I’ve seen several respected luminaries argue that LLM is not “true AI” or “Strong AI” since it’s based on large learning sets and predictive behavior. They argue that humans and animals are not taught on such large language models or data sets.
What are education and experience, if not Large Learning Models based on the teaching of schools, universities, and books?
It’s been argued by multiple sociologists and psychologists that Language defines Learning. If your language does not define a word, concept, color, skill, or experience, you have no way to understand or communicate it. This is the very basis of movies like “Arrival” (Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life) and novellas like Ted Chiang’s Lifecycle of Software Objects.
Likewise, it is our physical experiences that teach and reinforce our learning. Touching a hot stove teaches us or reinforces us not to touch a hot object again.
Bodies and physical interaction will drastically accelerate AI, much as the original textual GPT and LLM did.
TIM KELLOG
Really? definitions always come after understanding. You absolutely have to understand a word before you can define it. Like “yeet”, there’s no way on earth someone sat down and made a definition for it before using it. It seems like language is more of a linguistic representation of experience (which, imo, is kinda what LLMs are doing too, in a way). Also, not sure what any of that has to do with “true” or “strong” AI
“You’re going to have to yeet me!”
KEN FOREMAN
How would you communicate “yeet”?
To a non-English speaker, how would you communicate “yeet” without shared language and concepts?
Without a framework of language, you can have all the experiences you want and completely unable to share them with others.
Newton was the first to “understand” and define the law of universal gravitation, but F = G(m1m2)/R2 doesn’t need to be understood to be shared and communicated.
FERALROBOTS
what they are if not that is much, much more than that.
“I am a stochastic parrot and so are you” [to quote Sam Altman] is a RADICALLY insufficient way of understanding not just human intellect, but also the intellect of any animal we routinely interact with, too.
KEN FOREMAN
How would you communicate “yeet”?
To a non-English speaker, how would you communicate “yeet” without shared language and concepts?
TIM KELLOG
with motions
KEN FOREMAN
Also a good answer, but an equal justification for why we should give AI/ML a physical body for physical expression, interaction, and communication?
TIM KELLOG
tbh i’ve never thought about it, but my intuition says yes. if language is all that’s needed, then you could teach a child to ride a bike just by telling them how. but that’s not how it works — a lot of our knowledge isn’t represented in language.
How do you communicate and learn to ride a Bike?
KEN FOREMAN
If human muscles or locomotion had an instruction set, then it might be possible. However, we can’t communicate while riding a bike because we have no language for locomotion control.
Mathematics works as a shared language but also as an instruction set.
The same might also be true of LLMs as applied to physical motion and interaction?Not sure we’ll know until we try.
Industrial Robots are have learned motions and instruction sets to communicate motion control.
TIM KELLOG
oh! there was a paper a couple weeks ago that i forgot to save that talked about how LLMs, when asked to translate french to chinese, will first translate to “english”. not actually English, but a “instruction set” heavily based on english. so, LLMs actually do derive an “instruction set” before learning more complex concepts, and it’s something you can observe
When I was younger, I used to think personalities and philosophies were immutable. That when I learned or stumbled upon the answer, that I would find happiness and that it was “one true philosophy” to provide meaning to my life.
The older I get, I think our personalities and philosophies are answers to our situations as much as they are causes.
It’s a yin-and-yang, an ebb and flow between how we behave that causes our social changes and how we are treated that cause our personality changes.
When I learned HyperText and later HyperText Markup Language (HTML), it was like learning math (the language of the universe). I thought HyperText was the answer to social communications and shared knowledge. I thought that the World Wide Web (WWW) would unite us in ways unimaginable to our forebears and usher in a new era of knowledge and enlightenment.
And maybe that is true. It accelerated our shared knowledge, access to information, and the creation of Large Language Models (LLM) that form the basis of our current Generational Artificial Intelligence.
It also accelerated our ignorance, our radicalization to adopt and accept completely inane ideas espoused by others. It gave geniuses and village idiots alike a megaphone with which to shout their ideas.
So, my current desire to withdraw from the news, from social media, and from the clamor of angry and divisive people who insist that political violence is the answer if they don’t like the outcomes is my “ebb response” to the “social flow” of their behavior.
Sufis in Conclaves and Hermits on Mountains might not be universal answer to the human condition, but they are a sane response to irrational or excitable human behavior.
I’ve always been spiritual, and arguably, faithful.
Raised as Hungarian Reformed Protestant, Lutheran (ELCA), and later converted to Catholicism, I’ve been exposed to Christianity throughout my life.
I have never been Evangelical or Charismatic. I’d make for an extremely poor and unenthusiastic Missionary.
