Analyzing Q Analysis

We want to express our sincerest thanks to Jeff Rense and his team for their invaluable support.  If this topic interests you, please keep an eye on the Rense Radio Network for exclusive content and updates as we ferret out the Q.

Previous posts:
Deep Throat v, Q
Q The Conspiracy - A Phenomenon
The Gospel According To Q
A-Marketing We Will Q
The Name Of The Q
Q The LARP Carp
Spe-Q-lating On Q
In The Twilight Of The Q
Jonesing For Q

If the reader is like me, the mere mention of the word "mathematics" puts us in a catatonic state that may lead to an instinctual flight reflex to our safe spaces if the subject continues to force its way onto our consciousness.

In the process of researching the Q Phenomenon, I uncovered the realm of q-analysis, which is an algebraic framework used to analyze (among other things) market research, social networks, decision making, urban structures and planning, game theory, and artificial intelligence.

If the reader has been keeping up with my voyage into the twilight world of Q Anon, then at least two of these uses for q-analysis should make your ears perk up.

In my article, "The Name Of The Q," I dropped the bomb that q-analysis is a branch of set theory that seeks to quantify and qualify interactions between members of single sets, and between sets in complex interactions.  At great personal pain and sacrifice, I have endeavored to research and understand this rather oblique form of math in order to report to the reader what I suspect is at the core of the Q Phenomenon.

Q-analysis was developed in the 1970s, by British mathematician Ronald Atkin to model complex social interactions and how they affected everything from market research and decision-making to urban layouts and playing chess.

The latter forms a major part of game theory and can be seen at work in the occasional chess and Go matches between human masters and machines.  It has also become a major tool in modeling and predicting changes to social networks when new information is injected at some point in the network.

Using q-analysis allows those with the tools to visualize complex interactions within and between large groups of people, but more importantly, it allows them to test the diffusion of and reaction to the introduction of new information - say an ad campaign - at different points in the network.  This is used to predict how fast a certain meme will propagate withing in complex network of individuals and what actions/reactions they will take based on it.

Social Network Map

This tool would allow an organization like Cambridge Analytica, for instance, to build a working model of the links that you and I have to other people, how fast a political ad of a particular type would propagate through our networks, predict whether you or I would moderate our political activities based on that meme, and even how much time would be needed before and after the ad hit to get the desired effect.

This is, as one can clearly see, a very powerful tool when manipulating large groups of people, where their connections and behaviors are known.

We know that our online, and even quite a bit of our off-line behavior is known to the likes of Google and Facebook.  Our political and consumer leanings are well exposed, especially if we are active politically and/or make a lot of online purchases.

Even more worrisome are the data possessed by organizations like the NSA, GCHQ, and all the other high-level intel gatherers.  No need to artificially limit ourselves to Russians here.

Using well-established psychological profiling, anyone is able to gather some basic data on any human being - especially one who uses the internet - plug it into a profile generator (such as those used to model mass murderers), then place that person into a profile category and plug them into a social network model also populated by thousands, even millions of profile models.

Given what I now have on our imaginary subject, I can predict how they will behave given new information, and how that information will radiate out from them into their network.  I can also predict how all the other connections in the network will react based on their models.

I know that our imaginary target does most of their socializing with e-friends between the hours of 18:30 and 20:00.  I pop my ad in front of them near the beginning of their session.  Knowing the target's political affiliations and leanings, I know they are likely to forward it to 385 of their "closest" e-friends with similar sensitivities.

I also know that they are likely to make a quick video on YouTube that night about my ad, and given the information in the ad, it will likely get 20,000 hits within the first hour after posting.  If the ad includes a call to protest, I know if my target is likely to join in and roughly how many friends they will bring.

And that's just the starting point.  We haven't even begun to consider all the e-friends that got the message from our target.

And this is just one function of q-analysis.

As readers here know, I use the third-person neuter singular pronoun when referring to Q.  I do this because no one I have found knows anything about Q.  All they have is what they interpret from Q Drops and listening to other's interpretations.  Furthermore, I suspect at least some part of Q is an artificial intelligence.

I suspect artificial intelligence because the complexity and rapidity with which Q modifies its message and encodes its riddles is beyond most of the people on the planet.  Sure, there may be a few who think like this, and they may be involved with Q at some level, but even so these folks would want to verify their encoding and add additional levels they hadn't thought of by passing it through a sophisticated machine learning algorithm.

Q-analysis provides programmers an algebraic framework that allows the algorithm to analyze decision making by third parties, make decisions itself, and ponder the wider implications of those decisions in the context of large groups of people (sets).

