thoughtfulanalyst

[thoughtfulanalyst]

It's my 2 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

[thoughtfulanalyst]

Is Human Consciousness an Essential Component of Reality?

Since I was a kid, I have always been fascinated by the concept of consciousness. I have always wondered about what is real and what is unreal. I have always wondered if consciousness is a product of the human brain or perhaps a deeper, even spiritual, matter. What interested me the most in picking this topic, just like many psychologists and neuroscientists, is the curiosity to understand the relationship between consciousness and reality and whether our reality is objective or not.

The idea that consciousness is essential to reality is an old philosophical concept shared by a variety of religions. In actuality, a fundamentality of consciousness is a philosophical stance that has been maintained by several thinkers throughout history. Prior to proceeding, we must define consciousness. Many things may spring to mind when we consider consciousness, including our senses of sight, smell, and touch, among others. The term consciousness is defined simply by philosophers as awareness/experience. Despite millennia of philosophical and scientific analysis, definitions, and arguments, consciousness remains enigmatic and contentious. (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/)

In order to differentiate between consciousness and reality, we might define reality as the total of all that exists inside a system, as opposed to that which is only imagined. Additionally, the phrase refers to the ontological condition of objects, demonstrating their existence. Under the umbrella of ontology, philosophical concerns about the nature of reality are examined. Consciousness has recently been an important area of multidisciplinary research in cognitive science, integrating disciplines like psychology, linguistics, anthropology, neuropsychology, and neuroscience. (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203449486)

In his 2019 book, "The Case Against Reality," Professor Hoffman challenges us to reconsider what we believe about the visible world. Hoffman stresses that what we perceive to be the essence of our world is actually our subjective reality or present interface. Thus, the question of the relationship between consciousness and reality emerges. Are they connected or unconnected? Does the objective reality reported back by our senses paint a complete picture of the true reality? Is it possible that the world we see is not objective reality and it is just an interface to a deeper, true reality https://www.bridgingthegaps.ie/tag/psychology/

Donald David Hoffman is a cognitive psychologist and popular science author from the United States. He holds dual positions in the Departments of Philosophy, Logic and Philosophy of Science, and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, where he teaches at the Department of Cognitive Sciences (Donald D. Hoffman - Wikipedia).

Hoffman investigates consciousness, visual perception, and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical tests. His study focuses on perception, evolution, and consciousness (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027796007913). He is the co-author of two technical books: Observer Mechanics: A Formal Theory of Perception (1989) provides a theory of consciousness and its link to physics, and Automotive Illumination and Human Vision (2005) applies vision science to vehicle lighting. His 1998 book Visual Intelligence: How We Create What We See describes the contemporary science of visual perception to a wide audience. In his 2015 TED Talk titled "Do we view reality as it is? ", he contends that human senses have evolved to conceal reality from us.

Donald Hoffman believes that all main scientific theories, such as Einstein’s theory, theories and our present understanding of Quantum Physics and the theory of natural selection, all inform us that our present approach of trying to understand reality is not working.

Recent interest in the hard problem of consciousness and developments in the fields of neuroscience, psychology, and quantum physics have revived interest in panpsychism in the 21st century. Personally, consciousness is a fundamental element of reality, and there is more to consciousness than just physical processes in the brain. Neuroscience alone is not enough to understand consciousness. So how should research on consciousness be conducted? Using neuroscience, scientists are trying to map the human brain, and are trying to find neural correlate for all brain activities and for all experiences; will this research one day lead to the discovery of neural correlate of consciousness, and will these neural correlates of consciousness inform us where consciousness originate and how does it functions? At times, I wonder if the universe is in a simulation or if is it possible that we are all just dreaming, hoping to wake up one day.

Artificial intelligence, which cuts across every sphere of life, has taken the spotlight as regards consciousness for inanimate objects. AI and psychology are somewhat related as they seem to point toward consciousness. While humans have a carbon-based consciousness, smart machines, on the other hand, have a silicon-based consciousness. Consciousness is the only intrinsic part of reality that we truly know. We are the literal source of reality. The things we see, touch, and smell will be present unless we notice them.

