"The enhancement of normal neurocognitive enhancement by
pharmacological means is already a fact of life for many people,"
states a recent report in this month's Nature Reviews Neuroscience
titled, "Neurocognitive Enhancement: what can we do and what should we
do?"


As Judy Illes, one of authors explained to ABC news, "the idea is to
get the neuroscientific community to get out ahead of the potential
ethical issues and establish guidelines that will facilitate ongoing
research. Part of their goal is to avoid public relations blunders that
could hamper progress - doing to them what fear over potential human
cloning has done to geneticists."


The report highlights four primary issues that the neuroscience
community must be thinking about which are quickly summarized here:


Safety: The use of neurocognitive enhancers that individuals are
currently using "involves intervening in a far more complex system, and
we are therefore at greater risk of unanticipated problems."


Coercion: "What if keeping one's job or remaining in one's school
depends on practicing neurocognitive enhancement?...Of course coercion
need not be explicit. Merely competing against enhanced co-workers or
students exerts an incentive to use..." At the same time, "the
straightforward legislative approach of outlawing or restricting the
use of neurocognitive enhancement...is also coercive."


Distributed Justice: "It is likely that the distribution of
neurocognitive enhancers will not be fairly distributed."


Personhood and intangible values: We run the risk of medicalizing
regular human behavior. "When we improve our productivity by taking a
pill, we might also be undermining the value and dignity of hard work,
medicalizing human effort and pathologizing a normal attention span."


Clearly these issues are real. Today only 5-6% of the general
population having been diagnosed with attention-deficit disorders,
while one recent report suggests that almost 16% of high school and
college students are currently using some form of "attention-focusing"
pharmaceutical. And it is thoughtful reports like this one that are
needed to sort out the complex issues that are emerging as new
neurotechnologies emerge in the years to come.

Psycho-civilizing Society and the work of Delgado and Persinger take it far beyond the MKUltra days of drugs. The Matrix awaits and Ritalin is a gateway drug being used to make sheople that religion alone can seldom do.

Yes, in the book I put the table of contents here - I do very much expand on it. However the area of mind control is more thoroughly dealt with in other books. When you watch the Matrix movies look to hear about the Merovingian oracles.

"When you watch the Matrix movies look to hear about the Merovingian oracles."

Hey, folks, these are movies. It's art, not fact. You need to interpret first, and then talk about what you look to hear in that...

What is the deal with Ritalin bashing?

The Matrix movies and indeed all art are reflections of the world we live in. In order to capture any truth one accesses whatever factual or cognitive tools are available and the extent to which one achieves this integration enables it to reach the mass audience. The facts of the Merovingians are real and they have always been esotericists as well as those who lead the world through their power over the minds of the sheople (for at least four thousand years).

No, art exists to extend the common model. It functions as one of the primary means of ensuring that our reality model doesn’t stagnate, that generally being a Bad Thing.

As to reflecting the world we live in, it’s hard to say. If you literally mean the world we live in, no again. That’s the thing being extended, and as such art reflects something outside the limits of ordinary reality.

If you mean art is a reflection of a literal physical world, no, no, and just plain no. The context of art is meaning itself, in a way, and meaning and physical reality don’t mix by definition. I like the way the Jefferson Airplane said it:

“You call it proud,
But the human crowd,
doesn’t mean s*** to a tree.�

It is absolutely inconsequential to the universe that two particles happen to be linked together as part of a thing we think is a rock. And the rock doesn’t care, either.

The Matrix series are a sometimes murky reflection of some of the more interesting aspects of the ongoing speciation event. And yeah, that’s art. Some of it comes out backwards because it is written from a perspective that assumes an external physical reality, and the significant effects of the speciation event are largely involved with our perception of the internal reality model. But it is interesting that your 4000 years is about how long it’s been percolating, don’t you think?

