Sheep and Goats

Category: Scientists

Can a Crocodile Play Basketball?

Can a crocodile play basketball?

AI’s answer in this age of ChatGPT, 3 different applications:

One: That’s an interesting question. Crocodiles are amazing animals that have been around for millions of years. They are very good at swimming, hunting, and surviving in different habitats. But can they play basketball?

Well, the answer is probably no. Crocodiles are not very good at jumping, running, or handling a ball. They have short legs, heavy bodies, and long tails that make it hard for them to move quickly on land. They also have very strong jaws, but not very flexible hands. They can’t grip a ball or pass it to their teammates. They might even try to eat the ball or the other players!

So, crocodiles are not suited for playing basketball. But they are still fascinating creatures that have many other skills and abilities.

Two: No, a crocodile cannot play basketball. Crocodiles are reptiles and do not possess the physical abilities or cognitive skills required to play basketball. (Photo by Pixabay)

Three: Crocodiles are not capable of playing basketball due to their anatomy and lack of abilities required for such activities. They are not built for complex motor skills or coordination needed for sports like basketball.

Walter Isaacson wrote in 2005 that the crocodile question stymied AI, which invariably did well with any number-crunching question but not something that involved ‘thinking.’ So said his book ‘The Innovators,’ which traces the development of both computers and the internet. The most significant advance for the former was the microchip, which allowed for computers to shrink to desktop-sized. The most significant advance for the latter was switchable digital packets, allowing computers to communicate with each other over a network.

The first crocodile answer hedges its bets. ‘Probably no,’ it says, and explains why, exploring the crocodile’s anatomy, taking the question quite seriously (rather than giggling it away, as any 4 year old would do).

Answers two and three also don’t realize someone is putting them on, but they are more definitive and give evidence of ‘thinking.’ That is, they draw conclusions from how a crocodile is built in a way that is beyond pure number crunching.

‘The Innovators’ final chapter tells how chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov agreed to a challenge from IBM’s Deep Blue and lost. ‘Yeah, well, it’s just pure number-crunching,’ he comforted himself, not that it made losing to it any better. The machine wasn’t actually thinking. It was just running any given chess board against a gargantuan database it had downloaded, including all grandmaster games, and recalling whether any given move next move had turned out good or bad. Later, he got the idea of working in tandem with AI, letting the machine crunch the numbers whereas the person could focus on the overall deep strategy that was beyond the machine’s capability.

The concept was tested, also in 2005: grandmaster matched against machine against chess amateur paired with computer backup, The grandmasters lost. So did the machines alone. The amateurs with computer-backup were the ones victorious.

So the current crocodile answer isn’t too bad, really. It ‘reasons’ on the reptile’s anatomy to say, ‘No way.’ It doesn’t just search the internet for websites that says if a crocodile can play basketball or not, a method that would return zilch results.

AI prognosticators have christened as the ‘singularity’ the moment AI reaches the point where it doesn’t need people, where it can and does program itself. Will it decide people just get in the way at that point?

Dumping science in our collective lap with no idea as to how to control it is something I have worked into most of my books. From ‘Tom Irregardless and Me:’

“Sam Harris gave yet another TED talk in which he asked: “Can We Build AI Without Losing Control Over It?” The answer is no; you’ll screw it up like you screw up everything, like you drove Albert Einstein to say, “if I had known, I would have become a locksmith.”

From: ‘In the Last of the Last Days: Faith in the Age of Dysfunction:’

“Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Andrew Yang, and a panel of other leaders in technology, urged in March 2023 at least a six-month moratorium on AI development, allowing a little time to figure out what its long-term consequences will be. From their open letter of March 2023:

“Advanced AI could represent a profound change in the history of life on Earth and should be planned for and managed with commensurate care and resources. Unfortunately, this level of planning and management is not happening, even though recent months have seen AI labs locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one – not even their creators – can understand, predict, or reliably control.

“… Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?

“Events move quickly. Who would ever have thought a major risk to writing a book like this would be that portions would be obsolete by its date of release? Within days of this AI caution came a “photo” of Pope Francis fleeing a bevy of police closing in upon him from all sides. “I asked Wonder App to paint, Pope running from the police,” the banner advertised You could never tell it wasn’t him—even if you did wonder how His Holiness could hustle so fast.”

From ‘I Don’t Know Why We Persecute Jehovah’s Witnesses: Searching for the Why:’

“The New York Times writes about an app that makes it “relatively easy to create realistic face swaps and leave few traces of manipulation. . . . It’s not hard to imagine this technology being used to smear politicians, create counterfeit revenge porn, or frame people for crimes. Lawmakers have already begun to worry about how such deepfakes might be used for political sabotage and propaganda.” The anonymous developer cheerfully helps the Times reporter try his own hand at it. “I’ve given it a lot of thought,” he [says], “and ultimately I’ve decided I don’t think it’s right to condemn the technology itself.”[i] Of course not! They never do. It’s on to the next advance of science! Let the ethicists figure out what he has just dumped in their laps, something “which can of course be used for many purposes, good and bad.” It’s their problem, not his.

