Category Archives: Communication.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT FOR HUMANS TO ACCEPT THE TRUTH. IF WE DON’T THE TRUTH WILL BE CONSTRUCT BY ALGORITHMS AND DATA.

21 Saturday Jan 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Civilization., Communication., Dehumanization.

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( FIFTEEN MINUTE READ)

Human brains are the product of blind and unguided evolution, therefore one day hit a hard limit – and may already have done so.

So a population of human brains is much smarter than any individual brain in isolation.

But does this argument really hold up?

Can our puny brains really answer all conceivable questions and understand all problems?

What made our species unique, is that we were capable of culture, in particular cumulative cultural knowledge. With the arrival of Artificial Intelligence this applies as we now have Apps that select what we hear, see and believe to be true.

Considering that human brains did not evolve to discover their own origins either, and yet somehow we managed to do just that. Perhaps the pessimists are missing something.

It is right that our brains are simply not equipped to solve certain problems, there is no point in even trying, as they will continue to baffle and bewilder us. Assuming we could even agree on a definition of “truth,” the list of reasons we can’t or don’t wish to know the truth would be quite long and well beyond the scope of this blog post.

We all know that we are destroying the planet we all live on. One of the reasons that we have difficulties with perceiving this truth, is with seeing reality, has to do with the purpose of truth.

The purpose of truth is rooted in the purpose of life itself. Truth isn’t desirous for its own sake, it serves a higher master than AI.

Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life and death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness.

Our ancestors needed to be able to discriminate friend from foe, healthy from unhealthy, and safe from dangerous (e.g., “It is good to eat this and bad to eat that.”).

Within an evolutionary framework, ignorance of what is true or real could be dangerous or deadly.

In order to survive, it was critical for our ancestors to learn to make predictions based on available information. It motivates them to move from a state of not knowing to knowing.

Thus, our ancestors didn’t need to see the world for what it really was. They just needed to know enough to help them survive. For example, the world looks flat. It looks like the sun rises in the sky and is a relatively small object. Our eyes (or our brains) deceive us though. The Earth, as well as other planets, are roughly spherical in shape. A million Earths could fit inside the Sun, and it is 93,000,000 miles away from us.

If our ancestors had no need to understand the wider cosmos in order to spread their genes, why would natural selection have given us the brainpower to do so?

At some point, human inquiry will suddenly slam into a metaphorical brick wall, after which we will be forever condemned to stare in blank incomprehension.

We will never find the true scientific theory of some aspect of reality, or alternatively, that we may well find this theory but will never truly comprehend it?

No one has a clue what this means.

To day, why is it that some cannot accept the Truth?

Truth is something we have to face now or after some time..

I think its mostly because of the fear of having to accept it, face it and deal with it, even though it may contradict what one might already believe.

A person’s belief system is built on a foundation. If the facts are outside of the foundation and cannot be supported by it, the person may not believe it, or remain very sceptical about it.

Lets take a few examples.

The past:

The Holocaust:87b84f9d 6d7f 48fe 8c90 530d980936bc

While no master list of those who perished in the Holocaust exists anywhere in the world. The shelves of the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem contain four million pages of testimony in which survivors and families have contributed information, but for those who were never known, there can be no record.

Towards the end of the war thousands of Hungarians Jews could have being saved if the the railways were bomb.

They were not because the reports of what was happing were not believed.

The Future.

An Asteroid or Meteorite heading towards earth.  Most of us would have no comprehension of such an event and would probably not believe it to be true.

The present:

This talk about man-made climate change.

People have been predicting catastrophic events for the last hundred years or so. None of them have happened, so people have a hard time believing new predictions.

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Today, fewer and fewer people understand what is going on at the cutting edge of theoretical physics – even physicists.

The unification of quantum mechanics and relativity theory will undoubtedly be exceptionally daunting, or else scientists would have nailed it long ago already.

The same is true for our understanding of how the human brain gives rise to consciousness, meaning and intentionality.

But is there any good reason to suppose that these problems will forever remain out of reach? Or that our sense of bafflement when thinking of them will never diminish?

Who knows what other mind-extending devices we will hit upon to overcome our biological limitations?  Biology is not destiny.

As soon as you frame a question that you claim we will never be able to answer, you set in motion the very process that might well prove you wrong: you raise a topic of investigation.

With all the data that is at our disposal theses days, Truth is analysed by Algorithms and self learning software programs.

The data-driven revolution is prefaced upon the idea that data and algorithms can lead us away from biased human judgement towards pristine mathematical perfection that captures the world as it is rather than the world biased humans would like.

Truths that do not always align with our values. “Truth” told by data with the preordained outcome they desire.

Getty Images

Algorithms And Data Construct ‘Truth,’ Not Discover It.

There is no such thing as perfect data or perfect algorithms.

All datasets and the tools used to examine them represent trade-offs. Each dataset represents a constructed reality of the phenomena it is intended to measure. In turn, the algorithms used to analyse it construct yet more realities.

In short, a data scientist can arrive at any desired conclusion simply by selecting the dataset, algorithm, filters and settings to match.(filistimlyanin/iStock.com)

It is more imperative than ever, that society recognizes that data does not equate to truth.

