The Value of Human Life

It is important that we speculate on the point of our existence and evaluate what we do because if we get these ideas sufficiently misconceived we could end up in dire straits.

One thing that seems obvious to me; and I guess it is at the heart of us all; though perhaps we do not know why; is that individuals persevere to keep either themselves and/or their offspring alive.

If this is true; and if this is the backbone of some purpose for us; then we need to constantly evaluate where we are heading.

We should believe firmly in cause and effect and not luck; luck, so it seems to be to me, is where a gap in understanding exists. Let us be reminded that our species is constantly under check by natural disasters, war and other things to keep our population limited or to obliterate it. Technology and resources, the fruit of our endavour for discovery and understanding; need help keep our population stable.

Many misconceptions come about by people attempting to do good; but it is because they have not understood the steps involved to understand even a simple thing fully that problems arise. For example, we could introduce gentically modified foods widely to help keep our population high; but the long-term effect could be disease, which could wipe out our entire species. It could wipe out other species too; the risk is in the unknown effects because, though we may understand how genetically altering something affects something else in isolation, we do not understand how these things relate to other things. This is the nature of risk; but to analyse the risk; we need all the help, advice, knowledge and understanding neccesary and the judgement of wisdom to help dictate the outcome.

Natural disasters, volcanoes, earthquakes have always threatened us. We must understand their nature. All religious teachings must help us use our knowledge WISELY and the intelligence of scientists must be tallied in with this if we are to evolve (determined by wisdom).

We must pay interest in what we do and the laws of nature seem to be the most definite answers we have so we must side with them. For example, advances in artificial intelligence have stemmed from Darwinian principles of evolution; that essentially things have a purpose and that Nature uses a procedure of going through various steps to alter the optmimum path to get to the desired outcome. In maths; there are shortest path algorithms which do this.

Now, in AI, the application of shortest path, means that essentially, systems can teach themselves to do things. Now, if a system is programmed and can accelerate the learning process (or evolution) such that it can go beyond boundaries imposed upon it; we have a case where if the acceleration of learning and understanding is greater than the human intelligence, then at some point it could overatke and we do not know where this will lead.

As has always been the case, maybe more so now, we must take seriously our place, what we want to achieve and how we are doing now.

Because I do not know why, it seems to me lucky that the people most respected are those that do what that say. Those who constantly aim to do what is best, even in adversity, and do it without blaming anyone else or anything else, other than wanting to be better themselves, demand respect because they are purer.

Religion is important; life's lessons moreso, but to become great as individuals, which also helps others become great, we have to prevent ourselves even thinking of doing wrong and aim towards being individuals of the highest character. A product of our material age is that we think if we are somehow inferior we are limited and we blame whatever has happened on this. There is a saying; 'a poor workman always blames his tools'. I'll add another saying 'the greatest of characters stem from pitiful beginnings'.