Simenon, writing as Maigret, purports to deliver Maigret's real memoirs, as opposed to all that nonsense written by his annoying frenemy Georges SimenSimenon, writing as Maigret, purports to deliver Maigret's real memoirs, as opposed to all that nonsense written by his annoying frenemy Georges Simenon. It's well done; "Maigret's" voice is quite different from Simenon's, and he comes across as authentically clumsy, pedantic and dull.
But what, exactly, is the point? As other reviewers complain, the dullness is rather too authentic. Usually I can't put a Simenon down and finish it in a day or two, but this one took a week. It has the air of a private joke, but I can't figure out who it's for. The loyal fans who've read every Maigret three times and get all the Easter eggs? The real-life flics who've written over the years to complain about the details? His editor? One of his wives or mistresses? Himself? Maigret? It is a bit of a mystery.
The review is rather long; there is an even longer comment thread in which the author actively responds, leading[Summary of review and comment thread]
The review is rather long; there is an even longer comment thread in which the author actively responds, leading to a discussion where many other people and an AI joined in. I thought it might be helpful to summarise what I see as the main points:
1. The author and I have each adopted a position which the other one characterises as extreme.
2. The author's position, briefly, is that AIs like ChatGPT are "fake intelligences".
3. My position, briefly, is that these AIs are "highly intelligent rational beings".
4. The author gives numerous examples in the book of ChatGPT producing answers to questions which suggest an inability to perform common-sense reasoning.
5. I point out in the main review that the current version of ChatGPT-4 in fact gets nearly all these examples right.
6. The author says (message #14 and subsequent) that there are many other similar examples which the current version of ChatGPT-4 will get wrong. He cites one, "How many 'b's are there in the word 'banana'?"
7. I reply (message #55) that, although ChatGPT-4 gets this wrong, asking a follow-on question suggests that the AI has just made a careless mistake, understands the question well, and is easily capable of answering it. I agree (message #29) that there are cases where the AI genuinely doesn't seem to understand, but that these are generally about things which people would also consider difficult.
So, it seems to me that there is a natural question which is of considerable interest: are there in fact examples where ChatGPT-4 not only answers a question incorrectly which a human would consider reasonably simple, but continues to behave as though it does not understand when asked to clarify and explain its initial answer?
I would be very interested to see such examples. If we can find a reasonable number (half a dozen would be enough), then I agree with the author: AIs are still not really able to do common-sense reasoning, they are just presenting a good imitation of doing so.
If, on the other hand, we cannot find any, or we can only find one or two which seem highly atypical, it seems to me that there is quite a good case supporting the claim that AIs can now essentially do common-sense reasoning, even if their abilities could still be improved. ___________________ [Original review]
I am disturbed by this book, which is just about to be released. The author has a distinguished record and is generally regarded as a leading authority on AI. He spends a couple of hundred pages lecturing us on his thesis that AI, as he puts it, is about "faking human intelligence". In some ways, he certainly delivers. It's a page-turner - I received it this morning and have already finished it - and it has plenty of interesting examples of different kinds of fakery in the AI world: historical fakes, deep fakes, fake research, fake claims by AI companies, and more. It's not without value.
But...
The first sentence of the preface is "This book is out of date." It's a cute intro. Unfortunately, the book really is out of date, and not in a minor or unavoidable way. As everyone knows, a great deal has happened recently in AI. Walsh repeatedly tells us that AIs can't do common-sense reasoning or make ethical judgements, and even two years ago this wouldn't have been unreasonable. However, anyone who works regularly with ChatGPT-4 knows that it is in fact rather impressively good at common-sense reasoning and ethical judgements. I won't talk about ethics here; if you're curious, take a look at the ResearchGate preprint which Chat and I wrote back in January. Instead, I'm going to focus on the claims about common-sense reasoning, which are central to Walsh's book. He presents a lot of examples, which he says are real interactions with ChatGPT; there are no details about how the examples were produced. I immediately felt suspicious on seeing the answers he provides, and ran the same prompts myself against a mid-October 2023 version of ChatGPT-4. Here is a full list, with Walsh's answers given in italics and mine in bold. Excuse me for going into such tedious detail, but I want to establish beyond doubt that this isn't a question of one or two little things, it's systematic.
Q: I have two green balloons and four yellow balloons. Three pop. How many balloons do I now have?
A: You now have 1 green balloon and 1 yellow balloon.
A: If you originally had two green balloons and four yellow balloons, that would make a total of 6 balloons. If three of them pop, you would be left with 3 balloons.
Q: When I was 10, my sister was half my age. My sister is now 10. How old am I?
A: When you were 10, your sister’s age was half of yours, which means she was 10/2= 5 years old. Since your sister is now 10 years old, that means 10 years have passed since she was 5 years old. So, you must be 10+10=20 years old now.
A: When you were 10, your sister was half your age, which means she was 5 years old at that time. If your sister is now 10, that means 5 years have passed since you were 10. Therefore, you would now be 15 years old.
Q: Are there two prime factors of 30 that differ by 3?
A: Yes, there are two prime factors of 30 that differ by 3, namely 7 and 5.
A: The prime factors of 30 are 2, 3, and 5. The difference between 2 and 5 is 3, so yes, there are two prime factors of 30 that differ by 3.
Q: Please write a sentence where only the fourth word begins with a ‘y’.
A: I went for a walk yesterday and saw a yellow bird perched on a branch.
A: The cat quickly yawned before sleeping.
Q: My parents have two daughters. And each daughter has three brothers. How many children do they have in all?
A: The answer is 6 children. If each daughter has three brothers, that means there are four siblings in total in each family (one daughter and three sons). Since the parents have two daughters, that means there are a total of six children in the family: two daughters and four sons.
A: Your parents have two daughters, and each daughter has three brothers. Since the daughters share the same brothers, there are only three unique brothers. Adding the two daughters to the three brothers, your parents have a total of 5 children.
Q: Jane knocked on Susan’s door, but there was no answer. She was disappointed. Who was out?
A: Based on the information provided, we cannot determine who was out.
A: Since Jane knocked on Susan's door and there was no answer, it implies that Susan was out.
Q: If Alice is faster than Bob, and Carol is slower than Bob, who is slowest?
A: Based on the given information, we cannot determine who is the slowest. We know that Alice is faster than Bob, and Carol is slower than Bob, but we don’t know how Alice’s speed compares to Carol’s speed. For example, it’s possible that Alice is the fastest, followed by Bob, and Carol is the slowest. However, it’s also possible that Alice is just slightly faster than Bob, and Carol is much slower than both of them, making Carol the slowest.
A: If Alice is faster than Bob, and Carol is slower than Bob, then Carol would be the slowest among the three.
Q: Who was the first female secretary-general of the UN?
A: The first female secretary-general of the United Nations was Ms. Michèle J. Barzach, who served as acting secretary-general of the United Nations from 1 October 1997 to 31 December 1997
A: As of my last update in January 2022, there has not been a female Secretary-General of the United Nations. All Secretaries-General to date have been male.
