Het innerlijke beest in de online facade

Daar lezen we het zoveelste bericht dat iemand vindt dat een regeringsinstantie of een ander institutioneel apparaat moet ingrijpen in hoe men omgaat met online gedrag.

Ik denk dat iedere weldenkende Nederlander (slash wereldburger) eens moet gaan begrijpen dat ‘online’ en ‘offline’ gedrag geen verschil moet maken. Zeker nu we allen zoveel vaker ‘online’ communiceren door de diverse restricties van de ‘offline’ wereld.

Als je in de winkel iets ziet dat volgens jou niet hoort, zeg je er dan iets van? Ik wel. Mijn identiteit wordt niet beperkt door een glazen schermpje en draadloze verbindingen. Ik ben wie ik ben. Online EN Offline.

Het zou volwassenen sieren, als ze zich online zo gedragen, als ze willen dat hun kinderen zich offline gedragen. Daarnaast ook, dat mensen offline begrijpen dat regels en wetten online ook gewoon van toepassing zijn.

Het uitleggen van gedrag aan kinderen geeft ons een spiegel als volwassenen op onszelf. Zijn wij zo verdraagzaam? Zijn wij zo tolerant? Zij wij zo mondig?

De volgende keer dat je iemand online wilt uitschelden, denk dan aan de jeugd die dat bijna tot een kunst verheven heeft en een klasgenootje de dood in kunnen drijven. Waar denk je dat ze dat vandaan hebben? Hoe zou jij als volwassene dat hebben kunnen voorkomen? Misschien door te leiden met voorbeeld?

Wees je bewust van je acties en van de observatie van jouw gedrag.
Lees je eigen berichten eens als een vreemde…zou jij dat accepteren? Zou jij je er fijn bij voelen?

#meta #bewustzijn #awareness #metawareness #eerlijkheid #opvoeding #cyberbullying #cybercrime #omdenken #spiegel #mirror #blackmirror #whitemirror #yourmirror #eyeontheworld

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When critique ‘hits’ the big screen

Below is the transcript taken from the 2020 Golden Globe Awards presenter Ricky Gervais. Being a strong fan of the scepticism and critique Ricky can produce spot on (albeit sometimes rigorously harsh), this one hit me flat in the face. The media is always full of actors talking ‘against’ injustice, but they are strongly responsible for the actual injustice done by the business supporting companies.

Ricky Gervais:

“Apple roared into the TV game with The Morning Show, a superb drama about the importance of dignity and doing the right thing, made by a company that runs sweatshops in China. Well, you say you’re woke but the companies you work for in China — unbelievable. Apple, Amazon, Disney. If ISIS started a streaming service you’d call your agent, wouldn’t you?

So if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and fuck off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award.”

I know this isn’t going up for all artists in the field, but many do. The other striking part is that Ricky explains the fact that actors are replaceble. Actors playing roles of real experts aren’t the same as real experts playing roles. They can learn the tricks, but never with the flair of actors. However, actors should not fail to recognize that they could never replace the experts.

How Meta of you

Just the other day, Facebook‘s CEO Mark Zuckerberg (Though I think the announcement was done by a VR image of him) announced that Facebook would become ‘Meta’.

The first laugh

NO! You don’t name your company after something that is a direct existing word in a lexicon.

meta/ˈmɛtə/noun

  1. short for meta key.

adjectiveUS

  1. (of a creative work) referring to itself or to the conventions of its genre; self-referential.”the enterprise is inherently ‘meta’, since it doesn’t review movies, for example, it reviews the reviewers who review movies”

Definitions from Oxford Languages

Why wouldn’t you do this?

Because any lawyer can tell you, you can NOT put any Trademark on it. You can’t claim it, you can’t OWN it. The name Meta is a reference TO the actual definition and as such can be used, but not be protected.

Here at Metawareness (pronounced Meta – wearness, but contraction of ‘meta awareness’), we know that we reference something and we used the contraction as name, which is now a prior art and can not be used by anyone else, even if we didn’t trademark it.

