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Artificial Everything

[Too] many conversations about encroaching technology and artificial everything – we should just call it that, as we have no real definition for intelligence, much less understand what it means – compel further examination. Let’s go in.

First off, let’s acknowledge a basic premise.

We’re edging along a process of abdicating our personal sovereignty by our own choosing. I can’t tell you not to install a front door camera and spy on your neighbors or not to let slopGPT be your therapist. But let’s at least acknowledge how much we submit to all of this voluntarily. It’s not the illusion of choice, but still actual choices that we make continually. All the while creeps a sort of helplessness about what is being done to us. It is imperative to maintain our wits at such a time – such as a time as may come, such a time as now.

It is necessary to demonstrate how modern imagination is captured – and defended. Among the multitude of familiar arguments on which to draw, public and private liberties, civic duty and overwhelming loss of self esteem among our fellow citizens compel a checklist on the rescue mission should one be required.

There is extraordinarily powerful hype and propaganda supporting the inevitability of artificial everything. The laziness of corporate media has made this so much easier; excellent at completing PR circles, not so very good or interested in explaining things, rewarded for the combination with diminished honor and loss of prestige. Though a quite visible slight of hand, effort to acknowledge this process reminds us that we remain far from powerless. The sheer vastness of all we’re not thinking about and discussing enough also require some work on our part, to investigate, to understand, but first just to care about. When we get to the place where this work is not optional – and hey, we like work. It’s one our fears about AE, that it will take work away from us –  we’ll be well on our way to better places. If you’re already there, congratulations. You’ve got plenty of work to do.

Image: Author photo of work on a wall.

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The moral element

There are so many issues on which people can be or become confused about whether their choice stance is political, economic, or moral. The problem with the third in this sequence is that it makes the choice/stance much clearer on the first two than may be desirable or convenient.

Further, confusion about the rights of others that allows for a seeming choice where none exists creates space for degeneracy – bigotry, victimization, persecution, false equivalence – which turn into their own rationales for unfortunately familiar behavior. It’s sadly too easy to see why attacks on vulnerable people are wrong, so the convolution helps cover otherwise indefensible actions and positions, from anti-trans attacks all the way up to capitalism itself.

The fear that capitalism would be so much less forceful and thus successful with limits on its rapacious character is so embedded as to be dogma. It must always be fully unleashed to exist at all. We equate force with success, which inures to all the resulting destruction. Collateral damage hardly makes a dent as a concept anymore and it remains unclear whether that manifests from the inability to see outside of one’s own interests or the casual acceptance of casualties, whatever their nature. Either way, it’s quite the evolution. We have yet to grapple with the actual consequences of zero-sum, much less the reality that ‘externalities’ get less and less external the further on with this we go.

The concept of ‘easy solutions’ feeds misdirection from guardians of the status quo, no matter their futurist garb. Positive-sum deflates fascism and environmental catastrophe with great collaboration and distribution, and its tools sit idle, though ready. One of the new tricks taught by every old dog is that opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.

One need not be a philosopher or a socialist to recognize the moral character of our actions. No special training or knowledge is required, only courage.

Image: Symbol for the chemical element Beryllium; elements are amoral but Be is a divalent element that occurs naturally only in combination with other elements to form minerals. Just sayin’.

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On Popularism

The political strategy characterized by advising politicians, particularly Democrats, to prioritize policies with majority support supported by Wall Street while avoiding divisive, ideologically extreme, or unpopular issues, popularism consists of poll-driven, focused-grouped balderdash designed to resonate with existing public sentiment. While following polls is a bad approach, lefty or progressive stances that poll strongly are often not considered at all. Popularism is pseudo-analysis that elides clear public support for things like funding childcare and protecting immigrant communities, aka communities.
What are some leading issues? Are they popular? It’s an election year – let’s advise our candidates.
Over the past year, the White House has courted tech billionaires and gone out of its way to protect the AI industry’s agenda, fast-tracking permits for data centre construction and approving the sales of advanced chips to China while cracking down on states’ attempts to regulate chatbots … But across the US, citizens, clergy and elected officials in conservative communities are leading a grassroots rebellion against the rapid rollout of the technology.
Conclusion: not popular

And it was all too easy to be pessimistic about the prospects both for cooperation and for persuading voters to accept even modest future-oriented sacrifices.

