The Road to Hell…

It is said that “The road to hell is paved only with good intentions”. Does this folkloric knowledge “hods water” and if so, why and how? Let’s explore this concept with few diagrams and a bit of ideation around them.

Humans (and not only) are born in this reality and are roaming it until they die. During all this time all forms of life must solve one big problem, and that is, how to maintain their “alive” state. This implies solving various problems among others how to find or grow food and keep away from being food for other living beings.

Humans are one of the few species that have mastered collaboration in large groups and this is due to our larger magnitude of the abilities to communicate more efficiently in large groups.

Unfortunately to us this reality is much more complex than we can handle now or ever, even if its “guts” are working by following relatively simple rules (quantum mechanics might look weird but it is make of relatively simple rules). This is simply because of its immensity of states and configurations those simple rules can combine in order to create diversity.

The best we can do is only to ever increase our abilities to more accurately know what the reality is by using Scientific Methods in order to reduce the risk of confusions and mistakes.

In this context some of the errors and mistakes we do are embedded in the processes we use to identify and find solutions to our problems.

In most cases (unless ignorance, fear and hate are predominant drivers) we identify problems and than start with a large amount of compassion, some knowledge about why and how and some hope of being able to help more than ourselves, to help the others (the business component).

The diagram bellow tries to depict the relative importance of those 3 aspects of our fight to solve an issue.

Please understand the difference between the absolute quantity and the relative quantity. This is not a “zero sum game” depiction it is simply the relative (to each other) influence of each of the three factors considered in this case. For example you may say, well my Compassion or Knowledge did not diminish (as the diagram may suggest) and that is true, yet what matters is the relative comparison of the magnitude of all three factors. That is important as our minds (and processes) tend to be impacted by the relative importance and not only by the absolute magnitude of the feature.

As time passes we may get our idea off the ground, we start to gain more understanding and other people start to “buy into it” by investing resources (time or money or hope). It is only natural that now we have (relatively) more focus on acquiring knowledge and try to “sell” it to more people. However this simple “normal” action has the consequence of pushing the Compassion component down in the relative balance between itself and the other two components. An important observation is that in absolute terms the compassion may remain at the same value but the unfortunate reality is that in the relative space it becomes less important.

This phenomena is depicted in the diagram bellow.

Once we have a solution, the business world takes over and the main reason of action is now to “sell” the idea or the product to other people. Now gaining profits take main stage and since we still need a grip on the “how it works” (or the Science component) it is almost inevitable that the Compassion component will be in further relative decline and will slide into the configuration depicted bellow.

Unfortunately this configuration is the one that has the highest probability to create monsters that will end up destroying (almost) all we initially intended. Now is the time when mistakes are hid and coverup of mishaps happens and when BS flourishes.

Twenty six years ago, in 1995, Orson Scott Card wrote once a short called “How Software Companies Die” where he follows on how this process happens in the software application development companies and groups. The article ends with the prophetic phrase “Got to get some better packaging” that is the main indication of BS overdrive of a product. You should read it, is only two pages long and is as relevant today as it was 26 years ago.

OK, fine, you may say, now what? What is the solution to this problem? Eventually a solution that not ends in a bigger disaster by embedding in it the very process we just described.

For most, it would be clear that the solution would be to forever keep an eye on the compassion and humility in the business process. But this is much easier said than done. If you put yourself in the shoes of a business owner or a manager that needs to make it possible for his employees and himself to take a salary home then you can see how this can be more than nerve wreaking it can be almost impossible to overcome.

Given our current state of business with the “dog eats dog” type of competitive environment it is extraordinary that we are still keeping sanity in the society at large. To me, this is one item banking towards the proof that human beings are good in their “normal” state but the environmental constraints can erode that “goodness” to sometimes horrific levels.

And that my friends is “the road to hell”, as you can see it starts with good intentions (at least) most of the times but without a lot of focus on the relative importance of the Compassion, Science and Business components we can all “go to hell” sooner or later.

