Hoarders?

The Space Station after 20 years. One wonders how much stuff has been just left around. These astronauts are not always known for neatness.

EHR Again

HHS has published a set of recommendations to reduce the burden of the EHR on the delivery of health care.

They note:

Based on this input, the draft strategy outlines three overarching goals designed to reduce clinician burden:

1. Reduce the effort and time required to record health information in EHRs for clinicians;
2. Reduce the effort and time required to meet regulatory reporting requirements for clinicians, hospitals, and healthcare organizations; and
3. Improve the functionality and intuitiveness (ease of use) of EHRs.

 As we have been noting for a decade this thrust of the ACA and its manager at the time was a massive useless burden on medicine and the patient. It was in my opinion thrust upon all of us by individuals who had apparently no idea what they were doing. 

This of course seems to be the general thrust of Governments.

Bees Again

Eureka Alert has an interesting piece on bumble bees, not honey bees, the European imports, somewhat weak but used by many artificially. They note:

"This study highlights the undervalued work that wild bees do," says Nicholson, noting that two-thirds of the world's most important crops benefit from bee pollination, including coffee, cacao (for chocolate) and many fruits and vegetables. "Without them farmers need to find pollination somewhere else, by paying high rental fees to bring in honeybees, for example."

 We noted this summer the explosion of bumble bees, Bombus genus, rather than the few honey bees. Bombus are great pollinators and seem well adapted to the environment. They do not seem to suffer from the diseases of the over bred honey bee.

In addition, you can actually pet a Bombus, they like humans.

Just some thoughts amidst the explosion of generally unreadable news.

Nationalism and Characteristics

The above is from a study some decade ago regarding what items are very important for national identity in countries. Note the US lists citizenship as the most, well above all other countries. Also language is critical. Religion is low but not the lowest. Laws are high but not the highest.

France is not included! Pour le Francais, pensez cette information.

College Students and Socialism

In reading my Alma Mater's student paper I came across a piece written by the head of the student Socialist body. The Tech contains the following:

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is building a club on the MIT campus to fight for genuine socialism. This means the fight for internationalism, for the unification of workers of all countries, for the abolishment of borders and for bringing the world’s political map into harmony with the international character of production. The working class is an international class. The problems workers face all around the world stem from the international capitalist system and must be countered with an international socialist program. We fight for workers’ control of the means of production. Major banks and corporations must be placed under international social control and run democratically by the workers themselves to meet the needs of society, not private profit. We fight against war and the militarization of society. The vast sums expended on militarism by all the capitalist powers must be used to meet pressing social needs, including education, healthcare and all social programs. We fight for the defense and expansion of democratic rights. ... We fight for historical truth and against the falsification of history. The development of a socialist movement today requires that workers and youth understand the essential experiences and lessons of the 20th century, and above all, the real history of the socialist movement — from the Russian Revolution through the Trotskyist opposition to Stalinism and social democracy.The future is socialism, but it must be fought for. There is no time to lose. 

Now I know something about Socialism. I spent my early years living with my Grandmother, Hattie (nee Kruger) who was head on one of the main branches of the Socialist Parties in the US (the one with Eugene Debs). I heard the arguments, listened to the debates, and Hattie died a Republican.

Now for the student above. Socialism is not Marxism. Marxism demands what the student writes, that is the means of production be placed in the hands of the proletariat. But not even Stalin was as extreme as the author in abolishing borders and destroying nationalism. I would argue that nationalism was even a tool of Communism is properly applied.

What I find in my opinion and based in my experience is that these students are so poorly educated in the facts that they can make such absurd statements. From BU I can accept it, yet from MIT I find it strange. Then again I have no idea who the author is or represents.

Now for all would be Socialists, I take as an example of what may happen, the New Jersey Transit. This is a Government owned and operated local transit system, which is critical to the survival of the State since it sends millions back and forth every day making salaries which are in turn taxed. No train, no job, no money, no State. But what happens with this Government owned Socialistic entity. Colossal incompetence! It does not work, despite the left wing Goldman folks at the helm. Now look at AMTRAK, another example of gross incompetence, another state owned and managed entity. Keep looking folks and what do you see every time you look? A Socialistic mess. Now consider this at a Cancer hospital. It must be next to a crematorium so as not to back up traffic too much! One does not have to look very far to see Socialism fails and is harmful. Worse yet, Marxism is even more deadly.

C'est le meme chose, je pense?

From Larousse we have: 

Nationalisme. Mouvement politique d'individus qui prennent conscience de former une communauté nationale en raison des liens (langue, culture) qui les unissent et qui peuvent vouloir se doter d'un État souverain.

