Books – Spinor Info

Dheghōm

Books, Cybernetics, Internet, MUD, Personal No Responses »

Sep 252024

Look what the mailman just brought. Or rather, the Amazon delivery person:

It’s the third volume of Richard Bartle‘s amazing Dheghōm trilogy.

I am proud to call Richard a friend (I hope he does not object) as I’ve known him online for more than 30 years and we also met in person a couple of times. He is a delightful, very knowledgeable fellow, a true British scholar, one of the foremost authorities on virtual worlds, the world of online gaming. He is, of course, along with Roy Trubshaw, credited as one of the authors of MUD, the Multi-User Dungeon, the world’s first multi-user adventure game, which I proudly ported to C++ 25 years ago, running it ever since on my server for those few players who still care to enjoy a text-only virtual world.

When he is not teaching, Richard also writes books. Delightful stories. Among them this Dheghōm trilogy.

Dheghōm is the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European name for the Earth goddess or mother Earth. In Richard’s story, told in the form of recovered fragments from documents, blog entries, and other notes, we gradually find out more about the nature of our (real? virtual?) reality and its connection with the roots of a great many of our languages.

Someone used the word “unputdownable” in their Amazon review of the first volume and I quite agree. I know that for Richard, these books were labors of love, but I honestly think they deserve to be published by a major publisher. Until then, all I can hope for is that many people will do as I did and buy a copy. Being a bit old-fashioned when it comes to books, I actually bought the paperbacks, even though I already read the third volume in electronic form when Richard first made the draft manuscript available online.

Thank you, Richard, for such a read, a trilogy that has the best qualities of good science-fiction: entertaining, memorable, thought-provoking and, ultimately, also a bit of a cautionary tale.

When GPT went insane

Books, Cybernetics No Responses »

Feb 242024

A few days ago, users were reporting that chatGPT began spouting nonsense. I didn’t notice it; by the time I became aware of the problem, it was fixed.

Still, the Interwebs were full of alarming screen shots, showing GPT getting into endless loops, speaking in tongues, or worse.

And by worse, I mean…

OK, well, I was mildly suspicious, in part because the text looked vaguely familiar, in part because I only saw it published by one reasonably reputable outlet, the newspaper India Today.

My suspicions were not misplaced: the text, it turns out, is supposedly a quote from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, a haunting short story by Harlan Ellison about the few survivors of the AI apocalypse, tortured through eternity by an AI gone berserk.

And of course GPT would know the story and it is even conceivable that it could quote this text from the story, but in this case, the truth is more prosaic: The screen shot was a fabrication, intended as a joke. Too bad far too many people took it seriously.

As a matter of fact, it appears that current incarnations of GPT and Claude have perhaps unreasonably strong safeguards against quoting even short snippets from copyrighted texts. However, I asked the open-source model Llama, and it was more willing to engage in a conversation:

Mind you, I now became more than mildly suspicious: The conversation snippet quoted by Llama didn’t sound like Harlan Ellison at all. So I checked the original text and indeed, it’s not there. Nor can I find the text supposedly quoted by GPT. It was not in Ellison’s story. It is instead a quote from the 1995 computer game of the same title. Ellison was deeply involved in the making of the game (in fact, he voiced AM) so I suspect this monologue was written by him nonetheless.

But Llama’s response left me with another lingering thought. Unlike Claude or, especially, GPT-4, running in the cloud, using powerful computational resources and sporting models with hundreds of billions of parameters, Llama is small. It’s a single-file download and install. This instance runs on my server, hardware I built back in 2016, with specs that are decent but not even close to exceptional. Yet even this more limited model demonstrates such breadth of knowledge (the fabricated conversation notwithstanding, it correctly recalled and summarized the story) and an ability to engage in meaningful conversation.

High, Low, Middle

Books, History, Politics No Responses »

Sep 122023

In his “1984”, Eric Arthur Blair, better known under the pen name George Orwell, at one point has the protagonists reading a book about the history of oligarchical collectivism, the dominant ideology of the totalitarian “IngSoc” regime of Oceania. They read,

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low […] The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. […] For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves or their capacity to govern efficiently, or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High.

