Prediction – You May Have Heard of the Doomsday Clock….

Since 1947. the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
grist
have been looking at specific factors to see where we as a human race, as a planet stand in terms of our risk of ending our own existance.

2020 & 2021 have put the clock at it’s worst ever predicition of 100 seconds to midnight.

……

What factors do these people consider in their predictions?

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists decide what Midnight and “global catastrophe” really mean in a particular year. They might include “politics, energy, weapons, diplomacy, and climate science”; potential sources of threat include nuclear threats, climate change, bioterrorism, and artificial intelligence.

nuclear risk

• climate change – carbon, fossil fuels, greenhouse gases
• new developments in the life sciences and technology – “disruptive technologies” such as synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, and cyberwarfare
• dangerous rivalry and hostility among the superpowers – failure to cooperate for the good of the planet
• tolerated disinformation on MSM and social media
  wiki

……

What can we do? –
It’s not all up to the govts and world leaders.

• If there is something on that list that you care about and know data about, do you share that on your platforms?
• Do you contact your members of whatever local and federal levels of govt and ask them what they are doing to reduce these risks?
• Do you sign petitions relevant to the risks you believe are serious?
• Do you keep informed on hostilities and conflict so that you can speak about them on your platforms and let your POV be known to your leaders?

…….

Global organizations are attempting to work with the nations to reduce hostility and reduce the number of nuclear weapons…..
nuclear – un
int’l red cross and red crescent movement
anti-nuclear – wiki list ……and could use whatever spare dollars you have.

…….

Global organizations are looking for ways to help our planet.
climate change – un
ipcc
epa
climate change – global wiki list

……..

Global agencies are monitoring the ethical growth of science and technology.
ISC
list science and tech watchdog groups – nap. edu

……

Global human relations and rights

• Article 1 Right to Equality
• Article 2 Freedom from Discrimination
• Article 3 Right to Life, Liberty, Personal Security
• Article 4 Freedom from Slavery
• Article 5 Freedom from Torture and Degrading Treatment
  the rights – hrlibrary
  rights’ orgs list – hrlibrary
  icrd
  icct

……

I know, it’s hard to think in macro terms these days when remembering to:

• grab your keys and mask before you go out the door,
• watching to see what your area’s public health covid threat level is,
• keeping food and water on your table,
• and a roof over your head is stressing you out.

But without the larger picture, there is no us. And the clock is now at the worst post since it began. And it’s not JUST about this pandemic. Think about that for a second.

At an Older Altar (a story)

At an Older Altar

He set up his altar. Candles, tapers, wine, loaf, herbs, prayer book, and kneeling pad. Then he stripped himself to his waist and knelt before the altar, chanting to get himself into the right frame of mind, ready for prayer and meditation. And maybe more. He was hoping today would bring more than fevers and blessings. He wanted a vision and was readying himself for that.
So he pulled out his fave whip and made sure it was in it’s best supple state. It was a better hurt then.

At first it did hurt. Just hurt. But then he got into the groove and the right mindset. And the pain became more than the lashes on his back. It became an energy that was no longer on his body. But in his mind.

It grew in brightness. He was one with the pain. And he could hear the whispers that he sought. At first they were harder to understand. But with a firmer hand on the whip, he finally understood what they were saying. And relaxed into their message.

He began to sing in praise of the divine, until the divine began to sing thru him and his words were no longer his own. His witness wrote down what he sang. So the old ones could spread their message on earth.

…….

self flagellation, old believers

At the Cauldron (a story/ish)

At the Cauldron

Stirring stirring she was stirring. And listening to the voices gathering to listen for their names in her incantations. Seeing what she wanted by whom she called. Little smiles of understanding here and there in the midst of shifting impatience and confusion. Most expecting some question that only a demon would know. Something that would happen in the next day or two. Yet the time grew as the question became deeper. And the lesser demons fell away, going off to answer questions they could, rather than listening for the story or the lesson from the older demons. Even the lesser angels fell away and the human guides. Well they did have other things to do. It wasn’t just boredom.

