Category Archives: Biosphere

Good AI perspective

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Virtually every commentary about AI approaches the topic at a too low perspective: the impact on jobs, privacy, energy vulnerability, etc. In fact, AI is a global issue that will change global politics, global trade and a new era of feeding the world. Below is an expert’s insights as to how AI will change the world – worth reading. From AXIOS:

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-167e2440-d545-11ef-86f8-718f1121da12.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top

Ancient Mariner

AI and Humans do not use the same logic

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Mariner was reading through an old scientific journal published in 2022 when he came across an article about how computer logic and brain logic do not reason in the same way. The comparison watched the brain reason through its neuron activity while the same task was assigned to a computer analog.

Too make several pages into one, both sides were asked to identify an algebraic shape and place it in the correct location. The shape was a doughnut hole. The computer was stumped because the data provided described an empty circle and was asked to properly insert it in the dough. To the computer, there was no information that provided the placement rules for mathematics; it knew, by formula, that it was dealing with a circle but had no mathematical process to determine where the circle was suppose to fit.

The brain, on the other hand, did not conjure the values of multidimensional tables to get the answer. The brain reasoned, “What things have holes in them?” An image of a coffee cup came into focus. The brain said, “Oh – a coffee cup has a hole in the middle, and so does a flower pot, and a well. They all have a hole in the middle”. So brain decided the put the hole in the middle of the doughnut.

The computer uses mathematical algorithms which, through frequency on tables, identifies a mathematical solution. The brain, on the other hand, uses reason. Both have to do a table search to obtain information but the brain uses experience and human function.

Will chatGPT ever master the human brain?

Ancient Mariner

Homo’s predetermined job for Planet Earth history

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It was just yesterday in Earth years that the first placental primate emerged, about 87 million years ago. It was the beginning of the Mammalian Age. Over those centuries,  mammals took many paths to become all the warmblooded, childbearing creatures that are around today; for example, mice, gorillas, reindeer, panthers, lions, beavers, monkeys, cattle, squirrels, bears, horses, gophers, whales, rabbits, sheep, wolves, warthogs, etc.

Dendropithecus turned up 13 million years ago, an early ancestor to a new line called Apes. Gibbons diverged from the line of great apes some 18–12 million years ago and that of orangutans (subfamily Ponginae) diverged from other great apes at about 14 million years ago.

African hominids diverged from orangutans about 12 million years ago. Hominins (including precursors of humans and the  Australopithecine and Panina subtribes) parted from the Gorllini tribe (gorillas) between 8 and 9 million years ago; Australopithecine (including the extinct biped ancestors of humans) separated from the Pan genus (containing chimpanzees and bonobos) 4–7 million years ago. The Homo genus emerged as H. habilis over 2 million years ago. To cut ancestry short, 300,000 years ago, the early relatives of Homo sapiens arrived.

The point is this: Homo sapiens and all its fellow mammals, some plant eaters, some scavengers, some herding, some predators, are in this Mammalian Age together. In an era that began 87 million years ago, it has become clear that humans have a predetermined role that in just 300,000 years mammals are disappearing at increasing rates. 10,000 years ago, wild mammals represented 99% – today only1% represent wild mammals. The rest have been scavenged big time by Homo who represents 32% of mammals along with 67% represented by homo-owned mammalian livestock.

Are humans just a pawn in the planet’s galactic history? Are we  another version of the giant dinosaurs who were bringing the Pleistocene Age to a close when the asteroid struck? The planet has few rules life forms must follow; one of them is ‘survival of the fittest’ Twice in the far distant past the planet wiped out all life with ice and with volcanic reorganization of the earth itself.

After an unusually long period of stable, supportive weather, the planet has begun to respond to another Homo behavior, carbonization, to begin raising the surface temperature of the planet. Further, Earth’s molten core is becoming active. Does Earth have plans to begin reorganizing the continents? It is predicted that Earth will undergo a global ice age in 200,000 years.

What does the future look like? Homo will have to wait to see what future versions of AI and chatGPT have to tell us. Is AI part of the next age sans mammals?

Ancient Mariner

Free, 1st class education online!

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For many folks, filling the mind, body and soul can be a real challenge. Especially if one doesn’t watch TV for news or entertainment, one hasn’t had a smartphone implant, one is getting really old, one is severely ill or one suffers disabilities.

