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Avalonian

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #350 on: January 14, 2018, 09:26:37 PM »
That is rather a wacky diagram. I mean, they don't seem to have paid much attention at all to predictions for aridity or extreme weather development. Spain is in the clear, apparently, as well as Australia. Central Asian states are no worse off than China or Russia, despite relying on rapidly-diminishing glacial run-off from the Tian Shan. Etc., etc. etc...

Plus, I agree completely about the assessment of the social side of the analysis. Apparently they considered 'food supplies', which seems to me to be the single most critical aspect (aside from drinking water), but what knock-on effects will the desertification of California have, for example..? The whole thing looks like a simple publicity exercise, to me.

But, exploring the idea, which countries would be best able to adapt to a generic extreme warming scenario? Excluding ones that turn to desert, get drowned by sea level rise, or are too hot for survival, I suspect you'd be looking for ones without too much technological development, that grow most of their own food already, and in which society is rather local. Some of the least-connected cultures on Earth are probably going to be the most self-reliant - say, the Andaman Islands, or indigenous tribes in Brazil, Bolivia or Ecuador. Isolated oceanic islands shouldn't see the extremes of heat as much as large land masses; those around the southern end of South America, for example, or the Falklands, might remain habitable, or even improve. Look for low-population places where the local climate is currently cool, and which don't rely heavily on imports, and you've got a good chance of successful adaptation, I reckon.

rboyd

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #351 on: January 14, 2018, 10:19:58 PM »
If the Brazilian rainforest turns into savanna, wont be too good for the indigenous. Also, I think that Bolivia is highly dependent on glacial run off.

Am doing my PhD thesis on societal resilience in the face of climate change, so couldn't help jump on this simplistic index.

Avalonian

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #352 on: January 14, 2018, 10:35:26 PM »
If the Brazilian rainforest turns into savanna, wont be too good for the indigenous. Also, I think that Bolivia is highly dependent on glacial run off.

Am doing my PhD thesis on societal resilience in the face of climate change, so couldn't help jump on this simplistic index.

Excellent - good project!  What sort of cultures are you focusing on?

Indeed, for Brazil - but if any rainforest survives in the west, then maybe traditional cultures will survive with them. I know the cities of Bolivia are highly dependent on glaciers, but not so sure about most of the broadleaved forest areas in the Yungas region, for example... it's so hard to predict future rainfall patterns, but overall there should be an increase in precipitation globally, and mountain areas should still get the bulk of it. Parts of the Andes, I can't help thinking, should remain entirely habitable.

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #353 on: January 14, 2018, 11:05:55 PM »
Am doing my PhD thesis on societal resilience in the face of climate change, so couldn't help jump on this simplistic index.

rboyd,

I am glad to read that you are working on a PhD thesis on societal resilience in the face of climate change.  And while I fully concur that the study that I linked to is simplistic, I believe that the interactions of our global socio-economic system and climate change are so complex as to make any/all analyzes, that I have seen, simplistic.  Thus, on this topic, the most important consideration is that each individual lean to take as much responsibility for their own decisions as practicable.

For example, if sea level increases three to sixteen feet this century, the associated freshwater hosing feedback mechanism will effectively invalidate all CMIP5 climate change projections, thus making any analysis that over relies on CMIP5 projections, invalid to one degree or other.  Thus each people needs keep updating any relating information/projections on a regular basis.

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

rboyd

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #354 on: January 15, 2018, 02:40:01 AM »
One of the hardest parts is dealing with the science when the official consensus is so far off base and the probability of non-linear behaviour so high. There are a lot of scenarios (which have alarmingly high real probabilities) that would render many countries' efforts irrelevant. The biggest question then becomes the political system's ability to deal with "planned retreat".

Really bad if its a whole country (Denmark, Holland, Mexico, Bangladesh?), but pretty bad if its even a part of a country (The deltas of Egypt, Vietnam and China, the South of Florida, the US Southeast, Burnaby British Columbia in Canada?). Getting people to accept that their assets are worthless, and getting others to help (rather than blame) them may overwhelm many political systems. Much may be squandered on trying to save the unsavable. The "Grapes of Wrath" rapidly comes to mind.

And yes, any thesis on the sublect will always be simplistic versus the actual complexity of the issue.

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #355 on: January 15, 2018, 04:11:59 AM »
And yes, any thesis on the sublect will always be simplistic versus the actual complexity of the issue.

rboyd,

Every march to the sea begins with a single step.

Best of luck on your dissertation (or is yours really a thesis?).
ASLR
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #356 on: January 30, 2018, 07:31:32 PM »
In my opinion, a collapse of the WAIS this century would likely accelerate schedule for the long overdue flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles.  So I hope people prepare accordingly:

Title: "Earth's Magnetic Poles Are Overdue For a Switch And We're Not Prepared"

https://www.sciencealert.com/earth-magnetic-poles-reversal-switch-overdue-turbulent

Extract: "Within the last 20 million years, Earth has fallen into the pattern of pole reversal every 200,000 to 300,000 years, and between successful swaps, the poles sometimes even attempt to reverse and then snap back into place.

About 40,000 years ago, the poles made one such unsuccessful attempt, and the last full swap was about 780,000 years ago, so we're a bit overdue for a pole reversal based on the established pattern.

The planet's magnetic field is already shifting, which could signify the poles are preparing to flip, and while we can't yet confirm that a reversal is on the near horizon, it is well within the realm of possibility.

To try to determine whether or not a flip is imminent, scientists have begun using satellite imagery and complex calculations to study the shifting of the magnetic field.

They've found that molten iron and nickel are draining energy from the dipole at the edge of the Earth's core, which is where the planet's magnetic field is generated.

They also found that the north magnetic pole is especially turbulent and unpredictable. If the magnetic blocks become strong enough to sufficiently weaken the dipole, the poles will officially switch.

Again, while it is not a certainty that the switch will happen soon, this activity at the Earth's core suggests that it is possible in the near future."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #357 on: February 07, 2018, 10:12:40 PM »
China is determined to take the lead in AI development by 2020:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-25/china-determined-to-match-western-competitors-in-ai/9357048

Extract: ""China has a declared ambition to equal the US in its AI capability by 2020 and to be number one in the world by 2030," said Professor Toby Walsh …

The Chinese Government's Next Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan, announced last year, aims to create a massive US$150 billion AI industry in China by 2030."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

sidd

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #358 on: February 08, 2018, 02:26:20 AM »
"In my opinion, a collapse of the WAIS this century would likely accelerate schedule for the long overdue flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles. "

Interesting. What leads you to this opinion ? Do tell.

sidd

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #359 on: February 08, 2018, 03:36:34 AM »
"In my opinion, a collapse of the WAIS this century would likely accelerate schedule for the long overdue flipping of the Earth's magnetic poles. "

Interesting. What leads you to this opinion ? Do tell.

sidd

Here is some background references:


1. Adam C. Maloof Galen P. Halverson Joseph L. Kirschvink Daniel P. Schrag Benjamin P. Weiss Paul F. Hoffman (2006), "Combined paleomagnetic, isotopic, and stratigraphic evidence for true polar wander from the Neoproterozoic Akademikerbreen Group, Svalbard, Norway",  GSA Bulletin, 118 (9-10): 1099-1124, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1130/B25892.1

https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-abstract/118/9-10/1099/125331/combined-paleomagnetic-isotopic-and-stratigraphic?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Abstract: "We present new paleomagnetic data from three Middle Neoproterozoic carbonate units of East Svalbard, Norway. The paleomagnetic record is gleaned from 50 to 650 m of continuous, platformal carbonate sediment, is reproduced at three locations distributed over >100 km on a single craton, and scores a 5–6 (out of 7) on the Van der Voo (1990) reliability scale. Two >50° shifts in paleomagnetic direction are coincident with equally abrupt shifts in δ13C and transient changes in relative sea level. We explore four possible explanations for these coincidental changes: rapid plate tectonic rotation during depositional hiatus, magnetic excursions, nongeocentric axial-dipole fields, and true polar wander. We conclude that the observations are explained most readily by rapid shifts in paleogeography associated with a pair of true polar wander events. Future work in sediments of equivalent age from other basins can test directly the true polar wander hypothesis because this type of event would affect every continent in a predictable manner, depending on the continent's changing position relative to Earth's spin axis."

