Author Archives: skipper

Homo sapiens is a lot like crabgrass

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Instead of writing about these things, mariner will drop the lead-ins and sources so the reader can check out the ones of interest.

֎ Scientists Make ‘Cyborg Worms’ with a Brain Guided by AI — AI and tiny worms team up to get to treats. In the study, published in Nature Machine Intelligence, researchers trained an AI agent to direct one-millimeter-long Caenorhabditis elegans worms toward tasty patches of Escherichia coli in a four-centimeter dish.

Want to know where the best place to buy a house is? Just ask AI, they’ll make you go there. BTW, got lots of money?

֎  https://www.politico.com/newsletters/digital-future-daily:  California lawmakers sent a nationally consequential AI bill to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk last week — America’s most high-profile effort to date to put fresh legal guardrails around AI safety.

State Bill 1047 would hold companies liable for harms caused by their software, establish protection for AI whistleblowers, and put safety restrictions and requirements on AI models that reach a certain level of computational power, the closest any new American law has come to the European Union’s sweeping AI Act.

All we need now is a functioning Federal Government.

֎ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-surveillance-pricing-practices-under-federal-probe/   AI ‘Surveillance Pricing’ Could Use Personal Data to Make People Pay More. The agency’s ongoing investigation was sparked by a growing awareness that companies are using AI and machine learning to track certain categories of user data—such as age, location, credit score or browsing history—which many people probably wouldn’t deliberately share.

Consumer surveillance extends beyond online shopping. “Companies are investing in infrastructure to monitor customers in real time in brick-and-mortar stores,” she says. Some price tags, for example, have become digitized, designed to be updated automatically in response to factors such as expiration dates and customer demand. Retail giant Walmart—which is not being probed by the FTC—says its new digital price tags can be remotely updated within minutes.

Use storefronts and pay cash as much as you can! Google won’t know you were there (if you leave your phone in the car).

֎ There are several stories in online news about the useless effort to make the oil industry take responsibility to reduce global warming.

Goodbye, Florida and New York City.

Ancient Mariner

 

The education experience

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In the last post, mariner wrote about habits stored in the brain which were hard to dislodge. It occurred to him that the manner in which education is applied to students also is suffering from old habits that are hard to dislodge.

It is true that the scope of intended subjects has changed over the centuries. It is ‘how’ a student is instructed that is under the microscope today. We can assume the early Homo folks simply did a show-and-tell, demonstrating the actual procedures to be learned. As conceptualization crept into the culture, it had to be captured in documents and eventually into special books called textbooks. Even with books, an instructor was required to translate information and give the information a human perspective. And so it has been for eons.

Today, it has suddenly occurred, “why keep human instructors in the classroom if a computer can provide a simulated teacher any time day or night?” Mariner admits that he often takes advantage of the wide, free-roaming learning opportunities available on the Internet; he has a master’s degree in gardening from Junk University (YouTube). The mistake in the question above is that for all its intelligence, computer tablets don’t have physiological souls, that is, computers don’t have to change behavioral habits hidden in their subconscious. A human instructor still is needed; it’s the instructor’s focus in the classroom that needs an upgrade.

Sadly, the idea of displacing employees as a beneficial act affects other professions as well from truck drivers to office workers to nurses. Even delivery workers may be displaced by little automated delivery boxes and drones – it occurs to mariner these boxes offer a good opportunity to practice hunting; will geese and deer be irritated if they are replaced by automated drones and robots?

Back to education.

Education, as everyone has learned during the Covid pandemic, is not just about books and visual presentations. He has heard from friends who are teachers that students, especially the younger ones, are unruly, unmannerly and disrespectful of the teacher’s role in the classroom. The National Center for Education Statistics reports that 32% of K-12 students are behind grade level. Why are schools still dealing with the long-term effects of remote schooling and other pandemic-era learning disruptions?  Something other than book learning and concepts disappeared during the pandemic.

Given a moment, one realizes that a great deal of socialization occurs in the classroom from pre-school to college. The most important learning may be tuning the student’s subconscious to be a collaborator with society. AI is trying hard to emulate this interactive experience as well but despite the canned responses of social robots, children need children – and someone who can adjust response and guidance to fit many subconscious minds in an integrated fashion. That takes another subconscious mind – a human instructor.

Along this line of thought, mariner has written posts that question the use of individual grading. He suggests that society today, with all its automated advantages, is more interested in individuals who can fit in and be fellow collaborators. To that end, grading should be applied to small teams in the classroom rather than to individuals since the Internet is so handy with factual information. What becomes important is human behavior in a learning atmosphere, not what a student knows about page 130 in a textbook. Having teams of students compete with other teams forces collaborative behavior. The computer tablet is the new textbook.

