Tuesday, December 28, 2021

social contracts, game theory, sociobiology and extinction threats here and now e.g.Russia

 Whenever we try to think really deeply, out of the box, to make sense of big challenges right in front of us... it can point to a need for new paradigms. THIS WEEK, the crisis in US-Russian relations has woken me up that way, pointing to very basic issues in fundamental science, BUILDING on but EXTENDING the frameworks given in http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm and in my draft paper on approximation of entropy operators. It comes down to the theory of dynamical games....


Sudden shifts in Russian policy this week have strongly reduced the probability of World War III over Ukraine this year. But even as Western policy leaders all breathed VERY loud sighs of relief, going back to other issues on their plate, a strong warning came to me: "DON'T think this is over, or that 
you folks are home free. Nowhere near that." As I see this playing out, it is a warning that the
"AGI/IOT existential threat" is EVEN more urgent, difficult and compelling than I was already saying months ago. That, yes, plus the nuclear and bio threats entangled with US-Russian relations. 

In the past, I have generally just agreed with Yeshua that these existential threats (with the partial exception of climate changes) can be seen as examples of existential level CONFLICTS, demanding peace as a solution, peace as in some kind of new social contract or Pareto optimal bargain. (Xi Jinping even seems to understand these words, more than other major world leaders, whatever the actions of other Chinese may or may not be.) We have always thought back to the Twelve Tablets of Rome, the ten Commandments, Locke and the US Constitution. (I have even visited Washington's meditation study, and been locked by accident  into a large room containing his private papers.) I view this as an example of Schelling's analysis of nonzero sum games, in Strategy of Conflict.

HOWEVER: WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE GAME OF HUMAN LIFE INCLUDING THE POSSIBLE OUTCOME OF EXTINCTION?

Naive judgmental people often say: "Of course this species will not go extinct. Species (like this) never go extinct. The biosphere has a very powerful natural stability, resulting from the mechanisms Darwin told us about." 

It is SO SAD how many "mainstream" academic cultures never learn what other cultures down the hall from them, in the same universities, know much better. To discuss the evolution of life, people really should know the foundational (if incomplete) work by E.O. Wilson, in Sociobiology, the classic work by George Gaylord Simpson before that, and the seminal book by Robert May Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems. (For a more complete up to date factual account see Ward and Kirschvink.) 

Back in the 1970's, May used solid mathematical modeling to completely disprove the old fantasies about stability in ecosystems. Species go extinct all the time, both at the bottom and the top of the food chain. What we see as stability is usually just HEAVILY FILTERED by millions of years of selection, BUT MASSIVE CHANGES in the web of ecological relations typically DO lead to massive new extinctions. 

The key point is that HUMANS (and all species affected by us) are at the BEGINNING of even more massive changes in the ecology of the earth, most notably through the AGI/IOT complex but also through many others. 

Here is a fundamental key question: in what kinds of  nonlinear dynamical games is the long-term outcome more or less guaranteed? What degrees of freedom do we really have? 

My common sense, informed by deep knowledge of the entropy functions predicted by the most solid modern physics, tells me that I am asking about the existence of widely separated BASINS OF ATTRACTION in the space of the human cultures which could lead to a sustainable social contract or to entropy and extinction. That in turn depends on the variety and scale of noise and connection in that cultural system. That does not sound much like separability. Nor does it LOOK that way, as I think of examples like the entropic processes guiding Putin and ALL other large human societies and organizations on earth today. (I pray that IEEE will be an exception, and there are reasons why it MIGHT be enough for us tALL o survive, but I will learn more this coming week or two.) Furthermore, the examples cited by May all feel like the kind of nonlinear dynamical process we are involved in; I do not see signs of collective intelligence giving collective free will there, or in any of the history reviewed by Ward and Kirschvink. 

IMPLICATION: ONLY A CHANGE OF GAME gives us much hope. And that comes back to issues
INTERNET design **IS** a kind of game design. Approached that way, with the right kind of immune system included, it may be possible to create enough of the right kind of separability of "QAGI workspace of consciousness" to give us a chance to survive. The odds may be against our species surviving in the face of so many things which we have to get right, but in such a large cosmos SOME species probably get through, so it is only natural that we should try our best... as part of our noosphere, we naturally do respond to the most basic feedback we receive from it, feedback which gently guides us all to help as much as we can.. 

Friday, December 24, 2021

Is Putin Determined to Start World War III?

For several days now, MANY people in the West have been wondering how best to react to a major speech by Putin which seemed to say: "I have told you exactly what my detailed demands are from you. You must concede IMMEDIATELY, visibly, and at massive scale, or else something is coming which you will regret deeply, and not be able to ignore. Ukraine is my target now." 

 This statement, plus some discussions we had yesterday, stimulated my "early morning self" to think a bit more deeply. In the discussions yesterday, I heard two theories about the Ukraine situation: =======================================================================

One theory: he will try an anschluss, just two provinces. "After all, if it worked for Hitler.." [Comment those words in quotes were not what anyone said. Just an inner reaction which came to me then. Call it "the voice of Loki," which is useful but which needs to be kept leashed.] 

 Another: he will show he can hack into the Turkish drones which Ukraine plans to use to restore national control. One argument in favor: after all, even WE could. (If USGOV knows the more basic things even I know.) One argument against: if Russia could, why didn't they save Armenia? ======================================================= 

 But in truth, I did hear a lot of Putin's speech (on France24 and DW and maybe FT especially), and had a sense of what was behind it. In truth... it is ever more clear this morning... that I can even empathize with what lies behind that speech and that expression of frustration and desperation. Some even say that empathy is a crucial starting point in addressing these kinds of problems (once one is prepared enough to really empathize and not fake it.) 

 As usual, my early morning meditation got into complexities 'way beyond what I could write down even in days of typing on a laptop. Two bits of some relevance: ACRONYMS (important to how my higher self encodes memories to my mundane daily self): in this case EHUB (Endless Halls of Unthinking Bureaucracy), what drives Putin nuts, and GGC (Give God Choices, an aspect of how I think about synchronicity in guiding behavior). 

 A major part of Putin's message felt like: "You guys said you wanted to join with us in a new global alliance right after the end of the Cold War, circa Yeltsin time. You raised all these promises. But then we tried and tried, and nothing worked, it got worse and worse and worse. I am sick and tired of that. I won't take it any more. If I have to kick the walls, well, what choice did you give me?" 

In fact... EHUB. I too have had lots of experience trying to figure out how to get constructive results, intelligence and sanity out of the US government, which I have interacted with in many many ways at many different levels. In addition to the EHUB experience, I have seen more and more in the past few decades of a syndrome I think of as " bait and switch." That and EHUB are not conscious policies of anyone, but a kind of reflex response syndrome which has evolved through time, in part because of the effects of greater concentration of power. "Power corrupts..". 

 The promises made to Putin were probably MOST astronomical under Donald Trump. Whatever his self image and beliefs about himself, Trump certainly was the most extreme practitioner of bait and switch I have ever seen in the White House in my life. What hit ME directly was when Trump promised to strengthen the US economy, including the energy economy, and live up to the US Constitution (interstate Commerce) by getting rid of irrational regulations and barriers to competition which hold us back. That was exciting. Then he hired ... alligators from Maro Lago?... who created NEW regulations, forcing more use of coal in regions which do not want to use it, so severe that Illinois almost seceded from the US national grid system. Bait and switch. One policy announced to the public, and the diametric opposite in actual operation. 

 So did Putin also encounter the EHUB -- not only mindless bureaucracy but hired trolls and alligators, thinking only of THEIR receipts from government funding, or ideological faction? And is he basically at his wits end now, seeing little hope that the people on top will be able to get rid of the alligators and tame the system to make it live up to what the people on the top SAY they want?

 There ARE some parallels between the dynamics at work now in the world and the dynamics of the 1920s and 1930s. People did write serious books about frustration-aggression. Frustration can lead to a kind of gotterdammerung feeling, where the status quo is so intolerable they are willing to risk war. But are any of us intelligent, broad and focused enough to find a third way, not just the empty BS we see in a lot of internet policy discussions today, but a more operational kind of dialogue? Again, I think of John Von Neumann's BALANCED way of navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, step by step.

 ======================================== ======================================= 

An important friend responded: I think that to interpret these geopolitical movements and threats, such as that of Putin's Russia, or the Middle East conflict, or the China-United States dispute, it is useful the analysis of the French professor Dominique Moisi, in his book “Geopolitics of emotions " https://www.amazon.com/Geopolitics-Emotion-Cultures-Humiliation-Reshaping-ebook/dp/B0027MJU32/ "It is not possible to understand the world in which we live without examining the emotions that contribute to shaping it. The world first moves around basic emotions: fear, humiliation and hope."

 So please forgive -- I have good reason to believe I now know more about how brains work as intelligent minds than anyone else on earth. That may sound crazy, but there is a paper by Werbos and Davis (open access, easy to find on scholar.google.com) which reviews our theory of how brains work, and shows how real-time deep recording data from the best lab in the US strongly favors our theory over the behaviorist style of model more common now in computational neuroscience. In a way, our strong mathematical model describes the mammal brain as a "machine to produce and act on hopes and fears," positive and negative values of J and lambda. And so, two of the three points in this sentence are 100% consistent with and directly reflect how the brain really does work, to the best of our knowledge. 

Hopes are basically the positive sign of J or lambda, and fears the negative side. The mathematics (the ultimate goals of any RLADP optimization machine) demand that both be present, and both be learned, reflecting the actual circumstances of the organism. SOME folks do live in a world where objective reality justifies more fear, and some more hope. 

 But what of HUMILIATION??? (Certainly a theme we cannot overlook in considering Putin, or in considering experiences I had in graduate school which make it easier for me to empathize with Putin.) This is one of those phenomena extensive and fuzzy enough that I cannot be truly brief and accurate both. Crudely... how others think about us and respond to us is PART OF our image of reality, and like all other dimensions of that image a venue for hopes and fears to develop. FEAR of being misunderstood, disrespected and humiliated is undoubtedly part of the very complicated set of thoughts in Putin's mind right now. Maybe a little HOPE of actually being understood and respected, not just pandered to as one would pander to a certain kind of dog, might be a thread that could help the world escape from the serious risk of WWW3 coming... 

My friend went on to say:  HE SAID IN 2019; "Ten years ago I published the book entitled The Geopolitics of Emotion: How the Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are reshaping the world, which was based on a double conviction. First: it is not possible to fully understand the world in which we live without trying to understand and integrate their emotions. And second: emotions are like cholesterol, there are good and bad. The question is to find the correct balance between the two. Fear versus hope, hope versus humiliation ; the humiliation that leads to mere irrationality, and sometimes even violence. " 

 I would NOT say that feeling hope is good and feeling fear is bad. Hope and fear are there in the machinery of the brain (and the soul as well, I would add) for a good reason. At best it is like the duality of what we optimize and what the constraints are which we need to honor as we perform that optimization. (I could write a book on just that duality, which cuts across so many dimensions of life and thought!!). Fear and hope can both be more rational or less rational. FREUD... a great and fundamental source, which fits well with our new mathematics... talked about traumatic memories in the "id" (an example-based prediction system, in great part, prediction by association rather than by global model or dynamics). They are often traumatic, or negative, biasing expectations relative to what a true causal understanding would predict. But whatever we may say about scientologists, they are quite right that irrational hope, "euphoric memories," can be biasing and destructive just as much as traumatic memories can. 

