Saturday, March 16, 2024

Only optimism can save us. But plenty of reasons for optimism!

Far too many of us seem addicted to downer, ‘we’re all doomed’ gloom-trips. 

Only dig it, that foul habit doesn't make you sadly-wise. Rather, it debilitates your ability to fight for a better world. Worse, it is self-indulgent Hollywood+QAnon crap infesting both the right and the left. 

In fact, we’d be very well-equipped to solve all problems – including climate ructions – if it weren’t for a deliberate (!) world campaign against can-do confidence. Stephen Pinker and Peter Diamandis show in books how very much is going right in the world! But if those books seem tl;dr, then try here and here and here.

In particular, I hope Jimmy Carter lives to see the declared end of the horribly parasitic Guinea worm! He deserves much of the credit. Oh, and polio too, maybe soon? The new malaria vaccine is rolling out and may soon save 100,000 children per year. 


(Side note: Back in the 50s, the era when conservatives claim every single was peachy, the most beloved person in America was named Jonas Salk.)

 

More samples from that fascinating list: “Humanity will install an astonishing 413 GW of solar this year, 58% more than in 2022, which itself marked an almost 42% increase from 2021. That means the world's solar capacity has doubled in the last 18 months, and that solar is now the fastest-growing energy technology in history. In September, the IEA announced that solar photovoltaic installations are now ahead of the trajectory required to reach net zero by 2050, and that if solar maintains this kind of growth, it will become the world's dominant source of energy before the end of this decade. … and…  global fossil fuel use may peak this year, two years earlier than predicted just 12 months ago. More than 120 countries, including the world's two largest carbon emitters…”

(BTW solar also vastly improves resilience, since it allows localities and even homes to function even if grids collapse: so much for a major “Event” that doomer-preppers drool-over.  Nevertheless, I expect that geothermal power will take off shortly and surpass solar, by 2030, rendering fossil fuels extinct for electricity generation.)

 

== Why frantically ignore good news? ==


It's not just the gone-mad entire American (confederate) Right that's fatally allergic to noticing good news. That sanctimony-driven fetishism is also rife on the far- (not entire) left.


“The Inflation Reduction Act is the single largest commitment any government has yet made to vie for leadership in the next energy economy, and has resulted in the largest manufacturing drive in the United States since WW2. The legislation has already yielded commitments of more than $300 billion in new battery, solar and hydrogen electrolyzer plants…” 


And yet, dem-politicians seem to dumb to emphasize this manufacturing boom resulted directly from their 2021 miracle bills, and NOT from voodoo “supply side” nonsense.

 

Oh, did you know that: “Crime plummeted in the United States. Initial data suggests that murder rates for 2023 are down by almost 13%, one of the largest ever annual declines, and every major category of crime except auto theft has declined too, with violent crime falling to one of the lowest rates in more than 50 years and property crime falling to its lowest level since the 1960s. Also, the country's prison population is now 25% lower than its peak in 2009, and a majority of states have reduced their prison populations by more than that, including New Jersey and New York who have reduced prison populations by more than half in the last decade.”  

 

Of course you didn’t know!  Neither the far-left nor the entire-right benefit from you learning that. (Though there ARE notable differences between US states. Excluding Utah and Illinois, red states average far more violent than blue ones, along with every other turpitude. And the Turpitude Index ought to be THE top metric for voting a party out of office.  Wager on that, please?)

 

Likewise: “The United States pulled off an economic miracle In 2022 economists predicted with 100% certainty that the US was going to enter a recession within a year. It didn't happen. GDP growth is now the fastest of all advanced economies, 14 million jobs have been created under the current administration, unemployment is at its lowest since WW2, and new business formation rates are at record highs. Inflation is almost back down to pre-pandemic levels, wages are above pre-pandemic levels (accounting for inflation), and more than a third of the rise in economic inequality between 1979 and 2019 has been reversed. Average wealth has climbed by over $50,000 per household since 2020, and doubled for Americans aged 18-34, home ownership for GenZ is higher than it was for Millennials and GenX at this point in their lives, and the annual deficit is trillions of dollars lower than it was in 2020.” 

 

(Now, if only we manage to get rentier inheritance brats to let go of millions of homes they cash-grabbed with their parents’ supply side lucre.)

 

And… “In March this year, 193 countries reached a landmark deal to protect the world's oceans, in what Greenpeace called "the greatest conservation victory of all time."

