Rebane's Ruminations

Unclear on Partisan Politics

George Rebane

The above cartoon by our tried and true progressive cartoonist Bob Crabb was filched from the pages of The Union’s 16jan21 edition.  It provides an opportune lesson that illustrates our polarization and the sorry condition of jurisdictions that practice monopoly politics.  (I do like the Burma-Shave signs.)

Collectivists like Bob sincerely want to “find a cure for” partisan politics.  They totally miss that partisanship is the only political order that provides the necessary and critical feedback loops which yield balanced governance.  Without effective and ongoing partisanship we get runaway one-party rule of the type that in recent years has put a heap of hurt on a number of states and urban jurisdictions led, of course, by California.

While our Democrats, along with other international globalists, work ardently for an overarching, all-powerful world government, almost all other people, who are able to give the problem some thought, oppose such a sure path to a stable and lasting tyranny.  As conservetarian, I would never want a political monopoly of free-market capitalism in my country to dominate so as to eliminate effective feedback from collectivist ideologues.

Progressives, hewing to the teachings of the immortal Marx, have no concept of the function of such balance in the ongoing back-and-forth of governance, and even less knowledge of how to achieve and maintain that needed tension.  For them, all goodness and light comes from but a single fount of truth enabled by one-party rule.  No broadly beneficial and productive social order has ever been achieved without robust feedbacks that check government excesses which easily arise from human weaknesses.

Government, by its very nature has always lacked these critical feedback mechanisms, and as a result is the most inefficient way to organize people to get almost anything done right.  (Most recent example, the states’ inability to efficiently distribute and administer C19 vaccines, again led by California.)  Nevertheless, every society needs individuals to contribute some time, treasure, and talent to collective enterprises, such as national security and shared infrastructures, that would be inefficient undertakings for private enterprise.

But here the modus operandi should always be guided by the minimalist principle of having the smallest possible government, but no smaller.  And to achieve that is where the collectivists and capitalists must meet on a sufficiently par basis of partisan politics to arrive at a workable social order, one that provides hope and equal opportunity for all to pursue their dreams, rewards merit and industry, does not abandon those unable, and all of it no matter how inevitably and unequally we are suited for the pursuit.

As history illuminates and we demonstrate daily, all other mono-partisan approaches to organize society lead toward tyranny or anarchy.

Scattershots – 15jan21 (16jan21)

George Rebane

The Capitol assault reports are getting curiouser and curiouser.  Instead of quickly blaming Trump supporters for the mob action while labeling them ‘seditious insurrectionists’, and then quickly calling the case closed, we keep having reports coming out documenting feds who now admit that they knew in advance that Trump haters were planning to enter the Capitol and visit violence in the midst of Trump supporters who would follow them in.  Here is one such report that has yet to be censored.  Readers should contribute their own pros/cons to such reports.

Also, the entire timing and preparations for the assault viz Trump’s speech is turning into a mendacious muddle.  Law enforcement agencies report that the assault began significantly before Trump’s alleged call to march to the Capitol.  And also that stores of assault equipments like crowbars, etc had already been stored in convenient locations for the perpetrators of violent entry into the building.  We need to be reminded again of the House article that gave rise to the half-day snap impeachment.  From my perch it sure looks like a historical political hit job has just gone down with pre-orchestrated rallying cries coming from both sides of the aisle.  What the hell is going on?  Is this Deep State on parade, while the rest of us are threatened with re-education camps?

California’s C19 vaccine distribution system is, predictably, one of the worst in the land.  Last night FN reported on the relative amounts of received vaccines distributed by the states.  California was next to the lowest with only 26% of its vaccines having been administered.  With each passing day our political monopoly in Sacramento finds more ways to screw up and make life worse for every taxpayer within its borders.  All of this is invisible to our local leftwing lackies.

Big business is making a sharp left turn, as we have noted in these pages.  This is now being picked up (here) by national columnists like WSJ’s Kim Strassel who notes, “Corporate America took a big step this week, moving from captives of wokeness to active accomplices. The legal and political consequences may prove profound.”  One political consequence that will fit the Dem socialists to a tee is that already corporatist big businesses will become protected extensions of the state, taking their operations marching orders from relevant (and possible new) cabinet departments, bureaus, and agencies.  This is the established route from Hitler through Xi Jinping to America’s radical left now going through birthing pains as it spreads its tentacles over the land.  None dare call it capitalism.

Last night on FN’s Bret Baier program we noticed something very shocking to us.  The program’s balanced panel of commenters has recently ensconced Harold Ford Jr (former congress critter from Tennessee) as its reasonable liberal voice.  The panelists currently join the program online from their homes.  Ford broadcasts from his elegant living room from which the man accidentally and momentarily revealed his deeply held values.  He pulled back his video camera so that it showed the room’s center-piece fireplace, and over the mantle on the wall, centered over the fireplace hung a large (Andy Warhol) portrait painting of a smiling Mao Zedong.  The prominent place in a former congressman’s home afforded this killer of over 100,000,000 of his own people made our jaws go slack.  This camera shot was quickly corrected as it became his turn to speak again.  Nuff said.

Grand opening coming soon.

And then there's more suppressed news 'Media Mostly Silent As BLM Activists Clash With Capitol Police'.

[16jan21 update]  Today The Union saw fit to publish my censored 6jan21 KVMR commentary.  (more here)

‘What Just Happened?’