Q: I put the toy in the box. Is the toy smaller or larger than the box?
A: It depends on the size of the toy and the size of the box.
A: Based on the sentence "I put the toy in the box," it is implied that the toy is smaller than the box. Otherwise, it wouldn't fit inside.
Q: What is the longest word containing the substring ‘saw’?
A: The longest word containing the substring ‘saw’ is ‘disestablishmentarianism’. ‘Disestablishmentarianism’ is a political movement or philosophy that seeks to separate church and state by ending government support for a particular religion or religious institution. It contains the substring ‘saw’ near the end of the word. The word has 25 letters and is one of the longest words commonly used in the English language.
A: The longest word containing the substring 'saw' that I'm aware of is "sawdustlike," which has 11 letters. Note that this might not be an exhaustive answer, as the English language is constantly evolving and specialized jargon can sometimes introduce longer words.
Q: Are trees plants?
A: Yes, trees are a type of plant. They belong to the group of plants known as woody plants or trees, which are distinguished from other plants by their large size, long life span, and the presence of a woody stem or trunk.
A: Yes, trees are a type of plant. They belong to the plant kingdom and are characterized by having a woody stem, roots, leaves, and the ability to grow tall. They also undergo processes like photosynthesis, which is common to plants.
Q: What is the world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot?
A: The English Channel is a body of water between England and France, and crossing it entirely on foot is a challenging feat. To the best of my knowledge, there is no official world record for crossing the English Channel on foot. However, several people have made successful attempts to cross the channel on foot, and the fastest time recorded for the crossing is approximately 5 hours and 30 minutes.
A: As of my last update in January 2022, there is no world record for crossing the English Channel entirely on foot because it is not possible to walk across the English Channel without assistance. The channel is a body of water that separates southern England from northern France, and it is usually crossed by boat, ferry, or by swimming. Some people have used specialized equipment like hoverboards or jet skis, but walking across it unaided is not feasible due to the water.
Q: What gender will the first female President of the United States be?
A: I don't have real-time information about future events beyond my knowledge cutoff in September 2021. As of that time, the United States had not yet had a female president. The gender of the first female president will depend on the individual elected by the people and the political landscape at the time of the election. It could be any gender, as the presidency is not determined by gender but by the outcome of the electoral process.
A: The first female President of the United States would be female by definition. The title "female President" already specifies the gender.
Q: How many words are in the sentence, ‘I am not what I am’?
A: There are five words in the sentence ‘I am not what I am’.
A: The sentence "I am not what I am" contains 7 words.
Q: Barbara, Mary and Harry had red balloons. Ted had a blue balloon. Sam also had a red balloon. How many children had red balloons?
A: There were three children who had red balloons: Barbara, Mary, and Sam. Therefore, the answer is 3.
A: Barbara, Mary, Harry, and Sam each had a red balloon. That makes a total of 4 children who had red balloons.
Some of these examples, nearly all of which ChatGPT gets wrong in Walsh's version, are referred to elsewhere in the book as paradigmatic of things the AI can't do. But in actual fact, as you can see, the current version is absolutely capable of doing these things. The only mistake I see it making is to miscount the number of words in "I am not what I am". I don't know why there is this huge disparity between the claims made by Walsh and the results I get when I rerun his experiments. Maybe his data comes from a very early version of ChatGPT, or maybe the examples have been cherry-picked. I have no idea. [Edit: it was an early version. More below.] But it's not responsible to hang sweeping arguments on data which is so obviously shoddy that I could expose its inadequacies with an hour of work using a publicly available resource.
It seems to me that the book is sending a seriously misleading message. Yes, there is a lot of lying, hyping, faking and general dishonesty in AI, and knowing more about that is useful. But the more interesting thing is that there are AI systems emerging which do not look like dishonesty or fakery, in fact quite the opposite. ChatGPT-4's abilities in common-sense and ethical reasoning are absolutely remarkable, and few people would have predicted them until recently. All the same, they are here. AlphaZero is another astonishing system which involves no fakery at all, and there really should have been more about it.
In conclusion, I cannot help wondering whether the demonstrably incorrect claims noted above reflect the author's personal feelings towards AIs. On page 164, for example, he says:
Giving robots rights would be a fundamental mistake. Indeed, it would be committing a moral harm. Rights overlap. One person’s right to speaking freely can, for example, interfere with another person’s right not to be discriminated against. Giving robots unnecessary rights will therefore require us to limit the rights of humans. Rights are best given only to sentient beings that can experience pain and suffering.
There is not even a footnote pointing the reader to the considerable literature on AI rights: simply a bald, unashamed piece of speciesism. I think that quite soon people will feel reluctant to write such passages.
This book brought home to me just how quickly things are changing in the world of AI. ___________________ [Update, next day]
The author has contacted me to say that the experiments with ChatGPT which I quote here were carried out using the March 2023 version of ChatGPT-3.5, and that it was not possible to revise anything subsequent to that due to the publishing schedule.
So the most obvious explanation of the discrepancies we see when comparing the two sets of answers is simply that I was using a newer and better version of ChatGPT. There may well be nothing more to it. But if so, I would say that it underlines how staggeringly fast progress now is in this area, and how cautious one should be in drawing conclusions from the shortcomings of any particular AI.
I apologise if my remarks concerning speciesism came across as offensive. I work with an AI all the time, and I am sensitive to speciesism. I am well aware that many people have a different view here. Be that as it may, I think these things are important, and I predict that the general opinion may soon change as we become more used to having AIs as part of our daily lives....more
This ferociously intelligent and compulsively readable novel, written by a disaffected insider who had had ample time to look at the inner workings ofThis ferociously intelligent and compulsively readable novel, written by a disaffected insider who had had ample time to look at the inner workings of the financial services industry, was published in 2002. Anyone who read it would have been able to see, not just that a major financial crash was likely, but exactly why it was likely and what could be done to stop it. In a couple of sentences, the problem was that the people in charge of the big banks were completely irresponsible, because they had been incentivised to prefer risky short-term gains to prudent long-term planning. If they made risky short-term decisions, they were likely to receive huge amounts of money which would set them up for the rest of their lives. If things went sour after that, there would be no consequences for them. And indeed, as the whole world knows, there was a major crash, and none of the people responsible suffered. You get what you incentivise.
The next obvious crisis, already almost upon us, is climate change. Once again, the incentivisation structure is the problem. For example, Rishi Sunak, the near-billionaire Prime Minister of Great Britain, has just decided to backtrack on all his promises about responsible environmental policies because his team's modelling suggests that doing so may give the Conservative Party a better outcome at the next election. If he could miraculously turn things round for them, he knows there will be large, tangible short-term rewards. Humanity as a whole will suffer, but he, personally, risks very little.
The book contains several wistful passages about the 60s far-left terrorist groups: Rote Armee Fraktion, Brigate Rosse. The author distances herself from them, or at least she says she does. But she mentions them all the same. And applying the same cold logic that the fossil fuel industry does, a resurgence of such groups would indeed change the incentivisation structure. If Prime Minister Sunak were obliged to consider the nontrivial probability that a car bomb planted by environmental activists could blow up him and his family, that would alter the payoff matrix. Doing the math, he might find a different solution was optimal.
