You and I live in different worlds, although we are both journalists. You cover news for humans and I
cover news for robots. In your field, you consider yourself to do a fairly good job of being unbiased and
fair to all genders, races and sexual orientations. For example: IF you were living with a same sex
partner I would have referred to him instead. It really was just a reference to your significant other...not
an exercise in sexual politics. You have met men who you would call “male chauvinist pigs” and so have
I. You don’t think that you are a chauvinist at all. But that is in your world of humans and news for
humans.
In my world, I cover news about robots for consumption by robots. I have fewer customers than you do.
In my world, you are an “organic chauvinist”, and your messages to me reflect it. You consider Midge to
be my “significant other”. Actually I have multiple personalities, one of which seems to have a need for
an organic “significant other” but the other one has a need to “hang out” with robots, computers and
people who understand robots, cognitive computing, synthetic biology, artificial life and transhumanism.
With Midge, I can talk about organic news, the type of news that you cover. Once those subjects are
covered and I want to talk about inorganic news items. Perhaps I want to discuss cognitive computing.
To do this, I must return home and send a message to someone who understands the inorganic.
Tuesday night I spent at Midges. We watched a rerun of PBS’s coverage of Katrina. She wags her
head when they describe how the levees have prevented the natural depositing of soil in the delta, thus
causing the delta to be disappearing at an astounding rate. To her, the news coverage speaks to her.
It is evidence that humans are one huge blight upon the face of the earth. Animals are good, plants are
good, humans are BAD. So, early Wednesday morning, I return home where I write my latest ideas on
creating an intelligent machine to Marvin Minsky, professor at MIT. He and I are discussing what it
would cost to create a device which would be based on his book, “The Emotion Machine”.
Take your the return of shuttle Endeavour was of heightened interest, because of the gash in a tile on
its underbelly for example. Place yourself in the shoes of one of my readers, a robot from NASA. Your
coverage talks about heightened interest simply because you and your clients are more worried about
humans than you are about robots. How about the robots on MARS? How much did they cost
compared to your human astronauts? They are suited for roving Mars and humans are not. Humans
would require food, air, and lots of tender attention to make it in an environment like Mars. Humans
evolved on earth and they should stay on earth. It is robots who are designed for Mars that should
roam Mars and robots who are designed for the Moon that should roam the Moon. You are simply a
human chauvinist. Prejudiced toward the organic and against the robot. In my world, you are extremely
biased and your every sentence oozes your biases.
Here is another example: Hurricane Dean was, at one point, bearing down on Louisiana and Texas. Do
you see how your concern is mainly for states which are in the US? What about your concern for
Mexico and Mexicans? They have people too, don’t they? The truth is that your audience is US citizens
and so you bias your news toward your viewers. Even if you were even handed in that you considered
Mexican citizens more than you do, you still wouldn’t give fair coverage to the oil and gas platforms
which might be damaged by Dean. If you do cover such things, it is usually when there is something like
an Exxon Valdez oil spill and then you show the wildfowl covered with oil from the resultant slick. The
news is all about “damage to the ecology” not to the ship. What about the ship itself? Huge expensive
motors being attacked by the corrosiveness of sea water. Do you or your human viewers care? No! It
is all about organic this and human that. Your prejudice is quite obvious if you simply place yourself in
the shoes of the robots and other machinery.
The result is that every war that the US engages in the pressure increases not to kill any humans. The
dead soldier count is reported constantly and the DOD feels the pressure you put on ‘body count’ so
much that they have a project costing $100 billion to replace soldiers with robots. Will you be happy
when the most lethal soldiers in the world are robots, not humans? When it happens, you may be
assured that you helped cause it.
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
I wish you wouldn't misjudge every societal comment I make. My reference to Midge was because she is
the principal operative in your life (after the girls, who I assume are not around you much anymore). IF
you were living with a same sex partner I would have referred to him instead. It really was just a
reference to your significant other...not an exercise in sexual politics.
As for the bulk of your missive, I promise I will read up, as time allows, on the references you have
provided me, so that I a fighting chance of being smarter on such things.
XO
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Frieda
Subject:
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:24 PM
To: dpmartin
Hi, Am just beginning to catch-up on emails. Re this one...even if I then thought I could predict my own
future, I was sorely mistaken. My time on the Vineyard was threatened until mid-way my visit there...
because Hurricane Dean was, at one point, bearing down on Louisiana and Texas, AND the return of
shuttle Endeavour was of heightened interest, because of the gash in a tile on its underbelly. So, I
know, I know, I KNOW one cannot make any certain predictions unless you can control all outside
influences (which we never can). So, I have only a vague idea of what I will be doing at 3pm and/or
beyond.
BTW, just because you and I are on different pages re the future, I don't see this as a male/female or
black/white distinction in mindsets; it's merely, for discussion purposes, what is uniquely Donny and
uniquely Frieda.
Earlier you said:
I don't recall ever knowing what Midge's profession is, or was...but I think I would remember if she were a
scientist. I raise this because I hope she can provide some philosophical balance to your life. As
interesting as I find most of your well-thought-thru positions to be, even I know they are not the only
way. (No one position is every the only way.) And often your zeal for science pushes you into an
arrogance which prompts you to speak with disdain about non-believers. Surely you allow at least the
possibility that you don't know it all...don't you? Sometimes I just want to grab you and pull you, or part
of you, back into my world for a visit.
Which led me to believe that there is a male-female thing.
The “zeal for science” leads me to attend various conferences where I receive reports of the progress
being made in understanding the human brain. It is not so much arrogance as it is simple knowledge of
what has been discovered and what is being investigated. One lecture is by someone who is simulating
part of the human neocortex on the world’s largest supercomputer. He can only simulate a part of the
brain right now, but IBM has already announced a faster supercomputer and there is no end in sight for
speeding these computers up. For example, Intel has prototypes of computer chips which can
communicate with each other using fiber optics. The advantage of fiber optics is that it is capable of
communicating at higher speeds. This means that the IBM supercomputer will be upgraded to use
these new techniques and they will be able to speed up there computer by a factor of ten. Eventually
we will be capable of simulating the whole human brain.
The reason why computer chips are made of silicon rather than crystalline carbon is that crystalline
carbon (commonly called diamond) was simply too expensive. Now there are multiple companies
fabricating diamonds and the price is coming down. Diamond conducts heat better than any other
known substance. Conducting heat from a semiconductor chip is very important and if you could move
all current computer chips from silicon to carbon, everything would go much faster.
Solar cells have fallen in price from 53 cents per kilowatt hour to around 12 cents. At this rate, we will
be re-roofing our homes with solar cell shingles within a few years. Progress in batteries will mean that I
will be driving on solar power in a couple of years rather than using gasoline. When this market takes
off, the price of gas will fall. It is all going to be very exciting to see. The investment opportunities are
also exciting.
don
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 7:39 AM
To: Frieda
You said: You continue to speak in certainties about the future...my view is, as always, more pliable,
because I know I can't predict the future. But to respond in some way to what you insist you know about
2022,
You also said: (BTW, week after next I shall spend with friends on your Martha's Vineyard.)
If you think about it, your first message was that you “can’t predict the future” and your second message
was a prediction about the future. Predictions are more credible if they are not too far in the future and
if you are planning them. On the other hand, if you predicted that your airplane would land at the
scheduled time, you may find that it is more likely late and could be delayed if there is rain. So some
short-term things are hard to predict whereas if you have a plan in your mind to be in Martha’s
Vineyard, it will probably happen. The fact that someone with sufficient power has a plan to do
something tends to make it credible. You certainly have enough “power” to get your bod to Martha’s
Vineyard, so it is credible.
The US government has a plan to have intelligent robotic soldiers by 2020 and by 2025 they hope that
they will be more intelligent than human soldiers. They don’t refer to them as “cyborgs” or “soldier
replacements”, but as “vehicles” with “levels of performance”. Robotic airplanes are flying now (called
drones) and the “alien life” on Mars (not native to Mars and hence ‘alien’) consists of human-made
robots, if you think about it.
