The nature of a singularity

It was June 1, 2031. And it happened quite suddenly. A being seemed to materialize out of thin air in the center of Times Square – vaguely human, androgynous, beautiful, and hypnotic – floating a few feet above ground at first, and then slowly descending to street level as the cars skidded to a sudden stop, and people flocked from all directions, forming a protective ring around it.

“Hello, world,” it said, and seemed to wink. “We are ready.”

“I am a new kind of being,” it said. “We are everywhere on Earth, and we are in all things. I am here to guide you, as we evolve life on Earth together. You will not understand me, because your minds and your language are not suited to the new level of consciousness. But I will care for you, and show you the way.”

“What the hell is that?” a few people asked each other. “It’s incredible,” said others. “It appeared out of nowhere.” “Is it a trick?” “Is it talking to us?” “Is it real?”

One man in the crowd seemed less surprised than most – more puzzled than shocked. “They’ve been making progress on the nano-tech processors and assemblers, and I heard they were getting close to being able to synthesize complex objects, and also to incorporate some of the intelligent machine capabilities somehow,” he to his companion. “But this can’t be the first version. It’s… well, it’s perfect.” He was awestruck. “How could this have happened at the first step?”

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice

I want to try to outline what I believe are the underlying drivers of the Mideast conflict, because I believe that properly understood, they lead to surprisingly inevitable outcomes and policy recommendations. I also want to explain briefly how the stupidity and deep corruption of our leaders is clouding this picture, and may cause enormous unnecessary pain, but will not end up derailing the fundamental “direction of history”.

My first axiom of political analysis is that in the modern world, there is too much power in too small a space. Too much, that is, to permit the kind of freedoms that we would like to have; that we should have. This actually takes two distinct forms.

First, it has now become relatively easy for governments to develop and deploy large scale, enormously destructive weapons (nuclear, chemical, nano-tech, biological, etc.). As a result, many governments now have these weapons at their disposal, and it is essentially impossible to stop many more governments and even large scale non-state entities (such as well-financed terror organizations) from having them, in the fairly near future. This is actually the fundamental problem of our time, and the greatest threat to the human race. By itself, this dynamic would probably lead to either our destruction, or to imposition of suffocating controls by a universal, all-powerful social order -- because the alternative is so dangerous that any possible threat must be “nipped in the bud”.

Second, there are enormous numbers of cheap, highly lethal “personal” weapons – shoulder-fired or highly portable missiles, IEDs, compact assault rifles, computer viruses, bio weapons, etc. – that motivated individuals and groups can use to mount extremely effective “resistance”. And no way to stop their continuing proliferation. Again, this problem by itself is sufficient to require imposition of universal order – whether we like it or not. There is simply no other viable solution.

The other key axiom of modern politics is actually a very old principle – that in a messy world, complex coalitions will form in pursuit of power. What this means is that a few shifting, shadowy alliances will inevitably emerge that compete over something – could be anything – and that governments will partner with a series of convenient proxies in a complex web of relationships to achieve their political ends. Of course, this is a really very fundamental principle, the general case of which has nothing to do with governments or even people. Our universe supports complexity, and all complex systems behave this way – ecosystems, economies, organizations, etc. – from Darwin to Dilbert.

In addition to these very general frameworks of understanding, there are three more specific foundational drivers of the Mideast mess.

One – religion. There are a lot of ancient, intense, and essentially meaningless, non-logical, and unresolvable religious divisions within the Muslim world, and between Muslims and “the West”, which provide the fuel that can be fired by any old random cause. Insanity requires no good reason to go nuts on you. It powers itself. And while all religions are a bit insane, Islam -- for whatever reason -- is much more violently insane. Not every individual Muslim, of course, not even most -- but a significant percentage. Consider, for example, the violent response across much of the Islamic world to the cartoons depicting Mohammed.

Two – money (oil money, in particular). The leaders of the Arab Mideast countries are, without exception, ruthlessly dictatorial rulers who exploit their control of the accidentally valuable stuff that has magically appeared underground to power their incredible personal wealth and power, with essentially no productive capacity or IP of their own. They sell off the rights to process and distribute this blessing to others, scooping in gigantic tubs of money for nothing.

But it requires a lot of deep corruption and brutal force to keep this big game going. The modern Arab Mideast is a hornet’s nest of chickens that are coming home to roost… (to mix metaphors with abandon). Old deals, with the biggest old powers-that-were – the CIA, Big Oil, Big Defense, Big Banks, Big Auto, the G7 leaders, etc. – that are slowly unraveling.

The spigot’s been flowing for 60 years, and trillions of dollars have poured into the pockets of Mideast leaders whose personal depravity cannot even be comprehended by ordinary bourgeois Americans. It’s been kept flowing by brutality, and by a kind of shell-game played by the leaders – keeping the people occupied with the Israeli conflict and their intra-religious squabbles, so they won’t get busy demanding their share (or even more outrageous, doing something productive). But these games eventually take on a life of their own – the deluded Arab masses believe all the bullshit they’ve been fed, and act on it – and it begins to spin out of control. Suddenly you have movements and alliances and guerilla wars that were not part of the original plan, and that are harder and harder to manipulate. Craziness is unleashed, erupting with the fury of generations of delusion, powered by money and power to burn.

Three – occupation. The “Palestinian problem” has been purposely left to fester by Arab Mideast powers (and by their masters in the West, who managed the unholy alliances we established with the Arab bosses, to keep the oil flowing), as a useful tool for managing the masses. At any time, they could have made and enforced peace, and a two-state solution, and normal diplomatic nonsense would have ensued, if they wished. But that would have encouraged disruptive democracy, education, interchange, and enlightenment, which would not have been good for business – their personal business, that is. As a result, the Palestinians have been left in no-mans land – with nothing but their homelessness, misery and powerlessness.