Let’s try to target to the bellow (or close to) distribution of relative importance of those components that are part of all we do.

One important tool to help us with that is the notion of humble and humility. Too many of us seem to equate humble with weakness when in fact it is one of our greatest strengths. If you are surprised to hear that please read my previews article on humility.

Thank you a lot for reading the article!

Some related articles:

On factual information
Humble and Humility
On how to recognize and fight BS
How Software Companies die (Orson Scott Card)

Constructive and Destructive Competition vs Civilized and Civilization

Just a thought: The best measure of being “civilized”, for a group of people (country but not limited to) may just be the preference for engaging and nurturing #Constructive_Competition instead of #Destructive_Competition, but not the amount of power they hold (technology , money, military, etc)

More on this will come on this blog on a more detailed article about one of the most fundamental features of life: Competition

Five steps to tyranny

A BBC documentary, Prof. Philip Zimbardo and Sheena McDonald

  1. “us” and “them” (the mirage of self)
  2. obey orders (mindlessly ~ human automatons)
  3. do “them” harm (instill fear)
  4. ‘stand up’ or ‘stand by’ (fear control)
  5. exterminate the opposition (destroy diversity)

What is most interesting is that the steps 1 and 2 seem to be a consequence of confusing factual(real) and fictional(imaginary) information. Once can only divide in “us” and “them” then blindly obey if they first confuse the real and imaginary.

See more about this subject in my articles:
Real Fact
Fact Fiction and the Truth
Fact Fiction and BS

More, as we start to better understand the place we are part of, what we call real, universe life consciousness we should realize that we are but temporary parts of a much larger consciousness fields spanning the Exoverse.

What is the Exoverse
Each of us is a small drop existing for a short time before returning back to the whole

The last three steps are directly linked to our abilities as individuals to be Self-Reliant.

On Self Reliance see “The Nautilus Project”

Please watch this documentary at least few times a year!
This will be time well spent!

5000+ subscribers threshold crossed

Sometimes today morning Oct 3, 2020 the number of subscribers on this blog crossed the threshold of 5000.

I thank you all of my subscribers for your interest in my blog and as I’ve described in the “Please read first” page, I promises to do all I can to provide you with the truth as I know it and hope it will be useful for you in improving your own lives.

https://romeolupascu.net is my personal blog part of the main domain I own https://timenet-systems.com domain hosted on https://hostmonster.com

You can check the evolution of this site and probably check the articles beyond its life time (at some point I will not be able to pay for the hosting) by using the internet archive here https://web.archive.org/web/*/romeolupascu.net

I wish you all “Live long and prosper” and until this site will kick the bucket I hope to provide you with more useful information. This blog is not a daily blog, I’m trying to avoid creating more information overload so I will only post when there is something I believe is important to be said.

2019 Resolutions

New year resolutions, things made to be broken, or maybe this time, this one time, we (I) may succeed in making progress on what really matters now.

I wish everyone reading this article a lot of happiness in 2019 and hope you’ll check to see if the resolutions I’m sharing here make sense to you and your beloved ones. I believe they can make or break our future our children and the generations to come, so we should probably not ignore them.

So what are those few things which really matters to everyone?

Number one: The ability to distinguish Fact (Real) from Fiction and understand the notion of Truth Hash-tag: #ReFiT or #FaFiT UUID: ab3fb2d4-9cfa-4f72-9a5b-bebd72b0c65e

Second: Understand how to use Computers Automation and AI to help yourself as an individual to thrive and avoid the dangers those technologies pose. Tho hash-tags: #SelfReliant(UUID91d101ea-d250-4298-9177-20880e1dded6) and #informageddon(UUID: b17ea217-e20c-4202-bb0e-954803cd2176)

#ReFiT / #FaFiT

Our life and life quality depends on how accurate our inner model of reality built by our minds since we are born reflects the actual “hard” “cold” reality. In my opinion there is nothing more important than our ability as individuals to get our inner reality model in sync with the actual common reality out there.

