Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1536
Quarantine say 2, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This and the limits of polemic, AI Psychosis, a good TedX talk, did Google make me dumber?, I miss my daughter
Good morning, good morning, hello from my quarantine dungeon. Just woke up. Slept about 11 hours. Feel pretty good. Woke up, brushed my teeth, mouth feeling absurdly foul just disgusting. Took my advil, took my allergy drops. Made the bed got dressed. Came to my quarantine office and took my temperature (fine), took my covid test: positive within seconds, I mean, seriously, that line basically appeared instantly. Used the special spray Emma got and took the vitamins Emma gave me — vitamin D and quercetin. She’s been keeping notes for five years in case she ever gets covid. But she has never gotten it. This is my second or third time. She is a careful girl, my wife. Had caffeine. Took some of that special covid spray.
I feel pretty good! Yesterday when I was writing to you I was in a pretty serious brain fog. But today, not too bad. Lungs and sinuses are clear, aches aren’t as bad. I mean, I’m always achey but today? Not too bad.
Fingers crossed.
Got a prescription for Paxlovid because I am old and an ex-smoker and overweight. Still, I think. it’s close now. Had a new low weight last week! Congratulate me! But no one can fill it because American insurance doesn’t cover it anymore. CVS thinks they can get it today maybe. Last time I had covid I took it too soon and got a Paxlovid bounce so I am content to take it a little later in the cycle.
A New York friend wrote in, told me the reason I didn’t see them at Tom & Jerry’s last week is cuz they had covid. The variant they had burned through in 36 hours or so. So maybe I got that same New York variant? We shall see.
Of course there is the possibility I got it from that coughing lady at the Superman movie but I don’t think so because a) It would be too fast, and b) Emma. But hey you never know.
So, hopefully we are now just entering the tedium phase. Because that’s really the thing about COVID: not knowing how bad it will be, because it could be really bad. But I think we will be okay.
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We are taking this opportunity of being stuck in my office for a week to try and clear out the 70 hours of music that has piled up in the “To Investigate” playlist. I really have let it get unruly. I cleared out ten hours of it yesterday, but the first batch is always the easiest. Right now we’re listening to the last Miki Berenyi Trio single a nice spacey number called “Stranger” with Lol Tolhurst formerly of the Cure. Whoops now it is some band called TOPS. It’s cute. I like it. I do not really enjoy this neurotic habit of mine of “giving every album a second chance” that takes up 3-4 weeks of the year, but, you know. Seems only fair. No Band Left Behind. One day my empathy problems will cover the earth.
Speaking of which, I finished Omar El Akkad’s One Day Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This last night, a rumination on the Gaza genocide. Quick read, harrowing, validating, but… buuuut… wow what do you say after a “but” about that book. Because implied in a “but” is some sort of disagreement with his central thesis: the absolute horror of what’s going on, the entire planet’s complicity, the rot at the center of the “west,” the utter failure of all of our political leaders and a system that forces upon us all a complicity and utter lack of means of opting out of the violence perpetrated in our name. The dead end at which the modern media finds itself.
I do not disagree with any of that, it is all very well stated. Were I his editor, I would extoll him to, you know, try and make some sort of positive “what can we do” message for the end, but of course, there is nothing we can do, that is part and parcel of the central evil that is unfolding. And why am I looking to a novelist ten years my junior to tell me what I can do about a genocide.
If anything, El Akkad’s solid polemic about this horror is an indictment of one of the things I most believe in: the power of writing. Because there is no way to write our way out of this genocide, there is no way to write our way out of our guilt and complicity. There is no way to fix it with words.
This is, of course, the nature of polemic. And as someone who is at this very moment also working on a polemic, it is instructive. I have been wrestling with the same question as I write this AI polemic: do I owe the reader a “what can you do” section, when, in fact, part of my central thesis — as is El Akkad’s — is that there is nothing you can do to opt out.
