Notes by Retraice

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Re53: Big Questions About Strategic Intelligence

Retraice^1

WAAIT Part 4: What outsiders living in a world of intelligence can ask themselves.

Air date: Thursday, 17th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

What can't we see?

We're living in a world affected by intelligence organizations, which are known to have kept very big secrets in the past. Our world might even be largely shaped by them. And now AI, perhaps the most powerful technology, is in the picture.

It's easy to remember that we live in nature's world, and in a world of many accidents--and a world of contingency.^2 It is harder to remember that we live in a world affected by intelligence organizations.

Examples of secrets kept (for a long time): o NSA;^3 o Church Committee revelations;^4 o Manhattan project;^5 o Area 51;^6 o The Rhodes-Milner group.^7

Observation selection effects: Biases in our judgments based on flawed gathering of sample data, i.e. flawed methods of observation, i.e. flawed assumptions about the world. What if some fish have evolved to escape our net?^8 What if our net was never designed with them in mind?^9

What about cumulative progress?

* adaptation begets adaptation; * leverage begets leverage; * money begets money; * power begets power; * control begets control;^10

Hence the seductive logic of a `breakaway civilization'--seductive and perilous to the reputation.^11

What about superpowers and secrecy?

Electricity and nuclear power (and weapons) are superpowers, though we're used to their presence. Now there is AI in the environment. Will we get used to it? Will something else happen? * DeepMind, OpenAI and others are publishing powerful new knowledge and tools. * Who's in a position to take action? Who has the time, money, knowledge, intent, `means, motive and opportunity'?^12 * Something can be `not secret' can still be `effectively unknown', i.e. `hidden in plain sight'.

On mental math (Re52 correction)

During Re52^13 I said that my interest in technical AI had begun in late 2011, 13 years ago. Correction: 11 years ago. My consolation:

"In the little evidence we have of his youthful characteristics there are no signs of any pronounced facility in computation, and indeed if he ever was an infant prodigy his later life reveals clearly that his arithmetical gifts soon degenerated to the level of no more than average competence.... The mistakes which occur in his lengthy calculations of hyperbola areas are damning evidence against the myth of Newton's prodigious facility in numerical calculation. Lengthy calculations appear frequently in his later scientific papers and not infrequently they too contain small numerical errors."^14

__

References

Andrew, C. (2018). The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. Yale University Press. ISBN in paperback edition printed as "978-0-300-23844-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)". Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0300238440 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0300238440 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018947154

Bamford, J. (1982). The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. Penguin. ISBN: 0140067485. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0140067485 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0140067485 https://lccn.loc.gov/82024608

Bostrom, N. (2002). Anthropic Bias: Observation Selection Effects in Science and Philosophy. Routledge. ISBN: 0415938589. https://anthropic-principle.com/q=book/table_of_contents/ Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0415938589 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0415938589 https://lccn.loc.gov/2001058887

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2019). Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0525557999. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525557999 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525557999 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032888

Dolan, R. M. (2000). UFOs and the National Security State Vol. 1: An Unclassified History. Keyhole, 1st ed. ISBN: 0967799503. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0967799503 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0967799503 https://lccn.loc.gov/00691087

Dolan, R. M. (2014). UFOs for the 21st Century Mind: A Fresh Guide to an Ancient Mystery. Richard Dolan Press. ISBN: 978-1495291609. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781495291609 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781495291609

Eddington, S. A. (1938). The Philosophy Of Physical Science. Cambridge. No ISBN. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.425432 Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Philosophy+Of+Physical+Science+Arthur+Eddington https://www.google.com/search?q=Philosophy+Of+Physical+Science+Arthur+Eddington https://lccn.loc.gov/40000644

Hersh, S. M. (2018). Reporter: A Memoir. Vintage / Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0307276612. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0307276612 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0307276612 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017051856

Jacobsen, A. (2011). Area 51: An Uncensored History of America's Top Secret Military Base. Back Bay Books. ISBN: 978-0316202305. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780316202305 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780316202305 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011925205

Newton, I. (2008). The Mathematical Papers of Isaac Newton: Volume 1. Cambridge University Press. ISBN: 978-0521045957. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780521045957 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780521045957 https://lccn.loc.gov/65011203

Okasha, S. (2002). Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 0192802836. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0192802836 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0192802836 https://lccn.loc.gov/2002510456

Quigley, C. (1961). The Evolution of Civilizations. Macmillan (reprinted by Liberty Fund 1979). ISBN: 0913966576. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0913966576 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0913966576 https://lccn.loc.gov/79004091

Retraice (2020/09/07). Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re1 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2020/09/08). Re2: Tell the People, Tell Foes. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re2 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2022/10/28). Re33: Outsiders, Power and Waste. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re33 Retrieved 2nd Nov. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/02). Re38: Follow up to `Re33: Outsiders, Power and Waste'. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re38 Retrieved 5th Nov. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/16). Re52: Big Questions About AI. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re52 Retrieved 17th Nov. 2022.

Wiener, N. (1954). The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Da Capo, 2nd ed. ISBN: 978-0306803208. This 1954 ed. missing `The Voices of Rigidity' chapter of the original 1950 ed. See 1st ed.: https://archive.org/details/humanuseofhumanb00wien/page/n11/mode/2up. See also Brockman (2019) p. xviii. Searches for the 2nd ed.: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780306803208 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780306803208 https://lccn.loc.gov/87037102

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Wiener (1954) p. 12: "[C]onsider not one world, but all the worlds which are possible answers to a limited set of questions concerning our environment."

^3 Bamford (1982) p. 16.

^4 Andrew (2018) pp. 687-689, including the generally unknown roll of the KGB opposite the well know actions of the CIA. On the contingency of history (a filing error) that saved some of the MKUltra documentary evidence from destruction in a CIA cover-up, see: Hersh (2018) pp. 210-211 on Helm's document destruction; Dolan (2000) p. 472 on Sidney Gottlieb's failure to destroy all the documents; and MKUltra, wikipedia.org (retrieved Nov. 18th, 2022) on the filing error that saved what documents did survive.

^5 Jacobsen (2011) p. xvi-xix

^6 Jacobsen (2011) p. 5.

^7 See Retraice (2022/10/28) and Retraice (2022/11/02) for details.

^8 Bostrom (2002) pp. 1-2, citing Eddington (1938) p. 16.

^9 See also Retraice (2020/09/07) on Vallee's `Major Murphy'. See Okasha (2002) p. 24 on assuming the `uniformity of nature' (I said `constancy of nature' during the livestream).

^10 See Retraice (2020/09/08) on Weizenbaum and "The test of absolute power is certain and absolute control."

^11 Dolan (2014) pp. 204-210. On what it takes to be a civilization, see Quigley (1961) pp. 132-153.

^12 See Retraice (2020/09/07) on Ferguson on the Rothschilds' communications network.

^13 Retraice (2022/11/16).

^14 Newton (2008) pp. 3-4.

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re52: Big Questions About AI

Retraice^1

WAAIT Part 3: What individuals, humanity, and players in the game can ask themselves.

Air date: Wednesday, 16th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

AlphaCode

This new AI system codes better than 50% of human coders in competitions.^2 How should we think about big advances in AI? o amplification of something: a kind of tool, now more powerful than before; o arrival of something: a strange new colleague, or an alien.^3

Individuals: How much do I matter?

One way of thinking about an individual's (or group's) power is the Banzhaf power index:^4 Of all the possible voting scenarios, in how many does this individual have the capacity to swing the outcome one way or another?

The harsh truth about AI, as regards the future of humanity, is: * The incapable will remain irrelevant. * The ignorant will be ignored.

But the group of people who are powerful, with respect to AI, is not a fixed entity: new arrivals are always joining; old members are always leaving.

