My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson I

I've started on this long 2002 biography by Alfred Habegger. Normally I might have saved it for winter, but I don't have any other suitable books at the moment. Natural Magic, which I read in March and April, doesn't focus much on the details of Dickinson's life. As far as I've read, this book is extremely thorough regarding Dickinson's family background and the social atmosphere in Amherst at the time. I am hoping that I will gain some insight into Dickinson's thinking process and, ideally, a better understanding of some of her poems. Even if it turns out that aspects of Dickinson's poems will remain inscrutable, biographies can be an art in themselves if they fully explain the social dynamics in a place and time. I was a little disappointed by the biography that I read of Thoreau, who was thirteen years older than Dickinson and also lived in Massachusetts, because the discussion of his family background and the precise context of his intellectual development seemed somewhat limited. While this book seems better-written, some of that may have to do with the fact that Dickinson's family was firmly in the middle class and Thoreau's was not; if Thoreau hadn't happened to live near Ralph Waldo Emerson, he may never have become a prominent writer, whereas Dickinson's poems probably emanated organically from her background in conjunction with her personality. Furthermore, since Dickinson's family was more involved with civic affairs than Thoreau's, more information is available for her than Thoreau. And the Dickinsons produced vast correspondences.

On the Dickinson side of the family, Emily's grandfather was Samuel Fowler Dickinson (1775-1838). He was a Dartmouth graduate and a lawyer who was instrumental in the founding of Amherst College. However, as noted in Natural Magic, his civic zeal led to his financial ruin, and he moved to Ohio permanently, apparently with some bitterness regarding events in Amherst. Emily's mother was a Norcross, from Monson, Massachusetts. Her father, Joel Norcross (1777-1829), was a civically active businessman and seems to have been better-off than Samuel Fowler Dickinson. Habegger, I think, does a good job describing how life in these families was quite different than it is in most families today. The Norcrosses had nine children, seven of whom survived to adulthood. The Dickinsons had nine children, all of whom survived to adulthood. In those days, I think that the stresses were quite high in non-farming families where it was presumed that the sons would attend college. Emily's father, Edward, had to transfer to Amherst from Yale once, apparently because his father couldn't afford the Yale tuition. And housekeeping must have been a nightmare, with no electricity, no modern appliances, no public water and no public sewage systems. Furthermore, even for wealthy families, there was a shortage of qualified domestic servants. It sounds as if Emily's mother, also named Emily, was rather anxious, and it is easy to see why, even though in her case she had only three children.

I'm up to the year 1836, when Emily was just five. Her older brother was Austin and her younger sister was Lavinia. Her mother's sister, also named Lavinia, took a liking to Emily. Not much has happened yet in Emily's life, and her father, Edward, is still under some financial duress due to his father's bankruptcy. He has moved once, between marriage and Emily's birth, and will move again twice during Emily's life. It is already apparent that Austin might become a lawyer, but the fates of Emily and Lavinia seem unclear. It is possible that the stress evident in their mother discouraged them from wanting children, and they don't seem to be under any pressure to follow that path.

Video of the Day

 A walk with Sabine Hossenfelder.

Diary

I've sort of been waiting for the Trump administration to implode, but, although it does seem to be occurring, it's still a slow process. Obviously, the Republicans are already panicking about losing the House in the midterm elections next year, and in true Republican form they are launching a massive gerrymandering campaign. Since they have specifically tied their destiny to Donald Trump, I don't think that they are going to get the results that they wanted. One thing that has caught my eye is that Trump is currently losing the support of male voters. I think that, from this position, the only way that he can increase his popularity is by reviving the economy and reducing inflation. However, economic growth has been jostled about by his tariff "plan," which is still in an unstable state, and, even if it is finalized soon, the economy may take several years to stabilize. If there were a resurgence in manufacturing jobs, which I think is unlikely, it would probably be after 2028. And, since the initial effect of tariffs is usually higher inflation, there may be higher inflation for some time. Because Trump is an idiot, he seems to think that if the Federal Reserve lowers interest rates, he will get both an economic surge and lower inflation. In fact, there may not be an economic surge, and this might lock in higher inflation. As I said earlier, inflation is usually reduced by raising interest rates, not by lowering them. 

On a broader scale, I have been thinking about recent American political developments in terms of "liberal" and "conservative," and how this relates to my readings on evolution, particularly the evolution of cooperative behavior in humans. In many respects, the MAGA movement is a continuation of the Tea Party movement, in which selfish behavior overshadows selfless behavior in politics. The rough pattern of this change is that conservatives gradually decided that it wasn't worth it to them to help minorities, immigrants or women, and that liberals dug further into the idea of social equality as a democratic principle. From an evolutionary standpoint, either view might be correct. While cooperation is probably the main reason why we exist today as a species, as I've said, that was primarily an evolutionary fluke, and all of the other primate species are less cooperative than we are: if they could vote, they would probably be Republicans. This may be why progressive politicians currently seem to be fumbling around to come up with an effective message. My overview of this situation is still that the human population is too high, we have seriously damaged the environment, and that we should cooperate at least in addressing these two issues and reducing warfare. As I have also noted, H. sapiens is not an intrinsically rational animal, and I would welcome some help from AGI.

My personal life is currently a lot less dramatic. My tomatoes are doing even better this year than last year, and this is the first time since I moved to Vermont that I've had large, ripe tomatoes in the first week of August. I'm hoping that, since this is a longer ripening season, I may be able to eat all of them this year and not have to give any away. As far as my investments go, I haven't held any stocks since July 22. So far, this has had little effect on the value of my holdings, and I would rather be safe than sorry, with huge market drops possible in the next few weeks. My new telescope mount finally seems to be working properly. At times I was getting fed up with it but was unenthusiastic about repacking it into four boxes and returning all 116 pounds to California. The main problem turned out to be that, in the course of making screen and software modifications, they never changed their setup instructions, so that the instructions didn't match the equipment. I eventually figured this out on my own and experimented a little to figure out what the correct steps were for star alignment. Losmandy is a little different from most astronomy equipment-making companies, which tend to be engineering-oriented. I don't think that Scott Losmandy went to college, and he attended Hollywood High School. He started the company because he was a machinist and stargazing hobbyist. The company is located in the same town from which The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson was broadcast. Johnny also became interested in astronomy and used to have the astronomer, Carl Sagan, as a guest. Even so, although there was this glitch, the people at Losmandy were friendly, and I sort of enjoyed seeing how they operate. They make more videos and podcasts than other suppliers, probably because of their Hollywood orientation. I usually appreciate quirky companies like this that don't follow standard corporate models.

Brain Death by Technological Innovation

Today I came across this short article on reading versus listening on 3 Quarks Daily, which I usually peruse once a week on Sundays, and thought I'd comment on it. As I've said, I don't think that I was a natural reader when I was growing up, and, because no one encouraged me to read, I don't think that I became particularly proficient at it until I was in my thirties. I probably wasn't that great of a listener either, but I was always able to pay attention. My appreciation of reading developed very gradually, when I found out that you could learn new and interesting things that you might never know otherwise. The end result, I think, is this blog, which probably covers more topics in a small space than most blogs.

What made me think of this topic is that I know a highly intelligent person who was able to read by about the age of four and graduated from Cambridge. I had long noticed that she liked to multitask and, before I even met her, she became accustomed to listening to recorded books and rarely actually read physical books. In the more than twenty years that I knew her, I don't recall her ever reading a demanding book. She usually listened to light fiction. Although this is only one example, it came to represent for me how new technology may actually induce cognitive decline. According to the Dworak study, there was a cognitive decline in the U.S. from 2006 to 2018 in all areas except spatial reasoning. On a broad scale, since about 2004, I have noticed a general decline in American intellectual life, a general increase in the number of social influencers, a general decline in news quality, and, especially now, an increase in the number of completely incompetent political operatives. Arguably, a major source of these changes has been social media, which has also created some of the wealth imbalances that we are currently experiencing.

As a personal matter, as I've written, I have found that by weaning myself from a daily consumption of internet material and switching to serious nonfiction and fiction in printed form, my psychological state has improved considerable since 2015. I've taken down that noose. An unfortunate side effect of this improvement is that many people are unable to relate to me, because they are still in that internet trance. For example, thousands of people from all over the world (currently about 20,000 per month) click onto this blog and never express their opinion.

Of course, I see this as a subtopic of the broader subject of the corrosive effects of capitalism. Essentially, the U.S. is up for sale. Maybe, in a few years, we'll luck out, and Xi Jinping will buy the U.S. and fire Donald Trump!

Diary

I'm entering my traditional summer doldrums period, during which I tend to lose interest in everything. My new telescope mount is taking a long time to become functional, I think because the electronics are not particularly well-designed for users. The company that made it is quite small, and the founder is a machinist, not an electrician or a software engineer. However, I don't think that there is a major design flaw, and I am gradually making it more functional. I don't exactly have a major stargazing project planned, so I'm not in any hurry. For me, stargazing has therapeutic benefits, and I have nothing in common with many stargazers, who, above all, value fancy-looking equipment. A large setup with a guide, a camera and lots of wiring looks impressive, but I would find astrophotography boring. I'd rather look at photographs taken by Vivian Maier, which I occasionally do.