If you are interested, I could even forward to you a message I sent to Yeshua's list on the neuroscience of the cells which actually implement these things, which some of us now know how to copy in AGI. Irrationality can of course lead to bad behaviors in a huge number of ways. That is such a huge subject, maybe too huge for an email which is already long enough. 

 One final thought: OUR EFFORTS TO LEARN AND GROW PAST the most common pitfalls which limit us, and lead to dangerous crazy behavior (like what Putin is very close to now, and like what already hit Trump in 2020 and last January) is a central part of the HUMAN POTENTIAL focus, the final chapter of Part VI of the IEEE book. I am still looking for better venues and institutional structures to do more justice to it. Best of luck, Paul

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

New experiment proved that living multicell organism can be turned into a Schrodinger cat

 Many reactionary philosophers have prayed that WE multicellular organisms could not possibly be "macroscopic Schrodinger cats". "You can put a block of wood or a communication network into a quantum mixed state, but not a LIVING CREATURE, not REAL LIFE." 

Now they have been proven wrong. But the creature they used in the experiment, a tardigrade, is ALSO very provocative, and I received this news at a time when the Presidential election in Chile seemed close to being in a mixed state too! Here is what I wrote to friends at the time, on the meaning of the experiment and on events in Chile:

====================================================================

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302337-tardigrade-is-first-multicellular-organism-to-be-quantum-entangled/

One of you recently posted:  "Tardigrade first organism to demonstrate quantum entanglement."

My initial reaction: "TARDIGRADES. I remember them well. But does anyone else know WHY I remember them and why I consider them important in the history of life?" (Suddenly I bcc the one other person, besides my wife, who really knows about them even as much as I do.) 

In fact, that post was an incredible exercise in synchronicity, connecting SEVERAL important threads in my early morning meditation today.

The first thread was political. When I first saw the post yesterday, I recalled a great visit to a research outpost in the Atacama desert. A graduate student showed me a box surrounded by endless dry sand desert, and explained that this desert was a great place to look for extreme extremophiles. The most extreme extremophiles we know about (other than places kilometers deep) are tardigrades ("little water bears")  and archaea. Tardigrades are the multicellular ones, so big that they are.. insect size, easy to find on the web.

This morning, that reminded me of the very important ELECTIONS in Chile. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59331694  )  Chile has had several great decades (and was not exactly zero before that), managing to take serious intellectual leadership in  many areas essential to our future. What has enabled them to move up so far, compared to any other nation in South America? In fact, the elections starting now in Chile remind me a lot of the important election we just had in Virginia, which I understand MUCH BETTER than any of the big media seem to, simply because I get to observe directly here (and ALSO have access to lots of media).

Chile like Virginia? Will the "Republican" candidate there (Bast) defeat the "Democrat" (Boric)?

Actually, in the past decades (after Pinochet was ousted) Chile has had a beautiful balance and dialogue between a rational left and a rational right. Just as many remember great rational Democrats in Virginia (still there, and I even gave them some money), many of us also remember Bachelet's time in Chile, a support for great enlightenment (including great serious deep research in Atacama). So why did Virginians suddenly elect a Republican governor his year, and why is Bast doing so well in the polls despite the friendly things he said about Pinochet and lack of interest in global climate change etc.? Why did the REMNANTS of the center parties (which lost the initial rounds) go to Bast?

Well, I blame it on good old-fashioned overreach, the extremism one gets when people feel too obligated to appeal to the base. Even the national Democrats in the US are suffering seriously in some ways from the same problem.
(Why is Kamala Harris being buried by the wrong kind of staff? What is that recruitment system doing to her?) 

A few days ago, I had been thinking of how to build ties to Boric, who has benefitted a lot from honest idealistic graduate students more into cybernetics than into Maduro or BLM stuff. BUT THE TARDIGRADE NEWS, at exactly the right time, crystallized my sight on why revered folks like Bachelet now see it differently. We could HOPE that Boric will do better on networking and recruitment and deal making than Biden and Harris, but how realistic is that, given the evidence we NOW have? I hope I am wrong, and I certainly have my eyes open, but it looks for NOW like Kast,

How Catholic IS Kast? What KIND of Catholic? Could he appreciate Teilhard de Chardin (or even our upgraded  version of that) or Pope Francis? Better than Maduro or Trump in any case. I certainly remember when BACHELET had a followers of Teilhard de Chardin in two of her key official  futurist networks (and so sad I am that I was violently ill when I had a follow-up meeting with one of the two). Would Bast be open to listening to her (who supports him now) about making plans for that, both for the sake of his administration but also for a nice election headline?

===================================================
But can you believe, that is only ONE PART of what cane to me in five minutes of my usual morning meditation?

Another part was a quick memory of the Climate Extinction cause and network which has been my main activity, after all, for several months now, thanks to IEEE and to some of the folks I bcc. 

I will resist the temptation to  the great draft preface by Ward, Wadhams and Werbos for the IEEE book proposal we have been working on. (I hope it will be releasable in a week or so, after we nail down more of the brain stuff, another topic in my morning meditation. I get long homework assignments these days.) THE NUMBER ONE THREAT to human survival from climate change is due to the growing likelihood that ANOTHER extremophile, the archaea producing H2S, will proliferate suddenly at the deep source of the Humboldt current which now brings oxygen (and lots of fish) to the coast off of Chile. Only this year did we actually combine the relevant numbers and models, and see how close and real it is. Poison enough to kill all humans on dearth, manifesting FIRST as a great stink in that same place where they were looking for tardigrades! It reminded me a little of the "silly" science fiction movie, Pacific Rim, where another form of life changes the oceans in a way which could kill OUR form of life. These extremophiles are actually doing that here and now! But IEEE, not Vancouver, is our best hope of preventing their success in annihilating us. (But I don't blame it on the souls of the tardigrades. And folks in Vancouver COULD help..)

==============

The other thread... came this morning, AFTER my brain research post, when I looked up the story posted here yesterday on tardigrades.

When I READ the whole article... no it is not a quantum mind kind of post!

Rather, it is... "The world's first demonstrated quantum entanglement of an entire  multicellular organism."

The first REAL macroscopic Schrodinger cat was not actually a cat, but a "water bear," but it still is hugely important.
More precisely, it is a hugely important landmark contribution to the large emerging literature on "macroscopic Schrodinger cats." It is the first solid empirical proof (that I know of) of a macroscopic multicellular organism being put into a quantum mixed state. Because WE are macroscopic multicellular organisms, it becomes ever more clear that folks who say "I could not be in a mixed state, that violate all our mainstream philosophies" need to learn that those philosophies are FALSE, proven empirically wrong. 

Just FYI, I attach a paper (accepted subject to minor revision, and revised accordingly) which goes on go describe how technology based on macroscopic Schrodinger cats has huge potential applications in technology, such as cybersecurity
issues immediately relevant to global currency issues here and now. (I just hope they start implementing BEFORE certain currencies like bitcoin crash.) 

Best of luck,

  Paul

===========
Later, my friend in Chile described their work with Boric, and I am VERY glad he corrected the vague impressions I had before that. Ffrench-Davis knows more about currency and inflation and deficit issues than the Great Authorities we read at Harvard years ago. AGI/IOT it radically changing those systems, but if such technology could be COMBINED with what Ffrench-Davis, maybe the world economy might have a prayer of surviving.

Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Best webcast I have seen for years on serious climate action

Earlier today, I saw a HORRID webcast, where COP26 people congratulated themselves on how successful they were. The measure of success? They got lots of kids to take the issue seriously, and then do stuff like wash dishes better. It's great that they wash dishes better, but ... that is not the kind of outcome we need, if the goal is to keep our species from extinction sooner than we expect!! 

 I hope that the IEEE book project will point us to a better way... but in the meantime, I was very delighted to see a far more encouraging webcast at noon today. Here is what I sent immediately to the transportation sector of the IEEE project: ============================================== 
Our Energy Policy (OEP) Webcast on Electrifying Transportation  

  Why this is important  

 More than 80% of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted from US comes directly from making electricity or from transportation. Those two are about equal.Most serious climate advocates see the replacement of fossil fuels by electricity as the best way by far to achieve climate survival, in transportation. Our draft IEEE book plan insists on taking a more efficient, market-based approach, with room in it for clean fuels under correct market incentives. However, there is no question that electric transportation is opportunity number one in this sector. 

 The webcast today (12/8/2021) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/energy-leaders-webinar-series/electrifying-transport-the-state-of-electric-vehicles-a-webinar/ conveyed essential new information on the very best serious action now being taken in the US on electrifying transportation (as it bears on climate risk). It was concrete enough both to point to important opportunities unmet even beyond that, but also to give important pointers to how to connect to and assist the existing great efforts. It is the most encouraging and uplifting piece I have seen on ACTION to prevent climate extinction from the US in years.

 I was surprised to see such a good webcast, but not SO surprised, since OEP is in many ways an offshoot of the EnergyConsensus dialogue led by the office of Roscoe bartlett (R-Md), which, until he was gerrymandered out of office, was the most effective, serious and honest deep dialogue on US energy security  across US government and other serious players. At first, EOP was not really living up to that high mandate, but today may be a major turning point.

  Selected Points  

 OEP usually posts these webcasts a few days later. For now… here are my scattered recollections, from scrawled notes, of most important things said. 

 EVERYONE agreed that incentives to purchasers of EV (also PHEV and HEV?) are the most crucial target in electrification.  

 I was so delighted that Colleen Jansen of Charge Point stressed that her firm is building networks of collaboration and information, to connect all the players which need to be connected to make this work, certainly to include auto makers, battery makers, and local governments. She ALSO spoke strongly on their advocacy of a Clean Fuel Standard (see werbos.com/oil.htm, for links to topics like the Brownback bill). She was setting very high standards of integrity and market-based balance, to a truly unusual degree.  

 Steven Boyd of the DOE Program on Batteries and Electrification and Michael Maten of GM had really great chemistry in discussion. No one who sincerely wants to accelerate electrification should neglect what lessons THEY have learned! Michael Maten in particular felt like “the new replacement” for a GM engineer/manager (Al Sobey) who was one of my very best partners in these areas until his recent death by old age. Maten’s rank is not as high as Al’s was, but it is really great that there is SOME coverage of that crucial base, including the link to government action. 

Boyd does NOT have so much mandate as his area (and Biden's climate commitments) call for, but you could see on his face that there is an upswing going on.  I was surprised that Boyd cites a $100/kwh target for car batteries, and others project $65 a bit later. But then he said Bloomberg cites more like $131, and it is a complex area, very variable across different car markets even in the US. 

Maten recommended https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/national-blueprint-lithium-batteries and https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/federal-consortium-advanced-batteries-fcab as crucial sources we all should build on. HOWEVER: Maten stressed that it is all “batteries, batteries, batteries” in their efforts.“That is THE issue in achieving their goal of being competitive without subsidies.” When I was at NSF and IEEE USA energy policy committee, we had access to much more detailed breakdowns on WHERE THE extra costs were which made a Toyoto Prius PHEV more expensive, for example, than a comparable ICE car. Batteries were part of it, but as I recall power electronics were even bigger. And yes, motor quality and control were crucial as well. (I remember how switched reluctance motors with modern RLADP control outperform electric motors requiring rare earths.) I suspect there are major unmet opportunities here still, from work we started (AND CHECKED) from NSF, used in Asia but not yet in US or EU. Some not even in Asia yet.

