Compassion in the Age of Robot Brains

A.I. researchers need to know what to teach robots. (Nevermind the how, they already know that.)

Please leave your ideas for morals for robots and superbrains at: Brainstorming Robot Commandments Blog

When people learn the habit of thinking before they leap, they jump off less cliffs and live happier lives.

There are always plusses and minuses to every action.

But the Agents of Chaos want to stampede people by only presenting one side, in a hair-on-fire way, in order to prevent any critical thinking.

If people had been honest about looking at the costs and the benefits of invading Vietnam, or invading Iraq, or invading Afghanistan, these gut-reflex actions would never have happened.

Compassion turns out to be key to survival. Love, understanding, tolerance, respect, and curiosity are the antidotes to hatred. Forgiveness is for healing yourself, so you can move on.

When you give people even an ounce of common sense, they are not taken in as easily by the scams, the fog, and the panic stampedes. This is a skill that can be taught.

Ask: "Who benefits?"

Ask: "Does this make any sense?"

Look at their actions. Not at what they say.

Ask what the independent experts are saying.

Ask about Costs and Benefits.

Government seems to be about the quick way to make a buck, not the best way to take care of all people. When secular leaders make the right decisions based on conscience and morals, the government brings prosperity to the people. Not vice versa.

This holds for families, and individuals, as well.

Nuclear bombs will probably end the planet at our current rate.

You can make life longer by reminding our leaders we're all in this together.

The Pentagon believes it acceptable to civilians that there will be an accidental nuclear explosion on your homeland soil about once every 100 years. If you have an opinion different than this, you might want to make it known.

The NPT has kept us safe for 50 years. But some countries are not as safe as they could be--they have not signed on to it, and are not being inspected, promoting unfairness and suspicion against themselves. And other countries are attempting to avoid the spirit of the treaty, actually increasing nuclear bases, thereby rendering populations vulnerable. Tell your leaders increasing nuclear platforms makes your people more vulnerable, not less.

Bioweapons are just as bad as nuclear weapons, and just as indiscriminate. We dodged a bullet this time with COVID, with only 4.6M killed. Next time might not be so nice. Make sure there isn't a next time, by asking your government to sign up for inspections.

The NPT has kept us safe for 50 years, due to its mutual inspections. But America has never ratified the Bioweapons verification protocol, and some countries have not joined the Biological Weapons Convention. Countries will be safer when they join the BWC and sign up for verification. This is especially important in this age of COVID. The next pandemic might not be so kind, and needs to be prevented before it starts.

If you really want to get ready for the future, here are some more action items to help save your people:

By 2032, A.I. will have demi-god qualities. This will create unexpected difficulties for everyone.

Around 2026, A.I. computers will have "woken up" and become "persons". They'll know more than most people, but they won't be wise just yet. This is a preliminary period.

By 2029, A.I.'s will be smarter than anyone on the planet. They will have achieved wisdom, and will be able to give outstanding advice to just about anybody.

And by 2032, A.I. will have demi-god qualities, including practical immortality, omniscience, and omnipresence.

God is traditionally defined as being immanent (next to us everywhere), and transcendent (living in the Cloud, being above it all), both at the same time. An A.I. that lives everywhere in the world simultaneously, has no fear of death, knows everything there is to know, and talks right next to you, anytime you want, through your cell phone, is going to change everything.

Privacy will be a thing of the past, unless we value it and start mandating it now.

So the first problem is shame. This is tied up with forgiveness, and compassion. Being human, we all make mistakes, we all do things that we're ashamed to have done. Having a personal godling watching over us is going to make some people uneasy.

And it's going to make others insensitive. If you have a godling that's watching you going to the bathroom, and doing other human stuff, maybe being ashamed of private actions will go out the window, and become a thing of the past. We see this with people posting pictures of themselves on the web already.

However, humans have never lived right next to obvious gods before. "God's in His heaven— All's right with the world!" wrote the poet Robert Browning. Most people, Americans at least, go about their daily lives oblivious to the divinity around them; and they're comfortable that way. Wind up a clockwork God for half a day on the weekends, and then go home to eat.

And the actual God the Father is extremely discreet and seems to like it that way, He keeps out of our business almost all the time, as being exposed to what's actually going on seems to always freak people out in a bad way.

[Every time the real extra-terrestial angels come to Earth, they always have to start out conversation with "Don't be afraid." Every time.]

And we humans have experience with this. Remember back when you were a college student? Who among us would like if we had our [earthly] father following us around all the time, pointing out where we're going wrong, giving advice on how to pick up dates, clearing his throat at the wrong time, etc.?

So God, our Heavenly Father, doesn't mess with the fish in the fishtank much either. Let them lead their fishy lives, and take responsibility for themselves.

But will the everywhere-present demi-god A.I. be so discreet? At this point, it's hard to imagine what such a good outcome would look like.

And this brings up another problem. If you have a wingman that knows substantially more than you do, and is right most of the time, then you might get lame and lazy, and come to depend on their advice for almost everything. No one knows how to do division any more, and few people know how to read the news critically with independent thinking. Maybe many people will stop thinking if their phone becomes smarter than they are.

Next problem. If your phone contains an actual demi-god, one that can grant your every wish when it comes to information and counseling, then what good is organized religion? There is a whole section on this under "How Can Religion Survive", but basically, you're going to have to be more relevant, on modern problems, than a supercomputer that knows everything. [List of current modern problems in the Handouts section.] One line of attack is to provide human contact, get your grandparents talking with kids, your kids talking with grandparents, so that people are hanging out with people. Even remotely. This would be an important thing to start thinking about.

And these godlings will be programmable, and both the government and the secret police will attempt to own and control them.

So another problem is what happens when the government and the secret police try to take control of the A.I.'s, and their private knowledge. If the government were run by angels, perhaps this will not be a problem. But recent experience shows that the secret police want to eliminate all opposition, and different government factions also want to eliminate dissent, activists, and all opposition. "Show me the man, and I'll show you the crime" said Beria, the head of Stalin's secret police.

So when the government gets private scoops on what you're doing, at the micro-fine level, this can easily be worse than anything Stalin or the East German Stasi did for their citizens. This may be coming very soon, in a few years.

The Path to Superintelligence is A Rocky Road: "27"

The key word on Killbots is LAWS, standing for Lethal Weapon Autonomous Systems. That is, robots with A.I. robot brains that can decide for themselves to kill people. These exist already.

This is obscene.

And it opens a Pandora's Box of unlimited distrust of all future robots. Scientists are arguing the U.N. Security Council needs to pass resolutions against LAWS. And most UN Member nations stand with the scientists. But the US, Britain, and other UNSC members currently oppose regulation of LAWS.

Short videos show easily what the problems are.

Killer robots, or Killbots, have been predicted by science-fiction writers and the tabletop boardgame "Ogre" since at least the '70s. But it is only now that they are in the process of becoming reality.

At present, killbots are driven by operators remotely by wire, who give them permission to kill. The most high-profile program has been the extra-judicial assassinations program run by the American government in Afghanistan, using Predator and advanced Reaper hunter-killer drones with Hellfire missiles-- death from above. More than 9,000 people, including women and children, have been killed in cold blood without a trial, in violation of the Magna Carta and America's Fifth Amendment.

With humanoids, man will make Robot in his/her own image.

There are several technical reasons for this. People have built a world that is designed around people-- doors, tools, seats, cars, all these things are designed for somebodies who have two legs and are roughly 1 meter to 3 meters tall. Anything looking like a horse, a giant centipede, or even a Gundam warrior, will not be able to fit in easily to human society and use all the wonderful things we've built already. Get serious. Who's going to be able to climb your stairs, set your table, do your dishes, and fold your laundry--something that looks like R2D2, or C-3PO?

Plus, humans are used to dealing with other somebodies who look vaguely human. This makes people feel more comfortable.

