Monthly Archives: June 2023

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. NECESSITY WILL BECOME THE MOTHER OF ALL INVENTIONS.

20 Tuesday Jun 2023

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( Twelve minute read) 

We all know that humans are bad for the planet, and for ourselves, but if you were asked to name the achievement of mankind what would be your list be like.

In our short fifty thousand-year history, we’ve had countless skirmishes, two World Wars, and are currently threatening over one million animal species with extinction, lending to our own.  

Against this back ground it would appear that we have not progress an iota, as we are still unable to comprehend fully that the plant we live on is our home and that what lives on it, are all contact to our survival and hence its survival.What if everything created in the built environment was balanced elsewhere? (Credit: Alamy)

Will our species go extinct? The short answer is yes. The fossil record shows everything goes extinct, eventually. Almost all species that ever lived, over 99.9%, are extinct.

Humans are inevitably heading for extinction. The question isn’t whether we go extinct, but when.

When necessity becomes the mother of all inventions our adaptability will make us our own worst enemies, too clever for our own good. (We adapt unlike any other species, through learned behaviours — culture – not DNA.) 

Changing the world sometimes means changing it for the worse, creating new dangers: nuclear weapons, pollution, overpopulation, climate change, pandemics.

Humans do not need to insert themselves into controlling life processes in every corner of the world, down to the very strands of DNA, to force the Earth system to absorb the shocks of our presence.

Up to Now we’ve escaped every trap we set for ourselves. So far.

Homo sapiens have already survived over 250,000 years of ice ages, eruptions, pandemics, and world wars. We could easily survive another 250,000 years or, longer. Survival sets a pretty low bar.

The question isn’t so much whether humans survive the next three or three hundred thousand years, but whether we can do more than just survive.

When the astronauts were on the moon, they were looking back at the Earth, they were not thinking that they were indeed inside the atmosphere of the Earth they were looking their home suspended in the void of the universe.  A planet that has lost 68% of its biodiversity, replaced with human-made material including concrete, plastic and bricks now outweighing the total mass of biological matter on the planet.

All of this challenges the way we see our planet’s borders.

The Earth’s extended atmosphere isn’t much good for supporting life, so to understand any of this we must realise that no human is ever going to leave Earth. ( Other than in the form cyborg. A portmanteau of cybernetic and organism— a being with both organic and biomechatronic body parts.)

——–

The problems, all tied to human consumption and population growth, will almost certainly worsen over coming decades. The damage will be felt for centuries and threatens the survival of all species, including our own. To understand the enormity of the challenges we face, future environmental conditions will be far more dangerous than experts currently believe. The problems are too numerous to cover in full here.

Essentially, humans have created an ecological Ponzi scheme. Consumption, as a percentage of Earth’s capacity to regenerate itself, has grown from 73% in 1960 to more than 170% today.people walking on a crowded street

Because in the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature.

What if, earth really was in trouble and the planet’s natural systems are fated to collapse and die off?

Will we develop artificial back-ups to take their place.  Perhaps. 

Technology will be needed to liberate the land required for rewilding. But, watching the recent flurry of commercial space flights, I wondered about how much biodiversity had been lost to make that happen, what it cost the Earth system.

If the Earth is not to be irreversibly degraded and unbalanced, we need some equal and opposite pull in the direction of replenishing natural complexity. Surely the best reward of a healthy planet is space exploration, not it being an escape from a dying planet.


In Blade Runner 2049, solar panels and synthetic farming stretch to the distance (Credit: Blade Runner 2049)

The technology we have made has many beneficial direct and side effects which will influence positions on this list.

MY LIST:

Fire.  Without fire we as a species do not start living past the age of 30, we cannot create civilization and we cannot banish the dark starting to take control of our fears of what goes bump.in the night. True. 

Gun power.  Few inventions have had an impact on human affairs as dramatic and decisive as that of gunpowder. True.

The Wheel. Is one of the greatest achievement of mankind.. True

Language. An entire list of words, sentences, phrases and whole lot of grammar made up of strange sounds from our mouth have the power to express ourselves and others. Without language we would have been prisoners in our minds. Without Language creative writing wouldn’t be possible nor would be Internet. What would our thoughts be like if we did not know any language? We even think in a certain language. Landing on the moon is the ultimate result of this. Probably the most difficult thing ever achieved, and practically mythic, even if all we got were photos and rocks. There is no bigger achievement in our species’ history. Every discovery that preceded it lead to it.  It proclaimed in a way that humanity is no longer limited to planet Earth, that we have a future in other places too. True/False.

Music. Is the language of existence. It puts our humanity into perspective, and brings meaning to everyday moments. Without music, it would be very hard to reflect on where we are and what we are doing, because as selfish creatures we are never fully satisfied. True.

