Monday Links

• The above map shows the likelihood of a child from the bottom fifth of the income distribution rising into the top fifth, and is from a fascinating article about the geography of income inequality in the NYT.  The underlying study is available, and you can get the raw data there too.
• Shipping goods from western China to Europe by rail.  This seems like an interesting development as it might help China to continue developing its interior, which lags considerably behind the big coastal cities.
• Interesting op-ed on the difficulties of growing food in the climate of the future with increasingly severe and prolonged heat waves.
• Last year's collapse in natural gas prices appears to be over:

Friday Links

• The above is New York's real-time wholesale electricity prices showing the effect of the current heat wave in the North East.
• The challenges of making changes to the US electric grid, which has over 500 owners.  This subject is really important to our ability to transition to a carbon neutral economy.
• New startups working on energy storage options.
• Juan Cole has some interesting thoughts on automation and globalization in the context of Detroit.
• Finally, Paul Krugman has a column arguing that China is hitting the wall.  Some of the assertions in there I'm not too sure about.  For example, arguing that China is running out of peasants seems inconsistent with the fact that urbanization is still only 50%, versus 80%+ in developed countries.  For context, below are the GDP growth data (annual through 2010, quarterly after that).  While it's clear that China is slowing down somewhat relative to the mid 2000s peak, it's still a high growth rate by the standards of any other country.  This is far from a hard landing, at least for now.

US Oil Rig Count and Oil Production

Monday Links

• The above is European industrial production.  Things were looking a bit more positive for a few months, but the last month's data is down again.  Retail trade was a bit better though - see graph at bottom.
• It doesn't matter where in the world we do it, killing people without proper due process will brand us as hypocrites and do us far more harm than good in the long run.
• Solar panel plant in Nevada canceled due to lack of demand.  If you as an individual don't yet buy your electricity from renewable generators, but could, now would be a great time.  This also suggests it's time to up the renewable portfolio standards in some of the states.
• Nation states now the major buyers of computer vulnerabilities, says the NYT.
• European retail trade:

Finally, I'm back from vacation so blogging should improve.

Monthly Oil Supply Graphs

Wednesday Links

• The NSA is recording and storing one billion cellphone calls per day.
• Wow on the diversion of the Bolivian President's flight so his plane could be searched for Edward Snowden.  Suddenly Julian Assange doesn't sound so paranoid any more.  I think we are all getting an object lesson here in how the world really works, and it's not pretty at all.
• Glenn Greenwald's speech on meeting Snowden worth reading in full.
• Morsi government in Egypt overthrown by military.  More unrest in Middle East is not great for the rest of us, but of course the main hope would be for a decent life for the Egyptian people.  I'ts very unfortunate that it has come to this.
• And the Oil Drum is closing down for new content.  That was where I first started blogging back in 2005.  Sad to see it go (though I confess I haven't been a regular reader in a number of years).

Finally, I mentioned the other day that I was using Vienna to read news.  It turns out that Vienna was in the background relying on Google Reader in ways that I didn't realize.  It totally fell apart and became useless once Google Reader was turned off.  Grrr.  It may take me a while to have a functioning blog reader set-up again.

Randy Udall, RIP

Randy Udall died last week while on a backpacking trip in the Wind River Range of Wyoming.  His body has just been found after an extensive search.

Randy was a co-founder of ASPO-USA.  I certainly didn't know him well enough to attempt a proper obituary, but I will say that he was a regular reader of this blog, and frequently emailed me with thoughts or questions or interesting links.  I always felt it an honor that someone like him found my blog worth his time.  I had met him a number of times at ASPO meetings and he had impressed me as one of the finer human beings I have known.  He was very smart and knowledgeable about the world, but retained an almost childlike quality of enthusiasm for it.  He was funny, charming, and had a knack for finding unique ways to communicate his concern for this planet we share.

I am deeply saddened at the news of his passing, too soon, at the age of 61.

Monday Links

• Above is European/Eurozone unemployment.  Still not stabilizing.
• Europe is really, really steamed over US spying now.  Spying on your friends and allies is not the greatest idea.  French greens are pressing for Snowden to be given asylum in France (you heard it here first). "The Americans justify everything with combatting terrorism," said the Luxembourg foreign minister, Jean Asselborn, who on Sunday described the latest allegations as disgusting. "The EU and its diplomats are not terrorists."  And this:  The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said in a statement that he was “deeply worried and shocked.” He added, “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on E.U.-U.S. relations.”  Does anyone seriously doubt that these allegations will prove true?
• On a side note, this situation is going to be very bad for Britain's relations with Europe also.  The British appear to have been functioning as very important enablers of American spying, and this is not going to forgotten or forgiven quickly by the Germans, French, etc.  (Of course, I don't doubt that the French at least are up to their ears in their own version of this stuff too).
• NY Times confirms that Snowden was involved in cyber-offense for the US government.  I first hypothesized that this must have been the situation three weeks ago.  The tone of the NY Times coverage is starting to shift.  They are realizing that the Obama administration has been materially dishonest in this area and therefore its denials cannot be trusted going forward.  The linked piece has a good discussion of the weakness of the administration's shifting defenses.
• Washington Post is also realizing it's been lied to.
• Egypt is definitely falling apart again.

