Wednesday, September 24, 2008

The Real Chile?

The Real Chile?:


We just completed our third, last, and best Fiestas Patrias--those week-plus long September celebrations that commemorate everything from Chile's independence from Spain, to Latin America's biggest and baddest military force, to the US-backed, CIA supported 11 September 1973 coup that ushered in the reign of General Pinochet and the death of Salvador Allende. (Via home is where your skis is.)

Wonderful essay about the subtleties, surprises, beauties, and contradictions of Chile and its peoples. A must read for anyone who cares about the messy heritage of colonial Iberia.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Books

I've updated the “Recently Read” sidebar. If you have an interest in mountaineering, Fallen Giants is worthwhile, although it has less technical analysis about the progress of high-altitude climbing than I'd like, it gets a bit repetitive, and its view of contemporary climbing is too predictable (all about the evil offspring of commerce and self-actualization). Traffic is a lot of fun, and very helpful to those who seethe about the cluelessness of other drivers (you know who you are!). The Lightness of Being could have done with a better editor — some repetitions, unflagged forward references, missing definitions — but it's really stimulating at the LHC opens up for business.

I'm close to finishing Haruki Murakami's memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, which I'm loving although I'm not a runner. He teaches without preaching about focus, endurance, limitations, and aging.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Friedman on ‘drill, drill, drill’: It’s like someone chanting ‘IBM Selectric typewriters’ during the IT revolution.

Friedman on ‘drill, drill, drill’: It’s like someone chanting ‘IBM Selectric typewriters’ during the IT revolution.: On NBC’s Meet The Press this morning:

FRIEDMAN: I’m actually not against drilling. What I’m against is making that the center of our focus because we are on the eve of a new revolution, the energy technology revolution. It would be, Tom, as if on the eve of the IT revolution, the revolution of PCs and the internet, someone was up there standing and demanding, “IBM Selectric typewriters, IBM Selectric typewriters.” That’s what “drill, drill, drill” is the equivalent of today.
(Via Think Progress.)

I agree with the sentiment, but Friedman's comment is historically inaccurate. There were quite a few such people back then (and mainframe vs minicomputer, and mini vs PC, and assembler vs C). They just didn't have the lobbying clout of the drillers.

The Singularity Is Far

The Singularity Is Far: In this post, I wish to propose for the reader’s favorable consideration a doctrine that will strike many in the nerd community as strange, bizarre, and paradoxical, but that I hope will at least be given a hearing.  The doctrine in question is this: while it is possible that, a century hence, humans will have built molecular nanobots and superintelligent AIs, uploaded their brains to computers, and achieved eternal life, these possibilities are not quite so likely as commonly supposed, nor do they obviate the need to address mundane matters such as war, poverty, disease, climate change, and helping Democrats win elections. [...] The fifth reason is my (limited) experience of AI research. [...] For whatever it’s worth, my impression was of a field with plenty of exciting progress, but which has (to put it mildly) some ways to go before recapitulating the last billion years of evolution.  The idea that a field must either be (1) failing or (2) on track to reach its ultimate goal within our lifetimes, seems utterly without support in the history of science (if understandable from the standpoint of both critics and enthusiastic supporters).  If I were forced at gunpoint to guess, I’d say that human-level AI seemed to me like a slog of many more centuries or millennia (with the obvious potential for black swans along the way). [...] And I can’t helping thinking that, before we transcend the human condition and upload our brains to computers, a reasonable first step might be to bring the 17th-century Enlightenment to the 98% of the world that still hasn’t gotten the message. (Via Shtetl-Optimized.)

Read the whole thing. I'm not sure I'd give as much credit to the Singularitarians as Scott does, but I'm in complete agreement with his estimation of AI: “a field with plenty of exciting progress, but which has (to put it mildly) some ways to go before recapitulating the last billion years of evolution.”