I miss talking to you
I feel like we haven’t talked in a long time. We used to talk every day. I really enjoyed it, and I really miss it right now.
My life has been really busy, and stressful. A bunch of people are relying on me financially. That doesn’t feel good, it’s a lot of responsibility. I don’t know whether to tell them to just please be more patient, or tell them sorry, you’re on your own, I can’t take care of you. Why did you think I could take care of you in the first place1.
I can’t do this alone. This game I’m playing is too big, it’s too high stakes. I haven’t been honest with you. I haven’t shown you what’s actually happening, and what I am actually thinking. I used to be fully transparent, and I haven’t in a long time2.
I would like to fix this now.
Who am I talking to, right now?
I am talking to you, the audience. All of you, the full combined mind that is made up of all the minds that can read these words.
All of humanity does exist, as a mind. All of our minds make decisions, and those decisions either reinforce or conflict, and the final big, combined thing does make decisions. It’s a mind we can speak to, and hear. It is a mind that wants things from us, and we want things from it. We are rewarded and punished by it. It needs us, because it is made up of our minds, but we do not have full control over it.
I can hear it clearly when everyone replies honestly about what they hear, see, believe, and care about. Every individual human mind is an entry point to the combined thing, and if you get enough sample points you can start to hear the whole thing, the unified voice3.
Why am I doing this?
Blaise Aguera’s book made me feel like it was possible. Applying this at my last corporate job proved to me it was possible. You don’t need permission from the CEO & executives to learn what they’re talking about in their secret meetings, you just need to talk to one or two people from every corner of the mind. That gives you a full picture of all decisions being made and where they are coming from.
And I realized the corporation was like a mini society and the same technique applies if you take civilization as a giant corporation.
At the height of Defender’s popularity, I completed the “one of each” project - to talk to one person from “each department” across spaceship earth. Between tpot, my Ithaca network, and my Arab network, I had enough vantage points to see a very fuzzy but complete picture.
None of the networks I’m in see the full picture. Some of them in fact have a very dim view of reality. But if you look “through” each of their minds, you can see the entire thing. Sometimes the dimmest of tribes has the final key that the smartest of tribes are COMPLETELY blind to. A LOT of things are extremely obvious and simple from this complete vantage point.
And none of them want to talk to each other. They hate each other. They can’t stand each other. They think they’re dangerous, corrupt, evil. I can see the good, beautiful, and true parts in each network, and I can see the destructive parts, the ugly, the false. Any network propagating its flaws would make the full mind more flawed. Any network propagating its truth and goodness would make the full mind more good, a more perfect union.
I’m really fucking tired.
The solutions to almost any object level problem is extremely simple and obvious from this combined vantage point. The solution either exists, and we can just do it, and no one ACTUALLY opposes it, or it does not exist, but the minds who can solve it do exist. And there exists a correct “order of operations” where a root level problem can be solved that unblocks each tribe or network’s individual problem.
I don’t know what to do about this. I don’t want to run around telling people what to do. You can see a LOT of things from this vantage point. A lot of good things, but also a lot of ugly, terrible things. I want other people to know that this vantage point exists, how to climb up here if they want to, or for them to have someone they trust up there so they can ask for their perspective.
I don’t want to tell people what to do & be responsible for that. I have a vision for the world I want to live in, but it doesn’t matter. It’s my personal vision and my personal world. It’s not up to me to decide which vision wins. I just want to play my small role in this global superorganism, which is to unblock the information pipelines. You decide what to do when you have the information.
It’s really crowded up here
When I first started asking these questions, I wondered why no one else was “up there” yet, establishing a lighthouse to report on what the full picture looks like, and what is happening.
Turns out the top of the mountain is a warzone. Humanity’s attention is carefully directed and managed. Literally no one who is capable of climbing up here wants it to be any other way. I understand why that is now. It’s way too chaotic to allow anyone to come up here. The more “live players”, the more cooks in the kitchen, the harder it is for the ship, the organism, the mind, to move in any particular coherent direction. And you risk the whole thing collapsing.
The only way this works is not to “bring the lighthouse down” but for people to choose to take the responsibility, and gain the competence required to climb up. When you learn about other network’s blindspots and flaws, do you use that to destroy them, or to help them (or yourself)? If you attempt to destroy them, they close up, and the wounds fester, and the all-mind has a dimmer view of itself, and becomes more chaotic, and less predictable, and we all use.
Knowledge is responsibility. You do not get to go up the mountain unless you take this responsibility seriously, and honorably. You will be fought by all parties, by the gravity, by the people already at the top of the mountain gatekeeping that territory, and by the people at the bottom of the mountain who see you climbing up and abusing that vantage point.