Individuals who do not want to be irrelevant or ignored will have to become capable in AI or very well-informed about it. Those who will become capable, and/or well-informed, will be the most motivated to do so.

Humanity: What are we doing again? Where are we headed?

As a whole, humanity can ask the question: AI is for what?^5 Some answers include: * specific tasks; * specific knowledge; * specific actions; * actions that go beyond satiable needs and wants, to `wants' like everything-better-more-all-the-time.

Players: How to win?

How can humans possibly respond to the forces of nature creating unfriendly AI--either autonomous colleague-AI or tool-AI wielded by the bad guys? Perhaps by trying to prevent it, or by trying to understand it in advance well enough to manage the risks?

Setting aside the possibility of colleague-AI, tool-AI is going to keep getting stronger and stronger. Are you a cosmist, who believes we should keep building it no matter what? Or a terran, who refuses to build things that pose a catastrophic risk to humanity?^6

If there is a general problem with our ability to respond to these possibilities, is it based on: * the technical threat of AI? * our capacity to respond itself? + If it is our capacity, is the problem IQ or trust? Or something else?

And is AI the most important force in nature to fear? What about what we've already seen from humans?

And once the key problems are identified: What would have to change, to fix the response problem?

_

References

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2019). Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0525557999. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525557999 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525557999 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032888

de Garis, H. (2005). The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines. ETC Publications. ISBN: 0882801546. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0882801546 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0882801546

Dennett, D. C. (2019). What can we do? (pp. 41-53). In Brockman (2019).

Retraice (2022/11/07). Re43: The Midterms -- Part 1. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re43 Retrieved 9th Nov. 2022.

Russell, S. (2019). Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking. ISBN: 978-0525558613. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525558613 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525558613 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029688

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is `competitive' with humans, theregister.com, Simon Sharwood, Feb 3rd, 2022.

^3 Dennett (2019) says we should stick to building tools, not colleagues. Russell (2019) likens super AI to the impending arrival of an alien species (p. 3).

^4 Retraice (2022/11/07).

^5 For some reason, this phrasing is better out-loud than `What is AI for?'

^6 de Garis (2005).

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re51: Sprinkle Some AI on It

Retraice^1

WAAIT Part 2: Mixing AI with things that were separate.

Air date: Tuesday, 15th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

For better and for worse, AI and ...

Here is an attempt to mix AI with aspects of the world that are not obviously related--because everything is related to AI. We'll look for the bad and the good results of the mixture.

(Side note: see Retraice (2022/11/14) note 3 on how smartphones, as used to mediate what would otherwise be direct human-to-human socializing, are the main way that AI is `at parties'.)

Intelligence

See Retraice (2020/09/07). o strategic intelligence: It used to be that SI entities connected directly to the copper wires, and before wires it was all human-to-human.^2 But now, oceans of information are vacuumed up digitally,^3 and AI is used to sift and sort and search it all. This is an ominous change, but if it leads to better results for citizens, and more stable global relations by avoiding misunderstandings and miscalculations, it's good. o natural intelligence: Already, via the phone, we are being changed for the better (smarter, faster) and for the worse (less patient, less circumspect), by AI.^4 o artificial intelligence: Programs writing programs--AlphaCode.^5 This could be good (we can do difficult things more easily) or bad (too much autonomy in the systems).

Hypotheses:

See Retraice (2022/03/07), Retraice (2022/10/19).

These eleven hypotheses do, in a sense, roll up into the twelfth. AI, therefore, mixes with all of them, for better and for worse. * H1. Space: `Humans are now technologically capable of living in space.' * H2. Technology: `Human technology risks are growing faster than their mitigation.' * H3. Death: `Human lifespan is being prolonged by new technologies.' * H4. China: `The U.S. is no longer the only superpower; war is likely.' * H5. Civil War: `The U.S. seems vulnerable to a civil war this decade.' * H6. Environments: `Humans can change environments faster than they can adapt.' * H7. Betterment: `Some things make the future better than the past.' * H8. Intelligence: `There are intelligence differences.' * H9. Darkness: `There is a pervasive darkness in humans, even amongst the good guys.' * H10. Wealth: `The current trend toward concentration of wealth is making human life worse.' * H11. Wildcards: `New technologies, discoveries and deception regularly cause historic changes.' * H12. Computers: `Some humans now control others better, but machinery could take control.'

On H12, and how AI mixes with human control of other humans, and perhaps machine control of humans, see Wiener (1954) and Wiener (1961).

Omniscience

See Retraice (2020/11/13). * physical omniscience: AI works well with sensors. * animate omniscience: AI is good at classifying objects, including creatures. * mental omniscience: AI can enable humans to know you better than you know yourself. Side note: Electrons are becoming more important than photons: Both have always been important, but now thoughts (in humans and machines?) matter more than the photon-absorbing-re-emitting vehicles that house them. We see people (via photons) on their phones, and think whatever we think about them; but what really matters is what's happening in their brains, the electrons (and chemicals), which can be completely uncorrelated with anything accessible via photons.

Other stuff

We can keep mixing AI with things and get surprising results. Use your imagination: * China model (Re47-49); * WM5 (Re31): What is, What is happening, What matters; * Sex (regular, and Dawkins/McLuhan's); * Re30: I.J. Good's paradox: To survive, we must build them; if they're built, we won't survive. And what's being done? Could AI help get the word out? * Good model (Re28): RTFM;^6 * WM4 (Re27): threat modeleing, selection, game theory, Turing machine cybernetics; * WM3 (Re26): meh; * WM2 (Re25): Computer control is suffusing GNRGCRB&R and NIAISI; to check we need info from trusted and integrated sources. * WM1 (Re24): NINFA, GNRGCRB&R, NIAISI, sources and tests and integration; computer control (H12) is What's GOOT.

And why do we `sprinkle' `some AI' on things?

Kelly: "Because here is the other thing the graybeards in 2050 will tell you: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an innovator in 2016? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category and add some AI to it, put it on the cloud. Few devices had more than one or two sensors in them, unlike the hundreds now. Expectations and barriers were low. It was easy to be the first. And then they would sigh. `Oh, if only we realized how possible everything was back then!' "^7

Kaplan:"Strong AI is basically a concept that intelligence is some kind of magic pixie dust that you sprinkle on a machine and it suddenly becomes conscious and aware, and that what we're trying to do in AI is to duplicate this magical quality. Now, weak AI is just a disparaging name for what we really see today, which is an engineering approach to artificial intelligence. It's solving specific problems. That might be driving or playing chess. So strong AI is really for the sci-fi freaks, and weak AI is really for the engineers."^8

_

References

Andrew, C. (2018). The Secret World: A History of Intelligence. Yale University Press. ISBN in paperback edition printed as "978-0-300-23844-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)". Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0300238440 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0300238440 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018947154

Bamford, J. (1982). The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency. Penguin. ISBN: 0140067485. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0140067485 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0140067485 https://lccn.loc.gov/82024608

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2019). Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0525557999. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525557999 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525557999 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032888

Goodfellow, I., Bengio, Y., & Courville, A. (2016). Deep Learning. MIT Press. ISBN 978-0262035613. Ebook available at: https://www.deeplearningbook.org/ Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0262035613 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0262035613 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022992

Greenwald, G. (2014). No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0241968987. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780241968987 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780241968987 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014932888

Kelly, K. (2017). The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future. Penguin Books. ISBN: 978-0143110378. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780143110378 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780143110378 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017394116

Kissinger, H. A., Schmidt, E., & Huttenlocher, D. (2021). The Age of AI. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN: 978-0316273800. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780316273800 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780316273800 https://lccn.loc.gov/2021943914

McLuhan, M. (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Gingko Press. ISBN: 1584230738. Originally published 1964. This ed. 2003. https://archive.org/details/understandingmed0000mclu_n3p7 Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=1584230738 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+1584230738 https://lccn.loc.gov/2003012174

Retraice (2020/09/07). Re1: Three Kinds of Intelligence. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re1 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2020/11/13). Re14: Omniscience in Three Domains. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re14 Retrieved 14th Nov. 2020.

