January 2023 in Review

We’re now 1/12th of the way through 2023. Is this really the fabulous science fiction future we were promised? Well, at least the Earth is not a smoking ruin, at least most parts of it.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: How about a roundup of awful things, like the corrupt illegitimate U.S. Supreme Court, ongoing grisly wars, the CIA killed JFK after all (?), nuclear proliferation, ethnic cleansing, mass incarceration, Guantanamo Bay, and all talk no walk on climate change? And let’s hope there is a special circle of hell waiting for propaganda artists who worked for Exxon.

Most hopeful story: Bill Gates says a gene therapy-based cure for HIV could be 10-15 years away.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Genetically engineered beating pig hearts have been sown into dead human bodies. More than once.

what’s a good U.S. strategy?

Here are some ideas:

  • Rearm Germany and Japan. Why not throw in some nuclear proliferation while we are at it. Maybe South Korea or Taiwan would like to host some nuclear weapons, if they are not already?
  • Get involved in a land invasion of Russia, preferably in winter. (A convenient way to do this is to start your campaign in the fall or even late summer, and just assume it will be short.)
  • Also plan some Pacific island-hopping warfare.
  • Just assume this will not end with the deployment of weapons of mass destruction by any of the parties involved, especially not the world’s guiding light for peace and democracy.

Pfizer and “gain of function” research

This Pfizer press release just confirms that the technology to make genetically engineered viruses is widespread:

we have conducted research where the original SARS-CoV-2 virus has been used to express the spike protein from new variants of concern. This work is undertaken once a new variant of concern has been identified by public health authorities. This research provides a way for us to rapidly assess the ability of an existing vaccine to induce antibodies that neutralize a newly identified variant of concern…

In a limited number of cases when a full virus does not contain any known gain of function mutations, such virus may be engineered to enable the assessment of antiviral activity in cells. In addition, in vitro resistance selection experiments are undertaken in cells incubated with SARS-CoV-2 and nirmatrelvir in our secure Biosafety level 3 (BSL3) laboratory to assess whether the main protease can mutate to yield resistant strains of the virus.  It is important to note that these studies are required by U.S. and global regulators for all antiviral products and are carried out by many companies and academic institutions in the U.S. and around the world.

Pfizer

So they aren’t creating genetically engineered bioweapons of mass destruction, but they could if they wanted to. Somebody somewhere probably is. Not the U.S. government, which has no track record of lying or trying to dominate the world, and doesn’t collude with big business entities with the technology to do so.

ChatGPT

I set up a ChatGPT account and asked it to solve the lily pond problem. If the lilies double every day and will cover the pond in 30 days, on what day do the cover the half the pond. The answer, of course, should be day 29. ChatGPT correctly told me in words that this as an exponential growth problem, then gave me a numerical answer of 15 days (the linear growth answer!). Then it gave me some completely wrong math involving logarithms, after which it gave me two additional different answers that were not 29 or 15, and didn’t seem to acknowledge that it had even given multiple answers.

What scared me most was not the wrong answer(s), but the extremely confident manner in which it gave the wrong answer(s). This could fool people on problems where they don’t know the answer in advance, and the correct answer is not intuitive or obvious.

ChatGPT does tell much better knock-knock jokes that Siri…

As of today, we do not want this thing designing bridges or airplanes or anything else! I do not want it advising my doctor on my course of treatment, mixing my prescriptions at the pharmacy, or managing my retirement account, although these seem like plausible near-future applications once some kinks get worked out. It’s easy to be dismissive of the current state of this technology. But at the same time, it may not be that far off. Right now, it could argue you to a standstill in a barroom political or philosophical debate (you know, where a drunk guy makes a lengthy argument that is as illogical as it is confidently delivered, and since there are no consequences you just give up). In the medium-term future, I could imagine it being a conversational companion for a child or a person with dementia (although, there are some obvious ethical concerns here.) Could it be a best friend or significant other? This is a bit disturbing, because it might be able to always tell you exactly what you want to hear and be 100% impervious to your own annoying quirks, and then you might forget how to deal with actual people who are not going to be so forgiving. It could inhabit a sex doll – now there is a truly disturbing thought, but it will happen soon if it has not already.

