They are really close

Brian Christian continues to boggle my poor old head in "The Most Human Human".  Here he discusses experiments by University of Reading (UK) professor Kenneth Warwick.  Warwick had special devices inserted into his arm and used them to integrate himself with a mechanical arm that could exactly duplicate what his flesh arm did.  Then:

Perhaps the most amazing thing that Warwick did with his arm socket, though, is what he tried next. Warwick wasn't the only one to get silicon grafted into his arm nerves. So did his wife. She would make a certain gesture with her arm, Warwick's arm would twinge. Primitive? Maybe, yes. But Warwick waxes Wright brothers/Kitty Hawk about it. The Wrights were only off the ground for seconds at first; now we are used to traveling so far so fast that our bodies get out of sync with the sun. A twinge is ineloquent: granted. But it represents the first direct nervous-system-to-nervous-system human communication. A signal that shortcuts language, shortcuts gesture. "It was the most exciting thing," says Warwick, "I mean, when that signal arrived and I could understand the thing—and realizing what potentially that would mean in the future—Oh, it was the most exciting thing by far that I've been involved with." What might it mean in the future? What might the Lindbergh- or Earhart-comparable voyage be? As Douglas Hofstadter writes, "If the bandwidth were turned up more and more and more and still more … the sense of a clear boundary between them would slowly be dissolved."

(Christian, Brian (2011-03-01). The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive (p. 216). Doubleday. Kindle Edition.)

Uh-oh!  Sounds great for the couple seeking more unity but what about domination, jealousy, privacy, etc.?  I read about a Japanese product that gives someone a spray that can be sprayed into underpants to see if the husband has any semen in there.  How about a connection to the brain that allows one partner to see through the eyes of the other and note just where that rat is and what she/he is doing?

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

People and their machines

In a little less than 2 months, I am scheduled to give a presentation on Brian Christian's "The Most Human Human".  It is his story and thoughts related to participating in a contest to see how computers compare to people.  The British logician and computer theorist, Alan Turing, proposed in 1950 to use a comparative test to evaluate the effectiveness of computers.  Let a computer and a person be hidden behind screens and let people send questions to each in written form.  Let a panel of judges sort through the answers, correctly sorting those from the computer and those from the person.  Turing proposed the idea that if the sorting could not be done, then computers were successful at thinking (and answering questions) as people.

From time to time, the question arises: what difference is there between a computer and a human being?  The related question comes up: Are people a special type of machine?  In a long, careful and technical work on that question, one would want a definition of "person" and of "machine".  As more complex machines are built and as research and understanding of the mind, body, development and history of people improves, we can start to wonder if someday humans will build a machine that can reproduce itself and even threaten or enslave humans.  I know this is the stuff of much science fiction but the idea does come to mind.  

I haven't read much science fiction but I have been told that Isaac Asimov's stories feature quite a bit about robots, including the laws of robotic behavior and the law that machines may not hurt a human being.  However, in other stories of course, they may be trying to hurt us.

Brian Christian's book is about his entering the contest for the Loebner Prize.  He is not a computer scientist or information technologist and wanted to be awarded a prize they give for the "most human human".  It is awarded to a human contestant who is indeed human and does a good job sending messages that make that status clear to the judges.  The judges change from year to year but they have made errors, including deciding that a woman Shakespeare expert was a computer.  They thought it would be impossible for a human to have so much detailed knowledge.

We all probably know that technology is changing rapidly these days as new ideas are thought of and tried.  Not long ago, I saw that some pizza parlor was delivering pizzas right to homes by means of model helicopters.  Maybe you have heard of or actually use Siri, the Apple software that is a "personal assistant" and can interact (a modern word) with humans.  I guess the iPhone user speaks to Siri and asks a question or gives a command.  However, not all the kinks are out of the system yet.  I see that one man complained that he directed his Siri to send a message to his wife that he loved her.  The wife got the message "He loves her."

