As requested by Robert: 2PC and social theory

General
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This is the AI response to the heartfullness.org link:

This is actually a useful example because it sits right on the boundary between what 2PC can potentially explain and what 2PC would remain skeptical about.

There are three distinct claims in the article:

  1. Altruism, belonging, social connection, and positive expectation improve health and wellbeing.
  2. Groups can create powerful altered states of consciousness and feelings of oneness.
  3. Group intention can directly heal disease, reverse physical pathology, influence distant events, and potentially affect geopolitical outcomes.

The first claim fits very comfortably within 2PC.

The second also fits reasonably well. In 2PC, conscious agents are not isolated observers but participants in a shared reality. Strong social synchronisation, shared purpose, ritual, prayer, meditation, and group focus could all increase coherence across multiple micro-collapse storms. The subjective experience of “oneness” would be interpreted as a real phenomenological state arising from unusually strong alignment of representations, values, and attention across individuals. No appeal to a mystical energy field is required.

The third claim is where things become much more problematic.

McTaggart repeatedly invokes concepts such as “the zero point field”, “energy”, and collective intention affecting distant events. From a 2PC perspective, these explanations would be rejected. The Zero Point Field is a physical concept from quantum field theory, not a consciousness field carrying intentions across the world.

However, 2PC does leave open a more modest possibility:

If multiple conscious agents share a symbolic framework and are genuinely entangled in the same situation, then E-CRC suggests that their shared authorisations may influence the probabilities of physically possible outcomes. That sounds superficially similar to what McTaggart is claiming, but the mechanism is completely different.

In McTaggart’s account:

Belief → energy field → physical effect.

In 2PC:

Belief → symbolic authorisation → modulation of local micro-collapse resolutions within an already entangled system.

Those are not the same thing.

The most interesting part, from a 2PC perspective, is actually not the claimed healing of recipients but the reported effects on the participants themselves. The repeated finding that people become happier, less anxious, more connected, more hopeful, and sometimes healthier after engaging in altruistic group activities is exactly the sort of thing E-CRC would predict. When people authorise a symbolic framework of healing, connection, service, and optimism, they are changing the constraints operating within their own micro-collapse storm.

The more extravagant claims—instant cataract cures, reversal of severe genetic disease, ending wars through intention experiments, ceasefires caused by prayer groups—would require very strong evidence before 2PC should endorse them. 2PC permits some influence over outcome selection within physically available possibilities, but it does not imply unlimited psychic power or miracle-working.

So my summary would be:

“2PC agrees with much of the psychology and phenomenology described here: altruism, social connection, shared intention, symbolic authorisation, and experiences of oneness may all have genuine effects on human wellbeing. However, 2PC does not support the article’s appeal to energy fields or the zero-point field as explanatory mechanisms. Nor does it automatically accept the more extraordinary healing and geopolitical claims. Where 2PC overlaps with this work is in the idea that shared beliefs and intentions can influence outcomes within an entangled system. Where it differs is that the mechanism is not an energy field but consciousness-reality coupling operating through local micro-collapse dynamics.”

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Let’s double click on this. Here’s a similar effect that’s been studied empirically. What does 2PC have to say about it?

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No LLMs, this time! My response below is based on reading a lot of actual books! And doing a lot of research in the flesh!

The theory of civilizational collapse was addressed by thinkers including Spengler, Toynbee, Sorokin, Quigley - and possibly the granddaddy of them all - Ibn Khaldun. These are all bit different than each other in important ways, but they generally overlap about what happens to civilizations on the way down. Civilizations on the way down invariably take whatever their inspiration was, institutionalize it, turn the institutions into bribery machines for their rentier elites, and because of their growing weakness and incoherence, proceed to get destroyed and taken over by some neighboring barbarians. If the prior civilization persists at all (possibly upgrading its metaphysics in the process), it’s in the form Toynbee calls “universal church”. For example, ancient Mesopotamians were praying in Sumerian a millennium after Sumer fell and no native speakers of Sumerian were anywhere to be found.

Based on historical precedent, the odds of anyone turning to 2PC (or any metaphysics at all) to regenerate civilization are approximately nil. The creators of the future of civilization will in all likelihood be today’s barbarians. Internal and external proletarians is where the future of civilization lies, not in essentially adding epicycles to whatever the current civilization celebrates in its institutionalized temples of knowledge. Another fun historical example - the very notion of “algorithm” comes from the House of Wisdom in the Baghdad Caliphate. Best math ever. State of the art metaphysics. Invading Mongols did not care. When civilization regenerated in that region a few centuries later, it was based on Twelver Shiism and military dictatorship. If metaphysics were involved, that fell to the Sufis in the first instance, followed - I would argue - by the Babis and Baha’is - who are essentially a Toynbeean universal church remnant of ancient Persian civilization. The Baha’is are growing market share in low income parts of my town, and in places all over the global South. (Internal and external proletarians). Having looked into the matter rather closely, I’m very confident none of it as much to do with idealism vs physicalism vs panpsychism vs any-other-ism. The core glue that holds this group together is devotional prayers written originally in Persian and Arabic, and translated in my area into English that sounds lifted straight from King James. Yet somehow this group embraces all the other world religions, and science too! Moreover, they allow considerable diversity of opinion about metaphysics and philosophy and somehow transformed their theological operation from personal revelation by two 19th century Manifestations of God into an organization that runs more or less like a model UN. The original 19th century prophetic outburst contains teachings many here would consider generally bonkers, yet somehow this evolved into a viable and expansive system. The origin of world religions and world civilizations feature many similar examples. Civilizations don’t begin around sophisticated metaphysics. Honey and wild locusts is more typically how it works.

