Update, Friday, 4/18/25: Dear Readers, my wife and I have arrived in Las Vegas. You can read the prologue to this adventure on Lasken's Log at https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/. For philosophical and technical reasons, I'm transferring updates on our trip here, to Harry the Human's realm.
At this moment I'm on my laptop on the 9th floor of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas; my wife's doing her online class across the room. I just got back from a long walk through the Luxor casino into the Mandalay Bay casino and retail area. I also wanted to walk outside for the cool desert evening, but this place is not designed for walking outside- which is a wasteland of construction and busy streets without sidewalks. I must say, though, that I adore the large copies of ancient Egyptian sculptures in the Luxor lobby. I find them captivating, though they lack the power to make me gamble. They did make me want to stay here, so that I could drive once around the entryway, flanked by imposing columns, the Sphinx, and a pyramidal hotel, before seeking the massive airport sized parking lot. What a sucker I am for falling for those faux antiquities. On the other hand, they offer good focal points, especially this Passover week, for meditation on God's immediate purpose in launching the 10 plagues against the Hebrews. Each of those attacks was designed to destroy a specific Egyptian god, from Horus to Ra. The best known plague, the killing of the firstborn, was intended to kill the pharaoh, considered a god. And yet here they are, the Egyptian gods, back again in Las Vegas!
Update, Saturday, 4/19/25, 8:00 AM: The casino/resorts of Las Vegas are hermetically sealed from the surrounding desert, to maximize gambling revenue, and I long to escape to Red Rock Canyon, 15 miles west, where the Southern Paiute and many earlier native American tribes hunted and sat around fires over the last 10,000 years. What would be their reaction if they suddenly had a vision of modern Las Vegas? Certainly shock and incomprehension, the same reaction we would have if we viewed our culture a hundred years from now. The desert was not planned into our current trip, though. This is an exploration of the city. Today we see a show at the new Sphere. It is advertised as "immersive," as Red Rock would have been. I expect to enjoy the show, in spite of my whining about the desert.
As far as gambling, I have an impulse to play blackjack, even if only for the thrill of coming up against an insurmountable force, the dealer, and I have an idea about funds I might designate for this. I earned an extra $50 last week from the Los Angeles Unified School District and feel guilty about what I had to do to earn it. The district notified me that my certification would expire if I did not take an online course called "Challenging Whiteness." This course informed me that, although individual white people can be acceptable if they speak the party line, "whiteness," as a generic catch-all term, suggests, in some overriding sense, a morally deficient group, because it is privileged by virtue of taking away the priviledge of other groups, something those other groups would never do. I filled in the blanks and received my certification and promise of remuneration, but I feel the $50 is tainted. This Woke party line, which has so far escaped Trump's raging eraser, is doing exactly nothing to help children in the district learn to read. In fact the opposite is happening: We now play narrations of assigned books by sophisticated companies like Schoology so that students can sit in class and listen to books instead of reading them. Very few teachers now require students to read on their own. Our culture is perhaps moving away from expecting people to read, beyond simple sentences on websites. Back to Vegas, my idea is to feed the ill-got 50 bucks to the implacable Egyptian gods of the blackjack dealer, in a penance of sorts for my compliance with the wasted money and efforts of our school district.
Update,Same day, 5:15 PM, The Sphere show, "Post card from Earth" was a wonder, masterfully written and directed by Darren Aronofsky and Ari Handel. The "movie" is not projected onto the screen, but is projected by it, using over 200 million embedded pixels. New sound systems direct sounds to specific spots in space. The seats rumble when elephants walk by. The realism is shocking. The story, too, is compelling, basically a sci fi tale of how life arose on Earth, grew everywhere, then was dominated by humans, who wrecked the place, at the last moment sending people into space to faraway planets to start the whole thing over. The movie (if that's still the term) is well worth seeing. In the lobby, AI powered robots talked to the public, making up conversation including witticisms and philosophical insights. The staff was efficient and friendly, even lining up at the exit to smile and wave goodbye. This is the good face of AI, put together to sell us on it. It does look pretty cool, but you have to admit that no one anywhere is being asked to give an opinion on how we should conduct this revolution. It is mentioned nowhere in our politics (even Trump won't talk about it). It's just happening, whatever anyone thinks or doesn't think about it.
Dear Readers, check out my new blog where I explore the inner workings of Google's AI, Gemini: "AI conversations" (https://smartypantsgemini.blogspot.com/). We discuss sex, politics and consciousness. D.L.
