Note: "Frankenstein, the Monster..." (1821) should be a primer for every modern student and researcher in Artificial Intelligence. The tortured musings of the cobbled-together monster (Ai components) give clues two hundred years later to applying the (Alan) Turing Test for self awareness and developing algorithms for modern artificial intelligence machines.
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This was written in response to a request for comment regarding Mary Shelley, the early 1800's author of Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus, (1818) and Shelley's place in the evolving thinking about the meaning of life and the soul. Although Shelly might not to be significant in a discussion of 19th century tinking on these subjects, this blogger (Pericles21) feels Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' is very important and played a central if not initiating part in framing the thinking about the soul, life and even artificial intelligence from 1818 to the Transhumanism movement of today. Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' on a dare in 1818 when she was very young and lacking a formal higher education especially technical (although home schooled by very well educated and devoted parents, the Godwin's) who were well known at the time in European intellectual and salon circles. Mary's father was the political philosopher William Godwin, and her mother was the philosopher and feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft. In addition to Mary Shelley's own varied literary works, she edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley and even is rumored to have assisted in editing the works of the great Romantic poet, Byron. But Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein' still ranks as a leader in establishing a new literary frontier in human imagination that explores the most sacred areas of human thought, life and the soul.
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Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley was a product of her times, circa 1800. She participated in the thinking and discussions of her times about the nature of life and the soul. Remarkably for such a young person (age 19 at the time she wrote her first work, 'Frankenstein' in 1818) and a woman without formal education much less technical education, she was at the forefront of thinkers of her time (though unknowingly at first) about these topics. In particular, Shelley was caught up in the excitement of new scientific concepts in physiology, i.e., 'animal electricity' ala (Galvani, and discoveries in higher mathematics and science that would lead to the Riemann mathematical lectures in 1854, James Clerk Maxwell's 'Electromagnetic Relationships' in 1865, and eventually to Albert Einstein's Special Relativity Theory (1905), and along the same path of thought and imagination to great works in technical fiction and even art, e.g, the Cubist movement begun around 1905 and exampled by the painters, Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, Fernand Leger and Paul Cezanne.
Mary Shelley's intellectual world generated fictional works that expressed the excitement of new science which expanded the boundaries of human ingenuity and imagination. This new territory of the imagination based on scientific discovery led to the 1865 rendering of nascent quantum mechanical tenets of Uncertainy and other quantum principles in the fantasy worlds authored by Oxford mathematics professor (1855-81), Charles Dodgson (nome-de-plume, Lewis Carroll), notably his 'Alice in Wonderland' (1865) and 'Through the Looking Glass' (1871). And also in the works of Jules Verne, aka 'The Father of Science Fiction'- '20 Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' (1870) and 'Around the World in 80 Days' (1873); in the breakthrough science fiction works of HG Wells (biologist) - 'The Time Machine' (1895), 'The War of the Worlds' (1898) a truly out-of-this-world vision of non-earth (extraterrestrial life forms) and 'The Island of Dr Moreau' (1896) which must be placed as the inheritor of Mary Shelly's earlier 'Frankenstein'of 1818.
Although Mary Shelley was not a scientist nor formally educated, she was home-schooled by very well educated and sophisticated parents. And her parents' home was an important intellectual scene of the very important 'Salon' phenomenon of 17th and 18th century Europe. In the scene, Mary was 'taken up' as a teen age girl by the famous poet Percy Shelly and was introduced and immersed into the company of leading figures of 'forward' thinking in Europe, including the mentoring 'attention' from the poet and intellectual, George Gordon Lord Byron. In this company, on an idyllic Swiss lake vacation, Mary Shelley shyly accepted a 'dare' to write a story about some important or interesting theme of the day. Venturing forth from in this game, Mary wrote 'Frankenstein: or the Modern Prometheus' (1818). 'Frankenstein' put into narrative words the questions raised but not clearly stated from the serious scientific thinking of the time about the nature of the soul and life, and following on from there, race and species which in 1839 surfaced through the biology field work of Charles Darwin, 'The Voyage of the Beagle', and Darwin's later great breakthrough,'The Origin of the Species' (1859).
Despite Mary Shelley's lack of formal education, especially technical, Mary's 'Frankenstein' was at the leading edge of the wave of emotion among Europe's salon intellectuals who pondered the place (and meaning) of humanity in the midst of rapidly advancing 'new science'. A principal focus of those salon debates was, 'what are the biological and/or yet undiscovered principles of life and especially the soul'?
Following from her immersion in the leading salon discussions of her time, Mary Shelly explored what might be the consequences of mankind's 'tampering' with the sacredness of life and soul. In this context, Dr Frankenstein's creation is much more than a 'put-together monster' but a representation of humanity itself, stumbling along blindly and naively into new realms not completely understood and loaded with potential risks and dangers.
Of great 'prescience' in 'Frankenstein' is how Mary Shelley writes about the monster's musings (and laments) about his physiological incompleteness despite his self-awareness, his worries about who could love him, his search for love and his thoughts about what to do with himself. These are concepts of man-made intelligence that Mary Shelley rendered into words in 1818 but would not be addressed seriously until the 1940's mathematical work of Alan Turing's 'Turing Test', an algorithmic method of determining whether an artificial intelligence is self-aware, i.e., sentient. Interestingly, in the context of this discussion, Alan Turing turned his mathematical prowess into developing a theory for the chemical basis of morphogenesis.
More modern examples of Mary Shelley's legacy of exploring the meaning of life and soul would include Philip K Dick's, 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep' (1962) (also made into the film hit, 'Blade Runner' (1982), and Ursula Le Guinn's ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), Samuel Delaney's 'Babel-17' (1966) and Walter Moseley's 'Blue Light' (1998) and 'Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World' (2001).
