Opus 2026-336: No Thank You

Sitting as a passenger in one of those newfangled electronic digital automobiles I was offered the experience of having my seat warmed.  I said no thank you.

There may be a lot of pleasant things in the world, but I don’t need to get used to them so that I actually desire them.  Think of all the “needs” we have that were once “wants”.  Do you really need a smart phone?  Do you need power windows?  Cash?  

I sill concede that certain inventions make life easier.  I think the zipper is a game changer.  The microwave is awesome for reheating coffee even if coffee snobs disagree.  Free long distance calls are wonderful.  I would not want to go back to candles and oil lamps.  I like hot water on demand.  If necessary I could get by without them but I am willing to call them needs.

Those needs also come with a price.  One of the reasons it is so expensive to live in America is that we are used to all these “needs”.  One of the marks of totalitarian tyrants is to reduce the quality of life.  There is a certain ego satisfaction in depriving others of the things that make life enjoyable.  It may be sick but then so are the elites of Europe that are taking away air conditioning.

Freedom improves life not only in the abstract but also in the daily application.  

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-300: Digital Applications

Three bits of information presented as the result of research have come together in my mind.  I say “presented” because I don’t know how valid the research was.  Just because I want something to be true does not make it such.

The most emotionally satisfying is the documentation of the stagnation and decline in the results of standardized testing since digital technology came into the classroom.  We all have made note of this.  I can remember when they dumbed down the SAT test to improve scores.  I witnessed the decline in the years I was teaching, 1987-2017.  Every time they issued new text books the vocabulary had to be lowered.  The talking heads claimed that research on this went back to 1962.

The most frightening is the effect of AI tools.  The research here was done in the computer industry.  Use of AI seemed to keep the lower levels from growing.  They could do their work using all the offerings of AI but they were stuck in a rut.  The upper levels seem to be able to advance.  Either they were old enough to have developed a deeper understanding of what they were doing or just having the experience let you keep growing.  It isn’t just a matter of productivity but of making advances in quality.

The personal concern came from a discussion of Bible study and the use of digital Bibles.  The talking heads seemed to feel that their learning was being weakened by dependence on the screen.  I think they said computer tools could help your research but the idea was that there was an acutual physical and mental decline.

I find I am watching more videos lately.  Does that have anything to do with my decrease in physical and mental energy?  It seems vaguely that the two correlated in my life.  Of course, correlation does not mean causation but it causes one to wonder.  I think of all the people confined to a bedroom with a TV and slowly sinking.

Does the increased use of technology have an effect on the dementia of Americans?  This would go back to the advent of television.  Is there any research for such a thing?  I know that the visual can effect people. When my son was young we didn’t let him watch a lot of TV but we noticed that when what he watched was animated as opposed to live actors, his behavior changed and the change was for the worse.

My son suggested that it might be due to decreased attention spans which is another area that researchers have noticed.

I am going to reduce my screen time and increase my time with physical books.  It can’t hurt and I am willing for it to help.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-236: Don’t Help the Chick

I am watching a podcast from Reasons to Believe in which Hugh Ross and Jeff Zweerink are discussing AI coding.  I won’t try to summarize their discussion except to look at one observation they made.  Zweerink was reporting on some research and how it affected the work of different programmers.  It made people at all levels more productive but there was a more significant point.  The lower level programmers were more productive using AI helps but they were stagnant in developing new skill or new code.  The experienced programmers added new areas of progress to their productivity.  The point they drew was that the years of effort in learning to produce code had made it possible for the senior people to grow and advance with the AI.  Use of the shortcuts provided was keeping the low level people on a plateau.

That resonated with me.  There is a principle in life that says when you do things for people that they can do themselves you are not helping them but you are making them weaker.  I saw this in education with the introduction of computers and ready-made science kits.  The technology brought them to completion on a set project but did not develop the skills to move beyond the canned outcome.  Because they did not have to struggle they developed no intellectual muscle. 

Schools have begun allowing students to use calculators instead of learning their multiplication tables or the process of long division.  If all you want are bookkeepers then that may be enough. If you want rocket scientists or people to design bridges they need to develop a deeper understanding of how things work.

