Author Archives: Editors

“Three Phases” By Cyril Almeida

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“May God bless that poor woman and keep her safe. She has suffered enough. The rest of us, our suffering in this third phase of Pakistan’s history may just be beginning.”

PHASE one was state construction and finding ties to bind a new nation. Roughly between 1947 and 1958, when the political class was quickly overtaken and subjugated by a military and bureaucratic elite in the permanent state. Religion was quickly identified as the binding tie with potential in a country of diverse people and political histories.

Phase two began in the late 1970s. Three events in relatively quick succession that took the militarised and bureaucratised state and the experimentation with religious nationalism in the first three decades to the next level. The three events: the Zia coup and his Islamisation drive; the Iranian revolution just as petrodollars were turbocharging regional politics; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan under the Cold War overhang.

For at least two decades since the late 1970s, much of what Pakistan did or responded to stemmed from a combination of the three events layered on top of the original militarised and bureaucratised state and the experimentation with religious nationalism. There is no authoritative tome on that phase because we haven’t produced a world-class historian or political scientist since to write the book. There lies its own tale of sorrow.

The first contradiction is rooted in the second war in Afghanistan. If we helped the mujahideen defeat the Soviets, then how can we help the Americans fight the Taliban, drawn from the same inspiration as the mujahideen? Both wars can’t be right, and we’ve never had the courage to say the first one was wrong.

May God bless that poor woman and keep her safe. She has suffered enough. The rest of us, our suffering in this third phase of Pakistan’s history may just be beginning.

https://www.dawn.com/news/1443480/the-third-phase

 

“We need to face these dead” By Michael Gerson

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 “Civilization is hideously fragile,” said C.P. Snow. “. . . There’s not much between us and the horrors underneath. Just about a coat of varnish.”

Americans like to think of the military defeat of Nazi Germany and the liberation of death camps as their answer to the most murderous outbreak of anti-Semitism in history. It has become part of our national lore: American soldiers escorting German locals to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp, forcing them to see the faces of those killed with their complicity.

Americans predictably forget that their initial response to attacks on Jews in Germany during the 1930s was utterly shameful. Horrific persecution was broadly reported in American media. Yet our country passed up opportunity after opportunity to accept Jewish refugees, including children. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it was “not a governmental affair.” Cultural leaders such as Henry Ford and Charles Lindbergh normalized anti-Semitic ideas and language.

Yet after the war, no one ever forced Americans to walk past the faces of those who needlessly died with their complicity.

“Away from the battlefield,” wrote Eli Wiesel, “the judgment of history will be harsh. . . . How many victims, Jews and non-Jews, could have been saved had we changed our immigration laws, opened our gates more widely, protested more forcefully. We did not. Why not?”

It is not my purpose to indict the dead. It is only to point out how close to the cultural surface prejudice has been and remains. It is not foreign to human nature; it is a disturbing facet of that nature. Religious people might say that human beings are fallen — inherently prone to selfishness and sin. Science reveals Homo sapiens as creatures programmed to serve our family and tribe, predisposed to dehumanize out-groups and prone to follow the crowd even when we know it is wrong.

The knowledge that men and women can be led to commit, enable and ignore great evil should underlie any realistic approach to governing. Certainly any conservative approach to governing. “Civilization is hideously fragile,” said C.P. Snow. “. . . There’s not much between us and the horrors underneath. Just about a coat of varnish.”

These are the ultimate stakes of the political enterprise. I am talking about something in a different category from tax cuts and regulatory reform. Do political figures recognize the fragility of decency and humanity and guard them from fracture? Or do they shatter them for their own purposes by demonizing some group or faith? The cascade of consequences following this kind of act is more rapid than it has ever been before, due to the speed and amplification of modern technology. Many find permission for their worst instincts and corroboration for pernicious conspiracy theories. Some advocating more overt hatred emerge from under their digital rocks and are granted new visibility. A few of the unstable are given a cause that carries them into violence.

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HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

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HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

 

The light of the sun and moon cannot be outdistanced, yet mind reaches beyond them.

Galaxies are as infinite as grains of sand, yet mind spreads outside them.