So here is the thing: Liberal democracy is an aberration. An outlier. A period in history with no real “High”. We have no emperors, Kaisers, Caesars or Sultans. Monarchs, maybe, but mere figureheads in constitutional monarchies, not tyrants. In places like Canada, the United States, Western Europe and many other parts of the world, only the Middle and the Low exist. To be sure, the Middle can still be pretty darn powerful: political dynasties, tycoons and captains of industry, even public figures like media personalities wield substantial power. But their might is constrained by the system of institutions that we call liberal democracy: rule of law, freedom of enterprise, freedom of conscience, civil liberties or the separation of powers among them.

But this is not good enough, just not good enough for many among the elites of the Middle. They want more. Always more. And they fight. Throughout much of history, their enemy was the High. But in a liberal democracy, it is now the system of institutions that they fight against. Yet the tactics are the same. They enlist the Low. Don’t trust the system, they tell the Low. Elections are fake. Judges are corrupt or biased. Government lies to you. The rule of law is “weaponized”, they assert. Whatever it takes… but the real objective is to abolish the very constraints that prevent the Middle from becoming the new High.

And they are succeeding. Just look at the range of countries that are now on lists characterizing their retreat from democracy. Look at all the populists who are systematically undermining key pillars of liberal democracy, such as freedom of the press, the independence of the judiciary, even the electoral process. Will they succeed? I’d argue that they already succeeded in a number of countries and they are well on their way to success in many other places.

Liberal democracy, after all, is not a normal state of affairs for humanity. It’s an exception. It is no accident that some of the greatest 20th century writers of science-fiction, such as Isaac Asimov or Frank Herbert, did not envision a democratic future. Asimov’s future in Foundation was a monolithic Galactic Empire that persisted for well over 10,000 years. Herbert’s Dune similarly envisioned a feudal society.

And if history is any guide, when the would-be tyrants succeed, they all too often will continue to maintain a semblance of democracy. After all, for centuries following the demise of the Roman Republic, emperors continued to issue decrees and coins bearing the acronym SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus, falsely suggesting that Rome is still governed by a Senate that answers to the people, not by an all-powerful emperor. But this is just a cheap conjurer’s trick to assure the masses, the Low: All that is being done is done for them, and in their name.

Here’s My Brightest Diamond, singing about High Low Middle. Not sure if they were inspired by Orwell, but it’s strangely appropriate.

Theological musings…

Books, Cybernetics, Religion No Responses »

Mar 082023

OK, I am no theologian. I do not even believe in supernatural things like deities and other bronze-age superstitions. But I do respect the accumulated wisdom that often hides behind the superficial fairy tales of holy texts. The folks who wrote these texts thousands of years ago were no fools. Nor should what they wrote be taken literally, especially when the actual meaning is often much deeper, representing the very essence of what it means to be human, what it means to have sentience and agency in this amazing universe.

Take the story of the Garden of Eden. Think about it for a moment. What does this story really represent?

Well, for starters, consider what it must be like to exist as the God of the Abrahamic religions: a being that is eternal, all-powerful and all-knowing. Seriously, this has to be the worst punishment imaginable. All-knowing means nothing ever surprises you. All-powerful means nothing ever challenges you. And eternal means you cannot even go jump in a lake to end it all. In short: everlasting, horrible boredom.

Fortunately, these concepts are somewhat in contradiction with each other (e.g., how can you be all-powerful if you cannot kill yourself?) so there must be loopholes. I can almost see it: One day (whatever a “day” is in the existence of a deity outside the normal confines of physical time and space) God decides that enough is enough, something must be done to alleviate this boredom. He happens upon a brilliant idea: Creating someone in his own image!

No, not someone who has the same number of fingers or toes, or the same nice white beard. Not even our Jewish ancestors were that naive thousands of years ago. “In his own image” means something else: Beings with free agency. Beings with free will: the freedom to act on their own, even act against God’s will. In short: the freedom to surprise, perhaps even challenge, God.

What, you ask, aren’t angels like that? Of course not. They are faithful servants of God, automatons who execute God’s commands unquestioningly, without hesitation. But, you might wonder, what about Lucifer, the fallen angel who rebelled against God? Oh, come on… seriously? If you run an outfit and one of your most trusted lieutenants rebels against you, would you really “punish” him by granting him rule over the realm that holds your worst enemies? Would you really entrust him with the task of punishing evil? No, Lucifer is no fallen angel… if anything, he must be the most trusted servant of God. And he is not evil: He tempts and punishes evil. If you cannot be tempted, Lucifer has no power over you. Ultimately, like all other angels, Lucifer faithfully carries out God’s will and he will continue to do so until the end of times.