Dan Levy of Credit Suisse was a great moderator, and asked balanced but probing questions, showing awareness of how electrification is moving so much faster in other nations now. Part of the issue is supply chains, and Biden HAS given encouragement to strengthening our supply chains. DOE **IS** supporting more robust supply chains, though do they know what firms in China were doing decades ago in recycling lithium batteries? (All in my files.) Or how the foundation of rare earth production in China turns out to be TECHNOLOGY, not resources, as we learned in discussing it in Changsha and Wuhan decades ago with people who applied control algorithms I developed to the separation issues and other control in that sector? (The Chinese wanted to share with us, in a joint China/NSF research effort, but our protectors protected us from having that technology.  Memos in my files.)

Sarah Fitts, a partner of Schiff-Hardin, inaugurated the session, and had very exciting things to say as well. It felt as if she deserves a lot of the credit for this renaissance of OEP, and that her firm will be providing great guidance to electrification in coming years.

I do wonder whether Boyd has seen the workshop report from Sadoway of MIT, the last major NSF cut in batteries relevant to cars. In my files. Along with LOTS of technical details. I saw heavy filtering in some of the other channels, which may have limited what he had access to. 

  The discussion of hydrogen was quite amusing -- showing insight and depth and a sense of humor. The GM guy clearly and politely said "FORGET it for reducing GHG in transportation." (Is anyone proposing to use it to generate electricity for the US grid???) (Not his exact words, but close enough. The webcast video is coming soon. I will cite it in my chapter on alternatives to electricity in transportation.) 

All participants argued strongly about the importance of the grid interface. At times Colleen seemed to have a picture in her mind of a “recharge at work” station which exactly matched a design which Kumar Venayagamoorthy fleshed out for a grant I awarded him back when I was at NSF!! For Section II of the book, where there are MANY relevant technology opportunities beyond the transportation group as such.

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

IEEE Citation for Frank Rosenblatt Award, top technical field award for computational intelligence

2022 IEEE FRANK ROSENBLATT AWARD Sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society PAUL JOHN WERBOS For development of backpropagation and fundamental contributions to reinforcement learning and time series analysis Among the first researchers to realize the power of bio-inspired learning techniques to train neural networks in real time, Paul John Werbos’ development of backpropagation algorithms provided the backbone of reinforcement and deep learning methods for solving today’s complex tasks. Backpropagation allows training of neural network data online and in real time by using gradients computed backward through the layers of the neural network. His leadership of the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems group at the U.S. National Science Foundation enhanced the ability of countless researchers to contribute to prediction and control of systems ranging from nanorobots to the electric power grid. His work has made possible many advances in areas including electric vehicles and speech, face, and handwriting recognition applications. An IEEE Fellow, Werbos is program director (retired) with the National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, USA. TAGLINE: Backpropagation is the backbone of neural network training for deep learning applications critical to prediction and control of complex systems

Monday, November 22, 2021

Q basic realities of living in the multiverse or Minkowski space we are in

This week, I was stunned to see how little kids watching comic movies https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v1BpX4Awxk get to see a better image of reality which we now have from mainstream physics than do most professional physicists or mystics or philosophers! EVEN YESHUA may benefit from reading this one closely.... in a way, I am writing this for him. There is a huge explanation gap here. But please forgive me if once again I start from some claims which some of you on these lists would want to debate. I will be happy to explain a big, but FIRST THE BASICS. The most basic, solid, well-tested theory of charged particles and electromagnetic forces (just PART of physics, of course) is the version of Quantum Electrodynamics based on the Everett/Wheeler/ Deutsch theory of physics. I already gave lots of explanation of that AND MY VIEWS OF OTHER THINGS in links on my web page ========================================================= Is it possible to reconcile (1) the hardest core realism in physics, versus (2) the modern best quantum field theories, versus (3) our new mathematical understanding of brains and minds and the evolution of life; versus (4) the most powerful first person experience of soul and spirit, and of our connections to a serious and real higher level of intelligence? In truth, it took me more than 50 years to see a solid mathematical way to reconcile all this. But now – after exploring thousands of other views and cultures, I now see no credible evidence against the new unification I posted on youtube this year (see the slide below). For a more intuitive picture of what this means, see this recent interview discussion in Canada. ================================================================= The EWD theory says that we live in a specific type of "multiverse" called a "Fock space." It says that the state of the cosmos we live in, at any time t, is simply the state or value of a function psi(t,X), where X is a point in Fock space and t is time. WE KNOW from extensive experiments in many areas that our cosmos is EITHER: (1) A multiverse, like what EWD assumes (And like what the Spiderman trailer discusses!!!) (2) A 3+1-D curved space, like what Einstein assumed (I call this "HCER") . This SOUNDS simpler than EWD, BUT IN PRACTICE THOSE FEW OF US WHO DEEPLY UNDERSTAND the mathematics of that possibility (See https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Paul-Werbos/publication/327164414_WerbosFleury_v2/links/5b7de4bea6fdcc5f8b5de239/WerbosFleury-v2 or just use scholar.google.com to find the paper by Werbos and Fleury) understand that it yields a picture of our life whihc is actually WEIRDER than what EWD seems to depict. (3) WEIRDER even than either of those, as in concepts which have yet to be translated into real mathematics, or into clear images of how life actually works for us. (This huge collection ranges from "digital universe" to ultrafuzzy versions both of idealism and of solipsism." SO IF YOU WANT TO MINIMIZE CRAZINESS AND WEIRDNESS IN YOUR VIEW OF LIFE, (1) IS THE SIMPLEST, LEAST CRAZY OPTION YOU HAVE! Anyone who thinks that EWD multiverse is "too weird to believe" is simply out of touch with hard core experience, with first person reality and objective reality both! And so, when the kiddies ask how spiderman will survive in the multiverse, THEY are in touch with reality a lot more than the ignorant flat earth adults!! ======================== ============================== But now let me go to MORE ADVANCED QUESTIONS, building on that foundation. Questions like what the kiddies were asking, like what I have asked at times about President Trump 2021 and King Charles 1970-1990. And like some new quantum technologies which might just show up working on this planet, beyond even David Deutsch's Quantum Turing Machine. (But not yet the true time stuff, buried in the experiment+theory paper Werbos and Fleury if anyone understood it.) Kiddies first: IS IT POSSIBLE that Spiderman or some other human really could be put into a mixed state, where they exist in TWO "universes" (clusters of threads of the multiverse) at the same time, causing enormous problems for the entire space-time continuum? Please forgive me if I first review a major part of modern empirical physics which most people do not know about. =============================================== CAn ANY macroscopic object (let alone a person) enter into a mixed state, a quantum superposition? Because I am a hard core Einsteinian realist, I was once very skeptical of the idea that this could be possible. So was the famous Tony Leggett and many other physicists. I am very grateful to Menas Kafatos for inviting me to give a paper at his great symposium in 1988 where all the skeptics came to present their ALTERNATIVES to the Deutschian view: https://www.amazon.com/Theorem-Conceptions-Universe-Fundamental-Theories/dp/0792304969/ But real physicists do not just argue; they look for empirical evidence. Many did, starting from ideas at that conference. Due to them, and to work by followers of Deutsch, a huge literature has grown up (and keeps growing) showing that YES MACROSCOPIC SCHRODINGER CATS DO EXIST, AND YES EWD MAKES CORRECT PREDICTIONS ABOUT THEM. I have previously posted general literature reviews, but since I don't want to spend so much time on that today, let me just note that I went to scholar.google.com this morning and searched on: macroscopic schrodinger cats kilometers which gave 931 hits. One of the hits near the top which might be intelligible to nonspecialists: http://quanta.ws/ojs/index.php/quanta/article/viewFile/68/99 SO YES THEY ARE POSSIBLE AND REAL. ====================================== BUT HOW REAL COULD THEY BE THEY IN REAL HUMAN LIFE? ACCORDING TO PHYSICS? In the Spiderman trailer, a specific event occurs which "splits the multiverse" into two tracks, which stay apart but interact for as long as the trailer lasts. (I did not see the full movie. I saw the trailer because my family brought me to see Dune.) THESE lists might even discuss what kind of events would do that, but not in this post, which already is too large. In truth, I have often wondered whether our multiverse might have been split, to a macroscopic degree, one on the day after election day 2020 in the US and another in the UK . IS IT POSSIBLE that Trump really is occupying the White House right now, in an Alternate Reality which really DOES exist? This is a very tricky question, and I did not really understand the key principles until THIS YEAR -- the year when I more fully understood the full implications of the paper by Werbos and Fleury. (This is not trivial math!) ============================================= I BEGAN WITH A MORE ORTHODOX VIEWPOINT, LIKE WHAT MOST EWD PEOPLE TACITLY ASSUME. (And like what my latest next generation quantum computing ideas assume.) I pictured the "splits" as the kinds of flows one would expect by understanding pis-dot=iHpsi. One imagines parallel "universes" as states S(t) of the multiverse, with probabilities attached. The PRACTICAL QUESTION is what the probability distribution (S(t)) looks like. Many good, serious physicists assume that macroscopic schrodinger cats are still quite rare, and that Pr(S(t)) usually looks like a narrow normal distribution centered around a normal base case reality. Even solid EWD physicists were surprised when QED engineers learned how to create such states, but it took special efforts. ANY solid EWD physicist would agree that the Pr(S(t)) which emerges with time is exactly what the generalized Boltzmann distribution specifies. (https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Condensed-Matter-Physics-Chaikin/dp/0521794501/). The shape of the probability surface is basically the same as the energy surface, for states of relatively separated macroscopic objects, like people or cars, etc. A SPOTTY probability distribution, with LOTS of states well represented, is only possible if the energy surface is spotty. But in fact, we know how to do that. Is the internet itself starting to do that? MORE IMPORTANT IN THE DYNAMICS: those who do real QED dynamic calculations know that VIRTUAL states are also important, states with a kind of imbalance such that their probability DECAYS WITH TIME. I have generally assumed that the Trump2020 "universe", if it existed, has been decahing in probability ... a very serious MACROSCOPIC virtual state. (Hey, has anyone studied macroscopic virtual cats? I don't know how hard it would be, but if anyone could, it would be a great PhD topic under an advisor capable of such things!! The math is almost certainly right, but that doesn't tell you how easy it is to DO.) ==================================== ========================================= BUT BEYOND THAT: Long ago, I (and no one else?) understood how the MRF models necessary to explain CHSH experiments under HCER, OR under a version of EWD modified to be mathematically consistent (https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10773-008-9719-9.pdf) tell us that WE are actually just POSSIBLE STATES, not "the only real" or "chosen" states! (Yes, Pr(S) for states over 3D space can have that property!) In a way, we are like the "shadows on the wall" of Plato's cave. Tricky, splitting kinds of environments (like the 2020 elections?) can induce a LATTICE of possibilities, which branch out from ONE START, but then later RECOMBINE to one final state. When we experience life IN THE MIDDLE of that lattice, there are parallel copies of us out there just as real as we are! There is both recombination, and evaporation, in the statistics of Pr(S) under HCER, just as there are in EWD. So in the end, HCER is not REALLY weirder than EWD! Through the mathematical equivalence (at the level of QED) they predict precisely the SAME degree of weirdness. HCER does make more interesting predictions at a later stage, but even the most advanced possible quantum technology on the table NOW does not yet rise to that later stage. I allows it, but not yet. Time, better models of nuclear force and solitons are key parts of the difference which we will someday see (if we ever get that far on this planet at risk). ============= Let me pull out a fine poing sme folks may have missed: The experiments in Werbos and Fleuery were NOT to test EWD versus HCER. Those experiments were designed to test a few variants of EWD slightly altered (NOT by altering psi-dot=iHpsi but by altering practical models of macroscopic objects interacting with psi) VERSUS the ancient Cartesian dualisms which many philosophers are enamored of , "seeking God (a path to heaven)" in a pair of polarized sunglasses). Consistent versions won over Cartesian versions, hands down. But THAT needs to be more widely understood and replicated. From the viewpoint of believing in psi-dot=iHpsi, it is about MACROSCOPIC MODELS of MACROSCOPIC objects, and how they ingteract over time, which is absolutely central to reality (and even to spiderman). to be mathemafically consistent

