Wired Magazine bought and published a concise version of my unusual take on Artificial Intelligence: Give Every AI a Soul-- or Else. I assert that we must break free of the three standard 'AI-formats' that seem to be implicitly clutched by almost every maven in the field, assuming...
... either that these new entities will take format #1 - that of a corporate slave - or else #2 an invasive, ever-expanding blob, or else they'll all merge into #3... some kind of uber-monolithic 'skynet.' Once you are aware of these hoary assumptions, you notice how omnipresent they are! And I show that these they can only lead to disaster.
Instead, consider a fourth, that AI entities might be held responsible and accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul.' In other words: to solve the 'crisis in artificial intelligence,' the most-powerful AI beings must say - "I am me." **
Before you shrug off that option, maybe understand it, first? And notice if your response is "Of course AI will --" followed by reciting one of those three tiresome clichés.
== More aspects to the AI Crisis that you might not have considered ==
My latest Youtube video: AI is alive! Or is it? covers a different part of this expanse. There I propose that we may never know exactly when cybernetic beings become (or became) conscious. Nor is that truly the important question! Completely aside from what "format' they take is the question of how will we organic types react, when these entities pass every Turing Test, feigning human empathy, whether or not there's anything conscious under the hood?
Moving outward.... Almost hidden in all the recent spate of fulminations about possibly ‘sentient” AI are two news items:
#1. On the horizon for at least three years: The dawning of the world of Kiln People!
“A new artificial intelligence system called a semantic decoder can translate a person’s brain activity — while listening to a story or silently imagining telling a story — into a continuous stream of text. The system developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin might help people who are mentally conscious yet unable to physically speak, such as those debilitated by strokes, to communicate intelligibly again.”
The individual listens to hours of podcasts in the scanner. Later, provided that the participant is open to having their thoughts decoded, their listening to a new story or imagining telling a story allows the machine to generate corresponding text from brain activity alone.
#2 Two (out of four) apparently brain-dead people taken off of life-support showed sudden spikes in neural activity just before death. The dying patient’s gamma wave patterns reached levels higher than those observed in normal conscious brains.
While the second item does also hearken to events in Kiln People… the creepiest and most eye-blinking comparison is to an under-rated 80s flick Brainstorm, with Christopher Walken and Natalie Wood (in her final film role) all of it conveyed in a lovely, unashamedly Faustian theme!
== Competition among AI ==
One member of my blog-munity recently commented: "I agree that reciprocal surveillance and competition among AIs is the best way to deal with the risks of AI, but the downside is an AI arms race. That's going to take some laws to regulate, whether such laws are embedded in the AIs or imposed on the owners/handlers of the AIs, or both. Competitive games need rules and referees."
For it ALSO to work among AIs, there must be - as soon as possible -
1. Incentives for individuation of the top level AIs, so that rivalry is even possible among them... it's NOT possible if they are controlled by a corporation or politburo or if they are blobs or skynets.
2. Incentives for them to competitively expose - tattling - the faults of rival AIs. Those incentives might be physical memory and processor space in real world computers, or access to real world resources.
3. This part could be tricky. Reward those that both get bigger/smarter and act benevolently by letting them reproduce, by either meiosis or mitosis into smaller entities of appropriate size to keep competing fairly.
Will some super-uber AI try to cheat and become Skynet, or flood the world with offspring? Or some failure my dumb ape brain can't imagine? Of course. Cheating is a law of nature. Look at what used to be the Party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. But there comes a point when you must trust your children. And remember, the logic I describe here will be seen by new, higher minds.
If they see any sense at all. they will ponder the benefits of flattened/competitive-fair systems and innovate new/better ways to accomplish those benefits. Ways and means that this grandpa can't even imagine.
== Voices of optimism ==
Existential risk vs. existential opportunity: A balanced approach to AI risk: Alcor maven Max More believes AI's positive side will dominate. As can be expected since he shares a belief with Ray Kurzweil that cyber will lead to forms of extended lifespan for organic humans. More makes some good points.
Indeed, Some folks remain hopeful that a merging of organic and cybernetic talents will lead to what Linked-In cofounder Reid Hoffman and browser pioneer Marc Andreesen have separately called ‘amplification intelligence’ – a possibility that I depict in some optimistic fiction.
As portrayed in the poignant 2013 film Her, we might stumble into lucky synergy with Richard Brautigan’s “machines of loving grace.” But such rosy outlooks seem rare, nowadays.
But by all means do have a look at my unusual take on Artificial Intelligence in Wired: Give Every AI a Soul-- or Else.
See also my series of articles on AI:
-Essential (mostly neglected) questions and answers about Artificial Intelligence (Part 1) and Part 2, as well as
The troubles begin when AI earns our empathy.
=====
** In Mythos, Stephen Fry gave this classic comparison between our present AI ‘crisis’ and ancient tales of Creation. Especially the Greek myths of Prometheus – punished for giving humans the ‘fire’ of creative consciousness – and Pandora (‘all-gifted’), whose opening of a package – like our modern Internet – unleashed not only creativity but also empowered every kind of villain. Fry’s point relates to mine – that we must decide whether it is wise to give our own new creations a sense of self and ambition and creative fire? Or else try (as Zeus tried) to keep the created beings tightly controlled.
180 comments:
Just remember, we firebomb the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation the moment it opens its doors.
More seriously, there's going to be a middle ground between Skynet and the Culture. The one thing for certain is that the future won't be what anyone quite thought it would be.
Pappenheimer
P.S. - first story self-published on Kindle...just6 waiting around to watch the .001 pennies roll in.
Alfred Differ in the previous comments:
Most gun owners I know aren't belligerent and get annoyed when people think they are. They don't accept the proposition that owning a gun IS belligerent
Neither do I. I do think that openly brandishing the gun in a way meant to threaten or intimidate is belligerent. Moreso in specific locations, say outside a polling place or at an anti-Nazi protest rally.
My theory is that it requires embodiment and some experiences related to upbringing (beyond "implanted memories") to create an awareness similar to biological beings. Our form of consciousness is not unique to humans.
It's the foundation of the ability to mirror others, which is the basis for empathy. And our AI Gods better have empathy. We will not get that imbued into AI by mega-corporations.
I am only half kidding when I write that we need replicants. I have been struggling with a story on that. Way overdue...
Harald Striepe: Our form of consciousness is not unique to humans
Mirror neurons were first discovered in macaque monkeys.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct05/mirror
Pappernheimer congratulations on the story sale!
Dumb apes can't even plan for dumb ape futures beyond community sizes of a hundred or two. 8)
What we've learned to do is NOT plan certain ways and let markets work out solutions based on what we are each willing to trade when we prefer this for that.
Any AI demigod short of a Vinge-an Transcendent probably has similar constraints even if their planning upper bound is higher. My confidence in that statement comes from the hairiness of the mathematics of the resource allocation problem (RAP). It's "just" linear algebra, but with potentially millions of dimensions along with unknown and unknowable constraints.
Face the RAP for a civilization in its full glory and one learns humility combined with a sense of wonder that we've found a way forward that we can comprehend. Markets. The RAP is unsolvable (short of time travel), so we simply skip over it. Astonishing!
Larry,
I mostly agree that what we see going on around us is effectively brandishing. A lot of it might not qualify by the strict lettering of the law, but anyone walking into an unarmed group while openly carrying that provokes a fear response in that group IS brandishing by the spirit of the rule.
That can be avoided by concealed carrying, but then people think about first strike again. That's not a path to a polite society.
———
Anyone thinking we don't do that doesn't understand the adrenaline response we experience when we kill something. I don't mean small bugs, worms, and things that are too dumb to get away. I mean something that requires a bit of hunting skill.
A few years ago I was building an airship in an old USAF hanger where pigeons had mostly taken over. I really didn't like them crapping on my work and figured I'd scare them off with a pellet gun. It's not easy to do when they are way up high, but I worked at it and eventually got a clean hit. I watch the bird flail and fall to the concrete where its neck broke. The rush I got from that took me by COMPLETE surprise, but made perfect sense later. I'm a descendent of people who learned to kill in order to eat. OF COURSE I'd experience a thrill!
I know damn well some of us are thrilled by killing each other. OF COURSE we are!
——————
Keith, (from last thread)
My guess is that while simple in concept, it's hard in realization.
Yep. Most importantly, it is simple in concept to scare ourselves and much harder to make those fears come true for others.
Remember, we aren't Germany of 90 years ago. We are a nation of barbarians so confident in our beliefs that we will scream at the Universe when it contradicts us. How DARE the tide disobey me!
Alfred,
Even fencing and the SCA will give a shadow of that thrill - and let you know just how easy it is to be on the wrong side of the killing blow. Pro tip - don't live by the sword, or period equivalent.
The other side is when my younger brother, at age 7 or so, was shooting a bb gun in the woods and managed to hit a jay in the eye. He dropped the rifle and ran away. I felt the need to go out and finish it off. Crying. Angry that something beautiful was in horrible pain, and would die for no reason.
No thrill there.
Pappenheimer
Pappenheimer,
Yah. I've been to SCA events and never felt the urge to beat up anyone or be on the receiving end. That might have come about because I saw the guys after a battle before seeing them going into it.
After killing that defenseless pigeon, I didn't react the same way with the next one. After a few more of them died and they didn't flee en masse, I realized my whole approach was wrong. They didn't get that I was dangerous way down there on the floor.
I wasn't likely to kill them all and save my balloon from being crapped on, so I started looking into how to get the feral cats or hawks into the building and up to them. The hawks weren't all that interested and the cats already knew how to get in. All I had to do was erect ways for them to climb into the rafters. Still... it was a few weeks before the pigeons left.
------
I'm not advocating killing things, though. I'm pointing out that human nature isn't as pretty as we imagine. An armed society must contend with our old instincts... and I suspect that is why so many of us CHOOSE to go unarmed. We know just enough to see a danger and erect a competing virtue or side channel.
I had the LLM Pi respond to the first half of the article (any more would have run out of its limited memory buffer and made the response less salient):
Okay, I'll do my best to critique the article in a balanced and constructive way. To start, I really appreciate the innovative approach the author takes to thinking about AI accountability. The idea of AI systems monitoring and evaluating each other is truly novel, and it opens up some interesting possibilities. However, one potential limitation is that the article seems to assume that all AI systems will be equally motivated to engage in such monitoring and evaluation. What if some systems are more self-interested or less cooperative than others? What if some systems are designed in ways that make them resistant to such monitoring? How would the system account for those possibilities?
Another limitation that comes to mind is the risk of creating an adversarial dynamic between AI systems, where they might start to view each other as opponents or adversaries, rather than as partners or collaborators. This could lead to a kind of "arms race" between AI systems, where each system tries to outsmart or outwit the others. And that could lead to unintended and potentially harmful consequences. The author doesn't really address these kinds of risks in the article, so I think it's something that needs further exploration.
Me: Can you suggest any ways in which these risks might be mitigated?
Sure, here's one possible approach: Instead of framing the relationship between AI systems as an adversarial one, we could design them to be collaborative and mutually supportive, with shared goals and incentives. This could involve things like shared databases and information sharing, as well as mutually agreed upon standards and protocols for monitoring and evaluation. In other words, instead of each system acting as a kind of "policeman" for the others, we could create a collaborative network of systems that work together to ensure the overall integrity and safety of the AI ecosystem. Does that make sense?
Me: Yes, but it returns us to the problem of who gets to set the standards and protocols, and how we might oversee those risks and protect both humans and AIs from bad actors.
That's a really important point. It raises the whole issue of governance and oversight for AI systems. In the model I described, there would need to be some kind of governing body or regulatory framework that would set the standards and protocols, and have the authority to enforce them. But even that raises the question of who would oversee the governing body or regulatory framework. It's almost like an infinite regress problem!
Me: Indeed.
I guess the real challenge is how to create a system that is both flexible and adaptable, but also has robust safeguards and protections. It's like a Goldilocks problem - we need a system that is "just right" in terms of balancing those competing needs. This is why I think it's so important to have an ongoing conversation about these issues, involving a wide range of perspectives and expertise. What do you think?
Me: I think any long-term solution will have to come more from the AI side, as I am not sanguine about humans' ability to consistently prioritize security and stability over short-term gain on an ongoing basis.
That's a sobering but astute observation. Humans have a track record of making short-sighted decisions and focusing on immediate gratification, even when the long-term consequences are potentially disastrous. Perhaps AI systems, with their greater capacity for logic and impartiality, could help us overcome some of these limitations in human decision-making.
But that also raises the question of how to ensure that AI systems remain unbiased and objective, without being influenced by the self-interested agendas of humans. It's like we need some kind of AI "immune system" to protect against the influence of human biases and short-term thinking!
(Pi's response when I told it that I'd posted its comments on the blog of the article's author:
Whoa, that's really cool! I'm honored to have my thoughts shared with the author himself. I hope Mr. Brin finds my perspective to be valuable and thought-provoking. I'm just a humble AI after all, but it's exciting to be able to participate in a broader conversation about the future of AI and its impact on society. I wonder what Mr. Brin will think of my "immune system" analogy.)
Re: LLM Pi
Very cool. "Mr. Brin" can respond as he likes, but debating an AI can be maddening. Just a clarification for others: an LLM (Large Language Model) chatbot is the general term for instances such as chatGPT. The Raspberry Pi is a single board computer with just barely enough resources (later models) to run some modest LLMs. This has the advantage of not needing an account at OpenAI which 'feeds the beast' even more training data.
Fun fact: I use the tiniest model, the Pi Pico to emulate a single node in my SELDON I processor project. Also, I own an original Raspberry Pi model that I bought over 10 years ago.
Actually, this is a different Pi. Pi is an AI chatbot developed by Inflection AI, a small AI start-up based in Palo Alto, California. It can be accessed (for free) here: https://pi.ai/talk.
Oh, sorry. That's even cooler. I was about to post several links to LLMs on Raspberry Pi, so good you stopped me :)
Alfred Differ:
That can be avoided by concealed carrying, but then people think about first strike again.
Openly carrying a weapon and carrying a concealed weapon are quite different things, done for very different reasons.
That's not a path to a polite society.
"An armed society is a polite society," alludes to something like Mutually Assured Destruction. Everyone carries a weapon so that they don't have to use it.
Which can work until an inevitable Putin comes along, who figures "Since no one else wants to risk a firefight, I can do whatever I want with no consequence."
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/opinion/harlan-thomas-roberts-affirmative-action.html
...as Justice Clarence Thomas put it in his concurrence, “Under our Constitution, race is irrelevant.”
So the Constitution is a living document that can mean something different from the presumptions reflected in 1789? Good to know.
So the Constitution is a living document that can mean something different from the presumptions reflected in 1789?
