It’s Been A While

I haven’t posted in a while. About eight months to be more exact. My previous posts took me a long time to compose. I wrote them more like research papers and they were taking eight hours (or more) per post. I spent a lot of time compiling research, editing many times, searching for just the right picture, optimizing the title, optimizing keywords for search engines, formatting links, and on, and on, and on. The process consumed the purpose. When the Summer came around that style of writing just became too cumbersome to keep up with and I prioritized other activities higher. The topics weren’t all that exciting either. I just stopped writing.

I’m going to try to get back at it, but with a different approach. I’m going to take more of an organized stream of consciousness approach to my writing. I’m not going to worry as much about “perfect” writing, thorough research, siting resources, picking just the perfect picture or title. I have a lot of ideas and concepts that I’d like to share so I’m just going to go more free-form. It will be odd for me because I’m way more comfortable with the thoroughly researched and edited research paper sort of post. So, forgive me now for the sloppy writing I’m about to embark upon.

During my writing hiatus I’ve been soaking up knowledge in a few different areas. My upcoming posts will be brain dumps on what most people will consider pretty esoteric, geeky, and maybe even a little “woo woo”. That’s fine though. Some of you will get it and maybe even learn something from it. Maybe I’ll even find my tribe in the process and learn some things from you.

The topics that I’m currently ravaging are cryptocurrencies and block chain technologies, a global paradigm shift, personality typology, humanistic and cognitive psychology, development of human and global consciousness, mindfulness meditation, the concept of the technological singularity, and the nature of reality. Hopefully I haven’t lost you already.

I typically have 30 or more browser tabs open with these and other topics I’m researching. As unrelated as some of these may seem, I’m able to connect them all. I jump from one topic to the next like mental gymnastics. I’ll give a brief description of each here and then over the coming weeks and months I plan to jump into each in more detail.

 

Cryptocurrencies & Global Paradigm Shift

A few years ago I heard some co-workers talking about cryptocurrencies. They described it as electronic money that you had to “mine” using a computer. Sort of like digging for gold. I didn’t really take the time to understand it and on the surface it sounded crazy so I wrote it off. Well now I’m kicking myself in the ass because I wasn’t paying more attention.

In 2010 the first cryptocurrency called Bitcoin was selling for $0.08 cents a coin. A $100 investment in Bitcoin in 2010 would now be worth over $21 million. As I’m writing Bitcoin is now worth almost $17,000 per coin. It has been close to $20,000 per coin just this week. My only consolation is that 99.9% of the world also missed the boat on that one. Anyway, it’s still early and I’m getting on board. I’m guessing that 99% of the world is still not on board.

It is still very speculative, but estimates are that millions of people around the world are investing in cryptocurrencies and related block chain technologies. The total market capitalization of all crypto/block chain investments is over $625 billion. I think I now see how brilliant it is and I think it is only going to get more popular. I think that maybe within as little as 10 years it will be very common to pay for gas or groceries with cryptocurrency.

Like me, a few years ago, this probably doesn’t make much sense to you. In future posts I’ll dive into the details and explain what cryptocurrency and block chain technology is. I’ll explain why I think it is around for good and actually will be part of a new global paradigm shift. A new world order if you will. I’ll explain why I think it’s a great time to invest wisely. Buyer beware though. There are cryptocurrency scams and pyramid schemes. You have to do your research if you are going off the narrow beaten path of the top few most popular cryptocurrencies.

 

Personality Typology & Psychology

In 1991, while in the U.S. Army, I took the Myers-Briggs type indicator (MBTI) assessment. The MBTI is a series of questions that when answered based on your preferences can categorize people into one of sixteen personality types. It is spooky how accurate it is. Honestly, it seems crazy how some seemingly simple questions can result in a description of my thought process and behaviors that are spot on. It’s all based on many rock solid psychology studies.

The MBTI results in a four letter code that when translated describes how a person sees reality, prefers to take in information, process it, and make decisions. There are four sets of paired preferences that result in the four letter code. They are:

Extroversion (E) / Introversion (I)

Intuition (N) / Sensing (S)

Feeling (F) / Thinking (T)

Perceiving (P) / Judging (J)

While everyone can function in all eight ways to some degree, we really prefer one of each pair. My personality type in 1991 was INTP. Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, Perceiver. I was a computer technician. I took the MBTI again in 2001 and once again was categorized as an INTP. I was a software developer. Like cryptocurrency, I didn’t really latch on to the power of what knowing my personality type could do for me.

I recently dug into it again and took an online generic version of an MBTI assessment. This time I was categorized INTJ. While personality type changes aren’t common, we can develop skills over long periods of time that can shift our preferences. The difference could be because my most recent assessment wasn’t an official MBTI assessment. However, I’m pretty confident that after about 16 years of project/program management I have moved from INTP to INTJ preferences.

INTx are among the most rare personality types. I know, you already knew that I was a rare bird. INTP’s make up an estimated 3.3% of the population while INTJ’s make up about 2.1% of the population. Even just intuitives as a whole only make up about 25% of the population. Sensors make up the other 75%. The rarity of a personality type has a whole lot of implications on how we as humans make our way in the world. Particularly a world that isn’t designed for us. Anyway, I’ll get into more details of personality typology in future posts.

 

Development of Human Consciousness & Meditation

I’ve been practicing meditation on and off and have experienced some very basic benefits. Primarily just with calming the inner voice that often rambles incessantly. No, I’m not schizophrenic. We all have an inner voice that won’t shut up. I wrote a few posts about meditation last Spring. Check those out.

Anyway, recently I have gone a little deeper into the development of the human consciousness (this is connected to personality typology and psychology as well). There are psychology models for how individual human consciousness and the collective consciousness develops. Many people, including myself, believe that we are approaching a tipping point or advancement in human consciousness. This starts to get deep. If I hadn’t lost you on the above topics a lot of you are starting to bail at this point. Stay tuned for more though.

One of the skills of intuitives is advanced pattern recognition. We can see large scale patterns and make connections that the rest of the world (sensors) can’t see just yet. Many great inventors, technologists, and science fiction writers (the ones that predict what the world will be like in the future) are intuitives. I don’t claim to be that good, but I am able to pick up what those other more skilled intuitives are putting down. Even though I couldn’t necessarily see it on my own, it all makes sense to me. I’m able to make the connections. It’s exciting.

 

Technological Singularity & Nature of Reality

And deeper we go. The technological singularity is the concept that humans and computers will one day start to merge. This sounds like way far out stuff, but some claim that we are only about 25 years out from a technological singularity where artificial intelligence starts to outpace humans ability to keep up. Large companies like Google are starting to develop groups to study the ethical and safe advancement of artificial intelligence. There is real concern (again mostly among intuitives) with computers and artificial intelligence taking the world over and making humans obsolete. Sounds like crazy stuff, but I think these are real issues that we will be facing sooner than most think.

On a somewhat related tangent, some legitimate theoretical physicists are actually doing experiments to test if we are living in a computer simulation. Some really cool discoveries in physics may be pointing to the fact that our world is really just data structures. Theoretical physicists have found evidence of error correction encryption codes in quantum particle studies. What we see as being reality may really just be data that our human conscious turns into the physical world.

If you didn’t just clock out trying to wrap your head around that then we are in the same tribe. I’d love to hear your opinions, ideas, and things you are studying. Stay tuned as I attempt at least a weekly post on some crazy sounding stuff.