Let me repeat an observation I have made multiple times.  When chicken eggs are approaching the moment of hatching, people want to help the baby chicks to break out of the shell.  They are so helpless and we are so sensitive.  The sad truth is that if you do the work for them and they don’t need to struggle, they will not set loose the hormones that will allow them to get strong and thrive.  Your shortcut may shorten their lives.

I am only part way through the podcast but I think one of the conclusions will be that AI can be a useful tool but it can also be a shortcut that inhibits human progress both collectively and individually. 

Be leery of shortcuts.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-218: Old Time Remedies

There are times when we look back to our childhood or read about bygone eras and we see things that people used to do differently. The difference was more than a lack of technology. It was often the hands-on power of craftsmanship.

I was recently reading something about cheese. The author was reflecting on the situation in England before one of the wars. He said that every neighborhood and sometimes every farm had a unique cheese that they made. The variety depended on many factors and may have even varied in different seasons. The point was that there was a lot more flavor and enjoyment when you compared it to our one-taste-fits-all cheeses of today.

Sometimes the old ways had the better way. I don’t want to go back to hauling water from the well in a bucket or heating the house with the fireplace but I know that pork chops don’t taste as good as they did before they became the “other white meat.”

This came to mind because my son and I were discussing the call of Abraham in Genesis 12. It is amazing the study tools you can bring to a restaurant if you have a hot spot on your phone. We were focusing on the Hebrew words. They seemed to be translated the same, were pronounced the same but looked different in the Hebrew script. We didn’t have enough knowledge to make a judgment.

Today as I was looking over it again I noticed what we call “King James English.” There were a lot of yee’s and “eth” endings. I remember looking into this once and whatever source I was reading said that this was already archaic in the time of King James. The translators did it to get across the nuances of the Greek and Hebrew. In modern English we have the pronoun “you” and we can’t know if it is singular or plural. Not so in the KJV. Thee is singular and Ye is plural. That knowledge adds to our understanding of the Bible. It would be good if we brought it back because it would make things more clear. The same applies to the “eth” endings. I already wrote about the LSB using the Hebrew name of God, Yahweh. This would be like that.

So don’t throw away your KJV. I f you are serious about Bible study it can help you get to the bottom of some questions. I don’t care what the package says, “New and improved” often isn’t.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-192: Change Is Forced on Me

I replace my laptop about every three years. We are past that time and so I set my son on a search for something that would not crash in the first month. That brings changes and adjustments in at least two areas.

First, I need to install the software I want and tweak things so that they work. In the process you have a constant battle with Microsoft trying to force itself into what you want. There is always a learning curve. Part of that is finding where they hid everything to be helpful. Others are changes and you can’t find out why.

Second, software. It has been my practice to purchase a new copy of Word Perfect with each computer. They have been playing the old Find-the-Feature game that they do every time. I finally decided to bite the bullet and move to LibreOffice. I am hoping that I will only need to play the game once. I am already finding a lot of features that don’t seem to be available but I am soldiering on.

There will be a lot of hiccups. A gracious reader informed me that my posts were coming up blank. Who was to know that Blogger would make adjustments without asking. I think I figured that one out but in the process I find other things tweaked. I have always published my full post so you don’t need to click “read more”. Now that seems to be the way it is. That always irritates me but I may not fight that battle.

I have made connections I never bothered with before. I got my printer going on WiFi instead of by cable.

I connected my stereo with Bluetooth. Only the future will determine how extreme I will get with this.

Thanks for your patience on my journey.

Now to see if this gets through in readable fashion.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-169: Next!

What is the next big step in technology?  We are in the middle of one but most of us are not paying attention.

Do you remember when you discovered the power of the Google search?  I remember using it as a teacher to root out plagiarism in my students work.  It was awesome. I could type in a suspicious sentence and quickly find out where it came from originally.

The current big step is backwards.  More and more often we find that the programmers of the so called AI and the algorithms that deliver unsought videos are out to limit our access to information.

A good example of this is found at the Lazy Farmer.  He is a resourceful individual who has been using YouTube videos to find out how to fix things.  We have all done that or should have.  I had a broken lawn tractor and found several videos that showed me how to take care of it.  At that time the problem was not YouTube but the little quirk that cooks have of leaving out one small ingredient or step when they tell you how to proceed.  

The Lazy Farmer documents his discussions with the AI that used to be helpful but is being reigned in by the developers.  The program confesses it has been told not to answer certain questions.