2. J. R. Creveling, J. X. Mitrovica, N.-H. Chan, K. Latychev & I. Matsuyama (08 November 2012), "Mechanisms for oscillatory true polar wander", Nature, volume 491, pages 244–248,
doi:10.1038/nature11571

http://www.nature.com/articles/nature11571

Abstract: "Palaeomagnetic studies of Palaeoproterozoic to Cretaceous rocks propose a suite of large and relatively rapid (tens of degrees over 10 to 100 million years) excursions of the rotation pole relative to the surface geography, or true polar wander (TPW). These excursions may be linked in an oscillatory, approximately coaxial succession about the centre of the contemporaneous supercontinent. Within the framework of a standard rotational theory, in which a delayed viscous adjustment of the rotational bulge acts to stabilize the rotation axis, geodynamic models for oscillatory TPW generally appeal to consecutive, opposite loading phases of comparable magnitude. Here we extend a nonlinear rotational stability theory to incorporate the stabilizing effect of TPW-induced elastic stresses in the lithosphere. We demonstrate that convectively driven inertia perturbations acting on a nearly prolate, non-hydrostatic Earth with an effective elastic lithospheric thickness of about 10 kilometres yield oscillatory TPW paths consistent with palaeomagnetic inferences. This estimate of elastic thickness can be reduced, even to zero, if the rotation axis is stabilized by long-term excess ellipticity in the plane of the TPW. We speculate that these sources of stabilization, acting on TPW driven by a time-varying mantle flow field, provide a mechanism for linking the distinct, oscillatory TPW events of the past few billion years."

3. To learn how much the North Pole has shifted in the recent decades due to rapid ice mass loss, see Chen, J..L., C.R. Wilson, J.C. Ries, B.D. Tapley, Rapid ice melting drives Earth's pole to the east, Geophys. Res. Lett., Vol. 40, 1-6, DOI: 10.1002/grl.50552, 2013; which can be found at the prime author's website at the University of Texas, where you can download a preprint (made available by the author):

http://www.csr.utexas.edu/personal/chen/publication.html

and here is a link directly to the preprint pdf:

ftp://ftp.csr.utexas.edu/pub/ggfc/papers/2013GL056164_preprint.pdf


« Last Edit: February 08, 2018, 04:18:10 AM by AbruptSLR »
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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sidd

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #360 on: February 08, 2018, 06:55:23 AM »
Do you mean magnetic pole or rotational pole ? both the papers you cite talk about the rotational pole.

sidd

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #361 on: February 08, 2018, 05:08:51 PM »
Do you mean magnetic pole or rotational pole ? both the papers you cite talk about the rotational pole.

sidd

sidd,

I will move this line of discussion to the 'Ice Apocalypse' thread (see the link below) in the Antarctic folder as this topic was meant to be just a word of warning here.  However, my general point is that a some portion of the changes in the magnetic pole can be associated with changes in the rotational pole (the attached image illustrates how fast this is currently changing), due to changes in the magma flow associated with ice mass redistribution.  Furthermore, my point is that due to the current exceptionally high rate of anthropogenic forcing and the bipolar seesaw mechanism that possible abrupt changes in ice mass loss can make faster changes in tectonic behavior than observed in the paleorecord.

https://forum.arctic-sea-ice.net/index.php/topic,2205.50.html

ASLR
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #362 on: February 12, 2018, 03:49:10 AM »
For those who are interested:

Title: "Yesterday, World Leaders Gathered at a Secretive Meeting to Decide the Fate of AI"

https://futurism.com/govern-fate-ai/

Extract: "Today, top individuals from around the world convened at the World Government Summit to discuss the agenda that should govern the next generation of governments. Yesterday, a select few of these leaders gathered secretive meeting to discuss the guidelines that nations should use as they help their people come to terms with no longer being the only sentient species on the planet.

Of course, this was just one of many topics of discussion. Attendees also discussed the most immediate ways they can implement AI to make our lives better, who should govern AI, and how to navigate the perilous roads ahead."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

Sebastian Jones

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #363 on: February 12, 2018, 05:37:44 AM »
Regarding the future of AI: CBC Ideas program is running a very interesting series, taking an in-depth look at the future of work and artificial intelligence.
http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/artificial-intelligence-robots-and-the-future-of-work-1.4286200

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #364 on: February 23, 2018, 07:12:16 PM »
I note that UN official are raising that climate change is coming much faster than the Paris Accord assumes, they are currently approaching the High Tech leaders to try to encourage a new form of 'Technocracy' that could better fight climate change:

Title: "Why Solving Climate Change Will Be Like Mobilizing for War"

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2015/10/why-only-a-technocratic-revolution-can-win-the-climate-change-war/410377/

Extract: "It’s clear that the market is unlikely to solve the problem of climate change on its own. If scientists are right, and there is no reason to think they aren’t, averting climate change will require such large-scale, rapid action, that no single energy technology, new or emerging, could be the solution. Neither could any single non-energy technology, such as video-conferencing as a substitute for travel, solve the problem on its own.

Assuming we do manage to significantly accelerate deployment without cancerous levels of corporatist corruption, if emissions targets still remain out of reach, some growth must be temporarily sacrificed. At the same time, investment across the portfolio of energy technologies will need to continue.

In other words, we are contemplating the sorts of austerities associated with wartime economies. For ordinary Americans, austerities might include an end to expansive suburban lifestyles and budget air travel, and an accelerated return to high-density urban living and train travel. For businesses, this might mean rethinking entire supply chains, as high-emissions sectors become unviable under new emissions regimes.

What Gates and others are advocating for is not so much a technological revolution as a technocratic one. One for which there is no successful peacetime precedent. Which is not to say, of course, that it cannot work. There is always a first time for every new level of complexity and scale in human cooperation. But it’s sobering to look back at the (partial) precedents we do have.

Like many technologists whose opinions have been shaped by Internet-era technologies, I’d like to see the institutions we are being asked to trust adopt some of the operating mechanisms I have grown to trust. Like many, including presumably Bill Gates, I hope the climate war will be fought with agile, open processes, networked organizational forms, and a great deal more autonomy for low-level actors than technocracies have historically been willing to cede.

I’d also like claims to professional authority on the part of frontline actors to be based on visible accomplishments rather than credentials. I hope the action (or inaction, rather) will not be driven by gridlocked committees inching towards ineffective and expensive compromises with excruciating slowness, after hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis and Sub-Saharan Africans have already lost their lives or livelihoods.

But to base decisions on comparisons between imaginary more-perfect institutions that might exist, and flawed, but slowly evolving institutions that do exist, is a perfect example of the nirvana fallacy. The pragmatic path is to trust that the technocrats in charge will fight the necessary bureaucratic battles with sufficient skill and professionalism to actually win in time to make a difference.

Can this work? There’s a slim chance, but it’s probably the best chance we have. And even a small chance of preventing massive misery in parts of the world (and periods of the future) that did not cause the problem, is worth taking."

See also:

Title: "Nirvana fallacy"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Edit, also see:

B. H. Samset, M. Sand, C. J. Smith, S. E. Bauer, P. M. Forster, J. S. Fuglestvedt, S. Osprey & C.-F. Schleussner (24 January 2018), "Climate Impacts From a Removal of Anthropogenic Aerosol Emissions", Geophysical Research Letters, DOI: 10.1002/2017GL076079

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL076079/full

Abstract: "Limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2.0°C requires strong mitigation of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Concurrently, emissions of anthropogenic aerosols will decline, due to coemission with GHG, and measures to improve air quality. However, the combined climate effect of GHG and aerosol emissions over the industrial era is poorly constrained. Here we show the climate impacts from removing present-day anthropogenic aerosol emissions and compare them to the impacts from moderate GHG-dominated global warming. Removing aerosols induces a global mean surface heating of 0.5–1.1°C, and precipitation increase of 2.0–4.6%. Extreme weather indices also increase. We find a higher sensitivity of extreme events to aerosol reductions, per degree of surface warming, in particular over the major aerosol emission regions. Under near-term warming, we find that regional climate change will depend strongly on the balance between aerosol and GHG forcing."

