Dear Friends in Spirit, In preface, I offer for your consideration last year’s Address to Davos, in five parts, relevant to what follows: Part 1: The Downfall of Ideologies Part 2: Attempts to Remold Man Part 3: Rise and Fall of the Couch Potato Part 4: Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic Part 5: … Continue reading Address to Davos; Avoiding the New Dark Ages
The mindset of piecemeal change associates happily with a short time horizon. Even with awareness that extends far beyond scale of the business/economic cycle, piecemeal change seems to require incrementally visible results. An example clarifies. Nuclear fusion has attracted little public funding in comparison to potential benefit. This is because the incremental results are uninteresting, … Continue reading Address to Davos, Part 4
In the hypothetical emergence of a primitive tribe from the jungle, the tribe members optimize their existence according to their own personal sense of hedony and well being. It may not be particularly encouraging to the onlooker, but neither does it affect the state of the world in a very negative way, other than the … Continue reading Address to Davos, Part 3
While Popper’s book was still Brand New and Important, Saloth Sar, a Cambodian, was studying electronics in Paris, but also soaking up French Marxism. Harmless as mere talk in European cafes, it mutated into virulence in Cambodia, where it became known as the Khmer Rouge. Motivated in some way that could hardly be called humanist, … Continue reading Address to Davos, Part 2
Dear Friends in Spirit, The basis of the Renaissance in humanism, rediscovered from Greek philosophy, is a thread that carried over into the modern period, flowering in the Belle Époque/Gilded Age of the late 19th century and early 20th. It survived the punctuations of western religious rivalries, with triumphant flowering of the science of psychology. … Continue reading Address to Davos Part 1
As I write this, we’re being hammered by the east coast snowstorm. I would like a golem to shovel snow. But how can I be sure that the golem is of good character? Like the superintelligence of the Singularity, the “brain”, or computing device of my golem would be a neural network. The good character … Continue reading Davos Address 5
How will Androids Remember Us? (24×18″, Oil on panel. Click to enlarge. There may be a delay.) Dear Friends in Spirit, In preface, I offer for your consideration my 2017 Address to Davos; Avoiding the New Dark Ages, in five parts. It is ever more timely. Part 1: The Downfall of Ideologies Part 2: Attempts … Continue reading Davos: T-18 Years and Counting; Blade Runner, Coming to a World Near You
(Click to enlarge. There may be a delay.) Relevant as it was last year, I offer Address to Davos; Avoiding the New Dark Ages. How will our successors remember us? The bronze head is not human. T-20 years and counting to the Technological Singularity. (How Will They Remember Us? 24×18″, oil on panel, chalk gesso … Continue reading Davos: T-20 Years and Counting
(Reuters) Russia’s Medvedev: new regions can be defended with strategic nuclear weapons. Quoting Dmitry Medvedev, “Russia has announced that not only mobilisation capabilities, but also any Russian weapons, including strategic nuclear weapons and weapons based on new principles, could be used for such protection.” Going beyond the use of tactical nukes, Medvedev’s statement implies Russia … Continue reading Note to China re Russia; Dmitry Medvedev Threatens to Use Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine
The top ten favorites appear below. Most readers access the blog through the front page. This table lists only direct references, as when a friend sends you a link to an article: 1 Ebola, Rats, Lice, and History, and Hans Zinsser Part 1 1.18 % 2 The Unfortunate Poisoning of Sergei Skripal 0.93 % 3 … Continue reading Your Top Ten Favorite Articles