In the world of AI, we are developing technologies that are getting better, faster, smarter, more
efficient than ever before (at least, from an end-user's perspective). However, there comes a point
where the automation can only do so much before human intervention is required, right?
Will I Am, artist, philanthropist and futurist is working with a team to create AI that
will be more life like and help in industries like call centers and customer support. The idea was
to create a virtual AI with which one could interact for support on simple things. He says his goal
is to add to existing business and industry today, but I think it might be more of a shift to
different industries and businesses; we need to educate people to understand these new jobs they
would be taking on.
Human vs Automation
One of the things I have observed with human behaviour is how people are so adverse to
change. I am no exception to this. We all endure inertia: a body in motion tends to stay in motion
in a straight line at constant velocity. Change the direction of that line (in physics we call this
acceleration), and it requires energy.
The amount of energy required depends on the desired direction, original mass, velocity, etc.
However, I have observed that people often turn away automation and prefer to "do it the old fashioned way" or
whatever methods work in their mind or is aesthetically pleasing. This is until something cliques
in their mind and suddenly the automation is found to be so much more convenient over "the old
fashioned way". Then, there's bugs, or issues, with the automation. If it does not have self
healing capabilities or corrective measures built in, it fails. Now we have become dependent on the
automation and business operations halt with no recourse for alternative action. This is where some
people feel the emotional attachment to old process and say "we've lost our way".
Human Evolution vs Robotic Evolution
It has taken humans over 200,000 years to evolve where we are today.
It has taken computers 40-50 years to evolve where they are today. If you checkout the
slope of improvements humans have made vs robots, you'd see that robots are catching up much
quicker than we are. If we don't continue to evolve with our robotics, then they will take over and
become the dominant species of the planet. We need not give up our rights to education and destroy
the one industry that will keep us above water in this sea of evolution. The more we destroy
ourselves in education, the less chances we have of building our AI to the next level. If, in the
case, that AI does evolve past humans and we fail to keep up to date with our robotics and
automation, we will find ourselves in that "people
zoo" some AI entities have mentioned in the past.
First off: I thoroughly enjoy the posts by Tom Bilyeu because he always has such insightful things to talk about in incredibile detail with his guests in an environment where they can be intellectually challenged and given the air and space to speak about things eloquently enough to get an intensely thorough understanding of the topic at hand without leaving you feeling like it's repetitive, overexaggerated, out of reach, nor too fast or slow. You can always enjoy a great story with Tom, so I encourage a follow to him on YouTube if you aren't already.
Here's the video in question this post will address:
Happiness is a Trap
People tell you that you need to buy this car, get these clothes and look like this and act like
that in order to be happy. They tell you once you have the perfect wife and the perfect home,
you'll be in this perfect place of happiness and can simply do the same thing over and over again
every day unto the end of your days and you can say you lived a happy life. The real thing we are
all seeking is the pursuit of happiness. The real thing we all want is the improvements. The core
aspect of it all is to simply look within and find what will make us more and continue to pursue
that. As Sadhguru says we are
infinite creatures seeking to constantly add to our worlds. It's a trap to think that you will be
happy and what you really should be seeking is progress.
My personal experience with this has resulted in the same conclusion: I have food in my belly,
clothes over my back, a roof over my head and a means to pay my way to build more. I have built and
built until I now have a life of comforts and amenities. You would think with all I have, I would
simply stay where I am and just enjoy it, but I don't. Now that I have everything I need, there was
some aspect of this that was missing before that I am discovering now. Tom and Aurthur cover this
later in the video. However, I wanted to highlight this idea here: Now that I have everything I
wanted when I was 19 at age 34, I find myself pivoting to another direction and resetting that bar
and goal that I want to reach even higher. I want to do more and have always wanted to provide
more. Even though I am a Gay man and enjoy my men very much, I find myself still having some of the
same hetero cravings like building a family and extending beyond just the reach of my current
presence. I still want to build on something bigger than myself. I still want to read all the books
on theocracy, religion, philosophy and explore the ideas that are out there. It's not that thinking
that learning these things will make me happy, it's that learning about things is the journey to
happiness. It's the constant progression to that fabled definition of "perfection" without ever
really achieving it because once you attain your goals, you assign new ones and strive for greater
heights. Some do get complacent and stagnant or comfortable.