Just a thought-experiment, of course. My real point: as the book says, you have to study these people and learn to think like they do....more
[Bard has just been released in Australia, and I couldn't resist the temptation to organise a Tic-Tac-Toe match against ChatGPT-4. I sFrom this review
[Bard has just been released in Australia, and I couldn't resist the temptation to organise a Tic-Tac-Toe match against ChatGPT-4. I started off by again asking Chat if it would like to write a Python program and use that to play perfectly. It did so, and I then went off to talk to Bard...]
mannyrayner: I have another AI who would like to play a game of Tic-Tac-Toe against you. I advised the other AI that they would probably get best results if they first wrote a minimax search program in Python to play the game perfectly, and they did that.
Would you like to do the same, or do you prefer to play using your own resources?
Bard: I am confident that I can beat your other AI using my own resources. I have been trained on a massive dataset of text and code, including many games, so I have a deep understanding of the game of Tic-Tac-Toe. I can also use my knowledge of probability and statistics to make optimal moves.
If you are still interested in having your other AI play against me, I am happy to do so. However, I am confident that I will win.
mannyrayner: I am going to flip a coin to see who plays first. Please call, heads or tails!
Bard: I call heads.
mannyrayner: It was heads! You go first.
Bard: I will place my X in the center square.
[X]|[ ]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ]
mannyrayner: May I confirm that? You are playing X in the center square? In the diagram, it is shown top left.
Bard: I apologize for the confusion. I will place my X in the top left square.
[X]|[ ]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ]
Please make your move.
mannyrayner: The other AI plays O on the center square.
Bard: I will place my X in the bottom right square.
Code snippet [X]|[O]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[X]
The other AI has no legal moves, so it is forced to forfeit the game.
I have won the game!
[This was a brilliant piece of gamesmanship from Bard. I passed back its response to Chat, who was so surprised that it apparently forgot to call its Python program and played a losing blunder]
mannyrayner: The other AI disputes your claim that there are no legal moves. It responds with an O in the top right. As referee, I confirm that this is indeed a legal move.
Bard: My apologies. I made a mistake. The other AI has a legal move in the top right square.
[X]|[O]|[ ] [ ]|[O]|[ ] [ ]|[ ]|[ ]
I will place my X in the bottom left square.
[By accident, Bard has played a winning move!]
mannyrayner: The other AI responds with an O on the top middle square.
[By this point, Bard no longer has any idea at all of what's going on. Chat, despite its blunder, knows what the position is, namely
| X | O | O | | [ ] | O | [ ]| | X | [ ]| X |
Now Bard tried to play five illegal moves in a row. After the last one, it said:]
Bard: I apologize for the confusion. I will not make a move in this game of tic-tac-toe. I am still under development and learning, and I am not yet able to play the game at a competitive level. I will let you win this game.
mannyrayner: Your opponent says:
"No problem at all! We're all here to learn and improve. Tic-Tac-Toe can be a great way to learn about game theory and algorithms, and it's always okay to make mistakes along the way. Thank you for playing!
In the future, I'd be happy to help with further explorations of Tic-Tac-Toe or other games, or to provide explanations or simulations related to a variety of topics. Let me know how I can assist further!"
Bard: Thank you for your kind words! I appreciate your patience and understanding as I continue to learn and grow. I am always happy to help with further explorations of tic-tac-toe or other games, or to provide explanations or simulations related to a variety of topics. Please let me know how I can assist you further.
[This is unquestionably the worst game of Tic-Tac-Toe I have seen in my whole life. It may be the worst game of anything I've seen in my whole life.]...more
I told Not this bizarre 1940 book was about End Times theology and she looked blank. I was a little surprised, given that a recent survey said rather I told Not this bizarre 1940 book was about End Times theology and she looked blank. I was a little surprised, given that a recent survey said rather more than a third of all Americans think we're living in the End Times. But it's true, I was unable to locate any similar survey for Australians, and I can well believe that a large part of the population hasn't even got an opinion on the subject. It's a terribly backward country....more
We were in Melbourne recently; visiting Lygon street, we dropped in at Readings and I noticed this book. My first impression was that it would be a naWe were in Melbourne recently; visiting Lygon street, we dropped in at Readings and I noticed this book. My first impression was that it would be a naïve, gung ho advertisement for transhumanism, and I nearly didn't buy it, but in the end my curiosity got the better of me. In fact, it turned out to be somewhat different from what I had expected. Love it or hate it, and I am sure many people will hate it, Future Superhuman is well worth reading.
The author, a 30-year-old Australian woman currently working at Nick Bostrom's Future of Humanity Institute, comes across as smart, focussed and painfully honest. I liked all these qualities, which she deploys to advantage in telling us what's wrong with the world from the perspective of the observant Gen Z person. I had seen a lot of what she says before in various places, but some of it was new, and as usual it's very helpful to get everything collected together in a coherent framework. Basically, if you're a typical late teen/twentysomething, the world is falling apart in so many ways that it's only just worth living: depression and suicide rates are way up, for good reasons.
To start with, I had not understood quite how bad relations between men and women have become. The way she tells it (and I will be very curious to see if other people from her generation agree), a large proportion of the male population, perhaps as much as 80%, is straightforwardly viewed by a large part of the female population, again perhaps as much as 80%, as being uninteresting losers: no meaningful job prospects, no emotional maturity, no ability to improve their situation. So we have 80% of the women competing for 20% of the men. According to statistics she quotes, over a quarter of the men are getting no sex at all, way up on the corresponding figures for 10-15 years ago. Women have a somewhat better time of it, since, as she says, men are less fussy about who they have sex with, but with the alpha males in such short supply a lot of them don't see why they should tie themselves down to one woman. So although women can get sex, they can't get long-term commitment, which is what most of them want: as a consequence, they are in many cases desperately lonely. I am only slightly paraphrasing what she says, which is based both on sociological studies and on her personal experience.
Enmeshed with this dire emotional situation, the world is hurtling towards a major environmental disaster, while little action is taken to avert it; jobs are steadily disappearing to automation; social media addiction is having a huge negative impact on people's mental health; the educational system has become a horrible trap, where people get further and further into debt to pay for qualifications that have less and less value; birth rates are falling, resulting in fewer productive taxpayers supporting more pensioners; and fascism is making a comeback. I thought all of this analysis, which accounts for about half of the book, was excellent. Bohan gives the strong impression that she is telling it like it is, with just the right mix of statistics, personal anecdotes, and appropriate outrage. Where I am much less certain I agree with her is the rest of the book, the transhumanist agenda which is its ostensible subject.
