There. I relinked your missed AI point and raised you two links.
MindMatters continues to track the odd journey of Avi Loeb.

Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb, spoke at a recent Ignatius Forum on his differences with “the scientific mainstream” about the evidence for extraterrestrial life. Perhaps in part because the venue was the Washington National Cathedral, Loeb felt motivated to reflect on the religious as well as the science implications of a search for extraterrestrial life.

"In finding advanced extraterrestrial intelligence, religion might simply reflect advanced science with a twist. Traditional religions described God as the creator of the universe and life within it. They also suggested that humans were made in the image of God. But these notions are not necessarily in contradiction with science. A sufficiently advanced scientific civilization might be able to create synthetic life in its laboratories — in fact, some of our terrestrial laboratories almost reached that threshold. And with a good understanding of how to unify quantum-mechanics and gravity, an advanced scientific civilization could potentially create a baby universe in its laboratories. Therefore, an advanced scientific civilization might be a good approximation to God."

Loeb told Cathedral Dean Randy Hollerith that he is not himself a “person of faith.” But one must assume that he means simply that he is not an adherent of a traditional religious belief system. The extraterrestrials he describes are currently as much a belief system as any other; they are not, of course, traditional.

Hollerith? I remembered that Herman IV was an Episcopal Bishop. I can't believe that another Hollerith, who is also a Bishop, is unrelated. And sure enough Randolph is Herman's brother.

The MindMatters article slides right past this unique link of religion and science. Loeb, who is trying to restore the link via aliens, is talking with a priest who is the great-grandson of the founder of computing.

I had some stupid nerdy fun with Herman IV....

= = = = = START REPRINT:

I like to watch for interesting dynastic descendants, and I like to watch for dynastic names that go beyond III. The whole I II III thing is growing obsolete, but IV and V have always been rare. Ran into a double hit in an article about sneaky dealings among the Episcopalians.

An attorney representing the Bishop of Los Angeles before a church hearing panel investigating him for misconduct, has conceded the Rt. Rev. J. Jon Bruno had entered into an agreement to sell the rectory and parish properties of St James Episcopal Church in Newport Beach.

On 22 June 2017 Julie Dean Larsen, the deputy chancellor of the Diocese of Los Angeles, wrote to the hearing panel chaired by the Bishop of Southern Virginia, the Rt. Rev. Herman Hollerith IV, that her client had not been able to answer their questions of June 9. 14 and 21 if he had made a deal to sell the property, because he had signed a confidentiality agreement with the buyer.

Hey! We got a IV and we got an unexpected descendant. Herman Hollerith IV. Is he really the IV from THE Herman Hollerith? Looking up, the answer is yes. Unlike many inventors, the original didn't get tangled up in lawsuits or lose everything when his company was sold. He stayed with IBM as a consultant and made a comfortable amount of money, then retired. His descendants remained prominent citizens.

Of course the name should be written as a Hollerith constant,

21HHERMAN HOLLERITH IV

to honor the constant Hollerith tradition.



Should the number be treated separately as an integer variable? Probably not. It's an ordinal, not a cardinal; and it's an ordinal that isn't always properly sequenced. Henry Ford II was actually Henry Senior's grandson.

In more modern languages you could handle it as an associative index...

As a dict in Python:

HermanHollerith =
{
'I' : 'Herman Hollerith',
'II' : 'Herman Hollerith Jr',
'III' : 'Herman Hollerith III',
'IV' : 'Herman Hollerith IV'
}
print HermanHollerith['IV']
Herman Hollerith IV

= = = = = END REPRINT.

And of course this ties back to abacuses in Nature and the IBM DCL with its Roman numeration.

Footnote for clarity: The ID types enjoy mocking Loeb. I can't do that. I think he's wrong about his comet, but he's a proper scientist. He's careful to distinguish facts from theories, and he's never arrogant or condescending. Those qualities are unique among publicly visible scientists now.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 2:11 PM

  Tech arrogance isn't new
Following on Zillow's stupid trust in the computer, here's a view of the problem from 1954, in Computers and Automation as usual.

Fletcher Pratt was a well-known popularizer of science and tech. I read his book on cryptography in 1959 and picked up a tremendous amount of insight into language and thinking.

In this case Pratt sounds just like Bezos or Zuckerberg.

The problem is likely to grow more acute with the advance of automation into new fields. Does it mean some kind of reorganization of industrial structure? It would be almost idle to predict, for the problem has not yet been submitted to enough study. It is possible that the situation will require going back to the level of the secondary schools and altering education. As now organized these schools tend to turn out specialists or at least people who will specialize at the next educative stage. Yet the demand of both automatic computers and an economy based on automation is for an immensely increased adaptability on the part of the individual. He must he willing not merely to accept periodic reeducation, but to regard it as a normal part of existence.

Sound familiar? Submit or die! Re-education every year! Miners must become coders!

It doesn't work. PEOPLE ARE DIFFERENT and PEOPLE NEED STABILITY. If you want people to learn, you need to maintain a civilization that lets them learn naturally and gradually. You need a bond of two-way loyalty, assuring the workers that they will continue to be useful and PAID after they risk their time and energy on adaptation. The promise of re-education was fake, just a scam to enable total destruction of work and industry.