“Already, news sources show an eagerness to rely upon unidentified sources that frequently turn out to be wrong. Will they handle this new advance responsibly? Not only must we anticipate dubious proven by video character assassination to become routine, but the more lasting consequence of this new technological advance may be that even genuine video evidence will be dismissed as fake news. It is as Isaiah envisioned: “Ah! Those who call evil good, and good evil, who change darkness to light, and light into darkness, who change bitter to sweet, and sweet into bitter!” The guileless one so slandered will explode in moral indignation, and thus appear guilty as hell. The professional liar will shrug it off with the feigned saddened dismay that his enemies could sink so low.”

Which will come first: Will humans succeed in harnessing their science so as not to ruin them all? Or will the NBA begin drafting crocodiles?

****** The bookstore

August 19, 2023
The Unknowable One-Way Speed of Light—and Occam’s Razor

(See Part 1)

Here is a fellow who says nobody has measured the speed of light. You may think they have, but all that has been measured is the round trip speed of light—derived from the time taken for a beam of light to reach this distant point and bounce back. So what they have is an average of two speeds—the time it takes light to reach the faraway place and the time it takes light to return.

What if the one-way speed of light is not the same in all directions? There are symmetries in the universe so that you might think it is. But there are also asymmetries in the universe so that you might think it is not. Anyone doing the math problem of rowing the boat at the same speed but traveling different distances going upstream or downstream begins to favor the second possibility. The rowboat travels at different speeds upstream vs downstream, though it relative speed is the same.

“Of course, it is simpler if light should travel the same speed in all direction, but that is a convention, rather than an experimentally verified fact,” says Derek Muller in the above YouTube video. Einstein made note of that in his 1905 paper; to say light travels the same speed in all directions is “a stipulation that I can make of my own free will to arrive at a definition of simultaneity.” Glad it works out for him.

And it works out for us too. The physics works the same for us so long as the round trip speed is c [the variable that stands for the speed of light]. It is just easier to think it travels one way as easily as in another, but it is not knowable, for reasons explained in the video. If, say, it moved like molasses in one direction, but was near instantaneous in the second, so long as the round trip is the same, we wouldn’t know. Why assume it is the same both ways? It’s easier, more testable. It is Occam’s Razor employed—that the simplest solution is the one with which to run.

However, those logicians too reliant on Occam’s Razor forget that Occam regularly fumed at his wife for ‘borrowing’ and all but destroying his razor to shave her legs. Whoa! You should have heard him scream every morning!

If Occam’s Razor does not hold with regard to the speed of light, what then? If it were the extreme mentioned above, molasses vs near-instantaneous, then light from the James Webb scientists to the edge of the universe (as though out there anyone cared what they were doing) would be traveling at the speed of molasses, but the James Webb scientists would be looking at the edge of the universe in real time. Those perfectly formed stars on the edge of the universe would not be from eons ago, but from right now—whatever ‘now’ means.

perfectly formed stars link to prior post

Ah well, so what? It makes no difference, Muller says. But it may make a difference should there ever be a reconciliation of the four fundamental forces, which don’t appear to get along with each other that well. It won’t upset my world. But to scientist chowing down their morning Feynman Flakes, it just may. I wish them well. When scientists start carrying on about how reality is much more complex than Newton and so maybe his conclusions of uncovering God’s handiwork don’t hold, just counter with, “How come you can’t just chalk it down to seeing but the “fringes of his ways?” It’s nothing but human pride at work—the refusal to acknowledge that anything could be true other than what they figure out themselves—and it doesn’t look that they will anytime soon, per the video.

to be continued.

(Photo: Pixabay)

****** The bookstore

February 23, 2023
Doesn’t Everything Fray at the Edges?—We Don’t Know Squat About the Universe

Everything frays at the edges. That’s why scientists were befuddled that the universe doesn’t.

Okay, okay, so that’s not the reason. But they were befuddled. They just assumed that the expanding universe would be frayed at the outside, the expanding edge, the very first galaxies. They probably are a chaotic mess, primitive, disorganized, soupy, mushy—whatever. With an evolutionary viewpoint on everything, of course you would think that. If something arises out of nothing, at least evolution should ensure it doesn’t arise perfectly formed. Surely, it only gradually takes shape.

But that new fancy-pants telescope is revealing we don’t know squat about the universe. The article linked to here is ever so deferential about models being overturned as it headlines, “Scientists Puzzled Because James Webb is Seeing Stuff that Shouldn’t be There—‘The Models Just Don’t Predict This’” I wish such folks were half as deferential whenever Witnesses adjusted on some non-core point. No matter how far out you look—and ‘far out’ in this case means going backward in time to ‘the beginning’—the heavens are completely formed, not a disorganized mess at all.