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/19). Re22: Computer Control. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re22 Retrieved 19th Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/27). Re31: What's Happening That Matters - WM5. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re31 Retrieved 28th Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/14). Re50: What About AI Though? (WAAIT). retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re50 Retrieved 15th Nov. 2022.

Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2020). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson, 4th ed. ISBN: 978-0134610993. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0134610993 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0134610993 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047498

Wiener, N. (1954). The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society. Da Capo, 2nd ed. ISBN: 978-0306803208. This 1954 ed. missing `The Voices of Rigidity' chapter of the original 1950 ed. See 1st ed.: https://archive.org/details/humanuseofhumanb00wien/page/n11/mode/2up. See also Brockman (2019) p. xviii. Searches for the 2nd ed.: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780306803208 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780306803208 https://lccn.loc.gov/87037102

Wiener, N. (1961). Cybernetics: Or the Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. MIT, 2nd ed. ISBN: 978-1614275022. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781614275022 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781614275022 https://lccn.loc.gov/61013034

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Bamford (1982) pp. 229-230; Andrew (2018).

^3 Greenwald (2014) pp 92-95.

^4 McLuhan (1964) pp. 68-69; Retraice (2022/10/27). Examples of the potential for direct, physical connection of AI to our nervous systems: Neuralink, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 16th, 2022; Kevin Warwick, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 16th, 2022. Even reading AI textbooks, e.g. Russell & Norvig (2020), Goodfellow et al. (2016), changes a reader by giving him handy models for thinking more tractably about the world in all its complexity.

^5 Google's DeepMind says its AI coding bot is 'competitive' with humans, theregister.com, Simon Sharwood, Feb 3rd, 2022.

^6 See Kissinger et al. (2021) pp. 13-19 on AI detecting aspects of reality beyond our capacities, which speaks to the `true' part of RTFM.

^7 Kelly (2017) pp. 26-27. Emphasis added.

^8 Engineering Intelligence, On The Media, Jerry Kaplan being interviewed by Brooke Gladstone, Apr 18th, 2014. Emphasis added.

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re50: What About AI Though? (WAAIT)

Retraice^1

Remembering the big thing that's bigger than all the other big things.

Air date: Monday, 14th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

AI, at parties, in three dimensions

Paying attention to AI leads to two basic results: the sense that `AI is in everything', and then an over-emphasis on some particular aspect of AI, a collapse into specialization.^2 And if it is `in everything', is AI `at parties', maybe in the music, or in the courtship?^3 If it is, it would make things more predictable, which businesses and governments like (for purposes of optimizing themselves toward their goals), and which humans like (for the same reasons, but only to a point).

`What about AI?' has a sort of acid-test way of stripping any topic down to the essential parts that are relevant to a hyper-rational phenomenon (e.g. AI itself).^4

Answers to the question can be broken down into three dimensions:

1. better, worse (value);

+ Life can be so good,^5 and so bad.^6 How does AI affect these two ends of the spectrum? Side note: If we can look after small groups, we can look after all humans. (Right? Should be, anyway.) + We need AI to see and do what we can't: o We can't do all the math, we can't operate all the machinery. o We are all mostly unaware of what's going on, around us and out there. We can't see it. o AI is good at `seeing' in ways that we aren't.^7

2. now, later (time): AI has affected the past, present, and will affect the future.

3. here, there (space): AI affects things close and far.

What is AI, again?

* physically: + algorithms (more refined; precise and improving on imprecise); - Turing machine, computer-science-based limits? + hardware (better, more pervasive; sensors, processors); - cybernetics, control-theory-based limits? + inventors (highly incentivized engineers);^8 + controllers (whoever can play the old power games best).^9 * prediction machines;^10 * mind-environment changers;^11 * automators;^12 * autonomous actors;^13 * pattern detectors;^14 * Ideas from previous Retraice segments:^15 + Re6: Interfaces between goals and environments. + Re7: Artifacts that absorb goals, and become animate. + Re8: Creatures: we should worry about reproduction, communication, control, energy sources, `looking for' things, at least as much as we worry about intelligence.^16 + Re9: They can already see us, better than we see ourselves.^17 + Re10: Guessing (intelligence), checking (tests), fighting (battlefields). + Re11: Travelers (intensionality?), intelligent things that can go places in time a space. + Re22: "Computers, which are chain-reaction controllers, and which make AI handling of information possible, and which are inherently vulnerable to hacking, are causing some humans to know others better than they know themselves, and thereby to control them, though computer-controlled machinery could take control if the motivation to control, which humans have, were to occur, naturally or by design, in the chain-reactions."

__

References

Agrawal, A., Gans, J., & Goldfarb, A. (2018). Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence. Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN: 978-1633695672. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1633695672 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1633695672 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017049211

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2015). What to Think About Machines That Think: Today's Leading Thinkers on the Age of Machine Intelligence. Harper Perennial. ISBN: 978-0062425652. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0062425652 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0062425652 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016303054

Brockman, J. (Ed.) (2019). Possible Minds: Twenty-Five Ways of Looking at AI. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0525557999. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525557999 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525557999 https://lccn.loc.gov/2018032888

Crawford, K. (2021). Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence. Yale University Press. ISBN: 978-0300209570. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780300209570 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780300209570 https://lccn.loc.gov/2020947842

Dennett, D. C. (1996). Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution And The Meanings Of Life. Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 068482471X. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=068482471X https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+068482471X https://lccn.loc.gov/94049158

Dietterich, T. G. (2015). How to prevent an intelligence explosion. (pp. 380-383). In Brockman (2015).

Dyson, G. (2019). The third law. (pp. 31-40). In Brockman (2019).

Gerrish, S. (2018). How Smart Machines Think. The MIT Press. ISBN: 978-0262038409. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780262038409 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780262038409 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017059862

Greene, R. (1998). The 48 Laws Of Power. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0140280197. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780140280197 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780140280197 https://lccn.loc.gov/98041387

Hoffman, D. (2019). The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth from Our Eyes. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN: 978-0393254693. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0393254693 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0393254693 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019006962

Kissinger, H. A., Schmidt, E., & Huttenlocher, D. (2021). The Age of AI. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN: 978-0316273800. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780316273800 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780316273800 https://lccn.loc.gov/2021943914

Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. Penguin. ISBN: 978-0143037880. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0143037880 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0143037880 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004061231

Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. Penguin Publishing Group. ISBN: 978-0143122012. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0143122012 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0143122012 https://lccn.loc.gov/2011015201

Retraice (2020/09/08). Re2: Tell the People, Tell Foes. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re2 Retrieved 22nd Sep. 2020.

Retraice (2020/10/25). Re6: Interface. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re6 Retrieved 26th Oct. 2020.

Retraice (2020/10/26). Re7: Artifactual Goals. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re7 Retrieved 27th Oct. 2020.

Retraice (2020/10/28). Re8: Strange Machines. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re8 Retrieved 29th Oct. 2020.

Retraice (2020/10/31). Re9: They Can See You. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re9 Retrieved 31st Oct. 2020.

Retraice (2020/11/02). Re10: Living to Guess Another Day. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re10 Retrieved 2nd Nov. 2020.

Retraice (2020/11/04). Re11: Travel. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re11 Retrieved 4th Nov. 2020.

Retraice (2022/10/19). Re22: Computer Control. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re22 Retrieved 19th Oct. 2022.