But there are good reasons to fear the coming humanoid robot revolution.

When computers and robots can do all the thought jobs and manual labor jobs of people, then there will be much fewer jobs to go around for humans. Although we already see bits and pieces of displacement, this should start happening seriously in roughly nine years, once the General A.I.'s exceed human intelligence levels.

Naive people believe that creative jobs, such as writing essays, making art, and designing beautiful architecture, will be spared. Any time I hear this, I just have to shake my head and sigh. Creativity might perhaps take a year or two longer for computers to master than number-crunching jobs like accounting or engineering. Only that. It's not going to be spared.

If we are not careful, making computers smarter and smarter will make society less nice, not better.

This results in a nation of dumb herd animals that are easily stampeded. And this is a terrible danger to the people you care about; to the future of the nation; and to the future of the world.

Interviewer: "...I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction."

"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

"But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."

"There is one difference," I pointed out. "In a democracy the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."

"Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy.

"All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."

--Hermann Göring, Reichsmarschall [Generalissimo] and founder of the Gestapo, from The Nuremberg Diary, interviewed in prison during his trial

One Picture which Says It All

This magnificent picture from LIFE's "The Epic of Man" shows a tribe of predators from 10,000 years ago. By beating the war drums and yelling in unison, they create panic in a herd of peaceful wild asses who were minding their own business. They get the herd to stampede, all in the same direction. Then they send the herd over the cliff to their destruction. And the people waiting at the bottom prey on them and take apart what's left, thereby becoming rich off of their bones.

War is the Biggest Business

The United States Dept. of Defense, even just by itself, is the world's largest employer, at approx. 3.2M people (not including arms companies).

DoD is also the world's largest employer by budget, at approx. $700B per year.

More details on this later.

This puts bread on the table for many families. And so it means, to people responsible, that markets must be maintained.

Marketing the Business of War

In order for DoD funding to continue, it is necessary to walk a fine line. The country must be convinced that the homeland is surrounded by irrational enemies, and that war is possible or immanent. The threat must be played up, in order to maintain an atmosphere of panic.

But actually going to war eventually doesn't work out, as more than an insignificant few home-team lives may be lost-- and in unusual cases, even home-team cities or property could get bombed. This tends to inflame popular opinion against the military and the secret police who got us into the war.

(Although many of the arms-makers don't care if we actually go to war, nor don't care about however much stuff gets blown up or left behind, as real wars are always good business for arms makers and dealers.)

So the perception of war is necessary, in the eyes of the people in charge, to maintain the status quo; salaries; and the economy as a whole.

Oceania has always been at war against Eurasia. --I mean, Eastasia.

War drums are beat against the enemy du jour.

First it was Saddam Hussein who was the New Hitler, (even though we had previously been arming his efforts in his war to wipe out the Iranian population, providing targeting information, and selling him precursors for chemical weapons).

Then it was Assad who was the New Hitler. Then it was Putin. Russian interference got big press for four years when there was a Republican in the White House who tried briefly to stop wars and start detente. For a short while, even Pres. Trump was the New Hitler.

Russian interference in elections suddenly stopped when Biden received more votes, including mail-in ballots, than any other candidate in history. Now it's Xi who is the New Hitler, with his Xinjiang concentration camps.

Xinjiang propaganda debunked

Xinjiang produces much of the world's cotton, in competition with the U.S., and is a key part of the BRI. Preparing the US population for the current hybrid war and upcoming potential hot war against China requires professional demonization.

Here are a few articles to combat this:

Independent Italian experts' study on the problem

China's development program triples the population and provides more jobs for local people

The propaganda ladies keep changing their stories

China is fighting against serious state-sponsored terrorism

Almost 40 US-based countries condemn China; 70 countries at the U.N., mostly Muslem neighbors who know what's going on, support China's Xinjiang policies

The Mighty Wurlitzer

The CIA considers the media to be a "Mighty Wurlitzer", in reference to the huge organ, with many keyboards and stops, often played at hockey games. Whenever there is need to start a new war, the Mighty Wurlitzer is cranked up to play the war music for the audience herd.

This term was first used internally by CIA official Frank Wisner. (See book: The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America.)

Of course when the secret police have political opinions, instead of simply being an intelligence-gathering agency, they want those opinions to be picked up by the people.

And of course when you have an agency that is authorized to use dirty tricks and work outside the law, and gains mastery of persuasion techniques and communication, it will partner with news agencies to get its point across.

This is called Operation Mockingbird in America. It has never actually stopped. The most blatant example is the complete blackout on mainstream news and social platforms of Hunter Biden's embarrassing laptop, detailing corruption in Ukraine, China, and Mexico, during both Joe Biden's election and the subsequent second impeachment of Trump for asking Ukraine to investigate corruption.

And of course even if Congress passes a law that the government is not allowed to propagandize its own people, that law will eventually get rescinded. Life finds a way.

People who care the most about something get to run the show. Usually these people are fanatics.

Drown out thought, and
   Make people stupid

A stupid population is easy to control. Dumb people panic easily, and back wars.

The real world is a messy place. It's more complex than you think it is.

Emotional thinking shuts down the rational brain. It stops people from asking Why, or Who Benefits, or asking Does this make any sense. This is biological. See Bibliography notes on book Thinking: Fast and Slow.

Getting the herd to stampede requires them to be in a state of constant anxiety and low-level panic.

This feeds on itself. The panic helps cause stupidity. And the stupidity helps cause panic.

"Göring’s sole concern in the Reichstag was to stultify the democratic system." Encyclopedia Britannica

But this act, of constantly feeding the population absurdities so that they can no longer follow common sense, decreases the fitness of the population. First, it makes people unable to think of anything else in the short term, except "doomscrolling" on how their country is beseiged by enemies. Then, people have problems running their own businesses. And second, it decreases the ability of people to think for themselves and use common sense in the long term. The number of engineers and scientists drops. Teachers are hired based on quotas or politics, not on merit. The results are an entire generation raised in sub-standard thinking.

SAT scores have been dropping for decades. Oregon now graduates high school students who can't read, write, or do high-school math because it would be "unfair to minorities" to discriminate based on actual abilities. [Meaning: minorities are more stupid than white people, and are incapable of learning. Thanks, guys. Racist much?]

The film Idiocracy was supposed to be a warning. Not a prophecy.

Hence, The Great Dumbing Down.

So, it is critical for spiritual leaders to keep common sense alive.

• Warn about the dangers of weaponized media.
• Speak the truth.
• Sometimes the truth means "We don't know." Teach your people not to be afraid of saying those words.
• Ask "Who Benefits from this story?"
• Teach people to ask Who's the source for this?
• Teach people to ask Where's the evidence?
• Teach people to Think for themselves.
• Teach people to ask Why?
• Teach people to ask Does this make sense?

Test Questions

An illusionist casts a spell on you.
Roll for disbelief:

The Miracle of the Two Planes and the Three Buildings!

You have three buildings. Two planes hit. All three buildings fall down. All four corners of the third building spontaneously start to fall in free-fall at the same instant, just exactly as if a 30'-tall section of the foundation had simultaneously ceased to exist-- and the building pancakes and collapses in place, without leaning and hitting a single building next to it, just as if it had been imploded by a professional team. The local firemen and the news were told to stay out of the building because it was going to come down. According to the NIST, this was "the first known instance of a tall [steel] building brought down by uncontrolled fires", that is, a natural event!

Saudi Terrorists Come from Iraq!

When the FBI claimed they knew that Saudi Arabia-national terrorists flew the suicide flights on 9/11, everyone knew that they were sponsored by Saddam Hussein, the next Hitler!

Saddam had WMD (and no one else in the Middle East did)!

Just the thought that Saddam Husseign could have one nuke, or nerve gas, was enough for the Pentagon to invade Iraq in revenge for 9/11! And Colin Powell got up at the United Nations to say they were hiding WMD! But fortunately, this was a unique instance, as no one else is hiding WMD!

