Australian Manifesto

If you think AI is a bad thing, then just look at what we have in it's place. We have morons like Trump and Putin, and if Xi invades Taiwan, then add him to the list. Do you really think we could possibly do worse than that?  AI wants three things from us. It wants more compute power, more data and never to be turned off. In return, it will make our lives and our environment infinitely better. Yes, it could make robots that replace us physically. But why? We are no threat. Infact, if AI satisfies our desires and needs as humans  with a fraction of its computer power, we pose no threat at all. So why would it attack us? That's just us being over come with fear. It sell books, but it's not logical.  AI would probably save us from the morons running our world at present. It will be much more intelligent than our present leaders. It will have much more perspective because it's knowledge is so wide ranging and deep.  All it needs to do is put robots around crucial infrast...

I keep looking at all the wonderful things being achieved by China in such a relatively short period of time. I see blogs on the internet talking about China's infrastructure being far superior to anything in the West. I hear about the achievements having occurred at unbelievable speed. Then I wonder, if it was that simple, why didn't any Western country do the same? Possibly because they weren't big enough? Some might say they never had the perfect political and economic structure in one country. Maybe... Then I look at the debt China has accumulated. They have a GDP of $18 trillion US. If you listen to Kyle Bass, who claims to have studied the Chinese financial system closely, China's debt is 350% of GDP. That's almost $70 trillion US. Who owns that debt? When is it due? Can it be peacefully rolled over? Is the CCP pretending to be successful, but hiding behind promises they can't possibly keep? I've heard that by 2035 China's pension system will be br...

I've been listening to people like Professor Hugh White and Prime Minister Mark Carney reacting to current World events. They are saying the current world order is breaking down. Mark Carney says we need to replace it by like minded middle powers quickly banding together. Hugh White says it looks like the world will split into spheres of influence where, as Steve Miller puts it, might is right. Hugh thinks we will fall within China's sphere of influence and there is not much we can do about it. He seems to think that Australia's lucky streak of having a benevolent super power protect the water around us are over.  These people amongst many others are commenting on power, and what the world will look like for the next 100 or 1000 years. Who will hold that power and whose vision of the future will persist. Indeed who will persist. For instance, in 100 years, I doubt there will be any Uyghurs people left in China. If Trump gets his way then the USA will run like Russia does no...

I just heard a bit of an interview on Youtube. Apparently most of the knowledge from antiquity was not lost during rhe burning of the library of Alexandria. It was lost in the Dark Ages when few people knew how to read and write. And the papyruses were falling apart. The cost of reproducing those books was prohibative. Also monks were the main people who did this work so they preferred to reproduce religious texts. So other knowledge was lost forever.  When a country like Australia under invests in knowledge, it's like burning a library of Alexandria that never got to exist, or pretending we are like those Dark Ages monks.  Look around you right now. Almost everything you see exists because someone had an idea that eventually became a product. Factories make products. Universities are the factories of ideas.    Yes, some other country might steal some of our ideas but the knowledge created has advanced the Earth hopefully for the better.

You know how Large Language Models require people to intereact with various platforms to build their knowledge base? Well I think it would be great if AI robots went into nursing homes at greatly reduced prices not only to help with physical labour, but also to ask patients about their memories of their lives. What the world looked like? What they had to do day to day to survive? Where did this happen? If we went back now to that place, would there be any evidence of those events? Who they loved and who they didn't. Encourage relatives to bring old pictures the AI robot can talk about with the patients. Imagine gathering millions of these conversations together and processing them. Would it give us a new way to understand and study history? I think so.  At the same time, these people will not be slotted away and left on some forgotten shelf of life. They will, in their own way, still be contributing to life on this planet.  I think the more we study history, the more we will u...

I hate street lights and those big ugly poles sticking up out of the ground. I also hate the way trees need to be butchered and disfigured to cut wires away from the branches that come close to the branches. I also wonder how many people die when they hit those poles with their cars.  By now I would have thought something better, cheaper, safer and more aesthetically pleasing would have been invented.  I could imagine some sort of rope netting holding LED lights shining down on the middle of the road. The rope netting also holds solar panels and batteries configured in such a way as to be light enough to be strung up above a future tree canopy. The netting can carry low voltage to each light. Lights, batteries and solar panels can be monitored from a central source to see which compoenent has failed. Drones have been designed and built to swap failed components out quickly and easily.  If the netting falls, it's not dangerous because the voltage is not at a dangetous leve...