EVERY Machine is Vulnerable to Unadvertised Behaviors (I Don't Play Guitar, I Play Electricity)

lareviewofbooks |  The past two decades have brought two interrelated and disturbing developments in the technopolitics of US militarism. The first is the fallacious claim for precision and accuracy in the United States’s counterterrorism program, particularly for targeted assassinations. The second is growing investment in the further automation of these same operations, as exemplified by US Department of Defense Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team, more commonly known as Project Maven.

Artificial intelligence is now widely assumed to be something, some thing, of great power and inevitability. Much of my work is devoted to trying to demystify the signifier of AI, which is actually a cover term for a range of technologies and techniques of data processing and analysis, based on the adjustment of relevant parameters according to either internally or externally generated feedback

Some take AI developers’ admission that so-called “deep-learning” algorithms are beyond human understanding to mean that there are now forms of intelligence superior to the human. But an alternative explanation is that these algorithms are in fact elaborations of pattern analysis that are not based on significance (or learning) in the human sense, but rather on computationally detectable correlations that, however meaningless, eventually produce results that are again legible to humans. From training data to the assessment of results, it is humans who inform the input and evaluate the output of the algorithmic system’s operations.

When we hear calls for greater military investments in AI, we should remember that the United States is the overwhelmingly dominant global military power. The US “defense” budget, now over $700 billion, exceeds that of the next eight most heavily armed countries in the world combined (including both China and Russia). The US maintains nearly 800 military bases around the world, in seventy countries. And yet a discourse of US vulnerability continues, not only in the form of the so-called war on terror, but also more recently in the form of a new arms race among the US, China and Russia, focused on artificial intelligence.

The problem for which algorithmic warfare is the imagined solution was described in the early 19th century by Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, and subsequently became known as the “fog of war.” That phrase gained wider popular recognition as the title of director Errol Morris’s 2003 documentary about the life and times of former US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara. In the film, McNamara reflects on the chaos of US operations in Vietnam. The chaos made one thing clear: reliance on uniforms that signal the difference between “us” and “them” marked the limits of the logics of modern warfighting, as well as of efforts to limit war’s injuries.

As Goes Blackness - The Parable

thisisinsider |  Like much of Glover's work, "This is America" is cryptic and loaded with shocking imagery and metaphor. The track's tone swerves from happy-go-lucky psalmic readings to more alarming verses. In typical Glover fashion, he dismissed close readings of his work in an interview at the Met Gala Monday night. 

"I just wanted to make a good song," Glover told E!. "Like something that people could play on Fourth of Julys." 

Directed by his frequent "Atlanta" collaborator Hiro Murai and choreographed by Sherrie Silver, the music video touches on gun violence, the precarious state of black bodies in the US, and how we've historically used entertainment to distract us from pervasive cultural and political problems. But the music video's iconoclastic images and many layers deserve close examination to fully parse. 

Here are 24 things you may have missed.  Twitter moments.

American Attempt to Niggerize Subvert Cuba with RAP was an Epic FAIL!!!

APNews |  For more than two years, a U.S. agency secretly infiltrated Cuba’s underground hip-hop movement, recruiting unwitting rappers to spark a youth movement against the government, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The idea was to use Cuban musicians “to break the information blockade” and build a network of young people seeking “social change,” documents show. But the operation was amateurish and profoundly unsuccessful.

On at least six occasions, Cuban authorities detained or interrogated people involved in the program; they also confiscated computer hardware, and in some cases it contained information that jeopardized Cubans who likely had no idea they were caught up in a clandestine U.S. operation. Still, contractors working for the U.S. Agency for International Development kept putting themselves and their targets at risk, the AP investigation found.

They also ended up compromising Cuba’s vibrant hip-hop culture — which has produced some of the hardest-hitting grassroots criticism since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. Artists that USAID contractors tried to promote left the country or stopped performing after pressure from the Cuban government, and one of the island’s most popular independent music festivals was taken over after officials linked it to USAID.

The program is laid out in documents involving Creative Associates International, a Washington, D.C., contractor paid millions of dollars to undermine Cuba’s communist government. The thousands of pages include contracts, emails, preserved chats, budgets, expense reports, power points, photographs and passports.

The work included the creation of a “Cuban Twitter” social network and the dispatch of inexperienced Latin American youth to recruit activists, operations that were the focus of previous AP stories.

“Any assertions that our work is secret or covert are simply false,” USAID said in a statement Wednesday. Its programs were aimed at strengthening civil society “often in places where civic engagement is suppressed and where people are harassed, arrested, subjected to physical harm or worse.”

Creative Associates did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

British Propaganda and Disinformation

strategic-culture |  When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led the way for its American “cousins” and Britain’s Commonwealth partners – from Canada and Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths. Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another – the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.

It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.

For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and “regime change.” IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly “The Daily Telegraph,” “The Times,” “Financial Times,” Reuters, “The Guardian,” and “The Economist,” ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers).

These leaders included Indonesia’s President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather of Pyongyang’s present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus’s Archbishop Makarios, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Chile’s Salvador Allende, British Guiana’s Cheddi Jagan, Grenada’s Maurice Bishop, Jamaica’s Michael Manley, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, Guinea’s Sekou Toure, Burkina Faso’s Thomas Sankara, Australia’s Gough Whitlam, New Zealand’s David Lange, Cambodia’s Norodom Sihanouk, Malta’s Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu’s Father Walter Lini, and Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah.

After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Somalia’s Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti’s Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad’s, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont’s turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State. 

