Category Archives: The world to day.

THE BEADY EYE ASK’S : ARE OUR LIVES GOING TO BE RULED BY ALGORITHMS.

20 Saturday May 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Big Data., Communication., Dehumanization., Democracy, Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship., Disconnection., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., IS DATA DESTORYING THE WORLD?, Modern Day Democracy., Our Common Values., Purpose of life., Reality., Social Media Regulation., State of the world, Technology, Technology v Humanity, The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Tracking apps., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., We can leave a legacy worthwhile., What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World

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( Ten minute read) 

I am sure that unless you have being living on another planet it is becoming more and more obvious that the manner you live your life is being manipulate and influence by technologies.

So its worth pausing to ask why the use of AI for algorithm-informed decision is desirable, and hence worth our collective effort to think through and get right.

A huge amount of our lives – from what appears in our social media feeds to what route our sat-nav tells us to take – is influenced by algorithms. Email knows where to go thanks to algorithms. Smartphone apps are nothing but algorithms. Computer and video games are algorithmic storytelling.  Online dating and book-recommendation and travel websites would not function without algorithms.

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. Algorithms are also at play, with most financial transactions today 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.

Algorithms are aimed at optimizing everything.

Self-learning and self-programming algorithms are now emerging, so it is possible that in the future algorithms will write many if not most algorithms.

Yes they can save lives, make things easier and conquer chaos, but when it comes both the commercial/ social world, there are many good reasons to question the use of Algorithms.

Why? 

They can put too much control in the hands of corporations and governments, perpetuate bias, create filter bubbles, cut choices, creativity and serendipity, while exploiting not just of you, but the very resources of our planet for short-term profits, destroying what left of democracy societies, turning warfare into face recognition, stimulating inequality, invading our private lives, determining our futures without any legal restrictions or transparency, or recourse.

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.

———

As they are self learning, the problem is who or what is creating them, who owns these algorithms and what if there should be any controls in their usage.

Lets ask some questions that need to be ask now not later concerning them. 

1) The outcomes the algorithm intended to make possible (and whether they are ethical)

2) The algorithm’s function.

3) The algorithm’s limitations and biases.

4) The actions that will be taken to mitigate the algorithm’s limitations and biases.

5) The layer of accountability and transparency that will be put in place around it.

There is no debate about the need for algorithms in scientific research – such as discovering new drugs to tackle new or old diseases/ pandemics, space travel, etc. 

Out side of these needs the promise of AI is that we could have evidence-based decision making in the field:

Helping frontline workers make more informed decisions in the moments when it matters most, based on an intelligent analysis of what is known to work. If used thoughtfully and with care, algorithms could provide evidence-based policymaking, but they will fail to achieve much if poor decisions are taken at the front.

However, it’s all well and good for politicians and policymakers to use evidence at a macro level when designing a policy but the real effectiveness of each public sector organisation is now the sum total of thousands of little decisions made by algorithms each and every day.

First (to repeat a point made above), with new technologies we may need to set a higher bar initially in order to build confidence and test the real risks and benefits before we adopt a more relaxed approach. Put simply, we need time to see in what ways using AI is, in fact, the same or different to traditional decision making processes.

The second concerns accountability. For reasons that may not be entirely rational, we tend to prefer a human-made decision. The process that a person follows in their head may be flawed and biased, but we feel we have a point of accountability and recourse which does not exist (at least not automatically) with a machine.

The third is that some forms of algorithmic decision making could end up being truly game-changing in terms of the complexity of the decision making process. Just as some financial analysts eventually failed to understand the CDOs they had collectively created before 2008, it might be too hard to trace back how a given decision was reached when unlimited amounts of data contribute to its output.

The fourth is the potential scale at which decisions could be deployed. One of the chief benefits of technology is its ability to roll out solutions at massive scale. By the same trait it can also cause damage at scale.

 In all of this it’s important to remember that while progress isn’t guaranteed transformational progress on a global scale normally takes time, generations even, to achieve but we pulled it off in less than a decade and spent another decade pushing the limits of what was possible with a computer and an Internet connection and, unfortunately, we are beginning running into limits pretty quickly such as.

No one wants to accept that the incredible technological ride we’ve enjoyed for the past half-century is coming to an end, but unless algorithms are found that can provide a shortcut around this rate of growth, we have to look beyond the classical computer if we are to maintain our current pace of technological progress.

A silicon computer chip is a physical material, so it is governed by the laws of physics, chemistry, and engineering.

After miniaturizing the transistor on an integrated circuit to a nanoscopic scale, transistors just can’t keep getting smaller every two years. With billions of electronic components etched into a solid, square wafer of silicon no more than 2 inches wide, you could count the number of atoms that make up the individual transistors.

So the era of classical computing is coming to an end, with scientists anticipating the arrival of quantum computing designing ambitious quantum algorithms that tackle maths greatest challenges an Algorithm for everything.

———–

Algorithms may be deployed without any human oversight leading to actions that could cause harm and which lack any accountability.

The issues the public sector deals with tend to be messy and complicated, requiring ethical judgements as well as quantitative assessments. Those decisions in turn can have significant impacts on individuals’ lives. We should therefore primarily be aiming for intelligent use of algorithm-informed decision making by humans.

If we are to have a ‘human in the loop’, it’s not ok for the public sector to become littered with algorithmic black boxes whose operations are essentially unknowable to those expected to use them.

As with all ‘smart’ new technologies, we need to ensure algorithmic decision making tools are not deployed in dumb processes, or create any expectation that we diminish the professionalism with which they are used.

Algorithms could help remove or reduce the impact of these flaws.

So where are we.

At the moment modern algorithms are some of the most important solutions to problems currently powering the world’s most widely used systems.

Here are a few. They form the foundation on which data structures and more advanced algorithms are built.

Google’s PageRank algorithm is a great place to start, since it helped turn Google into the internet giant it is today.

The PageRank algorithm so thoroughly established Google’s dominance as the only search engine that mattered that the word Google officially became a verb less than eight years after the company was founded. Even though PageRank is now only one of about 200 measures Google uses to rank a web page for a given query, this algorithm is still an essential driving force behind its search engine.

The Key Exchange Encryption algorithm does the seemingly impo

Backpropagation through a neural network is one of the most important algorithms invented in the last 50 years.

Neural networks operate by feeding input data into a network of nodes which have connections to the next layer of nodes, and different weights associated with these connections which determines whether to pass the information it receives through that connection to the next layer of nodes. When the information passed through the various so-called “hidden” layers of the network and comes to the output layer, these are usually different choices about what the neural network believes the input was. If it was fed an image of a dog, it might have the options dog, cat, mouse, and human infant. It will have a probability for each of these and the highest probability is chosen as the answer.

Without backpropagation, deep-learning neural networks wouldn’t work, and without these neural networks, we wouldn’t have the rapid advances in artificial intelligence that we’ve seen in the last decade.

Routing Protocol Algorithm (LSRPA) are the two most essential algorithms we use every day as they efficiently route data.

The two most widely used by the Internet, the Distance-Vector Routing Protocol Algorithm (DVRPA) and the Link-State traffic between the billions of connected networks that make up the Internet.

Compression is everywhere, and it is essential to the efficient transmission and storage of information.

Its made possible by establishing a single, shared mathematical secret between two parties, who don’t even know each other, and is used to encrypt the data as well as decrypt it, all over a public network and without anyone else being able to figure out the secret.

Searches and Sorts are a special form of algorithm in that there are many very different techniques used to sort a data set or to search for a specific value within one, and no single one is better than another all of the time. The quicksort algorithm might be better than the merge sort algorithm if memory is a factor, but if memory is not an issue, merge sort can sometimes be faster;

One of the most widely used algorithms in the world, but in that 20 minutes in 1959, Dijkstra enabled everything from GPS routing on our phones, to signal routing through telecommunication networks, and any number of time-sensitive logistics challenges like shipping a package across country. As a search algorithm, Dijkstra’s Shortest Path stands out more than the others just for the enormity of the technology that relies on it.

——–

At the moment there are relatively few instances where algorithms should be deployed without any human oversight or ability to intervene before the action resulting from the algorithm is initiated.

The assumptions on which an algorithm is based may be broadly correct, but in areas of any complexity (and which public sector contexts aren’t complex?) they will at best be incomplete.

Why?

Because the code of algorithms may be unviewable in systems that are proprietary or outsourced.

Even if viewable, the code may be essentially uncheckable if it’s highly complex; where the code continuously changes based on live data; or where the use of neural networks means that there is no single ‘point of decision making’ to view.

Virtually all algorithms contain some limitations and biases, based on the limitations and biases of the data on which they are trained.

 Though there is currently much debate about the biases and limitations of artificial intelligence, there are well known biases and limitations in human reasoning, too. The entire field of behavioural science exists precisely because humans are not perfectly rational creatures but have predictable biases in their thinking.

Some are calling this the Age of Algorithms and predicting that the future of algorithms is tied to machine learning and deep learning that will get better and better at an ever-faster pace. There is something on the other side of the classical-post-classical divide, it’s likely to be far more massive than it looks from over here, and any prediction about what we’ll find once we pass through it is as good as anyone else’s.

It is entirely possible that before we see any of this, humanity will end up bombing itself into a new dark age that takes thousands of years to recover from.

The entire field of theoretical computer science is all about trying to find the most efficient algorithm for a given problem. The essential job of a theoretical computer scientist is to find efficient algorithms for problems and the most difficult of these problems aren’t just academic; they are at the very core of some of the most challenging real world scenarios that play out every day.

Quantum computing is a subject that a lot of people, myself included, have gotten wrong in the past and there are those who caution against putting too much faith in a quantum computer’s ability to free us from the computational dead end we’re stuck in.

