ASI, "Artificial Superintelligence?" Update post.

What is artificial general intelligence (AGI) and how close are we to getting there? What defines the next step, called artificial superintelligence (ASI), and why might the gap between those two be so dangerous? When machines become smarter than us, what roles are left for humanity? Should we think of AI as software, or as something we’re raising like a child? Will tomorrow’s AI destroy us, ignore us, or protect us? This week Eagleman talks with computer scientist & AI researcher Ben Goertzel.

A totally fascinating discussion. Savor every minute. Notwithstanding my long-standing interest in a breadth of AI topics, I was not aware of Ben Goertzel. My Bad.

 

Total Badass.

 

Wonder what he'd have to say about this: "AI slop and scientific publishing?" 

 

Ben lives in the Seattle area. Makes me like him all the more. I have serious PacNW history. See here and here. Still have many dear friends there.

 

Check out his Substack. Bracing stuff.

 

apropos, some closing observations from this 1976 book.

 

Other Senses, Other Worlds, Ch. 11, Beyond Human Intelligence

…Is this as far as we can extrapolate from what we know of Laboratory Earth in our attempts to see into our own future or into other worlds?

Actually, it is not. It is within the realm of our reason and imagination to catch glimpses of still more distant possible descendants. We see that in nature successful solutions often arise by what is called convergence—that is, they arise independently in different lines that are often separated in time and place and are in no way related to each other, because these lines have encountered similar environmental problems and have coped with them in a similar way precisely because that solution is an efficient one.

Prehensile tails, for example, have developed in many kinds of monkey (although not in all), in the common opposum, and in several related
species, in the true chameleon and a few lesser genera, and in a fish, the sea horse. Similar needs in these disparate creatures have evoked a similar response in the structure and function of the tail.

In earlier pages we have from time to time described what amounts to a group brain as it exists among earth's social insects, which produces intelligent solutions, although the individuals comprising the groups are separately only capable of comparatively stereotyped actions. What if a group brain were to evolve where all the individuals were possessed of the kind of superbrain and superintelligence we are attributing to Homo neocorticus?

Utilizing the concept of convergence, we see that the social insects, by the use of chemical substances—the pheromones—that give off distinctive odors, have achieved almost instant communication, an important element in their cooperative actions. In a mass brain of cooperative superbrains that might evolve from Homo neocorticus, we could imagine an absolutely new type of communication emerging, no longer either verbal or even more refinedly symbolical. It could be a direct brain-to-brain awareness promoted by an individual brain's electric charges that might be intensified or modified so as to constitute an instant transmission without any kind of language, receptor mechanisms being evolved within the brain itself.

In order to conceptualize this thought, we paid a visit to a modern laboratory where electroencephalograms of patients being tested for brain disturbances are being recorded and processed all day long. We saw there a technician in her middle years who had spent all her working life recording and interpreting the "squiggles" registered by inked points onto long rolls of papers as they responded finely to the electric emanations of the patients' brains. The lengths of paper were subsequently folded into bound volumes.

This technician could open any of those records and read them, understanding all they implied, as easily as we read any page printed in our own language, and she was teaching her young assistants to do the same. In other words, the direct electric emanations from half a dozen different areas of the patient's brain simultaneously, with their respective periods of excitement and calm, had clear meaning for her, and she could read like a book any of the volumes in the large library of records of brain activity that were assembled on the shelves of her office. If we can imagine these inked lines of the EEC squiggles as an extremely primitive and crude form of what might ultimately evolve as a form of direct brain-to-brain communication, we believe we have a plausible model on which to base our speculations about our descendant species-after-next. Such instantaneous communication could easily suffuse an entire group and make possible intelligent mass action of an order that we can no longer imagine, or even speculate about.

The question that remains is: Why such a brain? What possible environmental circumstance could ever evoke it? And the answer is that once a higher intelligence appears on the natural scene, it makes its own environment. It is a matter of common observation among ourselves that every human being leaves a mark of his or her own personality upon surroundings. A housewife's individuality can almost be read by the condition in which we find her house—the order or disorder in which it is kept, the way it is furnished and decorated, the implements and equipment she uses. A man's fields or garden, office or workshop or den, also reveal much about him. It would seem that something of the brain and perhaps of the whole nervous system of each of us is displayed in the environments we make for ourselves. Even the little bowerbird reveals his individuality in the small objects he uses to decorate his bower and in his arrangement of them. And so we feel we are justified in assuming that as a brain evolves in complexity, it will surely be to the accompaniment of an increasingly complex ambience.