Over the decades, I’ve attended Jewish services in Synagogues, Sunday Services with Devout Pentecostals, Sundays with the Southern Baptist Conference, drum circles with modern pagans, and weekends with “Charismatic Catholics”.
While I appreciate the devotion of others, I honestly believe that it is our actions that define us as a Christians. Try as I might, I have severe difficulty understanding when some call themselves “Christian” and yet hate half our nation because they’re Democrat, or they’re Republican, or they’re immigrants, or they’re homeless, or they’re… whatever… “they’re not you.”
I paid attention during Matthew 25:34-37 where Jesus spoke about the poor, the homeless, the imprisoned, the sick. I must wonder if many of my fellow Christians conveniently forgot that part. For all our Nativity scenes, we forget that Christ himself was a refugee, an immigrant, and without a home at his birth.
My faith keeps me and sustains me through my life. I lost family and friends. I served in the military. I had a decent career between corporations and government contracting. I survived cancer, chemo, radiation, and being immunocompromised. I don’t shout it from the rooftops, but I quietly carry it in my heart as I hope to serve others by word and deed rather than charismatic and performative evangelism.
And so it goes. As I wait for the latest word and chapter in my life, I have faith. It sustains me. It is a quiet candle burning in my heart and shared together with my family.
I was 8 years old in 1980. My grandfather was Benjamin Balogh, Jr. I lovingly called him “Pop-Pop.”
When I was younger, I used to sit on his lap and access the MITS Altair 8800 from his kitchen. The MITS Altair 8800 was in his basement, and he ran twisted pair up from the basement and into the kitchen corner. He put a LSI ADM-3A terminal on his kitchen counter. It was a beautiful and masterful work of engineering. The cabling was clean and routed through the wall with the terminal block for the twisted pair mounted into the woodwork of the kitchen counter.
The LSI ADM-3A terminal connected to power and communications cleanly. You’d enter the kitchen and think that the computer was part of the kitchen and wasn’t some untidy mess or an afterthought.
Of course, it took me years to realize this. Decades before Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) and the modern ethernet we take for granted, my grandfather had cleanly and elegantly networked his house. In 2023, while some home builders do offer built-in ethernet ports running through the same conduits as your power and phone, it still isn’t common. Most people settle for either ethernet cables strewn about their house from their fiber ONT or cable modem to their routers to the computers, or one fewer strand of cable and Wi-Fi. I can’t even say I put this same amount of thought or effort into networking my own house. But my grandfather did.
In 1980, I was 8 years old. By Christmas of 1980, he upgraded from the MITS Altair 8800 with LSI ADM-3A terminal to a beautiful TRS-80 Model III under the Christmas tree. Again, he networked his house, but this time he ran the network to a corner of the living room behind the fireplace and sitting area. The sitting area was still the focal point of the living room. Conversations, rest, and time together with family still came first. But there was a computer tucked away on a small desk with a TRS-80 Model III, a phone, and an acoustic coupling modem to rest the phone receiver on the modem!
In December of 1980, using dialup on CompuServe cost $10 an hour. While playing tic-tac-toe and a textual grid-based version of Star Trek was so much fun on the TRS-80, it was talking to others on CompuServe that really interested me. There was a world of others to talk to, also on their computers, whom you could talk with, leave messages for, or play games with! It was magical!
Irene, Ken, Jim, and Mike (Foreman Family)
I don’t know about about your childhood. I guess mine was “average” for the son of two working parents in the 1980s. My mom had remarried. I had two younger stepbrothers from her second marriage. Since I was already six years old when she remarried, there was an age difference between my brothers and I. Not only an age difference, but a “parent difference”, since my stepfather felt my brothers were his, but I was the kid from the previous marriage.
I guess he loved me? Honestly, to this day, I cannot honestly tell. I think he did. Since I was a “weird kid”, he sometimes rudely or unpleasantly asked me “are you on drugs or something?” because I was quiet and taciturn. It’s not because I was being rude, but because by that age I already had something of an idea that I was alone and different from others. My mom had remarried, I never really felt like I was his son in the same way as my grandfather treated me. Parents, when they love their children, actually bond with them and dote on them.
Thomas Foreman never really bonded with me.
You might argue he did dote. At times. I still thank Dad to this day for helping me out when my first relationship flared out terribly and I needed his help escaping what was becoming a terrible and an abusive relationship. Tom understood me while my Mom questioned my loyalty and ethics. I understood both their perspectives. I also understood my ex- and my betrayal of her in leaving our relationship. From each of our perspectives, we are never wrong, and it is other people who are the issue. It’s always others who are mistaken or need correction. I’ll be honest, I was wrong. So was my ex-. I loved her, but we were wrong for each other.