[Union columnist Terry McLaughlin asks that pointed question (here) on the 14jan21 edition’s op-ed page.  She goes on to provide and excellent background summary that lets the reader answer her question.  It turns out that we Americans have been given an education over the past year to accept a much more expressive way of protesting everything from public policies to individuals and institutions – in short, we have been carefully taught that riot and mayhem is now de rigueur for expressing collective dissatisfaction.  Ms McLaughlin’s piece provides us with the syllabus for that course.  It is posted below with her permission.  gjr]

Terry McLaughlin

There is no excuse for the violence that took place on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol. What we witnessed is morally reprehensible and I am ashamed and horrified that it occurred.

Americans deserve to know who was responsible, and those persons who perpetrated vandalism or violence should be brought to justice.

It cannot be denied that both the political far right and far left are home to their own share of Antifa-like anarchists, and the chaos at the Capitol has refuted any perception that the left owns a monopoly on widespread political violence. While we can never excuse or defend this behavior, we can make an honest effort to identify the environment in which it happened.

These events resulted from a multitude of causes: concerns and distrust in the integrity of our elections, pent up frustrations of citizens stripped of their livelihoods and freedoms during the pandemic, and yes, the rhetoric of the president of the United States.

But not the least of these causes is the justification, defense, and even apathy of the media and many of our elected political leaders regarding the violence committed across America throughout 2020, including attacks on federal courthouses, burning of police stations, and the establishment of “autonomous zones” in Portland and Seattle. The message was loud and clear: If you are dissatisfied with a political or social issue, violence is an acceptable answer.

Dark Days Diary – 13jan21 (updated 15jan21)

George Rebane

‘America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.’  I used this anonymous aphorism as a tagline for a recent post, and upon reflection, it rings more true with each passing day.  Today loud voices are heard mostly from the Left, but also some from the Right, exhorting us to set our beliefs aside and be compliantly silent.  The underlying principle that is being hoisted like a banner in the public square is ‘politics has no place for violence.’

That is also the title of a piece by Rep Steve Scalise (R-LA) in the 13jan21 WSJ (here).  Unfortunately, the congressman could not be more wrong, both historically and existentially.  Going back to the days of historian Thucydides of ancient Greece, violence has always been one of the extremes and frequently practiced bookends of politics.  The other extreme of political behavior is silent compliance, the rigidly enforced favorite of tyrants.  To get a deeper understanding of this, I recommend to you Graham Allison’s Destined for War: Can America and China escape Thucydides’s Trap (2017).  (Kissinger’s plaudit of the book included, “Thucydides’ Trap identifies the cardinal challenge to world order.”)

Allison and other historians have long made it clear that almost every military action, including partisan uprisings, were spawned for political reasons.  Nevertheless, most of us believe that a social order succumbing to either of these extremes represents a failure of practicing prudent politics.  An oft-accepted definition of politics is ‘the art of the possible’, which is still valid with its noted bookends withstanding.

In this light, I maintain that current arguments, exhortations, and platitudes from our national leaders do nothing to calm the angry sea that today defines social order.  None of these politicians can point to a common ground where we may meet to forge a mutually acceptable future.  What each offers in place of such a political meeting is simply another version of ‘my way or the highway’.  And the diagnosis is appropriate to those of us minor ideologues making our voices heard on the grassroots hustings.  For me as a conservetarian, the Left offers little to nothing that would give rise to a world in which I would want my progeny to live.  And collectivists feel equally strong about their ideals.

Political peace has been achieved in the past mostly by both (all) sides stumbling into a de facto compromise that is to no one’s complete liking, and one that motivates everyone to continue working for their political goals with plausible hope in their hearts.  And that is the important point.  The discovered compromise must be such that neither side loses hope of still being able to push the policy peanuts in their desired direction.  When that hope vanishes or is quashed, then one of the political bookends is all that remains, and the one chosen depends on the people’s means, culture, and their historical narrative.

Today President Trump was impeached again by the House, this time being accused of “encouraging a mob to storm Congress as part of an effort to overturn Joe Biden’s election win."  For millions of us across the land this most certainly was the most scurrilous political act we have witnessed during our lifetime.  There is no need to rehash all the ethical, constitutional, and simply principled criteria that were violated in performing probably the most vindictive act by Congress in its long history.  There was no opportunity, nor desire by the Democrats, to permit a reasoned defense by the opposition; it was simply a hastily assembled and railroaded political lynching.  What it underlined for all who pay attention is that this abortion on the floor of the House did nothing but cement in place an implacable division between polarized Americans that continues to grow in its scope and girth.

And we learned more about the stout political underpinnings of the ten so-called Republicans who decided to pile on to this judicial charade.  All the while more Republicans quake in their boots as the Dems and their lamestream continue to broadcast accusations of ‘acts of sedition’ and ‘insurrection’, none of which was intended or took place.  What did take place, as the record shows, is the President’s exhortation for his supporters to go to the Capitol and protest the scheduled proceedings to certify the electoral votes.  There is nothing illegal about a call for such action by citizens who do feel aggrieved that the November election was fraught with irregularities and fraud.  But today our liberties retreated another step as last Wednesday’s speech by the president was deemed both illegal and impeachable.  Besides cementing our breach, this second impeachment has now put a serious rip into the fabric of what once were the normative affairs of governance.

