So Who Are the Terrorists Now?

Now we’ll circle back to the damages Iran is taking, which is lot. White Empire is doing what they have been doing across the Middle East for decades, what they’ve been doing across the world for a century, and what they did to their own continent for centuries. Killing as many natives as possible, trying to destroy their civilization, and loot the resources or just let them rot lazily. Iran’s Red Crescent reports, via Fotros,
• 787 people have so far been killed in US and Israeli bombardments
• 153 cities across the country affected
• 504 locations hit.

What are the Empire’s main targets? Life, in general. In the first wave, they hit the leadership, the leadership’s families, and even opposition members. They want Iran to have no government, the Empire succeeds when states fail. They also hit an elementary school where over 150 little girls have been killed, because they are trying to kill the future. These are all targeted hits, to try and break populations. As Peter Cronau of DropSite said, “First a girls school, then the Red Crescent building, then two hospitals, now a gym where teenage girls were playing basketball. Beginning to look less like accidents of war, than an intentional policy.” I mean, yeah, duh. Ask the Native Americans about blankets.
(Source: indi@indi.ca)

And has any of this terror campaign lessened Iran’s ability to respond? Apparently not. A continuous bombardment of American military bases and Israel continues with no sign it will cease. American troops are being evacuated from exposed bases to hotels and those hotels are being hit by drones (not willy-nilly, but targeting the floors the troops/CIA agents are renting).

So, who are the terrorists now? And boy am I glad Trump warned us about how Obama was going to invade Iran and how he promised to not start any new wars. We can trust Trump … to be exactly who he is.

The Law of Unintended Consequences Rules AIs, Too

I read recently that a noted software developer fired many hundreds of Junior Software Engineers and replaced them with AIs. Not just AIs, but AIs now to be monitored, supervised by the remaining Senior Software Engineers. So, gosh, what could go wrong? Well, one Senior Software Engineer pointed out as he was heading out the door (He quit, obviously.) with the question: “Where do Senior Software Engineers come from?” Obviously they come from the ranks of Junior Software Engineers, who are tasked with less important tasks, to cut their teeth, so to speak. They need to work, make mistakes, correct them, etc. There is much to learn and without a large pool of Junior Software Engineers, there won’t be any Senior Software Engineers to do their work, so this guy saw the writing on the wall and hightailed it out of town.

The “leaders” in so many tech firms are now business types, no longer the tech types who used to run these places, you know, like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, Sam Altman, Larry Ellison and even Bill Gates (to some extent). The business guys look at the salaries “saved” when the Junior Software Engineers were “made redundant,” “let go,” “terminated,” etc. and think that is a net savings with an increase in productivity thrown in. Except going out the door with them is much institutional knowledge, even a bit of wisdom, and losing that Senior Software Engineer, is an even bigger hit to those categories. They might not even see those “Juniors” as being “Seniors in Training” or as resources of institutional knowledge, etc.

And when it comes to writing software code, AIs shine, but there is another problem come up. You may be aware of what is called “AI slop” sometimes referred to as “AI Hallucinations” or AI Bullshit,” but output from an AI which is severely flawed, let us say. And AIs are being “taught” to train themselves, so fairly soon, they will be raking through the slop from other AIs, even their own, and the problem magnifies. We were alerted to this problem when photocopiers were invented. We learned that if you copied a copy of a copy, etc. the copies soon became unrecognizable. Then when computers came along we were taught the same lesson again, with “lossy” file formats such as JPEG. When JPEG images were saved over and over, they too became “muddy” if not downright unrecognizable.

Now, in an experiment AIs have been fed their own output, then re-fed and re-fed it and, guess what, what you get is bizarre and of no use whatsoever.

So, if we give over training (the expensive part of AI enterprises) to the AIs themselves, what can we expect as results? You know, from AI medical advisers, and that sort? Hello, SkyNet!

Is an Agreeable Definition of Consciousness in the Offing?

