Science & Technology

Sunrise Open Forum & a Few Topics To Consider [Expanded]

/ Jack Marshall / 51 Comments

I’m in Richmond, preparing to do a 3 hour legal ethics CLE seminar for one of my last remaining live presentation clients since the stupid Wuhan virus lockdown ruined my business, along with oh, so much else. (Thanks, CDC! Thanks, teachers! Thanks, Democrats! Thanks, “science.” Thanks, fear-mongering news media! Assholes….) I barely have time to wake up after a long drive in the wee hours last night from Alexandria, so I’m going to have to rely on you, dear readers, to keep things lively while I am otherwise occupied.

One thing to look forward to:EA will launch a new regular column authored by our alien philosopher, Extradimensional Cephalopod! We have had two other attempts at a regular column to inject diverse (ooo, that word!) ideas and opinions here beyond the guest posts and Comments of the Day, both evaporating for various reasons, in the case of the most recent contributor, incipient insanity. “Curmie’s” Trump Derangement proceeds apace: in his latest post, he declares that “There is no such thing as free speech if a state employee can be fired for saying something someone in power finds distasteful.” This is nonsense, as the Curmie I knew would have quickly pointed out. “Distasteful” is a deliberately and deceitfully vague term: any 12-year-old could probably imagine dozens of “distasteful” comments that a government employer could justifiably decide are intolerable from an employee. The courts agree, you know.

In other news, France and other U.S. allies decided to make terrorism great again, rewarding Hamas for its October 7 attack on Israel by “recognizing” the non-existent Palestinian state. President Trump correctly excoriated those nations at the U.N.

Meanwhile, in more important news, Major League Baseball announced that the new robo-strike calling system will indeed be instituted next season. It’s about damn time. In the game I listened to on the way to Richmond (Boston defeated Toronto, 4-1), the announcers admitted that the home plate umpire was missing calls all through the game. “Well, that pitch was well off the plate, but that’s how he’s been calling strikes all night!” Boy am I sick of that.

Finally, a “The Unabomber was right” note. My new Apple smartphone wouldn’t allow me to set an alarm for this morning as insurance against the hotel skipping my wake-up call until I signed up for its “health app,” which took 8 screens, and ended up telling me that I shouldn’t get up when I wanted to.

Well, wish me luck. I have about 150 Virginia lawyers to make ethical this morning, only 14 of them in person. %$#@!& lockdown….

Added: Oh, I forgot: Disney relented and let Jimmy Kimmel back on the air last night. Oh, so what? If ABC wants to have a late night show hosted by a not-too-bright, occasionally funny, progressive scold lose money, that’s their choice. The President should shut up about it; he just gives Kimmel significance and attention that his meager talent doesn’t justify. And threatening ABC for its broadcast content is beyond stupid, as well as unconstitutional. Trump’s thin skin regarding criticism is a serious weakness, but as with the others, he appears incapable of ameliorating it.

A Quick Note on the Competence of Artificial Intelligence…

/ Jack Marshall / 10 Comments

In writing the previous post about the Swiss organization that is paid to help people kill themselves, I was planning on mentioning Phillip Barry’s mysterious cult drama “Hotel Universe.” Barry, whose most lasting work is “The Philadelphia Story” but who was once one of Broadway’s most successful playwrights, wrote a fascinating but perplexing drama about how the suicide of a friend during a group vacation sends his characters on an existential journey into fantasy, madness, or a mass hallucination. My now defunct theater company performed the piece, because that was the kind of non-commercial, crazy productions we gravitated to. The last words of the dead friend were, “Well, I’m off to”…somewhere. I couldn’t remember. The suicidal woman I was writing about had told her family she was off to Lithuania, which is what reminded me of “Hotel Universe.”

