Dr. Jacques Vallee ~ The Control System

a reply to: 1ofthe9

Having had a chance to go over this concept of hyperstition, I see some correlations with older ideas, regarding the materiality of thought, the universal mind or a cosmos which responds intelligently to both individual and collective hopes, fears and dreams, etc.. Even the trickster plays into hyperstition in some ways.

The terminology of it is another dimension I will have to follow, as it seems to create a new or modern revisionist way of seeing this phenomenon.

Very nice post and thank you. I'd like to discuss it with you in the future, once I have PM capability.

Hey you kids!

Here are a couple of ATS threads that readers of this thread might find informative and germaine to topics discussed in this thread...

Value Formation

and...

The Biology of Belief

...

a reply to: 1ofthe9


Hmmm,

Neat video. It reminds me of VMWare video tutorials. Have you ever watched one? The ones from the VMWare company itself? I won't link them, but I became so accustomed to them that I began to pick out my favorite presenters. My fave is a guy with an obvious speech impediment that he has overcome. My point being that discussing virtualization, let alone presenting a cogent and fliud presentation on the particulars of it. strains the human speech beyond anything I have ever seen.

Anyway, neat stuff, yeah, if one is really disciplined about closing that loop then the only "Old Ones" around here is us.

I think the most valuable thing I found in the video is the group he mentions that made the video presentation he runs in the background, they are called Orphan Drift. We can never know how much it may have influenced the artistic mores of the members of FL.org, but it is neat to me to see that folks have been working with vidoe moantages like that since 1998.

www.orphandriftarchive.com...

www.orphandriftarchive.com...



P.S. Did you notice? Under all that the guy is saying that the only thing that will keep us from looping back again is deconstruction.

originally posted by: Bybyots
a reply to: 1ofthe9


P.S. Did you notice? Under all that the guy is saying that the only thing that will keep us from looping back again is deconstruction.

Yeah, its the power of knowledge made manifest. Once we learn from history it won't repeat. And, thanks for the links. Also, have you ever read The Secret, by Rhonda Byrd?

originally posted by: Bybyots
a reply to: 1ofthe9


Hmmm,

Neat video. It reminds me of VMWare video tutorials. Have you ever watched one? The ones from the VMWare company itself? I won't link them, but I became so accustomed to them that I began to pick out my favorite presenters. My fave is a guy with an obvious speech impediment that he has overcome. My point being that discussing virtualization, let alone presenting a cogent and fliud presentation on the particulars of it. strains the human speech beyond anything I have ever seen.

Anyway, neat stuff, yeah, if one is really disciplined about closing that loop then the only "Old Ones" around here is us.

I think the most valuable thing I found in the video is the group he mentions that made the video presentation he runs in the background, they are called Orphan Drift. We can never know how much it may have influenced the artistic mores of the members of FL.org, but it is neat to me to see that folks have been working with vidoe moantages like that since 1998.

www.orphandriftarchive.com...

www.orphandriftarchive.com...

P.S. Did you notice? Under all that the guy is saying that the only thing that will keep us from looping back again is deconstruction.

Heh. Yep. Nick Land and friends in the 'dark enlightenment' are involved in some weird occult shenanigans. I can't make much sense of what they call 'lemurian time-sorcery' and what not - although some suggest Land and friends might be hitting the Adderall a bit much. Never the less - the end result is the invocation of the Apocalypse by a variety of actors.

It isn't limited to the west either. Putin's inner circle is rife with transhumanists and occultists. They've been in this stuff since the 1920's - more of a Buddhist/Shamanic path then the West. Ungern von Sternberg rides again.

And on a somewhat related note, is anyone familar with Unmasking the Enemy - by Nelson S. Pacheco, and Tommy R. Blann? I've seen it come up before in various texts, but it seems to be one of those things that escape everyones attention...

originally posted by: Gianfar
[quote/]The CCRU has coined the term ‘K- tactics’ to describe the action of hyperstition, using the mode of schizoanalysis, in contemporary information culture...

...Yes, the bleeding edge of postmodernism is overlapping with Lovecraft.

Beautiful piece of work. Whose the author?


Forgot to link it I guess.
merliquify.com...

originally posted by: lostgirl
Had an interesting thought yesterday - it's a bit nebulous, so am presenting as food for thought rather than any sort of 'theory'...

