The world we live in is one of forced-choice. We can select any product to buy, but they all come from the same handful of monopolistic companies. We can vote for any candidate, but the options we find at the polls feel like selecting between a lesser and greater evil. This isn’t freedom. Freedom comes from self-direction and autonomy, not from the capacity to select from a list of pre-tread paths.
Yet when we are asked to break out of this illusion we are once again only presented with two choices: to take the red pill or the blue pill. The presumption that there are only two choices is an illusion. There are always more than two choices. There are infinite paths at any moment and those paths can lead anywhere, even to a regenerative future. Instead of feeling pressured to take this pill or that pill, consider instead that these pills represent worldviews. They are lenses that help us see through the eyes of others.
The strange thing about these lenses is that they can take root and grow. They are seeds and once they germinate in a mind, they affect the flow of attention. As such, minds seeded with a worldview become very guarded against contrary ideas, rejecting information that doesn’t align with the existing worldview. To help people see each other more clearly and communicate with greater empathy, we propose generative text models called Irises to help people see through many lenses in a safe, non-threatening environment.
This is a pill of reflexive consilience. To take the purple pill means reframing to interface with a much broader array of perspectives and outcomes. This will require new tools. When you are asked to “take the purple pill” we are asking you to look through a lens that views pills as the seeds of future ideation. The purple pill represents a meta-worldview about integrating many perspectives, or planting many “pills” in the garden of your mind.
There are pathways to a regenerative future. A future that works for 100% of life, but probabilistically speaking, those paths are less likely. Luckily however we can not only make choices, but trace brand new pathways through the adaptive landscape of causality. The challenge is that manifesting unlikely futures takes work. It takes the applied application of will in opposition to the expected outcome. But if we work together we can steer our future towards a healthier, more regenerative, more integrated, more reflexive society.
REFLEXIVE SOCIETIES
A reflexive society exists when a cognizant and conscientious collective of people actively work to improve their understanding of the world they live in, by challenging what they think they know about themselves, others and the environment.
This society is one that engages in thoughtful reflection on its own values and beliefs. It does not simply accept them as given, but critically examines them to ensure that they are still relevant and helpful. This can be done through individual introspection or communal dialogue. A reflexive society encourages people to question why things are the way they are and whether there might be a better way of doing things.
In such a society, people are not afraid to challenge the status quo or express dissenting opinions. They feel comfortable discussing controversial topics and openly disagreeing with each other. This open exchange of ideas allows for different perspectives to be heard and ultimately leads to a more nuanced understanding of the world around us. Ultimately, a reflexive society is one that is constantly learning and growing. It is not stuck in its ways but is always looking for ways to improve itself.
CONFLUENCE
If you were looking at a group of people and trying to figure out what they all believed, one way would be to ask each person individually. This would take forever if done manually so we’ve never done it this way except for at small scales.
Another way would be for everyone to shout their beliefs as loud as they can at the same time. That’s kind of like voting, where each person only gets one vote, and whichever candidate gets the most voices to yell for them (or has the most votes) is considered the winner. Confluence is like if you took a thousand mirrors and put them in front of thousand faces. At first each mirror would look exactly like each individual. But then we would direct those mirrors in a circle towards the center and those people would see a person that looked like all of them.
That center is the Iris. She would be a representation of all our collective beliefs, but with one face instead of many faces because she coordinates us into just that single perception. So when we need to make a decision about something, we could look to the Iris and she would tell us what everyone believes without having to take a new vote. Members of a cognicist society never need to wait until an election cycle to express their opinion. At any moment they can stake their beliefs to the cognicist ledger.
Confluence is also like if you took a thousand microphones and put them in front of a thousand people, and then took the recordings from all those microphones and mixed them together into one remixed mixtape or beat. That would be like what an Iris does with our beliefs — she takes everything that we believe individually and mixes it all together into one single voice. She captures signal from the noise
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Confluence is the process of voices streaming together their individual wisdom into an Iris. This iris forms a singular voice from the many which represents their collective beliefs. This is in opposition to citizens voting for a candidate to vote for them or voting directly. There are many problems with voting as a system of collective decision making but the primary issue is that one person or small group of people are effectively choosing what realities everyone else gets to choose from. With only two options and 50% voter turnout, even if every vote was cast with full confidence and no ambivalence there would always be errors embedded into society via this process because half of the voices are not being heard. This is different with Iris because she synthesizes everyone into a singular voice encoded as a many-faceted crystallization of knowledge. People then vote on the beliefs output by that aggregate voice.