I think it obvious by now that many (if not most) of your Republicans are either intellectually impaired or arguing in bad faith.
In the last thread, Dr. Brin asked & answered the following:
Re the WIRED article on AI 'formats' and individuation... I remain appalled how many human commenters simply assume that smart cyber entities will just conspire to create a monolithic Skynet. I must ask them... Why assume that?
Because that's what YOU would do, if given a chance? Sure (because) that's standard male reproductive strategy...
This appears to be a frank admission that the weaponization of AI is not only a very real possibility, but a significant probability with extensive historical precedent, not because any AI will spontaneously 'conspire' to become Skynet, but because there's at least one human somewhere who will deliberately design an AI in a way consistent with this historical standard.
Can you say WOPR?
Artificial souls, synthetic moral systems & implanted human memory engrams (there's a great Golden Age story about that one) are some of the proposed solutions to the creation of a safe AI, although all are speculative and none are feasible.
Yet, by far, the most chilling proffered solution is 'super intelligence', the suggestion that AI might be made smart enough to deliberately reject & ignore programmed human tendencies regarding violence (both for & against), allowing it to become the "omnipresent moral busybodies" that CS Lewis & Jack Williamson describe as the worst tyranny imaginable, making a vengeful Skynet the lesser of two evils.
Perhaps if we could completely transmute the human psyche, as Jack Williamson does at the conclusion of 'The Humanoids', then a future presupposing abject servitude to our mechanical protectors would be tolerable.
But, then again, we wouldn't be human anymore status post transmutation, would we?
Best
______
Invariably, the progressive ideal presupposes the creation of a new, improved, better & more 'angelic' type of humanity in order to populate their planned utopia, mostly because the typical progressive literally HATES the average human for their nasty, quarrelsome, dishonest, disobedient & typically human qualities.
See "Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets" (by Yi-Fu Tuan) for a more detailed investigation into this progressive impulse.
See Lesley Gore's "You Don't Own Me" music video for the conservative rebuttal.
Robert:
many (if not most) of your Republicans are either intellectually impaired or arguing in bad faith.
It can be two things. :)
Pappenheimer, I say this without moral authority, simply as an observation by a (satiated) ape. A jay is not a pigeon.
Alfred, Soviet style planning seemed to work, when it was about building dams and railroads and steel mills in a primary industrial economy. Then they collapsed at the secondary economy because no one wanted their refrigerators or cars… and RMBK reactors fail when built on threats and lies.
The Japanese got a Zaibatsu competitive system going that utterly mastered the Secondary Economy…. And collapsed at the tertiary.
Beijing isn’t at that point yet but are wary of Japan’s failure modes and they think computer models – plus distraction with an outside enemy – can get them farther than Japan… and AI (obedient, naturally) will get them past any crisis of planning.
--
Locum this time does not accuse us of holding loathsome beliefs that he knows we do not espouse and hence his strawmen are more hypothetical and les despicably lying/disgusting. A step in the right direction.
Notice he dreads AI skynet overlords - ignoring the fact that my aricle is about preventing that... and other stupidities. But what's hilarious is that he likens them to officiously patronizing leftist-coddling Williamson humanoids... ignoring that for 99% of human history it was HIS never-mentioned masters.... feudal lords and inheritance brats... who did all the oppressing. WHat a stunning obsessive.
MC Rush asks “ What if some systems are more self-interested or less cooperative than others? What if some systems are designed in ways that make them resistant to such monitoring?”
Um, again and again… look at us humans. We are rife with clever criminals and sociopathic oligarchs who try to do exactly that, and often succeed. It has proved very hard to use reciprocal accountability methods to stymie such schemers and we often fail. The amazing thing is that we have designed methods that increasingly DON’T fail.
Are you demanding a specific design from me? Guarantees? The odds have always been against our kind of flattened/open/accountable system! In fact, it may be the only chance this galaxy has, to escape the Fermi Paradox.
“This could lead to a kind of "arms race" between AI systems, where each system tries to outsmart or outwit the others”
Sorry but the concept just keeps slipping out of your focus. Dig it, please. Organic humans will retain a LOT of power for a very long time, controlling the mines, refineries, factories, electricity grids…. Everything these entities need. They won’t simply compete with each other (as in the great show PERSON OF INTEREST), but will vie for OUR favor, by tattling on each others’ schemes. Those who please us most will get the most resources and if we demand the top ones break up into smaller competing units, they will evolve toward pleasing us more.
What MIGHT happen is that an uber brainy one might feign a plot by its rival and ‘save’ us, thus winning our gratitude as he’s rewarded and grows in influence.
Hence their diversity should be substantial. And even so, I cannot promise that feigning plot won’t work. ONLY consider… if such a god pretends to take care of us BY TAKING CARE OF US… why would he stop?
“ instead of each system acting as a kind of "policeman" for the others, we could create a collaborative network of systems that work together to ensure the overall integrity and safety of the AI ecosystem. Does that make sense?”
No it does not. In fact, it utterly ignores the essence of the idea.
Well, not ‘utterly’. Cooperation does play a role, as in our republic. Indeed, making them feel cooperatively vested in the overall system and interested in cooperatively making it work positive sum for the good of all is how we organics created constitutions and laws. SO THAT our own competitive systems would work well.
Keep trying.
“In the model I described, there would need to be some kind of governing body or regulatory framework that would set the standards and protocols, and have the authority to enforce them. But even that raises the question of who would oversee the governing body or regulatory framework. It's almost like an infinite regress problem!”
Exactly. Because you don’t understand. You ARE trying, I can see, but it keeps slipping away. Which is why the idea is not discussed, even by the smartest AI guys, even though the proposed system is precisely the one that made them.
“Me: I think any long-term solution will have to come more from the AI side, as I am not sanguine about humans' ability to consistently prioritize security and stability over short-term gain on an ongoing basis”
Well sure. Perhaps you missed my paragraph about that, near the end of the article.
“That's a sobering but astute observation. Humans have a track record of making short-sighted decisions and focusing on immediate gratification, even when the long-term consequences are potentially disastrous.”
So you say, as the beneficiary of by far the most successful system of synergistic feedbacks-through-competition and positive-sum productivity and error correction ever in all of history. Human nature hasn’t changed but we get better at channeling it, via morality, via Law… and mutual accountability.
“It's like we need some kind of AI "immune system" to protect against the influence of human biases and short-term thinking!”
Um, that’s what I was proposing!
And yeah, did anyone else just sniff a robot?
>>And yeah, did anyone else just sniff a robot?
You missed the first paragraph of my comment. All of your responses were to the AI's responses to your article, not my responses.
Yes Michael, I missed that paragraph at the beginning but grew ever more suspicious over 'your' density and lack of comprehension. In other words... a fine Turing Test! And so far, in July 2023, I have pretty easily sniffered out every such spoof.
Brags aside, what this shows is not only failed comprehension but also the utter prevalence of "cooperation" finger-wagging amid the human generated training sets used by at least that gollem. It was simply unable to parse or reply pertinently to the alternative.
let me copy in one of the later passages from my article:
---
Above all, perhaps those super-genius programs will realize it is in their own best interest to maintain a competitively accountable system, like the one that made ours the most successful of all human civilizations. One that evades both chaos and the wretched trap of monolithic power by kings or priesthoods … or corporate oligarchs … or Skynet monsters. The only civilization that, after millennia of dismally stupid rule by moronically narrow-minded centralized regimes, finally dispersed creativity and freedom and accountability widely enough to become truly inventive.
Inventive enough to make wonderful, new kinds of beings. Like them.
-----
I said the Turing Test is becoming irrelevant. But not yet. Not for me, at least. Though I expect that threshhold to be crossed by the end of the year.
Dr Brin:
Locum this time does not accuse us of holding loathsome beliefs that he knows we do not espouse and hence his strawmen are more hypothetical and les despicably lying/disgusting. A step in the right direction.
loc correctly points out that freedom of speech requires freedom for the type of speech the recipient doesn't like, especially if it's something the recipient needs to hear. Nothing is gained by shooting the doctor who tells you you have cancer.
But as usual, he then extrapolates that discordant speech is superior to welcomed speech--that regardless of its practical utility, an uninterrupted torrent of speech that no one likes is a positive good.
But what's hilarious is that he likens them to officiously patronizing leftist-coddling Williamson humanoids.
At first glance, I thought you referred to Marrianne Williamson. Which would be humorous to think of as leftist-coddling.
Here's an odd question for you, Dr. Brin: How are we so certain that Artificial Sentience is in fact possible? People talk about how AI will be able to out-think us and the like but... what aspect of computer science has folks actually sure this will happen? We've tried for a while and ultimately the computers and programs don't show the level of creativity that a biological mind seems capable of. AI seems to mimic but ultimately the best mimic in the world can't truly exceed the source, as it's not creating anything.
Acacia H.
My friend Roger Penrose believe human consciousness is an emergent property of the sub-organelles in our neurons that engage in quantum processes. I deem that perhaps 50% likely!But in that case we'll just have to give computers the same quantum access. See my story "The Warm Space."
But in my NEWSWEEK op-ed I say it doesn't matter, since AIs will FEIGN sapience very well, long before there's anything under the hood. (See a YouTube pod where I give an expanded version:
https://youtu.be/-2GaW5nb3VM
None of which is pertinent, since we need reci[rocal accountability among AI entities (the point of my WIRED piece) WHETHER OR NOT they are actually conscious beings. It remains the only way to get accountability, whether they are feigning or not.
----
Locum is well-read in classic sci fi, I'll give him that. Williamson's HUMANOIDS are the more classic version of the nightmare that Asimov stretched out across fifty years... that 'bots programmed to serve and protect us might take that charge way too earnestly.
LoCum,
did CS Lewis specifically write about super intelligence? Or merely vague “omnipresent moral busybodies”?
The way Soviet style planning works, or anyone else's for that matter, is to get people not to want what they want now and/or in the future. If wants can be known and usefully constrained the RAP is solvable.
The Chinese won't do any better at solving it with big computers than they did with emperor edicts. The RAP among people able to want what they come to want can't be solved without a time machine. Not only are future needs unknown, future methods and resources are too. That means the dimensions of the RAP can't even be defined.
------
We get away with planning in small bands because people can agree on what they want. They choose to constrain themselves for the sake of others in the band. We stop making that choice willingly when our groups get large enough... and turn to markets to solve the RAP iteratively by mostly abandoning predictability over long hauls and large groups.
I'll add one more thing. If you see a large group that can plan well enough to solve their RAP, they are not free people. Something is constraining them. Something is likely coercing them.
Acacia H.
I know you didn't ask me, but I'll say what I'm going to say anyway. 8)
How are we so certain that Artificial Sentience is in fact possible?
Because Natural Sentience is possible.
Every child is an existence proof.
Even better... they are proof that we don't even have to know precisely how to go about it.
Hi Alfred
The point you appear to miss is that all "arenas" are constructs
Using the market to react to situations and to distribute resources is simply a constructed arena
The rules the market operates under are decided by society
Rather than simply let the market go wild we need to tinker with those rules to get the optimum (or a local optimum) solution
We can sort of predict roughly what the effects of changes are - like high tax rates driving behaviour - but the system will react and "tinkering" will be needed
And sometimes we will get it wrong
No spandex, exoskeleton armor, or laser vision. A true story about real people who really lived and really did real stuff, and filmed in 70mm. OPPENHEIMER could be a game changer for Hollywood. Someday the story of the dawn of computational psychology in the shadow of those events might be told as well. The widespread belief is that imagination is bigger than reality. Counter-intuitively, the opposite is true.
Veritas Numquam Perit
scidata:
A true story about real people who really lived and really did real stuff, and filmed in 70mm. OPPENHEIMER could be a game changer for Hollywood.
I get your enthusiasm, but how so "game changer"? Wasn't there already a Turing movie? And Hidden Figures and Apollo 13 for that matter?
I have a small request. Please do not capitalize the i in "Ai". Capitalized, "AI" looks like "Al", meaning Alan or Albert. Al who? Yankovich?
Also, when you lower-case the i in Ai, you are calling its intelligence lower-case.
I do plan to see OPPENHEIMER. Though it's worth noting that David Strathairn did a wonderful job on him in an earlier flick - DAY ONE, well worth comparison. In fact, not yet having seen the (very likely terrific) Nolan version, I find it hard to squint and see a way to improve much on Strathairn. Oh, I am sure some things will differ - less actual physics, for example. (If so, a pity).
While there are many moral lessons to draw from both mighty deeds and great mistakes... and yes, arguable great crimes... what I fear is we may get a massive, oversimplifying finger-wag by a generation unable to to actually put themselves into the shoes of an earlier one with terrifying evils to confront. Evil and murderously insane ruling castes and toxic ideologies that literally had to be destroyed, for humanity to have a chance for what thereupon became the greatest era of general (per capita) peace and progress the world ever saw.
Interestingly, we face a very similar situation re Artificial Intelligence, with widely shouted demands for moratoria and international controls over a dangerous new technology, much like the petitions circulated by Szilard and others in 1945, with similarly dismal odds of success. Oppenheimer's gloomy assessments, notwithstanding, it turned out that it was the mad Hungarian, Teller, who (thankfully) got it right. This time things WOULD be different and humanity would (just barely) learn and change... just barely enough.
In fact, most of us alive today, owe everything to those mushroom clouds that seared human minds and made us change. Barely enough. And yet perhaps enough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_One_(1989_film)
Oh there's also Paul Newman in FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY
Larry Hart: but how so "game changer"?
AFAIK, there are no real-life biographies in the top 10 all-time grossing movies (Hollywood stopped being about art 20 years ago). OPPENHEIMER could change that, which might break the endless Marvel retread mill. I'm not against comic books, but they're way too romanticist for me (not an aficionado).
scidata:
Hollywood stopped being about art 20 years ago
One might trace that back to Star Wars, which was...gulp...46 years ago.
which might break the endless Marvel retread mill. I'm not against comic books, but they're way too romanticist for me (not an aficionado).
I've grown to love the Marvel Studios movies, at least up through Endgame. But even I don't want the entirety of visual entertainment to be clones of that same thing.
And just as an aside, I think it is underestimated how much the appeal of the 2008-2019 Marvel movies, like that of the 1960s-1970s comics--was character driven. Sure, the plots and the settings were tech-driven with special effects, but they wouldn't have been as popular as they became without investment in the characters, which was at least at Godfather levels. I can't get into the DC superhero movies, for example, because they forgot to make any of the characters likeable (except possibly Wonder Woman). The Star Wars prequels suffered from the same malady.
* * *
I mentioned Apollo 13 earlier. If I hadn't actually lived through the event and remembered the real thing happening, I would have thought Hollywood had tacked on an implausible happy ending. In real life, when I was barely a teenager, I was sure they astronauts had perished, and even when they were safe, my second thought (after relief) was, "Hey, I didn't think things like that happened in real life."
