tag > Comment
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“Double Diamond” - from “Designing Social Systems In A Changing World” - Béla H. Bánáthy (1996)
#Comment: This influential design framework, as with most of the systems thinking of that time, is in my opinion best described with Wolfgang Pauli's famous saying "Not only is it not right, it's not even wrong."
Certainly there are more interesting and fun "active divination" and "reality tunnel management" (RTM) systems out there to explore, that are not limited by the contemporary totalitarian cult of scientism.
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Physicist: The Entire Universe Might Be a Neural Network
#Comment: In infinity the "world" is every possible thing at the same time, including nothing.
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That which is technically feasible and cheap to do, will be done...
...thus it is logical to assume that a significant portion of all media delivered via screens today (video, image, audio, text) is fully generated by machines, using weaponized secretive "deep fakes" systems with capabilities that are 10+ years beyond the current public imagination. Further, given how ubiquitous and cheap total surveillance has become, it is logical to assume such systems are on a trajectory to becoming "closed loop" and semi-autonomous, to be able to generate and deliver custom versions of "reality" for targeted audiences at scale, that continuously evolve based on individuals measured reactions to "behavioral micro-nudging" delivered through generated media. "The Show Must Go On" or "Unplug & Visit Nature", which is it for you?
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On Order and Disorder
Image is a note from Niklas Luhmann on Zettelkasten: He describes his system as a cybernetic system - A Combination of disorder and order, of lump formation and unpredictable combination realized in ad hoc access. In contrast to today's digital tools, centered on the habit of creating too much order.
#Comment: Order is essentially just a choice of perceiving things from a specific perspective, nothing more or less. Being able to see order and disorder in everything requires relaxation.
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The great conspiracy of the Ornithologists
On a crisp autumn day in 1915, 38 ornithologists gathered in the tiny Swiss village of Zimmerwald. Only, they were not actually bird watchers - that was just a cover. These were socialists from all over Europe, meeting to discuss ways to bring peace to a continent ravaged by WW1.
#Comment: "Ornithologists", "Socialists", and "Peace" are mere words, void of meaning until embodied and put into action.
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Everyday Magic
For some repairs around the house, had 2 handyman here the past 2 days. The first one's appearance was surprisingly similar to a gnome. The second one's atmosphere was strikingly similar to a enlightened monk. Both had peculiar smells and looks. Even though our interactions were brief, both handyman shared words of wisdom as parting gifts which impacted my consciousness profoundly. In this magical universe we live in, one never knows when and where the blessing will appear from. Always be ready.
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Google Says AI Generated Content Is Against Guidelines (alt)
#Comment: Widespread use of AI generated content is a nightmare for search engines like Google. Large scale generative botnets could essentially poisons their entire index to the point of breaking. It is just a question of time until the Bot VS Bot adversarial game becomes unmanageable. And despite their silly rules, it is essentially unbannable. A great times for alternative service, which less heavily rely on pure algorithmic approaches.
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Microplastics Found Deep in Lungs of Living People for First Time (theguardian)
#Comment: What if microplastics were low intensity biological warfare? What if significant sources of microplastic pollution were purposely allowed to enter the environment through leaky regulations? How would we ever know this was happening or who's responsible? A silent weapon for a quiet war.
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Huawei pivots to renewable energy as smartphones slump - U.S. sanctions force Chinese company to pursue solar power and storage projects
#Comment: China is already the world leader in all things renewables and is poised to significantly expand its technological and logistical lead in this crucial sector. Any other actor (nations, etc.) that wants to transform legacy energy systems to renewables, will inevitably have to deal with the Chinese and hence maintain somewhat positive relationships. Otherwise, all proclamations of energy transformation are just nice words. Case in point, recent headline from Germany - a country that is actively supporting the US-Empire lead war against China/Russia/Global-South/etc.:
Germany aims to get 100% of energy from renewable sources by 2035
Germany aims to fulfil all its electricity needs with supplies from renewable sources by 2035, compared to its previous target to abandon fossil fuels "well before 2040," according to a government draft paper obtained by Reuters on Monday. Europe's top economy has been under pressure from other Western nations to become less dependent on Russian gas, but its plans to phase out coal-fired power plants by 2030 and to shut its nuclear power plants by end-2022 have left it with few options.
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King Tubby & The Aggrovatos - Dubbing at the back yard (1982)
#Comment: In a more sane and funky world, King Tubby would be widely recognized and celebrated as one of the greatest people of the 20st century and beyond. Music is the preferred language of Kings.
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#Comment: As to be excepted, these western intellectual art academics complete ignore "proprioceptive art" traditions such as martial arts (Aikido, Kung fu, etc.), self cultivation arts (Qigong, Yoga, etc.), or diverse forms of nature-focused practices. Is this heavy selection bias due to Ignorance or Arrogance?
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"Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs" is a 2h critical analysis video about NFTs. If the time is to valuable for you to spend on this topic (it should be, go visit a forest instead), here is my short Comment:
In the early 2000s, "P2P" Communities like "BitTorrent" thrived around the vision of making all media and knowledge accessible for everyone for free by removing key barriers and ending (artificial) scarcity. It was a radical departure from the age old philosophy of the dominate power "elites", defined by concepts such as Scarcity, Property, Competition, Surveillance, Policing - and above all, financialization & commercialization of everything.
