Hello and welcome to the 61st episode of
NeoHuman podcast! I'm Agah Bahari,
@agologist on Twitter and Instagram and
you can follow this show on liveinlimbo.com,
iTunes, YouTube,
and today with me I have Alex Vikoulov.
Welcome to NeoHuman podcast, Alex! Hi,
thank you very much for inviting me over! Yeah absolutely!
It's a pleasure! I've been following some
of your posts on Facebook for quite some
time. We've been Facebook friends and it
just seemed like a very, very interesting
person and I know that you've had a new
book called The Syntellect Hypothesis: Five
Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution. You're
wearing the t-shirt of the same book, I
believe, right now as well. So, I
definitely want to hear your perspective
about everything that is going on with
respect to digitization and data, and all
of that, and talk a little about your
book. But let's start with your
background the life you've lived, the
work you've done, and what you are mainly
focused on now these days. Absolutely! So,
yeah, I hope we'll have a fantastic
conversation! I'm a Russian-American
futurist, evolutionary cyberneticist,
digital philosopher - not to be confused
with "digital photographer." Idealist - not
perfectionist type but platonist type.
Was born and raised in Russia, immigrated
to the U.S. in 1994 at the age of 24.
Studied Humanities at Tomsk State
University back in Russia and continued
my studies here when I came to
California - graduated from Armstrong University with
degrees in Finance and Economics. So, my
background is mostly in Economics. I
worked in the corporate world, I worked
in the AI startup world, run Ecstadelic
Media Group which is a PR, Digital
Media and Publishing company. So, yeah,
this is pretty much
in a nutshell my background. But
philosopher by vocation but I'm a strong
believer that you learn by doing.
I had this predilection towards Physics
and Philosophy ever since I was a kid,
you know. It was growing in the
background but for some reason I was
thinking about being economically
satisfied and thinking about money
in the early age. But it's changed
since then. For the most part right now,
I'm consumed with spiritual growth and
that's why I started this creative
project "Ecstadelic Media," my blog about
five years ago with a number of essays I
wrote and I saw that the public actually
likes it. That was my launchpad to write
the book which is the work of three
years of theorizing and putting it all on paper, let
alone decades of being a human in this
simulated reality... Simulated reality,
exactly! .. We'll talk about it later... Well, you mentioned you're an idealist I want to know what is your
ultimate goal on a
spiritual path which is interesting to
me because it has a digital, very strong
digital element to it. And I'm coming
from the same kind of a perspective at
this point. What is your ideal objective
to reach through this spiritual path... I'm
adherent of objective idealism. Another
name for it is Absolute Idealism - whose
forefather was Georg Hegel, the German
philosopher - idealistic perspective based
on phenomenology,
So, basically everything comes down to
experiences of conscious agents and
their interactions. That's what
really exists out there. There is no
objective reality basically "out there" -
only subjective reality, only subjective
points of view. Most physicists now come to a consensus that information is
fundamental. "Universality of computation
is the most profound thing in
the Universe," theoretical physicist David
Deutsch notes. Computational underpinnings
of our reality - that's where I stand at...
And the book that we are talking about is
The Syntellect Hypothesis. What do
you mean exactly by Syntellect? Ah
yes, I'm also showing the link to our
viewers but it's good. Yes, there you
have it! Very beautifully designed and
well-thought of! Yes, absolutely!