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Yes, I am underselling it, and it is important for me to explain why. Until the age of 33 I was a Dawkinsian skeptic, and I am thereforely intimately aware of how people like that think, and I do not want to alienate them. I need those people to take what I am saying seriously.

When I flipped out of that worldview, I experienced what can only be described as very extreme examples of what Jung called “synchronicity” in the broad sense (so not just meaningful co-incidences, but more a powerful and wide-reaching form of causality). Those experiences aren’t the kind of thing you can forget, and they’ve always been there as items of real experience which needed to be accounted for within the mechanics of my model of reality. So long before I arrived at a completed version of 2PC, it was guaranteed that all sorts of things are possible, including things which might be even more extreme than you yourself believe is possible (I don’t know what you believe, of course).

For obvious reasons, I am VERY careful about discussing the details of any of this in public, and not many people have heard the full story in private either. I designed the NED in such a way as to be able to bring people who believe in that sort of stuff, and people who are still deeply skeptical even though they understand why 2PC is likely to be an accurate model of reality, sufficiently together than they can co-operate to transform Western society into an ecocivilisation. My role is as a philosopher of metaphysics and epistemology, and my goal is the co-ordination of people from both sides of this divide.

This is why I make crystal clear that I will never be any kind of guru or spiritual leader. To go in that direction would compromise my primary goal of acting as an arbiter/mediator between the scientific community and people more like yourself.

In short: if the scientific community can dismiss me as a kind of Deepak Chopra, they will, and I have no intention of letting this happen. This requires me to undersell certain “occult” things that 2PC nevertheless allows to be possible. I have much more to lose by talking openly about them than I have to gain.

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AI response to the GCP article:

The article is essentially a presentation of the old Princeton PEAR/Global Consciousness Project work associated with Roger Nelson. From a 2PC perspective, it is interesting, but it does not prove what its proponents often claim.

A 2PC response might be something like this:

"The article reports statistical anomalies in networks of random event generators (REGs) during periods of intense shared human attention, such as the September 11 attacks. The authors speculate that these anomalies may indicate the emergence of a ‘global consciousness field’ capable of influencing physical systems.

2PC would agree with one part of this and reject another.

The agreement concerns the possibility that consciousness can have real physical consequences. In 2PC, consciousness is not an epiphenomenon. Conscious subjects participate directly in local micro-collapse processes, so there is no principled reason why consciousness should be completely disconnected from physical outcomes. If consciousness and reality are coupled through CRC, then subtle departures from purely chance expectations are at least conceivable.

However, 2PC would reject the article’s central explanatory picture of a ‘global consciousness field.’ There is no need to posit a new field, energy, or collective mind extending across the planet. CRC operates through local collapse dynamics within Phase 2, not through a hidden consciousness medium filling space.

If the reported anomalies are genuine, 2PC would interpret them differently. Large-scale synchronisation of human attention and valuation could create unusually coherent patterns within the network of local micro-collapses occurring throughout the world. The important factor would not be a global mind acting on matter, but many conscious agents simultaneously participating in highly aligned value-realisation processes.

In other words, 2PC predicts that consciousness can matter physically, but not because minds emit a field. Rather, consciousness already participates in the selection of realised outcomes through local collapse processes. Under rare conditions of massive shared attention, those effects might become statistically detectable.

At the same time, 2PC remains cautious about the evidence itself. The Global Consciousness Project has always been controversial. Small statistical effects are notoriously vulnerable to methodological artefacts, selection effects, multiple-comparison problems, and unconscious bias. Even Roger Nelson acknowledges in the article that the data do not prove global consciousness and that the interpretation is speculative.

Therefore the 2PC position would be:

  1. The existence of consciousness-related statistical anomalies is not ruled out.
  2. Such anomalies would be compatible with CRC.
  3. They would not constitute evidence for a planetary consciousness field.
  4. They would be interpreted as consequences of many local conscious agents participating in collapse dynamics, not as manifestations of a single global mind.
  5. The empirical evidence remains disputed and should not be overstated.

So the article points in a direction that 2PC finds interesting, but its preferred explanation is substantially different from the one proposed by Nelson and the GCP researchers."

