Merkabah

Eventhorizon said:
It is the nature of the universe. Or so I believe from what I have learned.
Click to expand...

Hasn’t there been just as much creation as there has been destruction in the universe?
 
[video=youtube;Vee4HUvi5GQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vee4HUvi5GQ[/video]

Concerning meat and why aliens would likely be aggressive to some extent.
 
Aliens don't necessarily need to be predatory

Terrence McKenna thinks mushrooms might be alien and they live off dead matter

[video=youtube;ljy3TH1T0jk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljy3TH1T0jk[/video]
 
muir said:
Aliens don't necessarily need to be predatory

Terrence McKenna thinks mushrooms might be alien and they live off dead matter

[video=youtube;ljy3TH1T0jk]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljy3TH1T0jk[/video]
Click to expand...

I freaking LOVE sautéed mushrooms!!! Aliens are so tasty....maybe you are right [MENTION=8603]Eventhorizon[/MENTION]...they could eat us I suppose...I guess we shall see...lol.
 
Experiment Proves Why Staying In Tune With The Earth’s Pulse Is Key To Our Well Being

​

The law of biogenesis statesthat life cannot be created from nothing, it is always life that creates life. This profound statement can begin a series of questions into the scientific unknown relating to who or what created human life.

“Omne vivum ex vivo — all life is from life”

​
In 1952 German physicist Professor W.O.Schumann of the Technical University of Munich began attempting to answer whether or not the earth itself has a frequency —a pulse. His assumption about the existence of this frequency came from his understanding that when a sphere exists inside of another sphere there is an electrical tension that is created. Since the negatively charged earth exists inside the positively charged ionosphere, there must be tension between the two, giving the earth a specific frequency. Following his assumptions, through a series of calculations he was able to land upon a frequency he believed was the pulse of the earth.
This frequency was 10hz.


hertz.png

It wasn’t until 1954 when Schumann teamed up with another scientist (Herbert König) and confirmed that resonance of the earth maintained a frequency of 7.83 Hz. This discovery was later tested out by several scientists and confirmed. Since then The Schumann Resonance has been the accepted term used scientifically when one is looking to describe or measure the pulse or heartbeat of the earth.Even though the existence of the Schumann Resonance is an established scientific fact, there remain few scientists who fully understand the importance of this frequency as it relates to life.

In the 1920’s another German scientist, Hans Berger, built an EEG machine himself which led to the first ever recording of frequency transmitted by the brain. While this was a profound discovery on it’s own, it is when we link it to the Schumann resonance that we see an even more profound truth.Dr. Anker Mueller, a colleague of Hans Berger, stumbled across Schumann’s published research results in the journal `Technische Physik.’ Upon reading Schumann’s results about the earths frequency, Dr. Anker Mueller was astonished to discover that the frequency of the earth was an exact match with the frequency of the human brain. Herbert König who became Schumann’s successor at Munich University, discovered and further demonstrated a clear link between Schumann Resonances and brain rhythms. He compared human EEG recordings with natural electromagnetic fields of the environment (1979) and found that the main frequency produced by Schumann oscillations is extremely close to the frequency of alpha rhythms.


Natural electromagnetic processes in the environment (I-IV), human EEG readings in comparison. Schumann oscillations (I) and the EEG a-rhythm, as well as locally conditioned fluctuations of the electric field (II) and the EEG d-rhythm, show a noticeable similarity in their temporal variation. — Herbert König, 1979

​
Research carried out by E. Jacobi at the University of Dusseldorf showed that the absence of Schumann waves creates mental and physical health problems in the human body. Professor R.Wever from the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology in Erling-Andechs, began a study where he built an underground bunker that completely screened out magnetic fields. He then got student volunteers and had them live in the bunker for four weeks where they were hermetically sealed in this environment. Throughout the four weeks, Professor Wever noted that the student’s circadian rhythms diverged and that they suffered emotional distress and migraine headaches.

Considering that they were young and healthy, no serious health conditions presented -which likely would not have been the case with older people or people with compromised immune systems. Wever then added the Schumann frequency back into the environment and the results were astonishing. After only a brief exposure to 7.8 Hz (the frequency which he had been screening out), the volunteer’s health stabilized. This demonstrated a direct link between humans and their connection with the pulse of the earth. This was later confirmed in 2011 by Luke Montanye who stumbled upon a discovery during research of water memory.We go back to the statement that all life must come from life. This life was always believed to come from material forms like egg and sperm or spore and cell division.

The professor showed that DNA sequences communicate with each other via frequency. Further, he was able to show that the frequency communication was so advanced that it was able to organize nucleotides, which are the ingredients that make up DNA, in such a way that it could make brand new DNA. While other previous studies were able to show this, Montanye did something different that no other study had done. He removed all DNA from the water and introduced a frequency. That frequency was 7.38 Hz, Schumann Resonance. When introduced, the test tubes were producing new DNA helixes. When the frequency was not present, no new DNA formed. Thus we have a link between Schumann Resonance and the creation of life.

Even though Schumann Resonance could be confirmed by measurements at the time of discovery, it is now much harder to detect that resonance due to the fact that our atmosphere is now heavily inundated with manmade radiation and various frequencies. This suggests that our wireless technologies of today are drowning out the natural signal our mental and physical body requires to function in a healthy way. Could this be a link to the increase in cancer cases over the past few decades? Considering the importance of the Schumann Resonance as it relates to health and the creation of life, one would assume our energetically polluted air space is certainly not helping.

