Ai & Ae (Artificial Intelligence and Aesthetic Experience)

I’m not afraid of AI (Artificial Intelligence). I am afraid of human greed and exploitation and violence and lies and xenophobia, but I have trouble understanding how I could be afraid of intelligence. I had always hoped to have a chat with a self-aware non-human intelligence, which could be a so-called artificial intelligence or it could be an alien. The reason would be to get a different perspective on my own intelligence, as a kind of reality check. At any rate, intelligence, whether artificial or otherwise, is pretty far down on the list of things that I think contribute to global catastrophe. But all of those things in the list that I am afraid of, they are way up at the top of that list. And to look at it the other way, on the list of things that might help provide a way forward out of the Anthropocene Extinction, I would say intelligence would be at the top of the list. Love would be up there too, but I personally have difficulty distinguishing between the two, love and intelligence. That’s one of the things I would want to talk to a AI or an alien about, to see if they reach that same conclusion. So intelligence is not the problem. The misuse of some of the fruits of intelligence, that definitely could be a problem. That’s why I get so vehement about clickbait.

Clickbait is a text or a thumbnail link that is designed to attract attention and to entice users to follow that link and read, view, or listen to the linked piece of online content, being typically deceptivesensationalized, or otherwise misleading.[2][3][4]

—–https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickbait

AI is trained on clickbait, so no wonder it writes good social media posts and advertising copy. Clickbait is just the filler between the advertisements. Its sole purpose is to keep you clicking so you’ll see more advertisements. It has no other purpose than to waste your time in order to get money for showing you advertisements.  You are better off staring at the wall or at your big toe then reading clickbait. Well I could explain that I guess, staring at the wall, at least the possibility could arise that you could make a thought of your own. Clickbait is worse than porn, which at least stimulates your reptile brain. Unfortunately, clickbait is not only just empty drivel. It has a more nefarious purpose, which is not only to keep you around for the advertising, but to prepare you to receive it in a susceptible way. So, in my humble opinion a world with less clickbait would be a better world. I could explain some of my vehemence pretty easily I think. The reason AI won’t do anything of real interest to me anytime soon is that ChatGPT and other Large Language Models are trained by predicting the next expected word, billions and billions of times.  I do love it that nobody seems to know exactly what a large language model like ChatGPT is actually doing, that is, how it produces what it produces. I won’t be a bit surprised though if it turns out that it is like a cat’s cradle or, let’s say, like a rope tied in slip knots. So then, AI is trained to predict the expected next words, but I am a philosopher and poet and what philosophers and poets are interested in is the unexpected next word. Continue reading

Xenophobia is an Illness

 Elizabeth Eckford, Little Rock HS

Xenophobia is a mental illness, most precisely, a psychological disorder. It is listed as such in The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (“DSM-V”).

Xenophobia consists of an Irrational Fear of persons or cultural characteristics that one perceives to be different than one’s own, that is, strange, foreign, or abnormal. Most fundamentally, Xenophobia is Fear of the Other.

Racism, sexism, and homophobia are forms of xenophobia.

The xenophobe is uncomfortable in the presence of the object of fear, and because the xenophobe wants to eliminate their discomfort by making the object of their irrational fear go away, that discomfort can be expressed as resentment, hatred, violence, and even genocide. Remember, however, that the fear is irrational. It is not caused by what the xenophobe is afraid of, but by the xenophobe’s own irrational reaction.   Accordingly, the xenophobe can trigger the discomfort, and violence, simply by thinking of the object of their fear. Furthermore, the xenophobe can be easily manipulated by lies and propaganda about the Other.

Xenophobia is treated with Exposure Conditioning, which consists of becoming engaged with the object of fear until the irrational fear is replaced by realistic understanding.   Usually,  xenophobes just need to spend some time with whatever it is they are irrational about, and they will get over it.  The exposure conditioning can happen in the natural order of things too, outside of a clinical setting. Therefore a diverse environment will have fewer instances of xenophobia than an homogeneous one, because any xenophobia that arises will more likely naturally dissipate.

This is a companion piece to The Little Boy Raised by Gay People.

Men have ruled the world for 3,000 years

Picasso’s Blue Guitar, Permission Requested

“Men are afraid that women will laugh at them.