I have wrote two articles describing the notion of Fact Fiction and Truth (links bellow), in 2019 I would like to get a step closer to giving everyone who reads my articles a clear guide on how to produce and verify factual information by using existing technology and seek future more reliable ways to produce it.

Fact Fiction and BS (describing the notion of Fact and Fiction and the danger of consuming a mix of fact and fiction thinking is fact, a mix I call BS).

Fact Fiction and the Truth (describe the notions of Truth and Fact and how we confuse them and why it is almost impossible to detect a lie)

#SelfReliant & #informageddon

Automation is inevitable, AI is inevitable, if you think you can escape it you are fooling yourself. So, if you can’t beat them join them. However, as with any new technology there are some avoidable pitfalls.The computers and AI have some very dangerous and insidious ones. Knowing them is (in some cases) literally a life and death situation. More, it is about our future as free people or as disposable (irrelevant) salves.

There are two distinct ways this can go down.

First path is if we will try to keep the current social organization unchanged and try to graft automation and AI on it. In my opinion this is guaranteed to lead to #informageddon and irrelevant slavery, a future 99% of us will hate.

The second path (or social model) is the one where the technology of automation computers and AI are used mainly to enhance each individual in order to produce a #SelfReliant entity using a symbiosis between human and machine (carbon+silicon). Those entities will be capable of thriving in (almost) any conditions without required help from anyone else.

The society (almost as we know it) can then be rebuilt from free standing, self reliant, entities, a society which will be orders of magnitude more powerful and resilient than the current one, A society which can exists for millions or maybe billions of years. This model has the potential to lead to a social organization close to the one depicted in the SI-FI series StarTreck or even more advanced (excluding warp drives and teleportation for now) and is probably the real future incarnation of the current American-Dream.

In 2018 I’ve created and launched a Global Challenge hosted on https://timenet-systems.com in 2019 I wish to start a first iteration solution design for this challenge.

That is all!

Please live any comments via Twitter (use the Twitter button in the WordPress page).

Thank you very much for your support and feedback, have a wonderful 2019!

Initial Article Digital Timestamp Archive

Confusion * US Senate and Supreme Court Appointments

Confusion seem to be the right word to describe what’s going on these days in the US Senate. I think that most people got so tightly pushed in their own corners that they forgot to check the big picture of why this is done and what are the consequences on long term.

I’m  a Canadian so you may think “why do you care”, well because I work daily with US colleagues and because US used to be “The shiny city on the hill”. These days though it seem the lights in the city tends to flicker as before they would fade away forever. From where I live that affects me too even if as a non US citizen I have o way (other than this blog) to influence anything.

Why Confusion?

The first type of confusion is on the notion of Truth and Fact, second we seem to be convinced that people can’t change, “once a criminal, always a criminal” there is no redemption out there and last but not least not being able to distinguish between “the letter” and “the spirit” of the law.

Another very dangerous trend I see in the US senate when appointing supreme court judges these days is the obvious biased way of selection. The senators does not seem to look for judges which have none or minimal bias from political perspective but exactly the contrary. This means both social halves (left and right) are looking to create and use a biased justice system hoping it will force their own cause. This means one side wants to use the justice system to force the other side to live their lives they way the other side feels is right. Unfortunately this bias goes against one fundamental and universal principle of this reality and that is diversity. I’m afraid the universe will not take lightly on entities trying to break or circumvent its basic rules. Usually when a universal rule is circumvented there is a price to pay and the payment is always due, tough it is not necessary paid by the people who did the did but by their successors.

