Tuesday, August 12, 2025

Something is about to blow

What's about to blow will be big and destructive, with the power to distract from other events that otherwise might end careers. When we've reached the point where leaders need distractions of this magnitude, we will have clues beforehand, as we do now. Here are some of the crises in critical stages which, if populations are not distracted from them, will bite the hands that fed them:

1. Is Trump in the Epstein files? Who else is in there? Because Trump won't disclose the files it appears to his base that he's protecting child molesters, a career breaking perception, at least it has been. A major terrorist act would be enough to get our minds off the sordid scenario.

2. Trump is playing the whole world in his mediation between Russia and Ukraine. While he pretends to scold both sides, we get hints that Russia will end up keeping parts of the Donbas region (formerly Ukrainian territory along the Russian border), an area rich in rare earth minerals necessary for the internet age. After Russia gets its chunk of the Donbas, it will likely do business with the U.S.- per prearrangement - in fulfillment of a deal that will piss off so much of the world that a distraction will be required at the moment the deal becomes clear.

3. It appears to a divided world that the Israel/Hamas conflict is between good and evil, with different opinions on which side is which. At this time the crimes of each are becoming clear, which will require a horrific act explained by one side as defensive, the other as offensive, to distract from the crimes of each.

4. Trump's base is having doubts about him not only because he's hiding the Epstein files, but because his policies are destroying their livelihoods. He can't face Americans much longer like this. A big terrorist attack would be useful right now.

Leaders of other countries and armies have a similar need for distraction. The situation is reminiscent of the lead-ups to the first two world wars, in which leaders surreptitiously sought conflict to escape from the mounting pressures of peace.


Here's a breakdown:

World War I: On June 28, 1914, just before the war broke out, a Serbian partisan, who was opposed to the Austro-Hungarian Empire's domination of Serbia, assassinated the Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Empire's throne. In a harsh ultimatum to Serbia, the Empire issued demands that, according to many historians, were so extreme they appeared designed to produce the intense Serbian response that, through multi-national alliances on both sides, triggered major war throughout Europe. Leaders took advantage of their populations' misguided belief that war would free them from their frustrated and futile seeming lives (see Aldous Huxley's 1928 novel, Point Counter Point).

World War II: In 1940, before the U.S. entered the war against Japan, Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, warned President Roosevelt that mooring the fleet at Pearl Harbor would place it threateningly close to Japan, that it would be highly vulnerable to surprise aerial torpedo and bombing attack, and that Hawaii was too far from mainland U.S. to be adequately supplied. The fleet was deployed at Pearl Harbor anyway because upper management needed major violence to cover its lack of better ideas.

Of course manufactured distraction is not the only cause of violence; there is also our predilection for it. You can't, however, predict human violence based soley on its potential, since violent ideation is a constant, while you can predict violence from political tensions that, if people blame them on their leaders and are not distracted, will grow into domestic strife rather than righteous war against other countries.

It should be noted that, while the first two world wars sought realignment of power and silencing of popular discontent, the next world war's purpose will be to replace traditional human culture and physiology with a bioengineered and AI managed new type of "human." Thus, while the manipulative strategies that trick people into war will be the same for World War III, the goals will be different. At least after the last two world wars we were still human.

Friday, June 20, 2025

Progress with AI humor

Check out my blog exploring AI technology, "Conversations with AI," and my latest post about teaching humor to an AI, at https://smartypantsgemini.blogspot.com/.

Friday, February 28, 2025

Is virtual reality real? (Updated)


[This piece is reposted from 4/9/22, updated in the context of the Israel/Hamas and Ukraine/Russia wars, with reference to recent Islamic State (IS) attacks]

The phrase "virtual reality" takes a twisty path from its Latin roots. Of course, by the time children are in middle school they know what virtual reality is, but ask them to define it. Then ask yourself.

A good dictionary (in this case Merriam-Webster) covers the basics: "Virtual" is related to the noun, "virtue," which we know to mean, "a morally good quality," like integrity or honesty, from Latin virtus, "merit," "perfection," from vir, "man."  The transition from vir to the rest is an etymological puzzle (while you're at it, consider "woman of virtue"), but my focus here is the equally mystifying modern usage of "virtual."