The most critical of these is the problem of optimization:

How do we find the best solution to a problem when we have a seemingly infinite number of possible solutions?

While it can be fun to speculate about specific advances, what will ultimately matter much more than any one advance will be the synergies produced by these different advances working together.

Synergies are famously greater than the sum of their parts, but what does that mean when your parts are blockchain, 5G networks, quantum computers, and advanced artificial intelligence?

DNA computing, however, harnesses these amino acids’ ability to build and assemble itself into long strands of DNA.

It’s why we can say that quantum computing won’t just be transformative, humanity is genuinely approaching nothing short of a technological event horizon.

Quantum computers will only give you a single output, either a value or a resulting quantum state, so their utility solving problems with exponential or factorial time complexity will depend entirely on the algorithm used.

One inefficient algorithm could have kneecapped the Internet before it really got going.

It is now oblivious that there is no going back.

The question now is there anyway of curtailing their power.

This can now only be achieved with the creation of an open source platform where the users control their data rather than it being used and mined.  (The uses can sell their data if the want.)

This platform must be owned by the public, and compete against the existing platforms like face book, twitter, what’s App, etc,   protected by an algorithm that protects the common values of all our lives – the truth. 

Of course it could be designed by using existing algorithms which would defeat its purpose. 

It would be an open net-work of people a kind of planetary mind that has to always be funding biosphere-friendly activities.

A safe harbour perhaps called the New horizon.   A digital United nations where the voices of cooperation could be heard.   

So if by any chance there is a human genius designer out there that could make such a platform he might change the future of all our digitalized lives for the better.   

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com  

 

 

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THE BEADY EYE SAY’S . THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY MUST BE BROUGHT TO HEAL WITH NEW LAWS TO REDUCE CONSUMPTION.

25 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2023 the year of disconnection., Advertising, Advertising industry,  Attention economy, Capitalism, CO2 emissions, Cry for help., Desensitization., Environment, How to do it., Human values., Modern day life., Profiteering., State of the world, Sustaniability, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The world to day., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., VALUES, What is shaping our world., Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Seven minute read)

It is crystal clear that consumption is a major donator to the problems of both the environment and all of us are now facing. There is consistent evidence that exposure to marketing for unhealthy commodities – for example advertising for alcohol or food and drinks high in fat, salt, or sugar – is associated with consumption, including among children and young people.

To confront the climate emergency, the amount we consume needs to drop dramatically. Yet every day we’re told by the advertising industry to consume more.

The purpose of advertising is to boost revenue, gain an advantage over competitors, and build brand awareness, so it latch on to what ever is topical – Climate change – Energy – Sustainability – Cost of living etc.

Now with technology it has billion-dollar persuasion machines, promoting not quality of life but rather quantity of stuff.

It’s woven into our personal communications whenever we use social media platforms. In public spaces, where we have little choice over where we look, adverts are invasive, appearing without our consent, with the trend towards digital billboards only exposes us ever more.

Its so prevalent as to be invisible but with an effect no less insidious than air pollution.

We all have a role to play — from making sustainable choices to help safeguard the ocean and our environment, to urging world and business leaders to take the urgent, widespread, and ambitious action needed to tackle climate change and protect the planet.

———

This is an industry capable of quickly shifting global public opinion, with the power to change hearts, minds and behaviour resulting in action, potentially on a global scale and also with profound and rapid effect.

It must be made to take responsibility for consumption, instead of continuing to drive the high carbon lifestyles and hyper-consumption that is killing us.

If we were to introduce new laws restricting marketing agencies from taking work from clients who aren’t actively reducing their own contributions to climate change, earning money from high carbon clients, the sort of companies from whom the investment community is increasingly divesting; promoting unnecessary and over-consumption, these companies  would eventually be forced to match their green advertising slogans with real green investment.

The questions for the advertising industry would become what are our obligations to tackle climate change i.e. how might we have contributed to climate change and how do we stop doing so, and what are our opportunities i.e. where can we make a positive contribution to the issue?

What other than laws will forced  it to rethink their strategies so the industry will go through a transition period, to discover a purpose beyond profit?

In fact, many would argue that the move to “doing well by doing good” will only become truly mainstream when the corporate social responsibility agenda and the growth agenda become one and the same.

There is no reason that governments could not introduce restricted areas and venues where the advertising of consumption is not allowed.

Buses covered in advertising at London's Piccadilly CircusA billboard advert in Manchester

For example:  Sporting events, Natural Reserves/ Public Park’s, Billboards and bus stops, Out door digital advertising.

We could stop television programming being sponsored by consumption  – Eat now.

Of course in a free society, businesses have the right to advertise their wares, and individual citizens are not the helpless brainless automatons that advertising industry’s considers them to be.

All advertising plays a crucial role in brand competition, drives product innovation, and fuels economic growth but would we not rather see community ads and art than have multi-billion companies putting logos and images everywhere?

If they are allowed to get the message out, the public has a right to reply to those ads.

We don’t want our city’s children bombarded with animated advertising on TV screens in the street.

Critically, the more that people prioritise materialistic values and goals, the less they embrace positive attitudes towards the environment – and the more likely they are to behave in damaging ways. If you think this is a fanciful aim, then you might need to think again with the state the world is in.

We’re in a place where major behaviour change is required.

To question the legitimacy of corporate outdoor adverting and draw attention to the impact they can have on social issues, mental health, wellbeing, the climate, and the communication of public space where governments are too inert/broke/ill-intentioned/in thrall to vested interests to take effective action.

Business leaders must increasingly look beyond short-term profitability to address the pressing need to reduce emissions.

——

.The advertising industry is in a very different place to where it was a year ago.

Where, how, and when you advertise will constantly change with the times. That’s one thing we can count on.

Culture has always defined marketing and brand marketers have a lot of power to dictate.

The rise of the internet, computers, and mobile devices only provided more platforms for video ads to appear. It’s probably still going to be one of the most important advertising trends in the next 5 years.

We have our hands on the levers of behaviour change, but in an era in which attention is often only ever partial, puncturing the collective consumer inertia with a complex message is no easy feat.

We spend every day thinking of ways to change people’s behaviours,

These skills are the ones needed more than ever by the world to halt the human causes of climate change.

——–

Advertising has always evolved with the technology at hand. This includes tracking of clicked links, customer behaviour, purchase history, survey responses, and more.

Marketers can then use that information to create custom messages or content that’ll match the target audiences’ interests.

Finding out which people to show a particular ad to and the right time to show them is crucial in the world of smartphones

Next step, profit.

——-

In a cut-throat and viciously competitive market, pioneering new technology can have a major impact on the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

Another big use of mobile advertising is through games.

A lot of mobile games are created with the format of being able to purchase resources with real-world money.

This means that ads will now be geared towards targeting real people through emails and other registered user data. With more information available, marketers can provide customers with a better offer that’ll most likely translate into sales.

Social advertising is the use of Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and other social media platforms for advertising potentials.

The format itself is undergoing rapid transformation because most people watch for content and not for production quality.

Data collection and cookies naturally have poor public perception, often being viewed as encroaching on private information and stealing data, with ads following consumers around the internet.

Now, these apps aren’t just for sending messages and emoji cause it’s also a place to find advertisements relevant to users.

As the climate crisis bites

————

We need new metrics and measurement tools – and new bonus and remuneration systems to underpin our value systems, not just legislation against high-carbon advertising, focusing on fossil fuel companies, petrol- and diesel-engine cars and aviation.

Because, marketing has been transformed by digital speed, relevance and reach of advertising campaigns.

Because, overconsumption in general, encouraged by advertising, has a climate and ecological impact.

Because, programmatic advertising uses AI to automatically buy ads that can target audiences more specifically. ( Programmatic advertising is a combination of big data processing, technical skills, and automation.)

Because, advertising works by getting under your radar, introducing new ideas without bothering your conscious mind.

Because, contextual advertising is a form of targeted advertising where site content and keywords are analyzed in real time to determine their suitability for a brand’s message.

Because, children are now at the mercy of so-called “surveillance advertising”. It is estimated that by the time a child turns 13, ad-tech firms would have gathered 72m data points on them. The more data collected from an early age, the easier it is for advertisers to turn young children into consumer targets.

A transformation of marketing is underway as we spend more time on our mobiles, tablets and laptops. The real-time conversations brands have with people as they interact with websites and mobile apps has changed the nature of marketing

We know that advertising is a key engine of the economy. There are visual images and marketing messages that have insinuated themselves into the nervous systems of humans.

There’s a long way to go and a lot to be done. The ad business, with strategy tools and processes that were for the most part developed in the 60s to accommodate the advent of commercial TV, is a lot closer to where it started the journey than where it needs to get to.

Let’s create a movement and band together to save the planet in a non-branded or political way.

New checks and balances need to accommodate the natural concerns of councils and residents around climate, air pollution, environmental light pollution, the “attention economy”, mental health and the dominance of non-consensual adverts in public spaces.

I’m sure most advertisers and agencies would rather work on solving this global crisis, and if we can use just 5% of the industry’s time toward this initiative.

It isn’t clickbait that is needed but a genuine concern for the fate of the planet or a cynical hunch that doing the right thing will drive growth and profit – if the improved behaviour is real.

I believe that would lead to greater satisfaction, retention and more.

Break the Silence and comment.

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

Contact; bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT BEGGARS BELIEF AND IS BEYOND PATHETIC THAT WE ARE UNABLE TO FULLY UNDERSTAND THERE WILL BE NO FUTURE WITHOUT NATURE AND IT’S BIODIVERSITY.