More About Professor W.O.Schumann

schumann.png

Winfried Schumann was born in Tubingen, Germany, the son of a physical chemist. His early years were spent in Kassel and in Berndorf, a town near Vienna. He majored in electrical engineering at the Technical College in Karlsruhe. In 1912 he gained a doctorate with high-voltage technology as his thesis.Prior to the First World War, he managed the high voltage laboratory at Brown, Boveri & Cie.

During 1920, he was made a professor at the Technical University in Stuttgart, where he had previously been employed as a research assistant. He subsequently took a position as professor of physics at the University of Jena. In 1924, he was made professor and director of the Electrophysical Laboratoy at the Technical University of Munich.The Munich laboratory subsequently became the Electrophysical Institute, where Schumann continued working until retiring from active research in 1961 at the age of 73, though he continued teaching for a further two years. Schumann was 86 years old when he died on September 22, 1974.

SOURCES
http://www.dpl-surveillance-equipment.com/articles/article_34.html
http://www.fosar-bludorf.com/archiv/schum_eng.htm
Schumann Resonators - http://www.schumannresonator.com/
 
[video=youtube;fAE6zX5wlt4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fAE6zX5wlt4[/video]
 



​
Scientists create circuit board modeled on the human brain


140428134051-large.jpg


Stanford scientists have developed faster, more energy-efficient microchips based on the human brain -- 9,000 times faster and using significantly less power than a typical PC. This offers greater possibilities for advances in robotics and a new way of understanding the brain. For instance, a chip as fast and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the speed and complexity of our own actions.


Stanford scientists have developed a new circuit board modeled on the human brain, possibly opening up new frontiers in robotics and computing.
For all their sophistication, computers pale in comparison to the brain. The modest cortex of the mouse, for instance, operates 9,000 times faster than a personal computer simulation of its functions.

Not only is the PC slower, it takes 40,000 times more power to run, writes Kwabena Boahen, associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford, in an article for the Proceedings of the IEEE.

"From a pure energy perspective, the brain is hard to match," says Boahen, whose article surveys how "neuromorphic" researchers in the United States and Europe are using silicon and software to build electronic systems that mimic neurons and synapses.

Boahen and his team have developed Neurogrid, a circuit board consisting of 16 custom-designed "Neurocore" chips. Together these 16 chips can simulate 1 million neurons and billions of synaptic connections. The team designed these chips with power efficiency in mind. Their strategy was to enable certain synapses to share hardware circuits. The result was Neurogrid -- a device about the size of an iPad that can simulate orders of magnitude more neurons and synapses than other brain mimics on the power it takes to run a tablet computer.

The National Institutes of Health funded development of this million-neuron prototype with a five-year Pioneer Award. Now Boahen stands ready for the next steps -- lowering costs and creating compiler software that would enable engineers and computer scientists with no knowledge of neuroscience to solve problems -- such as controlling a humanoid robot -- using Neurogrid.

Its speed and low power characteristics make Neurogrid ideal for more than just modeling the human brain. Boahen is working with other Stanford scientists to develop prosthetic limbs for paralyzed people that would be controlled by a Neurocore-like chip.

"Right now, you have to know how the brain works to program one of these," said Boahen, gesturing at the $40,000 prototype board on the desk of his Stanford office. "We want to create a neurocompiler so that you would not need to know anything about synapses and neurons to able to use one of these."

Brain ferment
In his article, Boahen notes the larger context of neuromorphic research, including the European Union's Human Brain Project, which aims to simulate a human brain on a supercomputer. By contrast, the U.S. BRAIN Project -- short for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies -- has taken a tool-building approach by challenging scientists, including many at Stanford, to develop new kinds of tools that can read out the activity of thousands or even millions of neurons in the brain as well as write in complex patterns of activity.

Zooming from the big picture, Boahen's article focuses on two projects comparable to Neurogrid that attempt to model brain functions in silicon and/or software.
One of these efforts is IBM's SyNAPSE Project -- short for Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics. As the name implies, SyNAPSE involves a bid to redesign chips, code-named Golden Gate, to emulate the ability of neurons to make a great many synaptic connections -- a feature that helps the brain solve problems on the fly. At present a Golden Gate chip consists of 256 digital neurons each equipped with 1,024 digital synaptic circuits, with IBM on track to greatly increase the numbers of neurons in the system.

Heidelberg University's BrainScales project has the ambitious goal of developing analog chips to mimic the behaviors of neurons and synapses. Their HICANN chip -- short for High Input Count Analog Neural Network -- would be the core of a system designed to accelerate brain simulations, to enable researchers to model drug interactions that might take months to play out in a compressed time frame. At present, the HICANN system can emulate 512 neurons each equipped with 224 synaptic circuits, with a roadmap to greatly expand that hardware base.

Each of these research teams has made different technical choices, such as whether to dedicate each hardware circuit to modeling a single neural element (e.g., a single synapse) or several (e.g., by activating the hardware circuit twice to model the effect of two active synapses). These choices have resulted in different trade-offs in terms of capability and performance.

In his analysis, Boahen creates a single metric to account for total system cost -- including the size of the chip, how many neurons it simulates and the power it consumes.

Neurogrid was by far the most cost-effective way to simulate neurons, in keeping with Boahen's goal of creating a system affordable enough to be widely used in research.

Speed and efficiency
But much work lies ahead. Each of the current million-neuron Neurogrid circuit boards cost about $40,000. Boahen believes dramatic cost reductions are possible. Neurogrid is based on 16 Neurocores, each of which supports 65,536 neurons. Those chips were made using 15-year-old fabrication technologies.

