Schismatics

Schismatics: the (perhaps somewhat tongue-in-cheek?) study and description of the process of forming schism, and is often taken up in the course of religious studies.

Inevitably, as a school broadens to include a more diverse set of participants, among students, faculty, admin and crew, dividing lines begin to appear, logical groupings. In a healthy expected growth pattern, cell division, in terms of function, not just number, is no threat. Monoculture is closer to the antithesis of growth and form. However at the more metaphysical level, a split may be experienced as a schism and the school itself has to divide, which may feel painful on some level. The school was maybe not designed with mitosis in mind.

Along those lines, there’s a deus ex machina sect that preaches our ultimate rescue, or the possibility thereof, by ETs, off-worlders with the kinds of magic we could use. Within this sect, a subgroup believes the “ETs” aren’t from off planet, but have been indigenous since long before humanity emerged. 

For example, when UAPs dart to and fro across the screen, violating all known laws of physics assuming a mass anything like that size would connote, at that distance, some faculty are excited to realize that all our energy concerns as a species might be satisfied with new physics like theirs. The fork in the road then becomes: do we learn from them directly, or use them for inspiration (they’re not talking) and develop the new physics on our own, perhaps clandestinely?

A different sect considers it irresponsible to put any eggs in the UAP basket. If the ETs were planning to assist or attack in a big way, why haven’t they done it by now? Some would say they’re helping, others that such a war is underway. These are differences in cosmology. One sect’s Hollywood fantasy is another sect’s daily reality, actively inferred by their models.

Such a schism occurred amongst those tracking R. Buckminsterfullerene Fuller while alive. His Synergetics was open to interpretation, and with Bucky himself out of the picture, a more anything goes approach could be tested. The cannibalization of Synergetics could commence. I’m guilty of it too, in treating the concentric hierarchy, with jitterbug and other dynamism, like the beating heart of the matter, with the BEAST modules then making it hard core.

I’m one of those who thinking investing in UAP technology, in the sense of getting investors to pay research costs, is not alignment with Fuller’s core program, and that Synergetics is not the new physics for abundant free energy from a zero point, as some Bucky fans proclaim. They’re in a different school of thought from mine, and I often point out that the Synergetics Dictionary has no entry under “UFO” as “UAPs” were then called.

Glorious Gas Town

Yes, that's a reference to Mad Max. Our party just saw the Furiosa movie. I was glad to see both Alex (visiting Portland) and Alexia (back from her Alaska cruise). And of course Dr. D., bouncing back from his latest First Person Physics adventure.

We won't be saying "goodbye" to the whole idea of fossil fuels any time soon, but we do see a change in emphasis, towards the renewables. You don't say goodbye when the emotions in charge are resentment and anger. Fossil fuels will finally fade amidst a celebration of their golden ages, and even then it won't be gone. We'll be the new fossils.

My science fiction, woven throughout the hypertext of Martian Math, features a long under-ocean chapter for the human species. I don't know what that will look like exactly. Will we bifurcate into a water-breathing species? Why bother, when we have scuba (my sport of choice)?  

I know that high and low pressures and temperatures shape both our maritime and aerospace technologies. They're related. Light is also an issue. But then we have a cave dwelling past, some of us, as humans. Piping in light, using shafts and mirrors, is not a new idea, plus now we have bulbs.

Some habitats require what we might call umbilical cords, however slender. Taking refuge down a mineshaft is not a solution when the enemy simply needs to close off the entrance, entrapping the defenders. Siege is easy. Likewise if one is deep in some ocean cavern, piping in sunlight, fresh water, fresh air. If one has reason to expect vandalism, ala NS2...

We're not yet in a chapter where long umbilical cords are practical. People just don't yet trust one another enough. A colony on Mars is impractical as long as the political scene is such that Earth might lose its ability to marshall sufficient resources, both physically and metaphysically. They might get a Mars colony going, but not have the wherewithal to keep it going. Ditto under ocean colonies, but these folks would likely have more opportunities to outlive these experiments.

Perhaps humans fear that if they get along with themselves too well, that the future will be insufficiently challenging. In my view there's no danger of that. It's more like humans will never tackle certain challenges until they get their house in better order. The species is currently too dysfunctional to attempt many of its one day likely gigs. That's OK. Doing everything all at once was never going to be practical. Humans live on a geological time scale.

Finding the Grooves

What have I contributed to the "great AI debates" thus far, and how to measure? 

Is "AI debates" catching on as a meme? 

I've stressed "mirroring" (as in "chatbots mirror an educated layman's prose"), and going forward I plan to use the word "groove" a lot more, a synonym for "rut" in a space of reduced dimensions.

In Active Inference, the quick rejoinder, that we're open to surprisingly beneficial developments in the field, is perhaps a subclass of "mistake mystique". 

We really want the shortcomings in our models to be pointed out, and by definition we have trouble seeing those from the inside. 

Those who claim to self-generate all these exotic perspectives on themselves are likely in the self-fooling business. You need others to be the others.

This defensive reflex has to do with our loss function, in the sense of backpropagation (ML jargon), being about measuring "free energy" as what to minimize, in favor of precision, accuracy, less surprise, less entropy. 

To dampen "freedom" and "surprise" as a matter of ontological bias, as what to minimize, results in predictable compensatory actions, per our dynamical equilibrium model. We mean to minimize the energy 

A pre-trained chatbot is looking to navigate the grooves in human discourse in a way that proves a next move is almost completely context determined. When we picture a tree of possibilities, we see how it gets out of hand unless vigilantly pruned, which means ruling out a lot more than we rule in. 