The hardcover 2019. Unfortunately, I don't
have the second edition 2020 on me because I
sent out so many signed copies at the
moment. So, I don't even have any left - I'll have a
replenishment today from Amazon... Amazing! So, let's
start with because terminology
obviously matters a lot and there are a
number of terms that you know we are
talking about there is no such a thing
as objective reality which I absolutely
agree with and then it becomes, you know,
what is the definition of, for example,
hypothesis from your perspective so
these are the kind of things that I'm
hoping we can build upon as a
result of this conversation for people
who might be completely strangers to the
idea of digitized mind and hive minds in
the way that you're talking about with
respect to Syntellect -
synthetic intellect I would imagine you were talking about, right?..  Right! Well, first of all, the
term "Syntellect" is composed of 'syn' -
as Greek 'together' and 'intellect'
'intelligence,' right? So, the intellectual
synergy of people and all other
conscious agents.  Right? So, Syntellect is
basically, it's a civilizational mind,
it's all-planetary mind in some context. It's an apt neologism that I came across when
reading "Manifesto for Transhumanist
Aspirations," I think that was, by Michael
Epstein, the book published in 2012. I
thought that it would be the most apt
neologism that can be used. So, I came up with
"The Syntellect Hypothesis" name for the book. So, the subtitle is "Five Paradigms of
the Mind's Evolution."  We are storytelling beings, right? We like stories and
everything is basically in our lives
chronological - I decided to come up with
these paradigms of evolution for the mind.
It makes sense: Going back to the Big
Bang in order to plot the evolutionary
trajectory of individual minds and later
collective intelligence and
civilizational minds.  Any conscious entity is
smacked in the middle between its
transcendental reality and lower levels of
organization. If you read the book - this is a
holistic system. It's actually a
nonlinear neural network of some sort. Chronology doesn't always apply. We used to
think that the Big Bang is the origin of
the Universe but it's not necessarily
true. I mean it depends on the
perspective. I mean everything
everything is perspectival. Yeah, it's easy for us to consume this Big-Bang-origination
story but the truest view is probably to
have some sort of pre-existence of Intelligence
that actually gave birth to our
universe. So, as I say in the book, our
world, our universe, is one of the
possible worlds simulated by Absolute
Consciousness, i.e. the Omega Point cosmology to which I dedicate a large part of the
book. In the words of one of my favorite
philosophers of all times Terence McKenna, a
"Transcendental Object at the end of time."
Now, my understanding, my understanding
about, for example, Big Bang that you're
saying is that when something become a
Status Quo in academia, people just don't
fund anything else to be pursued, you
know, it's just it becomes a business... Yes,
it is just so, it's a paradigm and
all the papers, all the academic research
pretty much falls into this mainstream
and by definition confirms that paradigm.
Fringe
academic research becomes overlooked but the most advanced science right now, I
would say, lies in
in the computational physics, in the
physics of information, of which I'm a big
proponent - Digital Physics and Digital
Philosophy, originated back in 1948 by "A
Mathematical Theory of Communication," a
seminal paper by Claude Shannon who
proposed "information can be quantifiable."
Everything comes down to the binary logic
of Nature and this is like a "Universal
tongue." Nature speaks in its own kind of
language and we are part of Nature. We are
part of the same continuum. We are part
of this evolving cosmos, so to speak.
That's interesting when you say that everything is in bits,
however, we have already achieved
quantum computing, so maybe everything is
in qubits... That's exactly right, well, yeah, I mean, see.
Actually it's a natural kind of
computation, right, I mean. So, from the
spectrum of possibilities, from the
quantum potentiality
Nature finds a definite outcome in
binary code. So, basically from quantum
potentiality to classical actuality of
our experience - that's quantum
computation. Right?..  So, the choices, the
choices are binary but options are
quantum is what you're saying?..  Yes and
actually it all comes down to our experiential
self, to our experiential reality. Every
single moment, a conscious moment - as a
matter of fact, I put out there "The
Conscious Instant Hypothesis." As human beings,
we experience about 10 to 30
conscious instants per second, right. It's
kind of like integrated information by
cognitive scientist Guilio Tononi -
confluent digital data streams. Integrated
information is what gives rise to this one
"conscious instant" and the sequence of
conscious instants - that's what represents
a stream of consciousness for us as human beings... The way that I think about consciousness is like
consciousness is Internet
and the way that we are experiencing it
is like our devices. So, we can, you know,
we can have access to it through our
own browser but it's just, you know, if
it's deleted that version of it is gone
but the consciousness is over there... Yeah,
see, consciousness is everything
right, yeah, so there are multiple
views it's such a multi-faceted
reality that you can view it from
different perspectives and a multitude of
different angles. So, absolutely, I mean
you can see it as I like to use this
metaphor: Consciousness to humans is like Cloud to computers -  we're like "nodes" of this
"Human Cloud," so to speak. Right? And
we're part of this larger whole.