Patriotisme. Attachement sentimental à sa patrie se manifestant par la volonté de la défendre, de la promouvoir.

Synonymes : chauvinism, civisme, nationalisme

For those of you not speaking French, the last one states that nationalism and patriotism are synonyms. Thus I was a bit confused when the French President stated that they were unequal, especially when the French control their language so closely. 

I leave this debate to those who may know a bit more. But I think words count.

What is AI? Some Thoughts but not an Answer

In the book by Gerrish, How Smart Machines Think[1], the author purports to address the field of Artificial Intelligence by example, namely via the construct of machines that think. The examples he uses are chess playing, movie selection, the TV game of Jeopardy playing, playing Atari games or GO, and self-driving vehicles as examples. Now this does cover the field we generally call AI but it does present a powerful set of examples that demonstrate what AI may encompass.

The problem is that we can mostly agree as to what a machine is, simply hardware and software, plus some set of past and ongoing data regarding the target at hand but we have always had a difficulty of a clear definition of what thinking entails. We have had philosophers for centuries opining on this topic and thus despite a massive amount of new information of the neural process in the human we have the conundrum of definitions regarding a machine. At the best we have Turing and his putative definitions, which may be still quite wanting.

Instead of bemoaning the clarity in defining the process of thinking, and equally as well its correlative the term intelligence, we will focus a bit on the area of artificial intelligence as an artifact of computer science. All too often AI is in the eye of the beholder. Set loose upon the Press, it has almost taken a life of its own. Moreover, recently with the MIT push to create its first "college" as an entity almost sanctified by the AI mantra, it means whatever one seems to want it to mean. To that end we shall attempt to explore it a bit.

To start out, my view is shaped by half a century working on the periphery of AI. My personal experience is using what AI has as its fundamental techniques and applying them to a variety of situations. But before examining them let me step back a step. I would contend that much of what we are looking at today started with Wiener and his work on Cybernetics. It included McCullough, Pitts, Minsky, Papert, and even Chomsky to a degree. These were the idea folks, lacking the power of machines and with primitive algorithms. In many ways they were trying to emulate what they conceived of as the brain and its functions. I personally see a key initial played as Wiener, because he added the major element of uncertainty. One could see his gun tracking system as an integrated "thinking machine" and a world of uncertainty. Wiener's world was an analog world, which is how he envisioned things but also limited by the tools at hand. We have abandoned that world a bit but as we will see it may still be floating around in current thought.

Now to commence, there are two issues worth focusing on when examining AI. First, what types of embodiments would we generally accept as fitting the field of AI. Second, how is the field of AI practiced; namely are there a set of fundamental precepts and canonical tools or is it just a set of ad hoc problem solving. Thus, is AI akin to say 19^th century medicine. A collection of techniques that may or may not work depending on the patient and the disease. 21^st century medicine has become focused on causes and therapeutics that address the underlying causes. It is an extension of Koch's laws to genetic structures.

Let us consider several of the areas of "AI" focus and development. This is not a comprehensive list but merely descriptive. Minsky's landscape of AI, his book Society or Mind, is a somewhat rambling but highly insightful discussion of the dimensions. It has stood the test of time and is always worth a review.

1. Pattern Recognition

In a sense this is one of the oldest forms. It takes say a letter, A, and reads it and then using the output of the sensors determines the weighting that best gives A in the presence of 25 other letters. The list of letters is fixed as is their size and font type. The sensors are two dimensional and of a density that satisfies a reasonable text identification probability.

We can assume NXN or N2 sensors and the output of the sensors can be simply 0 or 1. We can then, assuming 26 letters, choose N2 weights so that by adding up the weighted N2 samples we can divide the output space into 26 regions each uniquely assigned to a specific letter. This is a simple pattern recognition algorithm. We optimize this by repetitively "teaching" the system by submitting the 26 letters again and again to maximize the detection rate and minimize the false alarm rate. We assume that some form of convergence exists.

Now there are many algorithms which have been developed for this class of problems. We can examine a finite set of precisely defined "letters" or objects and then begin to expand it to

We can even extend it to blood cell identification, and the whole field of pathology. Winston in the 1960s applied some of these techniques to blood analysis. The techniques have been also applied to EKG analyses. These however are significantly more complex. One can approach the EKG world from two dimensions. One is from the training perspective, where thousands of EKGs are presented and classified. Then the system uses this based to select a diagnosis. The second approach is the physical analysis approach. He we would assume to know the physio-electro dynamics of the heart. Then we would try to use the underlying model of reality to ascertain what was defective and attempt to match that with what we have observed thus identifying the underly defects from what has to change to match the results. It should be noted that the preceding two methodologies are also descriptors of the two sets of our attempts to describe how one gets to know things. Perhaps humans who are proficient in this area utilize both approaches.