This post on O'Reilly Radar by Nat Torkington caught my eye, especially the first item.  It means that someone is trying to allow humans to compete in finding the best route and deal and they may indeed be able to surpass a computer and math.

Nat Torkington on O'Reilly Radar

Flightfox — Real people compete to find you the best flights. Crowdsourcing beating algorithms …. (via NY Times)

Code Monster (Crunchzilla) — a fun site for parents to learn to program with their kids. Loving seeing so much activity around teaching kids to program. (via Greg Linden)

Telling People to Leave Finance (Cathy O'Neil) — There's an army of engineers in finance that could be putting their skills to use with actual innovation rather than so-called financial innovation.

Kittydar (GitHub) — cat face recognition in Javascript.

O'Reilly Radar (http://s.tt/1oMxl)


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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Three notes

I keep a list of rough notions for a post and it has 135 ideas on it right now.  In some cases, I have forgotten that I posted about that idea but didn't delete the note.  But from time to time, I may post snippets of several ideas in an effort to clear some of my file.

Item #1 Afford Since we are targeted by such a steady stream of advertising and attempts to create desire in us, we often have reason to think of how much money, savings, saleable property and other wealth we have.  I was just shown today that for something like $230,000, I could buy a car with a cloak of invisibility around it.  I am not sure such a car would be a good thing nor how much the cloak works but that is not my question.  I want to know about it and many other things: Can I afford it?  I find that I and most people I know simply don't know what they "can afford".  

I can add the amount in my bank account and my wallet but should I try to get a loan for a desired item?  Should I try to launch a business to earn enough?  What I can or cannot afford is a slippery subject.

Item #2 - "Click here to learn more", often abbreviated to simply "Learn more".  This is typical wordng to invite me to pay attention to more content, wordsmithing, text, pictures including lovely little puppies or children, all aimed at getting me to attend to further explanation as to why I should do what someone wants me to do.  I am thinking about designing an app that will instantly change an link using the words "learn more" into a different link that will read "learn less".  The app will create a useable summary of the notion being pedaled expressed in few words and no pictures or sounds.

Item #3 - Curing phobias without understanding them  I read in Brian Christian's "The Most Human Human" that Dr. Richard Bandler, a scientist and hypnotist cures some phobias in some people without ever finding out what the person is afraid of.

Bandler is the co-founder of the controversial "Neuro-Linguistic Programming" school of psychotherapy and is himself a therapist who specializes in hypnosis. One of the fascinating and odd things about Bandler's approach—he's particularly interested in phobias—is that he never finds out what his patient is afraid of. Says Bandler, "If you believe that the important aspect of change is 'understanding the roots of the problem and the deep hidden inner meaning' and that you really have to deal with the content as an issue, then probably it will take you years to change people." He doesn't want to know, he says; it makes no difference and is just distracting. He's able to lead the patient through a particular method and, apparently, cure the phobia without ever learning anything about it. It's an odd thing, this: we often think of therapy as intimate, a place to be understood, profoundly understood, perhaps better than we ever have been. And Bandler avoids that understanding like—well, like ELIZA. "I think it's extremely useful for you to behave so that your clients come to have the illusion that you understand what they are saying verbally," he says. "I caution you against accepting the illusion for yourself."

Christian, Brian (2011-03-01). The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive (p. 78). Doubleday. Kindle Edition.



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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Duncan and Brian

A couple of books are giving me lots of moments of pause, which is more or less a sign of a thought-provoking book, no?  I have mentioned them both before.  Duncan J. Watts has written a couple of books but the only one I have been into is Everything is Obvious, Once You Know the Answer.  He is an Australian physicist and sociologist, specializing in network research, for Yahoo and others.  

