June 2024 in Review

Most frightening and/or depressing story: Some self-labeled “conservatives” in the United States want to do away with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Education, and possibly even the Federal Reserve. All these are needed to have a competent, stable government and society and to be prepared to respond and recover from the shocks that are coming, so I would call this nihilist and not “conservative” at all. How is it conservative to want to destroy the institutions that have underpinned the success of our nation thus far? On the other hand, they also want to double down on the unimaginative pro-big-business, pro-war consensus of the two major parties over the last 50 years or so, which has also gotten us to where we are today. And it looks like the amateurs and psychopaths have the upper hand at the moment in terms of our November election. This is certainly not “morning in America”.

Most hopeful story: Computer-controlled cars are slowly but surely attaining widespread commercial rollout. I don’t care what the cynics say – this will save land, money and lives. And combined with renewable and/or nuclear energy, it could play a big role in turning the corner on the climate crisis.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: I had a misconception that if the world reduces greenhouse gases today, the benefits will not kick in for decades. Happily, scientists’ understanding of this has been updated and I will update my own understanding along with that. The key is the ocean’s ability to absorb excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere relatively quickly. (I am not sure this is good for the ocean itself, but it is somewhat hopeful for temperatures here on land.) And it is not all or nothing – any emissions reductions will help, so the failure to act in the past is not an excuse to continue to fail to act.

terraforming Mars

This article suggests we might be able to terraform Mars with some very tough moss.

The scientists subjected whole S. caninervis plants to conditions typically found on Mars: high doses of gamma radiation, low oxygen, extreme cold and drought. They report that the plants could withstand combinations of these conditions, even losing over 98% of their water content and still bouncing back within seconds —”drying without dying” is the term that was used. Perhaps even more astounding is the plant’s ability to recover and grow new branches after being stored in a freezer at −80 degrees Celsius (-112 degrees Fahrenheit) for five years or in liquid nitrogen (-195.8 degrees C; -320.44 degrees F) for one month.

Space.com

Previously, my money was on fungi, but some combination of moss and tardigrades might be able to evolve into intelligent life in a few billion years. Now that it looks like humanity is probably going to destroy itself on Earth long before it develops viable space colonies, it’s more important than ever that we broadcast our devil spawn to other planetary bodies as soon as possible. If life on Earth more generally survives, whatever the cockroaches evolve into will be able to talk to whatever the moss evolves into in a few billion years, and there will still be hope for peace in the solar system for a few billion years before the sun burns out.

Biden

This is one of those posts where I say I am not going to comment on fast-moving current events, and then I do anyway. I’m writing this the morning of Saturday, July 6, 2024, and anything can happen before this gets posted and certainly between now and when you are reading it, whoever you are.

Here are two interviews with Biden, one from September 2023 and one from last night. The difference is pretty clear to me. It’s clear that he is having a lot of trouble accessing words and names on demand. That in itself does not indicate that a person is not able to think clearly. Surely, if he had had a stroke his doctors, family and political team would not be trying to cover that up? (But see Woodrow Wilson where this exact thing happened – with his wife and doctors concealing the extent of it not just from the public but from Wilson himself. And some say losing his leadership was decisive in the harshness of the Treaty of Versailles, the failure of the League of Nations, both of which led to World War II being more likely.) Not being a particularly articulate person, I have had this problem myself in many stressful situations, such as job interviews and first dates, even in my 20s. But I am not a professional politician. Being articulate and appearing to be sharp thinking on their feet is their stock in trade, and as they say, “perception is reality” in politics.

In terms of the hard nosed probability of a Democrat winning this election in November 2024, a few days ago I thought the risk of someone other than Biden was greater than the risk of Biden losing. If Biden could return even to the form we see below from September 2023, I think the “bad night” at the debate would blow over and the election would be at least a tossup. I am coming around to the idea though that the situation is deteriorating and will continue to deteriorate over the next four months. Biden seems to be having more trouble over time and the spotlight is going to be on him every second. So I think the situation is irretrievable. Taking a sort of reverse inspiration from Woodrow Wilson, his doctors can “discover” some condition that requires his immediate retirement, and he can then announce that he is retiring with some relative saving of face. Maybe we’ll get that “contested convention” we are always hearing about. Personally I like Kamala Harris okay, and maybe she would inspire enough turnout in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Milwaukee to eke out a victory. Or maybe a percentage point or two of suburban swing voters won’t bother to turn out for her because they just “don’t like her”, as happened to Hillary. Or maybe Trump will suffer an honest-to-god stroke in the next four months. The country has had a run of bad luck and we are due.

ProPublica, September 2023
ABC News, July 5, 2024

July U.S. Election Check-in

Well, I was all set to tell you that the polls moved decisively toward Biden in June, and that would have been true with just a few days to go. But it seems the debate on June 27 really did cause a sharp swing toward Trump. I don’t like it, but these are the facts of the case. We will see if the effect is persistent or if things slowly revert to trend. Either way, the polls closing in the last few days of June may not fully indicate the state of the damage, so it may get worse before it gets better for Biden, if it does in fact ever get better.