All these conditions affect the standard approach of instruction and require adjustment to long ingrained teaching habits. The growth of community colleges and new student demands that colleges guarantee employment at graduation are two of many indicators which suggest revamping the grading, textbook and syllabus methodology that has been around long before the United States existed.

An afterthought, smartphones are the new version of talking in class. Any psychologist or therapist or teacher would want to control thought processes. Think how successful a hypnotist would be if the person being hypnotized was busy using a smartphone.

Ancient Mariner

It’s different today

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In the last post, mariner cited a man who had lost his brain functions but could still make breakfast. The article citing him was about habit and how much of our behavior is managed by a special part of the brain that stores habits. Habits are frozen procedures that require no thought in order to take action.

For normal folks who still have brain function, much of our personality and our capability is under the control of habit storage – no thought or judgment required, A simple example is getting ready to go out the door. Typically, the car keys are always in the same place, ready to grab without thinking. If the keys aren’t in place (often in a purse or pocket), a person may get to the car door before realizing the keys are not at hand.

Mariner is aware that he and the gentleman with brain damage have similar habits. With mariner, it’s making the morning coffee pot. He is aware that he doesn’t need to process the routine – just do it!

Our reasoning skills are supported by many habit files. For example, one may have a firm prejudice about which route to take to a destination; why? “Oh, it just seems the easiest way to go” [even if it isn’t]. Prejudice, no matter the subject or behavior, has strong support from habit files.

In politics, a good example is staying with a political decision that isn’t relevant anymore. That person has a habit for their position on the matter and uses that memorized (habitual) position rather than apply new reasoning to a changed reality.

It requires way too much wordage to indulge in examples of a person’s personality. Suffice it to say there are tons of habit files; one doesn’t have to reconstruct who they are every moment of the day.

The comfort of habit is that one can do many procedural (and physiological) things and not have to think about them. How about when you change jobs and you realize you can’t do something the way you’ve always done it – something as simple as pulling out of the driveway in the right direction to go to work?

As we move through those periods of life where we have to figure out a new us, especially at retirement time, it often is a difficult time. Or it is a tough time when a family member dies. Or perhaps one’s role in past life disappears completely at retirement. What makes these transitions difficult is that we must toss out a lot of internalized habits about who we are and how we behave in a new situation. We have to invent new habits! The brain, of course, is hesitant to participate because these were supposed to be habits so the brain didn’t have to deal with them.

As the brain dwindles in old age, habits become important whether they are relevant or not. Perhaps this is why it’s so hard to be a new ‘you’ in one’s eighties and nineties.

Ancient Mariner

Know a song?

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I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then, the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

When I come home at night, she will be waiting
She’ll be the truest doll in all this world
I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl

I guess I had a million dolls or more
I guess I’ve played the doll game over and over
I just quarreled with Sue, that’s why I’m blue
She’s gone away, and left me, just like all dolls do

I’ll tell you, boys, it’s tough to be alone
And it’s tough to love a doll that’s not your own
I’m through with all of them, I’ll never fall again
Say boy, what you gonna do?

I’m gonna buy a paper doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal
And then, the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

When I come home at night, she will be waiting
She’ll be the truest doll in all this world
I’d rather have a paper doll to call my own
Than have a fickle-minded real live girl

Know what? Mariner just sang that entire song from memory. It is by the Mills Brothers and released in 1944! In fact, He knows several of their songs by heart. Yet, today he can’t remember what happened yesterday!

How does the brain play games like this? On the one hand, there’s Marilu Henner (Taxi), who has instant recall of every single day in her life versus the man who suffered total brain loss but could still make bacon and eggs for breakfast.

There are 100 billion neurons (brain cells) in the human brain. One would think that once learned or experienced, that moment would always be at hand. The brain, however, is a lot like a computer: it has a delete key and an escape key. And like most folk’s computers, the brain has a truly garbled filing system. Also like a computer, the brain has a restrictive operating system that will keep some information at hand for frequent use (virtually all these programs don’t care about the Mills Brothers, it’s more about body chemistry, aches and pains and making sure all the body cells understand what to do).

