TrustNoRobot

Category: politics

  • Efficiency and killer robots

    Efficiency and killer robots

    ef·fi·cien·cy

    /əˈfiSHənsē/

    noun: efficiency: the state or quality of being efficient.
    • plural noun: efficiencies
    • “to increase efficiencies and improve earnings”
    • Technical: the ratio of the useful work performed by a machine or in a process to the total energy expended or heat taken in.

    Humans have been on an efficiency quest since the first time we took a stick to hit a squirrel and eat it rather than run after it.   Every convenience that I have today comes from someone thinking they could do something faster, better or with less energy.   Everything from my car to the train to the powergrid and my lights in my house.

    Yes, I do get that the dream of flight and electricity started as something much grander than making $$.  Innovation comes from the creative genius and the desire to do something big and undone before, BUT shortly after the Wright brothers flew, someone started thinking about making cash on it.    On Jan. 1, 1914, the world’s first scheduled passenger airline service took off, operating between St. Petersburg and Tampa, Fla.   It folded fast but shortly followed by more.  This happened just a few years after the first flight! 

     

    The point; innovation and efficiency are connected.  Creatives chart the path and then automation and repeatable processes allow scale and efficiency to occur.  Look at our food processing and mass production.   At every level this truth plays out.
    So what?  So for the entire existence of humanity we have been on this path of improvement.  Yes it was slow in the early days but fueled now by scientific method and a worldwide network and interconnectivity, we are innovating and driving efficiency at at level that seems to be growing faster than Moore’s law (the principle that the speed and capability of computers can be expected to double every two years, as a result of increases in the number of transistors a microchip can contain.).

    Most would say that is a good thing as I have more comforts than ever before.  I get fresh squeezed orange juice and get berries in the middle of winter.

    BUT I think we are at a junction where these technologies are soon beyond our control.  The habit of our human condition to always push the edge and see what can be done has caused catastrophic situations in our past (look at the great depression or war technology in WWI or II).   We even have technology now that can destroy the place we live, like the entire world!  But the threat ahead is different…

    The threat we have ahead is the existential crisis of creating devices that not only replace jobs and are more efficient but that these devices will mature and evolve and repair themselves.  We are creating self sustaining higher than human performing devices that will put us out of jobs and take away key defining parts of our lives and perhaps our lives as well!

    We literally building killer gun wielding robots.  MUST WATCH!  Who the fuck thinks this is a good idea? Honestly, hasn’t anyone ever seen the Terminator?  They even reference it in the video.   It is like we are marching towards a future we all know is going to end like a bad scifi ending and like the programed sheep (with our precious human habit of innovation and efficiency) we march on.  NOW take what you just saw and apply the trajectory of airflight and commercial applications.  Does anyone think killer robots or anything else that will improve efficiency will go down any differently?

    Self driving cars are the same and so are the sexbots that are circling.  IT is going to keep getting stranger and stranger.

    By the way,  I’m super keen on all the tech to get people on Mars and beyond.  I am pretty sure Humanity’s only hope of survival at this point is start to spread out as quickly as possible and give us room to screw up in ways that don’t destroy the entire species.   I only hope there is time for us to expand before this catches up with us.

    As I’ve said before… I’m all for tech that makes sense, for a sensible approach of Humans Above Technology, not the other way around.

    Picture: An endoskeleton skull from the movie ‘Terminator Genisys.’  GABE GINSBERG/WIREIMAGE/GETTY IMAGES

     

     

    Humans Above Technology Inc. is a 501c non-profit entity that was formed to research the intersection of humanity and technology.  Help us fund research and raise awareness of the changes going on today in society, humanity and technology.

     

     

     

  • A human answer to COVID19 – SickAlert

    Sniffle? Sneeze? Should you social distance or run to the mountains. One thing is clear is that the fate of humanity really depends a lot on how humans behave in the next few months. We have a chance to social distance ourselves and there are some new tools that can help, or we can keep shaking hands and watch millions die. The time is now and I don’t see any robot angle swooping in to help.

    Check out this new app that we launched to help the world social distance. I promise if you download this app and self-identify as sick, people will part in front of you like the fucking Red Sea for Moses.

    Check out the site at SickAlert or download below and alert the world of your condition..