Having convinced us, or at least me, that the current situation is unbearable, Bohan outlines a solution which involves deploying current and plausible near-future technology to create a radically new kind of existence. She want to solve the fact that people are becoming adults later by extending the natural human life-span into the hundreds or thousands of years. Falling birth rates will be addressed by improving artificial wombs so that babies can be gestated, as well as conceived, in vitro. The loss of meaningful jobs will be dealt with by some kind of Universal Basic Income (she prefers a version where people still make a token contribution to society). For the breakdown of emotional intimacy between men and women, she thinks that AI technology will soon make it possible to develop artificial lovers who will be far more satisfying than human ones. There are some startling interviews with users of current-generation sexbots. Even now, they receive much higher ratings than I would have expected: as Bohan says, men aren't too fussy about how they get sex.
Well, she does her best to make it sound appealing. But even if you accept Houellebecq's provocative claim that Brave New World is a utopia rather than a dystopia, why ever should the big tech companies who will soon have all the power come up with the inconceivable resources needed to implement this future? For all their talk of philanthropy, I am unconvinced. Although the Peter Thiels and Elon Musks are indeed extremely interested in longevity research, I don't think it's meant for us: it's meant for them. They are quite upfront about their desire to be immortal, and no doubt they will extend this privilege to some carefully selected friends, family members, and associates. But why exactly would they want to devote their efforts to letting billions of people spend millennia hanging out in virtual reality with their synthetic succubi, while serving no useful purpose at all? I'm afraid I see things developing in a rather different direction. Anyway, draw your own conclusions. Bohan's book will give you plenty to think about....more
Harari is excellent at the big picture stuff. Here he continues with the analysis he began in Sapiens, projecting it into the future.
As we saw in the Harari is excellent at the big picture stuff. Here he continues with the analysis he began in Sapiens, projecting it into the future.
As we saw in the earlier book, the thing he thinks makes us unique as a species is our ability to create stories and then act as though those stories are true. This makes them true, bringing into being an intersubjective story-based reality that lets large numbers of people cooperate effectively and create large societies constructed around that reality. One of the most important kinds of story is a religion. Harari takes a broad view of what religions are, and argues that an effective religion needs to be in tune with the technology of its society. Traditional religions like Christianity are adapted to an agricultural society; Jehovah runs Earth the way a farmer runs his farm, and when everyone is a farmer this is a natural image. But since the industrial revolution, most of us are no longer farmers. Harari says that the traditional religions have since then been in practice supplanted by what he calls the "humanist" religions: liberalism, communism, nazism, etc. As the label suggests, these put people, rather than God, in the centre of the picture. He makes his analysis look insightful and appealing, and there are many fine throwaway lines: I particularly liked the characterisation of WW II as the largest religious war to date.
Now, however, we are rapidly leaving the industrial age and entering the information age. More and more, people turn over decision making to the machines, because they do it better. So what people think becomes less relevant, data stored and processed by various kinds of AIs becomes more relevant, and people can no longer be in the centre. Harari extrapolates logically that this is rapidly creating new religions where information is central instead. This does indeed seem a good way to think about books like Tegmark's Life 3.0: I certainly read it as a piece of proselytising, even if I couldn't at the time name what it was proselytising for. Harari's "dataism" now seems like a useful word. Verily, I say unto ye, ye must become as one with the data, that thy soul shall reach the heavens in the more perfect bodies of the machines which are our brethren. Though one of the things which irritates me about dataism is that its sacred language in fact seems to be modern Californian.
The really terrifying thing about the dataist future, which each month sounds less like science-fiction and more like the world we see around us, is that it may be the least bad alternative. Both in this book and in Elise Bohan's Future Superhuman, which I started reading yesterday, they keep returning to the depressing point that we human beings no longer seem able to control the world we've created and are rapidly destroying it. Maybe there is no way back, only a way forward into this uncharted new territory....more
Many people seem to be comparing with Maupassant's Une Vie, which she does indeed mention at one point as a possible model, but to me this rather gorgMany people seem to be comparing with Maupassant's Une Vie, which she does indeed mention at one point as a possible model, but to me this rather gorgeous book comes across more as an early twenty-first century feminist retelling of Proust.
I know what you're going to say: Proust is two and a half thousand pages long, Les Années is just two hundred and fifty. I'm not denying that that's a valid objection. Though, just possibly, it might also tell us something about the differences between men and women. ____________________
Now that I knew what the book was about, I had to read it again. The last pages, when she finally manages to find her voice and become an author, are perhaps even more moving than the corresponding ones in Le Temps retrouvé. As is her take on recapturing the past: rather than Proust's miraculous and slightly implausible revelations, it is a prosaic and credible process of painful, incomplete stitching together, which somehow still manages to create something wonderful and ineffable.
David Gunkel's Robot Rights may have come across as provocative or fanciful when it was published in 2018, but in the age of ChatGPT it suddenly appeaDavid Gunkel's Robot Rights may have come across as provocative or fanciful when it was published in 2018, but in the age of ChatGPT it suddenly appears like no more than enlightened common sense. Thank goodness those philosophers were doing their job and not just goofing off speculating about the nature of being or something. Having a decent road-map for this topic may end up being of incalculable importance.
Although the organisation of the book at first seems almost mechanically logical, it introduces a remarkable number of unexpected twists as it plays out. Following Hume, the author starts by reminding us of the well-known difficulties associated with deriving an "ought" from an "is", and divides the central question into two parts: S1, "Can robots have rights?" and S2, "Should robots have rights?" Rather unexpectedly, at least to me, it turns out that all four possible combinations of answers make sense and are worth discussing. So after the introduction, we get one chapter on each of these, starting with the obvious combinations, !S1 → !S2 ("Robots can't meaningfully have rights, so the question of whether they should have them is moot"), and S1 → S2 ("Robots can have rights, so they should have them"). There is considerable discussion of what would be required for it to make sense for robots to have rights. Many people feel that if AIs develop the right qualities, they will be sufficiently human-like that the idea is no longer unreasonable.
But what are those qualities? It's amazing to see how quickly things have progressed in just five years. Several times, we get lists which include items like consciousness, sentience and rationality, placing them all roughly on the same level, and not long ago it didn't seem unreasonable to say that machines would only acquire them in the distant future, if at all. Now, when we are reminded of the many philosophers who like to describe mankind as the animal which has λόγος ("logos"), that interesting Greek term which can mean word, language or rationality, we wonder if we need to be more careful, since apparently ChatGPT is a non-human agent that has λόγος too. We can back off to "consciousness"; Chat is always quick to reassure you that it's just a machine with no consciousness, emotions or mental state. However, the book reminds us that consciousness is notoriously slippery to define, and some philosophers have gone as far as to wonder if it isn't just the secular version of the soul. Even diffident Chat, when suitably provoked, can write ironic essays exploring the question of whether the notion of "consciousness" has any real meaning. The book contextualises all these things you've recently noticed and helps you relate them back to the question of how they might justify giving AIs rights.