Writing.  Without writing, humanity really has no memory. Everything will be forgotten or distorted over time. And there are only so many good teaches and brilliant minds to teach others. With writing, one teacher can teach millions of students. Writing is a way to get thoughts on paper, stories, recipes, instructions, letters, nothing would exist in our modern work without the art of writing. True. 

Mathematics. Was one of the first creations of humans that exists beyond a physical world. True. 

The theory of evolution. Has completely altered our understanding of how organisms co-relate, change and came to be. It asks one of the most provocative questions… what are we? From what did we come from? What will we become. We created something that enables us to grasp truth. This allows us to explore the universe without using our senses. True.

Money. There are many theories about the origin of money, in part because money has many functions: It facilitates exchange as a measure of value; it brings diverse societies together by enabling gift-giving and reciprocity; it perpetuates social hierarchies; and finally, it is a medium of state power. Money soon became an instrument of political control. Taxes could be extracted to support the elite and armies could be raised. However, money could also act as a stabilizing force that fostered nonviolent exchanges of goods, information and services within and between groups. In our time, possession of cash currency differentiates the rich from the poor, the developed from the developing, the global north from the emerging global south. Money is both personal and impersonal and global inequality today is linked to the formalization of money as a measure of societal well-being and sustainability. Even as currency continues to evolve in our digital age, its uses today would still be familiar to our ancient predecessors. True.

Electricity, because without it we would go back to prehistoric times. And above all, nothing would be created. Electronic devices now make up a huge part of the lives for the majority of the world. True. 

Atomic power.  Fashioned it into nuclear weapons which possess the capacity to destroy every living thing in their path. Nothing man has done is more significant to the future of this world and its inhabitants. True. 

The airplane.  Change the world.  True.

The Gun.  Still changing the world. True.

Clothes/ Synthetic Fibres / Plastics.  The fashion industry is responsible for 8-10% of global emissions.

While all these other discoveries are amazing nothing compares to this.

The Microprocessor. Nothing else has changed the structure of human society more than the microprocessor. That tiny chip inside every smartphone, laptop and microcontroller is far and away the most complex object ever made by humans. It has given our species unfathomable powers of computation and processing, a set of tools that we now use in almost every field of human endeavour, from physics to medicine. The manipulation of genes is the future of medicine.  Social media and the Internet, technologies built atop the microprocessor, have permanently altered the way we communicate over long distances. The processor has, in essence, created a unified planet for the first time in history. True/ False.

Technology.  Judged entirely on its own traditional grounds of evaluation—that is, in terms of efficiency—the achievement of modern technology has been admirable with the Internet somewhere in the middle because it can bring both destruction and humanity, and without it we wouldn’t be as far as we are today. The greatest communication tool ever devised! Both true and false. 

The Smartphone.  Now one of the most ubiquitous technology devices of all time with billions of users worldwide –Has become your home We have become human snails carrying our home in our pockets with apps for different purposes, in much the same way that the rooms in a house each meet a different need. In the near future millions of people will across many parts of the world that are conflict-bound or subject to some of the worst effects of the climate crisis, have left their homeland behind completely in search of a new life. Combining artificial intelligence with the extraordinary data-gathering capabilities of smartphones, is creating other opportunities. There are few arenas of human endeavour left untouched by the smartphone. As smartphones continue to evolve, however, so too will the capabilities they unlock. True.

Google’s Android operating system.  Used by one in every three people on the planet is a  technology that is not simply innovative, but must become responsible. True

Inequality. To think about inequality today we need to think about inequality in the past. This is true for economic inequalities – inequalities of income and wealth – and even more true of inequalities in health, in status, in citizenship and political influence. To set current trends in context. We no longer have state-legalised slavery, perhaps the most brutal form of inequality ever devised. Given that health and survival are the most basic of measures of inequality, it can be seen that politics and a cross-class alliance between leading and visionary employers and their workers was a more important driver – than economics and relative incomes – of trends in this “biological” dimension of inequality.

Racism. Race is socially constructed, not biologically natural. True. 

The Bible represents the Word of God or just the greatest fictional work in history, but here’s one fact: Nothing else ever written by humans has shaped the world and the future as much as the Bible has. False.

All the things that we are saying here today are part of the big lie that we are being forced to tell you!

Why ?

Because every thing is made from particles and according to Quantum Physics they can’t both be in the same state. 

Quantum technology.  In the not so distant future we will invent a multi-tasking ‘quantum’ computers, far more powerful than even today’s most advanced supercomputers. This will be the last human invention. 

So-called quantum particles can be in two places at the same time and also strangely connected even though they are millions of miles apart. If we change one, the other instantly changes to compensate.