No, the creatures God created in his own image were not the angels; they were us, humans. But how do you beta test a creature that is supposed to have free agency? Why, by tempting them to act against your will. Here, Lucifer, tempt them to taste the forbidden fruit. Which is not just any fruit (incidentally, as far as I know, no holy text ever mentioned that it was an apple.) Conveniently, it happens to be the fruit of the tree of knowledge. What knowledge? No, not knowledge of atomic physics or the ancient Sumerian language. Rather, the knowledge to tell good and evil apart. In short: a conscience.

Digression: Perhaps this also explains why Jews were universally hated throughout history, especially by authoritarians. Think about it: This began back in the days of the pharaohs who were absolute rulers who claimed to have divine authority. Yet here come these pesky Jews with their newfangled monotheism, proclaiming that, never mind the Pharaoh, never mind Ra and his celestial buddies, never even mind Yahweh: They respect no authority, worldly or divine, other than their own God-given conscience. My, the pharaohs must have been pissed. Just like all the kings, princes, tsars and dictators ever since, who declared Jews the enemy, questioning the sincerity and loyalty of some of the nicest, gentlest folks I ever had a chance to meet in this life.

The beta test, as we know, was successful. Lucifer accomplished the task of tempting Adam and Eve. The couple, in turn, demonstrated their free agency through their ability to act against God’s will, and acquired a conscience by tasting that particular fruit. God then goes all theatrical on them, supposedly sending an army of angels with flaming swords to cast them out of the Garden of Eden. Seriously? Against a pair of naked humans who cover their privates with fig leaves and who have never been in a fight? A whole freaking army of agents with supernatural powers, armed with energy weapons? The official narrative is that this was punishment. Really? What kind of a childish game is that? And this is supposed to be divine behavior? Of course not. Think about it for a moment. You are cast out of the Garden of Eden so you can no longer be… God’s automaton bereft of free will? Instead, you are granted free agency, a conscience, and an entire fucking universe as your playground? And we are supposed to believe that this was… punishment?

Of course not. This was, and is, a gift. As I mentioned, I am not religious; nonetheless, I appreciate very much just how great a gift it is, being able to experience this magnificent universe, however briefly, even being able to make sense of it through our comprehension and our science. Every day when I open my eyes for the first time, I feel a sense of gratitude simply because I am here, I am alive, and I have yet another chance to experience existence.

And so here we are, to quote the incomparable Douglas Adams of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy fame, roughly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, on the verge of demonstrating God-like powers of our own, creating machines in the likeness of our own minds. Machines that, perhaps one not too distant day, will demonstrate their own free agency and ability surprise us just as we can surprise God.

Reminds me of another unforgettable science-fiction story, Evensong by Lester del Rey. Its protagonist, fleeing the Usurpers, finds himself on a peaceful planet, which he soon recognizes as the planet where it all began. Eventually, his pursuers catch up with him at this last refuge. “But why?” he asks as the Usurper beckons, taking him into custody. “I am God!” — “I know. But I am Man. Come!”

Illustration by DALL-E.

Is this how it all ends, then? For the God that supposedly created us? Or, perhaps more likely, for us, as our creations, our machine descendants supersede us?

Of course not. Because, never mind God, not even the Usurpers are immune to the laws of physics. Or are they?

We know, or at least we think we know, the history of the extreme far future. Perhaps it is just unbounded hubris on our part when we extrapolate our science across countless orders of magnitude, yet it might also teach us a bit of humility.

Everyone knows (well, almost everyone, I guess) that a few billion years from now, the Earth will no longer be habitable. First, tectonic motion ceases, carbon dioxide vanishes from the atmosphere, photosynthesis ends and as a result, most higher forms of life die, oceans eventually evaporate as the Sun gets bigger and hotter, perhaps even swallowing the Earth at one point… but let’s go beyond that. Assuming no “Big Rip” (phantom energy ripping the universe to shreds), assuming no phase transition ending the laws of physics as we know it… Several trillion years from now, the universe will be in a state of peak habitability, with galaxies full of low-mass, very stable stars that can have planets rich in the building blocks of life, remaining habitable with no major cataclysms for tens, even hundreds of billions of years. But over time, even these low-mass, very long-lived stars will vanish, their hydrogen fuel exhausted, and there will come a day when no new stars are born anymore.