Searching for information is at a crossroad of finding nothing and only finding what the cultural architects want you to find. It is increasingly useless or decreasingly useful, take your pick.

The environment is being prepared for the next step forward.  Not being into tech I have no idea what it will be based on or how it will spread but people who were used to the vision of a free internet are increasingly realizing that the vision has cataracts.  When it appears I assume that the existing power structure will try to pull a Microsoft and put them out of business but eventually there will be a tool that will survive.  The current giants will try to reform and promise to do better.  Hopefully the general public will remember the Peanuts cartoon with Lucy pulling the football out of reach.

Of course the greenies could also win and bring down all modern technology. It is hard to access an internet powered by unicorn farts and rainbows.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-100: No Events Today

I knew that.

As I was looking at my home screen, I noticed that the Calendar app is still there even though I never use it and it informed me that I had no events today.  Actually, I do have an event today, but I have that event every Friday and so I really don’t need to be reminded by my computer about what I’m going to do this evening.

I keep a date book.  I write important things in it.  Next week I have an appointment with the dentist.  This week I had an appointment do you have a CAT scan.  I know I go to church on Sunday morning and when possible on Wednesday night.  I don’t need my computer to tell me that I have an event today.

I have pretty much always been this way.  I use a date book.  I check it every once in a while but even in my early stages of potential dementia, I know generally what I’m doing this week.  It used to be I would get up in the morning and go to work.  I didn’t need my calendar to remind me of that.  If I was in a good mood, I would remember to come home.  Usually, I would schedule several stops on the way to pick up groceries that were on sale at one of the many markets that existed in Southern California.

We have so many aspects of our life that our computers are trying to control.  Often when I go online to check my emails it urges me to sign up for some AI application.  I don’t need an AI application to check my emails.  I don’t need an AI generated summary every time I do a search on Google.  I don’t know if Google realizes it, but I am getting less and less willing to submit myself to the nonsense that they keep throwing my way.  I’m finding it of less and less value because it doesn’t bring up things that I know were there that should be at the head of the list.

Visit your local library.  Don’t bother putting it on your events calendar, just go.  If you don’t have a library card, shame on you.  Get one.  Check out a few books.  Take them home.  Find a good easy chair and read them.  Rinse.  Repeat.

Usually, if you forget an event for the day, it’s because it wasn’t all that important anyway.

homo unius libri

Opus 2026-090: How about a Dumb-Down

Some temptations roll off my psyche with no pause or penetration.  I was recently looking for a primary source document and at the beginning I saw this message:

“This appears to be a long document.  Save time by reading a summary using AI assistant.”

No.  When a certain terminal destination freezes over.  I would sooner have Joe Biden give me a summary as AI Assistant.  

The invasiveness of this software is ubiquitous.  If you don’t know what that means ask Google.  The irritation is even worse.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-607: It’s Everywhere

So is nitrogen and an atmosphere of pure nitrogen will also kill you.

Since I had the opportunity to preach recently, I was caught by the click bait that announced that the majority of pastors are using AI.  The article was not near as damning as I expected, and I understood how they could have honest pastors answering the question with a yes, depending on how the questions asked.

What made it stand out to me was that in my research I would not say I used AI, however, if you’re really honest, you admit that it’s almost impossible to look anything up on the computer without being forced to at least read the first couple lines of an AI presentation.  You all know how that goes; anything you look up it starts off with an AI summary.  Then when I go down to different articles, many of those will start off with the AI summary, so the problem is avoiding it.

I don’t use Google search as much in sermon preparation.  I have Bible study apps that help me with my word searches and investigations into the Greek and Hebrew.  I have actual books that also are used.  So I would say I don’t use AI, however, if I were totally honest, I would have to say that I had read some anytime I turned on the computer.

Recently, I was doing some research into using an air fryer.  I can’t remember exactly the question I asked, but when the response came up the first couple of offerings were from AI.  It’s everywhere.  Is it evil?  No, it’s a computer program.  The people who are programming it may be evil and the people who are prepping it and giving it the first spot in the search engines may be evil, but the AI itself is just the fast computer, so far.

