Anderz

Vernon Howard has a lot of good spiritual teachings. Now interestingly, Brian Scott has this new video about Vernon Howard:

"Edward Knight, vice chairman at Nasdaq, says the U.S. is leading the competition in artificial intelligence, but the government needs to get more involved." He also said that artificial intelligence will change the economy in much the same way as electricity did in the 20th century. With self-driving cars already a reality combined with fierce competition in AI development I expect much change to happen in society already within 10 years. And here Dr. Eric Weinstein talks about how none of the isms (capitalism, socialism etc) is able to handle the complex systems that are emerging.

Amazing, Waymo, formerly the Google self-driving car project, also has self-driving cars in real use. I guess I was wrong about how fully automated cars would be difficult to make a reality!

Wow, driver-less cars are already good enough in some areas, I found this: This automatic restaurant is almost scary, haha, but think of it as the game Pong and what will happen within a few years.

The absurdities of capitalism have also been described in relation to late-stage capitalism. I think balancing capitalism with socialism is useful, but even that's insufficient in the long run I suspect. Instead think of removing the need for money in society made possible by massive automation. That's a whole different kind of society! It transcends both capitalism and socialism because all practical tasks are done by machines. It's hard to even imagine how that would work, yet that's what will happen within just a few decades I predict.

Another thing many people complain about yet it's also often taken as something normal is the insane difference in wealth distribution in the world. So I think a decline in capitalism is necessary, as long as the prosperity can be maintained. And with exponential progress of technology and price/performance prosperity will increase, and also very importantly, over time poverty will be eradicated.

Hmm... Interesting, I found this video about capitalism in decline. Maybe it's better to think of it as capitalism declining instead of it getting obsolete. Like a bell shaped curve where capitalism has reached its peak and is now starting to slide down. An indicating of this is all the desperate monetization schemes on the internet, where even video games are using all kinds of micropayment systems which it's questionable if it actually improves the games or is just a means of getting more profit for the gaming industry. Leo mentioned something similar in one of his videos about games getting these kinds of payment schemes.

One interesting idea that might be difficult to implement one expert said, is a robot tax that Bill Gates has talked about. Bill Gates says that it will slow down automation and that could be a good thing I think, not as a Luddite perspective lol, but to smooth things out and to prevent rich people from getting richer by being first to utilize automation. In the long run I think automation will destroy capitalism but in the short run automation may benefit wealthy capitalists most, which can be prevented by having a robot tax.

Will there be significant so-called technological unemployment, jobs replaced by automation? Many experts say, no, and even Ray Kurzweil says that we will invent new jobs to make up for the jobs that are replaced. That may be true for say the next 20 years, but after that I believe it will be difficult to keep up with automation due to the accelerating progress of technology. Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if we had 50% unemployment already after 20 years, but we will see. I think Andrew Yang is correct, at least in the long-term scenario. Is a universal basic income (UBI) a solution? No, I don't think it solves the problem long-term, however as a temporary transition tool a UBI might be necessary.

Another thing Ray Kurzweil has said is that even though the change is accelerating we humans are very quick to adopt new technologies and then take them for granted. Take the internet for example. Before the days of the internet people read paper books and newspapers. People still do, but people also still use landline phones. Someone said that only the wealthy people will get access to advanced technologies. Ray replied: yeah, like cell phones. He explained that only the power elite could afford the early cell phones which didn't work very well. Today poor people in third world countries have cell phones with a capacity that far exceeds those early and very expensive mobile phones. Because even the price/performance improves exponentially it's true that new technologies tend to be expensive but then later they get cheaper and cheaper. And when one paradigm runs out of steam, a new paradigm replaces it which continues the overall accelerating trend. The price/performance trend is actually towards zero! So what kind of capitalism can be based on zero profit?

