Are we destined to fall in love with our robots?

If we could look into the near future, would we see some people who normally would perhaps be single, instead living in a love relationship with human created non-human, basically in love with a personal robot?

From Svedka Vodka ad

We see the elements now a days that if put together, indicate one thing. That we will one day in the not to distant future be seeing those who are in love with their personal robots and it doesn't even need to be a fully anthropomorphized bot, but simply a digitized personal assistant on one's phone as exemplified in the film, "Her".

As many reading this may know, a few years ago I published a short sci fi story myself about just that issue. By the way, feel free to download and read a free copy. It's titled, "Simon's Beautiful Thought" (if you would prefer to pay for a 99 cent copy, it's also available on Amazon and thanks for the support in downloading either copy). There's also a video trailer for it if you like.

My story came out a couple of years before Spike Jonze and Joaquin Phoenix's film, "Her". I should say here that although my story came out a couple of years previous, the film was in the works for over ten years. Although I had never heard about the "Her" project until I saw the film's promos, I just felt the Zeitgeist that it was time for this story to be written. Most likely again really, as I'm sure someone sometime previously had already written one like it; but it's all about the timing. 

I've done well on that issue if I do say so, predicting, writing and releasing stories prior to more famous versions coming out in novels or film. Another example of that might be between my short story first published on the online hard sci fi magazine, PerihelionSF.com, titled, "Expedition of the Arcturus" (also now in ebook and audiobook formats and yes, here's the video trailer). It wasn't long after that the film, "Interstellar" started to be talked about, in production and eventually start to be promoted and finally released.

In my story entire families are sent to a planet in Earth's first generational space ship in order to save humankind whereas in "Interstellar", a team is sent to explore a similar need, but they have more time than Earth does in my story. Two very different stories based in the same need and offering questions if not answers to specific issues.

We need to examine these things ahead of time, to think about them before it's too late to do anything about it. That's where things like science and speculative fiction and Futurism come into play. And speaking about that, allow me to inject here an article titled: "20 Crucial Terms Every 21st Century Futurist Should Know". It's good to at least be aware of these things and at most, it's a fascinating field to get involved in.

One of those things we should be aware of and explore are the proposed Laws of Robotics. A set of very useful things to have as protection against some very bad things possibly happening. It doesn't take a lot of foresight to see how robots or AIs and humans will have very close relationships. 

Ones that may very well easily transition into situations where there is little difference in the experience between "normal" interhuman relationships and inhuman or transhuman ones. So we really do need to consider various elements in the topic. Basically, how robots will relate to us, how we will relate to robots and, how we will relate to one another and treat one another. Treatment of robots is another topic that was first explored in "I, Robot" by Asimov.

I see these relationships as going one of two ways. Mostly people will get along with their "tool" and that will be the end of it. But for some, the love interest will grow and seem to be rewarding and useful, or it will become dark and destructive. I think the orientation in my story was a bit more realistic considering what these assistants will be designed for and then the film, "Her" took the other more popular \ entertaining (salacious?) if not more sensationalist view. 

Science fiction and speculative fiction should tell a good story, but they should also point out realistic possibilities to give us a good view into the future so that we can be more prepared for what is to come. Much of science fiction has turned dark to show us the negative effects of technology on humanity, but it's not realistically all going to be dark. Dark is just more fun and offers more of a roller coaster ride experience in entertainment.

Some examples of this are the following. The excellent 1979 film, "Alien" which was a reaction in a way to the 1977 more positive film, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind". Alien scared the hell out of many people. The reaction to that film was another Stephen Spielberg film in 1982, "ET The Extraterrestrial" which had a far more positive effect. There was also of course Start Trek and Star Wars but those dealt more really with overall societal issues, such as war and galactic federations.

We have heard much of late from famous and great thinkers about Artificial Intelligence and the dangers it poses if we do not pay attention now, first and foremost to some very necessary things. To follow on that progression by the way, we have the first of the "The Terminator" film franchise that started in 1984, an iconic year (considering the George Orwell book of the same name) and was itself a reaction against the ET and for that matter.

Terminator and its SkyNet were prime examples of the worst that could come from AI if it is allowed to run unabated. 1970's, "Colossus The Forbin Project" was a much earlier example of this with its echoes back to Kubrick's 1968 film based on Arthur C. Clark's short story "The Sentinel" and titled, "2001: A Space Odyssey" with its demented and destructive HAL 9000 computer AI.
SPOILER, it wasn't HAL's fault but politicians in Washington DC as uncovered in the 1984 film, "2010" based on another 1982 Clark book, "2010: Odyssey Two".

Some of those who have raised the question of control and protections for humanity regarding digital autonomous beings are none other than Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates and Elon Musk, both very concerned about the power that AIs might end up with and a very real need for us to control them before we give them too much control over us or too much autonomy. 

Controls as in the "Three Laws of Robotics", Isaac Asimov first came up with believe it or not in his 1942 short story "Runaround". Laws he published in science fiction and which have since been updated and will continue to be made better or at very least, he had set the standard and the basis to indicate that we would indeed need such laws built into robots and AI's.

By the way, while we're talking about all this: "The first use of the word Robot was in Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) (written in 1920)". Writer Karel Čapek was born in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic) and I read his play many years ago.

