Things that surprised me in 2016: space, physics, biology, psychology, history, technology progress

Things that surprised me in 2016
by Victor Osyka. Home intellectual saloon =)
March 2017
http://medium.com/victorosyka,
http://facebook.com/victor.osika,
osyka.victor@gmail.com,

Tradition of reflections =)
Please focus. Cannot distill, want to share A LOT, pace is
FAST.
Not actionable. I’m kinda philosophic + superficial.
Not fully structured. Just highlights on what I liked.
2

Last year upgraded my understanding of the world.
From laws of the universe to biological life, memes,
and then human civilization, which generates
technology progress.
3

Random
Excitements
6
Physics
(= laws of inanimate world)

Random
Excitements
7
Biology
(= life is a software to organize
matter + energy into own copies)
Physics

Random
Excitements
8
Biology
Physics
Memes, culture, civilization
(= combinatorial explosion of ideas and their combinations)

Random
Excitements
9
Biology
Physics
Space: NASA
Boyden on
thinking
Year = 1/35 of life
Space: spots to visit
Brain never
stops, plays
with memes
Reading amounts

Random
Excitements
10
Biology
Physics
Deutsch on the
Universe
Space: NASA
Boyden on
thinking
Year = 1/35 of life
Hawking on
the Universe
Reading amounts
Brain never
stops, plays
with memes

Random
Excitements
11
Biology
Physics
Genome
Space: NASA
Longevity
Boyden on
thinking
Year = 1/35 of life
Reading amounts
Brain never
stops, plays
with memes
Deutsch on the
Universe
Hawking on
the Universe

Random
Excitements
12
Biology
Physics
Genome
Space: NASA
Longevity
Boyden on
thinking
Year = 1/35 of life
Psychology
Petranovskaya on
Ru society
Happy brain
Reading amounts
Brain never
stops, plays
with memes
Deutsch on the
Universe
Hawking on
the Universe

Random
Excitements
13
Biology
Physics
Genome
Space: NASA
Longevity
Boyden on
thinking
Technology
Progress
Harari on Sapiens
Year = 1/35 of life
Psychology
Memes pairing
Petranovskaya on
Ru society
Happy brain
Reading amounts
Brain never
stops, plays
with memes
Deutsch on the
Universe
Hawking on
the Universe

Content in a classic way = list :)
1. Random Excitements
1. Space, NASA and Russian spots to visit, 1/35 of life, Brain never stops
2. Physics / Universe (= laws of inanimate world)
1. Deutsch, Hawking
3. Biology (= life is a software to organize matter and energy into own copies)
1. Genome, Longevity,
2. Habits of a Happy Brain, Psychology, Petranovskaya (= explaining everything on Russia)
4. Memes / Culture / Civilization
1. Sapiens (Yuval Harari is a “macro historian”)
2. Memes pairing / and how linked to [technology] progress
5. Technology
1. Pace of progress / Value chain / how to measure
14

1 year = ?
1 year =
1/35th of my life
1/30th of my [relatively] conscious life
1/17th of life since leaving of school
1/11th of life since univ. graduation
1/5th since LBS. Also started work at Almaz
1/3rd of life together with lovely July =)
16

Amounts I read during my life = lots of memes
processed, yes?
• Now mostly work and sometimes URL from Facebook, news, books and
MESSAGES.
17

AR/VR - next computing. Neuroprosthetics – to
follow (time horizon fully uncertain).
• Now computing – mobile devices and, previously, personal computers.
• AR/VR - is slowly emerging.
• Neuroprosthetics = linking the human nervous system to computers
• We already do neuroprosthetics = we are always with our smartphones.
Connection to brain will follow, but now - just glasses with augmentation.
18

Robert Scoble on this
• Short recent book is here
19

Human brain – seems, cannot maintain fully
empty state of mind?
• There is a part of brain which constantly sends impulses to make thought flows in a
brain. Несущая волна :)
• Collects signals from nerves, plays with existing thoughts in short memory and with
feelings in the brain. Seems, tries to recollect and to recombine them and create
some connections, hypotheses, generalizations and ideas for action.
• Can be simply a feature of [pre-]general intelligence?
• Meditation is hard and not fully possible, simply at the biological level. You can be
more calm but cannot leave all thoughts aside.m
20