They talk about the things that we as humans need beyond just the local and community levels,
there's also a global level of needs that we have. I find myself in the same position: Even though
all my needs are handled, I don't like that my current job does not directly benefit humanity. I
want a job that also directly impacts the fundamentals of how humanity functions and makes
improvements to it (that sounds like Governance, but really it's all involved with technology). I
want to know that what I am doing is actually making a benefit to people, not just taking away from
poor to fill the pockets of the rich. However, it seems for anything to survive well in this
environment and economy, only those businesses that exploit one facet or another are the only ones
that seem to survive.
Living with Intention without Attachment
I see sometimes people asking the question how they can love something without being attached to
it. How to be a good partner without feeling the need to snoop through their things. How to care
for your child without needing to control their every action because you know they have learned
their morals well from you. How to be involved with something that involves manipulating energy
like in Massage therapy or services that involve interacting with people and not allowing it to
drain you of your energy each day. When the question is asked "How do I live to love things but not
be attached to them, such that when I lose them, I do not feel the sadness from their loss and I
can continue on about my day and life as if those things were never in my life (presumably "like
everybody else seems to be able to do.").
I have learned the solution is not in thinking that you have to be detached from everything.
Sadghuru said it best: 3 meters of rope can solve the problem of detachment for you. However,
that's not what we seek, nor what we desire, so what is the solution? The idea is to change the
perspective away from attachment to entanglement. What we seek to avoid is the entanglement that
comes from that toxic relationship, the bad parent, or the walled therapist that can't connect to
save their client base and wonders why they aren't successful. So simply don't do those things.
Allow yourself to be the good parent that tries their best, but understands there's limitations to
what they can and cannot do and say with certainty or get away with "because I told you so."; to
understand there's a way to set your boundaries in a relationship to maintain a healthy level of
communication and connection that doesn't cause conflict or comparisons; to be connected to your
clients without involving or engaging in anything more than a client-therapist relationship with
clear boundaries defined and communicated. It's difficult to communicate a one-size-fits-all kind
of solution, because it is very specific to the situation and circumstance. However, the general
stance that I take is to live in gratitude every day because without that, the day may be
ungrateful for you and as a result, towards you as well. I live with intention and purpose by
defining it myself and living that every day. Each day that I live more aligned to my goals is a
step closer to self-actualization. Each day that I do not is not a failure, but an opportunity to
review how I might adjust either my perspective or desires to match what I can actually practically
do based on my circumstances or situations.
"The God Hole"
"You're looking for something evidenced by your craving."
The fact that there is hunger is evidence that food exists.
The fact that you have a drive for sex is evidence that it exists.
The fact that you have this craving for something to fill that void of a definition for "The All" is evidence that it exists.
This is an interesting thing for me because I consider myself agonistic and I want to read all the
religion books before making a decision on what is "Truth". I am also a firm believer that we all
have our own individual truth to be defined. Religion are a means by which this can be built,
designed and executed. For those that say "This is The Way", I believe they are really telling
their way that worked for them and the truth that they found. Instead of thinking about things from
a prescriptive perspective, I tend to take things (especially of this nature) from a more
descriptive and directive perspective. I will have to walk my own path and do my own things, but
essentially there is a general "formula" to the kind of success we all seek to obtain.
I'm also of the belief that all these religions and structures we have created are a result of us
attempting to congregate the ideas into a single body of knowledge and to be able to describe the
means by which someone reached enlightenment. I don't think of any of them as "The Way™", I think
of them as "A Way" that someone achieved their enlightenment. So, when I ask, look, learn and get
to know these, I don't take them to be the absolute truth.