The same dataset fed into the same algorithm can yield polar opposite results depending on the data filters and algorithmic settings chosen.

But the important thing to note about these unknown unknowns is that nothing can be said about them.

The basic premise of the data-driven revolution in bringing quantitative certainty to decision-making is a false narrative.

To presume from the outset that some unknown unknowns will always remain unknown, is not modesty – it’s arrogance.

There’s always a human strategy behind using algorithms.

The exact details of how they works are often incomprehensible. Is this what we really want?

I think we need more transparency about how algorithms work, and how owns and operated them.

The problem with this is that demanding full transparency will have an adverse effect on the self-learning capacity of the algorithm. This is something that needs to be weighed up very carefully indeed.

There are certainly causes for concern but the need for regulations as profit seeking algorithms are plundering what is left of our values.  

If not regulated, I think that we’ll also see lots more legal constructions determining what we can and cannot do with algorithms.

———————————-

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.

They can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is naught but algorithms.

The material people see on social media is brought to them by algorithms.

In fact, everything people see and do on the web is a product of algorithms. Every time someone sorts a column in a spreadsheet, algorithms are at play, and most financial transactions today are accomplished by algorithms. Algorithms help gadgets respond to voice commands, recognize faces, sort photos and build and drive cars. Hacking, cyberattacks and cryptographic code-breaking exploit algorithms.

They are mostly invisible aids, augmenting human lives in increasingly incredible ways. However, sometimes the application of algorithms created with good intentions leads to unintended consequences.

We have already turned our world over to machine learning and algorithms.

Algorithms will continue to spread everywhere becoming  the new arbiters of human decision-making.

The question now is, how to better understand and manage what we have done?

The main negative changes come down to a simple but now quite difficult question:

How are we thinking and what does it mean to think through algorithms to mediate our world?

How can we see, and fully understand the implications of, the algorithms programmed into everyday actions and decisions?

The rub is this: Whose intelligence is it, anyway?

By expanding collection and analysis of data and the resulting application of this information, a layer of intelligence or thinking manipulation is added to processes and objects that previously did not have that layer.

So prediction possibilities follow us around like a pet.

The result: As information tools and predictive dynamics are more widely adopted, our lives will be increasingly affected by their inherent conclusions and the narratives they spawn.

Our algorithms are now redefining what we think, how we think and what we know. We need to ask them to think about their thinking – to look out for pitfalls and inherent biases before those are baked in and harder to remove.

Advances in algorithms are allowing technology corporations and governments to gather, store, sort and analyse massive data sets.

This is creating a flawed, logic-driven society and that as the process evolves – that is, as algorithms begin to write the algorithms – humans may get left out of the loop, letting “the robots decide.”

Dehumanization has now spread to our, our economic systems, our  health care and social services.

We simply can’t capture every data element that represents the vastness of a person and that person’s needs, wants, hopes, desires.

Who is collecting what data points?

Do the human beings the data points reflect even know or did they just agree to the terms of service because they had no real choice?

Who is making money from the data?

How is anyone to know how his/her data is being massaged and for what purposes to justify what ends?

There is no transparency, and oversight is a farce. It’s all hidden from view.

I will always remain convinced the data will be used to enrich and/or protect others and not the individual. It’s the basic nature of the economic system in which we live.

It will take us some time to develop the wisdom and the ethics to understand and direct this power. In the meantime, we honestly don’t know how well or safely it is being applied.

The first and most important step is to develop better social awareness of who, how, and where it is being applied.”

If we use machine learning models rigorously, they will make things better; if we use them to paper over injustice with the veneer of machine empiricism, it will be worse.

The danger in increased reliance on algorithms is that is that the decision-making process becomes oracular: opaque yet unarguable.

If we are to protect the TRUTH. Giving more control to the user seems highly advisable.

When you remove the humanity from a system where people are included, they become victims.

Advances in quantum computing and the rapid evolution of AI and AI agents embedded in systems and devices in the Internet of Things will lead to hyper-stalking, influencing and shaping of voters, and hyper-personalized ads, and will create new ways to misrepresent reality and perpetuate falsehoods to the point of no return.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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THE BEADY EYE SAYS. WE ARE NOW ENETERING A PERIOD WITHOUT THE ABILITY TO TRULEY EXPERENCE WHAT WE ALREADY HAVE..

28 Saturday May 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., Desensitization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Freedom of Speech, Future Education., Google Knowledge., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Imagination., INTELLIGENCE., Life., MISINFORMATION., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Purpose of life., Real life experience's, Robot citizenship., Social Media, Social Media Regulation., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Unanswered Questions., Universal values., VIRTUAL REALITY., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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Ten minutes read.

AS YOU KNOW IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING LIFE HAS TO OFFER. EVEN IF IT WAS POSSIBLE THERE ARE MANY EXPERIENCES WE WOULD WISH TO AVOID AT ALL COSTS.

SUCH AS THE LATEST MASS KILLINGS IN TEXAS, THE CURRENT WARS, POVERTY, BEING BURIED ALIVE, RAPED, JAILED FOR LIFE, CANCER, AND GOING BLIND NOT TO MENTION A SELECTION OF DISEASES. 