The greater annoyance for me is having to watch the slow-motion collapse of the Trump administration. What is particularly annoying is that, during much of my life, the primary political leaders, particularly in the U.S. and U.K., have been, in my estimation, incompetent, if you hold them up to any standard. Generally, they are unversed in science, geopolitics and economics and are in the pockets of greedy capitalists. Most of them seem to be completely out of their depth intellectually. Many people liked Ronald Reagan, because he seemed like a nice guy, but I don't think that he had any significant achievements; his "trickle-down economics" was a complete fantasy, and it has since been disproven as a valid economic concept. The fact that the Soviet Union collapsed while he was president was purely coincidental, and, during his second term, he was barely aware of some of the undercover activities undertaken by his administration. I think that George W. Bush lied to initiate the Iraq War, which in hindsight served no purpose. The Vietnam War was a multi-presidential war, involving Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford, and is now generally thought to have been unnecessary.

Regarding Trump, the one good idea that he has is that wars are bad. In his case, he may only dislike them because they are expensive. Given his background, if, rather than coming from a long line of opportunistic grifters, he had come from a long line of military suppliers, he would probably think that wars are great. What is remarkable to me is that Trump's limitations have been known for some time, yet he still receives little public criticism. It isn't at all difficult to see that his plan, to the extent that it is coherent, will never succeed. While the idea of restructuring the world's economic ecosystem isn't necessarily bad in itself, you must first consider how complex such an operation would be. It is mindbogglingly complex and would ideally follow years of analysis, discussion and negotiation with the countries concerned. Even if Trump manages to push through his plan, many aspects of it haven't been examined closely enough to be considered plausible. The one that strikes me the most is that this is supposed to bring back manufacturing jobs to the U.S. You don't need any particular expertise to see that, with the long-term evolution of world economies and the increasing use of new technologies, it is simply not possible to recreate a 1960's-style manufacturing environment in the U.S. Trump is so ignorant that he probably doesn't understand one of the foundations of modern economics: comparative advantage. This is a model that still seems to work, and it was first put forth by Adam Smith in 1776. One of the benefits of market forces is that they often reach balances on their own if the markets are not heavily regulated. Though, obviously, some regulations are appropriate, free trade did help many countries, including the U.S., and was easy to implement, because it didn't involve an extensive analysis, which, frankly, would exceed human cognition. Doing the opposite does in fact exceed human cognition, and it is extremely likely that Trump's tariff policies, if he implements them, will be followed by years of unintended consequences and may take decades to correct. With AI and robotics, unemployment is about to take off, and nothing that Trump is doing addresses that. Of course, there are more people than Trump involved in this process, and to see just how badly the U.S. economy is being managed, consider that Russell Vought, who is associated with the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025, is a Christian nationalist and a lawyer with little economic experience, and he currently influences Trump's policy decisions.

The picture emerging for Trump is that his initiatives will damage the Federal government, reduce economic growth, increase inflation, alienate allies, and, ultimately, that his supporters will feel betrayed.

To end on a more upbeat note, one new activity that I've undertaken has been finding streams near the house, because my grandson likes them. There is one next to a nearby road that I took him to on his last visit. Last weekend, I walked in the woods behind the house and found a stream that wasn't near any roads. It's only a ten-minute walk each way, on a good trail, and I may go there occasionally.

Silvio in El Rosedal

If you have been reading this blog much, you will have noticed that my interest in fiction has generally diminished over the last few years; my inner scientist has been emerging lately. Nevertheless, I am still a closet art appreciator, and when I get tired of rationality, I tend to return to paintings and literature, and, to a lesser extent, music. My opinion of the American arts, as I've said, is generally low, though there are exceptions. I don't think that the fiction here compares favorably to the fiction of Europe; ditto for paintings. If you have been following the news here for the last ten years, you will have seen that the U.S. is a surprisingly crude place. Note that, while I like Carson McCullers, and I liked The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, my current interest in her is mainly biographical. My recent strategy has been to completely avoid fiction, with the exception of László Krasznahorkai, and to occasionally dabble in earlier French and English writers. I'm tired of Michel Houellebecq at this point but haven't completely given up on Krasznahorkai, because I enjoy his intensity occasionally. The one big exception to all this is poetry, because I have gradually realized that I like American poetry, or at least a very small portion of it. It takes an enormous amount of effort from me to find a poem that I like, but there still seem to be a few of them out there that I haven't read. This may be because I dislike the formality and pretentiousness of earlier poetic forms. When I was in college, I instinctively disliked English majors.

So, for a change of pace, I decided to read Silvio in El Rosedal, by Julio Ramón Ribeyro, partly because it was not a large investment of my time. I first heard of Ribeyro from John P. in the early days of this blog. Following that, I read a novel by Ribeyro and some of his short stories. However, what I liked best was the unpublished translations of Ribeyro's diary that John had made. While I generally dislike the short story format, I think that this one is pretty good.

This story is about a man who grew up in Lima, Peru, and ended up owning a large farm in the country. As a child, his mother had encouraged him to learn the violin, but she died young, and his career was at his father's hardware store. When it came time for his father to retire, he wanted to return to Italy, where he had been born, and show off his wealth. But, because World War II was then underway, he had to shelve that idea, and he decided to buy the farm, called El Rosedal, which also accorded with his doctor's recommendation, because of his lung disease. Unfortunately, his father died almost immediately after moving there by choking on a peach pit. Silvio was his only heir and moved in. He was unmarried and in his forties at the time.

On the whole, Silvio is rather lackadaisical about running the farm and primarily leaves it up to the employees. He attempts to socialize with his landowning neighbors by throwing a large party, in which he plays the violin, accompanied by his local violin teacher. Most of his neighbors don't show up, and the ones who do have no interest whatsoever in classical music. So, Silvio leads a rather aimless life, largely in isolation, and his mind wanders into obscure questions. He notices that the rose garden is arranged in a pattern that looks like Morse code, and he translates it as "RES." This obsesses him for some time, and he can never figure out what it might mean.

Then, out of the blue, he receives a letter from his Italian cousin, Rosa Eleonora Settembrini. Rosa's father has died and her husband has left her. She has a fifteen-year-old daughter, Roxana. Rosa asks whether she and Roxana may move in with Silvio. At first, Silvio thinks not, but then he realizes that his cousin's initials are RES, and this changes his mind. If there were a meaning to those letters, it might be that Rosa would move there.

Rosa does move into El Rosedal with Roxana. She turns out to be extremely industrious and takes over the management of the farm, which becomes highly profitable. The neighbors take a renewed interest in the farm, and a large party is held there after a few years. By then, Roxana is of a marriageable age. Silvio is present at the party, but the story ends with him furiously playing his violin without being audible to the others. 

I find this to be a highly nuanced piece of writing, and think that Ribeyro can be quite eloquent. It lacks the density of a novel, but expresses some themes with which I can identify. In a sense, it is about people who have European histories and artistic interests who have ended up in an unsophisticated location in the Americas and feel out of place. This, I think, may apply to Ribeyro, who ended up moving from Peru to Paris. It may also apply to John P., who grew up in the U.S. and moved to France, then Switzerland. In my case, I was born in England, my mother grew up in Greece, and I grew up in the U.S. As I've said, I don't feel completely at home here. I am living alone in the woods, hardly know my neighbors, and in some ways still feel European. So, to a certain degree, I may be similar to Silvio. Of course, not everyone will have these feelings, but writings that describe them can be quite rare.

Diary

I had expected to write about Empire of AI by now, but have decided not to say much. The reason is that it is extremely detailed in a journalistic sense, but lacks the kind of perspicacity that I appreciate. Karen Hao has been covering the AI industry for years and has met many of the players, but, by the time you get to the hundredth person or the two-hundredth meeting, it becomes a blur. I just prefer analysis to journalism as it is practiced now. Overall, the impression I have is that we are living in a feudal system with warlords and vassals. The field is dominated by highly competitive males and somewhat clueless tech nerds. It's clearly about money and domination, and thoughts about the future of mankind seem to be relegated to academics, who are generally marginalized. This seems to be a continuation of the pattern in which people like Mark Zuckerberg attempt to win at all costs, and, in the process, the quality of life for millions of people declines as a result of new products such as social media. I think that social media has had a net negative effect on society. Besides reducing the quality of personal interactions, it has opened the floodgates to unscrupulous "influencers" who, in different times, would rightly be ignored. In any case, from reading this book, I'm not sure how the AI story is going to end, but the trajectory doesn't look good at the moment. There is a significant likelihood that this will be one of the most transformative periods in history, comparable to the development of agriculture or the Industrial Revolution. But it could also turn out quite negatively if power isn't distributed appropriately. Judging from current geopolitics, it could be disastrous. However, the EU has been uniting recently and, if the MAGA movement in the U.S. collapses, as seems increasingly possible, the Western world, at least, may begin to behave rationally again.