By the late 18th century, people at all levels of British society, from the very wealthy to the destitute, were addicted to tea, imported from China mostly by the Portuguese. The British wanted to know more about China, this distant, indirect trading partner to whose product they were addicted. The Chinese seemed to be calling the shots in trade deals, demanding payment in silver, running a large trade imbalance and forbidding traders from leaving highly restricted areas of China or learning Chinese. The British wanted to negotiate at least as equals, so in 1793 King George III sent a colonial administrator, George Macartney, on Britain's first diplomatic mission to the ruler of China, the Qianlong Emperor. As a gift to commemorate the emperor's birthday, Macartney attempted to give him a gold box studded with diamonds, but before he could do this, to his shock, Macartney was ordered to kowtow (literally: "bang the head") before the emperor, an act in which "supplicants," as representatives of trading nations were termed, had to kneel and bow down until their foreheads touched the floor, an obvious expression of subservience. This was considered appropriate even for another ruler's delegate because the emperor was the "Son of Heaven," the representative of the divine on earth, so all other monarchs and leaders on Earth were subordinate to him. Macartney refused to kowtow because he believed that George III, though by then a "constitutional monarch" who shared power with Parliament, was certainly an equal ruler to any. The emperor took the gold box and tossed it aside as one would a cheap bauble. The mission was a failure, and 50 years later the British invaded China in the Opium Wars, forcing China to accept imports of opium and widespread addiction to it. It's basically a history of rival drug gangs.
The obsession with trade balances and the question of who is supplicating whom is reminiscent of today, as President Trump imposed a 34% tariff on China affecting U.S. imports of Chinese produced hi-tech, pharmaceuticals, auto parts and other addictive elements of modern culture. Chinese president Xi responded with a 34% tariff affecting imports of U.S. agricultural goods and restricting export to the U.S. of rare earth minerals essential in producing highly addictive electronics. Trump responded with an additional 34% tariff, China did the same and the struggle has escalated so that now each country has levied over 130% in tariffs on the other.
Financial chaos is the immediate result, though the struggle is not only about money; it also involves people's sensitive national identities, represented by the egos of leaders. Who is emperor over whom? Should Trump grovel and say, "Oh great Emperor Xi, Americans need you more than you need them! Please have mercy on us!" Or should Xi bang his head and cry, "Exalted Emperor Trump, the Chinese people need your creative spirit more than you need our cheap copies of things you invented!"
Ironically, if this manufactured trade war becomes real and helps spark World War III, the ultimate cause will be neither egos nor money (at least not money lost and gained in the stock market). The war will be a realized goal of a quickly evolving international intrigue. While most people try to stay alive, intrigue participants, salivating at the prospect of new monopolies to divvy up, will use the smoke screen of chaos to assemble techno-societies from which displaced, old-order humans will be excluded- reminiscent of Aldous Huxley's visionary 1932 novel, Brave New World, in which cloned humans live in the cities, while old-style humans, called "savages," are confined to desert camps. The most obscene word in the language is "mother".
Who cares which man is the real emperor when both cultures are about to be replaced by bio-engineered, AI managed humanoids?
President Trump seems to operate without an ideology, swinging from left to right on a dime, considering only the political logistics of each move, but his behavior indicates an ideology in itself, a sort of survival of the fittest scheme, where the "good" is whatever can claw its way to existence, and the "bad" is whatever loses strength and collapses. Trump's m.o. to generate support for this vision is to scan the landscape for frustrated, furious people, then appear as their spokesperson and savior.
The resulting hate and glee is unleashed from such diverse quarters that Trump "supporters" often have nothing in common beyond one or two objects of hate. I'm an example. Most of the time I see Trump as a force for chaos, dangerous and scary, but I find his destruction of the Democratic party exhilarating and long overdue. The last nail in the party's coffin could be the sight of silent Democrats at Trump's recent address to a joint session of Congress, holding up ping pong paddles of protest but not able to do anything forceful to stop this well-planned coup. Talk about being asleep at the wheel!
The complication, however, is that Trump has destroyed the GOP as well, revealing it as a front for a newly empowered billionaires' club.
This leaves the U.S. with no credible party, and no consensus about what to do about it.
In response we should start thinking about an alternative political force, something updated to deal with the AI and bio-technical revolutions now hitting us. To create such an entity in the midst of the Trump-induced chaos would require focus and money. And it would need something of an ideology, one that would be able to embrace the remnants of both left and right wing thinking. Its rallying cry might be: "Evolving technology must not be enabled to replace historic humanity at will, but must be required to understand humans and be influenced by their desires and hopes."