Isaac Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics":

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

He later introduced a fourth or zeroth law that outranked the others:

• 0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

This is further explored in the article, "Do we need Asimov's Laws?" The reader's comments below that article are also interesting and one offers a counter argument to the usefulness of the laws in, "Why Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics Can't Protect Us."

Well that's all very interesting and these are things we need to consider, but let's get back to the point of this article....

As I saw in the film "Her", the AI didn't follow the laws to a logical conclusion (for me), whereas in my story, "Simon's Beautiful Thought", they were. Is my story better? That's for the readers to decide and my tale was merely a short story, but in my view, they are in some ways equal. Both give the readers or viewers a good projection into two very different and possible futures. 

I read a short sci fi story when I was younger about a guy on another planet who was a top robot field handler. He could handle up to the considered limit of nine which very few could do. If I remember correctly these were like clones with attached appliances so that someone could wear an appliance himself and thereby control the cybernauts in the field to do manual labor too grudging for humans to do. 

Being that kind of a wild west mining planet, they had towns with bars and brothels to service the labor managers and handlers. Our hero falls in love with a prostitute and decides to run off with her. But at the end he discovers there is a control appliance under the bed where he meets his "lover", much like the one he uses to control his clones and he realizes in horror that this whole time he had been in love basically, with himself. He was the one guiding the clone "prostitute" to pleasure him as he needed and desired.

So not only was it a fake "hooker\john" relationship, it had no bearing in the realm of "relationships" whatsoever. Except to himself. Is that what we really want? It may even in some ways for some sound desirable, but unless you have a personality problem, I don't think that is actually the case.

For some more background on the topic there is a Huffington Post article on the robot paramour paradigm:

Why You're Destined To Fall In Love With Bots

Also for a quick survey of sci fi and our obsession with sex and robotics:

Ex Machina and sci-fi's obsession with sexy female robots

While many of us will not "fall in love" with our digitized assistants, there will most definitely be those who will fall fast in love with their non human entity or entities (as some will have multiples). The near future is going to be an odd place indeed.

Considering people now fall in love with things like toasters and electrical appliances residing on the street, some are now falling in love with their RealDolls (life sized sex dolls appropriately weighted and articulated) with no animation at all to them. They cost around $7,000 and some people have more than one of them. These types of objectivists will most certainly become bonded to their purchased non-human "toys" that may be either inanimate, animated, interactive or eventually, both.

Consider this, Mashable reports:

"With the press of a button, Barbie’s embedded microphone turns on and records the voice of the child playing with her. The recordings are then uploaded to a cloud server, where voice detection technology helps the doll make sense of the data. The result? An inquisitive Barbie who remembers your dog’s name and brings up your favorite hobbies in your next chitchat."

Is it a matter of time then that those who would now be against gay marriage will one day welcome the old days of when that was their only concern? Will they have to consider those who want to marry their dolls, or their AI or full cybernaut manufactured device?

My concern with all this isn't that people have a diverse array of things they can explore. More power to them in that; mostly. We have after all only scratched the surface of what it means to be human.

Humankind is a mere adolescent in it's development and there is much, much more to come. Not the least of which is our own physical and mental development. Once we have AIs freely available they will alter and further develop us in ways we can now only imagine, just by their mere existence and our interacting with them a on regular and long term basis.

But we have to imagine it all now, before it's too late.

My concern in all this isn't so much that people might fall in love with autonomous individuals, even if digitally created. We do that now with naturally organically created individuals in relationships.

My concern is in how people might fall in love with themselves, at least in the beginning, before robots become sophisticated enough to have their own mental / personality kernels with their own ID\Ego|Superego if you will to use an old Freudian paradigm.

At that point, it will be no different than a real human relationship.

However before that point, when AIs as they are now are mostly a reflection of who we are, for us to have a period in time where we are basically falling for ourselves, like falling in love with your reflection in a mirror, during that period in robotics development what might that do to humanity as a whole? Will it alter and develop us in a new direction where we are beings narcissistically involved only with ourselves? And if that were to become widespread, where would that leave humanity as a whole?

I see that as a far greater threat to humanity and our overall development, than I do an AI taking over the world as in SkyNet in the Terminator film franchise, taking over the world. That might be a better ending for humanity that for us to turn into the narcissistic mental midgets that we are seeing in the media now a days all around us. "Selfies" are rampant, entertainment news media is all about those who it is "all about". 

We have in point of fact, become enamoured with ourselves. For more on this see: "Psychogenic Photopenia-A New Disorder?"

If given the ability to further develop in that direction, how many may choose perceived perfection in a relationship over that of the more problematic and rich ones we receive from our fallible human beings in one to another?

There are many and varied, new and novel things in our future and I look forward to them all. To explore them, to consider and become involved in many of them. Still, we do need to consider looking before we leap as a species and consider well, our new paths before us.

And now, this....
Rise of artificial intelligence is changing attitudes on robot romance

And, this....

The Washington Post | Love in the time of bots

April 9, 2015

Source: The Washington Post — March 17, 2015 | Dominic Basulto

Read full article here

Artificial intelligence thought leader Ray Kurzweil has suggested that a real life human & AI romance might be possible in as little as 15 years.