Maybe each of us generates our own 'control system'? Maybe that's why staunch skeptics never see anything 'supernatural'?

(although on a personal level, that wouldn't jibe with my own case of being a 'believer' and yet never seeing anything that could even have been mistaken for 'phenomena')

I've been vaguely pondering this for the past few days, and, there is a radio series I have been listening to on BBC Radio 4 about the history of mental health which raised a pertinent point with regard to how we define psychosis which aided in bringing my thoughts into focus. Psychosis is, in the most basic terms, a distortion of reality perception, which can manifest itself in numerous ways. What is particularly interest, in this context, is that when patients with active psychosis are placed in an FMRI during visual and auditory hallucinations the brain shows exactly the same activity as if the sounds were 'real' or rather, external and perceivable to others. This confirms some of the points that have already been raised by myself and others, that the brain is capable of generating information that appears external. The second major feature of psychosis is a conviction in the reality of unusual beliefs.

This in no way suggests that all who witness and experience the 'paranormal' are suffering from psychosis, but if one considers psychosis as a spectrum, much in the same way as any deviation from the norm is assessed, we can safely assume that there is a probability that some of those experiences can be related to the lower end of the scale of psychotic characters, as well as, the inclination of those low end/high functioning psychoses being inclined, due to their predisposition towards 'unusual beliefs' to accept accounts given by those at the high end.

In conjunction with that idea, I was reading an essay by Nicholas Humphrey, a theoretical psychologist regarding the 'experiment' or optical illusion, created by Professor Richard Gregory.



The premise of the 'triangle' is that even when it is demonstrated that the object is 'impossible' our brains continue to 'make sense' of the of the available visual data in a nonsensical way. As Humphrey puts it, "Your mind, it seems, cannot help choosing the attractively simple - even if mad - interpretation over the unattractively complicated - even if sane - one. Logic and common sense are being made to play second fiddle to a perpetual ideal of wholeness and completion." Therefore, in context with the thread, we are somewhat predisposed to explain these phenomenon away as the work of God, Aliens, ghosts or the Little People, because it is simpler. It is less sane though. Humphrey continues, "For, if there is one thing that human beings are amazingly prone to (perhaps we might say good at), it is...maneuvering themselves into just one ideological position from which as impossible, even absurd explanation of the 'facts of life' happens to look attractively simple and robust...the tell tale sign of what is happening will always be that the solution works only from this one position - and that if the observer were able to shift perspective, even slightly, the gaps in the explanation would appear."

It seems to be then, that we are predisposed, when faced with something inexplicable, to find the shortest route to an explanation and that explanation is largely dependent upon ideological conditioning. Which I think is something that we have already concluded.

There is no such thing as an average brain. Each brain and therefore mind is unique, perceiving the world and processing that into a conception of reality that is largely unique to that individual, however that reality is somewhat predetermined by ideology and transmitted traditions. More over, it is the latter that determines whether the individual perceptions are acceptable to society. This will vary from society to society, of course. In the West we cannot help but factor in the effect of mass media, which again we have discussed, and which serves a similar function to oral traditions but on a macro level.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
It seems to be then, that we are predisposed, when faced with something inexplicable, to find the shortest route to an explanation

I don't know....it seems to me that there are many members of ATS (including me) who take 'more/longer' routes toward explanation in order to see from varying perspectives and hopefully increase the likelihood of discovering the most 'true'/accurate explanation possible...

As far as "The Triangle"...I don't see what the big deal was....

...I mean, we were shown an object, we saw a person do something in regard to the object which should have been impossible - at which point, my thought was, "must be an illusion" - then the object was turned to show (confirm) that it was an illusion..

...So, how did those scientists come up with all that complicated stuff about the mind having to choose between "mad" or "sane" interpretations in the scenario? Where do they get the idea that people are throwing out logic and common sense on being presented such an illusion?

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Fantastic, truly everyone has a different interface to phenomena.

Also Korzybski: "The map is not the territory."

Here's some more stuff worth reading.

a reply to: 1ofthe9
Reading that link reminded me of something I've been thinking about for several weeks/maybe a couple months now...

