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Category Archives: 2021. The year for change.

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ARE NOT TAKING THE DEVELOPMENT OF AI SERIOUSLY ENOUGHT.

29 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence.

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Algorithms trade., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence.

 

(Twelve-minute read)


Artificial Intelligence might be a term for collecting concepts that allow computer systems to vaguely work like a brain. However, the use of numbers to represent complex social reality is flawed.

AI might seem factual and precise when it isn’t as the results that AI produces depend on how it is designed and what data it uses. 

At the moment in our everyday world, AI performs narrow tasks such as facial recognition, natural language processing, or internet searches but the pace of its progress is exponential and regardless of its benefits.

The impact it is having is hard to ignore with more and more of the world’s commerce becoming automated and trading going online.

It’s transforming our world and will impact all facets of society, economy, living, working, healthcare, and technology in the not-so-distant future. It’s poised to have a major effect on sustainability, climate change, and environmental issues. 

Anybody making assumptions about the capabilities of intelligent software is capping out at some point is mistaken.

The applications of AI is now in, industry, healthcare, and medical diagnostics, transport, agriculture, education, and economics, machine and deep learning, data analytics, knowledge reasoning, and discovery, natural language processing, computer vision, robotics, as well as social sciences, ethics, legal issues, and regulation all have implementations in modern society.

And that is only a drop in the ocean.

It’s in automated reasoning and inference, autonomous agents and multi-agent systems, artificial consciousness, case-based reasoning, representation, neuro-inspired computing, process improvement and planning, robotic process automation, symbolic reasoning. 

AI-augmented immersive (VR, AR, MR & XR) reality, AI-enabled customized manufacturing, AI-enabled data-driven techniques, AI in cyber-physical systems, AI in image analysis and video processing, AI in perception and multimedia sensing, AI-supported sensors, IoT and smart cities, AI in education, autonomous vehicles, business and legal applications of AI, cognitive automation, hyper-automation, digital twins, healthcare, medical diagnosis and rehabilitation, robotics and robot learning, human-robot/machine interaction, industrial AI and optimization, symbiotic autonomous systems, as well as many others relating to AI.

Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind most of us have no idea where it is leading us and the possibility of something, seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most.

The time is now to determine what dangers artificial intelligence poses.

Already the legal, political, societal, financial, and regulatory issues are so complex and wide-reaching that it’s necessary to take a look at them no not tomorrow.

AI’s role is now so widely accepted that most people are completely unaware of it.

If we don’t its usage will lead to separation and polarisation in the public sphere and manipulate elections.


It has permeated the key sectors of most developed economies with profit-seeking Algorithms that are promoted as if they are flawlessly but they are built on human bias.

It is removing the ability to make judgments and our sense of responsibility.

It cannot explain or justify reaching a decision or action in the first place.

It is creating impersonal bureaucracies and leaders.

It feeds on historical data.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said: “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

Apart from autonomous weapons gaining  “minds of their own, AI’s power for social manipulation has already proven itself – Brexit – the 2016 U.S. presidential election – the Arab spring – China’s social credit system – the invasion of privacy which is quickly turning to social oppression.

At the present, we are not designing accident-free artificial intelligence, or are we aligning current systems’ behavior with our goals or core values.

Mitigating risk and achieving the global benefits of AI will present unique governance challenges, and will require global cooperation and representation.

More advanced and powerful AI systems will be developed and deployed in the coming years, these systems could be transformative with negative as well as positive consequences.

As AI systems become more powerful and more general they may become superior to human performance in many domains. If this occurs, it could be a transition as transformative economically, socially, and politically as not the Fourth Industrial Revolution but the Revolution of Monopolies.  

It’s now possible to track and analyze an individual’s every move online, and if a covid-19 passport comes into existence it will be issued by AI. 

It’s capable of generating misinformation at a massive scale and if not already we won’t be able to tell what’s true or real online and what’s fake including Covid passports. 

If we aren’t clear with the goals we set for AI machines, it could be dangerous if a machine isn’t armed with the same goals we have.

It’s not hard to imagine an insurance company telling you you’re not insurable based on the number of times you were caught on camera talking on your phone. 

While there are many uncertainties, we should dedicate serious effort to laying the foundations for future systems’ safety and better understanding the implications of such advances.

The international governance of artificial intelligence (AI) is at a crossroads: should it remain fragmented or be centralized?

Fragmentation will likely persist for now.

Society’s collective governance efforts may need to be put on a different footing.

An important challenge is to determine who is responsible for damage caused by an AI-operated device or service:

It is undesirable from a human rights perspective that there are powerful
publicly-relevant algorithmic systems that lack a meaningful form of public scrutiny. 

Without proper regulations and self-imposed limitations, critics argue, the situation will get even worse. It is gobbling up everything it can learn about you and trying to monetize it.

There is a real risk that commercial and state use has a detrimental impact on human rights.

Our situation with technology is complicated, but the big picture is rather simple. 

All AI should be under law required to have a transparency switch.

 

The human brain is a magnificent thing that is capable of enjoying the simple pleasures of being alive. Ironically, it’s also capable of creating machines that, for better or worse, become smarter and more and more lifelike every day.

AI will affect what it means to be human, be productive, and exercise

free will. People will become even more dependent on networked artificial

intelligence (AI) in complex digital systems.

Every time we program our environments, we end up programming ourselves

and our interactions. AI have massive short-term benefits, along with long-

term negatives that can take decades to be recognizable. AI is a tool that will

be used by humans for all sorts of purposes, including in the pursuit of

power. At stake is nothing less than what sort of society we want to live in

and how we experience our humanity. We already face an ungranted

assumption when we are asked to imagine human-machine ‘collaboration.

We cannot expect our AI systems to be ethical on our behalf – they won’t be,

as they will be designed to kill efficiently, not thoughtfully.

For now, AI will continue to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a

few big monopolies based on the U.S. and China. Most people – and parts of

the world – will be worse off.

Unfortunately, we are still unripe for the unity of humanity.

We require further development until we develop a sincere desire for

humanity’s unity, as well as the realization that it is impossible to achieve

that goal on our own. If we just bumble into this world of AI unprepared, it

will probably be the biggest mistake in human history.

The COVID-19 virus will one day be all but forgotten, but the dystopian

systems that the New World Order is right now putting in place will not.

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

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS: ARE WE RIGHT TO BE TALKING ABOUT GOING BACK TO NORMAL OR ARE WE JUST FOOLING OURSELVES.

26 Friday Mar 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Civilization., Climate Change., COVID-19, Digital age., Education., Environment, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Future Education., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., POST COVID-19., Poverty, Reality., Sovereign wealth fund, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The Reset. Fact or conspiracy., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Tags

Artificial Intelligence., Back to normal., Capitalism and Greed, Capitalism vs. the Climate., Defaults looming., Distribution of wealth, Forthcoming Economic Depression ., Global warming, Greed, Inequility, Overriding priority., Post-Covid-19, Rebuilding our society., Sovereign wealth fund, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

( Twenty-minute read) 


Apart from the tragic human consequences of the COVID-19 epidemic, it’s impossible to measure the price of A GLOBAL DEPRESSION OR THE COMING CLIMATE CHANGE, NOT TO MENTION THE SURGING INEQUALITY DRIVEN BY AI.