How we have been to Karachaevo-Cherkessiya...
• 6 meters big optical telescope since 1975, BTA-6 near Arkhyz
• 600 meters big radio telescope since 1974, Ratan-600
21

That
telescope
was BTA-6
22
Source: Wikipedia

…and to NASA space center in Florida
29
https://www.kennedyspacecenter.com

31
In Russia – railways. Here – trucking.

32
My dad has seen this module decades
ago in Ukraine when it was showed
around the globe

33
110m rocket for Moon programme
Brought to the orbit 140 tonnes (this is half of the
weight of Airbus A380 – the largest aircraft now)

34
Rockets are big. July is small =)

• That’s moon programme control center which has been saved since then.
• Video is impressive.
• $1 trillion budget (in today’s dollars).
• A few hundreds of thousands people involved.
• Decade-long effort in total.
35

Book - Musk biography
• Book at Amazon is here
• Unhappy kid?
• A few divorces
• “Take no prisoners” approach in everything? Always
prove the world that the world is wrong??? =)
• Invested $200m own cash into Tesla and SpaceX
• SpaceX may have been closed many times. Cried in 2008
after new financing round.
• Probably, only such protesting guy could resist so many
skepticism in both fields for years?
• Apollo museum at NASA – he could have been inspired
by this programme of hundreds of thousands of people
36

I met Leonov, 1st man in outer space, met at
Baring Vostok offices
• In Fall 2016 have seen him by occasion =)
• Very life-loving guy, smiling a lot
• 82 y.o.
38

We want to visit:
1. Space museum near VDNKH
2. Space Flights Control Centre in Korolev
3. FGUP CNIIMASH museum in Korolev
4. Zvezdny gorodok near Monino
5. Baikonur - to see rocket launch
6. Fly in nevesomost (IL-76M in Zhukovskiy?)
7. Fly in space, but unclear when affordable
space tourism will finally arrive =)
39
2 3
4 6

Baikonur – Official – See the launch
40

Baikonur - Unofficial
• Baikonur videos of spots
• Baikonur is very big, part is secret as this is military, part is under
security, majority is not secured
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJMjEbtjUoM
41

=
• =
43
Russian building for rockets

=
• =
44
This is Energy rocket, 60m
height

Boyden’s 10 tips on efficiency w/ memes
• He is a scientist (optogenetics)
• Less managerial, more thinking
45

Map of some of my life ideas as of now =)
46
There are some mindmapping software, this one is
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Boyden’s 10 tips on personal efficiency
1. Always synthesize ideas. Think.
Make models. Anytime when you
read.
2. Learn to learn fast. Prototype
ideas. Research how your brain
works.
3. Backsolving: from goals in the
future into today step by step.
4. Always have long-term plan. Even
if changed daily. You will learn by
reviews.
5. Map interconnections. Especially
towards your goals.
6. Collaborate.
7. Fail faster, learn, move forward.
8. Develop protocols of your
personal best practices.
9. Write everything. Otherwise you
will miss surprise when it
happens.
10. Simplify. Spend 2 days to make
10x simpler. “Library saves
months in lab”
47

2. Physics / Universe
= laws of inanimate world
48

Mathematics
• Theoretical and applied physics distinction. "Kvant" journal in USSR.
• Theoretical
• Applied
• Why science is always with maths?
49
Saturn's rings, 2015 satellite photo

50
From here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/95869671@N
08/32264483720/in/dateposted-public/

51
From here:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/95869671@N
08/32264483720/in/dateposted-public/

Book - Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch
• @ Amazon.com
• Inventor of theory of quantum computing in 1980s.
• Reviews science history (kinda long and boring =)
• Sees quantum superpositions and the Schrödinger equation as evidence for
his many worlds quantum multiverse, where everything physically possible
occurs in an infinite branching of alternate histories.
• Infinity = the enlightenment of the 18th century as near the beginning of an
infinite sequence of purposeful knowledge creation by humankind
53

• Speculates on the process of human-culture development from
a genetic basis through to a memetic emergence.
• Divides societies on more dynamic and more static (= better for
innovations)
• The sustained creation of knowledge could have arisen anywhere and
led to a beginning of infinity; it just happened to arise in Europe first.
• Extols the philosophical concept of optimism, where although
problems are inevitable, solutions will always exist provided
the right knowledge is sought out and acquired
54