This happens even if we separate the two particles from each other on opposite sides of the universe. It’s as if information about the change we’ve made has travelled between them faster than the speed of light, something Einstein said was impossible.

They will be capable of solving some of the most important problems, with quantum algorithm.

I say  “People rolled their eyes and said: ‘it’s impossible’.”

Failing to acknowledge the magnitude of problems facing humanity is not just naïve, it’s dangerous. And science has a big role to play here. If the human-biosphere umbilical cord is to be cut, it should leave mother Earth in peak health, and in service to both parties.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: DO WE LIVE A LIFE OR JUST EXIST AS A LIFE ON SOCIAL MEDIA?

11 Sunday Jun 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection.

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( Twelve minute read) 

NOT A FAIR QUESTION.

We can’t base our self-worth on something that’s largely out of our control.

The concept of time deludes us into concerning ourselves with its passing and impending arrival.

Because time is an illusion, which makes being controlled by time somewhat delusional.

The past doesn’t exist and neither does the future. The only true reference point we have to this moment in time, and to this thing we label “existence”, is a feeling of presence, of being here in this body, of seeing the world through these eyes. You can’t feel the past or the future, but you can feel what it feels like to touch something right now, to see something, to hear something.

It is important that we understand that to not be present is to be torn between two worlds, the past and the future, neither of which exist. To constantly reside in this state prevents us enjoying life and finding happiness, as we become victims of the past and a slave to a future that is yet to unravel.

Without time, the concept of when would not exist.

Time is infused into all that we do. Your very existence is designed by time. We check compulsively check time because we’ve conditioned ourselves to deem time as imperative to our survival.

If we don’t know what time it is — how the hell do we function?

So Just how free are we to live our own life as we want to?

——

We are not alone.

Other people can dictate many of the circumstances of our life. But, does that mean we are creatures of circumstance? Or can we still be the architects of our own life? Are we at the mercy of circumstances? Or is it rather that we ourselves create the circumstances, and therefore must accept responsibility for what we do?

Yes, of course, we are creatures of circumstances, to a large certain extent.

There are countless things, all around us in life, that are beyond our control , but we have the power of personal choice. We can decide how we live our life, what we think, what we do, what we love, what we hate. Circumstances do challenge our choices, but they never destroy our personal freedom if we become the architect of our circumstances.

Today’s way of life teaches you that you have to be busy to be seen as successful. And if you’re not stressed, then there must be something wrong with you. Moreover, you can’t just fill your days to the brim with “stuff”—because there’s the added pressure of having to capture every moment so you can share the images, vision and stories that prove you’re getting ahead.

Whether we’re religious or not, all of us have the gift of life, full of excuses with the inevitable result?

Countless things get left undone, that should have been done. There’s no time to connect with what you’re doing or to really stop and wonder why it is you’re doing it. Besides, it felt like I’d gone too far down the road to give up everything I’d achieved and start again.

And that’s the crux of the issue right there.

Somewhere along the way, we had been taught that life had to be complex before we could get anywhere. And worse, we believed that if we’re to make it simpler then we had to give up everything we had.

Starting again is just too daunting to think about. It takes you straight to overwhelm, at which point everything seems too hard. When you’re in that state, staying where you are—and living life the way you’re already living it—seems to be less painful than walking away and having to begin again.

The truth is this:

A simple life is about finding the things that are important to you and then creating the simplest pathway to have them in your life. There’s also no label that comes with having a simple life either, so you don’t have to pigeonhole yourself in any way.

That’s it.

We’re all unique, extraordinary human beings… so we need unique and extraordinary solutions that provide solutions for our own lives.

——

Why are we here on this earth?

Human intelligence was born in the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, as our ape ancestors evolved increasingly bigger brains. But our ape ancestors might never even have existed. 65 million years ago, dinosaurs dominated the Earth, as they had done for over 160 million years.

How have we ended up as the most advanced species on a small blue-green planet, orbiting a seemingly insignificant star, in one of the hundred billion galaxies in the Universe?

Earth’s surface that travels at a speed of seven miles every second. That makes us the only creature on Earth – possibly the only creature in our galaxy, or even our Universe – to have left its home world.

So how did we become such a unique animal?

Why am I here on earth? Where did I come from? What am I worth? Do I have any intrinsic value? Do I serve a purpose? These are all fundamental questions. They are life’s “big questions.”

How you answer these questions determines how you see the world and how you treat the world. Because you are a part of the world, how you see the world also determines how you see and treat yourself. So, it’s important that we resolve these fundamental questions. And it’s important that we discover the honest truth. Wrong answers to important questions aren’t helpful.

Why Am I Here? – The Atheistic Worldview
Why I am here? Well, if God doesn’t exist, that means that life must have come about through some natural impersonal, unintelligent, and ultimately purposeless process. That means we’re ultimately as purposeless as the very process which brought us into existence. Life’s just an accident and so are you.