But rest assured that it will be the young generation that will be saddled with the bill and the consequences and few countries are likely to be left unscathed by the covid -19 outbreak’s financial ramifications.

We have conveniently forgotten if you remember before the pandemic we had a financial meltdown in 2008.

Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Italy, economies were all operating on borrowed money with all of them amassing debts away beyond their annual tax revenues to the point that their budgets were consumed entirely by interest payments.

Greece was on the verge of causing the Euro to collapse while England was in the grips of an austerity program that resulted in Brexit the cost of which has no definitive figure. 

90% of this was big banks creating debts world-wise in the knowledge that they would have to be bailed out by the taxpayers. (Too big to fail is a phrase used to describe a company that’s so entwined in the global economy that its failure would be catastrophic.)

While Wall Street hedge funds, with credit default swaps and sovereignty wealth funds, we’re making hay while the sun-shined, world debts were doubling. 

Take Iceland for example. German banks pumped $21 into its banks, Sweden $400 million, England around $30billion, the Netherlands $300 million, Oxford University a mere $50 million. Iceland’s banks went bankrupt. The government couldn’t bail them out because it didn’t have the money. Instead of being too big to fail, they were too big to save. Iceland never resorted to austere budget cuts that are so prevalent in Europe.

They imposed capital controls. They let the banks fail.

Iceland’s economy successfully survived a sovereign bankruptcy and government collapse.

However, Iceland’s government today is spending a back-breaking 17.3% of its tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt.

Without a doubt, Iceland was and is the canary in the coalmine for the sovereign debt crisis that is now unfolding across the world right now.

With investors around the world suddenly wake up to a sobering reality of a major default… bigger than Iceland in 2008. It won’t be long before we see countries defaulting because of the amount of government borrowing to fight Covid-19 

So what happens when governments themselves ceased to be credible? 

This might be something that had been considered preposterous only months ago but when one looks at what is only the start of a global depression it is now very much on the cards.

It’s important to remember that throughout history humanity has experienced no shortage of pandemics and deadly viruses but despite the similarities, of these pandemics some of the differences are now even more striking.

The economic fallout from these pandemics was barely noticeable. (The same can be said of the Spanish Flu of 1918.)

What is making the COVID-19 pandemic so unique is not the virus itself, but our collective response to it. Governments in their zeal to control society, have destroyed the global economy on a scale the modern world has never seen. These losses are unprecedented in modern history. The loss of human life that can never be recovered is regrettable but there’s a degree of anxiety now that’s well beyond the health scares which are still very serious and concerning.

If we take a look for example at the USA.

Its economic loss is more than twice the total monetary outlay for all the wars the US has fought since September 11, 2001, including those in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria.

Closer to home. 

Millions out of work, industries losing billions, and that’s just the beginning. Transportation companies losing billions in market value with tourism the restaurant and foodservice industry decimated with real estate defaults looming.

Further afield the so-called least Developed Countries, whose economies are driven by the sale of raw materials, will not be spared either. Latin American region as similarly vulnerable.

In addition to global poverty, the pandemic has adversely affected vaccination rates, HIV transmission, gender equality, education, and more. Unfortunately, these problems won’t be reversed overnight—or anytime soon.

When will things go back to normal?

Never.  

Our society is fundamentally flawed, with a devastating financial storm more than likely on its way we cannot simply hit the reset button and go back to normal.

As we go about rebuilding our society for a new day, it is absolutely critical that we focus our efforts on healing the wounds of the people who suffered most.

We all know that the distribution of wealth is key to any recovery and we are going to witness in this pandemic and subsequent economic depression how inequality is the main cause s of why our world is in such a mess. 

So if we want a world worth living in we must address the distribution of wealth along with education.

( The Solution.

Embedding equity and empathy into our cultures by reimagining schools and the introduction of a Universal Basis Living Wage. 

Rather than preparation education (to enter a world of I am all right Jack ) we should be promoting core values education.

This education should be free to all paid for by the state. Not designed by wealthy white men paying the minimum wage, awarding themselves dividends, launching profit-seeking algorithms, running plundering sovereignty wealth funds, leaving the young generation with massive debt.

After two decades of progress around the world, nearly 37 million people have lost significant amounts of income and are now living on less than $1.90 per day. 

There is little point in governments spending billions on projects that enrich the few while their citizens have to resort to food banks, social welfare, etc. 

While Countries’ debts are ballooning exponentially, due in part to combating Covid-19, the fourth industrial revolution in the form of Technology is eroding the opportunities of earning a living or sharing in the profits of automation, machine learning, etc. 

It is not possible to stop the erosion but it is possible to share the wealth in a fair and meaningful way with a guaranteed income that would cut government costs while stimulating economic recovery. 

By scrapping the concept of the welfare state a form of structural inequality and replace it with a government-guaranteed payment to provide financial security

Cash is the best thing you can do to improve health outcomes, education outcomes and lift people out of poverty.  

It would stop people from emigrating not just to other countries but to cities.

The social welfare state is what prevents the poor from building their wealth to better their lives.

How could it be financed?  

Place a 0.05% aid commission on revenue made by profit-seeking algorithms and tax the top 1% and allocate 10 to 12% of GDP directly to the universal income payments.

The benefit would automatically rise with national prosperity and inflation.

The simplicity of the program means it would also cost governments less.

It is inevitable. If we don’t we will rebuild an exclusionary society.) 

                                                ————–

Germany, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. are all in the top 10 spenders, all conjure money out of thin air and funnels it to the government.

There will be inquiries.  How long of a sentence does someone get for railroading his nation’s economy? Life? 30-years? 10-years?

Where should we begin to rebuild our lives?

There are a number of possible futures however if we don’t take this opportunity to build a future that is more humane we will slide into something far worse.

The responses so far to the pandemic are simply the amplification of the dynamic that drives other social and ecological crises.

The overriding priority remains to save lives.

However, understanding human behavior in its wider economic context is necessary if we are to solve climate change or if we are to tackle future pandemics problems all created by our economic structure.

Both are socially driven. 

With every week that passes, we learn more about the virus and understand more about how to defeat it. But the more we learn, the more we realize how little the world yet understands about the true nature of the threat – except that it is a shared one that we must all work together to defeat. 

Now is the time to teach the student of society a lesson of humility which should guard him against becoming an accomplice in men’s fatal striving to control society – a striving which makes him not only a tyrant over his fellows but which may well make him the destroyer of a civilization…

The world is “not at the mercy of the virus called covid, but the fuse is burning on the bomb – Climate Change. 

It is at the mercy of Profit for profit’s sake that must be harnessed to affect change.

(See previous posts) 

At the end of the day, the Icelandic people are responsible back in 2008 for their collapse. They were never bailed out. They were stuck with the bill.

It does not take a genius to describe the changes that are needed.   

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. THESE DAYS WITH TECHNOLOGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE ARE TREATIES OR TRADE DEALS WORTH THE PAPER THEY ARE WRITTEN ON.