Major Bases For Nazi Propaganda And Activity In The Middle-East

FrontPage |  In the Western world, knowledge of history is poor -- and the awareness of history is frequently poorer. For example, people often argue today as if the kind of political order that prevails in Iraq is part of the immemorial Arab and Islamic tradition. This is totally untrue. The kind of regime represented by Saddam Hussein has no roots in either the Arab or Islamic past. Rather, it is an ideological importation from Europe -- the only one that worked and succeeded (at least in the sense of being able to survive).

In 1940, the French government accepted defeat and signed a separate peace with the Third Reich. The French colonies in Syria and Lebanon remained under Vichy control, and were therefore open to the Nazis to do what they wished. They became major bases for Nazi propaganda and activity in the Middle East. The Nazis extended their operations from Syria and Lebanon, with some success, to Iraq and other places. That was the time when the Baath Party was founded, as a kind of clone of the Nazi and Fascist parties, using very similar methods and adapting a very similar ideology, and operating in the same way -- as part of an apparatus of surveillance that exists under a one-party state, where a party is not a party in the Western democratic sense, but part of the apparatus of a government. That was the origin of the Baath Party.

When the Third Reich collapsed, and after an interval was replaced by the Soviet Union as the patron of all anti-Western forces, the adjustment from the Nazi model to the Communist model was not very difficult and was carried throughout without problems. That is where the present Iraqi type of government comes from. As I said before, it has no roots in the authentic Arabic or Islamic past. It is, instead, part of the most successful and most harmful process of Westernization to have occurred in the Middle East. When Westernization failed in the Middle East, this failure was followed by a redefinition and return to older, more deep-rooted perceptions of self and other. I mean, of course, religion.

Religion had several advantages. It was more familiar. It was more readily intelligible. It could be understood immediately by Muslims. Nationalist and socialist slogans, by contrast, needed explanation. Religion was less impeded. What I mean is that even the most ruthless of dictatorships cannot totally suppress religiously defined opposition. In the mosques, people can meet and speak. In most fascist-style states, openly meeting and speaking are rigidly controlled and repressed. This is not possible in dealing with Islam. Islamic opposition movements can use a language familiar to all, and, through mosques, can tap into a network of communication and organization.

Why isn’t the Nazi Origin of Modern-day Terrorism Discussed in the Media?

HuffPo |  During the final months of World War II, Hitler saw his dreams for a Third Reich crumble as Allied Forces turned the tides of war. Hitler became increasingly desperate for results and for propaganda wins to maintain morale. He sought counsel from Otto Skorzeny, the leader of Operation Greif, which used German soldiers to infiltrate their opponents by adapting enemy languages, uniforms and customs. Skorzeny was the twisted genius who had dressed Nazi soldiers in American uniforms in an effort to spread rumors of Eisenhower’s assassination and demoralize the Allies. In 1943, Skorzeny led the rescue mission that freed Benito Mussolini from prison. In 1944, he organized a secret unit of German suicide bombers.

As the Nazi war effort failed, Hitler designated Skorzeny to create a new secret underground resistance movement—a terrorist unit calledWerwolf. The Werewolves’ sole purpose would be to attack the Allies after the war was over. They were to perform random acts of violence around Europe, sabotage rebuilding efforts, and destabilize governments in a guerrilla effort to build the Third Reich. 

Many of the Werewolves were captured by the Allied Forces or abandoned their posts before unleashing much terror on Europe, but some fled to the Middle East. 

Skorzeny Sets Up Shop In The Middle East

In Infield’s 1981 biography, Skorzeny: Hitler’s Commando, Infield describes how Skorzeny went to Egypt, where he recruited a staff of former SS officers to mask themselves as converted Muslims and train elite young Mujahideen and the Egyptian Army in terrorist tactics. Infield knew and interviewed Skorzeny, and uncovered a great deal of information relevant to the terrorism we are fighting today. 

It was Skorzeny who trained Arab volunteers in guerrilla warfare tactics to use against the British troops stationed in the Suez Canal zone. Palestinian refugees also received commando training, and Skorzeny planned their initial strikes into Israel via the Gaza Strip in 1953-1954. 

One of these young Palestinians was Yasser Arafat, who went on to become the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The PLO was formed by Palestinian refugees seeking to claim land rights. It was their terrorist arm, Black September, that carried out the horrific kidnapping and murder of eleven Israeli athletes and coaches at the 1972 Olympics in Munich. 

The Nazi link to Islamic extremism and terrorist tactics is clear. Nazis, Islamists, and the Making of the Modern Middle East also explores the Nazi political influence on radical Islamic political organisations, including the Muslim Brotherhood (founded in Egypt in 1928) and the Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party of Syria founded in 1947. Former Nazis not only trained Islamic extremists in terror tactics, they also encouraged a nationalistic, socialist and genocidal political agenda in them.  

National Socialism (Nazis) and Arab Socialist Ba’ath Party

scotsman |  In Arabic, baath means renaissance or resurrection. The Baath Arab Socialist Party, to give the organisation its formal title, is the original secular Arab nationalist movement, founded in Damascus in the 1940s to combat Western colonial rule. But since then, the Baath Party has undergone many chameleon-like twists in belief and purpose. Even the young men in Iraq who today claim its discredited banner might be surprised at the party’s real origins. 

Those beginnings lie thousands of miles to the west, in the leafy streets and pavement cafes of the left bank of the Seine in Paris. 

Here, in the 1930s, the two founders of the Baath Party were educated at the Sorbonne University. They were middle-class Arabs from the then French colony of Syria. 

Michael Aflaq was a Greek Orthodox Christian and would become the main ideologue of Baathism, preaching freedom from Western colonialism, Arab unity and socialism. And Salah al-Din Bitar, born of a Muslim family in Damascus, would be the practical politician, later becoming prime minister of an independent Syria. 