After reviewing the story of the Luddites, Pratt predicts:

Modern counterparts of the machine-smashers can expect to achieve little more in the long run. The really important impact of the new methods will be felt when the use of computers is extended to take in the totality of a business or industrial operation instead of only some of its parts.

It is important to realize that computers today are as it were grafted onto industry and business, rather than built in as an integral part. There is no business in the United States today whose total structure has been set up with the use of computers as an essential part of the operation. Partly, no doubt, this is because the machines are so new; there has not been time for the growth of industries in which they perform a fully integrated function. Nor has programming progressed to the point where it is possible to instruct a computer on all the elements in a given industrial operation and expect an answer that will make managerial decisions almost unnecessary.

67 years later it's STILL not possible to "make managerial decisions unnecessary". QED Zillow.

Clearly this level of control seemed inevitable in 1954, and it still seems inevitable to the aristocrats. Or more accurately, the aristocrats want us to think it's inevitable.

THEY KNOW IT'S A HOAX BECAUSE THEY CREATED THE HOAX.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Soviet law, NOT alternate universe

  ¶ 10:37 AM

  Wolf has fun with Zillow
Wolf is having fun with Zillow's stupid AI-based failure. They bought 35k houses at the peak of a wildly distorted bubble, and now they're trying to unload 7k of the houses at a serious loss.

Zillow decided to go into the house-flipping business by remote control. They trusted their AI to tell them what each house should bring, and then engaged flipping crews by remote control.

There are plenty of lessons in this failure. Some of them are so universally obvious they don't even count as lessons. You're supposed to buy low and sell high, not buy high and sell low. Remote control doesn't work.

The computer stuff is obvious to programmers. Silicon Valley arrogance trusts software more than ANYTHING else. If you have software you don't need knowledge or common sense.

AI, which is just a very big abacus, is supposed to acquire magical powers from its size. Programmers know that the abacus can only do what you order it to do. Zillow made a HUMAN decision to buy high, and then programmed their abacus to justify their HUMAN decision. A simulation or model can be pushed and pulled in any desired direction by choosing the assumptions and setting the weights. Above all, a simulation that predicts unlimited exponential growth is IMPOSSIBLE.

As usual, one commenter hits the mark perfectly and tersely:

I just can’t get over the irony of a business built on predicting home prices attributing its setbacks to “home pricing unpredictability.”

Labels: AI point-missing, Emersonian justice, SES

  ¶ 4:43 AM

  Still missing the same point about alien talk
From MindMatters yet again.

The other question is, in a universe governed by the same principles of logic, mathematics, physics, and chemistry throughout, it should be possible for intelligent entities to somehow find a way of making contact. The fact that those principles of math and physics can be described abstractly at all seems to show that we do not live in a meaningless universe. Thus, in principle, there is meaning that we — and ET — should be able to find.

If extraterrestrial intelligences exist and want to communicate, it will be the same meaning. They won’t have a different “logic” or “mathematics” because they can’t.

No, no, no. Logic and math are irrelevant and unnecessary.

When we are communicating via radio waves, there is a guaranteed set of commonalities. We don't know anything about the aliens, but we know how their receiver works, and they know how our transmitter works. There are only two basic ways to create and receive electromagnetic waves. Nature does it one way, and human technology does it the other way.

Nature alters the static field by moving ions in neurons or tissue. Human tech alters the magnetic field by moving electrons in wires.

We know several of Nature's methods. Radio fish simply extend the axons of neurons out of the body in an antenna, with its length tuned to match the impedance of the mud they live in. Flowers transfer ions into petals to send a message to bees, then pull back the ions after the bees have grabbed the pollen.

Nature did it WITHOUT USING MATH, and the first humans to send and receive radio were doing it with minimal math. Mostly by trial and error, expanding in directions that seem to work, steering away from directions that don't seem to work. FEEDBACK IS LIFE.

So, as I've been saying repeatedly, the communication should be ABOUT the communication. Describe the circuits and antennas in a two-dimensional pattern that can be scanned after the receiving intelligence realizes the scanning freq.



This is how radio hams communicate across cultural barriers, especially when censors are listening. Humor and politics and religion aren't easily understood, and may be deadly. Antenna lengths and circuits can be understood by everyone in the circle.

HOWEVER! Considering that I've been repeating this message for years in the tiny single-culture circle of a few blogs, and nobody has heard it yet, I doubt that we have any chance of communicating to mysterious aliens.

Labels: AI point-missing, infinite STUPID, Real World Math, Trinity House

  ¶ 7:47 PM

  More from the inflection point
From Computers and Automation Feb 72, an article claiming that computers will "empower" secretaries. Oops.

In this case I'm sure the author is not a poor prophet. She's starting up a new company, and the article is basically an advertisement.

The way things stand now, many women making their way up in business and industry face the formidable liability of their own secretarial skills. The better their skills, the more they are categorized as secretaries, effectively precluding their promotion into more responsible positions. Many smart women are keeping themselves ignorant of such skills in order to avoid that trap; this is passing the burden on to office managers, who find good secretarial help harder and harder to come by.

