Rebane's Ruminations

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‘The Turing Test is obsolete.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]

The fat lady has sung, off key (Addended and updated)

George Rebane

[This is the addended, edited, and updated transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 16 December 2020.]

Last Monday the Electoral College elected Joe Biden to be the 46^th president of the United States.  The election was heavily contested for two distinct reasons, but to no avail.  Let me be clear from the start, I am a conservetarian and therefore not happy with the election’s outcome – also for two distinct reasons to which we’ll get directly.

This election is unique in our country’s history for a few significant reasons.  One of them being in the number of people who decided to get off their duffs and vote.  Another, and perhaps more important, is that this election was fraught with an enormous number of irregularities - procedural, legal, and criminally fraudulent.  Each of these categories contained enough incidents, not only to give credibility as to their witnessed occurrences, but also of the types that should have led to annulment or at least a redo of the cited precincts’ work to correctly qualify and count the ballots.  An alarming number of states violated their own laws, constitutions, and the US Constitution in the manner they conducted their elections prior to and in the aftermath of November 3^rd.  These violations are a matter of record, and they overwhelmingly favored one candidate over the other – always the same candidate.

Then we come to the criminally fraudulent incidents.  These again were reported by witnesses putting themselves at substantial risk of committing felonies, as they filed affidavits that attested to what they saw and heard.  And again, such sworn affidavits, which are accepted as evidence in all courts, numbered in the tens (hundreds?) across the land and described incidents of ballots handling that could have plausibly affected the election’s outcome had they been allowed to be corroborated by the authorities.

Is there a Dr/doctor in the house? (Addended 18dec20)

George Rebane

Joseph Epstein’s column in 11dec20 WSJ (here) about Jill Biden’s doctorate started a national row that has even penetrated our country’s hinterlands and backwoods.  The FLOTUS-elect likes to be called “Dr Biden”, and the compliant media has, well, complied to the extent that Dr Biden has become an ever-present, in-your-face item in today’s news.  Most people (including Epstein) debating the use of that honorific in a salutation are innocent of the genesis of ‘doctor’ and ‘Dr’, so maybe a little background would help.

Covid Related – 11dec20

George Rebane

With major ongoing national issues, I’m starting what would appear to be bespoke issue-dedicated sandboxes.  Let’s see how well/long this works out.

A reader sent me a link that supports arguments I and others here have made as to why the US has its reported Covid case and mortality numbers.  The Left has effectively screamed all summer long and into the fall that these were due to President Trump’s mishandling of the nation’s C19 response program.  Well, they were wrong on multiple accounts, but with the lamestream’s help, this continuously broadcast message convinced enough people to give us the currently reported and contested election results.

The actual reason for the difficulty in reducing our numbers to that of smaller, more culturally cohesive countries is that we are a large polyglot nation, now highly polarized, and of many cultures, ethnicities, and political persuasions.  Belgium, a much smaller nation of 11M, but otherwise similarly afflicted also demonstrates even higher C19 rates (more here and H/T to reader).  And it doesn’t look like this level of America’s ignorance will be surmounted any time soon – especially now that K-12 schools are starting to embrace ‘critical race theory’ big time.

Voter Fraud 6.0 ... until the fat lady sings (updated)

George Rebane

I asked this question of BarryP - "BarryP 549pm - don't the states have an argument for being aggrieved by the federally unconstitutional and/or purposive violation of state election laws that may/will foster an outcome of that state's election which on the federal level then illegally weighs against the legitimate voters of the aggrieved state? That is plenty of evidence for 'suffering harm' that supports the plaintiff state's standing with SCOTUS. What am I missing here?"  Barry said the answer was a long one and wanted to know where to post it.  My question is seminal, so I'm asking Barry to email me his answer, and I'll post right here for all to read.

Everyone else, please continue your election fraud relevant comment threads from 'Voter Fraud 5.0' hereunder.

[Worth repeating the 10dec20 update to Voter Fraud 5.0] Now here’s a shot in the shorts of all those on the Left telling the nation a slew of Big Lies about the integrity of the Dominion (Vote Editing) Software.  ‘Election Supervisor Shows on Video How Dominion Software Allows Changing, Adding Votes’.  This should renew some interest in the courts now chewing on election fraud suits.  The evidence tsunami is of historical proportions.  I know of no legal battle fought in my lifetime in which the plaintiffs have had such a profusion of evidence.