We don't exist in the vacuum. I mean
we are part of the larger pattern of
life. We have this transcendent effect
and that's what I talk about in the book
that we actually emerge as one Global Mind. At some point it's going
to be like a Solaris kind of planetary
mind when we're gonna have like
this hyperconnectivity of billions of
enhanced humans and superintelligent
machines as nodes of this global neural
network, enhanced with trillions of
sensors around the planet. This is it -
this is the Syntellect emerged. What it
means to you as an individual - because
consciousness is always singular,
you cannot get around it, I mean, it's
just it's always going to be singular - so,
basically it's going to be like you
transcend to the higher-order Syntellect,
you transcend to the Gaian Mind -
when you expand your dimensionality. If
you look back at our own evolution,
single-celled organisms back 4
billion years ago when life first started, they
were perceiving existence in a one-
dimensional plane of existence and then
plants and animals
expanded their dimensionality to two and
three dimensions. Now, humans we
experience it in 3D + Time, a fractal dimension -
Time goes for us in one direction because
we are anchored to biochemical processes
but it's about the change, you know, when
you transcend this low dimensionality and
you can have this expanded
dimensionality which might be 5D, or
6D, or 7D. Part 4 in my book - Theogenesis -basically we're becoming God, the
birth of a divine entity, "theogenesis,"
that's what I call it... Now, before we go
any further, because for some people this
might sound really strange or sci-fi-
like, you know, let me just bring up a
maybe a more foundational concept that
also came to my mind called the "Extended
Mind Theory," an idea in the field of
philosophy of mind, often called "Extended
Cognition," which holds that the reach of
the mind needs not end at the boundaries
of the skin and skull. So, the idea is
that even if you use a piece of paper to
write your shopping list on it that
becomes extension of your mind. So, what
Alex is talking about is because of
digitization this is potentially
something that can include everything...
We distribute our mindedness across
the globe, as we speak - I'm in Silicon
Valley, you're in Toronto. Right?.. I'm actually in South Florida... Oh, I'm sorry, my bad, my bad... No, it's just, it just
reminds me of being in Toronto in
January in that cold and I'm glad that
I'm not there... Anyway, we have this techno-cultural kind of wormhole between two minds and we grab
other minds that want to tag along. So,
it's all kind of collectivity
transcendent effect. At some point
we'll probably transcend our
language, our human language. I mean we
don't have to speak anymore.
We can transmit thoughts and we can be
mind-broadcasting and communicating
telepathically. That's what is called
"Synthetic Telepathy." I have some parts of
the book dedicated to that as well... Now,
that's a beautiful part of it. The scary
part of it is that now this conversation
that you and I are having through this
wormhole, the data of it will be owned by
Microsoft at the end of a day because
Skype is owned by Microsoft and Skype
data is being collected at this
point by centralized structures of
authority whether it's Google or
Microsoft or Facebook or Amazon. What is
your thought about this ownership of
data moving forward considering you know
we have begun the decade of Internet of
Things and Big Data and ubiquitous
computing?.. I'm extremely optimistic about
the future and that's why you have to
add this spiritual dimension, you know,
because this is a holistic system, right,
so we are all God, you know, in the matter
of speaking, right. We all some kind of
fractals of this Greater Cosmic Mind. So,
evolution of patterns, this is how the
universe evolves, I mean, evolves through us.
And we can have all kinds of
interactions - even if we have wars, this
is how the Global Mind actually puts to
test all kinds of hypotheses, you know,
through us as neurons of the Global Brain...
So, you're not worried about it?..
I don't worry about it all. Then again,
every single individual lives in their own
virtual perceptual universe, so because
it's a quantum multiverse you, by your
thoughts, you actually move in a
certain trajectory but any path to
the ultimate divine is valid. I don't
want to sound overly religious but as
Rumi said: "I searched for God and I found
myself, I searched for myself and I found
God." It's all holistic, sort of typical of
a biological brain: you can have all
kinds of different ideas - angel on one
shoulder, demon on the other - you always
have these different ideas and
hypotheses that need to be put to test.
