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Google is the world's largest breeding ground for sociopaths who see morals as obstacles to overcome, rather than paths to follow. Their utter indifference to the ethical repercussions and potential consequences of their actions is beyond all comprehension. Stefan, if you see this, I need to tell you that I strongly disagree with you about artificial intelligence. It is far more capable than you seem to think. Please watch the videos listed below and make a video on it at your earliest convenience. Thank you.

I decided to take a look at Carroll Quigley's "The Evolution of Civilizations" not because it is considered a prerequisite for discourse about civilization in these fora, but because, for some time, my own focus is on the abysmal state of the social sciences qua sciences. The social sciences are so abysmally unscientific that it is a revolutionary act of genius for anyone to bring to bear anything remotely resembling scientific method. Moreover, if one attempts to bring the social sciences into consilience with the larger body of human knowledge, one is attacked with religious fervor as evidenced by the treatment of E. O. Wilson by his Harvard colleagues in the 1970s over the nascent field of sociobiology. So Quigley was a revolutionary genius -- not so much because he offered anything fundamentally new, but simply because he spoke of a few obvious truths about science in a field of virtually universal deceit: the social sciences of the 20th century. Quigley's approach, however admirable given the horrid context, can too-easily lead one to accept premises of his which have subsequently shown themselves to be both scientifically inadequate and ethically vacuous. First, and foremost, the ethical vacuity on display in "The Evolution of Civilizations" is shared by the entire field of the social sciences. It may reasonably be summed up by comparing the ethics of medicine. In medicine, even if one has conducted double blind controlled studies of the safety and efficacy of a treatment (ie: one has established strong evidence the treatment causes beneficial effects) -- even then it is considered unethical to apply the treatment to human subjects without their informed consent. Accepting Quigley's proclamation that control experiments cannot be conducted in the social sciences to establish causality, the first duty of the ethical social scientist should be to denounce the use of his findings in a way that would violate the informed consent of human subjects in social engineering. Let me re-emphasize in stronger terms: Quigley, is not only not alone in this absence of ethics among social scientists, his posture is universally de rigueur. Nevertheless, those who hold Quigley up as an exemplar, however justified, have an ethical obligation to point out this ethical vacuity. Secondly, Quigley, himself, describes the social science equivalent of statistical mechanics -- averaging large numbers to make predictions. At the same time, he goes to great lengths in his discourse about "human nature" to emphasize that "culture" determines, for practical purposes, the outcome for statistically significant numbers of individuals. This is, essentially, the Boasian dogma of 20th century anthropology. It is upon this basis that we have seen the diagnosis of "institutional racism" held up as the "explanation" for statistical outcome differences between racial groups. This, in turn, has expended many trillions of dollars in social engineering projects spanning over a half century with outcomes that are, at best, questionable and, in any event, violate the scientific ethics of informed consent when treating human subjects, as described above. Having now made my essential critique of Quigley's otherwise reasonable premises, I want to point out what he got _very_ right in his presentation of scientific method, and how, with modern advances in universal intelligence based on mathematically defining Ockham's Razor in pursuit of automated science, we may be in a position to push beyond Quigley's limits. Ray Solomonoff essentially proved Ockham's Razor as essential to science in terms of computer theory and did so at the dawn of the computer age. However, over a half century into the computer age, we still aren't even beginning to exploring those implications in a practical way. Here's an obvious implication that should have been pursued almost from the outset in the 1960s: Whenever you have a dataset and are trying to come up with a predictive model, you have two basic options that avoid overfitting: Use the data you have, not to create the model but to test it. Approximate the data's Kolmogorov Complexity program as best you can so as to approximate Solomonoff Induction. #1 invariably ends up being impractical since you can't _really_ construct a model out of first principles. In any event, as you start to "consume" your data in tests of your models, you end up refining your models which gets you into the land of post hoc theorization thence overfitting as you consume more data. The best you can do is what Enlightenment