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.

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.

Chances are a choice, not a plan

Do you ever think you find something to improve about yourself? 

What is your first response? 

Are you acting on it, or are you planning to change it in the future?

Changes in the future are often….a plan. A plan that will be moved to the back of one’s mind and even if it stays in the front, it will just stay that: A plan.

Best changes, are changes that you act on. Once you have acted upon them, to plan how to prolong it, Why not plan and then act? Because, as I said, you will plan to act, and your brain will help you in that: It will plan in definite, because emotions and cognition will find reasons for you NOT to act ‘yet’, indefinite.

Your emotions and cognition will help you plan, but as change means insecurity, it will keep you planning.

So, advice: When you feel you should change: CHANGE. Then plan. Because your brain, both emotions and cognition, will help you plan why to stop….indefinite.

I know it is not that easy, but the logics is sound. Try it out. It works for me. Perhaps it can for you too.

Bottom line:

Plan a change and your emotions and cognition will help you plan the change, never arriving there. Act the change and plan how to continue the change, and your emotions and cognition will help you plan to stay in the change, never stopping it.

The meaning of gods (The comforting lie)

The meaning of gods


Very recently….like 20 minutes ago….I came to a final supporting piece of evidence that many people don’t ‘believe’ in gods as such, but in the effect believing in gods have on them, from society.


So, what is this about?

Well, whoever debated or discussed religiosity with someone who is ‘of faith’, will have come to realise that the counter arguments you get are all based on ‘personal experience’. This isn’t strange, because anything we know and learn from the world, we learn from experiencing it. However, the point for a non- or lesser-believer is, that they are self-sufficient enough to accept that if more people support the same view regarding experience, the experience holds more validity. Why would it be different from an experience from a religious person? Why would that hold less validity? For the religious person it doesn’t. It supports their reasoning in why they feel ‘happier’ in their own perspective. They feel they connect better with people than those that don’t ‘believe’. Is this true? Are people who don’t believe less connected? I would say (being a realist) no. I know I have a high impact on society around me, because of the actions I do. I do the actions because that is who I am and I know I try to help people with them. I teach good values, I act to improve the temporary or longterm quality of other’s lives. This would be (to my understanding) the same a person of faith would do. Likely for the same reason: To lighten the burden of others. But why are people discerning themselves about the underlying lie that is causing the discussion/debate? Why would I (a realist and therefore atheist) care about what kind of imaginary friend a person holds in their mind? Because of numerous reasons. 1. Because it is a lie. 2. Because it generates a fragile framework that is easily misused. 3. Because the direct and indirect effects are additional lies. 4. Because when the lie finds enough people, it changes society to a dangerous place for specific individuals or whole groups. Something that is ‘inhuman’.


Now, why would people still not accept the absence of a god, if it is the logical and honest thing to do?

Well, likely for the same reason someone would supress the truth regarding something, if it would mean the difference between a warm cozy place near a fireplace in the middle of winter, or standing barefeet in the snow of -10 C.



I read a very ‘sane’ story of a person today, that said: Well, I came from an ‘atheist’ home, but as we had family problems and it felt cold, I found a place where it promised warmth and care. Though it was based on religion, I welcomed it, because it felt someone cared for me.’ 


And I think this is what is causing people to only move away from the lie, if the lie is becoming too obvious to them that they can’t uphold it anymore.

The ‘atheist’/’realist’ view and life seems (I must emphasize this: seems) lacking the warmth of social cohesion we see in the christmas movies. The warm sweaters and cozy singing. People who are feeling lonely want this. People can feel lonely for many reasons, even with no place to go because of the amount of people.


We humans are a social species. Not all of us are at the same cognitive awareness level. Some pretend to be beyond, some don’t want to be aware. We all have our prerogative regarding what we want to be aware of. But does that mean we should accept a lie? No.


Why do we do this anyway? Why do for instance students more easily convert to a faith-based world view?

Well, taking the numbers and denominations, it is very likely an non-faith person at college time, will fall in a group where 3/4 is faith-based. Often a non-faith person doesn’t easily talk about it, causing 2 non-faith people next to each other, to be unaware of their shared state. This can cause them, due to the need to fit with the group to adapt to the general concensus of accepting a/the faith.