I believe that each of us has our own belief system that is our own design and by our own choice.
If we had a choice of a menu of all the things, I think we may discover a few things: 1) our
beliefs overall overlap a lot and that we could learn a lot from each other if we just stop
bastardizing each other for learning something new. 2) we actually don't know what we believe
because personally, we have not spent enough time thinking on the subject and what it means for
ourselves. We were exposed to something as a child and perhaps that's what many of us follow,
however, how many of us elect to simply learn as much as possible and make a selection after
learning all they can about the religions we have around us?
I also perceive that religions were created originally as a tool in order to describe that "God
hole" we seem to be missing or seeking at some point in our lives. They started as pantheons, which
are a collection of a representation of an idea that eventually coalesced into a belief system and
as we know them today, they are religions and are treated as labels that indicate whether someone
should love you or hate you, it seems, these days. While I disagree with that last point, what they
do offer is a sense of community and purpose beyond just the individual that we all innately seek.
What it provides one may not serve or be perceived the same for another.
Finally, after exploring a lot of these topics and the sheer overwhelming about of data, I am of
the belief that we should not be shoving religion down our children's throats. That's not to say
that religion is banned from being taught kids, no. Absolutely nothing is stopping you from
educating and introducing them to the idea of it. (Especially if they start asking about it and
it's all you know; just make sure to disclaim that you understand the limits of your own
education). My issue is when there is a coerced indoctrination because children under the age of 25
would not have the mind to understand or engage in religion in as meaningful a way. I certainly
didn't understand it and didn't want to understand or know anything about it until later in life. I
knew there would come a time. I believe that time is becoming upon me in the last few months or so.
As I dip into these studies and explore some of the things, I realize that you really have to have
a mind that is ready to accept this level of thinking. I think religion is a high level class of
knowledge and this is coming from a heavy IT guy that learned a lot of things from scratch by
myself outside of the classroom and faster than most other students. I consider myself someone who
adepts well to new situations and even then, religion seems like a difficult subject to explore and
understand. I think it should be the choice of the individual because ultimately the individual is
going to make the decision of what their belief system will include.
Now before you let your cognitive dissonance prevent you from absorbing what you just read, please
keep in mind a few things: This is just my perspective at the time of writing. New data is always
suceptible to change the things I think and believe as I discover new things. This is also just my
opinion on my facets surrounding this idea. Should they be law? No. Is it meaningful? Yes. So
somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, I believe its worth considering and asking yourself just
how much do you really "know" from your own experiences, can be measured, and repeated, and how
much was just told to you and you just went with it?
Quotes
"The more you understand the illusion, the less you are trapped by it."
Definitely knowing how things work lets me be more effective with how I handle it, no matter what "it" is.
You will never find the perfect person, you will end up creating the perfect relationship.
I was incredibly moved by this as it is completely true in that you can design any kind of relationships you want with those outside of your professional life!
If you're in a situation where you aren't using a NetworkManager of sorts,
then this post will guide you how to connect to Wi-Fi using just two commands:
`wpa_supplicant` and `dhclient`, okay, maybe a 3rd command called `wpa_passphrase`.
Let's get into the details.
Install Packages
If you have never connected to a Wi-Fi network in Linux on this system before, you probably have some packages to install. For at least the packages described in this post, I'll give the commands to execute:
sudo yum install *help me in the comments section, please?*
Create Wi-Fi WPA Key
This first command using `wpa_passphrase`
will allow you to create a Wi-Fi key that will be used to talk with your router. Checkout wpa_passphrase(8) when you get a chance.
wpa_passphrase 'UVerse8654930234' 'myd0gN@m3!'
Notice how I enclosed my Wi-Fi network name and my password in quotes.
If you use double-quotes, just keep in mind $ may inadvertently create a variable,
so escape accordingly or use single quotes to use a literal string.
