Thinking about AI

Thinking about AI

It is very clear to me that people don't know beans about what they want.

People, even very intelligent people, are rarely self-aware and are not capable of articulating an explicit hierarchy about their desires. They haven't thought about the scales (ratio-of-trade between attributes) of what they want and the relationships between those desires.

The videos on Hoe-Math and the videos where the narrator asks women what they require in a romantic partner demonstrate that.

A typical vignette of the second type of video has the narrator approaching an attractive woman, typically outside of an upscale bar, and asking her "What do you look for in a boy-friend?"

The answer typically comes back "He has to be between 25-and-30 years-old. He has to be making at least $150k per-year in finance or marketing. When we go out on a date (at least once a week), he must be happy to drop $250 for my half of the tab. He has to take me on at least four one-week, over-seas vacations a year. He must be fluent in French and have a swanky apartment. He has to be at least 6'-2" and have thick, wavy hair and have perfect teeth and manicured nails. Oh...and most importantly, whenever I call him or text him (any time of day or night), he must drop everything and call me back for a 30 minute phone-call where he pays rapt attention to events that have absolutely no interest to him."

She isn't describing a human being. She is describing a unicorn.

Guys might be slightly better, but not by much. While our needs in terms of a romantic partner might be simpler, there are other fields where our needs are more complicated.

Why this is important

AI answers questions. If you are unable to articulate a meaningful question, the responses will be equally not-useful.

How we got here

Think back to a pre-civilization village. A very large one might be 120 people. Books did not exist. Knowledge was passed down by observing your elders and your neighbor and copying what they did. Footwear is a good example. What did they make their sandals or mukluks from? How did they cut the hides or braid the straw? Fur in or fur out? How did they stitch them together? How did they care for them so they didn't rot? At what point did they start making a new pair?

Many of our behaviors are patterned on the "copy our peers" thinking. Picking a mate was a trivial exercise when there were only three available candidates and two of them were a day's walk away.

To be overly-flowery in my language, "copying our peers" is a form of "cloud-sourcing the logic" or "wisdom of the crowd".

Weaknesses of the follow-the-crowd model

First, a snarky observation: You don't need AI if you are going to rely on social media to tell you what you want.

Other weaknesses:

Computers will not make assumptions for you. If you gave that very long list that included $150k/yr to a computer, it will not automatically filter out candidates who beat women, are addicted to cocaine, have Monkey-pox and other sexually transmitted diseases, are compulsive liars, make a living denying insurance benefits to widows and orphans or are $1.2 million debt and have no assets.

Many of the things that we think "are a given" are not. Computers deliver a geeky karma of "Be careful what you ask for, because you are likely to get it."

A possible employment niche in the post-AI world

A consultant who does scenario-testing with the client to solidify specifications. Going back to our romantic-partner example because it is something nearly everybody has experienced:

"Suppose you and your new romantic-partner are dropped onto a deserted island or a remote, wilderness paradise. What attributes are you looking for?"

"Suppose that you had to relocate to a city where there was no internet or that it was so slow and unreliable that it was effectively unusable; What attributes would you value most in your new romantic-partner?" 

Both of those scenarios attempts to fire-wall off the "performing for the applause of the audience" grand-standing.

"Imagine you and your new romantic-partner together five years from now, would there be any additional requirements? Would any of your current requirements have softened or become less important? Which ones?"

"Now imagine you are together ten year from now..." 

"How about twenty and forty years from now..."

Then... trade-off studies:

"Do you prefer Jeff who makes $150k and is 6'-4" or Mike who makes $175k and is 6'-2" tall?"

"Do you prefer Sean who makes $200k a year but can only take two weeks of vacation or do you prefer Ian who makes $150k a year but is allowed four weeks of vacation a year?"