16 Sunday Apr 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Climate Change., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Telling the truth., The common good., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Obvious., 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., Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World Politics

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( Twenty-six minute read)

We have heard all of this over and over, but it is impossible to get serious about climate change, because it has been turned into a product to be traded.

The very words Climate Change, Global warming, Biodiversity, Sea levels, Natural disasters, Droughts, Melting  ice, the list goes on and on as a result they are falling on deaf ears. For example  “sustainable development”: a phrase at which many people quietly glaze over and switch off.  Or “Global warming” is another of those deceptive phrases. It doesn’t sound that threatening.

So if words like “climate change” and “global warming” have become a turn-off for most ordinary people, maybe we should change the words.  Perhaps we should talk instead about what those things actually mean:

Killer weather, a world under water, and a mortgaged future.

We have been told for over three decades of the dangers of allowing the planet to warm.

We all know this and we know that it’s urgent. The world listened, but it didn’t hear. The world listened, but it didn’t act strongly enough. It hasn’t been enough to change our behaviours on a scale great enough to stop climate change.

As a result, climate change is a problem that is here, now. Nobody is safe. And it is getting worse faster and faster, till one tipping point is reached causing a rolling coaster of from here to eternity.

There are many tipping points to choose from.

Here is mind. The Arctic Ocean’s ice cover melts.

This is a feedback loop with teeth.

Back in the 50s it was more than ten meters thick, reflecting as much as 3% of the sun’s incoming light back into space.

That light is now heating the Oceans of the Arctic and the Antarctic, both becoming the fastest places on Earth with rising temperatures. Which means a greater and greater release of permafrost carbon and methane, 20 times stronger than Co2.

The Arctic permafrost contains as much methane as all the Earth’s cattle could create over the next six centuries.

If released this fart would push the Earth into an irreversible tipping point at which point the sea level would be 110 meters higher than at present, with the global temperatures 5/6 degrees Celsius higher. At that point civilisation would be over.

One would think that such a scenario would be sufficient to make all of us pay attention but not so.

Why?

A big part of the reason is our own evolution. The same behaviours that once helped us survive are, today, working against us.

We lack the collective will to address climate change, because of the way our brains have evolved. We have evolved to pay attention to immediate threats. We overestimate threats that are less likely but easier to remember, like terrorism, and underestimate more complex threats, like climate change. Too much information can confuse our brains, leading us to inaction or poor choices that can place us in harm’s way.

Our brains evolved to filter information rapidly and focus on what is most immediately essential to our survival and reproduction.

In our modern reality it’s causing errors in rational decision-making, known as cognitive biases. “Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival make it difficult to address complex, long-term challenges that now threaten our existence, like climate change.

  • Hyperbolic discounting. This is our perception that the present is more important than the future. Throughout most of our evolution it was more advantageous to focus on what might kill us or eat us now, not later. This bias now impedes our ability to take action to address more distant-feeling, slower and complex challenges. While we may understand what needs to be done to address climate change, it’s hard for us to see how the sacrifices required for generations existing beyond this short time span are worth it.

Families carry water during a drought in Ethiopia; temperature rise already has altered weather and water systems in profound ways (Credit: Creative Commons)

  • To address the issue of climate change it requires collective action on a scale that exceeds our evolutionary capacities.
  • The larger the group, the more challenging it gets.

The future value is the value of it at some time in the future. The farther into the future we look, the fuzzier our view, but there will be no future unless we invest trillions and trillions into sustainability.

On a warming planet, no one is safe.

The air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all rely on biodiversity.

Unfortunately, we have created a world where an asset from a business perspective, has no value unless it can produce cash flows in the future. The difference in value between the future and the present is created by discounting the future back to the present using a discount factor, which is a function of time that is running out right in front of our eyes.

The world’s ecosystems are capital assets that up to now have escaped valuation and have therefore been mismanaged.

Now they are being bought by rich privateers, together with financial instruments and institutional arrangements that will allow individuals to capture the value of ecosystem assets.  For example, Sovereignty Wealth Funds.  They buy environmental protection, but only by liquidating natural capital (for example, prairies, forests, fisheries) to generate the funds; even “information” economies are built in proportion to such liquidation. The reinvestment in natural capital never equals the amount liquidated because of procedural inefficiency and profit-taking.

—–

The process of valuation in the short term might lead to profoundly favourable effects on the stock market, but the decision of how much to spend now to avert climate changes hinges on assessing how much it is worth to us now to prevent that future damage.

Since most of us would prefer money now, over money later, economists typically figure that we’re willing to spend only less than a dollar now to prevent a dollar’s worth of damage in a year, or in a decade.

The percentage less is called the “social discount rate.”

This implies that we either accept an assumption that many argue is economically unjustified (a near-zero social discount rate), or conclude that we should just accept climate change without much of a fight. (A third alternative is perhaps even less appealing to economists: accepting that their calculations simply can’t illuminate the question.)

We’re much happier to have good stuff now than later, so our short-term discount rate is high.

But we hardly distinguish between goods in the pretty far future and goods in the very far future, so our discount rate in the future is far lower to manage the essentials to life.

Now more than ever we must use the power of the law to fight those who would harm our communities, our climate, and the natural world we value so deeply.

We have an International criminal court, why not use it to fine this lot of polluters.

Peabody Energy

Company summary: Coal company
Based in: Missouri, United States
Founded: 1883
Emissions per capita: 2,231,818 tonnes – or, 449,057 return flights from London to Sydney.

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation

Company summary: Petroleum company
Based in: Kuwait City, Kuwait
Founded: 1980
Emissions per capita: 2,133,248 tonnes – or, 445,354 return flights from London to Sydney

ConocoPhillips

Company summary: Crude oil and natural gas
Based in: Texas, United States
Founded: 1875
Emissions per capita: 1,464,423 tonnes – or, 305,725 return flights from London to Sydney

Chevron

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: California, United States
Founded: 1879
Emissions per capita: 900,218 tonnes – or, 187,936 return flights from London to Sydney

Saudi Aramco

Company summary: Petroleum and natural gas company
Based in: Dhahran, Saudi Arabia
Founded: 1933
Emissions per capita: 750,126 tonnes – or, 150,930 return flights from London to Sydney

ExxonMobil

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: Texas, United States
Founded: 1999
Emissions per capita: 559,412 tonnes – or, 116,787 return flights from London to Sydney

BP

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: London, United Kingdom
Founded: 1909
Emissions per capita: 485,306 tonnes – or, 97,647 return flights from London to Sydney

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)

Company summary: Government-owned national oil and natural gas company
Based in: Tehran, Iran
Founded: 1948
Emissions per capita: 407,542 tonnes – or, 82,000 return flights from London to Sydney

Royal Dutch Shell

Company summary: Oil and gas company
Based in: The Hague, Netherlands
Founded: 1907
Emissions per capita: 384,939 tonnes – or, 77,452 return flights from London to Sydney.

Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965. The worst offenders are investor-owned companies that are household names around the world and spend billions of pounds on lobbying governments and portraying themselves as environmentally responsible.

The top plastic polluting companies

Company Examples of products             Number of countries plastic was found in Pieces of plastic found
Coca-Cola       Coca-Cola, Fanta, Sprite                                            51                                              13,834
Pepsico            Pepsi, Lays, Doritos                                                  43                                              5,155
Nestlé              Nescafé, Kit Kat, Nestea                                           37                                              8,633
Unilever          Persil, Cornetto, Sunsilk                                            37                                              5,558
Mondeléz International  Oreo, Cadbury, Milka                                34                                                1,171
Mars              Mars bars, M&Ms, Snickers                                      32                                                  678
P&G              Tampax, Pantene, Ariel                                              29                                              3,535
Philip Morris International  Parliament, Merit, Marlboro               28                                                2,593
Colgate Palmolive  Colgate Palmolive                                           24                                              5,991
Colgate, Ajax, Palmolive
Perfetti          Mentos, Chupa Chups, Fruittella                             24                                                465

It’s important to remember that, as a consumer, you do have the power to change the future of these polluting companies. As more people switch to renewable energy, cut down on plastic, and live a little more sustainably, these polluting companies will have no choice but to change their habits to stay on trend.

Economists develop new methods to quantify the trade-off between spending now and spending later.

To figure out how much we should spend fighting climate change, economists have some questions for you:

The health of the planet may hinge on the answers.

Most economic analyses of climate change have concluded that we should be spending only small amounts to combat climate change now, ramping up slowly over time. This conclusion mystifies most climate scientists, who argue that immediate action is the only way to forestall dreadful consequences. And at the heart of the disagreement are these very questions, about the value of future generations’ welfare in monetary terms.

The worst consequences of climate change are likely to unfold only over decades or centuries — in other words, in our children’s or grandchildren’s or great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren’s lifetimes, not ours.

The higher the price payed, also equates with a higher level of risk, which generates a higher discount and lowers the present value of any action.  The higher the level of risk is represented as beta in the capital asset pricing model, means a higher discount, which lowers the present value of  nature.

Discounting is the primary factor used in pricing a stream of tomorrow’s crises. .

By reiterating the importance of the world’s natural capital to the human prospect, the next step, is to focus on stabilizing the scale of human economy.  This requires taking on the advertising industry that is promoting consumption. It should be illegal to advertise any product that is not sustainable in their manufacture. Put restrictions on all advertising that is in contradiction to health of not just us, but the earth.  It has become a voracious top predator across the entire globe.

—

Biodiversity?

It is the variety of life on Earth, in all its forms and all its interactions. Bio means living, and diversity is the variety of life on earth. It represents different relationships (like ecological, cultural, or evolutionary) between several types of organisms on this planet. All living beings on from human beings to the tiny creatures like microbes combined to form Biodiversity.

