Category Archives: Life.

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE THE MOST DIFFICULT THINKS FOR HUMAN TO UNDERSTANDS?

20 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Digital age., Disconnection., Evolution, Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., INTELLIGENCE., Life., Purpose of life., Technology v Humanity, THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions.

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(Six-minute read) 

Of course, various people can be expected to have various answers to this question.

They all depend on when in our history as a species the question is asked, however, we can’t understand that which is beyond our knowledge still stands.

This question is like asking me to tell you everything I don’t know.

So in this post, I am going to try and address the usual problems with understanding. 

Even trying to define what we mean by “reality” is fraught with difficulty.

Philosophers devote their life’s work to developing and defending definitions of reality and other indeterminate concepts however one could tweak their definitions by equating reality with what appears to be a sufficiently large group of people. But just, because sufficiently many people believe in something, does not make it real.

Let’s just say that we behave in certain ways, merely because our brains act according to physical laws – Reality is that which, if you stop believing in it, does not go away. Things that we do not want to regard as real can be stubborn, as anyone who has ever been trapped in a nightmare knows.

Perhaps Penrose offers the best dictionary definition of “reality” as a starting point for understanding.

Whatever kind of reality you think you’re living in, you’re probably wrong.

                                            ————

My vote goes to Ourselves.

But “Know thyself,” turns out to be ridiculously complex.

We humans seem to be only just beginning to understand that we all live on one planet.

To understand that in a couple of billion years the sun will explode and your contribution will be ash. 

That we are completely, totally, and utterly alone in this piece of space called the solar system is beyond our understanding.

Let’s start with the nature of reality.

The brain operates with electrochemical signals from which it extracts patterns and assigns meaning, creating your subjective world. The brain doesn’t know or care where the data comes from; it just figures out what to do with it, and it does it efficiently.

Therefore all the sensors that we know and love, like our eyes and our ears and our fingertips, are merely peripheral plug-and-play devices.

Our common-sense notion of reality is that our eyes, ears, nose, and fingertips pick up objective reality, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

The interaction between what’s “out there” and our sensory organs isn’t the whole picture, either because the brain has no direct access to the outside world. Smells, sounds, and colors do not actually exist in the outside world they are locked in silence and darkness inside your skull.

At birth, we have no natural concept of reality. The slice of our ecosystem we can detect—or biological umwelt—(the world as it is experienced by a particular organism) is created by an interaction between the outside world, our sensory organs, and our “pink computational material.”

Ask the questions.

Eagleman says. “Your neurons require other people’s neurons to thrive and survive,” “Who you are has everything to do with who we are.”

So what can we know about the nature of reality?

We must first confront our utter lack of in-the-moment awareness regarding how our umwelt shapes and constrains what we know as reality.

However, we go about our lives as though we are operating in an objective reality.

The function of the brain, it turns out, is dependent upon input. In other words, feed the brain with enough shit for long enough and it will start believing that it is true/real.

Fortunately, the reality we experience is constrained by our biology.

Michael May who lost his sight at 3 years old from a chemical explosion says

 “Vision isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be if—a big if—you have developed the other blindness skills to make you a fully actualized person”

Just as May and other blind people can operate in a reality devoid of the light waves in the range received by the human eye, we are all able to operate in a reality devoid of the radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, and gamma rays that are passing through our bodies all the time.

We are unaware of them because we are “blind” to them—our sensory receptors are incapable of receiving them. 

“Over seven billion human brains traffic the planet today. Although we typically feel like independent operators, each of our brains operates in a rich web of interaction with one another—so much so that we can plausibly look at the accomplishments of our species as the deeds of a single, shifting, meta-organism.” —The Brain: The Story of You, Dr. David Eagleman

In particular, there is the question of the reality of our minds.

Should we not include a conscious experience as something real?

And what about concepts, such as truth, virtue, or beauty?

In fact, every process in the universe can be reduced to interactions between particles that produce binary answers: yes or no, here or there, up or down. That means nature, at its most fundamental level, is simply the flipping of binary digits.

Conscious mental experience, accordingly, has no further reality than that of the material underlying its existence; though not yet properly understood, it is merely an “epiphenomenon”, having no additional influence on the way that our bodies behave beyond what those physical laws demand.

For example, Quantum Physics uses the knowledge that our brains cannot understand such as something not existing until it is observed! where is the logic in that?

                                          ————

Take Religious beliefs -thoughts.

Quite a lot of religious concepts are so counter-intuitive that their respective religions just refer to them as mysteries and don’t even bother to try to explain them…..

‘Gods’ were of our own creation – because we couldn’t comprehend that we are completely, totally, and utterly alone in this piece of space called the solar system. It’s just us humans and everything else on this planet.

Or that we are completely, totally, and utterly not alone in the piece of space called the Milky Way Galaxy and or the greater globular cluster. Another life is statistically just too relevant to ignore.

Take Time itself the fourth dimension of reality. 

There is never enough time in the day. 