Not sure if pop culture 'memes' fall under the 'category' of "narrative" (although, I kind of think they do), but I've noticed that after many years of being 'thematically' prevalent, 'zombies' seem to be on the way 'out'...

...For awhile there, 'everything' was "zombie" (someone even wrote a 'zombie' version of a Jane Austen novel!), but lately the 'theme/meme/ect.' seems to be fading away...

So, as I was reading the posts in the link, I was trying to think whether anything specific has begun to 'replace' zombies.

There has been an uptick in young adult books/movies which are set in post apocalyptic America ("The Hunger Games", "Divergent"), and I suppose that there is a lot of 'end of the world as we know it' out there meme-wise...

I do think that there 'was' an attempt to promote some 'magical/fairytale' in pop culture...
...The first year of the show "Once Upon a Time" was brilliant and spawned a spin-off ("Once Upon a Time In Wonderland"), and a big budget theatrical re-telling of "Snow White", plus a new version of "Sleeping Beauty" (also big budget - Angelina Jolie stars) in theaters soon...

...But...that first 'foray' into 'fairytales' was hit hard by bad writing in the second season and, having gotten no better in the third season, won't likely make a fourth...
The (new take on) "Alice in Wonderland" didn't even make it a full season before cancellation, the "Snow White" movie has all but been forgotten already...So....it will be interesting to see if "Sleeping Beauty" will be a 'big' enough success to wake that 'storybook' narrative up and get it moving again...

Soooo. here's an interesting tidbit (control system-wise)
I think I may have some 'talent' as a rainmaker

We have had a dry spell for a few weeks and as of Monday the forecast this week was only 20-30% each day...

Well, I decided Monday afternoon to see if I could 'pray/visualize/whatever' some rain for us, went outside, thought up a little 'ritual', did it, and low and behold, starting the very next day (Tuesday) it has rained every day!!

(to the point that our pool is over-flowing!)

Now here's a pertinent part of the 'equation' for anyone who wants to try this sort of 'magic'...I think it has to be something that has a feeling of importance to you.

For example: I live in a primarily sunny state and (oddly enough) am among the 10% of Depression sufferers who get worse with too much sunlight (most people with "Seasonal Affective Disorder" get worse in winter due to limited sunlight).

Consequently, rainy days are very necessary to my sense of well-being...

So, there ya go, food for thought and maybe some experimentation as well!

originally posted by: lostgirl
I don't know....it seems to me that there are many members of ATS (including me) who take 'more/longer' routes toward explanation in order to see from varying perspectives and hopefully increase the likelihood of discovering the most 'true'/accurate explanation possible...

As a direct, and timely, example, you wished for rain and because it rained you have decided that you caused it to rain. Your ritual may have caused the rain, but without all the necessary and available data to determine how probable that is, I would err on the side of it being a coincidence. Either way, the 'shortest possible route' primarily refers to experience, and the moment, although, as I said, it also factors into how we will interpret the experiences of others but that is more to do with ideology. You want to believe that it rained because of you, therefore you have accepted that you are the cause of the rain. You choose believe the impossible.

originally posted by: lostgirl
As far as "The Triangle"...I don't see what the big deal was....

...I mean, we were shown an object, we saw a person do something in regard to the object which should have been impossible - at which point, my thought was, "must be an illusion" - then the object was turned to show (confirm) that it was an illusion..

...So, how did those scientists come up with all that complicated stuff about the mind having to choose between "mad" or "sane" interpretations in the scenario? Where do they get the idea that people are throwing out logic and common sense on being presented such an illusion?

It is not an 'illusion' though, it is an actual object but viewed from a single perspective, it appears impossible. Move your perspective and it makes sense. As such, it merely demonstrates the power of perspective, and shifting it in order to gain a fuller comprehension.

I'll let Humphrey explain...

" What, then, should be your attitude to this apparent paradox? Should you perhaps (with an open mind, trusting your personal experience) believe what you unquestionably see, accept what you always thought could not exist actually does exist, and abandon your long-standing assumptions about the structure of the 'normal' world? Or, taking hold of Holmes's* dictum, would you do better instead to make a principled stand against the impossibility and go in search of the improbable."

