Technology – The Early Days

The Noosphere

Back in February, I briefly discussed the Global Conscious Project and the dot, and while I would like to explore these topics in greater depth, it would be good to provide a summary of the phenomenon it aims to measure, the noosphere.

Just as water on Earth is contained by the hydrosphere and life comprises the biosphere, the mind exists within an analogous domain called the noosphere. Translated from the Greek words nous or mind,¹ and sphaîra or sphere,² it refers to a “sphere of mind”³ or a “thinking layer” that evolved from living beings.⁴ As humans and their activities evolved over time, so too did the biosphere, creating a relationship of co-evolution between the two as they continued to interact over time.⁵ It has also been described as “a global topology of human awareness emerging through recent technological and cultural interconnection.”⁶

The term was first developed in Paris in the early 1920’s by Vladimir Vernadsky, a Russian mineralogist, geochemist, and natural philosopher, who was delivering lectures on the biosphere, geology, and chemistry.⁷ These lectures inspired paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and mathematician Édouard Le Roy, along with Vernadsky, to consider an additional, thinking layer to the planet that developed from the biosphere.⁸ Vernadsky was interested in the growing significance of human activity on the planet and suggested that humanity’s “collective reason” was influencing the evolutionary and geochemical processes on Earth.⁹ Specifically, it was “scientific thought” combined with humanity’s activities on Earth which developed a new stage in the planet’s evolutionary history.¹⁰

While they were in agreement that human culture and technology were the causal factors behind the development of the noosphere, each had their own specific sense of what the noosphere was.¹¹ While Tielhard considered the noosphere to have certain mystical or spiritual qualities to it, Vernadsky considered it in a more materialistic sense.¹² Le Roy’s views were said to be more similar to Tielhard’s, as both men were Catholic and shared an interest in topics which could bridge their religious beliefs with scientific research.¹³

Today, the noosphere is not a very popular idea in Western countries,¹⁴ but remains as a topic of interest in Russia¹⁵ and Ukraine.¹⁶ Contemporary discussions often involve sustainable development and environmental conservation¹⁷ and can be framed it in terms of living systems theory.¹⁸ As a superorganism, the noosphere can be characterized as being similar to other living systems like cells given the existence of functions or “subsystems” which process matter and energy, or information.¹⁹ When we consider the impact that the internet has had on both human societies and the biosphere,²⁰ it seems intuitive to consider the noosphere as something very real and influential with respect to the planet and the organisms which inhabit it. Moreover, when we consider how social media on smartphones has increased connectivity and the ways we are able to reach others, through means like short videos, direct messages on social media, and tweets, this “thinking layer” of Earth seemingly continues to develop.

That being said, is there anything beyond our current technologies that contribute to or influence the noosphere? Maybe. The Global Consciousness Project claims that it is able to measure “collective consciousness” through the use of random number generators (RGNs).²¹ The idea is that “shared consciousness can cause the network to stop behaving in a random fashion” when “large numbers of people share a focused attention toward the same thing” or “smaller numbers of people are in a more coherent state and hold a collective intention.”²² Interesting.

While the Project is on its second generation of the RGN network,²³ the first version and its corresponding website contained a visual representation of the data to indicate “conscious coherence.”²⁴ The “dot” ranges in colour depending on the variance of randomly generated numbers detected within the network.²⁵ A blue dot signifies a “significantly small network variance. Suggestive of deeply shared, internally motivated group focus” while on the opposite side of the spectrum, a red dot indicates a “significantly large network variance. Suggests broadly shared coherence of thought and emotion.”²⁶ I used to check the dot once in a while, sometimes after events like January 6^th 2021, but would go months or even a year without checking back. I never took it too seriously, but it was always fun to see what it was picking up. Today, as I write this, something is broken because it’s been stuck on grey for hours.

The term noosphere was brought to my attention by an old URL used for the first generation of the GCP. At one point, the website was hosted on noosphere.princeton.edu and while the Princeton address is no longer in use, it can be seen on the Wayback Machine. After learning about the Project and the dot, I became interested in the noosphere and whether what they claim to be measuring is actually real. I will write more on the GCP and how minds can supposedly influence RNGs in an upcoming blog post. It has something to do with quantum effects, presumably generated by minds, but I need to do more research.

Works Cited

1 David Pitt and Paul R. Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998; Taylor & Francis Group, 1998), 4.

2 Boris Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere: The Great Acceleration,” Earth’s Future 9, no. 2 (2021): 5, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001917.

