Saturday, December 30, 2023

Advanced tips for rising writers.

On this occasion, as we swing into a 2024 that cannot evade its destiny to be 'historic,' let me turn attention to something apolitical...

... the art and skill of writing credible fiction. 

Many of you already know my more general site of Advice to Rising Writers. But offered here below is a supplement - a cluster of specific tricks of the trade.  


But first...


Here's a link to a recording of the first public performance of my play “The Escape,” on November 7 at Caltech. A 'reading' but fully dramatized, well-acted and directed by Joanne Doyle*. The recording is of middling quality, but shows great audience reactions. Come have some good, impudently theological fun!  You can also read the script of The Escape: A Confrontation in Four Scenes - available on Amazon.

And now, for you would-be Great Writers...


== The "Advice to New Writers of SF" packet from David Brin ==

This is a ‘canned’ general essay about tricks and skills of writing. It's not an instruction manual to become a great author! More a compilation of ‘wisdom’ chunks about some common mistakes often trip up would-be novelists etc. 

Many have have told me they found this advice useful in their writers’ journey. You can find more for authors on my website. Let's begin:

Naturally, it’s terrific that you are writing and I do want to offer encouragement! Still, there is good news and bad news in this modern era. The good: there are so many new ways to get heard, or read, or published that any persistent person can get ‘out there.’  Talent and good ideas will see the light of day!  

The bad news? it’s now so easy to get "published," bypassing traditional channels, that millions get to convince themselves "I am a published author!" without passing through the old grinding mill, where my generation honed our skills by dint of relentless workshopping, criticism, rejection, revision and pain. 

Alas, fiction writing is a complex art that involves a lot of tradecraft... as it would if you took up landscape painting or silver smithing. It is insufficient simply to have ideas or to be skilled at nonfiction-prose. Nor does a lifetime of reading stories prepare you to write them, alas! 

Storytelling is incantatory magic and there are aspects to the incantation process that are mostly invisible to the incantation recipient (reader). This means that extensive workshopping and skill-building are as important today as they were 30 years ago.  And for that, you need to do one of the most difficult-but-rewarding things a mature human can do – relish and seek criticism.

This is not meant to be discouraging!  In fact I am appending (below) a slug of 'generic advice'... much of it probably already below your level! Still, some items may not be. In fact, many published authors have found these insights helpful. I hope you will. But either way, do persevere.

Again, let me point you to an "advice article" that I've posted online, containing a distillation of wisdom and answers to questions I've been sent across 20 years.  (Note, most authors never answer at all.)  This article is at: http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm

I can also offer a general site containing advice bits from other top writers. 

In this collection of writing tips, I especially recommend the short how-to books of my colleague Nancy Kress, such as Beginnings, Middles & Ends. Also The Craft of Writing Science Fiction that Sells, by Ben Bova. And The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction, by J. VanderMeer.

Then there is my advice video! 

And some from Robert Heinlein (via J Pournelle) 

But let’s get started on this list of specific examples: things that (alas) even very talented neo-authors do, all too often.


== The biggest problem ==

 Skills at rapid-opening, point-of-view, showing-not-telling, action, evading passive-voice and so on are achieved by studied workshopping and -- as in most arts -- the whole thing is predicated upon ineffable things like talent, e.g. an ear for dialogue that only some people have. Indeed, point-of-view is so hard that half of would-e writers never "get" it, no matter how many years they put in.

* By far the most important pages are the first ones, when you hook the reader. And you need a great first paragraph to get them to read the first page. Starting with the Pov’s (Point of View character’s) name is certainly okay… even Heinlein did it now and then. (Though just the first name suffices; leave the last name for later.) Still, it is often better to start with an italicized internal thought, or an ironic observation, or spoken words or actions.  See an example, below.

* Reiterating that key point: POV (point of view) is among the hardest things for most new writers to master.  It gives your characters a “voice,” and presence and offers the reader a sense of vesting in the protagonist’s feelings and needs and will. This is all ruined by authorial data-dumps that make you feel lectured-to by a narrator!  It's better to reveal info as efficiently as possible via conversation, action and the point of view character's internal thoughts. 

Yes, you have a lot of information to deliver! You want the reader to know all about your precious character and world and situation, I get it. But be patient and tell as little of that as you can get away with, while hooking the reader's curiosity to learn more.

One great way to break the bad habit of narrator dumps is to develop visceral discomfort with three words: ‘were,’ 'was,’ and especially ‘had.' 

Oh, sure —  “had”, “were” and “was” are permitted. They are even sometimes necessary!  But you should find each use regrettable. Each time should cause a wee bit of pain! Because ‘had’ – and to a lesser extent “was” — often indicates that the narrator, instead of the point of view character (or pov) is dumping or explaining, instead of showing.  

If you look at my books, you'll find I include lots of ideas and background of past events, but I pace them in with movement, action, conversation and internal thoughts. 

