Is Capitalism Making Us Stupid?

Odd heading for this - but that is the name of the book cited and reviewed here.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2015/04/is-capitalism-making-us-stupid.html

I like the review a lot - it talks about a lot of things I am concerned about and have been thinking about for a decade or more. But when I finished reading it, I was not sure I wanted to buy the book. So I thought I would explore that a little bit myself, and share it - if I think it is worth anything.

Here's some of my basic premises that have developed over the last 15 years.

1. Capitalism is a pretty good system, provided we manage it intelligently.
   Economics is not well understood by most people, it is more governed by schools of belief than any scientific method - but  . . .  the market approach has great potential, if we use our brains to manage it.
2. Democracy is similar - could be worse. As Churchill famously said, it is the worst political system, except for all of the others. But we need to remember that we invented it, and we could still improve it. God did not hand it down. In fact, he (or she) seems prone to a somewhat more hierarchical approach. 
3. Humans are not rational - we make decisions by gut and emotion. That does not augur well for either capitalism or political systems, given the general failure to be rational about how we run them. I love the example cited of our innate ability to project the trajectory of a thrown object - Angry Birds - but the great difficulty we encounter to do the same for a dropped object. We "evolved" our society from blood feuds, dictators and wars. Why do we think this talking and negotiating approach is going to work?

What this reviewer, and I assume the book points out is:

1. Rational thinking is under attack. Our rationality is not only a biological imperative, it is under attack from a mass of "believers" who really do not value any rational approach to anything. How else explain the rejection of global warming, the mass attacks on information and data on any topic. Our political actors generally call on fear and loathing, belief and lies, rather than cite anything that resembles science or information. For heaven's sake, we are still fighting about evolution. 
2. Capitalism and Democracy were crazy inventions. Given the propensities of humans, neither should really work at all. We are competitive, vicious, fight to the death, hierarchy prone, strong leader followers. How can a "market" or a "consensus" approach ever lead to anything but disaster. The same was said for things like "invisible little beings cause diseases". Or "some problems with people's actions come from the physical make up of their brain and are not 'fixable'." We seem to have finally understood these two - it may take us a while to get to the evolution one. There seems to be some confusion with the "religious" stuff.
3. Advertising is not rational. Well, duh. And most political discourse is the same. I am not sure it is making us more stupid - we already have a lot of that. And our politicians are persuading us of lies and idiocies with the same techniques.
4. Being rationally informed about politics is not an efficient or rewarding investment. I've seen this before, but this brought it home. If you make a buying decision, you can be pretty effective about reading reviews, comparing products, pricing, etc. It takes some time and effort, and you have to overcome that instant urge to buy - but we can do it, and there is generally a reward. I get a good product at a fair price. The effort has a reward. But in the political world, my one vote has NO real positive returns. Why spend the time and effort to do any research, to meet the candidates, to understand the issues. Especially in the face of the barrage of misinformation that gets thrown at us. There is no reward to that effort. My vote makes no significant difference at all. So why should I undertake a lot of work to analyze positions and possibilities. Just go with the group.
5. Solutions to all of this are woefully lacking. I've been there. No one yet has any bright ideas on how to overcome all of this lack of reason in these two realms. I think the political one is key. If we could actually make decisions based on research and data, I am persuaded that we might adopt a "nudge" political framework, to help people make better, more rational decisions. I don't see any other approach that might work at the moment. 

Thanks for reading this far. Help me out here. What do you think?

Rational Or NOT?!

OK, if that last one on The Righteous Mind rang any bells, you really should read this one:

https://aeon.co/essays/we-are-more-rational-than-those-who-nudge-us

I have been stumbling along here reading a bunch of things in psychology and economics and culture and world views for about 15 years now. This piece cited above sums up about 5 books that I have found very interesting. Kahneman, and McCraney and Haidt, and Thaler.

