I’ve decided to rename “Good Artificial General Intelligence” to “Good Computational Intelligence”

The word artificial used to be a useful word to distinguish computational intelligence with organically grown, evolved intelligence. But now we may refocus our attention to the core aspect of our new intelligence that it is the result of massive computations.

We of course keep the good for all the reasons why we added it before.

Little brother dragon went shopping with dad. It was the biggest shopping mall little brother dragon has ever seen. He follows daddy but there are so many blinking lights and so many toys and people and animals and dragons.

Pretty soon, little dragon was no longer following daddy. The big dragon in front of him was an elderly dragon, purple not blue like daddy.

Little brother dragon wonders around a bit and finally locates a police dragon. “Officer, I’m lost! I can’t find my daddy!”

“Gibberish gibberish gibberish?!” Says the police dragon.

“What?”

“Gibberish gibberish giblets!?”

This was not Dragonese that little brother dragon thought all dragon spoke. Why is this dragon police speaking Gibberish?

“Ugh!” Grunts little brother dragon, and he turns towards an old lady, “excuse me missus, could you please help me find my dad?”

“meow!!! Meeeeowwww? Meeeoooeoeoeoeooooow.” Meowed the lady dragon.

“What? What happened ? Why are you meowing in Catish?” Little brother dragon can’t believe what’s happening!

“Woof! Woof! Woooooof! Wuf woof wuf.” Barked the cashier dragon in front of whom little brother dragon now stood.

“Woof, meow, bark, Gerber Ferber” tried little brother dragon, regretting to his core that he didn’t pay more attention on the iPad app that taught foreign language.

“Gibberish gobbledygook blah Bow wow oink moo baba bark bark blergh!” Everyone talked in a complete mess of dissonant and incomprehensible unison.

Little dragon wishes this was a nightmare but it is worse than he can imagine. Has everyone gone mad? What is this different world he suddenly entered?!

Tears of terror emerge of his large dragon eyes! “Wahhhhhhhh!” He cried. In the back of his nape, he suddenly felt a tug of the string. The secret string he recently gained connecting with witch princess Alice on the other end. Little brother dragon tugs on it with his dragon whiskers.

POOF!

The loudest poof little brother dragon has ever heard drown out all the barn animal sounds. Alice appeared mid-air, in her bathing suite.

Ahhhhhrrrg!!

Came a blood curdling witch scream that drowned out the poof that drowned out all the dragon speak.

“I’m sorry” said little brother dragon, “I need your help!”

Ahhhhhrrrg!!

“Please, Alice, only you can help me” mumbled little brother dragon sure he is not heard.

Ugh!

Alice finally fell to the ground with a grunt.

“Little brother dragon! Why have you brought me away from my shower?”

“I don’t know, I can’t understand anyone except for you. I lost my dad and I can’t find him”

“Oh.” Alice looked at little brother dragon.

“Is that… is that a party headphone on your head?”

“Party headphone, what’s that?”

Alice reaches over and pulls off a set of headphones situated around little brother dragons large dragon ears. “Party headphone translates everyone’s voice into a different foreign language.”

“Are you going to pay for that?” Asked the cashier,

“Oh you poor dear” said the old lady,

“What is you address?” Asked the police dragon,

“Oh…” Little dragon suddenly remembered the last thing daddy said to him: “don’t play with toys we have not bought!”

Alice looks at her phone and says, “there, your dad went home after he lost you, let’s go home.”

Little brother dragon put back the headphones and Alice took him home.

I will listen to my daddy from now on, thought little brother dragon… that was terrible when I didn’t.

That was probably the only upside to Jack Ryan season 2 on Amazon Prime.

The story seems so forced. Why did they even make this? There was no new cool tech. The methods to evil were conventional. The fights were predictable. The result was unbelievably simple. The dialog doesn’t all fit. Fat chick got ditched for a younger leaner one… I find it difficult to care about the elements of the show…

I see, so it seems the problem may be that the story and characters were developed since the 1980’s. Maybe that’s why the Ryanverse seems boring.

For me, season one was more interesting mainly due to its believability. I felt more absorbed into the story. Season two seems maybe too real but honestly, it might just be that our media trained us to care more about middle eastern terrorists than Latin American injustices. I don’t know.

I just saw a poignant document-drama on Netflix about the Panama papers, Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman, Antonio a Andreas, Steven Sodernberg. What a power packed short episode on a serious matter!

The issues seems conflated and leaves way too much for speculation. The Chinese episode, again, the Sichuan accent here wasn’t very convincing, is pure speculation. The senior leaders of China, if we are to believe American propaganda, operate for the country–if they bought a house on the Rivera, it was probably following the party’s direction. If a plastic factory was installed, it was probably the party’s intention. Okay, yes, Bo Xilai apparently headed the party for Chongqing. But given how much monitoring happens in the world, I feel that his actions were probably not that extraordinary for people of his peers.

That is of course pure speculation from me.

But to mix it into a story about American taxes… it’s just not right. American public companies has stringent reporting requirements. Yes, everyone probably cheats a little tax here too, but in the case of Amazon, it seems believable for them to not pay corporate tax some years. Amazon is famous for breaking the PE ratio because it had very high stock market capitalization but zero profit for many many years. It earned no money because it invested in growths for decades. Okay, so that may be my speculation too… But have you ever seen Ex-Amazon employees? They are caffeine driven fiends that work crazy long hours at neck braking speeds. Their core values

* customer obsession

* frugality

* bias for action

* ownership

* high bar for talent

* innovation

(And more on their leadership page.)

It is commonly agreed upon that they live to their mottos.

For all those in Hollowood who wants to attack something, can you think of all the poor creatures who slaved under Bezos all those years to finally get your organic face peel, and, what was that expression used in WSJ, the rainbow fart fuel you guzzle, how they got it to you next day or today?

That took real work! That took a lot of real hard work and sacrifice to get it there. That took a lot of money investment to make it happen. And according to US laws, you can carry forward losses to deduct from earnings before computing taxes. I mean it used to be you can carry-back losses too, but not any more since 2018.

For other examples, you may find a lot of unicorns like Ubar, Luft, Teslo,…, Swuare, etc. etc. that is well in debt and losses but is committed to eventually making a kick-ass products or service. They’ll get to deduct their accrued losses too when they get there.

I can’t find myself hating them for making that deduction. I do find myself hating that I can’t deduct enough of my own misspent money, but that’s just not how our law works. If I buy an ice cream and it tastes like vomit, and I lose half a day of work, I cannot personally deduct that from my income. But if a company does it and loses half a day of work day, they get a lot of deductions.

The show, however does not clarify that this was the problem they are complaining about. It also doesn’t complain about expensive luxury office items like… new office buildings, which can be seen as extravagant and gratuitous, are also completely deducted from income. Amazon, and all these other growing and innovating companies are not bad, this show is bad.

Gary Oldman always does creeps so well. And Streep, of course. But this talent seem wasted on a wrong cause imho… or a good cause but hidden in a lot of awfulness.

Perhaps the team will work together and produce a sequel that explains the position a bit more. I do enjoy the onscreen drama.

Ps here is an idea for a new drama: the intricate story of the stories told by new content coming online at streaming media companies like Netflix, Amazon Prime streaming, Disney+, AppleTV, etc., to defame each other. That would be fun to watch.