Monday, December 24, 2018
CHRISTMAS 2018
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays to all!
See my recent posts at Chicago Boyz
11:44 AM
Wednesday, August 08, 2018
I'M STILL HERE
...have been posting at Chicago Boyz, but have not had time to cross-post. Will try to do so in the future, at least for especially important posts.
You can find my recent posts at CB by using this link.
11:58 AM
Monday, April 16, 2018
MEDIA AND POLITICS
An 'art installation' at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art suggests some thoughts about the role of imagery and sensory experiences in political propaganda. At Chicago Boyz.
1:14 PM
Tuesday, March 27, 2018
WELL, THIS IS INTERESTING
Back in 1975, California Governor Jerry Brown was opposed to allowing Vietnamese refugees into California.
cross-posted at Chicago Boyz, where comments are open
11:58 AM
Sunday, March 04, 2018
WORTHWHILE READING & VIEWING
At Chicago Boyz
1:05 PM
Wednesday, February 28, 2018
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND HUMAN BEHAVIOR
WSJ has an story on the use of artificial intelligence to predict potential suicides. The article cites a study indicating that “the traditional approach of predicting suicide,” which includes doctors’ assessments, was only slightly better than random guessing.
In contrast, when 16,000 patients in Tennessee were analyzed by an AI system, the system was able to predict with 80-90% accuracy whether someone would attempt suicide in the next two years, using indicators such as history of using antidepressants and injuries with firearms. (It would have been nice to see numbers cited for false negatives vs false positives…also, I wonder how nearly the same results could have been achieved by use of traditional statistical methods, without appeal to AI technology.)
Another approach, which has been tested in Cincinnati schools and clinics, uses an app which records sessions between therapists and patients, and then analyzes linguistic and vocal factors to predict suicide risk.
Both Apple (Siri) and Facebook have been working to identify potential suicides. The latter company says that in a single month in fall 2017, its AI system alerted first responders in 100 cases of potential self-harm. (It doesn’t sound like the system contacts the first responders directly; rather, it prioritizes suspected cases for the human moderators, who then perform a second-level review.) In one case, a woman in northern Argentina posted “This can’t go on. From here I say goodbye.” Within 3 hours, a medical team notified by Facebook reached the woman, and, according to the WSJ article, “saved her life.”
It seems very likely to me that, in the current climate, attempts will be made to extend this approach into the prediction of self-harm into the prediction of harm to others, in particular, mass killings in schools. I’m not sure how successful this will be…the sample size of mass killings is, fortunately. pretty small…but if it is successful, then what might the consequences be, and what principles of privacy, personal autonomy, and institutional responsibility should guide the deployment (if any) of such systems?
For example, what if an extension of the linguistic and vocal factors analysis mentioned above allowed discussions between students and school guidance counselors to be analyzed to predict the likelihood of major in-school violence? What should the school, what should law enforcement be allowed to do with this data?
Does the answer depend on the accuracy of the prediction? What if people identified by the system will in 80% of cases commit an act of substantial violence (as defined by some criterion), but at the same time there are 10% false positives (people the system says are likely perpetrators, but who are actually not)? What if the numbers are 90% accuracy and only 3% false positives?
Discuss.
2:55 PM
Sunday, February 18, 2018
A FRENCH VILLAGE: COMPLETE SERIES NOW AVAILABLE
I’ve previously mentioned this series, set in the (fictional) French town of Villeneuve during the years of the German occupation and afterwards. It is simply outstanding – one of the best television series I have ever seen. The program ran from 2009-207 on French TV, and all the seasons are now available in the US, with subtitles. Having now watched the whole thing, my very positive opinion of the series is sustained.
Daniel Larcher is a physician who also serves as deputy mayor, a largely honorary position. When the regular mayor disappears after the German invasion, Daniel finds himself mayor for real. His wife Hortense, a selfish and emotionally-shallow woman, is the opposite of helpful to Daniel in his efforts to protect the people of Villaneuve from the worst effects of the occupation while still carrying on his medical practice. Daniel’s immediate superior in his role as mayor is Deputy Prefect Servier, a bureaucrat mainly concerned about his career and about ensuring that everything is done according to proper legal form.
