What *Should* We Be Worried About?

[app103]

Need a few more things to ponder?

Every year, the online magazine Edge asks top scientists, technologists, writers, and academics to answer a single question. This year, that question was "What Should We Be Worried About?", and the idea was to identify new problems arising in science, tech, and culture that haven't yet been widely recognized. And it's a very long list. There are some 150 different things that worry 151 of the planet's greatest minds. The answers cover a wide variety of topics and ideas.

This is the stuff keeps the smartest folks in the world awake at night.

http://edge.org/annual-question/q2013

[Renegade]

I'm worried about a bunch of worry-warts getting all psychotic and doing crazy stuff.

[Target]

I'm worried about a bunch of worry-warts getting all psychotic and doing crazy stuff.

isn't that what the postal service is for?

[Renegade]

I'm worried about a bunch of worry-warts getting all psychotic and doing crazy stuff.

isn't that what the postal service is for?

Hahahaha~!

But hey, I called it!

Dan Sperber - Social and Cognitive Scientist; CEU Budapest and CNRS Paris; Co-author (with Deirdre Wilson), Meaning and Relevance
Misplaced Worries

Worrying is an investment of cognitive resources laced with emotions from the anxiety spectrum and aimed at solving some specific problem. It has its costs and benefits, and so does not worrying.

Continued

Worrying for a few minutes about what to serve for dinner in order please one's guests may be a sound investment of resources. Worrying about what will happen to your soul after death is a total waste. Human ancestors and other animals with foresight may have only worried about genuine and pressing problems such as not finding food or being eaten. Ever since they have become much more imaginative and have fed their imagination with rich cultural inputs, that is, since at least 40,000 years (possibly much more), humans have also worried about improving their lot individually and collectively—sensible worries—and about the evil eye, the displeasure of dead ancestors, the purity of their blood—misplaced worries.

A new kind of misplaced worries is likely to become more and more common. The ever-accelerating current scientific and technological revolution results in a flow of problems and opportunities that presents unprecedented cognitive and decisional challenges. Our capacity to anticipate these problems and opportunities is swamped by their number, novelty, speed of arrival, and complexity.

Every day, for instance, we have reasons to rejoice in the new opportunities afforded by the Internet. The worry of fifteen years ago that it would create yet another major social divide between those with access to the internet and those without is so last century! Actually, no technology in human history has ever spread so far, so fast, so deep. But what about the worry that by making detailed information about every user available to companies, agencies and governments, the internet destroys privacy and threatens freedom in much subtler ways than Orwell's Big Brother? Is this what we should worry about? Or should we focus on making sure that as much information as possible is freely accessible as widely as possible, forsaking old ideas of secrecy and even privacy and trusting that genuine information will overcome misinformation and that well-informed people will be less vulnerable to manipulation and control, in other words that, with a much freer access to information, a more radical kind of democracy is becoming possible?

Genetic engineering promises new crops, new cures, improvement of the human genome. How much should we be thrilled, how much frightened? How much and how should the development of genetic engineering itself be controlled, and by whom?

New arms of destruction— atomic, chemical, biological— are becoming more and more powerful and more and more accessible. Terrorist acts and local wars of new magnitude are likely to occur. When they do, the argument will be made even more forcefully than it was in the US after 9/11 that powerful states should be given the means to try and prevent them including in ways that curtail democratic rights. What should we worry most about, terrorism and wars or further limitations to rights?

Looking further into the future, human will soon be living with, and depending on intelligent robots. Will this develop into a new kind of masters-servant dialectic, with the masters being alienated by their servants? Will in fact the robots themselves evolve into masters or even into intelligent, purposeful beings with no use for humans? Are such worries sound or silly?

These are just some examples. Scientific and technical developments introduce novel opportunities and risks that we had not even imagined at a faster and faster pace. Of course, in most cases, you and I form opinions as to what we should really worry about. But how confidently can we hold these opinions, pursue these worries?