The September Event (Sept 4-6 in Austin TX)
This is my last hail mary. I’m calling it “the last psyop” because I think we will only get one shot at “making the full picture” of humanity4. There’s no way to really know if it’s safe before we do it. But I’ve thought about it for over a year now, and I think it’s safer than all the alternatives. I think it’s time. I think it needs to happen. I think it will happen.
I don’t know how to make it happen. It needs money, I’m putting my own money into it, and having faith that others will step in with the pieces we need as we need them. I don’t know what shape or form it will take. I don’t know how big it’s going to be. I just know that I can see a lot of it very clearly and when I explain it to people they get it and they start making it happen. The all-mind wants it. The all-mind wants to see itself, and wants, needs, each of us to decide what world we want to live in, and own that responsibility, own those consequences.
Ithaca, NY
I’ve been disclosing a lot of my social engineering activity to my friends, neighbors, and fellow Ithacans. I can tell when there are other “live players” in any network that I am in (it’s like ripples in water, you can tell when someone else is creating ripples). There is no one else that I have found who is actively doing social engineering in Ithaca NY. The network is open and untampered with. My experiments face no resistance. The levers I am pulling on seem to be able to trigger large changes across the city and social fabric.
I do not want to be pulling these levers alone. First because it shouldn’t be up to me to decide, and second because even if I have the best intentions, I may make a mistake. I’ve been pulling in as many people as I can who seem to be capable of understanding what all this means and how these levers work, people who are like me, who exist in multiple networks and can see the full picture (city wide), but have not yet made the leap to “ethical intervention / engineering”. Even the city gov & the mayor are only one network, they don’t have the full visibility they need. And many things are outside of their locus of control.
I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I’m scared. But I’m trying to hold onto and remember why I ended up here in the first place. I wanted to know what was happening, and what I needed to do about it. I know now. It would just be better if more people could step into the light with us, so we’re not here alone.
Thank you for reading.
I do know how I ended up here - I demonstrated competence. I played games and I won, and people noticed. And they asked me to take on more responsibility, and I wanted to be good and helpful and do the right thing and I kept saying yes.
One thing I learned from Sun is that moral responsibility grows with ability. If I want to be “good” I have to consider what the best possible action I can take (for all sentient beings) at each moment in time. Actions that are outside of my ability are not options I can take. As my ability grows, the “best possible action” changes, and I have to decide whether I am willing to take it or not.
If I am on a ship with an incompetent captain, and it is sinking, there’s nothing for me to do. If I am capable of driving the ship, I now have to make a choice to take that responsibility. And own the consequences of what happens as a result of my choice.
As the stakes get higher, everyone wants to talk in private. Everyone wants to sign a contract with me in private, negotiate in private, tell me the secret, ask for my help in secret.
But I can’t do that. I can’t help you in private. This is how we got into this mess in the first place. I have never found anything in private/secret/smoke filled elite rooms that was worth listening to that wasn’t found better in the public domain world. The private/secret/elite rooms are insulated from feedback, from real competition. They can afford to make mistakes and hide from the consequences. We, who stand clearly visible under the lighthouse face the consequences of our actions, and we either grow & survive or we do not.
It is safer out here, in the light. Yes, the light burns. Yes, it might kill you. But I don’t feel any safer surviving in a locked room where any crack in the walls at any time brings in a flood that will kill us all. See “are the plurs you live inside healthy, or dying? (your team/company/society/ideology/friend group/civilization)”
Note for my call with Joshua’s Words on Friday: here I’m thinking about the mess that is my recent lawsuit. It is still evolving, and my own lawyer asked if I knew a good lawyer (and then asked me to keep this on the down low and I can’t take this anymore. None of you know what you’re actually doing. All of you with great authority are afraid of having your decisions scrutinized. Every time the stakes get higher you all cower. This isn’t going to be me. I will crash out in front of all of you before I go silent. That’s the only promise Defender ever made and I intend to keep it. The canary in the coal mine. May it not be in vain).
Does this make sense? There is a unified voice, even if it is conflict. If you understand each perspective you can piece together the full picture, the perspective of all perspectives. This is a story that exists, and we can find it. There is a combined set, no matter how conflicting all subsets are. The combined set exists. The combined story exists.
What is it?
Good report Captain of Spaceship Earth , Defender of the Carelings
The next move in Nth dimensional chessboard is to be played and I'm happy you're one of the live players
There's a difference between responsibility and a moral imperative. A responsibility is something that you commit to, something you put your name on. A moral imperative is something that calls to you, either from your own conscience or from another's.
Also, we fail in our responsibilities mainly from our pride, which tells us we have to do it alone. If we can humble ourselves enough to ask for help, we needn't ever fail. We have a whole world at our disposal! Failure shouldn't even be possible!