16 Tuesday Mar 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., POST COVID-19., Trade Agreements., Unanswered Questions., What Needs to change in the World, World Trade Organisation

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Brexit v EU - Negotiations.

 

( Fifteen-minute read) 


Countries can do whatever they choose and there is no organization in the world with any authority over any country’s government.

An anxious, frightened nation desperately turns to the government for leadership in managing and overcoming emergencies. This does not mean that momentous events like COVID-19, which tap into our deepest feelings of insecurity and mortality, ought to rule out the airing of legitimate differences of opinion.

This is how for all intended purposes the Good Friday Agreement was arranged not Brexit and subsequent Northern Ireland Protocol. 

The burdens of office are momentous but the actions we take are a great source of information about ourselves but underestimating the significance of platforms like social media for debate has its own consequences. The Arab Spring, Donal Trump’s election, Brexit, the handover of Hongkong, and now the Northern Ireland Protocol (designed to protect the Good Friday Agreement) a debate triggered by an online petition launched by the Brexit supporting DUP. 

Perhaps it’s time that trade deals and treaties were arranged by independent third parties because I believe that the detached self is able to paint the most accurate picture of who we are and how we work.

Brexit as I predicted is a good example of the unforeseen effort and costs involved when exiting a deal that is not properly understood in the first place. 

Northern Ireland voted to stay in the European Union.

Outside the EU a border inside the EU no border. 

Any trade deal or treaty comes with rules and regulations agreed to by all parties prior to the agreement any changes must to agreed upon by the signatures to that deal before implication.  Any unilateral actions nullify the deal as there is no point in agreeing on something that is not going to adhere to.   

                                      ——————–

Trade always takes the line of least resistance.

The implementation of the protocol on Northern Ireland was always going to be difficult – Brexiters have never accepted the need for the Irish Sea border that they have nonetheless created, arguing right up until the protocol was signed, that a mixture of technology and “mutual enforcement” by both sides could obviate the need for a trade border in Ireland.

As far as the Unionist in the north of Ireland choosing to put a trade border in the Irish Sea, Boris Johnson unsettled the fundamental constitutional ambiguity at the heart of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace deal as the price of delivering a fully “sovereign” Brexit for the rest of the UK.

The Good Friday Agreement functions (however imperfectly) because it enables the people of Northern Ireland “to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both”, but the protocol means the Unionist community now feels that its identity is threatened.

Alas, this week’s row — in which the UK government unilaterally granted itself more time to phase in burdensome bureaucracy, sparking a threat of legal action from the European Commission — shows how far trust and communication have broken down between both sides, obscuring the practical requirements noted above.

Government is not perfect — no human institution can be without trust.

To just exist without following any of the pre-agreed treaty clauses or simply for political gain is bad form. It also is a sign to the rest of the world that a treaty with a particular country and government in power that breaks it outside of those planned options isn’t trustworthy.

With that deadline gone and both parties have ruled out any extension to the transition period, it is now clear that there is no longer time for parliamentary approval on the EU side.

So where are we? 

The EU  which includes some large member states is not yet fully confident that a Johnson government will implement the agreement it signed — and yet in demanding demonstrations of UK willingness to implement the deal fully, it is at serious risk of testing the protocol to destruction. 

Does this mean that the UK will crash out without a deal?  

Not only the Council and the European Parliament have to ratify the agreement, but also the legislatures of all 27 member states by qualified majority voting or unanimity, depending on the scope of the agreement.

In the meantime the pandemic has flung the world into a maelstrom, we’re still not quite sure how to get out of it never mind climate change. 

We can’t build back better if we don’t know what building back better looks like.

So a good starting point is to think of the problems we have now, and what we can do to find solutions to help build back better.

With the astronomical cost of the pandemic yet to be determined radical economic or social change is the last thing governments want right now.

What’s needed is stability, to allow the economy to recover. A radical shift in policy seems unlikely when we’re in the midst of an economic crisis. It would be like taking the air supply away from a sick person fighting for their lives. It is quite literally, the last thing you would do.

We need to remember governments tend to react to problems, rather than proactively create radical reform, and herein lies one of the greatest challenges in dealing with the climate crisis never mind the No Nay Never Unionists. 

Under International law a border there must be till either Northern Ireland is reunited with the South or England rejoins the EU. 

England could leave the customs union with the EU,  Northern Ireland could not. 

                                             ——————— 

When it comes to Climate change to be sure, the governments have gotten a lot of things wrong.

Yes, we’re already in a crisis. A problem of breathtaking proportions. But does it feel like a problem? Not really.

From the perspective of people who have bills to pay, screaming children, stressful jobs, how does the climate crisis impact their lives?

For the majority of people, the climate crisis isn’t that high up on their list of priorities.

Things are going to have to get really bad for people to take notice.

It’s only when the climate crisis starts to feel like a problem affecting people’s lives that they’ll start demanding change.

At that point, it will be too late for governments to do anything about it.

The problem with government is that we are unable to make it work-work with us, not over us; to stand by our side, not ride on our back.

With public sentiment gripped by anxiety and uncertainty as we race to rationalize and intuit what COVID-19 will mean for how we live, the last thing anyone wants to see is politicians and other leaders bickering over the many prescriptions needed to address what is going to put Coivd -19 in the shade – the climate.  

To date, we’ve largely been spared that fate.

However, as technology turns climate into a product the climate movement needs to wake up to the uncomfortable realization that we need to be patient and let the system implode, but be damn sure to be ready when it does.

Lockdowns that ground society to a halt have given the environment a break. Governments would be well served to anticipate this next phase.

If they don’t accommodate what will become a loud chorus demanding, not without justification, regular demonstrations of accountability in the face of the most far-reaching encumbrances on personal liberties we’ve seen in our history.  

Climate is what shapes and defines our lives in various ways, and it is an indispensable resource during times of hardship and sacrifice.

All the “solutions” to the government’s problems promise to speed, streamline, standardize and modernize, but they rarely address the organizational changes required to actually make them effective, or the organizational changes that result.

The climate will take no prisoners so those attending the next climate change summit need to understand what is now their starting position is with economies being crushed by the Pandemic and the forthcoming Depression.

Global climate is projected to continue to change over this century and beyond. 

These meetings have been vital to find a global consensus on an issue that requires a global solution.

Among the many elements that need to be ironed out is the financing of climate action worldwide. (  See previous posts )

Because the clock is ticking on climate change, the world cannot afford to waste more time: we must collectively agree on a bold, decisive, ambitious, and accountable way forward.

This cannot be done by written agreements that are non-binding. It can only be achieved by rewards like non-repayable grants funded by placing a 0.05% World Aid Commission on all profit-seeking activities. ( See previous Posts)  

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS; DOES DEMOCRACY DEPEND UPON SOME PEOPLE BEING NON-CONFORMISTS?

15 Monday Mar 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Covid - Passports., Covid-19 Vaccines., Post-Covid-19, Privatization

≈ Leave a comment

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Algorithms., Coronavirus (COVID-19), Covid. Passports/ Digital ID., Post-Covid-19, Privacy boundaries., Privacy., Visions of the future.

