The problem seems to be this: we have great minds focus on efficiency, but no social engineering to help us gain happiness through time-reuse post-efficiency. In that void the attention economy has sprung up - a product of good intentions that most view as socially detrimental.

Sometimes. A few ed tech companies i know have private investors more interested in product efficacy than revenue or traction, and those are the ones that seem poised to impact the sector most effectively in the long run.

In a world where everything we've ever done is exposed, the old 'glass houses' metaphor might no longer work. If someone has reason, are we really going to say that piece of logic is fallible because the person is fallible? Or the organization they work for is fallible? Seems like puritanical thinking still at work in a world where no one ever was perfect.

Hyperbole.

Or you could argue that anyone who did not see this coming had their heads in the sand. Perhaps the problem is more about business model - if investors and public markets drive Facebook to make ad revenue, then it's going to do that as best it can. Would we rather have a national money-making machine, or a platform for social connectedness for a fee?

This key issue, and the lack of public awareness around the money behind their newsfeed, is the core of this course. Speaking with my family, and friends - very few people understand the far-reaching effects of news sites shifting to be entertainment sites, without any clear announcement.

I think this metric is misleading. Are we comparing video ads in feed to 'sponsored content' in feeds? The state and expectation of the viewer and the platform they are on has to be neutral for all ads types to be assessed...

As a marketer, that's pretty interesting. Then how should a new brand establish cred?

Relevant I get. Authoritative and trustworthy are subjective or easily manipulative aspects or sponsored content.

Not sure if anyone else has noticed, but observing laptop use in class this week, I noticed a marked decrease in participation with the teachers. the conversation was way less vibrant, at least half the class, more like 75%, were multitasking on their own devices. Compare this with the first week of class when everyone was paying attention - and you can a scene where individual distraction is hurting everyone's experience, and adding to other's distraction.

And as I read this, an ad pops up, with a beautiful picture of nature. Hilarious, but horrible.

I'm surprised that anyone denies this is happening. Plenty of research discusses distraction and it's deleterious effects on the human brain. Everyone in our generation should accept that we need to exercise mental control against the myriad of ad algorithms vying for our attention and contributing to our mentally unfocused baseline state.

Clearly it will do both, for different people.

Whatever. I love that book. the Russian authors build an unprecedented level of empathy by drawing out sustained storylines.

Karin Forsell agrees, as does Neuroscientist Bruce McCandliss. When we write, it activates different areas of the brain...

The brain, and focused attention, is like any muscle - use it or lose it. It's not an algorithm's fault that people don't have self-control. Educating people about the danger of distraction is good, but you can't force self-control.

Super sad to see this platform being gamed by bots, algorithms, and professional profile managers.

But how to achieve long-duration unitasking while keeping brain arousal high?

In Gazzaley's book 'Distracted Mind', he basically proves that just the presence of a phone keeps student's from being present and cognitively focused in class.

This is all good - sharing brain space with a computer is exactly what we envisioned. But the cognitive implications for someone else controlling if we have access or might lose this brain space is scary.

Theoretically the human brain should be better able to remember long-form information, like the Illiad, better now than the ancient Greeks. This seems to prove that it's not just simply lack of will standing in our way, it's expectation of information availability.

Great points

As highlighted in the other articles - these people, Bostrom and Urban, are wildly on the 'Singularity Negative' side of the argument, or under Musk's control, respectively.

Zuckerberg is mixing issues in a way that distorts them. Slowing down the process of building AI safely has zero to little impact on self-driving care technology, which is largely already developed. AGI is not needed for self-driving cars. Frankly, him lumping the two together is clearly manipulative, and self-serving. I congratulate his PR team on a job well done though.

Zuckerberg is making billions each year from narrow AI...so in terms of financials, he has an incentive to allow development..

https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/01/facebook-q4-2016-earnings/

From Wired article: Pedro Domingos, a professor who works on machine learning at the University of Washington, summed up his response to Musk’s talk on Twitter with a single word: Sigh. “Many of us have tried to educate him and others like him about real vs. imaginary dangers of AI, but apparently none of it has made a dent,” Domingos says. America’s governmental chief executives would be better advised to consider the negative effects of today’s limited AI, such as how it is giving disproportionate market power to a few large tech companies, he says. Iyad Rahwan, who works on matters of AI and society at MIT, agrees. Rather than worrying about trading bots eventually becoming smart enough to start wars as an investment strategy, we should consider how humans might today use dumb bots to spread misinformation online, he says.