 

And… "In August, Dutch researchers released a report that looked at over 20,000 measurements worldwide, and found the extent of plastic soup in the world's oceans is closer to 3.2 million tons, far smaller than the commonly accepted estimates of 50-300 million tons.”

 

And all that is just a sampling of many reasons to snap out of the voluptuous but ultimately lethal self-indulgence called GLOOM. Wake up. There’s a lot of hope. 

Alas, that means – as my pal Kim Stanley Robinson says – 
“We can do this! But only if its ‘all hands on deck!’

== Finally, something for THIS tribe... ==

Whatever his side-ructions... and I deem all the x-stuff and political fulminations to be side twinges... what matters above all are palpable outcomes.  And the big, big rocket is absolutely wonderful.  It will help reify so many bold dreams, including many held by those who express miff at him.

Anyway, he employs nerds. Nerds... nerdsnerdsnerds... NERDS!  ;-)

Want proof?  Look in the lower right corner. Is that a bowl of petunias, next to the Starship whale?  ooog - nerds.




Saturday, March 09, 2024

More science! - from AI to analog to human nature

We're about to dive into AI (what else?) But first off, a little news from entertainment and philosophy ... and where both venn-overlap with myth

Here's a link to a recording of the first public performance of my play “The Escape,” on November 7 at Caltech. A 'reading' but fully dramatized, well-acted and directed by Joanne Doyle. The recording is of middling quality, but shows great audience reactions. Come have some good, impudently theological fun!  

(Note, for copyright reasons the video omits background music after scene 2 (The Stones “Sympathy for the Devil;”) and at the end, when you see the audience cheering silently during “You Gotta Have Heart!” the great song from Damn Yankees, that's related to the theme of the play. 


Pity! Still, folks liked it. And I think you’ll laugh a few times… or go “Huh!”)



== A world of analog… ==


Before going to digital revolutions, might there come a return of analog computing? 

Bringing back analog computers in much more advanced forms than their historic ancestors will change the world of computing drastically and forever.” 

This article makes a point I depicted in Infinity’s Shore – that analog computing may yet find a place. Indeed, the more we learn about neurons, the less their operation looks like simple, binary flip-flops. 

For every flashy, on-off synapse, there appear to be hundreds – even thousands – of tiny organelles that perform murky, nonlinear computational (or voting) functions, with some evidence for the Penrose-Hameroff notion that some of them use quantum entanglement!

Says one of the few pioneers in analog-on-a-chip: “Digital computers are very good at scalability. Analog is very good at complex interactions between variables. In the future, we may combine these advantages.”


Which brings us back to my novel - Infinity's Shore - wherein a hidden interstellar colony of ‘illegal immigrant’ refugees develops analog computers in order to avoid a posited ‘inevitable detectability’ of digital computation. A plot device, sure. But it freed me to envision a vast chamber filled with spinning glass disks and cams and sparking tubes. A vivid Frankenstein contraption of… analog.

 

== AI, Ai AI!! ==

 

We just got back from Ben Goertzel's conference on “Beneficial AGI” in Panama. How can we encourage a 'landing' so that organic and artificial minds will be mutually beneficent? Quite a group was there with interesting perspectives on these new life forms. Exchanged ideas... 


...including the highly unusual ones from my WIRED article that breaks free of the three standard 'AI-formats' that can only lead to disaster, suggesting instead a 4th! That AI entities can only be held accountable if they have individuality... even 'soul'... 


Heck, still highly relevant: my NEWSWEEK op-ed (June'22) dealt with 'empathy bots'' that feign sapience and personhood.  


Offering some context for this new type of life form, Byron Reese has a new book: “We Are Agora: How Humanity Functions as a Single Superorganism That Shapes Our World and Our Future.”  We desperately need the wary, can-do optimism that he conveyed in earlier books – along with confidence persuaders like Steven Pinker and Peter Diamandis! Only now BP talks about Gaia, Lovelock, Margulis and all that… how life is a web of nested levels of individuality and macro communities, e.g. from cells to a bee to a hive and so on. Or YOUR cells to organs to ‘you’ to your families and communities and civilization. In other words – the core topic of my 1990 novel EARTH!  (Soon to be re-released in an even better version! ;-)

See Byron interviewed by Tim Ventura.