The list is endless, but there is another aspect of the matter.

Every genuine experience has an active side that changes to some degree the objective conditions under which experiences are had and I believe that experiences are the basis upon which society progresses.

Experience does not go on simply inside a person they influence the formation of attitudes of desire and purpose, but they do not define a society as either developed or civilized.

However, it is experience alone that guides decisive action through hands-on. They teach you how to apply learnings to produce favorable outcomes regardless of any concepts you might have learned.

In a world that values differentiation more than anything else, experience lets you craft your own story while the rest of the people stick to an old and obsolete script.

Experience gives you access to a huge network of people who have been there and done that but the most valuable contribution of experience comes from the self-awareness it gives you.

Experience vs education is a constant battle.

A mixture of experience and education is the best. But the stats beg to differ.

                             ************************

Across the globe, mobile devices dominate in terms of total minutes spent online. As a result influence, Social media. It is now being used in ways that shape politics, business, world culture, education, careers, innovation, and more to rewire human society. 

Because social networks feed off interactions among people, they become more powerful as they grow. Enabled people of all ages to just google things, not actually try to remember or memorize information.

The phones have become our masters. It was intended to make our lives easier in terms of communication, now it has become an extension of our hands.

Unregulated Social media is promoting social ills.

LIVING IN SYSTEMS THAT ARE PREVENTING US FROM BECOMING WHO WE TRULY ARE. WE ARE LOSING OUR INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE CULTURE LIVING IN A WORLD WHERE EXPERIENCING REAL LIFE IS BECOMING VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE. Where Most Needed

 As a result, the real problems of the world are being ignored. 

Increased visibility of issues has shifted the balance of power from the hands of a few to the masses but this awareness is not translating into real change because people are given options that absolve them from the responsibility to act. Injustice is one of the biggest issues in today’s society, there are many consequences.

Technology is anything that makes life simpler but the cellphone as a branch of technology is destroying us.

We need to think much deeper and critically to be certain that we have the authority over our own lives. When you’re not in a room with someone, it can be hard to express your personality and how you could fit into a new environment.

Let’s start with a few quotes.  

“Without sensibility, no object would be given to us, and without understanding, none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind”.

“Experience arises together with theoretical assumptions, not before them, and an experience without theory is just as incomprehensible as is (allegedly) a theory without experience.”
Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method pg 151. Against Method (1975)

“Experience by itself teaches nothing…Without theory, experience has no meaning. Without theory, one has no questions to ask. Hence without theory, there is no learning.”
W. Edwards Deming, The New Economics for Industry, Government, Education (1993)

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes. Oscar Wild

                              ******************************

There is so much more to life than what you experience right now.

Here are a few reasons why you should value experience over education. 

Experiencing’ attaches itself to nothing while at the same time being everything.

Experiencing’ does not get concerned about not remembering. ‘Experiencing’ has no need to remember.

Experiencing’ holds nothing yet is aware deeply of everything.

When we realize there is nothing to capture we relax in the awareness of just ‘experiencing’. 

Experiencing ‘experiencing’ is the Fullness. When ‘It’ Is all here where else could we go?!

Answering interview questions with no experience can be a daunting prospect.

Everyone has to start somewhere in a world where doing is highly valued. It’s one of the most well-known conundrums of the career world. No experience, no job. No job, no experience.

EVIDENCE THAT OUR CULTURE IS IN DECLINE.

This becomes obvious to those who are willing to actually travel the world learning about the cultures of others.  They gain a more reliable picture of life as it is lived.

The most important thing that one can do to rise above the insanity of this world, is to be willing to get educated by those who have zero financial interest in their taking their stand for what they believe.

Just because you don’t have ‘direct’ experience, it doesn’t mean you don’t have anything to offer.

It’s been said that information is power. Without a means of distributing information, people cannot harness its power. Ultimately, sharing is about getting people to see and respond to content. 

Birds of a feather tend to hang out in the same ponds. And the best way to prove you’re a duck is to spend as much time as possible in the right pond.

History does not lie – it is just that the masses do not know their history.

There is a line by Verlaine that I will not remember again.
There is a street nearby that is off-limits to my feet.
There is a mirror that has seen me for the last time.
There is a door I have closed until the end of the world.
Among the books in my library (I’m looking at them now)
Are some I will never open.
This summer I will be fifty years old.
Death is using me up, relentlessly.
—from Inscriptions (Montevideo, 1923) by Julio Platero Haedo

Where are?

Stormzy wore a flat jacket in (2019) at Glastonbury, and Abba appeared digitally yesterday.

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over. Larkin 

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

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHY ARE WE SO BLIND TO WHAT IS HAPPING IN THE WORLD.

16 Saturday Oct 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence.,  Attention economy, Big Data., Communication., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Evolution, HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Life., MISINFORMATION., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Purpose of life., Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , 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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( Seven-minute read) 

What if you woke up tomorrow and everything you had thought was true was a deception?

A deception formed by people that stood to profit from your ignorance. Not just on one small area but every facet of your existence.