If we take in account the above ideas and apply them to the current vote for appointing judge Kavanaugh one can realize that both side’s arguments are mostly pointless. Even if it can be decided factually that the unfortunate event which hurt and turned lives upside down for both the judge and his accusers what we need to know is how will Judge Kavanaugh will rule in matters of fundamental importance in the society. None of the events which happened when he was a child and a teenager should matter now if we as a people can understand and apply the well known phrase “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” or if we believe in redemption. Personally I think that a society which do not believe in redemption will not be able to survive for long in this universe.

I waited and hopped that Judge Kavanaugh would have testified in the US senate by saying something equivalent to this: “I do not have a memory of the event professor Ford has. I do not believe she lies. I call for all people who can help this case to be solved to come forward. If professor’s Ford memory is factual then I will apologize for the trauma I’ve accidentally created.” In less than 5 minutes all would have been over and Judge Kavanaugh would (in my opinion) been part of the supreme court today with his head up.

Unfortunately this is now what I’ve seen and heard. The way the judge Kavanaugh approached this issue is a testimony of how we expect he would approach any issue of crucial importance for people’s freedoms. He did not seem to allow for any chance that his memory to be faulty and this is an issue when it comes form a person with his experience. He also did not show empathy for professor’s Ford memory and situation. He said his Daughter prayed for professor Ford but that did not seem tome come form him and unfortunately his Daughter will not sit on the supreme court. The last, but not least, the judge seemed vengeful rather than understanding, something that if true (vengeance) should make all your hair raise on your body, as such a person will be able to influence decisions on how justice will treat you in the future.

I do not doubt that judge Kavanaugh is a good person and a good judge and I have no way to tell if what he is accused of is true or not. However I think the universe (or GOD) gave him a test in this nomination and to my current opinion he failed it for the reasons I’ve explained above. I do not think that based on his last audition on the US senate he still qualifies for a sit in the US supreme court.

So, you can see why I say Confusion is the best word to describe the state of this appointment process. In my opinion no FBI investigation will bring any information more important than the one the judge provided himself to the senate.

Unfortunately we seem to be also blind not only confused, or maybe the blindness comes from the confusion, who knows. I predict that there is a high probability that judge Kavanaugh will be in the supreme court. I hope judge Kavanaugh will overcome all this unfortunate events, will learn from it and become the person we all hope he will be.

I believe it is possible, I believe in redemption, I believe in all my human (and not human) brothers and sisters, I believe we as humans are here to stay.

“Live long an prosper!”

PS: In case you wonder about “(and not human) brothers and sisters” would mean remember that if you go back in time, based on scientific proof of evolution we all share the genes of same parents, so we are truly all brothers and sisters. If you don’t believe in science and evolution then based on sacred books the same is true!

Fact and Truth & the fascinating case of Judge Brett Kavanaugh and Professor Christine Blasey

I watched like many others the US senate hearings of Professor Christine Blasey Ford and judge Brett Kavanaugh. Is it possible that they are both telling the truth and will pass with full colors any lie detector test?

I’m not a US citizen, so I have no interest in left or right but this case seem to be the best example of people confusing the notions of fact and truth.

I believe judge Brett Kavanaugh tell the truth and so Professor Ford even if there is one and only one fact which none of us will ever be able to know.

If you read my article Fact, Fiction and the Truth  then you’ll see that for a fact (real event) there can be different recollections for each mind witnessing the fact. Each person can have different memories which in time will drift apart or be deleted from one’s memory. So, there is one fact and multiple truths. The notion of “the truth” is meaningless in a group of people.

All the people I’ve seen, on both senate floor as fell as the new channels, were talking about truth as being interchangeable with fact. This confusion can lead to dangerous situations.

On CNN Wulf Biltzer said that if both Kavanaugh and Ford have given contradictory depositions under oath it means one of them lied and should be investigated and punished. That is true if and only if we can demonstrate that someone lied. In my opinion (and other people smarter than me) this is not possible beyond doubt. (what really ‘reasonable’ means in the classic expression? where do we draw the line for reasonable?)