Defined by Physicists as the progression of events, from the past to the present and into the future. It’s not as you know something we can see, touch, or taste, but we can measure its passage. In the natural world, it has only one direction, called the arrow of time – irreversible it cannot move backward’s.  

However, Astronauts on the International Space station jump forward in time on returning from space.  

To reconcile general relativity with quantum mechanics, either time does not exist, or else it is not fundamental in nature. 

We cannot have any perception of the immediate present, without some memory of the past and some expectation of the future to give it context.

The universe is timeless. 

                                     ————————————

A few others could be added to the list of not understanding. 

Take Distance. 

The infinite distance of the Universe or multiple universes.

Take Massive data.

Analyzed by machine learning or algorithms.

Without computer programs to analyze massive data, we may never be able to discover new ideas because of our limitations. 

Take Art.  

What is art?

It’s completely subjective, for one thing. I may look at something and view it as art, where someone else would pick it up and eat it without thinking twice about it.

Take Music.

What is music?

It’s basically just talking while inflecting your voice in different pitches.

The Internet.

What the heck is the internet?

Language.

What IS language?? 

Love.

What is love? 

There are so many different types of love, that it’s hard for us to even understand where it comes from. 

Why?  Because you have to love yourself first before you can receive it. 

La vie?

We kill, murder, steal, lie, cheat, destroy.

We destroy not only ourselves, but the very planet we call home.

What is life? Take Wars. Death makes no sense.  

Take field forces like gravity.

It affects particles at an infinite distance, imagine their interactions!!

They change Every. Single. Instant.

What good would it be to describe a state of the Universe if, by the time you even began to do so, the state has changed drastically?

And, assuming you are actually a part of this Universe as you do that, you would also manipulate particles thus changing the state.

So there is no link between input and outcome.

Perhaps this is why the initiators of a cooperative or an ecosystem must create incentive and control systems that function stably over the long term.

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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. 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. IS ARTIFICAL INTELLIGENCE INTELLIGENT OR JUST PROBLEM SOLVING?

17 Friday Sep 2021

Posted by in Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Climate Change Summit Scotland 2021, Climate Change., Digital age., Evolution, Human Collective Stupidity., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, INTELLIGENCE., Life., Modern day life., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., VALUES, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World

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(Twelve-minute read)

Let’s start with this question.

Is humanity getting smarter or dumber with AI?

The answer has to be both, as intelligence per se cannot guarantee that one uses it intelligently.

We can find undisputed evidence of this by looking not that far back in history.

It took humans 200,000 years to think about God, soul, nature, world, life, and themselves. Our ancestors wrote million tons of Literature on all these topics and we still haven’t figured out any of these.

There’s more food wastage in the world than ever before although a large number of people are dying in hunger, malnutrition, and gross food shortage.

Although we know we are depleting Earth’s limited resources at a break-neck speed, there’s more over-production than ever before and more over-consumption than ever before!

For the sake of energy and resource conservation, we request the poor to consume less who already consumes way less, while we shut our eyes to the rich who keep consuming exorbitantly.

We invented the first atomic bomb in 1938 and the world’s first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945.

The concept of capitalism has many debated roots, but fully-fledged capitalism is generally thought by scholars to have emerged in Northwestern Europe, especially in Great Britain and the Netherlands, in the 16th to 17th centuries. 

Ever since we have plundered our planet-destroying what we love. Heating what is useful to us. We oppose what is good for us. Then, we love what is bad for us. We adore what is damaging to us. We follow what is deceitful.

We believed we were invincible, most intelligent, and just the best.

Then Corona showed us how very weak, unprepared and vulnerable we are.

With all the information we have been able to gather to help fight the virus – there are still some who cannot follow the rules. This is the height of stupidity.

So we are intelligent but only to a certain degree.

There are conflicting ideas about how intelligence is measured.

                              ———————————–

Is intelligence overrated? 

Socrates held that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’

Intelligence is ‘the ability to think, reason, and understand instead of

doing things automatically or by instinct.

This is not beyond animals and even plants, they too can be said to be possessed of intelligence. 

The problem with artificial intelligence is that is it artificial and does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.

It leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind. 

But when one considers that intelligence at its broadest, refers to the functioning of a number of related faculties and abilities that enable us to adapt and respond to environmental pressures.

So as we move toward an increasingly digital world Artificial intelligence cannot be considered in isolation.  

Take the West’s obsession with analytical intelligence. It has had and continues to have, dire political, social, and, above all, moral consequences.

Everything we love about civilization is a product of intelligence.

All this is to say that what constitutes intelligence can vary quite considerably according to our values and priorities.

After all, people deemed to be less rational—women, non-white people, the lower classes, the infirm, the ‘deviant’—were not just disenfranchised but dominated, colonized, enslaved, murdered, and sterilized, in all impunity.

History is full of technological over-hyping.

Will we control intelligent machines or will they control us? Will intelligent machines replace us, coexist with us, or merge with us? What will it mean to be human in the age of artificial intelligence? What would you like it to mean, and how can we make the future be that way? 

Why should we be asking these questions?

Because with AI there’s an enormous gap and there’s a paradox at work here.