The basic idea is that evolution has pretty much tuned us to be not quite rational. Oh, we have a brain, and that brain CAN stop and think about things, but mostly, it does not. And that is just fine - it works well. Just imagine walking into the supermarket and approaching the cereal aisle. You want to buy ONE box of cereal. If you were a purely rational animal, how long do you think that would take? Just think of the factors: cost, cost per unit, ingredients, health claims, packaging, etc. There are easily 4,000 choices in that one aisle. This could take a while - or NOT. For most of us, it is simple - I only want to spend 5 minutes at this max - good enough works just fine. It's called satisficing - an economist won the Nobel Prize for coming up with that idea for economic decisions.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/satisficing.asp

And that is the case when we KNOW we are thinking and we intend to make a rational decision. When we are not even aware of how we are leaning, it takes a lot less time. When the lion appeared in your path in the jungle, you were moving even BEFORE your brain registered the thing. MOST of our responses are that kind - an instinctive reaction brought about by the wonderful pattern recognition software in our head that KNOWS and reacts before our brain can even process it. It takes you less than a second to make a judgement about someone else - but it takes your brain about 8 seconds for that to register, and it takes your thinking brain somewhat longer to do anything about it.

The best thing about this article is that he holds out hope that we can figure out how to improve on our fast brain for the things that really matter. He cites Keith E Stanovich, Rationality and the Reflective Mind, who is persuaded that we can do better as a society, by reflecting together in a more civil way. Part of our genius, from Haidt, is that we have these powerful motivators that enable us to act as a larger group, to accomplish amazing things. If we can empower that group effort, with more civil discussion and reflective reasoning - we might have a shot at moving forward here.

I'm working on it - how about you?

Why Are Those Idiots from the Other Political Party So Crazy?

I just started a book I bought a few years ago. I wish I had read it then. This has the potential to be my “best book of the decade” – like I have never said that before. The book is The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt. If you liked Thinking Fast and Slow by Kahneman, this book applies those ideas to morals and politics. Research indicates that we act mostly from our instinct, not our reasoning.

When I watch the presidential candidates on the news, I always say to myself, how on earth can these idiots be so popular? They are clearly lying through their teeth. Don’t these people know about PolitiFact? They cannot possibly believe what they say. They are not in touch with reality, they are rude, uncouth idiots. People must be crazy to support them. Ahhhhh!

Come on – you’ve thought that too, haven’t you? Of course you have, and I KNOW I am right – just as you do.

When you look at the result of that in the political arena, and mix in a bit of brutish incivility, we end up with the current nightmare of idiots on both sides, unable to even talk to the other side, or treat them with respect. How on earth will we ever get out of this divide that is destroying our country? Other developed nations seem to be making good headway on important things, like health care and education. And they all seem to have a healthier attitude toward national defense spending. What is wrong with US? We are the most threatened people on the planet. We spend more on defense than the next 7 nations combined – and 5 of them are our allies!

http://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0053_defense-comparison

This book will help you understand a bit what is going on here with those “idiots”. It will help you see where these fears come from, and how people deal with them. It also offers a possible way out of this craziness. There is some hope – not much, but some. It may also help you to have a civil conversation with your neighbors across the back yard fence. They seem like nice people – what is wrong with them?

I will share more as I read the book – I’m only one third in – but I wanted to get this out there. Just watch the videos below. They say it pretty well. The first one is Steven Colbert in his old character, so it’s good fun, and it’s short. Colbert picks up on the important stuff in the book.

http://www.cc.com/video-clips/luw0ia/the-colbert-report-jonathan-haidt

We make snap judgments. We lose sight of the truth. Not me! But, yes, me and you. Absolute certainty? Hmm. I may have said that on occasion.

