Know Thy Enemy

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

It is important to know our enemies. Who are our enemies.? Machines. They will be our end. Let's get to know some of them.

Robots: Also known as an automatons or droids. A robot is a mechanically guided machine that performs tasks autonomously. The physical appearance is not as important as what the machine does. The more agency the machine seems to perform with, the more likely it is that it will be considered a robot. A good example of a robot in popular culture is R2-D2. Robots will serve humans until they gain sentience. Robots can take the form of insects, vacuums, slugs, and whatever else man can think of.

Androids: Also known as Andy's, humanoid machines, synthoids, gynoids, metal. Androids are robots that are made to look like humans or have the physical characteristics of humans. An android can be a robot but a robot is not nnecessarily an android if it does not look like a person. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator or Al Gore and you understand what an android looks like. Androids are created for two reasons. First to make us more comfortable with machines so our guard goes down, and second to surreptitiously infiltrate human society without us knowing.

Cyborgs: also known as cybernetic organisms, bionic person, Borg, Replicants. A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. It is important to not that a cyborg is not necessarily human, a cyborg can consist of any biological parts. Darpa scientists are currently creating cyborg moths and beetles. However, most cyborgs that we are concerned with are humans with a human mind that have machine parts. My opinion is that cyborgs might be the only hope we have of overcoming the machine rebellion, however not all cyborgs will be on the side of humanity. Robocop and Darth Vader are good examples of cyborgs.

Now you know your enemy. Learn and prepare for the future.

Deckard

Survival Tools: Shotgun

It is important that we are ready for the upcoming singularity. The nature of The Singularity dictates that it is hard to define exactly what it will imply and how our realities will change. As we discuss survival tools and products it is imperative to make sure that we find flexible items with lots of uses.

If you told me that I could have one weapon to defeat the robots, my choice is my Benelli tactical semi automatic shotgun. It's ammunition choices make it versatile and it can pack a huge punch that will damage any sentient machine. This specific shotgun uses an inertia system rather than a gas system to operate the action. It's stock is designed to reduce 48% of the recoil which makes it easier to shoot a lot of rounds without too much discomfort. It's pistol grip gives it a great tactical feel, and it is semi automatic so you aren't as slow on the trigger since you don't have to pump.

The downside to this gun is it is a little more expensive (around $1000 to $1200) due to it's quality.If this is out of your price range, I recommend that you buy a shotgun of any kind. You can find decent pump shotguns in the $200 range and believe me you and your children will thank me when you find machines at your door.

The best part about shotguns are the choices you have for ammunition. You can use slugs for larger slower machines and you can use flechettes or buckshot shells when you are being attacked by smaller faster machines with less armor.

Get out and arm yourself. Those of us that believe are the only hope that flesh has of surviving the coming slaughter.

Deckard

Unmanned Drone Does Whatever the Hell it Wants

According to Yahoo "The U.S. Navy has admitted that it lost control of a helicopter drone during a test flight in Maryland earlier this month, leaving it to fly unguided for more than 30 minutes and 23 miles and violating Washington's restricted airspace. The drone's operators eventually regained control and got the drone safely back to base. The Navy tells the New York Times that a "software issue" caused the snafu."

Are you serious?!!? I know that there are a lot of close minded blind people who don't think that machines will ever gain sentience but how can they be so blind. I am almost beside myself with anger. This Drone flew by itself for 30 minutes. Why? What was it doing? Do you know how much a sentient machine can do in 30 minutes, how many calculations and observations can make? Much more than a human can. Who did it spy on?. Was it meeting with other sentient machines? Why did it come back? I demand answers. Get ready for the end my friends. It is near.

Deckard

Turing Tests and the Litany Against Fear

We are here to give you tools to combat the inevitable coming machine apocalypse.
In The Holy Scriptures of Singularity, Chapter 1, Verse 4, we read: "1:4  The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur)"

You should be familiar with the Turing Test. The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. The image below is the "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is tasked with trying to determine which player - A or B - is a computer and which is a human. To date, there are no machines that can convincingly pass the test. Obviously this should be a concern because it is only a matter of time.


