Eden

I’m only giving you my truth and my beliefs, nothing more. Your life is yours and yours alone. You have to follow your own path, the one that your gut feeling tells you about when your mind is quiet. But be aware, there are many wasteful and dangerous paths in the Exoverse.

If you read the Bible (other belief systems heave equivalent information too), the most interesting part (at least for me) is the start, the description of creation, then the mishap that (so said) ostracized our first ancestors, out of the perfect place they used to live at the time, the garden of Eden. But what is even more interesting is the reason behind the so-called “expulsion” and how it perfectly ties in the model of the hypothetical Exoverse idea I’ve been exploring for a while.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/706/pioneer-plaque/ (maybe we should have also added a dog and a cat to give closer to the real image some aliens might see)

I argue that our ancestors, the ones that first created the scriptures wanted to send a message to us across the vast spans of time about what they found to be so fundamental to our existence that would supersede any other issue.

What I believe they tried to tell us is that we all are sharing one single Universal Body of Consciousness and to successfully accomplish our common goal in this existence we must succeed together regardless of the fragmentation this reality imposes on us and we perceive it as “self”.

In this article, I will use UBC as a shorthand for the Universal Body of Consciousness.

An excellent allegoric description of the beginning of this process is in the first verses of the creation, more important in this phrase (slightly different in each scripture) 1:2 “…the spirit of God moved over the Waters”. If we break through the allegory what remains is God and waters and to me, that translates in “UBC and Exoverse”. The allegory is important to convey these complex and deep pieces of information to young minds (that are almost all of us at some point in time). The ancestors could not directly describe “fields” of energy and information over pre-real states, a young mind would simply reject it as nonsense.

The UBC is here (in my opinion) to explore the “pre-real” or what I like to call the Exoverse in order to find a final solution to the problem it was tasked with at the begging of time. This final solution seems to be to find its most optimal form of existence a state that for most of us, can, for all proposes be called Eden.

However, once found I suspect that the event will mark “the end of time” as we perceive it, and more, (I believe that) the timeline itself is a finite entity, meaning that, if the UBC can’t find this Eden until “the end of time” then the “game” will be over either way.

However, our ancestors seem to suggest that there is also a “Dynamic Eden”, meaning an optimal state of existence here and now in the process of looking for that final one and maybe that is what we need to care most about as it is the only one we have access to.

So, what would this “Dynamic Eden” be? To try to understand that we need to see how the machinery of reality works at a most basic level or as it is now known the “quantum level” then integrate back to our macro and beyond to the cosmic one.

Since the details of the story are complex enough to fill a few books and since there is enough excellent information created by other people studying those domains I’ll simply lay down my conclusion and add the reasoning afterward.

My belief is that the UBC uses the universal machinery of the Exoverse to search the pre-real/Exoverse for the final solution. The process employed for the search is as simple as trying all possible states, then drop the ones leading to dead ends or useless outcomes and only keep the one that yields the best chance to fit the rules of the game. Darwin saw this process in the real world but I strongly believe this is much more fundamental and extends at UBC and Exoverse level.

If we consider the above assumption as valid, then the next logical step is to realize that in order for the UBC to be more efficient, its fragments (self) must be able to follow more “independent” or “diverse” paths. In this context more efficient means to be able to cover more potential states within a given quanta of time. Any unnecessary dependency between the fragments will lead to less independent paths checked, hence less efficient process overall.

On the other and we can’t over-fragment either as if we do we will simply loose ourselves in the immensity of the Exoverse. The UBC may dissipate into nothing when its fragments (self) won’t be able to connect back into the main body and this will also be considered a failure. Additionally all fragments need to be able to exchange information in the real world in order to allow for coordination that should lead to a better efficiency than a simple random search. However for the same reason, coordination should not impede diversity. Hyper coordination (tyrannies for example) lead to less diversity hence lower ability to test new paths in the Exoverse.

So, there you have it, we can define a “Dynamic Eden” by finding this optimal state of fragmentation and diversity whereas avoiding loosing ourselves in the immensity of the “space of possible states” we must explore, the Exoverse. When I say “we” I refer to more than humans, I refer to all forms of life in this reality (all over the visible and invisible universe) as WE are all parts of the same UBC.