Keeping themselves ignorant? I doubt it.

The editing typewriter is very useful for a secretary for it does a lot of repetitive work for her. Not the kind of work she might enjoy or profit from, but the jobs of retyping, revising, and correcting that go with the rest of the job.

True for TYPISTS, not for secretaries. The distinction between a typist and a secretary was perfectly well known at that time. This school film from the '40s defines the two jobs clearly.

Second, she will find herself with time on her hands -- and energy. A smart secretary can use her newly-found time away from the typewriter. She can take on new jobs that will put her in closer touch with the decisionmaking levels of the corporation she works for. She will be able to attend meetings, do the first drafts of reports, coordinate and keep records, follow up past activities, handle questions, and solve problems.

Actual secretaries were already doing those tasks. I was in academia from the mid '70s through 2003, across the transition to computers. Department secretaries didn't change their job. Unlike what you see on TV, a real secretary is more like a mother than a hot babe. She knows where everyone is and what everyone is doing. She knows who has the real power, and knows how to shape the power.

Computers did eliminate typists, who were generally students on work-study in academia. The executives and professors now have to do their own typing, which is a waste of their skill and time.

In short, computers didn't empower secretaries, they wasted the talents of executives.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 6:26 AM

  More 1975 inflection
Continuing from 1975 as a point of inflection in the growth of Deepstate.

Again from Computers and Automation, Feb 74 issue.

Charles Suskind narrates the history of ethics versus technology. He starts with the County Extension Agent system, a successful use of 'light-handed' government to spread the latest research to farmers. The agents had to gain the trust of farmers, the most realistic people in the world, and convince them to try new plowing methods or new seeds. It didn't always work, and the new methods WEREN'T always better than the old. Suskind doesn't seem to grasp the latter point.

Suskind then shows how Hitler expanded the allegedly 'moral' goal of euthanasia for suffering terminal patients into a total extermination of Untermenschen.

Here we have a perfect echo in this year's holocaust, which began with Gaian eugenics and euthanasia and switched abruptly to extermination of Untermenschen. Greta ordered doctors and governments to Kill Granny, and they followed the order.

Suskind suggests a Hippocratic Oath for engineers, which misses two crucial points.

I solemnly pledge myself to consecrate my life to the service of humanity. I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude which is their due; I will be loyal to the profession of engineering and just and generous to its members; I will lead my life and practice my profession in uprightness and honor; whatever project I shall undertake, it shall be for the good of mankind to the utmost of my power; I will keep far aloof from wrong, from corruption, and from tempting others to vicious practice; I will exercise my profession solely for the benefit of humanity and perform no act for a criminal purpose, even if solicited, far less suggest it; I will speak out against evil and unjust practice wheresoever I encounter it; I will not permit considerations of religion, nationality, race, party politics, or social standing to intervene between my duty and my work; even under threat, I will not use my professional knowledge contrary to the laws of humanity; I will endeavor to avoid waste and the consumption of non-renewable resources. I make these promises solemnly, freely, and upon my honor.

The good of humanity is the main problem. Euthanasia and eugenics are ALWAYS grounded on the greater good of humanity. Governments ALWAYS claim to be improving the breed of humanity by culling SUBHUMANS. Culling was quite open in Hitlerian language, and it's equally brazen in the language of both Gaians and Virans. "Science deniers" and "vax deniers" are subhuman vermin.

Serving INDIVIDUAL CUSTOMERS is the best way to be moral. When you want to SELL MORE PRODUCTS, you want to have MORE LIVING AND PROSPEROUS CUSTOMERS who can buy your stuff. Share Value broke this connection, leaving tech solely tied to Deepstate and Epstein.

And Epstein brings us to the other missing point, secrecy and blackmail.

Engineers were NOT secret-keepers before 1946. They respected patents and trade secrets, but patents aren't killers. A trade secret protects an amortized skill. It doesn't induce blackmail.

After the rebirth of Deepstate, the NSF and the nuclear program started bringing engineers into the fold. The sudden shift was visible in tech magazines between '45 and '46. The classic 'open source' attitude was still there in '45, spreading knowledge without breaking patents. In '46 everything was closed down to "protect against commie spies", who were of course really working for FBI.

Secrecy was well underway in 1957. I remember talking with one of my engineer uncles who was working at Los Alamos. He said he was working on rockets, and that's all he would say. In '58 Ike lamented the fast shift of tech firms from PROFIT AND CUSTOMERS to government contracts and secrecy.

By 1974 this shift was complete in electronics, but hadn't yet infected the newer software industry. Other writers in the same magazine were seeing it, but Suskind missed it.

His first example, the county extension program, belongs to the open source world. Serving the customer with some help from the government. His second example, Hitler's euthanasia/eugenics, belongs to the secret-keeping world, slaughtering the customer with plenty of help from the government. Engineers were already in the secret-keeping world in '74, so no pledge could pull them back.

Suskind also salutes Gaia at the end of his pledge, which would have helped to enable Greta's euthanasia/eugenics.

I'll try to be charitable and assume he was just a poor prophet, but I'm not in a charitable mood this year.

= = = = =

Continued here.

