"The Regenerative Design Framework" - adapted from Bill Reed, by @DrDCWahl.
A worthy challenge is to think through how this applies to our digital tools & processes (AI, Web, etc.) - towards truly regenerative and ethical technologies.
“To make the world work for 100% of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous co-operation without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone.” - Our global challenge, as outlined by Buckminster Fuller.
In his new white paper, Fullerton described eight principles that would govern a regenerative economy:
1. In right relationship. “The current system is exactly inverted from the way it has to be,” Fullerton pointed out. “There is no such thing as environmental issues. We are part of the environment.”
2. Holistic wealth. “Money is not wealth,” Fullerton observed.
3. Adaptive management.
4. Empowered participation.
5. Honors community and place. (As poet Wendell Berry wrote, “There are no unsacred places; only sacred places and desecrated places.”)
6. Edge effect abundance.
7. Robust circulatory flow.
8. System balance.
“My suggestion is simple,” Fullerton said. “Align our economy with these eight principles instead of the relentless pursuit at all costs of GDP growth and shareholder value.”
From Sustainability to Social Impact and Regeneration – New Rules for New Business
1st principle of the Technetronic Society: "Something ought to be done because it is technically possible to do it." E.g: If it is possible to build nuclear weapons, they must be built even if they might destroy us all.
2nd principle: "Maximal efficiency & output over all else".
The objective metrics that run our modern societies are essentially only concerned with *quantities*: (More GDP, Growth, Consumption, Production = Better). Few raise the question of *quality*, or what the increase in quantity is good for ~ leading to imbalances in the system.
Geoffrey Hinton - as an elderly man, teenager and young child.
"Of course there are some risks in using this tech for bad applications. But unfortunately, it is not possible to stop technology. So the ethical path we have decided is to release it & make people more cautious" - Dev of voice cloning app @LyrebirdAi on ethics & techno-determinism
"Eventually i think we will become the AI's. We will become intelligent machines. You might think of it as creating a new generation, a new kind of people. Humanity has continued to evolve & why would enhanced people or even designed people not be the next step?" - Richard Sutton
Comment: Hearing people talk about "enhanced & designed humans" (in the context of AI, genetics or elsewhere) always brings up very dark associations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_eugenics Given the historical context, think it is only right to be extremely careful with such aspirations & wordings.
"It's really hard to predict the future. I think there will be all sorts of things happening we did not except. But there is one thing we can predict: This technology is going to change everything" - Geoffrey Hinton's paradoxical end of documentary statement on A.I
Conclusion: Qigong practice may regulate immunity, metabolic rate, and cell death, possibly at the transcriptional level. Our pilot study provides the first evidence that Qigong practice may exert transcriptional regulation at a genomic level. New approaches are needed to study how genes are regulated by elements associated with human uniqueness, such as consciousness, cognition, & spirituality.
"All the companies I've worked for have this deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000 years ago. If businesses could find a way to invent 'agriculture,' we could put the world back together and all would prosper". - Alan Kay
Probably Drum - by Joo Won Park: "A drum machine & arpeggiator based on probability. A user can control the frequency of events for a drum and an arpeggiator"
Indian teacher seeks to promote China-India cultural exchange through yoga:
An inspiring dialogue between the worlds most populous nations (2.7b people combined). Understanding the explosive political power of yoga etc., the Communist Party clearly is watching closely.
For many around the world, India is inseparable from yoga. When mentioning yoga, many would just simply associate it with all kinds of demanding asana practices. But for Yatindra Dutt Amoli, the ancient activity is more than that.
“Before we came here, we saw that people were more focused on the asana practice. The teachers were not making it clear that yoga is not only about practice, yoga is also philosophy, yoga is also a way of life,” the 36-year-old from an Indian university told CGTN.
In collaboration with the Indian Council for Cultural Relations, the India-China Yoga College was established in Yunnan Minzu University in the southwestern city of Kunming in 2015 and Amoli is just one of the first foreign teachers.
“In the beginning, my life here was very difficult, because I'm from a totally different cultural background and society,” he recalled.
The friendliness of his colleagues and his growing interest in China resulted in him staying in the country longer than he had originally planned. Now, he is trying to impart systematic yoga knowledge to his Chinese students by integrating elements from Chinese culture.
“Gradually I understood that I have to change (my teaching method), I realized that if I teach yoga philosophy, I should teach it from a Taoism, Confucianism, Tai Chi point of view and Qigong point of view, even from their ethnic culture.”
Actually, yoga is usually compared with China’s Tai Chi. For Amoli, the two widely practised activities represent two different cultures, while they also share many similarities. He compares Tai Chi to “moving meditation” and said that yoga and Tai Chi may be different in their process, but they both seek harmony between human beings and nature.
“This is cultural root. Yoga is from our cultural root and Tai chi is from your cultural root. If we communicate through the two mediums, we can cooperate more, even we can go further than cultural issues,” said Amoli.
To promote the cultural exchange, the university has also established a college specializing in Tai Chi and are sending teachers overseas including India.
“Both yoga and Tai Chi are the embodiment of the wisdom of the East. They’re good to promote people-to-people exchanges between the two countries and our universities can play an active role in this regard,” said Lang Gongxun, vice dean of the India-China Yoga College.
He’s gotten used to life here, and Amoli said he wants to continue his stay in China to learn more about the country. He said he wants to find more ways to bring the two cultures together.
“By borders, we can say that you are Chinese, I am Indian. But as a human being, we’re all the same. Our lifestyles are quite rich, culture is quite rich. So we have to understand each other,”
said Amoli, who is obsessed with traditional Chinese classics such as Tao Te Ching, which provides the basis for the philosophical school of Taoism, and Huangdi Neijing, which has been considered as the fundamental doctrinal source for Chinese medicine.
Amoli said, when he went back to India last time, he found that people there knew very little about Chinese culture. “They said China has nothing. China only has Kung Fu,” he added.
Amoli is now devoting himself to learning Chinese. He said when he goes back to India next time or travels to other countries, he would like to tell people about other Chinese cultural treasures.
“I don’t know the political situation, and I am not interested in diplomatic things. I am just interested in cultural issues, and I think it’s time that we learn more from each other.”
"Why Indians say Americans are doing yoga wrong":
"More than 20 million Americans practice yoga. It's an industry worth more than 10billion dollars annually"
Yogic Paths: Exploring the Yogic Path
Yoga is meant to shape the life. To give a good shape to life. Its a way of living.
Great reply by @nntsn on the question "how can machine learning help with climate-change related issues:
Most environmental issues are fundamentally policy issues that currently are poorly tackled because of socio-economical and political reasons. To me it's unclear whether ML can (or should) fine-tune policies that struggle to even be brought up to legislators / the public.
If so, we should use ML to make a _better_ case for tackling such issues. Maybe we should chat with the orgs involved in lobbying policymakers and provide data analysis tools to strengthen their cases. Would be great to have a joint workshop on this at NIPS/ICML/AAAI/IJCAI.
Well said & agree. Would love to participate in a new virtual conference (airplane travel wrong symbol) focused on the topic of Flora-Fauna-Human-Computer-Interaction (FFHCI) - Bringing together CS,ML,HCI people with NGOs, activists & policy makers to discuss climate change challenges & solutions.
One of these days, someone will figure out how to effectively fuse the most effective bits of startups, political parties and religious groups into a fascinating new animal.