Let's talk science fiction for a bit. But first...
After finishing my duties in DC with NASA's Innovative & Advanced Concepts program - (NIAC) - and giving some big-picture strategy talks, I had a rush of pod interviews about artificial intelligence (many focusing on the ill-advised "moratorium petition" that's circulating among some of the world's smartest folks.)
Just days ago I was interviewed for the Skeptics Society's Michael Shermer Podcast, mostly on the hot topic: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Existential Threats - and my impudently unusual proposal for how to achieve that fabled 'soft landing.'
Anyway, let's turn to a field that's far better-grounded...
... sci-fi.
The second half of this posting will consist of a foreword I wrote for a way-cool spec-fic volume of stories by folks who know their science!
Before that...
== Sci-Fi Miscellany ==
Hey Dune fans who happen also to be fanatics for exquisite special editions. Here’s Frank Herbert’s masterpiece in gorgeous hardcover (in a fine tray) that's a feast for every sense. (Especially if you have Bene Gesserit psi powers.) And with my own special introduction material about Frank and his masterpiece.
I mean, I’ve had ‘special editions’ (and soon the long-awaited hardcover of Sundiver.) But nothing as lavish as this.
Sci Fi Snob reviews all six novels in my Uplift Universe (setting aside Existence). A very intelligent and thoughtful survey.
And from the sublime to...
Infinite Odyssey claims to be the first sci-fi magazine created completely with AI, based on human-inputted prompts like: "Write a unique 700-word story on the following topic, and the language will be mystical and engaging. Let the story end unexpectedly and tell the story from a 3rd person perspective…”
Alas, the example they give is stuff I’d give a C- in any beginner class. Sorry, at my clock speed, life is too short for this, at least for now. Their website offers the first volumes.
*Try the first chapter free, here.I think you you'll laugh! Oh, and note one trait of this tale that's rare in sci fi... you'll want the sci fi tech that these future folk take for granted! Though be careful what you wish for. Anyway, remember always to be many! (Addendum. The Postman came in 2nd for novella, then part II came in 2nd for novella the next year... followed by 2nd place for the novel Hugo. Worth noting? Ah well!)
== Way cool - while plausible(!) - escapism! ==
I wrote the foreword to a way-cool spec-fic volume of stories by folks who know their science! Just released: Inner Space & Outer Thoughts: Speculative Fiction from Caltech and JPL authors. (on Kindle and paperback).
Fact ignites fiction in this first-of-its-kind anthology of speculative tales by Caltech and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) scientists, engineers, technologists, and students. Experts at the frontiers of their fields, along with renowned Caltech alumni such as David Brin, S. B. Divya, and Larry Niven, present stories about alien astrobiologists, AI parenthood, a quest to preserve our histories beyond the heat death of the universe, a heist to steal engineering secrets from an ancient monk-scientist, the recovery of a long-lost phase of the human life cycle, the demise of Earth’s first intelligent species—billions of years before the rise of humanity, and much more!
I’m told that when I was four years old, I saw Einstein play the violin. Much later, as a Caltech undergraduate, I got to discuss Roman history and Finnegan’s Wake with Murray Gell-Mann. Richard Feynman—famed for bongo-playing, painting, and safe-cracking—briefly stole my date at a student house dance. And the same lesson—one that I tell at each commencement speech—got reinforced every time I wandered hallways at Tech, poking into random doorways to ask: “Say, what are you doing here? And what else do you do?”
What lesson got reinforced?
Be many.
Never settle for zero-sum. None of us has to be just-one-thing.
Every top scientist I’ve been privileged to know—from Bruce Murray and Hannes Alfvén to Sarah Hrdy and Freeman Dyson—had an artistic sideline or hobby that he or she pursued with some passion. A sideline that invigorated their scientific work.
To be clear, I don’t claim “top” scientist rank, though I get some licks in. Still, the lesson took hold, especially when I started writing science fiction tales to vent pressure as a Caltech undergrad, then as an engineer, then UCSD grad student and postdoc. Whereupon at some point my own artistic “sideline” kind of took over—a tail wagging the dog.
Civilization apparently valued me more as a storyteller . . . and who am I to argue with civilization? But I digress.
In most such “community” anthologies, the reader must allow for widely varied skill levels. But what impressed me most about these authors, aside from their vivid imaginative range and depth of scientific speculation, is how each of them developed craft—handling well so many complex methods of fiction narrative. Tricks turning mere chains of letters into incantations that inject ideas, emotions, and thrills into readers’ willing brains! I expected this from my fully fledged and revered colleagues S. B. Divya and Larry Niven. But most of the other writers featured here—many of them first-timers—are already what we used to call “ready for prime time.”
Okay sure, in a volume like this one, you’re expecting gosh-wow extrapolations from the mundane here-and-now. And these techers are explorers! From cool what-if speculations about brain plasticity to the potential costs and losses that accompany immortality. From whimsical science counterfactuals to daunting, Dickean questionings of reality. Several stories offer ruminations about memory, while others ponder eschatology through godlike expanses of time.
Former CIT Professor Christof Koch collaborates in a gedankenexperiment about the implications of “split hemisphere” research that began long ago at Tech. There’s also a dollop of time travel here . . . along with some “don’t get cocky” lessons about how humanity may not be quite the pinnacle that we sometimes imagine. And sure, how could any cosmic- minded collection lack for confrontations with the co-star of almost every human drama. . . . Death?
In fact, the relationship between Caltech and science fiction stretches way back, almost to its beginning. Eric Temple Bell (1883–1960) was a professor and best-selling popularizer of mathematics. But under the pseudonym John Taine he also published rollicking SF tales, while leading a life of mystery that Constance Reid peeled back in her riveting book The Search for E. T. Bell. Frequent Caltech habitués Fred Hoyle and Leo Szilard wrote sci-fi and Robert Heinlein set parts of Glory Road on campus. Around 1970, I watched CIT Poet-in-Residence Richard Brautigan recite “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” which remains to this day the work that best expresses hope and optimism for decency in our AI soon-to-be heirs. Indeed, both that long heritage and this bold new volume illuminate the quandary and the vital role played by science-based science fiction.
Yes, we and the great enlightenment experiment have all benefited from the Popperian cycle of hypothesis, evidence gathering, modeling, and refinement through falsification that propels progress in our studies and our labs and across civilization. Without question, we must defend that process from those who are trying to discredit the very notion of objective reality. Facts exist! And despite Plato’s cynicism, we are getting ever better at climbing out of his damn cave.
Still, it’s clear—there must be something more.
How poor would we be without our other side? A part of us that begins each next step forward by posing what-if questions that cannot yet be checked or falsified? Or those other notions that seem brilliant because they’ll always remain counterfactual? Questions posed not just by sci-fi tales but all the other art forms that draw hard-nosed scientists to croon: “Okay . . . wow.”
Shan’t our reach exceed our grasp? Or, as one of the authors in this volume described his own process of reaching out: “If any of my stories turn out to be anything but pure fiction, I shall be dismayed by my own lack of imagination.”
Oh, do play your instruments, or paint, or whatever, after the sun goes down. Or string together those chains of black squiggles—the letters, words, sentences, and incantations that lure us into envisioning that which never was! And even what can never be. For one thing, it is only with such practice that we truly learn to tell the difference! Besides, something deep within us hungers for mysterious rustles beyond the campfire light.
And so, for now, suspend disbelief. Let words and notions and feelings flow like the magic that enthralled our ancestors. Only these songs and spells are for our time. For our scientific age.
Tomorrow, back in the lab, we’ll feel better empowered to perceive.
* The Caltech TechLit Creative Writing Club is sponsoring an event on campus May 20, in person and remote, with readings, discussions and signings of this anthology, Inner Space & Outer Thoughts.
129 comments:
Thinking about the Uplift series...
IIRC, we found out that the Jophur were deadly enemies of the wheeled G'Kek, angry enough to kill them on sight. But I don't think we ever learned any more detail about what caused that feud, other than that the G'Kek had once delivered a terrible insult to the Jophur.
Do you have something in your head about exactly what that historic insult was? Because I concluded that the G'Kek had once used Jophur rings as tires. And I wondered if I am close.
LH i was thinking a gambling debt since we established something about that. But... your notion is so tempting...
You're making my point for me. 8)
One folds early to conserve resources for the next hand or to get out of the current game with enough to enter a different game.
Exactly. One doesn't continue a losing game when doing so costs valuable resources. Which is why I disagreed with your statement "It is VERY important not to accept defeat until the end of the game." Accept defeat and find a different game.
Dr Brin:
your notion is so tempting...
Sometimes, these things write themselves. :)
Perhaps the Traeki didn't/don't mind being used for 'donuts'.
Perhaps what really did it was adapting Jophur topknots as decorative hubcaps?
(my personal depiction of the G'Kek is as a sort of sentient Harley-Davison.)
Can you see the smoke, oh my rings?
Tony Fisk:
(my personal depiction of the G'Kek is as a sort of sentient Harley-Davison.)
On my first reading, I imagined bicycles, but my wife thought they were more like wheelchairs. On subsequent readings, I think the wife had it more correct. Of course, I have to say that.
I was thinking that a serial Kanten murderer could have a sideline as a furniture salesthing
Pappenheimer
This is getting into D&D mimic territory...
There is a brief reference to Huck as a 'squid in a wheelchair' in one book (Heavens Reach?)
Then again, the Mufala depicted in His Dark Materials season 3 are not quite the Mufala described in the Amber Spyglass.
snork* !