Mary Shelley's inquiring spirit lives on today. Modern (current, 2015) science is the most recent chapter of her legacy (and of her contemporary fantasy authors, e.g.,Wells, Verne, et al) of imagination- become-real, e.g., organ transplants, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and the looming 'trans-human singularity' ( Neal Stephenson, Ray Kurzweil, Jody Turner, Vladimir Mayakovsky, et al).
Thursday, July 2, 2015
Dylann Roof's Sister Pulls GoFundMe Site: Now Let's Build a Yellow Brick Road to America's Future
Amber Roof removed her GoFundMe page that was raising money for her honeymoon. Roof started the site after her brother, Dylann, allegedly murdered nine people inside Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church on JUne 17. On a page called “A Fresh Start for Michael and Amber,” Amber Roof writes that her dream wedding day “was full of sorrow, pain, and shame, tainted by the actions of one man.” The couple requested $5,000 “to cover lost wedding costs, to pay bills, and to send us on our dream honeymoon.” Ten percent of what they raise was to be donated to Mother Emanuel.
Pericles21 commented at 'The Daily Beast' news zine:
Pericles21 commented at 'The Daily Beast' news zine:
Give. Start something good behind her brother's deed. Give to the Mother Emanuel AME Church to fund a multi-racial Sunday Bible study group. Come from across the country and Show up Sundays at 'Mother E' in all finery looking like a flower gift to the Higher Power. Walk the Path to the higher Good. Show respect for the innocent and mercy for those in sin. Add a brick to the golden road to the future. Name a child after one of the Nine. Have to start somewhere.Hmmmm
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
'Modern' Republicanism: Squeezing the Last Drop of Profit from America's Slave Legacy, and Hoping for More
In Progress:
Modern Republicanism is stuck in place while America moves on. The GOP is like a grown-up child in tantrum whose parent has no more time to give and has walked on. The GOP is like an aged, whiskered mouse trying to find its way out of a maze of patched together twists and turns it cleverly contrapted a while back to gain access to a now empty cupboard.
The current GOP acts as a stubborn anchor keeping the American scow ship-of-state from leaving the dock while impatient foreign nations (friends and rivals) have grown tired of waiting and have begun the yacht race.
Today's GOP is living in a bad nightmare taken from the tales of 'Brer Rabbit': the Nixon-era GOP grabbed the tar-baby of immediate gratification to take away the southern, DixieCrat voting bloc from the Democrats (southern racism, anti-unionism, anti-education,..) and hasn't been able to let go since. The recent (June 17, 2015) Charleston, South Carolina race-hate shootings (9 Black church goers shot and killed ..in church Bible study) is the latest example of the xxxxx consequences of that strategy.
One could conclude that the GOP was driven to the 'Southern Strategy' because its hold-over, industrial revolution era (1890's to 1945) capitalist-first platform had reached the end of its relevancy to both modern domestic America (racial equality and growth into a multicultural union) and the global rise of new economic blocs, e.g., China, Pacific Rim economy, South America, BRIC. coming from the collapse of global empires, the shrinking of the globe into a mono-culture by modern communication and the removal of past boundaries that prevented the cooperation among workers and racial-national groups in America and around the globe).
a picture of how Nixon's 'Southern strategy' (or more accurately, the A of A,,,) has had a congealing (delaying, dragging) effect on America's attempts to grow into the 21st century is well-stated by Harold Meyerson, the Washington Post Opinion writer in his April 8, 2015 piece:
Modern Republicanism is stuck in place while America moves on. The GOP is like a grown-up child in tantrum whose parent has no more time to give and has walked on. The GOP is like an aged, whiskered mouse trying to find its way out of a maze of patched together twists and turns it cleverly contrapted a while back to gain access to a now empty cupboard.
The current GOP acts as a stubborn anchor keeping the American scow ship-of-state from leaving the dock while impatient foreign nations (friends and rivals) have grown tired of waiting and have begun the yacht race.
Today's GOP is living in a bad nightmare taken from the tales of 'Brer Rabbit': the Nixon-era GOP grabbed the tar-baby of immediate gratification to take away the southern, DixieCrat voting bloc from the Democrats (southern racism, anti-unionism, anti-education,..) and hasn't been able to let go since. The recent (June 17, 2015) Charleston, South Carolina race-hate shootings (9 Black church goers shot and killed ..in church Bible study) is the latest example of the xxxxx consequences of that strategy.
One could conclude that the GOP was driven to the 'Southern Strategy' because its hold-over, industrial revolution era (1890's to 1945) capitalist-first platform had reached the end of its relevancy to both modern domestic America (racial equality and growth into a multicultural union) and the global rise of new economic blocs, e.g., China, Pacific Rim economy, South America, BRIC. coming from the collapse of global empires, the shrinking of the globe into a mono-culture by modern communication and the removal of past boundaries that prevented the cooperation among workers and racial-national groups in America and around the globe).
a picture of how Nixon's 'Southern strategy' (or more accurately, the A of A,,,) has had a congealing (delaying, dragging) effect on America's attempts to grow into the 21st century is well-stated by Harold Meyerson, the Washington Post Opinion writer in his April 8, 2015 piece:
Fueled by the mega-donations of the mega-rich, today’s Republican Party is not just far from being the party of Lincoln: It’s really the party of Jefferson Davis. It suppresses black voting; it opposes federal efforts to mitigate poverty; it objects to federal investment in infrastructure and education just as the antebellum South opposed internal improvements and rejected public education; it scorns compromise. It is nearly all white. It is the lineal descendant of Lee’s army, and the descendants of Grant’s have yet to subdue it.
