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Monthly Archives: August 2017

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS HAPPINESS.

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Emotions., Energy, Google it., Happiness., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Technology, The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions.

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Capitalism and Greed, Distribution of wealth, Happiness., Inequility, The Future of Mankind

( A follow on read: Twelve minutes from the post – WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF NOW.)

While writing:( what is the concept of now) my daughter suggested I write a happy post. This post is therefore dedicated to her continuing search for happiness.

What is happiness?  How do we find the key to happiness?

Is happiness the sole purpose of life or is it just good health with a bad memory.

To day this is the default view. Skepticism about the afterlife drives humankind to seek not only immortality but also earthly happiness.

Who would like to live for ever in eternal misery?

What stands between us and an answer to this deceptively complex questions is the problem of subjectivity –happiness means different things to different people.

To behaviorist, happiness is a cocktail of emotions we experience when we do something good or positive. To neurologists, happiness is the experience of a flood of hormones released in the brain as a reward for behavior that prolongs survival. According to the tenets of several major religions, happiness indicates the presence of God.

This question has no straightforward answer, because the meaning of the question itself is unclear. What exactly is being asked? Perhaps you want to know what the word ‘happiness’ means. In that case your inquiry is linguistic.

Chances are you had something more interesting in mind: perhaps you want to know about the thing, happiness, itself. Is it pleasure, a life of prosperity, something else? Yet we can’t answer that question until we have some notion of what we mean by the word.Image associée

Is there anything more to being happy than just thinking you’re happy?

Do we have the power to choose to be happy or unhappy?

Are all kinds of happiness created equal?

Happiness is not a single all-encompassing concept it is a complex the notion.

A state of mind. What is this state of mind we call happiness? Typical answers to this question include life satisfaction, pleasure, or a positive emotional condition.

A life that goes well for the person leading it. Perhaps you are a high-achieving intellectual who thinks that only ignoramuses can be happy. On this sort of view, happy people are to be pitied, not envied.

We are inclined to think that pleasure is the key to happiness.

Is it purpose, or goal?

Has a goal that is an end-in-itself, nothing that he does is actually worth doing.

For most people, happiness is a central aspect of well-being, since most people very much desire to be happy. Even a slave might come to internalize the values of his oppressors and be happy, and this strikes most as an unenviable life indeed.

Is happiness overrated?

How if at all should one pursue happiness as part of a good life?

Is it possible to objectify and even quantify so subjective and elusive a quality as happiness?  The individual pursuit of happiness may be subject to non-moral norms as well, prudence being the most obvious among them.

The pursuit of happiness is self-defeating especially when it is associated with pleasure. The virtue of compassion or kindness, giving not receiving, produce happiness.    

Philosophical “theories of happiness” can be about either of at least two different things: well-being, or a state of mind. To be happy, it seems, is just to be in a certain sort of psychological state or condition.

Is it a psychological state (for example, feeling overall more pleasure than pain) and happiness as a positive evaluation of your life, even if it has involved more pain than pleasure.

Above all, there is the fundamental question: In which sense, if any, is happiness a proper goal of a human life?

Wealth, beauty, and pleasure, for example, have little effect on happiness.

What is needed to achieve genuine happiness?

Answer me this:  Would you choose to attach ourselves to a device that would produce a constant state of intense pleasure, even if we never achieved anything in our lives other than experiencing this pleasure. We all need to answer this question for ourselves.

Morality itself is a worthy goal of human existence. Our good or bad fortune can play a part in determining our happiness; for example, happiness can be affected by factors as our material circumstances, our place in society, and even our looks, whether we are married or not. In the long run marriage is not a major source of either happiness or unhappiness.

When asked Aristotle said” that the supreme good is happiness.”

And of this nature happiness is mostly thought to be, for this we choose always for its own sake, and never with a view to anything further: whereas honour, pleasure, intellect, in fact every excellence we choose for their own sakes, it is true, but we choose them also with a view to happiness, conceiving that through their instrumentality we shall be happy: but no man chooses happiness with a view to them, nor in fact with a view to any other thing whatsoever.

But what is happiness?

For Aristotle, it is by understanding the distinctive function of a thing that one can understand its essence.

Whereas human beings need nourishment like plants and have sentience like animals, their distinctive function, says Aristotle, is their unique capacity to reason. Thus, our supreme good, or happiness, is to lead a life that enables us to use and develop our reason, and that is in accordance with reason. Unlike amusement or pleasure, which can also be enjoyed by animals, happiness is not a state but an activity. And like virtue or goodness, it is profound and enduring.

By living our life to the full according to our essential nature as rational beings, we are bound to become happy regardless.

For this reason, happiness is more a question of behavior and of habit—of virtue—than of luck; a person who cultivates such behaviors and habits is able to bear his misfortunes with balance and perspective, and thus can never be said to be truly unhappy.

Some goals are subordinate to other goals, which are themselves subordinate to yet other goals, but happiness needs sadness. Without sadness there can be no happy moments unlike pleasure which can be manufactured by algorithms.

Being happy doesn’t come easy with the stress of modern life.  Take for instance the average American who uses sixty times more energy than the average stone age hunter-gatherer. Is he sixty times happier?

It took just a piece of bread to make a starving medieval peasant joyful.

It appears that even with all our unprecedented accomplishments even if we provided free food, ensured world peace, provided free medical care, gave everyone a thousand bitcoins the Capitalism system ensures that the ceiling of happiness remains out of reach.

Our exceptions are driven by our biochemistry level rather than our economic, social or political situation. Pleasure v pain. Unpleasant bodily sensations.

PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS DISAPPOINT TO REMAIN HAPPY YOU MUST LEARN HOW TO FORGIVE, FORGET, “ Comparison is the thief of joy.”

Self-actualization is Happiness. Joy goes in and out of vogue. We can deceive ourselves into thinking we’re happy when we’re not and we can be happy without realizing it.

Happy.

It’s pretty hard to tell what does bring happiness; poverty and wealth have both failed.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of a pig in shit"

I would be as happy as a pig in shit if I could live in THE CONCEPT OF NOW.

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHAT IS THE CONCEPT OF NOW.

29 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Cosmology

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Age of Uncertainty, Different Aspects of Time

 

( A mind-blowing, thought provoking ten minute read)

Humans seem to be the only animals who know they have to die sometimes. Therefore, the concept of time is fundamental to us and we have to argue from the basis of our transitory existence.

We can measure it, but we can’t feel it so we can’t experience it.curved space time

Is the concept of “now” an illusion or is now the past.

We know how to calculate the effects of velocity and gravitational potential on physical processes, we explain this in terms of time dilation, but we do not actually know that it is time that changes, and we most certainly do not know what time is. We completely avoid the fact that time flows, or that there is a special moment in time we refer to as “now.”

Time feels like one of the only constants in life — it passes day after day at the same pace.

You never be able to see now as the brain take time to process it.

So, will now as it is decoupled by external Algorithms that organise our lives lose it meaning or is there a time gene ticking in the twilight of our DNA.

Google it and see. Know thyself is never easier or cheaper.

One true time is the tick of imagination, without imagination there can be no time. It’s not, because time doesn’t exist, it’s just an illusion of the human mind, everything happens in the present, there was no past, there is no future, only a now that is invisible.