Seriously. right now go to your draft and do a global search for ‘had.’  (And the even-worse apostrophe-d -- 'd -- ick!). Then global-search "was." Do the pages light up?  Now do the same thing with your favorite novels, by authors you admire. I think you'll get the point.


== Example illustrating many of the points above ==

Here’s an excerpt - the opening line for a novel that someone sent to me, asking for advice:


Captain Bara Brakin hated the noise and turmoil of crowds, yet now she was stuck on crowd control in a busy tunnel-street of Deep Kinshasa while her patrol ship was in spacedock for repairs.  She'd joined Solar Space Force to get away from Earth cities, and the effect of crowds on her magneto-psi sense.  She'd loved every minute of her month of relative quiet on pirate patrol in the asteroids. 


Notice especially the telltale narrator dump cues of "had" and "was" and "were" and “‘d”. 

Were you vexed to see the word 'patrol' repeated in a single paragraph? Repeatitis is a far lesser sin. In fact there's no reason to diss Hemingway for ignoring the rule habitually! Still, many readers dislike it. Also, beginning with the character's full name isn't generally advisable.

Okay, let’s see if we can convey all the same information (and more from later paragraphs) dynamically by removing any presence of the narrating author. 

Try this instead:


Damn I hate crowd control duty.       

Over the tunnel noise and throng confusion of Deep New Delhi, Kara could barely hear her sergeant growl in agreement, as if reading her mind. 

“How long till the ship is fixed cap? I didn’t join SSF for this shit.”  

Of course it was a coincidence – Gomez didn’t have her magneto-psi sense.

“Belay that,” She snapped. “Well be back out there on comfy pirate patrol in no time.”


Do you see how I dumped in far more information via internal (italicized) thoughts, sensory input and conversation, without once using “had” or even “was”? Now add some spicey action… someone in the crowd throws something... and you’ve started rolling along, supplying lots of background info without an intruding narrator dump! 

Again (because these lessons only sink in from repetition) do a global search of your MS for "had" and "was" and "were." Every single instance should prompt: "Can I tell this another way? Or even NOT tell it, or let that info float in, later?" Try it. You'll write better stuff.


== Generic advice blips ==

* All else being equal, it's best to stick with... and master ... standard storytelling techniques before branching off boldly in new directions. Hence third-person in the immediate-past tense, with almost invisible narrator, is generally a good old style to use, especially your first few outings. (And it is preferred in the Out of Time series of YA novels I use to  mentor new writers.) First-person immediate-past is also fine (I've used it a lot) though it requires care in POV and has traps to evade.  

Lately we've all been seeing a lot of works in present tense. Yes, this can be done well (e.g. Vonnegut) and times do change, I guess. But far more often present tense invites authorial data dumps, POV flipping and nagging intrusions by an omniscient narrator, leaving us detached from the protagonist character. I don't like it, much.

* As noted, many readers hate “repeatitis” where a word gets repeated a lot. Even twice can be reader-irritating. English is so rich with synonyms and alternate ways of saying the same thing, that you can usually avoid it, unless repetition is a deliberate poetical device. 

This stricture has no strong reason for it. As I said, authors like Hemingway violated it a lot. But most professionals cater to this common reader whim. And hence, you’ll pick up a habit of minimizing even too many close repeats of “the.”

* Prologues can be nice, if short. But often they serve as crutches.

* One problem I used to see a lot, but perhaps less-so today, is excessive use of adjectives and flowery prose. Still, keep an eye out for it.

*  Want a simple trick to learn master craft? Find a dozen openings of novels you greatly admire and RE-TYPE THE FIRST COUPLE OF PAGES to see how that author did it!  Just re-reading those pages will not work!  I guarantee you will only understand how those authors did it if you retype the opening scene, passing the words through your fingers.  

And you’ll grasp that establishing POV early while minimizing data dumping is the hardest thing for neos to learn, yet absolutely essential. No matter how wonderful your ideas are, they are useless unless you master how to hook.

Talk this over with your colleagues.  Read aloud together and critique the first 5 paragraphs of lots of writers. Do nothing else in your workshop, till you all understand how to establish both the scene/situation and POV laced into conversation, action and internal thoughts.


*OVERALL WRITING RHYTHM: For novels:

Work out a significant part of the setting and plot elements, particularly socio-political dynamics of the world, as foundation. I do a lot of this in my head. But feel free to chart it out, as Heller and Vonnegut did!

-Start with interesting characters but don't get too specific till THEY start speaking up with their concerns and idiosyncrasies.

-Try to start with a scene that grabs readers with action and/or vivi imagery and a world and character they want to learn more about.

-Write about 30,000 words, then circulate a draft to consult with beta readers and experts for help refining setting and plot elements. Anything that confuses these readers "is my fault."

-Revise those first  30,000 words with all you've learned, esp. about the characters... and then continue forward, adding 30,000 words.