Human beings originally lived in the same "nature" as all other animals, and many still live very closely with it. If we camp in a forest, we do not actually need our superior mental equipment—that other creatures live out their lives in that forest is evidence of this. But most of us no longer live in natural settings, and even those who do, modify them with such artifacts as fire, weapons, and tools.

Today, all of mankind, some to a smaller but most to a larger extent, make our own habitats, and our man-made environment becomes more and more complex. Moreover, in the process of adjusting to our increasingly artificial surroundings, we become less and less fitted to live in natural ones, and so the course upon which we are embarked is far more likely to continue than to be reversed. For Homo neocorticus we can project a habitat of, to us, incredible complexity, and we can imagine that this will provide the spur that could eventually produce the Group-brained neocorticus, whom we could no longer designate as Homo.

At this point we pass our project over to our reader to use his or her imagination to visualize a meeting between Homo sapiens and Group-brained neocorticus, or its prototype as it may exist somewhere in the vastness of the universe.

'eh?

 

Stay tuned... 

apropos of The Ship of Theseus

Golden Era Update 47

AI slop and scientific publishing

A Science Magazine OpEd.
   

AI in scientific publishing: Slower, worse, and more expensive
H. HOLDEN THORP, Ed., Science Magazine

There’s a saying in the management world, popularized by NASA administrator Daniel Goldin in the 1990s, that the goal of technological improvements is to make products faster, better, and cheaper. Although this strategy had some success in the aerospace industry, the zealots of artificial intelligence (AI) have been making the same argument regarding how it will transform work, claiming that so little human effort will be required that humanity will enter an era of radical abundance, free from disease, drudgery, and danger, among other benefits, leaving society with more time for creative pursuits. But history tells a different story. When machines began to increase productivity during the second industrial revolution, American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor’s The Principles of Scientific Management encouraged corporations to use surveillance to get employees to work harder and longer, an approach that exhausted and discouraged workers and led to the transfer of knowledge and any decision-making from workers to management, while enriching the profits for only those at the top. Yet, it remains foundational to the American economic enterprise. Indeed, scientific publishing is starting to experience some Taylorism with the insertion of AI. Rigorous human checking of AI-generated research papers is creating bottlenecks as publishers strive to maintain the integrity of the scientific record. The challenge is requiring even more human effort, making the whole endeavor slower and more expensive...

 

These factors are complicating scientific publishing. The rate of research submissions at Science and other journals is increasing because conducting research and producing papers are accelerating. But because more papers contain more AI-generated errors, greater human oversight is required to check the findings...

 

The creation of robust human-curated scientific literature has never been more crucial. The propagation of AI slop in the scientific record and generally on the internet is making science less trustworthy...The history of Taylorism indicates that society should fight to protect the welfare and agency of those being pushed to do too much by technology in the name of production.

If the scientific community fails to address the influence of AI, then authentic research and validated findings will slow down to an expensive trickle into established knowledge, and the opportunities for flawed or fabricated information to be seen as reality will grow—all while AI profiteers cash in.

TAYLORISM, UGH

INTRODUCTION 

President Roosevelt in his address to the Governors at the White House, prophetically remarked that “The conservation of our national resources is only preliminary to the larger question of national efficiency.” 

 

The whole country at once recognized the importance of conserving our material resources and a large movement has been started which will be effective in accomplishing this object. As yet, however, we have but vaguely appreciated the importance of “the larger question of increasing our national efficiency.” 

 

We can see our forests vanishing, our water-powers going to waste, our soil being carried by floods into the sea; and the end of our coal and our iron is in sight. But our larger wastes of human effort, which go on every day through such of our acts as are blundering, ill-directed, or inefficient, and which Mr. Roosevelt refers to as a lack of “national efficiency,” are less visible, less tangible, and are but vaguely appreciated. 

 

We can see and feel the waste of material things. Awkward, inefficient, or ill-directed movements of men, however, leave nothing visible or tangible behind them. Their appreciation calls for an act of memory, an effort of the imagination. And for this reason, even though our daily loss from this source is greater than from our waste of material things, the one has stirred us deeply, while the other has moved us but little. 

 

As yet there has been no public agitation for “greater national efficiency,” no meetings have been called to consider how this is to be brought about. And still there are signs that the need for greater efficiency is widely felt. 

 

The search for better, for more competent men, from the presidents of our great companies down to our household servants, was never more vigorous than it is now. And more than ever before is the demand for competent men in excess of the supply. 