In the previous, Alfred Differ said...
So let me state for the record that I don't assign a moral judgement to a person's current location on the socio-economic ladder. I DO judge them if they know they are in a pickle and make no effort to get out of it, but not so harshly that I want them to continue suffering. Quite the opposite. They are the people to whom I think we must through life preservers.
Two things in direct response. First, as you point out, you "DO judge them". And the problem here is that you have to know a fair bit about someone's situation and the resources they have in order to determine whether there is something more that they could be doing to get themselves out of it. It is very easy to look at someone and say, "if they would just do X...", without understanding what - for them - doing X would require. Second, there are lots of people who are making an effort, but still need assistance if they to make any progress.
The "U" in your story seems to be a fine person, and I think no one would begrudge his actions. But his story is just another version of Horatio Alger. Giving someone a chance requires that they be in the right place at the right time for U to see them and choose to help. If some young person is of a different faith, or if their parents do not go to church at all, then they are out in the cold. That is my point about society providing what is necessary: if it is to work, then it cannot be dependent upon the chance of someone with resources noticing someone in need.
I have stories of people using their bootstraps to lift themselves who found help because someone looking at them believed just enough that a little help would be sufficient.
Even apart from the problem of having to catch the right person's eye, if they are getting help from someone else then it is not (by definition, basically) using their own bootstraps.
It is a fine thing for individuals to offer help, but this is not a solution for society as a whole, particularly one in which only a small part of the population has enough of the right sort of help to give.
Robert,
The game takes a lifetime to play. Defeat comes at the end... or possibly when one surrenders.
All the smaller events are just turns and moves.
Horatio Alger
Have you read any of his stories?
The poor boy - always "well featured" is helped by the wealthy older man
In the UK we call that a "Rent Boy"
Gregory,
You asked for a scenario and I've given you one. Now you point out that there aren't enough people like 'U' and the people who need help have to be lucky to catch someone's eye… to which I respond "No kidding."
My scenario still works as a way to coax people into the water, though. Some lucky few. However, it doesn't end with those lucky few because they might turn around and repeat the process.
If you want to complain that my scenario won't work to IMMEDIATELY solve the problem I'm just going to roll my eyes. Of course it doesn't. Over time, though, it can work. I think it already is. Someone helped 'U' and he's helped way more.
The question to which I don't have an answer is whether 'U' has managed to reproduce other 'U's. He HAS managed to create organizations that employed people. His kids know how to do that and aren't likely to have children of their own caught in the same trap they once occupied.
But his story is just another version of Horatio Alger.
If the work 'U' did stayed at the level of stories, I'd definitely agree.
If there weren't others sorta like him that I know, I might agree.
You are too willing to dismiss the point, though. 'U' isn't a story teller. He acted on his beliefs and succeeded or failed on his decisions. When done visibly, that's how the next generation decides what to copy imperfectly. Failures get ditched. Solutions get adapted and multiplied.
———
And the problem here is that you have to know a fair bit about someone's situation and the resources…
Obviously. It IS easy to look too quickly and think one understands. So don't.
This is why it helps so much when people DO try to help themselves. It is most likely THEY will know what they need which simplifies our decisions. Try that first! If it doesn't work, though, try something different. They could be in error too. Don't leave untested assumptions.
———
It is a fine thing for individuals to offer help, but this is not a solution for society as a whole, particularly one in which only a small part of the population has enough of the right sort of help to give.
No. It is the ONLY way things will actually improve. Individuals have to do it.
As long as we believe we can't, we won't.
As long as we believe another must, we don't have to.
I think we've waited long enough for God to part the sea solving all our problems.
We have to do this ourselves.
In the previous, Alfred Differ said...
It's possible (my assertion) and we have sketches for how to do it all around us.
1. The peasant farmer was the most common 'profession' of humans who lived after the ice melted. No matter how you count farmers today, they number a small slice of our communities because we industrialized and them got busy automating. Someone trying to ponder a re-organization of society a few thousand years ago would imagine the elimination of the farming clade? Doubtful, yet we've largely done it by pulling them up to become bourgeois.
But this isn't a sketch of how it would work. It is a historical sketch of how something else worked. As I said in my response, I don't know that such changes are logically impossible, and it may be that there are some social changes that may allow what you suggest to happen, but if you expect others to accept your suggestions then you need something more than: "I have no idea how, but it could happen."
Consider a group of - let's say 17th century farmers - we don't want to try to go back too far in time. Someone - let's call him 'DA' - suggests that in order to improve their lives they should all try to become gentleman farmers. DA says that they should hire workers and attempt to expand their farms. At least half of the farmers don't have the resources to do that, so they ignore him. From the rest, someone else points out that there is only one person they know of who managed to do that, and of the rest who tried, one-third just ended up doing more work for no additional reward, one-third failed and ended up back where they started, and the last third failed and lost their original farm. And if DA were to respond: "well, that may be true now, but if you just keep trying, and over the next several centuries some unknown changes to our structures of social and economic life come to pass, then it could happen that at some point in the distant future your great-great-[...]-grandchildren might be gentleman farmers", then how convincing do you think that would be?
The problem I see is that you seem to be saying that we should be aiming at something, but you cannot say anything at all about what that "something" is, how it would work, or how we might actually get there. "It's not impossible" is not an answer.
Further, what you are suggesting we aim at seems (at least to me, though I think that I am not alone in this) wildly implausible. I cannot come up with any plausible social/economic structure where something like 'rents' are relevant - meaning at least some fundamentally 'capitalist' society - and where anything more than a small part of the population could make a living by collecting rents. Something completely different, say a post-scarcity "Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism", may be far-fetched, but there are at least sketches of how it might actually work and what would be required to achieve it. Your proposal (at least what I have seen of it here) does not rise even to the level of hand-waving.
Duncan,
Yah. My little english granny would have robbed those older men and not shed a guilty tear. When I visited as a kid I got to see a little of her fencing operation and her accomplices. My mother emigrated to get out of all that.
As for the boys in the stories... yep. 'U' certainly got my attention when I heard what he said he was doing. 8)
Alfred
Your ideas about how things work remind me of a quote I read recently
Libertarians are like house cats, completely dependent on others, but fully convinced of their own independence.
You are not THAT bad - most of the time
Alfred Differ said...
You asked for a scenario and I've given you one. Now you point out that there aren't enough people like 'U' and the people who need help have to be lucky to catch someone's eye… to which I respond "No kidding."
No. I asked for some scenario in which some sizeable part of the population could make a living by collecting rents.
I did not ask about how some individual might be able to start a business, nor about how some individual might be able to collect royalties. It is quite plain that this can and does happen - in some small number of cases - so no such "scenario" is required.
Your story about "U" was (or at least seemed to be) a response to my objection to the "Horatio Alger" scenario, where one manages to succeed by catching the eye of someone with the resources to help them. The objection to that scenario is not that it cannot occur, but that it is not scalable, and that it is - as I explicitly noted earlier - dependent upon chance and the whims of those with resources. Thus, it is not a workable scenario for "society" as a whole.
In addition, if, as you seem to recognize, this works only for "Some lucky few", then it cannot be anything like a response to my actual question, which is how one creates a society where more than a small portion of the population makes a living by collecting rents.
If the work 'U' did stayed at the level of stories, I'd definitely agree.
If there weren't others sorta like him that I know, I might agree.
The issue has nothing to do with whether it is a "story" or not. HA stories are fiction, but the scenario they describe is one that actually happens - at least now and then. This is not in question.
Gregory
And the problem here is that you have to know a fair bit about someone's situation and the resources…
Alfred
Obviously. It IS easy to look too quickly and think one understands. So don't.
Yet you stated earlier that you do judge people when you decide that they are not doing enough, by your lights. I assume that this must be a judgment made without a full understanding of their situation, otherwise it would be limited to a very small number of people.
This is why it helps so much when people DO try to help themselves. It is most likely THEY will know what they need which simplifies our decisions. Try that first! If it doesn't work, though, try something different. They could be in error too. Don't leave untested assumptions.
Indeed, most "people DO try to help themselves" - to the best of their ability and within the limits of their resources. Unfortunately, for many - maybe the majority - their "I will work harder" only ends up like Boxer's: that is, in the knacker's yard. (Orwell)
No. It is the ONLY way things will actually improve. Individuals have to do it.
Don't conflate two very different things.
Yes, only I - as an individual - can decide what I will do and what choices I will make. In any situation, no matter how extreme, it is always my choice to say 'yes' or 'no'.
And any individual's choice may have far reaching effects, as that choice leads other to choose one way or another.
But "individuals", on their own, accomplish almost nothing. As your own words indicate, we are parts of society, and "We have to do this ourselves" - collectively, not individually. As an individual, I might be able to survive for a time. As a society, we can accomplish wonders. And one of those things, should we choose (and we should!) is to ensure that lives are not wasted merely because of accidents of birth or other elements of chance.
Dr. Brin,
You know Sarah Hrdy? Now I know where you got your neuroscience ideas. Fantastic! It was one of her books that got me interested, way back when. Now if you can just convince her to buy one more vowel...