Back to the dictionary- there are three broad definitions of "virtual":

1: Modern common use: "Almost or nearly as described, but not completely or according to strict definition : the troops stopped at the virtual border."  Virtual borders are not official borders on a map, but de facto borders, determined by use.

Note: Only definition #1 clearly references the historic usage of virtue,  retained in our word "virtuous," meaning "exhibiting virtues."  In the example above, virtual borders have the "virtue" of being observed by practice, though not the virtue of being indicated on maps.

2: In Computing: "Not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to exist, e.g., a virtual doorway;"  In other words, imaginary.

3: Physics: "Denoting particles or interactions with extremely short lifespans and indefinitely great energies, postulated as intermediates in some processes."  That is, particles, or things, that exist for such a brief period of time that their reality as things is questionable.

One might think that virtual reality derives from definition #3, since it is the most puzzling.  Does the length of time that something exists have bearing on the reality of its existence?  In galactic time, humans do not exist very long. Does that mean ours is a lesser existence?  That subject will have to wait for another essay, however, since virtual reality derives from #2, which means, as noted, imaginary.

[Note: I'm going to leave the definition of "reality" as "things that are real," a cop-out perhaps because Merriam-Webster informs us that "reality" derives from the Sanskrit for "property," something to do with "wealth and goods" being real things- a philosophical question for another essay.]

Under virtual reality we get: "The computer-generated simulation of a three-dimensional image or environment that can be interacted with in a seemingly real or physical way by a person using special electronic equipment, such as a helmet with a screen inside or gloves fitted with sensors."

The question I ask at this point is, why do we need to conceive of computer-generated simulation as a type of reality?  We never had that need with novels, plays or movies. Those are not types of realities.  They are imaginary.

In modern, media based culture, we seem to have concluded that reality is manufactured by us. We get support for this notion from TV news.   If the news show we watch shares our bias, our brain allows the television to hook-up with our perceptual apparatus, as a sort of adjunct brain, at least mine does. When I watch a TV news report from a war front on a station matching my bias, my mind gravitates towards belief. If I watch a story on a station that does not match my bias, I am skeptical. In a version of "confirmation bias," my brain is requiring that its perception of reality be moderated by outer mechanisms that match its bias, in other words that reality be manufactured.

In addition to the news, we have "reality shows." These are shows in which non-actors (termed "real") behave in unscripted but stage-managed ways.

These trends suggests that we don't require actual reality from our media, that it is enough to produce simulated, virtual reality, as video games do.

It is in this context that I consider IS (or ISIS), which in 2014, with its professionally produced, ready for prime time video of a Jordanian pilot burning to death in a cage, realized the predictions of numerous science fiction novels, from the media-mediated wars of George Orwell's 1984 to the blurred lines between war and mass entertainment in Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games.  On the day the IS video was released, ABC national news anchor David Muir described its "high production values," adding that, "No Hollywood studio could have done better," as if he were delivering a movie review.  In a sense he was.

 [Update, 3/23/24: Available sources suggest that IS is funded from continually shifting politics, which helps explain its unclear meaning. The obscurity deepened after the horrific attack of 3/22/24 on concert-going civilians in Russia, for which a putative IS took credit. Russia says the attack was directed by Ukraine, with no reference to IS. Hamas says that Israel and the CIA directed the attack through IS. The U.S. says that IS is an independent terrorist group that committed the attack independently, as indicated by its claiming to have done so. The "facts" on all sides are as antithetical to each other as the "facts" on either side of Israel vs Hamas/Hezbollah, or Ukraine vs. Russia. This is purposeful. We are not supposed to understand what's going on with these potential triggers of World War III, but it's clear what's going on: Current civilization is under threat of being dismantled by violent covert and overt forces. I don't recommend total pessimism, but to avoid it we need a politically influential group that describes and discusses things as they are, to save us from intellectual suffocation and keep hope alive.]