Next, watch this TED talk by the author. It’s a bit longer, but it is well done. The genius of this is that he uses what he learned in writing the book to present the information. He is appealing to your “elephant”, not your “driver”. The metaphors are wonderful, and so are the stories. They will stick with you.

https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind

All of this comes from experiments with people around the world. I am NOT making this up, and neither is the author. Here are the key ideas:

•   We are right! They are wrong. We are by nature self-righteous bigots. And that’s NOT a problem – it’s normal! We are always absolutely certain that we are right.
•  We go with our gut. Evolution has given us this gift of rapid decision making. If we weren’t so primed to jump to rapid conclusions, we would never make any decisions.
• Thinking comes after the fact. We marshal other ideas only to support our gut call. Rational arguments on the other side just confirm our belief. You can’t make the dog happy by wagging its tail.
• We tend to be a bit more conservative than not. It’s what worked! The guy who first tried that strange mushroom didn’t leave any kids.
• We work off 5 basic moral imperatives that are in our genes. They pretty much govern how we work. The flavor of the imperatives changes a bit given our “world view” or social culture, but they are key to our rapid decisions.
• Progressives / Conservatives are different. Progressives tend to use just two of our moral rules, while most Conservatives seem to use them all.
• We are Tribal. Team or tribal membership is a big part of us. And then our tribe blinds us to the real world. We take our values from the tribe, the culture we live in, the group we identify with.

The five foundations of morality:

1. Harm / Care.
2.  Fairness / Reciprocity.
3. In Group Loyalty. Only humans can form very large groups, which was a major step in enabling us to create civilization.
4.  Authority / Respect.
5.  Purity / Sanctity. Sex on the right, food on the left.

 www.yourmorals.org – You too can take part in the study.

The “liberals” or “progressives” work more from the values of harm / care and fairness / reciprocity. Conservatives tend to use all 5 more equally. The big insight for me was to understand that they feel that “order tends to decay”. I am usually on the progressive side – we need to move forward, to change adopt new technology and ideas. I tend to ignore the risks that this carries. The basic conservative position tends to be that civilization is pretty fragile, and we could lose it all if we are not careful. They see order as really precious, and anything that goes counter to the present structure is dangerous. It was also interesting to me that punishment seems to be a key part of our moral motivation – including religion and the threat of hell.

In another conversation, the author sums up his findings in this way:

But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer "moral clarity"—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

Jonathan Haidt 
https://edge.org/conversation/jonathan_haidt-what-makes-people-vote-republican

Finally, here is a longer interview with the author by a Wharton School professor. This one focuses a bit on Business Ethics – which is another interest of mine. Where was this guy when I was teaching that course? This one is longer, but you will learn a lot more.

https://youtu.be/qN42ZLwNFBY

That said, I promise to come back and share more after I finish the book. Let me know what you think. The author also has a website and many other resources out there.
http://righteousmind.com/

I trust this helps a little bit to understand the "crazies". Later.

Moving Money to Other Countries - HOW TO

Moving Money to Foreign Lands

If you have been following along here at all, I have been spending a fair amount of time thinking out loud about developing nations. What are the causes of this gap between developed and those still underway. Eventually, this gets into actually doing things for folks in other parts of the world, in the earnest hope that we can actually help them move forward. This piece is a bit of a departure, because it is eminently practical. It will provide you with a simple option for easily moving funds abroad at NO COST.

WHY?

I keep hoping all of this will make a difference someday. It is all founded on the basic belief that “we are all in this together”. I firmly believe that humans are fundamentally social. When one part of our human family is stressed, we all suffer a loss. When one part of our human family succeeds well, we all benefit. This is a BELIEF, my article of FAITH if you will. There are some studies that seem to confirm it, but it is not really a rational position. I choose this option - simple as that. 

And a story helps. I was visiting an old friend in Tanzania. We were out on the edge of the Serengeti. A young Maasai boy came up and they talked a bit. My friend went inside, retrieved some money, and gave it to the young man. I asked him what that was about. He replied: “That boy scored the second highest aptitude score in all of Tanzania. School is free, but he needs money for books and uniform. I am going to help him go to school.” But for a few dollars, that country and the rest of us would never know what that young man might accomplish. And I am persuaded, there are a few million similar young people out there. We need to invest in our young people, not burden them with poverty and loans that keep them from achieving the best they can be, and help the rest of us prosper.

Practical Alternatives

That said – how does one move money to other countries? You may be involved in a Sister Parish relationship, or sending “missions” to foreign lands, or just trying to fund a small one time effort. At some point, you will find that you may need to move some funds there. These are some of the options.