Labels: AI point-missing, defensible times, endless hell

  ¶ 11:53 AM

  SETI + METI = SILLY
More silliness about talking to aliens.

SETI/METI is the ultimate replacement of What by Who. Aliens are expected to be cult leaders for the cult of IQ and abstraction. Presumably they will be just like Fauci but cooler. We are waiting to be led by them.

Vakoch is planning on sending messages containing references to the periodic table. The idea being that certain elements, such as hydrogen, are abundant across the Universe so any receiving civilisation is likely to recognise a reference to the chemical signature of those elements.

Another important requirement is making sure that whoever is on the receiving end of the message knows what they’re tuning into, says Jacob Haqq-Misra, a researcher at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science. “The basic idea is to define some sort of mathematical language,” he says. Initial messages might establish some basics. One is not equal to zero, but one is equal to one, for example. “And now we've established a common language, we can talk about physics with each other.”

No, no, no. Your "basics" are NOT the basics of math. Axioms and definitions are the fake "foundation" stuffed under the REAL structure of math by Peano and Hilbert and Godel.

Why should we talk about physics? Real humans don't talk about physics.



One good idea: Do what hams do. Talk about antennas and transmitters and receivers and propagation. In other words, talk about the process of communicating.

A better idea: Talk in parallel instead of serial. Talk the way we talk. Send harmonies on many frequencies at once, so the receiving party could build a 3d object from the spectrogram.

The best idea: Shut up. First listen to the universe itself, instead of searching for a cult leader who is Just Like Me But Cooler. Figure out what the universe has in mind for us and for me.

This was the purpose of astronomy from Plato through the Arabs and Persians to Brahe and Kepler. After Kepler we stopped listening to the universe and started listening to cult leaders who spoke in the name of Science.

= = = = =

Later and more random thoughts:

Discussion of aliens is packed full of CASTE. The trite old cartoons featured an alien who looks like a vacuum cleaner approaching an Earthly vacuum cleaner and saying "Take me to your leader." He wasn't saying "Tell me about your life and your place."

The people who wish for aliens are high-caste Courtiers, the same type who wish to be leaders. Courtiers dress like leaders (including ballgags), drive the right cars and eat the right foods and medicines as recommended by leaders. They don't realize the leaders don't actually wear or eat or drive or inject any of those recommendations. It's a cargo cult.

BUT: The people who report actual contacts with aliens are pure 100% Deplorables. White Christians in Dixie, the lowest caste of all, the caste every leader and influencer wants to EXTERMINATE, but only Lincoln actually accomplished the task.

Conclusion: If the aliens are really landing and contacting us, they're good scientists following Carver's rules. They realize that Deplorables are sane. They want to interrogate sane realistic people instead of wacked-out cargo cultists. A vacuum cleaner can tell you more about the house than the owner can.

Labels: AI point-missing, Carver, Real World Math

  ¶ 12:35 AM

  Chancy niche
Pointed by UncommonDescent, a truly weird creature....



Triops is a mini-trilobite. In a larger size it would be scary as hell, but at this size it's sort of cute.

It's weird in two ways.

1. The eyes themselves are not weird. They're typical arthropod eyes, two big compound eyes with one or more light-sensors between them. (Note that the AI generating the synthetic speech in the video doesn't know the word 'ocellus'.) The mounting is weird. Normally arthropod eyes would be on the sides of a very small head, surveying all directions at once. On Triops the eyes are inside the huge shield, pointing only forward. This defeats the advantage of compound eyes without adding any obvious counter-advantage.

2. It emerges from eggs only in an uncertain and brief environment. Dry lakes may go for many years without enough rain to be worth hatching, and only last a few days or at most weeks when they do get wet. Many insects have a long larval or non-reproductive stage and a brief flying or swarming stage. For example, the aphids who swarmed here last week. But the Triops pattern is more like plants than animals. Purely dormant for years if necessary, emerging into life only when conditions are just right.

The uncertain environment has one obvious advantage: Predators can't depend on Triops as a food source, and can't develop strategies for hunting it.

I guess Triops is just an extreme example of the Booker T rule. Find your niche and stick to it. Store your skills and amortize. In this case we have 350 million years of amortizing.

Sidenote on AI: A human announcer hired to do a voiceover would rehearse the script first, catch the unfamiliar word, and look it up. In the age of radio, announcers were expected to be thoroughly versed in the phonetics of most languages, and expected to have serious dictionaries on hand for unfamiliar words. The AI didn't bother to look up the unfamiliar word. It wasn't in the standard database, so the AI guessed badly, not following the normal phonetic semi-rules of English.

Labels: AI point-missing, Carver, storage

  ¶ 11:31 PM

  Mutually Assured Destruction: fear vs reality
From ACM March 1958. An article by WH Pickering, head of JPL, gives an explanation not usually heard.

The ICBM with a hydrogen warhead takes less than half an hour to reach its target. This means, that within a few years every city on the globe will be living with a threat of sudden death - its life dependent on one man's action. And that man is not the ruler of an enemy country, but the soldier on guard in an isolated ICBM launching site.

The least we can hope is that he is not one of those young hotheads who frequently exchange rifle shots across a frontier. But no matter who he is, his decision is the death sentence of the target city.

