Nothing like a good thenewgreen response, inquisitive and open as ever.

Lacan is often criticised in philosophy (and was explicitly criticised by Jacques Derrida) as being too "phallogocentric". Phallogocentric means that you are developing knowledge from a "masculine" "linguistic" centric focus. This is why many deconstructionists would try to delegitimise Lacan's program by saying that his psychoanalysis basically amounts to a privileging of the phallic organ.

I tend to think this is a huge philosophical mistake. The first thing to note is that, towards the end of his career, Lacan specifically focused on the psychoanalysis of feminine jouissance (sexual enjoyment). For Lacan, as well as the many feminist Lacanian scholars who have further developed his concepts, feminine jouissance is perhaps the most mysterious and important of all psychoanalytic experiences. The second thing to note is that Lacan's paradigm (his "return to Freud") is meant to reinterpret all of the Freudian conceptual edifice (which relies on many biological metaphors) through the lens of structural linguistics. This means that when Lacan talks about the "phallic function" he is not referring to the "biological penis" but the way in which the symbolic is always-already overdetermining the "biological penis". I think this is nicely captured if one takes a close look at the symbolism of early human cultures where the phallus is always central and fundamental representation of ontology. Furthermore, in Lacanian psychoanalysis castration, basically the lack of "THE" penis ("THE" man) is something that all human subjects pass through (not just biological males). The consequence of castration, then, is that the lack of the penis (symbolic) is something which overdetermines gender identity for both men and women. For men they experience it as "not-having" and for women they experience it as "not-being". This negative effect is crucial to understand Lacanian metaphysics.

In terms of the penis as organ having an "outsized" emotional/mental impact, there is no question! But it is crucial to note that this "outsized" impact is something that must be read on the level of the symbolic and thus on the level of sublimation. It is not just the "sex act in itself" in which the "outsized" impact has consequences on the body. Indeed, for any human subject who "submits to the phallic function" and "becomes a man" (husband, father), there is a sense in which one is actually an "organ without body". The "phallic function" has "overdetermined" the body. This is the meaning of integrating the signifier "husband" or "father". It takes an enormous amount of integration of unconscious emotional energy to enact these roles.

I love your points about the strange way in which certain organs become important metaphors for feeling and action (e.g. penis, heart), whereas others would seem totally out of place (e.g. spleen). The heart in particular is an interesting metaphor, and I think it would be seen, or possible to interpret more on the level of the feminine jouissance.

In terms of animal emotions, I have recently been diving head first into learning more about the Wim Hoff method. I was really moved by his phenomenal description of learning the truth of the body and the brain imaging work that showed he was accessing the deeper emotional cores of the brain beneath abstract reason. For me, I am so in abstractions and so disconnected from my emotions that I have a lot of work to do to connect deeply with my emotional brain. From the descriptions of some of the neuroscientific literature on emotions, I would tend to think that emotions go down to the core of complex organisms. I think that emotions like "fear" and "hunger" are primal and core to their being. I think that the difference with emotions is that we have this layer of abstract self reflection and understanding. This layer of abstract self reflection and understanding filters the emotions and sometimes they can be "too much". Whatever is unique in humans, we may say from a religious point of view, is that this awareness of emotions is the core of suffering ("life is suffering"). It makes me think that the core difference between the sciences and the religions is related to the difference between the primordial scientific axiom of "I think therefore I am". With this axiom we have the pure abstract cogito (thinking subject) gaining an objective universal frame for being. What this pure abstract cogito sacrifices is embodiment (Cartesian dualism), and thus, perhaps, sets the stage for the division between science and religion. In the Western-Christian sense the body (and bodily resurrection) are central and primary. It may even be related to an axiom something like "I feel therefore I am" ("I love therefore I am"). This is totally foreign to the classical scientific understanding, but absolutely primary to the classical religious understanding. In any case, some of my thoughts. Not sure how I feel about it!

The part where he talks about the 3d printing clothes and circuit boards etc. is a little under developed.

I agree. I wish I could have gotten more concrete examples of how new technologies could be used to generate practical steps towards empowered individuation and self-organized communities. This is still super blurry to me and always seems to miss the dimension of the need for new large-scale political forms.

Thanks steve. I'm excited to start producing some online content again. I hope you enjoyed the whole episode :-)

Agreed. As soon as I read that I had the same reaction.