In his review of the 2013 Spike Jonze film Her, Kurzweil said he expected similar types of advances by the year 2029, “Samantha herself I would place at 2029, when the leap to human level AI would be reasonably believable.”

Kurzweil says your romantic partner might not need a physical body, as long as there’s a “virtual visual presence.” Kurzweil sees this happening via virtual reality experience.

“With emerging eye mounted displays that project images onto the wearer’s retinas and also look out at the world,” he said, “we will soon be able to do exactly that. When we send nanobots into the brain — a circa 2030s scenario by my timeline — we will be able to do this with all senses, and intercept other people’s emotional responses.” [...]

Innovation Requires Being Innovative

We need innovation. The usual way of doing business is killing us. We need more quality in life, more time to ourselves. One example is the less than five, or six day work week, the less than ten or eight hour day. Here is an example from Salon magazine that I've been calling for going on decades now: 5 Reasons it's time for a Four Day Work Week.And no, not ten our days but four day work weeks and six hour days. One mentioned in this article was calling for three day work weeks but hey, I'm reasonable.

What's holding America back from advancing into the future with innovation and progressive forethought? According to (myself and) Robert Reich, corporations (big surprise, right?). Even Henry Ford believed he needed to pay his workers enough to afford the products they were producing. Corporations today are pushing to squeeze every last dollar in a counter-intuitive effort to simply take every last dollar.

As if one day soon, there will simply be no more money. And there won't, if they keep taking it all for themselves and their shareholders.

Diana Kander at a TEDxKC titled, Our approach to innovation is dead wrong, talks about her experiences in martial arts. I had my own experiences through the martial arts. When I was a kid taking Isshinryu Karate, we fought in tournaments and we kept losing. Why? Because we were trained to kill quickly in our style.

Budokan was a local style around the Pacific Northwest that was consistently beating us in tournaments. It's Karate Ka strutted around like they had the better martial art, when we knew we were the better style. So why did they hold that position?

It was because they could beat is in a controlled environment, and that their style was perfect for tournament style fighting. But on the street, in a life and death situation, I would give it to us.

This situation simmered for some time until a Tacoma tournament...

During the finals, the main event was between our heavyweight fighter and theirs. The fight happened, it was a good fight, then finally our guy had had it and pulled out all stops. There guy ended up going to the hospital.

Finally we had proven that if we were pushed, we could clean the mats with these guys. There was no more question, no more strutting around town and no more claims of their being better. But to be fair, the black belts all started saying it was not something that should have ever started up in the first place and they felt bad about what had happened.

Especially our black belt who had won that fight. He had let it get to him too. It had been a brutal fight.

I remember being one of the last people at the tournament, after the finals night was over. The field house was almost empty, they were starting to turn off lights, two of the other style's black belts were walking the loser from the main event out, between the two of them as he couldn't walk out well on his own. He was hunched over a bit and walked slowly from the three rapid fire punches he had received in the chest and that had ended the fight.

We see similar things in schools where we are trained not for real life but a specialized view of real life. Then when we sometimes fight back, we feel bad about it. If we had been trained for the real world in the first place, we have to hold back because we can't do otherwise in a controlled environment.

Life usually doesn't set us up for it properly. Life is usually different than what you expect when it happens to you. So we need to be versatile, creative, ingenious and compassionate in all the right places and against all odds.

It's not that easy and much of the burden is laid upon us when it could have been corrected by those whose charge we had been placed in, in the first place. One of the things that could help us along our way is actively enhancing the quality of life for everyone and not just the rich elite few and those at the top of corporations and... nations.

By this point in human development and history we should be turning our thoughts to increasing luxury time wherever possible for recreation, the arts and sciences. We are wasting so much human endeavors on corporations when we need to be expending it on humanity.

The more luxury personal time people have the more people will turn to innovation, rather than spending all our time decompressing from work, work, work always worried about money and working. Part of the reason we don't have money, don't have enough personal time, is how we have been pushed down as a race of beings (at least in the so called first and second world countries) to where we have to work more and more for less and less for the fewer and fewer in control of all of us.

Guesswork, guts, instinct, all these things we need to cultivate before we need them, along with the teaching and training we receive, whether we want it or not in the course of our growing up and throughout our lives. We need the time to expand on these things and we can't do it if we are always working and always under duress from work, bills and lack of personal space and time.

When we do need to act in using those types of things, we need not to go into shock, but to act. To act appropriately for whatever the situation is which will most likely not be what we were trained for. But instead we have too little time to do anything but stew in our own juices, to stress, to see only the crest of the next hill and not over it into the next valley.

So be ready. Be ready for what will actually happen, and not necessarily what you were trained to expect to have happen. And strive to push those in charge to give us more and not trick us into thanking them for giving us less and less.

And best of luck.

American Ideals: Tobacco companies, Congress, Robotics and a thing called Ethics

I love his show and John Oliver is doing a great job on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver", poking fun at idiot South American leaders who are poking back, and at Tobacco companies, the scourge of our world.
#JeffWeCan

Now all that being said, a word about Tobacco companies, American corporations in general and the state of the world. You see, America isn't the only country being abused. A quick word about Russia who has been absconded with by an ex KGB thug in Putin.