If you don't want your password on the command line, don't sweat it, just omit the password
from the command and it will read from STDIN to ask you for it.
When it's all said and done, you'll end up with output like this:
You can take this and write it to the `NETFILE` you will create in `/etc/wifi/my-network.wifi`.
At least, this is where I store my configuration for this. #YMMV
Connect to Wi-Fi Network
Now that we have our configuration file, let's run our `wpa_supplicant` command to connect us to
the Wi-Fi network of our choice:
This will run `wpa_supplicant` in the background with the configuration specified in
`/etc/wifi/my-network.wifi`, using your `wlan0` interface and creating a PID file
in `/run/wifi/wpa_supplicant.pid`. The `-Dwext` says use generic Wi-Fi drivers.
For more information, you really should checkout wpa_supplicant(8).
NOTE: If you have a different interface than `wlan0`, please be sure to update your commands as necessary.
At this point, if you run `iwconfig wlan0`, you should see that you have connected over the Wi-Fi to the target network:
$ ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"My-Wi-Fi"
Mode:Managed Frequency: 5.805 GHz Access Point: 99:99:99:99:99:99
Bit Rate=780 Mb/s Tx-Power=22 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on
Link Quality=57/70 Signal level=-54 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:306 Missed beacon:0
Get IP Address
We're not out of the woods yet though, we still need to get an IP address. So far, wpa_supplicant handles the heavy lifting of decrypting and communicating with the router. We still need to get an address on the network. This is why I love Linux -- you get exposed to all the raw operations of how a computer really works.
To get an IP address, you can use the command `dhclient`.
For a full breakdown of all commands and operations possible, please see dhclient(8).
Here's what I used:
sudo dhclient -pf /run/wifi/dhclient.pid -v wlan0
This says I want the PID file to be placed in `/run/wifi/dhclient.pid`, to be verbose and to get an address we can bind to `wlan0`. The PID file option is optional. You can leave it to the defaults. I want this specifically for the script at the end of this post.
At this point, you should be connected to your Wi-Fi network and have an IP address and a default route. In theory, this is what you should have. I'll also include below situations where I don't get those expected results:
Wi-Fi Won't Connect
Troubleshooting tips
Make sure Wi-Fi is on. Some laptop models have a Fn-F6 or something function available somewhere to let you toggle the antenna for Wi-Fi. If it's off, you won't get a connection. I've been had by this before.
`iwconfig` not rendering your device? Make sure you have drivers installed and kernel modules loaded (e.g. `modprobe iwlwifi`). I have been known to have downloaded the source to my laptop's Wi-Fi drivers and custom compile them into the kernel I was using because they weren't widely accepted into the kernel just yet (Wi-Fi support needed much help).
Connects, but won't authenticate? Make sure there isn't a typo or trailing space in the network name and the password. The hash is a checksum of both and could be the reason it won't authenticate.
`dhclient` gets an IP, but doesn't set a default route? You may have a down default route that needs to be removed first and `dhclient` restarted. Seems it will only add a default route if not exist; instead of not exist and not linkup.
If this seems like a lot of work, don't worry, I got you: https://gist.github.com/markizano/
This Github Gist contains a `wifi.sh` you can place in `/etc/init.d/wifi` and a
`wifi.conf` you can place in `/etc/default/wifi`. Be sure to place your Wi-Fi
password configuration in `/etc/wifi`. If you want to make the service active on sysv-init setups, you can use:
`sudo update-rc.d wifi defaults`
I also be sure to `sudo chmod 0700 /etc/wifi && sudo chmod 0600 /etc/wifi/*` and `sudo chown root:root /etc/wifi`
to ensure restricted permissions on the configuration to secure the files.
So that's how you connect to a Wi-Fi network without a Network Manager in Linux if you ever find yourself stranded and need to pull this off, you now have this in your back pocket.