[update] Barry Pruett emailed me the following in answer to my question above.

Sandbox - 11dec20

[My internet has been mostly off all week long, and ATT doesn't know where the fault is.  But they've finally isolated it to somewhere up here on Hind Tit Rd.  Patience please.  gjr]

Sandbox - 10dec20

[Victor Davis Hanson (here) agrees with Rebane Doctrine that Biden will take credit for any and all Trump accomplishments re the nation’s economy, foreign relations (e.g. China and the Mideast), Covid response, … that he does not wind up destroying, specifically to “allow unchecked immigration. Freeze construction of, or even tear down, the border wall. Lift tariffs on China. Let NATO members pay as little as they like. Ban or cut back on fracking. Rejoin the Iran nuclear deal. Rejoin the Paris climate agreement. Polarize Israel and its new Arab allies. Fast-track the Green New Deal. Raise taxes sky-high. Let the Rust Belt rust. Allow Big Tech to do as it pleases.”  gjr]

Signs of Our Time – 9dec20 (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will be a category of highly opinionated observations from an octogenarian who has been privileged to witness (often unwillingly) more of the human travail than that to which most have been subjected.

Innovator extraordinaire Elon Musk is moving his Tesla et al out of Silicon Valley and California to (wait for it) Texas.  That will not come as a surprise to those freedom-loving capitalists and conservetarians who have paid attention to the accelerating autocracy bound downward slide of the once golden state that was the envy of the world.  And to the Democrat-dimmed of our state (and nation), this ongoing exodus has been totally invisible or worse – it has been denied, thereby rejecting the need for any policy corrections.

On the road to progressivist autocracy, YouTube has announced new censorship rules.  The latest batch has them removing all content that gives any hint that the recent election contained any fraud.  To these supreme hubristicates, the dispensing of news that covers the massive amount of submitted evidence and legal battles affirming fraud are considered not suitable for processing by the nation’s main street minds.  YouTube will relieve us of the burden and just focus on delivering all the pravda we really need.  We anxiously await their next installment. (more here)

‘Stakeholder capitalism’ is the label for destroying the best approach to generating and allocating wealth.  All the world’s major corporatists, as they assembled at Davos, are on board with ‘The Big Reset’ which is “a vague and open-ended mandate for corporations to do good in the world. Yet beneath the lofty rhetoric, stakeholder capitalism is mostly a front for irresponsible corporatism. It is an attempt to siphon off cash flow from productive uses to advance the mission of ‘global governance’ and create corporate and government sinecures for cronies along the way. … Stakeholder capitalism is used as a way to obfuscate what counts as success in business. By focusing less on profits and more on vague social values, ‘enlightened’ executives will find it easier to avoid accountability even as they squander business resources. While trying to make business about ‘social justice’ is always concerning, the contemporary conjunction of stakeholder theory and woke capitalism makes for an especially dangerous and accountability-thwarting combination.” (more here)

Team Biden will take full credit for correctly dealing with the C19 pandemic.  Not adding anything to the Trump administration’s accomplishments, the Democrats will just subsume all of it, with their lamestream telling us repeatedly that it was really they who put together and now deliver what Trump had done.  High school history books will memorialize the accomplishments that followed after President Biden rescued the country from the tragedy of the Trump years.  In gratitude we will be made happy to pay more taxes, welcome new layers of socially just regulations, and take comfort in no longer having to exercise such a wide spectrum of risky liberties.  What’s not to like?

[10dec20 update]  The manufacture of America’s double dummies in its schools – public and private – has ascended to a new level of intensity.  The Woke Revolution is now descending into the nation’s middle and high schools with the widespread adoption of curricula based on ‘critical race theory’ (q.v.) and specific subjects like history adopting the anti-American propaganda version as publicized by Project 1619.   The “tip of the iceberg” of this new aspect of our socialist revolution is described in ‘The Woke Managerial Revolution Goes to School’.  The question is, as always, ‘where are the parents?’