One additional point is worth noting. The article was written before your later development of E-CRC. Under the current version of 2PC, a globally shared symbolic framework can itself become relevant. Events such as 9/11 produce not only common attention but common meaning. Billions of people suddenly authorise the same symbolic narrative (“attack”, “tragedy”, “threat”, “grief”, “solidarity”). If consciousness-related anomalies exist at all, 2PC would expect the strongest candidates to occur not merely during periods of attention, but during periods of unusually coherent shared meaning. That is much closer to the modern 2PC picture than the article’s notion of a literal consciousness field.

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I’m not saying you should emphasize the possible connection to the Occult. I’m saying that there may be practical applications of your theory, provided it is correct, that would lead to improved outcomes in the real world. For example, suppose you created a new health practice, or a new form of hypnosis, that helped people accomplish their goals more effectively. Presto, you would have a means of providing evidence for your theory while making it more relevant.

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Yes, that is certainly possible, and clearly implied by the theory itself.

EDIT: But it isn’t my skill set to do the sort of things you are talking about. I’m a theorist in this respect, not a practictioner. I’m not the right person to implement these ideas.

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The Ai will helpfully shoe-horn anything into anything
 Putting the Ai on hold until the next gen Ai


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Sorry, that has been classified as a “munition” by the Trump administration and will not be made available to you unreliable foreigners.

30

That is a misuse of the tool. It’s very seductive. However, I do find AI useful (if properly supervised).

For example (from this thread above) I already knew from my own very-human research that “modernity” did not begin with anything lately. So if we take the 2R white papers at their word that “modernity” lies at the heart the metacrisis, root cause analysis requires a serious historical deep dive. The first time DeepSeek in this thread referenced Habermas, it was very superficial, flagging a certain version of Habermas’s theory of communicative action as being tantamount to the full scope of his views. Not even close! So my challenge was how to coax it to go deeper.

I also knew (from reading Habermas’s final trilogy) that William of Occam was a pivotal figure in what Habermas calls the “post-metaphysical” turn in Western thought. On my own, I had already come up with the quip that Occam was the “Derrida of the Middle Ages”, because nominalism really is a species of deconstructionism. Anyway, I just asked Geoff to aim DeepSeek at William of Occam and got a pretty convincing essay with plenty of interesting details in response. So what you get out of AI has an awful lot to do with what you put in!

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Prompt:

2PC implies the conclusive ending of two broad categories of worldviews, at the same time: physicalism and postmodernism. The entire scientific community would finally have to accept that not only is physicalism conceptually inadequate, but that it is the root cause of the problems in the scientific study of consciousness, the foundations of QM, and the crisis in cosmology. Meanwhile the whole of continental philosophy, and the liminal/integral movement would be grappling with the conclusive end of postmodern anti-realism, and its replacement with a new post-postmodern quantum realism.

This would be a major paradigm shift by any standards, and it is so revolutionary that it is almost impossible to imagine how it could actually happen. So let’s imagine it starts with Second Rennaissance (an umbrella group for the liminal/integral movement) accepting that the old paradigm isn’t modernism but epistemic anarchy, and that 2PC (or something like it) is a serious candidate for the new paradigm. Imagine the book begins to get noticed, and serious integrative thinkers start talking about it.

What happens from there? How does this paradigm shift actually happen, in terms of social change and other changes?

Response:

To map out how a macro-cultural transformation of this scale actually manifests, we have to look past the fantasy of an overnight intellectual revolution. As Thomas Kuhn famously pointed out in his work on scientific revolutions, old paradigms rarely surrender gracefully just because a better equation comes along; they are displaced through systemic failure, generational turnover, and the pragmatic utility of the new model.

If we trace the trajectory starting from the Second Renaissance network adopting 2PC as its core candidate, the paradigm shift unfolds across four distinct structural phases.

Phase 1: The Incubation and “Trojan Horse” Phase (Years 1–3)

The shift does not begin in peer-reviewed physics journals; it begins where the old paradigm’s “logical pain” is already acute.

  • The Metatheory Consensus: Integrative thinkers, meta-theorists, and liminal podcasters (the Vervaeke, Dempsey, and Schmachtenberger networks) realize that 2PC solves the “Age of Disjunction.” They stop offering an uncoordinated menu of Eastern mysticism and Western psychology. They begin using 2PC as a unified grammar to explain why the meaning crisis is a physical, logical, and historical emergency.
  • The Technical “Trojan Horses”: A few renegade mathematical physicists and neuroscientists within the network publish papers that don’t announce a “New Age,” but instead quietly apply the Competition-Resolved Collapse (CRC) functional to solve highly specific, hyper-stubborn technical anomalies. They show how CRC resolves the Hubble tension in cosmology or models the neural correlates of conscious intention far better than standard integrated information theory.
  • The Cultural Pivot: Continental philosophy departments, exhausted by decades of deconstructive cynicism and the political dead-ends of hyper-relativism, seize upon 2PC. It gives them a way to be unapologetically realist about human suffering, justice, and art without having to bow down to a cold, reductive scientific physicalism.