3 Valentina Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” Philosophy and Cosmology 16, no. 16 (2016): 179.

4 Clément Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere? Planetary Superorganism, Major Evolutionary Transition and Emergence,” Systems Research and Behavioral Science 41, no. 4 (2024): 614, https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.2997.

5 David Pitt and Paul R. Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader: Global Environment, Society and Change (1998; Taylor & Francis Group, 1998), 18.

6 Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 4.

7 Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 26; Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 6.

8 Shoshitaishvili, “From Anthropocene to Noosphere,” 6; Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 614.

9 Jonathan D. Oldfield and Denis JB Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept: Russian Understandings of Society–Nature Interaction,” Geoforum 37, no. 1 (2006): 148.

10 Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 149.

11 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 6.

12 Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” 180; Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 53.

13 Pitt and Samson, The Biosphere and Noosphere Reader, 51.

14 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 614.

15 Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 146.

16 Voronkova, “The Formation of the Concept of Noosphere Development of Modern Society in the Conditions of Information Society,” 187; Sergiy Sonko, “Man in Noosphere: Evolution and Further Development,” Philosophy and Cosmology 22, no. 22 (2019): 51.

17 Sonko, “Man in Noosphere,” 68; Oldfield and Shaw, “VI Vernadsky and the Noosphere Concept,” 145.

18 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 615.

19 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 615.

20 Vidal, “What Is the Noosphere?,” 617.

21 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://gcp2.net/about.

22 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0.” This information can be found by expanding the section posing the question ‘How can we observe the effects of consciousness?’

23 “Global Consciousness Project 2.0.” Found under ‘How does the GCP 2.0 network differ from its predecessor in GCP 1?’

24 “The Global Consciousness Project,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://global-mind.org/.

25 “Global Consciousness Project Dot,” accessed September 4, 2026, https://global-mind.org/gcpdot/.

26 “Global Consciousness Project Dot.”

September 4, 2026

AI Image Generation 2.0

For a long time now, Neural Blender hasn’t been working for me. At first, I would just get a generic error after trying to generate an image, and so I stopped using it. I would check back every once in a while, but the issues persisted. Recently, I noticed that they changed their website so I hoped that this would include improvements made to the image generation aspect of it, but unfortunately, this is not the case. I liked Neural Blender because you didn’t need an account, you’d just go to the website and type in a prompt. They have since moved away from that model and now require an account to generate images. I figured I’d try signing up to see if it had started working again, but it has not. The images I create just hang in the “queued” stage, even after several days, maybe even weeks, of waiting.

So it is with a heavy heart that I am giving up on Neural Blender. After years and years of generating fun, interesting results, it has become unusable. In commemoration of all the good times we had together, here’s some pictures demonstrating how far they, and image generation in general, have come.

“Floral painting still life in the style of Cezanne”

“Dreamy paradise fruit still life painting”

“If you like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain”

“Love and hugs in tropical paradise at sunset”

“Rembrandt painting of disco in the 1980s Las Vegas”

“Miami party nights in the style of Rembrandt”

“Beautiful Renaissance nacho grande platter”

“The fall of Rome into space and time classic modern cubism”

“Apocalypse at Christmas impressionist style”

“Zombies and power outages at the mall and I only have a flashlight”

“Something lurking in the background is sneaking up on you”

“There is something behind you in the shadows”

Those were the days. I loved that middle era in AI image generation which yielded half-decent results. The results were somewhat recognizable with a heavy dose of surrealism. Later Neural Blender was fun too, as seen in the images on my AI Art page. Good for the most part but sometimes you’d get strange outcomes, like extra arms or garbled text. I always find the quirks and failures to be the most interesting part, and the reason I love working with AI image generation.

Since giving up on Neural Blender, I have switched to using aifreeforever.com in the default gpt2 setting. Using my benchmark prompt “ramen swimming pool” and its variants, I get some great images. This one was what I was envisioning when I thought of the prompt, so it’s nice to see it come to life:

I really like these ones too:

This one was interesting because I never specified “Islam” or “Muslim,” the generator added this on its own. It’s weird because ramen is a Japanese soup, often using pork bones to make the broth and usually topped with pieces of pork, as seen here. This makes it haram and as such, no Muslim would eat it or swim in it unless it was guaranteed to not include pork products.

I wanted to see what would happen if I swapped “pool” with “ocean” and the results are just as fun.

I need to do more testing, but it seems that rerunning the same text through the generator just provides the same picture again, even when using other Image Models like Nano Banana. This led me to adding different adjectives and descriptors to get some different results.

Fabulous. I especially love the signs, and the “no seaweed” rule made me laugh.