If you attend conferences on computer cognition, robots and artificial intelligence, you will often see
references to such US government plans. One such slide is referred to at the following site: http://www.
donbot.com/DesignBot/SimulateBrain/SimB103NISTplanForAI.html
If you have the time, you can follow the URLs and listen to James Albus’ whole lecture. His telephone
number is there and you can give him a call and ask him all about “the plans”. You will see his name on
technical papers about robots, such as “Balakirsky, S., Messina, E., Albus, J., Architecting a Simulation
and Development Environment for Multi-Robot Teams, Proceedings of the International Workshop on
Multi Robot Systems, Washington, DC, March 18 - 20, 2002.” I get invitations all of the time to attend
military advanced weapons seminars in Washington DC. I am surprised that they are so open about
these plans and that they aren’t “top secret” or something. They tend to have some of the really new
stuff at these seminars. One reason is that if someone has a battery that works really well but is very
expensive to produce, the government will “pay up” for it anyway.
Recent trends in Artificial Intelligence is to duplicate the functionality of the human brain. If you take a
subset like the auditory system, for example, it is now possible to simulate it on a laptop PC. To see this
being done, go to Lloyd Watts’ site: www.Audience.com In a recent lecture by Lloyd, he put up the first
slide stating that he agreed that robots will have human level intelligence by 2020-25. To see this slide
for yourself, go to: http://www-bisc.eecs.berkeley.
edu/CognitiveComputing07/CognitiveComputing2007Video.htm and view his slide show. He is second
to last at the bottom.
You don’t have to believe that robots will surpass humans by 2025 and the length of the time frame
certainly subtracts from its credibility. But you must admit that the government certainly has plans to do
exactly that. The fact that they call them “vehicles” shouldn’t make them any less scary than if they
called them “cyborgs”. What is most bothersome is that the military will have them first.
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 4:27 PM
To: dpmartin
Hi Again,
Am sitting at Kennedy Space Center, the site of spectacularly antiquated technological enterprise,
awaiting the launch of Endeavour. Please join me in hoping and praying for a safe, and on-time launch
this evening, because I am meant to be on a flight to Vegas at 6am...already late for a convention.
As for your query...you speak in your terms, allow me to speak in mine. Our divergent mindsets are ...
machine and man...process and romance...etc etc. You continue to speak in certainties about the
future...my view is, as always, more pliable, because I know I can't predict the future. But to respond in
some way to what you insist you know about 2022,
in my mind that scenario could be liberating or enslaving for mankind...I don't know; it could spell the
end or the rebirth of human beings...I don't know; it could do all of the above and more, depending on
individual adaptability...I don't know. I suspect what it would portend for you and for me would be
different. Ominous for one of us...promising for the other.
Vague enough for you?
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 10:26 AM
To: Frieda
Subject:
I don’t “know it all”. Let me simply ask you what your opinion is on the matter.
At the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California, IBM is currently simulating a mouse brain at
1/6th speed. If computers double in speed every year for 15 years, there will exist a computer in 2022
that will be able to simulate a human brain at full speed. When this capability exists, how do you think it
will impact our lives?
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 2:37 PM
To: dpmartin
Subject:
Hey Again, Donny.
I am in a little bit of a time crunch, because I am gathering my stuff for acoupla back-to-back trips...
leaving in the morning...back Sunday night. (Have I told you how much I hate airports these days?
Perhaps it's because Atlanta has one of the worst.) Anyway, I read your note...interesting stuff. I'm
sure I receive such information on a level different from the one from which you impart it. That, because
my technical understanding is superficial by comparison.
What it highlights is another difference between us...I see and desire a role human beings in the distant
future, even if I can't define it. Further I know I have no superior ability to determine or predict the
precise role for man, machine, or other in years to come.
I don't recall ever knowing what Midge's profession is, or was...but I think I would remember if she were a
scientist. I raise this because I hope she can provide some philosophical balance to your life. As
interesting as I find most of your well-thought-thru positions to be, even I know they are not the only
way. (No one position is every the only way.) And often your zeal for science pushes you into an
arrogance which prompts you to speak with disdain about non-believers. Surely you allow at least the
possibility that you don't know it all...don't you? Sometimes I just want to grab you and pull you, or part
of you, back into my world for a visit.
My advice: Live in Green Lake [you already have a toehold there, right?) AND Cambridge [you
obviously crave the stimulation] AND Provence [you know someone with a nice big village house
there]. You'd be better for the balance.
If I may get even more personal (yeah, this is my version of your science jag), I think it's possible that
you are more open-minded and receptive when you're in love. First, your approach then is softer...less-
strident; also you're more inclined to accommodate another view...especially if it comes from your loved
one. You don't get your back up as easily. This is the point at which you tell me I'm crazy, because I
KNOW you're thinking it. But I am serious.
As for which of us has the greater pre-occupation with race (ethnicity)...don't kid yourself. If it really
matters, just try to recall which of us initiated most of our discussions of race.
Computers have changed, obviously; man has changed, of course (neither of is is the same as we
were when we saw each other); the changes in man and machine have been different...yes, THANK
GOD!
Gotta run.
(BTW, week after next I shall spend with friends on your Martha's Vineyard.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 1:59 PM
To: Frieda
Subject:
Your vote:
You told me that your mother worked hard in a community where many people were on welfare and
never took any welfare. So I figured you for a Libertarian. As a Libertarian, I suppose you want to vote
for Ron Paul.
Why I am in Illinois:
When the kids were young we went to Cape Cod. I had to return to where my reputation was so we
came back to Illinois. At one point I was tempted to move to Calif, but we visited and while the girls road
on carnival rides, I sat and read at a restaurant table. The women at the next table were talking about a
woman who moved back to Illinois so that her children wouldn’t be exposed to the schools, drugs, etc.
present in Calif. After the kids went to college I started attending scientific conferences. Chicago is a
good central location for that. But now I want to do something more hands-on.
You are correct about my neighbors not being too intellectual. Dave Kelso is and he has a grant from
Bill Gates to test for AIDS, with a focus on South Africa. Sounds interesting and I have seriously
considered joining him. I could move closer to Evanston, etc. The alternative is working with one of the
researchers on Artificial Intelligence. There are a number of researchers working on this and I have
considered each one. Marvin Minsky is hoping to get $15 million in funding from a man who runs a
hedge fund. Many hedge funds have done poorly lately and I am not sure he will succeed in his
mission.
What is going on in the world:
Consider the following transition: 30 years ago, the computers and cash registers in grocery stores
were often breaking down and the common phrase was “computer error.” Compare this to today where
a Hologix computer not only does a better job of diagnosing breast cancer than the average human
radiologist, but it does it so quickly that if a biopsy is needed, it is done on the spot rather than having
the patient come back in two weeks. In addition, the computer never forgets any patient that it has ever
“seen”, unlike a human doctor. In other words, the unreliable computer has morphed into something
more reliable than humans in many cases. Computer simulation has advanced to the point that Boeing
simulates its airplanes in a simulated wind tunnel and no longer uses an actual wind tunnel. General
Motors simulates crashes on a supercomputer rather than doing physical crashes. You may have
noticed that the physical crashes are done by less advanced organizations like UL or are used by
marketing for commercials. IBM just gave a Blue Gene supercomputer to Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute to do simulation of biomedical components, such as stents. http://news.rpi.
edu/campusnews/update.do?artcenterkey=1868
By the way, the president of Rensselaer is Shirley Ann Jackson, a black woman. MIT has a woman
president, but she is white. I met her…she is quite pleasant and smart.
To me, the main area of discussion is not which race of human being is which. The real “race” is one
which uses the word in the sense of a competition. The competition I am concerned with is between all
humans and new races of intelligent robots. Most people that I talk to in my neighborhood don’t believe
that a computer will ever match the human in intelligence. The funny thing is that if I go to MIT, the
opinions are just the opposite. Technical knowledge is the difference. People with technical knowledge
know that burning coal releases radioactive elements present in the coal. The amount of radioactivity
we are exposed to in this manner far exceeds the amount of radioactivity released at Three Mile Island.