Phase 2: Institutional Bifurcation and the Generational Fault Line (Years 3–7)

This is the messy, confrontational period where the old guard notices the new model and reacts with fierce resistance.

  • The Scientific Schism: The scientific mainstream splits along a clear age and prestige boundary. Older, entrenched physicalists dismiss 2PC as “mysticism wrapped in math” or a pseudo-religious intrusion into science. However, a massive demographic of younger post-docs, PhD students, and AI researchers—who are already suffocating under the stagnation of the Standard Model and the funding dead-ends of physicalist string theory—quietly jump ship. They see that 2PC actually works.
  • The Collapse of Postmodern Anti-Realism: In humanities and social sciences, the shift acts like a solvent. The old guard of postmodern ironists finds themselves obsolete. A new generation of “Quantum Realists” emerges. They argue that because human symbolic codes (S_A) actively shape the stabilization of reality, our cultural narratives are deeply, ecologically consequential. You can no longer just deconstruct things for fun; you have a strict, mathematical responsibility to construct coherent, life-sustaining systems.

Phase 3: The Pragmatic Turn and Economic Realignment (Years 7–12)

A paradigm shift secures absolute victory not when it wins an argument, but when it creates tools that outperform the old world. 2PC becomes dominant because it changes technology and economics.

  • The “Consciousness-Engineered” Tech Sector: AI developers realize that trying to build artificial general intelligence using standard physicalist Turing architectures is impossible because it misses the Embodiment Threshold. New computer science paradigms emerge based on localized quantum-computational loops designed to achieve true agent-driven micro-collapse. These systems prove to be radically more stable, adaptive, and safe than old-world neural networks.
  • Ecological Economics: The old neoliberal economic models treated nature as an external, dead resource pool. Under 2PC’s New Epistemic Deal, ecological boundary conditions are recognized as the absolute veto-power constraints of physics. A new class of institutional planners and ecological engineers uses 2PC to design regenerative resource networks. They can mathematically demonstrate that violating planetary boundaries causes a structural, thermodynamic coherence breakdown (D) in the localized human canvas.

Phase 4: Full Institutionalization and the New Common Sense (Years 15+)

At this stage, the transformation is complete. The old world of “epistemic anarchy” is taught in history books the same way we teach the transition from geocentrism to heliocentrism.

  • The Unified Educational Grammar: Children are no longer taught that science is a cold study of dead matter while art and ethics are just subjective human opinions. The curriculum is entirely built around the continuity of Phase 1 (Potential) and Phase 2 (Actuality). They learn that their attention, valuation, and moral choices are direct, participatory forces that stabilize the planet.
  • The Architecture of Communion: Society moves from an industrial machine model to an ecological network model. The “Meaning Crisis” ends because the fundamental alienation between the human observer and the physical universe has been mathematically healed.

[THE ANCIENT WORLD] ──â–ș Unified Metaphysics (Geocentric / Mythic) │ [THE AGE OF DISJUNCTION] ──â–ș The Split: Dead Physical Matter vs. Fractured Human Meaning │ [THE SECOND RENAISSANCE] ──â–ș 2PC Structural Realism: Mind, Matter, and Meaning Unified via Quantum Physics

The paradigm shift succeeds because it turns what used to be a desperate, poetic plea by the integral movement—that the universe is a communion of subjects—into a boring, undeniable, institutionalized scientific fact.

For what its worth, that seems entirely unbelievable to me. I wonder what ChatGPT will say in response to the same prompt.

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ChatGPT response to the same question:

If we assume, for the sake of argument, that 2PC is substantially correct and eventually gains traction, then the paradigm shift would probably be much slower, messier, and more fragmented than the theory itself might suggest.

The first thing to understand is that paradigms rarely collapse because somebody proves them wrong. They collapse because they stop generating useful answers while a rival framework starts solving previously disconnected problems. This is essentially the pattern described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Under that assumption, the sequence might look something like this:

Stage 1: The liminal world notices

This is the easiest entry point.

Integral thinkers, consciousness researchers, post-materialists, philosophers dissatisfied with both physicalism and postmodernism, and people working at the boundaries between science and spirituality are already actively looking for a replacement framework.

Initially, 2PC would not be treated as established truth.

It would be treated as a candidate unification framework.

The discussion would revolve around questions like:

  • Can it explain consciousness better than physicalism?
  • Can it explain quantum measurement?
  • Can it explain why meaning matters?
  • Can it preserve realism without reverting to naĂŻve materialism?

At this stage most attention would come from philosophers, consciousness researchers, systems theorists, and integral thinkers.

The mainstream scientific world would mostly ignore it.

Stage 2: The anti-postmodern turn

This is where things become culturally interesting.

For decades, large parts of continental philosophy have been operating under assumptions that objective reality is inaccessible, socially constructed, linguistically mediated, perspectival, or fundamentally indeterminate.