Then came the renewable energy revolution. Solar and wind power have become cost-competitive with fossil fuels — they are, in particular, clearly cheaper than coal. Huge progress in batteries has rapidly reduced the problem of intermittency (the sun doesn’t always shine, the wind doesn’t always blow.) There’s now a clear path for a transition to an “electrotech” economy in which renewable-generated electricity heats our homes, powers our cars, and much more.

Conclusion: very pop– wait. It seems that the Trump administration has decided to block/rollback this transition that would benefit the planet, ensuring that the US will be left behind in global competition. Oh well.

ICE detention centers:

Communities across the country have been shocked to learn that DHS wants to use warehouses in their towns for detention space amid the ongoing immigration crackdown.

Conclusion: as popular as the plague. And speaking of…

The bipartisan American investment, which the Trump administration led, was absolutely key to containing a horrific global pandemic which could have been exponentially worse without the stunning accelerated development of mRNA vaccines — one of the great public health triumphs in modern history. But this miracle cure was only the beginning. The massive investment in mRNA opened doors to numerous other medical advances…

These mRNA advances would obviously benefit people in the United States, who would be much less likely to die of cancer, flu, pandemics, and a range of other illnesses.

Conclusion: popular, live-saving, beneficial across borders and populations. Unfortunately, also vulnerable to disinformation by cranks and malefactors willing to lie to enrich themselves and endanger others.

So even among this small variety of issues, clear policy preferences can be sorted. Public opinion has a role to play, and it’s especially important in the face of corporate media with thumbs on the scale, keeping unpopular issues and policies in a kind of eternal toggle state where the jury is still out. These should not be avoided. Look for candidates who run toward your preferences. Some might even already be there.

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Fascination with numbers

It’s no stretch to suggest that quantifying life as we know it not in terms of quality but economic growth leaves everyone a bit empty, a bit lesser for the experience, such as it is.

Numbers are fine, can be fun, even. Inspiring. Take Clairaut’s Theorem, as just one example. Among the heights of the Enlightenment – there were several – the eighteenth-century French mathematicians/philosophers Alexis Clairaut and Pierre Louis Maupertuis led an expedition to Lapland in the Arctic Circle (in the 1730’s) in order to measure a single degree of the median arc. The goal was to calculate the shape of the Earth, and validate whether Newton was correct in his Principia where he theorized it was an ellipsoid shape.

In disagreeing with Newton’s theory, Clairaut suggested not only that the Earth is of an oblate ellipsoid shape, but it is flattened more at the poles and is wider at the center. You can imagine the controversial this unleashed among scholars of the day, and Clairaut leaned in, full tilt. He courted the fight and published work in the 1740’s that promoted Clairaut’s Theorem, which connects the gravity at points on the surface of a rotating ellipsoid with the compression and the centrifugal force at the equator.

Under the assumption that the Earth was composed of concentric ellipsoidal shells of uniform density, Clairaut’s theorem could be applied to it, and allowed the ellipticity of the Earth to be calculated from surface measurements of gravity. This proved Sir Isaac Newton’s theory that the shape of the Earth was an oblate ellipsoid. In 1849 George Stokes showed that Clairaut’s result was true whatever the interior constitution or density of the Earth, provided the surface was a spheroid of equilibrium of small ellipticity. [wikipedia]

Provides interesting context to our jokey notion about “views differ on the shape of the Earth.” There’s an amazing book about all of this and more that centers on Madame Du Châtelet, erstwhile mistress of Voltaire who translated Newton’s Principia.

Fascination may be in the eye of the beholder. However, a focus on economic growth beyond the point where it may be healthy, productive, even possible, disassociates us from even the power of numbers themselves. Growth becomes its own ends and we, captive to the destruction its portends, stand idly by and make nervous jokes about issues long settled, amidst our intellectual withering and spiritual decay.

Image: [shiny)Detail of a painting by Lou Kregel.

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Kicking over the tipping point

Dignity, restraint and action in a time of constitutional crisis. It’s amazing but, like the Steven Wright  joke where he realizes someone has been following him from in front, the Republican Party is re-enforcing community by galvanizing communities against it. And that for which it stands:

Within hours of taking office on Jan. 17, Spanberger signed an executive order that rescinded Youngkin’s order mandating that state agencies contract with ICE, but that alone left the agreements intact. She went a step further this week by actually pulling the plug and ordering four state agencies, including the state police and the Department of Corrections, to end their 287(g) agreements, terminating their role as force multipliers for federal immigration authorities.

