THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS OUR BIOLOGICAL REASONING BEING REPLACED BY DIGITAL REASONING.

03 Wednesday May 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Algorithms., Artificial Intelligence., Civilization., Digital age., DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP., Digital Friendship.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASK’S: IS OUR BIOLOGICAL REASONING BEING REPLACED BY DIGITAL REASONING.

Tags

, , , ,

(Ten minute read)

We all know that massive changes need to be made to the way we all live on the planet, due to climate change.

However most of us are not aware of the effects that artificial intelligence in having on our lives.

This post looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, due digitalized reasoning, which is turning us into digitalized

citizens, relying more on and more on digitalized reasoning for all aspects of living.

Does it help us understand what is going on? Or to work out what we can do about it?

It could be said that the climate is beyond our control,  but AI remains within the realms of control.

Is this true?

It is true that the human race is in grave danger of stupidity re climate change which if not addressed globally could cause our extinction.

We know that using technology alone will not solve climate change, but it is necessary to gather information about what is happing to the planet, while our lives are monitored in minute detail by algorithms for profit.

There are many reasons why this is happing and the consequences of it will be far reaching and perhaps as dangerous if not more than what the climate is and will be bringing.

——–

While biology reasoning usually starts with an observation leading to a logical problem-solving with deductive conclusions

usually reliable, provided the premises are true.

Digital AI reasoning on the other hand is a cycle rather than any logically straight line.

It is the result of one go-round becomes feedback that improves the next round of question asking to ask machine

learning, with all programs and algorithms learning the result instantly.

Example  One Drone to the next. One high-frequency trade to the next. One bank loan to the next. One human to the next.

Another words.

Digital Reasoning, is combining artificial intelligence and machine learning with all the biases program’s in the code in the first place without any supervision oversight, or global regulation

It combined volumes of data in real-time to remove the propose a hypothesis, to make a new hypothesis without conclusively prove that it’s correct.  An iterative process of inductive reasoning extracts a likely (but not certain) premise from specific and limited observations. There is data, and then conclusions are drawn from the data; this is called inductive logic/ reasoning. 

Inductive reasoning does not guarantee that the conclusion will be true.

In inductive inference, we go from the specific to the general. We make many observations, discern a pattern, make a generalization, and infer an explanation or a theory.

In other words, there is nothing that makes a guess ‘educated’ other than the learning program.

The differences between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning.

Deductive reasoning is a top-down approach, while inductive reasoning is a bottom-up approach.

Inductive reasoning is used in a number of different ways, each serving a different purpose:

We use inductive reasoning in everyday life to build our understanding of the world.

Inductive reasoning, or inductive logic, is a type of reasoning that involves drawing a general conclusion from a set of specific observations. Some people think of inductive reasoning as “bottom-up” logic the  one logic exercise we do nearly every day, though we’re scarcely aware of it. We take tiny things we’ve seen or read and draw general principles from them—an act known as inductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning also underpins the scientific method: scientists gather data through observation and experiment, make hypotheses based on that data, and then test those theories further. That middle step—making hypotheses—is an inductive inference, and they wouldn’t get very far without it.

Inductive reasoning is also called a hypothesis-generating approach, because you start with specific observations and build toward a theory. It’s an exploratory method that’s often applied before deductive research.

Finally, despite the potential for weak conclusions, an inductive argument is also the main type of reasoning in academic life.

Deductive reasoning is a logical approach where you progress from general ideas to specific conclusions. It’s often contrasted with inductive reasoning, where you start with specific observations and form general conclusions.

Deductive reasoning is used to reach a logical and true conclusion. In deductive reasoning, you’ll often make an argument for a certain idea. You make an inference, or come to a conclusion, by applying different premises. Due to its reliance on inference, deductive reasoning is at high risk for research biases, particularly confirmation bias and other types of cognitive bias like belief bias.

In deductive reasoning, you start with general ideas and work toward specific conclusions through inferences. Based on theories, you form a hypothesis. Using empirical observations, you test that hypothesis using inferential statistics and form a conclusion.

In practice, most research projects involve both inductive and deductive methods.

However it can be tempting to seek out or prefer information that supports your inferences or ideas, with inbuilt bias creeping into  research. Patients have a better chance of surviving, banks can ensure their employees are meeting the highest standards of conduct, and law enforcement can protect the most vulnerable citizens in our society.

However, there are important distinctions that separate these two pathways to a logical conclusion of what Digitized reasoning is going to do or replace human reasoning.

First there is no debate that Computers have done amazing calculations for us, but they have never solved a hard problem on their own.

The problem is the communication barrier between the language of humans and the language of computers.

A programmer can code in all the rules, or axioms, and then ask if a particular conjecture follows those rules. The computer then does all the work. Does it  explain its work.  No. 

All that calculating happens within the machine, and to human eyes it would look like a long string of 0s and 1s. It’s impossible to scan the proof and follow the reasoning, because it looks like a pile of random data. “No human will ever look at that proof and be able to say, ‘I get it.’ They operate in a kind of black box and just spit out an answer.

 Machine proofs may not be as mysterious as they appear.  Maybe they should be made to explain. 

I can see it becoming standard practice that if you want your paper/ codes/ algorithm to be accepted, you have to get it past an automatic checker – re transparency because efforts at the forefront of the field today aim to blend learning with reasoning.

After all, if the machines continue to improve, and they have access to vast amounts of data, they should become very good at doing the fun parts, too. “They will learn how to do their own prompts.”

company will enable customers to spot risks before they happen, maximize the scalability of supervision teams, and uncover strategic insights from large

The Limits of Reason.

Neural networks are able to develop an artificial style of intuition, leverage communications data to spot risks before they happen, and identify new insights to drive fresh growth initiatives, creating a large divide between firms investing to harvest data-driven insights and leverage data to manage risk, and those who are falling behind.

This will bear out in earnings and share prices in the years to come.

The challenge of automating reasoning in computer proofs as a subset of a much bigger field:

Natural language processing, which involves pattern recognition in the usage of words and sentences. (Pattern recognition is also the driving idea behind computer vision, the object of Szegedy’s previous project at Google.)

Like other groups, his team wants theorem provers that can find and explain useful proofs. He envisions a future in which theorem provers replace human referees at major journals.

Josef Urban thinks that the marriage of deductive and inductive reasoning required for proofs can be achieved through this kind of combined approach. His group has built theorem provers guided by machine learning tools, which allow computers to learn on their own through experience. Over the last few years, they’ve explored the use of neural networks — layers of computations that help machines process information through a rough approximation of our brain’s neuronal activity. In July, his group reported on new conjectures generated by a neural network trained on theorem-proving data.

Harris disagrees. He doesn’t think computer provers are necessary, or that they will inevitably “make human mathematicians obsolete.” If computer scientists are ever able to program a kind of synthetic intuition, he says, it still won’t rival that of humans.

“Even if computers understand, they don’t understand in a human way.”

I say the current Ukraine Russian war is the labourite of AI reasoning this war with all its consequence is telling us that AI should never be allowed near nuclear weapons or….dangerous pathogens.

An inductive argument is one that reasons in the opposite direction from deduction.

Given some specific cases, what can be inferred about the underlying general rule?

The reasoning process follows the same steps as in deduction.

The difference is the conclusions: an inductive argument is not a proof, but rather a probalistic inference.

When scholars use statistical evidence to test a hypothesis, they are using inductive logic.

The main objective of statistics is to test a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a falsifiable claim that requires verification.

  • Most progress in science, engineering, medicine, and technology is the result of hypothesis testing.

When a computer uses statistical evidence to test a hypothesis it’s assumption may or may not be true. To prove something is correct, we first need to take reciprocal of it and then try to prove that reciprocal is wrong which ultimately proves something is correct.

Finally this post has been written or generated by a human reasoning, that see the dangers of losing that reasoning to Digital reasoning of Enterprise Spock.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE ASKS: DOES ENGLAND NEED A CORNATION?

01 Monday May 2023

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE ASKS: DOES ENGLAND NEED A CORNATION?

Tags

( Ten minute read)

Before answering this question I am not a Royalist fan.

King Charles III’s Coronation will take place on Saturday 6 May 2023.

It formalises the monarch’s role as the head of the Church of England and marks the transfer of their title and powers.

However, it is not actually necessary for the monarch to be crowned to become King, Edward VIII reigned without a coronation – and Charles automatically became King the moment Queen Elizabeth II died.

This coronation it’s about privilege and everything that a multi-faith, multi-ethnic Britain isn’t about.

European monarchies got rid of coronations long ago.  The British ceremony is the only remaining event of its type in Europe.

The idea that one man, who by accident of birth, is being anointed and set above the rest, who is unelected, and doesn’t represent Britain religiously or ethnically, jars badly.

It is an state affair, littered with curiosities: which means the government controls the guest list.

A medieval oath, holy oil poured on to a 12th Century spoon, and a 700-year-old chair housing a stone that supposedly roared when it recognised the rightful monarch.

850 community representatives have been invited to the ceremony in recognition of their charitable contributions. More than 6,000 armed forces members will take part, making it the largest military ceremonial operation in 70 years.

The Coronation will be paid for by the UK government. Clearly it won’t be cost-free.

St Edward's Crown

In an uncertain world where leaders break international rules of law all the time,  all of this sounds like something from a bygone age, it is.

It has no constitutional value, ( not that England has a written constitute.) but has remained much the same for more than 1,000 years. The monarchy’s legitimacy is based on tradition and continuity, any meaningful change would require a major overhaul, like disestablishment of the Church of England or a referendum on the monarchy.

