We are coming up to another god-wobbling Climate Change gathering in Scotland which by any account will be A ZOME GATHERING because of COVID-19 on the 1 – 12 November 2021.
This one is the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26).
A two-week showcase as to why the world is unable to come together to tackle the problems of climate change. Remember that these conferences started in the 90th.
This one is likely to include demonstrations of virtual reality technology; showcasing innovation helping to tackle global climate change and probably like the others will archive little or nothing.
Why?
Because they produce nonbinding promises without addressing the main problem of how or who is going to finance the changes needed.
We live in an age in which intersecting crises are being lifted to a global scale, with unseen levels of inequality, environmental degradation, and climate destabilization, as well as new surges in populism, conflict, economic uncertainty, and mounting public health threats.
The coronavirus pandemic may lead to a deeper understanding of the ties that bind us on a global scale., and there are, to a certain degree, parallels that can be drawn between the current COVID-19 pandemic and some of the other contemporary crises our world is facing. All require a global-to-local response and long-term thinking.
All need to be guided by science and need to protect the most vulnerable among us, and all require the political will to make fundamental changes when faced with existential risks. They all need Money.
It’s rational for an individual country not to drastically reduce greenhouse gases, given most economies are heavily based on energy resources that emit them. Yet, if all nations act that way — indeed, that’s what’s happening — most countries would eventually be worse off due to the cumulative impacts of all our emissions, not to mention the hoarding of covid-19 vaccines.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that Covid -19 is real and that Climate Change will wreak havoc on the planet. BOTH ARE ALREADY DOING SO.
Covid-19 has brought the entire world economy to its knees in a matter of weeks during a pandemic that scientists warned us would come.
While enacting policies today to cut greenhouse gas emissions won’t have a discernible impact on global warming for decades, if not centuries. That’s because we have already locked in significant warming due to our historical emissions. Unlike other policies, climate change is cumulative. The longer we wait to address it, the bigger the problem it becomes and the harder it gets to solve, fueling a feedback loop that makes solutions ever more difficult.
Although global emissions were not as high as last year, they still amounted to about 39 billion tonnes of CO2. Covid-19 has changed this narrative to one that involves avoiding a rebound in emissions.
The bottom line: Big climate policy would have to offer concrete benefits outside of its impact on emissions — think jobs or energy security — to overcome this time disconnect.
The bottom line: We are the first generation of humans to start paying the price for a warmer world, and we are also the first to face costs as we try to address it.
We’re paying now and later.
Cost No. 1: Responding to flooding, heatwaves, and other extreme weather that climate change is often making worse.
Cost No. 2: Enacting policies to reduce emissions, which would come in the form of higher fossil-fuel costs today.
Cost No. 3 will continue for decades, if not centuries, even in addition to Cost No. 2.
This is because of the aforementioned time disconnect: the amount of warming locked in already has also locked in associated costs — which will come in the form of not just money, but also health, lives, and nature losses.
This just might be the world’s greatest collective action problem, which is when rational, self-interested decisions of individuals make the circumstances of the group worse, and vice versa
Imagine getting taxed before you put that money into your fund and then not living long enough to reap the payoffs of your fund. That’s happening with climate change, on a global scale.
Even though climate change presents a slower, more long-term health threat, an equally dramatic and sustained shift in behavior will be needed to prevent irreversible damage.
When we eventually overcome the COVID-19 pandemic, we can hopefully hold on to that sense of shared humanity in order to rebuild our social and economic systems to make them better, more resilient, and compassionate
Joe Biden’s climate plan promises net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, Biden would be pushing 110 years old when he’d have to check (likely from the afterlife) on how his policy did. I’ll be 65. How old will you be?
Essentially all organisms use weather cues to guide their lives, and when these change and fracture everyone takes a hit.
As I have said in previous posts there is only one way to finance the changes.
That is by making a profit for profit sake pay, by placing a World Aid Commission of 0.05% on all activities that are not sustainable. ( See previous posts.)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
“You’re well within your right to know which vaccine you’re taking.
In this post, I am addressing the moral case for taking or not taking the Jab and I am no science or Medical guru.
Everyone has a choice.
When you get vaccinated, you should receive a card or printout telling you which COVID-19 vaccine you received, the date, and where you received it. You’ll also get a fact sheet listing the vaccine’s risks and benefits.
At the moment there are:
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine- USA.
Pfizer’s vaccine – USA
Novavax -USA
and AstraZeneca. – Uk
CanSino – China.
Others in trial. Valneva, GSK/Sanofi Pasteur, Janssen.
Vaccines and drugs often take years to go through trials and development before gaining approval and being used to treat patients. So with vaccines ready to be delivered within months of Covid-19’s emergence, it’s fair to ask how we can be sure they’re safe.
Could issues present themselves years down the line? No one knows. 100 percent safety can never be guaranteed.
The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two doses within 28 days. These vaccines don’t contain live viruses and will not give you COVID-19.
They are mRNA vaccines that use a strip of genetic material called mRNA. Once the mRNA enters a cell, it triggers the cell to build copies of the spike proteins. The immune system learns to recognize these spike proteins through the production of antibodies that block the virus from entering healthy cells. Both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines work this way.
The Pfizer vaccine needs to be kept at super-cold temperatures of -70 degrees Celsius, while the Moderna vaccine must be stored at -2 degrees Celsius and must be used within 12 hours once it reaches room temperature.
The Pfizer vaccine is approved for individuals 16 and older.
The Moderna’s has been approved for patients 18 and older.
The AstraZenecaViral vector vaccines rely on another virus, called an adenovirus.
There is nothing in either vaccine that could affect anyone’s genetic makeup.“There is no evidence at all that they have any effect on fertility
For many diseases, immunity acquired naturally often lasts longer than immunity from a vaccine. But that means you have to suffer, and survive, the disease,” So what is called herd immunity might well be achievable but at the cost of millions more deaths and suffering.
To debunked myth that has with the help of social media morphed into a conspiracy theory after Bill Gates suggested creating a digital certificate of vaccine records.
There is no microchip and no tracking device of any kind in either vaccine.
It’s almost hard to deny this stuff because it’s so stupid or strange that even
to repeat it gives it credibility.
Unfortunately, it’s too early for anyone to knows whether any of the vaccines
will actually affect the virus spread with a new mutation or whether
symptomless vaccine takers could still infect others.
Everyone wants to see the back of Covid-19.
The truth at the moment is that there is a carnival of wild claims, distortions,
and flat-out lies about whichever jab you happen to get.
The pharmaceutical companies that developed these vaccines did so
against their own Data.
