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My repair of the global constancy of the speed of light c – the loss of which had stopped Einstein from publishing on gravitation for 4 years – has revived Einstein’s early greatest strength.

If c is globally constant, black holes are radically different – nonevaporating – in contradistinction to Hawking. And the by definition superluminal expansion speed of the “Big Bang” is likewise exploded.

Two canonized postulates gone: So it is no wonder that CERN refuses to defend its six years old safety report?

Suppose the young Einstein was indeed stronger: Would it not be worthy to check on this fact, especially so if it could save the planet from a catastrophe?

The world needs a voice capable of defending the older Einstein against the younger one. Anyone able to hit that goal?

. @hjbentham . @clubofinfo . @dissidentvoice_ .#tech .#gmo .#ethics . @ieet .

Since giving my support to the May 24 march against Monsanto, I have taken the time to review some of the more unusual opinions in the debate over genetically-modified organisms (GMOs). The enthusiasts for technological development as a means of eliminating scarcity and disparity view GMOs favorably. These enthusiasts include Ramez Naam, whose book The Infinite Resource (2013) argues for human ingenuity as a sufficient force to overcome all resources shortages.
On the other end of the spectrum, alarmists like Daniel Estulin and William Engdahl argue that GMOs are actually part of a deliberate plot to burden poor nations and reduce their populations by creating illness and infertility. Such fringe figures in the alter-globalization movement regard big pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies and agri-giants as involved in a conspiracy to create a docile and dependent population. Are the opinions of either Naam or Estulin well-informed, or are they both too sensational?
Most commentators on the GMO controversy, unfortunately, seem to lean towards either the enthusiast or alarmist categories as described. Reason is often lacking on both sides, as people either blindly leap onto the GMO bandwagon as something tantamount to human progress, or they reject all biotechnology as evil by renewing the fallacy that unnatural actions are necessarily bad. The only thing both sides seem to have in common is their resistance to the Malthusian Club of Rome’s insinuations that overpopulation has to be rolled back to save the Earth’s resources.
Ramez Naam persuades us that the fire of human intellect can overcome our limited resources and allow tens of billions of people to exist on our planet without consuming all natural resources. Estulin and Engdahl reject the Club of Rome on the basis that resource limitations do not really exist and the analysis of the Club of Rome is simply aimed at justifying control of the Earth’s resources by the cherished few “elites”.
The truth rests somewhere between what the alarmist fringe critics of GMOs and the techno-progressive enthusiasts are trying to tell us. To be truthful, there is a serious controversy involving GMOs, but it is no outlandish conspiracy in any sense. It is merely an extension of the problem of greed that has burdened mankind for as long as feudal lords or capitalists have been privileged to put their selfish interests above the common good. The problem with GMOs is neither the nature of GM technology, nor something mysterious that takes place in the process of genetic modification. It is the nature of the businesses tasked with running this industry.
Whether or not certain GMOs on the market today actually cause cancer and infertility is irrelevant to the real debate. The problem is that we can guarantee that the companies engineering these organisms do not care if they cause health problems. They are only interested in downplaying or blocking bad news, and putting out constant marketing and good news about themselves. Typical of any fiercely monopolistic firm, this is not an honest relationship with the public, and corresponds to the prevailing belief in profit as the exclusive priority. For their game to be worth playing, they have to put increasing yields, shelf life and resistance to pathogens above anything else when designing crops. They have no choice than to do this, from their perspective, because the alternative is to allow themselves to be outperformed by their rivals.
The fact that corporations put their own profit above health is a systemic issue in the world economy, and it is already known to the majority of consumers. We face it every day. Most of the fast food served by multinational fast food companies is accepted to be unhealthy, so the claim that giant food companies have little interest in our health is not a conspiracy theory. It is only a rational suspicion that the agricultural producers of seeds will also put profit over the long-term health of consumers and the interests of local farmers.
In theory, genetic modification could lead not only to higher yields but healthier food. Unfortunately, the businesses involved only really care about beating competition and becoming the best supplier. This behavior poisons everything, perhaps literally, now that these companies have been entrusted to define the toxicity in crops as a defense against pests. What we can learn from this that the problem is not GMOs per se, but the aggressive greed of the corporations who desire the oligopoly on food production via GM technology.
The public harm caused by giant firms, especially when they practice their ability to lobby the state itself, already runs very deep in most facets of life. The more significant the tools made available to such firms, the greater the potential for harm. Even if specific specimens are not harmful and can be proven completely benign, the fact is that GMOs open up an unacceptable avenue for unprecedented harm and malignant corporate interests invading people’s innards. It is this, rather than the whole science of genetic modification, that should be opposed and protested against.
Genetic modification and synthetic biology do not need to be new instruments of oligopoly and monopoly. There is a benign alternative to foolishly entrusting the mastery and ownership of living organisms to greedy multinational leviathans. We can look into “biohacking”, as popularized by science and technology enthusiasts who favor the empowerment of individuals and small businesses rather than corporations. There is a strong nod in this direction in J. Craig Venter’s book, Life at the Speed of Light (2013), in which he envisages living organisms being quickly customized and modified by lone individuals with the technology of synthetic biology. Such a development would transform society for the better, eliminating any need to trust an unsympathetic and self-interested corporation like Monsanto.
DIY genetic engineering is already possible. DIY means the product will be entirely disinfected from corporate greed, and adhere to your own specifications. They would not be able to put their profit above your health, because they would not get the chance. With this, biohackers can already genetically modify organisms for their own benefit. The extent to which farmers can begin to modify their own crops using comparable technology is not yet clear, but the development nevertheless represents an extraordinary possibility.
What if farmers and consumers could decide genetically modify their own food? In that case, it would not be the profit-oriented poison that is being consumed at so many different levels as a result of corporate greed. Crops would be modified only insofar as the modification will meet the farmer’s own needs, and all the technology for this process could be open-source. This hypothetical struggle for DIY genetic engineering rather than corporate genetic engineering would be comparable to the open-source and piracy battles already raging over digital technology.
Of course, some new hazards could still conceivably emerge from DIY genetic modification, if the technology for it should become ubiquitous. However, the only risk would be from individual farmers rather than unaccountable corporations. This way, we would be moving away from giving irresponsible and vicious companies the ability to threaten health. Instead, we would be moving towards giving back individuals more control over their own diets. Of course, abuse would still occur, but it would not have global consequences or frighten millions of people in the way that current genetic engineering does.
In sum, there is no reason to complain that genetic modification is perilous in its own right. However, there is always peril in giving a great social responsibility to a profit-hungry corporation. In much the same way that large firms have captured the state machinery of our liberal democratic states to serve their greedy interests, we should expect them to be subverting health and the public good for profit.
The complex dilemma over GMOs requires not an anti-scientific or neo-Luddite reaction, but an acknowledgement that intertwined monopolistic, statist and hegemonic ambitions lead to the retardation of technology rather than progress. I have made this very case in an essay at the techno-politics magazine ClubOfINFO, and I consider it to be an important detail to keep in mind as the GMO controversy rages.

By Harry J. Bentham - More articles by Harry J. Bentham

Originally published at Dissident Voice on 23 June 2014

AN ACTUAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CEO AND THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CHIEF STRATEGIST!

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AN ACTUAL EXCHANGE BETWEEN THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CEO AND THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL WORLDWIDE CHIEF STRATEGIST!

QUESTION: HOW CAN WE ILLUSTRATE MR. ANDRES AGOSTINI’S CONCURRENT COORDINATED CONVERGENT SYSTEMS THINKING (CCCST): ARTICULATED UNDER INTELLIGENCE AUGMENTATION AND AMPLIFICATION (IAA) VIA ASIN: B00KNL02ZE ANSWER: BY PAYING ATTENTION TO AN INDOORS INTERVIEW BY THE ROYAL DUTCH SHELL HERE:

Many world-class zillion-dollars corporations go to huge unknown distances to make a difference in sustaining and guaranteeing their For-Lucre Competitive Advantage. Shell, as many others are a good example of this, through many, many decades to date. I was fully trained and thoroughly indoctrinated by Shell to this end a long time ago while I keep always researching their latest canonical milestones. However, my ongoing research considers and analyzes the findings of many other zillion-dollar corporations beyond, by far, those of Royal Dutch Shell.

Governments, governmental agencies, political bodies, universities (including those into strong R&D&I), as well as a myriad of other companies, supranationals and NGOs, DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO DO THIS. THEY THINK THAT SEEKING KNOWLEDGE THIS WAY IS A CLEAR SIGN OF INSANITY.

Nothing, and nothing at all, will preclude Shell and other Fortune-7 Corporations to seek out and seize boundaryless knowledge.

All of my assertions are backed by most-updated brick-and-mortar books and manuals. I can give you a brief general idea, but my time and researched proprietary findings are extremely expensive for me to tell you about where to find those contents.