Without a Creator in the beginning, there was nobody around to put you here on purpose which means you aren’t here for a reason. It’s that simple.

Why Am I Here? – The Theistic Worldview
Why am I here? Well, if God does exist, that means He is ultimate reality. If He created you for a reason, that’s ultimately why your here. If you’re valuable to Him, that’s ultimately what you’re worth. What He says is right is absolutely right and what He says is wrong is absolutely wrong. We may be free moral agents with the freedom to make moral decisions, but that doesn’t mean we can choose what actually is right or wrong; that just means we’re capable of choosing to be right or wrong.

The Omnipotence Paradox

The Omnipotence Paradox is a philosophical problem that challenges the idea of an all-powerful God. The paradox argues that if God is truly omnipotent, then he should be able to do anything, including things that are logically impossible. However, if God cannot do something that is logically impossible, then he is not truly omnipotent. This paradox has been debated by philosophers for centuries and continues to be a topic of discussion in modern times.

The basic form of the Omnipotence Paradox can be presented as follows:

Can God create a stone so heavy that he cannot lift it? If God can create such a stone, then he is not omnipotent because he cannot lift it. If God cannot create such a stone, then he is also not omnipotent because there is something he cannot do. 

So don’t begin by asking, “Why am I here?” Begin by asking, “Does God exist?” If He doesn’t exist there’s really no point in asking “why am I here?” – everything is ultimately pointless. And if He does exist, you’ll discover your reason for living when you discover who He is. So begin at the beginning. Does God exist?

Belief in the existence of God (or gods) is definitional of theism and characteristic of many (though not all) religious traditions .Arguments for the existence of God are usually classified as either a priori or a posteriori—that is, based on the idea of God itself or based on experience.

It may be possible (or impossible) to prove the existence of God, but it may be unnecessary to do so in order for belief in God to be reasonable.

This post is not about the existence of a God even it was true to all arguments for or against, merely deflect the question to that of who created God.  Life will take care of the rest.

The world’s population stands at 7.91 billion in January 2022, with the annual growth rate of 1.0 percent suggesting that this figure will reach 8 billion sometime in mid-2023.

Well over half (57.0 percent) of the world’s population now lives in urban areas.

More than two-thirds (67.1 percent) of the world’s population now uses a mobile phone, with internet penetration now standing at 62.5 percent of the world’s total population, with 58.4 percent of the world’s total population using social media. 12½ trillion hours spent online, a new milestone in internet adoption, and new records for social media use…

424 million users started their social media journey over the past year, equating to an average of more than 1 million new users per day, or roughly 13½ new users every single second. 

Within the context of social media — when it’s not clear that people are necessarily engaging in real self presentation and there’s a lot of ideal-self or false-self presentation — is that good?”

I always think of social media as mapping our social lives in the mass media, where everyone can interact with you and judge your every move. Social media has become an important part of our lives whether we like it or not.

When you pull out your phone to take a photo, are you planning to share it on social media? Why is it so important that people – most of whom you’ve never met – see the minutiae of your daily life?

The fact is that when we use social media we’re being tracked and we’re being manipulated.

Social media gives us a different perspective on where we fit in the world,. 

I want us to think about how we quantify our experience in a way that isn’t really up to us – it’s based on algorithms and other people. If we really want to understand the effect social media is having on our lives, we need to move away from just thinking about the time spent on it, to how that time is used.

“I want people to think about how weird it is that we’re posting pictures of our experiences just for the ‘likes’ and the ‘shares’

Growing up with digital technology may be changing teen brain development in ways we don’t yet know — and these changes may, in turn, change how teens relate to technology.

But not everything in life is clearly yes or clearly no – like or don’t like, share or don’t share. I worry that we’re losing sight of being OK with ambiguity. Just because there’s no ‘maybe’ button, it doesn’t mean everything is black and white.

The Covid pandemic highlighted just how beholding to social media our lives have become. It’s how young people organise mass climate change protests, but also how anti-vaxxers spread dangerous misinformation.

Current 24-hour news cycle is just one example of our growing information consumption, contributing to a hidden epidemic of ‘digital un-wellbeing’.

Social media has changed the way we live our lives and will continue to do so in the future.

However the hope has to be that with its help we are realizing that all life is interconnected.

Wherever you are, commit to being there, completely. 


 

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com 

 (What money could buy back in…)

Table of priced goods each decade.

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE WE HAVE ALREADY PASSED A TIPPING POINT.

