[FRIAM] water, again (was murder offsets)

Wed Apr 21 12:10:18 EDT 2021

I went back to reading Ted Chiang at this point:

> And that is an example, I think, of this general idea that the intentions
> or the spiritual nature of the practitioner was an essential element in
> chemical reactions, that you needed to be pure of heart or you needed to
> concentrate really hard in order for the reaction to work. And it turns out
> that is not true. Chemical reactions work completely independently of what
> the practitioner wants or feels or whether they are virtuous or malign.

> Immediately after reading this breaking alert from The Washington Post:

> Baltimore plant with contaminated Johnson & Johnson vaccines had multiple
> failures, unsanitary conditions, FDA report says
> <https://s2.washingtonpost.com/31f97bf/608035ece6e81b42e4fd8e45/5972cf2a9bbc0f1cdceb5a63/3/13/608035ece6e81b42e4fd8e45>
>
> Vaccine production at the Emergent BioSolutions plant was shut down
> earlier this week after 15 million doses of raw Johnson & Johnson
> coronavirus vaccine were contaminated by ingredients from AstraZeneca’s
> vaccine.
>

The chemistry only works if the chemists expend the necessary effort to
making it so.  When they fail, they generally poison people, destroy the
factory, and, in this case, I think they're taking the company down with
them.

Chiang's point is entirely theoretical, in practice purity of intention is
absolutely essential.

-- rec --

-- rec --

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 11:16 AM Roger Critchlow <rec at elf.org> wrote:

