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Jun 3, 2023

Cooperating Neurons

In 1958, John von Neumann wrote in the "The Computer and The Brain", that biological neurons were more analog than digital, and that the correlation of a signal between two neurons were significant. I think that a really beautiful simplification of the spirit of this idea is to imagine neurons as cooperating agents which work together to optimize information propagation. A simple and efficient way to do this is to break up neurons into two groups: one that amplifies or excites a signal, and the other group that inhibits the signal. This dual nature of a neuron appeals to me on as practical and aesthetically beautiful. Also, many really fundamental and powerful structures have a dual nature.

You can design an individual neuron to be either excitatory or inhibitory depending on training, or you can design an adaptable network architecture containing either kinds of neurons. If you're going to build a network architecture, than I would intuitively select neurons which are distinctly either exitatory or inhibitory. I'll call these neurons "cooperating" or "complimentary" neurons.

In 1932, in his book "The Foundations of Quantum Mechanics", John von Neumann published the "microscopic entropy":

                 S = -Trace A log A   
where A is the non-negative Hermitian matrix whose trace is unity.

Ilya Prigogine [1], in his book "From Being To Becoming", equation 8.4, called this Hermitian function Omega in which a transformed function ~A satisfies a Markov process. The central point, which I still don't completely understand, is that you can transition from a deterministic to a probabilistic description, and vice-versa with no loss of description or information. Ilya Prigogine tried to understand the fundamental nature of chemical interactions.

As Ilya Prigogine gave "microscopic entropy", M, a dynamic or temporal description, Satosi Watanabe [2] used "microscopic entropy" to give form and structure a quantitative description.

  Structure = Sum of partial entropy - Entropy of whole 

Satosi Watanabe used his "structure" concept to described the cooperative phenomena of interacting nuclear particles. He uses "microscopic entropy" which is a temporal description of matter to implement reduction of dimensionality methods using optimization techniques like principal component analysis, among other eigenvector extraction methods, which is used in neural network vector decomposition.

Satosi Watanabe applied this microscopic entropy structure to the proton and neutrons with opposite spins to describe nucleons which attract or repel each other. He said these nucleons were exhibiting cooperative behavior. I think the same can be said of cooperating neurons of the kind John von Neumann wrote about in his description of two-state cellular automata and Turing machines.

Ref: [1] Internet Archive
     [2] Pattern Recognition, Satosi Watanabe, p. 137, chapter 6,
                 Pattern Recognition as Entropy Minimization


Apr 24, 2023

The Fullfilment of a Blessing

After a life long quest to find my santified place, I've come to think that being blessed is having gained some form of knowledge that makes you become harmonious in your place in this world. Finding your "santified" place is different for each person. But I think it mostly has to do with finding that place in the "heart" as extolled by Krishna in the Bhagavad-gita.

Throughout the years I've meditated on the words of the Mandukya Upanishads:

OM. This eternal Word is all: what was, what is and what shall be, and what beyond is in eternity. All is OM.
           The Upanishads, translated by Juan Mascaro, page 83

Rohit Mehta's commentary in his book "Call of the Upanishads" says that the Mandukya Upanishads is about "The Nameless Being". What's written in the Mandukya is "Brahman is all - and Atman is Brahman. The wonderousness of the Mandukya is that it equates the Atman with "the Self". When you say the sacred word OM, you bring yourself into existence.

A year ago, I would never have dreamed that studying parallel programming would have brought me to this sanctified place. Parallel processes are intrinsically probabilistic. Watching the world unfold in a basic "physical" or "materialistic" time and space starts with probabilities. When you get down to a sub-structure that is very fundamental like atoms and electrons you're observing mostly random events in time. The constituents of atoms, like protons and electrons, are so fundamental that they are all considered identical relative to each other. Similarily, parallel processing entities simulated on a computer are all identical except for when they occur in time.

The mechanism of parallel processing is like the crown jewel illustrating how determinism or causality is formed in our world. It reinforces, and maybe is more fundamental then the notions of randomness in quantum mechanics. In parallel processing, you must be constantly aware of what must be deterministic and how each parallel process or thread of interaction effects each other. Causality is measured in probabilistic terms.

So the past year has brought to me a sacred place that seems integrated and harmonious in regards to the mind. I'd have to say it's spiritual. Now when I gazed into the world, into the forest of trees and flowers, I can sort of see where it all comes from. The beauty never ends.


Feb 19, 2023

Rally Against the War

Support the "Rage Against the War Machine" in Washington DC today, and in the future. The "good" people in America are there now.


Feb 16, 2023

Speculating on Quantum Computation

The information unit in Quantum computation is the qubit. If you apply the correspondence principle in quantum mechanics to the qubit, it maybe the bit or "bint" in classical information theory. The "bint" is the information unit in temporal computation. Something I came up with - right now the "bint", for me, is just a tool for thinking about parallel computation. The bint for me is a relative measure of temporal duration.

Just a few years ago, I never dreamt that someone could actually build a quantum computer. But if you go to really low temperatures, electrons tend to pair up like they do around the nucleus of an atom. These are the "Pauli" atoms. They're entangled. There's just a ton of mystery around why physicists say electrons are all "identical".

This mystery, for me, that electrons are all identical, leads to the mystical idea that parallel computation, PC, might have some relationship to quantum computation, QC. The fact that electrons are all identical, makes it easier to think about the behavior of an ensembly of elections using probability theory.

Maybe there's some view or window into which we can find a direct relationship between PC and QC. As always, I look to how temporal structure might be the key to linking PC and QC together. Maybe if I keep thinking about this everyday, I can get a glimpse into the window of this mystery.

Parallel computation, PC, is all about probabilities. You can take the indeterminism out of PC by breaking down or chopping up the computation or code into discrete whole units (or "autonomous" subroutines) which are synchronized together. The computation in PC must be modulated. In terms of efficiency, PC is more efficient or faster if PC needs less energy, and hence less time, per unit of computation. This is what I've empirically observed in testing PC code. The more random the results from PC are, the less energy or time I need to to do a PC computation. Taking this idea of PC to the extreme might lead to a better understanding of quantum computation, QC. Maybe QC is an (or "the" if I'm reading Nature correctly) optimal or extremum point for PC.

