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Month: December 2020

Organizational Update from OpenAI

It’s been a year of dramatic change and growth at OpenAI. In May, we introduced GPT-3—the most powerful language model to date—and soon afterward launched our first commercial product, an API to safely access artificial intelligence models using simple, natural-language prompts. We’re proud of these and other research breakthroughs by our team, all made as part of our mission to achieve general-purpose AI that is safe and reliable, and which benefits all humanity.
Today we’re…… Read more...

December 29, 2020

Gateway and Hemi-Sync

Now that we have briefly profiled the basic mechanics of the principal techniques for altering or expanding consciousness which share some of the objectives and/or methods employed in the Gateway Experience, we may proceed to focus on what that technique actually involves.

Fundamentally, the Gateway Experience is a training system designed to bring enhanced strength, focus and coherence to the amplitude and frequency of brainwave output between the left and right hemispheres so as to alter consciousness, moving it outside the physical sphere so as to ultimately escape even the restrictions of time and space.

The participant then gains access to the various levels of intuitive knowledge which the universe offers.… Read more...

December 26, 2020

2020: The Year Things Started Going Badly Wrong

How today’s energy problem is different from peak oil

Many people believe that the economy will start going badly wrong when we “run out of oil.” The problem we have today is indeed an energy problem, but it is a different energy problem. Let me explain it with an escalator analogy.

Figure 1. Holborn Tube Station Escalator. Photo by renaissancechambara, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.The economy is like a down escalator that citizens of the world are trying to walk upward on. At first the downward motion of the escalator is almost imperceptible, but gradually it gets to be greater and greater.… Read more...

December 23, 2020

El Pequeño Buda

Podrías ver a cualquier niño como un Buda pequeñito, o un maestro Zen que ha caído en paracaídas en tu vida, cuyas acciones y presencia van a tocar todos y cada uno de tus botones, y a retar cada creencia y apego que tienes.

Cada niño vive en un jardín en donde todo se percibe y siente directamente, sin el velo de del pensamiento. Libre de creencias, interpretaciones y juicios.

Caes de la gracia cuando empiezas a pensar y te conviertes en conocedor y ‘nombrador’ con el lenguaje. El nacimiento de la mente es la muerte de los sentidos, la expulsión del Paraíso.… Read more...

December 20, 2020

Psychologist: Consciousness Is Not a Thing But a Point of View – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

Anyone who thinks about consciousness soon realizes that it is a Hard Problem. It means being a subject of experience, rather than an object to which experiences happen. A dog has consciousness. He yelps when in pain. But a rock does not care about becoming sand.

In an interesting article in Psychology Today, neuropsychologist Mark Solms outlines some thoughts from a book he has written on the subject, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (Norton, 2021):

Physiological processes do not produce consciousness in the sense that the liver produces bile. Consciousness is not a thing but rather a point of view.

… Read more...
December 19, 2020

The basic plan for the Federal Reserve System

The basic plan for the Federal Reserve System was drafted at a secret meeting held in November of 1910 at the private resort of J.P. Morgan on Jekyll Island off the coast of Georgia. Those who attended represented the great financial institutions of Wall Street and, indirectly, Europe as well.

The reason for secrecy was simple. Had it been known that rival factions of the banking community had joined together, the public would have been alerted to the possibility that the bankers were plotting an agreement in restraint of trade—which, of course, is exactly what they were doing.

What emerged was a cartel agreement with five objectives: stop the growing competition from the nation’s newer banks; obtain a franchise to create money out of nothing for the purpose of lending; get control of the reserves of all banks so that the more reckless ones would not be exposed to currency drains and bank runs; get the taxpayer to pick up the cartel’s inevitable losses; and convince Congress that the purpose was to protect the public.… Read more...

December 9, 2020

La esencia del guerrero siempre está oculta y guardada por algo como una puerta. Bien escondida, es como un monasterio en las montañas. Muchos saben de su existencia, pero muy pocos llegan ahí, y menos aún entran.… Read more...

December 9, 2020

El Viejo más Rico del Mundo

El tiempo es la clave: cuando te mueres o enfermas no te llevas el dinero contigo: el dinero sólo lo tienes durante un periodo limitado de tiempo.