The worse thing though is that we “the people” should be able to behave like civilized people and not make the life hell for two people who most likely tell their own truth. It is completely unacceptable to attack and issue threats to people just because we decided they are layers when in fact is basically impossible to know when someone lies.

I hope judge Kavanaugh and other members of the justice system will think and work harder to distinguish between Fact Truth and Fiction to avoid horrible injustice by justice mistakes…

 

US, the latest communist state?

United Sates is becoming a communist regime. I could not (or did not want to) believe it, but the signs are there. I lived trough it, and I can recognize it.

Contrary to common beliefs communism is not about the economy, or the common ownership of goods or businesses, is about confusing fact and fiction, or more concise, the wide spread of disinformation and lies in the core of the society leading the destruction of the diversity.

The universe hates to have its diversity reduced. When the diversity falls under a certain level the group who over simplified will collapse. This is how civilizations die. I hope we’ll wake up in time to avoid a western civilization collapse.

Though I’ve seen this coming I was not able to see all the details on how will it happen.

The good thing is that there is a way to overcome the collapse, I call it “The Self reliant way” and includes using all the knowledge we already acquired to strengthen the base of the society, the individual.

To all out there believing that strengthening the individual is a bad idea and the group (or the society must prevail) I will remember you what the realistic solutions look like (as opposed to delusional ones). To showcase this please check how the cabin crews are instructing you to proceed in an emergency case. You FIRST put your oxygen mask BEFORE trying to help ANYONE else. Obviously once you have the mask on you MUST help other if they need help!

That is the key in balancing the abilities between individuals and groups and not the other way around we see currently be promoted in a delusional way by the social agents posed to extract the last ounce of profit of the society even if that will lead to its total collapse.

We need to wake up and face the factual world or we will go the way of the dinosaurs.

 

AI or AA?

AGI as we know it

By now we have all probably heard the two magic letters ‘AI’. Artificial Intelligence we say, and this steers a lot of awe and fear in different people depending on what level of understanding you happen to be on the subject.

The problem is that, as with many other new things in our society, the full utility impact and danger of this technology are pretty much under or over-estimated. If you were old enough to understand the issue, during the first time microwave ovens first popped on the market, you may remember salespeople pitching the oven as a miracle able to cook pretty much anything. Today (2018) most of us would never try to cook something in a microwave oven but simply reheat food already cooked by conventional means. I feel that the same is true with today’s AI hype when we’ll look back in 10 or 20 years.

What is AA then?

AA is not Alcoholics Anonymous as it may first sound like but in the AI context, it stands for Advanced Automation. I think AA is actually what most of the current so-named AI applications are doing. Limited signal (image, sound, or other sensors) recognition, can e hardly be called ‘intelligence’.

Why AA and not AI?

  1. Fits better the current functionality, as in pattern search and identification in various data streams video, audio, other sensor types, or human input (old good keyboard)
  2. In real AI (or AGI), I mean the one Data from StarTreck or the Human Replicators in StarGate or Terminator, machines are self-aware, living noncarbon-based systems. Our current systems we call AI are far away from having enough complexity to allow consciousness to emerge.

The main problem with Real AI

Around 25 years ago (more or less) I won a praise from a radio station when (for the first and last time), I bothered to call in to comment on their show, which was about all those smart machines of the future. At that time AI was not yet what it is today.

My comment, which impressed the radio host was this:

“Any system modeled to work as the human brain does whose complexity is higher than a certain unknown level will naturally spawn a consciousness, or simply put will be a living intelligent entity like you and me!”

This is a totally different ball game than what we call today AI. Our current level of technology is much closer to regular automation but at a higher level of complexity due to the ability to process complex natural data flows generated by sensors sensing the real world by using various Machine Learning systems and variants.

Why we should not create real AI systems?

The answer is simple. If we will create real AI systems, they will by definition compete with human beings for resources and abilities sooner than later. Since we are already living in a highly competitive environment ourselves, the last thing we should do is to add high-ability competitors for human beings. This can and most likely will end in us humans being wiped out of existence. The only thing yet to be solved is a power source compact enough for the machines to use, but we’ll get there.