Putin, in trying to support the Russian people's ideals as he sees them, is failing to be a true leader who could lead his proud nation into the future. He has twisted things about so that he seems like a good thing for many, but is only a good thing for the elite few and is bringing down the disdain of an entire planet on his people.

There are many being misled world wide. The Russian people. The American people, Many of the Muslim community being charmed into absolute absurdity by ISIL.

We can thank those responsible for many of the world's problems today in various entities mimicking the Tobacco industry debacle over past decades for so much of the nonsense that is now happening all though our lives, in our American Congress and among our citizenry.

Tobacco years ago was having an image issue. They were selling an addictive drug in a form that literally killed hundreds of thousands of people world wide. How does one get over that kind of brand suicide? You confuse the issue, distract, redirect and more importantly, misdirect. Twist reality to the point that Satan smiles upon you.

Also note that many of these tactics were old KGB tactics of disinformation, and there's your American patriotism for you. Years of watching the KGB by Britain's MI6 taught them a great deal about how to alter reality to their desires and agendas.

The American CIA learned from MI6, the Tobacco industry learned from them, as did others. Because what happens in prisons, in the military, in the clandestine services, eventually always trickles down into civilian organisations, companies and lives.

And that's what the people did who the tobacco industry hired to fix their image and therefore their profits and so for many years, fixed their bottom lines. When it failed in America, they moved to other countries, now killing many overseas at younger and younger ages.

No matter anymore that their products kill people. Right? Because all that is important, is what the profit making entity does to preserve themselves their profits, their power. As was with them, so it is with others, even those who hold the public interest as their charter, even though they could really care less.

There is actually more to all this, an even darker side, as recently pointed out in a Salon magazine article, "Republicans’ deadly political strategy: Ruining our country hurts the Democratic Party".

Nothing seems to matter for Republicans in viewing their actions of twisting elections, facts, Gerrymandering, etc., except Republicans. Their remaining is power is far more important to them than doing the right thing for America.

If it could be proved to them that Democrats (or any other party) were a better thing for America and that they were damaging our country, they would still fight to remain in power being the zombie party that they have become.

That alone is reason to kill off the GOP if you ask me. Grand Old Party, my backside. They have become a party to sit on and not look up to.

Years ago some moron decided that corporations are people. Laws were passed to protect the stock holders over that of the citizenry. Stock holders, are therefore more important than the people who are being sold products and services to.

Think about that for a moment.

Who would make such laws? On the surface it sounds wise, that a for profit company who is there to make profit, should make profits their business.

But at what cost? And to whom? If corporations are anything, they are robotic or cybernetic, not human. They are an extension of humanity not a part of it.

At what point does a company stop and say, "Wait, are we stepping over the line?" But now they just have to respond, "Naw, we just have to make profits and we are considered a person too even though we are a corporation and so our only goal is to make our stock holders more rich, within the structure of the laws we can circumvent." Great, lucky us.

I would like to make a suggestion....

Issac Asimov many years ago came up with the three basic rules for robotics in order to protect humankind. They have since been refined by others, but I would like to suggest we use that now for corporations. Just as a place to start.

If an American company sells a product in America, or MORE especially, if it exports it or sells that product (made in America or in the local country), then it also has a moral, ethical and legal requirement to follow certain rules and these rules can start with and then be honed to be more appropriate, from these following self evident laws:

1) A robot (that is, a corporation) may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2) A robot (yes, yes, a corporation, you're getting it now) must obey the orders given it by human beings (now this is here actually referring to the ideal of humanity and not just its leaders), except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3) A corporation (originally a robot) must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

And in that last one lay the problem most of the time lately. Corporations will do anything to maintain their bottom line and existence and in some cases, a corporation should be allowed to die. To say that the bottom line is existence and profit at any cost, is to beg for horrors to happen, sooner or later, here or there, in sight or behind closed doors or in foreign and poor countries.

It is something to consider, to act on, to make an America ideal.

It is a concept, an entity that could be respected around the world, and not too far in the distant future, in the off world(s), when and as that will become a thing.

We need to stop being fools (including myself) in not paying any of this any attention. We also need to consider that this may very well already be "a thing". A thing we need to address now before we are already in off world endeavors as it's approaching fast and once established, it may be too late to do anything about it.

We need to act on all this before it's too late. If it's not too late already.

I'm not the only one feeling like this, John Oliver has his own take on the infrastructure side of things as also mentioned in this Salon article..It's really all about the same things though.

Fears of Immigrants and Religious AntiDiversity

During WWI America interred over 2,000 German citizens in country. Among the notable internees were geneticist Richard Goldschmidt and 29 players from the Boston Symphony Orchestra (Wikipedia). On top of that we required a quarter of a million Germans to register.

During WWII America placed over 100,000 Japanese American's in internment camps on our homelands and over 11,000 Germans. What made them internment rather than concentration camps? Spin? Locally to me on Bainbridge Island, just a few miles from where I live there was an internment camp.

During Vietnam many soldiers referred to Vietnamese by racial slurs, which is pretty normal during war time, dehumanizing the enemy to make it easier to deal with the thought that humans are trying to kill you and that you have to kill other humans. Then if you survive the war, you one day have to return to civilian life and not kill again.

War is hell. After war can be its own kind of hell.

