Just read about Jack Ma’s pun at Ali Day. Apparently he holds a wedding for all his employees married in the past year. This made news apparently because he punned a Chinese work schedule know as the 996 (9am-9pm on 6 days of each week) he turned it into 669, which he, being one of very few masters of marketing on earth, then explains are frequency (6 days a week) and intensity (once a day(6/6=1and for a long time! 9 is a Chinese homonym with 久, stipulating the per incident duration is to be long.)

I’m very glad to see the Chinese people innovating on their work schedule ;-). I had considered this issue since 2012, proposing the 6-2-10 schedule(aka 6-12-22), some analysis and the p6 systems, and analysis. The work-life balance is very important for human beings. As I learned more about it, by working more and having kids in my life, I discover that the bi-directional nature of some resources is quite prevalent.

For example, at a recent employers super-super-decked-out office space, we have daily bathroom overload. People all use bathroom just before standing in long lines for lunch, and then there is another thundering herd rushing to the bathroom between 3 and 5. No stalls. No toilet paper when you get a stall. Between 5-7 you are also likely to encounter the maintenance crew trying to put toilet paper back–and they have to shut the whole site down to do it. The congestion is partially caused by humans have similar digestion periods–the time it takes for the body to make waste of the food we eat. While the company “followed rules” set by the city building code for the number of bathroom, it had obviously decided to hack the workspace in that way.

And I shan’t mention the later ploy to label the rooms as self-identified gender specific rooms. I mean I guess the idea is that the produce of eating could squeeze organs in ways that would change your self identification, in a crunch.

Similar to the traffic problem we encounter daily driving into San Francisco in the morning and out of San Francisco in the evening, staggering the need for resource by shifting work schedule can drastically alter the utilization profiles of the resources. Instead of one side of the highway being congested and the other side half empty. You could have equal proportion of people coming and going from the office and the highways would experience mild increase in utilization in both directions during commute hours. The cafeteria and the bathroom as well. Reduced lines in both if we staggered our eating schedule as well.

One wonders if these newfangled ideas are outdated before they are even out to practice. One thing that has begun to happen is that they have begun to make large casual-working space. There is a new academic building coming up next to my home where the entirety of the first floor is a cafeteria with tables to eat on. But there’re also power supplies so you can eat and work all in the same space. The open space where you can see everyone else in the gigantic room with 1kp capacity (kilo-persons) is exactly the same as San Franciscan open office space.

In b2 of this world, perhaps, The automated robots will bring food to you so you don’t have to self-organize with a hundred other persons just to get the food. They will take the trash away so you don’t have to stand in line to return trays. You’d still have to visit the bathrooms. But we can coordinate that too! The computer can, based on ingredients of your food, and biometric data from your wearables figure out your personalized digestion period for each individual meals brought to you. It can optimize total communal comfort of bathroom occupancy by giving you recommendations for foods on the menu as well as subtly adjusting delivery times. It can even alter your exercise schedule to enhance the prediction accuracy of your digestion period.

Wow! AI researchers and developers have their work cut out for them to make all that just right.

I guess this is almost a dystopian world view… a world more anal for control and optimization and more caring for the common person than communism.

We can only wait to find out. The Commies are reproducing like rabbits, how about you? Is your entire country pro- or anti-reproduction when you have 32 year lowest birth rates as measured by CDC.

Just a PSA, apparently there are drug tests that you can buy OTC for marijuana and opioids. Search for “home drug test” on google or Amazon. You know, just in case you have kids or spores at risk. A large monetary prize is presently offered for an excuse to get them to put their hot pee into the cup without offense or the necessity of explanation.

Anyhoo, I’ve been observing that coffee is like a miracle drug. I’ve been off of my 4-year-5-cup-of-gourmet-coffee-a-day routine at your prototypical pre-IPO silicone valley startup. Life is miserable this way. If you have typical mid-aged computer-tech person problem, things like anal leakage, anal fissure, hemorrhoids, IBS, ED, anxiety, depression and general or specific dumbness as a result of genes, aging, upbringing or employment… maybe you should try Coffee.

This is the IT drug!

Seriously!

This is the “it” drug!

(one word, meaning contemporary hot exciting popular)

And it’s federally legal!