If the reader has any interest in the state of their contemporary knowledge or has a strange confusion about how reality works, mariner suggests documentaries. Documentaries come in all forms of media. Want to travel? sign up for onsite education programs sponsored by a university. Want to avoid travel? register for a campus-based class. Like to read? visit the library or purchase an institutionally recommended book. Like to scroll a smartphone? download documentaries from endless institutional resources.

Even among the morass of television broadcasting one can find excellent documentaries from felting to building a house or, if one is intellectual, try watching 51 seasons of NOVA on PBS. YouTube has a number of top class documentaries – especially about human history and documentaries about well known personalities.

If one likes to talk back, Ted Talks is a good watch for eccentricities in human life – or watch the pseudo doctors who can heal any ailment.

Mariner presents below a teaser list that he feels provides a life lesson as well as new information:

⊕ HACKING THE MIND – PBS. This is an older documentary that still is popular. It shows a blind man whose eyes can actually see where to go and a three-year-old who forms firm prejudices without any thought process. The major point is that the subconscious brain is really in charge of everything we do.

⊕ SECRETS IN YOUR DATA – PBS. A lot of consternation is around today because new AI technologies will invade our privacy. Do not worry – it already has. One example displays to a person the names of all his friends and acquaintances from many years  ago; how about everywhere you went on your vacation, including stores. The major point is that everything is known to Google. Now it’s time for Google to live it for you; Google also speaks the subconscious language.

⊕ MESOPOTAMIA – THE GARDENS OF BABEL – YOUTUBE. This is an outstanding documentary about the beginning of western society. It began 15,000 years ago along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in the region between Iraq and Iran. Many of the worldly events like the Tower of Babel and Noah’s flood which were realities in Mesopotamia’s time, show up in the mythology of the Old Testament. Mesopotamia was the giant world leader for 300 years until surrounding population and new industrial progress allowed smaller states to bring Mesopotamia down. Hmm, 300 years? new industrial progress ….?

In a past post, mariner said that neither the human eye nor the snail’s eye reflect what reality really looks like. He took this insight from the following documentary.

⊕ DECODING THE UNIVERSE, 4 PART SERIES – PBS. The subject is quantum mechanics, a reality that doesn’t work the same as the universe humans live in – a quandary in itself – so pay attention (a warning to anyone who wanders into the quantum world). It seems the mysterious Black Cloud has some important functions that hold the Universe together.

So check out documentaries on the television and check out hobby interests on YouTube. They will fill one’s day many fold.

Ancient Mariner

 

Sticks

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Seasoned readers may remember that, on occasion, mariner yields a post to the creative works of his wife. She is a nonprofit, unpublished professional poet. Her collection on 8 1/2 x 11 paper is close to three inches deep. He has urged her to get published to improve the family income. Here is her poem:

A Short Sermon

If you go for a walk in the woods
You need a walking stick:

Something to support you
When the footing is dangerous,
Something to defend you
When the cougar stalks.
You don’t need aluminum
Trekking poles with hand grips
And carbon steel tips-
Any stick will do.

You only have to look around
To see that the woods provides
Sticks in abundance.

The woods which is full of treacherous footing
And cougars
Is also full of sticks.
It is, after all,
What the woods is made of: sticks.

Isn’t it a miracle
That what we most need
Is provided in abundance?
And by sticks I mean
Courage, hope, faith, love.
And by woods I mean
The world

MKM 11/20/13

Forget Trump – watch Google

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The identity of the evil dictator in the Matrix movie is now revealed: Google. Modern, top-of-the-line scientists have agreed that Homo sapiens will eventually vanish because science has discovered a way for AI to determine when to be pregnant and with what genome – without human intervention [perhaps these new creatures are the ones that will travel the universe as aliens]. But until then, it is Google’s intention to make humans no more in control of their lives than garden flowers can decide whose garden they will be planted in. The Axios article below gives the details:

“Google Gemini 2.0 — a major upgrade to the core workings of Google’s AI that the company launched today — is designed to help generative AI move from answering users’ questions to taking action on its own, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis tells Axios.

  • “We were always working towards agent-based systems,” Hassabis said. “From the beginning, they were able to plan and then carry out actions and achieve objectives.”
  • Hassabis said AI systems that can act as semi-autonomous agents also represent an important intermediate step on the path toward artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that can match or surpass human capabilities.
  • “If we think about the path to AGI, then obviously you need a system that can reason, break down problems and carry out actions in the world,” he said.”

Up to one-third of today’s stock market trades are run by computers without human intervention. But mariner wonders how a national or global economy would operate when the decisions are made by AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). This direction is so unfathomable that no one can predict human interactivity in the future – but it is inevitable.

