multijimbo

reading in hindsight: The Weapon by Fredric Brown

•4 June 2023 • 1 Comment

On my shelves, I have many books, some read but most unread. Among these are collections of stories that I’m slowly working, or reworking, my way through. (And my but some folk wrote a lot of stories: Sturgeon collected stories run to 12 volumes, and others like Vonnegut are large enough to count as weight lifting.)

One I like picking up is the collected stories of Fredric Brown. Writing in the 1940s to 1960s, Brown had some lovely ideas, albeit wrapped in stories that are problematically of their time, and one idea that I was reminded of today is from his 1951 story The Weapon. If you haven’t yet read it, there will be spoilers.

Dr James Graham is working on an ultimate weapon, a fact evidently publicly known. He is visited by a stranger named Niemand, who asks the question, ‘Is humanity ready for an ultimate weapon?’ Graham doesn’t listen and so Niemand then provides a demonstration of the dangers of giving a weapon to someone not capable of wielding it.

I’m sure that some amount has been written about possible interpretations of the story, but I will note that Ivy Mike, the first fusion bomb, was tested on 1 November 1952, and so this story sits in that complicated time in the early days of what became the nuclear arms race.

But if we take a step back and focus not on weapons but rather ideas, are we in the same situation? Are we, the collective we of humanity, developing ideas that we may not be capable of handling well in the end?

The first possible answer goes back to what might have been Brown’s initial inspiration and the nuclear bomb. If I remember correctly things I read a long time ago, there is an upper limit to the size of a fission bomb but there is no theoretical upper bound to the size of a fusion bomb, except where limited by imagination. And so this had to count.

But there are others. There may be an argument that the idea of a corporation might be an idea that we’re not entirely capable of handling well. One aspect of this I’ve encountered on more than one occasion is the view that corporations are the first instances of an artificial intelligence, something ultimately non-human (though made up of human agents) that has agency and desires.

The version of this filling the news at the moment are the chatbots. Again, I think the argument that we’re not prepared for the consequences of this creation is a strong one, even taking into account that this isn’t an artificial intelligence as such, but rather is a reflection of who we are. After all, the chatbots are trained one what’s been written and so in some strong sense, they’re a distillation of what we collectively have expressed over the years, decades, centuries.

This is a slightly different conversation than doomsday devices, another topic I feel worthy of consideration if only to understand paths not to walk, but still a conversation that we need to have lest we sleepwalk into a world that is significantly less comfortable than our current world with all its faults and complications.

So one very short story with a moral, are we ready for the things we make with our hands, but regardless of the answer, the big question remains. What next. What happens when we have built a weapon, in however general a sense. This ties into other thoughts about the toolmaker koan, that loosely it’s easier to build a tool than to use it well, and perhaps developing our understanding here is the next great quest.

Posted in bizarre and random things, writing ephemera

a time for some reflection

•28 May 2023 • Leave a Comment

The current academic year is coming to its end; I taught my last class a week and a bit ago, and my next proper class (besides the occasional seminar) will be in the autumn. There is a vast amount to be done over the summer, not directly related to teaching but directly related to the job as a whole. One research paper is largely done, needed a bit of tidying and some attention at one point of the argument. Another paper dances before my eyes, a mirage on the horizon, as yet unformed and nascent.

There are other projects as well, problems I would like to spend some time thinking about and working through. This is a part of the job, voyaging beyond the frontiers of extant human knowledge (how grand it sounds).

And both of these aspects of the role are aspects of it that I enjoy. Working with students and expanding their mathematical horizons, and then expanding the horizons of mathematics itself, are engaging and awesome experiences.

But this time, at the end of the teaching year, is a time for reflection. The teaching year went well, I think. I picked up a new class in semester 2, and I learned a lot and I hope the students did as well. This intertwines in some way to topics I’ve covered in previous chapters in this extended scree, such as the distance between teacher and student.

So in this case, though I hadn’t taught the class before, I have a few decades of both the experience of doing math and making sense of math, but also of teaching, of making sense of new things and relating them to other aspects of math. And what’s interesting is that in the process of preparing and teaching, I came across one or two things that I might be able to use in some of my mathematical project work.

There are other sides to this reflection, beyond the day job. There is the old parable of rock and gravel and sand. And it’s again time to undertake the audit, to empty the jar as it were and to examine my current rocks, my current gravel and my current sand. It’s a tricky examination, because all come with their sunk costs. And the fallacy notwithstanding, it’s hard to grind rocks into sand or to press sand to form gravel. It’ll be an interesting summer.

Posted in bizarre and random things, education and university life

watching in hindsight (again): Colossus the Forbin Project

•14 May 2023 • 1 Comment

A few years ago, I wrote about a 1970 movie I find myself coming back to from time to time, Colossus the Forbin Project. What struck me today was not the naïveté of the creators of Colossus and Guardin, but rather the prescience of the movie, and the books it’s taken from, in setting forth the emergence of new properties.

In the movie, this emergence comes at the beginning; the extent to which Colossus begins almost immediately to exceed the expectations of its human creators, amazingly without causing panic. This is the theme that drives the movie, that Colossus is more that was was created, and the humans never catch up to how Colossus is growing.

