Science as the ultimate accountability process - And are AI behaving this way because they're DREAMING?

The power of Reciprocal Accountability

 

Is there a best path to getting both individuals and societies to behave honestly and fairly?

That goal -- attaining fact-based perception -- was never much advanced by the ‘don’t lie’ commandments of finger-wagging moralists and priests. 

Sure, for 6000 years, top elites preached and passed laws against lies and predation... only to become the top liars and self-deceivers, bringing calamities down upon the nations and peoples that they led.

Laws can help. But the ’essential trick’ that we’ve gradually become somewhat good-at is reciprocal accountability (RA)… keeping an eye on each other laterally and speaking up when we see what we perceive as mistakes. 

It was recommended by Pericles around 300 BCE… then later by Adam Smith and the founders of our era. Indeed, humanity only ever found one difficult but essential trick for getting past our human yen for lies and delusion. 

Yeah, sometimes it’s the critic who is wrong! Still, one result is a system that’s open enough to spot most errors – even those by the mighty – and criticize them (sometimes just in time and sometimes too late) so that many get corrected. We aren’t yet great at it! Though better than all prior generations. And at the vanguard in this process is science.

Sure, scientists are human and subject to the same temptations to self-deceive or even tell lies. In training*, we are taught to recite the sacred catechism of science: “I might be wrong!” That core tenet – plus piles of statistical and error-checking techniques – made modern science different – and vastly more effective (and less hated) -- than all or any previous priesthoods. Still, we remain human. And delusion in science can have weighty consequences.

(*Which may help explain the oligarchy's current all-out war against science and universities.)

Which brings us to this article that begins with a paragraph that’s both true and also WAY exaggerates!  Still, the author, Chris Said, poses a problem that needs an answer: Should Scientific whistle-blowers be compensated for their service?

He notes, “Science has a fraud problem. Highly cited research is often based on faked data, which causes other researchers to pursue false leads. In medical research, the time wasted by followup studies can delay the discovery of effective treatments for serious diseases, potentially causing millions of lives to be lost.”

As I said: that’s an exaggeration – one that feeds into today’s Mad Right in its all-out war vs every fact-using profession. (Not just science, but also teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror.) The examples that he cites were discovered and denounced BY science! And the ratio of falsehood is orderd of magnitude less than any other realm of huiman endeavor.

Still, the essay is worth reading for its proposed solution. Which boils down to do more reciprocal accountability, only do it better!

The proposal would start with the powerful driver of scientific RA – the fact that most scientists are among the most competitive creatures that this planet ever produced – nothing like the lemming, paradigm-hugger disparagement-image that's spread by some on the far-left and almost everyone on today’s entire gone-mad right.  

Only this author proposes we then augment that competitiveness with whistle blower rewards, to incentivize the cross-checking process with cash prizes.

Hey, I am all in favor! I’ve long pushed for stuff like this since my 1998 book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Make Us Choose Between Privacy and Freedom? 

      And more recently my proposal for a FACT Act. 

      And especially lately, suggesting incentives so that Artificial Intelligences will hold each other accountable (our only conceivable path to a ’soft AI landing.’) 

So, sure… Worth a look.

== A useful tech rule-of-thumb? ==

Do you know the “hype cycle curve”? That’s an observational/pragmatic correlation tool devised by Gartner in the 90s, for how new technologies often attract heaps of zealous attention, followed by a crash of disillusionment, when even the most promising techs encounter obstacles to implementation, and many just prove wrong. This trough is followed, in a few cases, by a more grounded rise in solid investment, as productivity takes hold. (It happened repeatedly with railroads and electricity.) The inimitable Sabine Hossenfelder offers a podcast about this, using recent battery tech developments as examples. 

The takeaways: yes, it seems that some battery techs may deliver major good news pretty soon. And remember this ‘hype cycle’ thing is correlative, not causative. It has almost no predictive utility in individual cases.

But the final take-away is also important. That progress IS being made! Across many fronts and very rapidly. And every single thing you are being told about the general trend toward sustainable technologies by the remnant, withering denialist cult is a pants-on-fire lie. 

Take this jpeg I just copied from the newsletter of Peter Diamandis, re: the rapidly maturing tech of perovskite based solar cells, which have a theoretically possible efficiency of 66%, double that of silicon. 

