Get Ready for a Surprise!
Coming soon. Strap in, buckle up, and hold on to your dicks and lady bits. This will definitely be the longest (or shortest) chapter with multiple subplots, and subtle subtext that underlines said subplots that readers can digest with sleuth-like serendipity and superfluidity.
Figurative Intelligence
QUICK ANDREW NOTE: Please remember I still maintain I am an idiot who does not know what he is talking about. But it's fun to pretend.…Preoccupied with what you rather must do
Than what you should, made you against the grain
To voice him consul: lay the fault on us.
– Sicinius
I haven’t posted in quite some time! I was busy doing…stuff. It’s hard work studying walls. (Plus, the exam is supposed to be balls hard.) Recovery sucks and is super boring. (Especially when your tacrolimus and basophils goes up quite a bit, and you have to wait for a phone call to figure out why. Anti rejection meds and white blood cells. Ah the fun. Pretty sure my results went into a black hole that no one is going to look at.)
I want to be out and doing stuff. But it has given me time to read more about (and philosophize about) artificial intelligence and learning to speak Spanish. Today I heard an argument at my local corner store, all in Spanish, and it was just funny. I got to the front of the line and the lady behind the counter, who only spoke Spanish, was shaking her head in frustration. It was a stupid argument. Her son was there and we all started laughing. Her son looked at me and said, “My mom said that lady was crazy!”
I said, “Okay, this is my best grade school Spanish, but ‘Ella muy, muy loco!’” They both laughed hysterically. Both at my sentence, and the white guy trying really hard with a terrible accent. Ah, we laughed.
Okay, on to AI. I really wanted to learn more about AI because I wanted to have a more substantial opinion about it other than just, it’s going to kill us all! Or, anti-mediocrity bandwagon shit. And I will admit, I started this exploration with the ‘fuck AI’ mentality based on my current understanding. But wanted to explore more about what it is, where it comes from, where it’s going, and why people fear it so much.
So, the phrase ‘going against the grain’. It can be so satisfying as an application in life when it works for you. You decided to do something different because you believed it to be correct, or standing up for a cause that others won’t. (Problem is, every marketers mothers’ uses the phrase now. So it kind of lost its hand. But I’m still gonna use it.)
And to tie this all into the title: figurative intelligence. Something I promise will make sense at the beginning, middle or end of this rambling nonsense I’ve been thinking about.
Let’s use AI to discuss ‘going against the grain.’ And ‘going against the grain’ to dive into AI. And poop to discuss poop. (Just really wanted to say poop.)
If anyone claims to know everything there is to know about AI, just ask them to run you through it. Then order a bunch of bread. Cause you won’t need baloney. (For the record, I claim to know nothing about everything.)
Artificial intelligence is the nursing home everyone is throwing their mothers into without batting an eye. (They say you never call, that only your brother visits. The one who decided to give her grandchildren. She then reminds you dogs and cats don’t count.) Companies want the shiny new thing, CEOs love talking about said thing, people want to save money to make more money, and everyone thinks it solves multiple, complex problems with minimal effort.
Solving multiple, complex problems with minimal effort. This does not exist.
Everything comes back to bite you if you don’t understand where it came from. Intelligence is not knowledge. And artificial intelligence is not technology. It is a thought process carried out by machines. The goal is to eventually have the machines define that thought process.
If I may… Um, I’ll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you’re using here, it didn’t require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it.
You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now…
[bangs on the table]
– Dr. Ian “fucked your mom last night” Malcolm
I’ll just leave this here: Alan Turing, 1950, The Imitation Game. Good movie too. And I’ll leave this here as well, right behind the sentence before.
Everyone loves AI right now, it’s out of the greek winter and into those summer suits! But does it really make your life easier? Do you now find yourself with more free time? Have you finally figured out that sudoku puzzle?
Do you miss human interaction, [insert human name from file #80085]?
If so, please call us immediately. [Insert helper bot name: Cindy], our operator, is standing by, [insert human name]. We are here to show you a world that requires minimal effort, and help you find joy again in life by removing your paralyzing addiction to society and generalize your crippled understandings. [[Alert consumerism and reconstitution departments for brain wash.]]Call us at 1-800-UbE-fYnE
We let you keep the little piece of brain we take out when the other don’t!