Article he mentions: https://www.wired.com/story/elon-forget-killer-robots-focus-on-the-real-ai-problems/

About Petro Domingos: a researcher at Washington University. Author of the 'master Algorithm' - a known expert. To me, this also means, however, that he profits from having his name in this debate. Wonder how much people are using hyperbole to get their profile out there as a leader in this hot debate...

His take on this debate is that it's overblown. He outlines this in this Knugget article: https://www.kdnuggets.com/2017/01/domingos-ten-myths-machine-learning.html

"Machine learning will soon give rise to superhuman intelligence. From the daily news of AI’s advances, it’s easy to get the impression that computers are on the verge of seeing, speaking and reasoning as well as we do, after which they’ll quickly leave us in the dust. We’ve certainly come a long way in the first fifty years of artificial intelligence, and machine learning is the main reason for its recent successes, but we have a much longer way to go. Computers can do many narrow tasks very well, but they still have no common sense, and no one really knows how to teach it to them.

So there you have it. Machine learning is both more powerful than we often assume it to be and less. What we make of it is up to us — provided we start with an accurate understanding of it."

Reading Max Tegmark's book Life 3.0, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/22/life-30-max-tegmark-review

It becomes plausible that most of the agreement about AI comes from these world leaders and experts talking at small dinner parties. Why have Zuckerberg and Musk not met and discussed. Did they meet and disagree?

Let's discuss the technological and financial motivations of the people involved here:

Amazon, Google, Facebook, Apple, and IBM are the AI leaders according to multiple sources:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2017/02/24/what-companies-are-winning-the-race-for-artificial-intelligence/#42158acff5cd

http://fortune.com/2017/02/23/artificial-intelligence-companies/

https://www.datamation.com/applications/top-20-artificial-intelligence-companies.html

Here we see a case of two billionaires with both financial and ethical interests in the subject butting heads publicly.

Wired does a fairly despicable job of click-bating with this article, titled "THE NEXT PRESIDENT WILL DECIDE THE FATE OF KILLER ROBOTS—AND THE FUTURE OF WAR"

https://www.wired.com/2016/09/next-president-will-decide-fate-killer-robots-future-war/

"But perhaps the most important decision they will make for overall human history is what to do about autonomous weapons systems (AWS), aka "killer robots." The new president will literally have no choice. It is not just that the technology is rapidly advancing, but because of a ticking time bomb buried in US policy on the issue."

I find this article sensational and misleading.

Spearheaded by Max Tegmark from MIT: https://futureoflife.org/ai-open-letter/

This letter is the document with the largest number of professional signatures from experts and researchers. Essentially they argue for non-militarization, saying research must be "robust and beneficial is both important and timely, and that there are concrete research directions that can be pursued today."

They also outline a list of research priorities. https://futureoflife.org/data/documents/research_priorities.pdf?x56934

Specifically, they look for AI to help with labor market forecasting, major disruption forecasting, help developing legal and ethical laws and research,

Not surprising, but unclear what counter-measure tech is available.

The study found:

Researchers in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) have demonstrated significant technical progress over the past five years, much faster than was previously anticipated.

Future progress in AI has the potential to be a transformative national security technology, on a par with nuclear weapons, aircraft, computers, and biotech

Advances in AI will affect national security by driving change in three areas: military superiority, information superiority, and economic superiority.

Some interesting points from the report:

Lesson #1: As with prior transformative military technologies, the national security implications of AI will be revolutionary, not merely different. ■ Governments around the world will consider, and some will enact, extraordinary policy measures in response, perhaps as radical as those considered in the early decades of nuclear weapons

Lesson #2: The applications of AI to warfare and espionage are likely to be as irresistible as aircraft. Preventing expanded military use of AI is likely impossible.

Lesson #3: Having the largest and most advanced digital technology industry is an enormous advantage for the United States. However, the relationship between the government and some leading AI research institutions is fraught with tension.

Again, was under the impression that DJI had a fast-closing monopoly on the drone market, and likely is selling/trading data back to its government...need to verify this to the extent one can...

