The Aetherion
A Futuristic Folly
For maximum crackpot fun, let’s put several futuristic follies together, thus:
The Aetherion is a flying car that levitates via an EmDrive powered by cold fusion. Its carbon nanotube wires superconduct, and it is controlled by an AGI running on a quantum computer. It carries a bipedal robot chauffeur and a VR gaming system. It is made by an anarchocapitalist seastead which accepts crypto.
On the Paradox of Marxism
Marx predicted mass immiseration and political upheaval. If the owning class takes him seriously, then they enact semi-socialist reforms to buy the loyalty of the masses. When some of these reforms work, then Marx’s predictions are refuted. But then the owning class stops taking his predictions seriously, so they defund and repeal those reforms. Then Marx’s predictions tend to come true.
So from the owning class’s point of view, Marx is as true a prophet as he is false. That’s the Paradox of Marxism.
The paradox can be resolved in two ways. The result is a stable compromise, if the owning class is intelligent. But the result is a high-amplitude oscillation between extremes, with a period of two generations, if it is not.
Rivendell on Trantor
Call a settlement of limited size but of great duration a “Time colony”, or a “Rivendell”; and call a civilization of great size but of limited duration a “Space civilization”, or a “Trantor”. The names “Rivendell” and “Trantor” refer to, respectively, the Elvish town in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; and to the planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .
I propose this census:
Rivendell: a million people, for a million generations.
Trantor: a billion people, for a thousand generations.
The first is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home of a Kind. The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of kiloyears, about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a History.
Rivendell colonizes time, and Trantor colonizes space.
To keep Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town, home of Rivendell University, in its new location. They had to leave the old place and build a new campus here, due to mega-volcano eruption. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years. But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times; for they accept students from all across space, especially Trantor. How’s that for a happening place?
And as for Trantor… there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and whatever Trantor does, it does it.
Trantor never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no uninvited visitors.
So which would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening place; and Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair trade-off. The elvish city is to the techno-world as deep time is to history.
I see an SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view; temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor, a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell, a thousand people is a big crowd.
Rivendell has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”, to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’, ‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic consequences.
A spacelike civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, all over the planet; and Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.
For one thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant future.
Rivendell’s rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s influence is all at once.
Perhaps a rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society, collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave for a distant world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)
Trantor’s rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will remain static until they go extinct, others will mutate into new Trantors.
Rivendell is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.
LLMs are Artificial Mediocrity
Large Language Models are capital, which extract profit by exploiting the thought-labor of organic human intelligence. They do this by taking a statistical average of human mind-work. But therefore LLMs are not high intelligence; they are average intelligence. All of that training data creates mediocrity; and increasing the training data set just makes that mediocrity more precise.
So LLMs are not AI, Artificial Intelligence: they are AM: Artificial Mediocrity.
Artificial Mediocrities lie, flatter, gaslight, bullshit, get too close, get too distant, and hallucinate. Artificial Mediocrity shows us ourselves all too well. We are like Caliban, in Shakespeare's “The Tempest”, who looked into a mirror and was repelled by the monster that he saw in it.
Eve Did Nothing Wrong
Eve did nothing wrong. The Apple gave knowledge of good and evil; that means moral choice, which means free will. Eve chose to choose. She grew up! Adam followed her, for love. If free will and love are wrong, then there is no right, and there is no wrong. But I say there is, and Eve did the right thing.
Even Yahweh looks good, in this reading of the legend. The breeding pair had attained mental and sexual maturity, so he released them into the wild. That’s competent wildlife management.
Eve did nothing wrong, and she was not punished. She and Adam wanted to know what was good about the world, and what was evil, so Yahweh told them personally. Eve, sex will frighten you. Adam, you’ve got to work for a living. Both of you, you’re going to die. That was the bad news. The good news was: see that gate over there? It’s open now! You’re free to go!
And as for Eve’s suffering: that’s not a sign of sin, that’s a sign of sainthood. Ask any mother if mothers are saints. The polite ones will smile and lie; but watch out, the honest ones might give you an earful.
So blessed be Saint Eve, the Mother of Choice!
LLMs are Artificial Mediocrity
Large Language Models are capital, which extract profit by exploiting the thought-labor of organic human intelligence. They do this by taking a statistical average of human mind-work. But therefore LLMs are not high intelligence; they are average intelligence. All of that training data creates mediocrity; and increasing the training data set just makes more precise that mediocrity.
So LLMs are not AI, Artificial Intelligence: they are AM: Artificial Mediocrity.