• Book is 2011, he didn’t work with neural networks? =)
• The source of intelligence is more complicated than brute computational
power. He points to the lack of progress in Turing test AI programs in the six
decades since the Turing test was first proposed.
• What matters for knowledge creation is creativity. New ideas that provide
good explanations for phenomena require outside-the-box thinking as the
unknown is not easily predicted from past experience.
• In essence, he is anthropocentric and doesn’t believe in general AI at all =)
55

Human creativity:
• Evolved as a way to faithfully reproduce existing memes, as this
would require creative intelligence to produce a refined rule set that
would more faithfully reproduce the existing memes that happened
to confer benefit (and all the other memes too).
• From this increased creative ability, the ability to create new memes
emerged and humans thus became universal constructors and
technological development accelerated.
• Please remember neurobiological discovery I mentioned above that
the brain is always under random waves, kinda trying to make
random connections on nervous system info and on memes in the
memory.
56

Book - Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow
• @ Amazon.com
• Science is always progressing, understanding is changing all the time
• The central claim is that the theory of quantum mechanics and the theory of
relativity together help us understand how universes could have formed out
of nothing
• Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself
from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather
than nothing, why the universe exists, why we exist.
• It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the
universe going.
58

Book - Grand Design by Hawking and Mlodinow
• M-theory – set of theories, which intersect (= give same predictions)
with each other, but are based on completely different mechanisms
and different equations.
• 4 forces:
• Gravity
• Electromagnetism
• Слабое ядерное взаимодействие (radioactivity. we don’t observe in
life, allows to develop elements in stars)
• Сильное ядерное взаимодействие (keeps protons and neutrons.
Source of solar and nuclear energy)
• But this distinction could by false, that’s why physicists seek unifying
theory = grand design (= “великий замысел")
59

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2vgICfQawE 6 mins video
60

Book - Grand Design, Hawking/Mlodinow
• Game Life by Conway: endless 2D universe where square
cells can be live or dead.
• Interpretation by Hawking/Mlodinow:
• Very simple rules can generate enormous complexity.
• Same for quantum physics – relatively simple rules allow for
very sophisticated Universe we live in
• By the way - argument against simulation: the Universe is
very consistent across space (as we get further and further by
radiotelescopy) and across time (14B years)
61

Book - Grand Design, Hawking/Mlodinow
• Real universe vs. parallel universes vs. other universes
• Constants in laws of physics + Laws by themselves – vary from universe to
universe.
• There are simulations of universe with varying constants – everything
crashes and disappears very easily.
• The laws of nature that are required for life forms to exist appear in some
universes by pure chance
• Goldilocks rule for us:
• Orbit 2% = winters don’t kill life --> it can increase complexity
• Not close (too hot), not far (too cold)
• Age of universe = time for emergence of stars and then matter, and stars still
emit energy
• 3 dimensions = helps for sustainable structure of atoms
62

Time was enough
• Goldilocks rule from
physics – relation to
the timeline of the
Universe
63
From here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphical_timeline_of_the_
universe

Our planet is kinda safe.
BTW our eyes are optical, not radiowave-sensitive =)
64
From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_window

3. Biology
= life is a software to organize matter
and energy into own copies
65
That’s white cell in your blood -->

Life is software and, therefore, mechanistic
• Example: bacterial
motors.
• That’s from paper in
2016
66

Artificial ENGINEERED (not gene-synthesized)
• Stingray
67
From here:
http://www.npr.org/sections/health
-
shots/2016/07/07/484950849/synt
hetic-stingray-may-lead-to-a-better-
artificial-heart

Book - The Gene: An Intimate History, 2016
• @Amazon.com
• By Siddhartha Mukherjee
• …did not read yet. Only found. =)
• Actually, I didn’t like first 50 pages – too
vague.
• Maybe will finish later.
68

This book is great: Genome, 1999
• @ Amazon.com
• Genome is a software. It took long time to discover genome.
• Joke on Schrodinger and life
• Algorithm developed by iterations, not top-down goal setting
• Evolution was blind, planet changed many times, e.g. bacteria made oxygen
atmosphere, extinctions, changes of ecosystems.
• 50 billion generations of software during 4 billion years, and our
DNA is a successor of this process
70