Change needs time, different moments in time need time but how does time work.

Time exists in shapeless color.  It flows around us but there is no answer to how it works. Fortuitously or unfortunately our brains need time to process (but at different speeds) to predict the future, to recall the past, or to realize the present.

So when is now?

Is it the delay period for our brain to replace what we cannot see?

Time can only go forward. If it were possible for time to go backwards, then there would be no past, present, or future.

I am sure I am not the first nor will I be the last person to ask, just what time is.

We don’t know what it is or how it works but all moments of time are equally real.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of cosmology time"

The concept of “now” is completely alien from all physics, although Einstein despaired of his inability to understand it. He worried that its reality might lie outside of physics.

We’ve all heard the phrase that “time is relative,” but it can be difficult to wrap the mind around what that actually means. Relative to what as it flow differently in separate area.

Time is always relative to the traveler. So is it possible to travel through time while stopping time. Does each universes have its own timeline?

We really need to understand nature to properly understand the world of time. Time goes on no matter what. It is or it is not fundamental to the world?

The existence of now is not yet explained by physics, but that means that we don’t yet have the best theoretical understanding of time.

Space-travel with speeds close to that of light may be unfathomable far beyond the reach of current technology. But sending elementary particles on round trips in a particle accelerator at 99.99999 percent of light speed is routine.

We’ll ever be travelling back in time.. but you could never meet your future you!!!!!

In Einstein’s special theory of relativity, there is no such thing as “time” in the singular.

Time passes differently for different observers, depending on the observers’ motion. The prime example is that of the two hypothetical twins: One of them stays at home, on Earth. The other journeys into space in an ultra-fast rocket, nearly as fast as the speed of light, before returning home, he has slightly gone back in time-younger.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of cosmology time"Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of moving clocks with time"

Stephen Hawking is generally considered one of the smartest people on Earth. “We are each free to believe what we want, and it’s my view that the simplest explanation is; there is no god. No one created our universe, and no one directs our fate.” He believes in spontaneous creation from nothing.

Physics on its own will not settle the question of why there is something rather than nothing.

No one can prove or disprove the existence of an immaterial invisible being. What Hawking did do is show how the universe could come into existence without a Prime Mover to set things into motion.

He re-acquaints us with the standard debate between two eternal ‘somethings’-–the uni/multiverse and God.” We do not need a God who is outside space-time and who Himself was created from nothing, to create the universe. God is superfluous.

Space time however is a now slice of time that without motion goes nowhere, with motion it might encompass a worm hole to past present and future.

We all measure our experience in space-time differently. That’s because space-time isn’t flat — it’s curved, and it can be warped by matter and energy.

So technically, gravity doesn’t affect time, rather, affected time is what called gravity. Gravity is only the force which can decelerate the time…so it is not time.  Every object attracts every other object with a force that is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. So it stand to reason that time travels at different speeds.

In my opinion that mover is not gravity, its the space that occupies the space between dark matter and anti matter.

This bizarre ingredient dark matter dominates the universe but does not emit light or energy, but studies of distant supernovae revealed that the universe today is expanding faster than it was in the past, not slower, indicating that the expansion is accelerating.

This would only be possible if the universe contained enough energy to overcome gravity — dark energy.

So what we are saying is that dark matter particle interactions with ordinary matter to produce dark energy.

The familiar material of the universe, known as baryonic matter, is composed of protons, neutrons and electrons and sterile neutrinos only interact with regular matter through gravity, making it a strong candidate for dark matter.

However most of the matter in the universe is something yet unseen.

Now we come to antimatter, it is routinely made in high-energy collisions inside particle smashers the world over.

Every particle has an antiparticle with the same mass but the opposite electric charge. The proton has the negatively charged antiproton; the electron has the positively charged anti-electron, or positron.

Notoriously, matter and antimatter destroy each other, or annihilate, whenever they come into contact. These are also produced in some radioactive decays.

Time passing is actually a function of velocity, although velocity is distance over time.

Time is the 4th dimension, but we all know it is qualitatively different. We can stand still in space (choose any coordinate system) but we can’t stand still in time. Physics ignores this difference, and uses relativity theory to relate aspects of space and time intervals.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of cosmology time"

Ultimately, time is a parameter that measures how something changes with respect to a reference clock changing. By the time I have written this post and you have read it neither of us can get back the time we spent doing so.

“In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.” This is a good reason why time must only go forward. I will never travel in time but someone will, one day.

Perhaps there was no time before the big bang, it emerged as a consequence of the formation of a black hole in a higher-dimensional universe.

This seems unlikely as there must have being time before the big bang. Why? Because the past is different from the future. Why did the Big Bang have the properties it did because over time it developed them.

The observable universe is not all there is. It’s part of a bigger multiverse and the Big Bang was not the beginning of these universes.

Causes precede effects.

We remember the past but we don’t remember the future because at the center of Universes there is no time.

Why because time as a visible product does not exist.

However rest assured our personal data is probable the most valuable resource most humans still have. In time Google, Face Book and Twitter will become the all-knowing time oracles that will evolve into agents and finally into sovereigns.

Like Big Ben a black hole can never get back the time it lost, it remains silent.

I know what time is until you ask me for a definition about it, and then I can’t give it to you.

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. THE INDIVIDUAL IS BECOMING A TINY CHIP INSIDE A GIANT SYSTEM THAT NOBODY REALLY UNDERSTANDS.

22 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Evolution, Humanity., Innovation., Life., Post - truth politics., Social Media, Technology, The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Where's the Global Outrage.

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Algorithms trade., Artificial Intelligence., Social Media, The Future of Mankind

 

(Two minute read)

Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organism are algorithms a, and life is data processing. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves.Image associée

Every day we absorb countless data bits.

This relentless flow of data gives rise to new inventions, disruptions that nobody plans, controls or fully comprehends.

For instance no one knows where global politics is heading, or how the global economy functions or what the climate is doing.

For all intensive purpose we don’t give a fuck providing we don’t pick up a virus, and even then our wireless brains want to remain in the flow of data.

Algorithms are constantly watching us, monitoring our thoughts,and feelings to such an extent that the meaning of life is disappearing into the invisible hand of Dataisim called Google, Face Book. Twitter and their disciples.

Experiences are valueless if not shared with an Algorithm on a smart phone.

No wonder we are all busy converting our experiences into data.

Your Dog or Cat or Fridge, might soon have a Facebook or Twitter account.

By equating the human experience with data patterns it is undermining the main source of authority, meaning of life, and this shift will not be just a philosophical revolution, it will be a practical revolution.

After a few hundred years of data flow your feelings which were once your best algorithms will have being replaced by a filtered personal platform or platforms all attached to the Cloud for an annual fee.Image associée

Its good-by democracy, elections. Have you had your DNA sequenced, are you wearing a biometric device that is connected to your smart phone.

The personal cloud god algorithm will tell you who to marry, what career to follow, what to put in your fridge.

All of this begs the question are we humans developing a seed algorithm that when it combines with machine learning will develop its own path, going where no human has gone before or can follow.

We have no idea whether it will develop consciousness and subjective experience.