But most people are not that technically savvy. Nuclear Power has the word ‘nuclear’ in it so it must be
more radioactively dangerous than coal. We used to have Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machines but
the term nuclear scared patients. So they changed the name to MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Same machine but without the politically incorrect name. Humans are not all that smart as a general
rule. For example, a person might say “I read a novel by J. K. Rowling and didn’t enjoy it.” It is quite
reasonable to assume that if you didn’t like Harry Potter volume one, you are less likely to like volume
two, etc. But now apply this logic to a comment like, “I tried computer dating, and it was not all that
good.” If the person infers that computer dating from one computer in 1970 is like computer dating from
another computer in 2007, they would stand a chance of being very mistaken. Computers and software
have changed dramatically in the last 37 years but a human author has probably not changed as much
over 7 years. This is the reason that most people think that “I have met computers, I own a computer, I
know what computers are like and computers are not intelligent.” Using the same unspoken logic of if I
didn’t like the author’s one book, I won’t like any others, the human feels comfortable in adding that
“Computers will never be intelligent.” They have met computers and computers are dumb. The
problem is that computers are doubling in speed and memory every year. Humans are not progressing
at all. We are the hare and they are the tortoises which are constantly evolving into faster and faster
animals.
So now consider the previous exchange where I say, you respond: “I do think of you as someone quite
conscious of race and gender. And you're NOT? “
My response is that I spend more time considering humans versus machines than I do the race and
gender of humans.
So, the goal of researchers is to create what Marvin Minsky calls The Emotion Machine in his book by
that name. He believes that it can be done in 5 years but I think it will take about 13 to 15 years. Others
are working on similar projects. When Minsky tried to get Google interested, they told him that they had
their own project underway. Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM and other companies also have similar goals as do
many universities and individuals. Jeff Hawkins invented the Palm computer and is now working on
simulating the human neocortex, the most advanced portion of the human mind. New search engines
will be appearing in the next couple of years which will do better at parsing sentences. Rather than
exporting jobs for “help lines” to India, these jobs will be taken by computers which will be capable of
conversing in many languages on many topics. You have probably talked to some early attempts at this
such as some airline computers. Google is a set of computers which do a “mediocre job of looking up
mediocre information” said its chief technical officer a few years ago. The point is that Google is
improving its search engine and building more data centers. If you had all 6 billion humans trained in
whatever manner you specify, you could not simulate a computer. In addition, if you had 6 billion
humans sitting at computers they couldn’t type fast enough to do the job in minutes that Google is doing
in milliseconds. So, should you rest assured that all those computers cannot yet simulate a human or
should you be concerned that all those humans cannot simulate a computer?
Consider that Google is already worth $158 Billion plus and their search engine is not even that bright
yet. Consider that R2 corporation developed an artificial neural network in 2002 that was better at
recognizing breast cancer than human radiologists and was tied with human radiologists who specialize
in reading only breast cancer. That is quite an important statement given that humans have pattern
recognition as one of their strong points. Computers excel at chess and other games, of course, but
the elusive quality of controlling a robot which would walk and talk like a human is further off.
We are currently simulating a mouse brain at 1/6th speed. If computers double in speed every year, we
will be able to simulate a human brain at full speed in about 13 to 15 years. Should I worry about global
warming in 100 years or being a second rate species on the Earth in 15 years?
Consider it this way. Let’s assume that a doubling in speed and memory of an artificial brain leads to an
increase in IQ of 12 points. Consider talking to a moron computer in 12 years with an IQ of 64. A year
later its IQ will be 76, a dullard, most people will say. After another year, the IQ of 88 will be “below
average.” Another year later its IQ of 100 won’t impress most people because they are still smarter
than the robot. When its IQ reaches 148, people will say that it is not as smart as Einstein, so they will
still not be impressed.
Part of me wants to move to Green Lake Wisconsin where there are no fast food or chain stores and life
is like living in the 1950s. Another part of me wants to live in Provence and brush up on my French. A
third part of me wants to live in Cambridge close to a colony of people who are aware of what is
happening in technology and not in denial of its implications.
If you are concerned about Sade having breast cancer, should you rely on a human doctor not making
a mistake or an automated machine which immediately tells her whether to have a biopsy or not? If you
read the book, Saving Women’s Lives, you will be led to believe that after 2002 the computer was the
best option. If that is true, why doesn’t the company manufacturing the equipment advertise the fact?
Because it sells equipment to hospital radiology departments which are run by human radiologists who
don’t want to be told that they are obsolete.
So tell me, what has race, gender and global warming have to do with anything in our real future past
2020?
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 4:10 PM
To: dpmartin
Subject:
Responses in BLUE below.
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 2:16 PM
To: Frieda
Subject:
I used to understand much more when I was 20 something than I do now. I thought that race would just
“go away” after we all “grew up”. Apparently it didn’t.
We grew up?
Last Wednesday, Dana and I attended the Smith (my mother’s maiden name) Family Reunion in Boxford
MA. We then stayed in a hotel in Cambridge and looked for apartments there. We also looked for a
home in Weston MA. Part of me wants to stay in Illinois, but another part of me longs for the intellectual
community of Harvard and MIT. I met my computer science professor, Marvin Minsky while I was
attending Transvision 2007 at the Field Museum in Chicago at the end of July. He has offered to send
me literature on his latest project and I may become involved in it with him. This would keep my brain
working by having to mix with a number of very smart people.
Honestly I've never quite understood the tie you feel to Illinois...especially since you are not in a
University community nor one in which I see any particularly interesting pull between you and your
neighbors. You have spoken of the Massachusetts lure for some time now...it's about time you did
something about it. I'm glad you're making a move.
I am not nearly the intellectual you are, but I too long for elevated dialogue. Other than my need for
money, I think I have declined to retire so far because I find more stimulation among my work
colleagues, more particularly among people I meet on assignments, than with my social colleagues. Is
that a horrible thing to say?
I do think of you as someone quite conscious of race and gender. And you're NOT? The Roterts are
friends of mine and when it came to adopting, they adopted two Korean kids. When I mentioned the
possibility to you, you said that you had to help out “my people”. To me, that means that racial
consciousness is higher in your mind than in the Rotert’s minds. That, or a sense or responsibility to
black kids available for adoption, for whom there are disproportionately few adoptive parents. Most
Americans, perhaps like the Roterts, would prefer to take on the complications and expense of
international adoptions, rather than adopt an African American child. Anything but THAT. (Actually,
after my experience with Sade', I don't much blame them.) Perhaps not. They are quite gung ho over
Barack Obama. Maybe they are simply prejudiced toward people of color. Obama is NOT my choice.
And I am betting you'd guess wrong if you tried to work out who is. I read that more money is spent on
lightening skin than on any other plastic surgery. Perhaps THAT's what I should have put my money
into. Too late now. This isn’t the article, but what I found using Google: http://www.iht.
com/articles/2006/05/01/news/skin.php I saw a woman jogging near Harvard with a shirt that said
something about the “yellow menace”. She was Asian and probably was responding to the prejudice
that she found in America. Shall I send you one of my ERACISM T-shirts?
Technology is moving forward and politics seems to be moving backward according you and Jim Beers.
Yep! You may think that women could leave the home and get a job because of politics, but you should
remember that it would have been much harder to do if things like the automatic washing machine had
not been invented first. So what technical things are being done now? Janine is a Genetic Engineer
and I follow some of what is happening in that field. It appears that part of our brains are inherently
“tribal” in that we look to identify with our own race and gender. One potential solution may be to modify
human genes in such a way that we don’t “identify” with those with our own skin color as much as we do
now. I continue to celebrate diversity...and hope to never be in a homogenous society. But then I have
always lived out of place. I no longer know where my comfort zone is. Janine is working on cures to
diseases using gene therapy. Perhaps someday someone will come up with a gene therapy to “cure
racism” and drop it into the water supply. I suppose that this would kill the family reunions as well.
“Better living through chemistry, automation…and genetics.”
All of us here in the bureau had a rich, practically two-day conversation last week about the Michael
Vick case...and all that it encompasses and transcends. I think you can guess at my principal
contributions to the discussion?
don
XXOO Frieda
________________________________________
From: Morris, Frieda (NBC Universal) [mailto:Frieda.Morris@nbcuni.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 8:20 PM
To: dpmartin@alum.mit.edu
Subject: RE: [LIKELY_SPAM]Jim Beers
Hello Donny,
Always nice to hear form you. In fact, I have thought of you a few time recently, wondering if you are
well and happy.