In earlier years, there isn’t really a question. Children take the word of their parents. They will accept the believe, because it is rationalised and even worse, children aren’t rational yet, they are learning how to reason. So, when learning to reason with a faith, it means that any further thought will incorporate rationalisation including that faith.


How about, after college? Well, high school, university all hold the same social bonds and needs for people to support each other in groups. So, the same danger exists. But what when people are mature and starting their adult life? They surely don’t fall for such group based empathies? Why not? We are, as I said, a social species. The main part of our ethical/moral encoding comes from the genetic learning to rely on safety within a group.


So, as long as the group that is faith-based, gives a signal that the group supports the individual to the amount that we learn (cultural) to accept as warm and welcoming, people will try to accept the accompanying lie.



To overcome this obstacle, it is important, as a humanist, realist (and atheist), to acknowledge the shortcomings and work towards a honest and thoughtful world, where taking out the lie doesn’t equals leaving out all the accompanying social commitments and group support.


We must create a better view on non-faith societies, where humans are still supporting and ‘warm’ towards each other, so the individual will have no reason to see benefit in a lie over honesty and reason. Though this is not something that needs to change. Societies of secular reasoning are among those to best support the whole group instead of a selective one, being aware on the impact of limited visibility against the overall ‘Coca Cola’-family effect of religion, will improve global human awareness of honesty, logic and reason.

Meaning of life (Not Brian’s)

This text was a response to a ‘blog’ I found on a well known ‘Q&A’ site. However I found it valuable enough to have its own space on my blog.

Interesting piece, however, failing at some severe points (as I just commented on one of your answers elsewhere, I thought lets see what Roger Baker writes beyond answers).

It starts here (well actually in some incorrect presuppositions made regard ability to generalize groups or even individuals with a certain worldview):

We may or may not be children of God, but we are indubitably children of the universe, and it is physical and insentient. If, as cosmology teaches, the universe is cold, impersonal and pointless, devoid of any framework of intentional, the problem of meaning forces itself upon one.

It seems as a very rational thing to say: We are either this or that, but one can not deny one of them. However, cosmology doesn’t teach anything, not even by its findings. It only shows what is observable and deductible and painfully our interpretations are always personal. Besides that, calling it ‘pointless’ would seem as if the universe has no ‘goal’. Though it doesn’t have a ‘deliberate’ goal, it is not without point. Just like crystallizing water creates intrinsic webs of ice, it is due to removal of heat. Such is also the fact that the universe becomes more and more complex due to the binding of elements, it is not pointless. It has a direction to move to. Life seems (as we now know the working of folding of proteins, build from simple amino acids) inevitable in situations common to our own Earth atmosphere.

Of course it is not intentional, why would it? A rock falls from a pile, does it have an intention? No. If it hits your toe, still no intention.

The induction (or the need to) of meaning is a post hoc fallacy. See, we are a species that has learned to change the simple ‘pattern recognition’ behavior that is in all life (flora and fauna) to survive, into the ability to plan depending on it by choice. We changed the: ‘It will happen’, to ‘it has to happen’. This is the cause of animism and from that religion at the start of humanity.

As is proven by research and logic (as we know can see, as an individual, the far reaches of space and the inner working of our own body), we individually can deduct and induct how causality causes, but not bring meaning. We are born to die, we procreate to survive. That is one of the definitions of life. So, whether you quote William James or someone else, it doesn’t change that observably we can individually and as humanity as a whole, tell that the biological bonds between kin, are causing the natural cause for procreation and the meaning (again from biological point of view) for our life. However, humans have one thing over other animals: choice. A deliberate and cognitive choice. Even the ‘smartest’ animals will behave on instinct, not rendered mental concepts.(Humanistic meaning)

Whether life has a meaning, depends on whether we give it one (Our own meaning). Or we are indoctrinated with one (religious meaning).

—————

I don’t take physicists or philosophers to quote them for ‘knowledge’. This is something an individual has to come to on his/her own accord. The scientist or wise person, or even just intelligent person can be a proxy or ‘enabler’, but it is your own mind that should try to find the answers, the ‘truth’ in your personal world. I guess we agree on that (though we might disagree on how that should go).

Lets leave out the religion part for the moment, as we seem to stand on different sides of the door and (the metaphore isn’t meant to be mean) I enjoy the sun on my face on the outside of it.