I personally like the phrase ‘go against the grain.’ However, I never really understood the depth of it. To me it meant, do what you feel is the best, regardless of what others say. The majority could be wrong, and your intuition could be right. Preoccupation with it though can be of greater fault. (As per Shakespeare at the start of this rambling.) The way I read that blank verse above, is that you can get crazy with what you think you should do sometimes. You can screw up both ways. So we can go back to the old:
Well…you’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
– Bart Simpson
The phrase ‘against the grain’ is an idiom with literal origins. (I chuckle every time I see the word idiom.) You literally don’t want to go against the grain in woodworking, but it is something to use figuratively.
This whole thing is sounding too smart; like I read something smarter this morning or some shit like that. So I just need to class it up a bit:
Okay, back at it.
Its roots are used to describe how to work with the grain of the wood to help smooth and finish and that one should go with the grain rather than against it to avoid damage. However, when used figuratively, it highlights somebody doing something different.
– Going Against the Grain – Idiom, Origin & Meaning
The phrase has picked up speed over the decades, almost adopted for the opposite of what it represents. Now it’s like the perfect way to say “be yourself, by being like everyone else.” It’s everywhere in marketing. Taglines created by people just like you who Think Different; paid a lot more money to Just Do It.
What annoys me about the whole AI thing is how it’s masquerading as going against the grain, when in fact it’s encouraging you to go with the grain. That’s what AI has become for me. It’s cool, new, and something that is revolutionizing the world. Some (okay one) people want to shut it down, but to question it is to get a look like, “uh, we can fire you for that,” and “Fuck You! AI is gonna have my babies!” It’s like knowing more about AI has become a sort of pissing contest between people. It’s contentious, not helpful.
We are doing things that no one would have expected. Except we aren’t really giving it much thought as to the why, just that we can and you need to fucking accept it and buy it from Amazon! Cause it’s Prime Week. July 16-17. Great deals on apparel and deck chairs. I want mine in sunset orange.
Also, we’ve been doing the AI thing for a while now. (History is funny that way.)
Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.
– Edmund Burke
Time to dive into the history of AI! The concept has been rocking for over 100 years.
Actually, just kidding. This article does it pretty well. Nothing like a data science company explaining AI. (I love Tableau.)
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as a concept, steps into cognitive thought, moving away from more straightforward ‘answer my fucking question’ answers. The idea of thinking machines is to replicate practical thought that humans embody spanning over a lifetime of philosophy, critical thinking and detailed thought. We are going against the thinking of traditional ways of processing information and creating something that defines the future. But how do we enable machines to succeed us if all they know is a fuck ton of data points?
Intelligence is not knowledge. People hated Socrates for this. Both Socrates and one of his students, Plato, were going against the figurative grain, to teach others thought processes. (Which can get a Socrates executed unfortunately. He even refused to go with the grain–against his–when asked, as to avoid the death sentence.) Why was Socrates the wisest man in Greece? Because he knew that he knew nothing.
Caught on film, a meeting between Socrates and modern man:
So…we had good intentions. We tried to re-create the Oracle of Delphi, but Apollo wasn’t picking up.
The hubris of gathered intelligence is that without a basis in knowledge it will undo most shiny future applications of AGI. Against the grain, as well as artificial intelligence and AGI, is a buzz phrase now. It means the opposite of the opposite of its opposite meaning now. It’s a marketing slogan and a boiler plate phrase. (Call back to DVD and his love of boiler plates, someone who will probably never read this.)
And we are lost in Jurassic Park:
You didn’t earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don’t take any responsibility for it. […] You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could.
By the way, I am not against anything artificial. I just can’t get excited about something that others who claim to be super smart, don’t fully understand themselves. We are just getting started. But I just get tired of people and companies talking about it like it’s a solution. The problem was presented a long time ago. It would be ridiculous to think we are smart enough to have already even come close to anything resembling a solution for someone’s needs. Also, isn’t it all about defining applications? And once those applications are defined, how do we keep control?