The reality that people encounter every day is not a reality in and of itself. It is a perception "out there" via the lens of a fixed position and predefined point of view — people’s point of view. Our senses, language, and knowledge, or lack thereof, are all constrained. However, it assists us in functioning in this world, particularly in engaging in reasonably effective relationships with our environment and social partners (most of the time). Thus, even if we do not fully comprehend reality, we may nevertheless grow and prosper in the world as we know it. Our perception of reality is based on the density of our awareness. The mind/body/spirit complexes of humans have been evolving at a self-aware level of consciousness for about 70,000 years. We need a new theory of evolution in the broad sense of a new dynamic; it need not resemble evolution based on natural selection. We demand dynamic awareness. One limitation of this dynamic is that it must appear to be evolution by natural selection at the space-time interface when projected back to our current space-time.

CONCLUSION

Our impressions of reality are mediated by a complicated network of conscious and unconscious interpretations. Without consciousness, there is no reality in any of the forms we can conceive of it. Consciousness enables us to perceive what lies before us. This ability is shared by the vast majority of animals. So far as we can tell, this is the genuine essence of fundamental thought. Although animals do not reflect or think in the same manner as humans, we share a fundamental mental framework throughout our whole lives. We experience it daily when we react emotionally to an incident or circumstance. Although we may subsequently reflect on our experience and verbalize it, none of this is intentional. As we construct ever-more-intelligent AI systems, perhaps we should pause for a moment to consider the world from the unique vantage point of a cognitive scientist. In the next years, consciousness research at the interface of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology will continue to be both an inspiration and a challenge for scientists. In our pursuit of artificial intelligence, we may learn that the technologies we consider to be cutting-edge today will be made obsolete by the technologies we uncover along the road. In conclusion, the fundamental nature of reality requires more study for the purpose of clarity.

[thoughtfulanalyst]

Dark Data: The future of Information Security

What interested me the most in picking this topic was that it gave me the initial thought that it would have the same meaning as the dark web. Surprisingly, in line with the research conducted, it was discovered that the Dark web and Dark Data have totally different meanings.

The dark web is a hidden part of the internet that can only be accessed with the Tor browser. You must know the precise address of the website you wish to access because dark web pages do not show up when you search for them in search engines. Typically, this area of the internet is referred to as "dangerous." The dark web is often stereotyped as where illegal actions like the sale of illegal substances and the employment of assassins occur. Even if the dark web is home to more than simply illegal marketplaces, there are still risks there.

For journalists and whistleblowers, the dark web can be a secure platform for unrestricted communication. In contrast, Dark Data is the summation of all unutilized, unexploited, and untapped data in a company that is produced by users' daily interactions with numerous devices and systems online, including machine data, server log files, and unstructured social media data. Organizations might view this data as obsolete, redundant, incomplete, or restricted by a format that cannot be used with current technologies. They frequently are not even aware that it exists.

Dark data, however, might be one of a company's most valuable untapped resources. Bridging the Gaps – “Dark Data: Why What You Don’t Know Matters” with Professor David Hand

This write-up will dwell more on Dark Data: Why what you don’t know matters with Professor David Hand: Home - Professor David Hand (imperial.ac.uk). Professor David Hand, who formerly held the Chair in Statistics, is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Senior Research Investigator at Imperial College, London. He has held (twice) the office of President of the Royal Statistical Society and is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Fellow of the Institute of Actuaries. He served on the European Statistical Advisory Committee and as a non-executive director of the UK Statistics Authority for eight years. He serves as the chair of both the ONS's Centre for Applied Data Ethics Advisory Committee and the National Statistician's Expert User Advisory Committee. He has served as the UK's Administrative Data Research Network's Chair as well as the Research Board Chair of Imperial College's Data Science Institute. He served as Winton Capital Management's Chief Scientific Advisor for eight years. In addition to 32 books, he has authored 300 scientific papers.

As we all know, data collection can be automated, and this can take various forms, which are included in the types of dark data. Dark data can vary in various types namely:

Log files (servers, systems, architecture, etc.)

Previous employee data

Financial statements

Geolocation data

Raw survey data

Surveillance video footage

Customer call records

Email correspondence

Notes, presentations, or old documents.

