Bleeding Edge

When Socrates was asked what did He truly knew, he famously said that “I know One thing, and that is that I know Nothing”

Now many atheists are fond of arguing that God does not exist. And they have several methods of proof for that theory of theirs. They claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but ignore the billions who experience a divine presence in their lives each and every day.

They declaim the experience of Humans who for Millennia have been drawn to some divine experience of Spiritual value as their Godhead. They claim that a scientifically minded believer like myself, will be able to show you how the intelligent and anti-religious convincingly discount the existence of God, and then will show You why the 99% of people of this earth feeling the Divine inside of them — are wrong.

In the simplest possible terms, they do so by moving the yardsticks so as to make it impossible to score. It’s easy to paint God as a ridiculous pagan cariacture, complete with white beard and majestic hair, and then to go on and ask the couple prominent leading questions:

1) Can we really believe in the Great Bearded One in the Sky?

2) Can we do that in the 21st century?

Sadly the truth of God’s existence isn’t found in beards or in clouds either. Yet it is found in the lives of real people across this great and small planet we inhabit, that resembles a rock thrown across the Universe at great speeds. I’m not sure what evidence could be more extraordinary than the fact that every day, billions of people shape their lives around the knowledge that there is more to our existence than just the short few years we spend on earth, with the material induced body and our existence made of atoms randomly packed in our spectacularly predetermined existence.

I see something else entirely, because I see People who they go on to build lives of meaning, and purpose, with awesome families and unforeseen trajectories of Growth, that are directed around many different Spiritual traditions, but yet all circle the obvious underlying truth: There is something more to our existence here than what science can show us to be…

But don’t just listen to me. A recent Pew poll of scientists found that over half of scientists either believed in God, a universal spirit, or a higher power.

These are people who have dedicated their lives to the pursuit of science and logic, and over half of them accept that there is something bigger than them in the universe.

Among the regular population the data is even more compelling: a full 95% of the general public either believes in God, a universal spirit, or a higher power.

And it’s easy to confirm this with any one of them. You can simply ask them outright if they feel the presence of God in their lives. You can ask them directly if their lives would be different without this belief.

Billions of people will tell you, on any given day of any given week, that this is 100% true. And it is testable (see the Pew poll).

Talk about Disruption and Growth of Responsibility amongst people…

So we don’t actually have a lack of evidence for God: What we have is anti-religion types trying to define God in a way that makes it impossible. Sure, if you define God, or a universal spirit, or a higher power as something you can test and verify, there wouldn’t be evidence for that.

But that’s not the life that 95% of the world lives every day. That’s not how humans think about the world. To define God in that way is simply pedantic and impractical, and it accomplishes nothing other than congratulatory cheers from secularists.

When we speak of God, we do so within the context of real human beings on a real planet. These are people losing loved ones, people having children, and people readying themselves for death.

So, to the skeptics, rather than insisting on defining something out of existence, instead take a look from side to side. Look at your fellow doctors, policemen, baristas, and restaurant cooks.

They are the wellspring of the evidence you seek, and you only have to open your eyes to see it.

I created this argument for God as an analog to the current debate within the scientific community regarding free will.

The position being put forth by people like Daniel Dennett, Tamler Sommers, and a couple of my friends in a five year email debate is essentially the following:

We all experience free will
It’s dumb to define it in a way that we already know isn’t possible
So we should just call what we have “Free Will” and be done with it
This reduces to:

Free Will is the experience of having free will and that is the most iconic disruptive thing that exists out there, which by the way, maps quite nicely onto the notion that:

“God is people’s experience of greater meaning in their lives”

Or, stated differently, we should stop obsessing about reductionist definitions of “truth” and instead redefine truth from within the context of human experience.

In business things are being disrupted massively too and we need to redefine the context of the Human Experience there as well though the use of User Experience in Design.

Let’s look at the disruption this experiential lifestyle takes us to. Back in 1998, Kodak had 170,000 employees and sold 85% of all photo paper worldwide. Within just a few years, their business model disappeared and they got bankrupt.

What happened to Kodak will happen in a lot of industries in the next 10 year – and most people don’t see it coming.

Did you think in 1998 that 3 years later you would never take pictures on paper film again?

Yet digital cameras were invented in 1975. The first ones only had 10,000 pixels, but followed Moore ‘s law.

So as with all exponential technologies, it was a disappointment for a long time, before it became way superior and got mainstream in only a few short years.

It will now happen with artificial intelligence, health, autonomous and electric cars, education, 3D printing, agriculture and jobs.

Software will disrupt most traditional industries in the next 5-10 years…

Uber is just a software tool, they don’t own any cars, and are now the biggest taxi company in the world.

Airbnb is now the biggest hotel company in the world, although they don’t own any properties.

Artificial Intelligence: Computers become exponentially better in understanding the world. This year, a computer beat the best Go player in the world, 10 years earlier than expected.

In the US, young lawyers are already having difficulty finding jobs. Because of IBM Watson, you can get legal advice (so far for more or less basic stuff) within seconds, with 90% accuracy compared with 70% accuracy when done by humans.

There will be 90% less lawyers in the future, only specialists will remain.

