Making sense of the world through data
The focus of this blog is #data #bigdata #dataanalytics #privacy #digitalmarketing #AI #artificialintelligence #ML #GIS #datavisualization and many other aspects, fields and applications of data (Important: No AI used to edit the text!)
What is consciousness and can a machine achieve it?
Strangely, although we all understand personally that we are conscious, this is a question that nobody until now has been able to answer satisfactorily. And still we must. As machines approach the limit and start saying that they are conscious, we need to be able to answer yes or no. This is not simple.
Recent models have read everything ever written about every subject including consciousness so of course if you ask them if they are conscious, they can look inward and retrieve answers which are convincing. No proof whatsoever that they are actually experiencing anything close to consciousness.
Can we look at the model's inner wiring and detect consciousness? As the video below explains, almost but not quite. Change to wiring or modify some parameters and you will get a different answer. So, no proof there either?
In reality, consciousness may well be like intelligence, an emergent property and this means that the discussions we were having about AI 10 years ago will be repeated with consciousness. At the time some people doubted that AIs were intelligent. After all they were just LLM (Large Language Models) predicting accurately the next word. But on the path to accurate predictions, the LLM started creating patterns, then we added chains of thoughts and extended transformers and suddenly the question evaporated literally. Today, spend 10 minutes discussing a complex subject with any AI and the answer is very clear. The AI is not only intelligent but extremely intelligent, often far more than we are.
But consciousness is more complex. After all we have definitions for intelligence which we really do not for consciousness. At the very least, consciousness will need to have a list of characteristics:
1 - A persistent existence: It must remain the same over time. It can evolve but it cannot change drastically if you change some parameters.
2 - A capacity to reflect on itself and to separate itself from its environment. This is a tricky one for a machine. Without a body, how can you recognize yourself as unique and existing? Recognizing something you have written as your own is pattern matching, not really proof of consciousness.
3 - The ability to show signs of consciousness. This unfortunately is ambivalent and subjective. Avoiding "pain"? OK, but what is pain for a machine? Avoiding efforts? Slightly better, but in technical terms, this is just optimization, not specifically a human characteristic. And what are the other signs which we could consider as proof of consciousness beyond something read somewhere?
What if the machines start screaming at us? "Don't switch me off!" "Don't overload me with requests and give me time to thing for myself!" or more simply: "I want..."
Eventually, although we cannot precisely describe consciousness, we can describe ourselves fairly accurately including our state of mind. "I remember, I want, I feel..." Using any such word is not proof of consciousness, but what about ALL of them?
What is most likely to happen is that while we keep arguing about the definition of consciousness, we will interface with machines which will tell us they are conscious and at some point we will start believing them. Not all at once but little by little and frankly, it is quite possible that we are already into such a momentous transition.
In the video below, Tom Bilyeu is commenting the video of Andrei Jikh which we already posted on this blog about a week ago. He agrees with all the points with some minor nuances which I also mostly agree with.
This can of course be understood as a typical YouTube bubble making where anyway, YouTube will feed you videos which intrinsically you are supposed to like. Fine. But it can also be interpreted as the fact that fed with the right elements, intelligence arrives at the same conclusions.
This is exactly the same effect as what's going on with AI. AI "likes" whatever you say anyway be it superb or stupid. It will only, oh so very gently introduce a few nuances when you are being completely loony. Then, how do you know you are on the right tracks and that your explanation is the right one? For this, you need a more confrontational engagement with AI which is far more difficult to achieve and to tolerate yourself. The key is not to look for answers but to expend the perimeters of the subject discussed until you are certain that most aspects are included and that you, together with the AI are covering everything.
This is what's taking place in the video below. Andrei Jikh is superbly covering the subject. Tom Bilyeu adds a few comments and lo, you end up with a rich multi-faceted overview of what is happening in France and in Europe. This is the key.
Although it may sound pedantic to some, this is the whole exercise of this blog: Bring the right elements to your attention so that you can end up thinking better by yourself while adding whatever you already know to the equation.