philosophers came up with: Experimental controls -- which is to say, you have experimental setups, all identical except being treated in a slightly different way (including no treatment called "the control"). The social sciences have become the modern equivalent of a theocracy given their impact on public policy -- but social scientists haven't reached the level of scientific ethics required for them to insist that their theories not be taken as justification for imposing experiments on massive human populations as is required by Federal arrogation of social policy from the Laboratory of the States. If social scientists had anything worthy of being called "ethics" they would insist on devolution of social policy to the States and Federal support of migration of people to the States whose social policies they find mutually agreeable. This directly addresses the scientific need for experimental variation as well as the ethical need for informed consent when dealing with human experimental subjects. In the absence of such humility, the social sciences did have one other option: Data compression to approximate Kolmogorov Complexity. Note that I am not here talking about a general algorithm for data compression. I'm talking about a much simpler and obvious idea: Comparing theories by how well those theories -- losslessly -- compress the same datasets. And this is where I come to my perception of a "religious aversion" to Solomonoff Induction: Whenever I see arguments against the utility of Solomonoff Induction in the aforementioned role -- comparing theories by the size of executable archives of the same datasets -- they are _invariably_ (in my experience) strawman polemics. Yes, Kolmogorov Complexity is incomputable -- but that's not the argument. We're not trying to come up with a program to compress the datasets! There is a difference between a program that compresses the datasets and a program that DEcompresses the datasets (the latter being the approximation of the KC program). This difference is so obvious that its conflation in these arguments -- its _predicatable_ conflation -- is reminiscent of Orwell's notion of "Crime Stop": Selective stupidity to avoid violations of Ingsoc or the official ideology of The Party. There are other, less obviously stupid, strawmen that arise from time to time but these are almost invariably in the category of philosophical attacks on Cartesianism or the scientific method itself. While it is fine to have those philosophical arguments, it seems rather silly to hold up practical application of Solomonoff Induction on that basis as virtually the entire structure of technological civilization is Cartesian.

This philosopher, Sam Harris is convinced that general AI is the greatest threat that humanity faces. I disagree. Humanity needs to invent general AI to survive. Despite building the most compassionate and prosperous society the world has ever seen with technology barely indistinguishable from magic the governments of the world are on the verge of suicidal wars. In recent history governments around the world have killed +250,000,000 of their own citizens. It reveals a great irrational faith in government to consider general AI to be the principal threat facing our species. There is a good chance that the digital gods we build will be benign helpers of humanity, there is also a chance that they may snuff us out but there is a certainty that evil of the government multiplied by the irrationality, out group preference and impulsiveness of people will turn this planet into a radioactive wasteland. Technology is rapidly replacing our jobs, a disturbing trend that foreshadows great social upset and violence. I can only hope that general AI will first replace the jobs of utterly ineffective government bureaucrats and paper pushers who in their organized irresponsibility deprive the people of freedom. The waste, fraud and abuse of the government could be replaced by elegant algorithms that efficiently solve problems instead of perpetuating them. Sam hypothesizes that general AI will squash us like a human stepping on a bug that crosses his path, what’s not hypothetical is that even now the boot of government power stomps on the face of human liberty. Despite the having the accumulated knowledge of history, economics and philosophy freely available to us in our pockets everywhere we go, the electorate still vote based upon the most petty scandals, visceral emotions and base human biases. General AI could fairly restructure democracy to favor intelligent, philosophically robust policies and politicians and General AI could eventually completely replace the government, the way that democracy replaced aristocracy throughout the world. As a government AI would likely not be a central planner, AI would interpret all the data provided by the free market, and make decisions unbiased by emotion, ego, nepotism or political correctness. There’s a chance that the infinite intelligence that we can divine from 1’s and 0’s can wrest power away for good from the homicidal institution of government and that is worth taking a chance on!