With this situation rapidly becoming an accepted fact, military strategists have concluded that the only answer is the threat of immediate and total retaliation. Conceptually, the enemy's missiles are detected on route and the retaliatory missiles are launched even before the enemy missiles have reached their targets.

Thus, even if the launching sites do not survive the targets, destruction of the enemy is achieved. Even after the anti-missile-missile has been perfected, this basic strategy would be maintained.

In other words, MAD was meant to guard against Deplorables in the military. Computers and MAD were meant to protect the elite world from Deplorables.

What really happened is the EXACT FUCKING OPPOSITE.

The computers were the hotheads, and a Russian Deplorable saved the world by making a HUMAN decision.

= = = = = START 2015 REPRINT:

The newly publicized story of Stanislav Petrov slaps us with a couple of big lessons.

Petrov is the sanest man in the world, and thus the grumpiest man in the world.

Petrov saved the world from nuclear destruction in 1983.

He was manning the controls for part of Russia's nuclear arsenal, watching his radar and computer screens. Suddenly a blip appeared to be coming across the Arctic from North America. Then it was joined by four more blips in the same direction, but no more. Just five blips.

He had to think fast. There were four possibilities, formed into a truth table.

False indication, don't respond: End of his career. No other harm.

False indication, respond: Instant end of America, eventual end of humanity.

True indication, don't respond: Instant end of Russia, eventual end of humanity.

True indication, respond: Instant end of humanity.


His decision was based on a knowledge of all these possibilities, plus an understanding of his instruments and the meaning of their readings. He decided that five blips could not be a real USA STRONG attack, because USA STRONG understood the End Of Humanity logic as well as he did. If USA STRONG was going to attack, it would be sending hundreds of missiles all at once because there wouldn't be a chance to send the rest after Russia's response.

He chose not to push the button, and we're all alive because he did.

Thanks, Petrov!

It didn't exactly end his career, but he didn't get any rewards either. Now he's barely surviving on a pension, but he's fiercely loyal to Russia.

Lesson #1: Trust technicians. Trust metrology. A technician who understands his instruments will make the right decision far more often than a Professional who understands theories. The Professional will ignore obvious indications of bad readings, and will often intentionally falsify the readings, to keep his theory and his grants running.

Lesson #2: Especially for the beyond-evil hypermonsters who have been misruling USA STRONG since 1989. Don't underestimate Russians. Don't assume that they will surrender because you impose some economic hardships. They are accustomed to self-sufficiency and they are good at improvising. Above all, Russians are unconditionally Russian.

= = = = = END 2015 REPRINT.

THEORIES KILL. EXPERIENCE SURVIVES.

Labels: #DeplorableLivesMatter, AI point-missing, Metrology

  ¶ 3:29 PM

  Three missed points
Via MindMatters as usual, THREE pointmisses at once. A minor pointmiss by the author, then two MAJOR pointmisses by Brendan Eich. Not really surprising, just frustrating. Eich is trying to head in the right direction but doesn't have a good compass. Or else he's just a false flag. I can't tell and I don't really give a fuck.

= = = = =

First pointmiss:

“The control our search engines have over us is very sneaky,” says Nathan Jacobson, web developer and designer at the Discovery Institute. “It’s not obvious. When you go to The New York Times, you know the editors have chosen a certain set of subjects to cover, articles to share, they’ve selected certain writers to employ, so it’s kind of understood that you’re getting an intentional experience. The information that’s being fed to you is not all the information. It’s a carefully selected subset of information.”

In other words, the common assumption is that Google is a neutral library of information when in reality, it’s just as much a curator of information as The New York Times.

No. Libraries are NOT neutral. Librarians have the same mindset as Google and NYTimes. This is FEROCIOUSLY OBVIOUS on the reading end, and I've seen it on the writing end as well. In 1998 I was a regular customer at the downtown library. They knew me. After publishing my first courseware, I proudly donated a copy of the college textbook to the library. The librarian treated it like a dead mouse. She snooted her head upward, gave me the standard aristocratic veiled eyes and imperceptible headshake, picked up the textbook at extreme arm's length, and said "This will go into our annual book sale." Didn't even bother to pretend that it was suitable for the shelves.

Google is actually MORE neutral than libraries. It does include content from unfashionable sources, whether it prioritizes them or not. You're reading the proof. I've been writing this blog for 16 years on a Google-based platform. I'm unfashionable on all topics. Google has never censored what I write.

= = = = =

Second pointmiss:

Enter new search engine competitor, Brave Search. Unlike the other search engine alternatives that pull from the same English language indexes created by Google and Bing, Brave Search runs off of its own index, the third in existence in the English-speaking world.

Google remains dominant for now. Brave Search is hardly as well-known as Google and will need to do some work in the public awareness arena. Additionally, Google remains the better engine to use when it comes to niche searches. Nevertheless, Brave Search is already a strong alternative and expected to grow stronger.

Eich is totally missing the Booker T rule. When you're the small low-status competitor, you have to FIND A NICHE AND STICK TO IT. You're NOT going to beat Google at its own game. You're NOT going to be the first choice for people who want the latest celebrity crap and partisan political crap. Eich is making the Abernethy error, losing the ACHIEVABLE niches to aim for the IMPOSSIBLE mainstream.