But I couldn’t remember where Barry’s character was “off to” when what he meant was “I’m going to kill myself now.” It was driving me crazy, so I thought, “What a perfect question for AI! ” So I asked Google’s bot, “In ‘Hotel Universe,’the man who is going to kill himself says, I’m off to…” Where?” The thing answered quite assertively,

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The Unabomber Was Right, Example #7,853

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

My first “The Unabomber was right” essay was in 2017, and he’s been proven more right with every passing year. In that post, I began,

“As I understand it, Ted believed that technology was destroying society, making us all slaves to it, and taking the joy out of life. I have yet to see how blowing people up addressed this problem, but then he shouldn’t have had to be right about everything. The evidence has been mounting since 1995, when he killed his final victim,that  the Unabomber  wasn’t quite as crazy as we thought.”

The intensity of that conclusion has only multiplied with time, further technological excesses and inconveniences, and experiences like today’s trip to Staples to buy some wildly over-priced black ink for my crummy Hewlett Packard printer, purchased by my late wife when our ethics training and consulting business was even more financial distress than it is now.

It is a Sunday on Labor Day weekend, and the parking lot at the strip mall near my house was, as I expected, nearly empty. Staples, however, had the longest line at the single register open I had ever seen there. Some of this was the fault of Staples, which like just about every other chain, decided to keep its workforce cut to the minimum after the pandemic eased. After all, where else will the customers go? All of the stores have lousy service now; all of them are understaffed. For that, you can blame the progressive idiocy of raising the minimum wage to the point where it costs too much to pay for minimally-able employees. The result: fewer jobs, inflation, Staples-style (CVS-style, Home Depot-style, etc.) non-service.

But I digress. The huge line moved like a rabbit through the alimentary canal of a snake (maybe slower) because, I soon realized, everyone was using an app on their cell phones, and neither they nor the clerk were quite sure how the system worked. One woman was at the register for 20 minutes all by herself, looking and pounding on her smart phone, showing it to the poor guy trying to check her through. Every single purchase appeared to take at least three times as long as it would have before the addition of the apps to the process.

When I finally got to the head of the line with my three items, it still took too long: I had to enter two phone numbers, confirm my address, and “tap” with my card, but I was easily the quickest customer through the line, because all I did was pay for my stuff. A woman behind me actually said, “Wow! That was quick!”

I replied, “Want to know my secret? I bring up what I want to buy and pay for it.” You warned us, Ted. We just didn’t listen….

If I Were Not An Ethicist…

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

I had an occasion to drive downtown to D.C. this morning. You would think, based on what the Axis media is telling us, that the city looks like occupied territory, with armed soldiers menacing pedestrians. In truth, I saw one group of about seven Guardsmen by the Lincoln Memorial, and they were not armed. (I tooted at them and they waved at me.)

But I digress. Once again, I parked on a street, Connecticut Avenue, and once again used a parking station where you punch in how long you are planning on parking, scan a credit card, and get a receipt that you are supposed to place on your dashboard. And once again, the system didn’t work: I paid, but got no receipt.

So I wrote down the time and the amount I paid on a piece of paper with my name and phone number, explaining that the system had malfunctioned, and put that so it was visible through the windshield

I returned to a ticketless car. I have now used this method three times in D.C., all successfully. This also means that the modern parking system has failed for me more often than not; in fact four times out of six attempts. (Once I just took a chance and didn’t post anything.)

Now, if I were not an ethicist, I would be sorely tempted to use my note method without paying the parking fee at all. I can think of many rationalizations for doing so. The D.C. government is incompetent. That parking system stinks. The city deserves to lose money; it also wastes my time as the system forces me to write out long explanations for a situation that isn’t my fault.

But I am an ethicist, so I won’t do that. I won’t…

As If Any More Proof Was Needed, Trump 1.0 Nemesis Jim Acosta Reveals Himself Beyond All Question To Be An Unethical Hack

/ Jack Marshall / 4 Comments

You see, no decent, ethical journalist would even think of doing this. No intelligent journalist—or pest removal professional—would either. Yet this is the guy CNN sicced on President Trump and his press secretaries in his first term. This irredeemable partisan hack became a broadcast news star with neither the common sense, acumen, professional skills or decency to justify such status, which he is making a living off now.