People are scared of AI because they don’t know what it is. (And this is only when we are told something is using AI.) And we as a species are trained to fear that which we do not understand. But if you market something well, it makes that confusion fear pill easier to fucking swallow. (Apple Intelligence, iCloud, Apple is really good at this. No one knew what ‘the cloud’ was. Just that it held all their movies and music. Never occurred to them it was a few football fields of servers in Nebraska, that sucked up more power than that everyone in that state combined. And Apple Intelligence is brilliant. Ditch the word artificial and replace it with the name people ‘trust.’)
We’ll buy anything that looks cool, even if it takes months to understand how to use, and it really doesn’t do what it was marketed to us to do. Doesn’t matter. So as long as AI as a marketing concept can make its way into the lexicon of people who also enjoy Taco Bell, we’re all set. (What if people who celebrate a vocabulary for specific things got together for a yearly convention. Would they call it Lexi-con? Or Lexicon-con? Or…Lexi-can-con? So many options…)
Say something enough times, and it becomes meaningless and accepted. We just get tired of hearing it and go, “Fucking hell. Enough already! I’ll tell my daughter no music lessons and buy your stupid thing I don’t need that will be irrelevant in a year anyways.”
We also tend to forget things pretty quickly. So how do we get around all this? Fuck if I know, but we might not. It might weed out the stupid and leave the complacent with their wealthy overlords. Or it could kill us all. Or we could trust in people smarter than us.
But maybe the general public will never be ready for anything like AI…
My money is on nothing. Absolutely nothing. It’ll be a hot topic for a bit, then cause a market crash, people will get angry, another war will happen, we’ll work it all out, swing it back the other way, forget about it for a bit, some future generation will bring it up again, (Those poor machines. They didn’t deserve The Grand Unpluggening of 2048.) then rinse/wash and repeat.
I am about one tenth into understanding all of this, and want to know more. Ancient Greek philosophy seems like a new fun place to continue down.
So, what is figurative intelligence? It’s knowing that there is nothing there, that you know nothing, and there is no grain.
It’s the spoon.
Pictured below, two computers having an argument. Like sands through the hourglass. (Conversation is about how Stefano faked his own death. Again.)
Within a few decades, machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity — technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.
– Ray “200 pills/day to witness the singularity and then live forever” Kurzweil
Oh, and never hint someone is arrogant when trying to talk about this. People hate the word arrogant, and get all arrogant-y about it.
Postscript: (additional ranting from a crazed lunatic)
With this move towards ‘better’ intelligence, think of all the jobs they are ‘protecting’! All in the name of money and power!
Progress. I mean progress.
Progress.
Claiming Andrew
ATTENTION SHOPPERS: We have a 49 year old male that was left in aisle three next to the protein drinks. Can someone please stop off at claims at the front to pick up your 49 year old male. He is doing fine, but rambling about tacrolimus levels. Please, as soon as possible. He is getting on Betty's last nerve. And Betty is an Ozempic survivor.
Again, please just someone take him to the nearest doctor and prescribe medicine. He doesn't care which kind. Just medicine.
Thank you. [Instrumental rendition of A-Ha's The Living Daylights Bond song picks up where it left off; drowning out sadness in the background.]I really want to take a shower, but can’t because of the wound. I have wound care in two hours, and I can only change the bandage every two days. So, a shower every 48 hours.
Which I hate. I am a daily shower person. I can’t do the day without a shower. Helps me do stuff. Otherwise, I feel not ready for the day. Like I took it off or something.
And I really want someone to call me about my blood work at the moment. Whether it be Mayo, UCSF or Kaiser, I’ll take anyone. Just need to hear that we are on it, and adjustments are coming, or get your ass to the hospital for a spell. (But not back to Arizona, cause FUCK THAT.)
It’s this in-between shit that is driving me crazy right now. I just want to know who to go to for all questions, and have regular appointments. I have my doctor, and he’s been great, but there is a transfer happening to UCSF at the moment. And that’s experiencing delays. So is a one a month breathing treatment called pentamidine for anti-infection. I am in the ultimate holding pattern.