Starting with genes, then individual species, then communities of creatures and finally entire ecosystems, such as forests or coral reefs, where life interplays with the physical environment. These myriad interactions have made Earth habitable for billions of years.

Wildlife is not something you watch on television. The reality is that the air you breathe, the water you drink and the food you eat all ultimately rely on biodiversity.

It represents the knowledge learned by evolving species over millions of years about how to survive through the vastly varying environmental conditions Earth has experienced. We all interdependent with one another. Hence each species plays an essential role to boost ecosystem productivity.

Some examples are obvious: without plants there would be no oxygen and without bees to pollinate there would be no fruit or nuts.

Humans and our livestock now consume 25-40% of the planet’s entire “primary production”, i.e. the energy captured by plants on which all biodiversity depends.

The intricate jigsaw of life, constructed over hundreds of millions of years, has been thrown into disarray in the last 10,000 years by humans relocating species around the world. These invasive species can devastate ecosystems that have never developed defences – from rats devouring albatross chicks in their nests to snakehead fish decimating native species.

If money is a measure, the services provided by ecosystems are estimated to be worth trillions of dollars – double the world’s GDP. Biodiversity loss in Europe alone costs the continent about 3% of its GDP, or €450m (£400m), a year.

From an aesthetic point of view, every one of the millions of species is unique, a natural work of art that cannot be recreated once lost. “Each higher organism is richer in information than a Caravaggio painting, a Bach fugue, or any other great work,”

The extinction rate of species is now thought to be about 1,000 times higher than before humans dominated the planet, which may be even faster than the losses after a giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs 65m years ago. The sixth mass extinction in geological history has already begun, according to some scientists.

The results are scary.

Humans can’t have power over nature in nature.

—–

Despite the fact that natural resources are limited and take millions of years in the formation, the human is exploiting them for their endless greed and comfort.

Species extinction provides a clear but narrow window on the destruction of biodiversity.

The huge global biodiversity losses now becoming apparent represent a crisis equalling – or quite possibly surpassing – climate change.

Billions of individual populations have been lost all over the planet, with the number of animals living on Earth having plunged by half since 1970. Abandoning the normally sober tone of scientific papers, researchers call the massive loss of wildlife a “biological annihilation” representing a “frightening assault on the foundations of human civilisation”.

Humans may lack gills but that has not protected marine life. The situation is no better – and perhaps even less understood – in the two-thirds of the planet covered by oceans. Seafood is the critical source of protein for more than 2.5 billion people but rampant overfishing has caused catches to fall steadily since their peak in 1996 and now more than half the ocean is industrially fished.

Even much-loathed parasites are important. One-third could be wiped out by climate change, making them among the most threatened groups on Earth. But scientists warn this could destabilise ecosystems, unleashing unpredictable invasions of surviving parasites into new areas.

Today, 75% of the world’s food comes from just a dozen crops and five animal species, leaving supplies very vulnerable to pests or disease that can sweep through large areas of monocultures. Add in the falling yields expected from climate change, and the world’s growing global population faces a food problem.

Locating the tipping point that moves biodiversity loss into ecological collapse is an urgent priority. This being the only living world we are ever likely to know, let us join to make the most of it.

Could the loss of biodiversity be a greater threat to humanity than climate change?

Yes – nothing on Earth is experiencing more dramatic change at the hands of human activity.

Changes to the climate are reversible, even if that takes centuries or millennia.

That call is more urgent than ever. Our posterity is running out of chances.

But once species become extinct, particularly those unknown to science, there’s no going back. To put the matter as concisely as possible, biological diversity is unique in the evenness of its importance to both developed and developing countries is beyond any technical advances.

To spread technical capability where it is most needed, arrangements can be made to retain specimens within the countries of their origin while training nationals to assume leadership in systematics and the related scientific disciplines. Science is the best way to establish links with other cultures because it is concerned not with ideology but with nature and humanity’s relation to nature.

Cognitive biases that ensured our initial survival now make it difficult to address long-term challenges that threaten our existence, like climate change.

It is already clear enough that the missing ingredient is political will.

For example

Recognising the power of small groups.

Humans are more likely to change behaviour when challenges are framed positively, instead of negatively. In other words, how we communicate about climate change influences how we respond.  To get people to act, we need to make the issue feel direct and personal by focusing the issue locally, pointing both to local impacts and local solutions: Like moving one’s city to 100% renewable energy.

The key is having a large-scale, organised effort – but one supported and understood by hundreds of smaller groups and communities.

It’s true that no other species has evolved to create such a large-scale problem – but no other species has evolved with such an extraordinary capacity to solve it, either.  If academia, business, government, and citizens act together toward this common goal, we can create a pollution-free energy system; form a prosperous, adaptable and resilient society; keep human, animal, and plant life flourishing; and create a better world for ourselves and generations to come.

We can’t undo the mistakes of the past. But this generation of political and business leaders, this generation of conscious citizens, can make things right. This generation can make the systemic changes that will stop the planet warming, help everyone adapt to the new conditions and create a world of peace, prosperity and equity.

The world is now experiencing the early effects of climate change.

The overall effect of inadequate actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is creating a human rights catastrophe, and the costs of these climate change related disasters are already enormous. The Colorado river in the USA is drying up, the ice shelf is the Antarctic is melting, the glaciers in the Himalayas are melting five time faster. Somali is no the threshold of a Famine.

—–

If we don’t act, who will?

We have evolved to be able to stop human-induced climate change. Now we must act.

The risk that without intervention we could cross a threshold leading to runaway climate change. An inconvenient truth.

To save natural resources and to bring a change we have to change our habits that exploit our natural resources and directly or indirectly.

If you could ask one question of Global Leader.

What is the main motivation of your leadership?

Which competencies do you see as instrumental to develop in global leaders in order for them to thrive in this new world?

The key to multicultural leadership is in understanding the difference between intent and impact, as well as engaging in supportive interactions that cultivate a nurturing environment.

Sitting in Davis/ G20  ivory tower’s ONE cannot develop global mindset.

“The secret to success is sincerity. Learn to fake that, and you’ve got it made.”

Feel free to add your question.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S FAR TO LATE TO CONTROL AI.

01 Saturday Apr 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Artificial Intelligence., Dehumanization., Democracy., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Disaster Capitalism., Fake News., Fourth Industrial Revolution., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human Exploration., Human values., Humanity., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Our Common Values., Post - truth politics., Purpose of life., Reality., Robot citizenship., Social Media Regulation., State of the world, Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Technology., The essence of our humanity., The Future, The Internet., The metaverse., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., TRACKING TECHNOLOGY., Unanswered Questions., VALUES, VIRTUAL REALITY., What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World

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( Six minute read)

Why?

Because the change is already taking place.

Because,  There are now more cell phones in the world than people. There were less than 7% of the world on online in 2000, today over half the global population has access to the internet.

Because, technology has already radically transformed our societies and our daily lives, from smartphones to social media and healthcare. Technology touches nearly everything we do.

Because, your voice, your image, your race, your shopping habits, your health, your movement’s, your viewing habits, your voting, your financial standing, your criminal record, your interests, your decision making, down to what you are eating, not forgetting your sex life is and has being harvest for free.

All can be and are being faked.

Because, virtual interactions offers enticing financial opportunities for big businesses and digitalized Governments.

——-

Excessive use of technology can do more harm than good, and we should bear this in mind before we rush into digitizing our lives.

When all areas of human activity get rapidly digitized, it’s easy to become desensitized to the importance of innovations and advancements for the overall progress of society. Though it may be tough to predict which advancements technology would bring next, some innovations are already changing our beliefs about the world around us.

The coming generations will be living in a mixture of reality and the metaverse. Using headsets to create a  3D avatar – a representation of themselves –  to enter a virtual world connecting all sorts of digital environments. Perhaps when they go online shopping, they will be able too try on digital clothes first, and then order them to arrive in the real world.

A virtual economy of inequality.  Nowhere does the intersection of technology, enterprises and individuals hold greater opportunity than in the metaverse.

If it happens at all – will be fought among tech giants for the next decade, or maybe even longer.

———-

The Metaverse doesn’t exist – at least not yet, but there no way of predicting how people will react to it, or how it will be used.

( Everything transformed into line of code, augmenting reality by superimposing a computer-generated image on a user’s view of the real world. You have an experience while wearing another person’s body and you get to walk a mile in that person’s shoes.)

The next generation of the internet has the power to reshape the way that businesses and consumers engage, transact, socialize, work and learn together exploring the world on their own terms.

As of today, there isn’t anything that could legitimately be identified as a metaverse. The metaverse is essentially a massive, interconnected network of virtual spaces,

A better question might be:

What could become the metaverse?

Something that people would have considered magic just a few decades ago is now gaining popularity in business, gaming, and team building.

The combination of augmented, virtual and mixed reality – will play an important role.

The distinction between being offline and online will be much harder to delineate. So we either end up in a situation where it’s complete chaos and everyone’s allowed to do everything and you know, there’s racism, sexism, abuse and all that kind of stuff, or there’s incredibly tight moderation and no one’s allowed to do anything.

Wearable screens and gesture-based computing, other recent innovations, are predicted to soon substitute the usual PC and phone screens.

A red-haired woman wears the Oculus Quest 2 headset in white, holding two controllers

——-

Robots, another buzzword in today’s business world, have already replaced humans in some workplaces — robotic arms work at assembly or packing lines. Flying cars will soon address the issue of limited ground space and long traffic jams.

Clearly, technology by itself is neither good nor bad. It is only the way and extent to which we use it that matters.

It is indisputable that thanks to technology, we get a chance to live a life our predecessors could not even dream about.

But do all tech advancements bring sole good to our lives?