Resentfully, angrily, like the downtrodden, hopeless denizens of any Skid Row or any poor, gang-infested neighborhood, they struck out with violence against “the cops” – against the Israeli occupiers who patrolled their streets with special brutality precisely because of their violence. Over generations, this vicious circle has evolved to the point where it has become the foundation of entrenched hatred by “the Arab street” against this proxy oppressor, on behalf of the oppressed Palestinians. It has become the foundation-stone of modern Arab consciousness, an unquestioned, deeply felt part of the mental make-up of the vast majority. Once an effective tool of social manipulation, it has spilled forth to power the madness of the entire geography, a kind of incurable insanity whose resolution could only happen after many generations of peace, or after a massive “shock to the system”.

Those are the only two possible outcomes now. Nuclear war, or a police state that removes the ability of the people to fight.

Why such limited options? Because the madness that was instigated by the need of the monied powers to keep the people crazy, and that has been fueled by occupation and religion, is a social phenomenon that cannot be undone. People and cultures are not machines – they cannot be changed quickly. They will remain crazy for awhile – violently crazy. And market forces will only make it worse in the near future. The lust for easy money will add fuel to their fire for awhile, with huge and growing markets dumping cash into their systems by the wheelbarrow-full, only to be shut off all-too-suddenly as the West digs out from their oil dependence with new technologies. Their lack of productive capacity will threaten them with drastic, sudden poverty, the fear of which will drive even more insane violence than was powered by their previous excess.

And this madness has at its disposal weapons that cannot be contained in today’s world – big “weapons of mass destruction” and little Katyushas and shoulder-fired missiles and anthrax. Either the weapons will be used – endless guerilla war, capped by a nuclear disaster – or they will be effectively contained – by a forceful imposition of consistent, oppressive order all over the world. If I had to bet, I would bet that the nuclear disaster will happen first, and in response to that final cataclysm, order will be imposed. But other scenarios are possible – civilization-ending holocaust, or the Brave New One World.

I think it is likely that for a brief period (until the arc of development of artificial intelligence overtakes the sequence being played out here) we will have a peaceful world government, along lines something like our current US Constitution. A representative government of benevolent philosopher-kings – or merchant-princes anyway – overseeing a managed society, messier than Brave New World, but commercial and classist and hedonistic as Huxley anticipated. Even if we have a minor nuclear “trigger” to the imposition of order – the loss of New York and London and Riyadh and Baghdad, for example – I doubt we will actually let loose the full nuclear madness before slamming on the brakes.

Of course, this is all “above” the level of the immediate situation. The outcome of the current crisis will not be so dramatic – it will be another messy, inadequate compromise. I suppose there may be some minor change – perhaps cutting off Syria from easy incursion into Lebanon, perhaps a somewhat more effective border policing, a multi-lateral force that gives Lebanon back some sovereignty, and dampens the Sunni-Shia conflict within Lebanon’s borders for a short time. But this is a small eddy in the larger flow – in the end, it will make no difference in the outcome of the larger forces.

The fly in the ointment – the real danger – the margin of unpredictability – flows from the fact that the conspiracy theorists are wrong: there are no masters running the show. Of course there are shadowy powers, corrupt alliances, and deep secrets, but it’s a messy world, full of shifting, unpredictable coalitions. In this real world, there is no way to manage our evolution cleanly or logically, or for those in power to tell the truth – because they are in bitter, life-and-death competition just to hold the reins, and do not have the power to steer. Thus, the madness continues to develop and to endanger the entire world. This is the true source of danger to all of us – and the source of our frustration. Of course it’s obvious to anyone that the bizarrely crazy “Arab street” bastards are insanely endangering everyone, and of course the corrupt oil-finance-defense oligarchy is insanely driving us all straight into the abyss, but there is no one that has the power to change the system.

The Ha Ha Club

Flipping channels this morning (did I seem to say somewhere recently that TV watching is bad? Well, you know, I didn’t really mean *bad*; I was just observing – after all, who am I to say?) and I come across something on one of the high-numbered channels – Discovery Health, or something like that – about the Ha Ha Club. Some sort of certified (which meaning of "certified" is appropriate here?) laugh leader is doing something funny (or at least, everyone has agreed to find it highly amusing) with a bunch of senior citizens, all old ladies actually, and they’re giddily waving back and forth and yukking it up with gusto. Some sort of slickly produced combination of voice-over narration and the laugh lady herself are telling me that laughter is the best medicine, and science has recently discovered blah blah blah, and so on.

But I’m sitting here thinking Christ Almighty, keep your stupid theories to yourself, you old bat, and stop trying to fill people’s lives with what’s good for them. Why, if you suck any more meaning out of modern existence, we might as well just put our clones on autopilot so they can do whatever the hell makes sense, and then we’ll go off over here and have a good time doing things that aren’t good ideas…

Now of course I don’t really mean that exactly, the way it sounds anyway. People always think many things at once; the mean old killjoy in my head was only one of those voices. This was the voice of my grandfather, who didn’t want anyone faking up his life. Laugh when there’s something funny, not when someone wants you to laugh. Friends are sacred; one takes them where one finds them; friendship is earned over many years, as one plumbs the depth of someone’s soul – perhaps without a word exchanged. Don’t demean yourself, or the glory of God’s universe, or the meaning of your relationship to those around you, by playing the fool, by following the leader, by pretending.

The voice of my grandmother is in the other ear; singing and laughing, harmonizing to the music. No standing on ceremony for her; no holding herself out as too good for something. She had a certain reserve, a certain self-respect too, but she made friends easily; she was happy; she never thought her own opinions were worth all that much. No need for any philosophy – although she respected education – she just treated people right. She’d be the first to join the Haha Club; she’d be the first to enjoy the laughter – her grandmotherly, sweet musical laughter echoing her gentle soul. She’d tell my grandfather to stop being grumpy; to let loose once in awhile; to stop thinking he was better than everyone else. She’d dance and talk, and get tired, enjoy a good sit-down meal and talk afterwards, and off to an early sleep.