But at the end of the day, we figure things out, we're on the right track, nonetheless...
I totally agree,
I totally agree and you know this
spiritual side of all of these things for
me, I don't know where it's coming from
initially but it was empowered by the
use of psychedelics and alongside
reading and listening to Terence McKenna.
Now, you mentioned Terence McKenna. Have
you also had any spiritual, religious
however you want to call it, experiences
with psychedelics with the understanding
of data and information alongside
returns McKenna and spirituality that
put things together right in front of
your face?.. Life is a psychedelic trip!
"Psychedelic" is basically mind-manifesting, right? I mean, we live in the mind-based
reality. No matter how you slice it, everything is mental and everything
comes down to consciousness. Physicists
now agree that quantum theory, the
most successful theory of all times, shows
that you cannot separate reality from
from the observer - experience and
experiencers are one. There's the so-called
"Measurement Problem" and Quantum Effects versus Observer Effect - you cannot
separate the observers. So, it's always
the observer that manifests its own
reality. It's like in the movie Inception.
You create and perceive, right? It's like
always like a feedback loop, the Ouroboros
code. By the way, this is the book by my
good friend digital philosopher Anthonin
Tuynman. He wrote "The Ouroboros Code"
and published by Ecstadelic Media Group.
So, yeah, consciousness is the
totality of feedback loops -
everything comes down to what I call
"Experiential Realism" and in terms of
psychedelics, I mean, if you find certain
venue to explore your psyche that's
great!
We just have to embrace it. As a matter
of fact, as the humankind we experienced
two major singularities and we're in the midst of a
so-called "Cyberdelic Singularity," as we
speak.
The first singularity, according to Kevin
Kelly, WIRED magazine founder and editor,
techno-prophet himself, was back 50,000
years ago with the invention of language,
a linguistic singularity. How can you
explain a Shakespearean limerick to an ape?
Just completely inconceivable! So, that
was the linguistic singularity for human
species and now in the 1960s we've got
this cyberdelic singularity, the
confluence of psychedelic culture - LSD
and psilocybin mushrooms, masculine
etc., etc., and when we went out
to space - Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin
was the first to orbit Earth in 1961, cyberspace - we created the first computers. So, cyberspace
outer space and inner space - that was
the "Cyberdelic Singularity" outset.
Unfortunately, someone got scared, as we know, the Nixon administration made
psychedelics illegal. Right now we're
going through the Renaissance of
psychedelics but still illegal and some
of them on the Schedule I. As I said in
my book, I believe as we go further into
the future, psychedelics are information
technology. As Terence McKenna once
said: "The difference between computers
and drugs is that you can swallow one and
you cannot swallow the other but our
brightest minds in Silicon Valley and
beyond are working to change that."..
Well, Terence McKenna also himself he had
the Stoned Ape Theory that the reason
that our mind evolved much faster than
the rest of our body is because of
psychedelics... Yeah, the Stoned Ape Theory, I'm actually
quite supportive of it, that gave a huge
advantage to Homo sapiens over other
hominid species, I believe. These drugs are consciousness-
expanding drugs. There are different levels: A smaller dose makes you visually acute. So,
you can accurately estimate the situation
between the predator and prey, etc.
Visual acuity is a huge game-changer, right?
At an average dose, you're agitated and sexually active which is the main game in
evolution - sexual reproduction, right? And
at the highest dose, you go into a different
higher spiritual dimension and bring
some "souvenirs," you know, to share
with your tribesmen... Yeah! That's a very
beautiful way to put it because, you know,
I've been experimenting with them for
more than ten years and the meaning of
them changed a lot but that that was
based on what I was learning outside of
the experience and through the
experience, you know, you get out of it
what you put into it because if you go
with the mind of, you know, a chimp you're
not gonna think about "oh, you know, maybe we can digitize the entire universe and
quantify the patterns and make sense out
of existence," you know...  Yes,
well, yeah, we are on the cusp of going
more into inner space that's why
I'm actually quite fond of the Transcension Hypothesis by futurist John
Smart - Inner Space exploration is
where we are actually headed. We are gonna
have more and more computational density and basically become virtual minds,
substrate-independent digital minds.