All too often I see consciousness described as an inner dialogue of me with me that no one else can hear. There were words and sentences … oh, my. But studies actually show that most of our “thoughts” are preverbal, with words being applied only when we attempt to explain to ourselves or others what was running through our heads. Think of it as a variation of dream research, just when you are awake.

And when are we going to get an adequate definition/understanding of what thoughts are. Surely that needs to precede or t least accompany such a thing for consciousness.

And while early consciousness explorers didn’t dome up with much in the way of answers, they did come up with some very good questions. And example of which is “Has the reader never asked himself what kind of a mental fact is his intention of saying a thing before he has said it?” (William James)

And it is recognized that whatever mental activity is going on, its form isn’t fixed. Some “thoughts” are images, others fragments of words, others scents or other sensory information, and others cultural feelings (love, appreciation, etc. in other words nonsensory).

Alluding to dreams as a surrogate for consciousness, dreams are often cobbled together out of sights and sounds from memory. A common dream I had when young is racing across my junior college campus because I was late for a test, as I raced, the test became a final, but also I couldn’t remember where the classroom was, because I hadn’t gone to class for weeks. This often morphed into a search for a bathroom, which were inevitably locked, under construction, or backed up (ew!). This later part of the dream I was able to “interpret.” It meant I had to get up and go to the bathroom to empty my bladder.

People tell me these incredible descriptions to their dreams, something I do not experience. They speak of immense levels of detail and my dreams are like fast cut movies, the minute I “see” something the scene cuts away to another locale. Chaos, utter chaos. But that may be a conclusion reached from my memories, which are vast and detailed. (I can still read snatches from pages of a textbook I had when in high school. What value that had escapes me, but it was something I remembered (probably distorted all to hell as memories are very, very (Very!) plastic.

So, do you think we are on a path that might lead to better understanding of what our conscious mental processing consists of (and I hope our subconscious mental processing, too)?

The realization of what seems to be the case, namely that thoughts are mostly not made of words, words only come to them when we try to explain or communicate the thoughts sits well with my ideas that dreams, psychedelic visions, and whatnot are nonverbal and only get “interpreted” when we try to explain/understand them. This is why the woman experiencing a NDE and senses a glowing figure tells us she “saw Jesus.” The interpretations come pre-packaged as cultural tropes.

And as someone who teaches the mental side of a sport, the realization by one researcher, Christoff Hadjiilieva, that “The big lesson of meditation,” Hadjiilieva said, “is that the mind cannot be controlled,” is very interesting.

An Argument Against Naturopathy/Homeopathy

The State of Alaska’s House Labor & Commerce Committee is considering a bill that “would unwisely permit the practice of naturopathy, a discredited form of pseudoscience, in the state of Alaska.” (Source: CFI Director of Government Affairs and Policy, Azhr Majeed)

Naturopathy is not a name people bandy about. Most people, however, are aware of homeopathy which is really what is being considered in the bill above. (I think the term naturopathy is a substitute term to avoid the negative reputation of homeopathy. The term naturopathy was invented 80 years after the term homeopathy.)

The foundations of homeopathy are basically these two:
Law of Infinitesimals (or Law of Potentization): This principle states that the curative potency of a substance increases as it is diluted multiple times, often combined with shaking (succussion).
Potentization/Dynamization: The process in homeopathy involving serial dilution and succussion (vigorous shaking) to unlock the “vital energy” of a substance. (Source: Harvard University)

In ordinary language, they claim is that diluting a drug or chemical makes it stronger. (You can always recognize a scam if they claim “adding water makes it stronger.”) So, if you run across someone who believes in this nonsense ask them to consider the following scenario:

A guy goes into a bar and asks for a whiskey and a pitcher of water. When he is served, he pours out half of the whisky and fills the glass with water from the pitcher. Then he empties half of that diluted beverage into the bartender’s sink, and fills it up with water again. He does this ten times. Then he downs the final liquid in his glass. So, question: do you expect this guy to fall off of his bar stool dead drunk?

If you do. You are a homeopath.

Is Greed Good?

(Hint: No, not just no, but fuck no!)

