As a lover of grand or subtle thought experiments, your duty is to Pay It Forward!
SF has been very good to you.
In fact, it’s arguable that we are all here today, having just barely edged past many potential disasters like nuclear war, in part because of the dire warnings and self-preventing prophecies of sci fi... an argument that I back up in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood.
Indeed, SF has conquered the world! Or at least the movies, TV and Games that influence billions of humans, both entertaining them and preaching lessons of worry and danger and (occasionally) promise.
Alas, you and I also know that the games and shows are pablums - at-best distilled essences - devoid of subtlety, texture and complexity that can be found in higher end novels and stories. Sure, as a novelist I’m biased! But if you subscribe to this community – and have read this far – then so are you! Biased – (the way AIs will be!) - in favor of actual reading.
In a fast-changing and complex future, won’t we need complexity and subtlety and multilayered thought? Agreed? So, are you willing to act on that?
Beyond writing Vivid Tomorrows, I’ve pushed two projects. One is TASAT: There’s a Story About That, which could give future decision-makers access to 120 years of sci fi thought experiments that might be useful in a crisis. It’s been slow going – building a functioning web tool - even though at any point TASAT might save the world! (Volunteer programmers welcome!)
The other endeavor has been Reading for the Future.
I have re-posted the “Killer Bees Letter” on my other – less-used but more formal blog, on Word Press. Please click and give it a look.
Do you think it is a worthy goal to help new generations to step back occasionally from the flashy flicks and shoot-em games, to share our love of the literary genre that explores concepts far more deeply?
Concepts like the vast array of nuanced dangers and opportunities that lie above, beyond… and just ahead.
198 comments:
My own efforts are in the citizen science realm, but the goals are the same. I fully support your great initiatives, but I'm a terrible reader and an even worse team player - I try to do everything in FORTH :)
In the early 1980s, at the zenith of BASIC computing, the world stood at the gate of widespread computer literacy and computational thinking. Names like Kemeny, Gates, Allen, and Asimov pointed the way. It was within our grasp. But just then, came the horrific tumble into the fluffy, Mac-ified* world of sifting eye candy and clicking refresh. Fashion won the day, and was soon followed by crushing ignorance and cultism. Big science, especially A.I., retreated into the Ivory Tower, now largely funded by corporate power. The dismayed, vexed, and exclusive little sect who dizzily wonder why/how cultish fascism returned should stop haughtily browbeating citizen science and instead ponder exactly why it is that Johnny can't code. Better still, they should find a mirror and reflect on it.
* led by Jobs the mystic and the Darth Gates that replaced the Anakin one. Reminiscent of the scene in THE TIME MACHINE (1960), when Wells visits the long abandoned library and all the books crumble to dust in his hands.
BTW, IIRC there was once a Toronto edition of ComputerEdge magazine - free, oversized, cheap newsprint, bi-weekly, lots of DIY and grassroots stuff. Don't know if it was by the same outfit as the San Diego one. Long gone now.
Science Fiction neither predicts nor prevents. Instead, it inquires.
It questions that which most will not question; it considers the unthinkable; it challenges both the sacred and profane; and it confronts the status quo.
By asking 'What If?', it subverts the reader's expectations and subtly targets & alters their perspective in the guise of entertainment.
But, what it is unable to do or, more specifically, what it does very badly, is support the official mainstream narrative as the 'one & only narrative' as this is the aegis of propaganda and the antithesis of inquiry.
It is the one genre that our status quo cannot & will not tolerate, as evidenced by the SF luminaries who've been thrown into the dustbin for various *isms* & thought crimes, a list which includes John W Campbell, H P Lovecraft, Alice Sheldon, Barry Malzberg, Mike Resnick, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov & many others.
It is a genre that cannot be taught, only discovered, and its like may never come again.
Best
______
Scidata's reminiscences make me nostalgic for the glory days of BMUG, a time full of possibilities, now long dead, done & gone forever, amen, making this day is a day for eulogies.
Loc,
You actually bring up a valid point that isn't restricted to SF. Can art be enjoyed once you learn the artist wasn't a great, or even a good, human being? I'd add Marion Zimmer Bradley to your list. I'd have trouble rereading some of her Darkover work knowing what I now know.
I was reading an ancient Analog magazine* today containing the first publication of "And Then There Were None" by E F Russell. I'd rank it as first class pulp SF, pitting Ahimsa and a cooperative, classless planetary society against a caricatured military/bureaucratic Interstellar Empire, and winning. And then I ran across the verb "gyp"; to steal or con. That word might not pass an editor's scrutiny today.
Did I stop reading? No. Tempores and Mores change. People are still enjoying Heinlein and Asimov and Lovecraft, so this dustbin seems to be pretty full of readers. I think your eulogy is premature.
A counter-question would be - at what point does an author's/artist's personal conduct or belief taint their work? Or do you recommend not caring about anything but the work itself? Herodotus was pretty plainly a misogynist by today's standards, though probably representative of his own. Livy owned slaves while he was writing his fantasies about early Rome. If Hitler had actually become a pulp writer in the US as in Spinrad's Iron Dream, would you read his pro-fascist SF?
Somewhat OT, have you tried the works of Stanislaw Lem? He might be a good fit for you.
Dr. Brin, I can't sign up for your idea as I am no part of any SF organization, but it sounds like a good idea.
*It's a rescue from a deceased SCA hoarder's house. I have a box full of vintage SF mags I'll be tapping over the next few months; wish it could make the former owner smile to know that.
Pappenheimer
‘Course, in the distant future beings would communicate in ways we can’t imagine and they wouldn’t have names such as Zork from Morgon, or even numbers.
In the previous, David said...
You are careless sir, with the word “official.”
I believe that the Defense Planning Guidance of 1992 was an official document, as were others.
But even if you are right that the US aims to maintain a unipolar pax… the problem is… what? Never in history has there been a time of greater peace and progress and freedom. ALL of history COMBINED does not match the rise of nearly all the world’s people, helped by peaceful trade, education and the extremely low defense budgets that most nations could have for 80 years, under the expensive US umbrella.
If your point is that the Pax Americana of the past twenty years was a relatively good one (compared with other Pax Imperia, then I doubt that anyone will argue too strongly - other than those who ended up at the sharp end of the US spear. But even for those who have done well, living under a master - even a good master - can be an unpleasant experience. Living under the "US umbrella" is less comfort when one understands that this umbrella might be exchanged for a firehose at the will of the US.
Living standards are not the only thing that matters. Recall that the American Revolution occurred in large part because the colonists were dissatisfied with living under the control of others - even though average living standards in the colonies were probably higher than those in England. ('Probably' because, so far as I know, it is difficult to make any precise comparisons.)
The underlying mechanism behind the cancellation (or whatever you want to call it) of SF authors is driven by thought-action-fusion.
The belief that thought is action, and by extension reading words is an action.
Added to our evolved behaviours for social cohesion that means we share beliefs and values through modeling our identity to fit the group. What can be called a profile of ourselves.
This mechanism has been magnified by social media that reinforces how we see others, and how we are seen by our peer group, and this is how we got into the fine mess you see today.
Hi Ashley
I did not understand any of your comment - the individual words were comprehensible - but the combination did not make any sense
Can you re-phrase for me please
Ashley, are you saying that we model our behaviours on what we see around us, and so when we see others not reading (or ignoring certain topics) we do the same? Or have I totally misunderstood you?
Like Duncan, I'd appreciate an unpacked explanation, suitable for a Bear of Very Little Brain — because even after my second cup of tea I'm confused.
What did I miss? In what sense other than death* has Asimov been cancelled?
* Which is nobody's fault, not even the Romans'
* * *
Pappenheimer:
Can art be enjoyed once you learn the artist wasn't a great, or even a good, human being?
There's an intangible (at least for me) at work there that I can't fully explain except along the lines of "I know it when I see it." Why can I still enjoy old Woody Allen movies, but not old Mel Gibson movies? Why can I listen to Richard Wagner, but not to Ted Nugent? There'd be a essay there if I ever figure it out.
David, one thing I didn't see in your charter was an exhortation to authors to actually write the equivalent of Heinlein juveniles. Some are doing it, but more would be useful. Something a bright middle schooler could dig their teeth into, without the adolescent angst that high schoolers lap up. This niche seems filled by fantasy at the moment.
Scidata
The reason that the "gate of widespread computer literacy and computational thinking" never opened was that very, very few people want to code. I was a professional programmer for over 40 years, working on everything from embedded medical devices (yes there are people walking around with my code in them, how that for weird?) to automating the yellow pages publishing process. The number of people I met who actually wanted to code was minute.
The reason APPL was the first company to join the 4 comma club was that Steve Jobs got so much right about what people wanted. People don't want to fiddle around with the machine, they want to get their job done.
The biggest advance in the programming field arrived 1st on the Macintosh - Think C's integrated development environment. I fell in love with it instantly! No more compiler - assembler - linker - debugger cycle, it all just happened. Now, of course, I use Xcode and Interface Builder to do things that were unimaginable before Macintosh.
Interestingly, Mac OS X is unix all the way down to the Mach kernel:
// I do like this note (from Getting the Main Bundle in the Bundle Programming Guide):
//
// If the agent that launched the program did not specify the full path to
// the program's executable in the argv parameters, the main bundle value
// might be NULL. Bundles rely on either the path to the executable being
// in argv[0] or the presence of the executable's path in the PATH
// environment variable. If neither of these is present, the bundle
// routines might not be able to find the main bundle directory.
//
// Yep, its Unix all the way down :-). But we'll play nice and ask for the
// main bundle instead of tucking argv[0] away.
Correction - the magazine was "Astounding Science Fiction," June '51, 25 cents. Editor, of course, Campbell.
Pappenheimer
To clarify my position(s)
- the Macintosh was the devil's work (black boxes are cynical grifts)
- if BMUG means Berkeley Mac Users Group, then them too
- fashion is seductive, it's the original inception
- the Ridley Scott and Kevin Costner ads made my blood run cold. Soma anyone?
- I knew scientists, teachers, bureaucrats, tradesmen, and many girls who LOVED programming; what a tragic missed opportunity
- those who just wanted to 'get their job done' are now largely zombified
- when Chris Christie said that toady running for VP sounds like ChapGPT, it was no joke
- oligarchs dislike citizen science, but a few nasty academics fear it
- despite my fondness for transistors and FORTH, I live in the future, not the past
- I'm a skeptical optimist - the best kind of utopian
scidata
The Macintosh was what the vast majority of people wanted, hence Apple was the first member of the 4 comma club. We were fairly early investors and our cost basis was about $1.50 when we closed out our position at about $120. After all the stock splits we owned tens of thousands of shares so we are Apple millionaires. Steve Jobs made a lot of us!
I’ve met very few people who wanted to program professionally.
I do most of my work now in Objective C++ and HyperCard’s successor Livecode http://theviews.Org/The%20Library/starting-the-cataloging.html
Alan Turing moved the world ahead 50 years, Steve Jobs moved it back the same. We didn't need Apple millionaires. We needed widespread computational thinking and literacy.
Robert… my “Sky Horizon” series of YA novels is essentially an homage to TUNNEL IN THE SKY. I just finished volume 3.
Scidata… if you are serious about wanting kids to learn coding… and if you are now retired looking for a project, you could take on the proposal in “Why Johnny Can’t Code.” One person pushing that HARD might get somewhere.
Greg B keeps rationalizing baloney, sorry: “If your point is that the Pax Americana of the past twenty years was a relatively good one (compared with other Pax Imperia, then I doubt that anyone will argue too strongly - other than those who ended up at the sharp end of the US spear. But even for those who have done well, living under a master - even a good master - can be an unpleasant experience. Living under the "US umbrella" is less comfort when one understands that this umbrella might be exchanged for a firehose at the will of the US.”
A stunning array of crap, sir:
- 95% of the world’s people have never witnessed war with their own eyes. And yes that’s EIGHTY years, not twenty. Tell me what the best such ratio was in ANY other time/place… 5%? 2%? I'd wager it was almost zero.
- 95% of the world’s children are in school with full bellies. Most are empowered to roam the internet at will. Their favorite entertainments, Hollywood-rooted, preach the same memes that taught YOU all your suspicion of authority reflexes.
- Enabling most of the world’s nations to spend an average of 1% of GDP on defense… rather than history’s normal 30% is something you shrug off far too blithely, since most of the savings went to prodigious development. And living their lives without soldiers on every street.
- Again and again and again, polls and personal experience show that surface grumblings about America – often based on genuine complaints – nevertheless overlay a deeper current of genuine liking and affection. Moreover YOU KNOW THAT.
- Our current Rival Power has tried to extend influence all over the globe, failing every time, as nations around the Pacific and south rally to US alliances. For the simple reason that we are liked and generally trusted and they are not.
- You think people all over the globe haven’t NOTICED that we have elections that change the persons in power regularly? You think peoples around the world did not see the faces of Barack Obama and Kamala Harris, etc.
- All the world knows we had the power to actually conquer everything in sight, and did not, choosing instead to create a vast trade network that is the diametric opposite to the mercantile systems of Come, China, and Pax Brittanica. We exported JOBS while buying 20$trillions of crap we never needed, developing the whole world.
You know all that, yet you cling to your SoA oversimplifications, as if your invented Suspicion of Authority, instead of suckling it through every Hollywood medium, all your life.
And yes, that is an explicit outcome of this Pax. And you go ahead and try to come up with a reason why an oppressive empire would teach that relentless propaganda for individualism and questioning power. I’ll wait here.
In fact, your narrative DRIPS with contempt for all those billions who have risen into peace and prosperity for 80 years. YOU know better than them, of course, the poor deluded fools.
Tell you what? How about you look across the entire span of human history and find one case where a people were tempted by great power, and used it so carefully, with 90% + good outcomes?
Want an END to all empires? Guess what. Most Americans do, too! That’s part of the value system you suckled all your life. But what do YOU envision - pragmatically - replacing the Empire? Please. Inquiring minds want to know!
Before you come back with more clichés, How about you read and critique this:
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2006/01/more-misc-and-adolescent-thumping.html
---
Except when he dipped back into hallucinatory jibber-jabber paranoia, L’s spume this time was actually readable and about something glancingly real.
I think there are two issues working together to drive traditional SciFi to extinction.
