[FRIAM] St John's not Open

[Frank Wimberly]

I'm pretty sure St John's Coffee shop is closed today.  I will go to
Downtown Subscription.

Frank

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Steve Smith]

Roger -

Thanks for the Catalan novel reference!

Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today.  It's 
headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save 
it from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says".  The 
headline is accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric.  Nice 
try, Google, but you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole.


I'm far from as facile with the attribution of different type of errors 
in argument/rhetoric as Glen is, but I am always fascinated by how often 
we (deliberately?) conflate one thing with the other across 
scale/aggregation or personal/collective or individual/statistical.   I 
don't completely dismiss the likes of Musk's logic/rhetoric that a 
collapsing first-world birth rate's will lead to a radical disruption of 
"life as we know it" and saddle our (for those of us who have them) 
children/grandchildren with an inverted pyramid scheme in everything 
from "social security" to "infrastructure".   Odd how we think we can 
"solve" our problems by jacking up our exploitation tech (let's go haul 
asteroids in from the belts to solve our mineral/water shortages?)  but 
can't be bothered to consider how to manage a *shrinking* 
population/economy/footprint?


My *very* limited engagement with/reading on "AI" (what a gross/blanket 
term for many things?) *does* give me hope that it *could* be enlisted 
to help us solve these problems (shrinking everything) if only we will 
allow/ask it?


The inertia of our ideas/attitudes/opinions/instincts about "growth" and 
"prosperity" are rooted in an era of scarcity which continues to appear 
to exists (perhaps) only because of those very ideas and the limitations 
to distribution they cause (and perhaps require?).   Wars of 
aggression.  Chronic poverty. Etc.  do seem to be the consequence of the 
carrot-on-stick chasing of "more, more, more" for ourselves...  hoarding 
logic and hoarding consequences?


Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of 
disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in 
Catalan.  The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is 
available in English translation and as an ebook on overdrive.com 
 at your local library.  The narrator crosses 
refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his mom and gets sent off by her 
to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in the Pyrenees where the 
elite are amusing themselves with stories while awaiting the 
resolution of the first war of entertainment.  Lots of stories about 
themselves and their friends and acquaintances.


Love the reference to "first war of entertainment" and the (hyper) 
failure of (hyper) preppers... to that theme I recommend Cory Doctorow's 
Novella the Masque of the Red Death 
 
...  I'm also reminded (by the 40 year old reference to de Palol's work) 
of the classic 1959 Walter Miller Canticle for Leibowitz 
which, when I 
first read it (1960s?) located it in my mind at the "Christ of the 
Desert" Monastery  on the Chama River crossed 
with Los Alamos/Manhattan Project.   I didn't read Pat Frank's (also 
1959) "Alas Babylon" until some years later but it is often attributed 
as the first "Apocalyptic Novel" in the Nuclear age.


Privileged Crackpot yours,

 - Steve

-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Frank Wimberly]

My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think babies
are disgusting.  I hope they change their minds.  In any case, what does a
shortage of babies have to do with AI?

---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:

> Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today.  It's
> headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what will save it
> from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt says".  The headline is
> accompanied by a very serious head shot of Eric.  Nice try, Google, but
> you're not sucking me down that rabbit hole.
>
> Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality of
> disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago in
> Catalan.  The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol is available
> in English translation and as an ebook on overdrive.com at your local
> library.  The narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his
> mom and gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in
> the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with stories while
> awaiting the resolution of the first war of entertainment.  Lots of stories
> about themselves and their friends and acquaintances.
>
> -- rec --
> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
> archives:  5/2017 thru present
> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
>   1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
>
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom 
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021  http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/

Re: [FRIAM] crackpots and privilege

[Steve Smith]

My grandsons' girlfriends (twenty-somethings) say that they think 
babies are disgusting.  I hope they change their minds.  In any case, 
what does a shortage of babies have to do with AI?


Babies *are* (can be) disgusting, but same for puppies, kitties, and 
garden-soil from the right (wrong) perspective!


Maybe the point is "nobody left for the AI overlords to lord over" ?

I think the key is "existential threat"...    I didn't look for 
Schmidt's statement anywhere, so I'm just speculating that maybe he's 
doing a mild echo of Musk's idea that a collapsing (first) world 
population is somehow a *bigger* existential threat?


With my techhead hat on I am inclined to imagine that AI will help me 
(well, not ME anymore, but people vaguely like who I once thought I was 
or wanted to be) solve micro-techonomic problems like the ones that lead 
to Teflon(tm) and Velcro(tm) and higher density/faster-charge EV 
batteries, and higher density/dynamic range pixel-displays, and neural 
lace to wire (grow?) into my brain/ganglia, and microbes that can 
convert moon/mars-dust to Soylent/Huel/Water/??? etc.


My PsychoHistory hatted self (Asimov - Foundation 
 and the 
non-fictional variant 
 
) is inclined to imagine that AI *can* help with the "big problems", the 
ones nominally too large, too interdisciplinarian, too obtuse, too 
"wycked" (In Complexity Science jargon), possibly too counter-intuitive 
for most (any?) human or group of humans to grasp.


My Ned Ludd (very tight by definition?) hat has me thinking more down 
the rabbit holes of worst-case scenarios where all the arrogant, 
narcissistic @$$h0ii3z of the world (starting at the top with those 
whose names start with Pu Tr Be Zu Mu(r/s) Ne De ... and staggering down 
the hierarchy of potency and scope to most of us here most of the time) 
think they "know what is best" and put their resources to using the AI 
lever to "make it so"...


Even (especially) me, I constantly imagine that "if they made ME King" 
(or to the point, if *I* was the /wormtongue/ in the AI Overlord's ear) 
that I would "make the world safe and happy for everyone, ever after 
with no unintended consequences or unpleasant side effects".


One *might* guess that the smartest thinkers in the most grounded, 
thoughtful, gentle think-tanks (e.g.  in a Tibetan Lamasary or the "Club 
of Rome" or SIPRI or CESR or the Justice League of America or the people 
who task "jewish space lasers" or ??? ) would be practicing their 
AI-whispering skills right now. Maybe tasking Marcus' Quantum Computer 
with "the hard problem of universal consciousness"?



 An up-to-date version of Asimov's 9 Billion Names of God 
 ?




---
Frank C. Wimberly
140 Calle Ojo Feliz,
Santa Fe, NM 87505

505 670-9918
Santa Fe, NM

On Thu, May 25, 2023, 12:48 PM Roger Critchlow  wrote:

Google news decided to surface an article from Fortune today. 
It's headlined "Society's refusal to have enough babies is what
will save it from the existential threat of A. I., Eric Schmidt
says".  The headline is accompanied by a very serious head shot of
Eric.  Nice try, Google, but you're not sucking me down that
rabbit hole.

Meanwhile, someone apparently read my mind about the rationality
of disaster prepping and wrote an epic novel about it 40 years ago
in Catalan.  The Garden of the Seven Twilights by Miquel de Palol
is available in English translation and as an ebook on
overdrive.com  at your local library.  The
narrator crosses refugee swamped Barcelona to check on his mom and
gets sent off by her to a McMansion'ed medieval monastery high in
the Pyrenees where the elite are amusing themselves with stories
while awaiting the resolution of the first war of entertainment. 
Lots of stories about themselves and their friends and acquaintances.

-- rec --
-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom
https://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru present
https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/
  1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/


-. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. .
FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv
Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe   /   Thursdays 9a-12p 
Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam
to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
archives:  5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pip