 

(Six-minute read) 

THANKS TO TRACK AN TRACE millions of bits of information about each of us circulate through the internet, but our freedom and democracy don’t seem to have been substantially impacted as yet. 

We might still feel free to do as we please but will the introduction of Covid-19 passports turn us all into Dalits? ( Better known as Untouchables)

These people in the Hindu religion face discrimination and even violence from members of higher castes, or traditional social classes, particularly in terms of access to jobs, education, and marriage partners.

The concept of vaccine passports is no longer theoretical.

The premise for such passports (whether digital or otherwise) will indicate whether individuals have received A COVID-19 VACCINATION OR BEEN TESTED RECENTLY.

Are those that are not vaccinated to be marked with a yellow star.

There are also many privacy concerns to be addressed with vaccine passports that will result in benefits been distributed unequally, not removing them but perpetuating them.

We all know that data in the form of knowledge is the manner born to the digital age of algorithms.  

These days we are constantly asked by pop-ups to agree to the website’s privacy policy – us of one’s data and so on in order to personalize your experience and share your data. ( We value your privacy offers a choice – I accept or change consent – manage your choices) 

Why is this happening? 

Because the General Data Protection Regulations ( GDPR) have come into force with fines up to 20 million Euros.

How can such a privacy policy be legal?

They claim to value my privacy and I can review what they mean by that in the policy. However, at the same time, they do not commit to keeping it like that and might not “value my privacy” at any later point in time.

Now think this further.

If this clause is in fact legal, we could set up a website with a volatile privacy policy. That would be a privacy policy that changes on every visit to the website.

As an example, on the first visit, we happily tell the visitor that we do not collect any information, do not use personal information, and of course, also do not sell any kinds of data to advertising networks. However, as soon as the visitor accepted this policy (of course they are privacy-aware and read the policy), it will suddenly change to the opposite. The visitor will never be informed or even asked for consent again.

Clearly, we all place some value on privacy, but why?

We’ve seen how we use privacy as a commodity, if we can give out some of our private information and receive a bargain at the store then we call that a fair trade. 

If we use our privacy as a commodity, then we ought to think about how much we should ask for in return for our privacy. In setting that price, it would be a good idea to think about what sort of value our privacy has.

What if the situation with Covid Passports becomes considerable direr – Stigmatised for life – Contaminated from birth.

Democracy is a social good, and privacy is instrumental to that social good but we ought to think about how much we should ask for in return for our privacy. 

                                  ———————–

The non-conformist can take unpopular stances on government policy that might shine a light on issues that others hadn’t thought of. They’re the ones who get meaningful conversations going in public.

Now most of us are perfectly happy for our lives to be an open book even if there is a price to be paid.  

In setting that price, with the arrival of Covid-19 passports it would be a good idea to think about what sort of value our privacy has.

The argument for Covid -19 passports draws on the concept that people who are being watched will behave differently than people who aren’t being watched.

We don’t do things when we think it’s possible that someone is watching.

Security cameras serve this function even when they aren’t being monitored because the possibility of being watched is often enough to alter our behavior.

There is more at stake here than our preference to maintain sole control of our information. Privacy also serves as a social good.

We can use privacy to delineate our relationships with other people and we can make use of our private information in order to get those things that we want and need.

Now, it might seem like our loss of privacy is necessary to save lives but the flu kills around 650.000 of us a year. 

One thing however remains constant throughout this pandemic and the history of the world. 

WE ALL HAVE TO DIE SOMETIME. SADLY STATISTICALLY YOU ARE STILL YOUR OWN WORST ENEMY. 

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

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY IS IT THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO KILL A VIRUS?

04 Thursday Mar 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., COVID-19, Covid-19 Vaccines., Unanswered Questions., Viruses.

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

CORONA VIRUS., Coronavirus (COVID-19), Viruses.

 

(Twelve-minute read) 

 

Humans have been killing for thousands and thousands of years. Not just each other but almost every living thing, so why are we unable to kill viruses?

First, to kill a virus we must know what we are trying to kill.

Bacteria are not the most abundant microbes that live in and on our bodies.

That award goes to viruses.

If you think you don’t have viruses, think again.

To put it simply, when it comes to where viruses live in the human body, figuring out where they don’t live is a far better question than asking where they do.

It has been estimated that there are over 380 trillion viruses inhabiting us, a community is collectively known as the human virome.

Here’s where viruses come in.

They’ve already figured out how to kill bacteria. It’s all they live for.

Viruses are the most common biological entities on Earth.

Experts estimate there are around 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them, and if they were all lined up they would stretch from one side of the galaxy to the other.

So it’s clear that there’s a war being fought on our body surfaces every minute of every day, and we haven’t a clue who’s winning or what the consequences of this war might be.

The name Virus is from a Latin word meaning “slimy liquid” or “poison.”

They are microorganisms smaller than a bacterium that cannot grow or reproduce apart from a living cell.

They are not plants, animals, or prokaryotic bacteria (single-cell organisms without defined nuclei), and they are generally placed in their own kingdom.

In fact, viruses should not even be considered organisms, in the strictest sense, because they are not free-living—i.e., they cannot reproduce and carry on metabolic processes without a host cell.

Viruses must rely on a host for energy production, reproduction, and survival. It can remain inside the host for extended periods of time without causing any apparent changes in the host cell.

Viruses are quintessential parasites. They derive energy, as well as all other metabolic functions, from the host cell.

Most viruses vary in diameter from 20 nanometres (nm; 0.0000008 inches) to 250–400 nm; the largest, however, measure about 500 nm in diameter and are about 700–1,000 nm in length.

It is still traditional to divide viruses into three categories: those that infect animals, plants, or bacteria.

Antibiotics are not effective against viruses because viruses are entirely devoid of the machinery for life processes.

If you want to learn more follow the link below.  

                          https://www.britannica.com/science/virus

                                               —————————–

The resilience of viruses is what has made them such a menace throughout history remaining to this day the biggest and minuscule threats to humanity.

They don’t have to play by the same rules that living things play by.

They don’t really do anything — they’re effectively inert until they come into contact with a host cell, existing like freeloading zombies — not quite dead, yet certainly not alive.

“Viruses can be present in many locations – they can lurk in people, they can lurk in materials that are stored in freezers, they can lurk in wildlife and domestic animals – it’s really impossible to say if a virus has gone extinct.

It appears they take advantage of our bodies because our bodies are governed by our brains, which are unable to remember if they fought with a particular virus or not. So they mutate and hoodwink the immune system because our immune system is out of commission.  

So the only way to drive a virus to extinction is to eliminate it in the wild, which is an impossible task.

Regardless of whether there is a single person or animal not infected anywhere on the planet, we have to live with the virus. 

                                       —————————–

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was reported in 1977.

Measles, smallpox, anthrax, and tuberculosis were all gifts from our farmed animals.

In 1980, the World Health Organization declared that smallpox had been eradicated. Currently, there is no evidence of naturally occurring smallpox transmission anywhere in the world.

Although a worldwide immunization program eradicated smallpox disease decades ago, small quantities of smallpox virus officially still exist in two research laboratories in Atlanta, Georgia, and Russia.