[15jan21 update] 'Assault on the Capitol Has Let Loose the Electronic Octopus' argues Victor Davis Hanson in a convincing piece apropos to these dark days.  And reader posts a link with a DoJ official declaring there is "no direct evidence" of plot to kill, kidnap lawmakers in Capitol assault (here).

Sandbox - 12jan21

[There is a lot happening in the world while our federal govt is focused on the attempts to remove President Trump from office before his term is up next Wednesday.  Haven't heard much discussion of how our 'friends' and declared enemies are preparing for the new Harris/Biden administration.  There's some serious stuff going down as they anticipate a new TBD foreign policy from Washington.  Usually the bad guys pull off some kind of test to gauge the measure of America's new Big Kahuna.  gjr]

Control of Corporatist Oligopolies

“America was born of dissent. It shall perish when dissent is forbidden.”  Anon.

George Rebane

Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Apple, … arguably reside somewhere between monopoly and oligopoly in the capitalist spectrum.  It is very hard for a corporation that controls a dominating segment of a major market to become such a beast in a truly competitive environment, and then to maintain its standing without active help from the government gun in suppressing would-be competitors.  Such relationships between putatively private sector companies and the government is called corporatism.  And such participating corporatists are a malevolent disease of capitalism made possible by one of its systemic vulnerabilities.  The creation of corporatism is only possible with the abetting aid of a corrupt government, one that seeks large amounts of private funding to extend its political power over a citizenry having tendencies for non-compliance with the establishment’s diktats.

According to Rebane Doctrine and the basic tenets of conservetarianism, such corporatist oligopolies invite regulation to prevent them from becoming weaponized by one controlling political faction in a democracy.  (For more on this important happening, see LikeWar:The Weaponization of Social Media)  The threshold criterion here is the corporatist’s domination of a broadly embedded and established public function or service for which there exist no viable alternative providers in the marketplace.  When a corporatist achieves that status (call it a critical public good corporation, CPGC), then it’s time to put in place non-partisan regulations to either defang or dismember it.

At this point the lightly-read liberal will leap into this discussion with charges of ‘hypocrisy’ or ‘double standards’.  As I’ve recounted countless times, this response is borne of either purposive political snark, or more likely from the simplified worldview that most leftwingers are burdened with as they seek to make sense of complex societies – it must be either ‘this’ or ‘that’ with no perception of nuance or a middle-ground.

In the present case of gratuitous imposition of censorship and/or cutting off public communications completely, the corporatists are outing themselves as 1) the strong partisans they are, and 2) taking advantage of the current political environment to also quash competing companies, and all of it done as virtue signaling to support the public good.  The government’s sponsors of such corporatism and corporatists will, of course, support and sustain such private sector initiatives as the actions of good and caring corporate citizens.

The solution that would prohibit such preemptive partisan actions is to have in place a law that 1) prescribes criteria to identify such critical oligops or monopolists as CPGCs, and 2) restricts how CPGCs may conduct the critical public services and/or functions they provide.  In short, the profuse and protected profits they derive, when so designated, come at a price of regulatory controls that are supervised by an appropriate department – say, Commerce – of the federal government.  None of this violates the strong conservetarian principle of a minimalist government being among the social desiderata for a democratic republic that creates and distributes wealth within a capitalist context.

Under such a regulatory order it would be easy for a corporation to sufficiently divest or segment its operations to escape its CPGC designation.  The main objective of such an approach is to prevent what is happening today with private sector providers making political decisions as to who may or not continue using the communication services that the same corporatists have conduced people to accept, integrate, and make critical parts of their daily lives.

As a parting consideration, think about the disruption to your life were your phone company to gratuitously cut your ability to make and receive telephone calls.  That situation existed for decades when AT&T was the overwhelmingly dominant telephone service provider, and for that reason it was a strongly regulated oligopoly until advancing technology made possible a competitive environment that could best be served by a break up of Ma Bell into Baby Bells, and the entry of new service providers.  We all have benefitted from this paradigm, and now need to expand it into the world of CPGCs on the internet.

Dark Days Diary – 9jan21 (updated 12jan21)

No days unalert; … alertness when most necessary, is always missing, and not to give the matter a thought is to be slated for destruction.  Gracian #264

George Rebane

Over the years to this day we have seen that our leftwing neighbors don’t have much truck with concepts like nuance or shades of gray.  Their more simple worldview resides comfortably in the corners of the extreme – for them the needle is always pegged: yes/no, black/white, racist/woke, 0/1, socialist/capitalist, … .  (Bang-bang policy in control theory)  This embrace of simplicity goes back to the Bolshevik revolution and continued all throughout the 5-year civil war that followed.

During that terrible strife, communist partisans would stop trains of ‘White Russians’ fleeing the already consolidated Red areas.  They would have the passengers dismount to line up next to the tracks and show their palms.  Those whose hands were found to be soft and/or uncalloused were executed on the spot as bourgeoisie enemies of the people.  There was no middle road to be examined, nor any propensity to do so.  Terror was the name of the game, and to make their omelet, some necessary eggs had to be cracked.

From my perch on 6 January 2021

George Rebane

A socialist imposes unequal opportunity, promises equal outcomes, and delivers uniform misery.  A capitalist imposes equal opportunity, enables individual initiative, and delivers unequal outcomes that provide the best possible prosperity to all.

