Marilyn Monroe in London and Continuous Performance Improvement
This is an actual story.
I was the Insurance Broker House EVP for the world’s global oil corporation number two and got asked a delicate official favor from the Client.
To give you an idea of this piece of business, the Client was paying cash US$ 100 million for insured and re-insured premiums over their fixed and liquid assets. The latter via a major and reputable London Reinsurance Brokerage House.
So I went and met with the Worldwide CFO of the Client, and he said to me,
“…Mr. Agostini, we want to commission you to give Mr. Stewart Johnston a last warning … Their services to us either dramatically change to satisfy our needs and specifications, or we terminate them, not you … Please, take a plane to London and advise Mr. Johnston on our behalf …”
I said to Worldwide CFO of the Client, “…done…”
I made arrangements immediately to go to my world’s favorite metropolis, where I have many, many real-world accounts to comment about in some other due time.
The first day I took those magnificent breakfasts they give you in London, in which the mineral water is replaced for the sparkles of Dom Perignon.
London is a place in which I like to walk around, so I decided to go to Stewart’s office by walking, with little knowledge about the address direction.
So, I started my promenade and saw a gentleman dressed too informal and too bohemian and asked him,
“…Sir, Do you know how I can get to this Company’s head office?…”
And he replied, “…I have nothing to do with the financial systems or those opaque mates at Loyd’s of London …”, with huge disgust.
Not too far away, there was an impeccable gentleman who could be my grandfather and duly dressed up and he, all of the greatest sudden, said to me with politeness,
“…Sir, I know exactly where you want to go…Their office is so large and important that they have a Tube (Subway) station for themselves…!
In effect, I followed through his directions and I got there. I noted, as expected, that the head-office of the prominent Reinsurance Brokerage House was luxurious with some very nice frescos all over.
I asked for Mr. Stewart Johnston’s floor and office number and got there right away.
Up to this moment, Stewart had not the slightest idea of my out-the-blue visit.
Then, I was welcome by his gorgeous secretary. She was a beautiful blonde lady, dressed up ready to go Hail the Queen, probably in her mid twenties. She got me a nice seat right away and asked me if I wanted to drink tea or coffee.
She was a bit disappointed that I picked tea over coffee, considering that I was coming from the Western Hemisphere and not Far Asia.
Then, she advised me that Mr. Johnston will be meeting with me within five minutes. She seems friendly and entered a little small-talk conversation that went beautifully until she tried to give me a marked lecture on the pronunciation usage of the words “either” and “neither.”
As you know, in the English-speaking cosmos, each of those terms have two legitimate pronunciation, but she only preferred only one. Nobody has ever dared to correct my writing or speaking before. This was time #1.
Out of that I felt that the secretary whose “buttock” (and that of her employer), I came to save was giving me a lecture on diction.
Once the “master class” finished, I sat down with Stewart Johnston, who I had know for over a decade, and a dialogue exchange went like this:
Stewart (to Andres): Hello Andres? How are you?
Andres (to Stewart): Fine thank you, Stewart.
Stewart (to Andres): What are you doing in London?
Andres (to Stewart): I come to London twice a year every year but I am here to give you a very important message on behalf of our Multinational Client.
Stewart (to Andres): Really? Can you please tell me about it?
Andres (to Stewart): Certainly! You know that the Client assesses every form of performance and they have and utilize “performance indicators” for everything you and I do.
Stewart (to Andres): Indeed! And how much progress are we making?
Andres (to Stewart): Well, Stewart, as per the Client’s Worldwide CFO, your company’s performance is so low that merits the termination of your services unless you do something dramatic to improve your services.
Stewart (to Andres): Interesting. What can we exactly improve, Andres?
Andres (to Stewart): Very well. Here is list with the breakdown of ten (10) Reinsurance Indemnity Payment Checks that have months of delay and that they need to cash on. Make those payments immediately or please say goodbye to your U.S.$ 100-million account. It is up to you, Stewart. I forewarned that I have researched my sources and they mean to decapitate your company quickly.
Stewart (to Andres): I will look into this immediately and see which payments can be made right away.
Andres (to Stewart): Please make all of those payments the soonest.
Stewart (to Andres): Okay, Andres, I will take care of this now. Is there anything else?
Andres (to Stewart): Well, when I came into your office’s antechamber I was received but your beautiful and most-imprudent secretary. She gave me a cup of nice black Chinese tea and a dramatic lecture on how I should pronounce the words “either” and “neither.”
Stewart (to Andres): She did that? She is unconditionally terminated as of now, before you leave this office.
MODAL: When you are making millionaire commissions over 14 years, whether you are a guy or gal, do not EVER be so imprudent to be inconvenient to the person (savior) who has crossed the Atlantic to save you a U.S.$ 100-million account and your job, stupid. ABSOLUTE END.
Of course, Ebola can be stopped: By rigorously restricting locomotion for the population. But this presupposes heavy support networks. At the present moment in time, this strategy is still feasible. However, since the disease is spreading exponentially in both number and area, very soon the resources of aid-giving nations will be overtaxed. Then the Big Dying from Ebola will be accompanied by the Big Dying from hunger and thirst due to restricted locomotion without the necessary support services.
There exist institutions that could help. But they all do not know what “dying twice” means: FIRST: from having become untouchable and unapproachable; SECOND: from thirst, hunger and the pangs of the disease which are intolerably ugly and stenching. Mothers do not mind. But where are all the mothers for the dying? Even Jesus’ mother was there at the cross.
Since the disease is doubling every 3 weeks (only at some places the rate is slowed due to restricted locomotion), someone must make a “war plan.” I am sure some wonderful organizations have already done so, but they must join forces, resources and above all: information. One joint plan must be negotiated, maybe under the auspices of the Vatican?, or the CDC?, or Castroland? It need not be the money-stripped United Nations. Only: SOON!