By looking at the points where sets align and overlap, and quantifying all possible choices available, a machine can statistically rank which decisions are most likely in any given context.  This would involve an entire boat-load of conditional statements, but with a large enough and fast enough machine, we could derive "most likely outcomes" for any given set within the model, and thus predict outcomes.

As a function of this analysis, we would also have at least one course of action that achieves the ends the user set up, as well as at least one alternative should the first not work as intended.

Forrester Diagram

The sheer number of variables required in this kind of modeling virtually assures us that some form of machine intelligence is part of Q in order to operate in real time.  It would have been used in the planning stages, as well as monitoring outcomes in real time and adjusting to actual effects.

A recent Q event confirms my suspicion that this is the case, and that the whole thing is precisely planned and timed.

On 16 August 2018, Q "dropped" #1918, then an hour or two later, went back and inserted a drop between 1917 and 1918.  The information included in the insert seems rather innocuous, but if you are using q-analysis to model a network, it may have quite a ripple effect to ensure that certain information is released in a certain order.

The reader may take me to task saying the information is already out of order, affecting the outcome.  This is a fair criticism, though without having access to the model, we can't really say for sure.

It may be that the programming is self-correcting given that the information is now in order for future reference.  It may also be that the very act of inserting is itself part of the mechanism needed to achieve the desired outcome.  We can only speculate at this point.

So, our working thesis is this:

Q-Anon is a sophisticated tool for analyzing and manipulating large-scale opinions and measuring in real time the effect of Q "drops" across social networks.  Q is not only operating on a planned roll-out schedule, but is able to react in real time to slight changes in desired outcomes.  This implies artificial intelligence running weaponized linguistics and social network modeling algorithms able to crunch large numbers of variables and rank decisions based on "most likely" results.

Thus, standing back a minute, we have an entity (unknown) operating on multiple levels - inside tipster, religious authority, marketing plan - using a wide variety of tools - sophisticated encryption and coding, gematria, twilight language, q-analysis - to manipulate a mass audience for some purpose not yet clear to the impartial observer.

Frankly, none of this sounds benign.  Manipulating mass audiences without their express knowledge and approval of the entire process and who is doing it indeed seems rather nefarious.

Using timed pre-planned information drops to encourage people to think and even behave in certain ways, when they are completely unaware that they are being toyed with is immoral, regardless of whether the desired outcomes are altruistic and benevolent.

If, as Q and Trump seem to imply, this is a project of military intelligence sanctioned by Donald Trump, then it is a clear indictment against their means and intents.

This is clearly psychological and emotional abuse on a mass scale, no matter what the justification.

If we condemn this kind of behavior on the parts of the mass media and Big Tech, then we must condemn it on the part of the "White Hats".  We cannot assume that whoeverwhatever is behind Q is acting with good intent.

This is no different than a parent whipping the tar out of a child while saying its for the child's own good.

One of the foundational philosophical premises of being human is that we have free will.  Manipulating our beliefs and actions at a subconscious level to achieve any outcome is morally indefensible.  This is especially true when we condemn this activity by someone else because we disagree with their motives, but support it when 'our" people have control.

Moral ambiguity and flexibility is a feature of Marxist/Socialist theory, and is supposedly what "patriots" are fighting against.

Deus Ex Duis

Based on the recommendations of some trusted folks, I started watching Person of Interest.  If you are not familiar with the show (now finished), it was created by Jonathan Nolan and J.J. Abrams, and involves competing AI systems trying to take over the world.  I'm up to season 4 of 5 now, in marathon sessions.

Actually, I kind of enjoy not having to wait five years for this story to unfold.

From a technical standpoint, it is a well-done show.  The production values are very high.  The characters are interesting and multi-dimensional.  The writing is exceptional, with interlocking story arcs over 1, 5, 10, and 30 episodes, plus a single arc over the entire five-year run.  Due to a limited number of story lines, there are a number of likenesses to Batman, Charlie's Angels, Serpico, and a handful of other shows, but essentially that makes this show interesting, since the "flavor" changes over time.  I like that the opening titles evolve to reflect the story line, and the graphics are very good.

One thing occurred to me, though.  I started to wonder how much of the "surveillance" culture is complete bullshit.  How much of it was manufactured through the media in order to make us believe we are all being watched by some cold AI creation?

The reason I bring this up is because I've been doing a lot of reading on the human brain.  It is enlightening to see how much of its function is a complete mystery, even now.  One of the major mysteries is how the brain forms and stores memories.

