Category Archives: Biosphere

Mother Earth’s Code of ethics

Posted on by
2

Mariner has been reading and watching educational shows more than usual because the rife of today’s world seems beyond the pale. One is horrified when one sees how much of humanity lives life in ten square feet of bombed ruins with no water and no dependable food sources.

One thinks of the atrocities put on Native Americans, slaves and oppressed conditions even today subject to rape, physical beating and forced labor.

How did the American buffalo deal with forced extinction by humans? How do lobsters off the coast of Connecticut deal with warming water that forces them to migrate to Canadian waters? And the Coral Reefs, a sizable community of many types of plant and animal life – how do they feel about looming extinction?

Then there are the billions of years that passed before us; what did all the reptiles think when an asteroid changed the planet forever?

It seems that the core morality of Mother Earth responds to a different code of ethics than her inhabitants would like. Are humans too brash when they discount life in the same manner as Mother Earth? Have humans adopted the planet’s ethical model that allows disregard for normalcy and slower evolutionary change? It makes one think of the Holocaust where thousands of humans were disposed of without acknowledgement of the value of human life. One learns that on Planet Earth, buffalo and humans are equal in value.

Ancient Mariner

About Era shifting

Posted on by
Reply

Greetings, Readers

It has been pleasant, if not rewarding, avoiding television news. Watching headlines is a lot like taking slaps to the face over and over. Mariner does keep track generally through his own news email services and a number of trustworthy magazines. Television still has its saving grace through shows like NOVA (PBS) and documentaries on Netflix.

Just the other night PBS ran a show about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, two early presidents who had different perceptions about the structure and role of the emerging United States. They fought tooth and nail and were brutal politically. Honestly, there were as many dirty tricks as one witnesses with politics today. An important difference was that back then, each political battle added to the Constitution with the intent of strengthening the nation whereas today it is petty payback and disassembling the Constitution without a plan to improve it.

The general observation mariner took from the show was that moving from one era to another, whether presidents, migrating fowl or coral reefs, it is grotesquely disruptive to normal expectations. There is abuse at the individual level. New rules are yet to be known.

So it was with those early days when Europe, Russia and The United States (and indigenous natives) had several wars to determine how the new world would be split among nations.

Similarly, today a new economic future that has little to do with contemporary practices has led to a global scramble to acquire a dominant position in the ‘new world’. What frightens mariner is that the planet has its own Trumpian plan to force human life to pay for the ‘borrowing’ of too much of nature’s resources – including global warming, overpopulation and gross extinction of the planet’s biomass.

Under the circumstances, the best one can do is to love family, share with the community and be careful about insecure assets and income.

Armageddon progresses.

Ancient Mariner

Good AI perspective

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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!

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
1

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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