I have a deep respect for the aid worker who coined the phrase “dying twice”: You are an angel. Without you, we – the world – would still be blind.
Terra Forming Venus & Mars by leveraging Asteroids Inspired by: Lifeboat Foundation
Both Mars and Venus can be terra-formed to provide Earth-like gravity and atmospheres; Venus with an effort of about 100 years to terra-form the atmosphere, and Mars with an effort of about 2,000 years to terra-form the atmosphere. These are both potentially realized through the use of systems of solar sails. Asteroids provide many of the resources needed to seed related development.
Conceptual Space Elevator
Mars is not the closest match to Earth within reach, Venus is. Venus is 90% of the mass of Earth and can hold an atmospheric pressure that can support human life after terra-forming the atmosphere.
Mars has 38% of the gravity of Earth and will never be able to support the atmospheric pressure needed to sustain human life without pressurized suits. The current atmosphere on Mars is like living at 125,000 feet above sea level here on Earth and has very limited resources in the atmosphere. The Sun continues to whisk away the atmosphere, and there is no protection from ionizing radiation. On Mars we will be required to live in pressurized caverns and bio-spheres to sustain life.
Mining and Processing on Mars needs Space Elevator
So why not just live in ventilated caverns here on Earth?
Mars is needed as an absolute necessity to test Space Elevator deployment before deploying a space elevator from space. The following details a potential deployment methodology that is ecosystem friendly, provides for recycling precious resources, and provides low-cost interplanetary transport.
The on-going Venus missions can remain in space and use the space-built harvesting of resources to provide sustainable life-long enterprise in space for hundreds of thousands of people. People who provide services and resource processing over the 100 years of terra-forming Venus, and the 2,000 years needed for terra-forming Mars. Provided the total system proposed, billions of people will support diverse industries related to the terra-forming of Venus, then Mars, then … the building of other planets.
There are methods that can be developed to fraction larger planets into smaller planets, so that our solar system can potentially sustain 10 or more Earth-like planets in our Solar system. All without using fossil fuels for propulsion. Hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, methane, and other hydrocarbons used and converted to support diversity of life instead of wasted dilution as fuel byproducts lost and polluting space. Pollutants that cause frictional drag when a spacecraft impacts the pollutants and causing a change in course of spacecraft and asteroids and the needed extra fuel to compensate, and more fuel pollutants causing more expenditure of fuel.
Terra-forming Venus from Space
Venus can have its’ atmosphere terra-formed from space. The same technology to terra-form the Venus atmosphere creates both active Weather Control for Venus and Earth. The same structures can be used for solar sails to transfer people and resources between the inner planets and provide maintenance transport. The same systems can help provide for terra-watts of solar energy based utilities. All without fossil fuels.
Currently the atmosphere of Venus is very hot at the surface (molten lead temperatures), is poisonous to humans, and has a surface pressure about 90 times that of Earth. This can ALL feasibly be terra-formed to Earth-like conditions from space.
Can be cooled by Solar Sails
By creating large systems of solar sails, these solar energy based transports use large rotating sails that can also be used as “shade structures”. By positioning the shade structures between the Sun and Venus in elliptical orbits, this cools the atmosphere. As cooling continues, condensing vapors rain down upon the planet surface and related chemical interactions create systems of molecules on the surface.
These systems of molecules if strategically manipulated, provide the eventual materials to support vegetation and microbial life. Through pervasive influence, an Earth-like ecosystem is produced.
Being able to terra-form from space is desirable because of the costs and dangers related to transport to and from the surface.
Catalysts and energy differentials of the Venus atmosphere at different phases while cooling can convert the CO2 to oxygen and hydrocarbons. The atmospheres of both Mars and Venus are 97% CO2, but Venus has more atmospheric components to sustain catalyst based conversions.
The conversion and cooling processes lower the atmosphere pressures to designed final pressures and related atmospheric chemical distributions.
There are better systems, but these just support an example.
Space elevator Deployed from Space
Terra-forming Venus does not mean that Mars is not an important initial pathway to start terra-forming planetoids. Mars is critical for testing the viability of deploying Space Elevators. Mars has an atmosphere (thin) and significant gravity (but much less than Earth) that can be used to test the stresses and predicted nature of all parts to attain a stable space deployed space elevator. Until the Space Elevator deployed from space is tested on Mars, absolutely no one on Earth should want an asteroid steered anywhere near close to Earth.
Mars has the potential of having rich ore deposits and mineral compounds that do not exist here on Earth. For processing that needs gravity to facilitate processes, Mars may provide a unique environment in that region of space to support processing and manufacturing. But as yet, there are no fuels available on Mars to get off the planet. The depletion of Earth’s resources are presently necessary to be able to escape the Mars gravity to return to Earth.
The mining of the Moons of Saturn and Jupiter during the process of merging them with Mars is facilitated by producing space deployed Space Elevators. Nano-tube cables produced in space that are attached between two shaped and sized asteroids. The system is precisely rotated on a controlled trajectory so that one asteroid is controllably lowered to anchor the space elevator tether. A cable climbing tractor then controllably raises and lowers materials to and from planetoids.
The building of space elevators using this process may become the initial main industry for early missions. The combination of a planet that has numerous space elevators (every country; or shared by several small countries) and the low-cost solar sail structures described, provides an inexpensive means for almost any country to carry-on interplanetary space-based commerce.
