InstaPunk Returns

Exhibit 1. The Myth of Scientific Omniscience Where to start. There are so many places to start, all with consistently alarming intimations of one deep problem. The inference is seditious of rationality as we have deified it in science. I’m going to show you some of the more accessibly evocative starting points, not to drag you into the weeds of higher mathematics, but to stress some elements of simplicity that overthrow the fallacy called Artificial Intelligence. Bear with me. Just look for now. I’ll make connections as we proceed after viewing the items below. Exhibit 2. Turing Test Fallacy Exhibit 3. The Proof of Digital Inferiority (It works. Click where indicated on screen.) Exhibit 4. The Implementation Overreach Exhibit 5. The Implicatuons of “Sensitive Dependence” Exhibit 6. The Measurement Problem Exhibit 7. The Illusion of Control Exhibit 8. The Hammer/Nail Delusion Exhibit 9. The Impossibility of Artificial Intelligence Exhibit 10. The Oversimplification Problem Exhibit 11. ...

  Our own Queen Iris Stairway to Heaven A Whiter Shade of Pale (Procol Harum) You Don’t Own Me (Leslie Gore) All I Knead (The Hollies) Take on Me (Aha!) Grand Prize Winner: Bohemian Catsody Got your mind right, yet? Good. Happy Hump Day .

  This was going to be a Facebook joke, playing on the contrast between the haughty New Yorker grand dame and the plainspoken Trump 2.0 disdain for reflexive mass media TDS. When I looked Jane Mayer up in Wikipedia I discovered the need to write this post. The woman is an archetype of the particular kind of box highly influential lefties in the nation’s press come from. They are by no means representative of the nation they purport to understand and cover objectively in their reporting and opinionating. Back in April of this year, I wrote a post called “ TDS is a coalition not a monolith .” It described criteria that define various ways in which Trump haters are limited in their knowledge of American life despite  levels of education, power, and prosperity that might seem guaranteed to give them broad insight into their countrymen as a whole. Limiting factors include the isolating effects of being among the overpaid and over-indulged, the vertical siloing effects of geography...

  Yeah. He’s old. What of it? He can do it. But does he have to? …if Trump was thinking about resigning at some point. This could all be projection on my part. Probably is. But I’m old enough to have experienced the gradual loss of patience that comes with a life full of intense contending in a lot of different arenas. You get tired of seeing the same patterns of weakness and distraction even in people you have good reason to trust. He’s getting more irascible. I know what that’s all about. The usual army of enemies want to read this as a sign of burgeoning dementia. That’s not what it is. It’s rather the beginning of the question, “How much more of this shit is worth taking day after day? When have I done enough? When might it be appropriate to trust other younger ones to carry on, to come along from the ranks, to learn and practice the key lessons I have shown them?” Old age is about standing back to some extent. To see things from outside the fray, patterns indicating subtler ...