Miscellaneous Topics

From Javul
Revision as of 14:06, 6 November 2022 by Usmaan (talk | contribs)
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Various topics were moved here to consolidate so the 'All Site Pages' link only contains relevant/current material that is useful or will be used for implementation.

Website is under construction

This website javul.org is currently under construction. Many of the links or functionalities don't work as expected. You're welcome to check the current list of issues on github and report any new issues you find.

Javul Information Technology Group

Wikipedia, also a project that depends on volunteers, runs on the Mediawiki software which is open sourced and is continuously improved.

A critical part of the project, the Javul Information Technology Group will consist of volunteer and paid software developers who work to improve the project’s features and also look at requests for new software development which helps to fulfil the mission of project. Code repositories such as GitHub or BitBucket.org can be used to make it easy for people to join and contribute. This group will have its own Unit on the website.

This group will also create standards for software that others should follow. It will rate popular software according to how well the standards are followed.

The products of the group will be software, websites, phone apps and other IT components that will assist in managing effective leadership and governments, providing improved health care, fighting crime and so on.

Software based leadership and management system can be used for organizations of any size, whether its a small bakery, a national food chain, an airline or even a political system to replace old-fashioned ineffective governments. In fact fighting crime and creating better more responsible and accountable political systems is one of the core aims of this project.

There are many external initiatives that others are working on.

General Software Guidelines

  • Software should be universal so it can be used in any country
  • Utility/ease of use is more important than appearance and the 'cool' factor. It should be set as default and users should be allowed to change over to other options so they have the freedom to set the options according to their preferences.
  • User preferences: A critical aspect of good software is that it should be able to cater to preferences of multiple groups of the population. The default functionality can change over time and it should always be what most people want. There should be options for other groups to change the functionality based on what they like. A software should not just provide one set of preferences and set it as default. This always results in multiple groups being dissatisfied. J’s software development group would create guidelines on how this can be done and will rate all software according to how well people’s preferences have been taken into account.

Here are additional guidelines that we can create. They're just examples to get us started:

  • If a window has an 'X' button to close it, the ESC key should also work for the same functionality.
  • Ability to Zoom in should be provided if useful and the shortcut for that will be CTRL +/-
  • Windows should be easy to resize, with 3 pixels available for the resize controls both inside and outside the borders of the window.
  • Every software, web page, every app interface will have a 'Report a Problem' link that interfaces with Javul's 'Report a Problem' app
  • In internet browsers, Exit popups should be blocked and any website that uses this feature should receiving a negative rating for engaging in this practice. The same is true for websites that automatically play videos with sound, or implement any kind of parallel animations (or websites need to respect the animations setting that are done in the browser settings)

Examples of Bad Software Techniques

  • Making it look 'cool' and reducing usability: Why does the Calculator take so long to load? - this is absolutely unacceptable. We need alternatives for Windows because they do things like this and refuse to do anything about it. We want better software, not worse. It doesnt matter what the reasons are for this change. If the overall experience is now negative, then the change is not valid. At least the user should be given options to switch back to versions that are more usable.

Useful Links

  • https://www.openelement.com * openElement is a free website building application with a WYSIWYG interface ("What You See Is What You Get"). The software automatically generates the necessary code for a website to display and function correctly, without the creative constraints imposed by other tools. The benefit to users is a simpler approach for beginners and a faster approach to repetitive tasks for professionals.
  • OpenProject - Github (project management with some features)

Javul Manufacturing Group

This group would start by managing the contract manufacturing of some popular products such as smart phones. There are a lot of contract manufacturers located around the world such as Brazil, China including . A few key characteristics would be full transparency, customer satisfaction and open-design. The cost of creating the product would be public knowledge. Requirements and feedback would be gathered from customers to design and improve the product. Everyone would be able to take part in the design process.

Culture Change

The video that inspired the creation of this page is: Young girls force-fed for marriage in Mauritania | Unreported World

Our leaders need to recognize situations in which culture needs to be changed and they need to figure out a way how to do this. This could be done via education, seminars, advertising, classes, rewards for compliance, periodic checks on progress and so on. How do we decide when a specific component of a culture needs to be changed? This is something that people can decide however we can have a set of basic rules such as:

  • respect for human rights
  • reduction of divisive elements in society
  • Ignoring science (e.g. Cupping therapy)

Links

A new way of doing things

No idea on this website is unique or extraordinary. People have thought about wanting to live cooperatively since a long time and have been trying to solve various issues in society.

What is different now compared to 30 or 300 years ago? Internet exists and its popular and everyone is connected via their smartphones or computers. This type of global network did not exist 30 years ago. The internet already enables cooperation of different kind, Wikipedia being a prime example which is built by volunteers. Because of the internet we have the opportunity to utilize this network to further strengthen human cooperation.