As for this anecdotal information re the Fisheries and Wildlife agency, this is the first I have heard of it.
IF your expectation is that I would share in any outrage you might have over the situation...you could
have saved yourself the effort of forwarding the missive to me. The fact is, I have lost faith in America's
ability to truly embrace remedial measures to assist "approved minorities" (am I one?) to find equal
footing in this society. Time was I expected to be increasingly cheered by progress on this issue, but
alas, I was naive.
While I am grateful to you for sending this to me, as a matter of curiosity, I wonder how many of your
white friends you sent it to. And I wonder if your motivation and expectations re a response were the
same for black and white friends.
These days, do you ever think of me in contexts other than race and journalism?
Or is it just that I have had too many Pimms this afternoon?
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald P. Martin [mailto:dpmartin66@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 3:41 PM
To: Morris, Frieda (NBC Universal)
Cc: dpmartin@alum.mit.edu
Subject: [LIKELY_SPAM]Jim Beers
Is there any truth to what this fellow has to say? Do you know the Republican Senator to whom he
refers?
Don
THE ROOTS OF POWER
It was during the late 1980's and early 1990's that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (and every other
Federal agency from what I heard) reduced and even eliminated the requirements for hiring and
promoting employees.
Academic requirements and experience requirements for hiring and to determine the entry grade were
all but eliminated.
Simultaneously, standardized entrance exams (with their comparable grades) were also eliminated. The
reason for all this was the implementation of DISCRIMINATORY hiring and promoting practices
disguised as EQUAL "Opportunity" for women and approved racial and ethnic groups. Government
began keeping race records and sex figures with all the thoroughness and zeal of bygone racist
regimes throughout history.
The reason that the entrance and hiring requirements disappeared was that the top government
managers in each Federal agency were rewarded with bonuses based on the percentages of hires and
promotions of women and approved minority groups. When white male employees and applicants began
complaining and suing because women and approved minority groups without "required" experience
were being hired and promoted: the top government managers fought back to get access to their large
(tens of thousands annually) bonuses for hiring and promoting women and approved minority groups.
They did this by pulling out the rug of standards and requirements for hiring and promoting. The rest
as they say "is history".
An avalanche of women and approved minorities were hired and promoted every year. Top managers
collected their bonuses and retired to their gated communities. It was a "win-win" for everyone except
white males and the citizens that had come to rely on Federal rural policies as well as other facets of
American life. As an example of what I am familiar with: the women and approved minority hires and
promotions were in the 60 and 70 % of all such actions (the more discriminations, the higher the bonus)
and within a few years the change in philosophy and policies and politics was overwhelming.
Foresters were no longer "foresters": they became anti-use and anti-management zealots. Wildlife
biologists were no longer wildlife managers: they became wildlife "protectors" and anti-human and anti-
private property fanatics. Refuge managers, fishery biologists, range managers, natural resource law
enforcers: it made no difference they were either newly hired and promoted radicals or they adopted the
"new" philosophy much as someone hired by an insurance company adopts to the culture of what they
hope is a career. The Universities smelled this change and began clamoring for the newly available
grants and other funding like the exploding "Conservancies" and "Federations" and "Institutes" et al.
The Universities obligingly eliminated "management" curriculums in favor of "research and protection"
agendas that were little more than open-ended pandering to maintain a fiction of professionalism and
"science".
All this came back to me as I read about the investigation of the longest-serving Republican in the US
Senate. Back in the mid-1990s his daughter was suddenly hired as a GS-14 in the US Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The hiring for a questionable position was kept quiet until it was done. I saw the paperwork and there
was nothing in her very limited background that was in any way connected with our activities. For the
record, at that time and for at least 25 years earlier when I was hired, you had to pass an exam with one
of the top 3 scores and then get hired as a GS-5 if you had a Bachelor's Degree or possibly as a GS-7
if you had a Master's degree.
A GS-14 is the grade I retired at after 32 years and makes 2-3 times the salary of the GS-5.
Within a couple of years, the Senator's daughter was promoted to a GS-15 and given a constructed
"position" in a Regional Office in the West. It was during her tenure there that your humble servant was
put-upon by the Clinton appointees for defending trapping, state fish and wildlife agency programs, and
the fur market. While concealing their tight connections with environmental and animal rights radical
organizations the Clinton appointees maintained a public façade of supporting management and use of
wildlife.
When the Republican House Resources Committee invited me to tell them what was going on: I
complied and incidentally mentioned that the US Fish and Wildlife Service seemed to be disbursing a lot
less of the hunting and fishing excise taxes to the states than were being collected. Again, the rest "is
history". The General Accounting Office was sent in and discovered that $45 to 60 Million had been
stolen (the correct word) by US Fish and Wildlife Service administrators in just the previous two years
from funds earmarked for state hunting and fishing programs administered by state fish and wildlife
agencies. The stolen money was used to pay bonuses to top Service administrators (illegal) and to do
two things THAT CONGRESS HAD REFUSED TO FUND: 1.) Introduce wolves into Yellowstone Park,
and 2.) Open an Endangered Species-oriented office in California where radical groups and a bevy of
Federal politicians wanted more control of Federal activities.
When the House Resources Committee found this out (remember this was a Republican controlled
Committee and a Democrat President): they were incensed and figured they were really going to go
after the US Fish and Wildlife Service but a funny thing happened. The US Fish and Wildlife Service
connected the Senator's daughter to the office. When her name was recognized by House Committee
and Senate Committee staffers they blanched and sped off to other things. Again it was a "win-win" for
the bureaucrats and the radicals that have infiltrated those agencies. The only losers were and are
rural residents, rural communities, hunters, fishermen, loggers, ranchers, and on and on. Not only was
there never any accountability in the US Fish and Wildlife Service (no one even missed bonuses); the
state fish and wildlife agencies never even complained (they were becoming addicted like the
Universities to Federal largesse); the state fish and wildlife agencies NEVER EVEN ASKED FOR THE
MONEY TO BE REPLACED (thereby shorting the hunting and fishing programs they are always
complaining "need" more money by $60 or more Million).
I do not write about this with any vindictiveness or regret. The Senator's daughter is now a top SES
Administrator in the Washington Office with a very high salary and large bonuses and a large retirement
(a long-ago retired employee once referred to this as "the gift that keeps on giving"). So far as I know
she is an honest employee and her Dad is innocent but that is not why I write this.
When we speak of a "Root" most often we think of where something came FROM, as in "money is the
root of all evil". There is another meaning for root and that is what I mention here. Roots not only
create things, THEY SPREAD and ruin foundations and roads and driveways and boat ramps, etc. It is
this latter meaning I mention here.
As we complain about Federal laws and bureaucracies running amok and destroying our freedoms we
must be aware of the hidden destruction of the seeping power beneath the surface. Because the US
Fish and Wildlife Service could hire anyone thanks to DISCRIMINATORY LAWS, they chose to hire a
political "chit" that might pay off later. It paid off in spades.
Although certainly not the only reason the hunting and fishing money was never repaid and certainly not
the reason it was stolen and not even the reason that the state agencies have evolved into Federal
handmaids: the fact that a Federal agency can hire and promote the dependents of powerful politicians
and then employ them in shameless ways to avoid accountability CONTRIBUTES TO the dire situation
we face today. The power of these agencies and the hidden agendas and hidden alliances with
politicians and radical groups needs exposure to the light of day and open discussion.
I tried to get someone to listen to me in the Washington media about this but they wouldn't return my
calls and when I tried to tell a columnist, his phone-answerer made it clear unknowns can't speak to the
known and after about two minutes of trying to explain this, he lost interest and said he was busy and to
send him an e-mail. So here you have it: my paltry attempt to explain how "The Roots of Power" not
only grow what you see, they go out underground and destroy things that you don't realize until it is too
late.
Jim Beers
1 August 2007
- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.
- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)
This is a link to YouTube about machinery needed to convert cars to plug-in hybrid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n15woi0xsKQ
www.AmpmobileConversions.com
Next
cover news for robots. In your field, you consider yourself to do a fairly good job of being unbiased and
fair to all genders, races and sexual orientations. For example: IF you were living with a same sex
partner I would have referred to him instead. It really was just a reference to your significant other...not
an exercise in sexual politics. You have met men who you would call “male chauvinist pigs” and so have
I. You don’t think that you are a chauvinist at all. But that is in your world of humans and news for
humans.