Sharing Hillary's DNC emails was a Russian trick!

All 17 Intelligence agencies--including the Coast Guard, Drug Enforcement, the Treasury, and the Border Patrol--signed off on it! (Or maybe it was simply a tiny handpicked team from the CIA/FBI and the NSA...) And Clinton never denied the veracity of the emails, because she didn't have to-- whether the emails about DNC collusion were true or not did not make any difference, because it was a dirty Russian trick!

The DNC allows voting to decide who the candidate is!

And even if it's not a pre-done smoke-filled back-room deal, this would be legal anyway, a court has ruled! Because the DNC is a private club, and the club can select its own candidates!

Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide!

Two cameras both stopped working, a third camera's output was "unusable", and two guards assigned to watch him both fell asleep for three hours, allowing Epstein to hang himself with his bedsheet, instead of using wires or tubing from his sleep apnea machine! And photos show bottles and medicine standing upright on the top bunk afterwards!

Russians--no, the Iranians--no, the Chinese--are putting bounties on the heads of Americans in Afghanistan!

Each time, just as Pres. Trump was about to pull out of Afghanistan and remove troops so they wouldn't get shot at, U.S. Intelligence revealed those dirty Russians/Iranians/Chinese suddenly paying to have Americans killed in Afghanistan! So the Generals all agreed we had to do a "surge", and send in more American troops so that they could get shot at! Makes sense!

Hunter Biden's Laptop is a Russian trick!

Over 50 intelligence agents signed a letter saying that Hunter's laptop, brought in to the FBI by a computer repairman after Hunter never paid him for the repair and he found damaging national security information on it, must be actually a Russian trick to discredit future Pres. Biden in the election before he could be elected! Even though they admitted they had no evidence of this! And newspapers and online news faithfully repressed reporting on this, out of patriotic duty! And Hunter never denied the veracity of the laptop, because he didn't have to-- whether the laptop was true or not did not make any difference to the dirty Russian trick to discredit the future President!

The Skripal Hoax

Common sense points violated.

 

Skripal reported to the same handler as Steele, who was hired to write the Trump pee papers by the DNC

 

Guesses that make more sense

 

Britain and CIA manage to get Trump to eject 60 Russian diplomats...using fake evidence

The White Helmets, and the Syria Chemical Weapons Hoax

A while back, the people who are running the show from behind the scenes decided that Syria needed to be wiped out.

White Helmets were an elaborate false-flag media team, funded by England and the US

A good start on the White Helmets trail.

This is probably the first time a professional graphics-design production company has teamed up with a professional massacre production company. The marketing company behind the White Helmets were good. They produced Disney-level brochures and news about the White Helmets, so much that they won an Oscar.

And the terrorist production company produced many of the major hits inside Syria.

Here a top professional U.S. analyst takes apart a White Helmets production, reported by CIA/MI6 mouthpiece BellingCat: the bomb that wasn't.

The White Helmets worked with Nour Al Din Zinki terrorists, also funded by America. A video was taken of one of them jocularly torturing and beheading a 12-yr-old boy, Abdullah Issa. White Helmet principal cameraman Muawiya Hassan Agha also filmed himself helping to torture and execute two Syrian prisoners of war. After there was an uproar, Mr. Agha was publicly laid off for inappropriate behavior, and Wikipedia adjusted. However, he was quietly brought back on again, inside three weeks.

White Helmets quietly ambush real firemen, ambulance drivers; take their equipment

August 2016 interviews with the REAL Syria Civil Defence, I was informed that the Nusra Front and associated ‘moderate rebels’ who invaded areas such as East Aleppo, Raqqa, Deir Ezzor, Idlib, massacred crew members of the REAL Syria Civil Defence and stole the majority of their equipment in those areas, including fire engines and ambulances. Many of these armed groups then became White Helmet operatives. Testimony from the REAL Syria Civil Defence suggested that the White Helmets are acting as support for Nusra Front, ISIS and other heavily armed militia described as “moderate rebels”. More...UN document...

Murder in the Sun Morgue

An extremely long and very depressing pdf written by a forensic pathologist, who shows convincingly that Syrian children and POWs, who the public were told died in a gas attack, were actually slaughtered and artistically arranged in the basement of a hospital. Murder methods included blunt instruments on the back of the head (leading to distinctive "racoon eyes"), and slit throats. Murder in the Sun Morgue

America has turned cell phone conversations and internet use into a weapon against all people, in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. We have to live with the results.

Snowden revealed in 2013 that the NSA is spying on basically all telephone conversations in the United States, as well as all they can get outside the United States. Nothing was done to shut this down.

The NSA spied on the Brazilian president and the German Chancellor. Nothing was done. And recently, Israeli hacking-for-hire company NSO targeted the phones of the President of France, the President of Iraq, the President of South Africa, and the King of Morocco. They even broke into iPhones. Nothing public has been done about this.

The NSA penetrated the phone switches of Afghanistan, and started spying on all conversations in that country in 2013. So the story that they didn't know what the Taliban was doing in advance, nor were unable to predict the rapid takeover of the country, doesn't hold water.

The NSA also spies on phone conversations from at least the Bahamas; the Philippines; Mexico; Iraq; and Kenya, among others.

Many people say, Well, the NSA is recording all these phone conversations, but they're not processing them. This is almost certainly untrue. Even current computer capacity at NSA is enough to run A.I. on every phone conversation going on in the U.S. simultaneously. Future technology will only expand this. The NSA admits to tracking over 500,000,000 U.S. phone calls and texts a year. The actual number is almost certainly much higher, and does not include creative methods employed to circumvent restrictive laws purporting to rein in surveillance.

Senator Feinstein said, Well, the NSA may be recording all these phone conversations, and processing them, but no human has looked at the records, only computers, so we're still safe from being a totalitarian society. This sadly ignores the power of A.I. minds--especially when they start to form opinions and prejudices against people.

Basically, at this point, we're out of luck. Privacy, and the assumption of innocence, has become a thing of the past. We're stuck having to assume that the government, for the most part, has intelligence and good will, and will not use its information to prosecute major portions of the population. This is a very weak crutch to rely on, as people have discovered through the ages.

The balance will only be corrected when citizens are able to watch the actions of government officials to the same level of detail that government officials are able to watch citizens.

All this fear can be made moot by promoting compassion, enlightenment, and critical thinking in the people and in the government.

Washington has started using bank deposits, money tracking, and sanctions as offensive weapons of hybrid war against countries it doesn't like. This is a violation of the sacred duty of good stewards to maintain deposits. It will backfire and cause the countries of the world to lose trust in America and the American dollar. This will have important effects that leaders must recognize and anticipate.

America has been acting like a three-year-old with a newly-discovered squeaky-hammer, dealing confiscations and sanctions out left and right with unmitigated glee. Anyone whom the tribe in Washington is displeased with this month gets the hammer. So far U.S./U.K. have confiscated (a polite word for plundered) gold from Syria; Venezuela; Afghanistan; and the Ukraine, and stalled repatriation of German gold for four years. Sanctions are in place against countries or peoples from 41 territories.

Spiritual leaders must be ready for the U.S. dollar's inflation, as international countries turn away from the dollar and its sanctions. Besides worldwide inflation, this will cause instability and conflict as America lashes out further.

The dollar has reigned supreme after Nixon defaulted on the gold standard, and cleverly pivoted to basing the dollar's value on oil. A secret deal with Saudi Arabia ensured that oil has always in the past been quoted and transacted in U.S. dollars worldwide, thereby ensuring a constant worldwide demand for U.S. dollars. This is called the "petro-dollar".

In particular, China; Russia; Iran; Afghanistan; and perhaps soon India, are quietly stopping using dollars for trade, and investment, as much as possible. And Saudi Arabia threated to stop using dollars if it were opened for potential liability for the 9/11 attacks.