STATE2020 RESULTMost Recent 538 Poll Average (as of 7/1/24)
ArizonaBiden +0.4%Trump +4.8% (June 1: Trump +4.7)
GeorgiaBiden +0.3%Trump +6.3% (June 1: Trump +5.5)
WisconsinBiden +0.6%Trump +0.8% (June 1: Trump +1.4%)
North CarolinaTrump +1.3%Trump +7.3% (June 1: Trump +6.2%)
PennsylvaniaBiden +1.2%Trump +2.0% (June 1: Trump +2.0%)
MichiganBiden +2.8%Trump +1.8% (June 1: Trump +0.6%)
NevadaBiden +2.4%Trump +3.8% (June 1: Trump +5.9%)

In June, 1/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Biden – Nevada.

In June, 1/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Biden – Wisconsin.

In June, 1/7 swing states had no change – Pennsylvania.

In June, 2/7 swing states had small (< 1%) movement toward Trump – Arizona, Georgia.

In June, 2/7 swing states had large (> 1%) movement toward Trump – North Carolina and Michigan.

So the trend is all over the place, with big swings toward Trump coming right at the end of the month. Trump obviously has all the swing states at the moment and is headed for an electoral college landslide if current trends hold.

Enough has been written about the debate. I’ll just link to this Politico article that points out that if you were just reading the transcript, a lot of what he said was very reasonable and even astute. That was my impression when listening to the actual debate. But I can’t excuse any politician for failing to be prepared and put on a decent rhetorical performance – that is what they do, and there 10,000 politicians who could have done it better than Biden did on Thursday night. So either he was inexplicably, inexcusably poorly prepared, or he really is faltering physically and mentally, with dire consequences for our nation’s future.

how I’m using AI

AI has definitely improved my personal productivity when it comes to computer programming. I haven’t been successful asking it to write whole programs for me, but it has been fantastic for solving syntax problems in minutes that might otherwise take me hours to figure out. For example, I have data in xyz format and I need it in zyx format, please give me some example code that works. Or, I need to pass an argument to a function and does it need to be in quotes, parentheses, enclosed in ancient hieroglyphics or some random combination of these? In the past, I always started with a Google search on these questions, looking first for a blog post with examples, and failing that for a Stack Overflow post. At some point, I started using ChatGPT when those two options failed. Then I figured out I have access to a version of CoPilot through my employer and any data or code I supply is not going to be automatically broadcast to the world, so I have gradually been shifting to that. I just learned that CoPilot is really a version of ChatGPT. (The article I linked to mentions some other AIs I had not heard of yet, such as “Claude”.)

Then at some point, I started going to AI after blog posts but before Stack Overflow. This is about where I am now. For one thing, AI tends to listen to my question, understand what I am looking for and give me a relevant answer much more often than Stack Overflow. For another, it is much more polite than the dick heads and whining weenies on Stack Overflow. You know who you are. Thank you for your free service in the past, and if you want me to continue coming to you, you may want to at least learn some manners. You could start by asking an AI to analyze your posts and suggest ways to not be such a dick head.

I am not using AI for writing, because for me writing and thinking are two halves of the same coin, and I can’t farm out the thinking. The one exception to this is thank you notes and other social niceties – I have no interest in burning my limited intellectual capacity on learning how to write these, so I am very happy to have AI do it. I tried asking CoPilot to find me promo codes for a few stores, but none of them worked. I suspect the companies are paying for the same AI I am using for free, so it is probably snitching to them so I can’t get a deal.

consumption of farmed fish exceeds consumption of wild fish for the first time

In 2022, aquaculture supplied a majority of seafood consumed by humans for the first time. But there are many gray areas – fish are hatched in tanks, released to the wild or pens located in natural water bodies, then caught again later. Farmed fish are fed wild-caught fish. And regardless, fish farming generates nutrient loads to natural waters.

I’ve fantasized about a system where earthworms are produced using compost from food scraps and other sustainable sources, then fed to fish and shellfish in tanks, then the nutrient-enriched water is used in fertilizer-free hydroponic agriculture, and finally the water is cycled through a wetland treatment system and used repeatedly. So the only input to this hypothetical system would be garbage (okay, and air and energy), and the outputs would be compost, fish, shellfish, and vegetables. I’m sure there are may practical challenges to this system, but in principle it should work. AI might be able to constantly monitor and make small adjustments to a system like this to keep it running efficiently.

the Israel lobby

Let’s tackle the U.S. Israel lobby just with a few facts and figures.

First, a book I haven’t read: The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Here’s the description on Amazon:

Originally published in 2007, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, by John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Stephen M. Walt of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo issue in America: the impact of the Israel lobby on U.S. foreign policy. A work of major importance, it remains as relevant today as it was in the immediate aftermath of the Israel-Lebanon war of 2006.

