tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post901771376347711349..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Futurist Authority and the Toppling of the Ivory TowerDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-43183787468062171552016-08-08T13:59:03.782-07:002016-08-08T13:59:03.782-07:00Man, the list of futurological predictions is an u...Man, the list of futurological predictions is an unchangeable as a catechism, generation after generation after generation... and serves much the same purpose I'll be bound.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-79733363161184949642016-08-08T06:43:58.857-07:002016-08-08T06:43:58.857-07:00> . . .some interesting ties emerge between fut...> . . .some interesting ties emerge between futurology (admittedly,<br />> of a relatively sober sort). . . and Officialdom including<br />> Good People like the RAND Corporation<br /><br />Herman Kahn was himself a futurologist:<br /><br />_The Year 2000: A Framework for Speculation on the Next Thirty-Three Years_<br />Collier Macmillan Ltd. (February 1968)<br />https://www.amazon.com/Year-Two-Thousand-Kahn-Herman/dp/0025604406<br /><br />Make that 48 years, now. 1968 was, of course, the year HAL appeared<br />on movie screens. Did Kahn (and Wiener) say anything about that?<br />Well, yes:<br /><br />https://www.crummy.com/writing/hosted/The%20Year%202000.html<br />-------<br />Table XIX: Some Less Likely but Important Possiblities<br /><br />These are all misses, except for #22, which I would classify as a partial<br />hit due to the development of IVF.<br /><br /> 1. "True" artificial intelligence<br /> 2. Practical use of sustained fusion to produce neutrons and/or energy<br /> 3. Artificial growth of new limbs and organs (either in situ or for later transplantation)<br /> 4. Room temperature superconductors<br /> 5. Major use of rockets for commercial of private transportation (either terrestrial or extraterrestrial)<br /> 6. Effective chemical or biological treatment for most mental ilnesses<br /> 7. Almost complete control of marginal changes in heredity<br /> 8. Suspended animation (for years or centuries)<br /> 9. Practical materials with nearly "theoretical limit" strength<br />10. Conversion of mammals (humans?) to fluid breahters<br />11. Direct input into human memory banks<br />12. Direct augmentation of human mental capacity by the mechanical or electrical interconnection of the brain with a computer<br />13. Major rejuvenation and/or significant extension of vigor and life span--say 100 to 150 years<br />14. Chemical or biological control of character or intelligence<br />15. Automated highways<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />====<br /><br /><br />Sigh.<br /><br />An Amazon reviewer says:<br /><br />-------<br />It's not about predicting technological innovations.<br />24 May 2016<br />By Scott Harris - Published on Amazon.com<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />What critics who focus on technological advancement miss is that<br />the heart of this book is not his speculations about technological<br />inventions and innovations, but rather his framework for thinking<br />about the 33 years from 1967 to 2000. . . He was clearly using<br />Moore's Law before it was known as Moore's Law. . .<br />====<br /><br /><br />Yes, the SFnal predictions are pretty standard, and Kahn and Wiener<br />didn't even have Moore's Law (so called) to hang their hats on.<br />But Moore's "Law" (looking more and more uncertain these<br />days, alas) certainly gave the futurologists **juice**.<br />Juice, man juice! Why you neggin' out? ;-><br /><br /><br />There have also been rumors that a RAND researcher unofficially gave<br />advice to Gene Roddenberry about _Star Trek_:<br /><br />http://www.trekplace.com/harveyplynnjr.html<br />-------<br />Harvey P. Lynn, Jr.. . . a member of the prestigious RAND Corporation,<br />provided Star Trek original series creator Gene Roddenberry with scientific<br />and technical advice during preproduction of the series. . .<br />====<br /><br />It was a modest involvement.<br /><br />Loc. cit.<br />-------<br />Some brief comments regarding what I know about Dad's involvement:<br /><br />He graduated as an Electrical Engineer. Worked at RAND as a liaison Officer<br />between RAND and Project Airforce. Was never starstruck and had little<br />interest in TV, films, or science fiction. Apparently he met Mr. Roddenberry<br />though a mutual friend and was selected for the technical consultant job<br />more because he hit it off with Mr. Roddenberry than his technical expertise.<br />When offered the job, he boned up on physics, astronomy, etc. He picked up<br />surprisingly quickly on how to express the technical elements simply...<br />ie not having to explain how a phaser works...sort of how most people know<br />that a light switch turns on the lights but don't wonder about the mechanics.