PSB
I'm glad someone is noticing that the only way legal problems get addressed is when Republicans are inconvenienced by them. But the author of the below misses a crucial point. If a liberal judge gives a ruling that conservatives don't like, the supreme court will overrule her. If a conservative judge gives a ruling that liberals don't like, the supreme court will sustain him. We are not in a symmetrical situation.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Apr10-1.html
This is not just our view. HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said essentially the same thing yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union": "When you turn upside down the entire FDA approval process, you're not talking about just mifepristone, You're talking about every kind of drug. You're talking about our vaccines. You're talking about insulin." Then he added: "If a judge decides to substitute his preference, his personal opinion for that of scientists and medical professionals, what drug isn't subject to some kind of legal challenge?" But even he didn't raise the question of what law grants every one of the 670 district judges the power to ban any medicine he or she doesn't happen to like. What is needed to get the discussion rolling is some national ruling from a district judge that conservatives really, really don't like. For example, some random district judge ruling that the federal, state, and local governments are forbidden from providing any funding for any purpose to any school run by a religious organization because that violate's the Constitution's "establishment" clause. It would even mean college students with Pell grants couldn't use them at religious schools. The reaction to this would come within 50 nanoseconds and start the discussion about whether a single district judge can make national rulings.
gregory byshenk: "It's not impossible" is not an answer.
Indeed. Exploitation of the natural tendency to confuse possibility with probability is the business model of all Ponzi schemes. Such sales pitches get amplified with great effect with appeals to "not being self employed is for suckers."
As long as I'm already stating the obvious...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Apr10-3.html
...
The [Montana Senate] race is about to get worse, even though the Republicans don't have a candidate yet. The Republican-controlled state legislature wants to change the election rules specifically to defeat Tester. How do we know that? Well, because the proposed new rules will apply only to the 2024 Senate race and no other races. Not to gubernatorial elections, not elections for attorney general or other statewide offices, and not to House elections or state legislature elections. Just to Tester's election. The Republicans aren't shy about it at all.
...
This is the modern Republican Party in action. If you can't win elections under the current rules, change the rules so you can. Sometimes it is this kind of stuff (which they don't really believe in or they would have made the change permanent and for all offices). Sometimes it is voter suppression. In the 21st century, it is rarely "support policies the voters want."
Dr. Brin,
A couple questions regarding Uplift Universe sents:
Could a difference of opinion about the dreaded insult of the G'Kek have caused the schism between Traeki and Jophur? If so, what do the names actually mean? I'm thinking of how a religious schism resulted in the words Protestant and Catholic, meaning those who protest the Seven Sacraments and those who include all of them (yes, millions of people have been brutally murdered over such trivia).
Would the Traeki have been more like Libertarians regarding the tire issue, seeing it just as a matter of individual choice, and point out that they were all used rings, anyway?
Do Jophur get mad when they see Humans eating donuts or bagels?
Do G'Kek freak when they see axles the way many Humans freak when they see bones? If so, I would expect them to anti-grav for vehicles.
Along the same lines, do anti-social G'Kek wear emblems of axles to piss off their parents?
How much for a stack of Traeki pancakes?
PSB
Maybe instead of novels, you could do a series of short stories to address the important questions Uplift fans have?
Alan Brooks in the previous comments:
Because God told them it is not a problem for them :(
Y'know, I don't think that's really what's going on. I'm talking about the rank-and-file Christian voter now, not the puppet masters. I don't think they actually believe that God has let men who impregnate women off the hook. They're just not trained to think about the issue in those terms.
For the ones whose closely held religious belief opposing abortion truly is that a fertilized egg is a human being, I'll bet one could successfully make the case that a rapist who fertilized the egg inside of an unwilling ambulatory-incubator likely to do harm to the baby human is himself guilty of child endangerment.
The Gregory and Alfred dialogue is starting to remind me of the Frank and Ernest dialogue in Wilson's Schroedinger's Cat trilogy.
I know nothing of Horatio Alger. He was before my time. I do know of what has come to be called struggle porn, and especially a subgenre I have noticed which I call "entrepreneurship porn." Entrepreneurship porn is a feel-good news story about someone who got tired of the corporate career game and decided to go into business for themselves. One can make a regular drinking game of drinking whenever the enterprise in question turns out to be cupcakes.
PSB:
Do G'Kek freak when they see axles the way many Humans freak when they see bones?
Or alternatively, do they react the way 1910s people did at the beaches when a woman's bare ankle was visible?
Italy has already banned ChatGPT, and Canada has opened an investigation into OpenAI with similar concerns. Nothing to do with AGI fears, but rather privacy.
https://betakit.com/canadian-privacy-commissioner-launches-investigation-into-chatgpt/
Sad to see such reactionary, weak, and tardy actions. They should ask me what to do, or far better, OGH. I can only pine for the return of halcyon Expert System days, when men were men and AI was AI.
Do G'Kek pirates fly the Wheel and Crossed Axles?
PSB
Lorraine,
I've read 1 each of the Horatio Alger oeuvre and the "Army Boys" series (the latter is where a crew of happy young (white male)Americans spend some quality time in 1917-1918 France giving the Boche heck.) The Army Boys had some serious plot armor given the casualty rates of the period. Both novels were in my father's pre-teen book collection and both were equidistant from reality, but they taught lessons to the youth of the 30's and early 40's that we might bitterly regret today.
Pappenheimer
P.S. most likely my dad didn't spot any "rentboy" subtext (I didn't at his age) but:
"Horatio Alger Jr (1832-1899) was forced to resign as a Unitarian minister due to allegations that he had had sexual relations with boys in his congregation in Brewster, Massachusetts – charges he did not deny."
https://pridesource.com/article/49689/
Larry,
the situation has changed: if you visit houses of worship, you’ll see that neo-Trumpian values are becoming the new normal. Not the same rank and file anymore, it’s more populist—a sort-of Do your own Thing with God as the forgiving Overseer. A youth brought a prostitute to his parents’ house late at night; they strenuously objected. When I asked him why he did so, he replied,
“God asked me to.”
A far-Right rank and file Catholic told me that “JFK was our last good President.” Why? “Because he was Catholic.”
What about his private life?
“What does that matter!” was the resulting exclamation.
A Vietnam veteran goes to church “to have sex.” Does the church mind?, I asked. “No, they like me cause I’m a vet.”
And so forth. LACK of money is now the root of all evil to them. *When you are Saved, you are above the Law [of men]*
They got it covered—packed and stacked.
Proliferating subcultures.
struggle porn
Yah. I'm familiar with the genre folks. It fits with the Cowboy Ethic. Strong silent men learning to be such.
For the record, I disagree with the ethic. I'm found more among the Bourgeoisie.
------
I'll get to Gregory's second post later today, but I'll point out one thing right now about 'not impossible' not being an answer. I'm being nice. Perhaps overly nice. My heart-felt opinion is that most methods proposed by Progressives to make a better world don't work. It's the liberals who act individually who are making it appear that they work.
So when I say 'not impossible' you should probably read it as 'the only damn way it IS possible.' But I'm trying to be polite.
Think about our host's acronym CITOKATE. "the only known antidote" is in there, right? I'm pointing out something similar. The only KNOWN way forward happens to be individuals rolling up their sleeves and doing the damn work.
PSB,
I LIKE that idea for a pirate flag.
I'm going to have to practice my artistic itch now. 8)
Alfred,
I think "Wheel and Crossed Spokes" sounds better, but the other way would probably work better visually.
PSB
@Larry
Or alternatively, do they react the way 1910s people did at the beaches when a woman's bare ankle was visible?
I point to these incidents whenever I want to heighten how progressive our cultures really are. From my own family history, my Grandma got disowned by her family when she married a protestant.
On Chat GPT: The EU is planning to create legal obstacles for AI development. There will be loopholes, but I am unsure if the regulations just are a economically bad decision or will make sense.
ChatGPT has no intelligence, except sufficient wit to fool humans into thinking that it's intelligent. It doesn't pass the Turing test: instead, we fail it. In philosophical terms, ChatGPT is not a philosopher; it is a rhetorician. It isn't AI, artificial intelligence; it is AS, artificial sophistry.
I agree. Our problem is thinking it is more than a dumb tool. I was able to make it fail the Turing test (ignoring that it tells us it is a program) but getting it to say that 11 - 7 is 2. (It is not great and coming up with new mathematical proofs.)
Humans are not infallible judges of sapience (or beauty, or goodness). So, the Turing test was never going to be the ultimate arbiter. Ironically, that role may eventually fall to machines.
Did anyone else notice the nod to Kantens in Quantumania?
All the pirate punk axle references have me thinking of all the YA revamps we could do.
- Shadow and Bone... but with G'kek
- (even better due to the amulet) Trollhunters... but with G'kek
Tony Fisk:
Did anyone else notice the nod to Kantens in Quantumania?
It's been noted here before that the graphic novel series Quantum Vibe contains some pretty explicit homages to Sundiver.
Well, duh.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/opinion/abortion-rights-wisconsin-elections-republicans.html
...
Ann Coulter [Ann freakin' Coulter, for gosh sakes!] tweeted, “The demand for anti-abortion legislation just cost Republicans another crucial race,” and added, “Please stop pushing strict limits on abortion, or there will be no Republicans left.” Jon Schweppe, policy director of the socially conservative American Principles Project, lamented, “We are getting killed by indie voters who think we support full bans with no exceptions.”
...
The reason voters think Republicans support full abortion bans, as Schweppe wrote, is that many of them do.
...
Der Oger,
"I point to these incidents whenever I want to heighten how progressive our cultures really are. From my own family history, my Grandma got disowned by her family when she married a protestant."
- And that is quite an advance over the centuries when she would have been burned in the public square for it. People on this side of the Atlantic don't seem to get that there was a very, very good reason for both freedom of religion and separation of church and state. Ignorant loonies!