The processes of change is on our side!

Shouldn't be too long... I even don't care about paywalls for the journals I've published in, I anyway make the paper available for free and no one at the journal has ever contacted me.

EDIT: but maybe if I was a bigger name in academia etc. they would pay more attention to that act of rebellion...

It's a good point. And the idea of the mind as a quantum field metaphor is now getting more attention in cognitive psychology.

What's your speculation on the reason?

Imagine having NO access to the internet in this day and age?

Actually, I can imagine it. I have gone for the past few months without Internet connection in my apartment (and over a year now without a phone!). I find that the space of disconnection is a good place for me to collect my mind and feel more fully inside myself. I personally found/find it to be necessary, at least at the moment. But the goal would be that this space allows me to more fully engage with/on the Internet in a proactive and creative way.

But ya, Loon! Let's get the global brain up and running... !

It's a pretty ambitious prediction, and not your typical crazy prediction, i.e. "sometime in the next 20 years" (short enough to peak our attention but long enough away to be forgotten if it doesn't happen) -- so we can see if they succeed! Would be amazing!

Oh for sure. Internet for all! It should eventually be a basic human right (which is actually another reason why I am trying not to pay for Internet/cell phone etc., our communication space should be based on free universal access). And I realize what I am experimenting with is not realistic nor desirable to everyone... just something I am exploring.

feed the good and help it grow.

For today, Plato!

Thanks, added it - not sure why it didn't attach in the original attempt

Nooooooooooooo!

Haha, I was hoping you would respond.

Past studies have found that calorie restriction extends life and boosts this enzyme

Yes, I have heard similar things about calorie restriction in various organisms. How solid is the data on calorie restriction and life span for humans? I know it is something I have started thinking about as a strategy to slow down my own ageing process.

I'd bet a large amount of money that any single enzyme is a small piece of the puzzle.

The body is an incredibly complex system, so I would tend to strongly agree with you.

Really, it's still a lot easier and cheaper to walk more and eat less than to take a supplement that probably doesn't work every day for the rest of you (indeterminately long) life.

And in terms of supplements, what do you recommend? Do you have a specific dietary strategy for ageing? I have started doing the "paleo" diet (but I don't like that name). Basically I have switched to eating mostly fruits, vegetables, meat, and nuts/berries etc. But these are just guiding principles. I've also started to eat once a day and fast for the rest of the day. What do you think of these strategies?

I don't personally take any supplements, and I don't know of any that sound attractive to me.

I've been taking some for metabolism and nerve health, as well as your typically multivitamins for immune system health etc., and I do generally feel better, like my body is operating a little smoother and more efficiently. But of course, it is hard for me to conclude that it is not a placebo effect or something like that.

Have you ever read Kurzweil's book on life extension? He details some of the supplements and approaches he uses to extend his life span.

Based on my knowledge of paleo diet, I can't say that I'm a huge fan, but I'm not a huge fan of most diets.

I'm not a fan of diets either. I only call it the paleo diet because my supervisor is obsessed with it and he has developed his whole personal dietary system around it. I personally find some of his tips helpful, for example sticking primarily to fruits, vegetables, meats, nuts etc., but like I said, I use them more as guiding principles. To be honest, I think a lot of things related to health are more about common sense and mature decision-making when it comes to the timing and amount you eat, etc.

I think that we're better off when we eat things that are not made in industrial factories, and this requirement can be satisfied by many foods, paleo or otherwise (and I completely agree that the name is ridiculous; there's nothing caveman-like about a perfectly marbled ribeye, but that's neither here nor there).

Ya, I agree with you. I still eat things that are not considered paleo, like for example beans, yogurt, eggs (not sure if eggs are "paleo"), but ya, there are lots of foods that are good for you. Have you heard of the National Geographic "Blue Zone" project focused on understanding the dietary and lifestyle habits of human populations who experience longest life spans? Many of the populations in these samples are eating grains and wheat in their diets. What seems most important and primary is calorie restriction, but also most notably, community... and many of us have lost that today...

That's pretty extreme eating once per day. If I wanted to cut down on my food, I'd probably cut the size of each meal.

Ya, well it is kind of misleading. What I should have said is that I eat one meal a day and then I just pick and snack on small things, like a banana or some nuts etc.

