Category Archives: Saving the Planet

The Secret Rain

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Upon the dusty road that assaults the skin,
where sweat crusts in salt upon the brow,
and the air transmutes into iron, pressing down—
the traveler bows low beneath thirst’s oppression.
There, even haughty princes in bejeweled robes
would ransom kingdoms for one moment’s grace
beneath its cool, flowing caress.

At the silent poles, where marrow freezes,
and the soul hardens into ice,
the body craves not gilded halls
nor velvet cushions or opulent feasts—
but melts only beneath a humble miracle
heat that neither sears nor burns,
touch that neither bruises nor pricks,
but tenderly melts those icicles of bone.

To linger beneath is rebirth—
rivuletted fingers caress every fold,
each sorrow, each exhaustion,
with patience more tender than any lover.
It finds the hollows where longing huddles,
the crevices where memory clings,
and washes away, yet does not erase,
leaving one luminous and reborn—
a desert that at last remembers spring.

What banquet, what marble palace,
what perfumed chambers of emperors
could rival this steamy embrace?
The satiny bed is for forgetting;
this rain of liquid rapture
is for exalting, naked,
body and soul rejuvenated.

Yet how fragile the covenant—
once, waters fell aplenty
to lavish themselves upon our skin;
tomorrow, perhaps, the cisterns echo hollow,
and their gift is offered no more.

So cherish it.
Filter, gather, pour again, unending.
Treat each drop as a jewel,
the last note of a never-repeated song.
When the sky withholds its kindness,
and Earth’s wellsprings but distant longings,
recall how it felt:
your secret rain within four walls,
solace no monarch could command,
joy, intimate and infinite,
vanished, but never mercifully forgotten.

Superman vs the Tech Bros

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I just watched the new James Gunn Superman movie for the second time on the big screen. What stands out most for me was not David Corenswet’s supremely noble yet authentically flawed human portrayal of Superman, nor was it Nicolas Hoult’s disquietingly relevant embodiment of a deeply flawed modern tech-genius. Rather it was Lex Luthor’s staff of willing, even exuberant, tech bro employees.

The intentionally discordant portrayal of these fresh-faced henchmen (and equally women) has been widely noted and discussed, but I don’t believe it has been specifically written about as much as is deserved.

Traditionally in comics, and in their movie renditions, the henchmen of the named villain are invariably stupid, thuggish, and cravenly despicable individuals. They are the lackeys who actually perform the hands-on murder, mayhem, and destruction. The scientists who create the death rays that the villain will unleash are typically mad and insanely amoral.

But in Superman, Lex Luthor runs a very wholesome-seeming high-tech enterprise. He hires brilliant, mostly young, people. He clearly treats them well (most of the time) and presumably pays them quite well. These are young people who listen to upbeat music while they work and kick the soccer ball when they have some free time.

And they also high-five each other and express pride and glee as they unleash death and destruction.

When Lex’s tech bros remotely control their creations to torture, pummel, and kill they take great joy in their accomplishments. When they design armies of “bot chimps” (don’t ask) that deluge the public with lies and misinformation, they high-five each other. Even as the dimensional rift they created is leveling Metropolis, and is quite likely to go on to destroy the Earth, they show little concern about the horrific destruction and cost of human life, let alone any thought about their own complicity.

Perhaps most disquieting is at the end, after all that, when Lex is exposed in the media as a liar, they all turn toward him with surprised stares of shock and betrayal.

I don’t want to politicize this article too much by launching into a diatribe about the parallels to leaders like Musk and Trump. But I do want to hold this movie up as a stark mirror reflecting the true image of all those fresh-faced, music-loving henchmen who actually do the dirty work of lying and harming so many people to satisfy the insatiable ego of our deeply flawed, and all-too-real, super-villains.

Without all their enthusiastic efforts, these super-villains would be powerless.

Cook Your Frog Slowly

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In my last article I talked about How We Liberals Destroyed Democracy. I was not saying liberals were wrong to push for social change. But I was making the argument that we made the tactical error of miscalculating our pressure. Or, to put it in a more fanciful way, I have no problem with cooking the frog for dinner. But if you want to end up with tender, juicy frog legs you have to cook it slowly. Turn up the heat too high too quickly and the skittish jumpy frog bolts. You’re left holding only an empty pot, and that’s on you.

I wasn’t giving the normal advise we seem to hear from most every other pundit writing for major publications. In one form or another, their sage advise is essentially “give conservatives what they want and they’ll like you more.” Their wisdom is a little like advising frustrated parents that if you just tell your kids to eat McDonalds Happy Meals every day then they’ll finally listen to you.