I will answer your ‘question’ regarding meaning, if you do too from your perspective (only your own words, not refering to your earlier writing or others).

You ask two separate things:

  1. How do we give meaning to life?
  2. Why give meaning to life if its meaning ends at death?

The additional points are valid questions regarding the fear people have not having chosen the right meaning for their lives.

For the first question, how do we give meaning to life, I could say that is a spiritual journey for many. Many others (if not most) get the meaning of their life directed by parents, society or general culture (In India the cohesion between country, religion, culture and societies are so strong, there is hardly a difference. This is also the reason).

I shared the second link, to show you have for instance the book of Genesis does ‘teach’ us things, but not about the actual words but the intrinsic nature of the human mind. How awareness (growth of level of cognitive abilities like recognition of causality and ability to form abstract concepts) has altered the realisation of self and the influence of our view of self on the world around us.

Why do I explain this? Because this is where the meaning of our life comes from. Do ants think of a reason for their life? Or the meaning of it all? No, they are fully functional lifeforms, immersed in emotional instinctive behavior. It gets them from a to b and from life to death. This goes for all lifeforms without cognitive abilities like humans (as far as we are aware we are the only ones on this planet currently)..

Why do some think that there must be a reason/meaning for their life outside of their own mind? Because of the lack of awareness of causality. The lack of understanding how things work if there is no mind to observe it (you call this the non-physical, but the first link I shared shows how the mind comes from the brain, ie physical). ‘If a tree falls in a forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make any sound?’ Yes, it does. Sound is the word we give to the sensory input of material pressure (vibrations in air, but also through more solid objects) change, recognized by our body (ears, sinus, head, haptic feeling). However, we as humans aren’t the only ones to recognize this event in our surroundings. Even if we are not there to recognize it, nor any other life form, the event still takes place. the tree’s branches will still break, the trunk will rupture, the objects around it and the ground itself will tremor. However, this already happened way before human ears existed. It didn’t have any meaning, yet happened anyway.

So, if everything has happened, yet had no meaning, like the birth of stars and the death of them, the debris becoming planets on distant solar systems after a cataclystic event like a super nova. These events also have no meaning, except for the life that eventually might emerge on such planets and becomes aware enough to observe and question their place.

The fact that humans exist, as does other life on Earth (and possibly elsewhere), does not automatically bring a meaning. If history had gone different, we might have not gained cognitive abilities to question our surrounding, though logic states that it is most likely that this was inevitable.

Once you are aware of your parents (by the time you are able to see.), you will feel identified with them. They are part of you. This is a biological bond, that is caused by evolution, because those children who don’t cling like a leaf to their parents will die first. Our emotional field has all emotions of earlier iterations of animals, but our cognition doesn’t have a direct connection with them, though it is directly/indirectly influenced by them. The very first emotion (most important for survival) is fear. Even the single cell organism responds with the most rudimentary equivalent of fear. If something takes away fluids, move away. If something is hot, the cell will (by internal mechanism) move away from it, like plants do. This is meaning for them to survive? Or is it ‘reason’? Or ‘cause’? Life in general has become more aware each iteration (aware in level of response mechanisms to influences in the cycle of a life form). Nowhere in this trajectory there was meaning induced already. This only came into existence when cognitive awareness caused the individual entity (in this case proto-human) to recognize that not all signals were required to respond instinctively to. The fact that (proto-)humanoids weren’t at the bottom of the food-chain anymore, caused their numbers to increase. More entities in a group create more communication, causing complexity of interaction and ‘language’. But with complex communication comes enlarged memory due to the nature of individual differences. Communication causes humans to seek common ground, this is something that is imperative for survival as well. After all the physical dangers outside the group, now humanity has to ensure there is no danger from inside the group too. By following specific protocols, individuals ensure early recognition of danger or possibilities to have mutual goals. Is this a meaning? Or a reason? No it is a means though. Humans haven’t been aware of it, but they have been subject to it anyway (as an object). This all shows that there is meaning in itself.

We create a meaning based on our awareness of the world. When one is unaware of causality, all meaning is one’s own mind. When one sees causility that is identifiable, one will place meaning outside him/her self, based om the identification. Mostly like children do: I act like this, so any event outside myself happening in an identifiable order will be based on the same kind of reason: a person. ‘Stupid chair’ etc.

