Artists in politics

Artists taking part in politics, believe me, doesn't look good. They may even sound stupid. Politics isn't everything. Let its professionals do that.

Transcendence

On Tuesday, my fiance and I had a great time watching the movie Transcendence (2014). We enjoyed it a lot. Both of us are so much into the theme of the movie, Artificial Intelligence.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is debated in this movie. The story is ended with the deaths of Dr. Will and Evelyn Caster. Dr. Will Caster, who has invented an intelligent computer brain named "PINN", dies from cancer. Evelyn wants to bring back his husband to life through restoring his memories using the AI technology that Dr. Caster has invented. There are groups of people who are against these creations and want to stop them. Finally, they succeed to stop Dr. Caster, who is then an intelligent computer brain, by injecting a computer virus through the body of Evelyn. Evelyn gets shot and dies and Dr. Caster can't save her. Both die lying next to each other...

Artificial Intelligence, as a philosophical or ethical concept, is not a new thing. There are those, as depicted in this movie and also in another movie named "Her" that I have also recently watched, who believe AI is ethically questionable. At any point of time, man can hesitate and think about the ethicality of AI, or other somewhat similar concepts like "In vitro fertilisation" (IVF). From the view of man however, the righteousness license of these developments and breakthroughs are not issued by and from a meta-physical existence. Man quite a while ago decided on his own that exploring the nature is "OK" once he said "Cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). Nature is not any longer a sacred place full of magic, driven by meta-physical forces, where the entrance is not permitted. Man allowed his imagination to indefinitely explore the horizon of possibilities. Such a brain can travel thousands of years, with a speed of light, into the depth of the sky. And, that brain is also truly able to create a god, as it is best put by Dr. Caster, "Isn't this what man has always done?"

Pakistan: A Hard Country

I am reading "Pakistan: A Hard Country."

This book is especially recommended for those who angrily curse Pakistan without any hesitation or thought about why Pakistan, and by that I mean many different political, social, and religious fractions living together in this land, behaves the way it does. I am barely half the way through the whole book, but even now, I have realized how I was mistaken with my perceptions about Pakistan, the government, the army, its geopolitical environment, the past and the future, and many more things.

The author of the book, ‪Anatol Lieven‬ writes, "Pakistan is quite simply far more important to the region, the West and the world than is Afghanistan: a statement which is a matter not of sentiment but of mathematics. With more than 180 million people, Pakistan has nearly six times the population of Afghanistan (or Iraq), twice the population of Iran, and almost two-thirds the population of the entire Arab world put together. Pakistan has a large diaspora in Britain (and therefore in the EU), some of whom have joined the Islamist extremists and carried out terrorists attacks against Britain."
According to the author, it is true that the government of Pakistan supports the Afghani Taliban and by that it promotes extremism, however, it may also be the first stand against it.

Pakistan is made of many contradicting groups, fractions, ideas, however that won't be a cause for its collapse, if one wants to argue that. What may destroy the Pakistani system though will be the "flood and other ecological disasters" on the scale like that of the 2010.

You must read this book.

Participation

Extremism can only be resolved by providing chances for participation of isolated groups and fractions in the society. I don't expect politicians to understand this fact.