(And many of you first saw the word “perovskite” in my novel Earth, wherein I pointed out that most high-temp superconductors take that mineral form… and so does most of the Earth’s mantle. Put those two together! As I did, in that novel.)

Do subscribe to Peter’s Abundance Newsletter, as an antidote to the gloom that’s spread by today’s entire right and much of today’s dour, farthest-fringe-left. The latter are counter-productive sanctimony junkies, irritating but statistically unimportant as we make progress without much help from them.

The former are a now a science-hating treason-cult that’s potentially lethal to our civilization and world and our children. And for those neighbors of ours, the only cure will be victory – yet again, and with malice toward none – by the Union side in this latest phase of our recurring confederate fever. 

== A final quirky thought ==

Has anyone else noticed how many traits of AI chat/image-generation etc - including the delusions, the weirdly logical illogic, and counter-factual internal consistency - are very similar to dreams?

Addendum: When (seldom) a dream is remembered well, the narrative structure can be recited and recorded. 100 years of freudian analysts have a vast store of such recitations that could be compared to AI-generated narratives. Somebody unleash the research!

Oh and a hilarious smbc. Read em all.

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Add -in stuff.  Warning! RANT MODE IS ON!

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 It bugs me: all the US civil servants making a 'gesture' of resigning, when they are thus undermining the standing of the Civil Service Act, under which they can demand to be fired only for cause. And work to rule, stymieing the loony political appointees, as in YES, MINISTER.

 

Or moronic media who are unable to see that most of the firings are for show, to distract from the one set that matters to the oligarchs. Ever since 2021 they have been terrified of the Pelosi bill that fully funded the starved and bedraggled IRS for the 1st time in 30 years.  The worst oligarchs saw jail - actual jail - looming on the horizon and are desperate to cripple any looming audits.  All the other 'doge' attacks have that underlying motive, to distract from what foreign and domestic oligarchs care about..

 

Weakening the American Pax -which gave humanity by far its greatest & best era - IS the central point.  Greenland is silliness, of course. The Mercator projection makes DT think he'd be making a huge Louisiana Purchase. But he's too cheap to make the real deal... offer each Greenland native $1million. Actually, just 55% of the voters. That'd be $20 Billion.  Heck it's one of the few things where I hope he succeeds. Carve his face on a dying glacier.

 

Those mocking his Canada drool are fools. Sure, it's dumb and Canadians want no part of it. But NO ONE I've seen has simply pointed out .. that Canada has ten provinces, and three territories, all with more population than Greenland.  8 of ten would be blue and the other two are Eisenhowe or Reagan red and would tire of DT, fast. So, adding Greenlan,d we have FOURTEEN new states, none of whom would vote for today's Putin Party.  That one fact would shut down MAGA yammers about Canada instantly.

 

Ukraine is simple: Putin is growing desperate and is demanding action from his puppet.  I had fantasized that Trump might now feel so safe that he could ride out any blackmail kompromat that Vlad is threatening him with. But it's pretty clear that KGB blackmailers run the entire GOP.

Toward a Transparent World

Okay, time for an update for you all on news from the transparency front.  The one that matters most, because it is the only way to find our mistakes as we plunge into a rapidly changing future.

Hang on.  We're about to veer among many sub-topics.  All of them together paint an interesting picture of fast-changing times.

First, remember the Panama Papers leak? The Swiss anti-corruption expert, Mark Pieth, has told the BBC that he resigned from the panel that was set up by Panama's government in April 2016 to improve transparency, because of government interference. "We can only infer that the government is facing pressure from those who are making profits from the current non-transparent financial system in Panama," he said.   Surprised? Hey we know this... no one hit ever gets the bullies to admit that things are changing. 

But they'll learn that everything eventually leaks. Including scary stuff that the uber-experts thought they had locked up. Take a cache of hacking tools with code names such as Epicbanana, Buzzdirection and Egregiousblunder that appeared mysteriously online in August, apparently key tools used by the NSA’s Tailored Access Operations (TAO).  Tools that “would undermine the security of a lot of major government and corporate networks both here and abroad.” 

The tools were posted by a group calling itself the Shadow Brokers using file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent and DropBox.  Tweeted Edward Snowden from Moscow: “Circumstantial evidence and conventional wisdom indicates Russian responsibility.”