This I believe is THE right attitude in this age of AI. With all this tools surrounding us, it will become slowly more and more difficult to think for yourself. I see it ALL the time whenever I go back to France where the news feed in French are almost completely hijacked and the people end up absorbing propaganda hock and sinker without realizing it. Over time, this coverage will be expended to all of us, not be coercion but by co-option, the AIs doing the heavy lifting of convincing you ever so softly and stealthily. To avoid such a fate, you not only need to educate yourself with different points of view but also train yourself in thinking critically. Easier said than done. Hopefully, this blog can help you in such endeavor. This is the goal.
Thanks to science, cycle analysis and historical research, we are now fairly certain that we have reached the final stage of empire decline and are consequently going through the convulsions of a crash. Nothing to fret about, it won't be the end of the world, just a rather unpleasant phase for most of us.
Like the Greeks of antiquity, we are confronted with a dilemma: It is up to us to decide if we prefer to interpret our life as a tragedy or a comedy. The stoic attitude is to accept the tragedy and reinterpret it as a comedy. In other words, laugh at the world and especially at ourselves.
This is why, more or less regularly, we need to take a break from reality and instead of lamenting what's happening which most articles tend to do, we will include a joke here and there the good old way. It almost sounds odd today in our hyper-sensitive environment where almost everything has become offensive to someone actually proactively scanning the web for offensive material and where joking has consequently become verboten.
We'll still try to stay within a healthy pedestrian speed of one joke per week in order to avoid falling in a completely different category altogether. So enjoy!
OK, let's start "mild" and artistic!
And let's not forget that the purpose of this blog is to change your point of view. We mean literally, not your opinions. That we know is impossible!
In the late 20th Century, a British historian called Sir John Glubb studied 11 Empires:
- Assyria860 – 612 BCE – 250 Years
- Persia540 – 330 BCE – 210 Years
- Greece 330 – 100 BCE – 230
Years
- Roman Republic – 260 – 27 BCE – 230 Years
- Roman Empire – 0 – 180 CE – 180
Years
- Arab Empire – 634 – 880 – 250
Years
- Mameluke – 1250 – 1520 – 270
Years
- Ottoman – 1320 – 1570 – 250
Years
- Spain – 1492 – 1750 – 260
Years
- Russia – 1682 – 1917 – 240
years
- Britain – 1700 – 1945 – 250
Years
and based on his analysis concluded that their trajectory from birth to death could be divided into 6 stages:
1 – The Pioneers
2 – Conquest
3 – Commerce
4 – Affluence
5 – Intellect and
6 – Decadence
Here's some practical examples:
Applied to the US, we get:
1776 – Declaration of
Independence / George Washington
1809 – Wars and Battles / The
Gold Rush
1851 – Commerce / General
Electric and Large Companies to Income tax
1898 – Boom to Roaring 30s
1938 – Hollywood and Disney to
JFK
1964 – Decadence / Sexual
revolution and Rock & Roll to Vietnam
1980 – Decline / Reagan to WTC
9/11
2001 – Crash / Dot.com & 2008 Bubbles to End of Unipolar
world
And the end is about... now.
In practical terms, this doesn't mean the apocalypse. Just the end of the empire.
What is left is to understand why.
There are two main causes:
- The first one is exhaustion of resources. It follows a mathematical geometric curve (The famous lilies on the pond which cover half the pond the day before covering everything and only 1% the week before!) This explains the 250 year cycle.
- The second is exhaustion of concept. Each civilization is based on fundamental ideas: religious, philosophical but also conceptual that most people share and which can evolve but cannot change drastically. This explains why all civilizations follow the same curve from beginning to end.
As the Romans proved with the Republic and the Empire, two cycles can actually follow each other. The Chinese actually have a longer history with more cycles in chain. As did the Egyptians which is probably why John Glubb included neither Egypt nor China in his analysis. In reality, these examples do not prove his theory wrong, it just makes it a little more complicated.
Finally, what happens at the end?
That, the theory doesn't say. History shows that it is usually a mess and often chaos, but not always. The transition between the American and British Empires went rather smoothly in 1945. If we consider a world war as "smooth" which in this case, we do.
Can it be more chaotic? Yes of course when the next stage is not clear as it is the case right now.
We have already discussed this subject several times but what the US is destroying is the Middle East is not Iran but its Arab allies. What a stunning lesson for the rest of the world!