I will be reading along in "Everything …", and in making a point, Watts will mention some research results that are quite fascinating.  Example: When a wine store plays German music, its sales of German wine rise.  When it plays French music, French wine sales go up.  Cool!  There was a debate at one time among education theorist about sending information to student minds by multiple channels, such as visually and aurally.  No doubt, some imaginative person will find a way to send scents or touch experiences that also relate to the lesson.  This result on music and sales does get me thinking about what influences me, especially since I know that my subconscious can pick up things I am not consciously aware of.

I did my dissertation on decision theory as a basis for game and education simulations.  (I am bound by pride to insert the link but save yourself and don't click on it.)  Much about decision theory is about trying to bridge math and psychology and that ain't easy.  If you read Duncan Luce and others about his time and look into the original work by John von Neuman and Oskar Morgenstern, you can look at the original axioms they used as basic assumptions about choice and decision.  One of those basic assumptions relates to preference and it says that if you prefer tuna to beef, it will not affect your preference if you could also have a BLT sandwich.  However, it turns out that people are tricky and less rigid than math (big surprise!) and there are good and important examples where the presence of a third possibility does affect which of two other choices is selected, even when it itself is not chosen.

Watts' main point is that people are quite complex, especially in large groups.  But also singly and in pairs. as extremely well discussed by Brian Christian in The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive. (I give the whole title because it is exactly correct.  Time for pastors, priests, rabbis and shamans to take a look into this subject!!)  I have sent copies of Christian's book to four friends.  It has a very high rating and was the subject of excellent articles in The New Yorker and the Atlantic.)  The odd wording of the title comes from trying to be judged a human being and not a computer by human judges who can only see what you type.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Food and aging

Eric Barker runs the Barking Up the Wrong Tree blog. I get a free weekly summary of it each week.  He often summarizes interesting research and commentary, frequently on a personal subject such as one's happiness or health.  His blog gets noticed and he also writes articles for Time and other publications.  

 

I like a weekly contact.  If either a summary or the most popular item of the week or simply a weekly post instead of a daily one comes to my inbox, that frequency is often enough to stay aware of ideas and trends  but not intrusive or burdensome.  Maria Popova does the same with her weekly Brain Pickings.  

 

Barker this week features the two books by the Cornell scientist of food and marketing, Brian Wansink.  His books "Mindless Eating" and "Slim by Design" are astounding explorations of the psychology of eating.  I have written about this man before.  He has got to be one of the most interesting scientists around.

 

Food is an interesting subject.  We need food to stay alive.  We don't need it every minute like air but we need it.  Since it is more or less a daily need, it is only natural that food is also a social topic as well as a nutritional one.  I was surprised that in Dr. Sherwin Nuland's excellent "How We Die", this professor of surgery lists some of the most popular ways to die in the table of contents, devoting a chapter to each.  He wrote in 1993:

I have chosen six of the most common disease categories of our time, not only because they include the mortal illnesses that will take the great majority of us but for another reason as well: The six have characteristics that are representative of certain universal processes that we will all experience as we are dying. The stoppage of circulation, the inadequate transport of oxygen to tissues, the flickering out of brain function, the failure of organs, the destruction of vital centers— these are the weapons of every horseman of death. A familiarity with them will explain how we die of illnesses not specifically described in this book. Those I have chosen are not only our most common avenues to death, they are also the ones whose paving stones are trod by everyone, no matter the rarity of the final disease.

 

Of hundreds of known diseases and their predisposing characteristics, some 85 percent of our aging population will succumb to the complications of one of only seven major entities: atherosclerosis , hypertension, adult-onset diabetes, obesity, mental depressing states such as Alzheimer's and other dementias, cancer, and decreased resistance to infection.

 

Nuland, Sherwin B. (2014-06-25). How We Die: Reflections on Life's Final Chapter (Kindle Locations 1584-1586, 210-215). Chu Hartley LLC. Kindle Edition.