Covid-19 – A lifesaver from China? (updated 9dec20)

George Rebane

Yes, C19 has made us and the world’s other countries do terrible things to our economies, but being an extraordinary killer it ain’t.  As I explained in ‘Mismanaging Covid-19 …’, all that the virus has done is substituted its own grim reaper for the usual ones that work on the various age groups with their usual comorbidities.  Of course, the older people who are already scheduled to die of some malady they are now fighting, or soon will be fighting, are vulnerable to death from some cause.  Then along comes C19 and pre-empts the other causes, but in the process does not add to the nation’s mortality counts.

Well, that’s not exactly true.  Actually, C19 is decreasing the death rate of the nation when we examine CDC published data on deaths in America over the years. (more here)  Check the plot below.

The 2020 death count was extrapolated from 2,033,736 total deaths by 24 September 2020.  The daily average to that date of 7,588 deaths times 365 days gives this year’s total of 2,769,620.  (Say, that our end of year spike is higher than the computed average, and the mortality curve just keeps following the set trend.  Then the point made here still holds regarding the overall mortality impact of C19.)

So why are deaths going down in 2020, the year of our historic pandemic, during which people are running around screaming insane warnings, locking everything down, keeping immune kids from being educated, and destroying millions of small businesses?  Easy answer – gross ignorance and evil political agendas.

Some other factors are contributing to lowering the death rate include the decrease in people seeking medical aid from healthcare professionals as they hunker down and try to protect themselves from C19 infections.  According to government figures (as reported here many times) medical mistakes kill over 250,000 Americans year-in year-out.  It’s one of our leading causes of death, so if you stay out of hospitals and clinics, and don’t let them get their hands on you, there’s a better chance that they won’t getcha.  And more people will keep living at the end of the year.

The bottom line of my screed is that we have been fed wagon loads of bullshit about this pandemic, its morbidity and mortality, its virulence, effective therapeutics, public response policies, etc during the past year.  And all we’ve managed to do is cripple our economy, ruin countless lives, and abandon our freedoms to power hungry politicians, for what?  To save lives?  Not really.  Now what are you going to do about it?

[8dec20 update] It appears that CDC does publish various versions of data on the same topics.  I received an appreciated email from a reader who makes this point clear with CDC data that supports (calls out?) my above comment about the trendline being maintained even with an appropriate population-relative increase in the 2020 deathcount.

[9dec20 update]  The Democrats' idiots delight continues in Sacramento in coming up with insane and insaner response policies to the pandemic.  Now even some members of the Lockdown Luminaries are beginning to evince doubt in both their policies and the tortured 'logic' that has given rise to them over the past months.  Here's 'I'm Not Sure We Know What We're Doing,' Says a Newly Skeptical California Lockdown Advocate that indicates against all hope that there is a ray of sanity that might be leaking into the deep dark depths of Gavin's mind.

Scattershots – 3dec20 (updated 8dec20)

George Rebane

SCOTUS finally ruled against Gov Cuomo on the religious freedom case.  The 26nov20 NYT reported, “The Supreme Court late Wednesday night barred restrictions on religious services in New York that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo had imposed to combat the coronavirus. … The vote was 5 to 4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and the court’s three liberal members in dissent. The order was the first in which the court’s newest member, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, played a decisive role.” (more here)  Justice Barrett was the crucial vote for the 5-4 majority, with Chief Justice Roberts (the court’s new ‘swing vote’) going limp again and voting with the liberals.  Justice Gorsuch wrote the excellent majority ruling (here) wherein he states, “It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,”

‘This is why Yuja Wang is Wonder Woman’.  Ms Wang is unquestionably one of the greatest piano virtuosi to come along in many a year.  Take a listen to a five minute sampling of what this woman can do with a piano – truly a celebration and vindication of western culture and how it has contributed to the shaping of global cultures.