In the coming days, there will be endless commentators ready to declare that the coronation makes them “proud to be British”, while anyone who criticises any aspect of it will be accused of “hating their country”

While standing beside the 700-year-old Coronation Chair, the monarch is presented to those gathered in the Abbey by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The congregation shouts “God Save the King!” and trumpets sound. The sovereign swears to uphold the law and the Church of England. (The UK’s religious landscape for example has “changed beyond all recognition” since the last coronation in 1953)

A gold cloth is held over the chair to conceal the King from view. The Archbishop of Canterbury anoints the King’s hands, breast and head with holy oil made according to a secret recipe, but known to contain ambergris, orange flowers, roses, jasmine and cinnamon.( It’s an Anglican ceremony and the anointing is essential to that as the conferment of God’s grace on the monarch.)

The sovereign is presented with items including the Royal Orb, representing religious and moral authority; the Sceptre, representing power; and the Sovereign’s Sceptre, a rod of gold topped with a white enamelled dove, a symbol of justice and mercy.

Finally, the Archbishop places the solid gold, 17th Century St Edward’s Crown on the King’s head. (That crown contains the Cullinan II diamond, sometimes called the Second Star of Africa. It was given to Edward VII on his 66th birthday by the government of the Transvaal – a former British crown colony – in what is now South Africa. The other controversial stone is the Koh-i-Noor, which is part of the Queen Mother’s coronation crown. It is one of the largest-cut diamonds in the world. India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran have all made claims to it.)

The King leaves the Coronation Chair and moves to the throne. Peers kneel before the monarch to pay homage. The Queen Consort will then be anointed in the same way and crowned.

The Coronation Procession is also expected to be more modest than Queen Elizabeth’s furnal procession which had 16,000 participants, and took 45 minutes to pass any stationary point on the 7km (4.3 miles) route at cost estimated to be 6/7 million.

The Queen Mother’s in 2002 reportedly cost £5.4m.

Clearly Charles coronation won’t be cost-free with an estimate of 100 million. ( Two for the price of one)

———King Charles and Camilla at a military standards ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 27 April 2023.

The coronation is the King’s chance to plug into the power of the past and shape his future.

The royals seem to prefer ad hoc philanthropy to actually funding public services with an event that is literally about deference to hereditary privilege. (The £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate – previously inherited by Charles and recently passed on to Prince William – is not liable for either corporation tax or capital gains tax.) 

Charles notably didn’t pay a single penny of inheritance tax on the fortune the late Queen left him last year (the jewellery alone was estimated to be worth at least £533m), though he has “volunteered” to pay income tax, as he also did on the duchy estate.

Volunteering” to pay tax feels a little like a wanted criminal “volunteering” to hand himself over to the authorities. It doesn’t seem to be something you typically get a choice in.

It is inevitable that many Britons will view the coronation with a more gimlet eye this time around. Many in the country are more focused on navigating a cost-of-living crisis than celebrating a dysfunctional royal family.

Now, England is a competitive society, based on people who’ve earned their position through achievement.  Many Britons, viewed it mostly as a welcome holiday.

He’s inheriting a crown that has been shaken by events over the last five years.

Perhaps he might make a jester to the state of the nation  (The Firm or Monarch PLC is worth an astounding $28 billion at least.) and reimburse the tax payer.  A man whose car collection alone is estimated to be worth more than £6m asking the rest of us to celebrate his kingship by helping out at the local food bank feels, shall we say, a little “let them eat quiche”.

Perhaps in order to have a voice he will buy back HMS Britannia. The “soft power” of the monarchy cannot be underestimated.

Finally:

Can a modern nation call itself democratic if it retains an unelected head of state? Is a growing reliance on charity a point of celebration or shame?  Does sanitising the existence of royalty normalise wider inequality? 

In the end in a world run more and more by Artificial Intelligence, monarchies seem to be purposeless antiquated relics, anachronisms that ought to eventually give way to republics.

To understand why, it is important to consider the merits of monarchy objectively without resorting to the tautology that countries ought to be democracies because they ought to be democracies.

Here are the benefits of a Monarchs in the 21st century.

Monarchs can rise above politics in the way an elected head of state cannot. Monarchs represent the whole country in a way democratically elected leaders cannot and do not. The choice for the highest political position in a monarchy cannot be influenced by and in a sense beholden to money, the media, or a political party.

Monarchs are especially important in multi-ethnic countries.

The existence of a monarch makes it difficult to radically or totally alter a country’s politics. Monarchies have the gravitas and prestige to make last-resort, hard, and necessary decisions — decisions that nobody else can make.

Monarchies are repositories of tradition and continuity in ever changing times.

Most monarchies rule within some sort of constitutional or traditional framework which constrains and institutionalizes their powers.  

 Since anyone, regardless of their personality or interests, can by accident of birth become a monarch, all types of people may become rulers in such a system.

Today’s heirs are educated from birth for their future role and live in the full glare of the media their entire lives.

The pomp and pageantry attracts million in tourist revenue and no place does it better than the land of King Arthur and the knight of the round table. As in previous centuries, monarchy will continue to show itself to be an important and beneficial political institution wherever it still survives.

As a diamond-encrusted crown is placed on the king’s head, your packed local homeless shelter is desperate for help. Don’t you feel proud to be British?

The Beady Eye wishes him and his wife all the best on the 6th May.

Long may the Monarchs exist providing they are solely a tourist attraction that pay for themselves.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

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.

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

( 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’S TIME TO REMOVE THE BLINKERS WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

21 Friday Apr 2023

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S TIME TO REMOVE THE BLINKERS WHEN IT COMES TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE.

Tags

, ,

( Three minute read)

Yes.  Artificial Intelligence will most likely be needed to help us solve a lot of the big challenges facing society today, be that health, cures for diseases, climate change, etc.  It is already predicting the shape of every protein in the human body.

However, in my mind it is deeply wrong that a small group of people ( under the skin of private technology enterprises) without any democratic oversight are making decisions with potentially to affect every life on earth.

Its time to take our blinkers off and let the world have a say in what they are doing.

Why?

Because a three-letter acronym ( God like AI)  doesn’t capture the enormity of what Artificial General Intelligence (AIG) will represent, or do. This would be a force beyond our control or understanding and one that will usher in the obsolescence or destruction of the p

The Beady Eye has been bleating on about this and profit seeking algorithms, now for some considerable time, but from the number of comments on the subject it seems not many of us give a hoot for the need for transparencies, regulations, and overall safeties when it comes to technology. So we are running to the finishing line without any understanding of what on the other side.

Since the arrival of the internet/smart phone one only has to look at the state of the Planet to realise that we have gone training – AI ALGORITHMS / TECHNOLOGY TO GENERATE TEXTS/ RECONGISING EVEREYDAY IMAGES/  GENERATING REALISTIC PHOTOS/ AND REPLICATION OF VOICES, BY FEEDING THEM WITH THE ENTIRE INTERNET STRIP-MINING THE LIFEWORLD. (The focus on games and chatbots is sheltering people from the more serious implications of this work.)

The world already has many existential threats, but the threat posed by AIG is the number one risk of this century, with an engineered biological pathogen a close second. The potential for scams and misinformation is significant.

An God like super intelligent machine would be light out for all of us.

So the question is.

Why are these organisation racing to create God like AI ?

Is it that it gives an illusion of illimitable power.

For now the race is being driven by markets, with the Ukraine war the labourite of cyber wars, making private investment not the only driving force but nations also contributing to this contest.

If we put the wrong objects into a super intelligent machine we are bound to lose.

Unlike the human brain that grows large Ai systems are quite different.

They grow themselves with machine learning and their capabilities jump sharply.

We don’t yet full understand how they work and cannot demonstrate likely out comes in advance.

The present harms and AI/AIG are not mutually exclusive and overlap in important ways.

One of the most challenging aspects of thinking about this topic is working out which precedents we can draw on.

WE ARE NOT POWERLESS TO SLOW DOWN THIS RACE.

If we can get our governments to ask under oath about the timeline for developing God’s like AIG. To demand under law a complete record of the safety tests with evidence of understand how the system works, to ensure their aliment with our common values, we might save humanity, before we humans are cut out of the loop.

Unfortunately economics has not been flexible enough to take on this obvious truth  The whole field and discipline of economics, by which we plan and justify what we do as a society, is simply riddled with absences, contradictions, logical flaws, and most important of all, false axioms and false gaols.

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

≈ Comments Off on 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.

Tags

, , ,

( 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 : SOON THERE WILL BE NO OPTION BUT TO CHANGE THE CASINO CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

11 Tuesday Apr 2023

Posted by in Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S : SOON THERE WILL BE NO OPTION BUT TO CHANGE THE CASINO CAPITALIST SYSTEM.

( Twenty minute read)

It would be fair to say that up to now Casinos Capitalism has had an adverse and positive history, because of its understanding of the science of reward and reinforcement, but beneath this past history, our current problems lie.Casino Capitalism - Hans-Werner Sinn

It, along with colonialism, the brutal subjugation of indigenous peoples created the world of consumerism.

(The concept of colonialism is closely linked to that of imperialism, which is the policy or ethos of using power and influence to control another nation or people that underlies colonialism.)

The result is the planet was divided into a world of North and the South.

The North consumerism and the South cheap slave production to serve the North.

A perpetual Growth system of consumption for products that are not essential to life.

Over centuries and more so in recent decades this is the reason we see inequality growing, with the environment on the verge of collapse due to the exploration of natural resources to fuel profits at all costs – GDP before the people.

———-

One only has to look at the attempts to turn our economic system into green sustainability production and one see, that we now have a market place claiming,  buy this or that because its Bio/ Save energy.

Most of these items still have a built in replacement in order to ensure market growth.  –  Vehicles, Electrical Items, Smartphone, TVs, the list is endless, all fuelled by an advertising industry promoting their use behind unaccountable technology of algorithms the new looming menace.

