Elan Moritz

What is Understanding? This is the first of a series of Chats with OpenAI’s ChatGPT (Chat). The main goal is to obtain Chat’s response to a series of questions about the concept of ’understand- ing’. The approach is a conversational approach where the author (labeled as user) asks (prompts) Chat, obtains a response, and then uses the response to formulate followup questions. David Deutsch’s assertion of the primality of the process / capability of understanding is used as the starting point. Understanding is posited as a major step in the Big Picture description of emergence in the Universe. Understanding follows the emergence of Brains and Minds, culminating in Power Over the Universe. My evaluation suggests that Chat does indeed offer utility, but also has limitations manifested by overly general responses that do not focus tightly on the questions asked. Chat does yield some gems that could be easily missed. The approach used here includes creating Metaprompts, wherein Chat is asked to create more efficient prompts based on initial promptsThis approach appears to hold significant promise, and will likely be of benefit to those exploring various facets of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Large Language Models (LLMs) and designers of Advanced General Intelligence (AGI). Other findings include the need for creating new metrics and ways of discussing intelligence, and various adjacent areas and subprocesses associated with intelligence. Discussions of future directions is also included.

Memetic Science is the name of a new field that deals with the quantitativeanalysis of cultural transfer.The units of cultural transfer are entities called "memes". In a nutshell, memes are to cultural and mental constructs as genesare to biological organisms. Examplesof memesare ideas,tunes, fashions, and virtuallyany culturaland behavioral unit that gets copiedwitha certaindegree of fidelity. It is arguedthat the under standing of memes is of similar importance and consequence as the understanding of processes involving DNA and RNA in molecular biology.Thispaperpresentsa rigorousfoundation fordiscussion ofmemes and approaches to quantifying relevantaspects of memegenesis, inter action, mutation, growth,deathand spreadingprocesses. It is also argued inthispaper that recombinant memetics is possible incomplete analogy to recombinant DNA/ genetic engineering. Special attention is paid to memes in written modern English.

Recently the Principia Cybernetica Project undertook a computer‐based collaborative effort to develop a unified system of philosophy. The philosophy and its implementation are explicitly based on evolutionary principles of variation and natural selection (VNS) and a fundamental type of emergence called MetaSystem Transition (MST) which increases the overall freedom and adaptivity of systems. MST, conceived and articulated by Turchin (1977), occurs when a control subsystem is replicated and integrated into a whole through a higher level VNS generated control subsystem. Turchin also articulated the concept of “the will to immortality” which led to Heylighen's (1991) formulation of cybernetic immortality (CI) contingent on immortal meme systems, metarational consciousness, and limitless knowledge. A possible direction of future evolution is the emergence of further levels of organization realized in "superbeing/metabeings.” The precise configuration of these “beings” is still open; an aspect or totality of which may be viewed as "cybernetic immortality.” In this paper, I review aspects of memes and MST as the basis for cybernetic immortality, discuss the potential for further MetaSystem Transitions in humans and human culture (trans‐sapiens and trans‐culture) , generalized CI constructs and interactions between cybernetically immortal constructs. Finally, some reflections are offered concerning the role of CI constructs in future evolution and the evolution of the future.