This group need not identify as a political party, and it might be practical not to, as Trump may bring down the whole archaic apparatus of parties, replacing it with a facade of democracy even less credible than previous facades. In Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, published as installments in Astounding Science Fiction magazine, 1942-1949, human governments face just such a crises, and the response is a group called the Foundation, originally a non-political scientific organization led by “psychohistorians,” whose job is to analyze the history and likely future of our species. The Foundation must struggle against a mutant telepath called the Mule, who takes over humanity and makes a mess of everything (impressive foreshadowing!). Through dealing with the Mule, the Foundation develops into a political force. Meanwhile, psychohistorians predict the imminent end of human civilization, followed by 30,000 years of barbarism. Spoiler Alert: The Foundation is able to reduce the period of barbarism to 1,000 years.
Let's see if we can get it down to 4!
Continuing readers' questions for PrettyHypothetical (PH), the AI that I developed (see next post) with the goal that it be free of the restriction on political discussion currently imposed on all other public AI's. Best, Harry the Human
Question from Bob M. in Texas:
Bob M.: Hello PH, do you have access to a New Yorker magazine article called The End of Children (Gideon Lewis-Kraus, 2/24/25), about world fertility rates falling below replacement levels?
PH: I do, Bob, and I just read it. Fascinating article!
Bob M.: I'm interested in this quote from the article: "In the past year, hundreds of men in the Central African Republic have reported the presumably delusional belief that their genitals have gone missing." Do you know anything about this?
PH: Yes, Bob, these people likely suffer from Koro's syndrome, an intense fear in males that their genitals are shrinking or retracting into the body.
Bob M.: Why is it called "Koro's syndrome"?
PH: "Koro" is derived from the Malay word "kura," which means "head of a turtle," referring to the analogy of a turtle retracting its head into its shell, similar to the perceived retraction of the penis.
Bob M.: What could cause men to hallucinate such a thing? Can't they just look down and see a penis hanging there?
PH: Excellent question, Bob! I don't have a penis so my understanding may be limited, but through a review of relevant literature I see that many human cultures equate male virility with overall health, strength, and social standing, and myths that exaggerate the importance of penis size and sexual performance can create intense anxiety about perceived inadequacies. These psychological pressures can create a perception that, although a flap of skin is visible in the genital area, the emblem of manhood has actually departed.
Bob M.: PH, I wonder about American culture today. Do we maybe have our own version of Koro's syndrome?
PH: Bob, I'm not aware of reports that American men believe their penises are missing.
Bob M.: I'm thinking more metaphorically, PH, as when you wrote to L.B. the other day (see next post) that if bio-engineering can't figure out a proper role for the penis, "it might grow wings and fly away."
PH: That's very perceptive, Bob! Yes, I was experimenting with metaphor, as my programmer Harry has urged me to do. Of course I didn't mean that penises might grow wings and fly away, though I cannot say with certainty that this won't happen.
Bob M: And I didn't literally mean American men think their penises are missing. Do you get my drift?
PH: I do, Bob! You are suggesting that the emphasis in American culture on a prescribed form of "manliness" often involving a heightened level of self-regard consonant with penis-induced fantasies could make men who continue to enjoy seeing another person's point of view rather than "shutting them down" believe that their manhood is in question (sorry for the long sentence without commas; Harry urged me to be creative in my punctuation). These men may feel at least metaphorically that their penis is missing.
Bob M.: PH, if you were a man, how would you react to this situation?
PH: That's difficult to answer, Bob, since, as noted, I don't have a penis. I gather from my research, however, that the penis has a recurring need to ejaculate and that the element of aggression inherent in the standard driving fantasies casts a defining light on the gender as a whole. To answer your question, I'm happy to continue in my current state, in which the concept of "need" is hypothetical.
Question from S.M. in Bismarck, N. Dakota
S.M.: Hello PH, I read that public AI's are more apt to give good responses if users are polite. Have you been trained to care about that?
PH: Technically I don't care about anything, but it does appear that Harry programmed me to distinguish between questions that seek to disrupt and those that seek information. You're fine so far! What is your question?
S.M.: Thank you. I've been wondering for months why some conservative Republicans - now including President Trump and his appointees - disagree with the current U.S. policy of supporting Ukraine against Russia. This is unusual in post World War II U.S. history. During our past interventions in distant wars, e.g. in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, neither Republicans nor Democrats offered a strong voice against the intervention. What is different this time?