We are living at a time when great advances have been made, and are continuing to be made, in many areas of science and technology. These advances are having a major impact on our lives, and this will probably continue to be the case for the foreseeable future.

This may, at first, seem to be a very positive prospect, but there are important reasons to be concerned with its benign effects.  

As a society, we have not learned how to deal properly with the risks, especially at the early stages, when knowledge is sparse.

In today’s world, the benefits of AI have been seized by a small, wealthy elite.

If anything, regulation is getting weaker. As our technological abilities grow ever more powerful, the danger of this approach is steadily increasing. What would a wiser policy look like?

The most difficult problems involve new technology that has very obvious, attractive, characteristics, while little, or nothing, is known about the effects of long-term use.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food products are one example.

Nanotechnology is another fascinating new area that is sprouting all kinds of new products. Its applications range from sunscreen lotions to more durable concrete, to improved ways to administer medication. But the same characteristics that make it so interesting and useful, also make it dangerous.

Cell phones addiction.  

Whether this will lead to an intelligence explosion; and whether this is something we should welcome or fear.

Saying that “real intelligence has consciousness just pushes the problem further down the road” 

The next problem is what is consciousness and can AI be consciousness.

To become so it would have to act independently.  

As long as we manage to keep the technology beneficial  

After all, today, we cannot go very far without having some considerable IT skills.

                                    —————

While the large corporations profiting from this technology are strongly motivated to defend their products, often funding research to develop arguments in their favor, there is no adequate countervailing force.

Take profit-seeking algorithms that are plundering the world unregulated.

Surely they should be careful study by an independent public agency to look for possible harmful effects, especially possible consequences of long-term use before releasing for general use.

                     ——————————————  

When you look at the world we have today you could not be blamed for thinking that we are all suffering from world dementia which is disturbing our multiple higher cortical functions including memory, thinking, orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language, and judgment.

As a consequence of our greed and our disregard for the health of our planet, we are now faced with the problem of producing energy that is carbon-free. 

This is going to require a complete change in how we live our lives with our energy requirements produced from sustainable green sources. 

Yes, we are currently addressing the problem with Climate Change Conferences that to date are barking down the wrong road. 

Why?

Because all intelligence is telling us that there is no option but to generate energy from green renewable sources – sun – wind – water.   

Taken together, this suggests that the only viable option (working alongside intelligent technologies) is to take the H out of H20  (with green energy) and convert it into Hydron gas energy totally free of CO2 when used.  

When it comes to Genius AI is way behind humanity.

Genius is in contrast is more a matter of drive, vision, creativity, and luck or opportunity.pool of liquid hydrogen like that at the core of Jupiter

Intelligence is not in the cloud.

Whenever you use any service on the internet, you are connecting to one of many millions of servers located in one of many thousands of data centers around the world.

The energy requirements for these centers are estimates to vary from 200 terawatt-hours to 500 TWh and there are an estimated 18 million servers deployed in data centers globally.

If electricity continues to be a major source of data center energy and is generated from non-renewable sources, data center emissions could exceed the aviation industry which is currently responsible for 2% of annual human-generated CO2.

The data center industry is changing rapidly and how that will affect energy profiles is uncertain, but surely companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and their like should be using green energy. 

Companies all over the world use cloud storage. 

Finally:

Finances are intertwined in every part of our lives, and technology is quickly following suit, finding a way into every aspect of modernity.

They’ve been on a collision course for decades, and the integration of technology into finance was, as we see it now, eventually inevitable.

You’re seeing this now with new algorithms being used to determine credit worthiness, or generating profit for profit’s sake.

For better or for worse, artificial intelligence (AI) is a natural progression for us, and something that has the potential to make life much less monotonous.

AI and finance go hand-in-hand. 

One thing is clear, blockchain will indeed eventually transform how the industry works. 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. JUST WHAT IS AN mRNA VACCINE IN LAYMAN TERMS?

14 Monday Jun 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Civilization., Covid-19 Vaccines., Genetic engineering, Humanity., Life., mRNA vaccine and a traditional vaccine., Pandemic, POST COVID-19., Survival., Technologically Enabled Genetics., Technology v Humanity, The Obvious., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions., Vaccines., What Needs to change in the World

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(Five-minute read) 


Now before I start trying to answer this question I wish to make it crystal clear that I am no doctor, scientist, or professor of Epidemiology.


Over my life, I have visited countries that have to require one to be vaccinated for everything from Yellow fever to you name it.

The one thing that is stopping some people from getting vaccinated is not understanding how mRNA technology works and its long term effects ( Yet to be seen)

So I am going to try to explain in layman terms the difference between an mRNA vaccine and a traditional vaccine.

There are three sorts of vaccines.   

Live, attenuated vaccines are the closest to a natural infection. They contain a weakened version of a living virus or bacteria

Subunit vaccines contain only parts of a virus or bacteria instead of a whole pathogen.

Inactivated vaccines contain an inactivated or dead version of a virus or pathogen.

Most vaccines up to now work by presenting your body with a weakened or dead version of a virus or some of the proteins found on the surface of the virus.