Women are afraid that men will kill them.”

—Margaret Atwood

They said, ‘You have a blue guitar,
You do not play things as they are.’

The man replied, ‘Things as they are
Are changed upon the blue guitar.’

—Wallace Stevens

Men have Ruled the World for 3,000 years.

The World Can Be Other Than It Is

They Declared a Bogus Culture War

Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Bill O’Reilly, Rupert Murdoch (Fox News),
Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Falwell, Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump

Truth is the first casualty of war, and that is why these individuals declared a Bogus Culture War, so they could lie and propagandize with impunity, appealing to fear, ignorance, and xenophobia, for their own political and financial gain. They needed a pretext in order to violate long-standing political norms and traditions of bipartisanship, civility, inclusiveness, compromise, country over party, and respect for truth, evidence, and reasoning, so that they might gain political advantage by using lies, propaganda, and divisiveness as a political weapon against their fellow Americans.

Tell them about the Dream

“Tell them about the dream Martin,” the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson called out to Dr. King during his speech at the March on Washington. Martin heard her, put his notes away, and told them about the dream. That’s one of the bright moments, one of the many as an expression of the incredibly rich and deep African-American culture. I mean, this was the culture that invented blues, gospel, and jazz, and that alone ranks it with Athenian Greece and Renaissance Italy in terms of contribution to human artistic and cultural achievement. Add contributions to politics (non-violence), religion (Church), and language (Black English/Ebonics) and it would be a sad thing indeed if white Americans lived oblivious to the glory in their midst.

When America was Great, the Rich Paid Taxes

From the end of WWII until 1980, America led the world in everything–and the rate on the highest income tax bracket averaged 80%. We built the Interstate Highway System, created Medicare, went to the moon, American manufactured products were the envy of the world, middle class working people were thriving, and the national debt was trivial. In 1981 Republicans began their tax cuts for the rich, aka Voodoo Economics, and the bottom fell out. Infrastructure is crumbling, the middle class is declining, manufacturing is on life support, working people are hurting, and the Federal debt is a burden that will shape the lives of our descendants.

Republicans who oppose a fair and sane maximum income tax rate are lying to us–they are appealing to our love of America in order to line their own pockets and increase their own power. If we want a healthy and decent society, the rich have to pay their responsible share of taxes, just like they did when America was great.

Let Us Reason Together

President Lyndon Johnson often said, “Come let us reason together,” because he believed that the great deliberative body of the United States Congress could act in good faith to develop policies that would serve all Americans.

He passed Medicare, The Civil Rights Act, and The Voting Rights Act.

Just a few years later, LBJ declined to seek re-election because he came to believe that his policy in Vietnam was dividing Americans.

Racism Has Always Been the Worst Threat to America

Redneck Bigots Protesting Marriage

White southern racism has caused more death and suffering to America than all of the other regions of the country combined; more, even, than all the rest of the world combined.  Of course, to say “white Southerners” is not to say “all white southerners.” But it is to say an “effective mass” of them, comparable to a “super-majority” in politics, usually 60 to 75%. When the effective mass is that large, the super-majority can do whatever they want to do.

Racism

The virulent racist nonsense white southerner slave-owners used to justify living their pseudo-aristocratic lives on the backs of enslaved Africans is still corrupting our nation’s soul.  Even though the indefensible and illogical doctrine of white supremacy has been exposed repeatedly as empty and meaningless, it is still causing hatred, fear, and violence, and clouding the minds of American citizens.

The Civil War

When white southerners saw that the rest of the United States could no longer abide the abomination of slavery, they started the American Civil War. The cost: 750,000 Americans dead and a country that is still divided.

Jim Crow Segregation

Lynchings were commemorated with Lynching postcards

Lynchings were commemorated with Lynching Postcards

Fifteen years after the Civil War, white southerners instituted Jim Crow segregation, and enforced it with murders, ethnic cleansing, and political corruption. The cost: At least 4,400 African-American men, women, and children were murdered in terrorist lynchings and hundreds of thousands of Americans were deprived of the equal rights guaranteed in the Bill of Rights and the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution. It is, by the way, pretty easy to find the number of lynchings because many were held on the courthouse lawn and covered in the local newspapers, so that blacks would get the message.

