Can the Computer make People Better?

This is a trick question and can be answered in a number of ways. 

The easiest way is to assert the innate badness of people. "Nothing on earth will make people any better!"

Or you can go to the opposite extreme. "The Computer can make us perfectible (if not perfect). If the Bomb does not get us first."

Or we can note the obvious: the Internet has changed who we are - for better or worse. 

No Records Were Kept

I am referring to the transition from the RLDS church to the Community of Christ church. The church I grew up in (and was so important to my parents) is no longer.

Many things happened during this transition - including the decision to not remember what happened. 

My brother Steve was active during this transition, but all he will say about it, was that it was painful - nothing more. 

I'm sure it was painful, but it should have been recorded anyway. If we forget our past, we forget who we are. 

Fixing Quantum Mechanics

New York Times Magazine

If you are a normal person (and I assume you are), you don't give a damn about this. It's just too weird. 

But if you like to think (as I do sometimes) it will seem interesting. 

In any case, it will show you that physicists are human too. And that physics deals with human matters. 

Your online guided tour

I have some ideas about this.

First, I would writ write a script as though you were doing an actual tour, describing what the visitors would actually be seeing. First, the outside of the house, then the inside, room by room. 

Then you might add a historical overview, beginning when the RLDS bought land in Southern Iowa and built the town of Lamoni. 

Then add the history of the Railroads in the area and the Roads.

Then take videos, using any camera (your phone would probably be adequate). 

Then record the script, and add it to the video using any Movie Maker. 

Have fun!

My Monster Coffee Maker

I am an expert on Espresso machines. This is my third one. It has the brand Gevi (a company in Formosa) and is made in China. 

Espresso is made by forcing very hot water under high pressure through finely ground compacted coffee.

This all happens in a small cup with holes on the sides and bottom of it. This is held in a solid carrier where the coffee comes out of a hole in the bottom. It is complicated, believe me! 

I followed the instructions carefully, but nothing worked! Ir has a temperature meter (which is unusual) but this does not tell me much about what is going on.  

When I went back to the Amazon page for this product, it was replaced by a page showing a cute dog. Really!

I took the machine apart to see what was happening (I have become good this by now), Most machines have a boiler that is heated to provide steam pressure. 

This one has an external water tank and pumps to provide the pressure. A number of lights are provided but what they indicate is not explained. 

No explanations! This is not unusual, But the companies that do this ought taken outside and shot. 

People are Killing Themselves

And they can see nothing wrong with this. 

In fact, they think they are doing the right thing, what the world is demanding of them. And they are right: the world is demanding this of them and calling it Globalization. 

This process is most developed in the developed countries. They have more of everything, except beneficial human interaction. 

I like that last phrase: beneficial human interaction. This is what we all should be aiming for: a better world. 

But what we are getting is a worse world. And a world that cannot recognize this. 

The presence of the Computer in this complicated mix has not helped. It is demanding that we think better when we can barely think already.  

Korean War

Google News

I can barely remember this although a cousin of mine, Nick Ourth, fought in it. He later forgot all about it. 

In the Sixties, I was a follower of a Korean Buddhist teacher and bowed down to him every morning. There was even a Buddhist teacher in the US during the Vietnam War. There were (and still are) many Buddist organizations in Los Angeles. 

I knew nothing of the events described in this article. Americans have been in wars in Asia for a long time, without knowing who they were fighting.

Is the World finished, or just Getting Started?

It's hard for me to tell. 

By World, I mean the Human world, which seems to be self-destructing. But it also means the Computer world, which is advancing at warp speed. 

How can the two merge? 

They have to merge, and they have to merge soon. Before the Human Side of the Equation disappears. 

Computer guys have to recognize that only People can make Computers. And People guys have to recognize how important Computers have become. 

The Cattle Drives of the Past

This began with the construction of the Transcontinental Railroads - a huge engineering project, that opened up grassland in the Great Plains, to the Cattlemen of the time. 

Cows, with their complicated system of many stomaches. have the ability to convert grass into meat. 

These men grew rich by slowly driving cattle northward, and then shipping them to the Packing Houses that turned them into Beef. 