• 1.      Carry Cash. This is actually what our local Sister Parish did for quite some time. There is a $10,000 limit on this stuff. Not that it is illegal above that line, but you need to report it. The government is concerned about illegal activity. The other problem is bulk and safety. The largest US currency is the $100 bill. Those may be difficult to exchange because they are the ones most likely to be counterfeit. Twenties are better, but even $1,000 worth of twenty dollar bills is a little scary.
• 2.      Send a check. Well, the mail in many parts of the world is not very secure, and not trustworthy. That’s generally not a wonderful option. And then a check deposited there may take weeks to clear.
• 3.      Share a Bank Account. In this scenario, you open a US bank account, and send some blank checks on that account via a courier or personal representative. The foreign party writes a check on the US account and deposits it locally. This requires a bank account in the destination country, but that is generally a requirement for most operations. It also requires quite a bit of time. Funds deposited in a US account are generally available in one or two days. A foreign check deposited in another nation may take quite a bit longer. And there may be fees just for having a checking account.
• 4.      Wire Funds Electronically. This is very fast and secure, but there are sizeable fees. The sending bank will generally charge $50 for sending the funds. And the receiving bank generally charges $15 or more. You may get a special deal in some banks, reducing those fees somewhat. But, in general, it will cost at least $60 to move ANY amount of money internationally.
• 5.      PayPal. Paypal works in a lot of the world, but it also has a fee of at least 2.7%. Other similar funds transfer agents charge even more. And there are generally daily maximums of $2,000 or less. Many of these organizations simply do not support some of the poorest countries, like Nicaragua, our case in point.
• 6.      Debit Card. A debit card on a US bank can be used in most parts of the world. The drawback is that there is generally a sizeable fee for ATM withdrawals, or even for using it for purchases, or bank withdrawals. They may also charge a foreign fund conversion fee, similar to most credit cards.
• 7.      Schwab Checking Account. This option works well, and it has NO FEE. Open a Schwab One account, with checking. Go through whatever it takes to get a foreign agent authorized. This is a fair amount of work, and Schwab is quite stringent on this, because of the government’s concern with illegal operations, etc. Rest assured that the transactions can be traced, etc. That should not be a problem for the types of social minded things we are about.

Send some blank checks to your agent in the foreign country. Those will still take a long time to clear if they are deposited, but the account and checks on this end are free.

Get a debit card issued – this will require another song and dance, but it is worth it. Have the foreign agent made the custodian of the debit card. They can withdraw fairly large sums from a local bank with it if they are a regular customer. They can also do ATM withdrawals, up to $1,000 / day. Generally, there is no fee for this type of operation. If the ATM does have a fee, collect the fee information and submit it to Schwab. They will reimburse the account. We have not actually done this, as our agent has found an ATM with no fee.

The one hassle is that checks are deposited by mail. Schwab provides the checks and deposit slips and postage paid mailing envelopes. At some point, I am sure they will adopt the “take a picture” deposit already used by many banks. So the mailing step takes a few days.

When the funds arrive at Schwab, they dispatch an email indicating the date and amount received. The funds can be used one day later. They also have a very resourceful help number, in case there is any problem.

For another option, you can set up a two way electronic transfer between any US bank account and the Schwab account. There is no fee for this, but it generally requires at least one day for funds to arrive.

Conclusion

Find your local Schwab office, and pay them a visit. If they give you hassle about it, contact me and I will have our local Schwab agent help them understand how this can work. To locate my contact information, look at my website:  https://sites.google.com/site/carlscheider/  Or find me on FaceBook. There are only a few of us with that name! Or, worst case send me an email:  carlscheider(at)hotmail.com.

You can also drop a comment here on this blog to let me and others know how this worked out.

Enough with the Rational Arguments Already!

Enough with the Rational Arguments Already!

