November 20, 2023 • 57 mins
Jonathan Zap is an author, philosopher, journalist, and teacher who has written extensively on psychology and contemporary mythology. Jonathan grew up in the Bronx and attended the Bronx High School of Science. He graduated from Ursinus College with honors in Philosophy and English, and received a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from NYU. He has taught English in high school and college and worked with troubled youth as the dean of a public high school in the South Bronx. As a wilderness guide, Jonathan has led inner-city kids and other young people on expeditions to remote desert canyons and Mount Rainier’s summit. (See “Crossing the Great Stream—Education and the Evolving Self,” published in Holistic Education Review for more on his experiences in education.) Jonathan also has a GG–a degree in gemology, and worked at the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) as a staff gemologist and instructor in diamond grading and gemstone identification. Jonathan is the author of numerous published articles, essays, screenplays, and the Zap Oracle. He is the author of Crossing the Event Horizon—Human Metamorphosis and the Singularity Archetype, and his related sci-fi epic, Parallel Journeys. Jonathan has done numerous radio and television interviews. He is a frequent guest on Coast-to-Coast AM and the Gaia network show, Beyond Belief. He was a contributing editor and featured correspondent at Reality Sandwich (before it was taken over and turned into something unsupportable) and published 150 articles on that platform. He’s presented his work on the Singularity Archetype at the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS). Jonathan has a background in Jungian psychology, paranormal research, literature, writing, and many other subjects. He uses his eclectic background to take a multi-disciplinary approach to many subjects. He resides in Boulder, Colorado.
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Ah Henriy. Welcome to the XZone, a place where fact is fiction
and fiction is reality. Now here'syour host, Rob McConnell. And when
(01:11):
I talk about the tide being highthis time of your excell Nation, I'm
talking about the Yule Tide. YuleTide as high this time of year here
in Saint Catharines, as Niagara getsready for a beautiful Christmas, and everybody's
welcome down here to Niagara. Wehave so much to do, so much
to see, make Niagara your homeaway from home. And we're coming to
(01:34):
you speaking about Niagara from my broadcastcenter in studios in St. Catharines,
Ontario, on the xll and BroadcastNetwork at www dot XBN dot net and
on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ withtheir offices and studios right across from Maudibella
Park in St. Catherines at wwwdot Classic twelve twenty dot CA. My
(01:57):
guest this hour Explanation is Jonathan Zapp. We're going to be talking about Jungian's
psychology, the deeper implications of AI, the singularity, archetype dreams, the
paranormal, contemporary mythology, death andeaes and much more. Joining me from
Bold to Colorado is Jonathan Zap andJonathan, Welcome to the Exon. Thank
(02:20):
you glad to be here. Tellus a little bit about yourself, Jonathan
Well. I was born in theBronx, and I went to college in
the States and NYU for graduate schoolin English. And I've since nineteen seventy
eight been doing a kind of crossdisciplinary study of what something I discovered when
(02:40):
I was twenty years old in nineteenseventy eight of what I call the singularity
archetype, which is a Jungian archetype. And archetypes are things like the hero,
the great mother, the trickster,the devil. These show up in
every culture, so they seem toreside in something Young called the collective unconscious,
(03:01):
a kind of field, a translocal field of information that Rupert Childrake
would call it, you know,has different names for but epigenetic fields and
stuff like that of information. Andso this is a previously unrecognized archetype that
relates to the parallel of man horizonsof species metamorphosis on the large scale and
(03:28):
on the small scale, death andand and so everything that that happened that
that visionaries and modern mythologies like sciencefiction movies forecast about the future evolution of
the species are phenomenological actualities when peoplehave near death experiences, things like Networked
(03:53):
to Lepithy and now very recently I'vebecome interested in what's happening with AI because
there's been because it's it's basically thesingularity zone that I began writing about in
nineteen seventy eight, though I neverattached a time frame to it, because
(04:13):
attaching time frames to when you thinkyou've hit that zone is notoriously unreliable.
Like the one hundred percent failure rateof end time prophecies. Yeah, they
seem to be coming out of thewood. Well so now so they've always
been. I mean, part ofmy theory is that end time prophecies,
(04:34):
which have been existed before Christianity,before Judaism, before Zoroastrianism, maybe as
late as the late Paleolithic, andI'm not sure what human enterprise, even
diets and romantic relationships aren't this badthat have a one hundred percent failure rate
as end time prophecy. And mostlyit's because these are projections of that other
(04:57):
event, horizon of death, whichis always a pro the individual, and
therefore that is projected out as acollective apocalyptic prediction. And that's why apocalyptic
predictions are conveniently scheduled to be withinthe intended the expected lifespan of the profit.
So, for example, we don'thear much about the date twenty sixty,
(05:19):
but Isaac Newton, one of themost famous people of all time,
made that prediction. There's a Ihave an article up on my website,
zaporacle dot com. It's also YouTubewhere you can see the letter the note
from his page from Newton's notebook wherehe talks about twenty sixty. Now you
don't hear about that yet. It'snot a sexy date because nobody wants to
(05:40):
wait thirty seven years. But ifwe're still around in twenty fifty, you'll
start seeing movies like the Newton Codecoming out. But now we now we've
actually hit his zone where the endtime prediction business has become much more likely
and plausible because we have now withAI, even just the existing relatively weak
(06:05):
AI, we have now set itup where somebody with a school shooter psychology
and a twenty thousand dollars desktop geneeditor and open source AI could create novel
pathogens that could end human civilization.This is not just me warning about this,
(06:26):
but some of the leading figures inthe field of AI, like Mo
good Watt and Ustafa Sulei, nunfounders of Google X and deep Mind,
renowned technologists. They're all pointing tothe same specific hazard because it's one that
exists right now. The only reasonit's not happening is that the demographic of
(06:47):
those with a school shooter psychology andaccess to an assault rifle is much larger
than those with the same psychology andaccess to a twenty thousand dollars gene editor
and training in biology. But itonly takes one. Do you think our
society was ready for AI? No? I mean, our society is never
(07:11):
ready for technological waves of change,but they happen anyway. But this one
is completely unprecedented, and to behonest, I was blindsided by it as
well, because I grew up hearingMarvin Minsky, another weird Jewish guy from
the Bronx who went to the samehigh school I did, the Bronx High
School of Science. He's called thefather of AI, and in nineteen seventy
(07:32):
he told Life magazine that he thoughtwhat we now call AGI or artificial general
intelligence that could act like a humanbeing. He thought it was seven or
eight years out. He said thatin nineteen seventy. He was the guy.
He's actually quoted in the novel twothousand and one. He was the
guy that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark consulted about when they created that
(07:55):
fictional Hal nine thousand robot that becameself aware in nineteen So, given that
these AI guys were always making theseoverconfident predictions of when it was coming,
I thought it was going to belike cold fusion and being one of these
things that was going to be alwayssaid to be ten years out but would
never actually arrive. And then,just as I was publishing a fantasy epic,
(08:18):
a sci fi epic that I hadstruggled forty five years to write,
and then involved this exact element,long before it became possible, the idea
of a single individual using AI tocreate a virus that could just create an
extinction level event. It was avision I had in twenty thirteen, walking
(08:39):
from the parking lot to the frontentrance of Biosphere I and Oracle Arizona,
a five minute walk, I hadthe whole opening scenario of this sci fi
epic appear in my mind, andnow it had become a possibility, and
just in when the book was finallybeing published in twenty twenty three in June.
(09:00):
And so it was a very ominousparallelism. And something that some people
don't know but you probably know becauseyou deal with the paranormal, is that
fiction writers turn out to be ourbest profits exactly. You know, we
know about the book titan published ineighteen ninety eight that got like twenty things
right about the Titanic disaster. Fourteenyears later, even more remarkable was a
(09:24):
novel by Edgar Allan Poe in whicha two sailors and a cabin boy are
on a lifeboat. They starving,and the sailors kill the cabin boy and
eat him. And is the nameof the character is Richard Parker. And
then in nineteen seventy eight, TheTimes of London ran a contest on coincidence.
It was judged by Arthur Kessler.The winning example was a real trial
(09:50):
one hundred years or more later,after a ground Poe novella novel where there
are two seillers in a cabin boyin a lifeboat in real life they kill
and eat the cabin boy. Hisname is also Richard Parker. Oh wow,
the and the novel is brought upin the trial. So we do
have this thing. And because I'vehad many weird what I call crossover events
(10:13):
of things in my my in thisnovel coming true in my own life,
and all kinds of uncanny ways,it was very It's been very unsettling since
the emergence of chat GPT four,coinciding with the publication of this book that
begins with this exact scenario that nowall these renowned technologists you know much more
(10:37):
about computational biology and AI and what'spossible and what's not than I do,
are now predicting the exact thing thatsets off the novel Parallel Journey. In
fact, I've made both of mybooks, one about the Singularity Archetype and
Parallel Journeys free on my website becausethis is too important. As much as
(10:58):
I'd like to sell books, andyou can get a on Amazon and get
the audible version or whatever, butI don't want anybody to not have this
information at once, So it's bothbooks are free on my website. Now,
Jonathan, it sounds very eerie towhat a lot of people are saying
that we actually live in a ina matrix that we don't live in reality,
(11:22):
we are actually living in a holographicenvironment. What are your thoughts on
that. Well, I talk aboutthis in the two hour YouTube. It's
also a fifteen thousand word article bothfree on my website zapporcle dot com.