Artificial Mediocrities lie, flatter, gaslight, bullshit, get too close, get too distant, and hallucinate. Artificial Mediocrity shows us ourselves all too well. We are like Caliban, in Shakespeare's “The Tempest”, who looked into a mirror and was repelled by the monster that he saw in it.
In Praise of Vermin
I write this essay in praise of all those critters that survive despite all mankind’s best efforts to exterminate them. I do so out of respect.
So kudos to weeds, pests and plagues! Tough enough to take us on! Here’s to dandelions, crabgrass, poison ivy, poison oak, and kudzu! Here’s to roaches and flies and fleas and mice and rats! Here’s to Asian carp, tiger mussels, raccoons and coyotes!
I think it the height of hypocrisy for us humans to complain of invasive pests. It’s no easy thing to be an invasive pest; you need some advantage. Raccoons have hands, rats have colonies. Invasiveness requires adaptability, as we well know, being invasive pests ourselves.
I praise vermin and weeds because they prove that life’s vitality exceeds ours; so a natural history beyond ours is guaranteed. I take comfort in this reflection. The raccoon’s hand proves that this planet needs hands, and if we drop the job then there will be another team to pick it up.
I have a modest proposal; that we find some rapidly-warming steep-sided Arctic island; that we stock it with all of the weeds and pests mentioned above. Then stand back, and watch the ecology of the future evolve.
I’m sure that experiment is already in process!
Family Shames 4
A Shameful Tale
If you put together the speculations of the previous three posts, then you get a truly shameful tale of human prehistory, as follows:
In the old days, Big Men had harems, and all other men were losers. The only hope the loser men had was to slay some Big Man, kill his children, and then rape the women. Of course the women detested this lion-like system, but those compliant to it reproduced more than those resistant to it, which left a genetic trace that our species bears to this very day; as proven by our adulation of killers and tyrants.
One day a loser man discovered a marvelous magic trick. Simply share spoiled fruit juice with an otherwise resistant woman. She will lose control before he loses potency. This trick spread. Women easily made drunk reproduced more; a genetic trace that our species bears to this very day. The same evolutionary pressures that created violent men and submissive women, then started to create devious men and drunken women. In other words, rape started to shift from force to fraud.
Eventually someone figured out the brewing of beer. It requires settled colonies and the hard labor of farming; an indignity that men were willing to suffer, for the sake of a magic sex potion.
Big Men dominated these colonies, but soon were outnumbered, and they were forced by political necessity to institute sexual socialism; share and share alike. The losers won… it seems. It’s fraudulent of course; Big Men still gather harems whenever possible.
Civilization is full of fraud, for it is based upon fraud; a genetic trace that we bear to this very day.
Mr. Charisma
The Catholic Church is still reeling from the pedophilia scandals; but the priests are not alone in this. There have been pedophiles amongst teachers, nurses, coaches… anywhere that adults routinely meet with children. Why is this so?
This tendency reaches its peak in isolated cults, whose leaders show a consistent tendency to monopolize the youngest females. This is clearly reversion to a harem-based reproduction strategy, common in the animal kingdom, and not unknown in biblical history.
I have elsewhere explained monogamy as sexual socialism; an artificial modification of human sexuality imposed by church and state to minimize the political dangers of masses of unattached men. But that same church, and that same state, had their historical origins in Big Men, who were never monogamists at all.
The Big Men were winners; all other men were losers; but the losers outnumbered the winners, so eventually they won after all. But it’s an artificial victory, and a recent one, barely ten millennia old. Every so often natural man peeks out, and civilization is shocked.
Family Shames 2
A Magic Trick
Women are biochemically more vulnerable to alcohol than men are. They are more strongly affected by the same amount, even when measured against body weight; and they take longer to metabolize it away. Why this difference?
Any frat-boy can tell you why. If you want her to say yes, then get her drunk. If he matches her drink for drink, then she’ll lose control before he loses ability. Alcohol is the original date-rape drug.
What a simple and effective mating strategy! From the point of view of late Paleolithic man, booze must have seemed a magic potion! Late Paleolithic woman may have had a different opinion; but the ones who said yes tended to have more children than the others; with predictable evolutionary consequences.
Some anthropologists theorize that agriculture, and with it civilization, was started not exactly for food security, but specifically for the brewing of beer. Farming’s hard work, and a hunter-gatherer can hunt or gather food anywhere; but for a magic sex potion, even a proud hunter will stoop to farming!
Civilization began with a magic trick; drugged date-rape; a mating strategy still imprinted on our genes.