“Virginians deserve to have their state and local law enforcement resources devoted to the safety and security of their communities, not federal civil immigration enforcement,” the governor said in her order. These agreements “improperly cede accountability and discretion over Virginia law enforcement to the federal government.”

That’s the result of people pressure. Forces of civil democracy aka you, me, and all of us. One neat trick to turn many disinterested and distracted people into pissed off voters. I have always detested irony but I’m willing to let this one slip.

Governors and lieutenants, secretaries of state, state attorneys general have always been important statewide races. Now they are critical. Let’s elect good ones. Find one, be one.

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About once in every 20 years

The inimitable John Doe, and Exene.

Will revisit this but as a history nerd lad I was rather affected by John Locke and the whole right to revolution thing:

the common Question will be made, Who shall be Judge whether the Prince or Legislative act contrary to their Trust? This, perhaps, ill affected and factious Men may spread amongst the People, when the Prince only makes use of his due Prerogative. To this I reply, The People shall be Judge; for who shall be Judge whether his Trustee or Deputy acts well, and according to the Trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must, by having deputed him have still a Power to discard him, when he fails in his Trust? If this be reasonable in particular Cases of private Men, why should it be otherwise in that of the greatest moment; where the Welfare of Millions is concerned, and also where the evil, if not prevented, is greater, and the Redress very difficult, dear, and dangerous?

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Of fulcrums and chasms

Given the very sleepy lead into 2025, despite the alarms blaring full bore, headwinds for clean energy seem to have roared to the forefront this year.

Tax credits expiring. Wind projects shelved or cancelled, often for extraordinarily petty reasons certainly consistent with the personality of leadership. Domestic US EV sales dipping.

Despite the pettiness and short-sighted backwards-facing outlook, a cultural shift has been been leveraged into place. The ancient kind of leverage – with a rock and an iron bar:

“…as of the last three or four years, we finally have a tool, not at this point to stop global warming — it’s too late for that — but perhaps to at least shave some tenths of a degree off how hot the planet gets. And that tool is cheap energy from the sun and the wind and the batteries to store that power when the sun goes down or the wind drops. Alternative energy is the commonsense, obvious, straightforward way to make power on this planet, which is why 95 percent of new generating capacity around planet Earth last year came from these clean sources.

The authoritarian mindset –  which eschews progress on meaningful rights and resources for all in exchange for illusory safety from outside foes and forces – has always protected fossil fuel production by forgiving its destructive effects on people and planet in return for cheap energy. Another instant where the meaning of words carelessly cast aside returns for payment, with interest.

And now, that mindset is suspended over a chasm: destructive effects of global warming, coupled with cheap, clean energy increasingly available everywhere. Incompetent/compromised [let’s be honest] government is a distinct disadvantage. Can capitalism be saved?

Be neither depressed nor overly sanguine, as these were never the options. Instead, mock the laggards incessantly, especially your own. If you don’t know or feel unsure, find out. Use everything you have, make things. Row into the currents. Turn the beat around.

Image via

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Climate alarmism

Since there appears to be some misunderstanding about what constitutes climate alarmism, please be aware that the term is typically only invoked in spurious attempts to destroy longstanding scientific capabilities, demean the expertise upon which it is built, and weaken the country planet it was designed to protect. As of now, however, it has an added usage: vindictive retribution ( is there another kind?):

The NCAR laboratory in Boulder was founded in 1960 at the base of the Rocky Mountains to conduct research and educate future scientists. Its resources include supercomputers, valuable datasets and high-tech research planes.

Its dismantling would be a major loss for scientific research, said Kevin Trenberth, a distinguished scholar at NCAR and an honorary academic in physics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand.

Trenberth, who joined NCAR in 1984 and officially retired in 2020, said the research center is key to advanced climate science discoveries as well as in informing the climate models that produce the weather forecasts we see on the nightly news.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) said in a statement that the state had not received information about the administration’s intentions to dismantle NCAR.

“If true, public safety is at risk and science is being attacked,” said Polis. “Climate change is real, but the work of NCAR goes far beyond climate science. NCAR delivers data around severe weather events like fires and floods that help our country save lives and property, and prevent devastation for families.”

In his social media post, Vought said that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location” — but did not specify further.

The move comes as Republicans have escalated their attacks on Polis and others in the state for their handling of a case involving Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was convicted in state court on felony charges related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. President Donald Trump announced last week that he is pardoning Peters, who is serving a nine-year sentence, but it is unclear whether Trump has that authority, because she was not convicted in federal court.

For all those who voted for the deranged one, he is your mirror.