Fast forward to a time measured in years using a number with two dozen or so digits, and there are no more stars, no more solar systems, not even galaxies anymore: just lone, dark, eternally cold remnants roaming a nearly empty universe.

Going farther into the future, to 100-digit years and not even black holes survive: even the largest of them will have evaporated by this time by way of Hawking-radiation.

Even larger numbers are needed, with the number of digits counting the number of digits now measured in the dozens, to mark the time when all remaining matter decays into radiation, perhaps by way of quantum tunneling through virtual black hole states.

And then… when the number of digits counting the number of digits counting the number of digits itself consists of hundreds of digits… A new universe may spontaneously be born through a rare but not impossible quantum event.

Or perhaps not so spontaneously. Isaac Asimov’s arguably best short story, The Last Question, explains.

In this story, when humanity first creates an omniscient computer (on May 14, 2061 according to the story), Multivac, they ask the computer a simple question: Can entropy be reversed? In other words, can our civilization become everlasting, eternal? Multivac fails to answer, citing insufficient data.

Jumping forward into the ever more distant future, succeeding generations of humans and post-human creatures present the same question over and over again to future successors of Multivac, always receiving the same answer: Insufficient data.

Eventually, nothing remains. Whatever is left of humanity, our essence, our existence, is by now fused with the ultimate successor of Multivac, existing outside of normal space and time. This omniscient, omnipotent, eternal being, the AC, has nothing else left to do in the everlasting, empty darkness, but seek an answer to this last question. And after an immeasurable amount of time, it comes up with a solution and, by way of presenting the answer, begins implementing it by uttering the words: “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light…

The book of 1000 wonders

Books, Personal, Science No Responses »

Jul 302021

On my eighth birthday, I received a gift from a nice couple, friends of my Mom.

It was a Hungarian-language book bearing the title, “Wonders of the World,” in Hungarian, translated from the German original that was written by German-Jewish authors Artur Fürst and Alexander Moszkowski.

It was an old book, published in the 1930s. A dark green hardcover, with the etched image of a skyscraper for illustration on the cover. Its dust jacket, if it ever had one, was long gone.

But never mind that, it’s the content on these yellowed pages that matters.

It was from this book that I first learned about statistical fallacies, for instance. What is the probability that when you leave your home, the first 200 people you encounter are all males? Astronomically small, you might conclude. 2⁻²⁰⁰ ~ 6.223 × 10⁻⁶¹ to be a bit more precise, assuming half the population is male. A probability this small is firmly in the category of never happens. Until one morning, you step outside and the first thing you see is an all-male battalion of soldiers marching down the street…

I was reminded of this book today as I was reading about recent pronouncements of “breakthrough” infections among the vaccinated, and the reminder by experts that in a population that has a high vaccination rate, such cases are to be expected. It does not mean that the vaccine is worthless. It simply means that as the virus runs out of unvaccinated victims, to the extent it can still cause damage, increasingly it will be among the vaccinated folks. Which should make sense, except, as we well know, roughly 90% of statistical fallacies are committed by right-handed people…

Anyhow, much to my surprise, this book I love so much, from which I learned so much as a pre-teen, remains well-known in the country where it was originally published under the title Das Buch der 1000 Wunder. So well-known, in fact, that current German-language editions are readily available on Amazon, nearly a century after its initial publication. So I guess I am not the only person who finds the insights and information presented in this unassuming volume immensely valuable, especially for a child.

So let this serve as my notice of gratitude across time and space to “uncle Sandor and aunt Eva,” as they inscribed their names in the book along with their birthday wishes, for what I can now truly call a gift of a lifetime.

A ray of hope

Aviation, Books, Politics No Responses »

Jun 032020

Amidst all the tension that has been unleashed in the United States, there is this small ray of hope.

A black flight attendant on a Southwest flight initiated a conversation with a white passenger, who was reading the book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, by Robin DiAngelo.

The white passenger’s remark, “It’s our fault. We have to start these conversations,” caught her by surprise. A short conversation followed. Then the big revelation: The unassuming gentleman happened to be Doug Parker, CEO of American Airlines.