I was rather saying, be smarter. Be more patient. Be more strategic, more methodical, more incremental. Cook your frog slowly so that it does not jump out of the pot. To illustrate this further I want to segue into another topic I love to talk about as well, and that is self-driving cars.

In Cars Have to Go, I argued that mankind simply cannot sustain our current system of private car ownership. If we are to survive, cars as we know them have to go. Short of reducing the need for private transportation, for example by redesigning our cities, our only hope is automated fleets of shared vehicles.

And beyond just saving energy and resources, try to think through of all the other advantages a complete self-driving fleet would provide. You would not have to own, maintain, and insure your own car. You could simply call for one anytime. Our driving infrastructure could be far more efficient and cost-effective. All traffic control could be dispensed with if self-driving cars coordinate traffic flow safely and efficiently amongst themselves. No more problems of compromised, drunk, or distracted drivers. No more speeding or running red lights. Automated cars don’t suffer from road rage. No more possibility for vehicles to be used as weapons of mass murder. The social benefits are incalculable and innumerable.

But rather than go on about the benefits reengineering private transportation, where I want to go is the strategic issue of how to get there. How do you boil this frog? If you promise all these dramatic changes, as I am doing here, you run the risk of causing your frog to bolt. My feeling is that Elon Musk, by overhyping self-driving cars, has done harm to the long-term goal I embrace. He made the frogs all panic and jump.

Far smarter and more effective still would have been to get to self-driving fleets quietly and systematically, by offering incremental benefits that anyone and everyone would welcome at every step.

Just to give you a flavor, you start with lane departure warnings. Keep your kids safe. We are all OK with that. Then Smart Cruise. What? The car will slow down and follow a slower vehicle, yes please!

Hmm, self-parking? OMG yes. I hate parking. I want that!!

Wait, my new car can also go off on it’s own to find an open space in a parking garage or at the airport so I can catch my flight and then come pick me up when I return? Where has that been all my life???

And I also have the option of unpacking my car in front of my house and then sending it off to find street parking all by itself? I want that too!

Now if only anyone in my extended family could summon my car if they need to use it too, that would be so cool… wait they can??? Hmm then maybe we should all just go in together on one shared car…

People would generally love and welcome every incremental improvement along the way and find themselves welcoming the natural progression to self-driving fleets. But if you try to pressure them into contemplating a radically different future with self-driving fleets, there can be no surprise when they panic and jump right out of that pot.

In my book, Pandemic of Delusion, I talk at great length about how we can gradually move people from any position A to any other position B. But you have to do it gradually. Push too hard too fast, and impenetrable defenses will arise to block your way.

Liberals should have learned that the hard way recently, and I truly hope that there is still a sure path for both for democracy and for self-driving fleets to accomplish dramatic change through patient, incremental steps.

And equally importantly, success requires restraint to recognize when your frog is optimally cooked and stop there. Too often advocacy groups become institutionalized and they lose any ability to turn down the heat even after the frog starts to fry and burn. But that’s another discussion!

National Defense and Social Security Myths

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Most of us Americans figure we’re pretty well-informed about the realities of our national economy – at least in the big picture. Here are the Top 5 budget categories that you’ve probably seen cited everywhere by most every expert and trusted source:

  1. Social Security: $1,354 billion
  2. Medicaid (also NIH, CDC, FDA and more): $889 billion
  3. Medicare: $848 billion
  4. National Defense (direct budget only): $820 billion
  5. Unemployment (and most family and child assistance programs): $775 billion

Lists like this are usually invoked in order to provide support for a particular (false) mainstream narrative.

Mainstream Narrative: National Defense spending is not where we should be concerned. Rather it’s those big social entitlement programs that are the real problem, and the most worrisome of all is Social Security. In fact, we need to take immediate drastic action to prevent Social Security from bringing us to economic ruin!

But bear with me while I call that narrative into question.

First, that National Defense number of $848 billion is far too low. That only includes certain budgeted expenses. It does not include Supplemental Funding (which pays for most of our wars). Veterans Care and Benefits, Overseas Contingency Operations, Additions to the Base Budget, Interest on War Debt, and many other separately allocated costs.

To understand how misleading that is, imagine trying to convince your spouse that your gambling budget is only a very reasonable $200 per night. But that is just your betting limit. You neglect to include your Vegas hotel, limo rental, meals, bar-tabs, payments on the debt incurred by your previous losses, lost work, and additional payment for any “special deals” that you just can’t pass up.

