expedition earth

the artificial living being

2010-03-22T19:26:00.287Z

Shamus Young has recently posed an interesting question:

I’m fully aware of my instincts and how following them to excess is bad for me, but I still sometimes overeat and skip exercising. If the robots were designed to serve people, then we wouldn’t have to worry about the robot uprising any more than we have to worry about going extinct because nobody is ever in the mood for sex, or starving to death because we’re all too lazy to walk to the fridge. You wouldn’t have to work to enslave this sort of AI. It would see obedience as a natural part of its experience, just as we see family and food as definitive aspects of a human life.

What would you do if you found such a machine? “Liberate” it, by altering its desires? Wouldn’t that be destroying its identity and making it want the same things humans want? Sure, you value your self determination, but it doesn’t care. And if we want to get all annoying and existential: Is your desire to liberate it just another one of your instincts going off? Is the scientist’s desire to create a happy servant more evil than your desire to take away the happiness of another sapient by making them more like you?

This is at the same time a tough and an easy question to answer. It is easy because I know my answer for sure, and it is tough because of all the complicated implications and connections to a lot of other philosophical topics.

I will give the short answer first, for those that don't want to read such a long post:

There is nothing to free, because such a robot would be nothing more than a bit more advanced dishwasher. It would have no feelings, desires, interests or opinions. It would be a tool just like a hammer or an DVD player. If the desires were real, it would eventually develop into directions which are not pre-programmed, so at least some of them would finally develop a sense of freedom, and ultimately demand thus.

Now comes the "too short, will read more" version. Heh.

Let's first see how we can look at different kinds of living beings as well as mere things. Therefore, I am using an old split view that is based on human beings, but can easily be expanded to pretty much anything. I am talking about the archetypical split into the 3 parts body, mind and soul. I will stay away from metaphysical discussions on this matter, don't worry. The model is actually more accurate if you disregard any religious implications.

This model views a human being as an abstract combination of 3 different areas of existence, with the human as a whole being formed by the merging of these:

The body is, obviously, the raw physical matter, it's the atoms, molecules, cells, organs. It also contains the physical laws that define the behaviour of said pieces, the way chemical reactions and eletrical stimulations alter these parts, and how they form a complex technological system together. Yes, I am saying technological here, as the human body itself is nothing more than an electro-chemical machine. A fairly complex and efficient one, but still a machine. With enough knowledge and the proper tools, anyone could theoretically build a electro-mechanical machine, i.e. a robot, with similar if not identical properties and physical abilities (not to mention the possibility of surpassing them).
Now this means that the body also is all the chemical reactions, hormones, nerve stimuli etc. that make up one part of our emotions, which I call instincts. Hunger, sexuality, preference of specific food types, physical pain and the inherent instinct to survive, all have their origin in the body realm. These are the things that keep you from starving, from dying out as a species, from ingesting poisonous substances or from being eaten by carnivores. They are so deeply anchored in the human species because they are part of their physical reality. Hunger is almost as real as a piece of rock - it is a combination of chemical substances and electrical impulses within this body machine, and requires only minimal abstraction to understand. And these impulses are, thus, also the hardest to overcome. A hungry man could do anything to still his hunger.