What I am particularly worried about is that humans will be less and less able to appreciate what they should really be worrying about and that their worries will do more harm than good. Maybe, just as on a boat in rapids, one should try not to slowdown anything but just to optimize a trajectory one does not really control, not because safety is guaranteed and optimism is justified—the worst could happen—, but because there is no better option than hope.

[40hz]

Worried about?

IMHO Charles Dickens nailed it back in 1843 with a brief scene his story A Christmas Carol.

This.

“Forgive me if I am not justified in what I ask,” said Scrooge, looking intently at the Spirit’s robe, “but I see something strange, and not belonging to yourself, protruding from your skirts. Is it a foot or a claw?”

“It might be a claw, for the flesh there is upon it,” was the Spirit’s sorrowful reply. “Look here.”

From the foldings of its robe, it brought two children; wretched, abject, frightful, hideous, miserable. They knelt down at its feet, and clung upon the outside of its garment.

“Oh, Man! look here. Look, look, down here!” exclaimed the Ghost.

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

[attach]

[kyrathaba]

^ Spot-on, 40.

[kyrathaba]

I'm so worried about what's hapenin' today, in the middle east, you know.
And I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.
I'm so worried about the fashions today, I don't think they're good for your feet.
And I'm so worried about the shows on TV that sometimes they want to repeat.

I'm so worried about modern technology.
I'm so worried about all the things that they dump in the sea.
I'm so worried about it, worried about it, worried, worried, worried.

I'm so worried about everything that can go wrong.
I'm so worried about whether people like this song.
I'm so worried about this very next verse, it isn't the best that I've got.
And I'm so worried about whether I should go on, or whether I should just stop.

[Giampy]

With regard to PCs, in the last days several people living in my zone (Europe) have been attacked by an awful ransomware: http://news.drweb.com/?i=3379&lng=en
What about the rest of the World? Is everything fine there?

[pilgrim]

Today

Today was the day I said yesterday “When it’s over I’ll be glad”
But after living through it, it didn’t seem so bad.

Yesterday was the day you know I worried about the day before
And tomorrow was the day that worried me even more.

The day after tomorrow and the next day after that
They worried me so much it nearly knocked me flat.

Now what about next Monday or next Wednesday week?
If only I had a crystal ball so I could take a peek.

Then there’s next month and the one that follows on,
I have so much to think about my strength is nearly gone.

And what about next year and all the ones to come?
I do so much worrying I never have much fun.

When I look into the future worry’s all I seem to do,
I have so much worry I doubt I’ll see it through.

If only I could realise, my worry would go away,
There’s no yesterday or tomorrow, life’s just one long today.

[Renegade]

There’s no yesterday or tomorrow, life’s just one long today.

Where are you?

Here.

What time is it?

Now.

[tomos]

enjoying the poems

[IainB]

I'm so worried about what's hapenin' today, in the middle east, you know. ...

Yep. Now I are especially worried too, after reading this (which just might turn into something that could keep us all awake at night - if there are any of us left to worry, that is):
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

Snippets from Israel daily news stream

1. The US and Iran hope to reach an agreement by Friday that would lift some sanctions of the international sanctions for six months. In return, the Iranians would curb their uranium enrichment program. McClatchy News sums up the deal so far:

At the heart of the proposal is the demand that Iran halt the expansion of its ability to enrich uranium, presumably by not buying new centrifuges, the equipment used in the enrichment process. That’s a change from previous demands that Iran stop enriching uranium past a certain purity.
____________________

Israel opposes the proposal. AP‘s fact checks what Israel claims the Iranians are doing.

2. The Saudis bought nuclear weapons from Pakistan, according to the BBC. They’re even ready for delivery:

One senior Pakistani, speaking on background terms, confirmed the broad nature of the deal – probably unwritten – his country had reached with the kingdom and asked rhetorically “what did we think the Saudis were giving us all that money for? It wasn’t charity.”
Another, a one-time intelligence officer from the same country, said he believed “the Pakistanis certainly maintain a certain number of warheads on the basis that if the Saudis were to ask for them at any given time they would immediately be transferred.”
____________________

This might potentially be a tad worse than an itty-bitty radiation leak at Fukushima (where apparently no-one was killed or is dying of radiation poisoning, and no deformed births are expected as a result).