(Myoan Eisai – A Japanese Zen Buddhist)

 

 

INTRODUCTION

Whereas human consciousness, intrinsically arising from human being’s naturally evolved brain is still a mystery; artificial intelligence, algorithmically developed and up loaded in a Silicon brain of a machine is a feat of human brain. Human being has for ages been following and is still following the way human consciousness directs, but the thinking machine is following in a way that mirrors billions of years of evolving brain and its consciousness. From ancient time to this day the phenomenon of human consciousness has intrigued many philosophers, mostly discussed for many centuries in subjective terms. But for Steven Arthur Pinker (born 1954) a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, linguist, and popular science author and a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University known for his advocacy of evolutionary psychology and computational theory of mind, “The brain, like it or not, is a machine. Scientists have come to the conclusion not because they are mechanistic killjoys, but because they have amassed evidence that every aspect of consciousness can be tied to the brain. . . Consciousness presents us with puzzle after puzzle. How can a neural event cause consciousness happen?” (Pinker in his work How the Mind Works p 132). Thus, the mystery of human consciousness, from the time of Cartesian cognition, “I think; therefore, I am,” became an open challenge for the neuroscientists. The idea of brain as a “thinking machine,” opened a window in human mind to create human brain’s digital double, capable of transmitting artificial intelligence. Toby Walsh in his book, Machines that Think remarks, “Not without irony, Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), [an English theoretical physicist, and cosmologist] welcomed a software update for his speech synthesizer with a warning that came in the electronic voice of that technology: ‘The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race’ (p. 8).”

Although the “cognitive revolution” has introduced pragmatic methods of studying thought and other inner experiences of our mind, neuroscience, even helped by modern technology, has not yet provided an easy way of finding an answer to the hard question of how does subjective experience of human consciousness arise from the objective activity of the human brain? How can our brain’s physical network of neurons, with all its chemical action, electromagnetic system, and interaction of billions of cells and circuits, create a mind that allows a unified awareness of our thinking, recognizing, remembering, feeling, predicting, cognizing, innumerable experiencing of our life and of the universe, repeating hundreds of millions of times in the neocortex, and finally, apparently giving birth to an instantly combined output of all inner experiences in the form of “consciousness?” While we haven’t been able to give a definitive or comprehensive delineation of human consciousness, a scientifically created and defined artificial intelligence is already around us—on screens, in our houses, and even in our pockets. One day it will be talking and walking with us as a family member.

We know that at the root of Artificial Intelligence’s technological appeal is the capability of the machine to be able to perform many tasks characteristic of human intelligence. According to Ray Kurzweil, a pioneering researcher in artificial intelligence, hybrids of biological and silicon-based intelligence will become possible and one day the contents of a human brain will be transferable into a metallic brain, as a CD-ROM uploads its software into a computer. Many thinkers, philosophers, and scientists have agreed that human consciousness is a unique human capability that arises when information is broadcast throughout the brain. But there is yet no central location in the brain identified as the seat of consciousness where—like a streaming data in the head— it can be mapped, copied and downloaded into a Silicon brain.

The pivotal question before us is still about the very nature of human consciousness: Is consciousness an input loaded into the brain through our sensory experiences, perception, memory, intelligence, and diverse media of subjectivity and objectivity that our cognitive process makes use? Or, is consciousness an extra entity that we humans have in addition to our abilities of perceiving, thinking, and feeling? Or, is it an intrinsic and inseparable part of a human being as a creature that can perceive, think, and feel? If it is an extra ingredient—as many of us think of our soul as an extra entity—then we are naturally inclined to ask, “Is it the distinctive telltale signature of a human being?” On the other hand, if we have evolved with it, then we want to know how and why only human consciousness has evolved? Further there is also an opinion that we all have three eyes—the third one inside the head, being the “pineal gland” in the human brain which has the structure of an eye. It has cells that act as light receptors, as the retina does. It has a structure comparable to the vitreous—a gel-like substance between the retina and lens of the eye similar to the shape of a lens. Scientists are researching to better understand the “pineal body”—considered in Eastern spiritualism and Western philosophy—as a possible seat of consciousness. Once scientists are able to develop an artificial pineal gland, the artificial intelligence then also be able to have an algorithmically working artificial consciousness.

  • HUMAN CONDITION AND INTELLIGENT MACHINES

 

Before we argue about the role of intelligent machines and their capability of consciousness that is the same or similar to that of humans, we need to understand more deeply about the nature of human consciousness. The Dictionary of Psychology of American Psychological Association tells, that the definition of consciousness is twofold:

The first describes consciousness as “the phenomena that humans report experiencing including mental contents that range from sensory to somatic perception to mental images, reportable ideas, inner speech, intentions to act, recalled memories, semantics, dreams, hallucinations, emotional feelings, ‘fringe’ feelings (e.g., a sense of knowledge), and aspects of cognitive and motor control.” The second part of the definition speaks of “any of various subjective states of awareness in which conscious contents can be reported—for example—altered states such as sleeping, as well as the global access function of consciousness, presenting an endless variety of the focal contents to executive control and decision making (1931).