Has the reader ever searched for a file they knew was somewhere but after great effort never found it? The brain does that, too. Has the reader ever accidentally deleted a four page document they were working on and it is irretrievable? The brain does that, too. The brain’s delete key is used for these situations and also  when junk gets into the files – usually from illness, injury or drugs. Often, the delete key is used when brain processing hits a neuron to process but it’s not there. That’s called amyloid clusters.

Big city folks may never have experienced this, but out in the boonies, the internet signal isn’t always steady. The computer or TV screen goes dark for a moment or more and that little spinning curlicue shows up. The blocked signal is exactly what amyloid clusters do – they block the signal. The more amyloid clusters are mixed in between neurons, the more the brain shows signs of dementia. Fortunately, scientists are tinkering with ways to remove amyloid clusters.

So if it’s important to remember something, put it in a song and memorize it.

Ancient Mariner

The Neanderthal

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If one looks hard enough on television one can find excellent documentaries. Mariner recommends a documentary on Netflix about the Neanderthal. It was engrossing enough to provoke him into visiting several books and URLs about the topic of Homo history.

These five skulls, which range from an approximately 2.5-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus on the left to an approximately 4,800-year-old Homo sapiens on the right, show changes in the size of the braincase, slope of the face and shape of the brow ridges over just less than half of human evolutionary history. {Human Origins Program, NMNH,}

The future Homo in an artificial intelligence age: Homo electrus

Seriously, the documentary about Neanderthal was excellent and he recommends the reader check it out. One of the commentators suggested, in mariner’s words, It ain’t over til its over. How many more evolutionary eons in the future are there for Homo sapiens?

The Neanderthal existed for 400,000 years, disappearing 40,000 years ago because of the aftermath of the Great Ice Age that occurred in the Pleistocene Period. Neanderthal disappeared simultaneously with the migration of Homo sapiens out of Africa. There was enough hanky-panky that all humans today have some Neanderthal DNA in them.

Several sources cite the beginning of ‘modern man’ to be around 6,000 years ago – less than a blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. ‘Modern’ implies an interest in economy, invention and the manipulation of the biosphere AKA the beginning of industrialism.

What was pleasantly insightful in the documentary was the insights of the archeologists  who, interpreting the bones and surmised behavior, showed that even Neanderthal had an awareness of spirituality and compassion. These primitive sensitivities were exercised without any need for a defined religion or imposed cultural obligation. Would they be able to understand today’s anti-religious Protestant Evangelicals? How can Homo saps exist for the next 400,000 years, they wonder.

Making some comparisons between the fate of Neanderthal and ourselves today, there is one commonality: the environment. Neanderthal had no choice because the ice age totally wiped out a forested biosphere. Perhaps we have no choice, either . . . .

Ancient Mariner

 

 

 

 

 

In these times

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A person is as pressed by social media as if the person were a movie star. Every potion, every holiday spot, every kinky way to do something, is tossed at the screen. There are some well intentioned advertisers, for example medical advice, an ability to talk with family and friends, how to interact with government and the legitimate news organizations that love to talk about themselves.

But by a massive degree more frequently, a person is assaulted by mercenaries, corporate manipulators and irrational hagglers. Privacy is lost. Personal decision-making is thwarted by unbalanced information. And watching television has become so pervasive as to shut down normal social behavior, that is, interpersonal dialogue and mutual participation in life.

In the middle of the last century, mariner was a preacher. The job of preacher does have a political aspect to it when dealing with the congregation but the standard job description had a set of priorities: Foremost, run religious services and sacraments. Second, above all other responsibilities, visit the ill and shut-ins. Third, promote community programs and evangelism.

He is sorry to say that visiting is no longer a priority, In this century, the services and sacraments are sustained and the political aspect is not about the political issues that arise when attempting to be a Christian but rather, doing just the opposite by politicizing issues contrary to Christian doctrine.

In the world of politics, the well being of the citizenry has been co-opted by corporate interests and in recent times has created a have, have not society. Finally, in the background, the planet’s traditional political liaisons between nations have grown old and are under stress.

. . . .

Mariner mentions these situations because every one detracts from the one behavior that can see us through: Be a normal human being! That means talking to other human beings at least as often as sitting in a TV chair or scratching a computer/telephone screen. Sustain personal relations that build community spirit.

A simple pattern, be sure to visit each friend and neighbor regularly – even have them visit you.

Attend community events. Organize or associate with a picnic or event that includes friends and neighbors; participate in neighborhood activities; look for ways, even very tiny, where you can help a neighbor – especially shut-ins and the ill because preachers don’t do it any more. In fact, ask a neighbor to help you – something about which mariner has become experienced.