Russell, S. (2019). Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking. ISBN: 978-0525558613. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525558613 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525558613 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029688

Russell, S., & Norvig, P. (2020). Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. Pearson, 4th ed. ISBN: 978-0134610993. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0134610993 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0134610993 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019047498

Smallberg, G. (2015). No shared theory of mind. (pp. 297-299). In Brockman (2015).

Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation. W. H. Freeman and Company. ISBN: 0716704633. Also available at: https://archive.org/details/computerpowerhum0000weiz

Yudkowsky, E. (2013). Intelligence explosion microeconomics. Machine Intelligence Research Institute. Technical report 2013-1. https://intelligence.org/files/IEM.pdf Retrieved ca. 9th Dec. 2018.

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Men tend to focus as hunters, women tend to scan as gathers; a majority of those involved in thinking about AI as such are men (it seems), hence the collapse into focused specialization. This is obviously just an impression, and only intended as a possible explanation for the specialization over-emphasis tendency. A counterargument would be that it's the economics of modern life that forces specialization, not sex differences. Both can be true, and probably are. Note: Renaissance men and women are not generalists; they're in the middle between specialists and generalists. Generalists have the discipline (really, lack thereof) that leads them to move on before knowing too much about any particular subject.

^3 It occurred to us after the livestream that, since young people interact so much more via their phones, AI is indeed already `at' parties and `in' the courtship there.

^4 Cf. Dennett on Darwinism as `universal acid', Dennett (1996) chpt. 3; see also Hoffman (2019) pp. 56-57.

^5 Consider the optimists: Pinker (2011); Kurzweil (2005).

^6 Imagine Joseph Stalin but with the technological means of modern China.

^7 Kissinger et al. (2021) pp. 13-17.

^8 Cf. Yudkowsky (2013) pp. 20-21 on the effect of having "faster engineers", i.e. "the hypothetical scenario where the researchers are running on computers."

^9 Retraice (2020/09/08) p. 3 on control. Cf. Greene (1998) and below.

^10 Agrawal et al. (2018).

^11 Russell (2019) pp. 8-9. Humans are also `mind-environment changers' in a sense, if we think of power games and manipulation. Greene (1998).

^12 Crawford (2021) chpt. 2.

^13 Retraice (2020/10/28); Russell & Norvig (2020) p. 1001.

^14 Gerrish (2018) pp. 129-131.

^15 Retraice (2020/10/25); Retraice (2020/10/26); Retraice (2020/10/28); Retraice (2020/10/31); Retraice (2020/11/02); Retraice (2020/11/04); Retraice (2022/10/19).

^16 See Retraice (2020/10/28) and: Dyson (2019) p. 40; Smallberg (2015) p. 299; Dietterich (2015) p. 382. On control, see also Retraice (2020/09/08) p. 3, and Weizenbaum (1976) pp. 124-126.

^17 Cf. Retraice (2022/10/19) on "causing some humans to know others better than they know themselves."

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re49: China is Not F-ing Around

Retraice^1

China Part 3: A sketch of Xi's country.

Air date: Sunday, 13th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

Something is happening in China

"The China we once knew no longer exists. The China that was with us for forty years--the China of `reform and opening up'--is making way for something new. It's time for us to start paying attention. Something is happening in China that the world has never seen before. A new country and a new regime are being born." -- Kai Strittmatter^2

Our China model

Model of China: The most people with the most history, mostly doing well, except lately (1839-1976), and now making a comeback: 1.4 billion people striving; intense competition in business, love and life; government by a single party; risen in a U.S. world; speaking a different language.

The most relevant hypothesis is:

H4 China: `The U.S. is no longer the only superpower; war is likely.'

See Retraice (2022/03/07) for details and citations.

What happened in China (before Xi)?

Drugs, Mao, money; betterment, technology, economics.

China now: the best

The tier-one cities, especially, are remarkable things to behold (via YouTube). A Chinese who wanted to visit the United States once complained that "Every time I visit New York it's the same." Not so Chinese cities. While it is easy to hear about and see `tofu-dreg projects', i.e. shoddy construction and consequent disasters, the tier-one cities do not seem to be affected. o Is it now the #1 economy? Close enough: prosperity. o Belt-and-Road initiative: lower trade friction. o Corruption purge: less corruption (hopefully). o Evergrande crisis: risk-taking, aggressive growth. o TikTok (ByteDance) (also on the Worst list): innovation. o Military buildup (also on the Worst list): a natural consequence of economic success.

China now: the worst

* Military buildup: ominous, threatening behavior. * TikTok (ByteDance): spying, manipulation, coercion.^3 * Organ harvesting: the worst thing.^4 * Uyghurs in Xinjiang: internment camps. * Falun Gong: internment camps. * Surveillance state.^5 Cf. Russell (1952):

"In future [sic] such failures are not likely to occur where there is dictatorship. Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. Even if all are miserable, all will believe themselves happy, because the government will tell them that they are so." p. 66. Cf. Horesh (2020):

"Meanwhile, a previously unimaginable level of thought control is fast being made accessible for every middle-income autocracy that chooses to use it. Visit the wrong website and your social credit score declines, look up the wrong book and it drops further, mention the wrong phrases on social media and it sinks so low that alarms go off in the camera rooms when your face flashes on the screen. The opportunities this presents for behavioral modification are simply astonishing, as the exploration of every forbidden idea or acquaintance can be made part of a social credit score, whose every drop causes another shock in the hearts of the lowly ranked.... Yet, whether or not China goes so far, they have developed the tools needed to implement a security regime more totalitarian than even that of the East German Stasi, at a fraction of the effort and far lower cost, for any autocrat who chooses to go that far. Russians and Turks, Poles and Hungarians, could soon find themselves entering a vise from which they never escape. For once such a security regime is implemented, resistance can be shut down in ways not previously imagined, while independent thinking is gradually snuffed out." p. 158. * Covid origins and the opacity of the response. * Zero Covid and lockdowns: draconian, cruel. * Hong Kong crackdowns: against freedom and democracy. * Pelosi Visit, Taiwan military exercises: against freedom and democracy.

China now: war

* Constant outward pushing in South China Sea; * Tacit support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine invasion; * What does all this mean for H4, war with the U.S.? + You can't stop humans from hustling; + You can't stop competition between great powers; + You can stop evil;^6 + You can stop catastrophic war.^7

Haunting questions:

* What would a mobilization look like? * Can you stop an Artilect War^8 ? Who will the sides be?

__

References

Allison, G. (2018). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?. Mariner Books. ISBN: 978-1328915382. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781328915382 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781328915382 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005351

Andersen, R. (2020). The panopticon is already here. The Atlantic. Sep. 2020. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/china-ai-surveillance/614197/ Retrieved 8th Nov. 2022.

de Garis, H. (2005). The Artilect War: Cosmists vs. Terrans: A Bitter Controversy Concerning Whether Humanity Should Build Godlike Massively Intelligent Machines. ETC Publications. ISBN: 0882801546. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0882801546 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0882801546

Horesh, T. (2020). The Fascism this Time: and the Global Future of Democracy. Cosmopolis Press, Kindle ed. ISBN: 0578732939. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0578732939 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0578732939

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

Russell, B. (1952). The Impact Of Science On Society. George Allen and Unwin Ltd. No ISBN. https://archive.org/details/impactofscienceo0000unse_t0h6 Retrieved 15th, Nov. 2022. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Impact+Of+Science+On+Society+Bertrand+Russell https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Impact+Of+Science+On+Society+Bertrand+Russell https://lccn.loc.gov/52014878

Strittmatter, K. (2018). We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State. Custom House, revised, updated ed. ISBN: 978-0063027305. Published in Germany, 2018. This paperback edition 2021. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780063027305 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780063027305 https://lccn.loc.gov/2020288922

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Strittmatter (2018) p. 1.