So long story short, I learned to be alone.
I sought solace, comradery, and relationships from the other side of the computer screen. Behind the glow of a cathode ray tube lay a world of other people with similar interests as me who wanted to talk with me! We could talk about Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, the best cartoons to watch on a Saturday morning, whether Transformers have sex and what copulation between two robots would look like, and where do baby Transformers come from?
Oh! Remember earlier how I told you that my Dad would ask me “are you on drugs or something?”
In a supreme bit of universal irony, it was not me he had to worry about, but his own children whom he sired and raised that he needed to worry about. My worst vice was for financial idiocy which would come to haunt me several times over my lifetime, but my two younger stepbrothers did learn about the wonders of alcohol, marijuana, and heroin before they graduated high school.
In the giant scope of things, it’s often that which we accuse others of that we are most guilty ourselves? Tom was a lifelong alcoholic who raised three boys, all of whom had troubles themselves. It’s true; the vicious cycle repeats, the sins of the father do become the sins of the son. All three of his children would struggle with financial lessons while his wife (my mother) would ravage and deplete her finances by doting on her two youngest sons.
33 Years Ago — 1990
So, by the time I graduated high school, completed two years of college, and joined the United States Air Force, I learned that there was a magical world online that understood me even if my own family did not. I turned to that world for comfort and solace, to seek understanding and to be understood. Using Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes) and Internet Relay Chat (IRC), I met many wonderful friends over the years. The years became a decade, and some of them I still stay in touch with and we’re still friends today.
23 years Ago — 2000
By the year 2000, the world got turned on its head. With the attack on the twin towers, the nationalism and flag-waving that ensued, and rapidly advancing technology in smartphones and social media, the next ten years radically changed how American society works and interacts. I was no longer the lone wolf for spending vast amounts of time online, I was now just one among millions and soon to be billions entranced and enthralled by the glow of a computer screen.
The glow of a cathode ray tube (CRT) had been replaced by the glow of a liquid crystal display (LCD) and later light emitting diodes (LED) as our monitors became better, higher resolution, first much bigger (giant HDTV screens!) and then much smaller (portable smartphones!). Now everyone was online, and no one was truly aware of the people physically around them sharing the same physical space as them. We were becoming oblivious to each other as we “found our own tribes” online.
13 Years Ago — 2010
Work it harder, make it better Do it faster, makes us stronger
More than ever, hour after hour Work is never over
Work it harder, make it better Do it faster, makes us stronger More than ever, hour after hour Work is never over
…and here our story picks up pace. Nothing truly changes, but the pulse quickens and the heart accelerates! Can you feel it? Are you not entertained?! The carousel began before I was born, but it’s spinning faster now. CompuServe yielded to America Online (AOL). Everyone was on AOL and AOL disks (and later compact discs) were everywhere. AOL fell and yielded to MySpace, Friendster, Tumbler, Twitter, Facebook, and dozens of other social media outlets that promised to connect people in ways we never had before.
3 Years Ago — 2020
The pandemic changed life as radically as the twin towers did, but while September 11th was solely an American event, the COVID pandemic changed life on a global scale. Everybody became shut-ins. Everyone who could work from home did work from home, while those poor “essential employees” continued to work in the same places we abandoned while withstanding the worst of social labor. It was nurses, educators, garbage collection, restaurant workers, retail, Uber drivers, Amazon warehouse employees, and Amazon delivery drivers that kept the economy running and society humming while people stayed glued to their computers at home.
Now — The Parasite that Feeds
In 1990, my high school physics class had to do a presentation on someone who influenced us and radically changed the world. Many of my fellow students chose people like Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Carl Sagan, but I chose Jaron Lanier.
Jaron Lanier was the brilliant mind at Atari Research and VPL Research who along with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, Xerox/PARC, and William Gibson (“Neuromancer”) , we can thank for our current understanding and expectations of Virtual Reality. I was amazed and enthralled with Jaron’s vision of Virtual Reality, and I wrote my paper and presentation on Jaron’s vision of the future.
My class loved it!
My physics teacher HATED it!
When I asked why my physics teacher detested my paper and presentation so much, he answered me “People are not ready for virtual reality. People cannot even handle actual reality.”
Once again, it seems I caught a glimpse of the future that later came to pass. Jaron Lanier became a musician and outspoken critic of Facebook, Twitter, and the Social Media engine that divides us as the algorithms of “getting the most views! getting the most likes! spending the most time!” becomes increasingly predatory. Human beings are social creatures, but the online culture we created that is financed by time spent on a single site and most number of “likes” has idolized celebrity culture and “influencers”. An influencer has no tangible product or service advancing society or the common good, and yet children would rather be a YouTube star or Twitch streamer than an engineer, a pilot, or an astronaut?!