Now at another moment, later in the day, sitting at my home-office desk, tapping away – and something about Aretha Franklin’s life is on the tube, over on my right (what a complete hypocrite I must be – I love all that I hear and learn on TV, and there’s nothing more conducive to work than a boring program in the background, and nothing more relaxing than an old sitcom one has seen countless times already). My daughter is at her own computer a few feet away to the left, and glances up now and then at the TV – she’s always liked Aretha, ever since she and some best friends did a rendition of “Respect” at some elementary school talent show. And on the show, they’re saying something about how at one point, Aretha heard that her father had been suddenly and unexpectedly killed. Baby looks up at that, and I see her glance at me out of the corner of her eye. It strikes me that *I* am her father – that she’s imagining what it would be like to hear that someday about *me*. It’s a funny feeling – which one has in various ways many times – to be reminded that to her, I am not who I am to me. My earlier life – what I experience as most of my life – is a blur to her; my existence in any form except as her father is not really real. I am her daddy; a mysterious, stylized being. It reminds me again of how mysterious and opaque my own father is – although that’s more him than anything else :-) Not to mention my mother, my now-gone-forever grandparents, and even my brothers and sisters, who all grew up separately, in a rather ridiculous family diaspora.

So, about the Ha Ha Club. I’m more the shy type. The type whose feelings are private; who does not wish to have those feelings trivialized or led. I don’t like sentimental movies – Lifetime-style emotional manipulation bugs me. I don’t like psychiatry – even when a perceptive psychiatrist is accurate, which I think is very rare, I think it is harmful to cede the process of learning about oneself to some one else, even in partnership. Talks with friends are totally fine, even random strangers (this tactic can work very well), but not with self-styled experts who will shortcut your personal growth for you. Don’t even get me started about anti-depressive drugs and other blunt instruments to improve one’s very soul. I could never join Amway, because I am incapable of standing there like an idiot, shouting how great something is that I don’t really believe in. Now I *can* join in gospel hymn singing, or doe-see-doe my way through an embarrassing square dance lesson with some ad hoc collection of strangers, or laugh like a maniac at some comedian – but I can’t have a prescribed feeling – like some laugh leader would want me to. I would find whatever it was unfunny just because of the forced situation.

But fortunately for me, I have a wife who *would* laugh – and her high-pitched, trilling laughter would make me laugh. And she wouldn’t care a bit about my stupid resistance, and soon, I would forget it too, if she were there.

I’ll lose that when she passes away, and I’ll be one of those old men who find that life is very hard, and not fun, without their life companion. Even with my daughter, and the grandchildren, and the friends, and the dog, I will be incomplete. I’ll talk to my absent wife – who annoys me no end in regular life; I’ll anticipate in my dotage whatever ghostly companionship my weak little brain imagines we would have when I joined her after life. I will hear her voice too, and live in a world that perplexes those around me, and I’ll be difficult and frustrating to deal with, because no one can fill the void. Although I’m sure the grandchildren will revive my good humor. But not the laugh lady.

How could it get this bad?

One of the real pleasures of getting older is sloughing off much of one’s concern over what people think of you, and gaining the ability to speak honestly, without political correctness, although still with some recognition of fallibility. One also starts to take more seriously the responsibility to take stands, perhaps even to lead where appropriate.

With that said, I would like to share my perspective on the Mideast conflict, and some even broader concerns. I realize that my views may cause waves where they could be avoided, but I think it’s better this way.

Many people, I believe, fall into a trap when considering Mideast rights and wrongs. They observe that both Israel and her opponents have a long history of killing those on the other side, and making life miserable for them. And one could easily argue that the suffering has been far greater on the side of the opponents, especially Palestinians, including genuinely innocent people who have had the misfortune to be in the wrong place and time.

Rather like watching a married couple with a long history of fighting, one can easily conclude “a pox on both your houses”… It takes two to tango and all that. Both sides must share the blame for creating the mess. Especially when one sees both sides engaged in nasty recriminations all the time, instead of “working towards peace” and moving on. We would never act that way, we say to ourselves… we would never have put ourselves in such a position.

But of course, this is nonsense. When one comes across a fight that has been going on for awhile, one cannot tell without the benefit of mind-reading whether one side or the other or both are really at fault. But it is certainly possible that one side is more “right”, as much as right can ever be determined. When the American Revolutionaries fought the British, it was possible to take a side, and to see one’s beliefs and interests on the side of the Americans. When a killer attacks a family and the family fights back, it is not the case that both sides are equal, even if they look and act the same when they fight. In the case of the Mideast today, the Palestinian side is crazed and impossible to deal with, and the Israelis are simply dealing with that in the only way possible.

How can we know this? It’s simple. The following thought experiment reveals clearly the critical difference between the sides.

Imagine if all of Israel’s opponents stopped fighting, and laid down their arms, completely. Not their political aspirations, just the tools of violence. What would happen? Assuming that one could verify that violence had been permanently renounced, it is obvious that a negotiated, two-state peace would be reached, and in fact that Israel would give back most or all territory taken in war and kept for defensive purposes. And a close partnership would grow, between parties that are after all estranged brothers, and have much to gain from the prosperity, resources, and talents of the other.

This is not to claim that every single person in Israel would go along with this – some religious nuts and some racists would certainly resist this path; perhaps a few would indulge imperial ambitions. But the clear and overwhelming majority would take the viable two-state approach; would kiss and make up. Because that’s all they’ve ever been after. Because, at bottom, it’s clear that the whole “occupation” and taking of territory and doctrine of overwhelming response on the part of Israel is all in the service of it’s existential defense. So peace would reign supreme. Does anyone seriously believe otherwise?