One key moment of this emergence of capabilities is the moment that Colossus makes use of the tools available to it, to enforce its demands. And when Colossus decides not to answer.

The reason this struck home with me today is the almost constant speculation in the news and commentary about the unexpected emergent properties of our current artificial intelligence systems, as well as the speculation about the danger of continued development.

I will admit that I don’t see the development stopping or even slowing down. As has become obvious, we humans can be short sighted in our thinking, chasing the shiny at the expense of running into the road, into oncoming traffic.

But I suspect we’ll continue to experience unexpected emergent properties of the systems we develop, and this should also not surprise us. We are creating systems where we understand the basic shape of the system, but the details of the system are beyond the ability of our human minds to contain. I suspect the systems we build will continue to surprise us, and we should not be surprised by those surprises.

Another interesting aspect of this is that we saw this possibility, decades ago. Runaway robots, Colossus, Hal and all the others, they were Cassandras of sorts, ghosts from the dark corners of our imaginations, perhaps now brought to life by our hands. Interesting, isn’t it, the extent to which we don’t pay attentions to our own stories.

Posted in bizarre and random things

A random collection of moments

•30 April 2023 • 2 Comments

Some long time ago, measured by where it sits on the list of collected things, I wrote down the sentence, ‘a user guide is an admission of failure.’ I can see what I meant by this. Devices have become much easier to use, going back to the original iPod with its scroll wheel.

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague not so recently, about how students learning to code don’t understand file structures, because they never needed to. They don’t need to organize themselves; they can just search and they will find.

What implications does this observation about user guides have for education? I’m not sure, but education is full of user guides: textbooks, lecture notes, problem sheets, all can be thought of as user guides to particular areas of knowledge. But I don’t think this is the right visualization.

Rather, I think that the textbook or the lecture notes or the problem sheets are the devices rather than the user guides to those devices. So in this interpretation, the lack of a user guide translates to having a well structured textbook.

Bob the cat has developed the habit of walking across my keyboard and sitting on the papers on my desk when he wants a bit of attention. I of course indulge him, scratches under the chin.

It takes time and effort, and a lot of thought, to write a good textbook. I’ve written one, on Hyperbolic Geometry, and like potato chips, it’s hard to write just one 😉 And so part of what is on the list of things to think about is, what might be the next one.

Posted in bizarre and random things, education and university life, mathematics

the parable of the oak and the willow

•23 April 2023 • 1 Comment

There is an old story, which I might be misremembering. An oak tree and a willow tree, who had grown up next to each other, were having a conversation. The oak was glorying in the strength of its trunk and its branches, claiming that it could withstand the strongest of storms. The willow extolled the virtues of flexibility, of rolling with the strength of the storm rather than fighting it directly.

When the storm came, as storms always do, the oak found itself broken, where as the willow, aside from losing some leaves and smaller of its branches, remained standing.

I have a lot of sympathy for this parable. I’m not sure of the strength of its horticultural veracity, but I’ve always found it to make a certain kind of sense. It’s come to mind recently, I suppose, because of the storms, physical and cultural, that are currently swirling around. (I think perhaps I watch too much news.)

Beyond that, my aikido practice is much more willow-like than oak-like. Falling like a tree is not a good way to fall, for instance. And as I get older, the idea of using strength rather than technique and movement and flexibility becomes less attractive over time.

But it applies elsewhere as well. It can be applied for instance to teaching. The oak stands and says, this is my way and this is the way, and requires students to do as they do. The willow is more flexible, more adaptable to the individual student. Or so goes one interpretation.

I contemplate this parable particularly at times when I feel more oak-like than willow-like. Because there is an easiness to being oak-like; I will stand here and I will be, and I will let the winds whistle through my branches and leaves.

I find there to be a theoretical, hypothetical attraction to the way of the willow, but it does require more effort to move and be flexible than it does to stand in glorious ignorance of the world. And some days, it’s just hard to move, and it’s hard to move in response to the world. But still, the parable I think holds a clue to something more. The quest continues.

Posted in aikido, bizarre and random things, education and university life

Eastercon 2023 diary – day three

•9 April 2023 • Leave a Comment

The formal duties for the day are done; the Milford panel has been panelled and we sold more copies of the Eclectic Dreams anthology today, though I will be taking a few home tomorrow.

I will keep coming back to this point, but it’s good to see people. That said, there is one topic that keeps coming up in conversation, which is that engaging and interacting with large groups of people takes a remarkable amount of energy.

This is something I’m used from teaching, and the occasional feeling of dragging the class through the journey from blissful ignorance to understanding, but just interacting takes a lot of energy. Meeting new people, remembering names and context, fitting them into the growing context of the community, takes more energy than I’d remembered.

This is perhaps because in the Before Times, it was just a cost that we didn’t think about; I dealt with people every day, new and old, and I never thought to put a cost on it, because it was just part of what the days involved.

But the calculation is different now, if only because it is more explicit. And the question I’ve been asking myself today is, how to build that cost into future considerations. I like people, at least as much as any extroverted introvert likes people (namely, until we don’t).

