Tag: humanity

So, Bring It On

photog Current Events, photog's Corner , ,

Ever since humans began to practice an agricultural lifestyle, we have become entwined in a larger social structure than the family or tribe.  The much greater population density made possible by agriculture guarantees that independent existence disappears.  You live in a town or a district along with other farmers and tradesmen and the employees of the government that guarantee that the king (or duke or headman) gets his piece of the pie from your harvest.  And then there’s the Temple of the Gods and their priests who also need to be paid.

But in exchange for this taxation, you are protected by the king’s soldiers.  And the priests pray to the gods for you.  And living in this society you have access to coinage which simplifies the process of buying and selling the things you have and want.  And in this society, there are doctors (sort of) and craftsmen of all kinds producing products made of wood, stone, glass, clay, copper, bronze, iron and all the other materials that men work.  And if you happen to live in a really enlightened place you might get to watch a dramatic, poetry or music performance.  And if you are among the elite, you might even become a scholar and learn to read.

And over the centuries, the advantages of living in a civilized state have grown increasingly valuable.  If you live in an advanced society like ours, you will have access to cutting edge healthcare that has the potential to extend your lifetime to close to a century.  You can board an airplane and fly to a country halfway around the Earth within the same day.  You can learn science that explains the secrets of the universe.

But you can never be free.  You can never be independent.  You are tied to this society with ten thousand threads that bind you to the gigantic machine that is our civilization.  No single man.  No grouping of men can ignore the rules and the requirements of our human world.  Not even someone like Elon Musk can just do what he wants.  We all exist in the matrix of this human construct that carries us all along in a direction that we don’t control and can’t even predict.  We’re like cells in a collective organism.  We think of ourselves as independent entities.  But we are pulled along by the collective and must live in its shadow and survive its actions.

But how does it get better?  Well, human society is only something less than ten thousand years old.  So, this new multicellular organism is in its infancy.  It hasn’t had a chance to evolve very much yet.  And that is the hope.  That we will evolve this organism into an efficient and healthy creature that keeps all of its component cells healthy (and mentally happy).  It’s possible democracy is a mutation that will improve the self-regulation feedback loops that keep the organism healthy.  Or maybe not.  Maybe it will be replaced by something else.  From inside the beast, it’s hard to tell whether any progress is being made.  Mostly it feels like chaos.  But after all, the whole thing’s a miracle to start with.  So, bring it on.

Of Chatbots and Cheese

photog Current Events, Reclaiming the Family, Science, Science Fiction / Fantasy , , ,

So, as I was saying yesterday, the kids and the grandkids came over.  And Camera Girl killed the fatted calf, cooked it and then afterward served cake and ice cream to the stuffed survivors.  I skipped all the meatballs and sauce and made my self three sandwiches; a Reuben, a roast beef, provolone with mayo on “peasant bread” and a free form that included mustard, corned beef, lettuce and sweet gherkins on French bread; all washed down with hot coffee.  Suffice it to say I ate too much but have no regrets about it.  Later on, I had way too much vanilla ice cream and pound cake.  About that I do have regrets.  But c’est la guerre.

Today I faced the new day feeling bilious and groggy.  But all this warm weather of late inspired us to head for the state park for a long walk in the woods.  Seriously, I really want to thank whatever climatic forces are responsible for this winter’s mild weather.  I hereby agree to whatever destruction of the planet occurs and with my blessings.  Walking in the middle of February through this park without snowshoes is an innovation that is well worth finishing off those poor devils living at the Equator.  And since our Lizard Overlords are bringing all those people here anyway, at least I can have the benefits of a warmer climate here in Dunwich without feeling bad about it.  So, after the strengthening and revivifying effects of our hike I am restored to health and looking forward to enjoying the rest of this holiday weekend.

During the festivities yesterday I was able to talk with my eldest grandson and he told me he managed to get on the Dean’s List at the college where he is studying computer science.  Apparently, that requires a 4.0 grade point average.  I was impressed.  He is a lot like me.  Which means that studying for any subject in which he hasn’t any interest, is very difficult.  So that means he is displaying considerable discipline.  I attribute this to his parents spending a lot of time stressing the need for conscientiousness.  So, I am impressed with them too.

We discussed the recent trends in computer science.  We both got a laugh out of the recent vicissitudes of the “metaverse.”  The fact that the geniuses at Facebook didn’t realize that people don’t want to walk around wearing virtual reality headsets all the time is ridiculous.  After all, it’s one thing to wear a headset while flying an F-16.  There it’s a matter of life and death.  But in almost any other instance real life is superior to virtual life.  Think about it.  I can go into a field and throw a real baseball around with my grandsons.  Or we can all stand around wearing VR headsets and pretend to throw around a baseball.  That is so lame as to even defy comparison to other lame things.

Then we talked about artificial intelligence and of course ChatGPT.  He was generally very excited, not about the present chatbots, but rather about the potential in the near future.  Apparently, the level of sophistication is still growing quickly and whereas currently the behavior merely mimics human thought he was enthusiastic about it becoming closer to human creativity over time.  I warned him that AI’s ability to replace humans in the workforce might someday even allow it to replace computer scientists and he ruefully agreed the potential is there.

It was a very interesting conversation.  I still think of artificial intelligence as a tool.  If I let a chatbot write an essay for me, I’d use the output as a framework from which I’d insert the creative ideas that I wanted to make.  Facts and figures and even sententious musings aren’t thinking.  They’re scenery.  You have to have a point of view.  Sure, you can tell a chatbot the point you’re making but it still sounds like a Wikipedia entry.  I defy a chatbot to rise to my level of outrage.  And since my point of view is currently algorithmically forbidden to chatbots, by definition, I am immune from their competition.

Afterward, Camera Girl joined with the kids going to a middle school theatrical performance and Princess Sack of Potatoes saw her first live play.  And she was enthralled.  Camera Girl just watched her reactions to the performance throughout and said it was amazing.

And I thought, how is an algorithm going to mimic that?  An intelligent and emotional child “learning” about theater; how will the computer scientists mimic that?  The human brain only has about ninety billion neurons.  I’m sure supercomputers can multiply that number of memory slots almost infinitely.  But can we even define what it means to be a human being.  I’m not sure we currently can.  I’m not even sure we’ll ever be able to.  Lots of people are convinced that consciousness is just a level of complexity.  Once we have umpty-ump petaflops of computing power HAL will wake up and take over the world.  I’m far from sure that’s true.  It’s fun to use in science fiction stories but reality may not oblige us.  How do you program the point of view of a four-year-old girl watching a live play for the first time?  Where’s the slider for enthralled?

So, despite living in the pall of the East Palestine mushroom cloud and the other outrages that the Biden dismantling of America subjects us to, I’ve found fresh evidence that human life still contains transcendent beauty.  We are much, much more than the sum of our neurons and other cellular components.  We are capable of fascinating and remarkable behaviors.  Maybe we’re not quite obsolete yet.  Sure, the Lizard Overlords may take away our modern conveniences like gas and oil and force us back into a pre-industrial lifestyle but it will still be as human beings and that is an amazing simulation to be a part of.