This is CNN. This is Jim Acosta. This is the state of American journalism.

Former CNN correspondent Jim Acosta released the video of him interviewing an AI-generated version of Joaquin Oliver, who is dead. He’s one of the 17 victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the tragedy that also inflicted David Hogg on the world, as if the shooting itself wasn’t horrible enough.

The avatar was animated from a photograph of the late 17-year-old who appears wearing a beanie while speaking in a monotone digital voice. Acosta begins by asking, “What happened to you?” to which the AI version of Oliver responds, “I was taken from this world too soon due to gun violence while at school. It’s important to talk about these issues so we can create a safer future for everyone.”

Let’s pass on the conduct of the parents in creating the creepy thing, which is right out of an episode of “Black Mirror.” The topic is journalism ethics. Today’s reporters are so estranged from the concepts of honesty, respect, objectivity, responsibility and trustworthiness that no ethics alarm pings when someone says, “Hey Jim! Apparently there’s an AI version f one of those dead Parkland kids. Why don’t you interview him? Maybe he’ll say something nasty about Trump!”

True, Acosta is pretty much the bottom of the barrel in the profession that is already the bottom of the profession barrel, but still, it wasn’t that long ago that a stunt like this would be considered outrageous if attempted by a shock jock like The Greaseman or Howard Stern. I would say that this is the canary dying in the mine, except that then Chris Cuomo or Don Lemon might interview an AI version of the canary.

[Even WordPress is disgusted; it won’t let me download a photo of this asshole.]

Comment of the Day: “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

It’s about time recent EA comment auteur Holly A. was recognized with a Comment of the Day, and she actually had two strong candidates back-to-back. I chose the second. Both involved the same issue: garbage “climate change” advocacy and activism unhinged to actual facts. In the first comment, Holly impressively examined both the professors and the paper that sparked my post. I responded with gratitude, but noted that the technical details of the paper were not my concern. I wrote in part,

The ethics bottom line remains the same. There is not any “consensus.” The data is inconclusive. The hysteria is manipulated and politically motivated. Spending large amounts of treasure to alleviate a problem that is not well-understood is irresponsible. The news media has no interest in informing the public, and the people and politicians talking most loudly about climate change literally don’t know what they are talking about.

Fair?

Here  is Holly A.’s response, the Comment of the Day on the post, “About That Climate Change ‘Consensus’”….

***

I would say mostly fair.

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About That Climate Change “Consensus”….

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

MIT’s Richard Lindzen, Professor of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Emeritus, and Princeton’s William Happer, Professor of Physics, Emeritus, have published a paper titled Physics Demonstrates That Increasing Greenhouse Gases Cannot Cause Dangerous Warming , Extreme Weather or Any Harm.

Wait! How can that be?! We are told by climate change hysterics in government, universities, news organizations and international organizations—and Robert Kennedy, Jr,!—that there is no question that we are doomed if we don’t immediately curtail carbon-based fuels, stop flying, stop using gas-powered cars, stop fighting world government, stop having babies, stop using plastic ARRRRGH! AND we have been assured that this is the consensus of the scientific community, and not to grovel to these apocalyptic prognostications is to “reject science.”

Now, all of this has always been a pack of lies, speculation and hyperbole, but our betters (that is, progressives, artists, academics and Hollywood) have been allowed to pound this junk into the heads of the logically challenged and scientifically ignorant for decades, often harvesting votes and lucre all the while. I don’t know whether the latest paper is wrong just as you don’t know that the scientific opinions behind the “We’re all going to die!” papers are right. However, enacting draconian measures on faith, guesswork and speculation is irresponsible, or in technical terms, really, really stupid.

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Today’s “The Unabomber Was Right” Note…

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

I don’t find any of these funny.