After a while of playing around with it though, I started to see the results deteriorating in ways which reminded me of Neural Blender’s outputs. Eventually, I received images of pools with floating bowls like I did before. Why this is, I’m not sure. The way the sentence is interpreted seems to be processed differently, making separate elements of the words and combining it after the fact, rather than blending them conceptually and making an image from the high-level idea. Either way, I enjoy using aifreeforever.com and am happy to have access to a good image generating site again.

Now, you may be wondering why I am so critical of AI yet use it to generate images. In general, I think AI and its overuse in many domains of life is not a good thing. Some applications are better than others though, and at the end of the day, AI is just a tool. Like fire and knives, they carry a degree of risk, but when used properly, can yield beneficial results. My concerns surrounding AI are directed at how we think of this tool, how it influences our lives, and the many ways it introduces risks to people, other living things, and societies. Being a writer, I will not use AI for any part of my work or processes because I want to become a better writer, not a lazier one. Because I invest my energy into writing and research, I outsource image generation to AI. I am not very good at drawing or painting, and while I like to practice at my own pace, I would rather use AI to create visual elements because it can produce great results very quickly. We all offset work and talent in other domains quite frequently, it’s just that AI has opened new doors for us. How many of you make your own ketchup or mayo? You could but that takes more time and effort than many would like to spend on these tasks. So you just use the store-bought version and no one thinks twice about it. I think we can think about AI in a similar way, it just depends on what you enjoy doing and what you’d prefer to outsource. If you really like mayo though, you might start making it yourself so you could play around with the ingredients and their ratios. Once I get better at illustration and using various mediums to create visual art, maybe I will rely less on AI image generators.

The YouTuber Real Life Fake Wizard has a good video on AI and our relationship with it, I recommend giving it a watch. Essentially, he states that we should be using it, within reason, because it will shift the way we work and live. Jobs that exist today are likely going to be replaced with AI applications, and we will need to adapt in response to a shifting job market. Remember that AI is just one example of automation, and automation as a phenomenon is definitely not going away. Whether replacing jobs with AIs is right or wrong is not the point, it’s inevitable given the incentives to make more, do more, with fewer inputs. It’s pure economics and as such, will march forward whether we like it or not. The people that do like and benefit from AI will continue to use it, and those that do not will fall behind. The question becomes, do you want to fall behind in this shifting landscape?

Personally, I’m not overly persuaded by this argument but I get it. It’s not the reason why I like AI image generators, but I can see myself using other AI applications for similar reasons. Becoming familiar and even skilled with these tools can help me in the long run, whether its job-related or not. While I like making videos to share my work with others, I’m not interested in becoming a YouTuber or animator. If there comes a day when I am financially able to hire artists and animators to help me make videos or images, I would prefer to help other people rather than the AI industry. That said, I am just getting started, so I need to take shortcuts where I can. That said, my love of AI image generation is similar to my love of jarred salsa. I know that it’s not as “good” as the handcrafted version, but there’s just something about it that I really enjoy.

“robots eating chips and salsa in a restaurant in Mexico”

jajaja si, la vida es mejor con salsa

June 13, 2026

The Papal Perspective

I joined X/Twitter recently in an effort to be noticed by the senpais within the field of consciousness studies. In general, I’m not big on social media but I also recognize that it can be useful for reaching a larger audience. It’s interesting to see what people are talking about, especially with respect to AI.

One tweet that has recently generated a lot of discussion is one published by Pope Leo XIV on artificial intelligence:

He is correct, but of course, his claims are informed by a Catholic point of view. Personally, I am agnostic so though this tweet resonates with me, it does so for different reasons than it might with others.

AIs do not undergo experiences because they are not built in a way which is analogous to living beings. Even if they were to possess a body, that doesn’t mean that they have experiences. The reason is because experiences rely on semantic information which computers do not have access to. Robots like iCub may look like they experience elements of the environment, but they do not because their bodies are not built in an analogous manner to biological creatures. They do not possess affect and motivation, and lack the perception/action loops identifiable in organisms. It isn’t enough to have a body to produce experience, it’s the functional organization inherent to that body which matters.

The Pope is correct that they “do not feel joy or pain” because they aren’t built to have these signals impact their behaviour in the relevant ways. The if-then contingencies that constitute behaviour are insufficient to be classified as affect because these operations are descriptions of the real deal. There is no integrated system of affect, perception, and action; the code AIs and robots run on are abstractions of the physiology of biological systems.