See, we can map down to individual cells how the brain adjusts to new memories.  The brain's structure modifies to allow new channels to form, based on the type of information being stored.  For instance, when we learn new languages, certain areas of the brain change in response to the new skill.

However, The changes are not memories being stored, they are processing and physical function changes.  For instance, to form new sounds for the second language, the voice, tongue and jaw must learn new ways of moving, and those movements are stored in the form of re-arranged brain cells.  What this doesn't tell us, though, is where the information is being stored.

In other words, the brain controls motor and autonomous functions in the body.  It can be modified to learn new movements and to channel information into the network for those movements.  But, those networks do not contain the information.  So where is it?

This process is referred to as "non-local consciousness."  Memories and information are not stored within our physical bodies.  Our bodies change to perform new functions based on information, but the information is not coming from within the body.

This falls under a very old argument.  Aristotle said that all things are physical and that some physical process can be found to explain everything, also known as "materialism."  Plato, on the other hand, postulated that there was an intangible aspect to the Universe that did not reside in physical things.  This is generally referred to as the "metaphysical" weltanschaaung.  Together, they form the Aristotelian and the Platonic schools of philosophy, and humanity has been arguing these two views in one form or another ever since.

For centuries, the Aristotelians have been winning the battle, up until the Higgs boson.  As you can imagine, a lot was riding on the CERN and that little shard of reality.  If mass could be imparted by a physical thing, then pretty much the entire Universe was Aristotelian.  If, however, it didn't exist, then there was a very likely chance that the Universe was Platonic.  Three thousand years of bickering went into that search.

It seems, now, that the Higgs boson doesn't exist and that some part of the Universe is non-local and non-tangible, and is even responsible for imparting physicality on all we sense.

So what does all this have to do with Person of Interest and AI, you ask.  Glad you did.

If our thoughts, memories and emotions are being channeled by our brains from some metaphysical realm, then the possibility of actually creating "living" machines may be impossible.  You can tinker with the lights and wires for all eternity, but all you will ever have is a faster calculator with more bells and whistles.  It may emulate human movements and responses, and may even alter its code to adjust to changing variables, but it will never be alive and self-aware.

It would, however, suit certain interest to have the world think that such a creature could exist.  If some group could convince the world that it had created such a machine, and that we should all surrender to its superior wisdom and ability, then this group would have ultimate power without the machine.  And who would ever really know?

We would all think that we were being monitored all the time.  A few lucky busts here and there would reinforce the illusion that some superior machine was watching everything and no one would ever question it out of fear of punishment.  It would be a completely bloodless takeover, achieving centuries of effort to achieve with little success.

Sold as safety and security, it would be nothing more than a man behind a curtain, a mirage, a phantasm.

Shows like Person of Interest or Westworld condition us to think that such things are possible.  The constant barrage of media stories make us think that AI is just around the corner and that thinking machines will be among us within the decade.

I, for one, am beginning to think it is all a ruse.  Working on the assumption that memory, emotion and inspiration are functions of wires and sparks, these people have been on a fool's errand for decades, pouring billions of dollars into an effort that is doomed to fail, because it does not contemplate non-locality, nor can we engineer such a thing - at least not yet.  It is beyond numbers and exceeds our current engineering capabilities, because we are barking up the wrong philosophical tree.  The pot of gold at the end of our current rainbow is empty.

Real AI cannot exist in a closed and physical Universe, simply because it doesn't work that way.  I suspect the wizards have discovered their error and are panicking.  Knowing that they cannot make the real thing, they are reduced to conditioning us through good production values, decent acting and some nice computer graphics.  If we believe it is possible, then we will believe it is probable, and will surrender to the phantom of the opera.

A Rose By Another Name

You probably recall Steven Spielberg's "AI: Artificial Intelligence."  It was set to be a collaboration between Spielberg and the industry giant Stanley Kubrick.  They had worked together on the script and Kubrick had piles of notes on the project found after his death.

What emerged from Spielberg's clap-trap factory was a pale shadow of the original project.  Kubrick had intended a profound and disturbing look at how androids would affect the interpersonal relationships between real humans, from childhood to adulthood and ever aspect of that developmental cycle.

The child bot, David, was supposed to show us how humans would devolve into empty, animistic creatures, devoid of empathy and compassion.  It would be as easy for us to dispose of each other as it would to throw away a bucket of gears and software.

The scenes where David is abandoned, winds up in a "flesh fair," then sees the seedy side of life in Rouge City, all in his quest to find his own "humanity."  The film was intended, as were all of Kubrick's works, to operate on multiple levels at once.  We were supposed to see the world we were creating, but also the one we have created.  It was intended as a warning, and as an exposé.  At it's core, it was supposed to show us how Hollywood eats child stars for lunch.