El tiempo es el recurso escaso. Los que más tiempo tienen siempre son los jóvenes. Un jóven tiene más riqueza que el viejo más rico del mundo, y esto no es poesía, es realidad.

En esta cultura oímos a burócratas y a viejos billonarios como si fueran santos de hace siglos. Y mantenemos a los jóvenes sin una buena educación y sin trabajo. Drogados con imágenes alienantes y materialistas de cómo deben ser sus vidas.… Read more...

December 9, 2020

Dinero Fiat y Economía Post-Covid

Los inversores han dejado de considerar el valor ‘utilidad’ y se están pasado al valor ‘almacén’. Compran pisos como en China para “guardar” el dinero, no para generar innovación o investigación.

Lo mismo pasa con muchos otros productos: la gente piensa cada vez más en el valor de reventa de las cosas, y menos en el de utilidad.

Esto es consecuencia de la abundancia de dinero fiat al 0%: no hay ningún buen depósito de valor, y todo pasa a considerarse depósito.

El dinero fiat propicia este comportamiento porque ¿quién quiere arriesgar el 100% de una inversión para obtener un 5% de retorno, cuando puedes obtener el 200% de retorno al vender el “boleto” al siguiente que entra a jugar?.… Read more...

December 7, 2020
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? -TS Eliot  (The Rock)

This wonderful quote from TS Eliot echoes the DIKW model of Data, Information, Knowledge and Wisdom.The model is pure academicism and therefore useless from the practical point of view, but...

December 7, 2020

Organismos vs Mecanismos

La vida no es un mecanismo, sino un organismo. La vida no es mecánica, es orgánica. Y lo mismo ocurre con todos los sistemas complejos cotidianos: la economía, las ideas, la meteorología, etc.

En la Naturaleza los organismos no ‘aparecen’ sino que ‘surgen’ y crecen desde dentro. No son piezas que se ensamblan en el tiempo, o relaciones y reglas causa-efecto lineales como suelen suponerlas nuestra forma de pensar.

Las plataformas tecnológicas tienen éxito porque facilitan la creación de un ecosistema que se comporta como un organismo: de dentro hacia afuera, y en base a interacciones entre sus componentes.

Este organismo:
– Está compuesto de multitud de participantes con incentivos alineados,
– Evoluciona y da lugar a formas emergentes no previstas inicialmente.… Read more...

December 7, 2020
Dilbert platform

Platforms are not About Technology

Are you an entrepreneur? If you don’t have your own platform on the Internet, you tend to become a commodity. In the future, the most successful businesses will be platforms.

The value of a platform is neither in the technology or in the user growth rate. The value is in the community on top of it. In the activity that exists on the network of users, and their interactions.

Nobody should be in the business of “making software”. This is about enabling interactions among people, and among machines.

Are you able to bring together like minds to help people socialize and support each other in a differentiated and relevant way?… Read more...

December 7, 2020
Blockchain-vs-Traditional-database[1]

SQL vs Blockchain Databases

The problem of structuring data for unknown future uses was solved in the 70s and it’s called relational algebra.

It stores data in a way that is right, that prevents many types of errors based on the actual data and relationships between the real world objects the data describes.

It’s a way of storing data that works no matter how toy want to query it in the future. Data structured with relational algebra is accessed using a language called SQL.

A Blockchain database is the optimal technology to validate and register transactions safely, or any other time-dependent variable. But data recovering and analysis will still need to be run with SQL.… Read more...

December 7, 2020

Why Consciousness Shows That Materialism Is False – Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence

My friend and colleague Bill Dembski, a leading advocate of intelligent design of the universe and life forms, has done a superb short interview with Robert Lawrence Kuhn on Closer to Truth. Bill takes a position that will surprise many fellow Christians—he doesn’t believe that consciousness represents an insurmountable challenge to materialism:

Bill makes the point that much of the popular argument hinges on shifting meanings of “materialism” and “consciousness.” By contrast, he argues, the design inference in biology is a much more effective challenge to materialism.

I agree that design in nature is an effective challenge to materialism. But I also believe that the mind refutes materialism in a rather straightforward way—and in much the same way that evidence of intelligent design in biology refutes materialism.

