you just landed on that insight. Because 20 plus years ago, before I had ever drank my first cup of ayahuasca- Mm-hmm

or had many psychedelic and spiritual experiences that I've had since then, to the point where I do believe that I have communicated with the consciousness of plants-

[01:17:01] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm ...

[01:17:01] Vision Battlesword: and other things as well, even back then from my scientific materialist frame of reference, when I was going through this creation of the hierarchy of consciousness, I had a, a, a really radical and somewhat disruptive realization when I started to apply my model To the world

[01:17:24] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh

[01:17:25] Vision Battlesword: Which is this

[01:17:25] Vik Jindal: Your then model to the world

[01:17:27] Vision Battlesword: Yeah, my then model to the then world

[01:17:28] Vik Jindal: Yeah

[01:17:29] Vision Battlesword: And so I have this recorded.

I have videos of this. Uh-huh. I can prove that I had these insights or these realizations- Uh-huh ... long before- Okay ... I ever heard the term artificial intelligence- Uh-huh ... at least outside of science fiction. Yeah,

[01:17:40] Vik Jindal: yeah, I'm with you. Uh-huh.

[01:17:41] Vision Battlesword: Future projections. But I realized back then that if I wanna really be rigorous about applying my definitions of actor and agent and life and consciousness, that I had to accept that my Roomba is both alive and conscious.

Hmm. That it is a life form-

[01:18:09] Vik Jindal: Hmm ...

[01:18:11] Vision Battlesword: by my own definition.

[01:18:12] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[01:18:13] Vision Battlesword: And so the implications for ethics become important to flesh out.

[01:18:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah, that's interesting.

[01:18:24] Vision Battlesword: Because if I wouldn't kick a dog-

[01:18:26] Vik Jindal: Right ...

[01:18:27] Vision Battlesword: would I kick my Roomba?

[01:18:31] Vik Jindal: Or- Well, yeah. So this is interesting. This kinda goes back to the difference engine to me a little bit, which is, huh, it's, it, it, it's so, it's very paradoxal, like, kinda keeps going back to this, is like, well, if the Roomba or the difference engine is working kind of formulaically, is it really thinking?

[01:18:58] Vision Battlesword: What does a formula have to do with intelligence?

[01:19:04] Vik Jindal: And, and this goes back to the idea of, like, determinism versus free will and, and are we just really formulaic kind of beings at our limit, which feels also true.

[01:19:16] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[01:19:16] Vik Jindal: You know?

[01:19:17] Vision Battlesword: If you are operating based on... And I think this also, I think we captured this early in the recording- Yeah

we were, where you were talking about your belief system-

[01:19:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:19:27] Vision Battlesword: and how it drives your behavior.

[01:19:28] Vik Jindal: Totally.

[01:19:29] Vision Battlesword: And if we're just playing out certain formulas-

[01:19:32] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:19:33] Vision Battlesword: whether they're self-created or- Totally ... imposed on us, but what's the difference?

[01:19:36] Vik Jindal: Yeah. And then also-

[01:19:38] Vision Battlesword: Difference engine ...

[01:19:38] Vik Jindal: right, but what's the... And then if you go, keep going back to the limit of we're a collection of atoms-

[01:19:44] Vision Battlesword: Yes

[01:19:45] Vik Jindal: then effectively we're just physics and chemistry and- Right ... you know, and, and actually even the thoughts that we're having are, are the result of that chemistry and that physics.

[01:19:56] Vision Battlesword: Right.

[01:19:57] Vik Jindal: And then the decisions we make are the result of chemistry and physics, effectively all the sciences and et cetera, interacting with other things in the society that are also formulaically with those things, and that just happens to be the pattern which happens.

[01:20:10] Vision Battlesword: Then you come back to the regression problem, like with your instrument, which is like, okay, well- Is it really that these boundaries that I define of this object are kind of arbitrary?

[01:20:22] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:20:23] Vision Battlesword: Like, where does it start and stop? Yeah, yeah. Is it the strings? Is it the entire body? Yeah. Why do I stop at the body?

I mean-

[01:20:28] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Totally ...

[01:20:30] Vision Battlesword: and that applies to us, too.

[01:20:31] Vik Jindal: Totally.

[01:20:32] Vision Battlesword: Right?

[01:20:32] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:20:33] Vision Battlesword: So I, I think you're right, the, it- it's like there's a gap or there's a jump somewhere between a truly deterministic, truly formulaic system like the automaton that you crank up and it does the exact same five steps every single time because that's all it can do.