08 Thursday Jun 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., 2022: The year we need to change., Carbon Emissions., Civilization., Climate Change., CO2 emissions, Disasters., Human Collective Stupidity., Human Exploration., Humanity., Natural World Disasters, Our Common Values., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE CHANGE WE HAVE ALREADY PASSED A TIPPING POINT.

( Four minute read)

Have we reached a tipping point, that moment from which a system irreversibly changes state?

I say yes.

Climate tipping points could lock in unstoppable changes to the planet, self-sustaining shifts in the climate system that would lock-in devastating changes, like sea-level rise, even if all emissions ended.climate tipping points approaching Degradation drought Amazon less resilient fire emit more carbon than they absorb

Inhabitants of New York on Wednesday are invited to stay at home and to use masks outdoors. More than 100 million Americans are now affected by air quality alerts due to wild fires in Canada.A section of an ice sheet on water in Greenland climate tipping points

In the mean time melting of the sea ice in the Arctic will inevitably lead to a warming of the region: a huge white space, the pack ice reflects light when the sun shines 24 hours a day in summer.

It lowers the temperature of the Arctic. The disappearance of the pack ice – icy water already present in the ocean – will not directly lead to a rise in the sea and the  rise in global temperature caused by the melting of the sea ice risks in turn leading to extreme climatic events: heat waves, droughts, floods, etc.

Are we all screwed?

Yes.

Why?

Because every fraction of a degree makes tipping more likely, but we can’t be sure exactly when tipping becomes inevitable as one tipping point speeds up the next.

These signals can’t tell us exactly how close we are to tipping points, only that destabilisation is underway and a tipping point may be approaching.

These changes are just the beginning of worse to come.

The scale of recent changes across the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years, and it is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.

The most we can be sure of is that every fraction of further warming will destabilise these tipping elements more and make the initiation of self-sustaining changes more likely.

“It’s a huge red flag, but there’s still time to save everything else.”

The temporary reduction in carbon emissions caused by global COVID-19 lockdowns did not slow the relentless advance of climate change.

To implement climate change goals as geopolitical uncertainties threaten to undermine their efforts,

The world is yet to get to a “positive tipping point” in the fight against climate change. Air pollution from power plants contributes to global warming. It is now very likely that the 5-year average temperature for 2021–2025 will pass the 1.5 °C threshold.

Even if emissions are reduced to limit warming to well below 2 °C, the global average sea level would likely rise by 0.3–0.6 m by 2100 and could rise 0.3–3.1 m by 2300.

Three-quarters of people in the world’s wealthiest nations believe humanity is pushing the planet towards a dangerous tipping point and support a shift of priorities away from economic profit.

People know we are taking colossal risks, they want to do more and they want their governments to do more. We and they must move faster to implement more ambitious policies to protect and regenerate our global commons.

People in power seem to feel it is OK to fell old trees or destroy natural ecosystems for buildings or roads, or to dig up oil, so long as they then plant new trees. But this approach is not working.

Overall, 74% of people agreed that countries should move beyond focussing on gross domestic product and profit, and instead focus more on the health and wellbeing of humans and nature.

Its now or never for global cooperation to tackle shared challenges.

There is now a need for major economic and social transformation.

Currently the world is heading toward ~2 to 3°C of global warming; at best, if all net-zero pledges and nationally determined contributions are implemented it could reach just below 2°C.

One barrier appears to be media coverage. It is not helped the understanding of the issues, or what is at stake.

You don’t have to be told that it will not take much to tip us all into killing each other.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. ON THE STATE OF THE WORLD ARE NEW WORDS NOW NEEDED THAT DEFINE THE PRESENT.

06 Tuesday Jun 2023

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At a time when the world is changing more quickly than ever before, we need a new vocabulary to help us grasp what’s happening.

I’m not sure that THE WORDS WE HAVE AT PRESENT TO DESCRIBE OUR WORLD hold anymore in the world-wide ‘web’ of meaning, we now inhabit (or are trapped in), with its exponentially increasing complexities.

Amid the whirlwind of our changing times, in which even the new language gurus cannot tell us where we’re going, there must be some universal value that can define us other than stupidity being digitalized.

Humanity is a blip in geologic history:

With social media words are just kind of disintegrate before your eyes or become a meaningless string of letters.

Like the word need which has become some kind of a fatigue sound, falling prey to semantic satiations, losing meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.

Need is now repeated so much, that it is now as indistinct as the packages of generic Wal-Mart string cheese.

Take the  language of politics, for example, it is becoming increasingly blurred.

Right and left, conservative and progressive, traditional and modern — these words have become so calcified that we often get lost in the labyrinth of ambiguity.

If words created the world, then words can also enrich or impoverish it, sanctify or demonize it.

Language is rich in words and meaning, but it can also become petrified while reality creatively evolves around it.

The power of words is such that they can spark a war or bring about peace. Everything begins with language.