PSB
As for the science in SF I recommend this video (and other) by Sabine Hossenfelder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-jIplX6Wjw
She makes some good points that FTL may not necessarily be forbidden by special or general relativity.
And she makes an interesting point that those violations of causality and resultant paradoxes (FTL ships sending messages into the past warning themselves about future dangers, which they avoid and then have no reason to send a message into the past....) may not be so universe breaking after all or actually occur under general relativity.
For example, the USS Enterprise travelling a 10c arrives in orbit above your planet. Since it outraces the light images from itself it appears suddenly and without warning (so who need a cloaking device when traveling FTL?), and the images of the Enterprise would eventually catch up to it starting (from our point of view) with the most recent images at arrival and going back finally to its launch from Earth. In effect we would see a USS Enterprise suddenly appear out of nowhere above our planet AND a ghostly image of itself traveling backwards in time to its launch.
Similarly any radio transmission from the Enterprise (ignoring FTL subspace messaging) would be received as backwards gibberish (like playing a Beatles album backwards to hear "Paul is dead!")
But if we know that the image of the Enterprise moving backwards in time is not "real" and can be ignored, where is the causality violation?
As she points out, a gravity lens can make a galaxy appear to be a hollow ring, but we know that is not its real shape.
So if we know the supposed causality violation is not real is causality actually violated?
Follow up question concerning FTL via wormholes.
First off, the Babylon 5's White Star Fleet is not actually going FTL.
Instead, the wormhole is shortening the distance being traveled from Star A to Star B.
And while the fleet is in the wormhole tunnel between A and B it cannot send or receive messages or emit light images for an observer to see.
So would a wormhole short cuts allow for effective FTL travel without potential causality violations?
Or we can avoid FTL and causality violations completely and still have a galaxy spanning space opera by:
1. Having ships travel near c so that a journey of 10,000 years last only a few weeks according to the crew due to time dilation.
2. Have medical science advance to allow for effective physical immortality.
3. develop stasis/hibernation tech that allows for ageless sleep
(See "House of Suns" by Alastair Reynolds).
Those that stay behind can experience time dilation via the gravity of a Black Hole by building ring habitats in close orbit around a black hole.
That would have to be very, very close to the black hole to get significant time dilation, well within the black hole's photon sphere and accretion disk.
Could life survive such hard radiation? But I digress...
However, imagine a galactic civ whose citizens are either moving at near c or orbiting close to a black hole and living in a totally different time frame than the rest of the universe - one that allows for fast travel (from their point of view) across the stars.
If you can't increase the speed, you can always slow the time.
I believe the action described for the Enterprise above is referred to by Starfleet as 'the Picard Manoeuvre'.
Can any FTL motion that is permitted under natural laws break causality?
Gregory,
No. I asked for some scenario in which some sizeable part of the population could make a living by collecting rents.
No. That isn't what you asked, though I'm coming around to believing that IS what you intended to ask.
Please consider going back to the last thread to your 11:20 AM post that reacts to my post from the previous evening.
------
If what you really meant was about royalties, them much of what we've been discussing evaporates. I take it as a given that most of us won't making a living on royalties and would support the side that claimed it was an impossibility.
Regarding dividends... I'm not so sure. A lot depends on how things work out with automation tools.
Regarding self-employment and employing others, I obviously disagree as I think most of us can do that if we were taught how. Few will figure it out on their own, but I'm not advocating that.
------
Let's pause on this for a couple days and give everyone else a breather. That should give us both time to review what we've claimed, summarize our points, and ask for clarifications.
Even Star Trek FTL was kind of a wormhole thing. They change the geometry of the space around the ship. There is no 'hole' but it's conceptually similar with the added assumption of an embedding space.
As for causality, it is over-rated.
It's one of our illusions/delusions.
DP
The universe with citizens living in "slow time" is the universe in
"Between the Strokes of Night" by Charles Sheffield
Well worth a read - don't read the Wikipedia entry as it is a huge "spoiler"
Gregory
No. I asked for some scenario in which some sizeable part of the population could make a living by collecting rents.
Alfred Differ said...
No. That isn't what you asked, though I'm coming around to believing that IS what you intended to ask.
Please consider going back to the last thread to your 11:20 AM post that reacts to my post from the previous evening.
In my "11:20 AM post" I wrote:
Do you have some plausible scenario where this is possible for anything more than a very small part of the population? Bearing in mind, also, that even among those who have "royalties and dividends" as an income source, it is only a very small number for whom this is the sole or primary source of their income, and most continue to rely on some sort of payment for work.
I suppose that, depending on interpretation, there is some space between "a very small part of the population" and "a sizeable part of the population", but that seems to me to be a quibble. And in any case it is quite explicitly not a request for a scenario in which some individual might earn income (or even a living) that way, as that possibility (actuality, even) is acknowledged in that paragraph.
Alfred (continued)
If what you really meant was about royalties, them much of what we've been discussing evaporates. I take it as a given that most of us won't making a living on royalties and would support the side that claimed it was an impossibility.
Regarding dividends... I'm not so sure. A lot depends on how things work out with automation tools.
Regarding self-employment and employing others, I obviously disagree as I think most of us can do that if we were taught how. Few will figure it out on their own, but I'm not advocating that.
If I was unclear, then I apologise, but by referring to 'rents' I am referring to any/all of these - or more specifically, anything that does not involve directly selling one's labour.
You recognize that the first option, royalties, is not a live one.
For the second, dividends, again, could you provide some sketch of how you think it might work? Given your reference to "automation", I suppose that you could be referring to something like "Fully Automated Luxury [] Space Capitalism", but that would (at least seem to) require some automated post-scarcity social organization, and it is not clear that 'dividends', a part of capitalist social organization, itself dealing with allocation of scarce capital, would fit in. Again, I'm not saying that it is impossible in principle, but at least some vague idea of how it would work would be useful.
For the third, owning a business, I thought that we had already gone through this, and that you recognized that this also was not a live option for any more than a small part of the population. I thought (possibly in error) that you had acknowledged that mere "self-employment" was not a sufficient criterion, given that the issue here under discussion is one of whether one must sell one's labour to earn a living.
As we discussed earlier, most people who are "self employed" or "own a business" own very small businesses, and are dependent upon their own labour for their income (even if they are "selling their labour" to a business that they own). This is true even if they "employ[] others" as an owner. In order to not be dependent upon selling one's own labour, one must have sufficient income from the labour of one's employees that one can hire management and not be dependent upon one's own labour to maintain the business and for one's own income. (Perhaps one could "own a business" with few or no employees that simply collects royalties, but this then falls under the second case.)
But if we are then in the realm of a business that employs even 50 people (still an extremely small business, according the normal definitions of 'small business'), then we can see that it is indeed a "numerical impossibility" for this to be true for anything more than a tiny fraction of the population.
Of course there are other possible options, such as cooperatives or other forms of "employee ownership", but in these cases the employees are dependent upon selling their labour as their primary source of income, even if they are entitled to some share of the profit made by the company.
I believe that what I have claimed has been quite clear from the outset. If you think that something needs to be further clarified, then I welcome any questions.
DP:
In effect we would see a USS Enterprise suddenly appear out of nowhere above our planet AND a ghostly image of itself traveling backwards in time to its launch.
...
But if we know that the image of the Enterprise moving backwards in time is not "real" and can be ignored, where is the causality violation?
I'm not sure how that counts as a violation of causality in the first place. We already have real world examples of a similar phenomena concerning sound instead of light. A supersonic jet arrives at a place before its engine noise. So? I mean, it's cool to think about, but nothing universe-exploding.
The game takes a lifetime to play. Defeat comes at the end... or possibly when one surrenders.
All the smaller events are just turns and moves.
So game = life?
You are using a word in ways that I haven't seen before. Once again I have to wonder if this is your definition or an American thing.
Alfred Differ:
As for causality, it is over-rated.
It's one of our illusions/delusions.
If that's true, doesn't it put paid to the concept of morality?
Pretty much our entire lives are spent doing things on the basis of what those things will in turn cause to happen.
Game of Life - it's an actual thing in America. IIRC, you start out as a pink or blue peg in a car. I don't remember if there is a cemetery plot at the other end of the board, and am now wondering if the game's been updated so you can acquire a spouse that is the same color peg. It might be neat to create an SF version
Unknown:
Game of Life - it's an actual thing in America. IIRC, you start out as a pink or blue peg in a car.
When I first read Glory Season, it took me quite some time to realize that the references to "The Game of Life" weren't about that board game.
I don't remember if there is a cemetery plot at the other end of the board
One of the funniest lines to come out of Rudy Giuliani's press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, located between a porn shop and a funeral home, was "When you think about it, aren't we all between a porn shop and a funeral home?"
As far as I can tell there is a fairly strong consensus among physicists, though not uniform, that there is an "arrow of time," i.e. time "moves" in one direction defined by the very low entropy of the universe just after the Big Bang and its steady evolution towards increasing entropy, and that at least "locally" determinism (that events are bound by causality) reigns. I take "locally" to mean at human scales, meaning at the physical sizes and energies humans live their lives, and or within some distance constraint somewhere between solar system to galaxy to galaxy cluster scales similar.
Wow. Those are some of the worst sentences I've written in a while, and I've written lots of crappy sentences.
Also, if it should turn out that the MW interpretation is correct that would mean that the universe is ultimately deterministic. From what I understand.
In any case, in the context that you are talking about, Larry, I'm pretty sure it's safe to assume that causality reigns. If you step out in front of a speeding bus that action will cause you to die.
