The Global Mind concept

What is the Global Mind?

In my posts I often mention a concept called the "Global Mind". To understand the Global Mind we must first consider the concept of the Extended Mind. The idea that the mind exists outside of the beyond and extends beyond there individual. This concept has also been labeled as extended cognition. So when I communicate the concept of a decentralized exocortex and wisdom machine we now know that in order to have these two concepts make sense we require the concept of the Global Mind.

Ecosphere and Noosphere

When thinking about what the self really is we cannot think of it as independent. In simply terms, the evidence suggests that an independent self is biologically impossible. This is based on the fact that what the self actually is in nature is a complex adaptive system. In the human body there are many many organisms working symbiotically in order for a person to emerge. In order words, the person is an emergent property of these interactions from interconnected lifeforms.

Inside your gut for example is a biome, and this biome we call the microbiome is essential to the immune system, digestion, and health in general. If your microbiome is disrupted then it can damage you, it can disrupt your memory. The evidence is clear that the typical human being who may view themselves as some kind of independent individual is actually a complex adaptive system of many lifeforms interacting to keep the body in a state of homeostasis. The friendly bacteria in our guts is friendly because the bacteria uses our bodies as a home (host) while we also have evolved in such a way that we literally cannot live without it living inside us. This in general is how the whole biosphere works on the macro scale where life interacts with life to evolve life.

The ecosphere is the ecology which acts as the environment which enables life to evolve. The conditions for life to flourish are critical and in order for the biosphere to grow it must be in a sort of equilibrium with the ecosphere. Massive changes to the environment can quickly put many species into extinction which ultimately disrupts the web of life. This disruption causes the trigger (natural selection) which speeds up the adaptation and evolutionary rate of life. In order words, the life forms which survive the chaotic environment are the lifeforms which were best able to adapt and when the environment is much more difficult then the rate of adaption at least on earth increased enough so that resiliency improved.

The noosphere represents the sphere of human thought. This is the collective human mind. The ideosphere is a related concept which encompasses the memetic evolutionary space. The mind viruses which infect our brains are typically though to emerge from this particular space. If there is a global mind then we can think of the ideosphere as what exists inside the global mind.

The concept of Global Brain closely resembles the Global Mind concept to the point where it may just be a synonym.

Proponents of the global brain hypothesis claim that the Internet increasingly ties its users together into a single information processing system that functions as part of the collective nervous system of the planet. The intelligence of this network is collective or distributed: it is not centralized or localized in any particular individual, organization or computer system. Therefore, no one can command or control it. Rather, it self-organizes or emerges from the dynamic networks of interactions between its components. This is a property typical of complex adaptive systems.[2]

The World-wide web in particular resembles the organization of a brain with its webpages (playing a role similar to neurons) connected by hyperlinks (playing a role similar to synapses), together forming an associative network along which information propagates.[3] This analogy becomes stronger with the rise of social media, such as Facebook, where links between personal pages represent relationships in a social network along which information propagates from person to person.[4] Such propagation is similar to the spreading activation that neural networks in the brain use to process information in a parallel, distributed manner.

A distinction has to be made between brain and mind. A brain is a physical biological organ. A mind doesn't exist within the brain at all. To have a mind requires having language. To have a brain merely means being able to sense the environment but does not mean you will have any means of communicating with the outside world. Many other lifeforms have brains but only lifeforms which have communication can develop a mind.

Within the global mind there exists mindsets. These are like strains of thought which propagate. These common mindsets can include worldview, philosophy of life, shared concepts etc.

Originating from the study of organizational leadership and coinciding with the growth of multinational corporations in the 1980s, organizations observed that the effectiveness of their executives did not necessarily translate cross-culturally. Global mindset emerged as an explanation (Javidan & Walker, 2013). Essentially, leaders in cross-cultural contexts were hypothesized to need an additional skill, ability, or proficiency (i.e. a global mindset) that enabled effectiveness irregardless of the culture or context (Perlmutter, 1969; Rhinesmith, 1992).

