A platform is a place upon which you can stand and deliver a message, an audience can be defined as the people who pay attention to that platform and therefore hear the message. It is important to note here that the audience pays attention to the platform, not necessarily the message.
Delivering a message to people through a platform that they will hear and pay attention to is a little more complex. One of the key barriers you must overcome is engagement. That is, you must pique the interest of your audience by playing to their interests. There is a slight problem with this as someone who wants to deliver a message you need to cater that message to what the audience wants to hear, which can often be the opposite of your message. The problem if it was not obvious is that it is hard to make someone pay attention to something they are not interested in.
This is where we need to draw a line of distinction between your intended audience and the actual audience you have. A lot of people online do not succeed in doing this, which results in their message being contained within a small bubble and spreading no further. To give you an example, let's say you create a website to support a particular political party, let's call it the Banana Party. You want to reach out to people, your intended audience would be voters, but to be more specific it would be undecided voters. What will often end up being the case is that you will gather support for your site by promoting it through social media and advertising among other methods of marketing. Your website becomes your platform and your message is its content. You will use other platforms such as twitter or facebook to try and spread that message. The most likely place you will start on these platforms will be by finding existing communities that already support the Banana Party.
The problem with this is that you are growing your actual audience but you are not growing your intended audience. Spreading a message to people who already support that message does not achieve anything. You are not gaining greater exposure for your cause, you are in fact becoming more insular. You are not reaching undecided voters you are reaching people who already intend to vote for the Banana Party.
This post was inspired by a video on Youtube by a prominent gay youtuber who shall remain nameless. His video was one promoting marriage equality in the USA. While his sentiment may be noble his message is insular. The majority of people if not all of the people who actually watch his videos and subscribe to him already support marriage equality by virtue of the fact that they support him and his message. That is not reaching a new audience, that is in essence just ego stroking. Saying something your audience will love and receiving praise for it from that audience is insular.
There's a reason why some other youtubers who are more successful do collaborations with other youtubers - because they want to grow their audience and reach new people - in other words they actively try to find their intended audience. Having millions of subscribers is not security, and to rely on that cushion and become complacent is dangerous. Like any economy in order to be sustainable the number of new subscribers has to negate the number who are leaving; complacency leads to the number of new subscribers reducing. In the example of the Banana Party, you will not increase the number of votes your party will get by preaching your message to Banana voters, you need to reach people who are undecided, people who are apolitical and convince them there is a reason to vote, people who have questions that no-one has answered or been willing to answer. In political campaigning this is known as a Grassroots approach. Relying on traditional voters is insecure as for many reasons over time that number will drop naturally if you do not engage with new voters. One reason why parties in the UK are struggling to gain majorities in opinion polls is due to undecided younger voters.
You need to understand the difference between your actual audience and your intended audience. Your actual audience is the one you have, but having that audience does not at all imply they will actually listen to you. Your intended audience is the one that you want to reach, the people you want to listen to your message. The two will not always be synonymous, and often pursuing an intended audience can alienate your actual audience when you have a message that they are not interested in.
So how do you solve this problem? If you look at those who have been successful in growing their audiences and how they achieved it you can see that division is the best strategy. Many popular youtubers as an example have multiple channels, where they cover different types of content. Those who like those types of content will subscribe to those channels, those that don't will not, but crucially, as that content is kept separate from the main channel, they do not unsubscribe from it as a result. If you take this strategy and scale it up you end up with the same behaviour being used in large scale organisations. Companies frequently split into subsidiaries where particular products and services are grouped together - this appeases investors as it keeps the content they are interested in separate, while still contributing to the wealth of the organisation as a whole. In our political party example many parties have youth wings, which are specifically tasked with targeting younger voters, this leads to engagement and gives younger voters a voice, crucially the issues that affect those voters are explicitly addressed and this is done in a way that has influence within the party as a whole.
In the case of the video that inspired this post, the issue to be found there is that the video has been made on a platform where the reach of the video is only the actual audience and not the intended audience. While most of the suggestions on how to remedy this would be futile and fruitless, this raises an important point about criticism: you do not have to have a better solution to be able to point out flaws in the current. Understanding those flaws leads to a thought process that can ultimately result in a better solution. That thought process would never commence if flaws in the current solution were never brought to light.
We did not need to know the world was round in order to point out the flaws in assuming it was flat. Thinking about those flaws led to the eventual conclusion that the world was round. Without drawing attention to those flaws this would not have even been considered. I use the word "was" as "round" implies a spherical shape, which we now know the Earth is not. The Earth is closer to an egg shape, an Oblate Spheroid to be precise.
Will Robots replace Humans?
If you discard the debate about artificial intelligence for a moment and assume that at some point we did manage to create sentient robots there is a question people ask - Will robots replace humans? - My answer to that is no, but that requires some explanation.
First of all you need to define the word "replace" and what exactly you mean by it. In my definition for robots to replace humans they would have to take our place and do what we do. In this respect you can define humanity by a number of characteristics, notably survival instinct, and the instinct to procreate. The latter I realise some people will take issue with who have no intention of having children, and as a gay man I would agree that this does not define my life personally but as a race as a whole in order for humanity to survive it needs not only to continue living but to continue growing in number, or at the very least maintain a steady population which both require procreation.
As we have defined two core characteristics of humanity you can apply those to robots in the scenario we are contemplating and ask would they act in the same way and to me in my opinion they would not. First of all survival is something that is very hard to program into a machine quite simply because survival is something for a machine that is very hard to define. If we define it as the continuation of operation, many machines can continue to be functional while maintaining low power and little or no activity - in other words they can exist in standby mode. If a machine entered standby mode with no intention of ever leaving it, would you consider it as surviving? It's still powered and still operational, it's just not doing anything. To borrow a human analogy if you were to voluntarily enter into an indefinite coma with the intention of staying in it, would you consider yourself as surviving? What if you stay in it for 10,000 years and then die by freak accident?
In terms of procreation for machines that is closely linked to the above, for a machine there is little to gain and no real motivation. As humans we will eventually die we therefore need to be replaced. If humans lived potentially forever, there would be less motivation to reproduce. Add in logical conclusions a robot would come to in response to limited resources and non-renewable energy constraints versus their energy demand, even with increased efficiency it would be unrealistic to say they would not be limited as humans are in terms of sustainable growth. Relying on logic alone a robot would conclude that reproduction beyond an optimal population would be unnecessary.
Given that I therefore think that Robots would not take up our characteristics they would therefore not "replace" us. Of course this is all from a human perspective. This is what survival can be defined as from our behaviour, there's no way of knowing what survival would be defined as to a robot. As for the argument that robots will use the definitions we provide, that relies on classical artificial intelligence - we use that less and less because it is restrictive and does not advance that far. Modern artificial intelligence uses the evolutionary algorithm, which allows the agent to evolve as they see fit to achieve their task, including rewriting their own codebase, as a result the agents which evolve take complex forms of machine intelligence that are beyond our understanding and beyond our control as they are not explicitly designed by the programmer. Any intelligence we successfully create capable of sentience will inherently be therefore beyond our control.
First of all you need to define the word "replace" and what exactly you mean by it. In my definition for robots to replace humans they would have to take our place and do what we do. In this respect you can define humanity by a number of characteristics, notably survival instinct, and the instinct to procreate. The latter I realise some people will take issue with who have no intention of having children, and as a gay man I would agree that this does not define my life personally but as a race as a whole in order for humanity to survive it needs not only to continue living but to continue growing in number, or at the very least maintain a steady population which both require procreation.