People attempt to find single ‘unification’ theories or process models for things. By experience and intuition they feel a single theory can work for certain areas. For example scientists have pursued the 'grand unification theory'. Machine learning experts such as Andrew Ng have suggested that there can be one way of implementing machine learning so a machine doesn't have to be specifically programmed to do a certain task. Working on some of these unification theories is hard work as it involves a lot of knowledge and experience.

Javul aims to create and improve a single system that can work for all areas of society where progress can be contributed by anyone. Such a system is actually relatively simple to think of. The rest of the documentation talks about what elements this system will have, such as Units, Tasks and Objectives, feedback system and a way to maximize transparency and so on. While this simple system can be applied to almost any situation we have to also remember that most problems require their own unique solutions and this reddit link is a good example: What is the point of using screws with a Phillips head, flathead, allen, hex, etc. instead of just having one universal screw type?

How people use the problem-solving tools provided by Javul is up to them. They can be used to create and meet objectives, some examples of which are mentioned in this document. For example, one aim can be to reduce or eliminate the rule of corporations and governments as they exist in today’s world and to transfer the power they have over the masses to competent, knowledgeable and hard-working groups of people while maintaining full public accountability and transparency. This would be a new way to run the world. The great thing about the tools offered by Javul is that they can be used in any situation, by any group, individual or organization.

Introducing a new model for society

Currently the model that the world runs on is based on personal requirements. People work for a living to buy things that have some utility for them. The primary motive of companies today is to make a profit. This project can try to introduce other models in addition to the one we already have.

Both kinds of models would exist. The new model would encourage people work for things that are beneficial for society. Creating a successful model where the masses are strongly motivated to work for improvement of society is one of the goals of this project. Currently only a small portion of society spends significant amounts of their time for the improvement of society. These people are found in activist organisations and volunteer groups and they are usually doing the work for free although there are non-profit organizations as well which do the same kind of work. All of them form a small percentage of society. Our goal is to significantly increase this percentage.

It's important to notice that Javul does not support penalization of undesired or bad behavior but rather rewarding those who engage in good behavior. This means no one should be forced in do anything they don’t want to do.

Smart and hard working have existing throughout human history. One difference between then and now is the internet. It can enable people in remote locations in a way that was not possible before.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming, Light-bulb moments and Creativity - these are similar words that have the same concept. How do we increase brainstorming, generation, preservation and evolution of new ideas? Contributions of this nature need full recognition and compensation if possible. This is critical. Without creativity, we cannot have effective problem-solving. This topic requires a special focus.

Improving Leadership

Poor political leadership is a huge problem and is the cause of many other problems. It needs to be attacked from multiple sides:

  • Political Performance Metrics apps
  • Creating leadership structures from the ground up, for example giving opportunities to people to lead and have those leadership qualities tracked in a transparent and accountable way

Existing apps and software are trying to attack this problem from various sides. We need to see what angles are being attacked, or what aspects of the problem are being attacked. Seeing that analysis will provide us information about what aspects of this problem exist. And perhaps we can then see what additional ways can be used to be attack a specific aspect of the problem, or if there are new aspects that we can attack.

Scope of the project

The scope of this project is global and is applicable to every aspect of society in any part of the world. People from different countries can get together and solve problems that exist in any part of the world. Different countries and regions are at different stages of improvement in different areas and they can share their expertise in an area that they have advanced in more in relation to other countries and regions.

So there are no geographic limits. People in Europe might know how to solve certain problems in Australia or America. People in UK and America could get together and take an active role in helping solve problems in Africa, South America, the Middle East or other places. People in Asia may have knowledge and experience they can share to solve problems in the UK.

International collaboration is needed now more than ever. More and more regions are gaining access to powerful and advanced weapons and technology progresses quickly. International hostilities are often created by the very same leadership system which also causes the public to suffer in their own countries. These people are not qualified to lead internationally, let alone nationally so these kinds of leaderships need to improved or replaced.

Inspiration

Basic Income

Automation and high-efficiency production along with the use of AI is becoming more and more prevalent. Here's a quote from Stephen Hawkings posted on Reddit:

"If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality."

The future of society should not be at the mercy of politicians and powerful corporations. Basic Income is therefore an important and relevant issue for us. It becomes even more important to have organizations and governments which work for the people in a competent and accountable way.