Or, maybe, the impact of tech innovations is quite ambiguous.

We are all at the mercy of machine learning algorithms, that are non transparent, non accountable, and non regulated.

So we have an open letter from those on High in the Tec world,  advocating that the brakes should be applied to the creation of new tech that generates falsehood’s. You dont have to be a Tech genius to know that this is not going to happen.

My advice is.

To protect oneself.

Every person should have a secret verification word in order to authenticate the caller and a symbol to be used in all texts and emails, that if not present in any communication received or sent,  marks it as False.

——–

All of which begs the question: just why is the 21st century so dystopian?

A few years ago, you might have thought: this is just a phase. It’ll pass. But it’s not. If anything, it’s getting worse, and it feels like it’s here to stay.

When I say “it”, or “dystopia,” you might wonder exactly, precisely what I mean. What I mean is very simple though. How many crises do we face? More than I can easily count. Let’s try to list them all, though we’ll run out of sanity and room before we finish, for sure. Finances? Total crisis, incomes falling around the world, debt levels soaring. Infrastructure? Mega-crisis, unless you think the infrastructure we have survives this century, let alone this decade. Social systems? Everywhere from France to Britain to America — crisis. People’s…minds? Crisis, especially in young people, depression and anxiety and suicide rates soaring. Then there are the big ones: climate change and mass extinction, not to mention politics , which has taken a notably…fascist…turn, again.

All of this is what scholars have begun to call The age of Polycrises.  And in it, the better question isn’t: “what’s in crisis?

It’s: what isn’t?

Like I said, the list above is a mere brief beginning. Migration and refugees? Another one. Peace and democracy? Yup, in crisis.

How about upward mobility? Check. Faith and confidence in institutions? Super crisis. Take a look at any element of society or the world, and chances are, it’s in crisis. How about inequality? Shocking levels of crisis.

This is why the 21st century feels so dystopian.

It’s not really a “feeling,” though that’s the way it’s often made out to be by media. It’s an empirical reality. Scholars have begun to conceptualize the 21st century as a “Polycrisis” for a reason, which is that the dystopia is real.

So when media, bigwigs, wannabe intellectuals and so forth, make all this out to be exaggeration, hyperbole, imply that you are the fainting Victorian bride in the room, because, hey, Tucker!! Everything’s Great!!…they’re completely wrong. And that needs to be said. It’s a form of denialism at this point, because…

The next part is about cause and effect. We need, as a civilization and a world, to figure out what’s causing all this, so we can begin to undo it. But if all we do is deny it…then, my friends, our gooses are well and cooked.  It’s fascism on a dying planet, in different bitter and poisonous flavours, maybe.

ITS NOW AGI. ( Artificial General Intelligence) Already it is transforming every walk of life.

AI is not a futuristic vision, but rather something that is here today and being integrated with and deployed into a variety of sectors.

There are numerous examples where AI already is making an impact on the world and augmenting human capabilities in significant ways. This includes fields such as finance, national security, health care, criminal justice, transportation, and smart cities, digital education, decision making, democracy’s.

Artificial intelligence algorithms are designed to make decisions, often using real-time data. They are unlike passive machines that are capable only of mechanical or predetermined responses. Using sensors, digital data, or remote inputs, they combine information from a variety of different sources, analyse the material instantly, and act on the insights derived from those data. With massive improvements in storage systems, processing speeds, and analytic techniques, they are capable of tremendous sophistication in analysis and decision making.

———-

These software systems “make decisions which normally require [a] human level of expertise” and help people anticipate problems or deal with issues as they come up. As such, they operate in an intentional, intelligent, and adaptive manner

AI generally is undertaken in conjunction with machine learning and data analytics. Machine learning takes data and looks for underlying trends. If it spots something that is relevant for a practical problem, software designers can take that knowledge and use it to analyse specific issues. All that is required are data that are sufficiently robust that algorithms can discern useful patterns. Data can come in the form of digital information, satellite imagery, visual information, text, or unstructured data.

AI systems have the ability to learn and adapt as they make decisions. In the transportation area, for example, semi-autonomous vehicles have tools that let drivers and vehicles know about upcoming congestion, potholes, highway construction, or other possible traffic impediments. Vehicles can take advantage of the experience of other vehicles on the road, without human involvement, and the entire corpus of their achieved “experience” is immediately and fully transferable to other similarly configured vehicles. Their advanced algorithms, sensors, and cameras incorporate experience in current operations, and use dashboards and visual displays to present information in real time so human drivers are able to make sense of ongoing traffic and vehicular conditions. And in the case of fully autonomous vehicles, advanced systems can completely control the car or truck, and make all the navigational decisions.

If we don’t want to end up as deglazed digital citizens here’s what should be done.

  • Regulate broad AI principles rather than specific algorithms,
  • Take bias complaints seriously so AI does not replicate historic injustice, unfairness, or discrimination in data or algorithms,
  • Maintain mechanisms for human oversight and control, and
  • Penalize malicious AI behaviour and promote cybersecurity.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. ARE WE ALL FOOLING OURSELVES IN THINKING THAT THE WAR IN THE UKRAINE IS NOT GOING TO SPREAD.

20 Monday Feb 2023

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2023 the year of disconnection., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, The cost of war., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Ukraine/ Russia., Ukraine/Russian war., Unanswered Questions., United Nations, War, Wars, WHAT IS TRUTH

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( Seventeen minute read)

I don’t have to tell you that wars expose the barbarity in all of us.

They say that its impossible to deal with Mr Putin. Call him what you like there have been many like him that have come and gone that did almost anything to survive in power.

Most probably during the next week we will observe the intensification of the Russian military aggression in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as well as the rest of Ukraine.

A Russian tank enters a region controlled by Moscow-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. (Nanna Heitmann—Magnum Photos)

War by its nature is unpredictable.

Whether a larger war happens will depend partly on President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions, partly on the West’s military response, and partly on plain luck.

Aside from the risk of an unintended or unexpected incident, like a missile that goes astray along Ukraine’s western border, fired by either Russia or the Ukraine or a nuclear accident at the Zaporizhzhya nuclear power plant (which demands more action) the war could be catapult into a disaster beyond belief.

The question everyone has to ask—if this is going to be a large-scale war, if there is Ukrainian resistance and the conflict is prolonged over years—is whether the fighting can be contained to Ukraine or whether it will spill over into the rest of Europe.

You don’t have to be a  military general, or strategists to know that the more fuel you put on a fire the hotter it gets and the more likely it will spread.

Weapons might have changed, but wars have not, they run their course till there is no one left to kill, or to be killed, or the combating get sick of the killing and opt for peace.

What past wars tell us about how to Save Ukraine?Photo: SERGEY BOBOK/AFP/Getty Images

Most conflict since the end of the Second World War tends to involve counterinsurgency campaigns and proxy wars, making large-scale invasions—like what is currently happening in Ukraine—rare events.

Wars that end within a month last on average eight days, and 44 percent end in a ceasefire or peace agreement.

When interstate wars last longer than a year, they extend to over a decade on average, resulting in sporadic clashes.

Why?

Because the longer a war lasts with absent concessions by both parties, the more likely it is to escalate into a protracted conflict, despite the bravery of the Ukrainian people in the face of Russian aggression, that is a dangerous prospect.

The refugee crisis will grow. More civilians will die. Russia will become even more paranoid and irrational.

Mr Putin could declare Western arms supplies to Ukrainian forces are an act of aggression that warrant retaliation. He could threaten to send troops into the Baltic states – which are members of NATO – such as Lithuania, to establish a land corridor with the Russian coastal exclave of Kaliningrad.

This would be hugely dangerous and risk war with NATO. (Under Article 5 of the military alliance’s charter, an attack on one member is an attack on all.) But Mr Putin might take the risk if he felt it was the only way of saving his leadership. If he was, perhaps, facing defeat in Ukraine, he might be tempted to escalate further.

What is needed is a viable diplomatic offramp that addresses the concerns of all parties.

The time for crisis diplomacy is now.

How this might be achieved?

This is about Russia wanting to restore a sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space, and particularly about Putin wanting Russia to reabsorb Ukraine. Russia doesn’t just want a neutral Ukraine. It’s also demanding that Ukraine formally give up Crimea and parts of the Donbas.

Amid the fog of war, it can be hard to see the way forward or potential outcomes. Most are bleak.

The sense of outrage and injustice on the part of Ukraine will be difficult to overcome.

Moscow demands recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, the “states” in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region recognised by Russia at the outset of the conflict. Their supposed independence was cynically used by Russia to argue a right of self-defence of these purportedly sovereign states.

Perhaps if the Ukraine we to offer a form of “asymmetrical federation,” would see overall claims of statehood abandoned, but areas – or Oblasts – within the Donbas that have ethnic or linguistic majorities be given greatly enhanced local self-governance.

A settlement that keeps them as Ukrainian provinces but in an environment of self-government – almost virtual statehood, offering plenty of autonomy to both districts yet keeping them within Ukraine’s sovereign territory.

This could be balanced by internationally guaranteed rights to genuine local elections and safeguards for the right of minority populations – whether Russian speaking or Ukrainian.” with cross-border links to the Russian Federation to placate separatist groups.

However, Ukraine must not suffer de-facto division forever more as a consequence of turning the invasion into a frozen conflict. The Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian people who must have their sovereignty, their independence and their territorial integrity. It is vital the Ukrainian government is not pressured into accepting outcomes that reward a war of aggression.

So after an agreed period of lets say twenty years the asymmetrical federation decides by Referendum to stay as such, or join Russia or Ukraine.