But what occurs at the end of a virus’s existence is only just starting to gather interest.

Why do some viruses disappear? And what happens to them?

In a nutshell, we get lucky. 

Sars was driven to extinction by a combination of sophisticated contact-tracing and the quirks of the virus itself. Other than Sars, only two other viruses have ever been driven to extinction on purpose – smallpox, and rinderpest, which affects cattle.

The war against these two viruses was won using vaccines, which are also set to eliminate polio – cases have decreased by 99% since the 1980s – and possibly eventually measles, though recently these efforts have been set back by war, the anti-vaxxer movement.

With Covid-19 the virus can’t break into just any cell in the body. Instead, one of its proteins will bind to another protein. Once the invasion takes place, the cell, in essence, is transformed into a factory that churns out hundreds and hundreds of copies of the virus making it difficult to distinguish a healthy cell from an infected one.

.  Viruses pick up errors in their genetic code as they spread, so in some cases it is possible to simply wait them out (Credit: Reuters)

We are left with speeding up viral evolution artificially with drugs that could bring some benefits.

At the heart of the plan is the biology of “RNA viruses” – a group that includes many of humanity’s most intractable pathogens, including HIV, the flu, coronaviruses, and Ebola. Their genetic material is made of RNA as opposed to DNA, which means that when they hijack their host’s machinery to copy themselves, they don’t include a “proofreading” step where they check for mistakes.

But this staggering rate of mutation is a double-edged sword.

Above a certain rate, mutations become harmful, leading to virus strains that are burdened with genetic faults that hinder their spread.

This is usually thought of as a bad thing for humans, because these mutations mean that there’s an extraordinary amount of genetic diversity among RNA viruses, allowing them to evolve rapidly – so any vaccines or drugs that target them quickly become obsolete.

However eventually, this could lead to their extinction or ours.

In the meantime, one remedy for this Catch 22 is to make a conscious effort to remind ourselves about the world before vaccines.

Here are a few to remember. 

Smallpox – HIV – Influenza – Rofavirus – Marburg – Measles – Ebola – Rabies – Hib – Hantavirus – Dengue – Sars-Cov – Sars- Coc2 – Mers -Cov – Swine Flu – Avian Flue – Whooping Cough – Mumps – Chickenpox – Diptheria – Rubella.  (Cancer is neither a bacteria nor a virus however it is known that some viruses lead to cancer or help to kill cancer.) 

The 1918 flu pandemic, which infected a third of the world’s population and killed 50 million. This strain of influenza has gone extinct along with every flu virus that existed in humans until about 120 years ago. However, every few decades, a new type of flu will evolve quietly accumulating mutations that were useless or even actively harmful to its own survival. 

In the meantime, please can we learn two obvious lessons?

First, let’s stop bringing wild animals into markets alive (if at all): viruses do not survive long in dead bodies, even if not refrigerated. It’s a cruel practice anyway.

And second, let’s keep our distance from bats. As long as there are bats, there will be zoonotic viruses. Definitely don’t eat them.

Your missions down the research rabbit hole might’ve even led you to other novel ways of killing germs: namely,  Steam and ultraviolet (UV) light.

I would say any claim that they do is false.

As for their ability to kill COVID-19, your guess is as good as anyone.

To kill a virus one must break its out shell, without harming the healthy cells around it.

Nither shaking or steaming or sticking your head in a microwave will kill a virus.

Make no mistake about it; the viruses that have evolved with us for so many years are not only part of our past but will play a significant role in the future of human health.

Get Vaccinated. 

 

The fight against Ebola in Africa has been complicated by the fact the virus continues to circulate in wild animals (Credit: Reuters)

 

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

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS: ITS TO LATE TOO REGULATE ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE – SO WHAT IF ANYTHING CAN BE DONE?

18 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Emotions., Face Recognition., Facebook, Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Google, Inequality, Lock Down., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, POST COVID-19., Quantum computers., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Twitter, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Algorithms trade., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism and Greed, Globalization, Government, Inequility, Post-Covid-19, Technology, The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

  ( A Thirty-minute read)  Do you have a right to believe what you want? Yes, of course, but we now live in an Algorithmic driven world that is blurring the boundaries and amplifying the social tensions that are festering under the surface.  The problem is that we are allowing the building of technologies, that are making consequential decisions about people’s lives. AI is shaping people’s lives on a daily basis, but it’s an open question whether AI will become a trusted advisor or even a corrupting force.

It’s not COVID-19 that will kill us all its Profit-seeking algorithms.