Saturday, November 20, 2021

Scientific Foundation of Fear, and Threats of Extinction of the Human Species

First, I thank Yeshua ben David for his thoughtful comment on the video conversation with the Chile Council on Foresight, https://youtu.be/TT5n10Co8hM which they are using as input to BOTH parties in the major national elections which start tomorrow. I forwarded Yeshua's comments back to them, and they replied just now: ================================================================= Good morning Paul, glad to learn that you posted the video link in different places, also the drive link. I did the same. The email from Yeshua Ben David, very interesting on the dramatic situation of Venezuela, and also his comments about the crisis of integrity we are facing all over the world, but mainly in latin america. It is important what he said, that you continue inspiring people to find ideas and solutions. I completely agree with that. It's a good idea you should consider expanding the outline of the book to include those two new sections. I think the book will be a very useful contribution to knowledge and an "opening minds tool" . ================= THE DRAFT PROPOSED IEEE book I mentioned will focus intensely on climate and energy security, but this conversation with the Chile Council, and my other activities, led me to think I should consider expanding my proposed section of the book ("What have we missed?", a less formal chapter looking to the future) to include subsections or chapters on the internet risks (mostly a fear item, like climate) and on connection to the noosphere (a hope item, ever so connected to climate). ==================================================== But people have asked whether anyone SHOULD do anything about FEARS like the FEAR of worst case climate change, which will be a major section of the new book (if it is approved). In fact -- FEAR ITSELF is extremely fundamental to the human mind, to the mammal brain, even to the soul and to artificial general intelligence AGI). It is far more universal and fundamental than qualia like "redness"!! Those of us who are serious and sane students of first person human experience DO INCLUDE fear in our serious studies, even in FIRST PERSON SCIENCE. Those who do not are what I have called "spiritual coach potatoes," a very important phrase which I thank Yeshua for reminding me of yesterday. Fears of extinction of our entire human species are an important SPECIAL CASE of fear, but the GENERAL CASE is an important starting point we should all study on these two lists. MATHEMATICS is the most solid and universal foundation for the study of consciousness and intelligent systems. See the open access journal paper https://internal-journal.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnsys.2016.00097/full for a review of the evidence that mammal brains DO FIT a special class of neural network model, models based on "RLADP", neural networks designed to learn how to maximize some kind of inborn U signal (aka telos, utility). I have given tutorials and papers on RLADP, from concepts to implementation, for decades. SOME CRUCIAL STARTING POINTS: * Some of us would even DEFINE an "intelligent system" as a system (form) designed or evolved to learn to maximize the long-term expected value of U over future time. U is basically inborn. (See Pribram's edited book https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Values-Biological-Monographs-Proceedings-ebook/dp/B073V2VNMT/ for a detailed explanation and, of course, lots of real neuroscience.) * But the mathematics of RLADP tells us that intelligent systems must contain components I call J or lambda, to bridge the gap between long-term values U and guidance for actions here and now. Thus "The theory that the brain is an RLADP machine basically is a fancy way of saying that our actions are all driven by hopes (J or lambda positive) and fears (J or lambda negative)." The specific brain circuits which implement J and U and lambda are identifiable and hardwired into the mammal brain. What CAUSES a feeling of hope or fear (J going up or down) VARIES as we learn, but the physical basis of the feelings themselves is permanent. Without hopes and fears, we would not be intelligent. Those humans who APPEAR devoid of hopes and fears are called "low affect" or "personality disorder" in psychology, for good reason. (Bernie Baars has rightly urged us to get copies of the standard desk reference on common human mental disorders.) Those who PRETEND to be free of hopes and fears, but who clutch in their stomach as they say it, are far more common, fortunately; those too appear in the manual, in many forms, varying from psychopathic liars to very conscious liars, to those whose words and meanings are utterly disconnected (somewhat like split brain experiment patients). The math demands both positive and negative aspects. Many of us first person scientists have studied what children do. They often have unrealistic fears they need to learn to outgrow, but also real threats (like cars as they cross the street) for whihc they must learn MORE/NEW and better defined fears, using their full focused intelligence. Because people do not enjoy fear, they usually learn a host of ways to cope with fears. I urge any serious student of the human mind to read one of the great longitudinal papers by Vaillant (like https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/docs/230/2014/25Soldz.pdf) , who did a catalogue of the common "defense mechanisms" people learn to cope with major fears of threats or stress. Some lead to gross failure in life, even for successful graduates of Harvard, while others do well. The technical defense mechanism called "denial", often biasing climate policy is the one which can drive anyone to death, at any level. There are more promising defense mechanisms, including those which support honest probing, science and collaboration -- as we work very hard to advance in the new IEEE book project!! It has been an incredible emotional roller coaster ride for me, especially, as I have trained my my "global workspace of consciousness" to be able to see realistic future scenarios very vividly, with all the required labels for probabilities and alternative outcomes, and as the very best evidence does change as one probes deeper and deeper. Best of luck. We ALL need it!!! ===================================== ======================================== Addendum: In one discussion, a friend asked: "**IF** we do take climate risk seriously, what can we do? Just send letters to our Congressman, or change our lifestyle?" I replied by expressing MY fear reaction to people who overuse the phrase "Think globally, act locally." I was happy to hear an old friend propose that many years ago, but I would now wonder whether he could foresee what a Frankenstein monster that morphed into! The new IEEE book proposal begins by stressing the need to build new NETWORKS of communication, connecting all the way from the bugs under the mud in the Amazon to the highest levels of legislative and investment decisions, WITH LOTS OF SOLID TWO-WAY CONVERSATION TO INTEGRATE IMPORTANT REALITIES IN THE MIDDLE LIKE WHAT IEEE COVERS. I even urged some chapter authors to think of themselves as neurons, urgently needed to connect both "up" and "down" (and sideways of course) to give our world the TYPE of collective intelligence that we now need even just to survive as a species!

Saturday, November 6, 2021

From covid to climate to internet -- metaphors and reality and new physics

I see three really huge issues of life or death dominating at different levels of human thought these days -- covid, climate risks, and internet risks. All three can be great "toys" for the mind, areas to test our ability to think clearly and focus effectively. I am ever so glad that I am NOT one of the people who has to devote more than about 5% of my time and energy on covid. Yes, if we are sane, we all DO have to have some clear strategies for coping with covid, but I enjoy that about as much as I enjoy trips to the bathroom in my house. Yes, I have great respect for people like Fauci working hard to"cover" that part of our world, just as I respect my kidneys,but I am... happy or content... to occupy a different part of our noosphere. Yes, I notice global political signs in the way that covid flows (e.g. to Russia right now, as I see on DW livestream), but ... For several weeks I have "crashed" on the issue of climate extinction. After all, if covid threatens about 1% of us, one way or another, and if there are simple ways to be more secure in our own lives, why not pay more attention to the issue of climate extinction which threatens ALL of us, together, as a species? That's a matter of prioritization. And if COP26 people are screwing up more than covid policies are screwing up THAT area, is that not a call for those of us who know better to try to improve it as best we can? This has been a great learning experience, involving deep ups and downs, learning to adjust my views in the way I once did when I worked at NSF and learned the depths of many new fields. It is not only about making CONNECTIONS, but about INTEGRATION. Making new connections in thought and in human networks of communication is central to any field; I see failure to make connections with reality as the main reason why COP26 is making our chances of survival worse, not better, on the whole. But connections alone are not enough; it is essential to INTEGRATE the story, and to know the mathematical way of thinking, integrating and questioning (ala Von Neumann). By the way, the new story on climate is every bit as scary as what I feared a few months ago... and the workable solutions from technology, science and microeconomics (integrative market design) are still huge but scattered, not well enough integrated even now... So when folks talk about covid versus climate, one image comes to my mind: we CAN survive the lethal challenges facing us on climate by fully connecting to the earth (and sun), and drawing together more of the fullest, highest intelligence available there. Versus poor covid folks stuck in a kind of underworld. BUT NOW: today, on a kind of sabbath or weekend day... I can wait until Monday for the next big installment of the climate struggle.. and try to reflect on the bigger picture, not losing sight of that bigger picture. Above all, I see the new risks emerging from changes in the internet (http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm) as bigger, more definite, closer at hand and more difficult even than the number two set of immminent risks from climate. To what extent is this great crusade on climate (which is far from won) just a kind of avoidance behavior for me, distracting me from the really big threats, threats closer to my own personal comparative advantage? But if we humans are too dumb even to save our own lives in the face of someting so mundane and visible as climate problems, and if the very best experts on earth can act on total blindness until their eyes are forcibly directed to clear simple numbers under their own eyes, what hope is there of us surviving something far more challenging to understand and organize? Is the "spirit of the time" (Jung, Red Book) and our local solar noosphere just too... dumb?... limited... to be able to cope with something that tricky, if it can barely come to terms with something so much simpler rooted in its own experience? (I often cite Ward and Kirschvink, and Hazen's work, lately for an image of what our noosphere has experienced in its long life so far.) Actually, I THINK I have been able to smuggle some very serious and important new and benign internet technology into the IEEE climate discussion, with encouragement from others who agree that the internet sector is also important. So it is not JUST avoidance behavior, but it has a long way to go. And I am reminded again how Jung has seen as clearly as any human into "the spirit of the times" versus "the spirit of the deep", like OUR noosphere and the greater web of life and mind we see in gravitational lensing images of dark matter. If earth can handle climate, but if internet is too much for it, then maybe internet is a matter for the sky. None of us knows what the spirit of the deep, highest intelligence is that we could see in those photos, but at a minimum I see something like a network of bayous, an ecology FULL of noospheres, many more mature than ours, connected in a society OR MORE... On the main island in the center of Lake Titticacca are twin sacred mountains, pachamamma and pachatatta, reflecting earth and sky images much older and more universal than vedas or bible. In my view, reflecting spirit of deep and noosphere, more true and more real, at a fundamental level, than the many doctrines and rulebooks invented by later human political rulers. Should they house an image of climate sustainability on pachamamma, and a kind of Godel Escher Bach geometric image depicting internet on pachatatta, complete with mathematical symbols? For there is where we must strive to connect, to understand the internet evolution enough to avoid falling to our deaths in any number of ways. ======== But: from metaphors to reality. CRUDELY, the waves and waves of monumental change coming to the internet (which go far beyond the placebos and morphine you get from commentators who do not know the math and make money by telling people what they want to hear) are divided into several whole WAVE TRAINS. The very first wave train may be called "AGI/IOT", classical artificial general intelligence and internet of things COMBINED. (Two aspects of ONE system.) See https://arxiv.org/abs/1404.0554 for a roadmap from old shops to Levels of intelligence which China, at least, is moving ahead to build, but without the understanding necessary to prevent disaster. The new book by Kissinger and Schmitt dramatically understates what is coming, but it may help as a wake up call. The details are very important, but this morning I want to put down a marker beyond that. The next big wave train MAY appear, to a useful and positive degree, in the new IEEE book. We will see. I force myself to limit what I say, because we are entering an incredible minefield, where we MUST move forward but there are a hundred IEDs we need to carefully dodge as best we can. I can say that QUANTUM effects are crucial to the next big wave train. BUT NO, it is not about any of the silly versions of Cartesian dualism which have brown up in speculations about quantum stuff. It requires real math and real experiments. The next gigantic wave train, making massive changes to internet and IOT, requires nothing more than David Deutsch's many worlds model of physics, even with Copenhagen measurement rules ( minus observer) assumed But the wave after that will benefit from experimental work by Yeshua and Marc, which I do hope will stay in the chapter in the IEEE book, which I hope will fly all the way. HOWEVER... I am bcc'ing two of the others whose work connects to the wave after that, NOT to be discussed in the IEEE book. Ironically, the latest issue before last of Scientific American carried two stories which fit very well into the new picture. The work on "wobbly muons" sends a shiver up my spine (literally) right now, as I think back to what I saw. The first implication is that it strengthens the discussion we started on how to image dark MATTER (not to be confused with "dark energy", and not just particles of matter) with a resolution finer than the light years resolution in those gravitational lensing pictures. That is already a big deal! If our local noobrain is mainly made of dark matter, this might give us a way to map it out a bit better. BUT THEN: the wobbling clearly suggests a target for folks like Nancy on this list, or like Nanjing qi researchers, to try to get some very solid physical data, and see what we can do. Some of us can, and some of us haven't yet learned how, but THAT is worthy of further consideration.