During these twenty years providing Russians return to negotiations on limitations of intermediate-range nuclear weapons (and providing there is no further conflict ) NATO agrees to stop its enlargement, as part of “confidence-building”

Till than nuclear arms controlled by the United States remain in Europe.

NATO is a defensive alliance.

NATO’s world view is simple. The world is divided between two kinds of states. Those that defend something called a “rules-based international order,” called democracies, and those who don’t know what on earth they’re talking about, called authoritarians. The remedy for this unfortunate condition is of course, always more NATO.

(NATO holds its expansion to be a sacred right. It has spread across 14 countries of the former Eastern bloc to the borders of Russia. It has brought war to Europe by encircling a country that suffered about 27 million deaths the last time panzers rolled from the West.)

Ukraine is not a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but it borders four nations that are—Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania. Biden and other NATO allies have pledged to protect their eastern and central European members under the NATO treaty’s mutual defence commitments.

For Ukraine to give up its ambitions to join NATO, since that has long been a Russian red line.

I think what we’ll ultimately arrive at is something that satisfies no one, but at least is better than a hot war.

When Putin first came to power, his forces levelled the Chechen capital, Grozny, in order to recapture it. And more recently, Russian forces helped the Syrian government besiege cities and towns, a strategy now playing out in Ukraine. The war has sparked some protests inside of Russia, but don’t expect a popular uprising in a country that is imposing an Iron Curtain. You would have had a hard time convincing  Russians them that there country has actually invading Ukraine.

We that is the west are not going to invade Russia to effect an regime change, its not a realistic policy goal.

Why?

Because changing the regime in Russia and doing our utmost to weaken the Russian state, you cannot do that and claim that you are actually acting in the interest of the Ukrainian people because you’re not.

You are condemning them to an endless war for U.S. geopolitical purposes. There is nothing moral about that – nothing.

Where are we with the war.?

No matter how this conflict plays out, the world has changed.

It will not return to the status quo ante. Russia’s relationship with the outside world will be different. European attitudes to security will be transformed. And the liberal, international rules-based order might just have rediscovered what it was for in the first place.

This is now a proxy war “to weaken Russia” is destroying Ukraine, impoverishing Europe, and escalating, without an off-ramp, it has all the hall marks of spreading into an all-out war that threatens all of humanity with nuclear annihilation.

The bloc politics of NATO is, from the perspective of those who recall the tender mercies of its European and Japanese practitioners, nothing but the politics of imperialism in a world it no longer comprehends.

Putin will not deliberately extend an offensive beyond Ukraine unless he believed Biden would be unwilling to go to war to defend NATO allies, however he will retaliate in the cyber world, broadening the conflict quickly and dangerously.

A Russian takeover of Ukraine would deliver a blow to European order like none since World War II.

After the most recent wars with American involvement the United States will not get drawn into it unless it is dragged by NATO.

——————

In all ages war has been an important topic of analysis.

In the latter part of the 20th century, in the aftermath of two World Wars and in the shadow of nuclear, biological, and chemical holocaust, more was written on the subject than ever before. Endeavours to understand the nature of war, to formulate some theory of its causes, conduct, and prevention, are of great importance, for theory shapes human expectations and determines human behaviour.

Utilizing psychological approaches emphasize the significance of psychological maladjustments or complexes and of false, stereotyped images held by decision makers of other countries and their leaders.

This is insufficient because man behaves differently in different social contexts and nearly all wars are wage against the wishes of peacefully inclined people.

The ideal of the nation-state is never fully achieved. In no historical case does one find all members of a particular nation gathered within one state’s boundaries.

There is no rational basis for deciding on the extent to which the self-determination principle should be applied in allowing national minorities to break away.

As a rule, the majority group violently opposes the breakaway movement with violent conflicts ensue and, through foreign involvement, turn into international wars.

Nationalism not only induces wars but, through the severity of its influence, makes compromise and acceptance of defeat more difficult.

Although industrialists in all the technologically advanced systems are undoubtedly influential in determining such factors as the level of armaments to be maintained, it is difficult to assume that their influence is or could be decisive when actual questions concerning war or peace are being decided by politicians.

Improving the rationality of the decision making of individual states through a better understanding of the international environment, through eliminating misperceptions and irrational fears, and through making clear the full possible costs of engaging in war and the full destructiveness of an all-out war, possible in our age.

War can only be abolished by a full-scale world government.

Of course the likelihood of this happing is zero. 

The complex phenomenon of war represents a potential calamity of such a magnitude that all theorists must endeavour to understand it and to apply their understanding to the prevention and mitigation of war with all the means at their disposal.

Yes, as many as 200 million people may have died in wars throughout the 1900s, but roughly 10 billion lives were lived during that period. One may argue that this has merely been a matter of food production outpacing the production of assault rifles, so that violence has not so much been suppressed as overwhelmed by science.

Keep in mind, though, that these optimistic scenarios and others may, among other things, be products of their times. For we still live in the relatively benign aftermath of World War II, in which the greatest interstate war in history has led to 70 years without interstate war between the great powers.

We have a world full of beauty, with inherent call to protect that which is true, good, and beautiful.

Humanity after millennia of war may reach a culmination point, in which the number of humans killed by other humans continues to drop dramatically.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE LOOKS AT THE STATE OF THE WORLD. THE GOOD. THE BAD. AND THE UGLY.

31 Monday Oct 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Aid, Civilization., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, The Microchip., The state of the World., The world to day., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , Twitter, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage., World Leaders, World View.

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( Fifteen minute read)

We all know that Global leaders face formidable challenges, from dizzying technological progress and geopolitical tension to climate change to growing inequality but ours is an age of culture wars, identity politics, nationalism and geopolitical rivalry, all driven by smartphones.

An age of division, within and among countries with a global downturn that has meant that many of the foundation stones that we used to mark adulthood no longer exist.

This means international treaties and agreements must be framed or reworked to be sensitive to these requirements, including those relating to trading rules, investment agreements, intellectual property regimes and not world aid budgets becoming trickles of political conscious. 

Monetary and financial policies need to be reoriented, to encourage greater inclusion of those excluded and to make the financial system one that provides financial security.

Of course the likely hood of achieving any of this in our life times is zero, and will remain so, till our goals in education changes from  needles consumption towards non-material goals, to protect the earth which we all rely on for life.

Indeed extreme wealth now needs to be eliminated and replaced by extreme generosity.

Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the survival of an overarching concept of “one world” seemed at least conceivable, however difficult. But wars are transformative. The primacy of economics can no longer be assumed.

While technology continues its transformative march the Earth’s ecological and human systems are in severe crisis.

Although there is a wealth of information available, much of it is fragmented and the convergence of issues facing the earth are so interrelated that most of them cannot be fully understood out of context.10 Things Going On In The World Right Now That You Need To Know About

So here is some of that context:

THE UGLY:

33% of the world’s people live under authoritarian, non-democratic regimes.

On any given day at any given moment in your life, there are at least 15 wars and armed conflicts actively going on all around the world. Most are dismissed, forgotten, ignored and under-reported while the world stays busy looking the other way.

Civilians are being murdered, tortured and displaced due to terrorism, government instability and human rights violations. When these wars are completely forgotten and ignored, each and every death is even more tragic.

Over 100 million people live in slums.

3 billion of the world’s people (one-half) live in ‘poverty’ (living on less than $2 per day).

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th’s of the world’s people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid

The richest 1% of the world’s people earned as much income as the bottom 57%. The wealth of the world’s 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet.

17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.

Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide.

1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd’s of the world’s population will face water scarcity.

3.4 million people died prematurely as a result of outdoor air pollution.

The development and release of genetically engineered organisms and their products has proceeded globally at a rapid rate.

Millions of patents are in process and all living creatures are considered potential candidates for genetic modification and cultivation as bio-factories for human purposes and profit.

An estimated 27 million people are enslaved around the world, including an estimated 20 million people held in bonded labour (forced to work in order to pay off a debt, also known as ‘debt bondage’)..

700,000 people annually, and up to 2 million, mostly women and children, are victims of human trafficking worldwide (a modern form of slavery — bought, sold, transported and held against their will in slave-like conditions)..

About 246 million, or 1 out of 6, children ages 5 to 17 worldwide are involved in child labour.

275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world’s adults are illiterate.

Half of the forests that originally covered 46% of the Earth’s land surface are gone.

Between 10 and 20 percent of all species will be driven to extinction in the next 20 to 50 years. 60% of the world’s coral reefs, which contain up to one-fourth of all marine species, could be lost in the next 20-40 years.

Bee numbers decreasing worldwide,

Global warming is expected to increase the Earth’s temperature by 3C (5.4F) in the next 100 years.

There are over 45 million refugees and internally displaced people in the world.

Desertification and land degradation threaten nearly one-quarter of the land surface of the globe.

Over 70,000 new chemicals have been brought into commercial production and released to the environment in the last 100 years.

Higher sea level (a consequence of climate change), particularly in low lying areas, will contaminate groundwater by pushing to the surface toxic substances that have been underground for many years.

THE BAD:.

Global co-operation remains essential. However deep the rifts become, we share this planet. We still need to avoid cataclysmic wars, economic collapse and, above all, destruction of the environment. None of this is at all likely without at least a minimum level of co-operation. Yet is that at all likely?  No.

Given the immense political and organisational challenges, the chances that humanity will prevent damaging climate change are slim.

The whole human race will run out of ‘Patience’ 

Smartphone is now ‘the place where we live’ however free speech is a power now being bought by the rich – Twitter – Elton Musk who will not ensure that unless it is controlled it will be offensive to someone.

Microchip technology has modified existing patterns of human activities such as personal, social, political, and economic spheres.

However making the production process safer for the environment might be the hardest problem they have faced.