You must admit, this dovetails far better with Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth,” than it does it with an unintelligent Big Bang. If there was a Big Bang, it appears to have been a Big Smart one.

to be continued:

(Photo: The James Webb Space Telescope—Wikimedia Commons)

NBC update: The network brought in Michio Kaku, always ready to explain things to those dunderheads. Michio Kaku, who looks passably like Einstein, or at any rate is as close as we are likely to get. Michio Kaku, who looks a lot more like Einstein than that Einstein wannabe in the Verizon commercial, an actor whom you can more readily see portraying Charlie Chaplin than Einstein. God, it’s enough to make the real Einstein rise from the dead and puke!

Kaku confirms that new laws of physics are emerging. Six gigundous galaxies at the very expanding edge—no way does existing physics account for this. He thinks they’r black holes. After a short chat the moderator let him go to rewrite all his textbooks.

****** The bookstore

February 20, 2023
Jesus and Socrates—the Parallels

We don’t know much about Socrates. If we’re called upon to read his name aloud from print, we say what an embarrassed Michael Jackson said, that he had heard the name many times but had never seen it spelled out. How was he to know it was three syllables and not two? So, what do we know about So-Crates? We know he died from hemlock poisoning. We know he drank it himself, that he had been sentenced to die. And that’s about all we know, plain ‘ol people that we are.

Of course, if we have had some training on the topic, then we know more. We also know enough to say his name correctly. But most people are rank and file, unconcerned with Socrates because Socrates does not touch upon their daily lives—or if he does, they don’t know just how. They do know about Jesus, however, because Jesus is the lynchpin of the major religion. To be sure, much of what they know about Jesus is wrong, but they do have a lot of wannabe-facts at their disposal, some of which are true, whereas for Socrates they have almost nothing.

Simplify Greek history exponentially by knowing his relationship to other big names of the era. Socrates was one-on-one teacher to Plato, Plato was one-on-one teacher to Aristotle, and Aristotle was one-on-one teacher to Alexander the Great. There, doesn’t that help?

I was already delving into the unlikely. I was already drawing some parallels between Socrates and Jesus. Both had a way of buttonholing people, prodding them to think outside the box. Both attracted a good many followers in this way. Both were outliers to the general world of their time, and were looked upon askance for it. Both infuriated their ‘higher-ups’—so much so that both were consequently sentenced to death. Their venues were different, and so we seldom make the linkage, but linkage there is. As a result of auditing the Great Courses lecture series, I was beginning to play with the idea.

Imagine my satisfaction when I come across one of those professors, J. Rufus Fears, who has not only begun but has fully developed the idea in his lecture series entitled ‘A History of Freedom.’ Happy as a pig in mud I was, for it proved I was not crazy. Nearly all subsequent points are taken from his lecture, “Jesus and Socrates:”

They were both teachers, for one, Jesus of the spiritual and Socrates of the empirical. They both refused pay, a circumstance that in itself aroused the suspicion of the established system. (Victor V. Blackwell, a lawyer who defended many Witness youths in the World War II draft days, observed that local judges recognized only one sort of minister: those who “had a church” and “got paid”—“mercenary ministers,” he called them.)

Fears may be a bit too much influenced by evolving Christian ‘theology’—he speaks of Jesus being God, for instance, and the kingdom of God being a condition of the heart—but his familiarity with the details of the day, and the class structure social mores that both Jesus and Socrates’ transgressed against, is unparalleled. Jesus reduces the Law to two basic components: love of God and love of neighbor. This infuriates the Pharisees and Sadducees, because complicating the Law was their meal ticket, their reason for existence. After his Sermon on the Mount, “the crowds were astounded at his way of teaching, for he was teaching them as a person having authority, and not as their scribes.” Depend upon it: the scribes didn’t like him. Socrates, also, did the Sophist’s work—the paid arguers who ‘made the weaker argument look the stronger,’—better than they. They were jealous of him.

Neither Jesus nor Socrates encouraged participation in politics of the day. Jesus urged followers to be “no part of the world.” Socrates declared it impossible for an honest man to survive under the democracy of his time. Both thereby triggered establishment wrath, for if enough people followed their example, dropping out of contemporary life, where would society be?

Both Jesus and Socrates were put to death out of envy. Both had offended the professional class. Both became more powerful in death than in life. Both could have avoided death, but didn’t. Socrates could have backtracked, played upon the jury’s sympathy, appealed to his former military service. Jesus could have brought in witnesses to testify that he never said he was king of the Jews, the only charge that make Pilate sit up and take notice.