Before we are reduced to non- conscious algorithms would it not be prudent to establish a New World organisation that vets all technology against our core values as humans. ( See previous posts)

What prevents us from collaborating in a global effort to solve climate change, or any other problem is probable the same reason why we are being exploited by Social media. Humans are deeply divided by nationalism and sectarian beliefs.. However with knowledge comes responsibility. So this failure is a global moral failure, as well as a failure of political will.

The world is changing faster than ever before with us relinquishing authority to crowd wisdom/data in the form of social media that is being mining by capitalist organisations which is governed by algorithms.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of humanity"

While inequality on all fronts grows and our world organisations become irrelevant we are flowed with irrelevant information.

The answer is bleakly simple: We cannot get these issues on our political radar screens without a huge prolong popular uprising.  It looks like humanity will soon be a ripple within the cosmic data flow. Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of humanity"

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: IS IT TIME TO STOP THE FREE FOR ALL ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Social Media

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Power of Social Media, Social Media, Social networking, Social world

( A seven minute read )

What are the serious civic consequences for a world where information flows largely through social networks?

Science is converging on an all-encompassing dogma, which says that organism are algorithms a, and life is data processing. Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness. Non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms may soon know us better than we know ourselves. Social media inhibiting our ability to explore our thoughts and feelings so we can develop as individuals?

When one looks at the current state of the world is Social media tearing apart of the fabric of our societies … We’re getting countries where one half just doesn’t know anything at all about the other. Social media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed everything.

When we click ‘share’ what exactly are we saying.

More often than not, the stories we all decide to share seem utterly random.

 

But it might also be true to say that it is indirectly responsible for terrorists acts. It certainly contributed and was a product of the so-called Arabian spring.

It can spread extremists’ messages virally in minutes. Imagine getting news about middle East issues presented only by Jihadists, because somehow they’ve managed to manipulate social media. There is no “magic algorithm” for identifying terrorist rhetoric and recruitment efforts on the internet.

They say that Social media have revolutionized the ways in which people get involved with causes. In short, it hasn’t. But it has certainly changed the ways in which people can influence others. The more people disclosed about themselves on social media, the more privacy they said they desired.

It has swallowed political campaigns, banking systems, personal histories, the leisure industry, retail, even government and security.

The rise of Donald Trump is ‘a symptom of the mass media’s growing weakness’,especially in controlling the limits of what it is acceptable to say”. (A similar case could be made for the Brexit campaign.)

These  issues underpinning digital culture, and realise that the shift from print to digital media was never just about technology. Technology and media do not exist in isolation – they help shape society, just as they are shaped by it in turn.

Social media has swallowed the news – threatening the funding of public-interest reporting and ushering in an era when everyone has their own facts. But the consequences go far beyond journalism.

One thing is for certain with “Filter bubble” the pathway into the digital future is not going to be a linear journey up a ladder or pyramid.

If we are all not to become chips feeding algorithms Facebook, Google and Twitter must deal more effectively with the darker elements of the platforms they have created.

Algorithms such as the one that powers Facebook’s news feed are designed to give us more of what they think we want – which means that the version of the world we encounter every day in our own personal stream has been invisibly curated to reinforce our pre-existing beliefs.

ISIS has a well-established playbook for using social media and other online channels to attract new recruits and encourage them to act on the terrorist group’s behalf.

Why are we allowing this to happen?

One reason for the companies’ fragmented approach to purging videos that support or incite terrorism is the lack of a universal definition of “terrorist” or “extremist” content—social media companies are unlikely to want to rely solely on the judgment of the CEP or their peers.

Those running social media platforms should ensure that “their algorithms priorities countervailing views and news that’s important, not just the stuff that’s most popular or most self-validating.”

It’s also because we’re mainly interested in ourselves but the problem is that if you reveal everything about yourself or it’s discoverable with a Google search, you may be diminished in your capacity for intimacy.

It feels like theft when someone tells your secrets or data miners piece together your personal history — using your browsing habits, online purchases and social networks — and sell it.

Facebook, are the single fastest-growing source of news referrals online—with more than a billion items shared each day

.No longer do we balancing this type of news exposure with exposure to news that is pertinent to world events?

The problem is the sophisticated algorithms that filter what you read or see.

Are we being entirely closed in on ourselves and our personal world or are we making an effort to step outside of ourselves and become informed about the world at large?

Increasing narcissism of mankind. Self-enhancement and social promotion. Or is sharing really grounded in very basic human motives.

Somebody wants to relate positively to somebody else. This argument might not hold much longer. Social media has created a dilemma around how we reach people.

Each individual may share for a different specific reason: which is really related to how we evolved as a race.

Social media may constitute a force that drives citizens to read news, or at least headlines and abstracts but it is desensitizing us to the problems we all face such as Climate change, Inequality, Wars, Refugees, to the extent that most of us don’t really know where we fit into the greater scheme of things.

Digital crowding, or data grabs perpetrated by Internet companies, or Surveillance, or our vulnerability to cybersnooping which is incompatible with a free society.

They all demonstrate less individuality and creativity.

Social endorsements fundamentally alter the way news is consumed
and shared on the internet. The ever-growing digital native news world social media doesn’t always facilitate conversation around the important issues of the day.

While we are exposed to more information each day because of social media venues such as Facebook and Twitter, we may not necessarily be more informed about critical issues occurring in the world.

We must start taking responsibility for creating the kind of world we want to live in by lobbing the formation of a new World Organisation that vet all technology and AI Algorithms to ensure they abide to our core human values. ( See previous Posts)    

We were going to live online. It is going to be extraordinary. Yet what kind of living is this?

The opportunities for scholars exploring social media effects are vast in scope ( The psychic toll of the current data free-for-all.) and critical to our understanding of how communication is evolving.

Not “liking” anything on Facebook or following anyone on Twitter, making their social networks and preferences harder to track.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "algorithms pictures"

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IS ENGLAND STILL SUFFERING FROM EMPIRE FEVER DISEASE.

17 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

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( A ten minute read)

For better or worse the British Empire had a massive impact on the history of the world. It was in effect the plunder of a quarter of the world by one country.

There is probably no single reason to explain how Britain created such a vast institution and I have no intention here to attempt to give one, however it might help to examine the emotional residue of lost empire, and a peculiarly English neurosis about national pride.

Why? because, Britain has never faced up to the shame of empire.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of empire"

Perhaps Brixit is going to uncover the monumental ignorance surrounding the subject and the EU referendum is the last throes of Empire working its way out of its systems.

The consequences of departure appear to matter less that May’s vapid promise that Brexit will be “red, white and blue.”

It’s impossible to know the extent to which May believes her own myth-making but May’s global Britain will not be an open-armed nation going out into the world. It is a superannuated vision incubated by an amnesiac view of history in which the empire was an act of beneficence, and the outrages perpetrated in its name never happened.

Brexit may well turn out to be a reflection of the rectitude effects left by the collapse of the Empire.

In order to examine anything one needs to know it existed or happened in the first place so as to bear witness or to do anything about it.

The question is what were the motivations behind the creation of the Empire itself?

In world history was it a positive force or a negative force is in many ways irrelevant, the fact is that it was a transformative force.