Back home in French Syria, they became teachers by day and political intriguers by night. Early Baathist ideas were strongly fringed with fascism, as you might expect from a group of men whose ideas were formed in France in the turbulent Thirties. 

The movement was based on classless racial unity, hence the strong anti-Marxism, and on national socialism in the scientific sense of the word, such as nationalised industry and an autarkic economy serving the needs of the nation. Hence, the antipathy towards Western capitalism. 

But the rise of German fascism also played a role. Many in the Arab world saw Hitler as an ally. In 1941, the Arab world was electrified by a pro-Axis coup in Baghdad. At that time, Iraq was nominally independent but Britain maintained a strong military presence. An Arab nationalist by the name of Rashid Ali al-Kailani organised an army coup against the pro-British Iraqi monarchy and requested help from Nazi Germany. In Damascus, then a Vichy French colony, the Baath Party founders immediately organised public demonstrations in support of Rashid Ali. 

After the Second World War, the Baathists emerged as the leadership of Arab nationalism for two reasons. First, they were the only force with a coherent ideology. Second, the existing Arab political elites were blamed for the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948. Nor was Islam a competitor. For the Western-educated founders of Baathism, Islam smacked of backwardness. For the nascent Islamic fundamentalists, the Baathists were substituting Arabism for the much wider historic conquests of Muslim civilisation. But it was that pan-Arab nationalism that appealed to discontented Arab youth in the Fifties and Sixties. 

Baathism had something else to offer these youths: its tight, disciplined internal organisation which - at any rate, before the party became corrupt - stood in sharp contrast to the ramshackle nature of many Arab civil institutions. 

Like the Nazi and Communist parties, the Baath is organised through small cells in a rigid hierarchy. Members are expected to devote their life to the party. In Iraq, would-be members pass through four stages even before becoming a full member: supporter, sympathiser, nominee and trainee. Currently, there are about two million Iraqis in these categories. The system requires passing successfully a series of tests, so full members of Saddam’s Baathist organisation are the most hardened and fanatical of his supporters. 

With war looming, Saddam has extended this principle with the establishment of Fedayeen Saddam, many of whom have been in action against allied troops. The Fedayeen consists of teenage level members or novices eager to move up in the Baath hierarchy ladder. In this respect, they are very reminiscent of the Hitler Youth. 

It is estimated that there are about 40,000 full members of the Baath Party in Iraq. Each is assigned to an autonomous cell. A cell consists of three to five members, only one of whom would have a link to the next level of operation. This limits the ability to penetrate the organisation from without. This structure was born of the original clandestine and illegal life of the Baathists before they came to power. 

Is This Why Poppy Bush Abruptly Commenced Playing Grab Ass?

Counterpunch |  The legend of Camelot has had a decidedly devastating effect on the sober appreciation of US government institutions. The Kennedys were the US variant of the Royal Family and even more to the point, seemed photogenic, intellectual, glamorous.

The Kennedy family was itself the architect behind the faux aristocratic fantasy, the fiction, if you like, of an administration awash with shiny competence and brain heavy awareness.  In truth, it was essentially piloted by a medically challenged and heavily medicated figure who suffered, amongst other conditions, Addison’s disease.

President Kennedy’s rocky stewardship, as Robert Dallek notes in considerable detail, was marked by anti-anxiety agents, sleeping pill popping, stimulants, and pain killers.  The public image of a formidable, robust Cold War warrior was itself an elaborate fantasy, padded by its own conspiracy of deception.  As if realising the implications of his medical burrowing, Dallek had to reiterate the point that Kennedy was still functioning and capable and was at no risk of cocking up during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.[2]

The Kennedys were successful enough, be it through their army of ideological acolytes and publicists (think of the unquestioning pen of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.), to create the impression of knight-like purity, intellectual sagacity and calm.  To kill, then, what is noble, became an essential American trope: JFK, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr.  Behind each had to be a gargantuan conspiracy, an establishment puppeteer.

The Kennedy files that are promised for release are hardly going to rock the boat, alter the world, or change a single mind.  Historians will be able to bring out modestly updated versions of old texts; official accounts might be slightly adjusted on investigations, locations and suspects, but the conspiracy set is bound to stick with grim determination to ideas long formed and re-enforced by assumptions that refuse revision.

The Bushes and JFK.

Unified, Independent, and Sovereign

Counterpunch |  It somehow makes US Americans feel good that the “commies” finally came around and saw the light.  It’s a psychological and emotional salve that reassures the gullible, the uninformed, and the nationalists that the sacrifices on their side were not in vain.  The problem is it’s dead wrong.

3.8 million of Viet Thanh Nguyen’s fellow Vietnamese and over 58,000 US Americans did not die in a war of economic systems or ideologies.  The world is not binary and the cause for which they gave their all was not about a free market vs. a centrally planned economy.  It was about Vietnamese governing Viet Nam without continued foreign interference, occupation, and war.  Viet Nam won the war because it expelled yet another foreign invader.

Despite what embittered Vietnamese-Americans and diehard veterans who desperately want to believe, and want you to believe, that the loss of limbs, life and sanity were not in vain, it’s really that simple.

The “hardline communists” of whom you spoke, Mr. Viet, were also pragmatists – out of necessity.  They made the fateful decision to bend rather than break with the Đổi Mới (renovation) reforms of 1986, which began to bear fruit in the mid-1990s during my first visit to the country of your birth.  Viet Nam has one of the fastest growing economies in the world and is considered to be one of the great success stories of the developing world.  It also ranks 5^th among countries sending their young people to study in the US.