By switching to modern manufacturing processes and fabricating the chips in large volumes, he could cut a Neurocore's cost 100-fold -- suggesting a million-neuron board for $400 a copy. With that cheaper hardware and compiler software to make it easy to configure, these neuromorphic systems could find numerous applications.
For instance, a chip as fast and efficient as the human brain could drive prosthetic limbs with the speed and complexity of our own actions -- but without being tethered to a power source.

Krishna Shenoy, an electrical engineering professor at Stanford and Boahen's neighbor at the interdisciplinary Bio-X center, is developing ways of reading brain signals to understand movement. Boahen envisions a Neurocore-like chip that could be implanted in a paralyzed person's brain, interpreting those intended movements and translating them to commands for prosthetic limbs without overheating the brain.

A small prosthetic arm in Boahen's lab is currently controlled by Neurogrid to execute movement commands in real time. For now it doesn't look like much, but its simple levers and joints hold hope for robotic limbs of the future.

Of course, all of these neuromorphic efforts are beggared by the complexity and efficiency of the human brain.
In his article, Boahen notes that Neurogrid is about 100,000 times more energy efficient than a personal computer simulation of 1 million neurons. Yet it is an energy hog compared to our biological CPU.

"The human brain, with 80,000 times more neurons than Neurogrid, consumes only three times as much power," Boahen writes. "Achieving this level of energy efficiency while offering greater configurability and scale is the ultimate challenge neuromorphic engineers face."
 
I was listening to a Q&A session from Lee Harris and he talked of finding a Buddhist center to be with peaceful people. He said he loved it there because he was with people and not with people at the same time because everyone respected space and didn't project their emotional energy around on anyone.

Did you find the same experience?
 
Kgal said:
I was listening to a Q&A session from Lee Harris and he talked of finding a Buddhist center to be with peaceful people. He said he loved it there because he was with people and not with people at the same time because everyone respected space and didn't project their emotional energy around on anyone.

Did you find the same experience?
Click to expand...


I have not been yet!
 
The High Price of Materialism

[video=youtube;oGab38pKscw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oGab38pKscw[/video]​
 



Hamburger chef Jamie Oliver has won his long-fought battle against one of the largest fast food chains in the world – McDonalds. After Oliver showed how McDonald’s hamburgers are made, the franchise finallyannounced that it will change its recipe, and yet there was barely a peep about this in the mainstream, corporate media.
Oliver repeatedly explained to the public, over several years – in documentaries, television shows and interviews – that the fatty parts of beef are “washed” inammonium hydroxide and used in the filling of the burger. Before this process, according to the presenter, the food is deemed unfit for human consumption. According to the chef and hamburger enthusiast, Jamie Oliver, who has undertaken a war against the fast food industry, “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings.”
Besides the low quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver famously coined this the “the pink slime process.”
“Why would any sensible human being put meat filled with ammonia in the mouths of their children?” Oliver asked.
In one of his colorful demonstrations, Oliver demonstrates to children how nuggets are made. After selecting the best parts of the chicken, the remains (fat, skin and internal organs) are processed for these fried foods.
In reply to all of the bad press this process has received from Oliver, the company Arcos Dorados, the franchise manager for McDonalds in Latin America, said such a procedure is not practiced in their region. The same, it should be noted, applies to the product in Ireland and the UK, where they use meat from local suppliers.


In the United States, however, Burger King and Taco Bell had already abandoned the use of ammonia in their products. The food industry uses ammonium hydroxide as an anti-microbial agent in meats, which has allowed McDonald’s to use otherwise “inedible meat.”
Most disturbing of all is the horrifying fact that because ammonium hydroxide is considered part of the “component in a production procedure” by the USDA, consumers may not know when the chemical is in their food.
On the official website of McDonald’s, the company claims that their meat is cheap because, while serving many people every day, they are able to buy from their suppliers at a lower price, and offer the best quality products. But if “pink slime” was really the “best quality” that McDonalds can muster in the US, then why were they able do better in Latin America and Europe? More to the point, why can they apparently do better now in the United States?
These questions remains unanswered by the franchise which has denied that the decision to change the recipe is related to Jamie Oliver’s campaign. On the site, McDonald’s has admitted that they have abandoned the beef filler from its burger patties.
 
“Do You Know Who I Am?” — The Seductive Voice Of The Self-Important Ego




“I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:23-26 (Parallel versions appear in Mark 10:24-27, and Luke 18:24-27.)

​
global_3633648.jpg

The saying was a response to a young rich man who had asked Jesus what he needed to do in order to inherit eternal life. Jesus replied that he should keep the commandments, to which the man stated he had done. Jesus responded, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” The young man became sad and was unwilling to do this.

Jesus then spoke this response, leaving his disciples astonished.The “eye of the needle” has been claimed to be a gate in Jerusalem, which opened after the main gate was closed at night. A camel could only pass through this smaller gate if it was stooped and had its baggage removed. This story has been put forth since at least the 15th century, and possibly as far back as the 9th century. However, there is no evidence for the existence of such a gate.

This quotation has always fascinated me and the above snippet from Wikipedia also illustrates the tendency to take such maxims literally —wondering if such a gate actually existed. Eckhart makes clear that the “kingdom of heaven” in this story is the peace to be found “beyond all understanding” when one’s ego is seen as a separate, fleeting and illusory entity —the eternal life sought by the young rich boy is always present in the “no thing” that life represents.