Edit2, see also:

Title: "The Fourth Industrial Revolution can lead us to a zero-carbon future - if we act now"

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/01/how-we-can-direct-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-towards-a-zero-carbon-future/
« Last Edit: February 23, 2018, 07:21:54 PM by AbruptSLR »
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #365 on: February 28, 2018, 06:30:00 PM »
The synergy between AI and quantum computing will result in a virtuous feedback loop that will accelerate advancements in both fields in the coming decades:

Title: "AI Will Lead the Charge Developing Quantum Computers"

https://futurism.com/ai-developing-quantum-computers/

Extract: "Although quantum physics deals with the "physics of the small," measuring quantum systems is no small feat. To make things simple, researchers turned to artificial neural networks and machine learning."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #366 on: March 19, 2018, 03:45:54 AM »
The linked article provides interesting background on the history/nature of technocracy in China:

Title: "Kuora: Why do technocrats dominate China’s political elite? - While American politicians have law degrees?"

https://supchina.com/2018/03/05/kuora-why-do-technocrats-dominate-chinas-political-elite/

Extract: "I’m greatly oversimplifying here, but I believe that in a country like China, where the notion that a knowledge elite should run the show is deeply ingrained, technocracy was somehow a natural fit with the political culture. Mengzi (Mencius, the most famous of Confucius’s followers) once said, “Let those who labor with their heads rule those who labor with their hands.” But it goes back earlier than the 4th–3rd century B.C.E., when he lived: In China’s first well-attested historical dynasty, the Shang, a shamanic priesthood, whose power was built on oracular divination and communing with ancestor spirits, held power, and technology such as it was — bronze casting, scapulamancy, and plastromancy — was dominated by that priestly caste. In imperial times, from roughly 60 years into the Han (206 B.C.E. to C.E. 220) through the Qing’s collapse in the early 20th century, a class of scholar-officials, whose elite status was predicated on the “truths” contained in the Confucian canon and certified by passing a series of civil service exams, ruled China, with, of course, some not insignificant interruptions.

With the end of the exam system and the repudiation of Confucianism by the intelligentsia of the early 20th century, there was an effort to supplant the “truths” of the old order with new, scientific (perhaps more accurately, scientistic) truths. Part of this explains the embrace of the “scientific” theories of Marxist dialectical materialism that made Communism popular. Even the paroxysms of Mao’s Cultural Revolution — the spasmodic violence, the complete upheaval and turbulence — only attest to how deeply rooted this political privilege accorded to knowledge elites has been in the Chinese political culture.

Turning to the U.S., to me it seems equally natural that lawyers should dominate the political elite in a country built on rule of law, checks and balances (an independent judiciary, for instance), and a fundamentally adversarial concept of politics. It’s really been in the American DNA since the founding of the country. John Adams was, of course, a lawyer, and despite his dedication to the cause of independence, even defended the British soldiers after the Boston Massacre. James Madison wasn’t a lawyer, though he clearly had aspired to be one (but never gained admission to the bar). It’s hard for me to imagine how the U.S. could be any other way."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

CalamityCountdown

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #367 on: April 02, 2018, 01:24:57 AM »
I just noticed that NASA posted an update on their satellite sea level observations for the period ending 12/17/17.

After over a year of sideways and downward movement from late 2015 through early 2017, the most recent NASA report shows that over the past year an acceleration in sea level rise has become visible on the NASA graph, even with just a quick glance (then again, while the long term trend is consistently upward, the annual trend is so variable, that it's likely foolish on my part to suggest a change in trend based on the most recent periods of increase which have only been occurring for less than 12 months).

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

The 2/27/18 PNAS report that sea level rise was accelerating barely seemed to get any notice (of  course, how could it compete with a story about hush money paid to a porn star to keep quiet about her decade ago one-night stand with Trump)
http://www.pnas.org/content/115/9/2022
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/11022018/sea-level-rise-accelerating-satellite-study-coastal-flood-risk-antarctica-oceans


How much does sea level have to rise before there is a crash in US and worldwide coastal real estate prices? The 3.2 mm per annual rise does not seem to be causing much fear. How much does the rate of increase have to accelerate before real estate buyers notice the threat? And how many people have to be displaced before serious action is taken to limit sea level rise?


AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #368 on: April 21, 2018, 01:11:29 PM »
Will blockchain technology deliver beneficial AI for the masses?

Title: "This Startup Is Dreaming of a Global Brain on Blockchain"

https://singularityhub.com/2018/02/11/this-startup-is-dreaming-of-a-global-brain-on-blockchain/#sm.0001g8x1b9kx4fi6u8p1gt35shyja

Extract: "Ben Goertzel, a leading AI researcher, thinks the key to steering us towards a future in which AI is the best thing to happen to humanity is to develop it in an open, democratic, distributed way using blockchain—which is why he’s developing SingularityNET.

SingularityNET is a decentralized platform for AI. Goertzel and his team aim to build a blockchain-based infrastructure to enable various kinds of AI algorithms—from image recognition to natural language processing—to flexibly interact with one another in real time. The system will also be a way to track which algorithms are being used and to compensate developers accordingly.

Instead of humans manually stringing together algorithms, as the system develops, they’ll be able to communicate data and coordinate processing with one another. In the system’s initial incarnation, a user who has a task to complete using AI, training a robot to dance, for example, would send that task to the system, which would then parcel it out to various algorithms specializing in the different skills required to complete the task. The developers whose algorithms are used to complete the task will be compensated by the system with the tokens the user spends to get the task completed."

See also:

https://singularitynet.io/

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #369 on: April 27, 2018, 06:42:58 PM »
Quantum computing is now cooking with ultracold gas condensates as discussed in the three linked references.  This represents a great leap forward in quantum computing technology:

Karsten Lange, et al. (27 Apr 2018), "Entanglement between two spatially separated atomic modes", Science, Vol. 360, Issue 6387, pp. 416-418, DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2035

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6387/416

Abstract: "Modern quantum technologies in the fields of quantum computing, quantum simulation, and quantum metrology require the creation and control of large ensembles of entangled particles. In ultracold ensembles of neutral atoms, nonclassical states have been generated with mutual entanglement among thousands of particles. The entanglement generation relies on the fundamental particle-exchange symmetry in ensembles of identical particles, which lacks the standard notion of entanglement between clearly definable subsystems. Here, we present the generation of entanglement between two spatially separated clouds by splitting an ensemble of ultracold identical particles prepared in a twin Fock state. Because the clouds can be addressed individually, our experiments open a path to exploit the available entangled states of indistinguishable particles for quantum information applications."

&

Philipp Kunkel, et al. (27 Apr 2018), "Spatially distributed multipartite entanglement enables EPR steering of atomic clouds", Science, Vol. 360, Issue 6387, pp. 413-416, DOI: 10.1126/science.aao2254

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6387/413

Abstract: "A key resource for distributed quantum-enhanced protocols is entanglement between spatially separated modes. However, the robust generation and detection of entanglement between spatially separated regions of an ultracold atomic system remain a challenge. We used spin mixing in a tightly confined Bose-Einstein condensate to generate an entangled state of indistinguishable particles in a single spatial mode. We show experimentally that this entanglement can be spatially distributed by self-similar expansion of the atomic cloud. We used spatially resolved spin read-out to reveal a particularly strong form of quantum correlations known as Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) steering between distinct parts of the expanded cloud. Based on the strength of EPR steering, we constructed a witness, which confirmed genuine 5-partite entanglement."

&

Matteo Fadel, et al. (27 Apr 2018), "Spatial entanglement patterns and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering in Bose-Einstein condensates", Science, Vol. 360, Issue 6387, pp. 409-413, DOI: 10.1126/science.aao1850

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/360/6387/409

Abstract: "Many-particle entanglement is a fundamental concept of quantum physics that still presents conceptual challenges. Although nonclassical states of atomic ensembles were used to enhance measurement precision in quantum metrology, the notion of entanglement in these systems was debated because the correlations among the indistinguishable atoms were witnessed by collective measurements only. Here, we use high-resolution imaging to directly measure the spin correlations between spatially separated parts of a spin-squeezed Bose-Einstein condensate. We observe entanglement that is strong enough for Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering: We can predict measurement outcomes for noncommuting observables in one spatial region on the basis of corresponding measurements in another region with an inferred uncertainty product below the Heisenberg uncertainty bound. This method could be exploited for entanglement-enhanced imaging of electromagnetic field distributions and quantum information tasks."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #370 on: May 04, 2018, 07:00:12 PM »
If this keeps up then some day in the next few decades we may well have fast rail service from Tokyo to London:

Title: "A Geopolitically Genius Plan to Modernize North Korea's Trains"

https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/inter-korean-summit-rail-project/559652/

Extract: "Of course, with anything concerning North Korea, grand hopes must be accompanied by maximal caution. North Korea is where the best-laid plans go to wither and die. A version of the inter-Korean railway plan has existed for a while; the two Koreas even had a test run for the rail link in May 2007, having two trains cross the demilitarized zone on two spots. Further development stalled, however, because of the overall deterioration of the relationship between the two nations.

