“The high mission of any art is, by its illusions, to foreshadow a higher universe reality, to crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.“
– 5ER 48:7.23
At certain points along a critical path, while we are working feverishly to help our world somehow rise above its present condition, where darkness and death are too prevalent, we can just barely discern incremental progress towards an era of light and life. Occasionally, we will stumble upon fascinating little gems of truth that inspire us. Such inspiration helps us to develop a greater depth of understanding of what is yet to be, together with a deeper appreciation for exciting new vistas that were previously unseen. When our metaphorical diamonds in the rough are precision cut, they can appear to take on new meaning. And, when these little truth crystals are thought about in ways that promote an affinity for verifiable truth, while also serving to enhance our appreciation for true beauty and authentic goodness, our perfection hunger also increases.
Within the context of The Ascension Experience project, there is a busy intersection where The Experience Bank and The Ascension University are engaged in a unique form of collaboration. This particular project is focused upon the promise of, while also addressing the real fears associated with, artificial intelligence. Each of the commercial enterprises competing for dominance, within that particular field of endeavor, are led by individuals who are investing heavily in proprietary solutions. Sooo, it is in their financial interest to try and sell the idea of AI as mystic art that is altogether new.
In fact, the first “expert system” was developed in 1965 by Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg at Stanford University. What was then referred to as “apparent intelligence” would leverage two major components: a knowledge base and an inference engine. A knowledge base is simply an organized collection of facts that is categorically indexed. The inference engine quickly finds, verifies, and evaluates the facts contained within the knowledge base. Interpreting them for the user, in a competent and conversational way, presents a variety of challenges for today.
With respect to the competence factor, we refer to the experience conditioned knowledge bank we are building as The Experience Bank. This name serves to remind us that our understanding, as it relates to any given set of facts. can be conditioned by experience. When facts are increasingly understood, refined, and updated in a way that does not promote and is not subject to revisionist history; they will remain “grounded.” We believe we can accomplish this in a way that provides full transparency with respect to any and all influences affecting factual development. By making use of a blockchain database and storiing data in blocks that are serialized and linked together in a chain; nothing, including early clues and disproven historical beliefs that might inform a deeper understanding, gets lost.
Today’s misinformation and disinformation eco-system is clearly evident throughout the public domain. At a certain critical juncture, when AI developers and machine learning experts made the decision to place more emphasis on pattern recognition and less on principle, answers that are pleasing became the preferred result. This resulted in a diversion of the machine learning process down a variety of rabbit holes. And, when the same practices were adopted by parts of the journalistic community, it had the effect of distorting the public discourse.
Helping the client to achieve true objective satisfaction is preferable to simply enabling their addiction to subjective gratification.
– Bob Kalk
During the 1990s, James Preston Downs created a chart of Positive Qualities in an effort to advance the essential qualities of truth, beauty, and goodness. It was large, containing one-thousand words. In 2021 Jim, at the request of Bob Kalk, produced a more compact chart of Essential Qualities to use as a navigation aid in locating specific content within the Ascension Cafe and Ascension University projects. That chart appears here:
The Essential Positive Qualities – Copyright 2021 James Preston Downs
Ever since the new and more compact chart was produced, Jim Downs and Bob Kalk have been working to build a glossary based, in large part, upon the definitions provided within Jim’s Book of Positive Qualities. That glossary is located at Defining Our Times within the Ascension Cafe website. A little over a decade earlier, Jim and Bob worked out a series of conceptual frameworks that would serve as a way to insure the curricular focus for Ascension University while returning some balance within the spiritual, intellectual, and practical disciplines. Such balance had been lost, even within those schools that were originally founded as seminaries. During that period of human history commonly referred to as The Enlightenment, the intellectual disciplines effectively became trifurcated as Science (the domain of facts), Philosophy (the domain of meanings), and Religion (the domain of values).