When we become more aware of the world and have understanding that there are larger connections, it is this larger scope that provides us with meaning: We live together and are dependent on each other. So, this bond must have importance. Now we have (as humanity) evolved further and become aware of things as individuals. We are able as individuals to survive as such. We find that outside ourselves, everyone makes a meaning for their life (Buddhists make their reasons, Christians make their reasons, aboriginals make their reasons.) Because everyone has a choice based on their awareness, meaning has become individualized. But meaning is still not imbued by anything outside the mind. Cause and effect are not meaning, they are results. Taking ‘pointless’, as ‘meaningless’, yes, the universe is meaningless. We observe (and perhaps other species that have evolved into cognitive beings as well) the universe and are children. Our emotional dependency on pattern recognition (instinctive survival mechanism), causes our cognitive awareness to ‘feel’ there is a reason for things, even if it is just that false positive on danger.

Does not having a meaning in life, mean that life is meaningless? No, because our mind has emerged from the increasing complexity of manifolds, we are able to introspect, retrospect, deduct and induct on our observations (which are more than just the visuals). Yes, the only reason for our lives (biological) is to breed. What would happen if all of humanity lost the want to procreate? We would die out. Except that our biological sexual drive will cause the unaware to start breeding (having sex) anyway and cause the species to continue. This again is not a meaning, but cause and effect of biological measurements. But we give life meaning. How do we reflect on a Gorilla mother hugging their infant? How do we reflect on a Chimpanzee baby sleeping in the cultivation of its mother or father? Does it have less meaning? Or more?

Why would a human life have more meaning? The cognitive awareness? Is that what gives more meaning? Because the cognitive awareness is required to even fatom a meaning? Yet if all humans were finished off, the world would continue to turn and another species would emerge superior. Would that be the meaning for humans perishing? The cycle of life includes death. No matter what comes after. The existence as it was before you were born or a fictive eternity of mind? The implications of the wanted ‘after’, depends on the awareness one has for causality. If something doesn’t fit into the logic of reality, one will add supernatural or surreal solutions. To do so, will then cause more and more intrinsic webs of supernatural causes and reasons. But with it comes a reason and cause that is also requiring a meaning. Thus one creates a loop that will keep itself going. Worst thing is our primal emotion. When the loop is connected with fear, it is almost impossible to stop it. Life is prone on survival and to survive it needs to know it will not die. When it knows it will die, it either looses will to continue or seeks a meaning for death. The only meaning people ‘want’ for death is to continue living. The truth is, everything dies. The universe, the planet, humans, specks of dust. Dying is part of a cycle of existence. Energy – matter transformation. Direction to no direction. Movement to no movement.

But what would be wrong about it? Did you bother about life before you were born? No. You weren’t existing. IF you would imply everyone lives AFTER death, you automatically imply everyone lives before birth. Taking this into infinity, everyone would be in an infinite loop and you more likely will end up Buddhist, than anything else. If you live before birth, as what? Non-corporal? That would imply the mind or essence is not based on physical causes as we know it is. It implies we would be able to investigate mind / cognitive abilities at the moment of conception or even before (because the implication of added complexity would still have to adhere to reality). As we know, this is not so. We have been able to figure out where the mind/cognition is created and can switch it on and off.

So what is the meaning of life, if life ends? Well, for one, there is the meaning of A life and there is meaning of life. One is what it means to an individual, the other is what it means to a species or even broader, an ecosystem. Until an individual is aware of it, there is no meaning for it to discern. When it is aware, it will search for a meaning. Not that there is one, but it will search for it, because the pattern recognition that is the base of our mind, depends on search for causality. We as humans often fail to understand that causality is not meaning. It is cause and effect. The result, not the meaning.

So, if there is no meaning to life, what could we extract as the most objective ‘meaning’ we could give it?

Looking at life as it is, it is adaptation. Adaptation means learning. Learning means finding data, information and from that knowledge. This is what humanity has done. First with the increasing complexity of life itself, then its habits, then its communication, then its cognitive understanding. So, the meaning of life, in the most objective matter would be: Accumulate as much data, information and knowledge for the next generation to grow upon and extend.

I might add: To increase the positive effect of it on humanity, its habitat and entire ecosystem.

