Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 349

 

 

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "21 Lessons for the 21st Century," by Yuval Noah Harari.

In the last few decades research in areas such as neuroscience and behavioral economics allowed scientists to hack humans, and in particular to gain a much better understanding of how humans make decisions. It turns out that our choices of everything from food to mates result not from some mysterious free will but rather from billions of neurons calculating probabilities within a split second. Vaunted “human intuition” is in reality “pattern recognition.” Good drivers, bankers, and lawyers don’t have magical intuitions about traffic, investment, or negotiation; rather, by recognizing recurring patterns, they spot and try to avoid careless pedestrians, inept borrowers, and sly crooks. It also turns out that the biochemical algorithms of the human brain are far from perfect. They rely on heuristics, shortcuts, and outdated circuits adapted to the African savannah rather than to the urban jungle. No wonder that even good drivers, bankers, and lawyers sometimes make stupid mistakes. 

This means that AI can outperform humans even in tasks that supposedly demand “intuition.” If you think AI needs to compete against the human soul in terms of mystical hunches, the task sounds impossible. But if AI really needs to compete against neural networks in calculating probabilities and recognizing patterns, that sounds far less daunting.

In particular, AI can be better at jobs that demand intuitions about other people. Many lines of work—such as driving a vehicle in a street full of pedestrians, lending money to strangers, and negotiating a business deal—require the ability to correctly assess the emotions and desires of others. Is that kid about to run into the road? Does the man in the suit intend to take my money and disappear? Will that lawyer act upon his threats or is he just bluffing? As long as it was thought that such emotions and desires were generated by an immaterial spirit, it seemed obvious that computers would never be able to replace human drivers, bankers, and lawyers. For how could a computer understand the divinely created human spirit? Yet if these emotions and desires are in fact no more than biochemical algorithms, there is no reason computers cannot decipher these algorithms—and do so far better than any Homo sapiens.

A driver predicting the intentions of a pedestrian, a banker assessing the credibility of a potential borrower, and a lawyer gauging the mood at the negotiating table don’t rely on witchcraft. Rather, unbeknownst to them, their brains are recognizing biochemical patterns by analyzing facial expressions, tones of voice, hand movements, and even body odors. An AI equipped with the right sensors could do all that far more accurately and reliably than a human. 

For this reason the threat of job loss does not result merely from the rise of infotech. It results from the confluence of infotech with biotech. The way from the fMRI scanner to the labor market is long and tortuous, but it can still be covered within a few decades. What brain scientists are learning today about the amygdala and the cerebellum might make it possible for computers to outperform human psychiatrists and bodyguards in 2050.

Inequality goes back to the Stone Age. Thirty thousand years ago, hunter-gatherer bands buried some members in sumptuous graves replete with thousands of ivory beads, bracelets, jewels, and art objects, while other members had to settle for a bare hole in the ground. Nevertheless, ancient hunter-gatherer bands were still more egalitarian than any subsequent human society, because they had very little property. Property is a prerequisite for long-term inequality. 

Following the Agricultural Revolution, property multiplied and with it inequality. As humans gained ownership of land, animals, plants, and tools, rigid hierarchical societies emerged, in which small elites monopolized most wealth and power for generation after generation. Humans came to accept this arrangement as natural and even divinely ordained. Hierarchy was not just the norm but also the ideal. How could there be order without a clear hierarchy between aristocrats and commoners, between men and women, or between parents and children? Priests, philosophers, and poets all over the world patiently explained that just as in the human body not all members are equal—the feet must obey the head—so also in human society equality would bring nothing but chaos. 