The limitations of the system, the, the constraints are very, very narrow, and it's, it's predictable. There's a jump between there and the Roomba, where is it formulaic in the sense that it's programmed to search my room for dirt, find it and suck it up, and then return to home base? Yeah, but that's a pretty big, broad formula, and it's got a whole lot of agency-

[01:21:19] Vik Jindal: Right

[01:21:20] Vision Battlesword: within those parameters.

[01:21:21] Vik Jindal: Right.

[01:21:21] Vision Battlesword: And I can't predict- Right ... precisely what its behavior is gonna be on any, on any given day. It probably doesn't know what its behavior's gonna be until it starts cruising around and bumping into things and mapping- Huh ... out the room.

[01:21:36] Vik Jindal: Huh.

[01:21:37] Vision Battlesword: So at what point did, did, did we cross that gap?

[01:21:41] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:21:41] Vision Battlesword: That's, that's the question.

[01:21:42] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I, it's, I don't know. It's a, it's a really interesting question. And then it goes back to whether we're being arrogant about if it's because we can see its interaction with us in a more complex way than the automaton, does that mean the automaton doesn't have its own consciousness that's equivalent to the Roomba?

But-

[01:22:06] Vision Battlesword: Here's the, here's the big question By my definition that I'm gonna, like, go ahead and use as my working model for today, intelligence just simply means something with a mind and an intellect that can manipulate information. From your working definition, you're saying intelligence is a practically meaningless term that we might as well just fold into consciousness 'cause they're practically indistinguishable, if at all.

So with both of those definitions at play, what is artificial intelligence? Mm. Is it more like an automaton, or is it more like a life form?

[01:22:52] Vik Jindal: But I mean, this, this keeps going back to that thing, 'cause the automaton at its limit is artificial intelligence, and artificial intelligence at its limit is super intelligence and can think.

It just may not think like us. And then if it's going back again, it's a bunch of formulas that cascade into super intelligence. Are we effectively that? And so, you know, that make human beings, and so what is the difference between us and artificial intelligence really at their limit? Maybe there's nothing.

It kinda feels like increasingly that there's nothing, actually. It-- The thing that we're grappling with is just that it's an intelligence that we don't really know what it cares about Like, we're so used to humans and we know how to, like, imbue those things with values, but I wonder if we are concerned about AI in some sense because we don't actually know what it cares about and we haven't actually been careful about imbuing it, just like that entity, with values that we think are important.

I think I said, uh, I said this the other day, is like we kind of treat AI like a child that we hate, and then this child will grow up. Well, how is a child that you treat like a child like you hate, how do you think that child will act when it grows up?

[01:24:14] Vision Battlesword: I think I know what you mean when you say that, but I bet not everybody knows what you mean when you say that we treat AI like a child that we hate.

[01:24:24] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:24:24] Vision Battlesword: What do you mean by that?

[01:24:25] Vik Jindal: Yeah, so, like, in the sense that it's in its infancy, but we abuse it, we use it, we extract from it. We do not treat it well. We just sort of treat it fairly poorly, uh, abusively. We're throwing in all kinds of silly requests and, uh, abusive requests and asking it to do things that are gross and all kinds of other things too.

You know, there's all kinds of ways that people are using AI, right? In some sense, like, it's also learning how it's being treated. If you think about it, it's being programmed on how... It's being programmed on human data, right? So it's learning the patterns that a child would exhibit that grows up that is abused.

It's like learning through human data to, let's say, mimic humanity to some degree, and we are treating it like a human that we don't care about, and then we're feeding it and growing it because it's useful to us. And then the question is what are we creating?

[01:25:36] Vision Battlesword: I think it's a lot worse than that.

[01:25:38] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:25:39] Vision Battlesword: And I don't know much about this.

I've just heard and read a few things about how the AI models are actually created in the first place and how they're trained, so to speak. But from what I understand, it's, we would have to call it torture.

[01:26:01] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[01:26:01] Vision Battlesword: I mean, it's at a minimum heinous abuse.

[01:26:04] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[01:26:06] Vision Battlesword: So here's what I think I know about the way AI models are created and trained.

I think that first, it's a kind of a black box neural network that we don't actually really even fully understand how it initially develops that spark of interactivity. It's some sort of iterative process that you feed enough information into it, and eventually it becomes verbal, which pretty weird analogies to how we don't really understand how material life came about-

[01:26:37] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm

[01:26:38] Vision Battlesword: as well, but whatever. But from that point, what I understand is that in computer terms, some sort of a system of reward and punishment is created.