[IainB]

Well, after my gloomy comment above, I have today read of something that offers a bright spark of hope. It's described in a blog post by an American woman living in Israel. If this episode does not soften the hearts of the people otherwise apparently bound to make war with an obligatory/statutory and remorseless hatred, then probably nothing can or will, and it probably makes a nuclear war in the Middle East that much more inevitable if/when the US takes the economic shackles off Iran.
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)

The other mother and the grandfather in Gaza.
Sarah Tuttle-Singer November 19, 2013, 12:19 am

So on a day when my daughter puddle-jumps in boots with pink polka dots, and my son looks for snails, while I yell against the wind to my kids “hold my hand when we cross the street, dammit,” another mother waits in Gaza for word on her baby daughter.

Earlier, as the other mother’s daughter grew sicker by the minute, the baby’s grandfather asked for help.

Not such a big deal, right? Your kid is sick, you call for help. Duh.

But this is different. The little baby is the granddaughter of the leader of Hamas.

Hamas, whose very charter calls the Jewish people a “Nazi-like enemy, who does not differentiate between man and woman, elder and young.”

Hamas, that has sworn to create an Islamic State across all of Israel.

Hamas, whose mission is to “fight the Jews and kill them.”

But on this day, Ismail Haniyeh acted as a grandfather, the same way my babies’ grandfathers would act if their grandchildren were in trouble: The leader of Hamas asked for help. And without hesitation, Israel agreed, and that baby was transfered across enemy lines to Israel where a team of doctors was waiting.

The lines between Us and Them, blurry through a veil of the other mother’s tears.

I close my eyes and think about my own kids’ pediatrician: The smiling man who looks like Santa Claus with a yarmulke, who hands out kosher lollypops, who can lower a temperature with his cool hand, and can ease this mother’s frayed nerves with his beamish smile.

And I close my eyes and think about all the doctors in Israel who hover over this little girl.

He who saves a life saves the universe.

And as they work tirelessly over Ismail Haniyeh’s baby granddaughter, these doctors don’t care whose child she is.

I close my eyes, and I see that other mother: Her knuckles clenched, bone white, dry lips sucking air, her heart stutters.

Maybe it hurts her just below the bellybutton, where that baby grew not long before – that’s where it hurts me when my babies are hurting.

The other mother waits.

And waits.

And waits.

While I yell at my daughter to get her feet off the couch. While I tell my son that if I see one more freaking snail crawling on our table, I will liberate them in the garden.

The other mother waits.

As the seconds drag by way too slowly, and the phone doesn’t ring, she waits. Maybe she’s praying. Or maybe she’s too scared to move her lips to shape the words she wants to say:

Truly distress has seized me, but You are Most Merciful of those that are merciful.

And as hours pass with the shadows, and as the sky darkens, so does that last glimmer of hope.

Maybe it’s cold in the room where she sits, while I turn off the light and snap “go to sleep, already” as my kids giggle in bed.

Now, I’ve lived enough to know that turning the other cheek will sometimes get your ass kicked.

But I also still hope.

And while this baby girl won’t be cured, maybe — just maybe — the lines between Us and Them can stay a little blurry for just a little while longer.

[IainB]

Looks like straightforward no BS reporting from the Vice crew: The Islamic State (Full Length)
I found it via Guido Fawkes:

WATCH: The Islamic State
The best reporting of what has happened in Iraq and Syria over the last few months has not been in the papers or on television, but online. Vice are the only news organisation who have managed to embed a reporter with Islamic State (ISIS). Medyan Dairieh’s documentary from Raqqa is remarkable viewing and well worth a watch.