The combined knowledge of my research is a part of an infinitely larger ongoing proprietary research effort by me. Through many, many years, these books and manuals and handbooks have been physically published but you did not found out then. But many publications were only found through proprietary literature only.

When you want to access proprietary literature, you handsomely pay for it. Otherwise, it is impossible to gain access to that.

Everything I have or have had, I capitalistically paid for CASH AND IN FULL. If you are a commie, this is not for you or any other forms of hippies and chronies.

FOR INSTANCE:

Star Trek’s Captain Spock told James T. Kirk: “… Jim, the problem with you is that you always proceed from false assumptions … And being a Volcan and thus different from you, I have no ego to bruise …”

LET US NOW GET BACK TO OUR REAL-LIFE EXCHANGE AS PER ROYAL DUTCH SHELL:

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Okay, How is the strategic planning going along for the forthcoming year? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Very well, sir…We are introducing some novelties to our corporation-wide strategic planning, strategizing and strategic execution …!…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Can you give me some specifics? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Well, sir, our most unconventional and heterodox thinking and strategizing have always gone to a far-fetched fringe, spurting twilight-zones mind-sets while ridiculing the minimal and precarious notion of so-called ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking … So, this year we have a roaster of out-of-this-world people to interview in order to underpin our strategy and outsmart Exxon-Mobil and the like in the process. All of the interviews will be heavily documented for continuous close examination …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, I really like you rationale…Who is your first person to interview? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Thank you. The first one will be a Maharishi, the so-called ‘Great Seer’ …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… Drashtara, Sanskrit for the Techno-Harbinger …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…The Awaken Ones …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… Auspiciousness, a female spiritual leader of great audiences in the East and West …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Catholic Bishop…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Tel-avid Rabbi …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Lama …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “ … An Ayatollah …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Witch…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Saucerer…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who is next in your list?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…You list is nice but a bit too conventional for my profitable ambitions. What are you exactly going to do about it to fundamentally solve your shortcomings? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Sir, we are going to interview, as well, many other thought leaders, including many purposeful mentally-ill ponderers!…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Like whom? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Sir, a Schizophrenic …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… One person undergoing Clinical Delusional Disorder …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… Someone into Clinical Hallucinations …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…Someone into Clinical Histrionic or Narcissistic …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Guru from India …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Yogi from India …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… An Oracle from the Tibet …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Kabbalah Mystic …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “…Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Witch …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Brazilian Shaman …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… A Brazilian Shaman…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Saucerer …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Savant…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Knowledgist …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Beggar …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Homeless …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask her? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask her open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Gigolo …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Wizard …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Magician …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…A Autistic …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…One undergoing Asperger’s …”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… What will you ask him? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “…We will ask him open-ended questions without constraints of time: a) How do you see the world? b) What are humans missing? c) How can we make life better for all? d) If you were the U.N. Secretary General, What would you change in the civilization?…”

Royal Dutch Shell Worldwide CEO: “… Excellent, Who else? …”

Royal Dutch Shell Chief Worldwide Strategist: “… Every Student proactive in most-recondite Ivy-League own on-site Secret Societies … Several Prostitutes and several Tarot-card Readers, Soothsayers, Divinators, Foretellers, Predictioneers, Futilitarians, Hunches-tellers, First-Guessers, Second-Guessers, Fortunetellers, Prophets, Presagers, Premonitionists, Dictators, Anarchists, among many other savants.

Now, you can understand why people of The Netherlands OUTSMART MOTHER NATURE and are so intelligent, shrewd and mordant, as well as victorious, ready to “kill” petroleum as source of energy and impose Energy “X”.

Many, many zillion-dollars-corporations RELENTLESSLY exercise their Intellects and Strategies BY INCESSANTLY SEEKING OMNISCIENCE IN IGNORED FLANKS AND NOVEL QUADRANTS AND SPHERES. AND THROUGH THE PRECEDING, THEY MERIT AND DESERVE TO OUT-RULE THE WORLD, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE.

NOTHING, AND NOTHING AT ALL, WILL PRECLUDE SHELL AND OTHER FORTUNE-7 CORPORATIONS TO SEEK OUT AND SEIZE BOUNDARYLESS KNOWLEDGE.

ONLY SOURCE: Andres Agostini’s own Book:

Concurrent Coordinated Convergent Systems Thinking (CCCST): Articulated under Intelligence Augmentation and Amplification (IAA)
ASIN: B00KNL02ZE
http://amzn.to/1owe52O

By Mr. Andres Agostini
www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini

E.Q.-Focused Nations (suboptimal) Versus I.Q.-Centric Countries (optimal)

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1.- E.Q.-Focused Nations argue that the millenarian applied terms such as: Prudence, Tact, Sincerity, Kindness and Unambiguous Language DO NOT SUFFICE and hence they need to invent a marketeer’s stunt: Emotional Intelligence. I.Q.-Centric Countries argue that the millenarian applied terms are beyond utility and desirability and that stunts are to social-engineer and brain-wash the weak: Ergo, all of these are optimal: Prudence, Tact, Sincerity, Kindness and Unambiguous Language, as well as plain-vanilla Psychology 101.

2.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are mired with universal corruption, both in private and public office. I.Q.-Centric Countries are mired with transparency, accountability and reliability, as well as collective integrity and ethics.

3.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are flooded with structural unemployment. I.Q.-Centric Countries are flooded with fundamental employment and hiring even not only nationals but also international talents.

4.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are waging military campaigns and violence internationally, always attempting to IMPOSE HARD AND HARSH AND FOCEFUL POWER. I.Q.-Centric Countries are at Peace with all of the Nations of the world and ONLY believe in Diplomacy and its Concurrent Soft Power.

5.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are too quick, too ready and too constant to DESTROY THEIR OWN ECONOMIES while turning their great nations into seventh-level nations of the world. I.Q.-Centric Countries are ALWAYS CONSTRUCTING GREATER OWN ECONOMIES WHILE MAKING THEIR NATIONS MORE APPEALING TO FOREIGNERS, INCLUDING FOREIGN INVESTORS, TO DO BUSINESS WITH.

6.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are ALWAYS expecting major Domestic Terrorism Attacks and Huge Disruption to Public Services and Infrastructure through Cyber attacks, while they attract Immense Industrial Espionage. I.Q.-Centric Countries are NOT WORRY AT ALL about being attacked in any form at all, but focused on how to become world’s largest manufacturers of Tangible Goods that are both desired by Rich and Poor Countries.

7.- E.Q.-Focused Nations HAVE INVESTED LARGELY IN MAKING TOO MANY LOCAL AND GEOPOLITICAL ENEMIES around the Globe. I.Q.-Centric Countries HAVE ZERO DOMESTIC AND INTERNATIONAL ENEMIES WHILE ONLY PROFITING FROM FRIENDLY CLIENTS AROUND THE GALAXY. I.Q.-Centric Countries’ friendliness is taken incessantly to the banks.

8.- E.Q.-Focused Nations are bathed with CIVILIAN PROTESTS, including Anarchists and Anti-Systems and Anti-Establishments, in a permanent context of Social and Political Unrest. I.Q.-Centric Countries have ZERO CIVILIAN PROTESTS while enjoying and profiting from an Emotionally-Even Most Talented Population, while thoroughly employed into Rule the World through Economic and Peaceful Conquests.

9.- E.Q.-Focused Nations have HUGE BANKRUPTCY DIVIDES between those Leaning to the Left and those Leaning to the Right. I.Q.-Centric Countries FIND HUGE LUCRE IN EXPLOITING THE INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL OF BOTH THE “LEFT” AND THE “RIGHT,” OPERATING FROM WITHIN THE EXACT “CENTER” WHILE LEVERAGING UP THE INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE WEALTH OF EVERY CITIZEN.

10.- E.Q.-Focused Nations DO NOT SPEAK GERMAN. I.Q.-Centric Countries ONLY SPEAK GERMAN.

By Mr. Andres Agostini

www.linkedin.com/in/andresagostini

Computers will soon be able to simulate the functioning of a human brain. In a near future, artificial superintelligence could become vastly more intellectually capable and versatile than humans. But could machines ever truly experience the whole range of human feelings and emotions, or are there technical limitations ?

In a few decades, intelligent and sentient humanoid robots will wander the streets alongside humans, work with humans, socialize with humans, and perhaps one day will be considered individuals in their own right. Research in artificial intelligence (AI) suggests that intelligent machines will eventually be able to see, hear, smell, sense, move, think, create and speak at least as well as humans. They will feel emotions of their own and probably one day also become self-aware.