71
As a life - we are all and everything relatives =)

Book - Genome, 1999
• Competition and ruthless conflict at all levels:
• Intra-gene – components of genes
• Genes vs. genes
• Cells vs. cells
• Viruses against viruses. Components of viruses survive in our genes.
• Parasite vs. its host
• Virus vs. its host
• Bacteria vs. its host
• Bigger parasites
• Gender competitions
• E.g. Man’s DNA is used to make placenta in the woman’s body
• Animals vs. animals
• Species within population
72

Book - Genome, 1999
• Evolution is absolutely ruthless. It doesn’t care about you at all. You
are just an instance of algorithm before next iteration.
• Dopamine, endorphin, oxytocin – relatively recent “inventions”.
• Every gene which survived for these billions and millions of iterations
= it is meaningful
• BTW there were times when only a couple of hundreds of humans survived.
• Iterational algorithms may become very complex = tough to
change them directly
74

We all are
relatives with
everything
(plants,
animals,
bacteria).
75
Source:
images.google.com
DNA we share with
other species.
• These are 23
human
chromosomes
and
• how they are
related to
other species

Size of software of species
77
A kilobase (kb) is a unit of measurement in molecular biology equal to 1000 base pairs of DNA or RNA.
Source: Wikipedia

Longevity – what is now?
Life expectancy (men left, women right). Red – Russia, Green USA, EU - orange
79
Why these
improvements still
suck?
Because are not
genetic-focused =
Cure symptoms,
not actual reasons.

Longevity – current directions?
80
Non-DNA:
• Drug delivery into cells (nanotech)
• Aging as an illness, not necessary feature -> geroprotectors
• From symptomatic to real cure
• Senescent cells = big belief now
DNA-related:
• DNA sequencing
• CRISPR
• BTW, genome was discovered 50 years ago – no any genome-targeted longevity
tech yet.

Aging is indeed
hard to crack
(remember that DNA as an iterational algorithm)
81

Longevity – Moore’s law for this?
84
•Real longevity, seems, will be a quantum
leap?
•Against the laws of natural selection
and
•Not incremental growth of something?

86Source: images.google.com -> declining computing cost

87
Don’t forget memory and storage.
Source:
images.google.c
om -> cost
memory storage

Longevity – Moore’s law for this?
88
• Basepair = A base pair (bp)
is a unit consisting of
two nucleobases
• bound to each other
by hydrogen bonds. They form
the building blocks of
the DNA double helix, and
contribute to the folded
structure of both DNA and RNA.
Dictated by specific hydrogen
bonding patterns, Watson-Crick
base pairs (guanine-
cytosine and adenine-thymine)
allow the DNA helix to maintain
a regular helical structure that is
subtly dependent on
its nucleotide sequence.
Source: Wikipedia

Basepair
89
• The size of an individual gene or an organism's
entire genome is often measured in base pairs
because DNA is usually double-stranded. Hence,
the number of total base pairs is equal to the
number of nucleotides in one of the strands (with
the exception of non-coding single-stranded
regions of telomeres).
• The haploid human genome (23 chromosomes) is
estimated to be about 3.2 billion bases long and to
contain 20,000–25,000 distinct protein-coding
genes.
• The total amount of related DNA base pairs on
Earth is estimated at 5.0 x 1037, and weighs 50
billion tonnes.
• In comparison, the total mass of the biosphere has been
estimated to be as much as 4 TtC (trillion tons of carbon).
• = 1.25% of the biomass on the Earth is a
DNA
10^9 – billion = human
10^8
Source: Wikipedia

Longevity – some companies and initiatives
• The Human Longevity
Company, by Craig Venter and
Peter Diamantis
• iCarbonX, China, $600M series
A
• Deep Genomics
• Human Diagnosis Project
90
Genomics for:
• Drug discovery
• Optimizing drug response
• Diagnostics
• Link DNA changes to aging
markers

Psychology in my life
Why in biology?
• Cause we have a bio setup of our reactions, imprinting only follows this
• But - still this is somewhere between biology and society =)
92

Book - Habits of Happy Brain
• By Loretta Graziano Breuning, @ Amazon.com
• Hormones define our happiness a lot.
• Adrenaline – when life is under danger, too straightforward, she
doesn’t analyze it
• Dopamine – rewards EXPECTATION of new rewards.
• THE PROCESS is much more enjoyable than we think
94