In the late modern era, however, equality became an ideal in almost all human societies. This was partly due to the rise of the new ideologies of communism and liberalism. But it was also due to the Industrial Revolution, which made the masses more important than ever before. Industrial economies relied on masses of common workers, while industrial armies relied on masses of common soldiers. Governments in both democracies and dictatorships invested heavily in the health, education, and welfare of the masses, because they needed millions of healthy laborers to operate the production lines and millions of loyal soldiers to fight in the trenches. Consequently, the history of the twentieth century revolved to a large extent around the reduction of inequality between classes, races, and genders. Though the world of the year 2000 still had its share of hierarchies, it was nevertheless a far more equal place than the world of 1900. In the first years of the twenty-first century people expected that the egalitarian process would continue and even accelerate. In particular, they hoped that globalization would spread economic prosperity throughout the world, and that as a result people in India and Egypt would come to enjoy the same opportunities and privileges as people in Finland and Canada. An entire generation grew up on this promise. 

Now it seems that this promise might not be fulfilled. Globalization has certainly benefited large segments of humanity, but there are signs of growing inequality both between and within societies. Some groups increasingly monopolize the fruits of globalization, while billions are left behind. Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth. Even more alarmingly, the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion.

This situation could get far worse. As explained in earlier chapters, the rise of AI might eliminate the economic value and political power of most humans. At the same time, improvements in biotechnology might make it possible to translate economic inequality into biological inequality. The superrich will finally have something really worthwhile to do with their stupendous wealth. While up until now they have only been able to buy little more than status symbols, soon they might be able to buy life itself. If new treatments for extending life and upgrading physical and cognitive abilities prove to be expensive, humankind might split into biological castes.

Throughout history the rich and the aristocracy always imagined that they had skills superior to everybody else’s, which is why they were in control. As far as we can tell, this wasn’t true. The average duke wasn’t more talented than the average peasant—he owed his superiority only to unjust legal and economic discrimination. However, by 2100 the rich might really be more talented, more creative, and more intelligent than the slum-dwellers. Once a real gap in ability opens between the rich and the poor, it will become almost impossible to close it. If the rich use their superior abilities to enrich themselves further, and if more money can buy them enhanced bodies and brains, with time the gap will only widen. By 2100, the richest 1 percent might own not merely most of the world’s wealth but also most of the world’s beauty, creativity, and health.

There is no contradiction between such globalism and patriotism. For patriotism isn’t about hating foreigners. Patriotism is about taking care of your compatriots. And in the twenty-first century, in order to take good care of your compatriots, you must cooperate with foreigners. So good nationalists should now be globalists.

We Can't Handle the Truth

 

 

Read what you will into today's post, I am not trying to grind a particular political ax. I do want to call out that, for all the talk about elevating the truth, most of us don't actually want the truth, at least enough to pay the cost associated with it.

What do I mean? On shallow issues, we prefer to have our ears tickled than to have to absorb something less pleasant or more complicated. Honestly, folks, when you ask your significant other, "how do I look," do you want constructive criticism that will improve your aesthetic or do you just want them to say "marvelous!"?

On another level, we are invested in our opinions, so we are inclined to believe things that reinforce those opinions and avoid or discount things that challenge them. Whether this is superficial things like sports or music, or deeper things like politics and economics, when was the last time you honestly kept an open mind about something, kept your mouth shut when someone offered a contrary thought, and actually conceded the point and even changed your mind? 

In these cases, the truth truly is better for you, because it enhances your worldview or maybe even gets you to turn around when you were previously hurtling towards danger. Yet, we actively reject the truth in order to soothe our need to be affirmed that what we now believe is correct and doesn't need to be adjusted.

As a husband, parent, manager, and civic leader, I've tried very hard to lean into all that goes into actively seeking the truth. Sometimes I have to bite my tongue and take deep breaths in order to keep my mouth shut and my ears open. Sometimes I have to scold myself for being rigid in my thinking in order to dislodge myself towards changing my attitude, my opinion, and my actions. Even when I know it's for the best, it can be a bitter pill to swallow even as I know the pill is good for me.