"Do you prefer Prakash who is a surgeon making $200k who cannot take phone-calls while performing surgery and must enforce strict sleep-hygiene (i.e. no phone calls during his sleep hours) or do you prefer Jimmy who makes $150k and drives a hazardous material truck and can talk you on the phone (but not text) any time?"

How porous is the barrier between "Allowable" and "Not allowed"?

"So...we found a potential romance-partner who meets all of your criteria except for one. He lives 10 minute travel-time from where you live. The closest candidate who meets all of your criteria lives 90 minutes away. The flawed candidate is 35 years old...would you date him?"

Of course she would date him. She pulled the "25-to-30 years-old" out of thin air. There was nothing magical about that range except she thought there should be an age requirement. 

This deficiency comes up over-and-over through life. Which house should you bid on? Which job should you interview for? Relocate or stay? One more kid or not?

Incredibly, most people have never given a thought to the fact that having a lot of one thing (like income and status) means that there will be much less of something else (free time and flexibility). Critical questions are "How much of each is ENOUGH". Do you value lots of time with your romance-interest and eating balony sandwiches or do you value infrequent times with your romance-interest and Instagram worthy selfies more?

All of this scenario testing is really a "Sims game" but it is exploring the client's real-life desires and expectations. Bonus thought: The person who can write a Sims-like front-end to make a game that combs out the clients real requirements (and not the generic, cloud-sourced ones) will make a lot of money.

Change of topic: Update on the last part of yesterday's work-ticket

The last part of yesterday's work was a piece of cake.

I watched Quicksilver so Southern Belle and Handsome Hombre could assemble the pool.

Then I made a parts-run to Lansing for some odds-and-ends needed for the assembly.

Then I watched Quicksilver some more.

I tapped-out at 7:30 p.m. I was tired and dehydrated. The young people were still hammering away at the project.

 

Today was a productive day, and it isn't over...

 

The cabbage plants don't look like much now. According to my records, I planted the seeds May 14 which means they are about 25 days old.

If all goes well, they will completely fill that space.

Fifty late cabbage plants put in the ground today on 24"-by-40" spacing. 2:1:1 ratio of Deadon:Typhoon:Megaton.

Twenty Happy Rich broccoli in the ground.

Eighteen Hardy Hibiscus seedlings in the ground.

Over at Southern Belle's, I planted four rows of 15 kernels of Bodacious sweet corn and I hoed the weeds in her fenced-in garden.

I also rototilled the spot where Southern Belle wants to put an above-ground swimming pool so she can level it out.

I got the potatoes sprayed for Colorado Potato Beetles.

I was invited to go to Southern Belle's later this evening. I think she wants me to help assemble the swimming pool. The current temperature is 85F with rain expected at 9 p.m. Winds out of the southeast. 

I didn't get to the mowing even though I made progress on world-hunger. 

The Hoes of Eaton County

 

Three hoes, caught in bed (a truck bed).

Not the salacious content you expected? 

The day begins, bursting with promises

An acronym that I find useful

CMAYFCC...Call me after your first cup of coffee.

I want to talk to you. I need details. It isn't urgent and I want to catch you at your best time.

Big day planned

It won't all get done. 

Modest rains predicted for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

I did a garden walk-around. The potato patch needs touch-up with a hoe but I can delay tilling for another week.

If I am going to spray insecticide on the potatoes, today is my window if I want to get ahead of the beetles and the egg-laying. 

The fenced-in garden needs tilling and the cabbage plants are large enough to transplant. Cabbage is a heavy-lifter in a subsistence garden. It produces "tonnage" rather than garnishes. It keeps well in cold storage. It can be preserved as a fermented product. It has vitamin C and can be incorporated into the menu in a vast number of ways.

Southern Belle's last four rows of sweet corn need to be planted. 

I am trying to empty out the refrigerator in terms of scion I have stored. I depleted the local walnut trees and will have to finish off my cache by harassing the trees near the Upper and Hill Orchards.

I have push-mowing to do.

An interesting essay

Into the wilderness, where did Jesus flee to for solace and safety?