“But the carousel never stops turning. You can’t get off.”
In our headfirst race into celebrity culture, adoration, tribalism, and desire for acceptance by others while reviling anyone not of our tribe, we created monsters.
Politicians learned to play us against each other. People learned to use our tribalism to raise themselves, deify themselves, and denigrate others. Both the 24/7 news cycle on television and media, and the incessant need to be wanted on social media rewarded the most garish displays, the most violent acts, the most ostentatious statements… whatever it takes! …to garner views and attract people to following them.
We learned from each other that to be accepted, we need to remain true to our tribe. We need to shout our virtues and decry anyone who does not agree. We stopped listening to each other. We stopped compromising. We ceased to be civil.
But it doesn’t need to be this way.
How many “friends” do you have on Facebook?
How many “followers” do you have on Twitter?
If you delete your social media accounts, out of the hundreds or thousands of people you can friends or followers, who will truly notice your departure? Who will lament your absence in a week from now? In our ceaseless race for entertainment, adulation, and acceptance, we have the attention span of Mayflies.
And so, I got off the carousel.
Jaron Lanier and Jason Allison Fogleman were correct. People are not ready for virtual reality, we can hardly accept actual reality. Once we learn to be kind and civil and compromise with each other in real life, maybe we’ll learn to be humane online?
Ursula K. Le Guin in her “elder years” (still lively, vibrant, intellectually sharp)
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven
…
I knew that several of our family and friends were heading to divorce a year or few before they knew themselves. I think a failing relationship is obvious to anyone, but we ignore the signs or fool ourselves into thinking “everything is fine, they will always be there for me.”
Disney lied. Disney sold several generations that love is easily won, and once won, the couple lives happily ever after. The End.
“Amazing. Every word of what you just said was wrong.”
Relationships take time and effort to build.
Relationships must be maintained for you to trust, respect, and love one another.
“Happily ever after” only happens if you both work at it to make it happen, otherwise it’s your happiness, his, or neither’s happiness.
Any time I hear about another’s divorce, especially after decades of marriage, I always feel terrible. When one faults the other, I know better, it took two people to create a relationship, and it takes the failure of two people to dissolve one.
Ursula K. Le Guin was right. The truth about love is as plain as the nose on your face. Love is not a static object you attain and you possess for the rest of your life. Love is an effort that you made yesterday, you make again today, and you’ll make again tomorrow.
I don’t know about your relationship, but I’ll be honest about mine. It ebbs and flows. Sometimes Vicky and I are intensely in love and always there for each other. Sometimes Vicky and I are self-absorbed in whatever it is we’re doing and we take the other for granted. We just sort of assume that everything is alright and everything will still be alright in the morning.
When you stop caring for each other, and not some mythical love-caring but caring in the most basic sense of the word, you stop loving each other and your relationship begins that slow (or fast) decline into dissolution.
Don’t stop caring.
Don’t stop communicating.
Even if it hurts. (“That’s called effort, hon. Trying hurts.”)
And if you’re bitching about your spouse on Facebook where you think they don’t read it (which several of my friends do), ask yourself is that love? Would it be cool if your spouse did the same? So if you do and they do, does that make it acceptable? Why the hell do you bother staying together if you badmouth each other?
So, keep trying… or don’t, but likewise don’t be surprised when your relationships fall apart, and you find yourself alone.
…
“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.”
On these new Canon CMOS imaging sensors, each pixel has two photo diodes which can operate separately or together. Each diode has a separate lens over it.
When light goes through those lenses and hits the diodes, the processor analyzes each diode’s signal for focus and, once focus is achieved, the signals are then combined to record the image.
Each pixel on the sensor, then, has a dual role.
That dual role is what makes DPAF sensors different.
In other kinds of imaging sensors, some of the pixels are used for focus and the rest record the image, but none does both. In Canon imaging sensors, 80% of the pixels (horizontally and vertically) play that dual role.
The sensor on the EOS 5D Mark IV, for instance, is 6720 x 4480 pixels. At 80% coverage (5376 x 3584) more than 19 million pixels have DPAF.
By comparison, the Sony a7R iii sensor is 7952 x 5304 pixels and has 399 phase detection auto focus points.
While mirrorless cameras have been using phase detection auto focus in imaging sensors for some time, DSLRs typically use a separate phase detection auto focus sensor for focusing while the mirror is down and the viewfinder in use, and switch to contrast detection auto focus on the actual imaging sensor when the mirror is up and you’re using Live View or recording a video.