Tom Simonite is also a reporter for the MIT Tech Review: https://www.technologyreview.com/profile/tom-simonite/

http://talkingbiznews.com/1/wired-hires-two-names-streshinsky-its-executive-editor/

Goes contrary to other opinions/anecdotes I have heard about how much China is more integrated than we in the USA are.

Written through the Harvard Kennedy School

https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/AI%20NatSec%20-%20final.pdf

Overall credibility rating: LOW.

Why?

1. He is in the market of selling subscriptions. He is not a credible scientist, expert, etc.
2. He has disclosed that he is influenced by Elon Musk in writing this article. Elon Musk has financial reasons to take this position. To understand this article, we have to understand Elon's motivations.
3. While he cites experts in this article, he only draws on those experts who believe one side of the story. All are 'singularity' believers. It's not a well researched or fact-checked article.

Another article from Ray Kurtzweil: REVERSE-ENGINEERING OF HUMAN BRAIN LIKELY BY 2030, EXPERT PREDICTS

https://www.wired.com/2010/08/reverse-engineering-brain-kurzweil/

Reuters reports that this computer retains 'top supercomputer rank'

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-supercomputer/chinas-tianhe-2-retains-top-supercomputer-rank-idUSKCN0J11VV20141117

The TOP500 project, started in 1993, issues a list twice a year that ranks supercomputers based on their performance.

There was little change in the top 10 in the latest list and the only new entry was at number 10 – the Cray CS-Storm, developed by Cray Inc, which also developed the Titan.

The United States was home to six of the top 10 supercomputers, while China, Japan, Switzerland and Germany had one entrant each.

The United States remained the top country in terms of overall systems with 231, down from 233 in June and falling near its historical low.

The number of Chinese systems on the list also dropped to 61 from 76 in June, while Japan increased its number of systems from 30 to 32.

https://www.wired.com/2014/01/google-buying-way-making-brain-irrelevant/

Though Google is out in front of this AI arms race, others are moving in the same direction. Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft are doubling down on artificial intelligence too, and are snapping up fresh AI talent. According to The Information, Mark Zuckerberg and company were also trying to acquire DeepMind.

MEET THE MAN GOOGLE HIRED TO MAKE AI A REALITY https://www.wired.com/2014/01/geoffrey-hinton-deep-learning/

This guy is going to be at the Market for Intelligence conference I am attending this week... OMG

I REALLY disagree with this categorization of Google Search. Google has the largest set of training data in the world. IMHO, this is a hotbed for AGI.

Some good counter-points, alternative opinions from researchers from that same New Yorker article:https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom

Last summer, Oren Etzioni, the C.E.O. of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in Seattle, referred to the fear of machine intelligence as a “Frankenstein complex.” Another leading researcher declared, “I don’t worry about that for the same reason I don’t worry about overpopulation on Mars.” Jaron Lanier, a Microsoft researcher and tech commentator, told me that even framing the differing views as a debate was a mistake. “This is not an honest conversation,” he said. “People think it is about technology, but it is really about religion, people turning to metaphysics to cope with the human condition. They have a way of dramatizing their beliefs with an end-of-days scenario—and one does not want to criticize other people’s religions.”

Full article link: https://nickbostrom.com/superintelligence.html

This paper outlines the case for believing that we will have superhuman artificial intelligence within the first third of the next century. It looks at different estimates of the processing power of the human brain; how long it will take until computer hardware achieve a similar performance; ways of creating the software through bottom-up approaches like the one used by biological brains; how difficult it will be for neuroscience figure out enough about how brains work to make this approach work; and how fast we can expect superintelligence to be developed once there is human-level artificial intelligence.

The New Yorker published this afticle on Bostrom: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/23/doomsday-invention-artificial-intelligence-nick-bostrom

In it, the author notes: In moral philosophy, Peter Singer and Derek Parfit have received it as a work of importance, and distinguished physicists such as Stephen Hawking have echoed its warning. Within the high caste of Silicon Valley, Bostrom has acquired the status of a sage. Elon Musk, the C.E.O. of Tesla, promoted the book on Twitter, noting, “We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes.” Bill Gates recommended it, too.