And again on the proof of superstition

Any religitard (someone who has deliberately kept his/her ignorance up, by following superstition rather than using the brain his/her ancestors gave him/her) will keep coming up with reversed logic:

‘Look how beautiful everthing is. That MUST be my god’s doing’ (Whether it is Hindu, Muslim or Christian denomination)

‘But that is too complex to be existing without a divine hand’ (doesn’t matter the line of religion followed)

However, they still fail to meet any burden of proof

And what will they say?

But you can’t disprove it either’.

Well….that is where they are wrong. See, all we have for saying that something exists is EITHER: proof/evidence (not the same thing) or history.

Now the thing with history is, that it is either ‘left overs’ in the natural world, or interpretations written to paper by our ancestors.

What is wrong with that? Nothing, as long as you understand the implication. It means that without the knowledge YOU have, someone who wants to give an answer about something, will have to trust on the information he/she DOES have.

An example? The people who wrote most of the still in print religious books from around 3000-2000 years ago, thought the world was flat. They even thought the Earth was the center of the universe. Why? For the same reason you talk from perspective of I and you/others. You speak from perspective. In such you take the place your mind is, in your head, behind your eyes, and the first thing you address is how to connect what you see, hear, feel and experience to the ‘mind’ that is you. Why can blind people think? Because the mind doesn’t need a visual to work. A part of the brain is dedicated to visuals, but the mind doesn’t have that. At first, humans, gaining cognition (deliberate self awareness and ability to extend that awareness into planning etc), only saw the limits of the group. Then they extended beyond the groups (some where bannished, some were seeking or left behind, some were the sole surviver of a group), they sought out the world. But that world was what they walked on. Every step was a flat step. When looking up, they saw the sky, like a blanket, when they looked forward, they saw the world, until the next mountain, then next forrest. The world WAS flat. It still is to extend, as the WORLD is what you observe. But Earth has never been flat. The planet is what it is, a globe (read some Copernicus to understand how humanity escaped that limitation of mindset), and the world is too, now. The world is basically our projection of our awareness on the ‘universe’ around us. How do we know that our evolving humanity has gone through these stages? Because our individual evolution per human still follows EXACTLY the same steps of awareness.

Sooo, how does all this relate to the question? Well, you wanted to know prove for imagination, I now explained to you where our mind and from that our imagination comes from. BUT, how about the ideas of gods? Well, imagine you are limited in understanding and awareness. Imagine you are a ‘baby’ in mind. Basically learning to ‘write’ and ‘read’, or even the more complex pattern recognition, was something that has taken humanity the greater of thousands of years. Before that, mammals were growing out of an ice age, where the ‘tide’ had turned. The change in climate, made the center of Africa (then the center of the ‘world’ of mammals, like apes) a lush green jumgle. It was easier to stay alive, but also, many different species fought for dominance and died. The dinosaurs, already extinct for some time, left more of the smaller animals for the battle and these eventually started to take its toll. Homo Erectus (or before that even Homo Habilis) was able to get out of the trees, without being preyed on. They started to walk the fields and have less and less attackers. BUT, the instincts were there. They had been there for thousands if not millions of years in its ancestors, and they had proven to be the required survival instincts. When a bush rustled, it didn’t matter if there was a predator or not, you got into the tree, high up. These were eventually, even when humanoids and other mammals lived in groups, the instincts that would still pop up. The ‘fear’ of death, the fear of not being able to reproduce, was stronger than anything. It still is. These fears, these ‘false positives’ were the ability for humans to survive. The ‘look I ran from this bush and survived’ was a stronger lesson than: ‘look there is a dead body of a mate but we don’t know how that happened.’

Now, you have had your run in the community with these false positives (you survived, even though there was no danger), how do you explain this to your children when they are in the woods. Do you say: Look, if you die, you were just unlucky. Or do you say: Stay away from rustling bushes, because you will die if you don’t? I am guessing you would go for the second. This is how our mind works. We did and do this with everything. From losing our keys at home, to picking up the phone a second before the mechanism actually makes it ring. We think that it is ‘super natural’, because it ‘preceded’ us or happened due to a factor that we are ‘unaware’ of. This is the basic reason people seek for proof of gods and other superstition. But they are all the same, just some have a longer written story that supports it.