I get shaky hands if I don't eat enough. I tried to do one of those 72 hour fasts in the fashion of katakowsj or mike, and I failed after 30 hours. I developed a headache that was intense and seemingly getting stronger with every second.

Haha, ya, I've never tried anything like this but I probably would suffer in a similar way...

So far as I'm aware, no one has found an organism that doesn't respond to it in lab settings. It seems unreasonable that humans would be an exception. Not impossible, but not likely. The data that exist on mice and worms are very clear, and if a mechanism is preserved across those models (which diverged at the beginning of the Cambrian), then it's probably fairly important, so why would it have disappeared since rodents and humans diverged (don't know when off the top of my head, but very recently compared to that split)? This isn't a rock solid argument, or course, but it's a solid hunch, especially when we know that calorie restriction in humans does things like make chemo more survivable, has positive immune system effects, etc.

Indeed, I understand your reasoning here. In general terms I do think that calorie restriction must have some positive effects on health and the ageing process.

Is Athens as great as someone told me?

I'm loving it! Although it is crazy humid at the moment, it is at the same time totally surreal in regards to the architecture, landscape, mountains, beaches, statues, museums etc. I'm just taking my time, will probably stay for another week or two before hitting the islands.

First, thank you for sharing your point of view, I find the parallels between religious prophecy, and specifically eschatology, with actually existing global realities related to economics and technological evolution to be very interesting.

when the end time came (somewhere around the year 2000), a new world order would occur, illuminati, secret upper eschelon groups ruling the world

As an anthropologist I view this belief as "folk knowledge", in the sense that, yes, there is a (so-called) "new world order" (i.e. post-"second world"-communist world order) that is being controlled by a wealthy financial elite that is more and more able to direct the contours of the global economy away from transparent democratic decision-making processes. However, as I noted above, it is not being coordinated by some "illuminati" or whatever, it is just the unconscious tendencies of a capitalist super-organism, which is indeed very real, even if it is not conscious.

we'd have identity chips encoded into our skin to mark us as loyal citizens, there'd no longer be money, it'd be electronic, that the world would be slaves crushed by an authoritarian elite.

This is another example of folk knowledge, in the sense that, yes, money will eventually disappear, and eventually we will have some type of system which is hopefully far more ethical and socially moral, ideally based around mechanisms of universal access, trust, and reputation (things that help online social media sites self-organize for example, i.e. on Hubski we have universal access to the site (no money changes hands), and there are sophisticated mechanisms based trust and reputation in regards to the pre-programmed value system of Hubski, which is "thoughtfulness" of commentary, etc. We need to be innovative about the future of socioeconomics, and, in my opinion, that innovation away from capitalism and money, and towards a more social and ethical system, should be based in universality, trust, reputation, etc.

In short, what the particular example of folk knowledge represents, to me, is a classic example where a group of people make the common sense extrapolation of technological advancement (i.e. money disappearing and electronic devices merging with human biology, etc.) and do not realize that such advancement will necessarily require a concomitant social revolution in the way we structure the world. Of course, such social revolution is always the true singularity, which is why, in this particular example, we get a dystopian scenario where we are all controlled by authoritarian elites.

That only those who rejected the Mark of the Beast would be saved--these people would be swept up in the The Rapture, whisked away to Heaven, and all the weak, godless people who'd taken the Mark of the Beast would then live 100, 1000 (can't quite remember) years in the reign of the Antichrist, Satan reborn on the face of the earth, and those would be terrible, terrible times.

This is classic Christian anti-Singultarianism (there is also Christian pro-Singultarianism). I think it comes down to whether or not you take the central warning of Christianity seriously or not (i.e. do not eat from the tree of knowledge). If you take it seriously than the singularity, i.e. using human knowledge to become God-like and live indefinitely, is indeed the mark of the Antichrist. But what is obvious, at least to me, is that this central warning of Christianity is at best ambiguous, and possibly even a joke (i.e. why in the world would God create an infinitely inquisitive and curious species and place them within a world where they are ignorant of the natural processes around them, if He didn't want them to explore that world and learn how to better live in symbiosis with it?).

But it's scary, how close the description of the Rapture--apocalypse, end times I grew up with--mirrors what is happening in the world around me. Messes with my mind.