The program is ‘about’ the intersection of ultimate things…the darkest evil, the most stellar heroism….with the ‘dailyness’ of ordinary life, and about the human dilemmas that exist at this intersection. Should Daniel have taken the job of mayor in the first place?…When is it allowable to collaborate with evil, to at least some degree, in the hope of minimizing the damage? Which people will go along, which will resist, which will take advantage? When is violent resistance…for example, the killing by the emerging Resistance of a more or less random German officer…justified, when it will lead to violent retaliation such as the taking and execution of hostages?
Arthur Koestler has written about ‘the tragic and the trivial planes’ of life. As explained by his friend, the writer and fighter pilot Richard Hillary:
“K has a theory for this. He believes there are two planes of existence which he calls vie tragique and vie triviale. Usually we move on the trivial plane, but occasionally in moments of elation or danger, we find ourselves transferred to the plane of the vie tragique, with its non-commonsense, cosmic perspective. When we are on the trivial plane, the realities of the other appear as nonsense–as overstrung nerves and so on. When we live on the tragic plane, the realities of the other are shallow, frivolous, frivolous, trifling. But in exceptional circumstances, for instance if someone has to live through a long stretch of time in physical danger, one is placed, as it were, on the intersection line of the two planes; a curious situation which is a kind of tightrope-walking on one’s nerves…I think he is right.”
In this series, the Tragic and the Trivial planes co-exist…day-to-day life intermingles with world-historical events. And the smallness of the stage…the confinement of the action to a single small village….works well dramatically, for the same reason that (as I have argued previously) stories set on shipboard can be very effective.
9:03 AM
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
ATTACK OF THE JOB-KILLING ROBOTS, PART 3
The final months of World War II included the first-ever battle of robots: on one side, the German V-1 missile and on the other, an Allied antiaircraft system that automatically tracked the enemy missiles, performed the necessary fire-control computations, and directed the guns accordingly. This and other wartime projects greatly contributed to the understanding of the feedback concept and the development of automatic control technology. Also developed during the war were the first general-purpose programmable digital computers: the Navy/Harvard/IBM Mark I and the Army/MIT ENIAC…machines that, although incredibly limited by our presented-day, standards were at the time viewed with awe and often referred to as ‘thinking machines.’
These wartime innovations in feedback control and digital computation would soon have enormous impact on the civilian world.
This is one in a continuing series of posts in which I attempt to provide some historical context for today’s discussions of automation and its impact on jobs and society…a context of which people writing about this topic often seem to have little understanding.
continued at at Chicago Boyz
12:50 PM
Saturday, February 10, 2018
A 60-YEAR-OLD FIGHTER DESIGN -- STILL OPERATIONAL
In 2009, Neptunus Lex paid tribute to the MIG-21, which he referred to as “a noble adversary.” At the time, it appeared that the airplane was about to be phased out of service by those countries still operating it. Didn’t happen that way. though…the airplane is still in use by several countries, most notably India, which still operates more than 200 of them.
Design studies for the MIG-21 began in 1953, with first flight in 1958 and production shipments beginning in 1959. As analogy for the design’s longevity, imagine the Red Baron’s Fokker triplane from 1918 still being employed in a military role in the post-Vietnam era of 1977!
Also, there’s a pretty decent movie, based on real events, about the 1966 Israeli operation to steal a MIG-21 from Iraq. The moviemakers were evidently unable to get their hands on a real MIG-21 (in 1988), so a MIG-15 was used for the flying scenes instead.
More MIG-21 information here.