Thursday, June 25, 2015
The Charleston SC Shootings: About the Shooter at the Emanuel AME Church, About America's Abandonment of It's Children and of the Common Weal
About Dylann Roof, the shooter at the Charleston Church on June 17. Everyone is calling for various kinds of punishment to Dylann for those 9 people murdered.
To This writer, Dylann Roof is just as much a victim as the 9 people he shot and killed. And the bottom cause of it all is American greed and an obsession with profit, and the modern American inability to find a national ethic and direction, and substituting 'is it profitable' as the fix-it-all answer to these questions and moral dilemmas.
Looking at Dylann and reading his life story to date, I see a confused, barely-out-of-adolescence, kid ...an American youth...a product of American focus on profit and not public services, of America's obsession with defunding public education in favor of floating bonds for bigger stadiums, of being so afraid of providing services to racial minorities that services are cut for all citizens. Dylann was one of the victims of these wrong and un-American policies.
Before I see Dylann (as a co-called 'adult') confined for the next 20 years ...or executed (for God's sake), I want to see some of the major media hate mongers and truth distorters on trial - Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, the KKK leaders, and the rest. It hurts bad that their spew was successful in killing 10 people (yes, 10) on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
To This writer, Dylann Roof is just as much a victim as the 9 people he shot and killed. And the bottom cause of it all is American greed and an obsession with profit, and the modern American inability to find a national ethic and direction, and substituting 'is it profitable' as the fix-it-all answer to these questions and moral dilemmas.
Looking at Dylann and reading his life story to date, I see a confused, barely-out-of-adolescence, kid ...an American youth...a product of American focus on profit and not public services, of America's obsession with defunding public education in favor of floating bonds for bigger stadiums, of being so afraid of providing services to racial minorities that services are cut for all citizens. Dylann was one of the victims of these wrong and un-American policies.
Before I see Dylann (as a co-called 'adult') confined for the next 20 years ...or executed (for God's sake), I want to see some of the major media hate mongers and truth distorters on trial - Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, the KKK leaders, and the rest. It hurts bad that their spew was successful in killing 10 people (yes, 10) on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Thursday, June 11, 2015
World Affairs and American Public Education: Why We All Should Be Concerned (Charleston, South Carolina, is 'Proof')
June 25, 2015. Post Script. In the Shadow of Charleston, SC shootings. [ref., Perched Eye, June 25, 2015]
This postscript deals with a recent terrible shooting murders in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. That event that is not something to be proud of as a human, but it bears out this writer's warning..in a sad, gothic-surreal way.
It seems that much of the sentiment in this original post was made real by the mass shootings (and killings) of 9 African -American church goers on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Pericles21 emphasizes his shock (and concern) that 'anyone' with an ounce of analytical ability and common sense should not have seen 'Charleston' coming and should not have been surprised by the identity and profile of the shooter, a recently-turned 21, white 'man-child'- poor, a school drop-out and societal castoff, an abandoned and innocent soul set adrift by defunded public services (notably, public education) in a sea of right-wing media sharks without the mental acuity equipment to swim away from danger, falsehood and the deliberate distortions voiced by the extremist media stars (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter,the Fox News crews, the KKK, the Conservative Citizens Councils, etc.).
Finally, Pericles21 sees the Charleston shootings as 10 innocent persons (the 9 murdered church goers and the shooter) caught up in the modern american whirlpool of ignorance, profiteering and loss of a regard for the 'Common Weal' which could have prevented the mental erosion and vulnerability of the shooter, Dylann Roof.
Dylann's story and Charleston's tragedy is a modern American tragedy that could have been prevented but wasn't because a trail of persons (politicians, profiteers, extortionists, etc) chose the easy 'Way of the 7 Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.
The 'shooter' was/is Dylann Roof, a recently-turned-21 white youth, by looks a 'man-child',...poor, very much undereducated, ...then abandoned by 'society' to be netted by the fact-distorting, extreme right-wing hate mongers one finds freely wandering the radio and TV airwaves...claiming the wondrous ability to make complicated issues (especially race in America)'simple'. What makes this event surreal (in the true American tradition of gory surrealness, ala Natural Born Killers) is that the shot-at victims invited the shooter to first sit with them at Bible study, not knowing his intent to shoot them. To add to this Hollywood-like script, the shooter described to police later that this act of open kindness almost convinced him not to carry out his macabre plan...but his 'resolve' won out. So, no modern 'Amazing Grace' to bring down the curtain.
The message is reinforced by the terrible picture in Charleston June 17 - What has happened to America's concern for the Public Weal, most notably in the form of public education and family services?
A final comment: 'WHEN IS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GOING TO END?'
---------
America has its 'good' and 'faults', and the rest of the planet is critically affected by both aspects of America. America operates by a democratic election process that leads to a legislative-leadership structure that formulates national policy. Consequently, America's foreign policy - international interests, international friends and allies, willingness to militarily intervene in other countries affairs - is at its roots, dependent on the intelligence and awareness of the American public about world affairs as well as 'at-home' problems and needs.
In turn, the general intelligence and awareness of the American public is strongly shaped by the American education system which leads to the final point - can the rest of the world (and no doubt America itself) sleep easily knowing that the most powerful and influential culture on the planet has a significant number of its population who believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian 'Bible' wherein the world was 'created' only 7,000 years ago and who believe that fossil records showing dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are deliberately falsified lies perpetrated by political progressives intent on (1) destroying fundamentalist Christianity and (2) along the way to destroying Christianity, destroying America's the euro-racial (i.e., 'white' population).
This logic makes the problems within America's public education system a concern not only for America but for the entire planet.