During the Middle Eastern wars going back to the 1980s, many called the enemy as well as the civilians, by racial slurs. Because of Islamic terrorism we have begun to turn our attention and anger toward the Islamic religion rather than those who are actually attacking us as well as and actually mostly, other Muslims.

What does all this have in common? American exceptionalism at its worst?

Certainly a lower mental state of being, of compassion, of understanding, of comprehension, of essentially being human.

During the Bush Administration and the Iraq war after the attack on 9/11, even president Bush said that we were at war with terrorism and not Islam. Recently, President Obama has said the exact same thing.

It's interesting to note that some Republicans and conservatives have called Mr. Obama names, questioning his loyalties, picking and picking at his efforts rather than diving in and trying to help get things done, all merely because he has the higher mental state, the understanding, the comprehension to note that Muslims are really not our enemy (and thanks for that because there' a lot of them!), but the terrorists are.

Religion in general is a problem across all religions however, but really that is another issue entirely that we may well need to address sooner than later. One that we need sooner than later, evolve out of.

It's getting even scarier in the Middle East because the line between who are terrorists and who are citizens, is murky. This current trend of terrorist activities has also been very attractive to younger and younger people. They wisely cut the issues of their odd religious beliefs, supplanting them with more rational issues of camaraderie and adventure.

It's a mind worm overall, an addiction of concept, a call to action, to honor and other bullshit beliefs that are far more effective to draw people to the Middle East to fight in a stupid war against the people of the Middle East by lowlifes, criminals, murderers, terrorists, basically just the sad and disaffected.

Nations of the world need to get a handle on this quickly.

They are a cancer that is doing damage in many and varied ways, not the least of which are American citizens treating the Muslim community like second rate citizens, if not treating them as traitors to a country that for many of them is their's through and through.

The Muslim woman born in Brooklyn, is an American.

The Muslim man born in Montana, is an American.

Just as much as the Japanese Americans caged in America during WWII. As the Germans in WWs I and II who may not have even been American (yet) but were still loyal and very happy to be here.

We have to stop this kind of thing before it gets any more dangerous than it already is.

There are also Christian groups and people who are reacting against the Muslim community.

They are calling them names, interrupting their public (and peaceful) gatherings where the only non-peaceful people ARE Christians attending a gathering that they are not even invited to or welcome at.

They are saying we cannot abide or accept non-Christians, how the Islamic God is not the "real God", as if there were one to fight over which only makes them even more sad than they are to begin with.

Granted, many Muslims believe that about the Christian God, too, but many do not as there are actually very close ties between the three predominant desert religions of Judaism, Christian and Islamic.

But here's my point.

The issue here is not that Islam is the wrong religion, or that Christianity is, or Judaism is. Religion is wrong anyway and that is much of what is causing all this nonsense.

So in Christians making all this noise over how horrible Muslims are, it is on so many levels they who are the bad people. It's not that we don't need Islam in America, but we really don't need any religions here. We don't need their lack of paying taxes, their judgmental attitudes, their treating other religions who are not their religion, as something bad. What are you, two people, two years old?

American Christians need to stop acting like childish cretins, immature haters. Drop all this nonsense about religion and your favorite magic Dude in the sky.

That however is not the point here. It is not what this is all about and it is really, beside the point.

May who or what ever the God of your choice is, love you and help you in like kind to learn to love all others who are like and unlike you.

For those of you whose God wants you to do otherwise, may you and your God receive a deservedly long enduring and painful demise that wipes you both from human history for all of time, like so many other losers calling themselves either humanlike or Godlike.

It all doesn't have to be that way though.

This, is America. Remember? America.

"Land of the free, home of the brave."

Did you all fail your Civics class in high school?
Did any of you even finish high school?
Why are so many of you concentrated in the south?
In groups so frequently conservative and Republican?

You are an American too and though you may think you are a Christian first, you are still an American. You live here and here has given you the right to practice your silly religion in peace and safety. Why can't others do that too? What don't you get about let other's enjoy their silliness just as you do?

In America we have the right to live a peaceful life, to pursue happiness and pal, you're damaging people's calm for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You're ruining good citizens' pursuit to their happiness in their own ridiculous religion and ways which honestly, are no more ridiculous than your own.

So knock it off! Grow up. Be a good citizen yourself, first. Voice your opinion, but at least have an intelligent one and voice it at the right time in the right places and let others have their meetings as people aren't invading your meetings; and if they did, you would disingenuously cry, "Religious Persecution", when you seem to be the ones doing this the most.

Practice your silliness but let's get back to practicing our ridiculous beliefs in private where we can be less ashamed of our silly beliefs (because that's part of what this is about, in others having their ridiculous beliefs, it really shines the light on just how ridiculous your beliefs are that that always angers people).

Think your American Christianity is oh so different from Islamic Terrorists Islam? Really? ISIS bans teaching evolution in schools, just like so many Christians are pushing for in American schools. Isn't it interesting that both religions stem from the Middle East. So it really is just another middle eastern desert religion, after all.

Remember that common areas are for everyone, and not just you, not just the vocal minorities, not just the deluded and brain damaged ones.  Just let them practice their own silliness.

Otherwise, you may soon find out that we will all wake up to this nonsense overall, rid ourselves of religion altogether as we should, and you will find you have a very different kind of life than you wanted or intended. And none of you wants that. Right?