Currently people are talking about “the” AI bubble (not “an,” but “the”). Corporations are investing billions (possibly trillions) of dollars in companies developing what are called “artificial intelligences,” aka AIs. Since such an “intelligence” is a goal and not yet a reality, some are calling them “pretend intelligences” as they are, so far, only good at regurgitating materials created by actual intelligences.

Setting all of that aside, the focus of many of the postings right now is the “AI Bubble” which is that the AIs currently on offer are not making enough income to justify their investment. In fact they cannot make enough income to justify the investment, hence the “bubble” declaration and the focus on the damage that will be done by that bubble when it bursts, because financial bubbles always burst. (Many think the AI Bubble is the “Mother of All Bubbles” and could wreck the global economy.)

So, seeing these posts, I have to ask, why are these corporations investing so much money in the development of products that cannot produce enough income to justify the investment? The answer is simple: the corporations want to use AIs to replace a sizable fraction of their employees. You have already seen some of this happening if you have called for help to any company and gotten in a conversation with a chatbot, via “chatting” about your issue.

But if we stop to think about the effect of that replacement, we start from the thinking of the corporations. Corporations used to think of their highly trained workforces as an asset. But those days are long gone. Corporations now look at their labor costs as a liability. If only they didn’t have to pay all of those pesky workers … damn! Economics used to have somewhat of a soul, but that soul was sucked out by the likes of Milton Friedman of the Chicago School of Economics. Today economics is solely about profit and loss and has nothing to do with providing good jobs and services for the communities the companies exist in, etc.

So, modern corporations see the turnover from human workers to AIs as a reduction of losses … only. Estimates of as high as 40% of all jobs being replaced by AIs are dancing in their heads. But think about it. The executives of these corporations only see their stock prices soaring because their profitability increased. But looking past that, will stock markets even still exist? If 40% of corporate workers are canned, what happens to the economy when those folks no longer make an income and have no money to spend, or at least far less to spend. The job market cannot absorb all of those laid off workers, so what happens?

Also, a lower demand created by non-workers having less to spend means a lot of the currently marginal companies go belly up, creating more unemployment, creating even more uncertainty. And stock followers like uncertainty like they like the plague, so what happens?

I have to ask: Would the world be better off if there were less greed? We have no real need for billionaires, so why are we encouraging their existence? What if corporations were judged as to how good they are as corporate citizens of their communities? They keep insisting they are people, shouldn’t we expect them to act like good people instead of the psychopaths they currently are?

And how do the values of the products made by AIs hold up? Would you rather have an authentic painting by Picasso or ChatGPT? How good could a recipe be if an AI can’t taste the damned thing? How good can music be if the singer is an AI and the band is artificial. How likely are “they” to get “in the groove” or improvise, one bot riffing off of another?

Just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should, especially when the guide star of such efforts is making a profit, just making a fucking profit.

Was 9/11 Inevitable?

I just finished watching a documentary, A Good American, on Amazon Prime, one of the foci of which was a worker for the National Security Agency. He developed through his own initiative a way to track meta data from around the world to identify potential problems. Being a good American, he did not include meta data from U.S. citizens and the like to preserve their privacy rights.

But for his competition in the NSA, his approach had a problem. It was too cheap to implement and since it didn’t involve huge contracts for external contractors, many former and current employees of the NSA worked for such contractors, it was discouraged and downright sabotaged. Nobody was going to get rich implementing his approach and it was essentially complete in any case.

After 9/11, a suspicious official asked the team in charge of their banned effort to scan all the data collected by the NSA to see if the NSA missed anything. It took a day, day and a half but not only did they find evidence of the 9/11 plot, but they also identified the plotters and much more information that hadn’t come out yet.

The fates of people who stand in the way of corrupt officials getting rich was predictable but when the hammer fell upon this small team of good Americans, it was heart wrenching.

Donald Trump, Mr. President Corrupt Asshole the First, is busy knocking the pins out from under this country, but he is not the one that put our country on shaky enough ground for him to do the damage that has been done. You will see quite a lineup of corrupt assholes preceding him. Watch the video and be prepared to be pissed off, very pissed off.