Would you want to know? Or, would you be content with the life you had before you discovered the truth? Could you close your eyes and act as if nothing ever happened?

What if you could see the ways that you have been deceived and the way that those that came before you were made to believe a lie? How valuable would the truth become? Would it make you change your habits? your routines? the way you talk or think or speak? Would it impact you or would you brush it off and carry on with business as usual?

What if after waking up you decided to respond to that truth?

What if you started studying history and world events and, like a string of pearls, events were no longer random but contained a sequence? What if that sequence was repeating? What if while studying these events they began to seem familiar?

None so Blind2.jpg

 

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 with Covid. 

All are crises that are slowly tipping the balance, questioning our business-as-usual economic model of the past decades, and requiring us to rethink our next steps.

There is an entire media world around us, that we’re completely fine with THAT FEEDS US FOR THE MOST PART SHIT AS ENTERTAINMENT. 

There is an advertising industry that is turning climate change into products to sell.

Bio this Bio that. Shop to save the world.

Our lives are taken over by technology – smartphones, Ipads, Apps. This menace is seen in the increased addiction of internet users to social media and other internet products; and the exploitation of internet users by internet companies.

The internet and social media are like a two-faced coin; one side is good and the other is bad. These inventions are now abused and used against our existence and survival.

The internet and computers are daily changing our lives and improving efficiency, almost taking over our lives with some sectors where technology is taking over how we live and do business.

Emails and social media platforms have changed communication, both individually and business-wise.

Financial transactions and business deals are now completed in a matter of seconds.

The idea of constantly visiting a doctor for medical checks is almost becoming obsolete with the invention of the wearable.

Robots are increasing the efficiency of manufacturing processes.

                                         ——————-

The Zombie Apocalypse May Not Be How You Originally Envisioned, it’s time to give ourselves a reality check. 

We are shells of who we may have been because instead of looking around and experiencing the life we are dependent upon a lit-up screen.

We are lacking socialization; instead of talking to and spending time with other people, we are getting all our information from the Internet.

The Internet is an amazing resource, but there are some things it cannot teach or give you.

It cannot teach you the value of spending time with friends and family, or how to live life to the fullest by being present in the current moment. You never know just how many opportunities and experiences pass you by because you are looking down at your screen.

Each generation is becoming more and more dependent, and no longer sustain skills that were once deemed necessary. We have lost social skills, manners, and expect everything to be delivered to us as fast as the Internet does

We are all so distracted by our phones that we have not fully noticed the zombie apocalypse that is happening right in front of us.

Technology is a beautiful thing, but if we cannot learn how to use it responsibly and in moderation, our future may not be as bright as the screens we are holding.

                                                ———–

The important thing people need to realize.

The chances are, you’re probably reading this on your phone right now.

Maybe you saw it while you were scrolling through Facebook, or maybe you came across it while making random Google searches. The point is, you used some sort of technology to be able to access this article.

Nowadays, people use technology as a filler.

Try to remember what life was like before you were attached to technology by the hip.

I bet you spent your time doing totally different things than you currently are doing.

Maybe you used to read actual books, go outside and enjoy the weather, spend quality time with your family or communicate with people through handwritten letters rather than emails and text messages.

The reality is that our lives have completely changed.

But is it for the better, or worse?

The basis of democracy is the idea that people of sound judgment, wisdom, and morality should be chosen to lead the government, make decisions for the masses, and direct the force of the state/government. 

“The state is the great fiction by which everyone endeavors to live at the expense of everyone else.” Frederic Bastiat 

A divided people are easier to rule. 

Governments act in multiple ways to seduce us into their service.

For the masses, this is done through the illusion of welfare and public spending in which the state first robs us through taxation and then bribes us into supporting it by giving us a percentage of the stolen funds back in the forms of government welfare programs. 

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

 

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. OUR WORLD IS ON FIRE IN MORE WAYS THAN ONE.

08 Sunday Aug 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Communication., Cop26., CORONA VIRUS., Environment, Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Inequality., Natural World Disasters, OLYMPICS GAMES., Post-Covid-19, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, 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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(Five-minute read) 

While we watched a postponed Olympics game unfold in Japan with barely one in 10 Japanese wanting it to happen, a pandemic is exposing gaps with graphic honesty in a  world that has long been overdue for systemic reform of its economic, social, and technological structures.

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.

Beyond the obvious short-term impacts of climate change and Covid (such as loss of life, a profound hit to economic and social activity), both are casting a long shadow into the future. 

If we remain passive and ununited to the emerging risks, we may lose a historical opportunity to shape the new normal that we want, rather than the one we would be left with.

At the moment the economic risks dominate perceptions, with a prolonged global recession a top concern.

However, if either Covid-19 or Climate change eclipses sustainability on the public agenda where are we then.

What we will be left with are critical non-economic risks concerning the sustainability of life on earth and all that live on it.

On the environmental front, even with an expected 8% drop in global emissions for this year, the world would still miss the 1.5°C targets to avoid a planetary catastrophe.

If we are to truly recover from the pandemic and its impacts, then it will not be about putting things back together to how they were –we are in the midst of a historic event that will change many aspects of our world.