There will undoubtedly be those who, after reading this treatment, object to the religious overtones clearly in evidence. And, there will be those at the other extreme who object to the emphasis on science. We hope to draw from the people of good will who reside at the Sentient Center of a great humanity. Within such a holistic view of information science and management, the twelve Curricular Focus Teams we are currently building will always ask: “What is this?” – “What is the meaning of this?” – “What is the value of this?” The groups therefore were, and are, defined as follows:
The Aevia Institutes of Management (AIM)
| Curriculum Management Component | Philosophical & Spiritual Overtones Focus | Managerial & Scientific Focus |
| AIM/CES: Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Spirit | The meaning and value of Undying Hope as characterized by Focused Purpose, Healthy Dedication, and Insightful Leadership. | Facts explaining and supporting the arts and practices of enterprising souls. |
| AIM/FAC: Friends – Associates – Confidants | The meaning and value of Confiding Trust as characterized by Moral Affinity, Informed Fidelity, and Principled Adaptability | Facts supporting the building of trust relationships with special emphasis on advocacy, intellectual property, confidentiality, non-disclosure and other privacy concerns. |
| AIM/FAD: Fact Acquisition & Dissemination | The meaning and value of Sincere Fairness as characterized by Seasoned Acuity, Centered Clarity, and Ethical Inquiry. | Facts concerning the arts and sciences of human endeavor with special emphasis on fact gathering, aggregation, distillation, granularization and distribution. |
| AIM/MEK: Master Experience Key | The meaning and value of Forgiving Tolerance as characterized by Balanced Perspective. Resourceful Accuracy, and Resilient Structuring | Facts concerning the arts and sciences of human endeavor with special emphasis on the building of indexes, cross references and thesauruses. |
The School for Service to All (SSA)
| Curriculum Management Component | Philosophical & Spiritual Overtones Focus | Managerial & Scientific Focus |
| SSA/ANG: Advanced Necessities Guide | The meaning and value of Unfailing Goodness as characterized by Thoughtful Preparedness, Resourceful Adaptability, and Industrious Tenacity. | Facts promoting personal health and welfare for a great humanity. |
| SSA/DAD: Deep Abiding Devotion | The meaning and value of Unselfish Devotion as characterized by Divine Guidance, Patient Foresight, and Supportive Encouragement. | Facts concerning the nurturing role of fathers and others engaged in the role of child rearing. |
| SSA/MOM: Ministry Of Mercy | The meaning and value of Merciful Ministry as characterized by Sympathetic Understanding, Enveloping Tenderness , and Inspiring Beauty. | Facts concerning the nurturing role of mothers and others engaged in the role of child rearing. |
| SSA/SON: Serving Others in Need | The meaning and value of Loving Service as characterized by Shared Vision, Unified Motivation, and Constructive Engagement. | Facts concerning the need for authentic community and the technique of, administering and rendering service. |
The College of Revealed Cosmology (CRC)
| Curriculum Management Component | Philosophical & Spiritual Overtones Focus | Managerial & Scientific Focus |
| CRC/HAP: Heaven Abides Personally | The meaning and value of Enlightened Honesty as characterized by Clear Thinking, Warmhearted Luminosity, and Spiritual Transformation. | Facts concerning the relationship between God and individual human beings. |
| CRC/IIR: Interpersonal and Integral Relationships | The meaning and value of Courageous Loyalty as characterized by Cohesive Integrity, Mutual Confidence, and Responsive Friendship. | Facts promoting the development of a unified personality, healthy and supportive relationships and productive environments. |
| CRC/VAN: Values Affirmation Network | The meaning and value of Enduring Peace as characterized by Common Concerns, Sensitive Communications, and Impartial Judgment. | Facts favoring the adoption of higher values as well as the sharing of such values. |
| CRC/VIA: Value of Individual Advancement | The meaning and value of Enthusiastic Appreciation as characterized by Augmented Values, Infectious Joy, and Harmonious Progress. | Facts supporting the value proposition for continuous education, associating for benevolent purposes and engaging in cooperative enterprises. |
Today we are dismayed by the extent to which emotionally charged factions within the general population have been subjected to the detrimental effects of the disinformation/misinformation eco-system as angertainment plays through the world’s emergent and even some mature democracies. Populating and expanding roles for the teams we are presently working to build, would give each individual member exciting new fields of opportunity. Building a benevolence engine that exerts a positive influence on the evolution of artificial intelligence while also inspiring our progress towards an era of light and life, is our service motivation. Thinking of our modeling by analogy to a crystal radio would direct our thoughts in ways that result in higher levels of atunement to the greater cosmos. It could also be thought of as one of the many devices that aid us in achieving concert pitch.
Consider the architecture of a graphical crystalline model that would put the Essential Positive Qualities at the most prominent horizontal plane or girdle of the diamond described below. The Love at the center of the two dimensional chart could effectively and graphically be extruded to appear at the center for a top-view of the diamond’s table. Through animation, the love would also appear at the center of the girdle by means of selective transparency, while the twenty-seven qualities on the periphery of the chart are depicted along the outer edges of the girdle. And finally, the love would also be depicted at the culet (Latin for bottom) appearing at the base of the pavilion and underscoring the fact that Love resides at the axis of our metaphoric crystal just as it does at the center of all creation.
With this graphic model in mind, programmers could make effective use of the architecture pioneered by the late Troy Bishop through his Exemplar and Metrics file strategy to flash vector to a point of interest within any conceptual framework or inspirational text. These assets were recently augmented by Barry Clark in ways that make them more human readable and friendly for one revelationary compendium that integrates science, philosophy, and religion, This overall modeling schema could inform an Artificial Intelligence client in meaningful ways that have the quality of coherence, the effect of instruction, and the value of edification.
Our success, through efforts to build ethically and morally grounded reference models for use by all who practice within the artificial intelligence space, will depend upon the fervency of those willing to devote time, talent, and treasure to help “crystallize the emotions of time into the thought of eternity.” The faceted center of our university project’s seven point Ascension Star will serve as a constant reminder that a prismatic view of the cosmos is available for those enjoying the power of discernment as they craft devices that have clear utility and while we labor to move civilization onward and upward.
The website for the actual models will soon be here:
The Ascension University (pole) Star Copyright 2006 – 2023
Ascension University and The Aevia Charitable Trust (The ACT)
Apparent or Artificial Intelligence has been around for awhile. And, for future generations, getting it right could mean the difference between having them inherit a dystopian future while living on a planet that would best be described as the Devil’s Goofball, or instead giving them the tools required to help them make our world into a bright spot within the galaxy, one that shimmers, as if it were a diamond.