Horizon

Horizons is one of the most significant concepts, but most people are totally unaware of it.  I will try to explain in this blog.

Exactly what is a Horizon?  When you look out in an open area eventually the land will disappear with a line where your view of the land ends.  It could be a flat line or the ridge of mountains in the distance.  It could be less obvious if you were on a boat look at where the water ends and the shy starts.  It is clear that the distance one can see varies and thus the horizon varies that is the significant concept or point. 

If this does not make much sense to you, here is how the concept applies to you and your life.  When you think about some thing that is related to time, how far into the future do you include events in your set of passivity's?  That length of time is your horizon.  Some people consider events or facts farther into the future than others.  That is one reason the concept of horizon is so significant.

Let's discuss some applications of the concept of horizon.  One of the best examples of a person or a society that had a very long horizon is when the Chinese started the building of the famous "Wall of China" knowing that he would never see it completed nor would his children,  It was much the same with the Pyramids of Egypt.  There are also examples right here in the USA as well.

Look at early farmers here in the USA 200 years ago/  They had to farm fields what were covered with rocks and stones as well as trees.  Those original farmers knew that they would never reap the benefits of their efforts, but their children might so the dug out rocks and tree stumps.  The lesson from all of this is that horizons can and do change over time. Today most people have a much shorter horizon than those of 200 years ago.  If you have not noticed. our younger people are showing that many have an even shorter horizon.  We often call this "instant gratification{ because that is what it has become.  Few now want to do the work that is required to gain the benefits, they want every thing right now.

How short can ones horizon get before the whole society fails?  I think that we can now see the change and know that there is no free lunch which is what a person with a very short horizon expects.  What is your horizon and how does that compare with the horizon of your children.  You could even look at one of the differences between Liberals and Conservatives in terms of horizons,  What do you think the answer is?  Think about horizon and ask your friends about them as well. 

Abortion

 We just saw democracy in action yesterday on abortion. I will try to shed a little light on this subject.

If you have been reading my blogs, then you know that too many voters in the USA seem to only want "perfect" solutions.  In my prior blogs, I have tried to point out that the world is not only black and white or yes or no/  The world and everything has degrees of more right and less right or more wrong and less wrong.  I just do not understand why so many people still cling to perfect.  It is like a little kid who will not eat their dinner and when asked they want some thing else that they can not define.  I see mature people still acting like children in so many areas and particularly in politics.

That brings me to abortion. It seems like a logical choice that democracy should be able to resolve it the problem were defined as analog rather than digital.  I have been watching the media and how they present the question of abortion.  99% of the time they report abortion as either you are for abortion or you are against abortion when that is just a validation that the question is digital or black and white when it is not. 

Here is how I see the whole question. The question of abortion is made up of two simple element/ The first is who pays for abortion and the second is where along the 9 months of pregnancy is it restricted. First off, who pays and how much. This can range from who pays, federal or state to how much is paid, from zero to 100%.  Why was this whole question not on the ballot recently?.  I think it is because most of our electorate are so stupid that they do not understand nor have they ability to structure the question. Next how about answering the question of when an abortion can be performed.  It could start from zero or go up to a day after the birth.  If this clear question is asked on the ballot in our democracy, I guess that is the legal description.  

Will everyone be happy with the vote?  No, but at least 51% of the people will be happy and that is how democracy works.  That means 49% may still want the perfect solution that is impossible.

Per Capita Income

 It seems that the current craze is to save the world no matter what is costs.  This blog will explore this craze.

I went to the internet and looked up two numbers.  The first was the median per capita income for the world which was $2,900.  I then looked up the median income for the USA and that number was $37,400.  Now what is the significance of those numbers?  It is the starting point for those who want to make the world more equitable.  I defined their objective before and that is to get the median and the average quality of life closer together.  What they do not realize or appreciate is the fact that dividing the wealth ends up lowering the median quality of life/  How can that be?

The current capitalism economic system has been proven to produce the largest pie and in the process it provides a larger piece of pie for the median person.  Various systems have been tried to take earnings and wealth away from those who produce it and give it to others with the objective of raising their quality of life.  It can actually work, if the penalty on those who are responsible for producing wealth are not penalized too much.  I think that you can see that this is a balancing act that needs to be done correctly. Further. the reason that I showed the numbers above is that there is not enough wealth in the world to significantly raise the median income and thus the median quality of life.

There are now too many humans on Earth compared to the resources that are available to create enough wealth to significantly raise the median quality of life for the median. For some reason many humans and our colleges and universities teach that wealth is only a function of human effort or work.  They completely leave out the impact of natural resources and those are clearly limited.  Do you get that? 