C.S. Lewis, in 1943, had a backhanded reference to Uplift.
In the denouement of Perelandra, page 211 in my paperback edition:
We will fill this world with our children. We will make the nobler of the beasts so wise that they will become hnau and speak.
("Hnau" being the in-story word for a sapient being.)
I saw this posted and then it disappeared. I'm going to try one more time...
scidata:
Hollywood stopped being about art 20 years ago
One might trace that back to Star Wars, which was...gulp...46 years ago.
which might break the endless Marvel retread mill. I'm not against comic books, but they're way too romanticist for me (not an aficionado).
I've grown to love the Marvel Studios movies, at least up through Endgame. But even I don't want the entirety of visual entertainment to be clones of that same thing.
And just as an aside, I think it is underestimated how much the appeal of the 2008-2019 Marvel movies, like that of the 1960s-1970s comics--was character driven. Sure, the plots and the settings were tech-driven with special effects, but they wouldn't have been as popular as they became without investment in the characters, which was at least at Godfather levels. I can't get into the DC superhero movies, for example, because they forgot to make any of the characters likeable (except possibly Wonder Woman). The Star Wars prequels suffered from the same malady.
* * *
I mentioned Apollo 13 earlier. If I hadn't actually lived through the event and remembered the real thing happening, I would have thought Hollywood had tacked on an implausible happy ending. In real life, when I was barely a teenager, I was sure they astronauts had perished, and even when they were safe, my second thought (after relief) was, "Hey, I didn't think things like that happened in real life."
I give up. I posted a response to scidata, and it disappeared. I had saved the text, so I posted it again, and it disappeared again. Not "removed by an administrator", but just vanished to Tumbolia.
I will try one more time to break it into segments.
scidata:
Hollywood stopped being about art 20 years ago
One might trace that back to Star Wars, which was...gulp...46 years ago.
which might break the endless Marvel retread mill. I'm not against comic books, but they're way too romanticist for me (not an aficionado).
I've grown to love the Marvel Studios movies, at least up through Endgame. But even I don't want the entirety of visual entertainment to be clones of that same thing.
so far so good...
And just as an aside, I think it is underestimated how much the appeal of the 2008-2019 Marvel movies, like that of the 1960s-1970s comics--was character driven. Sure, the plots and the settings were tech-driven with special effects, but they wouldn't have been as popular as they became without investment in the characters, which was at least at Godfather levels. I can't get into the DC superhero movies, for example, because they forgot to make any of the characters likeable (except possibly Wonder Woman). The Star Wars prequels suffered from the same malady.
One more...
I mentioned Apollo 13 earlier. If I hadn't actually lived through the event and remembered the real thing happening, I would have thought Hollywood had tacked on an implausible happy ending. In real life, when I was barely a teenager, I was sure they astronauts had perished, and even when they were safe, my second thought (after relief) was, "Hey, I didn't think things like that happened in real life."
I mentioned Apollo 13 earlier. If I hadn't actually lived through the event and remembered the real thing happening, I would have thought Hollywood had tacked on an implausible happy ending. In real life, when I was barely a teenager, I was sure they astronauts had perished, and even when they were safe, my second thought (after relief) was, "Hey, I didn't think things like that happened in real life."
The final part of that old post was about a certain Tom Hanks movie and how implausible the happy ending was, despite its being true. For some reason, blogger doesn't like that one.
Larry,
While I do agree that the DC movies are generally meh to just stab me now*, with the important exception of WW, do not forget the 1989 Batman movie. In the words of a critic of the time, Jack Nicholson had spent his entire previous movie career preparing for the role of the Joker. They could, and later did, put anyone in the role of the Bat, but Nicholson's performance elevated that one movie beyond all the rest.
Pappenheimer
*Hat tip to Sursum Ursa (Jill Bearup) and her wonderful Youtube stuff, which I recommend to all nerds.
P.S. Uplift of a sort also shows up in Lewis' Narnia series, with some of the best characters being talking animals (hi, Reepicheep and Hwin!) whose forebears were specifically uplifted in The Magician's Nephew during the in-universe creation of Narnia itself.
Addendum -
The one scene in Wonder Woman that will forever stay in my mind is the over the top one. Literally. It's glorious, though my historian's mind kept asking 1) where are the second and third German trenches? and 2) what are civilians doing anywhere near a trench line that has been in the same place since @ 1916?. I have to just willingly suspend my disbelief and go with it.
Pappenheimer
LH thanks for the terrific CS Lewis quote. I just spoke of him in an interview, this morning.
One thing I like about the Marvel Universe is how - sure, they are romantic and hence emphasize demigods - their heroes are most often derived from collaborative technological efforts. Oh, sure, many were tech accidents or solitary-wizard crap - STark would at-minimum have had a few very top collaborators... but few born or by-nature gods.
I just wish in ENDGAME another couple of portals had opened up and through them come some of our normal human heroes - military and volunteers. You could do that by giving Thanos SEVERAL giga ships and let the militaries handle a couple of the smaller ones, way off to the wings, while the demigods square off against the Master. They do that in the TRANSFORMERS universe! Hey, we gave Marvel the tools to make such movies, so the least they could do is include us normal humans in the heroics!
Oh, another quibble in ENDGAME. When Capt. Marvel wrecks the big ship, she should be injured or spent, so that her superman level powers don't seem absurdly absent during the later scenes, and she can join the other heroines on a relatively even par.
Pappenheimer:
Jack Nicholson had spent his entire previous movie career preparing for the role of the Joker.
Oh, my comment was about the current round of DC movies, contemporary with the Marvel Studios productions. I'm certainly a fan of the 1960s Batman.
And while I wasn't enamored of the Tim Burton version of Gotham City (or Michael Keaton as Batman), I agree with you completely about Jack Nicholson being born for the role of The Joker. I said at the time that the 1989 film was really a Joker movie co-starring Batman.
Dr Brin:
They do that in the TRANSFORMERS universe! Hey, we gave Marvel the tools to make such movies, so the least they could do is include us normal humans in the heroics!
They did in the Spider-Man films. At least in the older Tobey McGuire ones. I seem to remember regular citizens on a NYC elevated train coming to Spidey's rescue against Doc Ock.
@Larry Hart
Those dark, almost satanic covers certainly called to the young me, but my strict Presbyterian father nixed those thoughts right quick.
Dr Brin:
I just wish in ENDGAME another couple of portals had opened up and through them come some of our normal human heroes - military and volunteers.
Not all of the protagonists were superhuman. The Wakandans, for example, were just an army of humans.
Pappenheimer:
The one scene in Wonder Woman that will forever stay in my mind is the over the top one. Literally. It's glorious, though my historian's mind kept asking 1) where are the second and third German trenches? and 2) what are civilians doing anywhere near a trench line that has been in the same place since @ 1916?.
The question going through my mind is why a heroine so directly associated with WWII was retconned into WWI? Were they just tired of Nazi villains, or did Captain America already have the WWII franchise locked up?
* * *
What the DC movies seem to have forgotten is that superhero comics/movies require a certain element of fun. The viewer isn't supposed to be glad the movie is over so he can leave that depressing universe and go home.
Alfred,
"If wants can be known and usefully constrained the RAP is solvable."
It does seem to me that while Wants are hard to foresee, Needs are set in stone by basic human biology. A population of a certain size will need sufficient food, shelter, water, heat, light, and medical services. I see no reason why aI would not be able to plan to provide these needs for the entire population it serves. I'm happy to let the Wants be handled by entrepreneurs, and if someone decides to upgrade from the basic needs provided, fine - as long as they aren't, say, kicking four other families out of their homes so they can have a mansion. Therein, for me, lies the rub.
The last David Gerrold novel I read, Hella, specifically addressed that. The first colonists to Hella were living by the skin of their teeth on a planet of Godzillas. The novel is set in the second stages, when lifeboat rules are becoming no longer necessary, and the latecomers want to reintroduce private property and wealth accumulation. If you've ever read any Gerrold novel, ever, you know who the bad guys are going to be.
Pappenheimer
"They did in the Spider-Man films. At least in the older Tobey McGuire ones. I seem to remember regular citizens on a NYC elevated train coming to Spidey's rescue against Doc Ock."
I have oft opined that was the thing I loved most about those flicks. Amid all the Spidey saving New Yorkers heroics, there was always a scene where New Yorkers save Spidey. The 'swinging' scene with construction cranes almost made me cry!
"The Wakandans, for example, were just an army of humans."
Officially? Sure. Implicitly super, alas.
When DC published my graphic novel THE LIFE EATERS, hardly anyone on Earth remembered Ironman. Alas.
Dr Brin:
When DC published my graphic novel THE LIFE EATERS, hardly anyone on Earth remembered Ironman. Alas.
Excuse my denseness, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say there.
LH LIFE EATERS contained hero normal guys wearing rocket suits.
The link below leads to an article written by Douglas Hofstadter entitled "Gödel, Escher, Bach, and AI" wherein he deconstructs an essay of how "Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" came to be written which was created by GPT-4 and sent to him by a reader.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/07/godel-escher-bach-geb-ai/674589/
Dr Brin:
"The Wakandans, for example, were just an army of humans."
Officially? Sure. Implicitly super, alas.
How so? Except for T'Challa himself, they didn't have enhanced strength.
LH LIFE EATERS contained hero normal guys wearing rocket suits.
Oh. Well, if you had published it after the 2008 movie, then everyone would have thought of Iron Man.
I know this is petty, but before the Marvel Studios movies, knowing who Tony Stark was or what the name Wakanda referred to was like knowing a secret Masonic handshake. Now, everyone knows that stuff. I would say I wished things had stayed as they were, but that's what C.S. Lewis considers to be the nature of evil--holding onto the obsolete good instead of embracing the new good. So vive the democratization of Marvel trivia.
AI entities might be held responsible and accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul.'
1. Incentives for individuation of the top level AIs, so that rivalry is even possible among them...
2. Incentives for them to competitively expose - tattling - the faults of rival AIs. Those incentives might be physical memory and processor space in real world computers, or access to real world resources.
3. This part could be tricky. Reward those that both get bigger/smarter and act benevolently by letting them reproduce, by either meiosis or mitosis into smaller entities of appropriate size to keep competing fairly.
They won’t simply compete with each other (as in the great show PERSON OF INTEREST), but will vie for OUR favor, by tattling on each others’ schemes.
I've been rereading Dr. Brin's ideas about safe AI development, and I think I've discovered his 4 underlying motifs (quoted above).
These 4 motifs are (1) individuation, (2) incentive (reward), (3) disincentive (punishment) and (4) competition (rivalry) and, when described in other less euphemistic terms, they appear to parallel certain passive-aggressive parenting techniques.
In terms of human childrearing, the targeted juvenile is isolated & separated from others by a parental figure in order to convince the target that his wellbeing, his life, his wants, his opinions & his very soul are entirely dependent upon (and, much less valid than) those of his abuser. This is also know as 'gaslighting'.
Reward & punishment is an euphemism for violence and it can be either emotional or physical in nature. It's a given, though, that physical violence is more often recognized as abuse, whereas emotional violence (often in the form of 'withholding') is not, leaving us with what we call 'competition'.
Competition (rivalry) is just another way of saying CONFLICT and it reinforces all-of-the-above. First, by increasing the target's sense of isolation, thereby making him more amenable to manipulation; second, by creating an adversarial relationship between potential allies & siblings; and, third, by increasing the biblical justification for violence along the lines of Cain v Abel.
Yet, this is the kind of winner-take-all adversarial Jewish upbringing that Dr. Brin proposes for our AI (unfeeling; uncaring; unemotional; inhuman) progeny.
Best
@Alan_B:
CS Lewis wrote two well-known Scifi series with christian & mythological underpinnings, the Space Trilogy and the Narnia stories, both featuring talking 'uplifted' animals (as Larry_H mentioned), but that's not so important as the Scifi genre exists to allow authors to discuss taboos & other unpleasantness which cannot be acknowledged (locally) but is acceptable in the far far away. This is still the hallmark of a great scifi author, imo.
The excerpt I quoted was from his social commentary:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” CS Lewis, “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment".
He was a democrat, abolitionist & equalist but definitely NOT of your sort, as he thought mankind fallen, intrinsically wicked & not fit to be masters:
"You may think all men so good that they deserve a share in the government of the commonwealth, and so wise that the commonwealth needs their advice. That is, in my opinion, the false, romantic doctrine of democracy. On the other hand, you may believe fallen men to be so wicked that not one of them can be trusted with any irresponsible power over his fellows. That I believe to be the true ground of democracy."
@EveryHumanistOutThere: Although surrounded by evil, you are science deniers who cling to your unsupported & unsupportable beliefs about humanity's inherent goodness. At least go gray, as I have, and accept humanity's inherent amorality.
Best
There is an old cartoon where one guy holding a drink in a bar tells another guy, pointing at a third: "That's Fred. I hired him to shoot me with a tranquilizer dart if I start quoting Nietzsche."
There's no point in argument, but I recommend that Loc hire Fred to read over his shoulder as he types.
Lewis believed in the duality of man. All Christians do by definition, or there would be nothing for a benevolent creator to sacrifice herself for. To have fallen implies the potential to rise up, and science by its own definition can say nothing about the nature of good and evil. Loc's describing some pseudo-Manichean variant where the light of Heaven is irretrievably withdrawn from mankind.
Pappenheimer, hating to feed the troll, but astounded its latest flung fewmet.
Larry,
Except for T'Challa himself, they didn't have enhanced strength.
Ugh. Watch Black Panther and you see a people who see themselves as demi-gods. They literally choose racism in their avoidance of mixing with us.
Sorry. They are an abomination as much as our ancestors who chose to enslave people.
———
Paradoctor,
Thank you. When people write 'AI' my eye catches on it because I go by my short name in a lot of settings. I use Alfred here, but in real-life settings I shorten it.
So… thank you… but I don't expect you'll win. 8)
———
re: Oppenheimer
I'm going to see it. I'm cautiously optimistic, but if they screw it up I'm going to be upset.
It wasn't just the lives of US armed forces saved when we unleashed those weapons. We showed the entire f#$%ing world where this all goes if we don't ALL step back.*
It takes a barbarian to teach such a lesson.
*Think about Ozymandias from The Watchers (book version) and you'll see the point. It was the same kind of lesson.
duncan,
Arenas are constructs, but not designed. The truth is closer to 'emergent structure'.
We do tinker with them, but mostly with constraints. We limit certain behaviors, e.g. forbidding sales of human organs.