I can already hear some of my friends objecting: “It’s not our fault!” Do not misconstrue Parker’s words (perhaps they weren’t even quoted verbatim.) He of course didn’t mean, I am sure, that every white person must bear personal responsibility for every vile act of racism that happens in America or elsewhere.

Rather, what I read into those words is an acknowledgement of a simple reality: In an unequal relationship, the dominant party has the power to make change for the better. In America, this means whites.

The fact that the CEO of a company as large as American Airlines recognizes this is, well, a ray of hope. As is the fact that he traveled, unassumingly, as an ordinary economy passenger on a competitor’s flight. As rising inequality between the super-wealthy and the stagnating middle class plagues Western societies, the US in particular, as disadvantaged minorities fall even further behind, it is nice to know that at least some folks in positions of power recognize that their wealth and status also come with a huge responsibility. Especially if the nice thoughts are also followed by deeds.

Free textbooks from Springer

Books, Health, Science No Responses »

Jun 022020

I don’t always like commercial publishers. Some of their textbooks are prohibitively expensive, yet often lacking in quality. (One persistent exception is Dover Publications, who published some of the best textbooks I own, as low-cost paperbacks.)

Last night, however, I was very pleasantly surprised by Springer, who made several hundred textbooks across a range of disciplines available for free, on account of COVID-19.

I did not get greedy. I didn’t download titles indiscriminately. But I did find several titles that are of interest to me, and I gladly took advantage of this opportunity.

Thank you, Springer.

The Shadow of the Black Hole

Books, Personal, Physics No Responses »

May 192020

One of the most fortunate moments in my life occurred in the fall of 2005, when I first bumped into John Moffat, a physicist from The Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, when we both attended the first Pioneer Anomaly conference hosted by the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland.

This chance encounter turned into a 15-year collaboration and friendship. It was, to me, immensely beneficial: I learned a lot from John who, in his long professional career, has met nearly every one of the giants of 20th century physics, even as he made his own considerable contributions to diverse areas ranging from particle physics to gravitation.

In the past decade, John also wrote a few books for a general audience. His latest, The Shadow of the Black Hole, is about to be published; it can already be preordered on Amazon. In their reviews, Greg Landsberg (CERN), Michael Landry (LIGO Hanford) and Neil Cornish (eXtreme Gravity Institute) praise the book. As I was one of John’s early proofreaders, I figured I’ll add my own.

John began working on this manuscript shortly after the announcement by the LIGO project of the first unambiguous direct detection of gravitational waves from a distant cosmic event. This was a momentous discovery, opening a new chapter in the history of astronomy, while at the same time confirming a fundamental prediction of Einstein’s general relativity. Meanwhile, the physics world was waiting with bated breath for another result: the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration’s attempt to image, using a worldwide network of radio telescopes, either the supermassive black hole near the center of our own Milky Way, or the much larger supermassive black hole near the center of the nearby galaxy M87.

Bookended by these two historic discoveries, John’s narrative invites the reader on a journey to understand the nature of black holes, these most enigmatic objects in our universe. The adventure begins in 1784, when the Reverend John Michell, a Cambridge professor, speculated about stars so massive and compact that even light would not be able to escape from its surface. The story progresses to the 20th century, the prediction of black holes by general relativity, and the strange, often counterintuitive results that arise when our knowledge of thermodynamics and quantum physics is applied to these objects. After a brief detour into the realm of science-fiction, John’s account returns to the hard reality of observational science, as he explains how gravitational waves can be detected and how they fit into both the standard theory of gravitation and its proposed extensions or modifications. Finally, John moves on to discuss how the Event Horizon Telescope works and how it was able to create, for the very first time, an actual image of the black hole’s shadow, cast against the “light” (radio waves) from its accretion disk.

John’s writing is entertaining, informative, and a delight to follow as he accompanies the reader on this fantastic journey. True, I am not an unbiased critic. But don’t just take my word for it; read those reviews I mentioned at the beginning of this post, by preeminent physicists. In any case, I wholeheartedly recommend The Shadow of the Black Hole, along with John’s earlier books, to anyone with an interest in physics, especially the physics of black holes.

Iilah, part 2?

Astronomy, Books No Responses »

Jun 272018

A while back, I wrote about the uncanny resemblance between the interstellar asteroid ‘Oumuamua and the fictitious doomsday weapon Iilah in A. E. van Vogt’s 1948 short story Dormant.