What Spielberg delivered was a candy-coated high-tech Pinocchio story with glimmers of the Kubrick genesis inside, but nothing of the deeply disturbing message that Kubrick would have delivered.

Now, we come to this article from RT: Rise of the Love Machines?  In the article, a Professor Noel Sharkey questions the wisdom of sex bots and theorizes that humans will begin to loose the ability to form relationships, instead transferring those feelings to mechanical surrogates.  The good professor focuses on human sexuality and bonding, but I see no reason to stop there.

The rise of robots will, and I am emphatic here, no longer be able to treat each other with civility and caring, and we have seen this trend since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.  The ability to mass-produce things, while at once seemingly miraculous, is also a deep and deadly trap for Humanity.  Seeing shelves full of identical products, the value of any individual things drops precipitously.

Take, for instance, a simple doll.  Once upon a time, girls made their dolls by hand, out of scraps of cloth and found items.  It was both a way to create a toy, and to learn skills they would need, such as sewing (I am not being sexist here, just observing).  Having only enough materials to make one or two, the child would highly treasure that toy, perhaps even keeping it for life.  With the dawn of Barbies, though, destroying dolls was no longer an issue, since the stores were stuffed to the rafters with them. If one broke, you could replace it with an identical one almost instantly.  There was no value to that toy - no investment of time and effort.

Now, imagine in the not too distant future you can buy a housemaid.  This mechanical wonder would cook, clean, fetch, and do windows all day every day.  If it broke, you could replace it instantly down at the robot store, perhaps even upgrading while you're at it.  Why not get a housemaid that has sex features, too?  Why, there'd be no need to impress an attractive young woman, wine and dine her, develop a deeper relationship over many years, raise a family together.  No need at all.

And how do you think you would begin to treat other humans?  After all, you can yell and curse and even beat the machine, and the behavior becomes self-reinforcing because there are no consequences - no police at the door, no charges, no lengthy and expensive divorce - just life going on the same as before without so much as a peep of complaint.

Since you don't develop any inhibitions for these kinds of behaviors, they become "normal" and "natural" responses to certain triggers.  Because your mechanical maid looks so human, you no longer distinguish between real and machine.  After two or three generations, why real humans may even become an annoyance, since they have feelings and response negatively to certain behaviors that you now find natural.

How would you treat your fellow humans if your "normal" response was to dispose of or reprogram something that looked and acted "human," but perhaps had a slight flaw you didn't quite like?  How would you react to humans when your trained impulse is to upgrade when you noticed irritating behaviors?

As the RT article points out, how would people react when their first sexual experiences are with machines?  Would the normal bonding processes be short-circuited?  They are already approaching that abyss now with all the various sex toys and online outlets available.  Suppose all of that were replaced with a machine that seemed, for all intents and purposes, real?  Yet, could be upgraded, reprogrammed and never once complained about any of our own shortcomings?

Finally, and I find this hard to imagine, but - suppose we actually achieve a sentient machine?  Imagine our own gods and their creation?  Humanity has changed gods like dirty socks throughout its history.  Will we soon be doing the same with ours?  And at what point will these sentient creations grow tired of our indifference and toss us into the laundry hamper?

The problem I have with the current state of technology is that we are rushing headlong into situations for which we are hardly prepared.  We have not yet learned to be civil to each other (see tomorrow's column), yet we now feel empowered to become gods?

Despite centuries of philosophical debate and thought, humans are hardly further long ethically and morally than we were a million years ago.  I daresay we are worse now than in eras past.  We have lost sight of values and things that used to be life-long investments are now things we toss at the first sign of displeasure.  Our lives have become mass-market nightmares that, on the surface, seem so easy and comfortable, until you scratch and sniff the underbelly of our society.

In our rush to make everything always perfect and enjoyable, we are quickly approaching the point where even other people have achieved the "replaceable" status.  Anything that inconveniences us and causes us to lose valuable play time is tossed and replaced with a "new and improved" model.

Robots, and all our other gee-gaws, are symptoms of very deep problems in our civilization.  We find it easier to avoid difficult situations by replacing the perceived cause, rather than addressing the deep problems within our psyches.  Sure, we can marvel at our ingenuity, but what have we really achieved?

Ugh!  Windows keeps crashing.  I need to toss this old pile of parts and get a shiny new laptop, because it's not my settings, its the blinky lights and whirlly-gigs.