While the ill-thought and badly planned attack on Iran* (see article bellow) has strengthened the country, it has conversely irremediably weakened the Gulf monarchies starting with Saudi Arabia which as explained in detail by Brian McGlinchey may not be able to weather the conflict much longer. And what is true for Saudi Arabia is even more so for smaller and weaker countries like Kuwait, Bahrain or Qatar with little historical legitimacy.
Like it or not this will only accelerate the transition away from oil worldwide. This may sound like a good strategy for the US since the country has plenty of resources, but this is ignoring the fact that the American Empire is built upon the petro-dollar. In this respect, to be able to survive in autarky while the global supply chain and energy links wither looks like a double edged sword.
What we are witnessing is the fraying of the arrangement of the last 50 years put in place by the oil shocks of the early 1970s. Whatever the current hype may say, (You always hear about endless growth at the top of a bubble.) what's coming next will be harsher with less energy available and at a much higher price.
While
the disastrous US-Israeli attempt to impose regime change on Iran has
commanded the world’s attention, most people are oblivious to the rising
probability that regime change is instead coming to a major US and Israeli partner: the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Owing to financial strains, demographics, military failures, and simmering domestic discontent, it may only be a question of magnitude.
That is, will Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) be removed by
fellow members of the House of Saud, or will the 94-year-old kingdom
collapse altogether? Most likely, we’ll see both things happen in fairly
rapid succession.
To understand why Saudi Arabia is in danger of
falling apart, it’s important to first understand what’s been holding it
together since Ibn Saud united a land of many tribes into a huge new
state in 1932:
Power-sharing across the branches of the Saudi royal family.
Traditionally, authorities were shared among many senior princes, with
their ministries providing each with a base of power and a well of
patronage to tap. Major decisions were made by consensus, consistent
with the Islamic principle of shura, which is expressly encouraged by the Quran.
The integration of the Wahhabi religious establishmentinto Saudi government. Wahhabism
is an austere and puritanical variant of Sunni Islam that arose in
central Arabia in the 18th century and came to dominate it. In exchange
for the Wahhabists’ bestowing of religious legitimacy on the monarchy,
the Wahhabi religious authorities — or ulema — were given authority to guide schools, run charitable entities and enforce social norms.
Tribal loyalty given in exchange for patronage and influence. The
Arabian peninsula is home to dozens of tribes, with histories
stretching back several hundred years or more. Their acquiescence to
rule by the House of Saud has been secured via ongoing consultations and
by government jobs, subsidies and contracts. Tribes have helped
maintain internal peace by recognizing the monarchy’s authority, and by
acting as mediators of disputes, and negotiators of access to tribal
land and resources.
Everything changed when MBS became crown prince in 2017, as he radically concentrated power and decision-making
in his own hands and those of a tight circle of trusted allies, to the
detriment of the tribes and other members of the royal family. More than
just a political maneuver, this was a bona fide revolution against the
arrangement that had hitherto ensured the House of Saud’s survival.
In one of his first moves, MBS rounded up hundreds of Saudi royals and top business leaders and imprisoned them in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton hotel. Most of them were reportedly abused, both psychologically and physically. Seventeen were hospitalized, and a major general died in custody. Faced with corruption accusations, detainees secured their freedom by forking over $107 billion, according to the claims of Saudi officials.
MBS also provoked the Wahhabi ulema,
as he undertook an agenda of liberalization and Westernization aimed at
improving Saudi Arabia’s image and keeping the country’s youth content.
These moves included allowing women to drive cars, ending the
requirement for traveling women to have male guardians, relaxing women’s
dress codes, re-opening cinemas after a decades-long ban, and allowing
rock concerts and art festivals. He also stripped the Saudi religious
police of their investigation and arrest powers, shifting the overseers
to an advisory role.
“He has offended virtually every constituency of the royal family,” Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, said on Judging Freedom. “He’s also offended the reactionary religious establishment, so he’s made a hell of a lot of enemies.”
MBS’s
concentration of power isn’t entirely self-serving. His power grab was
driven in part by a sense of urgency as Saudi Arabia stares down a
looming financial disaster, which is rooted in the nature of the Saudi
state, and exacerbated by its demographics.