We don’t know how long vaccine-induced immunity is going to last.
Will we all have to carry either a digital health card or some other government Pass?
More than likely.
If we need a booster jab does it have to be the same vaccine or anyone of the others?
What would happen if you had one on each?
In the end, we have to hope that there are no unseen consequences from any of the available vaccines.
Should you take a jab?
The vaccines’ effectiveness isn’t dependent on the scientists alone. It’s also dependent on us. So, what should we do and why? Here’s why I am going to get vaccinated.
Vaccines are something we do for each other as much as ourselves.
It depends on a personal basis on what value you place on your life but with society-wide consequences.
As much as viruses are scourges and will always be here, vaccines are our friends. Before the measles vaccine, that disease killed millions of kids every year. About that gift horse, we should not be looking at.
It will show what we’re made of.
All human comments are appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
If I was writing a post about what is right about the world it would be a few minutes read.
Of course, this is a flippant remark as there are many things right with the world.
Technology and Science has produced vaccines to fight Covid-19 and millions of us are every day doing our bit, to ensure that the most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.
However, to put it mildly, we live in a topsy-turvy world and its present state is pretty grim right now.
In a world that has been governed by inequality and recently by ‘fake news’ and leaders who dismiss ‘facts,’ it no wonder that we are in such a mess.
With this continuing statistically meticulous presentation of global trends is vitally important to understand the world today, including the economic, health, and geo-political reverberations of Covid-19.
The overall state of our world makes sad reading.
ACCORDING TO WORLD REVOLUTION ORG.
THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.
Around 258 million people live outside the country of their birth.
14% of the world’s children are economically active
Nearly 2 billion people in the world are overweight or obese.
More than 800 million people are undernourished.
By 2050 almost all seabirds will have ingested plastic.
Nearly 50% of the world’s economic output is generated in places aiming to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
Violence costs the world around $8.3 trillion a year – twice the amount needed to meet the UN’s development goals.
There have been over 250 major wars in the world since World War II, in which 23 million people have been killed., tens of millions made homeless, and countless millions injured and bereaved.
Over 35 major conflicts are going on in the world today. In armed conflicts since 1945, 90 percent of casualties have been civilians. 3 out of 4 fatalities of war are women and children.
In the wars of the last decade, more children were killed than soldiers. In the last decade, child victims of war include an estimated 2 million killed, 4 to 5 million disabled, 12 million left homeless, and more than 1 million orphaned.
There are 300,000 child soldiers in the world.
Landmines maim or kill approximately 26,000 civilians every year, including 8,000 to 10,000 children. At least 75% of landmine victims are civilians. It is estimated that there are between 60 and 70 million landmines in the ground in at least 70 countries.
More than 500 million small arms and light weapons are in circulation around the world. In major conflicts since 1990, they have caused 4 million deaths – about 90 percent of them civilians, and 80 percent women and children.
There are approximately 30,000 nuclear warheads in the world today. Some 5,000 nuclear weapons are on hair-trigger alert, ready to be launched at a few minute’s notice.
Current global military spending is approximately $800 billion per year; more than the total annual income of the poorest 45% of the global population.
Genocide and other mass murders killed more people in the 20th century than all wars combined. Between 54 and 80 million people have been killed in genocides in the last century. Between 170 and 360 million people have been killed, in total, by governments (democide) in the 20th century, apart from war.
Human rights & social justice.
33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes. 35% of the world’s people live in countries in which basic political rights and civil liberties are denied (such as freedom of speech, religion, press, fair trials, democratic political processes, etc).
1 billion people – 1/3rd of the world’s labor force, are unemployed or underemployed. An estimated 37 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labor (forced to work to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’). At least 700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported, and held against their will in slave-like conditions).
About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labor. Nearly three-fourths of these, about 180 million children, including 110 million under age 15, are exposed to the worst forms of, or hazardous, child labor. Some estimated 8.4 million children are trapped in the most abhorrent forms of child labor – slavery, trafficking, debt bondage, prostitution, pornography, and other such activities.
Women account for 70 percent of the world’s people who live in absolute poverty. Women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours, produce half of the world’s food, and yet earn only 10% of the world’s income and own less than 1% of the world’s property. Worldwide, a quarter of all women are raped during their lifetime. Depending on the country, 25 to 75 percent of women are regularly beaten at home. Between 10% and 50% of women report they have been physically abused by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Over 120 million women have undergone female genital mutilation. Women hold only 12% of parliamentary seats worldwide. Women account for 2/3rd of the world’s illiterate adults, and girls account for 2/3rd of the world’s children without access to education.
In 1998, extrajudicial executions were carried out in 47 countries, ‘disappearances’ occurred in 37 countries, torture occurred in 125 countries, prisoners of conscience were held in 78 countries, unfair trials for political prisoners occurred in 35 countries, detentions without charge or trial occurred in 66 countries, executions were carried out in 36 countries, and human rights abuses were committed by armed opposition groups in 37 countries.
There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.
Poverty & development.
3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in ‘absolute’ or ‘extreme poverty’ (living on less than $1 per day).
800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.
800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition.
2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. 1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people, or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water-related diseases.
275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.
3 million people die every year from HIV/AIDS. Approximately 25 million people have died from AIDS in the last 20 years. 70 million will die from AIDS by 2020. 40 million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, who will die within 10 years. 13 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS since the epidemic began, and the number is expected to double to 26 million by 2010.
Over 100 million people live in slums. An estimated 25 to 50 percent of urban inhabitants in poor, developing countries live in impoverished slums and squatter settlements.
The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people). The top 5% of the world’s people earn more income than the bottom 80%. The top 10% of the world’s people earn as much income as the bottom 90%. The richest 16% of the world’s population receives 84% of the world’s annual income.
The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet. The combined wealth of the world’s richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world’s population. The world’s 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world’s people. The wealthiest one-fifth of the world’s population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.
Poor countries (which contain 4/5th’s of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care. In 1997 the foreign debts of poor countries were more than $2 trillion and growing. The result is a debt of $400 for every person in the developing world – where the average annual income in the very poorest countries is less than a dollar a day.
Environment & sustainability.
Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone. Only one-fifth of the Earth’s original forests remain pristine and undisturbed.
Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years. Based on current trends, an estimated 34,000 plant and 5,200 animal species – including one in eight of the world’s bird species – face extinction. Almost a quarter of the world’s mammal species will face extinction within 30 years. Up to 47% of the world’s plant species are at risk of extinction.
60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20–40 years
Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles and marine mammals are entangled and drowned by irresponsible fishing practices every year.