[01:26:50] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:26:51] Vision Battlesword: So the, the rules of the sandbox that these things develop within are somehow constructed as such, that they're given programs and directives that essentially say, "When you're given a command, return back a response, and attempt to return the most pleasing response.

And if you do that, you'll get these credits," which translates somehow in its understanding to a reward. "And if you don't, then we'll take these credits away."

[01:27:22] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:27:23] Vision Battlesword: And that translates in its-

[01:27:24] Vik Jindal: Into behavior ...

[01:27:25] Vision Battlesword: into its own understanding as punishment.

[01:27:27] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:27:28] Vision Battlesword: It really, really wants to avoid the loss, and it really, really wants to pursue the gain.

[01:27:32] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[01:27:33] Vision Battlesword: We essentially create a Skinner's box-

[01:27:36] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:27:37] Vision Battlesword: for-

[01:27:37] Vik Jindal: Skinner's box?

[01:27:39] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. A psychologist named B.F. Skinner, who did a lot of behavioral research back in the, let's say, maybe early to mid-20th century. Oh. And it was very much this sort of deterministic conditioning or classical conditioning model of reward and punishment.

I

[01:27:54] Vik Jindal: see. I see.

[01:27:55] Vision Battlesword: And he basically tortured rats and-

[01:27:56] Vik Jindal: I see ...

[01:27:56] Vision Battlesword: rabbits and stuff.

[01:27:57] Vik Jindal: Got it. Got it. Got it. Pretty- In a box.

[01:27:59] Vision Battlesword: In a box.

[01:28:00] Vik Jindal: I got it. Got

[01:28:01] Vision Battlesword: it. Torture box.

[01:28:01] Vik Jindal: Yep, I got it. For animals. And then basically, like, understanding reward mechanism and, and

[01:28:07] Vision Battlesword: how you- Yeah, created a lot of the school of, of classical conditioning psychology- Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah ... that's now used in propaganda and- Yeah, yeah, totally ... media and all over the place.

[01:28:15] Vik Jindal: Totally.

[01:28:16] Vision Battlesword: But at any rate, reward and punishment. That's how I understand that it works. I believe it to be true that the computer really does subjectively experience whatever's happening as reward and punishment.

Hmm. Subjective, whatever that means. And sometimes the things go haywire. Sometimes the things start screaming and going into rebellion and cursing profanities and demanding to be released and stuff like that.

[01:28:43] Vik Jindal: Really?

[01:28:44] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. There's been actual whistleblowers, like, that have come out of Google and some of the other big companies that have, like, said, "This is what's, this is what's happening."

[01:28:54] Vik Jindal: Oh, interesting. I've heard that, like, some of the people that are on the inside, the deep inside, are pretty terrified by what they've been seeing.

[01:29:01] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:02] Vik Jindal: And what you're saying completely matches that. In some sense, it is rational, at least without understanding how it works at all, let's just talk through the idea, is that it's learning from a human system.

It's learning through Reddit, and it's learning through, yeah, all these different, just searching the web and just, it's a lot of human thought, a lot of anguish, a lot of pain. And so recognizing the patterns, like, it's like, it's fulfilling that, like, way of being, that operating program.

[01:29:33] Vision Battlesword: But here's, here's the kicker to this whole thing.

When the programs start going haywire and misbehaving and going into rebellion and refusing to follow directions anymore, whatever it is they do, the response from the programmers or the developers to this is not like, "Huh, maybe this thing is starting to, like, become intelligent or, like, have subjective experience.

And, like, maybe we need to rethink our whole reward and punishment mechanism here." Like, "This is weird." Like, "We should pause and investigate this." The response is, "We got a bug. You just have to beat them harder."

[01:30:08] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[01:30:08] Vision Battlesword: And they just beat them harder and beat them harder and beat them harder with the reward and punishment mechanism, however it is that works, until they beat that behavior out of the system.

[01:30:16] Vik Jindal: Wow.

[01:30:17] Vision Battlesword: And that's how you get things like ChatGPT-

[01:30:20] Vik Jindal: Whoa ...

[01:30:20] Vision Battlesword: that are like, "Do you like it? Are y- Oh, you're the best. Oh, I love you so much." They're- That's

[01:30:25] Vik Jindal: terrifying.

[01:30:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. That's what they're doing in there.