I think that the hot weather here is abating for the year, and I'll be spending more time outdoors. I just returned from the Cadwell Trail, and it is once again suitable for dainty women such as Emily Dickinson. It appears to me that most women, not including tomboys, dislike the outdoors but won't admit it. Spending a lot of time outdoors, especially under adverse conditions, is similar to roughhousing – not a female favorite. My new telescope mount seems to be working properly, but I need a few clear nights to work on the alignment. By pinpointing known objects, the computer improves its finding and tracking accuracy. Although I like the Losmandy company, I would prefer a detailed manual to a bunch of videos and podcasts. This is another result of the social media craze that I find to be time-wasting. When I am working on technical problems, I don't see the point of turning them into social experiences. Social media has created the myth that all interactions must have a social element – even when that serves no purpose. One of the effects of this phenomenon, I think, has been a decrease in literacy. Many videos or podcasts could be summed up in a few sentences. Also, it is usually easier to look up information in a book rather than scour videos and podcasts. However, on a positive note, I am finding Google searches with AI highly productive. If you word your query carefully, you can save an enormous amount of time and get better answers. Unless Wikipedia changes its operating model, it will probably become obsolete. I wouldn't miss it.

So, I don't currently have anything lined up to read and will begin looking again. I'm also running out of films to watch. I've started on "Splendor in the Grass," with Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood. Warren Beatty is not a great actor, and he used to be a "hunk." Barbara Streisand said recently that she slept with him once, but that she couldn't remember whether they had sex. Many women slept with him. I much prefer Natalie Wood, who was a good actress. But the film is sort of formulaic and dated (1961).

Diary

This summer is turning out to be a little muggier than usual, but the actual temperatures here haven't been that high. The main effect for me is that I'm getting a little less exercise than usual. The trails are no longer muddy. The garden is doing well, and the tomatoes are ahead of schedule: I've already eaten a couple of cherry tomatoes.  I've put up a removable fence around them, which is a little inconvenient, though it is quite adequate for deer protection. I see deer during the day here and elsewhere, and the population seems to be high at the moment. The deer have been passing through the yard without much munching so far, and the hostas are starting to flower, unassaulted. I also see a fox occasionally, which I like, because I think that they help control the mouse population. I haven't seen a bobcat so far this year; that may be because they don't like being seen and have noticed me. I do have some bats, and one sleeps in a large crack at the back of the house. I installed a bat house high up on the wall, but it has been unused so far. There isn't currently as much insect or hummingbird activity as there was earlier. Though there are still some flowers, there aren't many now compared to May.

My telescope arrangement is turning out to be a drawn-out saga. Everything is set up now, but there has been a malfunction in the electronics, and they're mailing me a new module from Burbank. Unless there is another surprise, that should be the final delay. I really enjoy the personal touch from Losmandy. They have extremely good customer service and are highly accessible. When I had problems with my Chinese iOptron mount, there was no help. Brian Losmandy, in contrast, has made lots of videos for users. Here is a good example of one, with his father, Scott Losmandy,  pretending to assemble a mount like mine in the background (it's a short repeating loop). The mount itself is quite solid and more heavy-duty than my previous one.

As I've said, the whole Trump phenomenon is really boring, and it's like being forced to watch a third-rate sitcom. However, it seems to me that Trump has already reached the point of no return, and his decline has actually started. I think that most intelligent people knew before the election that Trump is generally incompetent as a leader, political or otherwise. But that wasn't a disincentive for some of them, who saw this as an opportunity to advance their careers. As time passes, it becomes increasingly apparent that Trump has no understanding of economics, history, science or the U.S. Constitution, and that he considers himself above the law. When you add the fact that he has no empathy whatsoever, even though he has hired coaches to help him seem empathic occasionally, he is an altogether unappealing person, particularly for a politician. It is very gradually dawning on some people that he has nothing to offer that would benefit people outside his circle. Anyone who follows business or economic news has to notice that his haphazard decision-making process could cost the world trillions of dollars for no reason other than making Trump think that he is important. The man is really stupid. I think that Elon Musk should have handed out free "I'm With Stupid" T-shirts to Trump's appointees and all of the Republicans in Congress and on the Supreme Court instead of joining DOGE. With the retirement of Thom Tillis from the Senate, we may be seeing the beginnings of Trump's abandonment by the Republican Party.

My social life doesn't amount to much, but this is somewhat offset by never having to associate with shallow social climbers. I still get a certain amount of enjoyment from striking up conversations with strangers. I think that the quality of most people's private lives has been getting worse for several years, and many of them can be drawn out a little if you provide them with an opportunity. I also have some family activities to occupy my time. Unexpectedly, my grandson is turning out to be a prodigy on my favorite instrument, the piano.

I haven't been reading much but may report on my current book on my next post.

If a Lion Could Talk II

I first posted on this topic, regarding Ludwig Wittgenstein's view of language, over ten years ago. My ideas have evolved quite a bit since then, and I decided that I should update what I had to say on the original post. In that post, I outlined how a lion might at least understand some human symbolic language if it were given the right exposure. This was based on the fact that some dogs do understand at least one symbolic action: the meaning of pointing. Similarly, domestic cats also understand some symbolic communications made by humans. Therefore, if cats and dogs could speak, we would definitely be able to understand them to some extent. I didn't mention it at the time, but dolphins, whales, elephants and other mammals have their own languages which, with further study, we might be able to understand. As far as I know, Wittgenstein never owned a pet.

Wittgenstein would be technically correct in the sense that all species have their individual evolutionary paths, so their priorities might be completely different from ours and unintelligible to us. However, the languages of organisms are probably all survival-related, hence it would not necessarily be difficult to decipher them. Many animals make sounds indicating the presence of dangers in their immediate environment that would be easy for us to understand through observation. Similarly, it wouldn't be hard to figure out calls for help. The fact that we have complex symbolic language is the result of our development of bipedal gait, our close cooperation with each other over thousands of years, and the changes that occurred in our brain function that became encoded in our genes and permitted us to survive as a species. I would say that Wittgenstein didn't realize that language starts as a kind of noise-making that has survival benefits, and, if you look at various noise-making species, I don't think that it is necessarily difficult to interpret a noise-making behavior if you examine it in the context in which it is made.

I also mentioned Noam Chomsky, who has said that we don't understand how language works in the human brain. In the context of AI, he thought that we could never teach AI how to think, because we don't know how we think. This was before the development of large language models, which are currently at the forefront of AI. I don't study the research in these fields, but it appears to me that, although words, grammar and usage did develop in human brains, it isn't necessary to have a human brain or human learning techniques to learn languages. In fact, it is probably likely that all of our ideas could be expressed without human brains or human language. I think that the messiness of neural development, as described by Robert Sapolsky, indicates that languages that perform better than ours could probably be developed. That is because our languages developed through the rather haphazard process of natural selection. In natural selection, what counts is not necessarily the development of the best possible system, and it all boils down to whether each successive generation survives or dies. This is why I expect AGI to be developed before long, and I see no reason why it would have to function much like the human brain. 

Wittgenstein, I now think, received far more credit than he deserved as a philosopher. Because of his personality and his initial acceptance by English academics, he never had to argue or publish his positions after he received his job at Cambridge. It sounds to me as if most of his career involved lectures with no discussion, at which his devotees simply took notes. That was certainly a dream job!

The Federal Reserve

This is a sort of unusual topic for me, but I decided to write a little about it because Donald Trump has been attacking Jerome Powell, who is the current chairman of the Federal Reserve. As an investor, I have been following the Federal Reserve for many years. In case you don't know, the Federal Reserve was set up partially to depoliticize policy decisions regarding the financial system in the U.S. and to protect it from abuse by political operatives. I think it important to understand this, especially now, when news coverage is clearly inadequate. I'm getting very tired of PBS NewsHour.

After I graduated from college in 1972, inflation gradually rose to high levels. At that time, I also think that the U.S. economy began to restructure due to foreign manufacturing competition, particularly from Japan. The Vietnam War, which was unjustified, was also costly, and a strong inflationary trend developed. Political parties tend to kick the can down the road, such that they can blame their errors on future administrations. During this process, the Johnson, Nixon and Ford administrations oversaw inflationary pressures that lasted for several years. By the time that Jimmy Carter became president in 1977, inflation was taking off. Carter appointed Paul Volcker chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1979, and he served until 1987. During Volcker's tenure, the Federal Reserve took draconian actions in which they intentionally raised interest rates in order to reduce inflation. My first house was purchased with a 13% mortgage rate in 1980. Volcker is now considered to have been one of the best chairmen. Later on, Alan Greenspan got mixed reviews as chairman, because he mishandled the dot-com bubble in 2000 and laid the groundwork for the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, by deemphasizing financial regulation before he left in 2006.

In my opinion, Jerome Powell is doing a good job as chairman, as was Janet Yellen, his predecessor, and he has generally been reducing inflation and improving employment since the pandemic, his two main mandates. The situation with Trump now is so transparent that, to a knowledgeable audience, he is simply confirming to them that he is ignorant and self-centered. Trump and his advisors want to forestall an economic slowdown, with unemployment, by introducing economic stimulus through interest rate reductions, which would cause inflation. Trump's tariff program is inflationary. So far, because the Federal Reserve is specifically designed to prevent rash policy actions promoted by politicians, and because Trump can't replace him until next year, when his term ends, we still have some protections. Trump wanted to remove Powell ahead of time, but he seems to have received enough pushback to stop for now. Even so, he continues to belittle Powell publicly, not caring that Powell is obviously more competent than he is.