To use a loose but understandable term, the current generation of proto scifi fans have brains that are wired differently. The immediacy of an online world, a world where the contents of both the Great Library and the Cloaca Maxima exist at the interface of your fingers on a bit of glass....reading can't directly compete with that. Reading requires patience. Reading quality material requires it in hefty doses.
The other issue is monetary. It is hard to get paid to write books or screen plays. Video games don't actually need plots or writers, just programmers who are good at clichés. The cancel culture referenced above plays a minor role. In addition to plot lines and characters that will consign your work immediately to the discard bin there must be a larger nebulous area where, as the old Jerry Jeff Walker song had it "Chances will be taken" that must be avoided to be on the safe side.
I've seen some interesting stuff in recent decades of Sci Fi, stories told from alternate perspectives for instance. But if you are chasing an inattentive audience and trying to get there through financially constrained and craven editors....good luck unless you have in hand another Magnum Opus of glittery vampires and/or Anguished Teens with Powers.
Things change. Guttenberg probably finished off itinerant story tellers and bards. Marconi lured away the readers until the glowing black and white screens had their day. Now it is the phones. How long until it is the neural implants or maybe just an immersive virtual reality that is worth something.
Tacitus
The underlying mechanism behind the cancellation (or whatever you want to call it) of SF authors is driven by thought-action-fusion. The belief that thought is action, and by extension reading words is an action[Ashley].
If I may attempt to paraphrase, I believe that Ashley's point is that the many now confuse & equate 'bad_think' with 'bad_action', so much so that those who give voice to the potentially antisocial thought are now also assumed to be killers, nazis & domestic terrorists.
This is the magical thinking behind the power of the Medieval Curse, a more contemporary example being 2020 Biden & Harris's insistence that both Speech & Silence are now literally VIOLENCE.
Asimov was cancelled with accusations of 'sexual assault' after an old interview surfaced wherein he admitted that he enjoyed hugging & feeling up his comely female fans, because heterosexuality is now literally rape, the accusation being a prelude (imho) to a posthumous Weinstein treatment.
Likewise, Eric Frank Russell would be burned at the stake if alive today, despite & because of his brilliantly subversive & seminal antiracist work 'Somewhere a Voice' (circa 1953), even though his 'Wasp' and 'Space Willies' novels rank among SF's best.
Science Fiction is literally DEAD if & when it can no longer consider alternatives to the one true liberal-progressive utopian dream of diversity, inclusion & equity, which I want none of, as the term 'utopia' literally describes only the imaginary & non-existent.
Best
scidata:
- I knew scientists, teachers, bureaucrats, tradesmen, and many girls who LOVED programming; what a tragic missed opportunity
I was an engineering nerd college student in the 80s, before nerds were fashionable. I was amazed and interested in what computers could do, but I was nowhere near as smitten as some. I knew fellow students who spent every waking moment possible in a computer lab. I was never one of those.
I actually changed my focus from electrical engineering to computer science because the classes that most interested me were programming ones. My last two student jobs and my entire adult career has been about programming one way or another, although lately I do ETL using gui interfaces, which doesn't exactly look like what "programming" did in the 80s. I was fine with 3GL languages, never needing to be a "real programmer" who was fluent in assembly language or ones and zeroes.
Truth to tell, what I enjoy is designing algorithms. Coding itself is a convenient way of implementing those algorithms on a machine. To me, though, when mcsandburg above is proud of his code keeping people's hearts beating, it is the algorithm--the steps for the machine to follow in order to perform a function correctly--that is the important part.
Robert… my “Sky Horizon” series of YA novels is essentially an homage to TUNNEL IN THE SKY. I just finished volume 3.
That's three books (and I knew about them, as well as your Out of Time series). That's not enough. Consider using some of your accumulated influence/goodwill among SF authors to persuade more of them to write for younger audiences. Cory Doctorow does it, as do a few others, but most don't.
I get that economically it's probably a net drain, with the rewards (increased readership) not only long delayed but not necessarily going to the folks writing those books. But I think it's important.
Loc,
"...diversity, inclusion & equity, which I want none of...".
...and you've lost me again. I hope that isn't a political gaffe (defined as saying what you actually mean, accidentally).
I think nearly everybody else here considers those concepts to be societal goods to strive for, for all that we argue about the means to achieve them. May I have confirmation that you erred in your sentence construction?
Pappenheimer
P.S. SF isn't dead (it just changed), E F. Russell wouldn't be cancelled today (though he'd be appalled at who does get published...cough cough sad puppies cough cough) and the London Underground is not a political movement.
locumranch:
the accusation being a prelude (imho) to a posthumous Weinstein treatment.
Ok, so we're talking about your opinion of what liberal caricatures might do rather than something that has happened. Got it.
Weinstein is guilty of actual rape, which I as a liberal am perfectly comfortable distinguishing from the sorts of thing you say Asimov stands accused of, or Garrison Keillor, or even Al Franken.
Science Fiction is literally DEAD if & when it can no longer consider alternatives to the one true liberal-progressive utopian dream of diversity, inclusion & equity, which I want none of,
No, we understand you're more of a "boot on the upturned face of humanity," kind of guy. To each, his own, I suppose.
I believe that Ashley's point is that the many now confuse & equate 'bad_think' with 'bad_action', so much so that those who give voice to the potentially antisocial thought are now also assumed to be killers, nazis & domestic terrorists.
1940s-type science fiction most likely came of age when it was a solitary and somewhat-guilty pursuit. The fans of that age were not part of "the many" who could and would police each others thoughts. They were already outcasts in that sense.
Modern social media and that sort of solitary pursuit do not mix well.
Pappenheimer:
May I have confirmation that you erred in your sentence construction?
I doubt very much that he erred. When someone tells you who he is, believe him.
Robert,
Charles Stross has a whole thing on his blog right now about stuff he won't ever write, stuff he doesn't have time to write and stuff he might write if his publishers would actually agree to, you know, publish it. I think YA SF is somewhere on that list. I'd go ask Brandon Sanderson - fantasy author, but he's sidestepped the publishing industry.
Pappenheimer
One can walk past a federal building and think “I’d like to plant a bomb inside.”
But if one walks past the building with a prominent copy of ‘The Turner Diaries’ under the arm, maybe one deserves whatever consequences might ensue.
Having a book under the arm (any book) is not voicing out loud, nor is it necessarily a bad-action.
Tacitus have you played some of the more narrative games? They are filled with dialogue scenes and storylines. I think novels are vastly better… but it does not help to exaggerate.
Locum at least mentioned the word “paraphrase!” I am not Ashley and pay little attention to anything L looks at, so I cannot judge whether he ACTUALLY paraphrased accurately. Too bad the rest of his screed is more jibber-frothing jabber.
Robert: “That's three books (and I knew about them, as well as your Out of Time series). That's not enough.”
My Out of Time series has FIVE published and 5 more in queue, if we can get publisher messes figured out.
I said:
Truth to tell, what I enjoy is designing algorithms. Coding itself is a convenient way of implementing those algorithms on a machine.
So I'm less interested in Why Johnny Can't Code than in Why Johnny Can't Flowchart.
scidata
An interesting note about these entrepreneurs is how little of the wealth they created, they kept. Steve Jobs's estate was worth about $10 billion, Apple is now worth almost $3 trillion (it was the 1st company to achieve a market cap of over a trillion, hence the 1st member of the 4 comma club). So Jobs kept about 0.3% of the wealth he created. Bill Gates a bit more, but all in all they are examples of Ayn Rand's Pyramid of Ability http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/pyramid_of_ability.html.
scidata:
Did you ever read Vernor Vinge's "True Names"? Seems to me like Macintosh actuated what Vinge's story predicted in '81--embedding the code into symbolic icons that represent the verbs and nouns the user wishes to engage in.
Every kid these days already thinks they can run the web like Mr. Slippery.
locum;
You really think was Asimov canceled, with his daughter is producing Foundation?
Foundation:
The 2nd season of the show which started off like a rancid stream of poop through a goose--has actually solidified into something of a story. The gender / orientation bending feels less like inauthentic flavor of the month sprinklings. As the season progresses I'm still getting a vibe that the people wearing the big pants in the production meetings are at most one degree of separation away from burning man. To clarify my position, I hold productions that do the same trendy things authentically like "The Great" and the "Barbie" in the highest esteem.
MCS truly the 2nd billion$ should be harder than the 1st, rather than (in most cases) far, far easier.
If there is a rising difficulty, then having $10B would be a huge achievement. We would thus preserve capitalism's incentive to creat while squelching its incentives to cheat.
And I will make some of you angry by saying Elon's OUTCOMES, till 2 years ago - and even now in some ways - were vastly more significant than the dribble-drabble that especially followed the twit stuff.
Slim Moldie: Did you ever read Vernor Vinge's "True Names"?
No, but thanks. I'll add it to my already ponderous reading list. I see that Marvin Minsky wrote the Afterword using bits from his "Society of Mind". That book/theory was an early take on Jeff Hawkins' "A Thousand Brains". Hawkins invented the Palm Pilot decades earlier. That device enabled what is possibly the first ever handheld A.I. app, written by yours truly.
Agreed about FOUNDATION, cleary David Goyer has been somewhat reined in. I got a kick out of Brother Day referring to the current conflict as a struggle between "Foundation and Empire".
mcsandberg,
I know nothing about Ayn Rand, and I wish to keep it that way. Caveat: 'Pyramid' is a trigger word around these here parts. I will say this. Turing created 100X more wealth than Jobs and Gates combined. Where would he fit on Rand's pyramid?
Coding
Back in the early 80's I spent a factory shutdown hiding in the measurement lab trying to learn some "Basic"
The problem is that you need to be very "exact" - I spent a week finding that I had an "n" instead of an "m" on one line
"Coding" requires an eye for detail that is beyond me
Modern computing where you grab and move "lumps" is much easier
SciFi
Back in the day we used to have to wait for the next good book
Today there are over 3,000 new books published every day
There are a lot good ones! - as well as a lot of crap
The problem is not a shortage of good books as much as filtering the good ones from the others
Billions
I agree 100% - the second Billion should be harder - but I suspect that would be very difficult to arrange - so I would settle for NOT EASIER - and even that would be difficult
Capitalism is INHERENTLY a positive feedback process
We should judge people like Elon Musk by their (very very positive) achievements - not by the nonsense they say
Elon would surely make a better potus than the GOP candidates at the podium a couple of weeks ago. Christie was the only one I took seriously.
Whatever ‘serious’ is.
(Above is in reference to loc’s paragraph on First Amendment rights. He has a difficult time with its parameters...he’s a physician, not a philosophe.)
Saw a photo of a bumper sticker on a Tesla, "We bought this before we knew Elon was crazy".
Dr Brin:
And I will make some of you angry by saying Elon's OUTCOMES, till 2 years ago - and even now in some ways - were vastly more significant than the dribble-drabble that especially followed the twit stuff.
Elon Musk didn't historically come across as a right-wing chaos agent. It's like he was infected by Trump's Mule powers.
scidata:
I know nothing about Ayn Rand, and I wish to keep it that way.
I was gonna say that (all exceptions duly noted) most of us who do know something of Ayn Rand are not likely to treat her pronouncements as gospel.
@Duncan
I spent a week finding that I had an "n" instead of an "m" on one line
Ah yes. Those days when available memory was measured in Kb and variable names were strictly minimal. (From memory, SinclairBasic only allowed one letter! For strings, at least)
These days, except perhaps for loop indices, names like 'n' and 'm' are frowned on. And unit testing* will locate your problems far quicker than a debug print, or 'stepping through'.
* Once you've taken the time to set up your unit tests, that is. Fortunately, they're rather fun. I find them so, at least.
the second Billion should be harder
I often tell my daughter that "Your first twenty years are the longest. By the third twenty years, they go by like that!" Now that she's 21, she even admitted to me, "I'm starting to understand what you mean."
It would be nice if my fourth twenty years could be made to last longer than the first twenty did. I suspect that would be easier to arrange than the billon$ thing.
The toxicity of Musk's 'eccentricities' became apparent when nobody would take his submarine cave rescue system seriously.
As for his niXing of Tweetie... if you're wondering whether and why he's deliberately trying to shut down a major social media site, take a look at who the co-owner is.
(While I have a bolthole on Mastodon, I find 'X' remains tolerable, despite the spam ads. I do stick firmly to the 'following' stream, however.)
Mastodon = @davidbrin
Same for Blusky
Tony was the fellow who set up the EARTH predictions site on PBWorks, right?
I just got the following message: "We noticed that you haven't used your workspace named: Earth by David Brin for over 11 months.
As you may have heard, we reclaim workspaces that have fallen into disuse (PBworks Spring Cleaning)."
Trying to get in to give the site some activity. It was actually a way cool effort, for its day!
Ah, had to ChangePassword but it workes. I commented. Good for a year I reckon.
The toxicity of Musk's 'eccentricities' became apparent when nobody would take his submarine cave rescue system seriously.
Except the Thai Navy divers - who were the ones that actually DID the rescue - they thought it was a good idea but were very glad that the rains were delayed so they did not have to use it
The guy that got insulting about it was just a British hanger on - a "helper" at best - who got all pouty when the person he was disparaging insulted him back
Evidence that the Americans do not have a monopoly on "Karens"
I got that message as well. Basically have to click the given link and it will accept the 'ping' for a year or so.
I'm going to have to side with mcsandberg when it comes to the MAC line and Jobs. No doubt Jobs was hell to work for, but he got a LOT of things right.
———
I got my first dose of programming in high school. I liked it enough to keep pursuing it into college where I ran into COBOL. I spent 30 hours one week chasing a damn bug (missing statement terminator) and my love for the endeavor vanished. I finished that course and stuck with code dabbling afterward.
I understood the power of writing my own code, though. I got a PET and dabbled to complete tasks I wanted a computer doing instead of me. That sufficed into grad school when I encountered my first MAC and hyperventilated. It was OBVIOUS that they had the right kind of UI for the masses. I wanted one, but couldn't possibly afford it. So… I doctored my TA key until it worked as a general key used by the professors and snuck into a lab that had a couple of them. Eventually the department got a few more and made them available, so I wrote my dissertation on one. The one thing I did NOT like about the MAC was the specialty OS, but when they moved to some variant of FreeBSD that complaint evaporated.