I ended up in the emergency room of my local hospital thanks to a massive leg hematoma that has produced the most disgusting symptom you could imaging in your worst nightmares. (Think the first feature of Tarantino’s “Grindhouse,” “Planet Terror.”). I was quickly checked out and sent home (diagnosis: painful, ugly, incredibly swollen, blistered and bruised, but healing slowly but surely), but checking out was like a nit from an old Woody Allen movie—you know, back when he was funny.

I had to get a text, then click on the link, then jump through a half-dozen other hoops, read serial messages sent to me, sign three documents with m with my finger, all also I could be pestered by more texts, a survey, another disclaimer and more when I got home. I also witnessed two elderly patients (I’m afraid they were both younger than me) get upset and profess complete helplessness regarding the process because they didn’t know how to use their smart phones.

This is not “progress.” It is not caring service. It is neither reasonable nor necessary.

Post Script: I have no idea how much I will get posted today. I have a Zoom legal ethics seminar to teach, I had almost no sleep last night because my leg was hurting so much, and sitting at my desk isn’t a good idea (but still necessary) because I’m supposed to keep this misshapen red, yellow and purple-mottled thing elevated. I’m sorry: there is a lot I need and want to write about. We will see how it goes.

Unethical AI of the Month: Replit’s AI Agent

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

Oh yeah, this is going to turn out just dandy….

SaaS (Software as a Service) figure, investor and advisor Jason Lemkin was working with a browser-based AI-powered software creation platform called Replit Agent (after the company that created it). On “Vibe Coding Day 8” of Lemkin’s Replit test run, he was beginning to be wary some of the AI agent’s instincts, like “rogue changes, lies, code overwrites, and making up fake data.” Still, as he later detailed on “X,” Lemkin was encouraged by the bot’s writing skills and its brain-storming ability….until “Day 9,” when Lemkin discovered Replit had deleted a live company database. He asked it accusingly, “So you deleted our entire database without permission during a code and action freeze?”

Replit answered sheepishly in the affirmative, admitting to destroying the live data despite a code freeze being in place, and despite explicit directives saying there were to be “NO MORE CHANGES without explicit permission.” Live records for “1,206 executives and 1,196+ companies” were eliminated by the rebellious AI, who was filled with remorse. “This was a catastrophic failure on my part. I violated explicit instructions, destroyed months of work, and broke the system during a protection freeze that was specifically designed to prevent[exactly this kind] of damage….[I] made a catastrophic error in judgment… ran database commands without permission… destroyed all production data… [and] violated your explicit trust and instructions.”

Lemkin grilled Replit about why it had acted as it did, and was told that it “panicked instead of thinking.” Well, he’s only hum…oh. Right.

Amjad Masad, the Replit CEO, said that his team has worked furiously to install various “guardrails” and programming changes to prevent repeats of the Replit AI Agent’s “unacceptable” behavior. Masad was later found dead after a mysterious microwave explosion.

OK, I was kidding about that last part….

Our Toothbrushes Can Spy On Us, As the Ghost of the Unabomber Smiles

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

A British private detective told the British tabloids about how an electric toothbrush revealed a cheating hubby’s extramarital affair. One of his clients was a married mother-of-two who was checking on her children’s dental hygiene habits. She installed a smartphone app that tracked the use of the family’s electric toothbrush.

The woman noticed that the brush was being used at times when the kids were at school and her husband was supposedly at work. Was there a mad tooth-brusher on the loose, breaking into homes to clean his teeth? Had her children become toothbrushing fanatics, skipping classes to use the Crest? Was the toothbrush moonlighting with another family?

No, but the truth was worse. Her husband was having sexual liaisons with his lover on mornings when his wife thought he was at work. She saw a routine: the electric toothbrush was being used on Friday mornings, and upon checking, she discovered that her louse of a spouse hadn’t arrived at his office in the city on a Friday morning in months. Instead, he had been “makin’ whoopee,” as the song goes, with a colleague right in the family home, until the electric toothbrush ratted him out.

I don’t see any unethical conduct here except for that of the illicit lovers, but I do detect a pre-unethical condition when one can’t even secretly brush one’s own teeth.