Monthly Archives: February 2020

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S; HERE ARE THE BIG QUESTIONS THAT ARE YET TO COME WHEN IT COMES TO TECHNOLOGY.

19 Wednesday Feb 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Google it., Google Knowledge., Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., War, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders

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Thirty-minute read.

Who owns what?  What’s our purpose in life?  What are the values that we believe in? How do we think and make decisions?  What do we mean by work?  Can our work ever have true meaning unless it is to serve others?

What will help us all think deeply about the questions we need to ask and answer?

Climate change or technology.

However, for many of us, the answers to these questions differ in our working lives, compared with our personal lives, with family, friends and neighbours.

Were a ruling elite like Google to impose a command-and-control, fear-driven culture in which power is abused and the outcomes are social and economic misery for the vast majority?

Our reaction, if we are to go by what is now observable, will be So what? Now what?

MAKING sure companies compete fairly is a tricky business. The firms being regulated know far more about their business than those doing the regulating;

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all of humankind.” Says Putin. “Whatever country comes to dominate this technology will be the “ruler of the world.”

His rhetoric is entirely appropriate. Automation and digitalization have already had a radical effect on international systems and structures.

Technology can easily be referred to as the scientific knowledge to the practical problems we are experiencing in the world today.

On the other hand, its core strategy is to gobble up market share with profit-seeking algorithms.

Our environments are all so full of technology to the point that most of the time we take it for granted.

So are we all becoming personified idiots?

Technology has a great impact on all the fundamental aspects of all our cultures including laws and how they are enforced, language, art, health care, mobility, education and religion.

The obvious problem with all of this is that countries will not own or be in control of the technologies.negative effects of technology

While we all sit back and accept the benefits technology it also brings manipulation on a  worldwide scale with our future in the hands of only a handful of corporations and the vast amount of people that are okay with that.

It’s hard to argue against innovation. It’s hard to argue against greater choice, more convenience and lower prices.

One way or the other it is also hard to underestimate the fundamentally different rules that Google /Amazon/ Facebook/ Apple/ Baidu play by.

Hiding behind forked rhetoric that the data they collect does no harm as it is anonymous.

You do not need to know who you are. It is enough to know what you consume, your habits, your tastes, and where you are, through the IP address, the GPS of the mobile, or your Google account. Your name, or your phone number, is not important to sell you things.

Blurring the borders of privacy. Replacing real-life communication.

And on top of it, violent games and videos killing empathy and bring destruction into an individual’s life. Plagiarism and cheating are increase while analysis and critical thinking decline, ending up in social isolation.

(We now have a new perverse sexual harassment of Cyber flashing which is not against any law. Why? Because our laws cannot keep up with the speed of change)

Commercial technology like Smartphones, I pads, Home Alexa/Echo and there like is about creating another consumer touchpoint for their robust ecosystem of e-commerce, services, and media taking advantage of less sophisticated consumers and trick them into consuming items for short-term satisfaction and long-term pain.

Originally created to serve faithfully to humanity, digital devices are revealing their harmful impact on our lives.

We should all be careful what we wish for.

There’s an argument made by big corporations for each country to charge corporations the lowest possible tax rate, to loosen environmental regulations down to zero, and to eliminate employee protections. All so that a country’s commodity producers can be the cheapest ones.

The voice market war has only just begun.

The contenders:

Amazon-Echo v Google-Alexa.amazon-echo-google-home

Once they figure out how to improve their recommendations and push more people to make regular household purchases via voice it will lead to an explosion in voice-based shopping.

Google already has one of the most valuable brands in the world.

Google maps have virtually no meaningful rival.  Gmail…Google basically controls our handheld existence.

Google controls your life, literally, even if it costs you to believe it.

Google trackers have been found on 75% of the top million websites.

When you search on Google, they keep your search history forever.

Google is a company that offers almost all its products for free because the money is earned by selling the data it collects with those products, to advertisers and companies.

Last year Google made over $161 billion in total revenues.

As it is the premier search engine in the U.S., Europe, and many developing countries Google has the tools to control much of the world.

That’s just Google then you have Amazon.

With around 225 million customers around the world, Amazon wants to deliver everything you want to your doorstep, including Foods anywhere in the world. ( 300 items a second) These days half of all product searches start on Amazon.

Our lust for cheap, discounted goods delivered to our doors promptly and efficiently has a price.

Amazon has done a lot of good for consumers by expanding choice, making shopping far more convenient and by delivering extraordinary product value.

Yet, we can’t–and shouldn’t–ignore the profound effect that Amazon is having on just about every corner of the retail world they set their sights on.

Amazon is selling its facial recognition technology, known as Rekognition, to law enforcement agencies.

First and foremost, Amazon isn’t required by its investors to make any real money.

For us the Great unwashed there’s always the opportunity to cut a corner, sacrifice lifestyle quality and suck it up as they race to grab a little more market share.

With their algorithms, they tell you what restaurants you have to eat in, choose your music, label your photos associating them with each family member or friend that appears in them, pay for your purchases, suggest the movies you should see, and the apps that may interest you.

When in fact the searches we do, what websites we visit, what products we look at, where are we, your medical history, your political beliefs, your associations with others your employment prospects, everything from the womb to the grave is collected and analyzed

Before I hear you calling me a hypocrite I also have used Amazon.

If this scenario prevails, would this be really the way information is supposed to be organized?

In short, does the fact that an algorithm is able to provide more relevant information than a human justify this scenario?

These big brands platforms are more powerful than governments. They’re wealthier. If they were countries, they would be pretty large economies. They’re multinational and the global financial situation allows them to ship money all over the world.