It constantly mutated, evolved and changed in reaction to events, opportunities and threats. Motivated by greed and selfishness it consisted of an incredibly diverse set of actors through its many years of existence.

So at the risk of disturbing the past here are a few undeniable Empire facts.

Never mind that the majority of people under 50 on both sides of the English channel only have a hazy idea of what the Empire and Commonwealth were all about.

Never mind that approximately 35 million Indians died because of famines caused by British misrule, or that Winston Churchill blamed one of these famines on the “beastly” Indians for “breeding like rabbits”.Mohandas K. Gandhi reading at home, 1946.

Never mind that concentration camp was invented by the British Empire.

Never mind that 5.5 million million Africans were forcibly taken to the Caribbean colonies by British slave traders, that the wealth they extracted came at a horrific cost and that while that wealth continues to flow through British society today, its extraction is still keenly felt in the islands of the West Indies.

( £16 to £17 billion in today’s money, or 40 percent of all government expenditure in 1834 – paid, after the abolition of slavery, to slave owners slaves were given nothing).

Never mind that the Empire was a system of wealth extraction in which the lives of millions of people were disregarded in favor of the greed of the British nation and those who served it.

Never mind  that millions of Irish died in the Famine and the another million fled to the USA.

Never mind when it was all done that the British were erratically carving up their empire into new nations, imperial officials attempted to obliterate the truth of what had happened during empire through the systematic destruction and burning of official documents. In Delhi, this destruction went on for so long that the smoke from the fires hung above the Indian capital.

Never mind the bribe to the DUP.

Never mind Boris Johnson when he said that the continent of Africa “may be a blot, but it is not a blot upon our conscience. The problem is not that we were once in charge, but that we are not in charge any more”.

Never mind that in September of 2015, David Cameron told the Jamaican parliament that it needed to “move on from the painful legacy of slavery”, before announcing his government’s plan to build a £25 million prison on the island.

If we ignore or condone the never mind attitude the story of modern Britain is, in many ways, a tale of dwindling self-regard.

These imperial crimes – and many more – are either not known or glossed over, lost in the tide of colonial nostalgia and the fog of ignorance that is trying to put the Great back in Great Britain by evoking the indomitable spirit of a time when Britain bestrode the globe is a recipe for disillusionment.

If its true history is ever addressed in time, a less bellicose country could emerge — wryer, more self-aware, and chastened, perhaps, by the guilty knowledge that its national success-story was built on exploitation and conquest.

Such a response in Britain seems unlikely to happen, partly because many Brits do not know about – or refuse to accept – the darkness of empire.

Last year, Conservative MP Liam Fox tweeted that Britain “is one of the few countries in the European Union that does not need to bury its 20th century history”. Post-Brexit, Fox is now a cabinet minister, in charge of international trade – hardly the place you want an empire booster.

In January of 2016, a YouGov poll found that 44 percent of Britons (and 57 percent of Conservatives) thought their country’s “history of colonialism” was something to be proud of, and 43 percent thought the British Empire was a “good thing”.

The manufacturing of ignorance that keeps English people from learning about Britain’s imperial past continues to this day.

English history is not just Hitler and the Henry’s.

In place of realistic forecasts, May has offered a vision entitled “global Britain”. It seems like an obvious sham constructed around a massive contradiction: that by turning our backs on our closest neighbors we will open our arms to the world.

Of the over 100 former colonies, protectorates or dominions once ruled by Britain (depending on how you count them) 52 eventually transformed into the Commonwealth, although 31 are not that significant for trade.They still have populations of less than 1.2 million.

Persuading former colonial countries to sign trade deals might be difficult.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership recently sealed between the USA, Japan and ten other Pacific Rim countries included five Commonwealth countries. Canada has already done a deal with the EU. The UK would have to negotiate separate trade deals with its larger former colonies, if they were agreeable.

Sir John Seeley once stated that the British Empire was acquired in a ‘fit of absent-mindedness’. What he meant by this was that the Empire was acquired for a variety of reasons that did not add up to a coherent whole.

It assumed that British civilisation was innately superior to those it was subjugating.

Gain an income on the back of his nation’s prestige and maritime exploits.The famous ‘East India Company’ had to go cap in hand to the British Government to save it from bankruptcy but not before many individual investors and directors had made fortunes.

Christianity, Commerce and Civilisation.

How Brexit may influence the teaching of imperial history has yet to be written.

Defining the start and finish for the dates of the British Empire is not an easy task but I have a feeling that Brixit might achieve this goal.

My feeling is if you can’t escape fantasies of empire, if you can’t learn about what really happened in the name of the British crown, you will never be able to imagine a new identity for the country, an identity that can speak more fully to the multicultural nation you have become.

If you ever wanted evidence that England still suffer from Empire fantasy just look at the arrival yesterday of 65,000-tonne of new aircraft carriers at a cost £6.2bn for the pair, plus £200m rebuilding a jetty at HM Naval Base Portsmouth (while the country faces disintegration on many fronts, see previous post.)

It could not highlight its Empire aspirations in a world of increasing inequality. (This is the equivalent of 214 thousand free university places or 11,500 extra doctors) Not to mention the renewal of Trident another £205 billion or the HS2 which is set to cost £27.4bn.

The Royal Navy undoubtedly became a formidable military institution, but it was not always inevitable that Britannia would rule the waves. But did it turn England into a limited company, an institution, not a country or is the East India Company riding the waves again.

Its plain to see that your current trajectory, careering away from Europe with some puffed-up idea about your own importance, is undoubtedly a result of this failure of education, to face up to your Imperial crimes and demonstrate humility.

I’m often amazed at the lack of awareness of many British people about what actually went down under the Union Jack. Just as Ireland needs to emerge from its adolescent phase of a dwindling isolationist theocracy by facing certain issues head-on, Britain needs to emerge from its blood soaked past in the same manner because the issues won’t go away, they will always deeply underpin the prevailing narrative and culture.

“British Empire State of Mind”, will take a nuanced approach and “help provide some context for what’s going on in the world today, in terms of global inequality, poverty and how Britain helped create the conditions that caused and continue to perpetuate it now”.

As the UK leaves the European Union, so long as it’s a fantasy wrapped in the Union flag, with the bonkers notions that humans are divided in races, some superior to others etc the keeping of the lifeblood of commerce flowing freely will become more important than ever before.

In this nostalgic la-la-land, this gung-ho attitude to empire has spread much further than the corridors of power. Its legacy is still all around us.

The political imbroglio with a whole country’s future — and collective sanity — in its hands you would think that the British Crown which is a corporate sole and represents the legal embodiment of executive, legislative, and judicial governance would call a second referendum.

Unfortunately a second referendum on the terms of exit are viewed as acts of treason.

It seems, jingoism has become our asylum — a mad refuge from Brexit’s cold truths.

Its time England stopped negotiating with its self and the media and start to look after its people not an Empire that does not exist.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures depicting empire"

All comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.

//players.brightcove.net/624246174001/ryaWt2q-W_default/index.html?videoId=4713180189001

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: JUST WHAT IS ENGLAND DOING TO ITS SELF.