‘Big Companies Urge Biden, Congress to Address Climate Change’ - Amazon, Citigroup, Ford and others support a U.S. return to the Paris accords from which Trump withdrew.  Well, whouda thought?  (more here)  With the advent of the Biden administration we are going to see a return of corporatism on steroids.  Cash rich corporatists have always been lobbyists and supporters for all kinds of new regulations and fees that can be levied on their respective industries and business sectors.  We recall that a corporatist is a big corporation that can no longer effectively compete in free markets without some kind of government support.  Increasing costs for their smaller competitors and raising the barriers to entry for newcomers is always best achieved by established corporatists who can pay off legislators and regulators to do their assigned duties – all for the benefit of the consumer, of course.  These are the naïfs who ultimately will get it in the shorts, and pay for the whole thing.  (In case we have some new readers here, please recall that corporations pay no taxes or fees; they just pass those costs on to their customers.  But that’s a whole ‘nother story.) 

[4dec20 update]  Cutting the unemployment bonus again proved that the Left doesn’t do economics.  Writing unemployed low-wage workers checks with an added $600 bonus was supposed give the economy a boost and lower unemployment according to progressive economists like the socialist sage Paul Krugman.  Wrong again.  Workers got paid more for not working and the economy didn’t go anywhere.  When President Trump had to compromise eliminating the bonus to just lowering it to $300, then, lo and behold, unemployment plummeted and the economic growth set decades-long records.  As the song says, ‘When will they ever learn?’

Marc Andreessen, web browser pioneer and venture capitalist, years ago claimed that ‘software will eat the world’ (here).  AI has now achieved the ability to automatically generate code for some very structured applications, and soon will become smart enough to write programs from only verbal instructions, thereby promising to make legions of programmers redundant.  Some interpret this coming state of affairs with the claim that “Software Ate the World, and Soon It Will Write Itself”, going on to conclude that “developers are in short supply, but their products may acquire the capacity to replace them.”  Well no, that’s not quite true.  Most non-techies still believe that ‘line programmers’ create the wondrous systems that dazzle and deliver us.  But learning to code in a programming language, and learning to conceive and design a system to do what has never been done are two different skill sets – the first any smart high schooler can accomplish, the second takes a bit more education in one of any number of specific fields.  Bottom line, software is no more ‘eating the world’ than did movable type in days of yore – you still had to have something more to become an acknowledged wordsmith than what was needed to learn how to smith the words into print.  In the same way today, it will take more from fewer to come up with novel things the software must do, than the larger number who can learn how to make the software do it.  It’s the latter who should soon tremble.

Ever hear of ‘emotional support animals’?  Well, they’re a couple of steps beyond ‘service dogs’ in what they apparently provide to their owners.  And there’s more to be said about the portents of such critters, the humans they emotionally support, and the crumbling culture that now puts up with such nonsense.  This morning we awoke to news of a passenger bringing his peacock into the passenger compartment of an airliner.  Now those of you who know peacocks can readily conceive of the pandemonium that such an aggressive animal with non-existent toilet discipline will create attempting to come down the aisle and be confined to the middle seat.  Today’s laws do not allow anyone to question the legitimate and beneficial purpose that such arbitrarily selected support animals satisfy for those emotionally short-changed.  On that flight the pilot was astute enough not to take off with a cabin catastrophe in the making, but we were not told how the gathered authorities adjudicated the affair.  From my semanticist’s perch, it is clear that our language has not evolved at a sufficient pace to provide adequate adjectives to describe the depths of insanity that today’s progressive ideology is inflicting on our society.

[5dec20 update]  Check out the report on the anti-viral Ivermectin in 'Mismanaging Covid-19 ...'.

[6dec20 update]  Andrew Cuomo – talk about scumbag politicians lying to the public.  This political hack is one of the few in the nation to whom hundreds of Covid deaths can be directly attributed – recall his tragically misguided care facility diktat.  Now he tells the country that Trump’s Operation Warp Speed had nothing to do with the early development, testing, and approval of C19 vaccines; the big pharmas would have developed it anyway since they’re only interested in profits.  He believes his audience to be appropriately ignorant of what Warp Speed did to pave the path and lower the financial risk to the pharmas for them to put a very expensive full court press on their vaccine developments.  We know from decades of data how long it would have taken doing the same ol’ same ol’.  But that don’t make no never mind to another Democrat Big Liar telling people another Big Lie.

"Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out", David Horowitz here aligning with Rebane Doctrine.