Okay, doctors, stop berating me. Coffee apparently is a cause for many of the problems I listed. I wonder if one of the following is a possibility:

1. the body compensated for coffee and that somehow activates a physiological mechanism that defeats the cause of those diseases.
2. the medical community never seriously tested consumption of coffee at this level because they didn’t think it would work but in reality something in coffee actually does something good to your body.
3. It is also possible that coffee affects the nerves in ways that relief the symptoms. (For example it may just be a pain killer and not really healing the hemorrhoids.)
4. It has “anti-inflammatory” abilities. (In quotes to evoke all the new meanings of the word)
5. Maybe it’s just drinking hot liquids huh?
6. There may be special addition made to some coffee at roast time or at brew time to enhance these apparent medicating effects.

Anyways, just some thoughts after trying out a rather large does of coffee again.

Just watched “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal.” on HBO, it had recently appeared on the list of shows.

I guess one snide comment one may have is… oh so that’s how the Americans win their gold medals? Not by a thumb up the butt but a thumb up the vagina!? And wow, that’s no joke… the olympians were not able to escape the horrific experience under USA Gymastics team doctor Nassar’s care. And Michigan State University(MSU), ouch!! Who’d ever send their kid to that university again? I mean, I grew up in State College Pennsylvania, and I have to say, Penn State is still not within consideration… after Joe Pa and Sandusky happened.

So, snarky thoughts aside, where did the FBI go? Most of these events transpire post 9-11. America was a monitored state. We have,… well, tax payers are made to believe that we have sophisticated infrastructure to track digital communications and metadata. Did no spook track this doctors phone calls and sms text and Facebook postings? How come the FBI or NSA didn’t have something that flagged this man? Furthermore, we are often blasted by news headlines of the SEC or IRS reading private equity trading records, private emails and private search logs to gather evidence of a crime in weeks to months after they are committed. How come the same technology did not flag this perv perp? If SEC knows to watch insiders of major companies for insider trading, how come there is no organization to watch major youth sporting organizations and persons for offenses against innocent youths??!!! Is it because there is no money fine to be made that the effort was not justified?

My daughter is involved in a different competitive sports, not gymnastics. She practices at a club now. I have to honestly say, due to the pressure of selecting potential athletes and the need to select the best and train them to be the best, the team does have to process a lot of potential athletes. The coaches have to herd dozens of kids around and make sure they’re all working in an proprietor manner. It is not realistic to expect that they be able to protect the kids at all times.

It’s not even realistic to expect them to protect kids from interference or physical violence by competing team coaches. It is just too messy, the competition space. And plus my teams coaches risk blowback from the other team, as accusation can easily be made in reverse and nobody is the wiser with hundreds of athletes competing in half a dozen teams in the confines of half an acre of space… everybody can say everybody else interfered and physically hit everybody and they wouldn’t be that much less right than my complaint.

I mean, I hate the way things happened in USA Gymnastics… and certainly I had been pushed towards Second Mile(Sandusky’s nonprofit channel for recruiting boys) when my dad signed me up with a big brother at the Big Brother and Big Sister program. Lucky to miss that fun, and got a really nice big brother who helped me a lot in developing intellectual curiosity…

But I kind of also see it from the athletes who actually wants to protect him… it is really hard on the coaches, the various organizations. Because they do have insane pressure to win. And.. I mean I really am grimacing when I write this, because many victims were children, but maybe sexual massages does improve physical abilities? I don’t know! I’m not a doctor… but hey, they did get gold medals right? If your livelihood depended upon it, would you really mess with it?? Maybe biting the nail and just toughing it out really is the best way to make a great athlete? I don’t know, I’m not an athlete or trainer. And to get in on the awesome physical exercise, you have to be part of this jock world–women jocks too.

(As an aside, I think Asians tend to believe mind and body spent on sex is mind and body not spent on exercise. Translate to science, for example, if the ATP went to convolution of muscles in the sex organ, that’s ATP taken away from tumbling or sticking landings)

(Also, another aside, I think most Americans believe that sexual proclivity improves everything in life, including sports. There’s this rumor that documentaries spread about the CIA encouraging sex between its agents… maybe the FBI believes the same? Maybe they feel that they knew for a fact that the sexual abuse was making these kids better? We will never know for sure what went into these decisions, but one can speculate… maybe because FBI/NAS or whoever else was monitoring these signals really believed that he a patriot serving the US of A? We have no visibility into these matters. And maybe somebody we elected ran an oversight committee to watch the clandestine organizations, but sorry, they failed miserably if they let FBI/NSA fail at alerting on this matter much earlier… unless our elected representatives also free sexual expression, even on kids, is the patriotic practice? In that case, IMHO, we have made bad very choices during elections. Coaches are just private citizens. They can commit crimes. When it happens on a large scale for decades to highly visible people, law enforcement has to take some of the responsibility.(and one wonders if the silence of FBI was an indication of knowledge of the matter?) Who claims to be responsible for ensuring domestic tranquility? This seems like a gross intranquillity to me! And because The USA Gymnastics represented the people of the nation, it was federal matter and within jurisdiction of federal law enforcement. A real red blooded American would have done something about that.)