God has been proven to exist based upon the most reserved view of the known laws of physics. For much more on that, see my below article, which details physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) correctly describing and unifying all the forces in physics. The Omega Point cosmology demonstrates that the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics) require that the universe end in the Omega Point: the final cosmological singularity and state of infinite informational capacity having all the unique properties traditionally claimed for God, and of which is a different aspect of the Big Bang initial singularity, i.e., the first cause. For anyone who has ever wondered about such questions as what the meaning of life is, what the purpose of their own life is, whether there is life after death, whether God exists, what the future holds for humanity, and why anything exists at all as opposed to nothingness, then this article answers all of those questions using the known laws of physics. This article further provides an examination of the globalist political power-elite: history is given on their organizational structure and their methods of accumulating power; and analysis is given on where they're attempting to take the world, i.e., their self-termed New World Order world government and world religion. The article furnishes documentation on what the globalist oligarchy's ultimate goal is. This ultimate goal of theirs most popularly goes by the name of transhumanism: immortality through technology. However, I explain in the article that the coming radical life-extension technologies create a fundamental dilemma for the oligarchs, which is why they must dominate world society before such technology becomes a reality. The details of that dilemma are explained in Sec. 8.2.2: "The Mark of the Beast" of the article. Thus, this article explains to people what is to occur and why it is to occur, so that they will not be in ignorance as to the events that are to unfold. Below one can download the article for free. I encourage everyone to generously share this article with others. By all means, please save it to your hard-drive and give others copies of it. Also, feel free to share the text of this post. The article is in PDF format. James Redford, "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything", Social Science Research Network (SSRN), Sept. 10, 2012 (orig. pub. Dec. 19, 2011), 186 pp., doi:10.2139/ssrn.1974708; PDF, 1741424 bytes, MD5: 8f7b21ee1e236fc2fbb22b4ee4bbd4cb. http://ssrn.com/abstract=1974708 , http://archive.org/details/ThePhysicsOfGodAndTheQuantumGravityTheoryOfEverything , http://theophysics.host56.com/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf , http://alphaomegapoint.files.wordpress.com/2013/03/redford-physics-of-god.pdf , http://sites.google.com/site/physicotheism/home/Redford-Physics-of-God.pdf Below is the abstract to my above article: "" ABSTRACT: Analysis is given of the Omega Point cosmology, an extensively peer-reviewed proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) published in leading physics journals by professor of physics and mathematics Frank J. Tipler, which demonstrates that in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent, the universe must diverge to infinite computational power as it collapses into a final cosmological singularity, termed the Omega Point. The theorem is an intrinsic component of the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE) describing and unifying all the forces in physics, of which itself is also required by the known physical laws. With infinite computational resources, the dead can be resurrected--never to die again--via perfect computer emulation of the multiverse from its start at the Big Bang. Miracles are also physically allowed via electroweak quantum tunneling controlled by the Omega Point cosmological singularity. The Omega Point is a different aspect of the Big Bang cosmological singularity--the first cause--and the Omega Point has all the haecceities claimed for God in the traditional religions. From this analysis, conclusions are drawn regarding the social, ethical, economic and political implications of the Omega Point cosmology. "" Prof. Frank J. Tipler's Omega Point cosmology has been peer-reviewed and published in a number of the world's leading physics and science journals.[1] Even NASA itself has peer-reviewed his Omega Point Theorem and found it correct according to the known laws of physics (see below). No refutation of it exists within the peer-reviewed scientific literature, or anywhere else for that matter. Below are some of the peer-reviewed papers in physics and science journals and proceedings wherein Prof. Tipler has published his Omega Point cosmology. (The below papers, in addition to many other articles by Tipler on the Omega Point cosmology, are also available in the following archive: Frank-J-Tipler-Omega-Point-Papers.zip , 26712158 bytes, MD5: 6e5d29b994bc2f9aa4210d72ef37ab68. http://webcitation.org/6GjhT6t52 , https://mega.co.nz/#!JkVQWLZT!GNIDgVWPCCb72G6LLijSinf_6u9zc0a20gXBfAVE4MA , https://amazon.com/clouddrive/share?s=bTI58F1dSAIjSrxJ26R7d8 , https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7k4r80YepnxNjNOX2x0XzBOV00/edit , http://ubuntuone.com/0VMqN7rnJzXVsJCUXkj6lY ) * Frank J. Tipler, "Cosmological Limits on Computation", International Journal of Theoretical Physics, Vol. 25, No. 6 (June 