Watson already helps nurses diagnosing cancer, 4 time more accurate than human nurses.

Facebook now has a pattern recognition software that can recognize faces better than humans.
In 2030, computers will become more intelligent than humans.

Autonomous and electric cars: In 2018 the first self-driving cars will appear for the public.

Around 2020, the complete industry will start to be disrupted.

You don’t want to own a car anymore.

You will call a car with your phone, it will show up at your location and drive you to your destination.

You will not need to park it, you only pay for the driven distance and can be productive while driving.

Our kids will never get a driver’s license and will never own a car.

It will change the cities, because we will need 90-95% less cars for that.

We can transform former parking space into parks. 1.2 million people die each year in car accidents worldwide.

We now have one accident every 100,000 km, with autonomous driving that will drop to one accident in 10 million km. That will save a million lives each year.

Most car companies might become bankrupt.

Traditional car companies try the evolutionary approach and just build a better car, while tech companies (Tesla, Apple, Google) will do the revolutionary approach and build a computer on wheels.

Engineers from Volkswagen and Audi are completely terrified of Tesla.

Insurance companies will have massive trouble because without accidents, the insurance will become 100x cheaper. Their car insurance business model will disappear.

Real estate will change. Because if you can work while you commute, people will move further away to live in a more beautiful neighborhood.

Electric cars will become mainstream until 2020.

Cities will be less noisy because all cars will run on electric.

Truly the future is uncertain but we have the fervent belief that it will be far better for us than the past…

Electricity will become incredibly cheap and clean: Solar production has been on an exponential curve for 30 years, but you can only now see the impact.

Last year, more solar energy was installed worldwide than fossil.

The price for solar will drop so much that all coal companies will be out of business by 2025.

With cheap electricity comes cheap and abundant water.

Desalination now only needs 2kWh per cubic meter.

We don’t have scarce water in most places, we only have scarce drinking water.

Imagine what will be possible if anyone can have as much clean water as he wants, for nearly no cost.

Health: The Tricorder X price will be announced this year.

There will be companies who will build a medical device (called the “Tricorder” from Star Trek) that works with your phone, which takes your retina scan, your blood sample and you breath into it. It then analyses 54 biomarkers that will identify nearly any disease. It will be cheap, so in a few years everyone on this planet will have access to world class medicine, nearly for free.

3D printing: The price of the cheapest 3D printer came down from 18,000$ to 400$ within 10 years. In the same time, it became 100 times faster. All major shoe companies started 3D printing shoes. Spare airplane parts are already 3D printed in remote airports. The space station now has a printer that eliminates the need for the large amount of spare parts they used to have in the past.

At the end of this year, new smartphones will have 3D scanning possibilities. You can then 3D scan your feet and print your perfect shoe at home.

In China, they have already 3D printed a complete 6-storey office building, piece by piece.

By 2027, 10% of everything that’s being produced will be 3D printed.

Business opportunities: If you think of a niche you want to go in, ask yourself: “in the future, do you think we will have that?” and if the answer is yes, how can you make that happen sooner?

If it doesn’t work with your phone, forget the idea. And any idea designed for success in the 20th century is doomed in to failure in the 21st century.

Work: 70-80% of jobs will disappear in the next 20 years.

There will be a lot of new jobs, but it is not clear if there will be enough new jobs in such a small time.

Agriculture: There will be a 100$ agricultural robot in the future. Farmers in 3rd world countries can then become managers of their field instead of working all days on their fields.

Aeroponics will need much less water. The first petri dish produced veal is now available and will be cheaper than cow produced veal in 2018. Right now, 30% of all agricultural surfaces is used for cows.

Imagine if we don’t need that space anymore.

There are several startups who will bring insect protein to the market shortly.
It contains more protein than meat. It will be labeled as “alternative protein source” (because most people still reject the idea of eating insects).

There is an app called “moodies” which can already tell in which mood you are.

Until 2020 there will be apps that can tell by your facial expressions if you are lying.

Imagine a political debate where it’s being displayed when they are telling the truth and when not.

Bitcoin will become mainstream this year and might even become the default reserve currency.

Longevity: Right now, the average life span increases by 3 months per year. Four years ago, the life span used to be 79 years, now it’s 80 years. The increase itself is increasing and by 2036, there will be more than one year increase per year.

So we all might live for a long, long time, probably way more than 100.

Education: The cheapest smartphones are already at 10$ in Africa and Asia. Until 2020, 70% of all humans will own a smartphone. That means, everyone has the same access to world class education.

Every child can use Khan academy for everything a child learns at school in First World countries. Already released software in Indonesia and will release it in Arabic, Swahili, and Chinese this Summer, because of an enormous potential.
English app for free, so that children in Africa can become fluent in English within half a year…

Welcome to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Welcome to the Exponential Age. And if that is proof that there is a Spirit guiding us forward at the most difficult times we traverse during our Lives — this ought to be it.

Yours,
Dr Churchill

PS:

Einstein when asked about the Existence of God or Not — He wisely deflected the bluntness of the Question and he said that some people live their lives as if nothing is a Miracle and some others live their lives as if everything is a Miracle.