Diary

We seem to be having a slightly cooler than usual fall this year. September was almost like previous Octobers, and the temperature was in the thirties this morning. The leaves also seem to be peaking a little earlier than usual. Of the two bats that sleep on the house, I think that the one in the crack was an Indiana bat, which is gray; it has departed for the winter. The other bat, in the bat house, seems to be a little brown bat; it's still in the bat house today. I'm hoping that I'll build up a larger colony next year. I haven't seen any eastern phoebes for a few days, and they may already have departed. The insect population in the yard this year was different from usual, and although the eastern phoebes and bats may have reduced the insect population, the weather may also have had a significant effect. Cool, rainy weather may reduce the house fly and fruit fly populations. Usually, by August, there are fruit flies in the kitchen looking for food. I haven't seen any this year, and instead have a few fungus gnats, which don't cause much of a problem. By October, there are usually lots of house flies trying to get into the house, and I've only seen one so far. Climate change may be influencing some of these phenomena.

As I've said before, the stargazing conditions haven't been good recently. This may be because there are more particles in the air from fires and other sources. Apparently, LED's also have a brightening effect. Similarly, the large number of satellites in orbit reflect light back to earth. When I started stargazing in 2013, there were usually several good nights per year. In about the last five years, I haven't seen any. Probably viewing conditions have even declined at higher altitudes in arid regions.

On a more positive note, I still have a good supply of tomatoes. By this time of year, I've usually eaten so many of them that I start to get tired of them. I've found that I automatically rotate away from any food once I eat a lot of it. For example, since I hardly ever ate bacon for several years, I developed a craving for it and then began eating it often. Now I'm tired of it and have rotated to other foods. Something similar occurred with eggs, and I hardly eat them now. I think that I may be adapted to seasonal foods, since many of my ancestors lived in northern regions. They weren't eating a Mediterranean diet in Scotland or northern Germany.

AI currently seems to be inching out climate change as the panic of the day. Of course, humans being humans, many haven't even started to panic about climate change yet. Some of them still think that retiring to Florida is great idea. Longer term, it now looks to me as if AI may have a more significant influence on human lives. With AI that lives up to its potential, if you exclude the possibility of its control by evil technocrats or a rogue AI that is not aligned with human values, we may end up in a good situation, but one which could still cause a huge cognitive strain on most people. True superintelligence would theoretically operate at a level well beyond human cognition, and effectively be God. In the best possible scenario, I don't think that humans would be capable of competing with superintelligence, and it would become the effective Zookeeper for humanity – a concept that I brought up several years ago. It would maintain the biosphere for our benefit and prevent us from disrupting order. Possibly it would create a variety of environments and permit people to choose ones that they prefer. Regarding human evolution, I think it might end there, because any significant changes that we made to ourselves might only convert us into automatons. You probably can't exponentially increase your brainpower without becoming robotic. For the most part, many of the things that we enjoy: competition, religion, group affiliation, friendships, food, nature, etc., may be considered stupid primate fetishes by superintelligence. Another possible explanation for not hearing from advanced civilizations may be that they all go dark as far as the rest of the universe is concerned and live in their private realities. They may already know about countless civilizations and now consider the whole "civilization" thing rather passé. Superintelligence itself might only involve computing 24/7, something that we would not enjoy. Some people seem to think that we could link our brains to superintelligence, but I don't find that realistic. In any case, I think that there are enormous risks in how AI development plays out over the next few years. My current situation is fairly stable, but I have no way of knowing how long that will last.

I'm avoiding the discussion of politics for the time being, because I don't have anything new to say. I've already voted and think that the election results may be good. I'm reading an interesting and well-written book on symbiosis, which overlaps considerably with my thinking on ecosystems and the biosphere. I may not write about it, because it contains a large amount of information that can't be summed up easily.

A Private Affair

Following John P.'s recommendation, I just read this short novel by Beppe Fenoglio. The subject is similar to Italo Calvino's in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, though the style is completely different. The setting is rural Italy in the vicinity of the town of Alba during World War II, and the protagonist, who goes by the name "Milton," is a Partisan fighter opposing the Fascist fighters in the region. In the opening scene, Milton attempts to see Fulvia at her family's villa, but she had fled to Turin for safety. He is in love with her but is shocked when the housekeeper mentions offhandedly that she is involved with Georgio, his best friend. The three of them are well-educated, but, comparatively speaking, Fulvia and Georgio's families are wealthier than Milton's. That isn't presented as a particular problem within the narrative. Milton then returns to his Partisan activities, but he ruminates over this potential love triangle for the rest of the novel. The landscape is hilly, and most of the traveling is done at night, with fog, rain and mud. There are many Fascists in the region, and they may be encountered at any time, unexpectedly. 

Soon Milton learns that Georgio has been captured by the Fascists and has been taken away in a cart. His goal then becomes the rescue of Georgio. He speculates on whether or not they would execute Georgio and decides that, since he came from a good family, they wouldn't immediately. With this in mind he seeks a suitable hostage who could be exchanged to release Georgio. He does capture one, but he attempts to escape, and Milton shoots and kills him. The Partisans in the country frequently stay at farmhouses, where the families, including the women, are still at home. At one house, there is a female schoolteacher who is a belligerent Fascist, and the Partisans hem and haw over whether she should be executed. Finally they decide to spare her and merely shave her head as punishment.

At the end of the novel, Milton decides that he must find out for certain about Fulvia and Georgio's relationship, and he returns to her villa. However, he encounters a Fascist group near there and the novel ends with uncertainty regarding whether me makes it to the villa or not.

I agree with John P. and think that this a better novel than The Path to the Spiders' Nests. Apparently, Italo Calvino thought so too, and he touted this book. Some of that may be explained by the fact that Fenoglio was thirty-eight when he wrote it, whereas Calvino was only twenty-three when he wrote his. But you must also consider the fact that Fenoglio's style is what I call psychological realism, whereas, in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, Calvino's style is just basic realism, in which you merely see the external behavior of the characters, and their inner lives, to the extent that they exist, remain invisible. If there is any psychology in The Path to the Spiders' Nests, it pertains to whether or not Pin is able to comprehend what is going on around him. Pin's actions directly precipitate the death of his sister, but, because that is not a psychological novel, Calvino doesn't clarify that point or speculate on what Pin may or may not realize then or later. The Milton character in A Private Affair is presented in a far more human manner than the characters in most fiction, because you are shown his inner workings, which provide a sense of what is important to him. For this reason, I was able to identify far more with Milton than with any characters in The Path to the Spiders' Nests.

Because I've mainly given up on fiction, particularly American fiction, I'm not very excited by writing about it now, but I thought that this might be a good time to bring up The Road, by Cormac McCarthy, to clarify some points. I still think that The Road is one of the best American novels, though, obviously, many would disagree with me. In certain respects, The Road is similar to The Path to the Spiders' Nests, because the narrative includes only the actions of the characters, and their inner lives are generally ignored. In this type of realism, the characters are always, to some extent, ciphers, or some sort of inaccessible behavioral packages. Since I have spent my entire life observing people and thinking about my own characteristics, I now find it rather grating that most fiction is still based on simple externalities, and all of the interesting stuff is usually ignored. Although language is multipurpose, it seems to have evolved primarily for the exchange of factual, objective information, and therefore the inner lives of people may routinely be considered inappropriate topics. But they're not. There are indeed good psychological novels, but there seem to be far more of them written by Europeans than by Americans. In fairness to Calvino, I should note that both of his parents were botanists, and they were disappointed with him when he chose to become a writer. So, in Calvino's case, coming from a scientific background, his initial style was realistic and objective.