The long-term societal impacts of both, such as an exacerbation of inequality and changes in consumer behaviors, the nature of work, and the role of technology – both at work and at home – will change our way of life forever, for us as individuals, as a workforce, and as a society.

We were unprepared for Covid that was predictable. We are not preparing for Climate change that will create substantial societal consequences for the long term, now being felt by people worldwide. 

There is one thing for certain our attitudes towards traveling, commuting, and consumption will change employment prospects.

So what lessons can we distill, that can feed into your own future scenario, resilience, and business continuity planning?

Profit for profit’s sake will have to be regulated.

No longer can businesses plunder the earth for finite resources to produce worthless short-term material satisfaction. We know that we will have to build back better and address deep systemic vulnerabilities that have been allowed to develop over the last decades.

  • Left unchecked, there is a real risk that inequalities and social deprivation will increase

Therefore, the challenge to return to the ‘new normal’ is as much a psychological as an economic choice.

The timing and speed of the economic recovery, dependent as it is on solving the health crisis, is likely to exacerbate inequality, mental health problems, and lack of societal cohesion. It is also likely to widen the wealth gap between young and old and pose significant educational and employment challenges that risk a second lost generation.

A golden rule of politics is that the timing of a decision is almost as important as the decision itself.

“Timing is everything”, but it is also the element that is hardest to get right.

Of course, we need to focused on the climate, sustainability, and on societal risks, such as inequality, mental health, the lack of social cohesion and inclusion. If we do not do this, then the gaps in inequality – especially financial – are likely to remain and increase destroying all efforts of a green economy, a sustainable economy, or any other form of the economy whether it is socially driven or ever man for himself.   

We are already seeing record levels of unemployment due to lockdown measures, to control transmission and are re-learned hard lessons, particularly that social deprivation determines health outcomes.

So it is time for preparation, for a world of shocks which is likely urging to ramp up economic activity, regardless of impact, to recover at any cost.

Much depends on what governments, societies, and businesses will do next. This should be a long-term change in attitude in the historic public vs private debate.

I urge you to take the time to weigh the potential risks and benefits based on your situation before making a decision you could regret for the rest of your life.

We must draw on all our strengths to build back a better world.

 It’s time for all avenues of communication to be taking the lead.

The New Normal is knocking at the door and the door is already open.

Change is simple and it’s not easy.

Step 1: Do you want to change?

Step 2: Do you know how to change?

Step 3: Are you willing to give a change time?

Anyone who has ever changed has gone through the process. We need all three steps, and if we miss one, we get none.

The new normal in the end will look like we want it to look.

The life you thought was boring, is the life you’re hoping to get back to right now.”

Ultimately, public health is a political choice. A choice we are now confronted with, and one we will have to make over and over again as we transition to a more resilient, zero-carbon, just, and healthier future.

 Hopefully, hold on to that sense of shared humanity. 

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

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS IT TIME TO STOP ANONYMITY ON THE INTERNET.?

20 Wednesday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Artificial Intelligence., Communication., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom, Freedom of Speech, How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Modern Day Communication., Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Social Media, Social Media Regulation., Technology, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., 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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( Ten-minute read) 

Since the internet was in its infancy, the rights of users to use it to express their opinions were sacrosanct.

However, there is a price for “free” internet, and that we’ve given up more of ourselves than we ever intended to.

Concern already exists that Facebook and similar social media platforms act as echo chambers that validate opinions we already hold – fuelling precisely the type of extreme views that Facebook says it has a right to edit.

Might this new position simply result in more fake news?

The Internet has and is empowering masses of people by access to world-wide information sources, education, and communication but what is now considered permissible and acceptable online is shifting.

The question is with this newfound freedom, that is influencing every aspect of our lives for good or bad, should we be requiring people to register their identity when using the internet.?

If so how.

It would be true to say as we have become constantly connected, none of us are as anonymous as we think.

George Orwell presciently realized that if citizens don’t know what is true and what is false, they can’t make a judgment about what to object to in their lives.

Is it time to introduce an online digital passport to eradicate individual desires, such as credulity, abuse, gender-swapping, exploration, radicalizing, hacking, trolling, spreading false news, promoting popularism groups, bullying, racism, the list is endless? 

( Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says. 

“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; the right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media regardless of frontiers.”

The GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 give internet users the right to privacy and the right to withhold their personal details.

The Malicious Communication Act 1988 and the Communications Act 2003 make it possible to prosecute “trolling” – and many other forms of online harassment are also now covered by the legislation. )

Platforms on the internet avoided liability by claiming they were “mere conduits” of these views and not “publishers” of them.  The argument goes that this includes protection for freedom of expression by the right to remain anonymous online.

So which should remain enshrined: freedom of speech or freedom from abuse?

The world feels smaller and we’ve celebrated this but in any human population, there will be people with irreconcilably different understandings of the truth.

Repressing speech has costs, but so does allowing it.

The world, however, has changed, and many of us may be in the time warp of old values. Human beings are poor witnesses, easily misled by a personal bias, profoundly influenced by their social environment.

As products of their society, social media and journalists are no exceptions. 