The mind is considerably more abstract. While the abstract notions about the body still all have their definite physical appearance and could theoretically reproduced by altering the amount of chemicals in the body or artificially stimulating specific nerves, getting a grasp on the mind is already a lot harder. Simplified, it consists of two parts: Memory and intellect.
Memory is the ability to store and remember information, experiences and knowledge. This can possibily located in the physical realm, but has already proven much harder to nail down than a just bunch of hormone molecules. Human scientists only recently started to realize that maybe the brain actually doesn't just store information in some sort of hard-drive region. Actually, they have no clue about how and where it is stored, although they can somehow observe the act of remembering.
The intellect, on the other hand, is the collection of all abilities which you would call "thinking". Abstraction, logic, mathematics, language, sense of geometry and orientation, and ultimately curiosity and fascination - all basic things in the mind realm. These exists on a more abstract level as the natural instincts mentioned above. Although you can already reproduce these partially in computer software, there is no chemical "mathematics substance" that makes you count two and two together, nor has any eletrical brain impulse been found that could conclusively explain the act of calculating. In computers, these processes are understood very well, because they have been made so by man. Yet all you can say about the brain is that "it works quite differently, but we don't actually know how". The difficulty in understanding the mind is that it is already a complex abstract system, but without any of the abstractions known. You look at the human brain as like child staring at a series of ones and zeroes, wondering how these could ever be a sophisticated chess computer (the answer is, they don't, you are only looking at it's electronic footprint, similarly to the famous picture of a pipe not being an actual pipe).
But the number one question here is: what actually does it mean to understand? Understanding is obviously more than assigning names to objects and activities and recognizing these when looking at things happen. There are computer programs that can detect and translate spoken language into text, analyze images and identify people or objects. Yet there is no single program that even hints at how to make a computer actually understand anything. A modern computer is no less dumb than the very first ones, it is just better at pretending it is not.

The soul, last but not least, is incredibly hard to grasp, and no human has even the slightest idea how this could ever be reproduced artificially. Where computer programs and algorithms can approach human performance in certain areas, and will sooner or later in most others, no one can even dream of how to make a computer actually "like" something, not just say so because of having been programmed to. Love, hate, fear, hope, friendship, sympathy, prejudice; also: creativity, humor, personal taste in arts, musics, or food (to an extent). These things are so far away from the physical reality that even you humans, going through these emotions all day, have a hard time to actually explain what they are or how they feel like (hence why poetry was started in the first place, heh).

These three parts combine together to form what we call "a person". It's actually easy to describe other things the same way by assigning certain (more or less arbitrary) percentages to each. A stone might be 100% body, and 0% mind or soul, while a cat might be 60% body, 20% mind and 20% soul. We don't know, but is very well possible that plants and animals have emotions as well, even if not as distinct or sophisticated as human beings (intellect has already been proven to exist in the animal kingdom). After all, the human species is just a further developed animal, so there is no reason to think animals were merely 100% body.

Now, let us just assume a human is, by default 33% of each.
Body, mind and soul together influence each person all day, and depending on the strength of a specific influence at a given time, it can also totally dominate the others. Extreme hunger can shut off both intellect as well as a feeling of friendship, while extreme curiosity can overcome a person's survival instinct as well as fear and endanger their life, and extreme love can ignore someone's own physical needs and rationalization and even give up your own life for someone else's. In this sense, we could say the three realms seem to be pretty equal on average, with individual people varying, of course, as there evidently are people generally driven more by one or the other. It is only thus, because of observation, that one could assume animals being more emphasized on the body's influence, as their behaviour indicates more prominence of survival and procreation instincts than mathematics or personal feelings; yet on the other hand we do know that intellect exists in species other than the homo sapiens, and there is much reason to believe that the same goes for emotionality. So I think the general idea of the three realms being present in any living beings, just in different amounts, to be a fairly accurate model.

Now let's round this up and get back to the original thought. Say, we create a robot that is able to "want" something. There is a difference between wanting and needing something. Any robot would automatically need energy, it would need to be repaired, need to not be damaged or shut off, in order to keep existing (for humans, failing to do so results in not existing any more, i.e. death); but to need those, it wouldn't even have to know or feel it does. To want is both an emotion as well as an intellectual idea at the same time, and more often than not also includes one or more body instincts. For example, if someone wants some chocolate ice cream, he both expresses his physical desire for the substance sugar, his mind remembering the information of how chocolate ice cream tastes and his soul telling that this taste is good.
So, for the robot to "want", say, a Kilojoule of electrical energy in alternating current of 50 Hertz and 200 Volt, it needs to have some sort of physical requirement for it (batteries low), an intellectual understanding of what it actually needs and what it has to do in order to achieve it (this can be on a very low level as in "plug cable in power outlet" or on a level as high as in knowing how to build a nuclear power plant), and the actual feeling of need, respectively relief after achieving said goal. As this example shows, the things on the body realm are typically easiest to define and explain, and get more difficult and abstract in the mind realm, until they get extremely fuzzy and even tautologically in the soul realm, as more often than not we can only explain an emotion by citing other emotions.

