Rome Viharo

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Rome Viharo is a social media strategist known for supporting the ideas of Rupert Sheldrake and his conspiracy theories about skeptics on Wikipedia, working as the director of operations for Deepak Chopra's Integrative Studies Historical Archive and Repository (ISHAR), and advancing a mishmash of philosophical ideas he calls OS/AL 0 1 2, the promotion of which has at times been indistinguishable from internet trolling.

Contents

[edit] OS 0 1 2

Sometime prior to 2003, Viharo created the original version of what he calls "OS 0 1 2." His early promotion of it included some bizarre claims:

OS 012 is a memetic and language technology that resolves all conflict and war. It creates synergy and syncronocity [sic]. It allows the user to increase thier [sic] own intelligence.[1]

Apparently, the key to OS 0 1 2 is this bit of tri-positional logic:

All ideas conflict or have the potential for conflict. ALL IDEAS ARE TRUE(1), FALSE(2), and/or MYSTERY(0). ALL the time. In ALL environments.[2]

Viharo's self-described "global dialectic for personal interaction on the Internet" consists of vague claims and contradictory statements seemingly designed to confound arguments within a kaleidoscope of confused rhetoric, some of which go beyond nonsense and clash directly with known physical laws.[3][4] While no one is quite sure what OS 0 1 2 exactly is, a commenter on the Bad Science Forum may have described it best: "It looks as if someone took a philosophy text book, cut it into lots of tiny little pieces, and then stuck them back together at random."[5][6]

Viharo has also promoted OS 0 1 2 as a meme, claiming "The exact number of online users spreading [it] is impossible to determine, however online records suggest a figure no less than 50,000." Despite his boasts about its popularity, not many people have ever heard of it, and he's not above asking for money to help spread the idea.[7]

Early on, Viharo decided he could best try to spread his OS 0 1 2 "meme" virally. In practice, that meant picking fights on internet forums then trying to convince people their views were simultaneously right, wrong, and neutral,[8] an activity otherwise known as trolling.[9] Using a thought process much like the infamous Mary Whitehouse, he insists that anyone who talks about it is using it, regardless of their attitude toward it. When questioned about the nature of his algorithms, he has declared that text is an inadequate medium to convey his ideas,[10] even though whatever algorithm he is coding can be reduced to written form if it can be encoded electronically.

[edit] Aiki Wiki

In 2014, Viharo re-branded OS 0 1 2 as AL 0 1 2, supposedly symbolizing its mysterious algorithmic property. Sometime later, he again re-branded it as the "six petals of the ikia" at Aiki Wiki,[11] a website he is developing as "a platform for online collaborative consensus building and publishing."[12] In this regard, it appears to take a different approach than a traditional wiki (like this one): while most wikis are focused on publishing some particular body of information, and develop some consensus-building process to facilitate that goal, it appears that AikiWiki will be starting out with a consensus-building procedure, and publishing what comes of that procedure. Unfortunately, it appears poised to attempt to further Viharo's Wikipedia campaigns (see below) with a "cubby" that will include pages meant specifically for use in guiding Wikipedia editors.[13]

[edit] Google consciousness

In 2011 Viharo and business partner Maf Lewis delivered a talk at TEDx speculating that the popular search engine Google may be sentient. Viharo stated that Internet memes are the equivalent of spirits and that Francis Heylighen's concept of a global brain is being realized via Google and social media.

Admitting that he didn't know what consciousness is, Viharo cited philosopher Daniel Dennett's musings that consciousness involves parallel processes which compete... and concluded that since Google sorts and ranks competing websites, Google itself is conscious.[14][15][16] Naturally, Viharo's method of promoting his grand revelations was to stir up conflict on the JREF forum (posting as "Bubblefish").[17] Since then, he has claimed (Comfort-style) that this talk (and many of his other past errors as well) were merely "creative works" and not at all serious.[18]

[edit] Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia‎

See the main article on this topic: Guerrilla Skepticism on Wikipedia

In 2013, Viharo began to insist that Rupert Sheldrake's "morphic resonance" is not pseudoscience.[19][20]

Viharo became an online activist in support of Sheldrake's claims that a conspiracy of "ideologue" skeptics were targeting him for abuse.[21]

In an interview with parapsychology advocate Alex Tsakiris, Viharo said there was "definitely a conspiracy" of skeptics who were personally targeting him. He characterized the struggle as "a war of ideas", and compared it to "Americans and Nazis" fighting against each other in World War II.[22]

However, no such conspiracy of skeptics appears to exist.