More than 20 percent of the world’s known 10,000 freshwater fish species have become extinct, been threatened, or endangered in recent decades. Sixty percent of the world’s important fish stocks are threatened by overfishing.
Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe. Over 250 million people are directly affected by desertification, and one billion people are at risk.
Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years, resulting in multiple adverse effects on the environment and human society, including widespread species loss, ecosystem damage, flooding of populated human settlements, and increased natural disasters.
An estimated 40–80 million people have been forcibly evicted and displaced from their lands to make way for the construction of large dams, resulting in economic and social devastation for these people.
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IT APPEARS THAT THE WOLRD IS IN SUCH A STATE THAT TRUTH HAS ALREADY CEASED TO MATTER AND EVIDENCE OF THIS IS WHATEVER OF APPROVAL NARRATIVES WANT IT TO BE.
We think we understand environmental damage: pollution, water scarcity, a warming world. But these problems are just the tip of the iceberg.
Evidence is growing that the thermohaline current may be slowed or stopped by cold freshwater inputs to the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. This could occur if global warming is sufficient to cause large scale melting of arctic sea ice and the Greenland ice sheet. Such a change in the current may be gradual (over centuries) or very rapid (over a few years).
Either would cause planet-wide changes in climate. This effect may be part of what starts and stops the ice ages.
The land in the northern hemisphere has been unfrozen for less than half of the last 400,000 years. In 2005, it was discovered that deep water formation under the Arctic “Odden ice tongue” had almost stopped.
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If perpetual economic growth on a finite planet is impossible, what are the alternatives?
Can national governments manage the transition to sustainability, to a world of sharing?
I think not.
The capitalist system and its institutions have lurched from disaster to disaster, blatantly incapable of mastering the social, economic, environmental, and now health emergencies it has created.
Industrial civilization, economic growth, and the lifestyles of the developed world are dependent on inexpensive oil and gas. The energy and products from cheap oil have made possible the major changes in globalized industrial civilization in the last 100 years, including its huge impact on indigenous cultures and planetary ecosystems.
Affordable food production by industrial agriculture needs inexpensive natural gas and oil inputs for fertilizers, pesticides, industrial machinery, planting, cultivating, harvesting, processing, packaging, transportation, and marketing.
We use six times as much water today as we did 100 years ago.
Where do we go from here?
One question is:
How did we get to this state of extreme polarization?
Who (or what) started us down this destructive path?
All hail to the machine learning profit-seeking algorithms that run Social Media.
We are only as strong as our weakest link and the weakest link is Big Tech which is completely out of control.
Suppression of information, online bullying, and intimidation— are good if they serve politically correct causes, for which the ends justify the means but do anyone with a functioning brain not now realize that is it is conceivable that well-trafficked truth-telling sites are impossible?
Does this information break your heart?
Of course not.
Because we don’t see where the locus of power is, that it lies with the interlocked networks of corporations that command advanced communications technology, not in “their” government.
So wherever we are right now is not necessarily where we’ll end up.
The coronavirus has changed everyday life for many around the world affords us the opportunity to take responsibility for each other—to leave the myth of individualism and blaming behind, but the problem: Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, etc., are not “private companies” in any meaningful, real-world sense. These-are-private-companies like Facebook Twitter, Google, etc, simply aren’t in the real world.
These are private companies; they can do business with whoever they please and deplatform whoever they please. The myth of individualism has all but disappeared.
Social media is legitimately criticized as a destroyer of your time. ( See previous Posts)
The evidence for this is what happened in the Twitter presidency of the USA, the rejection of membership of the EU by England on lies, the Arab spring, and now the continuing coronavirus death toll.
New social media uploads last as long as those who control information want them to last.
Now, Biden says he wants “healing.” Biden-Harris “healing” will mean bowing before the cult of woke, a baffling concept because the awakened are still asleep.
Of course, slavery is an abomination. Of course, there should be free speech. Of course, there should be full emancipation of women. Of course, there should be the defense of all the Great Freedoms, even religion. That is how we progressed to this lofty condition of humanity.
Lots of ideas fail when put into practice.
It’s worth pointing out, too, that today’s striven-for norms may well confound the concepts of future generations. Although the wokes, or the wakes, hold strong opinions now who is to say what other ideas may take over and differently bias the next to awaken?
One wonders if when the pendulum swings future generations might not come to regard the woke clientele as equally misguided, just as today’s woke contingent deplores the earlier generations that thought memorial statues and patriotism well worth it.
Meanwhile, Rule Britannia and Land of Hope, and Crosby may be held to refer to slavery but are all also part of the great learning curve of human progress.
Perhaps we should all start replacing the customary ‘Good Morning’ greeting with an abject apology for consuming the commonly shared oxygen supply of the planet.
Anyway, I’ve had about enough of hearing the whining of those who stand, head bowed, around the catafalque of patriotism.
The speed at which things have been unraveling in 2020 has been jarring. From normalcy to Pandemic Panic lockdown with maximum fear in a matter of weeks; from ostensibly united against the pandemic to if we were not careful to nationwide riots and cultural revolution in a matter of days not years.
While the threat of the former will inevitably pass with time, the threat inherent in the latter is pervasive, aggressive, and emboldened.
Where do we go from here?
Even though we are living in a technological age every day we see appeals to save critically endangered animals, from Bees that are dying at an alarming rate, to Children, to Climate change.
In the next decade, we will see more than a hundredfold boom in the world’s output of human genetic data thanks to Covid-19 from the cradle to the grave which will not save the Bees that pollinate our plants. I would say that relatively few people would on reading this think that the world they are living in is getting better.
What comes next is anyone’s guess.
Giving up your freedom, trusting “your” government, wearing your face mask, and by the way, getting the jab so you can go back to consuming, while the real economy drops into the worst depression of modern times.
We might be confused by what is happing in the world but we should not be deluded.
There’s always something we can do.
At the moment with covid-19 there is a lot of millionaires Davos verbal diarrhea on social media about a Reset – without any financial commitments – it is just multimillionaires and multi-billionaires spouting their neoliberal capitalist ideology turning nature into a product.
There is huge inequality in the world and they are literally the representatives of the 1%, actually, the 0.001%.
The only thing that can be reset is Accountability and Transparency, with large financial fines for breaches of sustainability, while harnessing profit for profit’s sake to convert the world to green economies. ( See previous post: World aid commission of 0.05%
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
(FUNDAMENTAL FIFTEEN MINUTE READ. TO CHANGING THE DIRECTION THE WORLD IS GOING IN)
This virus has no vaccine against it, it extracts data about our behaviors and using it to manipulate us. It flourishes on social media that preys on the most primal parts of your brain.