Darrell E:
If you step out in front of a speeding bus that action will cause you to die.
I was thinking even simpler than that. If my fingers type these letters, then these words will appear when I post. An argument might be made that the words appearing on the post cause my fingers to type (or to have typed) those letters, but I'm not sure how that leads to anything useful.
Oh, and you know who is even more evil than Trump? Tucker Carlson.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Apr11-4.html
At the center of this particular drama is Sgt. Daniel Perry, who spent much time and energy fantasizing about and bragging about the possibility of killing members of Black Lives Matter. In the summer of 2020 (i.e., shortly after the murder of George Floyd), there was a BLM protest in Austin, TX, near Perry's residence. He got into his car, hightailed it to Austin, and then drove into a crowd of protesters. When Perry was challenged by a gun-wielding Air Force veteran named Garrett Foster, Perry rolled down his window and shot Foster five times at point-blank range. Foster died, of course.
When he turned himself into police, and again at his trial, Perry claimed self-defense. Somewhat dubious for a person who made a point of insinuating themselves into the situation that led to the killing, though of course it worked for Kyle Rittenhouse. Perry's problem is that his pre-murder bragging was done using mediums (like text messages) that leave a paper trail (well, metaphorically). And part of his bragging was his claim that not only would he be able to kill a BLM protester, he would get away with it by claiming self-defense. It took the jury 16 hours, but they returned a verdict of murder in the first degree. That's a capital offense in Texas, of course.
Guess who was not pleased that a white man was convicted of killing a BLM protester? Fox entertainer Tucker Carlson, who isn't even trying to hide his white supremacist views anymore. Within 2 hours of the verdict, which was delivered last Friday, Carlson was on the air demanding "justice" for Perry. This turned up the heat on Abbott, who very clearly takes his orders from Fox's primetime lineup.
In Texas, governors do not have the power to pardon someone all by themselves. They have to ask the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles for a review, and then if the Board recommends clemency, the governor can give the thumbs up. Abbott has already ordered such a review, and has insisted it be expedited. The Board knows full well what result the Governor wants, and if he gets it, he's already said he will overturn the jury's verdict and free Perry from prison. It's one thing to review a case if, say, new evidence has come to light. It's another thing to review a case because Tucker Carlson told you that you better do so if you know what's good for you.
Just a reminder that Tucker is yet another example of an oligarch-trust-fund baby, if anyone wants more proof that we should tax the truly wealthy to prevent power-building over generations. Tucker used his family connections and wealth to build his entire career.
Also, anyone else noticed that the newest fad among the ultra-rich is having massive numbers of progeny? The feudal dream of a harem and lots of kids is being personified by the Silicon Valley new rich.
Some nice snark from the Grauniad:
Why was the Wall Street Journal so shocked by [the ProPublica article on Clarence Thomas' gifts]? Were they worried about one of the most powerful people in the US, a man whose decisions can affect millions of people’s lives, being potentially influenced by a billionaire with strong views and reportedly a disturbing amount of Nazi memorabilia? Nah, they were appalled by the incendiary use of wealth-adjacent adjectives by ProPublica.
“The piece is loaded with words and phrases intended to convey that this is all somehow disreputable,” the editorial board wrote. “‘Superyacht’; ‘luxury trips’; ‘exclusive California all-male retreat’; ‘sprawling ranch’; ‘private chefs’; ‘elegant accommodation’; ‘opulent lodge’; ‘lavishing the justice with gifts.’ And more.” Yep, I regret to inform you there were even more words in the article – shocking stuff.
What, one wonders, would have been acceptable terminology? How exactly should one describe a “superyacht” or a “private chef” in reputable terms? The Journal did not provide any guidance on the matter. Luckily for us, however, some aggrieved billionaires have already stepped in to offer suggestions on how to be more compassionate towards rapacious capitalists. In 2019, ex-Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz told a New York Times columnist that “the moniker ‘billionaire’ now has become the catchphrase” and suggested it may be better to use expressions like “people of means” or “people of wealth”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/apr/11/comfort-sad-scared-billionaire-call-them-person-of-wealth
If "people of wealth" would stop using the influence of their money to take away our rights and undermine democracy, maybe words that describe them accurately wouldn't have negative connotations.
If all they did with their hard-earned wealth was take expensive vacations, eat fabulous food, and make sure their kids never had to answer to a boss, most of us wouldn't begrudge them their pleasures, out loud anyway. We don't disparage them for being rich, but for using their powers for evil.
Mmm. Yah. What Larry said.
Tucker's money isn't the problem.
How he got it isn't the problem.
What he's doing IS.
Countering one evil by committing another is a poor strategy to attract the political allies you need to accomplish it.
Larry,
If that's true, doesn't it put paid to the concept of morality?
That's a very old debate among philosophers.
I know time is a physical illusion, but it doesn't matter when I make ethics choices. I simply don't consider it.
If I had to justify myself to philosophers, I'd describe it as a personal preference that needs no grounding in rational thought.
Robert,
Life is the ultimate game.
I wasn't thinking about the board game, but it does have some of the features built into it's board and rules. Unless it's been updated, the board game I saw as a kid would probably be struck down by automatic fire from several civil, womens, and gender rights groups. Still... in the abstracted sense that's roughly the idea.
What I was ACTUALLY thinking about was an idiom. 8)
It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings.
The consensus among physicists is that time exists at the level of the manifold (NOT the big arrow) and that Entropy is a proxy for Big Arrow time.
General Relativity kinda kills the notion of a universal 'Time' as the philosophers describe it. Well... skewers it quite thoroughly. You can still have a universal time if most everything in the universe is heading in essentially the same direction, but there are solutions to Einstein's equation that have looping paths where a traveller follows a strictly time-like arc. (See some of Kurt Gödel's last works.) Our universe doesn't appear to be a good match for Gödel's solution, but if even one solution exists with time-like loops, Big Arrow Time is physical nonsense.
The illusion comes about from us taking our localized measure, combining it with an intuitive sense for the meaning of entropy, and applying it broadly. The error is in the last step.
Duncan,
Sorry I missed your earlier comment about cats. I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I love cats for exactly that attitude.
So… Meow.
If I were a cat I'd probably be a Siamese since they essentially don't ever shut up. 8)
———
Gregory,
I wasn't quibbling over the difference between small and small. I caught on "…where this is possible" and thought you meant 'this' to mean something broader than you actually did.
I pulled a copy of ALL that we've exchanged the last month and looked at it carefully now. I can see where you refined it (post for 1:07AM) and you probably don't see it as a refinement based on how you've described 'rents' just now. So… our misunderstanding makes a lot of sense. Turns out we aren't using the words the same way AND I thought you meant one thing when you meant something else.
———
I'm going to go over what you've written again because I DID miss the refinement in (1:07AM). I missed it because you block quote a fair amount of what I write. I get why you do that, but I try to skim past what I wrote. I remember it so I'm not inclined to re-read it. Unfortunately the difference between the quote and your words is whether the text is italics or not… so I have to be more careful.
———
One thing I've already spotted, though. I don't use 'rents' the way you do. Is this an English/American usages thing?
A 'rent' is collected on property when someone else uses it and there is very low risk of the principle value diminishing during the time rent is collected. Real property might depreciate, but that reflects it being consumed by wear and tear or something like that. Rent prices are adjusted to accommodate.
A lot of business ownership is NOT low risk. Quite the opposite. Start your own business and you've done the opposite of what many wealth advisors suggest. You've centralized your assets instead of diversifying. That's part of what scares people out of doing it in the first place.
There are quite a few ways to collect low risk rents, but they carry with them low gains. If one has already amassed a giant pile of cash, they'll suffice. For everyone else, though, they don't make sense except (perhaps) in the final years of your life. Even then, though, it might be better to hand it all to your kids (who can afford to take more risk) and sponge off them for the last few years. 8)
Srry been too frenetic to chime in. But you guys are carrying on great!
I've been swamped with all this "AI stuff" gadzooks!
So many facets. But something one of you said...
... I am reminded of a point made by Stephen Wolfram: “So what’s left for us humans? Well, somewhere things have got to get started: in the case of text, there’s got to be a prompt specified that tells the AI “what direction to go in”. And this is the kind of thing we’ll see over and over again. Given a defined “goal”, an AI can automatically work towards achieving it. But it ultimately takes something beyond the raw computational system of the AI to define what us humans would consider a meaningful goal. And that’s where we humans come in.”
I have long hypothesized that humans' role in the future will come down to the one thing that ALL humans are good at, that no machine or program can do, at all: wanting. Desire. Setting yearned-for goals, that the machines and programs can then adeptly help to bring to fruition.
It is a role in human-synthetic melding that I doubt many would complain about.
On the "everybody can live off royalties and such like"
The answer is that they CAN - this is exactly what a UBI would be - enough so that people would not HAVE to work
Some people would just do the couch potato bit - but the vast majority would get on and do things
We are more than rich enough for that to work - but management would have to massively up their game - if people can just leave you should not piss them off
They say:
“Kennedy was a good Catholic; Biden is not a real Catholic”!
Jason Kottke posted an amusing use of AI:
https://kottke.org/23/04/rupublicans
I suggest insuring you swallow that mouthful of coffee/tea before you open that link.
Alfred Differ:
Tucker's money isn't the problem.
How he got it isn't the problem.
What he's doing IS.