By showing the virus or parts of the virus to your immune system, the vaccine teaches your body to recognize the pathogen and turns on the production of antibodies, which are proteins that attach to the virus and allow killer immune cells to gobble it up.

In other words, traditional vaccines teach the immune system to make memory cells.

So if you are exposed to a virus at a future date, the immune system has the ability to rev up the production of antibodies rapidly and fight off the pathogen again.

                                              —————

The coronavirus pandemic infected millions of people in a matter of months and vaccines usually take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approved for public use. 

For example: 

Smallpox – several centuries.

Plague – to date no vaccine.

Typhoid – around thirty years.

Yellow Fever – around thirty years.

Influenza –   around thirty years – ineffective today because of seasonal changes.

Measles/ Mumps –  around eleven years.

Anthrax  – around 58 years

Polo-  around sixty years. 

Chicken Pox – around thirty year

Shingles – around forty years. 

Hepatitis B –  around twenty-four years.

mRNA vaccines have existed for more than 10 years and have been used with the Ebola and Zika viruses. What is new is in terms of how widely it’s being used on the market.

When the COVID-19 epidemic arrived, never before in modern history, has the entire world and all of the governments in the world banded together to get a vaccine to market so quickly.

Researchers worldwide sprang into action to identify and insert the correct genetic code into the mRNA platform.

                              ——————————

This of course raised questions. 

How a vaccine can get put together in such a short time? 

Were corners cut?  

Is the trial period too short? 

Will there be side effects in years to come? 

These are questions that can not fully answer.  Time will tell. 

In layman’s terms, the technologies already existed, and with vast amounts of money made available to produce a vaccine, it happened in months not years. 

The result was mRNA vaccines which use what is called RNAi research that is widely used by researchers to silence genes in order to learn something about their function.

The result is siRNAs that can be designed to match any gene, can be manufactured cheaply, and can be readily administered to cells.

In other words, a cellular mechanism that uses the gene’s own DNA sequence of the gene to turn it off.

However, RNAi is much more than a research tool that encompasses an array of ancient and sophisticated cellular mechanisms that regulate a variety of biological functions. 

The advantage of RNAi is the ability to design precisely targeted medicines for almost any gene, regardless of the function of the gene.

So each different vaccine aims to use a slightly different approach to prepare your immune system to recognize and fight SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

                                              —————–

Think of your DNA  as the “instruction manuals” in genes that tell a living thing—what to do.  

The mRNA helps cells to read those instructions. It is synthetic there is no COVID virus in this vaccine.

You can not get COVID-19 from the vaccine as mRNA vaccines never enter the nucleus of the cell, where our DNA is stored. Rather than presenting your body with the dead virus or parts of the virus, mRNA vaccines show your body the blueprint needed to make a viral protein.

The difference with mRNA vaccines is that it gives a recipe to our immune system. 

Your body uses this blueprint to make the SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins without including any part of the virus itself.

However, unlike less virulent or killed vaccines, the person is not infected with a virus, not even one that’s been weakened or killed.

mRNA is a small fragile fragment of genetic information that’s rapidly broken down within the bloodstream and within cells.

                                      ———————-

Finally, the world will need several different vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic as the virus mutates.

Of course in the short term, there are billions to be made by not sharing. But in the long term, it is taxpayers’ money that has helped the development of the vaccine.  

At the moment we have a handful of drugmakers dominating the global coronavirus vaccine race. 

To fight a global pandemic these companies must be made to share or waiver any patents, along with sharing the manufacturing process worldwide.

The Data from all Vaccines must be shared.  

While world governments must remove any trade barriers blocking the production of the vaccine. 

So far 75% of the world’s Covid -19 vaccines have been distributed in just 10 countries. 

It is a glaring fact that we are not going to end this pandemic anywhere until we do it everywhere. 

It is also a glaring fact while the virus spreads Covid mutants will evolve to trick our immune systems.

It is also a glaring fact that unless Inequality is tackled on a world basis we humans will struggle with any future pandemics that are coming with climate change.  

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN THAT THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS FREEDOM ? WE ARE NOT FREE AND NEVER WILL BE. .

22 Saturday May 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Facebook, Fourth Industrial Revolution., Freedom, Human values., Humanity., Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Pandemic, Reality., Robot citizenship., Survival., Technology v Humanity, The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The Obvious., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., 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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(Twelve-minute read) 

People think they’re free, but in reality, they don’t even understand freedom.

To live a free life, you must first be free.

Rousseau notes that the real mystery of freedom is how we can be in chains and still regard ourselves as free (Rousseau: 181).

And Kant’s argument provides us with a formidable justification for assuming that freedom is the necessary and indispensable condition of human existence given that man has the capacity to act upon the commands of reason: that is the categorical imperative.

If the will is subject to extraneous circumstances or influences it ceases to express itself freely in our actions. In this scheme of things, freedom can only be preserved if the moral laws that individuals endorse and accept as their guidance are such that they can accept them voluntarily (Kant: 57-58).