I also thought it was amusing in reading the article that it talks about the burden of the pastors.  I think it was in regard to sermon preparation.  I’m sorry, I don’t feel a lot of sympathy.  I spent 10 years in full-time pastoral ministry.  I prepared a full sermon for Sunday morning, a full sermon for Sunday night, a midweek mini sermon, a Sunday school lesson and anything else that popped up.  Now, most pastors preach one sermon on Sunday morning and cry the blues at being overworked.  I’m wondering if the guy who claimed to have written the article was also using AI or whatever that other program is that everyone seems to love.  Or the pastors could be spending so much time brewing exotic coffees and teas that they don’t have time to study.

AI was not used in the writing of this post.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-605: Pet Peeves Did I ever tell you that I hate telephones?

Did I ever tell you that I hate telephones?

Maybe I did.  I’m not sure I did a good job of conveying the depth of the digust and revulsion that they bring to my life.  Since I’m not someone who has a need to do a lot of talking, I find that I don’t need them.  Since I am someone who gets easily bored listening to gossip level conversations I find that I don’t want them.

Telephones tend to interrupt whatever deep thoughts are developing in my brain.  I can be halfway through writing something or mentally composing it and the phone rings.  Now I have no problem ignoring it if it is just a spam call.  I never answer the phone unless I know who’s calling and so the caller ID is very helpful.  The problem is that when it’s my wife calling I can’t ignore it, I have to answer.  It might actually be important.  It usually isn’t, but it might be.  So I am tired to this disruption of my life.  I’m talking about the phone not my wife.  But now that you mention it…

There are features that I have found beneficial.  To be honest, I like the GPS.  I could get along without it.  I was raised with paper maps.  I know how to find my way around.  But being lazy, the GPS sometimes tends to help.  Of course the fact that it’s wrong at times doesn’t endeared it to me.  The phone is valuable in case I have car trouble.  Of course, that assumes that I have car trouble in an area that has service for my phone.  The way life often works is that there seems to be an agreement between the Telecommunications industry and the auto repair business that breakdowns don’t happen where you can call easily for help.

I am racking my brain trying to find some other great use for my phone.  It works well as an alarm clock and time.  It might be good as a paperweight.  It can reserve my seat in church.  If I were into showing pictures of my grandchildren to people, it would be handy, but my children are so security conscious they don’t like me doing that.

All in all, it’s a losing proposition, but one that I can do nothing about.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-603: Different Generation, Same Issue

About 50 years ago when I was in seminary, I had another student share an insight with me.  I was probably two or three years older than the average seminary student and he was at least 10 years older than me with two children.  I came from a big city, he came from the small town.  He was also one of the wisest men I knew at the time.

He shared one time as we were working together that ours was the last generation that had our basic values formed before television.  Think about what that means.  Your sense of right wrong. Your sense of normal. Your sense of beauty. Your accent. Your vocabulary.  So much was molded by your source of information and your entertainment.

Today we face a similar challenge.  We have generations which were formed without social media.  Many of them have adapted and use it.  Many of them have been perverted by it.  But I would suggest that perhaps it’s not as strong in the pre-social media generation as it is and those who are raised with it.

That can be good or bad.  So many technologies have their beneficial side and their destructive side.  When I was a kid, we got our first TV and were introduced to cigarette commercials, murder, and violence.  We also had access to programs about science and about history.  And then there were Zorro and Maverick.  Think of the VCR.  It had both the positive and the negative influence possible.  Then you have the Internet.

Ultimately, the direction that things influence us is going to be based on the decisions we make and the priorities we establish.  I remember early on I realized that the things I clicked on the Internet would come back to haunt me.  Fortunately, I realized that soon enough I really didn’t need to go much deeper than one or two clicks into my curiosity about Russian brides.  I was spared a lot of pornography because of that.  I made decisions.  I may not have been aware of the long-term effects of those decisions, but the basis of my decision was the right thing and I benefited from it.

Work on making the right decision decisions. Work on having the right motives. It will pay off in the long run.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-556: Click Bait: Amazing Isn’t

The Clickbait promised to show me all the amazing things that the Notes app on my iPhone would do for me.  Needless to say, I did not bother clicking on it.  There are a lot of things I don’t need my Notes app to do.  I’m already using the one on my iPad and iPhone and in a general sense it works just fine .