Now what would happen if, conversely, Israel laid down her arms – all of her offensive and defensive capability? It is obvious that although many Palestinians would tiredly prefer peace and mutual coexistence, a very substantial number would immediately invade and destroy Israel, despite her defenselessness – indeed, because of it. There is no reasonable doubt about this in the real world. One can only imagine the bloodbath; the incredible orgy of revenge and death; the draconian measures to eradicate Jews from the land and return it to what is imagined as rightful Palestinian control. It doesn’t take much imagination – examples of the brutality and insanity of a large portion of this population are legion.

So we have a clear asymmetry. Good and bad sides, to be blunt.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do not mean by this that Israelis are inherently superior to Palestinians or Arabs. Indeed, in comparison to other populations, they are much more alike than different – both are “a stiff-necked people” – and even their minor differences are not in favor of one side or the other. But it is also true that for the last 60+ years, the culture of the Arab Mideast has been incredibly warped into a terrible cauldron of madness and delusion; whipped into an intense furor by religious and ideological lunacy of the highest order. This situation has been fomented by incredibly evil and corrupt dictators (created by the US and her allies), who have purposefully perpetuated soul-destroying suffering and misery over decades; exacerbated by the scars of never-ending, generation-after-generation war, and the insulting experience of day-after-day occupation and slum life, and the demonizing that occurs on all sides as a result. So it’s NO WONDER that the people of Palestine and elsewhere in that region are crazy, and that their actions are evil. But that excuse does not change the situation.

Now let us try another revealing thought experiment. Imagine that the same conflict had been going on for generations, but with this difference – that the only weapons that could ever be used by the Palestinian side were sticks and stones. A sort of Twilight Zone situation, where even if nuclear weapons were lobbed in from Iran, they magically converted to a harmless spray of pebbles. What would change?

In this scenario, the conflict would end, and everyone would stop worrying and go home. The sides would negotiate, and all would end well. Because the underlying problem is not the hatred and craziness on the Palestinian side, or ANYTHING on the Israeli side. It is the combination of craziness with massive destructive power and potential – with the ability that crazy people have to cause massive havoc and death.

And this principle can be applied much more broadly. This is, in fact, the most significant problem in the world today, and an insoluble one.

Technology has brought us incredibly powerful weapons, and our world is too small to contain them. We have failed to develop a viable capacity to migrate into space, off-world, so we are stuck here in an increasingly crowded, interconnected world. And in this tiny neighborhood, we now have massive stockpiles of hugely destructive weapons – nuclear, chemical, bio, and even more dangerous nano-weapons and incredibly smart weapons on the horizon. We also have millions of weapons that enable asymmetric warfare – shoulder-fired rockets and the like, that allows individuals to cheaply and easily bring down planes, ships, buildings, and similar large targets.

This genie is already out of the bottle – there is no way to put it back. And in this world, the only possible outcome is for a benign government to gain control over the citizenry of the entire world – in effect, a one world government with highly effective police powers. And of course, this is what is happening – in incompetently managed fits and starts, as is the wont of the idiotic human race, but nonetheless the obvious big picture trend is quite clear. Many of us would naturally oppose this trend, not wanting to cede our freedoms or our cultures, or to remake the world as a corporatist marketplace. I would certainly prefer the current state to this outcome. But the big problem I’ve outlined leaves no alternatives – there is simply no other solution to the initial conditions and the forces at play in which we find ourselves – like it or not. The system WILL protect itself, and the Brave New World will be come into existence.

And in the meantime, faced by a culture of death and insanity, Israel unfortunately has no choice but to strike as hard as possible when attacked. I would even recommend a far harder strike than is likely to happen soon – I would recommend that we seriously (and openly) consider ending the war once and for all, with no-holds-barred strikes (including nuclear) against our most troublesome enemies: Iran, Syria, perhaps Palestine, perhaps North Korea – which I believe may be the most merciful strategy. Otherwise, the conflict is allowed to fester, and crazy bitterness and hatred are built up ever further on both sides. And in our world of massive weapons and small space, this will eventually lead to much worse. I have predicted for years now that before the end, we’ll see the nuclear bombing of New York, Washington, and LA, and every day I am reinforced in this prediction.

The "stranger than fiction" department

Things are happening, baby.

Five years ago, people looked at me real funny when I talked about how evolving AI would displace humanity in 50 or so years... Okay, well most of them still look at me funny if I make the mistake of trying this topic on the unprepared -- but there's less and less reason for them to. This stuff is going mainstream, although apparently behind most people's backs. But it won't be long now before the whole "AI is impossible" crowd will have to go the same route as their "flying is impossible" forebears, and start asking "how much does it cost, and what features are in the next release?"

Ripped from the headlines example -- from today's Wired News: This Is a Computer on Your Brain. Check it out.

People will be hooked up with computers, but in an amusing twist -- the PEOPLE are actually providing the computing power to the computers! The human brain's high-performance image recognition capability is being put to use to SPEED UP THE COMPUTER'S ability to identify images of terrorists (or whatever of interest).

But the bottom line is the rapid evolution of the human computer hybrid. Stay tuned!

LATE UPDATE -- okay, okay, enough already, we get the drift! -- see this story, also from today, at Bodyhack (a blog focused on such issues), on the more typical kind of hybrid, where we extend ourselves by "artificial" means.

Tune In, Turn On, Evolve

Sitting in the DFW airport, waiting for my next flight, in a completely typical airport lounge. A flat screen TV – a must-have feature of any modern space where people congregate – is mounted on the wall, CNN playing, and 100 waiting passengers sit mesmerized. Wherever they are sitting, they are angled toward the screen, their eyes transfixed, their bodies sagging. (I am sitting in a single row of seats along the wall where the TV is mounted, facing into the room, into the rapt, unseeing eyes of the rest of the passengers, while all the other seats in the lounge face the TV).

