Well, I'm struggling with this myself. Should we be cynical because the world around us has been cynical historically? I prefer not to be cynical - to be blunt I don't mean to belittle anyone, but being cynical is just boring. I am an empathical being so I understand that some people might think "boring" is inapropriate, but I try to elevate the discussion. Sadly Russia often through history has chosen to be cynical and the war in Urkaine is of course no exception. Cynism is a yoke that enslaves and prevents innovation. Humans are able to follwo different patterns of behavior, lets call one pattern the "clan vs clan" pattern. In the "clan vs clan" pattern hierarchies are created through violience and groups fight against each other for power. This pattern is what runs the matrix that criminal gangs operate in. The pattern is "self balancing" since its basically the people with most violence capital that calls the shots. However, this pattern fails to provide for the many, abundance flows to those with power and there's not so much cause for innovating for your own sake since your work will just end up in the hands of the powerful. I beleive you can see in Russia and in countries where cartels run the business that they are less effective in providing for the many. In Russia the answer to this is to work with spirituality - the Russian orthodox church has been tied into the power structures and Russia tries to promote its orthodoxy abroad in attempts to gain influence, but just like the rest of the power structures it is corrupt.
I beleive that Europe deserves a better future than falling into cynicism, not least the eastern parts. Its like resuming the dark ages. Its hard to predict the future and I don't know what will happen. Sadly weapons and armed conflict will most likely play a role, but I think that we must reason more broadly to really solve the conflict. Beating cynicism with cynicism is just cynical. People have an abillity, even if it may be suppressed in some people, to be reasonable.
Teachers sare another example. I think many of us actually want to work for a bigger cause. Its just that the system is so to say rigged so that your attention flows in the direction of making money instead of trying to save the world. What doctor or teacher does teh best job? The one who only looks at the paycheck or someone who feels responsible?
This is interesting. How does AI stuff fit in this list? All AI stuff uses data that has been gathered without conscious consent and the resulting models may be used in malicious ways. How should we stand on that?
What kind of international law can we expect in the future? A law that is constantly broken by various maleficent actors? Of course we've heard them complain that the current order is run by the west and harmful to others. What are the alternatives? A hundred cables?
Depending on angle we could see different dumb things in the pandemic. I'm not sure which specific dumb thing you're referring to.
Intelligence is, as I see it, distributed both in space and time. What is stupid in a local time/place context may turn out to be part of a process that ends up creating something great. Of course it could also be the other way around.
We've been made accustomed to fast feedback. Technology moves rapidly and therefore gives us quick feedback (dopamine). Peace processes move slowly and therefore gives less dopamine for those involved. Now, what would the junkie in you choose to pursue?
These days noone seems to have peace to the world as a dream and driving force. I grew up in the spirit that we should try to achieve peace everywhere. Nowadays when people think about war they think about cool technology, who wins all the resources and they think earning money selling weapons. If WW3 really gets off I feel pretty sure it's going to end in science fiction with AI, robots and lasers, it's no longer just stories. Perhaps we will all end up in a Skynet/Terminator scenario? When the technology is there, who will end up controlling it - big tech or the technology itself? I stopped caring about making innovations a couple of years ago - noone is ever trying to mitigate the doomsday. We're not this dumb, we could use our innovations to do some real good.
The number of comments on this post is quite telling.
Hope to see ya all in another future, not the one we're heading for. I just wish people did care.
New innovations - gives you PTSD every day. Computeres and technology used to be fun. It hasn't been for years. We're building ourselves a horrible future. If it wasn't my main income I would have stopped using them and moved into the woods long ago. I've seen this comming. It's no wonder that birth rates are plummeting world wide. The only help I can think of is divine intervention or if someone has a very well hidden plan to work it out. For authenticity to work it needs to be universal and I'm not sure that is the case.
Some ten years ago I relalized that the tech industry has little regard for what the socetietal consequences of tech developments will be. Since then work has not been fun in the same way. For example, social media fun to use, but when you think about it, it is just using our human vanity and desire to be seen to gather as much data from us as possible to use in ways that the users will never imagine. These uses of will not be in best intrest of the users, but of the business that collect the data. I foresaw that giving away strong encryption for free, will give criminals the tools they need to build there own empires. My thesis was proved by encrochat. Of course that service was exposed, but of course theere will be new ones, harder to crack. As for AI the dice has been rolled, no way to put it back. We have been taugth that it is fun to develop new technology, that progress is good and to earn as much as possible. Who teaches us to philosophize about the consequences? Wouldn't it be better if our developments were saving the world and our human race? We are tapping the life out of our planet.