However, here in this post, my main concern is whether the AI techniques will develop into quantum algorithms that will be totally out of control.  If artificial general intelligence is on the not too distant horizon, surely we should be ensuring that it is not owned by anyone corporation and that at its core it respects our core values. To achieve this we cannot surely let wealth be concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, or to be let to the marketplace, or any world organization that is not totally transparent and self-financing. We therefore as a matter of grave urgency need a new world organization that vets all technology, and algorithms. (See previous posts) As long as the ALGORITHMS don’t go to war with each other and cause something even more difficult to diagnose than a crash on the stock markets they are safe is as naive as saying ” It’s going to be Great.” AlGORITHMS are increasingly in charge of a world that is precious to us all. Basically, we’re entering the era of machines controlling everything. If we want to create new different societies with human dignity for all we need to do something about it. The difficulty of predicting the future is not just a cliche, it’s a basic fact of our existence. Part of the hypothesis of Singularity is that this difficulty is just going to get worse and worse. Yes, creating AGI ( Artificial General Intelligence) is a big and difficult goal, but according to known science, it is almost surely an achievable one. However, there are sound though not absolutely confident arguments that it may well be achievable within our lifetimes. If artificial general intelligence is on the not too distant horizon, surely we should be ensuring that it is not owned by anyone corporation and that at its core it respects our core values. If we think in months we focus on immediate problems such as the present-day wars, the Covid crisis, the Donald Trumps, the economy, if we think in decades, climate, growing inequality, the loss of jobs to automation are all presenting dangers. But if we look at life in total, science is converging on data processing and AI that is developing itself with algorithms. When intelligence is approached in an incremental manner, with strict reliance on interfacing to the real world through perception and action, reliance on representation disappears. It won’t be long before we will not be unable to distinguish the real world from the virtual world. Since there is only one real world and there can be infinite virtual worlds the probability that you will inhabit this sole world is zero.  So it won’t matter whether computers will be conscious or not. Is starting to feel like it’s every man for himself, Is possible that right now, a global crisis is upon us, Without even knowing… And the virus may not be the biggest threat, but the crisis that follows, Everyday goods that keep us alive will be gone, I’m talking, food, freshwater, medicine, clothes, fuel… Intelligence is decoupling from consciousness and soon rather than later it will be consigned to Google, Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones, and the like to make decisions that are not possible to reverse.  You might think that the above is stupid but it won’t be long before we will be witnessing the most unequal societies in history.                                  —————————— We humans will soon be living with robots that process data without any subjective experiences or consciousness or moral opprobrium. As we watch robots, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence machines, and the like slowly (and sometimes rapidly) permeate our world, it’s not hard to imagine them going from permeating to taking over. Algorithms are increasingly determining our collective future. It will only matter what they think about you. We are already halfway towards a world where algorithms run everything. This is why many of the issues raised in this post will require close monitoring, to ensure that the oversight of machine learning-driven algorithms continues to strike an appropriate and safe balance between recognizing the benefits (for healthcare and other public services, for example, and for innovation in the private sector) and the risks (for privacy and consent, data security and any unacceptable impacts on individuals).                                     —————————— WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS DO?  Please regulate AI, this is too dangerous. Given the international nature of digital innovation, governments, should establish audits of algorithms, introducing certification of algorithms, and charging ethics boards with oversight of algorithmic decisions. Why? They are bringing big changes in their wake. From better medical diagnoses to driverless cars, and within central governments where there are opportunities to make public services more effective and achieve long-term cost savings. However, the Government should produce, publish, and maintain a list of where algorithms with significant impacts are being used within the Central Government, along with projects underway or planned for public service algorithms, to aid not just private sector involvement but also transparency. Governments should not just simply accept what the developers of algorithms offer in return for data access. To this end, Governments should be at the forefront of the creation of a “statutory building code”, which describes mandatory safety and quality requirements for digital platforms. Social networks should be required by law to release details of their algorithms and core functions to trusted researchers, in order for the technology to be vetted. This Law should enable the enforcement of, 
  • forcing social networks to disclose in the news feed why content has been recommended to a user.
  • limiting the use of micro-targeting advertising messages.
  • making it illegal to exclude people from content on the basis of race or religion, such as hiding a spare room advert from people of color.
  • banning the use of so-called dark patterns – user interfaces designed to confuse or frustrate the user, such as making it hard to delete your account.
  • labeling the accounts of state-controlled news organizations.
  • limiting how many times messages can be forwarded to large groups, as Facebook does on WhatsApp.
If we took the premise that people should have a lawful right to be manipulated and deceived, we wouldn’t have rules on fraud or undue influence.                                 ———————————– To days Algorithms and where we are. As data accumulates, even more so now with Covid- 19 track and trace, and now working from home we have more centralized data depositories and large centralized AI models that work off centralized or decentralized data. How does the concentration of power affect this balance that impinges on individual liberty? Our democratic institutions and public discourse are underpinned by an assumption that we can at least agree on things that are true. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube create algorithms that promote and highlight information. That is an active engineering decision. Regardless of whether Facebook, Twitter profits from hate or not, it is a harmful by-product of the current design and there are social harms that come from this business model. Platforms that monetize user engagement have a duty to their users to make at least a minimum effort to prevent clearly identified harms. We have to focus on the responsibility of platforms. Because people are being manipulated with objectively false information, there has to be some kind of accountability for platforms. Currently, these platforms are not neutral environments they have no common understanding that there are certain things that are manifestly true with algorithms making decisions about what people see or do not see. In most Western democracies, you do have the freedom of speech. But freedom of speech is not an entitlement to reach. You are free to say what you want, within the confines of hate speech, libel law, and so on. But you are not entitled to have your voice artificially amplified by technology. The way Facebook and other platforms approach this problem is: We’ll wait and see and figure out a problem when it emerges. Every other industry has to have minimum safety standards and consider the risks that could be posed to people, through risk mitigation and prevention. There are right now some objectively disprovable things spreading quite rapidly on Facebook. For example, that Covid does not exist and that the vaccine is actually to control the minds of people. These are all things that are manifestly untrue, and you can prove that. However, algorithms are much more prevalent than that- the Apple Face ID algorithm decides whether you are who you say you are. Algorithms limit people’s worldview, which can allow large population groups to be easily controlled. Social Media algorithms tuned to your desires and want’s ensures that everything on your feed will be of interest to you without you knowing what data these algorithms use and what they aim for. Conclusion.  We are already living with large AI platforms that are monopolizing the fruits of globalization with billions being left behind. With us accepting this as if natural.
  • It will be too late when we are asking ourselves. What’s more valuable – intelligence or consciousness? Then ask yourselves what happens to society, politics, and daily life when non-conscious but highly intelligent algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?
  • Whatever view one takes on artificial intelligence ethics. You can rest assured that we will see far more nut cases blowing themselves up, far more wars over finite resources, with vast movements of people.
We have to remember that self-regulation is not the same as having no regulation. Of course, the loudest arguments for and against something often have one thing in common. They are often made by people with no desire to compromise or understand the other side. I think self-regulation, in and of itself contemplates people in power, deciding how they will act. We have to accept from history that we cannot possibly predict all adverse consequences of technology and that’s because it is not just technology that has adverse consequences, but the context in which is applied, It is impossible to regulate AI while thinking about all of its potential adverse consequences.  The seeds for harm at the design stage, or at the development stage, or at the deployment stage. We don’t have to wait for the technology to become an application before we think of regulating it effectively.  There is a need to strengthen specific provisions to safeguard individual liberty and community rights when it comes to inferred data. There is a need to balance the trade-offs between the utility of AI and protecting privacy and data.  Self-regulation within the AI industry may not be enough since it may not solve the massive differential between the people developing the technology and the people affected by it. Machine learning is the next step that they are aiming for, with the algorithms deciding the input and output completely. Inherent political and economic power hierarchies between the state and citizens and within the private sector need to be addressed because the promise of globalization is a lie when it comes to AI and prosperity for all. Algorithms are being used in an ever-growing number of areas, in ever-increasing ways, however, like humans, they can produce bias in their results, even if unintentional. We are all becoming redundant with biotechnology becoming only available to the riches of us. I don’t think that AI per se can be regulated because today it is AI, tomorrow it will be Augmented Reality or Virtual Reality, and the day after tomorrow it may be something that we can’t even think of right now. So it is important to have checks and balances in the use and access to AI that go beyond just technological means. Why? Because they are also moving into areas where the benefits to those applying them may not be matched by the benefits to those subject to their ‘decisions’—in some aspects of the criminal justice system, for example. However, technology companies are not all the same, and nor is technology the only part of the media ecosystem. It is essential to ensure a whole society response to tackle these important issues. You could require algorithms to have a trigger TO SHUT OF – to stop misinformation or terrorist groups using social media as a recruiting platform. BUT who defines what counts as misinformation? It is no longer possible for humans to fact-check so the only course of action is a world Independent Universal Algorithm that is designed to establish fairness.  While “fairness” is much vaguer than “life or death,” I believe it can – and should – be built into all AI using their algorithm. Therefore every Social network should display a correction to every single person who was exposed to misinformation if independent fact-checkers identify a story as false. (Google’s search algorithm is more closely guarded than classified secret documents with  Google Algorithm’s that now owns most of the largest data sets in the world stored in its cloud.)                                        ——————– We now have algorithms fighting with each other for supremacy on the market, prey on other algorithms in order to blunder the world exchanges for profit to such an extent that they now effectively in control of capitalism.  Take for instance, when someone says algorithmic trading, it covers a vast subject not just buying and selling large volumes of shares automatically at very high speeds by unsupervised learning algorithms. There are four major types of trading algorithms.  There are:
  • Execution algorithms
  • Behavior exploitative algorithms
  • Scalping algorithms
  • Predictive algorithms
Transparency must be a key underpinning for algorithm accountability. Why? Because it will make it easier for the decisions produced by algorithms to be explained.  (The ‘right to explanation’ is a key part of achieving accountability and tackling the ethical implications around AI.) We are only on the outskirts of mind science that presently knows little about how the mind works never mind consciousness.  We have no idea how a collection of electric brain signals creates subjective experiences however we are conscious of our dreams. 99% of our bodily activities take place without any conscious feelings. As neuroscientists acquired more and more data about the workings of the brain, cognitive sciences, and their stated purpose is to combine the data from numerous disciplines so as better to understand such diverse phenomena as perception, language, reasoning, and consciousness. Even so, the subjective essence of “what it means” to be conscious remains an issue that is very difficult to address scientifically. To really understand what is meant by the cognitive neurosciences, one must recall that until the late 1960s, the various fields of brain research were still tightly compartmentalized. Brain scientists specialized in fields such as neuroanatomy, neurohistology, neuroembryology, or neurochemistry. Nobody was yet working with the full range of investigative methods available, but eventually, the very complexity of the subject at hand-made that a necessity. The first problem that arises when examining consciousness is that a conscious experience is truly accessible only to the person who is experiencing it. Despite the vast knowledge we have gained in the field of mathematics and computer science, none of the data processing systems we have created needs subjective experiences in order to function. None feel pain, pleasure, anger, or love. These emotions are vanishing into algorithms that are or will have an effect on how we see the world but also how we live in it.   If not address now all moral and political values will disappear, turning consciousness into a kind of mental pollution. After all, computers have no minds. Take images on Instagram they can affect mental health and body image.  You might say so what that has always been the case. And you would be right up to now but because of Covid-19 government has given themselves wide-ranging powers to collect and analyze data, without adequate safeguards. If we are not careful they will have no notion of self, existing only in the present unaware of the past or future, and therefore will be unable to consciously plan for future eventualities. Unconscious algorithms in our brains rather than conscious images in a mind. If you are using a smartphone, it indirectly means that you are enjoying the AI knowingly or unknowingly. It cannot be modified unknowingly or can’t get disfigured or breakdown in a hostile environment. We should not be regulating technology but Artificial Intelligence. It is so complicated in behavior we need to be regulated it at the data level. In lots of regulated domains, there is this notion of post-market surveillance, which is where the developer bears the responsibility of how the technology developed by them is going to be used. As William Shakespeare wrote in – As you Like it.   ” All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and entrances. ”   Sadly with AI, Machine Learning Algorithms no one knows or for that matter will ever know when they enter or exit. Probably like AI learning is actually an ongoing process that takes place throughout all of life. It’s the process of moving information from out there — to here. Unfortunately with the brain, has its own set of rules by which it learns best, unlike AI, the information doesn’t always stick. Together, we have a lot to learn. Humanity is in contact with humanity.   All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the cloud bin.        