One point you're missing, though. What he's doing to keep getting more money is part of the problem. The man is already richer than God, but he'll keep on doing evil in order to keep the gravy train delivering.
Insatiability is (part of) the problem.
Alfred Differ:
I know time is a physical illusion, but it doesn't matter when I make ethics choices. I simply don't consider it.
My beef is about causality more than time per se. I'm willing to accept that we just happen to be traveling through time at 1 second per second because of momentum, and that other velocities are possible. I am not willing to accept that my fingers are typing these letters because that's what appeared on the post. Or that I ate breakfast because I am no longer hungry.
If I had to justify myself to philosophers, I'd describe it as a personal preference that needs no grounding in rational thought.
But how do you justify inflicting your personal preference upon what others should do?
I get what you meant, and can even chuckle about it, but if that sentence above was all I knew about you, I'd have you pegged as a Q-Anon Trump supporter. Well, maybe not, because of the four syllable words and lack of all-caps. :)
Given a defined “goal”, an AI can automatically work towards achieving it. But it ultimately takes something beyond the raw computational system of the AI to define what us humans would consider a meaningful goal.
My father (toxicologist, epidemiologist) once said something like "any scientist can answer a research question, a good scientist can ask the question, and a great scientist can tell you if the question is worth answering". I can't recall his exact words, which is a pity because he was much more eloquent than I am.
One thing I've already spotted, though. I don't use 'rents' the way you do. Is this an English/American usages thing?
Possibly. Although I've noticed that you often use words in ways that aren't the same as other Americans I know, so it may not just be that.
We are more than rich enough for that to work - but management would have to massively up their game - if people can just leave you should not piss them off
Yup. Managing volunteers requires more skill than managing employees. You still need all the organizational skills to coordinate work etc, but you have to be much more collaborative/collegial that a traditional hierarchical manager.
When Manitoba tried the mincome experiment in the 1970s they found that unemployment didn't rise (despite dire warnings). People did take longer to find a new job, because they were able to be more choosy and not take the first offer, but they found work.
Anyone else remember Mack Reynolds' Peoples Capitalism, with everyone having shares of Universal Basic stock whose dividends provided a minimal income?
Alan Brooks:
They say:
“Kennedy was a good Catholic; Biden is not a real Catholic”!
Not sure what that was a response to, but I'll bet that "they" were calling Kennedy much worse names than "good Catholic" in 1960.
Alfred Differ said...
One thing I've already spotted, though. I don't use 'rents' the way you do. Is this an English/American usages thing?
It is not (so far as I know) an "English/American" thing. Rather 'rent' or 'rents' is a common generic term in economics, referring to income derived from ownership or control over some asset or resource (or 'capital') as opposed to income derived from production or the performance of some work. This includes rent on a piece of real estate that one owns, but also royalties from a copyright that one owns, dividends from stock one owns, and so on. In short, income from what you have rather than from what you do.
This has nothing particularly to do with "risk", one way or the other. Capital can be invested in all manner of different ways, from very low to very high risk. But economic rent is simply income derived from capital, regardless of how one chooses to invest.
A lot of business ownership is NOT low risk. Quite the opposite. Start your own business and you've done the opposite of what many wealth advisors suggest. You've centralized your assets instead of diversifying. That's part of what scares people out of doing it in the first place.
This is true. Most new businesses fail. As the saying goes: "don't gamble with what you can't afford to lose" - and many people don't have capital that they can afford to lose, or at least not enough to make any difference.
And even among those that do not fail, the vast majority do not create any significant wealth for their owners. Some people want to "be their own boss", but often this means that they work more and harder for less than they could earn elsewhere, for very little in the end. If they can somehow sell their business, it will not be for much.
I've known a fair number of people who started businesses. A handful have been "successful", in that they were able to amass some amount of wealth from doing so. But all of these were people with access to significant capital (either their own or via their networks) that they could put at risk without serious risk to themselves.
Re: yearned-for goals
I've been watching transistors at close range for 50 years, not too much longer than they've existed widely. Hysteresis, controls, cybernetics, Prolog goal seeking, AI. At the turn of the century, I formed a corporation to market what I believe was the world's first truly handheld Expert System Shell. Sounds creepy now, but I was fascinated with the concept of machine desire. That's why I look down my nose at generative systems created on GPU farms and instead pine for the glory days of GOFAI. I think we rushed right past a key question in our great haste to chase shiny bobbles.
Alfred Differ:
Tucker's money isn't the problem.
...
Countering one evil by committing another is a poor strategy to attract the political allies you need to accomplish it.
There is zero danger that actual laws restricting wealth will be passed in this country. What's happening is a public relations issue. The "Don't call us billionaires--use terms like poverty-challenged," contingent are demanding that the public not think badly of them, not matter what bad things they do.
Every billionaire isn't evil, just like every priest is not a child molester. But there is enough of a pattern that there is a reason the term "pedophile priest" isn't just a one-off, and the same can be said for "evil billionaire." The best way to change that PR situation is to set a better example.
And on a side note: just backed Shapers of Worlds on Kickstarter. Looking forward to it.
But there is enough of a pattern that there is a reason the term "pedophile priest" isn't just a one-off, and the same can be said for "evil billionaire."
It's worse than that. There's evidence that increased wealth diminishes compassion and empathy and increases cheating.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-wealth-reduces-compassion/
his observations were consistent with a large body of social science finding that people of higher socioeconomic status, compared with those lower down the ladder, are more prone to entitlement and narcissistic behavior. Wealthier subjects also tend to be more self-oriented and more willing to behave unethically in their own self-interest (to lie during negotiations, say, or to steal from an employer). In one study, Piff and his colleagues stationed a pedestrian at the edge of a busy crosswalk and watched to see which cars would let the person cross. Suffice it to say that Fords and Subarus were far more likely to stop than Mercedeses and BMWs.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/does-wealth-rob-brain-compassion/618496/
They say God tells them to separate the sheep from the goats, in response to my asking them which presidents they admire.
Robert and Gregory,
Okay. You both have a legitimate point on which I'll concede.
I am self-trained when it comes to economics, so my linguistic model isn't anyone's fault but my own.
In my defense, I HAVE read a lot because economics became very interesting to me when I realized that the climate deniers were up to more than one game. Only some of them deny the science… which we can handle with science community methods. Some were denying the economic conclusions that seem to follow from the science… which we CANNOT handle with science community methods. Economics isn't a science but it sure is interesting from a theory perspective. (The experimental side of the shop is a wondrously entangled mess of too many variables and dry at times, but useful occasionally to point out stupid assumptions.)
So… if you want me using their terms properly, I'll happily adjust.
———
(more for Gregory)
"don't gamble with what you can't afford to lose"
That's actually terrible advice.
Most hear it as "don't gamble".
There are stupid ways to gamble. That's a certainty.
The flip side of that advice goes like this.
If you don't gamble, you won't win anything.
Life is full of gambles.
Larry,
Tucker's insatiability is a problem.
Taking his money wouldn't solve that.
The "ethically challenged" are what they are.
Smack them directly for that.
The cause of the punishment must be understood by the one it is inflicted upon or it won't deter.
———
My beef is about causality more than time per se.
Yep. You and a lot of other people.
Get to know General Relativity, though, and you'll see that there is no "cause then effect". You type letters AND post. Both exist. The time order of events depends on the perspective of on-lookers. Along your path, you'll always think they land in the correct order. Others might disagree.
What GR assumes is what we call localization. An event at B can only be influenced by events {A} that are in the reverse light cone and can only influence events {C} in the forward light cone.
Special Relativity makes that statement too, but GR allows the space to be curved making it difficult to imagine where the forward light cone goes. Could it wrap back around and enclose the reverse light cone? Turns out there are solutions to the field equations that tolerate it, but you wouldn't really notice. You'd still think you move 'forward in time'.
———
But how do you justify inflicting your personal preference upon what others should do?
Ha!
Preferences are what they are. Subjective facts.
They say nothing about objective facts.
The droids for which you're looking argue against objective reality. 8)
Alfred Differ:
The cause of the punishment must be understood by the one it is inflicted upon or it won't deter.
Well, since Tucker is probably breaking no laws, the punishment in this case is looking at him funny on social media. And the writer who told the New York Times not to say "billionaire" because the word has bad connotations (which is what we were discussing), is essentially trying to shut down social disapproval as a means of correcting.
If I can't do that, I'm fine with guillotines as a backup plan.
Get to know General Relativity, though, and you'll see that there is no "cause then effect".
You're still hung up on time's arrow. I'll concede a frame of reference in which effect happens "before" cause to an observer. I maintain that cause is still cause and effect is still effect. If I type certain letters (and hit other buttons), a certain post will exist on David Brin's site. If I don't, it won't. I'm not invested in which one happens "before" or "after" the other, but I do insist that one action is clearly dependent on the other action happening.
In some sense, you know that too when you admit that you have moral preferences. A part of your brain knows that your actions have good or bad consequences, no matter what order they happen in.
The smaller problem is the insatiable nature of the most wealthy.
The larger problem is, globally, wealth equals political power.
Restrict the political power of wealth and I'll be less likely to try to remove extreme concentrations of wealth. Some of the solutions for removing the political power of wealth are less coercive than taxation and more popular too.
However, dynastic wealth is the doorway to the feudal trap that Dr. Brin sees, even more than inherited political power. The richest person in the world can always find a king to buy support from. The reverse is not always true. The 10 richest people in the world control our universal destiny much, much more than the 10 strongest monarchs.
Plus, the monarchs are not self-selecting for insatiability.