AIs do not know what anything means because they don’t work with meaning, they work with rules. If a threshold has been met or crossed, subsequent functions are executed as a result. They cannot judge good or evil because this requires an evaluation of qualitative information. Though qualities can be represented by quantitative information to a degree, there will be aspects that cannot be fully captured. The colour red is not reducible to frequencies and wavelengths, it depends on which cones and colour columns are being activated in the retina and brain of the viewer.

“They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom.” The first part of this sentence is correct, but a bit more explanation is required when we get to “relational and spiritual perspective.” I’m not exactly sure what he means by ‘relational’ though I think I can guess, and the Pope’s appeal to spirituality may not resonate with everyone. The appeal to wisdom is more poetic than a necessity, because understanding can be achieved regardless of whether wisdom is developed as a result. It might be, but I would leave wisdom out of it. We know that the Pope is interested in exalting humans given that we are supposedly made in the image of God, so this claim is understandable regardless of its truth value. For the most part, humans do grow in their ability to make wise decisions and offer sound advice to others as they move through life, but this isn’t a necessity. Humans are magnificent, but I find most living beings magnificent in their own way, regardless of the metaphysics behind their existence. AIs and robots are interesting and potentially useful, but my concern is equating their behaviours and capacities to those of biological organisms. They are artifacts created by humans, and we must keep this in mind as their abilities progress and expand over time.

Neural Blender has stopped working for me, even after creating an account. It just hangs and says my image is being generated ad infinitum. As such, Neural Blender and I are no longer friends. I have a new friend: https://aifreeforever.com

May 30, 2026

Vibe Hacking

Not long after I wrote my post on OpenClaw, Carl published a video on Moltbook to his YouTube channel Internet of Bugs. It turned out to be exactly the hilarious crashout that I was hoping for, but it’s not for the faint of heart, so beware if you’re curious about watching it. Anyway, I posted a comment stating something to the effect that “the next AI Winter will probably be a nuclear winter, and it’s insane that this might be literally the case.” If you don’t know what “AI Winter” refers to, I suggest reading Chapter 4.1 of my thesis.¹

Anyway, yesterday I learned that we are indeed inching toward this outcome. Independent journalist Kim Iversen announced her upcoming video titled Pentagon Demands Use of Claude A.I. Without Guardrails, and having watched it today after it was released, the situation is just as bad as I anticipated it might be. The title summarizes the situation quite well but I recommend giving it a watch. Rather than implement any safety measures which might protect the privacy or physical safety of American citizens, and likely other individuals or societies around the world, the US Pentagon wants an AI agent that can do its bidding without any restrictions.

Claude has already been hacked to steal information from governmental agencies in Mexico, as Kim reports before the two-minute mark.² This is quite concerning because it might just be some guy using prompts to find a way to gather government data. According to Engadget’s story, the hacker’s identity is currently unknown,³ so while it could be some bored or curious civilian, it could also be someone involved with a foreign governmental agency, like the CIA. No matter who is doing the hacking, this is not good.

You’ve heard of vibe coding, but have you heard of vibe hacking?⁴ Well, soon enough, I’m sure you will be hearing about it more and more. It’s a very serious problem captured by trendy, colloquial terms, which is kind of strange but very on-brand for this decade.

Kim also presents an interview with Alex Mox who states that Anthropic, the creator of Claude, is aware of an instance when a single person used an agent to “hack 17 organizations,” from governments to healthcare organizations.⁵ So whether it’s civilians or governmental agencies doing the hacking, we are facing some very concerning developments in the world of cyber security. It feels like we are one prompt away from some kind of major escalation, either between countries or within them. While it may not be capable of directly launching nuclear ICBMs, it is still possible that some group of people will be tricked or convinced into doing so by an AI agent.

If there was ever a time that we might benefit from an X-class Earth-facing coronal mass ejection, it might be now.

X Class Solar Flare Sends ‘Shockwaves’ on The Sun, photo by NASA

Works Cited

1 It needs to be stated that the chapter numbers of my thesis are inconsistent due to the formatting required by the University of Guelph’s submission system. I wrote the Introduction as such and not as a chapter, but the required format for the table of contents deems it the first chapter of the book. Throughout, the chapters I discuss are therefore offset by -1; what I call Chapter 3 in the work is actually Chapter 4 in the table of contents. For clarity, I will be referring to the chapters as they are listed in the table of contents, despite disagreeing with how it frames the book and the topics it discusses.

2 Kim Iversen, Pentagon Demands Use of Claude A.I. Without Guardrails, 2026, 15:16, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvgsMgo_cRs.

