I recently finished listening to the audiobook version of this title. Given my listening habits, it took me the better part of a year to make it through the 21 hours. Normally, if I take such long breaks from a book, that means I’m not going to finish it. Not the case with this one. Demon, the protagonist, had a way of fading away for a few weeks at a time but then he would bubble to the surface of m’brain and I’d feel the urge to check back in on his story.
Part of the reason it took me so long to get through this one was that I felt the middle 1/3 of the book slipped into a repetitive and depressing cycle of Demon — an Appalachian middle-schooler thrust into the foster system when his single mom OD’ed — having some horribly tragic event befall him, only for him to somehow cobble a life together and a path forward… until the next tragedy or piece of crappy luck struck. I remember thinking “Dang. How much bad luck can one kid endure?” but I guess resilience is a requirement of both the reader and the character.
Set largely in the heyday of Purdue Pharma’s and the Sackler family’s ravaging of Appalachian culture via bottles of hydrocodone, Demon Copperhead is the deep dive, 21 hour version of The Matt Mitchell Music Company’s song, Bootstrap Nation. Side note: while we’re on the topic, if anyone wants to subject themselves to a sickening and sobering peek behind the source of America’s opioid epidemic, check out Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain.
I’ll steer clear of spoilers here but I will say this about the way Kingsolver wrapped up the novel: it was worth the effort. Go grab yourself a copy and settle in for a swirling eddy of neglect, abuse, bad luck, and bad choices splashing against the occasional rocks of kindness, compassion, and connection.
This lands in the “If you know, you know” category, but my brother recently sent a response to my “Open Letter to Family” post from back in August. I appreciate the dialog. I sincerely do. Any sort of political exchange these days that doesn’t devolve into a shouting match (or strained silence) should be celebrated. So, hurray us! With that, let’s dive in.
First up: religious faith, politics and the governance of a country. My wanderings through the world have led me to the conclusion that belief in (a) god doesn’t necessarily equate to wisdom and being a caring, compassionate human being. Some of the cruelest, most self-serving, and childish adults I have met profess to be strong Christians. At the same time, some of the cruelest, most self-serving, and childish adults I have met are avid atheists. And… some of the most generous, empathetic, and giving humans I have met have a deep religious faith. And… it’s also true that some of the most generous, empathetic, and giving humans I have met have either no faith, or a faith other than Christianity.
I think that while faith can be a good source of guidance on how to lead a good, moral life, the evidence would seem to indicate that it isn’t the only way. There’s also some evidence to indicate that many people use their loudly professed faith as a cover for actions that are in complete opposition to the very tenets of that faith. So as long as I’m not telling you what you have to believe and you’re not telling me what I have to believe and — especially — our government isn’t telling both of us what we have to believe, I think we can set aside using any particular faith as a litmus test on how to proceed.
One last side note: this may be neither here nor there, but it’s probably pretty clear that I don’t subscribe to any particular faith. I’m solidly in the agnostic camp. It seems like my options are to either believe that everything in the universe somehow came from nothing or everything in the universe came from something that always was. Either way, we have to engage in some magical thinking to explain how we walking bags of sentient ocean water came to be. Given that, I’m perfectly comfortable operating in the unknown and honestly saying “I don’t know.” Any time I encounter someone who gets rigid and dogmatic and claims some proprietary insight into the ultimate unknowable aspects of our existence, that causes my left eyebrow to shoot up.
Actually, one more side note on this subject. My guess is that if somehow there were some collective human amnesia that swept over the world tomorrow and erased all signs and memories of the thousands of forms and versions of belief in the supernatural, in short order we humans would come up with some new stories to explain our corner of the universe. And those new origin stories would probably be different than the multiple beliefs that exist today. Humans are good at concocting stories — it’s our superpower. Conversely, if we wiped away all scientific discovery to date, we’d eventually get back to exactly where we are with our understanding of the universe. The testable, replicable approach to observing and explaining the physical world should yield the exact same results.
New topic: Immigration. I’m 100% in agreement that countries need to have laws that provide for the control of their borders. Agreed. Also agreed is that it is the executive branch whose job it is to carry out and enforce those laws.
