Around 5am this morning I woke up (too much Fernet last night? or maybe it was the pre-Qoöl latte) and started thinking about layers of awareness. Clearly the brain has lots going on at all times both inside and outside of the realm of consciousness awareness, and multiple layers within conscious awareness itself. For example, not only can you focus your attention directly on your physical sensations, or your thoughts (or even mental stillness), but it is easy enough to maintain an awareness of that awareness, or meta-awareness. This could be described as the state of being conscious of where and how your attention is focused.

If you concentrate hard, you can also (most likely) at least briefly achieve a layer on top of this, that is, the state of being aware that you are aware of where and how your attention is focused. However, this meta-2nd power-awareness (meta-2-awareness) isn't very functional. There's no real point in maintaining this state of mind, because there isn't any content to process through this additional filter. What non-reflexive information can you glean from being aware that you are aware of your attention? None, as far as I can tell.

However, I think it's relevant that this state of mind exists. For an AI with multiple "brains," this extra layer could really come in handy. If you were a sentient being with autonomous control of more than one body-brain (biological and/or artificial), then you would necessarily need to maintain multiple attentions, at least one for each physical and virtual environment that your body-brain agents were currently inhabiting / exploring. In this case meta-X-awareness would at least come in handy, and might be absolutely necessary to effectively manage multiple agents with discrete perceptual fields.

Meta-1-awareness, or being aware of where and how your attention is focussed, is the state of mind that allows a human being (one body, one brain) to act with intention in the world, to transcend the reactive state, and to manifest imagined realities through creative action. Meta-2-awareness would serve a parallel function for a sentient being controlling multiple body-brain agents. Meta-2-awareness would serve as the contextual "glue" that would hold the multiple body-brains together into one identity, with the capability for unified intent.

Is there the potential for conflict between the Meta-1 and Meta-2 states? I think so, because sub-agents (or holons, to borrow a term from Ken Wilber) can have their own conflicting agendas (conflicting with each other, or with the agenda of their meta-agent or respective sub-agents). For example, your kidneys/bladder/fluid regulatory system, as a non-autonomous sub-agent system of your body, has an agenda that is discrete from whatever components of your body-brain motivate you to seek entertainment. Thus, the conflict experienced in direct simple awareness when you have to piss during a movie you are enjoying. A conflict you could potentially experience in meta-1-awareness could be between two or more memetic complexes competing for attention and energy (ethical programming vs. success/ambition programming for example). A conflict between simple awareness and Meta-1 awareness could also exist, for example part of you could want to "veg-out" and watch some mindless television while your Meta-1 level directs you to more intentional, goal-directed behavior (and this should not be interpreted as an anti-TV, or "pro-productivity" statement). The process of falling asleep when you want to stay awake is also a battle between levels, that of somatic non-awareness and simple awareness (and by default all higher levels, which require simple awareness as a platform to operate on top of).

So, a potential conflict between Meta-1 and Meta-2 states could manifest as conscious agents "splitting off" from the AI master-brain, even going so far as to trying to dissolve the higher state entirely. Destroying the network, if you will.

Is there a need for a Meta-3 state? It's hard to imagine, because a Meta-2 state could effectively manage a very large number of linked sentient agents. Let me know what you think.

Also started a new remix of "One" this morning ... much harder than the original mix but still breaks. We'll see how it goes, but I'm hoping Mark and I can use it for some exclusive mixes we'll be delivery for the Momu album promotion in Feb.