Westworld’s Consciousness Riff

The HBO remake of Westworld is superior TV in a number of ways. But its most intriguing aspect may be its foundational riff on what makes up consciousness. The basic premise is that recursive experience plus an emotional occurrence that anchors memory – especially an episode of painful loss – ignites (self) consciousness. Intriguing, yet not finally convincing. The ability to experience emotion itself requires consciousness – one must be aware of feeling such-and-such. Westworld’s premise begs the question of where that awareness comes from.

There seems to be no a priori reason to suppose that machines cannot be intelligent. It may be useful to think about intelligence as existing in more or less distinct forms. Generically, intelligence might be defined as the ability to acquire, process and apply knowledge. (Animals have varying degrees of this kind of intelligence and so may plants.) Machines have the ability to store and process information. Machine intelligence is the orderly processing of information according to governing rules (software). Both the information and the rules are externally derived and stored within the machine. The machine itself may be contained in discrete units or widely distributed (the cloud). Machines can learn – by adding and elaborating rules based on previous cycles of processing – but they can’t process information without instructions stored in memory. Cloud intelligence is machine intelligence taken to a higher level by accessing massive information from many data sources using more and many powerful processors and sophisticated software with built in “learning routines.”

Human intelligence is what we human beings have. It is what we know as manifested in thought and action. Our knowledge is stored in two places, our heads and in our culture. Culture is contained in language, traditions, techniques, art and artifacts, beliefs and whatever else carries collective knowledge across time and generations. The basic unit of human intelligence, however, remains the individual mind, which itself can be thought of as an organically based “machine.” But there seems to be a ghost in the human machine that we experience as consciousness. Mere machines cannot feel emotion – or pleasure and pain – no matter how massive the memory and computing power. And the movies Matrix and Terminator aside, machines do not inherently strive for self-preservation. Machines are not alive nor do they have “souls.” Whether because humans are organic life forms evolved over hundreds of millions of years after having crossed-over somehow from an inorganic strata or from deeper principle of the universe, we feel and experience pleasure and pain. Why is the unknown. Westworld, for all its brave speculation, sidesteps this question.

The 2016 Election

It's over and that is good.  The choice was not the best and either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders might have done better than Hillary.  She carried self-inflicted wounds and the weight of being the first serious woman candidate in a country where lots of white men are still challenged by that.  (Now watch for Elizabeth.)

However, it is also clear that yesterday the global reaction against globalization – which has benefited the rich more than the bottom – came to the US with the election of Trump as President.  Not just white men felt left behind by what seems an elite project to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest.  But if the Republican conservative fundamentalists fill Trump's Administration and have their way, our country and the world will continue coming apart and there will be many losers.  Watch for encouragement of foreign extremists (and Putin) as well as chaos in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan if the US hand is removed or rejected.  Watch for Republicans ruining the economy again with more trickle-down.  Watch for those people feeling empowered now to do nasty things to others not like them (including some who may get cabinet jobs.)  Things all around could get dangerous.  But being an optimist, one can hope that Trump will surprise in some good ways.  Perhaps centrist Congressional Republicans, Democrats in the Senate and the former Democrat version of Trump (he was one a few years back) will save us from the excesses of the campaign Trump.  Trump's victory comments were at least more presidential.  

Boy, do we ever need Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Ethnic Conflict Helps Bacteria Cooperate

A recent Science News piece reports research indicating that “bacteria assassinating each other when crowded together ironically can favor the evolution of cooperation.” This happens when different strains of bacteria are initially mixed randomly. Using their own brand of natural antibiotic, each bacterium launches an attack on its neighbors from different strains. This eventually leads – through a kind of bacterial ethnic conflict – to clumps of same strain bacteria that can then shift from expending energy on warfare with opposing clumps to cooperating with each other in its same-strain clump. As the researcher summed up: “This resulting clumpy distribution, despite its murderous origin, favors the rise of cooperation, such as secreting substances useful to a whole community.”

This seems quite clear and while not really surprising – like prefers like – also suggests a possibly illuminating thought experiment. Imagine a beneficent bacterial power – lets call it the USA (Union for Safe Association) – that seeks to use carrots and sticks – super-antibacterial agents plus sugar – to push the different strains into coexisting rather than trying to kill each other. This would require maintaining an unnatural balance and might never succeed in making each bacterium focus its energies on anything but finding other ways to win living space. Perhaps it could work as long as the USA worked diligently, non-stop and forever. But should the effort lag, nature would probably just take its course.

Despite billions of years of evolution, identity-specific living organisms – strains – seem to follow the same imperative to clump. This is the state of nature. Past human experience suggests that there are only a few ways to establish a stable order out of mixture: strong, perhaps brutal central rule (whether from inside or outside, a Leviathan), sufficient nutrient (wealth) to allow all strains a piece of the pie (Western liberal democracy), or letting nature take its course (“ethnic” conflict finally ending in more or less homogeneous entities that at least have that to be proud of). Does the human species suggest better?

