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.