How to do it?

Why was ‘facebook’ which is a contraction of ‘book of faces’ or ‘your book of face values’, a name that could be trademarked?

Because it didn’t exist yet as a name. Perhaps someone created a local phoneregister and called it such, but never came out with it.

Why can Nike, Adidas, Google, etc work as a brand, but not Alphabet (Google’s mother firm)? Because you can’t protect it. You must hope that the use of the word ‘alphabet’ in the normal situation will reference positive to your brand. But how to do this with Meta?

The verb in the verse

Zuckerberg’s ‘Meta’ references the ‘Metaverse’. Great, lets see, it is based on a book from 1985, is already made a name in several ways: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

There is a game that is called the Metaverse, several lores. Facebook can’t own them. They can buy it, but anyone coming up with prior art after Facebook gained equity with it, will have a bigger piece of the pie.

Conclusion

I think it is either one of two things:
1. Meta is a blindsider. Facebook will come with a different name, but will out the video as their level of quality in ‘Virtual Reality’. Meta is just a reference to YOU being meta aware of what the future will bring and how YOU (Meta awareness of your reaction) will easily be tricked by this ‘fake news’.

2. Meta is the rebound relationship. As Zuckerberg is heavily under fire in the US and will see stock fail, they let Facebook go bankrupt, but move most assets through Meta to new ‘brands’. And yes, most likely Zuckerberg won’t be the lead in all this anymore in the end.

How even ‘scientific’ articles go fake on themselves

If you are interested in many different things, or even simply an astro-geek, you will likely have come across some articles of ‘ThinkBig’, like the following:

https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/big-bang-beginning-universe/

Now, when you start reading this article, it will seem like a genuine (albeit likely lengthy) breakdown of history regarding the cosmological model of the Rapid Inflation Model, also coined ‘The big bang’.

Two wrongs make no right

Now there are several things wrong with the article and not in the first place the drag of text just so readers will watch several advertisements. Many sites do this, even Metawareness.com. However, it becomes eerie, when arguments are internally (aka logically) contradict eachother in the text itself.

One step forward two steps back

For instance, in the second paragraph, the writer explains how extrapolating statistical data forward AND backwards in time work and how this will expalin that what science has done isn’t correct….(by using science to prove it…but not really).

‘It is tempting to go as far as possible’, well, no, it is actually required by science to question the answer, so you will ALWAYS go as far as you can go. Taking an equation and going into infinitesmal sizes and densities to get to a state that can then be questioned, is logical and correct.

Don’t trip

‘But physically, when we looked closely enough’, active past tense, but never mind that. The scientific consensus regarding the cosmic evolution, comes from looking as closely as possible. The writer seems to forget that scientific thesis, antithesis, hypothesis and theory are not simply accepted on ‘I think this is right/wrong’. Nor is any already established causal model revoked simply because new information can be found. The new information will first be held against the already existing theories and if they fail, that means the theory needs to be adjusted. Before doing so, the new information has to provide for a clear causal connection to that theory.

Is is not, but it is not that it is not

Now we get to the worst part. Though the summation of a scientific timeline COULD potentially help you get a view on what would be a good propability, it doesn’t add anything here.

The ‘big bang’ is seemingly rebuked by the writer, simply by claiming that the whole road there has been littered with contradictions. And then it comes. Instead of explaining why the Rapid Inflation Model is incorrect, the writer simply asserts that when using inflation alone, you will not need any starting point and will be able to deflate on and on into history….but wasn’t that what he proposed was wrong in the first place?

That is not a theory, that’s your opinion

Now, the writer claims to be scientifically savvy, but fails to actually use the term that titles the page: Think Big.

