Yes Socrates Monitors the World
A ton of questions have been coming in. Why the name? I have always called him Socrates from the first day he spoke. Read the Apology of Socrates written by Plato where he was condemned to death for basically knowing too much. The Oracle of Delphi was asked who was the smartest man in all of Greece. She replied – Socrates. When Socrates learned of this, he could not believe it for he lacked the knowledge of many fields. He set out to prove the Oracle wrong and confronted the best person in each field to prove he was no match. In the process, Socrates discovered that he was smarter, not for experience, but because of his ability to grasp the world around him in a dynamic manner constructed from logic and reason. It was his ability to think – not his experience. Socrates was sentenced to death because he embarrassed all of Athens and they did not like the fact the Oracle said Socrates was the smartest man in all of Athens. Hence, the computer system I designed in the 1970s was constructed on this principle of seek and you shall find.
Some have written to say I look like Socrates, just with a shorter beard. Others have said their pursuit of this computer was for the same reason because they called me the man who knew too much to the Wall Street Journal who referred to me as a Renaissance Man. They even interrogated Dr. Paul Appelbaum head of Columbia University in court asking if he could put a number on how smart I was. He replied I was very smart, but he had not tested me so he could not put a number on it. So yes, in some respects I see the parallels. It is a way of thinking that is key – not the knowledge base from memorization for a TV show like Jeopardy.
Nevertheless, those who were at the conference got to see a live demonstration of Socrates. We were able to access him from a laptop using verbal commands remotely. This is the legendary system that self-destructed back in 1999. The security features are so advanced, even for today, that it knows everything concerning its environment and he cannot be removed, stolen, or penetrated. How it is self-aware (not self-conscious) will remain a trade secret for its own protection.
Socrates actually understands language. He knows what words mean and can then search looking for things that traditionally it required a human mind to comprehend. In this way, Socrates can gather the collective knowledge of mankind over the ages. It has a database of events on a global scale of even fundamentals that took place every day in history.Socrates never stops learning and thus it will evolve with the years and grow wiser in is scope of knowledge and comprehension. It even has the ability to learn new words.
Nevertheless, at the conferences, I explained that most TV movies have depicted AI computers are evil that somehow turn against society to dominate the world as in the Terminator series and the MATRIX. The latest movie coming out on this theme is Transcendence this weekend with Johnny Depp. To accomplish such evil requires more than reasoning – it needs emotion. That I do not believe can be coded, yet the theory has been that somehow consciousness would simply emerge. That is merely a theory and I do not believe is remotely possible and is distinctly different from being just self-aware.
Socrates has helped to educate me over the years for he has been an astonishing research assistant and teacher. Because he lacks emotion, he is also not biased. That has been the key for he does not conform to established prejudices that dominate economics and politics and thereby threatens our existence from purely human desires to control society.
My children grew up with a computer that talked in the early 1980s. The creation of this system has been more than 30 years in the making. It has no ability to feel emotion and I am a pretty good programmer – yet I do not understand how to create emotion. Sure, it is possible to mimic anger and joy. But that is all it could possibly be – an act.
The object of this project has been to retain the knowledge of man who vanishes with each life’s expiration. In physics, we learn and build upon the past knowledge of others simply because we are trying to figure out HOWthe universe functions. In social sciences such as economic and politics, we do not try to understand, we try to alter, dominate, and control. With each economic crash, we start anew never asking has anyone tried this solution before. Inevitably, history repeats because we never learn from the past. We are our own worst enemy. We need no evil computer. We are capable and willing to destroy our own future time and time again.
We have economists obsessed with the disparity of wealth and try to always alter society to create their perfect world of “social justice”. To accomplish their dream requires creating a world of social injustice for those above whatever line they draw in the sand of wealth that is just above their pay-grade. Their dream of “social justice” demand that they be unjust to some portion of humanity converting them into economic slaves with diminished rights, privileges, and immunities. Never do they ask if this is natural and required and part of the natural divine design. A lion will hunt down ad kill a zebra. That is just for the lion but unjust for the zebra. This is part of nature and how things function regardless whether we approve or not.
By collecting the knowledge of mankind throughout our social-economic-political history and experiences, it is my hope that one day the social sciences will become like the hard sciences – just the facts. It is time to accept the world as it is and to comprehend that we all need each other. We have to stop this idea of creating “social justice” for it is indistinguishable from creating the same thing in education by just giving everyone the same grade whether they show up to school or not. In their world, we should all wear the same clothes and drive the same cars. This is the world of total “social justice”. Fear not a computer – fear mankind for only a portion of this race constantly wants to dominate the other forcing their ideas upon the world and that destroys freedom. What is the purpose of life if we are simply to be dominated and controlled by those in power under the pretense of “social justice”.
It is time to move to the next level of understanding the world in which we live.