They hired Cowboys to keep the cows moving at the proper pace, which could difficult during storms. 

Gradually, literature developed that glamorized the Cowboy, and Movies where made, that started the singing Cowboy. These were called Westerns and people loved them. 

Then these grasslands were fenced in (with barded wire) and used for growing crops. The Wild West was no more! 

Emma was not too smart

I am still reading the Kingdom of Nauvoo, where Emma Smith is trying to combat Polygamy. Something that nearly everyone else in Nauvoo, was in favor of. Eventually, Polygamy was forgotten, but this was after she was dead. 

She must have known of this situation, but persisted in her moral campaign, which got her nowhere. The main result of this, was the total ignorance of her sons who knew nothing of what was going on. 

She stayed behind, in Nauvoo, when nearly everyone else had left. 

Is Stupid Bad?

I could make this longer: are stupid people, bad people?

The response to this is "that depends on a lot of things!" Perhaps we could state it this way: "Are bad people stupid?" This sounds better. 

And places the blame for all the bad things going on, on bad people. 

Another way to approach this, is with the Book of Mormon, that millions believe in. Are Mormons bad people? 

As someone who was raised a Mormon, I have to answer "Yes and No!" Some Mormons are and some Mormons are not. And some Mormons are both. 

Something to Believe In

I am still thinking of The Book of Mormon. Why is it so important to so many people? 

The answer is the title of this posting: it gives them something to believe in. 

Joseph Smith, who wrote it, came up with the right features that made it believable. He was an ignorant person writing to ignorant people. Most of the people in his time, and ours. 

Machine Learning Crash Course

Google

If there is one thing I am good at, it is being stupid. I have been practicing it all my life. And online learning makes this easier than ever. 

It can spot my mistakes instantly and set me on the right path immediately. That is fast, because the Computer is fast!

And it is free. Watch the first lecture, and learn what Machine Learning is about. 

Stupidity and Destructiveness

These rwo go together and are part of the same pattern. If you have one, you have the other also. This behavior is unconscious, which makes it much worse. 

I am saying this problem is serious, but most people think it is not. 

Using Computers and Understanding Them

People have little trouble using Computers, but a lot of trouble understanding them. 

Perhaps this is caused by our fear of them, as something that is smarter than we are. I will assume this is the case for this essay. 

One of our outstanding abilities is our ability to think. But now the computer can do this also. And this scares us. 

This fear is mostly unconscious, which makes it very dangerous. 

Before I go on, I want to emphasize this: we live in fear of ou lives. We lived in a world where we were the dominant species, but this is now threatened. 

We will have to share our dominance with the Computer. Something we have not done before, but I think we can - if we take the trouble to know what we are trying to do. 

We have to develop a better kind of intelligence - one that includes the Computer. 

I have Cappuccino Coffee

This is

espresso coffee topped with frothed hot milk or cream and often flavored with cinnamon

I have an Espresso machine, but it has not made any steam for frothing milk until now. 

I add Splenda to make it extra-tasty. 

Rejection of the Computer

The Computer is the most important thing that has ever happened to us. But most of use are denying this with all our strength. 

Why?

Because we would prefer to be without it, and wish it did not exist. 

Why?  (again). 

Because the Computer is controlled by Software. 

Before it showed up, we lived in a Religious world. Supernatural forces controlled everything. But Software is not supernatural. 

Got it? 

Business is Bad for People

Now that I have said this, I have to defend what I said. What did I mean? 

It came from my experience in Business, which was mostly bad. 

I became an Electronics Engineer (U of Illinois, 1959), even though I had no interest in Engineering, I just wanted to make money. Big mistake. 

I made money because of the Cold War, where the US and the USSR tried to outspend each other. 

I specialized in Radar and helped build the FPS 35, the most powerful radar ever built. It was three stories high, packed with racks of vacuum tubes - wth am antenna on top, half the size of a football field.

Tne one on Montauk Point on the tip of Long Island could detect missiles launching from Cape Kennedy in Florida! 

I was working for the FAA, and when I was in one of their Air Route Transportation Centers (built to withstand the Atomic Bomb, everyone there went crazy and tried to get out. Places like this will drive you nuts. 