As we have defined two core characteristics of humanity you can apply those to robots in the scenario we are contemplating and ask would they act in the same way and to me in my opinion they would not. First of all survival is something that is very hard to program into a machine quite simply because survival is something for a machine that is very hard to define. If we define it as the continuation of operation, many machines can continue to be functional while maintaining low power and little or no activity - in other words they can exist in standby mode. If a machine entered standby mode with no intention of ever leaving it, would you consider it as surviving? It's still powered and still operational, it's just not doing anything. To borrow a human analogy if you were to voluntarily enter into an indefinite coma with the intention of staying in it, would you consider yourself as surviving? What if you stay in it for 10,000 years and then die by freak accident?
In terms of procreation for machines that is closely linked to the above, for a machine there is little to gain and no real motivation. As humans we will eventually die we therefore need to be replaced. If humans lived potentially forever, there would be less motivation to reproduce. Add in logical conclusions a robot would come to in response to limited resources and non-renewable energy constraints versus their energy demand, even with increased efficiency it would be unrealistic to say they would not be limited as humans are in terms of sustainable growth. Relying on logic alone a robot would conclude that reproduction beyond an optimal population would be unnecessary.
Given that I therefore think that Robots would not take up our characteristics they would therefore not "replace" us. Of course this is all from a human perspective. This is what survival can be defined as from our behaviour, there's no way of knowing what survival would be defined as to a robot. As for the argument that robots will use the definitions we provide, that relies on classical artificial intelligence - we use that less and less because it is restrictive and does not advance that far. Modern artificial intelligence uses the evolutionary algorithm, which allows the agent to evolve as they see fit to achieve their task, including rewriting their own codebase, as a result the agents which evolve take complex forms of machine intelligence that are beyond our understanding and beyond our control as they are not explicitly designed by the programmer. Any intelligence we successfully create capable of sentience will inherently be therefore beyond our control.
Sweet and Sour Dreams
Awake we live in a world so confined,
While asleep we dream of wonders to find,
Our minds expand and our horizons fall,
For in this world we heed adventure's call,
We set out free of bounds and explore all to see,
We become the things we forever want to be,
Here in this realm no laws nor rules can restrict,
Our futures become unruly and hard to predict,
We do as we please and we are pleased as we do,
Here you will see what lies deep within you,
The heart beats faster as the rush takes hold,
Imaginations move in leaps and bounds untold,
Colours twist and twirl weightless in the air,
Visions erupt and sweet sensations occur,
Emotions fill the emptiness of your soul,
Until your ravished heart cannot pay the toll,
A head in the clouds inspires visions so sweet,
Yet be careful of where you rest your feet,
As the sun shines high in this world so endless,
Hidden deep beneath is a dark unyielding abyss,
Swoop and glide through the clouds in the sky,
Do not drop nor dive too deep, this you must try,
There is a threat forever present to us all,
The threat of the animus awakening fall,
The darkness we fear is not confined to our mind,
It is the world in which we wake ourselves to find.
While asleep we dream of wonders to find,
Our minds expand and our horizons fall,
For in this world we heed adventure's call,
We set out free of bounds and explore all to see,
We become the things we forever want to be,
Here in this realm no laws nor rules can restrict,
Our futures become unruly and hard to predict,
We do as we please and we are pleased as we do,
Here you will see what lies deep within you,
The heart beats faster as the rush takes hold,
Imaginations move in leaps and bounds untold,
Colours twist and twirl weightless in the air,
Visions erupt and sweet sensations occur,
Emotions fill the emptiness of your soul,
Until your ravished heart cannot pay the toll,
A head in the clouds inspires visions so sweet,
Yet be careful of where you rest your feet,
As the sun shines high in this world so endless,
Hidden deep beneath is a dark unyielding abyss,
Swoop and glide through the clouds in the sky,
Do not drop nor dive too deep, this you must try,
There is a threat forever present to us all,
The threat of the animus awakening fall,
The darkness we fear is not confined to our mind,
It is the world in which we wake ourselves to find.
Speaking to Strangers
I have confidence issues which I have discussed before on this blog; but following some people on twitter I can honestly say I don't think there are many people that don't have some form of issue with self confidence. I say this because the amount of people I see on twitter who are actually shy in real life is quite high. There have been many tweets about people they have seen in passing and taken a liking to but never even spoken to because they didn't have the confidence to do so. Random people in the street, Gym crushes, Tube crushes, - that last one actually has an entire website devoted to it.
How different would your life be if you actually spoke to everyone you took an interest in? If you discarded the fear of rejection or the possibility of judgement and just went for it how different would your life be and how many people would come into it who you would otherwise never have met? Going up through my family tree there have been a number of people including my mother and my grandmother who have all had what some people call "the gift" where random people find you approachable for no apparent reason. I have discussed this before on this blog but the things I have been told by random strangers about their lives would make many peoples' eyes pop. Despite all I have been told and the random people that approach me I don't find it weird at all and I've never judged anyone who did it. With that experience in mind I have no reason at all to believe that anyone would react badly to randomly talking to them in public without ever having met before. Still the idea is a bit unsettling.
We live in a world that is becoming more and more connected every day. The Internet is a marvellous invention and the freedom the online world gives you to express yourself is underpinned by anonymity because people feel like no-one online is going to know them in person so they can be a lot more open and honest than they would offline. You are much more likely to respond to a random tweet than approach someone in public and start a conversation about the same thing. What if you behaved offline the same way you did online? What if you didn't have that inhibition and you had the confidence to approach people and talk to them. I realise there will be many people out there who have no problem with this at all and they do this regularly, to them I simply ask how many times have people reacted badly? Is there any foundation in reality for the fear?
How different would your life be if you actually spoke to everyone you took an interest in? If you discarded the fear of rejection or the possibility of judgement and just went for it how different would your life be and how many people would come into it who you would otherwise never have met? Going up through my family tree there have been a number of people including my mother and my grandmother who have all had what some people call "the gift" where random people find you approachable for no apparent reason. I have discussed this before on this blog but the things I have been told by random strangers about their lives would make many peoples' eyes pop. Despite all I have been told and the random people that approach me I don't find it weird at all and I've never judged anyone who did it. With that experience in mind I have no reason at all to believe that anyone would react badly to randomly talking to them in public without ever having met before. Still the idea is a bit unsettling.
We live in a world that is becoming more and more connected every day. The Internet is a marvellous invention and the freedom the online world gives you to express yourself is underpinned by anonymity because people feel like no-one online is going to know them in person so they can be a lot more open and honest than they would offline. You are much more likely to respond to a random tweet than approach someone in public and start a conversation about the same thing. What if you behaved offline the same way you did online? What if you didn't have that inhibition and you had the confidence to approach people and talk to them. I realise there will be many people out there who have no problem with this at all and they do this regularly, to them I simply ask how many times have people reacted badly? Is there any foundation in reality for the fear?
Getting Older
I feel old. I started to write a post earlier and I wrote the words "when I was younger" and it made me realise that I am getting older. I know that should be obvious but it's not something I usually stop and think about. I'm not the typical gay guy who is obsessed with ageing and feels depressed about being another year older.
Truth be told I look forward to ageing because my life has got better with age. I used to be quite fat for one and I lost that weight as I grew older. Primary school wasn't the best experience for me partly because I was bullied but beyond that, I had difficulty in school because of my eyesight which held me back. My under-performance was wrongly identified by the school as being caused by learning difficulty, they even put me into a special class, thankfully the teacher running it soon realised the only thing holding me back was my eyesight and made the school aware of that and had me returned to the mainstream classes. I was already different enough I didn't need anything else setting me apart.
