Doomsday Clock Moved Forward After Trump Becomes President

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock forward by a half of one minute, only days after Donald Trump became President of the United States of America. It now stands at two and a half minutes to midnight.

“The board’s decision to move the clock less than a full minute reflects a simple reality: As this statement is issued, Donald Trump has been the US president only a matter of days.”

The full document can be viewed here.

For more info about the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, see the website:  thebulletin.org

– Your Joyful Benefactor

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Proposition (XVIII)

Ideal Platonic forms don’t exist in the universe – they are the product of the human mind only.

Corollary : It was thought by Plato that all objects have an ideal form which exists within the universe and that their counterparts – real objects or “sensible things” are simply degenerate forms of these ideals. However, the opposite is true. The degenerate form is in fact in the mind. Consider a sphere. The most perfect spheres in the universe are stars, but as we know the surface of a star is a raging torrent of ever shifting plasma. The dimensions of the star are also imperfect – stars bulge due to their rotation and so their form is less accurately

Doomsday Clock Still at 3 Minutes to Midnight: Excerpt from Noam Chomsky Essay

In his new book Who rules the World?  Noam Chomsky talks about The Doomsday Clock, nuclear weapons, climate change and the prospects of survival for the human species.

The essay from the book can be found here.

Extract below:

Let us turn to the other (and traditional) concern of the atomic scientists who adjust the Doomsday Clock: nuclear weapons. The current threat of nuclear war amply justifies their January 2015 decision to advance the clock two minutes toward midnight. What has happened since reveals the growing threat even more clearly, a matter that elicits insufficient concern, in my opinion.

American Scientists Write to Obama: Take Nuclear Missiles off Hair-Trigger Alert

More than 90 US scientists including Noble Laureates have today sent a letter to President Obama urging him to take land based nuclear missiles off hair-trigger alert. These missiles can be launched within minutes, and therefore are more prone to mistaken launches in response to warnings of an incoming attack, real or false.

Read the full article here, on the ucsusa.org website. The Union of Concerned Scientists is a nonprofit science organisation based in the United States.  It was formed to “initiate a critical and continuing examination of governmental policy in areas where science and technology are of actual or potential significance” and to “devise means for turning research applications away from the present emphasis on military technology toward the solution of pressing environmental and social problems.”

– Your Joyful Benefactor

Proposition (XVII)

Culture is the content of consciousness. As agents, we sort through the vast cultural artifacts that we have inherited and use other agents to rationalise our expanding knowledge.

–  Your Joyful Benefactor

Proposition (XVI)

The study of the mind requires a new logical formalism, as there are no mathematical tools to model the base abstraction layer of interconnecting neurons within the brain.

Corollary. – The wet stuff of the brain is simply organised matter and how it is organised is a complete mystery. Consciousness is often thought to be the hard problem of the mind when in fact it is what’s going on pre-consciousness that is the hard problem. Imagine your personal computer is connected to a black box that spits out 1’s and 0’s to show what is occurring inside its memory and then trying to figure out what is going on with no access to any other peripherals or data. Trying to see patterns or sets of things within this stream, that translates to the higher level action of, for example, moving a pointer across a screen is extremely difficult and yet this is what the current problem is.

– Your Joyful Benefactor

Proposition (XV)

The aim of humanity is to create the ultimate simulacra of itself.

Corollary: Our avatars that inhabit the new virtual spaces we have created, are the first step to this new enlightenment. We are slowly becoming the new Gods of a meta-society and have no conception of the dangerous powers we will be able to wield.

– Your Joyful Benefactor

Russell’s Wisdom

Image: Wikipedia

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

– Bertrand Russell

Proposition (XIV)

Consciousness is simply one’s own perception that others also perceive you as a thinking thing out there in a world of thinking things.

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Setting Out

Image: Wikipedia

The Initial Mystery that attends any journey is: how did the traveler reach his starting point in the first place?

– Louise Bogan

“No Man’s Sky” Game Begs Interesting Questions About The Universe and The Mind

Image: Hello Games

The computer game on everybody’s lips at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) this year was Hello Games “No Man’s Sky”. It’s a science fiction game that has a simple aim – to procedurally generate an infinite galaxy and allow the player to explore it in real time without boundaries.

Proposition (XIII)

Man’s rise as a species is the story of the evolution of his tools by natural selection.

– Your Joyful Benefactor