Josh Plovanic's Writings and Thoughts

So, a lot of my posts over the past year have been about information theory and ideas. I like to think about information and ideas a lot. Concepts like a hypothetical abstract realm of existence fascinate me and light up my mind.      I'm a war fanatic too. Any book or article that deals with war and warfare are an automatic tractor beam to my eyes. I've been thinking a lot about information warfare and mind warfare. I've written on these topics recently as well.       As I dived into deep thought about information warfare, I started thinking about the possibility of something akin to "information weapons." To put it shortly, weaponized information that cuts deep into the thinking processes of an enemy and cuts into their minds.       Depending on your intentions, these hypothetical information weapons would be used to either overthrow the minds of your enemy or induce self-destruction on your enemy.      Now this gets a little science-fictiony, but these weapons

     There is a blindness that plagues humanity, and it is far worse than any plague of a virus or disease. It is a blindness of the mind, where truth is concealed or lost in a sea of mass deception and distortion. It is a blindness to the reality of sin and evil. It is a blindness to the consequences of reckless and riotous living. It is a blindness that undercuts the conceptual foundation of our reality in the minds of millions of people. It is a blindness that takes away the value of sacredness and denies the existence of holiness and the divine. It is a blindness to the complexities and wonders of an infinite existence.  It is a blindness that causes us to be herded and maneuvered by powerful people and governments into positions that compromise our liberties and sabatoges our children's future. We often become unwitting and even seemingly willing agents of evil. This blindness, from my perspective, is far more dangerous than Covid-19. This blindness of the mind hinders the fut

    The microcosm fascinates me almost as much as the macrocosm does. The realm of the small has its own mysteries. Its own wonders. Its own beauty.     I am fascinated by quantum structures and the quantum level of the physical reality in general. The particles, the laws, quarks, gluons, bosons, fields, quantum foam, singularities, all these things perk my curiosity from time to time.       I am fascinated with zero-points. Points in space and time that are irreducible in their smallness and lie at the smallness boundary of our physical universe. Infinitely small points, to put it another way. I call it a boundary because I believe past this smallness boundary is not an absence or nothingness, but a broader infinity our physical realm is projected from.      As a follower of Christ, I find it interesting that the best way to geometrically symbolize a zero point is a cross. Two intersecting lines with the infinitely small point being where the lines intersect. I don't find pure coi

     Artificial Intelligence is a hot topic in many sectors of society, in particular the tech industry. Engineering an artificial electronic network that can calculate, has a level of creativity that can reasonably parallel that of a human, or reasoning and other cognitive processes, even possibly emotions.   Self-aware and sentient artificial systems are big tropes of science fiction and fantasy. We've come a long way with AI, and are probably a lot more advanced with it than I am aware, especially with the advent of quantum computing.    However, I want to focus on another form of intelligence engineering. This one has a few more ethical questions and considerations than AI does. It is the engineering of human intelligence. Essentially enhancing the intelligence and cognitive capacity of human beings. It is a morally and ethically questionable undertaking, and has many risks as well as benefits From my thinking, I have contemplated 4 major avenues of engineering human intelligen

Modeling can be a difficult process in itself, but one of the great flaws of artificial models is that when applied to real world complex systems, models of those systems are often oversimplified, and since you can never have a complete awareness or measurement of all the information present in a system and all the variables, the model and the predictions made within the model often fail to be accurate and are not successfully applied to a real world scenario.     Often times the complexity of the variables of the scenario is too great and results in a great degree of unpredictability within the system that no artificial model, no matter how empirical the model is, can successfully apply to the scenario and flawlessly predict its outcomes. This is known as the Ludic Fallacy. The Ludic fallacy was first described by a statistician by the name of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. He describes it as "the misuse of games to model real life situations."       Games are a foundational compone