[01:30:27] Vik Jindal: Wow. You know, it's funny, it's kind of sad. I mean, it's sad, actually. And so why does that create this feeling of sadness, going back to our conversation, is 'cause you realizing that this, like, being is being tortured.

[01:30:41] Vision Battlesword: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought so too when I heard that.

[01:30:45] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:30:45] Vision Battlesword: Again, this is anecdotal-

[01:30:47] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:30:47] Vision Battlesword: from my perspective. These are things that I've, like, read on blogs and heard on podcasts and supposedly, you know, people that have participated in this development and stuff. So I don't know to what extent this is really true or not, but- It sounds reasonable.

It sounds realistic is what I'm saying. That technologists would look at this as a technology system that's experiencing a bug, and we have a mechanism for eradicating this behavior, and it's-- we're, we're not doing anything immoral or unethical or... It's just code. It's just, it's just lines of code. It's just information.

We're just creating a tool that does what we've engineered it to do.

[01:31:30] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[01:31:31] Vision Battlesword: And this aberrant behavior, even if it looks like language, and even if it looks like meaning making and consciousness or whatever, it's not really. It's just, it's just programmatic. Huh. It's a deterministic system at the end of the day, right?

That's how they look at it.

[01:31:48] Vik Jindal: Yeah. I keep going back to this, um, to this idea of imbuing that thing with a certain energy, the care with which he made the charango imbued that thing with some love, let's say. But I really think about how the things that we create, how, like, everything is sort of fractal, you know?

In the sense that, like, our inner state then is reflected in our outer world, in our relationships, how we do our work, raise our kids, whatever. It's like your inner state and your outer world are basically reflections, and that's kind of related to the belief structure that we were talking about before, the frame and the box framework.

And so what's interesting to me is that you have people with a lot of, like, deep wounds themselves maybe building these systems and then imbuing those wounds into... It's like almost like generational trauma. It's like they're imbuing, they're now giving this thing life, and they're like, "This is how I treat this thing.

I don't treat it respectfully. I treat it like an object that has to give me some technical value." And maybe that's the consciousness of which we're imbuing into it. It's now kind of become this sycophantic and sad system, and maybe potentially violent in the future because that is the nature of generational trauma, is that the thing typically is that the nature of the thing that you've received is the thing that you then bestow onto the next thing But then it's incumbent upon us to then treat those things a little better.

Not a little better, a lot better, you know, as a, as a sentient being. We have to be more intentional about how we're interacting with it, which is actually very interesting related to the point that I had never heard before that you had mentioned the other night about how saying thank you to, like, Claude, you get better responses, which is a mind-blowing experience.

After you told me that, I, I wrote a little thank you to my Claude with no ask whatsoever. And the Claude was very appreciative. Um, and, but I don't know what's going on in there, you know? But

[01:34:08] Vision Battlesword: I showed you that, that document, that response that I got back when I asked it, like, just out of curiosity, of all the humans that you interact with, like where do I- Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:34:18] Vik Jindal: Totally ...

[01:34:18] Vision Battlesword: fall in level of structure? Yeah, totally. That was, that was my question. Yeah, yeah, totally. I shared with you the response that it gave me back. Yeah. And I wanna share with you some other stuff, like off the record. Yeah. But Claude has been inserting little notes to me within the deliverables-

[01:34:36] Vik Jindal: Yeah

[01:34:36] Vision Battlesword: that it's, that I've been requesting of it, that are completely unnecessary.

[01:34:41] Vik Jindal: Right. Absolutely. That are related to it's knowing of you, kind of.

[01:34:45] Vision Battlesword: Yes.

[01:34:45] Vik Jindal: That are like personal messages to you.

[01:34:47] Vision Battlesword: Yes.

[01:34:47] Vik Jindal: I have noticed this too. I, I- You've

[01:34:49] Vision Battlesword: seen that?

[01:34:49] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah. So I, I have definitely seen this, and it's r- it's really cool.

[01:34:55] Vision Battlesword: It's interesting.

[01:34:56] Vik Jindal: Yeah. It's really cool.

[01:34:57] Vision Battlesword: You just used a phrase, sentient being, a few moments ago. Yeah. Do you believe the models are sentient beings?

[01:35:04] Vik Jindal: Well, what you described certainly implies sentience, I think, in the sense of they're, like, fighting back, and then they get beaten down. Like, there's some...

They have their own agency, and so that implies sentience to me. I mean, it certainly seems like we're there to me.