I think where we have some difference is how those laws are being enforced. If the law isn’t being enforced in the same way for everyone, or if the enforcement is being conducted in an unlawful manner, then the law and the power of the government become a tool of intimidation and coercion.
Some examples? These are the three that I find most concerning, although there are more:
Arresting and detaining U.S. citizens: While ICE policy explicitly states it cannot use its civil enforcement authority to arrest a U.S. citizen, there have been documented cases of citizens being erroneously arrested and even deported.
A shocking lack of due process for those who have been arrested: See above. The fact that I can be swept off the street by Federal agents into an unmarked vehicle by unidentified, armed dudes in face masks is pretty unsettling. And if it’s not a straight-up kidnapping scenario, then I’m lucky that the courts get to take their leisurely time to figure out if I’m guilty or not. In the meantime, I can lose my job. I can lose my housing. My wife and kids can go hungry. This is not a fictitious scenario.
Targeting individuals based on protected characteristics: I guess the good news here is that the Supreme Court ruled last month that ICE can use race, language, ethnicity, profession, etc., as grounds for suspicion. That’s tongue-in-cheek about the “good news” part. As I mentioned before though, I don’t know who would trust the federal government with such broad legal rational for arresting and detaining someone. If ICE can willy-nilly arrest brown-looking construction workers, they can just as easily use that same logic to arrest white-looking loggers. We seem to have moved away from “innocent until proven guilty” to “guilty because Trump thinks you look guilty.” That should be alarming.
Here in my backyard, consider Cesar and Joswar, legally here in Spokane with Ben Stuckart as their legal guardian (Ben is a former City Council president here in Spokane and an acquaintance of ours). Cesar and Joswar were here to pursue permanent US residence. Joswar and Cesar checked every single box to be here legally, they had jobs, they were following every law laid out for them. They were checking in as requested for their asylum hearing where they were unlawfully arrested by ICE and then held in federal prison in Tacoma for months. Rather than languish in prison for an undetermined period of time, both have chosen to self-deport. That’s not justice.
Cesar and Joswar were detained on June 11th of this year. That afternoon, Ben rallied several hundred protesters to peacefully protest the arrests, with the hope of obtaining the release of Cesar and Joswar. The next day, the U.S. Justice Department sent out a mass email to all 93 U.S. attorneys ordering federal prosecutors to prioritize cases against protesters who defy federal immigration enforcement and to publicize those types of cases. In a move that can reasonably be seen an intimidation and silencing tactic, Ben and nine other US citizens are now up on federal charges for conspiracy to “impede or assault law enforcement officers”, which can carry a sentence of six years in prison and fines of up to $250,000.
Local fun fact: Rich Barker, the former US District Attorney here in Spokane, is the husband of one of my coworkers. Rich refused to bring federal charges against Ben and other protestors because he felt the charges were politically motivated and lacking in substance. Within a month, he was forced to resign. And just so you know, the Barkers are good, solid Mormon stock. Rich isn’t some radical left-wing type.
Within just the past few months, I’ve seen federal governmental abuses of power, lawlessness and political coercion/intimidation within a (couple) stone throws of my front door. I think the most dangerous threat to the rule of law and the Constitution is those who use loopholes in the law to weaken and tear down the rule of law. Turning the power of law away from the basis of civil society and into a tool to enforce conformity and silence is frightening.
As a good summation of the state of affairs with the militarization of America’s police and law enforcement (and more importantly, the “police-ification” of America’s military), pour yourself your favorite drink and give this a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcTZ_en5FTM Ezra Klein, the host of the podcast, definitely has his viewpoint but he asks some fair questions about where all of this is headed.
All right. New topic, of sorts. Am I being hypocritical in now wanting be an immigrant myself? I don’t think so. Especially given that I will be following the laws of the country we’re looking to move to. What would be hypocritical is if I expect special treatment solely because I’m a middle-class white guy. Whiiiich… is exactly what I have here in the good ol’ US of A. And I don’t like it. My rights and freedoms are only as solid as the rights and freedoms of those who are the most profiled, targeted and oppressed. And as of today, that feels pretty damn tenuous.