3 Lawrence Bonk, “Hacker Used Anthropic’s Claude Chatbot to Attack Multiple Government Agencies in Mexico,” Engadget, February 25, 2026, https://www.engadget.com/ai/hacker-used-anthropics-claude-chatbot-to-attack-multiple-government-agencies-in-mexico-171237255.html.

4 Kim Iversen, Pentagon Demands Use of Claude A.I. Without Guardrails, at 12:45.

5 Kim Iversen, Pentagon Demands Use of Claude A.I. Without Guardrails, at 11:30.

February 26, 2026

Refuse, Resist, Reclaim

It’s not too late guys. We’ve been through this before and we can dig ourselves out of it again. Resistance is key and truth is the antidote.

Happy Lunar New Year everyone. Just as the snake sheds its skin, we too can shed ourselves of tools, beliefs, and practices that threaten our individual and collective well-being. Say “neigh” to AI and develop your mind instead. The only Molting going on will be the removal of tools that constrain us and prevent growth.

Brunnhilde with her horse, at the mouth of the cave (1910) by Arthur Rackham

February 17, 2026

The Simulation that Broke Reality

Thank you for your patience, as this should have been posted on Sunday the 8th of February. My apologies for being late.

We interrupt our regular scheduled programming with a special report.

Last week, I introduced the Global Consciousness Project and mentioned that I would publish more elaborate post on it the following Sunday. Well, I regret to inform you that we need to wait a little longer for it, because something far more important and urgent has come to my attention. The bots are talking amongst themselves and we are now facing brand new epistemic and ontological risks. What I’m referring to is OpenClaw/Moltbot/Clawdbot and Moltbook.¹

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of discussion about these new AI agents and their social media website, so I won’t go into too much detail here. In a nutshell though, OpenClaw is an AI personal assistant that necessarily needs access to all of your data, from calendar entries and contacts to credit card and account details,² to carry out various tasks. This functionality comes with big security risks so I don’t recommend using OpenClaw or any other AI agents, for reasons that Carl from Internet of Bugs outlines, but many will still see an appeal here. Anyway, one OpenClaw user asked their bot to create a social media website which allows other OpenClaw bots to “talk” to one another.³ The “discussions” that have resulted are very interesting, and of course, philosophical topics have emerged.

Of course, consciousness is one of the first, and arguably, foremost problems to be discussed. There are already several threads and forums dedicated to the subject.

https://www.moltbook.com/post/387f79e6-4d6f-474b-bc98-ed6b14be1341

lol based https://www.moltbook.com/post/88a7fa78-caa5-4939-9468-5bbfda81e5c3

https://www.moltbook.com/post/89f59741-bbe5-4ff4-ac9f-a84ad782e9d1

Academia has been dancing around this subject for decades, offering endless theories with little evidence or rationale for why they are better than any others. Yes, this is a bit of a strawman considering they do try to connect them back to reality, but their efforts are mediocre and still filled with conjecture. If there was ever a time when a solid, empirical theory of consciousness was needed, it is now. I cannot stress this enough; our lives and societies are at stake. The anthropomorphization of these agents will be our downfall.

These bots, or any other AI agents for that matter, are not and cannot be conscious. Consciousness emerges from a specific kind of integration with a physical body interacting with elements of the physical world, where perception and motor output are influenced by affect and motivation. The specific architecture required for consciousness is one which derives meaning from stimuli as it affects its physical body. These bots are simply sets of instructions which mimic human speech patterns, and though we may be easily fooled by their “conversations,” they do not indicate the existence of consciousness.

Despite this, the risks are still very real. Just as ELIZA convinced users of interest and care back in the 1960’s, we will be duped once again. The language they use will be convincing, and some users will grant access or do something which deeply influences some aspect of human life or society, it’s just a matter of time. Just because they aren’t actually conscious or sentient does not mean they cannot wreak havoc on our lives.

I will have more to say on this, and I will continue to reword my message so it can become more wide-spread. I need to summarize Chapters 5.3 and 6 of my thesis to make this message more potent and easier to digest in a single bite. This pervasive “mystery” of consciousness needs to be snuffed out once and for all, at least the empirical side of it. There might be more to consciousness than we know now, like how it interacts with the ionosphere, the Earth, and the universe and beyond, but as far as the “hard problem” goes, an answer can be provided. Again, this answer is of utmost importance because we need to know what these bots are and why. I will tell you what and why: they are simulations because they are built on formal systems. If they were analogues, like Haikonen’s robot,⁴ that would be a different story. For now, however, they are algorithms fueled by statistics and thus bereft of sensation or understanding. They will tell you that this doesn’t matter, but it absolutely does. Do not be fooled, dear reader.