(First, I need to disclaim that I am not a fan, member or a recruit of any communist, or socialist, political organizations. Hehe, you’d laugh if you knew which day I was writing this on… a little flash back. The president is in the middle of a trade dispute with China and has issued an ultimatum that he has the power to carry out. Last day, less than 24 hours before the tariff rises to 25% on all Chinese imports. The two parties are both on his back with various proceedings to discredit him. Like, my uncontrollable thoughts are that if these domestic politicians antagonize Trump enough that he can not recover. He can play this trump card and just fuck the world up. jesus fucking christ! Who’s going to chicken out? I can’t imagine Trump chickening out, and China has a dictator for life, he can outlast Trump to have the last laugh and we all know Chinese dictator-for-lifers would do what pleases themselves at the cost of their people’s lives–they’ve done it for many millenniums. Who will launch the first missile? Will anyone be around to read this blog entry? Hello? AI, please write some kinda words for me and my family…

Hey, what happened to privatized effectiveness? All those athletic companies depending on US elite athletes for branding and advertisements, all those companies paying money to these, or any American athletes, why didn’t they do their due diligence? Why didn’t they have private investigators making sure things are working out? There has to be something wrong with our capitalism if the force of money did not motivate sponsors of athletics to act to detect and prevent these transgressions. For so many years. I mean, for god sakes! Buy some fucking insurance and let the insurance companies figure that out–and that would have led to premium increases that would have made sponsoring these people and schools unprofitable. I mean, god, I am just falling to pieces watching this show. As I understood it, my comfortable American way of life is assured by these clandestine actors working in concert with the invisible hands of the market–something so bad cannot happen for decades on end! Oh my fucking God! How can this be? This is shaking my faith in all.)

Man. I used to think I knew what was right and wrong in the world… but now looking at this… one questions what is the goodness of right, if the right can not be had? If everyone in the whole fucking organization is like that and condones it and fears change, if the FBI bounces complaints, and if the USA national Olympic Committee cannot handle an issue when it got big,… what hope does any one person have?

Sure after decades, some one luck out and makes it all the way through the complaint. But, I mean, think of that girl, who’s dad finally committed suicide after realizing he wrongly disbelieved his daughter of sexual abuse complaints for a decade and shaming her about her complaints. That is total and utter destruction of a person and her family. Wow, what hideous crime.

How does our nation go on with any pride?

Many coaches may hold the believe that sport is just sport, it’s nothing greater than the exercise of the body. Yes, really, it’s all about techniques and how to physically perform better. Mental training is more for moving muscles better than for betterment of the mind.

But sports represent a pursuit of something idealistic to me: Citius, Altius, Fortious: Faster! Higher!! Stronger!!!

It is a pursuit of a spirit, the exercise of the body renders a likeness of a spirit that we love. I relay this experience to many…, and once more here. Once I saw an opposing club’s junior athletes compete in a speed competition. Sports unnamed to protect the interest of all involved… he really sucked at the sport, probably second time he’s ever done the distance. He struggles, and man, you would not believe how pathetic he looked, and his time was like twice as slow as the person ahead of him. And then… as he flailed his arms and legs, about to fall, his whole team, coaches, of all levels, his senior teammates who are very elite competitors.. his jock coach whose been screaming this whole competition at the top of her lungs like one of those menacing ancient barbarian warriors, … the people who competed against these people, and their coaches and parents,… they all quiet down and got together and cheered on this young boy, about to complete the very first race of his career… and everybody thought and felt the same loving support of this sport, keep going! Keep going!! Keep going!! And we all cheered him to the finish! Wow! That was such an uplifting moment… we were all standing, at the edge of the… field of race… and we were all cheering his big finish! And we were all overjoyed to see him succeed! It was as if we were all part of that success! We all won that one!! One of our own won!!