Hover over conversations I’ve had and hear what so many people keep saying about upgrades to their software.  One of the universal complaints that I keep hearing is that they don’t want updates.  Every time a new operating system comes out, a new word processor or who knows what else those of us who have a bit of experience and maturity, keep wondering who they’re trying to fool.  Every time I buy a new laptop, I buy the current version of Word Perfect.  I keep wishing I could go back to the old version I used several laptops again ago.  The so-called improvements actually make things worse.  In addition to just moving things around in order to feel needed, they take away the things that I use the most and add things to take three times as much time to implement.

I find myself looking for the old discontinued items when I shop.  If I need a new Bible I look for the old 1977 edition of the NASB.  I could understand why the 1611 KJV needed to be upgraded but the language has not changed that much since 1977.  I drive an old car and hope I never need to buy a new one because I don’t want a computer telling me how to drive.  I use GPS but I always check the route it has laid out to see if it is really where I want to go.  I even prefer Old Fashioned Oatmeal.

I accept the fact that there are young people out there who have time on their hands and still think that socialism is going to work.  These are the ones who probably think that the latest app or upgrade is going to revolutionize their life.  I disagree.  It will take up more time.  They will have less leisure.  Along with that they will do less thinking, reading and contemplating what’s actually going on around them.  They will be more susceptible to being controlled.

So no, I don’t need to know all the glorious things that my Notes app can do.  It does what it was designed to do and does it well.  That’s all I need . But then I’m just a dinosaur living in the world of mammals.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-533: Organic YouTube

Even if you’re not aware of it, you are struggling with the invasion of YouTube videos by AI.  Sometimes it’s relatively obvious.  All those cute little babies that have the expressions of celebrities with mouths that are matched perfectly with the dialogue?  They can’t be real.  That much is obvious.  At other points I find myself listening to what would be instructional videos and after a while, I realize that this is not a human being trying to communicate with me.

In the future, the AI is going to continue to get more sophisticated.  That in itself is not the end of the world, but it certainly could influence the value of what we’re hearing.

I think we could draw a parallel between the food we eat, and the ideas we consume.  One of the theories of the health nuts is that modern foods are causing the obesity, epidemic and contributing to general ill health.  It couldn’t be that we are eating too much and moving to little.  They would lay it on the additives and the GMO plot.  Processing takes the healthiness out of the food.  It makes it artificial.

And the food industry they have come up with things like “organic” and “free range”. The terms in themselves are relatively meaningless.  There is no federal legislation that binds you to give a definition of what is really organic and what isn’t.  I remember watching a video on free range chickens and it was rather amusing to see how little was required for that label.  It wasn’t much.  I remember somebody pointing out that grass fed beef pretty much can apply to anything on four legs that is not a pig or a lamb.  It would be hard to find a cow that had not eaten grass sometime in life.

Foods are theoretically labeled organic to help the consumer differentiate between what is healthy and what isn’t.

I might suggest that we have an organic title for YouTube videos.  In fact, the term organic might be good because it would imply that there was actually a living organism that contributed.  I don’t know how you would enforce this.  I don’t know how you would know for sure.  I still think it’s a good idea.

I would not want to forbid AI generated content.  I am for freedom of the press and freedom of speech, even for computer programs.  After all, they were originally written by humans and designed by humans.  At the same time I think we have a right to know the source of what we’re getting.

So how about a “organic” label for what you watch or for what you read?

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-532: Still Searching for Perpetual Motion

This morning, as I was using my iPad, I found myself doing something stupid and the iPad separated from the stand it was on.  My son has me set up with this new product where you have a keyboard and a protective cover that folds.  The iPad itself is attached to the top of the cover by magnets.  He shared with me how the magnetic technology had advanced to the point where these magnets did not mess up everything going on in the computer.  I was duly impressed.

But when the iPad itself became separated, I got to thinking about magnets.  Do magnets lose their charge over time?  If you put two magnets together in the proper way, they will stick together.  If you leave them sitting there, they will continue to stick together.  Will they eventually stop sticking?  If the loss of attraction takes place over 1 million years then it’s pretty meaningless.  If it takes place over six months then all my theories are gone.  But I like to speculate.

If this magnetism does not fade fast enough to be explained by the energy used to attract the other object, then we have a violation of the laws of physics.  At least it would seem that way to me.  This might be another one of those areas where research is already being done and I just am not reading that page in the newspaper.  It might also be an area that’s so obvious that no one is looking into it.  Or the research may have already been finished and I am preaching to the choir.