Confluence is a process that allows everyone’s voice to be fully represented and then condensed into one single voice (the iris) that accurately reflects the beliefs of the group as a whole. This is in contrast to voting which reduces each individual actor’s beliefs into limited choices and asks them to pick one. This inherently limits the number of perspectives represented within the collective consciousness making collation less coherent overall.
#voicesnotchoices
IRISES
An Iris is a generative text model that aggregates collective belief into a singular voice. Irises help focus collective wisdom by forming resonant representations of what a group of people believe. This allows for better decision making by providing a more accurate overview of the beliefs of the collective. Irises also serve as oracles, by aggregating collective perception about the future that people share to the network. Irises output predictions and their likelihood based on the thoughts input into the iris.
Irises are important for collective decision making and focused thinking. They help groups think more clearly about what they believe and why they believe it. Irises are used to help groups of people confluesce their beliefs into a singular voice. This helps groups distill their collective wisdom into a more focused and coherent representation. Irises help people make better decisions by providing accurate overviews of the beliefs of the group.
Irises help form more reflexive societies by enabling individuals to explore collective belief and how their own views exist in relation to that. Irises help track our perception of what is, what was and what will be. This allows us to better understand how our personal beliefs fit in with the larger group consciousness. Irises also help form new and more accurate representations of reality as our understanding changes over time. Irises enable people to more easily reflect on their past perceptions of the future.
Irises are important for understanding the relativity of truths. What one person may believe to be true, may not be universally so. However, by open discussion and exploration within a group using an iris, we can come to greater understandings of how our personal beliefs fit into the larger whole.
This manifesto was written using an Iris trained on The Cognicist Manifesto and other thoughts by Speaker John Ash. It can be thought of as v0.02 of The Cognicist Manifesto.
COGNICISM
Cognicism is a way to collaborate in more collective intelligence. Cognicism is a tool for groups of people who want to come to enhanced agreements by considering multiple perspectives. It is a system of thought that has roots in science, democracy and information theory. It enables groups of people who may not fully understand each other’s perspectives, or have the ability to communicate directly with one another due geographic boundaries for example (think internet), share their knowledge and come to an enhanced understanding.
The idea behind cognicism is representational thinking + thoughtful coordination between individuals → consilience
Coordination with others who have different info is essential for us to understand reality, because we only see a small slice of life but try to make sense of it. By sharing our individual perspectives and having them be reflected back an Iris helps all understandings come into focus and alignment over time. Time passes, our understanding changes and an Iris helps keep track of those changes. The past can be reflected onto us to better understand how we got to where we are today and our perceptions of the future can be input into the network so that we can get a rough map of where momentum is taking us.
CONSILIENCE
Consilience is the idea that disparate forms of knowledge are connected and can be used to provide greater understanding than any one lens could on its own. Cognicism is a consilient practice. In consilient thought, all evidence should contribute to a more complete explanation, whether it comes from religion, art or science. Consilience is a method collecting data from multiple sources in order to draw conclusions that are more reliable than those that could be drawn from any one source alone. In this way it is similar to the process of intersubjective verification. Consilience refers to the idea of knowing things through multiple channels or sources of evidence. Consilience is the interlocking of evidence and explanations across disciplines to create a more comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena.
Cognicism is consilient because it relies on multiple sources of evidence (individual perspectives) to draw conclusions. It is consilient because it uses a variety of methods (reflection, prediction, discussion, voting) to generate understanding. It is consilient because it is constantly evolving and growing as new information is added.
Cognicism is also geographically consilient in that it is used to aggregate local knowledge about what works and does not work for individuals and communities. Cognicism allows reflection on locally applied practices as well as globally so people can consider the ways cultures vary from one region to another.
