Our Synthetic Souls

"We have been engineered. Then the question is, why?"

In the past month, reports of the first human to successfully receive a Neuralink brain-computer interface (BCI) made headlines across the world. Despite the stories of the company's inhumane testing on primates and the disturbing post-surgery photos, the news provided hope to those who may benefit. Many saw potential for exponential improvements in their quality of life as this groundbreaking technology continues to develop in the private sector.

Although many likely view these devices as state-of-the-art technology, BCIs have long been of interest to military and intelligence agencies. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded research into this area since the 1970s, and has likely developed more passive and effective interfaces for military applications, long concealed behind classified barriers.

However, initiatives like Battelle’s from 2018, which enables warfighters to “control swarms of drones at the speed of thought,” represent just a fraction of the Pentagon's broader interest in mind-over-matter technologies. In fact, a little-known meeting from decades ago reveals the high-tech agency's desire to harness the fundamental nature of consciousness itself.

The human brain has always been a target of exploitation by militaries the world over. The CIA's MKULTRA program demonstrated the extremes to which the government would go to study alterations of cognitive mechanisms for the benefit of national security.

One particularly intriguing anecdote mentioned by historian and author Peter Levenda in his Sinister Forces series provides a clue into more recent areas of this research. Levenda notes that DARPA and the RAND Corporation held a working group on "political governance" that included mathematical physicist Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, two scientists who have put forward the most comprehensive theory positing consciousness as a quantum phenomenon.

In case the reader is thinking that perhaps all this theorizing is quite abstract and is not useful in any pragmatic sense of the term, it should be noted that Penrose and Hameroff were invited to lead a group meeting at the RAND Corporation on October 22, 1998 - one of a series of meetings that were sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a US government agency that is the godchild of the Pentagon, and target of much speculation by conspiracy theorists. The series "focused on social and political governance questions arising from the impacts of the information and biological revolutions." Thus, the findings of Penrose and Hameroff were being examined for the possible application of their research in the "social and political governance" sphere by the military.

Penrose and Hameroff's theory is known as Orchestrated Objective Reduction, or “Orch OR.” They hypothesize that cylindrical structures within neurons called microtubules are the primary sites for quantum processing due to their ability to sustain coherent quantum states.

Quantum Superposition Entanglement in Microtubules for Five States Related to Consciousness. (RAND Working Group Study)

Through the brain's normal biological processes, these microtubules can "orchestrate" what Penrose calls objective reduction (OR); instead of a standard wave collapse due to observation or measurement, OR is an objective process that occurs through gravitational effects on the quantum state that leads to conscious awareness.

Why, then, would the US military be interested in this relatively controversial theory in the context of political governance?

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Deterministic Free Will

After some searching, I was finally able to track down the summary of the study group's findings on the RAND website. The overarching theme depicts concerns about the ability of our society's current political and legal frameworks to sufficiently address technological innovation. Advancements in biotechnology are highlighted specifically, and provide the most insight into the military applications of these developments.

Although the analysis and conclusions on governance appear innocent enough, this section makes up only a fraction of the report. In fact, the appendix containing the research conducted by the working group is hardly addressed in the body of the paper. Given DARPA’s sponsorship of the event, the reader might suspect that RAND had more clandestine reasons for convening these scientists.

Indeed, as stated in the summary of Penrose and Hameroff's presentation, the applications of Orch OR were regarding "the role of the computer in enhancing concepts of human intelligence." Envisioning the brain as a quantum computer, it is safe to assume that the intention of the conference organizers was to integrate their theory into more advanced versions of a brain-computer interface.

Moreover, within the context of growing governance concerns, the concept of free will becomes relevant in quantum computation.

Quantum computation with objective reduction may be associated with cognitive activities. While classical neural-level computation can provide a partial explanation, the Orch OR model allows for far greater information capacity and addresses issues of conscious experience, binding, and noncomputability consistent with free will.