To prevent contributing to, or otherwise disturbing the natural wobble of the Earth over long periods, the positioning of space elevators needs to be logically determined in advance. As economic systems change, small countries not previously thought to have the potential to engage in a space-based economy may purchase a space elevator. To prevent global ecological destruction of micro-ecosystems (diversity of life that contributes to overall resistance to pervasive pathogens), a balancing in support of our stable wobble must consider potentially positioning space elevators in locations not intended to be used, to position a space elevator where it is desired.
Delivering rich ore asteroids to the surface of the Earth
A slightly different version of the space elevator provides a means of delivering and extracting large masses from Earth’s gravity. In largely the same manner that a space elevator is created using the Bola method of deploying space elevators, large amounts of mass can both be deposited and extracted without the use of fossil fuels.
A heavier built carbon nano-tube cable delivers an ore-rich asteroid to Earth as an anchor. The tether is transferred from the anchor to the payload to be extracted from Earth. The near-orbit tethered mass in space has a latching/hinge mechanism where another carbon nano-tube cable that extends out into space at some angle from tangent to the Earth’s atmosphere to a far-orbit mass with twice the total mass of both the near-orbit tethered mass and anchor. At the mid-point between the far-orbit and near-orbit tethered masses, is a latch/hinge structure that a larger asteroid attaches to and pulls with increasing velocity (not sudden stresses) both the anchor payload and far-orbit masses along a trajectory out toward a delivery destination. The mid-point attached acceleration method is necessary to prevent catastrophic failure forces from building up during the extraction process.
This method of using asteroids and solar sail structures provides for low-cost interplanetary commerce.
Extending commerce to the resources of the Kuiper Belt.
The Kuiper Belt has significant volitile gas resources. Volitile elements are frozen. There are vast resources of water and hydrocarbons to use for terra-forming Venus, Mars and other planets that we build. There is presently 20 to 200 times as much known mass in the Kuiper Belt as there is in the Asteroid Belt. These resources provide elements needed to support biological life.
Another reason for providing a presence in the Kuiper Belt is to detect masses on a trajectory toward Earth. We want masses to be on a trajectory that spirals into Earth’s orbit around the Sun so we can harvest resources, not tangent to Earth’s orbit where an impact causes potential global extinction from impact on Earth. The Kuiper Belt is expansive. By having a presence we can not just detect impending events, we can cultivate them into beneficial mining outcomes.
Automated systems of solar sails can systematically guide thousands of objects on trajectories that will eventually form an orbit around the Sun between Venus and Earth. However, because of the reduced photon pressures from the Sun the time needed is much longer. But, tend to stop the orbit of anything around the Sun and it will start moving toward the Sun. The timing and trajectory within the complex gravitational fields of the solar system scheduled so that the trajectory and orbit entered never intersects Earth’s orbit around the Sun.
Materials stored in its own orbit around the Sun between Venus and Earth. Accelerate the orbit to deliver it to Earth, slow the orbit to deliver it to Venus.
Ethics related to the deployment of Space Elevators
Space Elevator strands are quite small for human eye detection at a distance. The extreme hazards for flight safety and related economic upheaval related to space-based trade, must be taken into account and planned for in advance. Terrorists, either from intellectually deprived puppets of economic aggressors (undeclared economic coalitions that instigate destruction for self-serving purposes), or countries at war in dispute of access to natural resources, the danger is that a single person has the capacity to disrupt an entire nations primary source of economic sovereignty.
See http://eliminate-all-corruption.pbworks.com to see how global society can both Maximize Freedoms and at the same time Maximize Security, not having to sacrifice one to have the other. To include providing an environment to maximize economic development globally.
Realize that all science and technology based products are transitory; they only exist until something better comes along. Doors based upon latches and hinges have largely gone unchanged for many thousands of years. But with the potential tools of space-time manipulation at our near-future door step, the potential is that housing and doors may take on a form that is an entirely different form of technology; will producing living environments where doors and housing are not like anything we can presently reference physically. Perhaps a living space directly accessible without having to physically travel from anywhere. Transportation similarly may become unnecessary as physical movements evolve with other technological capabilities.
These changes in technology largely motivate the directions we choose to socially participate with others (money) to support development of related technologies.
Money is a social tool that provides the ability to efficiently connect resources and opportunities to act toward diverse pathways of development. Evolving along a broadly sustainable pathway toward a set of desirable outcomes, the social processes incrementally change and use technology to generate the related economic processes; i.e. interconnected loops of cash flows.
For most, this is the primary importance of ethics, to broadly promote a sharing of resources and opportunities that overall deliver vast systems of mutually beneficial outcomes; global economic and time pervasive prosperity. This is the common short-sighted purpose of ethical consideration.
The longer-sighted purpose is to “Broadly promote the diversity of life”; only through diversity does plague-like conditions meet local barriers to prevent broad destruction (extinction events).
Space Elevators provide the opportunities to both create sustainable environments for humans, but also other species. If we focus upon creating environments just for human habitats, then a plague in the form of economic depression, biological virus, genetically evolved sterility .… will eventually cause the extinction of humans; in the not so distant future. If we ourselves desire to survive, and/or evolve, then required is that the environments we create are also broadly diverse to include every known form of life that has its’ boundaries limited by resources and synergy with other diverse forms of life.