First, education is perhaps the most important aspect of a developed nation today. Life is complex and requires insightful and trained minds to comprehend global issues and then, to resolve them.
Second, America is still the dominant nation economically and is arguably THE major influence shaping global culture ...and values.
Third, with all the above influence-factors, plus by virtue of it's armies and defense budget, America is too powerful a determining factor to the physical safety and sanity of the globe to have major issues in the education of Americans. Yet, America is failing to educate itself with the result that American beliefs are erroneous and are increasingly simplistic, isolationist, and xenophobic (race, nations, geographic regions).
Fourth, America has problems with its public education system. IMHO, America began to abandon and defund its public education system beginning with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s with the racial integration of public schools. America showed it could not adjust to a diverse population reality as compared with the unreality of enforced (and forced) racial segregation after the Civil War followed by the Jim Crow era which operated to unofficially but effectively restore the pre-war racial separation under slavery, especially in the 'public' service sectors that includes 'public' education. This issue has not been resolved. Moreover, in some ways, much of America has managed to re-verse itself from the Civil Rights era and resurrect old segregation patterns in the public schools. This reversing trend has been aided and made quicker by the added devices of school 'vouchers' and 'charter schools' which operate much like private schools yet receive public funding.
Along with the increase in charter and school voucher programs has come the most dangerous kind of academic 'freedom' - new opportunities for special-belief charter schools to receive funding for erroneous beliefs that would not have been taught in the days of strong, professionally rigorous public school systems with synchronization from the Department of Education in Washington, DC.
It is as if American education threw up its hands and gave up on the challenges and needs of diversity and open desegregation, and said, 'OK, you local neighborhoods, fix things yourselves. We (Wash, DC) only want some nominal bow to national education goals ..about which we don't know a solution.'
America needs to solve this. But, overall, it appears to me the biggest problem with American education is the lack of a national perspective on what is the purpose and content of its school teaching, and the interference (or local dominance) from religion and regional 'prejudice'.
The gaps and faults in our lacking a consistent national education program seems a 'down side' of the American version of democracy which opens up the formatting of school curriculums to states and cities and towns with distinctly different 'beliefs' that can over-reach into curricula taught in the classrooms of America.
An example of the consequences from the lack of a national consensus on education is the morass America currently experiences with creationism vs evolution. There are varying, and hotly debated, school philosophies in America on that subject and in some parts of Americat 'Creationism' is winning, or has won, over evolution. One fears how detrimental the supremacy of Creationism will be to the children who are receive an susch an education.
And these differences in education emphases seem to arrange around geographic 'poles' in America.
These poles are first, geo-political, i.e., 'Red (Republican Party, conservative, southern and formerly rural, rebel states that lost the Civil War)' vs 'Blue (Democratic Party, progressive, coastal and more northern, urban-industrialized winners of the Civil War)' states. Then there are divisions by race, economics, religion, gender tolerance, etc.
America suffers from a 'relativity dissonance' in that there is no national ethic or agreed-on scientific principle set that unites the country on just about any of these subjects. This is maybe the downside of a democratic society where 'laissez faire' marketism (so called 'free market') dominates almost al thinking about just about all topics, including education.
This 'laissez faire' replacement of science and logic seems to be the current substitution in America for a national ethic. Until this 'laissez faire' creed is tempered or is replaced by a more considered, real policy/ 'philosophy of state' the American education system will continue to be fragmented and drift.
This postscript deals with a recent terrible shooting murders in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. That event that is not something to be proud of as a human, but it bears out this writer's warning..in a sad, gothic-surreal way.
It seems that much of the sentiment in this original post was made real by the mass shootings (and killings) of 9 African -American church goers on June 17, 2015, at the Emanuel African Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Pericles21 emphasizes his shock (and concern) that 'anyone' with an ounce of analytical ability and common sense should not have seen 'Charleston' coming and should not have been surprised by the identity and profile of the shooter, a recently-turned 21, white 'man-child'- poor, a school drop-out and societal castoff, an abandoned and innocent soul set adrift by defunded public services (notably, public education) in a sea of right-wing media sharks without the mental acuity equipment to swim away from danger, falsehood and the deliberate distortions voiced by the extremist media stars (Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter,the Fox News crews, the KKK, the Conservative Citizens Councils, etc.).
Finally, Pericles21 sees the Charleston shootings as 10 innocent persons (the 9 murdered church goers and the shooter) caught up in the modern american whirlpool of ignorance, profiteering and loss of a regard for the 'Common Weal' which could have prevented the mental erosion and vulnerability of the shooter, Dylann Roof.
Dylann's story and Charleston's tragedy is a modern American tragedy that could have been prevented but wasn't because a trail of persons (politicians, profiteers, extortionists, etc) chose the easy 'Way of the 7 Deadly Sins: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony.
The 'shooter' was/is Dylann Roof, a recently-turned-21 white youth, by looks a 'man-child',...poor, very much undereducated, ...then abandoned by 'society' to be netted by the fact-distorting, extreme right-wing hate mongers one finds freely wandering the radio and TV airwaves...claiming the wondrous ability to make complicated issues (especially race in America)'simple'. What makes this event surreal (in the true American tradition of gory surrealness, ala Natural Born Killers) is that the shot-at victims invited the shooter to first sit with them at Bible study, not knowing his intent to shoot them. To add to this Hollywood-like script, the shooter described to police later that this act of open kindness almost convinced him not to carry out his macabre plan...but his 'resolve' won out. So, no modern 'Amazing Grace' to bring down the curtain.
The message is reinforced by the terrible picture in Charleston June 17 - What has happened to America's concern for the Public Weal, most notably in the form of public education and family services?
