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Intro and summary written by :
Well, there’s no need to decentralize the cosmic operating system because it is already decentralized, but the title that I’ve given to this conversation is nice and puts together the two topics that we are discussing.
What is the cosmic operating system? It came out in a discussion that
and I had last year. The cosmic operating system is the main character of my new book titled “Irrational mechanics: Narrative sketch of a futurist science & a new religion”, which is still a draft.I should summarize the book but I can’t do so because the book is already a summary. I’ll just highlight a few main points.
The cosmic operating system is another name for the fundamental laws of nature and also another name for what has been called Mind at Large, or God by any other name. If the fundamental laws of nature are simple, then the cosmic operating system is a simple little program. But if the fundamental laws of nature are very complex, and I think this is the case, then the cosmic operating system is a very complex program that thinks and acts with intelligence.
A good metaphor is that the cosmic operating system is like a superintelligent Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is solving a hugely complex optimization problem or playing a hugely complex game that requires sophisticated thinking. There are many solutions, and these solutions are multiple histories of the universe that exist in parallel.
We are part of the cosmic operating system. That is, you and I and everyone else, and animals and aliens and AIs and all that, are semi-autonomous agents of the cosmic operating system that communicate and act with free will within constraints. The cosmic operating system mostly acts through us in a decentralized way.
Irrational mechanics is a name for a new science that extends the science of today just like irrational numbers extend rational numbers into the much bigger set of real numbers. I’ll confess that I call this new science irrational mechanics also to annoy the ultra-rationalist bureaucrats of science and the politically correct crowd.
Irrational mechanics is big enough to deal with things like faster than light travel to the stars, time travel, the paranormal, cosmic evolution, and various concepts of life after death.
My book is not a treatise on science or philosophy, but a narrative sketch like those that explain the background world of a science fiction work.
In the last chapter, titled “Religion for Spaceship Earth,” I say that the cosmic operating system wants us (and our AI mind children) to expand first to the planets and moons of our solar system and then to the stars. This is our cosmic destiny and duty.
Stella brought up parallels with the simulation hypothesis in addition to The Kybalion, a Hermetic text published in 1912, by anonymous authors called the Three Initiates. We discussed these parallels (and differences) and other parts of Giulio’s book.
Then Stella told the story of our old Space Coop / Space Decentral project to build a decentralized space agency. We feel that this project can and should be revived, but should be based on decentralized, peer-to-peer, collaboration infrastructure — with lower emphasis on developing smart contracts.
Giulio mentioned the Secure Scuttlebutt project as a promising start that hasn’t yet achieved technical maturity. Unfortunately, one of the main developers has left the project.
Stella mentioned two interesting peer-to-peer projects in development: Keet and Radicle.
Decentralizing the cosmic operating system