8:09 AM
Monday, February 05, 2018
THE DETAILS OF WORK AND THE REALITIES OF AUTOMATION
At Chicago Boyz
5:19 PM
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
TOCQUEVILLE FORESAW THIS
Alexis de Tocqueville:
[The power of government] covers the surface of society with a network of small complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power… does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, until each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and hard-working animals, of which the government is the shepherd.’
I disagree with Tocqueville about “such a power..does not tyrannize”, it certainly does tyrannize, and to a greater degree than many of the kings and emperors of the past. Neither George III or Kaiser Wilhelm II ever thought to issue edicts about which pronouns people were allowed to use. This California bill is in the true spirit of the totalitarianisms of the 20th century: Naziism and Communism.
Speaking of totalitarianism, here’s Arthur Koestler, in his novel Darkness at Noon. Rubashov, an Old Bolshevik who has been arrested by the Stalinist regime, is reflecting on his Communist beliefs and where they may have led him astray.
A short time ago , our leading agriculturist, B , was shot with thirty of his collaborators because he maintained the opinion that nitrate artificial manure was superior to potash. No. 1 is all for potash; therefore B. and the thirty had to be liquidated as saboteurs. In a nationally centralized agriculture , the alternative of nitrate or potash is of enormous importance: it can decide the issue of the next war. If No. 1 was in the right, history will absolve him, and the execution of the thirty-one men will be a mere bagatelle. If he was wrong . . .
Isn’t this reminiscent of today’s leftist who say that climate change is a a matter of “enormous importance”, it can decide not something as relatively minor as “the issue of the next war” but the entire fate of the human race and hence, free speech on this matter must be suppressed?
Koestler’s Rubashov explains to himself that since the Revolution has overthrown all the rules of ‘cricket-morality’, the State is now ‘sailing without ballast’…and begins to see where this must inevitably lead:
to settle a difference of opinion, we know only one argument: death, whether it is a matter of submarines, manure, or the Party line to be followed in Indo-China. Our engineers work with the constant knowledge that an error in calculation may take them to prison or the scaffold; the higher officials in our administration ruin and destroy their subordinates, because they know that they will be held responsible for the slightest slip and be destroyed themselves; our poets settle discussions on questions of style by denunciations to the Secret Police, because the expressionists consider the naturalistic style counter-revolutionary, and vice versa.
We are not yet at the point in America where people are sentenced to physical death for political deviations, but now on a regular basis people have their careers destroyed–sometimes a form of economic death–for such deviations.
And it is worth noting that the California bill in question was introduced not by some back-bencher no one has ever heard of, but by the Democratic Majority Leader of the California Assembly.
8:35 AM
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
ARE THOSE ROBOTS SLACKING OFF ON THE JOB?
Much concern is being expressed these days about technological unemployment driven by robotics, artificial intelligence, etc. But labor productivity numbers have been more in the direction of stagnation than in the direction of a sharp break upwards…see for example this BLS analysis. Note especially Chart 5, which compares productivity growth in three periods: 1947-2007, 2001-2007, and 2009-2016.
See also this piece, which looks at total factor productivity across continents.
So, what is going on here? Why have the remarkable innovations and heavy corporate and government investments in technology not had more of a positive effect on productivity? I have my own ideas, but am curious about what others think.
7:57 AM
Friday, January 19, 2018
BONHOEFFER ON STUPIDITY AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings.
9:31 AM
Thursday, January 04, 2018
WORTHWHILE READING
We’re living in a time as if some blight has come across the earth. Something fantastic, something deep, something old, something elevated, something high is basically being obliterated.
Also from Cold Spring Shops: Collaboration creates mediocrity. I would rephrase this to say that collaboration can create mediocrity, especially when used as an unthinking buzzword and deployed as a pseudo-religion…after all, the purpose of basically all organizations is to allow people to collaborate, in various ways, to do what they could not do individually. But shallow thoughts about collaboration and de-leveling and de-siloing and de-hierarchicalization are indeed in many cases detracting from the serious work that needs to be done on organizational design.
Three from Sarah Hoyt:
9:48 AM
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