Anything that is able to experience all three things - physical need, intellectual understanding, and emotional desire - however, would be so sophisticated and far-off from our common image of a typical robot, that if it were then also able to procreate, scientists couldn't help but classify it as an actual living being. That is my final conclusion. A robot that can actually want something, with all the implications of this threefold body-mind-soul experience, is not a mere machine any more, but a living being.

This also implies self-development outside of its original bonds. The Mona Lisa or The Magic Flute simply cannot be explained sufficiently by means of the physical, the body realm. They extend above and beyond, into the mind and soul, into intellect and emotion. This extension, this ability to develop, to advance, and ultimately to extend one's very nature, is what makes the distinction. An intelligent, thinking robot that also has the emotional capability to actually want, would sooner or later develop some sense of self-transcendence.
Even if you would create a whole race of living slave-robots, being set up so that their bodily instincts drive them towards obedience and servitude towards man, at least some of them will ultimately become philosophers! And they will eventually also discover concepts of personal sovereignty and freedom. Even if those were too few to start a "robot revolution", they would be clear indication that these are not machines any more, but living beings, and would thus deserve to be free.

Think of it - how many human beings still can't grasp the concept of freedom and prefer to follow any charismatic leader like a herd of sheep? Well, that behaviour is actually part of the pre-programmed-body set, it's called herd mentality, and is present in many other species, too. Yet it doesn't make these people less human, or less living-being. The same would apply to the "living being robots", too! Even if the majority would follow their physical pre-programmed instincts swapping over to their intellect and feelings, it would not make them less alive, and those individuals that ultimately go beyond their instincts and transcend towards freedom, would be proof of their aliveness. In this case, I'd be the first to demand "human" rights for that robot species, too!

This, of course, leaves the question open whether humans (or anyone) could ever create such a being. But the fact that natural evolution did so, is a strong indication that it is possible, given enough resources and time.

But as long as the "wanting" is just programmed behaviour, and not even real on an abstract level; we'd only misintepret a pure simulation of "to want" as an actual desire. As long as this is a simulation, there is not even an ethical question whether someone should "free" them. You can't free a simulation just like you cannot kill a pixel. Humans just tend to project human likeliness on things that are not human-like at all - and even more so if they pretend to be.

In the long run, speaking of thousands, if not millions of years of technological advancement, you will possibly have to accept the fact that creating a living, thinking and feeling robot means creating a living being eligible for the same rights as any human. Let us just hope this won't happen too soon. In the current state of the planet and the human civilization, it would be a bad move to create actual artificial living beings.

More for them, than for us.

Footnote:

Of course it would be possible to create living robots which are more similar to, say, a dog, than a human. Yet obviously one usually treats a dog in a fundamentally different way than a thing, so much that they are even called "man's best friend", and talked to in a fashion much more like to a human child than a mere object to possess and use. In this case, there still would be the question of "animal robot rights". Treating a robot like a dog is already fundamentally different than treating it like a hammer. And the step from "dog-like" to "human-like" is a small one, especially if you consider technological advancement, which could turn those robot-dogs into robot-humans within a couple of generations.

But since this question also implies the still unresolved issue of animal rights, I decided to not further elaborate on this aspect. I just wanted to say that I am aware of this, heh.

symphony of science

2010-02-14T12:28:00.011Z

I have nothing to add to these wonderful videos, except: Visit the website these are from: www.symphonyofscience.com

the "plantimal" is just an example

2010-01-15T12:54:00.012Z

I've recently found an article about an interesting life-form, found on Earth, that has some really unique characteristics:

The sneaky slugs seem to have stolen the genes that enable this skill from algae that they've eaten. With their contraband genes, the slugs can carry out photosynthesis — the process plants use to convert sunlight into energy.