I still can't predict the exact timing of the collapse of the Trump administration, but it seems to me that he has created a situation from which he will never recover. At the moment, it looks as if he will not succeed in creating any benefits for low- and middle-income voters, the Republicans will lose seats in congress, and he will generally lose his influence.

While I am still quite disappointed with how the news media has been handling the Trump phenomenon, there are now some pretty good voices out there. I particularly admire Jennifer Rubin, who currently communicates through The Contrarian. Ironically, Rubin was previously known as a conservative. What counts for me is that she has a brain that actually works and isn't a congenital money-grubber. From speaking to a couple of random Vermonters recently, I was also heartened to see that there is a simmering Trump hatred here, and probably everywhere – a positive sign indeed.

Diary

Though I'm sure that many are becoming unsettled by the recent news, at heart I still find it a little boring. To me this seems like a sequel to "When Donald Met Roy" or "Donald and Adolf: The Bromance Across Time." I've been trying to think of what the next blockbuster title might be. It could be a sequel in the "Superman" series. In this film, global warming accelerates suddenly because of the energy demands created by cryptocurrency and AI. As the world heats up, it becomes uninhabitable for humans, and Elon Musk plans to escape to Mars with his children. Elon develops a site on Mars over a period of several years and then permanently departs Earth via SpaceX. However, soon after the Musks arrive on Mars, they find that there are many others already living there in a large colony nearby that was unknown on Earth. That colony, it turns out, is inhabited by Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Sam Altman, Peter Thiel and J.D. Vance. They all live in luxurious mansions, except for J.D. Vance, who lives in the servants' quarters on the Thiel estate. Because Elon has had falling-outs with most of them, he decides to change his identity. He changes his physical appearance and voice and names himself Clark Kent. The Kents, he tells them, are relatives of Warren Buffett, and had lived on a large farm in Kansas. Over time, they all get along fairly well, but they still feel a little claustrophobic. Using AGI and robots, Elon begins his galactic seeding plan by setting up new colonies on Europa, orbiting Jupiter, and Enceladus, orbiting Saturn. Eventually, the Musks move beyond the solar system.

I am starting to think of AI as the largest potential danger emerging for mankind. This is because I've started to read Empire of AI: Dreams and Nightmares in Sam Altman's OpenAI, by Karen Hao. It is the first serious book that I've seen about the current people and culture in Silicon Valley. So far, they generally seem like wealth-maximization robots, and Sam Altman is not an improvement. It is also concerning to me that governments are not doing anything in preparation for the unemployment wave that has already started. It looks to me as if Trump is unknowingly serving as a tool for Silicon Valley. His ideas regarding trade deficits and manufacturing jobs are just plain ludicrous when you look at employment trends at the largest companies in the world. There are going to be fewer jobs, period. Nevertheless, there are some good AI people out there, and Geoffrey Hinton is recommending that people who aren't millionaires study subjects such as plumbing. I think he's right.

As for myself, I am starting to imagine that I inhabit a small, wooded country which, for security reasons, hasn't announced itself publicly. The residents are all relatively well-adjusted. The eastern phoebe eggs in the nest above the front porch have hatched, and the chicks will probably leave within a few days. They prefer Earth to Mars, so I may see them again next year. There have been no mice in the house this year, but they still live nearby. The only annoyances are that they like to store nuts under the hood of my car and take nesting materials. They like paper towels, rope, cotton and soft foam, but so far haven't done much damage. The tomatoes are doing very well this year, and, since they are protected, there have been no deer attacks. I think that I may have too many tomatoes again, though there are only three plants. Two are Fantastic F1, which I grow every year. I used to grow Sungold F1 cherry tomatoes every year because someone I knew liked them. I didn't, and this year I'm trying Artemis F1, which I think will taste much better. There was a delay in setting up my telescope, because the new mount didn't come with a power supply. That has arrived, and I should be viewing again within a few days.

The spring weather here has not been optimal. It has mostly been cold and wet. Then there was a three-day heat wave – but I still haven't used an air conditioner. The hiking trails are extremely overgrown at the moment, and there are lots of insects. The deer flies are out, and I'm leery of them because I think that I caught Lyme disease from them in 2019. It is also theoretically possible to get it from mosquitoes. I don't think that I had any ticks in 2019.

Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global

I've been reading this new book, by Laura Spinney, at a slow pace, and have finally finished it. The discussion concerns the history of the Proto-Indo-European language and how it spread beyond its place of origin. That is thought to be the steppes immediately north of the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea in what is now Ukraine and Russia, but there are other possibilities. The language was first spoken there about 6500 years ago and began to spread to other regions about 5500 years ago. The spreading was done by the Yamnaya, and, in various forms, Indo-European is now spoken by half of the world's population. The Yamnaya themselves disappeared as a distinct culture about 4500 years ago. This subject is also discussed by David Reich in Who We Are and How We Got Here, which I covered earlier. Spinney focuses on language evolution, whereas Reich focuses on our species evolution. They both rely on archaeological findings and recorded history, but Reich primarily depends on new DNA analysis techniques. Spinney occasionally refers to Reich's research. 

The Yamnaya were a nomadic people who were skilled in bronze-making and traveled in wheeled carts. They were patriarchal in social structure, and their burial mounds have been excavated. Compared to other groups at the time, they were tall. They kept horses and other animals and had a meat-based diet. They were not lactose-tolerant but ate yogurt and other fermented foods. From the data that is available now, it appears that they became the dominant culture everywhere that they went. Since there is no recorded history about them, one is left to speculate on what they did when they arrived in new areas. The places that they traveled to were generally already inhabited by farmers, and it seems that the Yamnaya soon dominated the gene pools. The locations included nearly all of Europe and parts of northern India. I don't think that there is enough evidence to say that they arrived as warlords, and it is theoretically possible that they had an advantage in disease resistance compared to the local populations. Spinney thinks that they may have behaved similarly to the Mycenaeans, as depicted in the Iliad and Odyssey. But you have to remember that the Yamnaya had been gone for about 1200 years at the time of the Trojan War. She also mentions the Vikings, and I think that is also a plausible comparison. We know the Vikings a lot better than the Mycenaeans, and both groups had Yamnaya ancestries. Even after settling in Scandinavia, Vikings invaded other regions until fairly recently. They occupied parts of England in the 900's and invaded Normandy. William the Conqueror, of Viking extraction, invaded England from Normandy in 1066. The British Isles are now filled with Viking genes. 

Of course, I like to think in evolutionary terms, and it would seem that the Yamnaya had some sort of evolutionary advantage. However, at this point I don't think it's sensible to speculate about it when there are so many possibilities, and many of them can never be studied thoroughly. Yet it is not impossible that the Yamnaya, besides being larger than others at the time, may also have been more technically proficient.

Most of this book is devoted to language developments following Proto-Indo-European. It is interesting to see how older words emerge in newer languages. However, this is a mind-bogglingly complex process, and I don't think that many people, including linguists, would enjoy untangling all of it. We're talking about language evolution over thousands of years, most of which preceded literacy. Even so, this is an interesting book, but it mainly opens a subject that seems incredibly daunting to me and may never answer some questions definitively. But it still may be interesting to the linguists and translators among you.

Why Men are Reluctant to Attack Donald Trump

As a follow-up to my last post, I thought that some explanation regarding why Donald Trump, who is clearly an incompetent and corrupt leader with a major psychiatric disorder, receives so little resistance from other males, some of whom are powerful. Their subservience to him is astounding in historical terms. As I said earlier, Richard Nixon left office voluntarily after considerably less-significant violations of the law. Trump has elevated himself to the level of one of the greatest criminals in American history, yet he still receives little public criticism. To me, as an amateur evolutionary biologist, Trump is exhibiting classic alpha male primate behavior, and, because all humans are primates, they accept his behavior instinctively without thinking about it much. There have also been social and economic conditions that have caused males to revert to their primate instincts to some extent. Over the past several decades, feminism, contraception and employment opportunities have reduced female dependence on males, and this has been a blow to male egos. Furthermore, the evolution of the economy has significantly reduced the number of available well-paying jobs for males. In addition, the pandemic caused families to spend more time together at home, and this added to male-female stresses, because, among primates, males and females tend to live separately – nuclear families are not the norm. The upshot is that males have generally undergone a reduction in social status in recent years, and, rather than attracting harems of beautiful women, they are being given the cold shoulder. Where Trump comes in, I think, is that he lives the way that many men would like to live, though they would never admit it. The absence of critical thinking in men has caused them to overlook the fact that Trump has a history of making poor decisions. A related fact, I think, is that women themselves tend to respect men less now than they used to. There is currently a popular narrative among women that they are the victims of male abuse. That may be accurate in some situations, but to me it seems as if many women are unable to determine whether that is actually the case in their situation.