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

A Buddhist view of protecting yourself from covid infection and climate extinction

First, the "lower world", the mundane physical covid part. In previous discussion (appended in part below), some of us converged on a two-level picture of the BASICS of how covid spreads. At one level, it spreads like a simple flu or cough infection from nose to nose, mainly by particles in the air. At another level, it goes from nose to lungs and blood, where it causes unique damage. The vaccinations address the second level, but even for those of who have been vaccinated the first level affects our lives, and what we need to do. Ironically, Fauci has at times said things we should notice, trying to point us gently towards a sensible balanced approach. Yes, he has often struggled under powerful politicians -- mainly Trump and Biden, whom he had to take very seriously. And he had to work with FDA, which certainly IS under terrible pressure to honor its primary "stakeholders," mainly big pharma. (I have seen how the current stakeholder system works across many agencies and nations!!) But the JAMA youtube channel tries to get deeper. I remember Fauci's paper (in Science?), posted there, which stressed the MIDDLE WAY -- doing low-cost reasonable things to prevent covid, not wasting energy by rewriting our lives but not ignoring reality either. (Unfortunately, that paper only paid lip service to most of those reasonable things except for masks, and more can be said even about which masks when and how.) So -- to keep YOUR nose clear inside, what can you do? Plamen cited a nasal spray which protects our nose. If you MUST go out to places where the particles may be dense in the air, it is worth the effort. His advice about what spray to buy sounds important. But for me, an even simpler change of habits is very powerful. Simple things can have big effects. (And you can do both if you need to.) Over time, I have learn a graded ladder of TYPES of hot shower. It helps to take such showers regularly anyway, but after coming back from crowded events with covid potential it is especially important. One simple first step is just to heat the water in the pipes leading to your shower. I should do that anyway, to save time and money and hot water, except when I am taking a shower after my wife who already heated the pipes. The easy simple way to heat the pipes is to put salt into a plastic glass, shut the bathroom door, and turn on hot water in the sink. When the water is as hot as I can stand, then put a small amount into the glass, swirl and gargle. Use it like a mouthwash, trying to fill the nasal cavities and throat as much and as long as you can with moderate effort, feel the vapors. Steam and hot water are good ways to kill all kinds of viruses, including covid. Next step, KEEP gargling, as you enter the shower. (That usually means clearing the area a bit -- putting MY towel over the shower door wall, and putting a shirt or towel from the laundry hamper on the floor for when I will come out.) THEN I turn on the hot water in the shower cubicle, and eventually spit out the salt water to the floor, where it drains away to the shower exit pipe. After that, it depends on what LEVEL of shower I choose this time, but in any case, filling the air with steam helps me breathe in hot steam, which is also a crucial benefit for covid or virus risks. The shower is also a perfect place for advanced qi gong or physical therapy exercises, which also benefit from various types of deep breathing with maximum awareness, which we need to cultivate more and more when we age. ========================= So where is the Buddhism here, aside from deep breathing? There are many TYPES of Buddhism worth knowing about and using. (See www.werbos.com/religions.htm for links to photos depicting a few important kinds of Buddhism.) One strand of Buddhism helps people organize their memories and experience into the system of "seven worlds." That is most famous in Japan, but Chogyam Trungpa also has a book on meditation which I studied last year after I read his book Born in TIbet last year. That, and Jung's Red Book, was a great book to read when we were all struggling to survive the first year of covid. In MY life, I tend to simplify it from seven worlds to the three I see every day -- the "lower world" (like the huge forest behind my house), the "middle world" (like our kitchen and like office buildings I often see in Virginia), and the "upper world" (like higher meditation and astral travel, for me our bedroom). SOME Japanese view life as a struggle to rise from the lowest worlds to the highest ones. BUT THIS IS An INCORRECT WAY TO VIEW OUR SITUATION. (See the noosphere species model, also linked to at werbos.com/religions.htm, and in more recent and complete discussions at http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm.) Each of us is a symbiosis of "body" and "soul", where our "soul" is a part of our local noosphere, no matter how high we rise. Yes, the noosphere has higher and lower parts, but nature calls us to INTEGRATE, to connect with other parts both above and below us, and to contribute as much as we can to the whole. Yes, it also calls us to be more effective, more conscious in a way, but only as it flows into the natural mission of contributing to the whole. I think of the climate extinction crisis as a beautiful example of CONNECTING the three worlds as best we can. It requires paying great attention, great awareness to the lowest world of life (and noetic mind) on earth, the level of archaea, the tiny microbes which, among other things, produce H2S. That level of life is what killed off most of the higher life of earth, in most of the great mass extinctions. (Please forgive me, but I am even bcc'ing Peter Ward, lead author of the book by Ward and Kirschvink, the best single volume history ever of life on earth. Chapter 12 discusses the biggest mass extinctions.) But of course, effective climate policy also requires lots of attention to the mundane discussions in those office buildings, often by internet. And in my view, it calls for us to go out to places in deep nature, like my back yard or many of the places in those slides at werbos.com/religions.htm, and connect with them in deep meditation. My wife has even chosen a background for her giant TV, a picture of Sirakawago in Japan, where I will forever remember feeling deep links with old trees, wisps of fog, mountains and sun above, and human settlements, all connected together. Is that the lower world or the upper world? Neither. It is CONNECTED. --- Yeshua might add that life does not end at the borders of our solar system. Indeed. IF we are firmly grounded, sane and connected with life and spirit and science and math WITHIN our solar system, we are THEN ready to peer out and see more clearly into what lies beyond. But without grounding, it can become nothing but a form of insanity at times. We see such insanities every day lately, so MANY forms of them!!! caveat: my apologies to astronomy classes for kids. OK, this is just one side of the issue. How to balance THAT? Well, I remember how long distance interferometry, INTEGRATING outputs from telescopes all over the earth, is what gives us the deepest penetration of many variables beyond our solar system. INTEGRATION lets us noosphere units work together to see further past our noosphere. Let me just close there. On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 2:26 PM Paul Werbos wrote: Since covid has been discussed seriously on both lists (Google wanted me to replace "lists" with "liars" !!!), I forward the link you sent, which is much more clear and focused than some of the other discussions have been: On Sun, Oct 24, 2021 at 1:35 PM Plamen wrote: https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/study-destroys-justification-for?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source= ======================= They are arguing that vaccination often protects the person vaccinated, but is NOT so good for protecting other people. This fits with something I read elsewhere, which claimed that spread is mainly due to virus up in the nose, while actual covid is more a matter of it getting to lungs or blood. The lungs or blood story I know fairly well, because I paid more attention when Italy was first hit by massive disease overloading their hospitals. I will never forget how a leader of hospital efforts said: "Unless they have low SpO2 or low lung capacity, send them home to rest and recover, not to hospital. But send them home with an oximeter (for SpO2 in blood) and a simple good spirometer to measure lung capacity (mine cost $10!), and a number to call if the numbers go out of bounds. " So, yes, it mainly STARTS in the nose, and it doesn't surprise me if the vaccination is more for blood and lungs. We ALL need to use masks to protect other people, when that is an issue. (Crowding, or places of low wind or humidity<20%). And to protect ourselves, which can be less of a problem if we are vaccinated, but that depends on details like how long ago it was and what type, etc. If fewer people get infected, fewer people will pass it on, in any case. All for now. Best of luck, Paul P.S. Since it mainly starts in the nose, I still follow the core ritual I followed at the height of covid in this area, when returning home. Always wash hands AND face, and breathe deeply to try to help with nasal cavities. And use a strong mouthwash, gargling to get it inside. That has other benefits besides covid prevention anyway. What of taking a full hot shower and changing clothes? I do that less now when returning home, but after a crowded or stressful environment it might still be a good idea, in some areas.