Getting back to the biblical story of Eden and cutting trough the veil of mythology and story telling, the fall from the Eden means we are off track from this Dynamic Eden I was talking about. We get off track by failing to be as diverse as required by the process we are engaged in, with or (most time) without our awareness.

It is said that we fall from Eden when we started to classify things as “good” and “bad”. We seek what we perceive as good and avoid what we perceive as bad. This “good vs. bad” as an issue is something that can surprise most of us and yet it makes a lot of sense when viewed in the context of the universal model I’ve explained above. It does because as “selfs” we do not have sufficient information to decide what is good and bad at universal level. To do that we would need to remember and integrate information in time intervals that spans billions of generations where in reality we struggle to even make sense of our own lives.

Overall, only what happens to the UBC matters and as such, only it can decide between what is good and bad. So, you see it all makes sense that our tendency to classify almost anything in a binary domain, a zero-dimensional space of “good-bad” is pretty much a slam-dunk way to run our lives in ditches.

I can “hear” some of the readers already asking “so you believe killing is good, right?”. Not so fast I’d say because killing is a special form of action that needs no classification to be deemed undesirable by the UBC. Why? Because is the most basic form of interference with the processes the UBC is engaged in. Killing simply makes exploring of states much more harder and inefficient. So there you go, in my opinion this is a much better explanation of why we should not kill, independent on the self centered good-bad dichotomy.

Obviously, following the same line of thought one can find other actions we “feel” as “bad” having the same root explanation. This all means that the ancestors were right when they told us to refrain form, over and/or miss-using the “good-bad” zero dimensional space of existence.

Just as an observation, in this line of thought the problem of “pure bisexual” issues we seem to have and had falls more towards the original indiscriminate good-bad dichotomy than the need of the UBC exploration principles.

Later on, in the Christian Bible (and other beliefs with different characters in play) Christ introduce the notion of forgiveness. This is another more complex path that our ancestors found important to communicate to us. Though even after 2000+ years most of us still do not actually understand what forgiveness really is. I’ll try explain it in just few words as this model of UBC and Exoverse fits it like a glove. You see, forgiveness simply allows for more states to be “sampled” in a more efficient way if we don’t interfere directly with the process of sampling of the Exoverse.

Christ, from the Mormon faith web site

When one forgives, his or her actions will be more along what they were supposed to be, if the “bad thing” would not have happened to them. They will not consume time and energy to construct and act on revenge and would allow the other side to seek a better path going forward. You may say that “revenge” is just another “experience”, another “path” the UBC takes in the Exoverse but even if this is true the “coupling” between the two humans engaged in revenge are in a way more predictable and so having weaker potential to explore new states.

IMHO: Forgive does not equal forget and forgive is a strength not weakness as one needs a lot more strength to find the best path of action in the Exoverse (future) when under the burden of hate than to allow himself or herself to be consumed by it. Last but not least we are one (UBC) and hurting another self regardless of the reason will reverberate in the UBC (Socrates understood this well).

Buddha is even more clear in this matter and it describes better how once can find this optimal path of “experiencing life” by letting go of pain and illusions in life. In a nutshell that also translates in a less complex and interdependent set of “paths” the UBC can use to explore the Exoverse.

https://ethics.org.au/big-thinker-buddha/

From the Islam world of faith I can cite Rumi, where the UBC would be the Sea and the self as a drop. A beautiful analogy.

In the Sci-Fi fandom this notion was also pursued some time ago and kept alive to this day in the well known StarWars series. (though lifting objects with one’s abilities to use “the Force” is not the point here)

And even a better explanation (but judged from the Exoverse hypothesis incomplete) in the new scene where Luke Skywalker teaches Ray about what the force is (again please try cut trough all the cinematic effects and hype and go to the core of the matter)

The hypothesis of the Exoverse and UBC as I believe it ,is briefly explained in the page bellow. I hope to be able to add more “meat” around it though it may remain forever a hypothesis as it is very difficult if not impossible to test.