Profit seeking  Algorithms hidden beneath the surface of the web.

They are the invisible nonhuman workforce that powers the web—and they’re foreshadows the true future of world.

There are no labour laws to govern this kind of work. 

The harms from so-called AI are real and present and follow from the acts of people and corporations deploying automated systems.

Regulatory efforts so far focus on transparency, accountability and preventing exploitative labour practices are dim to the affects on society as a whole. While many of us hear about the latest and greatest breakthrough in AI technology, what we hear less about is its environmental impact .

In fact, much of AI’s recent progress has required ever-increasing amounts of data and computing power. And this all comes at a cost — while currently cloud computing represents roughly 0.5% of the world’s energy consumption, that percentage is projected to grow beyond 2% in the coming years .

Artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are in a phase of rapid development, and are being adopted widely.

While the concept of artificial intelligence has existed for over sixty years, real-world applications have only accelerated in the last decade due to three concurrent developments: Better algorithms, Increases in networked computing power and the tech
industry’s ability to capture and store massive amounts of data.

Data discrimination is a real social problem.

As search engines and their related companies grow in importance—operating as a source for email, a major vehicle for primary and secondary school learning, and beyond—understanding and reversing these disquieting trends and discriminatory practices is of utmost importance.

We need when we using AI to combat online problems and urging policymakers to exercise “great caution” about relying on it as a policy solution.

For Example:

Facebook’s algorithm amplified misinformation” and “it consistently chose to maximize its growth rather than implement safeguards on its platforms.

———

We all know Climate Change is the last thing that the world now needs, but there is a deeper crisis:

A lack of imagination.

The global response to the pandemic was in a sense a testing ground for the international community’s capacity to deal with the biggest and most complex international challenge of all – climate change.

While we’re at it, we should think about the question of scale, not just at global and national levels but at community levels.

WHAT’S IS NEEDED IS A REDUCTION IN PRODUCTIVITY OF NON ESSENTIALS ITEMS.

MORE OF AN EMBRACMENT OF PROGRAMS THAT ARE FOCUSED ON TURNING IDEAS AND THEIR IMPACT.ON LOCAL COMMUNITIES.

Let’s not beat around the bush — we all want something from someone. And while the importance of networking and asking for help is undeniable, why aren’t we taking a more human approach to the process?

We need transformation not just in our economies but across the whole of our societies – from the economy and our politics, to our family structures and media and communications systems – as all these social spheres are interlinked and all are fundamental to our well-being. We need to transform the structures of our societies so that changes which put the brakes on climate disaster become, not just verbal ambitions but real actions.

With 57% of people worldwide say  “Capitalism as it exists today does more harm than good in the world, we all know by our nature we are selfish and greedy, that we have insatiable needs.

THE TIME HAS COME FOR LOCAL COLLECTIVE SOCIALISM.

A sort of confederalism where small-scale communities manage their own provisioning systems, working in partnership with other communities where necessary. Social norms are when you help a friend without expecting payment. Market norms are when you base your actions on how much money people will pay or cost you. When people act on social norms — that is, when they do things because they want to.

In short: people are much more likely to go above and beyond for tasks that they’re emotionally (rather than financially) invested in.

With this insight in mind, consider tapping into social norms to create situations where both parties walk away with more value than they anticipated. How can you use value exchanges to get what you want, give others what they want, and nurture a relationship in the process?

This doesn’t mean replacing capitalism with state socialism. It means diversified ‘ecologies of ownership’, where co-operatives and community owned enterprises sit beside publicly owned initiatives.

For example.

Councils should be able to make available non repayable grants to set up village gardens, to produce for their community’s.

It doesn’t have to be huge. It can be as simple. Lead with value: Start the interaction by offering something that’s need.

Every village has retired gardening people, why not pay four or five of them to run a garden/ polytunnel/garden shop.

Another example.

Why not create combination of local energy co-operatives and regional public energy companies in the framework of a cap on energy prices and a publicly owned national grid – all based on renewable energy.

( The average home in the UK would need around 9.2m² of solar panels to satisfy its yearly electricity demands, estimated at 2,900kWh, costing an estimated £2,588.  A five-bedroom house will usually need 14 panels. The return on a solar panel takes between 10 to 25 years, depending on the cost of the installation, the power produced, the amount resold and where you live.

If you divide your annual electricity usage by 265, you’ll end up with roughly the right number of solar panels for your home .Most countries in Europe would be able to satisfy their electricity needs with less than 1% of their total land area being devoted to solar power.

The world would need around 85,894km² of solar panels.

——

While we may think of capitalism more as the absence of the state in favour of the market, in reality, the domination of the market is impossible without a domineering state to impose it.

The state institutionalised hierarchy, and with capitalism, state domination and bureaucracy reached into every corner of society, resources, or what we call the ‘means of life’ should not be owned by anyone, they form a commons based on the principle of ‘usufruct’ – everyone is free to use them as long as they do not damage or deplete them.

The principle of the ‘irreducible minimum’ means that everybody is entitled to the means of life no matter what they contribute – an even more generous maxim than Marx’ famous ‘from each according to his [sic] ability to each according to his needs!’

The sentiments behind these slogans are not confined to the ash heaps of history, rather, many of the policies from the political left today fit under this simple slogan.

“From each according to ability” is what underlies a concern for the common good and a conception of society as a cooperative venture, with mandatory public service as a matching policy proposal. Overall, the phrase from each according to his abilities is a phrase associated with socialist and communist ethics, but with the arrival of AI it is transferring people into digitalized citizens, with ownership of natural resources such as fresh water, fresh air becoming the exclusive ownership of profit seeking algorithms.

Why is this happing?

Because, most of our institutions set up after world War 11 are not working.

Because,  western capitalism is not irretrievably bound to fail; but it does need to be rethought like the return of public ownership.

The key principle in all this is removing profit from a significant portion of economic activity, and bringing democracy in.

Indeed, if you judge by measures such as inequality and environmental damage, “the performance of Western Capitalism in recent decades has been deeply problematic..

Perhaps most significantly, in many developed nations late-20th Century capitalism has contributed to a significant gap between the wealth of the richest and poorest people. The richest billionaires in the word have amassed staggering fortunes.

So, will capitalism as we know it continue in its current form – or might it have another future ahead?

If the gap grows between rich and poor, then instability can follow (Credit: Jay Directo/Getty Images)

The inequality gap may matter more than some politicians and corporate leaders would like to believe.

Why?

Because, to build a better world, a world where many worlds fit; linked worlds of collective liberation and ecological sustainability.

Because, While industrial capitalism exploited and controlled nature with devastating consequences, surveillance capitalism exploits and controls human nature with a totalitarian order as the endpoint of the development. This leaves surveillance capitalism as an exceptionally useful tool for businesses, but also an invasion of privacy to users who do not want their private experience to be owned by a company.

Because, as a result of rising inequality, the ever-rising cost of living, people have less trust in institutions.

Because, economies will with AI, become completely divorced from the demands of people, who seek jobs, affordable housing, education, healthcare and a clean environment.

Because, there is ample evidence that social and environmental impacts are relevant and need to be incorporated into development models.

Because, the desire to earn profits from business activity, is the driving force of capitalism. It’ flaws as with any system are numerous, but the one that stands out is the trickle down aspiration.

Because, it is obvious that these issues must also be considered within the social contract underpinning capitalism, so that it is more inclusive, holistic and integrated with basic human values.

Because, capitalist growth is driven by profit expectations, it fluctuates with the changes in technological, climate change, or social opportunities for capital accumulation. It is held accountable only to the test of profitability.

Because, government must stop ignoring the needs of ordinary citizens and companies must do more than deliver profits to their shareholders.

Because, if we don’t seize this opportunity to build back better – to reset and reinvent rather than ‘return to normal’ – systemic risks and vulnerabilities will continue to accumulate, making future shocks both more likely and more dangerous.

Because, the shift toward greater individual liberty changed the social contract.

Because, technology will have an important role to play, but the principle has to be that the technologies we develop will enhance rather than harm our relationship with nature. What is certain is that technology won’t save us while the current drivers of the economy – capital accumulation and the profit motive – remain in place. Unfortunately as people increasingly asserted their right to individual liberty, they are being exploited by AI.

While one response to the downsides of capitalism in its current form is for nations to take a defensive posture, seeking to protect themselves by minimising external ties, protectionism is short-sighted, particularly when it comes to trade, – Brexit.

=====

Will capitalism as we know it evolve into something new?

With  artificial intelligence capitalism, lifting a substantive number of people out of absolute poverty people expected less from governing authorities, in exchange for greater civil liberties, including individual, political and economic freedom. But at the same time, critics argue that its tenets of lowering taxes and deregulating business has done little to support political investment in public services.

This newer strain of capitalism has NOT led to increased economic growth worldwide.

Previously, many resources were provided by those in power (land, food and protection) in exchange for significant contributions from citizens (for instance, from slave labour to hard labour with little pay, high taxes and unquestioning loyalty).

The economic system of Capitalist is characterized by private or corporate ownership of capital goods, by investments that are determined by private decision, and by prices, production, and the distribution of goods that are determined mainly by competition in a free market.

Capitalism has fuelled the industrial, technological and green revolutions, reshaped the natural world and transformed the role of the state in relation to society.

However, the story is not universally positive.

In recent years, capitalism’s shortcomings have become ever-more apparent. COVID-19 has exposed the fragility and societally negative outcomes of contemporary capitalist economies. The virus has highlighted many vulnerabilities – within businesses, supply chains, economies, health systems and political institutions – that will need to be addressed in the post-crisis world.