This concept has been immensely helpful to me as I’ve attempted to “make my way in the world” and have fallen victim to various levels of conditioning —not the least of which is a fear of how harsh life can be without personal resources. Such a fear can lead to debilitating anxiety, and below I want to dig further into how it can be consciously addressed.
​
money-198x300.jpg

We have all had our struggles with money and perhaps more importantly, the desire for wealth. For me, one of the great treatises on this topic is Jacob Needleman’s Money and the Meaning of Life. Needleman’s perspective is that money is the “key” to mastery of the external world —it literally represents the value of survival as it can be exchanged for food, clothing, water and all of the essentials but it cannot replace them —you cannot eat money.

Therefore its value is established anthropomorphically by the human mind and agreement among man and women as to its value. If you take a dollar to the Amazon the natives will not give you anything for it; gold would be another story because its “value” is more genetically programmed and perhaps even intrinsic –but all of these aspects relate to what is material and external.Going back to the apocryphal story above, I have noticed in self-observation how much stronger my “sense of self” can become with more money or around issues of money.

For example, in an upscale restaurant where I am paying for a good meal, I will expect better service and a certain amount of deference —my own importance becomes somehow solidified in my mind. Referring to Eckhart’s story —of the person who is served cold soup and complains vociferously “how dare you serve me cold soup” —this is far more likely to occur in a fine restaurant than if one is a guest or is given a free bowl of soup in a soup kitchen.

Similarly in matters of finance, I have noticed that both the matters themselves and my requirement that my needs be treated as matters of grave importance even though a bank, for example, will have many customers aside from me.And the world responds. The more money one has, the more one can demand better service, better medical care, better food, and so on. My father used to say “whatever can be fixed with money is of no real significance.

”But this points in two directions.First, for most people it is a clear indication that having sufficient money to meet the exigencies of life is important. For example, if you break down on the road you want enough to fix your car —if you need to stay overnight you may need a hotel. Having insufficient means in such circumstances makes life more difficult. The other thing my father always alluded to however, was that the really important things cannot be “fixed” with money. Your relationships with loved ones and oneself —these take one inward to a far deeper level beyond the external material dimension into what Eckhart calls “presence.”

And such a movement invariably requires an openness and space between ones’ “self” and the world and a diminution of the egoic voice of self importance —the same voice that money makes stronger if it is the main motivation in life. This is obviously the point of the parable.Needleman puts this well in his work:

​
“What is most necessary for man and what is given to him in abundance are experiences, especially experiences of the forces within him. This is his most essential food, his most essential wealth. If man consciously receives all of this abundance, the universe will pour into him what is called life in Judaism, spirit in Christianity, light in Islam,power in Taoism.”

[video=youtube;CHJRDcL7jPI]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=CHJRDcL7jPI[/video]

To me, the key word here is “consciously” – to “consciously receive” does not mean to hungrily seek and acquire (or to covet material wealth) – but rather to accept what IS with gratitude and awe. In Needleman’s terms this is the true meaning of conscience, to maintain attention in both the outer and inner worlds –in deference to the struggle between them.

What has helped me immensely in this area is the realization that sufficient means to live well is a worthy goal —part of human experience is to be able to deal effectively with the material world —that is indeed our “school” here on earth. And this is also a worthy goal in science —understanding the material to the greatest extent to help and safeguard others.

But when the mind takes over —and there is never enough and no sense of reverence and awe for all that IS —that is when the “kingdom of heaven” or peace on earth can no longer be attained; when acquisition and mastery are ends in themselves, then the ego has subverted the reality that Eckhart has brought out so eloquently when he says:

“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.” ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose


<em>[video=youtube;BD52vEw3ZUY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=BD52vEw3ZUY[/video]


This is also Needleman’s point when he writes that “one needs money to live and survive in the outer world, to fulfill one’s obligations to the community and to nature, but that above and beyond this, the role of money is to serve as the instrument for getting understanding.”

Notice again that within this context, there is nothing wrong with acquiring and using money consciously —in the outer world it can be wondrously helpful and provide even inner riches. However it is always the inner understanding that provides real wealth in the most significant dimension —the often overlooked inner world of consciousness.In our time the entire notion of wealth is distorted and completely separated from the inner dimension.

We can see this with money – which began as a means of exchange of material goods of real value – grain, animals, clothing, and even, unfortunately, people and women – and represented the product of actual labor – now it is merely blips or pixels on the screen. It is created and exchanged electronically and can be created by mere thought.

Money and wealth has become an illusion with no actual connection to the outer or inner world.And like the sirens to draw sailors to the rocks, the pursuit of money or wealth for its own sake can doom the inner journey by strengthening the part of man that seeks to master the outeworld at the expense of the inner —his chattering mind that wants MORE —the Ego.

So that the next time your distorted view of “wealth” leads you to puff yourself up and ask someone, “do you know who I am?” You stop and deeply ask yourself the same question.
​
 
10313533_389235704550000_1314841963612991071_n.jpg
 
10155735_389236777883226_1791503520439970441_n.jpg
 
This is crazy if this is true....wow!

Real Life “Carrie”? Student’s “Psychic Attack” at Japanese All-Girls School Sends 18 to Hospital

In a fantastically strange bit of news from the Land of the Rising Sun, a “psychic attack” straight out of a Stephen King novel was reported at an all-girls school, sending over a dozen to the hospital and shaking up the student body.