According to a recent survey by Splunk, 55 % of data gathered by companies is classified as dark. That means more than half of the data collected never gets used.

Here is a scenario, for instance, there is a need for an individual to check their account balance through a mobile banking application; the individual might think that they are only providing their credentials, but in reality, they are actually generating larger amounts of other data such as their login time and data location, date, browser used and IP address this data often ends up being stored for regulatory reasons only and is rarely used for any other purpose including Business Intelligence Analytics and this is how dark data comes to light.

There are some useful importance and risks associated with dark data. Over recent years, companies have realized that the value of leveraging dark data could be enormous; if executed correctly, it could yield impressive insights and results.

Importance of Dark Data

Discover insight from hidden data: For a better group, companies can utilize dark data to identify crucial insights that would have otherwise remained hidden.

Diversify your data analysis: Insight tends to be more relevant, accurate, and precise when the original data source is more relevant, precise, and accurate. If companies want more comprehensive and quality results, they need to expand their boundaries and begin investing in their dark data because dark data includes unstructured and non-traditional data. It offers unique contributions to the raw data pool and business pipeline.

Associated Risk of Dark Data

Unspecified source and authenticity of the data: Dark data is left unmanaged, unregulated, and unorganized. It is more susceptible to data contamination than active data; this makes it difficult to evaluate the validity, authenticity, and source of dark data and its derivation insights which can cause monetary or brand value losses as well as companies concern.

High Storage Cost: If companies are not actively managing, analyzing, and leveraging their dark data, it simply becomes clutter that takes up valuable space; whether it is slowing down your servers or cluttering your cloud storage, a growing amount of dark data will increase your storage and maintenance cost as well. With that being said, the best approach for businesses to take is to either delete or convert their dark data.

Conclusion

As new computing methods for data processing are developed, reports indicate that the value of dark data will increase. Technological advances are facilitating the economic utilization of this dark data, but numerous businesses are yet to recognize its significance of dark data.

In healthcare and education, for instance, vast volumes of data might generate a substantial potential to serve patients and students in the same way that consumers and financial services seek their intended targets. To wrap up, dark data can yield valuable competitive and unique insights when managed and utilized correctly. As a result, leading business intelligence companies like Cubewave have developed tools and solutions for businesses to make the most of all their data dark or active.

Finally, to stay ahead of the curve in today’s increasingly saturated market, companies need to rethink their data strategy and invest in the right software to illuminate their dark data.

[thoughtfulanalyst]

The Price to be Paid with the Innovation Technology

I selected this topic because I am in the line of technology, which is something I love to talk about. Technology is used in our daily lives as individuals and companies. We use technology from making our clothes clean by using the washing machine, to communicating with colleagues or customers, especially the work from home being implemented. I know it is a very broad field that involves different aspects. With regards to this topic, here is the link I selected Bridging the Gaps – "The Technology Trap" and the Future of Work with Dr Carl Frey.

Carl Frey, an Oxford Martin Citi Fellow who oversees the program on Technology & Employment at the Oxford Martin School, is the invited participant in this study. The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and Power in the Age of Automation is one of his books.

Frey received his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition in 2011 after completing his studies in economics, history, and management at the University of Lund. He subsequently joined the Oxford Martin School, where he founded the curriculum on Technology & Employment with sponsorship from Citigroup. He was an instructor at the Lund University Department of Economic History from 2012 to 2014. In his most recent book, The Technology Trap: Capital, Labour, and Power in the Age of Automation, Frey—who is currently the coordinator of the Future of Work Programme at the Oxford Martin School and is recognized as one of the world's foremost experts on the effects of automation—examines the effects of technological change in greater detail.

This book has two key lessons for readers to remember. First, whether people will oppose technology relies on whether it will affect them financially. Second, as history has demonstrated, effective opposition requires the backing of those in authority. Resistance is pointless without it. Although this may seem obvious, I found Frey's distinction between enabling and replacing technologies eye-opening because not all technology is created equal. Usually, enabling technology benefits employees by increasing productivity or making physically taxing tasks easier. The foundation of the argument is the contrast between technologies that support labor and those that replace it. In contrast to labor-replacing technologies, which completely remove employees from the labor market and force them to reskill or look for other possibilities, labor-enabling technologies complement workers by increasing productivity and creating prospects for new jobs. The Technology Trap is a timely warning that although technological progress may be advantageous to everyone in the long term, some workers may pay lifetime adjustment costs.