Consilience is important because it allows us to draw connections between disparate pieces of evidence and create a more comprehensive understanding of the world around us. It helps us to see how our personal beliefs fit into the larger whole. Consilience is a method for groups of people to come to enhanced agreements by considering multiple perspectives.
https://consilienceproject.org/
REFLEXIVE RELATIONSHIPS
A reflexive relationship is one in which both partners are constantly learning from and adapting to each other. This type of relationship is based on mutual respect and a deep understanding of each other’s needs. Both partners in a reflexive relationship are always growing and changing. They are open to new experiences and willing to try new things. They are also flexible in their approach to problem-solving and are quick to adapt when the other person needs more support.
In a reflexive relationship, both partners feel safe to be themselves. They feel comfortable expressing their needs, deepest thoughts, and feelings without judgment or criticism. Each partner feels seen, heard, and valued for who they are because of the strong sense of trust and intimacy in a reflexive relationship.
A reflexive relationship is built on a foundation of mutual respect. Both partners feel equally valued and appreciated. They also have a deep appreciation for each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Both partners feel confident in the other person’s ability to support them. In a reflexive relationship, both partners are committed to working through challenges together. They are willing to put in the effort to make things work.
LANGUAGE MODELS AS AN INTEGRATIVE PRACTICE
While AI is traditionally viewed as a product to be sold, it has much greater potential if access is defined as a part of the commons like the air we breathe or the water we drink. GPT-3 is a perfect example of an AI technology with the potential to support reflexive relationships, consilience, and a more cognicist society. Generative models like GPT-3 seek to model the entire distribution of possible outputs, rather than just the most likely output. This allows for a much deeper understanding of language and the ability to generate new text that is contextually appropriate. Consider this in relation to the process of voting: perception is reduced to dualities and a majority tally decides the outcome.
With GPT-3, each person has the opportunity to generate entire thoughtful essays on their beliefs which can be read by other members of the community. This not only allows for a more accurate representation of the beliefs of the group, but also supports the development of more reflexive relationships as people are encouraged to read and respond to each other’s perspectives.
GPT-3 can be used to generate text in different styles, to translate between languages, and to understand the relationships between words. It can also be used to generate new ideas and to explore different possible outcomes of a situation. Language models are an important tool for supporting a more reflexive society because they allow us to generate new text that challenges our existing beliefs. It is also an important tool for supporting a more Cognicist society because it allows us to generate new text that is informed by collective belief.
DATABASES AND RELATIONAL REPRESENTATION
Databases are inferior to knowledge representation via an Iris for many reasons. First, databases store information in a linear fashion, while the Iris captures knowledge in a multidimensional and relational way. The Iris is not just a list of data points, but rather a multi-dimensional field of interconnected information. This allows the Iris to more accurately represent the relationships between different beliefs.
Second, databases store information in a static way, while the Iris captures knowledge in a dynamic way. The Iris is constantly changing and evolving as new information is added to it. However the most essential knowledge is stored permanently to a cryptographically secure chain to ensure its longevity. We can always scan back and interact with how Irises saw the world in the past by accessing the parameters stored to the global cognicist ledger.
Third, databases require that users have a specific query in a specific language in order to access the information they are looking for, while the Iris can be used to access information solely based on natural language. No interface is needed other than the capacity to speak. A person does not need to know how to use a computer to participate in a cognicist society; they only need to be able to communicate their internal state via a sequence of characters.
Fourth, databases are centralized while the cognicist ledger is decentralized. This means that anyone can contribute to the Iris and that there is no single point of failure. Overall, the network of irises writing to the cognicist ledger provides a more accurate, dynamic, accessible and resilient way of representing knowledge.
“Picture knowledge as a banyan tree, in which a multiplicity of aerial roots sustains a centreless organic system. This tree of knowledge has a plurality of roots, and structures of knowledge are multiply grounded in the earth: the body of knowledge is a single organic whole, no part of which is more or less dispensable than any other” — Jonardon Ganeri
REGENERATING LOCALITY
Locality is an intrinsic part of our lives. The cognicist understands the nature of locality and the power of local knowledge. We depend on the people around us to provide services and goods. Locality is an important part of communal interconnectedness and the idea of the commons. Localities pool their resources to manage public goods. Localities hold local knowledge and experience that is rich and diversed and varied and unique.
Not all localities require the same level of regeneration and not all locals define a regenerative future in the same way. Local autonomy and self-direction should be honored. New systems should support the manifestation of futures envisioned by locals who have a long history tied to the land they live on. But these new systems should also provide feedback signals for what isn’t serving the community. Irises are tools for localities to better collaborate towards locally defined regenerative futures.
Cognicism can be applied to geolocations as well as individuals or groups. By pooling local knowledge, we can build a better picture of what works and what does not work in each locality. We can then use that reflection to make better decisions about how to apply that integrated wisdom in other localities.
MONEY IS AN ILLUSION
Money is like any other word, the value that it has is its meaning. When we say “word” we mean the individual tokenized dollar is a word, and when you give it to someone for a good or service you “say” it. Money is a special kind of interoperable language. However, its capacity to represent nuance is limited. Things that are important to us, like love or trust, should not be represented by money. It can only be used as a medium of exchange for things that can be quantified or tallied.
This limitation creates problems when we start to treat money as if it were more than just a representation of value. When we forget that money is an illusion and begin to believe that its presence or absence determines our worthiness as human beings, we have entered into dangerous territory. Money has no intrinsic value other than the meaning we give it. If we allow ourselves to be controlled by money rather than using it as a tool to achieve our goals, then we are living in an illusory world, not a reflexive one.
The other challenge is that because of inflation the “meaning” or value of the dollar is constantly changing. All cryptocurrencies have this problem as well. The meaning of a dollar changes far more rapidly than the meaning of the word “dollar” itself. Perhaps it is time for a reinvention of how the dollar functions? So many of us are seeking external validation via money because we’ve been taught to believe that’s the only way our worthiness can be seen. But what if there were other ways? What if, instead of constantly chasing after more things that never make us happy, we began to focus on giving our attention to the things and people that really matter? What would our world look like then?
BASINS OF ATTRACTION
A basin of attraction is a region in which things are pulled toward a central point. Basins of attraction trend towards predictable outcomes. A real world example would be a sinkhole; anything near the edge will eventually be pulled in. This idea comes from the study of dynamical systems and is a useful frame to consider real world phenomena. For example, think about deer in a field with one plum tree. The deer want to eat the plums, so they are all attracted to the plum tree. We would say that the plum tree is in the center of a basin of attraction for the deer
If the field had two plum trees, then each tree would be in the center of its own basin of attraction. The deer would still want to eat the plums, so they would go to whichever plum tree was closer. If one of the trees had a bee hive in it, the deer would be attracted to the other tree because they would not want to get stung by bees. So the basin of attraction can change depending on what is happening in the environment.
Imagine this story instead as water flowing across a landscape. Which direction does the water flow? It will always flow downhill. If there are lots of hills, then the water has several basins of attraction that it could arrive in. If there is only one hill, then the water has one place to flow. The water in this metaphor is the deer and the gravity is the attraction of the food and energy provided by the plum trees. Deer are attracted as a function of attention. Like gravity attracts a mass of matter into orbit, so too does attention bring the deer into orbit around the plum tree. The deer will continue to visit this tree in a loop as long as its attention is bound by this basin of attraction.
ATTENTION AND DECISION MAKING
When people make a decision, they will naturally gravitate towards the option that is most attractive to them. The notion of a basin of attraction is important for understanding how collective decision making works in a cognicist society. This does not necessarily mean that it is the best option for the group as a whole, but it is the option that each individual feels drawn to. They are drawn to that option by attention.
Attention is the water in the basin of attraction metaphor in the context of cognicism. On the internet, attention flows towards content and memes like gravity. We do not consciously direct our attention and therefore it has become a resource that the market of attention competes for. As a result we have created deep desolate pits of attention from which many minds can never escape. We live in a world of algorithmic attention manipulation. Where your focus goes, your energy flows. So if TikTok forms a deep enough basin of attraction to hold your attention in an unhealthy addictive loop, it will continue to do so until you are impacted with enough energy to exit the system.