Last Wednesday at the well-known prep school Kamigōri High in Hyogo, Japan, emergency services were called out and a reported 18 girls were taken to two separate hospitals after what was described as a bizarre, hour long “state of panic” during which dozens of teen girls began hyperventilating.
The initial incident began around 11:45am when a first year student began complaining of a “bad feeling”. Her hyperventilating sparked a chain of similar events that affected 17 first years, and one third year student.

Things got even stranger when rumors began spreading that the incident was actually the work of a psychic attack dealt from the first girl to exhibit the bizarre symptoms.

According to the Aioi police department, it was well known amongst the other students that the girl displayed “supernatural senses” and they believed she was to blame for the hospitalizations.

Some of the girls at Kamigori High took to Facebook and Twitter to air their concerns following the event.

“This doesn’t seem like simple hyperventilation,”fellow student Kaisei Yoshimura said. “There are a lot of suspicious rumors spreading around the internet. Wonder if they’re better off calling in an exorcist?”

The victims have since been released from the hospital and have shown no long term after effects. The girl accused of psychically attacking her fellow students has not responded to rumors about her alleged psychic abilities and authorities have not released her name to the public, although I suspect it might be Carrie.

What do you think happened at the prep-school?
Did a Japanese “Carrie” show a display of psychic powers?
Or was this simply a case of mass hysteria?



 
Poltergeist Activity Filmed Inside Ellacoya County Store [video]



A recent video clip from the surveillance camera of the Ellacoya Country store clearly shows a glass lid flying across the room on its own! This March 10 video has quickly gone viral all over the web, after being initially posted on YouTube by WMUR-TV

WMUR-TV, which is a leading station covering political and other news from New Hampshire, posted a video on their YouTube channel on March 10th. The video, extracted from the CCTV surveillance of a general store in Gilford, New Hampshire clearly shows a glass lid being mysteriously hurled from the shop counter when the counter is virtually empty.

Employee Heidi Boyd, who was in an adjoining room, rushed in as she heard the lid smash against the floor. “I walked around and looked and I was on the floor. It took several minutes to set in [and it's] still freaking me out”, she told WMUR-TV.

[video=youtube;hQGy7eAd9NI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&amp;v=hQGy7eAd9NI[/video]
 
18j7auwlzzaovjpg.jpg
S​
EXPAND12345...12

How Much Longer Before Our First AI Catastrophe?

What will happen in the days after the birth of the first true artificial intelligence? If things continue apace, this could prove to be the most dangerous time in human history. It will be an era of weak and narrow artificial intelligence, a highly dangerous combination that could wreak tremendous havoc on human civilization. Here’s why we’ll need to be ready.

First, let's define some terms. TheTechnological Singularity, which you've probably heard of before, is the advent of recursively improving greater-than-human artificial general intelligence(or artificial superintelligence), or the development of strong AI (human-like artificial general intelligence).

But this particular concern has to do with the rise of weak AI – expert systems that match or exceed human intelligence in a narrowly defined area, but not in broader areas. As a consequence, many of these systems will work outside of human comprehension and control.
But don't let the name fool you; there's nothing weak about the kind of damage it could do.

Before the Singularity
The Singularity is often misunderstood as AI that’s simply smarter than humans, or the rise of human-like consciousness in a machine. Neither are the case. To a non-trivial degree, much of our AI already exceeds human capacities. It’s just not sophisticated and robust enough to do any significant damage to our infrastructure. The trouble will start to come when, in the case of the Singularity, a highly generalized AI starts to iteratively improve upon itself.

18j3vjf3ce9c7jpg.jpg
S​
EXPAND
And indeed, when the Singularity hits, it’ll be like, in the words of mathematician I. J. Good, anintelligence explosion – and it will indeed hit us like a bomb. Human control will forever be relegated to the sidelines, in whatever form that might take.
A pre-Singularity AI disaster or catastrophe, on the other hand, will be containable.

But just barely. It’ll likely arise from an expert system or super-sophisticated algorithm run amok. And the worry is not so much its power – which is definitely a significant part of the equation – but the speed at which it will inflict the damage. By the time we have a grasp on what’s going on, something terrible may have happened.

Narrow AI could knock out our electric grid, damage nuclear power plants, cause a global-scale economic collapse, misdirect autonomous vehicles and robots, take control of a factory or military installation, or unleash some kind of propagating blight that will be difficult to get rid of (whether in the digital realm or the real world). The possibilities are frighteningly endless.

Our infrastructure is becoming increasingly digital and interconnected – and by consequence, increasingly vulnerable. In a few decades, it will be brittle as glass, with the bulk of human activity dependant upon it.
And it is indeed a possibility. The signs are all there.

Accidents Will Happen
Back in 1988, a Cornell University student named Robert Morris scripted a software program that could measure the size of the Internet. To make it work, he equipped it with a few clever tricks to help it along its way, including an ability to exploit known vulnerabilities in popular utility programs running on UNIX. This allowed the program to break into those machines and copy itself, thus infecting those systems.

18j3v2t8z4qzvjpg.jpg


On November 2, 1988, Morris introduced his program to the world. It quickly spread to thousands of computers, disrupting normal activities and Internet connectivity for days. Estimates put the cost of the damage anywhere between $10,000 to $100,000. Dubbed the “Morris Worm,” it’s considered the first worm in human history – one that prompted DARPA to fund the establishment of the CERT/CC at Carnegie Mellon University to anticipate and respond to this new kind of threat.
As for Morris, he was charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and given a $10,000 fine.