I hope that you can see how things start to make more sense, and that our ancestors understood such deep truths about what are we and why are we here. Their problem though was to try convey such complex and deep insights to the other minds, to propagate this insight to the whole “body of consciousness” in order to push it and all of us to a next level of this game we play in the Exoverse. Did they succeed? I think they did at least partially, but the cart (of knowledge) seem to have run in some ditches many times and we have to try pick it up and keep it on the path as, there is no other chance for us.

My own approach on life at the moment is basically:

“Live and let live, enjoy life, then share your life experience with as many others as you can and that are willing or able to listen. Three should be no comparison and no judgement of another one’s path in life, as it is just another experience, another path walked by the UBC in the Exoverse.”

Merry Christmas to everyone that it means something and Happy New Year to you all.

(PS: This is the first draft, the “as is” version, the article may be edited later based feedback I’ll get on its clarity and English proofreading)

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!

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

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

Fact, Fiction and the Truth

Is Truth the same thing as Fact? What is the difference between Fiction and Lie?

In the post “Fact Fiction and BS” I’ve looked at the notion of Fact. In this post, I will focus on the notion of Truth and its relation to the Fact.

You can check the classic definitions of truth, fact, and fiction in dictionaries or lately online dictionaries. I’ve included some links at the end of the article.
I will try (below) a definition of my own aiming at the core of the concept.

The “Truth” is the mental projection of a  Fact

Also, the Truth is the attempt of the human mind to capture and recall a Fact.

Let me present the definition of Fact and Fiction from the “Fact Fiction and BS” article:

Fact: A fact is any piece of information, created by a sensor of any kind measuring one or more parameters, from a well-defined position in space-time and whose content can undoubtedly be authenticated by a quorum of “witnesses”  at any moment in time and space, after the measurement, upon request.
Facts are the bricks of what we call “reality”.

Fiction: Any information which is not fact is fiction!

Based on the above definitions of Fact and Fiction you can see that the Truth resides somewhere between Fact and Fiction. For a short time, a Truth can “match” perfectly a Fact but will never be a Fact, it is simply our mental image of a Fact.

So, the human mind alone can only produce Fiction or Lies and in certain cases (at random or not) match a Fact.

One important corollary of the above sentence is that any attempt to find “facts” by probing human memory is futile. For example, using a machine such as a classic lie detector may at best only probe if an individual lies intentionally. If your intention is to get to a fact by using any device to probe the brain’s memory content then you are simply leading yourself on a wrong path.

The most accurate dictionary definition I found so far is in “ The Devil’s Dictionary (1881-1906)” stating “TRUTH, n. An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance.“. I’m not sure why the devil seems to be closer to defining a term than the holy. That says a lot about how our psyche works.

So, how and why the brain is such an unreliable machine to produce factual information? Let’s explore some of the most important causes of error.

  1. Errors in how the information is acquired by the brain via natural sensorial processes
  2. Errors induced by the “malleability of the mind” as our memories change continuously for many reasons

Let’s explore those error-inducing reasons.

1. The information acquisition errors.

We all know that our visual and auditive acuity is different from person to person as well as at different moments of one’s life. Our “reality” is constructed by our brain exclusively out of sensorial information. If the information produced by our natural sensors differs from person to person and even for the same person in time, then how can we think we can produce factual information out of it? Additionally, sensorial errors induced by external conditions further undermine the accuracy of the raw basic information our brains use to construct our reality.

An excellent case study, put in a movie is (obviously) The Matrix scene where Morpheus explains to Neo what Matrix is. Interestingly enough our reality may be an even more complex and convoluted case of The Matrix where each individual tends to live in their own Matrix and our reality is only an overlap of many individual Matrix-like realities.

2. Memory storage inaccuracies.

The fact that the information in a human mind matches a Fact does not necessarily makes it a Fact. To be a Fact the information must be able to be verified by other entities (minds or machines) and we have no way, yet, to precisely extract mind states and test them against other minds or machines. The problem is, even if we can probe and examine a mental state, the mental state will change almost immediately (that is how minds work) hence rendering the mind state non-factual. Yet for the mind, there will be no way to sense that without an external reference. So, the Truth (the representation of a fact) will drift away from the Fact. This is a complex relationship and if we are not aware of it we can end up confusing Truths and Facts with disastrous consequences for us and the society.

