The only daily news mariner reads are the email titles from news websites. He avoids television news. However, given a decent education and actively pursuing information during two presidential elections, he has a perspective about the way things are going. More than once he read headlines about two billionaire preachers trying to turn the US government into a theocracy – an awkward interpretation of the spirit of Jesus similar to what Rome did 2,400 years ago.
Anyone who takes the New Testament even half seriously asks about billionaire preachers. Isn’t that a blatant oxymoron? How can a representative of Jesus’ instruction that one is with God only when giving, sharing or helping become a billionaire? Remember the main parable about the Good Samaritan? Samaritan Jews and traditional Jews did not get along well (sort of like Protestants and Catholics} but a Samaritan is traveling in traditional Jewish neighborhoods when he comes upon an injured Jew by the side of the road. The Samaritan gets the Jew to an inn, pays his housing costs and assures the innkeeper that he will cover medical costs. Mariner is pretty sure the Samaritan is not a billionaire in Rome-dominated Israel.
At a minimum what the preachers are doing is even worse than what Donald is doing. Metaphorically, if the nation were a shrub, Donald is using shears to cut it to the ground but is possible that the shrub will grow back; the preachers want to pull the shrub out by the root.
Of course one of the benefits is that the US congregation will have its own pope – probably a billionaire.
Mariner was reading through an old scientific journal published in 2022 when he came across an article about how computer logic and brain logic do not reason in the same way. The comparison watched the brain reason through its neuron activity while the same task was assigned to a computer analog.
Too make several pages into one, both sides were asked to identify an algebraic shape and place it in the correct location. The shape was a doughnut hole. The computer was stumped because the data provided described an empty circle and was asked to properly insert it in the dough. To the computer, there was no information that provided the placement rules for mathematics; it knew, by formula, that it was dealing with a circle but had no mathematical process to determine where the circle was suppose to fit.
The brain, on the other hand, did not conjure the values of multidimensional tables to get the answer. The brain reasoned, “What things have holes in them?” An image of a coffee cup came into focus. The brain said, “Oh – a coffee cup has a hole in the middle, and so does a flower pot, and a well. They all have a hole in the middle”. So brain decided the put the hole in the middle of the doughnut.
The computer uses mathematical algorithms which, through frequency on tables, identifies a mathematical solution. The brain, on the other hand, uses reason. Both have to do a table search to obtain information but the brain uses experience and human function.
As many folks may experience, a sound sleep may be disturbed by a brain chasing some weird thoughts during the night. Mariner experienced this phenomenon last night when he was disturbed through the night by his brain struggling with language.
This time it was the troubles humans have because they must use the same sounds over and over again for different words because the human limits on making different sounds cannot handle the billions of words humans have invented. So humans have to use the same sound for many different words and meanings. Just a few simple one-syllable examples:
Cow, now, sow, plow, mean, bean, lean, tree, flee, see, flea, sea, etc.
If one sounds out the vowel letters in the alphabet (a,e,i,o,u and sometimes y, which is redundant to i), that’s about the limit of different noises a human can make. Humans try to stretch these sounds so they can invent more words. That is called slurring, or respectfully, dialect.
So humans use five sounds over and over and over again by attaching distortions of the throat, mouth, tongue, teeth, lips and jaw. These noises are called consonants.
Twenty-six letters constitute all the letters one is supposed to need to make words. But it isn’t that easy thanks to the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between 1400 and 1600. The shift made it easier to invent more words with the same vowel noises. Check these examples:
plough as well as plow, slough as well as slough – tricky, one uses the ‘ow’ sound, the other uses the ‘u’ sound; the other direction to make more words with no more vowels is to combine words, allowing vowels to be used more than once in one word. For example, tie dye as a simple one and Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is a complex one that means ‘fear of big words’, something about which Icelandic and Welsh languages have no concern.
What would it be like to be a crow and have to develop an entire vocabulary based on ‘caw’ noises. They have, you know.
So mariner can understand the problems ChatGPT (which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) has trying to capture nuance and relevancy in human languages.
The dialect piece can be entertaining. Jimmie Carter and Fats Domino never end a word with the ‘ur’ sound; mariner’s friend from Boston puts ‘ur’ noises wherever he likes.
Thinking further, one wonders how the vowel noises are represented in sign language, There are only so many gyrations of the face, arms and hands.
No doubt readers have had enough fantasizing about archaeology and the role of humans. Today the post is about the behavior that keeps humans and communities bound to one another. This bonding is not limited to humans but also includes many of our mammal friends.
Mariner’s daughter, an excellent published author, came across a poem that she shared with her family:
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Lameris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
An sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead – you first,” “I like your hat.”
It is remarkable how this poem calms us and makes us feel secure. Our interpersonal behavior, at its most intimate and respectful moments, is the strong glue that holds society together. These simple, often automatic comments are what strengthens complex ideas like “equality”, “all men are created equal” and “one man, one vote”. These gestures and comments should reflect out into our political behavior.