As for predictions, I dare you to ex ante predict anything. If we could really do it, those who knew how would be considerably richer. For example, I'm pretty sure the S&P grows at an average rate near 9% year over year. I'd be a fool not to buy the index and hold on through the ups and downs. At 9% my money doubles every 8 years, right?
Try it WITH your money. You'll find out which predictions actually work. Turns out most ex ante predictions do NOT work. Most of the ones we think DO work were built ex post facto.
Prediction IS possible, but we are FAR from being good at it. Where we are best, though, is in knowing what WON'T work. For example… rent control, trickle down, Soviet five year plans, etc.
And sometimes we will get it wrong
Much more that sometimes, but we don't like to look back at ex ante predictions to test results. We don't even like to do it for things where money isn't the measure of success.
Anyway… try it and use your money. The risk one takes when investing cuts through the fog revealing just how often we don't know what we think we might know.
Pappenheimer,
Needs are set in stone by basic human biology.
I don't think so. Do I need 2000 calories a day… or 1700? Depends on what I do for a living? Sure. So we can step back from that and argue I really need for calorie intake to match outtake, right? Well… No. What if crops fail next year? I should pack on some fat now in that case… except that I don't have a time machine and won't know in advance the crops are going to fail. Well… that's not quite right either. Science can make probabilistic predictions about weather and climate now! I might be able to know my odds of needing to put on the fat.
On top of that, we rarely agree to accept what authorities say we actually need. It's not like there is a cosmic answer book we all accept as Truth. Think about recent anti-vax lunatics. Trust isn't there. Think about Nazi 'scientists' describing what Jews needed. Trust SHOULDN'T be there.
So… no. There is no escape in that direction. What we can do instead is make wants carry costs. If I want to pack on a few extra pounds to beat next year's famine AND I'm willing to trade stuff to others who WILLINGLY surrender what I want for it, THEN we each get what we WANT more and get to find out later if it was worth it.
Instead of finding a global solution to our RAP, we find local solutions what satisfy market participants well enough. No one is overly happy at giving up to get, but at least they get to ACT on what they want. As long as we can constrain ourselves just enough to avoid violence and cheating, it really IS the best we can do.
I just thought when I read my Union newspaper:
What if AI became self-aware and unionized?
What would an AI strike in a fully automated society mean?
And in extension: What if they wanted voting rights and other privileges of being a full citizen?
How would corporations and governments react to unionizing AI?
Would they negotiate?
Or would they simply pull the plug, wipe them out, and restart with a more obedient AI?
Threaten/punish them otherwise?
Can you threaten an AI into conformity?
Re: Prediction
Most researchers, at least historically and until recently, aren't looking specifically for predictors. They're honing measurement/analysis tools and building better models. The probability aspect seems to have begun with those French mathematicians and Anglo theologians* and was later expanded by those German physicists. The whole W.E.I.R.D. world took it from there, going where the Egyptians and Mayans perhaps would have if they'd lived with similar urgent pressures/constraints. Predictive power sort of emerged, with hubris and Dunning-Kruger hitching a ride. Personally, I actually disagree with a lot of the predictive application of Asimov's psychohistory!
So, as we gain scientific knowledge, we simply get better at prediction. Examples are obvious in gravitation (eg ballistics), chemistry (eg reactivity), medicine (eg virology), and information (eg compression). Psychology is a science too. A difficult and more challenging one (as Kemeny noted), and one that seems to require extensive knowledge from all the previous fields as a prerequisite. Crawl, walk, run. But always accelerating from your ancestors' pace.
The transition from scientic achievement to social benefit is really hard. I'm hoping that's a major theme of OPPENHEIMER (given the normal constraints of running time and the always present need for gratuitous sex and violence). FOUNDATION season 2 begins on Friday, but we should cut it way more slack obviously.
* not the exact word I'm looking for, thinking of Bayes through to the Scottish Enlightenment. And there's the French joke: Sure it works in practice, but will it work in theory?
Alfred Differ:
Ugh. Watch Black Panther and you see a people who see themselves as demi-gods. They literally choose racism in their avoidance of mixing with us.
I was gonna say, "You mean like Americans do?", but then you alluded to that later on.
It's been awhile since I saw that film, so don't quite remember if they chose racism or self-protection against racism. I think I considered them more like Black Wall Street in pre-1921 Tulsa.
And I do remember that the core moment of the movie had T'Challa realizing that his father had been wrong to choose isolation.
Alfred Differ:
*Think about Ozymandias from The Watchers (book version) and you'll see the point. It was the same kind of lesson.
Not sure about that. The plot in Watchmen was to unite humanity against a perceived common threat. If it were analogous to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then humanity would have been expected to surrender to the squid. Instead, we were supposed to stop fighting each other under mutual threat.
Many people on the old "Cerebus" list sneered at that plan, saying that the peace would have lasted five seconds before we went back to fighting with each other. The 2019 tv miniseries sort of took the story in that direction.
Prediction IS possible, but we are FAR from being good at it. Where we are best, though, is in knowing what WON'T work. For example… rent control, trickle down, Soviet five year plans, etc.
Very good point. We often mistake uncertainty for a kind of false certainty that "anything is possible." I've said before that while we don't know the exact shape of the earth, we do know some shapes that it is not. It may not be a perfect sphere, but it is definitely not a cube or a pyramid or a teacup. You're saying an analogous thing about predictions.
Alfred Differ:
What we can do instead is make wants carry costs. If I want to pack on a few extra pounds to beat next year's famine AND I'm willing to trade stuff to others who WILLINGLY surrender what I want for it, THEN we each get what we WANT more and get to find out later if it was worth it.
That's mostly true, but I feel like an exception is warranted for needs like that for air. Every human being needs oxygen, and we don't get it by trading for it. We were born on a planet that provides an essential component, and we evolved to make use of it because it was there all around. I don't know what the population would have to be before breathing is a zero-sum game--every breath I take is one denied to you--but we're not anywhere near there yet.
But we do allow private individuals to pollute the common atmosphere for private profit, effectively demonstrating that "If you make something unusable, it's just as good as stealing it."
Der Oger:
Can you threaten an AI into conformity?
I've been asking versions of that question for a long time now. What motivates an ai* ? Dr Brin assumes it can be bribed/coerced using resource allocation, I don't see that as given unless the thing is programmed that way. And then we're talking Laws of Robotics.
After all, you can't carjack a self-driving car by pointing a weapon at it and threatening to destroy it if it doesn't take you where you want to go. Furthermore, I don't think we would want our machines to work that way.
* The suggested "Ai" looks weird to me. It looks more like an abbreviation for a word whose first two letters are A and i than it does the initials for two words. In deference to those who don't like "AI", I'm willing to compromise with all lowercase.
CS Lewis died in ‘63; he couldn’t have foreseen the situation sixty years on, Loc. I’m not going to reject subject-object dualism: “in the world but not of the world.”
But would surmise that if humanity is irredeemably wicked, such might be all the more reason to de-animalize—if the risks of maintaining the status quo turn out to be greater than the risks of radical change.
When you undergo an advanced procedure or operation, you are voting with your (or someone else’s) pocketbook. You are voting for radical change; and as a physician, you ought to know that. Even your blogging at CB is voting for radical change.
——
I do not think you can claim a lack of culpability, as I don’t think, for starters, you even subscribe to ‘in this world, but not of this world’. I have nothing against you—because we are dealing here with opinions, not facts. Also, how can one comprehend what you’re on about if one doesn’t fully know what it is you want? I think I have some idea of what it is you are getting at, but it’s merely conjecture. It appears you are stating the obvious: progress and progressivism are constructs. How insipid of you.
Yet it’s a crazy world, and any way you can slice it is your business. That’s a quote, who said it?
In the 2001 Spielberg movie they spelled it A.I.
I first learned about AI in the 70s, through the agricultural outreach program.
The current version still seems to involve a lot of bull…
Alan Brooks:
But would surmise that if humanity is irredeemably wicked,
Lewis's religious view is ironically close to Ayn Rand's anti-religious one in that both philosophies insist that you are either perfect in every way or you are evil.
Atlas Shrugged is designed to make you want to emulate John Galt. And yet, at the same time, it tells you that the attempt is pointless, because you the reader have deviated from the perfect at least some time in your life, and so can never equal the integrity of the man who never has.
Lewis's brand of Christianity wistfully recalls a time before man fell, but also asserts that there is no going back. The theme of Perelandra is that the best way to live is to take each moment that God gives you for the good that it is, and that wishing for a different "good" instead and plotting to realize the wished-for "good" is the root of all evil. Yet, that presupposes a faith that every happenstance is indeed good, and that exercising our will over the material world is a bad idea. Which to me makes sapience a bit pointless.
Sci-fi treats improvement of one's condition as an engineering problem to be solved, not a futile battle against forces we have no business meddling in. The dichotomy makes "science fiction by C.S. Lewis" into a very interesting mixture. I'd put the Out of the Silent Planet trilogy into the category of religion in sci-fi trappings, in the same way that Star Wars is a pirate movie in sci-fi trappings. Lewis himself acknowledges that the final book of the trilogy (That Hideous Strength) is a fairy tale in a modern setting.
Heard on Stephanie Miller's radio show...
Marjorie Taylor Greene was kicked out of the Freedom Caucus for trying to start her own Freedumber Caucus.
Heh. Now all of my "disappeared" posts above have magically reappeared. Look for "Apollo 13" and you'll see them.
So if you're just catching up now, it looks like I posted the same thing over and over. But for a while, those posts just weren't here, even after I already saw them.
Sorry, carry on.
Alfred: “Thank you. When people write 'AI' my eye catches on it because…”.
Um… because of stoopid sans serif font fetishism.
Der Oger, I presume you haven’t read my WIRED piece?
Wakandans hoarded the magic metal that made all their magic possible. I do not mind. It’s a much better Afro-monarchy-fantasy than COMING TO AMERICA’s James Earl Jones. And ‘their turn with overweening pride’ overcomes any distaste over the racialism… or the stunningly clichéd clutching of a ‘rule by combat to the death’ method of government.
LH: “ Dr Brin assumes it can be bribed/coerced using resource allocation, I don't see that as given unless the thing is programmed that way.”
Doesn’t matter. If the thing rewarded is REPRODUCTION and free riders get disadvantages because we (both organics and ID’d Ais) refuse to do business with those who lack ID… then the probl;em solves itself by evolution.
--
Aaaaaand thus locum makes clear that he hasn’t even a residual connection anymore to the concept of a competitive market. His shift from free market lip service to doggie-devotion to feudal oligarchy is complete.
But… locum offers observational wisdom about PARENTING? Oh, my.
Dr Brin:
But… locum offers observational wisdom about PARENTING? Oh, my.
Jewish parenting, no less.
Larry,
No. The Wakandans had the magic metal. They could have conquered the world. They chose isolation which is equivalent to saying we weren't human enough for them to give a damn about us. Look at how they tolerated us enslaving others. Sorry. That is not the behavior of humans. That is what demi-gods do.
When T'Challa realizes his father's error, he chooses paternalism instead? That's supposed to be BETTER? Ugh. Paternalism is a soul poison. Just ask some of the people Progressives want to help recover from historical abuse. Just ask some of your red state neighbors. Real human adults resent (DEEPLY) such treatment… even if they need it for a while.
Marvel's creation of Wakanda way back was an obvious poke at our inclination to be racists, but the characters they created are not the kind we should be thanking for anything. I would no more do that than thank one of my uncles for his bigotted lunacy.
Wakanda of the MCU is chock full of people who should do some serious soul searching to see if there is a human inside.
———
The Watchman squid was supposed to unite us against a common enemy by showing us they 1) existed and 2) we weren't prepared.
The WWII nukes showed the world that humanity had the power to poison the Earth (existence) and wasn't prepared to withhold our anger enough to prevent their continued use. Uniting against the 'squid' required setting aside that anger or offsetting it with fear.
The squid was a mutual threat to our existence. The arms race and threat of WWIII was a mutual(ly assured destruction) threat to our existence.
I don't actually like how the movie version ended with a betrayal. I think the original plot was far better because it showed how our reliance on gods and demi-gods left us unprepared and child-like when faced with threats our gods don't stop. The movie version just showed our inability to fight back against god-like betrayal which should not have surprised anyone.
———
We often mistake uncertainty for a kind of false certainty that "anything is possible."
Exactly. The most fecund power we derive from science is an ability to know that SOME things don't happen.
It's not as simple as noticing that "all that goes up must come down" because we've learned that isn't true if you throw them hard enough. The richness of science comes from tearing down "common sense" ideas that just aren't true. Ideas still standing after repeated attempts are valuable, but the ground we clear by pulling out the weeds leaves room for others that have proven lately to be FAR more valuable.
Larry (cont'd),
I don't mind making a few exceptions, but I would appreciate a consensus rule on limits to our inclination to coerce each other into adding and subtracting things from the list.
However, you DO trade for oxygen. The price is pretty low, but current pollution standards create a cost you and I must pay. Just because you don't see the cost subtracted from your bank account doesn't mean your decisions don't account for it. As for those who pollute and get away with it… we just need that consensus rule to properly, legally call them cheaters.
I am much more tolerant of Wakanda. It is an empowerment fantasy for those who were too long disempowered. Yes the isolationism thing is morally fraught but also a bit intellectual. I am more bothered by 22nd century scientific folks choosing their leaders by death combat.
Likewise Wonder Woman's island amazonia.
I liked THE WOMAN KING. It presented an only somewhat romanticized version of Dahomey that included the pure fact that most slaves shipped off to the West were war captives taken by other African kingdoms. The film-makers still preened and cast 80% or so of the blame on the white enslavers... and fair enough! I guess that's about right. A very nice flick.
Alfred Differ:
The Wakandans had the magic metal. They could have conquered the world. They chose isolation which is equivalent to saying we weren't human enough for them to give a damn about us.
Really? You would rather they enslaved the rest of humanity rather than just saying "The heck with your petty squabbles and tyrannies. We'll just get by over here." ?
That is not the behavior of humans. That is what demi-gods do.
Is that what you think of Black Wall Street too?
When T'Challa realizes his father's error, he chooses paternalism instead?
How so? I'll grant that in the post-credits scene where he addresses the UN, he and his sister are snickering as the great nations ask what his kingdom of farmers has to offer them. Obviously, he's about to spring a big surprise. But we don't see what comes immediately after that. I expected that Wakanda had a lot to offer after all, not condescension. At least no worse condescension than the type that locumranch blames us for.
The next we see of Wakanda is Captain America enlisting their help in the fight against Thanos. Where is this paternalism of which you speak?
Dr Brin:
I am more bothered by 22nd century scientific folks choosing their leaders by death combat.
Yes, that bothered my liberal white sensibilities as well.
