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Boricua Futuristics: Part 6 – Renewable Energy

9 Jul

OK Gente,

A key part of the future of Puerto Rico is certainly getting out of debt. Like it or not, that has to be done w/in US economic system. Getting legislative change seems key.

I would contend that if restructuring can happen, one crucial item in the post restructuring phase is renewable energy. They have to replace the dinosaur electrical utility they have…The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA).

Decentralized renewable energy would be a big help! If I did a plan, it would include no taxes for renewable energy companies for x years …tax breaks for those consumers who use it. USA govt. could subsidizing implementation through the Energy Department.

Let PR be laboratory for renewable energy instead of other crap. Lots of engineering strength in PR. Build on that! Could be important.

I would organize island wide folks from engineering departments and ex-NASA folks. They should be encouraged to start a bunch of renewable energy companies. These companies could get US govt and external funding (eg. Solera?) to set up a new grid for PR and then expand the Caribbean and then Florida. Further, PR could make deals to sell some of the electricity generated to northern US states in the winter.

Just a thought.

Sun, wind and engineering! The island has all three!

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Part four: My AI overlord

5 Jul

One of my favorite social commentators Chris Hedges has spoke against “Utopianism”. He says utopian ideologies end in barbarism. He says the main reason for that is the ugly irrational human impulses and emotions that undermine any human project.  There sure have been many idealistic endeavors that have succumbed to these hard wired tendencies and ended up all fracked up!

Kinda hard to disagree.

This view implies that humans can never arrive at what progressives think of as  justice and peace. This viewpoint, opinion certainly has been challenging for a utopian such as myself.  I’ve always had a view of a more just society.  It seems difficult to move towards a “better” situation if you don’t have an idea of what it looks like in mind.  

What this view seems to imply is that humans cannot manage their affairs in a peaceful and just way.  What’s difficult to believe about that is that there has been progressive change over history.  Hedges doesn’t seem to account for that.  It seems unlikely to me that he is advocating a blind random walk through a forest of social configurations that may or may not be better for humanity.  

However, I do think that a forward march to progress is not guaranteed.  it is very much provisional.  We may or may not progress to a more just, humane and egalitarian society.  

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Linked my blog to Facebook

5 Jul

Well, Gente,

I reconnected my blog to FB.  I am going to write more as I got a lot of shit rolling around in my head.  It feels better to be putting my content on “MY” site than on FB. My friend Melissa Rey Mohammed introduced a term to me that I have been thinking about….She says that FB is “social narcissism”. I kinda like that phrase cause its kinda a built in oxymoron…two words that kind of mean the opposite but go together. Anyhow its gotten me to thinking about how I have been somewhat uncomfortable about FB.  So thanks N.C. for getting me back to working on my blog.

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Part 3: My AI Overlord — I just watched the movie “Transcendence”

4 Jul

So I just finished the movie “Transcendence”! I found it thought provoking, fairly accurate, but ultimately it didn’t go far enough. It did not present what an intelligence on an exponential curve of self-improvement would ultimately lead to in terms of capabilities.

An intelligence like that, with quantum computing, would be able to run every possible simulation imaginable and many we could not. Humans could not even come close to challenging it. In the movie, it had limitations that I think would be preposterous if it was exponentially I erasing its intelligence.

Once it had ability to interact with the physical world, forget it. The nano, pico and femto- machines would re- organize the world.

However, it is Hollywood, so they had to give the public part of the diet it has been fed for a long time. You need for humans to win in the end. Love beats all etc. The movie could’ve contemplate “losing” a conflict. That was so unrealistic, the AI would have re-written its code so long ago, it wouldn’t resemble at all what it started like. Plus, wouldn’t it would’ve guessed they’d try a virus and have defenses?!?!

The movie had to scale back what it tried to do. Otherwise, people would have to eat a new food and that would NOT go down well.

HW has bred a fan base on a certain diet of stories. The viewers come to expect it. That is all they have ever eaten. Simple example . They can’t have the AI “win”. That is against the diet of happy endings. This movie leaned more on the humans win side, with a hint of otherwise. Couldn’t be the reverse.

They couldn’t have envisioned a world where the human species has evolved beyond now. They could have even pictured a scenario where “normal” humans have been preserved if they want to be, but they would be handicapped so to speak. They’d be like a person with Down’s syndrome now. That would be a negative message for viewers, a downer and hence not in the diet. Even if it was speculation. The spec can’t stray too far from humans now! Iron rule!!

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Part 1 of my series … My AI overlord

4 Jul

OK, for the first part of this series, I would have to ask my friends….

Do you think evolution is a fact of nature?

Do you think humans evolved?

Do you think humans are evolving?

Do you think that evolution is natural?

IF your answer to all these questions is yes, then it should surprise you that the humans of the future will not be the same as the humans of today. To incorrectly anthropomorphize, one might even say that this is what nature intended.

Just as we supplanted the Neanderthals, Denosovians, Hobbits and the mysterious others, so shall some further evolved homo species supplant us. Thus is the order of things.

Anybody have a problem with this?

So why am I asking these questions? Its because I think that we as a species are not at the end of our line.  We are continuing to evolve.  An important question is whether people have moral, ethical, gut, rational issues about how we continue to evolve.   If folks acknowledge that we can and should continue to evolve, then they might say that if its “natural”, it has to be random.  if its purposeful, then somehow it is not ok.  

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Part 1: my series … My AI overlord

4 Jul

OK, for the first part of this series, I would have to ask my friends….

Do you think evolution is a fact of nature?

Do you think humans evolved?

Do you think humans are evolving?

Do you think that evolution is natural?

IF your answer to all these questions is yes, then it should surprise you that the humans of the future will not be the same as the humans of today. To incorrectly anthropomorphize, one might even say that this is what nature intended.

Just as we supplanted the Neanderthals, Denosovians, Hobbits and the mysterious others, so shall some further evolved homo species supplant us. Thus is the order of things.

Anybody have a problem with this?

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