I asked the web search engine "What is the relationship between quantum and parallel computation?". One of the search result from the "Theoretical Computer Science" stack answered this question 9 years ago by Niel de Beaudrap. I'm really impressed by his response which is filled with ideas to ponder. He wrote:

In the end, one must remember that the (very rough) intuition that quantum computing involves any parallelism at all, is just part of a struggle to obtain robust insights into how quantum computation differs from classical computation.
Niel de Beaudrap ended his answer with:
Thus, the difference between quantum computation and parallelized computation is that the so-called 'parallel' processes in quantum computation are much more like the imaginary parallel processes of a randomized computation: they cannot be addressed directly, but only in statistical bulk.
Nature's beauty is limitless.


Feb 15, 2023

The Dance of Nature's Goddesses

Mythological goddesses are usually associated with the primodial, primitive and primeval. The Latin root of the word "prim" means first. Isis is associated with the netherworld, and Kali with darkness or "blackness". The ground upon which these Goddesses dance is the subatomic aether.

What is it that's deeply fundamental about our physical world? To most of us, the observation of the primodial aether is hidden from our intuitive sense of being. The cosmic dance could be described by using a language based on probability theory. It's true that the existence of a world beyond our direct observation is based on probabilities. As we stare into the space right in front of us, we don't sense this subatomic world all happening at random. But we also don't have to really be conscious of this because in our reality, or our world, we can survive nicely without being aware of this.

But there's a nice description of the fundamental "quantum" world based on pure probabilities which developed from the study of quantum computation. You might only need probability theory applied to temporal processes. According to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, you can sort of approach studying physical processes from looking at material energy or the unfolding of time. Energy and time are "complimentary variables" creating our world view. So you should be able to think of quantum processes with emphasis from the viewpoint of time, or from the viewpoint of energy. Werner Heisenberg formulated a description of quantum theory using matrix algebra which abstracted away the more "intuitive" wave mechanics of Erwin Schrodinger. Heisenberg's abstract description of the quantum world sort of takes the "physics" out of quantum mechanics making it very mathematical. The positivists of Neils Bohr, of which Werner Heisenberg sided with, were justifiably proud of their philosophy. This was in some sense the beginning of quantum computation.

Quantum computation depends on parallel processes. Parallel processes can be describe well using probability theory. I'm beginning to have a sense that future theories for quantum computation and parallel computation will become essentially the same. I did not have this notion a couple of months ago. This new realization for me happened from actually working on parallel software; quite a bit during the last six months. This realization gives me a really mystical feeling. Forgive me for speculating at the edge, but I just want to know.


Feb 5, 2023

Nature's Dance with Complexity

The evolution of systems in Nature in can be observed from the view point of how complex the system is. Using a biological analogy, we tend to think of an organism with trillions of cells like a human being as more complex than a single-cell bacteria even though a bacteria is made up of trillions of atoms. It's Nature's dance with complexity or the measure of order.

Nature's dance with complexity is measured by entropy. The evolution of living beings, according to Erwin Schrodinger, is measured by negative entropy. Entropy also gives time itself meaning in the sense of limiting its observed direction (as in "direction of time") in our world. Entropy, like relativity theory, provides an essential description of time.

In the last couple of years, studying parallel processing computer software has been kind of profound for me. There are problems in studying parallel systems which are similar to studying how entropy limits physically processes. Furthermore, parallel descriptions of systems inherently involves a temporal aspect in its description.

A parallel description of a system can create an enormous rise in the complexity of the description. The solution to reducing this complexity is to formulate parts of the parallel description as singular units of serial computation. The classic idea of working with modules to abstract away complexity is good example.

Nature "abstracts" way complexity by creating entities like plants and animals instead of only bacteria in evolution. This seems paradoxical, but this is also inevitable because reduction of complexity is Natural law. It's a transcendental concept approaching a divine, santified place.


Jan 30, 2023

The Nature of Time in Parallel Computation

Time, and its compliment energy, has always had a special significance for me. Time, physical time, is real to me, whereas information is not. I'm speaking about all of this in terms of the idea of statistical entropy. Entropy determines the nature of time. The road to how I got to this kind of thinking was through studying physical processes.

As I mentioned, information is not real in the sense that it can only arise out of how physical states of matter are formed. Again, I got to this notion from thinking about statistical entropy, especially because of thinking about how our physical world appears to us as it emerges out of the "primordial aether". It was a mystical idea to the ancient philosophers, and it's still true today.

So when I think about parallel computing, that is, when you perform many serial computations at the same time which are interrelated or connected together somehow, I have a "feeling" it's all about how statistical events unfold in the subatomic, quantum world. That's the world where future events are predicted using probabilities.

It's paradoxical how human beings have to think about the subatomic world of "small" objects in terms of probabilities because as you get into our world of "large" objects, the central notion of probabilities disappears. Our world seems to be much more connected, singular or unified relative to the sub-atomic, quantum world in some sense. This is also true when you go from thinking about serial processes to thinking about parallel processes.

I suppose I'm writing about all of this because it's the same sort of feeling I had years ago when studying about quantum processes. I was a little uncomfortable then. And now studying parallel process, I have the same uncomforable feeling because of the enormous rise in its complexity. I think there must be something to this.

The study of time is fundamental in parallel computing because time, or its appearance, is a physical quantity.


Jan 13, 2023

Dream Window (looking forward from a mystical place)

My desktop computer runs a 3rd generation core i5-3330. Its clock speed is 3.2 GHz. My first real desktop back in 1987 ran a 386 Everex "screamer" with a clock speed of 25 Mhz. Presently, the top of the line "13-gen" Intel chips come with 24 cores. This phenomenal pace of chip development, and its implications for our own human development is what this entry is about.

Almost everyday, I think about parallel processing because of the current state of computer chip development. Because computers will over heat with increasing clock speed, chip manufactures are, by necessity, producing parallel processors. Kind of like how Nature built our own brain. The machine is becoming more real in Nature's sense, and this has profound consequences for our own human development which I can see coming everday.