-Consult with more beta readers, do another revision of all 60K... then  add 30,000 words, and spin and repeat until complete. This pattern works for me because "my openings are the weakest part of the process so they get reworked till they pop. I write endings that work first draft. A different rhythm works for different authors.

* Finally, there are many other sources of good writing wisdom! One of the best is by my friend and colleague and ought-to-be-Grand Master of SF Nancy Kress, who details how you can create a main character readers won't forget and plant essential information about a character's past into a story? I cannot recommend this one too highly!  See "Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint."

* Author James Murdo offers this handy tool to make a Glossary for your novel. 

Oh, there’s so much more that I discuss when teaching workshops. General skills and tricks specific to science fiction. Like why you should make your first novel a murder mystery!

Alas, though, that’s all I have time for. Still, I hope it’s been useful. Remember to read carefully my “advice article” at http://www.davidbrin.com/advice.htm, where there are links to the advice missives by many other successful authors… and some disagree with me on every point raised here!

Above all keep at it!  That’s the key to success, even more important than “seek feedback!”

 Persevere.

 Good luck! 

With best wishes, for a confident and ambitious 21st Century,

David Brin


(Note, for copyright reasons video of "The Escape" goes silent, omitting some of the wonderfully apropos background music! For example after scene 2 (The Stones “Sympathy for the Devil;”) and at the end, when you see the audience cheering silently during “You Gotta Have Heart!” the great song from Damn Yankees, related to the theme of the play. Pity! Still, I think you’ll laugh a few times… or go “Huh!”)

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Will the Supremes Dump Donald? And the Doctorow Doctrine on AI

So now there's speculation that the U.S. Supreme Court might back up Colorado and disqualify Trump, by saying 'it's up to each state.' I am skeptical. In fact, there's just one way that could happen....

... and that would be if Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and especially John Roberts get orders to do so, from the oligarchy that they serve. 

Why would the oligarch masters order such a hit on Trump, the best asset they ever had? Their greatest tool promoting neo-feudalism vs. against the American Enlightenment Experiment?

Two reasons based on two possibilities. 
It could happen either ...
(a) ...if Trump is losing big, if Trump seems on the verge of torching their main weapon against modernity, the Republican Party... 
...or else ...
(b) ...if he wins, bigtime! Whereupon he keeps his declared word and then goes full brownshirt, exactly as he's now promising! Whereupon - as at the end of Cabaret or in The Manchurian Candidate - the oligarchs realize too late that they can no longer control their tool. And he'll rampage through the aristocracy that nurtured him, the way Hitler did.

Either way, they lose! So yeah, they are talking about dumping him. But how? His MAGA/confederate/brownshirt popularity means that no pliably-controlled 'mainstream' tool, like Nikki Haley, will come to the rescue. 

So what are the Masters' options? 
Here I'll speculate, starting with a question...

... what is the consensus aim of the world oligarchic putsch? Is there still a common goal among the casino mafiosi, hedge moguls, carbon lords/sheiks, prepper fetishists, inheritance brats and "ex"-commissar "former"-stalinists in the slightly-relabeled KGB?

1. The goal may still be utter demolition of the American-led Enlightenment,
that blocks any return to 6000 years of inheritance-based rule by lords, kings and priests. This has been their project for 30 years, already, by inciting a hot new phase of the recurring, 240 year US Civil War. 

Certainly many of the Prepper fetishists and sheiks dream of an "Event" tearing down the USA. 

Only now one sees signs that some of the smarter oligs are staring to reconsider this risky gamble, this killing of the goose that laid all their golden eggs.

Alas, despite tome recent defections, there's still a LOT of money and power dedicated to this all-or-nothing gamble. And the core of this scheme remains, as for 106 years, in Moscow.

Sure, the 'former' commie Putinists look like they are weakening, in Ukraine. Still, they are the ones holding masses of blackmail kompromat on prominent westerners, especially most of the high goppers. So, Putin remains the putative leader of those who want an America in flames. And again... he has the blackmail files on hundreds, including likely Supreme Court 'justices.' (See links* below.)

If that goal truly remains the oligarchy's consensus, then the thing they'll want to do with Trump is obvious! 

Martyrdom

The 'Howard Beale' option, in such a way as to blame lib'ruls and incite a tsunami of Timothy McVeighs - and much more - across our land.

2. What if the goal is to salvage something of a Republican Party that they can still control, while maintaining a USA that continues to generate wealth and science and new medical advances to save oligarch lives... plus space junkets and all the things that make their wealth worthwhile to any sane person? 

In that case, a gentler easing out of Trump will suffice. And orders will go out to Roberts & co., telling them to do just that... 

...and it becomes Nikki Haley after all! Counting on enough women voters to defect and save them. (Her latest flubs mayshift that.)