Both blue collar and white collar jobs are being replaced by automation. Even companies themselves may be replaced by so-called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: But one thing that I came to think of is that even the replacement of jobs, companies, organizations and maybe even politics is something that will happen exponentially. This means that very little happens in the beginning and then later the change is getting faster and faster. Ray Kurzweil has shown with what he calls the Law of Accelerating Returns that all of evolution, not only technology but also biological evolution, follows that kind of accelerating curve, such as the graph below showing the time between major paradigm shifts in earth's history:

Now I came up with a strategy for how to deal with society and the internet. And that is to treat it lightly without detaching. And also to look at alternative information and sort out what is true and what is woo woo. Also, similarly with mainstream information and be skeptical about it instead of trusting authorities unquestioningly. I will try this approach on Brian Scott's recent video:

There is something seriously wrong with the information on the internet. From a nondual perspective there are no mistakes or wrong information, but compared to the transpersonal stage the information available at the personal stage, which means almost all information on the internet, is heavily manipulated, wrong or absent. I will disconnect from the internet for a while.

Consider the possibility that each new moment contains more information than past moments. And an AI can take in new information from the environment that previously didn't exist and modify itself or modify new AI that it constructs. In this way I believe an AI can transcend itself and produce meta models.

Wow, I can now hardly find any new information about Trump's U.S. Supreme Court lawsuit. I think it could be hugely important! Because setting a precedent allowing all states in America to change laws outside of what is legally allowed seems dangerous to me. Or I have missed something. I'm a total amateur when it comes to this. Not even Trump himself has tweeted about it, at least not recently as far as I can tell. Well, in Januari things will be cleared up. I'm eager to find out who will be the U.S. President. And I still believe Trump may have a chance of winning. I actually hope Trump will win, haha, so that there will be a lot of draining the swamp action. That's useful for building the global personal stage 'cocoon' I believe.

My idea that the transpersonal stage will bring inner peace, isn't that just selfish wishful thinking? Well, it's more than that. Firstly, it's a want for others to feel inner peace too and to move the whole of humanity into the transpersonal stage. And also, I believe that the transpersonal stage means a collective consciousness, and then inner peace is necessary to make it possible to join in intersubjective feelings and experiences. Imagine if a collective consciousness would share the suffering between people. What a horror! So that wouldn't work and so my guess is that inner peace is absolutely necessary as a foundation for the transpersonal stage.

Aha! One observation about what thoughts are is that they are labels. And there is a real difference between thoughts about reality and fantasy thoughts of course. A thought about my money is real and a thought about a unicorn is a fantasy thought. The mistake we make at the personal stage is to take the thoughts as being the same thing as what they represent. We mistake the label for that which the label points to. And this makes thoughts prone to become very problematic and a huge burden and inner conflict. Something trickier is the thinker of the thoughts itself. The "me" which is a thought construct in relation to other thoughts. Ramana Maharshi called it the I-thought.

One way of completing the neti neti method is to recognize what thoughts are, and then to see that thoughts are a part of the totality and not a cause of anything. One way of looking at it is if a thought is a cause, then what is the cause of that thought itself? And the neti neti method can be seen as what the actual causes are which are not this, not that, and only That, as in the totality. I found another of Leo's older videos, and this is about the nature of thoughts.

The neti neti method might be useful as a stepping stone towards nonduality, but notice that's it only goes half the way. Why? Because when we say "not that" about anything, that's a duality perspective. The nondual perspective includes everything. That of course means that it even includes the neti neti method but it's more than that. It's a totality perspective. So the neti neti method should only be used as a stepping stone or it becomes a duality trap.

Neti neti means not this, not that. I now have a different method that I will experiment with. Instead of saying not this not that, to say this and that. I am this, and I am that, I am everything I experience!

Something that I got reminded of is that all personal memories are from the personal stage! So it's the whole personal self that needs to be questioned, including when practicing the neti neti method. And I also want to remind myself of what Roger Castillo said in his recent satsang video. The thinking mind (the crystallized ego) is very attached to successes and failures. What needs to happen I theorize is that all personal successes and failures need to be recognized as a part of the perfect order of reality. So it's actually 100% success! And then from a transpersonal stage there can be a transcend and include of success and failures so that it's still valid but seen as a "game" layer on top of a foundation of peace.

Here is an older video by Leo where he explains the neti neti method. I find it useful for shifting my perspective from material identification and separations and to a nondual perspective.