Unlike the hikikomori, a NEET can enjoy a social life, like going out often and visiting their friends. Though in certain cases, a NEET can also be considered a hikikomori.
A hikikomori is a social recluse–someone who doesn’t willingly venture outside the comfort of their home.
NEET, an acronym for “Not in Education, Employment, or Training”, refers to a person who is unemployed and not receiving an education or vocational training.
NIH argues this is a cultural phenomenon specific to Japan:
I’d disagree. I think social withdrawal and interaction solely through gaming or the internet is also common in the United States and Europe as well as Asia.
From the Article:
A form of severe social withdrawal, called hikikomori, has been frequently described in Japan and is characterized by adolescents and young adults who become recluses in their parents’ homes, unable to work or go to school for months or years. The aim of this study was to review the evidence for hikikomori as a new psychiatric disorder. Electronic and manual literatures searches were used to gather information on social withdrawal and hikikomori, including studies examining case definitions, epidemiology, and diagnosis. A number of recent empiric studies have emerged from Japan. The majority of such cases of hikikomori are classifiable as a variety of existing DSM-IV-TR (or ICD-10) psychiatric disorders. However, a notable subset of cases with substantial psychopathology do not meet criteria for any existing psychiatric disorder. We suggest hikikomori may be considered a culture-bound syndrome and merits further international research into whether it meets accepted criteria as a new psychiatric disorder. Research diagnostic criteria for the condition are proposed.
STUX: It’s kinda crazy to see how big social media platforms just ignore their responsibility in managing content posted by their users 🫢
It feels like it’s more about the discussion of what should be a bar or not instead of actually acting or being clear.
Platforms like Gab and Parler are even worse since they just hold their hands up and push the responsibility to the users. They only remove stuff when it’s in their own face, they don’t care about others.
I want to do it differently. Our rules are clear, and we don’t care about being the biggest platform in the world. We just want a nice community without harassing, spam, and bullying.
We handle a simple general ‘rule’:
Respect is more important than saying whatever you want. Care for each other. 💕
KEN: There’s a number of articles about how being a Facebook Moderator is a soul-sucking job that damages your mental health and results in trauma to your psyche.
Most social media platforms reward views, clicks, and time spent reading/interacting.
Kind and considerate posts don’t attract nearly the attention as divisive or controversial topics. Compassionate comments aren’t nearly as common as enraged ones.
It’s truly a social issue. We need to acknowledge, reward, and recognize kindness rather than rage. We need to encourage compromise rather than controversy.
None of these things have social value in social media. While cute pictures make for good memes, the real time and interaction is spent in rage-posting and comments.
I don’t know how to fix that, but we need to stop rewarding it.
The Ease of Cut, Copy, Paste (Accidental or Intentional Plagiarism)
pla·gia·rism
/ˈplājəˌrizəm/
noun
the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
“there were accusations of plagiarism”
Plagiarism is the representation of another author‘s language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one’s own original work.[1][2] In educational contexts, there are differing definitions of plagiarism depending on the institution.[3] Plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and a breach of journalistic ethics. It is subject to sanctions such as penalties, suspension, expulsion from school[4] or work,[5] substantial fines[6][7] and even imprisonment.[8][9]
a meme that’s being reposted or shared on Slack, Facebook, Twitter, or email,
source code being discussed, repurposed, or reused from Sourceforge, Github, Gitlab, StackOverflow,
images, quotes, works of art, or documentation anywhere on the internet,
I know that both myself and others are guilty of re-using, sharing, or presenting others’ efforts as if they were our own or appearing to others as if they were our own. I’ve been in heated debates with co-workers, friends, and family as they took the efforts of others and posted it without accrediting the source. I get especially upset when I see watermarks cropped out, new text or logos slapped on it as if the new re-user was the original author or creator, or when the original source is obscured.
And yet I’m guilty of all these things myself…
“So, if you know better, BE better.”
That was the sage advice given to me by a random Twitter user that I never met before and never spoke with since. Even if I’m alone in researching the sources of memes, quotes, documentation, or source code, I do know better, so I need to make the effort (even if I make mistaken attributions, I need to make the effort to reference my sources).
Documenting your sources is like writing documentation when writing code or working as a developer or engineer. It doesn’t come easily, and it’s easy to ignore, but it’s rewarding and makes life better for others in the long run. We apply the rules of plagiarism to scholarly articles, but we don’t hold ourselves (or I don’t hold myself) to the same standards when talking on Facebook, Twitter, Slack, or my blog, but I do know better and I could be better, so I need to make the effort to do better.
If I fall short of that integrity or journalistic standards, feel free to hold my feet to the fire. I’ll source and document my sources in my work, my articles, and my blog.