There may not be any reason per se to want sentient robots to experience exactly all the emotions and feelings of a human being, but it may be interesting to explore the fundamental differences in the way humans and robots can sense, perceive and behave. Tiny genetic variations between people can result in major discrepancies in the way each of us thinks, feels and experience the world. If we appear so diverse despite the fact that all humans are in average 99.5% identical genetically, even across racial groups, how could we possibly expect sentient robots to feel the exact same way as biological humans ? There could be striking similarities between us and robots, but also drastic divergences on some levels. This is what we will investigate below.

MERE COMPUTER OR MULTI-SENSORY ROBOT ?

Computers are undergoing a profound mutation at the moment. Neuromorphic chips have been designed on the way the human brain works, modelling the massively parallel neurological processeses using artificial neural networks. This will enable computers to process sensory information like vision and audition much more like animals do. Considerable research is currently devoted to create a functional computer simulation of the whole human brain. The Human Brain Project is aiming to achieve this for 2016. Does that mean that computers will finally experience feelings and emotions like us ? Surely if an AI can simulate a whole human brain, then it becomes a sort of virtual human, doesn’t it ? Not quite. Here is why.

There is an important distinction to be made from the onset between an AI residing solely inside a computer with no sensor at all, and an AI that is equipped with a robotic body and sensors. A computer alone would have a range of emotions far more limited as it wouldn’t be able to physically interact with its environment. The more sensory feedback a machine could receive, the wide the range of feelings and emotions it will be able to experience. But, as we will see, there will always be fundamental differences between the type of sensory feedback that a biological body and a machine can receive.

Here is an illustration of how limited an AI is emotionally without a sensory body of its own. In animals, fear, anxiety or phobias are evolutionary defense mechanisms aimed at raising our vigilence in the face of danger. That is because our bodies work with biochemical signals involving hormones and neurostransmitters sent by the brain to prompt a physical action when our senses perceive danger. Computers don’t work that way. Without sensors feeding them information about their environment, computers wouldn’t be able to react emotionally.

Even if a computer could remotely control machines like robots (e.g. through the Internet) that are endowed with sensory perception, the computer itself wouldn’t necessarily care if the robot (a discrete entity) is harmed or destroyed, since it would have no physical consequence on the AI itself. An AI could fear for its own well-being and existence, but how is it supposed to know that it is in danger of being damaged or destroyed ? It would be the same as a person who is blind, deaf and whose somatosensory cortex has been destroyed. Without feeling anything about the outside world, how could it perceive danger ? That problem disappear once the AI is given at least one sense, like a camera to see what is happening around itself. Now if someone comes toward the computer with a big hammer, it will be able to fear for its existence !

WHAT CAN MACHINES FEEL ?

In theory, any neural process can be reproduced digitally in a computer, even though the brain is mostly analog. This is hardly a concern, as Ray Kurzweil explained in his book How to Create a Mind. However it does not always make sense to try to replicate everything a human being feel in a machine.

While sensory feelings like heat, cold or pain could easily be felt from the environment if the machine is equipped with the appropriate sensors, this is not the case for other physiological feelings like thirst, hunger, and sleepiness. These feelings alert us of the state of our body and are normally triggered by hormones such as vasopressin, ghrelin, or melatonin. Since machines do not have a digestive system nor hormones, it would be downright nonsensical to try to emulate such feelings.

Emotions do not arise for no reason. They are either a reaction to an external stimulus, or a spontaneous expression of an internal thought process. For example, we can be happy or joyful because we received a present, got a promotion or won the lottery. These are external causes that trigger the emotions inside our brain. The same emotion can be achieved as the result of an internal thought process. If I manage to find a solution to a complicated mathematical problem, that could make me happy too, even if nobody asked me to solve it and it does not have any concrete application in my life. It is a purely intellectual problem with no external cause, but solving it confers satisfaction. The emotion could be said to have arisen spontaneously from an internalized thought process in the neocortex. In other words, solving the problem in the neocortex causes the emotion in another part of the brain.

An intelligent computer could also prompt some emotions based on its own thought processes, just like the joy or satisfaction experienced by solving a mathematical problem. In fact, as long as it is allowed to communicate with the outside world, there is no major obstacle to computers feeling true emotions of its own like joy, sadness, surprise, disappointment, fear, anger, or resentment, among others. These are all emotions that can be produced by interactions through language (e.g. reading, online chatting) with no need for physiological feedback.

Now let’s think about how and why humans experience a sense of well being and peace of mind, two emotions far more complex than joy or anger. Both occur when our physiological needs are met, when we are well fed, rested, feel safe, don’t feel sick, and are on the right track to pass on our genes and keep our offspring secure. These are compound emotions that require other basic emotions as well as physiological factors. A machine without physiological needs cannot get sick and that does not need to worry about passing on its genes to posterity, and therefore will have no reason to feel that complex emotion of ‘well being’ the way humans do. For a machine well being may exist but in a much more simplified form.

Just like machines cannot reasonably feel hunger because they do not eat, replicating emotions on machines with no biological body, no hormones, and no physiological needs can be tricky. This is the case with social emotions like attachment, sexual emotions like love, and emotions originating from evolutionary mechanisms set in the (epi)genome. This is what we will explore in more detail below.

FEELINGS ROOTED IN THE SENSES AND THE VAGUS NERVE

What really distinguishes intelligent machines from humans and animals is that the former do not have a biological body. This is essentially why they could not experience the same range of feelings and emotions as we do, since many of them inform us about the state of our biological body.

An intelligent robot with sensors could easily see, hear, detect smells, feel an object’s texture, shape and consistency, feel pleasure and pain, heat and cold, and the like. But what about the sense of taste ? Or the effects of alcohol on the mind ? Since machines do not eat, drink and digest, they wouldn’t be able to experience these things. A robot designed to socialize with humans would be unable to understand and share the feelings of gastronomical pleasure or inebriety with humans. They could have a theoretical knowledge of it, but not a first-hand knowledge from an actually felt experience.

But the biggest obstacle to simulating physical feelings in a machine comes from the vagus nerve, which controls such varied things as digestion, ‘gut feelings’, heart rate and sweating. When we are scared or disgusted, we feel it in our guts. When we are in love we feel butterflies in our stomach. That’s because of the way our nervous system is designed. Quite a few emotions are felt through the vagus nerve connecting the brain to the heart and digestive system, so that our body can prepare to court a mate, fight an enemy or escape in the face of danger, by shutting down digestion, raising adrenaline and increasing heart rate. Feeling disgusted can help us vomit something that we have swallowed and shouldn’t have.

Strong emotions can affect our microbiome, the trillions of gut bacteria that help us digest food and that secrete 90% of the serotonin and 50% of the dopamine used by our brain. The thousands of species of bacteria living in our intestines can vary quickly based on our diet, but it has been demonstrated that even emotions like stress, anxiety, depression and love can strongly affect the composition of our microbiome. This is very important because of the essential role that gut bacteria play in maintaining our brain functions. The relationship between gut and brain works both ways. The presence or absence of some gut bacteria has been linked to autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder and several other psychological conditions. What we eat actually influence the way the think too, by changing our gut flora, and therefore also the production of neurotransmitters. Even our intuition is linked to the vagus nerve, hence the expression ‘gut feeling’.

Without a digestive system, a vagus nerve and a microbiome, robots would miss a big part of our emotional and psychological experience. Our nutrition and microbiome influence our brain far more than most people suspect. They are one of the reasons why our emotions and behaviour are so variable over time (in addition to maturity; see below).

SICKNESS, FATIGUE, SLEEP AND DREAMS

Another key difference between machines and humans (or animals) is that our emotions and thoughts can be severely affected by our health, physical condition and fatigue. Irritability is often an expression of mental or physical exhaustion caused by a lack of sleep or nutrients, or by a situation that puts excessive stress on mental faculties and increases our need for sleep and nutrients. We could argue that computers may overheat if used too intensively, and may also need to rest. That is not entirely true if the hardware is properly designed with an super-efficient cooling system, and a steady power supply. New types of nanochips may not produce enough heat to have any heating problem at all.

Most importantly machines don’t feel sick. I don’t mean just being weakened by a disease or feeling pain, but actually feeling sick, such as indigestion, nausea (motion sickness, sea sickness), or feeling under the weather before tangible symptoms appear. These aren’t enviable feelings of course, but the point is that machines cannot experience them without a biological body and an immune system.

When tired or sick, not only do we need to rest to recover our mental faculties and stabilize our emotions, we also need to dream. Dreams are used to clear our short-term memory cache (in the hippocampus), to replete neurotransmitters, to consolidate memories (by myelinating synapses during REM sleep), and to let go of the day’s emotions by letting our neurons firing up freely. Dreams also allow a different kind of thinking free of cultural or professional taboos that increase our creativity. This is why we often come up with great ideas or solutions to our problems during our sleep, and notably during the lucid dreaming phase.