* " 'How often have I said to you,' Sherlock Holmes observed to Dr. Watson, 'that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?' "

The triangle serves as an example of the way in which our minds process the world of information around us. We are drawn to simple solutions that often defy logic and common sense. So, that when someone offers us an explanation that seems to answer everything, ie that God created the universe in seven days, or your loved one died because of bad magic or witchcraft, we grasp onto that solution rather than other more complicated, multi-causal explanations.

originally posted by: Autograf
a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Fantastic, truly everyone has a different interface to phenomena.

Indeed. There is no such thing as an 'average' or 'ideal' brain. I wonder how much of this is due to our being born with undeveloped brains. One of the primary drawbacks of bipedalism is that it necessitated our births being brought forward to a point where the bones in our skulls had not fused and the brain, therefore, had not reached it's full capacity. The complexity of the human birth canal is without comparison, and the high level of infant and maternal mortality must have facilitated, via natural selection, this rapid adaptation to bipedalism. The result, in brain terms, is that we are born with a malleable sponge for absorbing information that gains much of it's structure through experience.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
You want to believe that it rained because of you, therefore you have accepted that you are the cause of the rain. You choose believe the impossible.

Uuummm...actually, no...I never stated that I particularly wanted it to rain "because of" me, nor that I really "believe" that I caused it...(hence the 'wink' icon)
My post describes an 'experiment' wherein I attempted to cause a low-probability (20 - 30%) event to manifest...and though it 'appears' that I was successful, I certainly wouldn't lay money on any ability to repeat such results.

I don't "choose to believe" the impossible - I choose to explore the realm of impossibility, because significant scientific evidence shows that many a seeming 'impossibility' has, thru successful experimentation, turned out to be merely an 'improbability'...

'Experience' thru out history has proven that there is such a fine line between 'impossible' and 'improbable' that in most cases it is necessary to entertain the former in order to discover the truth of the latter...

originally posted by: lostgirl

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
You want to believe that it rained because of you, therefore you have accepted that you are the cause of the rain. You choose believe the impossible.

Uuummm...actually, no...I never stated that I particularly wanted it to rain "because of" me, nor that I really "believe" that I caused it...(hence the 'wink' icon)
My post describes an 'experiment' wherein I attempted to cause a low-probability (20 - 30%) event to manifest...and though it 'appears' that I was successful, I certainly wouldn't lay money on any ability to repeat such results.

I don't "choose to believe" the impossible - I choose to explore the realm of impossibility, because significant scientific evidence shows that many a seeming 'impossibility' has, thru successful experimentation, turned out to be merely an 'improbability'...

If you say so Either way, it still provided an excellent, and timely, example of what you had requested clarification on.

originally posted by: lostgirl
'Experience' thru out history has proven that there is such a fine line between 'impossible' and 'improbable' that in most cases it is necessary to entertain the former in order to discover the truth of the latter...

In what sense? Experience taught us that the world was round(ish) and that the Earth revolved around the Sun, before that there was merely assumption, not experience. When the latter discovery was made, by observation (direct experience), it was deemed impossible due to ignorance, not impossibility.

In the case of your rain making 'ritual', to use the ready example, what could you have done to increase probability of a positive outcome? Ritual, fundamentally, precedes scientific process by following a certain set of fixed procedures that, if followed to the letter, result in a probable/expected outcome. This is why the originators of modern science utilised 'magical' texts, because although littered with a lot of mumbo jumbo, they also contained formulas/rituals with proven scientific value.

Now another example, contextually, it is impossible that UFOs are visitors from another planet, and yet, thousands of people prefer that explanation over all others, largely, because it is the most simple. Just as previous generations have attributed similar phenomenon to spirits, angels, etc, all equally impossible, and all requiring a similar, single ideological perspective which once one moves a step away from shatters the illusion, hence the relevance of the 'triangle'. So having eliminated the impossibles, we are left with the improbable, which so far, in this discussion at least, we have found to be multi-causal. In order to progress any further on from that point, we have abandon ALL ideology and preconceptions, which I believe is also, the point that Vallee find himself.

Belief, of any kind, is only a factor in so much as that it has been shown to effect outcome. As in, we, as the devices that are measuring the phenomenon, are distorting the results. We need to recalibrate our equipment.

a reply to: KilgoreTrout

Slight quibble, even in the context of the EDH: it is still technically possible that some UFOs are visitors from another planet (our solar system's own planets and moons being the obvious candidates), or from some non-planetary ET habitat.