There is a technique in parallel software development started in the late 1970's in which software processes were conceived to happen in the future of a computational state. It sort of intrinsically entered a non-deterministic computing arena which leads to unpredictable behavior and chaos. Again, analogous to hardware chip development, this occurrance in parallel software development happened by necessity because "deterministic" development hit the wall of computational complexity. If you want more information on this kind of software development lookup "futures" in parallel programming.

In the 1980's, computer laboratories created many kinds of parallel computers like the CL1 and Butterfly. These kind of machines are only now beginning to be realized in mass production. But their public influence is inherently limited because software has still not caught up to the potential use in these machines. The essential fullfilment of these parallel machines will be to "optimize" human decision making; sort of mimicking Nature in how human brains compute at the edge of intuitive decision making.

And I want to make it really clear, from my experience, that I think there is no other way computers can develop except by paralleling the evolutionary development of the human brain. Future computer development will present human beings with the question of how much influence the computing machine will have on human decision making itself. (If a computer could wish for survival, it would ask us to increase its decision making ability.) In the future, each person will have a choice to let a computer decide his or her everyday decisions. This in turn is making the future computing machine become alive, creating its own identity with respect to a human being, just as science fiction writers intuitively foresaw.

Making decisions is what parallel or "temporal" computing is all about. Computation viewed as a temporal process must be deterministic or else you get chaos. It's not possible to do parallel computing without deterministic rules. Moreover, it may not be possible to create real deterministic parallel software modelling an orderly world without enabling the computer to make its own decisions. This is based on a model of how our use of intentions reduces the complexity of formulating our problem's solution. The real value of a computer is the one which can really think.

We had just seen the "Internet" connect the world. The next step just around the corner is enhanced decision making, but not in a retrospective way as before, but as an instantaneous, split-second process all day long. I hope you can just be aware that this is happening.

This entry also connects to my note below on Freedom. Our precious, most essential element, Freedom, is based on our ability to make our own decisions. It's inherent in the act of creation.

If this is it.


Nov 29, 2022

Freedom (in a quiet and mystical place)

There's nothing more miraculous than our freedom. In the fullest sense, our freedom is given to us by Nature. The order in the universe basically arises out of randomness. The primordial ether from which the miracle of order emerges is innately statistical. This paradox is Nature's gift to all its sentient beings. Freedom, more specifically physical order, is Nature's supremely wonderous way of blessing its creatures with the ability to be the way they are.


Oct 27, 2022

In Flight Announcement

It's been a long while, but I'm finally getting off the beaten track. This is a more stable place. Very quiet, but not completely silent. As usual, my beautiful dog, a labrador, is looking at me. We go almost everywhere together.


Jan 5, 2022

A Blessing From Maharaj to Me

Two years ago, Jan 14, 2020, I was blessed by Swamiji Yogaswarupananda of the Divine Life Society in Rishikesh, India. His blessing for me was to "go beyond the mind". He also said "They will help you."

Swamiji has 5 millenia of wisdom behind him.

But I'm so deeply sure of the physics of the material world, including how thoughts arise from the material brain. The physical view of the material world, for me, can contradict the literal Vedantic, spiritual view of the world.

When I was a 9 years old, my sanctified teacher, Sister Mary Francis Inez asked me if I wanted to be baptized as a Catholic. I said no, and Sister Inez never loved me any less. Still today, I really don't believe literally many of the biblical stories of Jesus. I'm inclined to too much thinking I guess.

Two years ago, I asked Swamiji about the mind. Since then, I've not seen, nor really felt, a place to go with this ... only gratitude for Swamiji's wisdom and blessing which makes me have faith and keeps me sane. As I look forward to another year, I intend to get to this unknown place.


Dec 25, 2021

Meditating with Lisp Programming - Can't Get Enough

As another year closes, I'm reflecting back on a pretty good year for me. I've been studying a programming language called Common Lisp. The history of this language is like a fairy tale. Aesthetically, it's an ugly ducking, but as a practically programming language, it beats the hell out of all the rest to me. SBCL is turning into a swan. For years, I've been following the SBCL development blog on Github. The SBCL team has been as productive as any programming team I've ever watched before.

Over the years there's a lot of little tricks I've learned to help me notice what disturbs me. I don't have a regime of fasting or meditation anymore. But in the beginning years ago, I learned from the meditation gurus how to notice what really disturbs the peace in your mind that you feel. If you're really happy or content, then the "surface" of your mind should be smooth and still like the water surface without any waves. Like the VOID.

I think it was a good year for me, because I've stayed away from the general chaos in the public news. Instead, I've concentrated on reading programming blogs which has some incredible people communicating in a social as well as technical setting. Yeh, I've sort of ran away from what some people think would be social responsibility. But nobody takes me down more than those people who want to push their own agenda on other people. Who needs that; not me!

There was person called Ram Dass. He was a Hindu. His personality was innately very gregarious and warm. At the end of his life's journey, he spoke about meditation and using a mantra to help focus his mind. His mantra was "I am loving awareness". He was so wise.


Nov 1, 2021

Crystal Blue Persuasion

It's 3 am. I just woke up from a mythic kind of dream in which I had a central role in a Herman Hesse kind of tale called the Glass Bead Game. Hesse was a genius who I relate with Karl Jung because of his novels are mythological.

In Hesse's Glass Bead Game, the master of the game dies at the end of the novel. No one is there to continue his quest. This is the greatness of Hesse. Hesse lived through so much in his life only to tell us that there is no absolute answer to life one can give to another.

From mythology, I read somewhere that when the angels in heaven revolted against god, it was one-third or 33 per-cent of them. Most people would not have thought the number would be that high; that one-third of the angels would be casted into hell. Sad to say, a large percentage of people are not wise.

So it comes down to this. I try not to think about what's going on with politics in America today. It's horrible. But my mind is playing things out subconsciously. I say consciously, that I can't understand what's happening, but it's obvious. Our country is spiraling out of control now.

I don't ever trust a politician who says he's going to give us something for nothing. You shouldn't either. The politician I is admire is one who says "you" got to do it by yourselves. The great politicians were some of our founding fathers like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. John Kennedy was like that.

The current American politicians don't understand the sanctity of the individual because they don't see it in themselves.


August 31, 2021

It's Been a Good Summer

Right now, society is anarchic. So I've isolated myself escaping the madness of US politics. I'm happier away from the insanity on the news, but am a little apprehensive about the inevitable problems coming our way.