Computers cannot dream and wouldn’t need to because they aren’t biological brains with neurostransmitters, stressed out neurons and synapses that need to get myelinated. Without dreams, an AI would nevertheless loose an essential component of feeling like a biological human.

EMOTIONS ROOTED IN SEXUALITY

Being in love is an emotion that brings a male and a female individual (save for some exceptions) of the same species together in order to reproduce and raise one’s offspring until they grow up. Sexual love is caused by hormomes, but is not merely the product of hormonal changes in our brain. It involves changes in the biochemistry of our whole body and can even lead to important physiological effects (e.g. on morphology) and long-term behavioural changes. Clearly sexual love is not ‘just an emotion’ and is not purely a neurological process either. Replicating the neurological expression of love in an AI would simulate the whole emotion of love, but only one of its facets.

Apart from the issue of reproducing the physiological expresion of love in a machine, there is also the question of causation. There is a huge difference between an artificially implanted/simulated emotion and one that is capable of arising by itself from environmental causes. People can fall in love for a number of reasons, such as physical attraction and mental attraction (shared interests, values, tastes, etc.), but one of the most important in the animal world is genetic compatibility with the prospective mate. Individuals who possess very different immune systems (HLA genes), for instance, tend to be more strongly attracted to each other and feel more ‘chemistry’. We could imagine that a robot with a sense of beauty and values could appreciate the looks and morals of another robot or a human being and even feel attracted (platonically). Yet a machine couldn’t experience the ‘chemistry’ of sexual love because it lacks hormones, genes and other biochemical markers required for sexual reproduction. In other words, robots could have friends but not lovers, and that make sense.

A substantial part of the range of human emotions and behaviours is anchored in sexuality. Jealousy is another good example. Jealousy is intricatedly linked to love. It is the fear of losing one’s loved one to a sexual rival. It is an innate emotion whose only purpose is to maximize our chances of passing our genes through sexual reproduction by warding off competitors. Why would a machine, which does not need to reproduce sexually, need to feel that ?

One could wonder what difference it makes whether a robot can feel love or not. They don’t need to reproduce sexually, so who cares ? If we need intelligent robots to work with humans in society, for example by helping to take care of the young, the sick and the elderly, they could still function as social individuals without feeling sexual love, wouldn’t they ? In fact you may not want a humanoid robot to become a sexual predator, especially if working with kids ! Not so fast. Without a basic human emotion like love, an AI simply cannot think, plan, prioritize and behave the same way as humans do. Their way of thinking, planning and prioritizing would rely on completely different motivations. For example, young human adults spend considerable time and energy searching for a suitable mate in order to reproduce.

A robot endowed with an AI of equal or greater than human intelligence, lacking the need for sexual reproduction would behave, plan and prioritize its existence very differently than humans. That is not necessarily a bad thing, for a lot of conflicts in human society are caused by sex. But it also means that it could become harder for humans to predict the behaviour and motivation of autonomous robots, which could be a problem once they become more intelligent than us in a few decades. The bottom line is that by lacking just one essential human emotion (let alone many), intelligent robots could have very divergent behaviours, priorities and morals from humans. It could be different in a good way, but we can’t know that for sure at present since they haven’t been built yet.

TEMPERAMENT AND SOCIABILITY

Humans are social animals. They typically, though not always (e.g. some types of autism), seek to belong to a group, make friends, share feelings and experiences with others, gossip, seek approval or respect from others, and so on. Interestingly, a person’s sociability depends on a variety of factors not found in machines, including gender, age, level of confidence, health, well being, genetic predispositions, and hormonal variations.

We could program an AI to mimick a certain type of human sociability, but it wouldn’t naturally evolve over time with experience and environmental factors (food, heat, diseases, endocrine disruptors, microbiome). Knowledge can be learned but not spontaneous reactions to environmental factors.

Humans tend to be more sociable when the weather is hot and sunny, when they drink alcohol and when they are in good health. A machine has no need to react like that, unless once again we intentionally program it to resemble humans. But even then it couldn’t feel everything we feel as it doesn’t eat, doesn’t have gut bacteria, doesn’t get sick, and doesn’t have sex.

MATERNAL WARMTH AND FEELING OF SAFETY IN MAMMALS

Humans, like all mammals, have an innate need for maternal warmth in childhood. An experiment was conducted with newborn mice taken away from their biological mother. The mice were placed in a cage with two dummy mothers. One of them was warm, fluffy and cosy, but did not have milk. The other one was hard, cold and uncosy but provided milk. The baby mice consistently chose the cosy one, demonstrating that the need for comfort and safety trumps nutrition in infant mammals. Likewise, humans deprived of maternal (or paternal) warmth and care as babies almost always experience psychological problems growing up.

In addition to childhood care, humans also need the feeling of safety and cosiness provided by the shelter of one’s home throughout life. Not all animals are like that. Even as hunter-gatherers or pastoralist nomads, all Homo sapiens need a shelter, be it a tent, a hut or a cave.

How could we expect that kind of reaction and behaviour in a machine that does not need to grow from babyhood to adulthood, cannot know what it is to have parents or siblings, nor need to feel reassured by maternal warmth, and do not have a biological compulsion to seek a shelter ? Without those feelings, it is extremely doubtful that a machine could ever truly understand and empathize completely with humans.

These limitations mean that it may be useless to try to create intelligent, sentient and self-aware robots that truly think, feel and behave like humans. Reproducing our intellect, language, and senses (except taste) are the easy part. Then comes consciousness, which is harder but still feasible. But since our emotions and feelings are so deeply rooted in our biological body and its interaction with its environment, the only way to reproduce them would be to reproduce a biological body for the AI. In other words, we are not talking about a creating a machine anymore, but genetically engineering a new life being, or using neural implants for existing humans.

MACHINES DON’T MATURE

The way human experience emotions evolves dramatically from birth to adulthood. Children are typically hyperactive and excitable and are prone to making rash decisions on impulse. They cry easily and have difficulties containing and controlling their emotions and feelings. As we mature, we learn more or les successfully to master our emotions. Actually controlling one’s emotions gets easier over time because with age the number of neurons in the brain decreases and emotions get blunter and vital impulses weaker.

The expression of one’s emotions is heavily regulated by culture and taboos. That’s why speakers of Romance languages will generally express their feelings and affection more freely than, say, Japanese or Finnish people. Would intelligent robots also follow one specific human culture, or create a culture on their own ?

Sex hormones also influence the way we feel and express emotions. Male testosterone makes people less prone to emotional display, more rational and cold, but also more aggressive. Female estrogens increase empathy, affection and maternal instincts of protection and care. A good example of the role of biology on emotions is the way women’s hormonal cycles (and the resulting menstruations) affect their emotions. One of the reasons that children process emotions differently than adults is that have lower sex hormomes. As people age, hormonal levels decrease (not just sex hormones), making us more mellow.

Machines don’t mature emotionally, do not go through puberty, do not have hormonal cycles, nor undergo hormonal change based on their age, diet and environment. Artificial intelligence could learn from experience and mature intellectually, but not mature emotionally like a child becoming an adult. This is a vital difference that shouldn’t be underestimated. Program an AI to have the emotional maturity of a 5-year old and it will never grow up. Children (especially boys) cannot really understand the reason for their parents’ anxiety toward them until they grow up and have children of their own, because they lack the maturity and sexual hormones associated with parenthood.

We could always run a software emulating changes in AI maturity over time, but they would not be the result of experiences and interactions with the environment. It may not be useful to create robots that mature like us, but the argument debated here is whether machines could ever feel exactly like us or not. This argument is not purely rhetorical. Some transhumanists wish to be able one day to upload their mind onto a computer and transfer our consciouness (which may not be possible for a number of reasons). Assuming that it becomes possible, what if a child or teenager decides to upload his or her mind and lead a new robotic existence ? One obvious problem is that this person would never fulfill his/her potential for emotional maturity.

The loss of our biological body would also deprive us of our capacity to experience feelings and emotions bound to our physiology. We may be able to keep those already stored in our memory, but we may never dream, enjoy food, or fall in love again.

SUMMARY & CONCLUSION

What emotions could machines experience ?

Even though many human emotions are beyond the range of machines due to their non-biological nature, some emotions could very well be felt by an artificial intelligence. These include, among others:

  • Joy, satisfaction, contentment
  • Disappointment, sadness
  • Surprise
  • Fear, anger, resentment
  • Friendship
  • Appreciation for beauty, art, values, morals, etc.

What emotions and feelings would machines not be able to experience ?

The following emotions and feelings could not be wholly or faithfully experienced by an AI, even with a sensing robotic body, beyond mere implanted simulation.