But there's also good transparency news. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, a growing army of confidential informants — better known as whistle-blowers — has helped federal securities regulators identify and prosecute wrongdoers. Now the same thing is happening at the state level. 

== Save us from advertising! ==

Did you see this piece on "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver?"  It relates to the idea of people being able to make micro-payments to read journalistic content.

Yes, micropayments could save journalism. They could also ease many of our modern aggravations with a world run by advertising.

 The New York Times is investing in a Dutch company, that seems to be getting micropayments better than previous attempts, but still misses several key points.  Points that anyone could get -- ahem -- by reading my own work on the topic. 

The hot new Evonomics site ran my extensive exploration of a way out of this era when advertising noxiously controls the Internet and why all past micropayment systems failed. … and  the "secret sauce" that may empower the next one to work. See: Advertising alone cannot maintain the internet. and Beyond Advertising: Will micropayments sustain the internet?

== On the internet and encryption ==

Okay, let's veer onward to encryption. While urging you all to join EFF (The Electronic Frontier Foundation) and the ACLU and all sorts of activist orgs, I am also known for disagreeing with these paladins of freedom over tactical matters. E.g. I assert that we'll do better by insisting that elites be naked to supervision, rather than (futilely) demanding that elites not-see. 

Nevertheless do join EFF! (And the ACLU and SierraClub/Greenpeace and Doctors Without Borders… (see my essay on "Proxy Activism.") Here are just two examples of important issues where the EFF heroes are fighting for a sensible, accountable future.

(1) "How DigitalCopyright Law Is Being Used to Run Roughshod Over Repairs" getting in the way ofletting folks tinker with or fix things they legitimately own.

(2) "Tell Your University: Don't Sell Patents to Trolls."

Aaaaan let's veer again! For a quarter of a century I have been inviting “cypherpunks” or fans of encryption, to show us an example when it ever consistently and reliably worked.  Edward Snowden - who has his admirable aspects, especially as a ‘social T-Cell and a coal mine canary - falls apart when it comes to future recommendations, falling back upon the standard romantic crypto-twaddle, instead of stepping back and noticing what has actually worked.  What is actually working right now, on our streets! Citizens insisting not on hiding, but upon seeing. 

Now…?

“Hackers obtained the mobile phone numbers of 15 million Iranian users of the Telegram encrypted messaging app, and hacked the accounts of more than a dozen of them, security researchers say.” 

A crypto system designed specifically and carefully to protect the IDs of dissidents, trivially slashed open!  As happens monthly, weekly, even daily to banks and insurance companies, political parties and government agencies. Fools — Information leaks… by its very nature!

You could decide to work with this trait, instead of standing athwart history with your hands up, yelling “stop” at a tsunami.  I've been trying to show you how.

== Cameras extend Citizen Power ==

As forecast in The Transparent Society  (1997) -- especially p. 160 -- cameras are fast becoming the critical extensions of either police power or citizen power… or both.  

If it is only the former, then we’ll get a police state. 
If only the second, then we’ll have chaos.  
If both… well… there’s a real chance we’ll get the win-win, the positive sum outcome, in which good cops find their work increasingly effective, catching and convicting real villains with rising facility – while bad cops soon find themselves in real trouble, at-best seeking some other employment, somewhere with less accountability. (Good luck with that.)

I have called it the most important advance of civil liberties in our lifetimes -- certainly in thirty years -- even though it was hardly covered by the press. It happened when, in 2013, both the U.S. courts and the Obama Administration declared it to be "settled law" that a citizen has the right to record his or her interactions with police in public places. No single matter could have been more important because it established the most basic right of "sousveillance" or looking-back at power, that The Transparent Society is all about. 

It is also fundamental to freedom, for in altercations with authority, what other recourse can a citizen turn to, than the Truth?

And yet, despite the clarity of this basic principle, tussles over this mini-revolution are ongoing, down in the details and at the level of the street. For example, will we citizens get access to footage taken by the body-cameras worn increasingly by street cops? While civil libertarians demand instant access under all circumstances, a bill just passed the North Carolina General Assembly will empower police to withhold body camera and dash camera footage. 