Viharo further claims that he "thought [he] was also editing anonymously on Wikipedia" (because he was using the name "Tumbleman") but "was outed by Vzaak/Manul on Wikipedia within three days of arrive [sic] on Sheldrake’s article."[23] However, in his first edit on the talkpage of Rupert Sheldrake's article, he linked to his userpage as "Rome Viharo",[24] though he removed his name a minute later.[25]

[edit] ISHAR

In 2014, Viharo became the director of operations for Deepak Chopra's Integrative Studies Historical Archive and Repository.[26] Viharo used a sockpuppet account ("SAS81") on Wikipedia to attempt to get other users to remove skeptical sources from Chopra's Wikipedia article.

However, Viharo was discovered and permabanned, becuase he was using a new account to evade a previous ban.[27][28]

Viharo later claimed on his website that he was fired from his director position at ISHAR by the president of the Chopra Foundation,[29] and ISHAR's website appears to confirm that he no longer holds that post.[30]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Viharo as "Bubblefish" spamming "creativity.net"
  2. OS 0 1 2 BASIC
  3. Viharo's huge "Global Dialectic for Internet Communication" tract
  4. See Bekenstein bound[wp] at the other wiki; compare with claims that "Simply, ideas, memes, media and words replicate. Exponentially." Exponential growth is unbounded; the actual possible information density of any given region is not.
  5. Bad Science
  6. Oddly, Viharo's O S 012 is also marketed by someone calling themselves Thor Hammerax who maintains that their The Hammar Axis theory proves "the stars actually rotate around us."
  7. About OS 0 1 2 "This project needs intellectual and financial resource, if you are interested in this, please contact OS012 AT zeitghostmedia.com"
  8. Viharo trolling as "Tumbleman" introduces himself to a forum: "This dialectic is unique, in that is quantifies the irrational, and the feelings, art, and humor, object and subject, into her axiom and proposition. THis confuses many at first, most likely including you...you will soon see how silly some of your ideas have been...Just a warning...I am always winning in every discussion that I have. I am completly undefeated."
  9. Viharo as "Bubblefish" even kept a log of his trolling activity
  10. Viharo avoids being pinned down about AL 0 1 2
  11. The ikia itself.
  12. https://web.archive.org/web/20150416071249/http://aiki.wiki/about_aiki_media
  13. http://aiki.wiki/search/category/Wikipedia
  14. By Rome Viharo for Google Consciousness GoogleConsciousness.com
  15. Google Consciousness Youtube
  16. About Viharo's TEDx presentation The most incoherent presentation ever made supposedly "rocketed to the top" of the TEDx “most popular” ranking.
  17. JREF thread about "Google Consciousness"
  18. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Essay:Rome_Viharo_revisits_Rational_Wiki,_a_critique#Creative_works.
  19. Viharo as Tumbleman argues that Sheldrake's morphic resonance isn't pseudoscience
  20. Viharo as Viharo argues that Sheldrake's critique of "the scientific materialistic philosophy" is "an idea worth spreading"
  21. Pseudoscientist Rupert Sheldrake Is Not Being Persecuted, And Is Not Like Galileo - New Republic Farley concludes, "the central claim, that Guerrilla Skeptics are controlling Sheldrake’s bio, is demonstrably false. It is a classic conspiracy theory."
  22. Rome Viharo, Wikipedia, We Have a Problem Skeptiko.com
  23. http://wikipediawehaveaproblem.com/2015/04/rational-wiki-wikipedia-editor-comparison/
  24. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake&diff=prev&oldid=570985795
  25. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Rupert_Sheldrake&diff=next&oldid=570985795
  26. Maureen Seaberg Let's Raise ISHAR! Huffington Post
  27. Wikipedia, ISHAR update
  28. Sockpuppet investigations page; block noted at bottom
  29. Update: The ISHAR project
  30. http://isharonline.org/content/ishar-boards
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