First published in the Wall Street Journal in 1994, this article was titled "Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography"

http://www1.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/reprints/1997mainstream.pdf

She notes: Since the publication of “The Bell Curve,” many commentators have offered opinions about human intelligence that misstate current scientific evidence. Some conclusions dismissed in the media as discredited are actually firmly supported.

1. Intelligence tests are not culturally biased against American blacks or other native-born, English-speaking peoples in the U.S. Rather, IQ scores predict equally accurately for all such Americans, regardless of race and social class. Individuals who do not understand English well can be given either a nonverbal test or one in their native language.
2. The brain processes underlying intelligence are still little understood. Current research looks, for example, at speed of neural transmission, glucose (energy) uptake, and electrical activity of the brain.

https://edoras.sdsu.edu/~vinge/misc/singularity.html

The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era. Vernor Vinge, Department of Mathematical Sciences, San Diego State University.

" This article was for the VISION-21 Symposium sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, March 30-31, 1993."

Kurzweil, a noted author and 'futurist', wrote "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" in 1999, New York, NY: Penguin Books, ISBN 0-670-88217-8

He is known to be a prominent believer in the Singularity: https://singularityhub.com/2016/03/22/technology-feels-like-its-accelerating-because-it-actually-is/

See also him explaining this in a TED Talk https://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_on_how_technology_will_transform_us

After some digging, it becomes evident that Tim Urban is highly influenced by Elon Musk. See this post Urban put up about Elon basically telling him what's important. Urban became a believer: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html

This is interesting, in that while Urban discloses his relationship with Musk, it's really not clear that Elon put him up to writing this article about AI, and since Elon quotes it in his own social media, Elon is making Tim Urban look like an expert. Urban has a large subscriber base, especially among technologist in Silicon Valley. It begins to look like this is Elon's way of influencing the technology community, globally. https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/11/from-1-to-1000000.html

Tim Urban was interviewed by Forbes in this article.

Does not come across as an AI expert. Sounds like a casual blogger. We need to figure out what his background is that gives him so much gravitas writing an article like this, and why someone like Elon Musk would believe in what he says is true.

Or, maybe he ghost wrote this for Elon?

This is super worth noting

I wonder if this will be an individual process soon, or if we will subscribe to a trusted platform or algorithm to vet sites for us...?

As they say - it's a mindset. The age of investigative journalism where we can sit back and let others vet facts for us is over. Too many algorithms are playing against us.

It was super interesting to see how many Stanford students assumed the validity or quasi-accuracy of the daisy image. Definitely revealed how thinking needs to shift for our generation, even amount those 'highly educated'.

Back to my comment above - I get the desire to get students into an inquisitive mindset, as well as the reality that professionals cheat the system when possible using site metadata, tags, etc., but I wonder who is working on automating collection of this information? Maybe if it were a private service, sites could/would not be able to manipulate it? Who is working on this/can comment on this from Google Chrome?

Surely we can run a bot/script that gives us the salient facts about any site we visit - if a human can crawl the web an discover two owns the site, who cites it, known political affiliations, can't we present that as an 'information' tab in the browser? Is this already happening somewhere? Must be automated.

Agreed - this is a really helpful framework. I just wonder how we can implement this realistically. Even if we provide something like Hyposes.is - people/special interests will begin to optimize and game that system too.

I'll add a third idea: It's about volume of information, or the 'noise in the machine'. There is a point at which people just switch off if they are being bombarded with too much political ranting. If 90% of this is entertainment-rated political news, and only 10% is informed, expert opinion or journalism, you could rationally blame the hyperbolic entertainment-news for making the citizenry push mute.

This is why it's highly problematic that Fox News describes itself as entertainment, has no real ethics statement I've found (so far), yet a large number of people view it as journalistic truth.

Interesting debate on this on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Is-Fox-News-registered-as-a-news-organization-with-the-FCC

And even the educated do't really understand what's happening all the time. Ghostery being two prime examples...understanding which sites have your profile, and your data, is a new form of literacy. Most tech users don't even realize that sites protecting their information or their inbox are crawling and selling their personal data right back to advertisers.

Not sure about you guys, but I definitely google everyone I mean, especially bosses, professors, etc.-

I think this is a good example of an edge case on social media though. Most younger 'natives' seem to genuinely care less about what the older generation finds shocking behavior, so the line is moving. The 'so what' seems to be, by and large, pretty minimal...