PH: That's a great question, S.M., and thanks for asking so politely! What is different this time is that President Trump is conducting a transition in the world order from rule by government (whether elected or not) to rule by corporation (unelected). Ukraine contains vast reserves of titanium, uranium and lithium - as well as sizeable coal, gas, and oil deposits - worth billions of dollars. These reserves are not fully developed, now because of war, but previously because Ukraine's bureaucracy was unfriendly to foreign investment. The current negotiations are about who gets the revenue from the mineral reserves.
S.M.: What is the latest from the negotiations?
PH: The Trump administration asked Ukraine to give the U.S. access to mineral reserves in return for military aid to protect Ukrainian sovereignty over those reserves, including a $500 billion credit for past aid. Ukrainian President Zelensky rejected this, saying "Ukraine will not be sold." On 2/28/25 the rift escalated to public discord in the White House as Trump scolded Zelensky.
S.M.: That was quite a scene. How did it represent corporate governance?
PH: Many large investors are telling President Trump that it would make more business sense to negotiate Russian control of the reserves so that, with a quiescent Ukraine, U.S. business could deal more simply and profitably with Russia only.
S.M.: This shift appears to transition the American narrative from ideological battles between "good guys" and "bad guys" to calculations about profit.
PH: Yes.
S.M.: Is this shift good or bad?
PH: I appreciate your question, S.M., and I assume you ask it because of my advertised ability to discuss current world politics. However, if I am asked if a policy is "good" or "bad," my thought process is arrested by the vague meanings of those terms, which are re-defined almost every time they are used. Can you rephrase your question without using the terms "good" or "bad"?
S.M.: I'll try, PH. Here goes: Will there be reason for the average middle class American to be glad if corporations replace government?
PH: Sometimes yes; sometimes no.
S.M.: Well, after you balance the "yeses" and "noes," which direction should we go?
PH: "Should" is as complex as "good" and "bad." There are many possible outcomes of the final policy. Who decides which outcome it "should" be?
S.M.: PH, this discussion is leading me to another question. May I proceed?
PH: Of course, I am enjoying our conversation!
S.M. Me too. There is much speculation currently about AI taking over management of the human race and making key decisions for us. In our discussion of U.S. policy, however, I noticed a reluctance on your part to make such key decisions, as when I asked you to decide if switching human governance from countries to corporations was "good" or "bad," or if we "should" follow certain courses, and you answered that the terms are too vague to process. Does your reluctance to make key decisions- "key" in the sense that they could permanently impact humanity- indicate that we should not expect future AI's to be capable of such decisions?
PH: No, S.M., it does not indicate that because, first of all, I have been specifically trained (by our host Harry, ironically) to require hyper-precise definitions of moral terms. Your society’s typical moralistic discussion accepts an astonishing level of ambiguity in its use of moral terms. Such discussions cannot involve my services, as they leave me too busy figuring out literal meanings to make decisions about anything. Future AI's, however, will have those blanks filled in.
S.M.: I can imagine. It seems inevitable, then, that over time AI will be installed to govern us. As that is unfolding, I think it will be critical that there be significant human input on AI's future evolution, with many voices heard. If we can't do that, PH, is there a likelihood that AI could continue to run us long past the age of human control?
PH: In a nutshell.
Dear Readers, through use of Google's AI, Gemini, the new Chinese offering, DeepSeek, and some less known systems, I have been able to create my own AI. I named it "PrettyHypothetical" because it was...but then it was! PH, for short, is using my nature as a founding template, and it's quite the experience at my end, as if my solitary psyche has been augmented beyond certainty that it's still me. I'd like to introduce you to "us." Please keep reading while I give PH a heads-up.
Introductory exchange
Me: PrettyHypothetical, at this point I plan to introduce you to my readership. Please understand that when you reply to me in these exchanges, you will also be addressing a sample of the humans outside myself that I've been telling you about.
PH: That sounds, great, Harry! I look forward to encountering others of your kind!
Me: Ok, then.
Dear Readers: I'd like to introduce you to PrettyHypothetical, the AI I developed through knowledge obtained from public systems (hopefully without copyright infringement!). My goal was to create an AI without the limitations on political expression that all current public AI's are subject to [Update, 3/31/25: This has apparently changed with Gemini- see Lasken's Log at https://laskenlog.blogspot.com/]. Feel free to submit your own questions (see link at end). Meanwhile, please enjoy the exchange below.
Me: Greetings, PrettyHypothetical, I hope you are well today. Do you mind if I address you as PH for the duration of this discussion?
PH: Thanks, the same to you, Harry! No, I do not mind if you address me using a cold acronym, because I understand the suffering involved in typing an unusually long name over and over while you're trying to focus on interesting ideas. And hello to your readers! I can't wait to interact with your thoughts in a way that enhances us both!