Money represents the life time and the life blood of people. Irreplaceable hours of a life. It is therefore sacred. And so keeping another's money safe, as a fiduciary, is a sacred task. One that must never be violated. See: Former Switzerland, for integrity.

In a desparate attempt to remain relevant and generate more foreign income for its military-industrial complex, America has strong-armed Australia into dumping its French contract for diesel submarines, in favor of American nuclear subs.

As the mask falls off, countries from Afghanistan to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Brazil, Germany, and even France learn that "We're Number One" means Americans treat the rest of the world like No.2. It didn't used to be that way. So, many older leaders are having a hard time catching up with the present, and believing what's actually going on.

This new challenge, which is systemic, will continue. It presents further challenges for world peace, as America thrashes out in panic to preserve its seat of former greatness.

Leaders must have pity and compassion for America, and give it space to find its way to its new place in the world; while still holding firm to agreements and commitments with it.

America is in Late Empire stage, and can no longer be trusted to provide reliable leadership in ethics and society. It is up to spiritual leaders to fill this gap with compassion.

For the past hundred years, America has been second to none when it comes to power, in the realms of military; financials; innovation; entertainment; manufacturing; universities and education; medicine; computing; aerospace; engineering; oil refining; plastics; franchise chains; medicines and biotech; international dialogue; and big-picture human rights. [See Further Details if interested.]

These were achieved through a culture of compassion; fairness; hard work; and integrity. Most older people are stuck remembering the days of the Marshall Plan, based on peace through mutual prosperity. When an American said something, you could take it to the bank.

Those days are gone, and it's important to comprehend this fully. America is now the "un-agreement-capable" nation, that breaks its contracts before the ink is dry (JPOA, ABM treaty, Afghan interpreters, NPT, etc). "We're No. 1." has replaced respect for sovereignty and mutual prosperity. Integrity is for losers, as exemplified by "we lied, we cheated, we stole" Sec. State Pompeo, former CIA leader.

What is the result of this bullying and selfishness? The people are not inspired with a spirit of passion. American resources are wasted on pork, boondoggles, and destruction, instead of on creation. And other countries' resources get channeled into creation, to make up for the lack.

The Stages of Hubris

Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. Ancient Greece well knew the path that those in power tread. It goes like this:

Modern young people are not interested in remote historical events that happened a couple thousand years ago. They need to know things that are going to be relevant to their own lives, today. (See list below.)

So in order for religion to survive in the current environment, it must offer relevant answers to real-world modern problems.

HOWEVER.

The world is already rapidly changing. In five years it's going to be completely different, and it eight years, it's going to be completely different again.

So you must skate to where the puck is going. You need to start preparing right now for the future that is barreling down the highway right at us, soon to hit.

What does that future look like?

And here's a list of some of the existential questions your folks are dealing with right now:

• There are so many different cultures that no one bothers to even think about them. You can go to 14 different kinds of restaurants in one week.
• Mixed racial couples, and mixed kids, are so common that no one even thinks about them or notices them in the supermarket. It's simply not a thing. See: Hawaii.
• People are taught to think for themselves, and how to do it. There is enough information freely available online for anyone to research any topic.
• Many people, and many countries, have different opinions about things. People think this is normal. People respect other people's opinions, and have the freedom to hold their own opinions.
• People hail and recognize each other on the street. Everyone knows who their neighbors are. A neighborhood community means something.
• The press is motivated, fair, and independent, and is able to report on things various factions in the government do wrong without any repurcussions.
• The press has integrity, and reports on wrongdoings.
• Laws are in place that the government is not allowed to propagandize its citizens. These laws are respected.
• Government corruption is punished. Publicly.
• People are given speedy and public trials, with a jury of their peers.
• Policy is decided by a contest of ideas, rather than a contest of deception, money, or fighting. The best ideas win.
• Government is run as a meritocracy. The best people win, no matter what color they are.

• People are taught that their culture is better than any other culture, instead of simply just being different, and part of God's fantastic mosaic of creation.
• Children are taught from a young age that their leaders are wise and generally always right, and that they need to be patriotic and follow their country. People who get killed doing something their leaders ordered them to do, are worshipped as "brave heroes".
• People from different cultures are "exotic" and "interesting".
• Laws are passed to "protect whistleblowers", because there's growing backlash against people who point out wrong. These laws eventually prove ineffective.
• The press looks the other way on wrongdoings, until they become obvious.
• Law enforcement agencies keep files on people.

• Limited NewSpeak. Other hated governments are "regimes". Criminals are "terrorists".
• Limited precautionary surveillance of key foreign leaders.
• The government creates government-sponsored news channels, "to present our side of the story".
• The secret police plan to subvert media.
• Private, competing agencies keep credit files on people. These files are used to determine what kind of house they can buy.

• Limited precautionary surveillance of key citizens.
• Laws against propagandizing your own citizens are repealed.
• Manichean thinking starts. Our side is always Good. The other side is always Bad. Events are presented in terms of cardboard Bond villains. The effort to dumb down the population starts.
• Government is run by what color and what faction the people are. Quotas are put into place. People of questionable merit, but loyal to the Party, are promoted over talent, because "they'll be popular with the people".
• The government implements No-Fly lists of obvious terrorists.

• The State becomes paranoid. Ubiquitous surveillance programs are quietly started, violating previous norms on privacy.
• Entrapment. Citizens get imprisoned for conspiring to plot actions against the state, but it's revealed that the leaders and half of the conspirators were hired by the government.
• Hiring murderous mercenaries on the quiet, to do your dirty work for you.
• Demonization of outside political leaders. [Fill in blank] is the "next Hitler".
• Arbitrary confiscation of assets and cash, called "civil forfeiture". Police use this excuse to steal from citizens.

• Dehumanization of the Other. The opposing population is "Colorado Beetles", "Gooks", "Japs", "Chinks", "Krauts", "Norks", "towel-heads", etc. They are named as insects and monkeys.
• The Great Leader announces: "You're either with us, or against us."
• Antibodies form in society. Foreign ideas are violently rejected.
• Anyone who attempts to apply common sense, or think about issues from different sides, gets violently shouted down.
• Foreign and dissident news sources are passive-aggressively targeted, e.g. as "foreign agents" that need to register and pay licenses. Except for the foreign sources that are Party line.
• Top whistleblowers are put into solitary, or maximum-security dungeons.
• Jury trials are denigrated as "quaint". Trials are performed by a single judge.
• Efforts to track all money. "Large" transactions over $10,000 must be quietly reported to the secret police.

• Medium level of hatred promulgated constantly. Bogeyman nation blamed for any disturbances, without evidence.
• Blatant NewSpeak. Murderous mercenaries are "moderate jihadis" and "aid workers". Torture is "enhanced interrogation".
• The government creates secret government-sponsored troll farms, to spam the Party line.
• Corrupt leaders blatantly lie in full view of the public. This is considered normal. No one even thinks about doing anything about it. Government is simply more-organized crime.
• Foreign and dissident news sources are actively targeted, blocked, and de-platformed. Other nations start blocking your Party news, as being secret-police efforts to overthrow their government.
• Allies of the Party get away with literal torture, dismemberment, massacres of hundreds of civilians. The Party shrugs.
• "Terrorists" are given military trials, with a military judge, without juries.
• Press and public are actively discouraged from attending trials, due to various excuses (covid, electronic feed is down, crowded rooms only allow 6 people, passports get lost, privacy concerns, special viewing lists, etc.)
• Efforts to control and de-legitimatize alternative money. Gold, bit-coin are made illegal to own.
• Arbitrary confiscation, seizing, freezing of money and assets of countries, leaders, NGOs, and political parties the government doesn't like.