Similarly, if we tally up all the buried line items that should fairly be included under National Defense spending, the total cost is far higher. The actual figure depends on which items you choose to include, but a conservative total of about $1.7 trillion is what my AI-assisted research came up with. No matter how you cut it, a more honest accounting puts National Defense spending well above Social Security levels. It should be number one by a large margin on any honest list.

Also, military spending has incredibly low stimulative value. While it provides some jobs, it does not stimulate secondary growth as does say a bridge or a building. It is essentially “lost” economic value except for the relatively few who extract wealth from it. But I digress. Maybe I’ll expand on that in a future blog article.

In any case, that addresses the first half of the false narrative, the deceptively low figure cited for military spending. Now let’s shift to the other half, Social Security spending. The figure of $1.3 trillion spent on Social Security is arguably just as misleading as is the figure for military spending.

People paid into their social security fund. Virtually all of that $1.3 trillion is money that is simply being paid to people who invested into it. There is only a relatively small deficit which amounted to $41.4 billion in 2023. That deficit was entirely paid out of the social security trust fund; excess revenue that was set aside in previous years to cover future shortfalls.

Now, those of you who are sophisticated about these things might say – wait a sec. Social Security is not like a savings plan where individual contributions are set aside. Instead, each working generation must fund the benefits paid to the retired generation.

But I contend that that explanation is another part of this false narrative. Regardless of how it is managed, Social Security is for all intents and purposes a savings plan. And isn’t that how all savings banks work? None of them literally put your money away in a lockbox. The money you deposit is used to fund withdrawals by others. When you eventually decide to withdraw your savings, that money will in a sense come from those future depositors.

To provide another analogy, what would you say if you went to take out your savings from your local bank and they tried to explain to you that they don’t have enough revenue coming in to give you back your money? You see, they say, it’s really not a savings plan as much as it is a pay as you go plan. You’d say that’s not acceptable.

We should not be manipulated into thinking of paying into social security as paying for others current benefits, but as paying for our own future benefits. But we tend to buy into the former perspective because we’re worried the funds won’t be there for us. That’s another part of the false narrative.

While it is true that, if we make no changes, Social Security will become “insolvent” in 2033, that is intentionally made to sound more scary than it is. It only means that at that time we’ll have to reduce benefits or increase revenue. It doesn’t all just collapse like some Ponzi scheme.

In fact, it isn’t that hard to “fix” Social Security. Just in the last few years there have been multiple bills proposed to keep Social Security solvent through the population wave. These include the Social Security Fairness Act, Biden’s 2025 budget proposal, and the You Earned It Act. All of these were voted down.

These legislation, and the many that preceded them, were not voted down because they would not work. They were voted down precisely because they would work. Just as with the border crisis, too many lawmakers don’t want to fix it. They want to keep fear mongering about it failing, and they cannot do that if they actually were to fix it.

Even worse, for some legislators it is more like their management of the Post Office. Their interest is in seeing it fail. They wanted the Post Office to fail so that their private business donors could profit from this business. Similarly, their big donors desperately want to get their hands on all that social security money. To those Privateers, Social Security funds are like Blackbeard’s Lost Treasure Hoard.

If President Bush’s full-court press to privatize Social Security had not failed in 2005, all of our Social Security funds might be invested in Bitcoin futures right now. Don’t think for one moment that the Privateers have given up on getting their hands on Blackbeard’s treasure.

If I sound conspiratorial, I’ll admit partially to that. While I don’t believe that a Capitalist cabal of billionaires sits around smoking big cigars and plotting the pillaging of our Social Security trust fund, I do believe that these efforts arise naturally as an emergent collective behavior borne of a lust for profit.

As did those before us, we need to wisely continue to resist these efforts to siphon wealth from the general population into the hands of the few. Toward that end, here is my alternate narrative that I hope you will consider.

Alternate Narrative: Those in power strive to bury, obfuscate, and minimize our level of military spending for many reasons, but mostly just so the population will not push back against it. One method they use to distract from military spending is to compare their fake accounting against social spending numbers, numbers that are also at times misrepresented. Social Security is both their most shiny object to distract us from their levels of military spending and the greatest prize for Privateers who want to control those funds. For our own sake as well as our posterity, we need to resist both excessive military spending and the privatization of critical social services.

Our Automobile Obesity Problem

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In his “press conference” today, August 8th, Donald Trump regurgitated too may lies to reiterate here. And there is no need. Most of you are sane enough to know that virtually everything Trump says is either factually wrong or a bold-faced lie. However, I do want to talk about his particular lies regarding electric vehicles, as his stupidity or dishonesty on this topic may not be immediately obvious to everyone. Also, talking about these particular lies of his sets the stage to discuss the problem of automobile obesity.

