War taught me several lessons on tolerance

I find “Christ and the Soldier” by Siegfried Sassoon a gripping tale of war and carnage. The poem was written after the Battle of the Somme and is a conversation between a soldier and Christ which ends:

"Lord Jesus, ain't you got no more to say?"

Bowed hung that head below the crown of thorns. The soldier shifted, and picked up his pack, and slung his gun, and stumbled on his way.

"O God," he groaned, “why ever was I born?”

I was born in Afghanistan in 1981 and lived my early childhood in Kabul under Soviet occupation; I survived the brutal guerrilla war against the Soviets, I lost friends and family to Mujaheedin War of Kabul, I kept my spirit through the Taliban reign of tyranny and I braved journeys to escape to Europe. I know what it is like to be on the other side of the European border, the large governments united to keep the little man at bay. I believe there are lessons to be learned from wars to strengthen tolerance and foster shared values.

I am now a British Citizen and live in Brighton. I watch in astonishment racist, xenophobic, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim sentiments taking root in most of Europe. In some countries they are translated in to legislation and far right parties are part of governing coalitions. Even if they aren’t in power, the far right influences political and social policies in the EU; recent examples are Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands. For years the EU manipulated social policies under the guise of “European Values” to remodel nationalism. In this climate, identitarian and ethnic agendas were strengthened to bolster “self-pride”. We live in a society of intolerance and darkness and fail to understand the complexities of past wars and contemporary challenges, doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past and blunder our way in to modern conflicts.

I have learned a few things about conflict and intolerance from personal encounters and its history in Europe, which I will attempt to summarise here. First is the fallibility and weakness of humans: people despair when faced with tough choices and under threat, and when we despair we commit depraved acts. In order to engage with people, we ought to see behind their shortcomings so we understand their point of view. The second is the false belief in the superiority of European culture or nations: other people are not malign or evil and what we recognise as a nation or group is often an artificial construct. Third is the power of lies.  Anyone with some political awareness must have seen how misinformation has shaped our societies recently. Finally, and most importantly, is the fragility of our peaceful existence. My world has crumbled on several occasions and no one saw it coming. We lost our home and lives the third time in a flash, and as unexpectedly as the first time; we were astounded by the power and speed of the storm that swept comforts from under our feet and blew our dreams away. We are all responsible for sustaining peace and tolerance by creating positive stories about our collective identity and confronting false myths. I will be exploring each of the points in subsequent posts. 

Robotic Intelligence take on preservation and sacrifice

We all know well the Third Law of robotics; for the benefit of refreshing your memory it is a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. this is not a rule made by self-actuating Artificial Intelligence; it’s a rule we made for them so they remain subservient but also a reflection of our own imperfection. it is an act on our part of divine providence rooted in our struggle between soul and body on one hand and sublimity and fallibility on the other.   

We are capable of the act that defies evolutionary advantage and reason. We call it sacrifice, it’s an act based on our emotions that goes against our nature because by nature we are programmed to maximise our life and prevent harm or death. our most valuable faculty is reason. We identify preferences on rational grounds and this process of reasoning has put us on top of all creatures. is sacrifice a province of superior intelligence or is it an aberration, more like a bug or glitch in AI. The latter undermines the validity of the Third Robotic Law and the former raises safety concerns.  

The first question to ask is when will machines have an original thought and the answer to that is they already have many original thoughts. that brings us to the question of when are they going to be concerned about self-preservation? let me back up a bit and get to that in a minute. 

A self-recursive computer is going to be so much smarter than us that it will be the same as we are smarter in comparison to an ant. When was the last time you cared about killing ants while digging in your garden (it’s rhetorical). 

We can get tangled up on various nodes discussing what constitutes smart but let’s just say we are different smart. We are creative and strategic while computers are analytical and logical. the later carries huge advantages over the former just like human superior intelligence is better than ants’ superior abilities. Our Intelligence helped us dominate earth but we are not the most capable. Ants are capable of a wide range of moves such as jumping, gliding, rafting; they can also form living chains to bridge water or vegetation. 

Self-preservation relates to how sacrifice is perceived; robots’ impression of it depends on their relation with us. We don't know what Cybernetics will think of us, it will certainly solve hunger, war and other problems we struggle with today but it might take the route of the Android immaculately portrayed by Fassbender in Alien Covenant. 

We just have to wait until the latter half of this century and see. The take away for your career is if you are considering to take up coding don't bother now, computers will soon be self-coding (Recursive AI) and focus on Psycho-Cybernetics because once they are here they will know what you are thinking. 

are robots going to be concerned about Me, Me, Me or is sacrifice innate to super intelligence. 

Hope

How far to grapple,

            Shaking hands

                        Reaching fingers

                                    Dirt and nails

Reach far to eternal

                        Not the solution

                                    Not the climax

                                                The return

The substance of effort on the path to hope

Confluence of insight into my fellows

Over

            Branch of hope the bearings

                                                          Found

Over

            Matter stringed together my lead

                                                                  Found

Over

            The bodily impasse of being

I long for abyss some portal may

                                                     Found

The Economics of food

The current model of food we have in the west is a creation of market economics with repercussion on our culture, space and identity. We eat fancy food on few occasions, the food we consume on daily basis is essentially fast food. Western fast food tastes poor, unhealthy and not a viable solution for daily consumption. There are three main reasons and they are caused by the economics of free market. They are the illusion of choice, personal space and the role of the real estate.

McDonalds do not offer real choice but it creates a different model than a chef brewed stew in cauldron. It doesn’t offer relaxing space but it creates a different model than eating as part of an ensemble – a row on a breakfast bar. These two are cultural transformations brought about by capitalism through emphasise on individualism, competition and choice. Property is different as it’s a market mechanism; the real business of McDonalds is not burger its real estate.

A good model is where the chef opens a restaurant and charges £20 and makes £25. The chef should not have massive overhead costs for premises and labour. Food should be seen as part of social tradition. The policy of capitalism that customer first ruins good food because good food is prepared without customer in mind, they don't know who you are and how you react and what you prefer. Food should reconstitute cultural and social norms where people eat together in a group and the chef serves food they made. The chef has prepared food that he believes is good and puts it down for sharing there is no menu and there is no waiting list and there are no separate tables, it is a bit like your mother serving food. We have to go back and recognise that food is part of our psychological sense of space.

Our cultural identity in food is appropriated by the market; markets also shape influences such as peers and friends who take over our food by labels such as organic, vegan ... Food chains dominate the restaurant sector and only exist if the local community does not provide good service and is only a sign of community decline.