  • The Separation of Blame and Responsibility

    Blame and responsibility. We marry these two things together naturally. We figure that blame for something means we are responsible for it, and also the inverse, that if we are not to blame for something, we are not responsible.

    I have recently been reading the book The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and the author Mark Manson makes a big point of the idea of radical responsibility, which is that we are responsible for everything in our lives, but we are not to blame for these things. It’s a good trick of language to divide these concepts, and frees us up to look at the world in a refreshing way.

    Try this game: think of a problem in your life or the world, and release yourself from blame while accepting responsibility for it.

    You are not to blame for not being rich, but you are responsible for handling your finances, and you are responsible for how you feel about money.

    You are not to blame for climate change, but you are responsible for protecting the world.

    You are not to blame for the shitshow the Internet has become, but you are responsible for which social media you choose to use or reject.

    You are not to blame for the dumpster apocalypse of our political system, but you are responsible for helping to fix it.

    You are not to blame for having feelings for a coworker, but you are responsible for acting like an adult and not cheating on your wife.

    You are not to blame for the misuse of AI and robots to manipulate, deceive, and take away value from human life, but you are responsible for supporting social constructs that protect us from this misuse.

    You are not to blame for your crappy habits, but you are responsible for changing them into good habits.

    You are not to blame for belonging to a country that assassinates foreign leaders, but you are responsible for pointing out that our own laws forbid this.

    Executive_Order_11905

    So much of our culture is about retributive justice and punishment for wrongs we commit. But there is no evidence that following this script will lead to a better world in our post-shame slophouse. Instead, we can make more progress but placing ideas like Justice into the same dump we place Rights and Reason, and thinking instead how we can build better selves and a better world.

    You are not to blame for blaming yourself for everything, but you are responsible for stopping the needless cycle of recriminations you are subjecting yourself to.

    Picture of Quinn, who I am delighted to be responsible for.

  • We’ll Be Right Back…

    The meeting had an impressive roster. The heads of the world’s media and advertising companies sat silently around a massive walnut conference table in a sparsely furnished room on the 89th floor of a featureless midtown tower, awaiting their guest.

    The door opened, and Trump shuffled in and sat down at the head of the table.

    A throat was cleared and an Australian accent intoned “Donald, we have a problem. Ratings and revenue are down.”

    “Impossible.” Huffed Trump, crossing his arms

    “This isn’t about polling, this is about ad revenue. And we are down on sales 15% for the year. The Wall and the tariffs and minor scandals just aren’t cutting it. And our economists say unless we get more people watching more commercials, the global economy could collapse,” said a voice with a Chinese accent.

    “The people love -” Trump started.

    “Listen boy” a thick Texas drawl cut him off. “Your act just ain’t pulling in the numbers. We gunna have to go for plan B, and hope that a nice juicy Impeachment will pull in some viewers. The writers have several gold options for this…”

    “Ok, and you still promise me I won’t lose in the Senate?” Trump asked.

    There was an uncomfortable silence in the room. An older woman’s voice broke it.

    “Depends on how that storyline tests in the Midwest.”

    Art from Beeple

  • Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    Democracy and Science Are Failing: Upward

    The news looks grim. Democracy will fail. Science is in a Replication Crisis as the planet cooks. Language is broken.

    None of this is news. The viability of Representative Democracy has been in question since Plato, and probably for thousands of years before that. Science has always been a “look at me and my big brain” contest that led to shoddy methodologies and conclusions. And language has always just been a magic trick to convince yourself and others that truth can be wrung from the filthy dish cloth of reality by barking sounds and pointing.

    But let me explain why I am excited to be living right now: it’s a time when the general public is starting to suspect that Democracy, Science, Language and yes even Money are not ground truths. They are skeins laid over the true power of the human brain and society, and we can remake them, craft them into anything we wish. That doubt of ground truth makes the public open to change, change we sorely need.

    We are all connected, not by some mystical noosphere, but rather in reality, with computers in our pockets connected by an extremely reliable global network. At our disposal, finally, a way to extend our mental processing powers using AI.

    It is time for the great flowering, the age of Computer Assisted Pragmatism.We don’t need to align on the exact methods and applications that will be built to further the next step in our personal and social evolutionary tale. In fact, using language to try to align everyone is not going to work. We just need to build the next phase and be willing to adapt to further the ultimate aim. It is that aim that we do need to align on.