 

Most of our lives, we are told to try: exercise, eat wholesome foods wisely, etc., etc.  Good advice and worth taking.  However, despite our best efforts, our bodies run down.  Our metabolism slows and all our internal processes are less efficient, less complete and slower.  Food matters all the way through and aging is not our fault.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Humans and machines

To many people, especially 'people' people, the subject of computer technology often seems somewhat dry or even anti-human.  But I think there is a side to computers that actually leads to a better understanding and appreciation of humans.  

The current issue of The Atlantic brought the subject back to mind with its main article on minds and machines by Brian Christian.  The article is actually titled "mind VS. machine" because of recent contests between the IBM computer called "Watson" and Jeopardy experts.  But the subject is an old favorite of mine.  

Think about it: tools, not just rocks for hammering and sticks for poking but pliers, ropes, edged objects like knives and swords, are the very stuff of human life.  Want to do something but you can't?  Simple!  Invent a tool that enables you to reach your goal.  Over time, we have gone a step further and invented machines, some that enable ground transport or water travel or flying through air or space.  We have also tried to invent machines that can tend to work we want done more or less on their own, without human intervention.  Thermostats are often given as examples on older discussions but today, monitors on smoking, carbon monoxide and other substances and events are commonplace.

The reason this subject is relevant to the education and training of people is that trying to invent machines that can do what we do and what we want done sometimes sheds very valuable light on us, on just what we can do, what we actually do and how we do it.  

Yes, maybe sometime in the future, computers will rise up in a war against humans.  But so far, I think we are doing pretty well.  Just comparing the spine of a human body with a machine can show what a marvel we are and how far we still have to go before our machines can match us.  Just compare the feelings and interchanges and results of a discussion between a group of lively, intelligent college students or senior citizens with machines of comparable ages and you will see that given lots of time and money, some machines can be built that can do or out-do us in particular endeavors but mostly, we are still pretty amazing.

Amazon TV and new TED talks

You already know that if you write something in Word but don’t save it, it disappears.  That is basically what happens with streaming.  If you stream something, you can see it but after it is over, you don’t have a copy, just like a live tv or radio show.  If you have a Netflix account, you can watch Netflix movies on your computer.  If you have a streamer, like Roku, you can have the signal stream travel from your streamer into your tv and see the movie on one of your tv’s.

Maybe you have heard that Amazon has just begun selling a streamer of its own.  It is being called Amazon Fire TV.  We have been using a Roku player, available from Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy and others for a couple of years now so naturally, we compare the Amazon streamer to the Roku.  So far, the Roku seems as good or better.  But we’ll see.

I am surprised that TED talks aren’t any easier to install on my Amazon streamer than they are and that the TED “channel” on the Roku lacks a search tool.  These days, such a tool is often represented by a simply drawn magnifying glass.  If you go to TED talks on your computer, the web site has good search capabilities. Similarly, the TED app for iPad has a fine search tool.

TED talks are non-commercial and can be on any topic.  A gripping TED Talk I have seen in the last few days are Diana Nyad, the 64 year old woman who swam 90+ miles of ocean between Cuba and Florida.  Very inspiring although I certainly wouldn’t try that.  Brian Greene makes as clear as anyone I have watched or read why some astronomers and cosmologists are saying the evidence is that our universe is one among many.

I recently sent this list to a friend.  I think they are all excellent TED talks.

Ernesto Sirolli

Sugata Mitra

Carin Bondar

Diana Nyad

Jill Bolte Taylor

I have sometimes watched a few too many in a row, to the point, that I simply can’t be inspired any more for a while.  Just like this guy who overdosed on TED talks.

(I have been having more bounces lately, all associated with SpamCop.  If I get quite a few, I will resend from another account or without the links, which sometimes satisfies the spam filters.)

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Leave a copy here

​I have written several blog posts about the book The Most Human Human by Brian Christian.  He participated in the Loebner contest, set up in a Turing test where a computer and a person communicate with the judges to see if they can tell who is a human and who is a machine.  The same author has written a new book "Algorithms to Live By".  It is a consideration of some principles of computer design and architecture that seem to have some relevance to people's lives outside of computing.