[8dec20 update]  Cringing capitalists and the great Cocoa Collusions.  The cocoa growers of Ghana and Ivory Coast (61% of world supply) decided to collude and raise the price of cocoa by almost 20%, claiming to alleviate worker poverty.  Naturally candy producers like Hershey and Mars don’t want to pay more for their prime ingredient, so they are working together trying to find ways to pay less for cocoa (what a concept!).  In this crazy world of progressive pandemics, virtue signaling has become a de rigueur for both corporatists and cringing capitalists.  Both Hershey and Mars are denying that they are trying to circumvent the ‘virtuous’ price increase, when instead they should counter with the free and open markets’ correct argument.  They should tell the cocoa growers that producers also have an obligation to keep prices low for their customers whose financial welfare is no less important than that of the cocoa workers.  Virtue signaling has become a particularly contagious and corrosive form of cringing for capitalists in the face of socialism’s global advance.  (more here)

A new approach to ‘Why can’t we all just get along?’  In the 8dec20 Union, Mr Rob Cairns attempts to heal our divide by suggesting that, instead of attacking, we sit down with our opposites to have a “real conversation” with “them”.  The conversation would launch with questions like ‘What’s important to you?’, ‘What are your concerns?’, ‘What are your fears?’, ‘What are your hopes?’, ‘What are your priorities?’.  A laudable approach indeed, but one having little chance of success when considered in light of the now drastically different belief systems that today propel our polarization.  RR has spent years revealing and dissecting our contending beliefs, and the record is here for all to see.  When a leftist finally deigns to reveal his belief(s) and/or solutions to social problems, to rightists they range from the odious to patently unworkable.  What such questions serve to divert from is an exploration of the meta-world views (i.e. ontologies) of the two discussants.  Without understanding each other’s basic views of how ‘their world’ functions, the rest of the conversation quickly becomes moot since the participants cannot help but talk past each other.  And the real problem, encountered in the attempt to explore ontologies, is that perhaps only a small share of people are capable of such productive pursuits.  Alas.

Today's joke from Rush Limbaugh illustrates the above ontological differences.  A capitalist sitting at a bar is sandwiched between Bernie Sanders and AOC while watching the news.  They see a tense video of a man ready to jump from a tall building.  The capitalist says, 'I have $10 that says he jumps.'  Begrudgingly Sanders and AOC take him up on the bet.  The man jumps to his death, and the capitalist collects his winnings.  Then a moment later he says, 'I can't take your money, because I saw this report earlier on the news.'  AOC responds with, 'That's OK, so did we, but we didn't think he'd do it again.'

Voter Fraud 5.0 … until the fat lady sings (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

This will most likely be the last edition of ‘Voter Fraud’.  In a correspondence with a reader I asked if he was aware of any site that served as a clearing house for the hundreds of voter fraud reports, affidavits, and suits filed from all over the country – in short, where can we go to see all the publicly declared and gathered evidence alleging voter fraud.  He got back to me with this excellent compendium that lists them all and updates the list daily.  The site is called https://hereistheevidence.com/ - enjoy.

[5dec20 update]  Not set in stone.  A lot of the stuff our Left and its lamestream put out about the post-election and its scheduled milestones is simply not true.  Here is a piece that explains the matter and links to the related constitutional research document prepared by the Election Integrity Project.

And this editorial - 'With Our Election System Under Assault, Americans Need to Speak Up' - in the Epoch Times pretty well sums up a lot of the country's feelings about the very polarized debate about election fraud.

[6dec20 update]  More evidence on the astronomically low probability of obtaining the claimed and/or certified Trump/Biden election results.  Anyone who claims to be technically astute in probabilistics will immediately call to question what the so-called ‘non-polling metrics’ indicate about the likelihood of fraud in the election’s aftermath.  Patrick Basham of the Democracy Institute did an extensive interview with Mark Levin of FN (here) where he pointed out the anomalies in these metrics which have historically been 100% reliable in identifying the winner of presidential elections.

Suddenly, this time everything went haywire as ALL the metrics pointed to a Trump win, but were nullified with the afterhours arrival of truckloads of mail-in ballots which statistically stunk to high heaven.  For example, what do you think of boxes of uncreased mail-in ballots (i.e. NOT mailed) each of whose vote counts came up repeatedly and exactly Biden 50.5% and Trump 49.5%?  And other such goings on were apparent in many vote count sessions across the key battleground states.