The question was deeper than any this witch had asked before. And only the demons who were fallen angels were left in the room. They knew the older wisdom as well as their angelic brothers and sisters did. And contrary to the lore, they had not forgotten it.

Which was much as the witch had expected. And what she was counting on. Because she had worried that the angels might not be willing to share. But the old demons might, if only to cause trouble. Though they did like sharing knowledge and their lesser demons often weren’t interested in the old wisdom. They just wanted to prank the humans and angels. Not that that wasn’t fun….

Both angels and demons agreed….This witch was stronger than they’d known before. One to watch from now on.

The Truth-Sayer (a story/ish)

The Truth-Sayer

One day a year, the old man walked down the path from his cave and set up a tent at the bottom of the mountain so the villagers could ask him any question they wished to. It never took long for the crowd to form. He sighed, but he knew it was the price he paid for being left alone the rest of the year. So he centered himself and went to work.

What were the typical questions they asked?:

…..

I have a love, one I adore so well. But when I ask my love if they are true to me, my heart says they lie when they say yes.

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

…….

My parents are so tender and so kind. They tell me I can be anything I wish to be. Is this true? Is my future bright?

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

…..

My boss says he values my effort and enjoys my company. And is quite sure he could never replace me. But has no more money to feed my family. Is this true?

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

…….

The head man of the village has come to us to say he needs more money to build homes and fight the good fight that protects us from famine, pestulance and war. He says he’s tried everything he can to reduce our taxes, but this year he needs more. Is that true?

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

……

My child has told me he is innocent of all those who care for him have claimed he has done. Yet I see a gleam in his eye when they list his bad deeds. Is he telling the truth or are they?

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

…….

The villagers went back to their homes, feeling a bit diminished in his wisdom and zeal. They looked at the villagers with a jaundiced eye from that day on.

And the old man went back up the mountain to his cave. To greet his son who asked about his day, knowing full well what the answer would be, since it was all his father was able to say since the stroke:

Sadly the old man said, ‘Everybody lies’.

His son might be accused of deception by the villagers, but whether by delusion or truth, his father wasn’t wrong. At some point in their life, everybody lies. You just need to know the reason, and determine if you can live with it.

Prediction: Ways People React

The alarmist :
chicken little

The worker bee :
little red hen

time to work, time to play
grasshopper and the ant

be careful who you trust
snake and foolish frogs

Given the exact same situation – living your life and meeting those needs – you’d think there was only one way to deal with it. Yet obv that just isn’t so. So how do you predict which way someone will act? Unless you know them really well? But is that always a sure bet? Prob not!

The First Stage of Prediction – Learning

When a child learns something new and newish, they look around and ask questions. The answers and the words used are simple answers to what may not always be simple.

For example, if they look at a dog, what do they see? Why is it a dog? Why is it called a dog?

A few of those answers might be:

• A dog barks (so does a seal, but would a young child see a seal?)
• A dog growls (so does a bear, but would they see one?)
• A dog eats meat (a dog will eat a lot of what you put in front of it. It’s omnivorous – within reason, it is a dog

Anything else is pretty much breed defined:

• Is it big or small?
• Furry or bald?
• What colour is a dog’s fur?

Learning is basic and experiential, and the person who answers the questions is limiting answers based on what they think the child needs to know and what will quickly explain it. And what will protect the child.

Will a dog hurt me? That depends:

• How is the dog controlled?
• How is the child treating the dog?

And from this the child develops their schema for what a dog is. And adds new info as they run into dogs. That look like big rats, hairy donkeys and bears. That are timid, frightened creatures or really aggressive, terrifying creatures.

And they learn how to predict the dog’s behaviour. How to trust the dog.

…….

And most of these rules and methods also are applicable to teaching a computer what something new is to them. You supply info they need to understand what the new thing is in terms they can understand.

…..