 

A paper on “Nepotistically Trained Generative-AI Models Collapse” asserts that – in what seems to be a case of back feedback loops - AI (artificial intelligence) image synthesis programs, when retrained on even small amounts of their own creation, produce highly distorted images… and that once poisoned, the models struggle to fully heal even after retraining on only real images.  I am sure it’ll get fixed - and probably has been, before this gets posted - but…. 

 

Oy!  Or shall I say aieee!”  This very clever Twitter troll has developed an interesting demonstration of recursive "poisoning." (link by Mike Godwin.)

 

But then we can gain insights into the past! 

 At the Direction of President Biden, Department of Commerce to Establish U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute to Lead Efforts on AI Safety. Through the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),  the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (USAISI) will lead the U.S. government’s efforts on AI safety and trust, particularly for evaluating the most advanced AI models. “USAISI will facilitate the development of standards for safety, security, and testing of AI models, develop standards for authenticating AI-generated content, and provide testing environments for researchers to evaluate emerging AI risks and address known impacts.”


== Insights into human nature ==

 

Caltech researchers developed a way to read brain activity using functional ultrasound (fUS), a much less invasive technique than neural link implants and does not require constant recalibration.  Only… um… “Because the skull itself is not permeable to sound waves, using ultrasound for brain imaging requires a transparent “window” to be installed into the skull.


A researcher wrote about his shock after discovering that some people don't have inner speech. Many folks have an internal monologue that is constantly commenting on everything they do, whereas others produce only small snippets of inner speech here and there, as they go about their day.  But some report a complete absence. The article asks what's going on inside the heads of people who don't have inner speech?


Ask those and other unusual questions! In The Ancient Ones I comment about those human beings who, teetering at the edge of a sneeze, do NOT look for a sharp, bright light to stare into. Such people exist… and they almost all think we light-starers are lying! Yeah, we smooth apes are a varied bunch.


== And finally ==


The Talmudic rabbis recognized six genders that were neither purely male nor female. Among these: 


- Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics.

- Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics.

- Aylonit hamah, identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics.

- Aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention. And so on.

They also had a tradition that the first human being was both.


A laudable acceptance we can all learn from! Of course, they also taught against the dangers of excessive, self-righteous sanctimony. Those who sow deliberate insult and contention in their own house (or family, or coalition of well-meaning allies) inherit... the wind.


Monday, March 04, 2024

The futility of hiding. And then a brief rant!

Just back from an important conference (in Panama) about ways to ensure that the looming tsunami of Artificial Intelligences will become and remain 'beneficial.' Few endeavors could be more important... and as you might guess, I have some concepts on-offer that you'll find nowhere else. Alas, literally  nowhere else. Even though they merely apply only the same tools we used to make an increasingly beneficial society, the last 200 years.

More on that later. Meanwhile... first off, since it's much in the news... want to see what the Apple Vision Pro will turn into within a few years? Watch this video trailer for my novel Existence. predicting where it'll go.

And while we're on prophecies.... This is deeply worrisome... and almost exactly overlaps with my "Probationers" in Sundiver! Back in 1978. Not a joke or a satire.

"Justice Minister Arif Virani has defended a new power in the online harms bill to impose house arrest on someone who is feared to commit a hate crime in the future – even if they have not yet done so already. The person could be made to wear an electronic tag, if the attorney-general requests it, or ordered by a judge to remain at home, the bill says."

But don't worry! The government won't misuse this power! Trust us!


== The Futility of Hiding ==

One purpose for the "Beneficial AGI Conference"  - (and I believe the stream will be up, soon) - was seeking ways to evade the worst and most persistent errors of the past.


Take the classic approach to human civilization - a pyramidal power structure dominated by brutal males, of the kind that ruled 99% of human societies - and many despotisms today. We are all descended from those harems. Onlynow, new tools of techno;logy might empower a return to such pyramidal stupidity, making such abusive power vasty more effective and oppressive than when it was enforced by mere swords.


Such a tech rich extension of despotisd was depicted by George Orwell utilizing total panopticon surveillance for control, of course without any reciprocal sousveillance purview from below. In fact, I doubt George O. ever considered even the possibility. But Orwell's novel would lead to very different outcomes if every member of 'the party' had every moment watched reciprocally by the prols! (The reciprocoal accountability that I prescribed in The Transparent Society.