True, dumping Trump will incite civil war within the GOP, as ol Don rages against every betrayal by former friends, going third party pyrotechnically. And yes, November 2024 would thus see a huge blue wave, leading to a surge of legislation that's badly needed for the nation's good... including some rise in taxation of the rich. And it's likely many blackmailed goppers will slide into retirement...

...but the saner aristocrats might swallow that. They may realize that being merely very-rich in a vibrant, scientific and free civilization is more fun - and conducive of long life - than trying for feudal lordship amid ashes, hated by all the surviving nerds who know bio, cyber, nuclear, nano and who - volcanically angry - also know the detailed locations of every prepper redoubt.

Anyway, in U.S. politics everything is ephemeral. By 2026, a reformed Republican Party would come roaring back. Count on it. Just - pretty please - make it one with a scintilla of modernity and loyalty and sanity. 


== So, will they or won't they? ==

Hence, do I think the Supremes will actually disqualify Trump? Even if Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and especially John Roberts get orders to do so, from the oligarchy they serve?

Nah. At this point they are far more afraid of MAGA brownshirts than they are of feudal overlords with blackmail kompromat. Roberts & co. will protect Donald. And we'll have to take him out at the ballot box, ourselves.

*Links regarding likely blackmail of the GOP establishment:

*GOP lawmaker says fellow Republicans compromised by sex and drugs.

* Political Blackmail: The Hidden Danger to Public Servants.

* Talking Feds: From Russia with kompromat.

(Side note: by siding with Colorado and dumping Trump, Roberts might thus proclaim: "See? We ARE neutral! So when Dems resume power, please don't reform or expand the Court?")


== The Doctorow Doctrine? ==

Cory Doctorow takes on the “AI Bubble” with his usual fury and indignant panache, blending a very substantial amount of knowledge with equal dollops of tendentious cynicism (his trademark) and – frankly – this time throwing in more outrageously false statements than I have ever seen him issue before. (Especially in the first paragraph!) The result is very much worth reading, for litanies of examples and keen insights, while you should remain wary about those tendentiously compulsive cynical declarations.


Is this whole ‘AI thing’ an overhyped bubble?  Sure, as an economic or commercial investment. For one thing, Cory is right about the vast energy requirements of these art-and-language emulators. For another, ‘gollms’ or generative large language models are inherently incapable of sapience!  Though they will soon be profoundly good at faking it, passing most Turing tests by simple, brute force sentence-completion. Moreover, efficiencies will arise, as these prematurely labeled ‘intelligences’ focus on optimizations.

 

Still, none of that truly matters. Because this time success vs failure won’t be measured by investor losses in tens of billions of dollars, but rather in terms of manipulative POWER… the power to spread Turing-passed falsehoods that make today’s disinformation waves seem like Mother Goose.

In fact, the real issue is whether there can be anything like an Enlightenment Civilization issuing forth and surviving and even augmenting, from the arrival of these tools. A civilization in which ‘truth’ and ‘fact’ are still things. One where predatory liars are caught and deterred often enough for us to stumble forward in at least some confidence and overall safety. 

 

That can only happen if we utilize the same tool that enabled the last 200 years of gradually improving civilization to continue our historically miraculous escape from six millennia of brutal, feudal predation.


That tool? It’s called reciprocal accountability amid general transparency. The very same tool that Cory is attempting to apply upon those he deems to be fools or villains… and that I am applying to him, as I type. We both have the same habit, learned from the same civilization, though we differ in awareness of that fact.

 

There is no other conceivable solution than incentivized reciprocal accountability. In fact there is no other even plausible method in our toolbox. Just as we learned to somewhat tame those hyper-intelligent predators called lawyers, by siccing them upon each other, we desperately need to figure out – quick – how to get AIs holding each other accountable, both on our behalf and for incentive rewards – or else this experiment is done.  

 

I talk about one approach to doing this in my WIRED article

 

We have a window of opportunity to get these new entities competing with each other to catch liars on our behalf. And that matters to me, far more than whether the Uber company is commercial toast.

 

-----

Oh, in addition to the WIRED piece... my related NEWSWEEK op-ed (June’22) dealt with ‘empathy bots’’ that feign sapience and personhood. And the most accurate multi-year prediction I ever made. So far.

Sunday, December 24, 2023

Patterns and tactics that debase our politics (and maybe even yours)

== Again, be passionate... but NOT "mad as hell!" ==

As we embark on a year of political hell in the USA - and therefore the world - I plead with all sides to see how our deepest sickness - deliberately stoked by enemies - is a self-doped high of sanctimony that afflicts ALL partisans, of all kinds! (And yes, including me.)

Please watch my TEDxUCSD talk on “The addictive plague of getting mad as hell.”

That does not mean that all sides are morally or factually the same! You all know that I believe – supported by mountains of proof – that one of the US parties has spiraled into utter insanity, waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and 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.

So yes, I am dedicated to the ‘Union” side – nearly always the good side – in this latest phase of the 240 year American Civil war.  

