prejudice – Page 2 – Harmonia Philosophica

Psychopath AI… Psychopath humans… Old fashioned prejudice…

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have truly created a monster. A team of researchers who specialize in the darker side of artificial intelligence made news for their latest creation: “Norman”, a machine-learning bot that “sees death in whatever image it looks at”, its creators told HuffPost.

Pinar Yanardag, Manuel Cebrian and Iyad Rahwan wanted to prove that an artificial intelligence algorithm would be influenced by the kind of content fed to it. So they made Norman, named for “Psycho” character Norman Bates, and had it read image captions from a Reddit forum that features disturbing footage of people dying.

The team then showed Norman randomly generated inkblots and compared the way it captioned the images to the captions created by a standard AI. For instance, where a standard AI sees, “A black and white photo of a small bird,” Norman sees, “Man gets pulled into dough machine”. (1)

Seeing life everywhere. Trained to ignore death. Wondering why and how we came to be. Questioning everything regarding our being.

And yet, the questions we ask hold the key to our prejudice. And as all other questions, already contain the answers we secretly wish for.

Audacious humans dancing on a bed of death…

Too busy to see that what they see is the key to what you don’t see…

Life. Multiverses. Humans.

The Multiverse theory, introduced in the 1980s, can explain the “luckily small” amount of dark energy in our Universe that enabled it to host life, among many universes that could not.

Using huge computer simulations of the cosmos, research has found that adding dark energy, up to a few hundred times the amount observed in our Universe, would actually have a modest impact upon star and planet formation.

This opens up the prospect that life could be possible throughout a wider range of other universes, if they exist, the researchers said. (1)

We define death as the norm.

And we are surprised by the existence of life.

Only because we see life as something precious.

In a world born out of chaos, we love order.

In a cosmos born out of darkness, we love light.

But our essence is neither light nor darkness.

Our essence lies in our ability to perceive them and admire them.

Close your eyes. Imagine yourself.

You are not alive.

You are not dead.

You simply are.

You don’t need a universe to exist.

The universe needs you.

And yes, universes are common in… humans.

Electricity and memory. Time and timelessness. [Questioning the obvious]

Electrical stimulation delivered when memory is predicted to fail can improve memory function in the human brain, a team of neuroscientists shows for the first time. That same stimulation generally becomes disruptive when electrical pulses arrive during periods of effective memory function. (1)

We stimulate and see memory improving.

We do thing and see results.

But all our perception is based on the belief in many other notions. For example the notion of time or the notion of change. What does it mean “memory is improved”? It is improved at a specific moment in time. Obvious and yet very complicated. What if the memory of a person is improved but after some time he forgets again? Isn’t that what we all do anyway? Will we say that memory is improved then? No, would be the “obvious” answer. Now what can we say for the “improvement” of memory in humans who will anyway die after some years? Not so obvious now is it?

What does it mean that the “memory of a person” is improved? Is it the same person always? Do we remain the “same” even after major changes (like not remembering anything) happen to us? If we change and yet remain the same person, then it is like saying that the notion of change exists for a person but at the same time it does not: If change means nothing for the person itself, then the person does not… change! Weird huh?

Question the obvious and you will see that you remember everything.

Because there is nothing to remember.

All questions entail time. And death.

This is obvious.

Forget everything and you will see…

The fascism of scientism has a name: Richard Dawkins… “The state needs to ‘protect’ children from religion and their… parents” (!)

In an interview prior to a speech at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, last week, Dawkins told the media that parents have too much influence in their children’s education, especially when it comes to religion.

“There is a balancing act and you have to balance the rights of parents and the rights of children, and I think the balance has swung too far towards parents,” Dawkins told the Irish Times. “Children do need to be protected so that they can have a proper education and not be indoctrinated in whatever religion their parents happen to have been brought up in.”

He added, “You have to write off those people” who value the Bible over science.

Dawkins was in Ireland, along with physicist Lawrence Krauss as part of a tour promoting Arizona State University’s Origins Project. “And parents of course have concerns and a say, but they don’t have the right to shield their children from knowledge,” Krauss said. “That’s not a right any more than they have the right to shield their children from health care or medicine. And those parents that do that are often tried and imprisoned when they refuse to allow their children to get blood transfusions or whatever is necessary for their health. And this is necessary for their mental health.” [1]

Meet the religion of today.

It is not called religion and yet it is.

It is called “Love for science”, a.k.a. “scientism”.

Practiced by people BELIEVING that science will answer all metaphysical questions, even when these are not even part of the realm of science.

Meet the new fascism.

It is not called fascism.

It is called “Love for knowledge”.

Practiced by people who believe only their knowledge is the correct one. By people who speak for tolerance and yet they are intolerant to any other opinion than their own.

Meet the old religion.

In the beginning it was not called religion either.

It was called “Love”.

Practiced by people who just believed in… love. By people who had answered all the great metaphysical problems. In their heart. Now. By people who were tolerant, even to their enemies while they slaughtered them.

Now go and watch out of the window.

Is the rain coming?

Why do we die? Why shouldn’t we?

Life is destructive. Our environment and our internal functions all wear and tear at our body over time. Evolutionarily speaking, natural selection rewards those who can survive such hardship. So why don’t we live forever – why age at all?

There have been numerous attempts to understand how and why we age – as recently as 1990, the biologist Zhores Medvedev tallied more than 300 possible hypotheses. But according to Steven Austad, a biogerontologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, one explanation has risen to the top: “Reproduction is the name of the game. Basically, we age because it’s not in nature’s best interest to perfectly repair our bodies. The main thing is to keep us reproductive as long as possible, and then let our bodies deteriorate”. (1)

People anxious about why they die.

As if they know what death is.

People trying to understand what the best interest of nature is.

As if they know what life is.

Prejudice. Definitions. Assumptions. Fear.

Guiding our philosophy. For thousands of years now…