What is Mormonism?

There are Mormons, lots of them, but Mormonism, an abstract idea, cannot be well-defined. 

You can say "It is an American religion, begun by Joseph Smith," but this quickly became many religions (and many Churches) after his death in 1844. 

The largest Mormon church now is the LDS church in Utah, and the second largest the RLDS (now the Community of Christ) in Missouri. 

This is the Church of my family, and it has a problem with Mormonism. Is it, or is it not a Mormon church? It cannot make up its mind. 

Book of Mormon in the Community of Christ Church

I have taken this from the Wikipedia's article on the Book of Mormon:

In 2001, Community of Christ President W. Grant McMurray reflected on increasing questions about the Book of Mormon: "The proper use of the Book of Mormon as sacred scripture has been under wide discussion in the 1970s and beyond, in part because of long-standing questions about its historical authenticity and in part because of perceived theological inadequacies, including matters of race and ethnicity."^[105]

At the 2007 Community of Christ World Conference, President Stephen M. Veazey ruled out-of-order a resolution to "reaffirm the Book of Mormon as a divinely inspired record." He stated that "while the Church affirms the Book of Mormon as scripture, and makes it available for study and use in various languages, we do not attempt to mandate the degree of belief or use. This position is in keeping with our longstanding tradition that belief in the Book of Mormon is not to be used as a test of fellowship or membership in the church."^[106]

The Need for Something Wonderful in our Lives

I can remember what that was for me when I went to college in the Fifties: Electronics! And of course, Masturbation. 

And Cars. 

All of them fit together nicely in my mind. But a car, for me and many others, was impossible. 

I remember how a Mexican friend of mine solved this problem. He bought a nice car, drove it across the border, and stopped making payments! 

I used another method, I found a bunch of guys who owned a car, and joined them! 

I learned later they were gay, but this made no difference. They were friendly and they owned a car. What more could I want? 

Incompetence

There are plenty of incompetent people around, and most of them are good at covering their tracks.

And the people their incompetence effects are also good at not noticing this, and seem to prefer it.

Examples are not hard to find, and I will use one from the Church my family belonged to, the RLDS church.

It has self-destructed, and my brother (and quite a few other church members) think this is wonderful!

Book of Mormon in Wikipedia

I read this article while I was having breakfast this morning. 

It's a long read, but worthwhile. It contains many summaries,  including this one:

True or not, the Book of Mormon is a powerful epic written on a grand scale with a host of characters, a narrative of human struggle and conflict, of divine intervention, heroic good and atrocious evil, of prophecy, morality, and law. Its narrative structure is complex. The idiom is that of the King James Version, which most Americans assumed to be appropriate for divine revelation...The Book of Mormon should rank among the great achievements of American literature, but it has never been accorded the status it deserves, since Mormons deny Joseph Smith's authorship, and non-Mormons, dismissing the work as a fraud, have been more likely to ridicule than to read it.

— Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848, Pg. 314

Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey

New Yorker

This is strange, really strange. And there is nothing more to say about it.

Click in the link and see what I mean.

Industrialization and Mormonism

The end of the 18th Century, resulted in the separation of Americans from their mother country, and the Second Great Awakening. Americans have always been Religious and Violent and soon became Industrial.

Industrialization made fundamental changes to English People's thinking, which was shown in their reception to the Book of Mormon, which has no literary value. They thought it was wonderful and divine scripture, and insisted on traveling to America to be with this Prophet of God!

The history of this book was not complicated. Joseph Smith wrote it to make money and tried to sell it. in Canada. But his followers had other ideas and took it to England. They did not take it to London, the literary center of England, but took it directly to the Industrial Midlands, where the workers toiled and lived in terrible conditions, that must have damaged their minds.

Even today, over one hundred years later, there are people (such as my Brother) who believe in it completely!

Smith did not consider himself to be a divine person, but rapidly got used to the idea, started receiving revelations, and soon had a large following.

This was violent mass insanity, which eventually resulted in his death.

Compatible Components

This is what Software is: Components that work together easily.

Software Developers (the people who use these things) ask only one thing of them: how well do they work with other Components? 