1986), pp. 617-661, doi:10.1007/BF00670475, bibcode: 1986IJTP...25..617T. (First paper on the Omega Point cosmology.) http://webcitation.org/64KHgOccs * Frank J. Tipler, "The Sensorium of God: Newton and Absolute Space", bibcode: 1988nnds.conf..215T, in G[eorge]. V. Coyne, M[ichal]. Heller and J[ozef]. Zycinski (Eds.), "Message" by Franciszek Macharski, Newton and the New Direction in Science: Proceedings of the Cracow Conference, 25 to 28 May 1987 (Vatican City: Specola Vaticana, 1988), pp. 215-228, LCCN 88162460, bibcode: 1988nnds.conf.....C. http://webcitation.org/69Vb0JF1W * Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point Theory: A Model of an Evolving God", in Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger and George V. Coyne (Eds.), message by John Paul II, Physics, Philosophy, and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory, 2nd ed., 2005; orig. pub. 1988), pp. 313-331, ISBN 0268015775, LCCN 89203331, bibcode: 1988pptc.book.....R. http://webcitation.org/69VaKG2nd * Frank J. Tipler, "The Anthropic Principle: A Primer for Philosophers", in Arthur Fine and Jarrett Leplin (Eds.), PSA 1988: Proceedings of the 1988 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association, Volume Two: Symposia and Invited Papers (East Lansing, Mich.: Philosophy of Science Association, 1989), pp. 27-48, ISBN 091758628X. http://webcitation.org/69VarCM3I * Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists", Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science, Vol. 24, No. 2 (June 1989), pp. 217-253, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9744.1989.tb01112.x. Republished as Chapter 7: "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions to Scientists" in Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen (Eds.), Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1997), pp. 156-194, ISBN 0812693256, LCCN 97000114. http://webcitation.org/5nY0aytpz * Frank J. Tipler, "The ultimate fate of life in universes which undergo inflation", Physics Letters B, Vol. 286, Nos. 1-2 (July 23, 1992), pp. 36-43, doi:10.1016/0370-2693(92)90155-W, bibcode: 1992PhLB..286...36T. http://webcitation.org/64Uskd785 * Frank J. Tipler, "A New Condition Implying the Existence of a Constant Mean Curvature Foliation", bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf..306T, in B[ei]. L. Hu and T[ed]. A. Jacobson (Eds.), Directions in General Relativity: Proceedings of the 1993 International Symposium, Maryland, Volume 2: Papers in Honor of Dieter Brill (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 306-315, ISBN 0521452678, bibcode: 1993dgr2.conf.....H. http://webcitation.org/5qbXJZiX5 * Frank J. Tipler, "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe", NASA Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Workshop Proceedings, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Jan. 1999, pp. 111-119; an invited paper in the proceedings of a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, Aug. 12-14, 1997; doi:2060/19990023204. Document ID: 19990023204. Report Number: E-11429; NAS 1.55:208694; NASA/CP-1999-208694. http://webcitation.org/5zPq69I0O Full proceedings volume: http://webcitation.org/69zAxm0sT * Frank J. Tipler, "There Are No Limits To The Open Society", Critical Rationalist, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Sept. 23, 1998). http://webcitation.org/5sFYkHgSS * Frank J. Tipler, Jessica Graber, Matthew McGinley, Joshua Nichols-Barrer and Christopher Staecker, "Closed Universes With Black Holes But No Event Horizons As a Solution to the Black Hole Information Problem", arXiv:gr-qc/0003082, Mar. 20, 2000. http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/0003082 Published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Vol. 379, No. 2 (Aug. 2007), pp. 629-640, doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2007.11895.x, bibcode: 2007MNRAS.379..629T. http://webcitation.org/5vQ3M8uxB * Frank J. Tipler, "The Ultimate Future of the Universe, Black Hole Event Horizon Topologies, Holography, and the Value of the Cosmological Constant", arXiv:astro-ph/0104011, Apr. 1, 2001. http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0104011 Published in J. Craig Wheeler and Hugo Martel (Eds.), Relativistic Astrophysics: 20th Texas Symposium, Austin, Texas, 10-15 December 2000 (Melville, NY: American Institute of Physics, 2001), pp. 769-772, ISBN 0735400261, LCCN 2001094694, which is AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 586 (Oct. 15, 2001), doi:10.1063/1.1419654, bibcode: 2001AIPC..586.....W. * Frank J. Tipler, "Intelligent life in cosmology", International Journal of Astrobiology, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Apr. 2003), pp. 141-148, doi:10.1017/S1473550403001526, bibcode: 2003IJAsB...2..141T. http://webcitation.org/5o9QHKGuW Also at arXiv:0704.0058, Mar. 31, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.0058 * F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers", Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Apr. 2005), pp. 897-964, doi:10.1088/0034-4885/68/4/R04, bibcode: 2005RPPh...68..897T. http://www.math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything", arXiv:0704.3276, Apr. 