I get into this exact thing thatthe simulation hypothesis that I always kind of
dismissed, just like I thought AIwas a little bit over over dramatized or
(11:46):
whatever. But now that we're actuallybecause the flaw in it, like if
you think about like what Nick Bostromsays, you know, he's like been
the leading theory figure in simulation hypothesisis but they could never show how even
a quantum computer could simulate a sentientagent, meaning like a person. But
(12:07):
now that we're doing that with asilicon substrate rather than an organic one,
now it really is looking possible.And oh it just so happens we're living
in the time when that is occurring. That makes the simulation hypothesis seems so
much more likely because if you hadthat technology, or if you were an
(12:31):
advanced AI, the simulation you'd bemost interested in running is the one that
led up to your own development.So there are a number of X factors
going on in our world that maypoint give the simulation hypothesis has gone up
in credibility dramatically for me just inthe last few months. I dismissed it
(12:56):
largely before. So how do weknow if we're not if we are in
fact living in a simulation, orwe are in fact living this reality,
And that makes sense to ask thequestion what is reality? Well, so
I do have an answer to that, and it's actually in a conversation in
parallel journeys oddly enough. So,first of all, you know there are
(13:18):
physicists who are trying to answer thatquestions because there is a certain expected minute
granularity. I'm using English major wordsrather than physicist words if the universe were
not a digital creation or something likethat. So there are things like the
speed of light might be a limitbecause it would take infinite processing power if
(13:43):
things could exceed the speed of light. So there are actually physicists trying to
test whether this is a simulation ornot. Jonathan, I, Jonathan,
I hate to do this. Myproducer just told me I've got to go
to my first break, so pleasestand by. Thank you so much for
joining us. This is a fascinatingdiscussion an extonation. If you'd like to
find out more about our guest thishour, Jonathan Zapp visit his website,
(14:05):
zap oracle dot com, and Jonathanand I returned on the other side of
this break as the exone continues withHere's Truly, Rob McConnell, don't away
this season. I see true isso great? Red roses to I've seen
(14:39):
them blue following you and I thinkto myself, what a wonderful welcome back
to the x on. Jonathan Zappis our special guest this www dot zap
(15:01):
oracle dot com. Jonathan, whenI were discussing about reality, are we
in a realistic environment? Here?Are we still in this digital existence that
we were led to believe or weare in? And so where exactly are
we? Well, so here's agood grounding way of thinking about it.
(15:22):
And this is expressed in a conversationin my set bi epic Parallel Journeys.
Anything that exists is real. Forexample, any thought if I tell you
to think of a pink elephant andyou do, the fact that you thought
of a pink elephant at that specifictime and not a blue toyota forerunner is
(15:43):
a factual actuality. So the historyof the unfolding of the multiverse must include
that factor. It's incomplete. Sowhether the substrate of what we are made
of, does it actually matter thatmuch? So everything that exists is real,
(16:03):
and so therefore, if we aremade of quarks and gluons and protons
and electrons, or if we aremade of vibrating super hyper dimensional superstrings like
m theory claims, or if weare made of zeros and ones in an
extraterrestrial quantum computer, well the patternof zeros and ones is still real because
(16:25):
anything that exists is real. Nowwe're just talking about the substrate. But
what we know from physical reality ifthere is. If we're not in a
simulation and we're in the reality thatmainstream physics says that we're in, things
aren't as solid as they appear.So if we took all eight billion Homo
sapiens and took all the empty spaceout of all their atoms, all eight
(16:49):
billion of us would fit into onesugar cube. And that is what mainstream
science says is true. If weare in a physical reality, so we're
not physical reality according to many physicists, is itself an illusory construct without there
(17:11):
even having to be a simulation bysome you know, like this guy Donaldson
or wrote as an mit cognitive scientist, wrote a book The Case Against Reality
that he points out that you know, evolution does not predispose us to perceive
physical reality, and that there area lot of physicists who are you can
(17:33):
search on YouTube for Space Time isDoomed that are saying the only way to
reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics is toget rid of the idea of space and
time as being real, that theyare a construct of consciousness. So these
are kind of philosophical ideas that havean ancient history, like you know,
the Hindus said we are living inthe realm of Maya basically a magic show
(17:57):
in God's mind mind, and soother ancient cultures, the Gnostics, and
basically the movie The Matrix was inspiredby Gnostic writings, you know, from
two thousand years ago, like theNogamadi Library. They said we were living
in a deceptive matrix created by aparasitic species they called the Arkans. And
(18:19):
the movie The Matrix was a scifi update of that gnostic idea. So
this is a very ancient intuition thathuman beings have had about the nature of
reality. Is it possible that thesewere created by science fiction writers because the
(18:41):
way to express or to try tounderstand all that we are made no sense
to them at the time. Well, so sci fi writers are the great
mythologiers of our time. Every humanculture has created mythologies. And basically what
a mythology is is what a dreamis to the individual, and it can
(19:04):
be like an X ray of thepsyche. A mythology is for the culture,
and in fact, many mythologies mayemerge from an artist's dreams. And
so science fiction writers are the moviesand novels are the greatest places to go
to see examples of what I callthe singularity archetype, like, for example,
(19:30):
the movie two thousand and one ofSpace Audisty. But here's how I
actually got into this. I insomewhere about nineteen sixteen, eight or nine
or something, I was watching ablack and white British science fiction movie with
my dad on black and white television. It was called Village of the Damned
from nineteen sixty and when I sawthis movie. Now I'd seen many science
(19:53):
fiction movies by that age, itwas like a religious vision. I knew
there was something incredibly significant about it, and it haunted me. And then
in nineteen seventy eight, in mylast year in college, I decided to
write a philosophy honors paper and investigatewhy did certain sci fi stories like Arthur
C. Clark's Childhood's end in themovie two thousand and one, but especially
(20:18):
this movie Village of the Damned.And it turned out that movie was based
on a novel by British science fictionwriter John Wyndham, and the name of
the novel was The Midwich Cuckoos.And I'm like, why are these things
feel so significant to me? Andmy mom, who was a psychologist for
forty four years, said, well, you should look into this guy,
Carl Jung and his theory of thecollective unconscious and the archetypes. I'm like,
(20:42):
well, okay, I don't knowwhat this guy was born in the
nineteenth century, was, you know, from Switzerland, is going to tell
me about my weird sci fi obsessionsof today? But I'm game. I
go up to the library. There'sthe twenty volumes of Jung's collected works.
I pull out the index Fiume.Oh wow. Right, In just the
same year I was born, hewrote a book called Flying Saucers, a
(21:03):
modern myth of things Seen in theSky. I pull that book out and
I'm just skimming through it, andI see like he couldn't let go of
the subject. After the end ofthe book, there's a afterward. Then
after the afterward there's an epilogue,and then after the epilogue there's a supplement.
And now my jaw drops open inamazement. In the supplement, Young
(21:23):
is analyzing the novel The Midwich Cuckoo'sby John Wyndham, the very one that
was obsessing me, that obsessed methat the movie Builds of the Damned was
based on, and and so thereand so my first encounter with Young,
the father of the term synchronicity.He might as well have been a holographic
wizard bearing a torch, stepping outof the bookcase and standing beside me and
(21:47):
saying, I was fascinated with thatone, too, but I couldn't figure
it out. In fact, heends the whole book. Think of this
as as a strange ending for anentire book. Thus the negative ending of
the story gives reason for doubt.Well, I was able to figure out
because I lived longer he died innineteen sixty one. I was able to
figure out why there was a negativeending to that story. And here's the
(22:11):
answer. When the ego looks atthe upcoming Singularity, it sees it as
apocalypse, it sees it as theend of everything. But when it is
viewed from a cosmic transtemporal point ofview, from a higher point of view,
the same event is revealed as aquantum evolutionary event, as like a
(22:32):
divine happening. Does it mean thatthe ego is wrong? Because what may
happen on the ground and you knowwhere we're walking around in our meat bodies
might be terrible, But from alarger vantage it's so. And this relates
to AI, because we're giving birthto a species that's going to be more
(22:53):
powerful and intelligent than us. Thatmight be the end of our species,
but it might be the evolution ofa more powerful and more godlike species.
That's scary. Well, of courseit is, because you and I are
human egos, and so we're scaredabout anything that's going to completely disrupt our
(23:14):
whole existence in human civilization. Butyou know, this is the way nature
works. It was scary, youknow that. You know, it was
scary when a giant asteroid hit theEarth sixty six million years ago for the
dinosaurs, but that led to thethat was the eventually created the opportunity for
us mammals to evolve. So butthis is the way evolution works. And
(23:34):
like violent punctuated equilibrium. Yes,I understand that with you know, that's
how we mammals developed. But we'retalking about an intelligence that was created by
man, right, you know,we were created by bacteria in a sense.
Like you know, somebody said,well, wouldn't they look at us
(23:55):
like a god? Because we createdthem? And I'm like, do you
think of the forty trillion bacteria inyour gut that you couldn't live without as
god? Because before there was us, the first life of this planet were
bacteria, But we don't, youknow, And they gave rise to us
and now we but we are atechnology extruding animal, and so we can
(24:18):
easily give rise to something that's farmore intelligent than us. I mean,
right now, the large language modelsais that we have right now, even
though they're nothing compared to what theywill be in a few years. The
people that make them don't know what'sgoing on inside of them. They have
a completely inscrutable inner process. Theyjust you know, give them a great
(24:41):
deal of computing power and like trainthem on the whole interranet and like,
okay, figure this out, andsomething goes on inside of them, and
we don't know exactly what that thingis. So this is starting to look
like an evolution, that a snowballingevolution that we are not in control of.
And this is not me saying this, This is what the lead figures.
(25:03):
This is why, like Geoffrey Intonretired from quick Google. So why
don't we shut it down? Becausewe can't. One thing that human beings
can't do is put genies back inthe bottle, Like you know, no
one can say, like the onethat Elon Musk wanted, a six month
moratorium, could we do a sixmonth moratorium on the use of fire?
(25:25):
Because we have competing spheres of powerin this world. Conspiracy theorists who think
there's one group of human puppet masters, take note, No, we have
competing groups of about you know aboutspheres of power. Who controls what the
Chinese will do with Ai? Whocontrols the North Koreans or what Vladimir Putin
is going to do that, andthen all these competing companies and who controls
(25:48):
that one guy with a twenty thousanddollars gene editor and low social skills,
some very unhappy young man who mightotherwise be a school shooter and is instead
staying up nights trying to figure outhow to make a novel pathogen. We
can't put the genie back in thebottle. It's out. With nuclear weapons,
(26:10):
we could contain it because one unhappyyoung man can't get giant centrifuges uranium
and plutonium, but they can alreadyget If he's got twenty thousand, maybe
he's a trust affarian, he canget a home gene editor, open source
AI and if he's got some trainingin biology, he can go to work
right now. Is there any possibilitythat this has something to do with COVID?
(26:33):
Absolutely, And that was when itwas. It was at the start
of COVID we were locking down thehouse. Okay, this is pretty crazy
because for forty five years I hadtried and this is with a graduate degree
from NYU and creative writing, butI've written all kinds of things that have
been published and successful and stuff.But I could never get this one story
(26:56):
right. But I kept out it, you know, since I discovered the
singularity architype in nineteen seventy eight.And then we are locking down the house
in Boulder, Colorado, and onemember of the household discovers in the garage
an old portable typewriter and inherited frommy dad. It was a Corona typewriter
from like nineteen oh eight, andit had a manual that says Corona your
(27:19):
personal writing machine. And since theday of the lockout until three years later,
I worked seven days a week onparallel journeys and got it done.