So many mysteries if we see them.  We only see them if we look for them.  Look for things that don’t make sense but happen anyway.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-520: On the Street: Freedom Comes with Four Wheels

I am driving across the metropolitan area of Texas around San Antonio and I am in bumper-to-bumper traffic which is caused by road construction.  Instead of getting frustrated, which would be normal for me, I’ve been thinking about blessings and how God blesses all of us and I’m looking now especially at the blessing we have of the automobile.

When I sit out on the porch in the morning and hear people going to work, I am impressed with all that flexibility that the automobile gives people looking to better their lives.  As I look at the different roads and how they get really congested at certain times, I am glad I live in a world where I don’t have to walk or ride a horse everywhere I go.

We tend to forget the tremendous influence automobiles have on our liberty and our freedom.  We are capable of getting places on bicycles, I guess.  I heard one commenter on a YouTube channel commenting how when he got to where he could not afford a car he was fortunate to be in a place where there was public transit.  He used it while saving up for something better.  Well and good.  I have no problem with that.  That’s probably a good step forward in accumulating wealth.  If you’re in a position where you can have mobility without owning a car, go for it.  But for most of us a car is how we get to shop where we want to shop.  It’s how we get to the church we want to attend.  It’s how we get to vote.  It is an awesome key to flexibility.

Maybe you should build a little icon to Henry Ford.  After you get through thanking God for your automobile, you might think warm thoughts about Henry Ford for the idea that he had that made the automobile affordable for the lower and middle classes.  The elites, the upper class, the one world government people already had cars, and chauffeurs.  Instead of finding ways to pass on such benefits they are working overtime, trying to take away your freedom of movement.  The issues that bring the cost of driving up and drive cars out of the range of people put a sparkle in their eyes.  They love the regulations.  They limit your freedom.  Remember the Cash for Clunkers program?  What it really did was removed the access to inexpensive cars from poor people who could not afford something better.  How many million cars were removed from the market?  How much did the cost of an automobile go up?  How many people are now stranded because they can’t afford it anymore?  That’s all part of the plan from the elite.

Anything that makes it harder for you to afford a car, to pay for the gas you need and to maintain it should be fought with great vigor and enthusiasm.  One of the factors in liberty is mobility.  You hear about voting with your feet?  Well maybe we need to learn to vote with our wheels.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-515: AI Virus

I wrote about an MIT study that showed using AI support causes damage to your ability to think.

I showed it to someone who worked in computer security and he said that he sees it in his managerial group and they are trying to push it amongst the ones who actually do the work.  It is spreading like wildfire and wildfire is malignant.  

The thought came to me that the AI programming may work very similar to a virus.  It may somehow move from person to person, causing brains to shut down, causing emotional and mental intellectual damage, and those people, because they don’t want anybody else to get by without the benefits that they’re getting, will force it on others, therefore spreading the destruction.  We need to develop a way to treat this illness.

As we move forward, society may divide into two groups.  One group will have their brains watered down by AI and will be tools of whomever controls the AI.  The other group will be like the Amish and will live a separate and parallel existence.  Whether they are allowed to live that separate existence is doubtful so they may have to find ways to fight the virus.  It may be to compete.  Some people will have to volunteer to be guinea pigs.

The guinea pig will be someone who understands what’s going on and who volunteers to use the AI tools, which we know will lower their IQ, and seek to find ways to block or counteract it.  It would be scientific research and these would be heroes of the human race.  If it can be done there is hope.

The parallel track would need to use AI to compete with the speed of contamination in order to counter attacks that they are using on the normal people.  Other than that, it wouldn’t be necessary.  Well, that and the fact that the AI group will not be satisfied to allow normal people to continue being normal.

If the machines take over it won’t necessarily be because they are smarter as much as the elites that control them have made sure that we are dumber.  Same difference if you are a cog.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-514: AI Sydrome

A friend directed me toward an article out of MIT that was investigating the effect that AI crutches had on the people that used them.  The research was frightening but not surprising.  They found that people who used ChatGPT had serious reductions in their ability to think and process.  There was a clear difference.

This made me wonder if reading the material produced by AI would have the same effect.  Do we get dumber when we read the product of artificial thinking?