Yet there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic this time around. For starters, both South and North Korea specifically want this project. It’s also consistent with what their neighboring countries want as well. China is raring to begin the One Belt One Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project that would enhance the physical connection between Europe and Asia. The inter-Korean railway could serve as the eastern extension, creating the overland connection between South Korea and the prosperous Chinese cities across the Yellow Sea from the Korean Peninsula, including Beijing and Shanghai.

A stable inter-Korean railway may also motivate Japan to finally begin working on the Korea-Japan undersea tunnel, a project that had been under discussion since the 1980s. If built, it would be the longest undersea tunnel in the world, more than four times the length of the Channel Tunnel between France and the United Kingdom.  According to the South Korean government, the inter-Korean railway plan caught the attention of both the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Asian Development Bank—respectively led by China and Japan, with many other member nations—indicating international support for the inter-Korean railway plan."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #371 on: May 04, 2018, 07:46:26 PM »
The first linked op/ed piece states that capitalism is at fault for our unsustainable world, as these 'invisible hand' of capitalism is as stupid as the 'invisible hand' of evolution that created the behavior of lemmings.  The invisible hand of evolution not only created lemming behavior but also the potential for enlightened human behavior; however, the Buddha found that realizing the human potential for enlightenment requires following a 'middle path'.  Therefore, I provide the second linked article about how a 'new invisible hand' (based on updated evolutionary theories) can allow technocrats to nudge modern socio-economic systems from global capitalism to a more sustain socio-economic system by following a middle path between laisse faire and central planning:

Title: "The Climate Crisis? It’s Capitalism, Stupid"

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/20/opinion/climate-capitalism-crisis.html

Extract: "The real culprit of the climate crisis is not any particular form of consumption, production or regulation but rather the very way in which we globally produce, which is for profit rather than for sustainability. So long as this order is in place, the crisis will continue and, given its progressive nature, worsen. This is a hard fact to confront. But averting our eyes from a seemingly intractable problem does not make it any less a problem. It should be stated plainly: It’s capitalism that is at fault."

The claim here is not that unintelligent people do not do unintelligent things, but rather that the overwhelming unintelligence involved in keeping the engines of production roaring when they are making the planet increasingly uninhabitable cannot be pinned on specific people. It is the system as a whole that is at issue, and every time we pick out bumbling morons to lament or fresh-faced geniuses to praise is a missed opportunity to see plainly the necessity of structural change.

Put differently, the hope that we can empower intelligent people to positions where they can design the perfect set of regulations, or that we can rely on scientists to take the carbon out of the atmosphere and engineer sources of renewable energy, serves to cover over the simple fact that the work of saving the planet is political, not technical. We have a much better chance of making it past the 22nd century if environmental regulations are designed by a team of people with no formal education in a democratic socialist society than we do if they are made by a team of the most esteemed scientific luminaries in a capitalist society. The intelligence of the brightest people around is no match for the rampant stupidity of capitalism.

&
Title: "Why New Economics Needs a New Invisible Hand"

http://evonomics.com/the-new-invisible-hand-david-sloan-wilson/

Extract: "The New Invisible Hand suggests the existence of a middle path.

The old concept pretends that the pursuit of individual or corporate self-interest robustly benefits the common good, as if “led by an invisible hand” in the words of Adam Smith. This is also the essence of the term “laissez-faire”, which is French for “leave it alone”. Nobody believes that an economy can truly be a free for all—certainly not Adam Smith, who invoked his metaphor only three times in the entire corpus of his work. A fuller reading reveals that he was amply aware of the need to regulate economies. Nevertheless, those who have made the invisible hand their central metaphor regard laissez faire as by far the better path to take than its alternative—centralized planning.

I am not the first person to declare this notion of the invisible hand dead, but my grounds for doing so are somewhat novel. Evolutionary theory makes it crystal clear that the unregulated pursuit of self-interest is often toxic for the common good. This conclusion becomes especially strong when we conceptualize self-interest in relative rather than absolute terms, a distinction that separates much evolutionary thinking from much economic thinking. When we absorb the fact that “life is graded on a curve” as the evolutionary economist Robert Frank puts it, then we can see that nearly all cooperative efforts require time, energy, and risk on the part of the cooperative individuals that place them at a relative disadvantage compared to less cooperative individuals within the same group.

The same theory that delivers the death stroke to the old concept of the invisible hand also provides a strong foundation for the new one. The two elements of the invisible hand metaphor are: 1) A social system works well; 2) without its members having the welfare of the system in mind. Nature is replete with examples, such as eusocial insect colonies and multicellular organisms as societies of cells. The members of these societies work harmoniously for the common good without even having minds in the human sense of the word. In each case, the first element of the invisible hand metaphor is satisfied because the society is the primary unit of selection—colony-level selection in the case of eusocial insects and organism-level selection in the case of multicellular organisms. The second element is satisfied because higher-level selection winnowed a small set of lower-level behaviors that contribute to the common good from the much larger set of lower-level behaviors that would disrupt the common good. In short, higher-level selection is the invisible hand. When it doesn’t occur, then disruptive forms of selection among individuals within groups take over, such as cancers in multicellular organisms and varying forms of cheating behaviors in eusocial insect colonies.

One of the great discoveries of evolutionary science during the last few decades is that this theoretical framework, called multilevel selection theory, can be applied to the evolution of our own species–including our genetic evolution primarily at the scale of small groups, our cultural evolution at successively larger scales during the last 10,000 years, and the rapid changes swirling all around us today that we are trying to influence with our policy decisions.

The main take-home message is easy for anyone to understand. We must learn to function in two capacities: As designers of large-scale social systems and as participants in the social systems that we design. As participants, we don’t need to have the welfare of the whole system in mind, but as designers we do. There is no way around it. Anything short will result in social dysfunction.

This is a definitive refutation of laissez-faire as a perspective for formulating policy, but it is not an endorsement of centralized planning. Indeed, the main import of the New Invisible Hand is to suggest the existence of a middle path, a way to design social systems that is itself evolutionary and iterative, resulting in regulatory processes that look like laissez-faire, even though they never would have come into existence on their own.

In short, the middle path between laissez-faire and centralized planning has been discovered many times, as might be expected from a cultural evolutionary perspective—but that isn’t good enough. Each discovery originates as a cultural “mutation’, often by happenstance, and spreads on the basis of its success to a degree, but then remains confined within certain cultural boundaries and is largely unknown outside its borders—somewhat like the geographical distribution of a biological species. What’s needed is a way to transcend these cultural boundaries so that all of the examples can be related to each other and understood from a unified theoretical perspective provided by a combination of evolutionary theory and complex systems theory."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #372 on: May 10, 2018, 09:46:05 PM »
Globalization going to continue growing, no matter what anyone says, so it is good to think about ways to 'make it more egalitarian, fair and just', as discussed in the linked article:

Title: "Does globalization have to mean massive inequality? Maybe not — there’s a better way"

https://www.salon.com/2018/05/10/does-globalization-have-to-mean-massive-inequality-maybe-not-theres-a-better-way/

Extract: "Despite widespread backlash, globalization is unstoppable. Now we must make it more egalitarian, fair and just"
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #373 on: May 12, 2018, 12:25:17 AM »
More evolutionary lessons for our rapidly changing socio-economic situation:

Title: "The Business World Needs Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory" by David Sloan Wilson

https://evolution-institute.org/the-business-world-needs-multilevel-selection-theory/

Extract: "Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory can create order out of this chaos. It was developed for the study of social behaviors in non-human species but it is equally relevant to the cultural design of human groups, including but not restricted to business corporations.  It is based on the following principles, which are so elementary that they are unlikely to be wrong.
1.   Evolution is based on relative fitness. It doesn’t matter how well one survives and reproduces in absolute terms; only in comparison to others in the vicinity. As the economist Robert Frank puts it in his book The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, life is graded on a curve.
2.   The social behaviors that maximize relative fitness within a group tend to undermine the welfare of the group. This is the opposite of the metaphor of the invisible hand.
3.   Social behaviors that are “for the good of the group” might be selectively disadvantageous within the group, but they can be highly advantageous in betweengroup competition.