At approx 40 minutes it is quite long, but it is worth a watch.
Those IS (was ISIS) mujahadeen seem to be very committed - I guess similar to the Al Queda and Taliban.
This is from the YouTuble link:

Vice crew: The Islamic State (Full Length)
Published on 14 Aug 2014

Subscribe to VICE News here: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE-News

The Islamic State, a hardline Sunni jihadist group that formerly had ties to al Qaeda, has conquered large swathes of Iraq and Syria. Previously known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the group has announced its intention to reestablish the caliphate and has declared its leader, the shadowy Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, as the caliph.

The lightning advances the Islamic State made across Syria and Iraq in June shocked the world. But it's not just the group's military victories that have garnered attention — it's also the pace with which its members have begun to carve out a viable state.

Flush with cash and US weapons seized during its advances in Iraq, the Islamic State's expansion shows no sign of slowing down. In the first week of August alone, Islamic State fighters have taken over new areas in northern Iraq, encroaching on Kurdish territory and sending Christians and other minorities fleeing as reports of massacres emerged.

VICE News reporter Medyan Dairieh spent three weeks embedded with the Islamic State, gaining unprecedented access to the group in Iraq and Syria as the first and only journalist to document its inner workings.

Check out the VICE News beta for more: http://vicenews.com

Follow VICE News here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vicenews
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicenews
Tumblr: http://vicenews.tumblr.com/
Instagram: http://instagram.com/vicenews

[Renegade]

Looks like straightforward no BS reporting from the Vice crew: The Islamic State (Full Length)

I'll need to check that out. I like Vice. They do cut through a lot of BS and they report on things that you don't see elsewhere in the MSM.


Another thing to be worried about...

http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/court-silence-can-be-used-against-suspects

tl;dr - In California, if you say anything to the police, that CAN and WILL be used AGAINST you. Also, if you're silent, that CAN and WILL be used AGAINST you. Here's that as a nice little table.

/	Speak	Stay Silent
Held against you	O	O
Not held against you	x	x

[Stoic Joker]

Tom was arrested after his Mercedes sedan plowed into a car driven by Lorraine Wong, who was turning left onto a busy street.

Prosecutors argue that Tom's car was speeding at 67 mph in a 35 mph zone when the collision occurred. He was placed in the back of a police cruiser but was not officially arrested and advised of his rights until later in the day.

In what universe is it your fault when some idiot turns in front of you?? Yeah yeah, sad story bla bla bla ... But cruising down the road close to double the posted speed limit or not...you have the right-of-way, period. Anybody crossing the flow of traffic needs to do so smartly.

Do they not teach this in California's Driver's Education classes?!? Or do they actually enforce the F'em they got brakes rule there?

Darting out into traffic without regard for how fast oncoming vehicles may be going is how squirrels get killed constantly ... And that's setting the bar for knowing better pretty friggin low..

[Renegade]

Darting out into traffic without regard for how fast oncoming vehicles may be going is how squirrels get killed constantly ... And that's setting the bar for knowing better pretty friggin low..

Squirrels! Love the metaphor! But yes - exactly that.

I had the same basic thing happen to me before - totalled the car.

I'm driving along (at the speed limit) and a woman quickly guns a left turn in front of me to get into a supermarket parking lot.

I'm absolutely going to hit her - no doubt about that - so I pull hard right and hit her in the front of her car at her engine rather than hit her broadside and ricochet left into other cars. Good thing as her kid was in the passenger seat and probably would have been hurt. As it was, nobody was seriously hurt.

The intersection where I have to turn when I leave the house is pretty much blind due to an incline. I'm never in such a rush that I need to gamble on there being no cars coming. These things aren't rocket science.

But... the more dangerous thing in the article is that silence = guilt.

[IainB]

I recall that in UK contract law, silence can not be taken as an acceptance of an invitation/offer to treat.
Are you suggesting that In US law silence may be taken as an admission/implication of guilt?   
Wasn't there a 5th amendment right to silence in the US Constitution, or something?

[40hz]

This from Popehat:

Cops, and prosecutors, and other public employees in the criminal justice system have power. It is the nature of power to make people believe that they are better than the rest of us, and entitled to privileges the rest of us do not enjoy.