The more you push the differences between religion, the more you point out how different religion is from the direction humanity is headed, and the quicker you will bring about the demise of magical thinking as a "thing".

Although... a life, a nation, a world without religion, sure would solve a lot of our problems.

Either way, we don't need no American bigots here.

If you really don't like us being free for everyone, teaching science in schools, ISIL will surely welcome you with open arms, with a knife behind their back and one soon to be in yours too I'm sure.

So feel free to visit them soon, anytime....

Update April 22, 2015 - Earth Day.
From Salon magazine - 6 reasons religion may do more harm than good

Whether you're religious or not, is your choice, obviously.
But it's not a bad thing to review this list just to be sure this has no bearing on you and yours.

Religion properly handled, can be rewarding for many, as long as it doesn't get out of control. That is my primary argument with it. Those who allow it to become more than it should be, negative in nature, or abusing others. Think Middle East in ISIS or locally with religion getting into politics and how it has been affecting non religious citizen's rights.

This is America where we're all supposed to be protected for those things being perpetrated upon us, by way of another's belief system that disagrees with our own. And vice versa. Pushing an agenda, can backfire and does, and has.

So protect your beliefs, allow other's beliefs to also remain protected.

Also as this update is on Earth Day, here's my blog for this year's Earth Day.

#terrorist #religion #atheist #christian #islam #muslim #isis #isil

Contained Weapons and the state of the Ignorance of Intellectual Knowledge

I've been thinking for years that we need more non-lethal weapons for police... and military. I couldn't figure out why that hasn't happened yet. I also noticed there are ways of thinking being demonstrated in public, rationales, agendas and ideologies that feel very foreign to me as an intellectual and an american, and that frankly are, stupid.

I think we've gotten to a point when it may be more necessary than desirable to examine these things.

Regarding weaponry, for police TASERs are great but we still need something better. The new sound devices that make your skin feel hot and can be used in order to disperse crowds is one interesting solution to a problem usually made worse by police and government officials.

For the military, we really need to stop the majority of these drone attacks. We may also need to start giving consideration to building contained weaponry.

What I mean by that is... take for instance, the missiles that drone carry. A drone fires a missile (OK, a drone pilot fires it, whatever), the missile tracks it's target, strikes it and detonates destroying the target. As well as unintended collateral targets. That's innocent people, usually.

Too frequently this ends in overkill.

But what if when a bomb explodes, rather than an uncontained explosion, it sets off a fragmentation weapon where the pieces remain attached to the center of the device? In that way there'd be shrapnel all of which would remain a part of the original central part of the device.

It still shoots through any people or metal within the length of the chains or wires that maintains connection to the primary piece, but they would stop within the length of that constraint. We are developing materials, new concepts, new ways of thinking, that just might be conducive to this type of technology.

Here is one example: ‘Impossible’ Quantum Space Engine Actually Works – NASA Test Suggests. We're on the crux of many new things, some of those we need to start carrying over into more practical applications.

There are many other examples out there today that could lend themselves well to visualizing my point. The more you look for them, the more you find.

Maybe the missile hits the center of a truck. It explodes, individual fragments shoot out from the source, punching holes all through the truck, killing all in the vehicle, but anyone who is say, fifteen feet from the missile, is safe (OK, safer anyway), excepts perhaps for some flying truck debris.

There be the possibility of the odd case of the loss of an eye or some minor burns or pelleting, but very much more possibly, there could be no unintended deaths.

This is the kind of thinking we need to start using. To think within the box as well as without, not allowing as in this case, for the shrapnel or explosive power to extend beyond the containment of the area surrounding the blast.

We also need more contained devices allowing for temporary disablement or minor destruction. We need to knock a crowd out, rather than killing if not dissipating everyone within range. We need to stop thinking in terms of attrition by way of destruction and start thinking of attrition by way of disablement or temporary disablement.

Benign war over the horrors of war.

We have entered into the age of  the "Ignorance of Intellectual Knowledge".

So much of our knowledge now is limited and offering us only a flat effect. Book learning limited in scope.. Information that shows us superficial meanings, with limited definitions or explorations of topics. Information in two dimensions when we need as a minimum four, maybe more.

Our ability to acquire knowledge needs to be expanded as our bandwidth permits. Which is another issue. We need faster speeds in order to access knowledge more comprehensively on the internet and more information needs to be made available, world wide, along with functional AIs that are compartmentalized to protect their user, but which can also be honed to give 4D examples of what knowledge is actually needed.

We are currently enhancing our knowledge into stupidity and we need to enhance it into wisdom.

Why do you think there is so much detriment going on around the world as opposed to enlightenment? People are remaining ignorant at a far greater rate than ever before. In the past, we didn't lean that much and so our ignorance to knowledge ratio was low.

Now however we are learning vast amounts about many varied topics and yet, we are still remaining ignorant to many integral issues about and related to these topics. We don't just need to know more facts about each issue, we need more quality information about them and more quality ways of disseminating wisdom.

Which brings us back to contained weaponry. Weapons that exert control without destruction.

We are surrounded by a rapidly changing world that we mostly aren't even aware of. If we are, it is only superficially. We need to raise the knowledge of each and every person on this planet, we need to wipe out ignorance and magical thinking styles of compartmentalized thinking and agendas (think religious terrorism).