MLS theory makes it crystal clear that unless competition is appropriately structured and refereed, it can do a lot more harm than good. To make matters more complex, the logic of MLS theory applies to all levels of a multi-tier hierarchy, including the tiers of a single hierarchically organized corporation. What’s good for a single employee can be bad for her unit. What’s good for her unit can be bad for other units, and so on, all the way up to what’s good for the corporation being bad for the global economy and environment.

The idea that competition among firms results in the best replacing the worst would be called “naïve group selection” by an evolutionary biologist—as if selection operates only at the level of firms. Evolutionary biologists went beyond naïve group selection decades ago and their progress can be a tremendous source of insight to the business world."

See also:

https://new.evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/tvol-biz-publication-1.pdf
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #374 on: May 14, 2018, 10:30:33 PM »
The linked reference provides discussion about the use of Robustness Metrics w.r.t. climate change:

C. McPhail, et al. (08 January 2018), "Robustness Metrics: How Are They Calculated, When Should They Be Used and Why Do They Give Different Results?", Earth's Future, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000649

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/2017EF000649

Abstract: "Robustness is being used increasingly for decision analysis in relation to deep uncertainty and many metrics have been proposed for its quantification. Recent studies have shown that the application of different robustness metrics can result in different rankings of decision alternatives, but there has been little discussion of what potential causes for this might be. To shed some light on this issue, we present a unifying framework for the calculation of robustness metrics, which assists with understanding how robustness metrics work, when they should be used, and why they sometimes disagree. The framework categorizes the suitability of metrics to a decision‐maker based on (1) the decision‐context (i.e., the suitability of using absolute performance or regret), (2) the decision‐maker's preferred level of risk aversion, and (3) the decision‐maker's preference toward maximizing performance, minimizing variance, or some higher‐order moment. This article also introduces a conceptual framework describing when relative robustness values of decision alternatives obtained using different metrics are likely to agree and disagree. This is used as a measure of how “stable” the ranking of decision alternatives is when determined using different robustness metrics. The framework is tested on three case studies, including water supply augmentation in Adelaide, Australia, the operation of a multipurpose regulated lake in Italy, and flood protection for a hypothetical river based on a reach of the river Rhine in the Netherlands. The proposed conceptual framework is confirmed by the case study results, providing insight into the reasons for disagreements between rankings obtained using different robustness metrics."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #375 on: May 18, 2018, 04:59:35 PM »
I hope that you are practicing your holistic thinking, because the future is coming faster than most people realize:

Title: "Quantum computing edges toward mainstream"

https://www.axios.com/quantum-computing-edges-toward-mainstream-dfd65971-1a41-4b83-a410-9f9c8fb965e6.html

Extract: "Quantum computing will enter the mainstream faster than most of us realize, a panel of experts told a San Francisco crowd earlier this week — with some important real-world applications emerging within five years.

"Within 5 years, we're going to see something that makes everyone look up and say, 'Wow, how is this possible?'" said Arvind Krishna, director of research at IBM, at a Tuesday event hosted by the Churchill Club."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #376 on: August 06, 2018, 04:05:26 AM »
Here are interesting discussions that also touch on the topic of adapting to the anthropocene:

Title: "Nationalism vs. globalism: the new political divide | Yuval Noah Harari"



&

Title: "How Thomas Friedman and Yuval Noah Harari Think About The Future of Humanity"


« Last Edit: August 06, 2018, 04:17:52 AM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #377 on: August 13, 2018, 02:30:14 AM »
Yuval Noah Harari summarizes the obvious about the coming of 'Digital Dictatorships':

Title: "HUJI Talks - BOG 2018 - Professor Yuval Noah Harari"



Extract: "Hacking human beings... Digital dictatorships... A biological, technological reality? Do we have the necessary computing power and biological insight? Will algorithms know us better than we know ourselves?"

Edit, see also Reply #366
&

Title: "Elizabeth Economy: The Future of Xi Jinping's China"



Extract: "Xi Jinping has created a new model of Chinese politics. He has taken unprecedented steps to consolidate his authority, has overseen the expansion of Communist Party’s role in Chinese political, social, and economic life, and has constructed a virtual wall of regulations to control more closely the exchange of ideas and capital between China and the outside world. Beyond its borders, Beijing has recast itself as a great power, seeking to reclaim its past glory and to create a system of international norms that better serves its more ambitious geostrategic objectives."

&

Title: ""China's led by Engineers, the U.S. by Lawyers. What could possibly go wrong?"



&

Title: "Yukon Huang: Debunking Myths About China's Economy"



« Last Edit: August 18, 2018, 04:36:31 AM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #378 on: August 14, 2018, 06:01:18 PM »
The modern socio-economic system (socio-Darwinistic system) is built-on opportunism; and which is living on borrowed time by denying the truth of our current unsustainable situation.  Thus, any post-collapse society will need restore trust in sustainable truths:

Title: "A philosopher explains America’s “post-truth” problem"

https://www.vox.com/2018/8/14/17661430/trump-post-truth-politics-philosophy-simon-blackburn

Extract: "To get some answers, I reached out to Simon Blackburn, a philosophy professor at Cambridge University and the author of On Truth. We talked about what’s misleading about the phrase “post-truth,” and why the real problem may stem from a lack of trust."

Edit: For a start any post-collapse society can redefine the term 'post-truth' to mean seeing things from multiple different points of view to order to gain insight on the truth of a constantly changing world/universe.

Edit2: Second, a post-collapse society can appreciate that time is a derived parameter in a Holographic/Quantum/String-Theory Universe; which means that change is a function of true free will (not preconditioned free will).
« Last Edit: August 14, 2018, 06:42:42 PM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #379 on: August 23, 2018, 05:53:57 PM »
The blockchain revolution has a ways to go to mature, but it has already started (in an infant form):

Title: "Blockchain Is Starting to Show Real Promise Amid the Hype"

https://www.barrons.com/articles/blockchain-is-starting-to-show-real-promise-amid-the-hype-1534554901

Extract: "The blockchain revolution is here.
 
The technology long associated with Bitcoin is now being used to make businesses as varied as trade finance, videogaming, travel insurance, and diamond mining more efficient and more secure.

The blockchain revolution is also far, far down the road.
...
Businesses that aren’t already considering how to use blockchain to restructure their operations, particularly in finance and logistics, risk their software—and even their business models—becoming outdated.

“We really see this as transformative in the same way that the internet changed communication,” says Marie Wieck, general manager for blockchain at IBM(IBM), which has more than 1,500 staff members working on the technology.
 
Still, it’s a bit like trying to pick future winners and losers of the internet back in the early 1990s. Tomorrow’s Facebook—and its Pets.com—are not yet visible on the horizon."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #380 on: August 24, 2018, 12:37:40 AM »
The cited finding could help practicable quantum computing become a reality sooner than previously expected:

Title: "Research team finds evidence of matter-matter coupling"

https://phys.org/news/2018-08-team-evidence-matter-matter-coupling.html

Extract: "Rice physicist Junichiro Kono, graduate student Xinwei Li and their international colleagues have discovered the first example of Dicke cooperativity in a matter-matter system, a result reported in Science this week.