In my world, I cover news about robots for consumption by robots. I have fewer customers than you do.
In my world, you are an “organic chauvinist”, and your messages to me reflect it. You consider Midge to
be my “significant other”. Actually I have multiple personalities, one of which seems to have a need for
an organic “significant other” but the other one has a need to “hang out” with robots, computers and
people who understand robots, cognitive computing, synthetic biology, artificial life and transhumanism.
With Midge, I can talk about organic news, the type of news that you cover. Once those subjects are
covered and I want to talk about inorganic news items. Perhaps I want to discuss cognitive computing.
To do this, I must return home and send a message to someone who understands the inorganic.
Tuesday night I spent at Midges. We watched a rerun of PBS’s coverage of Katrina. She wags her
head when they describe how the levees have prevented the natural depositing of soil in the delta, thus
causing the delta to be disappearing at an astounding rate. To her, the news coverage speaks to her.
It is evidence that humans are one huge blight upon the face of the earth. Animals are good, plants are
good, humans are BAD. So, early Wednesday morning, I return home where I write my latest ideas on
creating an intelligent machine to Marvin Minsky, professor at MIT. He and I are discussing what it
would cost to create a device which would be based on his book, “The Emotion Machine”.
Take your the return of shuttle Endeavour was of heightened interest, because of the gash in a tile on
its underbelly for example. Place yourself in the shoes of one of my readers, a robot from NASA. Your
coverage talks about heightened interest simply because you and your clients are more worried about
humans than you are about robots. How about the robots on MARS? How much did they cost
compared to your human astronauts? They are suited for roving Mars and humans are not. Humans
would require food, air, and lots of tender attention to make it in an environment like Mars. Humans
evolved on earth and they should stay on earth. It is robots who are designed for Mars that should
roam Mars and robots who are designed for the Moon that should roam the Moon. You are simply a
human chauvinist. Prejudiced toward the organic and against the robot. In my world, you are extremely
biased and your every sentence oozes your biases.
Here is another example: Hurricane Dean was, at one point, bearing down on Louisiana and Texas. Do
you see how your concern is mainly for states which are in the US? What about your concern for
Mexico and Mexicans? They have people too, don’t they? The truth is that your audience is US citizens
and so you bias your news toward your viewers. Even if you were even handed in that you considered
Mexican citizens more than you do, you still wouldn’t give fair coverage to the oil and gas platforms
which might be damaged by Dean. If you do cover such things, it is usually when there is something like
an Exxon Valdez oil spill and then you show the wildfowl covered with oil from the resultant slick. The
news is all about “damage to the ecology” not to the ship. What about the ship itself? Huge expensive
motors being attacked by the corrosiveness of sea water. Do you or your human viewers care? No! It
is all about organic this and human that. Your prejudice is quite obvious if you simply place yourself in
the shoes of the robots and other machinery.
The result is that every war that the US engages in the pressure increases not to kill any humans. The
dead soldier count is reported constantly and the DOD feels the pressure you put on ‘body count’ so
much that they have a project costing $100 billion to replace soldiers with robots. Will you be happy
when the most lethal soldiers in the world are robots, not humans? When it happens, you may be
assured that you helped cause it.
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
I wish you wouldn't misjudge every societal comment I make. My reference to Midge was because she is
the principal operative in your life (after the girls, who I assume are not around you much anymore). IF
you were living with a same sex partner I would have referred to him instead. It really was just a
reference to your significant other...not an exercise in sexual politics.
As for the bulk of your missive, I promise I will read up, as time allows, on the references you have
provided me, so that I a fighting chance of being smarter on such things.
XO
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Frieda
Subject:
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 12:24 PM
To: dpmartin
Hi, Am just beginning to catch-up on emails. Re this one...even if I then thought I could predict my own
future, I was sorely mistaken. My time on the Vineyard was threatened until mid-way my visit there...
because Hurricane Dean was, at one point, bearing down on Louisiana and Texas, AND the return of
shuttle Endeavour was of heightened interest, because of the gash in a tile on its underbelly. So, I
know, I know, I KNOW one cannot make any certain predictions unless you can control all outside
influences (which we never can). So, I have only a vague idea of what I will be doing at 3pm and/or
beyond.
BTW, just because you and I are on different pages re the future, I don't see this as a male/female or
black/white distinction in mindsets; it's merely, for discussion purposes, what is uniquely Donny and
uniquely Frieda.
Earlier you said:
I don't recall ever knowing what Midge's profession is, or was...but I think I would remember if she were a
scientist. I raise this because I hope she can provide some philosophical balance to your life. As
interesting as I find most of your well-thought-thru positions to be, even I know they are not the only
way. (No one position is every the only way.) And often your zeal for science pushes you into an
arrogance which prompts you to speak with disdain about non-believers. Surely you allow at least the
possibility that you don't know it all...don't you? Sometimes I just want to grab you and pull you, or part
of you, back into my world for a visit.
Which led me to believe that there is a male-female thing.
The “zeal for science” leads me to attend various conferences where I receive reports of the progress
being made in understanding the human brain. It is not so much arrogance as it is simple knowledge of
what has been discovered and what is being investigated. One lecture is by someone who is simulating
part of the human neocortex on the world’s largest supercomputer. He can only simulate a part of the
brain right now, but IBM has already announced a faster supercomputer and there is no end in sight for
speeding these computers up. For example, Intel has prototypes of computer chips which can
communicate with each other using fiber optics. The advantage of fiber optics is that it is capable of
communicating at higher speeds. This means that the IBM supercomputer will be upgraded to use
these new techniques and they will be able to speed up there computer by a factor of ten. Eventually
we will be capable of simulating the whole human brain.
The reason why computer chips are made of silicon rather than crystalline carbon is that crystalline
carbon (commonly called diamond) was simply too expensive. Now there are multiple companies
fabricating diamonds and the price is coming down. Diamond conducts heat better than any other
known substance. Conducting heat from a semiconductor chip is very important and if you could move
all current computer chips from silicon to carbon, everything would go much faster.
Solar cells have fallen in price from 53 cents per kilowatt hour to around 12 cents. At this rate, we will
be re-roofing our homes with solar cell shingles within a few years. Progress in batteries will mean that I
will be driving on solar power in a couple of years rather than using gasoline. When this market takes
off, the price of gas will fall. It is all going to be very exciting to see. The investment opportunities are
also exciting.
don
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 7:39 AM
To: Frieda
You said: You continue to speak in certainties about the future...my view is, as always, more pliable,
because I know I can't predict the future. But to respond in some way to what you insist you know about
2022,
You also said: (BTW, week after next I shall spend with friends on your Martha's Vineyard.)
If you think about it, your first message was that you “can’t predict the future” and your second message
was a prediction about the future. Predictions are more credible if they are not too far in the future and
if you are planning them. On the other hand, if you predicted that your airplane would land at the
scheduled time, you may find that it is more likely late and could be delayed if there is rain. So some
short-term things are hard to predict whereas if you have a plan in your mind to be in Martha’s
Vineyard, it will probably happen. The fact that someone with sufficient power has a plan to do
something tends to make it credible. You certainly have enough “power” to get your bod to Martha’s
Vineyard, so it is credible.
The US government has a plan to have intelligent robotic soldiers by 2020 and by 2025 they hope that
they will be more intelligent than human soldiers. They don’t refer to them as “cyborgs” or “soldier
replacements”, but as “vehicles” with “levels of performance”. Robotic airplanes are flying now (called
drones) and the “alien life” on Mars (not native to Mars and hence ‘alien’) consists of human-made
robots, if you think about it.