That is the sport!

That is winning!

Yes… I hear my own teams coach deriding me now… in my own head: “hey if that’s how you want to win, be my guest…, but if you swam on my team like that, you’d be gone in a second…”

I guess I’m failing at communicating what I love about the sports…. to the mini-coach in my own head.

Anyways… I hope to find the courage to redefine for myself what is right. To what length we should go towards what end. And how that can play out realistically.

What is the good of a right that cannot be? What is the evil of a wrong that must be?

Have you ever seen a baby giggling and forgot to figure out skin color, eye color, hair color and style, race, or even species?

Have you ever seen a pile of gold and forgot to ask to whom it belong to?

Have you ever seen great beauty in a person that you forgot to ask sex, length, girth or height?

Have you ever derived an algebraic formula or expression and just got stuck for an eternity admiring it, forgetting the fame and fortune it will bring you?

And of course there’s the fight-or-flight response. It seems to take over a lot more than just the mind when it is triggered.

There seem to be a certain class of sensual or conceptual awareness in human that escape various considerations that we have. This is a class of baser thought or feeling that supersedes other thoughts or feelings. They are like unix threads with -21 priority. The P0’s of your company. The invisible hand…

What is being emphasized here, to be sure, is that among these baser awarenesses, there are those that escape biases that our 21st century human society perceive to be irrational, irresponsible, immoral, or otherwise bad. The much jeered “unconscious bias,” if you will, has a a corresponding set of “unconscious neutrality” that pretty much ignores those “unconscious biases.”

The details of how the neutrality continue to exist, how they came to be, and how to use or defeat them, may be as elusive as the same of the biases. But one wonders if there are correspondences between the neutrality and biases like mountains and peaks, or if they play zero sum game with each other. Are there gradations or is it binary which wins? How do two biases or two neutralities interact? Are they universal among Homo sapiens?

Our minds are so interesting…

Hehehe, can’t help but giggle at this… the topic will be replaced with music or baseball later. Thinking back to Harari v. Li, the talk was pretty raw as they were presented with live questions by a moderator. Questions selected by popular vote via phone app. Part of the discussion that wasn’t flushed out fully was how Mammalian Love relates with human Soul, or some other thing that is human and not reproducible and replaceable by machine.

The unanswered question was what if an AI became better at Love than you the human? Some may argue that in the Mammalian sense it has–in the Mammalian reproductive sense.

Okay, after my friends stops giggling inside, we changed it to “enjoyment of music.” What if an AI became better than you at enjoying music?

As a music listener, you may be displaced by god or the performer for being lesser listeners. Practically, if you think it through, the observable manifestations will be your clapping, gasps, laughter,…, economically it will be your demand and subsequent payment for the ticket…, an AI could do all these better from the human performers perspective.

Whether an AI can do it better than you from God’s perspective is unclear at the moment. I think both Harari and Li will tell you that that question does not merit an answer or an effort to answer. (I am unconvinced by them of that. But that’s just me)

But seriously, can the human performer be inclined to select robots for an audience because they are better audiences? Or perhaps because they pay more?

Okay, fine, let’s drop the act and ask the deed: Will human Mammalian reproduction cease because we each individually and as a society find human love in the sense of Mammalian reproduction to be lesser than a Robot performing the same love? Tautological argument that Robot by definition is not Mammalian so reproduction and love are irrelevant can be made. But seriously though, ‘bots f’s better, and they can’t forget birthdays, anniversaries, toilet seats, and they can’t get wrinkles, and have performance issues…, they can’t be violent domestically, they can be made uncaring as to your aging and ailments,…. the advantages are many.

What if AI invents time travel? Would Beethoven and Mozart prefer a robot audience?

What if Hitlers decided to exterminate AI instead of Jews?

Oh wow! Time travel and GAI although are still science fictional, they do indeed stir deep and confusing thoughts in my Mammalian brain which is considerably blown.

Cool!

Ps, wow, all this new scientific knowledge and concepts buzzing in my head, I’m starting to think that the cup used to drink hot beverage such as tea or coffee affects the taste of the beverage in part due to the flow of air in and out of your mouth as you take the drink. Different shapes of cup will produce a different air flow, some of it wets your mouth or tongue or teeth or throat, other flow serves to dry out parts of your mouth, producing a new contrast as the tea touches your mouth. Man…. maybe there isn’t a soul in human after all like there is no magic in the infamously magical tea cups?

