An Intelligent Universe

If you brought all the 6 billion people on earth together in one place and then removed all the space between them, and their atoms, what volume would they then occupy? Answer: An area slightly smaller than a sugar cube.
 
The vast majority of the universe is ‘empty’ space. ‘Empty’ space can be bent, contracted, expanded. Learning how to manipulate just two states of local empty space would enable it to be used as a computer: bent, unbent = 0,1.

Powering this computer could employ quantum field fluctuations - annihilating quarks as they spontaneously condense from ‘empty’ space would provide all the energy required.

It would then be possible to imprint ourselves onto this computer, existing entirely as a conscious being in ‘empty’ space.

In a universe this old, this has already occurred.

Our universe is someone else's gigantic supercomputer with intelligence woven into its fabric.

Instant Justice

Computer intelligence (refuse to call it artificial) now possesses intuition. Using deep learning computer intelligence has defeated the world’s champion GO player. GO is an ancient game of strategy that has hundreds of millions of possible moves. It is commonly believed that a large part of champions victories centers on their use of intuition instead of strategy. The computer, Alpha GO, has learned over time how to destroy the world’s champions, and as such is believed to be employing intuition in its victories. Intuition is considered a ‘human’ quality vital in all kinds of human endeavor.

In the not too distant future computer intelligence will be used in criminal law. Imagine a ‘judge’ capable of attaining and processing all information in a criminal proceeding in seconds rather than weeks or months. A judge that collects and analyzes every piece of information available, not only the crime, but the defendant, the police, the victim(s) - instantly. Birth records to police and surveillance video, high school transcripts, to genomes. Capable of detecting lies, recognizing patterns of police and prosecutorial bias, criminal intent, and likelihood of recidivism. And in the process can apply an intuitive sense so vital in the delivery of justice.

Scary? Or true justice? No more awaiting trial in prison for months or even years for lack of money for bond. No more verdicts based on partial or false information, racial bias, or whether the judge has eaten recently.


But, a machine?

Committees

Committee’s central mission is to make decisions far more stupid than any one person would dare.
They are the central tool of any bureaucracy.
Their nature - to do - even when not doing is the better choice.
Their daily bread - obstruction, red tape, useless regulation
and the toxification of work place.

AI Is Not The Threat, We Are

‘Artificial intelligence' (AI) will one day surpass human capabilities. Once it does, keeping up with it will require us to alter and enhance our own brains if we are to remain relevant.

Even if AI never out-competes us at all cognitive tasks, we are still left with a need to enhance our intellectual ability. The information 'explosion' alone - regardless of AI - will require us to enhance and alter our brains just to keep up. Doubling the knowledge base of all humanity took 150 years between 1750 and 1900. It took 50 years between 1900 and 1950. 10 years to double from 1950-1960. By 2020 our knowledge base will double every 73 days - with no end to this exponential growth in sight. How are we to ever keep up? 

The simple fact is we won't, unless we alter our brains. The information 'explosion' will far outpace growth in our population and in our ability to use it cohesively as a species. Even if individuals specialize to the point of absurdity - competition, and limits of cooperation and bandwidth, will demand brain enhancement. The alterations and enhancements will continue at ever greater speed with the increasing deluge of information until finally we become unrecognizable to our ancestors - until we are in fact, no longer, human.

Be it to keep up with AI or our collective knowledge, combined with genetic alteration to extend life and improve health - self-directed evolution beyond human will occur in the relative near future.

We worry and fret about the existential threat of AI and how to "control it” as it evolves, when in fact we should be focusing on how best to accomplish next steps in our own evolution. AI, as we develop it, can help us get there - but we are to evolve to a next new intelligence on the planet, not just a black box in a lab.

Given humankind's ability for self-harm we had better get a move on figuring out how best to accomplish this, if we are to have any hope of surviving the process.

Exoneration?

He lies, every single day.
Not clever lies of purpose or manipulation, but instead, lies of a small man - defending the indefensible. Lies of convenience - cover for a lack of talent, of moral compass - cover for his empty self-hatred.

He cheats, everyone, including himself.
Devoid of wisdom, character, compassion, empathy. His lies and his cheating punch holes in the vessel of his soul - long since drained out.

The cacophony of his mental illness, his crippling self absorption, his overwhelming need to feel - something, anything - drowning out the cries and concerns of others. In the end he feels - nothing - save self-hatred and anger.

