On The Shoulders Of Giants

The questions is: is there a god or not? Is the universe composed of matter only or there is more to it than that? I have looked at the arguments of both sides and found neither of them convincing. In my view, by argument alone, you cannot prove or disprove god. What about evidence? Is there any evidence that points to the existence of god or otherwise? In my opinion there is only one convincing evidence: the enlightenment phenomenon. The enlightenment phenomenon is when someone through meditation, solitude, seeking of truth or otherwise experiences something unique and as a result becomes enlightened. Of course, there are degrees to enlightenment and the experiences vary greatly. But in some cases we can say with a good degree of certainty that a person has been enlightened: Buddha, Jesus, Mohammad, Ali, Rumi, Shams. These individuals and many like them have had unique experiences and became enlightened and transcended their backgrounds and rose to new dimensions. To me, that fact is miraculous and an evidence pointing to the existence of god. The rational mind would then want to know if religions came from god. My answer is most likely yes. The next question is if most religions came from god, how come they are tainted with misstatements, pandering and intolerance. In other words, for example why does god have a beef with homosexuals? I have thought about this question most of my life and I recently have arrived at an answer: the answer is that every religion was a political movement in a society that was far from Utopia, and in order for that political movement to succeed in such societies, it had to be tainted and it had to be brought down to the levels that people could swallow. I believe that homophobia in Islam doesn’t come from god but it is a left-over from the Arabian society of 1400 years ago. The reason that god said he created the world in six days, was that it was an easier sell back then than a scientific explanation of how the universe came about. The unfortunate thing is that religions are never honest about this fact because they can’t be. How can they criticize the same people that are going to carry the message to the future generations? It’s impossible. So we have to live with sketchy religions at best that are completely out of touch with the majority of us today. But not all hope is lost. If we look at religions as vectors, arrows that point from one social state to another social state, and put every religion in the context of the society that it was introduced in, I think the directions these arrows pointing are pretty clear.

As Obama and McCain are warming up for the general election campaign, I see a sharp contrast in the economic theory of the two camps. As the old adage says, follow the money. As a background note, let me mention that I am talking within the capitalist paradigm and I am no Karl Marx.

I believe this is what this battle comes down to: more wealth (money, power and opportunity) concentrated in the hands of a minority on one side, and more wealth shared by more people on the other side. I call it the exclusivist and the inclusivist philosophies. As of now, the exclusivists are mostly the Republicans lead by George Bush and McCain and the inclusivists are mostly the Democrats led by Obama. The best defense that exclusivists have is that overall, it is better for everyone meaning that if we have richer billionaires and bigger corporations, the average Joe would be better off. This is the old battle between liberty versus fairness, and please don’t think Ayn Rand versus Lenin. Evidence shows that in a free-market capitalist system people are better off (think South Korea versus North Korea) but the question is where do we draw the line? Are we better off because Haliburton, Exxon Mobile, Blackwater and lobbyists are better off with George Bush in office? Or would we be better off living in a society where veterans would get a chance to go to college and more people would have access to health insurance? I don’t think we are any better off because of Republicans’ exclusiveness and I think the election in November will show that most Americans don’t think so either.

Proof video

Here is an excerpt from BusinessWeek’s article titled “Meet Your New Recruits: They Want to Eat Your Lunch”:

…”We are followers of Warren Buffett,” explains Greene, who says he studies the famed Omaha investor’s letters to shareholders as if they were sacred texts.

High-revving students scoff at advice they sometimes hear about intellectually browsing before settling on a narrow employment path. “Many of my fellow classmates have been planning out their college choices since middle school, so to tell them not to plan for a future career during freshman year is illogical,” says Janet Xu, 22, a senior at Yale and editor of the undergraduate magazine Yale Entrepreneur. She is heading off soon to be an analyst for Sears Holdings (SHLD) in Chicago….