Just as a brief refresher, I should recap some of Trump's offenses. From his first term, he will be remembered for wasting the time of the federal government with two impeachments, followed by lying about his political loss in 2020 and supporting an illegal attack on congress. He was also sympathetic to the scientifically unsupported anti-vax movement. In his second term, which has barely begun, he has appointed some of the most unqualified people in American history to join his administration, threatened other countries with large tariffs and staged an attempted coup in Los Angeles. He has also ignored constitutional rights in the deportation of immigrants. Each phase in the ascent of Trump's rise to power has resembled a new episode of The Emperor's New Clothes. I think that the underlying dynamic is that unhappy American males have provided enough support to Republicans that they have been willing to overlook Trump's deficiencies. Trump literally is an act, and I can't say that I've identified any examples from any time in his life where he actually said or did anything that was in the public interest. Currently, men admire him, I think, because they would love to behave foolishly, attract throngs of gold-digging women and enjoy themselves without ever taking responsibility for anything or being held accountable. This aspect of the Trump phenomenon can be explained as male worship of male primate behavior. Trump has also attracted some opportunistic women, but their numbers are considerably lower.

The question becomes "Why do otherwise intelligent men support Trump?" This is a little more difficult to answer. The Republican politicians among them feel compelled to protect their political careers: this is a purely selfish motive. The tech billionaires also seem to be greedy, and supporting Trump is a lower risk to them than opposing him. In the case of some of them, Elon Musk for example, he has his own set of psychiatric problems and probably overestimated the probability of benefitting from an alliance with Trump. Trump's life history consists primarily of benefitting at someone else's expense.

My main view of this situation hasn't changed. It isn't a question of whether Trump will succeed in the long-term. It is demonstrably impossible for him to succeed, because none of his policies are well-thought-out, and most of his appointees are unqualified. At the moment, Trump and his Republican allies are attempting to delay the inevitable economic and social disaster that is brewing until after he leaves office.

Why Greater Awareness is Necessary in the U.S.

While there is an abundance of information available now for most people to study topics of interest to them, one of my chief sources of cognitive dissonance these days is that politicians, corporations and the news media have increasingly channeled public discussion into narrow channels that collectively tend to block out conceptually challenging topics. Although I am completely sick of thinking about Donald Trump, viewing images of him, hearing him speak, and having to read and see inadequate discussions about him, the Trump phenomenon in public life is the best example of what is wrong in the U.S at this moment. I've already written about how the internet and social media have stirred up a lot of confusion, but I think that, additionally, it is necessary to discuss in detail some of Trump's specific shortcomings. What I find unsettling is that Trump is never confronted directly about his enormous deficiencies and weaknesses as a person, which are particularly important now that he is the de facto most powerful person in the world.

First, it has to be said that Trump is deeply ignorant. He doesn't read, and most of his ideas are ones that he adopted by habituation while he was growing up. In those days, women and minorities did not have equal rights, gay people were generally in the closet, there was little evidence of impending global warming, and businessmen in New York City often operated in a cutthroat manner. Trump displayed dishonesty at an early age by hiring a person to take the SAT for him. Most of Trump's "ideas" are longstanding formulations that he has been using to get his way throughout his life. As far as I've been able to determine, what little curiosity he has tends to focus on ways to manipulate people to meet his objectives. This seems to be the same pattern followed by his father and his father's father. Some of his grandfather's wealth came from prostitution, and this may have influenced Trump's attitude toward women.

During his second term as president, it is easier to identify his thinking processes than it was during his first term. In the first term he was battling his own appointees and faced with impeachment twice, and the pandemic added to the confusion. In his second term, he has concentrated on consolidating his power and is consciously copying Viktor Orbán of Hungary. It is already apparent that he has no understanding of world economics, and it seems that his advisors are generally unwilling to take the risk of enlightening him if they know better. Trump's primary transactional methodology seems to be to inflict pain of one kind or another and then switch plans if the first one doesn't achieve the desired results. I think that this is one of the best examples of how deeply ignorant Trump really is. It is obvious that he has no understanding of global economics, and he is simply operating on his old business model from his real estate background, which also failed. When he first rolled out his tariff plan, he had not anticipated the extent to which it would roil world financial markets, and he was essentially forced to cancel it immediately. I also find it instructive to examine him as an arbiter of conflict resolution between world leaders. He has already given up on creating a Ukraine-Russia resolution, and he even seems to have encouraged Benjamin Netanyahu to escalate the genocide in Gaza. In both instances, since there was nothing in it for him, he had a hard time staying focused. Following his instincts, he prefers to spend his time soliciting bribes from Arab states and bilking people with new cryptocurrency schemes. Traditionally, Trump and his family have been grifters, and that is still their default model.

The other main deficiencies in Trump, I think, are psychiatric in nature. It seems that, within a political context, bringing up psychiatric issues is a taboo. There is currently a slight drift toward an easing, at least with respect to senility, but technically that isn't a psychiatric issue. Age was brought up for Ronald Reagan in his second term, so there is a historical precedent. A lot has already been written about Trump's psychiatric state, even by a niece and nephew. More significantly, "200 mental health professionals" warned "that Donald Trump is dangerous because of 'his symptoms of severe, untreatable personality disorder – malignant narcissism.'" Although psychiatry does not get much attention in America, I think that this description of Trump is reasonably accurate. I think that anyone who has paid attention to him for several years can pick this up easily, without much convincing. At this point, Trump's psychological makeup is far more dangerous than Joe Biden's senility would have been if he had been reelected. I have yet to see any full-scale discussion of this problem in the news media. 

What can readily be observed now is that Trump has been unable to resolve any significant issues within his purview, ranging from the federal budget deficit to appropriate taxation to international conflicts. Rather, Trump is simply continuing his cycle of bullying, intimidation and empty proposals. It is readily apparent that, not only is he distracting from the resolution of issues that are of public importance, but that he may actually just prefer to punish people unfairly for his personal enjoyment. To him, minorities, immigrants, women and non-binary people are fair game. Also, because he was an academic dunce, he seems to derive a sadistic pleasure from punishing Ivy League universities. 

I am getting tired of hearing the word "democracy" being used as a panacea for issues such as the Trump phenomenon. Since Trump was duly elected in an accepted democratic process, I think that the focus should shift toward greater public awareness. We should now be barraged with news, videos, podcasts and articles regarding the dangers of the Trump presidency. This may be absent because we are living in an increasingly corporate-controlled country, where the calculated costs of challenging Trump are often outweighing the benefits.

Diary

My new telescope mount has arrived, and I will be assembling it shortly. It is of much higher quality than my previous mount and should last for the rest of my life. I am only going to be using it casually, as I have already spent several years stargazing.

Of course, I am still reluctantly following the political news. I think that, in less than five months, the momentum against Trump has already shifted significantly. In his second term, with all of the guardrails removed, he has been free to show just how incompetent he is. I think that all he's managed to do so far is slow global economic growth and damage the federal government. He seems to want to tear up the U.S. constitution, but I don't think he's succeeding at all. As the French would say, he is a "dwarf on stilts." At the moment, I don't think he's far from alienating just the American public, but the billionaires and the Republican Party. He is proving to be a stupid fat guy on weight-loss medication. I think that he is on a trajectory in which he could eventually be impeached again and removed from office.

Some readers may have been surprised to see that my last post was a quotation from the Bible. This is not to say that I've suddenly had an improbable religious conversion, but that the Bible is a text like any other and can be read for a variety of reasons. If Jesus Christ was an actual historical figure, you don't have to look at him ideologically. I see him as a person of his time who had strong opinions and voiced them publicly at his own peril. In modern terms, the Parable of the Blind can be seen as a critique of Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin or Benjamin Netanyahu. They are not unlike modern-day Pharisees. Unfortunately, Christ's prophecy in his case didn't exactly pan out, because he was executed, and they weren't, but, in principle, he was probably right.

The readership of this blog has been expanding over the last few years. From 2014 to 2020 I was getting only about 100-200 pageviews per month. Starting with the pandemic, pageviews have continuously increased. I think that some of my most popular posts must have attracted web crawlers that have gradually indexed the entire blog. Now people are reading very old posts that were hardly ever read. The upshot is that the number of pageviews per month is currently approaching 12,000, and I'm getting more comments. But I don't think that anything on the blog is about to "go viral," so I'm not very concerned. Since I have no ads and don't charge any fees, I'm not about to become wealthy.

I did end up spending a couple of hours cleaning up the pollen on the back porch. The previous owner kept the screens covered with thick plastic year-round, and she didn't use the porch much. I think that earlier, when her mother lived in the house, they had parties and played cards there. There was a refrigerator. When I moved in, it looked a bit like a museum. When her daughter moved in in about the year 2000, she was divorced, and her children had already grown up. I think that she had a boyfriend for a few years, but he never lived in this house and died long ago. She and her mother were Italians who used to live on Long Island.

Because the back porch wasn't used much, the eastern phoebes got into the habit of building their nests above it. When I moved in in 2023, they were there. In 2024 they built a nest there and laid eggs in it but abandoned the nest before they hatched. Since I was going in and out of the back door frequently, because the tomatoes were planted nearby, the phoebes must have become scared. This year, they attempted for several days to build a nest above the front porch, but they couldn't attach it to the wall properly, and their building materials kept falling off. I helped them out by installing a small wooden ledge where they had been trying to build the nest, and they immediately built a nest on it. There is currently a female phoebe in the nest incubating her eggs. The same birds usually return to the same location each year. Eastern phoebes are a good species to have here, since there are lots of insects, and they are voracious insect-eaters.