However, Frey's assertion regarding the value of education should cause concern in the UK. Budget cuts currently underway coupled with a general slowdown in the buildup of human capital would put workers (both present and future) in even greater difficulties in the so-called race between technology and education. The Technology Trap is a great and original reminder that current policy decisions will determine how work will be done in the future, even though it may leave readers with more questions than answers. It deserves to be widely read because it may be the most thorough explanation of automation to date.

In conclusion, technologies benefit society in several ways as it helps ease the workload of humans and make them complete tasks on time. However, we also discovered that as technology advances at this age and time, it has its side effect. Nowadays, we use machines to produce many products; however, most of these machines require the aid of humans for them to function, and as much as we would require the machine to produce lots of products, the humans that work alongside the machines have to be active for the number of hours the machine is to function. This means there is still a need for human power factors in order to make these machines function adequately. However, the use of machines will require only a few people thereby reducing the number of manpower needed compared to if the task were to be done manually. This corroborates with what Carl said about people losing their jobs as a result of the invention of technology. Furthermore, the few hands operating these machines often work overtime and end up not enjoying the monotonous routine of the same daily task. This has made many people resign from their jobs.

Secondly, just like in the era of covid 19, people had to work from home as a result of the pandemic, and companies were not ready for this automation. This brings us to the fact that as much as technology is the world's future, some individuals are not ready to transform into this new lifestyle of using technology, in some cases, artificial intelligence for their daily activities or even jobs. It is difficult for people to take this journey of transition, which is why humans need to be carried along through the journey of automation. This can be done through companies creating awareness, conducting training for staff, and gradually converting their daily activities into the mode of using the new technology. This way, things would not be overwhelming for employees.

Furthermore, the advancement of technology and automation will greatly impact the educational system. Currently, virtually every youth wants to be a web/software developer, which can be achieved with just a high school diploma and proper boot camp training. This will lead to a decline in the number of those pursuing a bachelor's degree and ultimately lead to a reduction of students' interest in other fields of education such as sciences, history, anthropology, philosophy etc. This translates to a reduction in the number of students in class, leading to a reduction of physical teachers, seeing that robots can also do human tasks. Ultimately, technological advancement will change the traditional educational system having its pros and cons. This technological advancement might lead to a decline in societal norms and values as most people who learn remotely can choose to learn whatever they want to learn, at any time and anywhere.

In summary, there is a looming technology trap that needs urgent attention so we do not end up creating secondary problems after solving primary challenges. As such, the choices we make and the policies we devise and put into effect today will significantly impact the nature of work and the state of the labor market in the years to come.

[thoughtfulanalyst]

Three probing questions to decipher human personalities.

1. What step do you take to manage stress?

2. What five adjective describes you best?

3. Do you think dream holds meaning?

[thoughtfulanalyst]

The Major New Developments in Cyber Security

Cyber Security is the protection of internet-connected systems such as hardware, software and data from cyberthreats. The practice of cyber security is used by individuals and enterprises to protect against unauthorized access to data centers and other computerized systems.

With the increase in cyber-attacks per second, outlined below are some of the recent major developments and innovations in cybersecurity which may provide us with 360 security protection in our businesses and other aspects of cyber life.

IOT Security Posture: IOT security posture takes zero trust and defense-in-depth approaches by placing security controls across the IoT system at multiple layers, thereby safeguarding connected devices and networks on the internet of things devices.

Virtual Dispersive Networking (VDN):VDN follows the approaches of traditional military radio spread spectrum security. VDN divides the original message into some multiple parts, and it encrypts each component separately and routes them over many servers, computers, and even mobile phones. When it comes to the role of Hackers, they are left scrambling to find out data parts as they go through like data centers, Cloud, Internet etc.