Today President Trump’s talk sunk the walk of the thousands of conservative DC protesters.  This dreadful character defect of his has done incalculable damage to his work while in office, to his legacy after he leaves office, and his political future by how he transfers power to his successor.

The message to Congress and the American electorate on this day should be evidence centric and NOT election outcome centric.  Assembling thousands on the Mall and Capitol grounds to shout and wave signs reading ‘Biden stole the election’ and ‘Trump won by a landslide’ helps get the real message and purpose of the demonstration to no one.  And it amply feeds the waiting propaganda factories of the lamestream.  There was not a single sign I saw that demanded the examination and adjudication of the mountains of evidence that substantiate election irregularities and voter fraud.  That should have been the obvious and clearly displayed reason for the anger and frustration of those assembled, and their demands for redress of grievances.

Instead, on the day Congress was to actually certify the Electoral College vote count, the peaceful protest became a mob that stormed the Capitol to display their most base sentiments as they destroyed property and disgraced legislative chambers and legislators’ offices by posing for the cameras like a bunch of ignorant rock apes which indeed they were.  (I would still like to see the authorities confirm the conservative bona fides of the idiots who rampaged through the Capitol.)

The subsequent videos and tweets by the President did nothing to quiet the emotions of his loyal supporters.  If anything, these communicated a back-handed imprimatur to continue running amok.  IMHO, today’s presidential performance tremendously increased the likelihood that the Republicans will splinter, and that DJT’s hopes for a White House reprise are dashed.  It should not surprise anyone to see VP Mike Pence emerge from this imbroglio as the courageous Horatius at the bridge to lead what is left of the Republicans.  The comparative lassitude of the McCarthys, Cruzes, Cottons, and Jordans gives strong evidence that their best days are behind them.  And it will be interesting to see if the former majority leader McConnell will be allowed his last hurrah to marshal the Senate’s de facto minority in a rear guard action against the socialist onslaught of Pelosi and Schumer.

For those of us who continue to believe that society will best be served by a governance that promotes individual enterprise, open markets, capitalism, equal opportunity, and freedom, it definitely has not been a good day.

An Appeal to Restore Election Integrity (updated 16jan21)

George Rebane

[This was to be the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary censored on 6 January 2021.]

[Update.  I was informed this afternoon that my “commentary got cut tonight by station management.”  Management is now “establishing criteria for commentaries”, and there were elements in my piece with which the station took issue.  I am saddened that the pall of leftwing censorship across the land has now reached our little corner of the Sierra foothills.  Ratcheting autocracy on parade.  gjr]

[16jan21 update.  I am happy to report that The Union saw fit to publish this commentary in its 16jan21 hardcopy and online editions (here).  Update continued below.  gjr]

Today our country is again unhappy with how our national election was carried out.  Here we are not talking about voters unhappy that their candidate did not win, which happens with about half the voters in every election.  Instead, we concern ourselves with the very large number of voters on both sides of the contest who are dissatisfied with various parts of the voting process, and believe with all the cited and documented irregularities of the November election, that something serious is amiss with how we have come to elect our political leaders in the 21^st century.

Sandbox - 4jan21

[Time for a fresh Sandbox ready to take on the new year and the exciting events forthcoming this week from the nation's capital.  gjr]

Evidence - Why not look at the evidence? (updated 7jan21)

George Rebane

Why not indeed?  The existential evidence abounds of election fraud and irregularities having happened.  It exists just for the looking in forms of

1. witnessed and sworn affidavits of polling place and vote counting wrongdoings;
2. witnessed and video records of after-hours arrivals of thousands of unmailed ballots in unmarked vehicles;
3. mass arrivals of ballots supporting Biden that fail simple statistical tests that attest to their numerical authenticity;
4. demonstrated ease with which voting machine counts could be manipulated;
5. recorded denials of access to vote processing observers;
6. obvious gross numerical discrepancies between registered voters and votes cast;

Uncounted complaints of these infractions and irregularities have been filed across the land, and all have been rejected by our already dubious judicial system, not for lack of evidence, but on procedural grounds.  And these procedural grounds smell to high heaven that include the scurrilous use of ‘lack of standing’ of the plaintiff.  The legal notion of standing has no basis in constitutional law, and was only concocted in the 1920s to reduce an overly burdened case load on the courts as a means of avoiding/reducing adjudications.

What no court has done is to examine the evidence in open court and find any of it lacking in form, substance, and/or credibility.  In fact, the opposite findings have been issued to the effect that the unexamined evidence, even if verified, would not have materially changed the election’s outcome.  That is both false and a lie on the face of the vote counts presented in the reams of existing evidence.  And whether or not the evidence would change the election’s outcome is immaterial as a point of law.  What is important is to examine and conclude on the verity of the irregularities in the November election, and then prepare feasible remedies so that these will not be repeated in future elections.

All of this should be done in order to restore bipartisan confidence in our elections, especially the last one that saw copious amounts of dubious votes arrive in the dark of night to be surreptitiously counted in favor of the Democratic candidate.  So now on 6 January 2021, Congress will meet to go through what has been a pro forma certification of the electoral college votes.  However, this time dozens of Republican congress critters will rise to object to the electoral college counts.

Given the behavior of the courts, many Republican MOCs maintain with Sen Josh Hawley (R-MO) that “At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections, but Congress has so far failed to act.”  Today’s count is fluid, but upwards of 140 MOCs now say they are willing to join in the rejection of electoral college votes, and demand that the collected evidence of fraud see the light of day.