… Read more...
December 7, 2020
misdiagnosis

Reporting, Bureaucracy and Misdiagnosis

In an interconnected world, the traditional way of analyzing reality based on cause-effect relationships is obsolete. The economy depends on the propagation of information, and this in turn depends on technology. And technology in turn depends on economic and social conditions.

People do not make economic decisions rationally. What used to be “the economy” is now a complex system composed of millions of players who interact with each other, and respond to informational stimuli that occur in real time.

The dynamics of registration and reporting of the system (eg time to register mortgages, collect information, surveys, etc.) generates very partial information, which when published is already obsolete, and causes misdiagnosis.… Read more...

December 6, 2020
you marketing

From “Product Marketing” to “You Marketing”

Most marketing boards insist on ‘problem-solving’ as the main approach to gain customers. But solving immediate needs is only an intermediate step. It is important to go further. What we all seek (even unconsciously) are deeper motivations and concepts.

Lets review some marketing strategies:

– Mediocre marketing focuses on the product or the seller.
– Traditional marketing focuses on the benefits, and puts them ahead of the specifications.
– Brilliant marketing revolves around the human condition: your desires and aspirations.

When you know how to connect to people by appealing to those desires magic happens. I’m talking about feeling better, having more time, creating a family, having more fun, falling in love, feeling in control of your life, etc.… Read more...

December 6, 2020

Are Programmers going to be Replaced?

Programming is like dancing: everyone can do it, but very few do it so well that they get money in return.

However, writing the code is only part of solving the problem. In fact, it’s not the most important, because different languages can solve the same problem. The key is knowing how to pose the problem: build the model that reproduces and automates something real.

For example, fifth generation languages (5GL) are purely declarative: they express what needs to be done. Then the machine sets the how, and does it. To use them you need to be clearer about WHAT to do than about HOW it should be done.… Read more...

December 6, 2020

De los Verticales a las Experiencias

Vivimos en un mundo de mercados verticales ultra-competitivos. Pero el valor que pide la gente es horizontal, integrador y de resultados.

Los que inventan nuevos conceptos ‘transversales’ que derriban los verticales y es donde aparecen las experiencias.

Por ejemplo, el marketing digital se ha organizado en ‘especialidades’ verticales ultra-competitivas.

Pero en realidad la generación de valor que demandan los clientes es un proceso horizontal, de integración, y orientado a resultados: “Invierto euros y quiero clientes a cambio”.

Estos son los modelos interesantes y es donde está todo por inventarse. Los verticales se están terminando, lo que quedan son las personas y sus experiencias.… Read more...

December 6, 2020
This duality can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past but cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it...

The Knowledge vs Control Dichotomy According to Shannon

Shannon's Information Theory is one of those few books with mathematical, technological and philosophical implications. A true genius that has been little studied.

December 6, 2020

How Per Aspera makes you feel like an Artificial Intelligence – PC Gamer

Grappling with the ramifications of Artificial Intelligence is one of the first things science fiction ever did as a genre. Yet most sci-fi books, movies, and games explore those ideas from the perspective of a person, whether we’re taking down SHODAN in System Shock or chatting with Cortana in Halo. That’s something the developers of Per Aspera, Tlön Industries, wanted to change. From their offices in Buenos Aires the team of about 12 people have spent the last few years trying to figure out what it would be like to inhabit the mind of a newly awakened—a newborn—Artificial Consciousness.

The result is Per Aspera, a strategic city-builder that has players working to terraform Mars as the artificial consciousness AMI.

… Read more...
December 6, 2020

The Hacking Philosophy

The hacking idea is intrinsic to any complex system. You discover the mechanics that make it to work, and then you can see it from the inside and manipulate it at your convenience. It’s not just about coding and programming. It is a universal concept.

People tend to use insecure systems, or secure systems they don’t know how to use. This creates opportunities and vulnerabilities everywhere.

Besides, it’s much easier to hack people than computers: people have volatile emotions that make them paranoid and vulnerable. Specially when they know they belong to something dark and unfair.

That said, almost all IT security these days is “cheaper than possible” because the people in charge are not able to do risk management.… Read more...

December 5, 2020
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