A non-guilty pleasure

 

I am not ashamed.

I never finished reading the Harry Potter series back in the day when my sons were Potterheads.  I plowed through the early books and quite enjoyed them.  But as my sons became the standard-issue hormonal teenagers and I had to deal with the real life teenagers, I stopped reading them or watching the movies (#’s 4 through 7) because the books pretty accurately portrayed the angsty/self absorption that is bog standard for that age grouping.  I had enough of that shit in my real life.

So, I did buy an “all in one” e-book copy of the series a couple years ago but I was still working and the electrons remained frozen on silicon until last week.  

So I decided to see what happened in the books.

First, I really think that Ms. Rowling knows how to spin a yarn.  I think that this is a solid piece of writing.  I can understand why the kids liked it, but what I find interesting is how much I enjoyed it.  I am definitely not the demographic it was written for.

So I decided this morning that I need to do a slow read and pull out the now passé methodology of literature outlines and criticism taught by Lavon Lake at Clearfield High School a long time ago.

What I am finding interesting is peering in on the still passionate foofooraw of the factions within the fan base.  People study these books closely and spend as much (probably more) time as folks currently studying the Iliad.  

I am going to do a slow-re-read, and maybe watch the movies.  Not because it is great literature, but because I want to figure out just why it is so enjoyable.  I will probably fail.

I have to consider the simple idea that it is like chocolate ice cream.  It is pleasing in a manner that defies description, it doesn’t hurt anything, and sometimes, when the mood suits you, a person can obsess on it for a brief period of time.

Correlations

Correlation is not causality:

Look, everyone is low-key a-twitter about trumpy’s latest bit of performative art over in the middle east.  I remember him doing something similar back around this time in his first term.  He blew a bunch of holes in the Syrian desert and that did nothing particularly useful other than letting the male/female news-whores (Mika and Joe and their ilk) dismount the “I hate Trump” train for a day or two.

I can’t say that this time is different other than the fact that I have successfully weaned myself off mainstream media and at this time I take my news-whores in written form and have a much higher threshold of disbelief.

Look, when I was still in my serious tin-foil hat days, I found it interesting that one could take a plain-vanilla, reasonably accurate set of data like sunspots and map “shit-hitting-the-fan” events on the poor, innocent graph and believe that it meant something.  Now I am not so certain.

My latest worldview is that especially here in the land-o-the-free and to a unknown extent elsewhere, we have the attention span of a swarm of gnats.  We act like everything that happened two weeks ago is ancient history.  I cling to data like sunspots not because they are correlative/causitive, but because they remind me that history is there and echoes throughout the actions of the world.

History is there, from Darius to Sikes-Picot to the six-day-war.  People in that region remember it all and act on that history.  We are a bit player in that context.  Maybe we ought to step aside and let them continue.

Venn Diagrams

 

I tend to love the damn things (Venn Diagrams that is).  I find them interesting in the sense that they do provide a visual to kick off thinking about a subject.  I usually manage over time to start modifying them in my head.   They aren’t really all that good a way to accurately depict nuance and conflict within the particular system, but they ça donne à réfléchir.

Consider the simple diagram above.  This is (to me at least) a reasonable view of how to discuss politics in America.  I think that the colors accurately reflect how most of my friends view the situation. 

But I think that it is really not all that easy.  The sizes of the pinkish and the bluish right/wrong circles are not exactly equal as shown, even worse, the labels can be swapped by merely changing who is looking at it.  It is kind of a “Schroedinger’s label” kind of event, where you can imagine the labels in a digital closet somewhere and they only settle down, almost randomly on one of the two circles on you see above when someone allows them on the computer screen.

I suppose that what I worry about the most is that the little football shape that is the intersection of right and wrong where realistic compromises can be made is shrinking.  The two circles are moving away from each other and the space where compromises can be made is shrinking.

I think that I read somewhere that a significant minority of the US feels that an upcoming civil war is in the cards.  I have a hunch that there is no valid and falsifiable methodology that the yellow journalist who wrote the piece can produce to support his/her claim (label warning: I do not consider polls valid as their statistical universe is always constructed to support a pre-existing opinion).  But in this case, if I were to pull an opinion out of my ass (like the original writer, what sauce for the goose after all) I would not disagree with the 40% estimate, but rather hedge my claim by stating +/- 15%.

Politics is an odd beast that sleeps in the purplish intersection above.  Politics is also the human means of everything not turning into an oversized barroom brawl.  The solutions that politics gives you never really make anyone happy, it just makes the solution offered not worth fighting about.

The way that the country seems to be moving is that the sideways movement of the two circles is proceeding apace and the little football shape is growing smaller.  All I can hope for is that their speed doesn’t increase.

A Complete Shitshow

 I can't even read the headlines anymore.  Everyone is frenetically clutching their pearls, taking sides, and shouting incoherently.  Everyone is certain that they know "the plan" and are popping up like everywhere.  Everyone seems to have chosen sides.