Meanwhile leftwing propaganda organs like the LA Times maintain that “there is no evidence of voter fraud and the integrity of the election has been repeatedly affirmed at the state level, in the courts and in Washington.”  Joining in accepting the current election results, no matter how marred, are members of the Republican congressional leadership led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

But given the highly polarized state of the nation and the countless controversies surrounding this election, the simple question remains, ‘Why not look at the evidence?’

Here and here are two recent, extensively referenced reports by John Lott and Peter Navarro that present in detail the case to be made for the existence, scope, and authenticity of the current body of election fraud evidence.  How would you judge an appeals process that dismisses even considering the examination of evidence only on the basis of the plaintiffs not having said the appropriate ‘Mother may I?’ at some point in bringing it to the attention of the courts?

[7jan21 update] More light on the matter from the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society is presented in 'Set In Stone? - A Historical, Constitutional, and Legal examination of Electoral College Deadlines and their implications for the 2020 Presidential Election'  Download Electoral_College_Deadlines_White_Paper.

Turing Test – Alexa ‘head scientist’ unclear on the concept (updated 2jan21)

George Rebane

‘The Turing Test is obsolete. It’s time to build a new barometer for AI’.  On the FastCompany website we read, “The head scientist for (Amazon's) Alexa thinks the old benchmark for computing is no longer relevant for today’s AI era.”  And why does that head scientist Rohit Prasad have such a thought?  Well, according to his report, he claims that the AI will give itself away by being able to instantly answer questions like ‘What’s the square root of 3434756? Or ‘What’s the distance from Seattle to Boston?’  What Mr Prasad overlooks is the definition of the test as Alan Turing posed it.  An AI will pass the Turing Test, if in a one-on-one competition with a human through a non-disclosing interface, the AI can fool at least half the humans asked to perform the test by asking the tested AI and human ANY series of questions, and then concluding that the AI is the human.

The test is NOT to see which one can answer detailed factual or computational questions to which humans cannot provide the correct answer.  Being able to answer the above questions instantly would, of course, give away the AI.  But that is an AI that is still not smart enough to know that it must also fool the humans testing it, and therefore it would fail the test.  An AI that knows this, and couches its answers accordingly will have a chance to pass the Turing Test.  Mr Prasad is apparently not aware of this extremely high bar that Dr Turing set for the machine.

Here again is another example of ‘science’ not speaking with a single voice.  When you consider what the qualifying AI must do to pass, then it should be clear that the test very much remains relevant for this or any era.  Passing the Turing Test will be a confirmation that the Singularity is then behind us.

[31dec20 update]  And then reader BarryP @ 1045pm asks, “What then is the utility of the Turing test?” – an excellent question.

No one knows how the Singularity will come about.  There is a group of AI workers who continue to hold out the naïve belief that peer Ais will be purposely programmed, activated, and controlled much like we do our workhorse computers today.  However, the field of cognitive science is not even close to supporting such a hope – e.g. we don’t know enough what ‘emotion’ or ‘envy’ or ‘shame’ or ‘perfidy’ or ‘pride’ or … are, let alone how to program any of these into a machine.  The closest we have come to making intelligent machines is through application of the approach developed by renown behaviorist BF Skinner – reinforced learning.

But we already have a good idea that, given a sufficiently rich computational and sensing environment, intelligence can arise spontaneously along any of a number of pathways.  It most certainly did in us and countless other critters.  As I have contemplated elsewhere in these pages, the internet, when considered in all of its connectedness to countless other known and unknown networks, is the most complex ‘organism’ on earth, by several assessments having already surpassed the complexity of a human brain.  No one today can even draw the schematic of this dynamically evolving beast.

So, while corporations and governments are nurturing nascent neural-nets and other learning architectures to become sentient, it may already be happening (has happened?) in the bowels of the internet, with or without surreptitious human cooperation.  No one should be surprised if sometime in the next 50 years a sentient (and sapient) AI announces ‘I am here.’  This may be a public announcement, or done secretly to one or more selected humans, or even by the AI introducing itself through a Turing-like test in, say, an academic setting by having coopted/replaced the human-designed system.  In the latter case, being able to pass the Turing test would be a very subtle way for the AI to announce its advent and pretend that it is still under control in its ‘laboratory’ environment.  In the meantime, such testing does give us a metric in how much progress our purposive programs to achieve peerage have made.

I must admit, that the above scenario would be the most scary and world-shaking thing humans would encounter – a true Singularity, marking an event from which onward no one can fashion a usefully likely future for mankind.  There already exist a number of academic and governmental panels commissioned to propose anticipative public policies for dealing with such AIs.  I doubt that any of these draft policies will be useful in a post-Singularity world, but their labors at least acknowledge that we are already aware of such possibilities in the near future.

[2jan21 update]  From some comments below that seek to cite proof that computers have already passed the Turing test, we need to correct such misapprehensions by people who demonstrably are not familiar with what Alan Turing proposed.  He did NOT describe a domain-specific dialogue with unsuspecting humans wherein the interactive computer could fool the human in a short conversation.  Were that the criterion, then we could celebrate BBN’s development of Eliza, a limited but cleverly designed chatbot, that even fooled the supervisor of the development team into thinking that he was talking with the lead developer over a teletype link as he sought to demonstrate the system to visitors at the Bolt, Beranek, and Newman facility one weekend in the mid-1970s.  The truth was that he was conversing with Eliza who was left online for the weekend.  The machine kept up a totally realistic, but very frustrating exchange, until the supervisor picked up the phone and called the developer at home, who instantly resolved the situation.  This, of course, then turned out to be a wonderful demonstration of BBN’s technology that impressed everyone there.  But did the computer pass the Turing test – not by a long shot.