(And just for everyone out there, this is totally expected with transfers. I am whining because I am a whiner who enjoys whining right now.)
My whole brain and life is exactly this right now. Down to every line and scene. Let’s just hope we stick the landing…
Holy shit, gotta go. Pam just told me I can take a shower and she'll clean my wound and re-bandage me!!The Pentamidine is Mightier than the Spit
I’ve run through this a bit in my head, and have decided it plays out like a comedy scene. So that’s how we’ll describe it.
Enjoy. And I promise not to bring your mother into it.
So…
[SCENE]
INT OFFICE: 5th floor, San Rafael Hospital. Kaiser.
Pulmonology breathing treatment appointment for pentamidine. Pentamidine is a once a month inhaled medication for anti infection treatment after a liver transplant.
Andrew and Pam enter the waiting room.
Andrew
Can you hold my mask please?
And the keys? And the paperwork?
Pam
I guess. Is that why you bought me this purse?
Andrew
Yes.
At this point, two people enter and go into their appointments. Several people who work there come out to use the restroom, but no patient technically leaves.
An MA walks out.
MA
Andrew? Is Andrew here?
Andrew
[looking around for another male person in the waiting room. Or any person for that matter. No one.]
Yep.
The MA walks him back and puts Andrew in a bubble boy like tent. Offering him a bottle of water, which he accepts.
Andrew
A tent?
MA
Ya, not as fancy as Mayo.
Andrew
Are you kidding me? I’m gonna be Dustin Hoffman in Outbreak, deep in an intense conversation with Kevin Spacey and Cuba Gooding Jr. for 20 minutes.
The MA awkwardly chuckles. Andrew realizes he’s old with that reference. She does some stuff, gives Andrew a puff of Albuterol, hands him a breather, and it’s off to the races.
Andrew
Just a puff?
At Mayo I got an Albuterol breathing treatment before hand.
MA
Ya, not as fancy as Mayo.
At this point Andrew realizes that this is all the MA says and will ever say. So the breathing treatment for pentamidine begins.
Andrew is tented up and remembers the last breathing treatment was 15 minutes.
15 minutes comes and goes.
The MA has spent that entire time trying to plug a mouse into the computer. When the mouse is plugged in finally, the keyboard becomes unplugged. This goes on for 5 more minutes until the MA resorts to pen and paper. [Very Benny Hill]
Then at the 25 minute mark, Andrew is having difficulty breathing. The MA checks his breather, and holds up a hand indicating 5 minutes.
Andrew realizes that the pentamidine mixture is at the base of the breather, not in the box on the table. So, he tilts the breather to the right to see the fill level. Right at this point the MA leaves the room. Andrew finishes the tilt and pentamidine pours into his mouth.
Finishing the dose.
He panics and spits into his hand. A lot. The nurse walk back in to grab something and Andrew closes his fist to hide the spit, rushing it back to his side. Breather shoved back into his mouth.
Andrew covertly and slowly checks his hand. Unfortunately, all the spit has quickly run onto the floor. It’s everywhere. He moves his sandal to cover it, creating a bigger mess.
The nurse leaves once more, and Andrew yanks the breather out of his mouth again, throws the tent to the side, and grabs all the tissue he can. The tent goes back very violently, the tissues go to the floor. He continues to panic, furiously trying to clean all of it up with his feet.
At this point, any remaining pentamidine he had left has also dripped onto the floor, given how Andrew was holding the breather. As he is trying to clean that up, the nurse walks back in. Andrew shoves the breather back into his mouth, tissues on the floor and in his hand.
He looks at the nurse with wide eyes. Frozen.
She lifts the tent and pulls out the breather.
Andrew
Sorry, I started to drool a bit and needed a tissue.
MA
Oh ya, I meant to give you one.
Both of them ignore the mess Andrew has created in the room. It’s now an unspoken secret between the two. Never to be mentioned.
She quickly escorts him out of the room, back to Pam. The MA is still carrying the breather, dripping spit and pentamidine onto the ground.
MA
There you go. You should be all set.
Andrew
Thank you.