Just how true in the world of Algorithms, Data collection, Social Media, Search Platforms, Track and Trace, Potential Covid Passports, Smartphones with around-the-clock electronic surveillance to name just a few, remains to be seeing.     

In fact, there is no such thing as freedom. 

Is there a statement more likely to provoke consternation from people than to submit that there is no such thing as freedom?

I think not.

The modern political theory holds that “freedom” is something available to all but in the technology world and post-pandemic world, there is no such thing as freedom in the absolute sense since everyone views freedom differently.

Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?

The dictionary definition of freedom is; The power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint and the power to determine action without restraint.

In other words, we have full control over the things that we choose to do.

This is simply not true.

A democratic constitution will not state that each of us is free, what it says is that we have the right to certain freedoms which the constitution is supposed to protect.  

We are simply part of a system of rules that gives us certain rights referred to as freedoms.

So what have we got? 

  • Free means that we freely make the choices we make and are thus are morally responsible for our choices. In addition, we may be held legally accountable for the choices we make.
  • Or does it mean I am stronger than you, so I will retain my freedoms at your expense by the use of force?

There is no such thing as “freedom” because it can’t be defined objectively.

Why? 

Because too many people in the world live with the constraints of poverty, poor access to health care and education, and a structural lack of opportunity.

None of us were representation or were participants in the writing of the rules of the social contract of the Internet.

In the face of such a common reality, is it reasonable to speak of free will as a tool to change lives?

At the most, we might be able to argue that in such circumstances a person is constrained but not determined.

We are free to stop eating but we are not free to stop breathing.

                                             ————–

The truth is that our rights, beliefs, and actions are determined by our biology, neurology, life context, nature, experiences, and interpretation of our experiences.

In psychological terms, free will means that we understand the history of our determinedness; how we have come to be what we are. 

However, the scope of your individual rights has one primary limit: it ends where the rights of another begin.

Apply that universally and you have the basis for all rights.

Instead of using the word “freedom” as an entity all in itself (which does not exist) should we be using rights?

Each culture defines rights differently based on the ethos of the various cultures.

“Rights” are simply arbitrary policies set up by individual societies to meet the needs of the citizens. Different people and different individuals differ on what they believe is a right.

Again, a subjective phrase depending on what is morally right.

It is my belief, and it is a belief shared by many, that these are rights that should be observed, and that the infringement upon these rights of any entity, whether it be government or individual, should be stopped.

So rights are freedoms with the caveat that it’s morally correct to collect Data without our express permission to do so in the first place. A Liberty which is taken for granted.

Take  “Liberty” an abstract word that doesn’t have an absolute definition.

The word simply means whatever it is accepted to mean even if one’s man’s desired Liberty is perceived as infringing on another man’s Liberty.

Freedom, use to be the ability to legally do or think anything that does not infringe upon the rights of another human being whether or not the action or thought is popular or under a certain prevailing viewpoint.

Freedom does happen, in the brain but one’s perception of freedom changes when one can not see the freedom one owns. So freedom these days still exists though it may seem as though it is not all that it is cracked up to be.

Not any longer. To access platforms one has to agree with an untransparent Algorithm that runs that platform.  

Is this morally wrong? 

How do you define “morally wrong” when everyone has a different moral belief?

The problem is that data collection is now the holy grail and the fewer people in a country feel they have been severely limited in their freedom, the less free the country is as a whole.

“Freedom is nothing left to lose”

The current Pandemic has and is highlighting how freedoms that are taken for granted can be reversed. 

As long as the masses do what the elite tells them to do, then they are free.

What then is freedom? 

The power to live as one wishes. – Marcus Tullius Cicero.

The moment we let go is the moment we find freedom. – Rebekah Stephenson.

Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. – Martin Luther King.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom assumes responsibility and most people are afraid of that. – Sigmund Freud.

Freedom is the power to choose our own chains. – Jean Jacques Rousseau.

It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything. – Tyler Durden.

Money doesn’t buy you freedom, but freedom cannot be achieved without money either. Money doesn’t work for you, you work for money – you’re a slave for money.

                                          __________________

The role of the internet and social media offered the possibility of retrieving a common space and a way for people to share and connect and to be free. 

It was a chance to build an economy that wasn’t based purely on the extraction of resources and capital.

But that’s not what happened.

Instead, digital technology is used to double down on industrialism and it has evolved in everything from the spread of terrorist propaganda to the rise of authoritarianism.

At some point, technology ceased to be a tool to help us get what we want and instead became the only thing we actually want.

Technology is everywhere, and we’re all more or less dependent upon it — so how do we escape the pitfalls?

We’re talking about algorithms here. They live with us, even if we don’t see them.

We stopped using technology and it started using us.

We’re all hostage to our technologies, or we’re simply at the mercy of this system.

We’re being steamrolled by our devices, and the result is a kind of emotional slavery turning crucial decisions about people’s lives over to machines to translate the data into action.

We now live in a consumer democracy that restricts human connection and stokes “whatever appetites guarantee the greatest profit.”