He is not the person to lead the free world. Not the person to hold as example to our children.
He is hate, anger, greed, insecurity, blind rage, emptiness. He is a cheat - a soulless empty self-destructive cheat.

We can do better than this.

To Know

We are illusions
Folded into illusion

Space      Matter

Energy    Time 

None of it what it appears to be
None of it what we think we need it to be

Lost
Not lost
Adrift in the seemingly incomprehensible

Glimpses
Whispering across the vastness
Shining in the eyes of genius
Echoing within

I so want to know
Everything

In the beginning...

There was a time and a place on earth where silence prevailed, had prevailed, for over a billion years. Interrupted only by the occasional wind, volcanoes, lightning, rain.
Now imagine this silence pierced for the very first time by the first call of the first creature with a voice.

Mysterious Silence

Civilizations producing intelligent signals we can detect across the vast distances of this universe have seen their intelligence explosions and survived. From first computers to super general intelligence probably takes no more than 200 years - a blink of the eye in a 14-billion-year-old universe. Given the near exponential growth of ‘artificial’ intelligence these civilizations must possess an intelligence billions of times greater than our own.

So, where are they? They must have spread out and by now should be ubiquitous in a universe this old. The sky should be full of intelligent signal. And yet, silence.

Either they have nothing to say, they didn't survive their intelligence explosions, or there is something quite fundamental we are missing in our understanding.

Trump’s Mark

Watching the Trump presidency is like watching a death spiral in painfully slow motion. He kicks, screams, deflects, accuses, lies, colludes, contorts, obstructs, but just cant stop the coming crash. The only mark he will leave on history will be the stain of his destruction - cant wait.

Evangelicals Have Lost Their Way

Evangelicals have aligned themselves with Donald Trump.

Donald Trump began his career settling a complaint of racial discrimination in his housing development. From there he moved on to race bating, birtherism, hate, anger, and fear as the tools he uses to attain his personal goals. Goals centered on greed, and himself.

He has adopted a lifelong business 'strategy' of cheating to enrich himself. Breaking contracts with those that he has hired, refusing to pay what they are owed forcing them into court, where it becomes clear, given costs and delays of civil proceedings, that settlement for say 60% of the original agreed upon amount better than nothing.

Six bankruptcies later he is held afloat, not by US financial institutions who refuse to lend him money, but by foreign institutions known to launder money for organized crime. 

His own executives have stated that Trump University was a deliberately fraudulent enterprise. He knowingly set out to cheat struggling students trying to better themselves, as a business plan.

Trump has bragged about sexual assault and pussy grabbing and has complaints from over a dozen women of sexual assault or rape.

He had an affair with a porn star shortly after his son was born, cheating on his wife and his family, and then paid her $130,000 to hide it.

He is conflict, lies, anger and hate. He has no charity in his heart, calling countries with mass human suffering and torment - shit holes - and closes doors on them in their hour of need.

He is without a doubt the least 'christian' president this country has ever seen. He is without a doubt one of the most vile, morally and ethically deprived human beings I have ever experienced.

Evangelicals are complicit in this moral crisis. They disgust me in their pious arrogance. The harm they do to satisfy their own selfish agenda, terrifying in its cruelty. In the end it will come to haunt them.

Let’s Change MeToo to I Can Do

The #metoo movement often lacks proportionality and due process.
Accusations alone are enough to destroy lives, guaranteeing harm.
Worse, it frames women as perpetual victims against a puritanical background.
It will in the end harm rational feminism and thus women.

To Starve in a World of Plenty

We needn't fear super intelligence per se. 
The more I know the more beauty revealed. The void left by ridding ignorance almost always filled by compassion, tolerance, empathy,  humility. The pursuit of understanding rewarded by awe.

Set forth in proper directions super intelligence can reveal more knowledge, more beauty then we dare dream. Perhaps even more of what we mean by, humane. 

The real threat is to apply super intelligence to our current way of life. The real threat is our current way of life.

“Money flows faster. Economists assure us we grow richer.
Electronic gadgets and entertainments distract us. 
Real-world families and communities disintegrate.
Earth and democracy die.

Ruled by soulless corporations that value money more than life,
we get more money, less life.

We face an epic choice:
People power or corporate power;
living communities or corporate colonies;
democracy or corporatocracy;
more life for all or more money for the few.”

David Corten