General transparency might, possibly, prevent the worst aspects of Big Brother. But there are ways that lateral light might also go badly. For example when - as in the PRC - "social credit" system, that is used to let a conformist majority harass and bully dissident minorities or even eccentricity, enforcing homogeneity, as we saw predicted in Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.


This will be exacerbated by AI, if we aren't careful, since such systems will be able to sieve inputs across the entire internet and all camera systems, as portrayed in "Person of Interest."  While that TV series depicted many worrisome aspects, it also pointed toward the one thing that might offer us a soft landing, as there were two competing AI systems that tended to cancel out each others' worst traits.

I have found it very strange that almost none of the conferences and zoom meetings about AI that I've watched or participated in has ever even mentioned that secret sauce. (Though I do, here in WIRED.)


Instead, there are relentless, hand-wringing discussions about disagreements between "policy wonks' and nerdy tech geeks over how to design regulations to limit bad AI outcomes... and never any allowance for the fact that these changes will happen at an accelerating pace, leaving even our most agile regulators behind, mere ape-humans grasping after answers like a tree sloth. 


Or else... what generally happens at many sincere conferences on "AI ethics," we see a relentless chain of hippie-sounding pleadings and "shoulds," without any clue how to do actually enforce preachy 'ethics' on a new ecosystem where all of the attractor states currently draw towards predation..


In Foundation's Triumph I explored the implications of embedded "deep-ethical-programming" regulations - including Isaac Asimov's "three laws of robotics," revealing the inevitable result. Even if you succeed in emplanting truly genetic-level codes of behavior, the result will be that super-uber intelligent systems will simply become... lawyers, and find ways around every limitation. Unless...


...unless they are caught and constrained by other lawyers who are able to keep up. This is exactly the technique that allowed us to limit the power of elites, to end 6000 years of feudalism and launch upon our 240 year Periclean enlightenment experiment... by flattening power structures and forcing elite entities to compete with one another.


It is only the exact method prescribed by Adam Smith, by the US framers and by every generation of reformers since. And it is utterly ignored in every single AI/internet discussion or conference I have ever watched or attended.


If AI are destined to outpace us, then one potential solution is to flatten the playing field and get distinctly different AIs competing with each other, especially tattling on flaws and/or predations or malevolent or even unpleasant behaviors.


It is exactly what we have done for 250 years... and it is the one approach that is never, ever, and I mean ever discussed. Almost as if there is a mental block against admitting or even noticing the obvious.



== Don’t try to hide!”

Your DNA can be pulled from thin air: Reinforcing a point I’ve been pushing since the 1990s, in The Transparent Society and elsewhere, that hiding is not the way to preserve privacy, there are the shrill cries that new generative AI systems may decipher and interpret our personal DNA! Only – as illustrated in the film Gattaca – that DNA is already everywhere. You shed it in flakes of skin wherever you go. There is a better way to prevent your data being used against you. By aggressively ripping the veils away from malefactors who might do that sort of thing! 


And by this point, the only folks reading any longer are likely AIs... So, time to get self-indulgent with a temper tantrum!



== And now... that rant I promised! ==


I sometimes store things for posting and lose the link. But here's a quotation worth answering:

"Alas, we have TWO wars against the Enlightenment raging, one from the reactionary right and the other from the postmodern faux marxist wannabe totalitarian Red Guards on the left."

Bah! One of these lethal threats is real, but not because of MAGA. Those tens of millions of confederate ground troops are -- like numbskulls in all the previous 7 phases of our recurring US Civil War -- merely riled-up mobs, responding to dog whistles and hatred of minorities and nerds.  They are brownshirt tools of the real owners of today's GOP ... a few thousand oligarchs who are now desperately afraid. 

What do theose masters -- here and abroad -- fear most? You can see it in the only priorities pushed by their servants in Congress:

They dread full-funding of the IRS. And a return to effective rooseveltean social contracts, replacing the great Supply Side ripoff-scam. They fear a return to what works, what created the post WWII middle class. What could block feudalism's long planned return.  And let's be clear, when Republicans control a chamber of the US Congress, preserving Supply Side and eviscerating the IRS are their ONLY legislative priorities. All the rest is fervid, potemkin preening.

Who are they? An alliance of petro princes, casino mafiosi, "ex" Kremlin commissars, supposed marxist mandarins, hedge lords, inheritance brats... Trace it... sharing one goal. One common foe. The worldwide caste of skilled, middle class knowledge professionals. 