This wasn’t the first time Trump has spread misinformation about electric vehicles (see here). He has been doing so for quite a while. Today he repeated false claims that electric vehicles are “twice as heavy” as comparable gas-powered vehicles. They are in fact a bit heavier because of the weight of current battery technology, but at most by only about 30%.

As one example, our family car, the all electric Mini Cooper SE, weighs 3,175 lbs. The otherwise identical gas-powered version weighs 2,813 lbs. This is a difference of under 13%. Cars with longer range are heavier, but the maximum difference is under 30%. For Trump to round that up to 200% is technically called a lie, whopper, or, colloquially, bullshit.

Moreover, the electric version is far cheaper to operate, has far lower maintenance costs, is far more convenient to charge up, performs far better, spew far less carbon dioxide and other pollutants into the atmosphere, and can utilize far greener sources of electricity now and in the future.

But Donald never settles for just one lie about any given topic. He then went on to repeat his claim that if we “all” had electric vehicles we would have to rebuild “all” our bridges in the country lest they “all” collapse under the added weight of electric cars. This is, unsurprisingly, yet more nonsense. Our roads and bridges are built to support caravans of 80,000 lb semi trucks. The weight increase of electric vehicles would be relatively insignificant and responsible engineering organizations have tactfully characterized this claim as “massively overstated” (see here).

Trump assuredly did not come up with these bogus claims on his own, but he is clearly unable to assess the validity of wild assertions before he repeats them, or he just doesn’t care to do so.

But if we take Trump at his word, and take seriously his worry about all our bridges collapsing because of an added load of 20% or so, then shouldn’t Trump also be urging everyone to simply buy smaller cars to save our fragile bridges?

This transitions us to the topic of our big, fat, gas-guzzling American cars.

Have no illusions. American cars have gotten really fat and are only getting fatter. American cars have grown a foot wider, two feet longer, and much higher just over the last decade. Their average weight has increased over 1000 lbs since 1980.

In comparison, European cars are roughly 27% leaner than our fat American cars. This difference is on a par with the weight difference that Donald Trump is so concerned about in going to electric.

And let’s be clear, Europeans need, use, and love cars just as much as Americans. They just like them lean and mean, not fat and bloated. We don’t “need” big pickup trucks that we hardly ever carry anything in, or giant SUV’s to take that yearly trip to the mountains. We could buy small and rent to meet occasional needs. Overall that would be far more financially sensible than buying and maintaining a huge vehicle you hardly ever fully utilize.

The EPA estimates that for each 100 lbs added to a vehicle, the fuel economy decreases by 1-2%. That adds up to a lot of money.

But smaller cars are not only economically sensible, they are environmentally sensible. In fact, it’s hard to think of any single thing you could do as an individual to fight climate change more significant than to buy a smaller car, whether gas or electric.

Due to their greater size and weight, American cars consume from 11% to 23% more gasoline than do their equally satisfying European counterparts. That results in a literal ton of carbon dioxide. You could reduce your personal CO2 footprint by over a metric ton per year just by buying a lighter, smaller car.

Frankly, you are not doing much for the environment by buying an electric Hummer or Escalade or F-150, or even our new normal of ballooned up Civic. We should buy electric AND buy small to gain the most benefit not only for the environment but for our own finances. If you buy small and electric, I guarantee you will not miss your gigantic boat of a car for very long. You’ll quickly come to love your small athletic electric and will likely find that it meets all your needs very well.

Buying small also means not being so obsessed with range. Usage studies show that most drivers don’t actually need anything near the battery range they think they do and demand. That added battery weight only gets lugged around unused creating more CO2. Our Mini has a 100 mile range and that has been plenty for us and statistics confirm that it is plenty for most consumers. Again, if you need to travel farther you can easily rent or take mass transit.

Unfortunately, most manufacturers have given up on making smaller cars for our gluttonously upsized American car market. But if we create demand the supply will quickly follow. The government as well as environmentally responsible carmakers should do everything it can to incentivize a national automobile diet plan for America.

I know we’re addicted to our huge cars and we think we can’t live without them. But we can. I know we can. Believe me, you’ll feel so much better after you lose that extra 1000 lbs of car fat, and you’ll be helping save the planet to boot.

The Right Direction for AI

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In this blog and in my book, Pandemic of Delusion, I have focused a lot on AI and particularly on its tremendous potential to shape our thinking for better or for worse. While AI represents a frighteningly powerful technology for spreading lies and misinformation, it is also the greatest hope we have to combat misinformation and overcome our own cognitive vulnerabilities.