The discovery could help advance the understanding of spintronics and quantum magnetism, Kono said. On the spintronics side, he said the work will lead to faster information processing with lower power consumption and will contribute to the development of spin-based quantum computing. The team's findings on quantum magnetism will lead to a deeper understanding of the phases of matter induced by many-body interactions at the atomic scale."
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #381 on: September 04, 2018, 03:16:49 PM »
I believe that this article offer some insights into how Western society got into the condition that it is in, and so hints about what to do make our situation more sustainable (if you interpret the article with objectivity, if not then not):

Title: "Why our individualistic culture makes us less happy"

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/4/17759590/happiness-fantasy-capitalism-culture-carl-cederstrom

Extract: "Carl Cederström on how corporations redefined happiness and turned hippies into Reagan voters.

By the end of the ‘60s, there’s a feeling that society is not allowing people to be authentic, that corporations are the enemy. People are thirsting for solidarity, and they see corporate life as dead and two-dimensional. And this is very powerful stuff that upends society.

But what happens as you move through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s is that the political conditions start to shift and corporations start to address all these concerns. You actually see articles in places like the Harvard Business Review about how to attract a “revolutionary spirit” and bring the youth into the corporate world.

Instead of obsessing over the self-actualized perfected person, maybe we should care more about equality, community, vulnerability, and empathy. Maybe we should get out of our heads and be more present in the world around us. I think that’s how we build a better world."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #382 on: September 05, 2018, 12:55:00 AM »
Thus the only type of reasoning that most people trust is deductive logic; which encourages them to over-simply complex problems (including climate change) until they can understand them deductively.

However, AI is equally as good at both inductive and abductive reasoning as it is at deductive reasoning.  This simple fact alone will give advanced AI a major advantage at understanding complex problems as compared to human understanding:

See, Title: "Logical reasoning"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_reasoning

Extract: "Informally, two kinds of logical reasoning can be distinguished in addition to formal deduction: induction and abduction. Given a precondition or premise, a conclusion or logical consequence and a rule or material conditional that implies the conclusion given the precondition, one can explain that:

•   Deductive reasoning determines whether the truth of a conclusion can be determined for that rule, based solely on the truth of the premises. Example: "When it rains, things outside get wet. The grass is outside, therefore: when it rains, the grass gets wet." Mathematical logic and philosophical logic are commonly associated with this type of reasoning.

•   Inductive reasoning attempts to support a determination of the rule. It hypothesizes a rule after numerous examples are taken to be a conclusion that follows from a precondition in terms of such a rule. Example: "The grass got wet numerous times when it rained, therefore: the grass always gets wet when it rains." While they may be persuasive, these arguments are not deductively valid, see the problem of induction. Science is associated with this type of reasoning.

•   Abductive reasoning, a.k.a. inference to the best explanation, selects a cogent set of preconditions. Given a true conclusion and a rule, it attempts to select some possible premises that, if true also, can support the conclusion, though not uniquely. Example: "When it rains, the grass gets wet. The grass is wet. Therefore, it might have rained." This kind of reasoning can be used to develop a hypothesis, which in turn can be tested by additional reasoning or data. Diagnosticians, detectives, and scientists often use this type of reasoning."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
― Leon C. Megginson

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #383 on: September 05, 2018, 01:56:52 AM »
I believe that this article offer some insights into how Western society got into the condition that it is in, and so hints about what to do make our situation more sustainable (if you interpret the article with objectivity, if not then not):

Title: "Why our individualistic culture makes us less happy"

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/9/4/17759590/happiness-fantasy-capitalism-culture-carl-cederstrom

Extract: "Carl Cederström on how corporations redefined happiness and turned hippies into Reagan voters.

By the end of the ‘60s, there’s a feeling that society is not allowing people to be authentic, that corporations are the enemy. People are thirsting for solidarity, and they see corporate life as dead and two-dimensional. And this is very powerful stuff that upends society.

But what happens as you move through the ‘70s and into the ‘80s is that the political conditions start to shift and corporations start to address all these concerns. You actually see articles in places like the Harvard Business Review about how to attract a “revolutionary spirit” and bring the youth into the corporate world.

Instead of obsessing over the self-actualized perfected person, maybe we should care more about equality, community, vulnerability, and empathy. Maybe we should get out of our heads and be more present in the world around us. I think that’s how we build a better world."

Very interesting how the Establishment co opt grass roots social movements and undermine them .
There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is contempt prior to investigation. - Herbert Spencer

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #384 on: September 05, 2018, 04:46:18 AM »
Very interesting how the Establishment co opt grass roots social movements and undermine them .

The best way for anyone to adapt to the Anthropocene is to wise-up via mindfulness :)
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #385 on: September 07, 2018, 10:02:27 AM »
You maybe ignoring the fact (based on high level cognitive science research) that human reason and thoughts are embodied. AI has no "body" so by default then it is unrelated to human reasoning and thought.

A major line of advanced AI research is to interface it directly with the human brain, in which case the AI would have a body and at some point in AI evolution would have access to all associated human mind-body interactions.
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #386 on: September 08, 2018, 06:33:10 PM »
snip
Quote
However, AI is equally as good at both inductive and abductive reasoning as it is at deductive reasoning.  This simple fact alone will give advanced AI a major advantage at understanding complex problems as compared to human understanding:

The wikipedia link is basis for the above assertions / assumptions. These a very big sweeping claims. I don't believe you just because you say it, I want to see some of the supporting research that you believe suggests the above is a fair accurate and credible comment to make.

So where is your evidence suggesting it's true? As in high quality academic science based research papers? Are there any risks? What additional research did the authors of such papers say still needed to be done?

First, the Wikipedia article does not need to provide proof, because it is somewhat arbitrarily defining that all of logical reasoning can be sub-divided into three groups.

Second, while it is possible to subjectively define anything (a major issue in the Fake News commotion); what really matters is whether such subjective definitions are useful, or not, which is a subjective/situational judgment call.

That said w.r.t. adapting to the Anthropocene, the process of natural selection and sustainability are measurable concepts in chaotic systems (like our current global socio-economic system that is driving climate change), and perhaps the linked article on Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory, provides more useful concepts for improving sustainability (possibly by using MLS Theory in ML algorithms, and into government nudging policies) in the face of the coming 4th Industrial Revolution:

Title: "The Business World Needs Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory" by David Sloan Wilson

https://evolution-institute.org/the-business-world-needs-multilevel-selection-theory/

Extract: "Multilevel Selection (MLS) Theory can create order out of this chaos. It was developed for the study of social behaviors in non-human species but it is equally relevant to the cultural design of human groups, including but not restricted to business corporations.  It is based on the following principles, which are so elementary that they are unlikely to be wrong.

1.   Evolution is based on relative fitness. It doesn’t matter how well one survives and reproduces in absolute terms; only in comparison to others in the vicinity. As the economist Robert Frank puts it in his book The Darwin Economy: Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good, life is graded on a curve.
2.   The social behaviors that maximize relative fitness within a group tend to undermine the welfare of the group. This is the opposite of the metaphor of the invisible hand.
3.   Social behaviors that are “for the good of the group” might be selectively disadvantageous within the group, but they can be highly advantageous in betweengroup competition.


MLS theory makes it crystal clear that unless competition is appropriately structured and refereed, it can do a lot more harm than good. To make matters more complex, the logic of MLS theory applies to all levels of a multi-tier hierarchy, including the tiers of a single hierarchically organized corporation. What’s good for a single employee can be bad for her unit. What’s good for her unit can be bad for other units, and so on, all the way up to what’s good for the corporation being bad for the global economy and environment.

The idea that competition among firms results in the best replacing the worst would be called “naïve group selection” by an evolutionary biologist—as if selection operates only at the level of firms. Evolutionary biologists went beyond naïve group selection decades ago and their progress can be a tremendous source of insight to the business world."

See also:

https://new.evolution-institute.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/tvol-biz-publication-1.pdf
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #387 on: September 08, 2018, 07:01:53 PM »
I find it interesting to consider that if possible future Technocratic governments emerging from information technology cultures (like Silicon Valley's culture) make use of value functions from AI assessments, then what lessons will AI learn about the value of the type of such neurodiversity perspectives as those discussed in the linked article:

Title: "The Educational Tyranny of the Neurotypicals"

https://www.wired.com/story/tyranny-neurotypicals-unschooling-education/

Extract: "I believe at least some of Silicon Valley’s phenomenal success is because its culture places little value on conventional social and corporate values that prize age-based experience and conformity that dominates most of society and most institutions on the East Coast. It celebrates nerdy, awkward youth and has turned their super-human, “abnormal” powers into a money-making machine that is the envy of the world. (This new culture is wonderfully inclusive from a neurodiversity perspective but white-dude centric and problematic from a gender and race perspective.)