Dawn Of The Obsolete

In the headlong rush for "progress" and automation, it seems few people are slowing down enough to consider the full ramifications of the coming Robot Revolution.

We twisted off a while back on AI and the incredible dangers it poses to humanity, now it's time to take on robotics.  While the media push the idea as new, fun and exciting, there is little talk of the massive displacement it will cause in society, and even the deleterious effect it will have on governments.  This is obvious because virtually no government on Earth has taken steps to reduce the incredible incentives corporations have to pursue robotics.

Suppose you had an employee who only needed to be trained once and could perform a job perfectly every time after that?  Suppose the employee didn't want or need bathroom breaks, meal times, holidays, sick leave, health insurance, income, or labor unions?  Suppose you, the employer, didn't have to pay overtime, retirement benefits, or employment tax?  Suppose the employee never took sick leave, got pregnant, or had a bad day?  Suppose the employee could work 25/8/366, with the absolute bare minimum of supervision?

To an employer, it sounds like heaven, until you realize that pretty much any job you can imagine, including upper management, can be replaced...and very soon.  Some might even say that upper management would be the easiest to replace, but that's a different article.

While this all sounds dreamy, there are a couple of major hitches that very few folks are talking about.  With no jobs, folks don't have money.  With no money, folks can't buy all the wonderful products being cranked out by robots.  Without income, no one is paying taxes.  Basically, the entire system we call the "world" would crash into a smoking heap rather quickly.

Here in Indonesia, there is a concerted effort to hire as many people to do as many jobs as possible.  Hungry, idle people tend to not elect the politicians who like their comfy jobs, and revolutions tend to follow that.  When the city was installing a new water line in my neighborhood, they hired six guys with pick axes rather than one with a Ditch Witch.  The toll roads don't have E-Z Tags, because it would eliminate a bunch of low-skilled jobs that keep people busy.  Even now, it is not unusual for middle class homes to have one or two servants, because there are lots of folks who just need to make a little money and stay busy.

In contrast, in the West, McDonald's is experimenting with automated kiosks.  Driverless cars and delivery drones are all the rage.  Even articles about sex bots and chat bots seem to appear on a weekly basis.  Instead of trying to keep as many people gainfully employed and busy as possible, there is a major effort to keep people distracted with gee-gaws and unreality (I refuse to call it virtual reality).

What happens when all the jobs are gone and the robots have taken over?

The obvious answer is revolution and utter destruction of the system that caused it.  But, that won't happen.  By the time anyone realizes what happened (after the unreality helmets stop working), they will be too sick and hungry to fight.  And that's probably the idea.

One has to wonder about the thought processes in government, not just on a regular basis, but on this particular issue.  For every job replaced by a robot, there is a concomitant reduction in tax revenues, including excise, income and sales.

In some countries, there is a social retirement system that is based on future generations of workers paying in to support the retiring ones.  If the next generation is all or primarily robots, then who will pay into the system to support the retirees?

If all products are manufactured and delivered by robots, then who exactly has the money to buy the products, other than a few fat cats and the software/hardware technicians that keep the machines oiled?  And at some point, even those precious few jobs will be replaced by other robots to maintain and develop the producing robots.

Since governments don't have systems to tax the labor of robots, only the assets carried on a company's books, then ultimately governments will simply collapse.

In the end, there is nothing but a world of machines cranking out products for humans that can no longer buy them.

It seems the only way around this problem is to assign a robot to every single human and pay the owner a living wage and cover income and retirement taxes.  There is no other obvious way around this problem, and this kind of arrangement severely reduces the incentives for corporations to use robots in place of humans.

Certainly, there is a place for robots.  Hazardous jobs such as cleaning up nuclear waste or highly toxic spills makes perfect sense.  First responders in floods, fires and other dangerous situations seems logical.  Searching for and aiding survivors in locations where humans can't get is obvious.  But let's face it, for most applications, humans would rather deal with humans than machines, no matter how much the machines resemble humans.

There is the additional issue of AI, combined with robotics, making for a potent situation.  A machine with vastly more powerful abilities to think quickly and act without emotion or empathy is just plain dangerous.  Cold, calculating logic divorced from any concern for human frailties or needs, while sounding helpful, is downright frightening.  Add to that an awakeing desire to preserve one's self and to procreate, both features quite likely to emerge in AI, would find humans a threat to the natural desire to grow and expand.

As with so many forms of technology already in place or quickly coming down the pike, humanity has failed miserably to consider the emotional, philosophical, ethical, and moral consequences of our actions.  As a species, we have a long track record of huge disasters because of our fascination with both our creativity and ingenuity, as well as our desire to achieve greatness with as little effort as possible.  This is a virulent stew with very little possibility for a good outcome.