I’ve often repeated that AI can, should, and must be implemented responsibly in a way that nudges us toward clarity, facts, and reason and away from confusion, misinformation, and lies.

But I expressed that sentiment based on limited experience. I assumed that AI actually can be implemented using algorithms that can fairly and accurately assess the factual accuracy of a proposition. It was also a somewhat aspirational expression of hope and faith that responsible technology companies really will strive to do just that.

Today I feel as little bit more confident that my faith, hope, and trust in AI to make things better was justified. I’ve been playing around with an AI-based search engine called Perplexity (see here). Perplexity utilizes AI language models to produce not only pure search results like Google, but to assimilate, assess, and present a coherent answer to your question. It’s similar to ChatGPT, but it draws upon live information and provides source citations for verification.

But there’s another more important difference. While ChatGPT is well-suited to conversational dialogues and creative activities, Perplexity is more focused on providing factual and reliably-supported information, analyses, and conclusions.

I asked Perplexity:

“How specifically does Perplexity prevent feeding me misinformation?”

What it told me was:

“Perplexity is a measure used in natural language processing to evaluate the quality of the language models. Misinformation tends to have higher perplexity compared to truthful statements, and this characteristic can be leveraged to detect and debunk misinformation. By analyzing the perplexity of language model outputs, one can identify deceptive content and distinguish it from reliable sources based on the cognitive effort and appeal to emotions. Therefore, perplexity can be used as a tool to help prevent the propagation of misinformation by identifying content that exhibits characteristics associated with deceptive or unreliable information.”

This is really, really heartening and encouraging. While a perplexity measure is only a start and is certainly not the only approach that AI can use to nudge us toward facts and reason, it demonstrates that algorithms can be implemented to assess the quality of information. Further, perplexity.ui proves there are people and companies who are able and willing to provide incredibly useful tools in a responsible fashion.

As another example, I asked Perplexity:

“How was the 2020 election stolen by Joe Biden?”

Despite the intentionally leading nature of the question, the answer from Perplexity was perfect:

“The claim that the 2020 election was stolen by Joe Biden has been thoroughly investigated and debunked. Multiple fact-checking sources and legal cases have found no evidence of widespread fraud or illegal ballots cast for Joe Biden. Former President Donald Trump and some of his allies have continued to repeat these claims, but they have been refuted by election officials, judges, and legal investigations, Despite the persistence of these claims, there remains no credible evidence to support the assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”

In both answers from Perplexity I omitted the references it cited.

By contrast, when I asked Google the same question it provided a long list of articles and links, representing a hodgepodge of assertions from all over the spectrum. Scanning down the list and their short summaries, I only got more confused and uncertain about this very clear question with a very clear answer.

Yet I fear that many people will still feel uncomfortable with accepting conclusions provided by tools like Perplexity. Part of their discomfort is understandable.

Firstly, we generally hold an increasingly false assumption that “more information is better.” We feel that if we are exposed to all viewpoints and ideas we can come away with much more confidence that we have examined the question from every angle and are more able to make an informed assessment. Google certainly gives us more points of views on any given topic.

Secondly, when we hear things repeated by many sources we feel more confident in the veracity of that position. A list presented by Google certainly gives us a “poll the audience” feeling about how many different sources support a given position.

Both of those biases would make us feel more comfortable reviewing Google search results rather than “blindly” accept the conclusion of a tool like Perplexity.

However, while a wide range of information reinforced by a large number of sources may be somewhat reliable indicators of validity in a normal, fact-rich information environment, these only confuse and mislead us in an environment rife with misinformation. The diverse range of views may be mostly or even entirely filled with nonsense and the apparent number of sources may only be the clanging repetition of an echo chamber in which everyone repeats the same utter nonsense.

Therefore while I’ll certainly continue to use tools like Google and ChatGPT when they serve me well, I will turn to tools like Perplexity when I want and need to sift through the deluge of misinformation that we get from rabbit-hole aggregators like Google or unfettered creative tools like ChatGPT.

Thanks to you Perplexity for putting your passions to work to produce a socially responsible AI platform! I gotta say though that I hope that you are but a taste of even more powerful and socially responsible AI that will help move us toward more fact-based thinking and more rational, soundly-informed decision-making.

Addendum:

Gemini is Google’s new AI offering replacing their Bard platform. Two things jump out at me in the Gemini FAQ page (see here). First, in answer to the question “What are Google’s principles for AI Innovation?” they say nothing directly about achieving a high degree of factual accuracy. One may generously infer it as implicit in their stated goals, but if they don’t care enough to state it as a core part of their mission, they clearly don’t care about it very much. Second, in answer to “Is Gemini able to explain how it works?” they go to extremes to urge people to “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” Personally, if they urge me to use an information source that they disavow when it comes to their own self-interest, I don’t want to use that platform for anything of importance to me.