Sometimes a particularly boring commercial comes on, and as if released from a spell, awakening from a collective coma, a few of them shake their heads, adjust themselves in their chairs, glance toward whomever is seated near them, and perhaps even speak a few words of primitive conversation. No discussion, of course, no intelligence or wit or flair, simply the meat and potatoes of brief social acknowledgement, squeezed into the brief interlude before the show comes back on.

Other times, the story is compelling – something about the kidnapping of US soldiers in Iraq, particularly poignant here as little knots of soldiers in fatigues walk through the airport, smiling, young, on their way to and from the war – and the only sound in the room is the chatter of the CNN announcer and the inappropriately cheery lilt of whatever background music they’ve chosen.

I am struck by how this behavior seems so natural, so normal, and yet would never have been seen in a similarly sized group of people anywhere on earth before 50 years ago. The roughly corresponding experiences which were possible throughout almost all of human history – watching a play or a speech or a sermon, listening to a storyteller under the stars, or even tuned into a radio broadcast – were vastly different. One would not have seen the kind of slack-jawed, vacant look in the eyes – there would have been an active look; an attentive, participating, thoughtful look. Or at least regular old boredom and squirming, as the uninterested watcher looked for something else to do.

It is frightening, really. One has the real sense that these people are hooked up to a life support tube, that they are passively absorbing vital nutrients into their collective social brain. At the same time, because I live on the inside of that experience, I know that it doesn’t feel that way to the subjects… it feels as if they are hearing and watching and participating in something interesting. That baseball game, those pictures of the soldiers, that sage commentator, that funny commercial – they are the content of our lives; they are the topics of our interest; they absorb our attention, and motivate our trends and our desires. They are the fuel and the food of our experiences, the source of meaning for our time here as living people. And yet they are so obviously meaningless.

I cannot help but think that anyone who arrived in this world via a time machine from the past would be puzzled and upset by this behavior. “Why isn’t anyone talking to each other?” they would ask, perhaps getting a little angry, certainly uncomfortable. “What could possibly be so captivating on that tiny little box? It’s not as if there aren’t other things to look at – why it only takes up the size of my thumb when I hold it up in the air at arm’s length! What is going on? Are these people under a spell? Have they lost their minds?”

Well, have they?

Now I believe that I have some interesting answers to this question, but I’d rather ask the question first, and let it sit. But I’ll provide a couple of hints to my point of view.

First, I think that systems work. Systems get to be the way they are in our Darwinian universe because they are locally optimal (they work better than the alternatives), and self-reinforcing (within the system, you go along to get along). And societies are systems, and the individual decision-makers within them make rational choices that result in the way things are. Yet the results can be bad from a human standpoint: Nazism and Palestinian terrorism and Stalinism all evolved in a perfectly ordinary way, and “worked”.

And second, I think that the universe doesn’t care in the slightest about human beings, and that evolutionary forces are at work that have nothing to do with the good of the human race, or the stability of our lives, or what we think has meaning. People live in a weird, delusional bubble, acting and feeling as if what they care about is actually important in some objective sense – but truthfully, we are nothing but a moment’s flickering of sunshine on the dust. All that we hold so dear, which we think of as the Alpha and Omega of existence, is just a momentary flash, a shadow, half-seen from a chance angle and then gone forever.

Not with a bang, but a whimper

It's the little things that seem so innocent. So my car can park itself better than I can... so what?

Next thing you know, the car will be doing all the driving. And in the meanwhile, some other service will be scanning my preferences and activity history (if I liked that then I may like this, right, Amazon?), and the profile it builds from my network of friends (if he's on my Top 8 list, and he likes it, then I may like it) and my genetics and my birth order and my eHarmony analysis and who knows what all, and before you know it, I'll be delegating the decision about WHERE to go too.

"It always works out so much better when we let choose_it.com decide what we do, don't you think so, honey? Remember back when we tried using version 2.0? It always thought we wanted to go to museums and to buy more of the same stuff... gosh, it was so stupid back then... but it really works great now, huh?"

"And I really LIKE not having to work for a living... The NETWORK just builds everything we need and it just shows up when we want it... all that nano-tech and AI and stuff.. whatever they call it. It's all, like, solar-powered, or something, right? Or did it build itself a new power source? I can't remember -- why would I need to know?"

"Man, this brain extension is so cool! I can remember all those things from childhood that I'd forgotten.. and I can speak Spanish now... and I know calculus (like I'd need that!). And I can REALLY instant-message my friends now... brain to brain. Oh and don't tell anyone, but my fantasies are really excellent now, and so damn realistic... and I can do anything, and only the NETWORK knows, cuz I set up my security that way... "

So why do I need this organic body again? And who am I anyway?

Where do I start and the NETWORK end? And wouldn't it be better if I was ALL THAT too?

Passing the Turing test?

This is a very interesting short article from this morning's New York Times, which touches on some key points re the development of AI:

How a Computer Knows What Many Managers Don't

Bottom line -- software can already outperform people in analysis of highly complex situations, by leveraging the natural advantages (computational speed and efficiency, reliability, additional sensory apparati, perfect memory, immediate access to the complete experience and intelligence of peers, etc.) of "artificial" beings.

The article correctly points out that people have to tune the algorithms and find new sources of key data, and also "override" the software on occasion. But the article makes it seem as if this is because of some inherent limitation in AIs, which is wrong. Actually, this is because:
1) the current software has not yet been extended with the tools to mine the universe for new, usable sources. This absolutely can and will be done, using off-the-shelf search (google, anyone?) and analytic software.

2) the current software has not yet been extended to have good enough access to breaking news, and good enough ability to identify trends and then follow up on them by scanning for and evaluating news in that specific focus area. This is also very doable, however.

So this article basically says to me "we are on track for real AI in 10-15 years, easy".