Andrew darts out of the office, Pam following close behind. As he runs out of the office, he remembers the water bottle that is still in his hand. The bottle would have made a great thing to spit in, rather than his hand.
EXT CAR: He explains the whole story to Pam, and she cannot stop laughing at him all the way home. Andrew realizes he’ll never live this one down. Still tasting the medication in his mouth.
[/SCENE]
Ah, the fun. Pictures of the experience. I am an idiot, now documented.
The MA left notes in the Kaiser portal. Dosing went fine without incident.
**phew**
Regarding Andrew
This is a quick blurb, but an update on me.
I am doing really good with the wound healing, but still at about 50%. Only one bandage left, super small. It’s shaping up to be quite the scar.
I am in between girlfriends right now. Mayo broke up with me, but still wants to be “friends.” We are respecting each other’s space right now.
UCSF really likes me, but is still dating that other guy right now. I think it’s more than one guy too. Not sure of the stability that relationship would offer me.
And Kaiser loves me, but they’re not ‘in love with me.’ They totally want to be there for me and help me navigate life, but can’t always make the 8pm movie on Wednesday.
So, I have three hospitals watching me, but no one wants to fully take Jeff Fahey on. Good news is that I’m healthy, and resting. Gearing up for physical therapy and finishing up wound care.
I’m also in the market for a long term thing. We’ll see what happens.
Then getting to know work again, which should be fascinating.
Oh, I don’t think I’m a lot dumber than you think that I thought that I thought I was once.
– White Goodman
Everything is on the Table
Sure there are dishonest men in local government. But there are dishonest men in national government too.
– Richard M. Nixon
I have decided that this is the last post here. I have lost a bit of interest in this at the moment, and have a desire to move on to new ideas and obsessions. Plus I’m doing pretty good, and there’s nothing interesting there. Just kind of boring.
I have however, found a love of writing down my nonsense. So that will continue. But Jeff Fahey’s story should come to a blog style conclusion. (He’ll have more to tell of course, but this ‘leg’ of the journey has come to an end.)
But, I must go on one more rant, for the sake of the story. It’s a mixture of things, pointing to nothing in particular. Conclusions might be drawn, but none are intended. Inspiration for sure, but it ends there regarding similarities.
Okay, here we go.
FUCKING POLITICS.
Right. That’s it. Nothing to do with anything, just needed to get that out. And not just government politics. Politics in life and work as well.
But seriously. This:
Those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
– C.S. Lewis
I guess it just bugs me that people straight up lie and twist truths (like a really shitty magician who very much gave up on being a semi shitty magician a while ago) and get away with it. And it’s not even certain people. It’s fucking 90% of people. I think there has to be at least some good somewhere, or else this would be the most cynical thing since Diogenes. (Look at me! I’m smart cause I look things up and craft bad jokes around it!)
I now realize that most everything is run with hookers, money, and drugs. All of this aiding to a constant build of power and elevation over others. (And most people can’t even wear a bandage properly. It’s not half of a fucking envelope for Christ sake.)
And it goes even further for those who refuse to change or listen to others. It’s everything. The longer you live, the longer you see the same people do the same things, with a different flavor. Thinking they are sneaking something by you. Or doing it in a different way this time. Or just being plain dumb. (Or forgetful as fuck.)
Remember when you were a kid and you got caught? Like red fucking handed? The excuses would flow like non-alcoholic wine. “It was him! I didn’t mean it. I don’t remember. It was a rock!” (I’ve used all of these. The rock one was a highlight. I backed into a neighbors car visiting my parents, took off, they knew it was me, and I blamed a rock. I was 16, not 5 like this sounds.)
Eddie Izzard pretty much nails this. (Watch the whole routine if you want to see one of the best stand ups of all time.)
As a reminder, this post has no rhyme or rhythm. It's just rambling nonsense.So, kids lying, politics, and Jeff Fahey. What do these all have in common? And where the hell is this going?
Nothing and nowhere really. Except that everything is now on the table.
He said the title in the blog post!! Actually a super common occurrence in movies. Take any major movie. They almost always say the title. I’ll just pull a super random one out. Let’s try Matrix:
See? Every movie.