My definition of the Truth is based on analyzing how the human mind works. To perceive anything, our mind needs to rely on memory. Simply put there is no way for the human mind to make the distinction between any entities outside of the mind itself without prior information about the external world. To use this prior information the mind needs to store it in the physical support, the neurons in the brain.

An interesting book explaining how our memory works and how reliable is (or not) The Memory Illusion by the researcher Dr. Julia Shaw. The book cites many research projects including her own trying to understand how reliable the human memory is, including how the memory can be manipulated. YES! your memory can be manipulated by what you hear in ways you can barely believe. Many other researchers such as Elizabeth Loftus have studied how human memory works and provided sufficient proof for us to understand our own weaknesses and our inability to gather and use factual information by only using our own natural bodies.

So, we are bad at probing our reality with our natural sensors and we easily mess up what we acquired by mixing it with fictional constructs of our own information induced by other minds and yes we do forget things.

Knowing all this, how anyone can hope to get to and be able to work with Facts? Luckily for us, we invented ways to precisely sense and measure reality and also accurately store and recall information. Our digital computers, if used correctly, have the potential to do exactly that.

My solution to these limitations of the human mind is to pair human beings with digital machines in a fully symbiotic way in order to use the machine as a scaffolding for the mind. This new living entity will be able to accurately acquire and use factual information as well as unleash human creativity in the realm of fiction.

I’m coining a new concept called “Self Reliance” for Self Reliant Individuals as the base unit for a society of the future. Self Reliant is NOT equal or equivalent to Selfish, but exactly the opposite. A society made up of self-reliant living entities has the best shot to endure until the end of time and enjoy life together with all humanity. “Live and let live” kind of society. This society is also built on shared facts and will lead to a microbalance of abilities. However this is not a given, we have to fight for this type of society. Unfortunately, our current society seems to head directly towards auto-destruction instead. Yet there is hope….

Obviously, this is what I believe and I’m presenting here the base on that belief. I’m happy to get any feedback that may lead to a better understanding of this essential issue deeply affecting the lives of all of us. I also believe that most of the atrocities humans committed against other living things including other humans during our short history under the sun are rooted in this confusion between the Truth and Fact.

I have intentionally not analyzed the concept of Lie in this article. A lie is an intentional distortion of truth by a human mind when communicating with other human minds. This is all for now on the subject of lies. If time permits I’ll come back to this subject in a different article.

Added on Oct 28, 2018: If you are still skeptical about how easy is those days to change digital information without the ability to detect the change just take a look at the excellent abilities of the InPixio suite of editors (https://www.inpixio.com). Those tools are exquisite and have a lot of use in creating fictional constructs by mixing and altering real data. The edited info is good and can add value as much time as we can detect that it is fiction. Without detection, it is just beautiful BS… Below is a small example of what inpixio erase can do. The following images are before and after the removal of an object from the image:

and, after removal…

End add Oct 28, 2018

  • Links to other people’s opinions in this matter

Dr. Julia Shaw on human memory imperfections

Elizabeth Loftus: Powerful case of human memory issues

Anil Seth: Excellent talk about the mind and reality

Blowing your mind, we live in “A Matrix” like reality, Nick Mercer:

The heads in the sand: Next, how and why we run towards our own demise… (gullibility and ignorance) Forget for a while this is a commercial, just turn off the sound and see the brilliant way it points out a human weakness of all of us (more or less but always there).

Why a pure market approach to health is not only a bad idea but is simply immoral

There is a blind fight out there between believers in different versions of our health care model. Some are worshiping the mighty market and the others are jumping head on in the communal insurance pool. Who is right? I personally believe both views have huge issues and biases.

It seem that both groups are missing one important fact I’m going to try explain by using a simple graph bellow.

Market based health care model

Let’s put the above graph (the camel graph) in few words. The profit for the health industry, including Drug companies, Hospitals, Doctors and personnel, and to some extent insurance industry makes the biggest bucks out of your health misery!

If you are dead, the industry makes nothing (at least for now…), if you are completely healthy the industry only makes money out of your insurance and your fears. It sells you “maintenance pills” however you have the choice to refuse buying into it.