They have to work with people also and have a good User Interface (UI), but that is secondary. The main thing is Computers, how does it work with them?

This even applies to Software Developers (Programmers). How well do the apps they write, work with the Computers they were written for?

Thinking

I probably shouldn't be writing about this, since I'm not much good at this myself. But there are people even worse at it. Much worse, in fact.

And they are not just worse at it, they are allergic to the stuff and fight against it - without realizing this at all.

Thinking, a mental activity, is also related to one's physical condition. And as I age, it deteriorates.

 We are born with the ability to think, but it has to be exercised.

And now that we live with thinking machines, we have to upgrade our thinking also, to make it compatible.

The Transition from the RLDS to the Community of Christ

Somebody should have been documenting this as it happened, but they did not.

And even now, approximately thirty years later, most people insist nothing happened and there is nothing to document.

This is not true. Something happened and what happened should be documented. But this cannot be done.

Let me repeated that: it cannot be done.

Tiny Japan Firm Helps to Crack Code for Next-Gen Computer Chips

Medium

A Japanese company is doing this?

Yes, but an American company is reporting on them - to its intense delight.

Reversal of Values

This has become a global phenomenon and has become normal behavior for most people. Behavior that is invisible to them, and cannot be explained to them.

As I try to explain this, I have to start with the word "phenomenon". I had to look this up in Merriam-Webster, where I could see how important it is. This refers to what has become our normal unconscious behavior. Where to go from here?

Let's try the word "behavior". Can we understand this?  Yes and no. We can almost understand it, but we can also not understand it. Can you see where I am going?

I am saying, for reasons no one understands, that our values have become reversed, and we cannot see this.

The Long-Forgotten Flight That Sent Boeing Off Course

Medium

This story about one American company could be about many American companies.

It is also well-written and pulls you into the story.

Prozac and Me

Back in the Nineties, I was working in Silicon Valley, and I was in Therapy, a common combination.

One of my therapists noticed I was depressed, and put me on Prozac. He was sure this would solve my problems.

It didn't, and I moved to Costa Rica but continued to take Prozac. It was cheap and easy to get.

I got another therapist, who noticed my Prozac wasn't doing me any good. He sent me to a psychiatrist and assumed he would prescribe a different antidepressant. But he only upped my dosage of Prozac!

This continued until my dosage reached alarming levels. And some studies were made to see if Prozac really worked. It didn't, and another study was made, using more people. Same result.

I decided, on my own, to quit Prozac. I did, with no adverse effects.

I just got a book The Antidepressive Fact Book, which is saying the same thing: the damn things don't work!

Smart Computers, Stupid People

This is not very flattering to people, who have improved themselves for thousands of years. But for the last 200 or so, our progress has not been so impressive.

But progress during the last 50 years or so, for the Computer, has been impressive.

Perhaps we should not be comparing ourselves to it. Or we should be saying we are better at some things and it is better at other things.

But we have to begin by defining what it is. And right here I get into big trouble.

Most people do not want to admit what it is good at.

A few of us know this and have gotten rich because of this. But the rest do not know and do not know they do not want to know.

Money Stuff for June 8, 2020

Bloomberg Opinion

This is a long, complicated read. But it is saying some important stuff.

Like the Computer is making Financial fraud easier to commit, and more difficult to detect.

How to Use Masks during the Coronavirus Pandemic

Scientific American

Randomized controlled studies have shown mask-wearing is indeed effective against the flu, but such trials do not currently exist for masks and the coronavirus. “The evidence isn’t always as perfect as we would like it to be,” Koehler says. “Based on the aerosol science, we know that the masks are going to help reduce the transmission of these particles. Can it be 100 percent effective? Maybe not. But can it help? I think so.”

Being Good to Your Computer

Is Being Good to Yourself

This is true of any technology but is especially true of our latest technology, the Computer, which is most like us.

I will be more explicit. The Computer has Software that tells it what to do - in great detail, The better this coding, the better the Computer.

The latest development here is Artificial Intelligence (AI), and it is getting better rapidly. And Angular is also helping out.

Angular is a platform and framework for building single-page client applications using HTML and TypeScript. Angular is written in TypeScript. It implements core and optional functionality as a set of TypeScript libraries that you import into your apps. 