    For me, this alignment entails that we must agree that individual humans are Singletons, worthy of empathy, respect, and fair treatment. Technology (and yes, Money and Language and Government are technologies) built to further the Singleton Pattern is worthy. Other tech should be discarded as evil.

    Which is why I do not reject the ultimate value of AI out of hand. Because it is very possible that the new world we will build cannot be negotiated without the extension of our consciousness, cognitive powers and Language (HAiL) using AI. AI that looks out for us, and protects us from folks who just don’t care about others, and will do their best to steal our shared futures.

    So do not dispair sisters and brothers and non-binary friends. It took Representative Democracy over two thousand years to spread, Science a few hundred, and electronic intelligence almost a few dozen. It will still take time for us to thread new social structures around the bones of the old ones. But it is happening today, and right now there is a college undergraduate realizing what I realized in University: that all of the structures of thought and control that people take for granted are grand illusions.

    The difference is, today that student is a comp sci major, and they have the power to build a platform to change the world.

    Build. Build like the wind.

    Image from The Guardian

  • Eliminate Pronouns

    Let me preface this by saying first that I understand gender as a full spectrum of biological expression, and that I roundly reject the idea of solely binary gender classification. And if you don’t, I recommend listening to this podcast about the current science around gender research.

    I remember a few years ago when someone first suggested that I should use “they” as a safe pronoun to refer to all genders. Of course, I took umbrage at the idea: why co-opt our plural pronoun and create language confusion when people could just tell us what pronoun they preferred?

    And now…well, now I know for a fact all language is hopelessly broken, and my opinion has changed. I was wrong, but not about “they” as a gender neutral pronoun replacement.

    If I had to constantly correct or remind people about my gender because they call me the wrong pronoun I would find that…unacceptable. Which is exactly the thought experiment that should be attempted by people who don’t think pronouns are an issue. Imagine yourself called the opposite pronoun of your gender identity, and then when you correct someone on it, they say “whatever”. Real problem.

    I want to support trans and non-binary folks as much as I can, so I believe I have a solution…at least one that may eliminate the pronoun issue.

    We all have names. We allow people to go by whatever name they choose. And a pronoun is simply a pointer to that name. But what if we just got rid of the pronouns completely and called each other only by our names?

    Taking away an indeterminate placeholder for identity makes language less broken.

    It’s time to eliminate pronouns completely.

    No more he, no more she, no more they to refer to an individual. Just call them by their names. And use “they/them” to refer to everyone or a group exclusively, as in the sentence above.

    Because I don’t know your gender identity, and you don’t know my intentions. There are real battles to fight in the world, and my perceived microgressions against you likely distract both of us from them.

    Fight for your name, and I will fight for mine. We are Singletons, we are unique in the universe and should endeavor to be reconized as such. Fighting over pointers to our names divides natural allies in making the world more accepting of trans, non-binary and cis gender identity.

    And if I happen to use any pronoun in the future, apologies. Going to take some practice to eliminate this pointless pointer.

    Image above from transcister blog.

  • The big tent

    The big tent

     

    We live in the richest country in the world, and no one should be hungry, and no one should be homeless.
    A livable wage, affordable healthcare, affordable educational opportunities, and the ultra rich paying their fair share of taxes would all go a long way towards resolution as the general citizenry would then have opportunity to better themselves.
    Question; when did these simple and humanitarian concepts become associated with the far left???     Hell, it was the majority of the republican platform when Ike was president, and America had a robust and thriving middle class.
    What ever happened to the republican party that championed fiscal responsibility, family values, limited government, and a formidable military standing?
    I look at trump’s GOP, and I see a party that more resembles the taliban; they advocate forced patriotism, they’re anti-gay, they’re misogynistic, they want god in government, and their leaders seemingly refuse to recognize or accept any government mandated checks on their power…
    What I see clearly is that trump and his enablers have pushed the right so far in the direction of hate, intolerance, and totalitarianism that anything left of center now appears to be extreme, when in reality, it represents the diversity of our people. It speaks of equality, freedom of choice, and humanity; the very virtues on which America was founded, and grew into the greatest nation on the planet…
    Mark my words, old boy, this is a dark and tumultuous time for the American people, and history will, in our lifetime, reflect the truth regarding these events…

  • Cancel the Debates Now: Trump is #NotDebatable

    I have a vision. It’s a vision of a Democratic debate stage, and the Dem candidates are asked the question “if you win the nomination, raise your hand if you will refuse to debate Donald Trump.”