Legal Jim Crow segregation lasted from 1880 until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act was  passed by a “traitor to his race,” Democratic president Lyndon Johnson from Texas. Ironically, legal segregation lasted longer in the United States than it did, as apartheid, in South Africa. The Cost: When he signed the Civil Rights Act, LBJ said, “We have lost the South for a generation,” though it has turned out to be longer than that. Continue reading

Mass Shootings. It’s not just the guns. It’s something worse.

Mass Shootings - Sandy Hook CT

Teddy Bear Memorial, Sandy Hook CT

It’s not just the guns. It is something much, much worse. There are guns everywhere in the world, but only in the U.S. has there been an average of more than one mass shooting every day this year (274 days / 294 mass shootings). The something worse is that in the U.S. various factors have combined to cause American culture to lose sight of the most fundamental moral precept known to humankind. In the words of Jesus of Nazareth, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” In the words of philosopher Immanuel Kant, “You must never treat persons as things.” In the words of the Rastafarians, “I and I say I and I, instead of you and I, because the other is an I also.” And in the words of Confucius, “If you don’t want someone to do something to you then don’t do it to them,” which is of course, another way to state the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” To put this as clearly as I can: if one loves and respects others as one loves and respects oneself then one does not murder, rape, cheat, manipulate, take advantage of, or otherwise violate that other; rather, one is as concerned with the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial well-being of the Other as with one’s own.

Continue reading

Peace Between Israel and Palestine

b4

“Our lands are intertwined.  Our histories are intertwined.  Our fates are intertwined.  Let us be partners.

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin Talk Peace

Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin, 1977. Sadat was assassinated by right-wing extremist Egyptians in 1981.

“There are millions of people of good faith, vision, wisdom, compassion and courage in Palestine and Israel. We will put all of our energy into building peace and prosperity for the children of Israel and Palestine.  We will work side by side and the welfare of each will be the greatest desire of the other.  The success of each of us will be measured by the success of the other. All of our children will thrive. The entire desert will bloom.  We will watch each others’ backs and help and support each other.  We will trust.  We will be stronger together than we ever were separately. We will live lives of safety, freedom, comfort, work, and spirituality.  Continue reading

When I died I was much surprised to meet God

When I died I was much surprised to meet God.

“You didn’t believe in me, in my literal existence, did you?” He asked.

“No I didn’t,” I replied. “I thought you were a way of talking about being human in the world.”

He laughed and said, “That’s the spirit!  Good for you. There was no evidence or reason to believe otherwise. It’s what I would have thought myself.”

So I asked my question, “Why did you create rational people with free will then,  when some of them would surely reach erroneous conclusions?”

“Oh come on, ” He said, “that’s an easy one.  I created humans to be self-creating. They are open-ended. To keep things moving along, I needed people who could ask new questions unto eternity.”

“Dang,” I said, “so I was wrong.  You exist and this is the afterlife.”

“Oh no,” He said, “you were right.”

 

Michelangelo, Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants

Star Child, Excerpt from concluding scene of Stanley Kubrick, 2001

 

Happy Bastille Day – Merci Mes Amis

the-statue-of-liberty2

The French Revolution began with the liberation of the Bastille prison by the citizens of Paris  on July 14 1789.

Bastille-Day-Eiffel-Tower-4

For Lafayette, George Washington’s friend and compatriot. For Lady Liberty, beacon of freedom to millions. For the respect and refuge from racism you gave to African-American jazz musicians. For your sound advice even when our politicians would not hear it.

Merci mes amis.

Thank you, friends.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité.

 Liberty, Equality, Brotherhood.