Algorithms are behind the digital services that we consult daily. They are modifying the opinion of their users based on their psychological profiles and they are increasingly being extended to all businesses.

Take a platform like Facebook, and Facebook is using data from your past to dump you into a statistical bucket. Once they know what bucket you’re in, they do everything to keep you in that bucket and to make you behave in ways that are more consistent with all the things about that bucket.

The lifeblood of data science is turning what left of our identity into  “filtered freedom”  “predictive algorithms freedom”  “governance algorithm” “risk reports algorithms, Google search algorithms,  all effectively destroying human autonomy.

With a growing dependence on automated systems that are taking humans and transparency out of the process?

Where are our digital rights? 

How to confront the use of algorithms.

George Orwell once predicted that those who control the information hold the power.

This is more true today than it ever was!

How do you win against a computer that is built to stop you?

How do you stop something that predetermines your fate? 

There must be total and full transparency with all algorithms subject to auditable accountability. 

I can’t control other people, but I can control my choices.  

One of the things we need to make really clear about algorithms — is that they are hand-tailored to a particular decision.

Kant notes that man may come to approve of various rules of social co-operation for a variety of reasons, some of them ethically more obscure than others.

Algorithms are not just doing our thinking for us they are fucking up the world.

AI algorithms are worthless without a dataset to work on.

Because of this, the usefulness of an AI algorithm is intrinsically tied to the availability of high-quality data. In this regard, AI algorithms are fundamentally different from other types of software, whose code is valuable on its own without any additional data.

This is why you see companies like IBM buying Weather Channel’s data operations not because it wanted to know if it’s going to rain, but because climate change is going to be the number-one factor driving global GDP the data will allowing it to do everything from predicting winter energy demand to forecasting crop yields.

Google, Facebook, and others hold similar advantages in their respective areas, possessing vast quantities of consumer and social-media data that can be used to train highly valuable AI tasks, from sentiment analysis for marketing to object-recognition for photos to natural language processing for user interfaces.

For AI tech companies with large treasure troves of data, the sky is the limit, and rest assured it is not to stimulate broad societal benefits but to cash in on your freedoms.

Freedom is to remember your humanity what you do with what’s been done to you.  

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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 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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( 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.   

 

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THE BEADY EYE ASKS : YOU HAVE SO FAR SURVIVED COVID-19 BUT IS THERE A TRUE DEFINITION OF LIFE.

10 Wednesday Mar 2021

Posted by in Life.

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(Three-minute read) 

Life has no meaning but each of us has meaning and we bring it to life.

Life is what separates living things from everything else serving humanity.

“Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have—and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.” Philip Appleman

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone – we find it with another.” Thomas Merton

“The meaning of life is not to survive but to die.” 

It would be fair to say that Scientists, Philosophers, and religions have spent millennia pondering what it is that makes something alive. In a very literal sense, we do not yet have a meaning for life.

In fact, there are currently over 100 definitions of life.

For instance Nasa ” A self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution.”

However the classic borderline case of life is a virus – it’s inert as long as it does not encounter a cell. 

So the decision as to what is alive or dead is where the cut-off point lies with a virus.  

A virus carries DNA and RNA the blueprint for life. They, therefore, exist between the boards of chemistry and life. 

What about life as we do not know it.

It seems obvious that at some level all we see about ourselves, living or otherwise, is merely a manifestation of chemical reactions and the laws of physics.

The chemical reactions occurring for the universe’s first few billion years led inexorably to our teeming world, yet no one would describe them as life. But so what? 

The creation of artificial life is now a fully-fledged branch of science creating new organisms that so far no one has assembled together into a functioning synthetic life form.  

If this was to happen it would redefine what we presently understand or didn’t understand by life. 

We need to get away from our current concept as AI increasingly shapes the human experience, how does this change what it means to be human?

Humanity is in the process of losing something significant.

Algorithms could soon—if they don’t already—have a better idea about what is alive or dead.

As they become more and more predictable, the creatures inhabiting the increasingly AI-mediated world will become less and less like us. 

So to find a working definition for ‘life’ seems to me to have little practical value.

It is estimated that there are 1031 virus particles in the oceans – they vastly outnumber all other organisms on the planet.

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 alive or not, viruses are doing rather well!

I would argue that the only satisfactory definition of life, lies in the most critical property of genetic heredity: independent evolution.

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

12 Friday Feb 2021

Posted by 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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(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.

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. IF YOU LOOK AROUND YOU AT THE PRESENT STATE OF THE WORLD YOU SHOULD NOT BE FORGIVEN FOR FEELING DISPARE.

17 Sunday Jan 2021

Posted by in 2021. The year for change., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Capitalism, Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., Disaster Capitalism., Earth, How to do it., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Inequality., Life., Modern day life., Our Common Values., POST COVID-19., Poverty, Robot citizenship., Social Media Regulation., Stimulus package., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Universal Basic Income., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Aid.

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(Fifteen-minute read) 

As we floundering around in the midst of COMPOUNDING PANDEMICS that are far from over, the future is not here yet.