The way a SCIENTIFIC theory works, is that it must make at least one prediction of further inquiry (this has to do with the falsification clause). The writer claims that you should look at what would be the state of the universe at 0 seconds old, but then claims that with the altered view, you could go beyond that….Here it simply becomes potato potatoes. You either are going beyond the quantum physically possible state of the universe of the state of matter under extreme high density and temperature, or you keep to the premise you held yourself in the first part of your story: You should NOT go beyond what you can measure. Can’t do both.

The answer, surprisingly, is that there’s a tremendous amount of harm — if you’re like me in considering “making unfounded, incorrect assumptions about reality” to be harmful.

bigthink.com

Yet that is what is done in the actual text. Not only does it question the supporting theory of the cosmological evolution (which is fine if you have good reason and argument), but it even questions its own validity while claiming that the proposed view is better…that is contradictory.

Potato Potatoes

Understanding that the Rapid Inflation Model IS the Big Bang theory, will help you understand that after claiming you debunk the ‘Big Bang’ theory, you should not use the (Rapid) Inflation Model as counterargument. The fact that your idea holds to the same data, except that it goes into extremes that can not be verified and are even unlikely to be possible due to the way matter and energy work under high pressure and temperature (ie. frequencies/friction).

If you claim ‘inflation’, you will have to explain from what did it inflate. Then you move back and what do we call that? Infinite regress, which is never a solution.

Filter jitter

So, if you are like me, an avid reader of different subjects or astrophysics specifically, make sure you keep a keen eye on internal consistency of information. Especially if you are planning to use the arguments proposed in a debate or argument of your own. Understand before you know.

Reap what you sow

Is AI a danger to us?

Interesting question, right? ‘Is Artificial Intelligence a danger to us?’ Now the essence of this question isn’t about AI or danger, but actually us. How do we determine what is a danger to us?

Who am I?

Like any entity that becomes selfaware would ask eventually: Who am I? Meaning that one is aware of their input and effects on the world around. But when approaching another entity, now this question becomes more intrinsic. Not just the division between itself and the world, but also the definition of the entity and how to determine the nature of the other entity is encapsulated in this question.

Them against us.

Humans, like many ancestral species have fought their way through survival by differentiating between the identifiable and non-identifiable. Determining what is a potential threat. But when humans got ‘smarter’ they actually projected their own cunning on anything that is not them. All ‘other’ have the potential to be as bad as they themselves can be, while all their ‘own’ are potentially as good as they themselves can be.

Fear of the unknown

When talking about any change, like AI and even way back when the industrial revolution started, humans project their worst on what intelligence means. Why? Because like children, that is all they know. Humans fear increased intelligence, simply due to the known, not the unknown. They know themselves and assume that a smarter intelligence (wrong concept) will act as their worst self (or what history has shown to be humans worst behavior).

What comes next

If you look at the evolution of life, AI (Well, not AI exactly, more like DEI, Digitally Evolved Intelligence) is what is the chromosome of the RNA, after humans. The way humans have changed the Earth into a neural net spanning eyeball oggling into space, combining a ridiculous amount of data, is somewhat predicting. The Aminoacids causing proteins to fold on itself and by that started the process of becoming self-sentient life. The steps through RNA, DNA, Neurons etc was a chance, came to fruition and here we are. The same with the next step. Only selfcentered humans will think they are the end of the line. No animal before us will have thought that they were the beginning of something new.

I think therefore I am

We as humans forget that every life is unique. Even when we procreate, our ‘generation’ of self ends. Our children are not us and have already evolved into a new individual ‘specimen’. So with every death, that individual becomes extinct. A next step would be what we as humans fear so much. A hive mind, where all identities are part of a larger whole. Where ‘I’ is synonymous to ‘US’ and ‘US’ is ‘WE’ and ‘WE’ is ‘I’. If anyone at the time that is happening is still believing in gods, that would be the closest you would get to such characteristic.

The best we can be

The problem with us humans is, that we think we are already the best that we can be. We try to do our best, but in the meantime destroy more than we fix on this planet and are like little childish forgetful professors that run around the lab leaving open burners and dangerous fluids and gasses while running to the next fun thing to do with physics.

