Links to Consider, 11/6/2024
Ted Gioia on artificial reality; David Epstein and Amanda Ripley on conflict; Peter Gray on the good enough parent; Niall Ferguson joins substack
Guess what? These same four companies—Meta, Apple, Microsoft, Google—have a new dream technology built on fakery.
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But their AI plans aren’t much different than the virtual reality debacle.
In VR, we go into a fake world to interact with real people.
In AI, we remain in the real world but interact with fake people.
That’s not much of an improvement. By my measure, it’s actually a step backward.
I think that the most sober way to think about chatbots is as a significant improvement in the way that humans can communicate with computers. Expect rapid advances in computer programming and robotics.
The “fake people” applications are tantalizing. Have a personal coach or tutor. Converse with a historical figure. Clone yourself. But the attempts may fall short.
Contra Gioia, there are successes in artificial reality that one can point to. Old-fashioned art is an example, if you think about it. So are, movies, television, and video games. Porn. If nothing else, machine learning is going to make it easier for creators to compose in these realms.
In a conversation with David Epstein, Amanda Ripley says,
Every conflict has the thing that we fight about and then the thing it's really about underneath. And that’s usually one of four things. It's almost always: respect and recognition; power and control; care and concern; or just flat out stress and overwhelm.
Parents who feel confident about their parenting will be more calm and patient, less anxious, and will thereby provide a greater source of security for their children, than parents who don’t feel so confident. In Bettelheim’s words: “The child’s shaky security depends, as he well knows, not on his abilities to protect himself, but on the goodwill of others. It is borrowed from the security of his parents. … Being a good enough parent hence requires that we ourselves be convinced that this is what we are.”
I used to say that I would be satisfied if our daughters reached 18 not having been on drugs or pregnant. Many of our friends were shocked by my seemingly cavalier attitude. But I figured that if they were in decent shape by age 18, they would be fine afterward.
As a parent, it does not help to be anxious or perfectionist. It’s a bumpy ride, just try to enjoy it.
I have suggested that when a great power spends more on debt service than on defense, it will not be great for much longer, a proposition that appears to be true of the Habsburg Spain, the Dutch Republic, Bourbon France, the Ottoman Empire, and the British Empire. (I have half-seriously called this Ferguson’s Law.) It should therefore be a cause for concern that the United States today, for the first time, spends more on interest payments on the federal debt than on national security.
Have a nice day.
substacks referenced above:
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Arnold - First I just want to thank you for hosting Dan Klein a while back. He took a lot of crap from certain libertarians over the past few months for his support of Trump and Republicans. For this Dan Klein moved up a few notches on my FIT. He was always in the top five for his 1) work on Adam Smith, 2) his attempt to reclaim the word liberal from progressives, and 3) his “Inventing the Individual” book discussion group, but now he takes on a new badge for openly supporting Trump and Republicans when it mattered most.
If you missed Arnold’s interview of Prof. Klein, here it is. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nHiMRNERQB4
The ill advised grift driven proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, contrary to what our leaders expected, far from weakening Russia has been a big boost to their war-fighting skills and technology, especially in drones and anti-drone warfare where we have little actual combat experience. We have drawn down our stocks of munitions which cannot be replaced anytime soon due in part to the relocation of basic manufacturing overseas. They are building an impressive battle hardened army while we are focused on DEI instead of competence. Russia, now proceeding like a steam roller on the ground will extract a steep price for bringing the conflict to a close, which will include their possession of the Donbas or most of it, and neutralization of Ukraine. The outcome will cast a shadow over the continued existence of NATO as European members will wonder what protection it would offer them even as they are pressured to increase their contribution. If NATO couldn't dissuade or stop Russia in Ukraine, despite providing everything short of ground forces, which would have been political suicide for western nations, then it will be seen as an expensive paper tiger. This in turn discredits US unipolar hegemony. We should be thinking about how to pursue our strategic interests in a the coming multipolar world, rather than continuing the senseless indiscriminate grift-driven belligerence.