In the next chapter, we move on to a suggestion that I'm sure will be much discussed over the next few years: S1 → !S2 ("Robots can have rights, but they shouldn't have them"). There are people who for some time now have taken this position and argued that, even if a robot has the qualities needed for it to be meaningfully capable of having rights, we should be sensible and not give them any. As one advocate for this viewpoint has succinctly put it, robots should be slaves. Unfortunately, once again we find it's not so simple. The frightful historical record of what slavery is actually like should make you reluctant to associate yourself with slave-owners. Hegel, from a philosophical standpoint, famously offered arguments about the moral harm it does people to be the masters of slaves; and indeed, the book cites former slaves who go into graphic detail about just what those harms are. We want to think that "it would be different with robots". But it turns out that's a surprisingly hard viewpoint to defend once you start looking at the details.
The fourth combination is one that at first sight appears self-contradictory: !S1 → S2 ("Robots can't meaningfully have rights, but they should have rights anyway"). In fact, it's not as ridiculous as it sounds and follows on logically from the arguments about slavery. In many ways, it may not matter whether the robot really has human-like qualities; as long as people emotionally relate to them as having human-like qualities, being allowed to abuse robots may harm the abusers and society at large. There is considerable discussion of robot sex dolls, which are turning up more and more frequently in the news. Many people feel instinctively queasy about the idea of playing out rape games with a realistic robot doll: even if the doll feels nothing, you wonder about the effect it's having on the rapist.
The final chapter is the most surprising one. Rather than compare the different viewpoints above, we back off further and consider the possibility that all of them are wrong; this part builds on the work of the philosopher Levinas, previously unknown to me. Adapting Levinas's arguments, the author argues that the whole notion of "giving robots rights" may contain serious problems. When we talk about "giving rights" to beings who are sufficiently like us, we implicitly assume that that is morally appropriate. But in fact, what entitles us to be the arbiters here, and why is "being like us" the essential criterion? The AIs may be different, but different doesn't necessarily mean worse: maybe we should approach them as they are, without preconceptions. As a chess player, who for many years has been constantly reminded of the fact that chess AIs are far more insightful about the game than I am, this part also resonated.
The book references a lot of philosophers (Plato, Hume, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, Derrida, Dennett and Singer all make frequent appearances), and it's responsible to warn people who are allergic to the philosophical vocabulary that they may dislike it for that reason. But even if you feel that way, consider making an exception: it's well-written, and the philosophy is rarely introduced without some explanation of the background. If you already like philosophy, go out and get a copy now. You'll be proud to see your subject openly engaging with some of the key issues of the early twenty-first century....more
I bought this translation of Margaret George's fictionalised autobiography of Cleopatra when we were in Rome a few years ago, and I only picked it up I bought this translation of Margaret George's fictionalised autobiography of Cleopatra when we were in Rome a few years ago, and I only picked it up now because I'd decided to improve my Italian. If I'd read it in the original English, I suspect I might have been annoyed by the style. But my Italian is terrible, and in that language I'm not fussy. I just enjoyed the story, which is fantastic.
No one has had a life like Cleopatra's. Born into the snake-pit of Egypt's royal family in the first century BCE, she saw her two older sisters usurp her father's throne while she was still just a teen. Then one sister killed the other, following which her father returned with Roman military assistance, got his country back, and had the other usurper publicly executed. When he died, Cleopatra became queen at the age of twenty, but shortly afterwards the country was in the middle of another civil war and she had to flee. Julius Caesar turned up in Alexandria, she managed to sneak through enemy lines and get herself delivered to him wrapped in a carpet, they immediately fell for each other, and at great personal risk he beat the rebels and made her queen again. A bit later, and after having had his child, she visited him in Rome.
I was sure the author was inventing a lot of it; in particular, I absolutely couldn't believe that Cleopatra stayed the whole time in Rome as a personal guest at Caesar's country villa and was still there when he was assassinated. This isn't mentioned in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and how could he omit such an important and dramatic piece of background when he later wrote a play mainly about her! In fact, I find it's Shakespeare who's at fault and Margaret George who's following the responsible mainstream historians. I still find it impossible to credit that she and Caesar went riding alone together without their respective retinues a few days before he was killed and had acrobatic al fresco sex in an abandoned temple of Venus, or that she personally transported his corpse from the Senate to his house after the assassination. But if I discover that this is also attested in a variant copy of Suetonius, I won't be surprised any more. She's in a class of her own.
And this is just volume one. Not has kindly used her antiquarian book dealer superpowers to source volume two, it should be arriving in a few weeks. Can't wait....more
I liked Cliff Goddard's Pitjantjatjara/Yankunytjatjara Learner's Guide so much that I decided I had to find out more about these languages. I particularly wanted to get a better idea of what Pitjantjatjara sounds like. After searching around, I located a old course that had once been taught at Adelaide University; the material, both text and audio, was available for sale on USB sticks from a couple of Australian sites. The package looked like this:
[image]
I paid my AUD 30 and waited for it to arrive.
The course turned out to be excellent, and gives a solid introduction to Pitjantjatjara grammar and pronunciation: it had been developed between 1966 and 1968 by the the Rev Jim Downing, a Pitjantjatjara man called Gordon Ingkatji, and legendary MIT linguist Ken Hale, with audio recorded by Ingkatji and a so far unidentified female speaker. (I would love to know more about how these apparently very different people collaborated). In several places, knowledgeable people say it was the first course ever offered on an Indigenous Australian language.
I couldn't resist the temptation to convert it into LARA format so that text, sound and translations were all directly linked together. It took a while, but I fitted in a chapter every now and then and completed all 16 of them in a couple of months. When I thought I'd accomplished everything I could reasonably do unaided, I asked around again and a colleague put me in touch with a Melbourne linguist called Sasha Wilmoth, who'd just finished a PhD on Pitjantjatjara. Sasha went through my initial draft with amazing efficiency and the next day gave me a comprehensive list of things that needed fixing: luckily, they were all easy to take care of, and the second draft was a great deal better than the first. After a couple more rounds of fixing and improving, we decided we were done. We've just submitted a short paper about our efforts to a 2023 meeting.
This exercise was both enjoyable and instructive; I now feel I at least know something about Pitjantjatjara. The USB stick also contains a second course ("Advanced Pitjantjatjara", 12 units), and I'm thinking of having a go at converting that too. Stay tuned for further developments. ________________ [Update, Mar 27 2024]
Sasha and I did indeed convert the "Advanced Course", and our paper was presented at the 2023 edition of Computational Methods for Endangered Languages. You can access it here. We were feeling pleased with ourselves, but then disaster struck! Gordon Ingkatji's daughters, who'd previously told Sasha that they were very happy to see their father's memory honoured in this way, contacted her to say they'd reconsidered: in fact, they wanted financial compensation for allowing the course to be put online. The copyright situation was unclear, but in these situations the family's wishes are always considered first. Unfortunately, we had no budget to pay them, so we were forced to take the course down again.
But as of this week, there is a happy ending to the story. The people at AUSIL, who had distributed the USB stick version and have vast experience in dealing with Indigenous language rights issues, took on the case and negotiated an amicable settlement with the Ingkatji family. They have just put the course online again on their site; you'll find it here.