Mining the Asteroids between Mars and Jupiter
The total mass of the asteroid belt is about 1/35th the size of our Moon. About 1/2 the total mass of the asteroid belt are in the four largest asteroids called Ceres, Vesta, Pallas, and Hygiea. Most asteroids are one of three groups in composition: carbonaceous (C-type), silicate (S-type), and metal-rich (M-type). These are the primary purpose of
Terra-forming Mars from Space
Mars can be terra-formed to become an Earth-like eco-system, but it takes a more involved effort. With Earth’s present atmospheric components, the pressure on Mars would be too sparse to both prevent ionized losses of water introduced, and provide the pressures needed by humans to survive without a pressurized suit. By maneuvering three of the largest Moons of Jupiter (Ganymede, Europa, and Calisto) to merge with Mars on specific trajectories that incrementally bring Mars to a new sustainable orbit around the Sun, enough mass can be added to Mars to provide an atmospheric pressure needed to sustainably support human life and the related ecosystems. Moving Moons sounds far fetched, but the continuous force applied by solar sails to precisely cause a track through the gravity distributions imposed on the Moons, and not just the dominant influences (a form of finite element analysis), provides a practical method by which the Moons can be accelerated along intentional trajectories over long periods of time.
The Moons due to the gravitational fluctuations of Jupiter have sufficient friction to produce heat; and water is present. Therefore it is possible that life may be present. If so than this form of terra-forming is not ethically plausible because the evolution of those life forms and their potential future will be extinguished by the act of merging the Moon with Mars. There are other related ethical issues to consider.
Planetary bodies are considered sacred by many cultures, and the ethics related to inhabiting those planetary bodies is an ethical issue. Merging them becomes an even greater social issue.
But given a finding that life does not exist on the Moons, then as mass is merged with Mars and the orbit is changed to reflect a stable new orbit, then the crushing of those large masses together creates heat that must dissipate before providing a habitable environment for life. The act of crushing the last of three Moons, the water-rich Moon, with Mars is to produce an atmosphere. The crushing exposes core materials of all three Moons and Mars.
This process will produce a jagged landscape that will produce planetary quakes for millions of years. By reversing the process the non-uniform gravity of Jupiter can be used to accelerate the process of annealing the planetary structures. By moving Mars to orbit Jupiter, as Moons are merged in with Mars the gravitational forces can anneal the merged structures to largely stabilize them before the intentionally unstable orbit casts Mars out toward a new orbit around the Sun. The solar sail systems guiding the path of the now larger Mars to seek a stable orbit. The now larger Mars that is about the same size as Venus will have far less quakes and terra-forming the atmosphere provides the components needed for using catalysts to produce the needed balances in atmospheric and soil components.
Needed calculation will need to be done to determine the losses in atmosphere and chemical make-up due to the processes involved and the interaction with Jupiter’s annealing gravity influences. All of the incremental gravitational interactions of all solar system gravitational and electromagnetic influences will need to be modeled for millions of years so that long term stability is supported during all translations in mass.
The total process has continuous opportunities to harvest unique resources to use in support of the business systems needed to support a 2,000 year effort. Sixty generations of people continuously supporting a long term business initiative. Not as attractive as terra-forming Venus, but providing a third largely independent ecosystem within our solar system.
Maximizing the Diversity of Life in Independent Ecosystems
With three largely independent ecosystems, three forms of evolution can be promoted to provide diverse outcomes. For example, Mars can evolve technology based evolutionary systems that promote a diversity of life that is uniquely technology interconnected and dependent; technological evolution. Earth can largely remove its technology and dominantly provide support or the evolving of already established ecosystems and related animal and vegetation life; natural evolution. While Venus can support human-centric evolution; building Venus as the resources and imagination provide for the most interesting place for humans to live. While distributed out in space on asteroids, other planets, space stations… is a mix of all parts of the three independent ecosystems. The purpose of which is to sustainably support a maximized diversity of life.
Deploying Space Elevators from Space
The most expensive part of producing products for space based efforts, is the transport between the ground of planetary bodies and space. To deploy space elevators from Earth requires transporting large amounts of materials, and related burning of fossil fuels.
To deploy space elevators from space requires a source of carbon (atmosphere of Venus), a heat source (Sun), processing system (relatively small from Earth), and two small asteroids. By shaping and sizing two asteroids and connecting a fully developed nano-tube space elevator tractor cable between them, the two asteroids can incrementally be rotated around one another connected together by the nano-tube cable. The resulting rotating masses are carefully guiding in trajectory and rotation such that the counter rotation of one asteroid end entering the atmosphere slows rotation and gently transitions to the total system into geosynchronous orbit with the planetary body.
This business of creating space elevators can deploy space elevators throughout the solar system.
Care must be made to deploy mating space elevators balanced across the same hemisphere such that noticeable increasing planet wobble does not occur over long periods of time.
Synergy with Native American Robotics Mars Yard
NASA is funding an educational initiative to encourage students to engage STEM education. Employment opportunities in rural areas are very sparse. To prepare students for engaging in opportunities accessible through use of the internet, STEM programs are being taught. STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. More recently the effort has been to produce STEEM, or Science, Technology, Enterprise, Engineering, and Mathematics.
The Robotics Mars Yard is in a building with dimensions of 50 feet by 60 feet that intends to house automated system of robots and self-configuring landscape to be used by native American students throughout the United States. Simulators are to be built to allow most students, anywhere globally, to participate in related activities. Coursework already in use by teachers are intended to be modified to provide greater contact time with each student, and at the same time free instructor time so that they have more time to thoughtfully interact with the unique needs of each student.
The broad use of the Mars Yard is centered in its user interface, that matches form and function of most programming user interfaces. Students are able to engage programming beginning as early as Elementary School, and use the system throughout Post-Doctoral industry and related research efforts. Developing the ability to engage diverse related technologies, followed by developing the ability to produce market driven enterprise.
Contributors include Dr. Nader Vadiee (SIPI.edu), Dr. Larry Crumple (NM Museum Curator), Dr. Zhang (transportation science) … and a host of others.