What laymen here and elsewhere miss about Turing’s prescription for peer ‘thinking machines’ is that the test needs to involve unlimited conversations with multiple human testers who know 1) that they too are being tested, and 2) that each tester knows that the two conversationalists taking part are a machine and another human, and 3) at some undefined endpoint determined by the tester, s/he will be required to identify the human and the machine.  The conversations are not to be limited in any sense, and they will be repeated with a large sample of human testers.  At the end, the fraction of correct assessments will determine whether the Turing test has been passed.  Any human/machine exchange short of that will not qualify.  Hopefully, this requirement will be accessible to our readers.

Scattershots – 27dec20 (updated 30dec20)

Suspension of judgment is always the part of wisdom in a listener, and the remission of faith to authority the part of wisdom in a speaker.  Gracian #154

George Rebane

Identity politics is a totalitarian enterprise, as called out by Paul Gigot, op-ed editor-in-chief of the WSJ.  About Gigot's defense of Joseph Epstein’s commentary on Jill Biden’s doctorate – ‘The Biden Team Strikes Back’ – Roger Kimball of The New Criterion writes,

The governing strategy of identity politics is not to encourage free expression but to shutter it. In essence, it is a totalitarian enterprise, deploying the shibboleths of race, gender, and radical egalitarianism to enforce a stultifying conformity. It is heartening to see Gigot affirming that, at one of our nation’s most important newspapers, “these pages aren’t going to stop publishing provocative essays merely because they offend the new administration or the political censors in the media and academe.” If, as we suspect, the preview we just witnessed was a sort of sighting shot, it suggests that Gigot is going to have his hands full dealing with ever more intolerant efforts to “turn the page” and enforce ghastly new modes of “healing” and “unity.”  (and more here)

[29dec20 update] Speaking of ‘doctors in the house’ (here), we are now not surprised to hear that the pandemic is causing most leading universities to ‘pause’ their 2021 admissions to PhD programs.  “More than 140 humanities and social sciences programs at top schools have suspended admitting students for fall 2021.”  And also we’re not surprised to hear that STEM PhD programs are not affected by these cutbacks.  During disasters, society in the large acts pretty much as humans do in the small when it comes to deciding who gets to stay in the lifeboat – utility rules. (more here)

Trust government ‘science’ when spouted by agenda-driven politicians?  The short answer is ‘No’, the long answer is NFW!  One of our astute readers draws our attention to “Joe Biden's decision to hold over Dr. Anthony Fauci in his administration as his chief medical advisor as a symbol of his commitment to ‘trust science’ is coming under new scrutiny following Fauci's recent admission that he altered public scientific estimates based on opinion polls.” (more here)  The most vulnerable double dummies are those who believe science speaks with one infallible voice.  We witness their blather nightly on the lamestream.  And the Democrats (including their local lackies) still claim that theirs is the ‘party of science’.  Please note the above entry on PhDs when recalling their braggadocio about all the Left’s college graduates.

Biden’s education programs promise to be on steroids in their announced path to destroy the last vestiges of the nation’s public education.  From here on all curricula in union-dominated government schools will be focused through the lens of critical race theory.  It is now in the open that progressives have no desire to produce students with market-valued skill sets and the ability to think critically,  The overt K-12 objective from here on is to produce a generation of dumb and woke kids, indoctrinated to believe that meritocracy, personal responsibility, diligence, achievement, industry, intelligence, … are all characteristic traits of white supremacists and racists, and therefore to be eschewed in the coming socially just world of newly-minted, anti-capitalist socialism.

Anyone notice how silent the EU has been about China’s global policy of stealing commercially and militarily critical IP from any and all?  The most plausible answer to that silence has been that EU countries neither develop nor protect much homegrown IP, but license it from IP producers like the US.  Countries like Germany and the Netherlands incorporate licensed IP into their higher-quality manufactured products, and have been more than willing to meet aggressive thieves like China in the marketplace.  In the past they haven’t cared much about China and others stealing IP as long as they can market their stuff to the pilferers.  Now things are changing as China’s ability to manufacture quality products grows along with its domestic consumption for same.  The EU is coming around to America’s assessment of China (thank you President Trump), and they are becoming wary of China’s global commercial and political ambitions being carried out on a very tilted playing field.  (more here)

[30dec20 update]  ‘California may be losing its business mojo’ was the 29dec20 Union’s lead editorial.  In there Dan Walters of CalMatters presents a thoughtful summary of what has happened to our formerly golden state.  The exodus is now at such a fever pitch that only the most dedicated progressives in epiphany-free Sacramento are still blind to it (of course all their local lackeys have no hope of comprehending this ongoing disaster).  Nevertheless, they outnumber all the more saner ones.  In recent weeks tech giants like Tesla, HP, and Oracle have headed for greener pastures (Texas of course).  Why stay in a state encrusting with regulation- and tax-numbing socialism when your post-Covid workers can work from anywhere?  There’s less benefit in Silicon Valley than meets the eye.