Nina Simone – I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to be Free

African-American composer and vocalist Nina Simone lived the last 10 years of her life in Aix-in-Provence, France.  Continue reading

The Little Boy Raised by Gay People

the-rainbow-in-my-experience-2When I left home at 19 I was emotionally stunted and pretty much devoid of social skills.  Luckily I fell in with a loving and kind group of gay people who helped me grow up.  They were all so quick-witted, and I wasn’t, that they called me their “straight man,” my George Burns to their Gracie Allen.  I learned many important and useful things.  I share them freely.  Don’t carry a wallet in your back pocket because it spoils the line of your jeans. Don’t put a sweater in the dryer.  Swimmers have the best bodies. You must hang Christmas tree ornaments so they dangle freely and do not get caught up on other branches; similarly, you must hang the tinsel strand by strand rather than glopping it on.  Continue reading

It’s Nothing Personal Ms. Jenner – TV Just Sucks

ProtectYourChildrenThe hubbub surrounding Caitlyn Jenner is a clear and classic example of how media corporations manipulate the American conversation for their own own profit.

First, contrary to implications, there is nothing new, experimental, risky, or even medically interesting about the process of gender reassignment.  That process has been refined for over 60 years, since before Christine Jorgensen went to Sweden in 1952.  Today, the whole process is quite well understood and standardized, the psychological and behavioral indications, the drugs and hormones, the social and cosmetic aspects, the surgery.  It is a straightforward medical matter for Ms. Jenner and her doctors. Continue reading

Lou Reed Died Yesterday and I Cried Today

Andy Warhol Lou ReedOriginally Written October 28, 2013.  Lou Reed is to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday April 18.  His sponsor is Patti Smith and his music will be performed by Beck.

Lou Reed died yesterday and I cried today. I was thinking of something I wrote for a poetry slam after Bradley Nowell died, “When an artist dies, Satan smiles.”  Upon reflection that seems suspiciously close to “I saw Satan laughing with delight / The day the music died.” It’s not that Lou Reed died. I hope he had a good passing. But he was an artist once. He brought something new into the world. In Ursula Le Guin’s book The Word for World is Forest, those who are bringing something new into the world are called gods—while they are bringing something new into the world–so someone might say, “I was a god then.” I have observed over the years that if an artist sees that something is worth doing, and that he can do it, he will do it, regaloureedrdless of consequences. I think that is the difference between artists and entertainers; an entertainer worries about coming back tomorrow night. Maybe I cried for the price that artists pay. But, no, Vincent van Gogh has already reassured me about that. In his last letter to his brother Theo, Vincent said, “My own work, I am risking my life for it, and my reason has half-foundered because of it….that’s all right.” Maybe I cried for the wonder of a world “that hath such people in it,” or is it that it hath so few such people in it.

Why I Dress Like a Homeless Person

Homeless GandhiDo clothes make the man? For many years I made my living as a college professor.   My classes were known for a high degree of activity, interactivity, creativity, and laughter.  People brought their friends to see the show because I was not one of the professors who wore a suit and stood behind a podium and recited his lecture, or read it off the PowerPoints.  Rather, I took part.   I demonstrated the Buffalo Dance, ran the video camera, mixed the paint, moved the furniture, held the fire extinguisher, and whatever else needed to be done.  For this kind of performance art, one needs clothes that are designed to facilitate movement, not those that are designed to restrict it.  Think about it, suits were originally the mark of the ruling class, for precisely the opposite reason, to demonstrate that they were not required to do any physical work.  Ease of movement was for the workers, and they wore clothes appropriate to their need to move unrestrainedly.  So did I.  Continue reading

Protect Your Family Against Psychotronic Attack

I met Paul the first day I moved into the neighborhood. I was unloading the truck by myself and a burly fellow walked across the street and introduced himself as Paul; he asked if I needed any help unloading. I did, but Pfarady04aul was wearing some kind of brace under his shirt. “No,” he said, “it’s not a back brace; it’s for something else.” After he helped me get the washer and dryer in the basement, we chatted briefly. I complimented him on his front yard garden; in addition to quantities of the normal vegetables, he had a peach tree with peaches on it. I had seen these in Georgia, I told him, but never so far north. We also talked about the heat and the growing season here. It used to be better, Paul said, but lately the weather had become increasingly erratic, with unnatural hot spells, even during the winter, and late freezes. Continue reading

Learn to Love

Learn to Love KokoI had to learn how to love.  I had to work at it—paying attention to what made me feel happy and what didn’t.  There were so many mistakes.  It took 60 years, which seems like a long time, and I think I was lucky in the people I knew along the way.

