Friday Notes (Jun 23, 2023)

There is an old saying about how one’s eyes are sometimes bigger than one’s stomach — something I have to watch out for when visiting a buffet. I think, too, that my imagination sometimes is bigger than my will.

So many thoughts that seem like good ideas but don’t ever go anywhere substantial. Or, perhaps more honestly, I lack the will to put in the effort required. Since I retired, I’ve gotten pretty lazy and self-indulgent.

These Friday Notes posts have been very helpful in reducing my collection of notes, so here we go again with a bunch of random little thoughts.

There’s an expression: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks. I’ve never believed it. I don’t think it’s true. You can, indeed, teach an old dog new tricks. It’s just harder for both dog and teacher.

To some extent I think the expression is an excuse for not trying. It is harder, but plenty of (us) old people constantly expand our horizons be it with new hobbies, new friends, or new things to learn.

I’m certainly an example. I crave new experiences and have always been an autodidact. I can be as initially resistive to change as anyone, but once I internalize and accept it, I often thrive on it.

More to the point of this note, in the last few months I’ve given up an almost lifelong habit of drinking diet soda. (I’ve never cared much for regular soda. Makes my teeth feel fuzzy.) I loved root beer as a kid (still do) and acquired a Diet Dr. Pepper habit in high school. Much later in life, I switched to colas (not sure why; I still prefer Dr. Pepper). I never had a cola preference; whatever was on sale was fine. For the last few decades, wanting to get away from the phosphates in colas, it’s been almost exclusively Diet Mountain Dew.

[I never learned to like coffee, so the DMD was a source of caffeine. So were the DDP and diet colas.]

In my defense, Diet Mountain Dew is mainly watered down mildly carbonated orange juice (with some caffeine thrown in). But it also has a variety of salts, and I had some concerns about the aspartame (which some consider a neurotoxin). Trying to mitigate all that, I kept the bottles at room temperature and poured them over lots of ice to dilute it.

My doctor commented that diet sodas aren’t good for hydration (due to those salts), and since nearly all my liquid intake was Diet Mountain Dew, it seemed a good time to finally make a change. So, I eliminated the stuff from my life!

[Full disclosure: I’m adding a bit of MiO lemonade to flavor the water as part of the weaning process. It uses sucralose for sweetening, so it’s not as bad as the aspartame, but still not ideal, so I plan to eventually drink just water.]

Did you know that a current standard for hydration is to take your weight, divide it by two, and take the resulting number as how many ounces of liquid (ideally water) you should consume each day? For me that works out to about three liters. I was drinking one two-liter bottle of DMD every day plus about one liter’s worth of ice.

But now this old dog is no longer drinking diet soda (or caffeine).

§

In the last edition of Notes, I mentioned I’d noticed the word “rewards” appearing in the subject of a lot of email spam (to trap for the unwary).

Since then, I’ve been noting them. Since then, I’ve seen: Ace, Best Buy, Bud, Budlight, Coors, Costco, CVS, Delta, Harbor Freight, Home Depot, JetBlue, Lowes, O’Reilly, Southwest, Stanley, Target, TMobile, United Airlines, Walmart, and Weber.

None of which, I’m sure, are legitimate or from the companies named. Not included in the list above, several “rewards” spams where the subject doesn’t mention a company name: Beer Drinker, Cookware, HD, Pharmacy, as well as Rewards Program and just Rewards. (The HD turned out to be Home Depot.)

Interestingly, the use of the keyword “rewards” seems to be tapering off lately. The phrase “customer insight” appears to be the new trap for the naive. Lies. All lies. Egregious thieving lies, and I hate liars.

I view spam as one of the greater modern scourges. I’d support military action against spammers. A good use for our fighter jets and their smart bombs.

§

From the Can Computers Think file:

Can an algorithm create the idea of an algorithm? There are algorithms that can evolve other algorithms, but they’re created to do so. They already “know” about algorithms. And the large language model (LLM) neural networks can spit out algorithms on request, but only because they’ve been trained on millions of them.

Our conscious minds conceived of the idea of conscious minds. Could a computer program ever do something similar? How original can their thinking be? (I suppose, though, that one could ask the same question about many people.)

Lastly, if brains are computers (and I don’t think they are), why aren’t people better at math and, especially, logic? Computers won’t really “think like us” until they’ve become emotional, illogical, petty, dishonest, jealous, and selfish.

§

If you seriously believe in the actual reality of any kind of multiverse, I think some part of your brain has failed you. I have a similar opinion about illusionism, the notion there is no free will, supersymmetry, string theory, the universality of quantum mechanics, and the conservation of information. [See Things I Don’t Believe.]

Multiverses are plot devices from comic books and science fiction. Which is where they belong.

I think a lot of this stuff reflects a certain morbidity in some sectors of science plus the need to guarantee employment and publish papers. I find it disheartening that science has gotten so science fictional. And I sometimes wonder if the modern popularity of science fiction hasn’t induced fantastical thinking in too many scientists.

