Society Is Made of Narrative. Realizing This Is Awakening From The Matrix | Zero Hedge
In the movie The Matrix, humans are imprisoned in a virtual world by a powerful artificial intelligence system in a dystopian future. What they take to be reality is actually a computer program that has been jacked into their brains to keep them in a comatose state. They live their whole lives in that virtual simulation, without any way of knowing that what they appear to be experiencing with their senses is actually made of AI-generated code.
Life in our current society is very much the same. The difference is that instead of AI, it’s psychopathic oligarchs who are keeping us asleep in the Matrix. And instead of code, it’s narrative.
Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix – Caitlin Johnstone
Most human suffering is due to believed mental stories, from the psychological suffering of the individual to the large-scale suffering caused by international power structures who advance violence and oppression via propaganda. We must evolve a new relationship with narrative.
Most people’s lives are dominated by mental story, so whoever can control those stories controls the people. The good news is that all we need to do to reclaim our world from the controllers is to reclaim our stories. The barrier between us and freedom is as thin as a fairy tale.
Scientists find path to ‘holy grail’ of renewables
“Given the increasingly pressing need to find green energy solutions it is no surprise that scientists have, for some time, been hunting for a magical catalyst that would allow us to split water electrochemically in a cost-effective, reliable way,” said [Max] García-Melchor. “However, it is no exaggeration to say that before now such a hunt was akin to looking for a needle in a haystack. We are not over the finishing line yet, but we have significantly reduced the size of the haystack and we are convinced that artificial intelligence will help us hoover up plenty of the remaining hay.”
What Is BERT? – Whiteboard Friday
There’s a lot of hype and misinformation about the new Google algorithm update. What actually is BERT, how does it work, and why does it matter to our work as SEOs? Join our own machine learning and natural language processing expert Britney Muller as she breaks down exactly what BERT is and what it means for the search industry.
Scientists: Human Extinction Is Extremely Likely
And people don’t seem all that bothered by the possibility.
Forget nuclear weapons, biological warfare, and the slew of other ways humanity could cause its own destruction for a moment.
If you take into account only naturally occurring phenomena — supervolcanic eruptions, asteroid impacts, and the like — researchers from the University of Oxford recently determined that the probability of our entire species going extinct in any given year is as high as one in 14,000.
Now consider this: In October, a separate team from Oxford published its own paper on human extinction in the journal Scientific Reports — and it found that people don’t seem to see the loss of humanity as uniquely tragic.
Tags: extinction, research, humanity
The Not-So-Slow Leak
Emigration plays powerfully and violently with identity – it can shred it, dilute it, confuse it, strengthen it (temporarily anyway: distance in space and time, plus acculturation and adaptation to a new country and culture, erodes an emigrant’s grip on their homeland and grasp of its evolution). This is one of the reasons Cuban artists, regardless of genre, lose relevance if they continue creating island/revolution-themed works without returning periodically to recharge and reboot with “Cubaness.” I’m an immigrant and often wonder ‘what am I?!’ as I commit social faux pas in New York – sitting too close, inviting more people into an almost-full elevator, making casual conversation with strangers and eye contact with passersby. Stateside, I catch raised eyebrows as I kiss people hello and goodbye at parties and functions. I suppose similar awkward moments beset Cubans living off-island.
Tags: emigration, immigration, acculturation, identity
What is the Baha’i Faith? An Introduction by Rainn Wilson
This realization formed the genesis of a short 14-minute animated presentation about the Baha’i Faith – a fun, low-key, intimate talk that people can share and discuss. Ok, so maybe it’s not really a conversation, or even really a fireside, (I mean it is a bit one-sided, what with me yappin’ the whole time) but hopefully it’s a conversation and even a fireside starter.
I hope you enjoy this little labor of love, coming out during the sacred bicentenary celebration of the birth of one of the founders of the Baha’i movement, The Bab. Pass it around! Thanks for watching! Special thanks to my collaborators, BahaiTeachings.org, Baha’i Blog and Swiss VBS!
Tags: religion, baha’i faith, spiritual principles
Often cross-posted from Diigo, Flipboard, or Pocket. Click here to see the complete GAVNet Collaborative Curation collection.
Greener Acres Value Network News 