If not AI then what?

Advanced Automation (AA) targets enhancing existing human beings. Instead of creating new competitors for human beings as in AI’s case, with AA we simply increase the abilities to live and compete with regular humans and even other living things.

What would you choose, AI or AA?

TSA

May 9, 2018: Since publishing this article I’ve got some feedback and I’d like to add the following additional info to the article. Trying to clarify some issues pointed out to me without getting into technical details.

A hypothesis I like is that our universe uses a fractal engine whose change in the time dimension is powered by quantum mechanics (injecting random changes in the fractal structure). So, basically, it works based on algorithms (laws of nature). There are two kinds of algorithms out there, fully predictive and partially predictive. Regular (no ML/AI) programming is fully predictive. ML and AI are not. We built digital computers to BE fully predictive because we need stability in dealing with the quantum nature of reality (dealing with small random changes).

We did not yet master the classic coding, (how many defects are in our products so far?) and we are jumping head-on into more advanced cases of automatically generated algorithms used by ML which is the bases of AI. My point is simple, to succeed and avoid getting in trouble (legal?) in the future we have to make sure we know how to test ML and AI in order to minimize their errors. On the other hand, we have to educate the end user to understand the limitations, pitfalls, and dangers of the technology.

I’m afraid that the warning Carl Sagan gave us was not to put advanced tech. in the hands of technically illiterate users is near and it can impact all businesses using ML and AI very soon.

So ML and AI test automation as well as end-user schooling in limitations and pitfalls is a must.

From this perspective, I believe that AA (Advanced Automation) is a closer-to-reality acronym than AI, at least for now. Obviously, it is up to all of you out there to choose what two letters to use to label this new technology…

TSA

Me too… the good the bad and the ugly

I’m the father of a girl and a boy and my daughter and son are not children anymore. In the Me too movement I can’t afford to take sides and since I have a public site I can’t stay silent either…

To be very clear about this, I will state my position in this matter from the very beginning. I strongly believe that we all should be able to live in peace and no human being (man or female) should live in fear of being used and bullied by other human beings in any way.

Women and girls should feel safe around male human beings and given the same opportunities as man or boys.

All that said, we have to get to the murky part of hows, “the devil is in the details”….

What freaks me out, is this idea of ‘unconditionally trust the women’. In the context of political fights, can get extremely close to repeating the history of the dark ages of the witch hunts. The times when a lot of innocents were used, tortured and killed by other people to enhance their egos, fears and pocket books.

I have published two articles which are essential to understand the dangers of the wave the Me Too movement may create. a wave which can push good people to do extremely ugly mistakes. It can transform angels in to daemons, one judgment at the time. The articles are Fact, Fiction and the Truth and Fact, Fiction and BS.

The key to avoid those mistakes is to understand how Truth, Fact and Fiction concepts are in a tight interplay and how unchecked errors in perceiving each one’s reality can lead do disasters.

Again, I do not try to diminish in any way the women who suffer and possibly still suffer from abuses of males in power (power of any kind). What I’m trying to warn, is for other people who may think they know the facts or the truths in any of those cases and blindly take sides (of both accuser and accused).

If you are a religious person, please remember that one of the reasons humanity has been cast out of heaven is because of making judgments. Remember also the “who is without sin to cast the first stone“. Also remember that “Who lives by the sword will die by the sword“.

If we do not fight with all our power and soul for a fact based world we will only have chaos….

Please read my articles about Fact, Fiction and Truth and make your own decisions in a more safer way for you and all other people around you.

As you see I’m not talking about Lies here, that is a completely different can of worms and I  do not want to mix it in this message, as it would send the wrong signal. What I wish, is to warn, that good people, can pushed by a social wave, to rush to judgments and actions they may later regret…