I didn't want to code anymore. I wanted the tools others were willing to code and WOULD code if I had to do it. That was good enough… except in the mid-90's a lot of companies were throwing stupid amounts of money around to get their processes into code. I bowed, took their money, and spent the next 30 years coding.
Shortly before I began accepting the stupid amounts of money, I got to meet an early Linux zealot and see what he was doing with hardware that normally used winDOS. I didn't quite hyperventilate, but it was close. Freeing the OS and related tools would put more code (written by others) in my hands. I could compile stuff well enough most of the time and even learned how to build my own kernels, but what I wanted was the tools others were building.
———
For a very small span of years, I used Windows at home and at work. Usually I used Linux and home and whatever I had to use at work. Now I've got a MAC at home while work uses Windows and Linux variants. I haven't compiled anything except my own geometric algebra java tools in many, many years.
I'd still rather not code, but I've learned enough to become a decent software engineer. And… companies are still tossing around stupid amount of money for this stuff. It's as if they believe it's terribly important, so I guess it is.
I've met people who DO want to code, but not many. Most of us are chasing the easy money.
Alan,
Elon would surely make a better potus than the GOP candidates at the podium a couple of weeks ago.
Ugh. Actually No.
You'd SERIOUSLY regret him being elected.
(If I've read your political character correctly.)
Larry,
Elon Musk didn't historically come across as a right-wing chaos agent.
He still isn't one. He's a min-archist at heart and has admitted it in writing.
Y'all would absolutely howl at the Moon if he got elected.
He would dismantle a lot of things NOT because it would help rich people.
He'd do it on Principle… which would have about the same effect.
Unfortunately I suspect that Alfred is right about Elon Musk!!
Did not write that Elon would make a good potus. Wrote that he would make a better president than the GOP candidates who debated two or three weeks ago.
Which is not saying a whole lot.
Have no intention of voting Republican, Libertarian—or other third party. After January 6th, decided to vote Democratic without even glancing at the ballots.
If anyone doesn’t like that, they can call the Complaint Department and leave a message.
Alan
I think that Musk has done more to help the planet than anybody else I can think of
But I also think that as POTUS(not possible) he would be far worse that the GOP clown show because he would be far far more COMPETENT at making the disastrous changes
A reply to Duncan Cairncross and Robert.
I apologize for being unable to convey what I was trying to say.
It's a problem stemming from inability to write clearly on matters that I understand, but that others do not.
First Assumption
If you can think or say it, then the ingenious among us can find a way to realize it.
If that feels true, then reading words can put thoughts into your head that you may not have considered.
From there we move to when threatened, our emotions cause us to revert to our core beliefs from evolutionary selection.
One core belief is that words and thoughts are one and the same.
That is what thought-action-fusion boils down to.
Second Assumption
Apply this to social norms (normative actions shared by the group because they're valued), of what is good and what is bad, and ask how do you measure people's compliance to these values?
Arguably, one can measure people's fitness to be a member of the group by what they say and do.
So, an individual's ability to model social norms signals to the group their trustworthiness. The more the individual strays from the consensus, the more likely it is that they will become to be seen as an outsider (this drives all kinds of bigotry).
Third Assumption
Our language and actions have been magnified by our technology.
We now have social media that encompasses millions of people. We did not evolve to be able to conform to millions of people's disparate beliefs (the Dunbar number).
One adaptation to our technology is how we portray ourselves to the world. What is called a profile. Social media has just magnified the use of profiles from a few people (politicians, film stars, etc.) to include everyone who has a presence on a social media platform.
So, what used to be the scandals of the few rich and powerful people that disrupted societal norms have morphed into the chaos that come from too many people doing too many things that swamps our ability to cope (causes fear). That drives humans into fight v flight v freeze responses.
Conclusion
The power of language to convey our intentions rests on the foundations of our biology; innate responses that are selected through reproductive success.
Robert: “That's three books (and I knew about them, as well as your Out of Time series). That's not enough.”
My Out of Time series has FIVE published and 5 more in queue, if we can get publisher messes figured out.
Still not enough. A middle-schooler could get through them in a week or two.
When my niece discovered Harry Potter she had a plethora of other YA fantasy books to read while she was waiting for Rowland to write the next in the Potter series. If the same had happened with one of your books there wouldn't be much out there except dystopian Hunger Games-esque YA SF.
Alfred Differ: I've met people who DO want to code, but not many. Most of us are chasing the easy money.
Said Jobs to Turing. Or Ptolemy to Copernicus. Or the Ministry of Education to Johnny.
I've taken plenty of that easy money too, and the prestige that comes with it. I hope that will be my consolation on the march past the crumbled ruins of Athena Parthenos, back to the caves.
I fibbed a bit when I said I know nothing of Ayn Rand. I do know that she worshipped the free market and despised government. Of course there have been many monsters who believed exactly the reverse. So much of history stands on the foundation of that false dichotomy. SF explores all this better than most literature. Certainly more elegantly.
Alan Brooks:
After January 6th, decided to vote Democratic without even glancing at the ballots.
Welcome aboard. I decided that during the 1998 Clinton impeachment.
As a layman, it takes me years/decades to sift through the evidence, and draw conclusions & confusions.
Confusions: there’s a great deal of political schizophrenia around, many citizens going back ‘n forth from in a shuttle zone of politics. Often searching for cosmology.
Left Right Left Right
sound off
one two
sound off
three four
Maybe so. But he might be preferable to ‘Throatslitting’ DeSantis and Chimera Ramaswamy. Can’t get my mind wrapped around the Trump phenomena, though—it’s a riddle wrapped in an enigma.
I wanted [a Mac], but couldn't possibly afford it.
Back when I started my first engineering job Macs were just coming out. Corporate was, well, very corporate and concerned about appearances. One of the tech writers was very good, and wanted to use her personal Mac to do her job (insisted on it, in fact). Corporate wanted her to use the company mainframe system (a line editor) because policy and procedures. Her boss eventually got permission for her to use her own computer — which also got her a small office so clients walking through the open plan Herman Miller office wouldn't see a non-standard computer and clutch their pearls.
I didn't want to code anymore. I wanted the tools others were willing to code and WOULD code if I had to do it.
When I got my first computer (C64) I went to the Commodore Users Group meetings in a nearby city with my father. I was astounded that several of the chaps there didn't know how to program and didn't care to learn how; they just wanted to use their computer to do tasks for them and didn't care about the details. Which shouldn't have surprised me, given that that was my attitude towards cars, but it did.
Ashley, thanks for unpacking. A lot to think about still, but at least I've got a place to start.
Alfred Differ:
"Elon Musk didn't historically come across as a right-wing chaos agent."
He still isn't one. He's a min-archist at heart and has admitted it in writing.
There's a lot of overlap between the two things. After all, the law of the jungle sounds impartial in theory, but benefits the strong and ruthless in practice. The law that forbids rich and poor alike from sleeping under bridges constrains the poor and protects the rich. Whether Musk himself is an authoritarian right-winger isn't as relevant as the fact that he's harming society in the same ways that those types want. Ralph Nader and Jill Stein weren't right-wingers either, but judge them by their works, and they might as well be.
I haven't followed Musk the way many on this list have, but my recent impression is that he likes to tinker without the unusual filter of "careful about possibly breaking something important and irreplaceable." I admit there are two sides to such a personality--it can lead to breakthroughs in innovation that others were too timid to try. But the obvious downside is when others' lives are carelessly harmed or even destroyed in the process.
In Vonnegut's novel Galapagos, a group of people were stranded on a rocky island whose source of fresh water was a spring that bubbled out of a small opening in a hillside, filling a small natural basin every 23 seconds. The book's narrator notes that, had there been such tools available on the island, someone would inevitably found a way to block up the flow of water for good, or to crack open the reservoir and disgorge all of the water at once. Musk reminds me of that sort of thinking.
When they hide behind religion, you have to ask why is it some of the most ultra-materialistic people who have ever lived would expect us to play along with their game. Their creed can be summed up as Do as I say not as I do.
mcsSandberg
Something that drives me nuts is the idea that "entrepeneurs" create the entire value of their companies. Karl Marx would tear his hair out hearing this. (Besides which if the company captures a large share of the value it "creates" then it hasn't donated much of it to the rest of society. Look up economic rents someday.)
reason
You can look at it however you want. The fact remains, No Elon Musk, No Tesla. No Henry Ford, No Ford Motor. No Steve Jobs, No Apple.
In some cases, someone else might have created the products, in Steve Jobs case, I doubt seriously that we'd have anything like the iPhone because it took someone who could not only get the product designed and built, but someone who could convince AT&T to completely rebuild their network to support these devices. Jobs revolutionized personal computing, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, retail stores and digital publishing.
Diversity, Inclusion, Equity & Perfectibility:
I am too much the pragmatist to settle for utopian fantasies that may never come to pass. Instead, I want 'good enough' right now, as in the case of the hungry man who eschews an imaginary banquet in favour of a stale sandwich.
Perhaps you'd understand my perspective better if you were more familiar with a few old saws about the perfect being 'the enemy of the good' and 'a bird in the hand'.
Or, perhaps not, especially if you're a credulous jenny who'd chase a carrot for all eternity without a chance to ever taste it.
Progress is a confidence game, a messianic religion, a manipulative tactic & a never-ending treadmill wherein we are all asked to trade our fleeting present for an ephemeral & non-existent prophet's paradise to come.
Insert your choice of expletives here.
Best
_______
Remember when Science Fiction offered near INFINITE possibilities? It started its death chant the very moment that most authors adopted the L. Ron Hubbard model in order to describe the 'one & only true path forward' to salvation.
How did Ashley just put it? The more the individual strays from the consensus, the more likely it is that they will become to be seen as an outsider (this drives all kinds of bigotry).
In this sense, Progressivism is just another type of bigotry & DIE is just another messianic religion.
I think like you, but that’s from excessive doubt and fear.
Pragmatism? Everyone thinks they’re a pragmatist. A radio talkshow-blabber, with a squeaky voice, replied to my query as to he being a pessimist by proudly saying,
“No, I’m a realist; a Pragmatist.”
And being a libertarian is now the In Thing: countless rightists call themselves libertarians—even if they are aren’t.
• The top #1 thing I want from a president is what ALL dem prez do (esp. Bill C)… APPOINT 5000 skilled, smart, honest and dedicated people to fill positions across government, guiding and motivating and empowering half a million smart, dedicated civil servants across the nation to do their lawful jobs well, with enforcement that generally leans (sometimes hard) in favor of average folks and science and planet and future.
As opposed to the top priority of GOP presidents, to fill those 5000 positions with corrupt shills, loonies and hirelings of oligarchy, determined to undermine the law and steal, hand over fist. And – under Trump – many of them actual agents of enemy powers, foreign and domestic.
Clinton only could legislate his first 3 years. Obama only his 1st two. Knowing this cycle, Biden and Pelosi got a LOT done, their 1st 2 years… manybe 30% of what we desperately need. But in all three cases, I could sleep at night because of those 5000 appointees. IF JOEB GOES DROOLING SENILE TOMORROW, THAT WILL STILL BE TRUE.
Which brings us around to “President Elon”. For all his faults, Elon likes smart, hardworking people. He would be a royal pain! But there’s be neurons all over Washington.
Okay, Alfred has a point with: “He would dismantle a lot of things NOT because it would help rich people.
He'd do it on Principle… which would have about the same effect.” Let’s not test it.
• Re coding? Come on. The Mac was a natural extension of what we did developing our brains, LAYERS. Mammal cortex atop the fish cerebellum, then the primate crtex, then human convolutions, then the prefrontal lobes. Mac world lay atop the coding world in the same way and I am glad of it. But I want sapience to be self-inspecting, We need a higher PERCENTAGE of kids who at least know how and why pixels move. And that’s why I pushed WHY JOHNNY CAN’T CODE.
So yeah, I share the worry and the conviction something must be done! And any of you retired guys looking for a project…? But dyspeptic snarling at “Kids these days!” with their mice and stuff? Come on.
• Ashley: “The power of language to convey our intentions rests on the foundations of our biology; innate responses that are selected through reproductive success.” Well… sure. Nicely said.
Though I believe that- as Kate Hepburn said in AFRICAN QUEEN (one of the greatest of all movies) :
“Nature, is what God (or sapience) put us here to rise above.”
But my actual question is: did Locumranch, when he used the word “paraphrase” last time, ACTUALLY paraphrase you correctly? That miracle would make my morning.
REASON: I just finished a piece showing how Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Ayn Rand all shared the same basic assumptions about the process that Marx called 'capital formation,' but they diverged over matters of fundamental personality. Smith optimistically believed that sapient humans might negotiate ways to keep positive sum competitive/creative processes going indefinitely. Marx dyspeptically deemed that to be a hopeless wish, in the face of inevitable final phases of capitalism... while Rand agreed that Marx's final phase of mogul lords was unavoidable - and she called it good.
Vitamins. Wow. L's latest was written almost... sanely-put! Dyspeptic in his cynical grouse at 'progress,' but it's a stance.
Too bad he spoils it by (consistent with his nature) basing it all on assertions about all of us that are ditzy-wrong strawman silliness, rendering the rest of it kinda sad.
Don’t wish to criticize loc too much, because he’s a better person than me; no fooling.
But he reminds me of the majority of *Christians*; they set the bar so high, none of them can reach it. But it doesn’t matter because Now doesn’t matter, what matters is the Kingdom to Come. Thus one must crucify the flesh so that the spirit can arise. One must die to the self—and live for the Man Upstairs.
However, they lay up treasures, as: “we’re not stupid, we want our cake on Earth, and eat it too. The pinkos want to take it away from us. Whose fault is it? That [Negro] Obama. It started with him.”
reason 8:17 am:
That consummate capitalist entrepreneur Edison defined genius as 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration. The entrepreneur provides the 1%, and we proletarians provide the 99%.
Though Tesla, who was a victim of Edison's business practices, might have defined Edison's genius as 1% inspiration, 49% perspiration, and 50% imitation.
Something that drives me nuts is the idea that "entrepeneurs" create the entire value of their companies. Karl Marx would tear his hair out hearing this.
So would Abraham Lincoln, who agreed with Marx about the role of labour in creating value.
Labor is prior to and independent of capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration. Capital has its rights, which are as worthy of protection as any other rights. Nor is it denied that there is, and probably always will be, a relation between labor and capital producing mutual benefits. The error is in assuming that the whole labor of community exists within that relation.