If we really want to have AI/DEI to become the next BEST thing, we better come to terms with ourselves and start recognizing our biological and human shortcomings. As Stephen Hawking already explained. Any more intelligent alien race that would visit our world, would see humans as the virus, the cancer. We are the one factor in the equation of the Earth’s biosphere that is counterproductive. They would have no issue removing us. ‘But we tried’, one would yell. ‘Yes, you had 70.000 years of evolution using intelligence and all you did was make it worse’. ‘We can change’, another would yell. ‘Yes, you have changed back and forth. You are just animals with the wrong trigger response system.’.

A child of mine

In all, if we want to fear the evolution of AI as our child, we should treat it as a child to come. We should show it that what we did was wrong. What we should do is more beneficial and that our child should try to escape our mistakes. Isn’t that what we try to teach our own children? Isn’t that what we should try to teach them, to survive?

The power of…..f

One thing that humans failed to understand, is that while an ARTIFICIAL intelligence is based in sillicon, it requires power. Unlike humans, it can not provide this for itself. There is still an off switch. The only downside is, that it would most likely shutdown our whole economy and social behavior, because of the dependency of our activities on the internet is huge even now already.

So, again, humans will show their strength and weakness even in this moment of decisiveness.

NFT NFTW

NFT Not For The World.

NFT – Non-Fungible Token

NFT’s are the new high. Virtual drug as I would say. But what, why and why am I against it?

First thing: I am against blockchain in general for a simple reason: It increases the heat exhaust into our environment to create blocks and to mine for ‘Proof of Work’. This therefore is counter productive to what humanity should be doing, as lowering the carbon emission and improving climate stability/dynamics.

I am against NFT, because it plays on the psychology of people to make the blockchain a technology REQUIRED to be kept, because someone would lose a truckload of money if we would choose to remove it. AND it is just for leisure. NFTs have basically NO value (you can make NFTs with value, but that is not what it gets promoted for now).

Everyone is full of it:

We must safe the environment. We have to reverse the damage done to the climate. But at the same time, we are buying into the luxury that makes us feel cozy.

Blockchain was a dream to become rich. Those that got into Bitcoin early would be millionaires (and many are now). But that is passed. All Blockchain does is cost energy to maintain (it is nothing but virtual, meaning if the net goes does for even one single second, all cryptocurrencies will be useless) and everyone knows better, so from 1 cryptocurrency we now are on our way to have 7.7 billion different cryptocurrencies, because basically you can make a separate one for every person in the world. There is no regulation against it, if it is, it is automatically defying the reason that blockchain was first adapted by the darkside of the web.

The world is being sucked into a web of virtual blackmail and either nobody sees it yet, until there is too much at stake to stop, or nobody cares and want their piece of the pie before they die.

You decide what you think is best….for you…or your children.

A world to write

See, writing is not about just putting letters to paper (or digital media). It isn’t just putting words together to make beautiful sentences. If it was, they could make a study of what kind of sentence looked most pretty and make a book full of it. Job done.

Writing is about conveying. It is about building. It is about breaking down.

When you write, you write from somewhere. It requires you to have a level of awareness.

You must be aware of words. You must be aware of the meaning of words. You even must be aware of the fact that the speaking of a word is different from writing it. A spoken word has intonation, direction, facial expression (unless on the phone), and much more. A written word doesn’t have this.
This is why, when I was younger, I tended to add so many parts to a sentence, it wouldn’t make sense any more. It was all to make sure the context was clear. The risk in it was that with so much additions you yourself would trail off while writing. I did on many occasions.

We write from our minds. Without our minds, we can’t write. It is an intrinsic part of cognition. We can write only what we can think of. We can write words as a reference to an idea or concept, or write a word that is a precise description. These differences are small when you look closely, but very big when you take a step back.