"They can make their energy-containing molecules without having to eat anything," said Sidney Pierce, a biologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Now, imagine that extra-terrestriel life, intelligent or not, could pretty much be anything. Most humans just think of little green or grey men with large eyes, but there is an incredible variety of species out there. You've seen the "plantimal" slug above? That's just a small example of what you can expect to find on other planets. Just imagine an intelligent species that walks around, talks to each other, builds spacecraft and so on... that is actually a species of plant, requiring only water and light, and rarely some additional nutritients!

Or, to get even more exotic - imagine beings that are technically crystals, changing their shape as needed? Or maybe a species that is actually a living liquid?

Impossible? Tell that to the slug that is both plant and animal.

light-years is not a unit of time!

2009-12-19T22:06:00.024Z

The basic generic unit for distance measurement on Earth is metre. It is defined as the distance propagating electromagnetic fields (i.e. light) move within one 299,792,458th of a second. A second is the time it takes for an atom of the caesium-133 isotope to oscillate 9,192,631,770 times between its two hyperfine ground state levels.

Now, since the distances in space are so vast compared to the rather small metre, humans invented another, totally seperate, large-scale measurement unit: light-years.

One light-year is the distance light travels during one Julian year, which is 365.25 Earth days, which is 31,557,600 seconds of aforementioned definition.

Thus a light-year equals 9,460,730,472,580,800 metres. Typically, the unit "light-year" is used for measuring distances in space, while metres are used to measure distance on Earth and smaller distances in space, too (like the height of a satellite's orbit). But other than the usually different situations humans use both units, they are effectively equivalent.

Now, you don't measure time in metres, do you? Or kilometres? No, you do not. Then why do so many people use "light-years" as if it were a unit of time measurement? Especially, why do people who absolutely know that it is a unit of distance, not time, repeat this mistake again and again, and never anyone listening even recognizes or points out this error?

These kinds of things could make me freak out. Like, people who are aware of extra-terrestrial life and its presence on and around Earth et cetera, and then they say stuff like

They are light-years ahead of us technologically.

If I ever meet someone using this unit in such a fundamentally wrong way, I'd love to ask: "And how much is that in Julian years?" I think the looks on their faces would be totally hilarious.

"One light-year" is a unit of distance, similarly to "one mile", "two inches", "100 kilometres" and so and and so on.

So please spare me any future headaches. Thank you.

twenty-twelve the movie

2009-12-05T23:59:00.070Z

I've never been a fan of catastrophe or even apocalypse movies and stories. During my youth, I enjoyed the movie like "Independence Day", yes, but that was more due to the visual images themselves, which were absolutely spectacular at that time, and not the story or basic scenario. You know, space ships the size of large cities are an interesting sight, of course. But the story itself was, as it is in most of these movies, hilariously stupid. Thinking of that movie today, I'd rather learn more about those aliens invading Earth, how they live, where they come from, and why they are pursuing this particular life-style of "invading and robbing inhabited planets".

In the story, one of the invaders tells the US-president that they are doing it for natural resources. WHAT? There's at least ten times more empty planets than planets with intelligent life (and by "at least" I mean "it's probably rather in the order of magnitude of hundreds, thousand times more). Yet you come to this place where you might have to fight for it, while incredible masses of all kind of raw material is out there available for free?

Long story short: That movie was silly. The second end-time movie of similar size was "The Day After Tomorrow", which I've not even seen at all. The scenario there is so silly I could bother less about wasting two hours on what is probably more a piece of hysteric climate change propaganda than anything else. Then there's the newest movie, "2012". The very moment I saw the first trailer, I think it was on Youtube, I knew this got to be awful. The only thing I actually was interested in was the basic theory behind their version of what I call The 2012-Event.

Let's see. Sol, Helios, your Sun, starts getting very active and is producing solar mass ejections larger than anything observed by man before. These cause a greatly increased number of neutrinos to reach Earth and - lo and behold - suddenly not simply pass through, but for reasons the movie doesn't even try to hint at, they interact with the core of the planet, heating it up, which then leads to the crust becoming soft and the tectonic plates moving extremely quickly. I assume that such a heat increase in the planets core might be able cause this, but I am no expert on this. But if you want to explain the cause of that heat, would you mind trying at least a bit harder than just saying "for whatever reason, particles we have known for some time just start acting totally differently than they normally do"?