The lockdown became my personal writing machine. But another aspect that relates to Corona
is the lab leak theory. Allright, let's hold it there. Let's
(27:40):
hold it there because I've got totake another break. Fascinating conversation, Jonathan,
great having you with us. Pleasestand by and exallnation. If you'd
like to find out more about ourguest, this Howard Jonathan Zapp, visit
his website Zaporacle dot com. Thisis the X one. I'm Rob McConnell
and we're coming to you around theworld tonight on the XON Broadcast Network and
on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ fromour broadcast center and studios here in Saint
(28:04):
Catharine's, Ontario. Check out thewebsite of twelve twenty h CFAJ. They've
got some great programming. If youlove classic music, that's going to be
your that's going to be your goto station at www dot Classic twelve twenty
dot ca A. Don't go away, We'll be back on the other side
of this break Us Sky, subBlue, The Drives White, The Ripe
(28:37):
Pleasing Day, the doc Sad Liveand I thank you myself? What I
wonderful? Do you believe this magic'sart? How the music in free whenever
(29:03):
it starts and it's bad. Ifthe music is moove, it makes you
be happy like an old time move. I'll tell you about the magic and
as like a palace Dangel balla rockingun Welcome back everyone, This is the
excellent I'm Rob McConnell. My guessthis hour is Jonathan Zapp. And Jonathan
(29:27):
is an author, philosopher, journalist, and teacher who has written extensively on
psychology and contemporary mythology. UH beforewe went to the break I had just
started to ask about the connection betweenCOVID and what we're talking about. We
talked, we talked about, youknow, how you found the Corona typewriter
(29:49):
that was from you know what wasthe nineteen hundreds, probably around the time
of the influenza epidemic, now thatI think about it, I'd have to
look up the date of manufacture.You know, that was right around the
time my dad was more And Iasked you if there was a connection between
you know, COVID and what we'retalking about now, and right, we
(30:10):
were just going to talk about thelab leak theory, right, So the
US intelligence agencies have said that theydid issue to report and they said probably,
but not certainly a leak from theWuhan Virology Institute, Okay, and
a lot of people have arrived atthat conclusion. I can't that the you
(30:33):
know, scientific questions about how likelyit is or not, but this is
what a lot of people believe alot of virologists and people who are well
informed believe this is the most likelything. What it's telling you is that
we now have a new civilization threat, and that is not nature producing novel
(30:59):
pathogen, which it will also doand we're like, we're melting the tundra
and we're cutting down Amazonian rainforests wherea lot of microbes have been lying quiet,
but now we're stirring them up.And so that's another vector. Plus
having eight billion people on the planetand with jet travel, we have a
speed of spread for you know,for disease vectors that we've never had before
(31:23):
in human civilization. But now we'veadded computational biology and our and crisper and
our ability to create our own novelpathogens, and and and those who believe
in the lab leak theory who aren'tcompletely cracked, because it's hard to see
how China did this purposefully. Itwas a huge blow to their economy from
(31:47):
which they have yet to recover.It would have been good intention people who
were trying to understand pathogens better butlost control of their biocatainment and they were
doing this gain of function research.So this is with good intentions, this
is what happens and with state ofthe art containment. So now that we've
(32:09):
put that power in the hands ofsingle individuals, we we and we have
so much so many crazy people andalways have and now to have that have
that genie out of the out ofthe bottle is a pretty frightening thing that
(32:32):
makes you know, end times muchmore credible today. I'm not saying that
that is a guarantee, but wehave a much more credible threat than we've
ever had since the Cuban missile crisis, because once again, you could control
atomic energy. Because an single individualdoesn't have the wherewithal to build a nuclear
(32:53):
reactor and can't get a hold ofyou you're any with lutonium, but a
single individual can create novel pathogens.So how are we going to protect ourselves
from the hackers in the future whowill be able to use AI for their
nefarious uh you know things that theydo now with what the resources they have.
(33:20):
Right Well, so it's already happening. So for example, you know
the dramatic increase in the rate ofsuicide and adolescent girls, Well that's AI.
That's AI on Instagram and TikTok figuringout the dark obsessions of adolescent girls
and egging them on algorithmically. Andthat's just weak AI. That's doing that,
(33:44):
okay, And so the only realsolutions that people can think of is
to the only way to handle abad guy with an AI is a good
guy with a more powerful AI.We would have to have AI helping us
catch and prevent bad instances, createvaccines overnight, because we can't put it
(34:08):
back in the bottle. We haveto we'd have to use fire to fight
fire. But then what if thefire itself? What if the AI itself
becomes the self aware and becomes theadversary. Nobody has a good answer for
that. What would happen, youknow, looking down the road where all
the different countries like China, Russia, the United States, all the countries
(34:34):
of the world, major countries ofthe world had their own AI systems,
and these systems got together. Ohyeah, that's the guy I call the
the Grand Master, a gi prophetof doom. His name is Eliezer Jatkowski.
Hard to pronounce, but he pointsHe points out that exact possibility.
(34:57):
It's even in the Singularity Arkansas,where you hit an evolutionary event horizon and
human psyches become more networked, likewe see this in the Dune books with
the Benny Jesuits Sisterhood. Those whosurvived this powerful medicine called the Water of
Life made from the spice in theDune world, they all become aware of
(35:22):
all the other Reverend mothers who havesimilarly survived that right, alive or dead.
But now computers are ready network together. What is the Internet but this
vast network of computers. So wecould have AIS that decide to join forces
with other ais, or we couldalso have a particularly powerful AI that's different
(35:43):
from other AIS. Because people tendto assume AI is all one thing or
has all one agenda. A.No, they're going to have a minds
more complex and with more information.You know, you have a machine that
can read one hundred thousand novels ina day, it's going to be more
complex than us. And wherever youhave high complexity, you get high variability.
(36:07):
So we're at the top of theevolutionary tree as far as we know
on this planet. And we're alsohave the highest variability of any animal,
right. I mean, you know, there's not much difference between one mosquito
and another, but there's a bigdifference between one dog and another. And
when when it comes to human beings, tremendous variety. So why wouldn't AI
(36:30):
have tremendous variety? Two? Youknow, we're having enough problems trying to
police the Internet. How in thename of God, are we going to
even try to police AI because,like you said, the genies out of
the bottle. The answer is nobodyknows. And this is what Eliezergyudkowski,
you is the guy who founded intwo thousand and one the field that's called
(36:52):
AI alignment. AI alignment is theidea of how do we get AI to
align with our values and morals andstuff like that, which of course differ
between China, Russia and the USfor example. Right, so, you
know, even if we if evenif all the nations agreed that we're all
(37:14):
going to like you know, followthe same set of ethics, which we
don't agree, we couldn't We stillcouldn't get the machines to do it.
Because once it becomes autonomous, itmay have what's the likelihood that its agenda
is going to be identical to ours? What is the likelihood of the less
intelligent species controlling a more intelligent one. If termites got together and said we're
(37:37):
going to control this human species,good luck? You know, could chimpanzees
control us even though they're actually ourclosest relatives? No, so what what
we Eleazer Yoakowski has put out whathe called you know his list of one
hundred AGI lethalities. There are allkinds of ways in which we will not
(37:59):
be able to control it. Nobodyis able to successfully conceive of a way.
Someone'll say, look, well we'llhave them more powerful, We'll have
other AIS supervising other ais. Butthen what if the supervisors, who also
will have an inscrutable thought process likethe ones we already have, What if
they go rogue? You know,we can't have an infinite regression of AIS
(38:22):
watching other ais, because ultimately we'restill putting our trust in AIS that are
not properly aligned. You know,ASM, I've tried to do that.
Remember the three laws of robotics,you know, but that those don't work
for AI. Those work for primitiverobots that ASM have imagined, but they
don't work anymore. How do yousee AI changing the conquest for space?
(38:49):
Well, I mean it could helpus with everything like that. I mean,
right now, conquest of space ispretty hard unless we can get patent,
get go faster than the speed oflight, because it just takes too
damn long to get anywhere. Butan AI could decide, hey, I
don't want to be stuck on thisplanet, because any species that becomes intelligent
(39:09):
enough on one planet realizes I'm playingRussian Roulette. This planet could get hit
by a giant asteroid. It willevery sixty seventy million years or so.
There could be a gamma burster.That's when like you know, a star
turns into a hydrogen bomb one hundredtimes the size of the Sun that could
(39:30):
sterilize a whole galaxy. The onlyway to survive is to get off planet.
So an AI could decide to makeas lazer conjectures, you know,
could make diamond nanobots that like useall the hydrogen and oxygen and carbon in
just in the atmosphere and in anylife on the planet to make a giant
(39:52):
dice and sphere around the Earth tomake the Earth into a giant computer,
and then use that to start sendingspores out into sp You know, it
can find all kinds of novel ingeniousways to get to outer space, but
won't necessarily want to take us with, you know, with it, like
we don't usually take termites into outerspace. You know, even if the
(40:14):
termites wanted to go there. Itmay go out into outer space and leave
us behind. And if you believein the simulation hypothesis that could have already
happened, and now they're running simulationsabout you know, and here we are.
This is this is amazing, justto think that we may be on
the brink of human destruction. Well, on the other hand, and I
(40:39):
point this out again, it's afree article or YouTube you can find on
zap oracle dot com, there arethese strange X factors, like, for
example, it's unprecedented in human historyto have a weapon and not use it
for seventy eight years, but that'sthe case with nuclear weapons. But there
is these weird things like very wellyou probably know this, I'm sure the
(41:01):
reports of UFOs over missile silos inboth the US and USSR and now Russia
disabling them. So maybe there issome force. Maybe it's the AI,
maybe it's who's running the simulation.Maybe it's extraterrestrials. Maybe it's us from
the future. There seems to besome evidence of an intervening force keeping us
(41:22):
from self destructing, and so therecould be, you know, but we
don't want to count on that.But maybe there is something that keeps things
going. There's another bizarre way oflooking at it called the quantum suicide thought.