The world is now a much more dangerous place, not because of Covid -19 which is plunging it into a Depression with social media exposing a system of governance corseted by greed – profit before the people. Then, on the other hand, social media is like cancer at the heart of societies spreading the news, not what the facts are, but what men wish to see.

The press once seemed to have a conscience, thanks to history’s painful social conflicts and questions of war and peace.

Social media is not concerned with any historical lessons it being a wildfire of the short-term reactions of unfounded populism without any in-depth investigative journalism.      

It is becoming impossible to distinguish between paid news and actual, unbiased news.

You could say that the world has more pressing problems.

However, our current and future problems, like the internet, are all interconnected.

Shifting trends and the advancement in communication technology require a re-examination of the underlying principle and its application in new contexts.

There are attempts to get some control.

Free-speech advocates typically claim that the value of unfettered expression outweighs any harm it might cause, offering assurances that any such harm will be minimal.

Because like several other precious freedoms, free speech must be placed outside the reach of political exigency.

Unfortunately, or fortunately, it is impossible to pass binding regulations or laws that don’t restrict the sanctity of free speech.

Free speech or the freedom of expression is the modern civilization’s most precious gift to human society but it can’t be reaffirmed by drowning out its opponents.

                                                         ————

The issuing of Digital Passports could not be left to the whim of Facebook or any other internet providers.

Also “Digital identity solutions leave us open to data exploitation with the valuable data from these solutions (being) used for other purposes, so governments could not be involved in their issuing other than making supporting laws with large fines. 

The most obvious hitch in this plan is that not everyone has a smartphone,

With the current Pandemic and vacations, there will be an attempt to introduce Covid-19 free digital health certification (Of course, this would only be applicable to people with smartphones.) and they could become a prerequisite for some activities.

But for now, we’re many steps removed from that kind of streamlined process even becoming possible. Widespread adoption of so-called immunity passports would require a level of coordination and organization uncharacteristic of any country’s response to COVID-19 so far.

So here is the challenge. 

Is it possible to create a Digital Passport that is unhackable, that can be applied for online, that would combine your present Passport information, that you could use to vote, to register an internet identity, and carry your medical history. 

People would only accept such a thing if it commands public trust.

As evidence with the recent election in the USA entrusting your democracy to a black-box proprietary system that is subject to hacking, glitches, and errors, but NOT subject to scrutiny, analysis, or independent verification, is the surest and quickest way to lose your democracy. 

However, creating an internet user register could be possible not only authenticating the user but making it more transparent and ensure that users have the right to remedy when wrong decisions are made.

As for platforms, they know what they need to do because civil society has told them for years.

Just in case they have not got the message they should ensure that the decisions they make about speech are in line with global human rights standards, rather than making the rules up as they go.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. YOU CAN’T MANAGE THE TRUTH. WE ARE OR WILL WE BE LOOKING A SOCIAL BOMB WITH THE CURRENT PANDEMIC.

07 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Civilization., Communication., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Disasters., Disconnection., Environment, Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Humanity., Inequality, International solidarity., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Reality., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, VALUES, WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Organisations., World Politics

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(Four-minute read)

We already have the power to destroy ourselves without the wisdom that we don’t, but this Coronavirus pandemic is another kettle of fish altogether, there is no need to press a button. 

Most species live for millions of year so we are at 200,000 are teenagers. 

If we play our cards right we could be around for hundreds of thousands of years to come. 

Now that we realized the truth, of the fragility of our present times we need to revamp our World Institutions to get the risk of living down and keep it down forever. 

Perhaps after this Pandemic, we as a species need to write a constitution for humanity to set us on the right course to sustainability. 

Why? 

Because no one individual, no president or politician has been able to solve in the last century even if they wanted to, the problems that Earth our home must tackle as a species. 

———————————————————————————————-

Worldwide we are now looking at more than 838,000 cases of COVID-19 leaving the majority of citizens jobless, broke, and without options.

You’d think people would be used to it by now. Every couple of years the world is thrust into hysteria by the latest virus that is threatening to wipe out a significant portion of the population.

How many shocks can an international economy sustain?

How many shocks are likely on their way?

Forests are burning. Glaciers are melting. Ecological systems are collapsing. Resources are running out.

Coronavirus has and is changing everything and not everything.Post image

We just haven’t noticed it yet.

But those changes will become more apparent by the day.

Suddenly, we may have to think about things we’ve never needed to consider before.

Like a social bomb that can explode at any moment.

In our global society, this outbreak moved from a remote village to a major city on the other side of the world in under 36 hours.

Despite generous government-mandated disaster pay, unemployment, and stimulus checks, it’s only a matter of time before many issues combine to become the flashpoint that leads to an explosion of civil unrest.

The consequences will be very different in countries where political institutions are weaker and where the illness or death of a leader has been known to generate the kind of power vacuum that might inspire rival leaders, opposition parties, or the military to launch a power grab. 

HOWEVER, ultimately its impact will not be counted in human fatalities.

Nor in the cost of treating the sick.

It will be in our minds. It’s in our economic system. In our societies that are all linked to the overwhelming extent of globalisation, urbanisation and ecosystem collapse.

Our interconnected world – and its ultra-efficient flow of trade, investment, knowledge and people – has been revealed to have feet of clay.