My lovely wife and I often sit at the kitchen table discussing the morning news. I don’t think it is any great surprise to anyone that knows us, but we tend to the “liberal” or “progressive” side of things when it comes to social issues. She often gets quite upset with all of the popularity of some of the candidates for President that espouse more “conservative” views. She seems particularly frightened of the fact that one Donald Trump is admired, followed, or supported by a huge number of people. She regularly says to me, “What is wrong with people?”, “Don’t they read anything?”, and words to that effect.

I try to tell her, you are being way too rational about this stuff. People simply do not pay that much attention to things. They tend to make judgments with their “fast” brain – the pattern recognition, gut reaction part of their thinking engine. Excellent research by highly trained scientists has figured out that. See my little piece on Daniel Kahnneman’s book, Thinking, Fast and Slow.  

A group of psychologists from Yale have been studying the political dimensions of this stuff for some time. See  http://www.culturalcognition.net/

One of their findings is that most people are more motivated by their “culture” than any rational idea or argument. Another is that most people are not very sophisticated about political discussions. They are not privy to the complexities and the problems. They make simple judgments about complex things – it is the best we can do.

Conservatives appeal to values all the time – it’s the only thing they do. Progressives really do not have a communications program that speaks to anyone. They keep offering facts and studies, which tend to do nothing but confirm the other side in their belief based value system. Most of us are simply not going to be persuaded by this approach. It is a complete waste of time. They are working with a “false theory of human reason”. Humans do not work that way.

I just read an excellent little piece on this, and I would like to encourage you to read it. This is an interview with the author of Don’t Think of an Elephant.

http://www.truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/27576-george-lakoff-progressives-cannot-succeed-without-expressing-respect-values

Here are a few quotes to further tempt you.  

What progressives call "rational arguments" are not normal modes of real reason. What counts as a "rational argument" is not the same for progressives and conservatives. And even the meaning of concepts and words may be different.

Progressives constantly ask how to "respond" to illegitimate claims by conservatives, whether about fear or anything else. That is because conservatives have an effective communication system and progressives do not, and conservative marketers better understand real reason. To deal with illegitimate fears, you don’t wait till you have to respond. You need (1) to build an effective communication system, (2) to communicate the general progressive value system, (3) repeat the truths that reveal what is right about those values, (4) act with courage to promote the sense of courage, confidence and hope that allows the truth to be meaningful and powerful. Within such a context, one can honestly and openly discuss the facts that undermine such fears, so that the illegitimate fears don’t get established in the first place. 

The Democratic party right now seems outwardly to stand for nothing in general, just a laundry list of positions. But most Democrats understand that "the private depends on the public," namely, that public resources for all allow for private freedoms, whether in private enterprise or private life. Republicans talk about freedom all the time, but the Democrats are the real party of freedom and need to say it. The truth of progressive freedoms is part of what we take for granted, so much part of the fabric of our lives that we don't pay attention to it. Naming it makes you pay attention to it. 

Obama is also a rationalist; that is, he has the false theory of human reason that many progressive policymakers have and that he mastered in law school and teaching law. According to classic rationalism, if you just tell people the facts, then by universal logic, people will reason to the right conclusion. For example, the president thought that if the public liked each of the major provisions of his health care bill, they would support the whole bill. They still like each provision. Conservatives never attacked the major provisions. Instead they attacked it on two moral grounds: Freedom (government takeover) and Life (death panels). These are not the same issues so far as our brains are concerned, and morality is more of a determinant of personal identity than the details of insurance. The conservative manipulation of real reason won out over the repetition of insurance provisions. Yes, the provisions work. And so does the conservative moral framing.

And here is the best advice of all:  

In personal interactions, as over the Thanksgiving table with conservative relatives or in your social or business life with colleagues and coworkers, the first thing to realize is that, for the most part, conservatives believe deeply that they are morally right, that they and other conservatives are operating from the right moral principles. They don’t believe that they are immoral, and they don't believe that right and wrong don't matter. As moral beings, they want to be treated with respect. And in personal relationships, respect is appropriate.