History of man’s evolution reveals, that at a certain point of his evolution, when man transcended nature and ended his passive role of only a creature, he emancipated himself from the complete bindings of nature; first by an erect posture and second by the growth of his brain. The evolution of man may have taken billions of years; but what matters is that a patently new species to be identified as a human being arose transcending nature, recognizing life “aware of itself.” Self-awareness, reason and imagination, disrupted man’s harmony with nature that characterized his prehuman existence. Upon becoming aware of himself, the human being also realized the limitations of his existence, and his powerlessness at being a finite being. In his death he visualized his own end. But until today he is never free from this dichotomy of his existence. He cannot rid himself of his mind, even if he wants to; he cannot rid himself of his body as long as he is alive—rather his mind and body create in him a strong urge to be alive, and live an infinite life. He cannot go back to the prehuman state of his harmony with nature because he now views himself as a “special species.” He must proceed to develop his reason until he becomes the sovereign of his nature and a master of himself. But an awareness of his biological relation with the rest of animals poses a challenge to his conscious self. To assure himself that he is no more like an animal, he is tempted to demonstrate his merits as a special species through his unique physical advantage and exceptional intellectual eminence.

Human mind, an evolutionary product of his biological brain, is now changing the course of evolution by creating a digital double in his own image, equipped with artificial intelligence and emotions. Homo sapiens, from the time of their appearance on this planet, have used their neural mechanism in building tools which helped them to initiate a new form of evolution that brought about a social culture of sharing knowledge. As neurology gave birth to technology, the process of technology today has led us invariably to the creation of an amazing tool we call computer. The computer has enabled us to create an expansion of our knowledge base, permitting extensive multiple layers of links from one area of knowledge to another. Perceiving the distinctive appearance from other animals and the uniqueness of our intelligence, our power of communication, and our capability of acquiring and sharing knowledge on this planet, has given rise to a realization that humans are special creatures. But throughout our history of knowledge, scientists have mostly remained reticent to evaluate and prove with scientific reasoning our claim of being a special creature, fearing that they might not be supporting the religious doctrine of human exceptionalism of intelligent design. However, regardless of how humans got to be the way they are today, their intelligence with technology in their hands, has enabled them to overcome any biological hurdle to changing themselves in almost every aspect of their life. Hard scientific data is cumulated across vast spheres, ranging from ecology to epistemology, and cognitive psychology and consciousness, affirm that human beings are truly remarkable and are the only species we know that is achieving this. Today, by developing artificial intelligence, human beings are successfully changing the course of evolution by creating digital doubles in their own image. . . . to read full article please visit: https://independent.academia.edu/MirzaAshraf

Mirza I Ashraf – Academia.edu

independent.academia.edu

Mirza I Ashraf studies World Philosophies, Social Sciences, and International Relations.