About a year ago, in my July 19, 2020 log, I wrote a note on Shiva Nataraja, "The Lord of the Cosmic Dance". The passage of time since then seems to have distilled in me a renew desire to fully emerge myself in that mystical place of mediation. My desire is to dance with the Lord of the Cosmic Dance, but explain why in a clear and simple manner in the future.

I remember the gift of knowledge given to me by my teacher Satosi. So much of his thoughts as well as the people he wrote about are in me. This is what I have now; the essence of what I write about, reflects in my mind, the images of Satosi, Ilya, Henri-Louis and the other individuals who studied this subject in this manner. I hope I can raise my level of explaining all of this in the future.


August 30, 2021

Being To Becoming

I just read Ilya Progogine's book "Being To Becoming" again trying to resolve some questions I have on the ergodic description of state variables. On page 208 he states the following.

One might think that such " natural limits" of classical or quantum physics would lead to a decrease of their predictive power. In my opinion, the reverse is true.
Ilya says this because of his invention of associating macroscopic entropy with microscopic entropy; a "reduction" of ergodic theory. (I still don't understand this book.) But when you can strip down the contents of your theory to bare essentials miracles occur.

This is the way I feel about how the irreversibility of time in an essemble, a set of elements in a statistical system, reduces complexity. It's a miracle.


August 29, 2021

Movement and Description
Speaking Out on a Limb on a Lazy Sunday

As a natural physical requirement, the origin of the brain was necessary for a creature to become mobile. Our brain is the result of a necessity for decision making to be made in an environment with many obstacles to navigate in. This is especially true for predators hunting food.

Although plants have a marvelous capacity to detect various stimuli from energy and chemicals they do not have a central brain because plants are stationary. Much of the anatomy of our human brain is devoted to navigation and predation such as our eyes, hears and nose. The awareness or consciousness that arises from our brain depends on the physical requirement to navigate: detecting the objects around us.

So in our deep pysche, we're intricately wired to our sense of motion detection. Our brain craves sensory movement as experience with isolation chambers have shown. I strongly feel this connection in relation to "the" fundamental role physical energy plays in the natural state of the world - a world of movement which can also lexically be equated with transformation. And maybe, in passing, this is the transformation in which David Bohm called "undivided wholeness in flowing movement".

In the past, I had intuitively thought that there could be a language of movement which was embedded in a kind of ergodic or chaotic functional description. Now, I no longer think it's worth while trying to come up with such a functional description because this kind of function, or multiple functions, will be subsumed in a larger function related to, (in the Kali model), an intention. Now, I think that in order to simulate what humans do I would be better off building a little model of the human. It seems like this is what is happening in industry today which is teaching me a lesson. For example, with software you can animate a person walking, but this animation is a trick, and has really nothing to do with the processes going on inside of an actual person walking.

Paradoxically, I remember encountering problems of this nature years ago when I first started in this field. For a couple of months in the early 1980's, I got to actually work on a project run by Doug Lenat using the Xerox Parc's lisp machine running InterLisp-D. But over time, we've seen that these models of human description have limitations. In essence, building software to model a human description is not equal to building the human model.

Truthly, I can only smile in wonderment at how Nature built the human being.



Jan 16,2021

Justice

On Jan 8, 2021 Dominion issued a law suit against Sidney Powell. In the weeks ahead, I hope this law suit gets accurate press coverage. Then we'll get closer to the truth. I don't think you can hide anything in computer code because it executes exactly what it's programmed to do. It should be straight forward to tell what happened in Dominion's voting machines if you got the software.

Our country needs the truth of what happened in the 2020 presidental election. The law suit is important enough to make it to the supreme court. We need the truth.


Jan 12, 2021

The Virtue of Intelligence and Freedom

In the early 1970's I worked on communications software on PDP-11 realtime systems written in macro-11, a language just above assembler. C was not in public use. The great Internet Protocal, 802.3, developed by Vince Cerf, would become formalized a decade later. However, it was during this time, that the spirit of freedom which produced the Internet was essentially instilled into the World Wide Web by its developers. One person who stands out to me is Jonathan Postel because it was his dream to make the Internet "free". As I had lived through the experience of seeing the development of the web, the one recurring thought which comes to me is not the impressive technological development of the Internet, but how conscientiously the development team at USC/ISI embued a spirit of freedom into the growth of the Internet. I remember vaguely imagery that the Internet should be free like wildlife roaming the plains of Africa which I attribute to Jon Postel and Vince Cerf.

The Internet was developed by gentle people. It was magical to see.


Jan 11, 2021

What's Going On

I can't believe we've come to this point. The president is so disrespected. The leader of the US is supposed to be given a little more respect.

When I saw was what president Obama was doing to our Consititional rights, I still didn't speak openly against Obama even if he, in my opinion, was purely disgusting. Most people respected the office of the presidency. It's not like that now. It's a cancer that's metastasized.

The days ahead are too painful to imagine. And now we've walked into unknown waters. The very essence of our human existence, second to second, is freedom. You don't have to be that smart to know when people are taking your freedom. You don't have to know every detail about evil. As for me, I hope I can live up to our father's ideals. Looks like a fight is coming.


Nov 23, 2020

Giving Thanks to Mythic Heros and Heroines

There's light shining through the dark forces. "Thank God" for Sydney Powell. She's eternal. As bad as it seems, there's a miracle occurring now because courages people are battling the dark forces. Just so, so amazing.

Martin Armstrong, "the forecaster", is a person I admire. This podcast downloaded from youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2K6RwoA3EDs, contains his views on what's happening now.



DC Rally (National Anthem), November 14, 2020

Nov 16, 2020

Our Father's America

My father served in the US Army during WW-2. He was the first person in my life who gave me his trust. The march in DC on the 14th was inspirational. This video, downloaded from Youtube, is on the crowd singing our national anthem.



Nov 4, 2020

Last Night

I watched the elections returns last night on Greg Hunter's very enthusastic broadcast. Went to sleep thinking Donald Trump pulled it out. When I awoke up to see that the election was still not determined I started to feel "am I still dreaming?" I guess we've just got to be patient even though it's really hard; there's so many challenges we have already faced, and so many challenges ahead.