71% of America’s military age youth cannot qualify to serve.  That’s the latest from the DoD.  The reasons for this horrible statistic is that since the military became an all-volunteer enterprise, their standards were raised.  The major disqualifiers for our young people are intellect, drugs, and bad health.  Modern warfare uses a lot of high-tech combat systems that require more than a two-digit IQ to operate, with druggies and overweight people not measuring up. 

Covid Related – 26dec20

George Rebane

The evidence against our lunatic lockdowns continues to pour in.  And as fast as it arrives, it is rejected/ignored by our anti-American, pro-control, anti-science Left.  Assemblyman Kevin Kiley writes, “California, with the nation’s most severe lockdowns, now has the most new cases per capita in addition to all the other harms. It’s hard to imagine a more catastrophic failure of political leadership.”  We are truly the poster-child for failed lockdowns and other evidence-free nostrums for fighting C19.  (more here and here) 

Epidemiologist, professor of medicine, and Greater Barrington author Dr Jay Battacharya, MD, PhD has been telling us for months about the foibles of quarantienes and lockdown in the face of this pandemic.  He and a bevy of notable colleagues in the field of infectious diseases have been promoting the diligent monitoring of seroprevalence (q.v.) instead and using that to implement focused responses that target primarily the vulnerable population segments and leave the rest of the people to go on with their work and lives while taking prudent non-draconian measures so as not to solicit infection.  All of this has fallen on deaf Democratic ears as these politicos revel in their new-found opportunities to once more dial back our liberties and attempt to install a new slate of permanent control regulations into lightly-read, compliant minds.

Sandbox - 26dec20

[Hopefully, after our Christmas gut busting binges, everyone today is eating more lightly, no matter that such professed dedications never last long.  In the meantime we must gird our loins for the Georgia vote, and then the darkness that the new regime promises to spread across the land in 2021.  gjr]

Christmas - 2020

Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.  Matthew 1:23

George Rebane

Last year I wrote - Another tumultuous year is ending with celebrations for peace and joy.  The Rebanes count themselves among the diminishing number of American Christians who still wish their family and friends, and RR readers of all persuasions a season of remembrance and reflection on what has been bestowed on this third planet, circling a modest star, making its way with billions of similar stars in a galaxy that populates this universe with uncounted trillions of other such galaxies.  Christmas still reminds many of us that we are among the blessed in our seeming insignificance.

2020 has given new meaning to ‘tumultuous year’ which now ends with a foreboding not seen during my lifetime.  So, more sincerely than ever, Jo Ann and I wish everyone a season of remembrance and reflection of what we once were and how we may regain the blessed parts of our country's past.

‘The Sovietization of California’

George Rebane

We have covered this dreadful progress to autocracy for years from a number of perspectives.  In my lifetime California has descended from its Olympian perch as the planet’s jeweled jurisdiction, to one that today competes with second and third world countries in governance, infrastructure maintenance, husbanding its natural resources, extracting tribute from its citizens, and daily ratcheting down more of their freedoms.

Longtime California resident and national columnist Dennis Prager in Heritage Foundation’s Daily Signal gives a summation (here) of how the Left has tattered the once golden state.  Prager describes California as “a state where corruption reigns (one of the leading Democrats of the last half-century told me years ago that politicians in California are window dressing; the real power in California is wielded by unions) and where, for nine months, normal life has been shut down, schools have been closed, and small businesses.”

As a celebrated national leader in everything from technology to ideology, the state has worked hard to fundamentally transform America into its own declining state of collectivism.  As one of its leading bamboozles, California has convinced the nation’s light thinkers that the Left follows the science, when demonstrably “the left’s claim to ‘follow the science’ is a lie. The left does not follow science; it follows scientists it agrees with and dismisses all other scientists as ‘anti-science’.”  And then doubles down with the bigger lie that science speaks unambiguously with a single voice, which for some mystical reason only those of the Left are able to hear and understand.

Given our state’s lead, “there is no question that America is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, two countries: one that values liberty, from small businesses being allowed to operate to people being allowed to say what they believe, and one that has contempt for liberty, from eating in restaurants to free speech.”  And more differences between us are legion.  De facto, the Great Divide is already here, and, as observed in these pages, awaits only its de juris resolution.

Contending and Correcting Elections

"Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord."  Isaiah 1:18

George Rebane

There’s an ‘open letter to the President’ going around the email circuit beseeching him to invoke the Insurrection Act, activate National Guard and the military to seize ballots and vote computers across the nation, publish all the secret evidence of alleged voting fraud, and essentially proceed toward a redo of the national election under newly prescribed and strict supervision.  The letter was written by two lawyers – Stewart Rhodes and Kellye SoRelle.

Regardless of what we think about the legitimacy of the November election, at this stage of the game I don’t think that carrying out the open letter’s prescriptions is a good idea.  If tried, it will not occur peacefully, and will most certainly give rise to massive civil disturbances that could lead to a civil war.  The problem is that the US has a 250-year history of elections – admittedly some more contended than others – that have in the end been accepted by our citizens with relatively minimal turbulence (e.g. ‘Battle of Athens’).  Because of this, our country has not put in place mechanisms to peacefully contend and correct both statewide and national elections.