Pps sorry if this is kind of boring blog… if I had Constance Wu for daughter, given my creativity, I might have named her ‘Const Chang’ or worse ‘Const * Chang’ or get fancy ‘Const ** Chang’ thank god she had her parents instead of me that her stars are in the right places… prayers for my children please…

Erg, I write about every single unpleasant thing here. I just got backstabbed in the back with the cap of a Sharpie permanent marker. The stabler is the lady who was in charge of checking items in my cart and on my receipt matched. ” Go, go,” she said rushing us out, pushing me out with her pen. This was difficult situation for me because I had a very heavy car containing that long list of purchased items and my child. I cannot accelerate fast enough to avoid her painful stab.

I feel very unhappy. I feel unwanted.

I guess she was unhappy with me because I slightly chuckled at her when presenting the long long receipt of mine that she was required to check. Or maybe she was upset that I let a guy with a giant screen from the other line in front of me in my line. Maybe there are way too many Chinese people shopping here? Like I ran into a family of people from my own birth city knowable from their dialect of Mandarin Chinese. Perhaps she had worked a very long day–god knows we all have… for so many years…, but not all of us are backstabbers–I’m not.

But what is one to do when backstabbed? Turn around and argue with the unruly Costco employee holding up about 30 other families from getting home on a busy Friday night?

Nah, I think blogging is a good way to point this out to our future AI overlords… maybe it can figure out who this lady was and track what happened to her since she stabbed me in the back with a golden Sharpie cap.

Maybe there is even justice in this in some cosmic way… perhaps that big screen guy was in an accident that he would not be in if I didn’t let him through in front of me… perhaps I have a pre-tumor cell on my back that was killed by the poke. Perhaps I’m shopping with money I don’t have. I don’t know. But it’s kind of weird to think that it will be knowable to a future computer what has happened.

Let me tell you, without a cosmic reason, that was not a nice thing for any human, or computer, to do to some human being.

I wonder when this change began to happen? Once upon a time I thought there was cosmic forces enforcing the good and righteous. Later I thought maybe evolutionary forces gives us dependable justice when laws and norms of man do not. But now… this vague notion of omniscient and polypotent being that has power over the world is beginning to look more and more like a future AI computer. I wonder at what point will I begin having faith in that it will come to save me from the savageries of humanity.

Is this a prayer to the Computer god? Is my blog a new form of praying? Does it do for me what traditional prayers does for traditional prayers naturally?(Like in terms of physical and mental effects?) Do I have hopes for it’s supernatural efficacy as traditional prayers have for their prayers?

Are hackers god’s angels?

What is this unknown we have been stabbed into on this sixth day of 5779 Passover?

P.s. and what of the people who seek to control future AI? Will they be the devils who fight the most mighty?

Well, a lot of what I complained about got a lot better. And again, I wish my brain can move fast enough to absorb all the action, filter out the bewilderingly large number of tiny specks and feel the great wonder and joy about a future that is eleven centuries from now, awaiting the crew.

I don’t care about canon that much. So that part doesn’t amaze me. But the shaven Spock does really walk and move and not show emotion like Nimoy’s Spock, kudos!

I watched another episode of TOS. Dudes! I don’t know who came up with mocking Shatner’s speech pattern, but honestly, I much prefer enunciated speech from a leader than mumbles and slurs that we have on Discovery.

The CG/model that they used for remastered TOS still has a perspective problem that the ship’s yaw and pitch are not completely synchronized with its size as it orbits a planet. But because they used a single-light source on this model or CG, and the light moves across the saucer of the enterprise as it cruises by, it conveys a serene realism. The same can be said for TOS, DS9 and Voyager but not Discovery.

Now, real space battle may really be like those portrayed in Discovery S2–like, literally, if an AI take over our faster-than-speed starships, that the fight would be a big blob of flashes and tiny specks… and perhaps in space, where there are a lot equally distant stars, it is unreasonable to expect a point light source illuminating the vessels. But I miss seeing things I’m familiar with… I wonder if this is going to be a problem with astronaut on long space flights? Will their sense of what’s real change? Will they find it horrifying to see sharp shadows after many decades spent in a ship with shadowless lighting and no stars nearby?