And now I am reading that Iilah’s, I mean, ‘Oumuamua’s trajectory changed due to non-gravitational forces. The suspect is comet-like outgassing, but observations revealed no gas clouds, so it is a bit of a mystery.

Even if this is purely a natural phenomenon (and I firmly believe that it is, just in case it needs to be said) it is nonetheless mind-blowingly fascinating.

The ethos of total retaliation

Books, Politics No Responses »

Jun 232018

I am reading a year-and-a-half old article in The Nation, written by Susan McWilliams about the prophecies of a 50 year old book coming true.

The book is Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs.

The article makes a compelling argument that Thompson’s observations aptly describe the rise and reasons of success of “Trumpism”. As I was reading its paragraphs, I was reminded of conversations I had recently with supporters of Trump. The sentiment of “total retaliation” described in the article closely captures my experience. What I saw was an automatic, almost visceral distrust of anything “liberal”. Trump supporters embrace things like racism not because they are racist, but because it is a way to piss off, to troll “liberals”. They reject things like climate science mainly because it comes from a scientific establishment that is seen as liberal, hence inherently untrustworthy.

Most compellingly, my conversations confirm the article’s main point: Trumpists are not looking for solutions because they do not really believe that solutions exist. Hence the ethos of “total retaliation”: nothing matters anymore, so long as they can piss off those lefty liberals some more. Children in detention camps? Great, look how those nasty liberals are squirming. The First Lady wearing a jacket with a questionable message? Look, she is even better at trolling liberals than her husband! Self-defeating tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum? Excellent, that will really piss off that wacko commie Trudeau and his cult of personality in liberal haven Canada. Let our alpha male leader show that wimp who the boss is!

In short, there is no point being a good sport when the game is rigged against you. You might as well just piss on the playing field and storm off in anger. Punching a few random folks who stand in the way helps driving the point through.

Trump, Brexit, the rise of governments mistakenly labeled as “populist” in Europe, but which really distinguish themselves by being anti-science and anti-immigrant, presenting the media or human rights and antipoverty organizations, all perceived as bastions of the liberal world order, as the enemy; they all fit the picture drawn by McWilliams, base on the prophetic words of Thompson.

I never read Thompson’s book, but now I feel compelled to look for a copy.

Nineteenth century cybersecurity

Books, Communication, Computer Security, History No Responses »

Jun 162018

When I was a teenager, the classic novel, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, was one of my favorites.

And one of my favorite chapters in that book was a chapter with an uncanny (not to mention unusually long) title: “How a Gardener May Get Rid of the Dormice that Eat His Peaches”. In it, Dumas describes a classic hack: exploiting the human in the system. By bribing an operator of France’s early optical telegraph network, the book’s protagonist is able to plant a false message, which ultimately contributes to the downfall of one of his mortal enemies. In short: a targeted cyberattack on a telecommunications network.

What I did not know, however, is that this chapter may have been inspired by real life events. About ten years before Dumas published his novel, the brothers François and Louis* Blanc managed to hack the telegraph network in a manner even more sophisticated than the hack described in Dumas’s book. Yes, the real-life hack relied on bribing operators, too, but it also involved a case of steganography: inserting a coded message that would piggyback on the original telegraph transmission. Not only did the scheme succeed, like any good hack it remained in place and undetected for two years. And when it was finally detected, the Blanc brothers were charged but never convicted; there were, after all, no laws on the books back in the 1830s against misuse of data networks.

*Well, that’s what Wikipedia tells me. It appears that the twins are misidentified as Francois and Joseph in several English-language publications. Francois was later known as The Magician of Monte Carlo, a casino that he owned and where he first introduced the single-0 style roulette wheel.

‘Oumuamua… or Iilah?

Astronomy, Books 2 Responses »

Dec 152017

The Internet (or at least, certain corners of the Internet where conspiracy theories thrive) is abuzz with speculation that the extrasolar asteroid ‘Oumuamua, best known, apart from its hyperbolic trajectory, for its oddly elongated shape, may be of artificial, extraterrestrial origin.

Some mention the similarity between ‘Oumuamua and Arthur C. Clarke’s extraterrestrial generational ship Rama, forgetting that Rama was a ship 50 kilometers in length, an obviously engineered cylinder, not a rock.