This is the big question I have: We have an idea that is so nearly beyond doubt, in this case that to learn to love is what makes you happy, but we don’t act on it, we don’t implement it.  Nobody doubts it.  I should say that nobody who understands it doubts it.  And that’s the question.  Why is such an important and basic idea not a fundamental part of human education and culture: how to love.

Obviously, people should begin to learn to love at home.  And then they should learn in church (by “church” I mean, “spiritual activity.”)   But what if for some reason they don’t?  I agree, they should learn at home and in church.  But what if somehow they don’t? I do believe that some people learn abuse and bigotry at home and at church.  Shouldn’t learning to love just be everywhere anyway?  Shouldn’t it be about the most basic thing there is?  Are the people who don’t learn it in family or church just screwed?  That seems like a lot of people.

Recommended: http://gtu.edu/news-events/currents/spring-2011/a-theology-for-koko

Grampa, What Were You Doing When They Killed The Oceans?

Decline on ocean fishing off Key West

We baby-boomers ought to be ashamed.  It is incomprehensible to me that any member of my generation (U.S. baby-boomers, b. 1945-1964) could look at these pictures and not feel that they have failed in one of their most fundamental human responsibilities.  The picture above shows the catch off Key West, FL, in 1958, 1983, and 2007  The picture below shows the habitat of the tiger in 1850, 1950, and 2006.  These pictures make it real to me, more than the statistics, charts, and graphs.  It’s really happening.  Some of the damage was done while the boomers were kids, just because there were so many of them, but most of it was done after they matured and came to power, when those numbers could have been used to prevent further destruction.

Indian Ocean Tiger Habitat

Continue reading

Another Good Reason to Repeal Cannabis Prohibition

Repeal Cannabis Prohibition CO RoadsignThe conversations in a pot store, or recreational cannabis dispensary, are fascinating.  People in Colorado pot stores are talking about very subtle variations in their consciousness and experience, associated with different forms and strains of cannabis.   They are doing very comfortably what philosophers call phenomenology, examination of the structure and nature of consciousness and experience.  It’s usually a pretty hard thing to get across in class but these people are naturals.  Allen Ginsberg certainly understood too.  In 1966 he wrote that “the marijuana consciousness gently shifts one’s attention…to sensing phenomena.”  And then his 1977 his book Mind Breaths Ginsberg explicitly associated the creation of poetry with the observation of consciousness as practiced in Buddhist meditation. Continue reading

Charlie Haden says Listen to Rough Jazz

Rough Jazz: Charlie Haden, Don Cherry, Dewey Redman,Ed Blackwell“Listen to rough jazz” is a something Charlie Haden said in his last concert in his home town of Springfield Missouri. The play on words is that rough jazz is the opposite of smooth jazz, the ubiquitous, insipid jazz format of unchallenging, uncreative, and unobjectionable background music. Rough jazz, roughly, means, “hard bop and modern jazz, or music that led to it (or came from it),” or, alternatively, “music that swings, is improvised, uses blue notes and call and response.” It just means “real jazz.” Charlie Haden is the rightmost in this great  photograph.  Why do I call it great?  Because all I see is the love of creative music.  Charlie grew up in the Ozarks town of Springfield but somehow all he wanted to do was play jazz. His dad took him to a concert of a jazz dance band that came through town and Charlie got to meet them in their hotel room. He said remembered that it smelled funny. One of them said to Charlie, “Look at us. We got nothing but the music. Do you want to end up like us?” “Yeaaaaaah,” said Charlie. Continue reading

Spaceship Earth has exceeded its carrying capacity

license99eSpaceship Earth has exceeded its carrying capacity. Its human inhabitants are talking of limiting carbon emissions, refraining from dumping environmental toxins, eating lower on the food chain, and wasting less water. These are all good ideas, but none of them is going to save us, not even all of them together. There is an elephant in the room that is being ignored.  All of these Climate Change Conferences and no one says the obvious: There are too many people.  OK, I will open the bidding: If we are extraordinarily careful Spaceship Earth can sustain 1 billion people, and “by extraordinarily careful” I mean, no burning coal, no petroleum, ground the jetliners, restore the 75% of forest we have destroyed, take down the dams and let the rivers live free again, no more Consumer growth economy. Continue reading