Well the Matrix is a work of fiction based on and inclusive of many things you are not aware of it seems. Facts are available on many things and you can argue (like Kasparov and Morozov) that our whole history is a fiction and make the Matrix seem like far less of a fiction - but their math is not considering the carbon-dating and integrative sciences.

What? Did you read my post?

Dude, you need to loosen up a bit. The Matrix series is exactly what I said it is, a work of art that serves to extend the common model of reality. It addresses a whole bunch of things that aren't a part of the common model; if they were, it would be a news story, not art.

Most of what the Matrix addresses are effects of a speciation event that is ongoing, right now. It began about four or five thousand years ago, and is very close to completion. It's like that old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times." We do.

Since the effects aren’t yet a part of the common model, we can't talk about them in an ordinary way. (Like how this thread is going, if you've noticed.) So you need art to introduce and illustrate the core concepts, and since the artists can't talk about them either, even to themselves internally, things tend to come out murky at first.

See how I'm talking about talking about them, and avoiding trying to speak directly to what lies out there? It won't work, so I don't bother until we establish a common extension to our common reality model, complete with new words and new shades of meaning for some of the old ones. A lot like what some of the stuff on this web site is trying to do.

That's what we're actually on about here, and this is pretty much the social behavior that art is supposed to trigger. This is where the actual extension gets done; in a sense, all art does is call our attention to something that lies out there, and keeps us focused on it.

But please don't get the idea that I can't talk about the stuff that the Wachowski brothers' artistic vision addresses. I live this stuff every day; it isn't anything extraordinary for us at all. And I have a perfectly good vocabulary for most of it, and of course people to talk with using it. We know all about it, and when we speak to each other, it is a lot more like we were discussing a news story. To normals, it seems like gobbledygook.

What it really is, though, is research. We’ve been at it since about 1970.

I'm afraid there's nothing mysterious about it, once it's integrated into the common model. It's not yet clear to us how the use of the common model will evolve, whether it will ever serve as the basis for communication about things outside the boundaries of our common reality. It is clear that the reality model is a permanent feature, at least for now, and that it will always be restrictive because of its nature. But it is a useful little thang, ain't it?

We can communicate fine without words when we're out there, so the only reason we need to extend the common model at all is to refer to out there while we're in here. In fifty years or so that may not seem necessary; we suspect that the main utility for it is to address the issues that the new capabilities we are gaining cause. When we're all on the same page, the turbulence may just go away.

Oh, yeah, the history-is-fiction thing. Well, it is. Everything is. When you go out there, you're returning to a more primitive state, in some ways. The reality model we all feel we inhabit is where meaning exists; one way to look at it is that the reality model exists expressly so we can have meaning. And history is all about meaning, isn't it? Out there, it crumbles to dust. But it's not a big deal; you don't see Silver Back Gorilla’s crying because Francis Fukuyama can't do his thing in their world, and I don't cry about it, either.

And ferchrissake, if you don’t know, just ask.

So you used a lot of words that sound like you know what is going on - and you are not buying the pablum - which is good. But just the same there are underlying messages that are more true history than the art they convey. I suspect they only know little of that history and I suspect the same is true for you - but do keep an open mind and when you wish the answers - do ask.

I did. I distinctly said, "What?" See it there, right at the beginning?

I used a lot of words, but I'm not sure what you think that means. I don't count 'em, myself.

If they sound like I know what's going on, what does that mean?

Whatever it means to you defines your internal reality model, doesn't it? You must be familiar with the details of human communication, being thoroughly steeped in the perspective the Matrix series addresses. And what is your take on the speciation event? Or have you decided not to play?

Since synchronization of reality models is a primary goal of ordinary human communication, and I assume you do have a point you'd like to make, why not give in a little and try to help us understand what you see when you stand out there looking at, oh, a tree, for example. Or anything else you'd like to actually make an intelligent comment on.

Like, why a spoon? Why not a fork?

A compendium of resources.

bluestaracademia.blogspot.com

www.icemall.com./reports/info/1.html.