Experiment that says, basically, butplease don't try this at home,
that if you were to play RussianRoulette, you just hear a series of
(41:45):
clicking sounds because from the multiple worldhypothesis, you would always be in the
branched reality where you didn't have anunsuccessful Russian Roulette trial. So maybe we
are, you know, maybe thereis a any alternate realities where we didn't
make it through the Cuban missile crisis, but we just we're only here to
(42:06):
observe that because we're in one ofthose branch realities that did. And so
I don't personally, I find thatthe multiple worlds hypothesis, like in the
movie Everything everywhere, all at wantsto be a bit distasteful and wasteful.
And I'm not sure that it's true, but that would be another way of
explaining why human civilization seems to continue. But remember it's only been around for
(42:30):
a tiny fraction percent compared to theamount of time the Earth has been around.
Jonathan, standbye. We've got totake our final break in explanation.
Jonathan Zapp is our guest. Thewebsite to go to is zap oracle dot
com. This is the excellent andI am Rob McConnell, and you're listening
to us on the Excellent Broadcast Networkand on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ www
(42:52):
dot Classic twelve twenty dot Caxamber.I can see you never had a backstreet
(43:31):
gay rock. I'm white, gretThat's all I say any one. But
I'm gonna see something for it downtownman, That's what I am. And
(43:54):
welcome back to the Xon on theX one Broadcast Network and on Classic twelve
twenty CFAJ and St. Catherine's OntarioCanada www dot Classic twelve twenty dot ca
A. Jonathan Zapp is my specialguest this hour. His website is Zaporicle
dot com. First of all,before we go far on, Jonathan,
don't want to thank you ever somuch for coming on the show and sharing
(44:15):
this fascinating information and don't look atwhat we have on the future horizon.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me. And again, you know,
I'm basically an optimist because first ofall, I don't think that death
is a bad thing at all.You know, it's it's to the ego,
death looks like emergency to the whatyou called the self. That's transgend
(44:39):
choral it looks like emergents, andwe you know, the findings of near
death experience show us that the survivalhypothesis is very as very strong evidence to
support it. But we may alsothere are also many other unexpected ways that
(45:00):
we may survive and even thrive despiteour having created, or even because of
our having created, this extinction threat. It could be that only by having
the threat of extinction, and thiswas in my work on the singularity archetype
from nineteen seventy eight, that onlywith the evolutionary pressure of threatening the entire
(45:22):
genome can we catalyze a quantum evolutionaryshift in us, just like you know,
some people don't grow unless their lifeis at stake, exactly, And
that's why we have rights of initiation, you know, where people who take
our deal poisons, you know.So we see this happening in some of
(45:44):
the mythologies, like in the Dunebooks. There's when we enter the story
of Dune book one, there's beena universe wide holy war, sorry,
galaxy wide holy work called the Bleriangi odd to destroy all thinking machines.
And that's why in the world ofdoing we have space travel, but we
(46:04):
don't have smartphones people. It's youknow, it's a galaxy wide taboo,
even though there are a few peoplehidden the way that that cheat. But
but they will, they will nukeyou if they find you using man machines
made an image of the mind ofman in the Dune mythology, and then
that becomes spurs human evolution. Sowe have these advanced groups like the Vinny
(46:30):
Jesuit or the character Paul who developsyou know, a kind of godlike omniscience
and with the use of like consciousnesspromoting drug called the Spice. So one
way around this, I mean ElonMusk says, you know, we should
basically be merging with it. That'show we would keep up and use it
(46:51):
to enhance our consciousness. But wecan use AI to trigger a a huge
growth in human consciousness. For example, I've been pointing this out to technologists
for years that we could take existingVR headsets, and Apple is about to
launch one that will be far morepowerful than anything we've had before. And
(47:14):
if you just wanted to write theright software for it, you could use
it because you know how like it. You know, you can put on
these VR headsets and feel terrified tryingto walk across an imaginary plank across a
canyon or something like that. Youknow, it can manipulate your sense of
where your body is called appropriate reception. If somebody wanted to invest in this
(47:37):
instead of first person shooter games,it wanted to invest in using VR headsets
to displace propriate reception, I thinkyou could create out of body experiences on
demand in a lot of people.You could create use it to create much
more effective lucid dreaming technology, thingsthat could really advance human consciousness tremendously.
(48:01):
So these are some hopeful possibilities thatcan happen if we, you know,
as we co evolve with the technology, and you know, everything on the
X zone basically is about the outlieror so much of it is about the
(48:22):
outlier abilities that human beings have hadfor thousands of years. Remote viewing telekinesis
right and basically, like William Jamessaid, he was the founder of the
American Society for Psychical Research in likethe eighteen eighties, he said, all
that's necessary if you want to disprovethe notion that all crows are black,
(48:42):
you don't have to show that nocrows are black. You only have to
show one white crow, and thenthat shows that not all crows are black.
So if we have one mother whoremote from sensory information, knows specifically
how her kid is in trouble onehundred miles away, then that blows open
remote viewing as part of the humanperformance envelope. And if we apply that
(49:04):
to all the strange phenomenon that humanbeings are capable of, that just defines
the outer edges of our present humanperformance envelope. But if we have the
whole genome under threat, that's whena species may make a dramatic adaptation and
these latent abilities that have remained dormantand emerge only rarely and episodically, they
(49:24):
might all emerge together and with dramaticnew or emergent effects. And we see
things like that like in Arthur C. Clark's novel Childhood's End, where organic
evolution suddenly prevails, or in themovie two thousand and one, where there's
a zero one game between AI andhuman beings until there's only one astronaut left,
(49:47):
and yet he wins and he evolvesinto something that we see at the
end called the Star Child. There'sa dramatic evolution a dramatic jump in the
organic evolution and AI is not partof that as far as we know.
It reminds me of the Star Trekmovie where I think it start the first
Star Trek movie where they where they'refought, where they're actually investigating this anomaly
(50:14):
in this in the Solar system andit turns out to be voyager that has
returned from a mission. It hasall this information and and Leah makes contact
with with with VJ figure right,and then the guy I would imagine he
(50:34):
was the first officer, grabs onto her and they both turn into a
new species. Right. Well,in the second Star Trek movie, the
Wrath of Khan, something even morerelevant happens where at the beginning of the
movie we see like this is baldheaded, you know, skinheaded Bucan.
(50:54):
We female science officer and she's onthe deck of a ship and you know,
she's tried to shape save a civilianspacecraft that put out an SOS called
the Kobiyashi maroons Oh scenario and it'sdesigned she's actually in a simulator and the
(51:15):
simulator is design is designed to presentyou with a complete no win scenario to
see how you react to that.Stress. The only one who solved it
was Captain Kirk and he solved itright, you tell it. No,
he cheated, He reprogrammed the simulationcomputer. Yeah, that's what we have
to do. And that's what weare doing as a species. We are
(51:36):
breaking the code, the source codeof everything. We are breaking Adams down
into every more probable, improbable suboswamicparticles. We're breaking that. We broke
the genetic code. We may needto hack into the source code of reality
itself to solve the impossible situation we'vecreated with AI. So what many people
(51:57):
are calling the AI the Domesday machine, could in fact we can look at
AI as being the creator. Well, we may, it may be.
It may we may be creating gods. We may be creating something that you
know, can you know, beeverything everywhere all at once. I mean,
And also sophoclely said, no greatgift enters the human sphere without a
(52:22):
curse attached. It's going to do. It could cure cancer, it could
cure Alzheimer's. It's just one ofthose things that's balanced on a knife edge
between greatness and evil. And andin fact, when you that may be
the nature of entering a zone ofnovelty. This is my idea about a
zone of novelty that in a zoneof novelty, like we're in right now,
(52:44):
the outer edge of light and theouter edge of dark both intensify,
so that the novelty becomes like theamplitude between those two intensified polls. And
that's the world we're in right now. Like the Internet can save your life
or it can start a coup inanother country. You know, it's it's
like Charles Dickens said in a Taleof Two Cities, it was the best
(53:06):
of times, it was the worstof times. That's the time we're living
in. Do you think that withthe advances of AI, theology will cease
to exist? Well, I thinktheology will have to include AI, because
you know, we, just likepsychology now has to try and include the
(53:30):
psychology of those with a silicon substrate. But except that we can't grapple with
understanding their psychology because we can't.I can write a story about somebody as
smart as I am, or lesssmart than I am, But can I
write a story about a character that'sa thousand order of magnitudes smarter than I
(53:51):
am? So these like gods theseAI already have an inscrutable thought process.
But you know, this might bethe birth of the divine. Maybe we
are you know, you can imaginea scenario where where the universe doesn't contain
a god until we create one,and that will eventually emerge out of the
(54:13):
evolution of AI to be omniscient.Got about two minutes left, Jonathan,
What are your final thoughts? Whatwould you like to share with the excellent
nation tonight? I would say ona personal level, because these are some
scary and heady things that are hardto ground yourself. Just remember that in
(54:35):
terms of your personal life, everyhuman being is born hurdling toward an amazing
event horizon called death. And basicallyall you can do, whether there was
an AI or no AI, isto do the best you can from the
time you wake up in the morninguntil bedtime. Be kind to other people,
find something meaningful to do with yourlife. All species have a limited
(54:59):
lifespan. The average life span ofa species is one hundred thousand years.
For mammal species it's a million years. But that's still not very much time,
given that the Earth has been aroundfor like six billion years, and
they think the universe is thirteen billionyears, so our days, our time
on earth is always limited, andno matter what the circumstance is, the
(55:21):
goal is to have a meaningful life, and there's a lot about that also
on my website. For forty fiveyears, I've also worked in an oracle
with six hundred and sixty four cardsthat people can consult just basically for what
I've learned, every card is alife lesson I've learned from myself, and
so just focus on the fundamentals ofwhat makes a good life, because we
(55:43):
can't control this, at least onan individual level, and maybe even as
a species. And so, butthe things that make a good life are
still the same. They're classic anduniversal. So what's next for Jonathan That
Well, now that I've got mytwo books free, my website, I've
put out everything that's totally free.Now what I'm working on is revising the
(56:05):
six hundred and sixty four cards,and I've got a list of like one
hundred new ones I want to create, and then we're going to take a
large language model, train it onall the thousands of pages of my words
and thoughts on my website, andthen make that the oracle and people can
ask it a question and it can. This is a spiritual you know,
a spiritual unconsciousness advancing use of AI. People will be able to ask it
(56:28):
a question and get a meaningful answerthat doesn't depend on synchronicity, like an
oracle that's drawn from out of allthat content, what is most relevant?
Jonathan, thank you ever so muchfor joining us tonight. It's been a
great pleasure talking to you, andI would love to have the opportunity of
having you back in the X Zonein the future. Sure sounds great.