What if non-avian dinosaurs survived?

There seems to be a growing consensus that the number of dinosaur species was already in decline before the great asteroid impact that ended the Cretaceous era 66 million years ago. As Science News reports, as of about 50 million years before the mass extinction the number of new dinosaur species was being eclipsed by the number going extinct and dinosaur diversity was decreasing. Duck-billed and Triceratops-type dinosaurs were doing well until the end of dinosaur days as was a group of small toothed raptors. But ultimately, only avian dinosaurs – the birds – survived.

Why did the number of dinosaur species decline over time and why did only avian dinosaurs survive? The dinosaur decline might have been due to climate change perhaps brought on by continental drift and the resulting land-form, rainfall and ocean current alterations from the late Jurassic onward. Perhaps only birds survived the long “nuclear-type” winter after the impact because they could eat carrion and seeds, of which there might have been much. Some small non-avian dinosaurs also could have been able to do the same but they might not have been able to travel long distances. Perhaps only a small number of birds – even just a few species – made it through on remote islands and as the earth recovered, they could spread. The land-bound non-avian dinosaur survivors – if any – might not have been able to reach places where their numbers could then rebound.

But what if there was no impact or somewhere creatures like the small raptors made it through? Carnivorous tyrannosaur- and velociraptor-type dinosaurs (theropods) were doing well at the end of the Cretaceous. Indeed, it may be that the hundred million year-plus competition between carnivores and herbivores had led to the evolution of a lesser number of species but ones ever more evenly matched. Some of the largest herbivores and carnivores ever were alive at the end. And it may have been that the carnivores were getting smarter, perhaps even hunting in packs. (The herbivores apparently had long been herd animals.) Seems the smaller theropods – like Troodon – were the (relatively) smarter ones. It is interesting to speculate how earth's evolutionary processes might have played out differently if at least some of these non-avian theropods had survived the great impact. With another 66 million years of evolutionary competition, might they have gotten even bigger brains, as primitive primates eventually did. Or perhaps I was just too impressed at an early age with the Gorn captain forced into combat with Captain Kirk.

Repeal the 2nd Amendment

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

There are more guns than people in the United States today. Every time there is a mass killing, some will argue for gun control and others – led by the NRA – will push back by using the opportunity to loosen guns laws even further. Mass killings get the news but many more people are killed by guns in suicides and criminal homicides.

The victims of gun death from homicide tend to be young black men. Gun crime follows the social and economic inequality of America's inner cities where our police must protect their communities while facing the possibility of being out-gunned themselves. The police are in the front lines of a society still plagued by this race-based inequality and the fact that there are too many guns too easily had.

The advocates of unrestrained “gun rights” base their case on the 2nd amendment to the US constitution. That amendment might be read to suggest that given that a state has the right of self-defense, people must be allowed to have guns so that when they come together in that state's army (militia) they know how to use them. Or it could be read to mean that people have a right to have guns in order for them to be able to protect themselves from the state. This second reading is the implicit – if not always explicit – argument of the NRA-led gun lobby. They may also seize upon the word “militia” to suggest the right to come together in bands to resist government encroachment.

The pro-gun readings of the 2nd amendment highlight the fact that the amendment itself is outdated. In 21st Century America, the notion of a citizen uprising to defend us from a central government dictatorship is simply the realm of fantasy. Indeed it has been repeatedly enacted as such in movies about citizen uprisings against foreign or alien invaders. In reality, we have a government of and by the people. When it over-reaches, there are checks and balances. (Someday, a Supreme Court may correct the notion that money is speech.) It is difficult to credit the founding fathers with the belief that they were providing the right to bear arms in order to empower the citizens of the United States to overthrow the government they themselves had established. The language of the 2nd amendment seems to make clear that the right of self-protection belonged to the state and not to individuals.

But even the first reading of the amendment – indeed any reading – must confront the clear language that for whatever the reason, the right to have guns shall not be infringed. It does appear absolute. So that should lead to the obvious conclusion that the 2nd amendment is obsolescent and injurious to the nation's health. We all – people in their homes and on the streets, police and young black men – would be safer in a country where there were no guns beyond those modest ones used by hunters and sportsmen under reasonable regulation. The 2nd amendment should be repealed.