It is as if we were a neanderthal person swooped up in a time bubble and dropped on today’s Times Square . . . .

Armageddon proceeds.

Ancient Mariner

A new pet word

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Seasoned readers know that mariner has a world class linguist as a friend. One of our pastimes is collecting words that catch our fancy. Most of them are American slurs like ‘jeetjet?’, or the word may be a ridiculously long and convoluted word like ‘hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia which happens to mean fear of long words. Mariner has a new one: peer. As an adverb, it is someone going to the bathroom; as a verb, it is someone looking with timidity; as a noun, it is someone who is equal to others; as a proper noun, it is the name of Gynt’s fancy hotel room. In British usage, being a peer suggests one belongs to an upper class rank like Duke or Lord; in the United States, it means that a person is accepted and equal in a group of others with similar circumstances – as in the democratic phrase ‘All men are created equal’ which, of course, has never been true.

Mariner came upon ‘peer’ nestled in psychological essays. The essays suggested that the desire to be a peer is a strong need to sustain the ego and is a core survival skill. One quickly can identify with this urge especially in school rooms; if classmates are not openly friendly, an individual may have doubts about their own worth in this peer group. A nuanced suggestion is that ‘peer pressure’ is at the foundation of human behavior in that it is a desire to have others accept the individual as a social member and to be part of the tribe’s protection against harm. So while the ego is sensitive to group acceptance, it also is the motivation for achievement AKA defender of the tribe.

Throw the word ‘peer’ into the political mixing bowl and one can see what drives social conflict. It has become common knowledge that MAGA emerged from a labor class that for half a century has been underpaid, lost guaranteed benefits and ultimately was not considered as successful as college graduates. Talk about peer pressure – from the white collar world!

To survive, the ego must be satisfied. it finds others who share the person’s disgruntlement and together launch counter attacks against those who deny their equality.

It turns out not all humans are peers and, will a computer ever be a peer to a human?

Armageddon proceeds.

Ancient Mariner

The new world ain’t so bad

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As many, many voters have done, mariner has shut down news in its entirety. Not only that, he has removed television in general from his options. He and his wife spend one evening each week on a ‘date’ to watch British mysteries together. Other than that, the television sits dark in its corner.

After a few days of dysfunction, one begins to fill in the space with other options – everything from talking more often with family members, to reading books, to crosswords, to reading magazines, even to stopping to talk to neighbors more frequently. Did the reader know they could still go to the movies?

Slowly, the brain turns to other things not thought of in a long time; there’s that attic door lock that has needed fixing for years; building a clear report of family assets, budget patterns and tax detail; tossing out one million four hundred pieces of 8½x11 paper that has been cordoned off for most of one’s life; gifted non-viewers may recall knitting, crocheting, painting and writing. Two friends of mariner make jewelry.

There is time to restart your attendance to community organizations and social events. If he wanted, mariner could go to a square-dancing club; even if he wanted to go, his knees and vertigo would make a mess of things.

How long has it been since the reader washed their dog? Does that trip to a lifelong friend nine states away seem more likely? The point one realizes is that an awful lot of life has been missed while opting for television to fill one’s day.

Brain scientists say an inactive brain goes south faster than an active brain – that is, if the brain has to learn new facts or skills on a daily basis, the brain may likely go southwest – a longer trip.

Speaking from his own experience, gearing up a daily to-do list and be willing to execute it is as difficult as gearing up a heavy 18-wheeler.

But the good side is a feeling of being an independent person, not attracted and seduced by television and, if one is committed to becoming a busy individual, one may lose track of the smartphone once in a while.

Remember: psychologists say that happiness comes automatically if one is active in the community, loves one’s family and graciously works at supporting the least of us.

Ancient Mariner

Bats, Beavers and Bears

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Regular readers know that in his younger years mariner spent some time as a preacher. One sermon he wanted to preach but never did because it would be confusing to the congregation, was a sermon about the common relationship between bats, beavers, bears and humans. Without needing to sustain a congregation’s comprehension, he may try to deliver it in essay format.

* * *

This topic rests upon the definition of survival, behavior and faith. They all are identical, come from the same set of brain cells and are managed in the subconscious mind except when rituals are performed. This phenomenon is identical in bats, beavers, bears and humans – and virtually all creatures in the animal world. If one is a zoologist, the common term is survival; if one is a psychiatrist/sociologist, the common term is behavior; if one is a theologian, the common term is faith.