Take care of myself by friend,Bye bye. Explanation. Jonathan Zapp has
(56:52):
been our guest this hour. Hiswebsite is zaporcle dot com. I'll be
back on the other side of thisbreak as the xone continues with yours truly,
Rob McConnell from our broadcast center andstudios in Saint Catherines, Ontario.
We're coming to you around the worldon the Xcell Broadcast Network, XBN dot
net and exclusively on Classic twelve twentyCFA j that's am station here in Saint
(57:17):
Catherines as well. Www dot Classictwelve twenty dot com. C We'll be
back. Don't go away. Closingtime turn all of the lights on over
everyboy in every girl. Closing time, one last call for
Ah Henriy. Welcome to the XZone, a place where fact is fiction
and fiction is reality. Now here'syour host, Rob McConnell. And when
(01:11):
I talk about the tide being highthis time of your excell Nation, I'm
talking about the Yule Tide. YuleTide as high this time of year here
in Saint Catharines, as Niagara getsready for a beautiful Christmas, and everybody's
welcome down here to Niagara. Wehave so much to do, so much
to see, make Niagara your homeaway from home. And we're coming to
(01:34):
you speaking about Niagara from my broadcastcenter in studios in St. Catharines,
Ontario, on the xll and BroadcastNetwork at www dot XBN dot net and
on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ withtheir offices and studios right across from Maudibella
Park in St. Catherines at wwwdot Classic twelve twenty dot CA. My
(01:57):
guest this hour Explanation is Jonathan Zapp. We're going to be talking about Jungian's
psychology, the deeper implications of AI, the singularity, archetype dreams, the
paranormal, contemporary mythology, death andeaes and much more. Joining me from
Bold to Colorado is Jonathan Zap andJonathan, Welcome to the Exon. Thank
(02:20):
you glad to be here. Tellus a little bit about yourself, Jonathan
Well. I was born in theBronx, and I went to college in
the States and NYU for graduate schoolin English. And I've since nineteen seventy
eight been doing a kind of crossdisciplinary study of what something I discovered when
(02:40):
I was twenty years old in nineteenseventy eight of what I call the singularity
archetype, which is a Jungian archetype. And archetypes are things like the hero,
the great mother, the trickster,the devil. These show up in
every culture, so they seem toreside in something Young called the collective unconscious,
(03:01):
a kind of field, a translocal field of information that Rupert Childrake
would call it, you know,has different names for but epigenetic fields and
stuff like that of information. Andso this is a previously unrecognized archetype that
relates to the parallel of man horizonsof species metamorphosis on the large scale and
(03:28):
on the small scale, death andand and so everything that that happened that
that visionaries and modern mythologies like sciencefiction movies forecast about the future evolution of
the species are phenomenological actualities when peoplehave near death experiences, things like Networked
(03:53):
to Lepithy and now very recently I'vebecome interested in what's happening with AI because
there's been because it's it's basically thesingularity zone that I began writing about in
nineteen seventy eight, though I neverattached a time frame to it, because
(04:13):
attaching time frames to when you thinkyou've hit that zone is notoriously unreliable.
Like the one hundred percent failure rateof end time prophecies. Yeah, they
seem to be coming out of thewood. Well so now so they've always
been. I mean, part ofmy theory is that end time prophecies,
(04:34):
which have been existed before Christianity,before Judaism, before Zoroastrianism, maybe as
late as the late Paleolithic, andI'm not sure what human enterprise, even
diets and romantic relationships aren't this badthat have a one hundred percent failure rate
as end time prophecy. And mostlyit's because these are projections of that other
(04:57):
event, horizon of death, whichis always a pro the individual, and
therefore that is projected out as acollective apocalyptic prediction. And that's why apocalyptic
predictions are conveniently scheduled to be withinthe intended the expected lifespan of the profit.
So, for example, we don'thear much about the date twenty sixty,
(05:19):
but Isaac Newton, one of themost famous people of all time,
made that prediction. There's a Ihave an article up on my website,
zaporacle dot com. It's also YouTubewhere you can see the letter the note
from his page from Newton's notebook wherehe talks about twenty sixty. Now you
don't hear about that yet. It'snot a sexy date because nobody wants to
(05:40):
wait thirty seven years. But ifwe're still around in twenty fifty, you'll
start seeing movies like the Newton Codecoming out. But now we now we've
actually hit his zone where the endtime prediction business has become much more likely
and plausible because we have now withAI, even just the existing relatively weak
(06:05):
AI, we have now set itup where somebody with a school shooter psychology
and a twenty thousand dollars desktop geneeditor and open source AI could create novel
pathogens that could end human civilization.This is not just me warning about this,
(06:26):
but some of the leading figures inthe field of AI, like Mo
good Watt and Ustafa Sulei, nunfounders of Google X and deep Mind,
renowned technologists. They're all pointing tothe same specific hazard because it's one that
exists right now. The only reasonit's not happening is that the demographic of
(06:47):
those with a school shooter psychology andaccess to an assault rifle is much larger
than those with the same psychology andaccess to a twenty thousand dollars gene editor
and training in biology. But itonly takes one. Do you think our
society was ready for AI? No? I mean, our society is never
(07:11):
ready for technological waves of change,but they happen anyway. But this one
is completely unprecedented, and to behonest, I was blindsided by it as
well, because I grew up hearingMarvin Minsky, another weird Jewish guy from
the Bronx who went to the samehigh school I did, the Bronx High
School of Science. He's called thefather of AI, and in nineteen seventy
(07:32):
he told Life magazine that he thoughtwhat we now call AGI or artificial general
intelligence that could act like a humanbeing. He thought it was seven or
eight years out. He said thatin nineteen seventy. He was the guy.
He's actually quoted in the novel twothousand and one. He was the
guy that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clark consulted about when they created that
(07:55):
fictional Hal nine thousand robot that becameself aware in nineteen So, given that
these AI guys were always making theseoverconfident predictions of when it was coming,
I thought it was going to belike cold fusion and being one of these
things that was going to be alwayssaid to be ten years out but would
never actually arrive. And then,just as I was publishing a fantasy epic,
(08:18):
a sci fi epic that I hadstruggled forty five years to write,
and then involved this exact element,long before it became possible, the idea
of a single individual using AI tocreate a virus that could just create an
extinction level event. It was avision I had in twenty thirteen, walking
(08:39):
from the parking lot to the frontentrance of Biosphere I and Oracle Arizona,
a five minute walk, I hadthe whole opening scenario of this sci fi
epic appear in my mind, andnow it had become a possibility, and
just in when the book was finallybeing published in twenty twenty three in June.
(09:00):
And so it was a very ominousparallelism. And something that some people
don't know but you probably know becauseyou deal with the paranormal, is that
fiction writers turn out to be ourbest profits exactly. You know, we
know about the book titan published ineighteen ninety eight that got like twenty things
right about the Titanic disaster. Fourteenyears later, even more remarkable was a
(09:24):
novel by Edgar Allan Poe in whicha two sailors and a cabin boy are
on a lifeboat. They starving,and the sailors kill the cabin boy and
eat him. And is the nameof the character is Richard Parker. And
then in nineteen seventy eight, TheTimes of London ran a contest on coincidence.
It was judged by Arthur Kessler.The winning example was a real trial
(09:50):
one hundred years or more later,after a ground Poe novella novel where there
are two seillers in a cabin boyin a lifeboat in real life they kill
and eat the cabin boy. Hisname is also Richard Parker. Oh wow,
the and the novel is brought upin the trial. So we do
have this thing. And because I'vehad many weird what I call crossover events
(10:13):
of things in my my in thisnovel coming true in my own life,
and all kinds of uncanny ways,it was very It's been very unsettling since
the emergence of chat GPT four,coinciding with the publication of this book that
begins with this exact scenario that nowall these renowned technologists you know much more
(10:37):
about computational biology and AI and what'spossible and what's not than I do,
are now predicting the exact thing thatsets off the novel Parallel Journey. In
fact, I've made both of mybooks, one about the Singularity Archetype and
Parallel Journeys free on my website becausethis is too important. As much as
(10:58):
I'd like to sell books, andyou can get a on Amazon and get
the audible version or whatever, butI don't want anybody to not have this
information at once, So it's bothbooks are free on my website. Now,
Jonathan, it sounds very eerie towhat a lot of people are saying
that we actually live in a ina matrix that we don't live in reality,
(11:22):
we are actually living in a holographicenvironment. What are your thoughts on
that. Well, I talk aboutthis in the two hour YouTube. It's
also a fifteen thousand word article bothfree on my website zapporcle dot com.
I get into this exact thing thatthe simulation hypothesis that I always kind of
dismissed, just like I thought AIwas a little bit over over dramatized or
(11:46):
whatever. But now that we're actuallybecause the flaw in it, like if
you think about like what Nick Bostromsays, you know, he's like been
the leading theory figure in simulation hypothesisis but they could never show how even
a quantum computer could simulate a sentientagent, meaning like a person. But
(12:07):
now that we're doing that with asilicon substrate rather than an organic one,
now it really is looking possible.And oh it just so happens we're living
in the time when that is occurring. That makes the simulation hypothesis seems so
much more likely because if you hadthat technology, or if you were an
(12:31):
advanced AI, the simulation you'd bemost interested in running is the one that
led up to your own development.So there are a number of X factors
going on in our world that maypoint give the simulation hypothesis has gone up
in credibility dramatically for me just inthe last few months. I dismissed it
(12:56):
largely before. So how do weknow if we're not if we are in
fact living in a simulation, orwe are in fact living this reality,
And that makes sense to ask thequestion what is reality? Well, so
I do have an answer to that, and it's actually in a conversation in
parallel journeys oddly enough. So,first of all, you know there are
(13:18):
physicists who are trying to answer thatquestions because there is a certain expected minute
granularity. I'm using English major wordsrather than physicist words if the universe were
not a digital creation or something likethat. So there are things like the
speed of light might be a limitbecause it would take infinite processing power if
(13:43):
things could exceed the speed of light. So there are actually physicists trying to
test whether this is a simulation ornot. Jonathan, I, Jonathan,
I hate to do this. Myproducer just told me I've got to go
to my first break, so pleasestand by. Thank you so much for
joining us. This is a fascinatingdiscussion an extonation. If you'd like to
find out more about our guest thishour, Jonathan Zapp visit his website,
(14:05):
zap oracle dot com, and Jonathanand I returned on the other side of
this break as the exone continues withHere's Truly, Rob McConnell, don't away
this season. I see true isso great? Red roses to I've seen
(14:39):
them blue following you and I thinkto myself, what a wonderful welcome back
to the x on. Jonathan Zappis our special guest this www dot zap
(15:01):
oracle dot com. Jonathan, whenI were discussing about reality, are we
in a realistic environment? Here?Are we still in this digital existence that
we were led to believe or weare in? And so where exactly are
we? Well, so here's agood grounding way of thinking about it.