There is nothing to be ashamed of if you do have a learning disability. I was not ashamed of that I was angry at the school for paying so little attention and taking the view that if you couldn't do something you had to be split from the rest of the group. Experiencing that kind of discrimination at such a young age I think led in part to my understanding of it and how it affects people and contributed to my disdain for anyone who dismisses people because of what they can or can't do and what they do or do not know.
The polar opposite of this experience was my time at University where there was a strong support network, an entire department of the University devoted to making sure your time there was made as adaptive to your needs as possible. In truth it was one of the reasons I managed to get through University in the first place. The change here though in comparison with primary school just showed me that things do get better, and although you may meet a few people who are incompetent, you will eventually meet people who genuinely give you a sense of pride.
I've felt lately like time is speeding up. June is not long off and when it lands we will be six months gone into this year and a half of the way through. When I was younger - and that's not as unnerving to say this time round - time seemed to be vast. A day could last forever. School holidays were 3 months long in Summer and that time was an absolute eternity. You could do so much and see so much. Time seems to speed up as you get older though. Weeks pass like days, Months pass like weeks, and Years pass like Months once did. When I graduated University I felt like I had achieved so much for my age, but I also felt like there was so much I still wanted to do. In the time that has passed since, I have in many ways given up on most of the things I wanted to do because I realised they were idealistic to the point where they were just plain unrealistic. I focused on a few small goals I wanted to achieve and a few years later here I am and I have achieved them. The question is what comes next?
The things I wanted in life when I was younger aren't important to me anymore. The thing I want now more than anything is to find a guy that I can share my life with who can make me happy and who I can hopefully make happy too. I know there will be those that say, that you shouldn't need someone else to make you happy, and I can understand why some people feel that way but I just don't. I have always wanted to make other people happy and it has always been other people that made me happy. I want to make that special someone feel like the happiest person in the world, and for him to want to do the same for me. I don't want to be selfish and self centred. I don't want to be one of those people that loves themselves so much they are incapable of loving anyone else. As for the rest, it doesn't feel that important to me anymore. My attitude to money has dramatically changed with age, I wanted it so much when I was younger, I had it for a time and I realised that it doesn't make you happy. I know some people will smirk and say that is cliché and to be honest I don't care. Money never made me happy.
The things that made me sad weren't things I could buy my way out of or that I could make disappear by throwing money at them. I know money makes some things in life easier. However I don't think it can change you. I think it only ever brings out the side of you that you were too afraid to show or could not show when you didn't have it. I want to live a comfortable life, the dream of being a billionaire is gone. I am not going to turn it down if I have the opportunity but I am not going to chase it either. There are people who spend their lives chasing things they will never have, and that's okay for some people because some people enjoy the chase more than they enjoy the actual achievement. I think in all honesty that is why some people are single and will always be single, because they like everything leading up to the actual relationship. Once they reach it they lose interest.
I'm not depressed about getting older because older guys are the kind that are more likely to want the same as me. Younger gay guys don't want commitment. I've always been attracted to older guys, I've never had any interest in anyone younger than me. In many ways that was a saving grace for me as it let me escape the pitfalls of the guys mentioned above. I have more to look forward to with age and more opportunity than I did when I was younger and one of the sad things I have to admit is that when younger people cry that nobody takes you serious when you are young, is actually true. People do take your opinion and what you have to say more seriously the older you get. It's sad and dismissive but it is still true.
Truth be told I look forward to ageing because my life has got better with age. I used to be quite fat for one and I lost that weight as I grew older. Primary school wasn't the best experience for me partly because I was bullied but beyond that, I had difficulty in school because of my eyesight which held me back. My under-performance was wrongly identified by the school as being caused by learning difficulty, they even put me into a special class, thankfully the teacher running it soon realised the only thing holding me back was my eyesight and made the school aware of that and had me returned to the mainstream classes. I was already different enough I didn't need anything else setting me apart.
There is nothing to be ashamed of if you do have a learning disability. I was not ashamed of that I was angry at the school for paying so little attention and taking the view that if you couldn't do something you had to be split from the rest of the group. Experiencing that kind of discrimination at such a young age I think led in part to my understanding of it and how it affects people and contributed to my disdain for anyone who dismisses people because of what they can or can't do and what they do or do not know.
The polar opposite of this experience was my time at University where there was a strong support network, an entire department of the University devoted to making sure your time there was made as adaptive to your needs as possible. In truth it was one of the reasons I managed to get through University in the first place. The change here though in comparison with primary school just showed me that things do get better, and although you may meet a few people who are incompetent, you will eventually meet people who genuinely give you a sense of pride.
I've felt lately like time is speeding up. June is not long off and when it lands we will be six months gone into this year and a half of the way through. When I was younger - and that's not as unnerving to say this time round - time seemed to be vast. A day could last forever. School holidays were 3 months long in Summer and that time was an absolute eternity. You could do so much and see so much. Time seems to speed up as you get older though. Weeks pass like days, Months pass like weeks, and Years pass like Months once did. When I graduated University I felt like I had achieved so much for my age, but I also felt like there was so much I still wanted to do. In the time that has passed since, I have in many ways given up on most of the things I wanted to do because I realised they were idealistic to the point where they were just plain unrealistic. I focused on a few small goals I wanted to achieve and a few years later here I am and I have achieved them. The question is what comes next?
The things I wanted in life when I was younger aren't important to me anymore. The thing I want now more than anything is to find a guy that I can share my life with who can make me happy and who I can hopefully make happy too. I know there will be those that say, that you shouldn't need someone else to make you happy, and I can understand why some people feel that way but I just don't. I have always wanted to make other people happy and it has always been other people that made me happy. I want to make that special someone feel like the happiest person in the world, and for him to want to do the same for me. I don't want to be selfish and self centred. I don't want to be one of those people that loves themselves so much they are incapable of loving anyone else. As for the rest, it doesn't feel that important to me anymore. My attitude to money has dramatically changed with age, I wanted it so much when I was younger, I had it for a time and I realised that it doesn't make you happy. I know some people will smirk and say that is cliché and to be honest I don't care. Money never made me happy.
The things that made me sad weren't things I could buy my way out of or that I could make disappear by throwing money at them. I know money makes some things in life easier. However I don't think it can change you. I think it only ever brings out the side of you that you were too afraid to show or could not show when you didn't have it. I want to live a comfortable life, the dream of being a billionaire is gone. I am not going to turn it down if I have the opportunity but I am not going to chase it either. There are people who spend their lives chasing things they will never have, and that's okay for some people because some people enjoy the chase more than they enjoy the actual achievement. I think in all honesty that is why some people are single and will always be single, because they like everything leading up to the actual relationship. Once they reach it they lose interest.
I'm not depressed about getting older because older guys are the kind that are more likely to want the same as me. Younger gay guys don't want commitment. I've always been attracted to older guys, I've never had any interest in anyone younger than me. In many ways that was a saving grace for me as it let me escape the pitfalls of the guys mentioned above. I have more to look forward to with age and more opportunity than I did when I was younger and one of the sad things I have to admit is that when younger people cry that nobody takes you serious when you are young, is actually true. People do take your opinion and what you have to say more seriously the older you get. It's sad and dismissive but it is still true.