What about you? When did you last seek out, listen to, and affirm an opposing perspective? When did you, even when the setting gave you room to have the last word, just kept your mouth shut and said thanks? When could you honestly say you were willing to pay the full price for hearing and receiving the truth? It takes significant effort for me, and I don't always put in that effort, even when I know it's the right thing to do and I want to be known as being truth-seeking and open-minded. The truth, it seems, is more elusive, and our commitment to it far weaker, than we'd like to admit.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 348

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination," by Brian Jay Jones.

Like his father and grandfather before him, the boy was named Theodor, with the middle name Seuss—pronounced Soyce, in proper German fashion—affixed as a recognition of his mother’s side of the family.

Nettie, too, would directly influence Ted’s ear for the beat and intonation of words. As she put her son to bed each evening, Nettie would chant a refrain she had often sung behind the counter at the Seuss bakery to inform patrons of the day’s pie flavors: “Apple, mince, lemon . . . peach, apricot, pineapple . . . blueberry, coconut, custard and SQUASH!”—at which point she would playfully squash a giggling Ted down into his mattress. Ted later credited his mother “for the rhythms in which I write and the urgency with which I do it.”

Geisel would usually overstate the restrictive nature of his contract with Standard Oil—outside work was permitted, within reason—but he did have to be careful. The exclusive nature of his contract with Standard Oil, he explained, “forbade me from doing an awful lot of stuff.” Writing and illustrating children’s books, however, wasn’t a forbidden activity. “I would like to say I went into children’s book work because of my great understanding of children,” Geisel said later. In truth, “I went in because it wasn’t excluded by my Standard Oil contract.”

To his increasing distress, the responses were all negative. Geisel would later recall being rejected by twenty-seven publishers, though that number would vary with the telling, ranging from as low as twenty to as high as forty-three. Regardless, no one was biting. While editors knew the Dr. Seuss name, it wasn’t enough to overcome some initial skepticism. Some editors expressed concern that A Story That No One Can Beat had no real moral lesson for children—that the narrator, as a result of choosing not to share his tall tale with his father, had suffered no consequences. (“What’s wrong with kids having fun reading without being preached at?” Ted groused.)7 Others argued that he should leave the rhyming verse to Mother Goose. Mostly, said Geisel, “[t]he main reason they all gave was there was nothing similar on the market, so of course it wouldn’t sell.”

Unable to have any real children, then, Ted and Helen created a fictional one: Chrysanthemum-Pearl, born at about the time of Helen’s surgery (hence her age was given as eighty-nine months, or a little more than seven years, in 1938), and a precocious child whom the Geisels could good-naturedly discuss at dinner parties when the conversation turned to children. Friends were in on the ploy—though as far as they knew, Ted and Helen had simply chosen to remain childless and had made up Chrysanthemum-Pearl for some genial competitive fun. And thus, any time a friend told a story about one of their children, Ted—in a tactic worthy of Mulberry Street’s Marco—would one-up the tale with a story of the miraculous feats of Chrysanthemum-Pearl, who could, for example, “whip up the most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting.”36 Everyone would laugh, and the conversation would usually move on to a different subject. In fact, Ted and Helen talked for years about Chrysanthemum-Pearl in such convincing terms that, for a while at least, their niece Peggy thought she was real. Even she wouldn’t know the full story behind Chrysanthemum-Pearl for decades.

On February 13, PM ran a Dr. Seuss cartoon with the caption “Waiting for the Signal from Home,” depicting a long line of Japanese Americans—shown stretching along the entire Pacific coast—queuing up to receive bricks of TNT from a building labeled “Hon. Fifth Column.” From the stereotypical portrayal of the Japanese—each one is drawn exactly alike, in bowler hats and black jackets, eyes represented by small slits—to its underlying distrust of his fellow citizens, it’s one of the lowest moments in Dr. Seuss’s career. Further, it’s a shockingly tone-deaf message coming from Ted Geisel, who had experienced bigotry by association during World War I when he was pelted with coal and mocked for no other reason than a shared heritage with the enemy. By his own experience, he should have known better.