The other day a friend showed me a video from a source on the Internet that purported to be a recording of the transmission from a U.S. drone that was conducting an attack on IS ground troops in Syria who were attacking the Peshmerga (Kurdish enemies of IS, thus our allies).  It was a nighttime attack, the ground troops glowing white through infrared lenses. The chatter from drone control, which was hundreds or thousands of miles from the scene, was dispassionate but engaged, technical, referencing targets and coordinates, ordering rocket and 30mm fire that resulted moments later in white flashes where running forms had been.  It looked exactly like a video game.  I could have been pounding my thumbs blasting aliens or Kazakhs (a favorite game foe for a while).  Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game comes to mind, in which hot-shot 9th grade gamers are told by the military that they are trying out a new training video, while they are in fact fighting real aliens (Spoiler alert: Book III reveals that the "invading" aliens were on a peaceful mission).

What do these musings have to do with the real IS?  I should add that my point is not that IS is not real.  It's hard to see how its actions could be faked.  A man really was burned; people were really beheaded; many European and American cities are really being terrorized.  I'm talking about the sober thinking behind IS, specifically their marketing department, and they clearly have one. The War of IS is packaged for young men the way a video game would be packaged. Consider how you'll be watching a TV show that young people also watch, and suddenly there's a commercial for a video game showing CGI heroes blasting a variety of monsters, with titles like End of Doom Part III!  Now it's Return of ISIS- The Reckoning!  

Commentators have wondered where IS comes from and what it wants. It is not a country, or associated with one.  It has no past as an established enemy. But its genesis in no secret. IS formed in reaction to persecutions of Iraqi Sunnis by U.S. imposed Shia leaders, after the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq that toppled Sunni leader Saddam Hussein. IS was in effect born of U.S. policy, continuing the pattern of post-World War II conflicts in which we indulge our need to fight enemies by creating them- as we do with video games.

In other words, IS is not entirely real.  Virtually, though, it's real enough. It certainly has no problem with ratings, though IS is at heart a transitory organization, dependent on outside support.  On its own it does not have the staying power of a profitable video game.  The best outcome would be to win this war quickly, as well as virtually and really.  

[Update, 11/4/23: The Israel/Hamas war is both real and virtual. In America its reality is bolstered because many people instantly identify with one side or the other, and because people on both sides are maimed and killed. The virtual parts are the competing storylines of the conflict's background, such that someone new to the subject could read all the opposing accounts from biblical times to October 7th, 2023, and come away with no idea what to think, because the same assumed facts and historical fragments, accepted by each side but filtered through different perspectives, support antithetical narratives and draw antithetical conclusions. On top of this, since the October 7th attack, two new antithetical storylines explaining the purpose and nature of the attack have unfolded, as specific as the Manhattan Project in their intent, creating two groups of people living in opposite realities-fissionable material when the two groups are in contact, social atom bombs to be manipulated and ignited as one would physical bombs. Americans who manage to remain “undecided” or "unaligned" through the pressure to choose between these realities (due to our freedom of speech we get both storylines) will be overruled by the passion and argumentation of those who are sure of their place in the struggle].

[Update, 6/11/25: The two post-October 7 narratives have reached a dangerous intensity, with a worldwide audience believing either that Israel is genocidally starving and killing innocent people, or that Gaza's 2 million people, if unrestrained, would storm into Israel and kill every Israeli they could find. There's plenty of commentary on the situation; my only point is that it was pre-planned. Hyper-inflamed emotions were the desired outcome. The effects of increasing conflict will be felt far beyond the region. The local explosion will be used as a match to ignite other flammable potential (e.g. war with Iran). There are enough such ignition points (now including Occupied Los Angeles] to light the whole world on fire. The good news (maybe) is that the fires will be somewhat controlled to ensure that an AI mediated, bioengineered new humanity comes out the other end.]
  


Saturday, January 25, 2025

Sam Altman will prove you are human

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and owner of ChatGPT, is a booster for his technology, AI, as in a piece in the online journal BBC Tech Decoded ("The Intelligence Age," 9/27/24) with comments like, "In the next couple of decades, we will be able to do things that would have seemed like magic to our grandparents."