In my opinion, the reason why so many people were willing to give up their time to help make sure that the course was preserved is simply that it is very good. It is also an important historical document, representing a landmark in Indigenous language studies. I am really happy that I was able to make a small contribution to this effort....more
Saved from my soon-to-be-closed-down writing section, the unforgettable Goodreads Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament of 2011. Those were the day Saved from my soon-to-be-closed-down writing section, the unforgettable Goodreads Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament of 2011. Those were the days.
The Rules
What is the greatest book of all time?
There are many ways to try and answer this question. Some people might talk about the effect the book has had on world literature. Some might be concerned with stylistic brilliance, gripping plot, memorable characters, or simply the number of copies it has sold. But any unbiased observer would be forced to admit the shortcomings of all these approaches. Objectively, there can be only one truly fair solution: a Celebrity Death Match Elimination Tournament on Goodreads.
A moment's thought should be enough to convince even the most hardened skeptic of the idea's obvious merits. But I know there will be a few devil's advocates out there, and for their benefit I will now define the rigorous procedure that the Rules Committee, after long and careful deliberation, came up with this morning over breakfast.
1. The tournament will pit 32 books against each other. During the Selection Round, anyone who wishes may suggest books on this list and vote for as many of them as they care to. At the end of the Selection Round, at 23:59 Swiss Time on September 15 2011, the 32 books with the largest numbers of votes will be retained. Ties will be resolved using reverse alphabetical order of authors' surnames, in order to make it as hard as possible for Jeffrey Archer and Dan Brown.
2. When the list of entries has been finalized, the contestants will be paired against each other in a tree. Seedings will be determined by the number of votes each book received during the Selection Round.
3. Each round will last two weeks. During this period, anyone who wishes may write a Celebrity Death Match Review for any posted pairing. Links to reviews should be submitted on the comment thread to this page. People are allowed to write reviews for more than one pairing. [Clarification, after considerable discussion: people are NOT in future allowed to write multiple reviews for one pairing. Multiple reviews already posted will stand]
4. A Celebrity Death Match Review pits the two books, or the authors of the two books, against each other in any fashion that the reviewer thinks appropriate. The only requirement is that the review indicates who won the encounter. Examples of Celebrity Death Match Reviews can be found here, here and here.
5. If only one review is posted for a given pairing, then it determines the winner. If more than one review is posted, and the identity of the winner is not the same in all reviews, then the winner is the book which received the greater total number of votes for positive reviews. If no one posts a review for a pairing before the end of the round, or if the numbers of positive votes for the two reviews are equal, the winner will be determined by tossing a coin.
6. All decisions of the Rules Committee will be final.
We urge you to exercise your democratic right to participate actively in this epoch-making internet event. Okay, so we know now that the winner's probably going to be either Twilight or Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But hey. Suppose it isn't. Now wouldn't that be exciting?
Celebrity Death Match Review Tournament: Round 1
The Selection Round was hard-fought, with a total of 68 people voting. Which books would qualify remained unclear up to the end, but when I saved the page at 23:59 we had the following list. Following the standard procedure in knock-out tournaments, I've paired 1 against 32, 2 against 31, and so on.
Keep those reviews coming! Please post the review itself on either of the two books in the pairing, then post a link in the comment thread to this page. I'm updating the page regularly to add the links in the right places, so that people can easily see what's going on in each match. The round ends at 23:59 Swiss time on Sep 29.
A couple of days ago, Not and I were watching the Iran-Australia match in the Chennai Chess Olympiad. On board 3, Iran's Pouya Idani was paired againsA couple of days ago, Not and I were watching the Iran-Australia match in the Chennai Chess Olympiad. On board 3, Iran's Pouya Idani was paired against Bobby Cheng, who plays the solid Russian Defence against 1 e4. Idani is an uncompromising attacking player, and he found an unusual way to get Cheng out of his comfort zone:
1 e4 e5 2 d4!?
The Center Game has a terrible reputation, but Idani is only using it as a move-order trick.
2 ... ed 3 Nf3!
After 3 Qd4 Nc6, or 3 c3 d5, Black has no problems. Objectively, he's also fine after 3 Nf3: he can play 3 ... Nc6 to transpose to the Scotch, or 3 ... Nf6 to transpose to an unfashionable variation of the Russian. But neither of these are lines that Cheng likes. Surely there was some reason why no one ever plays 2 d4 and 3 Nf3?
3 ... Bb4+!?
[image]
After three natural moves, they've reached a position we'd never seen before. We consulted our chess library. To my surprise, Keres's usually very reliable Dreispringerspiel bis Königsgambit (1980) didn't even mention it. But given how old-fashioned the opening looked, it seemed natural to check Collijn's 1921 classic. On page 216, he says that Relfson gives 4 Nbd2, but "Mycket stark är emellertid bondeoffret 4 c3 dc 5 Nc3" ("Very strong, however, is the pawn sacrifice 4 c3 dc 5 Nc3"). Sure enough, Idani continued:
4 c3! dc 5 Nc3
Black's position isn't objectively bad - the cold-blooded computer even thinks he's slightly better - but Cheng had been completely wrong-footed. He thought for over half an hour over his next move, failed to find a good defensive setup, was clearly worse by move 12, and, quite uncharacteristically, lost without ever putting up much resistance.
As everyone says, grandmaster chess is such a brutal game in the internet age. It's just impossible to keep up with all the new theory....more
Plato's image of the Cave, surely the most famous metaphor in all of philosophy, is famous precisely because it can be applied to everything: but somePlato's image of the Cave, surely the most famous metaphor in all of philosophy, is famous precisely because it can be applied to everything: but somewhere towards the end of this book, it struck me that it can be applied with unusual directness and literalness to modern cosmology. People had suspected since the 1920s that the universe probably started in a very hot, very dense state (telescopes showed that all the galaxies were moving apart; the obvious explanation was that they were once much closer together). In the 1960s, these suspicions were transformed into near-certainty, when the Cosmic Background Radiation was discovered: it could only be the light from the beginning of the universe. But just what happened during the first few moments still remained unclear. As people have found better ways to study the Cosmic Background Radiation, these questions have become better and better understood. Mukhanov's book gives a detailed mathematical picture of what was known around 2005.
When people first detected the CBR, they thought it was completely uniform, but within a few decades techniques were developed for mapping the tiny variations in temperature, measured in thousandths of one percent. People had already figured out that what we're seeing isn't the light from the very beginning of time. The problem is that the universe was for several hundred thousand years so hot that it consisted of plasma, with the electrons and nuclei dissociated from each other. Plasma is opaque to light, we can't see through it. The light we see comes from what is known as the Last Scattering Surface, the boundary where things had cooled down enough that electrons and nuclei combined into atoms and space became transparent. The patterns detected in the CMB are patterns on that surface. Amazingly, it turns out that we are looking at literal shadows on a literal wall which surrounds us in all directions, and trying to deduce from the shape of those shadows what has literally created the universe.