We need people to better understand why those they have voted into office to protect and enhance their lives are only exerting controls to enhance their own lives and that of the ideologues (and oligarchs) who protect them. We need people invested in humanity and not just their small concerns, their tribe, their tiny areas of control.

There is much going on all around us and in many cases it would seem that most of us really have no clue about it all. We find people with vastly different interests and concerns and so generally speaking, as tends to happen we then find a reason or need to kill them.

I would argue that war is not our most powerful weapon. Proper and appropriate knowledge is.

Contained weaponry may just be the beginning and thinking appropriately in order to devise these types of things, to then create and use such things, could all lead us along the path that is much more useful and productive than merely breaking social contracts and then killing those on the other side of those broken contracts.

We need new ways of thinking about our world, about our actions, and about our concerns. America's priorities have been screwed up for years. We have tried hard to see what they should be, and to put plans into action to bring those things to fruition.

We have also had those in power, many of those who are rich and getting richer all the time, who control those in power, all of which have obfuscated things through a fog of too much information or not enough quality information, who have fed us mis and disinformation, and have abused their rights as human beings.

They need to be called to be accounted for, or to have their power (money) stripped from them. There is truly no reason for any human being on this planet to have over a billion dollars in a limited and closed economic system such as we have on this planet. Nations should have billions, people, and that include corporations, should not. Most especially if corporations are ridiculously to be considered people!

The first step to all that is to see what is really happening all around us. The second is to stop allowing power and money brokers abusing the systems in place, the tools they have to abuse against us and which in the end are against all people and not just our state or nation.

The first step of all that which may just be our first destination is to enhance the quality of knowledge available to us. And perhaps the first step to that is to change our ways of thinking in order to see what we cannot seem to see now.

NOTE Friday 2/20/2015: Oddly enough the fact that this article this week so far has gotten far fewer hits than most of my articles do, actually proves my point about what I'm saying here. No one cares. No one is really considering or looking into much of this. We are lazy on a point that is so prevalent as to seem unreasonable to even consider, to talk about openly, or to try to change our current path and way of thinking on. And we have to. We really, really have to.

UPDATE  Friday 2/20/2015: Here's another consideration....

I know they've done studies of prayer, and belief in God helping people to excel beyond their norm. I saw research where they proved that it doesn't take a belief in God but a belief in a considered source of power outside of oneself, which seems to be key. So you can believe in God, or Rock, or Dog, for that matter, it's all the same. But I wonder if anyone has yet done a study showing which is more effective the belief in God, or the belief in a properly considered source of power out there beyond one self.

Which basically is like saying, "I've been hiking for 20 miles and I can't go another, so I'll select that tree in the distance and make it there. Then when you make it there, select another road map up ahead and repeat. That method has gotten me through long hikes, forced marches and efforts all through my life (I'll just write one more page before quitting for the day, now another....).

Considering prayer usually fails in requests, it's counterproductive at least to some degree, which is inherent in the process. But if you are directed to consider that which is a source of power outside of yourself in the right way it won't fail, or at least less often.

That, is the study I'd like to see done. It's all about new ways, more effective ways, of thinking. We have the knowledge, we just need to get it to the right processes, apply it, get the right people (most people) using it and I suspect, all of our lives would go in a much better direction.

50 Shades of Sadness for Romance? Not really.

Happy St. Valentine's Day! A great day for some (those happy in a relationship) and a miserable day for many (those in a bad relationship, or the rest of us single people).

What to do, what to do on this famous date day\night, right?

The book "50 Shades of Grey" has had amazing success for a book so questionably written and which has produced a much better film (see review). Which is saying only so much. The film is to be released today on St. Valentine's Day. 

Odd choice, you might think. Lust over romance? Odd? Really? Then again, it may be an interesting choice for date night. On the other hand there are various boycotts for it to either not be released (good luck on that one as everyone is getting on the marketing bandwagon for this, from jewelers to lingerie companies), or for individuals to boycott it for a variety of reasons descending into the nutty. 

The point of this film especially on SVD, I have to believe, isn't the specifics of the storyline, it isn't the exchange of romance for lust, desire and abuse; but the erotic It's about the Gestalt that results from viewing it. If you can get beyond the darkest parts and if you've had bad experiences with that, you might want to skip this flick. Skip it hard.

Especially should more negative feelings arise from viewing of the film. Should one or the other take offense and I'd think that would be the woman on the date (or the guy if he's trying to be disingenuous and if she is into it, maybe you should just shut up and see where the ride takes you). If she can ignore the psychic abuse and take it all superficially, it could be arousing.

Apparently it was for a lot of female readers, but will that translate to the same when seeing what their minds imagined when reading it? It's a mixed bag, though the actors and directing gloss over the poorly written parts making it, perhaps, more glamorous? That needs to be left up to each individual viewer.

For either way, it could still evoke licentiousness and actions appropriate to a good time (even if not in the BDSM vein). From what I understand, it's not true BDSM in the story as he (SPOILER) contracts her to be his partner in this. Which destroys the entire concept of using one's mind in all this.

It makes him basically a punk and bully and her simply a victim (dumb enough to adhere to the contract, or is she just enjoying it all?). Having a contract removes any mental sparring, control issues, and brings it all down to a child's version of BDSM, making her a mere toy and less a partner in the endeavor. BDSM for kindergarten players, where one, really isn't.