Can we do anything to make a difference?

We need to be supporting the development of an efficient circular economy.

Why?

Because sustainability is an unstoppable force.

Let’s not race to the bottom.

Country’s population size will become less important for national power as small countries that develop a significant edge in AI technology will move far above their weight.

Ultimately, however, winning and losing will not be determined by which country gains the most growth through AI. It will be determined by how the entire global community chooses to leverage AI — as a tool of war or as a tool of progress.

They can eliminate rules protecting clean water, air or consumer safety, but they will always find a way to be cheaper or more brutal than you.

We all assume that Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, are spying our activity and up to now advertiser is not interested in your name when they are it will be too late and the winner will be Inequality.

So what does all this mean and what are we all going to do about it when we’ve stopped talking about it?

Once you start to connect all the invisible dots together the impact on society will, in the end, be down to the people that use the technology they have to be responsible for it and if they use it irresponsibly they have to be held accountable.

A Footnote:

For me, there is little point in Jeff Bezos setting up an Earth fund when Amazon is one of the biggest promoters of pollution. Pretending to be a do-gooder.

The brown box doesn’t begin to address the larger issue: Each year in the United States alone thrown paper in the trash that represents approximately 640 million trees or roughly 915,000 acres of forest land.

Amazon ships an average of 608 million packages each year, which equates to (an estimated) 1,600,000 packages a day.

Then when we talk about energy consumption, we’re talking about the sources of energy that generate our power: oil, coal, natural gas and alternatives like solar, wind, hydropower and biofuels.

How much electricity they use and the bill is, god only knows, so its no wonder that they have contracts with oil and gas companies.

Now consider that people conduct over 1,6 billion searches per day, and you get a massive energy footprint of roughly 12.5 million watts.

Is e-commerce reducing or increasing our carbon footprint?

Google’s worldwide operations, collectively worldwide use about 2.26 million megawatt-hours per year to power its global data centre operations, which is equivalent to the power necessary to sustain 200,000 homes.

In 2018 Google generated 39.12 billion dollars earnings out of which it paid 243 Million a day in electricity.

This is only an educated guess.

The link between global warming and energy demands is obvious. Surely both of these players should be investing in Green energy.

There’s a deafening silence from pundits and elites and columnists and politicians on our joint self-destruction.

They are simply going on pretending it isn’t happening.

We don’t, as societies or cultures, value learning or knowledge or magnanimity or great and noble things, anymore.

The average person has become a tiny microcosm of the aspirations and norms of elites. We’re the only people on earth who thwart our own social progress, over and over again — and cheer about it.

We are caught in a death spiral now. A vicious cycle from which there is probably no escape. The average person is too poor to fund the very things — the only things — which can offer him a better life:

The result is that a whole society grows poorer and poorer.

Unable to invest in themselves or one another, people’s only real way out is to fight each other for self-preservation, by taking away their neighbour’s rights, privileges, and opportunities — instead of being able to give any new ones to anyone.

Though it’s too late to escape for them, let us hope our governments regulate their algorithms for profit sake.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: SINCE THE DAWN OF TIME WARS AND BATTLES HAVE HAD A SIGNIFICANT IMPACT ON THE COURSE OF HISTORY.

18 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in Afghan War., Technology v Humanity, War., What Needs to change in the World

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(Thirty-five-minute read) 

” Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” John F. Kennedy

If you ask Google how many wars have they been in the world.

Here is the answer:

” Early humans could have fought wars that went unnoticed. Sources range from 100,000 to 300,000 WARS.”

Then if you look at wikipedia.org and ask how many are current wars, on top of the list of the 40 active conflicts/ wars around the world at the moment, the Afghanistan conflict is number one, because of the letter A. 

You could not be blamed for wondering that after so many wars why it is in these modern days of interconnectivity other than the insanity of one or more leaders that causes wars. The boundary between rational and non-rational is fuzzy. There must exist incentives for conflict and some barriers to the ability to reach an enforceable bargain. 

The ideological change is both the most common cause of conflict and the root of most wars, but there is rarely only one cause of dispute.

Not only do we go to war we supply arms to the potential adversity. 

War is a better-known word in England that Afghanistan.

(According to Wikipedia,) The Kingdom of England has fought conflicts in 171 of the world’s 193 countries that are currently UN member states, or nine out of ten of all countries. So it is not surprising to learn that the British invasion and occupation of Afghanistan in the late 1830s. 

You could say England has been at war from the Battle of Edgehill (October 1642) 

What do you define as a war? What do you define as the UK?

Take the nicely named Troubles in Northern Ireland – 30 years.

(The leftover of the Irish War of Independence 2 years has its origins in the 12th century when England invaded to create its first colony.)

As with all wars once they start the original reasons are eventually forgotten in the devastation inflicted. 

World war one started in 1914 after four years it left over 15 million people dead and set the stage for World war two six short years.

The Holocaust alone resulted in over 11 million people killed, 6 million of which were Jewish. Somewhere between 22 and 26 million men died in battle during the war. In the final act of the war, between 70,000 and 80,000 Japanese were killed when the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The Vietnam War lasted for 19 years and 5 months.

The Falklands 10-week. 

The Gulf War six months was a war waged by coalition forces from 35 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait arising from oil pricing and production disputes.

The ongoing war of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict with Israel established in 1948 continues to the present day on various levels.

Or the ongoing Al-Qaeda insurgency in Yemen now 22 years.

So here is what I have learned about the Afghan wars.