• Oxytocin = support from others. Feeling of closeness with people.
• Endorphin - happiness (euphoria) from physical safety + from real
world (food, drink, drugs, etc.)
• Serotonin - respect from others. Not by caring (= oxytocin), but by the
other people in the horde. Vanity fair, all that stuff.
• Cortisol – rewards action, punishes non-action. Makes us stressful.
95

• Human biologically is always aimed to survival. Even a choice between
2 great options increases our cortisol level (!).
• Life is not about true or wrong choices, but a chain of compromises.
• Hormones react on new, but then adapt to the reality and disappear.
 It is VERY important to enjoy the way to the goal along the way,
every micro-step.
• (note Dreams vs. Illusions in Psycho below)
96

Psychology - Experience
• Doing for 1.8 years (since summer 2015).
• Monthly and weekly (last few months). 2k RUR/session 1.5 hrs.
www.b17.ru marketplace.
• But you can find in Moscow free in your rayoinnaya poliklinika AND it will be
great. Did this too.
• My emotional diary is 192 pages now (I write mostly my emotions and key
thoughts from sessions with psychologists).
• School of psychology doesn’t matter at all.
• Older than 40-50 y.o. is better (have seen life. Experienced parenting etc.)
98

Psychology - Results?
• I wasted time and money.
• Absolutely nothing happened to me.
• Nothing changed.
• Psychology seems to be non-working and
placebo.
99

…it was just joking =)
To check your pre-judgements =)
100

Psychology - What I learned - Me
• I had no clue about my
• emotions (= feelings inside. They arrive and disappear. Some – stay longer)
• reactions (= what I do with these feelings)
• desires (= what and how I want and why)
• triggers of my good and negative emotions (= tensions overload psychics)
• -> Emotional diary helps to starting meeting own self and its features =)
• Psychology is a practice, not science. But I don’t care: I feel better + my body
responds very well. But this practice is really rational.
• Emotions vs. reactions.
• Emotions = from our biology. We cannot eliminate them.
• Reactions = we can choose. Surely, from childhood we develop patterns, and stick to
them, but we can intentionally change our patterns.
101

• 2 core fears of any mammal:
• (1) to die
• (2) to be not noticed by others. These 2 fears explain A LOT about all people you know.
• Attention is always seeking something bad, it takes effort to switch to reality. Human
nature… Results in higher cortisol -> immune system is suppressed -> health may
suffer in mid/long term.
• You need effort to switch your mind and soul to good. And our life is mostly very good.
• Resistance of psychics to the changes. =)
• But you can change yourself very fast + body responses.
102

• My aliksitimia as a post-trauma experience.
• Long time ago my twin bro died on the sea, drunk guy was riding jet ski and crashed
our sea bicycle
• Trauma was so hard that I couldn’t fully live through this and it resulted in the hidden
and suppressed depression. Tension. Aggression.
• My fears overall and especially of walking by pedestrian walks.
• Strong victimization.
• Why the killer was not punished but why this is not a problem at all.
• Looks like I had some power: no dissociation happened + I took care about
parents.
• I can help to many people who lost somebody.
103

Psychology - Relationships
• July couldn’t help me more than sending me to psychologists
• I did projections of my relationships with my twin brother to all my
other personal relationships.
• Which is too strong: bro was man + all people are different etc.
• Women are different from men, other hormones setup and bio role.
104

Psychology - My parents
• I had a feeling of indignity towards mom and dad that they didn’t support me in
this pain.
• Explanation by psychology: they simply could not, too hard suffering.
• Grand-mom – she supported me: after her World War II / “Life is continuing…”
• Big gratitude towards parents.
• One surprising outcome: emotions towards power = unresolved conflicts with
parents. Helped me in acceptance of ”world is not ideal”.
105

Psychology - Friends
• “Some people simply cannot survive your happiness”.
• Some people don't see that you change, they may have satisfied some psycho
needs with you and when you change - they may not need you anymore.
• Projections vs. reality. People (and me) have TONS OF OWN PROJECTIONS
= perception of reality is less rational
• If somebody has low awareness about his own emotions, then any source
of fears will reveal strong pressure.
• Birth of kids is probably one the most powerful catalysts of internal fears.
• Personal borders = you can protect them, you have a right.
106

Psychology - World
• World is not ideal. De-idealisation = more objective view on the
world. De-idealisation takes some pain but then you see it more
objectively and act more efficiently and more comfortably.
• Dreams vs. illusions - kinda strong bias. Nobody knows what he
will feel when will reach something.
• Trump's win - I have seen in Las Vegas =) He was not happy =))
• Reference points for happiness, what you perceive as a norm. E.g.
Spain with 20% unemployment rates last 8 years
107