The presence of weaponized politics is the absence of small gestures that are above ideology.These gestures and comments also lie beneath bonding – a desire to unify and find security in belonging by sharing similarities rather than differences. Everyone likes to be respected, to feel valued, to feel uniquely important. How powerful is the effect of offering a seat on the bus to an unknown person. Do you know they murdered their mother? Of course not but bonding goes beyond prejudice, beyond race, beyond station. Bonding is the glue of civilization.
It is our human responsibility to sustain community by acting in the manner of Danusha Lameris’ poem.
It was just yesterday in Earth years that the first placental primate emerged, about 87 million years ago. It was the beginning of the Mammalian Age. Over those centuries, mammals took many paths to become all the warmblooded, childbearing creatures that are around today; for example, mice, gorillas, reindeer, panthers, lions, beavers, monkeys, cattle, squirrels, bears, horses, gophers, whales, rabbits, sheep, wolves, warthogs, etc.
Dendropithecus turned up 13 million years ago, an early ancestor to a new line called Apes. Gibbons diverged from the line of great apes some 18–12 million years ago and that of orangutans (subfamily Ponginae) diverged from other great apes at about 14 million years ago.
African hominids diverged from orangutans about 12 million years ago. Hominins (including precursors of humans and the Australopithecine and Panina subtribes) parted from the Gorllini tribe (gorillas) between 8 and 9 million years ago; Australopithecine (including the extinct biped ancestors of humans) separated from the Pan genus (containing chimpanzees and bonobos) 4–7 million years ago. The Homo genus emerged as H. habilis over 2 million years ago. To cut ancestry short, 300,000 years ago, the early relatives of Homo sapiens arrived.
The point is this: Homo sapiens and all its fellow mammals, some plant eaters, some scavengers, some herding, some predators, are in this Mammalian Age together. In an era that began 87 million years ago, it has become clear that humans have a predetermined role that in just 300,000 years mammals are disappearing at increasing rates. 10,000 years ago, wild mammals represented 99% – today only1% represent wild mammals. The rest have been scavenged big time by Homo who represents 32% of mammals along with 67% represented by homo-owned mammalian livestock.
Are humans just a pawn in the planet’s galactic history? Are we another version of the giant dinosaurs who were bringing the Pleistocene Age to a close when the asteroid struck? The planet has few rules life forms must follow; one of them is ‘survival of the fittest’ Twice in the far distant past the planet wiped out all life with ice and with volcanic reorganization of the earth itself.
After an unusually long period of stable, supportive weather, the planet has begun to respond to another Homo behavior, carbonization, to begin raising the surface temperature of the planet. Further, Earth’s molten core is becoming active. Does Earth have plans to begin reorganizing the continents? It is predicted that Earth will undergo a global ice age in 200,000 years.
What does the future look like? Homo will have to wait to see what future versions of AI and chatGPT have to tell us. Is AI part of the next age sans mammals?
Readers know mariner’s distaste for the invasion of privacy by new technologies embedded in our vehicles, budgets, social life and that of our children as well. Perhaps his unusual resistance can be traced back to his career.
He has had dozens of jobs from paper boy and soda jerk to preacher, parole officer and computer system consultant. The longest career was as a freelance consultant hired by corporations to install computer upgrades – thirty years. He never was wanting for the next contract because he ran a stable project that met its goals. One would think that such a consultant would have to be a computer expert and indeed he had a major in computer science but not one in computer engineering.
In fact, what made mariner successful in project management was his previous experience as a preacher and a parole officer. Mariner did have an associate or two who were computer engineers and coding specialists which made it possible for him to manage the difficult part of the project: people. He had learned a technique that creates team ownership. Each project worker was assigned to an eight to ten member group; each member owned a segment that was an integrated segment such that the other workers had a role in the worker’s success. Mariner was always present at these group meetings playing the role of coach and at times, decision maker but never taking away segment ownership. In the end, the group managed itself.
But the transition in the corporate power structure caused by a new computer system was often tragic. Employees who had worked there for many years were told they would be laid off; workers were transferred to lesser jobs and hopeful careers were interrupted. coders and technicians who were unfamiliar with the new technology were pushed into dead end corners of operations. In larger corporations, there were fierce political battles between vice presidents and key managers because their political power, created by the amount of data they controlled, was no longer needed. Everyone will own all the data.
Did the reader catch the phrase ‘everyone will own all the data’? Were the upgrades in mariner’s projects ancestors to Google, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok? The major reason for mariner’s projects was to move from a network where the workstation computer created data that was uploaded every night to data storage devices where it could be integrated with other workstation data; the core work data remained in the workstation to be managed by a network of employees. Hence, a supervisor, manager or vice president was important because they managed (owned) the data in their unit’s workstations.
The effect of his projects forced a reorganization of the corporate workforce without, he suggests, any grace or feelings about a large segment of displaced workers and managers. In his projects, the workstation became a data entry terminal little more complex than an ATM.
Now, long out of his career, he understands the subtleties of data ownership and how it creates, metaphorically, a democratic operation. Today, one’s private computer – much more personal and life-important, is being taken away to live in the clouds of the AI corporate data banks. Now everyone owns all the data – including the reader’s data. The reader’s computer is just a data entry terminal.
Democracy will have a hard time existing in an AI world.