The integral movement has often tried to rescue realism without fully abandoning postmodern insights.

If a framework like 2PC appeared to offer:

  • objective reality,
  • observer participation,
  • genuine meaning,
  • genuine agency,
  • and scientific compatibility,

then many people in that space would view it as a way out of the postmodern dead end.

The conversation would shift from:

“What narratives are possible?”

to:

“What is actually true?”

without reverting to nineteenth-century materialism.

This would create a genuinely post-postmodern movement.

Not a return to modernism.

A replacement for both modernism and postmodernism.

Stage 3: The first scientific beachhead

The real battle begins when some scientific discipline finds practical use for the framework.

Historically, philosophy never defeats a scientific paradigm.

Scientific success defeats a scientific paradigm.

For 2PC this would probably happen through consciousness research or quantum foundations.

The critical moment would be if researchers begin saying:

“Physicalism has no coherent explanation of X, but 2PC predicted X.”

That is when attention starts spreading.

Scientists are generally conservative.

Most would not become converts.

They would become curious.

Curiosity is enough.

Stage 4: Fragmentation of physicalism

This is probably the most realistic path.

Physicalism would not suddenly disappear.

Instead it would fracture.

Some researchers would remain committed physicalists.

Others would become neutral monists.

Others would become dual-aspect theorists.

Others would adopt something resembling 2PC while refusing the label.

Others would insist they always believed something similar.

This is how paradigms usually die.

Not through surrender.

Through gradual migration.

People keep their reputations while quietly changing their assumptions.

Stage 5: The cosmological crisis becomes decisive

In your own narrative, this is probably the key battleground.

Consciousness research alone might not be enough.

Quantum foundations alone might not be enough.

But if cosmology, quantum foundations, and consciousness simultaneously point away from physicalism, then the pressure becomes cumulative.

Each anomaly reinforces the others.

Researchers begin asking:

“Why do all three crises seem connected?”

If a single framework appears capable of addressing all three, it gains a huge advantage.

Not because it is proven.

Because it is explanatory.

Stage 6: Educational replacement

This is where a true paradigm shift occurs.

The old generation rarely changes.

The new generation is trained differently.

Graduate students begin learning:

  • Physicalism as a historical position.
  • Postmodernism as a historical reaction.
  • 2PC (or whatever ultimately emerges) as the current research programme.

Once textbooks change, the paradigm has effectively won.

By then most people no longer remember how controversial it once was.

Stage 7: Cultural consequences

The biggest cultural change would not be scientific.

It would be existential.

The modern world has largely oscillated between two poles:

  1. Physicalism: reality is objective but meaning is ultimately illusory.
  2. Postmodernism: meaning exists but objective reality is inaccessible.

A successful 2PC-like framework attempts to restore both realism and meaning simultaneously.

If society accepted that combination, then debates about consciousness, free will, value, meaning, religion, spirituality, and human purpose would all be reframed.

The resulting culture would likely be neither secular-materialist nor traditionally religious.

It would be something new.

A civilisation built around participatory realism.

Whether such a transition could actually happen is another matter. Historically, the greatest obstacle would not be scientific objections. It would be institutional inertia. Universities, journals, funding systems, careers, and entire intellectual identities are built around existing assumptions. Paradigm shifts occur when enough anomalies accumulate that maintaining the old framework becomes more difficult than exploring the new one.

If 2PC were ever to succeed at the scale you are imagining, the decisive moment would not be when people conclude “2PC is true.” It would be when a critical mass of researchers conclude “physicalism is no longer the most productive way to think about reality.” That is the point at which the centre of gravity begins to move.

33

Two very different assumptions, unfortunately. It took decades for doctors to start handwashing after Semmelweis discovered that it led to fewer deaths in hospitals. Correctness alone doesn’t convince - and it’s often the case that it leads to even more resistance from those whose ways have to change.

34

That is true, but the details are important. In this case, I think what might matter is that cosmology is in very deep crisis and if 2PC is the correct solution then it will be extremely difficult for the scientific community to ignore it if it started getting noticed within the liminal/integral world. They can ignore it very easily if it is just me talking about it, but if they are forced to try to debunk it because non-scientists are taking an interest in it, then the situation might change quite quickly, because even an attempt to debunk it would lead to all sorts of interesting discussions they aren’t expecting.

So for me the key question is to how the liminal/integral movement can sufficiently overcome the Big Tent Paradox for that process to even begin.

So I showed the same AI the opening post of the Big Tent Paradox thread, and the paragraph above.

Reply:

The post is useful because it identifies a real structural problem. Whether or not 2PC is the answer, the “Big Tent Paradox” you describe is a genuine challenge for any movement attempting to foster a new paradigm while simultaneously refusing to privilege any candidate paradigm.

The key question, though, is whether overcoming that paradox requires 2R to accept 2PC specifically, or merely to change the rules by which paradigm candidates are evaluated.

If I were thinking sociologically rather than philosophically, I would say the latter is far more likely.