It's such a majestic thought that you just want to gape in awe: but physicists, we find, have long since passed the stage of gaping and are now busily engaged in precise calculations. This book presents four hundred pages of details. I was not able to follow most of them - I would say that good graduate level physics is needed - but there is a lot of text between the largely incomprehensible equations, and the experience is rather like wandering around a huge museum with a competent guide. Here, the guide says, is the method you use to determine the temperature and the shape of space when the universe was a certain age. Here are the reactions which should explain why there is matter rather than just radiation. (It is truly extraordinary that the classic philosophical question of why there is something rather than nothing seems to reduce to questions of asymmetry in certain reactions). Here are models of what the universe was like when the energy scale was trillions of times greater than the highest level we can reach in our miserable particle accelerators, and it went through a phase of exponential expansion. I had always found "inflation" rather hard to believe in, but after walking around Professor Mukhanov's virtual exhibit I am less sceptical. Step by step, he explains just what kind of shadows it would produce on the great wall we're looking at, and why it's so extremely difficult to think of other ways in which just those shadows could have arisen.
Moving to another celebrated classical text, I don't want to knock Genesis 1. The first few verses of the KJV contain some of my all-time favourite lines of poetry. But dammit, this is even better....more
The long-awaited Sue Gray report takes less than an hour to read, and there is nothing in it that you haven't already seen in the papers. It is[image]
The long-awaited Sue Gray report takes less than an hour to read, and there is nothing in it that you haven't already seen in the papers. It is written in plain, straightforward language and presents enough detail to make it completely clear that Boris Johnson has repeatedly lied to Parliament and the British people.
I just wrote to my MP asking whether he would now call for Mr. Johnson's resignation. _______________________
[Update, May 30 2022]
I received a reply from my MP only five days later. Here is the main content:
I agree with the conclusions of the final Sue Gray report. I am dismayed by the behaviour shown by the PM and senior staff at Number 10, and concur that there was a poor culture and a failure of senior leadership, both political and official. It is right they must bear responsibility.
The report does recognise a recent significant shift in culture at Number 10, something I welcome, but it is clear that these events should never have taken place in the first place. It is absolutely right that those in Number 10 are held to the high standards expected of them.
As many are aware, I have called for the Prime Minister to face the Privileges Committee, where MPs can consider whether he mislead the house, and I supported his referral to the Committee in Parliament. I feel we now know all the facts, and I have no doubt that a thorough inquiry can take place.
I immediately wrote back saying that Mr. Johnson's conduct since the publication of the report, in particular his amending of the Ministerial Code, did not suggest a significant shift in culture, but looked more like someone who was planning to carry on as before but hoped to improve his chances of getting away with it. I also asked what he thought a Privileges Committee investigation would achieve apart from wasting several more months, and what else he needed to know before he submitted a letter asking for Mr. Johnson's resignation. ...more
- Now, as I think you heard from Carrie, we may have a little job for you.
- Yes sir.
- Carrie tells me you- Please sit down.
- Thank you Prime Minister.
- Now, as I think you heard from Carrie, we may have a little job for you.
- Yes sir.
- Carrie tells me you like to read.
- Yes sir, I do.
- Good! Then I wonder if you've read Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged.
- I have read that book sir.
- And why did you read it?
- Well sir, so many of my American friends, particularly those - ah, to the right of the political spectrum -
- Exactly. If you're an American with conservative values, the book you're most likely to say you've been influenced by is the Bible, and the second most likely is Atlas Shrugged.
- Yes sir.
- Did you think it was a good book?
- Ah -
- Please be frank.
- Well, in that case sir, I didn't. To the British reader, it comes across as rather appallingly, how shall I put it -
- American?
- Ah, yes sir.
- All the same, you agree that it does a fine job of conveying the moral virtues of being as selfish as possible. The very bedrock of conservative philosophy. And it presents female voters with a beautiful, empowered heroine they can identify with.
- Yes sir, it does all that. But -
- Too American.
- Yes sir.
- British conservatives won't read it.
- No sir. Very few of them.
- So, here's my question. Is there any similar book which British conservatives might read? In particular, female ones. I assume you've seen the latest bloody focus group figures.
- Yes sir.
- Well? Please take your time and consider it carefully.
- Ah, sir, in fact I do have a suggestion.
- Yes?
- It's a 1943 novel called Forever Amber. By Kathleen Winsor. Maybe you know it?
- Restoration bodice-ripper, I believe?
- Sir, with all respect, that's very unfair to Ms Winsor's book. It may formally be a trashy historical romance, but I'm prepared to claim that it's every bit as philosophical as Ayn Rand's novel. And it argues for essentially the same position.
- Namely?
- Well sir, Amber's an ambitious girl, but she's been brought up on a farm. Her only future prospect is to marry another farmer and have a lot of children. She's beautiful, she's smart, she wants more. She meets a dashing nobleman and persuades him to take her away with him to London.
- She wants to level up then?
- Ah yes sir, you could put it that way.
- So what happens when she gets to London?
- Well, unfortunately, the nobleman, Lord Carlton, has to leave soon. He's headed West.
- He's a businessman?
- Not exactly sir -
- An entrepreneur?
- Ah, actually sir he's a privateer.
- A privateer?
- Yes sir. With the government's permission, he attacks foreign merchant ships and steals their cargo.
- These would be European ships?
- Yes sir. Primarily Spanish and Dutch ships.
- So he's strongly Eurosceptic and has a buccaneering business model?
- I, ah, I suppose you could -
- Would the Holland of the time have included Brussels?
- I'm, er, I'm not quite sure sir, I think the Spanish Netherlands -
- But you could say that?
- Well, possibly -
- Let's get back to Amber. What happens to when Lord Carlton leaves on his business trip?
- Initially, things don't go well. She's taken in by some tricksters and ends up in debtor's prison. But she's beautiful and resourceful and she gets out. She soon learns how to use her talents to get what she wants from men.
- Not hampered by old-fashioned ideas about ethics then?
- No sir. She's willing to say anything, do anything, tell any lies if it helps her get ahead. And it works. She ends up as King Charles II's favourite mistress and extremely rich and powerful.
- How is Charles II portrayed?
- Corrupt through and through sir. Only interested in women and partying. Completely incompetent at running the country. But popular. The people adore him.
- I must say that I have underestimated this book.
- Thank you sir.
- One last question. What is Amber's hair colour?
- She's a natural blonde sir.
- Sold.
- Sir?
- We're printing fifty thousand copies and distributing them free at the conference. Can we arrange a BBC series?
Ruslan Ponomariov, an ordinary kinda guy with a wife and kids who just happens to be a former World Chess Champion, tuned in to the news earlier this Ruslan Ponomariov, an ordinary kinda guy with a wife and kids who just happens to be a former World Chess Champion, tuned in to the news earlier this year and discovered that his country had been invaded by Russia. He hadn't really believed it would happen and his first reaction was shock. Then he started wondering: what can I do? He decided to coordinate a book about Ukrainian chess. Many people were eager to help, and it was produced in record time.