<br /><br />From his earnings as consultant, we bought our first color TV. I think<br />that's in 'The Making of Star Trek'. My Dad was never really a big fan<br />of the show...not a Trekkie in today's sense. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-24668341576434565532016-08-07T18:25:33.939-07:002016-08-07T18:25:33.939-07:00> Is there such a thing as a **nice** mathemati...> Is there such a thing as a **nice** mathematician?<br /><br />Bertrand Russell?<br /><br />Actually, come to think, Ray Monk, his biographer, ended<br />up not liking him very much.<br /><br />And his daughter, Katharine Russell Tait, wrote a book<br />(_My Father, Bertrand Russell_) in which she (while making<br />it clear that she loved her father dearly) revealed some<br />of the less pleasant aspects of being a member of the family<br />of one of the preeminent intellectuals of the last century.<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-23953781134258645492016-08-07T17:48:13.194-07:002016-08-07T17:48:13.194-07:00Is there such a thing as a **nice** mathematician?...Is there such a thing as a **nice** mathematician?<br /><br />-------------<br />"A Beautiful Behind"<br />Book Review:<br />Sylvia Nasar: A Beautiful Mind, a biography of <br />John Forbes Nash, Jr.<br />from Ferment<br />VolXII #4<br />September 9, 1998<br />Editor, Roy Lisker<br /><br />[John] Nash joined the faculty of MIT in 1951, where he remained until<br />quitting in 1959. From Nasar's account we learn that Nash carved out a<br />special niche for himself in the pantheon of the world's worst<br />mathematics instructors. Students in his classes were regularly<br />derided and ridiculed. He called them "stupid" and "idiots" - to be<br />fair, he didn't treat his colleagues any better. He ignored both<br />questions and requests. . .<br /><br />[A] typical afternoon in the common room of a typical mathematics<br />department at a major university [is] something that can only<br />be understood from direct experience. . .<br /><br />As a class, research mathematicians are competitive, rude,<br />introverted, irritable and poorly endowed by disposition or training<br />with the conventional social graces. It is a noisy silence, rather<br />than voluble discourse, that fills the corridors and common rooms of<br />research departments. People in divergent disciplines, logic and<br />differential equations for example, use such incompatible<br />vocabularies that they, literally, have nothing to talk about. . .<br /><br />Persons in exactly the same area of research also don't tend to talk<br />to each other. On one level they may be concerned that others will<br />steal their ideas. They also have a very understandable fear of<br />presenting a new direction of inquiry before it has matured, lest the<br />listening party trample the frail buds of thought beneath a sarcastic<br />put-down. . .<br /><br />Above everyone's head at a gathering of mathematicians hangs the<br />scimitar of exposure of ignorance. Say you get into conversation with<br />someone who brings up the concept of a "Riemann surface". You decide<br />to risk all by confessing that you don't know what a Riemann surface<br />is. The words are barely spoken when already the eyes of almost<br />everyone else in the lounge is fixing you with a look of<br />long-suffering, malevolent and self-righteous disgust. Never mind<br />that your field is mathematical logic, or discrete semi-groups, or<br />computability, or combinatorics, in which the concept of a Riemann<br />surface rarely, if ever, enters. You are now forever type-cast as<br />ignorant. Excessively insecure individuals, notably graduate<br />students, may even start wondering aloud, (behind your back<br />naturally), what somebody like you is doing in their great department<br />in the first place.<br /><br />Because just about everyone fears lest his ignorance be disclosed,<br />people rarely open their mouths for any purpose other than that of<br />speaking innocuous banalities. Or sometimes they may venture to talk<br />about other subjects altogether, music, or politics, or Elizabethan<br />drama. Yet one must be careful not to do too much of this, since<br />there are some sorts who may begin suggesting that he's covering up<br />his ignorance of 'real mathematics' by vaunting his knowledge of<br />something else. Furthermore since many mathematicians do not<br />cultivate interests outside of mathematics, such conversations on<br />complementary subject matter soon peter out.<br /><br />Departmental teas tend to be held around 3:30 or 4:00, just before the<br />afternoon seminars and colloquia. People sit apart, or in little<br />groups, their minds consumed by calculation:<br /><br />(1) The obsessive-compulsive calculation of solutions to problems and<br />equations. This goes on relentlessly, even in dreams.