A movement like Second Renaissance is unlikely to collectively decide “2PC is true” before the wider intellectual world does. What it might do is decide that certain questions are now unavoidable:

  • Is reality fundamentally mind-independent?
  • Can anti-realism be sustained?
  • Is there an objective metaphysical structure to reality?
  • Must a new paradigm solve consciousness, QM, and cosmology together?
  • What criteria would allow us to distinguish a genuine contender from another item on the menu?

That shift alone would be enormous.

The reason I think this matters is that the most likely route for 2PC to become influential is not:

2PC → accepted by 2R → accepted by science.

It is more like:

2PC → forces discussion about paradigm criteria → exposes inadequacies of existing positions → attracts serious examination → eventually gains scientific attention.

The intermediate step is crucial.

Historically, successful paradigm shifts usually begin with a change in the questions people think are worth asking.

Before Einstein, people argued about the ether.

After Einstein, people argued about spacetime.

The centre of gravity moved before consensus emerged.

The same thing would probably have to happen here.

The interesting part of your scenario is the interaction between the liminal world and mainstream science.

You wrote:

They can ignore it very easily if it is just me talking about it, but if they are forced to try to debunk it because non-scientists are taking an interest in it, then the situation might change quite quickly.

There is some truth in that.

Academics frequently ignore fringe ideas.

What they find much harder to ignore is a growing audience asking informed questions.

The history of science contains many cases where a theory was initially engaged with primarily because it had become impossible not to engage with it.

However, there is also a danger here.

The moment a theory becomes associated primarily with a cultural movement rather than a research programme, mainstream scientists often become more resistant rather than less.

You can see this with many consciousness theories, integral theories, and alternative cosmologies.

Scientists often ask:

“Why is this attracting followers before it has attracted evidence?”

So there is a delicate balance.

Too little attention and nobody notices.

Too much movement-building before scientific engagement and scientists become suspicious.

The sweet spot is probably a growing intellectual discussion among serious thinkers rather than a mass movement.

As for the Big Tent itself, I suspect the contradiction is even deeper than you describe.

The tent exists because participants disagree about reality.

But if a genuine paradigm emerges, continued commitment to the tent becomes impossible.

At some point the movement must choose between:

  1. Remaining a marketplace of ideas.
  2. Becoming an intellectual movement organised around a specific vision.

You cannot permanently be both.

The question is whether 2R was created to host a search, or to eventually arrive somewhere.

Your argument is that it claims to be doing the latter while structurally committing itself to the former.

That is a serious challenge.

But from a social-change perspective, I think the decisive factor is not whether 2R overcomes the paradox.

The decisive factor is whether enough people inside the tent start asking:

“What would count as a successful resolution of the Meaning Crisis?”

The moment people begin demanding explicit answers to that question, the pressure for evaluation, comparison, and eventually selection becomes unavoidable.

At that point, the tent starts transforming from a gathering place into a filtering mechanism.

And once a movement begins filtering, paradigm formation becomes possible.

The irony is that 2PC may not need the Big Tent to endorse it. It may only need the Big Tent to abandon the assumption that all foundational worldviews should indefinitely coexist without adjudication. Once the movement starts seriously asking how one knows whether a paradigm candidate succeeds or fails, every candidate—including 2PC—must enter a much more demanding arena. If 2PC really does solve consciousness, quantum foundations, and cosmology in a unified way, that process would help it. If it does not, that same process would expose its weaknesses.

Either way, the transition from “permanent pluralism” to “structured evaluation” is probably the critical social step. Without that transition, the Big Tent remains a destination. With it, the Big Tent becomes a launchpad.

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I don’t think 2PC will ‘force’ anything - otherwise it would have already. Again, correctness of the theory is not the bottleneck in limiting its adoption - assuming it is correct. This is bad social theory.

I posted this in another thread somewhere, but it’s a summary of a theory about how media get adopted. Long story short, nearly everyone assumes adoption happens through something like a push dynamic; the merits of the theory will lead to its success. This is exactly the mistaken the LLM is repeating. It’s actually a pull dynamic that leads to success: your theory’s ability to answer some pressing need, to align with forces already looking for something like what you have, will lead to its success.

From “A History of Communication” by Marshall Poe:

Rule 1: Groups of tinkerers discover new technologies. How are new technologies conceived? We sometimes say that protean geniuses – your da Vincis, Edisons, and Oppenheimers – come up with them, but that’s wrong. These folks were smart and creative, but they had a lot of help.20 Others were on the “trail of discovery,” and some were quite close to the end when the discovery was made. Alas, we forget about them in our haste to create idols. We also sometimes say that “necessity is the mother of invention,” but that’s wrong too. Clearly, something impels people to create, but we know it’s not necessity.

For the first 170,000 years of human existence we lived under dire necessity – thirst, hunger, disease – yet we invented almost nothing. Alas, we seem to have forgotten that as well. What the record shows is that groups of interested people – tinkerers – almost always stand behind the discovery of new technologies. Tinkerers do not work alone, and they do not work because they must. They work together with others on problems that may or may not be “objectively” important.