Links

Quotes

Bill Gates: " ... When I look at politics, I have to admit there's some trends in terms of how what trust people have, how they're polarized. I do worry about that. That's not you know, (?) I don't bring unlike the biology where I get to study and see it, I'm on the same footing as everybody and seeing these political trends, but yes there are things that I do worry about. But overall, the human condition, our ability to feed, prevent disease, how people live an enjoyable life, we are making great progress on those things so as long as we stay committed to them, that's, it makes me love the work and remain optimistic."
MKBHD: "Alright, well I hope obviously your work goes as far towards the successes as possible. And I guess my last question would be. Knowing that you're doing all this work but someone in my position, I'm not a philanthropist, I don't necessarily have the means, how does someone like me or someone watching this help in the best way that they can?"
Bill Gates: "Well I wish more people could actually get to these countries, you know, join the peace corps, spend time, even just spending a few weeks there and see how great their needs are and see the progress. A lot of volunteer work in the United States builds that sense of 'ok, we care about other humans even beyond our own family group'; even people have very different experiences."
"So at a young age, a little bit of giving money away, you know to form that habit and picking which things you really want to give to, including lots of things here in the US and getting involved in volunteer time, those are the people who I think will help kind of bring the world together and you know, void just this divisiveness. That is my greatest concern."
  • Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. -Margaret Mead

Governments attempting to censor the free internet

Personal Safety

How safe is it for anyone trying to do right thing? Depending on the situation it can be risky, e.g. Chris Packham reveals he has been sent death threats over campaign to save birds. Consider that this happened in a developing country with better human rights and judicial systems than other places so you can imagine the threats that could be triggered in countries where crime and justice is a bigger problem.

This makes it even more critical for people to act as one and for us to have multiple redundancies and safety measures. We cannot be driven by fear and decide not to take part in this project. If anything that makes it even more urgent for us to drive forward and to work harder. There is safety in numbers.

Strategy and Web Design Internship (old)

Javul.org is seeking designers with a desire to tackle the dysfunction in global politics and empower citizens as change-makers. See this page for more details on the project: Performance-Based System for Electing Better Leaders. The ideal candidate has experience with design research, UX, and visual design of digital systems.

Your internship experience will include:

  • 8-10hrs/week of remote work
  • Weekly voice conferencing through Discord
  • Research, brainstorming, feature prioritization, mapping, prototyping and designing specs for a beta website.

--> (?) This is a paid position at the rate of $250/month.

If interested, please send a letter of interest to javul.org AT_ (gmail) (minimum 150 words) and talk about your previous experience in Research and Design and your thoughts on the project.

Volunteering and Initiative - A few personal experiences

Lets study the topic of volunteering and taking initiative. This writeup may seem appear like I’m overthinking but its actually a good example of volunteering and we can look at it in detail.

I moved to a new city and was travelling the same route every day for work. I noticed that at one location along the route, a traffic alert sign originally located on the sidewalk had fallen over about a foot (30 cm) into the road and obstructing traffic. It was clear that the sign had been in that state for a while. It wasn’t a big issue but it was enough to make me watch out for it while I was driving. Every day I would look at the sign and be slightly irritated, wondering why no one living in the house in front of that sign bothered to go over and take it off the road and put it back on the sidewalk so it wouldn't obstruct traffic. This is a small example but its a good example to study in regards to volunteering and taking initiative.

Finally one day when I was driving on the route I thought of that sign and decided to see if there was a street I could park my car at, walk over to the sign and take it off the road. Indeed there was a street very close to it. I parked my car, walked over and took the sign off the road. There were also some sandbags that were placed to weigh it down so it wouldn’t fall over. The sandbags had also fallen onto the road. Watching the traffic closely, I took everything off the road and placed the sandbags back on the sign. Mission accomplished, I walked over to my car and went on my way. The total time taken to fix the problem was probably just 2 or 3 minutes (that included me parking the car, walking over, fixing the sign, walking back, driving to get back on my route). As I’m typing this, it was possible the wind knocked it over. If I was going to be on that road regularly and saw the sign knocked over again, I would have called the city to ask them to fix it, perhaps take the it away or use a more permanent arrangement that wouldn't be knocked over.

While I was fixing that sign on the road, only a few people saw me do it and some of them probably thought how nice I was to do that. Some would have wondered what I was doing. A large number of people would pass by the now-fixed sign and never know that someone like me had fixed it.

Once I went to a clothing store and noticed there were 3 items lying on the floor that some customers might have dropped when they were evaluating items to buy. I picked up the items and tried to put them back in their matching places as best as I could. I noticed store personnel were present and walking around.

I’ve personally come across many situations like this where I saw that people were not doing what I thought they should do if they came across a situation like that, with the result that a problem existing but no one cared enough to volunteer and do something about it.

Let’s study what goes on in the mind in this situation according to the different types of people who come across this situation.