The discomfort of education, awareness, and experiences outside our own personal bubbles and comfort zones.
The discomfort of a shared society and history where some people enjoyed the finer things and other people struggled only to know hardship, but the discomfort at discussing or acknowledging such things.
The discomfort of addressing the “elephants in the room” where skin color, gender, wealth, and privilege define where you start and where you’ll finish.
Whether on social media, in the workplace, in the news, or in the classroom, it’s become such that we can’t have a rational conversation without it devolving into heated arguments.
Discomfort alone is reason to shut down any conversation, any rational discourse, any attempt at bettering ourselves or our shared situation?
I’m just as guilty of these things. I don’t like having my failings pointed out to me. I don’t like being reminded of an uncomfortable past. I hide behind a “it wasn’t me, it wasn’t my circle, it wasn’t my tribe” as a reason to avoid a conversation. I don’t like being discomforted, made aware, or reminded of terrible things.
And so, I keep seeing arguments online and in the news, where people get angry, sometimes violently angry, because they feel entitled to their personal comfort and yet would deny others their own comforts. It isn’t reasonable to think that life would be easy, and that life is equally easy for everyone. No one politician, whether red or blue, liberal or conservative, will save us, wave a magic wand, and make all the hurtful things go away.
So, are we unable and unwilling to even have the conversation?
Should the conversation be banned in schools, on social media, and in the halls of our government?
Jewish: Lashon hara (Hebrew: לשון הרע; “evil tongue”) Christian: Taming the Tongue (James 3:1 – 3:10)
❝ When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go.
Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.
All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. ❞
— Epistle of James to the Twelve Tribes Scattered Abroad
In his letter, James covers ways we can mature as Christians. The first two chapters cover growth through trials by knowledge of God’s word, by putting that knowledge into action, and by letting go of worldly prejudices. Chapter 3 adds another layer to our Christian maturity by talking about how we use our words in how we teach and in how we generally speak to or about others. The quality and contents of our speech reveals how much we have let godly wisdom truly mature in us.
HAPPY DIWALI The festive season is upon us and we have been celebrating a string of festivals back-to-back. After marking Navratri, Dussehra and Karwa Chauth, it is time to celebrate the festival of light – Diwali (or Deepavali).
HAPPY DIWALI
The festive season is upon us and we have been celebrating a string of festivals back-to-back. After marking Navratri, Dussehra and Karwa Chauth, it is time to celebrate the festival of light – Diwali (or Deepavali).
One of the most important festivals among Hindus, it is widely celebrated in every part of the country. This festival is widely associated with Goddess Lakshmi and several people perform Lakshmi puja on this day for wealth and prosperity.
In some regions of the country, Diwali is marked as the day when Lord Ram, along with wife Sita and brother Lakshman, returned to Ayodhya after 14 years of exile. Diwali also coincides with Kali Pujo, celebrated across Bengal. Deepavali basically symbolizes the victory of “good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance”. People celebrate this day with much fun and fervor.
Every year, Diwali falls in the month of Kartika, as per the Hindu lunisolar calendar (which is between mid-October and mid-November).
This year, Diwali will be celebrated on 4th November, 2021. However, the celebration will be extended for 6-long days and will culminate with Bhai Dooj on 6th November, 2021.
IRENE: How many launches are there each day, Vincent? A dozen?
VINCENT: Sometimes more.
IRENE: You’re the only one that watches all of them. If you’re going to pretend like you don’t care, don’t look up.
— Uma Thurman (Irene) to Ethan Hawke (Vincent) in Gattaca (1997)
The Apollo 11 launch and Moon landing were extensively covered in the press. Over 53 million households tuned in to watch this mission on TV, and an estimated 650 million viewers worldwide watched the Moon landing.
The same was not true in 1972, as people were more interested in game shows than space missions. Space quickly became boring.
The same is true of the Space Shuttle program. With 134 launches (133 successes, 1 catastrophic failure resulting in death of all onboard) from 1972 to 2011, Americans and the world lost interest in going to space.
And the same is true of SpaceX. What is today’s novelty becomes tomorrow’s boredom. In Andrew Niccol’s GATTACA, he knew this lesson well, only the truly passionate “watches all of them. If you’re going to pretend like you don’t care, don’t look up.“
People have a limited attention span and care for the truly wonderous.
NOTE:
The text below was a posting from a good friend online who is struggling with the same issues about communication and divisiveness in social media that I am. Below was his very well-spoken post online, and my reply. I think these last few years between politics and the pandemic has strained many of us. We need to learn to listen, compromise, and be respectful of each other again.
A few recent conversations have gotten me thinking on the importance and difficulty of communicating with friends. If you’ve interacted with me, it’s probably worth reading this, and I would truly appreciate a moment of your time. I’ll try to keep it brief.