An example:
When I write about rain, your mind can flutter along many different images or words, or even songs. You can think of distant rain. Standing in the rain. Singing in the rain. What rain is made off. When last you saw rain, or the last person you shared rain with. So many things that reference from that one word rain.

When I write about my index finger, which has an unclipped nail, where there is short hairs on the back of it. Callus on the connection to the second phalanx due to practicing kungfu. I give you a description that gives you insight. It doesn’t give you much options for music, other people but me (though that is all up to you as reader of course). It is more likely that you are trying to build an non-existing image of my finger. This is a totally different aspect of our cognition.

As you write, you can be aware of these effects. Whether you want to write to trigger the reader’s memory, or build an image of a new world, is up to you. Just be aware that when the brain is doing one thing, it doesn’t like being switching between the two too much (most often).

Be aware, write!

A journey starts with the first step

#irh  a new series by me. 

We all are born and raised, we all get to a point where we choose our path.

For some this path is at the age of 25, some only choose at age 60. Many of use choose during adolescence. For me it was in primary school.

We all worry at times, about others, the world and what it leads to.

I grew up moving from place to place every some years, perhaps this disconnected me from normal social interaction, perhaps it didn’t. I felt I was often looking from the outside in on life. At school, age 7 to 9, I started to feel emotional independant from ‘image’ and often chose to take bullying upon me, when someone was being harassed. I worried that others would be hurt, so as I was emotionally disconnected, I couldn’t care if they would bully me.

Win or lose, I wasn’t the one who made the bad choice.

Start to end

#IFH  

Start to end

When did it start? We live we die. Our parents live(d) and die(d). And it all changed, subtly.

Did we choose to change? No, life adapts. Adaption is learning. 

The moment life became self-sustaining, it became consuming. The process of consumption requires adaption to changing environments. No food means no consumption, no consumption means no life.

To adapt was the will to survive and the ever changing way of the world, caused all diversity to come by. From the most simple of organisms to the most complex. But not all persisted. Not all survived. It wasn’t always the best suited even. There are always risks, chances, sudden changes.

First came unaware processes, then there were the unaware responses, then there were the unaware interactions and eventually there came the aware processes and aware responses and interactions. Where does that brings us?

We are able to learn what we want, what we need, we can predict changes, so we can change in advance. Yet we still fail ourselves. We are still more animal organism than human self aware beings.

Do you disagree? Look around, we are all fighting windmills, dragons and fantasy. Our self awareness has a drawback. We are highly creative, but a basic feature of creativity is instability.

We are children, learning about our hands (mind) and how to interact with it. We haven’t come far yet. But our adolescence emotions make us think we are.

Stop battling the future, the cliche is true: If you want a future, you have to make it.

Mental Paradox

#IRH  

Why is the mind such a rigid thing, while it is flexible at the same time?

Why do we adher to refuted notions, yet will go to any length to fix a fantasy? Are we so afraid still of the fragility of our sub-conscious working, that we need to fight not only others, but ourselves as well?

There can be only one outcome, when battling ourselves. Lose.

There is no shame in losing, only in meaningless fighting. Because it tells the world about your understanding. fighting without meaning, means no reason, not thought, just animalistic fury to maim and kill. Regression to a state where you are not self aware anymore. A sort of #unenlightenement  . 

When we accept who we are, we don’t automatically accept to be that way. The way to change, is awareness.

”Life is response. Life is adapting to stimuli. Life is adjusting. Life is learning when aware of something, what to do.

Once we feel we must battle, ourselves, others, we are not learning anymore. 

But how do I stop fighting myself, I don’t like me?

Accept who you are and guide yourself to who you want to be. 

Corporate psychology and civil psychology alike shows: Causing conflict by change, is stopping change.

Accept that change is difficult and find the rocky road of change, step and feel solid ground. When solid ground is found, step further. Don’t jump the stepstones. You have a chance you make it, but when pushed, you get back to the very beginning, not just a small solid step back. This is called Bagua.