With our planet is crying out, our political leaders are like fish out of water, apart from the obvious, it seems that we have lost the plot. Compounded by ignorance, short term self-interest, the pursuit of wealth, and political interests, any actions that are vital for survival are stymieing by the lack of conciliation. 

Climate Change, Biodiversity, Artificial Intelligence, Poverty and Inequality, Population all on the top of the list. All of them are presenting overwhelming challenges ahead.

There is no way of sugar-coating any of these threats, they have no borders.

We are brought up with other people’s perceptions of life.  

Not until we develop enough, intellectually, can we change those perceptions, and even then it can be difficult to change our perceptions about the world until we start to really question it.

Anything else is a blatant lie.

With millions of dead and millions more death to come, we can only prevent any one of them from coming to fruition if we take all of them especially the environmental threat seriously.

With large swaths of people still dealing with entrenched inequalities, it is no wonder we are unable to see the above threats as reality. 

If there was ever a time to join together it is now.

We all have an identity and cultural distinctiveness, but if we bound together in a common cause, we could accomplish spectacular things.

To do this we must first start to see ourselves as HUMAN BEINGS, and the planet earth as HOME, not our individual countries.  

                                                   ————

I am sure you will agree that the world order is destined to change and it’s urgent that humanity gets a way to preserve what’s left on Earth. 

In this regard, technology is not a destiny jobs will be for robots and life for people.  

The problem is who is the owner of the robots and how do we ensure that we all benefit. 

At the moment there are millions wasting their time in useless jobs to scratch a living.  Rest assured that capitalism will come up with millions of more useless jobs. 

                                                 ————

Unfortunately, we are not able to act as one, and even if we could there would be no point in becoming mindless drones with no culture.

There would be no point in living because it’ would be all just be one culture with no distinct forms. 

The raw reality exposed by the current pandemic is that everyone is only just a human unable to act as one due to greed-driven by unregulated social media and profit-seeking algorithms.

                                                  ———– 

The big question is what can be done?

SOLUTIONS WITHOUT FUNDING, ABOUND ON TED TALKS. 

We know that poverty is one of the main driving forces when it comes to any long term perspective to protecting the earth.

Poverty is not due to a lack of knowledge. POVERTY IS CREATED BY SCARCITY, not a personality defect as Maggie Thatcher once said.

As George Orwell said  “Poverty annihilates the Future “

 You would think by now we would have figured out the reasons for its existence.  

ALMOST EVERYTHING NEEDED FOR LIFE IS MADE SCARCE BY APPLYING CAPITALIST PROFIT, TURNING ALMOST EVERYTHING INTO A PRODUCT TO BE TRADED.   

SO WHEN ONE IS UNABLE TO ACQUIRE WHAT IS NEEDED DUE TO THE LACK OF CASH YOU HAVE POVERTY.   If we genuinely ask why do the poor make so many bad decisions THIS IS THE MAIN REASON. 

Till now we have ignored the symptoms of poverty to our cost, and now to the chilling silence of Earth protests, we find ourselves unable to enjoy the Earth we live on. 

To date, we have created World organizations without the power of funding that vents verbal warnings,  that no one takes heed of unless it is in their own interest to do so

Take Co2 admissions. We continue to pump Co2 into our shared atmosphere.  (Earth isn’t the only planet in our solar system with an atmosphere, it is the only one in which we humans can survive.) 

It is blatantly obvious that we are not able through our global conversation whether they are online or not due to profit-taking we are not able to establish any solidarity. 

A lot of religious people mentioned that there is a leader who is going to save this world and stands for oppressed, poor, and homeless people.

While we are waiting we need to be more creative in our imagination if we want to match the relentless progression of biodiversity loss, climate change, and the other problems facing us all that are going to drive the Scarcity market.   

 A basic income is an idea that has and is being kicked from pillar to post for years.

Free money for everybody.

Not the welfare state but AN INCOME FOR ALL –  UNCONDITIONAL YOU DO WHAT YOU WANT WITH IT.

Where will the cash come from?

( See previous posts. A World Commission of 0.05%)

Of course, no one or anybody is going to take on or take down the holy grail of profit for profit’s sake.

After all, we live in societies that have allowed themselves to be subsumed by greed with ethics still being sacrificed on the altar of turnover and growth at all costs- GDP.

What is truly galling though is how the rot persists, where people cannot see the direct causal link, to overconsumption prompted by the advertising industries.

Profit is not intrinsically bad, but profit for profit’s sake alone is not just bad it’s unimaginably damaging.

Profit has to be extracted in such a way that every partner in the supply chain profits; from the workers to the shareholders, from the local community through to the nation itself.

That means creating a system where people are empowered to speak, where processes are so transparent that nothing can be hidden and where part of those profits is reinvested into those communities to sustain growth and development for generations to come.

So before we find ourselves teetering over the edge of the precipice. We need to speak truth to power when we start to feel discomfited, not when we have already entered the realm of cognitive dissonance or, worse, open and cynical collusion in the Bell Pottinger mode.