It may surprise you that my own stance is intermediate and more patient than the ACLU’s. So long as the police bodycam, dashcam and drone recordings are uninterrupted, comprehensive, protected and available to defense attorneys, I see no urgent need for rapid release. Transparency that is only delayed can still achieve its main purpose: accountability. With that key proviso, I am willing to grant cops some breathing room.

What we cannot allow is limitations on what citizens themselves may record, in public spaces. Here is just one of many sites online that coordinate citizen images of police in action – both behaviors meriting scrutiny and meriting praise.  

What about that thing I alluded to above... a patent filed by Apple, for a utility allowing some outside entity to shut down your phone’s camera? Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, we can hope it is a ‘blocking patent’ aimed at preventing this feature from every appearing in real life.  Yes, concert venues claim a need to prevent covert and illegal recordings by members of the audience… as if real video pirates cannot bring in more sophisticated devices? Indeed, we’re now all behooved to purchase and maintain some old-fashioned cameras, just in case.

This is simply the crucial moment of decision in our civilization – more important even than the 2016 US elections.

I’m a stockholder, but I deem this invention patented by Apple — allowing remote control or shut down of the camera on your phone — to be an Orwellian nightmare.There are some possible compromises - e.g. letting venue owners set up a zone wherein phone cams degrade down to “Citizen Mode” at say 1 megapixel. But no, I don’t want anything at all.

== Sousveillance and freedom ==

Said it before.  Will keep saying. One of the chants at Black Lives Matter rallies should be “Give Us MoreTech!” Which is short for: “Oh so NOW you believe us, now that we can take pictures of what we went through for generations?”  

Well, yes.  Then become nerds! Use cameras to fight back, a lot safer and more effective and modern than guns.

But none of that will be possible when elites - like the state - can shutdown our phone-cams.  So make a habit of keeping some old fashioned cameras around!  And count on technology to give us so many eyes that this trick will sink into obscurity.

Oh, speaking of which. Edward Snowden, in collaboration with Andrew Huang and the MIT Media Lab announced the design for a case-like attachment to monitor an iPhone, alerting the owner when its radio transmitters are operating suspiciously, whether hijacked by hackers, the government, or Apple. 

== Philosophers at work? ==

 Cory Doctorow advocates two core tenets to take up in the fight for a non-Orwellian cyber-tomorrow:

1.   Computers should be designed to obey their owners. When devices receive conflicting commands from both a manufacturer and an owner, the owner’s desire must always win.

2.   True facts about computer security should always be legal to disclose.

Though his meta rule is -- Don’t give in to nihilism (it’s all hopeless) or denialism.  I, too, have been fighting these for ages. He and I disagree in many areas of tactics and over the plausibility of encryption as a cure-all. (It can be useful, short-term, and it will cure absolutely nothing, over the log run), but I approve of his vigor and passion in the world.  Nevertheless, I’d add a third core tenet:

3.  If your computer systems have been taken over by a botnet, and you did not take reasonable efforts to ensure that you are not a source of infection to others, then you share legal liability for the actions of the controllers of the botnet.  Now that’s gonna be less popular sounding!  Because it says, “You don’t just have rights, you have responsibilities.

Okay this is bizarre.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has handed down a very worrisome decision on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Facebook v. Vachani. According to one online pundit, it says that if you tell people not to visit your website, and they do it anyway knowing you disapprove, they’re committing a federal crime of accessing your computer without authorization. But I am not sweating this.  Common accepted values will triumph.  

Scout quoted my colleague Eliot Peper, citing my friend and Wired founder Kevin Kelly's new book The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 technological forces that will shape our future about an interesting suggestion to deal with a modern problem. Humans are very tribal and we do not like the cognitive dissonance of actually thinking about intelligently different points of view. 

In olden times, it was easy to dismiss and drown out those differing perspectives. Keep to your own kind! Drive that other church out of town! Attend Nuremberg rallies. Today, though? A million diverse viewpoints surround you, with eloquent advocates eager to offer you discomforting evidence that might threaten to rock your comfortable convictions? Maybe make you realize you're only 60% right!

What's a true-believer tribalist to do?