He is upfront on some delicate issues, like replacement of traditional human jobs with AI jobs. As a long-time teacher, I was struck by this: "Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need," explicitly predicting the automation of teaching and the raising of children by machines. Altman also predicts replacement of doctors: "We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more."

Altman claims this future will bring a "shared prosperity and service to a degree that seems unimaginable today." It's the "shared" part that seems unimaginable.

This is not to say that AI-conducted teaching and health care would be sub-standard; Some aspects might be more efficient and faster than they are today. The price, however, will be that humans are no longer nurtured and raised by humans, but by machines.

To be clear, my argument is not that switching humanity to machine nurturing would be bad in some absolute sense. That's a matter of opinion. I am saying that we should be aware that it's happening. Awareness has been part of our definition of "human," and there are those who don't want that definition changed.

Speaking of awareness, Altman proposes an awareness in AI of whether a particular user is human. According to Time magazine ("Are you Human?," 6/23/25) one of Altman's companies, Tools for Humanity, is working on a device called "the Orb," which will scan everyone's iris to determine if the microscopic patterns appear human. If they do, the Orb will create an ID number with 12,800 digits for that person, who will use it throughout their lives to conduct any sort of business. The ID numbers will be entered into the Tools for Humanity data base, which will evolve into a "Proof of Humanity" network. Altman's goal is to catalogue at least 50 million people by the end of this year, and "ultimately to sign up every single person on the planet." As an incentive, the first people to sign up will get $42 in Altman's crypto-currency, Worldcoin, in "what ultimately the company hopes will become the world's largest financial network."

Again, I'm not arguing that requiring everyone on earth to have an ID number generated and stored by one private company, to certify that they are human and enroll them in the company run world economy, is either good or bad. I'm just saying we should be aware we are doing it and ponder its meaning. Of course, since Time has revealed the Orb and its future uses, a lot of people will know about it and may care, but the topic will soon be forgotten as we are distracted by wars that are, ironically, directed largely by AI.

Altman describes the future he sees: "Technology brought us from the Stone Age to the Agricultural Age and then to the Industrial Age. From here, the path to the Intelligence Age is paved with computing energy and human will." He apparently thinks the age we're entering should be called the "Intelligence Age." I don't know why he thinks that, unless he's only talking about machine intelligence. The typical human, with each forward step by AI, will get progressively less intelligent, in the sense of knowing valuable skills. As an obvious example, if cars become self-driving, people will forget how to drive. The same holds for teaching and being a physician, and for virtually any other current human job you can think of. Humanity may become like the children of AI, cared for and protected by an intelligence it created but can no longer understand.

As mentioned above, there is also the likely advent of widespread war mediated and conducted by AI, which will work to the advantage of an AI based humanity by destroying traditional human systems and replacing them with efficient AI systems.

In a time of general war it will be more difficult for creative outsiders to affect our ongoing evolution, but even now, in relative peacetime, we are not organized or encouraged to prioritize discussion of the coming world. An example is the recent U.S. presidential election. In all the debates, speeches and journalists' questions, there was not one reference to humanity's imminent leap into the unkown. Another example of non-awareness comes from the United Teachers of Los Angeles, to which I belong. UTLA was effective in the 1970's in raising teacher salaries from $30,000 to $70,000, but today it says not a word about the likely automation of teaching. What's the difference how much money we make if our jobs are gone?

Since an AI run civilization seems likely and could possibly be more efficient and less painful than current "civilized" life, one might ask why we should bother to critique it?  In my case the answer is that during the transition I prefer not to be assaulted by advertising and propaganda, such as Altman's, designed to distract our attention from a full understanding of what is happening. I would rather talk openly about the pros and cons, as that will be the only way for people outside the industry and politics to have any influence on the coming evolution.

[Check out my blog exploring AI technology, "Conversations with AI," and my latest post about teaching humor to an AI, at https://smartypantsgemini.blogspot.com/].

Something is about to blow

What's about to blow will be big and destructive, with the power to distract from other events that otherwise might end careers. When...