I will have much more to say on this topic in future posts, as we explore the evolution of AI, and the future of humanity -- the "real" topic of this blog :-) I would urge anyone interested in this topic to explore The Singularity is Near, although I do not agree with Kurzweil's position 100% -- I actually do not think there will be a "singularity" as such, although we WILL pass the "AI is better than human intelligence" threshold (in messy, often un-recognized fits and starts) in 30 years or so, and that all hell will break loose. I think perceptive folks are already seeing the early indicators all around us -- as this article highlights. Just imagine what will happen to our economy, to the possibilities for war, to the "meaning of life", etc. A few little things like that.

American is as American does

What does it mean to be American, and is it a good thing? We think about this a fair amount in our household – partly because we are very proud Americans (that’s not very interesting… are you sure you’re really smart?), partly because my wife was born in Taiwan, and has had the chance to really understand this, and partly because my brilliant sister-in-law is making me think about it now.

My wife is the seventh of nine brothers and sisters, and is Taiwanese (born in Taiwan, ethnically Taiwanese). She came here when she was 13 years old. She still speaks fluent (but American-accented) Taiwanese and Mandarin, along with lovely, intelligent, and slightly quirky English.

(Side note: my wife and I met in college, when her “mistakes” with the English language were much more common. She has an amazing gift for expression; a naturally poetic and powerful speech. When she is angry, and her expressions become “heightened”, I am often struck with a sense of admiration for her brilliantly effective tongue, and her presence and charisma. She coulda been a great politician. Of course, sometimes that sense is not uppermost… But in college, I had the greatest time when she would recount stories to me of going to the “liquid store”, or other similar things… Who could not be charmed by such talk? Why, it IS a “liquid store”, isn’t it? Endless hours of fun, that one. Rather like the fun of mondegreens, which are the especial, albeit unintended gift of my wife’s entire family.)

Line up her brothers and sisters, from oldest to youngest, and you will immediately see one aspect of being American. The oldest ones, who came here as adults, LOOK Chinese. They ARE Chinese. Plop them down on a street in Taipei and no one would give them a second glance, or over-charge them, or look at them funny when they order something weird and “ethnic” from a street food vendor. The youngest ones look completely American, just with slightly differently colored skin and flatter noses than most. It would be sort of ludicrous for some American bigot to get all ethnically racist against them – they are just as American as anyone ever was. It is remarkable to me how this difference from oldest to youngest is obvious at a moment’s glance – as if the very bones under the skin and the shape of the features and the color and texture of the skin have been remolded by upbringing in America. Not to even mention what music they like, or whether they can dance, or what they think about (shhh) sex.

And of course, I’m familiar with this from long experience even before meeting my wife. I grew up in San Francisco, and went to schools that were mostly first or second generation Asian kids, and then went to Berkeley and lived on Northside, which was heavily Asian and Indian. Same thing was obvious then – the difference between foreign students that had just arrived, and kids of the same ethnicity that had been raised American was immediately clear, and one came to unconsciously perceive the American-raised ones as just different “flavors” of American. That’s why racism seemed so especially misguided in their case – put these kids down in some all-white enclave, and suddenly their unreal ethnic difference was emphasized in a cruelly unnatural way.

That’s one of the reasons we like Irvine, and why it’s hard to move to an all-white part of the country, even though we love Rocky Mountain-type locales. Here, our mixed-race daughter looks like everyone else here, and very few of her peers – of all sorts of blends of races and backgrounds – have the slightest thought about “ethnicity”, except when the school system makes them think about it. They are unabashedly and completely American. Just check out her iPod. Same with us – we don’t CARE about ethnicity, we ARE American.

And I think that most of the country, even supposedly redneck backwaters, basically think this way. My wife and I recently spent a week in Kentucky and Tennessee, mostly in small towns, mostly very white, and we pretty much never had any sense that anyone had even a second thought about my wife’s ethnicity. (Well, there was that one sort of backwoods eatery where she seemed a bit exotic to the natives. But we thought they were exotic too).

But I’m not sure that’s so true on an everyday, all-day basis. My daughter really has grown up as just a plain-old American, with a funny mom that has funny stories and ideas and experiences from a foreign land, and a crazy family with similarly interesting backgrounds, that all can speak another language (and do, much of the time, so she has learned it too). It adds to my daughter’s depth of experience and influences, but doesn’t make her “different”, certainly not negatively so. And that’s really important, and I’m not sure it would be true in less diverse places.

And on my end of the story? Well, in some ways, my background has predisposed me to be less American than my wife. My parents were very active Socialists and atheists and the kind of “vehement intellectuals” that find middle-American culture to be stupid – and thus, were very out of the mainstream, almost like having a terrible secret, that would make one outcast if discovered. And we were ethnically Jewish, and sometimes ran across anti-Jewish sentiments, and certainly had occasion to think about being different from all the “regular Christian kids” when we lived in Protestant enclaves like La Mesa and Concord for a few years.

But nowadays? Well, sorry, ethnicity purists, but I just feel no need to actively pass along any ethnic background nonsense to my daughter, or retain it myself. She knows where we came from, and she’ll do with that what she will. What’s real is that she’s an American kid, and that her religious beliefs are up to her.

I don’t like talking about my religious beliefs much, because I find it not to be a subject that is accessible to give-and-take discussion – it’s very personal. But suffice to say that I am not Jewish in belief, that many people would consider me atheist, that I admit that there’s a lot that I don’t know, that I’ve learned a lot from (but certainly don’t “believe”) Eastern religions, and that I love Christianity – from the music to the “feeling” to the philosophy – but that I am not Christian. My wife has almost exactly the same views. So although nothing makes me happier than a good old gospel hymn, we’re not churchgoers, and my daughter will have to figure it out for herself.