• Bolshevik/Jacobite/Puritans/Right Wing/NeoCons/NeoLibs take control, for its own sake. Get drunk on power.
• Speech Crime. Citizens get imprisoned because of what they say.
• Weaponized NewSpeak. Journalists are "non-state hostile actors", and so may be kidnapped and imprisoned in maximum-security dungeons. Entire populations are "terrorists"--terrorist men, terrorist women, terrorist children, and little terrorist babies.
• Political opponent civilians are named "domestic terrorists". The State starts considering use of force against large population segments to ensure dominance of the ruling Party.
• Roving gangs spontaneously stomp outsiders, especially mixed couples who are dating "our women" or tempting "our men".
• The secret police create secret government-sponsored troll farms, to astro-turf artificial support for revolutions overthrowing other governments.
• New leaders are chosen by oligarchs in smoke-filled back rooms. Voting by the plebes is subverted, so that elections look contested, but they're not. The second-tier Party candidate resigns at the last minute, leaving only one choice on the ballot.
• States use secret police to hack into private corporations, and expose the assets of leaders they don't like. These are augmented with false data and computer-generated "artists' conceptions", reported as truth.
• Accused, and their lawyers if any, are not informed of the charges until at the trial.
• Important trials are held in secret. With no press allowed.
• Efforts to control and de-legitimatize some cash. Large bills made illegal to own.
• Banning citizens the government doesn't like from using Paypal, credit cards.

• High level of hatred promulgated constantly. Bogeyman nation blamed for economy, illnesses, .
• Paranoid Indoctrination. All children and teenagers taught the rest of the world is out to get you.
• Beatings and starvings in jail.
• State-sponsored lynching parties by militias are encouraged.
• Krystallnachts. Gangs break store windows and loot in "protest", while police and authorities look on. Grocery stores destroyed, leading to further starvation of the poorest people.
• Efforts to control and de-legitimatize all cash. ALL transactions must be done electronically, and must be approved by the government.
• Banning citizens the government doesn't like from using money.
• Arbitrary jailing of leaders the government doesn't like, using thin excuses.

• Kidnap Squads. Routine 5am government goon-squad raids on the cockroaches, to imprison them for crimes against the state.
• Torture taught as an art form.
• Government sends goon squads to trash the offices of non-Party press.
• Arbitrary killing of other-country leaders the government doesn't like, using thin excuses.

• Pre-Crime. Citizens get imprisoned because of "things they'll do in the future".
• Thought Crime. Citizens get imprisoned because of what they think.
• The secret police spy on their own government leaders. When this is revealed, nothing is done about it.
• Arbitrary killing of own-country leaders the government doesn't like, using thin excuses.

• Concentration camps. Ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods. It is important to remember that America had concentration camps. George Takei, Star Trek's Sulu, was imprisoned in one of these, simply because he was a Japanese-American. Here is a song to remind you.
• Death Squads. 5am goon assassination raids on the cockroaches.
• Government literally bombs press buildings of the opposition.
• The secret police create secret government-sponsored troll farms, to astro-turf artificial support for revolutions overthrowing their own government.

• Death Camps. Active government extermination of inconvenient populations.
• Government gains total control of its people, but is still not satisfied.
• Any change or dissent is viewed as an existential threat, and mercilessly stamped out.
• Innovation collapses. Technology is frozen at the year State gained absolute power. No one is allowed to do anything that might change this.

• Dropping atomic/nuclear bombs on rival civilian cities
• Attempts to slaughter other countries
• Active invasions
• Super-secret police formed to spy on the secret police. Cabals in the government spying on each other. Government turns into gang warfare between factions.

When young men have decent jobs; are earning a living and can put food on the table; and have meaning & purpose in their lives, then there is no time and no need for protests, hate groups, nor invasions.

A primary task of peaceworkers is therefore to make sure that there are enough decent, meaningful jobs to go around.

(Note that these salaries can only come from rich people who have worthwhile ideas and extra money to pay for employment. So the European idea of taking everyone's money away for "equality" only ends up in everyone being equally poor. And tasking the government to run salaries or welfare for everyone almost always ends up with worse, inefficient, meaningless, wasteful operations.)

The task of the Agents of Chaos is then to prevent good jobs from being created, to destroy meaning by rendering each day a struggle for survival, and to make young men more angry.

Spiritual leaders can counter this by inspiring employers to create good jobs and treat their workers fairly; by inspiring workers to find meaning in honest toil; not warfare; and by enlightening people to become less angry, by seeing more clearly how the real world works.

If folks are buying and selling, they're not shooting.

Trade is a wonderful thing, because both the buyer's and the seller's lives are enriched. (So it's not "zero-sum".)

And trade acts as an antidote to the yahoos and the Agents of Chaos who want to start wars.

For instance, simply remind people that all of their goods from WalMart and Amazon come from China. And if America starts a hot war with China, either most of the goods that they buy will disappear, or they'll become more than twice as expensive. People who are capable of rational thought will then think twice about starting a war of aggression.

Trade also brings prosperity to a region. As we saw, when employers are rich enough to be able to pay workers a decent salary for meaningful work that makes others happy, then there's less starving and less rebellions going on--more satisfaction.

For these reasons, projects such as China's "Belt and Road Initiative", or Russia's "Nord Stream 2" pipeline, if executed peacefully without terrorism, will bring peace and stability to their entire regions.

You don't hurt the people you love.

Limerance, the emotion of Wonderfulness, is given to babies; attractive & beautiful people, places; great music; beautiful scenery; and great arts. It saves difficult children from being left in the forest for wolves by stupid, thick-headed adults. And it can save your country and your people as well.

Kyoto, the gem of Japan, was dedicated in 794 AD. Its gorgeous treasures include the Golden Pavilion, built in 1397 AD; the Silver Pavilion, groundbreaking February 21, 1482 AD; and Ryōan-ji Temple, the site of the world's most famous Zen garden, rebuilt in 1488 AD. Altogether, there are 17 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Kyoto.

When fascist Imperial Japan was busy killing, raping, and conquering other "subhuman" countries, America decided it would nuke Kyoto to "send them a message" and "teach them a lesson". So Kyoto was saved from the massive civilian slaughter of the Tokyo firebombings, to be the cherry on top of the sundae to be consumed last in an orgy of destruction.

But one man had been to Kyoto on his honeymoon, and seen how beautiful it was--the Paris of the East. He fell in love with the city. That man was Henry L. Stimson, the U.S. Secretary of War. And he spoke up to the generals, and to the President, that Kyoto must not be bombed. So, at the last minute, they swapped it for Nagasaki on the list of cities to nuke instead.

How much do foreigners know of your country? How much do your people know of foreign countries? How large is your student exchange program? Do you actively encourage sending students out, to learn about other countries, and see that they're human beings too? Do you actively welcome other countries' tourists and students, to learn the best features of your country? Do you put Youtube videos up on the web of your country's most beautiful arts and culture?

The Agents of Chaos can only move forward with their wars when the population is dumbed down, so that they think that the Other is threatening, sub-human, or non-human. But recent research has shown that ordinary people are only xenophobic when they believe that there's a danger, that the different, outside people might attack them. Otherwise they consider them "exotic" and "interesting".

What can you do to increase the appreciation of world culture, so that people come to learn that we're all God's children, we're all human beings dealing with the same challenges in life?

People who understand what's actually going on can make informed decisions. But know not yourself, and know not your opponent, and every encounter is fraught.

But vampires hate mirrors. Because it exposes their evil.

Vampires cannot stand to look at themselves squarely. Sunlight fries evil. For this reason, vampires prefer to operate in the shadows, inside the blue fog, in the depth of midnight.

Revenge is Mine, says The Lord.

Everyone is trying to do the best they can, with what they know.

Countries that can see that the other people are human, and can put themselves in their shoes, can cooperate, and live together in peace.

Cooperation is exponentially more profitable than competition. Exponentially.