A final comment: 'WHEN IS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR GOING TO END?'
---------
America has its 'good' and 'faults', and the rest of the planet is critically affected by both aspects of America. America operates by a democratic election process that leads to a legislative-leadership structure that formulates national policy. Consequently, America's foreign policy - international interests, international friends and allies, willingness to militarily intervene in other countries affairs - is at its roots, dependent on the intelligence and awareness of the American public about world affairs as well as 'at-home' problems and needs.
In turn, the general intelligence and awareness of the American public is strongly shaped by the American education system which leads to the final point - can the rest of the world (and no doubt America itself) sleep easily knowing that the most powerful and influential culture on the planet has a significant number of its population who believe in a fundamentalist interpretation of the Christian 'Bible' wherein the world was 'created' only 7,000 years ago and who believe that fossil records showing dinosaurs lived millions of years ago are deliberately falsified lies perpetrated by political progressives intent on (1) destroying fundamentalist Christianity and (2) along the way to destroying Christianity, destroying America's the euro-racial (i.e., 'white' population).
This logic makes the problems within America's public education system a concern not only for America but for the entire planet.
First, education is perhaps the most important aspect of a developed nation today. Life is complex and requires insightful and trained minds to comprehend global issues and then, to resolve them.
Second, America is still the dominant nation economically and is arguably THE major influence shaping global culture ...and values.
Third, with all the above influence-factors, plus by virtue of it's armies and defense budget, America is too powerful a determining factor to the physical safety and sanity of the globe to have major issues in the education of Americans. Yet, America is failing to educate itself with the result that American beliefs are erroneous and are increasingly simplistic, isolationist, and xenophobic (race, nations, geographic regions).
Fourth, America has problems with its public education system. IMHO, America began to abandon and defund its public education system beginning with the Civil Rights movement in the late 1950s with the racial integration of public schools. America showed it could not adjust to a diverse population reality as compared with the unreality of enforced (and forced) racial segregation after the Civil War followed by the Jim Crow era which operated to unofficially but effectively restore the pre-war racial separation under slavery, especially in the 'public' service sectors that includes 'public' education. This issue has not been resolved. Moreover, in some ways, much of America has managed to re-verse itself from the Civil Rights era and resurrect old segregation patterns in the public schools. This reversing trend has been aided and made quicker by the added devices of school 'vouchers' and 'charter schools' which operate much like private schools yet receive public funding.
Along with the increase in charter and school voucher programs has come the most dangerous kind of academic 'freedom' - new opportunities for special-belief charter schools to receive funding for erroneous beliefs that would not have been taught in the days of strong, professionally rigorous public school systems with synchronization from the Department of Education in Washington, DC.
It is as if American education threw up its hands and gave up on the challenges and needs of diversity and open desegregation, and said, 'OK, you local neighborhoods, fix things yourselves. We (Wash, DC) only want some nominal bow to national education goals ..about which we don't know a solution.'
America needs to solve this. But, overall, it appears to me the biggest problem with American education is the lack of a national perspective on what is the purpose and content of its school teaching, and the interference (or local dominance) from religion and regional 'prejudice'.
The gaps and faults in our lacking a consistent national education program seems a 'down side' of the American version of democracy which opens up the formatting of school curriculums to states and cities and towns with distinctly different 'beliefs' that can over-reach into curricula taught in the classrooms of America.
An example of the consequences from the lack of a national consensus on education is the morass America currently experiences with creationism vs evolution. There are varying, and hotly debated, school philosophies in America on that subject and in some parts of Americat 'Creationism' is winning, or has won, over evolution. One fears how detrimental the supremacy of Creationism will be to the children who are receive an susch an education.
And these differences in education emphases seem to arrange around geographic 'poles' in America.
These poles are first, geo-political, i.e., 'Red (Republican Party, conservative, southern and formerly rural, rebel states that lost the Civil War)' vs 'Blue (Democratic Party, progressive, coastal and more northern, urban-industrialized winners of the Civil War)' states. Then there are divisions by race, economics, religion, gender tolerance, etc.
America suffers from a 'relativity dissonance' in that there is no national ethic or agreed-on scientific principle set that unites the country on just about any of these subjects. This is maybe the downside of a democratic society where 'laissez faire' marketism (so called 'free market') dominates almost al thinking about just about all topics, including education.
This 'laissez faire' replacement of science and logic seems to be the current substitution in America for a national ethic. Until this 'laissez faire' creed is tempered or is replaced by a more considered, real policy/ 'philosophy of state' the American education system will continue to be fragmented and drift.
Sunday, December 28, 2014
Is The Great Singularity Still Coming?
Much has been said about an approaching 'Singularity' in human cultural organization and behavior, and even in the nature of human existence at its core, i.e. should/will 'we' cast aside our bio-bodies and go-fearlessly (or somewhat fearlessly) into a #GreatNebulo of new existence defined as a world of virtuality wherein humanity will exist as cyber imprints within vast but nanoscale arrays of massive-memory-quantum-computing-systems (#MMQCS).
One major voice predicting the approach of a Singularity is Ray Kurzweil.
I laud Kurzweil. Though retired as a practicing (materials and quantum) scientist, I've diligently followed the scientific journals and have developed 'hobbies' in advanced technologies such as energy and nanotech.