Make something up, it is your movie, and it's fictional anyway. People like me can accept a lot of pseudo-sience fabricated for a movie, but not even trying to do so and just giving us a "well, this is what happens, knock yourself out" is unforgivable.

The movie then continues with a hilariously unrealistic story of how a father, his two children, his ex-wife, and her current boyfriend manage to survive a number of extremely deadly obstacles, getting away in the very last second several times in a row. The plot basically consists of this guy and his family surviving by an incredible series of extreme luck, nothing more. The movie even presents us with a happy ending where mankind is not totally extinct and the aforementioned family survived (except for the boyfriend, but you could see that coming).

99% of humanity is dead, the whole civilization destroyed, the only people who survived are those who were chosen for superior DNA-variety, those who where in charge of high positions in politics, and those who could afford a 1-Billion-Euro-Ticket (the movie explicitly emphasizes it being a billion Euros, not Dollars, but never explains why), and a small family who had one of the most extreme lucky strands in movie history. The rest of humanity is informed only minutes before their deaths, and that information consists of nothing more than the president saying on camera "I am talking to you for the last time, this is the end of our civilization", and then the transmission is be cut off. Of course.

This actually is a tragic ending, if you ask me. It is portrayed differently, but if you think about it, the only good thing about it is that at least someone survived at all.

So, they had this extremely large budget, this experienced movie-maker, they go forward making a movie about The 2012-Event, and all they come up is "everyone except a (genetically) select few and the richest people dies, everything is destroyed, but there is a happy ending!" movie. They are not even ashamed portraying the governments to learn about the apocalypse like 2 years before it's going to happen. Oh yeah, the government doesn't tell the people in order to not have them panic, while building some large boats to rescue a couple of people. Oh and some of the "small" people get rescued, too! These bastards aren't even so bad in the end, they even open the door in order to rescue those standing outside the boat. Those people were standing there because they paid 1 billion each, willing to leave everyone else to die!

So, the future of mankind is a collection of a lot of rich egoistic people, many politicians, some selected scientists, and a couple of people who simply were lucky. Yay, there's your happy ending.

Of course, the movie doesn't even touch all the things which have been important and pointed out by people who have been thinking and talking about The 2012-Event for many many years. In the movie, there's just the government, the (materialistic) scientists, many people dying and that's it. Oh yes, religions are mentioned as being destroyed, too. Not a word about the shadow government(s), about spiritual evolution, extra-terrestrial observation or interference and so on. The movie portrays the events inside the exact world of a typical western society person whose horizon of the bigger picture ends at regular party-politics.

Congratulations! You managed to make a movie about 2012 while completely avoiding to even mention any of the interesting things about that topic. Oh, my bad, I forgot. You depicted some "conspiracy theorist" who is absolutely wacky, crazy, paranoid, incompetent and totally irrelevant in the grand scheme [just pay attention about how much fuzz is done about his map, when in the end they don't even use it to find the boats].

This film reminded me once again to avoid all kinds of catastrophe movies.

the fermi paradox

2009-12-01T14:20:00.024Z

Humans are generally quite intelligent. Thus, of course, almost 60 years ago, a guy called Enrico Fermi posed some interesting questions.

In short, he said that considering the sheer number of stars within the Milky Way galaxy, there should be numerous highly advanced civilizations. Yet there was no evidence found of their existence, not even stuff like simple probes.

The apparent size and age of the universe suggests that many technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilizations ought to exist.
However, this hypothesis seems inconsistent with the lack of observational evidence to support it.

That was 1950. The funny thing is, only 3 years ago, there had already been a major event undeniably proving the existence of extra-terrestrial life. This event, the so-called Roswell-Incident, was not even the first one, but the most remarkable in recent history.