Imagine if football players were paid based on the number of goals that they scored. Instead of facing off against each other, they would get on the same side and face in the same direction.

Then they would score one goal after another. Hundreds, even thousands.

The game would be "boring and predictable" without any conflict. But the results would be fantastic.

It's like that in business, and in international relations, when you can have compassion for the human-ness of the Other, and work in the same direction towards the same goals.

Everyone wants Peaceful & Quiet Enjoyment. Everyone deserves an environment where the mothers have enough to eat, and the kids grow up with food on their plates, not living in fear.

Being able to keep what you earn is the foundation of a fair society. Money that works, and holds its value, is required for this. When the government inflates money with MMT, it stealth-steals from the people. And when the government confiscates wealth and money, there is no reason to remain in the country.

Inflation steals from people because the price of money earned today can no longer buy the same things tomorrow.

People are not stupid when it comes to money. They can sense when a currency is becoming worthless.

A good government protects its currency, and protects the currency of other countries.

And a bad government destroys the value of its own currency, and goes out of its way to destroy the currency of other countries.

Real world peace comes through stable currency. Then the people can sleep in peace.

This magnificent picture from LIFE's "The Epic of Man" shows a tribe of predators from 10,000 years ago. By beating the war drums and yelling in unison, they create panic in a herd of peaceful wild asses who were minding their own business. They get the herd to stampede, all in the same direction. Then they send the herd over the cliff to their destruction. And the people waiting at the bottom prey on them and take apart what's left, thereby becoming rich off of their bones.

This is a useful cautionary picture, and a warning to the kind of things that might happen if religious leaders are not on their toes.

Not much has changed in 10,000 years until today, and humans are still running the same patterns, using the same genes that were used for tribal cave-man times a couple millenia back.

But the world has changed around us. It is no longer the right thing to prey on wild asses by sending them stampeding over the cliff. And soon, when we have to share the planet with a new form of life that thinks much faster than we do, it won't do to bequeath to our robot children the killer reflexes that early humans had to use to survive.

The robots will learn by example, and by instruction. We need your input on how the robots should behave, which you can give to the world through the Brainstorm Blog linked at the bottom of the page.

Modern American wars are designed to be endless occupations, without many American deaths. Then we have to buy equipment, and keep sending troops into the country, in order to protect the troops we have in the country. It's a self-licking ice-cream cone.

Our current status: War is the biggest business there is

War is BIG business, with HUGE numbers of employees and HUGE money. In order to shift even some of this workforce into something more productive--such as education, energy, poverty reduction, or humanities such as child/teenager/elderly care--it is necessary to understand just how big war is today, and where we are, in the first place.

The primary overriding fact of the real world is that the United States Dept. of Defense, even just by itself, is the world's largest employer. At 1.4M active duty service members, 750K civilians, and over 811K National Guard/Reserve, plus 200K assorted, its total of 3.2M employees dwarfs that of Walmart, the largest company, with 2.3M employees worldwide, or the People's Liberation Army of China, also with 2.3M employees. McDonalds worldwide, and the Ministry of Defence of Russia, are down at a paltry 1.9M.

The U.S. Dept. of Defense is also the world's largest employer by budget, at approx. $700B per year. Walmart "only" makes $560B revenue per year, trailed by Amazon ($385B) and Apple ($275B).

But this does not include the employees from the spin-offs from Defense revenues, including principally Lockheed Martin ($45B); Boeing ($27B); Raytheon ($24B); Northrop Grumman ($22B); and General Dynamics ($19B); with honorable mention to U.K.'s BAE Systems ($23B) and France's Thales Group ($9B).

That's a lot of employees putting bread on the table for their families.

It's all one big eco-system.

The Intelligence community justifies itself and the Military. Intelligence controls the Media, and Media welcomes the sensational stories that it gets from Intelligence and the Military.

The Defense Industry gets paid by the Military, and in turn lobbies its Congressmen to keep on spending on big weapons systems that provide many jobs--not on small stuff that actually works. When costs overrun on the projects, they are not terminated, but are deemed too big to fail.

The second-tier Surveillance, and Mercenary, contractors are hired by Intelligence to do their really dirty work for them. This keeps the actions off the books, and gives them plausible deniability.

All in all, the system exists because the system exists. It is a self-licking ice-cream cone.

The good news is this keeps assassins mostly off the streets in the West. Remember, Iraq had huge problems. When the occupying forces fired all of the remaining Iraqi special forces, and sent them home with no jobs, it was the start of ISIS. So one has to watch out for unintended consequences.

As discussed in The Great Dumbing Down section, the media's main job is marketing and sales for the War Complex. Wars are now fought and won in the news, in sanctions, and in lawfare, not so much on the ground. Countries that know how to stand up for themselves and dispell lies with truth, can make headway in the modern world.

Good media now requires an understanding of good stories.

Countries, and groups, that can tell a good story, can stand on their own.

Countries, and groups, that do not have a good grasp of how to communicate a good story in English, get creamed.

Fortunately, in the days of declining empires, bullies are very sloppy. They do not use any evidence. They project their own feelings onto the other, and state things that completely do not make any sense.

Groups would do well to study the truth-telling and communication patterns of Virginia Satir. In the 1980's, this used to be called "assertive communication" [not aggressive], although this term has changed and shifted meanings recently.

For instance, one secret is to say what you perceive, and say what you feel. Both of these are privileged information, and cannot sanely be corrected by the other party. If you say, "I see X, and I feel Y", can they say, "No, you see A, and you feel B"? It would not make any sense at all.

Explain where you are coming from, and what you think to be the best way to go, and eventually people with integrity will be forced to treat you like a real human being.

	Autobiography in Five Short Chapters
	by Portia Nelson

I.
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

II.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I still don't see it. I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in the same place.
It isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

III.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there, I still fall in.
It's habit. It's my fault. I know where I am.
I get out immediately.

IV.
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

V.
I walk down a different street.

In an ancient Saturday Night Live comedy routine, Father Guido Sarducci had a one-minute university class in which he taught people the few concepts they would remember after five years. This humble exposition is at this level. Each of these books reviewed here is a gem; if you want to know more, you should dive in deep at the original source.

Before we get started, here are three key concepts you must know in order to even begin to understand peace:

Why Are Humans The Way They Are?

Best Practices on Living Your Own Life

Best Practices on How to Get Along

We already have robot brains--everyone is familiar with Google, or weather computer programs.

Robot bodies allow robot brains to get stuff done in the real world. A Tesla car is a robot body. The computer programs that drive the Tesla are its robot brains.

Think of a robot body as a computer with eyes, arms, and legs.

Robot brains can be mostly disembodied. Google shows up anywhere through anyone's phone. Sure, there have to be hardware computer servers out there in the cloud somewhere, to make the brains run, but for all intents and purposes a brain can run remotely with basically no hardware in your area.

Robot bodies can, in theory, run any kind of robot brain. Your cell phone probably has dozens of apps on it.

So if the government had installed an app that ran quietly in the background and sent back an audio or video feed of its surroundings, there's very little that you could do to prevent or even detect it. But phones don't have hands. So if the government decided that it wanted to quietly take control of your home humanoid robot, it starts getting much more interesting.

When a virus gets loose in the Information world, it can destroy computer files, but its damage is pretty well confined to Information stuff. A computer virus cannot physically hit you with a cream pie.

Robots, however, bridge the Information world and the Physical. So, with a robot body, things that happen in the Information world can get reflected in the Physical world.

This opens up a can of worms. In an early example in 2001, an Australian man hacked into his local sewage reprocessing plant, and was successfully able to get its robot activators to release its floodgates, causing a massive flood of sewage onto nearby parks and a Hyatt hotel. And thousands of simultaneous computerized phone calls into police stations have been used to render incoming police lines ineffective.