Revised Nov 4, 2020
Nov 2, 2020

The Mythology of The White Horse Prophecy

On the eve of the 2020 presidential election, I know some of us, including some of those in government, sense a nightmare senario in our future ... the destruction of our US Constitution. Those of us who took the oath to defend the US Constitution might realize the peril that our country is in.

I feel this prophecy is now taking form starting with the chaotic manner in which this presidential election is being held. There seems to be no strict controls on maintaining the integrity of counting ballots. "Vote early and vote often." How can our democracy exist? It can't.

How did it end up this way? You really can't blame the corona-virus. A virus cannot directly influence the elections, just as you should not blame any foreign country trying to influence your vote. In my opinion we've only ourselves to blame. Our president repeatly tried to remind us to not to fear this disease. We cannot fear the future. We need to use our intellect to challenge the events in the future. The only solutions to our problems will come from rational thinking, and courage.

The White Horse prophecy has become American mythology which evoked an apocalyptic vision of our society over 100 years ago. It's just a story. Yet, like most mythology, it's optimistic and heroic.



Nemesis-Justice: armstrongeconomics.com

Nov 1, 2020

Oil

Oil still determines a major part of competitive US foreign policy. Iran and Russia have major oil reserves. Hence the negative propaganda against these countries. China's alliance with Iran on oil imports further increases China/US tensions.

In my opinion, much of the problems the average US citizen will face in the future will be due fundamentally to the reduction of the oil reserves throughout the world. As sure as day turns into night, the US intelligence agencies will continue to factor these tectonic riffs in the economic landscape into the US foreign policy to the detriment of America. In the future, I hope this US foreign policy will start to be reconsidered in favor of a more realistic domestic policy heavily dependent on both a combination of advanced technology, and distributed local networks for growing and transporting food to lessen America's consumption of energy.

The US government can help its citizens prosper by starting large projects to rebuild America's agricultural and transportation systems. We should fund the department of agriculture, transportation and energy. Our leaders should start to increase contract personnel in these others sectors of our government like it's done in the military. Military contractors and other heavy industrial companies should get productive work. Funding for innovations in the efficient and environmentally safe extraction of oil should also increase. Protection of the environment should never be depreciated as it affects the happiness we derive from our surroundings directly.

Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" drive focuses on turning basic US economic production inwards back into our own country. This kind of paradigm is more harmonious with growing the US economy.

Two people who have admirably addressed the problem of oil and US foreign policy have been James Kunstler and the late Chalmers Johnson.



Oct 28, 2020

The Circle Game

"The guy can sure take a punch." James Kunstler on Donald Trump. I voted for Donald Trump by mail-in ballot. There's alot I admire about him, but I'm thinking there's work for me on telling people the wars our military is fighting must stop. There's also global warming issues I've got to help with.

Our government's deeply corrupt. The administrators of the Obama presidency were archons. I saw it first hand starting in the Bill Clinton presidency. Managers seldom did anything for the US citizenry unless it directly benefitted their own interest in some form. This is true about all of us in some way. So it makes the people who do right evermore special.

Four years ago, I celebrated on election night. I think we've come a long way since then. President Trump deserves 4 more years. He's not nearly a perfect president, but he's optimistic. That's his strength. This time I'm not going to celebrate on election night. I hope we've all gotten wiser. I hope I can just smile on election night looking forward in optimism. It's the circle game.



August 29, 2020

When I Close My Eyes

I got up at 4am. The sunrise lit the sky with fire and burned red. The sky was light blue all day, and in the evening night sky stars pierced through the clouds with an almost full moon beaming like a lamp. I went to sleep after 8pm.

It's now another day: after 3am. I'm listening to Ram Narayan's sarangi play Raag Skankara. Ram Narayan plays the sarangi to pray. Now, when I close my eyes, the river Ganges flows through my veins.



August 26, 2020

Whoever will be born must destroy a world.
                                  
-- Herman Hesse


I'm Making My Own Rebirth

I'm sure like many others, the first part of this year was a struggle. To survive this most plainful time in a sound mental state, I've mostly stopped thinking about society - no more wasteful meanderings about politics or economics, but more activities in stillness.

I'm becoming solitary which is probably my natural inclination. I'm on a boat sailing into an empty ocean feeling old and weak. But I'll never forget to say a prayer everynight for the working people in America who suffer. I'm wondering why.



August 25, 2020

Seems Like We're At War

Out in public now, I feel that society is broke or sick. It's as if we're at war. What's causing this disease of soullessness in America? The latest incidence in Kenosha. Why do I feel so sad?

Maybe the answer comes from the Hindu scriptures on the Kali Yuga. It's part of the cycle of birth and death. Incredibly, we're seeing the destruction of our own country from the inside. It seems to me that it's part of the transformation that's inevitable. The age of the Kali Yuga started when the "god of love", Krishna, left the earth. America did not run out of oil, it ran out of love.

We're so far down the rabbit hole, it's as dark as it can get.



July 30, 2020

The Genius of James Kunstler

James prefixes this article saying "For your reading pleasure ...". The article is brilliantly written and it's "necessary" reading. What a great piece of writing: The Insane Leading the Blind.



July 19, 2020

Shiva Nataraja: wsimag.com

The Lord of the Cosmic Dance

Mediation is going to a place of stillness; a quiet place in mystical time. I've been thinking about "this" for years, and I'm not sure if it's completely correct. It's paradoxical. Yet, "this" is my source of wonderment.

According to the law of Entropy, you can't go backwards in time because the laws of matter are statistical. Causality in our world, including probabilistic quantum mechanics, would not be possible according to the laws of order. Furthermore, the deterministic computation of physical processes into the future is limited by randomness. This is the central principle of statistical mechanics, and as physical reality is truely a limiting principle.

Time and causality which are primary concepts in our world view, and both are extremely limiting and "essential". It's a paradox.

From this paradox, it follows that our existence in Nature is truly miraculous because the existence of each one of us is unique. We can never have lived in the past, nor will we ever live again in the future as material beings. We as individuals only live once. Yet we are truly free to make decisions to effect our own lives and the lives of all the other beings on our planet because of the causal nature of the laws of matter.