Being Different
When you are young you are told that being different is bad. You are told that you should try and fit in. You should try and make friends by finding people that you have things in common with. You are conditioned to succumb to peer pressure and to walk, talk, and act, like everyone else. Being different is punished, often with exclusion, bullying, harassment and in some cases physically.
Being different is something that you quickly learn you don't want to be. Some people don't conform and they stand out at all costs, and sadly they often end up enduring the most pain. The irony is that those people are stronger than everyone else and they are ahead of their time in accepting something that when they get older they will realise other people were jealous of them for. It's hard to get a kid to believe you when you tell them that others are jealous of them when they are being bullied but it is true.
When you get older what you are told gradually changes until you reach a point where you are being told the exact opposite. From a time when you were a kid being told you need to fit in and conform and be the same as everyone else you come to a time when you are told you need to be different, you need to stand out, and you need to compete. You are prepared for the world of work and coached for interviews with advice like "make yourself memorable" and "make an impression", and "be bold, be different, make them remember you more than anyone else" which all flies in the face of what you were conditioned to believe for most of your life up until that point.
If you think our schools don't teach people what they need to learn to be able to get a job and to be able to do anything of merit then you are right, but the contents of the curriculum are a tiny portion of the problem with the school systems we have in place. The entire learning environment is fucked up beyond recognition as anything but constructive. School is the antithesis of the working world. The bulk of what you learn you will never use, neither in your job nor in your personal life. The emphasis and the importance placed on these things is undue and unwarranted. When you have a system like this it is no wonder that the majority of people don't want to be there.
If I was to reform the school system the first thing I would do would be to encourage individuality and choice. I would do that by making simple changes. Scrap uniforms entirely and let students wear whatever they like. You need to be comfortable to be productive. Extend the range of subjects offered on a much larger scale and make classes elective. Instead of offering a set curriculum, offer the 3 core subjects of English, Maths and Science, adding a fourth for ICT, and then make students pick the subjects they want to do with them. This privilege is something at present is only afforded to students attending University, College, Sixth Form, or doing elective GCSEs in their final years of High School or Secondary school. That's not enough, spending years before that opportunity learning things you will never use is wasted time and effort and ultimately it causes resentment. Students need to be given greater say in what they want to learn from a much younger age.
If you want to prepare children for the real world you need to stop filling their heads with lies and useless information, completely change their negative environment and turn it into something positive and constructive. If you want creativity you need to nurture it, not stifle it and suffocate it under a shroud of regulation and conformity.
Being different is something that you quickly learn you don't want to be. Some people don't conform and they stand out at all costs, and sadly they often end up enduring the most pain. The irony is that those people are stronger than everyone else and they are ahead of their time in accepting something that when they get older they will realise other people were jealous of them for. It's hard to get a kid to believe you when you tell them that others are jealous of them when they are being bullied but it is true.
When you get older what you are told gradually changes until you reach a point where you are being told the exact opposite. From a time when you were a kid being told you need to fit in and conform and be the same as everyone else you come to a time when you are told you need to be different, you need to stand out, and you need to compete. You are prepared for the world of work and coached for interviews with advice like "make yourself memorable" and "make an impression", and "be bold, be different, make them remember you more than anyone else" which all flies in the face of what you were conditioned to believe for most of your life up until that point.
If you think our schools don't teach people what they need to learn to be able to get a job and to be able to do anything of merit then you are right, but the contents of the curriculum are a tiny portion of the problem with the school systems we have in place. The entire learning environment is fucked up beyond recognition as anything but constructive. School is the antithesis of the working world. The bulk of what you learn you will never use, neither in your job nor in your personal life. The emphasis and the importance placed on these things is undue and unwarranted. When you have a system like this it is no wonder that the majority of people don't want to be there.
If I was to reform the school system the first thing I would do would be to encourage individuality and choice. I would do that by making simple changes. Scrap uniforms entirely and let students wear whatever they like. You need to be comfortable to be productive. Extend the range of subjects offered on a much larger scale and make classes elective. Instead of offering a set curriculum, offer the 3 core subjects of English, Maths and Science, adding a fourth for ICT, and then make students pick the subjects they want to do with them. This privilege is something at present is only afforded to students attending University, College, Sixth Form, or doing elective GCSEs in their final years of High School or Secondary school. That's not enough, spending years before that opportunity learning things you will never use is wasted time and effort and ultimately it causes resentment. Students need to be given greater say in what they want to learn from a much younger age.
If you want to prepare children for the real world you need to stop filling their heads with lies and useless information, completely change their negative environment and turn it into something positive and constructive. If you want creativity you need to nurture it, not stifle it and suffocate it under a shroud of regulation and conformity.
World War 3
So I made a few tweets about this but I wanted to go into more detail and explain a few things.
The general election in the UK on May 7th was won by the Conservative Party [The Tories] with a majority. That was something not many people, if anyone, was expecting. In the run up to the election the polls suggested a hung parliament. Even those who voted Tory in the election were not expecting a majority they thought at best it would be a coalition. The exit poll on the day that was conducted showed this would be the case too however the outcome we now know was a majority.
Let me first say I can see a case for red or blue in our elections, and I would consider myself a swing voter. I consider policy first and foremost and the reason I was opposed to this government was because of policy, not the fact that it was blue. I am fiscally conservative and believe there are substantial cuts that need to be made but I believe they need to be made in a socially responsible way which I do not believe they have been in the last 5 years nor do I believe they will be in the next 5 years.
I am not being a sore loser with this election either, I am genuinely intrigued over the outcome and to me something does not add up. This was only exacerbated when I learned after the election that a month ago a van was stolen in London with 200,000 blank postal ballots and that a number of constituencies had raised concerns over a "last minute" rush of postal ballots. There are various rumours and assertions that connect these two incidents and while I am not entirely convinced myself I am quite disturbed by the fact that the Tories gained 37 seats with a collective margin of 250,000 votes, narrow down to 30 seats and you hit 200,000 petty much on the nail.
The mathematical possibility that the election was rigged is valid. The real world application of this theory owing to the way in which postal votes work in the UK is also valid and entirely possible. There were also postal ballots sent out which did not include candidates from UKIP, Labour and The Greens. These are all very concerning.
We can move on from that for a moment and consider any real reason why anyone would want to steal our election. The sadistic argument of wanting to rob from the poor and give to the rich while it might be altruistic to uphold and decry, the reality is that the possible reasons lie beyond our borders. Within the last few years, the growing hostility of Russia has been a cause for concern for many in Europe. The invasion of Georgia and annexation of Ossetta. The invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. The provocative flights of Russian fighter planes over UK airspace. These are all acts of hostility. In response whether you choose to acknowledge it or not we have retaliated through economic warfare. Russia is being brought to its knees very slowly. Economic sanctions, together with the fall in oil prices which are influenced heavily by western nations can not be denied to have a negative impact on Russia.
The United States has begun the process of lifting sanctions on Cuba which lasted decades and taken steps towards restoring diplomatic relations. This is not for want of peace or reconciliation, this is purely strategic in an effort to avoid another Cuban Missile Crisis. There is a full scale war coming between Russia and the EU and by association, NATO.
What bearing does this have an UK elections? Very little other than one key point - the Brexit. The Brexit [British Exit] from the EU will come before a full scale war for a number of reasons. First and foremost is financial. The UK is not a part of the Euro, however it is not free from influence from the European Central Bank, and as a member of the EU it is adversely affected by any negative economic activity within the EU. There is also the cause for concern over immigration as one of the western most nations of the EU in the event of a war with Russia many would seek to put as much distance as they can. There is also the case for funding. The UK remains to be one of the largest economies in Europe and despite everything our press likes to report and convince us of otherwise the plain and simple truth is we are not broke. We are considerably rich, our credit rating although not AAA with all agencies still remains high. Our spending on defence is also one of the highest in Europe.