I can sympathise. What I would recommend, if my recommendation is worth anything, is that you look for the synergies between knowledge structures. This is basically the Kurzweilian approach to singularity, in the sense that Kurzweil, on the first page of The Singularity Is Near (2005) reveals that he was raised in a Unitarian church where he was encouraged to explore all of the overlapping commonalities between world religions under the basic principle of "many paths to the truth". Of course, we do know, from a scientific perspective, that objective knowledge is illusory, and that our models are not objective reality, and our perceptions are not objective reality (or Kant's we do not see the "Thing In Itself", etc.). So, in the end, all we have is our historically contingent, subjectively constructed knowledge structures, created with imperfect perception, and imperfect tools, to explore a world we all share, but at the same time, to explore a world we all have an irreducibly unique perspective and understanding of, etc.

Also very true. It is ok to bail out a country that just caused a World War, but it is not ok to bail out a country suffering from the rule of oligarchic tyrants.

I'm sure it will be great, you only live once, so you might as well transcend. But in the meantime, I just need to appreciate my current animal state. Wait... what am I saying? Universe, I am not impressed! Where is my transcendental freedom!?!

Commons may be the radical third we need to break the eternal friction between state and market.

how do you feel about liquid democracy?

I haven't come across the concept of liquid democracy yet... but from the metaphor I'm guessing it's kind of similar to what I mean by distributed democracy? I wrote a working paper on my ideas of distributed digital democracy if you're interested. Just check the beginning of "Section 3" for my specific ideas on distributed democracy to see if its anything similar to "liquid democracy". But I'll have to re-do this paper later in the year, many of my ideas about it have changed and the tone of this paper should be altered if I submit it to an academic journal.

My bad!

How does this come about?

There are simple policy measures that can be effectively taken if we have an aware populace with a new sense of unity around issues of socioeconomic equality. That is the point of Bernie Sanders even attempting to run for president. He isn't doing it because he wants power.

How does this come about?

Welcome to one of the biggest problems in complex systems science.

EDIT: But to be less vague it is about opening up government policy decisions in such a way to maximise latent collective intelligence, building new trust/reputation systems for more public participation in politics, becoming experimental with the democratic process itself at different levels, developing our economy towards an abundance model, etc. It's going to be a process.

#TheAgeofAuthoritarianCapitalism

My view on the singularity - in terms of the technological possibility space - is largely consistent with my previous thoughts. Replacement organs will be commonplace in the 2020s (and I think robotic replacements too) and nanotechnology/even more intense robotic revolution will be 2030s. By the 2040s our technological capability will be beyond anything we can reasonably expect to understand by contemporary standards. What is changing is my views on the social, cultural, and political ramifications. I have actually spent the last year writing a paper (about 70 pages) with everything I currently think about the evolution of the universe and the 21st century. One of the final working versions before official publication in Foundations of Science will be up probably this month or next month.

Check out Fantastic Voyage if you want to learn about steps you can take now to prolong your life and increase your chances that you live well into the 2040/50s. Although there is more up to date material out there this is a good overview and place to start. Most if not all of the recommendations are still relevant. I'm just starting to take my biological maintenance more seriously (couple years from 30, so I'll be in my 60s around the 2040s - should be ok if all goes well (which of course is not entirely guaranteed, but not unrealistic) :D)

The future will present some seemingly unique problems, but as mentioned in the piece, maybe they're not all that unique.

Old behaviours, new divisions. Instead of race, religion, ethnicity; it will be: are you carbon or silicon? Are you biological human or a biological-technological hybrid cyborg? etc.

The comparison doesn't make perfect sense, but neither does any definition of human, or a rationale for putting non-humans on similar footing.

IMO, I think it is precisely this that makes us human, this flexible/dynamic symbolism that allows us to have this conversation - to construct conceptual frameworks that can be debated and critiqued over time. Chimpanzees will only ever have a solidarity of mind with their kind, but humans can symbolise totally new solidarities, i.e. all apes deserve fundamental rights, all mammals, all organisms, etc. That is totally an evolving open-ended symbolic process, i.e. what is "similarity of mind" can always be re-articulated, depending on where we are intersubjectively as a species.

Because I do not yet fully know what I want to say or how I want to say it. (or to use the above jargon: I am not yet fully self-organized and ready to expose my system to selection).

The problem is subtle: how to be authentically original (not simply regurgitating symbols that have been regurgitated elsewhere), while at the same time not being insane.