The insurance though is a totally different matter. To work will, all people should contribute to maximize the common pool and no one or only few should consume out of the pool in order to maximize the profits. One way or another things go down to profits and entitlements. When you have a limit on your insurance people tent to maximize the usage and the health industry pushes for it. That pushes the costs up and lower insurance business profits so they will push down on how may people are insured, how expensive your insurance is and how much you can claim.

Clearly, we want that people which helps us to be healthy, to have a top status reflecting our real top health condition. Unfortunately, when profit is in the middle, things start to get biased towards the dark side.

My solution for this complex problem?

These days, personal automation, will give all individuals a chance to get out of this “rat race” if they choose to understand and believe in it.

There is a bright future waiting for all believers in this solution and will be alive when it will happen. Extends your mind and grab it or else it may grab you instead, if it does it could grab you the wrong way. Sh..t happens in general, but it tend to happen more frequently to the ignorant. Don’t be one.

America is choosing, “Blue Pill” or “Red Pill”, explaining the Trump phenomena

Morpheus: “This is your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill , you stay in wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.Remember all I’m offer you is the truth and nothing more…
Morpheus: The pill you took is a part of a trace program is designed to disrupt your input output carrier program so we can pinpoint your location.”
Neo: “What does that mean?”
Cipher:It means buckle your sit belt Dorothy, cause Kansas is going bye-bye!

Blue or Red Pill?the_pill

Buckle your sit belt Dorothy, cause Kansas goes by-bye…cipher

The next day…next

I’m a Canadian. Why should I care about who the US citizens will give the power to? Well, maybe because even though I can’t vote for the most powerful person on earth I will (like most of the people living outside US) will definitely be impacted by this choice.

Let me explain what I felt as I was watching this spectacle. Do you remember the aviation disaster with the Germanwings flight 9525 ? When they listened on the cockpit recording, they could hear the screams of the passengers, which become fully aware they only had minutes before their Kansas went bye-bye. I think many of us, non US citizens, though living close to US may have felt that night. The truth is that we really have no idea if this means we are now flying our 9525 yet. I surely hope we didn’t, but how did we get here in the first place? Here is my take on this It started a long time ago with another German artifact, the Berlin wall …

What does the rise of Mr. Trump has to do with the fall of the eastern socialist block? Well, if you go even more back in time, people like Mr. Trump, in the eastern part of the world, found themselves in their own 9525 sort of speaking, when communism took Russia by storm. As a consequence, the western counterparts got scared, very scared and they suddenly realized they needed a wall. Well, not the Berlin kind, but a human one. A wall they could use to defend themselves, if the same phenomena would happen in their own countries. So they “took it easy” and allowed the middle class to grow and flourish. That proved to be a smart decision. The middle class people are usually floating around the center.  They usually do not shallow any blue or red pills. This makes the middle class a formidable wall against extreme behaviors. That was a good plan, as much as it lasted, until that Berlin wall fell…

Well, its all figurative, but all those events are part of a bigger “flow” of events each linked to each other.  When the communist block fell there was no mental counterbalance for power welding people in the west. Their fear subsided and the regular greed started to prevail in their minds. On top of that, two more new phenomena become more important each day, globalization and automation and they destabilized even more the already fragile balance of power between the social classes (the micro balance of power).

Globalization?

For many, this simply means that you loose your well paid job, to create a dozen of stupendously low paid jobs somewhere else on the globe. How is this possible? Because most of the people today have no way to efficiently communicate to other people on the globe. As such “divide and conquer” principles are easy to be used to kill wellness in both places, here and there, all imposed by a “dog eats dog” like market based competition.

On the other hand, if globalization means that all of us are able to freely communicate and exchange information and ideas then globalization would be ideal, yet that is not true so far.

Automation?

When W. Ford started to build his cars he invented the assembly line. He also paid well his employees, well enough that they could afford to buy his cars. This new approach put out of business many of his competitors who still believed in “craftsmanship”. Each car being unique and the soul of the craftsman poured into it, was not enough to compete against highly efficient production process created by Ford. And that lasted for a while. It lasted until the computers and their close relatives robots and automated production lines were invented. And so the Ford’s assembly line looses its humans.

The problem with automation is that every job on earth can be automated.Every single one!.

Don’t lie to yourself hopping it will pass, because it won’t. The fact you can’t imagine how what you do can be done by a machine it does not mean others can’t.