I discovered 'Kurzweil' long after coming to my own opinion that humankind was headlong racing to a #techno-cultural-conjointure that will be marked by an explosive utilization of massively rapid technological advancement resulting in a complete transformation of humankind - its signatures such as culture, cities, and even human formats. By 'human formats', I mean body shapes, functions or even the future need for bodies. In short, I felt 10 years ago and more so today from looking out at our American culture as perhaps the prime example of techno-cultural change, humanity has not long to go before experiencing a 'Great Transformation' which will be advented by crossing a technological threshold most likely in bio-cyber areas. This will lead fairly overnight to 'going cyber', virtual existence, or #LivingInTheCloud. The technologies will be the combination of:
#SentientArtificialIntelligence (#SAI),
#NanoTechMassiveMemoryAssemblies (#NTMMA), #NanoscaleQuantumComputing (utilizing #ExtendedCubitQuantumScaling (#ECQS),
and nano-engineering, including #Nanoscale-Space-Temporal-Propulsion (#NSTP) which will require immensely less energy (10exp-15 factor?) than human scale space craft. Others might estimate different ratios but the general picture is painted.
These breakthroughs will mean unlimited lifetimes and opportunities to investigate the universe via ultimately #NanoArkAssemblies ( millions of personalities contained in nanoscale-memory-computing systems).
Kurzweil and others speak of the 'Singularity' happening in terms of several hundred years. I believe, knowing a little of how DARPA works, 100 years or less will be required. I would not be shocked if DARPA (or international combine of cooperating government agencies despite lower level disagreements) has already progressed well along this general technological route.
In summary, I feel Kurzweil and others show a maybe more-than-mild degree of obsolescence in their predicted timeline for the occurrence of The Singularity. (And once real threshold-crossing occurs, there will be a succession of Singularities marked, and caused, by technologies and implemented-cyber-concepts well beyond what we can fantasize about today.
One major voice predicting the approach of a Singularity is Ray Kurzweil.
I laud Kurzweil. Though retired as a practicing (materials and quantum) scientist, I've diligently followed the scientific journals and have developed 'hobbies' in advanced technologies such as energy and nanotech.
I discovered 'Kurzweil' long after coming to my own opinion that humankind was headlong racing to a #techno-cultural-conjointure that will be marked by an explosive utilization of massively rapid technological advancement resulting in a complete transformation of humankind - its signatures such as culture, cities, and even human formats. By 'human formats', I mean body shapes, functions or even the future need for bodies. In short, I felt 10 years ago and more so today from looking out at our American culture as perhaps the prime example of techno-cultural change, humanity has not long to go before experiencing a 'Great Transformation' which will be advented by crossing a technological threshold most likely in bio-cyber areas. This will lead fairly overnight to 'going cyber', virtual existence, or #LivingInTheCloud. The technologies will be the combination of:
#SentientArtificialIntelligence (#SAI),
#NanoTechMassiveMemoryAssemblies (#NTMMA), #NanoscaleQuantumComputing (utilizing #ExtendedCubitQuantumScaling (#ECQS),
and nano-engineering, including #Nanoscale-Space-Temporal-Propulsion (#NSTP) which will require immensely less energy (10exp-15 factor?) than human scale space craft. Others might estimate different ratios but the general picture is painted.
These breakthroughs will mean unlimited lifetimes and opportunities to investigate the universe via ultimately #NanoArkAssemblies ( millions of personalities contained in nanoscale-memory-computing systems).
Kurzweil and others speak of the 'Singularity' happening in terms of several hundred years. I believe, knowing a little of how DARPA works, 100 years or less will be required. I would not be shocked if DARPA (or international combine of cooperating government agencies despite lower level disagreements) has already progressed well along this general technological route.
In summary, I feel Kurzweil and others show a maybe more-than-mild degree of obsolescence in their predicted timeline for the occurrence of The Singularity. (And once real threshold-crossing occurs, there will be a succession of Singularities marked, and caused, by technologies and implemented-cyber-concepts well beyond what we can fantasize about today.
Saturday, December 27, 2014
How Would Humans Appear to an Alien Visitor: A Manual for Investigating the Human Species
this comment was posted in response to the above question, 'How Would Humans Appear to an Alien Visitor'.
"Biologically, humans are still in a primitive, furred stage with constant emission through their dermal encasement sac (aka 'skin') of gaseous and liquid wastes that are toxic to self and to other humans unless proper space is available - a very messy and unsanitary species to be around. Note: a significant human social effort and giving up of possessions is involved in the often intricate cultural ritual and apparatus of dermal cleansing humans call, 'bathing', which is essentially immersing themselves in a terrible hydride chemical fluid they call 'water' which however is the same fluid environment that nurtured them in their early biological history before they adopted their current shape. Also, though they describe themselves as 'civilized' and 'evolved', humans still give top priority to energy-draining designs for their space exploration by insisting on biological support systems primarily involved with provision and management of bio-input ('food) and output (waste treatment and recycling). Humans have not progressed to accepting the limits to bio-bodies and moving towards cyber existence.
Humans suffer extreme protective anxiety over food and food symbols such as personally 'owned' trinkets (material objects of value), opposite sex (reward symbolism) or trinkets of others. Humans can ingest almost any other bio-species on their planet to obtain energy for movement and thought. Additionally, Humans are primitive to the point of even engaging in cannibalism when normative 'food' is scarce.
The minds and thinking of Humans are 'Unlinked' so they have, so far, had to rely on external devices to communicate with each other via various biological (facial expressions, sounds, pheronomes) and artificial (technical) contrivances such as books, electromagnetic radiative contraptions visual signaling. In the last respect, human technology has become more and more intricate for their species though they don't realize that their stubborn insistence on retaining their bio-shells is an obsession that leads to a dead-end and merely prolongs the inevitable progress to cyber-state existence. However, the tragic lack of a bio-interlink with other humans causes them great pain and tragedy as the result of individual isolation and the need to achieve 'certainty' and clarity about their world by employing consensus and trading back and forth vocal and non-vocal signals, aka spoken languages, writing, and body (facial mostly) exertions.