In his first class, Ted set out to help his students decide what kind of writers they wanted to be. They could be “torchbearers,” he told them, intentionally writing to deliver a moral or message, or they could be “Mrs. Mulvaneys,” Ted’s most derisive category, reserved for those who wrote kids’ books simply for the money, without regard for the content. He hoped, however, they were in a third category of “writers who want to make a profession of writing stories that children will like.”

The Lorax was a success, too, as a piece of propaganda. The Keep America Beautiful campaign would present Geisel with a special award for his environmental improvement efforts.16 A decade later, the United Nations would distribute the book in several languages to reinforce a conservation message globally, and the environmental group Global Tomorrow Coalition would seek permission to name its highest award after the Lorax—a request Geisel granted. (He wouldn’t always be so generous when he felt his message was being misconstrued or misappropriated. When Horton’s humanist mantra, “A person’s a person, no matter how small!” showed up on the letterhead of a pro-life organization, Geisel’s attorneys slapped the organization with a cease-and-desist order.)

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 347

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Live Your Best Life: 219 Science-based Reasons to Rethink Your Daily Routine," by Stuart Farrimond.

Noisy workplaces are hard to concentrate in, but complete silence can stifle thought for many. In fact, some background noise, be it the tick of a clock, distant chatter, or musical murmurings from the radio seem to activate the “watching” brain network and help us stay focused. Around 50 decibels, the sound of rainfall, seems to be the sweet spot for most of us. Extroverted people tend to thrive in noisier places, whereas more reflective types may founder in such an environment. Noise-canceling headphones can be useful—although the downside is you may lose out on valuable interaction with colleagues. In a shared workspace, decisions about noise and tidiness levels invariably require compromise.

Anxiety and stress are the enemy of aimless thought. Feeling under threat restrains the brain’s “wandering” default mode network and instead nudges the brain toward its vigilant salience network. Writer’s block is a mental trap brought on by becoming anxious about a lack of creativity. This becomes a vicious circle that makes it even more difficult to think creatively, upping the anxiety further. 

If you’re feeling blocked, take a break and relax so your brain switches back to its wandering network. Monotonous tasks, like doing dishes or driving, can calm the mind enough to bring on an epiphany, which is why cruising along the highway can ignite our best ideas.

Contrary to what you might expect, you are often at your creative best just when you think you are at your worst. This is because creativity and lateral thought flourish when your mind is in its wandering, default mode network, which is more likely when your concentrating, executive control network is running at low ebb. For night owls, creativity is maximal in the morning; for morning larks, the best ideas tend to come in the evening. 

The three brain networks—wandering, watching, and concentrating—work together to develop your creativity. Learning new skills helps your brain form new pathways, encouraging these three networks to collaborate more effectively. Allow time for creativity and work in a space that encourages you to be creative, without trying to force it. Take regular breaks to prompt your brain to think outside the box. Get enough rest and sleep, since anxiety-inducing pressure will choke creativity.

Remarkably, the brains of new parents rewire, retuning the dopamine-driven reward system to be more motivated toward childcare rather than sex.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 346

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Love is an Ex-Country: A Memoir," by Randa Jarrar.

The following weekend, my mother saw the navel ring as I was coming up the stairs from the basement. She shouted at me, asked if I was trying to damage my body. It was strange for her to ask this, since she had stood by while my father had beaten my body so many times. I said to her, as calmly as I could, “It’s my body.”

The thought of another woman being jealous of my body was alien to me. Why would a slim woman envy me? In a year, I’d know: because I was confident and gorgeous in my rejection of mainstream beauty standards.

For a very long time, I intensely disliked the word naturalized. It made me feel as if my family’s very existence was unnatural, and would only change once they became citizens. I looked up the word to avail myself of this feeling, and I enjoyed the biological definition—that to naturalize a plant was to make sure it could live wild in a land where it was not indigenous. The wild part was the part I adored. We were living wild in America. Until we were not.