In my work life, and my aikido life both, the group of people I deal with is constrained, mainly people I already know and work with (or throw around, respectively), and I don’t do much in the way of Eastercon people. So something to think through.

Posted in bizarre and random things, writing ephemera

Eastercon 2023 diary – day 2

•8 April 2023 • Leave a Comment

I’d intended on writing from Eastercon on each of its days, but alas got distracted by seeing old friends and making new friends, and fell down on day one. We’ll see how the rest of the weekend goes.

But here we are in day two, and it’s going well. The sun is shining, the panels are humming and I’m currently sitting in the Room of Buying and Selling with a small pile of copies of Eclectic Dreams.

This is an anthology of stories (which I was pleased to co-edit, with Pete Sutton and Liz Williams) that have passed through the Milford Science Fiction Writers Conference. We had the formal book event yesterday afternoon, and should you not be at Eastercon, you can order your copy via the links contained HERE (so get your copy today!).

Beyond that, being here reminds me of this sprawling community of science fiction and fantasy that I’m a part of. I’ll admit that sitting here in the Room of Buying and Selling, the temptation to buy yet more books for the already over-burdened shelves at home is exceptionally tempting.

More than that are the people. Going to panels and listening to others talking about things they know and things that excite them, evening conversations in the bar, and catching up with people is good for the soul.

The hosts of the Deadline City podcast often talk about the necessity of filling the well, and that’s part of Eastercon does for me. I experience the same refilling in other parts of my life, with aikido summer school and the occasional math conference, and I do love the energy of being in the midst of so many like minded folk.

Posted in bizarre and random things, Uncategorized, writing ephemera

reading in hindsight: Jokester by Isaac Asimov

•2 April 2023 • 1 Comment

I like dipping back into the (personally) distant past and seeing what stories from those days have to say to us today. I picked up Jokester by Isaac Asimov earlier today; the core idea of it had stuck with me since I read it the first time, because I enjoyed the twist, but it was a smaller aspect of the story that caught my attention.

To add a bit of context, the news over the past few weeks and months have been filled with stories about ChatGPT3 and its cousins, and the impact that they might have on education (where I spend a chunk of my days), among other fields.

The aspect of Jokester that caught my attention was the core fact of the existence of the Grand Masters, such as Grand Master Meyerhof who drives the action in this story. This core fact is that there is a subtlety and a skill required to appropriately frame a question for a computer such as Multivac.

Or for ChatGPT3. I’ve not done a lot of playing around with it directly, but I know folk who have spent more time than perhaps is entirely wise. One thing that’s come out of my conversations with them, and the reading I’ve been able to do, is that, the output can depend a lot on how the question for such Large Language Models is framed.

And this brought me back to Grand Master Meyerhof; not actually the questions he asked, as interesting as they are, but that the skill of the dozen or so Grand Masters was to be able to frame the question.

Thinking of Large Language Models and their impact on education, just to focus attention, it seems that this provides a bit of direction for us to work to work with. These tools are not going away; the main question for us is, how to use them and more even than that, how to use them well.

I’m reminded here of the toolmaker koan, a novel by John McLoughlin, that I haven’t read for a long long time. But it does contain the basic question, is it always the case that a civilization will develop tools before it develops the ability to use them, and this strikes me as where we are at the moment.

We have developed some awesome and mighty tools. Perhaps these tools won’t allow us to answer Grand Master Meyerhof’s question as Multivac was able to, but they do pose this question for us. Will we have or develop the wisdom to use them well? Or won’t we? We will soon find out.

Posted in bizarre and random things, education and university life

Moby Dick as a metaphor

•12 March 2023 • Leave a Comment

Every couple of years, I go back and read Moby Dick. I first read as a university student, and I’ll admit that the first time through was something of a slog. But as I’ve gone through and through again, it’s begun to grow on me.

Moby Dick contains many things that we can view as metaphor; we’ve become familiar of the great white whale as the elusive object of obsession. For me, the great white whale is often a research question, one of the questions on the LIST, which recedes every time I make an attempt.

I haven’t thought too deeply about the metaphor, beyond trying to prevent myself from becoming a mathematical Ahab. I don’t know for instance where Queequeg makes an appearance in this metaphor, or Ismael. But I do often have Starbucks whispering in my ear, advising me, persuading me to spend time on the questions on which I can make some progress, despite the howls of protest from Ahab and his old questions.

The metaphor of Moby Dick also works for aikido and writing. The things to do, the voice of obsession, the dissenting voice and Ismael at the end holding on to the coffin so carefully made and carved by Queequeg.

But this leads me down another line of inquiry (enquiry?) entirely. (In the balance, probably a bit more enquiry than inquiry.) Would Melville be surprised at the metaphors we pull out from his story? Would he be surprised at how Moby Dick and Ahab have become part of the imagery we use and the descriptions we give?

I don’t actually know. I hope he would be appreciative. But I do know, as do we all, that we each read things into stories and novels that the author may not have intended. And that’s just part of the way of things.

Posted in bizarre and random things, mathematics, writing ephemera