The cyber security benefit of this innovation is that:

I. Unparalleled Security: Dispersing the data over multiple different paths, eliminates the Man-in-the-Middle threat. Hackers can only obtain a small chunk of the original data on any given pathway, rendering any data obtained meaningless and nearly impossible to decrypt.

II. Speed/Performance: Since the dataflow is from multiple independent paths using unique methods, it increases available bandwidth and optimizes data flow on individual pathways. Therefore, speed and performance are improved.

Zero Trust: Zero Trust is a strategic initiative that helps prevent successful data breaches by eliminating the concept of trust from an organization’s network architecture. The Zero Trust policy determines who can transmit the micro perimeter at any point in time, preventing access by unauthorized users and preventing the exfiltration of sensitive data.

AI and Machine Learning: Artificial intelligence has been a major contributor to the advancement of cyber security and intrinsic component which is Machine Learning is currently be used to identify malicious behavior from hackers by modeling network behavior and enhancing comprehensive threat detection.

Multi- factor Authentication: This is a security enhancement that allows the presentation two credentials when logging in to an account. The benefits of the MFA is that It assures consumer identity and compliances with Single sign on login (especially in the area of one-time password).

Behavioral fuzz testing: Fuzzing is the art of automatic bug detection. The goal of fuzzing is to stress the application and cause unexpected behavior, resource leaks, or crashes. The process involves throwing invalid, unexpected, or random data as inputs at a computer. Fuzzers repeat this process and monitor the environment until they detect a vulnerability. Development, Security and Operations teams can learn in advance what the effects of a possible attack could be, and perhaps what countermeasures can be taken in advance.

In conclusion, the major developments in cybersecurity as really improved the security of information management and businesses and this has helped in mitigating risks of data loss, ransomware and many other cyber related attacks /threats.

[thoughtfulanalyst]

Major cybersecurity challenges in our world today

Due to the covid 19 outbreak, an uptick in sophisticated schemes of cyber-attacks is on the increase. And as such there are threats that pose to the cyber security world presently. And I would be drawing our attention to some of these threats as this would be very informative for our day-to-day activities in our various aspects of life.

Here are some of the major challenges:

1. Phishing Attacks: Phishing is still one of the most occurred attacks in the cyber world. And this is because attackers on their part are attackers are relentless & aggressive. They are always out there coming up with different tactics on how to manipulate people to clicking on phished emails and thereby tricking the target into believing the email is from a legit site.

Solution

Internet users must now be security conscious by not interfacing with links or attachment found on email or randomly on websites as well as pop – ups which are of questionable features.

2. Social Engineering: This is a non-technical means of gaining information from a target. This is done either by having a physical conversation with the target or through voice-over conversations. Their first step in doing this, is gaining trust from the target and this is done by coming up with conversations that the target is comfortable discussing; through this means the target opens up to the attacker about their private life and also other confidential information which the attackers need in carrying out their malicious agenda.

Solution

Do not be in a hurry to give out information when pressured by the attacker as social engineering requires a form of urgency on the part of the attacker. The urgency to get the information as soon as possible from the target.

3. Ransomware: According to our research, 1,097 organizations were hit by ransomware attacks in the first half of 2021.This cyber-attack caused downtime, defection or total disruption or collapse. Ransomware involves encrypting the company's data thus limiting access to the data and then forcing the company to pay a ransom before the data can be decrypted and accessed by the company.

Solution

Companies and organizations should make sure to deploy a cloud security backup system so that this does not by any means slow down effective production and access to data when needed.

4. Insider Threat: Insider Threat is a risk to an organization that is caused either intentionally or accidentally by either employee, formal employee, contractors or associates Most companies do not pay attention to this, not knowing that this could pose more threat to the workspace as a whole. These actors have access to critical data which can cause harmful effects on the company.

Solution

The company should develop a strong security awareness training for all staff of the company.

Cyberattacks are posing more threats to businesses, government and individuals and this is causing lots of concern. Internet users also need to protect themselves from threats and vulnerabilities as they occur, same way we cannot leave our house unlocked we should also try to implement same strategy to our cyber world by patching vulnerabilities and updating applications in order to reduce the risk vulnerabilities could pose to our network.