Still, there can be no doubt that many on our side, as well, are poisoned by this mind plague that robs humans of their reason. And it makes for a fractious alliance… the only one with a chance to save the nation, the planet and our children. In other words, we cannot afford this malignancy-addiction.

*(Here's scientific background: Addicted to Self-Righteousness? And my video: Indignation, addiction and hope.)

== Patterns and currents that flow below your favorite - or most-hated - memes ==

First a couple of notes:

A June milestone passed without much notice, the 300th anniversary of the birth of Adam Smith, arguably as important to our Enlightenment Experiment as even the American revolutionary ringleader, Ben Franklin. See my posting:  Adam Smith - Liberals, you must reclaim him. 

Okay, so can we wean ourselves off carbon? The zero-sum Foxite meme is that Democrats' push for sustainable alternatives must mean more dependence on oil imports. Yes? Um, no? U.S. oil production is forecast to average an all-time high of 12.8 million barrels a day this year and keep growing to 13.1 million in 2024, even as sustainables surge. That means the loser is... OPEC. Indeed, effective energy independence from OPEC happened under Barack Obama.

Still, U.S. fuel market price sways on decisions made at the oil cartel’s machinations. Feeding lie-narratives from Fox etc. that Joe Biden has hampered US production. 

To be clear. I want rapid progress toward zero carbon! (A carbon tax is essential.) Still, today's surge in sustainables like wind and solar ironically depends on a steady supply of reliable transition energy. We do our best and most rapid work not with purity, but momentum and determination.


== Political tactics in play! ==

Most Americans - indeed most Earthers - spent their formative years suckling from the greatest propaganda campaign in history, called Hollywood, yet cannot name the deep reflexes they were taught... like Suspicion of Authority. No, you didn't invent SoA - the main theme in almost every film you ever loved. I talk about that in Vivid Tomorrows. 


But what of the American Empire? Loathed and admired, might it open a path to an end to all empires? In an older essay, I laid out possibilities for how Pax Americana could succeed its way into revered retirement, in favor of the Earth Federation we see so often portrayed in sci fi. See Whatever Comes Next.  


Meanwhile, alas, the troglodyte-right is pitching a "system overhaul" for the U.S. government in a plan called Project 2025, a revealing and horrifying look at what many leading entities on the right have in store for America, should Donald Trump return to the White House. Target #1 is the 140 year Civil Service Act, that transformed the old Spoils System into the corps of professionals that gave us the first (mostly) honest governance in human history.

But that can't be allowed any longer, it seems. After winning the national popular vote only once in 30 years and retaining lots of power only due to cheats like gerrymandering and the Electoral College, today's oligarchy now realizes that all the regular tricks are failing, as ever-more millions get wise to them… 

...and even confederate MAGAs will shrug off the hypnosis when the entire U.S. southeast gets trashed and flooded and malaria'd by climate change. 

Indeed, the casino mafiosi, petro princes, hedge lords, inheritance brats and Kremlin "ex" commissars who own and operate today's GOP share two fears... 
(1) that the sane American majority will reclaim power and calmly limit theirs... or else 
(2) that the populist MAGA trend toward brownshirt-ism will reach the critical point portrayed at the very end of CABARET, when Michael York asks a smug German aristocrat: "So, you still think you can control them?"


Hence, if they regain power in 2024 (and there are tricks in play) they know it could be their last chance to end one-person-one-vote democracy, to crush the civil servants and entrench inheritance-brat feudalism forever. ALL of the ‘reforms’ offered under “Project 2025” have that aim, and to preserve the GOP’s sole political reason for existence.


What reason is that? Why, to protect Supply Side tax grifts for the rich and keep eviscerating the IRS. LOOK at the actual bills passed by the Mike Johnson House - the laziest in 100 years. That truly is all they care about.


Speaking of which - after one of those marvelous Pelosi Bills restored IRS funding, and the crippled agency is back on the job!  The IRS plans to crack down on 1,600 millionaires to collect millions of dollars in back taxes.”  Striking terror into the core of the cheater aristocracy, a form of anti-feudal revolution that I predicted in Earth.



== Patterns of Democracy ==


Alt sources of wisdom… assuming I am not enough of a wiseguy for you?;-)


Arend Lijphart seems worth looking into. Beginning with his book Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in 36 countries, and going back to his earlier work, Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian & Consensus Government in Twenty-one Countries (1984), Lijphart focused on the broader contrast between majoritarian democracy and consensus democracy.  Somewhat similar to Adam Smith and Arnold Toynbee, Lijphart argues that the main factor in having a viable democracy in a strongly divided society is the spirit of accommodation among the elites of different groups. 


And this is where I step in, with perspective on 6000 years of dullard feudal lords practicing stoopid, zero-sum governance that held us back in 99% of past civilizations. Unsapiently pursuing male-reproductive reflexes (e.g. harem building), their imperative was - and remains - one that Smith and Marx and even Ayn Rand deeply loathed: creating empires to leave to those aforementioned inheritance brats. 