The only argument ANY theist has for their god or supernatural power, is circular reasoning which has been done away with already (and again in the piece above):

The book says this happened and I will not seek into the mind of humanity WHY someone wrote it down like that, I just accept it for true, because I once had an experience I couldn’t explain, so it must be true. So, the book says my ignorant superstition is called , so I will name it .

Wanna be right, or correct?

It has been several years now, that I have, talked, discussed, debated and fought theists of many sizes. Even agnosts and atheists. What?! Yes, even agnosts who call themselves such and wanted to claim that I could not prove the nonexistence of ignorance and as such it had to have a space in the mind of some obscured human. I strongly disagree. Why? Because we are all human and many if not most of us will be a parent eventually. We are supposed to make a better future for our offspring. Why? Because they are the legacy of humanity. If not for them, what then? Shouldn’t we teach them how we made mistakes and prevent the really lethal ones from being remade? Isn’t that what all species do? Alter the next generation, so they will survive changes?

Yes, I know, I get ahead of myself.

What this text is about, is simply: what do you gain by actual research. How much is your own brain capable of deducting and inducting regarding yourself and the world around you?

See, in the end, if you look really closely, a theists thinks the atheist, or evolutionist is taught information he/she recites. However, the atheist thinks the same about the creationist or theist. They just copy their text from a book and that is it. So….how do you get beyond this point? Well, most simple solution, we throw all books, all knowledge gathered by humanity, whether accepted by some and/or all, out the window and sit together and see how you can still get to some point of reference, without…..reference.

So, consider this:

You and I sit down on a beach. We are to look at things around us and see if we can make a timeline and by deductive/inductive reasoning (that which makes most of the human mind) come to a mutual conclusion.

Why is the theist always wrong?

As a theist you use a presupposition where no evidence is due. This is using false positive and projection. I can start explaining to you how a child learns about dependancy on its parents, interaction with it, building first an emotional structure that gains certain responses, which will be the base of the cognitive structures later on in life. But that will take a lot of time (took me some years of study for the different psychological and neurological directions in science). These structures are, when not met with correct consideration, causing individuals and from that groups, to respond to patterns in nature and more importantly society, with irrational behavior. Why? Because instead of understanding the physics and psychological evolution of humanity, people are then building their responses and insights/assumptions on these patterns based on ignorance. (this was an explanation still, so if you want to know more, check for instance http://lifeisadecision.blogspot.com (going to be moved here too). But I will elaborate answering two common questions that are giving theists the assumption that their idea about superstition is warranted.