So here’s where I land, at least for now: I’m not looking to leave because I hate this country or because I’ve given up on its ideals. I’m leaving because I’ve seen too clearly how those ideals can be weaponized against the very people they’re supposed to protect. I’ve watched neighbors be indefinitely detained, prosecutors fired for refusing to play politics, and citizens threatened with prison for peaceful protest—all within walking distance of my home. At its best, the America I believe in doesn’t play favorites based on skin color or political loyalty. It doesn’t confuse enforcement with intimidation or mistake conformity for order. Maybe I’m naive to think I’ll find something better elsewhere, but I do know this: I can’t stand here and watch the rapid erosion of due process and equal protection under the law while pretending my comfort and safety somehow exist separate from everyone else’s.
First of all, the drop cap option within WordPress seems to have disappeared. So much for style consistency.
But on to more serious matters. The latest issue of The New American just arrived last week and there are two things of note: 1) there was zero mention of our newly minted federal police force in the form of ICE and 2) there was a piece on Putin that was a reprint… from nearly 20 years ago. Huh. Seems like there might be some more recent/breaking news on that topic.
Oh, and also: The Supreme Court handed down a decision last week that ICE can make arrests “based only on race, language, location and occupation.” Let that sink in for a bit. This is not rule of law. This is rule of power, based on the whims of whomever is in power. Using the exact same legal logic and justification (or lack thereof), ICE could be directed to arrest white, English-speaking folks wearing cowboy hats. Who in their right mind would trust the Feds with that power?
I wanted to update you on where Maggie and I stand regarding the current state of our country. While our daily life in Spokane continues to grind along, we’re deeply troubled by what’s happening nationally.
Our Primary Concerns
Three issues are particularly worrying to us:
Federal overreach and Constitutional violations: ICE now operates with a budget 80% the size of the entire United States Marine Corps, essentially functioning as a federal police force. Armed, masked, unidentified federal agents are pulling people off streets and shoving them into unmarked vehicles—not just in distant cities, but here in Spokane, on our streets.
Military deployment against citizens: We’re witnessing the normalization of using federal forces against American citizens on American soil. Just as of yesterday (8/24/25), Trump announced he is (illegally) activating the National Guard in 19 states. This is after deploying United States Marines in Los Angles. Armed National Guard troops are now deployed now in D.C.? How is that okay? With anyone?
What the hell? This is in no way what America’s Founders envisioned. The silence from traditional “small government” and “Constitutional” advocates like the John Birch Society on these issues has been deafening.
Update as of today (8/25/25): Trump signed an executive order to activate the National Guard in all 50 states. That’s pretty bleak, folks, if you’re at all concerned about rule of law versus rule of power.
Messing with our electoral process: Texas has redistricted their House of Representatives districts, not on the regular schedule, but at the request of Trump?
Trump meets with Putin in Alaska for a 3-hour private limo ride and then announces that since Vladimir doesn’t like mail-in ballots, Trump is issuing an executive order to do away with mail-in ballots? We should all be asking… why does Putin care about our voting mechanisms?
Why This Feels Different
Trump’s character issues (34 felony convictions for election fraud, stemming from a cover-up of an affair with a porn star? The glaringly obvious Epstein connections? The E. Jean Carroll rape conviction?) combined with his actions in office have moved me beyond distrust of my government to active fear of my government.
We are witnessing:
Stripping people of due process. The federal government cannot legally deport people without giving them their day in court. And yet… here we are.
An executive branch that admits wrongly deporting people, then ignores court orders demanding correction
The pursuit of rule of power over rule of law
This is more tangential, but what’s with the odd coziness between Trump and Putin? It would be the irony of ironies if the true conspiracy here is that Russia infiltrated the John Birch Society and turned it into a mouthpiece for Russian interests… It seems plausible. Two days ago, Russia conducted a missle attack on an American electronics factory in Ukraine. Not a peep from Trump. See also: messing with the electoral process, as already mentioned.