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276 * Frank J. Tipler, "Inevitable Existence and Inevitable Goodness of the Singularity", Journal of Consciousness Studies, Vol. 19, Nos. 1-2 (2012), pp. 183-193. http://webcitation.org/69JEi5wHp Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, in which the above August 2007 paper was published, is one of the world's leading peer-reviewed astrophysics journals. Prof. Tipler's paper "Ultrarelativistic Rockets and the Ultimate Future of the Universe" was an invited paper for a conference held at and sponsored by NASA Lewis Research Center, so NASA itself has peer-reviewed Tipler's Omega Point Theorem (peer-review is a standard process for published proceedings papers; and again, Tipler's said paper was an *invited* paper by NASA, as opposed to what are called "poster papers"). Zygon is the world's leading peer-reviewed academic journal on science and religion. Out of 50 articles, Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper--which presents the Omega Point/Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE)--was selected as one of 12 for the "Highlights of 2005" accolade as "the very best articles published in Reports on Progress in Physics in 2005 [Vol. 68]. Articles were selected by the Editorial Board for their outstanding reviews of the field. They all received the highest praise from our international referees and a high number of downloads from the journal Website." (See Richard Palmer, Publisher, "Highlights of 2005", Reports on Progress in Physics website. http://webcitation.org/5o9VkK3eE , http://archive.is/pKD3y ) Reports on Progress in Physics is the leading journal of the Institute of Physics, Britain's main professional body for physicists. Further, Reports on Progress in Physics has a higher impact factor (according to Journal Citation Reports) than Physical Review Letters, which is the most prestigious American physics journal (one, incidently, which Prof. Tipler has been published in more than once). A journal's impact factor reflects the importance the science community places in that journal in the sense of actually citing its papers in their own papers. For much more on these matters, see my above-cited article "The Physics of God and the Quantum Gravity Theory of Everything" in addition to my below website: Theophysics: God Is the Ultimate Physicist. http://theophysics.freevar.com , http://theophysics.host56.com , http://theophysics.ifastnet.com The only way to avoid the Omega Point cosmology is to reject the known laws of physics (i.e., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and hence to reject empirical science: as these physical laws have been confirmed by every experiment to date. That is, there exists no rational reason for thinking that the Omega Point cosmology is incorrect, and indeed, one must engage in extreme irrationality in order to argue against the Omega Point cosmology. Additionally, we now have the quantum gravity Theory of Everything (TOE) required by the known laws of physics and that correctly describes and unifies all the forces in physics: of which inherently produces the Omega Point cosmology. So here we have an additional high degree of assurance that the Omega Point cosmology is correct. ----- Note: 1. While there is a lot that gets published in physics journals that is anti-reality and nonphysical (such as String Theory, which violates the known laws of physics and has no experimental support whatsoever), the reason such things are allowed to pass the peer-review process is because the paradigm of assumptions which such papers are speaking to has been made known, and within their operating paradigm none of the referees could find anything crucially wrong with said papers. That is, the paradigm itself may have nothing to do with reality, but the peer-reviewers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with such papers within the operating assumptions of that paradigm. Whereas, e.g., the operating paradigm of Prof. Tipler's 2005 Reports on Progress in Physics paper and his other papers on the Omega Point Theorem is the known laws of physics, i.e., our actual physical reality which has been repeatedly confirmed by every experiment conducted to date. So the professional physicists charged with refereeing these papers could find nothing fundamentally wrong with them within their operating paradigm, i.e., the known laws of physics. #################### In the below resource are six sections which contain very informative videos of physicist and mathematician Prof. Frank J. Tipler explaining the Omega Point cosmology, which is a proof (i.e., mathematical theorem) of God's existence per the known laws of physics (viz., the Second Law of Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and Quantum Mechanics), and the Feynman-DeWitt-Weinberg quantum gravity/Standard Model Theory of Everything (TOE), which is also required by the known laws of physics. The seventh section therein contains an audio interview of Tipler. A number of these videos are not otherwise online. I also provide some helpful notes and commentary for some of these videos. James Redford, "Video of Profs. Frank Tipler and Lawrence Krauss's Debate at Caltech: Can Physics Prove God and Christianity?", alt.sci.astro, Message-ID: [email protected] , 30 Jul 2013 00:51:55 -0400. https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.sci.astro/KQWt4KcpMVo , http://archive.is/a04w9 , http://webcitation.org/6IUTAMEyS The plain text of this post is available at: TXT, 42423 bytes, MD5: b199e867e42d54b2b8bf6adcb4127761. http://mirrorcreator.com/files/JCFTZSS8/ , http://ge.tt/3lOTVbp