  • Hunger, thirst, drunkenness, gastronomical enjoyment
  • Various feelings of sickness, such as nausea, indigestion, motion sickness, sea sickness, etc.
  • Sexual love, attachment, jealousy
  • Maternal/paternal instincts towards one’s own offspring
  • Fatigue, sleepiness, irritability
  • Dreams and associated creativity

In addition, machine emotions would run up against the following issues that would prevent them to feel and experience the world truly like humans.

  • Machines wouldn’t mature emotionally with age.
  • Machines don’t grow up and don’t go through puberty to pass from a relatively asexual childhood stage to a sexual adult stage
  • Machines cannot fall in love (+ associated emotions, behaviours and motivations) as they aren’t sexual beings
  • Being asexual, machines are genderless and therefore lack associated behaviour and emotions caused by male and female hormones.
  • Machines wouldn’t experience gut feelings (fear, love, intuition).
  • Machine emotions, intellect, psychology and sociability couldn’t vary with nutrition and microbiome, hormonal changes, or environmental factors like the weather.

It is not completely impossible to bypass these obstacles, but that would require to create a humanoid machine that not only possess human-like intellectual faculties, but also an artificial body that can eat and digest and with a digestive system connected to the central microprocessor in the same way as our vagus nerve is connected to our brain. That robot would also need a gender and a capacity to have sex and feel attracted to other humanoid robots or humans based on a predefined programming that serves as an alternative to a biological genome to create a sense of ‘sexual chemistry’ when matched with an individual with a compatible “genome”. It would necessitate artificial hormones to regulate its hunger, thirst, sexual appetite, homeostasis, and so on.

Although we lack the technology and in-depth knowledge of the human body to consider such an ambitious project any time soon, it could eventually become possible one day. One could wonder whether such a magnificent machine could still be called a machine, or simply an artificially made life being. I personally don’t think it should be called a machine at that point.

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This article was originally published on Life 2.0.

The technological singularity requires the creation of an artificial superintelligence (ASI). But does that ASI need to be modelled on the human brain, or is it even necessary to be able to fully replicate the human brain and consciousness digitally in order to design an ASI ?

Animal brains and computers don’t work the same way. Brains are massively parallel three-dimensional networks, while computers still process information in a very linear fashion, although millions of times faster than brains. Microprocessors can perform amazing calculations, far exceeding the speed and efficiency of the human brain using completely different patterns to process information. The drawback is that traditional chips are not good at processing massively parallel data, solving complex problems, or recognizing patterns.

Newly developed neuromorphic chips are modelling the massively parallel way the brain processes information using, among others, neural networks. Neuromorphic computers should ideally use optical technology, which can potentially process trillions of simultaneous calculations, making it possible to simulate a whole human brain.

The Blue Brain Project and the Human Brain Project, funded by the European Union, the Swiss government and IBM, are two such attempts to build a full computer model of a functioning human brain using a biologically realistic model of neurons. The Human Brain Project aims to achieve a functional simulation of the human brain for 2016.

Neuromorphic chips make it possible for computers to process sensory data, detect and predict patterns, and learn from experience. This is a huge advance in artificial intelligence, a step closer to creating an artificial general intelligence (AGI), i.e. an AI that could successfully perform any intellectual task that a human being can.

Think of an AGI inside a humanoid robot, a machine that looks and behave like us, but with customizable skills and that can perform practically any task better than a real human. These robots could be self-aware and/or sentient, depending on how we choose to build them. Manufacturing robots wouldn’t need to be, but what about social robots living with us, taking care of the young, the sick or the elderly? Surely it would be nicer if they could converse with us as if they were conscious, sentient beings like us, a bit like the AI in Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie Her.

In a not too distant future, perhaps less than two decades, such robots could replace humans for practically any job, creating a society of abundance where humans can spend their time however they like. In this model, highly capable robots would run the economy for us. Food, energy and most consumer products would be free or very cheap, and people would receive a fixed monthly allowance from the government.

This all sounds very nice. But what about an AI that would be greatly surpass the brightest human minds ? An artificial superintelligence (ASI), or strong AI (SAI), with the ability to learn and improve on itself, and potentially becoming millions or billions of times more intelligent and capable than humans ? The creation of such an entity would theoretically lead to the mythical technological singularity.

Futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil believes that the singularity will happen some time around 2045. Among Kurzweil’s critics is Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen, who believes that the singularity is still a long way off. Allen argues that for a real singularity-level computer intelligence to be built, the scientific understanding of how the human brain works will need to accelerate exponentially (like digital technologies), and that the process of original scientific discovery just doesn’t behave that way. He calls this issue the complexity brake.

Without interfering in the argument between Paul Allen and Ray Kurzweil (who replied convincingly here), the question I want to discuss is whether it is absolutely necessary to fully understand and replicate the way the human brain works to create an ASI.

GREAT INTELLIGENCE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE MODELLED ON THE HUMAN BRAIN

It is a natural for us to think that humans are the culmination of intelligence, simply because it is the case in the biological world on Earth. But that doesn’t mean that our brain is perfect or that other forms of higher intelligence cannot exist if they aren’t based on the same model.

If extraterrestrial beings with a greater intelligence than ours exist, it is virtually unthinkable that their brains be shaped and function like ours. The process of evolution is so random and complex that even if life were to be created again on a planet identical to Earth, it wouldn’t unfold the same way as it did for us, and consequently the species wouldn’t be the same. What if the Permian-Triassic extinction, or any other mass extinction event hadn’t occured ? We wouldn’t be there. But that doesn’t mean that other intelligent animals wouldn’t have evolved instead of us. Perhaps there would have been octopus-like creatures more intelligent than humans with a completely different brain structure.

It’s pure human vanity and short-sightedness to think that everything good and intelligent has to be modelled on us. That is the kind of thinking that led to the development of religions with anthropomorphized gods. Humble or unpretentious religions like animism or Buddhism either have no human-like deity or no god at all. More arrogant or self-righteous religions, be them polytheistic or monotheistic, have typically imagined gods as superhumans. We don’t want to make the same mistake with artificial superintelligence. Greater than human intelligence does not have to be an inflated version of human intelligence, nor should it be based on our biological brains.

The human brain is the fortuitious result of four billion years of evolution. Or rather, it is one tiny branch in the grand tree of evolution. Birds have much smaller brains than mammals and are generally considered stupid animals compared to most mammals. Yet, crows have reasoning skills that can exceed that of a preschooler. They display conscious, purposeful behaviour, a combined with a sense of initiative, elaborate problem solving abilities of their own, and can even use tools. All this with a brain the size of a fava-bean. A 2004 study from the departments of animal behavior and experimental psychology at the University of Cambridge claimed that crows were as clever as the great apes.

Clearly there is no need to replicate the intricacies of a human cortex to achieve consciousness and initiative. Intelligence does not depend only on brain size, the number of neurons, or cortex complexity, but also the brain-to-body mass ratio. That is why cattle, who have brains as big as chimpanzees, are stupider than ravens or mice.

But what about computers ? Computers are pure “brains”. They don’t have bodies. And indeed as computers get faster and more efficient, their size tend to decrease, not increase. This is yet another example of why we shouldn’t compare biological brains and computers.

As Ray Kurzweil explains in his reply to Paul Allen, learning about how the human brains works only serve to provide “biologically inspired methods that can accelerate work in AI, much of which has progressed without significant insight as to how the brain performs similar functions. […] The way that these massively redundant structures in the brain differentiate is through learning and experience. The current state of the art in AI does, however, enable systems to also learn from their own experience.” He then adds that IBM’s Watson learned most of its knowledge by reading on its own.

In conclusion, there is no rational reason to believe that an artificial superintelligence couldn’t come into being without being entirely modelled on the human brain, or any animal brain. A computer chip will never be the same as a biochemical neural network, and a machine will never feel emotions the same way as us (although they may feel emotions that are out of the range of human perception). But notwithstanding these differences, some computers can already acquire knowledge on their own, and will become increasingly good at it, even if they don’t learn exactly the same way as humans. Once given the chance to improve on themselves, intelligent machines could set in motion a non-biological evolution leading to greater than human intelligence, and eventually to the singularity.

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This article was originally published on Life 2.0.

Where are the real-world proven-track records of and by the White Swan Author, Mr. Andres Agostini?

a  from Profitable Challenges

What are four (4) solid real-life examples that the White Swan Author has risk-managed? Andres has many letterhead testimonials about those. See the ensuing:

1.- World-class Petroleum Refineries whose risks that Andres has managed are available at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/white-swan-oil-refineries

2.- World-class Oil and Gas Tankers (maritime vessels) whose risks that Andres has managed are available at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/white-swan-oil-gas-tankers

3.- World-class Petroleum installations, equipments and hardware whose risks that Andres has managed are available at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/white-swan-petroleum-installations

4.- Toyota and Mitsubishi Motors factories and installations whose risks that Andres has managed are available at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/05/white-swan-cars

Oil Refineries that has continuously benefited from Mr. Andres Agostini’s White Swan Transformative and Integrative Risk Management. The White Swan Idea is at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Through five and half years, the White Swan Book’s Author Andres Agostini concurrently managed the risks of the world’s number 1 and the world’s number 3 Oil Refineries. There is a sample of installations of these two refineries.

