Society: The deep human neural network

Deep learning and neural networks have been inspired by the way our brains work. But if we turn it on its head and put human brain nodes in the place of regular nodes in the network what we get roughly is a simulation of humanity and our society.

There is a vast pool of human knowledge that has been thought of and experienced and passed on as tradition, history, facts, science, religion, arts and so on. This is the training data that feeds our human network. The base layers in the network roughly represent how the masses are educated with this raw data. 

Then there is a whole hierarchy of people represented by successive layers graded by their weights and influence in the society like teachers, scientists, lawyers, priests, psychologists, doctors, artists. 

The final layer are the decision makers, the big businesses, the politicians and the spiritual / religious authorities. They decide the course of humanity and the validity of the knowledge generated by the network i.e. whether it should be fed back to be retained in the base layers or not. 

Out of this mess we want to generate an intelligent society, but it's always a modification of the past knowledge and thought. Any network after all, however smart and ingenuous it  may appear to be is  limited by the the training data. 

So there is an artificial intelligence and order in the society which may improvise a bit on facing a new challenge but the response is always rooted in the past. 

There is no general intelligence which can look at any problem afresh. Perhaps the solution to an orderly society doesn't lie in depending on human conditioning but breaking it. To see how the contents of our brains are related to the common content of humanity and to solve the human problems we all have instantaneously is the characteristic of this intelligence. It can't come about as long as the individual brain is occupied with its own trivialities and unable to perceive the functioning of the human network.

Isolation

I have been confined to the 3 rooms and 1 balcony of my apartment for a few months now. If it weren’t for the windows, the balconies, the birds chirping outside, the lake and the clouds I would probably loose my sanity. There are 4 people in the family but most times we are stuck to device screens, the child is absorbed in its play like we are on our mobile phones. The resorting to the banality of superficial conversations or entertainment on the mobile only makes the gnawing sense of loneliness, boredom and isolation more obvious. I have a feeling that people and things can’t solve this problem. The problem is self created, its the continuous activity of self centered thought That creates the boundary of the self , isolates it and then invents the escapes. The inability to stop the chattering mind can wear one out and make one insane and neurotic if there isn’t enough energy to take the necessary action. I think thats what happens unless one escapes into the numerous avenues we have of stimulating pleasure and sensations whether its physical, intellectual or spiritual. But one cant knowingly deceive oneself, all one can do is to say with the situation gathering the intensity of all one has and maybe things will change.

Ingredients of intelligence

This is one dish that has no recipe but if the right ingredients are in place it cooks itself like a salad.
First thing to come is a dissatisfaction with everything there is because one is goaded by the world, hurt and  suffered. He has been deceived by the priests, gurus, gods and psychologists. There should be no help and no desire to find something beyond because that leads to imagination, delusion and deception or an escape from what he is.
So all that's left is the man with his consciousness which is also the consciousness of humanity of which he is tired of and his capacity to be sensitive, alert and observe.
Then the brewing begins as all problems of life unravel themselves and the self appears at the center of all of them. It needs energy to pursue this inquiry into problems without trying to fix them or brush them away, till the very end i.e. to look at these problems like one looks at one's child.
                The ancient mythical symbolism of this is probably of Shiva. A man depicted as having modest needs ensuring that they are met and  is physically secure through his Trident (Trishul). He then drums up his Damru (drum) to wake up the Cobra symbolising attention around his neck to be alert of the conflict in the ocean of his consciousness of conflicting desires and thoughts. He holds on to the unpleasantness of He holds on to the unpleasantness of fears, anxiety, jealousy, envy, greed, lust boredom, restlessness and other problems of living (poison) that emerges out of this conflict in his throat(mind) diligently contemplating on it till clarity emerges as the crescent moon and cleanses it away like the Ganges. Or to be so aware of ones anger like the Nataraj that one can still beautifully render the dance of Tandav with poise which destroys the very structure of the ego, its image and the associated anger.
 If one is not wasting away energy in entertainment, work , sex, travel, and has some leisure to go into it then meditation happens. The quality of that mind is an intelligence which operates in the imperfect world maintaining an arm's length of distance from it.

In the face of crisis the important comes to the front

Mankind has been hit by a virus that doesn’t care about international borders. Man has been hit with the possibility of imminent death. People and companies made of people higher up in the chain are now evaluating what’s important for them and their employees. Working from home for months is becoming the norm. Hoarding of essentials too, probably thats all why most people work, to hoard some more. I wonder how many of the folks will voluntarily work at home if salaries were made zero and the other options were to spend time with family or on entertainment. The virus has stripped mankind bare and eroded into what corporate guys call value in the stock market. I guys its a wakeup call for humanity to see if there can be a different way of living without going out and comparing oneself with others in malls and holiday destinations. A way of living where work is voluntary and basics are taken care by the community. Education happens by taking care of children at home and fetching information from the internet. Where people are not turned into hungry consumption zombies by mindless advertising and stock markets don’t exist. Perhaps if the powerful and influential woke up the world would be a better place.