They are ALL waging all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 


== BOTH sides do it? ==

But the left?  The LEFT is just as bad?  
The what? 
Where in God's name does this shill get this crap about "postmodern faux marxist wannabe totalitarian Red Guards on the left." ???

Yes. Yes, today's FAR left CONTAINS some fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.   

But today’s mad ENTIRE right CONSISTS of fact-allergic, troglodyte-screeching dogmatists who wage war on science and hate the American tradition of steady, pragmatic reform, and who would impose their prescribed morality on you.     

There is all the world’s difference between FAR and ENTIRE.  As there is between CONTAINS and CONSISTS.  One lunatic mob owns and operates an entire US political party, waging open war against minorities, races, genders, even the concept of equal protection under the law. But above all (as I said) pouring hate upon the nerdy fact professionals who stand in their way, blocking their path back to feudal power. 

The other pack of dopes? A few thousand jibbering campus twerps? San Fran zippies? Yowlers who are largely ignored by the one party of pragmatic problem solvers that remains in U.S. political life.

Sure, Foxites howl about 'woke'. But ask any of them... even the worst campus PC bullies (and though shrill, they are deemed jokes, even on campus). Ask them about Marx!  You'll find that the indignant ignoramuses could not paraphrase even the simplest cliché about old Karl. Their ignorance is almost as profound as their utter ineptitude and irrelevance. Except as excuses for tirades on Fox, they are of no relevance at all.

What is relevant is NERDS!  All nerds stand in the way of re-imposed feudalism. The folks who keep civilization going. The ones who know cyber, bio, nuclear, chem and every other dual use power-tech. And that is why Fox each day rails against them, far more often than any race or gender!

Want a pattern? Again, let me reiterate. Ask your MAGAs or right-elite friends to explain that cult's all-out war vs ALL fact using professions, from science and teaching, medicine and law and civil service to the heroes of the FBI/Intel/Military officer corps who won the Cold War and the War on terror. 

Friday, February 23, 2024

Republican rationalizations are unchanged, even in the face of ... facts

Down at the end, I'll offer an excerpt from an essay on my alternate site asking "Does government-funded science play a role in stimulating innovation?" Both the far-left and today's entire-right share in common a cult reflex answer to that question. An answer emblematic of the lobotomization of our time.

But do hang around for that excerpt, at least!

== Another milestone raises a serious question ==

With the passing of the "Greatest Generation" (GG) - parents of the boomers - and now Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter - perhaps it's time to re-evaluate the America... and world... that they made.

Especially the Rooseveltean social contract that transformed the USA into a world titan, science-leader and awash in wealth, while setting us down an inexorable road toward some kinds of equality: first regarding social/working class. But then (admittedly far too-slowly!) race/gender and the rest.

That social contract directly correlated with the highest rates of middle class prosperity increase, fastest startup entrepreneurship and lowest levels of wealth disparity the world had ever seen. But it has been - since the 1980s - carved-away on a range of incantatory excuses and partially demolished by a massive campaign of conservative 'reforms'...  

...economic and social theories that were supposedly aimed at enhancing creative market freedom, but that correlated exactly and always with reduction of innovation and competition, while restoring the one trait that the Greatest Generation despised most... born-class as the primary decider of a child's destiny. 

This campaign was justified by guys like Milton Friedman and Robert Bork, and think tanks such as Heritage and AEI, that continue pushing utterly-disproved notions like "Supply Side (voodoo) Economics" - that never had one successfully predicted positive outcome.  

(In science, a theory is abandoned in the face of relentless predictive failure, but cults don't do that.)

In the 90s, those pro-oligarchy economists were augmented by "neocon" imperialists who urged both Bushes and Dick Cheney etc. to plunge us into blatant traps that had been laid for us by Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Those Middle Eastern wars were supposedly in revenge for 9/11 attacks that (always remember) happened on their watch. The neocons openly brayed their ill-disguised glee at transforming an 80% benign American Pax into a thumping, gallumphing empire.