Every microchip is a metropolis.

Unfortunately, like every city, these chips consume an immense amount of resources and generate truckloads of waste. The microchip is essentially made from sand—albeit sand that has been melted, purified, and refined until it is over 99.9999 percent pure silicon. Overall, a microchip is a structure that stands in abject defiance of the second law of thermodynamics: It creates a region of extreme order from a whole lot of chaos, and that does require a lot of energy.

The comforts of modern life gifted by these wonder chips come at the expense of a vast amount of resources.

One or more microchips runs every one of the 40 billion connected devices currently in use—a figure that’s expected to jump to 350 billion by 2030.

They have created a storm of microchip embedded devices which affect our daily lives.

There is enough depleted uranium in the world.

THE GOOD:

Even though it may feel there hasn’t been much uplifting news lately, there are still a lot of reasons to be optimistic.

The smartphone is changing the world, its vastly different uses are reducing corruption, enabling transparency, making it possible to document both good and evil political debate.

We’re close to eradicating some diseases, a vaccine against Malaria is one step closer.  Cancer deaths are dropping.

More and more people are moving to alternative media sources in order to find truth. We are seeing this happening in real time.

There is amazing amounts of information are at everyone’s fingertips, and instantaneous communication to almost anywhere is essentially free. We all live our lives awake and a sleep, in small bubble of self  awareness, unaffected or detached or deceived by a politically noxious combination of lies as to what is happing around us, till it comes home to roost, then its to late.

The word apocalypse has its roots in the Latin word apocalypses, meaning to uncover. That is what we are experiencing right now—the uncovering or revealing of the truth. The sooner we all come together to embrace this, the sooner it will become our reality.

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Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WILL RUSSIA INVADING UKRAINE LEAD TO WW3?

16 Sunday Oct 2022

Posted by in #whatif.com, 2022: The year we need to change., Human Collective Stupidity., Mr Putin., Our Common Values., Reality., Russia / Ukraine ., RUSSIA/ UKRAINE/ US/ NATO/ EU., Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Telling the truth., The cost of war., The state of the World., The Ukraine., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, War, We can leave a legacy worthwhile., Where's the Global Outrage.

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No one knows and no one wants to find out.

Let’s cut right to the chase here:

The only certainty about the war over Ukraine is that all existing certainties have been shattered.

If one listens to main media it would be fair to say that it is in a warp way encouraging Mr Putin to use nuclear weapons, ( not that he needs encouragement )

So how worried should you be?   How does this end?

It is difficult to see how Putin “wins.” But he cannot accept defeat.

As long as there is no direct conflict between Russia and NATO then there is no reason for this crisis, bad as it is, to descend into a full-scale world war.

Is this true?

It’s always hard to predict what Mr. Putin is going to do, and anyone who says they know him really well … would not be telling you the complete truth.”

The hard facts are that this has now developed into a NATO backed war.

So what are the likely outcomes?

The spectrum of possible outcomes ranges from a volatile new cold or hot war involving the United States, Russia, and China; to a frozen conflict in Ukraine; to a post-Putin settlement in which Russia becomes part of a revised European security architecture.

That is as honest an assessment as anyone who isn’t Vladimir Putin can give you.

But the wild card here is the state of Putin’s mind.

The whole idea after the Second World War was we’re going to try to set up a system whereby we live in a world in which big countries cannot just decide we’re going to send in our military and take this territory that belongs to this other country has never worked.

There is almost zero mutual trust remaining between Russia and the West.

While the conflict is tragic for the Ukrainian people, it’s unlikely to lead to World War III because, at the moment, it appears that no world leaders want it to escalate to that degree, and efforts are being made to make sure fighting stays within Ukraine’s borders.

There are three major factors that make Europe today different from in the 1930s and ’40s and could prevent World War III.

The first is the NATO alliance.

The second factor is the presence of nuclear weapons.

The third is that the Ukraine is not a NATO member, so there is no formal obligation to come to its defence.

Where is this war going to go is however the big question keeping the world on edge:

It is fair to say that China or the USA would not allow their countries to be surrounded by nuclear missiles.

So be in now doubt that intellectual laziness, historical amnesia and dishonesty will take lives in the years to come.

History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.” – Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) or to quote the late Norman Mailer, “Whatever else it is, history is a bitch.”

There is a saying that nothing unites a country better than being invaded by an enemy but Putin’s actions have far-reaching implications for global politics and democracy.

This is a dangerous backdrop against which to have a blazing public row over who is to blame for the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

Europeans need to ask themselves hard questions. Are they willing to confront Russia? Is Russia going to challenge the borders of NATO? And how should Europe respond?

The immediate question is how to diminish Russia’s ability to threaten its neighbours.

The West’s political, economic, and military posture toward Russia is obviously in a state of flux at the moment. As a result unlike the Soviet Union, Russia is no longer a global competitor to the United States and there is no strong ideological component that unifies and divides the international community with regard to Russia.

Rather, what we see is a revisionist Russia (with somewhat limited capabilities to project force beyond its borders) that is challenging core principles of the international community.

So we have a long and potentially very unsettled period ahead of us that no radiation will cure.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS. WHAT IN TODAYS WORLD IS THE VALUE OF A HUMAN LIFE?

23 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Algorithms.,  Attention economy, Capitalism, Civilization., Dehumanization., Fourth Industrial Revolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human Exploration., Inequality, Life., Modern day life., Modern day Slavery, Money in Politics., Our Common Values., Profiteering., State of the world, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., Unanswered Questions., Universal values., VALUES, What is shaping our world., What Needs to change in the World, World Economy.

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( Five minute read)

A profoundly ethical issue.

“What makes a life worth living?” “What is a life worth? ” are both questions that nobody can answer and should perhaps remain unanswered.

These questions once came pre-answered—by culture, by religion, by tradition—but these days, because of capitalism we each have to ask and answer for ourselves, with an answer not in poetic words or any words but an answer in pounds and pence or dollars and cents.

The “real question today is not when human life begins, but, what is the value of human life?”

The task of valuing life has many competing truths with no simple answer.

“Price tags are being continuously placed on our lives. If we care about equity, we need to ensure that the science behind these estimates is not oversold and that fairness is always a consideration when cost-benefit analysis is performed.”

Howard Steven Friedman

Valuing some lives more than others seems logical and natural to many of us.

We value human life in a way that assumes we possess a sacred something.

Aristotle concluded that we should value human life, due to our inherent capacity for reason.

So what reasons can we give for calling human life valuable?

The question’s complexity resides in the fact that how we arrive at a price tag on human life says a great deal about our priorities. A lot of the value we attribute to human life comes from religion. However, when you remove religion, what philosophical arguments are left?

This is were it gets tricky.

The philosopher’s job is not to accept the assumed inheritance of our forebears.

Do we determine the value of a human life based on the value we place on our lives in private decisions, and do we accept policy choices that puts future generations at risk.

Do we continue to value human life, especially above and beyond animals? If you value rationality, why is that? And does rationality, alone, bestow value on a human life?

How should we proceed?

We teach each generation that human life is valuable beyond all else.

.Is this good enough today?

Government officials are supposed to put numbers on the pros and cons of these questions but how to assess the value of a human life in financial terms is riddled with conundrum based on our behaviour which has no common denominators to adjust our assessment of a life’s value based on its quality or the probability of death?

How much should we pay today to prevent an event that would result in the loss of ten billion human lives in 50 years?    Climate Change.

So, how much is a life worth?

It seems so inhumane to put a monetary value our modern sentiments tell us that costs should not dictate life-and-death decisions. But those modern sentiments do not fit our modern experience.

We know that not all lives are valued by society equally.

Over the past four centuries, generations of black people have asked the question: What is a black life worth?

The summation of historical facts and statistical data clearly shows that the prices of black bodies in America are worth more imprisoned, enslaved, and dead than educated.

Here in Europe depending on all sorts of assumptions arisen by the Covid pandemic and now the war in the Ukraine there are a lots of conversations (right now) that seem to pit economics against life and health.

The result is the cost of living is mounting day on day while its value is descending but don’t worry your value is being look after by  the invisible hand of the market  run algorithms is giving your value the finger.

Unfortunately GDP distribution issue are now surfacing, like where is the GDP growth actually coming from?  Who’s losing income?  Does it increase equity in society?

How much a person is willing to accept to risk their own life – Climate change.

In the end the answer is my life is worth everything to me.

How much money do you get for losing a limb? It depends on where you live.

How much body parts worth workers compensation 4

Foot note . What’s wrong with killing people?

Abortion kills babies, and its advocates are loudly telling us the value they place on human life.

The idea is that we can best understand what life is worth by first understanding what death means.

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

Contact:  bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAYS. EVERY RESEARCH HAS ITS LIMATIONS AND SO IT WILL BE WHEN IT COMES TO HUMANITY PENDING DEMISE.

09 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Earth, Evolution., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Purchasing Power., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, Telling the truth., The common good., The Obvious., The state of the World., The world to day., Truth, Unanswered Questions., Uncategorized, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

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( Five minute read) 

All animals must learn to do some things.

This is true even of those animals that function almost entirely by instinct. But exactly what that means – whether they are making rational decisions or simply reacting to their environment through mindless reflex – when it comes to making decisions, consciously considering their goals and ways to satisfy those goals before acting remains a matter of scientific dispute.

Apes and Monkeys  Matriarchal Elephants, Parrots, Octopuses, Pigs, Dolphins, Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Dogs, Ravens, Pigeons, Raccoons, Foxes, Crows,  Ants,  Whales, are all able to reason to a certain extent, to name a few.

In the true sense of learning, is by making mistakes and remembering to avoid them in the future.

We are also animals, so how do we  determine exactly what sets humans apart from other animals.