Synergy with Lifeboat Foundation
Lifeboat Foundation (LF) at www.lifeboat.com is a non-profit organization dedicated to identifying and developing resources for mitigating mass extinction events. Those in review are currently considered to be existential because of low probability, but more often because of no current practical method of mitigation.
NASA recently selected Lifeboat Foundation as a contributor in an upcoming event to help provide insights related to asteroid centered enterprise in space.
ALL development requires sustainable business support or the effort never gets off the ground (pun intended), or the effort dies without significant useful outcomes. “Not” listed below are the concepts for business systems of development submitted to Lifeboat Foundation for review and potential inclusion in their managed effort with NASA.
Question: A Counterpoint to the Technological Singularity?
Douglas Hofstadter, a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University, indicated about The Singularity is Near Book (ISBN: 978–0143037880),
“ … A very bizarre mixture of ideas that are solid and good with ideas that are crazy. It’s as if you took a lot of very good food and some dog excrement and blended it all up so that you can’t possibly figure out what’s good or bad …”
AND FOR INSTANCE:
“… Technology is the savior for everything. That’s the point of this course. Technology is accelerating, everything is going to be good, technology is your friend … I think that’s a load of crap …” By Dr. Jonathan White
Back to the White Swan hardcore:
That discourse can be entertained at a forthcoming Renaissance, not now. Going against this idea will be outrageously counterproductive to ascertain the non-annihilation of Earth’s locals.
People who destroy, eternally beforehand, outrageous Black Swans, engaging into super-natural and preter-natural preparations for known and unknown Outliers, thus observing — in all practicality — the successful and prevailing White Swan and Transformative and Integrative Risk Management interdisciplinary problem-solving methodology, include:
(1.-) Sir Martin Rees PhD (cosmologist and astrophysicist), Astronomer Royal, Cambridge University Professor and former Royal Society President.
(2.-) Dr. Stephen William Hawking CH CBE FRS FRSA is an English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, author and Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the University of Cambridge. Formerly: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
(3.-) Prof. Nick Bostrom Ph.D. is a Swedish philosopher at St. Cross College, University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, the reversal test, and consequentialism. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics (2000). He is the founding director of both The Future of Humanity Institute and the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology as part of the Oxford Martin School at Oxford University.
(4.-) The US National Intelligence Council (NIC) [.…] The National Intelligence Council supports the Director of National Intelligence in his role as head of the Intelligence Community (IC) and is the IC’s center for long-term strategic analysis [.…] Since its establishment in 1979, the NIC has served as a bridge between the intelligence and policy communities, a source of deep substantive expertise on intelligence issues, and a facilitator of Intelligence Community collaboration and outreach [.…] The NIC’s National Intelligence Officers — drawn from government, academia, and the private sector—are the Intelligence Community’s senior experts on a range of regional and functional issues.
(5.-) U.S. Homeland Security’s FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency).
(6.-) The CIA or any other U.S. Government agencies.
(7.-) Stanford Research Institute (now SRI International).
(8.-) GBN (Global Business Network).
(9.-) Royal Dutch Shell.
(10.-) British Doomsday Preppers.
(11.-) Canadian Doomsday Preppers.
(12.-) Australian Doomsday Preppers
(13.-) American Doomsday Preppers.
(14.-) Disruptional Singularity Book (ASIN: B00KQOEYLG).
(15.-) Scientific Prophets of Doom at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bUe2-7jjtY
White Swans are always getting prepared for Unknown and Known Outliers, and MOST FLUIDLY changing the theater of operation by permanently updating and upgrading the designated preparations.
Authored By Copyright Mr. Andres Agostini White Swan Book Author www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini www.amazon.com/author/Agostini
Among transhumanists, Nick Bostrom is well-known for promoting the idea of ‘existential risks’, potential harms which, were they come to pass, would annihilate the human condition altogether. Their probability may be relatively small, but the expected magnitude of their effects are so great, so Bostrom claims, that it is rational to devote some significant resources to safeguarding against them. (Indeed, there are now institutes for the study of existential risks on both sides of the Atlantic.) Moreover, because existential risks are intimately tied to the advancement of science and technology, their probability is likely to grow in the coming years.
Contrary to expectations, Bostrom is much less concerned with ecological suicide from humanity’s excessive carbon emissions than with the emergence of a superior brand of artificial intelligence – a ‘superintelligence’. This creature would be a human artefact, or at least descended from one. However, its self-programming capacity would have run amok in positive feedback, resulting in a maniacal, even self-destructive mission to rearrange the world in the image of its objectives. Such a superintelligence may appear to be quite ruthless in its dealings with humans, but that would only reflect the obstacles that we place, perhaps unwittingly, in the way of the realization of its objectives. Thus, this being would not conform to the science fiction stereotype of robots deliberately revolting against creators who are now seen as their inferiors.
I must confess that I find this conceptualisation of ‘existential risk’ rather un-transhumanist in spirit. Bostrom treats risk as a threat rather than as an opportunity. His risk horizon is precautionary rather than proactionary: He focuses on preventing the worst consequences rather than considering the prospects that are opened up by whatever radical changes might be inflicted by the superintelligence. This may be because in Bostrom’s key thought experiment, the superintelligence turns out to be the ultimate paper-clip collecting machine that ends up subsuming the entire planet to its task, destroying humanity along the way, almost as an afterthought.
But is this really a good starting point for thinking about existential risk? Much more likely than total human annihilation is that a substantial portion of humanity – but not everyone – is eliminated. (Certainly this captures the worst case scenarios surrounding climate change.) The Cold War remains the gold standard for this line of thought. In the US, the RAND Corporation’s chief analyst, Herman Kahn — the model for Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove – routinely, if not casually, tossed off scenarios of how, say, a US-USSR nuclear confrontation would serve to increase the tolerance for human biological diversity, due to the resulting proliferation of genetic mutations. Put in more general terms, a severe social disruption provides a unique opportunity for pursuing ideals that might otherwise be thwarted by a ‘business as usual’ policy orientation.