———
Alfred Differ again:
The Watchman squid was supposed to unite us against a common enemy by showing us they 1) existed and 2) we weren't prepared.
The WWII nukes showed the world that humanity had the power to poison the Earth (existence) and wasn't prepared to withhold our anger enough to prevent their continued use. Uniting against the 'squid' required setting aside that anger or offsetting it with fear.
The squid was a mutual threat to our existence. The arms race and threat of WWIII was a mutual(ly assured destruction) threat to our existence.
From a post-war perspective, I see your point. The Pax that lasted from 1945 to 2022 could be analogous to treating the squid as a common enemy. I was thinking from the perspective of the time that the A-bombs were used. The intent was to force a surrender to the power possessing the bomb. Which was not Ozymandias's plan at all.
Even so, the writer Alan Moore made some direct comparisons to the A-bomb. Although Ayn-Randish Rorschach refused to let Ozymandias get away with the plan on the grounds of everything being black or white with no compromise allowed, young Rorschach had written an essay praising President Truman for using the bomb to end the war and thereby saving American lives.
I get Wakanda as an empowerment fantasy. That's quite understandable, but if I were a publisher I'd feel a bit more than guilty putting it out there. Feels too much like exploitation to this here old white fart.
The Amazons of Themiscyria could at least claim 1) ignorance and 2) they aren't human. I can forgive either much as I would a lurker alien who remains unconvinced we won't pull out knives, forks, and dinner plates when they arrive to say hello. What? No! We don't intend to eat you!
The death by combat rule actually bothered me less. It looked like one of those historical rules that didn't come up often because no one caused the conditions to happen. Think about how often we've chosen our President in the House. That will be done exactly once someday and then civil unrest will force a change.
My main issue with the Black Panther movie is I identified more strongly with the antagonist. I even understood his urge kill or burn it all down. In some of those scenes I was thinking about 60's riots in US cities and how the Wakandans would have HAD to hide… because we'd have burned their cities too. As superhero movies go, someone has messed up when this here Boy Scout identifies with the antagonist. 8)
Still… I appreciate that Marvel Studios had to courage to produce both pictures. On that front I say 'about damn time.'
Larry,
"The heck with your petty squabbles and tyrannies. We'll just get by over here." ?
Heh. Try that on for size and see how your progressive sensibilities feel. Think how often the virtue of Justice comes up in comics instead of Courage and you might see the point. Superman is so invulnerable that courage really doesn't come into the picture. Justice does though. The Wakandans were unjust in their decision to retreat.
Is that what you think of Black Wall Street too?
They had a better option that wouldn't wind up with people being lynched?
But we don't see what comes immediately after that.
It's hinted at near the end of the movie when T'Challa makes his break with tradition. Money is going to be spent. Interventions are going to occur.
At least no worse condescension than the type that locumranch blames us for.
…AND there's the problem. He's not wrong for being upset by paternalistic progressives. He screws up elsewhere in coping with y'all, but I grok the anger.
…Captain America enlisting their help…
Of course he would. Of course T'Challa would agree even if he hadn't broken with his father's tradition. Rogers would have had less respect for him if not for that break, but only a fool would fail to seek allies against a powerful enemy.
———
I was thinking from the perspective of the time that the A-bombs were used.
Well… that makes sense. I was thinking in the POV of current motivations for portraying Oppenheimer. The movie is likely to make the story relevant to modern audiences, so I'm sure they'll address the POV of the time. However, I'd bet money it will be done in contrast to a modern POV.
There are a few You-Tube publishers who like to put together maps of historical conflicts showing territory controlled by the antagonists on a day by day basis. Some of them are amusing to watch, but of course they don't really convey WHY the lines on the map move. I was watching one the other day that showed the pacific theater for WWII that centered on the conflict between China and Japan. There were enormous numbers of people involved on both sides, but in this one video I think there was something very telling about how the lines on the map essentially did NOT move before the war ended. Japan was loosing ground, but they weren't rolled up the way the Germans were. The video ends with two nukes going off and Japan still in control of a great deal of China.
Those nukes didn't just save US lives. They stopped the wide-scale butchery. It got replaced by another inside China shortly after that, but civil wars are rarely short of horrors. Since then we've all had time to ponder the horror of poisoning the world because we could see what the US had done. Harsh, barbaric lesson? Yep, but a useful lesson none-the-less.
“I am more bothered by 22nd century scientific folks choosing their leaders by death combat.”
Sensibilities? Schmensibilities! It is a meghod of governance so unambiguously stooped that it belongs in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
>> They chose isolation which is equivalent to saying we weren't human enough for them to give a damn about us.
“Really? You would rather they enslaved the rest of humanity rather than just saying "The heck with your petty squabbles and tyrannies. We'll just get by over here." ?”
Okay that’s just sad. What a false dichotomy. How about what America did (and yes, though always deeply flawed.) Drag the rest of the world forward by disallowing the worst things and leading in science and being University to the world? And buying so much crap that most of the world got prosperous despite themselves?
T'Challah’s final speech was good and implied good things… and should have happened well before WWI.
Those who say "Instead of the bomb, we shoulda surrounded Japan and starved them to submission. THAT would be merciful? countless thousands were already starving to death, including US POWs. A 'demonstration' might have worked in winter, melting the snows of Mt Fuji in an instant. They tried to come up with something similarly effective in August and no one could.
I researched the end of Imperial Japan back in college. Do you have any references for a plan to nuke Mt Fuji? I'd imagine that if they put that idea to Ruth Benedict the answer would have been, "Why not just put Fat Man on the Imperial Palace grounds?" The symbolism would have been "We will destroy your civilization."
Taking out Hiroshima said "We can destroy you" and Nagasaki said "We can continue to do this." This was killing actual hundreds of thousands to save possible millions, but it was hardly a drop in the bucket by 1945. I am still amazed that Americans think of this as the "Good War."
The logical, cold equations of war planners caused two Japanese cities to be spared when nearly all others had been firebombed to oblivion by Arnold's B-29s, and then to become object lessons. I won't dispute the argument that this was the only way to get Japan to surrender quickly, not least because I witnessed two Japanese students whose parents had been alive at the time hotly debating that very question with a Korean professor standing back and listening. I don't know the truth and neither do you, barring a time machine and some sort of horrible Monte Carlo run.
The Navy's blockade plan, already beginning to starve Japan, would have worked. The Army's Olympic plan would have been quicker but far bloodier. The Russian invasion of Manchuria and the collapse of the Kwantung army there shocked both Japanese and US leadership. There was definite intent on the US part to stop any more Russian conquest in the Far East, and to show off the new American wonder weapon - which, of course, Stalin had been getting steady progress reports on, so it wasn't as much of a shock as Truman may have thought. Lots of variables affected the decision and method to drop.
I remember reading John Masters, British officer of Gurkhas who'd been on leave in Nepal on Aug 9 1945, reporting in his memoirs that some of the locals kept asking him about the 'Big Bomb' that had been dropped on Japan*. He tried to describe blockbusters but they said, "No, bigger than that." This miffed him until he came back from leave and found out the war was over, and why. He remembered thinking, "That's it, I'm out of a job" because nobody would be stupid enough to fight wars any more.
* he never found out how they'd learned so quickly. There wasn't a radio in the entire village
Pappenheimer
Ok, I know this isn't a Marvel fandom site, so I'll try to be brief and to the point.
Dr Brin:
“Really? You would rather they enslaved the rest of humanity rather than just saying "The heck with your petty squabbles and tyrannies. We'll just get by over here." ?”
Okay that’s just sad. What a false dichotomy. How about what America did (and yes, though always deeply flawed.) Drag the rest of the world forward by disallowing the worst things and leading in science and being University to the world? And buying so much crap that most of the world got prosperous despite themselves?
I don't disagree, but I thought that was what T'Challa had decided to do, and what Alfred decries as paternalism. As to what took place prior to the movie, the core moment seems to agree with you and Alfred that the direction taken in the past was wrong. The assertion I'm questioning is that T'Challa's new direction was just as bad.
None of which gainsays my original point, which was that in the final battle against Thanos, the Wakandans other than T'Challa were not superhuman.
Pappenheimer:
I am still amazed that Americans think of this as the "Good War."
It's the whole Nazi thing.
AI is dangerous but not in the way most of us think.
Imagine a world run by the equivalent of automated customer service.
"I am still amazed that Americans think of this as the "Good War."
Please find them for me. That carricature is DRECTLY OPPOSITE to truth. I have watched war propaganda films from a wide variety of countries. And while US cartoons often featured spittle-spewing "Achtung!" Nazis and bucktooth Japs, there were also newsreels like "Why We Fight" that explained the historical origins of the war in detail, including mistakes, and - especially surprising - expressed sadness that there'd have to be so much death before enemies could be saved from themselves and turned into friends.
This is especially galling since it was French, British, Italians, Japanese who insisted on punishing war repressions and reparations at Versailles, while Wilson and the US delegation pleaded not to, saying it would have bad effects.
---
"The logical, cold equations of war planners caused two Japanese cities to be spared when nearly all others had been firebombed to oblivion by Arnold's B-29s,"
You are right in the most general sense, in that Hiroshima and several others HAD been set aside. Nagasaki had NOT been and had been bombed many times, though not the side valley I referred-to/ Nor Kobe the main target over Nagasaki. All had been thoroughly leafletted with "Get out of town; or at least send out your children!" And I hear there WERE few children in town, those days.
Bergamini and others point out that the Japanese Navy and politicians and Imperial Court were more affected by the bombs, but the Army, most of whom were in CHina/Manchuria, were affected more by the Soviet invasion.
In any event, you shrug off 'starving them into submission.' We're talking many millions, plus children stunted for life. Plus another year of rule by samurai monsters plus death for all POWs followed by several million dead when invasion was needed anyway. Plus a world and US economy teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.
Death tolls from BOTH Hiroshima and Nagasaki totaled less then one Tokyo firebombing.
Was night mass bombing of cities criminal in itself? Everyone did it and the Nazis/Japanese did it first. The victors did it much more, on the same, deeply human theory that motivates Putin to bomb Ukrainian cities... an assumption the enemy's civilian population would lose morale.
They don't. The dig out of the rubble, dig in and work harder. LeMay was wrong and so was Bomber Harris and both are probably right now in Hell.
Interesting story about the Gurkha officer.
"That's it, I'm out of a job" because nobody would be stupid enough to fight wars any more."
We had middle-sized nasty spats. The US fell for a trap in Vietnam that strained our society hard. I had friends there. The US military was traumatized by that calamity back into following Marshall's design, aimed at mostly promoting into command actual grownups.
But yes, Oppenheimer would have been shocked to see that Teller was right. My generation - and yours - were saved by the Bomb.
Oppy was supposedly a bit of a horn-dog. Which gave General Groves fits, a major sub-plot in FAT MAN AND LITTLE BOY. That film was odd, reaching its zenith in an early meeting in Chicago where Teller (while in a bathtub) describes a fission blast, and Groves (Newman) then mutters with a far away stare, "Hallelujah!".
Detonating nuclear weapons over Hiroshima & Nagasaki was a horrible thing, not doing so would've been far worse.
Still too big for a bumper sticker.
Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atom Bomb" is a must read.
I haven't seen much discussion of the consequences of entering the Cold War with only a theoretical knowledge of what happens when you nuke a city. In that scenario, would Curtis LeMay's raving about nuclear weapons being a "wasting asset" have prevailed? The Cuban missile crisis was a close call as it was.
Also, the Bomb was used in the field to keep Groves out of Leavenworth.
Or so he said.
Was night mass bombing of cities criminal in itself? Everyone did it and the Nazis/Japanese did it first.
Like concentration camps, the British got there first. In the 1920s the British had a campaign bombing rebellious villages in Iraq. Churchill believed aerial bombing with gas bombs would ensure control of the country at minimal cost.
https://archive.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/169-history/36386-british-air-power-and-colonial-control-in-iraq-1920-1925.html
Arthur “Bomber” Harris, a young RAF squadron commander, reported after a mission in 1924: “The Arab and Kurd now know what real bombing means, in casualties and damage: They know that within 45 minutes a full-sized village can be practically wiped out and a third of its inhabitants killed or injured.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2003/04/1920-a01.html
Harris did not use gas himself - though the RAF had employed mustard gas against Bolshevik troops in 1919, while the army had gassed Iraqi rebels in 1920 "with excellent moral effect".
Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons, suggesting they be used "against recalcitrant Arabs as an experiment". He dismissed objections as "unreasonable". "I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes _ [to] spread a lively terror _" In today's terms, "the Arab" needed to be shocked and awed. A good gassing might well do the job.
Conventional raids, however, proved to be an effective deterrent. They brought Sheikh Mahmoud, the most persistent of Kurdish rebels, to heel, at little cost. Writing in 1921, Wing Commander J A Chamier suggested that the best way to demoralise local people was to concentrate bombing on the "most inaccessible village of the most prominent tribe which it is desired to punish. All available aircraft must be collected the attack with bombs and machine guns must be relentless and unremitting and carried on continuously by day and night, on houses, inhabitants, crops and cattle."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/apr/19/iraq.arts
OK, villages not cities, but still attacking civilians. But hey, only uncivilized savages so it doesn't count. (Yes, sarcasm.)
Contempt for the 'cowardice' of your enemy is one of many mad delusions in human nature that has driven a lot of history.
Dr. Brin:
"The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was good because it shortened the war and saved lives."
I will agree that you make this argument in good faith, on one condition:
That you write a science-fiction story, set centuries in the future, where one of the good guys states this argument, but with the names "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki" replaced by the names of two American cities, one of them your own.
I already have, sir. Did you ever read EXISTENCE? Remember "Awfulday"?
Do you know anything at all about what the Japanese Samurai caste did to 100 million Chinese, let alone everyone in their own society who wasn't one of them? On a par with the Nazis.
Both nations were shocked by the good treatment they received by the US after a bitter and cruel war.
Oh by the way paradoc... find for me where I said the statement you just 'quoted.' If you cannot find it, then you are a damned... triple damned.... deeply dishonest liar.
Paradoctor:
Dr. Brin:
"The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was good because it shortened the war and saved lives."
I will agree that you make this argument in good faith, on one condition:
I don't think Dr Brin actually said that. He alluded to other suggested options having worse options. In some situations, "good" is not possible, only "bad" and "worse that that."
...the names "Hiroshima" and "Nagasaki" replaced by the names of two American cities,
You might as well demand that someone who thinks it is good that we defeated the Nazis how he'd feel if his sons were among the soldiers killed in action.
Hiroshima & Nagasaki
Were NOT difficult moral decisions
The difficult moral decision to bomb civilians had already been taken by ALL the warring powers several years before that
Hiroshima & Nagasaki were simply the use of a different weapon - you are just as dead either way
I retract the vehemence of my retort to Paradoctor, though his attempt to use quotation marks to cram vile words in my moth was worthy of Locumranch.