Please don't ask me to explain this. you will live with it, and use it, before you can understand it.

Google has made Angular and has also put a lot of work into explaining it to software developers (who are people also). I am using my 83-year-old-mind, to learn it also. 

There was a Lot going on in Nauvoo

And he wants to tell us about it, as a historian.

My siblings, by contrast, do not want to hear anything about it, history or not.

I am reading the Kingdom of Nauvoo, in the Kindle format. My siblings are not reading anything.

I am reading about Joseph Smith's attempt to become the President. I am surprised by how reasonable this was - at the time.

But the Times change, and he was soon killed an angry mob.

Being Stupid in a Clever Way

This way makes it difficult for us to understand how clever they really are.

They have reversed their values because this makes them feel good, and they are certain this also makes them right.

Has the Computer made People Better?

This depends on the People, and how smart they are.

The Computer has made most people stupid, and not just stupid, but very stupid. How has this happened? To understand this, we will have to go back a few years, to when we became Civilized.

We know when this happened, and where it happened, and its basic ingredient: Clay, which they used for everything. Today, we have tons of rheir writing - on backed clay, that lasts forever.

We had novels, with their stories of Love between Men, and Temple Prostitutes. And Bookkeeping, to record forever all the temple offerings.

To go back even further, our species came down out of the trees in Eastern Africa, with one important invention: Language. This made us smart, and before long we were everywhere, except Antarctica. 

I could explain how language made us smart. because I was in a hospital once. without it. But that is another story.

To go back to the beginning, we soon had many civilizations, and they were at war with each other. Not very nice, I know - but that was the way it was. This was the Ancient World. that ended with the fall of the Roman Empire.

We now live in the Modern World, with its abundance of inventions, because we were thinking again.

A few of us were thinking, and before long we had produced Software. This takes us back to the original question: this made us smarter, but did it make us better?

Untangling Andy Warhol

New Yorker

You gotta read this. Several times.

This is one thing Beth and I got right: Pop Art. We were both a little crazy, but so was everyone else - in NYC, and later in Santa Barbara, California.

It pains me to say so, but Beth was too crazy and ended up in the psych ward. Someone else got the trailer, with all the artwork in it, when I left for my new job in Denver.

Are we doing Anyone any Good?

This a serious question, but is not asked very often because the answer is usually: No. This is embarrassing, so the question is not often asked.

There is an easier way of coping with this, however: lying. This was often used by the Mormons (Joseph Smith and his many followers). He was killed for such outrageous behavior.

One hundred years later, it was used by advertising and is considered normal behavior.

Americans don't like America because America does not like Them

I will use my own life as an example.

I ended up in Silicon Valley in the Nineties. This place has a huge number of Therapists, and I had used many of them.

I ended up in a Men's Group. We all worked in the Valley, so did our Therapist. For him, the crazier things got, the more work there was for him.

I did not see it that way, the craziness in the Valley was not my cup of tea, and I moved to Costa Rica.

When I first came down here, I had a huge mailing list from my friends up there, wanting to know about things down here. But when they realized I was making a new life for myself down here, they lost interest.

For them, there was only one life, American Life. If it was destroying itself, this was something they could easily overlook.

There are plenty of other examples, that say much the same thing. "Stop the World, I want to get off!"

Seoul Unveils ‘Korean New Deal’ Recovery Plan

Korea Times

The government announced a plan to invest (Korea Times) 76 trillion won ($62 billion) over the next five years to aid the economy’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The “Korean New Deal” will invest in digitization, clean energy, and improvements to the social safety net.

This might be a good deal, or it may be nothing. I am especially interested in digitization. This is described by Wikipedia as: 

Digitization is of crucial importance to data processing, storage and transmission because it "allows information of all kinds in all formats to be carried with the same efficiency and also intermingled".[4] Though analog data is typically more stable, digital data can more easily be shared and accessed and can, in theory, be propagated indefinitely, without generation loss, provided it is migrated to new, stable formats as needed. This is why it is a favored way of preserving information for many organizations around the world.

As always, the Devil is in the Details.