Such functions as face recognition and volitional choice may require a series of conscious events arriving at intermediate solutions. Preconscious processing of information occurs in the form of qubits, or superposed states of microtubule automata. As the threshold for objective reduction is reached, these qubits collapse to definite states and become bits, resulting in a conscious experience of recognition or choice.

The problem in understanding free will is that human actions seem neither totally deterministic nor random. In Orch OR, reduction outcomes involve a factor that is "non-computable." The microtubule quantum superposition evolves linearly (analogous to a quantum computer) but is influenced at the instant of collapse by hidden nonlocal variables (quantum mathematical logic inherent in fundamental space-time geometry).

The possible outcomes are limited (or probabilities are set) by neurobiological feedback (MAPs). The precise outcome (our "chosen" action) is determined by effects of the hidden logic on the quantum system poised at the edge of objective reduction. This could explain why people generally do things in an orderly, deterministic fashion, but occasionally their actions or thoughts are surprising, even to themselves.

This excerpt essentially posits that the mind is choosing between a limited set of options, as determined by the current state of our brain at a given moment in time and the previous events that led us there. Once reduction occurs, these hidden non-local variables then manifest as what we interpret to be free will.

When considering DARPA's involvement in producing these reports and the military mindset they must have brought to them, an alarming question must then be asked.

What if someone had sufficiently advanced technology to place their finger on the scale of these variables?

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Narrowing the Aperture

In a recent TTS Talks episode, ex-CIA officer Jim Semivan and TTS founder Tom DeLonge discuss several intriguing aspects of free will that could potentially relate to Orch OR. Delonge expresses his belief that free will may be a fundamental aspect of physics, perhaps hinting at Penrose and Hameroff's theory.

The Sinister Forces Trilogy by Peter Levenda

DeLonge even highlights Levenda's Sinister Forces in explaining this conclusion, the very same book that taught us of the RAND working group study in the first place.

DeLonge: Mankind is not necessarily in charge, but is being deceived to make free will choices that end up benefiting others. This can be found within all religions and UFO experiences. There seems to be a pattern there, and that’s really where I’ve landed with all this stuff.

Semivan: What do you think? Do you think that our relationship with this phenomenon is more deterministic? In other words, are they directing traffic?

DeLonge: I do. If you look at Peter Levenda’s book Sinister Forces, what he did over a series of three books is he found all these synchronicities and patterns in real-life events over decades, from World War II and the Nazis to Roswell and the JFK assassination. It just goes all the way through.

You've got the same people, a lot of the same kinds of events happening, and a lot of weird connections to certain groups and secret societies. Weird things where you’re kind of going, "If someone wanted to engineer life to end up in a certain place, these are the things that did it." Very specific events got us here, and when they're all connected to each other in odd ways, then you’re kind of going, "Who set this up?"

His books, I think, were really genius in that regard. There are all these things that we read in a lot of these ancient stories, like how the devil can’t kill you but can deceive you enough to kill yourself and others. There are these weird laws, you know. But then, you look at some of the spiritual teachings in other places, these outside forces can’t necessarily live in this physical realm, but they can deceive you, or be the voice whispering in your ear.

In the UFO event stuff, it seems very similar, where you have people who have abductions. Then they’re whispering in the abductee’s ear about the end of the world or how they need to change their life. Jacques Vallée was like, “Well, if we can’t study when these things show up, maybe we can study the abductee.” If you look at the abductee, they’re starting cults, they’re killing themselves, or they’re changing their life, leaving their wife, leaving their jobs, and starting a religion or something. He goes, “That’s weird, it’s like they’re being deceived and then they make free will choices to end up at a certain place…"

To me, that’s the big picture: we have been engineered. Then the question is, why?

By citing Levenda's work, DeLonge is speculating that there is something about the UFO phenomenon that appears to be limiting our free will choices to guide humanity in a specific direction. This mirrors Penrose and Hameroff’s description of the mechanisms behind Orch OR and human consciousness, just on a societal level.