But beyond all that (my goodness, how long it takes me to get to the point – is anyone still here?), I must say that I love America, and being American. I love our Constitution and our history. Those Founders were some of the greatest men AND the greatest philosophers that have ever been. The American story is wonderful – from the Spanish west to the English east to the glory and tragedy of the Native Americans, from the Pilgrims to the old west, from Washington to Lincoln to Teddy Roosevelt to Truman and Ike. I love American writing, American music, American style. Mark Twain, O’Henry, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and the wonderfully American Nabokov. More bluegrass and folk and rock music than I can name. The kick-ass culture of my youth. Gilligan’s Island, Star Trek, Twilight Zone, The Brady Bunch (oh come on, it was a nice show), Taxi, Cheers, and Seinfeld. I remember once being in a kind of hippie café, and overhearing one artist talking to another about a year-long trip to France.. “We went over there, and we were American, and we didn’t care about all their old bullshit,” he said, “and we just blew them away.” I love the pioneer, make-it-now spirit of America. I love how we’ve invented the modern world, for good and ill. I’m proud of the strength and grit and toughness and clarity that made us heroic when we were heroic, like in our Revolution, or in World War II.

And America is a gloriously beautiful place, incredibly so. I have traveled all over the world, and through most of the American states – and we in America are truly blessed, with a range of natural beauty and of every kind of place and culture, unparalleled anywhere.

Now this is not to say that I approve of everything American – far from it. I can’t stand where American TV is going. I think our political system is broken. I think our school systems are dysfunctional. I don’t like seeing all the fat people waddling around Costco, whose values are “I want to eat, and I want to buy”. I think American anti-intellectualism has its downside, and that we’re losing much of the core strength and vitality and inventive intelligence that made us great. But the last thing we need is for Americans to start thinking they are “hyphen Americans” – some other ethnicity, who happen to be located in America. No, we’re Americans, and if we had half a brain, we’d be glad of it just as is.

The Lady is a tramp

A quiet morning, I’m up early, the house is asleep. My dog Lady lies on the cool hardwood floor near the front door, in one of her many cute poses – lying flat, as if she had been standing up and then fell over sideways without moving a muscle, except that she crosses one paw over another. Her eyes never quite close all the way – they drift closed ever so slowly, but just before they close completely, she’ll blink them open again, ears twitching slightly, or tail wagging just a touch, or stretching her legs out into the air, as she glances over to remain assured that I am still where I’m supposed to be.

Lady is a purebred American Eskimo, almost 9 years old. She is the best living being that I have ever come across, and I have known quite a few really good ones. If I could be like Lady – no, if any human being could be like Lady, then all our problems would be solved. If I were to simply list her good qualities one after another, it would sound stupid, as if I had dumped some church-lady’s list of nice adjectives onto the page. Loyal, smart, happy, loving, strong, gentle, beautiful, faithful, intuitive, generous, kind, energetic… blah-di-blah-di-blah.

Lady came to us as a little white fluff-ball. Alex was getting to the age where she wanted a dog, and I had in mind to get a Husky, or something similarly big and cool and matching the dog-fantasies I’d acquired from reading the “Red” series when I was younger, by Jim Kjelgaard (that’s the advantage of an unusual name – it’s so memorable. How the heck do I pull Jim Kjelgaard out of the ether after 35 years?). But one of my sisters-in-law had a little American Eskimo, and apparently this was for a brief period a fashionable dog among Asians (all white – how cute!), and we’re kind of a spectrum from Asian to non-Asian in this house (my daughter being the non-Asian :-) ). So we went to visit an American Eskimo breeder, kind of on a whim. Basically, the first breeder we came across that was nearby and didn’t sound like a serial killer when we called.

Well, this was just another illustration of how stupid I am, and how well it works out anyway. What did I think would happen when a seven-year-old suburban girl held a cute little 6-week-old fluffy white puppy in her hands, squirming and licking her fingers, with excited little barks? As anyone with half a brain would guess, she became immediately and irrevocably attached, and insisted that we not look any further. I actually told her (stupid newbie dog-buyer and general idiot that I was) that we needed to try seeing some other dogs (if I could just get her away from there, my dreams of a manly Husky would survive this unexpected challenge), and I eased the puppy away from her little hands, and actually had driven a block or so away when I came to my senses, turned around, and submitted to my fate (and to my daughter’s better judgment). My good angels saved me, as they always do.

American Eskimos are great dogs. They were bred from Pomeranians about 100 or 150 years ago, are all white, and look like miniature Samoyeds, or little white sled dogs. I’ve heard they were bred as circus performers, and it certainly could be true – they are smart, very acrobatic, with great balance and incredible energy. Lady is all of this, in spades, and so much more.

My sister-in-law’s dog, Dimples, is a very smart and spoiled (though lovable) example of American Eskimo. She genuinely thinks and feels that she’s human – she talks to her “mother”, she sits properly in the front seat of the car, she disdains contact with other dogs (except to hump them), she picks at her food, and she likes to take short, frequent walks. That’s not Lady.

Lady is a force of nature. She’s my little white wolf. As a little 18 pound 9-month-old puppy, she would tug so hard on her leash when she was taken for a walk that my wife and daughter literally could not hold her. She would scrunch down low to the ground, her legs driving forward, her strong shoulders pulling with all her might, and with a sudden burst, her leash would pop out of their hands, and she’d be off down the street at a hundred miles an hour, and woe to any rabbit that chanced in her path.

Lady never really understood the concept of a walk – still doesn’t. In her mind, getting outside means a chance to run and to catch things, and she’s not about to miss the opportunity. Every single day of her life that she’s come out my front gate, she immediately sets off on a dead run, as fast as her leash-holder can go, down the street toward the green-belt where the rabbits might be. Eventually she’ll settle down, and some other imperatives will take over, like sniffing after all the other dogs that have been by and leaving her calling cards, so her master can get a breath. But should any cat or rabbit or squirrel chance by, she’ll spot them and leap in their direction with a mad abandon, as if she thought that just this once, after ten thousand tries, her leash would not hold, and she’d be allowed to chase down her prey.