Confusing the Goal with the Outcome

Various companies are hawking their “artificial intelligences” (AIs) for use and sale. I understand that the goal is to create an intelligence that is artificial, but the marketing arms of these companies are referring to their “AIs” as if they had met that goal already. It is clear that they have not. Artificial intelligences do not yet exist, so we shouldn’t be referring to them as AIs as if they did already exist.

The programs being hawked today aren’t at all close to being intelligent. One foundational researcher refers to them as “pretend intelligences.” They are able to carry on a conversation as if a real person were involved, but they do not understand the concepts and certainly the contexts of the words produced.

When these programs make egregious errors, they are referred to as “AI hallucinations” as that terminology supports the idea that the programs are intelligent already. We are told that large language models are “taught” vast amounts of “knowledge” when they are just given access to vast amounts of data in databases. Please stop referring to them as AIs or their outputs as manifestations of intelligence, otherwise you are just part of the AI hype machine that is selling billions of dollars of … hope … that something will come out of their efforts.

AI Whine Replaces Google Whine

I just read that a fourth grader asked their teacher, “Why do I need to learn how to read if AI can read for me?”

I am old enough to remember “Why do I have to learn this stuff when the Internet can supply me with all I need?” and my favorite “Why do I need to learn math when I can use a calculator?” (This came from a student who punched dozens of keys rather than just moving a decimal point when multiplying by ten.)

The people behind these questions think that dictionaries are useful in learning to spell. (To find a word in a dictionary, you have to know how it is spelled.) To find information on an Internet search engine, you need to know how to ask the question, which requires some knowledge of the context of the question. And with regard to AIs, at least the machines not worthy of the name we have now, you need to know how to prompt the damned things. Yes, I assume that kids will learn how to do that fairly well, given the role of AIs as workarounds to actually doing the work of learning, but really—having an AI read a text to you? Think of all the problems associated with this. In any communication the words used are of less value than the affect, how the words are read/spoken/pronounced/etc. The kid making the “read to me” request also has to listen to the entire piece. Readers can skim, jump around, and thus be more efficient. Imagine a kid listening to a basically boring text. Gosh, will they lose focus? Will they lose the stream of information and where it might be going? So, they will surely ask the AI to “summarize” the work for them. But what if the summary doesn’t emphasize the part the assignment was getting to? And can a summary provide context? (One of the things AIs utterly fail to do is to provide context, because context requires understanding and AIs don’t understand shit.)

Any teacher who falls for this shit has failed, if you ask me.

Billionaires You Gotta Love ‘Em or Laugh at ‘Em

Have you seen videos or articles on the very rich people who are obsessed with living forever? They program every minute of every day around dietary supplements, various and sundry “treatments,” exercises, and more, each activity or practice designed to correct some flaw in their anatomy or biochemistry.

It makes me tired just thinking about it.

And there is a law of nature, what is it now, oh yeah, everything that lives, dies. Even if you manage to transfer your personality into some sort of artificial person, aka robot, there is a law of nature, what is it now, oh yeah, all machines eventually fail.

It is not quite as instructive as the fable of the Grasshopper and the Ant but the billionaires spending all their lives extending their lifespans but skipping over actually living is in the same category at least.

You Need to Pay Attention to this Shit

We are rapidly reaching a point at which bullshitters are dominating the public sphere. (Take Elon Musk … please.)

The problem is that while AIs can shit out sentences that seem to qualify as scientific breakthroughs, they can’t actually do science. Take Google’s claim that its Deepmind product had advanced material science by 800 years, “discovering 2.2 million structures.” It turns out that these “discoveries” are useless — in that they constitute trivial variations on known materials, and/or have no uses, and/or can only exist at absolute zero: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.chemmater.4c00643
(Source: Cory Doctorow)

The bullshit claims for AIs make their outputs very, very attractive to business leaders and we all know what great thinkers those folks are. (Can you name one utterance by a business leader that is remembered and benefits society at large? Please let me know if you do. The same for any actions they took as a business leader.)