I’ve been learning a lot of lessons about how tone can be misinterpreted, as well as the meaning behind the words. Sometimes the subject matter can also influence how one or both of those are received.
I’m not an expert on very many topics, but there are a few that I’ve put a great deal of effort into understanding. If I appear to be arguing with you, or pushing back on a specific subject, I hope that it’s clear that I do so because I have some knowledge on the subject, or that I believe that there are other angles to consider.
I haven’t always been that careful in the past. I’ve sometimes thoughtlessly shared a political meme, or made a wide-reaching comment. On some of those occasions friends have pushed back on me, and rightfully so. For the last few years I’ve been a lot more careful. I’ve had my slip-ups, sure, but I’m working on it. However, the point I really want to make, is that every time one of you has pushed back on me, whether I agreed or not, and whether I said anything at the time or not, I *did* listen. It’s made an impact. I’ve changed some of my ways of thinking and doing things as a result.
Posts that are inflammatory can be quite cathartic, but you never know who is watching and adjusting their opinion of you. Something that feels like common sense to you might be painfully offensive to someone else, for reasons you haven’t thought of. And while we’re all free to hold the opinions of our choosing, it’s not always clear which of your friends might have struggles you are unaware of, political leanings you aren’t aware of, or just simply know more about the subject than you do.
For these reasons, I won’t try to force my opinions on you (not that I ever did, and I apologize if it ever looked that way). If I’m arguing with you, it’s probably because I think one or both of us has incomplete or incorrect information, or is being emotionally reactionary. Sometimes it’s just about looking at an alternate viewpoint. Sometimes it’s to show that such alternative perspectives even exist. If we disagree, I don’t think any less of you, and I hope that you will show me the same consideration.
Social media has ironically had the impact of both bringing people together, and yet dividing them further. We create our own echo chambers, isolated cells of groupthink that reject external ideas. The only way to combat this is to communicate ideas. And the only way to succeed at that is to be able to have civil discourse without outright rejecting each other’s perspectives.
To that end, I’m renewing my effort to be clear, respectful, and interested in your ideas, even if we disagree. It’s all about civil conversation and understanding. Will you join me?
(As an aside– being in the middle-ground “politically homeless” category, I get to sometimes be at odds with all of my friends, depending on the subject!) 🙂
Very well said!
Like others commented, I’ve been having similar struggles both in the workplace and with family/friends online. These past few years have been brutal between my struggle with cancer, political acrimony, the pandemic, and various social divisiveness.
Tone was already difficult to maintain in-person, particularly when people are passionate about their views, but it seems nearly impossible to convey tone and nuance online via Slack and socialmedia.
I’ve been actively trying to “hold my tongue and taste my words before I spit them out”, I’ve also been trying to listen more and to hear all sides of a debate or conversation.
I hear you completely. I couldn’t agree more. I truly wish I could join your efforts and be as reasonable & measured in my consideration of others.
Related to my thoughts about my earlier post on Identity Management in the Age of Unreality, we are in age where we believe our own information sources and distrust others. We have no single Source-of-Truth or Authority to whom we can rely on and agree upon. While Logic, Reason, and the Scientific Method ought to be the framework for our understanding and agreeing upon truth, they are poorly taught and poorly understood by many. Isaac Asimov’s quote has been proven true:
“Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
As you can see above, I released a cartoon this week that used one of the biggest clichés in cartooning. The Titanic has been drawn often, by many. I don’t think I’ve drawn the whole ship before, but I’ve certainly drawn sunken or sinking ships and alluded to the iceberg, which is the same thing.
The Titanic represents hubris, man’s ego coming back to bite him in the ass. It’s appropriate for politics, corporate greed, and blind ambition, unchecked by reality. Sooner or later, an iceberg comes along to challenge the unsinkable claim. PLENTY of cartoonists have drawn politicians standing on the bow as it sinks.
While I would normally avoid the Titanic imagery, and I’m sure other cartoonists who see it will roll their eyes at my audacity for bringing it out of mothballs, it was a popular cartoon this week. I heard from several editors who loved it, proving once again that we’re supposed to be pleasing our customers, not each other.
The Problem of Trust (“Are You Really Who You Say You Are?”)
So, you got an email or a friend invite from Bill Gates, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, Robert Scoble, Donald Trump, or YOUR MOM… but did you really? How do you know?
Back-alley firms meddle in elections and promote falsehoods on behalf of clients who can claim deniability, escalating our era of unreality.
[There is a] secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire.
Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies.
They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability.
