Sunday Agenda
- Check in
- Opening Blessing
- Review WWWs
- Weekly event logistics
- Review Agenda
- Javascript … aurora.js … AI (speech recognition) & Distributed service support
- Strategy/Tactics Talk … something like the one page plan
- Evaluations
- Closing Blessing
Check-in
- Eric … feeling much better than I have been for several days
- Brandon … kind of in a funk, which has been growing deeper
- Ben … I am panicking about the election
Opening Blessing
Always look on the bright side of life! May we find a way to support each other in seeing the bright side of life. (Even though we are, of course, working to avoid the dark sides.) --Blessed Be
WW(W)s from last time
- Brandon … spend 15 minutes every day on Machine Learning … ongoing
- Brandon … make a daily 1 minute video check-in for Ben and Eric … ongoing
- Brandon … Meditate regularly with Eric … ongoing
- <s>Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … spend at least 15 minutes a day on Flight in a Cage … ongoing</s>
- Ben … Send Brandon/Eric a video message each day about what I did … ongoing
- Eric … Send Brandon/Ben a video message each day about what I did … ongoing
- Eric … Work on Buckleberry at least 15 minutes a day… ongoing
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Ben … ongoing
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Brandon … ongoing
WW(Ws)
- Brandon … get a new server started for the wikis … by next business call
- Brandon … start asyncroservice on github … by next business call
- Brandon … spend 15 minutes every day on Machine Learning … ongoing
- Brandon … make a daily 1 minute video check-in for Ben and Eric … ongoing
- Brandon … Meditate regularly with Eric … ongoing
- Ben … meditate regularly with Eric ... ongoing
- Ben … spend at least 15 minutes a day on Flight in a Cage … ongoing
- Ben … Send Brandon/Eric a video message each day about what I did … ongoing
- Eric … Send Brandon/Ben a video message each day about what I did … ongoing
- Eric … Work on Buckleberry at least 15 minutes a day… ongoing
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Ben … ongoing
- Eric … Meditate regularly with Brandon … ongoing
Weekly Events Logistics
Service rotation: Eric, Ben, Shelley, Brandon
- Nov 12 Service: 8:00 AM PDT / 11:00 EDT … Ben
- Nov 13 Business Call: 8:00 AM PDT / 11:00 EDT
Samhain
Eric will celebrate it tonight! (November 5-6)
Javascript
Brandon proposes an open-source project for distributed SolSeed services
- Start by using Aurora.js … It doesn't have video support, just audio
- Brandon also wants to use it for his AI speech-recognition project
- Do syllable recognition on audiobooks
- Create an open training set for anyone to use on AI speech-recognition projects
- There's also Video.js
- Eric: but that may be a steeper learning curve
- Ben doesn't know if he could motivate himself to work on this
Strategy Talk
Opportunities
- Brandon: Start a Shiny Party that promotes science better than any existing party, as well as voting reform using ranked-choice ballots and auditable cryptographic proof of who's voting so we wouldn't have to trust the voting-machine companies
- Ben: Work on ways to preserve good things about civilization through a climate-disrupted dark age
- Two main points:
- Preserve the New Story thinking, don't get trapped in our current broken story again.
- Create a tech tree with instructions that can get us back from any level of dark age to where we are but with the most sustainable technologies emphasized.
- Work with the Long Now Foundation
- Ben: They are supposedly an encyclopedia project but they don’t seem to have a plan to keep it safe
- DNA based data
- Eric: The steps to create some of the technologies we have today using lower-level tech may have been lost … how would you get from sticks and stones to integrated circuits and rockets?
- We could start an open-source collaborative project to build a tech tree like in Civilization-type games, but with instructions for how to really do it, and a focus on making the resulting civilization sustainable
- Ben: Would embedding the New Story into the process mean the shape of the tech tree or the time to climb it is changed (such as moving slower and more patiently)? So even if a medical technology will make our lives less nasty, brutish and short, we might put off getting that technology if the fast path to it isn’t sustainable. So would that work? Or does already having had the wealthy life make it so we will just desperately want to attain it again?
- Eric: The stories people tell about what's important can have a big enough effect. Large numbers of people have changed the way they live based on the story of sin, heaven, hell, and purgatory. If you live in a story that if you get civilization wrong, it will collapse again and put everyone through the same misery you're trying to climb out of, you will be strongly motivated to work on creating a society that doesn't do that again. People who believe in immortal souls, though, may never see their distant descendants as being as important as themselves. If your only immortality is through reproduction, then you can only consider it in terms of the story of your descendants.
- Ben: I think that being so good at long-term thinking yourself, you may underestimate the difficulty
- Eric: Teaching people about historical, evolutionary, and geological time gives people tools that they mostly don't have that would enable long-term thinking
- Ben: But then there's the genetic argument that each generation has fewer of your genes
- Eric: But if you have more than one child, and they each have more than one, and your relatives who share some of your genes are having children, each generation will still have most of your genes
- Ben: How do we tell people how not to get into the mess we're in with the way we use technology?
- Eric: Skip internal combustion engines etc
- Ben: Preserve the New Story thinking, don't get trapped in our current broken story again
- Ben: The only concrete thing I can think of is to make an inspiring music video (Rise Anew)
Evaluation
- Eric: It was good to get on one of these calls again, I haven't been on enough of them in the last few months.
- Ben: I don’t know if I have been significantly cheered up or not. Part of me is really excited about the idea of just giving up. Not having to try so hard.
Closing Blessing
We came together to do the work, and we tried to show each other the bright side of life. Whether we succeeded in either of those things, we came together, and that in itself is a success, because by feeling connected, we can feel much more alive than what we would feel in isolation. So I hope that you carry this feeling of connection forward until our next call, and may your day be filled with life and love. -- Blessed Be