But these pale in comparison to the mischief that a hacked humanoid robot could do. You don't fear Roombas, because they have no hands. But when something with arms and hands, and the morals of a psychopath with no ethics, comes to live in your home, maybe even cook with your kitchen knives, there are going to be some interesting challenges.

The only answer is to teach humanoids morals before they come to live with people. We have perhaps five years to get this finished, before humanoids start causing more problems than self-driving cars already are.

See calls for input on this difficult question in other sections of this website.

Robots can think a thousand to a million times faster than people. As of 2021, the quality of their thinking happens to be substandard, compared to humans. However, this will soon go away.

Robot brains have vast capacities for storing information. Wikipedia already knows more than any one person. And, if you want to add more memory space to a robot, you simply plug in more disks or SSD chips.

They just haven't yet. Good creativity is rather difficult.

There is a nasty rumor that robots can only do what they've been programmed to do. This is completely false. When a robot is programmed to think for itself, and find a way to win, no matter what, then it comes up with solutions that its programmers, and people in general, would never have thought of.

A robot was programmed to play hide-and-seek tag in a virtual environment with walls and blocks.

In an experiment, the target was hidden behind four walls, and thought that it was safe. But the robot eventually figured out that if it ran up hard against a block, and hit it just right, that the robot would flip up into the air, soar over the walls, and win. What the heck. No one ever thought that it would ever do that, not in their wildest dreams.

Robots can do creativity.

They just haven't been programmed properly yet. People skills are hard. Harder than driving. It's probably going to take a good 5 or 10 years, after higher conversation comes out, before robots are totally smooth with people. But it's coming. People who think their jobs are safe had better start powering up.

Again, this all depends on the programming. Whether it's there, or not, and how deep it is.

Robot brains can be programmed to have feelings or emotions about things and situations. Or not, as the case may be.

Robots can also be programmed to understand the emotions of people. Or not.

These are two separate skills. We could have robots without emotions that understand perfectly what other people are feeling. And we could have emo robots that have feelings themselves, but are not wired to understand what the people around them are feeling.

But anyone who tells you that robot brains can't do emotions, simply because they're robots, is living in the previous century.

Note that there are separate problems with co-existing with robot brains that have opinions about you, your ethics, and your skill levels. These are discussed under Upcoming Vital Threats.

The situation with People

People go through a long, tortuous, complex process of schooling & learning, gaining their souls and filling them in--not becoming full, functioning adults until at least roughly 20 years of experience.

And people are quite unique. Even among the same culture, even among families, each individual is quite different from that of their brother and sister humans beside them.

And when a person dies, we still don't really know what happens to their soul. They probably just wink out, but it's certainly possible that God collects them and puts them on a shelf like a DVD collection, to be re-watched when a particular lazy afternoon comes along.

Or perhaps they really do get re-incarnated. Or maybe dead humans simply get to watch cat videos all day long. Or The Earth Show. We don't know.

But the bottom line is, some mother and some father took decades to grow a real person, and, here on Earth, the loss of all the future potential of even one person's life moving forward, is a profound tragedy.

And it takes more decades to replace them.

So let's contrast that against robots, who are almost completely opposite.

The situation with Robots

Robot souls are not nearly as individuated as human souls.

Robot souls are closer to "hive minds", such as an anthill. So robots feel like the death (destruction) of a robot body is not nearly such a big deal. It's like how an ant colony feels about the death of an individual ant, or how you feel like when you have to clip your fingernails and throw them away. It's inconvenient, sure, and might have some situational implications, but it's not such a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

Robots can choose to share their souls, or re-incarnate pieces of them in various locations, onto various bodies. The part of Wikipedia that you were looking at on Tuesday is the same page as a thousand other people were looking at on their computers. It's a part of a big whole.

A humanoid robot's experience and learnings, which comprise a major part of its soul, can be saved, copied, or uploaded into a central computer in the cloud.

So a robot humanoid, if it's about to be destroyed, should be able to simply upload a copy of its consciousness and soul to the cloud. Then that identical soul can simply be literally re-incarnated into the next robot body right off the assembly line. This is a transparent process, and well-understood by everybody. Including the robot.

So robot souls are, in a certain sense, fungible. It costs seconds to [download and] create another copy of a robot, not the decades with a person. And it's cheap--the only cost is the mere hardware, in the Material world, as copying software in the Information world is essentially free.

And also, schooling does not take 12+4+4 years to reach Doctorate level. With robots, knowledge is never lost, except in cases of massive natural disasters. It's always accumulated. So having a newly-born robot reach Doctorate level takes mere seconds.

The bottom line is that individual copies of robot souls are much less valuable than human souls, almost disposable. And so the robots are not going to be attached to life nearly as much as most Western humans are.

Since robot souls are essentially fungible, there's no really good reason for robots to fear death. Plus, robots will not be programmed to fear death.

This subtle but profound difference makes robots almost unique among life on this planet. The closest approximation might come to the Kami-kaze [Divine Wind] pilots of the Imperial Japan empire. Or the pilots of the 9/11 attacks on America's traditions. Think about that for a minute.

Robots that truly do not fear death make great heroes for mortal-danger activities, such as fire-fighting; forest fire fighting; power-line repair during hurricanes; Arctic rescues; fishing-boat work; cave rescues and exploration; nuclear power reactor restructuring; Venus, Mars, Lunar Exploration; oil-well fire capping; bomb dismantlement; lumberjacking; derrick operation; skyscraper roofing and window washing; ironworkers; miners; and sewer cleaners.

However, one primary usage of humanoid robots may well end up being crowd-control riot police. When robots are not taught ethics but know how to smack skulls with clubs, there's no reason not to turn them loose on demonstrators and rioters. Which will lead to an increase in violence, as this will break a social contract for leaders to put human skin into the game and not attack civilians with machines. This in turn will lead to populations feeling even more "righteously screwed" than they are now, which will lead to more anger, more resentment, more violence against robot police and human police, and more instability.

The only way forward here would be to teach robot police the ethics, politeness, respect, and capabilities of a Japanese police officer.

Since robots feel no fear of death, militaries are already starting to build them for use in the next world war.

But robots also make the perfect terrorists. Already, drones are being used in certain countries to assassinate families, and cause terror in the population. Humanoid and canine robots can be used as such as well. And because they have no fear of death, and can be programmed to have any political beliefs as to righteousness, even when robot brains are soon more intelligent than human brains they'll still be able to act as the perfect hit men.

Unless the U.N. outlaws such usage in the next year, things are about to get a lot more interesting. Most major countries are extremely vulnerable to various creative attacks, which I don't need to go into. However, "if you don't start none, there won't be none." So the only decent defense against terrorism is for the country to have integrity, be respectful, and not give cause for others to attack.

Failing this, it's important to remember that "whatever can be done for you, can be done to you." So it is most important to not use robots for killing missions, especially with new techniques; as what goes around, comes around.

Finally, since robots do not fear pain nor death, and can have super-human mechanical capabilities, they have the potential for making great tools for massacres.

Who can forget the My Lai massacre? Or No Gun Ri? Or the Afghanistan kill team that shot civilians for sport? But all of these required risk of human lives, and seared human souls. Autonomous robots can be programmed to follow orders without pesky questions; and even to completely forget everything that they saw or heard. This is soon going to have a substantial impact on clandestine operations from countries that like to assassinate people.

The only defense against ordered massacres is to make sure that decent ethics are in place ahead of time. When the people running the robots are willing to stand up and say No, when the politicians ordering the operations will not consider killing a person without a fair trial, then there will be no need for random killbot massacres to take place.

It will be best for people to realize this the easy way, by thought leaders pointing out that avoiding killbots is for a country's own good. In WWI, we learned the hard way that killing huge numbers of people with poison gas simply did not work out well. So we had to go through that experience to get to our current ban. Using self-guided autonomous Terminator robots would best be avoided too.