^3 "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks." -- Jeff Hammerbacher. We misattributed this to Andrew Ng during the livestream. The Best Minds of My Generation Are Thinking About How To Make People Click Ads, quoteinvestigator.com, Jun. 12th. 2017.

^4 Forced Organ Harvesting in China: Examining the Evidence, Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission, humanrightscommission.house.gov, May 12, 2022; China: UN human rights experts alarmed by `organ harvesting' allegations, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), ohchr.org, Jun. 14th, 2021.

^5 Strittmatter (2018); Andersen (2020); City Brain, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 15th, 2022.

^6 "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." -- variously attributed. The Only Thing Necessary for the Triumph of Evil is that Good Men Do Nothing, quoteinvestigator.com, Dec. 4th, 2010.

^7 Allison (2018).

^8 de Garis (2005).

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re48: From Drugs to Mao to Money

Retraice^1

China Part 2: A sketch of China from the Opium Wars to 2012.

Air date: Saturday, 12th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

Our China model and H4

Model of China: The most people with the most history, mostly doing well, except lately (1839-1976), and now making a comeback: 1.4 billion people striving; intense competition in business and mating; government by a single party; risen in a U.S. world; speaking a different language.

The most relevant hypothesis is:

H4 China: `The U.S. is no longer the only superpower; war is likely.'

See Retraice (2022/03/07) for details and citations.

What happened in China (before Xi)?

We don't know for sure, we only know what historians tell us, for which a trust model would be ideal. But short of that, we know (better) things that are present-tense:

The Chinese call it the `century of humiliation'.^2

Whatever else we accept about the history of China, that sentiment is present-tense.

Now, on the history of China before Xi:^3 * Drugs: pursuing `better' (H7) via trade and substances (wealth, H10). + the Opium Wars (1839-1860): tea sold to the West, and opium sold to China, two drugs with very different effects (one stimulative, one destructive); it started with an imbalance in trade, because China sold tea, but didn't want anything the British were selling, so the British started pushing opium from India; + the `Century of Humiliation' (1839-1949); Western technology (boats, guns) won wars, lead to economic exploitation. * Mao: pursing `better' via technical modernization (technology, H2, H12). + civil war between nationalists (Chiang Kai-shek) and communists (Mao Zedong) (1927-1949); + `The Great Leap Forward' (1958-1962, 20-30 million died), peasants died, few knew at the time; + `The Cultural Revolution' (1966-1976, up to a million died), city-folk died, everybody knew at the time; + UN recognizes PRC (mainland China) over ROC (Taiwan) (1971); + Nixon visits China (1972). * Money: pursing `better' via economic reform toward the Western model (wealth, H10). + Deng Xiaoping ('70s and '80s), economic reform, `hide and bide'; + Jiang Zemin ('90s), economic reform, globalization; + Hu Jintao (2000s), economic reform, the Internet; + Economic miracle, Western companies trying to get in and profit, extraction resisted by China; + China's ideas about the top spot: `Unrestricted Warfare' (1999), `The China Dream' and the `100 Year Marathon' (2005, 2009).

__

References

Allison, G. (2018). Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?. Mariner Books. ISBN: 978-1328915382. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781328915382 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781328915382 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017005351

Ames, R. T. (1993). Sun Tzu: The Art of Warfare. Random House. ISBN: 034536239X. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=034536239X https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+034536239X https://lccn.loc.gov/92052662

Keay, J. (2009). China: A History. HarperCollins. ISBN: 978-0007221783. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780007221783 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780007221783 https://lccn.loc.gov/2009930982

Pillsbury, M. (2015). The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower. St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN: 978-1250081346. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781250081346 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781250081346 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014012015

Qiao, L., & Wang, X. (1999). Unrestricted Warfare: China's Master Plan to Destroy America. Echo Point, reprint ed. ISBN: 978-1626543058. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781626543058 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781626543058 https://lccn.loc.gov/2006504536

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

World Book, E. (2017). World Book Encyclopedia 2018, 22 Volume Set. World Book, Inc., 2018 ed. ISBN: 978-0716601180. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780716601180 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780716601180 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034899

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 For China, the history that matters is still the `century of humiliation', Michael Zhou, scmp.com, Sep. 28th, 2021.

^3 Sources covering most of what follows: Keay (2009) pp. 455-460, 464-466, 523-529, 534-535; World Book (2017) vol. 3, pp. 502-507; Pillsbury (2015) pp. 27-30; Qiao & Wang (1999) pp. xvii-xxii; Ames (1993); Allison (2018).

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re47: Meanwhile, in China

Retraice^1

China Part 1: Sketching China while trying to avoid the conclusion that World War III is coming.

Air date: Friday, 11th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

The U.S. and China

While the U.S. is mired in infighting, and arguably in decline, China is in take-off mode, and naturally eyeing the top spot.

A China model

First, how should we think about China?

The most people with the most history, mostly doing well, except lately, and now making a comeback. o 1.4 billion people striving;^2 o intense competition in business and life;^3 o government by a single party;^4 o risen in a U.S. world;^5 o speaking a different language.^6

The most relevant hypothesis is:

H4. China: `The U.S. is no longer the only superpower; war is likely.'^7

What is happing in China

A roughly chronological sketch: * a bunch of stuff happened before.... * the Opium Wars and `the century of humiliation' (1839-1949); * Mao: civil war ('27-'49), great leap forward ('58-'62, 10s of millions starved), cultural revolution ('66-'76, up to a million killed); * Nixon visit (1972); * Deng Xiaoping ('70s and '80s), economic reform, `hide and bide'; * the one-child policy; * Jiang Zemin ('90s), economic reform, globalization; * Hu Jintao (2000s), economic reform, the Internet; * Economic miracle, Western companies trying to get in and profit, extraction resisted by China; * ideas about the top spot: `Unrestricted Warfare', `The China Dream', `The 100-Year Marathon'; * Falun Gong persecution; * Uyghurs in Xinjiang persecution; * organ harvesting; * surveillance state; * Xi Jinping (2012, 2017, 2022...); * corruption purge; * constant outward pushing in the South China Sea, including building artificial islands; * Belt-and-Road initiative; * Hong Kong protests, `scholarism', more protests, millions in the streets, crackdown, National Security Law; * Covid origins questions (wet market? lab leak?); * zero-Covid policy and draconian lockdowns; * tacit support for Russia's invasion of Ukraine; * Evergrande debt crisis; * Pelosi visit, military exercises over Taiwan; * Is China now the #1 economy? Close enough.

__

References

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Some see a population crisis coming, as the one-child policy has caused a huge deficit in fertility, not to mention an imbalance of more men than women, and was itself a sort of genocide by forced sterilizations and abortions and infanticide.

^3 Coming up, as China has been, means huge opportunities for wealth and power. Also, a shortage of women means competition there, too.

^4 The Chinese Communist Party does not allow opposition. It's hard to imagine modern China, for better and for worse, without the CCP. They may be comparable to the Nazi Party, now or eventually. China is mostly not the CCP, but the CCP is in control.

^5 The post-World-War-II world has been dominated by the U.S., with some competition for a while from the USSR/Russia. This has been the environment of China's rise. Included in this environment are the World Bank, the IMF, the UN, and the U.S. Navy in the Pacific.

^6 The differences between Chinese and English (and any Indo-European languages) should not be underestimated. "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world," (Ludwig Wittgenstein). And remember, most of what is said and written in China is never translated. ^7 Retraice (2022/03/07).

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re46: Bad Faith and the Bad Life

Retraice^1

The Midterms Part 4: There will be suffering, resentment and the `intent to deceive'.

Air date: Thursday, 10th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

Deception

Bad faith (intent to decieve) applies to all the other things discussed below. Why the bad faith?

1. competition;^2 2. other incentives, e.g. profit.