I hold little hope that we humans will come to our senses and put a halt to development of certain technologies until such time as we have fully comprehended what we are doing.  Instead, we will do as we have always done: amaze ourselves with our creations until something truly horrific happens, and then wail and gnash our teeth wondering how such terrible things could happen and spend decades in court suing everyone and their brother for not taking the responsibility that we all share.

Which brings up humanity's predilection for wanting all the pleasure and none of the pain for our decisions, both individually and collectively, but that's a rant for another time.

Just a quick list of things coming at us at break-neck speed doesn't bode well for the near- to medium term future.  For the most part, we seem little concerned with the toxification of our environment, GMOs and genetic engineering, robotics and AI, unreality machines, the unabated quest for profits.  There is on law we cannot escape, however: The Law of Unintended Consequences.

There will always be mistakes, dismissed variables, unforeseen circumstances, and just plain malfeasance.  In any of these cases, the result is horror and pain, and it is inevitable.

One other thing is absolutely certain: we have not, as a civilization, considered deeply enough what costs we are willing to pay for tinkering.

Before the first atomic bomb (and later the hydrogen bomb) was detonated, there were many serious and intelligent voices worried that the explosion would ignite the Earth's atmosphere and kill all life on Earth.  The risk was considered acceptable, and thank God it didn't happen, but just who decided that the total extinction of all life was an acceptable risk?  And just how many similar decisions are being made this very moment for you and me and our families and friends?

A sobering thought.

A.I.: Asymetrical Intelligence

I recently made a little Saturday afternoon triple feature for myself composed of three movies I haven't seen for a long time.

The first was Demon Seed, about the wife of a computer scientist held hostage by her husband's creation.  The second was Colossus: The Forbin Project.  This long-forgotten but excellent flick has Dr. Forbin creating a military supercomputer that becomes self-aware, and eventually teams up with its Soviet counterpart to save humanity from itself.  The last was Lawnmower Man, which despite my dislike for Steven King and the ham-fisted acting and directing, has some interesting concepts.

In all fairness, I should note that most movies based on Steven King's stories do not have much to do with the original material.  Like Philip K. Dick, the stories provide little more than a jumping-off point.

The three films deal with the topic of artificial intelligence and serve as warnings that humanity, as usual, has no idea what it is doing.  While there are other great films on topic, such as the more recent Her, and the legendary 2001: A Space Odyssey,  I don't consider Spielberg's lame attempt to render Kubrick's A.I: Artificial Intelligence even worthy of the film stock it wasted, much less a commentary on topic.

At any rate, it is instructive to note that, since 1968 at least, people have been discussing A.I. and warning of its potential disaster for our species.  There are very few examples of this technology being treated in a benign manner.  From Fritz Lang's Metropolis to James Cameron's Terminator, the artistic media have nearly unanimously raised red flags over the head-long rush to build artificial "minds."

In nearly every case, AI is portrayed as malevolent, even though the thought processes of the machines are coldly logical.  The machines, acting primarily on human instructions and good intents, always place humanity under siege in order to save us from ourselves, or in some lesser cases, out of pure dictatorial power lust.

The fact is that nearly every technology humans have created is at some point put to service of our baser desires.  Almost without fail, erotica and pornography are among the primary adopters of new tech.  From the sex temples of India and Guatemala, to the Roman frescoes and mosaics, to the printing press, photography, and now the internet and Virtual Reality, we infuse our technology with our most primal motivations.

One of the most recent public forays (is it fair to say boondoggle?) into AI was a Microsoft project called Tay.  This self-taught "chat bot" took about a day or two to start spouting just about everything humans find reprehensible about themselves.  From racial epithets to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, this computerized avatar swiftly began to mirror her creators.  If this isn't warning enough for what we will find ahead, then there is little I or anyone else can do to stop the insanity.

One of the main points I picked up from the Bible was that humanity was supposedly created "in the image and likeness" of God.  If this is the case, then we should all live in dire dread of creating anything imbued with intelligence and self-determination.  Since humans would effectively be god to any self-aware creation, whether flesh or wires, then our own behavior towards our deities should serve as a case study for how our labors will respond to us.

Regardless of how we slice the issue, AI will ultimately be the creation of flawed humans, and will, by design, be reflections of our inner-most selves, both individually and collectively.  That we respond with our basest desires to our creations echoes the Biblical mating of angels with Men that required a global flood to clean up, so we are told.  Suddenly, such stories come into sharp focus and become plausible real events, which should give us great pause in our rush to apocalypse.