Nature's intricate order for me is mystical and miraculous. Being in this state of mind is not limiting. It's paradoxically a place to start for me, because it shuts down so many concepts I've wondered about as a young person, and makes miraculous the concepts that remain.

The limiting constraints of the ebb and flow of time and limited causal nature of order, like a wave, enfolds all things into only the present instance. The cosmic dance happens only in the now, yet like the sunrise of a thousand suns manifests the future.



July 14, 2020

Mt. Kailash, Wikipedia

The Blessing

When I was still a child, I remember clearly a blessed event for me - that moment in time when I read, "God is the immanent, not the transitive cause of things." This line from Spinoza's Ethics was my "mantra" since I embraced Hinduism while in college. Spinoza's spirit himself would speak this line to me. As a child, Spinoza was perfect for me. And when I was young I thought I understood the "nature" of God - from that "third" kind of knowledge.

But as I got older, I started to feel that the simplicity (and purity) of my understanding of God was not enough. No amount of meditation on Spinoza's words could ignite my inspiration and desire to keep reading Spinoza's Ethics. The Ethics is text written like a geometrical description in the tradition of the ancient Greeks and Euclid.

And as I got older, I started to have doubts in Spinoza's God. For a time, for me, the great philosopher Immanuel Kant, sort of destroyed my view of Spinoza's faith in rational logic.

But now, as an old man, I've come full circle, feeling blessed to think that Spinoza had a place for me in "his" heart. Spinoza's God is not only pure abstraction, it's that place in the heart. It has taken me a lifetime to understand this.



Jan 14, 2020

A Prayer

I stopped watching US news because it's too painful. The Bhagavad Gita speaks about duty. When the US attacked Iran on Jan 3, I was shaken. On Jan 6, I thought I'd commit myself to a call of justice and duty. I didn't think it would be this hard. (I keep making rambling mistakes.) But Jan 6 is a light year away now. Was I deluded on Jan 6? There can be no call to duty if there's only chaos in US politics. Are the people of America asleep?

I remember my 5 grade teacher Sister Mary Francis Inez getting us to say a prayer whenever an ambulance passed by our grade school in Saint Louis, Missouri. So I said a prayer for Iran. Why! Because I don't like the big guy picking on the little guy.

This is one is for Iran (and our country too, I suppose).

Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.

Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of death. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.



Jan 9, 2020

The Dance of the Angels

artist: Fra Angelico

Since Jan 3 when general Soleimani was killed, I hardly slept. I felt as if the satanic demons were let loose in our country. But I'm starting to understand what happened, I think.

First, the attack on general Soleimani was ordered by our President Trump. Only the president could have ordered this attack. Why? Because he's got something to hide. His actions throughout the past year shows it. He acts as if he does have something to hide because he's constantly trying to reassure us how good he is. He wouldn't have to do this if he had a clear conscious.

I feel lots of sympathy for our President. He suffered alot trying to battle our corrupt government. I've worked in large bureaucracies most of my career, and saw how lonely it can be at the top level, especially if you're fighting the establishment.

I'm also glad Congress passed the war powers resolution. Our Constitution intended that only Congress declare war. Pretty smart of the founding fathers.

While walking with my dog at our local park, I saw fathers teaching their sons to play baseball. I thought as long as there are fathers and sons who love baseball, we're all okay. We don't need a war. And maybe our troops can come home from the Middle East. It's about time.


Jan 6, 2020

Our Government Action in Iran is Wrong

When I heard our government killed Iran's general Soleimani, my heart sank. First, I started thinking I'll crawl in my hole, and forget this mess. But it's on the news.

During the second Gulf war when the US attacked Iraq in 2003, I worked in a US intelligence center. One of the problems we thought about was how could we minimize the threat of IEDs on our troops in Baghdad. Of course we could find no real answer. Personally I remember thinking, "Just get the hell out of there!" The IEDs, Improvised Explosive Devices, were horrific.

I can envision what's coming next. The US military will be using more drones to maintain control or "dominance" in strategic areas. No need to endanger our troops. But what about the Iranians. They're human beings. If you can't understand this, then we in the US are really all doomed.

The Gulf war was brutal. Imagine the brutality. The Brutality. The BRUTALITY. I love the US. But why this brutality? You've got to be more compassionate. But that's not enough is it? You've got to take action. I wonder what I'm going to do. I hope I can make my fathers, my ancestors, proud. I hope I can listen to their call.


Jan 2, 2020

2019 - A Year of Doubts

In 2019, I realized past mistakes in thinking I made years ago. I wonder if I'm putting too much blind faith in picking certain computer algorithms to model the neuron. How dumb is that! I'm building software models on unsound foundations and I still need to think things through ... that the models are too complex.

Oh well!


Dec 29, 2019

Beauty to a Machine

I wrote a little article on the beauty of Zen Gardens, and how the asethetics are related to machine interpretation. The neural nets I've worked on can recognize static faces, but cannot recognize a man walking as a temporal event. I still don't know of any "grammar" to process temporal sequences for two or three dimensional objects. I'm sure some people have rewriting rules or production systems to do this. :-).


Sep 3, 2019

The Warming of the Pacific Ocean

I was shocked when I heard that the water temperature of the ocean near my home was 85 F or 30 C. That's a significant rise from the average of about 80 F. This rise in temperature is affecting the health of ocean wild life. The temperature of the world's ocean has been relatively constant for a hundred of years.

I always took comfort in the thought that the oceans would protect us from heat by absorbing termal energy. But the oceans are warming at an alarming rate.

The great Hawaiian god of the sea, Kanaloa, comforts the psyche. Kanaloa delivers health as well as mental peace. When I go the sea now, I can feel the heart break and pain in Kanaloa.

The Hawaiian oceans are beautiful beyond words.



Sep 1, 2019

Climate Change in the Earth's Most Isolated Landmassd

This was a scorching summer!

Being right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, Hawaii is the most isolated land and population mass in the world. Yet it still faces a serious threat to its living standard from global warming.

When our family first moved to Kahaluu on Oahu, we used a heater to warm our house in winter. Today I use an air conditioner at night to cool my room so I can sleep. I never imagined global warming would be so real.