During the nineteenth century, two large European empires vied for dominance in Central Asia. In what was called the “Great Game,” the Russian Empire moved south while the British Empire moved north from its so-called crown jewel, colonial India.

Their interests collided in Afghanistan, resulting in the First Anglo-Afghan War of 1839 to 1842.

This resulted in a series of unsuccessful wars for the British to control Afghanistan, Bukhara, and Turkey. The British lost at all four wars — the First Anglo-Saxon War (1838), the First Anglo-Sikh War (1843), the Second Anglo-Sikh War (1848) and the Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878) — resulting in Russia taking control of several Khanates including Bukhara.

Following this great victory over the British, Afghanistan maintained its independence and continued to play the two European powers off of each other for three more decades.

Soviet-Afghan War.

Afghanistan is not called the “graveyard of empires” for nothing.

The Soviet-Afghan War lasted over nine years, from December 1979 to February 1989. Insurgent groups are known collectively as the mujahideen, as well as smaller Maoist groups, fought a guerrilla war against the Soviet Army and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan government, mostly in the countryside. The mujahideen groups were backed primarily by the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, making it a Cold War proxy war. Between 562,000 and 2,000,000 civilians were killed and millions of Afghans fled the country as refugees, mostly to Pakistan and Iran.

More than nine years of direct involvement and occupation.

On April 27, 1978, a Soviet-supported communist government took over the country with the first Soviet deployment into Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. They had President Amin put to death because he was talking to the Yanks and installed their own leader, President Babrak Karmal.

The Soviets resorted to using napalm, poison gas and helicopter gunships against the Mujahideen – but they experienced exactly the same military scenario the Americans had done in Vietnam. 

In the years that followed, more than 870,000 Afghans were killed, three million were maimed or wounded, a million were internally displaced and over five million were forced to flee the country.

It became a source of embarrassment for the Soviet Union as the Mujahideen (a guerilla force on a holy mission for Allah) would come down from the mountains in the summer with US-supplied Stinger missiles and after around 13,000 Soviet troops were killed the Russian had had enough with the country becoming one of the poorest nations in the world. 

By 1982 some 2.8 million Afghans had sought asylum in Pakistan, and another 1.5 million had fled to Iran. The Soviets suffered some 15,000 dead and many more injured. 1988 the Soviet Union signed an accord with the United States, Pakistan, and Afghanistan and agreed to withdraw its troops.

Mikhail Gorbachev took the U.S.S.R. out of Afghanistan.

Men start growing beads and destroy all non-islamic idols and statues- al-Qaid. 

By the end of the 1980s, the Mujahideen was at war with itself in Afghanistan with hard-line Taliban fighters. The word Taliban means “students”

By 1982, the Mujahideen controlled 75% of Afghanistan despite fighting the might of the world’s second most powerful military power.

On 25 April 1992, a civil war had ignited between three, later five or six, mujahideen armies, which escalated into another full-blown conflict. By mid-1994, Kabul’s original population of two million had dropped to 500,000. In 1995–96, the new militia Taliban, supported by Pakistan and ISI, had grown to be the strongest force.

On September 2001 the 9/11 terrorist attack which the USA believed that Osama Bin Laden head of al-Qaida was the behind the attacks. The United States began bombing Afghanistan and 10 years later kill Osama.

As of August 2016, about 104,000 people have been killed in the war in Afghanistan since 2001, more than 31,000 being civilians.

With the rising of ISIS in Afghanistan, the country was plunged into a new humanitarian emergency and Afghans into a new internally displacement and the refugee crisis.

Since invading in 2001, the United States has poured more than $117 billion into Afghanistan.

The war has enjoyed bipartisan support from the beginning. Bush launched it. Obama began his administration approving a “surge” of 30,000 troops for what he called the “good war.”  

The United States went into Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks to get bin Laden, quash Al Qaeda and punish the Taliban for harbouring them. Bin Laden is dead; Al Qaeda has metastasized across the region; the Taliban have been hunted for 16 years.

Now there is no clear vision of where we’re headed.

A blank check to wage war anywhere, any time, for any length, 

To me it is quite clear with Trump “where we’re headed”—to more years of endless war without victory, wasting more lives ensnared in a war with no exit. 

So the situation isn’t complicated:

The origins of opium date as far back at 3400 B.C

There is enough opium production in Afghanistan (something the US was never truly capable of controlling or suppressing.) to ensure that the current war ends in a dream-like state and armed nation-building does not work.

Forty years might seem a long time but its nothing compared to wars back in the days when wars lasted from anything up to 700 years.

So here are few brewing for the future. 

The U.S.A. vs. Iran.

Why? 

Because of Donal Trump re-election. His inability to learn from Vietnam or Afghan that military power will mean little when drawing into a decades-long guerrilla war with factions of the Iranian regime.

Egypt vs. Ethiopia.

Why?

Because the Ethiopia Blue Nile dam is 60% completed…

Iran vs. Saudi Arabia.

Why?

Because the collapse of Lebanon, the Arab Spring, the Yemen civil war, and the Qatari blockade are all significant global geopolitical events spawned by tensions between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The two nations are already engaged in numerous proxy wars in Syria, Yemen and Iraq, and as time goes on this list is only set to grow in size. 

North Korea vs. the U.S.A.

Why?

Because North Korea operates as a military dictatorship,

Russia vs. NATO.

Why?

Because Nato needs to justify its existence. 

The Irish have always been noted for a complete disregard for time.

Venezuelan Civil War.
 
Why?
 
Because it is safe to say things are not going too well in Venezuela.

South China Sea War.