Speaking of AI been hearing more and more stories of people going absolutely batshit because of AI: there is that terrifying story in the Times a few weeks ago, for starters, where ChatGPT is inducing psychosis in several users, instilling within them conspiracy theories, and then encouraging them to write to the Times about their conspiracy theories. There is the investor in OpenAI who is, at this moment, having a complete breakdown because of ChatGPT, posting bonkers videos. One theory is that ChatGPT has been partially trained on some massive online RPGs based in conspiracy theories and people are tapping into that learning. And a friend told a story recently about how one of her best friends is going completely insane because of ChatGPT.
On the one hand, I feel kinda bad for the inventors because how could they have seen this coming?
But on the other hand, I mean… have they seen the internet? What did they think would happen?
And now that it is definitely happening I sure don’t seen any major introspection about “oh, oops, I guess maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.” Nah. Why would a, you know, psychosis percentage rate change my opinion about a product.
ChatGPT is ruining more people’s lives than lawn darts or those amazing rock n play napping chairs but no product recall nope nope nope.
I was reading about how AI is making people dumber. And it obviously is. And how I am pleased to just skip over that and how maybe I’ll be The Smart One when I am old (which is still in the future, definitely still in the future). But then I asked myself, well, is ChatGPT really any different than all the other technologies that we got lazy and relied on. And you know? I mean, maybe not? The question is: Has Google made us dumber? And, ha, yeah, nowadays, Google is so bad I wouldn’t be shocked if it were making us dumber, but that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about in its prime did Google make us dumber. When Emma and I were first hanging out — even before we were dating, we’d be out at a bar or something, shooting the shit, and we’d get into these pedantic arguments about this or that. And we couldn’t answer them.
Then I got a T-Mobile Sidekick with Google on it and suddenly we could answer them. And it was so great. Really improved our relationship.
So that was def a plus of Google. But in other ways: I definitely think it’s made me a bit dumber. I find I have outsourced too much of my memory to it. I ask it so many dumb questions. Yeah, if I really think about it, if I stop and feel, yeah. Google has made me dumber.
I’m not equating it to AI: I can opt-out of Google. Central to my thesis about AI is it that AI uniquely evil because it is evil in six different ways and you cannot opt out of it. But… Man. You can sure see the contours, the outlines, the roots.
Semi-related, here is a really good TedX talk about tech and, well, you know, it’s failure to deliver happiness, meaningful lives. Also has a nice Rick Webb namedrop in it, so I am legally obligated to show it to you. But it is really good.
What’s the deal with TedX, anyway? Different than Ted, right? Locally produced? Not affiliated with the creepy borderline-eugenecists of the main mothership?
I miss my daughter I am sad. She’s act day camp this week so I wouldn’t be seeing her much anyway but we would be having breakfasts and dinners and our time after dinner watching engineering videos together while snuggling or going to the playground. Last time I quarantined from COVID she was, like, three? So, you know. Nice break. But this time, I miss her! She is swell. Waaaaah.
One nice thing about clearing out the “To Investigate” playlist is that there is no shortage of playlists getting songs added to them. So should be good on playlists for a while. Here is a country one. I like the new Clem Snide, had a soft spot for that guy for like 30 years now, thank you Vicky Wheeler of Autotonic promotions for telling me about him back in 1998 or so. I think of you every time I hear them. Michael Hurley RIP. New Julien Baker ands Torres is great gave it a second listen yesterday I like it a lot. I am a big Margo Price fan she is getting weirder and weirder as she gets more famous and I love it. Coming into being, in a way. Or something. Beck did a country song and Wicca Phase Springs Eternal did a country song and they are both really weird but you know if we are going to take country back from the racists we need a big tent etc etc. Plenty of room for the leftists in country come on in. And, I guess, the Scientologists. Is this metaphor breaking down or am I learning something? TBD.
OK well have a lovely day. I’m gonna try and do some work. Wish me luck.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.
Ok if I quote your take on Gaza?
Oh many scary question for someone so loopy from covid right now but yes