Prouder, Stronger, Better

President Ronald Reagan made us feel better, even though times then, like now, did not always feel better.  Here’s the text from a re-election campaign ad in 1984:

“

It's morning again in America. Today more men and women will go to work than ever before in our country's history. With interest rates at about half the record highs of 1980, nearly 2,000 families today will buy new homes, more than at any time in the past four years. This afternoon 6,500 young men and women will be married, and with inflation at less than half of what it was just four years ago, they can look forward with confidence to the future. It's morning again in America, and under the leadership of President Reagan, our country is prouder and stronger and better. Why would we ever want to return to where we were less than four short years ago?

”

Warren Buffett's Three Secrets

Warren Buffett is in the news this week with his now-famous letter to shareholders.  In an interview article published in December, Tony Robbins quotes Warren Buffet’s three secrets to wealth. They are worth repeating.

"When I asked Warren Buffett — what are the secrets to your wealth, he said it's three things. He said, No. 1, it's being born in America. No. 2 is good genes, so I live long enough, and No. 3, it's compound interest. Compound interest — people have no idea the power that it really has."

Three Things That Could Destroy Humanity

Stephen Hawking may be most famous for his work on black holes and gravitational singularities, but the world-renowned physicist has also become known for his outspoken ideas about things that could destroy human civilization.

Hawking is part of a small but growing group of scientists who have expressed concerns about "strong" artificial intelligence (AI)—intelligence that could equal or exceed that of a human. "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," Hawking told the BBC in December 2014. The statement was in response to a question about a new AI voice-synthesizing system that Hawking has been using.

Hawking's warnings echo those of billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla Motors, who has called AI humanity's "biggest existential threat." Last month, Hawking, Musk and dozens of other scientific bigwigs signed an open letter describing the risks, as well as the benefits, of AI. "Because of the great potential of AI, it is important to research how to reap its benefits while avoiding potential pitfalls," the scientists wrote in the letter.  

If our machines don't kill us, we might kill ourselves. Hawking now believes that human aggression might destroy civilization. "The human failing I would most like to correct is aggression. It may have had survival advantage in caveman days, to get more food, territory or partner with whom to reproduce, but now it threatens to destroy us all.”

For example, a major nuclear war would likely end civilization and could wipe out the human race, Hawking added. When asked which human quality he would most like to magnify, Hawking chose empathy, because "it brings us together in a peaceful, loving state."

But Hawking had made ominous warnings even before these recent ones. Back in 2010, Hawking said that, if intelligent alien life exists, it may not be that friendly toward humans

If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn't turn out very well for the Native Americans," Hawking said.  

       

From the threat of nefarious AI, to advanced aliens, to hostile humans, Hawking's outlook for humanity is looking pretty grim.

http://www.livescience.com/49952-stephen-hawking-warnings-to-humanity.html

Religion and Moral Courage

Researchers in a contemporary project called Explaining Religion spent three years collecting information about the influence of religion on morality. “In particular, the project’s researchers have studied the ideas of just deserts, of divine disapproval and of the nature of religious ritual. One theory of the origin of religion is that it underpins the extraordinary capacity for collaboration that led to the rise of Homo sapiens. A feature of many religions is the idea that evil is divinely punished and virtue is rewarded. Cheats or the greedy, in other words, get their just deserts. The selflessness which that belief encourages might help explain religions’ evolution.” 

The late ethicist Rushworth Kidder explained the importance of moral courage in living the ethical life. He said courageous leaders have a high tolerance for three things: ambiguity, public exposure and personal risk. “Envision a Venn diagram where the circles represent principles, danger and endurance. Moral courage exists at the intersection of those three things. Moral courage is being willing to endure significant danger for the sake of your principles,” he explained. 

“Everywhere you go and ask 'What are the most important moral values?,' you get similar answers," said Dr. Kidder. “Honesty, responsibility, respect, fairness and compassion are common answers. There is no difference in the values held by men and women or English speakers and not, those who are deeply religious and those who are not religious.” He said in a values-challenged age, the difference between talking about ethics and acting ethically is summed up in two words: moral courage.   

Read more in Threes, Chapter 4 “Threes in Religion and Mythology"

Three Challenges for On-line Demand Services

The emergence of on-line services such as Uber and Handy and others has ramped up the profile of online demand. It represents an interesting convergence of consumer expectations and technology. 

 

Are these types of services fighting an uphill battle?

 

The Economist thinks perhaps. “There are three reasons for skepticism about their chances. The first is that on-demand companies trying to keep the costs to their clients as low as possible have difficulties training, managing and motivating workers….The second problem is that on-demand companies seem likely to be plagued by regulatory and political problems if they get large enough for people to notice them….The third issue is size. The on-demand model obviously has network effects: the home-help company with the most help on the books has the best chance of providing a handyman at 10:30 sharp. Yet scaling up may be difficult when barriers to entry are low and bonds of loyalty are non-existent.”

 

From The Economist, “There’s an App for that,” January 3, 2015.

Three Layers of the Cloud

We hear about the cloud and cloud computing.  But did you know?…

“The ‘cloud of clouds’ has three distinct layers.  The outer one called ‘software as a service’ (SaaS), includes web-based applications such as Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, and Salesforce.com, which helps firms keep track of their customers….Going one level deeper, there is ‘platform as a service,’ (PaaS), which means an operating system living in the cloud.  Such services allow developers to write applications for the web and mobile devices.  Offered by Google, Salesforce.com and Microsoft, this market is also fairly easy to measure, since there are only a few providers, and their offerings have not really taken off yet….The most interesting layer—the only one that really deserves to be called ‘cloud computing,’ say purists—is infrastructure as a service (IaaS).  IaaS offers basic computing services from number crunching to data storage, which customers can combine to build highly adaptable computer systems.” 

Market leaders are GoGrid, Rackspace and Amazon Web Services.  Amazon is by far the largest, owning about 80 to 90% of the current capacity.  The cloud is estimated by Forrester Research to grow to $56 billion in 2020 from about $1 billion in 2010.           

From Threes, Chapter 8, “Threes in Business and Technology” 

Three Wise Men

Gaspar, Balthasar, and Melchior, the three Wise Men or Magi, visited the Christ child in Bethlehem bearing gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  The three gifts had a spiritual meaning: gold as a symbol of kingship on earth, frankincense as a symbol of priestship, and myrrh (an embalming oil) as a symbol of death.  Sometimes this is described more generally as gold symbolizing virtue, frankincense symbolizing prayer, and myrrh symbolizing suffering.  All three are ordinary offerings given to a king.  It has been suggested also by scholars that the "gifts" were medicinal rather than precious material for tribute.  The three wise men were probably priests from Persia who traveled a long distance, perhaps 1,000 miles, on their pilgrimage to Bethlehem.      

 

from Threes, Chapter 4, “Threes in Religion and Mythology”