Dams: To be or not to be by Daanish Mustafa

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If the water bureaucracy of Pakistan and Prime Minister Imran Khan are to be believed, the question of building dams has come to have the same import as its Shakespearean equivalent. To be or not to be was the question that Hamlet, the prince of Denmark, contemplated in the eponymous play as a choice between life and death. But is the choice really that stark as far as building dams is concerned? Can a piece of infrastructure, and that too as mundane as a wall in a river, be a matter of life and death for a country as large and diverse as Pakistan? My favourite analogy about the dam debate is the choice of transport between, say, Rawalpindi and Lahore. One could travel by airplane, train, car, bus, horse, foot and so on. In such a scenario, to declare that anyone thinking about traveling by any other mode but an airplane is an anti-development traitor and an Indian agent is simply madness. A madness that Pakistani society at this time is partaking in with a lot of gusto.
Every Pakistani should have adequate water to ensure their health and hygiene. The entire country should have enough water to support its food security and economic prosperity. But if the objective is to ensure water security, a dam is one instrument besides many others which can be applied to achieve this objective. Obsession with a single pathway to achieve water security, that is, dams, may not only be stupid but also downright expensive and counterproductive.
Many of the arguments supporting large dams are predicated upon a number of fallacies. Let us review the most salient of them. The first argument is that large dams are essential for water storage. It is not true. There are three types of water storage: glaciers, groundwater storage and surface water storage (through dams). From among these three types of storage, human beings cannot do anything about glaciers. Of the remaining two, surface storage is most expensive and wasteful because of evaporative and seepage losses as well as financial and environmental costs. Groundwater storage, on the other hand, is the most efficient and demand responsive. It is little wonder then that in the United States alone hundreds of dams are being decommissioned and water storage for the past 30 years has almost exclusively been undertaken in groundwater mode.
Pakistan is very fortunate to have vast aquifers underlying the Indus planes which provide up to 80 per cent of the crop water requirements in those areas where fresh groundwater is available. Wise management of those aquifers, and not mismanagement as is the case right now, could ensure up to 54 million acre feet (MAF) of stored water as compared to seven MAF that Kalabagh Dam could store in a year. So, the dam argument does not work as far as water storage is concerned because there are cheaper and more efficient ways of storing much more water.
The second argument in favour of dams is that we are running out of water and that we have to store water for when we have less of it. This also does not hold water. Firstly, we are not running out of water. There is no natural or physical process through which we can run out of water. The same amount of water we have had for thousands of years will be around for many more years. We just have to use that water wisely. Even after taking climate change into consideration, there is no scientifically legitimate scenario under which we run out of water. Also, dams do not create water; they store whatever water there is. If in another universe we were running out of water, dams would simply be empty in that case.
The third argument is that every year we waste 35 MAF of water that goes to the sea. For people in Karachi, it might be useful to visit Gharo and Keti Bandar to see what lack of water in the Indus delta does to land and lives. Water going to the sea is not wasted; it is essential for the ecology and livelihoods of people living in coastal areas. Also, a brief look at the amount of water flowing below Kotri Barrage tells a whole different story. For eight out of the past 10 years, the average annual flow of water below Kotri has been under 10 MAF; sometimes even less than five MAF. It is only in the flood years that enough water flows below Kotri Barrage to make up an average of 35 MAF over 10 years. Average flows are the most irrelevant number in the water sector, something that our engineers cannot seem to get their heads around. The upshot is that there is simply not enough water in the system for a large dam, the size of Kalabagh Dam or Diamer-Bhasha Dam, to become viable. If one cannot fill a dam for 75 per cent of the time over a decade, how does that make that dam financially or functionally viable?
The fourth argument is about energy: dams deliver cheap electricity. But given their capital cost, as researcher Hassan Abbas has calculated, a 100 watt bulb run on electricity produced from a dam will cost 100,000 rupees. We have abundant solar power potential using which means the cost of electricity can be 20 times cheaper than what we will pay for electricity from the Neelum-Jehlum project, for example.
Lastly, Diamer-Bhasha Dam is not so much a water storage dam as it is a hydroelectric dam with a projected cost of 14 billion US dollars which is likely to double over its construction period. All that one does with hydroelectric dams is to build an artificial waterfall. At the likely cost of 28 billion US dollars, Diamer-Bhasha Dam will probably be the most expensive artificial waterfall in the world. And that too on one of the most silt rich rivers and in the most seismically active zone in the world. The consequences of the dam’s failure in this case are too terrible to contemplate. It will mean the end of every infrastructure on the Indus and hundreds of thousands of lives. Do dams get built in seismically active zones? Of course, they do. But such dams, for example those built in California which are seismically active, tend to be of lower height, around 100 feet, to protect against their failure. We are instead proposing to build the highest dam in the world, at 933 feet, in a deep gorge. The foolhardiness of the proposal is simply stupefying.
The real cost of building Diamer-Bhasha Dam is likely to be 10 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Few countries in the world would spend 10 per cent of their GDP on a risky proposition.
Is there a water crisis in Pakistan? And what do we do about it, if not to build dams? There is certainly a water crisis in Pakistan and it is a lot worse than we think it is. And it has been around for decades. Children die of renal failure in Pakistan today due to lack of clean drinking water. In parts of Karachi, people have not received water in their taps for more than a decade. The crisis is urgent and it is here. The remedy suggests itself in the simple statistic from Pakistan’s water distribution policy — that 97 per cent of water in Pakistan is devoted to agriculture.
All human habitations combined in Pakistan, including large cities like Karachi, Lahore and Rawalpindi, can only lay claim to about two per cent of the available water. Industry also uses one per cent of the total water. Meanwhile, Pakistan is the second biggest exporter of cotton and one of the major exporters of rice and sugarcane. All three crops are major consumers of water, and all three, generally, are produced by large farmers. Simply removing subsidies on agricultural electricity, I would argue, will solve the problem of water waste in the agriculture sector in one go. Sensible crop choices could, furthermore, quadruple the amount of water available for the all-important domestic water supply sector.
To be or not to be, is not the question. Neither should the question be to dam or not to dam. The question should be: how do we give every Pakistani equitably access to water? How do we use water efficiently enough to get maximum economic benefit from it? How do we meet multiple expectations from water for our ecology, culture, economy and society? The biggest water crisis in Pakistan is its unjust distribution. Golf courses and exotic plants never face scarcity of water in big cities; only the poor have no water. Large sugarcane farms have plenty of water; small farmers do not have enough to grow food. These are the features of the water crisis that deserve immediate attention. And along the way if one needs to build a small dam here and there, to address the water crisis, then so be it.
posted by f.sheikh
The writer works at the department of geography at Kings’s College London.
This article was published in the Herald’s October 2018 issue. To read more subscribe to the Herald in print.