Why?

Because it is home to 10% of the world’s fisheries and tens of billions of barrels of oil.

Amazon Apps ves Humanity 

Why?

Because we were too lazy and gave away all of our data. 

Climate War.

Why?

Because this could very well be the catalyst to end all wars. 

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WHY IS THE TRUTH UNDER ATTACK AS NEVER BEFORE?

14 Friday Feb 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Communication., Dehumanization., Disconnection., Fake News., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Social Media, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Thirty-minute read)

 

It is widely assumed by the general public that humanity is “progressing” and that we are better both physically and mentally than our predecessors were. Of course, this is true for some of us but for 6 billion of us on 2$ a day I doubt they would agree.

A person’s conception of truth is deeply intertwined with their conception of reality and truth isn’t actually divorced from reality. Science is dependent on truthfulness.

Few of us these day’s has the time or resources to check all of the news we confront on a daily basis. Instead, we rely on other methods of assessing truth, but can we or should we trust the source?

As the saying goes, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and you can fool all of the people some of the time, but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”

In a world where facts are under siege, credentialed sources are proving more important than ever.

We are getting our news from platforms, run by Facebook, Google, Twitter, Messanger,  etc including other social media sites and search engines, but can we place our trust in those platforms.

The profession of undermining truth has been in existence for decades. For much of recorded history, the truth was rooted in scholasticism now it’s rooted in a capitalist haze where political correctness and social justice including warfare have descended from the ivory tower of the rich infiltrating tech, business, healthcare, and governments.

The quest for facts these days is now governed by disinterested Google algorithms that trade us, accuracy for efficiency, creating a “spiral of silence,” in which everyone believes that everyone else believes something but no one actually believes it.

It seems that we accept truthiness instead of requiring truth.

As a result, humankind is losing mental capacity to know the truth and we are living in an era of rationality inequality.

For example, voters act on issues that don’t affect them personally and are under no pressure to inform themselves or defend their positions.

People vote as if rooting for sports teams, encouraged by the media, which treat politics as a horse race, encouraging zero-sum competition rather than a clarification of character and policy.

So what is happening?

History is littered with the bending or inverting of truth by people in power has long been consequential, so the recent prominence of “fake news.”  is not a new development. The belief that fake news is displacing the truth itself needs to be examined for its truth.

The implication is that we may as well give up on reason and truth and just fight the bad guys’ lies and intimidation with lies and intimidation of our own.

“Social media.”

Not long ago many intellectuals deplored the lack of democratic access to mass media.

Now a few media corporations, in cahoots with the government, “manufactured consent” with their oligopoly over the means of production and dissemination of ideas.

We used to say, freedom of the press belongs to those who own, one no longer true.

Social Media with it’s like algorithms are now fueling, accusations of racism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia that can be weaponized: since everyone reviles these bigotries, they can be used to demonize adversaries, which in turn spreads a terror of being demonized. It has become the place where one can express heterodox opinions without fear of being silenced or fired.

A network of pluralistic ignorance enforced by denunciation mobs.

So when it comes to intolerant repression of non-leftist ideas, don’t blame the Millennials or the iGens because unregulated Social Media is now blazing out of control abetted in part by government subsidies and lack of will to regulate.

People gravitating to people who are like them.

Social media held out the promise of giving a voice to the people, unfortunately, is making us dumber.

It is true to say that the network dynamics of social media are still poorly understood, but they do not yet host the mechanisms of vetting and reviewing that are necessary for true beliefs to bubble up to prominence from the turbid pools of self-presentation, group solidarity, and pluralistic ignorance.

We project the best sides of our lives through social media but revile real vulnerability.

So we are living in a post-truth world” true?

If your answer is “yes” then the answer is “no” because you’ve just evaluated the statement in an evidentiary manner, so evidence still matters and facts still matter.

But humans are fundamentally irrational – No.

If humans were truly irrational, who specified the benchmark of rationality against which humans don’t measure up? How did they conduct the comparison? Why should we believe them? Indeed, how could we understand them?

We did not evolve with the truth-augmenting technologies that have been invented in recent millennia and centuries, such as writing, quantitative datasets, scientific methodology, and specialized expertise. We evolved with the reality of the thought of what is true.

We don’t believe in reason; we use reason but as soon as you try to argue that we should believe things by any route other than reason, you’ve lost the argument, because you’ve appealed to reason.

That is why a defence of reason is unnecessary, perhaps even impossible. The very fact that one is examining the validity of reason shows that one is committed to reason.

This is the point where it gets somewhat complicated.

We build mental models of the world around us that allow us to explain, predict, and control things to our advantage.

Algorithms know this by monitoring our lives and consultancy firms that specialize in defending products from tobacco to industrial chemicals that harm the public (that have and are with us since the dawn of Capitalism) are manipulating the market place for profit while ensuring that the truth stays buried.

So our reasoning is contaminated by false news.

Social media is a major source of these falsehoods coupled with peculiarities in human behaviour on social media, make it easy for fake news to spread. Twitter, Facebook you name them.

“Political” fake news spread three times faster than other kinds, and the top 1 per cent of retweeted fake news regularly diffused to at least 1,000 people and sometimes as many as 100,000.

Out of all of the news you see reported, how much of it do you believe is made up or fake news?

Around 40% with 70% per cent more likely than true news to receive a retweet.

While the political repercussions of fake news are quite obvious, the phenomenon it depends on how the information is presented and how rationality is defined.

The powers of inference for example.

Rational inference, scepticism, and debate are in our nature but set against false news that is normalizing the production of alternative facts are a project long in the making.