So then, what does “artificial intelligence” actually mean (to use the latest buzzwords)?

Even the brainy scientists don’t really understand it. If so, what just happened to you is nothing new.

These days we have the capacity to look billions of years into the past but it seems that we can’t see beyond our own very noses, or hear, when it comes to the planet.

It used to be said that to name something is to begin understanding it but the veneer of linguistic facility of AI is not the same as actually comprehending human language.

AI has burst out of its academic bubble into the real world, and its lack of understanding of that world can have real and sometimes devastating consequences.

It might be possible to write down all the unwritten facts, rules and assumptions required for understanding text but not language. We let machines learn to understand language on their own, simply by ingesting vast amounts of written text and learning to predict words.

But has GPT-3 — trained on text from thousands of websites, books and encyclopaedia’s — transcended Watson’s veneer? Does it really understand the language it generates and ostensibly reasons about?

The crux of the problem, in my view, is that understanding language requires understanding the world, and a machine exposed only to language cannot gain such an understanding.

Humans rely on innate, pre-linguistic core knowledge of space, time and many other essential properties of the world in order to learn and understand language. If we want machines to similarly master human language, we will need to first endow them with the primordial principles humans are born with.

Machines that can genuinely comprehend what “it” refers to in a sentence, and everything else that understanding “it” entails.

——–

The world faces four main challenges: climate change, mistrust of leaders, increased geopolitical tension, and the dark side of the technological revolution.  (Which is digitizing not just our imagination of our future’s by plundering the finite resources of the planet for profit.)

1) Climate change is the defining issue of our time,”  It represents an “existential threat” to humankind. “The planet will not be destroyed. What will be destroyed is our capacity to live on the planet.

2) People believe that the fruits of globalization are not being fairly distributed. Seven in 10 people in the world live in countries where inequality is growing.

3) Increased geopolitical tensions are further exacerbated by weaknesses in institutions. For example, the UN Security Council’s “inability to take decisions” or to enforce the ones they do take, such as the arms embargo.

4) Artificial Intelligence that is owned by corporations are unbalancing the values that are common to us all.  Turning Democracy into AI Totalitarianism Democratic Societies with mass surveillance.

Because in the age of the internet and super-connectivity, all of these things, like face recognition have been raised to sophisticated arts ( Clear View ) that, instead of being forced on us, have quietly colonised our lives.

In times past, when frustrating circumstances demanded new ways of expressing what it means to be alive here a few for present day use.

The internet/cyberspace is wonderful, because it gives people the freedom to augment or totally change their identities, and this is a marvellous new dawn for human expression, a new step in human evolution. Nah, it’s a false dawn, because the internet is essentially a libertarian arena, and as such an amoral one (lots of ‘freedoms’ but with no attendant social obligations); it is a new jungle where we must watch our backs and struggle for survival, surely a backward step in evolution.

  1. The term ‘hyperobject’ was coined by the academic Timothy Morton, and it refers to phenomena that are so large and so far beyond the human frame of reference that they are not susceptible to reason but to AI.
  2. Immigration. The realisation that racism never really went away, it just camouflaged its fundamental failure of empathy as tolerance – this is a contention of the Black Lives Matter movement. The term is now making the short jump to other second- (eg LGBT) and third- (eg feminism) phase civil rights movements equally lulled by the illusion of tolerance. The goal is to go beyond feeling tolerated to being fully accepted and welcomed.

3. Deletion. This word is likely to be bandied about much more frequently in the decades ahead, as social media users realise that the websites they are on are not merely neutral ‘platforms’ for ‘social interaction’ but more like a kind of flypaper to which people and all of their personal data stick. Moreover, these websites are specifically designed to be addictive –

4) Global capitalism is, by its unjust and shambolic nature, going to experience crashes of increasing severity throughout the 21st Century, leaving us all to survive with growing desperation amidst its wreckage.

5. Shadow banking. Nobody knows how large this sector is, but current estimates put shadow banking at (£124 trillion) and OTC transactions at (£412 trillion), or roughly twice and six-and-a-half times the GDP of the entire Earth, respectively. Both sectors were of course heavily involved in creating the 2008 crash, and both have remained almost unaltered since then.

6. Attention crisis. The fact that no one can take their eyes off their smartphones – James Williams writes that “the liberation of human attention may be the defining moral and political struggle of our time”. Our minds are being rewired for commercial purposes. His argument that the social contract, the idea of human rights, should be extended to cyberspace is gaining traction.

Was the creation of the internet not supposed to be the dawn of a technological and informational utopia? Even its father, Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the world wide web, is convinced it is failing us.