<br /><br />(2) The calculation of how much of what one thinks or knows may be<br />safely revealed in a room of many potential enemies and few allies. At<br />those times the climate of a mathematics lounge will be crippled by an<br />oppressive and surly silence. Conversations will be punctuated with<br />long, vacant silences, abstract gazing at the empty walls or out the<br />windows, and excessive caution in speaking out. Hostility in all of<br />its forms, subtle or crude, is omnipresent. Indeed the atmosphere may<br />be so thick with tension that only a saber could cut it. . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-4480986276183179802016-08-07T17:33:50.686-07:002016-08-07T17:33:50.686-07:00This just sounds like the most delightful place to...This just sounds like the most delightful place to work.<br />(I've **known** people like this. They do indeed get<br />you down after prolonged exposure.)<br /><br /><br />http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-0-230-10298-9_6#page-1<br />------------<br />_Wild Man: The Life and Times of Daniel Ellsberg_<br />Tom Wells<br />Chapter 5, "Supergenius"<br /><br />The intellectual environment and RAND was loose. . . But interdisciplinary<br />work was hazardous, as the place was cliquish. . .<br /><br />"It was a very competitive, vicious environment," . . . a RAND sovietologist<br />at the time remembers. "RAND was a ball-busting place." . . .<br />When one abrasive RAND mathematician attacked another man's presentation,<br />the presenter "grew so nervous that he finally fainted." . . .<br /><br />One of the sharpest knives at RAND was wielded by Albert Wolhstetter,<br />a powerful and controversial figure. . . "He did it with style. . .<br />walking in very late, looking at the victim -- then **destroy**. . .<br />He was **nasty**. Ruthless and nasty." Many analysts were intimidated<br />by him. "He managed to have an enormous store of facts at his<br />fingertips. . . If you raised an objection to something he was saying<br />or proposing, he could bring out that stack of facts with amazing<br />facility." The nuclear strategist Bernard Brodie, who became an<br />enemy of Wolhstetter, almost had a nervous breakdown because of<br />him. . . "He became so broken down in the presence of Albert," Thomas<br />Schelling remembers. "Just tongue-tied. And I'm sure Dan [Ellsberg]<br />never did. Dan would just never be intimidated by somebody like<br />Albert."<br /><br />A mathematical logician. . . Wolhstetter was brilliant, suave,<br />sophisticated, a Renaissance man. A perfectionist, he had problems<br />completing work and was difficult to work with. . .<br /><br />Wohlstetter and his wife. . . also a talented RAND analyst, and their<br />unconventional daughter lived in a glamorous, distinctive home in<br />the Hollywood hills. It had a spiral stairway, pool, bamboo, view,<br />the whole bit. [They] entertained frequently, in high style.<br />Albert liked to hold court and be the center of attention. He would<br />"talk. . . at nauseating length about a fine little wine or some<br />cuisine. He was. . . a monomaniacal monologuer" . . . [and]<br />a big name-dropper. But he could be charming. . . "If you're willing<br />to listen, he gets to like you." Wohlstetter's ego was gargantuan.<br />"His attitude was sort of, 'I'm the only smart person there is,"<br />a former RAND engineer remembers. "And when you listened to him<br />carefully, what he would really be saying is, 'Those other guys<br />are pretty dumb, aren't they?' . . .<br />====<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-57680179222811892092016-08-07T17:31:34.525-07:002016-08-07T17:31:34.525-07:00> [P]art of the reason Hannah Arendt. . . manag...> [P]art of the reason Hannah Arendt. . . managed to provide such<br />> prophetic critiques of futurology and artificial intelligence. . .<br />> I elaborated this point in April 2009, in Hannah Arendt on Futurology<br />> is because she happened to read and grapple with "Thinking the Unthinkable"<br />> and "The Report from Iron Mountain," one a prescient documentary critique<br />> and the other a brutal satire of corporate-military think-tanks,<br />> and both of which were taking on RAND in particular.<br /><br /><br />http://annwww.alternet.org/world/we-have-bunch-debauched-intellectuals-managing-american-empire<br />------------<br />People who specialized in thinking about national insecurity<br />came to be known as “defense intellectuals.” Pioneers<br />in this endeavor back in the 1950s were as likely to collect<br />their paychecks from think tanks like the prototypical<br />RAND Corporation as from more traditional academic institutions.<br />Their ranks included creepy figures like Herman Kahn,<br />who took pride in “thinking about the unthinkable,” and<br />Albert Wohlstetter, who tutored Washington in the complexities<br />of maintaining “the delicate balance of terror.” . . .<br />====<br /><br /><br />http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man<br />------------<br />Fat Man<br />Herman Kahn and the nuclear age.