Politicians—two in particular—lies a lot. But politicians have always lied. They say that in war, truth is the first casualty, and that can be true of political war as well.

THERE’S A TON OF MISINFORMATION OUT THERE, AND WE’RE NOT OKAY LETTING IT GO UNCHECKED.

Why is the truth important?

We all need to know the truth if we want to be able to behave rationally.

Spreading disinformation here, hiding evidence of harm there, undermining authorities evidence can change people’s minds. Internet discussion groups, in which these ideas harden and grow more extreme in the absence of critical engagement.

Group loyalty is an underestimated source of irrationality in the public sphere, especially when it comes to politicized scientific issues like evolution and climate change.

Forecasting is no longer the dark art of pundits, gurus, it is big data and everyday fact-checking with Google has and is been revolutionized.

When people are confronted with their own ignorance of the facts, they become more epistemically humble about their opinions.

Unwelcome news is automatically rebranded fake news.

In the end, we are mere mortals but has the day of rationality-promoting norms and institutions passed?

The causes are complex, but it’s exhausting to live in a society where asking for help equals failure.

“Life before Google.”

Nothing can reverse the damage that has been done during our own generation, and some of this regression in truthfulness in the last 50 years is a paradoxical byproduct of the fantastic progress, we have made inequality.

From climate breakdown to air and water pollution, Co2 emissions, natural disasters,  the spread of the coronavirus virus, ongoing wars, our media watchdogs that don’t know what they are watching only using them to boost their viewing ratings.

Something important about the way we conceive of truth in our daily lives is needed if we are to tackle the difficulty assessing the reliability of the information that we find on the internet.

To achieve this these platforms with profit-seeking algorithms need to put their money where their mouths are.

Considering the technological boom are humans becoming smarter or more stupid?

The art of creating scientific disinformation is now at a new level of the tricks reanalysing results to reach different conclusions and hiring people prepared to rig methodologies to produce funders’ desired result.

The truth of history constitutes its whole value.

Enriching a favoured few at the expense of the great majority of mankind will be the last lie. The inconvenient truths will inevitably come to light.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

 

The films served to both promote products and a vision of America undergirded by chemicals and synthetic materials. We learn the industry was proud to produce insecticides, PCBs, vinyl and other materials and toxins later identified as environmental toxins.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS THE CLASS SYSTEM GOING TO BE EVENTUALLY REPLACED BY BIOLOGICAL STATUS

11 Tuesday Feb 2020

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Biotechnology., Cellular Biology, Climate Change., Dehumanization., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Genetics., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., Nanotechnology, Natural selection., Our Common Values., Reality., Robot citizenship., Sustaniability, Technology, The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

We may die out as a species for one reason or another, but evolution is inevitable so there will be a change in the future. We are not done evolving yet, so it begs the question of what could Homo sapiens really become – and what is forever beyond our reach?

We were fish once, and now we eat fish for dinner!

Humankind has come a long way from a single cell floating in the ocean waters, we have managed to become the multi-cellular wonders of nature that we are today.

However, evolution doesn’t have a direction, it’s confined are of this ecosystem called Earth which decides in the long run which direction if any it goes in. 

Skull D2700 discovered in 2001 at Dmanisi in Georgia is held by museum staff as they prepare it for an exhibition in Netherlands

Future humans might be very different from people today but not in the way science fiction movies would lead you to think.

Combining knowledge of our past with current trends, we are entering a new phase in human evolutionary history—one that makes the future less predictable and more interesting than ever before.

SO THE FIRST THING TO APPRECIATE IS THAT:

Evolution and natural selection are not the same things.

Evolution refers to the relationship between a species (a breeding population) and its ever-changing environment. Evolution does not concern what individuals may think it is the gradual genetic change of a species over time.

Natural selection is the phenomenon that rewards certain advantageous traits and punishes others through better or worse survival or reproduction. Medical science and public health measures have enabled the developed world to escape most natural selection.  

Right now most of us are the sacrificial generation.

In nature, natural selection is the most powerful evolutionary force, but other factors may take over when technology grants a second chance to those who would have died. 

Consequently, even with a complete lack of natural selection, it doesn’t mean that humans will not evolve. It is a selective force that clearly has shaped human evolution in recent centuries and may still be doing so today with the Coronavirus.

 With the Viruses, natural selection may not be “over for humans.”

This set aside we are more than likely going to have to adapt to climate change’s, to technologies like Biotechnology involving living systems and organisms to develop or make products.

Technology is already affecting the way our memory works and humans may eventually reach a point where they can force evolution upon themselves through the use of technology.Will our descendants be cyborgs? © Daniel Haug/Getty

We now have genetic samples of complete genomes from humans around the world, and with geneticists are getting a better understanding of genetic variation and how it’s structured in a human population environmental factors are no longer the driving force for evolutionary change.

We’ve all heard of designer babies, perhaps in the future, it may be seen as unethical not to change certain genes.

The human race will one day split into two separate species one more advanced than the other.

Races, as normally understood, would still be a thing, but with two separate species that will probably still call themselves human, even if they are technically different from those before them.

Of course, we don’t know this for sure but consider it’s not really a biological question anymore, it’s a technological question it is not beyond conceptuality that humans will not evolve into a single, ubiquitous ethnic group.

However, there is also a risk that current society collapses and some new society arises with ideas of eugenesy or breading races of superhumans and slaves.

One species with hi-tech machine implants, growable limbs and cameras for eyes even with different facial features and skin colour and external aids entirely responsible for survival.