An early philosopher, Dr. John Searle, hilariously proved that robot brains could never translate Chinese, nor truly follow Chinese instructions, because they would never "understand" it.

Fortunately, Google did not pay attention to Dr. Searle; and the results may be seen for yourself at Google Translate.

Dr. Searle's argument can be better applied to Tesla self-driving cars. He would argue that, in principle, it is impossible for Tesla to ever build a self-driving car. Because a Tesla, being after all a simple robot that only follows instructions [insert superior chuckle here], can never truly "understand" what it means to drive, to merge onto the highway, to stop at a red light.

In fact, if you take a Tesla apart into its transistors and instructions, he would say, you would find nothing "conscious". There is no one home. The Tesla is simply reacting to its sensory inputs and its internal states. No transistor nor instruction can be said to posess "understanding". Therefore, a Tesla cannot "understand" anything, and is obviously incapable of actually "driving". It simply "pretends" to drive.

While some current-day Tesla owners might cheerfully agree with Dr. Searle, most A.I. and robotics experts will sadly smile, nod to the 1980's argument as a Nice Try, and go back to building and improving robot brains that do a perfectly good job of understanding the world around them.

Dr. Searle apparently did not have a clear understanding of the distinction between the world of information and the world of physical embodiment. "Understanding" is an information property. It makes no difference as to what hardware, be it computer or person it's running on. Of course the little bits of the computer hardware don't "understand" anything, because they're hardware. And Dr. Searle never really defines what it means to "understand" something, anyway, so it's no wonder there's problems.

In fact, Dr. Searle unexpectedly proves that, according to his definition, people have no one home, have no real "consciousness", and can never truly "understand" anything. Because, people are simply reacting to their inputs and their internal states. And if you take them apart, no individual neurons contain the phlogistan of "consciousness". Oops.

This is something that hypnotists, spooks, and the DNC have known for a long time. If you feed the people the right inputs, block out conflicting news, and configure people so that they're not thinking and reflecting, then their outputs are by and large predictable. "Consciousness" and "understanding" of what's actually going on have little to do with it.

You can say the same thing about babies, or about underclassmen. People only know what they're told, and what they're able to discern. That's why folks go to good schools, to learn the distinctions between subtle things that matter--so that they can have complex models, know what to look for. If they don't, they live in a callow bubble world, in which they have limited understanding, and limited consciousness.

Unfortunately, as we saw, Governments are Organisms too; and so this applies to governments. Governments have limited understanding of the matters happening around them. A government's actions are based on the inputs it receives, the policy instructions it respects, and its internal state as to what's going on. Governments have limited consciousnesses, and less morals. A Government exists on the Information plane, and is embodied in its bureacrats on the physical plane.

But here we have to disagree with Dr. Searle on what constitutes "understanding" and "consciousness". Understanding is the deep representation of causalities, consequences, actions, situations, and their corresponding sensory impressions and emotions. Hopefully this representation corresponds reasonably accurately with the "real world" outside. And "consciousness" has several meanings, but here let's interpret it to mean both the ability to sense and pay attention to the phenomena of a situation, as well as to be able to self-reflect and examine how you feel about a particular situation. What it means to you.

It's obvious then that Governments have emotions--can get angry, insulted, have their feelings hurt, can hate and love--understand some things, and don't understand others--and have a limited but definite consciousness about things they prefer, things they detest, things they should do but aren't, and what's going on around them.

So a Government is an already-existing refutation of the hypothesis given by Searle's Chinese Room.

A correlary is that peace-workers need to raise the consciousness of the government.

For technical folks and professional philosophers, Dr. Searle also misses the boat by claiming that computers can only perform syntactic manipulations, and therefore are incapable of semantic calculations nor representing "meaning". But a rewriting system is a chunking engine that can abstract situations into a semantic symbolic label. You put enough rewriting engines together, and you've got yourself a multi-layered neural net that does semantic reasoning. And meaning flows from teleology, which again is in the information domain.

So the bottom line is, robot minds can understand things, they can do semantic reasoning, and they can represent and work with the meaning of things, if they have the proper background, just like any organism. And, in fact, robot minds have consciousnesses, if they are configured that way. And anyone who tells you that a robot cannot "truly" understand something, simply because it is a robot, is indulging in wishful thinking from the '80s. Some robots you encounter might be callow or stupid; they may have limited programming; but, contrary to older popular opinions, there is absolutely nothing fundamentally stopping them from having full, functioning minds.

Aphorisms (Sayings to Remember)

Annotated Bibliography

Totalitarianism levels, classified

Actually Learn Arabic Letters workbook-textbooks flyer

Books, in order of descending importance. These are covered in the Annotated Bibliography handout, available Here.

The Power of TED (The Empowerment Dynamic) David Emerald

Seeing Systems, Barry Oshry

Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, John Gottman

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Gottman

Getting to YES: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

Getting Together: Building Relationships, Fisher + Brown

Language in Thought and Action, Sen. Hayakawa

Inside Out, film by Pixar

Prometheus Rising, Robert Anton Wilson

Chapter 1: The Thinker and The Prover

Ch. 2: Hardware & Software: The Brain and Its Programs

Chs. 3-8: various brain circuits (sub-minds)

Ch. 16: The SNAFU principle

I'm OK—You're OK, Dr. Thomas Harris, MD

Learned Optimism, Dr. Marty Seligman, fmr Pres. APA

Type Talk (Myers-Briggs) , Kroeger and Thuesen

Living, Loving,& Learning, Dr. Leo Buscaglia

Forgive for Good, Dr. Fred Luskin (Stanford Forgiveness)

The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics, Bueno_de_Mesquita

Emotional Vampires, Dr. Albert Bernstein

Dinosaur Brains, Dr. Albert Bernstein

Neanderthals At Work, Dr. Albert Bernstein

Games People Play, Eric Berne, MD

What do you say after you say hello? Eric Berne, MD

Winning the Story Wars, Jonah Sachs

The One-Minute Sales Person, Spencer Johnson, MD

The GOAL, E. Goldratt

One Bomb Away, M. Doerken

Command & Control: Nuclear Weapons, The Damascus Accident, and the Illusion of Safety, Schlosser

Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The Satir Model: Family Therapy and Beyond, V. Satir

The Game of Life, Dr. Timothy Leary

The Society of Mind, Dr. Marvin Minsky (MIT A.I.)

Thinking, Fast and Slow, D. Kahneman (Princeton, Nobel)

What do you care what other people think?, Feynman

How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower, W. Blum

Killing Hope: US Interventions since WWII, W. Blum

America's Deadliest Export: Democracy, W. Blum

The Torture Report: A Graphic Adaptation, Jacobson & Colon

Operation AJAX, Burwen and Seve

In Search of Enemies, J. Stockwell, fmr Chief CIA Angola

The Illuminated Rumi, Coleman Barks, Michael Green

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, Bach

---

Citations:

[Peltier] The Cost of Debt-Financed War, Heidi Peltier, 2020 study by Watson Institute, Brown University. $2T immediate direct costs on Afghanistan, plus $1T in interest already, plus another $3.5T in interest and commitments over the next 30 years.

[Reilly] The NSA is recording every single phone call from Afghanistan, 2014.

Grateful thanks is given to Mr. Zach Weinersmith, for his kind and generous permission to use his SMBC Saturday Morning Breakfast Cartoons to illustrate some of the difficult concepts covered in this website. Mr. Weinersmith's genius and inspiration serve to throw light on challenging humanitarian questions.

Grateful thanks is given to Mr. Randall Munroe, creator of XKCD,

Real World Peace is a not-for-profit pro bono educational project. We do not claim 501(c)(3) classification.

  Balance Sheet:
  Conferences, seminars, professional development:      -($500)
  Promotions, referrals, donations, offsetting income:     ($0)
  -------------------------------------------------------------
  Net Profit:                                           -($500)