<br />By Louis Menand<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />In his day, Kahn was the subject of many magazine stories,<br />and most of them found it important to mention his girth --<br />he was built, one journalist recorded, “like a prize-winning pear” --<br />and his volubility. He was a marathon spielmeister, . . .<br />a jocular, gregarious giant who chattered on about fallout shelters,<br />megaton bombs, and the incineration of millions. Observers<br />were charmed or repelled, sometimes charmed and repelled. Reporters<br />referred to him as “a roly-poly, second-strike Santa Claus”<br />and “a thermonuclear Zero Mostel.” He is supposed to have had<br />the highest I.Q. on record. . .<br /><br />The best-known response to “On Thermonuclear War” was a movie. . .<br /><br />“The movie could very easily have been written by Herman Kahn himself,”<br />Midge Decter wrote in Commentary when “Dr. Strangelove” came out, in 1964. . .<br /><br />There were a number of possible models for the character of Strangelove. . .<br /><br />But one source was Kahn. Strangelove’s rhapsodic monologue about<br />preserving specimens of the race in deep mineshafts is an only<br />slightly parodic version of Kahn. There were so many lines from<br />“On Thermonuclear War” in the movie, in fact, that Kahn complained<br />that he should get royalties. (“It doesn’t work that way,” Kubrick<br />told him.) Kahn received something more lasting than money, of course.<br />He got himself pinned in people’s minds to the figure of Dr. Strangelove,<br />and he bore the mark of that association forever. . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20363830523991846872016-08-07T16:36:24.211-07:002016-08-07T16:36:24.211-07:00now I kind of want to teach a course organized aro...now I kind of want to teach a course organized around Iron Mountain--I had not noticed that about Arendt. <br /><br />since it didn't get automagically created the first time, now I'll build a clickable link to Uncle Ray the Immortal one appearing with Crissie from Three's Company because I love it just that much:<br /><br /><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNkWIixjKE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNkWIixjKE</a>D. Gloumbiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02388301204117198345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-58952561331637505032016-08-07T16:28:12.319-07:002016-08-07T16:28:12.319-07:00Very true, very important. You know, part of the r...Very true, very important. You know, part of the reason Hannah Arendt (patron saint of this blog) managed to provide such prophetic critiques of futurology and artificial intelligence -- I elaborated this point in April 2009, in <a href="http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/04/hannah-arendt-on-futurology.html" rel="nofollow">Hannah Arendt on Futurology</a> and <a href="http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/04/hannah-arendt-on-common-sense.html" rel="nofollow">Hannah Arendt on Common Sense</a> and <a href="http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2009/04/hannah-arendt-on-ai.html" rel="nofollow">Hannah Arendt on AI</a> -- is because she happened to read and grapple with "Thinking the Unthinkable" and "The Report from Iron Mountain," one a prescient documentary critique and the other a brutal satire of corporate-military think-tanks, and both of which were taking on RAND in particular. Still worth reading, I've even taught Iron Mountain at UCB fairly recently and it's still a jolt.Dale Carricohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-38830422623403173672016-08-07T15:45:15.476-07:002016-08-07T15:45:15.476-07:00and some interesting ties emerge between futurolog...and some interesting ties emerge between futurology (admittedly, of a <i>relatively</i> sober sort), analytic philosophy, and Officialdom including Good People like the RAND Corporation, in this book & elsewhere in this philosopher's work (turned up in a now-dormant investigation of mine into thinking about the future)--can't remember if the good ol' "Delphi Method" turns up here or not: <br /><br />https://www.amazon.com/Predicting-Future-Introduction-Theory-Forecasting/dp/0791435547/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470609871&sr=1-1&keywords=rescher+predictingD. Gloumbiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02388301204117198345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-31096197006230151422016-08-07T15:38:16.572-07:002016-08-07T15:38:16.572-07:00on the late-night infomercial/futurology nexus, th...on the late-night infomercial/futurology nexus, this has always been a favorite of mine ever since I stumbled on it: <br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpNkWIixjKED. Gloumbiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02388301204117198345noreply@blogger.com