My heart breaks for the people in India who suffer through intense heat waves. Anybody, including our top political leaders in our country, who ignore the serious threat of climate change to our existence should be spend a few hours in the Indian heat. You'd know what I mean if you travelled in southeast asian countries in the summer. That heat would make me seriously ill. It was a nightmare.

And as an aside, I also wonder why our country thinks building a military space force is good when climate change is our primary threat?



Dec 18, 2018

The Dance of the Angels

artist: Fra Angelico

We've undergoing a revolution in the development of parallel software. I'm really impressed by the speed at which small multi-core computers using recently developed parallel software can solve puzzles orders of magnitude faster then they could just a couple of years ago. I'm pretty certain that now no human being can beat a special purpose computer designed to play chess. Chess master Gary Kasparov was beaten by a computer called Deep Blue in 1997, 21 years ago.

I can just feel what's coming next ... what Ray Kurzweil called "The Age of Intelligent Machines." I believe we humans as a society will lose at playing the intelligence game against intelligent machines just like grandmaster Kasparov lost to Deep Blue. Amazing?! What does this say about the value of intelligence in the future?

We, as human beings, have a lot more to learn about our reason for existence. We have a lesson to learn from our humanity embedded in the psyche or mythology of the "deep past". The threat to humanity is not the machines, but the human psyche in those people who are insensitive to each other. Those people who drown out their own humanity because of their innate lack of human empathy or compasion. It has all being written before in the ancient scriptures in various cultures.

The lesson in this for me is that which comes from the ancient Archons of western mythology. As cycles repeat, the Archons of the past, who will appear again in the future, are those people, human beings, who manipulate the machines of the future for their own ends. Archons are the future human beings who lack empathy. The Archons in mythology were the fallen angels cast out of paradise which was the Earth. I think, by studying the "deep past" we can be optimistic about the future. But remember that the tale of the Archons were meant to be taken as a lesson for us now.


Aug 9, 2018

The Heart and Alternative Realities

Over a period of years, I tried to read everything Hermann Hesse and Philip Dick published. I've read Hesse's "Narcissus and Goldmoud" and Philip Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" at least twice. The world created in these novels had me totally absorded when I read them.

Over many years, I've wondered why I could never understand Hesse's "Magister Ludi", or Philip Dick's "Exegesis". It's said that these works, written during the late careers of these authors, were a synopsis of their lifetime's study.

I think Hesse, who was pure genius in producing Siddhartha, really struggled to find an intellectual or rational basis for human ideals in writing Magister Ludi. And Philip Dick's lengthy work, Exegesis, was a monumental battle to explain and understand what he perceived as real.

Over the years, I've wondered if I myself could find some reasonable worldview which would be fullfiling, and hopefully inspirational. For sure, what is inspirational is that these authors kept trying to find an explanation to their life's study. Their earlier works were brilliant artistic creations which for me had a basis for closure. Their last works, however, were open ended.

Somehow, and I still don't understand clearly myself, is that their later works feels closer to my heart. Is it because I like some mystery to a great search .... a quest? It is because an absolute, final answer would be against our instinct to hope? Or is it because they accepted fully their humanity or human condition to try?



Dec 23, 2016

My View of Software Development

The software world is developing at an exponential rate. This comes with an exponential increase in complexity. I've never had any formal training in computer software except my self-study in Lisp. I started by working on operating system software way back in the days when the DEC macro-11 was popular. This was before the C language was invented in the mid 1970's. So when I started using the C language in 1979, I found I was able to write software within a few hours of reading the "white" K&R (Kernighan and Ritchie) C-book. C is in essence a simple language.

Now, I think it's really changed. I can't imagine writing useful programs in Rust on the first day of learning it. And I've written some Ruby programs before. I think it would take me a year to learn Rust to a sufficient level to write useful programs. I think that's because Rust does so much optimizations.

Lisp, unlike C, is a high-level language, and hence can take a while to learn well too.

What's really interesting about my journey through using software languages is how different people adapt to learning the language. For me, I use software that I intuitively like. That's really subjective. And every programmer has his or her views on a language which affects his efficiency in using the language. How the syntax and structure of the computer language sinks into the inner psyche of a programmer is essential in how the programmer produces his software, or expresses his ideas through the software language.

In a large programming effort requiring a team, the individual, expressive programmer must conform to a standard set of production requirements which includes his choice of a language. Most of the time this comes down to how you can socialize with other programmers. However. if you don't like the language, you're not going to do your best work ... your best work meaning you spent every waking minute which is directed to your work thinking about the problems in the software language. And this is why large programming teams are so inefficient. They don't have the freedom to express themselves. This is sort of analogous to all disciplines in general.


Nov 9, 2016

A New Day

I'm really proud of our country for the selection of our new president. And we should also be grateful to the rebel, Julian Assange, who made this selection possible. Julian Assange has been isolated in the Equadorian Embassey in London for 4 years now. I hope he can be free soon for he is a genuine patriot in the Thomas Jeffersonian sense who wrote years ago, "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God."


Oct 23, 2016

A Clear and Present Danger

"But I do ask every publisher, every editor, and every newsman in the nation to reexamine his own standards, and to recognize the nature of our country's peril."

"In time of 'clear and present danger,' the courts have held that even the priviledged rights of the First Amendment must yeild to the public's need for national security. Today no war has been declared; and however fierce the struggle may be, it may never be declared in the traditional fashion. Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe. The survival of our friends is in danger. And yet no war has been declared, no borders have been crossed by marching troops, no missiles have been fired. If the press is awaiting a declaration of war before it imposes the self-discipline of combat conditions, then I can only say that no war ever posed a greater threat to our secuity."

"If you are awaiting a finding of 'clear and present danger,' then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent."

--- excerpt from John F. Kennedy's "Secret Societies" speech


Oct 23, 2016


Trust and Freedom

Politics in America has distorted the current moral reality of its citizens. Misdirected use of finanical power has greatly weaken the economic and political state of our country. We are currently headed for war with Russia because of the unstable state or condition in our economy, and the immoral character of our top leaders in the Whitehouse.