Lives half lived

Some days are brighter and more beautiful than others. The noise of the cicadas and the chirping of the birds are sweeter. The moon looks fuller, closer and brighter. Water sparkles and waves more than other days. The sunsets are purple and wavy clouds look like the heavens with the light of supreme intelligence shining through them.
         Its not that these things don't happen on other days but we are trapped in the web of our day to day chores, too busy to notice.
   Like a spider who is too busy making its web and waiting for its prey. It thinks it has mastered the art of navigating the web, but until it steps out of the web and marvels at the beauty of rainbow colors that sunlight creates, it is trapped in a web of its own making. We all are spider-men that's why the movie is so popular.

The game of thrones

There are three kingdoms:
Ducks who are rich as hell, but they are blind. The leader of the Ducks is like the all the ducks in his clan, after all that’s how it is everywhere. And all the ducklings are like the ducks in the clan.
Some poor folks called Jokers can see everything but cant do much other than act.
Ducks only listen to Pegions who can convey the messages from jokers who enact them as charades in the public.
Everyone knows only one kingdom would be left in the end in the globalised world.It won't matter what it's called because everyone in it would be an immigrant.

The kingdom would have 12bn people to sustain forever.
Ducks think their stuff will get over, if they allow people from other kingdoms in their territory. Stuff wont get over but their time will and pretty soon.
Once people have enough beyond a threshold and some empathy they are happy to share so we don't need to worry about stuff getting over.
Its the empty spaces we need to fill with people, otherwise we would have perpetual division and conflict.

People numbers wont grow once they are lifted out of abject poverty. Earth has enough resources for our needs but not our greed. Bubbly swedish experts confirm this in their book.
Too much is being spent on binoculars and sticks when all we need is a magnifying lens.
Together the disabled folks need to be carried to the empty spaces with the help of the ducks, pegions and jokers who can see everything crystal clear in spite of their limitations.

We need to get all on the same page but that needs a lot of empathy.
To learn and see anything clearly there needs to be humility and a quiet mind.
A mind which can see its own reflection on every face.
So we need to teach our children to look and be curious. We cant teach them unless we ourselves are looking at them. Its like a tide going in and out reinforcing our learnings. We keep learning until there is nothing more left to learn, Vedanta ;)
If everyone in the new generation can look and see we wont have to play this game anymore.

So the beginning of the game is its end, all we had to do was really to look.

The action which is always right

We all act from the desire and will of our selves. Thought solidified as desire and crystalized as will power drives this action.
However because of the limitations of thought even with good intentions the actions are incomplete and fragmentary, they solve one problem and create two more. One may have infinite resources and great intentions but as long as the self exists actions will cause conflict and  dissatisfaction.We need to understand if there is an action which never causes conflict, where there is no choice involved in the acting. This action is spontaneously acted by compassion and love, the self is completely absent. Only such action can solve the world's problems and has the force of supreme intelligence behind it.

The joy of timelessness

There is just the now when time stops. Past  and the imagined future are put in their right place. One can be there doing absolutely nothing just enjoying the moment with music, connection with
 nature and insights forever. But their is a living to be made and things to be done so the joy comes to an end and is replaced by a mechanical routine and one then craves for a vacation to escape life.

The etymology of our god names

Hanuman is the ignorant man who follows Ram or Hari to become super human. Har means to strip away i.e loose everything one has accumulated in one’s life. Our thoughts, ideas, stuff that we have. Once we loose attachment to everything we become hanu-man from man.
In the hanuman chalisa there is kuber the god of wealth and yama the god of death gaurding  and guiding our actions. So one needs to look at the message in the hanuman chalisa a 100 times to see what Tulsidas means to say.
Btw har har mahadev also is similar, once we get rid of the past and the accumulations we have elements of shiva within us. We are the creator, sustainer and destroyer of our own worlds which plays out within our brains.

The new world

It's our earth, one earth that's all we have. As long as we have division on it there will be conflict, misery and war. We can go to the Moon or Mars but we will spread the same tribalism there as well.
     So before we get lost in outer space we need to heal and make whole the inner fragments. The new world would be one with dotted porous borders and friendly nations.

Trikaldarshi or common sense

Many of us have solved high school physics questions where a projectile is launched with a velocity and we calculate its landing spot.
In a way we know its present past and future given some context. Can we call it some sort of superpower or is it just some keen observation of how things work?
I really love the way the knowledge of a field can be applied in another, one needs to be a generalist though and not an expert.

The Quantum brain

Our brains are filled with thoughts, its like a chain reaction of everything we have seen in our life.
In the sane person the thoughts are ordered, in sequence, comfortable like bottles in a bottle factory assembly line. In a manic person the thoughts race. They take the leap of the energy of the creation. A manic brain is at many places and times at once. Words cant portray that state so the outside world only sees a lot of blabber. Finally when the dust settles some events make sense backward in time leading to a beautiful insight.
This is much like the quantum computers we are trying to build.