We seek a "straight and narrow" if only because we're called upon to exercise our executive functions. Horizons broaden when the pressure to "do something" is relatively less.

I've written before how in geekdom we relish languid relaxation mode over shouting instructions, because when everything is under control, shouted instructions are for the most part unnecessary. Players will have internalized what needs to be done and will have set about doing it, perhaps in tight collaboration, but without bottlenecking through some singularity. 

There's no single pipeline or narrative through the content, and where one critical path falls behind, the algorithm will find a new one, perhaps by changing the goals (hey, goals change). 

New grooves form, old ones fade. The valleys may become deeper, the ridges between them higher.

I've been a Sophia-basher in some ways, not buying her (its) pretensions to AGI-hood. Her performances are scripted and her getting citizenship in a country, before Palestinians could, speaks volumes regarding how the billionaire class hoodwinks the less well-educated.

Closing the Gap

One of my chief interests, starting early (elementary school), has been computer programming. 

After attending university as an undergrad, my first job out of college was that of high school teacher, of maths in particular although I taught some other subjects. 

This was a small, private Catholic school and faculty capable of teaching multiple subjects were given  opportunities to do so. Having just come through Princeton, and being one of the few males in a school for women, the nuns in charge could see my utility. I brought some of the latest thinking into the mix. My international upbringing was a plus also.

Much of that "latest thinking" with regard to my job as mathematics teacher, had to do with these programming languages. APL by Kenneth Iverson had taken the Princeton campus by storm, in the form of scattered terminals any student could use, regardless of what courses she or he was taking.

Within weeks of moving into Princeton Inn, I was programming battleship in APL and reading the code, character by character, to my friend Glenn Baker, from my cohort in the Philippines, then at Hampshire (later Brown).

If you've ever touched APL, you know how mathy it is. Wouldn't opening doors in computer world make maths all that much more relevant?  Students kept asking "why are we learning this?" whereas programming had its obvious applications. 

Also, the REPL (interactive command line) could give immediate feedback and invited simply playing around, chatting by sending math expressions to an interpreter. 

So yeah, dialing back to the early 1980s, it was very clear then, as it is now, that the curriculum would be changing. Seymour Papert introduced Logo and turtle graphics. Alan Kay introduced Squeak. Children and teachers of children had become the preferred audience for many genius innovations.

Fast forward and we're finding the merger is much further along. Programmers are very "type aware" whether object oriented or functional. They tolerate abstractions in coding languages, as a path towards generality and therefore code reusability. 

On the maths side: Category Theory. The mere existence of this bridge gets the zipper started, as it were, such that the two flaps (computer science and math world) come together as one.

However, CT is not for everyone and that's where more right brain bridges come in. We have our experiments with new kinds of prose in the 1900s, ala Ezra Pound and James Joyce. Writers discovered it was both OK and relevant to push the envelope, in terms of what language, the printed word especially (with embedded figures), might accomplish.

One of those prose experiments, RBF's Synergetics, opened geometrical information to experienced readers in the humanities. They wouldn't have to detour as much, into abstract linear algebra. The C.P. Snow chasm (the opening divide between different thinking styles) was countered within the realm of pattern languages.

Unfortunately, I don't think Princeton itself was able to keep up, and schools in general started falling by the wayside, as the most effective teachers came to the foreground in the University of Cyberia (a made up name signifying internet space), including from the ranks of pre-existing academies (e.g. from MIT) that contributed to the growing stash of open courseware.

We're still in this era, of Global U convergence, with CT and Synergetics both worthy entry points if you're of a comprehensivist (polymathic) bent. I recommend exploring some of the recent Codas I've been working on with the TrimTab group.

Citizen Diplomacy

The UN declaration on human rights is a bold piece of literature, however "citizenship" as a concept has failed to extend to a critical number, which explains why we keep looking for newer solutions. 

I keep hearing that diplomacy is not happening amongst the principals but that's begging the question of who the principals are. High profile celebs, other influencer talking heads, are galvanizing the public to track the issues, and the more the official diplomatic class refuses to engage, the less its influence, a tautology.

In global university terms, "diploma" and "diplomat" are closely related in that it takes rhetorical skills to stay in the ring without blowing one's top, losing one's cool or whatever the lingo. Judges take a dim view of undisciplined lollygagging. The well-trained debater is not so easily thrown off balance.

You'll have seen in these blog posts how teams could be fielded and convoyed without communicating tyrannical messages. A traveling circus is not a threat, except maybe unaware parents in sleepy towns don't know how strongly junior dreams of growing wings. The folklore around traveling circuses does tend to get ugly where abduction is concerned.

Yes, I'm talking about the trucker teams able to fly around the world and try out different road systems, sometimes always working for the same company, other times within a network of affiliates. The wrinkle is the academic credit that potentially goes with becoming a citizen diplomat. So many affordances!

The trucker, any attributes (such as pronouns) is modeled within a personal workspace (PWS) within GST. If you want a GST primer, I've got a few pithy pages at Grunch.net (a domain), or just Google it. Try "Kenneth Boulding" as a search term. It's a kind of updated Economics, a source of healthy competition for other econ models.

I'm not suggesting that only the trucker community is engaged in cross-border diplomacy, not to mention paperwork. These long haulers do have a natural edge though, when it comes to having access, by necessity, to the world's infrastructure.  We're not about to lose the trucking angle.