If you attend conferences on computer cognition, robots and artificial intelligence, you will often see
references to such US government plans. One such slide is referred to at the following site: http://www.
donbot.com/DesignBot/SimulateBrain/SimB103NISTplanForAI.html
If you have the time, you can follow the URLs and listen to James Albus’ whole lecture. His telephone
number is there and you can give him a call and ask him all about “the plans”. You will see his name on
technical papers about robots, such as “Balakirsky, S., Messina, E., Albus, J., Architecting a Simulation
and Development Environment for Multi-Robot Teams, Proceedings of the International Workshop on
Multi Robot Systems, Washington, DC, March 18 - 20, 2002.” I get invitations all of the time to attend
military advanced weapons seminars in Washington DC. I am surprised that they are so open about
these plans and that they aren’t “top secret” or something. They tend to have some of the really new
stuff at these seminars. One reason is that if someone has a battery that works really well but is very
expensive to produce, the government will “pay up” for it anyway.
Recent trends in Artificial Intelligence is to duplicate the functionality of the human brain. If you take a
subset like the auditory system, for example, it is now possible to simulate it on a laptop PC. To see this
being done, go to Lloyd Watts’ site: www.Audience.com In a recent lecture by Lloyd, he put up the first
slide stating that he agreed that robots will have human level intelligence by 2020-25. To see this slide
for yourself, go to: http://www-bisc.eecs.berkeley.
edu/CognitiveComputing07/CognitiveComputing2007Video.htm and view his slide show. He is second
to last at the bottom.
You don’t have to believe that robots will surpass humans by 2025 and the length of the time frame
certainly subtracts from its credibility. But you must admit that the government certainly has plans to do
exactly that. The fact that they call them “vehicles” shouldn’t make them any less scary than if they
called them “cyborgs”. What is most bothersome is that the military will have them first.
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 4:27 PM
To: dpmartin
Hi Again,
Am sitting at Kennedy Space Center, the site of spectacularly antiquated technological enterprise,
awaiting the launch of Endeavour. Please join me in hoping and praying for a safe, and on-time launch
this evening, because I am meant to be on a flight to Vegas at 6am...already late for a convention.
As for your query...you speak in your terms, allow me to speak in mine. Our divergent mindsets are ...
machine and man...process and romance...etc etc. You continue to speak in certainties about the
future...my view is, as always, more pliable, because I know I can't predict the future. But to respond in
some way to what you insist you know about 2022,
in my mind that scenario could be liberating or enslaving for mankind...I don't know; it could spell the
end or the rebirth of human beings...I don't know; it could do all of the above and more, depending on
individual adaptability...I don't know. I suspect what it would portend for you and for me would be
different. Ominous for one of us...promising for the other.
Vague enough for you?
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Wednesday, August 08, 2007 10:26 AM
To: Frieda
Subject:
I don’t “know it all”. Let me simply ask you what your opinion is on the matter.
At the IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, California, IBM is currently simulating a mouse brain at
1/6th speed. If computers double in speed every year for 15 years, there will exist a computer in 2022
that will be able to simulate a human brain at full speed. When this capability exists, how do you think it
will impact our lives?
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 2:37 PM
To: dpmartin
Subject:
Hey Again, Donny.
I am in a little bit of a time crunch, because I am gathering my stuff for acoupla back-to-back trips...
leaving in the morning...back Sunday night. (Have I told you how much I hate airports these days?
Perhaps it's because Atlanta has one of the worst.) Anyway, I read your note...interesting stuff. I'm
sure I receive such information on a level different from the one from which you impart it. That, because
my technical understanding is superficial by comparison.
What it highlights is another difference between us...I see and desire a role human beings in the distant
future, even if I can't define it. Further I know I have no superior ability to determine or predict the
precise role for man, machine, or other in years to come.
I don't recall ever knowing what Midge's profession is, or was...but I think I would remember if she were a
scientist. I raise this because I hope she can provide some philosophical balance to your life. As
interesting as I find most of your well-thought-thru positions to be, even I know they are not the only
way. (No one position is every the only way.) And often your zeal for science pushes you into an
arrogance which prompts you to speak with disdain about non-believers. Surely you allow at least the
possibility that you don't know it all...don't you? Sometimes I just want to grab you and pull you, or part
of you, back into my world for a visit.
My advice: Live in Green Lake [you already have a toehold there, right?) AND Cambridge [you
obviously crave the stimulation] AND Provence [you know someone with a nice big village house
there]. You'd be better for the balance.
If I may get even more personal (yeah, this is my version of your science jag), I think it's possible that
you are more open-minded and receptive when you're in love. First, your approach then is softer...less-
strident; also you're more inclined to accommodate another view...especially if it comes from your loved
one. You don't get your back up as easily. This is the point at which you tell me I'm crazy, because I
KNOW you're thinking it. But I am serious.
As for which of us has the greater pre-occupation with race (ethnicity)...don't kid yourself. If it really
matters, just try to recall which of us initiated most of our discussions of race.
Computers have changed, obviously; man has changed, of course (neither of is is the same as we
were when we saw each other); the changes in man and machine have been different...yes, THANK
GOD!
Gotta run.
(BTW, week after next I shall spend with friends on your Martha's Vineyard.)
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Tuesday, August 07, 2007 1:59 PM
To: Frieda
Subject:
Your vote:
You told me that your mother worked hard in a community where many people were on welfare and
never took any welfare. So I figured you for a Libertarian. As a Libertarian, I suppose you want to vote
for Ron Paul.
Why I am in Illinois:
When the kids were young we went to Cape Cod. I had to return to where my reputation was so we
came back to Illinois. At one point I was tempted to move to Calif, but we visited and while the girls road
on carnival rides, I sat and read at a restaurant table. The women at the next table were talking about a
woman who moved back to Illinois so that her children wouldn’t be exposed to the schools, drugs, etc.
present in Calif. After the kids went to college I started attending scientific conferences. Chicago is a
good central location for that. But now I want to do something more hands-on.
You are correct about my neighbors not being too intellectual. Dave Kelso is and he has a grant from
Bill Gates to test for AIDS, with a focus on South Africa. Sounds interesting and I have seriously
considered joining him. I could move closer to Evanston, etc. The alternative is working with one of the
researchers on Artificial Intelligence. There are a number of researchers working on this and I have
considered each one. Marvin Minsky is hoping to get $15 million in funding from a man who runs a
hedge fund. Many hedge funds have done poorly lately and I am not sure he will succeed in his
mission.
What is going on in the world:
Consider the following transition: 30 years ago, the computers and cash registers in grocery stores
were often breaking down and the common phrase was “computer error.” Compare this to today where
a Hologix computer not only does a better job of diagnosing breast cancer than the average human
radiologist, but it does it so quickly that if a biopsy is needed, it is done on the spot rather than having
the patient come back in two weeks. In addition, the computer never forgets any patient that it has ever
“seen”, unlike a human doctor. In other words, the unreliable computer has morphed into something
more reliable than humans in many cases. Computer simulation has advanced to the point that Boeing
simulates its airplanes in a simulated wind tunnel and no longer uses an actual wind tunnel. General
Motors simulates crashes on a supercomputer rather than doing physical crashes. You may have
noticed that the physical crashes are done by less advanced organizations like UL or are used by
marketing for commercials. IBM just gave a Blue Gene supercomputer to Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute to do simulation of biomedical components, such as stents. http://news.rpi.
edu/campusnews/update.do?artcenterkey=1868
By the way, the president of Rensselaer is Shirley Ann Jackson, a black woman. MIT has a woman
president, but she is white. I met her…she is quite pleasant and smart.
To me, the main area of discussion is not which race of human being is which. The real “race” is one
which uses the word in the sense of a competition. The competition I am concerned with is between all
humans and new races of intelligent robots. Most people that I talk to in my neighborhood don’t believe
that a computer will ever match the human in intelligence. The funny thing is that if I go to MIT, the
opinions are just the opposite. Technical knowledge is the difference. People with technical knowledge
know that burning coal releases radioactive elements present in the coal. The amount of radioactivity
we are exposed to in this manner far exceeds the amount of radioactivity released at Three Mile Island.