A collective thought consciousness. Thought could be converted into instant gratification, and consequences to misusing it controlled by AI.

Computers will punish you! 

The human brain, being a machine striving for maximum efficiency, typically remembers where information is stored, rather than the information itself but as technology becomes more and more advanced, our brains will adapt in order to maximize efficiency – perhaps to the detriment of our memory.

Nanomachines would be part of the human form.

People could download their being into a computer system and be a part of the AI collective.

We will no longer operate within the confines of survival of the fittest. 

There is still going to be selection but artificial selection, so its no surprise that much technological advancement is currently aimed at the human body.

Up to now, sexual selection has defined evolutionary paths.

This will become less and less with gene editing with many of our internal functions becoming obsolete and what we might see is differentiation along lines where people live.

And what about space?

If humans do end up colonising Mars, what would we evolve to look like?

With the lower gravity, the muscles of our bodies could change the structure. Should we spend too long as galactic explorers, it’s likely that we’d eventually lose most of our muscle mass?

“What once use to be a magic flute will become a water carrier.”

So if we survive climate change humans will not evolve just for reproduction.

Whether it is genetically enhanced humans, bionic men, or uploaded beings, technology and its advancement with our decisions will shape the future of Earth and its inhabitants, including ourselves.

It will certainly be shaping human development. Bio to Artificial transmission with no inoculations.

Google Brain / Health or Microsoft Health vaults.

However, the future might be a lot slower than we think. It will take thousands of years for us to develop technologies that allow us to colonize the solar system.

If we do manage to move to other worlds, it’s likely that we’ll need to adapt to them using a combination of genetic engineering and technology.

All these changes may mean that Homo sapiens will speciate, or evolve into multiple new species. It will mean that our progeny have survived, even if they are nothing like us.

If we consumed most of the planet’s resources in doing so that is not evolution; that is the road to extinction.

CNBC Tech: Apple Watch 2

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks chucked in the bin 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE LOOK’S AT POPULISM. WHAT EXACTLY IS IT?

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Communication., Democracy, Digital age., Disconnection., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Modern Day Democracy., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Politics., Populism., Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Technology, The common good., The far-right., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What needs to change in European Union., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Politics

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(Eighteen-minute read)

The word came from the “prairie populists”, a 1890s movement of US farmers who supported more robust regulation of capitalism.

“But no one is clear what it is.”

We can’t really talk about populism without talking about our conflicting conceptions of democracy – and the question of what it truly means for citizens to be sovereign.

So is it an ideologically portable way of looking at politics as a forum for opposition between “people” and “elites”?

Or is it simply part of what it means to do politics?

Or is it a lens for looking at our politics?

Or a mode of talking about politics, rather than a set of beliefs?

Or is it an emerging political movement driven by technology, spread by social media, the smartphone and ruled by algorithms.

There is one thing for certain populism is inherent to democracy.

So it would be in the first place a massive mistake, considering the hollow, undemocratic mess we are in, with algorithms making decisions about our collective fate – outside the reach of politics, to ignore its power.

If one looks at the state of liberal democracy today it is becoming more and more a sham.  A nice-sounding set of universal principles that, in practice, end up functioning as smokescreens to normalise the exploitations and inequities of our capitalist system.

Nothing can stay depoliticised forever. The questions of populism would have little urgency were it not for the widespread agreement about the shortcomings of the political status quo: About the abyss between the shining ideals of equality and responsive government implied by our talk about democracy and the tarnished reality of life on the ground.

Populism is supposed to explain: Brexit, Trump, Viktor Orbán’s takeover of Hungary, the rise of Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, even Putin.

However, neither Trump nor Brexit should be regarded primarily as populist phenomena.

His election and Brexit shows that every status quo – however sturdy – is only temporary, and can always be challenged by a movement that seeks to replace it with something new.

Populists consider themselves as victims of economic exploitation, anti-austerity movements – such as Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, and Occupy these movements are obviously animated by a sense of opposition.

From this perspective, populism is just another word for real politics.

On the other hand, what most people knew about these parties, at first, was that they were openly nativist and racist. They talked about “real” citizens of their countries, and fixated on the issue of national and ethnic “purity,” demonising immigrants and minorities.

But I say that there are no real populists in politics – just people, attitudes and movements that the political centre misunderstands and fears.

The question of populism, then, is always the question of what kind of democracy we want.

The only inherent connection between rightwing and leftwing populist movements is that both embrace the same fundamental truth about democracy: that it is an ever-shifting contest over how the default “we” of politics is defined and redefined, of which no one definition can be guaranteed to last.

When populism appears in the media, which it does more and more often now, it is typically presented without explanation, as if everyone can already define it.

It sounded less alarming than “extreme right” or “radical right”.

It will always live in the shadow of the muddled media and political discourse and there can no longer be any doubt that we are going through a populist moment, so which type of populist you want to be.

A liberal democracy populism that is forced by rightwing populism to make good on its promises of equality. That needs to reacquaint with the need to construct a democratic “we” – a people – around their demand to protect liberal institutions and procedures, in opposition to radical rightwing parties who are happy to see them discarded.

Liberal democracy, in this context, has almost nothing to do with contemporary distinctions between left and right. It refers, instead, to the idea that government should facilitate pluralistic coexistence by balancing the never fully attainable ideal of popular sovereignty with institutions that enshrine the rule of law and civil rights, which cannot easily be overturned by a political majority.

or

A populism that can never be disentangled from the concept’s pejorative baggage.  An ideology runs the risk of making effective and worthwhile political strategies seem irresponsible, even dangerously promoting nativisms and short term gains.