Sharrows

Sharrows are just markings telling bicyclists it is okay to “take the lane”, and telling motorists they have let bicyclists take the lane. In my experience, this can actually work okay on very narrow city streets with very slow traffic. The reason is that speeds here are low. So even if a bicyclist gets hit, that person is unlikely to die. I bike in this way, by taking the lane on relatively low-traffic, relatively slow streets. Surprisingly, the vast majority of drivers will wait patiently or change lanes and pass if they can do that safely. A small handful of psychopathic assholes will lay on the horn, scream, throw things, or spit. I would not let my children ride this way, but I feel safe enough doing it when I really need to. Those same psychopathic assholes are the ones who will kill a child crossing the street legally on foot, so not being on a bike is not going to save you from them.

Now having said all that, I agree sharrows are bad. Speed kills. Twenty is plenty, and anything over 20 mph is simply not safe for the bicyclist to be out there at all. Under 20, the hope is that the bicyclist will suffer only non-lethal broken bones and organ damage. Even in slower traffic, nine out of ten bicyclists don’t understand or don’t feel comfortable taking the lane, so they ride on the edge. Almost all drivers, for some reason, will speed up to pass a bicyclist riding on the edge. There is no room for error in this situation. Anything unexpected like an open car door, the car swerving slightly, or a pedestrian/dog/scooter enthusiast, and the bicyclist is likely to get hit hard and likely killed. If the vehicle is something bigger than a car, as it often is, the bicyclist has even less chance.

So what we need is safe, modern, competent road and street design. That’s it. Safe designs exist. We just have to design them, build them, and maintain them.

But if I were feeling cynical I would say yeah, but this is America, and we can’t have nice things here.

Exxon knew

Exxon’s climate science was as good as that of government and academic scientists as long ago as the 1970s. They accurately predicted what was going to happen. And then they publicly lied and lied and lied about it. This is one of the most evil things ever done in the history of our world, because it affects every single one of the billions of people on the planet, and tens or hundreds or trillions yet to be born. And they knew exactly what they were doing. These people knowingly conspired to ruin a planet where every living being we know of in this universe live. And they did it for short term wealth and power, I guess.

On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data.

Science

Joe Biden releases the hounds

A Secret Service agent walking into the White House might expect to get an ass chewing on occasion, but not literally… Joe Biden’s dog Major apparently bit Secret Service agents in the White House not once but repeatedly. Happily, the dog was able to go live with a “family friend” and the White House is now home to another, less vicious dog of lower rank, Commander.

Bill Gates on 2022 and 2023

This article is subtitled “My Wish for 2023”, but it is mostly about what the Gates Foundation did in 2022. He says the world moved backward on polio, but it can and should be eradicated, and we know how to do it. Infant mortality in developing countries can be reduced by using cheap ultrasound machines powered run by smartphone apps to identify high-risk pregnancies, stretching the limited pool of medical expertise (and it seems like this sort of thing could save money in developed countries if it could be done at home in combination with a telehealth session, at a pharmacy or neighborhood clinic say in a school or library, by a technician showing up at your door at a convenient time, etc.) He is predicting a gene-therapy based cure for HIV in 10-15 years. He says a gene therapy based cure for sickle cell disease is available now, but prohibitively expensive or unavailable in developing countries where the disease is common.

Africa in 2022

Since I neglected Africa in one of my year in review posts due to my relative ignorance of this entire continent, here is a summary of a post about Africa in 2022. This person, Andrew Korybko, describes himself as “a Moscow-based American political analyst specializing in the global systemic transition to multipolarity”. His voice is definitely not impartial, and yet interesting. Some brief fact checking confirms that he is not making things up, although he puts his own (Russian intelligence?) spin on them. Here is his list of top 5 developments in Africa in 2022:

  1. Africa was affected by food and energy price spikes, but this did not trigger widespread civil unrest.
  2. African countries were generally neutral in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
  3. The government of Mali expelled French military forces and accepted Russian support (to glowing praise, in this author’s stated opinion, who believes there is a “Franco-Russo proxy war” going on. I take no position on this having next to no knowledge other than a vague sense that the current government of Mali came to power in a military coup and has been accused of atrocities.)
  4. A peace deal (according to this author; a “cessation of hostilities” according to Wikipedia) was reached in the Ethiopia/Tigray conflict.
  5. A new war is brewing in D.R. Congo and once again pulling in regional parties.