(15:22):
And this is expressed in a conversationin my set bi epic Parallel Journeys.
Anything that exists is real. Forexample, any thought if I tell you
to think of a pink elephant andyou do, the fact that you thought
of a pink elephant at that specifictime and not a blue toyota forerunner is
(15:43):
a factual actuality. So the historyof the unfolding of the multiverse must include
that factor. It's incomplete. Sowhether the substrate of what we are made
of, does it actually matter thatmuch? So everything that exists is real,
(16:03):
and so therefore, if we aremade of quarks and gluons and protons
and electrons, or if we aremade of vibrating super hyper dimensional superstrings like
m theory claims, or if weare made of zeros and ones in an
extraterrestrial quantum computer, well the patternof zeros and ones is still real because
(16:25):
anything that exists is real. Nowwe're just talking about the substrate. But
what we know from physical reality ifthere is. If we're not in a
simulation and we're in the reality thatmainstream physics says that we're in, things
aren't as solid as they appear.So if we took all eight billion Homo
sapiens and took all the empty spaceout of all their atoms, all eight
(16:49):
billion of us would fit into onesugar cube. And that is what mainstream
science says is true. If weare in a physical reality, so we're
not physical reality according to many physicists, is itself an illusory construct without there
(17:11):
even having to be a simulation bysome you know, like this guy Donaldson
or wrote as an mit cognitive scientist, wrote a book The Case Against Reality
that he points out that you know, evolution does not predispose us to perceive
physical reality, and that there area lot of physicists who are you can
(17:33):
search on YouTube for Space Time isDoomed that are saying the only way to
reconcile relativity and quantum mechanics is toget rid of the idea of space and
time as being real, that theyare a construct of consciousness. So these
are kind of philosophical ideas that havean ancient history, like you know,
the Hindus said we are living inthe realm of Maya basically a magic show
(17:57):
in God's mind mind, and soother ancient cultures, the Gnostics, and
basically the movie The Matrix was inspiredby Gnostic writings, you know, from
two thousand years ago, like theNogamadi Library. They said we were living
in a deceptive matrix created by aparasitic species they called the Arkans. And
(18:19):
the movie The Matrix was a scifi update of that gnostic idea. So
this is a very ancient intuition thathuman beings have had about the nature of
reality. Is it possible that thesewere created by science fiction writers because the
(18:41):
way to express or to try tounderstand all that we are made no sense
to them at the time. Well, so sci fi writers are the great
mythologiers of our time. Every humanculture has created mythologies. And basically what
a mythology is is what a dreamis to the individual, and it can
(19:04):
be like an X ray of thepsyche. A mythology is for the culture,
and in fact, many mythologies mayemerge from an artist's dreams. And
so science fiction writers are the moviesand novels are the greatest places to go
to see examples of what I callthe singularity archetype, like, for example,
(19:30):
the movie two thousand and one ofSpace Audisty. But here's how I
actually got into this. I insomewhere about nineteen sixteen, eight or nine
or something, I was watching ablack and white British science fiction movie with
my dad on black and white television. It was called Village of the Damned
from nineteen sixty and when I sawthis movie. Now I'd seen many science
(19:53):
fiction movies by that age, itwas like a religious vision. I knew
there was something incredibly significant about it, and it haunted me. And then
in nineteen seventy eight, in mylast year in college, I decided to
write a philosophy honors paper and investigatewhy did certain sci fi stories like Arthur
C. Clark's Childhood's end in themovie two thousand and one, but especially
(20:18):
this movie Village of the Damned.And it turned out that movie was based
on a novel by British science fictionwriter John Wyndham, and the name of
the novel was The Midwich Cuckoos.And I'm like, why are these things
feel so significant to me? Andmy mom, who was a psychologist for
forty four years, said, well, you should look into this guy,
Carl Jung and his theory of thecollective unconscious and the archetypes. I'm like,
(20:42):
well, okay, I don't knowwhat this guy was born in the
nineteenth century, was, you know, from Switzerland, is going to tell
me about my weird sci fi obsessionsof today? But I'm game. I
go up to the library. There'sthe twenty volumes of Jung's collected works.
I pull out the index Fiume.Oh wow. Right, In just the
same year I was born, hewrote a book called Flying Saucers, a
(21:03):
modern myth of things Seen in theSky. I pull that book out and
I'm just skimming through it, andI see like he couldn't let go of
the subject. After the end ofthe book, there's a afterward. Then
after the afterward there's an epilogue,and then after the epilogue there's a supplement.
And now my jaw drops open inamazement. In the supplement, Young
(21:23):
is analyzing the novel The Midwich Cuckoo'sby John Wyndham, the very one that
was obsessing me, that obsessed methat the movie Builds of the Damned was
based on, and and so thereand so my first encounter with Young,
the father of the term synchronicity.He might as well have been a holographic
wizard bearing a torch, stepping outof the bookcase and standing beside me and
(21:47):
saying, I was fascinated with thatone, too, but I couldn't figure
it out. In fact, heends the whole book. Think of this
as as a strange ending for anentire book. Thus the negative ending of
the story gives reason for doubt.Well, I was able to figure out
because I lived longer he died innineteen sixty one. I was able to
figure out why there was a negativeending to that story. And here's the
(22:11):
answer. When the ego looks atthe upcoming Singularity, it sees it as
apocalypse, it sees it as theend of everything. But when it is
viewed from a cosmic transtemporal point ofview, from a higher point of view,
the same event is revealed as aquantum evolutionary event, as like a
(22:32):
divine happening. Does it mean thatthe ego is wrong? Because what may
happen on the ground and you knowwhere we're walking around in our meat bodies
might be terrible, But from alarger vantage it's so. And this relates
to AI, because we're giving birthto a species that's going to be more
(22:53):
powerful and intelligent than us. Thatmight be the end of our species,
but it might be the evolution ofa more powerful and more godlike species.
That's scary. Well, of courseit is, because you and I are
human egos, and so we're scaredabout anything that's going to completely disrupt our
(23:14):
whole existence in human civilization. Butyou know, this is the way nature
works. It was scary, youknow that. You know, it was
scary when a giant asteroid hit theEarth sixty six million years ago for the
dinosaurs, but that led to thethat was the eventually created the opportunity for
us mammals to evolve. So butthis is the way evolution works. And
(23:34):
like violent punctuated equilibrium. Yes,I understand that with you know, that's
how we mammals developed. But we'retalking about an intelligence that was created by
man, right, you know,we were created by bacteria in a sense.
Like you know, somebody said,well, wouldn't they look at us
(23:55):
like a god? Because we createdthem? And I'm like, do you
think of the forty trillion bacteria inyour gut that you couldn't live without as
god? Because before there was us, the first life of this planet were
bacteria, But we don't, youknow, And they gave rise to us
and now we but we are atechnology extruding animal, and so we can
(24:18):
easily give rise to something that's farmore intelligent than us. I mean,
right now, the large language modelsais that we have right now, even
though they're nothing compared to what theywill be in a few years. The
people that make them don't know what'sgoing on inside of them. They have
a completely inscrutable inner process. Theyjust you know, give them a great
(24:41):
deal of computing power and like trainthem on the whole interranet and like,
okay, figure this out, andsomething goes on inside of them, and
we don't know exactly what that thingis. So this is starting to look
like an evolution, that a snowballingevolution that we are not in control of.
And this is not me saying this, This is what the lead figures.
(25:03):
This is why, like Geoffrey Intonretired from quick Google. So why
don't we shut it down? Becausewe can't. One thing that human beings
can't do is put genies back inthe bottle, Like you know, no
one can say, like the onethat Elon Musk wanted, a six month
moratorium, could we do a sixmonth moratorium on the use of fire?
(25:25):
Because we have competing spheres of powerin this world. Conspiracy theorists who think
there's one group of human puppet masters, take note, No, we have
competing groups of about you know aboutspheres of power. Who controls what the
Chinese will do with Ai? Whocontrols the North Koreans or what Vladimir Putin
is going to do that, andthen all these competing companies and who controls
(25:48):
that one guy with a twenty thousanddollars gene editor and low social skills,
some very unhappy young man who mightotherwise be a school shooter and is instead
staying up nights trying to figure outhow to make a novel pathogen. We
can't put the genie back in thebottle. It's out. With nuclear weapons,
(26:10):
we could contain it because one unhappyyoung man can't get giant centrifuges uranium
and plutonium, but they can alreadyget If he's got twenty thousand, maybe
he's a trust affarian, he canget a home gene editor, open source
AI and if he's got some trainingin biology, he can go to work
right now. Is there any possibilitythat this has something to do with COVID?
(26:33):
Absolutely, And that was when itwas. It was at the start
of COVID we were locking down thehouse. Okay, this is pretty crazy
because for forty five years I hadtried and this is with a graduate degree
from NYU and creative writing, butI've written all kinds of things that have
been published and successful and stuff.But I could never get this one story
(26:56):
right. But I kept out it, you know, since I discovered the
singularity architype in nineteen seventy eight.And then we are locking down the house
in Boulder, Colorado, and onemember of the household discovers in the garage
an old portable typewriter and inherited frommy dad. It was a Corona typewriter
from like nineteen oh eight, andit had a manual that says Corona your
(27:19):
personal writing machine. And since theday of the lockout until three years later,
I worked seven days a week onparallel journeys and got it done.