> There was a book review in Science last week, sort of the book that Google
> wasn't going to let Timnit Gebru write on their nickel.
>
> AI empires
>
>    1. [reviewed by] Michael Spezio
>
> Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial
> Intelligence *Kate Crawford* Yale University Press, 2021. 336 pp.
>
> Kate Crawford's new book, *Atlas of AI*, is a sweeping view of artificial
> intelligence (AI) that frames the technology as a collection of empires,
> decisions, and actions that together are fast eliminating possibilities of
> sustainable futures on a global scale. Crawford, a senior principal
> researcher at Microsoft's FATE (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and
> Ethics in AI) group, conceives of AI as a one-word encapsulation of
> imperial design, akin to Calder Willingham's invocation of the word
> “plastics” in his 1967 screenplay for *The Graduate* (*1*
> <https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6539/246#ref-1>). AI, machine
> learning, and other concepts are here understood as efforts, practices, and
> embodied material manipulations of the levers of global power.
>
>
> -- rec --
>
> On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 9:40 AM uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Well, Chiang was, I think, arguing that there's a reductionism lurking in
>> the asymmetric *use* of technology. Exploitation of resources by
>> capitalists is just one form it can take. Reducing progressive ephemerides
>> to the influence of superheroes or conspiracy theories is another one.
>> Roko's Basilisk is yet another one.
>>
>> To gloss all that into an equivalence class of arbitrarily swappable
>> buzzwords or over-specific irony about the misunderstanding of socialism is
>> a mistake. Eschatological thinking might not rise to being a first order
>> trait ... a crisp category of people. But it's a persistent and prominent
>> pattern.
>>
>> I really enjoy optimistic narratives like Pieter's. But I can also
>> appreciate tragic narratives like Merle's. Eric's (and Chiang's) broach of
>> the emergence of detailed and echatologically ambiguous story-telling out
>> of the simpler types hits the right vein of ore. We're seeing more of these
>> ambiguous stories lately ... in spite of the render-farm nonsense Jon
>> laments.
>>
>> On 4/20/21 12:54 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
>> > Yeah.  I’m not sure what they’re afraid of, or even that they could
>> articulate it.  (And I guess I mean this as a royal “they”.  Not some
>> others, but a Weltanschauung that we can see rising, in which we are
>> immersed)   You are certainly right that the words are just buzzwords,
>> exchangeable at the drop of a hat.
>> >
>> > There is an expression “a full world” that I took up from its use by
>> Herman Daly in papers like “Economics in a full world”, which argues that
>> the problems that need solving are different when everything is occupied,
>> than they were when everything was (for people) a frontier with no
>> effective pushback against their expansion into it.  People’s anxiety and
>> bad behavior is somehow reflective of an awareness that the world is full,
>> and there might not be any room in it for them.
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Apr 21, 2021, at 12:23 AM, Marcus Daniels <marcus at snoutfarm.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> The hypothesis that the latent fear is of capitalism is amusing since
>> the anti-vaxxers who are afraid of Bill Gates doing whatever he is intent
>> on doing to them (what is it?) seem to be the same ones so terrified of
>> socialism.
>> >>
>> >> Btw, someone finally approved by Clubhouse subscription, and so I
>> turned it on.   Let's just say the "compelling app" is not full of
>> compelling people.   It is one thing to know that these anti-vaxxer people
>> exist, it is another thing to realize they have a place to talk, and do so.
>> >>
>> >> -----Original Message-----
>> >> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of David Eric Smith
>> >> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021 10:23 PM
>> >> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <
>> friam at redfish.com>
>> >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] water, again (was murder offsets)
>> >>
>> >> This was a nice read, Glen, thank you.
>> >>
>> >>> On Apr 20, 2021, at 12:11 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> I should have linked this:
>> >>>
>> >>>
>> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/30/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-ted-chi
>> >>> ang-transcript.html
>> >>>
>> >>
>> >> Several of Chiang’s observations have a ring of insight to me.
>> >>
>> >> On just one, for the accident that it overlaps with another factoid.
>> His comment that superheroes:
>> >> 1. Are magic == special
>> >> 2. Preserve the status quo
>> >>
>> >> I think it was in Jane Smiley’s introduction to the volume of the
>> Icelandic Sagas that she edited and compiled, that she says the Sagas are
>> considered a premonition of the modern novel far ahead of its normal place
>> in literature (the Quixote is I think usually credited as the first)
>> because (for the Sagas), they realized that the old heroic tales of gods
>> and trolls (e.g. the Eddas), didn’t have the depth to remain interesting
>> under the retelling.  The Sagas brought the focus “down” to the real
>> troubles and accommodations and inventions of real people, which were
>> richer, more complex, and more satisfying over time than the old tropes.  I
>> have come back to her comment many times, in thinking about what is the
>> cultural role, whether of Eddas, epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata in