Belong to a local group that helps the indigent or get with friends to repair an old person’s home.

Reinforce family unity with visitations, vacations, and reunions. Share more time with children whether at home or who have moved into their own life.

Participate in local election activity. Of course, always vote!

One of the overlooked activities that build community strength is a local newspaper. Sadly, local papers are disappearing because of competition with the Internet. However, if you are fortunate to have a local paper, subscribe to it. More is happening around the community than one may think.

Deliberately give one full day each month dedicated to servicing others. That includes spouses, children, neighbors, social organizations and anyone else who would be pleased with your dedicated interest.

Finally, enforce a time when your own well being Is important. It could be fishing, golfing, boating, etc. Or perhaps reading, visiting natural surroundings, taking a short trip to see something interesting, have a hobby. Just find a place where time belongs only to you – and not to the TV or telephone.

Our genome says we need a tribe to care for.

Ancient Mariner

Beyond the Glory of America

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Officially, mariner has returned home from Chicken Little’s hen house. He did watch the democratic convention. News is show biz. The actual participants in the convention, however, really put on a professional Broadway show. So the race is about to start: 74 days to election day. One’s vote is just like buying a lottery ticket or a ticket to a Taylor Swift show.

Less acute as an issue but a great deal more impactful is recent news from environmental scientists. They have begun to provide comparatively more accurate timelines about global warming. Speaking very generally, the planet will be a different planet by the end of the century.

One factor is melting polar ice. He just read that they are melting faster each year. If they melt at their present increasing rate, scientists predict a rise of as much as 50 feet in ocean level by 2100. As the years pass, anyone living near the Tropical Zone (between Tropic of Cancer in the north  (23°26′ N) and the Tropic of Capricorn in the south ( 23°26′ S.) will experience a significant increase in temperatures and storms. In terms of the U.S, Phoenix is just 486 miles above the Tropical Zone at 32º18′, Brownsville Texas just 162 miles above at 26º10′ and Florida just 54 miles at 24º49′.

Global warming is an economic issue. Already the United States has had to spend an extra 11 billion on this phenomenon. Add to that overhead the same circumstances in other nations around the world – from Haiti to China.

Whether Donald or Kamala, they will be forced to address this issue in addition to all the economic political arguments we expect to hear.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner lied

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Watched the democratic convention. How many times did you hear someone say ‘existential’? Did they mean:

Meaningful? Emotional? Positive? Real? Empirical? Spiritual? achievement?

Let’s face it. ‘Existential’ is a thesaurus word – just like ‘gay’ was.

Ancient Mariner

Existential-3

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Isn’t it great that we have a new hobby – the meaning of existential? Marc’s observations are a true experience; when we hear folks use the word, we tend to feel they really don’t have a substantive argument. Marc is wise beyond his years (He has many).

Mariner promises this is the last post about existential.

Just to warm up the reader’s egotistical, self-centered brain, what you have warmed up has nothing to do with existentialism. To use another awkward analogy, existentialism in its correct, philosophical perspective, is not who you think you are.- that is not what’s important. Who you think you are is a result of interacting with reality.

Many years ago an individual, unnamed at the time, described his philosophy of life as an effort to experience as many different sensations, emotions, circumstances and social engagements as he possibly could because, he said, “I am what I experience”. He believed in the philosophy of existentialism.

Given Schroeder’s cat in a box, the cat is not real until you otherwise experience it.  What makes it real is a context provided by reality, not one’s egotistical, self-promoting ego – the reader didn’t know until reality presented it to them. A valid existential moment. One has the realization that until reality interacted with you, you could not add the experience.

Philosophically, those who believe the existential experience is what gives meaning and purpose to one’s life, believe reality is what defines us and shapes us. Our own definitions of ourselves are a way of interpreting that existential moment.

So, now that this wonderful, abstract word is not just part of your vocabulary but also an existential experience – and a hobby, mariner leaves the reader to enjoy a newly defined sense of self.

Ancient Mariner

Existential-2

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Mariner expected the common response to be “Doesn’t this guy have anything else to do?” The feedback from friends and readers was varied. Two responses to the post are examples.He admits his detailed meandering may have caused confusion. This time he will be breviloquent.

On the second line of the post, classic Latin suggests it is an essence or a state of continuous ‘being’.

Graphically, in the sequence 4,5,6   5 is the existential relationship.

The moment of behavior combined with the impact of present reality is the existential moment. That moment provides meaning to the behavior and to the definition of reality.

He said it was a hobby.

Ancient Mariner