    And as one, all candidates raise their hands.

    Because:

    1) You should never debate a liar (or a child). We are all familiar with political prevarication, and misstatements, and exaggerating.

    Then there is lying like we have seen for the last few years.

    Even within the different classes of lying, we could say there is lying about the future (what you plan to do), and lying about the past. Then there is a whole different level of lying about the present.

    Donald Trump constantly lies within all these dimensions. In fact, I would suggest that he lies in ways that never occurred to most of us before. That China called him to negotiate. That his wife knows Kim Jong-un. And those lies are just the last week. Asking why he lies is a pointless exercise in navel-gazing.

    His lies cause a breakdown in our civic discourse, and that is #NotDebatable.

    2) Debates provide legitamacy to Trump, which he sorely needs. For low information voters, the debates are simple zero-sum contests, and he will be declared a “winner” by his oblivious supporters no matter what happens in a debate. Take this opportunity away from him and the trolls and bots supporting him. Don’t give him another chance to lie and attack more.

    Also, get over the fantasy of “beating” Trump in a debate. He will strut and posture and fume and never admit he is lying and incompetent. Liars like him never do.

    Let his lies and the confused “leadership” of his term speak for themselves. If you as a voter really need a debate to determine whether Donald deserves another four years, you really aren’t doing your job of paying attention to reality.

    3). Hold rallies, town halls, policy speeches, and debate other Republicans to find a way forward post-Trump. These are all valid uses of candidate time. But providing additional ad revenue to networks via a political wrestling match, networks that have already made billions on their reality star shitshow, isn’t something the Democratic party needs to do.

    Reality TV got us here. Enough.

    4) Trump will scream and cry that Dems are being weak. Let him, he does it already. And remind him time and again that he is a liar, and that liars have no place in the public square.

    Practice it with me:

    “It’s not debatable that Trump is a liar, and people who care about reality don’t debate liars.”

    See, easy.

    5) We can have conversations about how to move forward with our society once this liar is removed from office. Before then, not so much.

    I have tried not to make this into a political tactics blog, but because the Dems are once again outthinking themselves on impeachment, maybe they will consider something revolutionary like this.

    The job of the President is not to win debates, it’s to coordinate and lead a nation and a party. I have not seen a fruitful debate in 40+ years, and at worst they lead to the narrow victory of folks like W. Bush because he presented a more “likable image.” Enough. The planet is on the line, and the games must stop.

    Trump should not be President. It’s #NotDebatable.

    And maybe we need to pick a President who, instead of winning debates, can win back our future.

    Media: ask this question of the Democratic candidates. You might be surprised at the answer.

    Image from The Hill.

  • The Shibboleth and the Miasma

    Your word of the day explains all you need to know about the inanity of our modern politics and culture. The word is shibboleth.

    A shibboleth is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another.[3][4][5] Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passwords, simple ways of self-identification, signaling loyalty and affinity, maintaining traditional segregation, or protecting from real or perceived threats.

    It’s a fun word to say also: shib – o – leth. Sounds like the name of a forgetful Irish boxer.

    The thing is, in the Bible there is a story about how the difficult pronunciation of this word was used to separate out a tribe that was then slaughtered.

    And the Gileadites took the passages of Jordan before the Ephraimites: and it was so, that when those Ephraimites which were escaped said, Let me go over; that the men of Gilead said unto him, Art thou an Ephraimite? If he said, Nay;
    Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand.

    It’s all fun and games till lisping causes genocide. And BTW, if you actually let your kids read the Bible you’re likely in danger of having child services called on you, so make sure to have them play some violent video games afterwards to calm down their Bronze-Age PTSD a little.

    A shibboleth is, culturally, what gerrymandering is politically. It’s a way to divide with the intention of destruction of a group. Our shibboleths are the dog whistles of race, gender, assault weapons, abortion, etc.