But the takeaway from the incident was clear: Despite our best intentions, accidents willhappen. And as we continue to develop and push our technologies forward, there’s always the chance that it will operate outside our expectations – and even our control.

Down to the Millisecond
Indeed, unintended consequences are one thing, containability is quite another. Our technologies are increasingly operating at levels beyond our real-time capacities. The best example of this comes from the world of high-frequency stock trading (HFT).

18j7hpjgufpxsjpg.jpg


In HFT, securities are traded on a rapid-fire basis through the use of powerful computers and algorithms. A single investment position can last for a few minutes – or a few milliseconds; there can be as many as 500 transactions made in a single second. This type of computer trading can result in thousands upon thousands of transactions a day, each and every one of them decided by super-sophisticated scripts. The human traders involved (such as they are) just sit back and watch, incredulous to the machinations happening at break-neck speeds.

“Back in the day, I used to be able to explain to a client how their trade was executed. Technology has made the trade process so convoluted and complex that I can’t do that any more,” noted PNC Wealth Management's Jim Dunigan in a Markets Media article.

Clearly, the ability to assess market conditions and react quickly is a valuable asset to have. And indeed, according to a 2009 study, HFT firms accounted for 60 to 73% of all U.S. equity trading volume; but as of last year that number dropped to 50% – but it's still considered a highly profitable form of trading.
To date, the most significant single incident involving HFT came at 2:45 on May 5th, 2010. For a period of about five minutes, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted over 1,000 points (approximately 9%); for a few minutes, $1 trillion in market value vanished. About 600 points were recovered 20 minutes later. It's now called the 2010 Flash Crash, the second largest point swing in history and the biggest one-day point decline.

The incident prompted an investigation by Gregg E. Berman, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The investigators posited a number of theories (of which there are many, some of them quite complex), but their primary concern was the impact of HFT. They determined that the collective efforts of the algorithms exacerbated price declines; by selling aggressively, the trader-bots worked to eliminate their positions and withdraw from the market in the face of uncertainty.

The following year, an independent study concluded that technology played an important role, but that it wasn’t the entire story. Looking at the Flash Crash in detail, the authors argued that it was “the result of the new dynamics at play in the current market structure,” and the role played by “order toxicity.” At the same time, however, they noted that HFT traders exhibited trading patterns inconsistent with the traditional definition of market making, and that they were “aggressively [trading] in the direction of price changes.”

HFT is also playing an increasing role in currencies and commodities, making up about 28% of the total volume in futures markets. Not surprisingly, this area has become vulnerable to mini crashes. Following incidents involving the trading of cocoa and sugar, the Wall Street Journalhighlighted the growing concerns:
"The electronic platform is too fast; it doesn't slow things down" like humans would, said Nick Gentile, a former cocoa floor trader. "It's very frustrating" to go through these flash crashes, he said...

..The same is happening in the sugar market, provoking outrage within the industry. In a February letter to ICE, the World Sugar Committee, which represents large sugar users and producers, called algorithmic and high-speed traders "parasitic."


​
Just how culpable HFT is to the phenomenon of flash crashes is an open question, but it’s clear that the trading environment is changing rapidly. Market analysts now speak in terms of “microstructures,” trading “circuit breakers,” and the “VPIN Flow Toxicity metric.” It’s also difficult to predict how serious future flash crashes could become. If insufficient measures aren’t put into place to halt these events when they happen, and assuming HFT is scaled-up in terms of market breadth, scope, and speed, it’s not unreasonable to think of events in which massive and irrecoverable losses might occur. And indeed, some analysts are already predicting systems that can support 100,000 transactions per second.

More to the point, HFT and flash crashes may not create an economic disaster – but it’s a potent example of how our other mission-critical systems may reach unprecedented tempos. As we defer critical decision making to our technological artifacts, and as they increase in power and speed, we are increasingly finding ourselves outside of the locus of control and comprehension.

When AI Screws Up, It Screws Up Badly
No doubt, we are already at the stage when computers exceed our ability to understand how and why they do the things they do. One of the best examples of this is IBM’s Watson, the expert computer system that trounced the world’s best Jeopardy players in 2011. To make it work, Watson’s developers scripted a series of programs that, when pieced together, created an overarching game-playing system. And they’re not entirely sure how it works.

David Ferrucci, the Leader Researcher of the project, put it this way:
Watson absolutely surprises me. People say: 'Why did it get that one wrong?' I don't know. 'Why did it get that one right?' I don't know.​
Which is actually quite disturbing. And not so much because we don’t understand why it succeeds, but because we don’t necessarily understand why it fails. By virtue, we can’t understand or anticipate the nature of its mistakes.

18j3v735c65ezjpg.jpg


For example, Watson had one memorable gaff that clearly demonstrated how, when an AI fails, it fails big time. During the Final Jeopardy portion, it was asked, “Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle.” Watson responded with, “What is Toronto?”
Given that Toronto’s Billy Bishop Airport is named after a war hero, that was not a terrible guess. But why this was such a blatant mistake is that the category was “U.S. Cities.” Toronto, not being a U.S. city, couldn't possibly have been the correct answer.

Again, this is the important distinction that needs to be made when addressing the potential for a highly generalized AI. Weak, narrow systems are extremely powerful, but they’re also extremely stupid; they’re completely lacking in common sense. Given enough autonomy and responsibility, a failed answer or a wrong decision could be catastrophic.