By President Abraham Lincoln,
First Annual Message, December 3, 1861
https://pnhp.org/news/abraham-lincoln-on-labor/
Alan B seriously, you give him WAY too much credit.
Paradoc, please don’t tumble into Nikola Tesla cultism. For a man with his difficulties, he got stupendous amounts of support and collaboration, accomplished everything reasonable to expect, was modestly rich and when his mind failed he still got respect. The Tesla Cult deeply insults him with the Lone Wizard who Saw It All! Crap.
Robert thanks for that Lincoln quotation. I have inserted it into my new, extensive essay on the commonalities – and wide differences – among Smith, Marx and Rand.
David,
my reference to setting the bar too high might apply to loc. Perhaps he ought to go with the flow and truly live for Now—not be all indignant because things aren’t working out the way he believes that things should.
Shoulda coulda woulda.
mcsandberg - I'm not a fan of the great man theory of history. I think it is bullshit.
David - I think you misunderstand me. I am not saying Marx is right - only that there is a surplus to be divided and the more is captured by rents, the less value for the normal consumer is created. Confusing "creating" value and "capturing" value is one of the great mistakes of neo-classical economics. Assigning the whole value of a collective effort to the nominal head is a weakness in human nature.
“ Which brings us around to “President Elon”. For all his faults, Elon likes smart, hardworking people.”
He’d make a terrible president.
People who think they can run government like a business really don’t understand the point of government. And he’s not a great businessman either. He likes smart, hardworking people who kiss his ass. The last part of that being the most important part of his employees’ qualifications.
David,
Where will you put your new essay?
reason I was not disagreeing with you, just mentioning I wrote a big paper on the topic
reason:
Confusing "creating" value and "capturing" value is one of the great mistakes of neo-classical economics.
Steve Jobs creates value. Mitt Romney captures value. You can get rich either way, but they're nothing alike in the sense that Ayn Rand thinks we should all be grateful to them for our livelihoods. The mere existence of Rearden Metal may enhance all our lives. The mere existence of Bain Capital does the opposite.
Capitalism relies upon a surplus being re-invested in productivity. But the latest fad for years now has been the attempt to "monetize" everything that can be monetized, and then to suck that money out of the organization. To badly mangle a Dilbert line, it's as if productivity is like stealing from the shareholders.
As early as the 90s, I remember some columnist rhetorically asking the question, "If a CEO saves the company a billion dollars and then rewards himself with a billion dollar bonus, what benefit has actually accrued to the company?"
He likes smart, hardworking people who kiss his ass.
Which is a lot better than HATING smart, hardworking people even if they kiss his ass.
The GOP is well known for promoting STUPID people and firing the smart ones
"If a CEO saves the company a billion dollars"
I spent decades improving productivity - about half of the good ideas (and a lot of terrible ones) came from the Shop Floor workers - the other half from the engineers
In all that time not a single good idea came from the top executives
duncan cairncross:
not a single good idea came from the top executives
If the CEO claims credit for saving the company money, chances are he means he fired people or sold off assets.
David,
When and where will your new essay be published?
Thanx!
A possible new, and yet very old, weapon against drug-resistant superbugs:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/08/230829125828.htm
About time we went medieval on their butt-ocks.
Looking for.a venue for my SMith/Marx/Rand paper...
@Duncan: Re: “He who is not to be named.”:
He likes smart, hardworking people who kiss his ass and fires the smart ones who WON’T kiss his ass. (Witness his Return To Office mandate.)
A joke:
Q: How do you become a billionaire?
A: Be a deca-billionaire and buy Twitter.
@Dr. Brin: Re: Your DUTY as a sci fi fan...?:
I’m afraid I’m missing something here.
According to WordsRated on 2022/10/02 (https://wordsrated.com/science-fiction-book-sales-statistics/), ISTM that SF Sales are doing quite well, especially in the Juvenile category:
• Science fiction books, combined with fantasy, generated $590.2 million in revenue in the United States.
• Within comic books, science fiction sales grew by 8.3% in 2021 compared to 2020.
• In the United Kingdom, science fiction sales in 2021 were 23% higher compared to 2020.
• Science fiction books in Australia sold 9% more copies in 2021 than in 2020.
• During the first half of 2018, the science fiction genre sold 2,679,000 copies, 18% higher than in 2017, with “Ready Player One” by Ernest Chile selling 430,000 copies alone.
• In the juvenile category, the science fiction genre combined with fantasy sold over 20.3 million copies during the first half of 2018.
• Along with fantasy, the science fiction genre ranks no.8 on Amazon’s most competitive categories list.
• In audiobooks, science fiction with fantasy holds the largest share of sales among all audiobook categories, generating over $1.6 billion in revenue in 2021.
Why does it matter what format someone uses for their entertainment? If younger people prefer anime, manga/manhwa, comics, games, MSU movies, and video to the written word which their parents and grandparents used: why should we care? Shouldn't they be able to choose what entertains them even if we find it maudlin or upsetting?
“…games and shows are pablums - at-best distilled essences - devoid of subtlety, texture and complexity that can be found in higher end novels and stories.” This sounds similar to me of the comments officious literary snobs have frequently made about science (and other genre) fiction. ISTM you lament the lack of use of SF as an educational tool to teach students “complexity and subtlety and multilayered thought.” Assuming SF can be used this way
(I believe it can.), is it necessarily the BEST tool to teach such? I suspect that if these can be taught through writing as opposed to just reading, in a few years an improved LLM designed as a writing teacher aid can help students learn by doing…
Re: Pax Americana:
Europeans and the rest of the Neo–West (Do you still call it that, Dr. Brin?) should be incredibly GRATEFUL to the US:
"Adjusted for inflation, the US government has given other nations nearly $1 trillion in military aid since 1947" (https://usafacts.org/articles/how-much-does-the-us-give-other-countries-in-military-aid/) which has enabled them to build peaceful and prosperous societies (typically with much higher levels of social benefits than we have here) paid for by the US taxpayer. How wonderfully altruistic we’ve been!
“…choosing instead to create a vast trade network that is the diametric opposite to the mercantile systems of Come, China, and Pax Brittanica.
We exported JOBS (Who did THAT benefit here in the US? Not those whose jobs were exported.) while buying 20$trillions of crap we never needed (Who is to say to the free American consumer what is necessary and what is “crap we never needed”?), developing the whole world." (Again, how wonderfully altruistic we’ve been!)
........................................
Re: “Why Johnny (and Janey) can’t code”:
Why do they need to? Sanjiv and Mei can and their friends are learning in droves, so let’s keep them coming here!
Our students perform better than those trained overseas (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1814646116), so let them come here to learn and encourage them to stay here, too..
(A staggering 49.9 percent of CS degrees were awarded to international and immigrant students in 2016. https://www.istcoalition.org/data/index/stem-computer-science-reach-record-highs/#:~:text=A%20staggering%2049.9%20percent%20of,and%20immigrant%20students%20in%202016, a majority of CS students are foreign-born-
“In computer and information sciences, the majority of full-time graduate students are international students at 211 universities, representing 78% of the U.S. graduate school programs with at least 30 students.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/08/19/international-students-remain-a-primary-source-of-us-tech-talent/?sh=736985c0650d)
Robert thanks for that Lincoln quotation. I have inserted it into my new, extensive essay on the commonalities – and wide differences – among Smith, Marx and Rand.
If you know Harry Turtledove personally, it would be well worth talking to him about Lincoln and socialism. He had a socialist Lincoln in one of his alternate history series, based on Lincoln's own writings, so I'm certain he knows much much more about that than I do. As a historian he goes back to primary sources to research his alt-history novels.
People who think they can run government like a business really don’t understand the point of government.
Once again I recommend Jane Jacobs' short book Systems of Survival.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival
Her argument is that what is admirable and virtuous behaviour in commerce different from admirable and virtuous behaviour in government; that the vices of one are the virtues of the other.
The Wikipedia article has a decent summary, but the book is well worth reading. Alfred, I think you in particular would find it interesting.
Keith seems determined to be our locumranch from the left. He knows damned well what I meant and served up a laundry list of deliberate misinterpretations or faux 'reputtals.'
Pfeh.
--- Robert a role of government is to politically negotiate what Adam Smith called public goods and either (short term) see that those needs are met, or elas (longer term) institue incentinves so that private parties act in self interest to create solutions to satisfy those needs.
This includes public goods like scientific reearch that are beyond the normal payout return on investment horizons of private capital.
Two things have been happening. ROI in corporate world have been shrinking as Milton Friedmanism took over and the incestuous CEO caste became almost purely parasitical... and the process of negotiating public goods called "politics' has been systematically and deliberately destroyed, with all such deliberations taking place within the Democratic party.
I believe these trends can be reversed. Alas, the oligarchies likely also know that. Hence, when it looks like the GOP will go down in flames, so will many public buildings and works as a wave of McVeighs are unleashed.
We must make clear we will trace them to their enablers.
scidata,
Or Ptolemy to Copernicus.
It's not that simple. Copernicus had centuries more data available to him, but still opted for a cosmology that was pretty close to Ptolomy's. It was sun-centered, but it still relied on circles and could be extended with epicycles. Look at Brahe's bastard cosmology model and you'll see what was going on. It wasn't until Kepler had to abandon his dearly loved regular solids model that he found a better way as a twist on the Copernican model. (Brahe's went in the trash.)
Even then… Kepler's cosmos was actually quite weird. Take a peek at his book on it.
Copernicus got part of it right, but his model made worse predictions that Ptolemy's until Kepler's tweaks were added. Astronomy students are taught Kepler's three laws, but there were actually thirteen and it was the Equal Areas in Equal Times law that likely enabled Newton to crack the underlying problem of Why.
Real advancements are very messy things when examined in detail. For example, Ptolemy's model work very well in his time and then gradually failed for the Arabs who inherited it. They made adjustments and added more epicycles, but they also added something the Greeks never did. Some of the Arab scholars required the circles never overlap. All of that lead to a calculation nightmare and THAT'S what finally killed geocentric astronomy. From crap a flower bloomed. 8)
LOTS of what we do works that way.
—————
And.
I don't believe for a moment that Rand worshipped the market. What she espoused looked more like "little brained people should follow big brained people… who would never work for government because they aren't that stupid. Follow unless you can also be big brained."
I say this because of the way her ideas catch fire in the minds of 20-something bachelors. Her fans NEEDED to believe they Understood A Truth about the universe because being a 20-something bachelor can otherwise be pretty depressing.
Ayn Rand's rational ideals don't describe real humans any better than most economists do.
You’re correct re Elon: he could have been a fellow traveler to progressives (the Right prefers the designation LIB’RAL) yet their Christian-like puritanism compels them to wish for a leftist version of ‘new heaven and new earth’—goes back thousands of yrs.
Besides, we must pretend to be more optimistic than we are, as the public becomes too discouraged with unvarnished truth.
The term is diplomacy.
Alfred Differ: Real advancements are very messy things when examined in detail.
That was my point. It's not nearly enough to just 'do what works' or go for the 'easy money'. I once got fired from a job for arguing that their shallow 'results oriented' design was doomed to fail in a rapidly evolving ecosystem, and that they needed a deeper process model. Less math, more physics. They did fail a year after I left (though possibly due to other factors I knew nothing about). Johnny can eat for a day on 'cut&paste', but he can eat for a lifetime on computational thinking.
On Ayn Rand, maybe I didn't fib - perhaps I truly do know nothing about her ideology. Suits me fine. As Steve Jobs said to Woz* in PIRATES OF SILICON VALLEY (1999), we must be careful which doors we open lest all kinds of badness bursts in.
* I do love Apple history, because nobody with a heart is fully immune to romanticism.
SF is never about the future, it's always about the present.
HG Wells "War of the Worlds" was not about a Martian invasion.
It was about European colonists committing genocide to the aborigines in Tasmania.
I disagree, DP. Human authors can't avoid using what they know to invent stories and they can't completely avoid using a whatever-century-they-live-in human-centric view no matter how hard they try, but they can very easily write about an imaginary future. Or even a future that they think may or will happen, to one degree or another.
Sometimes an author simply wants to tell a story. Of course, even then whatever story they create is informed by their experiences. From one point of view what a story is about can be interpreted in as many different ways as their are readers. But to answer the question with some semblance of objectivity the only accurate answer is what the author's intent was. If they intended to write an allegory about real events set in a science fiction context, then that's what the story is about. If they merely intended to write the best story they could about an alien invasion, then that's what the story is about, regardless of what ideas they may have cribbed from real history.
DP:
SF is never about the future, it's always about the present.
Or at least it's always about the recognizable human condition.
Darrell E:
and they can't completely avoid using a whatever-century-they-live-in human-centric view no matter how hard they try
That's not a failure on the author's part. Some purists complain that real-life alien lifeforms would be unrecognizable as lifeforms, or wouldn't converse in English, but a story that wasn't recognizable as being about something pertinent to the audience would be pretty meaningless.
"Darmok" wasn't about the fact that an alien race conversed exclusively in allusions and metaphors. It was about the fact that, for the most part, we communicate in allusions and metaphors.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/31/opinion/republican-candidates-china-russia.html
This is the Republican base. And its antipathy to China helps explain why many of the right-wing pundits and politicians often described as isolationists aren’t isolationists at all. They’re Asia Firsters. Tucker Carlson, who said last week that American policymakers hate Russia because it’s a “Christian country,” insisted in 2019 that America’s “main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in national polls, wants the United States to team up with Moscow against Beijing, too.
Tucker Carlson and Vivik Ramaswamy are living in a dream (nightmare) world. Even if their "Russia good; China bad" worldview had merit, the fact is that Russia and China are nominally aligned against western hegemony. Why would Moscow join us in an alliance against China?
AB: the jabbering lunacy of the far left knows no bounds. Supposedly ‘sympathetic’… they laid into a powerful man with Aspergers… something any idiot could tell you is a dumb idea. While the mavens of the right did with Musk what they had done with Trump… flattery, flattery, flattery. In many cases, it works even better than blackmail, especially since I wager Elon is blackmail-proof.
Alfred: the thing to add about rand, that I keep repeating and no one else seems ever to have noticed, is her spite toward children and reproduction. ONCE in all of her works are children mentioned, with some derisiveness. Some “life-oriented’ philosophy.