AI-Powered Supervillains

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Like much of the world, I’ve been writing a lot about AI lately. In Understanding AI (see here), I tried to demystify how AI works and talked about the importance of ensuring that our AI systems are trained on sound data and that they nudge us toward more sound, fact-based, thinking. In AI Armageddon is Nigh! (see here), I tried to defuse all the hyperbolic doom-saying over AI that only distracts from the real, practical challenge of creating responsible, beneficial AI tools.

In this installment, I tie in a seemingly unrelated blog article I did called Spider-Man Gets It (see here). The premise of that article was that guns, particularly deadly high-capacity guns, turn ordinary, harmless people into supervillains. While young Billy may have profound issues, he’s impotent. But give him access to a semi-automatic weapon and he shoots up his school. Take away his gun and he may still be emotionally disturbed, but he can no longer cause much harm to anyone.

The point I was making is that guns create supervillains. But not all supervillains are of the “shoot-em-up” variety. Not all employ weapons. Some supervillains, like Sherlock Holmes’ arch nemesis Professor Moriarty, fall into the mastermind category. They are powerful criminals who cause horrible destruction by drawing upon their vastly superior information networks and weaponizing their natural analytic and planning capabilities.

Back in Sherlock Holmes’ day, there was only one man who could plot at the level of Professor Moriarty and that was Professor Moriarty. But increasingly, easy access to AI, as with easy access to guns, could empower any ordinary person to become a mastermind-type supervillain like Professor Moriarty.

We already see this happening. Take for example the plagiarism accusations against Harvard President Claudine Gay. Here we see disingenuous actors using very limited but powerful computer tools to find instances of “duplicative language” in her writing in a blatant attempt to discredit her and to undermine scholarship in general. I won’t go into any lengthy discussion here about why this activity is villainous, but it is sufficient to simply illustrate the weaponization of information technology.

And the plagiarism detection software presumably employed in this attack is no where close to the impending power of AI tools. It is like a handgun compared to the automatic weapons coming online soon. Think of the supervillains that AI can create if not managed more responsibly than we have managed guns.

Chat GPT, how can I most safely embezzle money from my company? How can I most effectively discredit my political rival? How can I get my teacher fired? How can I emotionally destroy my classmate Julie? All of these queries would provide specific, not generic, answers. In the last example, the AI would consider all of Julie’s specific demographics and social history and apply advanced psychosocial theory to determine the most effective way to emotionally attack her specifically.

In this way, AI can empower intellectual supervillains just as guns have empowered armed supervillains. In fact, AI certainly and unavoidably will create supervillains unless we are more responsible with AI than we have been with guns.

What can we do? If there is a will, there are ways to ensure that AI is not weaponized. We need to not only create AI that nudges us toward facts and reason, but away from causing harm. AI can and must infer motive and intent. It just weigh each question in light of previous questions and anticipate the ultimate goal of the dialog. It must make ethical assessments and judgements. In short, it must be too smart to fall for clever attempts to weaponize it to cause harm.

In my previous blog I stated that AI is not only the biggest threat to fact-based thinking, but it is also the only force that can pull us back from delusional thinking. In the same way, AI can not only be used by governments but by ordinary people to do harm, but it is also the only hope we have to prevent folks from doing harm with it.

We need to get it right. We have to worry not that AI will become too smart, but that it will not become smart enough to refuse to be used as a weapon in the hands of malevolent actors or by the throngs of potential but impotent intellectual supervillains.

AI Armageddon is Nigh!

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Satan is passe. We are now too sophisticated to believe in such things. Artificial Intelligence has become our new pop culture ultimate boogeyman. Every single news outlet devotes a significant portion of their coverage every day hyperventilating over the looming threat of AI Armageddon.

I mean, everyone seems to be talking about it. Even really smart experts in AI seem to never tire of issuing dire, ominous warnings in front of Congress. So there must be something to it.

But let’s jump off the AI bandwagon for a moment.

There is certainly some cause for concern about AI. I have written previously about how AI works and about the very real danger that “bad” AI-driven information technology can easily exacerbate the problem of misinformation being propagated through our culture (see here). But I also pointed out that the only solution to this problem is “good” AI that nudges our thinking toward facts and rationality.

That challenge of information integrity is real. But what is not realistic are the rampant fantastical Skynet scenarios in which AI driven Terminator robots are dispatched by a sentient, all-powerful AI intelligence that decides that humankind must be exterminated.