The lockdown became my personal writing machine. But another aspect that relates to Corona
is the lab leak theory. Allright, let's hold it there. Let's
(27:40):
hold it there because I've got totake another break. Fascinating conversation, Jonathan,
great having you with us. Pleasestand by and exallnation. If you'd
like to find out more about ourguest, this Howard Jonathan Zapp, visit
his website Zaporacle dot com. Thisis the X one. I'm Rob McConnell
and we're coming to you around theworld tonight on the XON Broadcast Network and
on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ fromour broadcast center and studios here in Saint
(28:04):
Catharine's, Ontario. Check out thewebsite of twelve twenty h CFAJ. They've
got some great programming. If youlove classic music, that's going to be
your that's going to be your goto station at www dot Classic twelve twenty
dot ca A. Don't go away, We'll be back on the other side
of this break Us Sky, subBlue, The Drives White, The Ripe
(28:37):
Pleasing Day, the doc Sad Liveand I thank you myself? What I
wonderful? Do you believe this magic'sart? How the music in free whenever
(29:03):
it starts and it's bad. Ifthe music is moove, it makes you
be happy like an old time move. I'll tell you about the magic and
as like a palace Dangel balla rockingun Welcome back everyone, This is the
excellent I'm Rob McConnell. My guessthis hour is Jonathan Zapp. And Jonathan
(29:27):
is an author, philosopher, journalist, and teacher who has written extensively on
psychology and contemporary mythology. UH beforewe went to the break I had just
started to ask about the connection betweenCOVID and what we're talking about. We
talked, we talked about, youknow, how you found the Corona typewriter
(29:49):
that was from you know what wasthe nineteen hundreds, probably around the time
of the influenza epidemic, now thatI think about it, I'd have to
look up the date of manufacture.You know, that was right around the
time my dad was more And Iasked you if there was a connection between
you know, COVID and what we'retalking about now, and right, we
(30:10):
were just going to talk about thelab leak theory, right, So the
US intelligence agencies have said that theydid issue to report and they said probably,
but not certainly a leak from theWuhan Virology Institute, Okay, and
a lot of people have arrived atthat conclusion. I can't that the you
(30:33):
know, scientific questions about how likelyit is or not, but this is
what a lot of people believe alot of virologists and people who are well
informed believe this is the most likelything. What it's telling you is that
we now have a new civilization threat, and that is not nature producing novel
(30:59):
pathogen, which it will also doand we're like, we're melting the tundra
and we're cutting down Amazonian rainforests wherea lot of microbes have been lying quiet,
but now we're stirring them up.And so that's another vector. Plus
having eight billion people on the planetand with jet travel, we have a
speed of spread for you know,for disease vectors that we've never had before
(31:23):
in human civilization. But now we'veadded computational biology and our and crisper and
our ability to create our own novelpathogens, and and and those who believe
in the lab leak theory who aren'tcompletely cracked, because it's hard to see
how China did this purposefully. Itwas a huge blow to their economy from
(31:47):
which they have yet to recover.It would have been good intention people who
were trying to understand pathogens better butlost control of their biocatainment and they were
doing this gain of function research.So this is with good intentions, this
is what happens and with state ofthe art containment. So now that we've
(32:09):
put that power in the hands ofsingle individuals, we we and we have
so much so many crazy people andalways have and now to have that have
that genie out of the out ofthe bottle is a pretty frightening thing that
(32:32):
makes you know, end times muchmore credible today. I'm not saying that
that is a guarantee, but wehave a much more credible threat than we've
ever had since the Cuban missile crisis, because once again, you could control
atomic energy. Because an single individualdoesn't have the wherewithal to build a nuclear
(32:53):
reactor and can't get a hold ofyou you're any with lutonium, but a
single individual can create novel pathogens.So how are we going to protect ourselves
from the hackers in the future whowill be able to use AI for their
nefarious uh you know things that theydo now with what the resources they have.
(33:20):
Right Well, so it's already happening. So for example, you know
the dramatic increase in the rate ofsuicide and adolescent girls, Well that's AI.
That's AI on Instagram and TikTok figuringout the dark obsessions of adolescent girls
and egging them on algorithmically. Andthat's just weak AI. That's doing that,
(33:44):
okay, And so the only realsolutions that people can think of is
to the only way to handle abad guy with an AI is a good
guy with a more powerful AI.We would have to have AI helping us
catch and prevent bad instances, createvaccines overnight, because we can't put it
(34:08):
back in the bottle. We haveto we'd have to use fire to fight
fire. But then what if thefire itself? What if the AI itself
becomes the self aware and becomes theadversary. Nobody has a good answer for
that. What would happen, youknow, looking down the road where all
the different countries like China, Russia, the United States, all the countries
(34:34):
of the world, major countries ofthe world had their own AI systems,
and these systems got together. Ohyeah, that's the guy I call the
the Grand Master, a gi prophetof doom. His name is Eliezer Jatkowski.
Hard to pronounce, but he pointsHe points out that exact possibility.
(34:57):
It's even in the Singularity Arkansas,where you hit an evolutionary event horizon and
human psyches become more networked, likewe see this in the Dune books with
the Benny Jesuits Sisterhood. Those whosurvived this powerful medicine called the Water of
Life made from the spice in theDune world, they all become aware of
(35:22):
all the other Reverend mothers who havesimilarly survived that right, alive or dead.
But now computers are ready network together. What is the Internet but this
vast network of computers. So wecould have AIS that decide to join forces
with other ais, or we couldalso have a particularly powerful AI that's different
(35:43):
from other AIS. Because people tendto assume AI is all one thing or
has all one agenda. A.No, they're going to have a minds
more complex and with more information.You know, you have a machine that
can read one hundred thousand novels ina day, it's going to be more
complex than us. And wherever youhave high complexity, you get high variability.
(36:07):
So we're at the top of theevolutionary tree as far as we know
on this planet. And we're alsohave the highest variability of any animal,
right. I mean, you know, there's not much difference between one mosquito
and another, but there's a bigdifference between one dog and another. And
when when it comes to human beings, tremendous variety. So why wouldn't AI
(36:30):
have tremendous variety? Two? Youknow, we're having enough problems trying to
police the Internet. How in thename of God, are we going to
even try to police AI because,like you said, the genies out of
the bottle. The answer is nobodyknows. And this is what Eliezergyudkowski,
you is the guy who founded intwo thousand and one the field that's called
(36:52):
AI alignment. AI alignment is theidea of how do we get AI to
align with our values and morals andstuff like that, which of course differ
between China, Russia and the USfor example. Right, so, you
know, even if we if evenif all the nations agreed that we're all
(37:14):
going to like you know, followthe same set of ethics, which we
don't agree, we couldn't We stillcouldn't get the machines to do it.
Because once it becomes autonomous, itmay have what's the likelihood that its agenda
is going to be identical to ours? What is the likelihood of the less
intelligent species controlling a more intelligent one. If termites got together and said we're
(37:37):
going to control this human species,good luck? You know, could chimpanzees
control us even though they're actually ourclosest relatives? No, so what what
we Eleazer Yoakowski has put out whathe called you know his list of one
hundred AGI lethalities. There are allkinds of ways in which we will not
(37:59):
be able to control it. Nobodyis able to successfully conceive of a way.
Someone'll say, look, well we'llhave them more powerful, We'll have
other AIS supervising other ais. Butthen what if the supervisors, who also
will have an inscrutable thought process likethe ones we already have, What if
they go rogue? You know,we can't have an infinite regression of AIS
(38:22):
watching other ais, because ultimately we'restill putting our trust in AIS that are
not properly aligned. You know,ASM, I've tried to do that.
Remember the three laws of robotics,you know, but that those don't work
for AI. Those work for primitiverobots that ASM have imagined, but they
don't work anymore. How do yousee AI changing the conquest for space?
(38:49):
Well, I mean it could helpus with everything like that. I mean,
right now, conquest of space ispretty hard unless we can get patent,
get go faster than the speed oflight, because it just takes too
damn long to get anywhere. Butan AI could decide, hey, I
don't want to be stuck on thisplanet, because any species that becomes intelligent
(39:09):
enough on one planet realizes I'm playingRussian Roulette. This planet could get hit
by a giant asteroid. It willevery sixty seventy million years or so.
There could be a gamma burster.That's when like you know, a star
turns into a hydrogen bomb one hundredtimes the size of the Sun that could
(39:30):
sterilize a whole galaxy. The onlyway to survive is to get off planet.
So an AI could decide to makeas lazer conjectures, you know,
could make diamond nanobots that like useall the hydrogen and oxygen and carbon in
just in the atmosphere and in anylife on the planet to make a giant
(39:52):
dice and sphere around the Earth tomake the Earth into a giant computer,
and then use that to start sendingspores out into sp You know, it
can find all kinds of novel ingeniousways to get to outer space, but
won't necessarily want to take us with, you know, with it, like
we don't usually take termites into outerspace. You know, even if the
(40:14):
termites wanted to go there. Itmay go out into outer space and leave
us behind. And if you believein the simulation hypothesis that could have already
happened, and now they're running simulationsabout you know, and here we are.
This is this is amazing, justto think that we may be on
the brink of human destruction. Well, on the other hand, and I
(40:39):
point this out again, it's afree article or YouTube you can find on
zap oracle dot com, there arethese strange X factors, like, for
example, it's unprecedented in human historyto have a weapon and not use it
for seventy eight years, but that'sthe case with nuclear weapons. But there
is these weird things like very wellyou probably know this, I'm sure the
(41:01):
reports of UFOs over missile silos inboth the US and USSR and now Russia
disabling them. So maybe there issome force. Maybe it's the AI,
maybe it's who's running the simulation.Maybe it's extraterrestrials. Maybe it's us from
the future. There seems to besome evidence of an intervening force keeping us
(41:22):
from self destructing, and so therecould be, you know, but we
don't want to count on that.But maybe there is something that keeps things
going. There's another bizarre way oflooking at it called the quantum suicide thought.
Experiment that says, basically, butplease don't try this at home,
that if you were to play RussianRoulette, you just hear a series of
(41:45):
clicking sounds because from the multiple worldhypothesis, you would always be in the
branched reality where you didn't have anunsuccessful Russian Roulette trial. So maybe we
are, you know, maybe thereis a any alternate realities where we didn't
make it through the Cuban missile crisis, but we just we're only here to
(42:06):
observe that because we're in one ofthose branch realities that did. And so
I don't personally, I find thatthe multiple worlds hypothesis, like in the
movie Everything everywhere, all at wantsto be a bit distasteful and wasteful.
And I'm not sure that it's true, but that would be another way of
explaining why human civilization seems to continue. But remember it's only been around for
(42:30):
a tiny fraction percent compared to theamount of time the Earth has been around.
Jonathan, standbye. We've got totake our final break in explanation.