Obviously, there are leftwing and rightwing populisms both are motivated not by passion for populism’s core ideas, but by other ideological factors best described as a fuzzy blanket to camouflage nastier nativism.

We are now living through a time when familiar webs connecting citizens, ideologies and political parties are, if not falling apart, at least beginning to loosen and shift and old theories of populism that defined it specifically as rightwing, racist or anti-immigrant is insufficiently wide to describe these new developments in populist politics.

It seems to me that Populists deal in “simplicity,” in “glib, facile solutions” while liberal leaders have been “oblivious” to the sufferings of their people.

So why are the traditional parties of the left in the western world being defeated?

Because the other side doesn’t play fair any more with conflict an inescapable and defining feature of political life.

The juvenile incapacity of both to bring their preferences to the political arena and engage in the complex give-and-take of rational compromise is with Social Media now fraught with a political examination and association accusation and assassination.

With the impersonal forces, of “globalisation” and “technological change voters are deciding that mainstream political parties have done nothing for their static incomes or disappearing jobs or sense of national decline these past two decades.

The “many, not the few.”

Populism is a new, consensus-smashing thing that is now secondary to nativism. Ultimately, they are disputes about which types of politics make us suspicious, and why.

To conclude that the two camps are simply talking past each other would be to miss the extent to which they are in agreement –and what, taken together, they tell us about the current political moment.

We can never know exactly where democracy is going to take us – not this time, nor the next, nor the time after that, but political parties must come to terms that the elephant in the room is that we no longer vote once every five years we vote on Social media ever five minutes.

Unless politics is not achievable, or rewarding, it obviously is sowing the long-term seeds for discontent.

It’s great to see politicians with Twitter accounts but there’s only so much you can do with that. Online participation in local decision-making is possible.

Failing to practice what you preach has ethical and political costs. E-voting is the next step.

Here below is what they are voting on and its not Fifty Shades of Grey Popularism.

 

 

Capitalist greed has and is poisoning political life.

Unregulated Algorithms will ensure it continues to do so.  Combined with the new realities of the portability of populism’s ideological movements spread by social media it is no wonder that liberal democracy is crumbling around the world.

To keep up with algorithms and their lavishly detailed position papers, their leaders,  Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, Mircosoft, and their inc have little personal sympathy any longer with the travails of working people.

We can only hope that the fear of populism on the left will enable the victory of populism of the right.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: WE CAN NO LONGER BE CERTAIN ABOUT ANYTHING.

06 Thursday Feb 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Digital age., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human values., Life., Technology, The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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 Twenty four-minute read.   

We have no idea how the world will look in twenty years never mind fifty when most of this generation will be in their seventies but it is now becoming clear beyond any doubt that AI and its algorithms are drastically changing the world we live in both for the good and bad.

There is one thing for certain artificial intelligence will have and is having a more profound effect than electricity or fire. 

It will not just hack our lives our brains, it will hack or very existence.

It might well warn us about climate change, the coronavirus but it will as it is manipulate our needs and wants and beliefs. It will effectively be controlling people for both commercial and political purposes. 

Given the force of this technology to have any control left we need meaningful regulations, if not we might as well just surrender to the algorithm, which is becoming so complex that no one will understand them.

The reality is that most of us are giving rivers of free information to Big data to an extent that we will soon be unable to think for ourselves.

If we don’t get a grip by the time you reach the seventies your futures and the future of the next generations will be decided at random by nonelected platforms.  

If this is so, the decision-making process for us all become a thing of the past.

The outlook for Ai is both grim and exciting. 

Already we see data collected affecting elections, with our ability to know what is fake and what is true at the mercy of Social Media run by algorithms.  

We all know their faces: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Baidu in China, Twitter, Alibaba, to name a few who are already transforming the basic structure of life.

Taken together they form a global oligopoly.

These unregulated platforms are competing for dominance all with a conflict of interests. Hence their algorithms.

The chances of self introducing regulations that will affect or stop their development is pie in the sky. 

Its time we stopped thinking about AI in kind of scientific terms.

Why?

Because algorithms are making critical decisions about our lives and the tech-driven approach to governance is growing. Because any particular scenario will be far from what we think is true today and we are running out of time to do anything about it.

If we are to call a spade a spade there is no or little understanding as to how to regulate these emerging technologies.  Even if there were governments and world institutions that could do so they are largely unequipped to create and enforce any meaningful regulation for the public benefit.

 The problem is how does one regulate an Algorithm that learns. 

You might happy ceding all authority to algorithms and their owners if so you don’t have to do anything they will take care of everything.

If not algorithms are watching you right now to ensure that you do not read this post and if you do read this post they will use one of the most powerful tools in their arsenal of big data – split and divide – False News and repetition thereof for example. 

It won’t happen overnight since development cycles often take years but our collective past will become a less reliable guide and we will have to adapt to the unknown. 

Unfortunately teaching the unknown without mental balance is a disaster in waiting. 

It might be easy now to laugh at this but unless we make our voices heard instead of like clicks it will not be climate change that changes us but race bias that is already programmed into Tec world.

We’re starting to see money examples where these algorithms are prone to the kinds of biases and limitations that we see in human decision making and increasingly we are moving towards algorithms that are learning more and more from data.

 I say, learning from this data almost institutionalizes the biases.

Why?

Because they are trying to personalize the media they curate for us. They’re trying to find for us more and more of the kinds of content that we already consume.  

So what if anything can be done?

Even if we do eventually introduce regulations they will have little effect unless we find a way of sharing the benefits of AI.