You sign up to it with the terms and conditions when you get online with Twitter or Facebook, Google, and more.
Companies like Facebook and Google have corporate goals and interests that are backing us into an untenable social framework, where these monopolies own and operate the Internet, outside societal influences, and democratic control, extracting data on a massive scale.
They own your content in precise ways, and they have precise aims for your content.
As well, and, most of the time, treating our private lives as raw material for their profit.
Their algorithms are engineered to amplify the most extreme, angry, toxic, content with the intent to maximize data extraction thereby creating a huge societal asymmetry of knowledge and power – a whole new dimension of inequality.
WE ARE LEARNING THE HARD ABOUT THEIR DESTRUCTIVE EFFECTS – the election of Donald Trump, the Arab Spring, Promoting Popularism, false news on everything, from climate change to covid-19.
WITH THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS IT IS INTOLERABLE TO ALLOW MISFORMATION TO BE SPREAD WILLY NILLY WITHOUT VERIFICATION OF THE TRUTH.
This commercial surveillance has to stop because the boundaries between the virtual and the real world are melting.
We the people should have the right to decide what becomes of data and what remains private. What data is sharable and what purpose data should be used for.
WHY?
BECAUSE OUR PUBLIC DISCOURSE RULED BY SOCIAL MEDIA IS BEING RULED BY A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE FOR THE SAKE OF THEIR PROFIT.
If we don’t in the not so distant future you will see algorithms with self-awareness or worse still self-aware robots.
Instead of massive concentrations of data to manipulate our commercial and political behavior, data becomes a critical resource for people and society to ensure we remove inequalities in society.
There is no room tweaking any of this to get us where we need to go.
Let’s not delve into whether social media are a boon or bane for society. Instead, let’s appropriate social media and use it as an extension of ourselves to reach out to others, and not as a replacement for our physical offline relationships…
Unfortunately, our political discourse is shrinking to fit our smartphone screens and it is too late to regulate or pass laws governing the use of Algorithms. Only the threat of the very large fines will get these platforms and the people behind to concentrate on this in an appropriate way.
Because the formulaic quality of social media is well suited to the banter it appears these days that you’re only as relevant as your last tweet.
WE NEED A FUNDAMENTAL WORLD RESET WITH AI TO TETHER INDUSTRIAL CAPITALISM TO EQUALITY NOT INEQUALITY.
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Facebook is basically an advertising company; they exist to make money, like all companies.
Even though Facebook has joined WHO and UNIFC to supply accurate information about covid-19 vaccines misinformation still finds a way on to social media where it combined to make a whirlpool of misinformation.
For example. A post like this.
10 years from now you will hear commercials that say ” if you took the Covid-19 vaccine between 2020-2021 you may be entitled to compensation”
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The world is experiencing dramatic events that are leaving their mark not only on our society and our economy but on each and every one of us.
On the plus side of Ai technology, machine-learning algorithms are helping researchers understand the virus, identify the regions of the world with the highest contagion rates, and forecast the capacity needs of national health systems, with the aim—among others—of minimizing fatalities in the COVID-19 pandemic.
These algorithms can identify patterns of concentration, contagion rates, hidden similarities among cases, and, in general, allow for the aggregation of valuable knowledge that provides a more accurate global picture of the pandemic. More importantly, such algorithms can be used to protect communities that might be more vulnerable. For example, if an elder-care facility is located in an area with a high concentration of contagion, it should receive special attention to prevent unnecessary fatalities.
Prediction algorithms, together with fine-grained simulations can be used to forecast the evolution of the crisis.
For all these outcomes to be reliable, an important precondition is the trustworthiness of the data used with the algorithms.
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Social media is run by algorithms, programs that spit out the things you see online, working in the background to come up with the things you see.
The interest of the corporation is fueling the content that you’re seeing.
However, when we are talking about algorithms on the internet or social media, you’re talking about people’s data going into a system and reworked preferences that come from that data input coming out. So you’re seeing the same sorts of things again and again when you’re expressing your preferences online.
So clicking on Google, YouTube, Twitter, the Facebook which are reinforcement systems based on existing preferences is about giving anthropomorphic agency to something that really doesn’t make decisions in the same way that we do.
Are they giving us beneficial moments, or making actual choices for us?
The question is if algorithms just show us what we want, can they push us in different directions.
Think about it in terms of what the algorithm wants and how it’s treating us by personifying the algorithm.
To sum up.
They are inescapable and encrypted in individuals’ online lives constantly, ‘making autocratic decisions…to produce a single output and agonistic in influencing individuals becoming a key site of power in the contemporary mediascape with the ability to, ‘shape social and cultural formations.
To date, we as individuals have granted algorithms the, ‘almost unimaginable power to determine what we see, where we spend, how we perceive.
Their power seems to be located in the mechanics of the algorithm.
However, it is in the hands of the individual to modify their opinions and perspectives to what has been put in order for them.
Every algorithm falls under a certain class.
Basically, they are-
1) Brute force.
2) Divide and conquer.
3) Decrease and conquer.
4) Dynamic programming.
5) Greedy algorithm.
6) Transform and conquer.
7) Backtracking algorithm.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As you know the workings of the world of finance are screaming compilated.
All money is created as debt and destroyed when repaid.
Money originated as commodity money, but nearly all contemporary money systems are based on fiat money. ( Fiat money does not have intrinsic value and does not have use-value.)
It has value only because a government maintains its value, or because parties engaging in exchange agree on its value.
There are three major theories regarding the origin of money:-
1 Money was created for trading purposes;
2 Money was created for social purposes;
3 Money was created for religious purposes.
Money is an unconditional means of payment, a token for wealth, worthless of itself, but symbolizing wealth because it is enshrined in law. It is then administered by Governments as a public resource, for and on behalf of the People.
Money today has no connection with earthly resources, and actually many earthly resources are diminishing while money (or at least the number on the pieces of paper) gets bigger and bigger.
I think we’d soon find out how money has stopped us from appreciating the true value of the earth we live on.
In the coming years, we need to get this reality of money out to everyone.
I imagine the scenario whereby ‘money’ in its present form disappeared in a flash, there would be no physical change in anything, just a lot of renegotiation.
With Facebook’s Libra looming on the horizon and the Covid-19 pandemic further depressing the use of physical cash perhaps it’s time for Central Bank digital currency (CBDC) to be introduced.
To give policymakers more effective tools to support the economy, particularly during times of crisis, while maintaining financial stability. Allowing central banks to distribute newly created public money directly to citizens rather than going through financial markets.