Basham explained that there are "a dozen or more of these metrics ... [that] have a 100% accuracy rate in terms of predicting the winner of the presidential election. … Those metrics, include party registration trends, how the candidates did in their respective presidential primaries, the number of individual donations, [and] how much enthusiasm each candidate generated in the opinion polls. … In 2016, they all indicated strongly that Donald Trump would win against most of the public polling.  That was again the case in 2020.  So, if we are to accept that Biden won against the trend of all these non-polling metrics, it not only means that one of these metrics was inaccurate, for the first time ever, it means that each one of these metrics was wrong for the first time and at the same time as all of the others." (emphasis mine)

Were such infinitesimally low probabilities to obtain in any other endeavor, every reasonable person familiar with the issues would say that there definitely has occurred a massive anomaly.  It is the consideration of such “deeply puzzling” evidence, when added to all the other affidavits submitted under penalty of perjury, that persuades me that this was an historically fraudulent election the (most likely criminal) vagaries of which need to be investigated and brought to light.  (more here)

Did China effectively buy Dominion Voting Systems one month before the election?  The fraud smoke about this election is sure getting thicker by the day.  Not only do the Chinese dominate the board of Dominion’s holding company, but “in a previous voter fraud lawsuit filed by Sidney Powell, a former military intelligence official claims in an affidavit that Chinese operatives had access to Dominion Voting Systems in several key states.” (more here) 

[10dec20 update] Now here’s a shot in the shorts of all those on the Left telling the nation a slew of Big Lies about the integrity of the Dominion (Vote Editing) Software.  ‘Election Supervisor Shows on Video How Dominion Software Allows Changing, Adding Votes’.  This should renew some interest in the courts now chewing on election fraud suits.  The evidence tsunami is of historical proportions.  I know of no legal battle fought in my lifetime in which the plaintiffs have had such a profusion of evidence.

Sandbox - 3dec20

[Well, we can have a lot of fun now dissecting the incompetence and corruption of the Team Biden cabinet nominees.  And I don't think Hunter Biden's escapades are going to go away.  They will be joined by ignoramuses like John Kerry who will be taken to the cleaners by the Chinese as he tries to negotiate environmental issues with them with an empty quiver.  gjr]

Mismanaging Covid-19 News and Response Policies (updated 10dec20)

George Rebane

[This is the addended transcript of my regular KVMR commentary broadcast on 2 December 2020.]

The nation’s response to the Covid pandemic has been an episode of our history quite unlike anything that any of us have experienced before.  Those who pay attention know that most of what has been proposed, done, and reported has been wrong, either because the science was incomplete and politicized, and/or the news we received was purposed to serve a political agenda and not report what was really happening.  And all of it continues to this very day.  Americans remain misinformed and confused about literally every aspect of the Covid pandemic.

Today the news breathlessly reports on the new surge of infections telling us how many recently infected joined the total number of US Covid cases, which we are told are now north of 14 million.  To add emphasis to the dire situation, we are further told that this is the largest number of Covid cases of any country in the world.  On top of that, America’s Covid death toll is the world’s highest.  The message is clear, the Trump administration has mismanaged the country’s response to the pandemic, and it could have been otherwise.

Begrudgingly we are told that vaccines are coming, but there is no effective way to distribute them and properly prioritize who should be the first to be vaccinated.  Our schools are to remain shut because we don’t want to endanger our children or their teachers.  Lockdowns on small businesses are prescribed all over the land for reasons no one can provide – the mantra ‘follow the science’ should ring hollow in people’s ears for there is no definitive science that provides such backing.

Returning to the number of reported Covid cases – it actually represents an erroneous estimate of the cumulative number of people infected by the virus during this year.  The average person takes this to be the number of people still ill and suffering, especially since that number is reported in conjunction with the latest mortality count.  All of these millions remain in danger of losing their lives.  The better-read person knows that most of the infected are asymptomatic and therefore unknown to the counters.  And of the symptomatic, the disease runs its normal course in two to four weeks during which you either overwhelmingly recover or rarely die.  Furthermore, of the few who are symptomatic, a small fraction of those require hospitalization.