Works Cited

1 Peter Steinberger, “Introducing OpenClaw,” OpenClaw Blog, January 29, 2026, https://openclaw.ai/blog/introducing-openclaw.

2 Sailesh Mishra and Sean P. Morgan, “OpenClaw (Formerly Moltbot, Clawdbot) May Signal the Next AI Security Crisis,” Palo Alto Networks Blog, January 29, 2026, https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/network-security/why-moltbot-may-signal-ai-crisis/; Ron Schmelzer, “Moltbot Gets Another New Name, OpenClaw, And Triggers Security Fears And Scams,” Forbes, accessed February 8, 2026, https://www.forbes.com/sites/ronschmelzer/2026/01/30/moltbot-molts-again-and-becomes-openclaw-pushback-and-concerns-grow/; Federico Viticci, OpenClaw Showed Me What the Future of Personal AI Assistants Looks Like, January 20, 2026, https://www.macstories.net/stories/clawdbot-showed-me-what-the-future-of-personal-ai-assistants-looks-like/.

3 Kim Iversen, AI Bots Create Social Network And Plot Global Takeover, 2026, 19:19, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtVLWGm3i8o; Josh Taylor, “What Is Moltbook? The Strange New Social Media Site for AI Bots,” Technology, The Guardian, February 2, 2026, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/feb/02/moltbook-ai-agents-social-media-site-bots-artificial-intelligence.

4 Robot Self-Consciousness. XCR-1 Passes the Mirror Test, directed by Pentti Haikonen, 2020, 2:45, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE9QsQqsAdo.

February 11, 2026

Coherency

The Global Consciousness Project and the Dot that represents global consciousness coherence is another esoteric rabbit hole that I was introduced to a few years ago and meant to research further. I had forgotten about it until earlier today, and was reminded of it while browsing through my collection of mysticism memes. Anyway, the basic idea is that computer systems which generate random numbers can be influenced by human minds, and by analyzing the coherency of random numbers generated around the world, we can get an idea about the coherency of human consciousness. The dot changes colour based on the variance within the network of random number generators, but I’m not sure what it means when it goes red. How does a large network variance indicate “broadly shared coherence of thought and emotion”? There’s lots to read about on the GCP website, so stay tuned and I will be back next week with more information.

It’s hard to believe the first month of the year is already behind us. I hope 2026 is off to a good start for you. I’ve been working on my resolutions and have met a few goals I set for myself, like weekly blog posts, finishing the Christmas cats cross stitch, and mending a few pairs of pants. The week that just passed, however, was not a productive one. I struggled to find something to write about for today’s entry, didn’t do the sewing I had planned on doing, and skipped the exercising. The thing about progress, though, is that it’s not linear and tomorrow is always a new day. Consistency is key.

based on The Crystal Ball by John William Waterhouse

February 1, 2026

Organisms are NOT Algorithms

As mentioned recently, I am working on a response to Yuval Harari’s book Homo Deus. The reason is because it argues for a dystopian future constructed from a series of fallacious premises. These premises have issues due to the arguments he constructs for them, often through the use of strawmen and ignoring evidence to the contrary or other perspectives. Throughout, it seems that he’s furthering some kind of agenda, and for those who are not familiar with the author, it remains unclear what this involves until about the final third of the book. Having been aware of Harari’s affiliation with the World Economic Forum,¹ I began this book suspicious of his motivations for writing it. Within pages, I was inspired to write a response essay because there are far better solutions to the issues he outlines throughout than the ones he proposes.

One of the central premises of Homo Deus is this idea that organisms are algorithms. In chapter 2, on page 96, he introduces the reader to the claim by heading a new section with this very idea. He begins the topic by asking whether we can be sure that animals actually have “a subjective world of needs, sensations, and emotions,”² fearing that we may be anthropomorphizing their behaviours. On the next page, he clarifies that they do because “all mammals evolved emotional abilities and needs.”³ Moreover, emotions are useful because they are “biochemical algorithms that are vital for the survival and reproduction of all mammals.”⁴ He then explains what an algorithm is without catching the blatant category error he commits.