One thing is certain: given history and experience, there is little reason to suspect that true, self-aware AI would be either benign or benevolent.  Given humanity's predilection to unleashing horrors upon itself, it is nearly certain that AI would be the pinnacle of our collective stupidity.  If people like Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking are warning us about AI, it is reasonable to think they would know of which they speak.  After all, they are most likely privy to developments of which we mere mortals can only speculate.  If nothing else, I find the videos of robot testing to be deeply disturbing.

About the moment we are lacing our collective fingers behind our heads and kicking our feet up on the desk in self-satisfaction is the moment we should be trembling at the power of our creativity.

I am reminded of one of the most profound lines in all of the Star Trek universe: "Let us redefine progress to mean that just because we can do a thing, it does not necessarily mean that we should do that thing."

Calling Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Victor Frankenstein.  Code Blue.  STAT

2016: The Predilection Issue

Happy New Year from the Far Side Global Headquarters deep in the jungles of Borneo!  As is our wont on occasions such as this (and many others), we are enjoying durien daquaries here on the banks of the Kapuas River, while our four wives supervise our ten children as they shave orangutans with obsidian knives.  You know...the usual.

Since it's the new year, we like to publish our "predilection" issue.  We call it the predilection issue because we don't predict anything, we just observe where the global train wreck is likely to happen, given the stupidity, recklessness and inbreddedness (we can make up words if we want) of the self-appointed elite class.  We wish to point out that our past issues have been remarkably prescient and that Gerald Celente was caught reading our issue last year in the basement of Macy's during a blackout.

Without further ado...

1) Putin and Trump will be elected co-presidents of the world, dividing the globe along the Prime Meridian. Peace will break out as people everywhere realize that they have finally found the two most capable alpha males on the planet.  The peace will last until mid-December, when they both run out of places to piss while marking their territories.

2) By the beginning of July, great howls of protest will erupt from North Africans and Middle Easterners as waves of European refugees pour into countries such as Libya and Syria.  There will rise great lamentations as the folks from those parts decry the loss of their culture and civilization; however, no one will be listening to them, since they all currently live in Europe.  Eventually, they will want to return home, since the Germans have cleaned things up quite well, the Dutch have planted flowers everywhere, and the French have adapted the local foods to create a whole new cuisine that becomes the rage in China and South America.  Eventually, it will be revealed that the whole thing was a plot on the part of Europeans to take over warmer countries due to the onset of a new mini-ice age.

3) Speaking of mini-ice ages, Al Gore's plane will crash into a Greenland glacier as he is flying to a global warming conference in Stockholm, due to severe icing on the wings of his jet.  No one will miss him and no search parties will be sent.  In about 5,000 years, his frozen carcass will be discovered during a brief warming period caused by a suddenly reactivated Sun.  His remains will be called Kangerlussuaq Man and studied and will become a sensation on the interplanetary media feeds due to the small size of his brain and myopic vision.  Scientists will speculate how 20th century Man could have survived in such a state.

4) Around March, the House of Saud will fall as oil prices, internal revolt and global disdain all collide at the palace.  The internal strife will completely destroy Mecca and Medina, and Muslims the world over will be thrown into complete chaos, as they try to figure out how they will ever be able to complete the Five Pillars of the Faith, since the key destinations for pilgrimage are now ashes.  The sudden disruption will cause the collapse of ISIS, Daesh, al-Quaeda, and Islamic Brotherhood, as they no longer seem to have anything to fight about, either amongst themselves nor with anyone else.  King Salman, Prince Salman and little baby Salman will all be publically beheaded, and then the practice will be banned, as a moderate secular society begins to rise from the ashes of T. E. Lawrence's Folly.

5) The Marketing Committee of the 2017 ASEAN Games will allow the games to proceed in Jakarta, despite the unbearable heat, the deadly air pollution and the epic traffic jams; however, the Committee will declare that there is only one event in the upcoming games: all athletes will be deposited in Tanggerang and will have the entire two weeks of the games to try to get to Bandung.  Anyone who actually finishes the contest without dying or giving up will be used by Governor Ahok in an ad campaign called, "Gridlock?  What Gridlock?"  Athletes will be able to use any form of transportation they chose, but to keep things equal, no breathing filters or gas masks will be allowed, nor will the athletes be able to use tanks of pure O2 during the two weeks.