Well, it turns out  there are lots of ways to filter out dissonance and drown out disagreement, by wallowing in the online equivalent of Nuremberg rallies. Human nature makes this inevitable. In my 1989 novel EARTH I forecast crude versions of 21st Century echo-chamber social media. Kevin Kelly now calls for hacking the for newsfeed and other social networks... adding a dedicated algorithm that occasionally drops in content that challenges your preconceptions or predilections. By coincidence, this is exactly what I portrayed happening in EARTH, when hackers break through citizens' protective preference walls to show them information outside their habitual comfort zones. 

This interesting article suggests an easy to activate “emergency” button or App on smartphones that would unleash your GPS, your emergency contact and a number of other functions without having to focus on details. “Among current phone makers, Samsung is the only one to implement anything like a comprehensive emergency setting on their S5-and-later flagship phones. If you set up this feature beforehand, pressing the power button three times quickly sends an “SOS message” with your location, a photo taken with the front and rear cameras, and 3 seconds of audio to 3 emergency contacts.”  It’s a start. Our phones will become so sophisticated that the “phone” aspect will be an add-on.

Oh, heck, while I'm at it... that novel also portrayed “Tru-Vu Goggles” that gave folks VR and AR overlays while they were out and about -- and citizens using their AR cams to hold authorities accountable. That element disqualified Earth -- for all its tech-wow prognostication -- from acceptance in the community of cynical cyberpunk, whose core premise, preached relentlessly, is that "my fellow citizens are sheep."  

And for that reason the novel is never cited by the with-it, cynical crowd.  Ah well.

Pseudonyms, Algorithms and Problems of Human Control

A couple of interesting items from the near future, this time.  But first... Does the Murdoch Hacking Scandal Signify the End of Privacy? - Scientific American interviews 'one of the world thought-leaders on transparency, whistle-blowing, hacking and our future as an "enlightened" civilization.'  (Their words. In fact, the “thought-leader” happens to be me. Gosh.)

Should Facebook and Google offer pseudonymic membership?

Consider the issue of real names: pseudonymity vs identity.  Just like Facebook, Google+ insists that people use their real names. They've already suspended many accounts found to be in violation.

Complains one blogger: “Allowing pseudonyms could be a way for Google Plus to distinguish itself from Facebook, particularly since Google contends that Google Plus emphasizes personal control over information and sharing. But as it stands, that control is limited to those who choose to go by real names.” Some users, no doubt, merely want to separate their public and private profiles.

Some take their objection even further:  Google+'s "No-Pseudonyms" Policy is Homophobic, Not Just Anti-Social. A snip: “Forcing people to use their real names can be directly damaging to people, especially people who are persecuted for their political views, or persecuted just for being who they are. Like LGBT people — who still face execution in at least three countries.”

A good point.  But Google and Facebook have legitimate counter-points of their own.  First, anonymity and unaccountable pseudonymity are proved to foster some very unpleasant types of online behavior, ranging from predatory to deliberately harmful to just plain nasty. Second, anonymity can open the door to automated personas that sift and collect data for hidden masters, or that might replicate endlessly, clogging the system with multiple, non-real  entities. 

Sure, there should be realms where identity is as open and wild as the old west! But when it comes to those domains that offer themselves up as central fora, where we'll all feel obliged to join and where our children feel they "must" have a presence? These should be subject to norms of accountability, backed by a reputation that rises and falls according to one's deeds - as it always did for our ancestors. 

There are other problems too, described in my book The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom.

The perennial key question: Must we make an either-or choice? Our civilization made most of its real strides by looking for the win-win, the positive sum game. I have been consulting for some folks who believe they see a terrific business offering two items desperately needed online, both reputation management and portable but accountable pseudonyms... 

...pseudonyms that come certified and therefore offer some defense  against abuse, with “follow me” reputations that ensure accountability for specific misbehaviors... but still provide safety from retribution for political or other views.  In fact, the outline for such a system seems remarkably clear, with some surprising added benefits! 

Somebody is going to make a lot of money, providing a win-win-win solution to this problem.

Are Algorithms Going to Take Over? Too late - they have!

Kevin Slavin argues that we're living in a world designed for -- and increasingly controlled by -- algorithms. In this riveting talk from TEDGlobal, he shows how these complex computer programs determine: espionage tactics, stock prices, movie scripts, and architecture. And he warns that we are writing code we can't understand, with implications we can't control...