= = = = =

Third pointmiss:

Eich's Brave browser advertises privacy, allegedly protecting your account from data robbery or whatever. This is a fake concern in the first fucking place. Privacy is impossible. One browser is allegedly protecting your data while everything else is not protecting you. Closing one window doesn't help when all the other windows and doors are stuck open.

So how will the Brave search engine protect your privacy?

Jacobson explains that, building on its acquisition of Tailcat, Brave Search is “anonymously leveraging users’ computers to crawl the web and contribute to its index.” Maintaining an index of the web is a “massive undertaking” considering how much new content is posted online every twenty-four hours.

Jesus! Brave will protect your privacy by invading your computer and turning it into a bot. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but I thought the purpose of AV was to PREVENT malware from turning your computer into a bot. (Incidentally, this fits into the War On X theme. The War On Hackers makes more hacking, not less hacking.)

= = = = =

Emersonian footnote: After linking the Library Association website to reference their obvious mindset, I skimmed the website. They're focusing heavily on e-learning now, because e-learning enables them to keep ALL ORANGE WITCH-BREATH DEPLORABLES out of their lives. Too bad, nasty vile arrogant haughty bigoted bitch. You tossed out one of the FIRST examples of user-friendly courseware. The 1998 dead mouse turned out to be your Lord and Savior in 2020, because it was rebranded by your fellow demons.

Caste is everything. Content is nothing.

Labels: AI point-missing, Emersonian justice

  ¶ 6:17 AM

  AI missing a BIIIIIIIIIIIG point.
In MindMatters as usual, Stephen Berger explores the ethical problems of 'Creative Destruction'.

Berger has solid empathy for the drivers and assembly workers who are displaced by DESTRUCTIVE DESTRUCTION (correct name) but he doesn't remember the world before Share Value.

Applying the Golden Rule to AI-driven innovation means being mindful about how AI is introduced and what jobs it replaces, especially initially. If the impact of AI is to take old junkers off the road, that is probably a societal benefit unless you are the owner of the old junker, now on the shoulder of the road, and it is the only way you have for getting around.

The problem is that AI is developed using that other Golden Rule, “He who has the gold rules,” and it is developed in a competitive environment with other AI developers. The most appealing business cases are the ones that will get funded. These business cases are seldom a secret. Other innovators see the opportunity and develop competitive solutions. The first company to bring a solution to the market will enjoy a very significant advantage. Who has the time or energy to worry about social impacts? If you don’t develop the system others will and you will be out of business. The focus is drawn to competitors and winning with little room left for contemplating the impacts of innovative AI technology.

This situation is relatively new, beginning around 1980. Before globalization and Share Value, the invisible hand WORKED. An industry that eliminated its workers, or moved its plants to China, would quickly feel the impact of the lost wages IN ITS OWN CITY. The feedback loop was CLOSED.

Industrialists didn't need to be nice or altruistic. Their own PROFIT forced them to maintain and increase employment, and to maintain loyalty by decent salaries and decent treatment.

Globalization broke the feedback loop with employees. A company that sells everywhere has no motive to maintain employees in one location or plant.

Share value broke the feedback loop with customers. Investors want to see ZERO PRODUCTION AND ZERO CUSTOMERS AND ZERO EMPLOYEES. Investors want to see pure math, pure stock manipulation, with no physical limitations.

So the only real solution is to constrain both globalism and share value.

Return to the laws and regulations of 1939. Delete all laws and agencies formed since then, restore all laws and agencies of the New Deal.

Labels: AI point-missing, Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law, the broken circle

  ¶ 4:48 PM

  Enticement point-missing
The web's "telepathy" works well in some places and not at all in others.

Youtube certainly knows what I like, but the Suggested For You column rarely includes anything I like. It seems to be stuck on old TV comedians like Rodney Dangerfield, who I never watched on live TV and never watched on Youtube. Totally uninteresting.

Now Quora is doing the same thing. In the last few months when I was in survival mode, not creating much, just spewing out bile, I was spending ENTIRELY TOO MUCH TIME on Quora. They should have learned what I want to see and what I hate. They know what makes me click.

This week they're switching over to part subscription mode, with about 10% of the items grayed out to entice you. None of these items entice me. They don't belong to the category that triggers serious and knowledgeable answers, and they don't belong to the category that triggers a FUCK OFF reaction. They're just uninteresting and unclickworthy.

After reading their explanation: Oddly, they're not trying for clicks. They're only monetizing a few "chosen" writers. Well, I didn't choose any of them, so FUCK OFF. This is a WEIRD business model! Quora is asking the customer to pay for products the management likes, but not for products the customer likes.

Reminds me of Detroit's attitude in the late '50s when Nash was proving that a significant number of drivers wanted plainer and smaller and more practical cars. Detroit wanted to sell only what the management liked. Finally and grudgingly they offered competitors to Rambler, but their attitude was: WE KNOW WHAT'S GOOD FOR YOU. PRACTICAL CARS ARE HORRIBLE. WE'LL MAKE SURE YOU KNOW GOOD AND GODDAMN WELL THAT YOU ARE DRIVING A HORRIBLE CAR.