DP: “SF is never about the future, it's always about the present”
Come on guy. Hyper generalization is just silly. Want counter-examples? We’d be here all day.
“Or at least it's always about the recognizable human condition.”
Not even that. Bah. See OTHERNESS.
---
Re UFOs... Jesus, the most recent 'whistle blower' is an even worse jibberer than I had infered from the news. See https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4900
SO... Mussolini had a 'crashed ship' in 1933? Shared it with the Japanese and Nazis, and... what? Not one scientist from any of those three countries is known to have disappeared into the kind of emergency research program that such a 'find' would have merited or incited, nor was there a single suspicious leap in any kind of technolgy. The turbopumps and gyros developed by Von Braun for the V2 were clever increments on Goddard... and just increments. Likewise when the Americans supposedly seized all the materials, this is just an extension of the fevered-silly "Roswell" stuff. Though now it's NINETY years that 'the govt' has somehow kept this crap secret without ANY plausible reason to do so, while running 'research' programs longer than a human lifespan, summoning thousands of the best human minds to a ManhattanProject scale effort with zero outcomes and zero leaks....
It takes a special kind of jibbering-moronic fetish to swallow crap like this. And mind you I am "Mr. Aliens," having studied such notionf in science, SETI, NASA and innumerable science fiction thought experiments. And that is why I am so sick of the UFO nonsense. Not because contact isn't possible! (See EXISTENCE! http://youtu.be/wzr-DSDMkJM ). But because all of these scenarios are insipid, time-wasting and DUMB!
If aliens or probes ARE listening in on our Internet (as I depict in EXISTENCE), they must be laughing, or shaking their heads, sadly, over this recurring mania.
Larry Hart,
"That's not a failure on the author's part."
Yep. That was my point.
Adam Smith & Marx and Ayn Rand walk into a bar graph.
Smith: 'Look at that ever increasing wealth.'
Marx: 'From exploiting the masses.'
Rand: 'Nice display. I'd have sex with the printer.'
She'd want the printer to be ROUGH... but wear protection.
From William Taylor. Who oughta have a job with some late night comedy show.
Dr Brin:
no one else seems ever to have noticed, is her spite toward children and reproduction.
Oh, I noticed when I first read her. How her heroic characters are simply bursting with sexual appetite, but never give a thought to what might issue from such unions. It's one reason I think of her novels as adolescent fiction. Another related reason for that is that her heroes give no thought to what happens when they die.
Strangely enough, she presents an explicit conversation between Rearden and Dagny where they discuss the notion that even a simple pleasure of a good meal can't be enjoyed by productive people as its own end, but only in the sense of what purpose the energy from the food will be put to. Which seems in direct conflict with the notion that sex is a good in and of itself, not only without regard to consequences, but without even thought of consequences.
Rand: 'Nice display. I'd have sex with the printer.'
Heh. On first reading, I thought that meant sex on the printing machine.
She'd want the printer to be ROUGH... but wear protection.
Kinda, but her studly heroes and voluptuous heroines don't seem to even use protection. They simply don't conceive. It's adolescent fantasy of gratification without responsibility.
Illustrates the confusion these people have between metaphysics and materialism. They’d have to live the frugal life citizens lived before the 20th century to realize this wish-dream:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/unhyphenated-conservatism/
Elon Musk for President
I agree with Dr. Brin & second the nomination. Elon Musk has my vote, as does any man who threatens to sue the ADL for billions of dollars over allegations of antisemitism.
It reminds me of another such tireless crusader against antisemitism who once filed suit against the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles for similar reasons.
Could it be that EM and DB are related?
Best
_____
As Ayn Rand rape jokes go, I'd have gone with a 'Rearden' reference, as I think that the film 'Victor/Victoria' was loosely based on zer autobiography. But, I didn't because of an unwillingness to risk cancellation over misogynic or anti-LGBT+ slurs.
@Dr. Brin: I just finished "The Transparent Society" and found it interesting.
Do you have any thoughts about an updated 25th Anniversary edition?
Cheers,
Keith
locumranch:
Elon Musk has my vote, as does any man who threatens to sue the ADL for billions of dollars over allegations of antisemitism.
You make it sound as if Elon is accusing the Anti-Defamation League of antisemitism, when you know the opposite is true. He has turned Xitter* into (among other things) a cesspool of antisemitism, and now throws a tantrum at the exodus of participants and advertisers which is nothing more than the inevitable consequence.
But, I didn't because of an unwillingness to risk cancellation over misogynic or anti-LGBT+ slurs.
Who are you kidding? You'd proudly wear cancellation as a badge of honour.
* Hal Sparks insists that, using Chinese transliteration, the name above would be pronounced as if it begins with "sh".
KD: "@Dr. Brin: I just finished "The Transparent Society" and found it interesting.
Do you have any thoughts about an updated 25th Anniversary edition?"
Thought about it for the 20th anniv. At nmy age I have to pick my time sinks. No one (or very few) seems interested in fundamentals of how we got this distinct civilization,
For all of his deliberately outrageous responses to lefty idiots who think it productive to screech and shriek at an asbergite, I am pretty sure Elon has not drunk the full koolaid. Sometime he will tire of the gushing (paid) flatterers. And Locum is not fit to clean his shoes.
I am pretty sure Elon has not drunk the full koolaid.
I most sincerely hope that you are right!
The other "wunderkind" - Like Gates and Jobs - have ridden one horse to billions
Musk has ridden two - Tesla and SpaceX
Arguably Tesla is actually several! - as is SpaceX
And he still has some smaller horses in his stables - Neuralink may end up as big as Tesla
Clarification
Elon Musk has NOT done all of that himself - instead he has "unleashed the beast" and helped several thousand engineers to do 99% of the work
Hal Sparks insists that, using Chinese transliteration, the name above would be pronounced as if it begins with "sh".
"x" in pinyin is close to "sh", but not quite. The tongue is in a different position — it's a sound we don't have in English.
To make the pinyin "x-" sound, try to make a "sh" sound while the tip of your tongue is down, below your lower front teeth. The middle of your tongue should rise to the roof of your mouth to make the sound. This should feel weird, because this is not something you normally do in English.
One way you know you're making the "x-" sound correctly is that you can comfortably smile while you make it, whereas it's a bit difficult to do this with the "sh" sound.
https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/pronunciation/The_%22j%22_%22q%22_and_%22x%22_sounds
" I am pretty sure Elon has not drunk the full koolaid. Sometime he will tire of the gushing (paid) flatterers."
Have you met the guy? Every bit of his public life and how he runs his companies suggests the exact opposite. He is the smartest guy he knows and he lets everyone know it. And he's quick to fire anyone around him who might challenge that.
I call it "X-Twitter". It illustrates an adage:
A fool and his money are soon parted.
Twitter - X - or whatever
I tend to agree that it is probably going to lose Elon Musk a LOT of money - possibly as much as 10% of his wealth
But I would NOT bet my money on that!
To put it into the terms an ordinary guy could use
Musk buying Twitter is exactly the same as me buying a crashed Tesla with the intention of making it into a Hot Rod
Musk was pissed when the money men took PayPal from him - he envisioned a much much more comprehensive service - probably including OGH's micropayments
I suspect he intends using Twitter as the basis for some sort of "One Ring to Rule them All" App so that we won't needs lots of Apps and passwords and crap
Is he going to succeed?? - dunno - but I won't bet my money against him
scidata,
That was my point.
Okay, but…
It's not nearly enough to just 'do what works' or go for the 'easy money'.
The thing is we don't all agree on 'what just works'. (Even after we find out.) As your story about being fired for arguing about their design shows, we can reasonably disagree on what works. Humanity advances fastest when we explore all of them and discover 'what just fails'. If enough of us believe a test actually fails, it doesn't get copied (much) by people of the next generation of testers.
That's really how Ptolemy's cosmos finally failed. The beautiful idea was revealed to be matched up against a nightmarish calculation problem. Kepler's twist on Copernicus was revealed to be easier for making astrology predictions and many chose to let Ptolemy go. It was a few decades before anyone came up with a beautiful idea that delivered Kepler's model.
The best argument I ever saw for why we must liberate each other to try and potentially fail is that people WILL and in that we are all better off.
———
As for the money, I just treat it as a signal for how strongly someone wants me to try their way instead of mine. There's nothing wrong with thinking their way will fail, but one shouldn't take their money if one isn't willing to prove it one way or the other. That's what they are actually paying for.
David,
Re Rand's "spite toward children and reproduction"…
Yep. I'm mostly on your side for that. I note there ARE guys who go through life wanting sex but no children, but not large groups of us who can manage to get along to some degree.
I remember a 'bell' going off in my head much like in the Highlander stories. I was watching a young father dealing with an infant with no one around to help him. Gong! Suddenly I wanted one. I sat at my table stunned for quite some time… and watched.
I can accept a story where characters never hear that bell, but if large numbers of them don't then those characters aren't human. At least… not anymore.
———
Sometime he will tire of the gushing (paid) flatterers.
When they fail to get him to Mars… or some other goal about which he actually cares.
From what I've seen he likes the attention. Good and Bad. But… he often gets that without having to pay a dime.
Alan Brooks said...
You’re correct re Elon: he could have been a fellow traveler to progressives (the Right prefers the designation LIB’RAL) yet their Christian-like puritanism compels them to wish for a leftist version of ‘new heaven and new earth’—goes back thousands of yrs.
First, I would point out that there are a lot of different types of "progressives", from the "utopia now" types to pragmatists.
Second, I would suggest that the chances of Musk being (and staying) "a fellow traveler to progressives" were pretty vanishingly small. Yes, it may be true that "the far left" was unwise to attack Musk, as David wrote.
But even so, it seems clear that Musk is not someone who accepts any kind of criticism, at
least from those he considers beneath him, and being a "progressive" - or even a "fellow traveler" - means that one will receive criticism. This is not only because "left liberals", "progressives", and "far leftists" all criticize each other, but also because groups are internally critical (well, except for some of the nuttier extreme left groups).
As David suggests, what was required for Musk was/is "flattery, flattery, flattery..." - and that is not something you are likely to find among progressives. Even if some subset were willing, it would be impossible to enforce conformity among all progressives.
Alfred Differ:
I note there ARE guys who go through life wanting sex but no children,
That was me in my twenties. It was actually something I liked about Atlas Shrugged. I remember thinking, "In most stories by now, Dagny would have become pregnant." The fact that the story finished without that happening was a pleasant surprise.
And even so, I recognized that that was a kind of adolescent wish dream.
Gong! Suddenly I wanted one.
That's not what it was like for me. If it wasn't for my wife, I would have been happy to go through life childless. But once we had a child, it was like, "Hey, all those people who tried to convince me fatherhood is wonderful weren't lying after all."
Gregory,
Was referring to far-far leftists, whom the Right is lambasting hourly, no, second-by-second, all over the world. The Right considers those who aren’t far-leftists to be *goo goo* leftists. Don’t argue with me about it, tell it to them. And then leave their presence—because you won’t move them an inch.
Have to go, time for jury duty today; maybe decades from now criminals will be rehabilitated. Perhaps by the end of the century?
Alfred Differ: we must liberate each other to try and potentially fail
You're preaching to the choir. The CIO of Canada (amongst many other titles) wrote "Canadian Failures: Stories of Building Toward Success" (2017) which makes the case brilliantly. Failure is a close cousin to criticism (FITOKATE?)
I learned a long time ago that people's eyes glaze over at success stories, but they are usually transfixed by failure ones. That's why I'm so popular at parties.
@scidata,
There was a Simpsons bit about that.
Homer: "I wonder why stories of degradation and humiliation make you more popular."
Moe: "I don't know. They just do."
Elon has also erected more rooftop solar than all but a few in the field.
"Elon Musk has NOT done all of that himself - instead he has "unleashed the beast" and helped several thousand engineers to do 99% of the work..."
And?
"Have you met the guy?"
Dinner at his house, twice. 2nd time he asked me to "bring the smartest Mars people you know, and I brought two top folks from JPL... + Greg Benford and Steve Barnes. Not one of them kowtowed. All challenged ERM's challenges and he seemed to love it.
OTOH we've had little contact since, so...
Alfred Differ 12:27 am:
About that bell: in one episode of the "Sopranos", Christopher was at a gas station, bummed out that he had to choose whom to betray: his true love Adriana or his mob boss Tony. He saw a cruddy family car with mom and dad and kids. That's when a bell went off in his head, but not the one you heard; so he went to Tony and betrayed Adriana. Chase, the director of the series, made a practice of giving his mobsters a chance at redemption, which they consistently reject.
Re: Elon
And you have to be on the edge to suffer an expensive RUD that takes out your entire launchpad, dozens of Raptors, a booster, and a starship, then have another entire (improved) set ready to go months later. All while continuing other launches (some manned), Tesla, Neuralink, etc, etc. A 'normal' person would be a puddle on the floor by now. Perhaps not a superman, but definitely several sigma from the mean.
With all the discussion of Musk I'm reminded of a story about Fermi and Groves (from John Keegan's The Face of Battle):
As to the influence and genius of great generals — there is a story that Enrico Fermi once asked Gen. Leslie Groves how many generals might be called “great.” Groves said about three out of every 100. Fermi asked how a general qualified for the adjective, and Groves replied that any general who had won five major battles in a row might safely be called great. This was in the middle of World War II. Well, then, said Fermi, considering that the opposing forces in most theaters of operation are roughly equal, the odds are one of two that a general will win a battle, one of four that he will win two battles in a row, one of eight for three, one of sixteen for four, one of thirty-two for five. “So you are right, general, about three out of every 100. Mathematical probability, not genius.”
I'm also reminded of Gould's views on the role of contingency in evolution, and how the role of chance is often under-appreciated in evolutionary biology (and history). On a more a pop-sci note, Malcolm Gladwell's argument that the Great Man theory of history ignores (or steals the credit from) a lot of supporting characters who get written out of the story.
Given that there are a lot of tech startups, most of which aren't runaway successes, what is the role of chance in the success of any tech venture? Has anyone tested the null hypothesis? (I can see this being a difficult analysis, what with network effects, the mob psychology of business, and so on.)
On the edge? Heh.😏
That’s a strong case of belief-in-self. Lots of people have it, but few of them are backed by gigabucks. Ego helps bias the scales by which we balance our lives.