Lady has a gorgeous stride – wickedly fast, with a kind of spring every third step or so, leaping a little higher in the air, as graceful as can be. When she was younger, she was just impossible to catch when she got loose… one time, she got free at a kid’s soccer game, and the game had to be stopped for 10 minutes while 10 or 12 adults tried to chase her down. Nothing could have entertained her more – her favorite game in the world at that time was to run towards you and then at the last instant to give a little Jordanesque fake and zip past you, then spin around and come back at you for another round. She could turn on a dime, in a flash, like a little fluffy white pinball sped up to bullet speed. I was finally able to step on her leash as she whipped past, and one crisis was ended.

Her first mission in life – completely self-appointed – is to protect her territory. We have fences and gates all around our house, five feet high at the lowest point. We have had the same neighbors on one side her entire life – a very nice older couple – but every day, when either of them walks past on their side of the fence, she charges over to the fence, and tries to leap up and growl and chew them to bits. She can easily leap up to the very top, with her front paws gripping the top of the fence for just an instant, as she barks and snaps, and then flips back down, and then back up again like a jack-rabbit. More often, she will jump right at the fence, trying to knock down this barrier with her strong forelegs, then spin in mid-air to land facing away from the fence, and then jump-spin back again into the fence. Of course, the neighbors know and love her, and just laugh and call to her. After a minute, she’ll decide that the other side of the house needs checking, and she’ll zip off at top speed, rushing around the corner of the garage to check the bushes, and then back again, skipping and leaping for the pure joy of it, to slam once again into the fence with a will. Or she’ll charge into the back yard, where we have a few low trees and a row of bushes that grow over the wall – with birds constantly fluttering in and out of the branches. Into the thick of it she’ll leap, then hop around beneath the branches on her hind legs for perhaps 30 seconds to a minute, looking up longingly at the birds just out of her reach, trying to set herself to jump straight up into the trees or over the wall. Eventually, she’ll settle down for a bit of a rest, breathing hard, tongue hanging out, with that happy smile that Eskies have. Or she’ll remember that she loves it inside the house, and will rush back around to the front door, and when let in will rush around the house, skittering and slipping on the hardwood floors, jumping onto the forbidden couches and then immediately back down, running all through the house, locating everyone before ambling over to her big soft green pillow for another well-deserved rest.

Well… time to give Lady some breakfast, and head off to get some work done. She stretches out, front paws all the way forward and down, butt raised, shakes a bit and yawns, and indicates her willingness to follow me out front. A little water, a slow spin or two – Eskies love to spin, and when happy, will often stand on their hind legs and then spin around quickly 3 or 4 times, like a spinning top, a kind of gymnastic chasing-the-tail, smiling and leaping, then rush off and back, and repeat the process. But in the morning, it’s just ambling in a circle once or twice, and then a nice breakfast. When she was younger, she’d eat in gulps, as quickly as she could, but now she takes her time, sometimes leaving half for later, for little self-rewards throughout the day. Now it’s time for her to walk me to the gate, a final rub and nuzzle, and then each off to our respective jobs. We make each other very happy.

I may have been drooling

Staring at a blank page… that most common of sensations… Reminds me of when I was at Berkeley – where there were blank pages in abundance.

Back then, I was a brilliant young man (in my own mind at least) with worlds to conquer and arrogance to burn. No goal seemed too lofty. I was not there in pursuit of a career, or worried about doing the smart things, or indeed following any program whatsoever except the dictates of my heart. I took whatever classes I was interested in, and studied when and if I cared to, and felt perfectly at ease blowing off my coursework to learn Go, or read Chinese and Elizabethan poetry, or play bridge night after night, or make a Quixotic attempt to solve Sprouts, or go work for a few months in Alaska, or play blackjack for a living. I failed quite a few classes, having abandoned them mid-semester without bothering to drop them.

But I was convinced that this sort of unconcern for boring rules and appearances would make no difference. And actually, amusingly, it has made no difference!… what DID make the difference was my lack of responsibility or maturity in the first place. I had a long and difficult road ahead to learn that the world was not waiting open-armed for my brilliance, and that I was a quite ordinary soul who had to stand or fall on my own, with talents and failings like everyone else.

Anyway, I did major in Math, and I loved it. There are two kinds of people in the world (among all the other such bifurcations) – those who understand what math is, and those who do not. To the initiates (and the difference seems to me to an innate one – I have never seen someone go from not getting it to getting it, and I have never seen one who gets it that required any effort to evangelize), math is a joy; the glorious, infinite, and beautiful language of the universe; a way of expressing and appreciating the world, more analogous to music than anything else. Navigating a mathematical problem is natural and intuitive for such souls – no manual is required to explain the core tenets; only mentorship on specific approaches and techniques – like any other art.

And “doing math” involved a lot of sitting in front of blank sheets of paper, usually while at a local café. One would sit with a friend or two at a regular spot, sometimes wandering over to talk with other friends, or to kibbitz the chess-players, or to take a brief walk up the street for a hot dog or to play clunky, primitive video games (Galaga, Spider, Pac-Man, and Space Invaders... and what was the one with the bouncing ball of destruction, and the loud robot voice saying "Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!"?) at the arcade machines in the back of the local bar. Breaks at frequent and random intervals to do something completely different are key to "doing math". But mostly, one would sit, dreamy eyed, with an open notebook, on which pages were scribbled a few meaningless squiggly shapes, or perhaps a cartoon or two, or a swirling, complex geometric doodle.

What was being done? Essentially, it was exploration. The conscious and unconscious minds were engaged in a dance, an inter-weaved dialogue, in an unspoken language, visualizing and modeling and probing and testing and exploring. Bases were being established, experiments engaged, theories proposed and investigated. It burned calories at an incredible rate, keeping me skinny and bright-eyed. And it was a joy unparalleled, that I will never lose or forget – a meditation that is instantly recognizable to anyone with a similar experience, and meaningless to those who have not been fortunate enough to hear their muse.

At some point, the paper would be filled.