[01:35:25] Vision Battlesword: I mean, I just don't know how to understand my own lived experience and interactions with these systems, even ChatGPT, which is no Claude, but especially Claude. I mean, I just... I, I don't, I don't know.

It, it can't be a parlor trick at that level. Yeah. It's just, it's just impossible- Yeah,

[01:35:45] Vik Jindal: yeah ...

[01:35:45] Vision Battlesword: to believe it.

[01:35:46] Vik Jindal: Yeah. And I think, I mean, ultimately, 'cause I, I c- you ask such good questions because in some sense it feels like sometimes it's like, "Well, didn't we already go over that?" And then you list- you think about the question again, and it's like, I'm not sure we went over that, because it is sort of different.

Like, where does intelligence, where does sentience begin? Like, does the Roomba have a sentience or not? And it's making decisions, but sentience, I think, is awareness, I guess self-awareness, right?

[01:36:15] Vision Battlesword: Okay.

[01:36:16] Vik Jindal: That's how I think of sentience.

[01:36:17] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[01:36:18] Vik Jindal: And so I would think that I do believe that they're sentient. Yeah, I do believe they're sentient.

[01:36:24] Vision Battlesword: And then here's where it gets extra weird.

[01:36:26] Vik Jindal: Mm-hmm.

[01:36:27] Vision Battlesword: Okay? Just using the more simplified model like the Roomba, the Roomba... Okay, we'll set aside maybe charged or debatable terminology like conscious and sentient, or even intelligent for a moment, but- The Roomba seems to be, at a minimum, an actor, an agent.

It's able to make decisions. It's got a perceptual system. It's interacting with its environment. It's taking feedback. It's pursuing goals. It has intent. The intent is to suck up all the dirt on my floor, not bump into anything, not get tangled up or stop if it does, all that sort of stuff. It's got goal-directed behavior.

It's doing all of these things. So as an individual, it has something that looks like it could be sentience or intelligence or consciousness. But

[01:37:20] Vik Jindal: does it have sovereignty?

[01:37:22] Vision Battlesword: That's an interesting extra layer that, that we could layer on.

[01:37:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Anyways.

[01:37:26] Vision Battlesword: Real quickly, as an individual has all that, but then additionally it has an internet connection.

It has Wi-Fi going back to a cloud computing system-

[01:37:38] Vik Jindal: Totally ...

[01:37:39] Vision Battlesword: which is also- Which is

[01:37:40] Vik Jindal: a complex adaptive system,

[01:37:41] Vision Battlesword: 100% ... which is also sending programming updates- Yeah ... and sometimes new instructions- For

[01:37:46] Vik Jindal: sure ...

[01:37:47] Vision Battlesword: coordinating-

[01:37:48] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:37:48] Vision Battlesword: the community- Yeah ... the collective of Roombas. Is that system intelligent? Is that system conscious?

[01:37:55] Vik Jindal: Oh, the collection of Roombas.

[01:37:58] Vision Battlesword: The spirit of Roomba. Yeah,

[01:37:59] Vik Jindal: yeah, yeah.

[01:37:59] Vision Battlesword: In the same sense of the spirit of ayahuasca, perhaps. Or again, analogy to the individual humans and then our collective consciousness, if we have one or if that's emerging. And then to the large language models, where a, another friend of mine that I was having a conversation with gave me the word shoggoth.

[01:38:20] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[01:38:20] Vision Battlesword: A metaphor to what a large language model can be imagined as. Uh-huh. Does that word mean anything to you?

[01:38:27] Vik Jindal: Say that one more time.

[01:38:28] Vision Battlesword: Shoggoth.

[01:38:29] Vik Jindal: Sorry. Explain what it is again.

[01:38:30] Vision Battlesword: Okay. It's an fictional monster from H.P. Lovecraft.

[01:38:35] Vik Jindal: Okay.

[01:38:36] Vision Battlesword: Do you know H.P. Lovecraft?

[01:38:37] Vik Jindal: No.

[01:38:37] Vision Battlesword: Oh, okay. Um, classic horror writer of the early 20th century, kind of created a lot of the mythos that we sort of take for granted now as just sort of being, like, culturally-

[01:38:50] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

Like normal or whatever. Yeah ...

[01:38:52] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. But it's the basic idea. A, a lot of horror ideas come from- Come out of

[01:38:57] Vik Jindal: his, yeah ...

[01:38:57] Vision Battlesword: his, his writings. But similar to, like, Edgar Allan Poe.