The 10 richest people *are* self-selecting for insatiability.
Here, Dr. Brin, a short little story seed on humanity going out into the stars to look for other spacefaring species... and finding we are the first. Not alone - there is life everywhere. But we're the first to step out into the stars.
I like story concepts like that... hopeful concepts showing the better side of humanity. Humanity as the eldest sibling.
Acacia
matthew,
Restrict the political power of wealth and I'll be less likely to try to remove extreme concentrations of wealth.
I consider that a reasonable bargain. We might argue over the details of restrictions, but I'd rather that than removals... which I think too often move money to other insatiable people.
------
...dynastic wealth is the doorway to the feudal trap that Dr. Brin sees...
I get it, but the danger lies in what the money can buy.
In a community with small amounts of free cash and a weak loyalty to the rule of law, a few bucks can persuade a cop to enforce a law... or not. Where Rule of Law is stronger it generally takes more money but the same is true if incomes for everyone are improved.
Dynastic wealth involves a lot of money. I get it. I'm just not inclined to take it until someone misbehaves. Two wrongs... yada yada.
Larry,
I'm not invested in which one happens "before" or "after" the other, but I do insist that one action is clearly dependent on the other action happening.
Okay. Then the technical term for what you are wedded to is 'locality'.
You still won't get what you want, though. In a looped universe you'd repeat your actions. Whether post comes before typing or after depends on where the observer starts watching. In that kind of loop "dependence" is meaningless* because the light cones wrap around. Locality still applies, but the loop destroys the meaning of dependence.
We don't appear to be in a looped universe, so this is just a possible result of GR. If there is a God and He has a cosmic reset button, though... well... it wouldn't be the first time human intuition conflicted with reality.
* That happens when two observers can't agree. That's what happened to the concept of simultaneity in 1905. Two legit observers won't agree when event separations are space-like and can agree when they are time-like. That result meant we had to toss the concept of 'global simultaneity'. What we did is cracked it down to an observer dependent result.
Acacia I won a Hugo for a short story with a similar premise....
Sorry guys. still swamped. Posting soon...
if you want me using their terms properly, I'll happily adjust
It would greatly aid communication. Which I assume is your intent…
Alternately, you could provide definitions as a footnote to your posts. I'm used to code-switching, as a Canadian following American political discussions.
Sorry guys. still swamped. Posting soon...
Forget posting, get back to writing books! My oldest grandniece is a fast reader and you're not writing fast enough… :-)
Robert,
I would, but the issue is with me using a different definition unintentionally. I'm not aware that I am because no professor threw an eraser at me for getting it wrong. 8)
So... one distinction I make is that not all 'rents' are alike. Someone with their life's savings at risk in a company they founded is very different than someone like them with their money in Treasury Notes.
I was taught to think of 'Rentiers' as people who weren't at much risk. They get upset at small rule changes because their money truly isn't making much money. Small rate of return have a way of making investors VERY picky.
------
I think my 'financial investment' vocabulary is in decent shape, but that's because I've got money at risk. I learned it more from doing than reading.
Duncan,
I didn't remember exactly the way you phrased things about a UBI, but it was you I was thinking about when I hesitated to support the impossibility argument regarding dividends. I think you've referred to UBI both ways? Maybe someone else did?
I was also thinking about how automation will impact labor costs. If I own a service company that relies mostly on automation, I might collect a salary from it AND the profit at the end of the year. Salary and Dividend isn't unusual for current business owners, but the balance between them could shift with AI's and centaurs.
Royalties (income from copies of existing works) depends so heavily on intellectual property laws that I'm not hopeful for them being a long term source of income except for the richest who can defend their property.
Alfred Differ:
Okay. Then the technical term for what you are wedded to is 'locality'.
Maybe scientifically. To me, the term I'm wedded to is "responsibility". If my blood sugar gets low enough, I feel hungry. There could be a number of reasons I eat when I'm hungry--I just don't like being hungry and know what to do about it, or I know enough to understand that continuing to live requires eating. But for whatever reason, hunger prompts me to eat, and eating relieves the hunger. You can imagine a frame of reference in which the relief of hunger prompts me to eat, which induces the hunger in the first place, but that's not what's going on in my consciousness. The stimulus which is the cause and the act of will which is the effect are clear, and only rudimentarily because of the order of events.
You still won't get what you want, though.
I'm a Jewish Cubs fan from Chicago. I'm used to not getting what I want.
In a looped universe you'd repeat your actions. Whether post comes before typing or after depends on where the observer starts watching. In that kind of loop "dependence" is meaningless* because the light cones wrap around.
I feel like I'm debating with that guy who insisted that I don't exist, and that my insistence that I do exist demonstrated my ignorance. You're talking about phenomena that I haven't sussed out in quite some time, but I really don't care whether an observer sees me eating first and then being hungry. The hunger is what prompted me to eat, even if the two things happened out of order.
We don't appear to be in a looped universe, so this is just a possible result of GR. If there is a God and He has a cosmic reset button, though... well... it wouldn't be the first time human intuition conflicted with reality.
Well, yeah, if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon, but she doesn't, and God created this universe, not that other one. So for whatever reason, my intuition seems good enough to get by the few decades I have left on this planet.
* That happens when two observers can't agree. That's what happened to the concept of simultaneity in 1905. Two legit observers won't agree when event separations are space-like and can agree when they are time-like. That result meant we had to toss the concept of 'global simultaneity'. What we did is cracked it down to an observer dependent result.
IIRC my college physics, the observers mustcause the other.
Something messed up the last part of my post, so let me try again:
* That happens when two observers can't agree. That's what happened to the concept of simultaneity in 1905. Two legit observers won't agree when event separations are space-like and can agree when they are time-like. That result meant we had to toss the concept of 'global simultaneity'. What we did is cracked it down to an observer dependent result.
IIRC my college physics, the observers must agree when the separation is time-wise...
...continuing the correction:
And the fact that observers disagree on the order of space-wise-separated events says nothing about the concept of cause and effect, because neither event can affect the other, which means that neither event can cause the other.
Alan Brooks:
They say God tells them to separate the sheep from the goats, in response to my asking them which presidents they admire.
They do the same thing with popes. When a pope declares that abortion is a sin or inveighs against communism, he's infallible. But when the pope tells them to be tolerant of gay people or that Putin is wrong for warring in Ukraine, well, he's obviously straying from God.
Larry,
For the sake of precision (on my part)...
1) Space-like separations permit two observers to disagree on the time order of events. Believers in locality argue that is sufficient to know neither event can influence the other.
2) Time-like separations prevent two observers from disagreeing on the time order of events. They must agree on order even if they disagree on elapsed time between the events. Locality believers argue this is necessary but not sufficient for influence to occur from the first on the second.
Both of these assume observers following time-like paths... which isn't the case in FTL stories.
The one thing they can ALL agree upon is the interval's size that directly connects the events, but they won't agree on whether it is time-like or space-like unless both observers are on similar arcs. (Both space-like or both time-like.) No matter what you do (FTL or not) you'll think you are on a time-like path, so the question for each observer is whether the other is.
———
None of that matters much since you are a believer in locality. Most physicists are too… but not all. Quantum entanglement has caused some of us to rethink this.
Bell's work has forced us to give up at least one of the following.
A) Determinism
B) Locality
Before Bell we assumed we had to give up determinism and had to keep locality. Turns out that's not true, but most of us are loathe to give up locality.
I'm not among the believers, but I don't let that alter my ethic because I don't care to let it.
Larry, (cont'd)
...but I really don't care whether an observer sees me eating first and then being hungry.
I DO get it, but you are getting into the realm of preferences. You are entirely allowed not to give a damn. 8)
I think people often put too much thought into why they do what they do. We often rationalize our choices that are really just preferences.
When you want to get around to enforcing your particular preferences on others... well... you construct arguments that don't care about physics... and that's fine. Don't sweat it. It doesn't matter whether other observers agree on order of events... unless for some strange reason you decide to include it in your argument.
It would greatly aid communication. Which I assume is your intent…
So... in the interest of checking myself to see if this REALLY IS my intent, I asked my wife to chime in on whether I'm using words and defining them in a different way. In other words, am I really all that hard to understand. She would know, right?
Her response was "Well, duh!"
She's as much a progressive as many of you all are and points out that she doesn't know what I'm talking about at least half the time. That's before I open my mouth about physics were I DO think I know a thing or two. 8)
So...
argh.
They say that JFK was a lapsed Catholic; whereas Biden is a non-Catholic.
To them Fauci is a debil, because they say he wouldn’t let them worship the way they wished to in the Choiches of their Choices.
Alfred,
Given the recent discussion about causality, and your educational and professional background, you might find this video by Sabine Hossenfelder (theoretical physicist) interesting.
I Think Faster Than Light Travel is Possible. Here's Why.
Now, don't be too dismissive of that title. She's not talking about a method for actually traveling faster than light, she's merely talking about whether or not our current best understanding of the physics of our universe really do forbid faster than light travel as is typically taught. And she's not talking about warping space. She goes over the speed of light as a limit, the speed of light as a barrier and time travel paradoxes.
Not having a doctorate in any field of physics I can't say how reasonable her arguments here are with respect to our current best understanding of the physics, but they sound plausible. I'd love to hear her discuss, or argue, this topic with some other theoretical physicists.
I would, but the issue is with me using a different definition unintentionally. I'm not aware that I am because no professor threw an eraser at me for getting it wrong.
Standard problem with autodidacts.