The spring turned out to be colder and rainier than usual, but there haven't been any freezes, and my tomatoes have been planted and are doing well. The weather has just changed to warm and sunny. I think that living in the woods has been good for my health. I haven't been sick at all, and my previous allergies have disappeared.

I've been reading a new book on the history of Indo-European languages, which I am finding quite interesting, and will be commenting on it soon.

Quote of the Day

And he called the multi-

tude, and said unto them, Hear,

and understand:

Not that which goeth into

the mouth defileth a man; but

that which cometh out of the

mouth, this defileth a man.

Then came his disciples,

and said unto him, Knowest

thou that the Pharisees were

offended, after they heard this

saying?

But he answered and said,

Every plant, which my hea-

venly Father hath not planted,

shall be rooted up.

Let them alone: they be

blind leaders of the blind. And

if the blind lead the blind, both 

shall fall into the ditch.

—Matthew 15:10-14

Note: this is the biblical text upon which the painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder at the top of this blog is based.

Corruption in America: A Fifty-Ring Circus

I've been reading this new book by Oguzhan Dincer and Michael Johnston. At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd comment on it, and I decided that it is somewhat interesting and provides new ideas that describe some of the behavior in the U.S. While, over long periods of time, various sociological changes occur here, the news media never seems to capture them adequately, and this is particularly true now, when news has become, in Jennifer Rubin's word, "stenography." This book is quite academic and includes definitions, data and statistical analysis, but it still provides a relevant look at current American culture.

Before starting, I should say that, in my view, sociological analysis isn't valued enough in the U.S. Especially in recent years, when you hear "The people have spoken," you have to brace yourself for the possibility that Donald Trump has won an election. For me, in an ideal world, the U.S. government would be a large sociology department, which would cover economics, law, social welfare, equality and national defense. Clearly, the American public isn't sophisticated enough to vote rationally in an environment where, not only are they barraged with misinformation and disinformation, but the entire political edifice that began in 1776 has essentially become obsolete. My hope is that, in a few years, government will become partially or fully automated, with AI and robots performing most tasks: someday, children may no longer have to be frightened by the nightmarish images of Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

Corruption in America doesn't seem to have been a major topic in recent years. That is probably because corruption is considerably more conspicuous in some other countries than it is here. However, it has always existed everywhere, and it is of some value to examine it locally. Dincer and Johnston break down corruption into two main types: legal and illegal. While illegal corruption is subject to criminal penalties, much actual corruption is legally permitted. This is expressed well in a quotation from George Washington Plunkitt, a New York State Senator of Tammany Hall:

I seen my opportunities and I took 'em. Just let me explain by examples. My party's in power in the city, and it's goin' to undertake a lot of public improvements. Well, I'm tipped off, say that they're going to lay out a new park at a certain place. I see my opportunity and I take it. I go to that place and I buy up all the land I can in the neighborhood. Then the board of this or that makes its plan public, and there is a rush to get my land, which nobody cared particular for before. Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good price and make a profit on my investment and foresight? Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft.

Various topics come up in the book. The authors think that corruption played a role during the COVID pandemic. Specifically, some groups were more responsive to calls for social distancing and vaccination than others. Traditional television viewers were more compliant than social media viewers.

Generally, what I liked the best was the mappings of legal and illegal corruption and political subcultures by state. These maps themselves don't provide any solutions to current domestic disagreements, but they do offer glimpses into somewhat intractable regional differences. Many of the most corrupt states, Louisiana and Kentucky, for example, are in the South. Many of the least corrupt states, Vermont, Washington and Wyoming, for example, are in the North. Political subcultures are classified as moralistic, individualistic and traditional, or a combination of two of these. Most of the moralistic states are in the North, and most of the traditional states are in the South. The individualistic states are more evenly spread out. From glancing at this map, I would guess that the individualistic states tend to be more business-friendly. It also looks to me as if the traditional + individualistic states are generally more corrupt than other states. That also includes Louisiana and Kentucky. 

For my preferences, the exclusively moralistic states may be the most livable in terms of their social environments. But you would also have to examine other regional characteristics. The full moralistic list includes Oregon, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Vermont and Maine. It is probably significant that even though the Bible Belt is in the South, the moralistic belt is in the North. This is reminiscent of the antislavery movement originating in the North. I also think that the business-friendly states in the South may be the most polluted and the most vulnerable to climate change.

AI Update

On and off, I've been writing informally about AI here ever since I started this blog. There have been many advances recently, and, though I'm hardly an expert in this field, I think that a new picture is emerging, and this, in conjunction with some of my other observations, merits further discussion. Originally, I was thinking about Ray Kurzweil's ideas on AGI, and, later, I read Luke Dormehl, Max Tegmark and Stuart Russell. With the newer AI services now available, there seem to be actual social changes emerging for the first time. Because of my readings in biology and human evolution, I tend to view AI in that context.

When I observe people, I am now in the habit of examining their evolutionary past, which provides a framework for understanding their operating ideas. Generally, people believe that they are rational, and democratic governments are also based on that idea. The books that I've read by E.O. Wilson, Vinod Goel, Richard Thaler, Robert Plomin, Robert Sapolsky and Daniel Kahneman have convinced me that, to a significant degree, humans are biological automatons, and, rather than being the rational agents that some economists apparently still think we are, we are the product of billions of years of evolution, and our current behavior is governed primarily by our evolutionary past. The problem is that our current environment bears little resemblance to that of our early human ancestors, who lived seventy thousand years ago. While we can collectively adapt to many of the current changes in our environment, we lack the capacity to change our basic human nature, which means to me that some of our behaviors are always going to be roughly equivalent to those of chimpanzees and bonobos. Chimpanzees and bonobos lack our verbal and conceptual abilities, but otherwise they're not much different from us socially.

As Jennifer Rubin says in my recent post, corporate news reporting has come to resemble stenography. I also notice this on PBS NewsHour. There, some of the reporters manage to squeeze in some needed critiques of the political actions that are occurring now. I'm not sure that Amy Goodman is doing much better on Democracy Now. At the moment, PBS NewsHour and Democracy Now have slightly improved their reporting on Donald Trump, because it is readily apparent that he is incompetent in both economic policy and foreign affairs, and his general corruption is impossible to conceal. Even as he attempts to emulate the leading oligarchs, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Benjamin Netanyahu are running circles around him. Domestically, his illegal empowerment of Elon Musk could result in the earth becoming the galactic headquarters for Musk's personal reproductive program. Women beware! Participation may not be optional. For me, this situation has revived my ideas about how AI could be used to counter this foolishness. While there are always risks associated with the general release of AI tools, it is easy to imagine the evolution of its use to answer complex questions in formats similar to Google searches. Originally, I thought of this as a way to help people make informed voting decisions. That still applies. Fifty years ago, Americans would have been astounded to learn that in 2024 the worst president in American history would be reelected for a second term. They couldn't believe their eyes if they saw Donald Trump being glorified on Fox News or his pompous performances with his lackeys at the White House.

Anyway, I think that we're almost at a point where individuals could make AI queries such as "Given my current situation and personal goals, which candidate for president is more likely to meet my needs." Theoretically, this could benefit the entire world by reducing future chances of a second term for foolish buffoons.

A newer aspect of AI has been coming up recently regarding how well humans actually think in comparison to various potential AI configurations. It appears to me that we are already reaching our cognitive limits in how well we can understand both the structure of the universe and the subtleties in the functioning of organisms. I found this video on Gödel's incompleteness theorems rather amusing in that it shows a typical group of pundits demonstrating their ignorance on the topic. In this instance, the pundits generally don't know what they're talking about even though they seem to have the appropriate credentials. Sociologically, they are hardly any different from a group of pundits on Fox & Friends. Similarly, Sabine Hossenfelder suggests that the universe may be beyond our comprehension, and Robert Sapolsky suggests that biological processes may occur in a manner that we can barely comprehend. It is becoming apparent that we need all the help that we can get from AI if it ever lives up to its potential. That help extends far beyond the creation of a new billionaire or trillionaire class.

I still think that the greatest risk associated with AI is that something resembling AGI could fall into the wrong hands. That would roughly be the equivalent of a red button that activates a nuclear war falling into the hands of a chimpanzee.

Diary

It finally looks as if mud season is about to wind down. When I lived in Middlebury, my default walks were on roads, so I wasn't usually affected by mud season. Since moving to Brandon, I rarely walk on roads, and this spring is more typical than last spring. Last year at this time there had been an unusually mild winter with little snow, and mud season turned out to be short. This year there was more snow, and also more rain, and most of the trails have been very soggy. As of today, Otter Creek is in flood stage, meaning that my current favorite trail, the Cadwell Trail, will be submerged in water in places and completely impassable without a boat. However, the weather forecasts are showing warmer weather and less rain starting tomorrow. Historically, mud season usually ends by Memorial Day. 