Between organized efforts to sow distrust and spread misinformation, and the age-old efforts of con men and hackers to assume the identity of others, we now live in an “Age of Unreality” where we assume that one social media account is real, but if we get a second invite from that same person that they’ve been hacked or that someone is trying to assume their identity.
Unfortunately, we don’t apply this same skepticism to the news we read or the emails we receive. If we do apply such skepticism, it becomes a stressful and paranoid-level of distrust as we try to filter truth from mistaken understandings, deliberate misinformation, or various “bad actors” preying upon the trust and confidence of others.
Proofing your Identity – Driver’s License and REAL ID
Proofing your Identity – Affidavit of Identity
Proofing your Identity – Facebook Verification (1/2)
Proofing your Identity – Facebook Verification (2/2)
The Perils of Mistrust (“Facebook Jail”, Twitter Suspensions)
If I’ve learned anything these past few years, and especially these past few weeks, I’ve discovered it’s far easier to get thrown into “Facebook Jail” than it is to prove my identity despite providing government documentation and notarized affidavits to these companies.
There are numerous articles on the internet about how to apply for Confirmed Identities and Verified Accounts on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but as you can see from my linked pictures, that process is not easy, not consistent, not standard, and not consistently reproducible. Social media verification is capricious and arbitrary.
I don’t have an answer or solution yet. I think this is an excellent opportunity for social media companies to unite behind a single standard of identity management, authentication, and verification. I think that Google Identity (Open Authentication, or “OAuth”)is one of the best ways to manage identities online, while Facebook Identity/Privacy/Security and Twitter Identities are two of the worst at self-policing, validating, and verifying.
Identity Authentication, Validation, and Verification are issues I’m trying to solve myself both in my personal use of the Internet and my professional career. Secure Socket Layers (SSL) , Transport Layer Security (TLS), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA/2FA), and Public/Private Key Encryption are all tools that should be implemented everywhere regardless of users’ perceived need.
The internet equivalent of REAL IDneeds to become a reality. We already have Domain Name Servers (DNS) to map domain names to Internet Protocol (IP) addresses. We need the same for identity management: keyservers that map and verify users allowing us to verify and confirm people are who they say they are.
TOKYO, JAPAN – JULY 27: Simone Biles of Team United States watches her team perform on bars after pulling out of the competition after only competing on the vault during the Women’s Team Final on day four on day four of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Gymnastics Centre on July 27, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images) — 2021 Getty Images
I have my own thoughts about:
1) holding an Olympic gathering while much of the world is struggling with a pandemic 2) the value, expense, waste, and displacement of Olympics being held in major world cities every four years 3) the cost and damage done to host nations 4) the sheer avarice of the International Olympic Committee and its sponsors, compared to the costs incurred by host nations, cities, and Olympic athletes 5) the value of having multiple nations build and tear down infrastructure rather than having a shared infrastructure and location that gets reused
All that said, I admire the courage, conviction, tenacity, and determination of athletes as well as the shared hope and vision it inspires in the host nations and their audiences.
“There’s a look of mischief in his eyes. ‘Smilla. Why is it that such an elegant and petite girl like you has such a rough voice.’
I’m sorry,’ I say, ‘if I give you the impression that it is only my mouth that’s rough. I do my best to be rough all over.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
“I feel the same way about solitude as some people feel about the blessing of the church. It’s the light of grace for me. I never close my door behind me without the awareness that I am carrying out an act of mercy toward myself.”
― Peter Høeg, Smilla’s Sense of Snow
WE’RE ALL BROKEN IN SOME FASHION, but so often we either accept or fail to recognize our brokenness. The more sane or rational of us make peace with our brokenness, but we don’t always recognize or accept that others are also broken and in need of the same grace we grant ourselves.
The wisest of us recognize that we are broken, that others are broken, and that we are all in need of understanding, compassion, and grace. This is a rare wisdom, and usually causes more heartache and pain for the wise than it does for the foolish or angry who fail to recognize or care that others are as broken as they are.
I’ve been naive for much of my life. As I grow older, I understand that my naivety is deliberate. I want to see the good in people. Having been broken myself, I don’t hold the brokenness of others against them. For the most part, this just makes me weird or eccentric, but there is the occasional fool who disabuses me of my hope for goodness in others.
Over my lifetime, I’ve met some truly beautiful people whom I’ve loved as family, who I took into my heart. I always wondered why they were “so prickly, so rough on the outside.” Others thought them to be aloof, difficult, detached, … and here I was in my naivety trying to befriend them and to earn their respect.
I understand now why some people are prickly.
I understand why some people have rough skins that others are unable to get past.
Being “rough all over” is the sensible reaction to an unkind world where you don’t want to expose your tender or vulnerable parts.