A little over ten years later, I was back in my parents’ home, standing in their basement and doing a load of my parents’ laundry. I was standing right by the water heater, right by the spot where my father had beaten me twenty-four years earlier. He was upstairs now, his left leg slightly shaking, his bones bruised from his disease, his hands curled in his lap. I laundered his undershirts and socks and my mother’s things happily, wanting to help. For some reason, there was a baseball bat just a couple of feet from the washing machine. I wanted to feel something, anger, bitterness, revenge, self-pity—anything at all. But all I could feel was sadness, both for the man my father used to be and for the powerless girl I once was. It was perhaps the seven years that I spent away from him that helped me reach this destination in myself. The fact that by the end of the seven years, every cell in each of our bodies had turned and changed, so that not a single part of him had ever beaten me, and not a single part of myself had ever been beaten.

No one can touch you here, unless you ask them to. No one can hurt you here, unless you beg them to, negotiating the level of hurt and a safe word, if “stop” does not suffice. 

You may not touch anyone here, unless they ask you to. You may not hurt anyone here, unless they beg you to, and negotiate with you the level of hurt and a safe word. 

You may ask anyone to touch you and you may ask anyone if you can touch them. 

You don’t have to touch anyone or be touched by anyone. 

You always have the right to say yes, to say no, and to change your mind. 

If you don’t accept someone’s no, you are kicked out immediately. 

In kink, consent is queen.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 345

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Just As I Am," by Cicely Tyson.

I couldn’t believe the same actress had played both the young woman and the elder one, but Deloris insisted she had. I stared at my sister, and then back at the screen, marveling at Ms. Tyson’s mastery of her craft, the brilliance with which she had transformed herself. It planted in me a seed that immediately took root. She was the manifestation of excellence and artistry, a dark-skinned, thick-lipped woman who truly mirrored me. I can pinpoint the exact moment when my life opened up, and it was there, in front of that set, that mine did. With one mesmerizing performance, with one gorgeously poignant rendering of her character, Ms. Tyson gave me permission to dream. (Viola Davis)

I know instantly whether I should take a role. If my skin tingles as I read the script, then it is absolutely something I must do. But if my stomach churns, I do not touch the project, because if I did, I’d end up on a psychiatrist’s couch. Either my spirit can take the story or it cannot, and my senses have never misled me.

Even with my childhood long behind me, I find it difficult to lay bare my parents’ blemishes. My instinct is to protect their legacies in a world where we are too often demonized. My mom and dad, with all of their frailties, are part of a centuries-long story, a narrative setting that hangs behind myriad Black lives. That story harkens back to when our foreparents were herded onto ships, their naked bodies stacked, row after row amid vomit and sewage, for the treacherous Middle Passage. That tale continued as more than two hundred years of enslavement pressed its foot down on our necks. Our men were emasculated and thrashed, our women raped and brutalized, our families ripped apart and auctioned off like cattle, our grueling labor uncompensated. We still bear the emotional and economic scars. The assault on us, and its resulting trauma, spans generations. Our traditions, our communities, our dignity—all of it has endured barbarous attack. And when someone makes an assassination attempt on your tribe, you adopt a posture of self-defense. You fold in on yourself as a way to cover your wounds. And you dare not hand your assailant another weapon, another piece of shrapnel he or she will use to further shame and dehumanize your people. 

This is the painful history my parents were born into. And it is only against this backdrop that their many choices and faces can be understood. Two human beings whose ancestors were declared savage beasts. Two imperfect souls loved by a perfect God.

It was the first time I’d ever been approached in a sexual manner. It was the last time I felt truly safe. With his hungry gaze, this stranger had stolen from me a sense of security. That is what violation does: it wrenches away one’s God-given freedom to exhale, to feel relaxed and unguarded in this world. You don’t have to be physically touched to be emotionally robbed.