There are multiple instances where Elijah, John the Baptist and Jesus fled into the wilderness to avoid the Biblical equivalent of The Deep State.

Tabor wrote an essay where he makes the case that the geological feature now called Wadi el-Yabis is the most likely place where Jesus spent the winter before his Passion and death. 

The bottom of Wadi el-Yabis is wide and flat near where it flows into the Jordan.

Farther upstream, the stream-bed narrows, the limestone sides become steep, fractured and riddled with caves.
 

More raccoons .and. Potato diggers

My sister's new landscaping was getting demolished.

The landscaping consisted of a raised island of sandy-fill topped with top-soil. Her goal was to make the island well enough drained to plant Redbuds and Rose-of-Sharon. This island is a scant 50' from the edge of a lake. 

She sweet-talked her husband into putting out some game-cams to identify the culprit which visited every night.

It turns out that the culprit is a raccoon and he/she seemed very interested in the eggs the turtles were burying in that beautiful, easy-to-dig loam and sand so very close to the edge of the lake. I didn't try to convince her that euthanizing the raccoon is the preferred option. She is set on trapping it and having her husband relocate it.

Deer damage in the fenced garden

Expected but not hoped for.

A potato plow

One of these came up for sale on Craigslist

I bought it.

The gentleman volunteered, with no prompting "Being able to grow potatoes will be a good thing if the internet goes down and the trucks stop running."

Mrs ERJ (my navigator) asked for clarification.

He said "Most folks only have three days of food in their house. If the trucks stop running then you aren't going to want to be in the city." He is approximately 27 miles from the center of a metro area with a population of about 1.1 million people.

Obviously, he is a kindred spirit.

I asked why he was selling the plow.

He said that he had explored an equipment rental business that specialized in small-holding sized equipment. The dream died when his insurance company quoted the liability insurance premium.

Great business idea. It might be worth talking to a good attorney and exploring LLCs. Also having that attorney write up contracts that explicitly nullify liability if the user modifies the safety features in any way, shape or form.

I once paid a kid to mow my grass. After he was done, I went out and found that he had stripped all of the plastic "shielding" off of the mower.

When I asked why he had done that, he replied "We always do that. That shit always clogs up with grass and it slows me down when I have to stop and clean it out."

True story.

Anyway, if anybody knows of a ready-made, reverse cow-catcher for this kind of plow...I want to know about it. Potato diggers often have a weir or grating behind the foot of the plow. The weir allows the dirt to drop through and the potatoes are pushed along the length of the weir and drop on top of the dirt behind the unit where they are easy to pick up.

First day of digital news detox

Suddenly, it seems like I have three more hours of usable daylight.

And I have a wife. She seems to have a perfectly peachy personality. I am thankful for whoever arranged our marriage.  I owe them a solid favor.

Rain, ducks and a back-up plan to deal with snails

 

Looking at the weather forecast, tomorrow looks like a good day for tilling-and-planting. The soil should be dry enough to till and you cannot beat natural rain for getting seeds (both garden and weed seeds, unfortunately) off to a grand start.

My goal for tomorrow is to get the nursery emptied out and the plants in dirt, in garden rows.

Duck update

They ate very little of the feed I put out yesterday. That probably means they were gorging on slugs, snails, earthworms and centipedes that had been hunkered-down in the dirt waiting for the dry-spell to end.

This Plague of Snails has me re-thinking my cover-crop strategy. My guess is that snails and slugs thrive in the cool-damp of spring and fall and my cover-crops are super-charging their populations.

I normally plant cool-season, edible plants for my fall/winter/spring cover-crop. Sometimes I plant turnips. Sometimes rye grain. Sometimes oats. Some of my thinking is "Well, if things truly go into the septic-tank, then I still have something edible growing in the garden, even in the off-season."