Flying through space while burning rocket fuel is not the only way to arrive here. However it is the 'shortest distance between two points', and as soon as one starts talking about other means of transport, other essential forms of UFO such as biological entities, or etc, one has lost that simplicity. As Vallee pointed out, there is no simplistic explanation.

a reply to: Autograf

It's a fair quibble. The impossibility is largely statistical. While it is likely, probable, that life exists within other galaxies, it is unlikely that they are humanoid in appearance, and given the age of the universe, the time that it took to create an inhabitable environment where life could evolve on this planet, it is statistically impossible that if humanoid life existed elsewhere that it would be anymore advanced than we were. Or if in fact other forms of life had evolved capable of achieving similar levels of intelligence and technology to us, that they would be sufficiently advanced to travel here. The impossibility hinges on the fact that the universe operates under certain 'rules' or 'laws' that render the likelihood of such scenarios as extraterrestrial visitors miniscule in terms of probability of such life evolving at a point much earlier than life did here. Furthermore. If we accept that there may be a multitude of life supporting planets out there, the frequency of the supposed visitations, as reported, becomes disputable based on that miniscule probability of there being both the intelligence and technological advancement somewhere out there to facilitate it, say one in a billion planets with life with that capability. So of the billion or so (this number is off the top of my head of course) planets with evolved life much like our own, why would that one planet with such capability ignore all those and focus all it's attention on ours. Why are we so 'special'?

Really, in my very humble and bascially equipped opinion, I would have to say, that it is far likelier that such visitors come from outside the universe, but then we return to the point of 'why us?', 'what's so special about us?'...statistically. Unless we are the only planet that has successfully evolved to support life...but now I am just having mental fun, and defeating the object that I originally intended to communicate. The thing is, I don't think that there is a simple, single solution, but nor do I think that we are being visited by aliens, or ETs and that the vast majority of arguments relating to ETs are impossible given all that we know about the age of the universe and the way in which we have evolved in relation to it, including the incredibly long process by which our own planet reached a stage whereby it could even support the most basic forms of life. Our intelligence belongs to that process, and I know of no feasible short cut to this level of intelligence and therefore to technological developments. We can discuss other forms of intelligence, certainly, that I think falls into the improbable, but interstellar travel, physical visitations, likely not.

I watched Professor Brian Cox's series 'Wonders of the Solar System' last night, and something that has been troubling me for a few days came to a head. What exactly does Vallee mean by 'intelligence'?

Dictionary definitions are incredibly vague. Intelligence being defined merely as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills', and continuing on that stream, knowledge is defined as 'facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject' or 'awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation'.

Intelligence, as a stand alone, does not seem to incorporate consciousness, sentience or sapience.

originally posted by: KilgoreTrout
I watched Professor Brian Cox's series 'Wonders of the Solar System' last night, and something that has been troubling me for a few days came to a head. What exactly does Vallee mean by 'intelligence'?

Dictionary definitions are incredibly vague. Intelligence being defined merely as 'the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills', and continuing on that stream, knowledge is defined as 'facts, information, and skills acquired through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject' or 'awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation'.

Intelligence, as a stand alone, does not seem to incorporate consciousness, sentience or sapience.

There's a really good bit of recent scifi that addresses this, and I'd really recomend it to fellow thread-followers:
Blindsight by Peter Watts.

We could be dealing with something that is intelligent ala insects, but isn't sentient. The Killing Star is another good one. Although we haven't been evaporated by relativistic weapons - thankfully - I think we can consider that there are other motives at play. Certainly it seems, at least from our speculations, that there is some kind of social modification going on. My best guess is that the control system seeks to introduce 'anti-structure' at certain points in human society - coinciding with international tension and local unrest. I believe this is why the CS is no longer as active as it once was in the major superpowers - a lot of the really interesting recent stuff seems to be occurring in the Third World - ie South America and Iran. China and North Korea would be really interesting to examine as well, although information is, of course, hard to come by. Anyone speak Mandarin? We should think about opening lines of communication with Chinese researchers.

I would like to see, if this is even possible, the UFO reports from North Africa and the Middle East before and during the Arab Spring. If my hunch is decent, we should see an increase...