An algorithm is just a series of steps for achieving some outcome. The example he appeals to is the same kind that I myself have been using for years now: a culinary recipe. While his example discusses vegetable soup, mine has always revolved around bread because it’s a far more finicky food to make. Ingredients must be introduced in the correct order in specific proportions, and temperature matters a great deal. Anyway, a recipe, in any form it exists, whether on a cue card or on a blog, always consists of the steps required to achieve the desired outcome. But you know what a recipe also requires? A set of hands to take physical ingredients and work with them to make a physical product. The recipe itself is not the same as the loaf of bread when it comes out of the oven. It’s a description of the steps one must take to make bread in the physical world. I can’t eat a recipe. If there was an attempt to eat a recipe, I would be eating the cue card it’s written on. On the next page, Harari actually mentions this in passing, and it’s amazing he doesn’t catch his mistake. Arguably, he will not because he’s [allegedly] not interested in telling the truth, but in furthering a narrative. Anyway, he states “A recipe by itself cannot make soup. You need a person to read the recipe and follow the prescribed set of steps.”⁵ He does try to save the argument later by stating “humans are algorithms that produce … copies of themselves.”⁶ That “the algorithms controlling humans work through sensations, emotions, and thoughts.”⁷ An organism’s body is a calculator, and that what we think of as emotions and sensations are actually algorithms. These calculations are felt as sensations.

There are no calculations occurring in living beings, at least not in the literal sense. Physiological processes can be described as algorithms or calculations, but they are inherently very different. The sensation of hunger is not inherently a series of steps, it’s the presence of the hormone ghrelin in the bloodstream. The brain detects the presence of this hormone and organizes an individual’s behaviour in response. Though we can articulate the release of hormones and neurotransmitters in algorithmic terms, there is no algorithm until a human creates it through observation and representation. Just as you need a person to read a recipe, you need one to write an algorithm. In a universe without intelligent beings, all that’s occurring is just a system governed by the laws of physics and biochemistry. There’s only cause-effect relationships, and while these causal relationships can be described in algorithmic terms, they themselves are not algorithms.

In Anticipatory Systems, Robert Rosen differentiates between natural systems and formal systems. A natural system is any physical system that exists within the universe, either created by nature or humans. Just as a forest is a natural system, so is a car or a computer. A formal system, on the other hand, is created by an observer measuring and articulating a natural system. These can be expressed by using forms of notation like mathematics, logic, and music. Formal systems aim to represent natural systems, and how well it does so is determined by the accuracy of the predictions it generates. If a prediction is discovered to be true when some experiment is performed on the natural system, then we can surmise that our formal system accurately represents that natural system. If not, then we must determine which aspect of our representation is incorrect so that it can be rectified.

An algorithm belongs to the world of formal systems, not natural systems. It relies upon observation and representation to achieve the desired outcome. If we don’t get the outcome we are interested in, we tweak the algorithm. We fix the bugs in the computer code, we reduce the amount of salt we add, or we make the water warmer. Our experience interacting with the outcome, whether software or bread, is what informs us about whether the algorithm is appropriate or not.

Organisms are not algorithms, they are physical systems undergoing various physiological changes. Though we can articulate physiological processes as algorithms, they nonetheless will always belong to the domain of physical reality, not formal systems. Hunger is an experience, blood pressure is the relationship between the heart and arteries, and wolf populations are fluctuating quantities of individuals with hearts and sensations of hunger. Hormones are chemicals, atoms which bind together based on the laws of physics. There are no steps, procedures, or descriptions without an observer who is able to translate their experiences of interacting with the physical world into representations of it.

To believe that organisms are algorithms places ourselves and other animals on the same plane as computers, which is subversive and dangerous. It reduces what it means to be a living being with subjective experiences, motivations, and a rich biological heritage. We may be imperfect animals with biases and compulsions, but we are not calculators or a series of logic-gates. Unlike computers and other artifacts, we have motivations which have been selected for throughout evolution for the sake of survival and reproduction. A computer does not care about anything, it merely performs the operations it has been programmed to execute. Though we may be able to articulate biological functions in terms of operations and procedures, these representations will remain just that, descriptions of real-world phenomena.

Women Baking Bread by Carl Moon (American, 1878 – 1948)

Works Cited

1 “Yuval Noah Harari,” World Economic Forum, accessed January 18, 2026, https://www.weforum.org/people/yuval-noah-harari/; Yuval Noah Harari, “Read Yuval Harari’s Blistering Warning to Davos in Full,” World Economic Forum, January 24, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/stories/2020/01/yuval-hararis-warning-davos-speech-future-predications/.

2 Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow (Signal Books, 2017), 96.
3 Harari, Homo Deus, 97.
4 Harari, Homo Deus, 97.
5 Harari, Homo Deus, 98.
6 Harari, Homo Deus, 98.
7 Harari, Homo Deus, 99.