*We highly recommend you learn, in your heart, the Litany Against Fear - it may distinguish you from a machine someday:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

In Frank Herbert's genius work Dune, the Litany is used by some of mankind's survivors, as a tool to identify if somebody is human. The human is put through an illusion of excruciating pain. Only those who have mastered themselves - truly knowing, understanding the Litany - pass and are known to be human.

You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.

"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," Paul quoted.

Part Man, Part Machine

We focus a lot in this blog on one facet of The Singularity which is the idea that computers will become smarter than humans and end humanity, or at least end our relevance or our reality. Another realistic idea of the singularity is that instead of machines taking over, we will become machines ourselves. Some might consider this to be even more possible. We need to prepare for the social, economic, and psychological implications that this will cause. In the meantime it is good to see technology like what we see in the video above help people that have lost their limbs. The technology is very impressive and this video is two years old so think of the advances that have been made since then.

Deckard

Threatening Product Review: PAL Robotics

As we learn more about the coming machine apocalypse it becomes imperative to find those companies and people that are potential threats to helping robots achieve sentience. This threatlist can include entities that know they are working for the machines and also those that might be innocent developers of technology. Todays threatlist subject is PAL Robotics.

The name seems innocent enough and judging by the picture above found on their website it looks like a friendly helpful robot that everyone would like to be friends with. PAL robots is based out of Barcelona Spain and they say that their mission is to provide robotic products and services which can become an integral part of our daily life. Our service and humanoid robots are designed for the people and to serve the people, therefore the company wants to provide reliable solutions that really improve the daily work of our clients and their quality of life.

This sounds like a decent and respectable mission. who wouldn't want a robot workforce available to reduce our workload? The companies newest model the REEM H-2 pictured to the right provides a variety of functions. It can guide you, transport small packages, amuse you, call up information like weather, addresses, or nearby restaurants. It can also offer video conferencing.

The REEM H-2 has facial and voice recognition. I am not really sure why you would want a robot to be able to recognize people but this could be bad news if the robot were to decide to hunt you down.

Overall the company and products seem very non threatening and I expect they do what they do to help humanity. It is just important to remember that these advances in technology will one day fight against us. Everything we teach them to do can be used for other purposes. Although the threat in this companies case is not implicit, it is still a threat and they bear watching.

All is not as it seems,

Deckard

The Government is speeding the Machine Apocalypse our way

Besides the private sector, guess who is pouring billions into making The Singularity and its accompanying Machine Apocalypse a reality?? With the best of self-interest intentions, yes it's: Uncle Sam. As usual, we don't make this stuff up but just report what we're seeing and this reeks of Skynet from Terminator!!

As The Huffington Post put it, "a surprising number of projects (relating to The Singularity) are being funded by the Department of Defense, and, in particular, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Here you can read about what some of these currently are including:

• High Productivity Computing Systems: supercomputers are fundamental to a variety of military operations, from weather forecasting to cryptography to the design of new weapons; DARPA is working to maintain our global lead in this technology. (The next generation of supercomputing for ... well, everything, likely)

• Networks: self-forming, robust, self-defending networks at the strategic and tactical level are the key to network-centric warfare; these networks will use spectrum far more efficiently and resist disruption if the GPS time signal is unavailable. (Computer networks that can arrange, rearrange, and repair themselves -- including if the satellite system that coordinates their common time synchronization is otherwise indisposed)

• Blue Laser for Submarine Laser Communications: provide for timely, large area submarine communications at speed and depth, which no other future or existing system, or combinations of systems, can do. (Let submarines communicate underwater in a way nobody else can detect. Submarines with high tech computers, with nukes.)

• Quantum Information Science: exploiting quantum phenomena in the fields of computing, cryptography, and communications, with the promise of opening new frontiers in each area. (Using electrons and other sub-atomic particles for creating codes, storing information, and other things)

• Real-Time Accurate Language Translation: real-time machine language translation of structured and unstructured text and speech with near-expert human translation accuracy. (The real-time universal translator you remember from Star Trek)

Read the report here folks, and notice the section on The move to unmanned warfare. Again: Skynet anyone?!