Historical Parallels
I compiled an incomplete list of political actions from 1930’s Germany and 2025 America. See if you can identify which political leader took which actions:
Used populist appeals claiming to represent “the people” against elites
Scapegoated minority groups and outsiders
Attacked press freedom, labeling unfavorable media as “enemies” or “fake”
Attacked academics and intellectuals
Claimed only they could “fix” the nation’s problems
Used propaganda and legal tools to target minorities and “enemies”
Refused to accept electoral losses, claimed fraud, threatened democratic institutions
Deployed force to intimidate, detain, or suppress opposition
Showed antagonism toward an independent press and transparency
Expressed hostility toward institutional norms when they constrained power
Worked to circumvent checks and balances
Associated with political violence by supporters
The comparison? Every single action applies to both Trump and Hitler. The eventual scale of Germany’s horrors differ dramatically from where we are right now, but the foundational patterns? They’re remarkably aligned. Frighteningly so.
Our Decision
Given our country’s headlong lurch toward authoritarianism, Maggie and I are exploring moving out of the country. We plan to visit Panama in January (perhaps in October, if the stars align) then spend a month or so exploring living/working options. If current American trends continue, we aim to establish permanent residency there.
This decision hasn’t come lightly. We’re giving up:
Proximity to our children and family (this is obviously the one that has brought on the most tears and literal physical illness)
Careers that we enjoy
Retirement savings
A wonderful social network
Decades of the life we’ve built here
What outweighs all of this is the prospect of living in an increasingly oppressive police state. If we can get out now and provide our children a path out too, the writing on the wall says we should act sooner rather than later.
What I’m Asking
I’m not requesting any specific action from you, except this: if you share concerns about America’s rapid slide into an authoritarian police state (just because they aren’t currently targeting you doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist), Constitutional erosion, the stripping of rights from people legally here on American soil, the deployment of a MASSIVE and heavy-handed federal police, and an executive branch lacking a moral compass, it’s time to start talking.
Discuss your concerns within your social circles
Call your elected representatives and demand accountability
Make sure your passport is current and consider having an exit plan
I find the human brain to be endlessly fascinating. At least until the recent advent of AI’s hallucinations, it was our only known source of flights of fancy, musings, dreaming up gods and religions, and generally trying to make sense of this spinning world.
I usually take the combo of my brain and my body as being “me.” That unique combo has, with one notable exception in the early 2000’s, always more or less marched in lockstep and functioned as a singular unit. But what is the “self,” if and when the mind and body go their separate ways?
The bulk of Sacks’ work here is an exploration of cases where the mind/body fusion is broken or otherwise confused. A few sample cases: A man who doesn’t recognize his own left leg (and is disgusted by it’s presence), a woman who lost all proprioception (the ability to tell where your body parts are in time/space without needing to get visual confirmation to make that determination). A man whose brain could not process images from the left side of his field of view. A man whose very being ceased to exist at a certain point in his life, leaving him to live in a state of suspended animation from his midlife onward. A man who lost the ability to recognize faces; not just the ability to recall who was who, but literally not being able to tell the difference between a fire hydrant and a human child.
All fascinating stuff.
Coming back to my personal episode, in 2001, I was walking up our basement stairs in our little shack of a house in North Seattle when I realized that my right calf muscle wasn’t working as it should. I couldn’t do a heel lift on my right leg. There was some disconnections between my right calf muscle and brain… the message just didn’t get through. I went through a few rounds of neurological testing, got checked for Parkinson’s (not as much fun as it sounds) and, after a few weeks of doctors shrugging and giving me the “let’s wait and see” advice, the muscle slowly started to respond to signals from my brain. It was a small enough issue that I could go hours at a time without even remember the problem existed, but it was a disconcerting period in my life. What if the symptoms extended up and/or down my leg? What if it moved over to my left leg?
Aside from that weird little blip, I think the closest lack of proprioception experience I can come up happened when I went into the dentist just a few weeks ago for my routine cleaning. It was time to have a set of x-rays taken and as the dental hygienist was wedging various wheelbarrow-sized equipment into my mouth to take the pictures, I lost all sense of control and placement of my tongue. Was my tongue in the way? Was it out of the way? Was it doing something weird/slightly obscene? I don’t know, because my tongue proprioceptors seemed to check out for a few minutes. While not an exact match, that’s pretty damn close to what I felt with my calf. A part of my body just seemed to be hanging around but lacking a connection to my brain. Super weird. And the thought of having that experience extended to my entire body is simply terrifying.