Functionally, capitalism instead of planning economic decisions through centralized political methods, as with socialism or feudalism, economic planning under capitalism occurs via decentralized, competitive, and voluntary decisions.

The profit motive, an indispensable, if regrettable, by product of capitalism, is being exposed daily, with social media, climate change, the environmental dangers of the free market and profit seeking algorithms.

Capital is wealth—that is, money and goods—that’s used to produce more wealth with underpaid work for profits.

Governments and regulators must intervene to ensure the costs of environmental and social damage are internalized by the companies responsible:

Profits cannot come at the expense of long-term societal resilience.

The green recovery is vital if we are to create more resilient economies and a world in which business can thrive, not just now but long into the future.

Reach out to people with a genuine intention to connect and add value to their lives, and you’ll see how much more you’ll be able to get from the interaction than if you just treated it like a transaction.

What can be done to change the inequality that is the main feature of capitalism?

Just-in-time” may be superseded by “just-in-case” as the mantra of procurement. 

The case for ‘green’ stimulus measures is clear: they are likely to deliver more jobs and higher (equitable) growth in the short-term, while reducing longer-term risks linked to climate change and biodiversity loss – crises that, if unaddressed, will cause a level of disruption to our economies and societies orders of magnitude greater than COVID-19.

Now, more than ever, integrating climate goals into business strategy will be a vital driver of long-term success.

Ultimately, it is worth remembering that citizens in a capitalist, liberal democracy are not powerless.

So it follows that we might be similarly blind to what capitalism could look like in another two centuries. However, that does not mean we should not ask how it might evolve into something better in the nearer term.

The future of capitalism and our planet depend on it.

——–

To destroy democratic capitalism and replace it with authoritarian socialism is not the solution.

Communism, socialism, capitalism, and democracy are all among our top all-time lookups, and user comments suggest that this is because they are complex, abstract terms often used in opaque ways. They’re frequently compared and contrasted, with communism sometimes equated with socialism, and democracy and capitalism frequently linked.

I believe that  beneath the political, and driving it, is a justified, if poorly articulated differences.

Communism referred to an economic and political theory that advocated the elimination of private property and the common sharing of all resources among a group of people

Revolutionary socialism, which advocates a proletariat overthrow of capitalist structures within a society; societal and communal ownership and governance of the means of production; and the eventual establishment of a classless society.

———

Why should our life chances be so far determined by the accident of where we are born?

Why would we want to live in societies that benefit some people in some places at the expense of other people in other places?

The good societies that we build now, during the ‘great pause’, need to work for everyone in the world.

There’s a tension when we’re thinking about scale – when formulating alternatives, should we be thinking global or local? The universal or particular?

Our current capitalist economy is certainly global – there probably isn’t a person in the world whose life isn’t integrated into it somehow, though in different ways in different places. So it makes sense to start there.

We know the dangers involved with huge corporations sucking up data on the most intimate aspects of our lives – how they collaborate with governments to enable wholesale spying, crackdowns on democratic freedoms, and dystopian predictive policing and facial recognition practices; how voters are manipulated during elections; how discrimination is built into algorithms; how the data-based business model encourages fake news, polarisation and hate; and how these companies resolutely dodge tax.

The data frenzy is also wreaking havoc on the environment – a 2015 report found that data centres are responsible for about 2 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, putting them on par with the aviation industry. And it’s exacerbating global inequality.

It is China and the US who are set to reap the biggest rewards from AI, while Africa and Latin America will see the lowest gains. It is unlikely that the profits accrued to multinationals based in the US or China from data mined in lower-income countries will ‘trickle down’ to those supplying that data.

The concept of cultural imperialism has been around for decades. Now we can also speak of data imperialism. Again, it is the profit motive that’s at the bottom of all this.

In our attempts to understand the new from the old and the unknown from the known, we risk either stripping away too much truth or adding too much falsehood so that our inquiries inevitably become futile.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gail.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

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S: IT’S FAR TO LATE TO CONTROL AI.

( 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: WHAT YOUR NOT BEING TOLD ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RESULTING MONETIZATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES.

28 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by in 2023 the year of disconnection., Climate Change., Monetization of nature, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE: WHAT YOUR NOT BEING TOLD ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE RESULTING MONETIZATION OF NATURAL RESOURCES.

Tags

, , , ,

( Seven minute read)

Some things we can mitigate, some we can’t. Some things we can adapt to, some we cannot.

The question of how (or whether) we respond to climate change ultimately is a matter for policymakers to decide, but politics cannot (and should not) be separated from good science.  And so on, and so on. We’ve heard them all.

As CLIMATE CHANGE  impacts grow in frequency and severity, they will—and in many cases already have—create crises for people and nature around the world. If unchecked, these impacts will spread and worsen with more animal extinction and biodiversity loss, water shortages, and displaced communities.

Climate change is one of the most contentious issues facing society today.

Over the past several decades, we have seen not only increasing environmental degradation, but also the erosion of the concepts of the public good and collective responsibility to preserve nature.

In embracing the monetary valuation of nature as a strategy for mobilizing support for environmental conservation, environmentalists are resigning themselves to a political status quo that can only comprehend value in terms of money and markets.

By viewing ecosystems and their services through a pecuniary lens, monetization profoundly changes our relationship with nature, and, if taken to the point of commodification, can subject the fragility of nature’s balance to the destructive logic and volatility of markets.

Even though the trend toward the privatization of public goods has been pervasive over the past decades, we should not acquiesce so easily in allowing the privatization of the most basic public good of all—nature itself.

We must meet the grave environmental challenges of the twenty-first century with boldness and prudence, using the precautionary principle, along with the principles of fairness and democracy, to set boundaries that human action must not transgress.

Some argue that monetization, by revealing the economic contribution of nature and its services, can heighten public awareness and bolster conservation efforts. Others go beyond such broad conceptual calculations and seek to establish tradable prices for ecosystem services, claiming that markets can achieve what politics has not. Such an approach collapses nature’s complex functions into a set of commodities stripped from their social, cultural, and ecological context.

Although the path from valuation to commodification is not inevitable, it is indeed a slippery slope.

Do nature’s services need a monetary value?

Do conservation policy need an economic motive to get sufficient attention from policymakers and the public?

One approach seeks to monetize the value of nature simply in order to reveal its immense economic contribution to society.

Monetization is only meaningful and effective if there are markets to set prices for the ecosystem services in question. Markets for such commodified ecosystem services, they argue, can protect conservation policy from the vagaries of political will. Roll back bureaucratic red tape, and let the market work its magic to save nature.

The line between valuation and commodification, although clear in theory, becomes blurred in practice.

The monetization of any resource can cause long term problems for people.

To be sure, valuation alone does not inevitably entail the risks to the preservation of nature intrinsic to commodification. Nevertheless, it changes how we see and relate to nature and can inadvertently pave the way for the privatization of ecosystem services that the advocates of valuation often oppose.

Environmentalists, business leaders, and policymakers have all sought to make environmental protection an economic rather than just a political issue. The introduction of “no net loss” policies, which allow economic development to proceed as long as the net acreage of a specific type of ecosystem is maintained, has effected a paradigm shift in environmental policymaking. However, offsetting ignores how unique and interconnected biodiversity is, and it overlooks the importance of nature for local communities and the ways they suffer when their ecosystems are damaged. Land-use policies based on whether a company can pay for an offset, and not on what local communities and humanity need to survive, undermine basic rights and democratic principles

National economic accounts such as GDP remain blind to the services of nature. Such accounts likewise fail to distinguish between constructive and destructive economic activity with respect to human and ecological well-being. Needless to say, a deeper understanding and greater awareness of the relationship of society to nature is always welcome, but the rigor and usefulness of GDP-level information remains questionable.

Delineating an individual ecosystem from the complex fabric of nature poses numerous significant challenges. For example, the provision of oxygen for humans and animals to breathe is an ecosystem service of global scale.

But how do we value the contribution of individual sub-systems like a single forest to this global service?

We could all still breathe if one forest is cut down, but not if all forests were cut down.

Embarking upon the path of valuation also changes the way we see and understand nature.

The value of the whole ecosystem to society is more than the sum of its monetized parts:

Reducing its value to mere monetary terms, even if it were technically practical, strips away its cultural and spiritual value. A bad policy can be replaced, but the holistic functions of nature cannot.

Through disaggregation, each service can be rendered into a discrete monetizable “package” so that it can have its own market and its own price. Such an approach tilts policymaking in favour of the interests of the economically powerful. The least powerful actors—often local communities, indigenous peoples, women, small-scale farmers, etc.—get pushed to the margins, their voices ignored.

In order to prevent monetization from slipping into commodification, we must revisit one of the hallowed principles of environmental policy: the precautionary principle. It states that when an action or policy could pose a substantial risk to the environment, a very high burden of justification should fall on those seeking to take such an action. Like the classical mantra of medical ethics, the precautionary principle insists upon first doing no harm.

What if one of those billionaires manipulates the market by withholding or restricting the free flow of water?

71% of Earth’s surface is water.

There are 326 million trillion gallons of it on and in the planet.  96.5% of the water is ocean water, and just 3.5% is fresh water.  Of that 3%, 69% of that water is locked up in glaciers.  Another 30% of that freshwater is underground and usually requires costly extraction.  That leaves 114 million billion gallons of readily accessible freshwater, not necessarily drinkable water, but water nonetheless.  That sounds like enough, but it represents just 1% of the Earth’s water for every man, woman, child, and animal on the planet.  That 1% of the water has to also serve every agricultural and industrial need on the planet.  In most cases, it also needs to be filtered and treated before it is safely consumable.