What is not reported are the rates which put into perspective that we are a large and mobile nation of at least 330 million people.  So what we need to hear is not the large gee-whiz numbers, but instead the rates of infection, hospitalization, morbidity, mortality, recoveries, etc per hundred thousand or per a million.  Comparing America’s raw numbers with those of smaller countries like Canada, Denmark, or Germany has sent the wrong, but perhaps desired, message to people deciding who to vote for during this election year.

We should remember that reaching herd immunity – naturally or vaccine aided - is how every infectious epidemic peters out and ends.  Politically incorrect scientists have been telling us for months that the real number of Covid cases is enormously higher than those recorded by the healthcare establishment.  It turns out, as reported in the prestigious journal Nature, that the real number of cases should include what is called sero-prevalence.  The sero-prevalence survey of a population reveals the vastly larger number that have been exposed, and available antibody testing data show that this number is over 50 times higher than those symptomatic and recorded clinically.  This finding is so critical that the World Health Organization has now a program to establish sero-prevalence rates worldwide.

These important findings, based on already available data, indicate that the Covid mortality rates, instead of being in the reported 3% range, may actually be an order of magnitude lower in 0.2-0.3% range.  This makes the Covid fatality rate closer to the flu season that we encounter annually.  Recognition of this fact alone should impact response policies and eliminate business lockdowns, stay-at-home quarantines, and shuttered schools.  There are many more important aspects of this pandemic that have been politicized beyond recognition.  While there is not enough time in this short commentary for me to list them all, I strongly recommend listeners to look deeper into the reporting on the progress of the Covid pandemic, and not base their understanding solely on what they hear on the mainstream media’s daily six o’clock news.

My name is Rebane, and I also expand on this and related themes on Rebane’s Ruminations where the addended transcript of this commentary is posted with relevant links, and where such issues are debated extensively.  However, my views are not necessarily shared by KVMR.  Thank you for listening.

[Addendum]  According to John Hopkins University, the proportion of US deaths in the various age categories has not been visibly impacted by the C19 pandemic.  “Surprisingly, the deaths of older people stayed the same before and after COVID-19. Since COVID-19 mainly affects the elderly, experts expected an increase in the percentage of deaths in older age groups. However, this increase is not seen from the CDC data. In fact, the percentages of deaths among all age groups remain relatively the same.” (more here)

As I have attempted to explain, this result is not surprising since older people are already ‘scheduled’ to die from any number of causes in their sunset years.  Substituting C19 as a cause for one of the other causes doesn’t move the needle much on the total count.

And here are some citations to expand on the sero-prevalence points made in the broadcast commentary.  The interview with Dr Bhattacharya also presents data on the comparative death rates with other recent viral infections and the experience with our annual flu season. (here and here)

[5dec20 update]  We have heard almost nothing of anti-viral Ivermectin in connection to C19.  Teams of reputable medical and healthcare groups have studied the prophylactic and treatment performance of Ivermectin, and have published extensively on it. (more here)  But none of it has been picked up by the CDC, NIH, Trump administration, and of course, the lamestream.  The clinical evidence appears overwhelming that this medicine is effective in both preventing and treating the Covid virus.  Additionally, it seems to also be effective in treating some of the bad aftereffects that afflict some people who have recovered from the virus.  I add Ivermectin to the chamber of horrors from which politicians and nationally prominent medicos pull out their politicized and vacillating ‘science’ to recommend public response policies that vary all over the map and calendar.  Some coven of clinicians somewhere has decided that Ivermectin shall not see the light of day, even so that it could be countered were there any basis for such opposition.  And here is one outspoken scientist giving a summary of the drug in lay language.

[10dec20 update]  YouTube censored the above link to the summary video on Ivermectin.  A reader pointed to this Vimeo link that still gives access to information on the socialist proscribed anti-viral.  More signs of our time.

Protein Folding – Solved!