As a result of their being Unlinked', humans suffer from a constant sense of being isolated. Consequently, humans must be treated with caution as their lack of true connectedness coupled with their still-primitive reliance on fear-fight-or fight bio-coded instincts makes them dangerously suspicious, afraid and psychologically inconsistent (unstable). In fact, another intricate cultural pre-occupation has developed to try to bridge the communication gap - this is known as 'therapy'...and some 'therapies' are quite touching and inventive and are also known as 'philosophical systems'. Furthermore, humans have a special kind of need and brain structure that makes them search for true and pure communication which they feel must be possessed by a perfected breed of human they call, symbolically, 'gods'. Humans have created often elaborate and admittedly appealing mind structures to help them in the matter of 'religion' and their gods who they often attach with human weaknesses and personalities. Human religions should be regarded carefully and respected by the explorer and exo-scientist as much for care and respect for human subjects as much as for avoiding dangerous emotional collapse in humans by taking away the mental stability structure of the human subjects. Religions are for many humans, sometimes like a blind person finding his way with a special cane...take away the cane and the result is predictable, or not which is the danger with humans.
Special Note: human lack of bio-connectedness, creates constant opportunities for deception (facial 'lies' and spoken words) in pursuit of material trinkets and perceived 'gain'. 'Gain' is a human trait of desiring more than an individual's fair share of needed energy or even trinkets. Humans have an interesting way of treating their 'more than fair share' - they hide the excess share(s) away and protected from other humans. This trait has also led to the development of a significant human cultural phenomenon called 'banking systems and investments' - which are again often elaborate systems of lies, deceptions and visual tricks (misleading advertising) to persuade some humans to give up some of their excess in hopes (or false promises) of multiplying their 'investment'.
Humans have other undesirable traits and features. They are burdened by their need to manage personal bio-wastes or else suffer disease and death. They are ridden with bio-parasites that result in early demise. Again, significant cultural structures and time occupations have been developed to address the constancy of human disease - an activity-set humans call 'doctoring' with elabroarate infrastructures for training principals and support staff. Humans give up much of their surplus nation and individual wealth to the 'doctoring' sector of human social organization.
Lastly, but not least, humans recognize their great species 'lack' from not having #BioConnectedness creates both good and bad.
On the good side, humans acknowledge that being unlinked, along with a seemingly innate drive to trickery, can with practice (following prescribed cerebral formulae) lead to artful expressions known as 'comedy'. 'Comedy' is a human behavior with apparent rules that creates a sort of substance-free addiction marked by positive, elevated emotional states usually accompanied by uncontrollable throat expulsions humans call 'laughter'.
On the bad side, humans also acknowledge their non-connectedness has and will continue to offer opprotunities, or requirements, for deceptions and trickery to extort from others their possessions and rights. Humans allocate a significant portion of their waking lives to combat and control this human physiological loophole (regulate) and results by developing an elaborate systems of regulation and formalisms of communication among individuals and groups. The generic territory of these systems is 'Law'. The conducting and acting out of these systems and their rituals are done by individuals and groups specially trained - lawyers, juries and courts. All of currently encountered human study subjects involve some form of their 'Law' apparatus. It is wise for the exo-scientist to remember this feature of human behavior and social organization.
But, humans being what they are, even acting out the rituals of 'Law' some humans are not able to wean themselves completely away from their species inclination to indulge in trickery and deception.
Consequently, much of current human 'comedy' has to do with (to humans) the antics of those in the Law sector. The exo-scientist will constantly hear references to these tales ('lawyer-jokes'), accompanied by even more vigorous throat explosions. These recitations (jokes) are sometimes very elaborate in complexity or are so linked to basic human physiology and physiological activities as to be either difficult to interpret or difficult to witness in their mental imaging.
For a primitive and coarse species, humans can be unfathomable in their preoccupation with their base functions. And why humans so frequently associate in their 'comedy', practioners of 'Law' with human waste and acts of reproduction is a subject of serious study as it seems to represent the surfacing of as yet unknown human traits.
In summary, the exo-scientist is cautioned when investigating the human species. Humans are inherently inconsistent and lack the rationality of post-biological species. They tend to compensate for their Great Lacking (of wireless Bio-linkaging) with over-aggressiveness, suspicion and a knack to somewhat readily drift away on tangential courses to follow exceptionally 'de-ranged' human indivuals or individual interpretations of reality (supersitition). Humans show exceptional inventiveness concerning the imaging and implementing of these mental abberrations in the form of physical tools devoted to perpetrating physiological mayhem on other humans. These traits, along with being principally omnivorous, inquisitive, and focused on species reproduction, render humans often dangerous or at least embarrassing to be around. Treat humans with care for the sake of investigator safety and sanity.
"Biologically, humans are still in a primitive, furred stage with constant emission through their dermal encasement sac (aka 'skin') of gaseous and liquid wastes that are toxic to self and to other humans unless proper space is available - a very messy and unsanitary species to be around. Note: a significant human social effort and giving up of possessions is involved in the often intricate cultural ritual and apparatus of dermal cleansing humans call, 'bathing', which is essentially immersing themselves in a terrible hydride chemical fluid they call 'water' which however is the same fluid environment that nurtured them in their early biological history before they adopted their current shape. Also, though they describe themselves as 'civilized' and 'evolved', humans still give top priority to energy-draining designs for their space exploration by insisting on biological support systems primarily involved with provision and management of bio-input ('food) and output (waste treatment and recycling). Humans have not progressed to accepting the limits to bio-bodies and moving towards cyber existence.