An algorithm is a recipe, a particular way of carrying out a set of instructions. Maybe you learned to do multiplication using a pattern that looks like this:

  14

X  9

If so, you know and use an algorithm for multiplication. Algorithms are sort of like a learned procedure.  We hear about algorithms in all sorts of places, such as the statement at the bottom of Google News, which says

The selection and placement of stories on this page were determined automatically by a computer program.

I think we are all getting more used to computers doing things, even to the point of driving a car with humans inside as passengers.  Maybe you have heard of the iOT, the internet of things, where your computer, your refrigerator, maybe your furnace and other machines and objects are electronically sensitive, "smart", and able to communicate with each other.  They will have input from each other and the environment around them.  They will no doubt be governed by algorithms that may need tweaking by owners.  Preferences and procedures will need to be modified to suit individual tastes.

One of his chapters is about caches ('cash es), storages.  In computers, some files are needed very often and many, more rarely.  In deciding on the rules for building and maintaining a cache, a handy one has been LRU (least recently used).  That translates into simply keeping what is needed often close by.  It also translates into not re-filling folders and papers that are often needed but leaving them out on the desk where they are handy.

Similarly, many computer systems and websites that have high levels of use have mirror or copied sites scattered around.  That way, a file that is called for is close by, in a mirror site and doesn't have to be transmitted long distances to fill the request. This copy business might get to be a big deal some day.  If your kids are scattered around the country, make  copies of yourself so you are close to each of them.

​

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Good ideas from a good writer and researcher

Eric Barker is a professor of communication at UCLA.  He writes a blog called Barking Up the Wrong Tree.  He picks good topics, researches them well and summarizes his results excellently.  His topic today is ideas from computer science that can help people in non-computing situations.  He bases much of his column on the book "Algorithms to Live By" by Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths.  I have read a good part of that book and I recommend it.

I have had quite a few experiences where some aspect of work with computers helped me in other parts of my life, social, mental or other aspects that seem quite distant from computer science.  Many people assume that computing is too dry and impersonal to be of value in social situations or in practical areas such as organizing your house, your tools or your records.  But that can be quite wrong.  Take a look at Barker's column:

http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2017/04/computer-science/

You can subscribe to his Sunday newsletter that features his choice of the topics of the week and order his book which comes out on May 16.

When is it time to stop?

Brian Christian again.  I have written about him and his book The Most Human Human, where he discussed the Alan Turing challenge to make a computer program that can act so human in what it types that judges will mistake the statements made as being from a human.  Christian has a new book, co-written with Tom Griffiths called "Algorithms to Live By".

If you learned to use a particular layout out with pencil and paper to do addition or long division, you learned an algorithm, a recipe, a formal procedure or method of solving a problem.

The first algorithm in the book is the secretary problem or the prince problem.  A boss hiring a secretary or a princess choosing a prince worries about when to stop interviewing and choose a person.  Stop too soon and you miss a great choice.  But when is too soon?  This is the subject of optimal stopping.

My first grad class was basic statistics.  I was charmed by what seemed magical.  A little adding and division, some squaring and subtracting and bingo!  The truth emerged from numbers!  Later, I decided I had invested my enthusiasm too soon.  Numbers, yes.  Insight, yes.  But magic - definitely not.  So, I am quite doubtful that I will employ more numbers to decide what to do.  I do buy the idea that understanding the algorithms used in computing and operations research and computer science may give me some new insights into my own thinking.

Every day I search among possibilities for the blog topic.  Every time we finish a book I am reading aloud or a tv series we have been watching, it is time for a new search.  Each new search is first a survey of candidates for selection and then a choice among them.  You know, like a US presidential election.  Similarly, what's for dinner? Think of a set of candidates and make a choice.