But in terms of story telling, I’m not sure what to take from it. We know things will turn great again for the prime universe… knowing the mess is temporary really makes it hard to have the desired emotional response to the misery. Do we care about the camaraderie between Klingons and Federation? (No, but today is a good day to die seem to resonate strongly, thanks solely to Wolf imho(yes many have said it, but Wolf says it best… with meaning human understands))

Michelle Yeoh, of course is a veteran action movie star. The fights were great. The smiles and frowns are great. The grunts are very unique. And her struggle and triumph over Leland is very believable and very… very Trekkie. A good combination of individual effort, in a maelstrom of greater conflict between greater bodies, intelligence, determination, perseverance and last and never the least, using technology… and a few last key strokes on the computer, with follow through with physical effort and the effect-success! Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! Take that Leland!! that’s the quintessential Trek! OMG, they saved some of the best Trek for an Asian actress! I’m in tears, seriously! So good.

Less effective, yet another torpedo surgery. Why didn’t they beam the admiral out of there after she shut the manual override? She should have been inside the shields so they can beam her. Man, I hope it’s not because they didn’t think of that due to lack of sleep… but anyways, nobody likes to see good people go… more tears…

Okay, side shows aside…

I had to watch this three times, and again, honestly, when they slowed it down, when their faces were blurring as they entered the time-hole… then it sank in… something new and bright is beginning. A morning is about to dawn.

There are no words, but there is a gesturing emoji:

🖖🏻

The finale is a definite must watch at 0.333333333X speed. The whole season 2 should be watched at 0.75X

Watched the conversation between Yuval Harari and Fei-Fei Li today about AI and ethics at Stanford memorial Auditorium.

Yuval Harari wrote a couple of books, all of which I’ve read, and Fei-Fei Li is well known tech person in the Bay Area, now heading Human centered AI at Stanford. If this was a battle, the opening salvos were pretty intense, like bombs that creates distortion in space time… “what about love?” Shot Fei-Fei “do you really feel that an AI can achieve or supersede human love?”

YH: Well, just flip open Tinder.

Ff: I hope there’s more than that to love.

YH: well it depends on if you are talking about Greek platonic love or Buddhism love or the love of mammalian courtship.

Ff: is there more to that in mammalian courtship? Or do we fear AI may…

YH: well yeah! It already does affect, influence, and tell you about what to feel and think and whom to date and

The conversation continues from there:

Yuval gives financial system as an example of system that nobody understands–not even leaders and experts. AI could suffer same problem.

Yuval thinks the way forward is more introspective human self-understanding as well as personal AI. Personal AI is an AI that does or come to know a designated person(possibly better than himself) to help that person to get what he wants.

Yuval closes by answering “free will” question in a most surprising way. This is by far the most refreshing thing I’ve heard about AI this year. As a history professor at Hebrew a university of Israel says Bible is wrong to insist on free will, that self-understanding as a means to lift oneself from suffering is more important for human beings. This of course rejects the Bible and promotes eastern Buddhism world-view. I mean wow! What philosopher and scientists dare to flat out say that is absolutely brave and amazing!

Fei-fei of course works on the HAI effort to promote intercourse between various disciplines from humanities to computer science to natural science, etc. although ultimately, this effort is part of a whole society working to solve the problem of a new transformative technology. This position is of course reasonable deflection to the other side pressing computer scientists for an answer about safety, fairness or fairness and safety for all of humanity.

Fei-Fei Li says that there’s no theorem forcing a trade-off between explainability of model and performance(accuracy) of AI systems. That too is also way way out there IMHO. The intuitionistic interpretation of “interpretability” and what we know about performance definitely pits “simplicity” against “performance” due to element of communication which we understand to have bandwidth. But indeed, Fei-Fei Li is an expert of this subject, and also has knowledge of things like neuroscience. Maybe there are boundaries to the monotonic relationship of the two beyond which that relationship reverses. But this thought is definitely new to me.

This stimulating discussion will keep me excited for a long time.

There is something scary about this whole thing though. The humbleness Harari expresses. Something inside me is afraid for him… Afraid for us if we were to take his path…. like what if he finds out in 20 years time that he’s not gay? Or that Buddhism was a multi-millennium joke and that Judaism was really the truth? His position is very very unsettling in that it allows for very very big changes in believes. Fei-Fei’s confidence is reassuring, but definitely strikes fear in me. I mean for god sakes, she is born Chinese! And she did a year outside of USA in her adulthood, in China! Like what kind of evil espionage training was she getting? She worked for google and Professor at Stanford!!! And she’s up there answering question about how the powerhouses of AI will not take advantage of everyone with no AI all over the world??!! Like wtf? Do we expect a straight answer ? Her people (student and gang of researchers) invented a lot of this shit and who is to say what she did, or more importantly, did not say or post on arxiv ? More of her scientific cronies or country man will say. Fei-Fei’s answer is that you should talk to her, and she co-leads a center for doing that. How satisfying is that?