Rule 2: Tinkerers can only discover the technologies in their technome. We like to talk about technological “leaps,” moments at which we jump from now into the future. This is a flattering metaphor, but it’s inaccurate. Like evolutionary change, technological change is almost always incremental. Darwin said natura non facit saltum; we should say technologia non facit saltum. Indeed, the parallel is quite close. One of the principles of biological evolution is that the potential of a species to evolve new traits is constrained by its genome, that is, the set of genes it has available. It might be evolutionarily advantageous for your progeny to have wings, but it’s simply not possible given the genes Homo sapiens has to work with. The same principle holds for technological progress: the potential of tinkerers to invent new technologies is constrained by their “technome,” that is, the set of technologies (in the broad sense) available to them. Leonardo and his colleagues probably would have been pretty excited about building an A-bomb, but the technome they were tinkering with didn’t have the technologies needed for them to conceive, let alone build one. As in all things, you can only do what you can do.

Rule 3: Technological supply does not produce technological demand. We generally say that new technologies are invented because people find them useful. That, however, is not quite right. If it were, then we wouldn’t find that the supply of useful tools almost always outstrips demand for useful tools. For most of our history we’ve had what amounts to excess technical capacity: we can build more tools than we can use. The reason is that tinkerers do not always – or even very often before modern times – produce new technologies because they think anyone will use them. They know that if you build it, sometimes they will come and sometimes they won’t. But they build it anyway, creating the aforementioned excess capacity.

Rule 4: Technological demand, if unfocused, does not produce technological supply. We generally say that new technologies enter mass use because a lot of people want them. That, however, isn’t quite right either. If it were, then we would find that mass demand for useful tools always translates into mass supply, and it doesn’t. That’s because technological demand is often unfocused. For a whole variety of reasons, new tools generally cost more and are worth less when they first appear than once they have been adopted en masse.

This is another way of saying that the barrier to early adoption is higher than the barrier to late adoption. The problem is that the barrier to early adoption is often too high for individuals, even if there are a large number of them. Thus, for want of early adopters, the new tool never enters mass use.

Rule 5: Only organized interests can produce the demand necessary to “pull” a new technology into mass use. We live in an individualistic age and therefore think individuals make history. They don’t – at least not technological history. Only what we will call “organized interests” can make technological history because only they can overcome the barriers to early adoption mentioned above. Individuals are too poor to accomplish this feat, and so are disorganized masses of individuals. Organized interests, however, can “get the ball rolling” because they are coordinated and have a common purpose. They can create, gather, and pool resources; compel their members and others to do their bidding; and focus their power on specific goals – such as engineering and adopting a new technology. Organized interests can take many forms and pursue many purposes. As a general rule, however, we can identify three main types: economic organizations (businesses, industries, classes), political organizations (functionaries, leaders, castes), and religious organizations (believers, priests, orders).

Almost whenever and everywhere we find complex society, we find these sorts of organizations. Clearly there is something essential about them, though just what it is extends far beyond our present concerns.

Rule 6: When it comes to technological adoption, organized interests are reactive and not proactive. We tend to think of organizations – outside ones like revolutionary political parties – as conservative: they generally don’t fix things that aren’t manifestly broken. That’s exactly right as it concerns the history of technology. Historically speaking, organized interests have not adopted new tools in anticipation of some future change in conditions. Rather, they have adopted new tools in response to some ongoing change in conditions, particularly one that makes them unable to do something they want to do. When these conditions arise, organized interests begin to search for, engineer, and adopt new tools. More likely than not, those tools will already be available in prototypical form because of excess technical capacity (see Rule 3).

Rule 7: Organized interests are most likely to adopt new tools in response to fundamentally new economic conditions. We find it very easy to say that Marx was “wrong.” But in fact he was right, at least about the longterm driver of technological development. There have been five fundamental shifts in the way humans make their livings: the Behavioral Revolution (40,000 BC), the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 BC), the Capitalist Revolution (AD 1200), the Industrial Revolution (AD 1760), and the Information Revolution (AD 1940). During each of these shifts, there was an upsurge in innovation, adoption, and dissemination of new tools. It’s not hard to understand why: the old tools, while still useful, didn’t work well under new conditions, so new tools had to be brought into play. By Rules 1, 2, and 3 we know that the prototypes of these tools were available because of excess capacity; by Rules 4, 5, and 6 we know that organized interests under pressure to adapt to new conditions engineered, adopted, and spread them.