George Rebane

Rejoice!  We have all lived to see the practical solution to one of the most complex and important processes that defines and determines how all critters live and die.  It’s called protein folding, and it describes how a very long string of bio-molecules called amino acids first hook up with each other, and then snap into a (minimum energy) shape that enables it to function with other bio-molecules. (more here)  These other bio-molecules may be on the surface of or inside various kinds of living cells.  And here is how MIT Technology Review describes it –

“A protein is made from a ribbon of amino acids that folds itself up with many complex twists and turns and tangles. This structure determines what it does. And figuring out what proteins do is key to understanding the basic mechanisms of life, when it works and when it doesn’t. Efforts to develop vaccines for covid-19 have focused on the virus’s spike protein, for example. The way the coronavirus snags onto human cells depends on the shape of this protein and the shapes of the proteins on the outsides of those cells. The spike is just one protein among billions across all living things; there are tens of thousands of different types of protein inside the human body alone.” 

The basic idea to grasp here is that proteins do their work physically through the way they are shaped with all kinds of complex sticky-out parts that enable it to latch onto other molecules or even ‘destroy’ them.  It turns out that all the complex stuff that goes on inside the deep recesses of living things depends on how giant ‘LEGO games’ are assembled and played in very tiny but complex universes. 

There exist myriads of different proteins numbering in the, who knows, hundreds of thousands (millions?), with the possibility to assemble gazillions more different shaped proteins that don’t yet exist in nature.  And here has been the rub.  We can write down and/or derive the chemical structure of a protein in a form that all high school chemistry students were taught with all the N, C, H, O, … atoms hooking up to each other through various combinations.  But that only tells us the ‘stretched out’ sequence of the protein's constituents.  However, that’s not how they exist and do their work.  When the necessary ingredients for a given protein are put into a ‘soup’, they tend to hook up according to one or more of the possible stretched out versions, and then instantly this long and complex string of atoms folds or bunches up into a very special shape that gives it the ability to do its work.

The very special folded shape (see graphic) is brought about by the folding molecule, like all conformable structures in our universe, seeking its minimum energy state.  The energy level of a bunch of connected atoms is determined by their resultant electric field which in turn is determined by the physical configuration of the atoms with respect to each other.  And now you can see that for a bio-molecule, with thousands of strung together atoms, there are a lot of possible shapes each with its own very complex electric field and corresponding energy content.  Now which of these gazillions of shapes is at the lowest energy level?  Or said differently –

“Identifying a protein’s structure is very hard. For most proteins, researchers have the sequence of amino acids in the ribbon but not the contorted shape they fold into. And there are typically an astronomical number of possible shapes for each sequence. Researchers have been wrestling with the problem at least since the 1970s, when Christian Anfinsen won the Nobel prize for showing that sequences determined structure.”

Google’s Deep Mind AI outfit has come up with a humongous deep-learning neural net called AlphaFold that was trained to recognize and analyze hundreds of thousands of known protein molecules.  The bottom line here is that when it is given the stretched out structure of the thousands of hooked up atoms, it is able to ‘very quickly’ figure out how the stretched out version folds into a very specific minimum energy form with various sticky-out parts, dents, and deep holes that make it in/compatible with certain other bio-molecular structures in a critter, plant, or organic broth. (more here)

To give you an idea of the breakthrough, in the old days (i.e. yesterday) our fastest computers would wrestle with a given stretchy structure for months or years looking for the absolute minimum energy configuration.  (Each configuration requires the computation of millions of unimaginably complex electric field shapes from the physical position of a single feasible configuration of atoms that is allowed by the physics of our universe.)  Today AlphaFold has reduced that time ranging from a few hours to a few days.  This opens up whole new worlds of bio-molecular design for all kinds of new medicines, energy conversion bio-molecules, foods, materials, … .

And to show how technology is accelerating, there is an even faster algorithm working on a recurrent geometrical network (RGN) that promises to be “a million times faster” than AlphaFold, able to solve the folding problem in seconds.  And as all this work is being published, a hundred entrepreneurial efforts will launch, not only to implement RGN based folding tools, but also use them to solve important problems to provide humankind with better healthcare, cleaner environments, cheaper energy, and new foods – all affordable like never before.

There is a lot more to be said about this breakthrough – e.g. development of an entirely new type of bio-computer that is faster and more energy efficient than today’s von Neumann silicon-based computers.  And perhaps the intelligent machine that achieves Singularity peerage with humans will be an auto-configuring bio-computer.  Now ain’t minimally regulated and taxed capitalism wonderful?