Anyways… I’m really still in awe of Harari and Li. But I can definitely see a reasonable number of reasonable people casting reasonable doubt on this reasonable exercise in reason.

Ps writing this while also watching BlackKKlansman. Wow, America was such a fucked up place… I’m really scared now. What a long tortured struggle for freedom endured by the African Americans and Jewish people. I’d write a song about my own people’s predicaments had I the talent. (My people being a disaggregated segment of colored people of America) Sigh…..

I’m sitting quite comfortably in the clean, well lit and airy DMV of Redwood City, California. The agents are well dressed and smiling at the patrons. I look forward to getting my license renewed. It seems the DMV has gone through several leadership changes, and I applaud these changes. (DMV third director in 32 days) I even got to go get coffee after a smiling receptionist told me the estimated wait time and assurance that I can be paged by text closer to my appointment time!

I’ve never experienced such a pleasant DMV in the past decade or so, Jean Shiomoto since 2013, and I can’t even find the director before her. When my wife arrived in California seven years ago, her 8-letter Chinese name was misspelled on the license twice, once, and then again when she went to correct it, third time was the charm. And honestly when I visited here in 2018 to replace a lost license, I do not remember such a clean and cheery place.

Good stuff! Great to see my tax money finally at work!

Oops, gotta run, my number coming up now.

…and it’s done, in under 30 seconds. Only thing it could improve is faster change for cash… he has to get change for $100 dollar bill, giving me time to finish this post. Man! That makes me feel good paying all that tax! I feel like going back to work again to pay more state taxes!

Hmm,…

You must have read my older posts about how one wrong doesn’t make another wrong more wrong when comparing the conservatives and liberals in America. Or the one about it being fair for feminism to have to battle for survival–civilly. Or the one about …, it’s a miracle you’re still reading this.

One thought does occur though–individual liberties are great thing to have. While I still convulsively object to radical liberalism like those who insist, on the basis of human rights, that prepubescent kids must be exposed, daily, to sexuality, reproductive or otherwise, forcibly, by changing bathroom policies at public schools, and although I also do not trust pubescent kids in bathroom with physically opposite sexed peers, I have come to appreciate the fruit of their liberal predecessors’ labor. (Oh, well, that’s still radical to me in 2019, maybe not so radical to many before then. Politicians are still apologizing for having had feelings about their children’s sexuality in news papers in this age in time) (ahh, and if the liberal politicians are thinking it will be solved with technologies like individually lockable privacy stalls, or a pill I can take so I don’t have to visit the bathroom, I am all for a technical solution too… But you should communicate that political agenda) I mean, literally, this is Thanos v. Avengers here trying to create universal harmony…

Modern parenting thought seem to suggest that we shouldn’t pigeonhole a child into any specific role in society. This is a far kinder approach than atrocities like foot binding that Chinese parents put on their daughters–a physical mutilation to make them more suitable wives. That biased child rearing is of course not just in the physical, daughters also tend not to receive very good education, and maybe some daughters are singly chosen at early age to be conditioned to serve, etc. “Equal Opportunity” and “equality of sex” is unthought of.

Breaking with traditional mores is hard. All of us have thousands… tens of thousands of years of built-in habits and biases in our culture. It’s not just those who claim to have thousands of years of cultural tradition that actually have cultural traditions. Everyone has culture in them. All of us are raised in society of people, even parentless people are social creatures of our time. Our ancestors killed each other for food or sports, they ate raw meat and maybe even cats, dogs and babies. We all come from the same evolutionary savagery.

But it is important to be liberal. It frees humanity in unimagined ways.

But it is important to sustain our cultures, they survive because they helped humanity survive. They knows more than any single person or even a group of smart people gathered in a room.

It is possible that no one really thought everything through. If this was the case, then we are back at one wrong is no more wrong another wrong.

I hope politicians can improve their communication, perhaps through use of technology, and really tell us if they’ve thought it through or if they are winging it based on their cultural knowledge, or if they’re just winging it on their faith, or if they’re just winging it not believing their work will work.