Psychology - Society
• Modern world in many countries makes people feeling neuroses. Because of
rationality. But people biologically are still the same.
• Looks like 90% of people have no clue about their emotional drivers and
patterns.
• Other 10% - work with psychologists.
• If people are aggressive or scream = they suffer inside, they are worried inside
etc. People who are happy inside or self-confident - they don’t attack and don’t
blame others for their emotions.
• Political system (in any country) depends a lot on the psychological health of the
last few generations (!).
109

Psychology – Famous people
• Trump = billions didn’t solve his fear of being invisible. “You
will never make it enough”. =)
• Elon Musk and his challenge to [engineering] authorities =)
• Bill Gates, Warren Buffett = relatively calm guys.
110

111
R u s s i a n S o c i e t y

L. Petranovskaya on Russian society
• She is great Russian
psychologist and researcher,
also she does public
appearances and writes
books on kid edu
• Focus of her research is on
cross-generational transfer
of psychological traumas
114

115
Я знаю, никакой моей вины
В том, что другие не пришли с войны,
В то, что они - кто старше, кто моложе -
Остались там, и не о том же речь,
Что я их мог, но не сумел сберечь,-
Речь не о том, но все же, все же, все же.
Александр Твардовский

According to Petranovskaya, Russia:
• Had a trajectory of events in XX century – 2 wars, 1 revolution, 1 citizen
war, repressions, totalitarian state, USSR state, USSR dissolution, post-
soviet capitalism with 3 devaluations etc.
• These events affected society with shocks: deaths, broken families, lost
parent(s), intrusion of gov. into private life, loss of savings, loss of
pensions, uncertainty, unfairness etc.
116

• As a result: many people have traumas from the social role point of view
• Because kids read unconscious signals from parents on parents’
emotions and act upon them:
• Face
• Body
• Blood pressure
• Eyes
• Etc.
117

• Born in 1920-1930s generation: affected by war, lost husbands.
• Women: lost husband, raise children alone, stress & responsibility, emotionless (не
удалось прогоревать, supressed depression, злость на судьбу и на того, кто ушел)
• Born 1940-1950s generation: life without fathers.
• Didn’t get full emotional spectrum from moms.
• Doesn’t have role model of the father. Rather have – to disappear? (= self destruction
– drink, smoke, risk life, fight, etc.)
• Allocate love and fears on kid, block separation, blend own emotions with their adult
children (!).
• Doesn’t love themselves (because their war-generation mothers didn’t provide
enough of healthy love…)
118

• Born in 1960-1970s generation:
• Takes effort to separate from mothers
• And while these moms don’t fully love themselves = suffer from neurosis, health
issues, unhappy aging etc.
• Manipulation by moms could be very high
• Belief in (as have seen by own eyes around): «Все мужики - сволочи», «Все
бабы - суки», «Хорошее дело браком не назовут».
• Hyper-responsibility. Successful now in many fields, but not fully happy inside.
119

•Kid care system (kindergardens, schools, детские
дома)
• Was true in 1930s, 1940-1960s, and system still operates
by the same patterns now
• Operated by similarly emotionally traumatized workers
• Focus on body, food, etc. Doesn’t take into account and does
not prioritize emotions of kids.
120

• Complex phenomena of traumas and cross-generational waves
• Suppressed depressions
• Infantile vs. hyper-responsible fluctuations
• Didn’t experience love -> cannot love own kids in a warm way
• Separation from parents
• Privacy issues vs. too introversive life
• Relationships “kid-parents” very often are mutually complicated
• Sustainable pattern in even modern culture that being parents is подвиг
• With food, with dacha, cars, pamperses etc. = «жизнь положить, ночей не спать, здоровье
угробить»
• Major problem is that kids is programmed to fear and avoid real world.
121

Basically, these traumas now result in that people of various generations:
• Reproduce these traumas and norms on their kids…
• Do not trust each other. Cannot cooperate at scale with other people.
• Cannot cooperate to protect their interests
• Do not believe in that they can control the world by their efforts. Do not
challenge authorities. Paternalism.
--> That explains current social consensus / electoral demand+behavior
122