 

What we are all looking for, however, is the readymade, competent man; the man whom someone else has trained. It is only when we fully realize that our duty, as well as our opportunity, lies in systematically cooperating to train and to make this competent man, instead of in hunting for a man whom someone else has trained, that we shall be on the road to national efficiency. 

 

In the past the prevailing idea has been well expressed in the saying that “Captains of industry are born, not made”; and the theory has been that if one could get the right man, methods could be safely left to him. In the future it will be appreciated that our leaders must be trained right as well as born right, and that no great man can (with the old system of personal management) hope to compete with a number of ordinary men who have been properly organized so as efficiently to cooperate. 

 

In the past the man has been first; in the future the system must be first. This in no sense, however, implies that great men are not needed. On the contrary, the first object of any good system must be that of developing first-class men; and under systematic management the best man rises to the top more certainly and more rapidly than ever before. 

 

This paper has been written: 

 

First. To point out, through a series of simple illustrations, the great loss which the whole country is suffering through inefficiency in almost all of our daily acts. 

 

Second. To try to convince the reader that the remedy for this inefficiency lies in systematic management, rather than in searching for some unusual or extraordinary man. 

 

Third. To prove that the best management is a true science, resting upon clearly defined laws, rules, and principles, as a foundation. And further to show that the fundamental principles of scientific management are applicable to all kinds of human activities, from our simplest individual acts to the work of our great corporations, which call for the most elaborate cooperation. And, briefly, through a series of illustrations, to convince the reader that whenever these principles are correctly applied, results must follow which are truly astounding. 

 

This paper was originally prepared for presentation to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. The illustrations chosen are such as, it is believed, will especially appeal to engineers and to managers of industrial and manufacturing establishments, and also quite as much to all of the men who are working in these establishments. It is hoped, however, that it will be clear to other readers that the same principles can be applied with equal force to all social activities: to the management of our homes; the management of our farms; the management of the business of our tradesmen, large and small; of our churches, our philanthropic institutions our universities, and our governmental departments.

Frederick Winslow Taylor. The Principles of Scientific Management (pp. 5-7). (Function). Kindle Edition.  

I came to the "quality control & management" movement in 1986 when I took up 5 & 1/2 yrs of contract employment with a forensic-level environmental radiation laboratory in Oak Ridge.

 

I joined ASQ—back then "ASQC," the "American Society for Qualty Control." I served the Lab as a technical apps programmer and Statistical Process Control analyst (SPC).

 

Back then, "Taylorism" was a cautionary tale of the outdated (mostly white male) paternalistic past. The Main Dudes were Shewhart and Deming.

 

  

 

Shewhart was esteemed history. Deming was methodologically "Biblical" in the era. We were all in. I soaked it all in. In 1992 I passed the intimidating ASQ Exam for Certified Quality Engineer. The 4-hour open book test from Hell with a fail rate of 50%. I headed to the nearest bar after finishing.

 

My subsequent Cert was 'Total Quality Management / Continuous Quality Improvement" issued in the wake of 6 moths' training at IHC in Salt Lake City. 

 

Eventually, all things went "Lean."

 

I became a member of ASQ's "Lean Division." Touted "Lean" books here on the blog.

 

 

When I began posting this blog, I made ample note of my affinity for progressive QC/QA/QI methods. By 2016 I was covering various "Lean Heathcare" events. On the heels of that stuff came our mixed-metaphor "Agile" schtick. (My dubiety reeks a bit.)

I eventually became the ASQ Las Vegas Section 705 Chairman, and then went on to co-found and lead the Nevada Quality Alliance (NvQA), a state-level Baldrige-modeled nonprofit assessment and award program.

QI has by now turned out to be a mixed blessing. Specifically under the likes of Jeff Bezos et al, much of it has become faux-quantifed (e.g., "6-Sigma") gussied-up Taylorism. I am pleased to see AAAS voicing their/our concerns. Unsure at this point as to what will prove to be effective remediation.

"The creation of robust human-curated scientific literature has never been more crucial. The propagation of AI slop in the scientific record and generally on the internet is making science less trustworthy."

apropos: "Is there a 'science' of science communication?"

 

CODA

[NY Times] A Florida pastor sued OpenAI on Wednesday, claiming that its chatbot, ChatGPT, had offered him “extremely dangerous medical recommendations” that led to delayed care for a life-threatening pulmonary embolism last year.