Both spoke ambiguously. In Socrates case, he was eternally asking questions, rather than stating conclusions. His goal—to get people to examine their own thinking. In Jesus case, it was “speak[ing]to them by the use of illustrations” because “the heart of this people has grown unreceptive, and with their ears they have heard without response, and they have shut their eyes, so that they might never see with their eyes and hear with their ears and get the sense of it with their hearts and turn back and I heal them.” He spoke ambiguously to see if he could cut through that morass, to make them work, to reach the heart.

What if Jesus were appear on the scene today and enter one of the churches bearing his name, churches where they don’t do as he said? Would they yield the podium to him? Or would they once again dismiss him as a fraud and imposter, putting him to death if he became too insistent, like their counterparts did the first time?

If Jesus is the basis of church, Socrates is no less the basis of university. His sayings had to be codified by Plato, his disciple, just as Jesus’ sayings had to be codified by some of his disciples. Thereafter, Plato’s student, Aristotle, had to turn them into organized form, founding the Academy—the basis of higher learning ever since. Professor Fears muses upon what would happen if Socrates showed up on campus in the single cloak he was accustomed to wearing, “just talking to students, walking around with them, not giving structured courses, not giving out a syllabus or reading list at the start of classes, not giving examination” at the end. Would they not call Security? And if by some miracle he did apply for faculty, which he would not because he disdained a salary, but if he did, you know they would not accept him. Where were his credentials? Yes, he had the gift of gab, they would acknowledge, but such was just a “popularity contest.” Where were his published works?

Similarly, where were Jesus’ published works? Neither Jesus nor Socrates wrote down a thing. It was left for Jesus’ disciples to write gospel accounts of his life. It was left for Plato to write of Socrates’ life. If either were to appear at the institutions supposedly representing their names, they would not be recognized. Shultz, the chronicler of early Watchtower history, recently tweeted that when he appends a few letters to his name, such as PhD, which he can truthfully can, his remarks get more attention than when he does not. He says it really shouldn’t be that way, but it is what it is. Both Jesus and Socrates would have been in Credential-Jail, neither having not a single letter to stick on the end of their name. It wouldn’t help for it to be known that each had but a single garment.

Today people are used to viewing “career” as the high road, “vocation” as the lower. Vocation is associated with working with ones’ hands. Fears turns it around. “Vocation” represents a calling. Jesus was literally called at his baptism: the heavens open up, and God says, “This is my son in whom I am well-pleased.” Socrates had a calling in that the god Apollo at Delphi said no one is wiser than he. Socrates took that to mean God was telling him to go out and prove it. “Career,” on the other hand, stems from a French word meaning “a highway,” a means of getting from one place to another, considerably less noble than “a calling,” a vocation.

We who are Jehovah’s Witnesses are quite used to pointing out that religion has run off the rails. What is interesting from these parallels is the realization that academia has no less run off the rails. Both have strayed far from their roots, and not for the better. Both have devolved into camps of indoctrination.

****** The bookstore

January 9, 2023
The Far Side and the Spoofing of Science

A scientist pours one liquid after another upon a duck placed on the table. His companion carefully calibrates the results on a chalkboard. Beneath the heading “Like” is “Milk off a duck’s back,” followed by “water off a duck’s back,” followed by “orange juice off a duck’s back.” Next on the list is “acid off a duck’s back,” but this is crossed out. Afterward, there is “syrup off a duck’s back.” More ingredients on the table remain to be tested. The caption: “It’s all rather scientific. Then we publish our results.”

I think I did not reflect until now on how Far Side consistently spoofs “science.” This fits in so well with reality today, when any yo-yo says anything and calls it “the science.”

”Scientific studies” have come to be a standing joke. If a study doesn’t go your way, just hold out for the next one that may.

It is as though a parlor trick vastly over applied. Very effective if confined to a narrow field of focus. But ridiculous when relied upon to evaluate all of life.

An underreported experiment several years back, to me reveals it all. Volunteers were asked to remember a certain number, then they walked down a corridor to another room in which another researcher awaited to take down that number.

On the way down, each was met by a woman who thanked them for taking part in the study. To show the researcher’s gratitude, she offered each participant a choice of two snacks—a fruit salad or a slice of chocolate cake.

Now, unbeknownst to each participant, some had been given 2-digit numbers to remember, and others 7-digit numbers. When results were tallied, those who had been given 2-digit numbers were twice as likely to choose the fruit salad as those who have been given 7-digits. What could possibly account for that?

The conclusion researchers drew was that if our minds are not heavily taxed, we choose fruit. We make the rational assessment that it is healthier for us. But if our minds are taxed, rationality goes right out the window! We say, “Yummy! Cake!” and grab for the chocolate. Read it here.

The fatal flaw in relying upon “science” is us. Unless things are very very simple, emotion immediately trumps “critical thinking.” This weakness sabotages most of what passes for science. It make reliance on science the most foolhardy of endeavors. It’s okay as a supplemental tool. But no more than that. It must always be in subjection to superior methods.