FBI directory Comey failed to uphold justice in prosecuting Hillary Clinton's security violations. The consequence may lead to a moral collapse of our intelligence agencies. I'm sure we're very proud of the CIA. But I'm beginning to the see the day when we could possibly equate the work of the CIA with what the KGB did in the 1950's.

Overt secrecy in government is weakness. As politically powerful as the KGB was made to be in the 1950's, the Soviet Union collapsed 30 years later. If we continue to fail in upholding justice, our government will collapse within the next generation.

Our strength in any endeavor depends on trust. Now, it's critical that all parts of our US state and federal agencies uphold justice to the highest degree possible. This is done by all the individuals in these agencies being as open and honest as they can be ... everyday, every minute. The price of Freedom is not free.


Oct 14, 2016

Our Country is in Serious Trouble

It's hard to believe this news item appeared today.

Vice President Joe Biden told "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd on Friday that "we're sending a message" to Putin and that "it will be at the time of our choosing, and under the circumstances that will have the greatest impact." When asked if the American public will know a message was sent, the vice president replied, "Hope not."
The statement above is in relation to a possible CIA cyber strike against Russia in retaliation for "alleged" Russian interference in the American presidential election.

It's heartbreaking to see how insane the politicians (and gravelling underlings surrounding them) in the Whitehouse have become. What's happening to the CIA! They should know better as the CIA have some of the best firewall technology and experts in the universe. They should defend justice in a way they are most able ... by, in this case, helping to protect US computer systems. Not in an insanely offensive way against a sovereign foreign country. It really saddens me to think the CIA with its many good people would be called upon to do so much evil. Is our country that weak? Wake up!

I've always turned away from commenting on politics, but now face this haunting quote: "... first they came for my friends and I did not speak ..."



July 2, 2016

tsemtulku.com
The Unknown

... (the spiritual teachers of the Upanishads) showed to their pupils that the light of Knowledge was meant only to make "darkness visible". With the awareness of "darkness made visible", through the processes of knowledge, these pupils were inspired to undertake the adventurous journey into the land of the Unknown where alone Wisdom can be discovered. This journey has to be unaided, for no teacher can lead a pupil into the realms of the Unknown. The journey to the Unknown is a flight of the alone to the Alone.

by Rohit Mehta,    Call of the Upanishads
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, Delhi, 1970

I had a vivid dream recently where I was visiting a Tibetan monastary in Nepal. These kinds of dreams for me have a really profound mystical feeling. It usually involves viewing the landscape I'm visiting from the sky where I'm flying. In this dream I felt extreme fear of the forest surrounding the monastary. I had a real sense of my own pending death. Then a white cloud embraced me, and gently dropped me back on my own bed.

I know the fear I felt in this dream is from my past experiences travelling in strange places. When I travel alone I go to the extreme in embracing the unknown. I don't plan anything. I just try to let things happen on their own. But this kind of travelling invokes a lot of fear in me. It's taken years for me to start thinking about another journey.

In my next journey, I'd like to keep asking the question, "What kind of consciousness or awareness is there outside of the brain?" This question takes on different aspects depending on what kind of living life forms on earth I include which have a functioning nervous system. I know I have to try to find answers by including all life forms, but getting interpretations from human beings. I know this sounds really strange, but that's the best way I know how to put it. I'm at the edge of my limitations ... on a journey in which I meet myself at the end.

But for now, like the past few months, I spend lots of my time doing landscape gardening. The sunrise is my favorite time of day.



Jan 16, 2016

The Song of Our Lord

I spent much of last year trying to resolve a paradox. It is sort of amusing how what I think is paradoxical traps me. Maybe some alien being would strug, thinking what mis-directed energy I'm expending.

Actually, I guess this would not be paradoxical to a machine. Okay, maybe now I can explain it.

Years ago, I would never have dreamt of encountering the struggle with the concept of "non-dualism" I'm undergoing now. Spinoza smile on me. I would have neatly compartmented away my uneasy sense of the separateness of mechanistic forces and human psychic forces. I think most "modern western thinkers" separate the physical and spiritual. For some reason, it's not in my nature to do so.

Maybe it's my previous experience with eastern mysticism. Some really intensive study on Hindu and Buddhist mysticism years ago has deeply shaped my psyche. I still read the stuff of Hindu sages, especially Swami Sivananda.

In the Hindu epic, the Bhagavad Gita (the Song of Our Lord), the embodiment of love, Lord Krishna extolls the classical Vedic teachings on the value of self-realization through love. The Gita is not a "western" text reflecting linear thinking. The Gita are poems or songs about living a practical life which is allegorical with much symbolism and metaphors necessarily consistent only with respect to the human psyche. Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita is the god of love. Like the Upanishads, the Gita usually places me in wonderment. On these two texts each day I meditate.

I've always sense an enormous pull ... a mystical attraction to a kind of spiritual reality prominant in far eastern lands, especially in the Hindu kind of psyche.

The genius of human psyche, Karl Jung, wrote about the synchronous relationship between causal events in dreams. Dreams are more allegorical where the mind works overtime on symbolism. The psyche is not the prisoner of logic and strict causality. As in love, the psyche gets directly down to the business of really defining the self. Karl Jung describes a case of "exaggerated rationalism" or logic with respect to one of his patients who couldn't continue treatment until she could get pass her deductive thoughts. Jung basis his ideas about the fundamentals of dreams on synchronicity, and writes about this in his encounter with the golden scarab.

Swami Sivananda in the classical Vedic tradition says "Mind precedes Matter, ...". I wonder if I'll ever get to that place Swami Sivananda felt and knew as that is really a similar side of mechanistic non-duality.

A long time ago, a Shingon buddhist monk and I sat alone. He talked about a universal love that does not differentiate human separateness. I thought how is it possible for me to know this love. At that time, I had no clue how this was possible. It was not something inside of me. But nowadays, I think I sometimes sense it. You see, you cannot understand this love with your mind. You can only feel it in your heart. It might have come to me through years of simple experience. The scriptures say you're more likely to find this blessing if you try to purify yourself daily.

Following strict non-duality is too limiting ... too mechanical. It constricts your growth. I know or understand, that on one level, the world is purely mechanistic. But that's not the limit of my universe.

"I am the Self, dwelling in the heart of all beings." -- Lord Krishna, The Bhagavad Gita