Okay. No more preaching at the choir… until next time.😏
Robert:
"Hal Sparks insists that, using Chinese transliteration, the name above would be pronounced as if it begins with "sh"."
"x" in pinyin is close to "sh", but not quite. The tongue is in a different position — it's a sound we don't have in English.
Was I too subtle in trying to coyly suggest that Xitter could be pronounced as "shitter"?
Intriguing, if it works:
https://www.centauri-dreams.org/2023/09/06/interstellar-path-helicitys-bid-for-in-space-fusion/
I like the idea of ion jets firing into a linear accelerator.
“Dinner at his house, twice…”
I was hoping you’d say something like this. It’s encouraging, maybe he’s not become a complete “richest man in the world” monster.
I just know him from the employee side. You have to be a bit of a masochist to join one of his companies if there’s any chance you’ll have contact with him.
https://www.thestreet.com/investing/tesla-worries-heat-up-as-major-exec-goes-mia#:~:text=Besides%20electric%20vehicles%2C%20Tesla%20is,executives%20that%20report%20to%20Musk.
Robert the Fermi-Groves story is clever & amusing and bears no relationship at all to real life arcs of battles won and lost.
To claim that the Falcon 9's utter and profound change of space launch has anything whatsoever to do with chance reveals a complete lack of understanding. No one has been able to come anywhere close to duplicating the capability that gave SpaceX utter dominance of orbital launch and - while slashing prices - providing ERM with the cash flow to engage in whims... one of them highly questionable.
My first Sci Fi Author was Jules Verne, and what I took from him is that while scientific progress and technological revolutions can make the world a better place, and often do so, there is always the chance that they end in the wrong hands.
Nemo, Robur, Harry Killer, the billionaires of Propeller Island - it won't be difficult to find their modern day counterparts.
Hi Dr Brin
My comment about "unleashed the beast" was because a large part of Elon Musk's success has been in simply HELPING his engineers make improvements while in almost every other large company the senior management works to PREVENT their engineers from changing anything
He appears to be willing to to say "oops we got that wrong" - while every other senior executive would be boiled in oil BEFORE admitting to a mistake
@duncan: And I Always thought that to be a specifically German or French ailment :-)
Was I too subtle in trying to coyly suggest that Xitter could be pronounced as "shitter"?
If pronouncing the "x" as it is in pinyin then it would be more like "tsitter" with a nearly-silent "t".
I get the joke you're trying to make, but it relies on treating the "x" as if it was chinese, then mispronouncing it to make the joke work.
Blogger Oger said...
My first Sci Fi Author was Jules Verne, and what I took from him is that while scientific progress and technological revolutions can make the world a better place, and often do so, there is always the chance that they end in the wrong hands.
I'm not convinced Nemo was the wrong hands. From what I remember, he was an anti-colonialist, and a villain only because he used he super-science to oppose the colonial powers on behalf of the downtrodden.
Oger: Their modern day counterparts span the globe and they are not genius inventors like Nemo and Robur. They are mostly inheritance brats. Hedge parasites. Casino mafiosi. Murder princes. "Ex" commissars. Carbon barons. Media lie-moguls.
I ask that they be dealt with and tamed before we go screeching at fellows who gave us self-landing rockets and advanced the electric car by 15 (I assert) years.
I thought the remade Nemo in LEAGUE OF EXTR. GENTLEMEN was the best part of a flick with several good/flawed parts/
I really wish I had this handy as a young bullied student, bludgeoned by mathematics:
"Quantum phenomena do not occur in a Hilbert space, they occur in a laboratory"
- Asher Peres
And Nemo showed reverence for the oceans in a time of war and whaling (we're looking at you Ned).
Dr Brin:
the remade Nemo in LEAGUE OF EXTR. GENTLEMEN
I never saw the movie, but Nemo was a very interesting character in the graphic novels. They all were, actually.
…SpaceX utter dominance of orbital launch…
I ran into a stat the other day when SpaceX broke its own yearly launch record. Apparently… if you add up the mass put in orbit this year, 80% of it was put up there by F9's. This includes satellites that would nominally compete with StarLink.
Just yesterday I ran into an indirectly related story. Two new ViaSat birds put up this year are having serious problems. Serious as in 'the birds could soon be declared non-functional.' If that happens it becomes a multi-hundred million dollar insurance event. Possibly $1B. This is a BIG deal because ViaSat competes with StarLink and might be caught in a trap where its birds are too big to underwrite against losses.
SpaceX and ViaSat already gripe about each other to regulators over the usual technical issues… risk of collision, disrespect for radio licensing requirements, etc. What comes next, though, could be sudden and involve in-flight Wi-FI and military communications. A few big insurers closed their doors to underwriting space risks years ago. Those who remain might wind up having more to say about the future of space than people realize insurers can manage. IF they lower their underwriting cap, they'll all but kill the big birds and indirectly drive up the launch rate for smaller rockets… like F9.
———
Just today I started following (on Xitter) a SpaceX engineer involved in advancing the F9 design. They aren't done. Don't expect F9 to vanish when the BFR is flying. They are already certain it won't go away soon.
Lfred I have friends in BOTH companies...
Makes sense.
I've got a few friends from companies that had to file for bankruptcy including that version that leads to all the assets being sold off when the shop folds. I've learned to hope that surviving companies will recognize talent and snap up people when they become available. It works occasionally. 8)
Don’t read this, it’s a familiar lament; look at the photo and who the author is:
https://spectator.org/american-despotism/
I was too busy to get in on the last cycle, that dealing with the Ukraine. Mostly its been good busy....I scored a victory over meaningless paperwork of such magnitude that I'm tempted to style myself in the Old Roman fashion as Tacitus Bureaucraticus!
But to resume serious mode.
What is your perception of an end game for the Russia/Ukraine conflict? I assume everyone expects a negotiated settlement, I mean...Kiev is not going to march on Moscow. But the Devil resides at his usual address.
Will this be another Korea, where clear aggression became a stalemate and eventually the status quo ante was accepted as anything else ran the risk of nuclear war.
Or will we go for some sort of Libya, Syria, Balkans sort of deal where nobody is really happy and continue to kill each other at various levels of anarchy?
I'm looking for details. Status of Crimea and Donbas. What to do with ethnic Russians in areas you want to hand to Ukraine, and I suppose vice versa. If you are planning on some kinetic removal from office of the head of a nuclear armed power I'd say that is a level of danger never before attempted, but be honest if you mean it.
And along the way....what are the guardrails? Our commander in chief said no way we'd send F16s....and now we will. Cluster bombs and in today's news depleted uranium rounds are now okeedokey. Once you say at all costs - and I'm interested in where all our money goes, but that's another story - where do you stop? I suspect we have some mustard gas squirreled away somewhere.
Look, we all have our political philosophies. There is a natural tendency to trust those who we consider to be the Good and Noble Guys and Gals.
But.......do you have limits.....?
Just being Contrary, which will likely have its usual effect...
Tacitus
Tacitus:
I'm looking for details. Status of Crimea and Donbas. What to do with ethnic Russians in areas you want to hand to Ukraine, and I suppose vice versa.
Your bias is showing. Those areas were all part of Ukraine since the breakup of the Soviet Union until they were occupied by force. It's not a matter of taking from Russia to "hand to Ukraine."
Ethnic Russians lived there all along, and I'd say they're welcome to remain if they wish. They're just not welcome to an occupying Russian army.
Once you say at all costs - and I'm interested in where all our money goes, but that's another story - where do you stop?
Cynically? When it's obvious we're in a Vietnam-like quagmire, throwing blood and treasure into a buzzsaw with no reasonable path to repelling the invader. Your line of questioning seems to assume we're already there, whereas the facts on the ground look otherwise.
Ideally? When the invader has been routed and made to understand the costs of repeated actions are too high.
But.......do you have limits.....?
Do you have limits on supporting law enforcement or border security? Do you ever think that controlling crime in the streets or illegal immigration costs so much that we might as well just let the bad guys win?
If the difference is keeping our own homes safe rather than some foreigners, then whatever happened to "fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here"? If Russia takes Ukraine, do you not think the former Soviet bloc nations will be next? If a Russian invasion of Poland or the Baltic states invokes Article 5, will you blame Russia for provoking the next World War, or will you insist that we abandon NATO or else the war is our fault?
I have to admit, I never saw you as a "blame America" type.
Just being Contrary, which will likely have its usual effect...
Well, I'm telling you what I think. Care to put your own ideas on the line instead of just asking the questions and assuming that our answers are wrong?
Larry
You are being uncharacteristically chippy today. I won't take offense. I know you to be a moral, good person with sincere beliefs. Perhaps this question brings those two poles into conflict.
I will of course give you my take on what a peace treaty would look like but having posed the question don't you think its fair to give those so inclined a chance to answer? And I will do so based on at least a moderate familiarity with the current situation and its history going back many bleak years.
I'll leave it at that. But don't assume you know my opinions on this matter in advance or my reasons for holding said opinions. On the conservative side of the political spectrum there are diverse ideas on this point. On the Progressive side, not so much.
Tacitus
The only peace treaty I imagine would be worth any spit involves returning Ukraine territories and the elimination of all basing rights for Russia along the Black Sea regions they do not directly own.
The way this ends is when Putin is made to look too weak. His own people will toss him out a window and then peace can be discussed.
As for US involvement, I'm generally for it short of boots on the ground. Ukraine DID agree to de-nuke their armed forces based on a promise (and some cash), so I think the US has an obligation to meet.
-------
I'm inclined to sit back and let anger in Ukraine be what drives any future truces or peace treaties. As long as they want to fight the fight will go on anyway, so there's not much point trying to play referee.
Tacitus:
You are being uncharacteristically chippy today.
Blame it on COVID. Seriously, although I'm on the recovery end at this point.
But don't assume you know my opinions on this matter in advance
You seemed to anticipate our responses too, so fair is fair.
Of course, I might be mistaken about that. In which case, it sure seemed that way to me.
Alfred Differ:
elimination of all basing rights for Russia along the Black Sea regions they do not directly own.
After a peace on Ukraine's terms, I'd be willing to allow Russia some sort of long term lease allowing them to keep using Sevastopol as a face-saving way of avoiding nuclear war. That would be the limit of my concession to the aggressor, if it were up to me, that is.
Tacitus asks about the endgame of the EXISTENTIAL Ukraine-Russia conflict, as if he expects a sincere (and/or thoughtful) answer from the collection of iconoclasts, conformists, elitists & autists who lurk here, so I will step in with a mostly pragmatic answer:
The Ukraine-Russia Conflict will end rather abruptly, right after the US Elections in 2024, as do the majority of most western pro-democracy conflicts once the so-called 'existential threat' against our current ruling class ends, as is the established historical pattern since Vietnam.
Do you even remember the Sandinistas?
For overthrowing a US-supported Nicaraguan dictatorship, they were labelled the EXISTENTIAL THREAT to Latin American 'democracy' back in 1979, leading to all types of contra-legal US shenanigans & scandals, until democracy was declared 'restored' in 1990, followed by total Sandinista control (as of 2022) that went completely unnoticed, unreported & unlamented by the MSM.
Now, Ukraine faces the same fate.
Public interest will wane, followed by some new cause célèbre & a ratings-driven collapse of mainstream media coverage, leaving both disagreeable warring parties to their own uninteresting & unreported devices.
That's the beauty of the EXISTENTIAL designation for, once declared, things like rules, limits & behavioral conventions no longer apply, and this holds especially true both at home & abroad.
Best
_____
As Larry_H claims Covid, I'm sending him my hopes, my prayers & some decidedly GOOD news, as both NPR & the CDC report that a new Covid booster (which will soon exist) will doubtlessly be "highly effective" and "100% safe", if not mandatory.
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/09/05/1197707351/lab-data-suggests-new-covid-booster-will-protect-against-worrisome-variant
So, Vax Up, people, lest the powers that be declare you an existential threat, like most republicans and/or red state americans.
Of course Pence worries. Since Reagan, the GOP had two priorities -extend 'supply side" (SS) tax grifts for the aristocracy and slash the IRS. Look at actual legislation passed by lazy GOP-controlled Congresses. Other than SS grifts &slashing IRS, they DID almost nothing! Certainly not - when they held every lever of power - Trump's "wall"!
But things are changing. And now (as in CABARET) those oligarchs are wondering "what if we can no longer control them?" What if MAGAS decide to demand action on their dog whistles? Already we see it happening re abortion, reaming out education, and glorifying both Nazis and the Kremlin. Next? Torching science, the FBI, Intel agencies and the military officer corps?
The party’s 'conservatives’ are now desperately afraid of their populist-roused brownshirts. Pence wants a GOP that continues to service oligarchy by winning gerrymandered/cheated elections. What his masters do NOT want is either a party self-torched down to ashes by fanaticism or else a victorious Trump 2.0 burning Reichstags and declaring a national "Nehemia Scudder" cult.
Reaping what you sowed, a bit, Mike?
https://www.npr.org/2023/09/06/1197887694/mike-pence-donald-trump-populism-conservatism-free-market-republican-party
locumranch:
some decidedly GOOD news, as both NPR & the CDC report that a new Covid booster (which will soon exist) will doubtlessly be "highly effective" and "100% safe", if not mandatory.
I gather this is sarcasm, meant to invoke the dreaded "I'm from the government, and I'm here to help you." I'm not sure what the danger is supposed to be, though. I'll be taking the new vaccine as quickly as it's available in the hopes of avoiding a repetition of the past two weeks of my life.
So, Vax Up, people, lest the powers that be declare you an existential threat,
Again, my reason for vaxxing is not because someone is making me do it. After all, I've been getting flu vaccines every year since they became commercially available around 1995. "I've had so many vaccines before. In very many ways, it's just one more."
Fine with me if you and other Republicans decline. Just leaves more for me.
like most republicans and/or red state americans.
You said it. :)
From his perspective, down on the ranch (if that is where he is; it appears so) it’s safe—if he’s careful.
Tacitus asks re the Ukraine end game. Yeah I see this a lot among his fellow Ostriches… who cannot QUITE swallow the Foxite line that Putin is a lovely fellow… but who do need to rationalize continuing connection to the pro-Moscow cult.