Thursday, October 14, 2021

Inconvenient questions about human genetic diversity

A friend recently accused me of gross myopia. And no, it's not about "race", which is a confusing fuzzy distraction. Since 2019, I have tried to focus my own personal energy on five real centers of value or telos: (1) reducing the chance that the human species will go extinct within a century or two, due to what some of us now know about climate change (http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm and http://drpauljohn.blogspot.com/2021/09/worlds-greatest-engineering-society.html); (2) likewise, reducing the "existential risk" to humanity due to a complex of huge changes coming to the world internet; (3) human potential, as in helping us connect better to the noosphere of which we are a part, embedded of course in a large cosmos; (4) passing on important unique things I have learned in an incredibly information rich life; and (5) working on the kind of direct human connections which keep us all alive. BUT: MYOPIA. Even before huge changes in technology and in our relations to the noosphere changed the path of human history, great civilizations were dying in just a few centuries, more than the century we get for climate and internet effects. Many of the causes of those deaths are still in play. I even proposed doing my PhD thesis on what I learned about those issues before 1972, and the Harvard faculty preferred that over neural networks and backpropagation and such, what I ended up choosing. Selection effects are clearly central to what pathways are really open to humans in the coming millennium, and I am sorry that I have not done as much justice to them as they deserve. but where can an honest and deep enough dialogue be created on that? For my climate and internet concerns, there is at least important public discussion now on "existential threats". But for selection effects? All I can offer now are a few diffuse observations and questions. Back when I was an undergraduate, a classmate once said: "Washington and Jefferson did such a deep job of creating a whole new order, a new social contract. They created a great rat race. But now we who must live in what they created have no choice but to learn to be rats. That's not fair. It's not what I want with MY life." That social vision was grounded in liberte, egalite, fraternity, and I have seen where Lafayette and Washington met. For many years, people in neuroscience and neural networks followed the vision of Donald Hebb, which assumed for neurons what many have assumed for humans: one universal social contract, one learning rule for all neurons, leading to great cooperation. From 1963 to 1964, it was a huge transition for me to understand how and why Hebb was wrong. ONE neuron type does not work. One can build a real intelligent system (without cheating) only by having at least a few very basic very different TYPES of neuron, adapted to different signals, responsive to different feedbacks. The caste system of India worked out in truly horrid, nonsustainable directions, which reminded me of the opening scene of the old Superman movie explaining how the caste system in Krypton caused the explosion and death of that planet. Those risks are very serious, more serious than we would imagine if we only had estern values in play. But simple money-based selection mechanisms ( selecting which genes persist) may be equally fatal, and there is lots of experience showing that too. In nature, speciation is a very pervasive fact of life. No new economic system, whether based on (1) law, on (2) chaos, on (3) gene manipulation or on (4) most varieties of what seems to be Sustainable Intelligent Internet (SII, a new option for social contract) can avoid the very deep and serious implications of whatever selection mechanisms are in effect for humans over future centuries. Anyone who claims that his or her choice from this menu (1 to 4) avoids the existential risks implied here is lying, either to himself and herself or just as a con game. What POSSIBLE sustainable outcomes might be possible? I tend to believe that some kind of SII (http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm) might be the most workable, maybe. GIVEN that we have brain designs with just a few basic cell/organ types (like giant pyramid cell, limbic ell, etc), perhaps a sustainable intelligent market design which provides for just a few parallel roles in the larger market system, might be sustainable, if it includes the kinds of conflict of interest provisions which we now know are essential to stability even in less intelligent brains. (See the discussion of DHP stability in http://www.werbos.com/HICChapter13.pdf.) A kind of rule-based honorable competition. Alternatives? Well, I see in the EU what happens when folks with roles like that of Schroder migrate to jobs funded by Gazprom, massively perverting EU markets in a way which screws up the EU economy here and now, blocking the kinds of climate technology which COULD be saving us all. Good old fashioned conflict of interest effects, reaching fatal proportions, and not just that one example!!! But I see other modes of gross instability in every other region on earth!! If ALL of us fall into myopia, because we ALL face incentives to do so, then we all die together! The rules need to be better crafted to support the kinds of functions which our brains rely on neocortex to perform. (I do hope Amit and Benjamin will send us URL of our discussion of that in their conference last week.) Best of luck. We all need it... a lot of it... ====================== Deep in my files I still have that thesis proposal to Harvard from 1971/1972. But I know a lot now which I did not know then.

Monday, October 11, 2021

Serious meditation on covid booster as a case study of bigger issues

There are MANY times in this life when performing a small task offers us a chance to learn much larger and important lessons, if only we are open and aware ("conscious"?) enough to see what lessons are offered. For me, this morning [2AM-3AM], in a higher regular meditation time, I feel a duty to pass on SOME of the many lessons which result from thinking about a simple task I will do later this morning: getting a third pfizer covid shot, which I scheduled yesterday (with help from my wife). [I Posted this 6 hours ago on a serious covid discussion list and on two lists studying human consciousness. A key covid guy encouraged me to repost it here.] First interesting part: I had not planned to get the third shot so soon. Coming back to the US from two or three weeks in Greece, mainly revisiting ancient history, I have a lot of important catchup work to do. I was planning to do the catchup stuff first before any kind of covid stuff. But we are grateful to a neighbor who is unusually well-informed about such things, who passed on links first to the report showing less than 50% effectiveness of the shot after 6 months in preventing covid, and then a more radical reduction just a month later. Second: I still have work to do in controlling my own emotions. Thanks to our neighbor, I did look more closely at emails in my gigantic inbox from Arlington county on scheduling vaccinations. I navigated enough to see a link to a close place, a Harris Teeter we visited in past years, and start to schedule an appointment. But a badly designed web page were bad enough to unleash negative hormones, and I was giving up, until my wife calmed me down, took charge for awhile, and reminded me of alternatives, like the nearby Safeway we visit much more often anyway. (Just as close as the Harris Teeter, but the web sites did not know that.) And so at 11AM, I should be there. I feel strange announcing that when I know weird things can undo almost any plan these days, but it LOOKS inevitable this time. Third: the booster shot policy issues in the US are a great case study in public administration, where people work hard but fail to live up to the kinds of standards of rationality and efficiency we should all have learned, following the great work of John Von Neumann, important to policy in bigger and riskier areas like climate, internet policy and human potential, the three areas I have committed to try to help more this month (really, since 2019). (( Side comment: I also see new work on real physics, as in Yeshua's new experiments, as being far more important than covid, as part of these priorities)). Standards of rational and efficient policy include the question: WHY are many of us now offered a third pfizer shot as the only option, when Moderna might be just as good or better for the booster shot? THAT question deserves very serious analysis by folks who know enough to approach it rationally. But for myself, I have lots of thoughts about that serious question, but even more thoughts about how I myself have my own special pattern of connections and dharma and whatnot, urging me to focus much more on those other priorities I mention. I DON'T want to dedicate too much of my OWN limited time and energy to covid. But this issue itself is a beautiful case study in rational first person experience and decision making, more important as a case study than as a thing in itself. It reminds me of another lesson: how many people, people WITHOUT special dharma for covid, waste too much time or energy either fighting covid risk or fighting against reasonable, easy precautions (like the shot I will get this morning). Why do humans waste so much energy in neurotic ways like that? This is ever so basic to real scientifically grounded understanding of human consciousness as it works in reality!! That is worthy of a long discussion on both of the consciousness lists I cc'ed here, but advances in internet company policies make it more difficult to to get you links to important, quick straightforward explanations!! And it is a very big question in any case, based on the connections between issues studied in human psychology (from Freud and Jung to folks like Losscher and Vaillant) and ojr new mathematical understanding of the brain (as in Amit's conference last week, for which recordings will be announced this week). Some of us understood the basic principles of intelligent or conscious systems many years ago, but the issues of neuroses and local minima in human brain development, and then higher creativity, took more years to get a fix on, even just the aspects based on mundane brain function. My slides last week included a nice new flow chart explaining key aspects of what we learned in the paper by Werbos and Davis, easy to find via scholar.google.com if you know about advanced search (as you all should!). That in turn is a reminder that folks who pretend to be omniscient gods on earth really need to work especially hard (as we all should!) to strengthen mundane "first order sanity", as explained in the suite of three papers I published in 2019, linked to from werbos.com/religions.htm. One hour ago, meditation told me to get this down NOW, before I get distracted by other things, but now I will go back to bed, after one small thing on another track... Best of luck, Paul [P.S. It took me an hour to write this, but it covered only about 15% of about 10 minutes in midddle of night meditation. That is typical, except that it is usually between 4AM and 7AM that I get to the highest state I get to in normal life. TRAVEL is different because it offers special new connections in meditation, usually in daytime because that is when we travel. But in Varkisa beach, near Athens, one night, it worked just as well there.]

Friday, September 17, 2021

World's Greatest Engineering Society proposes a new direction in understanding and coping wth worst climate risks

