Tag: The Guardian

Multiple Me’s?

barryh1 Comment

I’m generally a great fan of The Guardian/ The Observer, but they do sometimes publish a load of nonsense, because they have a blindspot, being entirely materialistic and denying the interiority of mind and the spiritual. Here is a recent example that just appeared in my inbox: What happens if your mind lives for ever on the internet?

This article actually takes this question seriously and goes on to examine the implications of multiple versions of ‘you’.

I would suggest that this is nonsense, like much that is written about so-called Artificial Intelligence.

Yes, I accept that at some point it may be possible to understand aspects of my/your brain activity and put it up on the internet as some sort of simulation of me/you. But it will be just that, a simulation. It will be algorithmic, will not be conscious. It will be all ‘outer’ and no ‘inner’. it will not contain the essence of me/you.

And thank God for that!

Featured image is from the article.

 

After the carniverous plenty…

barryh3 Comments

George Monbiot’s article Mass starvation is humanity’s fate if we keep flogging the land to death is a timely reminder that we are on course for the biggest of all disasters. Our increasing population and increasing demand on the natural world cannot be sustained without major change. We need as a species to eat less meat. Period.

The Guardian graphic in Monbiot’s article says it all:

guardian graphic monbiot

So after that stuffed-meat Christmas dinner, maybe you should call time on anything but the very occasional indulgence in meat.

Easy abstractions 

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This week’s Guardian ‘long read’ on Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world by Nikil Saval is well worth a read, outlining the failures of economic/political policy that have led to today’s dysfunctional world economy and its increasing inequalities.

How easy it is to propound abstractions and not consider the real world implications – free trade, free markets, globalisation – the apparent obsession of many economists and politicians over the last 40 years.

Of course, chickens eventually come home to roost. And this is what we see in the real world, with people in the West disillusioned with the effects of a failing globalisation system, just as in the early 20th century.

Deluded by these abstractions have politicians failed to act according to the interests of those they represent? It is after all their job to so act.

But of course we all have our own favourite abstractions, and our own view of what might have been better decisions…