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.