In spite of extremes of wealth and poverty that are characteristic of any rapidly developing economy, Viet Nam’s government has been praised for converting wealth into national well-being, i.e., helping to create a rising tide that raises all boats, certainly not a claim the US can make, where extreme wealth concentration and a resulting oligarchy are the order of the day.  (20 US Americans own as much as wealth as 50% of the population.)

The Communist Party is not a monolith, as you know.  In fact, there’s probably more diversity of opinion within this one party than in the US in which “there is only one party…  the Property Party … and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat”, as another US writer and public intellectual, Gore Vidal, once described the US political system.  I know this because Viet Nam is not a country I visit from time to time; I have lived here for over a decade.

Bún Thịt Nướng - Bún Bò Xào

theculinarychronicles |  Truth be told, most of my “mom-meal knock offs” aren’t 100% authentic. But that sure isn’t do to lack of trying! She was so quick maneuvering around the kitchen–throwing a little of bit of this and a little bit of that into pans that we could never keep up. Let’s not even begin to get into how she never measured!

So, on one recent weekend, I found myself recreating a meal that we often had growing up– Bún Thịt Nướng or Vietnamese Grilled Pork over Vermicelli Noodles. It’s not a dish that I eat (or more like “order“) often these days but when I do get the chance to enjoy it, I am reminded of how it really is a great depiction of Vietnamese cuisine. An extremely savory and mutli-layered flavor protein, combined with tons of fresh herbs, pickled veggies, cold noodles, various textures, and all enhanced by a spicy nước chấm (dipping sauce). And like many Vietnamese dishes, Bún Thịt Nướng is not difficult to make but it does take some time preparing as there are many steps and components to the dish.

I spend most of the time below describing steps to preparing the pork so if you have any questions, about the condiments in particular, feel free to shoot me an email. Since I was too lazy to pull out the grill, I ended up using my tried and true All-Clad grill pan to cook the pork. It worked fairly nicely but if you want the true authentic flavor, I’d recommend using an outdoor grill with with one of those wire mesh grilling baskets. You can pick one up for really cheap at most Asian grocery stores. You can’t beat the slightly charred flavor produced by cooking it that way. Plus, if you’re ever in Việt Nam, you’ll see that it’s the way my peeps do it.

I was quite pleased with the final dish. The warm grilled meat over the cold veggies and noodles are a perfect pairing–particular for warm summer days.

foodforfour |  This refreshing vermicelli noodles with wok-tossed beef is our family’s favourite during the summer months. Thin juicy slices of beef with beautiful flavours of lemongrass is served on a bed of cold vermicelli noodles, fresh herbs, topped with sprinkles of fried shallot and chopped peanuts, and drenched in fish sauce.

This dish is really easy to make and also very versatile. The vermicelli noodles salad and fish sauce forms the basis of many popular Vietnamese dishes as the beef can be substituted for another type of protein. Other Vietnamese vermicelli noodle dishes are served with pork skewers (bun nem nuong), grilled pork ( bun thit nuong), spring rolls (bun cha gio), sugarcane prawn (bun chao tom) and grilled fish.

The trick to preparing this dish is to prepare all your ingredients before you start to stir fry. Fish sauce dipping sauce can be made the day before to save time.

Nước Chấm

wikipedia |  Nước chấm (Vietnamese: [nɨ́ək tɕə̌m]) is a common name for a variety of Vietnamese "dipping sauces" that are served quite frequently as condiments. It is commonly a sweet, sour, salty, savoury and/or spicy sauce.

Nước mắm pha (mixed fish sauce) is the most well known dipping sauce made from fish sauce. Its simplest recipe is some lime juice, or occasionally vinegar, one part fish sauce (nước mắm), one part sugar and two parts water. Vegetarians create nước chấm chay (vegetarian dipping sauce) or nước tương (soy water) by substituting Maggi seasoning sauce for fish sauce (nước mắm).^{[citation needed]}

To this, people will usually add minced uncooked garlic, chopped or minced Bird's eye chilis, and in some instances, shredded pickled carrot/white radish and green papaya for bún. Otherwise, when having seafood, such as eels, people also serve some slices of lemongrass.

It is often prepared hot on a stove to dissolve the sugar more quickly, then cooled. The flavor can be varied depending on the individual's preference, but it is generally described as pungent and distinct, sweet yet sour, and sometimes spicy.

A Higher Order Theory of Emotional Consciousness

pnas |  Emotional states of consciousness, or what are typically called emotional feelings, are traditionally viewed as being innately programmed in subcortical areas of the brain, and are often treated as different from cognitive states of consciousness, such as those related to the perception of external stimuli. We argue that conscious experiences, regardless of their content, arise from one system in the brain. In this view, what differs in emotional and nonemotional states are the kinds of inputs that are processed by a general cortical network of cognition, a network essential for conscious experiences. Although subcortical circuits are not directly responsible for conscious feelings, they provide nonconscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences. In building the case for this proposal, we defend a modified version of what is known as the higher-order theory of consciousness. 

Much progress has been made in conceptualizing consciousness in recent years. This work has focused on the question of how we come to be aware of our sensory world, and has suggested that perceptual consciousness emerges via cognitive processing in cortical circuits that assemble conscious experiences in real-time. Emotional states of consciousness, on the other hand, have traditionally been viewed as involving innately programmed experiences that arise from subcortical circuits. 