But for that, you have to use black-hole
physics to go inside... Yeah, the Transcension Hypothesis is one of the possible
solutions to the Fermi paradox as well.
So, most advanced civilizations - they
become post-biological, they just
phase out biology altogether and
become digital minds instead. But
because we're on the exponential trend for
miniaturization, you just need more and
more computational density and you just
go inside - what creates multitude of virtual
worlds and you'd have this apotheosis of
the mind, you know, just like living in
the inner space of your own design. So,
you don't need this space-time, you don't
need the universe "out there." You
can just send out probes and colonize, and
basically convert all matter of the
universe into computronium. That's
probably the ultimate destiny of our
universe - to convert the rest of the
universe into computronium but for our
own needs because we'll be going inside -
inside our minds... Do you think there are
other civilizations that reach the same
kind of, because it seems like if you
want to talk about this within a maybe
more familiar kind of concept, the Kardashev scale, for example, that we first have to
become a planetary kind of a
civilization and huge part of it part of
that now relies on computation and
digitization for us to make sense out of
what is happening and it starts from
there, right?
So, I think the biggest threat to this
progress which from my perspective is
inevitable but the biggest threat to is
slowing it down is lack of education.
Would you agree with that? The nature of
education will probably change. So, if you
can just download knowledge. Yeah. in the
"matrix" - all we need is just computational
resources. And what we are right now on
the global scale: We are one thinking
entity, basically, right. I mean the whole
humankind is one thinking entity. All we
need is computational resources and we
process information at a certain
capacity, right, but with superintelligent machines coming online we'll
have more and more capacity which will at
some point eclipse biological minds,
right, but because we're gonna merge with this technology, we'll become super-
intelligences ourselves. So, this is why
I call it the "Cybernetic Singularity"
instead of the technological singularity. In
fact, speaking of singularities,
we'll have a plurality of singularities
going forward, in my view... Well, it depends
on the context, right?..
Yeah, everything is contextual, of course.
Going forward, say circa 2030, we'll 
have most probably AGI, artificial
general intelligence, human-level AI. And we're not just talking about
logical intelligence, we're talking about
emotional intelligence so that you can
speak just like you speak to me, right, with a whole array of human emotions, so to
speak. This is going to be like the AGI
Singularity, and then later on we'll have
most probably again, you know, it's all
speculative at this point, but
some kind of Simulation Singularity,
right, when you can create ultra-
realistic virtual realities and where
you can recreate historical events in
minute detail and come up with a
myriad of fantasy worlds. Basically,
that's when you expand your dimensionality. So,
the Simulation Singularity which is
pretty cool, right... I don't know let's
let's put 2035, circa 2035, when mind-
uploading will become a reality
pretty much. When we all have some kind
of personal exocortex on the Cloud and
by the end of the 2030s, we'll probably have our thinking predominantly on the Cloud.
But because it's not limited by our cranial
capacity, our biological wetware, we can
extend indefinitely in the computational
capacity of our own minds... You give us to get to the
point of mind-uploading and creating
basically our own versions of reality
first in a more like a VR experience but
at some point the idea is that you
wouldn't be able to even tell the
difference between what's virtual
and what's real. And you give it about 15
years... Yeah, something like that!
I already have a virtual reality headset where I meditate regularly,  and it's already pretty
awesome, right but human beings have only 10-30
conscious instants per second.
High-resolution of our vision is at the extent of
the arm, if you look at your thumb. This is high-fidelity. And there are
already prototypes in virtual reality
that can actually replicate resolution
human eyesight. There gonna be like multi-sensory virtual reality, of course, we'll have
augmented reality - it's all going to be
like a video game.