The lawsuit claims that ChatGPT had assured Scott Winters that the early warning signs of his health crisis were “not something dangerous,” and had dissuaded him from seeking medical advice, instead telling him to trust that “God did not design your body to endlessly fail.”

The suit, filed in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco, accuses OpenAI and its chief executive, Sam Altman, of negligence and the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” pointing to moments when the chatbot offered Mr. Winters diagnoses and treatment plans and encouraged him to ignore pleas from friends and family to seek medical care… 

Practicing Medicine without a license or SME.

My enervating decade of The Donald

 

Closer to 11 years now, actually. He was ramping up his noises about running for President in 2015. Many people found the notion utterly absurd. I did not. 

 

In late 2015 I underwent 9 weeks of daily radiation therapy for treatment of prostate cancer. My rad tech folks and I joked that we should name my tumor "The Donald."

 

"So, what're we doin' today? Let's Nuke The Donald, shall we?"

 

In 2016 most people I knew still tended to blow Trump off. He was a gauche clown who didn't have a chance of winning the Presidency. Women in particular tended to be in the thrall of the prospect of Hillary smashing the Glass Ceiling. Her Sheet was compelling, particularly in contrast to the crude Donald Trump.

 

I was uneasy. I began voicing my concerns in April 2016 on another blog platform. Excerpt: 

Where’s the “Pre-Crimes Unit” when you need one?


Put aside the endless onslaught of reflexively arrogant, belligerent, and vulgar P.T. Barnum bombast. Forget the neurotic, tellingly insecure “The-Beautiful-Thing-About-Me-Is-I’m-REALLY-Rich” fixation, replete with gauche, ostentatiously cheesy gold-plated fixtures and escalators, and the “Finest Polished Marble.” Never mind the (made in China) monogrammed shirts and pastel silk ties, redolent of arriviste exhibitionist 60’s Manhattan throwback 4-Color Glossy tabloid “Style and Elegance.” Forget the creepy, objectifying, lecherous “Nice Tits,” “Down on Your Knees” sash, bikini, big hair, and spike heels misogyny. Forget that everyone who dares dispute Him is “A Loser,” “Weak,” “Stupid,” “A Moron,” “Disgusting,” “3rd-Rate,” “A Stiff,” “A Dope,” “A Low-Life” — someone to perhaps be the target of the latest 500 million dollar empty Trump lawsuit threat du jour.

Let pass the patently phony “I’m a Strong Evangelical” whose “favorite book” is “da BIBLE!” Forget the low-intellect Moths-To-The-Flame Totem comprising that stupidass Mexican Wall proposal. Forget the equally phony “I Have Many, Many Great Friends Here in ______________.” Forget the blindingly obvious time-worn boiler room grift M.O. of “Trump University®,” “Trump Network®,” “Trump Baja Ocean Resort®,” and “Trump Institute®.” Put aside that in the net worth ranking of world billionaires he’s a rounding error (Update: I’ve coined the hashtag “#BiglyFakeBillionaire”).

Forget his eye-rollingly fatuous “only rich people should be allowed to play golf.”

Forget that “maybe protestors should get roughed up.” “Maybe I’ll pay the [attackers’] legal expenses.”

Forget that “women must be punished” (well, uh, maybe not, at least until after Wisconsin).

Put aside all of that, along with the the rest of the maudlin, panoramic accruing expanse of its kindred lowbrow, cognitive-pollution Time Share Closer bullshit (see, btw, Harry Frankfurt’s instructive book “On Bullshit”).

Focus on, remember, and act against the truly important stuff.

Call them our Pre-Crimes Portents.

He’s dog-whistling war crimes. Without much subtlety, as is his style.

Our chronic domestic discord aside, in the face of a maddeningly complex, irredicibly dangerous, and all-too-requently corrupt world of international geopolitics comprised of ~7.4 billion contending people, Donald J. Trump proposes that we simply ignore or explicitly abrogate myriad inconvenient international obligations (akin to the way he has long viewed his multiple corporate bankruptcies as expedient “smart strategic defaults”); he would have us abandon NATO (an Inaugural Ball gift to Vladimir?). He would have us part company with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states. He claims that 23% of humanity — Islam — “hates us” and should be banned from the U.S.

And — “wink, wink” — perhaps nuked.