If there is a war coming with Russia it is in the best interest of the UK and the rest of Europe for us to be outside the EU when it happens. I will admit this may seem convoluted to some people and crazy to others. Conspiracy theories exist for a reason. They are most often based in a modicum of truth. "If it was true we would know, someone would have said" - this argument is fundamentally flawed by virtue of the fact that you do not believe anyone who speaks anything other than what you already believe to be true. "A person who believes a lie will fall deaf to the truth no matter how loud it is spoken"
The general election in the UK on May 7th was won by the Conservative Party [The Tories] with a majority. That was something not many people, if anyone, was expecting. In the run up to the election the polls suggested a hung parliament. Even those who voted Tory in the election were not expecting a majority they thought at best it would be a coalition. The exit poll on the day that was conducted showed this would be the case too however the outcome we now know was a majority.
Let me first say I can see a case for red or blue in our elections, and I would consider myself a swing voter. I consider policy first and foremost and the reason I was opposed to this government was because of policy, not the fact that it was blue. I am fiscally conservative and believe there are substantial cuts that need to be made but I believe they need to be made in a socially responsible way which I do not believe they have been in the last 5 years nor do I believe they will be in the next 5 years.
I am not being a sore loser with this election either, I am genuinely intrigued over the outcome and to me something does not add up. This was only exacerbated when I learned after the election that a month ago a van was stolen in London with 200,000 blank postal ballots and that a number of constituencies had raised concerns over a "last minute" rush of postal ballots. There are various rumours and assertions that connect these two incidents and while I am not entirely convinced myself I am quite disturbed by the fact that the Tories gained 37 seats with a collective margin of 250,000 votes, narrow down to 30 seats and you hit 200,000 petty much on the nail.
The mathematical possibility that the election was rigged is valid. The real world application of this theory owing to the way in which postal votes work in the UK is also valid and entirely possible. There were also postal ballots sent out which did not include candidates from UKIP, Labour and The Greens. These are all very concerning.
We can move on from that for a moment and consider any real reason why anyone would want to steal our election. The sadistic argument of wanting to rob from the poor and give to the rich while it might be altruistic to uphold and decry, the reality is that the possible reasons lie beyond our borders. Within the last few years, the growing hostility of Russia has been a cause for concern for many in Europe. The invasion of Georgia and annexation of Ossetta. The invasion of Ukraine and annexation of Crimea. The provocative flights of Russian fighter planes over UK airspace. These are all acts of hostility. In response whether you choose to acknowledge it or not we have retaliated through economic warfare. Russia is being brought to its knees very slowly. Economic sanctions, together with the fall in oil prices which are influenced heavily by western nations can not be denied to have a negative impact on Russia.
The United States has begun the process of lifting sanctions on Cuba which lasted decades and taken steps towards restoring diplomatic relations. This is not for want of peace or reconciliation, this is purely strategic in an effort to avoid another Cuban Missile Crisis. There is a full scale war coming between Russia and the EU and by association, NATO.
What bearing does this have an UK elections? Very little other than one key point - the Brexit. The Brexit [British Exit] from the EU will come before a full scale war for a number of reasons. First and foremost is financial. The UK is not a part of the Euro, however it is not free from influence from the European Central Bank, and as a member of the EU it is adversely affected by any negative economic activity within the EU. There is also the cause for concern over immigration as one of the western most nations of the EU in the event of a war with Russia many would seek to put as much distance as they can. There is also the case for funding. The UK remains to be one of the largest economies in Europe and despite everything our press likes to report and convince us of otherwise the plain and simple truth is we are not broke. We are considerably rich, our credit rating although not AAA with all agencies still remains high. Our spending on defence is also one of the highest in Europe.
If there is a war coming with Russia it is in the best interest of the UK and the rest of Europe for us to be outside the EU when it happens. I will admit this may seem convoluted to some people and crazy to others. Conspiracy theories exist for a reason. They are most often based in a modicum of truth. "If it was true we would know, someone would have said" - this argument is fundamentally flawed by virtue of the fact that you do not believe anyone who speaks anything other than what you already believe to be true. "A person who believes a lie will fall deaf to the truth no matter how loud it is spoken"
What would you want to achieve in 600 years?
Lifespans are an interesting attribute of a species. They don't always correlate to size and they don't conform to any great extent at all. Some animals live for hours, some for days, and some for only a few years. Our own lifespans vary by country. The life expectancy of someone here in the UK for example is 81.5 years, while the USA is 78.7 years, and in Russia it is 70.5 years. The lowest life expectancy in the world is 38 years in Sierra Leone and the highest is 84.6 years in Japan.
Our life expectancy changes over time, and while today we live relatively long in comparison to historical figures, it's still relatively short in comparison to some forms of life on Earth. A Redwood tree for example can live for thousands of years and the oldest tree in the world is thought to be a Bristlecone pine tree at an approximate age of 5,000 years.
Our lives are incredibly short by comparison but given all we accomplish within them and given what we are expected to do within the time we are alive you have to ask yourself the question of how long you would actually want to live to as a species. Increasing the pension age is something that often results in riots, not just here in the UK but around the world too. Yet as our lifespans lengthen and we live longer, the system we have becomes unaffordable unless you expect people to work longer before they can claim it. I'll discard the fact that 95% of people deplete their entire contribution within 3 years of claiming their pension as that is an entire post by itself; but if you maintain the system we have and had a life expectancy of say 600 years then the expectation that you would work until you were 560 years old would be real. Would you want to work for so long? Even those with the most hardened work ethic would wince at the thought of spending half a millennium in their job.
All that of course assumes that things would stay as they are, just with larger numbers, but that's not guaranteed either. While you can attribute a lot of our advancement as a race within the last hundred years to the advancement of technology, you can't dismiss that population growth has contributed to many technological innovations, and the collective contributions of that growing population in taxes and purchases have provided the money to fund those innovations. With a far greater population that would result from such long life expectancies you would have to consider what technological advances would come as a result. For one, the desire to live on other planets would become a lot less idealistic and a lot more imperative. Our expansion beyond Earth would be a necessity.
All this brings us back to the question that we started with: What would you want to achieve in 600 years?
Our life expectancy changes over time, and while today we live relatively long in comparison to historical figures, it's still relatively short in comparison to some forms of life on Earth. A Redwood tree for example can live for thousands of years and the oldest tree in the world is thought to be a Bristlecone pine tree at an approximate age of 5,000 years.
Our lives are incredibly short by comparison but given all we accomplish within them and given what we are expected to do within the time we are alive you have to ask yourself the question of how long you would actually want to live to as a species. Increasing the pension age is something that often results in riots, not just here in the UK but around the world too. Yet as our lifespans lengthen and we live longer, the system we have becomes unaffordable unless you expect people to work longer before they can claim it. I'll discard the fact that 95% of people deplete their entire contribution within 3 years of claiming their pension as that is an entire post by itself; but if you maintain the system we have and had a life expectancy of say 600 years then the expectation that you would work until you were 560 years old would be real. Would you want to work for so long? Even those with the most hardened work ethic would wince at the thought of spending half a millennium in their job.