If prices provide information about scarcity and an incentive to action,^3 and one form of action is deception, then scarcity can create an incentive, among other things, to deceive. Examples include every advertisement ever made. This incentive to deceive is not so different from other motivations to deceive. In our competition for mates, wherein the `price' of a mate can be thought of as their sexual attractiveness,^4 `showing off'^5 is a form of deception incentivized by that `price'. This is to say nothing of the big difference between stated and `revealed' or `demonstrated' preferences.^6

Dysfunction

1. What's going on that's making the elections a question of civil war and the end of U.S. democracy?^7 What's with the suffering and resentment?^8

2. Deaths of despair are going on:

+ Suicide and addiction (`accidental poisonings', i.e. drug over-doses, and liver disease, i.e. alcoholism) are up, life expectancy is down;^9 + The 4-year college degree is the major divider.^10

3. Suicide is what? (See `license to breed' below.)

4. "Addiction is the opposite of connection," says Hari:

"The opposite of addiction isn't sobriety. It's connection. It's all I can offer. It's all that will help him in the end. If you are alone, you cannot escape addiction. If you are loved, you have a chance."^11

5. Habit is the basis of addiction: addiction is a normal learned habit that happens when desire combines with repetition to form a "narrowing tunnel of attention and attraction," says Lewis.^12

Competition

1. Acquiring and controlling territory is a `license to breed'.

Dawkins says Wynne-Edwards' `group selection' and "genuine altruistic birth control" ideas are bad evolutionary reasoning, specifically the "altruistic" part, i.e. "for the good of the group", because genes cannot "see into the future" and do not "have the welfare of the whole species at heart." The better explanation is in selfishness--that fighting for territory, an expensive use of energy, has worse odds than waiting and hoping a competitor will die and free up territory, which sometimes happens.^13 So the idea that territory is a `license to breed' is true, in a sense, in that reproduction is optimized to available resources (`territory'). But the voluntary withdrawal is false. Yet the waiting-and-hoping explanation can't possibly apply to human suicides, because there is no chance of gaining anything after suicide. Compare this to addiction, where waiting-and-hoping is a plausible explanation.

2. If it's gradual, we adapt to degradation in our quality of life; if it's steep, we react.^14

3. Power trajectory (downward) is the best predictor of a group becoming violent.^15

(The two major predictors of civil war are moving toward or away from democracy, i.e. being an `anocracy' in the gray zone between democracy and autocracy, and factionalization.^16

Hope against technology

1. Hope for `betterment' (H7) is probably what addiction-hope and power-hope are `for'.^17

(Note: addiction is more hopeful than suicide.)

Betterment is probably a rate, not a state; and we notice acceleration and change in acceleration (jerk), not so much the rate itself.^18

But we also detect photons, people we can see who are doing well.^19

2. Hope for love:

+ But technology has separated us physically: no pheromones means women look for resource-garnering ability.^20 + But technology has consolidated the dating market, 10% 90%: Porsche polygamy.^21

3. Hope for money:

"Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor; and if one is a member of a captive population, economically speaking, one's feet have simply been placed on the treadmill forever."^22

Most often in financial life, you're either earning interest or paying interest (hint: the poor aren't earning it). Warren Buffett likens interest rates to gravity in the financial world.^23

But technology is in a race with education: the widening gap is income inequality.^24

4. Technology is pushing against hope for love and money, though it's also pushing for these things. What's the net effect? What's the marginal cost-benefit of technology itself, as a whole?^25

Something is happening to us

If you accept all this, then you should accept that something is happening to us. All the bad guys didn't go to one side, and all the people on one side didn't become bad guys.

It's not that we don't have agency and control, only that these forces are way, way bigger and more complicated than we're acknowledging.

Something is happening to us. A hyperobject something. Nature is not F-ing around.

But neither are we, against it. We've been very successful against the parts of nature that are trying to kill us.

_

References

Case, A., & Deaton, A. (2020). Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Princeton University Press, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-0691199955 (probably a misprinted ISBN in the eBook). Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Deaths+of+Despair+case+deaton https://www.google.com/search?q=Deaths+of+Despair+case+deaton https://lccn.loc.gov/2019040360

Dasgupta, P. (2007). Economics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0192853455. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780192853455 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780192853455 https://lccn.loc.gov/2007297583

Dawkins, R. (2016). The Selfish Gene. Oxford, 40th anniv. ed. ISBN: 978-0198788607. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780198788607 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780198788607 https://lccn.loc.gov/2016933210

Dixit, A. (2014). Microeconomics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0199689378. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780199689378 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780199689378 https://lccn.loc.gov/2013953432

Dyson, G. B. (1997). Darwin Among The Machines: The Evolution Of Global Intelligence. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465031627. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0465031627 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0465031627 https://lccn.loc.gov/2012943208

Freedman, L., & Michaels, J. (2019). The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, 4th ed. ISBN: 978-1137573490. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781137573490 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781137573490 https://lccn.loc.gov/2019934815

Hari, J. (2015). Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs. Bloomsbury, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-1620408926. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781620408926 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781620408926 https://lccn.loc.gov/2014021633

Koch, C. G. (2007). The Science of Success. Wiley. ISBN: 978-0470139882. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780470139882 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780470139882 https://lccn.loc.gov/2007295977

Lewis, M. (2015). The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction Is Not a Disease. PublicAffairs, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-1610394383. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781610394383 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781610394383 https://lccn.loc.gov/2015940383

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/10). Re19: Nature Is Not F-ing Around. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re19 Retrieved 12th Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/06). Re42: News -- Wealth, Wildcards, Computers. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re42 Retrieved 8th Nov. 2022.

Simler, K., & Hanson, R. (2018). The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 9780190495992. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780190495992 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780190495992 https://lccn.loc.gov/2017004296

Tinbergen, J. (1974). Substitution of graduate by other labour. Kyklos, 27(2), 217-226. Jan. 1974. https://repub.eur.nl/pub/8084 Retrieved 8th Nov. 2022. Paywalled source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6435.1974.tb01903.x

Walter, B. F. (2022). How Civil Wars Start. Crown. ISBN: 978-0593137789. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0593137789 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0593137789 https://lccn.loc.gov/2021040090

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Simler & Hanson (2018) chpt. 2.

^3 Dixit (2014) p. 2.

^4 Simler & Hanson (2018) p. 34.

^5 See p. 40 for examples.

^6 Dasgupta (2007) p. 144; Koch (2007) p. 34; Revealed preference, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 11th, 2022.

^7 Walter (2022); H5 in Retraice (2022/03/07); Retraice (2022/10/10) on blue-and-red (B&R) politics.

^8 Case & Deaton (2020); Hari (2015).

^9 Case & Deaton (2020) pp. 1-2.

^10 Even this observation seems inadequate to us. Is the 4-year degree really enough? Is grad school the divider now? See Retraice (2022/11/06) on Tinbgeren and below.

^11 Hari (2015) p. 293.

^12 Lewis (2015) loc. 47 of 4394.

^13 Dawkins (2016) pp. 142-154.

^14 Freedman & Michaels (2019) p. 17, quoting Liddell Hart on air raids during World War II.

^15 Walter (2022) p. 63. Note also `hunger' for community (p. 219). Cf. addiction and `connection' above.

^16 Walter (2022) pp. 11, 214.

^17 Retraice (2022/03/07).

^18 Walter (2022) p. 63 on `downgrading'; cf. p. 175 on `accellerationism,' when groups try to hasten downfalls, and p. 153 on Republican self-reported power status.

^19 FIXME TODO Who? On how we care only about relative inequality, not global or absolute.

^20 Scott Galloway on Real Time with Bill Maher, Sep. 9th, 2022. FIXME TODO: This really needs a better source.

^21 Scott Galloway on Real Time with Bill Maher, Sep. 9th, 2022. FIXME TODO: This really needs a better source.

