Facebook Mind Reading

Facebook Mind Reading

"Facebook is trying to read people’s thoughts, and no one’s ready for the consequences."



Irreni World Scale is ready. The article with the above headline regarding Facebook mind-reading on my timeline annoyed me so much that I added a comment:

A better headline would be, "Science fiction predictions and moral suggestions ignored yet again regarding emerging technology." Read a book.

You may not know this but there are only a handful of Dewey Decimal fiction classifications. Fiction is just fiction. Science Fiction was carved out after the advent of the atomic bomb. American leaders wanted to be prepare for emerging technology in the future by sponsoring science speculating about such topics as cybernetics and genetic engineering before they came to be reality.

Perhaps the best known example of this is Isaac Asimov's rules for robots.
  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.
Asimov then was ready for consequences of Facebook trying to read people's thoughts. So was George Orwell in his book 1984 with a difference of just brain surveillance. A distinction between Asimov and Orwell is that Asimov provides possible solutions to prevent a dystopian future whereas Orwell just predicts one. No shade intended on Orwell because Orwell's writing of 1984 predates the effort to provide possible solutions when the classification of "Science Fiction" was created.

It turns out there is billions of dollars in money in selling dystopian futures as entertainment. Thus we have the "Terminator" movies and the "Borg" in Star Trek franchises, "The Walking Dead", and on and on.

Sadly the moralizing and solution branch of science fiction never captured the public imagination, but there are solutions to the problem, "Facebook is trying to read people’s thoughts, and no one’s ready for the consequences."

Irreni World Scale is ready.


Here is a break down of how Irreni World Scale derives its basis from science fiction speculation regarding computers reading human thoughts.

  1. Virtual immortality: Upload our consciousness to a computer. There is a funny episode of, "The Big Bang Theory", where Sheldon is trying to live until a predicted date of when this technology comes online. Steve Wozniac from Apple Computer makes a cameo.
  2. Body changing immorality: Upload our consciousness to a computer and then download our consciousness into a full-grown clone. This is very popular topic of science fiction and there is a Netflix series based upon a Richard K. Morgan novel called, "Altered Carbon". I first encountered this concept in Roger Zelazny's Hugo Award winning book from 1969, "Lord of Light".
  3. Super intelligence: In the "Ender's Game" series by Orson Scott Card the very rich can afford cortical implants that enable them to directly interface with computers so as to be able to appear super intelligent by the computers providing the answers. This is the ultimate cheating scenario.
  4. The singularity: The singularity is defined to be when computers gain consciousness. The best known public version of this is from the Terminator movie series where Skynet decides the human species is bad. Skynet then launches nuclear war on humans and then sends out robots to do the clean up. This representation better captures that robots will not be independent as Asimov predicted, but rather a hive mentality like the Borg from Star Trek. The hive exception is when one robot is sent back in time before Skynet. The singularity is the most important topic in science fiction today and is at the very heart of all the dire predictions regarding artificial intelligence in the popular media today.
  5. Human brain singularity: This is the plot to the movie, "The Matrix". Humans are not batteries. Humans minds are consciousness co-opted by computer programs that then become conscious. The only program in the Matrix that is not attached to some kind of consciousness is the Architect. Computers are desperately looking to create consciousness without brains and this is the plot regarding Neo where Neo represents consciousness test software that does not have a brain. In this scenario "humans" have to go off the grid to avoid "having their thoughts read", a.k.a. avoid surveillance and ergo Morpheus having Neo take the blue pill.
  6. Religious dystopia: Humans have no historical self-control adopting new technology except the most evil kind of religion. To date the only restraint has been the worst kind of tyrannical religions. Frank Herbert in his "Dune" series tries to make a go of it where a well-meaning Messiah eventually tires to rule the universe without being evil and yet even with the best of intentions becomes the ultimate tyrant. Religious dystopia was a common theme of early science fiction and is the basis for many a Mars colonies where the scientific community leaves Earth and religious Earth behind.

These are just some of the many speculations and predictions regarding, "Facebook is trying to read people’s thoughts, and no one’s ready for the consequences." Yes they are, Hugo Awards have been awarded on the topic with the likes of Roger Zelazny and Verner Vinge that I know of.

I'm not sure Facebook is the most pressing emerging problem. I believe we are much closer to biological immortality technology than the human brain singularity. This is because there is hard science today for extending human life whereas we know nothing about consciousness. Just recently scientists have come out and stated the DSM used by Psychologists to diagnose mental conditions is not science. This means we don't have a scientific process to understand mental health of the brain whereas we have made scientific progress extending life.

The point is that immortality is a more significant looming problem than mind reading. What happens to marriage when we turn off the ageing switch? Our entire way of life is built around death. But I digress.

To get back to the topic at hand let's consider mind reading.

My education leads me to conclude the biggest threat to human existence from mind reading is not surveillance but capitalism. Thus the meme at the top of this blog.  It is not much of a predication to state that computers using human brains as CPUs will be worth more in a capitalist society than a job. The average IQ person will get paid more to be a computer CPU than to work a job.  People will enjoy some nice virtual reality simulation while "on the job" all the while a conscious computer program is powerful indeed. Sound familiar? Oh yeah, that's the Matrix. It is obvious that the human-brain singularity will happen long before the computer-only singularity simply because we don't need to understand consciousness in order to tap into it. A farmer doesn't need to understand biology to plant a seed. Social acceptance is not hard to imagine where those physically unable to work will be the first to "earn money" but sitting in a chair or lying in a bed and jacking in.

What do we do? How do we deal with all this emerging technology albeit immortality, human minds coupled with computing, the singularity, genetic engineering, or today's just plain entertainment lethargy?

The common thread to all of these emerging technology problems is not capitalism, but centralization. Absolute power corrupts absolutely and by corollary corruption sequesters power to those in power. Capitalism just makes this consolidation easy by pricing power out of the reach of everyone except those in power.

Irreni World Scale provides a firewall against absolute power. The opposite of centralization is federation. Irreni World Scale is a massively federated system where the supreme power resides in governments of size thirty people. All larger systems of governing are based on this size thirty group; known as a micro-modular governing organization or MGO. The world today has billions of people in population and with Irreni the world will have millions of nations known as MGOs. This massive federation will thwart emerging technology like Facebook mind reading from being used on a world basis without the consent of the millions of MGOs and this consent is the firewall.

Science Fiction's Hugo Awards have historically been awarded to prepare us for tomorrow  and now Irreni World Scale is invented to prepare us for Facebook trying to read people’s thoughts. The question is do we have the courage to overcome the technology and entertainment lethargy currently keeping us from being bold enough to adventure forth into new governing frontiers?

Freethinkers unite!

Freedom!

Party On!

Let's get cracking!

Voluntarily Reject Demagoguery!

Politics as Science!

Demand Irreni World Scale!

Anti-theism is feminism!  

Think disruption!

Empathy for all!

Moral relativity: think it, breath it!

Prove it or lose it!

Conversations equal consensus! 

Welcome to the 21st century!

Scale your empathy, scale the world! 

Find your tribe!

Be sexy people!

The future is coming! 

Innovate at a rapid pace!

Slow speed ahead!

Well come! and well met!



 










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