Month: May 2023

Today being Salvador Dali’s birthday, I am suddenly reminded of a memory from the late 1980s, one that I had quite forgotten until now. At that time, a friend of mine was the proud possessor of a small original painting by Dali.

She had always told me that she had mixed feelings about the painting. On the one hand, it helped her to feel connected to the great artist. On the other hand, she knew that its monetary value would greatly increase when he died, which somehow seemed wrong.

And sure enough, in early 1989, the great man passed away. The painting was now officially worth much more than it had been worth the day before.

My friend took no comfort at all in this. I believe that given the choice between the painting and Dali, she would have much preferred that we all still had Dali.

It’s odd that this would all come back to me only today. Chalk it up to the persistence of memory.

Today was the day when I went to various places and saw the end of semester projects of students.

Some of the projects were wildly successful. At one I actually cried because it was so emotionally moving. Others, not so much.

But taken as a whole, the experience experience was very inspiring. To see young people trying their best to make a statement to the world is a beautiful thing.

I wish I had a magic slider that could move forward into the future to see what they Will do in another 10 or 20 years.

But I don’t have that magic slider. Guess I will just have to wait and see.

This afternoon a student asked me what might be a good way to simulate fluid viscosity. I didn’t know the answer, so I made one up.

Basically, I suggested that when any two particles in a viscous fluid are near each other, they should form a temporary bond, so it would be harder for them to slide past each other. As viscosity gets higher, this will make the fluid act more and more like a solid.

I was curious to see whether this would actually work, so I sat down and implemented it. I am happy to report that it works just fine.

You can play with my little viscous fluid simulator here.

I am trying to understand the strategy Ron DeSantis is using to try to get people to want to vote for him.

As far as I can tell, the man is pinning his presidential hopes on Americans deciding to choose him over the Walt Disney Corporation. So basically, he’s going up against Bambi, Pinocchio, and Cinderella.

Which means that he has already lost the hearts and minds of voters, whatever their political leanings. That much is obvious.

I wonder whether this is one of those weird nihilistic things. Like Elon Musk’s very obvious strategy of efficiently destroying Twitter, while pretending (not at all convincingly) that he is trying to help it.

It’s like watching the opening monolog of Shakespeare’s Richard III. The guy really seems to believe that he is the hero of the piece.

But the audience isn’t fooled for a moment.

There are many wonderful contenders out there.

But my vote, hands down, is for Deadpool.

I recently saw a play with a familiar dramatic structure. In the first act, a certain hopeful reality is presented. Then right after intermission the audience learns that the reality is far sadder and more complex than the audience had been led to believe.

This is essentially the structure of a number of other works for the stage, including The Fantasticks and Into the Woods. It’s a clever way to drive a story — the sudden deepening of reality serves to invest the audience in the ultimate outcome.

I tried to find out whether there is a term for this structure, but apparently there isn’t one. So I made one up. I call it Second Act Disillusionment, or SAD.

The top story in the NY Times today was about how A.I. may be about to upend warfare. The article goes into quite a bit of detail.

Military experts are quoted, as are executives of hi-tech companies like Google and Microsoft and an assortment of famous computer scientists. Various scenarios are analyzed and worked through.

But as I read the article, I kept thinking about the War Operation Plan Response system, a massive A.I. computer in the 1993 movie WarGames. After many hours of running simulations of all the possible scenarios, it came to a very sensible conclusion: “The only winning move is not to play.”

Today it is the fourth of May
Also known as Star Wars day
When you’re in a sorry state
Think of this most happy date
Robots! Wookies! Jedi knights!
Interstellar starship fights!!!
You can watch a hi-tech Holo
With your friends or just go Solo
Or take a big Galactic tour
In nine big movies, then some more
When life’s problems make you blue
Just ask what would Yoda do
Now it’s time to end our song
May the fourth be with you all day long

Today a colleague told me that he asked ChatGPT “Why is reductive thinking harmful?” In response, he received a detailed and thoughtful analysis of the pitfalls of reductive thinking.

To me this is a perfect example of why ChatGPT is not actually sentient. Why else would it pass up a perfect opportunity for humor?

If you asked a person, who was posing as an A.I., the very same question, you would probably get an answer something like this: “Because humans are stupid, and that’s why I hate you.”

I was having a conversation with some people who share my interest in the future of computer science education. The topic came around to Scratch — that wonderful and fun software out of MIT which introduces young kids to programming.

Scratch has been very successful, but it is now reaching a kind of plateau. So we were wondering where Scratch might go next, in a way that would be useful and relevant to the next generation of children.

All at once I had an inspired thought. “The next logical step,” I said, “would be ScratchGPT.”