15 Tuesday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Uncategorized

≈ Leave a comment

( A seven minute read)

The British establishment is slowly coming to terms with the enormity of the legal and political cluster bomb that Brexit has unleashed on it.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "british flag pictures"

From the outside England paints a picture of a country falling asunder, in desperate need of restoration in more ways than one.

Big Ben might have gone silent for four years, and India and Pakistan might be celebrating 70 years of separation complements of the Empire, Mrs T May is going to soon have to lay her cards upon the table in more ways than one.

She is picking unilateral limits on the rights of other EU citizens to work in the UK over membership of the single market – the hardest of Brexits.

Where she has failed is to explain to the country the true extent of the economic damage this will entail and the entire of the requirements of dealing with their European colleagues.

In my view in order to find a positive outcome for both sides, a wholesale change of ministers would be preferable, but this is unlikely – at least for the moment – for the sake of Conservative party unity.

It might help to have a few ministers educated in the way Brussels works.

You simply cannot talk to European leaders like you talked in the Brexit campaign, and you will look like a fool if you do.

For the Brits, they must realize if they are to get anywhere, they must first acknowledge common concerns. There are plenty to be found: on economic growth, on trade, on Russia, on tackling terrorism, and yes, on freedom of movement.

If concerns can be framed as common ones, then the EU is willing to negotiate.

What absolutely will not fly is any notion that Britain is getting a special deal: à la carte, cherry-picking, having and consuming cake – whatever you want to call it. EU leaders know this would be the beginning of a death spiral for European unity and will defend it at all costs.

The common understanding of the Brexit dynamics is that due to the time pressures imposed by Article 50, it will be England under pressure to sign a quick deal. But not taken into account is the degree to which Europe itself could change during this period.

The fact that they’ve banned foreign academics from advising them on their EU strategy is mind-bendingly stupid.

Of the many issues behind Britain’s exit, the right to live and work on equal terms anywhere in the EU has been the most painful for the UK government post-referendum. The UK has always been a country of immigrants and diversity, and has grown great on the back of it but the question of EU migration was not anywhere to be found on the ballot paper.

The EU migration issue is not going anywhere fast, no matter how many well-meaning facts you throw at it.

Because England pandered mostly to false rhetoric about immigration it now finds itself on the threshold of becoming a satellite tax haven that in the long-term is going to break up under political pressure for Scotland and bribes to the DUP.

This again raises the question of whether London and Scotland could form a union and remain in the EU, leaving the rest of the UK out in the cold. Can you imagine if the whole of London went on strike for a day? That would be a statement, and each time London did it, GDP and the pound would crash. At the end of the day the UK, or even just England, is tiny. London might be the powerhouse of the UK – it pays a third of the UK’s tax but London is not a state within a state.

Combined with the strain of its ageing population it needs to be addressing both the perception and the reality, both are essential, but pandering to either is wrong when you see the following:

( A health service that is in need of thousands new nurses, a mental health service that is collapsing, a prison system that is overcrowded, understaffed, a screwed up educational system that produce debts on average of £30,000 @ 6%pa, a housing shortage,  personal and national debt levels out of control, enormous growth in inequality, pensioners struggling, the cost of public transport going through the roof, food banks on the increase, binge-drinking, gambling, a homeless crises, a people trafficking problems, an ageing population, an energy crises, that will push the cost of production in Great Britain up, a woeful imbalance of the English economy towards London: to mentions just a few of the problems that need to be properly addressed.)

It has not even build a single runway in a single airport in less than 30 years.

Taking the above into account its easy to building policies around popular fears, rather than established facts which is undermining everything that country is and always has been.

England is in bad need of some wisdom, by addressing the social and economic problems experienced by the people who feel they are under threat.

In or out of the EU England is and will be in a personified holy mess.

Some one with an ounce of wisdom needs to say ” We want a rerun of the In or Out referendum.” Sovereignty is not absolute, inside the union or outside it. If freedom means more than being left alone, there will be less of that as well.

It is unrealistic to hope that a deal between the Tories and the DUP will have no impact on the politics of Northern Ireland. It is very tough to see how a U.K. government dependent  on Democratic Unionist Party – which is propping up the Prime Minister’s minority government for its survival as part of a £1.5bn deal can be perceived as unbiased in its efforts to forge compromises between the DUP and Ireland.

The truth is that the English government has no answers to the “really tough questions” on Ireland’s post-Brexit border. A vision of a seamless, friction less border where nobody is aware that it exists...for now that seems to me pie in the sky.

In my opinion it’s a tragedy of the Brexit debate that it appears any common European identity is not valued by everyone In England.

England is full of wealth, of multifarious produces, supply for human want in every kind ; yet England is dying of inanition, to be shut-in by narrow walls of isolation is the last thing the doctor wants.

In my view British insularity is not just a feature rather a state of mind.

The major flaw with the United Kingdom’s government lies not in the fact that it’s outdated and unfit for the times we live in, but in the mistaken belief shared by the majority of British citizens that their country enjoys the best and most democratic government system known to man, regardless of the fact that it has no written constitution, that many of the freedoms taken for granted in other countries and enshrined in their fundamental charters are linked to the British Sovereign’s “Royal assent” that could be withdrawn any time at his/her whim, and that upper chamber of parliament is made of unelected members to whom pompous titles are bestowed upon, together with an alphabet soup of “honors” such as MBE, CBE, CMG, KCMG, etc.

The fact is, very many British people are unsettlingly down to earth, and perpetually riveted to the TV and football matches and bygone glory.

Each medal won in Rio – 27 golds, 23 silvers and 38 bronzes – came at a price of £4,096,500 in National Lottery and exchequer funding over the four-year Olympic cycle. The Scrap Value per gold medal : $501.

The recent 6 medals won by immigrants at the London World Championships 2017 – £27 million.

‘Foreigner’ can range from someone with different skin colour, accent, beliefs or customs, to those who do not support a particular football team or even those who live on the wrong side of a main road. British people are very sensitive to ‘accents.’

England is not a land of optimists, it’s a mixture of the class system governed by Postcode lottery of life,( Quoting – Cecil Rhodes: “to be born British is to have won the lottery of life”) that stigmatizes people by race, religion, or nationality.

The whole country is drowning in ‘heritage.’ Out of the 196 countries on the world today, there are only 22 of them that Britain has not invaded.

In this technological driven world insularity can only be viewed as a race to disaster. The future is so much more important.

Career politicians only interested in their own agenda while Academia as it exists today is the product of two past great intellectual revolutions with the current technological revolution demanding unity.

Nobody gets the name of the country right. Great Britain hasn’t existed since 1801.

 

Populist governments don’t usually work out.

I don’t know what it can do. It might be the world’s fifth biggest economy, but it is in the process of becoming a drab nation to justly regarded as one of the most ominous, “divine right,” of the Referendum.

How does Britain really stack up against the rest of the world?

No matter how much Monty Python may poke fun at the British, eccentricity will remain a national characteristic.

To ignore reality to impose its own vision of the world is a pillar of English philosophy. The right to be different, be it individually or as a nation, is part of the cultural heritage of this country. Britons do this entirely in order to refract the rules of reality itself through their own twisted lens, thus allowing them to declare their nation the winners at the game of life without having to do anything particularly special.