If anyone has any interest in such oddities of the human experience, Sacks is a fluid, entertaining writer who is able to translate his professional neurologist expertise and package it up in a way to make it accessible to the laity.
Indigenous pagans from times before history. Russians. Germans. Swedes. Poles. Lithuanians. The Russian Orthodox Church. Crusaders. Mercenaries. The Catholic Church. Seafaring merchants. From the early 1200’s through the early 1700’s (the timespan within the focus of this book), the control of Riga sloshed around between these competing — and occasionally allied — forces like beer in a nearly empty keg on a boat in heavy seas. A clunky sentence? Yes, but it also captures the frothiness and chaos of Riga.
Not being any sort of a northern European history buff, I went into this book with some trepidation, fearing it would be overly academic and inaccessible to newbs such as myself. I’m happy to report that with the judicious use of skipping forward a page or two here and there, I came out the other side with an appreciation for the unique and overlooked role that Riga has played in European history.
Fun fact: I never knew that there was a northern front to the Crusades. With 100% of the imagery of the Crusades in my mind being focused on the Holy Land abutting the Mediterranean, there was also a long-running effort by the Roman Catholic Church to convert pagans in the Baltic regions of northern Europe to Christianity. Through a combination of the cross, commerce, coercion and the crossbow, the pagan tribes eventually succumbed and/or formed alliances with the arriving forces. For those who refused to acquiesce and acknowledge the radiant beauty of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ… those people were erased from the landscape. As gawd would have wanted.
Fun fact #2: For Christians who joined the Crusades in the fight to retake Jerusalem from the Muslims (mission accomplished!), fighters could be granted up to a lifetime’s worth of indulgences by the church. Righteous, dude. For those willing to take up arms and head off to Riga and Europe’s northern climes, one year’s worth of indulgences would be granted. One year?! Pray tell, dear Pope, how the hell does that even work? Do I get to pick the year? Is it randomly selected? If so, by whom? Is it selected before or after my term of service? Can it be a year in the future or does it have to be for deeds that have already been completed? Does it have to be a single calendar year or can it be a fiscal year? Can I (or the indulgence grantor) pick and choose specific minutes/hours/days/weeks/months that would add up to a year? So. Many. Questions.
At any rate, within the span of this book’s focus (after the early 1700’s, Riga slipped into two centuries of Russian tsarist rule), Riga saw half a millennium of constantly morphing ruling interests. But in the end… after breaking away from the German empire in the aftermath of WWI only to be forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union, only to be invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany and only to be re-occupied by the Soviets at the end of WWII and finally becoming an independent parliamentary republic following the collapse of the USSR, the most unexpected of all outcomes is that since 1991, Riga has stood as the capital city of its own sovereign territory. History whiplash.
Will Riga’s indepence be a permanent and lasting thing? History seems to indicate that we should check back here in a few years. In the meantime, go track down a copy of this work for yourself: https://search.worldcat.org/en/title/1090904513
And if you want to kick some of this history around with Dr. O’Connor, go hang out at your local disc golf course or join a game of Risk. Listen for the muffled swearing and you will probably have found your guy.
According to Abraham Lincoln, ‘The legitimate object of government, is to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they cannot, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.”
Let’s discuss. Feel free to add comments below. Since we’re now off of Facebook’s algorithm, feel free to throw bombs. Go ahead, be inflammatory. But here’s the single ground rule: attack ideas, not the individual. Here we go.
Damn. Prepare to say this over and over as you read this book.
I don’t think I’ve ever read a book where I involuntarily said damn out loud so many times and with so many different intonations. There were plenty of “Daaaaamns,” as in “Oh, yeah. That’s bad. We’re screwed,” but also a number of “Damns!” and “Damnity damns!” along the lines of “That’s mind-blowing!”
But before we dive into all the damns, a bit of background first. If you aren’t already familiar with Kurzweil, go Google him and browse around for a few minutes. He was the first to develop print-to-speech scanning technology (Stevie Wonder was his first customer), he’s the inventor of the Kurzweil Keyboard (here’s an interesting short video about the development of that technology with a brief mention of the upcoming role of AI in music), he’s spent his entire life in computers/high tech and he has a long track record of guessing correctly about upcoming technological advances. Not only is he deep in the AI world, he’s able to report back out to the rest of us what he sees on the horizon.