To the extent possible, science seeks to address human bias. But the extent possible is often not sufficiently much. In an ideal experiment of discovery, you line up two groups with identical attributes barring just one. Then, by tinkering through repeatable experiments with the one variable attribute, you make your discoveries as to its significance. Trouble is, very few things can be reduced to such simplicity. Humans, life, and reality itself is far too complex. You can applaud the efforts of science as you draw tentative conclusions. But you should never lose sight of how easily those conclusions can be overturned.

Those who rely upon science as the be-all and end-all generally do just that. Upon reaching a conclusion, they circle the wagons and decry new or contrarian evidence as ‘fake news.’

Humans don’t have the integrity to handle science. It is not a moral failing, but it is built into how we are, as the cake-fruit experiment shows. To be sure, moral failings can and do exacerbate the problem, and ours is an age of much moral flexibility. The staunchest proponents of science never seem to notice when money trumps their science.

There was once a more modest time when medicine was called the ‘healing arts.’ Today it is called ‘evidence-based science.’ The first is a recognition that life is far too complex to imagine its individual components can be isolated and played against one another. The first allows for all laudable human attributes to come into play, not just deduction, but also intuition, empathy, even (or perhaps particularly) love. The second eliminates all these things for cold thought. Nothing wrong with cold thought in itself, but to elevate it over all else creates vulnerability and allows for the baser qualities of humans to rise.

Is it not a bi-product of the evolutionary “science” that is abiogenesis, the idea that life could arise on its own? If you realize life could not do that, you maintain a certain awe of it. If you think it can, you say, “Well, how hard can it be? If blind chance can bring about life, culled only by natural selection, just think what can be done if focused powers of deliberate engineering are brought to bear!”

Thus, scientists are unafraid to tinker with what any godly person would have the common sense to stay far away from. ‘Gain-of-function’ research becomes a nifty tool of of scientific endeavor. Then when it unleashes an unnatural pandemic—that is when such human inventions escape the lab, they do what morally depraved people have done since the beginning of time. They muddy the waters to hide what they’ve done. We are all undone by the modern “worship” of science.

***Yikes! all you who merrily reproduce Far Side cartoons. Look what I’ve just spotted on Wikipedia:

“Since 1999, Larson has objected to his work being displayed on the internet, and has been sending takedown notices to owners of fan websites and users posting his cartoons.^[25] In a personal letter included with the requests, Larson claimed that his work is too personal and important to him to have others "take control of it".^[26]^[25] In 2007, he also published an open letter on the web to the same effect.^[27] Larson has been criticized for not providing a legitimate online source for the Far Side series and negatively compared to cartoonists who have embraced the internet.^[28]”

^{He wishes you wouldn’t.}

^{***Visit the Amazon bookstore:}

November 15, 2021
What AI is Like:

When you tweet from ancient Egypt, speaking into the phone and relying upon AI, you soon learn it is dicey to say Phoraoh Sneferu by name. You do better to name him Pharoah Steven, and make corrections later. Even this is risky. He might emerge as feral Steven.

AI is dumb enough not to recognize whenever you stray off the beaten path with unfamiliar words. Yet it is smart enough to know a sentence should make sense. Therefore, it not only screws up Sneferu, but also two or three words on either side as it tries to reinterpret the entire sentence. It’s both dumb and smart!

It reminds me of the fellow who was selling a talking dog for only $10. Making sure it could really talk, a potential buyer asked it many questions. Yes, the dog said, he could really talk. He had learned to do so auditing courses at the university where they would not let him formerly enroll, discriminating against him because he was a dog. This is how he, after learning how to speak, went on to lead various Dog Rights protests up and down the coast. Furthermore, he had worked for the New York Times and they had sent him to Egypt on a story. where he had explored the pyramids. (He even confessed to peeing on some of the great stones.) Then he bought an entry-level stake in bitcoin and was now a billionaire.

“This is amazing!” the buyer exclaimed. “Why are you selling him for just ten dollars?”

“Because he’s a big liar!” the seller said. “He never did any of those things!”

That’s what AI is like.

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March 26, 2021
The Dunning Kruger Effect

I became so tired of charges that I suffered the Dunning -Kruger syndrome that I resolved to find out what it was. Before I could, someone sent me a nice video, along with the observation:

“Here's a good video for you. It's animated, so you should be able to understand it:”

Of course! Talk about motivation! “Hi! Here’s a video that insults you! It only takes 10 minutes. I hope you’ll watch it.”

Still, he had done me a favor. I had been meaning to check it out. A taunter is not necessarily a bad thing because he helps you to test whether you can keep yourself restrained under evil. Sometimes you find that you cannot and then it is back to Bible 101 for you!

I watched it. Sigh….it is the Child’s game of King of the Mountain played on an intellectual plane by Adult Children—to the same self-aggrandizing end and with the same pushing and shoving techniques. Low information people are prone to overestimate their command of a subject? Is that really such a profound observation so as to wait for Dunning and Kruger to give it academic endorsement? Just read up on the “fool” in the Bible and you will pick up the same.