2022 roundup roundup

Finally, I’ve come to the point where the 2022 recaps and 2023 predictions are rolling in faster than I can deal with them in individual posts. Here are a few highlights:

Five Thirty Eight – “Numbers that Defined 2022”

  • The U.S. hit a record low poverty rate of 7.8%. This is expected to increase with the end of pandemic support programs. I would like to think that low unemployment and rising wages also have something to do with this.
  • 47% – “the percentage of Republican candidates who ran for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state and attorney general this year and didn’t accept the legitimacy of the 2020 election.” We know politicians are in the business of getting elected, but it is still disturbing that they are this morally flexible. If they have to be this morally flexible to get elected, then we have a system that is selecting the most morally flexible among us to lead us.
  • Inflation – 9.1%. We know, we know.
  • The Republican margin in the House – 9. Lower than expected for a mid-term election year, still probably enough to stand in the way of much legislative progress over the next two years. It’s amazing to me how quickly we swing back and forth from doom and gloom sentiments about one party or the other. They seem relatively evenly balanced, and the one thing that is certain is that the two of them together are dominant and creating a very effective barrier to major new parties or ideas breaking in.

Lawfare – “The Year that Was (2022)”

Coverage of what some people call “the blob”, also known as the military-industrial-intelligence complex.

  • January 6 – the trials and the committee; the Mar-A-Lago raid and investigation
  • “climate security” – in my view, the article somewhat misses the mark on the coming storm of drought, famine, sea level rise, migration and geopolitical instability the world may be in for. Then again, the article is a look back, not a look ahead.
  • The Ukraine war of course, and more broadly the U.S., NATO and Russia. Also the U.S. and China, of course. “Great Power Competition” seems to be a theme.
  • “massive protests in Sri Lanka, Iran, China, Peru, and elsewhere”. I admit, I forgot about Sri Lanka and I don’t understand the situation in Peru. And where exactly is “elsewhere”?
  • “Cyber” – a noun or an adjective? The important geostrategic conclusion is that it used to be adjective, but it has become a noun now and there is no turning back. Microsoft is an “integral player in Ukraine’s cyber defense.” (but that was an adjective right?)
  • Social media and content moderation. I just find it hard to get too excited about this. I still see the garbage on social media as more of a mirror of the garbage in our society than a cause of it. I am open to evolving my views on this. But one thing I never want is for my access to the world’s information on the internet to be curtailed.
  • The Supreme Court – overtly political, ideological, biased, and corrupt. Those are my words. Lawfare’s words are “high profile cases underlined the reality that justices are deciding cases largely on ideological lines. With a conservative majority on the bench, decisions led to an erosion of the powers of the administrative state and a decline in civil rights protections in cases where national security was at issue.”

Not mentioned – the ongoing grisly wars in Myanmar, Yemen, and various countries in Africa I am embarrassed I can’t name (Ethiopia?). Some new JFK-related files showing pretty clearly the CIA lied about its connections to Lee Harvey Oswald. Nuclear proliferation? The ethnic cleansing in Xinxiang province of China – does the U.S. press not mention this because we realize it would be hypocritical given our immense prison population, Guantanamo Bay, etc.? No, that can’t be it.

Project Syndicate – “Commentators’ Predictions for 2023”

  • Protests in Iran will continue, but the government will hang on. More broadly, the U.S. will focus on “great power competition” and neglect the greater Middle East. Turkey will have an important election in 2023.
  • “We are entering an era of high and rising debt, precarious jobs, a crisis of care, inflation, climate change, and food insecurity…” “Many scenarios that once seemed unlikely are becoming increasingly plausible, such as famine, sharply increasing poverty, mass displacements of people, cascading sovereign debt defaults, widespread energy shortages, and recurrent global health-induced disruption. All represent tragic reversals of progress.” (these are different commentators – please see the article for attributions.)
  • One thing everybody seems to agree on is that climate change is a big deal and in 2023 the world will continue…talking about it. Green energy technology and adoption will continue to accelerate regardless of government inaction, though.
  • Most people think Covid will continue to wind down in 2023.
  • Central banks may abandon their 2% inflation targets and settle for something higher if it means economies are growing.
  • Nobody wants to go out on a limb and predict that the Ukraine conflict will wind down in 2023.