    The thing is, in the 20th c there used to be things you just didn’t say, because everyone realized that talking about differences in a pluralistic society was, well, dangerous.

    What changed? Well, I hate to say it, but the Internet happened. Or as Neil Stephenson calls it in his recent book Fall, the Miasma.

    Let’s consider the name of the Internet as a shibboleth for a second. What if we started calling the Internet “The Miasma”? We could at least separate out the folks who blindly believe everything they read from those who view the whole thing as a pernicious distraction from the real issues facing us. That would make for a better world, right?

    But that’s the trap, thinking that just changing the words leads us to a greater understanding of the truth. The truth is, language itself is the trap, and until we build new and better forms of communication for brains to interface, the trap will just draw us in deeper the more we struggle with it.

    Not a fan of Musk personally, but at least his Neuralink company is building in the right direction.

    The work is the product of Neuralink, a company Musk founded in 2016 to develop a high-bandwidth, implantable brain-computer interface (BCI). He says the initial goal is to enable people with quadriplegia to control a computer or smartphone using just their thoughts. But Musk’s vision is much more ambitious than that: he seeks to enable humans to “merge” with AI, giving people superhuman intelligence—an objective that is much more hype than an actual plan for new technology development.

    Neuralink prototype device. Credit: Neuralink

    On a more practical note, “the goal is to record from and stimulate [signals called] spikes in neurons” with an order of magnitude more bandwidth than what has been done to date.

    Once you start seeing language itself as just bad technology, you start to imagine better ones, where our interface plane is managed by AIs devoted to facilitating better communication and interaction. This is HAiL, and I am convinced more and more every day it’s the right river for our species to float down. Dangerous waters for sure, but the camp we have made out of words is hopelessly befouled.

    Image from The Brick Testament, a Lego version of the Bible. Sigh.

  • Mass Shootings and the Ouroboros of Language

    I have written before about language not being an effective tool to solve our complicated social problems. Despite the deep irony of using language to express this thought, I will continue to do so. If I believed doing an interpretive dance to express this thought would be more useful, I would dance till the end of love.

    But here’s the thing: language is useful. It can order thoughts, create unexpected connections between events in the world and neural blossoms in our brains, and plow practical roads through the dense jungles of confusion that is our world.

    In the beginning was the word because it was the greatest magic trick our brains ever crafted for us. It let us control other humans at a distance. Magic.

    But each word is a bulldozer clearing a road, each utterance a pattern that influences future patterns. If you want to figure out how we should tackle an issue like mass shootings in the US, you are not going to be able to talk it out and come to a compromise. Because to some people guns mean safety, and to others they mean violence. Those are not meanings that can be changed through listening to arguments from the other side.

    We may belive the issue is about trying to align on policy, but what policy aligns a person who feels good when holding a gun with one who feels horror? And of course guns are just one part of this equation: race, economic stagnation, national identity, mental health, rights, 8chan, etc: each means something different to different folks. All of this mess isn’t going to be negotiated with words, and logic is just expensive wordplay.

    So, if this is a solutions blog, what is the post-language solution here? Well, the technology is nascent for sure, but ultimately I believe it is the HAiL systems, the human AI language systems that are currently evolving around us. These systems will translate the language of our political opponents so we can truly understand each other on a neural level.

    Because when a gun nut is talking about how owning guns are their rights, what they are talking about is the fear of losing them, of losing control to governments and larger unfeeling systems. When a liberal talks about gun control they are talking about their fear of a dystopian society of mindless violence, or in other words, the current world.

    The linguistic arguments around guns causing or not causing mass violence are an ouroboros, a snake eating its own tail, the ancient symbol of eternity, the world soul, the life cycle, and the absurdity and futility of it all. There is no conclusion to be found in solely language-based arguments, just endless cycles of one-upsmanship.

    Only when we understand and feel each other’s emotional states beyond language will progress be made, and the ouroboros freed from the endless gnawing. To do this, we will each need an AI to extend us, to communicate on our behalf to the rest of the world, to other AIs.

    We will need meet-in-the-middle AI to negotiate these connections.

    Then, and only then, can we progress beyond our infantile political, legal, religious and media operating systems.

    Images from Wikipedia, and Conan the Barbarian.