4. Memes /
Culture /
Civilization
123

Book - Sapiens by Yuval Harari
• @ Amazon.com He is UK-educated Israeli macro historian
• Humans = 2.5 million years ago. Biologically we are like 30,000 years ago.
• 3 major revolutions:
• the Cognitive Revolution (70,000-30,000 years ago) --> cooperation via
language/memes generation
• Our psychology seems to develop somewhere here
• the Agricultural Revolution (10,000 years ago) -->population growth
• and the Scientific Revolution (500 years ago) --> population explosion + longevity
growth
125

• Memes
• From 50 monkeys to 150 people in crowd. Then to 1K-1M-1B. Why? By language.
• Memes via imaginable social realities (conventions, institutions) allowed
institutional progress: religion, money, capitalism, politics etc.
• These shared myths allowed humankind overcome the forces of the nature.
• Human (1 person) now knows more than entire population 15,000 years ago
• The main purpose of writing was to record numbers. Our brains are much
better at remembering biological, zoological, and social information.
• Writing changed the way humans think: we think far more categorically than
before. 126

• Politheistic vs. monotheistic religions
• Sapiens killed 40 types of other homos (bigger brain = more complex
collaboration + weapons)
• Sapiens made all animals their slaves (dogs, cows, chicken etc.)
• We used to be walkers, collecting plants. Agricultural revolution made us
slaves of plants: human started to work more and worry more about
uncertainties of weather and enemies to arrive and conquer.
• Our health is for walking, we get many illnesses due to less-walking life last
thousands of years
127

• Evolution divides population and allows for separate
mutations (species in different ecosystems, people across
continents) then combined them back (Era of Great
Geographical discoveries, making Babylon again). Cyclical
process.
• See cross-domain memes exchange and enrichment proposed
above in Memes/Combinatorial explosion.
128

• Culture is always a conflict between different parts of spectrum.
• E.g. freedom vs. equality in USA now.
• It is part of the human experience to reconcile these contradictions.
• History is always moving toward unity. The whole planet is moving
toward one world culture.
• Religions, money and empires – 3 core unifiers.
• Empires allowed to spend resources on edu, sci and R&D. Wars pushed
progress a lot.
129

• In XVII century average British had 0 sugar intake/year, in XIX
– 8kg/year
• Live a safe community, drive as little, care on psychics. Local
crime + car accidents + suicide = biggest killers of humans.
• After health issues from aging.
• Technology affects human, and will affect sapiens even more:
• Either via general AI
• Either via bionics
• Either via genome modifications
130

Memes
• Memes = Ideas
• “Richard Dawkins states that in biology it is
genes which really matter, and we as
people are just vessels for the conveyance
of genes. It’s the same with ideas or
“memes”. We are the vessels that hold and
communicate ideas, and now that pool of
ideas percolates on a global basis more
rapidly than ever before.“
• That’s quote from VC investor Steve Jurvetson
132
Richard Dawkins

Pairing of ideas: 7B people + internet
• “From this conceptual base, come the origin of economic growth and
accelerating technological change, as the combinatorial explosion of
possible idea pairings grows exponentially as new ideas come into the mix
(on the order of 2^n of possible groupings per Reed’s Law).
• It explains the innovative power of urbanization and networked globalization.
• And it explains why interdisciplinary ideas are so powerfully disruptive; it is
like the differential immunity of epidemiology, whereby islands of cognitive
isolation (e.g., academic disciplines) are vulnerable to disruptive memes
hopping across.
• If disruption is what you seek, cognitive island-hopping is good place to start,
mining the interstices between academic disciplines.”
by Steve Jurvetson
133

Memes chains can be VERY long
134

Philosophy from 600 BCE to 1900s
135

Mathematicians: advisors -> their students. 200,000
people. On the left – 20,000 of them showed
136Source: math genealogy projects

5. T e c h n o l o g y P r o g r e s s
138

Definitions
• Technology - collection of techniques, skills, methods and processes
used in the production of goods or services or in the accomplishment
of objectives, such as scientific investigation.
• Science - systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge
in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the
universe
• Innovation - a new idea, method, product, etc. Incremental
improvements: 1->1.2. Innovation: 0 to 1 (non-existing emerges).
139

Progress
• the idea that the world can become increasingly better in terms of
science, technology, modernization, liberty, democracy, quality of life,
etc.
• that advances in technology, science, and social organization can
produce an improvement in the human condition.
140