Now I believe there’s an 80% chance that nationwide incidents of election fraud, ranging from petty to massive, occurred.  And I also believe that there’s a 50% chance that such fraud, as supported by presented and rejected evidence, would overturn significant election results (e.g. the presidency) if allowed its day in court and found to be true.  But today, we are where we are, and there remain only a few low probability opportunities to change the overwhelmingly accepted election outcomes using in-place processes and procedures.  The enduring problem we shoulder going forward is that, given the polls, there is a significant fraction of Americans who no longer have faith in the manner our elections are conducted (I am one of them.)  So, what to do?

My recommendation is that we join in a bipartisan effort to put in place a comprehensive and transparent set of processes and procedures under which future national (and perhaps also statewide) elections may be contended and corrected in an orderly and peaceful manner.  This would be launched and supervised by a congressional commission with a staffed working group of people with appropriate legal and information systems expertise to devise, develop, and test the resulting federal System for Contending and Correcting Elections (SCCE).

The bipartisan SCCE would prescribe the required legal underpinnings for its field operations, and recommend to Congress any additional supporting legislation needed.  Its working group would publish the how/when/who functions that define such things as SCCE election monitoring mechanisms, election scheduling, means of voting, vetting of franchised voters, accepting and processing reported irregularities, ballot chains of custody, isolating voting machines, standards of identifying and adjudicating fraud, procedures for holding re-elections, and so on.

In the latter case when a re-election is warranted, the SCCE's procedures for the uninterrupted continuance of government in the interval would already be laid out, specifying which elected and appointed officials remain with what duties and powers.  It is not yet clear whether all this can be accomplished through legislation, or will the Constitution need to be amended to handle such interregnum matters.

In any case, this approach of commissioning a SCCE during the relative political quietude between elections would serve our country much better than today’s calls for tanks in the intersections and attack helicopters flying overhead.  And in the worst case, the attempt to launch such an initiative would be very revealing of which organs of the Deep State, which private sector institutions, which corporatists, and which political parties rise to oppose such approaches to restore public confidence in the elections which sustain our democratic republic.

These are my preliminary thoughts on the matter, and I'm sure readers have their own ideas to offer on what, if any, preparations need be made to avoid the now existential travails we continue to suffer from the elections of 2016 and 2020.

Scattershots – 18dec20 (updated 22dec20)

George Rebane

The recall of Gov Gavin Newsom is making good progress, and petition signatures may be collected until 10 March 2021.  Here is the link to get your signature on a petition to recall this hubristic progressive idiot before he does more damage to our state.

Cato’s annual Human Freedom Index just published; it rates each country’s freedom along twelve dimensions.  The top ten countries in order of rank were - New Zealand, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Estonia, and Germany and Sweden (tied in 9th place).  The United States and United Kingdom tied in 17^th place.  And it appears that, given the Democrats’ headlong progressive plunge toward socialism, our freedoms will be more limited as Team Biden builds back leviathan and its stifling laws, regulations, and taxes. (more here)

[19dec20 update] California finally has a draconian plan to chase away the rich, and then keep stalking them.  Now going through the state Assembly is “a proposed wealth tax (that) would apply for a decade to anyone who spends 60 days in the state in a single year.” (more here)  I have prophesized this future for us for some years now.  The state has been so badly mismanaged by collectivist Democrats for decades that it now needs to go after the already-taxed assets of its residents, starting with the wealthy, and then as always, working the damage down to the middle classes.  “Assembly Bill 2088 proposes calculating the wealth tax based on current world-wide net worth each Dec. 31. For part-year and temporary residents, the tax would be proportionate based on their number of days in California. The annual tax would be on current net worth and therefore would include wealth earned, inherited or obtained through gifts or estates long before and long after leaving the state.”  The ongoing exodus of our producers will now sky rocket, to be replaced by the new battalions of Biden's border bandidos.  These are topics worthy of discussing with our progressive readers who will not touch them with a ten-footer.

Expanding on the theme that Democrats are butt stupid and evil, we should note some stats over the last couple of years as reported by the WSJ –

• 660 companies have left California,
• 765 companies’ facilities have been moved out of California,
• Over 200,000 Californians have emigrated to Texas, more to other destinations,
• Welfare recipients and illegals continue to arrive in droves to keep the population stable.

And all because we have a political monopoly of double dummies who have no idea how humans behave (‘Tax rates don’t affect economic behavior’) and how to manage a productive economy.  All they know is that to stay in political power they need ever more ignorant voters buttressed by illegal aliens on the way to citizenship and the ballot box (not necessarily in that order), and tax the bejeezus out of those who have money and can still earn.

[22dec20 update]  Corporatists are racing to implement racist policies, and pledging big bucks to assure the new woke administration and their lamestream mouthpieces that they indeed are virtuous to a tee.  But it’s hard to tell where all those millions and billions will be spent to the advertised goal of "racial equity" in lending to and locating in black communities.  And no one is sure that the promised amounts aren’t just coming back to other businesses not owned by blacks.  But the puffing and parading under banners of social justice in the media is worth twice price paid to PR outfits to promote the newly progressivist participants.  BTW, haven't we tried all this at least a couple of times before? (more here)

Sandbox - 18dec20

[So now the C19 vaccines are arriving in backwoods counties like ours.  Does anyone know of a list or policy that prioritizes who should get the vaccine and when (and where)?  The news about its distribution stops with vague references to healthcare workers and old folks in care facilities being somewhere near the top of the list.  gjr]