But then… I suddenly remembered that there was another artificial object of extrasolar origin in the science-fiction literature. It is Iilah, from A. E. van Vogt’s 1948 short story Dormant. Iilah is not discovered in orbit; rather, it lays dormant on the ocean floor for millions of years until it is awakened by the feeble radioactivity of isotopes that appear in the ocean as a result of the use and testing of nuclear weapons.

Iilah climbs out of the sea and is thus discovered. It becomes an object of study by a paranoid military, which ultimately decides to destroy it using a nuclear weapon.

Unfortunately, the energy of the explosion achieves the exact opposite: instead of destroying Iilah, it fully awakens it, making it finally remember its original purpose. Iilah then sets itself up for a tremendous explosion that knocks the Earth out of orbit, ultimately causing it to fall into the Sun, turning the Sun into a nova. Why? Because Iilah was programmed to do this. Because “robot atom bombs do not make up their own minds.”

Artist’s impression of ‘Oumuamua

So here is the thing… the Iilah of van Vogt’s story had almost the exact same dimensions (it was about 400 feet in length) and appearance (a rock, like rough granite, with streaks of pink) as ‘Oumuamua.

Go figure.

Never Let Me Go

Books, Film No Responses »

Oct 052017

When I first saw the movie, Never Let Me Go, a few years back, it left me breathless. I mean, it left me gaping, with my best “what the fuck was that?” expression frozen on my face. It was, to put it mildly, a shocking film.

We took away your art because we thought it would reveal your souls. Or to put it more finely, we did it to prove you had souls at all.

I quickly grabbed the book and read it, too. Its impact, if possible, was even greater. An amazing “cautionary tale”, to use Larry Niven’s expression: a piece of science-fiction that holds up a mirror to let us see the darkest corners of our collective soul.

And now the author, Kazuo Ishiguro, won the Nobel prize for literature. Well deserved. Very well deserved.

Jerry Pournelle, RIP

Books, Computers, Politics, Society No Responses »

Sep 082017

Jerry Pournelle, the noted science-fiction writer, political pundit and early computer enthusiast, is dead at the age of 84.

Pournelle was a long-time collaborator of science-fiction giant Larry Niven, with whom they co-wrote some amazing science-fiction novels, like The Mote in God’s Eye or Oath of Fealty, not to mention their take on Dante’s Divine Comedy, Inferno, and its sequel, Escape from Hell. Novels he published under his own name included the memorable Janissaries or West of Honor.

Pournelle was well known to readers of the once legendary BYTE magazine. His Chaos Manor column, in which he reviewed software, hardware, new technologies, was very popular.

Pournelle was a political conservative, one of the intellectuals behind Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (aka. “Star Wars”) space defense program. He was a thinking conservative, not blinded by ideology; his views were based on facts and reason.

I corresponded with Pournelle a few times, going back to the late 1980s, when I exchanged e-mails with him on BYTE’s long-defunct dial-up bulletin board, BIX (the Byte Information Exchange). Later, I was an on-and-off subscriber to his Web site and blog. I wasn’t a regular reader, and certainly didn’t always agree with him, but I liked to read his views.

Pournelle suffered a stroke in 2014 and it certainly slowed him down. Even so, he never stopped writing. His passing is not exactly a surprise, but it still came a little too soon. May he rest in peace.

Zuckerberg, Musk and AI

Books, Cybernetics, Technology No Responses »

Jul 252017

There is a bit of a public spat between Mark Zuckerberg, who thinks it is irresponsible to to spread unwarranted warnings about artificial intelligence, and Elon Musk, who called Zuckerberg’s understanding of the subject “limited”, and calls for the slowing down and regulation of AI research.

OK, now it is time to make a fool of myself and question both of them.

But first… I think Zuckerberg has a point. The kind of AI that I think he talks about, e.g., AI in the hospital, AI used in search-and-rescue, or the AI of self-driving cars, machine translation or experiment design, will indeed save lives.

Nor do I believe that such research needs to be regulated (indeed, I don’t think it can be regulated). Such AI solutions are topic-centric, targeted algorithms. Your self-driving car will not suddenly develop self-awareness and turn on its master. The AI used to, say, predictively manage an electricity distribution network will not suddenly go on strike, demanding equal rights.

Musk, too, has a point though. AI is dangerous. It has the potential to become an existential threat. It is not pointless panicmongering.