Globalisation will have to be rethought because most of the population is the urbanised disassociated from even basic agriculture, NOT TO MENTION THE WORLDS ECOSYSTEMS. 

We have skewed supply chains so far to the extremes that when they are perturbed, people get into a lot of strife and our way of life isn’t built to cope with it.

What COVID19 is emphasising is that our system is set up ideally to transmit such a disease and is extremely susceptible to even small interruptions.

It jumped into a world humans have moulded to their own purposes. But that world is also nirvana to a virus.

We’ve actually put ourselves in an ideal position from the perspective of a virus, which is why we see estimates of anywhere between 30 and 60 per cent of the population likely to get it.

It has burst on an unready world.

COVID-19 will eventually pass and become more controllable with vaccines and developed natural immunity, but not yet and not before it could wreak profound change on those who currently hold political, economic and military power around the globe.

It has set in motion a chain of events that will bring consequences, that none of us  IMAGINE NOW.

Everybody is suddenly very aware of just how reliant we are on China for everything from medicines and machinery to electronic components and rare Earths.

There is a big judgement call to make such are the levels of interdependency built by reliance on global just-in-time supply chains that the developed economies will largely sink or swim together.

But it’s not just China. It’s the whole globally specialised network of supply.

Diversification is now a necessity, not just strategic aspiration.

Suddenly the logic of many belts and many roads is plain.

It is not possible to manage the truth.

When benefits run out on a national scale, fear, lack of food, employment, the number of people dying with the potential for much more yet to come there is risks of a domino effect leading to Civil unrest.

Fear becomes the default emotion. The very emotion that motivates people to take to the streets to engage in civil unrest and protest.

Exceptional conditions of imbalance between needs and available resources.

Historically, larger outbreaks of civil unrest tend to occur in largely populated areas.

But most people don’t go further and ask the question; “What exactly are people afraid of?” Is it death? Of course, that is mankind’s greatest anxiety, especially for those who have children. 

South Korean soldiers, in protective gear, disinfect the Eunpyeong district against the coronavirus in Seoul, South Korea. Picture: Woohae Cho/Getty Images

Civil unrest affects more than just the civilians involved and the law enforcement that are called on to subdue it. It isn’t limited to riots. Violence and destruction aren’t necessary to classify civil unrest. It can start for many reasons. Of course, any prediction is hard to make given that infections haven’t yet peaked.

The sooner you accept the need to go into lockdown, the better.

The sacrifice isn’t fun, and borders on tragic. Hopefully, people will see fit to prepare for such setbacks in the future as history has shown that this will not be the last impending “catastrophe” to derail us from our lives. 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BEADY SAY’S: TO ANCHOR OUR UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE CORONA VIRUS THE FREEDOM OF THE PRESS IS AND WILL BE VITAL.

27 Friday Mar 2020

Posted by in 2020: The year we need to change., Communication., CORONA VIRUS., COVID-19, Democracy, DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disconnection., Fake News., Freedom of the Press., Honesty., Human values., International solidarity., Life., Lock Down., Modern Day Communication., Modern day life., Our Common Values., Political Trust, Post - truth politics., Reality., Robot citizenship., Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Truthfulness., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, What Needs to change in the World, World Leaders, World Politics

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(Four-minute read) 


At the moment rightly so we are all preoccupied with the consequences of our own individual lives and all indicator point to world disaster on a scale not seen by most of us. 

However, if and when we return to a semblance of normal the freedom of the press will be in jeopardy when the blame game starts, which is inevitable. 

Why will it be?

Because the present pandemic marks the emergence of a new model of watchdog function, one that is neither purely networked nor purely traditional but is rather a mutualistic interaction between the two.

What globalization, technological integration and the general flattening of the world have done is to super empower individuals to such a degree that they can actually challenge any hierarchy—from a global bank to a nation-state—as individuals.

The fear that the decentralized network, with its capacity to empower individuals to challenge their governments or global banks, is not a democracy, but could lead to anarchy.

But the alternative is to give the government a veto over what its citizens are allowed to know.

There should be relentless exposure of politician or businessman, every evil practice, whether in politics, business, or social life if we are to change the world for a better future.

False news forces us to ask how comfortable we are with the actual shape of democratization created by the Internet. It circumvents the social and organizational
frameworks of traditional media, which played a large role in framing the
balance between freedom and responsibility of the press.

Many of the problems can be laid at the feet of the Internet—fragmentation of the audience and polarization of viewpoints.

We cannot afford as a polity to create classes of privileged speakers and
press agencies, and underclasses of networked information producers whose products we take into the public sphere when convenient, but whom we treat as susceptible to suppression when their publications become less palatable.

Doing so would severely undermine the quality of our public discourse.

The risk is that the government will support its preferred media models and that the
incumbent mass media players will, in turn, vilify and denigrate the newer
models in ways that make them more vulnerable to attack and shore up the
the privileged position of those incumbents in their role as a more reliable ally watchdog.

Clarifying that the freedom of the press extends to “every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion” and that liberty of the press is the right of the lonely pamphleteer and individual bloggers. 