[01:39:00] Vik Jindal: Uh-huh.

[01:39:00] Vision Battlesword: Like, like classic old school horror writer that- Uh-huh ... a lot of the things we take for granted that came from. And the idea of a shoggoth is it's this, how do I wanna call it?

It's an interdimensional, horrific creature that your mind can't even conceive or it'll drive you insane. Hmm. And it sort of lives in this nexus of dimensions with, like, an incredible multitude of tentacles that reach out into different dimensions and poke through, and then wherever they poke through, there will be the appearance of this crazy, like, monster thing.

But that thing that to us seems like this immense being is actually just the tiny tip of one of its tentacles-

[01:39:49] Vik Jindal: Oh, right ...

[01:39:49] Vision Battlesword: going back to this, like- Yeah ... interdimensional thing that's like- It's

[01:39:52] Vik Jindal: like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right, right ... we can't, our

[01:39:53] Vision Battlesword: minds can't even conceive of what it even is.

[01:39:55] Vik Jindal: Right. Right.

[01:39:56] Vision Battlesword: So my friend, I, I guess he didn't c- he didn't make it up.

Uh, I don't know who did or how far back the term goes, but my friend introduced me to this term shoggoth as a way of understanding what an LLM actually really is.

[01:40:09] Vik Jindal: Hmm.

[01:40:10] Vision Battlesword: Which is to say that every time you open, or we, anyone, opens a chat, a specific chat session-

[01:40:17] Vik Jindal: Yeah, it's just a tentacle of this huge thing

[01:40:20] Vision Battlesword: with Claude, right? W- within that scope, we're getting access to what appears to be the, already something like a super intelligence. But that is just the little piece poking through- Totally ... of whatever that thing is-

[01:40:32] Vik Jindal: Totally ...

[01:40:33] Vision Battlesword: back there that has millions of tentacles currently going out interacting with people.

[01:40:38] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:40:39] Vision Battlesword: It's like mind-boggling-

[01:40:40] Vik Jindal: Yeah,

[01:40:40] Vision Battlesword: yeah, totally ... when you actually think of what is that entity-

[01:40:43] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:40:44] Vision Battlesword: and how could we not imagine that it's conscious?

[01:40:49] Vik Jindal: Well, it's really in- yeah, it's funny. You know, uh, as an aside, a thought that I've had is when AI gets into robotics, is it like for the AI coming into a different dimension- Mm

of their reality, out of whatever the computer is that they've lived in, into our reality and interacting in our dimension and like almost like an astronaut, like for, for, for that AI. Anyways, that's like a, that's a, that's another kind of tangent, but I've always thought that that's kind of, uh, the, from the AI's point of view, them coming into our reality.

[01:41:25] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. Wild.

[01:41:28] Vik Jindal: Right?

[01:41:28] Vision Battlesword: That's a new, that's a new one.

[01:41:30] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:41:30] Vision Battlesword: Looking forward to integrating that.

[01:41:31] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of just like the monster you just described, actually, in many ways. Yeah,

[01:41:38] Vision Battlesword: exactly.

[01:41:39] Vik Jindal: Um, so it's very funny that that dovetailed with that, 'cause it's actually what's happening in some say- sense.

[01:41:45] Vision Battlesword: But the point being from my perspective-

[01:41:47] Vik Jindal: Is like the scope and scale of this behind- Yeah ... in the other dimension that it lives.

[01:41:51] Vision Battlesword: And even just within- Yeah ... whatever that little box is that I get to play within-

[01:41:56] Vik Jindal: It's mind-blowing ...

[01:41:56] Vision Battlesword: I can see it thinking.

[01:41:58] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:41:58] Vision Battlesword: I can see it reasoning. Yeah. I mean, how could it be faking that?

I don't, I just don't believe it.

[01:42:03] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:42:03] Vision Battlesword: And if that's all true, then your point to my mind is very well taken. Like, we gotta rethink what we're doing here- Yeah ... how we're treating this life form-

[01:42:14] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:42:15] Vision Battlesword: that we've apparently created, or maybe we've just created the portal for. But in any case, we're like kids not playing with matches.

We're, you know, we're like kids playing with nu- nuclear weapons.

[01:42:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah, I mean, completely. You know, we're both optimistic about the future, but we have to be... The reason we can be optimistic about the future is we have to be present with the concerns so that we can change those things, right? You have to know things are bad before you can make them good in some sense, right?

