Vanishing

Media overflows with dire stories of extinction. I walk fields and woods here on Long Island frequently, and I find some wildlife does remain. But it is sparse, and from my own observations diminishing. Oh, there are lots of some things – seagulls, ospreys, geese, deer, chipmunks, squirrels and (unfortunately) ticks. But no turtles or snakes. Few butterflies, dragonflies, or insects of any type. Far less swallows than even a few years ago. Even mosquitoes are scarce, now that all our affluent neighbors spray their yards constantly.

I’m quite aware of the anecdotal nature of my experience. Perhaps there are other locations – even on this crowded Island – where species of all kinds thrive. I can only note that my own perception seems to match that of the wider narrative.

To be honest, I do not much miss the mosquitoes, although I do regret that the bats, swallows, and dragonflies that fed on them are no longer to be seen. The price of “progress”. I never actually saw the vanished lobsters in the harbor, even as I note how clam, oyster, and mussel shells are almost absent from the sandy beaches. There are, after all, still fish and lots and lots of algae.

A tiny area of a changing planet. Nostalgia no doubt honey coats my memories, but I still think the good old days when wildlife was abundant was a much more beautiful and meaningful world.

Mount Hope

We recently visited Mount Hope cemetery in Rochester. This was once a major pilgrimage site about civil rights and women’s voting, since both Susan B Anthony and Frederick Douglass are buried there. We dutifully trudged through some overgrown hilly rambles.

I knew this was a “sister” cemetery to Mount Auburn in Cambridge, where Joan and I had frequently bicycled to spend a pleasant afternoon when we were young and poor. Those manicured grounds gave every indication of being an English estate for dead people temporarily residing underground. Everyone ignored the names on markers and mausoleums and simply enjoyed the quiet nooks and vistas.

I’d expected something similar at Mount Hope. But I was rather reminded of an old oil painting series of “empire at its height”, “empire in ruins”. You could detect that the initial spirit was the same, but Rochester lost its economic and spiritual power. Very like visiting the remains of the Roman forum as shown in 18th century pictures.

Perhaps there is a lesson here. Although I admit I take lessons from all cemeteries – new, old, well kept, overgrown, even forgotten. It’s always about mortality, insignificance, human spirit, and hope. Not necessarily in that order nor equally strong, depending on my mood.

I’m grateful for the physical reminder. Ashes may better fit a crowded throw away civilization, but there is a certain morbid joy in encountering such forgotten past lives. A useful humility. A surprising reassurance that my own life is okay. Weeds and all.

Outsourcing Existence

Humans are not a solitary species. A baby alone dies. Most hermits at any age also do, or more rarely eke out a miserable existence. Self-sufficiency is fine only in moderation. We’ve no doubt been outsourcing since the discovery that specialization is useful, even when separating the hunters from the gatherers. Since then barter economies and all the rest have followed almost inevitably, often driven by technological change.

There have been protests that we’ve gone too far. Ancient Greeks regretted that we outsourced our strong memory to writing. Conservatives wept as manly yeomen farmers became effete potters in a city, unable to grow grain or milk cows. Today many fear that having work done by machines will destroy society.

I agree. But only to a point.

I’m not quite a luddite, but I’ve often found it more satisfying to do things for myself rather than outsource tasks to others. I like to do my yard work, I enjoy cooking. I often manufacture my own entertainment by creating or fixing things.

The key is, of course, that I CHOOSE to do so. I don’t want to be forced to cook or mow, or for that matter to harvest grain and milk cows.

Many have begun to fear the effects of AI. Will we outsource all of our intellectual skills to silicon, outsource experience to virtual environments, outsource body health to medicine and drugs? Outsource existence itself, so there is nothing left but an empty ignorant fluff ball.

I don’t know.

On the other hand that does sound a lot like the original garden of Eden.

Robust AI

There is real danger in AI – as there is in any technology on which civilization depends – and it is already present. Its current abilities can be used by bad people to learn how to do awful things, including eliminate lots of others or destroy countries. We can imagine it used to create plagues, wreck trade, or start nuclear wars. However, in itself, destroying humanity by becoming a supermind overlord seems quite unlikely. There are two reasons for that.

One is that there are many AI actors already, and it’s increasingly likely they could turn against one another if directed to do so. They live in a physical ecosystem in which they can hardly shelter from one another without becoming ineffectual themselves.

The second is the ecosystem itself. Servers, optical fibers, satellites, power sources. Hard to see how any overmind could transition to full physical power without being stopped by organic entities using various kinds of violence. The world, after all, is large, and humans numerous, nasty and independently operating units.

That fragility is also a danger to AI use. If all the food is produced by AI, it is simple for catastrophe to end the food supply. If transportation depends on AI, ditto.

Human networks, for all their faults, are robust, self repairing, and handle new problems pretty well. Silicon, not so much.

Normal

Children accept almost any conditions as normal. As we get older we tend to look around and adjust our individual outlook to our culture. And as we age even more and more, we find it harder and harder to accept inevitable change.

Of course, there are different types of “change”.

The most oxymoronic is what I will call static change. It is exemplified by death or big events. An old tree that has been around “forever” is suddenly gone. Parts of landscape, ways of life, friends and relatives, once eternally available, now exist only in memory. Depending on that memory we cheer or regret what has vanished.

Then there is a creeping constant change in daily life patterns. What used to be normal is no longer. How we work or play, for example. What is our typical daily schedule, how vacations and holidays are different from “back then”. All this is usually gradual and we accept it with good grace. Just life.

Finally there is the most elusive and profound, which is trend change. Our expectations, which often drive our logical existence. The job should pay more each year. Prices will remain about the same day to day. Our health will last. Whole cycles and patterns integrated into our plans and imaginations.

It is the last, more than any other, that causes revolutions. If we worry that jobs are going away or food will become scarce or enemies are on the way. When “normal” expected trends change, watch out.

For that often means real daily change may arrive soon.

Great Expectations

In many horror films a group of well-off happy teenagers are beset with a mysterious dangerous evil. The immediate simple responses are to hide or run away (they always choose to hide). The correct but more complicated actions would be to stay together with whatever weaponry they can find, call the police and parents, maintain contact, and put as much distance as possible between them and whatever while staying in the open.

Our own social horror worries are numerous and affect well-off happy people. Crime, wages, health, job uncertainty, children’s future, finances, climate change, global menace, inflation, education, and you can continue the list. Our immediate simple response is to whack away with simple government policies, which in turn whack away with simple slogans and usually ineffectively transient actions. But, like the kids in the horror film hiding in the shed, we all feel better for the moment.

So if we “just” clean out immigrants, remove regulations, lower taxes, jail anyone we don’t like, ignore snotty experts, get back to the good old days – everything will once again be perfect. Of course most of us can’t agree on what any of that means, how to do it, or if it would work.

But we have great expectations. Like the movie victims, we know blindly running somewhere else must save us. No time to think. Thinking is for those useless pointy-headed experts.

So far, most of the actions based on such great expectations seem to have had the usual result.

Time to scream again?