Author: admin

I was having a dinner conversation with some friends this evening, and the topic came around to magic mushrooms, and similar “spiritual drugs” that people use to expand their consciousness. We agreed that trying such things was a bad idea.

I understand the intention. If only we could lift the barriers that prevent our minds from seeing deeper truths, perhaps we might have greater insight into the Universe and into ourselves.

But as I told my friends, those doors that separate one part of our minds from another are there for a reason.

To put it another way, living in a house with no walls would not be an experience of liberation. It would be an experience of not having a home.

Yesterday I was putting up curtains at home. If you’ve ever done that, you know that the key is accuracy.

You need to take your time with measuring tape and a level, marking everything carefully on your wall before drilling the first hole. And then, just to make sure, it’s a good idea to check your work after every step.

I prefer to use a metric measuring tape. It’s simply easier for me to take and remember exact measurements in millimeters, rather than trying to work with eighths or sixteenths of an inch.

There was one moment when I was using my metric measuring tape, and I realized that something was slightly off. And I found myself saying to myself “just one pixel over.”

Hearing that thought in my head, I realized that I was working through this as a problem in computer graphics. Only in this case, the pixels happened to be in the physical world.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, in the wake of its Brown v. Board of Education ruling, to order district courts and school districts to enforce educational desegregation “at all deliberate speed.” That was one of the high points in our nation’s checkered history.

When we look for positive things to say about America, that event is surely near the top of the list. It was a day when our nation showed itself to be capable of kindness, caring, and able to rise above prejudice.

How different from the order of the day today. If our glorious experiment in democracy is indeed destroyed in the next few years, as seems increasingly likely, at least we will be able to point proudly to a moment in time when our nation achieved a measure of grace.

A computer software system is like a house. You need to keep it in good repair.

From time to time, surfaces should be dusted and polished, and you have to put stuff away after you use it. You’d better know the difference between the kitchen room and the garage, and you need to remember to take out the trash.

If you don’t keep your software project in good shape, eventually stuff starts piling up in the corners, and you find yourself stepping over things without quite remembering what they are. Eventually, you might find it easier to just move out.

But with a little bit of tidying up and software maintenance, it never needs to come to that.

There are many interesting questions around the (still theoretical) concept of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). To me, one of those questions concerns what happens after you die.

Suppose, using some future technology, we were able to create a replica of some individual human’s mind that passed every possible test for sentience. Then the person in question dies.

From a legal and philosophical perspective, are they still alive? Does the A.I. retain any of the rights of the biological original?

For example, do they have the right not to be switched off or erased? Do they have the right not to be replicated?

And then will people be granted an inherent right, under the law, to have an A.I. back-up made of their mind? Or will that become a service you need to pay for — so that it might be available only to the wealthy and privileged?

Suppose it does turn out that a post-life A.I. can attain legal personhood. Does that mean we will have entered the age of human immortality?

As long as I am quoting my favorite quotes, here’s another:

“Ideology is like breath. You never smell your own.”
– Joan Robinson

“It’s not that you have a failure. It’s what you do with it.”

Michael Roemer
January 1, 1928 – May 20, 2025

I know that we live in a time of great divisiveness. Half of our nation thinks that the other half is crazy. And that feeling goes both ways.

So as terribly sad a day as this is, at least Memorial Day is a time when we can all agree on something. The brave men and women who have been willing to give their lives for their country and for their fellow citizens deserve our respect, and our eternal gratitude.

I’ve been wanting to go back and read the Harry Potter books in order. I remember reading the first one soon after it came out.

I was in a book store in the late 1990s, looking for a good book to read. The proprietor said “This recent book is quickly becoming very popular.” Which is how I came to buy the first one.

The title was “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.” It was a great read, but the title puzzled me. It soon became obvious that the book was about the philosopher’s stone.

So if I was reading a book that was obviously about the philosopher’s stone, why did everybody in the story keep calling it the sorcerer’s stone? I eventually learned the answer from a British friend.

The original UK title was indeed “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”, but the U.S. publisher thought that was too sophisticated for American readers, so they changed it. Basically, it was because they thought that we Americans are stupid.

Given where our nation’s current political choices have led us, it’s kind of hard to argue.

This week was notable for the list of invited commencement speakers at college graduations. To pick only two among many, one of those speakers was Kermit the Frog, and another was the president of the United States.

It’s wonderful to see such diversity on display. Consider the range spanned just by those two examples.

One of those two speakers is a talking puppet controlled by an unseen hand. The other is a frog.