After years of dirty fights by the "elites" and diverse "middle men" against the P2P, Commons and Open-Source movements, they seemingly have achieved dominance over the narrative once again. The result are things like NFT's, which implement the vision of creating more artificial scarcity by creating more (Intellectual) Property through more technological policing - and above all, more financialization & commercialization of everything. NFT's lead to a plethora of bad outcomes, including opening the (philosophical, cultural) door for all kinds of DRM maximalism nightmares, incl. patents on life.
Members of Hyperledger, indicative of the wider situation Despite the ubiquitous marketing messaging ("Decentralize power!"), unsurprisingly the hidden owners of the Crypto/NFT space are the same criminal gangs and empires of the 0.0001%, that have been running the show for centuries. Never forget rule N.1 of the blockchain: He who owns the biggest (quantum) computer and dominates the (power/fiber) networks, de-facto owns everything.
NFT's represent a massive failure of imagination. In the very moment that creating a post-scarcity, open-source, commons-based economy has become feasible, an entire generation has been enticed to become "wannabe investment bankers" engaged in a giant Ponzi Scheme instead.
More critique of Crypto & NFT's, here, here, here, here, here, here and here
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AI rivals average human competitive coder?
A journalist asked me to comment on the story "DeepMind AI rivals average human competitive coder". My comments ended up in the CNBC story "Machines are getting better at writing their own code. But human-level is ‘light years away’". Here are my comments in full length:
Every good computer programmer knows, that it is essentially impossible to create "perfect code" and that all programs are flawed and will eventually fail in unforeseeable ways, due to Hacks, Bugs or Complexity. Hence, computer programming in most critical contexts is fundamentally about building "fail safe" systems that are "accountable". In a 1979 presentation, IBM made the statement: "A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore a computer must never make a management decision". Besides all the recent hype around "AI Coder outperforming humans", the question of the accountability of code remains largely ignored. Has anything changed since IBM made that statement? Do we really want hyper-complex, in-transparent, non-introspectable, so called "autonomous" systems that are essentially incomprehensibly to most and unaccountable to all, to run our critical infrastructure, such as the finance system, food supply chain, Nuclear power plants, weapon systems or space ships?
#ML #Augmentation #Complexity #InfoSec #Robot #Systems #Comment
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"This diagram is too simplistic." - Margaret Mead
#Comment: A quote that nicely encapsulates the mentality of cryptocratic techno-complexity fetishists, then and now. In a world where "knowledge is fractal and the closer you get, the more you'll find" and paradoxes lurk behind every corner, complexity is the preferred form of masturbation of busy-minded intellectual people that desperately are searching for means to ignore infinity and death. As Leonardo Da Vinci once remarked: "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication".
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40 quintillion stellar-mass black holes are lurking in the universe, new study finds - "Small" black holes are estimated to make up 1% of the universe’s matter. #Comment: They will do anything to ignore "Infinity"
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Peak Sillycon Valley: Rich men suggest synthetic wombs should replace women
Perhaps the primary reason the conversation about synthetic wombs is attracting attention is because it was kicked off by a tweet from Tesla CEO and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk. He tweeted a concern that we should be worried about population collapse, sharing an article from the BBC about a “jaw-dropping” crash in the global fertility rate.
Sex Robot Fantasies of lonely white men. In response, Sahil Lavingia, founder of digital product trading platform Gumroad, suggested that we should invest in technology that “makes having kids much faster/ easier/ cheaper/ more accessible,” such as “synthetic wombs, etc.” Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin added that women would be able to keep working if synthetic wombs relieved the “high burden of pregnancy.”
#Comment: Somebody please provide hard evidence, that these "people" actually exist and are not "advanced" A.I bots.
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Controlled Opposition: Why Timnit Gebru Isn’t Waiting for Big Tech to Fix AI's Problems
"Gebru says DAIR’s funding model gives it freedom too. DAIR has received $3.7 million from a group of big philanthropists including the Ford, MacArthur and Open Society foundations."
#Comment: The bigger and more sophisticated the crimes, the more controlled the opposition. Best is to disengage & smile.
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International negotiations on the regulation of killer robots failed - "US rejects calls for regulation'
Following calls from the government of New Zealand for the adoption of international laws to prohibit and limit autonomous weapons systems, the United States has opposed such regulations. Speaking at a meeting in Geneva, US official Josh Dorosin maintained that America saw "the best way to make progress ... would be through the development of a non-binding code of conduct”. See as well this press-release.
#Comment: The entire Robotics & A.I Industry should be deeply ashamed of itself. Weapons are the true "killer app" of your tech. No wonder that the people involved act like soulless robots already today.
"If you're losing your soul and you know it, then you have still got a soul left to lose." - Charles Bukowski
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Connecting the dots? Or disconnecting from the unknowable cause clinging to illusory dots?
Decoding/Encoding 'consciousness' ('brains', a energetic spacetime pattern, call it what you want) is seemingly getting much easier and more reliable: from understanding individual mammal brains all the way to decoding the neural signals of 8 billion human monkeys and using it as part of closed-loop 'mind control' systems, based on exotic models of 'reality'. But to what end? Despite all efforts, we are still chasing the illusive white bunny of Alice in Wonderland. The deeper we probe, the more ghosts appear in the shell. The map is easily confused with the territory. Within infinity there is no "absolute truth" or "objective grounding" - but everything (incl. nothing) is a paradoxical, imaginary, timeless piece of... music? Seeking certainty and control here is a fools game - Learn to relax and go with the flow instead. Ask yourself "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes, in infinity?", and then call off the hunt and simply keep quiet.