(My hero - George Marshall - held meetings in 1945 revolving around a question that no leader had ever asked, before: "We are about to become an empire. What mistakes did all other empires make and how can we make something that succeeds? That won't make us hated and eventually destroyed?" (paraphrased))

Look at the blared yowls of Wolfowitz, Nitze, Adelman and the other neocons, in those days, and tell us you see any signs of wisdom, or awareness of the traps they were falling for.  Alas for them, their orgiastic era was brief. America soon soured on imperial preenings that distilled down to $trillion dollar ripoffs. At which point those poor neocons were promptly flushed away by the Republican establishment - without even a word of thanks - as oligarchy decided to veer republicanism away from armed adventures, over to populist/isolationist/lobotomizing/nerd-hating classic confederatism... now called Trumpism or MAGA.

But don't be distracted... all along, those apparent gyrations were superficialities. The central goal has always been the same. To defend and expand "supply side" tax grifts for aristocracy while crippling the Internal Revenue Service, so that a myriad cheats and thefts should remain hidden. 

Scan from 1981 to present. That sole priority was the only consistent policy position of the GOP and the only one always enacted, whenever they got power. 

(Other than that, and recently the abortion mania, can you name any actual legislative activity by GOP Congresses, the laziest in US history?)

No other 'priority' (e.g. the border) got more than lip service. That is, until the virulently riled MAGAs ('Do you still think you can control them?' Watch Cabaret!) demanded real action on abortion and other social incitements.

A lot of dems/libs went along with Supply Side (SS) in the 80s and even 90s, until, by it's 4th round, the effects grew clear: that not a single positive outcome prediction - not one - ever came true. 

Industrial investment? Nada, zip. As Adam Smith predicted, the vast waves of grifted lucre were poured by the rich into passive, parasitical 'rentier investments like real estate and bonds and tax havens. (A third of US housing stock was snapped-up by inheritance brats in cash purchases, immune to interest rates. It's why young couples can't buy homes.)

As for investment in manufacturing? Recipients of Supply Side largess did almost none. America's current, booming re-industrialization only began with the 2021-2 Pelosi bills.


== Why does no one point this out? ==

Well, Robert Reich does. Like the pure fact that federal deficits always worsen across GOP rule and after SS tax grifts (duh?)

Any non-hypocrite, competition-friendly conservative would realize by now that ONLY 
democrats enact pro-competition and pro-liberty measures. (Have your attorney contact me when you have escrowed $$$ wager stakes over that assertion; but first look at things like the ICC, CAB, AT&T and the damned War on Drugs - and now on reproductive rights.)

Here, in this New York Times article - Google on Trial - a corner of this program is appraised -- whether anti-trust laws can and should be used to break up super-corporations like Google who have inherent advantages. And yeah, that's a major issue. Cory Doctorow rails about it, entertainingly.

Left out are more imaginative solutions. Like whether it's time to help mom & pop America and get needed revenue by instituting a 5% National Sales Tax on interstate internet purchases. Since you-know-who (a South American river) is no longer a baby - but now a market dominating behemoth. In fact, since we all rely on that central market, without much other choice, isn't that the very definition of a public utility? (Ponder that. Treat that unavoidable e-marketplace like electricity and water and trash pickup. If there's no competition, then regulate it to be flat-fair-for-all?)

But the core issue that I keep returning to is one of tactics - at which Democrats (the Union Side in this 8th phase of the 250 year U.S. Civil War) have proved utterly inept! 

It's the reason why I wrote Polemical Judo. A few better tactics and we could peel away just one million residually sane Republicans, leaving the Confederacy in a state of utter, demographic collapse. 

(Of course then the oligarchs will resort to more violent versions of incitement; but we have skilled defenders working on that, right now, e.g. in the much maligned heroes of the FBI.)


And this...


In this conversation, Evan Anderson, CEO of INVNT/IP, an expert on global manufacturing and supply chains, takes us on a deep dive into the power dynamics between the United States, China, and Taiwan.



== Merits and drawbacks of government-funded science ==


And finally, as promised, here's that excerpt from an essay on my more formal, WordPress site asking "Does government-funded science play a role in stimulating innovation?"

There's a deep-cult that underlies many of our familiar political cults. What do the far left and today's entire right share in common? A desperate urge to AMPUTATE our options and methods down to only the few that they prescribe. And hence I posted (on my formal WordPress site) a dissection of this shared, sanctimoniously-oversimplifying, mania.

