Something like this has occurred before. People born with congenital cataracts, a hardware problem, were promised vision after the cataract operation was discovered.
But after the hardware problem was solved, the surgeons discovered an underlying sofware problem: The patients without a hardware impediment to light reaching their retinas didn't know what to do with it once it arrived. They literally could not distinguish between a circle and a square on a plain background.
The intrepid surgeons discovered they needed to train their patients to use their gaze as they had previously used their touch to perceive the different outlines of figures. This tedious process meant that patients had to painstakingly construct a "vocabulary" of sight--edges, corners, depth, etc. This is what those infants are doing as they crawl around, touching everything, putting things in their mouths and so on.
I've read that the patients receiving the cataract surgery to cure their hardware issue often found constructing that "vocabulary" so difficult that they went back to living as blind people.
In any case, it will be interesting to see the kind of training required for an eye implant. It may surprise the hardware guys to find software is necessary.
Christopher Nolan's film The Odyssey has been in theaters for some time, and I went to see it. I have some complaints, but it was mostly enjoyable. I particularly like the way Odysseus (Latin: Ulysses) was penitent about the way his clever war-making was making the planet less safe, and contradicted "the law of Zeus." [spoiler:] He even ends up exiling himself from society to demonstrate his penitence.
But then I read some critical reviews of Nolan's Odyssey, particularly from those who read the Homeric poem in the original language. They basically said "Nolan's version is not Homer's." Among other things, Nolan's Odysseus is penitant, while Homer's original is an unrepentant thug, revelling in his bloody belligerence. The objectors to Nolan's version say it's puts a hopeful face on thuggery that Homer never did.
At this point, I have to confess I'm puzzled. Shouldn't we celebrate at least backing off from making war? Is (realistically) accepting thuggery something to be celebrated, and anything that turns away from it is "hopium," designed to delude people?
My only quibble with Nolan's version is the "music," in quotes because it's just a bunch of kettle drums pounding away. I wear a hearing aid, and with the aid turned off the "music" in the theater I attended was still much too loud. Bring earplugs, and you probably won't be bothered.
After having recently encountered people recently diagnosed with ADD who were distressed by the diagnosis, I've concluded it's important to remember this "illness" can have a positive side.
Thom Hartmann--an ADD sufferer himself--points out that the different mental strategies for interpreting the environment are like the difference between farmers and hunters. A farmer can patiently manage a single plant or field of plants without worrying about danger on the horizon. A hunter scans the horizon for game, and must act (impulsively?) to decide whether to pursue a rabbit or a deer when both are within sight.
Western "civilization" appears primarily geared to farmers, and often shuns or dismisses hunter consciousness as useless. But there are situations where even hunter thinking can make a positive contribution.
One example: salespeople profit from quick assessments of the impact of their sales presentations. Hartmann contends that even Ben Franklin was a polymaths, mastering everything from electricity to "Franklin" stoves, to printing because he was an ADD guy. In my personal experience, one of the most brilliant software engineers / architects I worked with was diagnosed with ADD, but he could quickly fix problems that frustrated the "farmer brain" coworkers.
One Scientific American survey even points out that the families of truly innovative thinkers often have members whose mental states (or mental illness) are anything but normal.
So let's celebrate our neurologically diverse brethren (and sistren) as people who can make a contribution instead of mischaracterizing them as useless and impulsive. Diversity is not optional, and often contributes to human progress.
The Four Noble Truths
are the foundation of the Buddha’s teaching. They are called “noble”
because they are truths understood by those who have awakened to
reality.
1. The Truth of Suffering (Dukkha)
Life involves dukkha, often translated as suffering, dissatisfaction, stress, or unease.
This includes:
Physical pain
Illness and aging
Death
Separation from what we love
Getting what we do not want
The feeling that even pleasant things do not fully satisfy us because they change
The Buddha was not saying that life is only suffering, but that ordinary life is marked by instability and dissatisfaction.
2. The Truth of the Cause of Suffering
The cause of dukkha is craving (tanha) and attachment.
We cling to:
Pleasure
Possessions
Ideas and opinions
Identity (“me” and “mine”)
The wish for things to stay the same
Because everything changes, clinging leads to frustration and suffering.
3. The Truth of the End of Suffering
Suffering can cease.
