Interesting to realize that the living things that lay the foundation of the biosphere are extremely robust as compared to the humans that are destroying the biosphere.

Conscious and conscience are two words that share the same origin but mean two different things. The bias against explanations of consciousness comes from the conflation of these two words.

In addition, the question of free will is also adjacent to the notion of both consciousness and conscience. The ideas of consciousness, conscience, and free will serve as the foundation of justice in our civilization. (care to add another?)

So when we see people fail to condemn an act that is morally repugnant, we wonder if they have a conscience. But we don't wonder if they are conscious. When we incarcerate a person, we ask if they had "free will" but we inquire if they were 'conscious' during the crime.

The presence of consciousness and free will imply sentience. Which is the same as conscious and sounds just like a conscience. Our biases have muddled all the words together to likely mean the same thing.

The words that we use today continue to evolve. The same word can have a different meaning in the past. The word empathy is a recent word invented in the early 1900s. Originally it meant to place oneself from the viewpoint of a thing. Today we don't use it in this way.

Abduction is that thought process where we renew our past, question our present, and reimagine our future.

It was C.S. Peirce, a century ago, that coined the use of this term to describe a thought process that would convey hypothesis making.

A little over 50 years ago, proponents of Artificial Intelligence, proposed that deduction would be the core feature of human intelligence. This idea was driven by the bias towards formal logical systems and the emergence of computers.

This approach was in stark contrast to cybernetics (introduced a decade early) that proposed that dynamical systems were a model for intelligence. The descendant of this approach was coined as artificial neural networks.

This dynamical systems approach was later understood as being similar to an induction based thought process. Deep Learning leads to what can be characterized as Artificial Intuition.

It is astonishing that most of cognitive science ignores an obvious reality. That there are two kinds of humans.

Tomasello has a very credible hypothesis that what distinguishes humans from the great apes is the inclination towards shared intentional behavior. What is innate is the disposition and like personalities, it is what defines our cognition as we grow.

If cognitive preference is so critical in cognitive development then why is it that we seem to have completely ignored the difference in cognitive preferences between men and women?

Humans are that species of primates that wandered out into the savannah. The savannah is different enough from a dense jungle to exert the evolutionary pressures that encourage the development of planning and forecasting skills.

Furthermore, human infants required a disproportional amount of effort to rear. This meant the specialization of roles between women who were responsible for rearing offspring and men who were responsible for bringing home the bacon. Failure in either implied death.

NEW SCOOP from @zachsdorfman: China's Ministry of State Security has demanded that private Chinese companies, including Baidu and Alibaba, help them process stolen U.S. data, such as from the OPM hack, U.S. intelligence officials

Zach writes, "In what amounts to intelligence tasking, China’s spy services order private Chinese companies with big-data analytics capabilities to process massive sets of information that have intelligence value, according to current and former officials."

“Just imagine on any given day, if NSA and CIA are collecting information, say, on the [Chinese military], and we could bring back seven, eight, 10, 15 petabytes of data, give it to Google or Amazon or Microsoft, and say, ‘Hey, we want all these analytics," said one official.

It's hard to overestimate the significance of this intelligence assessment.

There has been speculation that Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent might have ties to China's security state. In fact, they work directly with them and for them—because they have to. According to US intel.

If you have been enjoying this series of scoops from @zachsdorfman, also take some time in your day to appreciate the skill and dedication that FP editor @BeijingPalmer has put into them.

Let me talk to those who are planning to buy cars these year; Buying a car is good. Very essential for making life easier. However, a car isn’t cheap, the cheapest car is around 450USD in Kenya. Today owning a car may seem very easy as compared to the 70s, THREAD 1/3

Today you can buy a car either in cash 💰, by bank finance, hire purchase and through trade in. But my interest on this post is on bank financing and Hire purchase. Bank finance is where the bank buys for you a car and you pay the bank for a period of time.

Hire purchase terms of purchase is where by you identify a car in a dealership, negotiate for its final price, pay an agreed deposit upfront then clear balance in defined period of time I.e in 6/12/18/20/24 months. So HP =Deposit + total Monthly Installments.

Whenever a bank offers to buy you a car, there is always a 99.9% chance that they will retain the logbook[A substitute for a collateral in lending] A logbook is the only instrument of ownership for any car in Kenya. So the bank will issue you with your logbook once you finish,

Finish paying for the car. The only problem I have with bank financing is the possibility of the buyer losing the car and servicing the loan. It has happened and it does happen. The bank repossesses the car and they auction it. You shall have lost two important things; the money

MIGRATING TO AUSTRALIA
International borders are currently closed and migration for offshore candidates next to zero but I will share this info so you can prepare, if interested. There are still things you can do in preparation

Migrating to Australia is a process and a half. It is costly and the process is long. It can take a year or so for the whole process to come full cycle. What I can not emphasise enough is that IT IS WORTH IT. There are a few visas available for trades people.

Please note that Australia does not classify trades people. You are either one or not. Whether you are class 2 or class 1, apprenticeship trained or not, if you have the required experience and pass their skills assessment you get the same certificate.

The most common visa is the State nomination visas, followed by the employer nominated visas. I will expand on these below. Between 2012 and 2017 you could easily get PR straight up, but they have since changed the rules to balance and spread people across other states.

PR allows you to work anywhere in Australia. Most people chose Western Australia as that is where most of the mining happens, leaving other states with skills shortage. Before we go into details about visas, I will share what you need to be eligible.

HMIC Alh. Lai Mohammed addresses a Press Conference on plans to return to Lagos - Lekki Toll Gate under the guise of #EndSARS protest.

PERPETRATION OF VIOLENCE UNDER THE GUISE OF #ENDSARS: NEVER AGAIN - FG

Being the text of the press conference addressed by the Honourable Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, in Abuja on Thursday, 11 Feb. 2021

Good morning gentlemen and thank you for honouring our invitation once again.

2.   As you may be aware, some EndSars proponents have given notice of their plan to return to Lagos - Lekki Toll Gate to be specific – on Saturday, February 13th 2021.

The ''Occupy Lekki Toll Gate'' flyers have been circulating online, with the proponents threatening that ''Lagos will burn'' again.

3.   Let me be clear: While peaceful protests are the constitutional rights of Nigerians, violent protests are not. At this time, the chances that any peaceful protest will be hijacked are very high.