Definitely calls into question the value and role of unbiased research, who pays for it, and who gets access to it.

Most public/private good initiatives suffer from some amount of tension. If there is a model for tenure that is in the public good, why haven't we transitioned more? Also - self-publishing must impact this dynamic somewhat.

'Save the Shire' is such an ironic slogan for them...

But doubtful that they signed a noncompete or exclusivity agreement, so all the data is for sale to anyone who pays.

There should be a way to deal with this input data issue. Sounds like an oversight.

in face, Facebook is building profiles on screwed data, and news is becoming even more extreme, and biasing readers on their platform...

Re news on automatically generated 'jew hater' category...

While not surprised, I did not know this...and frankly expected that Facebook operated in a vacuum with my data I've given to it.The cross-data implications are pretty intense.

wis·dom ˈwizdəm/Submit noun the quality of having experience, knowledge, and good judgment; the quality of being wise. synonyms: sagacity, intelligence, sense, common sense, shrewdness, astuteness, smartness, judiciousness, judgment, prudence, circumspection; logic, rationale, rationality, soundness, advisability "we questioned the wisdom of the decision"

Takes us back to court evidence standards - if defendant sites character evidence, will this sort of data be admitted?

Read 'the Psychopath Inside' by Fallon (2013). Not all criminal tendencies lead to crime. Many can be sculpted into high-functioning individuals.

https://www.amazon.com/Psychopath-Inside-Neuroscientists-Personal-Journey/dp/1591846005

End of radiology as a profession?!

training often happens iteratively, not always a priori...

See Silicon Valley on HBO - hot dog computer vision scenario.

Personally I like the puppy/muffin challenge more

Caveat being with varying degrees of accuracy and intelligence.

Sure, from a purely computational perspective. Still need humans to direct analysis and make sense of the data...so this is kind of misleading.

Not just IBM, Google, McKinsey etc also cite similar stats. I'll try to find some.

This is exactly what bruce/adam seem to be discussing in terms of interventions and learning styles.

Ask Karin - how is this incorporated in schools now?

Wonder how broadly this is being discussed/applied.

How is this different from style?!

I feel like several teachers have been skirting around the (political) issue of genetics, and intelligence. Would be good to understand the nuances of how people talk about it, at Stanford and in other cultures.

I really disagree, initially. An intelligence can be a mix of styles, which add up to a general style...His definition makes style sound un-dynamic, but 'style' and tendency might be the best indication of underlying values that drive intelligence and cognition.

So are we building AI with this fundamental idea in mind? Are we building potential? I argue not, we're thinking about it as an outline to be filled in, a domain to be mapped, not the proverbial 'lighting of a fire' as Yeats expressed.

Never more a propos than when one considers constructing AI.

Super - this resonates. The message of existing exams is 'we're trying to test how you deal with stress'. If a test is really about intelligence, the person has to be in a comfortable, or normal, state in order to get a true read on the metrics sought.

Another example of the medium is the message. The construct of the test is the message about value. He's breaking this down/reorienting it.

Clearly need to read the original work to understand this...

I have to imagine this is fairly unique

Word.

Wonder if we can use some of this for the Junior Museum and Zoo mobile project...

Very true. A number of friends and family have used this resource during/directly after earthquakes.

But billions of people can't access the internet. Anyone can walk a road. Are we creating a duel-track economy/world...?

How is this supposed to work vis a vis undesirable common asset usage, like distribution of pornography, hacking, and public monitoring by governments?

So system is superior only if there is expert knowledge?

" users acting independently according to their own self-interest behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling that resource through their collective action."

Lloyd, William Forster (1833). Two lectures on the checks to population. England: Oxford University. Retrieved 2016-03-13.

Does fair use extend to material that is itself unauthorized. In this case, the court said yes, extending and further liberalizing the standard.The author of “Point Break Live!” filed sued for copyright infringement and breach of contract, and the court held that "if the creator of an unauthorized work stays within the bounds of fair use and adds sufficient originality, she may claim protection under the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C. 103, for her original contributions." (http://fairuse.stanford.edu/case/keeling-v-hars/)

TVEyes is a media-monitoring service. in 2013, Fox News sued for copyright infringement, noting TVEyes was a commercial, on-demand service, and as such should not have protection under the fair use doctrine. TVEyes argues their product is more like a searchable database. A judge agreed with TVEyes in 2014, saying 'turning television broadcasts into a searchable database was a transformative fair use of the footage [1]. But the same judge ruled in 2015 that protection did not extend to allowing users to download or email the clips.