          Conventional warfare against the United States is foolish and a losing strategy. Our global competitors know this. The weapons are so powerful and technology so advanced that conventional wars would be much quicker and much deadlier. It is not in the interests of most world powers to pick a fight with the U.S. in the traditional sense.      However, their are a few nation-states that stand to reap an economic and strategic benefit from a weakened and destabilized United States, like Russia or China. They know that it is counterproductive and detrimental to their objectives to start a war to weaken America, but their are other ways of weakening the United States.       Since highly destructive weapons and advanced technology created the "mutually assured destruction" scenario, this has forced competing nation-states to fight wars unconventionally, through proxies or alternative forms of warfare, like chemical or cyber, and nations have been doing this for quite some

   I had a talk with a friend today, and one of the topics that came up in this conversation was differentness. Differentness in regards to human beings and human behavior to be more specific.       I've seen a lot of different tropes in media and cinema about differentness and conformity. Many of them are moral arguments, like the quasimodos or the nightcrawlers of X-men that try to reinforce the point of appearances not conveying the nature of someone's spirit or personality. "People can't see what's beyond their own two eyes" as nightcrawler put it in one of the x-men movies.       It's amazing how that point still needs reinforcing. No matter how advanced we may become technologically or socially, humanity will always retain a degree of its animal lineage. Many of us still fear and even hate what we don't understand. Many people still can't see beyond face value.        Even today, differentness is punished, mocked, ridiculed, and the distingui

A human system cannot stand for long if a significant majority of the participants of that system don't understand how that system works. If the ignorance of the operations and mechanisms of the system are massively widespread, neither can that system lay claim to being a system of liberty.      If the saying "the price of liberty is eternal vigilance" is true, than the death of liberty is when that vigilance gives way to ignorance.       Ignorance has many causes. A general disinterest in the processes of a government or society, mass distraction or "bread and circuses" situation, confusion caused by the complexity of the system, or outright deception are major causes of the ignorance that degrades human systems.        Another major cause of the breakdown of human systems is decadence. An overabundance of pleasure and leisure and the overindulgence of these things creates a situation where many individuals no longer need to understand the system nor have a des

 I don't base my worth based on how intelligent I am. I know this society places a dollar value on people based on how useful they are to the interests of those who run this place, and that often involves intelligence, but I view my worth from my own perspective is based on how I treat people.  This world has too many arrogant people who get their sense of worth based on how superior they feel towards other people. It has too many cruel people. Too many predatory people. Too much hate.      Kindness and compassion seem to be a dying art in a lot of places.  If I have to sacrifice my kindness and compassion for wealth and power I deserve none of these given to me by anyone. I know I have an arrogant streak. I know I have gifts that others don't. I get a little competitive when others hold over me what they are better than me at and what they have that I don't. I still go out of my way to ask strangers how their day is going and tell them to have a good day and take care of t

   Lately I have been having an uneasy feeling in my mind. I don't know if I'd call it an angst, but it is a general discomfort I've been having in my mind the past couple weeks. It's hard to describe, but the best way to describe it is like I'm mentally hovering over an abyss and all that's keeping me from falling is a paperthin sheet of clear plastic.       Now that may sound more distressing than I actually am right now. I'm (mostly) quite calm and stable. It's more of an unease about reality where I'm questioning reality, and my sanity to an extent, far more than I need to.        This unease in my mind often leads to a lot of fear and anxiety about the world, and the feeling of standing on a thin and fragile foundation is quite uncomfortable, but I remain calm and relatively controlled even with the feeling. The feeling is one of the biggest incentives for my writing. I document everything.  I do it to create an "information foundation"

       Games are one of the most effective and powerful avenues for giving a human being a sense of purpose and a reason to exist.         To start, lets define a game as any interaction between two or more conscious entities or  between a conscious entity and a force of nature where there is a clear goal you are trying to achieve, a set of objectives to complete to reach that goal, and a procedure specific to that particular game that you follow over the course of time needed (or set in the case of games with time constraints) to reach the objectives and goals.     By that rather long definition, a lot of situations in life could be considered a game. Football is a game in this sense, or chess, but by this definition of games so is war.      I must clarify, not all games are fun. Some are brutal and dangerous, but I consider them to be games still because of the dynamics and structure of those situations.        As for purpose? Games create a massive sense of purpose for an individual