Our thesis is that the brain mechanisms that give rise to conscious emotional feelings are not fundamentally different from those that give rise to perceptual conscious experiences. Both, we propose, involve higher-order representations (HORs) of lower-order information by cortically based general networks of cognition (GNC). Thus, subcortical circuits are not responsible for feelings, but instead provide lower-order, nonconscious inputs that coalesce with other kinds of neural signals in the cognitive assembly of conscious emotional experiences by cortical circuits (the distinction between cortical and subcortical circuits is defined in SI Appendix, Box 1). Our theory goes beyond traditional higher-order theory (HOT), arguing that self-centered higher-order states are essential for emotional experiences.

Elon Musk Thinks Humans Must Merge with Machines

libertyblitzkrieg |  To start, let’s examine some recent comments made by Elon Musk at the World Government Summit in the UAE.

ArsTechnica reports:

Humans must become cyborgs and develop a direct high-bandwidth connection with machines or risk irrelevance and obsolescence, says Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.

Musk’s latest cheery thoughts were imparted at the World Government Summit in the UAE. “Over time I think we will probably see a closer merger of biological intelligence and digital intelligence,” Musk said, according to CNBC.

The main thrust of Musk’s argument seems to hinge on the limited bandwidth and processing power of a single human being. Computers can ingest, transfer, and process gigabytes of data per second, every second, forever. Meatbags, however, are severely limited by an input/output rate—talking, typing, listening—that’s best measured in bits per second. Thus, avoid replacement by robot or artificial intelligence, we need to become machines.

By way of example, Musk spoke about self-driving cars, which will very soon start displacing jobs—lots and lots of jobs. “The most near term impact from a technology standpoint is autonomous cars … There are many people whose jobs are to drive. In fact I think it might be the single largest employer of people … We need to figure out new roles for what do those people do, but it will be very disruptive and very quick.”
Autonomous vehicles are perhaps the most visible prominence when it comes to recent developments in AI, but rest assured (or not) that we aren’t even close to AI’s capability ceiling. Current deployments of AI are quite limited in that they can only perform one or two tasks adequately—drive a car, lift a piece of steel, flip a burger—but AI research is slowly bubbling towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), which can ostensibly perform every task that a human is capable of.

Once that happens, it’s fairly safe to assume that AGI will continue to improve until, in the words of Elon Musk, it is “smarter than the smartest human on earth.”

As for how humans might achieve silicon symbiosis, the jury’s still out. Musk, according to CNBC, proposed a brain-attached high-bandwidth computer link, perhaps via neural lace. Low-speed and low-resolution EEG-based brain-computer interfaces already exist, of course, but I doubt that’s what Musk has in mind. In all likelihood, we will need to massively improve our understanding of the human brain before any such interface can be created.

Musk has been one of the individuals at the forefront of warning about the threats of artificial intelligence (AI) for a very long time, but it appears the thrust of his most recent comments center around concerns that a rapid increase in technology applied to the economy will result in a massive wave of job losses. This seems plausible to me, and I’ve called attention to it in the past. For example, in the 2015 post, Chinese Company Moves to Replace 90% of its Workforce with Robots,

Language Shapes Reality

Vox |  The film’s premise hinges on the idea, shared by many linguists and philosophers of language, that we do not all experience the same reality. The pieces of it are the same — we live on the same planet, breathe the same air — but our perceptions of those pieces shift and change based on the words and grammar we use to describe them to ourselves and each other.

For instance, there is substantial evidence that a person doesn’t really see (or perhaps "perceive") a color until their vocabulary contains a word, attached to meaning, that distinguishes it from other colors. All yellows are not alike, but without the need to distinguish between yellows and the linguistic tools to do so, people just see yellow. A color specialist at a paint manufacturer, however, can distinguish between virtually hundreds of colors of white. (Go check out the paint chip aisle at Home Depot if you’re skeptical.)

Or consider the phenomenon of words in other languages that describe universal feelings, but can only be articulated precisely in some culture. We might intuitively "feel" the emotion, but without the word to describe it we’re inclined to lump the emotion in with another under the same heading. Once we develop the linguistic term for it, though, we can describe it and feel it as distinct from other shades of adjacent emotions.

eigenvalues: influence of hyparchic folding via the backward arrow of time...,

parabola |  For thousands of years people have wondered about creative power. All this world around us was believed to have been made and did not just happen. Yet humans themselves make things. Are we then creators within a meta-Creation or mere “apes of god”? A primary realm of experience in which these and far more profound questions played out was in the making of words, or poetry. The authenticity of our poetry had to be granted us. This was the origin of the idea of the muse. The word itself has origins associated with mind, deriving from the proto-Indo-European root men “to think.” 

Mousika, from which we get our word “music,” was performed metrical speech. The speaking of verse was once the recognized form of intelligence and Plato had to argue it should be superseded by philosophical discourse (prose one might say) to open up to sceptical enquiry. This had vast implications since the very meters of verse were considered gods. (The secularization of language was completed only about five hundred years ago with the emergence of the form we call “sentence.”) Practically, for example in Norse poetry, there were different meters for different purposes, such as Fornyrðislag or “meter of ancient words” and Malahattr or “meter of speeches”.  By following and excelling in the forms, the bards were in tune, we could say, with the gods. The idea of intelligence and even “sacredness” residing in language itself rather than in people (capable only of temporary ableness) came down through the ages to Giambattista Vico and James Joyce and continues in modern commentators such as R. Calasso and George Steiner.

The making of verse and other manifestations of the Muses were expressions of making as such, including the making of the world and even evolution (in its various senses over the ages) once identified by the idea of the demiurge as in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. The demiurge became the arch-villain in Gnostic writings because he was seen as tied to the material world and creating a “prison-reality” such as depicted in the film The Matrix.