^22 Brooke Gladstone expressed this sentiment at some point on On The Media, but James Baldwin wrote it in 1960: Fifth Avenue, Uptown, James Baldwin, esquire.com, July 1960, retrieved Nov. 12th, 2022.

^23 The Fed is poised to hike interest rates this year. Warren Buffett has compared rates to gravity -- and said they `power everything in the economic universe', Theron Mohamed, businessinsider.com, Jan 22nd, 2022.

^24 Tinbergen (1974); Retraice (2022/11/06).

^25 Dyson (1997) might have answers.

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re45: Liberty and Equality Mean What?

Retraice^1

The Midterms Part 3: The United States is first about freedom, second about consequences (and therefore equality), because freedom is so inspiring, but it has no obvious solutions to luck and evil.

Air date: Wednesday, 9th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

One word each

To cut through the complexity and subjectivity of understanding the two parties, Republicans and Democrats, reduce them to their two ideals, liberty and equality. The need to simplify is obvious when we consider how hard it can be to think clearly on the spot, e.g. when being ambushed by an opponent (or a comic^2).

The U.S. is definitely more `about' freedom. Evidence: o The Statue of Liberty (not Equality). o The inscription on the Statue: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," (not yearning to breathe `equal').^3

But the U.S. is also known as "a government of laws, not of men",^4 i.e. being `about' equality before the law.

From here, two things seem obvious: The extreme versions of each ideal are incompatible; and if we don't define the terms, we'll often be talking past each other.

The incompatible argument:

(We owe this insight to Paulos (1995):^5) * PREMISE 1: Total liberty yields inequality. * PREMISE 2: Total equality yields illiberty. * CONCLUSION: `Total' is wrong. I.e. compromise is the real ideal (not a novel thought, of course).

The definitions argument:

* PREMISE 1: We decline to define our terms `liberty' and `equality' because its tedious to define terms. * PREMISE 2: We're using different definitions. * CONCLUSION 1: Our conversations will be stupid. * CONCLUSION 2: Our decisions will be stupid.

Definitions

Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) via Oxford Languages and Google: * Liberty: "the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views."^6 * Equality: "the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, and opportunities."^7 + Do we also mean equality before God or under the law? (Yes.)^8 + Do we also mean equality of outcomes or circumstances? (No.)

Two inherent problems with the ideal of freedom

"Responsibility is the price of freedom."^9 (not controversial amongst grown-ups). But those born to bad luck are not responsible for that; and there is evil in the world, and those who attack liberty, so "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."^10 Hence the need for equality. * Luck, specifically good luck (by genes, geography, adaptive fitness circumstances, etc.) and bad luck (same), are not deserved, and this bothers us. Does a person with Down's syndrome really enjoy freedom in a world built for people with twice the IQ? * Evil, specifically badness (e.g. being willing to benefit by slavery, tax complexity,^11 or being born or developed truly `evil'^12) is anti-society generally, whatever particular ideal you would espouse. Prisons and handcuffs are anti-liberty, and yet we depend on them to keep society livable for the majority of us.

(And, if we're talking about the ideals of the United States, obviously native genocide and slavery were anti-freedom, with plenty of `luck' and `evil' at play therein.)

There's no way to eliminate either of these consequences of taking freedom seriously. We must cope with them as bad weather, disease.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution:

Alan Dershowitz on the differences between the two:

"The Declaration of Independence is a lawless manifesto of rebellion. It relies on God, natural unwritten law, morality, `self-evident' propositions, and unalienable rights. The Constitution, on the other hand, is a relatively conservative legal document. Its most important structural innovation was the separation of powers and the system of checks and balances, which limited the power of any one branch. It sets out rules, structures, positive written laws, and a difficult process for amending."^13

So we look to the Declaration for our ideals, not the Constitution. Paragraph 2:

"We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...."^14

The tension between Republican and Democrats, then, can be seen as the tension between the fundamental idea of liberty, and the inescapable consequences of taking it seriously, which require, then, taking equality seriously in response.

_

References

Baumeister, R. F. (1999). Evil: Inside Human Violence and Cruelty. Holt Paperbacks, revised ed. ISBN: 978-0805071658. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780805071658 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780805071658 https://lccn.loc.gov/96041940

de Becker, G. (1997). The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence. Dell / Random House. ISBN: 0440508835. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0440508835 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0440508835 https://lccn.loc.gov/96051051

Ernst Klee, V. R., Willi Dressen (Ed.) (1988). The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders. Konecky & Konecky. ISBN: 1568521332. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=1568521332 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+1568521332 https://lccn.loc.gov/91022086

Jefferson, T., Madison, J., Hamilton, A., Jay, J., Washington, G., & Dershowitz, A. (2019). The Constitution of the United States and The Declaration of Independence. Racehorse, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-1631584831. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9781631584831 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9781631584831

Knowles, E. (Ed.) (1999). The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press, 5th ed. ISBN: 0198601735. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0198601735 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0198601735 https://lccn.loc.gov/99012096

Paulos, J. A. (1995). A Mathematician Reads The Newspaper. Basic Books. ISBN: 0465043623. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0465043623 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0465043623 https://lccn.loc.gov/94048206

Retraice (2022/03/07). Re17: Hypotheses to Eleven. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re17 Retrieved 17th Mar. 2022.

Salter, A. (2003). Predators. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465071732. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0465071739 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0465071739 https://lccn.loc.gov/2002015846

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Consider `Jaywalking', the recurring bit by Jay Leno, or `street talk' on The Footy Show.

^3 The New Colossus, Emma Lazarus (1883), nps.gov, retrieved Nov. 9th, 2022.

^4 John Adams quoting James Harrington: "And what, according to Adams, were to be the principles at the heart of the American regime? The principles of nature. Adams famously called a republic `a government of laws, not of men.' He was quoting James Harrington. The context is worth noting: `Empire of laws, not of men,' Harrington wrote, is `according to ancient prudence.' In contrast, `modern prudence' counsels that `some man, or some few men, subject a city or a nation, and rule it according to his or their private interest: which, because the laws in such cases are made according to the interest of a man, or of some few families, may be said to be the empire of men, and not of laws.' The empire of laws is concerned with right; the empire of men, with power." A Government of Laws, Not of Men: John Adams feared aristocracy, but recognized it was essential for the good of the nation, Richard Samuelson, Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2017, retrieved Nov. 11th, 2022.

^5 Pp. 7-8.

^6 OED via Oxford Languages and Google, retrieved Nov. 9th. 2022.)

^7 OED via Oxford Languages and Google, retrieved Nov. 9th. 2022.)

^8 Consider Milton Friedman: "`Liberty' is part of the definition of equality, not in conflict with it. Equality before God--personal equality--is important precisely because people are not identical. Their different values, their different tastes, their different capacities will lead them to want to lead very different lives. Personal equality requires respect for their right to do so, not the imposition on them of someone else's values or judgment. Jefferson had no doubt that some men were superior to others, that there was an elite. But that did not give them the right to rule others." What Does "Created Equal" Mean?, Milton Friedman, hoover.org, an excerpt from his books Milton Friedman on Freedom (Hoover, 2017) and, originally, Free to Choose: A Personal Statement (Harvest, 1990), retrieved Nov. 10th, 2022.

^9 Usually attributed to Elbert Hubbard in his A Message to Garcia (gutenberg.org), 1914, retrieved Nov 10th, 2022, an epigraph that sometimes appeared before the essay (and more often didn't): "To act in absolute freedom and at the same time know that responsibility is the price of freedom is salvation."

^10 This line is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, wrongly. The full sentence, from a speech (Jul. 10th, 1790) by the Irish judge John Philpot Curran is: "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt." Knowles (1999) p. 248.

^11 I.e. using the letter of the law to violate the spirit of the law.