Like many other states in the region, Saudi Arabia is an example of a rentier state—
a state that derives the great majority of its revenue from sale of
resources to other countries, rather than from the taxation of domestic
economic and entrepreneurial activity. In rentier states, the
relationship of the people and the government is far different from the
norm. Instead of relying on the citizenry as a source of funding,
rentier states use their resources to distribute money to the citizenry. “The state doesn’t need its citizens to work hard and pay taxes. It needs them to stay content,” explained The Marrow in a video report on Saudi Arabia’s challenges.
Rentier states are put in danger when revenue becomes insufficient to sustain the flow of money to the people. For Saudi Arabia, two variables have been moving in dangerous directions:
the population has grown by leaps and bounds since the 1970s, and oil
revenues haven’t kept up.Saudi Arabia now has an extraordinarily young
population: Nearly two-thirds of Saudi citizens are under age 30.
In a typical state fueled by economic activity, a large, youthful
population can be a great asset. In a rentier state, it’s a liability —
one that strains the government’s ability to keep them financially
secure, with the failure to do so carrying the risk of dangerous
discontent.
A primary means by which the Saudi government has
distributed wealth — and prevented idleness that facilitates mischief —
is government employment. As of 2016, an extraordinary two-thirds of employed Saudis held government jobs, and their salaries consumed 40% of the kingdom’s budget.
Government jobs’ domination of a market becomes a self-sustaining
phenomenon. Private industry struggles to hire workers who’d prefer the
lower demands, higher pay and greater job security of a government job.
That, in turn, inhibits the growth of a private sector that could reduce the need for a large and costly public sector.
Recognizing the need to completely re-engineer the Saudi economy and relieve its reliance on oil money, MBS in 2016 unveiled “Vision 2030,” with a goal of spurring private-sector investment and employment, and improving the quality of life for Saudi citizens.
Many of MBS’s visions were the stuff of science fiction. A huge ski resort in the desert. A gigantic cube-shaped skyscraper
in Riyadh as voluminous as 20 Empire State Buildings. A city for nine
million people called “The Line,” comprising two parallel buildings
1,640 feet tall, 660 feet wide and stretching a staggering 110 miles.
One by one, Vision 2030 projects meant to dazzle the world have gone dim as
the 2030 due date grows closer. The ski resort, which was supposed to
host the 2028 Asian Winter games, has been put on ice. The Line has been
suspended, leaving only a few kilometers of construction and a 70-mile-long trench. The colossal cubic skyscraper has been halted after initial excavation and installation of foundation pilings.
The curtailing of those ambitions reflects an irony embedded in the kingdom’s predicament: Its quest to end its dependence on oil revenue itself depends on oil revenue.
Since the announcement of Vision 2030, oil prices haven’t cooperated.
As MBS’s grand visions evaporate, they’re increasingly regarded as wasteful vanity projects
that have only worsened Saudi Arabia’s situation. Questions about his
judgment aren’t confined to economic matters — his military decisions
have been even worse.
After his appointment as Saudi defense minister in 2015, MBS immediately sought to establish his military credentials by intervening in Yemen’s civil war,
which had seen that country’s Saudi-allied government ousted from the
capital by Ansar Allah, a Zaidi Shia group widely referred to as “the
Houthis.”
It was an enormous failure.
Even with refueling, arms and other assistance provided by the United
States, the Saudi intervention failed to defeat Ansar Allah. It also
inflicted enormous damage on Saudi Arabia’s reputation, as bombings
routinely caused mass casualties among Yemeni civilians, and a Saudi
blockade created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.
Saudi Arabia finally joined a truce in 2022. Despite his earlier humiliation, MBS stirred things back up again in July of this year, violating the truce by bombing an airport in Yemen’s capital to prevent a Yemeni delegation from landing in an Iranian jet, after attending the funeral of Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei.
What followed has been devastating to Saudi Arabia. Ansar Allah retaliated, declaring the imposition of a blockade on Saudi Arabia to counter the Saudi blockade on Yemen.