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The White Swan Idea is at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Oil and Gas Tankers (maritime vessels) that has continuously benefited from Mr. Andres Agostini’s White Swan Transformative and Integrative Risk Management. The White Swan Idea is at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

Through five and half years, the White Swan Book Author Andres Agostini concurrently managed the risks of ten (10) oil and gas tankers (maritime vessels). There is a sample of five (5) vessels here.

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The White Swan Idea is at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

The Lifeboat Foundation Worldwide Ambassador Mr. Andres Agostini’s own White Swan Dictionary, Countermeassuring Every Unthinkable Black Swan, at https://lifeboat.com/blog/2014/04/white-swan

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WHITE SWAN — UNABRIDGED DICTIONARY

Altogetherness.— Altogetherness is the quality of conforming to the ability to investigate with all or everything included.

A Posteriori.— “ … A Posteriori indicates the demonstration that entails the ascendance of the effect to the cause, or the properties of the essence of something [….] After examining the matter that is dealt with [….] Derived by or designating the process of reasoning from facts or particulars to general principles or from effects to causes; inductive; empirical [….] Knowable from experience [….] relating to or involving inductive reasoning from particular facts or effects to a general principle [….] derived from or requiring evidence for its validation or support; empirical; open to revision [….] from particular instances to a general principle or law; based on observation or experiment [….] not existing in the mind prior to or apart from experience [….] the process of reasoning from effect to cause, based upon observation …”

A Priori.— “ … A Priori comprises that proceeds from a known or assumed cause to a necessarily related effect; deductive [….] Derived by or designating the process of reasoning without reference to particular facts or experience [….] Knowable without appeal to particular experience [….] Made before or without examination; not supported by factual study [….] relating to or involving deductive reasoning from a general principle to the expected facts or effects [….] to be true independently of or in advance of experience of the subject matter; requiring no evidence for its validation or support [….] existing in the mind independent of experience [….] conceived beforehand …”

Blitzkrieg.— “ … Blitzkrieg is a German MEME for war-waging White Swan Corporate Strategy conducted against competitors and with great speed and force; specifically: a violent techno-surprise offensive by massed brick-and-mortar forces and through digitized ground and World-Wide Web forces in close beyond-perfection coordination …”

Change .— “… Change is to transfer from (one conveyance) to another and/or to undergo transformation or transition and/or to go from one phase to another and/or the act, process, or result of altering or modifying and/or the replacing of one thing for another; substitution and/or a transformation or transition from one state, condition, or phase to another and/or to make or become different and/or a variation, deviation, or modification and/or anything that is or may be substituted for something else and/or to transform and/or to transfer from one (conveyance) to another and/or to pass gradually into and/or to pass from one phase to another and/or the act of changing or the result of being changed and/or a transformation or modification and/or the substitution of one thing for another and/or the process of becoming different and/or impermanence and/or biological metamorphosis …”

Closenessfulness.— (Closenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to see immediate and near-term foreseeable futures and likely prospects).

Complexity Science .— “ … Complexity Science is the systematic study of the nature and behavior of the material and physical universe, based on observation, experiment, and measurement, and the formulation of laws to describe these facts in general terms with the utter purpose of instituting the perusal of the phenomena which emerge from a collection of interacting objects [….] Complexity expresses a condition of numerous elements in a system and numerous forms of relationships among the elements [….] The use of the term complex is often confused with the term complicated. In today’s systems, this is the difference between myriad connecting ‘stovepipes’ and effective ‘integrated’ solutions. This means that complex is the opposite of independent, while complicated is the opposite of simple [….] While this has led some fields to come up with specific definitions of complexity, there is a more recent movement to regroup observations from different fields to study complexity in itself, whether it appears in anthills, human brains, or stock markets. One such interdisciplinary group of fields is relational order theories …”

Counter-closenessfulness.— (Counter-closenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to see alternate immediate and near-term foreseeable futures and likely prospects).

Counter-DoctorStangelovesness.— (Counter-DoctorStangelovesness is the quality of conforming to the ability to investigate, through alternate military strategy and practical systems theory as they are instituted in corporate theater of operations, as claims of management phenomena with potential corporate for-lucre application, such as ‘remote viewing’ through scenario-planning methodology ‘unthinkables’, the purported ability to physically ‘see’ unknown events, sites, or information from a great temporal distance, including those of the environment, industries and specially those of direct and indirect competitors to said corporations. Taken by Applied Thinkers and Savvy Corporation by and beyond the prescription of the RAND Corporation and the Hudson Institute).

Counter-farsightfulness.— (Counter-farsightfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to see alternate foreseeable futures and likely prospects).

Counter-foresightfulness.— (Counter-foresightfulness is the quality of conforming to the alternate perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred).

Counter-hindsightfulness.— (Counter-hindsightfulness is the quality of conforming to an alternate perception of the significance and nature of events after they have occurred).

Counter-insightfulness.— (Counter-insightfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to engage the alternate acute observation and deduction, penetration, discernment, perception and understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context).

Counter-intuitvenessfulness.— (Counter-intuitvenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to perceiving alternate intuitive knowledge).

Counter-Stargatenessfulness.— (Counter-Stargatenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to investigate alternate claims of psychic phenomena with potential corporate for-lucre application, such as ‘remote viewing’, the purported ability to psychically ‘see’ events, sites, or information from a great distance, including those of the environment, industries and specially those of direct and indirect competitors. Taken by Applied Thinkers and Visionary Corporation by the U.S. Federal Government’ and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s Stargate Project).

DoctorStangelovesness.— (DoctorStangelovesness is the quality of conforming to the ability to investigate, through military strategy and practical systems theory as they are instituted in corporate theater of operations, as claims of management phenomena with potential corporate for-lucre application, such as ‘remote viewing’ through scenario-planning methodology ‘unthinkables’, the purported ability to physically ‘see’ unknown events, sites, or information from a great temporal distance, including those of the environment, industries and specially those of direct and indirect competitors to said corporations. Taken by Applied Thinkers and Savvy Corporation by and beyond the prescription of the RAND Corporation and the Hudson Institute).

Dynamic Driving Forces .— “…Dynamic Driving Forces are forces outside the firm (external factors) that trigger the change of strategy in an organization. Industry conditions change because important forces (the most dominant ones that have the biggest influence on what kinds of changes will take place in the industry’s structure and competitive environment) are driving industry participants (competitors, customers, or suppliers) to alter their actions, and thus the driving forces in an industry are the major underlying causes of changing industry and competitive conditions. Driving forces analysis has two steps: identifying what the driving forces are and assessing the impact they will have on the industry .… The Most Common Dynamic Driving Forces include: 1. The Internet and new e-commerce opportunities and threats it breeds in the industry; 2. Increasing globalization of the industry; 3. Changes in the long-run industry growth rate; 4. Changes in who buys the products and how they use it. 5. Product innovation; 6. Technological change; 7. Market innovation; 8. Entry or exit of major firms; 9. Diffusion of technical know-how across more companies and more countries; 10. Changes in cost and efficiency. 11. Growing buyer for preferences for differentiated products instead of a commodity product (or for a more standardized product instead of strongly differentiated products); 12. Regulatory influences and government policy changes; 13. Changing societal concerns, attitudes, and lifestyles; 14. Reductions in uncertainty and business risk … Other dynamic driving forces include geologic, climatological, political, geopolitical, demographic, social, ethical, economic, technological, financial, legal and environmental forces, among others …”

Dynamics.— “…Dynamics is a branch of mechanics that deals with forces and their relation primarily to the motion but sometimes also to the equilibrium of bodies …. an underlying cause of change or growth …. a pattern or process of change, growth, or activity *population dynamics* …”

Far-fetched.— “ … Far-fetched is improbable in nature; unlikely. But given the emergent as-of-now nature of the Omniverse, far-fetched is omniverseral nature’s most probable and so probable to tectonically reform our cosmovisions, in front and beyond our smartest observations, and other constellations believed indisputable by our folly human assumptions …”

Farsightfulness.— (Farsightfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to see the foreseeable futures and likely prospects).

Flawness.— (Flawness is the quality of conforming to maximum error and failure).

Foresightfulness.— (Foresightfulness is the quality of conforming to perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred).

Fortuitousness.— (Unexpected and casually happening[s], as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Futilitifulness Thinking.— (Futilitifulness is the quality of conforming to maximum futility).