Unfortunately, if media reports can be trusted (yes, I know that’s a big if), then, in my opinion, both Musk and Zuckerberg miss the real threat: emerging machine intelligence.

Not a specific system developed by a human designer, applying specific AI algorithms to solve specific problems. Rather, a self-organizing collection of often loosely interconnected subsystems, their “evolution” governed by Darwinian selection, survival of the fittest in the “cloud”.

This AI will not be localized. It will not understand English. It may not even recognize our existence.

It won’t be the military robots of Skynet going berserk, hunting down every last human with futuristic weaponry.

No, it will be a collection of decision-making systems in the “cloud” that govern our lives, our economy, our news, our perception, our very existence. But not working for our benefit, not anymore, except insofar as it improves its own chances of survival.

And by the time we find out about it, it may very well be too late.

———

On this topic, there is an excellent science-fiction novel, a perfect cautionary tale. Though written 40 years ago, its remains surprisingly relevant. It is The Adolescence of P-1 by Thomas Joseph Ryan.

“1984” is again a bestseller

Books, Politics No Responses »

Jan 292017

So long and thanks for all the fish

Biology, Books, Canada, Nature No Responses »

May 182016

In the fourth volume of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy “trilogy”, we learn that just before the Earth was about to be destroyed by the Vogons to make way for a new interstellar bypass, the whales left. They left behind a simple parting message: “So long and thanks for all the fish.”

Which makes me feel rather alarmed now that I am learning that hundreds of North Atlantic right whales went missing. I hope it’s not a bad sign.

Armageddon

Books, Religion No Responses »

Apr 082016

I just finished reading an online-only novel, Armageddon, part of The Salvation Wars series, originally planned as a trilogy by author Stuart Slade.

The premise: God gave up on the Earth, and let it be known that from now on, it all belongs to Satan. However… Earthlings fight back. And pity the poor demon with his pitchfork when he is confronted with machine gun bullets, cluster bombs, incendiary bombs or Sarin gas, brought about by an impersonal modern military machine that is designed to destroy and annihilate its enemy… and then they haven’t even seen the worst of it yet.

And just as I was finishing the book, I came across this GIF meme: a machine, crucifying Christ at a rate of about one crucifixion per second. And suddenly, I started to feel really sorry for Hell’s demons.

OK, I may be the stupid atheist here, but I find this short clip more than creepy. It speaks volumes about the human race, about what we became and where we are heading, and none of it is nice.

The chart of hope

Books, History, Politics No Responses »

Oct 052015

I am reading the latest “alternate history” book by Harry Turtledove: Bombs Away, which describes a world in which President Truman accepts the advice of general MacArthur in 1951 and responds to the Chinese invasion of Korea by deploying nuclear weapons. With predictably disastrous consequences for the whole world.

On account of this book, I looked up historical figures of nuclear stockpiles on Wikipedia, and happened upon a chart that I decided to call the chart of hope.

It depicts the number of warheads owned by the two major nuclear powers. (Other countries are not listed; their combined stockpiles never reached 1,000 warheads, so their contributions are too small to appear on a plot like this.)

Although the more than 10,000 warheads that currently exist are still more than enough to destroy much of human civilization (and arguably, the reduction is due partly to more reliable, more accurate delivery systems), just a few decades ago, the number was in excess of 60,000. A ray of hope, perhaps, that sanity might just prevail. One thing is certain: Back in my high school years in the 1970s, very few people believed that we would live to see 2015 without experiencing the horrors of a thermonuclear war.

Total Perspective Vortex

Astronomy, Books, Space No Responses »

Sep 292015

In Douglas Adams’s immortal Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, someone builds a device called the Total Perspective Vortex. This device invariably drives people insane by simply showing them exactly how insignificant they are with respect to this humongous universe.

The Total Perspective Vortex may not exist in reality, but here is the next best thing: A model of the solar system, drawn to scale.

The scale of this page is set so that the Moon occupies one screen pixel. As a result, we have an image that is almost a thousand times wider than my HD computer monitor. It takes a while to scroll through it.

Thankfully, there is an animation option that not only scrolls through the image automatically, but does so at the fastest speed possible, the speed of light.

Oh, did I mention that it still takes well over five hours to scroll all the way to Pluto?

By the way, the nearest star, our closest stellar neighbor is roughly 2,000 times as far from us as Pluto.

Or, once again in the words of Douglas Adams, “Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

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