In many cultures the role of the demiurge was symbolized by the potter. Pottery and its art were deeply revered and appear to go back at least to Palaeolithic times. The abstract idea of it is that the demiurge has to use already existing material to fashion a world in contrast to the higher creation of ex nihilo, “out of nothing.”

On a personal level, the early Greeks had the idea of the daimon. It is mentioned in the Symposium that Socrates had problems with his daimon because it would indicate dangers but never tell him what to do–which is rather as we picture the unconscious these days.

R.B. Onians, who comments extensively on the terminology of early Greek thought, avers that the daimon had a personal physical location in the head and was associated with sex. It was only later, around the time of Plato, that the idea of thought originating in the brain was entertained. It is possible then to see the daimon in the head as a placement of creativity beyond the conscious mind. Onians traces the image into later times and links it with the appearance of energy around the head that became the “halo” of sacred individuals. The daimon as sexual and creative was also considered “irrational” and then became the “evil” demon. There are a myriad of evolutes of the idea including its translation in Roman times into the term “genius.” This very multiplicity of meaning is essential to its meaning. Just consider that special people (such as Lamia the queen of Libya) could become a daimon. Philip Pullman turned daimons into animals in his novels.

The people we imagined around their camp fire look to their artificial blaze and cannot see the deeper light in the “black” that surrounds them. Creativity has to be beyond consciousness. Yet, only in the world of consciousness can we seem to have choice and will. In the practical world–such as in industry or in psychotherapy–we strive to find ways of co-operation between the conscious and trans-conscious realms.  Nobody knows what happens at the critical moment which makes a process creative; consciousness is always somewhat downstream from reality. When Christ said while on the Cross, “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” it was the declaration of the central human predicament.

Commonly, people have located higher intelligences in the atmosphere or inside the sun. A more interesting “location” is the future, or at least in some order of greater time than our own moment. Until quite recently these intelligences were located in the “far-past” as in the days of creation. Bennett places them in a special time he called the hyparchic future, a phrase which means what is ahead of us capable of altering present time. Such a quasi-scientific view carries a sense of dealing with the higher intelligence and ourselves as a system. 

There is an aspect of all this that is mathematical and technical with no particular stake in spirituality. This is to look into process or action when they are self-reflective. An action that feeds into itself is infinite and requires no entity to “do” it but will exhibit what are called eigenvalues that appear as entities (that can be named). Speculatively, then, higher order operations or actions will incur higher beings. One of the most intriguing speculations in modern physics is that the very existence of the universe requires a multitude of what are called “Boltzmann observers.” And, as far as the reality of “I” is concerned there is a parallel in the singularity at the heart of a black hole in that it remains uncertain whether it can ever be observed.

transhumans about the bidnis of enginnering biomes, as well...,

MIT |  No matter where you are, you are surrounded by your microbiome—the complex biological system of more than 100 trillion microorganisms on the human body, in airwaves, and in every environment.

“You may not know it, but you’re walking around with two pounds of microbes on you,” says Bernat Olle SM ’05, MBA ’07, PhD ’07. “But only recently have scientists discovered how important and how useful they can be.”

Research in the field of the microbiome is still in its early stages, but it has already shown that microbes play important roles in metabolism, digestion, and even mood. And Olle is one of a growing group of engineers focusing on this area.

“Modern habits have been to clean up and sterilize everything—make it clean as possible,” he says. “But we’re starting to find out this might not be a good idea—and we’re abusing anti-microbial chemicals. These microbial exposures can help develop key human functions.”

Olle is co-founder and COO of Vedanta Biosciences, a Boston-based startup that researches interactions between the human microbiome and the immune system. He spoke to Slice of MIT at the 2015 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive, where he was part of a three-person panel that discussed the benefits of microbes and the impact they could have on medicine in the future.

the ineffable lucidity of school in a matinee..., accept no substitutes!

guardian | “I’ve always loved films that approach sound in an impressionistic way and that is an unusual approach for a mainstream blockbuster, but I feel it’s the right approach for this experiential film,” said Nolan. “Many of the film-makers I’ve admired over the years have used sound in bold and adventurous ways. I don’t agree with the idea that you can only achieve clarity through dialogue. Clarity of story, clarity of emotions — I try to achieve that in a very layered way using all the different things at my disposal — picture and sound.”

One scene in which some viewers struggled to hear dialogue featured Michael Caine’s character revealing key information to Jessica Chastain’s from his hospital bed. “We are following the emotional state of Jessica’s character as she starts to understand what he’s been saying,” said Nolan. “Information is communicated in various different ways over the next few scenes. That’s the way I like to work; I don’t like to hang everything on one particular line.”

eight years ago I told Cobb exactly what would happen in iraq after the u.s. pullout...,

How destabilized could Iraq become after an American pullout?

When you peel the rhetorical/propaganda onion and get to the essence of what the PNAC crew has unleashed - I'd say GAME OVER..., cept for the Ayatollahs counting and consolidating their winnings.

Solipsism (what a splendid term for ignorance, arrogance, and stupidity) done sealed the fate of this new american century...,

Islam declares in unequivocal terms that the real cause of our miseries is not economical. It holds that economic disorder is not the cause but a direct effect of moral degradation. Character building and development of moral health are the only remedies man is in need of. Without them social, political, economic or any other reform is simply unthinkable. Moral health is the master-key that opens all gates of progress and prosperity. It is the only power that can chase away all injustices, jealousies and the causes of conflicts and bad blood. To have a clear idea of the method we must know the real position of man.