Here is a side note.  If the median per capita income is $2,900, that means half of world earns less than $2,900.  if the pie was reduced by just 10% by these stupid economic policies and if 25% of the wealth of the top 25% of people was given to those in the lower 50% the net impact would be "zero".  Further in the process it would significantly lower the quality of life for those on the top side of the median. As I pointed out it has to be a delicate balance that keeps the productive people productive so that the pie does not get smaller.  The merit system is the only economic system that has produced the largest pie and the largest share of that pie for those in the lower half of the median.  Remember the Pie! and also the role that natural resources in GNP and quality of life.

Global Warming Math

 How about putting some numbers to the whole global warming thing?  I am going to try to do that in this blog.

How do we put numbers to global warming?  That is the big question that needs to be answered.  As long as it is just talk, everyone who has a mouth can shoot it off and that is exactly what has been happening.  My numbers might not be exactly correct, but is anyone's?  So here goes.

First off I want to start with population.  I think that we can all agree that when there were "zero" humans on Earth that you could not blame humans for causing global warming plus, I think that most can agree that global warming did not exist as defined today.  One conclusion is that global warming has gotten worse over time and most blame it on humans.  If it is worse today when we have the most humans on Earth that we have ever had, you might even consider that the more people, the worst for global warming.  There was probably a time when the number of humans was not a factor.  My estimate is when the population of the world was about 6 billion.  Now it is a little more than 8 billion.  That is a 33% increase over the 6 billion.  The impact of humans on global warming is not linear, but for short periods we can assume linearity.  I think that most of you understand that.  I look at the slope as .33, then when we get to 9 billion the global warming will be over twice as bad as it is now.

Here is another factor that needs to be taken into account and that is "quality of life".  Remember that Native Americans could feed themselves better than people were being feed in Europe back in the 1600's.  We know that because the Native Americans were much larger and were not suffering from starvation as were Europeans at the time.  My point is that the Native Americans could sustain their quality of life as hunter gatherers back then.  No one can do that today and why?

Look at the industrial revolution back in the 1700's. It had a big impact on raising the quality of life for the humans in those days and in the process they changed the earth in ways that started to contribute to global warming as it is defined today.  The point is that the impact of a human on global warming today is very significantly more than it was a few hundred years ago.

What you should be seeing is that if anyone wants to turn back global warming that they have to do two things and those are to lower the number of people on Earth and lower the quality of life for them.  If you do not want to significantly lower the quality of life, then you will have to significantly lower the number of people.  Simple isn't.

If you try to combat global warming by switching to a more expensive form or source of fuel, it does not exist.  As the fuel cost goes up, the quality of life goes down.  As the number of mouths increase the need for more food goes up.  I am sorry, but there is no free lunch here.

AI

 Artificial Intelligence has become so popular that it now goes by the abbreviation, "AI".  In this blog I will give my views on AI.

Xactly what is AT?  How is it any different than a simple "recipe".  Some person came up with a way to make or do something and wrote it down in the form of a recipe.  I think that we all know what that is and how it works.  Do you agree that it is a form of AI?  How about a recipe that is more complete and tells you how to substitute different ingredients if you are missing some.  What if you went one step farther and put the recipe on the computer in the form of a video.  In that form, it could show you specific techniques on how to make or perform the function.  Isn't the recipe, thus getting more and more flexible to show you how to do some thing?

What if the person who wrote the recipe were able to stand next to you while you followed the recipe?  They could show you special tricks or could correct you when you did something wrong or they could give you the OK if you did some thing not in the recipe.  What if the person documented their experience they had with you and wrote a simple computer program that showed you all the possibilities of how you could perform the recipe?  Are we getting closer to what is being called AI?

Are you starting to see AI from a different perspective?  Is it really much different from when us humans invented writing where we could put down on paper what people had been speaking?  If you don't know it, but you can do with simple relay circuits every thing that a modern computer can do and we have know how to do all of those things for hundreds of years.  What has happened with modern computers is that now we can do the same thing cheaper and faster. 

Another thing that has happened is similar to what happened with adding machines of the past.  Many people who did not know how to add, multiply or do division where able to operate an adding machine. They could not design an adding machine just like they could not design a computer nor the program withing the computer, but they could operate it.  Isn't that exactly what we are talking about with AI?  

We have always had a situation where we had a limited number of humans who were able to make tools for people who were able to operate the tools but who could not make the tools themselves/.  Historically these two groups were close together, but with the advance in technology the gap between the creators and the users is getting greater.  In the limit, it appears to me that their will become less and less a need for the users and a greater need for the creators of the AI. 

In the end you can see the social impact and how it will divide society between makers and users to the point that there will be no need or value for users.  If you look at the rate of change and the acceleration of it that the end will be sooner than you may think and it may be driven by something as simple and benign as AI.