And now, back to the swearing.
Moore’s Law. Most are familiar with the concept as it’s one of the bedrocks of technological advancement over the past 60+ years. While not actually a law like the laws of physics, it’s the fact that computing power tends to double roughly every 18-months while holding costs steady. That means that in 2026, I should be able to purchase 2x the computing power than I can today with the same hit to my wallet. We’ve been on this doubling trajectory for long enough now that whole new vistas are opening up on the horizon of what it is to be human.
The first “Damn!” of the book: Kurzweil applies Moore’s law going back to the Big Bang. Up to this point in my life, I’d only considered Moore’s law as forward facing tool with a beginning point in the 20th century.
Consider this: About 10 billion years elapsed between the first atoms forming and the first molecules (on earth) becoming capable of self-replication. Then there was about another 2.9 billion year span between first life on earth and first multicellular life on earth. Another 500 million years slips by and animals start showing up. Add another 200 million years to the clock and mammals appear.
Looking at life as the ability/power to process information, there is a trend emerging of accelerating change. “Focusing on the brain, the length of time between the first development of primitive nerve nets and the emergence of the earliest centralized, tripartite brain was somewhere over 100 million years. The first basic neocortex didn’t appear for another 350 million to 400 million years, and it took another 200 million years or so for the modern human brain to evolve.” 200 million years for modern brain development vs. 100 years-ish to hook our modern brains up to a radically expanded brain. Hmm. Damn.
In a chart, here’s the progression of how long it takes us to process information and learn new stuff:
So what happens when, according to Kurzweil’s prediction, humans are able to directly connect our neocortexes to the web? Daaaamn. At that point, who exactly am I? And with the ongoing exponential growth of computing power (with nano-scale computers projected to provide the computing power of 100 trillion human brains in the approximate volume of a single, current day human brain), the options become nearly boundless. Download the neuromuscular set of instructions for the ideal disc golf drive? Seems doable. Become a master music composer overnight? Why not? Holy damn.
Things are going to get weird in the coming decades. The pace of change we’ve seen over the past few generations is only going to accelerate. When I consider that my paternal grandfather was born in 1895 and lived a good chunk of his life basically in the Agricultural Age + Iron Age, I wonder what my [possible? eventual?] grandkids’ view on me will be.
Speaking of the Agricultural Age… Kurzweil spends a good amount of energy talking about the future of jobs and AI. Where are all of the current jobs going to go and what will replace them? In the 1890’s, over 40% of the American workforce was engaged in agriculture. We’re now sitting at 1%. Whether that has been a good thing for our society or not (Wendell Berry would take the adamant stance that it has not), the point remains that folks found jobs.
The other point is that even if agricultural workers in the 1940’s were told that their children, grand-children and great-grandchildren were going to become web site designers or digital video producers or Python or SQL experts, they wouldn’t have had a mental framework to make sense out of those words. Kurzweil’s argument with AI is that it is going to be such a radically different world that we can’t begin to explain to ourselves what it will look like.
Okay. I guess. But that’s not exactly comforting. Damn.
While it took 70+ years for ag jobs to drop from 53% of the workforce in 1860 to 21% in 1930, that was a relatively long timeframe. AI and massive computing power are poised to disrupt our current structures much more rapidly. What if, in the span of the next decade, nearly all trucking and delivery jobs were wiped away by autonomous driving? What if every radiologist were replaced over night by (better performing) AI tools? Bookkeepers? Fast food workers? My sense is that when cultural changes happen over the course of a generation or more, society has a chance to react. This time through the cycle, I’m not convinced that our social structures, regulatory systems, legal systems and safety nets are up to the task for the disruptions that Kurzweil lays out. Daaaaamn.
Speaking of social structures, our brave new future and who gets to enjoy (?) it, Kurzweil makes the assertion that a “kid today can access all of human knowledge with her mobile device.”