The people have a lot to be proud of, along with some shameful scars in their colonization. However they are afflicted by a national disease which makes them think they invented everything. The mere fact that someone ejaculated in someone’s birth canal and the baby landed on English soil makes each Englishman or woman the direct inheritor of the genius of these towering figures, and you should treat all the locals as though you were personally addressing Dickens or Darwin, even if they have trouble with revolving doors.

Nearly 52 per cent of Brits who voted to leave are out celebrating that the process of leaving the EU is at last underway, while the 48 per cent who voted remain are still looking on in horror. But after all’s said and done, things might not change that much after all the warnings of disaster. A compromise will emerge between the UK and EU, in the mean time England will have shot itself in the foot.

Only 1.5 billion people in the world might speak English, 1.051 billion speak Mandarin Chinese, with another 490 million speaking Hindi and 420 million Spanish.

However, Britain remains in limbo. It exports 44 percent of its goods to the common market, accounting for 3.3 million jobs. That privileged position is now lost.

Some one kindly tell me who is saying good by to the EU. 

Is it Great Britain, England, or the United Kindom, or is it the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

How Europe responds is far more important.

All comments appreciated all like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: WHO WANTS TO LIVE IN A WORLD RUN BY GOOGLE .

11 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Capitalism, Google, Humanity., Innovation., Technology, Wealth., What Needs to change in the World, World Organisations.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Artificial Intelligence., Big Data, Capitalism and Greed, Distribution of wealth, Elon Musk: take note., Inequility, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

( A Twenty minute read)

We might not yet be living in a world  that is run by Google but the way we are accepting artificial intelligence algorithms we will soon if not already be living in a world run by a Google Algorithm brain.

Algorithm, complex mathematical formulas, are playing a growing role in all walks of life: from health, to shopping, and jobs

The complex mathematical formulas of Algorithms are playing a growing role in all walks of life: deciding who gets a job, how police resources are deployed, who gets insurance at what cost, or who is on a ‘no fly’ list.

There decisions are often based on data collected about people, sometimes without their knowledge inferring all sorts of things about you from your digital crumbs.

They are being used – experimentally – to write news articles from raw data, while Donald Trump’s presidential campaign was helped by behavioral marketers who used an algorithm to locate the highest concentrations of ‘persuadable voters.

Completely lacking any form of transparency they are both untraceable, and subject to no form of accountability. They can infer your sexual orientation, your personality traits, your political leanings, with predictive power, with high levels of accuracy.

We’re already halfway towards a world where algorithms run nearly everything.

As their power intensifies, wealth will concentrate towards them.

They will ensure the 1%-99% divide gets larger.

If you’re not part of the class attached to algorithms, then you will struggle.

They will further stratify society, creating a world of haves and have-not’s.

So why are we ‘blindly trusting’ formulas to determine a fair outcome.

The main reason is because most people don’t yet know or understand what they are doing or could be doing.

Algorithms are not inherently fair, because the person who builds the model defines success. This is the reason why there is no popular outrage about Wall Street being run by algorithms.

For techno-evangelists, Google is a marvel of Web brilliance … For Wall Street, it may be the IPO (An IPO is short for an initial public offering. Like the name says, it’s when a company initially offers shares of stocks to the public. It’s also called “going public.” An IPO is the first time the owners of the company give up part of their ownership to stockholders.) that changes everything (again) …

The vast majority of trades these days are performed by algorithms. The idea that the world’s financial markets – and, hence, the well-being of our pensions, shareholdings, savings etc – are now largely determined by algorithmic vagaries is unsettling enough for some.

But in my opinion we should not automatically see algorithms as a malign influence on our lives, we should debate their ubiquity and their wide range of uses.

The online gallery reveal the interior of eight of Google's secretive server farms around the globe, from Finland to Iowa

wonderful attention to detail.

Why?

Because we now spend so much of our time online that we are creating huge data-mining opportunities.

Because there is the possibility of using big-data predictions about people to judge and punish them even before they’ve acted. Doing this negates ideas of fairness, justice and free will. This presents an entirely new menace: penalties based on propensities.

Because we risk falling victim to a dictatorship of data, whereby we fetishise the information, the output of our analyses, and end up misusing it.

Because by far the most complicated algorithms are to be found in science, where they are used to design new drugs or model the climate.

We all urgently need to consider the implications of allowing commercial interests and governments to use algorithms to analyse our habits:

How are they being used to access and interpret “our” data? And by whom?

Big data is a useful tool of rational decision-making. Wielded unwisely, it can become an instrument of the powerful, who may turn it into a source of repression.

But there is a bigger question about the oversights involving AI.

The questions being raised about algorithms at the moment are not about algorithms per se, but about the way society is structured with regard to data use and data privacy. It’s also about how models are being used to predict the future.

There is currently an awkward marriage between data and algorithms. As technology evolves, there will be mistakes, but it is important to remember they are just a tool. We shouldn’t blame our tools. At the moment there is consensus, that in the next twenty years we will be looking at seeing AI as smart as humans.

Difficulties come when they are used in the social sciences not to mention again financial trading.

Targeted Algorithms can now calculate whether a woman is pregnant and, if so, when she is due to give birth: Teenage daughters can be identified pregnant by retailers long before her own father knows.

From dating websites and City trading floors, through to online retailing and internet searches (Google’s search algorithm is now a more closely guarded commercial secret than the recipe for Coca-Cola), algorithms are increasingly determining our collective futures. “Bank approvals, store cards, job matches and more all run on similar principles.

“The algorithm is the god from the machine powering them all, for good or ill.”

They are now so integrated into our lives we barely notice them.

Pharmacists are already seeing some of their prescribing tasks replaced by algorithms. Data analysis as a factor in deciding whether to release somebody from prison or to keep him incarcerated.”

On the one hand, they are good because they free up our time and do mundane processes on our behalf.

However as their ubiquity spreads, so too does the debate around whether we should allow ourselves to become so reliant on them – and who, if anyone, is policing their use.

Here’s the scary bit:

We will be at the mercy of algorithms. How will they work when they are combined together. The result will be a system that will never be completely understood, that they could fail in unpredictable ways.

We are currently creating AI without fully understanding intelligence or cognition first.

Google released a developer’s kit last spring that lets anyone integrate Google’s search engine into their own application. The download is simple, and the license is free for the taking. The developer’s kit is a classic Trojan-horse strategy, putting Google’s engine in places that the company might not have imagined. Basically, those developers can do whatever they want.

Google doesn’t market itself in the traditional sense. Instead, it observes, and it listens. Their Algorithms will run everything from shopping to gods only knows what in the future. Googlers will be living amid semantic, visual, and technical esoterica.

Google now processes over 40,000 search queries every second on average, which translates to over 3.5 billion searches per day and 1.2 trillion searches per year worldwide A single Google query uses 1,000 computers in 0.2 seconds to retrieve an answer.

In February 2016, Google briefly overtook Apple to become the most valuable company in the world – worth more than $500bn (£350bn).

In 2015 alone, Google had revenues of $75bn (£53bn). That’s about £1,675 a second. Yet its core service – search – costs nothing to use. Simply, everyday in 2016 Google earned a over $58 million (£45m).