                                              social media oligarchy where the richest participants are allowed to spread dangerous                  .                

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THE BEADY ASKS. JUST HOW CLEVER DO YOU THINK THE HUMAN RACE IS?

12 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Civilization., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Pandemic, Post-Covid-19, Reality., Renewable Energy., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Truth, Unanswered Questions., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism vs. the Climate., Environment, Global warming, Our collective stupidity., Our Common Values., Our future., Our world problems, Technology, The essence of our humanity., The Future of Mankind, Visions of the future.

 

 

(Twenty to Thirty-minute read)

Do not read this if you are depressed or are easily depressed.

If you do read it try not to click the moron like button, but comment.  

We, humans, believe that we are the most intelligent beings on the planet. 

We believed that are superior to the animals due to our exclusive ability to reason.

In simple terms, this comes about when we select only the ‘survivors’ – those that outperformed the rest, whether people, machines, or companies – and come to conclusions based on their attributes, without looking more broadly at the whole dataset, including those with similar characteristics that failed to perform as well.

Our collective ingenuity has got us into the mess of Climate Change and now a Pandemic that is not just killing us but shining a light on our collective stupidity.

The Earth’s carrying capacity could absorb our endless acts of stupidity. 

So to answer this question one could go back over the history of humanity and pick out numerous examples since man emerged from his cave.

From the Nuclear bomb to stepping on the moon. From Michelangelo to Albert Enstine. From the Stone age to the Tec age we have put greed and power before looking after what we had in the first place – Earth. 

                                       ————————

As there is no escaping our interconnected world in this post I want to address the origins of Planetary realism when it comes to that interconnection.

Why?

Because we are now engaged in two possible futures for the world, the worst or the best. 

Are we going to continue shooting ourselves in the foot?

or  

Are we going to recognize that Human DNA is too similar to split us into subspecies or races of stupidity?  

Can we act like one? 

I firmly believe we know enough to solve our problems, I just doubt we have the collective will to work together to get the job done. We should be much better than our collective selves.

We have to start accepting our common vulnerability and therefore our common interest instead of just National Interests which is paramount to decisions that have to be on a global scale.    

When the stakes are high, we want those making decisions – whether they be machines or human, to be correct, trustworthy, and responsible.

However, now we are handing these decisions more and more to machine learning algorithms and neural nets. 

We implicitly grant artificial intelligence a degree of agency that not only overstates its true abilities but robs us of our own autonomy... It is always humans who choose whether or not to abdicate this authority, to empower some piece of technology to intervene on our behalf. It would be a mistake to presume that this transfer of authority involves a simultaneous absolution of responsibility. It does not.

Perhaps technology can be correct. But can it be trustworthy and responsible?

While it’s hard to judge even if another person is trustworthy or responsible, it may be even harder to judge something that thinks in such radically different ways as humans.

We once viewed ourselves as the only creature with emotions, morality, culture, which is not true, they can be found in the animal kingdom. 

Confucius:

“Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.”

This is to say that intelligence is the ability to recognize our weaknesses and one of our greatest weaknesses is the impenetrable barrier now being created right in front of our eyes between Artificial Intelligence and Capitalist Greed. 

If we measure the IQ of AI it would be against its capabilities of reasoning and its problem-solving ability and nothing else.

Rational thinking and intelligence don’t tend to go hand in hand. 

This measurement doesn’t measure curiosity or creativity.

Unlike the robotic world, people desperately believe they’re smart because they desperately want to see themselves as smart and sometimes because they really can’t tell.

Most of us measure our IQ as being five points higher than it actually is.

Thinking AI might work in the same way as a human brain is not only misleading but dangerous.

Up to now AI only takes orders and does not think by itself so there is a massive disconnect from biological networks. They, that is AI lacks some crucial components essential to navigating the real world…. they do recreate something like human intelligence that has the ability to analyze all matters from multiple angles while not or never will be prepared to take on responsible decision making.  

In short, Dunning and Kruger discovered that the less intelligent you are, the more confident you’re likely to be that you know what you’re doing and the more likely you are to be wrong. Being unsure, in this context, is often a mark of intelligence.