Alas for the oligarch-castes, they cannot succeed in this project (eating the enlightenment goose that laid all their golden eggs) amid a healthy enlightenment society. One that practices actual politics… the open comparison of priorities, goals and means, especially reciprocal accountability and good faith negotiation… all of it guided by fact-professions who provide grounding in objective reality.


In order to restore feudal pyramids of power, today’s worldwide oligarchy must first discredit those fact professions… a campaign that’s already underway! While destroying – as they already have – the practical art of politics.


Let there be no mistake here. Those are the two goals. Forget the details. Destroying enlightenment style politics of the kind described by Liphart – and discrediting all fact professions, from science, teaching, medicine, law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps—Those are the two priorities that can lead to restoration of secure pyramids of inherited power… and to humanity’s extinction. 



== Role Models? ==


Okay, this from Margie Taylor Greene -- now just Marjorie Taylor (look up the differing divorce rates among high Republicans vs Dems!) - is just too rich. No need to even edit! (I suspect there's some compacting edits but you can't beat this!) 


Then there’s the Lauren Boebert hypocrisy. 


Why does no one recite the passage “By their fruits you shall know them?” Seldom mentioned by anyone is the dissonance of getting parenting advice from MTG, Boebert and Sarah Palin, then glancing – even  briefly – at how their own children came out!  You hypocrites dare to preach to us?



== A libertarian who (maybe) actually means it? ==


Here’s an important article, about ways that our Enlightenment Experiment is under fiercely coordinated attack. Sure, by now we all know that. The big surprise is where this thing was published, at an ‘institute’ that long ago became not a promoter of freedom but a shill for oligarchy. Only now we see a serious attempt to tear masks off of the world-lunatics who aim to restore feudalism. Could it be that some, at Cato, are rediscovering their stated mission?

“In an age of widespread concern that liberal democracy is increasingly embattled around the world, the twin attacks on Enlightenment liberalism from the right and the left—and not just from the fringes—represent a worrying trend.”


Okay, sure, there are anti-enlightenment fanatics on all horizons. But these authors have realized what’s abundantly clear. That shrieks from a frippy far-left of woke-ist postmodernists are a much smaller threat... driven by sanctimony addictions, yet still rooted in enlightenment goals… while our meme-enemies on the far-right are massively coordinated, waging all-out attacks against our every pillar, from science, democracy, merit, and accountability… to, yes, any sort of freedom.


== No longer even pretending ==

In a worrisome trend, many elements of the oligarchy-funded neo-feudalism movement – that I’ve denounced ferociously elsewhere – no longer even try to disguise their intent to end anything like what we call liberty or free speech or open inquiry. 


Styling themselves as scions of Edmund Burke, their screeds display utter ignorance of human history or the past thinkers they claim to ‘quote.’ For example, as the Cato article points out, the "neo-monarchist' morons conflate Hobbes with Locke! While attributing to feudalism virtues that 6000 years of bullying lords always loudly claimed – but never actually displayed – as they preyed-upon and oppressed nearly all of our ancestors.

And here is a profile of more neo-monarchist brats, yattering (while they orbit Peter Thiel) about how a mixture of LouisXIV and czarist Putinism and Galt’s Gulch will (despite 6000 years of insipid-failed feudalism) somehow be vastly better (for uber lords, one imagines) than the scientific enlightenment that indulgently gave the ingrate-parasitic brats absolutely everything they ever had. 


I take solace from the evident fact that these malignant ingrates are also so very, very stoopid. Alas, they can still be dangerous.

Saturday, December 16, 2023

Human origins - and evolution. Patterns of cooperation and competition

I'm avoiding politics once again this time, in order to dive into the endlessly fascinating topic of human origins. And hence first, for your holiday shopping.... 

... a while back I suggested the perfect gift for that anthropologist or paleo-historian you know (either professional or amateur!) Or else your role-playing aficionado. My way-fun role-playing game TRIBES simulates life in the stone age! 

Can you hunt and gather and woo and connive to have the most offspring successfully reach adulthood? Only be careful competing! You only win if the the tribe survives!

Alas, folks reported interest last time... but no way to actually order the game!

Well, Steve Jackson has fixed the glitch. You can now order and play this fun diversion that's also highly pertinent to today's topic! 

== News about human origins and evolution ==

Scientists are advancing with synthetic evolution: At 493 genes, the minimal genome of M. mycoides JCVI-syn3B is the smallest known free-living organism, artificially culled-down to the absolutely minimum number that’s viable by folks at the Craig Venter Institute. In comparison, many animal and plant genomes contain more than 20,000 genes. So far, the simplest organism would have no functional redundancies or useless spacers. Note that it requires the researchers to supply food and ideal conditions. Which leads to their next step… altering conditions to see if evolution takes place.