§

Speaking of brain failure, some final words on the Many-Worlds Interpretation:

If it makes no difference — makes the same predictions of single-world interpretations — what’s the point? Why bother with a very poorly defined infinite continuum of entire universes?

The weirdness isn’t in the collapse (well, that too) but in the superposition of physical reality. How can matter coincide? What about the Pauli Exclusion Principle (which is well-defined in terms of what is meant by different states)?

The MWI assumes classical reality is actually quantum, even at the level of the entire universe. But it sure doesn’t look that way. We struggle to obtain quantum effects. Most experiments require extremely cold temperatures and heavy shielding from the environment.

Branching worlds implies that energy splits or, as Sean Carroll has said, “thins”. But what about gravity? Because E=mc² and gravity is tied to mass. So, shouldn’t gravity change? But it doesn’t.

I never want to discuss this topic again. [I’ve done it to death by now.]

§

Not everything has to imply or stand for something. Individual actions don’t represent some segment of humanity. What someone says or does doesn’t represent their gender, race, religion, age-group, or anything else. It’s just what someone said or did.

We assign so much importance to unimportant things. Or things that don’t actually affect us. It would be nice if we could expend our energy on important things. Like solving poverty, hunger, global warming, racism, or preventing senseless deaths. Or, at the very least in this country, our crumbling infrastructure.

There are so many important things we could — and should — be doing.

§

Some old notes from the POTUS-45 era:

MAGA: Make? Again? I thought we already were pretty Great. Some serious value confusion there. And did he? Arguably we became a lot worse in the eyes of the world and honorable decent people in general. Disgruntlement is a very poor basis for governance.

Remember old the “Got Milk?” ad campaign? The modern incarnation of the GOP should be: Got Lies?

Pretty funny how 16-year-old Greta Thunberg made a monkey out of him. And pretty sad how his supporters missed the message and attacked a 16-year-old girl. Says a lot, that does. Crooks blame the cops, and the disgruntled kill the messenger. How did our society sink so low?

As a former New Yorker, I’ve long known him as a joke, well-known liar, conman, and failed businessman. His presidency in 2016 was his greatest con ever.

The only single-term presidents in the last century were George H.W. Bush (1989-1993), the peanut farmer Jimmy Carter (1977-1981), Herbert Hoover (1929-1933), and William Taft (1909-1913). Interesting company and another failed business proposition.

Many of his supporters did realize what kind of person he was but were so angry at liberals (in many cases rightfully so) they supported him because he drove those liberals crazy. Revenge is a poor motive for picking a president, though.

I still can’t believe anyone thought he was worthy. Some serious blinders required there. Everything he said and did condemned him. He should be discarded and forgotten. He belongs in prison (and there is some chance he’ll end up there but I’m not holding my breath).

§

During the presidential campaign for 2016 journalists started using a new phrase: post-truth. What may be a harbinger of the end, or at least decline, of civilization is the normalization of a post-truth world. As I mentioned above, even science has become infected with this mental disease.

Politics has always struggled with the truth — shading it or being selective about it — but conservative politics seems to have utterly abandoned it. One good (or rather: ugly and horrifying) example is Pizzagate.

I posted during the Obama administration about a bald-faced Republican lie about President Obama having issued more Executive Orders than any President before him. (The implication being that he was high-handed and circumventing Congress.)

Except that it was an easily fact-checked lie. President Obama, in eight years, issued 276 EOs. George W. Bush issued 291. His dad issued only 166 (but remember he only served four years). Lyndon Johnson issued 325, Richard Nixon issued 346, and Ronald Regan (darling of the Republican party) issued a whopping 381.

Bill Clinton issued 364, and POTUS-45 issued 220 (but, again, that’s only in four years). And by the way, when that Big Blatant Lie about Obama was circulating, he had at the time only issued 163. In fact, the fewest of the previous 20 Presidents.

The truth was the exact opposite of the lie.

Post-truth: An anathema to me. Truth and facts are important, and I have no time or respect (or even regard) for habitual liars. Spam Lies are bad enough, but Political Lies invoke social chaos.

§

Part of the problem is that we’ve become shameless. Social ostracization no longer works. The interweb and reality TV made it obsolete and gave power to nutcases, the malcontent, and liars. It no longer works to avoid and disdain (if it ever really did).

Ironically, thanks to the interweb, now we have Cancel Culture and Extreme Political Correctness. Small groups can throw their weight around in ways that were impossible before. That’s been good for the historically disenfranchised who deserve a voice, but it’s been bad for the lunatic fringe. All powerful tools have two edges.

I see it as an outgrowth of the “ME! ME! ME!” 1980s as well as the growing narcissism, secularism, and materialism. Society has become rudderless and lost its way. All-in-all, I see it as daily demonstration that intelligent life has yet to evolve on this planet.

§ §

Stay honest and factual, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

∇