Sparks

  • Human the machine

    One of the great fallacies of humanity is the belief that we are inherently superior to machines—unique, irreplaceable, and beyond replication. Yet ironically, what truly distinguishes humans from machines is emotion, the very thing humans often suppress or conceal in shame.

  • Meaning of life?

    In general humans have transcended nature’s design and now no longer live for the propagation of the species. Furthering that, we also no longer live for the propagation of our families, societies and/or communities, but rather really intrinsically for the propagation of the individual. Our technological advancements are heading us towards a future where individuals can flourish on their own without needing any other humans – rather than somewhere in the middle where individuals can flourish alingside other individuals. Afterall, everything the “self” knows is an interpretation of signals received by our many senses and translated by agentic components of our brain. What does it matter if those signals come from biological sources or something emulating the biological source? In the end, the only thing needed is energy to keep the signals coming. 

  • A pessimists view…

    Given the advances in healthcare (like CRISPR, nano tech for delivering gene edits etc) and technology in general (AI/ML, robotic, space travel), when the .1% has most of the world’s resources, what do they need the remaining people for? Maybe they need the other .9% to hobnob with and show-off to but the remaining 99% are just using up world resources that they would like to own and use. As all of these advancements progress far enough, it seems the need for folks who clean, grow and/or cook food, make clothes or make anything else really, gets superceded by the abilities of these advancements. Will the owners of the world resources care or want the rest of us around? Even as we watch tik-tok and reels, rail against each other about fabricated and meaningless bullshit, the puppetmasters continue their acquisition of the world as we know it. 

  • Return to First Principles

    What would happen if we returned to having personal connections and reverted to using technology to advance and enhance our personal relationships instead of letting technology use our persons as resources.

  • Automotive shows

    Jason Cammisa of Haggerty is the best follow-on evolution of the Top Gear trio of Hammond, May and Clarkson. Embodying some of their beat characteristics in one presenter, he hosts some of the best automotive shows I’ve seen lately: Informative, entertaining and goofy. He knows cars, knows how to make fun of them if necessary and praise them for the right reason and seems to have a blast while doing it. 

  • Ironic? Humorous? Reality

    You engage a lawfirm to help review a legal document and, in return, you have to sign a legal agreement with said lawfirm to engage their services. Oy! 

  • First Principles

    Why the big push for first principles? Because people don’t know how to start a fire and don’t even know what questions to ask to learn how to do so. 

    This is figurative, of course, but if people don’t know the base workings of things and don’t know how to ask the right questions to figure out what those are, the results can be overly complicated and possibly even incorrect.

  • Adjustments

    For millenia, life on earth including humanity has adjusted, adapted and evolved as the earth has changed. In some cases external catalysts have caused changes to occurr too quickly and not all life has managed to survive the change. In recent history, this catalyst has been human ignorance (truly lacking knowledge of consequences) and human greed (driven by profits and wealth). Earth, like any other system evolves to the changing equation that defines its environment. It’s unlikely that life as we know it will have an opportunity to adapt to the changes we are catalyzing.

  • Nature the equation

    Nature is an equation with innumerable variables. Humans keep messing with these parameters but dont expect the outcome to change. It invariably will. Objectively – nature isnt mad or vindictive. Its simply adaptive. 

  • Agent of change

    The Earth and the rest of the universe are brokers or mediums of change. Ultimately, the relatively macro is indifferent to the changes it accommodates. What’s important is that change happens. It is us humans that observe a change to be good or bad. The brokers just facilitate the results of the equation of a myriad variables.