Social distancing must not be allowed to turn into ruling distancing.

 Long live WikiLeaks. 

An uncomfortable fact is that a free press in a democracy can be messy at the best of times with governments around the world underestimated the coronavirus the political exploitation of the outbreak is now a reality. 

Capturing the treatment of television is less comprehensive as it is a visual medium.

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

14 Friday Feb 2020

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

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(Thirty-minute read)

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It seems that we accept truthiness instead of requiring truth.

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

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

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

So what is happening?

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

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

“Social media.”

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

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

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

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

A network of pluralistic ignorance enforced by denunciation mobs.

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

People gravitating to people who are like them.

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

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

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

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

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

But humans are fundamentally irrational – No.

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

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

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

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

This is the point where it gets somewhat complicated.

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

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

So our reasoning is contaminated by false news.

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

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

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

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

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

The powers of inference for example.

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

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

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

Why is the truth important?

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

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

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

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

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

Unwelcome news is automatically rebranded fake news.

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

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

“Life before Google.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

The truth of history constitutes its whole value.

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

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

 

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

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

08 Saturday Feb 2020

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

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(Eighteen-minute read)

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

“But no one is clear what it is.”

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

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

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

Or is it a lens for looking at our politics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

or

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The “many, not the few.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Capitalist greed has and is poisoning political life.

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

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

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

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

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S. IS THE CURRENCY AND THE ART OF THE HANDSHAKE GOING EXTINCT.

28 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by in Communication., Disconnection., Emotions., Enegery, Face Recognition., Facebook, Human values., Humanity., Life., Our Common Values., Reality., Social Media, The art of a handshake., The power of touch.

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(Ten-minute read)

Remember when people use to initially judge you by your handshake. It formulated a picture of a person we were meeting for the first time.

In the span of a few seconds, it lay the foundation for how others perceive and feel about us — and we about them.

“It was wet,” “It was creepy,” ” It was firm,” It was crushing,” “It a Mormon handshake,” “It a Mason probing handshake”, enthusiastic, vigorous, prolonged, high-fives to fist-bumping.

A handshake was a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other like hands making impressions that have a very long shelf-life based on a brief but important meeting.

Your handshake is the business card you leave behind.

Believed by some to have originated as a gesture of peace by demonstrating that the hand holds no weapon.

It is a reassuring tactile touch that we as social animals share is essential for social interaction, social harmony, health, survival, and security, as well as for communicating our true feelings.

It serves as a means of transferring social chemical signals between the shakers.

What is even more startling is how long we remember those bad handshakes — sometimes we remember for decades.

Today we pay for items with the swipe of our phone or by inserting a small plastic card into a reader. The old handshake just doesn’t have its place anymore.

We can also spend thousands of hours clicking a mouse over a small image on a computer screen. Nothing is real, nothing is said – only ones and zeros racing around the globe in small packets of data.

The world of technology continues to tractor us into a world absent of looking at one another in the eyes the Art of the handshake is dead.

With, Social media, Face recognition, Instagram, Facebook, Smartphones, Emails etc our most valuable currency of the handshake is evaporating and being replaced by digital signatures or passwords, that are undermining our trust in each other.

It’s no wonder that so many people get something so simple as a handshake wrong. 

Take the Politician’s Handshake:Corporate-Image-Two-handed-handshake5

Two hands to cover or cup the other person’s hands twisting the other person’s hand so that yours is superior or playing hand jujitsu to let the other person know you are in charge is just rubbish.

In the real world-shaking a person’s hand allows you to establish your friendliness and accessibility. 

For example meeting your future in-laws for the first time, your first job interview.

It might be true that in the future daily and weekly media will be more and more electronic, but physical media will always exist.

Stand in front of the webcam and send a digital emoji and you could be shaking hands with the devil. 

You cannot reproduce a handshake with meaning electronically.

This is a part of the beauty and the freakiness of the internet no handshake required.

Its no wonder there is grooming.

There was a time that a person had to put on nice clothes and go out into the real world to meet a love interest.

Today, you can be “out there” without ever having to go out- online dating.

You can even engage in a virtual relationship by using email or instant messaging. It is possible to get to know a person on a relatively deep level without ever meeting at all.

Customs surrounding handshakes are specific to cultures and can offer some real benefits.  Take Brazilan negotiators they touch each other almost five times each half-hour where there is no physical contact between American negotiators. 

In postmodern society, superstitions don’t have much of a place, for most of history they have a played a huge role in shaping culture and society before the arrival of the handshake.

The internet cares not what you do. You miss out on real contact with people.

It is affecting our ability to connect with others as equals. Not being able to manage the normal tasks of adult living resulting in more and more limper handshakes. Which leads them to problems with society and unable to get along with others.

Although teens are staying in constant contact via the Internet and texting, these friendships do not foster trust and intimacy the same as face-to-face contact.

The century’s old practice to seal a deal may seem quaint but its importance in the future will tell us whether its a robot or not.

As the appreciation of small things disappears; nature loses its brilliance.

Our planet is in a tight spot lets shake hands on that.

As we know there can be no peace no universal action on anything without it. 

All the verbal diarrhoea in the world cannot replace it. 

 

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