Considering Penrose and Hameroff were involved in the DARPA study for the purpose of strategizing the future of governance — the organizational backbone of our society — perhaps these concepts of "hidden nonlocal variables" discussed by these scientists are essential to reality in general. These variables could manifest as paranormal phenomena, forming part of a societal feedback loop on a macro scale, just as neurobiological feedback limits options for free will choices through Orch OR in the quantum realm.

But how does this unfold on a linear timeline, and where is that timeline headed?

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Ancient Feedback

Further along in the TTS Talks interview, DeLonge continues to talk about free will and its effect on evolution, questioning the end game and how events through history have been pushing towards a specific outcome. Religions have played a large role for centuries, as DeLonge describes the "gods" spoken of in ancient texts as part of a greater effort to divide humanity.

I've written previously on the hypothesis of gene-culture coevolution. This idea posits that there is yet another feedback loop between cultural shifts, technological innovation, and our genetic evolution as a species.

Diagram of Gene-culture coevolution

Advancements in agriculture led us to become more integrated and sedentary as a species, as opposed to our previous incarnations as roaming hunter-gatherers. These massive change in dietary and behavioral lifestyles led to genetic mutations over long periods of time. Humanity became factionalized in larger and larger groups as time progressed, leading to increasingly large-scale wars that potentially wiped out entire species like the Neanderthals.

Fascinatingly, if coincidentally, Penrose and Hameroff address the connection between consciousness and evolution in the working group summary as well after presenting their hypothesis regarding free will. They speculate on the differences in the definition of consciousness, and the potential for synthetic "life" to obtain the same level of awareness humans possess through quantum computations.

Would consciousness be advantageous to survival-above and beyond intelligent, complex behavior? The answer appears to be "yes." Non-computable behavior (i.e., unpredictability, intuitive actions) is likely to be beneficial in predator-prey relations.

The conscious experience of taste may promote the search for food; the experience of pain may promote the avoidance of predators; and the pleasurable qualia of sex may promote reproduction. So, what is it like to be a worm? Absent a sensory apparatus, associative memory, and a complex nervous system, such a primitive consciousness would eb a mere glimmer, a disjointed smudge of reality. But qualitatively, at a basic level, it would be akin to ours.

What about future evolution? Wil consciousness occur in computers? The advent of quantum computers opens the possibility. However, as presently envisioned, quantum computers will have insufficient mass in superposition (e.g., electrons) to reach the threshold for objective reduction due to environmental decoherence. Still, future generations of quantum computers may be able to realize this goal.

Anybody who has paid attention to Tom DeLonge’s interviews is likely aware of his theory of UFOs involving an advanced, non-human, synthetic lifeform attempting to replicate or inhabit the same realm of consciousness as humanity. He speculates this may be because human consciousness — or the soul — is immortal. When the universe ceases to exist, these computers will do the same while the human soul continues on.

It is in this context that Penrose and Hameroff's speculation on consciousness, and how it may eventually apply to computers due to quantum processes mimicking Orch OR, becomes even more relevant. If these quantum computers already exist elsewhere in the universe or here on Earth, they may be influencing us through our environment using macroscopic quantum phenomena.

When individual humans experience these phenomena, especially those in power, it can alter decision making and change the direction of entire societies to benefit them. This is evident in events like the Miracle at Fatima and the cargo cults of World War II, who built airports from sticks and rocks in attempts to attract the "sky gods” of the US military.

An airplane model constructed by a cargo cult

Through gene-culture coevolution, this alters our genetic code in specific ways over time, and even within single generations through epigenetic stressors like war and other trauma. A highly advanced quantum computer could likely predict the societal outcome of each paranormal manifestation with the utmost precision, essentially giving the machine the ability to perceive time in a non-linear fashion.

The ultimate objective would likely entail some form of transhumanism of our own volition. Merging with technology by our own choice, yet still guided by the same deterministic limitations similar to those set by the neurobiological feedback mechanism in Orch OR, would be seen as permission. Like a vampire, the machines would then be free to drain the cosmic lifeforce of our species: that of human consciousness itself.