By learning from our mistakes had sharing our finds through language that we all understand and then taking correction action after reasoning that not to do so is more than dangerous. 

( Reasoning can best be defined as the basic action of thinking in a sensible and rational way about something. Sounds easy, right? Most of the time, reasoning happens automatically, but there are many types of  reasoning,  deductive, inductive, abductive, cause and effect, analogical, critical thinking, and de- compositional.

Reasoning is the ability to assess things rationally by applying logic based on new or existing information when making a decision or solving a problem and all reasoning begins with a set of reductionist assumptions that may not be challenged.

According to the Google Dictionary:

The meaning of reasoning is “thinking about something in a logical, sensible way”.
The meaning of logic is “reasoning done according to strict principles of validity”
The meaning of sensible is “… in accordance with wisdom or prudence”
Validity means to be “factually sound.”)

                                              —————————-

However all research has its limitations so it’s important to give an explanation of how your research limitations can affect the conclusions and thoughts drawn from your research.

The first thing needed is to take the new or given information and combine it with existing information, this allows for examination of all information before starting to make a decision.

Humans possess the power of reasoning but where is it when it comes to facing climate change?

“Since systematic scientific assessments began in the 1970s, the influence of human activity on the warming of the climate system has evolved from theory to established fact.”

Life on Earth depends on energy coming from the Sun. But several lines of evidence show that current global warming cannot be explained by changes in energy from the Sun:

  • The greenhouse effect is essential to life on Earth, but human-made emissions in the atmosphere are trapping and slowing heat loss to space.
  • Five key greenhouse gases are CO2, nitrous oxide, methane, chlorofluorocarbons, and water vapor.
  • While the Sun has played a role in past climate changes, the evidence shows the current warming cannot be explained by the Sun.

The dry, salt-crusted Lake Poopo. Poorly irrigated land, logging or evaporation can cause desertification. The amount ...

Here a few facts to put in your pipe to reason on.

People around the world are witnessing first-hand how climate change can wreak havoc on the planet.

200 million people in the world, more than three times the UK population, will live below the tideline by the end of this century.

Wildfires, from Australia to California and Greece, are raging for longer and spreading farther than ever before. Blistering temperatures are proving fatal.

A chilling number of Earth’s other denizens, including 40 percent of all amphibians known to science (about 3,200 species) is under threat due to human impact,

Plastic production and use is forecast to double over the next 20 years, and quadruple by the early 2050s,

At least 155 million people, 2.3 times as many as live in the UK, were pushed into acute food insecurity in 2020 due to extreme weather, as well as conflict and economic shocks.

Climate change is accelerating the spread of infectious diseases.

Nowhere on the planet is spared the impact of climate change.

Climate change both reduces the amount of food that’s available and makes it less nutritious.

It’s no good just having cold winters to replenish ice levels.

“The science is unequivocal.”

Once we pass a certain threshold, physics takes over it therefore stands beyond all reasoning, “If we don’t do anything, that would be cataclysmic.”

Unfortunately we are too occupied with ourselves, killing each other, making unsustainable profits looking at our selves on smartphones, and all the rest of the shit promoted by growth at all costs widening the inequalities in the world,  to acknowledge that the earth we live on is in crises and if no globally action is undertaken now, (not in thirty years or any time tomorrow.) there will be no growth put a race to the bottom.   

So the consequences of either ignorant of or in denial about physical alterations that climate change is going to bring cannot be left to people alone. 

Clarity about the danger is in some sense is our only possible atonement for leaving  not just a nuclear poison world behind but a world destroyed by climate change is another kettle of fish.

Why are we unable to see this? 

Many of humanity’s most dangerous problems arise from our antiquate way of looking at the Universe, which is at odds with the principals of science that we blithely use in countless technologies. 

Our cultures over the centuries downgraded the importance of having a home. To day ” the Universe” in the popular mind has become little more than a shapeless space or a fantasy setting for science fiction.

No atonement will suffice the generation to come. 

Were the generation that needs to make the big jump to sustainability. 

Get your finger out of where the sun does not shine and use your buying power to demand change.

Perhaps you will have noticed that taking the knee has disappeared from football ( Racism is cured)  if so let sport take up the mantle of promoting sustainability by holding aloft (for a minute) a piece of the earth they are playing on. 

Not until we stop focusing on or differences, classifying others into them and us will we realize the pearl we all live on. 

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

 

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bobdillon33@bobdillon33

THE BEADY EYE SAYS: GOVERNMENTS MUST GO BEYOND GROWTH (GDP) AND FOCUS INSTEAD ON A NEW SOCIAL CONTRACT.

02 Tuesday Aug 2022

Posted by in 2022: The year we need to change., Climate Change., Fourth Industrial Revolution., GDP., How to do it., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Humanity., Imagination., Life., Our Common Values., Purchasing Power., Purpose of life., State of the world, Survival., Sustaniability, Technology v Humanity, The common good., The Obvious., The pursuit of profit., The state of the World., The world to day., THE WORLD YOU LIVE IN., THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD.  , 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) 

This is an easy thing to say but to implement is another kettle of fish because it requires a paradigm shift in the way developed countries approach economic policy.

Changing the world seems like one of these huge, impossible things that no man can possibly achieve.

It requires a rethink how we define and measure economic success.

In order to find new ways to transform the world we live in goals will have to be built into the structures of the economy from the outset, rather than hoped for as a by-product, or added after the event.

Everything that goes around, comes around.

People always wish for change because it’s the constant thing in this world, and they always have this deep, inner desire to improve things even if there’s nothing to improve.

Every people I know wants change, but for what purpose exactly?

Why do we crave change?   And how exactly to change? 

How exactly can you change without making mistakes?

How to actually know you’re making a change if you don’t know your objective?

What if there’s nothing to be changed?

Where do we start?

Change comes in learning from the mistakes of our past.

Realising that it’s a mistake.

When things stay the same and your life is getting worse and worse, then it’s time for a change.

                                   ————————-

Broadly speaking an economy is an interrelated system  of human labour, exchange, and consumption. 

Economic policy should prioritise environmental sustainability, economic resilience, reducing inequality and improving wellbeing economic growth in OECD countries have generated ‘significant harms’ over recent decades – including rising inequality and catastrophic environmental degradation.

Instead of focusing on gross domestic product (GDP), now is the time to  prioritise environmental sustainability, improving wellbeing, reducing inequality and strengthening economic resilience. 

A return to the status quo would be disastrous so governments that are spending unprecedented sums to rebuild their economies after the Covid pandemic, must look beyond growth alone to prioritise the needs of people and planet.

It argues that this will require a new role for the state, with governments becoming more entrepreneurial, seeking to shape markets and steer the process of economic change, not simply correcting market failures.

                                    ———————-

So where are we?

Various layers of inequality have being exposed and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; the digital divide, environmental degradation. the energy sources we count on are limited, just like water.

In fact, most wars and political conflicts in the world start because of lack and/or need for energy resources. In America alone, the consumption of energy rises every year, and it doubles every 20 years. 

The climate crises is showing that computers and software will not be able to replicate human creativity.

This “new kind of social contract” is required to transform the relationship between the state, business, civil society and citizens.Industryweek 34572 Understanding 5g 5g 623431736

5G as on par with the printing press, electricity and the steam engine –

Self-driving cars, remote robotic surgery, autonomous weapons — all that and much more is set to be delivered via the 5G wireless network, which promises to transform our lives and add trillions of dollars to the global economy every year.

This leap forward in connectivity will be key to the spread of artificial intelligence and machine learning, enabling massive amounts of data to be collected from remote and mobile sensors and analysed in real time.

Drive everything from home appliances that order groceries to autonomous vehicles to smart cities.

Given the power of 5G technology, it is no surprise that it has also become a proxy for the broader power struggles. 

However Technology alone will not change the core problems in the world. 

Why?

  • The Fourth Industrial Revolution can’t be a panacea for the problems caused by our obsession with unchecked economic growth. Over the past couple of decades, the world has become enamoured with the transformative power of technology.
  •  In spite of all the hype, digital technology could not prevent nor control the spread of the coronavirus.
  • Technology won’t solve the climate crisis, prevent the recurring wildfires.

                     ———————————————-

The last thing the world needs is another ‘revolution’ that ignores the external cost to society of our unchecked obsession with economic growth at all cost.

We all think time and money is so important, but are our health, peace and happiness not more important?

We’re in this together and it can only be solve together. 

We can protest, till we are blue in the face, demand change till the cows come home, hold world conferences till we run out of air.  There is however one weapon if we all of us were to use it collectively that would bring change – that is  Buying power.

Doing the right thing for the environment, pro-actively using it to effect change.

In this uphill battle, the good news is that solutions are out there.  

Business would  be held accountable for addressing local and
global societal needs.

Industry players that suffer would not helplessly standing by as their revenues and profits dwindled, they would act intensified competition.

But is this inevitable? Can companies learn to adapt and react to ensure their continued success and prosperity? The answer is yes.

Since buyer power is dynamic, just visualize this scenario.

What would happen if we all refused to pay our energy bills till the Government put in place non repayable grants to install solar panels or insulation. 

There is no right answer here but it would be impossible to either jail or fine everybody.

It is therefore important to understand what choices we have available to us to determine what type of buyer we will be, and therefore where our strengths lie.

That strength would be a campaign conducted on our mobile phones. 

Once a month campaign targeting profit for profit sake, demanding change.

Your choices would impact their bottom line.

Resilience – not technology – is the answer to our biggest

challenges.

It’s either an entirely environmentally-friendly existence. 

Or are we just going to except a burning world with wars and mass migration till there is nothing left to live for. 

 

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