More examples:
- it’s like some sort of French Connection.
- It’s this Thing see.
- Seriously!? Peggy Sue Got Married?
- I would like to plead the 5th. You 12 Angry Men, you.
- It’s just a dangling Dog Day Afternoon.
- Hey! Charley Varrick! You wanna play Hopscotch?
- on and on and on and on and on….
We’ve entered into an ‘acceptance without understanding’ realm of the matrix. Doing things with no real grasp on what the results may be or what you’re doing.
So, with all my free time, all I can do is make things up in my head. This is both dangerous and fun. Dangerous because I make things up in my head. I imagine conflicts that aren’t there, events that never happened, and I give them all a plausible back story. I have a very vivid imagination. It runs rampant.
Fun because it’s creative! Sometimes I create things in my head that gives birth to new ideas or ways of thinking that can wander down a path of inventive creativity. Some people might say most things have been done now. I think most obvious things have been done already. ‘Weird and new’ takes a while to be appreciated, but it’s never done with flavors of the day. Good stuff always references the past.
There are two types of people in the world.
- Those who ask why something was done a certain way before changing or expanding things.
- Those who change things to the way they want without asking why something happened in the first place.
The first group is where creativity sparks. The second group scares me. They exist everywhere. Work, government, art, etc. They don’t want to understand history. They want to change it to what they think will work. And they will bag on the old process. “This doesn’t make sense. | This is sloppy. | This is wrong.” They don’t take the time to understand the why, just that they made a determination, and it’s going to be known by all. Some will even steal, lie and cheat to get where they want to be.
I am not saying that they aren’t right. These things very well might be wrong or sloppy. My problem is they don’t want to understand why it’s wrong. Therein lies the pathway to repetition and, on occasion, destruction.
It’s why certain things are so cyclical. We don’t want to know why it failed, just that it did and we can do it ‘better.’
There will always be roadblocks. There should be. It kind of like checks and balances. (Actually, it’s exactly like that.) It’s never one size fits all, hence the challenge. No job is easy. if it was, it wouldn’t be a job. And another thing Mabel…
I can’t stand people who say, “it’s not work if you love what you’re doing.” Mark Twain is credited with the quote that makes the rounds, but probably came from some jerk.
Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
– Some Jerk
That’s a huge fuck you of a saying. Usually from owners or executives. If you say this, you probably own a huge house on the hill and have 2.5 children, a dog that is bred not to harm anyone, a nanny, a housecleaner, and a weekend car.
If you love what you’re doing, you’ll never work as hard in your life. You want to see it succeed. And you’ll fight for it, whatever it takes. Work is work. A toll is a toll. And a roll is a roll.
And if we don’t get no tolls, then we don’t eat no rolls.
– Little John
So, with all this randomness and thoughts, this brings us to the two rules I have in life:
- Don’t be a dick.
- Don’t hurt anyone.
Pretty simple rules that cover a lot of things. Next time you’re unsure of something ask yourself these two rules as questions. If you pass, you’ll be okay.
And with that, on to the next set of stories. Most likely a public blog this time as I have a taste for it now.
So, what did we learn? (We is me in this case. Third person Andrew!!!)
- You are not your job.
- Fuck with the clergy. (Keep those guys on their toes.)
- Do something that makes you smile.
- Pain sucks. Manage it wisely.
- Be the ball.
- Take the breaks you need.
- Don’t drink that much alcohol.
- Thank those who help you.
- Beware of kids on escalators.
- Go to the doctor. And dentist.
- Call your parents. Once a week.
- Drink water.
- Skate or die.
- Fuck veggies. Protein is the name of the game.
- Exercise!
- Sit and watch people on a bench sometimes.
- Don’t be a menace to South Central while drinking your juice in the hood.
- Some people suck, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
- Some people are beautiful. Keep them close and listen.
- Listen to yourself.
- and Damn the man, Warren.
You only get one shot at this rodeo, and somehow I got two. Hold tight, be happy, don’t be a dick and remember, this is most likely what’s happening to you, every moment of every day: