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Newsletter Nr. 600
Amsterdam, Febrary 7th, 2015


‘EQUILIBRIUM IS DEATH’ - Energy, Entropy, Evolution and the Paradox of Life's Complexity - FRANK VISSER

I have dealt with Ken Wilber's reflections on evolution and entropy in several essays on Integral World. Briefly, Wilber has expressed doubts on several occasions about science's capability to explain the phenomena of biological complexity. Instead, he has suggested some cosmic Force (of Eros) is pushing life from its simple beginnings to the most complex biological phenomenon on earth: the human brain. Apparently, he sees no other way this could have happened.

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/visser90.html

GURUS AND IVORY TOWERS - Adi Da Full Spectrum - ELLIOT BENJAMIN

When I read Brad Reynolds' recent Integral World essay [1] about the influence of Adi Da on the early books of Ken Wilber, I must say that I was quite shocked to see absolutely no allusion to any of the narcissistic, abusive, and dysfunctional behaviors of Adi Da (alias Franklin Jones, Da Free John, etc.) toward his followers that a number of authors have written about, including Integral World authors David Lane, Andrew Smith, and Geoffrey Falk [2]

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/benjamin80.html


THE ARTIFICIAL BRAIN OF THE FUTURE - Looking at Ray Kurzweil's ‘How to Create a Mind’ - ANDREA DIEM-LANE

Ray Kurzweil in How to Create a Mind offers the reader a glimpse of the future, and not too distance one at that. By 2029 Kurzweil predicts that we will have computers with consciousness, or at least “convincingly” so. And arguably by the 2030s non-biological minds, with an emotional, moral and intellectual makeup, may be commonplace. Certainly, we will have to take the “leap of faith” that conscious computers have qualia, in the same we take the leap of faith that another human does (at this stage there is no way for me to truly know the mind of another). 

Read more:
http://www.integralworld.net/diem-lane15.html