Mearsheimer and Walt describe in clear and bold terms the remarkable level of material and diplomatic support that the United States provides to Israel and argues that this support cannot be fully explained on either strategic or moral grounds. This exceptional relationship is due largely to the political influence of a loose coalition of individuals and organizations that actively work to shape U.S. foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. They provocatively contend that the lobby has a far-reaching impact on America’s posture throughout the Middle East―in Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, and toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict―and the policies it has encouraged are in neither America’s national interest nor Israel’s long-term interest. The lobby’s influence also affects America’s relationship with important allies and increases dangers that all states face from global jihadist terror.

The publication of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy led to a sea change in how the U.S-Israel relationship was discussed, and continues to be one of the most talked-about books in foreign policy.

amazon.com

Second, a chart from the Council on Foreign Relations showing that since 1946, Israel has received close to double the amount of U.S. foreign aid compared to the next largest recipient, which is Egypt. The overwhelming amount of this aid has been military, which in practice often means the U.S. government buying weapons from the private U.S. arms industry to send abroad.

https://substack.com/home/post/p-145979905

And this is one argument I have heard, that part of the solid base of political support for the Israel lobby is the U.S. arms industry, because a relatively small investment in lobbying yields a huge return in profits. Which you can say about any lobbying, but in this case it is compounded by the already strong ideological, geopolitical, and highly motivated lobbying efforts in Israel’s favor.

today’s warming is not the result of emissions decades ago…well, it is and it isn’t

I’ve repeated a couple times that if emissions were stabilized today, the climate would continue warming for decades. I am not a complete idiot, because this was the scientific understanding at one time, but it is time for me to update my understanding. Michael Mann explains:

The conventional wisdom was once that warming would continue on for decades even if we stopped emitting carbon into the atmosphere due to the sluggishness of the oceans, which continue to warm up even after CO2 stops increasing. This is known as committed warming. But committed warming is only half of the story, an artifact of simplistic early climate modeling experiments in which CO2 levels are kept fixed after the hypothetical cessation of emissions.

Later, more comprehensive simulations with interactive ocean carbon cycle dynamics revealed that CO2 levels actually drop after emissions cease as the oceans continue to draw carbon down from the atmosphere. That decrease in the greenhouse effect cancels out the committed warming, and the result is an essentially flat line. In other words, global temperatures stabilize quickly once net carbon emissions drop to zero.

aps.org

So today’s temperatures are the result of emissions over the past decades, but today’s rate of increase in temperature is about the current rate of emissions or at least very recent emissions. This article doesn’t explain, but I think it makes sense, that global temperatures would start to drop at some point as the oceans continued to soak up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. (I’m ignoring ocean acidification for the moment – perhaps this would never be reversed?) This would be encouraging if there were any serious commitment among the world’s governments and institutions to stop emissions in the near future. Nonetheless, Mann points out that the damage already done is not a logical excuse to stop doing further damage. Any action will reduce the severity of future impacts, even if the floor for those impacts has already been baked in.

GPT-4 and the Turing test

I don’t know if the original Turing test was based on just one human participant, or if more than one was used, how those humans were chosen.

Scientists decided to replicate this test by asking 500 people to speak with four respondents, including a human and the 1960s-era AI program ELIZA as well as both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, the AI that powers ChatGPT. The conversations lasted five minutes — after which participants had to say whether they believed they were talking to a human or an AI. In the study, published May 9 to the pre-print arXiv server, the scientists found that participants judged GPT-4 to be human 54% of the time… GPT-3.5 scored 50% while the human participant scored 67%.

livescience.com

Should the criteria to pass be that 51% of a large random sample of humans could not correctly identify computer vs. human? How bad would the results have to be for the control (identifying the human as human) before we would conclude that the Turing test no longer makes sense?

It’s interesting that the Turing test is presented as a test of intelligence, but many of the things that apparently make computer conversationalists convincingly human are in fact cognitive biases, logical errors, and the appearance of emotionally-influenced decision making. These might be things you would look for if you wanted a computer to be a friend, but they are not things I would like for if I wanted a computer to counter my less rational human impulses and help me make more rational decisions.

May 2024 in Review

Just realizing I never did a May 2024 post. Here it is. I also made a range of political musings in May, which I have chosen not to include below, but they are on the record for anyone interested.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: What a modern nuclear bomb would do to a large modern city. Do we already know this intellectually? Sure. Do we constantly need to be reminded and remind our elected leaders that this is absolutely unthinkable and must be avoided at any cost? Apparently.

Most hopeful story: The U.S. might manage to connect two large cities with true high speed rail, relatively soon and relatively cost effectively. The trick is that there is not much between these cities other than flat desert. The route will mostly follow an existing highway, and we should think about doing this more as autonomous vehicles very gradually start to reduce demand on our highways in coming decades.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Drone deliveries make some sense, but what we really need is infrastructure on the ground that lets all sorts of slow, light-weight vehicles zip around in our cities efficiently and safely. And this means separating them completely from those fast, heavy vehicles designed for highway travel.