All that of course assumes that things would stay as they are, just with larger numbers, but that's not guaranteed either. While you can attribute a lot of our advancement as a race within the last hundred years to the advancement of technology, you can't dismiss that population growth has contributed to many technological innovations, and the collective contributions of that growing population in taxes and purchases have provided the money to fund those innovations. With a far greater population that would result from such long life expectancies you would have to consider what technological advances would come as a result. For one, the desire to live on other planets would become a lot less idealistic and a lot more imperative. Our expansion beyond Earth would be a necessity.
All this brings us back to the question that we started with: What would you want to achieve in 600 years?
What do you expect?
I like it when I know what to expect from people. It quells disappointment when you don't expect more than they can ever give you. The trouble is when you expect very little from people and they still don't give you it, then the disappointment is even greater. There is the argument that you shouldn't expect anything from people at all but in practice that's not that easy to do. If you don't expect anything positive you inevitably expect the negatives instead which isn't a particularly comfortable outlook to have on life.
You might argue that you shouldn't expect anything positive or negative but that in itself is not possible either because the idea that you should expect "nothing" is a logical fallacy, you can't expect something that doesn't exist, you come to the conclusion that expecting neither positive nor negative means you should expect neutrality - for things to stay the same. Life is forever changing, nothing in life ever stays the same forever, expecting things to stay the same is as fruitless as expecting the positives or the negatives.
So what should you expect? There is the last grasp offering in the argument to say that you shouldn't have expectations at all. That doesn't hold up in practice either, not unless you're going to be incredibly isolationist and incredibly self centred to the point where you don't have input from anyone at all. Otherwise your plans and your goals inexorably include how you think other people will react and by virtue therefore your expectations. In other words you have to expect something.
Is it possible to become so self centred? Unless you are completely self sufficient then the answer is resoundedly no. So that brings us back to square one, what do you expect? What should you expect? Even if you were to become completely isolationist the problem with that mentality is that you still have at least one expectation from people - you expect to be left alone.
I think, therefore I am. Addendum: People exist, therefore I must expect something of people.
You might argue that you shouldn't expect anything positive or negative but that in itself is not possible either because the idea that you should expect "nothing" is a logical fallacy, you can't expect something that doesn't exist, you come to the conclusion that expecting neither positive nor negative means you should expect neutrality - for things to stay the same. Life is forever changing, nothing in life ever stays the same forever, expecting things to stay the same is as fruitless as expecting the positives or the negatives.
So what should you expect? There is the last grasp offering in the argument to say that you shouldn't have expectations at all. That doesn't hold up in practice either, not unless you're going to be incredibly isolationist and incredibly self centred to the point where you don't have input from anyone at all. Otherwise your plans and your goals inexorably include how you think other people will react and by virtue therefore your expectations. In other words you have to expect something.
Is it possible to become so self centred? Unless you are completely self sufficient then the answer is resoundedly no. So that brings us back to square one, what do you expect? What should you expect? Even if you were to become completely isolationist the problem with that mentality is that you still have at least one expectation from people - you expect to be left alone.
I think, therefore I am. Addendum: People exist, therefore I must expect something of people.
Noah's Ark 2.0
Here's an interesting question for you to ponder. With humans possibly living on Mars within the century, starting small and growing our presence there, inevitably as we build an ecosystem we'll have to start bringing animals to Mars with us. Bearing in mind only the animals we bring with us would exist on that planet you have an interesting position where you inherit the mantle of Noah.
Regardless of whether or not you believe the story of Noah and the Ark, the principle remains quite simple to understand. In order to preserve the animal kingdom he selected 2 of every animal. In reality if we were going to take animals to Mars we would likely need to bring more than 2 of each kind for a number of reasons but the most pressing being the fact they will die eventually and 2 alone is not that much secure in terms of preseving their species. As for which animals you bring, that's what I want you to think about. Would you bring every species of animal? Is that even possible given the fact we continue to discover new species and classify them to this day. Which animals are the most important and for what purpose would we bring them? Food is perhaps the most obvious but there are other uses for animals depending on how far we can advance an ecosystem of our own design.
I am sure there are a few animals on Earth people have wanted to wipe out - I am not talking about cute and cuddly animals, I mean the annoying ones that people kill every day, mice, rats, flies, wasps etc. Animals that for the most part are generally referred to as pests or vermin. You have the opportunity to colonise a planet with the complete absence of those animals, and given the fact evolution takes a very long time, they would not evolve on Mars with our presence there. So that brings us back to the main question. If we were to gather animals to be placed inside an Ark to travel to Mars, what animals would you want to bring?
Regardless of whether or not you believe the story of Noah and the Ark, the principle remains quite simple to understand. In order to preserve the animal kingdom he selected 2 of every animal. In reality if we were going to take animals to Mars we would likely need to bring more than 2 of each kind for a number of reasons but the most pressing being the fact they will die eventually and 2 alone is not that much secure in terms of preseving their species. As for which animals you bring, that's what I want you to think about. Would you bring every species of animal? Is that even possible given the fact we continue to discover new species and classify them to this day. Which animals are the most important and for what purpose would we bring them? Food is perhaps the most obvious but there are other uses for animals depending on how far we can advance an ecosystem of our own design.
I am sure there are a few animals on Earth people have wanted to wipe out - I am not talking about cute and cuddly animals, I mean the annoying ones that people kill every day, mice, rats, flies, wasps etc. Animals that for the most part are generally referred to as pests or vermin. You have the opportunity to colonise a planet with the complete absence of those animals, and given the fact evolution takes a very long time, they would not evolve on Mars with our presence there. So that brings us back to the main question. If we were to gather animals to be placed inside an Ark to travel to Mars, what animals would you want to bring?
Can you stay friends with an ex?
I asked a question on twitter which was playing on my mind. "Can you stay friends with an ex?" - The responses varied which I was not expecting, but in the end it was pretty much a 50/50 split of yes and no. I've been thinking about this a lot and I have come to a few conclusions.
We expect different things from our friends than we do from our other half. We expect more from our other half in many ways than we expect from our friends and in many ways we do more for them than we do for our friends. Whilst the gap may not be that wide, for some people, particularly those friends who are very close, it is rare that a friend trumps the other half. Maybe in the early days of dating, and with a few extreme examples later in the relationship too. However the deeper you get into a relationship the more the gap widens.
When you split from someone there's a change in the dynamic of your relationship. Some might call it a demotion, or for the sports minded, a relegation. Either way when that change occurs what you expect from them has to change too. If it doesn't then you will end up in a situation where you want more from them than they should or, would give you. Likewise what they expect from you will change too. Ultimately the person who wanted to break up, even if it was mutual, the person that suggested or implied they wanted to break up will inevitably be the one who makes this relegation first. That leaves the other to make the same change. Therein lies the problem, the person who wanted to break up will not have made the decision on the spare of the moment, it will have been something they had been thinking for some time. That invariably means they are more prepared and move quicker in accepting the change than the one who was not expecting it.
Whichever side you are on one thing is key and that is communication. If you want to stay friends then you both need to be clear about how you feel and share without holding back. The one who initiated needs to recognise the other will have to take time to process it which will be extended and prolonged by staying in contact. That doesn't mean cutting them off is the right thing to do, that will often end the friendship entirely, no if you want to stay friends you above all need to have patience.
If you are the other and you were not expecting it you need to come to terms with a lot of things, and in many ways the stages of grief need to be passed through, maybe not all of them. Anger will happen whether you direct it at them or away from them. Denial too, and eventually bargaining as you try to reason why things didn't work out and maybe try and resolve that to restore the relationship. The final goal is acceptance but whether you get that depends entirely on communication between you both.