Excerpt: "For a century and a half, followers of Karl Marx demanded that we amputate society’s right arm of market-competitive enterprise and rely only on socialist guided-allocation for economic control. Meanwhile, Ayn Rand’s ilk led a throng of those proclaiming we must lop off our left arm – forswearing any coordinated projects that look beyond the typical five year (nowadays more like one-year) commercial investment horizon.
"Any sensible person would respond: “Hey I need both arms, so bugger off! Now let’s keep examining what each arm is good at, revising our knowledge of what each shouldn’t do.”
"Does that sound too practical and moderate for this era? Our parents thought they had dealt with all this, proving decisively that calm negotiation, compromise and pragmatic mixed-solutions work best. They would be stunned to see that fanatical would-be amputators are back in force, ranting nonsense."

If you are interested in this... and especially whether government-funded science has played a big role in "Making America (and civilization) Great," then drop on by.


Sunday, February 18, 2024

Sci Fi News & roundup!

First a few items about my own works. In about a month, two of my books - Earth and Glory Season - will be re-released by Open Road Media - with gorgeous new covers, in both trade paperback and ebook versions.  Pre-order now?


Here, Mark Rayner's lovely review of my novel Earth is very flattering. 

For any of you completists out there: my first novel – Sundiver - is the only one that never had a hardcover. Now one is coming… and what an edition!  Alex Berman's Phantasia Press will release “Numbered editions which will feature a full color wrap around dustjacket, frontispiece, and interior art by Jim Burns


Each copy will be printed in two colors throughout, on high quality acid free Smythe sewn paper with full color endsheets.” Phantasia previously released signed limited editions of the second and third books in the series (Startide Rising in 1983 and The Uplift War in 1987).  Expected release date early 2024.

This edition includes my 2020 foreword and a terrific Robert J. Sawyer introduction specifically for this release.


Do you know YA? I am looking for a new publisher for my series of short novels for teens, featuring some of today's brightest new authors, in a consistent future setting for adventures through interstellar space and time!  The "Out of Time" (or "Yanked!") series: Only teens can teleport through time and space! Dollops of fun, adventure and something so rare, nowadays... optimism for young adults. If you think of a publisher who might be compatible, speak up in comments!


Finally, are you a fan of live theater? We were in Pasadena at our alma mater - Caltech - to attend a one-night production of my play, "The Escape: A Confrontation in Four Scenes," presented by the Caltech Playreaders. The directing/acting/performances were beyond my best hopes! You can watch the production on Youtube.



== Sci Fi Roundup! ==


Almost the entire catalogue of sci fi legend Norman Spinrad is available (cheap) online. If you don’t read it… coming generations of AI surely will!


Thomas Easton and Frank Wu have a future-tech spy series going. ESPionage: Regime Change: A Psychic CIA novelWhen the Russians start an undeclared war to bring down the West with assassinations and disinformation attacks, the CIA reactivates a psychic agent from its old Project Stargate to fight off the attacks.  See Paul DiFilippo’s rave review!

Eliot Peper's latest novel Foundry is a near-future thriller featuring (among many things) two spies locked in a room with a gun, leveraging the secrets of semiconductor manufacturing to play the greatest of games, the only game that really matters: power.

 

Just finished reading a YA novel by Gideon Marcus… Kitra. A lovely, lively adventure tale of five teens – one of them a blobby alien – getting into and out of trouble when they buy a used spaceship. Fast paced and Gideon has got the skills. Hook your own teen on the series!


Amid headlines covering the demise of JFK on November 22, 1963, I long knew that an obit on the back pages told of the same-day passing of Aldous Huxley, supposedly during an acid trip (I hear) in the arms of a lady guru. (I’d rather blithely believe that hearsay than look it up.) What I never realized was that C.S. Lewis ALSo died the same day!  This book - Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog beyond death with John F. Kennedy, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley - imagines JFK, CSL and Aldous meeting in the Bardo just after death. One of them on a lingering acid trip, one shouting "Wait, I was so young and powerful!" and Lewis shocked to find himself in a buddhist waiting room.


Calling nerdy SF + NASA junkies...

As I retire from 12 years on the advisory council of NASA’s Innovative & Advanced Concepts program – (NIAC) – some high NASA officials have asked if any great science fiction was ever inspired by NIAC studies. In addition to my own, I know of as few more. Especially, Doug Van Belle’s A World Adrift - set in the skies of Venus, some 800 years after they were first colonized - incorporates elements from several NIAC studies, including Stoica (2015), Bugga (2016), and Balcerski (2018), with work by space scientist and Nebula winner Geoff Landis (2019) figuring prominently as an essential element of the plot.