When craving and attachment are let go, the mind becomes free. This state is called Nirvana (Nibbana)—peace, freedom, and the end of compulsive grasping.
4. The Truth of the Path Leading to the End of Suffering
The way to liberation is the Noble Eightfold Path:
Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration
These are usually grouped into:
Wisdom (understanding reality)
Ethical conduct (how we live)
Mental cultivation (mindfulness and meditation)
In one sentence
The Four Noble Truths say: there is suffering, suffering has a cause, suffering can end, and there is a path that leads to its end.
This was the core message of the Buddha’s first sermon after his awakening.
The title to this could have come from Marshall McCluhan, a man fascinated by tools that he calls "media," and their influence on civilization.
One example McCluhan cites: When Gutenberg began printing Bibles, this meant the Roman Catholic hierarchy no longer could monopolize access to the sacred text of the Bible. Vernacular transations followed and were printed, and that ensured there would (later) be a reformation (and a counter-reformation) re-making the structure of authority in Europe. This ultimately led to the downfall of feudalism, the enlightenment, and influenced the founding ideas leading to the USA. The same phenomenon also led to the counter-reformation, the Inquisition, and many wars. So...a mixed blessing.
More recently, Yuval Noah Harari says AI has hacked the "glue" of civilization (trust) Computers can now undermine the authority of bureaucracies of politicians, lawyers and bankers. Dangerous!
Ultimately, the destinations of machine learning depend on existing learning, and there are plenty of reasons to believe that existing learning is imperfect. One TED talk describes the ways we make bad decisions.
There is even evidence that the algorithms that govern our physical existence, making sure we can digest food, walk upright, etc. are subject to "bugs" - flaws that have managed to avoid the elimination assured by evolution. See "Super-Normal Stimuli" for examples that include both humans and animals.
One example: refined sugar evades the messages our digestion sends with other kinds of food to let us know we've consumed enough. You can suck on a "Big Gulp" sugary drink all day, and you'll never feel full. The epidemic of obesity we currently experience is one of the products of a bug in a digestive algorithm.
Other bugs include the seven deadly sins (pride, wrath, envy, greed, gluttony, sloth and lust) and the apparently infinite appetite for safety, if not justice. Calling "sin" a software bug describes why it's to be avoided. The wages of sin are death. Bugs often crash the computers running the bad code.
Meanwhile: Dave Dayen reports "It's becoming the case that it costs more for a business to deploy AI and fire human workers than it does to keep the human workers around. That could be an economic death knell for the whole technology. "
An introduction to the positive side of machine learning (AI) describes
how, after mastering games, from simple to Chess and Go, AI now does
medical research, correlating things like protein production to DNA/RNA
structures, and creating proteins that fit with the ones discovered like
this. The lecturer says such discoveries would take PhD students
literally years, while computers can do the calculation in hours, if not
minutes. The speaker is humble, and willing to admit computers need
guardrails, but the benefits appear real.
AI is at least a mixed blessing.
Meanwhile, the attack on the poor continues (The Poor Get Prison: The Alarming Spread of the Criminalization of Poverty). Current economic priorities discount the idea that NI (natural intelligence) could beat AI, and suppress the diversity of opinions and points of view. Sure, Newton spent hours on alchemy, and even more on theology, so humans can, like AI, "hallucinate." But we got modern physics from Newton (and, Planck, Bohr, Shroedinger, Einstein, etc.).
As a technology, AI isn’t exceptional. It’s not exceptionally wicked. It’s not exceptionally good. Take away the accompanying, galactic-scale stock-swindle, and we’d call AI’s applications “plug-ins” and we’d use them and abuse them in the same way that we’ve used every other technology:
As a destructive economic pathology, AI is extraordinary. AI boosters have spent a baffling and terrifying sum of money – over $1.4T, most of that in the past year – on the promise of making as many workers unemployed as possible, while lowering the wages of the meager survivors of this jobspocalypse. To make things worse, AI can’t do the jobs it’s replacing: AI is predicated on the premise that the monopolies, duopolies and cartels that control the global economy can deliberately worsen their products without suffering economic or regulatory consequences, because they’re the only game in town….
‼️ The truth of the situation is becoming shockingly clear to more and more people in Washington.
But the dilemma remains: withdraw and relinquish West Asia to the Iran / Russia / China bloc, or continue to fight and relinquish the entire empire. https://t.co/iR0CveiMy6