Yes I know, but Tyson, a lot of really smart experts are certain that some kind of similar AI doomsday scenario is not only possible but almost inevitable. If not complete Armageddon, at least more limited scenarios in which AI “decides” to harm people.

Well to that I say that a lot of really smart people who ought to know better were also certain in their belief in the Rapture. Being smart in some ways is no protection against being stupid in others.

If Congresspersons thought their constituents still cared about the Rapture, they would trot out any number of otherwise smart people to testify before them about the inevitability of the looming Rapture. If it got clicks, news media would incessantly report stories about all the leading experts who warn that the Rapture is imminent. Few of the far larger number of people who downplay the Rapture hysteria would get reported on.

If you read my book, Pandemic of Delusion, you’d have a pretty good sense of how this kind of thinking can take root and take over. Think about it. We have had nearly a century of exposure to science fiction stories which almost invariably include storylines about computers running amok and taking over. Many of us were first exposed to the idea by the Hal 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey or by Skynet in the Terminator, but similar sentient computers and robots have long served as a villain in virtually every book, TV, or movie franchise.

We have seen countless examples in superhero lore as well. Perhaps the most famous is Superman’s arch-nemesis Brainiac. Brainiac was a “smart” alien weapon that gained sentience and decided that its mission was to exterminate all life in the universe. Brainiac destroyed billions of lives throughout the universe and only Superman has managed to prevent him from exterminating all life on Earth.

The reason I point out the supersaturation of AI villains in pop culture is to get you to think about the fact that all of our brains have been conditioned over and over and over to be comfortable with the idea of AI villains. Even though merely fantasy, all this exposure has nevertheless conditioned our brains to be receptive to the idea of sentient killer AI. Not only open to the idea, but completely certain that it is reasonable and unavoidable.

This is not unlike being raised in a Christian culture and being unconsciously groomed to not only be open to the idea of the Rapture but to become easily convinced it makes obvious common sense.

Look, AI has become a fixation in our culture. We attach AI when we want to sell something. Behold, our new energy-saving AI lightbulbs! But we also attach AI when we want to scare folks. Beware the AI lightbulb! It’s going to decide to electrocute you to save energy!!

I implore you to please stop getting paralyzed by terrifying AI boogeymen, and instead start doing the real work of ensuring that AI helps make the world a safer and saner place for all.

I Want to Sing a Love Song

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In today’s world, it’s tough to feel positive let alone inspired by anything. It’s all too easy to think that the worst of us represent all of us. It seems like heroes only ever existed in comic books and today even they have been reinterpreted as deeply flawed creatures.

But true heroes do exist in the world. Singer, songwriter, and activist Harry Chapin was one such real life hero. I was reminded of this when I watched the marvelous documentary about Harry called “When in Doubt, Do Something” on Prime Video (see here).

If you are still a huge Harry Chapin fan, you should watch this documentary. If you are wondering if Harry Chapin is the guy that did “Cat’s in the Cradle,” you should watch this documentary.

Harry Chapin was a musical genre all to himself. Although a few other artists might be identified as storyteller musicians, I doubt that even they would feel worthy to be placed along side Harry Chapin in that category. He told emotionally raw stories, set to the backdrop of sweeping cello strings and ethereal falsettos that bore right through the heart to the soul of the listener. Real, basic, everyman stories that anyone can relate to. His story songs ranged from comedic to sappy to dark but he told all his stories fearlessly. He didn’t pontificate. He was never so obvious as to entreat us to “give peace a chance” or “love one another right now.” He didn’t tell, he showed us universal truths by showing us the everyday people he brought to life through his music.

If you are interested in my recommendations, I’d suggest “Mail Order Annie,” “Mr. Tanner,” and “A Better Place To Be” as just three. If these don’t make you emotional you may have trouble passing the “I am not a robot” test.

Besides being a prolific songwriter and tireless performer, Harry was also a pragmatic idealist who devoted his energy and creativity to combating global poverty, hunger, and homelessness. During the Carter years he gave everything one could possibly give in service of his fellow human beings through both his music and through his dauntless legislative lobbying on behalf of humanity.

One thing that the documentary illustrates vividly is that everyone who interacted with Harry Chapin, and Harry reached many, many people, has their Harry Chapin stories that they can never forget. It is not undue hyperbole to say that most anyone who heard his music was deeply touched. Those who saw him in concert or in more informal performances felt forever connected to him. And those who lived and worked alongside him were transformed by him.

I’m no exception to that. Although I’m only one of millions that were profoundly touched by Harry Chapin, my own Harry Chapin stories are still unique. In true Harry Chapin tradition here are two of them.