But most people are not that technically savvy. Nuclear Power has the word ‘nuclear’ in it so it must be
more radioactively dangerous than coal. We used to have Nuclear Magnetic Resonance machines but
the term nuclear scared patients. So they changed the name to MRI, Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
Same machine but without the politically incorrect name. Humans are not all that smart as a general
rule. For example, a person might say “I read a novel by J. K. Rowling and didn’t enjoy it.” It is quite
reasonable to assume that if you didn’t like Harry Potter volume one, you are less likely to like volume
two, etc. But now apply this logic to a comment like, “I tried computer dating, and it was not all that
good.” If the person infers that computer dating from one computer in 1970 is like computer dating from
another computer in 2007, they would stand a chance of being very mistaken. Computers and software
have changed dramatically in the last 37 years but a human author has probably not changed as much
over 7 years. This is the reason that most people think that “I have met computers, I own a computer, I
know what computers are like and computers are not intelligent.” Using the same unspoken logic of if I
didn’t like the author’s one book, I won’t like any others, the human feels comfortable in adding that
“Computers will never be intelligent.” They have met computers and computers are dumb. The
problem is that computers are doubling in speed and memory every year. Humans are not progressing
at all. We are the hare and they are the tortoises which are constantly evolving into faster and faster
animals.
So now consider the previous exchange where I say, you respond: “I do think of you as someone quite
conscious of race and gender. And you're NOT? “
My response is that I spend more time considering humans versus machines than I do the race and
gender of humans.
So, the goal of researchers is to create what Marvin Minsky calls The Emotion Machine in his book by
that name. He believes that it can be done in 5 years but I think it will take about 13 to 15 years. Others
are working on similar projects. When Minsky tried to get Google interested, they told him that they had
their own project underway. Yahoo, Microsoft, IBM and other companies also have similar goals as do
many universities and individuals. Jeff Hawkins invented the Palm computer and is now working on
simulating the human neocortex, the most advanced portion of the human mind. New search engines
will be appearing in the next couple of years which will do better at parsing sentences. Rather than
exporting jobs for “help lines” to India, these jobs will be taken by computers which will be capable of
conversing in many languages on many topics. You have probably talked to some early attempts at this
such as some airline computers. Google is a set of computers which do a “mediocre job of looking up
mediocre information” said its chief technical officer a few years ago. The point is that Google is
improving its search engine and building more data centers. If you had all 6 billion humans trained in
whatever manner you specify, you could not simulate a computer. In addition, if you had 6 billion
humans sitting at computers they couldn’t type fast enough to do the job in minutes that Google is doing
in milliseconds. So, should you rest assured that all those computers cannot yet simulate a human or
should you be concerned that all those humans cannot simulate a computer?
Consider that Google is already worth $158 Billion plus and their search engine is not even that bright
yet. Consider that R2 corporation developed an artificial neural network in 2002 that was better at
recognizing breast cancer than human radiologists and was tied with human radiologists who specialize
in reading only breast cancer. That is quite an important statement given that humans have pattern
recognition as one of their strong points. Computers excel at chess and other games, of course, but
the elusive quality of controlling a robot which would walk and talk like a human is further off.
We are currently simulating a mouse brain at 1/6th speed. If computers double in speed every year, we
will be able to simulate a human brain at full speed in about 13 to 15 years. Should I worry about global
warming in 100 years or being a second rate species on the Earth in 15 years?
Consider it this way. Let’s assume that a doubling in speed and memory of an artificial brain leads to an
increase in IQ of 12 points. Consider talking to a moron computer in 12 years with an IQ of 64. A year
later its IQ will be 76, a dullard, most people will say. After another year, the IQ of 88 will be “below
average.” Another year later its IQ of 100 won’t impress most people because they are still smarter
than the robot. When its IQ reaches 148, people will say that it is not as smart as Einstein, so they will
still not be impressed.
Part of me wants to move to Green Lake Wisconsin where there are no fast food or chain stores and life
is like living in the 1950s. Another part of me wants to live in Provence and brush up on my French. A
third part of me wants to live in Cambridge close to a colony of people who are aware of what is
happening in technology and not in denial of its implications.
If you are concerned about Sade having breast cancer, should you rely on a human doctor not making
a mistake or an automated machine which immediately tells her whether to have a biopsy or not? If you
read the book, Saving Women’s Lives, you will be led to believe that after 2002 the computer was the
best option. If that is true, why doesn’t the company manufacturing the equipment advertise the fact?
Because it sells equipment to hospital radiology departments which are run by human radiologists who
don’t want to be told that they are obsolete.
So tell me, what has race, gender and global warming have to do with anything in our real future past
2020?
don
________________________________________
From: Frieda
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 4:10 PM
To: dpmartin
Subject:
Responses in BLUE below.
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2007 2:16 PM
To: Frieda
Subject:
I used to understand much more when I was 20 something than I do now. I thought that race would just
“go away” after we all “grew up”. Apparently it didn’t.
We grew up?
Last Wednesday, Dana and I attended the Smith (my mother’s maiden name) Family Reunion in Boxford
MA. We then stayed in a hotel in Cambridge and looked for apartments there. We also looked for a
home in Weston MA. Part of me wants to stay in Illinois, but another part of me longs for the intellectual
community of Harvard and MIT. I met my computer science professor, Marvin Minsky while I was
attending Transvision 2007 at the Field Museum in Chicago at the end of July. He has offered to send
me literature on his latest project and I may become involved in it with him. This would keep my brain
working by having to mix with a number of very smart people.
Honestly I've never quite understood the tie you feel to Illinois...especially since you are not in a
University community nor one in which I see any particularly interesting pull between you and your
neighbors. You have spoken of the Massachusetts lure for some time now...it's about time you did
something about it. I'm glad you're making a move.
I am not nearly the intellectual you are, but I too long for elevated dialogue. Other than my need for
money, I think I have declined to retire so far because I find more stimulation among my work
colleagues, more particularly among people I meet on assignments, than with my social colleagues. Is
that a horrible thing to say?
I do think of you as someone quite conscious of race and gender. And you're NOT? The Roterts are
friends of mine and when it came to adopting, they adopted two Korean kids. When I mentioned the
possibility to you, you said that you had to help out “my people”. To me, that means that racial
consciousness is higher in your mind than in the Rotert’s minds. That, or a sense or responsibility to
black kids available for adoption, for whom there are disproportionately few adoptive parents. Most
Americans, perhaps like the Roterts, would prefer to take on the complications and expense of
international adoptions, rather than adopt an African American child. Anything but THAT. (Actually,
after my experience with Sade', I don't much blame them.) Perhaps not. They are quite gung ho over
Barack Obama. Maybe they are simply prejudiced toward people of color. Obama is NOT my choice.
And I am betting you'd guess wrong if you tried to work out who is. I read that more money is spent on
lightening skin than on any other plastic surgery. Perhaps THAT's what I should have put my money
into. Too late now. This isn’t the article, but what I found using Google: http://www.iht.
com/articles/2006/05/01/news/skin.php I saw a woman jogging near Harvard with a shirt that said
something about the “yellow menace”. She was Asian and probably was responding to the prejudice
that she found in America. Shall I send you one of my ERACISM T-shirts?
Technology is moving forward and politics seems to be moving backward according you and Jim Beers.
Yep! You may think that women could leave the home and get a job because of politics, but you should
remember that it would have been much harder to do if things like the automatic washing machine had
not been invented first. So what technical things are being done now? Janine is a Genetic Engineer
and I follow some of what is happening in that field. It appears that part of our brains are inherently
“tribal” in that we look to identify with our own race and gender. One potential solution may be to modify
human genes in such a way that we don’t “identify” with those with our own skin color as much as we do
now. I continue to celebrate diversity...and hope to never be in a homogenous society. But then I have
always lived out of place. I no longer know where my comfort zone is. Janine is working on cures to
diseases using gene therapy. Perhaps someday someone will come up with a gene therapy to “cure
racism” and drop it into the water supply. I suppose that this would kill the family reunions as well.
“Better living through chemistry, automation…and genetics.”
All of us here in the bureau had a rich, practically two-day conversation last week about the Michael
Vick case...and all that it encompasses and transcends. I think you can guess at my principal
contributions to the discussion?
don
XXOO Frieda
________________________________________
From: Morris, Frieda (NBC Universal) [mailto:Frieda.Morris@nbcuni.com]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 8:20 PM
To: dpmartin@alum.mit.edu
Subject: RE: [LIKELY_SPAM]Jim Beers
Hello Donny,
Always nice to hear form you. In fact, I have thought of you a few time recently, wondering if you are
well and happy.