So, if all jobs can be automated, let’s think of the extreme case when indeed all jobs are automated.

This means that no one other than the few very wealthy people will actually have a job and in income, all other will have none.

No job no money, no money no buy. Then why to produce anything in the first place?

More, if no one can buy, money will loose their value, and the wealthy will loose their wealth (monetary) instantly! WTF then? Well simply put, you can’t automate this type of society without killing it.

Now imagine that the business granularity is at the individual level, meaning that you are a business entity and you are SELF SUFFICIENT via computers and automation.

Suddenly the automation turns from a nightmare to a dream!

You have no job, but you don’t care as much time as you can ensure all your wellness by using your own symbiotic machines to live your life anywhere, on Earth on Mars, or in the deep space. More, you are your own master, you are independent you are free! …

So, is Globalization and Automation good or bad?

Well, I’d say they are what we make them to be. But so far in this early stages, we managed to uses them to hurt ourselves…

In one of my previews articles around a year ago I was warning about this phenomena by comparing it to one of the American movies called “The man of the year”. The fresh funny talking showman Mr. Dubbs getting elected president by a fluke of a computer. I don’t think Mr. Trump got elected by a fluke of a computer, but I do believe he got elected by a human fluke.

It was clear to me that the fall of the communist eastern block plus computers leading to globalization and automation will create the right conditions for more and more people to loose their hope, and when the hope goes all sorts of extremes can creep in.

I think Mr. Trump is a smart and cunning business man who felt that there is an opportunity and he took it.

Mr. Trump said these days “I won” and yes this is what happened fair and square. However my warning, is not to think that this is a regular win. Mr. Trump needs to analyze exactly what this “win” means, as I believe he sits on top of a explosive human situation, which can go off at any moment, endangering many lives in both US and all over the globe.

To summarize:

Mr. Trump got on top of a wave, which probably he and no one else may truly understand. Surfing the wave will be probably be a smarter thing than try to oppose it frontally.

Globalization and Automation can lead to our salvation or our destruction, let’s try to get the right pill this time, and keep in mind that there are many other “pills” of may other colors out there!

I believe in the future, I believe in the human race, I believe in each of us being self sustainable and I believe we can be a better global society.  We only need to stop and ask “why” until asking “why” has no meaning, to be curious to put ourselves in the other people shoes.

Because life is worth living!

I stand with you, Orlando, Brussels, Paris, Pakistan, and for all people who lost or had their lives destroyed by madness of extremisms

Orlando Florida US Jun 12, 2016, 50 dead 53 injured. People died and got hurt again, is there a way to stop this from happening?

  • Paris France, Nov 13, 2015, 130 dead and more then 350 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • San Bernardino California US, Dec 2, 2015, 14 dead and 22 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Brussels Belgium, Mar 22, 2016, 35 dead and more than 300 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Lahore Pakistan, Mar 27, 2016, 75 dead and more than 300 injured (source Wikipedia)
  • Orlando Florida US Jun 12, 2016, 50 dead 53 injured
  • And then the Sirian Civil War counting to more than 400000 people killed until now with millions pushed to live their lives with mostly nothing
  • And the list is longer, to long…

I would like to extend my condolences to all the people who lost loved ones in all those tragedies.

In total, in less than a year, we lost 130+14+35+75+50=304 people and destroyed or badly impacted the lives of 350+22+300+300+53=more than 1025 people by a handful of other people who’s minds were twisted by extreme ideas. I can’t even imagine what 400000 dead and millions more displaced means for a time we call ourselves “civilized”.

But by simply stopping here, by only feeling sorry for the loss, would not make much difference for the future. We need to start open our eyes minds and harts to the truth no matter how hard is to find it.

Against all the primal instincts which pushes us to answer the violence with violence the path to a solution include quite a different path. It is said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same thing again and again without changing anything and expecting different results. If that is true it is also an extreme, and we could tame the definition by excluding the “changing anything” to “changing enough” to reach a realistic goal. The thing is, we all find ourselves in various shades of insanity and need to continuously correct our action to stay out of it.

My personal opinion is that one important root cause, if not the most important one, on all our history, but more important these days is our ability to communicate.