The Senior Citizen Event Horizon

A friend at work today mentioned a news report he saw about some driver-less car going up a mountainous road with no guard rail and with passengers on board but with no one actually driving. This comes as part of a blitz of developments in smart cars and appliances, bots, the Internet of Things, wireless everywhere and Artificial Intelligence. I recently bought a smart TV mostly because I finally wanted HighDef. The TV is a 2015 model so not so smart. As far as I am concerned, this is a good thing. With OPM, the DNC, banks and businesses, etcetera, falling victim to an alarming array of professional and military hackers, I really am comfortable with all the inanimate devices I use being dumb and unconnected. I've come to realize that the ever-increasing wave of technological change has swept by me and that's okay. I'm comfortable in the world of pre-2016 things. I really don't need to live in the world of future tech. It's beyond my event horizon. I don't mind doing my own shopping list and don't see myself buying a fridge that will do it for me. My washer and dryer have settings I can set. The house thermostat responds directly to my pressing its buttons. My car does allow hand-free calls and hooks my music through Bluetooth from my iPhone. But I like driving it myself. (I even have stick.)

Those who have grown up after the time when users could write his/her own programs – I used Basic to do a recipe program on my Commodore 64 – and even more those now getting iPads in school will feel quite comfortable traveling through a world best captured in the sci-fi series of The Golden Age. Hopefully, it won't all collapse into a singularity.

What Hillary Needs to Do to Win in November

Donald Trump has been winning votes in places and with constituencies that the Democrats usually win in presidential races. Bernie Sanders has been winning votes that in the past went to Hillary. Both men have understood the dynamics of a political landscape transformed by the rise of the unprotected. Both understand that the great majority of non-elite Americans – those outside the 1% – live with varying degrees and kinds of fear. They have seen administration after administration, whichever party, remain complacent with erosion of America's place in the world, increasing inequality, loss of jobs and decay of basic infrastructure. Prospects for a better future – if not for themselves, for their children – seem to have gone up in smoke. Hillary Clinton has her core constituency of minorities but her ability to gather in those who have been voting for Trump and Sanders – working/middle class whites and the young – is very much open to question.

In part, Trump has prospered on the Republican side because of the ideological rigidity and uninspiring nature of his opponents. Clinton has been able to keep the lead on the Democratic side because of her establishment support and core constituencies. Whether the Republican establishment likes it or not, Trump has seized their party. The Democrats appear stuck with Hillary. Sanders may well have a better chance of beating Trump by keeping the traditional Democratic base while adding the young and inspired. Perhaps the party will yet grab hold of itself – what if Sanders won California? – and switch the super-delegates to Bernie. But otherwise, it will have to go into the November race with an uncharismatic, widely disliked, upholder of the establishment.

How might Hillary nevertheless win? She would have to meet Trump issue by issue with specific, focused plans to actually deal with the challenges that he only promises to overcome by merely being Trump.

Top of the list are jobs and free trade. Both parties' long adherence to the free-trade religion has clearly led to the shifting of American jobs abroad. The supposed benefits have included a plethora of imported “cheaper” goods that the working/middle class must struggle to buy with the wages of the lower paying service jobs left them. Clinton might instead call for a moratorium on free-trade agreements – including the TPP – and a re-evaluation of all existing such agreements (except for NAFTA which remains a vital part of our own neighborhood). Trade agreements that benefit far-off workers in repressive regimes – and thus help keep such regimes in power – should be special targets for possibly rolling back. Re-visiting free-trade would be accompanied by a re-industrialization program to support the creation of jobs in the productive sectors that could be competitive provided with limited government support and perhaps protective tariffs. Free-traders would offer many objections but the country at large is living with the reality that free-trade globalization may have been premature.

Clinton might also go beyond platitudes about re-building America by offering a detailed outline of infrastructure spending. Our drinking-water systems, city streets and mass transport systems, inter-city rails, highways, bridges, tunnels and waterways all need repair or replacement. Areas prone to sea-level and climate change need to be identified and communities, places and activities perhaps re-configured or relocated. Everywhere-wireless internet access might be built. All these would create good jobs and add value to our economy.

Clinton might outline detailed plans to curtail the ability of “Wall Street” – too-big-to-fail financial activities and entities – to cause or heighten economic recessions. She might also commit to seeking legislation (and Supreme Court nominees) that will reduce the role of money in our elections and enable universal voter participation. She might also decide to fund her campaign only from direct fundraising from individual small donors.

Finally, Clinton might take on directly the longstanding Republican attack on government. Government is our collective capability to act on our collective behalf. It is not the “enemy.” She should definitively eschew the sort of “triangulation” that looks to “compromise” with every 1% -inspired effort to cut government spending and target entitlements. This also means taking on the debt-issue. The US prints the world's money and there is no competitor yet on the scene.  Taxes on the well-off could be raised considerably without scaring them away. (The US is still the best place on earth to enjoy your money.) Clinton might also combine a continued commitment to a strong US defense with a commitment to look again at our need for such things as $13 billion aircraft carriers and expensive equipment and weapons that are seldom used or don't work or cost as promised.

In the general election, Trump will be the transformation candidate in the narrowest sense of trying to convince American voters that he himself is all the transformation they need. If she gets the nomination, Hillary Clinton may have to become the candidate of real, detailed plans for transformation in order to win in November.