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Sands through the hourglass

Or, Hey! You got pluralism in my diversity!

Hidden in plain, if at times dour, sight, an interview with Jill Lepore in CHE. She hits a couple of critical notes, per usual:

We’re in this appalling situation where civics education has a political balance that leans right, while the discussion of the diversity of the American past has a political balance that leans left. The problem with a civics education that leans right is that its version of the American past is inevitably going to be the story of the march of progress and prosperity and freedom. And the story that leans left is the story of atrocities and ongoing systematic inequalities. Both of those accounts of America are true, but neither of them is the entire truth. No child is equipped for life in a democracy if they are asked to receive either story as canonical.

One thing that really troubles me is that it’s now politically safe to talk about pluralism, but it is not politically safe to talk about diversity. Sure, those terms have different histories, and you could disambiguate them if you really wanted to, but ultimately they are kind of the same thing. I wish that civics initiatives would embrace the word “diversity” to depoliticize what they’re doing. And I wish that DEI programs that are still standing, of which I’m sure there are still some, would embrace the words “pluralism” and “civics.” There actually is a common project there. It’s possible to hold a common purpose across those different initiatives and to refuse to allow them to be politicized and demonized by the other side. To allow such a basic matter as what children learn in the third grade about their country to be determined by who’s won a seat in the Legislature in the last midterm election is outrageous. Those people should be ashamed of themselves.

[Narr: they are not ashamed of themselves]. And later, she suggests the reason people are unable to understand any common purpose beyond the accumulation of riches – which would lead to a downfall, except for the puny heights native to such  ambitions:

I teach at a university where the preponderance of our undergraduates go into finance, consulting, and tech jobs that they are recruited for almost the moment that they arrive in Cambridge, and whose time, instead of being devoted to academics, is devoted to securing positions in those industries. The pleasing of their parents, and the pleasing of those students, is the economic engine of the college and therefore of the university, in a way that I do not think is consistent with what a university is for. There are universities now that are creating centers for open inquiry. What is a university if not a center for open inquiry? Why would we need such a center? That anyone suggests such a center should raise a lot of eyebrows.

Successful marketing smears against the liberal arts notwithstanding, the underlying timidity about culture and civilization result in the increasingly inability to differentiate the real from the fake. It’s so complicated and new that people exchanged ideas on it using stone tablets. Adherents of classical learning become defensive  in conversations about earning potential, meanwhile West Point and the other three service academies continue to require philosophy, languages, history, and literature. Can you hold those competing notions in your head?

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The big miss on individualism

I get to speak with a great variety of smart people, as a side benefit to a day job that is actually its true and most durable point. Anyway, I share.

Just recently, a conversation with a philosopher led in some interesting directions. He came of age in Thatcher-era Britain, when he began noticing things not present just few years earlier.

“Beggars on the street most notably. A great rise in homelessness, and great rise in public ugliness as well. It was something that called itself individualism but to me was a mistaken form of individualism, a supposed form of individualism where everything is just about possessing things.”

Real individualism, real individuality, is about being a unique person – it’s not about showing off the fact that you along with 45K other people have managed to afford a particular item, he said. My deeper attention had been gained. He continued.

“To me it was sort of a perversion of individualism, and in tandem with the ecological texts I was reading, the two things came together.  It just seemed clear to me even back in the 1980’s that you can’t ultimately have a society based on infinite economic growth on a finite planet. On the one side we were prioritizing the wrong liberties and taking away a lot of people’s meaningful economic liberties at the same time in order to give extra ones for other people.”

“All of these things seem to be misconceived. Looking at the rise of liberalism in the broad sense, the rise of forms of society which placed the liberty of the individual first, and then you have the question of which liberties matter, how they are sliced up and how they are arranged.”

“Since that time, my core interests have been the concepts of nature in terms of freedom. And the flourishing of the individual. While I think of myself politically as being very left – people react to the word ‘individualism’ because it immediately conjures this 1980s concept of ‘greed is good’  because that language has been so thoroughly taken over.* But it doesn’t need to be like that.”

He brings up Oscar Wilde and his 1891 essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism. “Wilde says socialism will be of value solely because it will lead to individualism. What he means by that is if you make sure everyone has enough to begin with, people can actually express themselves as individuals when they’re no longer just scrambling for the basics.”

This is the road to any discussion about ethics. Can you imagine?

*There have been so many corruptions of language of this nature. Before we can take back the night, we’ll need to reclaim the day.