“The Limits of the Digital Miracle: Fragmentations and Emergences.”

It’s my great pleasure and honour to announce a new book by my friend Ronald Cicurel.

In The Limits of the Digital Miracle, Ronald Cicurel challenges the overhyped promises of the digital age, arguing that digital systems, including AI, cannot replicate the analogue complexity of the human mind. By exposing the limitations of understanding human cognition, he calls for a new humanistic movement to address the existential threats posed by our reliance on digital technologies.

Indeed, this movement inspires the #SANITI agenda I have proposed. https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/saniti-agenda-comprehensive-framework-ethical-safe-ai-martin-ciupa-b5hre/

*****

Clarens, January 2025

Launch of My New Book

Dear friends and readers,

I am pleased to wish you an excellent 2025 and to announce the release of my new book, titled:

“The Limits of the Digital Miracle: Fragmentations and Emergences.”

This philosophical essay explores the constraints and limits our mental space and language impose on our internal models of reality. It explains why our models are flawed but indispensable and why our human constructions, being digitized, struggle to integrate into an analog universe.

The book examines the impacts of information technologies on our societies, democratic systems, environment, and even our brains from a new perspective: the very functioning of our mental space. In this era of rapid advancements in AI and neuroscience, the book synthesizes the results of 15 years of research in these fields.

? Kindle and paperback editions will be available on Amazon.fr in the coming days. I am confident that this book's reflections and unique perspectives will help you think freshly.

? Readers who would like a signed copy are welcome to email me. I am also available to present and discuss the book’s theses for those interested in organizing meetings or conferences.

? For those who would like an overview of the book, request a PDF file containing approximately thirty pages of excerpts.

Thank you in advance for your support. I hope this study inspires new ideas and provides tools to address the challenges of our time.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Ronald Cicurel

The Limits of the Digital Miracle: Fragmentations and Emergences

Two versions: Kindle — Paperback

675 pages, 30 illustrations.

With a foreword by Brazilian-American neuroscientist Miguel Nicolelis and an afterword by British AI expert Martin Ciupa.

About the Author:

Ronald Cicurel is a Swiss scientist and philosopher of Egyptian origin. He earned his PhD in mathematics at the University of Lausanne. He served as a lecturer and researcher at EPFL until 2016, where he contributed to the launch of a brain research and simulation project. He is the author of about ten scientific books.

Summary of “The Limits of the Digital Miracle”

In this philosophical essay, the author explores the constraints and limits that our mental space and language impose on our internal models of reality, which ultimately shape our world. He considers three interacting complex systems: the environment, societies, and the human brain. Each level adds its own rules and imperatives to natural evolution.

The book examines how language, treated as the first digital revolution, has developed over millennia to enhance our capacity to imagine and predict. By materializing abstractions, we have reversed the natural adaptation process, intentionally transforming the environment to meet immediate needs. However, the rapid transformation of complex systems leads to critical points beyond which these interconnected systems seek new equilibria. Climate change, biodiversity loss, social structures, and mental serenity are disrupted, forcing us to rethink our worldviews.

The author illustrates how information technologies manipulate our thinking, democratic systems, markets, and lifestyles, shaking fundamental notions such as truth, trust, and spirituality. Without a long-term global perspective, opportunistic economies dominate, leading to power concentration and intolerable inequalities.

We chase progress, growth, efficiency, and performance ideas on this digital journey. But what reward awaits at the end of this pursuit? Is there truly a finish line? In 10 or 100 years, will we still be chasing the same efficiency goals?

The rapid advancement of information technologies has challenged our beliefs and ancestral myths. These approaches' materialism, which imitates capacities once thought purely human, has created a profound philosophical and spiritual rift. New beliefs, fueled by Big Tech and many Californian billionaires, are filling this void.

This book serves as a wake-up call against the danger of shaping communities tailored for machines but unlivable for humans. It meticulously describes the processes already underway.

Faced with this situation, the author invites a profound reflection on our conception of humanity, the future of our civilizations, and our place in the universe. He emphasizes the need to remain optimistic and continue efforts to understand and reason clearly, repairing our distorted relationship with reality and rediscovering solid anchors to rebuild our dreams.

Current Relevance:

The buzz around AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) and recent declarations by Sam Altman make the question of digital limits even more intriguing. According to AI leaders, we will have a conscious AGI that is more intelligent than humans by the end of this year. Understanding the motivations behind such claims reveals much about the current trajectory of AI development.

Table of Contents (Summary):

FROM THE UNIVERSE TO LANGUAGE

1.1 The miracle of planet Earth

1.2 Our History

1.3 Explanatory myths

1.4 Three complex systems

1.5 Adaptations and Regulations

1.6 The notion of complexity

1.7 Thought and Hypotheses

1.8 Language and the Brain

1.9 Another dimension

1.10 The two worlds of mental space

THE BRAIN AND INFORMATION

2.1 The notion of information

2.2 Shannon’s digital information

2.3 G?delian analog information

2.4 Brain and information

2.5 Fragmentation and individuation

2.6 Mechanisms of perception

2.7 Perception biases

2.8 Manipulation of perception

2.9 Abstraction, reduction, and inclusion

2.10 Human and Computer Memory

2.11 Understanding

2.12 Verbal and non-verbal knowledge

INTERNAL MODELS OF REALITY

3.1 The first digital revolution

3.2 Our models are flawed but indispensable

3.3 Computational models

3.4 Natural and Human Productions

3.5 Reversibility and emergences

3.6 Lotka’s principle, the third principle, and brainets

3.7 Growth-decay cycles

3.8 Summary and Descriptive Graph

3.9 Paradoxes and Paradigms

DYSFUNCTIONS

4.1 Language in the service of societies

4.2 Analyzing complex systems

4.3 Competition and Cooperation

4.4 The myth of progress and its corollaries

4.5 Re-centering the idea of progress

4.6 Economic dysfunctions

4.7 Misalignments

4.8 Metamodernity

4.9 Global balances

4.10 The ephemeral and imitation

4.11 Domains that resist economic integration

PROMISES AND RISKS OF TECHNOLOGIES

5.1 Promises and Threats

5.2 The funnel of dumbing down: technologies and power

5.3 The problem of attention

5.4 Social media

5.5 Power concentration

5.6 Surveillance capitalism

5.7 Truth and Disinformation

5.8 Disinformation in Science

5.9 Meta-crisis

PHILOSOPHIES AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

6.1 Intelligences

6.2 AI and AGI

6.3 Eugenics, transhumanism, and the augmented human

6.4 A Californian stroll

LIVING TOGETHER

7.1 Human choices

7.2 Conclusion

APPENDICES:

1. Examples of externalities

2. Examples of Moloch

3. An article by Martin Ciupa

This work emphasizes the need for humanity to reevaluate its values and relationships with nature and each other, offering a clarion call for conscious reflection and wisdom in navigating the complexities of our era.