Watch the video, then ponder the microsecond trading that he reveals in Wall Street. Stock markets should be driven by people who study a company's details and choose to invest... not by computer programs that detect the ordering patterns of those studious investors and automatically buy up whatever stock they want, before they can type "return."

In what way does that make "markets more efficient?"  How does it allocate investment capital better?  In fact, it deters intelligent investment in promising companies because the system has parasitic organisms sucking gradient energy and flattening opportunity curves.

I never thought of this before.  These awful parasitic trade-programs are the biggest argument FOR insider trading!

You know how I feel about this!

The Securities and Exchange Commission approved rules Wednesday that could make it highly lucrative for Wall Street whistleblowers and other corporate insiders to alert the agency to securities violations. Under the rules, whistleblowers will be entitled to receive 10 percent to 30 percent of the money they help the SEC collect through enforcement actions. Corporations had lobbied intensely for rules that would impose constraints on whistleblowers.  

And this...

Dozens of police departments nationwide are gearing up to use a tech company’s already controversial iris- and facial-scanning device that slides over an iPhone and helps identify a person or track criminal suspects. The so-called “biometric” technology could improve speed and accuracy in some routine police work in the field.  The smartphone-based scanner, named Mobile Offender Recognition and Information System, or MORIS, can be deployed by officers out on the beat or back at the station.

An iris scan is significantly more accurate than results from other fingerprinting technology long in use by police, BI2 says. When attached to an iPhone, MORIS can photograph a person’s face and run the image through software that hunts for a match in a BI2-managed database of U.S. criminal records. Each unit costs about $3,000.

Can we get the benefits without paying a steep cost?  Sure... providing we get these things, too!  And we always, always have the right to aim them back at authority.

Briefly back to politics... and murdochs vs eloi...

Got the literary reference? Now dig this.

Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal - Rupert Murdoch’s top partner and co-owner of Fox News - said that he wants oil prices to drop so that the United States and Europe don't accelerate efforts to wean themselves off his country's supply. Ask your favorite Fox-watcher what he or she makes of all the facts contained in that sentence.  First get them to read it aloud.  Watch cognitive dissonance and denial go to work. 

And to show who Barry Goldwater or William F. Buckley would be voting for, today? President Obama announces push to train 10,000 engineers yearly.

Science Miscellany

Some black holes may be older than time. 

And the campaign against Uplift begins -- with fear-mongering. See also "Rise of the Planet of the Apes."  This is going to be a hard struggle, with BOTH the right and the left lined up against what could be humanity's greatest and most noble accomplishment.

And more misceallaneous cool/weird science? Can eating “probiotic” bacteria extend health and life? Long considered a beneficial side effect of eating certain types of yoghurt, these “good bacteria” have been studied and even refined a bit by science. Indications are that there’s some truth to it. But do researchers have any literary background? Aldous Huxley wrote of gut bacteria bringing immortality in “After Many a Summer Dies the Swan.” (1939) You only learn it’s scifi on the last page! 

An interesting attempt to create a nonprofit to improve discourse by holding public figures accountable for conflicts of interest.  I’m not at all sure it is well-designed or executed, but some folks should look it over and report back. 

With support from President Barack Obama, NASA’s budget is at an all-time high. Over the next four months, the  division is due to launch three major missions: to the Moon, to  and to Jupiter. And the heliophysics division plans to send a probe plunging into the blistering atmosphere of the Sun, closer than ever before. But because the overall NASA science budget is relatively flat, something had to give. Since 2008, astrophysics funding has plunged relative to other NASA science -- and relative to physics and astronomy funding at other agencies.  Stung by spiraling costs and charges of mismanagement, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- Hubble's long-awaited successor -- is now seen by some critics as too expensive to fly. And the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST), which would hunt for exoplanets and probe the poorly understood phenomenon known as dark energy, may take too long to develop to be worthwhile. 

Don't be like these stupid engineers!  

Water appears to be abundant in the universe -- even where we least expect it!  Caltech researchers recently found an immense cloud of water vapor near a quasar  surrounding a black hole. This distant (and ancient) site - the super-blasting center of an ancient galaxy - indicates that water was around from the earliest stages of the universe...

Now to find intelligence... anywhere! Far from Washington, I presume...