Here it is worth recalling that the Cold War succeeded on its own terms: None of the worst case scenarios were ever realized, even though many people were mentally prepared to make the most of the projected adversities. This is one way to think about how the internet itself arose, courtesy the US Defense Department’s interest in maintaining scientific communications in the face of attack. In other words, rather than trying to prevent every possible catastrophe, the way to deal with ‘unknown unknowns’ is to imagine that some of them have already come to pass and redesign the world accordingly so that you can carry on regardless. Thus, Herman Kahn’s projection of a thermonuclear future provided grounds in the 1960s for the promotion of, say, racially mixed marriages, disability-friendly environments, and the ‘do more with less’ mentality that came to characterize the ecology movement.
Kahn was a true proactionary thinker. For him, the threat of global nuclear war raised Joseph Schumpeter’s idea of ‘creative destruction’ to a higher plane, inspiring social innovations that would be otherwise difficult to achieve by conventional politics. Historians have long noted that modern warfare has promoted spikes in innovation that in times of peace are then subject to diffusion, as the relevant industries redeploy for civilian purposes. We might think of this tendency, in mechanical terms, as system ‘overdesign’ (i.e. preparing for the worst but benefitting even if the worst doesn’t happen) or, more organically, as a vaccine that converts a potential liability into an actual benefit.
In either case, existential risk is regarded in broadly positive terms, specifically as an unprecedented opportunity to extend the range of human capability, even under radically changed circumstances. This sense of ‘antifragility’, as the great ‘black swan’ detector Nicholas Taleb would put it, is the hallmark of our ‘risk intelligence’, the phrase that the British philosopher Dylan Evans has coined for a demonstrated capacity that people have to make step change improvements in their lives in the face of radical uncertainty. From this standpoint, Bostrom’s superintelligence concept severely underestimates the adaptive capacity of human intelligence.
Perhaps the best way to see just how much Bostrom shortchanges humanity is to note that his crucial thought experiment requires a strong ontological distinction between humans and superintelligent artefacts. Where are the cyborgs in this doomsday scenario? Reading Bostrom reminds me that science fiction did indeed make progress in the twentieth century, from the world of Karl Čapek’s Rossum’s Universal Robots in 1920 to the much subtler blending of human and computer futures in the works of William Gibson and others in more recent times.
Bostrom’s superintelligence scenario began to be handled in more sophisticated fashion after the end of the First World War, popularly under the guise of ‘runaway technology’, a topic that received its canonical formulation in Langdon Winner’s 1977 Autonomous Technology: Technics out of Control, a classic in the field of science and technology of studies. Back then the main problem with superintelligent machines was that they would ‘dehumanize’ us, less because they might dominate us but more because we might become like them – perhaps because we feel that we have invested our best qualities in them, very much like Ludwig Feuerbach’s aetiology of the Judaeo-Christian God. Marxists gave the term ‘alienation’ a popular spin to capture this sentiment in the 1960s.
Nowadays, of course, matters have been complicated by the prospect of human and machine identities merging together. This goes beyond simply implanting silicon chips in one’s brain. Rather, it involves the complex migration and enhancement of human selves in cyberspace. (Sherry Turkle has been the premier ethnographer of this process in children.) That such developments are even possible points to a prospect that Bostrom refuses to consider, namely, that to be ‘human’ is to be only contingently located in the body of Homo sapiens. The name of our species – Homo sapiens – already gives away the game, because our distinguishing feature (so claimed Linnaeus) had nothing to do with our physical morphology but with the character of our minds. And might not such a ‘sapient’ mind better exist somewhere other than in the upright ape from which we have descended?
The prospects for transhumanism hang on the answer to this question. Aubrey de Grey’s indefinite life extension project is about Homo sapiens in its normal biological form. In contrast, Ray Kurzweil’s ‘singularity’ talk of uploading our consciousness into indefinitely powerful computers suggests a complete abandonment of the ordinary human body. The lesson taught by Langdon Winner’s historical account is that our primary existential risk does not come from alien annihilation but from what social psychologists call ‘adaptive preference formation’. In other words, we come to want the sort of world that we think is most likely, simply because that offers us the greatest sense of security. Thus, the history of technology is full of cases in which humans have radically changed their lives to adjust to an innovation whose benefits they reckon outweigh the costs, even when both remain fundamentally incalculable. Success in the face such ‘existential risk’ is then largely a matter of whether people – perhaps of the following generation – have made the value shifts necessary to see the changes as positive overall. But of course, it does not follow that those who fail to survive the transition or have acquired their values before this transition would draw a similar conclusion.
Getting Sexy and the Undivided Attention of Your Fortune-500 Client CEOs! (Excerpt from the White Swan book) By Andres Agostini at www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini
(1.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Procter & Gamble, talk to them through the notions of and by Process Re-engineering.
(2.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at GE, talk to them through the notions of and by Six Sigma, and Peter F. Drucker’s Management by Objective (MBO). While you are with them, remember to commend on the Jack Welch’ and Jeff Immelt’s master lectures at GE’s Crotonville.
(3.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at RAND Corporation and HUDSON Institute, talk to them through the notions of and by Herman Khan’s (Dr. Strangeloves’) Scenario Methodology.
(4.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Mitsubishi Motors and Honda and Daimler-Chrysler’s Mercedes-Benz, talk to them through the notions of and by Kaisen.