First comes understanding then comes prediction. To what degree though? Do they want to record, define, understand, forecast it’s behaviour, or control the new thing?

And was the info accurate. Garbage in, garbage out.

But for either child or computer, the info is basic and repetitive till they build enough schema to start creating for themselves. A child will, but will a computer?

Prediction and Laplace’s Demon

Living and thinking in terms of rules, laws and determinism can certainly make life easier to understand IF you know everything there is to know. You can explain away the universe then, right? And even how it moves. Mostly by how it has always been known to move. Again IF you know all the rules.

…….

Classical mechanics or Newtonian mechanics –
reformulations of known as Lagrangian mechanics and Hamiltonian mechanics. with analytical mechanics
and quantum mechanics.
And their equations of what force equals.

…….

But it doesn’t explain everything. Because even the stars evolve.

And you can find yourself getting caught up in errors and chains of errors because you presume that since it usually happens that way, it always will. Or it always has to be..

….

Laplace’s demon was the first published articulation of causal or scientific determinism, by Pierre-Simon Laplace in 1814.

……

But while it’s true that the universe, the earth and all it’s species (including humanity) have cycles they (we) walk thru over and over, that doesn’t mean that there are no possible changes.

In the universe, a comet might collide with a star and take out half a galaxy. On earth, a snow storm might cause Texas’ infrastructure to go nuts for a few days. Or a hurricane might take down Puerto Rico’s for a couple years. Or humanity might go from feudalism to corporatocracy or socialism.

And if we’re stuck in how we look at these things and live in the one that no longer is instead of our current iteration, we won’t and can’t catch on to the new rules and way of living.

Some people do find this harder to do than others, don’t we? We still have artisans and farmers who won’t ever be part of the global economy. We have technophobes who think the govt is surveilling us (and they aren’t completely wrong 😋) thru our tech. And we have people who truly believe that anyone can get rich and live the dream of being a trillionaire. That we all have an equal shot at that. These people will never grasp the rules by which our current iteration of the world of money and politics work, let alone predict it.

Not that the best economists or politicians get it right either.

So are there fatalistic elements we can track? Well yes and no. Yes, we as humans do certain things we have no way of changing atm. We are reliant on air (more oxygen req’d than anything else) , water, food, our skin burns if it’s too hot, and we get hypothermia if it’s too cold. And we walk upright, and need sleep. Or we literally die. If a man and a woman who are fertile have sex, they may get pregnant. If you stay at that level, knowing what we know now, those are safe predictions.

Yet there are aspects of things that we cannot predict as well. Like it’s safe to say that if we work together and take care of each other, we should get along. We have similar needs and similar desires and fears. But humanity isn’t exactly known for that, are we? We like our conflicts too much. To the point where there is a global industry just for war.

We know so much it is catalogued in many libraries. And we know so little, the libraries of that data and theories would fill many more. We have biases, and we think we know more than we do. And when we bump up against our ignorance or fear, we rarely throw out our scripts.

So how do we think we can safely and truthfully predict? Today, any better than in the days when our ancestors cut open a sheep and ‘read’ the entrails? Cuzz we have a lot of hubris?

Good question? What do you think?

Prediction and HCI (Human Computer Interaction or Interface)

The computer seems to be our new overlord in many ways. We have fallen in love with the thing. Almost to the point animism or of worship. It replaces minute functions, keeps our memory logs, and takes over our jobs. Because it can store and sort data, it seems predictive and we use it in that way in many fields, from math to science to even some medicine and some arts.

Should we?

Humanity does need to remember that there are positive functions that computers cannot do, can’t even mimic. Things that keep us literally alive. Because we aren’t Spock or Data from Star Trek. Logic and memory are good, don’t get me wrong. But it’s emotion and bonding that make humans thrive. That give us our creative edge. That keep us in the driver’s seat when dealing with a computerized world. A world where though computers are everywhere, and do many things for us, they are still tools. And only as good as the engineers and programmers who built them. Garbage in, garbage out. A computer can mimic, it cannot originate anything without a human. Yet?