Donald Trump would also apparently be OK with the Koreas and Japan all going nuclear. Were a war to break out, he simply says during a Rothschild, Wisconsin GOP primary rally “If it happens, it happens. Good luck. Enjoy yourselves.”...
_____

A PERSONAL NOTE: 

 

Shortly after Donald Trump's 1st term Jan 20th inaugural my younger daughter Danielle was diagnosed with terminal Stage IV metastatic pancreatic cancer. Unreal. The ensuing 13 months until she succumbed were pure hell. The Trump clown car follies certainly did not help matters.

_____ 

 

FAST FORWARD TO JANUARY 2021

 

Lordy, did I ever get this wrong (below).

 

 

And, so here we are in mid-July 2026.

 

 

COUPLE MORE READS ON TRUMP

 

 

I'm up to close to 2 dozen books on The Donald by now.

 

CODA

 

This had to have been a factor in Trump's decision to run in 2016. Ya feel me?

Dispositive Deep Dive Analytic Commentary on POTUS Donald Trump's July 16th National Prime Time TV Address

ANY Dissent is now "Radical Left Terrorism"

Whitehouse.gov

Today, the Trump Administration convened senior officials from governments around the world to launch an unprecedented global offensive against the transnational threat of Radical Left terrorism. Under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, far-left extremism will be treated with the same seriousness and ferocity the world has long reserved for jihadist terrorism.

* Secretary of State Rubio exposed the longstanding, willful blindness to left-wing violence: “Our counterterrorism doctrine has had a blind spot when it comes to extremist violence from the political left. Even today, the very idea that far-left terrorism could be a serious threat is treated as a right-wing fever dream.”

* Secretary Rubio warned that left-wing terrorism has surged to levels not seen in decades: “Today, we face a new wave of this old evil. Here in the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in decades… Americans have seen what those numbers mean.”


* Secretary Rubio detailed the transnational nature of the threat: “Antifa militants and their comrades travel from across Europe and to the Americas to participate in each other’s attacks, to funnel propaganda and training, materials, and target information through shared encrypted channels — moving through underground networks of safe houses, and finance and sustain their operations through transnational funds.”


* Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent announced powerful tools to combat illicit funding: “At President Trump’s direction, Treasury is expanding its efforts to identify organizations that abuse charitable and nonprofit structures as vehicles for illicit finance. We are examining where tax-exempt status has been exploited, where charitable entities have become financial conduits for foreign influence activity…”


* Secretary Bessent vowed to dismantle the financial infrastructure sustaining left-wing terrorism: “We will identify illicit funding, however artfully it is concealed. We will dismantle the networks that sustain political terrorism, however respectable their fronts may be. We will pursue those who enable political violence, however distant their jurisdictions.”


* Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller made clear there must be no retreat: “One of the hallmarks of left-wing violence and terrorism is its completely pre-textual and disingenuous appeal to civil liberties in an effort to shield its own violence… When the leftist — who does not believe in freedom, who does not believe in civil rights, who does not believe in any ordinary notion of justice — protests that we are violating his rights, understand the he is lying to try to persuade people who are not closely following the political scene that some injustice has perpetrated against him. We must stay the course and be completely unflinching in the pursuit of justice against these enemies of civilization.”


* Miller outlined the historic actions already taken by the Trump Administration: “Here in the United States, we have taken the necessary and essential action formally recognizing left-wing violence as a form of political terrorism that is a direct threat to our national security and the survival of our republican form of government.”

This is a sustained campaign to eradicate a violent ideology that targets police, civilians, and the very foundations of free societies.

Last year, President Trump designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization and unleashed a relentless campaign to dismantle the left-wing terrorism and bring its perpetrators to justice. Their funding is now being cut off, and international partners are now coordinating to shut down their safe havens, propaganda channels, and cross-border operations.

Under President Trump, Radical Left terrorism is finally being confronted as the organized, transnational threat it actually is.

______

Dissent is now "terrorism." 

Low T-Bawl

The jokes just write themselves.

9 pm EDT, July 16th, 2026. We can hardly wait.

[per WBAL-TV] President Donald Trump said that his Thursday night address will focus on “free and fair elections” and include “really big news.”

Trump on Monday announced the “Speech to the Nation” in a social media post but offered no details other than the 9 p.m. ET time. Asked in the Oval Office Tuesday to preview the speech, and specifically if it’s about elections, Trump replied: “Well, I’d rather save it, it will concern that subject, and we’ll have a couple of other things to say, but I’d rather save it.”

“But it’s really big news,” he continued. “It’s really, really big news, and our country has to shape up.”