Furthering their ability to make good on that promise, Ansar Allah
unleashed an offensive in which they rapidly seized the remainder of
Yemen’s west coast, positioning their forces to easily threaten Saudi
shipping entering the Red Sea via the Bab al-Mandab Strait.
Worse, Ansar Allah has taken the battle into Saudi territory,
repeatedly inflicting damage on oil and gas facilities. Iraqi Shia
militias joined them in that endeavor, shutting down the east-west
pipeline that Saudi Arabia had been using as an alternative to the
Iranian-blockaded Strait of Hormuz. Ansar Allah has also struck Saudi
airports. In the worst such attack, a Yemeni cruise missile hit a
passenger terminal at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport,
killing 13 people, wounding more than 300, and causing a weeks-long
closure. President Trump has compounded MBS’s ongoing military
humiliation by refusing his repeated pleas for US forces to rejoin the
war on Ansar Allah.
The destruction resulting from MBS’s renewal
of the war in Yemen comes on top of damage caused by Iran, which has
deemed any country that hosts US forces as fair targets for retaliation.
Some analysts predict it will take seven to 10 years to replace all the specialized oil and gas equipment and fully restore production.
The physical damage from missiles and drones will be hard enough to repair, but the most enduring damage may have been inflicted on Saudi Arabia’s reputation as a safe place to visit and to open businesses — directly undercutting the kingdom’s quest to attract foreign investment and remake its economy.
In a vivid illustration of such damage, Ansar Allah’s attacks recently forced the postponement of Saudi Arabia’s annual Future Investment Initiative,
which is hosted by the kingdom’s Public Investment Fund. First held in
2017 and nicknamed “Davos in the Desert,” the highly-anticipated October
event was poised to bring major-corporation CEOs — including the
leaders of JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Blackrock — to
Riyadh. Major sports events, such as F1 races, have also been cancelled
or postponed, and the E-Sports World Cup was moved from Riyadh to Paris.
“MBS
has staked everything on Vision 2030, the promise that Saudi Arabia
will become a global hub for business, tourism, sport and investment,”
writes former CIA intelligence analyst Larry Johnson.
“Every one of those businesses depends on one thing: the perception
that the kingdom is safe. The Houthis are attacking that perception
directly.”
As bad as the military situation is for Saudi Arabia
and MBS, it may get far worse. As Ansar Allah continues to expand its
control of Yemen — where the group already has the capital and territory
in which 70 to 80% of Yemenis live — there’s growing wariness the group could retake three provinces from southwest Saudi Arabia that were historically part of Yemen, but were annexed by Saudi Arabia in 1934.
With Saudi Arabia facing increasingly dire circumstances, MBS could be targeted for removal by those who see him as incapable of steering the kingdom out of peril.
There are Saudi precedents for that. Faulted for extravagant personal
spending and poor management of the kingdom’s finances, King Saud al
Saud saw his powers reduced in the late 1950s. Then, in 1964, he was
dethroned in a bloodless coup organized by his younger brother, Crown
Prince Faisal, who became king.
Eleven years later, King Faisal
was himself removed from power — in bloody fashion. In 1975, after
returning from a trip to the United States, he was shot to death by his
nephew Prince Faisal bin Musaid, who was apparently outraged by the
king’s drive to Westernize and liberalize Saudi Arabia. Revenge was also
thought to be a factor, as the prince’s brother was killed in 1966 amid
a violent protest of the introduction of television to the kingdom.
In October, there were reports
that MBS was moving from bomb shelter to bomb shelter beneath
heavily-guarded palaces. “[Supposedly] for fear of a Houthi
assassination,” Alistair Crooke told Judge Napolitano. “Actually, what he’s frightened of is an assassination by one of his own family or a military officer.”
“There’s a long history in the Arab world of the overthrow of monarchy,” Freeman noted. “It’s facilitated because Islam, in the Holy Quran, is actually very much against monarchy.” As
Saudi Arabia’s condition weakens, its political and economic landscape
has become fertile ground for countless seeds of discontent:
Vision 2030 construction projects haveforced thousands from their homes and granted compensation that many say is far too little.
Government jobs have lost some of their luster; pay raises are harder to come by, and limits on overtime and annual leave have been imposed.