This is important. In order to have a global mindset requires understanding the global mind. This understanding of the global mind is not free, it is not low cost, it requires quite a bit of resources and time in most cases. If you were born in a small town or even a big city but you have limited international experience then how can you develop the global mindset? Well in 2018 the Internet allows for the capturing of global sentiment so that it is actually possible to develop this skill but then consider the question of what if being adapted in this way is actually a form of wealth? To be able to communicate across languages, across cultures, and to adapt your products and services to them all is extremely valuable.

Summarization

• The Global Mind is essentially the "face of the earth". Put in another way, the collective wisdom of the earth is contained in this global mind which is generated by the various forms of computation which exist on the earth. This computation may be living or nonliving, human, or machine, as to be computable really doesn't have anything to do with being conscious. Pancomputationalism which would hold that any physical system capable of computation counts (trees, rocks, clouds) as they enter into computational states, have memory, etc.
• The Global Mind being the mind of the earth is also the record keeper of the earth. Prior to carbon dating we had no way to figure out the age of different fossils. By using carbon dating we are in a sense tapping into the mind of the earth itself to ask a question (how old is that previous lifeform?) and get an answer.
• The Global Mind itself includes all the collective human minds. The human mind can exist outside of our body just as a spider's web can exist and function as an extension of it's mind. The brain on the other hand is individual and this distinction is important to remember. As an individual your brain is limited to your body but your mind can function outside of your body. That mind can even function in a way which directly or indirectly supports the survival of the individual body.

Additional thoughts

Wisdom

Wisdom or sapience is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense, and insight, especially in a mature or utilitarian manner.[1]

When developing crypto projects we should at least consider the impact it will have on the Global Mind. Will that crypto project be able to improve the global mind or at minimum the collective human minds which make up our portion of that global mind? If we think of money as memory for example then we can think of money like we think of the clay tablet. If we think of the blockchain as much more resilient than the clay tablet then it's an augmentation or technological amplification of our collective memory. This has pros and cons, because the blockchain cannot forget anything ever if it runs appropriately, but we need to remember it's just a way to externalize memory. If we can externalize memory why can't we then use our ability to do symbol manipulation to compute, process information, discover knowledge, and let it emerge into wisdom?

In my opinion the biggest threat to the survival of the human species, the ecosystem of the earth, and life in general, is the lack of wisdom. If developers of crypto platforms do not put a greater focus on amplifying the capability of the global mind to generate wisdom then these crypto platforms will have limited utility and may even become tools used to destroy the masses. It's not enough just to create a new technology but it is important to think of the big picture of how that technology can impact the global mind and whether or not that technology allows for some multi-generational (or even multi-species) benefit. Wisdom is beneficial to all humans because it allows for better decision making but the only way to develop wisdom is to have a repository of knowledge.

This doesn't mean merely relying on "experts" to be thought leaders because follow the leader is limited and also creates a situation where the entire community may follow the biases of those in leadership. On the other hand if you provide the tools for everyone in the community to contribute knowledge, access knowledge, and most importantly develop wisdom, then every participant in this process can win in the long term. This leads to the conclusion that we require a knowledge economy, and a wisdom machine. Any crypto which can produce a knowledge economy and wisdom machine is in my opinion improving the collective resilience capacity.

References

Dodig-Crnkovic, G. (2011). Significance of models of computation, from Turing model to natural computation. Minds and Machines, 21(2), 301-322.

Kocherlakota, N. R. (1998). Money is memory. journal of economic theory, 81(2), 232-251.

Piccinini, G., & Scarantino, A. (2011). Information processing, computation, and cognition. Journal of biological physics, 37(1), 1-38.

1. Global Brain
2. Organizational Resilience
3. Ecological Resilience
4. Memex
5. Microbiome
6. Wisdom