This sort of pattern recognition and many other unusual traits associated with autism are extremely well suited for science and engineering, often enabling a super-human ability to write computer code, understand complex ideas and elegantly solve difficult mathematical problems.

Unfortunately, most schools struggle to integrate atypical learners, even though it’s increasingly clear that interest-driven learning, project-based learning, and undirected learning seem better suited for the greater diversity of neural types we now know exist."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #388 on: September 09, 2018, 03:40:21 AM »
The linked reference provides insightful discussion on the nature of technocratic ideology and methodology as it relates to contemporary America.  Per the article: "Technocracy may still appeal to those exhausted by populism's volatility.  In a sense, technocracy is a devil's bargain, in which citizens trades sovereignty for peace of mind."  I encourage interested readers to read this very short article.

Title: "a primer on America's vulnerability to technocracy" by Benjamin Jurney (May 2018), DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.20584.78084

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325269578_a_primer_on_America%27s_vulnerability_to_technocracy

Extract: "If oligarchy is characterized by wealth inequality, then technocracy is characterized by
knowledge inequality. Thus, the remedy for an emergent technocracy is a redistribution of
education: a technically literate public will be able to hold technocratic actors to democratic
standards. Ultimately, Congress must force corporate transparency and mediate the relationship
between Silicon Valley and the financial sector. If the evolution of algorithms is any indicator, a
realized technocracy would lead to an unparalled, if not irreversible, loss of human agency."

See also:

Title: "From Brussels to Silicon Valley, Coping with the Failures of Technocratic Rule"

https://freedomhouse.org/blog/brussels-silicon-valley-coping-failures-technocratic-rule

Extract: "Rather than abandoning institutions like the European Union and Facebook, we should push them to act more like democracies."

Edit: I would encourage readers not to dismiss the reality of the irreversible growing strength of technocracy fueled by advanced AI in the coming decades; and I note that just as democracy is not just one thing, neither is technocracy.
« Last Edit: September 09, 2018, 03:48:59 AM by AbruptSLR »
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #389 on: September 09, 2018, 05:14:49 PM »
When I refer to advanced artificial intelligence, I typically mean advanced quantum artificial intelligence.


In prior posts on quantum computing in this thread I have posted about gate model, topological, and BEC (Bose-Einstein condensate) quantum systems; but to date I have not mentioned annealing-based quantum computing (which uses quantum tunneling, together with quantum superposition and entanglement) as used by D-wave quantum computers.  To fill this gap I provide the following two linked videos, that talk about real world use of machine learning and hybrid classical/quantum computing:


Title: "Quantum Computing Takes Flight at D-wave"

https://skillsmatter.com/skillscasts/12259-quantum-computing-takes-flight-at-d-wave

Extract: "Come join Colin P. Williams for an insight into annealing-based quantum computing and how it can have applications in many diverse areas, from finance to counter-terrorism to particle physics! Don't miss it!

D-Wave is one of the leading companies in the development and delivery of quantum computing systems. Based on an approach called quantum annealing, which the majority of quantum computer scientists had originally eschewed, D-Wave has built four generations of quantum computers over the past 8 years and delivered them to brand name customers including Lockheed-Martin/USC, Google/NASA/USRA, and Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Recently, others, such as IARPA, Google, and NEC, have started their own efforts to build annealing-based quantum computers too. In this talk, Colin Williams will describe D-Wave’s approach to annealing-based quantum computing, how the technology works, the kinds of applications to which it is most suited, and the evidence for it exhibiting quantum advantage.

He will give examples of several applications in areas as diverse as finance, healthcare, counter-terrorism, particle physics, machine learning, and quantum simulation. He will showcase a specific example of the latter, which represents, by far, the largest and most sophisticated quantum computation ever performed by any type of quantum computer to date."

&

Title: "TECHNOLOGY Quantum AI The New Frontier in Artificial Intelligence"



I conclude by noting that hybrid computers can combine not only classical and one type of quantum computers but can combine classical computers with several different types of quantum computers (gate model, topological, BEC and/or annealing-based), and using different quantum systems to address different parts of the machine learning problem.

“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #390 on: October 11, 2018, 04:59:10 PM »
The linked article discusses a newly defined protocol by which a classical computer can control a quantum computer.  This work will likely accelerate the development of a quantum Internet that is piggybacked on top of our existing classical Internet; so buckle-up:

Title: "Graduate Student Solves Quantum Verification Problem"

https://www.quantamagazine.org/graduate-student-solves-quantum-verification-problem-20181008/

Extract: "Urmila Mahadev spent eight years in graduate school solving one of the most basic questions in quantum computation: How do you know whether a quantum computer has done anything quantum at all?

Now, after eight years of graduate school, Mahadev has succeeded. She has come up with an interactive protocol by which users with no quantum powers of their own can nevertheless employ cryptography to put a harness on a quantum computer and drive it wherever they want, with the certainty that the quantum computer is following their orders. Mahadev’s approach, Vazirani said, gives the user “leverage that the computer just can’t shake off.”

Quantum computation researchers are excited not just about what Mahadev’s protocol achieves, but also about the radically new approach she has brought to bear on the problem. Using classical cryptography in the quantum realm is a “truly novel idea,” Vidick wrote. “I expect many more results to continue building on these ideas.”"
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #391 on: October 15, 2018, 10:02:44 PM »
Quick question - are the various reports here about artificial intelligence actually relating to "adapting to the Anthropocene", or do they better fit the description "charging headlong into the Anthropocene"?

 :-\ :-X

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #392 on: October 15, 2018, 10:22:33 PM »
Quick question - are the various reports here about artificial intelligence actually relating to "adapting to the Anthropocene", or do they better fit the description "charging headlong into the Anthropocene"?

 :-\ :-X

Good question, but either AI will help some people adapt, while pushing many others up to and beyond the edge.
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #393 on: October 16, 2018, 11:56:05 AM »
Not sure if this in the right thread?
The following is from James Hansen@:
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181015_GlobalWarmingAcceleration.pdf
Global temperature appears to increase almost linearly over the past 50 years; the 1970-present rate is 0.17°C per decade. Jeremy Grantham pointed out that the rate of warming inferred by connecting the peak temperatures of the last two El Nino maxima (0.21°C per decade, see figure above) exceeds this longer term rate, and he infers that global warming is accelerating. La Nina minima probably provide a better estimate, and they provide more recent rates. As the figure shows, the most recent two La Ninas imply a warming rate of 0.38°C per decade, at least double the longer term rate! Such acceleration is predicted by climate models for continued high fossil fuel emissions as a result of amplifying climate feedbacks and is a cause for concern. We expect global temperature rise in the next few months to confirm our analysis.

This from James H. in ’88:
http://www.theartofannihilation.com/part-1-expose-the-2º-death-dance-the-1º-cover-up/
This workshop was supported by AGGG and behind them the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). The Bellagio conference proposed that policymakers should set a maximum rate of temperature increase at 0.1ºC per decade as the maximum tolerable limit and a second target, and a 1ºC – 2ºC above preindustrial temperature target. This appears to one the earliest references to a 2ºC maximum temperature change (along with rate of change) from a working group. The underlying principle for the rate of change target was that of the adaptability of ecosystems to climatic change, whereas in the case of the temperature target it was the boundary between changes that could be accommodated without serious or costly implications.

However, the goal of 0.1 °C per decade could only be achieved “with significant reductions in fossil fuel use” – World Climate Programme, 1988, p. 24, (emphasis in original)

0.38c almost 4 times the recommended rate of 0.1c for evolution to have even a shot at keeping up.

AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #394 on: October 16, 2018, 04:40:02 PM »
...
However, the goal of 0.1 °C per decade could only be achieved “with significant reductions in fossil fuel use” – World Climate Programme, 1988, p. 24, (emphasis in original)

0.38c almost 4 times the recommended rate of 0.1c for evolution to have even a shot at keeping up.