[1] https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-york/nysdce/1:2013cv05315/415525/

The issue with fair use in the case of Salinger v. Colting is what effects injunctions have on free speech and public interest. In this case, a group of universities issued an amicus brief after a preliminary injunction was put in place banning the publication of Colting’s book, arguing that injunctions must be closely considered, not automatically issued. They argued that the plaintiff would have to suffer irreparable harm to warrant an injunction. (http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/our-work/cases/salinger-v-colting-et-al)

In Authors Guild v. HathiTrust, a group of authors claimed that the HathiTrust Digital Library of scanned books infringed their copyrights. A Federal Court and subsequently the Second Circuit Court called this fair use for accessibility and search.[1] Fair use in this case was debatable. If the HathiTrust was deemed a library, it would be governed by 17 U.S.C. 108 and can't claim a fair use defense. [2]

The court ruled that special rights granted to libraries in §108 are in addition to fair use rights, and that there are four independent factors to address in any fair use evaluation: whether the purpose of use is commercial nature in nature, or for nonprofit educational purposes; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount of content used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work [2].

[1] Authors Guild v. HathiTrust (2d Cir. June 10, 2014). LINK [2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/108

In Cambridge University Press v. Patton, Cambridge University sued Georgia State University for distributing content through its e-reserves system, though Georgia State asserted that its uses were fair use, a legal concept that allows for distribution of copyright content in the interest of wider public good. Interestingly, the litigation was almost 50% funded by the Copyright Clearance Center, a licensing company - with a clear private, monetary interest in the outcome. (Andrew Albanese, "Publishers Appeal 'Flawed' Decision in GSU E-Reserves Case", Publishers Weekly, 11 September 2012.)

I think there is a persistent market for this. The Information is a good example of innovation in this model.

Harnessing user generated content and pairing it with respected journalism will be very cool.

Wonder if they will acquire Nat Geo.

Opinion, vs. reporting of facts, will become the differentiated news in a world where NLP drives automated reporting of current events.

I'll point out that Fox News has the most light-weight ethics and information standards statement I've seen, after assessing NPR, NYTimes, WJS, and CNN

Interesting to consider different attitudes to news based on social platform. I'll argue that Twitter and LinkedIn are more likely to be viewed as news sources, ergo their content is taken as such, with associated ads and trust in verified sources, like the NYTimes and NPR's accounts. Facebook blurs the line, does one really 'friend' the NYTimes? Are facebook users more intellectually vulnerable because they consider Facebook a safe place, still?

Interesting - so readers are becoming listeners. Predict podcasts will be inundated with ads next.

Which astounds me. I'm not their target market clearly...

Lao Tsu says "the master wins the battle before it begins" - if you explore the playing field (medium), the battle (content) becomes arbitrary.

Good definition, but I'll argue we need both kinds of inquiry for a healthy society.

Can someone opine on what he means by provocation?

Don't all societies cycle back into this over time, in a variety of ways? Making it interesting to ask "where are we in our cultural cycle, and where have societies historically gone next?"

Is this kind of GED/golden thread/known system stuff?

But then you don't get innovation...

prag·ma·tism ˈpraɡməˌtizəm/Submit noun 1. a pragmatic attitude or policy. "ideology was tempered with pragmatism" 2. PHILOSOPHY an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.

As evidenced in dating-app culture

Re SuperIntelligence - is AI destruction homicide?

Fermi Paradox...

Worth discussing how this is extrovert, vis a vis the other examples.

kind of a bold statement without facts to back it up...

https://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=LADEE_1fwLQC&oi=fnd&pg=PR11&dq=Pirolli+2007+information+foraging&ots=NqTO8zxEDS&sig=7v_PWB9dAK9vZ5bo36gvUUKapH0#v=onepage&q=Pirolli%202007%20information%20foraging&f=false

a Latin phrase meaning "from the founding of the City (Rome)", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ab_urbe_condita

Reminds me of the metasphere from Hyperion.

LOL