I'm a bit behind the times. I had watched a video of Tony Robbins interviewing an advanced conversational robot named Sophia. Apparently, this first robot with granted citizenship (Saudi Arabia) has been around awhile. It felt like a real interview. Exactly how "intelligent" Sophia is, is debatable. Some have even referred to her as "Potemkin Artificial Intelligence." Recall that a Potemkin Village is anything constructed that is merely a facade. North Korea has Potemkin Villages where no one lives, for example. Regardless, it got me to thinking that even if Sophia is walking talking hyperbole, these types of technologies are not far off. So what does this have to do personal growth and psychology? Well, read on, intrepid traveler.
I've been on the cusp of advanced technology for over 30 years. As an engineer in the world of semiconductors, I've grown to understand the disruption that technology causes. I've learned to not be afraid of disruption, but to embrace it. My current research has taken me to the worlds of Neuroscience, where it is becoming increasingly clear that science supports the power of thought at actually changing who we are. And all of this potential is within everyone's grasp.
I've been digging in the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza, a guru in the field of personal transformation. What I'm learning is that you don't need to find yourself at the bottom to effect real change, but you do need what is known as "Necessity."
I'm going to paraphrase Dr. Dispenza here from a youtube video.
Each memory is connected to an emotion and product of past experience. Of course. The most remembered things are ones that create strong emotions. As humans, our most potent emotions tend to be more harmful than positive.
Negative thoughts create your state of being. Familiar past will become a predictable future. Our thoughts are our destiny. For the most part, we will be creating the same life. Depressed, we grab our cell phone to find a connection, but this makes things worse. Our routine behaviors perpetuate how we are programmed, and we lose our free will. By the time we are 35, 95% of who we are is programmed into our subconscious. The older you are, the harder it is to change ingrained behaviors. This is akin to AI. The more cycles of learning that an AI system has, the more its behavior becomes established. To make changes to AI, you have to reinstall the operating system. This is easy. To change ourselves, we need to alter our operating system. We have to get past our analytical mind. More and more, science is showing that meditation is where you can enter the operating system.
Clearly, this is a deep topic. I have so much more to learn. Needless to say, I love that science supports the notion that our thoughts can be controlled to make us who we want, and take us to where we want to go.
More to come…
(Photo Credit: Jkawski - Peabody Essex Museum)