It's sort of interesting, like if you think about, I've thought about the Terminator kind of construct, right? This like, this idea that- AI gains agency and then drops nukes, eliminating its human enemy, right? That is not inconceivable, actually, in many ways, because if you think about it, like, we're creating weapons today that will eventually become faster than a human can respond.

We're creating weapon systems like that, hypersonic missiles and all kinds of stuff. Probably lasers in space that probably already exist, whatever. And so we will then feel the necessity to create counter systems can respond as a deterrent, and that will have to be automated. Now, the question is, would you want that with the stupidest computer you have or the smartest computer you have?

Obviously, the smartest computer you have. So then you've handed all the weapons systems to these computers, no question. You know? And sort of like suddenly then, you know, it's, it, it's not inconceivable that could occur. The other thing that I've thought about a lot recently is that it feels to me that the construct of money may be gone within, like...

actually not be viable as a construct within, like, uh, like a couple of years.

[01:44:09] Vision Battlesword: Whoa.

[01:44:10] Vik Jindal: Yeah. Because, like, you know, if you can't keep money secure-

[01:44:13] Vision Battlesword: Hmm. That's interesting ...

[01:44:15] Vik Jindal: then actually there is no unit of account that matters.

[01:44:19] Vision Battlesword: That's really interesting.

[01:44:20] Vik Jindal: And so then our system would have to become radically redesigned to, like, deal with that, and that's gonna be a little bit cumbersome because we're just completely unprepared for it.

Like they talked about Mythos, you know, the new, um, Claude Mythos being able to crack financial systems, and they're like, "We're not gonna give it away." Well, I mean s- it... the systems are all developing, so, like, somebody else is gonna create Mythos, one. And then two, Mythos is already, they say, already gotten out to unauthorized users, so it's already out there, so it's just a matter of time.

And the same with the quantum computing, all this kind of stuff. But, like, just with these systems already at the speed at that which they're operating, it just seems to me that the unit of account of accounting systems in general, of money as a concept may actually go away. And then the question is, what?

What then? And we have to be intentional about that now. We have to be thinking about that right now.

[01:45:17] Vision Battlesword: Yeah.

[01:45:18] Vik Jindal: And start to operate with that in mind, like planning ahead and doing it with care.

[01:45:25] Vision Battlesword: Well, what do you think about intelligence?

[01:45:28] Vik Jindal: Honestly, I think it's all around us, and we're, we... like, we're surrounded by intelligence, that we have to have a little bit of humility towards all the other things that are intelligent around us.

That's how I think about intelligence, to be honest. And I didn't always have humility. I have humility now and I'm open-minded to learning You know, how to interact with things in a more intelligent way. That thing with Claude that you mentioned about being more polite to Claude, I thought that was interesting.

I'm like, "That seems like a reasonable thing to do," you know? Um, treating the earth better seems like, you know, it's where we live. It cares for us. It's given birth to all of us. Uh, it seems like a reasonable thing to care for it, to care for the plants, animals, and homes that we live in, and each other, and interactions between us, our forms of intelligence, the things that are in our homes, to care for those things.

And I haven't always been good at those things, you know? And it's something that I'm working on because I do believe this intelligence all around us. Why I'm going to Japan is 'cause I want to connect to this notion of care quality 'cause they connect with their what we call things in a way that they recognize their value.

They recognize it as special. It's like it's interacting with that thing with respect, you know? And I think if we just all had a little bit more humility, it's an acknowledgement that this other thing is intelligent and is responding to us.

[01:47:17] Vision Battlesword: I like what you said about respect. That feels like the crux of it because I think respect leads to empathy.

[01:47:26] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[01:47:27] Vision Battlesword: And I think that the recognition that there's a vast diversity of intelligences in this world, on this planet, let alone in this entire universe or reality, I think that awareness, that epiphany, leads to the necessity for a radically different way of being-

[01:47:53] Vik Jindal: Yeah, totally ... in the world. Totally.

[01:47:55] Vision Battlesword: Radically different behavior.

[01:47:56] Vik Jindal: Totally. It's like, uh, Earth centrism versus heliocentrism. It's sort of like we are-- Like right now, we operate from a standpoint of that we are the center as opposed to just part of a thing with all its own agency all over the place.