“It doesn’t get bigger because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country,” the president added. “We’ll be discussing other things too, but it’s going to be a very big announcement.”

The media will likely be speculating about this ad nauseum until it airs.

 

JULY 15 UPDATE: POSTED ON FACEBOOK

 

UPDATE

Excellent discussion. BTW: Priors involving Maggie.

 

UPDATE 

Marco Rubio Kickstarts Wild Summit on “Far-Left Political Terrorism”
The U.S. is hosting an international summit on the dangers of “left-wing terrorism.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio held a "Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism" on Thursday (July 16th), as he and diplomats from dozens of countries discussed how to further quash what they see as left-wing terrorism. FBI Director Kash Patel, White House adviser Stephen Miller, and Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar were among those in attendance.

"This is what radical leftism is. They may wear various different slogans and ideologies across place and time. They can call themselves anti-capitalists, or anti-imperialists, communists, or anarchists, or Marxists," Rubio said, tapping into the modern McCarthyism that has helped define the second Trump administration. "But the fundamental character is always the same.... It is a poisonous resentment cloaked in the language of equality, justice, liberation-an overwhelming need to tear down what greater men have built.... Through violence and through terror, they once again seek to impose their ugliness on all of us.”...

So, "leftwing" dissent = "terrorism."

"The Rise of Collective Studipity"

Resonates nicely with my July 7th post. Quite timely. For starters, define "stupidity."

 

UPDATE

…Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38 percent read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.) Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: Last year, 57 percent of Americans placed a bet…

An excellent long-read at The Atlantic. 

Speaking of books,
 

Cory's book just came out. I've cited Josh's book before.

 

More shortly...

Seriously, dawg?

Buh-bye, Mr. Platner

Effective Dissent in our Age of Fear

    

I love Jacob Soboroff's new MS NOW show "Connect." It's where I was apprised of this timely new book last weekend. On Courage jumped my endless Kindle backlog rope line.
 

Serious piece of work thus far. I'm way into it already. Some related priors, quickly: "The ICE Storm," "Oopsie...Too Late." 

_____

 

STING

'eh?
 

UPDATE

 

I was just watching PBS News Hour and saw a segment featuring this author.

 

A Professor at UPenn.

 

Amazon blurb:

A compelling exploration of concrete strategies to reduce partisan animosity by building on what Democrats and Republicans have in common.

One of the defining features of twenty-first-century American politics is the rise of affective polarization: Americans increasingly not only disagree with those from the other party but distrust and dislike them as well. This has toxic downstream consequences for both politics and social relationships. Is there any solution?

Our Common Bonds shows that—although there is no silver bullet that will eradicate partisan animosity—there are concrete interventions that can reduce it. Matthew Levendusky argues that partisan animosity stems in part from partisans’ misperceptions of one another. Democrats and Republicans think they have nothing in common, but this is not true. Drawing on survey and experimental evidence, the book shows that it is possible to help partisans reframe the lens through which they evaluate the out-party by priming commonalities—specifically, shared identities outside of politics, cross-party friendships, and common issue positions and values identified through civil cross-party dialogue. Doing so lessons partisan animosity, and it can even reduce ideological polarization. The book discusses what these findings mean for real-world efforts to bridge the partisan divide.  

 I've just downloaded the Amazon preview for some initial impressions. to wit,

1. Is Overcoming Division a Fantasy? 

On a blustery January day, just moments after being sworn in as the forty-sixth president of the United States of America, Joe Biden delivered an address centered on “that most elusive of things in a democracy: unity.” This was perhaps a slightly odd choice, as the country seemed to be more divided than ever. Just two weeks before, supporters of former President Trump had stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to block the certification of Biden’s victory in the November 2020 election. January 6 marked only the second time in US history that the Capitol had been breached, but the first time that American citizens—rather than foreign troops—had been the ones doing the ransacking. Even before that insurrection, few would have characterized the United States as unified: the country was seemingly torn asunder by divides over how to address the COVID-19 pandemic and associated economic recession, as well as a centuries-overdue reckoning about the legacy of slavery and racism. Dissolution, not unity, seemed like a more appropriate topic for the moment. 

Biden acknowledged that there were deep and significant challenges to be overcome. But he argued that to confront these challenges, we have to “end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal.” He acknowledged that this will be difficult, and that unity does not imply unanimity: “The right to dissent peaceably, within the guardrails of our Republic, is perhaps our nation’s greatest strength. Yet hear me clearly: Disagreement must not lead to disunion.” But he argued that if we could come together as one, we could “heal a broken land” and “write an American story of hope, not fear, of unity, not division, of light, not darkness” (Biden 2021). 