Future (the ‚) .— “ … The Future is 1) What is yet to come, 2) What can happen or not, 3) The future is a tranquil country, 4) The indefinite time yet to come, 5) Something that will happen in time to come, 6) A prospective or expected condition, 7) Undetermined events that will occur in that time, 8) time that is to be or come hereafter, 9) Something that will exist or happen in time to come, 9) The period of time following the present moment and continuing on indefinitely, 10) The situation or condition of someone or something in the future, 11) One of a plurality of possible future conditions or situations, 12) The time or a period of time following the moment of speaking or writing; time regarded as still to come, 13) The future is what will happen in the time period after the present. Its arrival is considered inevitable due to the existence of time and the laws of physics. Due to the apparent nature of reality and the inevitability of the future, everything that currently exists and will exist can be categorized as either permanent, meaning that it will exist for the whole of the future, or temporary, meaning that it won’t and thus will come to an end. The future and the concept of eternity have been major subjects of philosophy, religion, and science, and defining them non-controversially has consistently eluded the greatest of minds. In the Occidental view, which uses a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the projected time line that is anticipated to occur. In special relativity, the future is considered absolute future, or the future light cone. 14) The only way you can see the future is if you’re ahead of your own time, 15) Learning how to be ahead of your time, today!, 16) The future is that the future is something that happens to us, not something we create, 17) Our future is determined by the actions of all of us alive today. our choices determine our destiny, 18) The future is a phenomenon that will be completely real someday even though it does not exist today, 19) Future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition, 20) Our intuition about the future is linear, which is hard-wired in our brains, 21) The future is being colonized all the time by people who have the resources, who do spend time thinking about it, planning for it and trying to shape it in their direction, 22) The future is already here; it’s just not evenly distributed, 23) the future is called ‘perhaps,’ which is the only possible thing to call the future. and the important thing is not to allow that to scare you, 24) The future is unsure. that’s the way it should be, 25) The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power, 26) The future is the past of to-morrow, 27) The best way to predict the future is to invent it, 28) To be masters of the future is to change the past, 29) The future is extremely important to high morale, to dynamism, to consensus, and in general to help the wheels of society turn smoothly, 30) The past is gone, the future is not to come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, 31) The future is not for the fainthearted, 32) The future is not an echo of the past, 33) The future is not a privilege but a perpetual conquest, 34) The future is not what will happen; the future is what is happening, 35) The future is more challenging than playing catch up, 36) The future is not an extrapolation of the past, 37) The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create, 38) The future is an unknown country which requires tough visas for anyone to enter. not all of us will get the chance to visit it, 39) The future is not what is coming at us, but what we are headed for, 40) The future is where I expect to spend the rest of my life, 41) The danger of the future is that men may become robots, 42) The future is the creation of millions of independent economic actors, 43) The future is independent of the past, 44) The future is alive. Like the present, the future is not a single, uniform state but an ongoing process that reflects the plenitude of human life, 45) The future is natural, out of anyone’s control, 46) The future is continually stalking on the present, 47) The future is technocracy in perpetuity, 48) The future is eternally clashing the present, 49) The future is absolute hard science dominance, 50) The future is going to get invented, with you or without you, 51) The future is S-H-A-Z-A-M (“…The wisdom of Solomon, the stamina of Atlas, the power of Zeus, the courage of Achilles, and the speed of Mercury.…” and 52) The future is not something that happens to us, but something we create.

Fuzzy Logic.— (A form of algebra employing a range of values from “true” to “false” that is used in decision-making with imprecise data, as in artificial intelligence systems, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Haphazardness.— (the quality of lacking any predictable order or plan, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Hindsightfulness.— (Hindsightfulness is the quality of conforming to perception of the significance and nature of events after they have occurred).

Inflection point .— “…Inflection point is a moment of dramatic change, especially in the development of a company, industry, or market … And/or a time of significant change in a situation; a turning point … A moment of dramatic change, especially in the development of a company, industry, or market … A point on a chart that marks the beginning of a significant move, either up or down … An event that results in a significant change in the progress of a company, industry, sector, economy or geopolitical situation. An inflection point can be considered a turning point after which a dramatic change, with either positive or negative results, is expected to result. Companies, industries, sectors and economies are dynamic and constantly evolving. Inflection points are more significant than the small day-to-day progress that is made and the effects of the change are often well-known and widespread … Andy Grove, Intel’s co-founder, described a strategic inflection point as ‘…an event that changes the way we think and act …’ … What Intel’s Grove calls ‘…strategic inflection point …, Andres terms « … Sputnik Moment inflection point … » … Inflection points can be a result of action taken by a company, or through actions taken by another entity, that has a direct impact on the company. Regulatory changes, for instance, could lead to an inflection point for a corporation that was previously held back by regulatory compliance issues. Inflection points in technology include the advent of the Internet and smart phones. Politically, an inflection point can be illustrated by the fall of the Berlin Wall or the fall of Communism in Poland and other Eastern Bloc countries …”

Insightfulness.— (Insightfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to engage the acute observation and deduction, penetration, discernment, perception and understanding of a specific cause and effect in a specific context).

Intuitvenessfulness.— (Intuitvenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to perceiving intuitive knowledge).

Litmus Test.— “… Litmus Test is a critical indication of future success or failure …”

Minimax.— “… Minimax is a decision rule used in decision theory, game theory, statistics and philosophy for minimizing the possible loss for a worst case (maximum loss) scenario. Alternatively, it can be thought of as maximizing the minimum gain (maximin or MaxMin). Originally formulated for two-player zero-sum game theory, covering both the cases where players take alternate moves and those where they make simultaneous moves, it has also been extended to more complex games and to general decision making in the presence of uncertainty …. In the theory of simultaneous games, a minimax strategy is a mixed strategy which is part of the solution to a zero-sum game. In zero-sum games, the minimax solution is the same as the Nash equilibrium …”

Mishaps.— (an unknown and unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Mistakenness .— (Mistakenness is the quality of conforming to maximum mistake and an unintentional act, omission).

Narrow-mindedness.— (Narrow-mindedness is the quality of conforming to unresponsive to new ideas).

Normalness.— (Normalness is the quality of conforming to maximum normal quality or normal condition).

Omniscience .— “… Applied non-theological omniscience consists of having total knowledge; knowing everything, having infinite knowledge, the current state of knowledge, the ability to know anything that one chooses to know and can be known and actually knowing everything that can be known. Synonyms to omniscience include panshopy, polyhistory and all-knowingness.…”

Open-mindedness.— (Open-mindedness is the quality of conforming to receptiveness to new ideas).

Prospective.— “ … Prospective comprises something that is likely or expected to happen [….] that looks forward to the future [….] that it is anticipated or likely to happen [….] of or in the future [….] potential, likely, or expected [….] yet to be or coming [….] of or concerned with or related to the future Set of analyzes and studies developed with the utter end of exploring or foretelling the future, regarding a determined subject matter …”.

Pseudo-fortuitousness.— (quasi-unexpected and quasi-casually happening[s], as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Pseudo-Fuzzy Logic.— (A form of algebra employing a range of values from quasi-“true” to quasi-“false” that is used in decision-making with quasi-imprecise data, as in artificial intelligence systems, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Pseudo-Haphazardness.— (the quality of quasi-lacking any predictable order or plan, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Pseudo-Mishaps.— (a quasi-unknown and quasi-unpredictable phenomenon that causes an event to result one way rather than another, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Pseudoserendipity.— Pseudoserendipity means PURPOSEFULLY CREATING the constant preconditions and conditions to seize “fortuitous happenstance” and/or “pleasant surprise” and/or “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. And also entails unexpected positive and beneficial accident(s) [….] the art of finding something unintended [….] the common experience of observing unexpected, anomalous and strategic data and events, which are transformed into the instance and context to develop a new theory or to complement an existing theory [….] And the faculty of making fortunate Technological Breakthroughs and Scientific Discoveries And Innovation Developments by accident, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles and tangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits and planes [….] Somewhat Expected Accidental Beneficial Discoveries in Science, Technology, Strategy, Business and Management …”

Pseudo-Randomness.— (Pseudo-Randomness means quasi-lacking of pattern or quasi-predictability in events. Pseudo-Randomness suggests a quasi-non-order or quasi-non-coherence in a sequence of symbols or steps, such that there is no intelligible pattern or combination, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Pseudo-recusriveness.— (quasi-pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Qualitative Analysis.— “…Qualitative Analysis refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business, risk and futures planning. Qualitative Analysis focuses on developing new insights and understanding of sustainable business performance based on narrative data …”