Technological progress
• Technological progress - generation, exploitation and diffusion of
knowledge
• Source: Oslo Manual. Guidelines for Collecting and Interpreting Innovation
Data, 3rd Edition, 2005.
• The overall process of
• (a) invention, innovation and
• (b) diffusion
• of technology or processes across civilization of live and non-live agents,
conscious and not conscious. (based on the current level of knowledge
about the reality (science + smthng else)
141

Space of known, perimeter of unknown
• Schematic
• Real
142

Technology creation value chain
1. Societies born kids
a) Some of them have brain structures to sci/engineering
2. Edu system reveals kids’ interests
a) And empowers them with memes on science which are known now
3. Governments fund basic research
4. Govs and corps fund applied research
5. Corps and startups
a) Engineers develop working technology
b) Penetrate this tech across the globe
143

Measurement
Of:
1. Outcome
2. Effort
3. Efficiency of effort
144
At levels of:
• Entire humankind
• Country level
• Institutions/universities
• Non-profit entities level
• Firm level (private or
government-owned)

Measurement
Of:
1. Outcome
2. Effort
145
At levels of:
• Country level
government-owned)

Measurement
Of:
1. Outcome
2. Effort
146
At levels of:
• Country level
government-owned)

Businesses penetrate tech around the world
147

Cost of engineering usually decreases prices
with time. Especially in electronics
148

Map of interconnectedness: 20 mln. sci and tech
articles, and 2 mln patents from 1996-2011
150

Outcome - Sci output
• More scientists in the world? #’s ?
• Number of patent claims? And
patents issued?
• How to compare one patent to another in
terms of value created?
• Expert opinion on scientific
progress?
• Hirsch index for peer reviewed published
papers?
• Scientific awards by community? (Nobel,
etc.)
• More scientific papers published?
• How you measure quality of papers?
(other than h-index)
• # of papers – what does it really measure?
/ “You get what you reward”
• Speed of creation of new
knowledge areas?
• Number of new journals, covering new
disciplines?
• Number of new subjects taught at grad
schools?
• More useless (as it is seen now) STEM
science fields/discoveries is created? (=
basis for future cross-disciplinary
permutations)
• Vocabulary expansion in various
languages? (= memes space is
bigger)
151

• Memes vs. matter/energy under our control?
• Space
• Distance researched by telescopes
• Distance from Earth reached by unmanned spacecrafts
• ...and by manned(and how many people live outside of Earth)
• Mass delivered to the orbit, to the space
• Atoms
• Bigger share of table of basic elements is used by human civilization?
• More atoms of matter are used per capita?
152

• Border "bits vs atoms" and where is it now? Case of biotech
within it?
• Bits
• Humanity’s compounding capacity to compute - tracking where we are on
Moore’s law chart?
• Limits of brain exhausted -> more computing used on the absolute basis?
• # of CPU-based devices globally? Connected devices globally?
• 3B smartphones + tablets + PC’s + servers + computers in cars etc.?
• Data accumulated?
• Connectivity throughput?
• Semi-autonomous agents (say, industrial robots) and autonomous agents (say, self
driving cars)?
153

Sci output
• Virtually
• More transactions occur (between agents).
• If simple assumption on ideas pairing, then # of ideas = n^2, n – people in cities,
urbanization will continue. But does this combinatorial explosion of ideas pairings
assume accelerating speed of the progress?
• Increasing speed of transactions? (in daily lives)
• More meaningful memes generated.
• Agents:
• Now live agents based on amino acids. In future – “AI” agents generate
transactions?
• One big AI-agent playing with ideas inside? What is 1 agent if non-bio? =)
154

Holons - what’s waiting us above? / Where
complexity stops?
• Definition:
• A holon (Greek: ὅλον, holon neuter form of ὅλος, holos "whole") is something that is
simultaneously a whole and a part. The word was coined by Arthur Koestler in his book The
Ghost in the Machine (1967, p. 48)
• Example:
• Quantum particles -> smaller # of protons and neutrons -> less atoms -> less molecules ->
less amino acids -> less cells -> less living agents -> less structures by these living agents ->
society -> some general AI? =)
155

?
156
http://medium.com/victorosyka,
http://facebook.com/victor.osika,
osyka.victor@gmail.com
 Me in a childhood =)

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