Just as with statistical analysis, there are explicit or implicit assumptions made in setting up a hiring or a princess/prince engagement that matter a great deal.  Alter the assumptions or procedures of the time frame or many other variables and you alter the whole operation in a fundamental way.  Can the boss go back and select someone he initially passed over?  Is the princess willing to become part of a harem?  Is she interested in marrying a prince who is dying?  Does her choice have to have a large amount of wealth?  Life is tricky but with enough machines and enough experimentation and enough thinking and thinking, maybe we will greatly improve our choosing.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Twitter: @olderkirby

Humans, emotions and computers

I read the letters to the editor in the Oct. 29 issue of the New Yorker. They were on the theme of dealing with the elderly who have dementia. An old man who had lost his wife appeared to go through the same agonizing blow of grief each time he was told again that his wife had died. He didn't remember that he had heard that before, and the information struck him just as forcefully and devastatingly each subsequent time he asked where his wife was and was told she had died.  His adult children found that if they said she was shopping, he was spared the nasty emotional blow.

 

A neuropsychologist who specializes in dementia seconded that letter, saying that responding to the emotional content of a statement or question is more helpful and effective than focusing on the literal content. One way to respond to an emotion is to sympathize with it as in "I feel that way, too" or in "I often have that feeling."  Another is to join in as in "I wonder that, too."  As with anything else, practicing and observing what works will lead to better responding.

 

I am reading "Algorithms to Live By" by Brian Christian.  It is an exploration of algorithms, rules and procedures that computers generally use that humans can adopt for their own use.  Generally, computers don't have emotions but there are some thoughts that maybe they should.  If emotions are good for humans, maybe computers, robots and artificial intelligence would be better with an emotional side.  Reading Christian's book, it is easy to see the many steps we go through when thinking and dealing with issues of daily life. 

 

If we are quick to blame ourselves or assume we are inferior thinkers or choosers or decision makers, we may be surprised to find that we wrestle with the same issues that computer designers face.  Besides that, there are many logical dilemmas and contradictions that we face in this world that have been proved to be unsolvable.  With the right issues, there may be no perfect solution or best path.  We don't proceed without error or in complete harmony with ourselves, our work and our aims and neither do the smartest, most farsighted machines.

 

Almost the first words out of Lynn's mouth this morning about wondering what to do first and why could have come directly from what I had just been reading in Christian's book on logical obstacles to perfect machine performance.

Adding to our knowledge

Information informs, adds to knowledge.  So, if I tell you that the dictionary contains words, you would only be getting information from my statement if you didn't already know what is inside the dictionary.  

OK, that is not strictly true because if I tell you that the dictionary contains words, you know that I told you something that is rather obvious on its face.  You now know that I seem to be the sort of person who says things that aren't very helpful.

It was attention-getting when Brian Christian wrote in The Most Human Human: What Talking to Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive that Claude Shannon wrote the most important master's thesis ever written in 1948 when he wrote A Mathematical Theory of Communication, (PDF file, free) which founded what is sometimes called "information theory".  

Of course, there are many other candidates for a wonderful ground-breaking thesis, but the recognition of what information is, attempts to make use of it, transmit it and preserve it are everywhere these days.  It is natural for us to reflect on what information is when we find we are changing things into a digital format that we never used to have, or associate with books, movies, pictures, sounds, speech, blueprints and all sorts of records.

Right now, I have a note to myself to get around to three books on information science and theory:

• The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood by James Gleick
• Seife's Decoding the Universe
• Information: A Very Short Introduction by Luciano Floridi

I have read the second book listed but I got lost and didn't understand it.  Somewhat like learning HTML coding or other aspects of computers and for that matter, car engines, I like to buzz around the edges of the subject but serious steady study is not for me.