==SF & Hollywood ==


Writing this on Star Trek Day!  Count me in with this wave of love for Trek! I do adore it for some unusual reasons, though. Example, the ship in Trek is a vast naval vessel charged with diplomacy, science, exploration and only occasionally fighting... and the captain is no super-force demigod (the core conceit of Star Wars) but merely a way-above-average person, who needs help every time, from above average crewmates. And the Federation is aboard, a topic almost every episode. It's faults and blessings and rules and codes and dreams and possibilities. (See my essay, To Boldly Go.)

(Shoot!  Shoot the Federations starship!" screeched that nasty oven mitt, Yoda, in one of the prequels. Seriously, Lucas? Are you at all the same person who created the wonderfull YIJC?)

In contrast, the ship in Star Wars is a WWI fighter plane (banking against nonexistent air) with the silkscarf lone hero-pilot and his gunner-droid... the knight and squire going back to Achilles & Patroclus. Wars is all about demigods, demigods. Demigods all the way down. Normal folk can only choose which set of feuding gods to die for. And the poor, hapless Galactic Republic has no place on such a ship. Hence it is never really a topic. The Starwarsian Galactic Republic does nothing. Ever. At all. Name an exception. The lesson is the same as in all works by Orson Scott Card: "Hold out no hope for a decent civilization. Throw yourself at the feet of a demigod and pray he'll be a nice one, like Ender!"

All of this and more is in Vivid Tomorrows: Science Fiction and Hollywood


Oh. Also. In this podcast, a brilliant Stanford biologist cites his influences, including science fiction authors. (Especially about 9 minutes in.)


And here's an bit for those who saw and loved (I did, with minor quibbles) the recent Oppenheimer film: a CBS 1965 interview with Oppenheimer. Twenty years after Trinity. Twenty years before Gorbachev.


== Science meets art! ==


If you are interested (as I am) in the intersections of science and art, then this might be a good listen for 20 minutes during your commute: an interview with half a dozen artists and musicians who collaborate closely with scientists. Fun and inspiring! There are also links to other discussions about the societal impact of science fiction. 

 

Of course, having spent my entire post-puberty life in both realms, I have my own take on science overlaps – and conflicts – with art. Or more generally, the tense but often productive interplay between pragmatic-enlightenment methods, on the one hand, and the deeper-rooted human drive for romanticism. 


As I describe in another program – and in Vivid Tomorrows – we would live far poorer, even soulless lives, without the mighty talent of creative imagination. Though we have – at long last – also come to realize how dangerous – even devastatingly deadly – imagination can become, when it seizes control of politics and policy. A failure mode that made the last 6000 years a living hell for 99.99% of our ancestors, until the last few generations began emerging from that world of delusion and ghosts and ‘magic.’


I do what most of those interviewed do - craft art that can collaborate with... or challenge... or project possible outcomes of... a scientific civilization that's dedicated to the kind of progress that only comes from lively, good-natured rivalry among the widest diversity of free minds.  In other words, the diametric opposite to those 6000 dark years.


Obeying unsapient reflexes, many members of a world oligarchy think they can make things much bettwer if they restore those 6000 years of brutal feudalism. Ingrate traitors to the one, unique civilization that gave them everything.


And finally....


North Korean science fiction? In The strange, secretive world of North Korean science fiction, A. Fiscutean reports that “Late dictator Kim Jong-il referenced science fiction books in his speeches and set guidelines for authors, encouraging them to write about optimistic futures for their country.” Of course, the father of the current dictator also had a fetish for moviemaking and (apparently) even arranged for some film creators to be kidnapped and brought to Pyongyang.  Further, “Stories often touch on topics like space travel, benevolent robots, disease-curing nanobots, and deep-sea exploration. They lack aliens and beings with superpowers. Instead, the real superheroes are the exceptional North Korean scientists and technologists who carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.”


Phew, no wonder Donald Trump 'fell in love' with Kim the younger! We must be under an alien Stoopidizer ray, that such 'leaders' are even possible.


Oh, an addendum... on travel to Panama!


Come on by comments if you have suggestions for our trip (to the Beneficial AGI Summit)...