Is it Live or is it Mirror-ex?
Plus FIVE THINGS that are different post COVID, the latest TRUpreneur article, some Headline Head-Scratchers, FTW about Hack, and a possible origin of pets
My apologies for missing last week’s tonic, as I needed some medicinal tonic for myself. I returned from Mexico and promptly got sick. Nothing brought back from the sunny south, but caught somewhere in the urban wilds of Vancouver. Anyway before I knew it Wednesday was upon me, I was still mass consuming mindless Netflix series from bed, and the deadline was missed. My health and energy has returned and so has MMT.
FIRST COURSE: We are well on the way to literally mirroring ourselves with AI
A whole new type of agent because ….we need them?
For those of you with the mistaken belief that we will put guardrails on new technology discoveries, think again. Then I ask you, think again. Here’s is an upbeat article about how AI interviews you - just having coffee with a new virtual friend - for about two hours and then creates a simulation agent. That is a benign phrase that means there is computer duplicate of you that represents your values and preferences. On major sociological and psychological tests, General Social Survey and Big Five personality assessments (which the article downplays), the new you is 85% accurate. That’s scary. Evidently something called the “dictator game”, which I have never taken or even heard of, will trip up your replica.
The article mentions a caveat. Do you think that having an AI agent that can fool major personality tests out there interacting in the world is a threat? We just need to marry it up with AI visual reproductions if us and we are completely mirrored. “You can have a bunch of small ‘yous’ running around and actually making the decisions that you would have made—that, I think, is ultimately the future,” Park says”. He is the research lead from Stanford.
He came up with this 2 hour interview concept after being on podcasts. Other researchers are developing other techniques - like hovering your emails - to create this same replica of us. Not sure about you, maybe I’m just too old, but I don’t want my own personal replicant. When they come to interview me for two hours I’m just going to make some stuff up. It will then be a funhouse mirror of me.
Secondi: FIVE THINGS that are different post COVID
This was influenced from my illness and from conversations with friends and relatives in our whistle stop in Vancouver
People assume every sickness you get must be Covid. They don’t believe you when you say it is a garden variety cold.
People believe all sick people with any type of illness should isolate until there are absolutely no symptoms remaining.
The continuing acceleration in social media usage that started in 2020 for many is creating more triteness, copycat-ism and ignorance.
People seem to generally fear more things, especially those they can’t control, generating a Safetyism boom.
Some people blossomed during Covid by establishing new activities, pastimes and habits.
IS IT POSSIBLE that The Flintstones had the first pet with Baby Puss?
Maybe you saw that we have discovered a fully mummified baby saber tooth tiger cub. Carbon dating determines that it is 35,000 years old. Looks very cute as its teeth haven’t grown in yet and the researchers notedly point out that it had soft fur. I’m hypothesizing that this would have been the first human pet. They probably kept it around until it got too rough and tumble then threw it out of the cave (before it throws Fred out of the house). Just like we do with alligators today, just flushing them out of our thoughts when they get too big.
This week I’m highlighting a wonderful article by Justine Bateman. You might remember her from Family Ties in the 1980s. Amongst many other things, she is a proponent of natural aging for celebrities, something that is normal for us…normies. Last week I binged two months of Netflix viewing in just four days so I noticed number of actresses of a certain age who apparently aren’t following Justine’s approach and are using various interventions to look more youthful. No names (Nicole Kidman…oops did that slip out). I’ll stop now before I name more unless I was seeing simulation agents, with an artificial waxen look.
Justine’s excellent blog - which is paywalled on Substack but I have linked to here - deals with AI amongst other things, as she describes the death of Hollywood. Her astute business model analysis is far better than any of our current generation Business school professors. This is combined with her Hollywood insider knowledge of 40 years as technology completely changed the creative process, while her cultural and sociological observations of viewers are incisive and apt. Surprisingly she is hopeful for a better future. After we bore ourselves to death with AI.
FTW: Hack(er)
This has to be one of the most confusing expressions that is overly used as it historically it has several different uses, almost all negative. Look at just some of them:
A cut with a machete
A bad golfer or writer
A mediocre computer programmer
Illegally breaking into someone’s computer
Coughing, especially with a smoker’s hack
Given we live in an era of nomenclature breakdown where people are easily confused if a word has more than one meaning or usage, how is it that hack has such cultural legs. I recently listened to a podcast by linguist John McWhorter that says many words gradually wear out their welcome, become negative and are replaced by a new, supposedly better word. The wheel of words as it were. Which is why I can no longer describe myself as crippled despite decades of it being a warm, well used word (I spent a couple of months in a Crippled Children Hospital in Grade 7) and I must now use the newly assigned word physicadiverse.
But not so for hack. It has new positive life. Suddenly seeing something that says 5 great parental hacks is meant to mean something good, tools you should add into your repertoire as a responsible parent. I can’t get used to it as I still hear the derisive putdowns of a programmer I knew whose last name was Hakker.
A few summers ago when I was working on my first iteration of training for entrepreneurs, I was sitting on our deck with a friend of ours. It was perfect weather, the rose was fine and I was talking about the tragically flawed business model of a local pizza maker. A story that is similar to so many. One evening these would-be proprietors made their famous homemade pizza, the booze was flowing and their guests said that they should start their own pizza business. The crust especially was they best they had ever had. It was a sure fire winner.
The idea should have have gone to the garbage with the empty bottles the next morning. Or at least have someone with successful new business experience cast a critical eye. But it didn’t happen. Their crust WAS the best, wasn’t it. So they invested $100,00 into a pizza truck and a new business was borne.
Click to keep reading The Pam Paradox: Many people are just not right for being entrepreneurs
HEADLINE HEADSCRATCHERS
No way this can come true now as Elon is currently reinventing government which will likely take awhile. PS. Martian dreams are just batshit crazy.
There goes human exceptionalism as fashion and fads now cross the species boundary
That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it consider sharing with a friend. Better yet, leave a comment.