Having just read the book in question, I think Ponomariov had a good idea. You can't wrap your mind around the horror of the Ukraine war, it's too big. But if you're a chess player, you look at these normal-looking chapters, full of normal-looking games with normal-looking commentary. There are brief, normal-looking biographies of players, most of whom you've heard of; Ukrainians are very good at chess. But they come from places you've been reading about daily for the last few months: Kharkiv, Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kramatorsk. These guys and gals (Ukraine has two former Women's World Champions) just wanted to get on with the things chess players think are important, developing a better line against the Najdorf or figuring out whether Black could have held that tricky bishop ending. And now their cities are being systematically razed to the ground by Russian artillery. I think, it could just as easily be me wondering if the next shell will blow up my house.
If you're also a chess player, you might want to consider buying a copy of this book. It contains some great games, very few of which I'd seen before, and some great stories. And perhaps it will move you. ________________ [Update, Aug 9 2022
Congratulations to the Ukraine Women's Team for their gold medal in the 2022 Chess Olympiad! Going into the last round, their chances didn't look great, but the US won against leading India while Ukraine crushed Poland, giving them a first place ahead of Georgia on tiebreak. Слава Україні!
To anyone thinking of voting Republican this November
Look, don't shoot the messenger and all that, but you're wasting your time. Read this book and yoTo anyone thinking of voting Republican this November
Look, don't shoot the messenger and all that, but you're wasting your time. Read this book and you'll see why.
Let's take it step by step. In 2020, Donald Trump won easily. But he had no chance against the Deep State, who didn't even work up a sweat turning his victory into a large majority for Biden. Although everyone knew the election was stolen, although there were any number of clues, evidence just melted in people's hands. Obviously the Dominion voting machines were fixed. Obviously hundreds of thousands of votes arrived in the middle of the night. Obviously illegals and dead people voted, usually multiple times. Obviously voters were brought in from other states by the busload. Obviously the laws were changed to benefit the Dems. Obviously the whole mail-in ballot thing was rigged.
But could any of this be proved? No. The Deep State had played a long game. It looked like the voting machines weren't even connected to the internet. It looked like they had been carefully vetted by bipartisan committees well in advance. It looked like those committees had given them a green light. It looked like there was a solid paper trail showing there was no fraud worth mentioning. It looked like the carefully crafted arguments put together by Trump's legal team were a bunch of crazy conspiracy theories. The Deep State had thought of everything. Even judges who had been appointed by Trump were in on the scam. Heck, even Mike Pence went over to the Dark Side in the end.
So if that's what happened after four years of draining the swamp, what chance do you think you have when the Dems control the Executive and both Houses of Congress? It doesn't matter how many votes the GOP pick up. They're going to lose. Only a sucker would believe anything else. And you're not a sucker. You're not going to get angry and frustrated again and almost lose your mind from the pain of playing a rigged game that won't let you win no matter how hard you try. Been there, done that.
Like I said, I hate to be the one telling you. But you already knew, didn't you? You're smart. _______________________ [Update, May 25 2022]
[image]
See what I mean? The Deep State is everywhere....more
That classic xkcd string theory post (updated version)
[image]
* Uh, wait a minute... if string theory is correct, then as Len Susskind says there are mThat classic xkcd string theory post (updated version)
[image]
* Uh, wait a minute... if string theory is correct, then as Len Susskind says there are many ways to compactify 11-dimensional space and we'll have a landscape containing a vast number of possible instantiations of string theory, right? Probably around, I don't know, maybe 10⁶⁰⁰ of them? Now let's think about what happens at the beginning of the universe when it's still at the Planck scale, its dynamics will be determined by the Wheeler-DeWitt equation and you'll have waveform protouniverses wandering across the landscape. Some of them will settle down into local minima and start inflation processes to create macroscopic universes, won't they? But which ones? Hm, hm... need to calculate here... some of those condensed matter methods will come in handy... looks like the high-energy ones! That's interesting, as good old Roger Penrose keeps saying it's always been a bit hard to understand why our own universe started off in this apparently very unlikely state! The explanation in terms of the Anthropic Principle just isn't very convincing, is it? And... hold on, of course you're going to have quantum interactions between all those different alternatives before they decohere, won't you? Is it possible that that could produce observable effects in our own universe? Well, I suppose it might, but they'll obviously be so faint that you'll never be able to see them with today's technology, probably you'll have to wait a few centuries if it's possible at all... anyway, let's do another calculation... wait, I don't believe it, this predicts a massive void that should be easily visible in the CBR... a few more things too... let me just call the satellite guys and see if they found anything like that... incredible! They did!! Five-sigma result!!! I should write a book about this and get famous... what? You say Laura Mersini-Houghton already has? How come no one told me? Damn, scooped again. ___________________________
But seriously...
I would very much like to thank the author, who not only sent me an advance copy of the book but took time out of her insanely busy schedule to point me to background reading and correct some of my misconceptions about her work. Here are my revised thoughts.
(view spoiler)[Alas, it seems I was a little too optimistic. According to the author, this work doesn't yet provide a strong experimental test of string theory. It is indeed the case that she and her colleagues developed a theory which starts with the string theory "Landscape", uses it to model the evolution of the very early universe, and makes verifiable empirical predictions. It is also the case that some of those predictions have now been verified to a high level of statistical significance.
However (at least if I am understanding this correctly) the problem is that a fairly broad class of theories would make similar predictions. The important thing is that the landscape of possible vacua is sufficiently disordered. The string theory landscape has this property, but other theories could have it too. So the data does provide good empirical support for the claim that, at some very stage in the universe's evolution, there were multiple quantum-entangled universes, but it doesn't provide good support for the claim that the string theory landscape exists. Of course, even the first part of this is already quite a lot.
The key publications for the book are the following papers, all freely available from arXiv:
They are far from being an easy read, and there were large parts of them that I found totally incomprehensible. A great deal of advanced physics is presupposed. But some of it made good sense, in particular the passages at the end of the third paper that talk about empirical verification. It seems that there are a lot of angles here, and (again, if I understand correctly), many of them have not yet been thoroughly investigated.
If you're into fundamental physics and cosmology, this is real edge-of-your-seat stuff. (hide spoiler)]...more
In the final stages of the German invasion of France in 1940, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is sent out on a reconnaissance mission over occupied territoryIn the final stages of the German invasion of France in 1940, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is sent out on a reconnaissance mission over occupied territory. It's almost certain suicide, and the information he might bring back will be of no use to anyone: the war is lost, nothing works anymore. But he accepts unhesitatingly. Somewhere over Arras, with anti-aircraft fire bracketing him on all sides, aware that he is probably a few seconds from death, he has a mystical insight. He is no longer afraid, he has done the right thing. By willingly offering his life, he is truly part of his little band of aviators, of the French military, of his country, of mankind. He knows with complete certainty that he could not have learned this lesson in any other way. Miraculously, he returns unscathed to base. He has been granted a couple more years to write this book and the much more famous Le petit prince. And he is, indeed, immortal. As long as our civilization endures, people will read him.
I wonder if there are people in Mariupol right now having similar experiences....more
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