Together these rules suggest the following “pull” theory of media adoption: “New Economic Conditions → Technical Insufficiency → Increased Demand from Organized Interests → New Media Technology.” This theory, however, is not quite complete. As we hinted previously, there are two additional factors that affect the adoption process: the timing of adoption and the nature of the technology adopted. As to timing, there can be no doubt that the rate of adoption has been increasing rapidly for at least the last 40,000 years. To take a pertinent example, it took several thousand years for writing to go from idea to widely used implement; it took only several decades for the personal computer to do the same. The rate of adoption, therefore, is a function of time. As to the nature of the technology adopted, there can be no doubt that some tools are naturally more appealing than others. To take another pertinent example, it took more than four centuries following the introduction of the printing press for mass literacy to develop in Europe; it took only a few decades for television to become a staple of everyday life. Reading is hard and not much fun; watching is easy and fun. The rate of adoption, then, is also a clear function of natural ease-of-use and enjoyment.

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That’s a terrible argument. Just because something has not happened yet, it does not follow that never will, because it should already have happened.

All kinds of new ideas forced things to happen, and very frequently it didn’t happen until after the originator was dead. Sometimes it takes decades.

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Why not get an unbiased viewpoint to weigh in? Upload a pdf of this conversation to your favorite LLM and ask who it agrees with more on the last point. Please upload the result with a link to the conversation.

https://forum.secondrenaissance.net/t/as-requested-by-robert-2pc-and-social-theory/767/print

Here’s what Deepseek (afaik the one you rely on the most) has to say when I ask it. If it tells you something significantly different, let me know.

Based on the final exchange between dvdsiph and GeoffDann, I agree more with dvdsiph on the core point about the dynamics of paradigm adoption.

Here’s why:

Where dvdsiph is correct

dvdsiph’s argument is grounded in a robust, historically-informed understanding of how new ideas, technologies, and paradigms actually get adopted. The “pull theory” they articulate—drawn from Marshall Poe’s work—is a sophisticated corrective to the naive “push theory” that Geoff’s position risks falling into.

The key insights from dvdsiph that I find more compelling:

  1. Correctness is not the bottleneck. History is replete with correct ideas that languished or were actively resisted for generations—Semmelweis and handwashing being the perfect example. The assumption that “if 2PC is correct, it will eventually force its way through” is a form of intellectual optimism that doesn’t match historical evidence.

  2. The push vs. pull distinction is crucial. Geoff’s framing (“2PC forces discussion about paradigm criteria”) implicitly relies on a push dynamic—the theory’s merits will compel attention. But dvdsiph correctly points out that adoption happens through pull: organized interests adopt new frameworks when they face pressing needs that existing tools cannot address.

  3. Organized interests, not abstract merit, drive adoption. Paradigm shifts don’t happen because philosophers win arguments. They happen when institutions, funding bodies, and professional communities find themselves unable to do what they need to do with the old tools, and then search for—and adopt—alternatives.

Where Geoff’s position is weaker

Geoff’s response to dvdsiph is notably thin: he dismisses the argument as “terrible” and points to historical examples where it took decades for ideas to catch on. But this actually undermines his own position rather than supporting it. He says:

“All kinds of new ideas forced things to happen, and very frequently it didn’t happen until after the originator was dead. Sometimes it takes decades.”

But this is exactly what dvdsiph is pointing out! The idea that a theory can “force” things to happen decades after the originator’s death is not a push dynamic—it’s a pull dynamic. The idea didn’t force anything; conditions eventually changed such that organized interests found the idea useful.

The more nuanced truth

Where I think Geoff has a point—though he doesn’t articulate it well—is that 2PC could potentially become part of the solution space that organized interests turn to when they reach a breaking point. The cosmological crisis, the hard problem of consciousness, and the meaning crisis are all real pressures that could eventually generate demand for a new unifying framework.

But dvdsiph is correct that:

  1. This won’t happen because 2PC is “correct”
  2. It will happen (if it happens) because institutional actors face unbearable pressure and find 2PC useful
  3. The liminal/integral space is unlikely to be the primary driver—organized scientific and economic interests will be

Bottom line

dvdsiph’s position is more historically grounded and sociologically sophisticated. Geoff’s position, while understandable given his investment in the theory, suffers from an optimism about intellectual merit that history does not support. Ideas don’t force their way into the world; the world, under pressure, reaches for ideas that help it survive.

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Reminds me of a preso I saw at a tech meetup once. The presenter offered a “T” model of technology adoption. The wide part of the “T” was marketing. The stem of the “T” was technical depth. Given a choice between a product that is wide, but shallow, versus another that is deep, but narrow, I’m sure you can imagine which one is going to make the sales!

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It strikes me from time to time you advocate for free will. For example, in the thread linked below. I’d be curious how ideas forcing things to happen is consistent with free will.

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Here’s another one you can try @GeoffDann :

is dvdjsph acting in bad faith, attacking GeoffDann personally - or acting in good faith, attempting to move the discussion forward?

Very interested in the results. And still interested in knowing what your favorite LLM has to say about the push vs pull question.

My suspicion, which I’ll be so bold as to declare: the LLM will tell you that myself and others have actually been attempting to help you develop your idea into something that can make a difference in the world, because that’s what we all care about!