Weekend Links

• Aligning CEO pay with long term innovation performance.  This piece resonated with me, as I found innovation systematically undervalued in the corporate world, as a result of the focus on near term results.  (But then, as an inventor myself, perhaps it's not surprising that I would think that).
• Is Miami doomed?
• US is engaged in major spying against the EU and many of the European countries including France and Italy.  I'm sure that's going to go over really great in Europe...  Maybe Snowden can get asylum in France by the time the dust settles?  I think US moral standing in the world will take a permanent hit from all these revelations.  Not a fatal one of course, but a material one.  I don't blame Snowden at all, but rather the successive US administrations that decided to engage in all these behaviors in secret.  The truth was bound to come out eventually.
• Morsi government in Egypt threatened?

Finally, a note that the demise of Google Reader is upon us.  I switched to Vienna some time back.  It's fine.

Friday Links

• The above is euro-area construction.  The last month is up slightly, but it's certainly not enough to declare and end to the down-trend.
• The spread between WTI and Brent oil prices continues to narrow (indicating that the infrastructure to bring oil from the US tight oil boom to market is catching up).
• I guess the President has essentially confirmed my theory that Snowden was a hacker for the government.
• NSA surveillance programs considered criminal.
• Chinese wind power company stealing US software and ending up in court.

IPOs Have Accelerated in 2013

Tuesday Links

• Obama climate plan.  It does sound like the administration is planning to take some reasonable steps.  Well, it's not great, but given that there is no hope of congress doing anything, our expectations of a rational response to the situation have gotten very low, and this is much better than nothing.
• Websites in both North and South Korea down due to cyber-attacks.
• Mutually assured destruction in cyber-space.  I think this is an important subject.
• Tundra fires in Siberia, record floods in Alberta, and heatwaves in Alaska.  All is not well in northern climes.

Also, administrivia note: blogging for the rest of this month and in July will be rather intermittent due to various summer/vacation things happening.  Relatively normal levels of blogging should resume around the beginning of August.  However, I'll try to keep at least some post flow so that you don't all abandon ship.

Monday Links

• US offensive cyberwar policy.  Clearly, other nations will respond by doing the same to us (to the extent they haven't already).  One good outcome of these leaks - Bruce Schneier used to be a sceptic who argued that cyberwar was an overhyped threat.  That seems to be changing.
• More surveillance revelations.  It appears that the British government is vacuuming up even more of the world's communications than the US government, but of course, sharing freely with its best friends.
• I agree wholeheartedly with this Glenn Greenwald essay.  I have to say that, in the long tradition of second terms of presidents being consumed with scandals, it now appears that the second Obama term will be consumed with scandals about surveillance and civil liberties.  Given the President's extremely poor record and attitude on these subjects, that seems appropriate (and I say this as someone who voted for him in both 2008 and 2012).  It's very unfortunate that the President has been so corrupted by the power of his office.  This is certainly not the change I was hoping for when I first voted for him.

Interest Rates

Wednesday Links

• Above are wheat yields in the UK.  The study above is inconclusive, but clearly one should be concerned about climate change.  The UK has had a particularly marked change in climate in recent years with a level of floods, late snowfall, and other extreme weather that was unknown when I was a child there.  Given that global yields and US yields don't show any sign of bend in the yield curve, perhaps the UK is the canary in the coal mine, and is worth studying more carefully.
• Has motorization in the US peaked?
• President Obama not so popular overseas.
• US coal exports set monthly record.

Tuesday Links

• Above shows European car sales in May for the last ten years.  The graph is not zero-scaled.  Apparently, this last May is a twenty year low.
• I suppose this is standard operating procedure.  Still, I can't help wondering what this kind of thing does to the character of our leaders.
• David Brooks argues that the mind is not the brain.  Looks like he didn't make it to GF 2045 or his column would have been yet more interesting.
• A quarter to a half of all bird species are threatened by climate change.
• Speculation that the NSA is actually getting the content of all US phone calls, not just the metadata.  I still am far from satisfied that we have the full picture here.  I no longer believe anything the administration says on this subject, and I'm not sure how far to think Snowden is exaggerating for effect.