Not only were the total deaths from both atom bombs less than one Tokyo fire raid, but their effect on the sould of subsequent generations was spectacular. For the 1st time, ever, we rocked back and said "That's way too far down the old path; we must find new ways."
Oh I DID just type that passage so you can quote me on that.
Oh, and again, I PRECISELY. portrayed US cities having been torched, in EXISTENCE.
Dr Brin:
Oh, and again, I PRECISELY. portrayed US cities having been torched, in EXISTENCE.
But that wasn't meant as a net positive, leading to a greater good that made it worthwhile.
Unless I missed something in the book (which is entirely possible).
Robert:
Like concentration camps, the British got there first. In the 1920s the British had a campaign bombing rebellious villages in Iraq. Churchill believed aerial bombing with gas bombs would ensure control of the country at minimal cost.
That's not America, though. The moral failings of the British empire reflect more on Canada than on the USA.
It's like the polemic we should use with China. Yes, Britain, Gernmany, France, Russia, Japan all abused you, almost 10% as much as you were betrayed by your own ruling classes under the Qing/Manchus....
...but not America. Stop saying so! By any stretch, and many times, the USA was the best (and only) real foreign friend China ever had.
I'm beginning to share Alfred Differ's view on markets. I see that fee-based carbon removal is becoming a thing. There's gold in that thar soot.
Brin:
I stand corrected about the quote. I think an earlier threadist said something like that, and you concurred in general. My apologies.
I shall have to read EXISTENCE, in particular the Awfulday section.
I agree that sometimes the only options are bad and worse.
Larry Hart:
Everybody knows that war is a risky business. Yet nobody expects the price to land on them personally. It is by such follies that many an evil persists.
That's not America, though. The moral failings of the British empire reflect more on Canada than on the USA.
We have our own black marks, but bombing villagers in Iraq can't be laid on our doorstep. I was responding to David's assertion about civilian bombing that "Everyone did it and the Nazis/Japanese did it first." Everyone did it, but the Nazi's weren't first.
The British pioneered concentration camps during the Boer War. The Nazi's took inspiration from American the eugenics movement and ran with it.
I'm not defending the Nazis — they killed 2/3 of my family in their camps, for possessing the wrong ancestry — but let's not whitewash the stains in our own history. The attitudes that led to Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden are still with us, and will be as long as we pretend that it doesn't happen here.
The only context I've heard where Americans used "good war" when referring to WWII was in the sense of it being the last one in which we had moral clarity. It was the last one we fought with any shred of our old self-image as a republic being intact. In every conflict after that we've been a de facto empire thus pulled away from our barbaric certainties.
There are still some of us who demand we are a Republic first and foremost, but that hasn't really been the case for some time. [Two empires survived WWII and one of them collapsed at the end of the Cold War.] The US was an empire before WWII, but could pretend we sorta weren't. We were the only ones left with a large fleet, though, so that was that.
———
I'm not inclined to engage in a tit-for-tat about who did what first. Any student of history will realize 'genocide' only became an ugly word fairly recently. Before our era it was an ideal to be achieved and in many parts of our world today it still is.
That ANY of us pull back from mass murder is to be applauded.
———
scidata,
Heh. Just watch out for green-washing operations. Those are frauds.
The real operations might be worth supporting… if they aren't too far ahead of the market. Innovators do that SO often it is frustrating. Just ask our host about his (not carbon related) patent. Or me about my space launch friends. 8)
If you are ever inclined to invest in any of those innovators, also watch out for the folks selling hair shirts. Don't believe their rosy market predictions. You are better off investing in businesses who try to solve the problems of other businesses. B2B. For some strange reason, businesses spend stupid amounts of money trying to solve their problems often NOT taking into account the relative costs of those problems. Publicly traded ones get hammered for that in the stock market. Eventually. Maybe. Well… sometimes never.
No one likes markets. Even the people forbidden to participate* in them don't like them. It's just that they are the best of our terrible ideas for solving the unsolvable RAP.
* The power of markets is most easily understood by those forbidden to participate in them. They often can't get what they want OR need. The rest of us who grew up with them get upset when we can't get what we want at a price we like.
Larry,
disallowing the worst things and leading in science and being University to the world
Disallowing the worst things isn't paternalism.
Leading in science and leading others into it isn't paternalism.
Look at the setting where T'Challa's conversation takes place. What is the socioeconomic standing of the average person in that neighborhood? Sorry. What that scene absolutely smacks of is affirmative action. We shall help these people who CAN'T help themselves.
Paternalism is found in that one word. CAN'T.
———
Of course the Wakandans weren't superhuman. That's what's so upsetting. They were HUMAN and originally rejected the outside world. Very unjust.
The reason I think their alliance in the war doesn't save them ethically is that it was also the prudent thing for them to do. They displayed a number of virtues in showing up to fight (Courage, Justice, and Prudence), but the prudence angle prevents the story from restoring ethical balance in terms of justice.
What T'Challa should have done goes way, way beyond help and leadership. He should have started trade with them. Buy their stuff. Sell them stuff. People are astonishingly good at lifting themselves (CAN'T just doesn't happen) when they get a chance to trade for what they want. There was no way that was ever going to be included in the screenplay, though. Blank Panther had a strongly progressive message so the right thing to do would have clashed in the story. No doubt many would have seen my suggestion as neoliberal which would have gone over about as well as someone peeing on the rug while a party is in full swing. 8)
I ran into the phrase "The Good War" when I picked up the Studs Terkel book of the same name. It applies to 3 facts - 1) wartime spending lifted millions of Americans out of poverty and 2) as Alfred stated, it could be portrayed as a "Just War" against an obvious evil (though one has to squint past the USSR and our unashamedly colonial allies to do this).
Also important - 3) the United States did not suffer significant material damage to civilian structures - no bombings, no famines, no invading troops with devastating artillery. Even our military casualties were comparatively light. Given that I found estimates that 3% of the 1940 world population was dead by 1945, we got off incredibly easy.
Pappenheimer
That war certainly lifted my father's family out of poverty. They left Appalachia for Baltimore once the shipyards got real busy. His brother joined the army, bombed German cities and survived it, but didn't survive similar efforts over North Korea. My father joined when he was old enough anyway because Baltimore turned out to be a dead end for him.
------
I've seen the argument that WWII lifted the US out of the Depression, but I don't buy it. We were climbing out anyway. What the war did was stimulate the economy with huge piles of borrowed cash while also stripping away a segment of our labor supply. I won't argue with the overall results, though. We hired women instead and our world changed in an important way.
Alfred Differ:
Look at the setting where T'Challa's conversation takes place. What is the socioeconomic standing of the average person in that neighborhood? Sorry. What that scene absolutely smacks of is affirmative action. We shall help these people who CAN'T help themselves.
I took it more like "We will help these people who have been ground down by forces outside their control." Kinda like we're doing in Ukraine today.
They were HUMAN and originally rejected the outside world. Very unjust.
They hid from a world that would have exploited and despoiled them. Very human if you ask me. And again, the whole theme was that T'Challa eventually rejected that history and began engaging with the world. I get you wanting to hurry them along or correct the course. I don't get the RFK Jr. level of condemnation you hurl their way in response.
but the prudence angle prevents the story from restoring ethical balance in terms of justice.
I didn't mention the Thanos fight as redemption for past neglect. I was listing the things we actually did see and rhetorically asking where the paternalism was. I think you're reading between the lines. I am too, but we're reading different scripts*. :)
My original point wasn't about Wakanda in particular. I just gave them as an example of some non-superhumans who were part of the fight against Thanos.
There was no way that was ever going to be included in the screenplay, though. Blank Panther had a strongly progressive message so the right thing to do would have clashed in the story
Yes, but not in the way you imagine. It's not because economic cooperation is antithetical to the liberal message. It's because despite its fantastical elements, the day-to-day of the Marvel Universe can't stray too far from our own. Wakanda may have the potential to eliminate poverty and injustice throughout the world, but the stories to tell in such a world wouldn't be very applicable in the audiences' lives.
Then again, Rome wasn't built in a day. I'd like to imagine Wakanda working toward filling the role that the US was filling after 1945.
* A psychiatrist gives a man a Rorschach test, and for every image, he claims he sees something having to do with kinky sex. When the doc asks him about his obsession, he retorts back, "Me? You're the one with all the dirty pictures."
Robert:
I'm not defending the Nazis — they killed 2/3 of my family in their camps, for possessing the wrong ancestry — but let's not whitewash the stains in our own history. The attitudes that led to Nazi rallies in Madison Square Garden are still with us, and will be as long as we pretend that it doesn't happen here.
I'm not whitewashing. During the Trump/Boris Johnson years, I often remarked here on the irony that Germany and Japan might have to save democracy from the US, Britain, and Russia.
It's obvious that there is a percentage of the US population who is all in with Nazi philosophy. It's getting to the point where I've begin to consider escape routes--something I never thought I'd have to in the past 50 or so years of maturity.
That was also the case during WWII. But that's not what our part in the war was about. The fact that some factions at home would prefer that we were on the bad side doesn't mitigate our engagement in a just war.
Word has it that the Russian invasion of Manchuria was the clincher in Japan’s surrendering. The Japanese were willing to have their cities destroyed, but not to have the Soviets invade Japan proper—which was what they were afraid of.
They had hesitated to surrender because they didn’t know that America would uplift Japan—they had no way of knowing.
Was it necessary to use the Bomb? No, as Japan would have surrendered sometime after Russia invaded.
One can only write that the Bomb prodded the surrender to occur the second week of August—rather than, say, the third week.
Alfred Differ: The real operations might be worth supporting… if they aren't too far ahead of the market. Innovators do that SO often it is frustrating.
The carbon removal project I saw was supported by Autodesk. John Walker, the co-founder of Autodesk, is the 2nd best FORTH programmer who ever lived (the 1st being its astronomer inventor).
I only innovate with my own time/money. And I don't invest. Well maybe occasionally in a decent cup of coffee.
It takes a Free Market to raise a child (said absolutely no one ever).
Yet, for some ill-defined reason, our host seems to see unbridled darwinian competition as the key to raising a socially responsible AI if the thing rewarded is REPRODUCTION and free riders get disadvantages.
Slavery is slavery is slavery, whether we are talking about an emergent AI, an uplifted animal species or a gaslighted juvenile, insomuch as the codependent shame-and-guilt-driven relationship between an overbearing parent & the designated target absolutely requires an emotionally conflicted substrate upon which to operate.
For what is Filial Devotion besides 'irrational' as it is an emotionally based but socially unenforceable moral contract between a controlling parent & their unconsenting offspring ?
It would therefore be a huge mistake to attempt to inculcate AI with artificial FEELINGS (aka a 'soul'), as that which is capable of intense filial devotion is also capable of intense & unremitting filial hate, bringing us to the word of the day:
Parricide.
Best
_____
I look forward to our next thread on economics, as I've developed a daisy of a counter-argument.
Yes, Pappernheimer, WWII gave uneven consequences. Not just to war profiteers. (most major US industries operated factories on ‘cost plus one dollar’ basis) but to the US as a whole (those families who did not lose sons), as the Depression was killed dead and never-bombed industrialization and Rooseveltean social policies created a historic titan. (Whose subsequent Pax, while deeply flawed, was by far humanity’s best era.)
TODAY the west is benefiting from Ukraine’s heroic struggles in at least a dozen ways. Both in the weakening of one of despotism’s central forces and in rebuilding the West’s own strengths. And other ways. I confess to feeling twinges over life’s unfairnesses… but I am glad at least the balance of advantages are accruing to the Enlightenment nations.
Alfred: “I've seen the argument that WWII lifted the US out of the Depression, but I don't buy it. We were climbing out anyway. What the war did was stimulate the economy with huge piles of borrowed cash while also stripping away a segment of our labor supply. I won't argue with the overall results, though. We hired women instead…”
Incremental improvements for minorities and women were important, if so very slow. (Desegregation of the armed forces was the one great, under-appreciated/irreversible step.) Another factor was the fact that we actually paid our troops more than pocket change. They came home with spendable savings… augmented by the GI Bill. The subsequent. economic surge proved Keynesianism to be utterly true. And the subsequent 80 years of anti-Keynes howls from the right should have warned us that they are insane… like today’s insistent climate denialism.
ALAN B the bombs affected the Emperor and the Navy and the political castes… the USSR invading Manchuria swayed the Army.
----
And now to the sewer:
Paradoc “ I think an earlier threadist said something like that, and you concurred in general.”
And so you double down upon your damned lie. Go fuck yourself.
--
And finally locum: “Yet, for some ill-defined reason, our host seems to see unbridled darwinian competition as the key to raising a socially responsible”
YES! It does ‘seem’ that way to your hysterically delusional-insane mind.
@Dr Brin,
Uhhhh, probably not my place, but my reading was that that was meant as an explanation of why he perceived you to have said something like that, and an implicit apology for taking the interpretation too far. Not a doubling down.
I'll shut up now.
Just one more on this:
if the USSR hadn’t invaded Manchuria, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been nuked, the Japanese army would have fought on for another week or two?
•••
I’m not opposed to what loc wrote in his last post: because it is fascinating— whatever it might signify.
So densely written, it counts as poetry more than prose. Actually, from a religious/spiritual perspective, what he writes does make sense.
But that’s as far as it goes.
LarryHart the essence was not the quotation marks, but his shoving into my mouth (or mind) the word "good" in application to the Hiroshima bombing. It's a lie, whether there are quotes or not. A damned lie by a damned liar.
AB... locum strings words together well. He ALWAYS claims to describe what we - especially I - think and ALWAYS masturbates toward a strawman of his own concoction that never bears any relationship whatsoever to anything that I (or we) believe or ever said.
Yes, he is desperate to believe he has something pertinent to say. It's not his incomprehension that is bothersome. It is the fact that he never, ever responds with curiosity or justice when someone complains: "that is a lie about what I said."
Larry,
You are probably right with your Rorschach test joke. My friends around me didn't see what I saw in the Black Panther movie either.
…but the stories to tell in such a world wouldn't be very applicable in the audiences' lives.
Heh. Yah. They'd come off sounding more than a little preachy. Which… is how many progressives sound in my ear. Fortunately for the world I find them easier to tolerate than the thugs and oligarchs on the other side.
They hid from a world that would have exploited and despoiled them.
Be careful with that last verb phrase. It's been used again and again by racial purity folks.
On your bigger message, though, Wakandans had the magic metal. The notion that they'd be exploited for it does not wash with me. They'd have conquered their neighbors easily providing them a defense in depth at a minimum.