The ultimate objective of Islam is to abolish the lordship of man over man and bring him under the rule of Allah (One God). To stake everything Muslims have - including their lives - to achieve this purpose is called Jihad. The Prayer, Fasting, Almsgiving and Pilgrimage, all prepare the Believers for military Jihad. But as they have long since forgotten this objective as well as the mission entrusted to them, and because all acts of worship have been reduced to their spiritual contents – they have gone from ‘the top to the bottom’ of world’s leadership.

This brother was on a roll..., too bad he doesn't know about the prosperity pimps infesting the black church, then he'd really have an example of abject debasement and the extreme reaches of subhuman apostasy that reduce ones moral stature from the heights to the degenerate bowels of world leadership. Drug along like so much helpless and impotent intestinal flotsam and jetsam in the belly of this big blundering beast.

In the end, which will be in about 10 or 15 years, the Muslim world and the rest of the world will iinevitably face the fact that the islamic fascists are for the most part, illiterate and incapable of marshalling the military force required for their vision of dominance. Their ambition is, by definition, that of a political play against the center, which will hold. The Arab states won't stand for it, nor will any other. They will be mercilessly crushed for the good of Islam and the region.

I say that it is impossible for nationalism to be toppled by these groups. Your boy is trippin hard when he says:

    Once and for all we better face it. Arabs are far from being at their very best if they are operating in the format of a ‘national state’. The Arab soldier may lack the necessary will to die for an idiotic flag. Both in the case of Saddam’s Iraq or Nasser’s Egypt, once within a conflict, a growing gap reveals itself between the charismatic, assertive, far over the top demagogue leader and some serious malfunctioning performance in the battlefield. Unlike the American, British, French, and Israeli soldiers who have proved throughout history to have some real tendency towards collective suicide for some empty promises shaped as ‘ideology’, the Arab platoon is slightly behind in exhibiting this kind of idiotic national patriotic militant zeal. He may as well be just too clever for those kind of deadly games.

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere. The Arab platoon is a myth on the same level as the 'politics' of the 'Arab street'.

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere.

In the course of your theoretical examination of the unusual properties/characteristics of virtual social networks - haven't you ever stumbled into big chunks of military operations research on netwar?

I mean really, the first time I ever encountered William S. Lind was during the late 80's as I pored over military operations research on network security. The theoretical constructs undergirding assymetrical warfare and hacking have gone hand-in-glove ever since. 

Theoretical synergy aside, perhaps it is only the direct experience of two or three people rooting a global corporate computing infrastructure in a matter of hours - that is capable of fully preparing one for appreciating the emergent/cascading effects of masterful exploitation of systemic vulnerabilities in large, massively interdependant constructs?

There's that.  As well, the question of expense.  The fact that the military requires 8 times the U.S. per capita expenditure of petroleum to operate - ungodly debt runups to enrich the weaponeers - and lastly the political capital squandered in maintaining the just-so-stories to mask unjust imperial aggression.

It would be bad enough if the PNAC-ians were winning.., but their strategies and tactics are vintage WW-I, and they're getting their hats handed to them with no end in sight.

In a contemporary war of attrition, in the cheap petroleum fin d'siecle, I'll bet on the hackers with a centuries old modus operandi of social networking that has proven massively successful at standing the test of time.

I concede that. You are right with regard to the efficiencies of the cellular and networked. But those things work because the individual participants are modern - they must buy into the concept of interchangeability. Essentialists cannot make networks work, and it is the fundamental illiteracy of Jihadists and their audience that will cause them to fail to exploit such capabilities.

The educated, modern Arab and Muslim world is under no threat from neocons or 'zionists'. When islamic bombs start exploding in Dubai the way they do in Palestine, then we'll see the world do, once again, what they did for Kuwait. Jihadis will be routed like Chechens.

Essentialists cannot make networks work, and it is the fundamental illiteracy of Jihadists and their audience that will cause them to fail to exploit such capabilities.

Surely you jest? Either that, or you haven' been in an engineering classroom anytime over the last 20+ years!!!  Cause the very last thing in the world that the jihadists are is illiterate, innumerate, or technically backwards. The president of Iran gots a PhD in engineering, what's G-Dub got?  I mean seriously.., you know good and gotdamn well them Ivy League skins he picked up in beer drinking and hell raising aren't worth the vellum they're printed on. ROTFLMBAO!!!!

The educated, modern Arab and Muslim world is under no threat from neocons or 'zionists'.

Oh yes it is. Iraq was highly educated, relatively highly modern, and no more scandalously oppressive than let's saaaaay...., China!  The real and present danger posed by the PNAC crew is that their catastrophic mis-steps have already undermined the tenuous at best hold of middle-eastern elites.

This is precisely why those same elites have done a 180. 

At the onset of the Lebanese crisis, Arab governments, starting with Saudi Arabia, slammed Hezbollah for recklessly provoking a war, providing what the United States and Israel took as a wink and a nod to continue the fight.

Now, with hundreds of Lebanese dead and Hezbollah holding out against the vaunted Israeli military for more than two weeks, the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is surging behind the organization, transforming the Shiite group's leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, into a folk hero and forcing a change in official statements.

Cobb said...

I am but I'm not paying attention to official statements two weeks into a war. That's not telling me anything but the opinions of third parties. If Iran is sending fighters, that's something I care to know about. If the Syrian army is on high mobilization, that's news I can use. But the tide of public opinion across the Arab world is not. Who is showing up with rifles and orders, that's what I'm talking about.

Today there is no consensus about the sentiments of the Lebanese. When are we going to see a poll that breaks down Druze, Christian and Muslim opinion in Lebanon? Nasrallah is acting like Lebanon belongs to him and all his apologists say so too. I doubt it.