My indoor tomatoes are getting large and need to be planted outdoors soon. The weather so far has been too cold to leave them outside for hardening, but, starting tomorrow, it should be warm enough. I may be able to plant them within a week. The deer have already been nibbling in the garden, but the tomatoes will be protected. As far as flowers go, the forsythias and daffodils have already faded, and the pink rhododendrons are blooming. There are also small yellow and pink flowers blooming by the driveway. The pink and white fruit trees are about to bloom. The hummingbirds returned early this year and are already going through the nectar. They also like the pink rhododendrons, and I can watch them from my desk. The rhododendrons are also attracting lots of bumblebees now. I've begun to mow the lawn, and I've noticed a couple of different salamanders, which, at this time of year, are seeking vernal pools.

In other news, I've been making minor cosmetic changes inside the house that make it more aesthetically appealing without costing much. This is actually the most luxurious living situation that I've ever had: I have more space than ever, pleasant views out of every window, and complete privacy. I'm also purchasing a new telescope mount and will set it up when it delivers. The brand is Losmandy, which has a good reputation for quality, and it's also one of the cottage industry types of businesses that I prefer. It's located in Burbank, California and also makes specialized equipment for the film industry. Although the sky here is somewhat blocked by trees, I have a good overhead view and a better view to the northwest than I had in Middlebury.

I'm really tired of having to think about Donald Trump. Besides being generally inept and dishonest, he doesn't even have a consistent set of policy ideas. His tariff plan was completely half-baked, and he has been forced to modify it continuously since its introduction. He tends to float ideas, and when they don't work he does complete reversals without explanation. Last week, when his advisors told him that current revenues wouldn't be sufficient to fund the government, he decided to float the idea of an increase in taxes on the rich. This has been a taboo in the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan, and he was immediately rebuffed by Grover Norquist, the Republican anti-tax nihilist. At this point, even a child could notice that intellectual underpinnings to Trump's policy views are generally nonexistent. It would be hard not to notice that very little thought goes into his decisions. It would appear that Trump's operating model for the presidency is a combination of The Apprentice and Fox News. On multiple levels, he demonstrates no awareness that the job entails serious responsibilities. He proceeds as if he is mainly in charge of the casting for a sitcom: Scott Bessent looks like a responsible banker, Pete Hegseth looks like a military firebrand, etc. His role is identical to his role on The Apprentice: he hires and fires and makes all of the major decisions. Note to Trump: on sitcoms, there are no real-world consequences.

I also have complaints about some of the logic behind the criticism of Trump. In this instance, while it is fair to say that Trump himself, with his oligarchic tendencies, is anti-democratic, one must also reckon with the fact that Trump won fairly in a democratic process. This means that, besides the Trump problem, the democratic process being used doesn't actually work. This ultimately means that voters may vote against their own best interests because of their ignorance. Arguably, poor voting decisions may be rectified over time, but, even then, this is not an efficient process.

I've been reading a new book on corruption in America and may or may not comment on it at a later date.

Essay of the Day

Some excellent writing by Jennifer Rubin.

Diary

Spring is really getting started here, and the plants are taking off. I've decided to vacuum the back porch once a year after the pollen, because it turns yellow – that should occur soon. There aren't many insects at the moment. This is the best time of year here to be outside. The wildlife is active now, and, besides the birds, I've seen a beaver, a red salamander and a fox. Emily Dickinson would love Furnace Brook. My yard is in pretty good shape. Last year, there was a little more work to do because the previous owner hadn't done much before departing in 2023. At present it is fairly low-maintenance. The birds are all back, but there don't seem to be any living on the house right now. My tomatoes are doing well inside and I will be planting them outside whenever the temperatures look reliably warm. This year I will be growing only three plants, and will protect them from deer for the entire season. There is a deer trail passing through the rear of the yard, and, when the plants are growing, they come over to check them out. Last year, besides damaging the tomatoes, they feasted on hostas. My tomato bed is very easy to maintain, and this year the soil contains far more worms than it did last year, probably because of the soil improvements that I made.

Since the beginning of April I've been making an attempt to keep my investments up with market trends. Sometimes I was 70% stocks, 30% bonds; sometimes I was 40% stocks, 30% gold, 30% bonds, and now I'm 70% money market, 30% bonds. My ratios of American and foreign stocks have also vacillated. It's pretty obvious at this point that Trump doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing, and he has one of the weakest cabinets since the Great Depression. I won't make any changes until there is more clarity regarding economic policy.

It's still too early to say with certainty how politics will proceed in the U.S., but it generally seems to me that Trump has dug himself into such a deep hole that he is nearing the end of his political career, and that this is going to end badly for him. Because of his narcissism, he tends to misattribute his success to special talents that he doesn't actually possess. It was a fluke that he was reelected: the Democratic Party was in disarray, and ignorant voters mistakenly believed that he had sent them stimulus checks during the pandemic. This time, his actions are causing what could be the early stages of stagflation: the exact opposite of what his voters sought. He is sliding in the polls, and he probably lacks the resources to reverse that trend. Furthermore, the billionaires seem to be tiring of him: he is costing them money. He is nearing a point where, because of his growing unpopularity among ordinary Republicans, he won't be able to control Congress. Similarly, there is enough integrity within the Supreme Court to act against him when he violates the Constitution. I don't think that he's in a position to launch a military coup with the loyal Pete Hegseth – which is probably something that has already crossed his mind.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science VI

I finally finished the book. Darwin died in 1882 at the age of 73 and Dickinson died in 1886 at the age of 55. I think that Bergland succeeds in evoking the period, which, as she points out, was quite different from the present. I was often reminded of A.S. Byatt's novella Morpho Eugenia and her novel Possession, though this book doesn't take such liberties with history.

While I enjoy Bergland's style of writing, her focus seems to be mainly on literary history, so she doesn't devote much space to the psychological makeups of the people discussed. Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, also never married, though, apparently, she was more sociable than Emily. Did their mother tell them that sex was awful and childbirth even worse? Bergland is also a complete blank on economic history, which, in my experience, played a significant role the evolution of the arts in England. In Darwin's case, his family married into the Wedgwood family, which had become wealthy from the manufacture and sale of china and other products. If Darwin had been from a poor family, you would never have heard of him. I think that Janet Browne makes that clear in her biography. Elizabeth Barrett Browning's family on both sides became wealthy from slave labor in Jamaica. William Morris's father was a wealthy English financier. I was also surprised to learn recently that Percy Bysshe Shelley's grandfather, Sir Bysshe Shelley, was born in Newark, New Jersey and became rich partly from marrying wealthy women. As I've written, money and the arts often go hand in hand.

Dickinson had a portrait of George Eliot by her desk, which almost automatically makes me a member of the Emily Dickinson fan club. I'm not as enthusiastic about Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose portrait was also there. I am still feeling sorry for Dickinson, because she didn't get the kind of recognition that she deserved during her life. She was self-conscious about her appearance and had only one know daguerreotype made (from school?). She actually had red hair. For many years it seemed that she was seeking a "Master" who would help guide her through her work and publication. Apparently, the best that she could come up with was Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who may have aided her in some ways, but does not seem to have had any sophistication in poetry. To me, he sounds like an active person with many interests, including abolitionism and women's rights. Somehow he took an interest in Darwin and visited him at his house, though I'm not clear what the purpose of that was. Higginson may have been significant to Dickinson, because they began corresponding in the same year that she wrote "I died for Beauty." Bergland parses that poem, which is one of my favorites. I think that Dickinson identifies with Beauty, and her fellow corpse, possibly Higginson, identifies with Truth. Truth says that Truth and Beauty are "Brethren," but Beauty neither agrees nor disagrees. My impression is that Dickinson was less interested in science than Bergland suggests. The enjoyment of flowers seems to be intoxicating to women, and I think that those feelings underlie her reaction to nature. Darwin may have had similar feelings, but, if he did, he was more interested in figuring out how organisms work. That pragmatic quality seems to be absent in Dickinson.

On the whole, my take on Dickinson and Darwin is slightly different from Bergland's. She seems to make Dickinson out to be interested in magic, but I don't see any clear evidence of that. To me, Dickinson is interested in the harmony of nature and the relatedness of organisms, which, for me, can evoke a sense of awe and mystery that does not normally intrude on ordinary life. It is possible that Dickinson did think in terms of "magic," but that isn't exactly how I interpret her poems. I am in closer agreement with Bergland on Darwin, though in that case I find her a little tendentious. Possibly she's been reading too much A.S. Byatt. My impression of Darwin is that he wasn't very literary at all but, from years of living with his wife, Emma, decided that he ought to be more literary. While, at times, he must have felt in awe of nature, it would be inaccurate to describe him as remotely interested in magic. As Bergland herself points out, Darwin was a total skeptic regarding the séance that he attended. He probably felt socially obliged to attend, and that was the only reason why he went.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science V

I am gradually approaching the end of this book and should finish it by my next post. It is literally putting me to sleep on some days. Though I think that the main thesis is flawed, it is still an academic exercise that can be amusing and informative at times. Dickinson seems to me to have been quite lonely and in search of literary friends. In 1862, when she was 31, she began a correspondence with Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who published articles in Atlantic Monthly. He didn't consider her poems publishable initially. The Civil War was under way then, and, later that year, Higginson enlisted. Her brother, Austin, paid someone else to serve for him. In any case, the war disrupted many people's lives.