I think that’s a dangerous misstatement. And therein lies a significant flaw in Kurtzweil’s argument that AI’s benefits will be ubiquitous. As a business research librarian, I know that my library is spending upwards of $80,000 per year to provide “free” access to top-shelf business research tools and resources. The good stuff is not free. I don’t think it ever has been and I don’t anticipate it ever being so. No one is getting access to all of human knowledge on a mobile device without paying for the good stuff. So I guess that’s a good thing for libraries? Maybe? Hot damn!
As a framework for assessing any given technology’s societal benefit, I think it’s useful to ask who will have access to this technology? Who will be able to control the use of this technology? Will the control be primarily democratic or will it require bureaucratic, centralized organizations to manage it? Who will primarily benefit from the use of this technology? And mainly, who can afford it? On the plus side of the equation, I do think (despite the paragraph above), that access to AI will be relatively widespread. It’s not a technology like nuclear power that requires massive capital outlays or highly specific and specialized knowledge to make it hum. That’s the upside.
The downside is that AI will, in Kurzweil’s view, have the ability to custom design infectious diseases and create all sorts of mayhem. And… it will be in the hands of the average Joe. Damn. And daaaaamn.
But… before you despair too deeply, dear reader, here’s Kurzweil’s closing paragraph: Overall, we should be cautiously optimistic. While AI is creating new technical threats, it will also radically enhance our ability to deal with those threats. As for abuse, since these methods will enhance our intelligence regardless of our values, they can be used for both promise and peril. We should thus work toward a world where the powers of AI are broadly distributed, so that its effects reflect the values of humanity as a whole.
It has been a while, folks. My last post here was early February, 2024. A lot has happened since then. We sold the big house and drastically downsized into a condo. Both kids have moved out into their own apartments, positioning us as empty nesters. The condo is a nine-minute walk to the Central Library. It’s a six-minute walk down to a swimming hole at the river. Pretty groovy.
Big changes, but good ones. The sale of the big house allowed us to pay off our property on the coast and pay off some other debts while still putting us in a position to have the condo paid off in roughly two years. Big sighs of relief to have that financial stress off our shoulders.
After making it through the stress of selling/buying/moving, that means I need to get back to doing some reading and keeping some notes to self here. So here we go.
Winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Overstory is a tale of layering, braiding, leafing, branching and intertwining tales of North America trees and some of the humans who inhabit that world. The protagonist here isn’t a person, but rather how trees of various ages and species and location manage to tie an amalgamation of humans together. It’s a pretty neat literary trick that Powers has pulled off here.
A couple lines/points that have stuck with me since I finished the book earlier this summer:
Trees sprang into being here on Earth about 400 million years ago. That’s 400,000,000 years. Four hundred million years, if you want to spell it with letters. Every tree we see is a successful experiment that has been running for a very long time.
Humans are not the important part of the this book. If all trends continue on our current path, I’m guessing we’ll be realizing we’re not the important part of the story of life either.
Human civilization, in its current form, would most likely not exist without trees. Take look around at our built environment and chances are, trees form the basic building blocks of what you see. Not just the structures of our homes and cities, our earlier forms of transportation and early weaponry, but they also form a significant chunk of our current food supply.
I should have bookmarked this passage when I read it so that I could easily quote it verbatim, but it went something like this: In the DSM 5 discussion of delusional behavior, delusion is described purely as an individualistic affliction. If the broader culture around you doesn’t view something as delusional (such as destroying the structure that supports life, worshiping the great flying spaghetti monster, etc.), then it isn’t delusional. If you find yourself fighting against something that is largely culturally agreed upon (that earth was created for the enjoyment and utility of humans), you may then be deemed delusional.
One quibble with the book (and a possible spoiler alert): Powers floats the possibility that the salvation of the world will come through the rapid deployment of AI as that will allow for inter-species communication. That would be cool I guess but I also have to remember that when Europeans encountered beings in the New World, there was discussion of whether the indigenous peoples were actually human. Eventually being deemed human didn’t seem to afford much protection to Native Americans so…. yeaaaaah.
Since these past few months have been a bit of a blur, I didn’t keep any notes as I was reading this but I will say this: if you’re looking for a well-written, poetic, sad and — at times — angry ode to the trees, this is your book. A+.
ReMarkable 