(5.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at NASA and DARPA and the Industrial-Military Complex, talk to them through the notions of and by Systems Approach with the Perspective of Applied Non-Theological Omniscience. And, also, want to get funded by DARPA? How? The pathway is extremely easy and promissory. Just give them an unimpeachable real-life demonstration of how to “violate” the Laws of Physics correctly and frequently, for Life!
(6.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Lockheed Martin, talk to them through the notions of and by Lean, Six Sigma and Skunk Works.
(7.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Toyota, talk to them through the notions of and by Toyota Production System (methodology).
(8.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Royal Dutch Shell, talk to them through the notions of and by Pierre Wack’s Scenario Methodology.
(9.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Mayo Clinic, talk to them through the notions of and by Dr. Joseph Juran’s (Total Quality Assurance) Prescription (ISBN: 978–0787900960). Also remember to conjointly speak, at all times, of efficiency, productivity, and ROI as it stems in the incessant real-time reckoning of man-hours per patient cured and healed. To this end, you might wish to peruse this great title: The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management by Peter F. Drucker (ISBN: 978–0061345012).
(10.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Google, talk to them through the notions of and by Strong Quantum Supercomputing and Reversing of Human Death.
(11.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Xerox, talk to them through the notions of and by PARC (Palo Alto Research Center Incorporated).
(12.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at ExxonMobil, talk to them through the notions of and by Efficiency and Productivity as well as Return On Investment (ROI) per Petroleum Barrel produced (outputted), and Project Management.
(13.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Boeing, talk to them through the notions of and by Aerospace Engineering, Avionics, Systems Engineering, Reliability Engineering, Safety Engineering, Industrial Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering.
(14.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence), talk to them through the notions of and by Superintelligence entrenched, in “plain sight,” in the covert realm of Dark Energy and Dark Matter.
(15.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Loyd’s of London, Swiss RE, Munich RE, and Allianz, talk to them through the notions of and by Minimax, Statistics, Actuarial Science, Predictive Analytics, and Systems Engineering.
(16.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Amazon, talk to them through the notions of and by Low-Cost And High-End Online Commerce, Content Creation, Hi-Tech, Quadcopters (Commercial Flying Drones) and Eternal Staggering Innovation. Don’t forget to mention the Mechanical Turk.
(17.- of 17 ).- If you want to seize the undivided attention of top executives at Northrop Grumman Corporation, talk to them through the notions of and by State of the Art: Quality, Continuous Improvement, Customer Satisfaction, Leadership (Man Management), Integrity, People, Suppliers, Sound Business Management, “Best in Class” Products and Services, and how to preemptively countermeasure Chinese penetrations and otherwise of both commercial and government networks in the United States.
NOTE: I know great consulting incumbents and other professional service providers who want to get the undivided attention of 90% of the CEOs above at once. Ergo, they really need to get ready to be multidimensional and cross-functional. There is no Internet resource, nor an online book or article giving you this most-profound advice, never ever. TO DO THIS, YOU NEVER NEED SO-CALLED “LEADERSHIP,” BUT I.Q.-CENTRIC STATESMANSHIP OR MAN-MANAGEMENT.
By Mr. Andres Agostini Author of the White Swan Book www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini
CERN bets the planet on the early Einstein having been wrong. Let me explain.
After having founded special relativity in mid-1905, the early Einstein held fast to the speed of light c being a global constant of nature for another 2 ½ years. Only in December of 1907 did Einstein switch to the view that c was only an everywhere locally, but not globally, valid constant of nature.
In 2008, results proving that the early Einstein of 1905 was right started to appear in the scientific literature. For example, quantum electrodynamics combined with the equivalence principle (Schwinger) shows this. Up until now, no counterproof is in the literature.
In light of this renaissance of the early Einstein, a previously noncontroversial policy of the famous CERN consortium turns out to be problematical: their refusal to update the outdated Safety Report of mid-2008. Demanding this update has become a priority issue for everyone who learns about its lack.
The return after a century to the global constancy of c of the early Einstein implies that man-made black holes – which CERN tries to produce in its soon to be re-started particle collider – are different: They are undetectable to CERN’s detectors. This fact renders the experiment strictly speaking unscientific. Most important, however: if but one specimen of the invisible hoped-for objects is slow enough not to fly away into outer space, it is going to grow exponentially inside earth to turn the planet into a 2-cm black hole after a silent period of a few years in accordance with the laws of exponential growth.
As long as CERN is unable to publicly contradict this scenario in an update of its famous 6 years old Safety Report, they cannot re-start the Large Hadron Collider on logical grounds.
It all boils down to the question: “Who of the two Einsteins – the early one or the 2 ½ years older one – was right?”
Literature has served an indispensable purpose in exploring ethical and political themes. This remains true of sci-fi and fantasy, even if there is such a thing as reading too much politics into fictional work or over-analyzing.
Since Maquis Books published The Traveller and Pandemonium, a novel authored by me from 2011–2014, I have been responding as insightfully as possible to reviews and also discussing the book’s political and philosophical themes wherever I can. Set in a fictional alien world, much of this book’s 24 chapters are politically themed on the all too real human weakness of infighting and resorting to hardline, extremist and even messianic plans when faced with a desperate situation.
The story tells about human cultures battling to survive in a deadly alien ecosystem. There the human race, rather than keeping animals in cages, must keep their own habitats in cages as protection from the world outside. The human characters of the story live out a primitive existence not typical of science-fiction, mainly aiming at their own survival. Technological progress is nonexistent, as all human efforts have been redirected to self-defense against the threat of the alien predators.
Even though The Traveller and Pandemonium depicts humanity facing a common alien foe, the various struggling human factions still fail to cooperate. In fact, they turn ever more hostilely on each other even as the alien planet’s predators continue to close in on the last remaining human states. At the time the story is set, the human civilization on the planet is facing imminent extinction from its own infighting and extremism, as well as the aggressive native plant and animal life of the planet.