Spoiler alert. It does.

At the opposite end of the scale... Neanderthal genes! Was there a penalty for promiscuity around 50,000 BCE?  People with roots outside Africa tend to have about 2% Neanderthal (or else Denisovan) DNA in their genome. So statistically, by random chance, you would expect Neanderthal DNA to collectively account for around 2% of the genetic risk of disease. Not in all cases, it seems: "But here we find that 8.4% is explained by Neanderthal gene flow," much more than is expected by chance alone.”  


It is so tiresome when sci journalists flub their reporting. Take these reports that the human ancestral line almost died out due to low populations about 800,000 years ago.  Yes “bottlenecks” are very interesting! A recently discovered ‘y-chromosome bottleneck’ around the time of early farming towns, has huge implications! As for these news stories: yes, there was likely a time when Homo Heidelbergensis & Antecessor (ancestor of Homo Saps and Neanderthals) were a small, isolated population, and surviving that isolation helped them to thereupon differentiate and speed our evolution. 


But, this was not about ‘the human line almost dying out’! These articles ignore the fact that very close cousins to Heidelbergensis - Homo Erectus - were everywhere in the Old World with no bottleneck. An isolation bottleneck was likely HOW we surged ahead of Erectus – evolution flourishes on such cycles. But Erectus was still around and would likely have spun off another isolated population. And maybe super-brain sapiens might NOT have happened!  See my speculations in Existence. Still, flawed reporting.


Human origins were definitely in Africa, stretching back to Australopithecus – “Lucy’ and her upright-walking kin. But further back to the ancestors of ALL apes? It appears that earlier hominids not only evolved in western and central Europe but spent over 5 million years evolving there and spreading to the eastern Mediterranean before eventually dispersing into Africa. Recent findings establish Anadoluvius turkae as a branch of the part of the evolutionary tree that gave rise to chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and humans.


 But sure, long after that, human genetic diversity in non-African populations appeared to have been shaped primarily by an out-of-Africa dispersal 50 or so thousand yr ago (kya). (As I describe in Existence.) With a major shift in reprogramming-by-culture. But somewhere around 7000ya there was another huge effect. Arrival of agriculture, towns and kings led to a Y-Chromosome bottleneck when only a small fraction of males got to breed. Then, rather quickly, actual cities got larger, law happened, and the great culling of males appears to have stopped... though not feudalism, dominating 99% of our ancestors.

We can do - and have done - better than that failed social norm.

See my neoteny article: Neoteny and Two-Way Sexual Selection in Human Evolution


== Did we evolve all the things that make us what we are? ==


I want to just drop in here a few thoughts about Richard Dawkins (famed author of The Selfish Gene , The Blind Watchmaker, and The God Delusion). Down in the comments community here at "Contrary Brin" (the very best such community online!), some opined a while back about Dawkins's belief that humans have no behaviors that did not arise from evolution. And I also must demur. What Dawkins etc. (and nearly all others) ignore is the emergent effects that occur when one layer of activity creates a new, ‘higher” layer.

Cells are vast communities of sub-cellular entities that do their various tasks & business in a manner that is generally at least as much competitive as cooperative, making and ‘selling’ chemicals and structures to each other, much like an economy. Yet the cell seems from the outside to be a consistent, self-cooperative entity.

In Earth I describe how this same effect happens at the next layer between cells in a macro organism, especially during fetal development, when proto-neurons compete with each other savagely, over growth factors, resulting in whole ecosystem structures – jungles and forests and deserts, across the developing infant brain: structures that combine into vastly better mental processes, wherein many next-layer personality drives and components continue to compete across life… yet, the thing that emerges - an individually identifiable human being - portrays with some verisimilitude a unitary organism, actively and effectively pursuing goals…

…goals that change as the organism satisfies ever-higher layers of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. All the way to abstractions that the cellular and mammal and ape and caveman brains that dwell inside our cortex could never begin to perceive, let alone understand.

And sure, often these higher ‘value’ goals (e.g. religion) can often be just surface justifications for more brutal, lower drives like vengeance, jealously, fear and avarice. And yet… 50,000 years ago (I believe, and argue in Existence), there came a new layering as humans became able to re-program their thinking modes completely via culture, leading to many subsequent major, 'renaissance' shifts in our tools, societies and things we can perceive/contemplate.

And of course this progression continues, as human individuals group themselves in cooperative - but also competitive - associations like families, tribes, communities, towns and nations. And civilizations, which aren't entirely the same thing. 

The crux: Dawkins is completely off-base if he thinks he can ascribe the emergent outcomes from those new and vividly unpredictable layers entirely to earlier evolved selection.  

Every phase and every level reveals the truth that nether cooperation nor competition can explain this, alone. Each is entangled in layer after layer of complexity.