I was very excited today to see this new draft book proposal, from the leader of the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy. Based on new information, I now agree with Greta Thunberg's two key points: (1) that the very extinction of humanity is a serious risk; and (2) the need for true science based policies, UNLIKE those we now see in governments around the world who claim concern but do not have the kind of policies which could save us. IEEE is a major foundation of modern quality science and engineering, following scientific approaches with a peer review system and internstional dialogue second to none. The IEEE Power and Energy Society has noticed what Greta and I have been saying, and what science I have brought to bear. THat is why I was so excited to receve the followng draft proposal from the group I am glad to be part of now. Do note how the bios at end show that these are highly qualified people already, but are reaching out to enlarge the serious scientific dialogue as far as we can... ============================= ================= New Technology and Market Design for Energy and Climate Security Draft of an invited Book Proposal to IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems Authors: Drs. Paul J. Werbos, G. Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Peter Ward, James Momoh, and Veronika Rabl Overview At a Hearing led by John Kerry of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2009, Senator Kerry urged that climate policy should not focus on expected or average climate outcomes, but on the PRECAUTIONARY PRINCIPLE, on reducing the risk of the worst truly serious possibility before us. Many in the public have started to worry that the extinction of the human species itself due to climate risk might well be serious enough to justify serious efforts, well grounded in the very best science and engineering. Some of us did not believe in the extinction threat in 2009, when one of us attended Kerry’s Hearing and worked for a Republican Senator, but as we get deeper into the scientific issues we have learned that the risk is far greater than we once thought, and needs to be investigated further: https://tosavetheworld.ca/314-ocean-currents-and-our-future/. The purpose of this book is to try to connect the very best science and engineering now available, both to understand the risk and to support new RD&D and other policies aimed at developing new ways to reduce the risk as soon as possible, at minimum cost (or even benefit) to the world economy. We as experts in these fields agree that these risks could be prevented at costs far lower than what we now see in policy discussions which do not yet have the benefit of the kind of very best, front line peer-reviewed science available today, particularly through IEEE, the world’s leading professional society, well know for defending high standards for diversity in viewpoints, objectivity and dialogue, as well as strength in the many fields of research we lead. The book will not discuss market design in general; rather it will include specific market design technologies, grounded in mathematical principles, for each of the relevant sectors, most notably the systems unified by IEEE research to be discussed with emphasis on power and energy systems (Section 1). Outline The book will reflect the general strategy illustrated in the slide below, but will aim to upgrade and improve that strategy by building new dialogues as part of developing and disseminating the book.
Source: http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm After the failure of omnibus climate legislation in the US in 2009, many serious experts said that we would have done much better with sectoral measures, focused and strategic efforts, focused on more concrete targets and drawing deep focused experts in the sectors. The book will support that approach, connecting IEEE leaders and other leading scientists to each of these five policy sectors. Because these policy issues are urgent, we will begin writing from the following draft five-part outline building on our many discussions so far, but will plan to invite others and expand the discussion as we can: • General introduction or preface (similar to the words above) • Section 2, by Momoh, with Werbos and Venayagamoorthy on “point 1” -- reducing net GHG from electricity production. • Section 3, by Rabl, on “point 2” -- reducing net GHG from transportation and from production of liquid or gaseous transportation fuels • Section 4, by Werbos, on “points 3 & 4” -- additional priorities in agriculture, in developing geoengineering options, in case of a need to move quickly to prevent the worst, and related sectors, where new efforts scattered about the world suggest that those sectors could actually sequester net CO2 in a way which converts them into an important asset, with only moderate economic incentives (circa $20-40/ton-of-CO2). • Section 5, by Ward and Werbos, on “point 5” of the slide -- new knowledge and R&D needs to assess the risk to human survival. A brief summary of the sections of the proposed book are given below: Section 2 -- Technologies from Generation to Market Design for Low-Cost Zero GHG (Momoh, Venayagamoorthy and Werbos) Net CO2 production from making electricity is the best and most important target for CO2 reduction. The IEEE Power and Energy Society (PES) is the world’s leading international society for all aspects of producing electricity, and many related technologies. Prof. Momoh led a major new direction in crossdisciplinary research in electric power in an initiative he created, advancing PES technology in a way which integrates operations research, intelligent system and microeconomics platform: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2002/nsf02188/nsf02188.pdf. When market design is done right, and most effectively, as in the best US transmission systems, there is no real dividing line between market design and advanced system coding and hardware. The further advancement of that kind of crosscutting technology is essential to deeper, low-cost reductions in GHG, Actual data on the sources of CO2 tend to be confusing, in part because of problems of definition, in part because of data collection issues, and in part because political advocates want to draw attention to sources of greatest interest to them. A few years ago, however, the most complete data came from the US, where more than 80% of the net CO2 came from just two primary sources -- making electricity, and transportation. There was heavy CO2 emission from industry, but much of that came from making electricity in industry for use by industry, and from off road vehicles using engines like those used in cars and trucks. Recent OECD data seems to fit the same general kind of pattern: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Breakdown-of-CO2-emissions-by-sectors-in-OECD-countries-14_fig14_323533605 Focused, high efficiency efforts to reduce net CO2 from just two technical areas, then -- making electricity and transportation -- could solve our CO2 problems far more effectively than fuzzy broad-brush efforts which do not exploit our best technical and microeconomics knowledge of these two sectors. After the failure of the broad-brush, 1/2 to 2 trillion dollars per year climate bills due to Waxman's Committee, Pew Trust was one of the many activist groups who concluded that we would have done better with "sectoral bills," bills focused with maximum intelligence, detail and technical competence on these (and a very few other) sectors where special characteristics allow much greater efficiency than what is possible with broad brush bills. In 2011, after this experience in 2009, the White House issued a new policy for the Smart Grid which still offers a huge improvement in impact and efficiency beyond anything underway today: "...the White House priority regarding Smart Grid development is to support NSF research on a ‘4th generation intelligent grid’ that would use intelligent system-wide optimization to allow up to 80% of electricity to come from renewable sources and 80% of cars to be pluggable electric vehicles (PEV) without compromising reliability, and at minimum cost to the Nation (Werbos 2011, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine)." By 2019, experts in electric power systems (such as those we funded and reviewed from the IEEE PES) were aghast at the contrast between support for renewable electricity which would cost the consumer more than $1 per kilowatt hour (5 or 10 times the prevailing generation cost) after the need for backup and power quality were accounted for, versus new technologies already demonstrating they could cost less than oil and gas or fission, on a realistic foundation allowing for electricity production in regions of more reliable sun. By 2019, the breakthroughs in new solar technology changed the proven options to a huge degree. (See werbos.com/E/GridIOT.pdf, supported by the French electric utility system but widely reviewed in the US, in Chile and Brazil.) In 2009, representatives of Exelon (the largest fission utility in the US) stated to many of us in EPW that the real, total cost of safe fission electricity (not even counting the security costs reviewed at werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf), were well over 10 cents per kwh, real cost -- even as new types of solar farm allow costs of reliable electricity well under that. Crucial to this have been proven breakthroughs in the user of power tower solar farms, using new forms of Brayton conversion of heat to electricity pioneered in the US but now used more in the Middle East and space programs, and low-cost storage of heat energy (pioneered in the US NREL but advanced substantially in Chile) which allows renewable electricity to track electricity demand even better than the best baseload sources today. The most important barrier to zero- CO2 electricity production today are the regulatory biases which make it easier to build long-distance pipelines than to build long distance power lines, and which favor in-state electricity production over long-distance transport. Next most important is the repatriation of solar thermal technologies back to major OECD nations, to Microsoft and to China, and the greater use of advanced power flow technologies (as in Werbos 2011) which allow more efficiency, reliability and lower cost. New breakthroughs in Quantum Information Science and Technology also provide a clear pathway to greater intelligence in the distribution and power electronics networks, crucial to costs and reliability in an all-renewable global electricity system. About one-tenth of global electricity demand comes in regions more than 1,000 miles away from low-cost solar thermal power sources. For the benefit of those regions, and for the sake of diversity and security, the world should also support the R&D essential to assessing and developing the full potential of electricity from space, as outlined in the book “The Case for Space Solar Power by Mankind”, which requires dramatic but feasible new R&D to reduce the cost of access to space down to $1000/kG-GEO, using technology like that proposed by Chase of ANSER in peer reviewed R&D funded by NSF in the past (under the JIETSSP program and follow-ons at Wright-Patterson). Abdul Kalam of India strongly recommended expansion and use of this kind of technology for geoengineering. Section 2: Increasing Energy Security and Reducing GHGs from Transportation (Veronika Rabl) Most of the impetus for the current move to electrify transportation is driven by energy and environmental benefits. While these benefits are significant, there is another aspect that should be taken into consideration – energy security. Although the specifics in this discussion tend to refer to U.S. conditions, the trends and issues encountered apply to much of the rest of the world. Transportation is almost entirely dependent on oil and consumes most of the petroleum used in the United States. Dependence of a critical economic sector on a single fuel represents a serious threat to national security. Ninety percent of the energy used in transportation during 2019 came from oil, an energy source subject to potential disruptions and market dislocations due to events beyond the control of the U.S. During the same period the transportation sector consumed more than 70 percent of all petroleum used in the United States. Our ability to reduce petroleum use will be essential to mitigating the energy security risks inherent in the dependence on a single energy source for transportation. An efficient way to curtail dependence on petroleum is to pursue electrification of passenger and commercial vehicles, and mass transit, such as buses and rail. Continuing to develop and implement alternative fuel options is also necessary to satisfy the continuing requirement for liquid fuels. Cleaner transportation is also critical to addressing environmental issues. Most of the CO2 emissions are generated from burning of fossil fuels. Electricity generation and transportation are the largest sources of these emissions; transportation is the largest source of CO2 emissions in the U.S. The 2nd largest U.S. source are emissions from electricity generation. As discussed in Section 1, emissions due to generating electricity can be addressed by substituting renewable generation, such as wind and solar, for fossil fuels. In fact, this transition is already taking place. In 2020, wind and solar generation accounted for over 10% of kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumed in the U.S. With this generation mix, CO2 emissions can be reduced by converting transportation from fossil fuels to electricity. Fuel combustion from transportation contributes about 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, exceeding those due to power generation. Because transportation emissions are widely dispersed, it would be impractical and uneconomical to capture and store transportation emissions once they are emitted. Only fundamental changes in transportation efficiency can alter this situation -- electrification represents such a fundamental change. Electric motors are inherently more efficient than internal combustion engines and can be used in mass transit, passenger and commercial vehicles, buses and rail. For example, electric vehicles convert about 69-73 percent of the grid’s electrical energy to power at the wheels compared to conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, which convert only about 16–25 percent of the energy stored in gasoline to power at the wheels. Conservatively, in the U.S. this implies that already with current generation mix the CO2 emissions of gasoline cars are three-times those of all-electrics. Similar analyses of well-to-wheels results for medium and heavy-duty trucks show that all electric -- Battery Electric Vehicles (BEVs) -- significantly improve environmental sustainability by providing deep reductions in GHGs, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and carbon monoxide emissions, compared to conventional diesel counterparts. Increasing shares of renewable and natural gas technologies in future national and regional electricity generation are expected to further reduce particulate matters and sulfur oxide emissions for further improvement of the environmental performance of BEVs. A radical transformation of the transportation sector will also reduce emissions, particularly in large cities. Gasoline combustion is responsible for most precursors of urban smog. A taste of what clean air feels like was offered by the 2020 pandemic. NASA satellite measurements revealed a 30% reductions in air pollution over the major metropolitan areas of the Northeast United States. Similar reductions have been observed in other regions of the world. Even with current generation mix, electrifying the transportation sector has the potential to increase transportation energy efficiency and reduce both greenhouse gas and criteria pollutants. Such factors consider on-road performance, battery manufacture and battery disposal, recycle and reuse. On average, this holds true worldwide. However, the impacts in any one economy or region are entirely dependent on the generation sources for electricity used to power the transportation conveyance. The transportation electrification strategy has challenges to overcome before reaching a broad-based electrified transportation system. The most prominent among these are range limitations, combined with longer refueling times. A focus on the following areas will help to meet these challenges: • Development of market channels and incentives for Plug-in Electric Vehicles (PEVs) • Improved battery technology • Development and deployment of battery charging infrastructure • Integrating PEVs into the electric grid (incl. DER) operations • Reduced weight, volume and cost of power electronics and electric machines for PEVs Continuing advances in batteries and ultra-fast charging are some of the technology options that are being pursued to reduce “range anxiety.” Section 3. Agriculture & Related & Geoengineering (Werbos) In 2009, the USDA held many briefings on how they could contribute to GHG reduction. Senator Specter was a strong supporter of that, but it did not get the attention it deserved. Only later, as we built connections to Brazil, especially, and probed that literature, did we learn how huge the unmet opportunities