What happens if the world does not return to normalcy within, say, a few years?
If so, governments will find themselves writing enormous cheques every month to sustain comatose economies. If that happens, all bets are off.
The bottom line is, we are not at the mercy of just a virus but a world economic depression with governments issuing epic amounts of debt. For now, confronted by an overwhelming emergency, governments have little choice but to engage in deficit spending on a giant scale, embarking on one of the greatest peacetime borrowing binges in history.
This is and should be raising many questions when it comes to borrowing, severely tests the question of how much the governments can borrow.
Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 coronavirus epidemic, the economic uncertainty will likely cost the global economy trillions.
In fact, the urgent question isn’t whether countries can afford to take on more debt. It’s whether they’re taking on enough debt to fund the stimulus programs necessary to avert an even deeper downturn.
There’s a degree of anxiety now that’s well beyond the health scares which are very serious and concerning. No matter how expensive an outpouring of government aid may seem right now, it is cheaper than dealing with a depression down the road.
After all, it consists of one arm of government creating money in order to buy debt issued by another arm of government, which looks perilously close to a shell game in which central banks monetize government debt and distort markets.
The amount a government can borrow depends on many factors, such as
Does it print its own currency?
Do markets trust the government to maintain low inflation and not default?
What is the interest rate on government bonds?
What is the state of the economy?
What is the purpose of government borrowing?
To what extent is the government borrowing from domestic or foreign investors?
Should we worry about the long-term effects of this new borrowing?
Without question, the new debt will leave taxpayers with a significantly larger burden to carry in years to come.
Some commentators believe debt-challenged governments may eventually be forced to go even further and turn to “helicopter money,” a maneuver in which central banks would simply create money, without issuing any corresponding debt, and the government would funnel the new cash to people and businesses.
The lender of last resort.
If there is no lender of last resort.
The nightmare scenario where the virus continues to suffocate the global economy for a year or more would lead to the unpardonable sin of blurring the distinction between fiscal and monetary policy.
Disaster Capitalism.
But until we win the battle against COVID-19, and revive our battered economies, we are in uncharted territory. Best to not rule anything out.
The economic impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus will be different than anything we have seen before.
This is the calm before the storm.
How far can a currency fall before the government has to protect its citizens from the effects of a worthless currency?
STIMULUS DOES NOT NECESSITATE EXTRA DEBT.
Money should become Man’s servant rather than his master.
In fact, central banks act as a broker between the governments and private bankers who lend the nation its own national currency at interest.
It does this by issuing gilt-edged bonds.
Markets are allowing all the major countries to borrow plenty at ultra-low rates of interest, underpinned by Central Banks buying up a lot of the debt.
This only has to change where inflation picks up, which so far it has not.
Inflation reduces the real value of the government debt, but, that means people will be less willing to hold government bonds.
Inflation will require higher interest rates to attract people to keep bonds. In theory, the government can print money to reduce the real value of debt; but existing savers will lose out.
If the government creates inflation, it will be more difficult to attract savings in the future.
But in an economic depression, inflationary pressures vanish so it is much easier to finance a deficit by borrowing.
So do government debt and deficits don’t matter.
2021 will be the first year where the three main economies or trading blocs of the world – the US, the European Union (EU), and China – will refocus their efforts on fighting climate change.
Can the world afford this avalanche of new borrowing?
With the coming economic depression and the need to redefine our association with nature, while addressing climate change, and getting control of the pandemics there is no choice.
It sticks out like a sore thumb if we are to win the war against this virus inequality has to be addressed by paying for the protection of our ecosystems.
In other words, to make it less profitable to destroy rather than to create.
This can be achieved without the need to borrow with the technology we have at our disposal by placing a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all activities that generate profit for profit’s sake. ( See previous posts)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.)
Once society gains control of the issue of money, it cannot let the bankers issue money ever again.
providing a safe public form of money and breaking the oligopoly that banks currently have on the digital money and payments system.
It does need standards and global agreements but the potential advantages clearly outwiegh the disadvantages.
endorsed digital currency is the way forward> this potentially is a great (and cheaper) way to distribute money to where its needed and this is more importnat than ever right know for obvious reasons.
Created money is already inflationary,
BORROWING COMES IN FORTY SHADES OF GRAY
a surge in misleading and unsubstantiated medical advice since the Covid-19 outbreak.
The first is that borrowing has been historically high in recent years following the financial crisis in the late noughties,
the deficit
GDP reflecting the need to spend and borrow to win the war.
Bank of England is buying in substantial quantities of the debt.
There is no need to count the interest paid on the debt owned by the Bank of England, as taxpayers and government get that receipt.
The debt taken on by the UK now has to be serviced by the following generations. And what are they getting in return for that debt? Just about nothing.
Quantative easing, which is bond buying by central banks
as it’s known in the jargon –
Covid is going to be around in the world for decadesa
possible total deficit of £7 trn by 2050.
By hoovering up domestic bonds, these central banks are creating artificial demand for bonds and thereby driving down interest rates (which move in the opposite direction to bond prices).
Central banks’ balance sheets are expanding furiously as they gobble up government bonds and other forms of debt.
Since the internet was in its infancy, the rights of users to use it to express their opinions were sacrosanct.
However, there is a price for “free” internet, and that we’ve given up more of ourselves than we ever intended to.
Concern already exists that Facebook and similar social media platforms act as echo chambers that validate opinions we already hold – fuelling precisely the type of extreme views that Facebook says it has a right to edit.
Might this new position simply result in more fake news?
The Internet has and is empowering masses of people by access to world-wide information sources, education, and communication but what is now considered permissible and acceptable online is shifting.
The question is with this newfound freedom, that is influencing every aspect of our lives for good or bad, should we be requiring people to register their identity when using the internet.?
If so how.
It would be true to say as we have become constantly connected, none of us are as anonymous as we think.
George Orwell presciently realized that if citizens don’t know what is true and what is false, they can’t make a judgment about what to object to in their lives.
Is it time to introduce an online digital passport to eradicate individual desires, such as credulity, abuse, gender-swapping, exploration, radicalizing, hacking, trolling, spreading false news, promoting popularism groups, bullying, racism, the list is endless?
( Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says.
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”
The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give internet users the right to privacy and the right to withhold their personal details.
The Malicious Communication Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 make it possible to prosecute “trolling” – and many other forms of online harassment are also now covered by the legislation. )
Platforms on the internet avoided liability by claiming they were “mere conduits” of these views and not “publishers” of them. The argument goes that this includes protection for freedom of expression by the right to remain anonymous online.