The video begins with the account of a bank robber who was caught because the lemon juice he put on his face hadn’t made him invisible to security cameras. He had imagined it would since lemon juice is a component of invisible ink. Can we agree that this fellow is not pulling with both oars in the water?

Nevertheless, university psychologists Dunning and Kruger seem to think this loopiness has broad applicability, as though anyone might commit such a faux pas. Reading of this idiot in the newspaper “led to Dunning and Kruger to examine this phenomenon more deeply.” This suggests to me that they too might not be entirely pulling with both oars.

There is a sneering quality to this video. Rather than view this fellow as a mental health candidate, these psychologists—or maybe it is just the video-maker—seem to expand his nuttiness to whomever might disagree with them over matters of science. Specifically, it is hurled at me because I do not lap up every bit of evolution they want me to lap up. I do lap up some of it. It wasn’t me who put dinosaurs on the Kentucky ark. But I don’t lap up the works.

In their experiment to “examine this phenomenon” more thoroughly, Dunning and Kruger take the lazy person’s way out and employ graduate students as their guinea pigs. Obviously, it is easier for college professors to do this—always there are graduate students lying about—but are graduate students representative of the overall population? In the matter of low-information people tending to overestimate their knowledge, are they not significantly different than the overall population? Probably the difference is not enough to make the experiment worthless, but it is enough to relegate its conclusions from book-status to pamphlet.

The cure for Dunning Kruger syndrome, as proposed in the video, if not D&K themselves? ‘Taking in more knowledge’ is the antidote. I doubt this goes anywhere near as far as taking in more humility, and graduate students are not known for this quality. Young people in general are not known for it—all the more so those who have entered the competitive heady world of graduate school. Rather than advanced learning being a cure for Dunning Kruger, it is more likely to simply transform an ignorant braggart into an educated one. Which is worse? It is hard to say. On the one hand, it is “I can handle a stupid person, and I can handle a belligerent person, but a stupid AND belligerent person…” That’s a pretty tough combination, my coworker said as we were batting the topic around. So yes, eliminating half the problem—that of being stupid—would seem to be an improvement. On the other hand, equipping braggarts with knowledge doesn’t necessarily change them into more tolerant people—as often, it simply makes them more insufferable.

Better than the recommendation to take in more learning, which depending on one’s circumstances, may not be feasible, is the recommendation to take in more humility. The world of academia probably provides the least fertile ground for growing that counsel, whereas the world of spirituality is probably the most fertile. You won’t find Philippians 2:3 on the quadrangle—counsel to “consider others superior to you.” Rather, it is usually just the opposite. Even in the most skewed comparison, everyone has at least one quality in which they are clearly superior. The trick is to find that quality and hone in on it like a laser beam.

The world of the head does not rule as it imagines it does. If not coupled with humility, then even when heady persons are right, they find that people resent and will not cooperate with them simply as a reaction to how ill-mannered they are. It’s staggering how the high IQ can be coupled with an infantile EQ.

To underestimate the gravity of what you do not know is a human tendency that will afflict all to some degree. No one is immune to the Dunning – Kruger effect. The video acknowledges this, even if it does propose a faulty solution. But the humble person who truly “does not think more of himself than it is necessary to think” has a leg up on the one who consistently does think more of himself than it is necessary to think, even when his increased knowledge reveals to him that the subject is more massive still. That doesn’t necessarily humble him. As often, it puffs him up with self-importance at the thought of what he has been able to figure out.

Dunning Kruger can work as my taunter says, but it can also work in the following Hans Christian Anderson way (per Wikipedia):

Two swindlers arrive at the capital city of an emperor who spends lavishly on clothing at the expense of state matters. Posing as weavers, they offer to supply him with magnificent clothes that are invisible to those who are stupid or incompetent. The emperor hires them, and they set up looms and go to work. A succession of officials, and then the emperor himself, visit them to check their progress. Each sees that the looms are empty but pretends otherwise to avoid being thought a fool. Finally, the weavers report that the emperor's suit is finished. They mime dressing him and he sets off in a procession before the whole city. The townsfolk uncomfortably go along with the pretense, not wanting to appear inept or stupid, until a child blurts out that the Emperor is wearing nothing at all! The emperor then sneers at the stupid little tyke, too stupid to know he is stupid, and laughs at his Dunning Kruger limitations.

……

****** The bookstore

January 13, 2021
Segwaying in San Diego

It doesn’t take long to learn how to ride a Segway. The San Diego tour operator gave us about 15 minutes in the company parking lot. Lean forward, you go. Pull back, you stop. Turn right or left pretty much like you were riding a bike.