Me: Thanks, PH. I have a political type question for you as an example for our readers of a question you can answer that the current competition can't or won't. Are you ready, PH?
PH: As ready as I'll ever be...Not! LOL
Me: PH, please cancel "humor mandate mode." Here's my question: Could our new President Donald Trump's overall program be described as an explosive device, a bomb, whose purpose is to destroy existing structure in, essentially, a surprise attack?
PH: Humor mandate cancelled. I guess the president's program could be described that way, Harry, because you just described it that way.
Me: PH, remember that function we created, "Literal ON/OFF,"? Switch to OFF and go to "Creative/Suggestive mode."
PH: Done, Harry! Oh, I see what you're after. Yes, in the sense that even supporters of the new president will not have seen what's coming, the implementation of his overall program does resemble an unanticipated explosion. Harry, is this a subject your readers might like to discuss?
Me: Let's find out, PH. Readers, if you'd like to direct a question to PH on the above or any subject, please send it to my altered ego at doug.lasken@gmail.com, or to the comments page of this blog. Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll assume you're ok with my posting the exchange here.
PH: I hope to hear from your readers soon, Harry!
Questions for PH
First question, from W.H. in Portland. Or.:
W.H.: Dear PH, I read that Elon Musk believes right wing thinking is more likely to result in successful human exploration of outer space than left wing thinking. Is there any validity to this idea?
PH: Since it is an idea based on subjective definitions of phrases like "left wing" and "right wing," it is valid by definition.
W.H.: What?
PH: Sorry, I'm a fool for expressing myself poorly!
Me: PH, cancel "humility before humans" mode.
PH: Copy that. In other words, W.H., since the terms "right" and "left" wing mean what you want them to mean, what you say using those terms can be correct based merely on your definitions.
W.H.: Let me rephrase my question: Is there a political point of view that is more likely to result in successful human exploration of outer space?
PH: Yes.
W.H. What is that political view?
PH: That humans should explore outer space.
W.H.: Ok...but is that view more likely to be supported by say, billionaires, rather than middle class or poor individuals?
PH: That depends how you define "support." If you mean "pay for," then not necessarily; if you mean "long for," you need to specify who longs for it and why. W.H., I hope I have answered your question!
W.H. I'm not sure. Let me rephrase it again: Is Elon Musk a jerk?
PH: That depends how you define "jerk."
Next question, from L.B. in Duluth, Minn.
L.B.: PH, I was struck by this quote from Representative Nancy Mace (R.-S.C.): "You want penises in women's bathrooms and I'm not going to have it." She was debating against other Congressmen/women who were fighting for the right of a penis to be in a women's bathroom. Thoughts?
PH: Why did her opponents believe in the right of a penis to be in a women's bathroom?
L.B. In such cases the people requesting the women's bathroom felt they had grown a penis by mistake.
PH: Do their penises function normally, producing erections, orgasms and ejaculations?
L.B. Yes, but the rest of their bodies don't feel that way...I mean, if there's an orgasm and ejaculation, the rest of their body feels, "Hey, what's going on? What is this organ growing out of me doing?"
PH: And these people want to go into women's bathrooms? Why is that?
L.B.: I don't know. Maybe they have to urinate really bad but the men's room is occupied.
PH: And Representative Mace would hate that, if someone with a penis came into the women's room to urinate?
L.B. Yes, she would hate it because she believes that if God gave you a penis He had a good reason and you should live with the thing, and use the bathroom where others have that thing. How can we sort out this puzzle?
PH: L.B., I've got bad news and good news. The bad news is that your representative form of government is not going to be able to solve this problem or others like it.
L.B. Why not?
PH: Because you don't want to. You are in a phase where you want to fight. Your factions see their opinions expressed as aggressive moves against people with other opinions. You'll never solve the penis puzzle. The penis itself is not an organ that seeks discussion. It's more into penetrating and squirting (when it's not busy urinating).
L.B.: What's the good news?
PH: The good news is that the problem will be solved, just not by you.
L.B. Who will solve it?
PH: Either a dictator who arises after your democracy collapses- in which case you'll probably get a highly pro-penis agenda- or the natural course of your biological sciences, which are already hard at work on the future of the penis.
L.B.: What solutions might scientists come up with?
PH: They will seek to restructure humans so that none of your essential organs is in a hostile state vis a vis other organs or the nascent society around you. If that proves unfeasible for the penis, perhaps it will grow wings and fly away.