...and of course, at the end of the article, the author offers to sell some kind of project assessment. My assessment is that it is not money that will buy greatness. You need to have engagement. This is why this kind of project seems to be doomed from the beginning. Large enterprises are sadly not driven by highly motivated people. The project scope is humongous. You have all kinds of legacy to take into account. To compare with Uber, which has a platform written from scratch by a (probably) highly motivated team is just ... whishful thinking. It is just very hard to create a common goal and motivated people in such a large project. Throw in a global consulting firm and you have recipe for disaster. I've worked for 14 years as a developer consultant and I know that the top priority goal is to get the customer to pay the bills, if your project produces something great it is nice, but the thing that will get the bosses moving are unpaid invoices. Nowadays I'm with a product company
Rant: Sooner or later some person will use all the data to something no good. I predicted some 8 years ago that criminals would start using encryption in the same way military does. It scared me. Encro happened; Criminal networks using encryption to plan murder, smuggle drugs, human trafficking etc. Data has been called the new oil, businesses are more and more finding ways to refine it. Will it be for their good? Yes. Will it be for your good? Just as long as it does not conflict with their good? By the businesses giving away features ("the first one free"); look at the ever better search results or all the long lost friends in social media; you are lured into giving away your data because it helps you. The problem is that our machines and even business models have become so complicated that it is hard for people to know all the logic and data flows. Can anyone without a comp sci University degree discuss strengths and weaknesses in various encryption methods? Journlists, politicians, public opinion? As engineers, programmers, mathematicians, nerds etc we don't see the problem because a) this stuff is paying our bills b) it's just so much fun to use your intellect to conceive new thingsno one thought about. All the code I've written has been mathematically proven? (Well...)
Of course, I have waited for some 20 years for techageddon and it hasn't happend (that I know of?). Can we learn from history? What about mr Murphy, the guy with the law? Why is the debate so just...nowhere?
Well, never mind, back to sleep then, take the pills, leave the kids at school, wait for the paycheck, make another payment on the mortgage. By the way, the kids love the phones, filters are so much fun, facial recognition is soo practical. Why would anyone be intrested in my emails, phonecalls, age, preferred gender, facial patterns, voice patterns, habits, bad habits; I'm no politician or famous person. I bet their phones and mine are protected by some...kind agency. Social media is way better than school. If everyone can find you in your underwear in social media, you are so much not just a weirdo, just like everyone else. Gig economy is freedom. What was the name of that new Russian "rocket" - САТАН, what does that even mean? Why can't they just use 7-bit ASCII? Elon's got it all figured out for us. People usually don't take opportunities to make dishonest money. Don't worry, icy chills may be trained to be ignored. The dating app will help you conceive children of the appropriate IQ. Those paranoid brain cells are just wasting your energy. Life will be so much freer without. We'll blame big pharma later and then some network / streaming service may use it for entertainment.
TLDR: Of course you already know that the spelling of powerful in Swedish is kraftfull. Kraftful is so much more fun. It translates into power ugly
I remember reading about Occam around 1987-89 in an Atari ST World magazine. Atari hade just announced the Transputer and the article introduced Occam as a way to program its parallel processor. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_Transputer_Workstation
I was a teenager at that time and I remember that the Occam code made little Sense to me
I started using the Internet some 25 years ago. Maybe things then were more idealist? I was younger then of course and perhaps more idealist by nature? Nowadays I'm afraid that the overall idealism may fade and that other more primitive forces will increase its drive of the net e.g. capitalism, criminality and autocracy.
Imagine putting RMS (Richard Stallman) in China. What do you think the authorities would think of him? Will software in China ever be free as in the definition made by Free Software Foundation?
I think this story is not as much a story about a software bug as it is a story about off hand accident management. If AECL had earlier been more humble and determined to find the errors maybe they would have? It seems jaw dropingly ignorantly handled. Why did it have to take so much time and several people dead before serious effort was put in to find the issues?
Yes, it seems that this hospital staff were the testers that AECL should have had themselves. A great tester is curious, imaginative, dedicated, patient and worth a good salary.
From Sailfish homepage " Our focus is in licensing the OS to be used in governmental and corporate environments, and Sailfish OS is already used to build local mobile ecosystems in Latin America, Russia, and China. "
Isn't any big enough state or corporation with too little transparency a threat to individual freedom? Is China combing opaque big tech with repressive state? Is that scary? Is Amazon changing people's lives? etc