But, putting all that aside.... this isn't Pretty Woman.

Sometimes getting riled up over matters of sexuality can and do lead to an interesting and rather intense exercise of the behavior. Perhaps not in the ways projected int he film but even only in the missionary position. If however one or the other is observed during sex to have a somewhat out of character resolution to the experience, then we know. Don't we? 

That isn't to say that next time you should pull out your Christian Grey costume and devices, but you do know the mental buttons to push (just gauge that correctly or you may be surprised at the negative and possibly volatile reaction from your partner).

One does have to wonder if in nine months from that viewing day there won't be a small baby boom from its previous viewers' nocturnal, post viewing experiences. Something perhaps that viewing the film over reading the book, would surely more easily lend itself to.

Regardless of what you think about all this, whether you decide to take a date to see it today, or couldn't care less, use your own mind and make your own decisions. Yes there may be some nut cases out there (guys most likely) who will want to entertain the Mr. Grey delusion and simply can't pull it off. Someone may indeed regret being alone in a room with him. 

So think about who you're with and where they may decide to go, or take you along. Willingly or not. Other than that...

I think it's really just not that big of a deal. Hype for hype's sake, abuse for abuse's sake. Where in the end after all, there's a lot of corporate money to made riding this bandwagon.

By the way? Probably not a first date movie....

It seems that Slate has a review on the film now: "Fifty shades of...beige?".

Our best example for handling God Myths is actually.... Santa Claus

Someone brought up a good point the other day about God. He's about as useful as, Santa Claus.

It made me think about my kids when they were younger. I used to do it up, kids put out cookies and milk, a note to Santa and went to bed. I'd eat the cookies, drink the milk, leave them a thank you note from Santa.

My son, when he was in 4th grade, told me he doesn't believe in Santa. I was both proud and sad for him. I tried to hold up the pretense but he gave me an analytic breakdown of how Santa simply can't be real, how I was Santa, and what I had been doing to prolong that myth. I was surprised but also pleased and impressed with his critical thinking skills.

I didn't agree so much as point out the facts.

IF you "believe" in Santa, you get more gifts. If you don't, well....

He refused to buy any of it. Finally, I said "Well look, I choose to believe in Santa because I like the idea, it's fun, harmless, and in the end, I like receiving more gifts. But you're welcome to act as you see fit. HOWEVER, you DO NOT tell your little sister. Got it?"

As for his younger sister, she went through a period of going to church in her teens, one she chose. One that unnerved her mother but that I figured she would soon outgrow, was for purposes more of its social aspects and about something she wasn't getting at home (as we were then divorced) than any true belief in "God", and so she did and eventually came to realize religion is all exactly about what is is.

Then I tried to explain how it helps to build the idea of wonder in life, of magic in the world and I believe those who don't have that understanding of the concept of magic in the world as adults, simply lose out on much of what is wonderful in life. There IS magic in the world. It's just not, "magic",per se.

So he dropped it. But he made it clear from then on he really didn't believe in Santa and so we kind of worked it out in that way. He does have a strong fascination for magic now as an adult, however.

All this made me think about religion and the "God" concept, in general.

There may be some things that are positive about it existing, though it could also be handled in a more safe and sane way through other means. But belief in "God" should also end at some point, just as Santa is useful for a time, and then should simply be let go, with a fond farewell and a move into adulthood and more mature and informed ways of thinking.

Environmentally, the God concept comes from our parents when we are very young as they are our first Gods. Genetically, our beliefs in the "Other", the "Greater" that which is all powerful and exists "out there", comes from a time that predates our humanity.

We can and I think we should, extend and buffer life for our children through parts of their young childhood, allowing them to experience magic in life.

But if we do, at some point, it should end and we should offer them more useful, productive, and more sophisticated forms.

I'm not saying we should raise our kids with "God" beliefs, but even if we did, it really should come to a conclusion at some point before they become adults. They should be led, coached, educated to have that realization come upon them naturally, organically, as it did with myself and my children.

Religion for most of us, for those who continue to believe, one of those odd animals wherein we do grow up, we do realize the silliness of it all, but then through the concept of "faith" we allow ourselves to continue to believe in what we know in our hearts is utter nonsense, but as it allows us a structure to follow and misbelive that it functions as an overall rule of law for all humans, and it simply does not, though still, many of us choose to close our minds and continue believing in those childhood mythologies.

And so we have entire cultures and nations around the world who hold this nonsense as reality until they die, who propagate it and perpetuate it among their young and in so many cases kill those, like my son, who would sanely and rationally refuse to believe in it in his young innocence into adulthood.

Religions, where people believe it is important what we wear or don't wear, what we eat or not, whether we grow facial hair, how we abuse others, especially women, for God's (really, men's) sake, and so on.

All things that at one point in ancient history may (or may not) have served a purpose and yet which are simply no longer necessary or even useful and frequently actually counterproductive, allowing certain factions to use their religion as a springboard for full out atrocities.

It's funny how wonderful one's religion is till you do a survey of all religions, add in sociology and psychology, anthropology and physics and finally start to realize one overarching necessity in the next step in our development... atheism, or at very least, non-theism.