The one who was not expecting it needs to accept that the relationship has changed, and they have to change what they expect from it. That will also mean you have to change what you give, as giving more than you will ever get back in the hopes of reciprocation is akin to unrequited love and that breeds resentment and sadly paves a path to depression.
Taking time apart will be tempting for the one who initiated the breakup, but this will end the friendship entirely. You need to realise in that moment the other is at their most vulnerable, they are hurt, and if you walk away from them when they are like that rather than stay with them and work things through as friends, then you are no friend and you never will be. This is like shooting someone in the leg, and walking away whilst saying you need space and you'll leave them to recover.
On the counter argument some will have that some relationships don't end with intentional breakup it only happens after a pivotal moment such as cheating; I would argue the person who cheated initiated it when they cheated. However long that was before you find out. Someone who is truly happy and content in a relationship will not cheat. If they are disloyal it is because they do not value the relationship as they once did - if they ever did. That change in mindset won't happen on the spur of the moment either, it will be premeditated. How that manifests itself in actions however can vary. Impulsive decisions whilst they can be dismissed as a slip, only occur when your footing is not certain. For someone to slide down a hill they need to be standing on the slope already, or make the conscious choice to walk onto it.
In all scenarios the same conclusion is drawn. The dynamic shifts and you both need to accept that. You will need patience and you will need communication if you are to stay friends. If you forego either, your friendship will breakup too.
We expect different things from our friends than we do from our other half. We expect more from our other half in many ways than we expect from our friends and in many ways we do more for them than we do for our friends. Whilst the gap may not be that wide, for some people, particularly those friends who are very close, it is rare that a friend trumps the other half. Maybe in the early days of dating, and with a few extreme examples later in the relationship too. However the deeper you get into a relationship the more the gap widens.
When you split from someone there's a change in the dynamic of your relationship. Some might call it a demotion, or for the sports minded, a relegation. Either way when that change occurs what you expect from them has to change too. If it doesn't then you will end up in a situation where you want more from them than they should or, would give you. Likewise what they expect from you will change too. Ultimately the person who wanted to break up, even if it was mutual, the person that suggested or implied they wanted to break up will inevitably be the one who makes this relegation first. That leaves the other to make the same change. Therein lies the problem, the person who wanted to break up will not have made the decision on the spare of the moment, it will have been something they had been thinking for some time. That invariably means they are more prepared and move quicker in accepting the change than the one who was not expecting it.
Whichever side you are on one thing is key and that is communication. If you want to stay friends then you both need to be clear about how you feel and share without holding back. The one who initiated needs to recognise the other will have to take time to process it which will be extended and prolonged by staying in contact. That doesn't mean cutting them off is the right thing to do, that will often end the friendship entirely, no if you want to stay friends you above all need to have patience.
If you are the other and you were not expecting it you need to come to terms with a lot of things, and in many ways the stages of grief need to be passed through, maybe not all of them. Anger will happen whether you direct it at them or away from them. Denial too, and eventually bargaining as you try to reason why things didn't work out and maybe try and resolve that to restore the relationship. The final goal is acceptance but whether you get that depends entirely on communication between you both.
The one who was not expecting it needs to accept that the relationship has changed, and they have to change what they expect from it. That will also mean you have to change what you give, as giving more than you will ever get back in the hopes of reciprocation is akin to unrequited love and that breeds resentment and sadly paves a path to depression.
Taking time apart will be tempting for the one who initiated the breakup, but this will end the friendship entirely. You need to realise in that moment the other is at their most vulnerable, they are hurt, and if you walk away from them when they are like that rather than stay with them and work things through as friends, then you are no friend and you never will be. This is like shooting someone in the leg, and walking away whilst saying you need space and you'll leave them to recover.
On the counter argument some will have that some relationships don't end with intentional breakup it only happens after a pivotal moment such as cheating; I would argue the person who cheated initiated it when they cheated. However long that was before you find out. Someone who is truly happy and content in a relationship will not cheat. If they are disloyal it is because they do not value the relationship as they once did - if they ever did. That change in mindset won't happen on the spur of the moment either, it will be premeditated. How that manifests itself in actions however can vary. Impulsive decisions whilst they can be dismissed as a slip, only occur when your footing is not certain. For someone to slide down a hill they need to be standing on the slope already, or make the conscious choice to walk onto it.
In all scenarios the same conclusion is drawn. The dynamic shifts and you both need to accept that. You will need patience and you will need communication if you are to stay friends. If you forego either, your friendship will breakup too.
What would you say to an animal if it could understand you?
If animals could talk what would they say? Or would you be more interested in what you could say to them, if they could understand you perfectly? I think we would be quite surprised by what animals think. I do believe they can think, to what extent they are self-aware however I think is debatable, but one thing is for sure, some animals show positive signs of intelligence.
The idea of being able to communicate with animals might seem a little farcical and hark of a Disney movie or something from Doctor Dolittle but technology is advancing that allows us to talk to other people who don't understand our language through digital interpreters and translation, the same research has been carried out on communicating with animals and while most of it is inconclusive and is still in its infancy the question arises as with any fledgeling technology - what would you do with it?
Human being have used animals throughout history for all sorts of tasks. Security, safety, defence, transportation, companionship, to name but a few. The time it takes to train these animals in their jobs and the efficiency of the processes would be greatly improved by this technology - it would also allow an animal to literally have a voice on the matter and say whether they really want to do it or not to begin with. While the ethical questions of whether or not animals should be used for work are something we can discuss another day, we can at least say there are some animal jobs such as guide dogs, that are beneficial to people and do not exploit the animals in a way that would cause offense to most people. Whether or not their jobs would improve if they could speak is an interesting question.
The other question to ask here is whether or not creating robots with intelligence would make most animals redundant. While that may make some people happy at the thought of animals no longer being used in this way, there is the obvious issue of preservation that would result if we pursued that route - notably that many animals are alive and in abundance today because we need them. The Chicken for example would likely be extinct by now if it was not edible. There are no wild chickens in the UK anymore except the odd feral bird that escaped; the wild chicken from which the chickens we eat today descended is no longer found here. Likewise if we didn't eat meat at all the question of whether or not cows would be extinct is equally as intriguing. Somehow the idea that they could talk to us makes the possibility of them becoming extinct a little more remote.
The idea of being able to communicate with animals might seem a little farcical and hark of a Disney movie or something from Doctor Dolittle but technology is advancing that allows us to talk to other people who don't understand our language through digital interpreters and translation, the same research has been carried out on communicating with animals and while most of it is inconclusive and is still in its infancy the question arises as with any fledgeling technology - what would you do with it?
Human being have used animals throughout history for all sorts of tasks. Security, safety, defence, transportation, companionship, to name but a few. The time it takes to train these animals in their jobs and the efficiency of the processes would be greatly improved by this technology - it would also allow an animal to literally have a voice on the matter and say whether they really want to do it or not to begin with. While the ethical questions of whether or not animals should be used for work are something we can discuss another day, we can at least say there are some animal jobs such as guide dogs, that are beneficial to people and do not exploit the animals in a way that would cause offense to most people. Whether or not their jobs would improve if they could speak is an interesting question.