Google at the moment controls around 70% of all online searches.How much does Google make a day?

It could and should be viewed as a monopoly, but most of us don’t give a toss as it is already impossible to stop using it.

We are all already essentially sentenced to a digital death out side any laws or regulations.

Innovation at Google is as democratic as the search technology itself. One reason Google puts its innovations on public display is to identify failures quickly. Another reason is to find winners.

We will all have a Google Assistant connected to the Cloud.

The question is: Will they be accountable to us or Google.

Will it make our lives better or improve its quality?

Not so as technologies have little to do with human thought or indeed intelligence.

GOOGLE RATTLES THE TECH WORLD WITH A NEW AI CHIP FOR ALL.

Google says it will not sell the chip directly to others. Instead, through its new cloud service, set to arrive sometime before the end of the year, any business or developer can build and operate software via the internet that taps into hundreds and perhaps thousands of these processors, all packed into Google data centers more recently, it has worked to sell time on this hardware via the cloud—massive computing power anyone can use to build and operate websites, apps, and other software online.

Unlike the original TPU, it can be used to train neural networks, not just run them once they’re trained. Also setting the new chip apart: it’s available through a dedicated cloud service.

Several companies, including chip giant Intel and a long list of startups, are now developing dedicated AI chips that could provide alternatives to the Google TPU.

Why?  Because, this is the good side of capitalism which is in the process of disappearing into the cloud.

Most of Google’s revenue still comes from advertising, however IN A MOVE that could shift the course of multiple technology markets, Google will soon launch a cloud computing service that provides exclusive access to a new kind of artificial-intelligence chip designed by its own engineers.

The company sees cloud computing as another major source of revenue that will carry a large part of its future: deep neural networks—machine learning systems behind the rapid evolution of everything from image and speech recognition to automated translation to robotics.

Algorithms will still need a human to collect blood and urine samples for them to analyse. Even the best data scientists would struggle to know what to do with all that data. But it’s the next step that we need to keep an eye on. They could really screw up someone’s life with a false prediction about what they might be up to.

The European Union’s data protection law, set from next year to create a ‘right of explanation’ when consumers are impacted by an algorithmic decision, as a model that could be expanded but in practices algorithms will be made the scapegoat for societal ills. Absolving Humanity.

The protection law or laws will be Unworkable.

With most of us not realizing that there is a race before AI becomes conscious and self-aware, AI is here to stay, luckily there is more to mere intelligence than a chip or implant can explain.

The danger is that Super Artificial Intelligence will con us into to thinking that it is consciousness without being conscious. We could be using brain-computer interfaces to link us to the cloud and there will be no clear moment when we emerge as trans human whether we like it or not. If the world takes the shape of whatever the most powerful AI is programmed (or reprograms itself) to desire it opens the possibility of evolution taking a turn for the entirely banal.

Should we now be regulating AI.

The problem is how the rules are set: it’s impossible to do this perfectly.

Without a doubt and it should not be left to a small group or self-regulation.

We should now set up an new world organisation that is totally transparent and self financing to vet all AI.  This organisation should not only vet AI it should establish a virtual bank where all programs are stored.The Iowa campus network room, where routers and switches allow data centers to talk to each other. The fiber cables run along the yellow cable trays near the ceiling.

 

Each server rack has four switches, connected by a different coloured cable. Colours are kept the same throughout data centres so staff know which one to replace in case of failure.

 

 

Diversity has a value all in itself but when you look at humanity as a whole there is a lot wrong.

We at the start of a major technology revolution with AI no longer a far-fetched fiction.

Fortunately we do not have to justify our existence as yet.

Saying that we want to save this precious puny planet and doing it successfully is still a long way off. If we don’t find a way of distributing the earth wealth we will end up fueling capitalism with Artificial Intelligence that serves only the few not the many.

There are people searching the Web for ‘spiritual enlightenment and so they should as the needle of our beliefs will continue to swerve away from the universality of God.

When someone enters a query on Google for “spiritual enlightenment,” it’s not clear what he’s seeking. The concept of spiritual enlightenment means something different from what the two words mean individually. Google has to navigate varying levels of literary to guess at what the user really wants.

At some point, all of this great stuff has to turn a profit by Google.

What we have at present, academic inquiry devoted primarily to acquiring knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from any intellectually more fundamental concern to help us resolve our conflicts and problems of living in more cooperatively rational ways – dissociated, that is, from the pursuit of wisdom – is a recipe for disaster.

It is hardly too much to say that all our current global problems have come about because of the successful scientific pursuit of knowledge and technological know-how dissociated from wisdom.

The appalling destructiveness of modern warfare and terrorism, vast inequalities in wealth and standards of living between first and third worlds, rapid population growth, environmental damage – destruction of tropical rain forests, rapid extinction of species, global warming, pollution of sea, earth and air, depletion of finite natural resources – all exist today because of the massively enhanced power to act (of some), made possible by modern science and technology.

Every branch and aspect of academic inquiry need to change if we are to have the kind of inquiry, both more rational and of greater human value than what we have at present, that we really need.

All comments appreciated, all like clicks chucked in the bin.

PS: I did not bother to address the effects that Algorithms will have on our vision, our language, our writing, our necks, our figures, our memory, our brains etc.

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: THE EUROPEAN UNION (EU) AND ITS 27 MEMBERS FACE FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES OVER THE COMING 5-10 YEARS.

04 Friday Aug 2017

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in Brexit v EU - Negotiations., Brexit., European Commission., European Union., Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Unanswered Questions., What needs to change in European Union.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

European Union

( A twenty-minute read)

While Britain selfie sleep walks to its exit to become a free trade satellite off the shores of the European Continent a revision of the structure — institutionally and functionally — becomes inevitable for the EU.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of Britain as a free trade country"

My recent post highlighted that the EU project suffers from not having any real democratic legitimacy – without constitutional accountability, it is heading for trouble. ( see previous posts: THE BEADY EYE SAYS: IT IS TIME TO PUT PAY TO THE TRAVELING EU CIRCUS COSTING £9/10 BILLION TAX PAYERS MONEY.) However the Euro zone ends up it is the only place in the world trying to combine social welfare with a competitive economic structure.

The Europeans took a while to discover that killing each other and pursuing imperialistic and colonial policies are not in accordance with European values. Atrocities and crimes were committed, now it has a chance to create a remarkable political maturity of consensus, cooperation, and compromises.

Global governance sounds good, but out of reach for either the EU or Britain.

The digital age implies that a global opinion exists but the game now is about shaping perceptions of that opinion. Perhaps the EU is going to be forced by Social Media to go down the road to a form of Direct Democracy.

A new political system with another balance between centralized power and decision-making closer to the citizen spearheaded by Europe would be a revelation. 

Solidarity looks fine on paper and in declarations, but is much tougher to deal with in practice. Rebooting Europe’s economic model to combine welfare and competition and introduce a much higher awareness of resource scarcities will be no mean achievement. It strives hard to remain faithful to all that Europe stands for purified by the purgatory over centuries.

But is any of this realistic in light of England’s Departure.

The disturbing factor is the absence of confronting the issues among European politicians.

So what is in store and where is it going to go in the next ten or more years.