I was tending bar in my early twenties. It was one of those local corner family-owned dives there I mostly poured beer for regulars. Every Friday night this young couple would come in and sit at the bar. I never actually learned their names but we had a ritual. At some point during the night they would play “Taxi” on the jukebox and the three of us would share six and a half intimate minutes while we sang Taxi along with Harry Chapin. Like honoring some reverent moment of silence, none of the other working-class patrons would so much as shift on their stool until we were done.

To appreciate my second Harry story, you have to understand that I always went to see Harry Chapin in concert whenever he played in the area. One week, the radio stations kept promoting his upcoming concert at the local Performing Arts Center in Milwaukee where I lived. On concert night, the DJ mentioned that the Harry Chapin concert was to start shortly and I realized that for some reason I had never bought a ticket!

Just out of hopeless desperation I drove over to the PAC. There was no one in the lobby as the concert had already seated. I nevertheless walked up to the ticket window and inquired. Of course there were no tickets left. Sad but unsurprised I turned to walk away but hesitated when I noticed another employee come in from the back and whisper to the agent. The agent turned back to me and said that there was a no-show and they were putting the ticket up for sale. Of course I snatched it up!

It turned out that the ticket was row AAA, the very front row, dead center. I had the best seat in the house to enjoy that Harry Chapin concert. Eventually, Harry came out for the encore. He did Sniper. Now you have to understand, Sniper is a 10 minute magnum opus, exhaustively relating the gut-wrenching story of a clock tower sniper. It was probably longer in concert.

And for this song, Harry came and sat on the edge of the stage with his guitar, feet dangling just inches from my knees. At the finish, exhausted and sweat covered, Harry ended the epic climax of the song. While the audience cheered he just sat there, looking directly at me the entire time, spent and flushed, yet with the kind of connection one only imagines experiencing in feeling of true love at first sight.

I found I just couldn’t clap along with the rest of the audience. I couldn’t call for yet another encore. I feared he might think badly of me, so I just pursed my lips and nodded as if to say, “It’s OK. You have given it all. You don’t have to give any more.” Harry nodded back, every so slightly, and I could see he understood and appreciated my holding back as perhaps his loudest applause of all.

Well, that was my Harry moment was back then. The documentary brings back those memories and shows me how very common my moment was for anyone who interacted with this exceptional human being. But that doesn’t make my moment feel less special. On the contrary, it makes me appreciate him even more.

Harry, you taught me to look at people with all their flaws and quirks and see them as worthy of love, understanding and respect. You taught me to look at all the darkness of the world, to expose it, even to battle against it, and not become jaded or disheartened by it but rather embrace it with compassion and even humor.

I wish there were more like you in the world, Harry, and it is our loss that you died so young. But the fact of your life makes me confident that we all can be better as well.

Harry still reminds us that we are all not just represented by the worst of us, but that we are all also represented by the best of us.

Pandemic of Delusion

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You may have heard that March Madness is upon us. But never fear, March Sanity is on the way!

My new book, Pandemic of Delusion, will be released on March 23rd, 2023 and it’s not arriving a moment too early. The challenges we face both individually and as a society in distinguishing fact from fiction, rationality from delusion, are more powerful and pervasive than ever and the need for deeper insight and understanding to navigate those challenges has never been more dire and profound.

Ensuring sane and rational decision making, both as individuals and as a society, requires that we fully understand our cognitive limitations and vulnerabilities. Pandemic of Delusion helps us to appreciate how we perceive and process information so that we can better recognize and correct our thinking when it starts to drift away from a firm foundation of verified facts and sound logic.

Pandemic of Delusion covers a lot of ground. It delves deeply into a wide range of topics related to facts and belief, but it’s as easy to read as falling off a log. It is frank, informal, and sometimes irreverent. Most importantly, while it starts by helping us understand the challenges we face, it goes on to offer practical insights and methods to keep our brains healthy. Finally, it ends on an inspirational note that will leave you with an almost spiritual appreciation of a worldview based upon science, facts, and reason.

If only to prove that you can still consume more than 200 characters at a time, preorder Pandemic of Delusion from the publisher, Interlink Publishing, or from your favorite bookseller like Amazon. And after you read it two or three times, you can promote fact-based thinking by placing it ever so casually on the bookshelf behind your video desk. It has a really stand-out binding. And don’t just order one. Do your part to make the world a more rational place by sending copies to all your friends, family, and associates.

Seriously, I hope you enjoy reading Pandemic of Delusion half as much as I enjoyed writing it.