Possibly the solution is to use your academic background and footnote the definitions you are using for technical terms outside your field? Consider the difference between the scientific and legal definition of "theory", for example. If the meaning of a word is so important to an argument, defining the word will make the argument clearer.
I asked my wife to chime in on whether I'm using words and defining them in a different way. In other words, am I really all that hard to understand. She would know, right?
Her response was "Well, duh!"
If you like, I could send your wife some erasers to throw at you. Purely in the interests of better
Purely in the interests of better
That was supposed to be "Purely in the interests of better communication, of course! :-)".
Don't know why it got cut off.
Alfred Differ:
I think people often put too much thought into why they do what they do. We often rationalize our choices that are really just preferences.
True, but not quite what I was describing. I think you're saying that it's my preference to eat when I'm hungry. I'm saying that my hunger might cause me to eat, and my eating then cause me to not be hungry any more. Another possibility, if I'm somehow incapacitated or impoverished, is that I don't eat, which eventually causes me to starve to death.
I'm not speaking to my preference for eating rather than dying. I'm saying that eating causes me to not be hungry, or else not-eating causes me to die. In either case, the physical action has consequences. There is a cause and there is an effect of that cause.
Alan Brooks:
They say that JFK was a lapsed Catholic; whereas Biden is a non-Catholic.
Given that both were born and baptized Catholic, what's the difference?
Gregory
"don't gamble with what you can't afford to lose"
Alfred Differ said...
That's actually terrible advice.
Most hear it as "don't gamble".
There are stupid ways to gamble. That's a certainty.
I would say, on the contrary, that it is very good advice. Some people may misinterpret it, but that doesn't make it bad advice.
I would say that it means what it says. That is, don't gamble with your rent money, or with the kid's school lunch money, or suchlike, because the consequences of losing that money are far out of line with the possible reward.
Yes, there are things like 'loss aversion', but - even apart from those who can't afford to lose anything, because they really need all the resources they have - gambling resources you really need is taking a gigantic risk. Losing your rent money, for example, may mean that you are thrown out on the street.
This shows up in things like retirement savings. Younger people are advised to put at least some of their money in riskier or more volatile investments, while those close to retirement are not.
This is also why some say "them that's got shall get" in a normal capitalist economy: because those that already have a lot of spare resources can afford to take risks that those who don't cannot. If a person has USD1M that they can afford to lose without hurting their lifestyle, then they have a lot of better opportunities than another person with only USD1000. As suggested earlier, the same kind of thing holds for someone "starting a business": if someone is willing to fund your business for a year or two, then you are in a much better position than someone trying to do it as a "side hustle" or just hoping that their savings last long enough to start collecting a salary.
The flip side of that advice goes like this.
If you don't gamble, you won't win anything.
Alternatively: if you don't have any resources to gamble with, you can't win.
---
On the subject of economics in general, I would suggest that some 'economics' - or, if you will, what some economists do - is 'science', albeit a very soft and very difficult sort. At least some economists actually are looking at evidence and building and testing (so far as possible) models. But it is also true that a large amount of what a large number of 'economists' do is something rather different.
Religionists filter such response out. They’re convinced that Biden represents a “Woke mob” constructing a new world order bent on taking over the world. Fauci was an anti-Christ to them. For a couple of years, they referred to him as a hideous demon, sent to disrupt their worship services as part of the burgeoning *Woke anti-Christian new world order*—to slowly usher in Armageddon.
Alan Brooks:
Religionists filter such response out.
I understand their irrational beliefs. I was asking a semantic question. What's the difference in meaning between a "lapsed Catholic" and a "non-Catholic". I mean, I can understand that I am a non-Catholic because I never was one, but for those who were born into the faith, what is the difference supposed to be between the two?
Separately...Joe Biden? Really? The whole reason Biden was nominated to run in 2020 was because he could appeal to white men and other constituencies of the Republican Party who would balk at a gay Pete Buttigieg or a female Elizabeth Warren or a socialist Bernie Sanders. Good ol' Joe--senator from a corporate friendly state who worked well with Republicans for decades--was acceptable or at least tolerable to white Christians who didn't like Trump but would never accept a leftist. Now he's the fount from which all evil emanates? Render unto me an effing break!
Lawrence Krauss laments the downfall of astrobiology (and maybe SETI).
https://quillette.com/2023/04/06/astrobiology-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-nascent-science/
extract:
Ultimately, the meeting resolved that it was appropriate to forbid the use of the word “intelligence” in the name “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” as it is a “white construct.”
If anyone's interested, my son showed me this fun little video about the Fermi Paradox last night. It's good for 11 minutes, and imaginative.
PSB
scidata:
Ultimately, the meeting resolved that it was appropriate to forbid the use of the word “intelligence” in the name “Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence” as it is a “white construct.”
If I wasn't me, that sort of thing could get me to vote Republican. Do they really mean to imply that only white people value rationality, and that describing reality is an act of cultural oppression? That premise really does imply that white people should be the ones running everything. But I suppose logical implication is also suspect.
I'm an out and proud liberal, but jeez!
JFK is considered by them to be a practicing Catholic who, as a youthful president, strayed from his marital vows. He was sacrificed, similar in some sense, to Christ, and received the last rites.
Biden on the other hand, is thought to be in active rebellion against God, thereby he is not a Catholic to them—not a Christian.
As for your second part, they won’t even listen. Buttigieg is ‘Butt-igieg’ the sodomite;
Warren is ‘Poke-o-haunt-us’—they love that sort of thing from Trump, who is a persecuted Christ-figure to them.
They feel that a latter-day Sanhedrin is delivering Trump up to Pilate on behalf of Caesar: Biden.
Just as only Nixon could go to China, only a devout secular humanist like Krauss could criticize social justice warrior extremism. Shades of Mauna Kea.
Younger people are advised to put at least some of their money in riskier or more volatile investments, while those close to retirement are not.
Decades ago one of my colleagues retired and pulled his pension funds out as seed capital for his retirement business. It did what over half of new restaurants do within a couple of years, and he had nothing left for his retirement but the (inadequate) government pension.
Everyone thought he was an idiot when we heard it. General consensus was that his (younger) girlfriend (and business partner) had something to do with the decision.
@Robert,
To me, "retirement business" is an oxymoron. If you're gonna retire, retire.
I thought Tucker's and FOX's defense was that they are entertainment, not news. How can they hide behind protections for a news organization at the same time? It's almost like conservatives don't have to make sense.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/13/business/media/fox-dominion-libel-trial.html
“As an ethicist, I deplore a lot of what we’ve learned about Fox, and I would never hold it up as an example of good journalistic practices,” Ms. Kirtley said. “But I’ve always believed that the law has to protect even those news organizations that do things the way I don’t think they should do it. There has to be room for error.”
...
Ms. Kirtley said she was concerned that the Dominion case might lead to copycat lawsuits against other news organizations, and that the courts could start imposing their own standards for what constituted good journalistic practice.
Shouldn’t we say undocumented, rather than extraterrestrial? :(
Do they really mean to imply that only white people value rationality, and that describing reality is an act of cultural oppression?
At the risk of committing both-sides-ism, no group is without its share of idiots. Have you ever dealt with a radical feminist? I encountered the same kind of thing at uni in the 80s.
I was told by one such radical that engineers were agents of the patriarchy because we built things, and building things was a masculine activity that, like all masculine activities, oppressed women. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to suggest that she was free to leave the oppressive soulless masculine concrete student centre and frolic freely in the -30° snow, but I've never been quick with a response and I had a class to get to. :-/
Shouldn’t we say undocumented, rather than extraterrestrial? :(
You could always go with Illegal Alien. Made for a pretty decent novel, after all… :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Alien_(Sawyer_novel)
Robert:
At the risk of committing both-sides-ism, no group is without its share of idiots. Have you ever dealt with a radical feminist? I encountered the same kind of thing at uni in the 80s.
Yes, I'm sure we've all been there. In those days, I was more of a conservative--at least moreso than the people I hung with. But in those days, there was such thing as rational conservatism.
Robert:
You could always go with Illegal Alien.
I'm so old that I remember annual tv public service announcements reminding resident aliens (using that word) that they had to register with the government every January. So for me as a youngster, "alien" meant foreigner rather than ET.
A college roommate who was two whole years younger than me also remembered those same tv spots, but in his recollection, he had always pictured the ads talking to little green men with antennae.
Alan Brooks:
Shouldn’t we say undocumented, rather than extraterrestrial? :(
I'd go with planetarily challenged.
There's a scene from the ancient animated movie Heavy Metal (holy frak, from 1981!) where future NY cops haul away a short blue alien in an "I heart NY" t-shirt who is vainly protesting that he is a citizen and piping up "go Yankees!" The observing cabbie mutters, "damned illegal aliens".
Pappenheimer
I brought up Krauss's astrobiology article because it's the second time recently that a 'pause' on research has been called for (AGI being the other one). Also it's coming from the NRAO, the birthplace of FORTH. It's gettin' personal.
Just to be clear, Krauss is vehemently against woo-woo influence in science. Don't forget, he's been sitting on Richard Dawkins' shoulder for years.
Sorry guys. THe Ai thing.... agh.
onward
onward
It's 'Finnegans Wake' (no apostrophe).
I'm very old, but the Art Linkletter version of the game of Life that I grew up on ends in one of two places, Millionaire Acres, or The Poor Farm. There is no such thing as a middle class retiree. Much more apropos social commentary than rival game "Monopoly" in my opinion.
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