The communication process implies extracting information from our minds, filter it, encode it in speech or words, then transport it over various mediums like airwaves (voice), electromagnetic waves, in networks, or solids, to one or more people, the receivers. The receiver(s) will then attempt to decode the information and (attempt to) re-integrate it in their minds. Both the sender and receiver have different mind contexts and each of those steps can and usually will be subject of errors.

My explanation of the communication process, may look “Rube Goldberg”-is but it is darn simple compared to the full fledged phenomena.

We usually do all this in “automatic” mode, paying little attention or no or little attention to all the possibilities for errors and that is where things break down. We assume we “master” communication, when in fact we kind of suck at it and the consequence of this inability is dire.

These days our abilities to transport information has advanced faster than our ability to process the information we receive (and make sense of it) due all the technological advances. Now we are witnessing the first consequences of this imbalance between our abilities to transport information, and our ability to process it. On top of that, we are unable to distinguish between fact and fiction and our ability to listen and understand other cultures has diminished due to of this informational overload.

All this pushes some of us to drawn in the informational flow, and tumble down into the vortex of madness and extremism.

Carl Sagan had this prescient view, he expressed in his last interview with Charlie Rose. Charlie asks, “What’s the danger of all this…?” referring to the Science and Technology in the hands of the public. Carl answers “We arrange the society based on Science and Technology where nobody understand anything about Science and Technology and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow-out in our faces…”  For the full interview (if you didn’t see it yet) check here.

I’m coining this phenomena the “Informageddon” as a derived form of the regular Armageddon, describing a way to screw ourselves big time due our collective madness and stupidity.

Of course, you may say, you can go crazy about it, but nothing would really happen (to others) if there will be no guns. Personally I think we should be able to defend ourselves, however if anyone would own a classic gun can lead to a arms race at the micro social level. All this is good for making bucks on short term but makes no sense on long term. I will discuss more about how to balance the need for self defence and what sort of technology can we use to replace the actual guns. As a Canadian I’m impacted in a slight different way than a US citizen but the problem is actually universal and needs attention.

I’m sure that there is a brighter future ahead of us. Yet the path to it is narrow and not a straight one, but I believe in it. To draw the path to an acceptable future we need to understand the dangers of the new technologies as well as their strengths. As with all other Technological wonders we can use every one of them for both good and bad, the distinction is apparent when we are able to see the big picture on long term.

“In order to be able to harvest the fruits, first we must take care of the roots”

The last two important aspects of the social organization, which can push towards the “Informageddon” are the specialization and competition. Even though both of them are essential for our progress an unhealthy amount or kind of each can hamper the progress.

We can distinguish two types of competition, constructive (or positive) and destructive (or negative). To understand the difference I have to tell you a small story. “Once upon a time there were two neighbours. And they (as with many of us these days) were competing on who had a better life. They both had livestock and were proud of their animals. One day the goat of one of them dies accidentally. In the evening both neighbours pray to God. First one asks God for good health for his family and livestock and wishes the best for his neighbour. He shares some of his goat milk with his neighbour whose goat died . The other neighbour though, prays for his neighbour’s goat to die too so he would not be in the position to be helped as he feels this as humiliating”.

You can see clearly the difference between constructive competition in the first person action and the destructive one from the other person.We can see how for the entire system (the two people together) helping each other leads to a stronger state whereas in the destructive case both would suffer. The problem with the technology is that it speeds up all processes and makes it harder and harder to people to react with long term plans. This inadvertently favours he destructive type of competition.

Please take some time and think how much of the constructive versus destructive competition is promoted more these days? What is the impact on long term of all the secrecy out there and all the actions we are involved in. This is the first step towards a sane future.

For future articles check the “Informageddon” category.

 

What would happen if you give a monkey a machine-gun?

Carl Sagan talking about the danger of marring more and more advanced technologies with very little or no understanding of the technology background by the masses.
Was he right? I thing he was. Arthur Clarke observed that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is undistinguishable from magic”. Which means that for most of the people out there science and technology is magic, this allows religious fanatics to attack science by brainwashing the very people using the technology. And at the top of the magic hill are the computers… We have to take computers out of the magic by simplifying them and making them understandable by everyone, or the future may not be ours.