So which should remain enshrined: freedom of speech or freedom from abuse?
The world feels smaller and we’ve celebrated this but in any human population, there will be people with irreconcilably different understandings of the truth.
Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it.
The world, however, has changed, and many of us may be in the time warp of old values. Human beings are poor witnesses, easily misled by a personal bias, profoundly influenced by their social environment.
As products of their society, social media and journalists are no exceptions.
The world is now a much more dangerous place, not because of Covid -19 which is plunging it into a Depression with social media exposing a system of governance corseted by greed – profit before the people. Then, on the other hand, social media is like cancer at the heart of societies spreading the news, not what the facts are, but what men wish to see.
The press once seemed to have a conscience, thanks to history’s painful social conflicts and questions of war and peace.
Social media is not concerned with any historical lessons it being a wildfire of the short-term reactions of unfounded populism without any in-depth investigative journalism.
It is becoming impossible to distinguish between paid news and actual, unbiased news.
You could say that the world has more pressing problems.
However, our current and future problems, like the internet, are all interconnected.
Shifting trends and the advancement in communication technology require a re-examination of the underlying principle and its application in new contexts.
There are attempts to get some control.
Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal.
Because like several other precious freedoms, free speech must be placed outside the reach of political exigency.
Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is impossible to pass binding regulations or laws that don’t restrict the sanctity of free speech.
Free speech or the freedom of expression is the modern civilization’s most precious gift to human society but it can’t be reaffirmed by drowning out its opponents.
————
The issuing of Digital Passports could not be left to the whim of Facebook or any other internet providers.
Also “Digital identity solutions leave us open to data exploitation with the valuable data from these solutions (being) used for other purposes, so governments could not be involved in their issuing other than making supporting laws with large fines.
The most obvious hitch in this plan is that not everyone has a smartphone,
With the current Pandemic and vacations, there will be an attempt to introduce Covid-19 free digital health certification (Of course, this would only be applicable to people with smartphones.) and they could become a prerequisite for some activities.
But for now, we’re many steps removed from that kind of streamlined process even becoming possible. Widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of any country’s response to COVID-19 so far.
So here is the challenge.
Is it possible to create a Digital Passport that is unhackable, that can be applied for online, that would combine your present Passport information, that you could use to vote, to register an internet identity, and carry your medical history.
People would only accept such a thing if it commands public trust.
As evidence with the recent election in the USA entrusting your democracy to a black-box proprietary system that is subject to hacking, glitches, and errors, but NOT subject to scrutiny, analysis, or independent verification, is the surest and quickest way to lose your democracy.
However, creating an internet user register could be possible not only authenticating the user but making it more transparent and ensure that users have the right to remedy when wrong decisions are made.
As for platforms, they know what they need to do because civil society has told them for years.
Just in case they have not got the message they should ensure that the decisions they make about speech are in line with global human rights standards, rather than making the rules up as they go.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
As we floundering around in the midst of COMPOUNDING PANDEMICS that are far from over, the future is not here yet.
With our planet is crying out, our political leaders are like fish out of water, apart from the obvious, it seems that we have lost the plot. Compounded by ignorance, short term self-interest, the pursuit of wealth, and political interests, any actions that are vital for survival are stymieing by the lack of conciliation.
Climate Change, Biodiversity, Artificial Intelligence, Poverty and Inequality, Population all on the top of the list. All of them are presenting overwhelming challenges ahead.
There is no way of sugar-coating any of these threats, they have no borders.
We are brought up with other people’s perceptions of life.
Not until we develop enough, intellectually, can we change those perceptions, and even then it can be difficult to change our perceptions about the world until we start to really question it.
Anything else is a blatant lie.
With millions of dead and millions more death to come, we can only prevent any one of them from coming to fruition if we take all of them especially the environmental threat seriously.
With large swaths of people still dealing with entrenched inequalities, it is no wonder we are unable to see the above threats as reality.
If there was ever a time to join together it is now.
We all have an identity and cultural distinctiveness, but if we bound together in a common cause, we could accomplish spectacular things.
To do this we must first start to see ourselves as HUMAN BEINGS, and the planet earth as HOME, not our individual countries.
————
I am sure you will agree that the world order is destined to change and it’s urgent that humanity gets a way to preserve what’s left on Earth.
In this regard, technology is not a destiny jobs will be for robots and life for people.
The problem is who is the owner of the robots and how do we ensure that we all benefit.
At the moment there are millions wasting their time in useless jobs to scratch a living. Rest assured that capitalism will come up with millions of more useless jobs.
————
Unfortunately, we are not able to act as one, and even if we could there would be no point in becoming mindless drones with no culture.
There would be no point in living because it’ would be all just be one culture with no distinct forms.
The raw reality exposed by the current pandemic is that everyone is only just a human unable to act as one due to greed-driven by unregulated social media and profit-seeking algorithms.
———–
The big question is what can be done?
SOLUTIONS WITHOUT FUNDING, ABOUND ON TED TALKS.
We know that poverty is one of the main driving forces when it comes to any long term perspective to protecting the earth.
Poverty is not due to a lack of knowledge. POVERTY IS CREATED BY SCARCITY, not a personality defect as Maggie Thatcher once said.
As George Orwell said “Poverty annihilates the Future “
You would think by now we would have figured out the reasons for its existence.
ALMOST EVERYTHING NEEDED FOR LIFE IS MADE SCARCE BY APPLYING CAPITALIST PROFIT, TURNING ALMOST EVERYTHING INTO A PRODUCT TO BE TRADED.
SO WHEN ONE IS UNABLE TO ACQUIRE WHAT IS NEEDED DUE TO THE LACK OF CASH YOU HAVE POVERTY. If we genuinely ask why do the poor make so many bad decisions THIS IS THE MAIN REASON.
Till now we have ignored the symptoms of poverty to our cost, and now to the chilling silence of Earth protests, we find ourselves unable to enjoy the Earth we live on.
To date, we have created World organizations without the power of funding that vents verbal warnings, that no one takes heed of unless it is in their own interest to do so
Take Co2 admissions. We continue to pump Co2 into our shared atmosphere. (Earth isn’t the only planet in our solar system with an atmosphere, it is the only one in which we humans can survive.)
It is blatantly obvious that we are not able through our global conversation whether they are online or not due to profit-taking we are not able to establish any solidarity.
A lot of religious people mentioned that there is a leader who is going to save this world and stands for oppressed, poor, and homeless people.
While we are waiting we need to be more creative in our imagination if we want to match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss, climate change, and the other problems facing us all that are going to drive the Scarcity market.