The more sinister of the factions, known as the Cult, preaches the pseudo-religious doctrine that survival on the alien world will only be possible through infusions of alien hormones and the rehabilitation of humanity to coexist with the creatures of the planet at a biological level. However, there are censored side effects of the infusions that factor into the plot, and the Cult is known for its murderous opposition to anyone who opposes its vision.
The only alternative seems to be a second faction, but it is equally violent, and comes under the leadership of an organization who call themselves the Inquisitors. In their doctrine, humans must continue to isolate themselves from the alien life of the planet, but this should extend to exterminating the alien life and the aforementioned Cult that advocates humans transmuting themselves to live safely on the planet.
I believe that this aspect of the story, a battle between two militant philosophies, serves well to capture the kind of tension and violent irrationality that can engulf humanity in the face of existential risks. There is no reason to believe that hypothetical existential risks to humanity such as a deadly asteroid impact, an extraterrestrial threat, runaway global warming, alien contact or a devastating virus would unite the planet, and there is every reason to believe that it would divide the planet. It is often the case that the more argument there is for authority and submission to a grand plan in order to survive, the greater the differences of opinion and the greater the potential for divergence and conflict. Social habits, politics, beliefs and even the cultural trappings of the different human cultures clinging to the alien planet are fully represented in the book. In all, the story has had significant time and care put into refining it to create a compelling and believable depiction of life in an inhospitable parallel world, and readers remarked in reviewsthat it is a “masterclass in world-building”. The central character of the story, nicknamed the Traveler, together with his companion, do not really subscribe to either of the extremist philosophies battling over humanity’s fate on the alien planet, but their ideas may be equally strange. Instead, they reject the alien world in which they live. With an almost religious naïveté, they are searching for a “better place”. It is through this part of the plot that the concepts of religious faith and hope are visited. Of course, at all times the reader knows they are right – there is a “better place” only not the religious kind. Ultimately, the quest is for Earth, although the characters have never heard of such a place and have only inferred that it might somehow exist and represent an escape from the hostile planet where they were born. Reviewers have acknowledged that by inverting the relationship of humanity and nature so that nature is on the advance and humans are receding and diminishing in the setting of this science-fiction novel, a unique and compelling setting is created. I believe the story offers my best exploration of a number of political and ethical themes, such as how people feel pressured to choose between hardline factions in times of extreme desperation and in the face of existential threats. Science fiction is a worthy medium in which to express and explore not only the future, but some of the most troubling political and philosophical scenarios that have plagued humanity’s past.
It is a nice game: Pretend that c, the speed of light in the vacuum, were a global constant of nature. Then the Einstein equation assumes a more compact form. And black holes acquire radically new properties. One should not try to produce them down on earth, for example.
Fortunately, this simple game is pure fiction. Presently, Stephen Hawking’s safety guarantee to the planet – the rapid “evaporation” he described – renders miniature black holes innocuous, his recent modifications notwithstanding.
There are some voices that c is indeed globally constant (http://eujournal.org/index.php/esj/article/view/2608/2469 ). Would this be a reason to look at the issue anew for Hawking and others?
To elder children and young adults, it is a bonanza since everything becomes transparent. The “ugly” dependency of the speed of light on the local pull of gravity – that it is slowed in the vicinity of the sun (Shapiro) and comes to a standstill at the horizon of a black hole (Oppenheiumer) – is gone since the distances travelled are proportionally enlarged. Simultaneously, the so far assumed to be added-on expansion speed of the universe ceases to be an option so that the “Big Bang” is no longer a physical reality. A new freedom – a vast new spatial reality to roam – opened itself up.
The same liberation has almost the opposite effect on slightly older young people – those who have to pass an exam or defend a thesis in a physical discipline. They are at a loss as to what still to believe and defend. Most textbooks have become obsolete. How discuss the new situation with Stephen Hawking, for example, or with CERN? Most importantly: How reconcile it with Einstein’s own work?
The latter job is a joy. A renaissance of the young Einstein – of the three years of his miraculous period ranging from 1905 until late 1907 – follows. These years were fueled by the universal constancy of the speed of light c in the vacuum as is well known.
What about the famous “Einstein equation” of late 1915, however: Has it become obsolete since its c is not a global but only a local constant? The equation only needs a re-scaling. The “too short” spatial distances for the elongated light travelling times just get proportionally stretched. The “Shapiro time delay” is now accompanied by a space dilation (“Shapiro-Cook space dilation”) and the infinite temporal distance to the horizon of a black hole is accompanied by an equally infinite spatial distance valid from outside.
The oldest and most important solution to the Einstein equation – the Schwarzschild metric – exists already in a correct stretched-out version. Only the full Einstein equation itself still waits to be written down explicitly in the correct form by a daring newcomer. Alternatively, Roy Kerr – author of the famous “Kerr metric” for a rotating black hole – may be willing to to accomplish the re-writing task for the Einstein equation which will then reveal a whole new physics.
Does the successful repair of a flaw that had gone undetected for a century (*) really need to be called a “catastrophe”? The opposite is the case. One sobering consequence also follows, however: When even the “hardest science” – physics – could go awry for a whole century, a new humility is called for in physics. The strongest young generation of history is now at the ready aided by the no longer distant young Einstein.
Acknowledgment: I thank the three Universities of the Normandy for the undeserved honor bestowed in Le Havre on my chaos work done in the footsteps of Jim Yorke who, together with Celso Grebogi and Ron Chen, was most deservedly honored there. For J.O.R.