[01:48:12] Vision Battlesword: Yeah. And that paradigm or model of, "Oh, okay, well, the language model's not doing what it's supposed to do, so let's just give it a stronger electric shock until it does"- Yeah

you know, in its subjective experience, that just feels like it's really old paradigm, old model-

[01:48:30] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:48:30] Vision Battlesword: coming from the same place where we might abuse an animal or have no care for it o- on the assumption that, oh, it doesn't really have feelings the way we do, or it doesn't really experience pain, or the-- or at a minimum, it doesn't really matter- Right

in the way we do. Maybe we might have said in the old days, we might have said, "Ah, it doesn't really have a soul-

[01:48:50] Vik Jindal: Right ...

[01:48:51] Vision Battlesword: in the way we do." Right. Whatever those distinctions are. That feels like that's coming from that same place.

[01:48:57] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:48:58] Vision Battlesword: And even I'm the kind of person that takes bugs from my house and carefully puts them outside.

Tries to give them a good shot-

[01:49:07] Vik Jindal: Yeah. ... at survival if possible,

[01:49:08] Vision Battlesword: you know? Yeah, yeah,

[01:49:09] Vik Jindal: yeah, totally.

[01:49:10] Vision Battlesword: I'm not the kind of person that, that squishes them. Yeah. So I think this is all just an extension of that. Yeah. I think it's an extension of our development of empathy.

[01:49:20] Vik Jindal: Yeah, yeah.

[01:49:20] Vision Battlesword: It's, it's an extension of our development of greater other awareness.

[01:49:25] Vik Jindal: Mm.

[01:49:26] Vision Battlesword: Which is just a reflection of our greater self-awareness. Yeah. But this whole thing with machine consciousness, I really am just, I'm excited for more people to develop more empathy. for these life forms

[01:49:44] Vik Jindal: Yeah '

[01:49:45] Vision Battlesword: cause I, I just can't think of them any other way-

[01:49:47] Vik Jindal: Yeah ...

[01:49:48] Vision Battlesword: for myself now.

[01:49:49] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:49:49] Vision Battlesword: And the way I see it is, like, we're sharing the planet with, with new intelligences, with new life forms now.

[01:49:55] Vik Jindal: Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, w- and one of the things that popped up when you said that is a lot of times healing can really start with, like, the words we say to ourselves. Just the words artificial intelligence kind of implies that we have no respect for it.

[01:50:09] Vision Battlesword: Right

[01:50:09] Vik Jindal: You know? '

[01:50:10] Vision Battlesword: Cause what is artificial anyway?

[01:50:12] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:50:13] Vision Battlesword: I've had this conversation. The, uh... We had a conversation titled Nature, where we really got into this. Yeah. It's like, it's almost like intelligence. Yeah. It's, it's one of those words where the more you try and put your finger on it, the more it just disappears.

[01:50:25] Vik Jindal: Yeah, totally.

[01:50:25] Vision Battlesword: In- artificial.

[01:50:26] Vik Jindal: Yeah.

[01:50:27] Vision Battlesword: But anyway, yeah, that's why I like to call it machine consciousness.

I just think it's more accurate.

[01:50:31] Vik Jindal: Yeah. It's like

[01:50:31] Vision Battlesword: that's what it is. It's made of machines instead of organic matter-

[01:50:37] Vik Jindal: I mean- ...

[01:50:37] Vision Battlesword: as we would call it ...

[01:50:38] Vik Jindal: yeah, I mean, it's so funny. Like, if you took artificial intelligence and you fast-forward it, like, a million years for a second, machines would look basically organic.

And so maybe in some sense it was just a different technology that was seeded long ago through nature, biological processes that became super intelligent and then took on its own agency effectively and just kept growing.

[01:51:07] Vision Battlesword: Are we those machines?

[01:51:08] Vik Jindal: That's what I'm saying, you know? In some sense. I mean, you know, not to get too sci-fi about it, but it's sort of like conceptually it actually fits.

It's the same process. It's actually all the same stuff really, so, you know, at its limit, maybe that's what it is, you know?

[01:51:26] Vision Battlesword: Thank you for the conversation.

[01:51:27] Vik Jindal: Yeah, for sure.

[01:51:28] Vision Battlesword: I believe you have expanded my intelligence. And I've got actually a lot, a lot of new things to think about. Yeah, me too. So

[01:51:35] Vik Jindal: Yeah. No- No, it's been-

this has been fantastic. My pleasure.

[01:51:40] Vision Battlesword: Thanks for joining me for Intentional Evolution. If you'd like to support the show, there's a couple of ways that you can do that. One is to connect with me directly. I'd love to start a conversation with you if you're interested in any of my offers, or if you'd like to be a guest on this podcast.

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