In a recent post, mariner mentioned four forces of nature that would determine the future of Homo sapiens. They were global warming, population, disappearing resources and AI. This post offers resources that help understand why AI may not be the blessing of other advances like the automobile, airplanes, can openers, electric lights, etc.
Often mentioned is the movie Matrix which has become a movie series. It is about the battle a few independent humans have against an AI brain that totally controls the human race; humans are kept alive in caskets so central AI intelligence can use them as batteries; These humans are fed a fake reality that makes them believe they are living a normal life.
Another frequently mentioned source is a PBS documentary ‘Hacking the Brain’ about the powers of AI and how, if controlled, AI can be useful but the documentary also displays the dangers of AI in its ability to manipulate humans even as they think they are living normal lives.
One source mariner hasn’t mentioned in a while is ‘The Social Dilemma’ available on Netflix. Largely, it is an interview of AI experts and managers who have left the AI corporations because of the immoral and intensely capitalistic policies exercised by corporations collectively known as Silicon Valley and which generate all the social media content with ulterior motives.
As to mariner’s prediction of Armageddon, AI is not a tool for making life better. There is an element of improvement reflected in better health care, resource management and supply chain efficiency but the AI technology is not controlled by anyone but the corporations themselves.
As it stands, social media can start wars, erroneously destroy careers, turn gossip into national policy, etc. – and does this without government restraint, without individual control of personal information, without total control of AI intrusion into economic sectors, and without due diligence to protect against hackers and international political abuse.
It is an area of the future which has yet to show its true colors. We will just have to wait and see how things turn out.
For many centuries, research suggests that since the earliest humans, there has been a fascination about eternity. It’s easy to understand that the TV will run forever unless it is turned off. That’s because it indeed can be turned off. Eternity is oblivious to human perceptions of time. Waiting in a line to use the bathroom may seem an eternity but no matter what happens, there is a finite conclusion so waiting in line is not eternity. Eternity has no end.
So what does eternity feel like? Religions speak of great societies in eternity, an eternity ruled, by the way, by human perceptions that have emotions – that is, living human emotions. All well and good but what does uninhabited eternity feel like?
Staring at the stars may be a way to feel eternity – if one can press beyond them and feel the endlessness beyond them. It is possible to look at loved ones in a family and sense the continuity provided by an eternity that allows for continuous existence.
Not intending to be quixotic, mariner can sense eternity by listening to Frankie Laine singing ‘Ghost Riders in the sky’. On the one hand, there is a human circumstance to provide focus. On the other hand, one can see beyond the riders and perceive endlessness. No stars get in the way or conjured heavens attached to the future – just empty eternity and the riders never stopping for rest at a human rest stop, on and on and on they ride.
One can sense that the riders may never be seen again.
To watch Frankie Laine, checkout the link below. You will need a password to YouTube. Or, you may search YouTube on a streaming TV.
Mariner stopped by to visit with Nosey Mole yesterday. He discovered that Nosey had blocked all his tunnel entrances. Then mariner read the headline on one of his news headline emails: The republicans in Congress have submitted a bill that would allow only republicans as eligible to vote for the Speaker of the House.
Will Donald really become our first dictator? He has said a time or two that if he won, there wouldn’t be any more elections.
The next vote for Congressman is two years away. It may be the citizen’s last chance for sustaining a democracy.
Metaphorically, in the last post about the distant future, mariner borrowed a Musk tourist rocket. In this post, he takes a ride on the fact tractor, that heavily geared pursuit vehicle most of us need to delve into truth, reality and comprehension (TRC).
Today, the tractor goes by many names but two are prevalent and represent the only publicly handy sources for TRC: Wikipedia and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS). There are many, many other TRC internet sites and publications but typically, they are known to fewer searchers and often have privacy procedures.
Only the two mentioned sites honor the factual standards of that time when TRC was available only in books. How many readers had a twenty-volume ‘Book of Knowledge’ reference when they were young? Mariner still has his, published in 1938, and the distance to the moon and stars was represented in an image of railroad trains setting off on trips to the Universe.
Both Wikipedia and PBS have fact-checking and nuance-rinsing requirements before broadcasting. PBS has a large library of insightful documentaries about every thought under the Sun – including the Sun. Further, PBS news editors do their best to represent today’s cacophony in a neutral manner. Wikipedia will print at the top of an article whether there needs to be some further editing by contributors.
Except for highly specialized subjects, jumping on the search engine or television to do some dependable research finds little to be confident about TRC beyond Wikipedia and PBS.
But today they need our help in a serious, continued survival way. They need subscribers to help pay the bills. Mariner subscribes to both, otherwise he would be embarrassed given the number of times each day he accesses each. As readers may know, all US governments are as happy as a bunch of three-year-olds being let into a playroom; anything is subject to abuse. At risk is Federal funding that contributes to PBS overhead. It is a specified target for the circus performers in Washington.
Wikipedia, just like all of us, has been overrun by social media. It requires a lot more staff and automated crosschecking to keep the dinner dishes clean, metaphorically speaking.
So here is a chance to help out. Become a subscriber.
You do not need to mark this post as ‘trash’. It is the only request for you to help out two TRC information sources that we use every day.