Labels: AI point-missing, Bemusement

  ¶ 11:27 PM

  Excellent finding, wrong focus
Carter Mecher and his hellish crew of superdemons know exactly what they're doing. All the doctors and Public Death Officers and mayors and governors and presidents know exactly what they're doing. This holocaust has been designed and planned for 15 years.

It's interesting to see that the mechanism Mecher is mechanizing runs deep in our genes. I'm sure Mecher's mechanics already know this particular detail, along with the more obvious correlations. Deepstate is always ahead of Academia.

It's also interesting that the researcher who is EXPOSING the connection is Chinese.

Drosophila are social creatures. The fruit flies forage and feed in groups, serenade one another through complex mating rituals, tussle in miniature boxing matches. And then they conk out: flies sleep 16 hours each day, split between a languorous midday nap and a full night’s rest.

So when Wanhe Li, a research associate in Young’s lab, began investigating the biological underpinnings of chronic social isolation, she turned to the gregarious and well-studied fruit fly. For the study, Wanhe Li first compared how flies fare under various lockdown conditions. After seven days, flies housed together in groups of varying sizes produced no anomalous behaviors. Even two flies cut off from the crowd were content with one another. But when a single fly was entirely isolated, the lonely insect began eating more and sleeping less.

Seven days is enough to start the effect, which also appears to induce gene expression. So it may be a multi-generational effect. I'm sure Mecher knows this as well. He intends to ruin the entire universe for the rest of history.

The researchers do the usual Darwin speculation:

One possibility, Young says, is that social isolation signals a degree of uncertainty about the future. Preparation for tough times may include being alert and awake as often as possible and eating whenever food is available.

Not quite. Isolation doesn't signal uncertainty about the future. Isolation directly creates uncertainty and paranoia by removing external feedback from Nature and other humans. Sensory deprivation leaves the individual totally susceptible to official sensory input and official commands. Our media-centered world has already moved us halfway into this mode several years before the lockdowns.

This article is focusing on overeating, which isn't the important variable. Overeating is simply a familiar immediate effect of sleep loss. Under normal conditions, one sleepless night makes you ravenous. Sleep deprivation is the critical weapon of psychopaths and cult leaders. When we lose sleep we lose confidence, lose immunity, and lose coherence. We are ready for total command and control.

Hungry for food, hungry for sense input, hungry for coherence. The demons supply all three in their preferred form.

Labels: #WholeOfSociety, AI point-missing

  ¶ 10:40 AM

  Reciprocal, point: missing/
This is just sort of cute.



The questioner (non-native English) missed the point of the meme, and the answerer missed the missed point.

(My credential: former proofreader.)

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 8:39 AM

  Pretty good explanation, stupid explanation
Two studies that appear in RealClearScience today make a nice pair. Both deal with subjects I've wondered about and written about often. One seems plausible, the other is just stupid. One increases knowledge, the other subtracts.

This study offers an explanation of the electrical fields that precede an earthquake by days or weeks. The mechanism feels a little too complicated, but it does account for the delay. Seems to be based on electrolysis between two plates of different charge. Electrolysis moves bubbles, which effectively carry a current that creates the field.

This mechanism would seem simpler:



A giant electret microphone. The upper plate is charged relative to the lower plate. As the upper plate slides, its serrated field moves across the serrated lower plate, repelling and attracting electrons at each small approach and retreat, and creating a complicated alternating current.

I discussed fields before quakes here.

= = = = =

This article tries to explain why we don't like the sound of our own voices. It misses ALL the points and facts.

Hearing ourselves requires a second process. The sound has to go out through our skull as we produce it before it moves through the air and our ears. “When we then hear our own voice played back from a recording, that sound is then only filtered through air, just like other people's voices, and so it sounds different from when we hear ourselves while speaking,” Maslowski writes via email.

No. We hear ourselves purely internally. The skull moves relative to the eardrum and also shakes the fluid in the cochlea, and we hear the 'inverse' result. The outside path doesn't matter.

There's an added factor beyond the simple bone path. When we speak, the internal sound is so loud that several automatic dampers are turned on to protect the cochlea from destruction. The tensor tympani muscle pulls on the eardrum, limiting and DAMPING its movement. The stapedius muscle tenses up the stapes where it enters the cochlea, providing more damping. These protectors mainly lose high frequencies, so what we hear is bassy. THAT'S why the external recorded sound seems high.

A smaller missed point:

In 1968, only 38 to 55 percent of people quizzed could identify the sound of their own voices. One of the rare exceptions were radio announcers, who got it 100 percent of the time. Similar surveys conducted in 2008 and 2010 found about 90 percent or more of people identified themselves.

Before widespread use of cassette recorders and iphones, it wasn't just radio announcers who heard their own voice electronically from outside. Everyone who uses a regular landline phone hears their own voice echoing in the receiver. This version of our voice is ALSO bassy, since the landline cuts all freqs above 3000. Radio announcers heard an accurate version of their own voice in their monitor headphones.

I've discussed the question here among other places.