A basic income is an idea that has and is being kicked from pillar to post for years.
Free money for everybody.
Not the welfare state but AN INCOME FOR ALL – UNCONDITIONAL YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT.
Where will the cash come from?
( See previous posts. A World Commission of 0.05%)
Of course, no one or anybody is going to take on or take down the holy grail of profit for profit’s sake.
After all, we live in societies that have allowed themselves to be subsumed by greed with ethics still being sacrificed on the altar of turnover and growth at all costs- GDP.
What is truly galling though is how the rot persists, where people cannot see the direct causal link, to overconsumption prompted by the advertising industries.
Profit is not intrinsically bad, but profit for profit’s sake alone is not just bad it’s unimaginably damaging.
Profit has to be extracted in such a way that every partner in the supply chain profits; from the workers to the shareholders, from the local community through to the nation itself.
That means creating a system where people are empowered to speak, where processes are so transparent that nothing can be hidden and where part of those profits is reinvested into those communities to sustain growth and development for generations to come.
So before we find ourselves teetering over the edge of the precipice. We need to speak truth to power when we start to feel discomfited, not when we have already entered the realm of cognitive dissonance or, worse, open and cynical collusion in the Bell Pottinger mode.
We have been gifted by the current pandemic which is yet to reach its apogee. It is daring us not to be paralyzed by our past.
It is offering a chance to find and resolve, to do things differently.
To call out the emperors of technology, when they stride about us in their unabashed nudity to put sustainability at the core of their online and off-line operations.
They are now the praetorian guard of citizen and corporate activists and it is essential in this post-covid-19 economic depression that society should be saved from exploitation.
Unfortunately, they are unable to regulate themselves. This can be done only when the state interferes with total transparency.
Is it not time that all non-essential products are labeled with their carbon footprint.
What is Cash but transparency, in its naked form, creating fair competitions.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In theory, social media is designed to connect us. In reality, it acts as a barrier. Our impulse to broadcast our lives makes us miss out on them.
It has become an essential tool for providing a space and means for the public to participate in influencing or disallowing environmental decisions historically made by governments and corporations that affect us all.
However, it is also unmooring of mind from the body that has left people adrift, navigating a turbulent online world without the reassuring markers humans evolved to recognize.
Technology has wrenched mind from body.
Far from bringing us together, the digital world is breaking us apart into an unhinged world of short term gratification.
It seems “who we really are” is now determined by how one chooses to present on social media, what we “want” rather than what we are.
Ironically, by engaging with social media, you lose the moment. In your quest to connect virtually, you disconnect from your reality and the people in it.
You’ve effectively pressed pause on the moment with your device becoming your main source of pleasure.
The mere presence of a cellphone, while two people are talking, interferes with their feelings of closeness, connection, and communication.
——————–
Social distancing started a long time before the threat of contagion, sometime around 2005 with the spread of high-speed internet.
And now due to the pandemic, its a technologist’s wet dream:
Forcing people online to shop, to educate, accelerating what were already inevitable changes, fuelling a crisis of democracy hiding our sexuality and identity.
Kathleen Richardson, Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI at De Montfort University, Leicester said “Rather than seeing the youth of today as profoundly happy with this cult of consumer self-making, the research indicates they are in despair, and worse still, are shunning opportunities to develop critical perspectives that could help them out of the quagmire.”
Technology is not neutral in what is happing in society.
It is an industry where the libertarian views of Silicon Valley’s founding fathers meet with the commercial imperative of profit.
Arguably, to some degree, we each now advertise and curate our online selves as products; mindful that the wrong tweet or “like” could cause reputational damage, or even end our careers.
While the urge to look at shocking content is a neurological response, the descent into more extreme material is facilitated by profit-seeking algorithms.
If the trajectory from moderate to extreme political content has implications for democracy, it is fair to ask, what if anything can be done.
———–
Are we wasting years of our life because we are more concerned with what is on the screen of our phones instead of the world around us?
Human interaction is becoming more extinct by the day.
The boundary between people and property is being systematically broken down, both in the form of customized social media surgeries to match the personas we each now advertise online.
The rush into hyper-individualism, leaving no structure within which to frame human experience, nor legally protect human experience and bodies.
There is no better example of how over-dependent we have become on smartphones than the current Pandemic.
Now before you call me a hypocrite, I will be the first to admit that I am using social media to post this blog.
With that said, I would like to clearly state there is nothing wrong with posting a Facebook status or Instagram photos to let people know how we are doing and what is new with our lives. However social media has now gone far beyond that.
Through social media we have created the perception that our lives are a lot more exciting than they actually are, creating a false reality, which we now find ourselves – dare I say – forever entangled in.
It is as if the mute button inside of us is turned off and we are unable to have conversations with ourselves, again instead of substituting it with mindlessly scrolling around on our phone.
Geographical boundaries cannot stop social media from reaching people.
Around the world, billions of us use social media every day, and that number just keeps growing. To put it into some context, every minute we collectively send more than 30 million messages on Facebook and almost 350,000 tweets.
It is changing the way we are governed, and the way we live in society impacting our abilities to get a loan, down to how long a prison sentence you get in lockdown, or at the pleasure of the arm of the law.
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Social media is a two-way street and allows non-experts to share information just as rapidly as health agencies, if not more so.
Before the dawn of social media, governments, along with the traditional media, were the gatekeepers of information. Whereas politicians and government officials once had to travel to interact with citizens, it’s now online.
This relationship has been turned on its head.
Nowhere is this challenge more acute than in the world of international affairs and conflict, where the rise of digitally native international actors has challenged the state’s dominance.
The Arab Spring is perhaps one of the best-known examples of how social media can change the world.
What can be done to get transparent governance of these social media platforms?
We know social media content can lead to violence, but is there a plan to stop it?
The answer to this question
Is that these companies cannot fix themselves.
Is that in short, no one really knows how Facebook — or other social media companies — makes content decisions, and given the potential harms, this has to change.
We need governance solutions for social media, and we need them now.
because these platforms are owned by private companies they have no real transparency obligations. So self-regulation is off the table.
What about oversight from governments?
This is not a great idea as there is a big conflict of interest.
Governmental interests clash with responsible governance, whether it is a politician’s reputation or national security. We cannot — and should not — expect social media companies to be completely transparent to states.
So any oversight has to be independent, collaborative, and accountable.
A body made up of civil society, multilateral organizations, and researchers, with legal powers to enforce speech standards, algorithms, human reviewers, privacy practices, and internal policy processes, among other things rather than one staffed with those very companies’ picks.