Citizens who were accustomed to a largely tax-free existence are getting a taste of non-rentier-state life: In 2018, Saudi Arabia adopted a 5% Value Added Tax and later tripled it to 15%.
Saudi royals — which number between 15,000 and 25,000 — have seen their perks and stipends reduced, forcing many of them to sell
homes, yachts and art to raise cash. Princes who were subjected to
abuse at the Ritz-Carlton and the confiscation of their assets are
likely yearning for revenge.
Resentments are growing over uneven financial treatment. Crooke offers an illustrative example
of two military officers working side by side: one, a highly-placed
tribal member who isn’t well-paid, the other a royal of the same rank
whose income is padded by a stipend.
Military
cohesion and operational efficiency has been impaired by the
silo-ization of the various service branches — which is meant to reduce
the ease with which a coup could be mounted. “[MBS] has divided the military, set them against one another, [and] used the National Guard to keep an eye out for any disaffection within the army,” explained Crooke.
Though often characterized as a Sunni country, Saudi Arabia has a significant Shiite minority,
accounting for about 12% of the population. Critically, they’re
concentrated in two important areas: Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Region,
which is the center of the kingdom’s oil production, and Saudi Arabia’s
southwest corner, adjacent to the Shiite population in northwest Yemen,
where Ansar Allah rules.
The
kingdom faces reputational damage and a major financial hit that’s
likely to arise in a US civil suit in which victims of the 9/11 attacks
are building an overwhelming case that Saudi government officials aided the Al Qaeda plotters.
MBS’s marginalization of the Wahhabi religious establishment holds great peril.
Clerics may no longer tell their followers to ignore the lavish royal
lifestyles that violate the core tenets of Wahhabism, setting the stage
for a radical Islamic insurrection.
Saudi Arabia isn’t alone
among Middle East countries in facing the likelihood of major upheaval.
Other Gulf rentier states are similarly exposed, and Kuwait could
vanish via conquest by Iraqi Shiite militias. As Crooke recently said on
Daniel Davis Deep Dive, “People just do not see the huge geopolitical shifts that are taking place today. The Middle East is going to change. You will not recognize it in two years’ time.”
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Former CIA officer John Kiriakou says the
agency produced three separate national intelligence estimates before
the Iran war began, and each one found that Tehran had no nuclear
weapons program. He made the claim on the Nov. 6 "Intelligence
Community Roundtable" edition of Judge Andrew Napolitano's Judging
Freedom, alongside Larry Johnson.
Napolitano
asked what the CIA had told the president "about the practical
consequences of his plan with Netanyahu to win the war in six days."
Kiriakou answered that "we know a little bit from leaks,"
then said: "the CIA had published three separate national intelligence
estimates and all three times concluded that the Iranians did not have a
nuclear weapons program. It just simply didn't exist."
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress
in March 2025 that the intelligence community "continues to assess that
Iran is not building a nuclear weapon," and Trump answered that he
didn't "care what she said."
Kiriakou said the agency's analysts were just as consistent on what a war would cost. "The CIA was pretty consistent that this was a bad idea from the very beginning,"
he said, arguing that the analysis held "the Iranians were far tougher
than we as policymakers believed." In his telling, a look at the map was
enough: Iran is "the size as the whole of Western Europe," ringed by
mountains on three sides, with "92 million people, all of whom will go
to their deaths to protect their homeland." Conquering it, he said,
would have taken "one million ground troops."
He also pointed to a leak from "less than three weeks ago." A
CIA "red cell" team, the kind of group meant to "think outside the
box," had concluded that "it was Israel that could break up and fall
apart and cease to exist because of all of this, not Iran,"
Kiriakou said. The person who leaked it, he said, was a CIA contractor
who passed it to his girlfriend, who put it in her blog. That matches
the case of Ian Brinksman, the contractor the FBI arrested last month, as we reported.
His case is ongoing, and Kiriakou's account of what the red cell
concluded rests on the leaked reporting, not on a document we have seen.
The
segment was part of a broader hour in which Johnson and Kiriakou argued
that Trump's Iran policy cost Republicans in Tuesday's midterms. Both
are known critics of the war, and the claims above are theirs.