Black children learn where they stand in this world by recognizing the spaces where our people can and cannot enter, and if granted access, whether our presence and humanity will be regarded as equal.

As long as we play our various designated roles—as court jesters and as comic relief, as Aunt Jemimas and as Jezebels, as maids whisking aperitifs into drawing rooms, as shuckin’ and jivin’ half-wits serving up levity—we are worthy of recognition in their meta-narrative. We are obedient Negroes. We are dutiful and thus affirmable. 

But when we dare tiptoe outside the lines of those typecasts, when we put our full humanity on display, when we threaten the social constructs that keep others in comfortable superiority, we are often dismissed. There is no archetype on file in which a Black woman is simultaneously resolute and trembling, fierce and frightened, dominant and receding. My mother, a woman who, amid abuse, stuffed hope and a way out into the slit of a mattress, is the very face of fortitude. I am an heir to her remarkable grit. However, beneath that tough exterior, I’ve also inherited my mother’s tender femininity, that part of her spirit susceptible to bruising and bleeding, the doleful Dosha who sat by the window shelling peanuts, pondering how to carry on. The myth of the Strong Black Woman bears a kernel of truth, but it is only a half-seed. The other half is delicate and ailing, all the more so because it has been denied sunlight.

I know now that Joan pined more for my presence than she did for my pocketbook. She needed my provision, yes, but decidedly more of the emotional sort, a cheek-to-cheek coexistence. I do not regret that I chose to earn a living in the manner in which I did, or that I arranged for Joan to attend school in a world miles north of mine. But I do mourn that my child, during the years she hungered to have me close, felt my absence so profoundly. My utmost, well intentioned as it was, fell short of her needs and desires.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 344

 

Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Ida B. the Queen  The Extraordinary Life and Legacy of Ida B. Wells," by Michelle Duster.

 

Ida agreed that gaining the right to vote was important and deserved a fight, but she did not feel optimistic about how much change would come from white women voting. She disagreed with Susan B. Anthony and other white suffragists’ belief that securing the vote for women would also bring a “womanly” influence to government, making it less corrupt and more compassionate. Ida had been around too long and endured too much complicity from white women involved in holding up white supremacy to believe that white women’s votes would fix the ills of the world. As an African American woman who had faced both racism and sexism, she viewed the right to vote as a tool to address race-based oppression, as well as civil and social issues. She knew that southern white women could be expected to support their husbands’ cries of white supremacy. After all, some of them were descendants of slave owners or had benefited from the institution of slavery, so they inherently viewed Black women as inferior. Thus, suffrage extended only to white women would do little to bring on much-needed racial reform. 

But as women slowly gained more rights, one state at a time, Ida started to think that Susan B. Anthony was right after all: things might improve when all women won the vote. Despite the quest for the women’s vote, Black women were significantly excluded from white-dominated national suffrage organizations. Locally, Ida founded the Women’s Second Ward Republican Club and was a member of the Illinois Equal Suffrage Association (IESA). She worked with white women in the efforts to gain suffrage in the state. “When I saw that we were likely to have limited suffrage and the white women were working like beavers to bring it about, I made another effort to get our women interested,” she wrote in her autobiography. Ida wanted to make sure that if white women got the right to vote, Black women did, too.

Ida’s primary aim was to write toward justice, not just away from racism.

Growing up in a time when close to ninety percent of formerly enslaved people were illiterate, Ida also understood the power that came from the ability to read, write, and speak clearly. And through their example, Ida’s parents taught her to be courageous, to believe that she had a voice, and that she should be politically and socially engaged, even if it was dangerous.

Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 343

 

Here is an excerpt from a book I recently read, "Index, a History of the  A Bookish Adventure From Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age," by Dennis Duncan.

It is not hard to see why the index is an invention of the codex era, and not the age of the scroll. It is a truly random-access technology, and as such it relies on a form of the book that can be opened with as much ease in the middle, or at the end, as at the beginning. The codex is the medium in which the index first makes sense.