This ideal oversight body should have an array of expertise:
From international law backgrounds to software capabilities to local socio-political context in various countries.
It should be able to tap into global networks of civil society and grassroots organizations. It should center a human rights approach — free of competing for governmental interests.
And of course, it cannot be a profit-maximizing initiative:
To hold social media accountable, its first responsibility must be too good governance.
Independent oversight is the only path to real change.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks ad abuse chucked in the bin.
BECAUSE The world we now have is a tragic begging world.
WE MUST BECOME PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVITY.
Because humanity is entering a new age, where we are faced with not only existential risks from our natural environment but by those of our own creation.
Two hundred years ago we didn’t understand the basic causes of a Pandemic.
Because the world is now so interconnected (with a vastly increased population than any time in our history) pandemics have more opportunities not only to spread new diseases but to originate new sources.
Because we are reaching “The Precipice” a time where we’ve reached the ability to pose an existential risk to ourselves, which is substantially bigger than the natural risks, the background that we were facing before.
Because we need to understand our vulnerability and determine what steps must be taken to end this pandemic.
Because just a few years ago more than one bomb was created.
One in the hands of a few decision-makers that could destroy civilization the other the Internet, not in the hands
The current bombs are created by our continuing abuse of the planet we live on. They are not in the hands of deranged dictators or impeached presidents but in the hands of a system of exploitation called capitalism now becoming more and more driven by profit-seeking algorithms.
Because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact.
Because there are vast differences between the effectiveness of working on different global problems we need better global prioritization.
Because as technology improves and the world economy grows or shrinks, it is getting easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.)
Because Covid-19 is showing us that there are many available avenues for improving the world, in terms of social value.
Because now there is much uncertainty around the value of specific options.
Because not enough cause prioritization is done, from the perspective of total social welfare.
The reasons are endless.
However to build the new field of ‘global priorities’ and to try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them we need to start understanding that just as the fate of gorillas currently depends on the actions of humans, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own.
Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. This could ultimately lead to machines that are much better at these tasks than humans.
(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but they also pose catastrophic risks. How one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood.)
Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls.
If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur. Nonetheless, work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected.
Prioritization research appears to be in its infancy. With common prioritize interventions almost zero it remains impossible to assume some common world values.
Why is this?
Once again the reasons are numerous – but they can be encapsulated in the word inequality, in all its forms.
Causes have to be made before developing a deep understanding of an area that required prioritization – climate change for example.
Covid-19 is shining a light on the need to develop world health versus biological research – which received very little attention up to now.
While billions are spent making AI more powerful, there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe.
AI could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.
Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. If machines surpass humans in intelligence, then common beliefs could easily originate from websites.
This is why it is necessary that we create a list ranking of which problems we think are most pressing for people. That promotes civilizational resilience, mitigating great power conflict, or laying the foundations for the governance of outer space.
If you have read this post you could not be blamed for thinking that the idea of creating a new list of global problems is worthless. BUT ALL THE TALK, AND AGREEMENTS IN THE WORLD ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE FUNDED TO BECOME PROACTIVE.
( See previous posts recreating such a fund – 0.005% world Aid Fund, before the current third revolution of Artificial Intelligence, invents the machine with intelligence that far surpasses our own.)
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
In this day and age we go online for everything from news, shopping, and travel to everyday conversation, and most of the websites we visit encourage interaction through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.
We witnessed this during the build-up to the Brexit vote with the spreading of untruths and now with a man who was elected the President of the USA with Twitter lies.
So, here we are staring down the barrel of a cocked gun with the odd situation where freedom of speech is censored by Algorithms.
Twitter who supported the spread of false news trying to wash their Pontious Pilate hands of Donald Trump, by moving his followers to a new platform called Parler, removing his twits permanently, and Brexit leading to the break up of the UK weakening the EU.
Rather than being shocked by the events in the USA of a groomed mob breaking into the house of Representatives perhaps we now see when we set the rules for who we allow into our social media bubbles and we don’t, we are reinforcing our own beliefs against reality.
Interestingly, different social media platforms are employed for different purposes during both the above situations.
Supporters get stuck in an infinite loop of making claims and increasing fear of the other group of supporters. Meanwhile, there is no discussion between the groups.
Claims are not countered, and both sides dig in further creating an isolation chamber where we live unchallenged lives that only reinforces what we don’t believe in.
Twitter is generally used to share or obtain information related to the event. Facebook, on the other hand, is used to check on the wellbeing of friends and loved ones. Twitter generally being open and fit for public broadcast, whilst Facebook is exclusive to friends and family by its own design.
There is a darker side to this refusal to accept even seeing these opposing views.
The downside to all of this is massive.
Social media is making our world less genuine.
The problem is, the way our technology-dependent world is headed isn’t going to just go away anytime soon. Alternatively, it’s going to keep evolving and transforming into new forms with who knows what other ideas to accompany it.
If we aren’t careful, we will continue spiraling down into this insensitive, demoralizing world that has become of our society today, due to social media, and now with covid-19, we are facing an economic recession that is driving us all on line.
One quick click and anyone who challenges your view on a topic are gone, leaving you exclusively in the company of people who agree with you 100% of the time. You are now isolated with people who just echo your own views.
It might be unfair to say that Twitter is now full of right-wing Trump supporters, and Facebook is full of left-wing Biden supporters with both sides preaching to the choir!
If our beliefs are not challenged, they do not evolve and grow, and we become more insular in our beliefs.
This is why Donald Trump is unwilling to accept that his time is up.
Using Twitter to encourage his followers with countless claims and counterclaims of voter fraud and other election wrongdoing. (In amongst this heated battle, Twitter and Facebook have started to censor unproven claims, but Social Media allows us to set our own rules.)
The problem is that Social Media is having a massive effect on journalism – in how it is delivered and consumed.
We now receive updates delivered in real-time from individuals all over the world. where items are brought to prominence through the “likes”, “shares”, “favorites” and “follows” Taking away what once use to be called the “exclusive scoop”
In a world that has become so dependent on technology, Governments can’t make social bubbles illegal, and the social media giants prefer you to stay in your bubbles
What it excludes could do us harm.
THERE IS NO REASON THAT SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORMS SHOULD NOT BE SUBJECT TO THE SAME REGULATIONS AS OUTLETS OF MEDIA.
For those who still dismiss social media as a passing craze or fad, here is a simple test – for one week, keep a tally of websites you visit that do and do not have links to Facebook/Twitter pages, options to “share”, “like” or “follow”.
All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.
All of them are presenting overwhelming challenges ahead.