The question is this: are we so addled by generations of "law and order" and "war on crime" and "thin blue line" rhetoric that we'll accept it?

Read the full article here.

[40hz]

I recall that in UK contract law, silence can not be taken as an acceptance of an invitation/offer to treat.
Are you suggesting that In US law silence may be taken as an admission/implication of guilt?   
Wasn't there a 5th amendment right to silence in the US Constitution, or something?

There is such a right.

And it has been argued in some jurisdictions (and agreed to by certain US judges) that a refusal to speak to police officers may be construed as sufficient grounds for suspicion of wrongdoing that that (by itself) is justification for arresting someone.

On the topic of "remaining silent" look here and here.

[Stoic Joker]

But... the more dangerous thing in the article is that silence = guilt.

Ah! Yes... I neglected to close the loop on that one. So working from the above position:

The Fuzz are saying that he is guilty based on his not asking about the poor victims in the other vehicle that he hit (cue the violins..).

I OTOH wish to assert the below:
1. There was no - guilt reaction - reason for him to ask about the condition of the other driver/idiot that caused the accident.
2. He had no way of knowing there were Children-to-think-of in the scant few seconds he was afforded to react when this daffy broad came darting into his path.
3. Even if he did find out about them after, see point 1.
4. It's fairly common knowledge these days that silence is golden when the cops are involved..*

It is frankly unfathomable to me how this got so absurdly turned around. When the reality of it is that since nobody in their right mind should be maniacally careening around corners with their entire family in the car...there was no way in hell it could possible be his fault in the first place. So the fact that the system went completely full zoot into upside-down day by making silence = guilt is almost fitting (in a kangaroo court kind of way) given the backasswards manner in which they decided to attribute guilt.

*Which may actually be the endgame objective if this little shenanigan. The system wants to make people afraid to be wisely/cautiously silent in an attempt to force them to blurt out something/anything that could be usefully incrimination.

[Renegade]

(in a kangaroo court kind of way)

Kind of?

I've found a portrait of the judge...

This from Popehat:

Cops, and prosecutors, and other public employees in the criminal justice system have power. It is the nature of power to make people believe that they are better than the rest of us, and entitled to privileges the rest of us do not enjoy.

The question is this: are we so addled by generations of "law and order" and "war on crime" and "thin blue line" rhetoric that we'll accept it?

Read the full article here.

Interesting quote. Let me follow that up with another:

http://www.copblock.org

Badges don't grant extra rights.

All police outfits are based on double standards. They are incentivized to be draconian. Cease buying into those those failed ideas and institutions. You Own Yourself. Think, and Govern Yourself.

Another thing to worry about - groups of armed thugs that think they're better than everyone else.

Talk to them. Don't talk to them... they'll get you. Because they're better than you.

[Stoic Joker]

It just occurred to me that law enforcement is a lot like tech support. As long as you can clear the highest number of calls, quality is irrelevant. Just stick to the script and walk them into a - The House Wins - favorable conclusion.

[IainB]

...There is such a right.
And it has been argued in some jurisdictions (and agreed to by certain US judges) that a refusal to speak to police officers may be construed as sufficient grounds for suspicion of wrongdoing that that (by itself) is justification for arresting someone.
On the topic of "remaining silent" look here and here.
______________________

Well, on the basis of that, silence seems to have been judged as a reasonable basis for cause for the police to arrest someone on suspicion, however that does not seem to indicate that it contributed to the proving of their guilt in any subsequent court of law.

[40hz]

...There is such a right.
And it has been argued in some jurisdictions (and agreed to by certain US judges) that a refusal to speak to police officers may be construed as sufficient grounds for suspicion of wrongdoing that that (by itself) is justification for arresting someone.
On the topic of "remaining silent" look here and here.
______________________

Well, on the basis of that, silence seems to have been judged as a reasonable basis for cause for the police to arrest someone on suspicion, however that does not seem to indicate that it contributed to the proving of their guilt in any subsequent court of law.

Silence is always your best bet - as in say absolutely nothing other than "I want to speak to an attorney - and I do not consent to any searches.