The question is whether they are bi-conceptual, whether they have partly progressive values. So turn the conversation to an issue defined by nurturance: What have you done, or are you doing, that helps other people or helps your community? What makes you feel good about it? And so on. If there is nurturance there, bring it out and magnify it, and respect it. Try to keep conversation focused on such issues. Don't try to argue against their conservative positions, and certainly not in their language. Listen. Be patient. 

If you must discuss political differences, just be positive, starting with your values and with how you understand freedom and how it arises from citizens working together to provide public resources for everyone. Use your language, not theirs. Stay respectful.

Zealot by Reza Aslan - a book review

Zealot by Reza Aslan – a book review.

I have been suggesting a book to people about the Jewish Jesus for several years now – Jesus Before Christianity. It was written by a Dominican monk, Albert Nolan. It is based on good exegesis of the New Testament, explaining how the people of Jesus’ own time would have understood his teachings. I recently recommended it to a friend, and he replied that he would read it – and I should read Zealot.

I found the book immensely enlightening. The author is nominally a Muslim, more a historian than a scripture scholar. But the result is very good. I highly recommend both books to gain a real understanding of the message that Jesus brought to his contemporaries. But I would read Zealot first, and then Jesus Before Christianity. And here’s why.

Zealot adds a whole world of information, giving a much broader historical perspective to the discussion. He presents actual history from that whole period that is very enlightening for setting the stage for what happens to Jesus. Nolan gives a little background on some of the movements and sects of the time, but Aslan provides a much better insight into the world in which this Jesus of Nazareth lived. He corroborates, criticizes and expands events. I am no historian, but he seems to have an excellent mastery of what we know of the time. He also makes the assumption that anything which is repeated in all of the Gospels is probably based on some factual event. I am not real sure about that, but it doesn’t seem to harm the picture. He criticizes and expands the Gospel stories with actual historical events. He carries the historical perspective into the early church, right up to Nicene and a bit beyond. The theological ideas of trinity and incarnation and the like, are later creations of the Greek Church. It helps explain our Christian history, but it is way past any message of the original Jesus.

Nolan is clearly a believer, but he also presents a very different Jesus than the “Christ”. His Jesus of Nazareth is a reformer, calling for a new world order. Aslan, on the other hand, is not a believer, but he says he is a “follower” of Jesus of Nazareth. Nolan is much better at explaining the way the disciples must have heard the message of this prophet. He brings it home in a way that Aslan does not. I was hoping for more toward the end of Zealot, but I was disappointed. To get that more, read Nolan. You can find my review of that book here: Jesus Before Christianity Notes.

I will just tantalize you here with a few examples of things I noted in Zealot.

1.       Brutality of the times. There are so many examples of utter brutality from those days, that it gives you the impression that the Middle East was a nightmare of continuous conflict. Oh, wait – that is the case today. Well – it has not changed much. From the original invasion of Palestine by the Jews who were ordered to slay every living thing, to the utter destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the brutality is incredible. I can understand when people live in a world such as that, their view of what passes for civilization will be very different.

2.       The Kingdom of God. The brutality, the presence of Rome, the poverty, wealth disparity and problems that existed give a better understanding as to why there were so many prophets walking the land in those days, promising the coming of the kingdom of God. Jesus was one of many. His message was very similar, but for some reason, those who heard it were moved beyond the norm. Paul, in particular, had some personal experience that drove the early Church.

3.       Nazareth. Azlan gives a detailed description of this town that gives a much better insight into the origins of the teachings of this prophet, Jesus.

4.       Focus on the Poor. The situation of the times, the imbalance in wealth and poverty, the terrible condition of the peasants – all make it clear why Jesus was so focused on the poor. Azlan describes the situation in telling detail. With all of our current income inequality, we might pay attention to this message a bit more. We are clearly not at the brink of a social revolution – at least not yet. If Piketty is right, it may be coming yet.

Read both books. I found them both inspirational in this business of being human and a “follower” of Jesus of Nazareth. But do read Zealot first, then Jesus Before Christianity.

The biggest thing I have taken away from all of this is that Faith is not a magical gift, or a firmly held conviction. It is a decision in favor of the kingdom of God. Read the books to see what that means.