The obvious answer would be to skip cover-crops for a couple of years and see if the problem self-corrects. However, cover-crops also scavenge nutrients that would otherwise be leached out by the rains and snow-melt...and they add organic matter to the soil when tilled into it.

Another possibility is to plant edible plants that have leaves that are high in oxalates. Some biologists hypothesize that retaining toxic, partially metabolized molecules like oxalic acid provide some level of protection against browsing. Those toxic compounds might impair plant growth but the protection they provide more than compensates for the penalty.

Rumex fueginus growing in a fen

It is reasonable to speculate that oxalates (insoluble salts of oxalic acid and metal ions like calcium or iron) deters snails since "dock" or "sorrel" (Rumex) are one of the few, common, broad-leafed plants in sedge-marshes.

I have no proof that this would work but calcium oxalate is highly irritating due to its sharp crystals and free oxalic acid (the "sour" in sorrel) will out-compete the carbonate ion for calcium ions, thus depriving the snail of the material it needs to grow its shell. 

In addition to Rumex, edible plants that have leaves with relatively high oxalate content include Buckwheat, Swiss Chard, Beets and Spinach. Only the last three plants tolerate frost. Oxalate content in greens can be reduced by boiling in water and then discarding the water. Oxalate can contribute to kidney stones and that is something most people would prefer to avoid.

So far, the ducks are doing a great job on the snails but I am a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy. One neighbor dog getting into the garden enclosure could kill them all in less than five minutes.  

Taking a vacation from news, work-ticket

I decided that I need a one-week vacation from news. A "fast", if you prefer.

That means that I will also be watching fewer videos because the news keeps sneaking into them.

A fellow from Switzerland purchased a combine/harvester in northern Holland and then drove it back home through Netherland, Belgium, France and Switzerland. It took him weeks since his top-speed was 11 miles per hour.

Note the castle in the background on the left side of the frame. Not scenery you will see in Michigan.

Driving through cities was harrowing, especially since the visibility from his seat wasn't all that whippy.

One thing I will say about Europe is that their near-paranoia about food-security means that they are exceptionally tolerant about machines that harvests food causing traffic jams. As recently as 1950 getting enough calories every day was a serious challenge in much of war-torn Europe.

37 minute run-time. Auto-dubbed in English. BTW, he got about 4.7 mpg.

Work-ticket

I spent an hour-and-a-half cutting green bamboo. Mrs ERJ assisted. She carried the stems and didn't allow the cut-ends to get any closer than 9 inches (2.3e+9 Angstrom in metric) to the ground lest they strike root and start growing again.

I planted two watermelons at Southern Belle's and four more in my garden. Southern Belle's green beans look better than mine. Next year I will not plant mine as early. They just stall-out and become food for pests.

Her potatoes and the first planting of sweet corn are up. 

I collected my post driver and used it to drive in T-posts in the Hill Orchard. I then used those posts to secure cages to protect trees from deer. 

Upon arriving home in Eaton Rapids I measured the distance between loops on a 160 body-grip trap springs and learned that it is 8" from outside of loop-to-outside of loop. I had some three-year-old hazelnut stems and one of them had a promising Y. I cut the Y long and used baling twine to pull it in to exactly 8". I also have the option of inserting a stick between the wraps of baling twine and twisting it to pull it even more if that is warranted.

A very small side-project was to make "medicated" wipes. Boric acid is a mild fungicide and stops bacterial growth. I made a 100 ml of saturated boric acid solution (it is a very mild "acid" with a pH of about 5) and added it to a 400 gram package of pre-moistened wipes. I make no claims about this being a great way to deal with superficial, external Candida skin infections but it isn't likely to do any harm and it is inexpensive.

Total time-on-task was just a little over two hours.

A few of the peony divisions I planted in the Upper Orchard were blooming.

The names of the varieties are unknown, but that doesn't make them any less pretty.

A squash seedling. It looks quite smug, self-assured and pleased with itself. An inch of rain will do that for a plant.