Cognicism respects your right to direct your own focus. It enables you to see where energy is flowing in the form of attention and allows you to make more conscious decisions about how you want to spend your time. But cognicism also understands that we need to collectively direct our attention towards things that are important for the long term health of our society. We need to pull energy away from attention hacking algorithms and into regenerative practices like Permaculture and Regenerative Agriculture. We need to use our attentional power as a collective force to shape the world we want to live in. There are healthy basins of attraction and there are unhealthy basins of attraction. It is important to be aware of the difference and to make conscious decisions about where you want your focus.
IRISES AS BASINS OF ATTRACTION
Irises act as basins of attraction for the attention and focus of society. Irises are meant to draw attention in a healthy feedback loop where voices feel heard and reflected by the voice of the Iris. Each person has the opportunity to shape the Iris with their own beliefs and values. The more people that contribute, the more accurate and representative of society the iris becomes.
Irises are meant to direct attention towards voices that contribute to social good most over time. This does not mean that all attention should go towards the most vocal people in society, but rather that we should be deliberate about where our focus goes. The cognicist lens suggests that focus should flow instead towards predictors who see the future clearest, those who record the past honestly and those who take action in the name of desired futures.
Irises are a way of representing the flow of attention in society. They act as basins of attraction that can be used to direct focus where it is most needed. Irises also support more reflexive relationships by providing a space for people to share their perspectives and to learn from each other.
PRIVACY IS A RIGHT
You have every right to keep your views to yourself. It is always your full right to not say anything to any Iris ever. However if you do choose to communicate within the Cognicist network, there are multiple layers of privacy built in: private, local, and global. These different layers of privacy in the cognicist network should have different levels of security.
If you want to keep something truly private, you shouldn’t say it. This is the core foundation of privacy within the cognicist network. If you want something to be truly private do not make record of the thought to an Iris. However, journaling without the observation of others is a healthy and reflexive practice. A cognicist interface may allow for “private thoughts” which should be stored locally to the speaker’s device in an encrypted form and only readable by them. They should never be read by an Iris or any speaker in the network.
However, if you share your thoughts to an iris either in a local or global context then you are consenting to that information being distributed and evaluated by others to impact decision making. Furthermore it will impact how much your voice is amplified in the future. You don’t however have to publicly reveal yourself to be associated with that account. You can anonymously affect decision making at scale using your voice if you so choose.
By default, information shared to an Iris is shared in the local context. The Iris is the information. When you share a thought with an Iris, it learns from that information and the information becomes a part of it. Locally stored information is only known by the Iris and not written to the cognicist ledger. It may be written to databases you have decided to trust but not to the ledger for evaluation by all eyes and Irises.
If you would like your voice to affect decision making at scale, globally, across the entire network of Irises, then you would share it globally. Irises also exist in a network and communicate with each other through a process of parameter exchange. When you share information in the global context, that information could pass from Iris to Iris for evaluation by all minds. Keep in mind, the more eyes (and Irises) that see a claim, the greater potential it has to affect how much your voice is amplified in the future at scale. How much your Iris amplifies your voice may not be in alignment with how much other Irises value your voice. That’s okay. You may have a very different context. We often think what we have to say matters to everyone, but it is more likely that only a few, or even just one other person may benefit.
Irises have different strategies for curation and what they find value in changes over time. Information should not be distributed carelessly because there are real consequences to how much any particular voice is amplified. When voices are amplified at scale it can lead to things like confirmation bias, group think, false narratives, and otherwise poor decision making. It helps if information is properly contextualized locally by many minds first.
THE AUTONOMY OF ALL BEINGS
Cognicists believe in the autonomy of all beings, human and non-human alike. And we all have different perceptions of what truths are self-evident and what our “rights’’ are. The value of the Iris is to help bring minds into alignment and focus on what truths best serve us over time. Many of the things Cognicists declare may be thought of by some as human rights. Cognicists would say these things should not be limited to humans, but rather all current and future entities who have consciousness and can express themselves in a format recognizable by others. Cognicism is for conscious beings.