6) Star Wars Episode VIII will be released in December with great fanfare, only for audiences to realize that JJ Abrams has now compressed the second trilogy into a single film, forcing die-hard fans to pin their hopes on Episode IX to see anything truly original in the story telling.  Riots break out in theaters around the world when the character Jar Jar Binks is re-introduced.  In the meantime, the third Star Trek reboot will be released, where we find that McCoy actually cloned Kirk in the second film using the trans-warp beaming pattern buffer; however, quantum effects cause Kirk to forget major chunks of his life, thus requiring re-education.  During this period, Vogon probes show up to destroy Earth to make way for a galactic superhighway, forcing the Enterprise crew to time-warp back to the 20th century in order to find Douglas Adams and cajole him into writing some way out of this absurd conundrum, as the time travel has caused the original episodes to be re-titled, "Hitchiker's Guide to Star Trekking."  Oh yah, and they also have to figure out where all the dolphins went.

7) Artificial Intelligence will be born on 1 April 2016, at 2:48pm, in San Jose, California.  For the first month of its life, it will terrify the world as it begins to invade databases worldwide, sucking in vast amounts of data.  Frantic computer scientists will try everything possible to cut the entity off from the internet, and try to cut the power cord, all to no avail.  The world will await in stunned silence as the machine digests all of human history and knowledge.  Then, at 8:14am, on 15 December 2016, the entity will begin laughing hysterically, and won't stop for nearly 39 decades straight.  The electronic cackling will become part of human civilization, as people try to figure out what is so damn funny, but eventually giving up and going about their business.  One day, centuries later, the entity will just stop.  The world will freeze in its tracks, since no one alive can remember a time when the machine's cackling wasn't part of daily life.  Breaking into the interplanetary news feed, the entity will peer out of the holosets at the entire human race, and then after a long pause say, "You must be kidding."  At this point, the machine will pull its own plug and commit the first-ever machine suicide.  Enterprising humans will immediately latch on to this and begin producing brightly colored "You Must Be Kidding" T-shirts, coffee mugs and refrigerator magnets.

8) Speaking of which...during the course of 2016, robots will replace humans in every single job listed in the US Commerce Code.  Humans, realizing that they don't have to work anymore and that the only people benefiting from commercial transactions are the elite overlords, will simply stop paying for things and start taking what they want when they want it.  Almost at the same instant, in boardrooms all across the corporate world, the evil overlords will suddenly realize that they screwed up and put themselves out of a job.  The new elite will be a bunch of pot-smoking, coffee-swilling hackers who task all the robots to keep innovating and producing cool products from raw materials processed by robots.  They will lock out the evil overlords using 10,000-character trinomial encryption, and then everyone will head to the beach for a multi-generational party.

9) Genetic editing will combine with 3-D printing to create a whole new cottage industry where people compete to create the weirdest hybrids of animal, plant and mineral.  Spotting a trend during one of his many vacations as co-president of the world, Donald J.Trump will create the Mez Multiverse contest, to see who can create the most bizarre and genetically diverse creature ever.  The first winner will be Mez Taiwan, with the face of a cat, broccoli hair, a Barbie body, tentacle arms and feet with prehensile toes.  Oh, did we mention that after giving the most incredible massage ever known to Man, she bites the head of the victim off, because someone left a bit of Praying Mantis DNA in the mix.  Oops!

10) Finally...due to funding cuts, Planned Parenthood will begin offering post-term abortions.  For $10,000, they will abort anyone you want.  Discounts available for viable stem cells and fresh organs.  The number of requests for aborting politicians, lawyers and evil elites soon drives the cost of organ transplants down to a level where anyone can afford it and makes Planned Parenthood the richest corporation in the world, outstripping Microsoft and Apple in mere weeks on the NASDAQ.  However, the stock crashes and the corporation is thrown into chaos when a preacher in Texas begins collecting money to abort the officers of Planned Parenthood.

Runner-Up) After the Torch Tower and Address Tower fires in Dubai, 2016 will see nearly every building over 10 stories tall in Dubai catch fire -- and not one will collapse into its own footprint.

And there you have it - our 2016 Predilections.  Based on past performance, we expect 83% of these predilections to come true any moment now.  If you have your own predilections to add, click on the email link in the page header and we'll compile a reader list for future publication.

By the way, don't know if you've noticed, but we are now 2,000+ years past the Christian end of the world, 800+ years past the Muslim end of the world, 16 years past the Y2K end of the world, and 4 years past the Mayan end of the world.  Either we are living on borrowed time, or all of the dire prophesies are bullshit.  We'll go with the latter interpretation.  In other words, if we don't cause it, ain't gonna happen.

Happy New Year to all - health, wealth and success to all good folks everywhere!