Collision hotspots for migrating birds revealed in new study

In referring to "dynamics latent in human organization since the dawn of civilization", I am speaking broadly of the sweep of human development from the earliest evidence available in archaeology and linguistics. Intricacies of that research are inappropriate here, but even a casual consideration of human (semiotics and, later) communication continuing from the earliest artifacts of the Holocene through various languages, cultures and beliefs into our current Anthropocene epoch renders current belief systems (equally) moot.

As such, appeals to current beliefs and borders are not different from the ones that motivated Prussian, Byzantine, Roman, Greek, Egyptian subjects in veracity, but rather only in the pattern of their employ as propaganda to further a given leaders aims.. Thus the underlying dynamics latent in human organization are precisely those that proved successful from Rameses to Cesar to Napoleon to Hitler.. The relevance of emerging research in archaeology and linguistics lies in its ability to illustrate these dynamics in the periods before recorded history, as well as to correct some of the distortion inevitable in historical records.

Personally, I started out long ago as a student of Eastern philosophy and language, but, in my opinion, current knowledge casts the Western philosophic tradition up to the period commonly referred to as the Enlightenment as singular in human history.

To the extent that fidelity to those principles was achieved, our current collective knowledge also shows the periods of revolution that resulted, from the American revolution that the French royalty funded, through the revolution in their own system that resulted, through the rest of the (Western) European continent and even the not so revolutionary restoration in Japan and the diminution of the Royals in Britain and beyond as foundational to the liberal world order as it is being attempted now after the ages of Imperialism and Fascism.

Motivations and rationalizations are indeed changeable, and the same words are used by diplomats and dictators to very different ends throughout history, to say nothing of the difficulties in translation (say between the English word "guarantee" and its Ukrainian /Russian equivalents or the uses of Han Chinese characters now in China, Taiwan and Japan.. ).

We must be very careful not to fall into the false equivalence of those hiding authoritarianism and totalitarianism behind empty labels and 'whataboutisms' - this is where we must use technology, such as is available in semantic analysis powered by the techniques of deep learning, to make patterns of communication comparable and contrast-able across languages, eras and nations.

There are quantifiable patterns in the messaging of governments. Today we have tools to make this apparent over vast corpora of text spanning borders and eras.. As one person, there is little I can do, but these patterns exist in the vast written records that are the heritage of our species and they will emerge.. Participating in this process is where my research aims intersect with the political process..

That said, I think the design of future systems is much more important than this line of intellectual pursuit, no matter how principled it may be. Like you, I also care about our current destruction of the environment within which we have developed over the Holocene, whether it is by climate change or nuclear holocaust. In my opinion, global information infrastructure that carries enough authority to prevent future wars of aggression will not look like the current UN so much as some future integration of systems for fraud detection and prevention writ large.. ..and capable of making Kleptocracy as well as corporate greenwashing clear to all who have power to do something about it..

This is the challenge of information systems in the dangerous times we live in.

BTW my 'nick' is just an abbreviation for recursive neural tensor network.