The problem is that our institutions, our education models are not able to keep up with the developments in Artificial Intelligence. We are becoming more and more detached from and in decision making, contributing, and rewards.

So our governments are leaving it to the market, to the big Tec companies themselves.

If you are expecting some kind of warning when AI finally get smarter than us then think again.

I say our algorithms are hanging out with the wrong data, profit for profit sake. 

In reality, our electronic overlords are just getting started with the smartphone, the I.Pads, Alex etc taking control.  We have to think about other measures, like is there a social contribution, and what is the impact of this algorithm on society?

This requires transparency.

But how do you create transparency in a world that is getting so complex?

Here is my solution.

Pharmaceuticals are considered as the most highly regulated industries worldwide and every country has its own regulatory authority when it comes to the drug development process.

(World Health Organization (WHO), Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), World Trade Organization (WTO), International Conference on Harmonization (ICH), World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) are some of the international regulatory agencies and organizations which play essential role in all aspects of pharmaceutical regulations related to drug product registration, manufacturing, distribution, price control, marketing, research and development, and intellectual property protection.)

Why not put in place a new World Governing Body to test and control Al algorithms. To act as a guardian of our Basic Human Values.

If this is not done it will remain impossible to truly cooperate with an AI or a corporation until such entities have values in the same sense that we do.

So:

All Companies already using algorithms should be legally required to submit the software programs running their algorithms for audit, by an independent team to ensure that our human values are complied with.

This audit could be done by a United Nation’s programme that is agreed to world wide.

The audit process (Because algorithms are constantly evolving as they gather more data.) has to be somewhat continuous like every ten years similar to Control technique. We might also need an algorithm to monitor the auditing algorithm to ensure it is not contaminated while it goes through its refresh-cycle of the Algorithm it is auditing. 

Then they must be made transparent with a certification of acceptable behaviour.   

Transparency for end users actually is very basic.

It’s not like an end-user wants to know the inner details of every algorithm we use.

But we would actually benefit knowing what’s going on at the high level.

For example, what kinds of data are being used by the algorithms to make decisions?

Recommend transparency measures.

Keeping in mind that these algorithms are being deployed and used by humans, and for humans, anyone impacted by decisions made by algorithms should have the right to a description of the data used to train them, and details as to how that data was collected.

The public, have little understanding or access to information about how governments are using data, much of it collected quietly, to feed the algorithms that make decisions about everyday life. And, in an uncomfortable twist, the government agencies themselves often do not fully understand how algorithms influence their decisions.

Having more and more data alone will not solve the problems, gender bias, race bias.

Perhaps the notion of control may only be an illusion.

It won’t be long before they are latching on to life forms.  For example, there’s a type of machine learning algorithm known as neuro labs, and these are modelled on the human brain. What’s happening in these algorithms is they’ve taken lots of data, and they learn how to make decisions like humans have made.

I think this field hasn’t yet emerged.

Humans aren’t changing that much. But the algorithms, the way they’re created, the technological side of it, continues to change, continues to evolve. And trying to keep those things in sync seems to be the greatest challenge.

In a world where algorithms are deciding who gets what, how machine decisions are made, and how the two, can work together.

Because we are going to use these systems so much that we have to understand them at a deeper level, and we can’t be passive about it anymore because the consequences are very significant, whether we’re talking about a democracy or you know, I’m curating news stories for citizens, or we talking about use by doctors in medicine, or used in the courtroom, and so on.

It is going to be extremely important as we roll out algorithms in more and more important settings going forward we start understanding what drives trust in these machines. Understanding what are some socially important outcomes of interest, so that we order these algorithms against these socially important outcomes, like fairness and so on.

Given everything we know about the world and indeed the universe as a whole does anyone seriously believe that nationalism and popularism will help us with this technological problem. 

Let’s talk about what data are collected about us.

It is far too late to be talking about privacy that is what gets abused.

Let’s fight against everything that we can control that limits our freedom. Whether it’s an algorithm, hungry judge or greedy state backed the wrong econometric model…

We need to rethink how we do education, we have to rethink how we do regulation, and firms also need to stand up and do a better job of auditing and taking responsibility as well.

Of course, none of this will happen.

Humans are more likely to be divided between those who favour giving Algorithms and Ai significant authority to make decisions and those opposed to it with both justifying whichever position while Algorithmic logic drives greed and inequality to a point where we will lose control of transparency completely.

To stay relevant as Yuval Noha Harari says in his Book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century “we will need to be asking the questions -how am I where am I.”

There testing rarely go beyond technical measures which are causing society to become more polarized making it more unlikely that we can appreciate other viewpoints.

Just knowing that an algorithm made the decision would be a good place to start.

Was an algorithm used?

If so who does it belong to?

What kinds of data did the algorithm used?

Today, algorithms and artificial intelligence are creating a much more frightening world. High-frequency trading algorithms already rule the stock exchanges of the world.

Personally, I would neither overestimate nor underestimate the role and threat of algorithms. Behind every smart web service is some smarter web code.

So we need to make sure their design is not only informed by knowledge of the human users, but the knowledge of their design is also suitably conveyed to human users so we don’t eliminate the human from the loop completely.

If not they will become a black box, even to the engineer.

All our lives are constrained by limited space and time, limits that give rise to a particular set of problems that are being exploited by profit-seeking algorithms. 

There’s so much data out there to be analyzed. And right now it’s just sitting there not doing anything. So maybe we can come up with a solution that will at least get us started on it.

It is a fascinating topic because there are so many variables involved.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.