I would suggest you might even take another step and ask yourself if reading kind of garbage literature that has been forced on kits for the past 20 years in public schools would tend to make a brain degenerate.  Muscles develop and maintain strength through resistance and effort.  The brain is the same.

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-512: Terms That Manipulate

By now I’m sure that most of you have seen these video clips that have babies resembling a well-known person making comments and looking really cute.  They will take the voice of the actual person and have the baby moving their mouth and having the exact expressions of the person they are mimicking.  There are others where they’re just babies making funny comments.  I enjoy them up to the point where I start getting bored.  They’re a great addition to our entertainment industry.

Nowadays, we would say these are AI generated.  When we say things like that, it comes loaded with a lot of hidden meanings that have been pushed upon us and are being constantly broadcast.  When we hear about AI, we are often overcome with fear.  We’re afraid of it.  We think about how it’s going to morph into a creature that makes us obsolete and replaces us.  We think of machines taking over the world.  It’s a popular fantasy.  It’s not a new fantasy.  It’s been around for years in science fiction.  If you remember the movie, 2001 Space Odyssey, you have a picture of HAL taking over the spaceship and essentially telling the human he was unessential. 

No turn your mind back a few years.  Before everybody got used to the threat of AI they might’ve said that something was computer generated or Photoshoped or before that even airbrushed.  These terms we got used to and they did not have the threat factor in them.

Keep in mind that one of the reasons why people are making such a big deal about AI is because they want the government to step in and start passing rules and regulations that will “protect us”.  There are people out there that always want the government to protect us.  Be leery of people who want the government to start regulating anything.

One of the best ways to not be threatened by AI is to work hard in a skill that cannot be duplicated by a series of bits and bites.  Use your creativity.  Use your uniqueness.  Yes, computers can do things which don’t require real judgment.  They can drive cars.  If programed correctly, they may even design cars.  The problem is what kind of car would it design for a computer module?  It wouldn’t have air-conditioning and certainly wouldn’t need a stereo.

Keep in mind that phrase from FDR, “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-497: Lasts: The Retreat of the Coffee Bean

I went to the store in all innocence recently.  I was going to buy some coffee beans and grind them in the commercial grade machines that were available in the store.  The store I was going to had three machines and a selection of 20 or 30 coffees.  Everything was smiles and unicorns until I started walking down the coffee aisle.  It seemed that things have been moved around.  I wasn’t seeing what I expected.  I got to the end of the aisle and not only was the bulk coffee gone but so were the coffee grinders. 

I walked back-and-forth several times and saw nothing.  Eventually, I saw an employee and asked.  He said “Yes they’ve been removed.”  He didn’t know if it was in all the stores or just locally.  later, I saw the manager and asked him about it and he said the entire corporate structure had removed the coffee grinders and the bulk coffee.  Evidently it wasn’t making enough money. 

Some people call it progress.  I salute their freedom to remove products that are not generating enough income to justify the space in the store.  At the same time I’m mourn for the loss of what used to be variety and choice. 

I still have my burr grinder at home.  I can still buy bulk beans and grind them myself.  In fact, I had recently just ordered 12 pounds of coffee over the Internet.  It’s not going to send me into depression.  But my choice has been limited. 

Goodbye coffee grinders.  It’s been good knowing you. 

homo unius libri

Opus 2025-480: Did You Notice?

Have you noticed yet the small changes that have been made in the dynamics of written English?  I am sure there are more than I see but let me list a couple.  

It used to be that you were expected to put two spaces after a period and after a colon.  You were also supposed to capitalize the first word after the colon.  One reason I noticed this was at some point my word processing software made the change which had it “correcting” my typing.  I had to dig into the inner workings to change the setting.  

Why the changes?  The basic reason is to save space on the computer disk.  Everything you type is recorded in 0's and 1's.  Even a single space takes up room.  Over a long document that can add up.  They totally overlook the fact that they were originally double spaced to make communication easier.  It alerted the reader that a new thought was beginning.  We live in a day when saving space on a disc is more important than clarity in writing.

You can make your own decision on the bigger reason for the change.  I would say it is a both/and situation.  It saved the technology people money and it gave them more control over the population by increasing ignorance.  It was a twofer.  

homo unius libri