Understanding on 21’s century politics, work, technology, religion, war, god, truth
-
Our personal data in hands of tech giants creates inequality and opposite of liberty. Data tells everything about current state of person, beliefs he is holding and action he might take on given situation. All this started for targeted personal advertising, but on the way it have far more power to utilized. So, they know everything about a user and it can be utilized for politics.
-
Facebook’s belief of connecting users to best communities have selfish reason and it does it for data only. While real communities with affection and sympathy can never be found on facebook.
-
Regarding Work, AI is way more powerful and it is growing day by day. But AI’s main power is prediction. It predicts on given input for ex(image, video, language), It should be leveraged for decision making. Because highest paid jobs on planet are of taking rational decisions in stressed situation. Summarizing is just one utility, but more potential can be unlocked by going one step further. Regarding replacing jobs, there is system level change required as pointed in book [[Power and Prediction]], if AI is point solution then it is not much utilized but as electricity is expanded as system solution, it generally takes time to adopt as system solution but It has more impact.
-
Regarding Nationalism, If we think about problems of this era such as global warming, bio-wars, climate change, sustainability shift etc, This problems can not be solved by national benefits, As seen during covid times, Issues are tackled globally. These global warming and all these problems should taken on global level rather then national, but this depend on leaders of respective nations. Collaborating on these issues happening in research sectors but collaboration might be difficult. Union countries suppressing $CO_2$ emission for growing countries but since grownup countries have created very large impact on climate.
-
Religion (I’m secular btw). People are unified by common belief or story. If a story is believed by group of people over 1000 years, then it becomes religion.
-
People need to spot difference between truth and beliefs, and updating belief based on closeness to truth. That is ideology of secularism. It is driven by statistics and science based reasoning to believe in anything.
-
Scientists don’t believe in their religion is most impactful and mother of all religions but every religion people think their religion has given humanity everything.
-
Terrorism has very less impact over death but it is most feared and marketed most. So, don’t panic by seeing media channels arguing about terror attacks and series about it.
-
War is this century have no return on investment because main source of capital is economics of capitalism. US have 19 trillion with 350 M people $ and EU have 21 trillion with 500 M People. Main source of capital lies in institutions and research groups. It can’t be captured by war.
-
If we don’t want to know truth, then it is easy to get ignored but if we need to know truth then it is harder to find. See for ex, If I need to know about Black mafia economics, it is hard to find truth. but knowledge on google seems lot lot more if we don’t know truth
-
Make Science fiction closer to reality. Science Research paper has lot less reach then science fiction work.
-
Meditation is being aware about thoughts and emotions. Human mind is very chaotic in thoughts, it washes away if we try to focus on something.
Highlights
▪ Property is a prerequisite for long-term inequality.
▪ equality became an ideal in almost all human societies. It was partly due to the rise of the new ideologies of communism and liberalism. But it was also due to the Industrial Revolution, which made the masses more important than ever before. Industrial economies relied on masses of common workers, while industrial armies relied on masses of common soldiers. Governments in both democracies and dictatorships invested heavily in the health, education and welfare of the masses, because they needed millions of healthy labourers to operate the production lines and millions of loyal soldiers to fight in the trenches.
▪ big challenges of the twenty-first century will be global in nature. What will happen when climate change triggers ecological catastrophes? What will happen when computers outperform humans in more and more tasks, and replace them in an increasing number of jobs? What will happen when biotechnology enables us to upgrade humans and extend lifespans?
▪ secular education teaches children to distinguish truth from belief; to develop their compassion for all suffering beings; to appreciate the wisdom and experiences of all the earth’s denizens; to think freely without fearing the unknown; and to take responsibility for their actions and for the world as a whole.
▪ What was the biggest mistake your religion, ideology or world view committed? What did it get wrong?’ If you cannot come up with something serious, I for one would not trust you.
▪ Democracy is founded on the idea that the voter knows best, free-market capitalism believes that the customer is always right, and liberal education teaches students to think for themselves.
▪ behavioural economists and evolutionary psychologists have demonstrated that most human decisions are based on emotional reactions and heuristic shortcuts rather than on rational analysis, and that while our emotions and heuristics were perhaps suitable for dealing with life in the Stone Age, they are woefully inadequate in the Silicon Age.
▪ hunter-gatherer in the Stone Age knew how to make her own clothes, how to start a fire, how to hunt rabbits and how to escape lions. We think we know far more today, but as individuals, we actually know far less. We rely on the expertise of others for almost all our needs.
▪ When you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail; and when you have great power in your hand, everything looks like an invitation to meddle. Even if you somehow overcome this urge, the people surrounding you will never forget the giant hammer you are holding. Anybody who talks with you will have a conscious or unconscious agenda, and therefore you can never have full faith in what they say.
▪ Not being invited to the Davos World Economic Forum is hardly a guarantee of wisdom. That’s why you need to waste so much time on the periphery – they may contain some brilliant revolutionary insights, but they are mostly full of uninformed guesses, debunked models, superstitious dogmas and ridiculous conspiracy theories.
▪ system is structured in such a way that those who make no effort to know can remain in blissful ignorance, and those who do make an effort will find it very difficult to discover the truth
▪ When you try to explain to people the true complexity of the conflict by means of statistics and precise data, you lose them; but a personal story about the fate of one child activates the tear ducts, makes the blood boil, and generates false moral certainty
▪ To really enjoy football, you have to accept the rules of the game, and forget for at least ninety minutes that they are merely human inventions. If you don’t, you will think it utterly ridiculous for twenty-two people to go running after a ball.
▪ If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things
▪ If you want power, at some point you will have to spread fictions. If you want to know the truth about the world, at some point you will have to renounce power. You will have to admit things
▪ Human suffering is often caused by belief in fiction, but the suffering itself is still real.
▪ if some issue seems exceptionally important to you, make the effort to read the relevant scientific literature. And by scientific literature I mean peer-reviewed articles, books published by well-known academic publishers, and the writings of professors from reputable institutions.
▪ We certainly need good science, but from a political perspective, a good science-fiction movie is worth far more than an article in Science or Nature.
▪ Whenever you see a movie about an AI in which the AI is female and the scientist is male, it’s probably a movie about feminism rather than cybernetics
▪ People are afraid of being trapped inside a box, but they don’t realise that they are already trapped inside a box – their brain – which is locked within a bigger box – human society with its myriad fictions
▪ Pain is pain, fear is fear, and love is love – even in the matrix
▪ Since your brain and your ‘self’ are part of the matrix, to escape the matrix you must escape your self. That, however, is a possibility worth exploring. Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the twenty-first century.
▪ people need the ability to make sense of information, to tell the difference between what is important and what is unimportant, and above all to combine many bits of information into a broad picture of the world
▪ If this generation lacks a comprehensive view of the cosmos, the future of life will be decided at random.
▪ the four Cs’ – critical thinking, communication, collaboration and creativity.
▪ New vistas are opening before you, and you have an entire world to conquer.
▪ Technology isn’t bad. If you know what you want in life, technology can help you get it. But if you don’t know what you want in life, it will be all too easy for technology to shape your aims for you and take control of your life.
▪ To give meaning to my life, a story needs to satisfy just two conditions: first, it must give me some role to play.
▪ Second, whereas a good story need not extend to infinity, it must extend beyond my horizons. The story provides me with an identity and gives meaning to my life by embedding me within something bigger than myself.