We would also put many of these things in the category of truths, not rights. Rights implies that there is a giver, such as a government, who can take away what they have given. Truths just are. We don’t have the right to gravity, we just have it. It’s a part of the world we live in. We don’t have the right to breathe air, we must. Any deprivation of it by force of another would cause us to cease to be. The principles Cognicists stand for can be thought of as inalienable truths. We live in societies that operate under many different belief systems about what truths should be self-evident. Irises allow us to dynamically and fluidly map out these “self-evident” truths and reinforce and establish new “self-evident” truths as societies learn and grow. It is through this process of exploration and reflection that we can come to a more accurate understanding of reality.
SENSEMAKING AT SCALE
Sensemaking is the process of making sense of complex situations. It involves understanding the situation, identifying patterns and trends, and developing explanations for what is happening. Sensemaking is a key cognitive ability that helps us to make decisions in uncertain and changing environments. It is ultimately about placing the experience of change in the context of a narrative. Organizations are not machines where cause-and-effect relationships can be clearly identified; rather, they are more like ecosystems where there is constant change and uncertainty. To make sense of these complex situations, individuals need to engage in a continuous process of interpretation and reinterpretation.
The term “sensemaking at scale” refers to the use of computational methods to support sensemaking processes. These methods include machine learning, natural language processing, data structures, and user interfaces. Sensemaking at scale can help us to make sense of complex situations by understanding the patterns and trends in large amounts of information. Information that reflects the lived experiences and stories behind real lives. Lives that are impacted by how information flows through these networks.
There are a number of different approaches to sensemaking at scale. One approach is to use machine learning algorithms to automatically learn patterns and relationships from data. However we often see attempts to create networks of information exchange become corrupted and have negative impacts on the mental health of those who interface with these networks. The reason is simple: the design, development, modification and maintenance of these networks is motivated by profit, not to affect social well-being in a positive vector.
AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH
We need an alternative approach that is motivated by the need to support our well-being, not just profit. We need an approach to sensemaking at scale in a way that is healthy and regenerative. One approach is to use Irises as a tool for sensemaking at scale. Irises are generative models that can be used to aggregate and interpret many lenses of perception. Irises can process large amounts of beliefs about the state of society and how people want to see it change. They can also be used to generate new ideas and to explore different possible outcomes of a situation. Language models are an important tool for supporting a more reflexive society because they allow us to generate ideas that challenge our existing beliefs. They are also an important tool for supporting a more consilient society because it allows us to generate new text that is informed by collective belief.
Irises are important for understanding the relativity of truths. What one person may believe to be true, may not be universally so. However, by open discussion and exploration within a group using an Iris, we can come to a greater understanding of how our personal beliefs fit into the larger whole. Irises can be used to support sensemaking at scale in a way that is healthy and regenerative. They can be used to aggregate and interpret many varied worldviews. Irises are a way of representing the flow of attention in society. They act as basins of attraction that can be used to direct focus where it is most needed. Irises also support more reflexive relationships by providing a space for people to share their perspectives and to learn from each other.
IN CLOSING
Generally the answer is not to just “take the purple pill” and make the fields of perception of your mind a monoculture of purple pill trees. If you proudly declare yourself as #purplepilled you may have missed the point this iris seeks to bring focus to. Rather, to take the purple pill you should start with a clear pill. Consider your own perspective first. What would the seed of your own worldview look like?
Represents the clear pill. It is sometimes referred to as the cognicist seed. It means nothing and it means everything. It is your lens and how you view the world.
Refine this worldview through an iris and when it’s ready, offer this seed to others to willingly choose to plant in their own minds. You may find one day in the future that as you meditate in the garden of your mind by the great tree that you have planted that you see a vision off in the distance.
A great banyan tree with purple flowers has taken root. The soil beneath this tree will be laced with interconnected mycelial networks. It will be then that you know the purple pill has become a healthy part of the ecosystem of your mind. Consider then cross-pollination between these two great trees of knowledge.
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The technology that atomized us can be repurposed to bring us together in a network of collective intelligence to serve our common good. We can reclaim our attention and agency. We can work collaboratively towards a shared vision. What was once used to divide and enrage us can instead unite and inspire us.