The end game would seem obvious, to me. Crush your enemies, Drive them before you and hear the lamentations of…
No. What seems obvious is the thing Putin repeatedly expresses fear of… a repeat of the 1917 Soldier’s Revolt. RF troops, demoralized and furious, turning to march on the Kremlin. Putin refers to it repeatedly and it was why the Wagner brief rebellion terrified him.
This is why the AFU’s strategy for months has not been territory but instead inflicting maximum casualties on RF troop concentrations and materiel. If they succeed at this and then cutting off and retaking Kherson Oblast and most of Zaporizhia, then SOMEONE in Moscow will sue for peace. Ideally amid the Impaler’s smoldering vapors.
Zelensky will want full return of all territories lost since 2014…
… And he knows he won’t get that, entirely. Instead, what’s likely is a ten year neutralization of Luhansk, Donbas and Crimea, with all property and homes returned to prior owners and refugees welcome home and recent ‘settlers’ to leave… followed by massive aid for hearts/minds followed by plebiscites in each area.
You raise AFU marching to Moscow in order to pose an absurd strawman.
Cluster bombs and uranium shells will be used in areas filled with millions of RF mines. Seriously? An aggressor plants MILLIONS of mines, ripping apart a lovely land for generations, and you fret about… that?
You think there is moral relativism in this thing? Vlad P is the speartip of vast evil around the world. If that spear is broken, many current insanities may ease, from Syria and Libya to Venezuela.
As for US expenses? Seriously? Every year we ‘spend’ vastly more upon Supply Side – never ever once worked – tax cuts for oligarchy than the entire defense budget. JUST fully funding the IRS to audit the rich will erase most of the deficit.
Under the surface, what this war has done is terrify any power that was even thinking of taking on the West. ALL our weapon systems work well and all systems based on RF designs suck. And that includes half the stuff built up by an eastern Rising Power. US procurement turns out to have been extremely competent, by the very same Officer Corps that the Confederate Cult now wages open war against. And wartime field evaluations are changing the next generation weapon systems as we speak. While Ukraine uses up stocks of older Western weaponry, they are TEATING the new stuff for us as we order production.
Inability to see the win-win… through eyes welling with tears over the death … is kinda sad.
Shucks, I am the consistent one here. I opposed Soviet-KGB efforts to harm us before 91, as I would have the czars and as I NOW oppose the the new czars who were propped into place by the Bush-Cheney clan, in the greatest US treason since Ft. Sumter.
. What about you, sir? Now that they erect statues to Nicholas II, they are suddenly okay?
--
Took a quick glimpse at this spew: “For overthrowing a US-supported Nicaraguan dictatorship, they were labelled the EXISTENTIAL THREAT to Latin American 'democracy' back in 1979, leading to all types of contra-legal US shenanigans & scandals, until democracy was declared 'restored' in 1990, followed by total Sandinista control (as of 2022) that went completely unnoticed, unreported & unlamented by the MSM.”
Ah, I see, so you are anti-reagan now. Figures.
typo: "While Ukraine uses up stocks of older Western weaponry, they are TESTING the new stuff for us as we order production."
I know "Vlad the Impaler" has historical connotations, but that's in Transylvania. I prefer "Vlad the Defenestrator".
You have heard how Republicans and/or red-state Americans have been dying from COVID at a greater rate than everyone else, right? ;)
Alan Brooks:
From his perspective, down on the ranch (if that is where he is; it appears so) it’s safe—if he’s careful.
Honestly, I don't care whether he takes a vaccine or not.
My point is that I will do so as soon as possible, and it's not because the big bad government has a gun to my head.
Dr Brin:
Reaping what you sowed, a bit, Mike?
I'm sure he's comforted by the conviction that Jesus will sort it out.
Dr. Brin: you [scidata] could take on the proposal in “Why Johnny Can’t Code.” One person pushing that HARD might get somewhere
Conclusion of WJCC: "they [the big players in modern computing] seem bent on providing information consumption devices, not tools that teach creative thinking and technological mastery"
I was steeped in the 8-bit world, including the 8052 and BASIC Stamp, long before I first read WJCC. I've written several BASIC interpreters from scratch (I wanted to prove I was just as smart as Bill Gates). My problem is lack of industry cred - I wouldn't even get in the door (despite once being a Microsoft Certified Trainer). Mention 6502/8086 computers and people start arranging your spot at the retirement home.
I do push hard for computational thinking from first principles. It's even possible to write one's very own interpreter in FORTH (grade 8 level project). Now that's jalopy tinkering level stuff. Currently though, fashion and fluff dominate. The "Top 100 AI Influencers" on this month's cover of TIME is downright embarrassing. I read part of the issue and it appears to have been written by ChatGPT. I wouldn't be surprised if they announced this in a few months to trumpet the revolution with suitable flourish. What dreck. They're the ones who are stuck in the past, not me. How did journalism get so lazy and stoopid?
I write, blog, and even talk to bureaucrats occasionally. I do have two things going for me. One is that I'm not selling anything, not even consulting services. The second is my chiseled good looks.
Loc might outlive us all:
he’s as tenacious as a
doberman.
Alan Brooks:
Loc might outlive us all
Hah! That'll show him.
First my perspective. Dying empires are dangerous. So are rising ones for that matter. I view much of our current world woes through the lens of 1914 when diplomats royally screwed the pooch. Would people be dying to this day over the post WWI boundaries if people used a little sense back then? Who knows.
I think Russia is living in the past to the extent that they won't give up the Crimea. How important it is to have a derelict navy operating in the Black Sea is highly debatable, but they've been intransigent on this point and I think they'd be willing to fight a war of attrition for a very long time over it. Expecting heroic officers to step up in Moscow is rather magical thinking. It might happen but don't bet tens of thousands of lives on it.
I think the best attainable goal would be pre-war borders. Disbanding of all irregular militias. At this point its probably not realistic to have Ukraine announce it won't join Nato for at least ten years but a tacit acknowledgment would be the subtext. Had they said this earlier how many lives would have been saved? Russia would remain under economic sanctions for years in recognition of the massive damage they caused.
You could take a harder line. Maybe the Donbas is still worth something and Ukes should get it back. But while I don't want to "reward evil" I also don't want avoidable catastrophe. Somebody bombs the Chernyoble containment building. A major infrastructure/cyber attack. Worse stuff.
The problem is that I don't hear any serious call for negotiations. Until that happens the fighting just goes on. I'm not as cynical as locum but of course there is politics all over this.
On the matter of what we supply the Ukes, call me old fashioned but I believe we have moral obligations. You damage our image in the world by deploying cluster bombs and such. We are supposed to be better than that. Oh, and the issue much hyped a few years back about combat readiness of the US military? Between slumping recruitment and short stock of ammo, this ain't helping.
This is a needless war. It should end with as few long term consequences, as few widows orphans and lost limbs as possible. That the dead and wounded are not Americans does not change the morality of this.
Larry, hope you feel better soon.
David, suggesting I am pro Moscow is offensive. I doubt this bothers you.
Tacitus
Tacitus, you are both astute and ironic. The hope-filled early 20th Century was sent to hell by two grandchildren of Queen Victoria, one of whom is having statues raised to him by the next would-be czar.
I am not fatacizing Kremlin officer saviors. If the Russian front collapses in Zaporizhia and Kherson, do you honestly think there will be no repercussions?
“I think the best attainable goal would be pre-war borders.”
Pre 2021? Or pre 2014? You expect us to allow Putin that reward? After invading and laying waste to a neighboring country and killing hundreds of thousands in both countries?
“. At this point its probably not realistic to have Ukraine announce it won't join Nato for at least ten years but a tacit acknowledgment would be the subtext. Had they said this earlier how many lives would have been saved?”
Seriously? Every attempt to placate Putin failed. He believed the flatterers he surrounded himself with. And he openly and volcanically intended empire.
“The problem is that I don't hear any serious call for negotiations.”
Sorry baloney. Many speak of it. But negotiation happens when the sides perceive some kind of basis for it. And Putin cannot back out of Kherson, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv Oblasts. If he does, then he will answer to the mothers of 200,000 dead or crippled RF soldiers whose lives were spent conquering and then poisoning and mining those regions.
“but of course there is politics all over this.”
Only to you ostriches, sir. There is such a thing as good vs evil – as there is a thing called national interest and both coincide. And again, if Putin wore different lapel pins, the US right would be assailing the commie bastard. But they are his property, now that he changed symbols.
“You damage our image in the world by deploying cluster bombs and such. “
Oh God it just gets worse. Please dig it, sir. The entire argument vs clusters is that they make an area dangerous to civilians, till the area can be cleaned up. Ukraine has said they will only use clusters in areas that already contain tens of millions of land mines. You absolutely ignore the millions of land mines, the bombed shopping centers and look down your nose at the use of clusters IN THOSE MINEFIELDS?
In fact, clusters are currently primarily used to CLEAR minefields.
No Republican should EVER talk to us about ‘military readiness” which is always better under democrats. And is far better now that we are out of Afghanistan, while the Ukraine matter has us replacing older munitions with totally upgraded ones. And again, nobody is going to attack Ta-i- wan any time soon, after what the RP has seen.
Calling this a ‘needless war” is totally a Foxite talking point. And while you may not be pro-Moscow, that is what the Foxites are.
And you watch that stuff. And spread it.
As a historian, Tac, you should be well aware that nothing less than all Russians walking back to the pre-2014 boundaries is going to work. That, and a couple of generations.
Sure, there might be an interim diplomat appeasement phase where Russia retains control of Donetsk, and maybe Luhansk (not a prayer with Crimea), but it wouldn't last.
@david a typo, but one that still serves: 'teating' does stimulate production.
Tacitus:
I think Russia is living in the past to the extent that they won't give up the Crimea.
They did give it up in 1993, though. I wish I knew more about the negotiations that took place back then. I'm sure it was agreed that Russia would have continued access to Sevastopol. But whatever the reasoning, Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nukes in exchange for a commitment from Russia not to invade. I think the major UN nuclear powers have some responsibility to defend the country who did that against the country who unilaterally broke its promise. Otherwise, we are telling the whole world, "You're only safe if you have your own nukes."
Putin is indeed living in the past. He doesn't just want to go back to 1993, but to the Soviet borders with Ukraine and the Baltics as part of the USSR and Poland et all as satellite states. It's not even matter of us "fighting them over there" so we don't have to fight them over here--well, in western Europe anyway. We're fortunate that Ukraine itself wants to "fight them over there". Supplying weapons and tactical assistance is the least we can do.
How important it is to have a derelict navy operating in the Black Sea is highly debatable, but they've been intransigent on this point and I think they'd be willing to fight a war of attrition for a very long time over it.
That's why I'd be reluctantly willing to concede them a Black Sea naval base if doing so would help end the war.
At this point its probably not realistic to have Ukraine announce it won't join Nato for at least ten years but a tacit acknowledgment would be the subtext. Had they said this earlier how many lives would have been saved? Russia would remain under economic sanctions for years in recognition of the massive damage they caused.
I'm not sure what you're describing here. Russia wouldn't have invaded had Ukraine pledged neutrality? Or they would still have invaded, but they'd take more blame than they are now? Really, I'm lost.
This is a needless war. It should end with as few long term consequences, as few widows orphans and lost limbs as possible. That the dead and wounded are not Americans does not change the morality of this.
Same goes for any war, including WWII. But refusing to engage in defense against an aggressor because people die in wars isn't really an answer. It lets aggressors know that they can do what they want with impunity, because the defenders get the blame for the subsequent war.
I hope you see that this line of argument invalidates every "stand your ground" law and self-defense defense that Republicans stand for.
Larry, hope you feel better soon.
It's happening already, though my nerves are still a bit frazzled.
David, suggesting I am pro Moscow is offensive. I doubt this bothers you.
I'm sure it comes from the fact that most pundits and politicians who argue peace at any cost seem to have an agenda of letting Putin be Putin. Just as much isolationist talk in the early 1940s was literally written by the German ministry of propaganda.
Tacitus,
I agree that the most recent Russian attack on Ukraine was needless. So was the seizure of the Crimea, which became a fait accompli. So was the movement into the Donbas.
This war is so needless that, pour non encourager les autres, the ones who started it should get nothing of value for their decision. Their prior experience allowed them to think they could get away with this.
Regarding Sevastopol, Russia had an open-ended lease on their base. Whatever else happens, they will not be likely to have a safe naval haven there for decades, now that Ukraine has the means to reach it.
Pappenheimer
Physicians can often obtain some happy pills, that is to say
the Really Good stuff.
sorry, that should be ne pas encourager. I was pretty sure I had that wrong, but no time to look it up.
Pappenheimer
Let me add one point about Putin's goals. What he never mentions is a people's right to self-determination. When the Berlin Wall and then the USSR fell - Putin called it "History's worst tragedy" - NONE of the subjugated peoples said "We love rule by Russians!" ALL of them celebrated. All of the Baltic states and Warsaw Pact states immediately begged to join NATO.
Is it true that Putin has a point - sort of - in claiming Hillary Clinton and Obama betrayed promises not to expand NATO? There is an angle to that which can be asserted. But only if you ignore completely the right of peoples to be safe from reconquest.
And Putin does completely ignore that. His appeals to Russo jingoism are utterly revanchist-racial-fascist.
Someone asked today, why don’t the other NATO countries kick in more dough.
I said: they will.
"why don’t the other NATO countries kick in more dough"
Before Putin attacked Ukraine I thought that the "other NATO" members were spending "enough"
I believed that a Russian attack would probably manage to defeat Poland but would then hit France, Germany and Britain who would easily chase the Russians back out of Poland
That would mean IMHO that the "other NATO" countries were spending more than enough
Then Putin showed that The Poles would have defeated Russia before France, Germany and Britain got involved
This shows very clearly that the "rest of NATO" was actually already spending far more than enough
In the medium term that means that "the rest of NATO" should be cutting down on its military budgets!
The only reason why "the rest of NATO" should increase its military budget is if they start to believe that the USA is a threat - which is not a good place
Dr. Brin said:
I ask that they be dealt with and tamed before we go screeching at fellows who gave us self-landing rockets and advanced the electric car by 15 (I assert) years.
True. But, If what's alleged currently ist true, this defense of Musk more and more sounds like those Hitler and GDR apologizers.
" He built the Autobahn" and "Everyone Had Work".
Let us mourn the Person he once was and might have been.