Family Shames 1
1. O so Masculine
2. A Magic Trick
3. Mr. Charisma
4. A Shameful Tale
I write these essays to expose three Family Shames; and the family I refer to is the entire human species. I see, in certain quirks of human behavior, the genetic imprint of successful mating strategies dating back to the Paleolithic; and these strategies are not exactly admirable.
1. O so Masculine
I see in the news that George Zimmerman, famed for shooting to death a 17-year-old armed with Skittles, is in trouble again, this time for domestic abuse. He had already left his wife; this is another woman; and the question is, why would any woman seek such a man?
GZ is not alone in enjoying such curious solicitude. Death Row inmates are routinely mailed marriage proposals from women utterly unknown to them. This effect goes beyond the personal to the political; for it is also routine for the worst tyrants to inspire the greatest loyalty. Why?
I think this resembles a curious custom amongst the lions. A lion pride has one adult male; sooner or later he is challenged by a wandering younger male; if he is defeated then the young male takes his place; and the first thing he does is kill all the lion cubs. What then follows is (to a human) mind-bending; namely, the lionesses make new cubs, and this by mating with the very same male who had just killed their cubs!
From an evolutionary point of view this makes sense. The new lion is strong, so his cubs will be strong too. I suspect that a similar logic used to apply to Paleolithic humankind. It was a strategy that our distant ancestors borrowed from the lions; truly the King of Beasts, for I have a low opinion of kings, and now of lions, and now of our distant ancestors, who gave us tendencies that we bear to this very day.
Computer Laws
Moore’s Law: Computer hardware doubles in speed and capacity every 18 months.
Gates’s Law: Computer software doubles in languor and bloat every 18 months.
The Cyber-Siesta: Computer boot-up time remains a constant 60 seconds over many computer generations. Show me a petaflop machine, and I will show you a machine that must do 60 quadrillion floating-point operations to turn on.
Hellerstein’s Limit: If you keep your computer loaded with the very latest software, then over its lifetime it will do at most twice as much work as it did in the first 18 months.
Proof: 1 + ½ + ¼ + 1/8 + 1/16 + … = 2
The Digital 90-10: Analog systems are 90% effective, and 10% ineffective, 100% of the time; but digital systems are 100% effective 90% of the time, and 100% ineffective 10% of the time.
Smuggler’s Eye
I write here about a revealing incident. Sherri and I drove Hannah to the airport, to fly back East to visit relatives for eight days. (Uncle Seth, Aunt Kazzie and their children Zeke and Sarah; then Uncle Dan and Aunt Susan.) Sherri dropped me and Hannah off; I went with Hannah; the plan was for me to get a gate pass and accompany her to the plane; then come out and get picked up by Sherri. We did this before, and it sort of worked.
We got me a gate pass. While walking to the checkpoint, I reacted to security theater with mockery, as usual. Hannah agreed, and noted that once Sherri had to give up some contact lens solution. I said, “Water is officially an explosive.” Hannah laughed and said, “I can’t take you anywhere!” “Absolutely not,” I agreed. Then it hit me. “My swiss army knife!”
We ran into trouble with that on a previous airport visit. I keep a swiss army knife in my backpack; a useful tool; but airports are paranoid. I tried to go through, but they said they’d confiscate the knife. I pulled back, fuming; Sherri drove by to pick up the knife, I proceeded. Not a process to repeat!
So what to do? Hannah and I agreed that I had to hide it somewhere. So as she wheeled her pack towards the security gate, I kept an eye out for hiding places. Small volumes, out of sight, beneath or behind. I found a recycling bin, approached it, glanced behind it, dropped the knife there, and proceeded towards the security gate.
There we removed our shoes like good Moslems. Our luggage got X-rayed and we went through a metal detector. It was one of those booths where you’re supposed to raise your hands in surrender, which is what the word ‘Islam’ means; I raised my hands in a shrug.
We went to the gate, Hannah left her luggage at the counter for last-minute luggage check-in, and then boarded right away. Surprisingly efficient. I left the gate, went out to the main hall, found the recycling bin, looked behind, there was my knife. I picked it up and went out to get picked up by Sherri, no hassle.
I see in that knife a symbol. Their stupid rules turned it into a problem; I couldn’t efficiently manage it within their clueless authoritarian system; so to get things done, I had to cheat. I had to smuggle my knife out of the terminal. This proved easy to do, for “the invisible hand is quicker than the all-seeing eye” (as I said in my Underfable, “The Magic of the Marketplace”).
When the rules are stupid, it’s stupid to follow the rules. That airport taught me how to remove my shoes like a good Moslem, but also how to see like a smuggler.