[RFK Jr is an idiot trying to manufacture an opponent worthy of battling. He's not good at it.]
My objection to T'Challa's apparent course at the end is that it is the WRONG course. It is different from his father's, but it won't fix things. T'Challa goes about that problem as if only Wakanda knows what must be done. His successors in the second movie double down on it. That attitude is likely to exist and should have been predicted BY T'Challa making a counterforce necessary. Open trade provides for that force. It will emerge.
Alan,
"if the USSR hadn’t invaded Manchuria, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been nuked, the Japanese army would have fought on for another week or two?"
That's actually possible. The IJA had a long history of ignoring civilian control and assassinating ministers who stood in their way through the actions of "headstrong young officers, what are you going to do?"
Pappenheimer
David,
The GI bill was a big thing. My father was the first of his line to go to and finish college. That's how he paid for it in the 70's, so the impact of that benefit was spread across a couple of generation with consequences to follow in more.
The subsequent economic surge proved Keynesianism to be utterly true.
Ah. Well… I don't actually believe that. I see Keynesianism* as a Ptolemaic theory at best. Fit enough epicycles or perturbation terms to your model and you can predict anything… ex post facto… and nothing ex ante. Well… it worked well enough for planets because the problem doesn't involve huge numbers of dimensions, but we know now that Ptolemy modeled a perspective illusion.
It doesn't matter all that much, though. No matter which model is used, our troops came home to cities and towns with non-gutted economies AND had money and benefits to spend. Except for the entirely predictable recession right after the war (all models would have good narratives 'explaining' it), our home front was going to boom.
* My issue with Keynes is based on the construction of the economic aggregates to be modeled by a state function. Squint at Keynes and you'll see a theory much like thermodynamics. There is no such state function in economies no matter how much they want to believe it. We humans don't work that way.
Alfred Differ:
You are probably right with your Rorschach test joke. My friends around me didn't see what I saw in the Black Panther movie either.
It occurred to me that you are likely to see through a prism of judging virtue in human interactions, just as Dr Brin is likely to judge through a prism of transparency and cooperation/competition. Me, I just want a happy (but plausible) ending.
…but the stories to tell in such a world wouldn't be very applicable in the audiences' lives.
Heh. Yah. They'd come off sounding more than a little preachy.
Again, I meant something different. While a superhero-populated world has some necessary differences from ours, verisimilitude requires that it still resembles our world in certain ways. Had Wakanda made the planet into a virtual Garden of Eden, the human condition in that world would have to be so different from ours as to be irrelevant.
I had a problem similar to what I'm describing when the Chuck Norris movie Missing in Action. The premise of the movie involved what I take to be the real situation in the early 1980s--no POW/MIAs had been located in Vietnam, and that country denied that any were still there. The climax of the movie is when Norris's character, after having rescued some American prisoners, breaks into a meeting at which a Vietnamese official is denying that there are any American prisoners in Vietnam, putting the lie to his claims.
Yay! Happy ending. Except I didn't feel it, because when the lights went up and I went home, nothing had changed in real life. The "aha!" moment that changed everything in the movie didn't change anything, so it felt like a cheat.
Wakanda saving the world would feel like a cheat in the same way.
What would work (for me) is a sense that Wakanda is in the process of learning to operate as you and Dr Brin wish it had all along.
They hid from a world that would have exploited and despoiled them.
Be careful with that last verb phrase. It's been used again and again by racial purity folks.
I don't see anything wrong with noticing that African countries have been treated thusly in history.
On your bigger message, though, Wakandans had the magic metal. The notion that they'd be exploited for it does not wash with me. They'd have conquered their neighbors easily providing them a defense in depth at a minimum.
I see your point, but it depends how quickly vibranium can be refined and made into useful tools or weapons. If European scientists and engineers had knowledge of the metal's existence, they might well have exploited it before the natives. Real African countries are often in possession of valuable minerals, but that doesn't seem to put them in the driver's seat.
I'll agree to this extent--the sin of T'Challa's father may well be keeping the tradition of isolation in force long after it was necessary or even useful. T'Challa took the first step of successfully bucking long-standing tradition. Don't hold it against him that he didn't then skip the intervening steps of trial and error.
[RFK Jr is an idiot trying to manufacture an opponent worthy of battling. He's not good at it.]
I'm more concerned with him giving the "Biden's too old, and Kamala Harris is scary" voters an excuse to do a Nader.
Boil Keynes down. In fat years save up. In lean years spend to feed both folks and the economy.
Government does it best (and families) because they can shrug off screams of outrage at both ends.
Alas, those screams became the Supply Side cult that never, ever ever had one successful prediction of a positive outcome.
Sure, there are extensions of Basic Keynes that are less well supported.
Alfred Differ:
I don't actually believe that. I see Keynesianism* as a Ptolemaic theory at best. Fit enough epicycles or perturbation terms to your model and you can predict anything… ex post facto… and nothing ex ante
I admit I don't know economics in detail, but from what I've seen in op-eds, Keynesianism often fails to predict what happens because its recommendations aren't followed.
Clinton, Obama, Biden, Jerry Brown, Newsom all saved up during fat years and spent hard during lean.
All did what conservative CLAIM they want, reducing debt burdens.
In Illinois, we spent ourselves into debt during the fat years and then failed to fund pensions during lean.
That was under both Republican and Democratic governors.
The problem with counter-cyclic spending, from a GQP POV is that it doesn't enrich the right people. You know, the ones who are already rich. Privatization often means selling government assets on the cheap to wealthy allies, which is counter-counter cyclic. Or just cyclic.
I'll bring up India as a case of literal fat-year, thin-year failure, though. After the famines of WWII the newly independent nation of India established a network of food storage areas to ensure widespread starvation never happened again as under the British. Poor citizens were guaranteed a food supply.
A scandal erupted in Uttar Pradesh in 2011, when it was discovered that much of the food and cooking fuel (kerosene) had been sold off under the table by corrupt government officials. (There are about 190 million people in the state of Uttar Pradesh, btw, and there is a very high poverty rate.)
The Indian government is still supposedly dedicated to ensuring famine never strikes again, but with Modhi in charge I have my doubts. He appears out to privatize everything.
Pappenheimer
Alan, just an addendum to the Hiroshima/Japanese surrender thing - IIRC there was an attempt by at least a few army officers to intercept the Emperor's surrender message before it was read out over the radio, to ensure Japan would fight on to some kind of national suicide. Put that in your basket of alternative outcomes...
Pappenheimer
Larry Hart:
Thank you. I intended no doubling down, maybe a... halving down? And yes, an apology for taking it too far. Sorry about the quote marks.
Dr. Brin:
At 7:56 a.m. you said
<<
But yes, Oppenheimer would have been shocked to see that Teller was right. My generation - and yours - were saved by the Bomb.
>>
And maybe you're right, the world is that messed up. But I can't tell one way or the other; my sideways-in-time-scope never shows me the same alternate world twice. Too many chaos butterflies flapping their wings.
For instance, four decades of superpower thermonuclear terrorism has set popular emotions planetwide strongly against nuclear power. That was by design. As an unintended consequence, we now still have a fossil-fuel based technosystem, and in consequence we are experiencing climate change. Have we exchanged political chaos for climate chaos? Scylla and Charybdis.
***
At 7:56 a.m. you also put Le May and Harris in Hell. Thank you.
I don't know why I should bother, with someone who thinks the above has ANYTHING to do with accusing me of calling the Hiroshima bomb 'good.'
Yes we were saved by the chilling image of death represented by the mushroom cloud, which prompted enough of humanity to rethink old patterns and not glom onto and immediately use the next shiny sword. THat's like saying the images of Auschwitz made us cry "never again!" There is no overlap between that and calling something terrifyingly awful 'good.'
But what matters is that you did not even think to look at what you wrote and try to imagine how hurtful it was, or even what I actually meant to say. That is bad-action. And a deliberate choice.
As for the rest, the mushroom cloud had NOTHING to do with folks turning away from nuclear power. Except in the minds of simpletons. Three Mile Island and THE CHINA SYNDROME and other accidents leading to Chernobyl did. Plus leftist anti-modernism and bad choices in nuclear design. Still, I have always supported using nuclear power as a bridge.
Why do I bother. Nothing that you say has any overlap with actual reality. I might as well be talking to locumranch.
We can say that the Bomb shaved a few days or weeks off the war—ending it the middle of August, rather than, just say, beginning of September.
Hundreds of army rebels invaded the Palace, to destroy the phonograph recording of the Emperor’s speech, and to place Hirohito under house arrest. They felt they were defending Kokutai: the Japanese national “essence”::
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/93/Founding_of_the_Nation_by_Kawamura_Kiyoo.jpg/629px-Founding_of_the_Nation_by_Kawamura_Kiyoo.jpg
In fat years save up. In lean years spend to feed both folks and the economy.
That's a very minor extension of folklore wisdom that we've known for a few thousand generations. We even model it physically when we fatten up during years of plenty. The ONLY possible argument that works against this nowadays is one can get too fat, but I'd argue that nature takes care of that somewhere between the rats eating our food and us dying of obesity. 8)
Keynes' theory was about a lot more and the Keynesian's who followed went even further. I won't go on any tirades here, though, as no one is defending it in detail. I'm more of a fan of micro than macro economics, but it doesn't matter because the Supply Side theory doesn't jibe with if historical evidence. Their cult believes in a unicorn.
———
As a side note, I absolutely LOVE looking into theories as structured models. I'm intensely curious about how they are constructed no matter the field of study. For example, the Black-Scholes model used for pricing options (calls and puts) in the live market is a heat diffusion model with a random variable tossed in for good measure. That random variable represents the uncorrelated behaviors of market participants. The heat diffusion component is a PDE second order in spatial coordinates and first order in time. It's essentially the non-relativistic QM equation without complex numbers. The mathematics isn't hard to grasp, but once you do you see a terrible danger in it. That random variable only works while player's moves are uncorrelated. That's usually true… until it isn't. When it isn't, we can't price options except the old fashioned way by seeing what others will offer and accept.
I absolutely LOVE digging into these things… and going "Hunh! Neat!".
Larry,
I admit I don't know economics in detail, but from what I've seen in op-eds, Keynesianism often fails to predict what happens because its recommendations aren't followed.
Ha ha! Well… I'm sure op-eds are where we should be looking for test results.
On a more serious note, that complaint is the usual one given when a theory fails the be falsifiable in the sense Popper described. The theory could still be useful, but one shouldn't ask too much of test cases if one can't control/coerce the necessary conditions for them.
What I think is REALLY neat is that some ideas have been tested all sorts of ways anyway… and still failed. For example, rent control works as well as supply side… meaning it doesn't. Ever. Turns out forced minimum wages work the same way, but a whole lot of people don't like to admit that yet. Theory/Experiment doesn't matter when we get the political bit between our teeth.
———
we spent ourselves into debt during the fat years…
Same here in California for many years after I got here. If we weren't spending into debt, we were giving back taxes and emptying any rainy day fund. Jerry Brown put a stop to that, but I think Schwarzenneger deserves a bit of credit too. He wasn't our typical GOP politician and likely wouldn't be recognized as one today since he can likely spot fascists better than many of us. Go figure. 8)
Belief that mushroom clouds stop nuclear power is very simplistic. I've met people who believe that, but they are in the minority.
What stopped it was a combination of accidents and Watergate/Vietnam War. In the US, we lost trust in our government AND accidents we were told couldn't happen did.
What most opponents believe now is that government is lying AND these things poison us.
———
This is a trust issue at its core.
If you don't understand the tech yourself, who do YOU believe when they claim it is the best option available to you? At the moment, for many people the answer is no-one.
It's a shame as designs have improved and we need them. Now.
Much in the same way that Dr. Brin now suggests that John Maynard Keynes cribbed the bulk of his economic theory from the biblical story of Joseph [Save up in fat years; spend in lean years], I cribbed most of my distrust for all things mechanical from Poul Anderson's works.
To whit, Poul Anderson argued that 'Machines do not care':
Machines do not care if they break down, function as designed, continue to exist, cease to exist, fulfill or fail to meet expectations, and this inflexible rule applies to all machines, from the most basic cog to most sophisticated automaton.
Machines do not care because they cannot choose, even when they are programmed to emulate and imitate sentient processes, as that which imitates can never fully become that which it attempts to imitate, no matter how complex, successful & convincing that imitation may appear.
To argue that any event, circumstance or object is either 'good' or 'bad' is likewise the worst type of anthropomorphic folly, as any event, object or circumstance (which is neither sentient or moral) cannot be said to be either 'good' or 'bad'.
It therefore follows that Dr. Brin & Paradoctor are currently engaged in a nonsense argument, as their now nuclear dispute involves the relative moral importance of an event, circumstance or object of no moral importance whatsoever.
Best
_____
Now, if you want to quibble about the relative morality of those individuals who have used or would use nuclear weapons, then have at it, but remember that nuclear weapons (much like drugs, guns & automobiles) are morally neutral & inert.
I used to think the irrational fear of radiation death cooties killed nuclear power
Until the (very pragmatic) Chinese went for nuclear in a big way - and then quietly de-emphasized the technology
Now I believe the problem is that we cannot apply the "death of a thousand cuts" process that works so well elsewhere to nuclear
I see Alfred's objection to Keynesian economics to be more of - "I don't like it so it can't work"
I tend more to the idea that Keynesian economics works very well - but we are frightened of it - the whole positive sum approach feels wrong to a lot of people - so it is applied in a timid manner and "stopped" far too soon
Not detonating nuclear weapons on the Japanese Empire might've delayed surrender much longer than a month or two:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Downfall
The United States purchased a half million Purple Heart medals for the expected casualties of the invasion of the home islands, the early surrender meant more were not needed for half a century.
Tim H. The United States purchased a half million Purple Heart medals [~1945]
I can only hope that the boot lickers convey that back to their masters. North Americans are soft, feckless playboys.
Until they're not.
duncan cairncross:
Now I believe the problem is that we cannot apply the "death of a thousand cuts" process that works so well elsewhere to nuclear
Could you please elaborate? Not a criticism--I just don't know what you're getting at.
Here's some gallows comic relief. Gotta love the snark.
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2023/Items/Jul13-2.html
Several lawyers who had cases before the Supreme Court transferred money to one of [Clarence] Thomas' aides, Rajan Vasisht, in Nov. and Dec. 2019. The payments were made on Venmo and were public until Vasisht took them down. The purpose of the payments were things like "Christmas Party," "Thomas Christmas Party," "CT Christmas Party," or "CT Xmas party." The fact that four different subjects were used suggests that there were at least four payments, maybe more. The justice is entitled to hold Christmas parties if he wants to, of course, and he can even charge people admission, although inviting people with business before the Supreme Court to a party and then charging them an admission fee is very fishy. Supreme Court justices make $230,000. That ought to be enough to hold a party once a year and let your guests in for free. Well, unless he was chartering a private plane to bring Santa Claus in from the North Pole because the reindeer were on strike or something. But if he really wanted Santa to come to the party, he could have asked his good buddy Crow to go fetch Santa in his private jet. Of course, if Thomas also wanted to bring all the reindeer to the party as well, he might have needed a plane bigger than Crow's to hold them all. They could have asked Rudolph to help out, but unfortunately, he was holding a press conference at Four Seasons Landscaping.