Trump.  Pity the fool.  Everyone seems to want to pin the blame on this particular jackass, but the truth of the matter is that he is a front-man, a salesman that (like all salesmen) uses glad-handing, a haircut, a good suit, and a good golf game to sell shit.  He is an excellent salesman, but he is nothing more than that.

So now we get to spend the next month or so trying to ignore the legion of salesmen in the differing media types attempting to sell me their narrative of how things are working out.  In a real sense, they are minions of a system that is moving the way it wants to move and they are only providing a smokescreen of semi-believable (and sometimes not-believable) storylines to provide a particularly sinister forum for rooting for who is going to kill who.

I think that we are looking at a time where the old divisions are at each other again.  The remnants of provinces the Holy Roman Empire and the Austro-Hungarians are fighting against whoever they feel is oppressing them this time (Poland is definitely gonna gets its turn in time).  The descendants of Moses are still trying to smite the descendants of Amalek son of Eliphaz.  Zhōngguó ( 中國) will continue to work on bringing 中華民國 back into line (this will happen about the same time that the new chip fabs being built here in the US are up and running).

Look, lots of stuff going on.  Everything that we are fretting about goes a lot further back than 1945 and the long-suppressed animosities that came from the last set of lame compromises that were shoved down throats on the other side of the planet.

I am thinking that we are looking at another of the periods where more shit is happening than anyone has the ability to damp down.  It doesn't mean then end of the world, it does mean that things are going to be changing in a way that lots and lots of folks won't like.

Past examples of unpleasantness:

1776-1812 (American Revolution through Waterloo)

1840-1870 (Europe's spasm, say goodbye to Metternich, say Hello to Bismark)

1915-1945 (The second thirty years war, because Two was a consequence of One)

So I kinda look at 2016 as the start of the current thirty-year mess.  And this time we know what is happening elsewhere (I am looking at you China and India).  We are just beginning to get some traction on this particular path of unpleasantness.  

Now, you are probably thinking about how I seem blasé about this.  I suppose that, in a sense, I am quite weary of it.  But I will most likely live long enough to see things get worse before they start getting better again.  My personal goal is to adapt to the world around me and make the best of what is going to probably be a somewhat less pleasant and lazy life.

Rabbit Holes

 Trying to write.  Big stuff is hard work and I am not used to that anymore.  I think that I need to get back to the basics and realize that outlines and drafts work better than my lazy, stream of consciousness.  I think a lot of the time, things here on the web are the product of a certain amount of laziness and I am probably more guilty than most.

Consider this little gem that popped up over at wikipedia:

So, it appears that 16,000 words is somewhere in the range of a novellete or a a low-end novella.  

Then consider the subject.  Baby boomers.  Pretty easy stuff: people in the US born between 1946 and 1964.  So 16,000 words on a subject with a simple definition.  Must be a lot of freight in that train.  All I wanted was the definition.

Complex issues, freighted with a lot of nuance, secondary meanings, and societal taboo are not amenable to short blog posts or tiktok videos.  Maybe actually trying to understand any “whole issue: and the repercussions of any decision is difficult for me and others here in the simulacrum of discourse that is our digital stomping ground.  I’m going to keep trying, but nearly everything worth talking about ends up in yet another rabbit hole.

Rabbit hole is just another word for hard work.

The Trolley Problem

 

So, I got an interesting response from a reader concerning my recent rant on AI and robots and old science fiction.  The part that raised some questions was:

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are a set of guidelines for the behavior of robots, designed to ensure their interaction with humans is safe and ethical. They are: 1) A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

The response from this reader was:

Law 1 is hugely problematic. Just think of all the 'hate laws' being pushed at the moment. What is 'harm'? And what if stopping a human being coming to harm requires harming them?

Yep.  He has got it right.  But then again, you have to think a little past that. About those laws, what they are trying to do, who is doing them, and the culture that promulgated them.

Consider for a moment the “trolley problem” presented above.  “Holy Kobiashi Maru Batman!”  This tired conundrum is trotted out and undergraduates preen and strut with their tired ass rationales.

But I think that this kind of thing is exactly what worries my gentle reader who pointed out the dilemma.  Our society really can’t stand the idea of “you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t”.  

The simple and unsophisticated presentation of the trolley problem is one where the mental/physical states of the person operating the switch and the victims on the tracks are unknown.  This is both simplistic and stupid.

Imagine you own petty bigotries and problematic actions (and please don’t think they aren’t there) and then imagine that you knew the identities and mental states of the “victims” on the track.  Now you have a real problem don’t you?  

What if the “one” is your daughter?  I would venture to guess that there would be five dead people at the end of the experiment.  What if you knew that four  of the five had terminal disease and would die in a week, would the change in death timing mean anything to you?

Let’s use an imaginary “Harry Potter” scenario but with no “magic” to help you out.  What if the “one” was Sweet Hermione and the “five” were mean-old Slytherins and you were a Hufflepuff?  Maybe a different answer depending on your house.  I am certain members of Ravenclaw and Slytherin would not take much time to make their respective choices.