18h5xkkyx2i81jpg.jpg


As another example, take the recent initiative to give robots their very own Internet. By providing and sharing information amongst themselves, it’s hoped that these bots can learn without having to be programmed. A problem arises, however, when instructions for a task are mismatched – the result of an AI error. A stupid robot, acting without common sense, would simply execute upon the task even when the instructions are wrong. In another 30 to 40 years, one can only imagine the kind of damage that could be done, either accidentally, or by a malicious script kiddie.

Moreover, because expert systems like Watson will soon be able to conjure answers to questions that are beyond our comprehension, we won’t always know when they’re wrong. And that is a frightening prospect.

The Shape of Things to Come
It’s difficult to know exactly how, when, or where the first true AI catastrophe will occur, but we’re still several decades off. Our infrastructure is still not integrated or robust enough to allow for something really terrible to happen. But by the 2040s (if not sooner), our highly digital and increasingly interconnected world will be susceptible to these sorts of problems.

18j7gysm0k3rxjpg.jpg
S​
EXPAND
By that time, our power systems (electric grids, nuclear plants, etc.) could be vulnerable to errors and deliberate attacks. Already today, the U.S. has been able to infiltrate the control system software known to run centrifuges in Iranian nuclear facilities by virtue of its Stuxnet program – an incredibly sophisticated computer virus (if you can call it that). This program represents the future of cyber-espionage and cyber-weaponry – and it’s a pale shadow of things to come.

In future, more advanced versions will likely be able to not just infiltrate enemy or rival systems, it could reverse-engineer it, inflict terrible damage – or even take control. But like the Morris Worm incident showed, it may be difficult to predict the downstream effects of these actions, particularly when dealing with autonomous, self-replicating code. It could also result in an AI arms race, with each side developing programs and counter-programs to get an edge on the other side’s technologies.

18j3v80p2bdgejpg.jpg


And though it might seem like the premise of a scifi novel, an AI catastrophe could also involve the deliberate or accidental takeover of any system running off an AI. This could include integrated military equipment, self-driving vehicles (including airplanes), robots, and factories. Should something like this occur, the challenge will be to disable the malign script (or source program) as quickly as possible, which may not be easy.

More conceptually, and in the years immediately preceding the onset of uncontainable self-improving machine intelligence, a narrow AI could be used (again, either deliberately or unintentionally) to execute upon a poorly articulated goal. The powerful system could over-prioritize a certain aspect, or grossly under-prioritize another. And it could make sweeping changes in the blink of an eye.

Hopefully, if and when this does happen, it will be containable and relatively minor in scope. But it will likely serve as a call to action in anticipation of more catastrophic episodes. As for now, and in consideration of these possibilities, we need to ensure that our systems are secure, smart, and resilient.
 
A Brief History of Spectrophilia: from Eve to Ke$ha



​
The idea of steamy hot sex with supernatural beings has been around as long as people have been writing things down, it seems — with the mention of erotic encounters with devils dating back to ancient Mesopotamia. (6) The mating of humans with ethereal creatures goes back, in Judeo-Christian faiths, to the idea that Eve mated with a serpent to produce Cain. There are some modern white supremacists who employ this Bible story in validating their antisemitism, citing that since Jews are the sons of Cain, and Cain was the product of a Serpent Seed, therefore the Jewish race is forever tainted as evil. (5)

In another bizarre, early Christian story, the Bible alludes to a race of giants, as described in the books of Genesis and Ezekiel. “The Nephilim” were said to be a result of the coupling of “the sons of God” and “the daughters of men”. (4) The idea of “Gods” changed to “devils”, when Gregory of Nyssa (300 AD) touched on the subject of the formation of demons, postulating that women who mated with demons produced more demons. (7)



​
The sin of copulating with demons gained momentum in the 1400′s, when an eccentric German Catholic priest named Heinrich Kramer set out to write a convincing tome on the lifestyle, identification of, and suggested punishments of, witches. Up until that point, belief in witchcraft had been seen by the church as a throwback to more primitive times, and that those who believed such a thing existed “had been seduced by the Devil in dreams and visions into old pagan errors”. (1,2) Kramer was tenacious in his beliefs, and a self-appointed inquisitor — which got him “thrown out” of the city of Innsbruck, and denounced by his local bishop as a “senile old man”. (1)

Indeed, his ideas were, by any era’s standards, bizarre. In attempts to sour the male parishioners’ view of accused witches in the community, he told stories of tainted hags collecting dozens of chopped off penises, which they would collect in “a bird’s nest, or shut them up in a box, where they move themselves like living members and eat oats and corn.” (2, p.303) Kramer’s life’s work was published, entitled “Malleus Maleficarum (aka The Hammer of the Witches/Der Hexenhammer )”, and eventually the idea of trifling and fornicating witches living among the good people of Medieval Germany took hold, and spread to lands near and far.


The Obscene Kiss, an illustration of witches kissing the Devil’s anus from Francesco Maria Guazzo’s Compendium Maleficarum (1608)

​
According to Kramer’s guide to witchcraft, and others like it (such as Frencesco Maria Guazzo’s ‘Compendium Maleficarum’, or ‘Book of Witches’, written around 1600) (3), witches are made by a woman being inseminated by a demon, or incubus. “Malleus Maleficarum” is slanted heavily toward the idea that women were usually the villains in incidences of witchcraft, and the book implies guilt in the title itself by employing the feminine Latin form vs. the more grammatically appropriate masculine form.