7. Post-human. It seems that history has caught up with us, for our identities now extend into cyberspace in many ways, we no longer merely rely on our brain cells but now store much of our knowledge in technological clouds that function as extensions of our minds, and we live with the corresponding hardware in such intimacy (in the form of portable devices that are linked to our minds and even metabolisms in many ways) that it sometimes feels like we are only a few steps away from being ‘cyborgs’ in the true sense of the term. Gender, though, is still a problem.

8. Masculinity. There was a time when you’d ask a man what masculinity was and his response would be something like ‘not feminine’ (pejorative) and ‘not queer’ (pejorative). Note all the negativity.

These days it is increasingly a good thing to be a woman (new, broad definition) and to be queer (new, broad definition). Both are eating away at the old territory occupied by masculinity, according to writers such as Hanna Rosin, Cordelia Fine or Grayson Perry. What’s left is something of a void, aka ‘the crisis of masculinity’.

The challenge ahead for men is to formulate what they are, and want to be, rather than what they aren’t. How to open up this frontier?

I have a suggestion. For generations feminists and queer activists have been fighting to draw attention to masculinity’s toxic side-effects. At long last, mainstream men seem on the verge of accepting that there is a problem. It remains for us all to take this a step further, and work to understand how this toxicity has also been poisoning men on the inside.

9. Generation Why? It applies to anyone born in the digital age.

To roughly clarify our terms here: Baby Boomers are the generation born after World War Two and before 1965; Generation X (Douglas Coupland) the cohort born between the mid-1960s and 1980; Generation Y (Millennials) includes people born between 1980-ish and 2000; Generation Z (Post-Millennials) is anyone born after 2000. These categories don’t really have global reach, but they are evocative as metaphors.

The gist of Smith’s argument is that Facebook and its like are reductive: they cut us down to size and reprogrammed us to suit their own ends, which are advertising and selling things – exploitation. “Five-hundred million sentient people entrapped in the recent careless thoughts of a Harvard sophomore,” she calls it.

Smith was writing a few years ago; the number of Facebook users has now passed 2 billion. Generations Y and Z have led lives saturated by the internet, by social media platforms and apps, which have claimed to make life complete and have all of the answers all of the time. Is this paraphernalia worthy of them? Are they content to be trapped in the reveries of Zuckerberg and the like? No. There are detectable tremors of disaffection and radicalisation. I suspect that as more and more post-millennials reach voting age, Generation Why may be giving us some loud answers.

10. The new weird An emerging genre of speculative, ‘post-human’ writing that blurs genre boundaries and conventions, pushes humanity and human-centred reason from the centre to the margins, and generally poses questions that may not be answerable in any terms we can understand (hence the ‘weird’). In the present era, where potent advertising and PR forces are doing everything in their power to make truth irrelevant and directly hack our minds, and where politicians no longer seem to acknowledge the existence of facts, the word has sinister new applications.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a tragic reminder of how deeply connected we are. There is a clear and urgent need for concrete multilateral solutions, based on common action across borders for the good of all humanity, starting with extend beyond national governments, to include more participation from local authorities, civil society, business leaders and others.

How close we are to destroying our world with dangerous technologies of our own making.

No one country can tackle the problem’s on their own no matter how large their population, how strong their economy or how feared their military.

Everyone sees change everywhere, and I think it’s important to figure out where are we going to be five to 10 years from now.

We’re going to see more automation. We’re going to see, unfortunately, more technological unemployment.

I don’t think they will be able to ignore the issue of inequality. We’re seeing social tensions and all sorts of frictions proliferate. The sooner we start tackling it, the better. We really need to start thinking outside of the box.

In the end it back to that word Need:

We need to be less wasteful. We need to economize our resources. We need to be more pro-environment in our own behaviour as consumers.

Let’s replace it with Yugen.

“We can either save our world or condemn humanity to a hellish future.”

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: ARE WE ALL SO DUMB TO THINK THAT ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE CAN BE REGULATED?

02 Friday Jun 2023

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( Three minute read)

Artificial intelligence is already suffering from three key issues: privacy, bias and discrimination, which if left unchecked can start infringing on – and ultimately take control of – people’s lives.

As digital technology became integral to the capitalist market dystopia of the first decades of the 21st century, it not only refashioned our ways of communicating but of working and consuming, indeed ways of living.

Then along came the the Covid-19 pandemic which revealed not only the lack of investment, planning and preparation that underlay the scandalous slowness of the responses by states around the world, but also grotesque class and racial inequalities as it coursed its way through the population and the owners of high-tech corporations were enriched by tens of billions. AWE 2022, AR, VR

It’s already too late to get ahead of this generative AI freight train.

The growing use of AI has already transformed the way the global economy works.

In this backdrop, AI can be used to profile people like you and me to such a detail which may well become more than uncomfortable! And this is no exaggeration.