So, though there is plenty of water on the planet, not very much of it is drinkable.  Not very much of it is accessible, and the distribution methods are easily manipulated, legislated, and monetized.  That’s never good for the common man.  Nestle Water, for instance, extracted 36 million gallons of water from a national forest in California in 2015 to sell as bottled water, even as Californians were ordered to cut their water use because of a historic drought in the state.

Farmers, hedge funds, and municipalities alike can now hedge against — or bet on — future water.

While that may seem innocuous enough, the cost disparity probably gets passed on to the cities and individual consumers. It’s easy to imagine how many ways the monetization of water as a commodity is a dangerous first step in government and corporate overreach and intrusion. Mega-banks and investment firms such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, Macquarie Bank, Barclays Bank, the Blackstone Group, Allianz, and HSBC Bank, among others, are consolidating their control over water.

Wealthy tycoons such as former President George H.W. Bush and his family, Hong Kong’s Li Ka-shing, Philippines’ Manuel V. Pangilinan, and others are also buying thousands of acres of land with aquifers, lakes, water rights, water utilities, and shares in water engineering and technology companies all over the world.

Complicit governments are legislating your rights to access and accumulate Earth’s free-flowing resources. It falls from the sky onto your property, but it is owned by someone else the minute it touches the Earth.

Water rights are conveyed as real property interests using the same formalities as real estate, but in most cases, everyone is tapped into the same source.  If fracking, mining, or industrial operations pollute that source, they spoil it for everyone.  So, merely having access to a water source is not enough.

The fact is that water is being restricted, legislated, and monetized more every year, and the rich are grabbing up the rights as fast as they can.

During periods of drought, when water levels are already low, it is easy to imagine how one person’s control over a large water area can lead to huge profits.  This is why the super-wealthy are snapping up water, water contracts, water rights, and governments letting them do so all over the world.  Two billion people now live in nations plagued by water problems, and almost two-thirds of the world could face water shortages in just four years.  Even on a planet covered and steeped with water, water is a resource.  As a resource, it can be monetized and controlled, and you could be denied or deprived of access to it.

Whatever you choose to call it, the most important thing is that we act to stop it.

If it is not the capitalization and exploitation of the resources of our planet  with climate change will continue.

I can assure you, the super-wealthy are not buying up the water around the planet for altruistic purposes.  They are doing so because they see a profit from it.  Freshwater first then fresh air.

—–

CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOW A PRODUCT AND NET ZERO A SLOGAN.

There is now no stopping sea levels rising.  A two meter rise would displace more than 2% of the world’s population and cut world food production/ supply by 25%. The rate of carbon emissions are the highest they’ve been in 66 million years and the amount of warming in the coming decades is expected to be 250 times greater than the average warming during the past century.

The rate of ocean acidification is the highest it has been in 300 million years!

Warming surface waters may be contributing to slowing ocean currents.

The warming climate is contributing to rising populations of insect / pests.

To mitigate the effects of climate change is going to cost quadrillions.

We are on course to match the worst extinction of earth species both on land and in the oceans.

We at a point where money will not suffice to make a difference.

There’s no consensus on global warming.

Many species are approaching—or have already reached—the limit of where they can go to find hospitable climates. In the polar regions, animals like polar bears that live on polar ice are now struggling to survive as that ice melts.

From straining agricultural systems to making regions less habitable, climate change is affecting people everywhere.

Climate change also exacerbates the threat of human-caused conflict resulting from a scarcity of resources like food and water that are less reliable as growing seasons change and seasons become less predictable. Around the globe, many of the poorest nations are being impacted first and most severely by climate change, even though they have contributed far less to the increase in carbon emissions that has caused the warming in the first place.

Higher temperatures are affecting the length of seasons and in some places, are already crossing safe levels for ecosystems and humans.

Now more than ever in order to enable a just transition to a low-carbon economy, gender and equality, human rights, and food security, with links to climate change 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.

Recently, many countries have focused on mainstreaming net zero emissions targets: 138 states have now made a net zero pledge.

However, targets in all climate-related national laws and policies are currently far from the pledges made in NDCs (Simply put, an NDC, or Nationally Determined Contribution, is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts) and from enabling global warming to be limited to below 2 °C.

For NDCs to work, they need to be widely understood and used by businesses, civil society, academia and ordinary citizens. Each has roles to play, which is why many governments invite different constituencies to take part in defining NDC priorities.

For many reasons, including a lack of adequate finance, capacity and, in some cases, insufficient political commitment combined with the pandemic-related economic downturn is expected to constrain implementation.

For developing countries, moving forward depends on developed countries realizing their commitment to provide $100 billion in climate finance to developing countries. Dedicating half of this amount to adaptation, would help close significant financing shortfalls for vital measures to protect lives and livelihoods. Rapid policy developments are required to achieve this goal.

Climate change legislation is less a politically partisan issue than is commonly assumed:

Everyone is a climate actor and can be part of the change that needs to happen.

If we can slow or stop deforestation and manage natural land so that it is healthy, we could achieve up to one third of the emission reductions needed by 2030 to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2°C (3.6°C).

We must as a planet commit ourselves to reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The truth, however, is that even if we do successfully reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, we will still have to address harmful climate impacts, and so the solution to climate change must also include measures to adapt to the impacts of global warming.

We need to increase renewable energy at least nine-fold from where it is today. This cannot be achieved without a major shift to renewable energy.

There is not a hard and fast deadline on climate action vs. inaction. There is no definitive line of demarcation that we can protect against; instead it is a matter of minimizing the effects of climate change.

We need to begin reducing carbon emissions RIGHT NOW to give our planet and our population the future that is least impacted.

The low carbon economy that we need to create will also give us cleaner air, better energy choices, new jobs and may even save us money. Likewise, many of the natural solutions that we need to adapt to even today’s climate change impacts benefit all of us: cleaner air and water, more natural recreation opportunities and jobs.

Nature, like climate, may be approaching irreversible tipping points where changes push systems into completely new states, even as more than half the global GDP depends on the planet’s natural systems.

For climate, the world has a clear net zero emissions goal.

But what’s the goal for nature? It hardly takes a genius to see things aren’t going well in the world or for our civilization.

When we actually look at the state of our civilization — in factual, empirical terms — the results are…well, you’ll be able to judge for yourself in just a moment.

Progress has flatlined and ground to a halt.

Living standards are declining in 90% of countries.

Each generation now does worse than the one before it,

Democracy’s in steep decline around the globe

The points above may in truth be small fry, compared to this one.

We are running out of our most basic, critical, fundamental resources.

People are more pessimistic now than at any point during the last century.

Anxiety, rage, anger, and despair are the defining sentiments of now — along with maybe the numbness of endlessly scrolling some algorithmically generated infotainment feed.

I could go on. But it’s hardly necessary. All the above are facts. They aren’t opinions, speculations, or even conclusions. They’re empirical truths about our civilization.

Each of the points above is its own crisis, and each one of them would be bad enough for any age, challenging, threatening, arduous enough.

But all of them, together, at once? That’s something new. They are painting a caricature without really thinking about the state of life as it is now. 

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmailcom

THE BEADY EYE: LOOKS AT PSORIASIS THE SCURGE OR BAINE OF MANY.

26 Sunday Mar 2023

Posted by in PSORIASIS, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE: LOOKS AT PSORIASIS THE SCURGE OR BAINE OF MANY.

Tags

 

( Thirty minute read) 

THIS POST IS AN ATTEMPT TO BRING TOGETHER ALL THE RELAVIANT AVAILABLE INFORMATION ON PSORIASIS, INTO ONE REFERENCE POINT. IN ORDER TO PROVIDE A BETTER SOURCE FOR THE LATEST INFORMATION ABOUT PSORIASIS.

Psoriasis is a chronic skin disorder affecting up to 2.5% of the world’s population.

Despite the myriad treatment options available, there is no uniformly accepted therapeutic approach for moderate-to-severe psoriasis.

Dealing with any skin condition can be frustrating, but psoriasis may just be one of the most problematic of the bunch.

If you do suffer from it, take heart in the fact that you’re not alone. 

Psoriasis cannot be cured, but it can be managed, and—over time—you can find the strategies that help minimize symptoms and maintain the highest possible quality of life.

WHAT IS PSORIASIS:

Psoriasis is a long-lasting, noncontagious autoimmune disease (An autoimmune disease is a condition arising from an abnormal immune response to a functioning body part characterized by raised areas of abnormal skin.] These areas are red, pink, or purple, dry, itchy, and scaly. Psoriasis is a complex chronic inflammatory skin disease caused by the dynamic interplay between multiple genetic risk foci, environmental risk factors, and excessive immunological abnormalities.

Psoriasis varies in severity, from small, localized patches, to complete body coverage.

If your family has a history of psoriasis, a viral infection such as chickenpox can be the catalyst for an outbreak especially in children. It can start at any age, but most often develops in adults between 20 and 30 years old and between 50 and 60 years old.

Skin cells are normally made and replaced every three to four weeks, but in Psoriasis this process only lasts about three to seven days. Psoriasis occurs when skin cells are replaced more quickly than usual. It’s not known exactly why this happens, but research suggests it’s caused by a problem with the immune system.

The exact role genetics plays in psoriasis is unclear. A genetic predisposition contributes to the development of psoriasis. Approximately 40% of people with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis have an affected family member. Approximately 7–42% of people with psoriasis develop psoriatic arthritis. In most patients, arthritis appears 10 years after the first signs of skin psoriasis. The first signs of psoriatic arthritis usually occur between the ages of 30 and 50 years of age. In approximately 13–17% of cases, arthritis precedes the skin disease.

Psoriasis is not contagious, so it cannot be spread from person to person. Doctors do not know the exact cause of psoriasis.