Humans suffer extreme protective anxiety over food and food symbols such as personally 'owned' trinkets (material objects of value), opposite sex (reward symbolism) or trinkets of others. Humans can ingest almost any other bio-species on their planet to obtain energy for movement and thought. Additionally, Humans are primitive to the point of even engaging in cannibalism when normative 'food' is scarce.
The minds and thinking of Humans are 'Unlinked' so they have, so far, had to rely on external devices to communicate with each other via various biological (facial expressions, sounds, pheronomes) and artificial (technical) contrivances such as books, electromagnetic radiative contraptions visual signaling. In the last respect, human technology has become more and more intricate for their species though they don't realize that their stubborn insistence on retaining their bio-shells is an obsession that leads to a dead-end and merely prolongs the inevitable progress to cyber-state existence. However, the tragic lack of a bio-interlink with other humans causes them great pain and tragedy as the result of individual isolation and the need to achieve 'certainty' and clarity about their world by employing consensus and trading back and forth vocal and non-vocal signals, aka spoken languages, writing, and body (facial mostly) exertions.
As a result of their being Unlinked', humans suffer from a constant sense of being isolated. Consequently, humans must be treated with caution as their lack of true connectedness coupled with their still-primitive reliance on fear-fight-or fight bio-coded instincts makes them dangerously suspicious, afraid and psychologically inconsistent (unstable). In fact, another intricate cultural pre-occupation has developed to try to bridge the communication gap - this is known as 'therapy'...and some 'therapies' are quite touching and inventive and are also known as 'philosophical systems'. Furthermore, humans have a special kind of need and brain structure that makes them search for true and pure communication which they feel must be possessed by a perfected breed of human they call, symbolically, 'gods'. Humans have created often elaborate and admittedly appealing mind structures to help them in the matter of 'religion' and their gods who they often attach with human weaknesses and personalities. Human religions should be regarded carefully and respected by the explorer and exo-scientist as much for care and respect for human subjects as much as for avoiding dangerous emotional collapse in humans by taking away the mental stability structure of the human subjects. Religions are for many humans, sometimes like a blind person finding his way with a special cane...take away the cane and the result is predictable, or not which is the danger with humans.
Special Note: human lack of bio-connectedness, creates constant opportunities for deception (facial 'lies' and spoken words) in pursuit of material trinkets and perceived 'gain'. 'Gain' is a human trait of desiring more than an individual's fair share of needed energy or even trinkets. Humans have an interesting way of treating their 'more than fair share' - they hide the excess share(s) away and protected from other humans. This trait has also led to the development of a significant human cultural phenomenon called 'banking systems and investments' - which are again often elaborate systems of lies, deceptions and visual tricks (misleading advertising) to persuade some humans to give up some of their excess in hopes (or false promises) of multiplying their 'investment'.
Humans have other undesirable traits and features. They are burdened by their need to manage personal bio-wastes or else suffer disease and death. They are ridden with bio-parasites that result in early demise. Again, significant cultural structures and time occupations have been developed to address the constancy of human disease - an activity-set humans call 'doctoring' with elabroarate infrastructures for training principals and support staff. Humans give up much of their surplus nation and individual wealth to the 'doctoring' sector of human social organization.
Lastly, but not least, humans recognize their great species 'lack' from not having #BioConnectedness creates both good and bad.
On the good side, humans acknowledge that being unlinked, along with a seemingly innate drive to trickery, can with practice (following prescribed cerebral formulae) lead to artful expressions known as 'comedy'. 'Comedy' is a human behavior with apparent rules that creates a sort of substance-free addiction marked by positive, elevated emotional states usually accompanied by uncontrollable throat expulsions humans call 'laughter'.
On the bad side, humans also acknowledge their non-connectedness has and will continue to offer opprotunities, or requirements, for deceptions and trickery to extort from others their possessions and rights. Humans allocate a significant portion of their waking lives to combat and control this human physiological loophole (regulate) and results by developing an elaborate systems of regulation and formalisms of communication among individuals and groups. The generic territory of these systems is 'Law'. The conducting and acting out of these systems and their rituals are done by individuals and groups specially trained - lawyers, juries and courts. All of currently encountered human study subjects involve some form of their 'Law' apparatus. It is wise for the exo-scientist to remember this feature of human behavior and social organization.
But, humans being what they are, even acting out the rituals of 'Law' some humans are not able to wean themselves completely away from their species inclination to indulge in trickery and deception.
Consequently, much of current human 'comedy' has to do with (to humans) the antics of those in the Law sector. The exo-scientist will constantly hear references to these tales ('lawyer-jokes'), accompanied by even more vigorous throat explosions. These recitations (jokes) are sometimes very elaborate in complexity or are so linked to basic human physiology and physiological activities as to be either difficult to interpret or difficult to witness in their mental imaging.
For a primitive and coarse species, humans can be unfathomable in their preoccupation with their base functions. And why humans so frequently associate in their 'comedy', practioners of 'Law' with human waste and acts of reproduction is a subject of serious study as it seems to represent the surfacing of as yet unknown human traits.
In summary, the exo-scientist is cautioned when investigating the human species. Humans are inherently inconsistent and lack the rationality of post-biological species. They tend to compensate for their Great Lacking (of wireless Bio-linkaging) with over-aggressiveness, suspicion and a knack to somewhat readily drift away on tangential courses to follow exceptionally 'de-ranged' human indivuals or individual interpretations of reality (supersitition). Humans show exceptional inventiveness concerning the imaging and implementing of these mental abberrations in the form of physical tools devoted to perpetrating physiological mayhem on other humans. These traits, along with being principally omnivorous, inquisitive, and focused on species reproduction, render humans often dangerous or at least embarrassing to be around. Treat humans with care for the sake of investigator safety and sanity.
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