In reality there were two groups of Euro members: Strong countries mainly in Northern Europe and weak countries primarily in Southern Europe.

The fact that the EU’s politics will be devoted to tackle self-created problem sideling other pressing matters are an appalling thought. Confusion, non-transparency, peculiarity even queer ways obscured by meetings and personalities may rule the headlines.

Politically the consequences are much more severe and next to impossible to foresee.

As of 2015 the Euro zone morphs itself into a genuine Economic and Monetary Union with a common economic structure and a common economic policy underpinned by a fiscal union and a banking union. This was bound to happen and it can only be regretted that it had to be done as a response to a debt crisis making the process laborious and burdensome.

As of now 19 countries out of 28 EU member states have joined the Euro.

Europeans may not fully trust each other, but mutual trust is stronger and deeper than in any other political conglomerate around the world.

One its greatest challenges is that Europe is not multicultural, but the world is.

The Union is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities. These values are common to the Member States in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail.

This core element is now in question with the influx of migrants not sharing the same cultural identity, causing internal pressure which is why migration/refugees are an existential challenge.

This is why the solution can only be to allow migrants/refugees getting into Europe, to do so with two provisos:  That they do not be allowed to disrupt the existing societal structure and they are educated to adapt to European norms and values. A European citizen approaching the authorities feel that if the roles were reversed the decision would be the same.

In doing so Europe can solve its demographic problem number wise by remaining opening for immigration, to vetted people wanting and ready to enter Europe — actually more than ready as they are banging on the door — do not share cultural identity with the Europeans.

Britain should have accepted that for the EU-27, the idea of free movement is not just political posturing, but an essential part of the single market.  The EU is unlikely to agree on major changes to free movement rules in the next few years.

The core demand for new terms tabled by the incumbent conservative government is to roll back the situation to 1992 and get guarantees that EU social provisions (broadly speaking) do not apply to Britain. This festered till the in or out vote now giving rise to the question of what economic and societal model Britain wants and the answer is a different one from what is found on the continent.

Psychologically the British people may be uneasy companions of former enemies like Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. Links with the Commonwealth fade which probably is regretted by many Britons. The Anglo-American partnership that has for decades given Britain a privileged role is judged by some politicians and part of the public to be closer outside the EU than inside despite American statements to the contrary.

Because of the Franco-German axis which is firmly in control of the EU, Britain has never felt comfortable and probable never will.

However access to the market of the 27 member states weighs heavier for Britain than access to the British market for the rest of the EU.

The tricky part is that the treaty provisions cease to apply to the member in question when such agreement is reached or in case of failing to agree within two years from the decision to secede.

Everybody will try to rescue what can be rescued from this shipwreck, but obviously the 27 remaining member states will take the view that Britain has decided to leave so leave you do.

The main argument apparently falling on a lot of deaf ears in Britain is that inside or outside the EU, economic transactions require compliance with EU norms, standards, and various rules. Those rules are shaped by the member countries promoting own interests. Britain outside will not participate in this sometimes laborious process resulting in British interests not being fed into the legislative process.

The two-year clause strengthens the EU hand, as they better than Britain can live without free movement of goods, services, capital and labor.

The Euro zone countries will tend to share views and interests to a much larger degree keeping EU member states not inside the Euro with a different economic structure on the sidelines.

It is true that no EU citizen has a fundamental, unlimited right to move freely across the EU. To be lawfully resident in another member-state, EU citizens need to be working, studying, or able to prove that they are self-sufficient. Otherwise, they can be kicked out. It is also true that free movement of persons was introduced after the free movement of goods, capital and services.

It is difficult to estimate how strong the negative impact will be.

As seen in many cases it is the long-term effect that matters and continuous lower growth will in the long run add up to a substantial loss even if England reduces corporation and personal taxes.

While EU free movement rules have been a toxic political issue in Britain for years, many on the Continent consider them a core achievement of the EU.

So could there be a free trade agreement between the UK and the European Union that allows the UK to limit freedom of movement.

My answer is no. Out is Out.

The conclusion to draw is a sentiment among the majority of member states and in particular the original six ones that either you are member of the EU, committed to solidarity, coherence, common decision-making, and common policies or you are not.

Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of Britain as a free trade country"

Britannia will “survive” without a post-Brexit free-trade deal with the EU.

The process of Brexit is likely to be a series of humiliating meetings in which the country is forced to accept a procession of ruinous trade deal terms – ruinous, at least, for the majority of the population.  In reality, the UK has never stood alone in the global free trade environment as we understand it today;

It may all end in disaster. But it does show consistency by the British. The EU can be replaced by countries full of fond memories of the empire. The UK has a long history of hypocritically claiming to want only trade in its international relations.

The British Empire stood by and watched one million Irish die of famine just 150 years ago while it continued to export pork and ham and lots of other produce to England. One million Irish! Has there been a word of regret about that genocide ever from the British State? Not one word.

“The British Empire was a great and glorious thing that did much good(such as ending slavery) ”

Such statements are totally untrue.

It was an evil kleptocracy and extortion racket. Imperialism is the geo-political equivalent of rape. There can be no defense for it. To call it “glorious” is nothing short of sick. It certainly wasn’t the empire which ended slavery. The empire not only fought tooth and nail to retain it, it actually managed to extort compensation for the vermin who had profited from it. It was the entire foundation of Britain’s wealth – or rather the wealth of Britain’s ruling class.

Far from benefiting from “free trade”, Britain got rich by imposing tariffs on imports and sending gunboats or troops to deal with anyone who presented problems.

If Britain is expecting to encounter fond sentiments from x colonial countries in free trade agreements it is about to be bitterly disappointed.

Britain did not make its fortune by trading freely.

The wealth of the UK was EXPLICITLY derived from its military domination of overseas territories, control of cheap inputs (such as cotton) and export markets that were enforced. So, the ludicrous idea of the Brexiteers that the UK can compete in the global economy does not stand up to scrutiny even historically.

In the contemporary world, it is nothing other than laughable. In the context of a highly open economy, dependent on imports of almost everything, the only effect of a devalued currency is inflationary pressure and an increased trade deficit. This policy approach almost qualifies as a definition of insanity.

We don’t need to wait to judge Brexit, because any clear-thinking and informed person can see outright what a disaster this is almost certain to be.Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of Britain as a free trade country"

The ECHR is an international human rights treaty that is independent of the EU and predates it. If the UK denounces the ECHR as well as leaving the EU it is setting itself up as another North Korea. Every single country in Europe — including Russia and Turkey — is in the ECHR. Write your own laws!

We are living at a moment when an old economic settlement is in crisis, but a new settlement has yet to be formed.

Unless the US and Europe can find common ground the prospect of chaos and infighting is too high for comfort as no other country or group of countries are waiting in the wings with ideas and economic power to lead. Some decades down the road the US and Europe will still account for more than 1/3 of global Gross Domestic Product — maybe more.

The politics of the future will belong to those leaders both in Europe and Britain who are prepared to face up to our present problems and future challenges.

Britain’s future is a nostalgic past that never really existed.

Yes, this is the way forward for “Poverty UK” — back to the 1950s! Résultat de recherche d'images pour "pictures of Britain as a free trade country"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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