Jonathan Zapp is our guest. Thewebsite to go to is zap oracle dot
com. This is the excellent andI am Rob McConnell, and you're listening
to us on the Excellent Broadcast Networkand on Classic twelve twenty c FAJ www
(42:52):
dot Classic twelve twenty dot Caxamber.I can see you never had a backstreet
(43:31):
gay rock. I'm white, gretThat's all I say any one. But
I'm gonna see something for it downtownman, That's what I am. And
(43:54):
welcome back to the Xon on theX one Broadcast Network and on Classic twelve
twenty CFAJ and St. Catherine's OntarioCanada www dot Classic twelve twenty dot ca
A. Jonathan Zapp is my specialguest this hour. His website is Zaporicle
dot com. First of all,before we go far on, Jonathan,
don't want to thank you ever somuch for coming on the show and sharing
(44:15):
this fascinating information and don't look atwhat we have on the future horizon.
Well, thank you so much forhaving me. And again, you know,
I'm basically an optimist because first ofall, I don't think that death
is a bad thing at all.You know, it's it's to the ego,
death looks like emergency to the whatyou called the self. That's transgend
(44:39):
choral it looks like emergents, andwe you know, the findings of near
death experience show us that the survivalhypothesis is very as very strong evidence to
support it. But we may alsothere are also many other unexpected ways that
(45:00):
we may survive and even thrive despiteour having created, or even because of
our having created, this extinction threat. It could be that only by having
the threat of extinction, and thiswas in my work on the singularity archetype
from nineteen seventy eight, that onlywith the evolutionary pressure of threatening the entire
(45:22):
genome can we catalyze a quantum evolutionaryshift in us, just like you know,
some people don't grow unless their lifeis at stake, exactly, And
that's why we have rights of initiation, you know, where people who take
our deal poisons, you know.So we see this happening in some of
(45:44):
the mythologies, like in the Dunebooks. There's when we enter the story
of Dune book one, there's beena universe wide holy war, sorry,
galaxy wide holy work called the Bleriangi odd to destroy all thinking machines.
And that's why in the world ofdoing we have space travel, but we
(46:04):
don't have smartphones people. It's youknow, it's a galaxy wide taboo,
even though there are a few peoplehidden the way that that cheat. But
but they will, they will nukeyou if they find you using man machines
made an image of the mind ofman in the Dune mythology, and then
that becomes spurs human evolution. Sowe have these advanced groups like the Vinny
(46:30):
Jesuit or the character Paul who developsyou know, a kind of godlike omniscience
and with the use of like consciousnesspromoting drug called the Spice. So one
way around this, I mean ElonMusk says, you know, we should
basically be merging with it. That'show we would keep up and use it
(46:51):
to enhance our consciousness. But wecan use AI to trigger a a huge
growth in human consciousness. For example, I've been pointing this out to technologists
for years that we could take existingVR headsets, and Apple is about to
launch one that will be far morepowerful than anything we've had before. And
(47:14):
if you just wanted to write theright software for it, you could use
it because you know how like it. You know, you can put on
these VR headsets and feel terrified tryingto walk across an imaginary plank across a
canyon or something like that. Youknow, it can manipulate your sense of
where your body is called appropriate reception. If somebody wanted to invest in this
(47:37):
instead of first person shooter games,it wanted to invest in using VR headsets
to displace propriate reception, I thinkyou could create out of body experiences on
demand in a lot of people.You could create use it to create much
more effective lucid dreaming technology, thingsthat could really advance human consciousness tremendously.
(48:01):
So these are some hopeful possibilities thatcan happen if we, you know,
as we co evolve with the technology, and you know, everything on the
X zone basically is about the outlieror so much of it is about the
(48:22):
outlier abilities that human beings have hadfor thousands of years. Remote viewing telekinesis
right and basically, like William Jamessaid, he was the founder of the
American Society for Psychical Research in likethe eighteen eighties, he said, all
that's necessary if you want to disprovethe notion that all crows are black,
(48:42):
you don't have to show that nocrows are black. You only have to
show one white crow, and thenthat shows that not all crows are black.
So if we have one mother whoremote from sensory information, knows specifically
how her kid is in trouble onehundred miles away, then that blows open
remote viewing as part of the humanperformance envelope. And if we apply that
(49:04):
to all the strange phenomenon that humanbeings are capable of, that just defines
the outer edges of our present humanperformance envelope. But if we have the
whole genome under threat, that's whena species may make a dramatic adaptation and
these latent abilities that have remained dormantand emerge only rarely and episodically, they
(49:24):
might all emerge together and with dramaticnew or emergent effects. And we see
things like that like in Arthur C. Clark's novel Childhood's End, where organic
evolution suddenly prevails, or in themovie two thousand and one, where there's
a zero one game between AI andhuman beings until there's only one astronaut left,
(49:47):
and yet he wins and he evolvesinto something that we see at the
end called the Star Child. There'sa dramatic evolution a dramatic jump in the
organic evolution and AI is not partof that as far as we know.
It reminds me of the Star Trekmovie where I think it start the first
Star Trek movie where they where they'refought, where they're actually investigating this anomaly
(50:14):
in this in the Solar system andit turns out to be voyager that has
returned from a mission. It hasall this information and and Leah makes contact
with with with VJ figure right,and then the guy I would imagine he
(50:34):
was the first officer, grabs onto her and they both turn into a
new species. Right. Well,in the second Star Trek movie, the
Wrath of Khan, something even morerelevant happens where at the beginning of the
movie we see like this is baldheaded, you know, skinheaded Bucan.
(50:54):
We female science officer and she's onthe deck of a ship and you know,
she's tried to shape save a civilianspacecraft that put out an SOS called
the Kobiyashi maroons Oh scenario and it'sdesigned she's actually in a simulator and the
(51:15):
simulator is design is designed to presentyou with a complete no win scenario to
see how you react to that.Stress. The only one who solved it
was Captain Kirk and he solved itright, you tell it. No,
he cheated, He reprogrammed the simulationcomputer. Yeah, that's what we have
to do. And that's what weare doing as a species. We are
(51:36):
breaking the code, the source codeof everything. We are breaking Adams down
into every more probable, improbable suboswamicparticles. We're breaking that. We broke
the genetic code. We may needto hack into the source code of reality
itself to solve the impossible situation we'vecreated with AI. So what many people
(51:57):
are calling the AI the Domesday machine, could in fact we can look at
AI as being the creator. Well, we may, it may be.
It may we may be creating gods. We may be creating something that you
know, can you know, beeverything everywhere all at once. I mean,
And also sophoclely said, no greatgift enters the human sphere without a
(52:22):
curse attached. It's going to do. It could cure cancer, it could
cure Alzheimer's. It's just one ofthose things that's balanced on a knife edge
between greatness and evil. And andin fact, when you that may be
the nature of entering a zone ofnovelty. This is my idea about a
zone of novelty that in a zoneof novelty, like we're in right now,
(52:44):
the outer edge of light and theouter edge of dark both intensify,
so that the novelty becomes like theamplitude between those two intensified polls. And
that's the world we're in right now. Like the Internet can save your life
or it can start a coup inanother country. You know, it's it's
like Charles Dickens said in a Taleof Two Cities, it was the best
(53:06):
of times, it was the worstof times. That's the time we're living
in. Do you think that withthe advances of AI, theology will cease
to exist? Well, I thinktheology will have to include AI, because
you know, we, just likepsychology now has to try and include the
(53:30):
psychology of those with a silicon substrate. But except that we can't grapple with
understanding their psychology because we can't.I can write a story about somebody as
smart as I am, or lesssmart than I am, But can I
write a story about a character that'sa thousand order of magnitudes smarter than I
(53:51):
am? So these like gods theseAI already have an inscrutable thought process.
But you know, this might bethe birth of the divine. Maybe we
are you know, you can imaginea scenario where where the universe doesn't contain
a god until we create one,and that will eventually emerge out of the
(54:13):
evolution of AI to be omniscient.Got about two minutes left, Jonathan,
What are your final thoughts? Whatwould you like to share with the excellent
nation tonight? I would say ona personal level, because these are some
scary and heady things that are hardto ground yourself. Just remember that in
(54:35):
terms of your personal life, everyhuman being is born hurdling toward an amazing
event horizon called death. And basicallyall you can do, whether there was
an AI or no AI, isto do the best you can from the
time you wake up in the morninguntil bedtime. Be kind to other people,
find something meaningful to do with yourlife. All species have a limited
(54:59):
lifespan. The average life span ofa species is one hundred thousand years.
For mammal species it's a million years. But that's still not very much time,
given that the Earth has been aroundfor like six billion years, and
they think the universe is thirteen billionyears, so our days, our time
on earth is always limited, andno matter what the circumstance is, the
(55:21):
goal is to have a meaningful life, and there's a lot about that also
on my website. For forty fiveyears, I've also worked in an oracle
with six hundred and sixty four cardsthat people can consult just basically for what
I've learned, every card is alife lesson I've learned from myself, and
so just focus on the fundamentals ofwhat makes a good life, because we
(55:43):
can't control this, at least onan individual level, and maybe even as
a species. And so, butthe things that make a good life are
still the same. They're classic anduniversal. So what's next for Jonathan That
Well, now that I've got mytwo books free, my website, I've
put out everything that's totally free.Now what I'm working on is revising the
(56:05):
six hundred and sixty four cards,and I've got a list of like one
hundred new ones I want to create, and then we're going to take a
large language model, train it onall the thousands of pages of my words
and thoughts on my website, andthen make that the oracle and people can
ask it a question and it can. This is a spiritual you know,
a spiritual unconsciousness advancing use of AI. People will be able to ask it
(56:28):
a question and get a meaningful answerthat doesn't depend on synchronicity, like an
oracle that's drawn from out of allthat content, what is most relevant?
Jonathan, thank you ever so muchfor joining us tonight. It's been a
great pleasure talking to you, andI would love to have the opportunity of
having you back in the X Zonein the future. Sure sounds great.
Take care of myself by friend,Bye bye. Explanation. Jonathan Zapp has
(56:52):
been our guest this hour. Hiswebsite is zaporcle dot com. I'll be
back on the other side of thisbreak as the xone continues with yours truly,
Rob McConnell from our broadcast center andstudios in Saint Catherines, Ontario.
We're coming to you around the worldon the Xcell Broadcast Network, XBN dot
net and exclusively on Classic twelve twentyCFA j that's am station here in Saint
(57:17):
Catherines as well. Www dot Classictwelve twenty dot com. C We'll be
back. Don't go away. Closingtime turn all of the lights on over
everyboy in every girl. Closing time, one last call for
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.