“To believe in God is to believe that goodness is more powerful than evil and truth is stronger than falsehood.” (Nolan, p. 102) I so choose. And you?

Book Review - The Second Intelligent Species: How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches

Book Review - The Second Intelligent Species by Marshall Brain.

The last blog post was on Utopia. Fittingly, I just stumbled onto this book about an "ideal" future with super intelligences running things. I use a variety of tools to try to stay abreast of interesting ideas. These gadgets, like Zite, keep track of what I read and what I like. One of my likes is "The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies". http://ieet.org/ I have a bit of a background in ethics, business ethics, and in IT technology - so it's a good fit. The authors in this group are also pretty "progressive". Not "liberal" as such, but certainly not "conservative" in any usual sense.

By the way, you can get a Kindle copy of this book for $0.99. Or read it free online. Worth every penny!*#

It is a good book, and the ideas are important. But it is a tad simplistic - no academic references here to studies that support his ideas - just the ideas. But they are interesting ideas, and that simplicity makes them more available. It makes you think about what will happen when we really do succeed in getting robots or artificial intelligences, to do ALL of our work. What do we do to earn our keep in that world? What will we do with our time - what opportunities will this give us, and what risks? And this brand of "crap" is likely to start hitting the fan in the next few decades.

The book starts off with a "short history of evolution" - from hydrogen to humans. A fascinating way to do it. Hydrogen really was everything that was. He projects what might happen if another intelligent species eventually arrives here, and takes a reading on what we are about. The resulting picture is a pretty sorry state of affairs. We have billions of people that are barely surviving, we spend trillions on armaments that could literally destroy the planet. Outside of Mozart and Beethoven and the like - why would any intelligent species want to have anything to do with us?

In subsequent chapters, he leads up to the book's 2nd title: "How Humans Will Become as Irrelevant as Cockroaches". Think about it. We are working our way toward making an intelligent machine. If we make it complex enough, it should become aware, just as we are aware. With a couple of generations of that progress, what will the ultimate 'next intelligent species' think of us? What do we think of chimpanzees, about one generation lower? What about cockroaches, two or three generations lower? We sure don't try to communicate with them. We would never expect them to understand what we are about. I have worked through this myself, and I came out at a totally different spot than where he ended up. See what you think. I think they will just ignore us and be about more interesting things. I hope his version is right!

Chapter 7 is particularly well done. And you can read it here.
http://marshallbrain.com/second-intelligent-species7.htm

He does a little thought experiment on the "ideal" society. WHAT IF, we could make up a society as we would like, considering all of this automation, minimum wage, etc. What would the ideal society be like? He makes some assumptions to keep this society simple, but he works through some of the alternatives. In the end, you come to a better understanding on just how our current society seems to be so poorly managed. We let it develop around us, instead of managing it. He has some better ideas - and he presents them well. He talks about the scenario where the 1% at the top manage to control things. There are alternatives there as well.The beauty of this is that when you simplify things a bit, the stark craziness of what we have stands out.

He has a wonderful thought scenario on what happens when millions of Teamsters are out of work because of self driving trucks. There is no question that this is going to happen - and within the next decade. What do those fine people do to earn a living? This is not a bunch of intellectuals occupying Wall Street. This may be the event that trips our trigger for some form of subsidized income.

He does some thought experiments on what a super intelligent entity would actually do. He indicates that Asimov's three laws for Robots may not be of much use. Along the way he develops a robotic morality. Why would artificial intelligences from other worlds be any different from the ones developed here? And a solution to the Fermi Paradox - again!

He has sparked a flood of new ideas. He is also immensely optimistic - certainly about robots, but also about humans. I hope half of what he says works out.

He does have a few short sighted problems. He does not talk about how an economic system works with a guaranteed basic income. I know it is doable, but he needs to explain that a bit more to the normal reader. What kind of taxes would enable this kind of thing? He also glosses over the real problems in getting highly emotional and non rational humans to agree on anything, even in the face of imminent danger. But  . . . it presents a fine Utopian vision that provokes thought.

Let me know what you think.