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Implications and Applications
PEAR activities are
motivated
by three overarching goals:
Basic Science
Accommodation of the
observed anomalies
within a functional scientific framework will require the explicit
inclusion
of consciousness as an active agent
in
the establishment of physical reality. This expansion of the scientific
paradigm demands more courageous theoretical structures than exist at
present,
guided by more comprehensive empirical data than is now available,
acquired
via more cooperative interdisciplinary collaborations than are
currently
practiced. PEAR has enduring roles to play in all three aspects of this
search.
Technological
Applications
Despite the small scale of
the
observed consciousness-related anomalies, they could be
functionally devastating to many types of contemporary information
processing
systems, especially those relying on random reference signals.
Such
concern could apply to aircraft cockpits and ICBM silos; to surgical
facilities
and trauma response equipment; to environmental and disaster control
technology;
or to any other technical scenarios where the emotions of human
operators
may intensify their interactions with the controlling devices and
processes.
Indeed, the extraordinarily sophisticated equipment that generates
much
of the fundamental data on which modern science is based cannot be
excluded
from this potential vulnerability.Protection against such
consciousness-related
interference could become essential to the design and operation of many
future information acquisition and processing systems. On the
positive
side, since these same research results provide important technical
evidence
of the precious process of human creativity, they offer the promising
possibility
of a new genre of human/machine systems that will enable more creative
performance in all manner of applications from medicine to management,
from manufacturing to communications, from education to recreation.
Cultural Implications
Beyond its scientific
impact and
its technological applications, clear evidence
of
an active role of consciousness in the establishment of reality holds
sweeping implications for our view of ourselves, our relationship to
others,
and to the cosmos in which we exist. These, in turn, must inevitably
impact
our values, our priorities, our sense of responsibility, and our style
of life. Integration of these changes across the society can lead
to
a substantially superior cultural ethic, wherein the
long-estranged
siblings of science and spirit, of analysis and aesthetics, of
intellect
and intuition, and of many other subjective and objective aspects of
human
experience will be productively reunited.
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