Can we really?

No, we cannot really let the computer take over. Because the flaws in the design can still cause horror and death. Yes so can humans! But humans can also correct things when they err, and see the human impact. Computers do not. Computers have no investment in whether the human lives or dies. A human is just a number.

And computers have no way of changing direction when reality strikes in an unexpected way. If someone fell down faint of a heart attack, the computer would observe it, and presume it was lost. Calculate the odds of that loss. Maybe call for help. But a human would interact to see if aid could be offered and the life saved. Humans are invested in other lives. Well most of us.

I play some games on line,

and i’ve never pretended to know all the rules and gambits like a master or computer would. In fact when I play a computer, that is actually my strength. I more often beat the computer than it beats me. It has no idea why I act as I do. It’s not in it’s schema. It often fails in trying to win, because it tries for the highest score or the gambit masters have ‘taught’ (programmed) it, rather than watching what I do and playing counter to that. It ‘reads’ where the pieces are and ‘decides’ which gambits are applicable, if any. And it has no idea what I will actually do when my turn comes again. It presumes I will use a known counter gambit. Thing is, I don’t know the master’s gambits, so how can i possibly play them? I might by luck, but not by design.

Yet many fields rely on computers.

For modelling and statistical analysis. For basic grunt work that is endlessly tedious. And for observation and cataloguing. Even for basic prediction. Most of them remember to keep the human observer involved so far.

Most people remember though that they have to compare the computer findings to real life. To the environment and humans within it. The unpredictable. We humans are crazy that way.

And so is Gaia. If a meteorologist ever forgets to look out the window and solely relies on what is on their monitor, they might miss the snow coming down on what was predicted to be a clear day. The FEMA guy might order fewer sandbags than needed when the levee breaks. Because he had no idea the wind would be so high due to an unpredicted storm front. But the birds nearby were trying to tell him something was up. And even though the runners were all in optimal health, the computer can’t predict one falling and straining their leg or breaking a rib in the fall.

A computer has memory, it does NOT have an imagination that would deal with surprises and human behaviour that wasn’t loaded into the program. Therefore it never has all the data it needs nor can it correct for what it doesn’t know. Like humans can. No matter how much data it has.

So is a computer ever able to fully interface with humanity?

Well, not yet. Not now.

Kind of scary for things like auto-pilot in planes, trains and cars, isn’t it? Or computerized surgeries. Humans still needed here. And this is why.

Monday, February 15 Happy Family Day Canada 2021!!!

Monday
, February 15 Family Day Canada 2021

observed in New Brunswick, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan and in British Columbia.
 (2nd (BC) or 3rd Monday (rest) in February) 

First held in Alberta in 1990

Family Day is supposed to reflect the values of family and home that were important to the pioneers who founded Alberta, and to give workers the opportunity to spend more time with their families. It was introduced in Saskatchewan in 2007 and in Ontario in 2008. British Columbia observed Family Day as a statutory holiday for the first time in 2013, New Brunswick in 2018. 

In the province of Manitoba, the third Monday of February is a general holiday, known as Louis Riel Day.

Trump is Acquitted HMFH!!* WTAF* is Wrong with the REPS ??

(the * initials in the title are swearing phrases. I’m sure you get it.)

cbc

Voting to find Trump guilty were Republican senators Richard Burr of North Carolina, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Patrick Toomey of Pennsylvania.

( A couple of these names shock me frankly!)

……..

So now you know what the REPs allow their POTUS candidate to do. Cuzz noone who followed Trump’s social media accts has any doubt that he did indeed incite his rabelrousers. And knew fully well who he was dealing with. White racists who buy into the whole racial holy war philosophy. They were his backers, his followers and his friends who he said x R that he loved! Their whole ethos is violence.

So what else did he expect, except that given an opportunity for violence, they would engage in it? Yep, that is who was given license to run again in 2024 today. Good luck US. You’re going to need it.