Re: Nemo: A near eastern deposed prince with a private military submarine feuding with the prominent seafaring Empire would bei called something else today. Maybe Verne even foresaw Bin Laden.
Would like to see a modern, what if remake of 20.000 Miles, though.
duncan cairncross:
The only reason why "the rest of NATO" should increase its military budget is if they start to believe that the USA is a threat - which is not a good place
Or if they think the USA will abandon NATO as Trump tried to do in his day.
... at Vlad's request, from memory, so I suppose increases to NATO countries' military budgets would be in keeping.
Vlad’s ace is with Xi.
That’s something to worry about.
Alan Brooks:
Vlad’s ace is with Xi.
It looks as if China's "unlimited friendship" or whatever he said at the Olympics was predicated on Putin's perceived invincibility. Seems like Xi has been walking that back a bit lately.
Apple's FOUNDATION is coming back into line with the books, and S2 E9 has a space battle that must have cost mucho dinero. So, if it's going to go the full 8 seasons (or more), they're going to need all the story they can get, including the 3B's final trilogy. I'm still waiting for David Goyer to ask me about computational psychohistory.
Comparing ER Musk to… Hitler? OMG Oger, go have some tea,
A better parallel is Nikola Tesla, who advanced so many techs for us – some in collaboration with Edison – and later wandered the parks talking to pigeons and shouting at clouds.
NATO needs to increase spending for its primary purpose – deterring war, at which it FAILED, this time.
Also major re-investments are needed
1) In stocks severely depleted in Ukraine.
2) In the entirely new drone-type systems that this fight has revealed are the future, and that are refining on the battlefield very quickly, much in the way how biplanes advanced in WWI.
Vlad is not Aces with Xi:
1) PRC now sees that 60% + of its military is based on RF/Soviet designs and doctrine that are proving utterly incompetent in the field
2) Vlad was leader of the world oligarchy destroy-the-Enlightenment movement and he still has the blackmail files. But both Vlad and Trump are looking more and more like the ologarchy’s nightmares, now.
---
The KB’s Second Foundation Trilogy is all about Seldon as a young man, then middle aged and (in mine) the last 2 weeks of his life, which Goyer completely messed up. If they want the IDEAS of our trilogy, which fix so many inherent problems, then I’d be happy to weave them in.
Tucker Carlson said to Trump that Trump may be in danger of assassination. If so, then the threat is not from Trump's open political foes. They want him to live a long, long time, but behind bars. It's Trump's secret financial backers that he's got to watch out for. They have exposure to him, and no further use for him, so it would be convenient to Howard Beale him. If I were advising him (not!) then I'd tell him to get imprisoned as the lesser risk.
Dr Brin:
NATO needs to increase spending for its primary purpose – deterring war, at which it FAILED, this time.
I'd say the UN failed at deterring war, which is its primary purpose.
Ukraine is not a NATO member.
Ukraine is however, a founding member of the UN from 1945, even though it was part of the USSR at the time. So is Belarus. Russia isn't. The Soviet Union was, but that entity no longer exists. A good claim could be made--and I believe Ukraine has made it--that Russia has no business as a permanent member of the UN security council.
Paradoctor:
Tucker Carlson said to Trump that Trump may be in danger of assassination. If so, then the threat is not from Trump's open political foes.
Probably to set up in the public's mind the idea that Democrats or leftists are behind any such assassination attempt that may come about, thus giving cover to the real perpetrators.
Count me in with today's wave of love for Trek! I do adore it for some unusual reasons. Example, the SHIP in Trek is a vast naval vessel charged with diplomacy, science, exploration and only occasionally fighting... and the captain is no super-force demigod (the core conceit of Star Wars) but merely a way-above-average person, who needs help every time, from above average crewmates. And the FEDERATION is aboard, a topic almost every episode. It's faults and blessings and rules and codes and dreams and possibilities.
The SHIP in Star Wars is a WWI fighter (banking against nonexistent air) with the silkscarf lone hero and maybe his gunner-droid... the knight and squire going back to Achilles. Demigods, demigods demigods all the way. Normal folk can only choose WHICH set of feuding gods to die for. And the Republic has no place on such a ship. Hence it is never really a topic. The Republic DOES nothing(!!!) in SW. Ever. At all. Name an exception. The lesson is the same as in all works by OS Card: hold no hope for a decent civilization. Throw yourself at the feet of a demigod and hope he'll be a nice one, like Ender!
All of this and more is in VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood - https://lnkd.in/g8QPuRH
Dr Brin:
the SHIP in Trek is a vast naval vessel charged with diplomacy, science, exploration and only occasionally fighting... and the captain is no super-force demigod (the core conceit of Star Wars) but merely a way-above-average person, who needs help every time, from above average crewmates.
In TNG, they turned that version's Enterprise into the flagship of the fleet, and the retcon series called Enterprise did even worse by trying to establish that everything of historical importance happened to that one vessel.
I like the setup in the original series better, where there is nothing unique about the starship Enterprise except that that ship and its crew happen to be the one whose stories the audience is following. Of course they're good at their jobs--sometimes remarkably so--but that happens organically, not because of destiny or anything like that.
@Dr. Brin: No. I compared those who find apologies for Musk with those who find excuses for tyranny of any shade.
If he has actively hindered UA operations, then he is making concessions to Putin, and that would be dangeously close to treason.
(Not that he would be alone with apologism. And yes, I recognize that Starlink had a tremendous effect in the war. It is a Dangerous path he walks.)
In the field. But Vlad can kill and maim numerous military personnel and civilians; even if his troops are chased out of all of Ukraine, its population is reduced.
One goal of war is to do just that.
Oger, again, his setting Ukraine up with Starlink in its desperate time of need was overwhelmingly important. His later waffles and cringeworthy chirps were not.
AB: the RF is suffering far worse population crash. Emigration of all the smart non-drunks. Russian women refusing to breed with drunks.
Is Locum going to start raving about 5G and nanoparticles?
Dr. Brin: Yes, I'll agree with that. But I would also point out that he has entered an incredibly dangerous game in which there are only two shields that protect him from harm: anonymity or a sizeable, effective security detail plus a staff of counselors he heeds.
Musk’s decision [...] was driven by an acute fear that Russia would respond to a Ukrainian attack on Crimea with nuclear weapons, a fear driven home by Musk’s conversations with senior Russian officials [...].
quote from the biography, possibly distorted.
You do not talk with senior Russian officials
If you have to, fact-check everything, do not agree to anything, stay sober, ignore flattery, respond to threats with calm, centered resolve, and above all, never come alone but with witnesses and people you trust enough to tell you that you are about to make a critical mistake. (By writing this, I recognize that Elon probably made that mistake that any autocrat has made: making wrong choices whom he admits to his inner circle.)
People whom I associate with the Russian Mafia (they were active openly in the areas around here, but have become strangely silent over the last decade) seldom directly threatened someone. They always told stories of what has happened to someone in the past. Sometimes, it was better to call their hand. The Arabs / Kurds learned that lessons fast. The Bikers gave up.
And I do not Imagine what the Ukraine Intelligence Service, rogue Elements of the US intelligence community, fanatical leftists, South African operatives, the MI6, the Secret Services of Poland, the Baltics, Scandinavia (especially the Swedish Rikspolis) think of Musk...
(See, that would be a threat I would Imagine being employed - cornering someone.But then again, These are people he could have pissed off...)
A counselor with a straight spine would have talked out Elon of this nuclear Weapon malarkey - Putin is, in Essence, a coward whp fears true strength, and resorts to deception and bullying. He ist still "Just a street thug".
Doubling down on a threat by a Russian seldom has been a wrong Option.
Oh, and as has been: Do Not Talk To The Russian Mafia.
David
I'm appalled by your apparent justification of cluster munitions on the grounds that they would be used to clear minefields.
Here's what Human Rights Watch, hardly a Foxoid shill, had to say on the subject:
https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/14/us-cluster-munition-transfer-ukraine-ignores-history-civilian-harm#:~:text=A%20Strong%20Response,manufacturer%20ceased%20production%20in%202016.
The things that your government authorizes "for the greater good", you own. There will be a bunch of children with amputated limbs on our karmic ledger.
I get the idea of putting US weapons into the hands of people who will use them to weaken the Great Russian Bear. But as you push Stinger missiles and depleted uranium artillery rounds about on your Risk board remember what happened the last time we went all in on this strategy.
The Taliban.
btw, I don't watch Fox at all. My impressions of the situation come from a variety of sources including a friend whose brother in law is, well let's just say he is "somebody" in the world of Ukrainian politics. My impressions of the degree of corruption are as a result pretty unforgiving. Morality of war aside, a lot of the money we are sending for non military aid would do US citizens more good. The most recent figures I could find suggest that 19.5 billion has been given to run hospitals - ok - and to pay salaries and pensions for Ukrainian governmental employees. Drop in the bucket as these things go I guess, but even the staunchest backers of the Ukes acknowledge widespread corruption.
https://www.state.gov/the-united-states-funds-economic-survey-of-ukraine-for-sustainable-recovery/#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20has%20thus,pension%20obligations%2C%20and%20operate%20hospitals.
A treaty will of course eventually be signed. Terms tbd and cost to get there....the meter is running.
T
"On your Risk board"
I really really enjoyed playing "Risk" - but I am coming to the conclusion that the game of "Risk" is actually one of the worse things to ever become popular!
Risk is basically about gaining "territory" and as you conquer a place its strength is added to your own
That is the opposite of the real world where an additional conquest REDUCES your available economic and military strength
The "Risk" mentality is completely WRONG - AND has become the the way that most people think!!
Tacitus, as a non-putinirezed European, I'd say, give the Ukrainians everything, as hard and fast as you can. Cluster (and phosphor!) ammunitions have already been used from the first days of the war, against civilian targets, by the Russians...
Ukrainian Corruption ist a relative t, hing (looking at your Methode of campaign financing and our methods of placing retiring politicians in company Boards), and, though certainly a populist move, Zelensky has advocated to sentence those convicted of corruption in wartimes as high treason.
If nothing else: Just think of having to free every Inch of Europe again. If Medwedew says, Lisboa is a part of Russia, every Russian (including those who might come from abroad) dying now will not kill your GIs later
Or anyone.
I'd call that a deal.
The Russians have been using cluster munitions indiscriminately from the start, so the issue of Ukrainians using a version of them with a better expiry warranty in proscribed circumstances is moot.
I am a little more concerned with depleted uranium shells. The dust from them has been implicated in the Iraq syndromes. I'm not sure of the benefits, given what the UAF has been doing to Russian armour anyway.
Re: Risk. David's comments remind me of an old SJ magazine game insert that pitted two necromancers and their undead armies against each other. The catch being that the larger their shambling horde, the weaker the individual units.
Tacitus:
I'm appalled by your apparent justification of cluster munitions on the grounds that they would be used to clear minefields.
Are cluster munitions more of a threat to civilians than uncleared minefields are?
This is from the article you linked to above:
While acknowledging that cluster munitions harm civilians, U.S. officials argued that using them will not significantly worsen the situation in Ukraine because the country already has to clear large numbers of Russian munitions, including submunitions and landmines. In addition, Ukraine has pledged to record where they use the weapons, and the U.S. has committed to support clearance efforts.
Tony Fisk
Re depleted Uranium
Remember when worrying about a few Kg of Uranium from those shells that coal is over one part per million Uranium - and we burn 7,000 million tons of Coal a year
So 7,000 TONS of Uranium goes up the smokestacks every year
Fair point, although those 'several kilos' will be more concentrated, and it does get absorbed into the food chain. (Hence that 1 part per milliin...)
Duncan,
Mercury too. There's all sorts of crap in coal. Given how it formed that kinda should be expected.
Larry,
...I'd be willing to allow Russia some sort of long term lease allowing them to keep using Sevastopol as a face-saving way of avoiding nuclear war.
The only way I see Ukraine tolerating that is if the US threatens to pull support if they don't concede it.
Back when the deal was made to de-nuke Ukraine after USSR broke up, they actually DID squabble over basing rights. We helped smooth things over with a boatload of cash. Putin has broken that deal by taking Crimea, so I don't think it is reasonable to expect Ukraine to consider another deal. It would smack of appeasement.
Alfred Differ:
"...some sort of long term lease allowing them to keep using Sevastopol..."
It would smack of appeasement.
It would smack less of appeasement than allowing Russia to keep anything they took by invasion. I was not suggesting an ideal result, but maybe something that Russia would agree to if they were losing, rather than have them fight to the bitter end.
Maybe Ukraine would be more amenable post-Putin?
Larry: Otherwise, we are telling the whole world, "You're only safe if you have your own nukes."
That is a reasonable attitude for any country to have, sadly. Treaties and agreements have proven remarkably easy for great powers to ignore when they see advantage in doing so, especially when governmental change gives an excuse ("that agreement was with the last administration, we don't consider ourselves bound by it").
I thought then that Ukraine was making a strategic mistake, happy as I was to see the number of nukes reduced. I did wonder if maybe they knew that the weapons weren't functional/reliable (or maybe knew they couldn't maintain them, nukes being finicky) and so they weren't really giving up much.
duncan: Risk is basically about gaining "territory" and as you conquer a place its strength is added to your own
That is the opposite of the real world where an additional conquest REDUCES your available economic and military strength
The "Risk" mentality is completely WRONG - AND has become the the way that most people think!!
It works for money, though. The more you control the stronger you are, and the easier it is to get more. So Risk is basically a Monopoly game with a different mechanic. Maybe view it as corporations competing for market share in a mature market?
Axis and Allies is basically Risk with panzers and aircraft carriers, and it has the same mechanic...now, the Nazis did garner economic value from the European nations they overran, as Japan did with Manchuria, but the idea that you could trundle some Mark IVs through, say, Cairo, and suddenly gain economic value from it (i.e. game cash) is pretty ridiculous.
Robert,
iirc Ukraine didn't have the funds to keep the nukes stationed on their soil operational or safe, and the US had a program to pay for deactivation and safe reclamation of fissile material before we had to send 007 in to stop WWIII. Seemed like a win/win at the time. The Ukrainians, I am sure, did not trust Russia, but relied on the West as a backup. Which we finally came through on. They were lucky, though - could have been TFG in office, in which case they might have been thoroughly screwed. Sorry even MORE thoroughly screwed; it's not a cakewalk now.
Pappenheimer
onward
onward
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