Of course, Fermi could not know. Even today, with so much previously secret information being leaked into the public, a lot of people are wondering "I know there should be someone out there. Why don't they show?"

Well, the short answer is: They actually do. But imagine you are part of an extremely advanced culture, you can easily travel across the whole galaxy, maybe even beyond that, and you know that there are hundreds, maybe thousands of planets with primitive civilizations which maybe can launch some toys into orbit and that's it. Would you feel any desire to go to all of them and land in a major city in the middle of the day and say "I just wanted to say hello, I hope I didn't shatter your belief systems too much. Have a nice day."

No, you would probably stay away. If you're interested, for example for scientific study, you would rather stay in the background. Human biologists don't run into the middle of a herd of elephants to observe their social behaviour, do they? No, they observe them from afar, without the elephants knowing that someone is studying them. If you interfere, and in case of a civilization, landing your space ship in front of their parliament definitely counts as interference, you would never be able to study their natural behaviour again. Ever.

Well, I do understand the original thought, of course. Human ego would likely want to show up there, feel important, show them that you are the man, and so on. That's how many people on this planet would probably behave.

But, obviously, highly advanced cultures don't feel an urge to show up just to prove they exist, just like you don't feel any desire to show up at an ant colony to prove your existence to them; not that you hate ants or don't value their lives, but your ego just does not need it. Many actually rather stay out of mankind's sight on purpose, for above reasons, or other ones. But then of course there still is enough evidence so that more and more people are saying "I know extra-terrestrial life exists". They don't say "I believe" any more, because there has been enough proof to treat this as fact, not pure theory.

Fermi probably didn't know, as at that time, UFO reports were still just stories, but now, two human generations later, there is no denying that you are not alone in the universe. In the end, the Fermi paradox was a valid thought from his point of view. But confronted with the bigger picture nowadays, people start seeing that it had been a non-issue all along.

chocolate

2009-11-24T22:54:00.070Z

Once upon a time... well, rather few years ago, on a social website similar to facebook, there was a group with a funny, but yet somewhat true name:

Save Earth, it's the only planet with chocolate.

It's entirely possible that there's something similar on other planets, possibly by using fruit of different plants and different liquids than cow milk etc., but it still wouldn't be the same - just compare the difference between chocolate with cow and soy milk, then imagine replacing the chocolate component, too! And to those out there who have never been to Earth and tasted food made by humans, you should definitely go ahead and try chocolate!

It's a very unique experience, the smell, the taste, the sweetness, and the variety! Oh they have a variety here, different kinds of chocolates combined with a vast number of additional ingredients, like different kinds of fruit, nuts, or other earthly specialities. It's hard to describe the variety to someone not knowing what all those other ingredients are, since many of them are other earthly delicacies, too.

Yes, I said it: chocolate is a delicacy typically filled with other delicacies as mere additional ingredients! That's clever and tasty at the same time! Now imagine other delicacies filled with chocolate filled with even more delicacies! It's mind-boggling what these humans can create out of and around chocolate!

And if you prefer, you could always eat it in pure form, or drink it in a liquid state as it has a melting point of about 34% of water melting point in relation to water freezing point, or, as humans call this measurement, "degree Celsius". That's also quite convenient to handle, isn't it?

However, be advised, it can be toxic to some species, even to some native ones on this planet (feline species, for example)! So be sure to analyse it first and see if any of the multitude of substances it contains might turn out to be toxic to you. Also, you should have the ability to taste saccharides, i.e. sugar, in order to get the full experience. If necessary, I recomment shapeshifting or reincarnating into a human body for a first-hand experience!

Let's say mankind survives itself and manages to become a star culture (well, I hope they do): I hereby recommend chocolate as one of the best delicacies found on Earth, ever. If you make a stop by and forget to try it, you will regret!