Those stirring words, poetic as they were, likely seemed hopelessly naïve to most Americans. Biden himself acknowledged as much, saying that he knew his words sounded like “a foolish fantasy” to many. The public agreed with his assessment: in a poll by the Pew Research Center early in his term, of all of the issues polled, the public was the least confident in Biden’s ability to unify the country, even when compared to major challenges like responding to the COVID-19 pandemic or reforming immigration policy (Pew Research Center 2021). This skepticism reflects the conventional wisdom about American politics: politicians in Washington, DC, are hopelessly divided and cannot come together on almost any issue, and ordinary voters are little better. Indeed, not only do voters disagree with one another, they also fundamentally dislike and distrust one another. This animosity seemingly eviscerates any calls for unity among members of the public…

the conventional wisdom about American politics: politicians in Washington, DC, are hopelessly divided and cannot come together on almost any issue, and ordinary voters are little better. Indeed, not only do voters disagree with one another, they also fundamentally dislike and distrust one another. This animosity seemingly eviscerates any calls for unity among members of the public…

Levendusky, Matthew (2023). Our Common Bonds: Using What Americans Share to Help Bridge the Partisan Divide (Loc 60). Kindle Edition.  

Seems relevant to the topic. Note a few priors, too: "High Conflict," "The Age of Grievance," "A Science of Deliberation?" "Civility," anyone? "Being Influential." Also, how about a shout-out to one of Matthew's UPENN colleagues, Kermit Roosevelt III.

 

I'm pretty far along into On Courage tonight. Lots to reflect upon.

 

ANOTHER UPDATE

 

CLICK

Stay tuned...

Trumped by The FIFA World Cup 2026 Orange Card

FINIS:
Belgium 4, U.S. 1 in regulation

Who/what are we? Are we actually "verbs?"

What? 

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In the moment of transition between life and death, only one thing changes: you lose the momentum of the biochemical cycles that keep the machinery running. In the moment before death, you are still composed of the same thousand trillion trillion atoms as in the moment after death— the only difference is that their neighborly network of social interactions has ground to a halt. 

At that moment, the atoms begin to drift apart, no longer enslaved to the goals of keeping up a human form. The interacting pieces that once constructed your body begin to unravel like a sweater, each thread spiraling off in a different direction. Following your last breath, those thousand trillion trillion atoms begin to blend into the earth around you. As you degrade, your atoms become incorporated into new constellations: the leaf of a staghorn fern, a speckled snail shell, a kernel of maize, a beetle’s mandible, a waxen bloodroot, a ptarmigan’s tail feather. 

But it turns out your thousand trillion trillion atoms were not an accidental collection: each was labeled as composing you and continues to be so wherever it goes. So you’re not gone, you’re simply taking on different forms. Instead of your gestures being the raising of an eyebrow or a blown kiss, now a gesture might consist of a rising gnat, a waving wheat stalk, and the inhaling lung of a breaching beluga whale. Your manner of expressing joy might become a seaweed sheet playing on a lapping wave, a pendulous funnel dancing from a cumulonimbus, a flapping grunion birthing, a glossy river pebble gliding around an eddy. 

From your present clumped point of view, this afterlife may sound unnervingly distributed. But in fact it is wonderful. You can’t imagine the pleasure of stretching your redefined body across vast territories: ruffling your grasses and bending your pine branch and flexing an egret’s wings while pushing a crab toward the surface through coruscating shafts of light. Lovemaking reaches heights it could never dream of in the compactness of human corporality. Now you can communicate in many places along your bodies at once; you weave your versatile hands over your lover’s multiflorous figure. Your rivers run together. You move in concert as interdigitating creatures of the meadow, entangled vegetation bursting from the fields, caressing weather fronts that climax into thunderstorms.

 Just as in your current life, the downside is that you are always in flux. As creatures degrade and your fruits fall and rot, you become capable of new gestures and lose others. Your lover might drift away from you in the migratory flight of tropic birds, a receding stampede of wintering elk, or a creek that quietly pokes its head under the ground and pops up somewhere unknown to you. 