By having a weaker belief system, and a more lascivious libido, Kramer reasoned, women were largely to blame for carnal sin. He stopped “just short” of stating that demons gave women more intense orgasms, and thus were optimal as sexual partners. (1)


“The Nightmare”, John Henry Fuseli, oil on canvas, 1781

​
In the wake of the era of witch trials, the idea of the incubus still played well to a sexually repressed European public during the Romantic Era, and was represented famously in legendary paintings by John Henry Fuseli and William Blake, among others. The pure deviousness of delicious and wrong deviant boning in the dead of night piqued the imagination of artists of the time, and images of helpless maidens being ravaged by awful fanged monsters were projected, flickering and terrifying, at the then-popular phantasmagoria shows. (8) These artists laid groundwork for later gothic horror masterpieces such as Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” (written in 1897).

Today, as outlandish as it may seem to most, there is still a strongly held fascination with the idea of sexual assault via phantom. Incubi (male demons) and succubi (female demons) are not limited, by any means, to Judeo-Christian mythology, and have been described in cultures worldwide to this day — often with the idea of incubus being bisexual. (6) In the modern climate of “Ghost Hunter” television programs, it is not a stretch to see how the idea of the Incubus has given way to “getting fucked by a ghost”. Although modern medicine explains away the phenomenon as an unsavory side effect of Sleep Paralysis, (9) many people still consider these encounters terrifyingly real.



​
“The Spiritual Science Research Foundation”, a group led by His Holiness Dr. Jayant Balaji Athavale of Mumbai, India (described as, ‘by profession a Consultant Clinical Hypnotherapist’) provides support to those who have suffered “sexual assault by a ghost”. A typical ghost rape is described, and is illustrated by one of the group’s “clairvoyant artists” : “In this case a subtle-sorcerer (māntrik), a higher ghost is sitting astride on the woman and transmitting his black energy on her. He is looking at her breasts with lustful eyes and fondling her. The woman went into a state of deep sleep and then the subtle-sorcerer raped her.

The environment was saturated with pressure of black energy and sexual thoughts. This explained the unexplained drained out feeling and that of soreness in the loins experienced by the woman since a long time.” An illustration of a naked male figure, which appears to be covered in soot and surrounded by a cloud of filth, a’la Pig Pen from “Peanuts”, straddles the helpless, possibly unconscious, female victim. A ring of red words that say “Om Hum Hanumate Namahaa” surround the illustration on four sides. “The reason we have employed a protective border is to counteract any harmful subtle-vibrations emitted by the drawings based on subtle-knowledge or the text about negative energies. As a result our readers are protected from these subtle negative vibrations.” (10)

In 2011, a Mennonite community in Bolivia was terrorized with a string of “ghost rapes”. Children as young as 3, up to and including a 65-year-old woman, reported nocturnal violations after waking up with a crushing headache, semen stains on their bedding, bits of rope scattered around/on them, and pelvic pain. Over four years time, 130 women reported being assaulted in their sleep. At first, the leaders of the puritanical old-order Christian community dismissed the stories, deciding the women were just making up fanciful stories (because all women when left unchecked, are prone to being dirty, lying whores, of course). When the assaults continued, the church elders decided that God was putting a scourge on the community, and later amended the explanation to state that demons were systematically raping all the women. For four years the rapes continued, until it was discovered that a group of men in the community had concocted a spray from medicines used to anesthetize cattle, and were fumigating entire families so that they could sneak in and rape the women at night. (11)



​
Segueing from horrible tragedy en masse to the laughably theatrical arena of Hollywood: performer Ke$ha claims that her song “Supernatural” is about her erotic experiences with a ghost. (13) Similarly, another attractive young entertainer recently stepped forward with her story. Throwing any thoughts of obviously fishy marketing tactics to the winds, one of the actresses who appeared in “Paranormal Activity 2″ came forward to confess her torrid love affair with a spectre.

A top expert in “spectrophilia”, Patti Negri, counselled actress Natasha Blasick after her red-hot love affair with a shapeless entity. The Russian born actress described, in detail, the first time she was attacked by a ghost — as what could only be categorized as forcible rape. However, she happened to like it so much, that she said she very much enjoyed the second time it happened, about a month later. She expressed hope that it will happen again. (12)

I’ll wrap up this hormone-fueled walk through the torrid history of ghost sex with the melancholy sentiments of one spectrophilia enthusiast that I found on a forum wall: “We were hoping to get some more specific tips on how to pick up the undead from this new article at ‘Lust Magazine’, but alas, the advice is maddeningly oblique: ‘For those seeking sexual union with a ghost, the only solution is to seek out haunted mansions and hope for the best…’”

(After initilal publication of this article, it came to my attention via The Anomalist website, that the proper term for ghost fucking came from Ghostbusters: “tupping”. It’s only a matter of time until PornHub adds a new category.)

works cited:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum
2. Stephens, Walter: “Demon Lovers: Witchcraft, Sex, and the Crisis of Belief”, University of Chicago Press; p44-50
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Maria_Guazzo
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nephilim
5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serpent_seed
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incubus
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexuality_in_Christian_demonology
8. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tat...-fuseli-blake-and-romantic-imagination/gothic
9. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/sleepless-in-america/200809/incubus-attack
10. http://www.spiritualresearchfoundat...osts_Demons/ghostspictures/sexualmolestation1
11. http://jezebel.com/mennonite-colony-has-a-major-ghost-rape-problem-1058040523
12. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/actress-claims-experiences-ghost-sex-article-1.1773793
13. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/27/kesha-sex-with-ghost_n_1919320.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top