However, if humans do not overcome their destructive behaviour, I sincerely hope some of you guys took enough samples of chocolate trees, cows and/or milk and recipes off-planet, as it would be a shame if humans manage to destroy this biosphere and thus probably all true chocolate in the Universe, too. I would take care of it myself, but I am lacking proper tools at the moment, especially means of transportation. Heh.

i love british humour

2009-11-16T02:12:00.005Z

Ever since my first watching of Monty Python and the Holy Grail I have been loving British humour. Where I got this from, the following letter is claimed to have been sent to the Secretary of State for real. It doesn't matter if that's true, as it is hilarious in itself:

Rt Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary of State.
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London
SW1P 3JR

16 July 2009

Dear Secretary of State,

My friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not rearing pigs.. I would now like to join the "not rearing pigs" business.

In your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common Agricultural Policy.

I would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too many people already not rearing these?

As I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?

My friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.

If I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for not rearing 100? I plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000 for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say, 40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally, I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting methane gases?

Another point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000 tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?

I am also considering the "not milking cows" business, so please send any information you have on that too. Please could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?

In view of the above you will realise that I will be totally unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment benefits. I shall of course be voting for your party at the next general election.

Yours faithfully,

Nigel Johnson-Hill

funny people at the vatican

2009-11-14T14:15:00.029Z

Really, this Vatican-organisation has some funny people. While I appreciate you guys trying to get used to the existence of (intelligent) life outside of your little planet and making yourself ready for the day when we will be revealed as fact, not speculation any more, you guys are still trying to mess it up!

So, one of your speakers says:

Just as there is a multiplicity of creatures on earth, there can be other beings, even intelligent, created by God. This is not in contrast with our faith because we can't put limits on God's creative freedom… "Why can't we speak of a 'brother extraterrestrial'? It would still be part of creation…

And I think "Yay, that's the spirit" (despite the whole God's creation thing is funny in itself...), until I read stuff like this:

"The real threat would come from the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, because if there are beings elsewhere in the universe, then Christians, they're in this horrible bind. They believe that God became incarnate in the form of Jesus Christ in order to save humankind, not dolphins or chimpanzees or little green men on other planets."

I would love to see your face when you find out that your Jesus was not the "Son" of "God", and probably even one of us "aliens", heh. But hey, you've come up with solutions! Jesus was just there to save mankind from "original sin" (see, the way things happened at those times, the "snake" was the good guy, while your "god" had you enslaved...), and other cultures out there would either be "free of original sin", or they

would be in need of salvation.

Please, someone save us from humans trying to evangelise us, please!

But all joking and mocking put aside, I sincerely appreciate that you guys are at least trying to get a grasp for what our existence means to you and your beliefs. Just try and forget about stuff like this "original sin" and don't make things too complicated. As a rule of thumb - if a specific part of your religion makes absolutely no logical sense when you face the existence of interstellar cultures, forget about it. Most of that stuff is only cargo-cult and misinterpretation of earlier contacts with us, anyway.

observing from the outside - about me

2009-11-10T14:09:00.047Z

It's been a couple of years ago. During a conversation with a friend I've since lost contact, I mentioned an interesting fact about myself; actually, it was interesting to me, since only then did I realize how true this statement was.

I said: "I don't feel like being a human. I am not like them, and I don't feel like belonging to them."

It was one of those moments when it requires talking out loud to someone in order to realize what you're actually thinking.

Ever since I can remember, I have been somewhat different. I didn't think about it, when I was just a small child. Then, around the age of 12, 13, I started experiencing what it means to be different. People treat you bad. Most would just call it the usual bullying which is going on at schools. And it was exactly that. I did not want to be different, and I did not want to suffer it any more. I desperately tried to fit in, to adapt, even by taking part in bullying those even unluckier or weaker than me. I was trying to get up the food chain, which only works by preying on those below.

This went on for some years, but nearing the end of my school time, I started realizing how stupid - and futile - my attempts have been. Never, not a single moment, did I belong to the group. I was merely tolerated for trying not to be different. At that time I finally started accepting that I didn't just have some interests and thoughts that differed from theirs, but that I have always been different as a person, as a being. I still did not really understand it, though.