We have been gifted by the current pandemic which is yet to reach its apogee. It is daring us not to be paralyzed by our past.

It is offering a chance to find and resolve, to do things differently.

To call out the emperors of technology, when they stride about us in their unabashed nudity to put sustainability at the core of their online and off-line operations. 

They are now the praetorian guard of citizen and corporate activists and it is essential in this post-covid-19 economic depression that society should be saved from exploitation.

Unfortunately, they are unable to regulate themselves. This can be done only when the state interferes with total transparency. 

Is it not time that all non-essential products are labeled with their carbon footprint. 

What is Cash but transparency, in its naked form, creating fair competitions.   

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while we pump CO2 in

https://youtu.be/aIL_Y9g7Tg0

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. IN ORDER TO BECOME PROACTIVE AND NOT REACTIVE WE NOW SHOULD BE BUILDING A NEW LIST OF GLOBAL PRIORITIES.

12 Tuesday Jan 2021

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2021. The year for change., Capitalism, Civilization., Climate Change., COVID-19, Dehumanization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disaster Capitalism., Evolution, Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Post-Covid-19, Reality., Robot citizenship., Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, THE NEW NORM., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, Viruses., 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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(Ten-minute read) 

Why?

We cannot come back from Extinction.

BECAUSE  The world we now have is a tragic begging world. 

WE MUST BECOME PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVITY.

Because humanity is entering a new age, where we are faced with not only existential risks from our natural environment but by those of our own creation. 

Two hundred years ago we didn’t understand the basic causes of a Pandemic. 

Because the world is now so interconnected (with a vastly increased population than any time in our history) pandemics have more opportunities not only to spread new diseases but to originate new sources.

Because we are reaching “The Precipice”  a time where we’ve reached the ability to pose an existential risk to ourselves, which is substantially bigger than the natural risks, the background that we were facing before.  

Because we need to understand our vulnerability and determine what steps must be taken to end this pandemic. 

Because just a few years ago more than one bomb was created.

One in the hands of a few decision-makers that could destroy civilization the other the Internet, not in the hands  

The current bombs are created by our continuing abuse of the planet we live on. They are not in the hands of deranged dictators or impeached presidents but in the hands of a system of exploitation called capitalism now becoming more and more driven by profit-seeking algorithms.   

Because we think everyone’s interests matter equally, approaches to improving the world should be evaluated mainly in terms of their potential for long-term impact.

Because there are vast differences between the effectiveness of working on different global problems we need better global prioritization.

Because as technology improves and the world economy grows or shrinks, it is getting easier to cause destruction on an ever-larger scale.

(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but also pose catastrophic risks.)

Because Covid-19 is showing us that there are many available avenues for improving the world, in terms of social value.

Because now there is much uncertainty around the value of specific options.

Because not enough cause prioritization is done, from the perspective of total social welfare.

The reasons are endless.

However to build the new field of ‘global priorities’ and to try to work out which global problems are most pressing and make progress on foundational questions about how best to address them we need to start understanding that just as the fate of gorillas currently depends on the actions of humans, the fate of humanity may come to depend more on the actions of machines than our own.

Rapid progress in machine learning has raised the prospect that algorithms will one day be able to do most or all of the mental tasks currently performed by humans. This could ultimately lead to machines that are much better at these tasks than humans.

(New transformative technologies may promise a radically better future but they also pose catastrophic risks. How one might design a highly intelligent machine to pursue realistic human goals safely is very poorly understood.)

Comparing global problems involves lots of uncertainty and difficult judgment calls.

If AI research continues to advance without enough work going into the research problem of controlling such machines, catastrophic accidents are much more likely to occur. Nonetheless, work on mitigating many risks remains remarkably neglected. 

Prioritization research appears to be in its infancy. With common prioritize interventions almost zero it remains impossible to assume some common world values.

Why is this? 

Once again the reasons are numerous – but they can be encapsulated in the word inequality, in all its forms.  

Causes have to be made before developing a deep understanding of an area that required prioritization – climate change for example.

Covid-19 is shining a light on the need to develop world health versus biological research – which received very little attention up to now. 

While billions are spent making AI more powerful, there are fewer than 100 people in the world working on how to make AI safe. 

AI could lead to extremely positive developments, presenting solutions to now-intractable global problems, but they also pose severe risks.

Humanity’s superior intelligence is pretty much the sole reason that it is the dominant species on the planet. If machines surpass humans in intelligence, then common beliefs could easily originate from websites.

This is why it is necessary that we create a list ranking of which problems we think are most pressing for people.  That promotes civilizational resilience, mitigating great power conflict, or laying the foundations for the governance of outer space. 

If you have read this post you could not be blamed for thinking that the idea of creating a new list of global problems is worthless. BUT ALL THE TALK, AND AGREEMENTS IN THE WORLD ARE WORTHLESS UNLESS THEY ARE FUNDED TO BECOME PROACTIVE.  

( See previous posts recreating such a fund – 0.005% world Aid Fund, before the current third revolution of Artificial Intelligence, invents the machine with intelligence that far surpasses our own.)

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

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