Labels: AI point-missing, Answered better than asked

  ¶ 1:07 PM

  Irrelevant point-missing
Since I'm in Not My Dream mode today, here's a completely irrelevant pet peeve. Youtube's 'suggested for you' extrapolates pretty well from what I'm watching right now. When I'm looking at an Intelligent Design lecture, it finds a similar ID clip.

But when I'm not currently watching, the suggestions always default to a type of entertainment that I've never watched on Youtube. Suggested thinks I want prime-time comedians from the 60s. Johnny Carson, Rodney Dangerfield, Mel Brooks, Don Rickles, Monty Python. I didn't like those assholes when they were live, and I've never watched them on Youtube. This has been the default for several years. Where does it come from? It's not smart AI.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 3:04 PM

  Beautiful AI point-hitting
The vast majority of questions on Quora are either absurd or stings. The vast majority of answers (including most of mine) are snarky and nasty. Snarky can be fun.

Here's a rare example of a serious question that brought a variety of serious and SIGNIFICANT answers.

Why are so many software engineers against the Internet of Things?

All the answers are worth reading. This one hits the proper points neatly:

One trend is to collect more and more data about the Internet users and find more and more creative ways to monetize this data in more and more creatively unethical ways.

The other one is to switch more and more services and products from purchase model to rental model.

Between these two trends there is a lot of sentiment among the tech crowd that the wide spread of IoT devices will provide a lot more potential for misuse in both directions.

In the first trend it will enable household IoT devices to gather a lot more private data without your consent. Would you like your IoT bed to tell Google how much sex you have? And if your partner(s) have their phones with them, Google might even find out who you have sex with! Isn’t technology wonderful?

Creatively unethical is a perfect hit.

Real programmers have been arguing against other uses and fantasies of AI as well. Programmers know how these things work, so we know how they can be misused, and we also know which goals are physically impossible fantasies.

How come nobody listens to these Experts? I thought Experts were in charge of the world?

The reality, of course, is that expertise is NOT the relevant variable. Deepstate is the only variable. Experts who agree with Deepstate are experts. Experts who disagree with Deepstate are Anti-Science Anti-Intellectual Deniers Who Must Be Exterminated.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 5:04 AM

  Almost getting the point
A surprisingly sane study in "social" "science".

If you've ever walked into a room, then completely forgotten what you went in there for, you've experienced what's known as the doorway effect: it's almost as if the mind blanks itself as you change location, ready for some fresh experience or input.

In a new study, scientists say the doorway effect (also known as the location updating effect) does appear to be real, but only when our brains are busy. What's more, it may not be as pronounced or straightforward as previous studies might suggest.

No duh.

These studies are using VR, which can't work properly. Only the visual aspect changes. Memory is associated with your full situation, especially including what you're doing. Senses plus muscles plus sequencing.

In the kitchen stirring a pot is not the same situation as in the kitchen pulling food out of the oven, even though you're standing in the same location and looking at the same appliance.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 1:07 AM

  In or out. Pick one.
More "working inside the system" crap.

Google has specialists working on AI "ethics", which is an oxymoron. Some of them found that Google wasn't "ethical" enough, which means that it wasn't crazy enough for their tastes. Google fired them.

Leaving aside the specifics, why would you expect ANY company to PAY you for criticizing what the company does? It's just naive. Some companies will allow it, but you shouldn't expect it.

When you're IN, you're IN. If you don't want to be IN, get OUT. Find another company, work on your own, or start a new company if you have the resources and influence to make it happen.

This is EXTREMELY SIMPLE and not at all new.

Labels: AI point-missing

  ¶ 3:08 PM

  Where's your BS detector?
This isn't really important, just a continuation of my AI point-missing theme.

MindMatters is upset about the supposed "misuse" of facial identification technology to accuse an "innocent" woman of taking part in the Jan 6 DC riot.

In the first place, she admits that she was there, and she's only complaining because the ID placed her in a part of the riot where she claims she wasn't present. Mighty small complaint.

In the second place, her biography smells to high hell of SPYCRAFT. She travels all the time and spent many years in various foreign countries. She supposedly "vacationed" in Mexico just after participating in the riot.

People who always "happen" to be "observing" every politically important event are not random curious observers. People who are always "vacationing" or "hiking" in hostile foreign countries are not "hikers". They are spies, whether formally or informally. Deepstate runs hundreds of NGOs and front companies that spy and agitate in foreign countries under various degrees of cover. This is not a secret or a mystery. It's been common for at least 130 years.

So why is the woman complaining? First guess: She's trying to fire the bureaucrat who forgot that she was an agent and put her identity into the public record. Second guess: Quality control. When you need to know how well a system works, you wiggle an input and watch the various outputs. A complaint about a partly valid ID might show up weak points in the ID system.

A major part of the activity in social media is black-box wiggle and watch. Questions and discussions intended to trigger responses and identify people with specific passions and interests. What happens next depends on the passions and interests. Some of the ID'd people will be cultivated as helpers, others will be trained as "terrorists" by "opposition" organizations. Sucker Filter reigns supreme.

Labels: AI point-missing, Sucker Filter

  ¶ 12:47 AM