== Where our evolved natures collide with policy? And with AI? ==

Our evolved natures interact fretfully with new technologies. Take recent cries that new generative AI systems may decipher and interpret our personal DNA!  Yes, that could be worrisome! A tool for criminals and oppressors and bigots. As illustrated in the excellent film Gattaca – that DNA is already everywhere. You shed it in flakes of skin wherever you go. 

But that's the point! As shown in that flick, collection and decipherment of our DNA will be trivial and banning all that is a mug's game. What matters - a point I’ve been pushing since the 1990s, in The Transparent Society and elsewhere - is that hiding will neither preserve privacy nor prevent your data being used against you

But what matters is not blinding others; it is preventing others from using your information to harm you. There is a possible solution, then. Not by hiding, but by aggressively ripping the veils away from malefactors who might do that sort of thing! 

Saturday, December 09, 2023

Yet more science! A year-end update of amazements.

What drives leaps in technological innovation? Just posted on my secondary blog: I discuss how government-funded science plays a role in stimulating innovation. An ultimate refutation to the hypnotic incantation that all-government-is-useless-all-the-time.

And as a terrific example... The universe at your fingertips! This zoomable image from the James Webb Space Telescope lets you explore galaxies - and travel backward in time to see how these galaxies were long ago. 


== Marvels of our planet ==

In the secret world below Antarctic sea ice, salty frozen fingers descend. Called brinicles, they may be like hydrothermal vents. But creatures of the deep, beware: anything caught in the path of a brinicle will be frozen alive. So beware the Brinicles!


This drone video of whales is terrific!  As are the drone innovations by my friend Iain Kerr and Ocean Alliance, finding innovative ways to do non-invasive science on whales who might be key to reviving our oceans-in-peril. 


With only one-quarter of the sea floor mapped with sonar, it is impossible to know how many seamounts exist. But radar satellites that measure ocean height can also find them, by looking for subtle signs of seawater mounding above a hidden seamount, tugged by its gravity. A 2011 census using the method found more than 24,000. High-resolution radar data have now added more than 19,000 new ones.



== Environmental news ==


In my novel Existence I posited that we’ll face a severe crisis over Phosphorus. Illustrated by a plot point that men - yes, male human citizens - in 2040 will be called upon, by law, to pee in phos recovery urinals! Or else... onto the flower beds outside your house, in lieu of store-bought fertilizer – that’s okay too. 

Now a company (did they read the novel?) has pioneered a method to (perhaps) remove and recover phosphorus from solid municipal waste without adding chemicals, using ‘electromechanical devices.” And if we did this at high scale it would also help save small seas like the Med & Black and Caribbean from fertilizer death. 

This is the kind of thing that pops up almost monthly, where nerds may be saving the planet, and us all. Despite the mad cult-ingrates who have it in for ‘high IQ stoopidpeople.’

Only now this: Massive phosphate rock deposits discovered in NorwayWow, lucky Norway: First beautiful fjords, then vast oil reserves, and gorgeous people... and now - it seems - large amounts of the phosphate rock that I fretted about, in Existence. If true, then maybe (male) men won't have to all pee into phos-recovery urinals by 2035. And the King of Morocco won't own the world, after all. A case of I'd rather be wrong.


Seeking new strategies... testing is underway to determine if sprinkling volcanic rock dust on farmland can help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  


== Earth History == 


Researchers have discovered that Earth’s tectonic plate movements cause sea levels to rise and fall in 36-million-year cycles, indirectly triggering biodiversity bursts, at least re: ocean life. These cycles, altering shallow sea and shelf habitats, are found to significantly shape marine life diversity over millions of years, challenging previous notions of species evolution.  “The cycles are 36 million years long because of regular patterns in how tectonic plates are recycled into the convecting mantle, the mobile part of the deep Earth, similar to hot, thick soup in a pot, that moves slowly.”


fossil discovery shakes our traditional view of the Cretaceous Era as being all dinosaur domination and cowering mammal submission. It suggests a more complex ancient food web in which certain dinosaurs were prey and some mammals were predators.  


Finally, while we fret over the Anthropocene and humanity making this planet much less habitable… possibly leading to our own extinction… a recurring side topic is “are we leaving any lasting traces, that might be noticed by later – presumably wiser – archaeologists or paleontologists – either successors or visitors?"  


It’s a topic I weighed-into, when I was lead pundit for a popular History Channel show called “Life After People,” contemplating what might remain of our vaunted civilization, one minute, or a day, a year, century, millennium and eon after we – for some reason – vanished from the scene.


This article from Nautilus - Could an industrial civilization have predated humans on Earth? - just the latest in a long series of such speculations… rightly concludes that our isotopic residue, if nothing else, would certainly blare that humans were here on Earth.  And thin but pronounced sedimentary layers of plastics. Our cities (covering just 1% of surface area) might be missed, but likely not the extensive network of roadways. But have fun speculating!