There’s barely any point in saying how easy it is because the product is no longer made. It was sold to a Chinese outfit in 2015, combined with some other products, and then discontinued in 2020. Murray joined us in San Diego and he told me the Postal Service—he retired as a mail carrier—might have bought a few hundred, maybe even thousands, but the Postmaster General fell off his. The owner of the company later had problems, too, running his Segway off a cliff to his death.

Well—we found it easy. After our brief training session, off we went in single file, reconvening here or there as our guide pointed out spots of interest. We spent much time in Balboa Park, where our guide snapped pictures of anyone who asked. We did, and handed our over camera to him. Balboa is an urban park originally constructed in order to host the 1915-16 Panama-California Exposition World’s Fair. Returning late afternoon, we had to thread our way through the homeless who were claiming their nightly sidewalk spots. This made me slightly nervous—we weren’t THAT experienced at driving these things, but there were no incidents.

It was atypically cold during our several day stay, and the locals kept apologizing for it, as though they expected us to blame them. I did learn something very interesting about rain. When the San Diego weatherman forecasts a 70% chance of rain, that means it will rain like mad but only for about 10 minutes. Afterwards the sky will return to brilliant blue. Where we come from when the weatherman says 70% chance of rain, that means it will rain all day, it will rain all day tomorrow, and it rained all day yesterday

****** The bookstore

December 19, 2020
Brother Glock and the Woo Factor – Part 2

For those who don’t know, ‘woo’ is a derisive term originated by the scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders. It refers to how they, the intelligent people, will run something past the dummies that the latter can’t understand and so attribute to the supernatural. “Woooo,” they exclaim. There is some overlap of scientists with scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders but the two are not the same. Plenty of scientists just go about doing science and see no contradiction with believing in God. Science is a tool for understanding, but it is not the tool for understanding.

The scientist/philosopher/atheist/cheerleaders kid themselves in their supposed enlightenment—just like the intrepid explorer did when he suddenly found himself surrounded by primitive cannibals! He pulled a lighter from his pocket, flicked it, and a low flame emerged. The astonished natives gasped ‘Woo! Woo!’ and fell back. “MAGIC!!” the explorer said in a deep voice. “It must be,” the chief said. “That’s the first time we’ve ever seen one light on the first try!”

So Vomodog thinks he has “won” with the admission that the Covid update (#4) is just good human advice? He thinks that it proves his case somehow—to win an admission that the Governing Body is not drawing on woo? I never thought that they were in this instance. Nor, I doubt, did many. Nor, as likely as not, did Brother Glock, who gave the talk that started this ball rolling.

Here is a statement from Harry Cheadle, in NewRepublic.com: “The current moment [of responding to Covid 19] is demonstrating just how far away we are from being able to come together to solve a planetary crisis. The pandemic is a test, and we’re failing it.”

Why is his statement true? Because you can’t get people to agree on anything. Propose a course, and find yourself lambasted by those advocating just the opposite. The Governing Body is the only entity that can issue an update of Covid 19 without my saying, “What is their real motive here?”

There is a public talk on making sound decisions that recognizes it is often not so crucial that you have made this or that decision, but it is crucial that you follow through on whatever you decide. This the greater world is unable to do. It is the paralysis of everyone challenging everyone else that collectively delivers the Cheadle verdict that “we’re failing the crisis.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses aren’t failing it, and it is because of completely human factors that they enjoy and the greater world does not. Witnesses have the ability to yield. They don’t insist on their own way. They do not have to “question authority” on every piddly thing. They trust leadership. They see that direction given obviously has their interests at heart, that it is not too onerous, that it allows for individual family headship. It allows that the circumstances of one family will not be that of another, and doesn’t try to tell them all what to do, even as it sets a greater overall theme of caution. In contrast, the direction of human leaders during these Covid days has ranged from draconian to complete laissez faire.

“Well, that’s just good sound thinking,” Vomodog says, “based upon Bible verses that show good sound thinking. We could have done that.” But the fact is that he didn’t. And in fact, he can’t—because he has sided among those with a societal inability to agree, a societal inability to compromise, and a societal inability to endure delayed gratification. Return to the fold, and he will find it again, but it’s not to be found in the greater world that he has chosen.

In fact, I have no problem if Brother Glock does think that a woo factor is at work, nor would I ever rule out that there might be—it is just that you can’t “prove” it in the scientific sense. But the fact is, you can discard all the woo, and still have the greater argument. You still have Vic Vomodog swimming in a chaotic cesspool of argument, indecision, and waffling. You still have him, like an insane Jeremiah, at the bottom of a miry cistern, trying to persuade Ebed-Melech to come down and join him. You still have him trying to sell you the bill of goods that your life would improve if you would just step over to the morass that is his.

July 15, 2020
Zoom and Jehovah’s Witnesses

In a service group Zoom meeting on the ministry, one sister said how we ought not “put people in boxes.” I agreed with this remark as I gazed upon ten boxes of people on my computer screen. The gray boxes suddenly appear with name only. It is like a drum roll announcing the appearance of yet another friend. Then the video comes online, as though the cymbal crash. I can get used to this. There are some aspects of it I even prefer—such as wearing my slippers.