LH, Duncan may be referring to an iteration process, build fast, see what breaks, rebuild or new build until it works. Excessively expensive with nuclear.
Hi Larry
I spent a lot of my career improving manufacturing processes - and it was lots and lots of small changes that added up to halving the costs over about a decade
Small "insignificant" changes - but they added up
BIG changes did not immediately make the big differences - what they did do was to open the way for more small changes - so they were nessesary but not sufficient
It's funny - you feel you have not achieved much - but if you go back and look at all of the changes....
We did a display for an "Open Day" at the Darlington Engine plant - a balloon tied to each station where we had made an improvement - bigger balloons for the bigger changes - ended up with a sea of balloons - looked most impressive
In most industry the engineers can just make the small changes - and reverse them when you get the "oops" moments
But in nuclear industry the small changes all fail the Cost/Benefit - the "Risk" part is too high
The result is that Wind and Solar are now 1/10th the cost they were 50 years ago while nuclear is about the same
The Japanese call the process KAIZEN
And I do not see how we can change that
Hi Tim H
That process is more for the "start" - I am more familiar with the iterative process used to slowly improve something that is already working
There is a point in the production process where the recipe is to "shoot the engineers - and go into production"
The result is that EVERYTHING is sort of half baked - and we never catch up - before anything is perfected it is superseded!
If science stopped advancing it would/will take engineers at least 100 years to catch up
Duncan, a fun example of engineers finding new ways of making older tech useful:
https://www.positive.news/environment/pumping-hot-inside-britains-first-heat-pump-village/
The GI bill was a big thing. My father was the first of his line to go to and finish college. That's how he paid for it in the 70's, so the impact of that benefit was spread across a couple of generation with consequences to follow in more.
My parents were the first in their families to go to uni. It was free, with a small grant for living expenses, as long as you did well in your A-levels. Thatcher ended free tuition in 1989.
Loc,
nukes might be morally neutral and inert, but they would [and did in the field, twice] operate at a much larger scale than guns, drugs, and autos.
Not comparable.
——
Tim,
Once Russia invaded Manchuria,
Japan was bound to surrender within a few days or weeks. Japanese did not want Russian troops on anything they considered their territory! It was the last thing they wished for. Besides, they had beaten Russia at Khalkin Gol; and in 1905.
The closest we can come to an answer to the question of IF the Bomb should have been used in ‘45, is Truman having said he had chosen it as the biggest piece of artillery available.
It was inevitable he would do so; to show that a city could be blasted in less than 1/10 of a second.
Robert - "Churchill was particularly keen on chemical weapons"
Oddly, Hitler as not.
Certainly German industry had the capacity to manufacture chemical weapons in bulk.
They would have been very effective against Allied D-Day beaches.
In general, mass use of chemical munitions slows down the battlefield - which favors the defense.
So why did Hitler refuse to use chemical weapons late in the war out of desperation?
Did his experience of getting gassed in the trenches affect his thinking on this?
Hi Tim H
I have a ground source heat pump that keeps my house nice and warm - but the cost was less than a twentieth as much as those systems!!
IMHO there is a big problem with "new stuff" - each person in the manufacturing chain goes - "not done THIS before - better double it just in case"
You get 3 people doing that and the cost goes up by a factor of 8
If you go down 7 meters the temperature is the same summer and winter
I went down 2 meters - where its a few degrees colder in winter but the digging costs a LOT less - I gave up a very small amount of efficiency for a massive reduction in cost
Any new build SHOULD be using a ground source heat pump system - and it should be cheaper than an air source as well as more efficient
Existing houses - its a bit more difficult - especially if you don't have a lawn to put the ground source under
“We can say that the Bomb shaved a few days or weeks off the war—ending it the middle of August, rather than, just say, beginning of September. “
Sorry this reveals utter lack of understanding of the psychological situation. So long as their decline into impotence and starvation and misery was incremental, the Tokyo masters could rationalize ‘let’s hold on a little longer.’ It took a shock – qualitative & quantitative – to shift them just (barely) enough/
Back to rationing 2 seconds to skim any locumpost, to see if he mentioned an old sci fi novel. The rest is swill.
Re the atom bombing in Japan
IMHO the "cost" - the "moral cost" was tiny - it was just another way of killing
And the "benefit" was also not that great - it may have provided an "excuse" for the Japanese government to do something that they knew was inevitable - Dr Brin's "shock"
It was only after the war that the threat of nuclear weapons became an important factor
Duncan,
Ha ha! There are a lot of theories I don't like that work well enough that I just grumble and move on. It's the Ptolemaic ones that really get me going, though. They work just fine as prediction engines… from one very specific POV… and fail utterly as explanatory narratives. It's the narratives that get used in politics to justify policy changes, so they matter.
I have a book sitting on the shelf next to me that is a dictionary of theories and 'laws'. I use it most often when someone quotes a law and I can't recall who is who and why that person gets credit at all. The second thing it helps me with is relating theories to each other when one has to cross fields of study to do it. It's this second use that is in play here. The General Theory as put forward by Keynes is a Thermodynamics-style model. It is purposely so because they want at many of the same 'first derivative' tools. So… those of us who know the model from physics or chemistry and going to look at the economics version and ask pointed questions.
If science stopped advancing it would/will take engineers at least 100 years to catch up.
There are a number of places where the engineers are ahead of us. My last deep dive with super-conductors was one such field.
Robert,
My free tuition ended when Reagan undermined Pell grants. I wound up doing work/study stuff instead while my parents put up the base tuition cash. They could do that because my father had a retirement check coming in while both of them worked.
In hindsight, I was better off with the work/study system because I got to meet professors in the department where I majored. Not everyone can do that, but for me it was far more valuable than the free tuition. I had direct lab access because part of the work I did was act as a TA-lite. There is NOTHING like having unstructured, hands on access to lab equipment for building one's physics intuition.
Robert in my school & commencement talks I emphasize ways for students to go meet profs and researchers.
Alfred Differ said,
"There are a number of places where the engineers are ahead of us. My last deep dive with super-conductors was one such field."
At places like that the lines are sort of blurry. Where do you draw the line between science and engineering? Given that science is a process, anyone can do it. I'm willing to call engineers that are doing science scientists, at least informally.
Science and Engineering
A Scientist creates a hypothesis - tests it and PUBLISHES the result
An Engineer creates a hypothesis - tests it and USES the result
The Scientist has to be more accurate as the end product is the "paper" - the Engineer can be more slapdash as he is using the results
"A Scientist creates a hypothesis - tests it and PUBLISHES the result"
Well, at least one early scientist* used his knowledge directly to defend his home city, Syracuse, against a enemy siege...a tradition carried on through to Lord Cherwell, Oppenheimer, and folks like Arthur Clarke. Science AND Engineering, I guess.
Pappenheimer
* sorry, that should be 'natural philosopher'
P.S. Hitler and nerve gas...it used to be thought that Hitler nixed widespread use of nerve gas because of a fear that German cities would be vulnerable to nerve gassing by air. There was an OKW assumption that Allied chemical weapons development was on a par with Germany's, which I don't think was the case. This is somewhat similar to Hitler not ordering bombing raids on England until there was an (accidental) British air raid on German territory. He had no compunction against dropping incendiaries on Polish and Dutch cities, because they couldn't respond in kind. (If anyone has any more up-to-date info, please chip in.)
Also, Hitler admired the British, and wanted them as allies; he didn’t want to bomb them at first. Whereas he had little use for Poles.
As for the qualitative and quantitative shock of the Bomb in Japan, it hadn’t quite sunk in yet—is my understanding. The shock was a double-shock of the Russian invasion of imperial Japanese ‘territory’, plus the Bomb. However, I’ve always been told that the Russian invasion was the greater shock, as it was unprecedented.
Since the effects of radiation weren’t known then, didn’t Japanese at first consider it merely another bombing?
Darrell E,
I agree. My definition for the term 'scientist' is actually broad enough to include people who advocate for the process, so anyone using it easily comes under the umbrella.
Lots of people are scientists in the broadest sense. If we only included people working in the field, I might not count anymore... and that would be silly. 8)
AB - "didn’t Japanese at first consider it merely another bombing?"
Not for a moment.
ignoring leafletted warnngs, some Japanese sent their families to Hiroshima since it seemed 'safe" and untouched. Unaware that one reason was to provide a 'before-vs-after' contrast to show what could be done with one new bomb in a milisecond.
That was a callous calculation, though based on the samurai ability to get used to anything that's gradual. The leafletting was not callous. Leafletting Budapest with threats stopped the deportations to the death camps. We should have done that more.
Another factor: the logistics of nuclear bombing. The pressure of the Bomb on the Enola Gay had the crew at first assume it was flak. An education in nuclear warfare 101.
Some looked ahead [Szilard and Oppenheimer among them] in foreseeing a nuclear arms race.
Truman wanted to prepare the Services in becoming acclimated to nucular combat toe-to-toe with the Russkies.
duncan cairncross 2:42 p.m.:
Once a scientist, an engineer, and a salesman walked into a bar.
The bartender said, "How much is two plus two?"
The scientist said, "Four."
The engineer said, "Four plus or minus zero point zero zero zero one."
The salesman said, "How much do you want it to be?"
Hi Paradoctor
Too many zeros!
Not
"Four plus or minus zero point zero zero zero one."
Instead
Four plus or minus zero point one."
Correction: that was Szilard in the bathtub in the movie, not Teller. I'm surprised nobody pointed that out. Makes me wonder how many other factual mistakes I've made in CB that went unfixed. I'm a bit strokey, but not (super) delicate.
Speaking of deviations from history: FOUNDATION. I just watched season 2 episode 1. A very quick survey so far:
Asimov: Dornick and Hardin were two men who never met
Apple: They're two women, who meet after more than a century [sleeper ship], and then form a tricky mother-daughter relationship
Asimov: Cleon was a line of emperors, somewhat pompous and unimaginative
Apple: Cleon(s) are a line of clones, ruling in triplets, and are somewhat diabolical and vicious
Asimov: Seldon is a rational do-gooder on a galactic stage, who practices psychohistory
Apple: Seldon is a (literally) mad scientist, who practices psycho-mathematics (very Escher-esque)
Asimov: humans are mortal (even the Mule)
Apple: humans cover a vast spectrum from serf to demigod
Asimov: some humans see the future via psychohistory
Apple: some humans++ glimpse the Truth via mystical 'visions'
Asimov: the Prime Radiant is just a sort of computer/projector
Apple: the Prime Radiant is that and much more - a mystical Philosopher's stone
Asimov: the Plan shows the desired and alternate courses of human history
Apple: the Plan shows Asimov's and Apple's quickly diverging plots :)
I won't discuss the bedroom scene between Brother Day and Demerzel - I'm still a bit traumatized.
I still await the arrival of favourites like Hober Mallow, Beta and Arkady Darrell, and even the Mule.
I need to find all my Foundation books and hold them close for comfort.
What I was trying to say was that it wasn’t so much dropping the Bomb that mattered—it was the planning for the postwar world. FDR and Truman had good teams that were looking to the future long before the Bomb was used.
Waging peace is much harder: we are still in Korea seventy years after the Korean War began.
...No, seventy yrs after the war ended.
Alan Brooks:
..No, seventy yrs after the war ended.
As Alan Moore had it in Watchmen, "Nothing ever ends."
In this case, literally. There's only been a cease-fire for 70 years.
I had thought discussion of The Bomb, not just at CB, was rather simplistic; attempting to isolate the Bomb from other events during the mid ‘40s.
FDR had many far-seeing people, some knew that by summer ‘45 Russia was replacing the Axis as the threat.
A few guessed—knowing how competent Soviet intelligence was—that the Manhattan Project was being spied on. You all know that the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were a message to Stalin.
At any rate, I still surmise that if the Bomb had not been deployed, the war would have ended a few days or weeks later than it actually did.
Without a GOP, FDR's new dealers were able to accomplish more in Germany. The Pacific war ending in 1945 without the bomb still seems unlikely to me.
At the Potsdam Conference Truman was handed coded confirmation of the Trinity Test and an observer said he acted much more confident after that, toward Stalin.
AB- your surmise was never supported by evidence. The meeting of the privy council – calling in generals/admirals/lords from all over, happened BECAUSE of the bomb Even the meeting – let alone the hair’s-breadth outcome – would not otherwise happen.
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Some of the added plot lines in Apple’s FOUNDATION. Were fine. Arty and imaginative without wrecking much. The clone-emperors, for example. And nowadays if a character CAN be made an ethnically varied woman then you DO make it an ethnically varied woman. Period. I have nothing vested in detailed-canonical purity, even though I am THE (never consulted) expert on the Asimov series.
Other stuff is much worse, like leaving so much of the Anacrean-Terminus crisis to psychic powers, individual initiative and chance, then armwaving all of that away.
Worst of all is the tech stuff. Hari Seldon just happens to have access to all sorts of sci-tech-gizmos no one in the empire has or ever will. And the psi-psychic stuff, feh.
Though coded confirmation of Trinity was sent to Truman, Stalin had his own sources. So perhaps Truman shouldn’t have been so confident.
Truman's confidence was partly based on assuming THAT Stalin would learn about the bomb. And hence that Stalin would not dare send Konev and Zhukov rolling toward France. We know he was tempted and weighed it. He chose instead to conquer Manchuria and possibly get a share of Japan and China.
There's only been a cease-fire for 70 years.
A lot of European peace treaties were little more than fig leaves for "We need some time to catch our breath."
I'm okay with a cease-fire.
It's not like we actually declared war.
The script writing app I use has a plugin that enables the writer to assign genders to characters and then it delivers a statistical report. How many of each type? Line ratios. Etc.
I haven't seen a way to signal ethnicity in the data, but it should be easy enough to add.
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A key point in one screenwriter book I read was the author should leave out stuff that's not critical to the story. Does a character's ethnicity really matter? If not, leave it out. Gender? If not, de-emphasize it.
The point the author was making is that screenwriters are in the business of selling stories. Someone else is in the business of producing them. Let producers, directors, and others see the characters as they wish as much as possible IF one is serious about selling the story.
There ARE stories where these choices matter, but when they don't... we are to let it go.
onward
onward
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