 THE DIFFERENT FORMS OF PSORIASIS:

Psoriasis often has an unpredictable clinical course. Pustular psoriasis frequently has a variable and protracted course without intervention.

Plaque psoriasis (psoriasis vulgaris) the most common form of psoriasis:

Plaque psoriasis is generally a chronic disease, with fluctuating severity over time. Its symptoms are dry skin lesions, known as plaques, covered in scales. They normally appear on your elbows, knees, scalp and lower back, but can appear anywhere on your body. The plaques can be itchy or sore, or both. In severe cases, the skin around your joints may crack and bleed.

Scalp psoriasis:

Scalp psoriasis is a type of plaque psoriasis.

It can occur on parts of your scalp or on the whole scalp. It causes patches of skin covered in thick scales.

Some people find scalp psoriasis extremely itchy, while others have no discomfort.

In extreme cases, it can cause hair loss, although this is usually only temporary.

Nail psoriasis:

In about half of all people with psoriasis, the condition affects the nails.

Nail Psoriasis can cause your nails to develop tiny dents or pits, become discoloured or grow abnormally. Nails can often become loose and separate from the nail bed. In severe cases, nails may crumble.

Guttate psoriasis:

Guttate psoriasis may resolve, relapse, or develop into chronic plaque psoriasis.

Guttate psoriasis causes small (less than 1cm) drop-shaped sores on your chest, arms, legs and scalp. There’s a good chance guttate psoriasis will disappear completely after a few weeks, but some people go on to develop plaque psoriasis.

This type of psoriasis sometimes occurs after a streptococcal throat infection and is more common among children and teenagers.

Inverse (flexural) psoriasis:

This affects folds or creases in your skin, such as the armpits, groin, between the buttocks and under the breasts. It can cause large, smooth patches of skin in some or all these areas.

Inverse psoriasis is made worse by friction and sweating, so it can be particularly uncomfortable in hot weather.

Less common types of psoriasis.

Pustular psoriasis:

Pustular psoriasis is a rarer type of psoriasis that causes pus-filled blisters (pustules) to appear on your skin.

Different types of pustular psoriasis affect different parts of the body.

Generalised pustular psoriasis or von Zumbusch psoriasis:

Generalised pustular psoriasis is a rare and serious form of psoriasis that usually needs emergency treatment.

It causes pustules that develop very quickly on a wide area of skin. The pus consists of white blood cells and is not a sign of infection. The pustules may reappear every few days or weeks in cycles. During the start of these cycles, Von Zumbusch psoriasis can cause fever, chills, weight loss and fatigue. Von Zumbusch psoriasis, also known as acute generalized pustular psoriasis, is a rare type of psoriasis characterized by white, pus-filled blisters (pustules). The pustules are not contagious but are the result of sudden and extreme autoimmune inflammation. It differs from the two other types of pustular psoriasis, which are generally limited to the hands or feet, and is considered far more serious. Von Zumbusch can develop at any age but predominately affects adults over 50. Von Zumbusch can appear abruptly on the skin. Within hours, tiny pustules appear, many of which will consolidate into larger blisters. Von Zumbusch psoriasis can be life-threatening and requires immediate medical care.

Palmoplantar pustulosis:

This causes pustules to appear on the palms of your hands and the soles of your feet.

The pustules gradually develop into circular, scaly spots that then peel off.

Pustules may reappear every few days or weeks.

Erythrodermic psoriasis:

Erythrodermic psoriasis is a rare form of psoriasis that affects nearly all the skin on the body. This can cause intense itching or burning. Erythrodermic psoriasis can come on suddenly and may need emergency medical treatment.

It can cause your body to lose proteins and fluid, leading to further problems such as infection, dehydration, heart failure, hypothermia and malnutrition.

People with Pustular or Erythrodermic psoriasis usually need to start with stronger (systemic) medications.

Severe extensive Erythrodermic and Pustular psoriasis can cause death. 

——————

Knowing your triggers may help you avoid a flare-up.

If you are not sure what they are, keep a diary of any psoriatic symptoms you experience, however minor. This can help pinpoint the conditions or substances you need to avoid.

  • An injury to your skin, such as a cut, scrape, insect bite or sunburn – this is called the Koebner response
  • Drinking excessive amounts of alcohol
  • Smoking
  • Stress
  • Hormonal changes, particularly in women – for example, during puberty and the menopause
  • Certain medicines – such as lithium, some antimalarial medicines, anti-inflammatory medicines including ibuprofen, and ACE inhibitors (used to treat high blood pressure)
  • Throat infections – in some people, usually children and young adults, a form of psoriasis called guttate psoriasis develops after a streptococcal throat infection, but most people who have streptococcal throat infections don’t develop psoriasis
  • Other immune disorders, such as HIV, which cause psoriasis to flare up or appear for the first time. If you have an active psoriasis outbreak do not get a vaccination, this includes the flu vaccine, especially if it is a live vaccine.
  • If you have psoriasis, avoid hot showers.
  • Extreme climates are common triggers for psoriasis. This is especially true with respect to extremely dry cold temperatures or intense heat with high humidity. 

TREATMENTS:

The pathophysiology of psoriasis.

The term pathophysiology comes from three Greek words. “Pathos” means suffering.

The skin is our largest organ. It consists of three layers:

  • The epidermis is the outermost layer (also called the cutaneous layer).
  • The dermis is the middle layer.
  • The subcutis is the inner layer (also called the hypodermis or subcutaneous layer).

A wide range of treatments are available for psoriasis, but identifying the most effective one can be difficult. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to managing psoriasis. Most people achieve remission when treatment has successfully isolated the part of the immune system that causes psoriasis .Biologic agents appear to offer a safe and effective alternative to conventional systemic therapies and phototherapy for the treatment of moderate-to-severe chronic plaque psoriasis. The biologics appear to be safer than traditional therapies, although long-term safety data still need to be established. Their use is associated with a much higher cost compared with traditional treatment options. 

The type of treatment regimen that will be best for you depends on your age, the severity of psoriasis, and the location on your body. Treatment that works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. Because of this, treating psoriasis can be a process of trial and error, and it can be frustrating.

Psoriasis is unique to each individual, and a treatment that works for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. Because of this, treating psoriasis can be a process of trial and error, and it can be frustrating. Options include creams and ointments (topical therapy), light therapy (phototherapy), and oral or injected medications. You might need to try different drugs or a combination of treatments before you find an approach that works. Even with successful treatment, usually the disease returns.

They are available as oils, ointments, creams, lotions, gels, foams, sprays and shampoos.

  • Vitamin D analogues. Synthetic forms of vitamin D — such as calcipotriene (Dovonex, Sorilux) and calcitriol (Vectical) — slow skin cell growth. This type of drug may be used alone or with topical corticosteroids. Calcitriol may cause less irritation in sensitive areas. Calcipotriene and calcitriol are usually more expensive than topical corticosteroids.
  • Retinoids. Tazarotene (Tazorac, Avage, others) is available as a gel or cream. It’s applied once or twice daily. The most common side effects are skin irritation and increased sensitivity to light. Tazarotene isn’t recommended when you’re pregnant or breastfeeding or if you intend to become pregnant.
  • Calcineurin inhibitors. Calcineurin inhibitors — such as tacrolimus (Protopic) and pimecrolimus (Elidel) — calm the rash and reduce scaly buildup. They can be especially helpful in areas of thin skin, such as around the eyes, where steroid creams or retinoids are irritating or harmful. Calcineurin inhibitors aren’t recommended when you’re pregnant or breastfeeding or if you intend to become pregnant. This drug is also not intended for long-term use because of a potential increased risk of skin cancer and lymphoma.
  • Salicylic acid. Salicylic acid shampoos and scalp solutions reduce the scaling of scalp psoriasis. They are available in non prescription or prescription strengths. This type of product may be used alone or with other topical therapy, as it prepares the scalp to absorb the medication more easily.
  • Coal tar. Coal tar reduces scaling, itching and inflammation. It’s available in non prescription and prescription strengths. It comes in various forms, such as shampoo, cream and oil. These products can irritate the skin. They’re also messy, stain clothing and bedding, and can have a strong odour. Coal tar treatment isn’t recommended when you’re pregnant or breastfeeding.
  • Anthralin. Anthralin is a tar cream that slows skin cell growth. It can also remove scales and make skin smoother. It’s not intended for use on the face or genitals. Anthralin can irritate skin, and it stains almost anything it touches. It’s usually applied for a short time and then washed off.

Mild corticosteroid ointments (hydrocortisone) are usually recommended for sensitive areas, such as the face or skin folds, and for treating widespread patches. Topical corticosteroids might be applied once a day during flares, and on alternate days or weekends during remission. Stronger corticosteroid cream or ointment — triamcinolone (Trianex) or clobetasol (Cormax, Temovate, others) — for smaller, less-sensitive or tougher-to-treat areas. Long-term use or overuse of strong corticosteroids can thin the skin. Over time, topical corticosteroids may stop working.

If you have moderate to severe psoriasis, or if other treatments haven’t worked, your health care provider may prescribe oral or injected (systemic) drugs. Some of these drugs are used for only brief periods and might be alternated with other treatments because they have potential for severe side effects.

Alternative therapies:

Include special diets, vitamins, acupuncture, healers and herbal products applied to the skin. None of these approaches is backed by strong evidence, but they are generally safe and might help reduce itching and scaling in people with mild to moderate psoriasis.

