There is no right thing to say to the survivors of a loved one killed in military circumstances. It is a set of circumstances that have no logical foundation. It is a place arrived at through a series of forced choices. Yet we have a POTUS who is a true child of the television culture, but who cannot come up with appropriately unoriginal things to say. If he watches a lot of television, doesn't he see the police procedurals where the protagonists say "sorry for your loss" and go on to the next agenda item. Why does he think originality and spontaneity are needed? The word, "condolences" is not the word poorly used, but the class of utterances that are offered as condolences are, in too many cases, poorly used. The KISS principle applies -- Keep it simple, stupid!
-- Kilgore Forelle
Monday, October 23, 2017
Uniquity IV
Nobody asked but ...
The biggest obstacle for general artificial intelligence (GAI), where machines can actually learn from external stimulus, is that humanity is networked imperfectly but is unique in each of its nodes. Humanity is a giant, fallible information system. It is difficult to see something like this because of its scale. I first became struck with the idea at the Knoxville World's Fair in the 1970s. The most popular exhibit was that of China. I don't remember where we stood with regard to Nixon's overtures to this vast Asian culture, but to my generation the network in that part of the world had been no man's land since FDR had handed China to Mao. Suffice it to say that the China exhibit in Knoxville was ripe with the shock of the new to us Americans. The thing that struck me most of all was the exquisite attention to detail (a skill that most Westerners had underdeveloped because of the demand for speed in productivity). At the time the population of China was said to be above 800 million, whereas we Yanks were still between 100 and 200 million. The oriental attention to detail was possible because there were so many more Chinese engaged in so many facets of productivity. The specific objects which fascinated me were paintings on the inside of small bottles. Somewhere among 800 million possibilities, someone would come up with the idea of painting on the inside of a bottle. Then the idea spread in some degree among the nodes of a relatively isolated network. The same calculus applies to Chinese acrobats, if you have ever seen them. With such vast numbers of possibilities the chances of there being people who could concentrate enough to become great acrobats was exponential. Creators of GAI are small in number, so the question is whether there will be enough innovation, networked in an auspicious way, to produce GAI. While this is a problem with quanta, the nature of the predicted result must depend on qualia from the possibilities of billions of unique units. I have tried in this series to interest you in the vast uniquity, every unit is unique. GAI is predicated on the idea of a vast sameness.
-- Kilgore Forelle
The biggest obstacle for general artificial intelligence (GAI), where machines can actually learn from external stimulus, is that humanity is networked imperfectly but is unique in each of its nodes. Humanity is a giant, fallible information system. It is difficult to see something like this because of its scale. I first became struck with the idea at the Knoxville World's Fair in the 1970s. The most popular exhibit was that of China. I don't remember where we stood with regard to Nixon's overtures to this vast Asian culture, but to my generation the network in that part of the world had been no man's land since FDR had handed China to Mao. Suffice it to say that the China exhibit in Knoxville was ripe with the shock of the new to us Americans. The thing that struck me most of all was the exquisite attention to detail (a skill that most Westerners had underdeveloped because of the demand for speed in productivity). At the time the population of China was said to be above 800 million, whereas we Yanks were still between 100 and 200 million. The oriental attention to detail was possible because there were so many more Chinese engaged in so many facets of productivity. The specific objects which fascinated me were paintings on the inside of small bottles. Somewhere among 800 million possibilities, someone would come up with the idea of painting on the inside of a bottle. Then the idea spread in some degree among the nodes of a relatively isolated network. The same calculus applies to Chinese acrobats, if you have ever seen them. With such vast numbers of possibilities the chances of there being people who could concentrate enough to become great acrobats was exponential. Creators of GAI are small in number, so the question is whether there will be enough innovation, networked in an auspicious way, to produce GAI. While this is a problem with quanta, the nature of the predicted result must depend on qualia from the possibilities of billions of unique units. I have tried in this series to interest you in the vast uniquity, every unit is unique. GAI is predicated on the idea of a vast sameness.
-- Kilgore Forelle
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
J. S. Mill's Methods I
Nobody asked but ...
From Dictionary of Philosophy
From Dictionary of Philosophy
Mill's methods: Inductive methods formulated by John Stuart Mill for the discovery of causal relations between phenomena.
Method of Agreement: If two or more instances of the phenomenon under investigation have only one circumstance in common, the circumstance in which alone all the instances agree, is the cause (or effect) of the given phenomenon.
-- A. Cornelius Benjamin-- Kilgore Forelle
Yalta Bibliography III
Nobody asked but ...
I also have written about Yalta, along with my alter ego, Verbal Vol, in previous posts to EVC. Here are the links:
I also have written about Yalta, along with my alter ego, Verbal Vol, in previous posts to EVC. Here are the links:
- http://everything-voluntary.com/biological-warfare-consequences-amazing-familiarity
- http://everything-voluntary.com/where-in-the-world-is-the-ukraine
- http://everything-voluntary.com/top-winnie-around-town-the-ring
- http://everything-voluntary.com/more-winnies-more-history-defining-religion
- http://everything-voluntary.com/the-winnies-the-euro-town-and-country
- http://everything-voluntary.com/roads-natural-statism-the-singularity
-- Kilgore Forelle
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Process Eats Product
Nobody asked but ...
There is no music that is free of the instrument. Interface dictates product. Consider this quote, "An elective despotism is not the government we fought for" from James Madison. Doesn't the current POTUS personify this misallocation of human resources? Didn't re-election become Job One as the votes were being counted in November 2016?
-- Kilgore Forelle
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Cincinnati II
As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government … too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.
— Robert Taft
— Kilgore Forelle
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