>> India, Gilgamesh, etc.  I think for all of these, Chiang’s characterization
>> works in both its dimensions, though perhaps in different degrees for
>> different cases.
>> >>
>> >> So the political right in the US turn to an encompassing paranoia +/=
>> cynicism and Qanon, and the movie industry (whoever that serves) is
>> dominated by Marvel Comics franchises.  Having had the modern novel, we are
>> throwing it away for not even epics, but dumb cartoons of epics, but
>> keeping the magic and preservation of the status quo.  After all, the real
>> heroics have supernatural up-enders as well as restorers (Loki or Enkidu),
>> and in the more advanced versions (the Eddas) the trickster is not
>> dominated or overcome, but a persistent force.  (c.f. also the Kosare in
>> Tewa and Keres, and the mudheads in Hopi, in NM).
>> >>
>> >> There was another observation of a similar kind I recall, from perhaps
>> two sources.
>> >>
>> >> Some historian came through SFI (for weeks or so), and gave a talk
>> commenting on the iconography of scientists following the second world
>> war.  The public wanted old-age Darwin, tired, patriarchal, apparently
>> gentle (one never saw the picture of the young man starting out to find his
>> way in the world, and the imperious, contemptuous Newton image was long
>> gone), and old-age Einstein, again the tired benevolent grandfather.  From
>> some other source, years earlier (I think coming from agriculture), there
>> was the comment that sterility in the US came in the 1950s from the
>> front-and-center nuclear terror.  Television was Ward Cleaver and Andy
>> Griffith.  In the Cleaver home Ward wore a tie sitting in the living room
>> chair in the evening.  In Mayberry there was nobody non-white to consider
>> the circumstances of, and nothing seriously bad ever happened.  That was
>> also when food in the grocery all went under plastic, and the ability to
>> smell food walking into a store disappeared.
>> >>
>> >> So I guess we already know people admit they are scared, because that
>> is commented on everywhere, but the reworking of their lives betrays a much
>> more inclusive fear even than what they state.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> I did wonder, too, in reading the Klein transcript, whether Chiang’s
>> brief characterization of the alchemists would be more congenial to DaveW’s
>> use of the word, since he always makes it a point to reject the common
>> reference as a misunderstanding.
>> >>
>> >> Eric
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> "It’s capitalism that wants to reduce costs and reduce costs by
>> laying people off. It’s not that like all technology suddenly becomes
>> benign in this world. But it’s like, in a world where we have really strong
>> social safety nets, then you could maybe actually evaluate sort of the pros
>> and cons of technology as a technology, as opposed to seeing it through how
>> capitalism is going to use it against us. How are giant corporations going
>> to use this to increase their profits at our expense?"
>> >>>
>> >>> On 4/19/21 8:01 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
>> >>>> Ha! Sure. ... it still looks like SteveS called it with the Red
>> Queen's Race. Even if such tech solves more problems than it creates, it'll
>> still be distributed according to the power structures in place (e.g. rich
>> people) when the tech's ready to scale.
>> >>>>
>> >>>> On 4/19/21 7:54 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote:
>> >>>>> Again technology to the rescue...   Nanotechnology for
>> desalinization.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> -----Original Message-----
>> >>>>> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ???
>> >>>>> Sent: Monday, April 19, 2021 7:45 AM
>> >>>>> To: friam at redfish.com
>> >>>>> Subject: [FRIAM] water, again (was murder offsets)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> Copper? Natural gas? Pffft! Water's the interesting one.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2ftheconversation
>> .
>> >>>>> com%2finterstate-water-wars-are-heating-up-along-with-the-climate-15
>> >>>>> 9092&c=E,1,Ewpqbk1K7YvvWaN9Wq82biEau11JE47_9tv9w77esjTa5t6HYRzAKlQ2w
>> >>>>> -qi_xGNkEoqhkVKJuvI9hoKZ1q58ZXHgk_APFIJbNOqB5FmfTBe3-Djst8,&typo=1
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> And another one:
>> >>>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theolympian
>> .
>> >>>>> com%2fnews%2fbusiness%2farticle250595449.html&c=E,1,NvMnnmssGuhqpYLB
>> >>>>> wvA3sYGLQlpI4LtssXofxpMUZv79UtcRK8Tqe9uBjxn8-AxuqoH2Ah-11_RcM_IlTW-T
>> >>>>> GgAXXpjbp6RfGPzrix6us3-O6w6BrA,,&typo=1
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> On 4/15/21 7:59 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:
>> >>>>>> Another good example is water rights across states given
>> >>>>>> watersheds, flood irrigation, etc.
>> >>>>>> <
>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fwww.theguardia
>> >>>>>> n.com
>> %2fus-news%2f2021%2fapr%2f05%2farizona-water-one-per&c=E,1,CH_
>> >>>>>> fKbSUirJq0d8JFH7BJbRnp3VoLW_l2ZsofeB8tXplQqNrJKiPCkdY2T3Ze0zf1SFcRC
>> >>>>>> sXjtq_OHxVwg0cuwInTDLJULErLjTj6DMWH-ln0w,,&typo=1
>> >>>>>> centers>
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> So, the question you're asking (how might "storage" in BTC be less
>> preferable to other assets?) isn't really answerable *without* first
>> discussing what that reservoir is *for*, what end does it serve?
>> >>>>
>> >>>
>> >>> --
>> >>> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>> >>>
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>> --
>> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>>
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>
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