  • Aloe extract cream. Taken from the leaves of the aloe vera plant, aloe extract cream may reduce scaling, itching and inflammation. You might need to use the cream several times a day for a month or more to see any improvement in your skin.
  • Fish oil supplements. Oral fish oil therapy used in combination with UVB therapy might reduce the extent of the rash. Applying fish oil to the affected skin and covering it with a dressing for six hours a day for four weeks might improve scaling.
  • Oregon grape. Oregon grape — also known as barberry — is applied to the skin and may reduce the severity of psoriasis.
  •  
  • Dead Sea salt baths work for some like healers if used early.
  • Mind-body therapies are often used by people with psoriasis to overcome the daily stress of living with psoriasis. Most of the therapies involve focusing on immediate sensations—the here and now—rather than projecting into the future or fixating on anxieties or insecurities.

Pills and injections:

If you have moderate to severe psoriasis, or if other treatments don’t work, your health care provider might prescribe pills or injections. Because of severe side effects, some medicines are used for only brief periods and are alternated with other treatments.

Options include:

  • Retinoids. These pills, such as acitretin, might reduce the production of skin cells if you have severe psoriasis that doesn’t improve with other treatments. Symptoms usually return once therapy is discontinued. Side effects might include lip inflammation and hair loss. Acitretin isn’t recommended for people who are pregnant, breastfeeding or might become pregnant within three years.
  • Methotrexate. This medicine can be taken by mouth or injected. It suppresses inflammation. Methotrexate might cause upset stomach, loss of appetite and fatigue. When used for long periods, it can cause severe liver damage and lower levels of red and white blood cells and platelets. It’s important to avoid alcohol while taking methotrexate. People need to stop taking methotrexate at least three months before attempting to conceive. This medicine is not recommended for those who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
  • Cyclosporine. This medicine — usually taken by mouth for psoriasis treatment — suppresses inflammation. It’s similar to methotrexate in effectiveness. It also increases the risk of infection and other health problems, including cancer, kidney problems and high blood pressure. These medicines aren’t recommended for those who are pregnant, intend to become pregnant or are breastfeeding.
  • Biologics. Several biologics are used to treat moderate to severe psoriasis. Options include infliximab (Remicade), etanercept (Enbrel), adalimumab (Humira), certolizumab (Cimzia), ustekinumab (Stelara), risankizumab-rzaa (Skyrizi), tildrakizumab (Ilumya) and ixekizumab (Taltz). Biologic medicines are injected, either by you or by a health care provider. They are for people who don’t respond to traditional therapy. Because these medicines have strong effects on the immune system, they might increase your risk of life-threatening infections, such as tuberculosis.
  • Guselkumab, an interleukin (IL)-23 inhibitor, effectively treats moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis.

    The Creams:

    There are many varieties of psoriasis cream available, so it’s a good idea to learn about the differences before you start buying and using them. The best cream for psoriasis depends on the location, type, and severity.

    Steroid creams, ointments, gels and lotions are applied directly to the area of skin that’s itchy or sore, to reduce inflammation. They are designed to improve pain and soreness, but they don’t usually treat the underlying cause of your symptoms.  Steroid creams should not be used on your face.

    Emollients that come in cream or lotion form are less moisturising, but are also less greasy and will dry on the skin more rapidly.

    • Dermalex psoriasis – moisturises the skin to help prevent flare-ups.
    • Oilatum cream – relives itching while soothing and rehydrating skin.
    • E45 cream – clinically proven to soothe dry skin as well as psoriasis.

    The primary benefits of Emollient creams, lotions and ointments are that: They reduce dryness, scaling, itching and cracking, making you feel more comfortable. They can improve the absorption of topical medicated products.

    • Emollients for psoriasis often contain liquid paraffin/white soft paraffin, anti-microbials, and lauromacrogols (which can prevent itching).
    • CeraVe’s Psoriasis Moisturizing Cream has 2% salicylic acid to help treat psoriatic skin symptoms, like scaling. The niacinamide-boosted cream also moisturizes and repairs the skin barrier, helping to restore essential moisture.
    • MG217 features coal tar, the resin that has been used to treat psoriasis for hundreds of years, and shows significant results in the reduction of inflammation, itching, and scaling.
    • Avène’s Soothing Eye Contour Cream doesn’t contain any active treatment ingredients, like salicylic acid, the cream is perfect for those with hypersensitive skin, as it’s known for soothing, hydrating, and reducing puffiness.
    • Curél Hydra Therapy oatmeal extract, vitamin E, water-activated, apply post-shower.
    • Gold Bond Multi-Symptom Psoriasis Relief Cream, contains salicylic acid.  Salicylic acid is a beta-hydroxy acid (BHA), which is a type of exfoliating acid. The other type is AHA, or alpha hydroxy acid, and this includes ingredients such as glycolic and lactic acid, derived from willow bark or produced synthetically, salicylic acid has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties. It is oil-soluble reducing the itch.
    • Enspilar Form. It helps to reduce the redness, thickening, and scaling of the skin that occurs.
    • Sorantinex. is a steroid-free three-step treatment regimen for the chronic form of psoriasis vulgaris (plaque psoriasis). Sorantinex  has also been shown to be safer and more effective than many prescription drugs for psoriasis.

Future Psoriasis Treatments on the Horizon:

Medical researchers are working tirelessly toward new and effective medications for psoriasis. Some up-and-coming options for people with the condition include:8

  • Deucravacitinib, an oral, allosteric TYK2 inhibitor that works by blocking certain immune proteins for better disease management
  • Tapinarof, a steroid-free biologic topical cream that works by hindering inflammation pathways within the body
  • Roflumilast, a topical PDE4 inhibitor that works by increasing the number of pro-inflammatory mediators in the body to reduce inflammation

    Perhaps most importantly, deucravacitinib (Sotyktu; Bristol Myers Squibb), an oral, allosteric TYK2 inhibitor, became the first oral therapy approval in more than a decade, after Phase 3 POETYK PSO-1 and POETYK PSO-2 clinical trials proved successful.

  • Sotyktu has the potential to become the new standard of care oral treatment for people with moderate-to-severe plaque psoriasis, given its profile in helping patients achieve clearer skin as demonstrated in the POETYK PSO clinical program, said April Armstrong, MD, MPH, associate dean and professor of Dermatology at the University of Southern California.

    The FDA also approved Tapinarof (VTAMA; Dermavant) cream 1%, a once-daily, steroid-free topical treatment for plaque psoriasis in adults regardless of disease severity, becoming the first FDA-approved steroid-free topical medication.

    A third FDA approval came for roflumilast cream (ZORYVE; Arcutis Biotherapeutics) 0.3%, a topical PDE4 inhibitor of plaque psoriasis, including intertriginous areas, in patients 12 years of age and older, which clears plaques and reduces itch rapidly in all affected areas of the body, including intertriginous areas.

    The fourth major FDA approval was for Boehringer Ingelheim’s Spesolimab (SPEVIG), the first major treatment of generalized Pustular psoriasis (GPP) flares in adult patients.

    Bimekizumba. A monoclonal antibody the first to block both ( Interleukin 17a & 17f ,two types of special proteins called Cytokines which regulate the immune system.  

Stay informed with a good source of information, so you will know if researchers identify a viral psoriasis, but more importantly, you will know when advances in the treatment of this uncomfortable medical condition are made.

  • FINALLY SOME COMMON QUESTIONS.

Does having psoriasis make you more likely to have a heart attack?

To date it is still don’t completely understand what the link between psoriasis and heart disease is, and certainly not everyone with

psoriasis will get heart disease (and vice versa). Research on this topic is ongoing.

Does what I eat affect my psoriasis?

The truth is that scientific research has not yet found a definite link, or found a diet that works for everybody.

Will drinking alcohol affect my psoriasis?

People taking certain medications for psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis – such as methotrexate or acitretin – should avoid alcohol, or

limit alcohol consumption. This is because it can influence the way in which the medications are broken down in the body, or

raise the risk of potential side effects.

Will I have psoriasis forever? 

Psoriasis is a long term condition, and is known to wax and wane (meaning it comes and goes – sometimes in flares. It has to be manage.

Did the Covid Vaccinations contribute to

The cutaneous side effects of COVID-19 vaccines are being studied and their immunogenicity is most likely linked to the

pathophysiology of psoriasis. Although uncommon, several cases of exacerbation and new onset of psoriasis have been reported

globally after vaccination.

It’s important to remember that the above information in this post is not a replacement for advice from a qualified health

professional.

All human comments and any verified insight much appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com

THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. CIVILIZATION WITH CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BE A VERY THIN VENEER.

21 Tuesday Mar 2023

Posted by in Climate Change., CO2 emissions, Dehumanization., Environment, Green Energy., Human Collective Stupidity., Human values., Life., Reality., State of the world, Telling the truth., The common good., The Future, The Obvious., The state of the World., Truth, Unanswered Questions., What is shaping our world., WHAT IS TRUTH, What Needs to change in the World, Where's the Global Outrage.

≈ Comments Off on THE BEADY EYE SAY’S. CIVILIZATION WITH CLIMATE CHANGE WILL BE A VERY THIN VENEER.

Tags

, , , ,

.( Twenty minute read) 

There are no words to describe the present state of our world.

Here below is a recent picture from Australia, it more than adequately does the job. Millions of dead fish float were seen floating on the Lower Darling in Far west NSW.

A thousand fish per square metre (caused “severe deoxygenation”)

We seen conflict raging for decades across the world, as if war is always and forever an ordinary routine, limited to developing third world nations, however wars are no longer something visited upon impoverished and remote populations. With the Coming Climate Change we ent seeing nothing yet when it comes to wars.

IT IS THE DEFINING ISSUE OF OUR TIMES, WITH PROFOUND CONSEQUENCES, FOR THE FOOD CHAIN, ENGERY  DISEASES, DWINDELING RESOURSE AND FUTURE WARS.