The most important question:
1. How did it all begin?
If you have some understanding of science, you will understand how humanity has evolved its knowledge regarding its place in its own mind, society, nature and on Earth. Like children, humanity itself has learned to move away from fully emotional being (which animals are), to cognitive beings. (having reasoning skills, not merely emotional dependency skills). As children first have a dependency on their parents, so did humans still have a dependency on nature, causing it to project any ability of itself onto the patterns (signals coming from any source around us: plants, weather, light, animals, peers, events). Thus causing us (humanity or more likely even before becoming homo habilis) to create animism. Why? Out of fear. Any emotion humans have, are based on the evolutionary bred emotion fear. The single cell organism and every intermediate species have this same first emotion: fear. Fear of dying, and from that survival is based on balancing this emotion with all other evolved abilities.
We as humans have come to a moment where we are able to make objective (without emotion) reasoning (inductive/deductive) about patterns around us and see the causation between them. This has given us most if not all technological advancements you and I are using today. This technological advancement is both proof of the ability of humans to make our interpretation of reality consistent AND use the interpretation to determine and predict related causality that we are not able to directly touch (physically). As such we came to understand the microcosmos and microbes, quantum physics (though this is a slippery slope subject still), we came to understand from simple roling balls (Newton) that the Earth could not be the center of the solar system, nor universe, simply because the forces that we witness and the related consistency in reality, could not work if it was. Then we found more and more methods and evidence that the earlier theories by both theist scientists and secular scientists were correct or false, making things possible for humanity to evolve in both cultural, scientific and technological sense. This gave us things like the laws of thermodynamics, of gravity, of relativity, of evolution. These have caused humanity to reinvent itself many times. It is like a child having its puberty. The phases of transcending to another cognitive level. We first grew into our habitat. We demolished it, until we saw what the effects were (like a spoiled child in its egocentric phase, we thought everything was ours). We started to understand the causality of nature.  We started to research ecosystems, biosystems, relations between amount of species that were part of each others lifecycle. We found more and more evidence that older species had gone through the same cycle and had become extinct (even before the hand of man took hold of Earth). We found out that there were ways to determine what the age of bones were, that there was DNA, that there were obvious relations between kin, between bloodlines, between ancestors. Though, as a child we first thought our parents and family were the world, we started to understand as humanity, that there was way more. Our parents had parents and this went on for thousands and thousands of generations. We found out that, physical resemblence was more than just face value. This caused us to look beyond our habitat, beyond Earth and we saw that people like Galilei, Copernicus, Newton and many more were right about how forces were not just acting here in our ‘little’ world. The observable ‘universe’ which at first was our solar system, was holding to the same laws. It never wavered from it, never changed its mind. We found out that the Earth had gone through many catastrophies, which humanity never knew about. We came to understand that if these forces worked in the solar system, we could start explaining why stars (previously just pinholes in a blanket on the sky) weren’t always in the same place and not even had the same distance among themselves. we created (based on the confirmed formulas and models that were proven by independant researches and tests) bigger models and formulas, that sometimes upset the existing ones, but were often improvements of the older models, not refutations (though sometimes they were). Eventually we came to understand that atoms weren’t the smallest parts we could calculate with, photons, particles and quarks were found to exist as smaller bases. They gave us insights on why nuclear forces degraded over time, why the Earth stayed going around the sun. But also, how elements were expelling or absorbing energy in their cycle (like the research had previously proven the causality in life cycles of animals), how eventually entropy would set in and a match would stop burning if no fuel was left. Theories about how the sun burned in a vacuum came and went. We found more and more radiation types, particles, levels of light and magnetic frequencies. These caused us to find that the whole of the universe was holding to this type of change, where energy and matter were exchanged. How background noise proved that there was a long history to the universe. Humanity was becoming the eye on the universe. We could see further and further, like an infant that could see only 30 cm after birth, one meter at age 6 months and further and further as its eyes adjusted to the level of detail around it. Humanity now understood why on Earth there were so many archeological finds in sediments that were old, very very old. The universe itself was very very old. Using different calculations, some precise, some crude, humanity found out what could and what could not be correct ages of things, of life, of rocks, of energy of movement. We found out that the solar system, the galaxy it was in, the universe we could see, was moving. Away from it something, but some things were moving towards each other. The universe was expanding. At first this was thought rediculous, so at least half of the scientific community set on a quest to falsify this idea. And even now there are still individuals that will look for calculations that will hold all proven laws and models, but will disagree with an expanding universe. However, this expanding universe meant also that it had to have been a starting point of the expansion. This is what currently is know as the singularity. Whether it is the correct name or cause, is to be determined, but the best answer in such case is: I don’t know yet! Why is that the best answer? It gives you the option to research and find the answer, but also any other answers in between. So, where did it all begin? At a point, approximately 17.8 BILLION years ago. (and even if science is a billion years off, or 10, it is still immeasurable by human mind). What started it? Well, the models all indicate that at some point friction caused the start. But for now, it is an unknown, which is fine.

The second question:

2. Do you believe the earth is eternal?
As you might have imagined from the long and winding road above, I don’t. Why would I? Rule number one in our reactionary universe; Everything changes. The Earth itself isn’t 17.8 BILLION years old, it is only 4.5 BILLION years old. So it already didn’t exist for ever, so why would I even consider it to exist for ever from now on? The elements that make up Earth will last a long time in their current form. BUT as science has proven that matter and energy shift sides every now and then, the matter that makes up Earth will eventually turn to energy (whether that is before the universe either collapses onto itself or outstretches itself of poofs like a soap bubble) and that energy will cool down and become new matter somewhere in the far future. Current calculations say that the sun will burn for another 5 billion years, so if we as species haven’t obliterated earth before than and haven’t settled our differences or have perished, Earth will go to an energy state in matter of seconds or years if the sun ends (either in cooling, or in explosion. Our sun isn’t very big in comparison to others, so we won’t have a supernova).

I hope that answers your questions. When Logically inclined, Honesty frames the view of Reason