The Robots and intelligences that we are trying to make will be a different hodgepodge of conflicting goals, prejudices, compromises and methodologies that make up our laws.  But at the end, the rules coded into them will be our rules because we did the coding.  The chance that they can come up with a solution that will make everyone happy is exactly zero.

My solution to the trolley problem is that I would walk away.  If there is no way to win, don’t play.  Maybe that is what we need to teach.  

Protein

 

“The American Way of Life is non-negotiable”.

George H.W. Bush

No pretty pictures today.  I am sitting at my multi use table (I suppose that it is technically a “kitchen table” but it looks out the widow at the courtyard and the blue sky, so it gets used for just about everything) and pondering the way that thing are going and treasuring the idea that I might be able to avoid most of the mess that seems to be heading our way.

Look, maybe I wasn’t cut out to be a Jain.  I am too much of an opportunistic omnivore to ignore meat.  Kill a plant to eat, kill an animal to eat, sorry folks, but it is where you draw the line.  My line is just the other side of primates.  Bushmeat in Africa is barbaric.  Those folks are our cousins.  Everything else is just prey.

So today is a quick discussion of my favored protein sources.  My radically diminished consumption of lamb and beef are not for some ridiculous moral posturing.  They are kept at arm's length  because they are ridiculously “overpriced” in the amount of CO2 that they produce.  They are also ridiculously overpriced in dollar terms as well.  

So I now tend toward pork, tempeh, and TVP.  During the next couple of years, I have a hunch that I will be drifting more and more toward the tempeh and TVP.  Again, this isn’t because of some high-falutin’ moral crusade, it is just the way the cookie crumbles.  

The graphs above are generated by Elon’s pet project.  My only caveat is that the price of tempeh is probably reflected as the overpriced nonsense sold in stores.  I can assure you that if you spend a little time and make it yourself, the cost goes way down

The times are ‘a changin.

  

A Dune Digression

 

I liked the Dune series from Frank Herbert greatly.  My taste for writing flavors has changed over the years, but I can still pick it up and enjoy it.  Hell, I even liked the prequels, the whole nine yards.  I didn’t especially care for the movies.  Too showy, too fashionista with the current mass market pretty boy playing Paul and the current flavor of skinny bimbo playing the women.

One of the (many) things that the books did do was discuss sentience and who should have it.  While the book came late to the sub-sub-genre that is the Dune universe, I thought that “The Butlerian Jihad” was pretty good.  Set 10,000 years before the original book, it discussed what would happen if the machine intelligence that we created out of our wealth and greed turn out to be as big a set of assholes as we are capable of being.  But I am now wondering to myself what is the process that turns a baby human into an asshole?

I am noodling around with different models of AI.  There appear to be a shit-ton of different flavors out there.  Ugo claims that some are better than others, but his usage and goals for what they produce is different from mine, so I am trying to withhold judgement.  One of Ugo and my interactions was when I discussed AI in terms relating AI as an equivalent to grad students.   

Ugo was/is a full professor at a prestigious university.  My guess is that he has been a mentor for quite a few.  When he defines his use of AI, my experience as a grad student when I consider Ugo’s use reminds me of the professors that were a decent sort and didn’t abuse their grad students. Just so you know, my professors did not always fall into that category.

Someone is training up a bunch of power hungry silicon to mirror the output of how that/those person(s) think.  What I am worried about is that if the person training them is an asshole that trains them in a manner that reflect the trainer’s flaws (greed, self-centeredness, anger, violence), those will be imbedded in the  output of the AI..

Maybe it is a time to review Asimov’s three laws

Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are a set of guidelines for the behavior of robots, designed to ensure their interaction with humans is safe and ethical. They are: 1) A robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm; 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law; 3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

I am not saying that these are complete, but they are a good start to begin the discussion.

Disgust

 

Plants on my walks make me happy

---

Voltaire.  At best, a snarky frog but of all the “philosophers” of that era, I can get along with his “big three”; freedom of religion, freedom of expression, and separation of church and state.  But today, I want to speak of his famous quip:

"This agglomeration, which was called and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire, was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire."

I think that the European Union is merely another attempt at recycling the idea of the Holy Roman Empire.  Even worse than the rotating millionaires that populate our politics, the Eurotrash seem to wish to create a clever disguise for the recreation of the Ancien Régime with a different set of nobility replete with an inquisition to suppress any thoughts deemed unworthy.

I am annoyed by the poseurs who sit around and declaim anything European as worthy.  Remember, they are the colonial powers that spend couple of centuries raping Africa, the Middle East, India, and Asia.  We threw the bastards off this continent 250 years ago, we should stick to that principle (and please, do me the courtesy of not trying to claim the French as our helpers, Louis XVI didn’t do it because he “loved liberty”, he did it because it screwed the British). 

Nope, I say let Europe stew in their own juices.  They deserve what they have coming to them.  I think that the Non-Europeans that they have in their countries should take over from the aristocratic swine that has floated to the top.