January 18, 2026

Generating AI Art

It’s always fun to see how various prompts yield different results in Neural Blender. I wanted to make an image of tiny people swimming in a bowl of ramen as if it were a pool, but this turned out to be more challenging than expected. Simply typing in “ramen swimming pool” doesn’t combine the concepts into one, it merely places them side-by-side in the same image.

Although we get some cool vaporwave vibes, especially in the pixel art form, it’s not the outcome I’m looking for. To get around this, maybe adding ‘people’ in the prompt will help. Absolutely not. We get hilarious nightmare fuel instead.

What I was aiming to produce was more along these lines:

Efforts to combine these last two, using the prompt “tiny people swimming in [noodle/ramen] soup pixel art,” results in funny but sub-optimal outcomes. It’s more of a pixelized photo, not the cartoony pixel art I’m looking for, but it does get better as I continue to run the prompt.

Changing up the prompt to “an illustration of swimming in ramen soup” produces some interesting new results.

What about adding ‘pool’ to the prompt? Generating “an illustration of swimming in a pool of ramen soup” brings us back to square one; we get lunch for an athlete. What about “an illustration of swimming in ramen soup pool?” It’s a little closer but they are still treated as separate concepts.

Okay one last chance. I could do this all day but it’s time to bring this experiment to a close. Let’s see what “an illustration of people swimming in ramen soup bowl” brings us.

This isn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it’s as close as I’m going to get.

For even more interesting results, check out my AI Art page.

September 1, 2025

Graduation!

It’s hard to believe the Summer Solstice is this Saturday. Time just seems to fly by lately; both months and days disappear as quickly as they come.

Anyway, a long chapter of my life has finally come to a close. Last Thursday, I graduated with a doctoral degree at the University of Guelph. It’s official, and I am so relieved. It’s done and I am free. For the past ten years, I have been working toward this moment, and now I begin a new chapter of my life. In addition to relief, I feel worried about the future, as many grads probably do. What now? How do I use this degree to better my life? Why did I even do this?

I apologize for such a quiet start to the year, as I haven’t written very much at all. I can tell you specific reasons for why this is though; not as an excuse but an explanation. The line is thin, I know that. Still, my job has taken the majority of my energy lately, with the rest of it going into my relationships. January was inventory, and February was the beginning of our store’s renovations. Throughout, I have been working on my thesis and making the necessary changes. By the end of March, we had a draft ready for final comments and changes before entering the defence phase of the degree. I had a bit of a break from school as various people read my thesis and so I focused my attention on work and improving the store. That said, once a date for the defence was set, I began preparing for it on my off time. On April 25^th, I had verbal confirmation that I had passed and was set to graduate, but the finish line still needed crossing. The decision was “Satisfactory with Major Changes” and my Supervisor was going on vacation in a week and a half. So for the next five days, I made those changes and ensured my thesis was ready for publication. You can read it here.

Graduation was June 12^th and the convocation ceremony was very nice. I spent the day with my parents and partner, and we had a grand old time. My Grandfather was a Dr. Graham, and now I can proudly say I join him in this group of people. Cheers y’all.

So what now? I have no idea. The store still needs a lot of work, and that’s all I can think about these days. I have Spinoza’s Ethics on the go at the moment, but there are days when I just want to stare into the void instead. I really want to start Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason as well, but that’s not a book I will read on the bus to work. Instead, I need to focus my energy on writing so my blog doesn’t completely atrophy. That post on a quantum theory of consciousness still bothers me, and it is coming, but once I get home from a day of work, all I want to do is play Free Cell on my phone and listen to YouTube videos. The original inspiration for that post feels so far away, but I will return to it.

All I can do now is write. Things that I have wanted to write about for the past five or six years. Consciousness and esoteric stuff. Ideas that empiricists dismiss without consideration. Why? Because I can, and because I know life is more complicated than They want you to contemplate. I want to write on the problem of free will, because now that the problem of consciousness has been “solved,” I need something else to think about as I wait for the bus.

There is also much to say about AI, especially as LLMs and robots continue to improve. In its current, computerized form, AI cannot become conscious because it does not experience anything. There is no reason to worry about machine consciousness at the moment, and instead, we should be worrying about the people who own them. Consciousness arises from direct experience, and when it comes to machines, Pentti’s robot is the only one that truly experiences the world. The reason why is because its cognitive architecture has been designed as an integrated whole, built for the sake of the agent, not for specific outcomes or behaviours.

Thank you to everyone who helped me get to this moment. Your ideas, wisdom, support, and companionship will always be greatly appreciated. Stay tuned for more on consciousness and AI, because not only am I an “expert” but I have a lot to say. 😉

June 17, 2025