This is just a tip of the iceberg!Full moon

So what if anything can be done to ensure responsible and ethical practices in the field.

Concern over AI development has accelerated in recent months following the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT last year, which sparked the release of similar chatbots by other companies, including Google, Snap and TikTok. The growing realization that vast numbers of people can be fooled by the content chatbots gleefully spit out, now the clock is ticking to not just the collapse of values that enshrine human life but the very existence of the human race.

“This is not the future we want.”

Now there is no option but to put in place international laws, not mandatory regulations, before AI is infringing human rights. However as we are witnessing with climate change, to achieve any global cooperation is a bit of a problem.

From the climate crisis to our suicidal war on nature and the collapse of biodiversity, our global response is too little, too late. Technology is moving ahead without guard rails to protect us from its unforeseen consequences.

So we have two contrasting futures one of breakdown and perpetual crisis, and another in which there is a breakthrough, to a greener, safer future. This approach would herald a new era for multilateralism, in which countries work together to solve global problems.

In order to achieve these aims, the Secretary-General of the United nations recommends a Summit of the Future, which would “forge a new global consensus on what our future should look like, and how we can secure it”. The need for international co-operation beyond borders is something that makes a lot of sense, especially these days, because the role of the modern corporation in influencing the impact of AI is in conflict with the common values needed to survive.

The principle of working together, recognizing that we are bound to each other and that no community or country, however powerful, can solve its challenges alone.” Any national government is, of course, guided by its own set of localised values and realities.

But geopolitics, I would argue, always underlies any ambition. The immaturity of the ‘Geopolitics of AI’ field leaves the picture incomplete and unclear so it requires the introduction of agreed international common laws.

Let Ireland hold such a Summit.

This summit could coordinate efforts to bring about inclusive and sustainable policies that enable countries to offer basic services and social protection to their citizens with universal laws that defines the several capabilities of AI i.e. identify the ones that are more susceptible to misuse than the others.

(It is incredibly important for understanding the current environment in which any product is built or research conducted and it will be critical to forging a path forwards and towards safe and beneficial AI.)

The challenges are great, and the lessons of the past cannot be simply superimposed onto the present.

For example.

The designers of AI technologies should satisfy legal requirements for safety, accuracy and efficacy for well-defined use cases or indications. In the context of health care, this means that humans should remain in control of health-care systems and medical decisions; privacy and confidentiality should be protected, and patients must give valid informed consent through appropriate legal frameworks for data protection.

Another For example the collection of Data which is the backbone of AI.

Transparency requires that sufficient information be published or documented before the design or deployment of an AI technology. Such information must be easily accessible and facilitate meaningful public consultation and debate on how the technology is designed and how it should or should not be used.

It is the responsibility of stakeholders to ensure that they are used under appropriate conditions and by appropriately trained people. Effective mechanisms should be available for questioning and for redress for individuals and groups that are adversely affected by decisions based on algorithms.

Laws to ensure that AI systems be designed to minimize their environmental consequences and increase energy efficiency.

If we want the elimination of black-box approach through mandatory explain ability for AI – Agreed or not agree should not be an option.

While AI can be extraordinarily useful it is already out of control with self learning algorithms that no one can understand or to be brought to account.

These profit seeking skewed algorithms owned by corporations are causing racial and gender-based discrimination.Following billions of dollars in investment, a major corporate rebrand and a pivot to focus on the metaverse, Meta and Zuckerberg still have little to show for it.

I firmly believe that the Government must engage in meaningful dialogues with other countries on a common international laws that are now needed to subject developers to a rigorous evaluation process, and to ensure that entities using the technology act responsibly and are held accountable.

Having said that, governments must keep their roles limited and not assume absolute powers.

Multiple actors are jostling to lead the regulation of AI.

The question business leaders should be focused on at this moment, however, is not how or even when AI will be regulated, but by whom.

Governments have historically had trouble attracting the kind of technical expertise required even to define the kinds of new harms LLMs and other AI applications may cause.

Perhaps a licensing framework is needed to strike a balance between unlocking the potential of AI and addressing potential risks.

Or

AI ‘Nutrition Labels’ that would explain exactly what went into training an AI, and which would help us understand what a generative AI produces and why.

Or

Take the Meta’s open source approach which contrasts sharply with the more cautious, secretive inclinations of OpenAI and Google. With Open Source models like this and Stable Diffusion already out there, it may be impossible to get the Genie back into the bottle.

The metaverse is not well understood or appreciated by the media and the public. The metaverse is much, much bigger than one company, and weaving them together only complicates the matter.

Governments should never again face a choice between serving their people or servicing their debt.

Still, the most promising way not to provoke the sorcerer would be to avoid making too big a mess in the first place.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com