Many of your same problems apply: temptation, anguish, anger, distrust, vice— and don’t forget the dread arising from free choice. Don’t be fooled into believing that plants grow mechanically toward the sun, that birds choose their direction by instinct, that wildebeest migrate by design: in fact, everything is seeking. Your atoms can spread, but they cannot escape the search. A wide distribution does not shield you from wondering how best to spend your time. Once every few millennia, all your atoms pull together again, traveling from around the globe, like the leaders of nations uniting for a summit, converging for their densest reunion in the form of a human. They are driven by nostalgia to regroup into the tight pinpoint geometry in which they began. In this form they can relish a forgotten sense of holiday-like intimacy. They come together to search for something they once knew but didn’t appreciate at the time. 

The reunion is warm and heartening for a while, but it isn’t long before they begin to miss their freedom. In the form of a human the atoms suffer a claustrophobia of size: gestures are agonizingly limited, restricted to the foundering of tiny limbs. As a condensed human they cannot see around corners, they can only talk within short distances to the nearest ear, they cannot reach out to touch across any meaningful expanses. We are the moment of least facility for the atoms. And in this form, they find themselves longing to ascend mountains, wander the seas, and conquer the air, seeking to recapture the limitlessness they once knew.

Eagleman, David (2009-02-10). Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives (Kindle Locations 1009-1041). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. See also "Possibilianism."

 

I first posted that in 2014 on another blog. David Eagleman, man...

 

I know Stanford has its issues. David Eagleman is not among them. 

 

See an earlier cite. David's book Livewired. 

 

UPDATES: "INNER COSMOS"

Trust me, OK? You will not spend a better 90 minutes, total. More shortly...

ERRATUM

 

I hope everyone had a safe and pleasant July 4th. We just cocooned at home (it was SO hot in Bmore) and watched a ton more FIFA Futbol. I'm getting there. 

 

UPDATE 

 

More "Inner Cosmos" stuff.

Intelligence? It's a word that we usually reserve for something abstract and cerebral, something associated with problem solving and planning and passing IQ tests. We tend to picture intelligence as a property of brains and especially big human brains. We're generally willing to grant some intelligence to dolphins and chimps and clever birds like ravens, but it's hard to know how to think about so many other things happening in the world. For example, my skin cells heal a wound. Is that intelligence or is that just biochemical cascades? A plant grows towards sunlight. Intelligent. A worm gets its head cut off and it regrows it. That's amazing. But we don't tend to call that cognition. But what if we've been looking at the whole notion of intelligence too narrowly? What if intelligence isn't just about neurons and genes, but it's about goals? And specifically, it's about the ability of a system to navigate towards an objective, to adapt to its circumstances, to make decisions along the way. That's a broader definition of intelligence. And if we apply it, suddenly intelligence doesn't just belong to creatures with brains. It becomes something that shows up in places we didn't expect…

 Brings this to mind:

TEN
The Nature of Intelligence
INTELLIGENCE AND EVOLUTION

Any exploration of the nature of intelligence is a precarious venture. Before we start out, we must know what we are seeking, and there is no generally accepted definition of intelligence. It is as hard to describe where intelligence begins and of what it consists as it is to define life itself.

There is no consensus about the point in evolutionary development at which life might be said to begin, nor even an exact demarcation between life and nonlife. Did life begin when amino acid molecules first formed self-replicating chains? Where is the boundarybetween the replication of crystal formations and that of carbon compounds? Indeed, there is no boundary. Life is a flow. It begins in inorganic material and emerges gradually along its course to sentience and intelligence.

The same may be said of intelligence. It begins with the simplest awareness of limited elements of the environment and it proceeds toward awareness of the self and then to abstract ideation by the most gradual stages. We may examine it and analyze it at any point along this continuum, but no one has yet been able to summarize its totality to the satisfaction of anyone else.

Before we go any further we must make it clear that our investigation is not about the qualities of especially brilliant human mental achievements or of the nature of the minds of those gifted individuals we call "bright," "great brains," or "geniuses," but of intelligence as an expression of life itself. By what means does an organism "know" its surroundings and what it must do to exist in them? What is the mechanism by which it makes a decision to take this path rather than that one? What, in fact, is a "thought"? Thought is nonmaterial. We cannot touch it, see it, or measure it. Yet at its inception  arises from a material organ, from the living tissue of the brain, and as its outcome it directs concrete actions. This is the mystery of the thinking process. It arises in the concrete and ends in the concrete, but is itself intangible.

If we trace the thinking process back to its origins in the brain, we find ourselves back again at the origins of life. Sensitivity to external stimuli is a property of every living cell… [Other Senses, Other Worlds, pg 127]

Also comes to mind:

 

The film is now up on Amazon Prime.