Some explanation of brain function may be helpful. As a machine, the brain performs the same functions for BBB&H and other warmblooded creatures as well. The mastermind that induced brain function is evolution, a very slow operator that takes many, many lifetimes to change genome reasoning gene by gene to keep pace as environmental reality shifts. If one could watch long enough, they would see the subtle similarity as bats behave as bats, beavers behave as beavers, etc.

In the human brain, evolution took a strange turn and added a frontal lobe to the pre-wired, automatic decision maker housed in the subconscious. The frontal lobe has a brand new function: humans can imagine stuff that doesn’t exist. This puts a strain on the subconscious engine that actually makes human decisions. Humans can easily imagine that a fantasy actually is real and live by it even though it has nothing to do with survival. The bats, beavers and bears are fortunate in this regard.

The term ‘ritual’ is simply a visible, three-dimensional act executed by the subconscious decision maker. It is an act to sustain survival. A bat decides to look for a cave, a beaver decides to build a dam, a bear looks for a den. Humans, with their artificially enhanced reality will look for shelter as well, but with distorted judgment. It is only the destitute and very poor who know that their decision is based solely on survival.

The second perspective, social behavior, is a montage of experiences among family, community and core personality. The core personality is found in the genome and provides the primary actions for survival but how a human behaves in public, under stress, confrontation, and accountability is a montage of ingrained behaviors externally induced to survive.

So the human frontal lobe, along with the fantasy that each human owns the planet and its natural processes, that community bonding isn’t as important as driving the interstates to new fantasies, that money measures surviveability, has led to a third category needed to describe the ethics of surviveability: faith.

Bats, beavers and bears don’t need nor can induce faith beyond a simple behavioral principal that allows them to take advantage of unusual situations. For example, a bear may depend on a human. Humans, however,  can  interpret reality many different ways. Humans often have the imagination to leverage reality beyond the rules of existence provided by evolution.

The subconscious decision maker, for all it’s sophistication, is swayed by the constant barrage of confrontations caused by wishes for glory, adventure and self-serving behavior. Reality has become a circus of convoluted survival values. Which value is a genuine risk to survival?

Enter faith. In addition to subconscious survival decisions, humans have a tool called ideology to help separate the wheat from the chaff. Ideology has many concentrations. For example, there is theological, political, communal, economic and whimsy. The advantage of faith is that it lays an organized value system over reality by which to measure decisions that are genuinely about survival. Unfortunately, the subconscious decision maker doesn’t accept these decisions; ideology is strictly a preoccupation of the frontal lobes. Unless a human convinces themselves that their ideology is the actual reality, humans tend to drift in and out of ideological allegiance depending on its convenience. Hence the need for divine forgiveness for habitual sinners.

Given all these machinations, the subconscious decision maker doesn’t wander far from it’s genome instructions. Survival, care for loved ones and concern for it’s tribe are the core reality. The extent to which the circus realities of the frontal lobe cause nuisance and disruption to our subconscious survival skill places great pressure on the true interpretation of reality. Just ask the bats, beavers and bears how much.

Ancient Mariner

 

 

God bless us, everyone

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With political fireworks everywhere and wars in every direction, mariner thought he may need an update from his alter egos. He searched for Nosey Mole but he was nowhere to be found. Mariner hadn’t heard from Amos in quite a while so he called him.

“My readers have missed your skepticism, Amos. What’s happening?” Amos replied quietly that these are not times to agitate. “These are times to hold tight to what is dear, to what comforts, to what gives hope for the future.” Amos didn’t have much else to say. Clearly he was frightened by the American collapse of democracy, by the disappearing biosphere and the potential for a global war. He felt that resolution in the tiniest sense was nowhere to be found.

Mariner went to see Guru. “What’s your image, Guru? Where will this all end?”

“The end is far away.” Guru replied. He explained that the planet is rolling into a global warming that not only will have physical ramifications on economic stability but will promote global war – likely between US allies and the rest of the world. The underlying causes will be food shortage for an over populated planet – a profound shortage that challenges equality as a political virtue.

He mentioned that many countries, especially more liberal countries, will be hard pressed not to succumb to authoritative governments constrained by a strong plutocracy governed by giant corporations.

Mariner suggested that this may be a continuous process; how long will it take? Guru suggested that global warming will cause significant destruction by 2050 and that further, will put pressure on a capitalistic world – if survival is an objective.

The fact remains that this election, and its reconciliation, will determine how humans move forward in an unbalanced world.

As a famous fictional character once said: “God bless us, everyone.”

Ancient Mariner