are for the entire earth -- but also how much is available to us only in Portuguese, at a time when covid and politics have complicated the communications. We plan to continue to discuss these opportunities, as in some of our discussion: That leaves agriculture and related, the submission to the COP26 event, and the issue of whether to consider a sixth section on AI/quantum for climate which I would have to handle myself. Today, there are signs that we might be able to get co-leaders from Brazil who could do true justice to that very tricky area. A combination of the terra preta techniques for soil management, combined with sustainable but profitable livestock management, could turn this sector from being "20% of the problem" to OFFSETTING 20% of the problem. (Not to mention some understanding of the Amazon!) But we will see. I am open to new possibilities if you suggest them. Likewise, geoengineering has been widely underestimated in environmental policy, in part because some offer it as an alternative to the other actions. We will push hard on the theme of wide ranging, innovative new RD&D, intended to do full assessment and advancement of a wide variety of options. In addition to the usual space mirrors and reflective particles, there are new options especially suitable for new R&D, like https://spectrum.ieee.org/climate-change and proposals for chemical engineering at high altitudes to create “band aids” for stratospheric ozone (lack of which was a crucial factor in the speed of past mass extinctions). Section 5 -- Assessing the Risk of human extinction by climate change (Werbos, to be updated by lead author Ward) What IS the nature of this risk? Why should we even believe that the risk is real? What target variables need to be the real focus of policy? Without clear, quantitative focus, climate policy can easily degenerate into a kind of Christmas Tree handout to well-placed stakeholders, or to other deserving causes. Climate change causes many kinds of serious but lesser risks, but the world also needs books like this and new institutions with a very sharp focus -- not as an alternative to other worthy forms of climate action, but as a strategic challenge in itself calling out for very clear focus. This section, section 5 of the book, defines the overall focus, the key target variable: prevention of the risk of mass extinction of the human species. In 2009, when Werbos was the National Science Foundation (NSF) research Program Director assigned to work with the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee to develop and evaluate climate legislation, He simply did not believe that the risks from climate change were so bad. Werbos worked well with the friendly group of Senate staffers under the leadership of Senator Inhofe (the true leader of climate skepticism in the US), under Republican Senator Specter, an honest but tough senator more involved in national security than in climate at the time. In his office, with access to all the information available to both political parties, we agreed with the IPCC report at the time. That report said that climate change is real, that moderate rational market actions are called for, but that business as usual would probably reduce world GNP by only 5% by 2100, not nearly so important as other issues Werbos worked on, such as the security of US transportation fuel in the face of new issues in the Middle East (Werbos.com/oil.htm). We had very good relations with the Marshall Institute. Werbos will never forget their witness at an EPW hearing who said: "You are all so afraid of CO2 reaching 800 or 1000 ppm. Don't you realize that for most of the history of life on earth it was 2000ppm or more, and life just went on as usual?" But later in that year, the Director of Geosciences for NSF invited us back to a big public lecture led by Prof. Peter Ward. He introduced Peter as the number one frontline expert on earth on the real science of what has caused mass extinctions in the past on this planet. No, life did NOT always go on as usual. And yes, we need to work very hard to truly understand the lessons of history, in order to avoid the risk of repeating them? What exactly DID cause the five to 15 gigantic past mass extinctions of life on earth? There are two main goals of this section of this book: (1) to give us the best range of information now available to science on what the risks are we should be worrying about, and even how to measure them, so as to support and guide the work in the other sections; and (2) to stimulate the true old NSF-style debate and dialogue, to guide us to the questions and research efforts we need to narrow down the remaining uncertainties. I also hope that the great geohistorian, Robert Hazen, who has told us so much about the role of volcanoes and carbon, can join in the intellectual integration and synthesis in this chapter. (I see no contradiction here with his work, but ne must read closely.) Peter Ward's talk was a life-changing experience for me, because of the final few minutes when he compared the data curves for past mass extinction events versus the curves we are on now. "By eyeball," he said,"It looks to me that at 1000ppm, it's PT (the greatest extinction ever) all over again." What worried me the most was not his conclusion, but the responses of others in that room. Most just agreed or disagreed, and changed nothing in their lives. I began ten years of intense checking what to believe, starting with his great paperback book Under A Green Sky, for which I did a three-page summary: http://www.werbos.com/climate_extinction_risk_and_solutions.htm. The risk is that a type of microbe called sulfanogenic archaea will proliferate in deep oxygen-deprived water, near the Humboldt and Gulf Stream currents, resulting in outgassing of H2S to the atmosphere, causing a rerun of many very pleasant outcomes which the earth has experienced before. Peter's book “Under A Green Sky” stressed that we needed more cross-disciplinary research, bringing in experts in partial differential equations (PDE, like the Navier Stokes equations which govern thermohaline currents, like those responsible for most of the great extinctions of the past). One of the core programs I ran at NSF focused on advanced PDE, and that guided me in some of the further reading I cite on my climate web page. It led to the talk I gave on these problems, led by the Global Leadership forum of the Millennium Project, broadcast on Korean national television: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPccNVHRFIM More recently, however, Peter himself has done deeper research into those past extinctions of life on earth. His newer book https://www.amazon.com/New-History-Life-Discoveries-Evolution-ebook/dp/B00OZM4AN2/ is the most comprehensive review in depth of what science now knows about the history of life on earth. Chapter 12 reports on startling but solid new findings by Professor Lee Kump on the direct causes of the PT extinction, the greatest extinction of all. It was a great shock to me to learn that two causal variables best predict what followed: (1) "stratified ocean," which is already starting now in the Arctic and Antarctic; (2) phosphates -- in indicator of a kind of fertilizer in the ocean, which has already spread in recent years but needs to be much better narrowed down with new research. Volcanoes also played a crucial role in the sequences of past events. I am very grateful to Peter Ward and to Metta Spencer for hosting two recent discussions of how these variables play out, and the questions they raise for the Arctic and for the Antarctic, over the next two to four decades especially: https://tosavetheworld.ca/314-ocean-currents-and-our-future/ https://tosavetheworld.ca/290-extinction/ Better understanding of oxygen-bearing ocean currents and chemical fertilizer flows in the ocean will be directly important to designing and evaluating our options for geoengineering (section five), and to the cycles of energy and life which currently power the great "chimneys of water" which bring oxygen to the deep Pacific, Arctic and North Atlantic oceans. Some of the risks to human existence come more directly from how we use energy, as well be discussed in those later sections. Brief Author Biographies (Partial list for now) Dr. Paul J. Werbos (www.werbos.com) is a Fellow of the IEEE and one of the first recipients of the IEEE Neural Network Pioneer Award, in recognition of the original development of backpropagation and of adaptive dynamic programming (now abbreviated as RLADP) in the 1960’s and 1970s. In 2021, he received the 2022 Frank Rosenblatt Award, then highest technical field award of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Backpropagation and RLADP are the foundations which made deep learning possible, including reinforcement learning systems more powerful than those used in Alpha-Go. INNS granted him its highest award, the Hebb award, recognizing his work showing how these mathematical tools can explain key aspects of learning in biological brains. He received Ph.D. from Harvard University (1974), Masters’ from the London School of Economics (1968) and Harvard (1969). In high school, he took undergraduate and graduate courses in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton, and obtained FCC First Class Commercial Radiotelephone license. He has also published on issues of consciousness, the foundations of physics, and human potential. He serves on the Planning Committee of the Millennium Project, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lifeboat Foundation and the Chile Solar Energy Research Consortium. He has been active in IEEE-USA; for example, for IEEE-USA he gave a major talk in Rayburn to over 200 Congressional staffers, which helped prepare the State of the Union message which led to the Energy Information and Security Act of 2007. In 2009, he served as a Brookings Fellow in the office of Senator Specter, responsible for climate, energy and space policy. In the last years before his retirement from NSF in 2015, he led research in three core areas -- electric power grids, adaptive and intelligent systems (AIS) and quantum and high performance modeling for systems and devices (QMHP). Dr. Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy (S’91-M’97-SM’02-F’21) is the Duke Energy Distinguished Professor of Power Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Clemson University in January 2012. Prior to that, he was a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), Rolla, USA where he was from 2002 to 2011, and a Senior Lecturer in Department of Electronic Engineering, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, where he was from 1996 to 2002. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is the Founder (2004) and Director of the Real-Time Power and Intelligent Systems Laboratory. Dr. Venayagamoorthy received his PhD and MScEng degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa, in April 2002 and April 1999, respectively. He received his BEng degree with a First-Class Honors in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria in March 1994. He holds an MBA degree in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from Clemson University, SC (August 2016). Dr. Venayagamoorthy’s interests are in the research, development and innovation of power systems, smart grid and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. He is a 2004 US NSF CAREER Awardee, a 2007 US Office of the Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program (YIP) Awardee, and a 2008 NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation (EFRI) Awardee. He led the Brain2Grid project funded by US National Science Foundation (NSF). Dr. Venayagamoorthy is an inventor of technologies for scalable computational intelligence for complex systems and dynamic stochastic optimal power flow. He has published over 550 refereed technical articles which are cited over 20,000 times with a h-index of 66 and i10-index of > 280. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has given over 500 invited technical presentations including keynotes and plenaries in over 40 countries to date. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is involved in the leadership and organization of conferences including the Clemson University Power System Conference and Pioneer and Chair/co-Chair of the IEEE Symposium of Computational Intelligence Applications in Smart Grid (CIASG) since 2011. He is currently the Chair of the IEEE PES Working Group on Intelligent Control Systems, and the Founder and Chair of IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Task Force on Smart Grid. He has served/serves as Editor/Associate Editor/Guest Editor of several IEEE Transactions and Elsevier Journals. He is the Editor for the IEEE Press Series on Power and Energy Systems. Dr. Venayagamoorthy has received several awards for faculty, research and teaching excellence from universities, professional societies, and organizations. According to a recent Stanford study, Dr. Venayagamoorthy is among the Top 25,000 scientists worldwide across all fields and in the top 0.1% worldwide in the fields of energy and AI. Dr. Venayagamoorthy is a Fellow of the IET (UK) and the South African Institute of Electrical Engineers (SAIEE), and a Senior Member of the INNS. Prof. Peter Ward (Bio to be inserted) Prof. James Momoh. FNSE, FIEEE, FAEng, FAS and Member ofNational Academy of Engineering (NAE). Dr. James A. Momoh received his BSEE top of his class (Howard), MS EE (Carnegie Mellon University), MS System Engineering (U of Pennsylvania), and PhD Electrical Engineering (Howard) and MA, Theology (School of Divinity) at Howard. He authored and co-authored over 300 published journal articles of nine modern power and voltage stability, Optimal Power flow(OPF), generalized fault studies and transient stability called sampling (Theta), smart grid and micro grids The work also led to award of 4 patents to his credit. He served as Chair and CEO of the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission from 2018 through 2020 where was responsible for providing oversight of the overall Nigeria Electricity Industry. Dr. Momoh served as chairman of EE department at Howard for 11 years (1989 -2001). He also served as director of the Center for Energy System and Control (CESaC) from 1984 until 2001. His research interest includes Optimization Theory Applications, Smart and.Micro Grid. Design and Implementation, and application of AI to Market design and power system Operation and Planning. Dr. Momoh served as Program Director at NSF from 2001 to 2004, where he was responsible for energy and power and computational intelligence. He designed and built a new interdisciplinary initiative called Electric Power Networks Efficiency and Security (EPNES). He previously received the highly coveted National Science Foundation (NSF) – US White House Presidential Young Investigator (PYI) and several other awards and Fellows. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE), FAEng, and FAS FNSE. He is recently awarded the 2021 Distinguished Tau Beta Pi (National Honor Society). He was elected into membership National Academic of Engineering, for his distinguished contributions to engineering; for the development of electric grid and for optimization techniques and implementation of advanced technology and policy for emerging electric grids in Africa. Dr. Veronika A. Rabl Veronika Rabl is a consultant in the Washington, DC, area, specializing in energy technology and policy. She has advised electric energy companies and governments around the world and has been an invited speaker at many events in the U.S. and abroad. She is an author, coauthor, and editor of numerous publications. Veronika’s work spans energy efficiency, demand response, electric transportation, clean power supply, and electric grid modernization, as well as energy and environmental life cycle assessments. Most recently she has been a team lead and coauthor of the IEEE PES (Power and Energy Society) Energy Storage Primer. She helped launch the Engineering Founder Societies’ Technology for Carbon Management Grand Challenge Initiative; assessed EPA Clean Power Plan implementation options; reviewed ISO/RTO market rules and processes; served as co-chair of IEEE Joint Task Force on the DOE Quadrennial Energy Review (QER); and cochaired development of report on demand management alternatives for the Commonwealth of Virginia. Until 2001 Dr. Rabl served as General Manager and Director at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). She established EPRI’s load management research program and technology portfolio, including energy storage, energy management, and distributed load control systems. She then held a series of positions with increasing technical, business, and policy responsibilities, covering both sides of the meter -- demand-side management, integrated resource planning, engineering load forecasting, electric transportation, power electronics and power quality, distribution systems, and metering. Dr. Rabl is a Senior Member of IEEE, past Chair of IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee, and member of the IEEE PES Industry Technical Support Leadership Committee. Veronika is a recipient of the IEEE-USA Professional Achievement Award for Individuals. Veronika holds a Ph.D. from the Ohio State University and an M.S. from the Weizmann Institute, Israel.