Containers of Containers -- A pamphlet on the Notion of Cosmolosophy and the Need For Change

Cosmolosophy is what I hope will be a useful new framework for finding meaning and direction in a complicated environment of information, social expectations and economic realities.The intent is to create a new synthesis of science and faith; as well as to strive for a description of us and our place in the Cosmos that balances a questioning mind with the need for that which transcends the merely rational.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

As if having a climate change denier in the White House weren't enough...

...We now more alarming evidence of profound change in Arctic ecology.

As the linked article below from the New York Times indicates researchers have gotten pretty convincing evidence that less ice is producing a great deal more algae there. A fact that, on the face of it might lead one to think that more food at the bottom of the food chain would be a good thing, at least for aquatic life, but, as is usually the case, things are a much more complex than that; especially when considers what may happen to, say the reproduction cycles of different species if a great deal more algae were competing for all of the light and nutrients that early stages of other species might need. And of course less ice in general every year is going to wreak havoc in a number of other ways in any case: higher sea levels, less reflection so more absorption of sunlight as heat into the oceans, etc.

If you have even a basic understanding of the interconnected nature of life and the physical aspects of our planet you have to see this as another canary in the mine getting ready to drop dead. And if it can't breath down there what do you suppose your chances are of continuing to do the same?

One would think that even the Trump Chump brigades would have to take notice of this. Unfortunately a good deal of that prospect depends on the chump commander and chief coming back to reality. And more's the pity.

Global Warming Alters Arctic Food Chain, Scientists Say, With Unforeseeable Results

by Carl Zimmer

Saturday, November 19, 2016

No Comment needed on Where This Guy Is Coming From

Bannon: 'Darkness Is Good. Darth Vader ... Satan. That's Power'

Thursday, November 17, 2016

Think Long And Hard About Self Reinforcing Interlink Connections...

...Between all of your games and the behaviors of everyday life.

These kinds of interlink connections are exactly what Andrew Wilson is talking about in the linked interview you see below from The Verge.

Sure, in a best case scenario as Mr. Wilson describes:

"...From the minute I get up in the morning, everything I do has an impact on my gaming life, both discrete and indiscrete. The amount of eggs I have in my internet-enabled fridge might mean my Sims are better off in my game. That length of distance I drive in my Tesla on the way to work might mean that I get more juice in Need for Speed. If I go to soccer practice in the afternoon, by virtue of internet-enabled soccer boots, that might give me juice or new cards in my FIFA product. This world where games and life start to blend I think really comes into play in the not-too-distant future, and almost certainly by 2021..."

But what if the interconnects try to reinforce things that are not so benign or beneficial? What if comments made somewhere penalize you in gaming. What if purchases from only one vender of a thing, say the more expensive one, is the main way to get ahead in a game. And what if they start these interlinks very unobtrusively at first. Then slowly begin to increase them as your behavior changes. Would you necessarily notice? Maybe. Maybe not. Whatever the case you don't need to be an expert in B.F. Skinner's positive reinforcement to understand how this sort of thing might be fertile ground for abuse; especially as VR immersion becomes more pervasive.

Just imagine a scenario where, as internet bandwidth increases, people take to VR with a vengeance; using it to not only game, but slip back and forth from that to remote working, without ever exiting whatever the physical interface ends up becoming. Might you then have your employer also involved? Would performance, and/or hours worked, become an increasing game benefits provider? So much so that you begin to lose the connection between what you're actually paid for work done, and the amount of work you do?

This may seem extreme pessimism but it's already been suggested in the YouTube video "Uncanny Valley," a frightening depiction of how VR putting you into a game might actually have you operating actual killing robots in some foreign land without you're realizing it.

YOUR LIFE WILL BE A VIDEO GAMEANDREW WILSON | CEO, ELECTRONIC ARTS
BY CHRIS PLANTE | NOV. 16, 201
See Also:

We are Already Living in a Multi Faceted Fantasy. Isn't that Kinda Horrible?

Experience is Experience, but can one ever substitute for the other?

Experience the New Experience

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Once AI Gets Good At This...

...And it likely will, not only will we not be able to decrypt it, we won't have any understanding at all of how it was done.

Ah, you reply, won't we then just get other AI to decrypt it for us?

Maybe. But how paranoid do you think we will become in wondering about whether the new decryptor was convinced, logically of course, to switch sides? And how would we really know if we couldn't determine what they were saying to each other?

Google’s neural networks invent

their own encryption

By Timothy Revell

Thursday, October 20, 2016

A Category Five Reality

Whirling shards
roiling around the core;
the hurricane
of tornados twisting
so many fragments,
flashing thought,
echoed feelings,
descriptive snatches
torn from any continuity.
My mind
and the maddening
matrix that made it.
Shit and shinola
fact and fiction
smoke and mosaic
mirrors, always shifting;
the angles and dangles
juxtaposing
every juxtaposition
endlessly.
All of it roaring,
at the tearing away
and crashing into
thin membranes of cognition.
And still
connections are made.
That miracle all
the more maddening
by all of floundering
to articulate
a small thread of understanding
out of all of the chaos,
which itself flutters
away in the torrent.
Can it ever be
caught
by another mind
to stitch together
a common weave
to hold
something shared?
A way to meaning
we can agree to?
Take the turn
of what we toil
to boil
in what we know
accelerating
off the electric burner.
To find the calm
within the eye
that sees a better vision
of how to find
and make our way?

Wednesday, October 19, 2016

The Big Expectations for Christmas Spending

As the article linked below indicates retailers are likely to ring up a big total for the holiday shopping season, and again I have to confront all of the mixed feelings this sort of thing resonates for me.

On the one hand it would be more than a good thing if people were feeling optimistic enough about their finances to indulge in giving generously to their loved ones. It doesn't take a keen viewer of the national scene to divine that we could all use a big dose of what Christmas is supposed to be about now, with all of the hate, fear, and bigotry demonstrated in Presidential campaigning so far. And it always amazes me just how much people can still pull out that core, loving motivation from all of the plastic, glitz and flash inherent in the commercialization that has taken over Christmas. Even for a non believer of deities like myself, one can always harken to the idea of families coming together to celebrate the ideals of a man that are real, even if he wasn't, or, even if he was, but not actually the son of one particular deity. Love. Empathy. Compassion and tolerance for all life and all people.

It has always seemed to me that you can believe in those even if you don't believe in other aspects of the religion that brought forth the ideas.

Be that as it may, though, my practical side can't help but wonder about what a number like $800 billion represents.

As in how much of that stays here to foster new investment (or sustained current investment) in more jobs, or the firming up of existing jobs, here? Wouldn't it be nice if the folks who report these kinds of statistics provided that kind of background context?

What is the carbon price we pay when that much extra spending gets pumped into our economy?

How much of that spending can one expect to be placed on the debt load that Americans are currently carrying?

I also have to wonder what the difference would be if, instead of using abstract counters to buy more trinkets, we were in an economy where you had to make all of the gifts you wanted to give yourself. An economy set up with the technical aids, and all of the component basics to allow you to do that very thing; just as you would be doing for all of the other items you wanted, or needed, for yourself.

Can you imagine the resources that would be freed up in just the elimination of product packaging, sales promotion, and global transportation costs (moving the items as well as the packaging)? Can you also imagine what such a thing would do to bring us back to a more complete focus on what this gift giving is supposed to be about? I can. And I have to tell you that it breaks this old man's heart everytime I see the difference between that possibility and what we live with now.