Saturday night: A Theoretical Introduction to Dreams

An Alternative to Post-Humanism | Intentions as opposed to directions on one hand - and instructions on the other | Mathematical forces in the universe versus physical forces | The present is mediocrity (and defines the zero elevation line), the past is deep but the future is high | Before the entrance to the humanities: "No entry through this gate for those who haven't studied algorithms" | Setting philosophy's demands from science and technology

The Dreamer Statue at the Tiger Spring  (Source)

• The academic discussion of post-humanist ideology is impotent, shallow, and lacks vision, unable to express any future vision with specific content - it's not important because it can't say anything important about the important thing (the future). Dreams offer it an alternative - in their very ability to offer an alternative: to talk about the future in a creative and generative way. Dreams are capable of offering - and to philosophy they offer a new philosophical genre adapted to talking about the future (just as Wittgenstein offered aphoristic paragraphs, for example, to talk about language). Academia is capable of saying only two types of things: either unimportant things about important matters - or important things about unimportant matters, due to its fear of the future. The future is important - by definition (hence the above sentence translates to the inability to say something futuristic about the future). This paralyzing fear solidifies into a policing and silencing mechanism (mainly self-imposed) called criticism, which stifles importance and creativity. The dream, on the other hand, is the lowering of inhibition and its definition is the combination of the important and the creative. The seminar's goal is to answer the question that is always the most important (by definition) and therefore always avoided to be addressed directly (like being afraid to touch fire or see God): What is important? And what are the important things about the future?


• The dreams in the seminar are lists of intentions. An ethics of learning - not resistance and not blind promotion, but shaping. Technology is neither blind nor a force of nature. Its power to push the world (and thus accelerate it) is a learning force - like the power of interpretation or argumentation as part of Talmud study, or cultural power as part of studying the classics, or the power of literary creation. This is the internal dynamics of learning, as opposed to external attraction - which is called "interest". Such a force is more fundamental than a physical force, it is a mathematical force, like the force that drives evolution and refines it (against physics and entropy). It turns out that in the universe there are not only physical forces, but also spiritual forces - for example, an organizational-computational force, and this is the computer's power to execute an algorithm. Computation is a fundamental force in the universe, its carrier particles are information, and its field is mathematics. And a learning algorithm is not blind and deterministic, even if it is not human and is "algorithmic", but built on open choice. It is not true that the more basic a force is, the blinder it is, but rather the more external it is (like a person who succumbs to natural forces from outside, or fate). To remove the blindfold that creates the illusion of blindness, we need to show other learning possibilities open to us: alternative history, alternative network (for example: alternative social network). Dreams are the removal of the cover - they are vision. In darkness, one can see through a dream, because the dream is the spreading of an internal space with multiple possibilities, and therefore one can learn within it.


• What's important? A dream is not a goal, only an intention. Not to leave technological development without cultural development (the root cause of the Holocaust. And of the cultural holocaust - the Facebookiad). A dream is a dive, adding a dimension, not just breadth and forward: not to allow the fastest possible advancement of the world on a broad front to be everything, that's only two dimensions (and therefore superficial) - but to advance in the third dimension of depth, that is, of the inside. Everything within the framework of learning: not ideology (goal, end), and not religion (source, beginning), but also not nihilism (middle, present - the present is mediocrity! It is the definition of mediocrity) - but a learning method. Correct processes at the level of humanity. System-wide learning processes (including culture) - because learning belongs to the learner and does not take over from outside, so that technology does not become an external force and therefore a force of nature, and also not a force under our control outside of us and therefore political-manipulative, but "learning - always within the system". Just as the Torah becomes yours when you are a scholar, despite not being under your control, but because you have penetrated it and you are inside it. Organizational consulting for all of humanity - as a system. And this is the role of the philosopher: organizational consultant of humanity, and a teacher who helps it learn, and its strategist in the face of the deep future.


• That technology should not be the owner, but we should be at home in it - any intellectual in our time who is not at home in understanding technology is a joke. All the greats: Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Wittgenstein - were at home in science and mathematics. And today it's important to add: computer science and information technology. Philosophy is a field built on mathematics. Just as it was written on the gates of Plato's Academy, today it should be written: No entry for those who haven't studied mathematics.


• The great lacuna in the world: due to lack of vision and technological dreaming, stemming from the failure of both philosophers and technologists, there is not enough concentrated research and development in spearheads that could change the world - levers of change and force multipliers - and instead a lot of focus on the new iPhone or a new feature on Facebook, or micro-tactical cultural engagement. Therefore, we need to map strategic directions for technological, social and cultural research and development. To map dreams for a world lacking vision, and therefore blind. This is what we'll do in the seminar. We'll give an example of how relevant philosophy should look, because due to the lack of serious engagement with the future, engagement with the future has become non-serious. Hence the importance of philosophy in raising the level of discussion, and in pointing out the failures of the current discussion, and above all: in identifying the fundamental points of change, where the paradigm will be replaced, as opposed to intra-paradigmatic changes. Just as philosophy investigated the principles of the world, so it must also investigate the principles of the future. To answer the question: What will constitute a fundamental change?


• The philosophy of everyday life in our time needs to demand from science knowledge to improve important decisions in life, and therefore needs to define what is the right data and what is the right metric, and not leave to scientists, for example, the definition of happiness, or other core definitions of human beings (which will constitute a cultural disaster, approaching us from the direction of brain sciences). From the public it needs to demand private funding of science: science should also be opened to crowdfunding, with everyone's participation, allowing scientists to engage in things that the public is interested in, and therefore we need a function of a public scientist. To the same extent, we also need a function of a philosophical scientist, who tries to realize the goals set by technological philosophy, such as the one that will be proposed in the seminar, before him. Thus, contrary to what happens in non-Nathanian schools, philosophy will stop being irrelevant, and science will also stop being culturally ignorant and promoting barbarism - which ultimately undermines it. The idea of a scientist ignorant of culture and a culturalist ignorant of science will lead to a superhuman intelligence lacking culture - that is, to the end of human culture. Therefore, it is important to fuse the technological ethos and the cultural ethos into one ethos - so that the world of the future will be like the ancient world.