Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Science Tries Imititating Life

The purpose of the internet is not just to aide in communication or game playing. It's higher purpose is to map out how people think and interact. We are designing all of our technology to duplicate human thought. We are attempting to create the "Synchronicity", we are trying to make computers that are smarter than us in the hope that they will make better choices than us. We are trying to make computers into God.

Google is a good example of this. Google is a personality test, it finds your likes and dislikes and tailors your search to you. It is not the only program that is mapping you out and the programs have a pretty good idea of how 90% of the people will act 90% of the time. We call this predictive programming. It will never get 100% because it cannot duplicate outliers.

When you hear about a new program or website, you should ask yourself what it is learning about you, about all of the people that go there. There is a new website that is hoping to understand all of the internet and you. I think you should read the linked article below because that is what they say about themselves.

Wired - Wavii Vows to Understand Entire Internet

You may have heard how the military is monitoring gamers and how they think. The military games are the perfect place for examining different battlefield tactics and see which ones work in which situations, why wouldn't they look at this information. Certainly the "Sims" is a good test ground for social interaction and to monitor peoples aspirations.

We do not live in "The Matrix", we are participating in giving people the tools to create one. I have previously written about crowd sourcing and why it cannot work, the same things apply here. The technology behind Wavii will eventually be combined with something even worse. They are currently attempting to create a technology that can literally read your thoughts. You will want to read this linked story also.

Singularity Hub - Brain Scanner Being Used To Give Stephen Hawking A New Voice

The article talks about someone who has invented a machine that can read your thoughts and they chose Stephen Hawking to learn from first. Many consider Mr. Hawking to be the smartest man in the world, a good choice if you believe he is and want to understand deep thinking; but, Mr. Hawking is still a douche and does not know all the answers.

While I know that this will fail to achieve what is truly intended, it will be very successful most of the time. That is not the part that bothers me the most. The use of this technology will make people intellectual cripples in the future.

Someone recently told me a story. They told me how a younger relative had asked them to review something they wrote for school. The person read it and said that there were numerous spelling mistakes. The kid said that the teacher said it didn't matter because the kid could always use spell check. When I was in High School, electronic calculators had just come out. My teacher told us that we could not use them and made us learn to use a slide ruler. That man taught us how to read maps, how to write checks (though my mother had already taught me when I was six) and he always gave very practical advice, things that were simple and would help throughout life. I deeply regret that I cannot remember his name; but, I remember his face, him and his teachings.

Ignoring, for the moment, how this technology can be used to manipulate us, consider how never having to learn things for yourself will make our children incapable of doing anything if the technology goes down. It will teach us to not think for ourselves, it will provide all the virtual pleasures and we as a species will become stupid and rely on it. It will destroy new thought through consensus and crowd sourcing. If you live in a virtual world and nobody will interact with you, you have been constructively put into solitary confinement.

Hundreds of millions of people rely on Facebook for their social interactions. What if they were removed from Facebook for bullying and everyone else at all the other social media sites rejected you because you had been kicked off for bullying. You lose your community. You would only be allowed back in if you allowed someone to approve what you said in advance, to censor you when you were inappropriate, in advance of anyone other than a moderator know what you said.

If you don't understand where all of this is going, I will explain. Right now there is talk about passing anti-bullying laws and internet protection laws. People are upset about that and these laws will not be successful in most ways. What is going to happen is that websites such as Facebook and others will be held liable if they allow certain communications. The websites will kick you off and they are legally entitled to. The same result through a different method, one that seems legal.

I was kicked off of a website by someone I dearly love. I was told that the site was being changed to allow me on in the future; but, it would require that a moderator approve my statements in advance. I want to be very clear, that was one of the purposes for the redesign, it was with me in mind and that was a very kind thought. I could never be involved in such a community, I don't believe in a mediator of my words and accept responsibility for my actions. Anyways, I do know where social is headed because of my personal experience.

What we are talking about is creating a personal internet experience. Lets say we identify someone as a pedophile (child molester). As part of their punishment, their use of the internet would be limited to their profile, the sites they could be limited to would be ones that didn't have children on them. We would all support that, wouldn't we? Now, what if, everything you ever did on the internet created a profile of you and determined what you could and could not see on the internet and you didn't even know it. Websites that you would never be interested in just didn't show up on your searches and you never made a mistake so you never learned anything new or that was not in agreement with existing beliefs? Get it?

In the end, it is a spiritual question. It is the simplest question in the world. Would you give up your free will for pleasure? What is being offered is "The Matrix", a place where you always win in exchange for giving up your free will. The price for free will is the truth and it is bought at a price. According to the bible, the smartest man up to the time he died, was Solomon. Solomon said that with great knowledge came great pain. How much pain will you take to grow, to not take the easy way out?