The article talks about a new group of elite college graduates emerging from top American universities who are aiming for the top jobs. At first, I got excited about this phenomenon. After reading the article, I have to tell you that I’m not as optimistic as I was about this new group. It seems like they all want to go to finance and consulting. In my opinion, for a healthy economy, we do need financiers and consultants, but they are one piece of the big picture and they are not the ones creating “value”. I believe “economic value” is created mostly by entrepreneurs, innovators, designers and manufacturers. Let me define what I mean by value (and this is my definition): true economic value is something for which people would pay voluntarily and with adequate relevant information. For example, when you pay $300 to buy a digital camera and you have done research on it before, you have read customer and analyst reviews and you know all the functions of the camera, that must have some true value to you. Value is not equivalent to cash. A pyramid scheme may generate cash for some people but doesn’t create any real value. A hedge fund may make some people richer, but it doesn’t necessarily create economic value. What an economy needs is a lot of value creators and some financiers.

Of the three, only art is unaccountable, meaning you cannot ask an artist “Why did you do it this way?” Science and religion are accountable, they have to justify everything they do.

People are either rationalists or not. If someone is not a rationalist and doesn’t agree with me, it’s hard to engage in a meaningful debate with them. Here’s my suggestion to Obama campaign: try to engage the rationalist Republicans in a meaningful debate and win them over.

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And for god’s sake, stay away from the word “Reagan”

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Finally, semantic web is on the map. There is a new kid in town and it’s called Powerset. This is a smarter search engine for Wikipedia. Go to their website, search for something or type in a simple question and explore the cool features offered for free.

Let’s say Ms. A is a software developer in America and she has developed a very cool and useful software and is selling it for $500 a piece.

Mr. B is an engineer in Canada and he needs the software developed by Ms. A. Mr. B can afford the software by paying 10% of his monthly salary. Mr. B takes out his credit card, fills out an online form and buys the software over the internet, downloads it and starts using it right away. Everybody is happy.

Let’s imagine Ms. C who lives in Congo and she is running a small company. She also needs the software. The GDP per capita of Congo is only $300. There is no way that Ms. C could afford the software. There are two options: 1) Ms. C forgets about the software and sticks to pen and paper which is much less efficient. 2) Ms. C gets a pirated version of the software and uses it. In any case Ms. A is not going to see a dime from Ms. C and Ms. C has to either break the copyright laws or stay at a disadvantaged position. What do we do now? How can we bring Ms. A and Ms. C together, so that everybody is happy?

Let’s look at this from another angle: Ms. A was lucky to be born in America and enjoy the democracy and the prosperity that came with it. She should be thankful. Ms. C was born in Congo and she did not enjoy the things that Ms. A enjoyed. On one level, the software is the intellectual property of Ms. A and she is entitled to benefit from it. On another level, Ms. C is also a human being with real needs.

Here is my solution: Ms. A sells her software all over the world to everyone who needs it, but she adjusts the price tag according to the purchasing power of each consumer. One easy way of doing this is to adjust the price tag by the GDP per capita of every country. If she wants to get into more detail, she could have different pricings for business, education, government and home consumers. And here is why everyone would benefit from this scheme: this method would minimize piracy. If I can comfortably afford an authentic copy of the item that I want, I have much less incentive to turn into low-quality, iffy, pirated replicas. Moreover, Ms. A would actually profit from this scheme. It may not be much, perhaps a few dollars only, but it’s better than zero. Thirdly Ms. A would build a good reputation by doing something humane. And lastly, Ms. C would enjoy the benefits of using that software.

You might say: that sounds pretty complicated. What if Ms. A’s company is small and cannot reach those consumers? My response is that the company doesn’t have to be big. All you need is a legitimate distribution system, that takes the software from Ms. A, prices it and distributes it all over the world, sells it, takes a cut and gives Ms. A her share. You can actually create jobs, increase profits for the authors and gather real customer data which in my opinion is gold.

I read an article in the Wired Magazine about the famous futurist and inventor, Ray Kurzweil. Mr. Kurzweil talks about the technological singularity, a hypothesized point in future in which intelligent machines will be able to improve themselves at an accelerated rate and he is hoping that he lives long enough to see that day. He is taking thousands of dollars of nutritional supplements and blood transfusions to extend his life and has medical experts working with him on this project. You can read more about him and his views online.

I understand that we need different specialties to tackle different problems and the same way that we need economists to take care of economy we also need futurists to provide visions for our future. But here is my problem with this breed of futurism: whose future are we talking about? The future of MIT and Harvard and Stanford graduates who live in the suburbs and make millions of dollars? What about the future of those billions of people who don’t have clean drinking water and electricity? Wouldn’t it be more fun if we all move towards the future together?