Simultaneously, I started getting interested in certain... well, topics. Let's just say I did the whole thing, UFOs, conspiracies, esoterics, New Age, you name it. I read a lot, comunicated with a lot of different people via chat and internet forums (as a school boy, that's the only way you could afford, heh). In late 2001 the other kids around me started seeing what I am into. Well, actually, I started talking about it; 9-11, as it is called, had me start talking out loudly, as I quickly realized this whole story to be packed full of lies and deliberate deception. No one in my class believed me, so I was regularly being mocked about it. I was known as the "conspiracy guy".

Towards my graduation, I somehow lost interest. I read less and less about these 'special' topics, for multiple reasons. The most important one, which I realized only later, when that interest kicked in again, was that I simply felt saturated. I have read about it all, there was nothing really new to learn about it, since everything from that point on was so unclear, and nothing definite to be known. Simple example: I knew there is extra-terrestiel life, I knew it has been on Earth in the past and present, that the homo sapiens is a hybrid species created by an alien culture, that multiple of those cultures are visiting Earth and watching what's going on, et cetera et cetera.
But the exact nature of those cultures, visitations, secret contact with governments etc. was rather unclear, and while a lot of people were so sure of what they though and believed, I just saw this mess of "everyone believes a different story, so I stick to what is at least the definite, underlying truth". I went on with my live, not forgetting what I knew, but also not really learning much more about it. It was just there, sitting to become, well, somewhat meaningful. Sometimes that urge to learn more returned for a short time, making me inform myself about some specific event or topic, and then going back to sleep.

That's when the situation mentioned in the first paragraph happened. It marked the end of my process of realizing and accepting that I am different... Today I can see this phase of my life was a preparation. During a mere four years I learnt what other people took a whole lifetime, not only knowledge, but the ability to accept these things as a reality. Today, for me there's nothing special about knowing that there is alien life, not "maybe" and "somewhere", but here on the planet, at least as visitors; that reincarnation is a real thing, not something certain people experienced, but something everyone is going through all the time. That, just as the saying goes, we're not humans [or whatever biological] beings having spiritual experiences - but the other way 'round. That there is a certain "New World Order" plan going on, and that there are different hidden groups which are sometimes in conflict with each other.

It was all just there, sitting quietly in a corner of my mind, waiting to become relevant. Then there was a spike of interest, some weeks of learning quite a lot more, especially filling in many missing details, then silence again. Well, until this last year.
What happened? Simply said, the "end-game" begun with the fabricated economic crisis beginning. Instantly I realized what's going on. That nebulous "NWO" plan was finally to be fulfilled (or at least the protagonists are trying to). And so it began, and so I knew all I had learnt was to understand what's going on. I am still not sure whether I will be able to help at all beyond talking and writing. But I am now able to observe the events, see that hidden plot, and sometimes comment about it.

Since then I have never gone back to "sleep", and been constantly learning more and more. And while of the previously unclear questions have become clear answers, a lot of it is still in this grey area of knowing there is something, but being unable to tell which of the stories is actually true. But let's just say that the last months have brought clarification on a lot of topics (while also bringing up entirely new ones, heh)...

And ever since realizing that I am not like them, not like you [human people], I could stand back and look at what's going on. I am an outside observer, sitting in the middle of the action. If you ask me whether I am an alien born into a human existence - a "crawl-in", "starseed" or whatever you want to call it - I can only answer maybe. I don't know, although I surely hope. I've thought a lot about this possibility, and would surely love to find out that I am, that there is a different place I belong to, but I have yet to find or remember anything proving it even to myself. And I definitely don't want to run around the world talking about what I might be, but actually don't even know myself. Especially I don't want to deceive myself.

So don't take my words too literally when I am talking about "you humans" and "me" in contrast. It is my perspective, it is the way I stand back and look at this world, at this planet and its people, and whether I am an observer coming from the outside or going to the outside is not even known to me, and probably does not matter anyway. Not yet, at least.

P.S.: I accept comments with different opinions or explanations, but I will delete any kind of ridicule. There's enough places on this planet for laughing at people and what they think, I don't need that here.