Furthermore, there are no reliable accounts of Hezbollah troop strength or casualties. As one person noted at Drezner, there hasn't been a rocket sent Haifa in two days. Does that mean they're out of rockets or shifting tactics. Israel is calling up 30k troops for training, does that mean they are escalating or losing too many on the front?

Bottom line - this war is far from over or decisive and all the opinion about it means nothing until some decisive battles are fought. That has yet to occur.

Hezbollah holds out for two weeks and that's a victory? Only for fluff journalists at CNN and Al Jazeera, but not in the real world.

Additionally, we both know this isn't about Amindinijad vs Bush. Even so, what's more crazy, snorting coke or taking hostages? This is about the willingness of an educated populace to support the direction of its government. And if you count Crazy A. as a jihadist, then we'll see how much tax and oil revenue he can collect from a repressed Iranian middle class.

As for the long term effects of hackers.. the black hats know little more than the white hats. When we're living in an age where people prefer the chaos of anarchy over the stupidity of conformity, all of the Jihadi dreams will come true. And then they'll enact Sharia and try to be the powers that be. I think it's un-bloody likely that smart people will stick with the Taliban template - they'd rather have Bush, Citibank and Walmart.

Aight, back to the high-level binnis at hand..., (bear with me, this does come back around to Islam and what happens when cruel, puerile PNAC-ians beat on the global hornets nest and morally indecent TFM's support it)

You've seen my orthodox interpretation of Blackness as interpersonal communion - as far I'm concerned - it is the quintessential disambiguation of the culture/concept. (when considered from a social networking theoretical perspective, it's not a simple statement of the obvious, though that's not the angle of attack that led me to the interpretation) You're also aware of my conviction that the zenith of old school Blackness instantiated a moral dimension and value that is unparallelled in the history of this country, possibly the history of the world. (the latter is a debatable contention - the former is not - because only within Blackness have American ideals been exemplified).

After political civil rights were obtained, brand "Black" was at its moral zenith.  MLK began aggressively wedding the moral qualities the core social capital of American Blackness to the cause of uplifting the poor and opposing American interventionism in Vietnam.  This was clearly an archetypal Christian imperative - and one which I've come to believe not only signed his death warrant, but also shaped the way in which subsequent political and media propaganda have been directed at and influenced both perceptions of Blackness and the behaviour of lots of Black folks.

A concerted political and  media effort has been underway for decades to undercut the superlative moral value with which Blackness was once imbued.  It's obvious in the code words used by the post Southern Strategy GOP. While the authors of the Southern Strategy - such as Pat Buchanan - claim that "morality" not "race" was the chief selling point of the GOP in the south, I am convinced that that question of morality had as much to do with wresting control of the moral high-ground away from Blackness and reasserting it in the authoritarian and moralizing terms that have been established within the Evangelical base.


It's not even debateable whether MLK's Christianity had any semblance or relationship to the kind of insane garbage preached and practiced by John Hagee and others of his ilk.

Now, the current state of Blackness has been profoundly degraded - in large measure - because our formerly great interpersonal communion has succumbed to the withering effects of Americaness.  We've lost the self-conscious moral compass articulated by MLK (post civil rights), and great efforts have been made to ensure that we never recover that degree of moral self-consciousness.  (I'm getting back to the social networks, moral value, and long-term potential theme here) You stated that;

There is no precedent in Africa, Asia or the Americas for a non-national military force to ultimately perservere. The Arab platoon is a myth on the same level as the 'politics' of the 'Arab street'.

From a social networks perspective - you've misjudged the long-term power/value of Al-Islam and wagered on the long-term power of the relative newcomer to the game, the nation-state.  My contention, very simply, is that in terms of its collective self-consciousness Al-Islam had been seriously degraded along its core competencies by the emergence of Trans-European Protectorate nation states as colonial powers and their installation of puppet elites to run their artificial and imposed national constructs. 

Blackness has been similarly degraded in the post-Civil Rights era by subordination to Americaness, i.e., the installation of puppet Black elites in nominal positions of authority but with no genuine constituent fueled authority.  However, the post-colonial era has seen the serial decline of nation states - cause as you know - the sun surely does set on the contemporary British Empire. 

The PNAC-ians have blundered on some very very fundamental levels.  On the trivially obvious level, by ignoring Santayana/Powell in Iraq.  They simply didn't learn from the British historical example and plumb phukked up. 

From a more sophisticated perspective, had they been technocrats rather than ideologues, they might have understood what kind of sleeping giant they threatened to activate/vivify by continuing unjustifiable and disproportionate aggression against increasing numbers of Muslims.  Do you genuinely care to try to measure the "enterprise-wide" assymetrical military potential of an angered, self-conscious, and militarized Islam?

Also, consider the fact that Sheiks and Imams have actual constituencies which empower them.  These are not like simple negro agitators with no actual constituents and no autonomous means of political and economic support.

IMOHO - the Muslim agents provacateur of these crises understand exactly what it is they're seeking to activate. Ultimately, I believe they'll prove successful because the folks in charge on the nationstate side have proven themselves completely soft-headed and utterly contemptful toward soft targets.

It's even possible that the domestic non-agenda of the PNAC-ians will have the same vivifying effect on latent collective Black self-consciousness. One would at least hope so...,

Cobb said...

That's a lot of dimensions to chew on at once so I'm only going to spit back a little bit.

1) Your global hornet's nest is a bunch of arrogant rock throwers who don't have the decency to fight as men but instead hide behind women and children. They haven't developed enough to form a nation and seek to hijack the one they're in without the least of consent of the people they would govern, were they capable of that. But even so have demonstrated they are determined to be more bringers of destruction to Israel than protectors of their 'own'.