BS: Still Hope for Humanity

Subject: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 16 Feb 23 - 08:16 AM

Just out of curiosity I looked up how much memory capacity human brains have compared with computers, and found that the average healthy human brain has about 25 times the capacity of the biggest servers.

So that means, in my book, that humans still have a lead over technology. Thinking it through, are brains are marvellous relational databases in that we are not only are able to associate countless physical attributes to an item but also a vast number of emotional attributes, eg the concept of 'a nice day' which might fail the Turin test.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Feb 23 - 08:50 AM

Life in general has a 4 billion year advantage in information processing over computers yet even the human brain can be overtaken by global changes that move faster than our evolutionary responses. Remember technology has a lifetime too.

We seem to respond after the fact more often than we take future precautions. Most people are unaware we have taken measures for a relative handful of humans to survive underground for a hundred years.

Say hello to a sea rise a hundred years before we predicted.
Hope is a survival instinct, not a promise.
I expect new species will emerge as most die off.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Rain Dog
Date: 16 Feb 23 - 10:39 AM

"the average healthy human brain has about 25 times the capacity of the biggest servers."

I guess it depends on the capacity of the server.

The problem that a brain has is in the ability to access all of that capacity. Computers are better at doing that.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 23 - 10:58 AM

Human brains can rationalize... sadly, they are trying to get computers to do something similar.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Donuel
Date: 16 Feb 23 - 09:06 PM

Google's AI mistake

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: robomatic
Date: 19 Feb 23 - 03:24 PM

Regarding the OP I do not think the two are relatable. The ability to store bits bytes and words is not the same as human memory. And I doubt the figure to begin with. Servers themselves aren't memory anyway. And a lot of our problems come from technology driving humans driving technology in an out of control spiral.

Over time I've come to the conclusion that no one really 'thinks'. What we think of as thinking in the sense of the appearance of using logic to obtain a conclusion is more or less accidental.

As for 'Still Hope for Humanity' I am constantly reminded of Spike Milligan's announcement during one of his 'Goon Shows':

"Cheer up dear listners! Olde England isn't finished yet!
It's finished.....
-thump-
NOW!!!!!"

Have a nice weekend.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 23 - 05:44 AM

President Biden is in Kiev this morning instead of Putin who hoped to be there one year after his invasion of Ukraine to install his puppet president.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Donuel
Date: 20 Feb 23 - 08:51 AM

The US 'won' the cold war by out spending the USSR. Now the remaining Russia could lose another Ukraine war the same way, unless China enters the war or Putin goes nuclear.

Steps in the hopeful direction include worker-owned corporations and a new environmental age of enlightenment.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: SPB-Cooperator
Date: 21 Feb 23 - 07:51 AM

I am still not convinced what the role of 99% of the human population in the current socio-economic system(s) will be in the future as technological advances can create wealth while humans become surplus to requirement. In my view humans can be divided into those that:

(1) Own or control land and its resources and capital.
(2) Those who directly serve or provide for the needs/wants of those in   
    (1).
(3) Those who provide the labour to increase the wealth of those in
    (1).
(4) Those who provide for the needs/wants of those in (2) and (3).
(5) Those who provide for the needs/wants of those in (4), (5) and
    (6).
(6) The dispossessed, destitute and not yet or no longer (temporarily or permanently) included in any of the above.

With each technological advance the number of humans needed for (2) (3) and (4) goes down so we have a social decision on what to do about the growing number of (5) and (6) where in a capitalist paradigm they are effectively surplus to requirement?

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: leeneia
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 12:37 AM

Anecdote: one day at college I was eating dinner with a right-wing guy who said he agreed with his father. Money spent on humanitarian causes was money wasted on people who are not worth saving.

I said, "I don't know. I was just reading about poor farmers in Egypt, whose children walk among the cotton plants, turning leaves over and pulling insects off. Four thousand years ago Egypt had pharoahs, ministers and scribes who were wealthy and powerful, but they are all gone now, and so is their culture. The children who walked among the plants then are the ancestors of the children who walk among the plants now."

He got agitated, sputtered something, and never ate with me again.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: leeneia
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 12:42 AM

AI at work: we were driving east on a road over a valley, and there was a railing on our right with posts. Our car saw the shadows of the posts and decided we were going to have a collision with them.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 03:53 AM

Yep. My car often thinks it's going to crash into something and alarms me with a huge, flashing and beeping red-alert. I've yet to work out in any single instance what it was that the car thought I was going to crash into. I've had this car for five months now and I still can't get used to the fact that it has an electronic parking brake (instead of a handbrake) that's supposed to come on every time I stop (except that there are occasional circumstances when it doesn't: I've yet to glean why that it is...). After all this time I still instinctively reach for the handbrake lever every time I pull up...

And a cautionary tale: the reverse parking sensor on my last car suddenly stopped working, which I discovered when I was one inch from backing into a garage door. The car was one week outside its three-year warranty. Try trusting your parking sensors again after that.

I can't help thinking that humanity needs to stay alive to its surroundings at least in minimal ways, despite all the "conveniences" of modern automation...

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: Donuel
Date: 22 Feb 23 - 10:11 AM

SPB, wealth-rewarding societies may be utopias for the rich but there are all kinds of Utopias.

I wonder what the MAGA utopia is.

Subject: RE: BS: Still Hope for Humanity
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Feb 23 - 01:28 PM

Of those 6 groups listed by SBP-Cooperator only one is totally dispensable, providing no evident benefit for any of the rest. The first one - those that "Own or control land and its resources and capital."