Without being curious, an intelligent person won’t ever use their intelligence to learn and form new ideas.

At the same time, a person without curiosity it seems, be less likely to question themselves or the world around them in the first place. As a result, it seems they would also be unlikely to ever use what intelligence they had to learn new things and question their own misperceptions.

But AI is learning to manipulate human behavior, creating more problems for the world. 

Of course, there is just one thing that nags away at the average man or woman in the street in amongst all this academic and government research and analysis, how safe is AI going to be for me – can I trust big business and government to behave ethically? 

It is already exploiting vulnerabilities in ways people make choices. Click like and the AI steer you towards particular actions by filtering your choices. 

WE now have  “behavioral modification empires.”

The purpose of organizations such as Google and Facebook ceased to be building connections, and instead became about adapting your habits and thought patterns in the name of profit.

With so much misguided thought and active disinformation online, it has become difficult for people with insight worth sharing to do so. Behind the anonymity of the web, anyone can claim to be an expert. When everybody is an expert, nobody is.

In other words, the AI learns how people make choices.

Broad, anonymous social networks breed collective stupidity.

This has enormous ramifications for the future as AI could be used to steer people away from stupid choices or to make them.  

AI can outwit us on the virtual battlefield so let’s not put them in charge of the real thing.

This is already happing with drones that identify, track and kill people without any human intervention. They have no moral capability to decide who lives or who dies, no empathy no compassion. 

However, if a machine can beat us at a game does it make them more intelligent than us?  

Despite the many warning raised not only will we see robots fighting wars they will be planning them too. 

David Dunning and Justin Kruger, “The miscalibration of the incompetent stem from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others.”

This goes directly into how people view themselves and their abilities. For instance, most people think they’re above average when that literally cannot be true.

In any leadership role, you’ve got to establish trust.

It’s trusting that the person is going to do things and trusting that they’re telling the truth and being upfront and honest.

But how you go about doing that virtually is a little different – it’s a different skill set.

We have seen that Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter transform Donald Trump into one of the worst presidents of the USA and a proud country England into a whaling nation of Nigel Farage has beings.

Because of our collective stupidity, social media transformed both into remote winners with lies.

Therefore it is reasonable to say that with the current Coivd-19 Pandemic that hopefully, people are now more likely to be seen based on what they actually do, not based on who they are.

Why?

Because they simply don’t translate into anointing leaders by virtual leadership.

Neither of them got better at the skills, such as reasoning from given data. Indeed smart people are more prone to silly mistakes because of blind spots in how they use logic.

                                       ———————–

Considering the benefits accruing from AI.

Let’s start with how much data we produce globally.  

It’s about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data produced every day in the world. 

Next, if you Googled “how much energy do Google’s servers use?”  

Unsurprisingly, it’s a lot. An estimate in 2017 claimed that the amount of power required to run Google’s servers is 2.26 million megawatts per year – enough to keep 200,000 homes going for the same time. 

Facebook, in contrast, uses a wee bit more than Google, at about 3.43 million megawatts per year. Between them and Google they could power over 20% of the houses in Scotland.

When we come to the internet as a whole, it uses a bit more than 10% of the world’s energy consumption. 

All electricity generation systems have a ‘carbon footprint’, that is, at some points during their construction and operation carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted.  Then again all electricity generation technologies emit CO2 at some point during their life cycle. None of these technologies is entirely ‘carbon-free’.

While the energy involved in all bitcoin transactions in one year is 77.78 terawatt-hours – equivalent to the entire electrical consumption of Chile.

It’s no wonder that even without co2 emissions have climate change. 

We are going to have to find a way to generate more electricity to power the economies and societies of the future, but in a manner that doesn’t wreck the planet.

There is a saying that “Mad dogs and English men go out in the noonday sun.” 

Did you know the sun produces the equivalent of 38,460 SEPTILLION watts – that’s 3.846 x 1026 watts) PER SECOND.  That’s almost enough to power a Metallica gig.

So you would think that it is a no-brainer that we have solar panels to enable everyone to use this source of energy by giving nonrepayable grants to every home to install them.  To stop Co2 emissions. We have to fit our species into the energy flow of its biosphere.

That is the meaning of life in case you are so stupid still looking for a meaning. 

Instead, we have Paris Climate change conferences promises and the forthcoming Glasgow Zome dribble turning CO2 into a product – for profit.  

Introducing more change to Be-IT

One thing is certain:

The original purpose of the internet has been lost. It set the stage for a technological revolution that could harness human intelligence and advance our shared knowledge.

Its click-baiting algorithms and lack of regulation have brought with them chaos.

As social media came to dominate the landscape, it made using the internet for the purpose of collective intelligence increasingly difficult.

The rise of social media was supposed to bring us closer together but instead, I argue, it has done the opposite.

A system based on generating clicks and interactions has created an environment for the outlandish and bizarre to flourish, with expertise falling by the wayside. With so much content being generated, how can experts possibly stand out from the crowd?

Machines and AI are great, but we have to retain some capacity to think for ourselves. 

No matter how algorithms are retrained they will continue to impact the millions who use them.

The results will be that AI over time, will not categorize people into races on traits it thinks are most important – but into stupid or clever. 

For obvious reasons, this year is different.

The pandemic has, of course, transformed how most workplace in-person teams are now all or partially digital operations in the wake of the pandemic, removing Joe Soap from any say about the Future.

At the moment we have a warlike philosophy – if we continue to develop AI it might not overtake our individual stupidity but our collective stupidity, putting our very existence in danger.

Tech should never be any more than a tool that helps us to bring out the best in humanity. Many of the issues we throw billions at and attempt to solve with technology could be easily achieved if we were able to better utilize our collective intelligence.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE LOOKS: FORWARD TO THE WORLD CLIMATE CHANGE GATERING IN SCOTLAND IN NOVEMBER 2021

31 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Covid-19 Vaccines., Disaster Capitalism., How to do it., Humanity., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Capitalism vs. the Climate., Climate change, Climate change and Intelligence, Climate Change Solution's., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Delegates Paris Climate change Summit Glasgow 2020, global climate change, Reality of Climate Change, The cost of Climate Change.

 

 

(Five-minute read) 



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. 

chimney

 

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.

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE.?

27 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., The Reset. Fact or conspiracy., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

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The essence of our humanity., The Future of Mankind, The Reset. Fact or conspiracy., THE SAD WORLD., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  

 

 

( Half an Hour read.) 

If I was writing a post about what is right about the world it would be a few minutes read. best things in world

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.

                                      ——————————

 

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.

                                       ——————

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT IS BORROWING? WHAT IS MONEY?

22 Friday Jan 2021

Posted by bobdillon33@gmail.com in 2021. The year for change., COVID-19, Human values., Inequality., POST COVID-19., WHAT IS BORROWING?, WHAT IS MONEY?, What Needs to change in the World

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Coronavirus (COVID-19), COVID-19, Governments borrowing, Money and power., Money of the future, VALUE FOR MONEY, When Money Talks, World Economic Depression.

 

(Fifteen-minute read)

 

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.

 

 

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