Qualt.— “…A qualt is brand of systems engineering who applies mathematical and ESPECIALLY non-mathematical models of uncertainty to financial and ESPECIALLY non-financial data and complex industrial operations. And a person who also studies the errors, the flaws and the limits of these qualitative models, understanding that there is a point of (i) inflection and (ii) Event horizon, in anything pursued by the for-lucre corporations …. A qualt has a combined background of advanced management, extreme project management (Agile) and systems engineering. A qualt spreads the usage of most-advanced business analytics and transformative and integrative risk management …. Whether he or she acknowledges it or not, the qualt is extremely AWARE of the many critical short-comings of many quantitative strategies and works hard at it advance to eliminate every form of downside through qualitative strategies …. For instance, qualts know that “…systemic risks …” are direct brainchildren of (a) Ignorance, (b) Manipulation, © Greed and (d) Corruption [….] Systems engineering, hugely embraced by Qualts, is an interdisciplinary field of engineering that focuses on how to design and manage complex engineering projects over their life cycles. Issues such as reliability, logistics, coordination of different teams (requirements management), evaluation measurements, and other disciplines become more difficult when dealing with large or complex projects. Systems engineering deals with work-processes, optimization methods, and risk management tools in such projects. It overlaps technical and human-centered disciplines such as control engineering, industrial engineering, organizational studies, and project management. Systems Engineering ensures that all likely aspects of a project or system are considered, and integrated into a whole. White Swans are the brainchildren of Qualts …”

Quantitative Analysis.— “ … Quantitative Analysis refers to the skills, technologies, applications and practices for continuous iterative exploration and investigation of past business performance to gain insight and drive business, risk and futures planning. Quantitative Analysis focuses on developing new insights and understanding of sustainable business performance based on numerical data, narrative data, alphanumerical data and statistical methods …”

Quant.— “ … A quant is brand of industrial scientist and engineers who applies mathematical model of uncertainty to financial and/or socioeconomic data and complex financial instruments. And a person who also studies the flaws and the limits of these models, understanding that there is a point of breakdown …. A quant has a combined background of applied mathematics, engineering and statistics. A quant spreads the usage of artificial intelligence in today’s markets …. Whether he or she acknowledges it or not, the quant is extremely AWARE of the many critical short-comings of many quantitative strategies (as he is never interested in qualitative analytics), such as their tendency to lead to crowded trades and their underestimation of the likelihood of chaotic, volatile moves in the markets …. Along with Central Bank chairpersons and world’s finance ministers, quants are the first ones to “…elicit…” that the global economy is being “ …affected…” by “ …systemic risks…”, that systemic risk turbo-charged by several corrupted politicians, manipulative economists and beautiful quants that never understand what the tangible corporate theater of operations is [….] Industrial engineering, partly used by so-called Quants, is a branch of engineering dealing with the optimization of complex processes or systems. It is concerned with the development, improvement, implementation and evaluation of integrated systems of people, money, knowledge, information, equipment, energy, materials, analysis and synthesis, as well as the mathematical, physical and social sciences together with the principles and methods of engineering design to specify, predict, and evaluate the results to be obtained from such systems or processes. Its underlying concepts overlap considerably with certain business-oriented disciplines such as operations management. Black Swans are the brainchildren of quants …”

Randomness.— (Randomness means lack of pattern or predictability in events. Randomness suggests a non-order or non-coherence in a sequence of symbols or steps, such that there is no intelligible pattern or combination, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Recursiveness.— (pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits.

Retrospective.— “ … Retrospective comprises something that is looking back on, contemplating, or directed to the past [….] looking or directed backward [….] Applying to or influencing the past; retroactive [….] looking or directed backwards, esp in time; characterized by retrospection …. applying to the past; retroactive [….] directed to the past; contemplative of past situations, events, etc. [….] looking or directed backward [….] review, revision, another look, reassessment, fresh look, second look, reconsideration, re-evaluation, re-examination [….] Considering a past event or development [….] Something that is chronologically presented pertaining to business tasks, with the utter object to show the trajectory of said business tasks …”

Risk .— “… The quantitative or qualitative expression of possible loss that considers both the probability that an event will occur and the consequences of that event … and/or the likeliness of injury, harm, damage, disruption or loss multiplied by its potential magnitude …”

Serendipity.— Serendipity means a “fortuitous happenstance” and/or “pleasant surprise” and/or “always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things which they were not in quest of”. And also entails unexpected positive and beneficial accident(s) [….] And the art of finding something unintended [….] the common experience of observing unexpected, anomalous and strategic data and events, which are transformed into the instance and context to develop a new theory or to complement an existing theory [….] And the faculty of making fortunate Technological Breakthroughs and Scientific Discoveries And Innovation Developments by accident, as a result of corporate manager’s perpetual MOST-RECURSIVE search for lucrative intangibles and tangibles in omniverseral: (a) hidden quadrants and (b) ignored flanks and © forgotten angles, and (d) recondite spheres and (e) hermetic theater of operations and (e) unrealized orbits and planes [….] Unexpected Accidental Beneficial Discoveries in Science, Technology, Strategy, Business and Management …”

Scientific Futuring.— “…Scientific Futuring is in place to develop a scientific method for studying the future. Scientific Futuring comprises: 1) an inductive process consisting of a number of accurate observations which have been consolidated, or generalized, into empirical laws or statements of underlying relationships between key variables and 2) A deductive, intuitive process by which the scientific “investigator” places his observations into a larger system of thought, or theory based on fundamental axioms. Scientific Futuring is instituted with the purpose of seizing knowledge of effects through causes. This method of Scientific Futuring, made up of a process employing the classical scientific steps of induction and deduction, and reinforced by additional steps of contextualization and evolutionization, is a battle-plan for study of tomorrow’s evolving world…”

Stargatenessfulness.— (Stargatenessfulness is the quality of conforming to the ability to investigate claims of psychic phenomena with potential corporate for-lucre application, such as ‘remote viewing’, the purported ability to psychically ‘see’ events, sites, or information from a great distance, including those of the environment, industries and specially those of direct and indirect competitors. Taken by Applied Thinkers and Visionary Corporation by the U.S. Federal Government’ and the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency’s Stargate Project).

System .— “…System comprises the whole compounded of several parts, members elements, components and subsystems, a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole, an organized set of interrelated ideas or principles, a naturally occurring group of objects or phenomena, a condition of harmonious and orderly interaction, and an organized and coordinated method; a procedure. System is a set of interacting or interdependent components forming an integrated whole or a set of elements (often called ‘components’) and dynamic relationships which are different from relationships of the set or its elements to other elements or sets. Systems unite and put together elements, components and subsystems toward the entire whole…”

Technology.— “… Technology is instituted in order to solve practical problems (both mild and complex ones) ─ especially in industry, commerce, economy, science, technology, society, and politics (including geopolitics) ─, the methodical practical application of the scientific method, mathematical principles, practical sciences and material used to achieve a commercial or industrial objective and beyond, as well as to achieve practical ends such as the design, manufacture, and operation of efficient and economical structures, machines, processes, and systems …. The profession of and/or the work performed by any engineer …” If you want a briefer definition, please see this: ” … the methodical and systematic application of science in order to solve practical problems …”

Theater of Operation.— “… Theater of Operation is hereby included to mean the four-dimensional coordinate system and beyond it, in which organization’s physical (tangible) and non-physical (intangible) events are located …”

The Eureka Moment.— “ … The Eureka Moment, also known as the ‘…Aha! Moment …’, refers to the common human experience of suddenly understanding a previously incomprehensible problem or concept. The Eureka effect is named after the myth that the Greek polymath Archimedes, having discovered how to measure the volume of an irregular object, leaped out of a public bath, and ran home naked shouting ‘eureka’ (I found it) …”

The Sputnik Moment.— “ … The Sputnik Moment is a point in time in which a country or a society or even a corporation, realizes that it needs to catch up with the apparent technological and scientific gap that exists between it and some other superpower and/or global competitors, increasing its investment efforts into education and innovative R&D&I …”

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management.— “…Transformative and Integrative Risk Management comprises of all activities and initiatives required to seize the optimum degree of risk elimination, mitigation, modulation or control within the constraints of operational effectiveness, time, and cost, attained through the specific application of management, scientific, engineering and mathematical principles throughout all phases of system operation.”

Transformative and Integrative Risk Management.— “Transformative and Integrative Risk Management comprises of all activities and initiatives required to seize the optimum degree of risk elimination, mitigation, modulation or control within the constraints of operational effectiveness, time, and cost, attained through the specific application of management, scientific, engineering and mathematical principles throughout all phases of system operation.”

Troublesomeness.— Troublesomeness is the quality of conforming to the ability to cause trouble, annoyance, or difficulty; vexation.

Un-reconnoiterable Cues.— (Un-reconnoiterable cues refers to un-explorable cues).

Wild Card.— “ … A wild card is a future development or event with a relatively low probability of occurrence but a likely high impact on the conduct of business …”