  1. A person sees the sign, isnt bothered much about it and drives around it. Maybe they dont think about the fact that it could be bothering other people or the fact that its not supposed to be there. As long as they’re not bothered by it they are perfectly fine ignoring the problem. I suspect this happens most often.
  2. Some people might see it and might be bothered by it to a noticeable degree but not enough to make them think about stopping and fixing the problem because it would be too much trouble that its not worth the time or effort.
  3. Judging by the number of cars that went by that sign every day and the sign had been there before I saw it and only I stopped by to fix it, I can conclude that a very small number of people are bothered enough and take the time and effort to fix the sign. Lets examine my emotions in more detail: (1) slight annoyance by the sign that would increase every day when approaching it. That anxiety/annoyance would happen earlier and I would anticipate the sign so I could prepare to drive around it. One day I was bothered early enough so think about checking if there was a closeby street that I could maybe park my car at and fix it. I didnt have any traffic behind me so I was able to focus on searching for that street. Indeed the street was there and I was relieved to find that out. That’s the moment I decided I would park my car and fix it. As I parked my car, I felt some additional relief as I discovered that I was going to do what I thought should have been done. Solving a problem generates some anxiety and mental burden as we try to find a way to solve it in the best way. This was a small problem but all problems generate some level of anxiety. I went to the sign, analyzed the situation, watched out for traffic and carefully stood the sign back up and arranged the sandbags around it to weigh it down. Satisfied that it was in its original intended place I walked back to my car. Job well done, I felt further relief knowing I had done a good deed that saved me and others some minor/major trouble depending on how you want to look at it. Count the number of cars that went by that location every time and add all the anxiety caused by that sign, including the slightly possibility of an accident if someone was driving too fast and steered too far into the next lane while trying to avoid the sign and the car in the next lane wasnt expecting what would happen so they weren't able to intervene on time.

If we were to draw the anxiety graphs of these 3 people they would all look different. For most people the anxiety level would be small and constant and increase only slightly when passing by the sign. For the person who fixed the sign, its possible that their anxiety level was already higher than normal, and they were sensitive to situations like this and the anxiety increased higher to the point where it concerned them enough that they decided to do something about it. The anxieties can have multiple causes:

  1. Personal inconvenience because I have watch out for the sign.
  2. Fear of an accident if I’m driving around it and someone wasn't driving carefully enough and they steered into my lane and caused an accident. It wouldn't have happened if the sign hadn't been there because I would have had room to avoid the sign. There's also some anxiety about a future accident happening involving other cars and not my own and knowing I could have prevented it if I or someone had fixed it.
  3. Irritation knowing that no one else has fixed the sign and being upset at people/society in general.
  4. Knowing that its going to take some effort to fix the sign. That could be laziness/procrastination
  5. I dont know the kind of neighborhood where I’ll be parking my car. There can be all kinds of dangers; perhaps there’s a guard dog loose in the area somewhere or a drug dealer and what not.

So there are multiple kinds of anxiety’s that are working together. Notice that everyone has these anxieties but the levels may be high/low. Someone’s anxiety about the bad neighborhood might be stronger than anxiety #3 (irritation knowing that no one has fixed the sign so far) and hence it never happens that they decide to stop and fix it.

There’s another aspect. Some people have walked on the sidewalk by that sign and could have easily fixed the problem without it taking much time or effort compared to mine and yet they didnt. Also no doubt that some employees from the city government drove by the sign, saw it but didnt care about it even though they knew that this situation was related to their job and they were the ones supposed to fix and maintain it since they had placed the sign there in the first place.

In regards to positive emotions, I will be satisfied with what I did when I pass by that fixed sign every day so that's one reward for my actions. I will also have reduced stress while driving on that route because I dont have to drive around anymore and I know I made the road safer for others and myself and I also have general contentment after doing something I had planned for.

I can easily say that the same kind of anxiety and concern I felt about that fallen-over sign is what also resulted in me thinking about the state of the world we live in and creating a website like Javul.org. I was lucky enough where I had the technical/management experience and means to create a website which I understand that only a small segment of society has.

Observations and Final Thoughts

There are some interesting observations and questions relating to volunteering and taking initiative.

What kind of person does it take to fix that broken sign? What kind of people are least likely to fix a problem like this and what percentage of society do they form? How many people are close to fixing it? Is it possible to not be bothered by the sign and still volunteer to fix it? How often does it happen that someone is bothered by the sign as much as I was, but still not care about stopping to fix it?

What role does parenting, culture and personality play a role in this situation?

Most importantly: If the probability of someone in society noticing a problem and volunteering to fix it is 5%, what can we do to raise that probability to 95%?

We have to think about questions like this and find answers.

Various Links

Retrieved from "https://javul.org/mw/index.php?title=Miscellaneous_Topics&oldid=1868"