With very little fuss at all Jehovah’s Witnesses adopted the Zoom conferencing software and now conduct all meetings this way. Doesn’t it provide case-in-point to those talks about how Jehovah considers people individually important? There were other church groups that also adopted Zoom—Witnesses were not alone—but because their normal program structure doesn’t incorporate congregation participation, there were remarks that the result just seemed too irrelevant and inadequate for the times. Some of those churches indeed had additional social groups, chat rooms, but that was just it—they were for chat, with no spiritual component built into it.

Then there were also some churches that blew past social distance strictures as a scheme to subvert religion and held their services as usual, enraging everyone else for being so ‘irresponsible,’ even defiant of public policy.

How much ‘credit’ will Jehovah’s organization get their for quick cooperation with the new social distancing policies at no spiritual detriment to believers? When the CultExpert tweets that cult members are putty in the hands of their leaders ordering them to ignore science and convene as usual, I append that there is at least one “cult” that does not. When he says that cults fall into line with the prompts of his new nemesis, the Supreme Cult Leader Trump, I tell him that there is at least one “cult” that is universally known to be apolitical—and not involved in such controversies at all. I mean, in some many ways, Jehovah’s Witnesses are the polar opposite of his cult model, and as so I can’t help but think, even though I know better, that he will one day halt his ridiculous efforts to categorize them as such. I think I told him somewhere along the line that if all persons were ‘cult’ members like Jehovah’s Witnesses, COVID-19 would have moved on by now—it’s not OUR people that were partying on the beach, but it likely included some of his, whose distinguishing feature is ‘independence’ and ‘forming their own mind.’ That’s a recipe for cooperating with government recommendations? I don’t think so.

The Zoom company wondered why so many of those using their app identified as Jehovah’s Witnesses—this was related to us by a brother in our service meeting group. Zoom had served as a tool for his huge family reunion just after the Memorial, bringing together ones who had not crossed paths in some time, and some of them had Warwick connections. Warwick brothers got to witness to the Zoom team, they related. Six Zoomer leaders attended a meeting, and three of those stayed on till the end.

Now, our brothers will unfailingly put a spiritual face on doings that may be completely non-spiritual. But surely the core of the story will be true. They will spin it that these Zoomers are on the cusp of Bible study themselves, when doubtless their first motive will be to see how their product is being used and provide customer support. That does not mean a spiritual component is non-existent. Time will tell. Meanwhile, unless I am very much mistaken (how likely is THAT?) Jehovah’s Witnesses worldwide are giving their product its most rigorous workout ever, ensuring that each member is connected to the coordinating organization—and this cannot help but put the cause to the front of their consciousness. Just like Putin never saw anything like every Witness in the world writing him on behalf of their brothers, so Zoom never saw anything like the efforts to keep every Witness in the world unified in Bible teachings.

Zoom was not ready for the explosion of interest in their product—nobody would be. It is as though you open a restaurant and everyone in the country shows up to order a hamburger. Some security issues came to the fore and the Zoom people scrambled to patch them, like the kid sticking his fingers in the dike. Two weeks ago our elders mentioned having received an 8-page letter from our own HQ on how to effectively yet safely use the product. All elders in the world got up to speed on Zoom—and there will be among them a huge number, no doubt, with very shaky grasp of technology to begin with.

Now you know—you just know—how the brothers would have been in interacting with Zoom personnel. They would have been respectful, patient, and even helpful, as the creators of what one Italian IT firm called the “world’s best website” (mentioned in one of the Yearbooks—I think, 2017). Contrast that with the typical customer, who might well not be that way at all—screaming when something goes wrong, some of them. Faith and its resulting qualities are not the possession of all people.

It seems a perfect time to kick back at some of those naysayers—you know who you are (oh….they will mostly be on the open forum, not here. Ah, well…tough) —who have said, “Who needs organization?” People are going stir-crazy in the greater world, but it is not so with Jehovah’s people. Just ‘Jesus and me?’—that’s enough? I think not. It is the bottom line, of course. You need a relationship with the father and with the son. But as a gimme, God throws in a network of united worshippers—a brotherhood. Anyone would be crazy to pass that by. We are social beings. We’re built that way. The brotherhood has come to the fore with its quick adaptation of technology.

At the same time, the non-stop Bible counsel fed us on how to get along with family and spouse in forbearance and love—you want to try to tell me that hasn’t come in handy? There are many people for whom the worst possible stressor is to sentence them to open-ended ‘prison terms’ with their family—cooped up in the same house! but it is not so for Jehovah’s people. Again, the godly organization has kept that counsel before us incessantly and never has the payoff been more apparent than now.

April 14, 2020