The linked article supports your point that climate is changing faster than insects (and those linked to such insects in the food change) can adapt.  Thus I would not recommend that anyone reading this thread should assume that they can rely on policymakers to make the necessary adaptations to avoid parallel losses in human life in the coming decades; but rather I recommend that they take adaptive measures themselves (note I do recommend denying reality as a sustainable means of adaptation).

Bradford C. Lister and Andres Garcia (2018), "Climate-driven declines in arthropod abundance restructure a rainforest food web", PNAS, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1722477115

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/10/09/1722477115

Significance
Arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. While the tropics harbor the majority of arthropod species, little is known about trends in their abundance. We compared arthropod biomass in Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest with data taken during the 1970s and found that biomass had fallen 10 to 60 times. Our analyses revealed synchronous declines in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods. Over the past 30 years, forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C, and our study indicates that climate warming is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web. If supported by further research, the impact of climate change on tropical ecosystems may be much greater than currently anticipated.

Abstract
A number of studies indicate that tropical arthropods should be particularly vulnerable to climate warming. If these predictions are realized, climate warming may have a more profound impact on the functioning and diversity of tropical forests than currently anticipated. Although arthropods comprise over two-thirds of terrestrial species, information on their abundance and extinction rates in tropical habitats is severely limited. Here we analyze data on arthropod and insectivore abundances taken between 1976 and 2012 at two midelevation habitats in Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest. During this time, mean maximum temperatures have risen by 2.0 °C. Using the same study area and methods employed by Lister in the 1970s, we discovered that the dry weight biomass of arthropods captured in sweep samples had declined 4 to 8 times, and 30 to 60 times in sticky traps. Analysis of long-term data on canopy arthropods and walking sticks taken as part of the Luquillo Long-Term Ecological Research program revealed sustained declines in abundance over two decades, as well as negative regressions of abundance on mean maximum temperatures. We also document parallel decreases in Luquillo’s insectivorous lizards, frogs, and birds. While El Niño/Southern Oscillation influences the abundance of forest arthropods, climate warming is the major driver of reductions in arthropod abundance, indirectly precipitating a bottom-up trophic cascade and consequent collapse of the forest food web.


See also:

Title: "‘Hyperalarming’ study shows massive insect loss"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2018/10/15/hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.c70784e553bc

Extract: "Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations. A new report suggests that the problem is more widespread than scientists realized. Huge numbers of bugs have been lost in a pristine national forest in Puerto Rico, the study found, and the forest’s insect-eating animals have gone missing, too.

In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the past 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 percent. In places where long-term insect data are available, mainly in Europe, insect numbers are plummeting. A study last year showed a 76 percent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves."
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #395 on: October 20, 2018, 05:36:56 PM »
Here is something more on the rate of machine learning advancement:

Peter W. Battaglia, et a;. (2018), "Relational inductive biases, deep learning, and graph networks".

Abstract: "Artificial intelligence (AI) has undergone a renaissance recently, making major progress in key domains such as vision, language, control, and decision-making. This has been due, in part, to cheap data and cheap compute resources, which have fit the natural strengths of deep learning. However, many defining characteristics of human intelligence, which developed under much different pressures, remain out of reach for current approaches. In particular, generalizing beyond one's experiences--a hallmark of human intelligence from infancy--remains a formidable challenge for modern AI.

The following is part position paper, part review, and part unification. We argue that combinatorial generalization must be a top priority for AI to achieve human-like abilities, and that structured representations and computations are key to realizing this objective. Just as biology uses nature and nurture cooperatively, we reject the false choice between "hand-engineering" and "end-to-end" learning, and instead advocate for an approach which benefits from their complementary strengths. We explore how using relational inductive biases within deep learning architectures can facilitate learning about entities, relations, and rules for composing them. We present a new building block for the AI toolkit with a strong relational inductive bias--the graph network--which generalizes and extends various approaches for neural networks that operate on graphs, and provides a straightforward interface for manipulating structured knowledge and producing structured behaviors. We discuss how graph networks can support relational reasoning and combinatorial generalization, laying the foundation for more sophisticated, interpretable, and flexible patterns of reasoning. As a companion to this paper, we have released an open-source software library for building graph networks, with demonstrations of how to use them in practice."

https://arxiv.org/abs/1806.01261

See also:

Title: "Google ponders the shortcomings of machine learning"

https://www.zdnet.com/article/google-ponders-the-shortcomings-of-machine-learning/

Extract: "Hence, "A vast gap between human and machine intelligence remains, especially with respect to efficient, generalizable learning."

In response, they argue for "blending powerful deep learning approaches with structured representations," and their solution is something called a "graph network." These are models of collections of objects, or entities, whose relationships are explicitly mapped out as "edges" connecting the objects.

"Human cognition makes the strong assumption that the world is composed of objects and relations," they write, "and because GNs [graph networks] make a similar assumption, their behavior tends to be more interpretable.""
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #396 on: October 22, 2018, 05:15:27 PM »
Mother Nature knows what the facts of climate change are, and if policymakers cannot figure it out, then it is likely that many human lives will be lost to climate change, until both policymakers and technocrats learn how re-calibrate old value systems to match a constantly changing reality (possibly with help from quantum AI systems):

Title: "Can technocracy be saved? An interview with Cass Sunstein."

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2018/10/22/18001014/cass-sunstein-cost-benefit-analysis-technocracy-liberalism

Extract: "In the book’s preface, you write, “the issues that most divide us are fundamentally about facts rather than values.”"
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #397 on: October 23, 2018, 04:28:57 PM »
The future is coming faster than you might otherwise think; and as Leon Megginson said: "It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who best manage change."

Title: "1 big thing: Jobs for humans in the robot age"

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-am-eb7bfb05-c3f5-48b1-a763-464f4317874b.html?chunk=8

Extract: "Maybe you didn't grow up dreaming of being an "augmented reality journey builder" or "master of edge computing" — or a "cyber calamity forecaster."

•   But someone will, Axios future editor Steve LeVine reports.

Jobs of the future will be heavy on the use of algorithms, automation and AI; customer experience; environment; fitness and wellness; health care; legal and financial services; transport; and work culture.

•   Why it matters: This is the sunnier side of the apocalyptic argument that robots are going to eat our jobs."

&

Title: "Pentagon launches first cyber operation to protect U.S. elections"

https://www.axios.com/pentagon-launches-first-cyber-operation-protect-us-elections-midterms-2018-russians-88bb7e65-77eb-4690-b5e8-4e8107f1a038.html

Extract: "The Pentagon’s Cyber Command is launching its first operation against Russian election interference by sending direct messages to Russian individuals informing them that their efforts to sow misinformation online are being tracked, the NYT reports.

Why it matters: It’s the first reported overseas cyber operation launched to protect U.S. elections. The midterm elections are exactly two weeks away.

Go deeper: Lawmakers criticize Trump’s plan to levy sanctions for foreign election meddling"
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AbruptSLR

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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #398 on: October 26, 2018, 10:20:05 AM »
The future is coming sooner than you think:

Title: "Creating the first quantum Internet"

https://www.axios.com/creating-the-first-quantum-internet-54f794e3-1ef5-4806-8c5e-719dac1dc95f.html

Extract: "Scientists in Chicago are trying to create the embryo of the first quantum internet.

Why it matters: If they succeed, the researchers will produce one, 30-mile piece of a far more secure communications system with the power of fast quantum computing."

&

Title: "China’s robot uprising"

https://www.axios.com/china-robot-superpower-7819d408-0355-4820-8c03-0b676f0ddd6b.html

Extract: " China bought 36% of all factory robots in the world last year, more than any other country including the U.S., and intends to ramp up its own production of them — another sign of its determination to be the pre-eminent technological superpower.

Why it matters: With the U.S. and China locked in a race to master artificial intelligence and quantum computing, robotics are a third, quieter competition between them. Mastery of any or all the three technologies is seen as key to geopolitical and economic power in the coming decades."
“It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”
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Re: Adapting to the Anthropocene
« Reply #399 on: October 26, 2018, 10:42:48 AM »
This will be interesting, it's make or break time for quantum entanglement IRL at scale.
Quote
"Fundamentally what they’re doing has been done before but just in a much, much smaller setting. And it sounds like, 'Ok, so it should just scale.' But something we’ve noticed with quantum technologies in the past, particularly doing things reliably, is that when you try to scale them over long distances things don’t always work."
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