As for this anecdotal information re the Fisheries and Wildlife agency, this is the first I have heard of it.
IF your expectation is that I would share in any outrage you might have over the situation...you could
have saved yourself the effort of forwarding the missive to me. The fact is, I have lost faith in America's
ability to truly embrace remedial measures to assist "approved minorities" (am I one?) to find equal
footing in this society. Time was I expected to be increasingly cheered by progress on this issue, but
alas, I was naive.
While I am grateful to you for sending this to me, as a matter of curiosity, I wonder how many of your
white friends you sent it to. And I wonder if your motivation and expectations re a response were the
same for black and white friends.
These days, do you ever think of me in contexts other than race and journalism?
Or is it just that I have had too many Pimms this afternoon?
-----Original Message-----
From: Donald P. Martin [mailto:dpmartin66@comcast.net]
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2007 3:41 PM
To: Morris, Frieda (NBC Universal)
Cc: dpmartin@alum.mit.edu
Subject: [LIKELY_SPAM]Jim Beers
Is there any truth to what this fellow has to say? Do you know the Republican Senator to whom he
refers?
Don
THE ROOTS OF POWER
It was during the late 1980's and early 1990's that the US Fish and Wildlife Service (and every other
Federal agency from what I heard) reduced and even eliminated the requirements for hiring and
promoting employees.
Academic requirements and experience requirements for hiring and to determine the entry grade were
all but eliminated.
Simultaneously, standardized entrance exams (with their comparable grades) were also eliminated. The
reason for all this was the implementation of DISCRIMINATORY hiring and promoting practices
disguised as EQUAL "Opportunity" for women and approved racial and ethnic groups. Government
began keeping race records and sex figures with all the thoroughness and zeal of bygone racist
regimes throughout history.
The reason that the entrance and hiring requirements disappeared was that the top government
managers in each Federal agency were rewarded with bonuses based on the percentages of hires and
promotions of women and approved minority groups. When white male employees and applicants began
complaining and suing because women and approved minority groups without "required" experience
were being hired and promoted: the top government managers fought back to get access to their large
(tens of thousands annually) bonuses for hiring and promoting women and approved minority groups.
They did this by pulling out the rug of standards and requirements for hiring and promoting. The rest
as they say "is history".
An avalanche of women and approved minorities were hired and promoted every year. Top managers
collected their bonuses and retired to their gated communities. It was a "win-win" for everyone except
white males and the citizens that had come to rely on Federal rural policies as well as other facets of
American life. As an example of what I am familiar with: the women and approved minority hires and
promotions were in the 60 and 70 % of all such actions (the more discriminations, the higher the bonus)
and within a few years the change in philosophy and policies and politics was overwhelming.
Foresters were no longer "foresters": they became anti-use and anti-management zealots. Wildlife
biologists were no longer wildlife managers: they became wildlife "protectors" and anti-human and anti-
private property fanatics. Refuge managers, fishery biologists, range managers, natural resource law
enforcers: it made no difference they were either newly hired and promoted radicals or they adopted the
"new" philosophy much as someone hired by an insurance company adopts to the culture of what they
hope is a career. The Universities smelled this change and began clamoring for the newly available
grants and other funding like the exploding "Conservancies" and "Federations" and "Institutes" et al.
The Universities obligingly eliminated "management" curriculums in favor of "research and protection"
agendas that were little more than open-ended pandering to maintain a fiction of professionalism and
"science".
All this came back to me as I read about the investigation of the longest-serving Republican in the US
Senate. Back in the mid-1990s his daughter was suddenly hired as a GS-14 in the US Fish and Wildlife
Service.
The hiring for a questionable position was kept quiet until it was done. I saw the paperwork and there
was nothing in her very limited background that was in any way connected with our activities. For the
record, at that time and for at least 25 years earlier when I was hired, you had to pass an exam with one
of the top 3 scores and then get hired as a GS-5 if you had a Bachelor's Degree or possibly as a GS-7
if you had a Master's degree.
A GS-14 is the grade I retired at after 32 years and makes 2-3 times the salary of the GS-5.
Within a couple of years, the Senator's daughter was promoted to a GS-15 and given a constructed
"position" in a Regional Office in the West. It was during her tenure there that your humble servant was
put-upon by the Clinton appointees for defending trapping, state fish and wildlife agency programs, and
the fur market. While concealing their tight connections with environmental and animal rights radical
organizations the Clinton appointees maintained a public façade of supporting management and use of
wildlife.
When the Republican House Resources Committee invited me to tell them what was going on: I
complied and incidentally mentioned that the US Fish and Wildlife Service seemed to be disbursing a lot
less of the hunting and fishing excise taxes to the states than were being collected. Again, the rest "is
history". The General Accounting Office was sent in and discovered that $45 to 60 Million had been
stolen (the correct word) by US Fish and Wildlife Service administrators in just the previous two years
from funds earmarked for state hunting and fishing programs administered by state fish and wildlife
agencies. The stolen money was used to pay bonuses to top Service administrators (illegal) and to do
two things THAT CONGRESS HAD REFUSED TO FUND: 1.) Introduce wolves into Yellowstone Park,
and 2.) Open an Endangered Species-oriented office in California where radical groups and a bevy of
Federal politicians wanted more control of Federal activities.
When the House Resources Committee found this out (remember this was a Republican controlled
Committee and a Democrat President): they were incensed and figured they were really going to go
after the US Fish and Wildlife Service but a funny thing happened. The US Fish and Wildlife Service
connected the Senator's daughter to the office. When her name was recognized by House Committee
and Senate Committee staffers they blanched and sped off to other things. Again it was a "win-win" for
the bureaucrats and the radicals that have infiltrated those agencies. The only losers were and are
rural residents, rural communities, hunters, fishermen, loggers, ranchers, and on and on. Not only was
there never any accountability in the US Fish and Wildlife Service (no one even missed bonuses); the
state fish and wildlife agencies never even complained (they were becoming addicted like the
Universities to Federal largesse); the state fish and wildlife agencies NEVER EVEN ASKED FOR THE
MONEY TO BE REPLACED (thereby shorting the hunting and fishing programs they are always
complaining "need" more money by $60 or more Million).
I do not write about this with any vindictiveness or regret. The Senator's daughter is now a top SES
Administrator in the Washington Office with a very high salary and large bonuses and a large retirement
(a long-ago retired employee once referred to this as "the gift that keeps on giving"). So far as I know
she is an honest employee and her Dad is innocent but that is not why I write this.
When we speak of a "Root" most often we think of where something came FROM, as in "money is the
root of all evil". There is another meaning for root and that is what I mention here. Roots not only
create things, THEY SPREAD and ruin foundations and roads and driveways and boat ramps, etc. It is
this latter meaning I mention here.
As we complain about Federal laws and bureaucracies running amok and destroying our freedoms we
must be aware of the hidden destruction of the seeping power beneath the surface. Because the US
Fish and Wildlife Service could hire anyone thanks to DISCRIMINATORY LAWS, they chose to hire a
political "chit" that might pay off later. It paid off in spades.
Although certainly not the only reason the hunting and fishing money was never repaid and certainly not
the reason it was stolen and not even the reason that the state agencies have evolved into Federal
handmaids: the fact that a Federal agency can hire and promote the dependents of powerful politicians
and then employ them in shameless ways to avoid accountability CONTRIBUTES TO the dire situation
we face today. The power of these agencies and the hidden agendas and hidden alliances with
politicians and radical groups needs exposure to the light of day and open discussion.
I tried to get someone to listen to me in the Washington media about this but they wouldn't return my
calls and when I tried to tell a columnist, his phone-answerer made it clear unknowns can't speak to the
known and after about two minutes of trying to explain this, he lost interest and said he was busy and to
send him an e-mail. So here you have it: my paltry attempt to explain how "The Roots of Power" not
only grow what you see, they go out underground and destroy things that you don't realize until it is too
late.
Jim Beers
1 August 2007
- If you found this worthwhile, please share it with others. Thanks.
- This article and other recent articles by Jim Beers can be found at
http://jimbeers.blogster.com (Jim Beers Common Sense)
This is a link to YouTube about machinery needed to convert cars to plug-in hybrid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n15woi0xsKQ
www.AmpmobileConversions.com
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