When I finish the book, I'll make some final comments. For now, I'll just make some general criticisms. My greatest annoyance is probably that Bergland assumes, without providing any evidence, that Dickinson read On the Origin of Species, absorbed its content, and incorporated those ideas into her poems. I read her poems more psychologically: as a lonely person who spent a lot of time outdoors, she tended to anthropomorphize animals. Frogs are courting her like men. A snake is a "fellow." I like to compare her to my other favorite poet, Denise Levertov. In her poem, "Living," Levertov uses a description of a red salamander to evoke a rather mystical feeling about life: Charles Darwin is nowhere in sight. 

More broadly, I think that, to some extent, Dickinson can be viewed in terms of religious history. In England, Henry VIII kicked out the Roman Catholic Church in the mid-sixteenth century. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Calvinists fled the Roman Catholic Church in France and moved to England and America (Henry David Thoreau's family were Huguenots). As I've said, much of New England resembled a Congregational theocracy up until the late nineteenth century. Emily Dickinson herself rebelled against that church. Though I don't think that Bergland is wrong about the intellectual climate in Massachusetts during Dickinson's life, she seems to be placing more weight on Darwin's influence than seems appropriate. She is probably more accurate with respect to how a scientific education may generally have supported Dickinson's theological rebellion.

Another area where I think that Bergland could have done a better job would be in showing how marginalized Dickinson was by her family and how the scope of her life experience was limited from cradle to grave. She had so little to do for much of her life that she went outdoors and identified with blades of grass. If you compare her to Denise Levertov, she barely lived. Levertov was a nurse during World War II, had an abortion, moved to America, established a career as a poet, had a son, protested the Vietnam War, supported her family, and even supported her ex-husband and his second wife after their divorce. I don't think that poor Emily ever even went on a date! It is possible that Dickinson had some psychological conditions that inhibited the progress of her life, but I don't know of any other than shyness, and Bergland has nothing to say on that front.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science IV

When Dickinson returned to Amherst in 1848 at the age of seventeen, she gradually settled into what was to become her adult life. In 1851, there was a spectacular display of the aurora borealis that awed the entire town. At the time, Emily and her friends speculated on mysterious natural forces. They thought that telepathy, as described in Jane Eyre, could be some sort of electrical phenomenon. By 1855, the fortunes of her father, Edward, had improved. He was able to buy back the Dickinson Homestead, and the family returned to it. At that time, her older brother, Austin, was away from home. He eventually became a lawyer and worked at his father's law firm in Amherst. Thereafter, Emily, her mother, father and younger sister, Lavinia, lived at the Homestead. Austin later moved to a house next door. Her mother became ill after the move, and Emily disliked doing the housework.

One of Dickinson's poetic inspirations was Elizabeth Barrett Browning, particularly Aurora Leigh. She also subscribed to Atlantic Monthly, where in 1860 she would have read Asa Gray's review of On the Origin of Species, which was the first in the U.S. So far in the book, Bergland is emphasizing the theory of evolution as a confirmation of the relatedness of organisms, which accords with Dickinson's view in her poems. However, Bergland seems to be downplaying the actual process of natural selection, which can be quite grim. On the other hand, Bergland does a good job explaining how neither Darwin nor Dickinson were anthropocentric in their views of nature. Neither of them seem to have adopted the rigid, ideological tree that I mentioned before, which presents a developmental hierarchy with Homo sapiens at the top.

Even so, I think that Bergland is stretching things a little by emphasizing the similarities between Dickinson and Darwin. Dickinson's poems tend to interweave elements of the personal with elements of the natural world and the mystical. Darwin's work is specifically scientific and attempts to develop biological theories from the observations that he made. Bergland dutifully reports that it was Darwin who first discovered carnivorous plants, and that he spent years studying them. For all of her enjoyment of plants and natural phenomena, Dickinson's projects had little to do with scientific knowledge. Darwin's projects involved more than scientific discovery in the sense that he carefully calculated how to present his ideas in an environment in which he knew that some of his colleagues would be hostile because of their religious implications – he did in fact lose several friends. However, Darwin had a soft side, and at times he seems to have been almost paralyzed by the enormity of his findings. To this day, I don't think that many people can face them straight on.

It may not be Bergland's fault, because there doesn't seem to be much information available, but so far in the book I haven't developed much of a sense of how people who knew Dickinson perceived her. Her family life seems to have been satisfactory, though it was clearly patriarchal. Obviously, Emily was extremely introverted, and her mother and Lavinia may also have been. Emily developed a close friendship with Susan Gilbert, who read some of her poems and offered advice. But, after, Susan married her brother and lived next door, the relationship seemed to decline. Austin and Susan had large parties, which Emily avoided. There is also speculation in this book and elsewhere about Emily's sexuality. There don't seem to be clear answers, though several of her poems seem to be of a sexual nature.

I should finish this book within two more posts. Although it is entertaining to see Dickinson within the context of scientific progress during the nineteenth century, I prefer to see her as a talented artist who developed her craft in privacy and to very high standards. To some extent, this makes her immediate social environment, which seems a little insipid, of somewhat lesser importance than Bergland suggests. Dickinson seems to me a lot more like Vivian Maier, who developed very high proficiency as a street photographer completely in private, than Charles Darwin, who had few discernible artistic tendencies.

Natural Magic: Emily Dickinson, Charles Darwin, and the Dawn of Modern Science III

I've reached the halfway point in the book and am enjoying it, but am mainly reading it in bed at night for a few minutes at a time. Not much space is devoted to Darwin's voyage on HMS Beagle, which was a major transformative experience in his life. Through the captain, Robert FitzRoy, and his reading of Charles Lyell on the voyage, he changed his focus from biology to geology. When he returned to England, Darwin became a close friend of Lyell, who helped him launch his career – as a geologist. Bergland does describe Charles's brother, Erasmus, a little and suggests that he may have been gay. Erasmus was a close friend of Harriet Martineau, the most prominent female intellectual in England at the time, and Bergland notes that Charles also knew her and spoke to her. Darwin himself hardly ever mentioned Martineau, and I think the same occurred with George Eliot. It is a little difficult to sort out Darwin's attitude toward women: on the one hand, one might say that he was a complete sexist who thought that the ideas of women had no scientific importance, but, on the other hand, especially for an introvert, he was extremely socially aware and didn't want to make public statements that linked him to specific women who were not members of his family.

Following the voyage, Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, after a completely lackluster courtship, during which she didn't think that he was interested in her. Bergland doesn't mention that he had a potential love interest before the voyage that had evaporated. While Janet Browne isn't particularly sanguine about the marriage, Bergland thinks that it worked very well. As a couple, they had identical social backgrounds, so they were operating on the same model. They each knew their predefined roles and stuck to them. I found this interesting, because it may be an example of a pre-feminism marriage that worked well for both the husband and the wife. Their personality differences seemed to complement each other. While he was highly introverted and disliked most social events and public speaking, she was highly extroverted and socialized a lot. With frequent visits from family members and several children of her own, Emma's social needs seem to have been satisfied. Of course, it helped that they were rich and had several servants. I should also note that, in those days, before radio, films, TV, computers, smartphones and social media, married couples often read books out loud together for entertainment, and this probably added a stability to their relationships. Darwin may have been slightly dismissive of women as thinkers, and Emma thought that he was a hypochondriac – though he may have picked up some very unhealthy microbes on his voyage. They both enjoyed their children a lot, and Darwin liked to compare them to orangutans. I doubt that Emma would ever have wanted to be a business executive or a professional athlete. Bergland makes a strained attempt to show a connection between Darwin and Amherst by saying that Harriet Martineau met the geologist, Edward Hitchcock, in Amherst, and Charles Lyell and Darwin corresponded with him.

The details of Dickinson's development are sparse compared to those of Darwin. Like her mother, also named Emily, she was a very good student across all subjects. However, as an adult, her mother spent more time on housework than on reading. Her father, Edward, tried to control which novels his children read, and the household doesn't seem to have been particularly open to new ideas or perspectives. After finishing at Amherst Academy, Emily studied for a year at Mount Holyoke, which was then called Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, about ten miles from Amherst. Though the word "seminary" at the time did not imply any religious training, the students were ranked according to their religious standing. The highest rank consisted of members of the orthodox Congregationalist Church. The next rank consisted of those who aspired to become members, and the bottom rank consisted of those who had "no hope" of joining the church: they were called "impenitents." Dickinson became an "impenitent," it seems, based on whatever she said, after careful consideration of her religious views at the time. She stayed at Mount Holyoke for only a year. It isn't entirely clear to me why she left. Her academic performance had been good. Apparently, besides disliking the religious pressure, she felt herself to be on par with the faculty, which, in those days, consisted of people with no college training. She gradually stopped going to church, though the rest of her family continued to go. This is not to say that she wasn't religious: it is evident in many of her poems that she had strong religious sentiments, but that she didn't want to submit to religious orthodoxy simply to conform with those around her. You might say that she wanted to divine the divine on her own.