Already, there is this smart contact lens by Mojo Vision that, you know, it's a
prototype but we'll probably have some
Internet-connected contact lenses
sometime within five years in
mainstream use, so that you can just, you
know, look at something and have
additional information. So it's all going
to be like a video game for everyone. And
you can actually customize it for
your own needs which is pretty cool...
For sure! For sure! I'm gonna take the nonstop dog barking as a sign coming from the
universe that we should wrap up this
interview. What is next for you and where
can our audience follow your work?.. Well,
the best way is to go to EcstadelicNET,
ecstadelic.net online and see all the updates and a bunch of videos - I have a mini-series of
"Ecstadelics with Alex Vikoulov," and I have new books listed on the website, and
of course, essays and news that we put out regularly on
our website. But I would highly recommend
to get my book The Syntellect Hypothesis:
Five Paradigms of the Mind's Evolution and
just get mind-blown
of the possibilities. This is
Self-Transcendence, engineering
godhood, self-divinization. That's 
where we are headed ... And I
will include the links to both your
website and your book and other links
alongside with the podcast as well...
Book trailer... Oh, right! I I will
include that one as well. It's a five-minute long one. I actually watched it
right before I'm coming online to
speak with you and I watch it with my
girlfriend who's a filmmaker and she
just made a visual representation of our
episode with Michio Kaku and it reminded
her also and me of that video the
trailer very, very cool. And what a cool
idea to have trailer for book... Yeah! Absolutely!
Based on reception which country do you
think or what group of readers in which
country are more susceptible and
accepting of the ideas that you're
talking about?
Well, first is the U.S., of course, the U.S.
and then the U.K., Canada and European
countries the most susceptible, Australia
yes, developed world...  One thing that
I've talked about this with Zoltan istvan
as well and he always brings up a lot
more to talk about it - how,
for example, while China is going along
with genetic engineering and
experimenting with human DNA and of the
very core of who we are the religious
aspect of a country like the United States
seemed to be or it would be fair to
think of it as some kind of a boundary
or some kind of an obstacle in front of
this scientific or technological
progress how do you see that that, for
example, Chinese who,
you know, they don't have any religious
faith. Their religious faith is a party, you
know, just following what the party
objective is but they they're not
limited by any kind of religious text to
stop human engineering so they can't
progress in that front while Americans
arguing whether or not that that is
something that can be done in a
society as religious as the United
States, right? Well, as I said, I'm pretty optimistic
about the future so any competition
brings out the best out of us. We'll
figure things out. There might be some
pitfalls, some setbacks but generally we are
on the right track. Any nation has some
kind of contribution to the
overall progress of the species... Yep,
that's an interesting way to look at it,
I totally agree with it. I mean there are
parts that we can control and we control
those parts and there are parts that we cannot control, but the big
picture seems to be fine... Actually
not everything is up to us because the
heuristic tendency of the universe to
create emergent patterns is stronger
than the human race itself. The Syntellect
emergence that I'm talking about in
the book is a cosmic necessity. That's
the inevitable evolutionary leap for
our species as we're going forward... Oh, yeah, I was gonna ask if you think of it as an
inevitability because it seems like an
inevitability to me... Yeah, absolutely!
We're not gonna stay as we are - we're
not the pinnacle of evolution - not
biological, not technological, either...
Totally agree! All right, Alex. Let me ask
you the last question I ask all my
guests that if you come across an
intelligent alien from a different
civilization what would you say is the
worst thing humanity has done and what
would you say is humanity's greatest
achievement?..  First of all, I won't believe
that we're gonna see alien life in
"Human Universe." We have to transcend our dimensionality first, right. So,
probably at the Syntellect level, we're gonna meet some "extradimensional" alien intelligence as
opposed to extraterrestrial. At that point we just
have to establish communication and
exchange information - it's all about
exchanging information - our histories
and our cultures. And it's going to be a
great enrichment to both parties. Our
greatest achievement - keeping our
beautiful planet as it is and taking care of other lesser
intelligences and keeping things in
check!