Final Thoughts on the GF 2045 Conference

I ran out of battery in the middle of the last section (with the spiritual leaders), so don't have good notes on what all of them said.  However, I think I can give an overall summary.  The folks from the eastern spiritual traditions all start from a non-materialist perspective in which consciousness is primary in the universe and not necessarily tied to matter.  They claim to have extensive experience, either within their tradition, or personally, or both, in moving consciousness around.  For example, Mahayogi 'Pilot' Baba is reported to have stopped his heart for days at a time and then come back to life (see here for a sceptical take).

So they all seemed willing to credit that it was potentially feasible that western science/technology could create a technological artifact that would support a consciousness (ho hum, we've been doing similar things for centuries, was kind of the perspective).  They were much more concerned with whether or not this would be a good thing employed en-masse by westerners.  They varied in their opinions: Swami Vishnudevananda Giri seemed to be pretty gung-ho (though he cautioned that the scientists who worked on this problem would end up profoundly changed by it), but most of the rest were fairly wary.  Phagyab Rinpoche gave a very eloquent speech in which he basically said it came down to the intent of those developing the technology.  If the goal was genuinely to help reduce the suffering of all beings, then it would probably be ok, but if the main goals were self-serving (eg just for longevity) it would probably give rise to all manner of problems.

That's the part that worries me: in the end, this stuff will be delivered by the technology industry, which is run by executives and investors who are, with some honorable exceptions, overwhelmingly driven by greed and competition.  I think that's going to show in the results.

So how did the conference impact my own thinking (as exemplified here, say)?  I continue to think that machine intelligence that is functionally (ie economically) equivalent to human is on the way.  I continue to think that it's likely to take longer than 30 years to achieve in full.  I continue to think this is going to exert absolutely massive stress on society, and that we should slow down.  The conference has caused me to revise upward my likelihood that scientists will reverse engineer the brain - I was impressed that they can produce a detailed level neuronal map of an entire mouse brain already (although they still can't emulate the complete functional behavior of even the simplest nervous systems).

And I was somewhat intrigued by the quantum mechanics arguments.  I don't have time to go into detail here, but it really is true that quantum mechanics privileges the observer, in such a way that it's not quite clear how to give a quantum-materialistic account of the human brain and mind (at least unless there's been new progress on this in the last couple of decades that I don't know about).  It's not clear to me whether this means that this project is going to run into the limits of materialism in a big way, or that there's just something that we really don't understand about quantum mechanics that the physicists are going to have to fix.

I think better of Dmitry Itskov.  Holding conferences and inviting a broad range of perspectives is at least making this stuff conscious, rather than society just continuing to drive hard in this direction without really talking about where it is that we are going.  I think he deserves credit for hosting a very open discussion.

Last Session of GF 2045

Amit Goswami

Consciousness and the Quantum: Science, Psychology and Spirituality

Technology is good for allowing humans to do what?  Creating free time - what we will do with it?  How will we make a living?  Scientific materialism is a 350 year old world view - not getting us anywhere (environmental problems etc).  Have to change our science.  "Quantum physics liberates the human spirit".  The individual behavior of objects is not determined.  "You are not a machine.  You know this already.  You have been the victim of propaganda."  Quantum activism - humans are capable of change.  "If objects are possibilities, then what makes this object turn into actuality?  All objects are concrete - they don't appear in possible positions."  Reality consists of two things - the domain of wavelike possibility, and the domain of concrete actuality.  In ancient times, people had the same idea - transcendant reality and immanent reality.  Became heaven and earth due to confusion.

GF 2045: Second Sunday Session

Randall Koene

Title: Whole Brain Emulation: Reverse Engineering A Mind.

Trying to take the big picture and look top down at how to understand the mind in order to duplicate.  Motivation for doing this is to avoid external catastrophes (meteorites, supervolcanoes, etc) - make ourselves more adaptable so we can cope with changes.  (Talk about projection - technology is the leading cause of change!)  Goal is to get to substrate independent minds.

Weekend Links

• The NYT has managed to dig up some more color on Snowden.
• Hmmm - since 2009 I've been working under the assumption that Iran's elections were fixed, but that led me to be completely incorrect in predicting this election.  So time to update my beliefs - the 2009 election corruption was a freak?  Ahmadinijad really did win?  The regime decided it needed to moderate this time?  Not sure what to think.
• China is planning to move 250 million rural residents to cities in the next 12 years.  It sounds like farmers are being forced off their land wholesale and into cities at an enormous pace.  Makes enclosure sound positively humane.