The other question to ask here is whether or not creating robots with intelligence would make most animals redundant. While that may make some people happy at the thought of animals no longer being used in this way, there is the obvious issue of preservation that would result if we pursued that route - notably that many animals are alive and in abundance today because we need them. The Chicken for example would likely be extinct by now if it was not edible. There are no wild chickens in the UK anymore except the odd feral bird that escaped; the wild chicken from which the chickens we eat today descended is no longer found here. Likewise if we didn't eat meat at all the question of whether or not cows would be extinct is equally as intriguing. Somehow the idea that they could talk to us makes the possibility of them becoming extinct a little more remote.
Cold
Seven days and all that stays,
Is a beating heart lost in its ways,
The mind has fallen onto its knees,
Not a single task is done with ease,
Every beat is felt deep within your soul,
Every thought that comes carries its own toll,
Life has sent you a test and you have failed,
Your last ship, into the wind it sailed,
The cold winds blow through a summer field,
The warmth ebbs away as the cold won't yield,
An icy hand closes tight upon your heart,
In that moment you're thrown back to the start,
The beating heart slows at a steady pace,
Retiring it wrests from its endless race,
Defeat, accepted at the touch of that bitter hand,
All fight is abandoned as with battles planned,
Silence falls as the heart holds still,
Until it is once again inspired by will,
Motivation is dead may it rest in peace,
For now at least the anguish can cease,
Winter has dawned and with it he brought the cold,
Until Summer's kiss bring forth warmth untold,
Out of sight and mind the heart will hibernate,
Until come the saviour of love before it's too late.
Is a beating heart lost in its ways,
The mind has fallen onto its knees,
Not a single task is done with ease,
Every beat is felt deep within your soul,
Every thought that comes carries its own toll,
Life has sent you a test and you have failed,
Your last ship, into the wind it sailed,
The cold winds blow through a summer field,
The warmth ebbs away as the cold won't yield,
An icy hand closes tight upon your heart,
In that moment you're thrown back to the start,
The beating heart slows at a steady pace,
Retiring it wrests from its endless race,
Defeat, accepted at the touch of that bitter hand,
All fight is abandoned as with battles planned,
Silence falls as the heart holds still,
Until it is once again inspired by will,
Motivation is dead may it rest in peace,
For now at least the anguish can cease,
Winter has dawned and with it he brought the cold,
Until Summer's kiss bring forth warmth untold,
Out of sight and mind the heart will hibernate,
Until come the saviour of love before it's too late.
Veritaserum
In the Universe of Harry Potter there exists a potion called Veritaserum which when consumed forces the drinker to answer truthfully any question put to them. In the 1997 Jim Carey Movie 'Liar Liar' the main character finds himself unable to tell any lies and is forced to tell the truth with mixed results, some hilarious some truly cringe-worthy.
Imagine if you will, a world where it was not possible to lie. Before we continue we need to clarify your definition of a lie. While most people will agree it is the intentional act of misleading through false information, we get into a grey area when we consider refusal to answer. For example if asked a question you know the answer to and you do not reply at all, would you consider that to be lying? While the more pedantic among you will insist it is not, they may still agree it is deceptive to withhold information - to the point where in a court of law withholding information is as bad as lying outright. Some will refer to this as a lie of ommission. As for the argument that not answering the question does not count as a lie, this gets complicated by the idea that you need to ask a question for it to be considered lying; a husband who cheats on his wife without her knowing and therefore she never asked if he was, would still be lying to her by having an affair and hiding it.
If we lived in a world where we could only tell the truth and we could not fail to answer any question when put to us, then the world we live in would be a very different place. For one, Politicians would become a very rare breed, albeit they already are to an extent, the career choice would become even less desirable than it already is. Other jobs would be made a lot easier however as court cases for all manner of trials would be settled in a fraction of the time.
The question you have to ask yourself to be incredibly corny is whether or not you think you could handle the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time. To give yourself a better idea of what that would mean then think of 6 questions. These questions should be 3 for yourself and 3 for other people. The 3 for yourself should be 3 questions you would never want to answer. The 3 for someone else should be 3 questions you would like to know the answer to with complete certainty that the answers you will get is the complete truth. Think of the possible answers to both and whether or not you would actually want to know and want other people to know.
Imagine if you will, a world where it was not possible to lie. Before we continue we need to clarify your definition of a lie. While most people will agree it is the intentional act of misleading through false information, we get into a grey area when we consider refusal to answer. For example if asked a question you know the answer to and you do not reply at all, would you consider that to be lying? While the more pedantic among you will insist it is not, they may still agree it is deceptive to withhold information - to the point where in a court of law withholding information is as bad as lying outright. Some will refer to this as a lie of ommission. As for the argument that not answering the question does not count as a lie, this gets complicated by the idea that you need to ask a question for it to be considered lying; a husband who cheats on his wife without her knowing and therefore she never asked if he was, would still be lying to her by having an affair and hiding it.
If we lived in a world where we could only tell the truth and we could not fail to answer any question when put to us, then the world we live in would be a very different place. For one, Politicians would become a very rare breed, albeit they already are to an extent, the career choice would become even less desirable than it already is. Other jobs would be made a lot easier however as court cases for all manner of trials would be settled in a fraction of the time.
The question you have to ask yourself to be incredibly corny is whether or not you think you could handle the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, all the time. To give yourself a better idea of what that would mean then think of 6 questions. These questions should be 3 for yourself and 3 for other people. The 3 for yourself should be 3 questions you would never want to answer. The 3 for someone else should be 3 questions you would like to know the answer to with complete certainty that the answers you will get is the complete truth. Think of the possible answers to both and whether or not you would actually want to know and want other people to know.
Heartbeat
Blood flows within your heart, but for whom does it beat? Does it beat for you or does it beat for another? One who makes it race as you give chase or one who makes it stop with a fleeting glance?
That moment of passion without touch, the connection.
Your eyes meet and your heart stops, for that one moment your breath is taken away and they are all you see.
Your body fills with anticipation, warmth envelopes you.
Every hair on your body stands on end as you feel a rush you have never felt before.
They are the one.
They smile and your heart jumps, swooning it fills over capacity to the point where it might burst right out of your chest but then it contracts so fast the blood flows faster than it has ever flowed before and you are in that one moment bereft of worry, of sorrow, of any and all thoughts other than him and there in that moment you are consumed with ecstasy.
Your mind elevates and reaches Euphoria, your consciousness heightens and suddenly you snap back from one extreme to the other, from feeling nothing at all to feeling everything at once.
Every inch of your body you feel, your eyes widen, your heart struggles to steady itself, your breath rushes back to you as if you had just rose up from the deepest ocean starving for air.
The rush slows and your body regains composure but your heart is out for the count, spent for the moment, for now.
That moment of passion without touch, the connection.
Your eyes meet and your heart stops, for that one moment your breath is taken away and they are all you see.
Your body fills with anticipation, warmth envelopes you.
Every hair on your body stands on end as you feel a rush you have never felt before.
They are the one.
They smile and your heart jumps, swooning it fills over capacity to the point where it might burst right out of your chest but then it contracts so fast the blood flows faster than it has ever flowed before and you are in that one moment bereft of worry, of sorrow, of any and all thoughts other than him and there in that moment you are consumed with ecstasy.
Your mind elevates and reaches Euphoria, your consciousness heightens and suddenly you snap back from one extreme to the other, from feeling nothing at all to feeling everything at once.
Every inch of your body you feel, your eyes widen, your heart struggles to steady itself, your breath rushes back to you as if you had just rose up from the deepest ocean starving for air.
The rush slows and your body regains composure but your heart is out for the count, spent for the moment, for now.
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