If you remember the hullabaloo related to the year change from 1999 to 2000, the Y2K worry and danger, and if you have seen the articles that predict any further wars countries are engaged in will be computer battles as well as people battles, you realize that the oil and other energy supply, the food supply and the electricity supply depend on all kinds of machines and their ability to process information.  If you, like me, were impressed that the bet between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne v. John Preskill was about information coming out of black holes, you had heard another reference to information and its importance.  Even, if, like me, you have only a vague notion of what they were talking about.  If you, like me, are aware of the increasing problem of identity theft, you realize the importance of information that would allow bad guys to convince others that it is you asking for a loan.  A few decades ago, my university didn't have that very important office: information technology, that is, instructional, faculty and student computers.  Now, it even has an office of information security.  That office just hours ago sent out a link to the Better Business Bureau's information on the top online scams.  In today's world, we have information, error, and disinformation.

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Bill
Main blog: Fear, Fun and Filoz
Main web site: Kirbyvariety

Like, um, human!

In February, I wrote about an article in the Atlantic by Brian Christian relating his experience in trying to be the "most human" participant in a Turing test held in Britain.  That's the test of computing engineering and coding where they attempt to build a computer that can respond to input in so human a way that people cannot tell whether they are communicating with a machine or a person.  Now in the current issue of the New Yorker, the clever and lively writer Adam Gopnik reviews books by Christian and others on the same and related subjects.  

I remember an article written by Gopnik that evidently was reprinted in his book "Paris to the Moon" that told about the pregnancy and birth his wife and he experienced while living in Paris.  It was memorable for both the style and content.  The Gopniks were told by their French gynecologist to be sure that she drank a glass of red wine each day, quite different advice from Americans trying to avoid fetal alcohol syndrome.  Mrs. G. sat in front of the doctor's desk beside her husband in a consultation.  After a few minutes, the man told her to take off her clothes.  Doing so, or even being requested to do so, right in the presence of two men, in the office, would not be considered good procedure in this country.

Gopnik relates in the New Yorker article linked above that his logician-linguist mother told him as a boy that computers were not smart, only fast at retrieving records from a large collection.  She said," Wait until they can talk, then we'll talk [about their intelligence]."  He takes that remark and runs with it, moving to the business of conversation as an essentially human activity.  He has especially memorable passages when considering a teen boy asking a teen girl on a date: "Intelligence is an affect [emotion] that flits between the empty spaces as much as it takes place in the exchanges.  If a teen-age boy says to a teen-age girl 'I was, like, wondering, if, like, you'd like to, like, go to that, uh, thing at Jacob's?" and she says,"Uh, well, …" it's bad news.  But if she says,"Well, um" it's promising, and if she says,"Yeah, like, funny, because, um..."it's the best news of all.  

Try computing that.  In fact, try just typing it. 

I gave a talk today using these notes

I gave a talk today using these notes.  I also mentioned:

There are many other smaller companies that can do your DNA.  A good source of information is your local librarian.  Many people have a natural fear of the results.  I recommend getting them.  Lynn and I have had ours done four times.  Over centuries, there seems to be a basic assumption on the part of many that most people are sort ordinary but a few are special or "noble". I prefer the view that most people have some special abilities, whether they know what they are or not.

Have your DNA Done

Bill Kirby

Wednesday, November 1, 2023

1. DNA banking and analysis - blog post , "Fear, Fun and Filoz"

2. "Seven Daughters of Eve" by Brian Sykes, a butler a direct descendant, current Duke isn't.

3. "10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution" by Gregory Cockran and Henry Harpending

4. "Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures" by Christine Kenneally

5. "Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project" – Spencer Wells

6. Family Tree, Ancestry.com, 23 and Me – others

7. "She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity" – Carl Zimmer

8. Many misconceptions about inheritance and descent over the years

9. Out of Africa, we are primates.

10. Libby – book borrowing – app

11. Call the Midwife (TV show on Netflix) – Mechanics of baby-making

12. YouTube – enormous virtually endless resource

13. "Genome: The Autobiography of Species in 23 Chapters" by