To date we have had summit after summit with countries promising to reduce their carbon emission at varying degrees and rates of time, with 60% not in the west returning home, PROBALY THINKING WHY SHOULD THEY BE CARRYING THE CAN WHEN ITS IS THE COUNTRIES IN THE WEST THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEM IN THE FIRST PLACE.

Vermillion Cliffs at Paria Canyon Wilderness in Arizona

We are already in a pivotal moment in deciding our planets future, which requires significant societal changes to mitigate it.

Why?

Because our current global political economy solves problems through business as usual growth, wasting precious time to effectively reduce emissions to prevent human suffering and ecological system collapse at an unimaginable scale.

Because we are unable to put the common good in front of short term profit.

Although we have been raising public awareness on climate change for years, this is not enough; the global temperature increases day by day.  Unless greenhouse gas emissions and global temperature are reduced within years, the world will face demanding consequences.

Because the fragility of life as we know it, will be shattered by Climate change.

——–

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. What we fail to remember is that we ourselves live in the very world we do not seem to care what happens to.

We do not realise is that with each day that passes without any action, the number of natural resources available also decreases significantly.

Take the Fashion Industry’s for example.

10,000 litres of water are used to produce just one kilogram of cotton.

WITH OVER 5 BILLIONS PAIRS OF JEANS PRODUCED A YEAR  – 60 PAIRS A SECOND USING – 1000 LITERS OF WATER PER PAIR = A MIND BLOWING WASTE OF WATER. 

The average jeans collection needs 36,250 litres of water. Hoodies and sweatshirts need 23,450 litres. T-shirts and shirts require 15,000 litres, while our undergarments combined use 45,950 litres of water. The average person drinks 691 litres of water per year.

This means that our jeans collection has used 52.5 years of drinking water for one person.

The next time you put on your best threads, think about the environmental cost of your outfit — you may just be dripping wet.

 

——

” We are now entering in the politics of eternity and the politics of inevitability.”

How is the Earth going to survive, if the only species it has the chance to lean on, turn their back to it?

Climate is the envelope within which all other environmental conditions and processes important to human well-being must function. ANY TIPPING POINT COULD opened the floodgates.

Inevitability politicians portray history as a journey from savagery to civilization and assume this trend will continue to their desired outcome.

We have witnessed in the past 30 years the degradation of liberal democracy, the spread of Islamic terror across borders, and the resilience of the illiberal Chinese political system.

Up to now very form of society has been based, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes…This is why Capitalism combined with democracy has provided the perfect balance for governance, and as a consequence took root in most countries.

The liberal arrogance shown at the end of the 20th century paved the way for the blowback of the 21st.

Liberals failed to confront the innate inequality of the post-war international order so liberal inevitability politics sealed its own fate. By failing to address the problems of the now rapidly collapsing global order, and those who are committed to democracy and strong institutions have spent this century trying to pick up the pieces.Vladimir Putin sits angrily at desk

Where eternity politics is best on display currently is in the Russian narrative on their invasion of Ukraine.

To the Russian eternity politician, the West is simply repeating its century-old tactic to assault Russian values and Russia’s greatness, as they did in the Crimean War, Great Northern War, or any other conflict they may pick.

But the eternity politician makes the same mistake as the inevitability politicians, they remove agency from individuals and movements with personalized beliefs, motivations, and tactics.

Herein lies the problem with both the politics of inevitability and the politics of eternity:

They ignore the fact that developments in the political and social conscience of individuals and societies determine history, not the other way around.

As an entire nation of people is stripped of its agency the war in Ukraine is boiling down into a proxy war between two great powers. However, what cannot be done is to create a single coherent narrative about the historical past, the political present, and the prospective future, because of the simple fact that human beings do not have omniscience.

We cannot possibly isolate the individuals and communities that shape historical development. We cannot aggregate history, and we should not try. Revolutions did occur in China and in Russia (along with many other places), regimes committed atrocities with impunity, as everything they did was in service of the righteous and inevitable world revolution, just as the dogma told them.

The most dangerous facet of the politics of eternity and politics of inevitability is not the gross oversimplification of history they embody, but rather the societal implications they necessitate.

In the case of liberal capitalist democracies, it leads to a small group of wealthy individuals amassing such great control that it threatens the very institutions liberals revere as eternal.

For the Marxist, it leads to the justification of mass arrest, disenfranchisement , and slaughter in the name of an inevitable world revolution that will never arrive. And for the nationalist, it means a constant paranoid struggle for dominance against their neighbours, no matter the cost.

So with the arrival of the Internet /Social media / The smartphone, are we in an “intellectual coma.” left with a form of Capitalism that is no longer working.

In denying historicism, we shouldn’t deny that progress is possible, rather we should accept that progress is not pre-determined, and relies on all of us as active participants to truly make history.

Climate change with out a doubt will lead to social disruption and potentially violent conflict.

I shudder to think about this impromptu utterances.

———-

Earth on psychiatrist's couch.

 

It’s not that difficult to see that, says mass migration, it will provoke more conflict in the world.

Our tribalism will become more apparent over the next decade or so. Social Media reflects this with the pervasive mentality in western journalism of normalizing tragedy in parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Africa, south Asia, and Latin America, Syria, Afghanistan, Ukraine, your name it and it is perversely turned into entertainment.

Everything will have to adapt to the changing times.

As culture change, so does the way we consume it – all digital and virtual viewing merging into a digital and physical worlds with  interactions changing into an endless cycle of content discovery, co-creation and sharing, which will deepen the emotional impact of content or by- pass it completely. This extends beyond our screens and newspapers and easily bleeds and blends into politics.

Righteous outrage immediately mounted online.

Xenophobia is an efficient tool to keep people divided. Colonial powers knew this early on. By separating people based on superficial characteristics, such as skin colour, and then assigning qualities to these features (such as being civilized vs. barbarian, or intelligent vs. backward), people started to believe that they were different from each other based on these highly unscientific classifications. To eradicate racism, we must become aware that our ancestors invented the notion of race for self-fulfilling reasons rooted in unscientific assumptions.

The question becomes how we classify people as strangers. This changes over time. Therefore, the classification of people as strangers is culturally constructed, with racism being one of its many forms.

Race and racism were non-existent during most of human history. To be human has always meant one thing -to be civilised. One was not born human. One had to become human.

Racism is a recently invented classification system that triggers xenophobia.

——-

After demonizing and abusing refugees, especially Muslim and African refugees, for years., now if one does not look like a refugee the chances of being excepted anywhere is almost zero.

You can see it already in Europe.

I suspect we’re going to see more nativism, more xenophobia, and more talk of building walls on our borders. Neighbour helping neighbour is a dying falsify.

Very concept of providing refuge is not and should not be based on factors such as physical proximity or skin colour.

The idea of granting asylum, of providing someone with a life free from political persecution, must never be founded on anything but helping innocent people who need protection. That’s where the core principle of asylum is located. If not we are showing ourselves as giving up on civilization and opting for barbarism instead.

On the one hand, there is something to be said about the idea of mankind as a group defined, beyond gender, race, or class, by a characteristic shared by all humans.

The history of the idea of human nature since the 5th century BC represents the history of Western violence and domination. It bears witness to some of the deepest conflicts and divisions the earth has seen.

The West identifies capitalism, liberalism and democracy as markers of civilisation and progress against Islamic fundamentalism, theocratic rule, and what it irresponsibly calls ‘the Muslim world’.

——–

These things exist with or without climate change, but the effects of climate change — migration in particular — will exacerbate them and help fuel reactionary movements around the world.

Ideology will always be a surface-level justification for conflict — people come up with narratives to justify whatever they’re doing in the political world. But if you look deeply at the source of future conflicts, I think you’ll see a basic resource conflict at the bottom of it all.

We can say with some confidence that climate change will render huge parts of the world less hospitable to human beings, and that as a consequence, humans will have to change how and where they live.

Are we prepared?   NO!

Do we have the institutions, the structures, the systems of cooperation we need to deal with this problem?  NO!

Have we existing structure of peacekeeping that can hold up under these conditions?   NO!

Can Western democratic society, which is built on a system of limitless growth and productivity, change its destructive relationship with nature?  NO!

Modern liberal democratic societies are successful at improving the lives and freedoms of people who live in them. The problem is that these systems are based on the exploitation of nature and our environment, and we’re sort of trapped in this paradigm.

The lessons for those of who lived through the coronavirus pandemic today, it that Civilization is a very thin veneer. That your well-being as individuals really depends on the flourishing of the greater society.

Why?

Because under even slight amounts of pressure, that social contract starts to break down, and [when] people lose that veneer … that can be very dangerous. If a pandemic finds a society that is fractured, where there is distrust, where the public health system is neglected or in decay … that is going to be revealed, as it was with profiteers during the pandemic “willing to make money off human misery”

——–

Putting the pandemic into perspective as a terrible episode, but nonetheless just one episode, in a much longer story. This however  is not an option when it comes to Climate Change. Overwhelmed by the disaster, people will see what our system of Capitalism has become.

I think one of the things that is clearly exacerbating matters is when the issue is what we’d call politicized.

With technology and social media we humans – we become the stories that we tell ourselves. Our stories are never just stories. They are self-fulfilling prophecies.

That’s because we tend to use history, which is at its heart the study of surprises, as a guide to the future. This should however not stop us from aiming to better understand the future: the knowledge gained through planning is crucial to the selection of appropriate actions as future events unfold. We don’t know the answer, but we can at least ask useful questions and catalyze the conversation!

It’s important to remember that technology is often value-neutral: it’s what we do with it day in, day out that defines whether we are dealing with the “next big thing”.

Is there a way to think of the human being beyond the opposition between the ‘civilized’ and the ‘barbarian’?

Or is such an idea of mankind yet to be invented?

 

Watch and weep.

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

Contact: bobdillon33@gmail.com