^12 Salter (2003); Baumeister (1999); de Becker (1997); Ernst Klee (1988). See also Retraice (2022/03/07) on H9: Darkness.

^13 Jefferson et al. (2019) loc. 22 of 576.

^14 Jefferson et al. (2019) loc. 509 of 576.

(The below text version of the notes is for search purposes and convenience. See the PDF version for proper formatting such as bold, italics, etc., and graphics where applicable. Copyright: 2022 Retraice, Inc.)

Re44: We Can't Vote and Can't Think.

Retraice^1

The Midterms Part 2: Trust (anti-nuking democracy) comes from practice (frequent voting) and drinking responsibly (not forgetting that we're being conned, which is manageable).

Air date: Tuesday, 8th Nov. 2022, 11:00 PM Eastern/US.

The hypothesis most relevant to the U.S. 2022 midterms is, of course:

H5. Civil War: `The U.S. seems vulnerable to a civil war this decade.'

Side notes

Side note, follow up from Re43: Super Tuesday: "the United States presidential primary election day in February or March when the greatest number of U.S. states hold primary elections and caucuses."^2 Today is not a Super Tuesday.

Another side note: We should find a way to apply the ingenious colossal machinery of our sports culture to politics. All problems would be solved.

About that nuke

The democracy nuke is `no confidence' (loss of trust) caused (in part) by infrequent practice, i.e. things we don't do often we don't do well, and voting is one of them.

We at Retraice are aware that making recommendations about how to fix a democracy, especially from the outsider-irrelevant position of a new podcast, is shouting in the wind. Outsiders are generally technical `dummies', meaning "any player, regardless of their weight, who has no say in the outcome of the election"^3 or other contest. Nonetheless, we're all part of coalitions of some sort, and ideas can be much more powerful than the `dummies' who hold them.

Back to the nuke: Voting, like other things, benefits from practice. More voting means more skill at: o compliance (e.g. registration); o procedure (e.g. knowledge of location, voter-roll maintenance); o norms (e.g. knowing what's out of the ordinary and what isn't).

So, are we delegating too much? I.e. are we doing too-infrequent elections and referenda, thereby leaving too much of the knowledge and decisions of civics up to our representatives? A heady question.

Are the downsides of frequent voting worse than the upsides? Thinking as homo economicus,^4 is the real benefit greater than the real cost?

Imagine if corporate boards could only vote every two years, or four. They would not have enough power to run their companies. The shareholders delegate to the board, and the board would have delegated too much to the executives.

Get bullshitted responsibly

We act like the world is simple but it's complex.^5 Alternatively: We know its too complex for us, so we seek someone who seems to be better/faster/stronger than us.

Technical bullshit

But these people are spouting technical `bullshit', as loosely defined by Frankfurt:

Statements that are "unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned with the truth-value of what she says. That is why she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating a proposition that she presumes to be false. Her statement is grounded neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth--this indifference to how things really are--that I regard as of the essence of bullshit."^6

"Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more extensive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are frequently impelled--whether by their own propensities or by the demands of others--to speak extensively about matters of which they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything that pertains to the conduct of his country's affairs. The lack of any significant connection between a person's opinions and his apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world."^7

This is not to say that intelligence (IQ, and/or good guessing^8), experience and wisdom are not extremely important--they are. The point is that they are not enough to overcome the mathematical complexity^9 of our society.

It's complicated

* PREMISE 1: The world is too complicated to understand completely.^10 Solutions might include: + trust policies;^11 + risk mitigation (especially hedging);^12 + explicit models.^13 * PREMISE 2: We instinctively respond to those who act like they understand, wich is analogous to being drunk.^14 Solutions might include: + being explicit about what's `good': Do we want someone good at `true', or good at `fit'? (They should always be good at `right', right?)^15 * CONCLUSION: We respond to liars, fools and bullshitters.

The real solution: Acknowledge reality: Being conned is like being drunk--and most of us, at some point, are so. First acknowledge it. Then drink (get bullshitted) responsibly.

_

References

Barlow, H. B. (2004). Guessing and intelligence. (pp. 382-384). In Gregory (2004).

Blackmore, S. (2005). Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. ISBN: 978-0192805850. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=9780192805850 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+9780192805850 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004027966

Frankfurt, H. G. (1988). The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge. ISBN: 978-0521336116. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0521336116 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0521336116 https://lccn.loc.gov/87026941

Gregory, R. L. (Ed.) (2004). The Oxford Companion to the Mind. Oxford University Press, 2nd ed. ISBN: 0198662246. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0198662246 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0198662246 https://lccn.loc.gov/2004275127

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN: 978-0374533557. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0374533557 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0374533557 https://lccn.loc.gov/2012533187

Lippmann, W. (1920). Liberty and the News. Harcourt, Brace and Howe (Leopold Reprint). No ISBN. eBook and searches: https://books.google.com/books?id=Df-SzcLRcAIC Retrieved 24th Feb. 2022. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Liberty+and+the+News+Lippmann https://www.google.com/search?q=liberty+and+the+news+lippmann https://lccn.loc.gov/20004814

Paulos, J. A. (1995). A Mathematician Reads The Newspaper. Basic Books. ISBN: 0465043623. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0465043623 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0465043623 https://lccn.loc.gov/94048206

Retraice (2020/11/02). Re10: Living to Guess Another Day. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re10 Retrieved 2nd Nov. 2020.

Retraice (2022/10/19). Re23: You Need a World Model. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re23 Retrieved 20th Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/24). Re28: What's Good? RTFM. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re28 Retrieved 25th Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/27). Re32: AI News. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re32 Retrieved 31st Oct. 2022.

Retraice (2022/10/29). Re34: Opinions. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re34 Retrieved 3rd Nov. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/01). Re37: Notes on Solutions to Conspiracy. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re37 Retrieved 4th Nov. 2022.

Retraice (2022/11/07). Re43: The Midterms -- Part 1. retraice.com. https://www.retraice.com/segments/re43 Retrieved 9th Nov. 2022.

Schneier, B. (2000). Secrets and Lies: Digital Security in a Networked World. Wiley. ISBN: 0471453803. Searches: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=0471453803 https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+0471453803 https://lccn.loc.gov/00042252

Footnotes

^1 https://www.retraice.com/retraice

^2 Super Tuesday, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 8th, 2022. Also noted in Retraice (2022/11/07).

^3 Weighted voting: The notion of power, wikipedia.org, retrieved Nov. 9th, 2022.

^4 Homo economicus, wikipedia.org

^5 Lippmann (1920) p. 37 ff.; Paulos (1995) pp. 3-4; Retraice (2022/10/29) p. 2.

^6 Frankfurt (1988) p. 125.

^7 Frankfurt (1988) pp 132-133. Cf. also Retraice (2022/10/29) on opinions.

^8 Guessing, i.e. using our intelligence to "improv[e] the reliability of predictions by exploiting the redundancy [compressibility] of sensory messages." See Barlow (2004); Retraice (2022/10/27); Retraice (2020/11/02). Guessing is different from understanding, just as humans are good at subconsciously scanning images for danger (Computer-human hybrids could be best at scanning for danger, Aviva Rutkin, Aug. 12th, 2015), but that doesn't mean we understand what we're seeing. Side note: We're very vulnerable to missing changes in images (change blindness). Blackmore (2005) pp. 58-59.

^9 Paulos (1995) pp. 3-4.

^10 Paulos (1995) pp. 3-4; Lippmann (1920) p. 37 ff.

^11 Schneier (2000) p. 308.

^12 Retraice (2022/11/01) on `trustable tools' and `risk-limiting audits'.

^13 Retraice (2022/10/19).

^14 For an example, see Kahneman (2011) pp. 209-212.

^15 Retraice (2022/10/24).