The characteristics of this class of recognition system are:

1. Finite number of distinguishable classes of objects, albeit large classes.

2. Objects which have a finite set of identifiers, albeit large sets, such as shape, color, etc

3. Objects which are static during recognition

4. Finite sets, albeit large sets, of objects

2. Speech Recognition

Speech recognition has reached a reasonable level of usefulness. Speech recognition is an example of a trained technique to detect answers to question and ultimately the actual collection of fully forms speech. It has evolved extensively over the past three decades and many techniques are available. One may question whether this is AI or just a technology. The question may be; is the system making decisions of any type or just matching utterances with written words.

One could perhaps combine this with an quasi AI system which emulates an interview with a psychiatrist, a physician, a professor, and then from the results of the interaction makes certain decisions. Yet these elements transcend the tasks of speech recognition.

3. Text Translation

Text translation is a complex process. Transliteration generally leads to nonsense text. One language has a structure and nuance which be absent from another. Even dialects can be strikingly different. My Sicilian Italian learned in my childhood was incomprehensible in Florence and insulting in Milan. My translations of Dumas can be childlike whereas a good translator can convey the drama of the author. Then again translating Pushkin can be even more challenging. Finally one should try translating legal documents from Arabic to English. Culture, religion, different language structures all lead to cumbersome results.

To quote from Joseph Stalin, not one know for either academic excellence or a broad understanding of cultures:

Thus, a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people. But not every stable community constitutes a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, but nobody calls them nations. What distinguishes a national community from a state community? The fact, among others, that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a state need not have a common language. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish in Russia would be impossible if each did not have a common language, whereas the integrity of Russia and Austria is not affected by the fact that there are a number of different languages within their borders. We are referring, of course, to the spoken languages of the people and not to the official governmental languages.

Thus, a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation. This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all who speak one language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation which at one and the same time speaks several languages, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! Englishmen and Americans speak one language, but they do not constitute one nation. The same is true of the Norwegians and the Danes, the English and the Irish. But why, for instance, do the English and the Americans not constitute one nation in spite of their common language?

This quote is descriptive of the sensitivity of language. Yes, the English and American speak a similar and mutually understandable language. But there are fundamental differences and thus any language translation must take these into consideration. Thus far it does not appear that any AI system accomplishes this.

4. Text Interpretation

"What do you mean by that?" may be a frequent question. We understand what was said, we can translate it but we may still have a lacking of meaning.

5. Information Retrieval (Q and A)

The game of Jeopardy is a classic example of information retrieval, via a question and answer scenario. Specifically we deal with the Question as well as the answer. As described by Gerrish, the IBM approach was complex, because it first required the parsing of the question and seeing what was asked for. Typically in the game there are categories of questions and then in each category a set of questions seeking the identity of some person, place or thing for which the specific question is the answer. This is a bit the opposite of our usual way of processing since here we see the answer posed and then seek to pose the question. However the same may apply in reverse. In either case it is still merely a case of checking known facts. It is static and certain and the answer is almost always unique. It also is non-iterative, namely we get just one chance at selecting the "question". As such this is a clear case of information retrieval. It does add the dimension of parsing and syntax analysis.

6. Directed Decision Dynamics

Robotic assembly machines may fit this area. They are directed, they are dynamic, and they must make decisions. For example if we have an assembly line with multiple models of cars, there may be a multiplicity of assembly directions for each model. The robot must identify the car and perhaps even "see" the differences.

7. Undirected Decision Dynamics

Consider a game of cards, a random game of cards. Namely when the deal changes so too may the game. Five card stud and so forth may be chosen. Thus every time a new game starts the system must first ascertain what the game is and then learn it and then play it. This area naturally fits into what we have seen for decades as war games. Certain centers such as the Naval War College conduct a multiplicity of games to see what scenarios could be presented by a variety of putative adversaries. Then we examine the response and continue the effort. The 1984 movie, War Games is a classic initial presentation of taking this simulation approach, placing the "rules" on a computer, and hen taking the "human" out of the loop. War Games are a classic example of undirected decision dynamics. We do not know the game the adversary is playing and the only way to asses this is sampling highly uncertain information, possibly taking some action to see the response and then redirecting our efforts according to some overall metric of success.

The 1950-1970 period laid out a multiplicity of War Game Scenarios in a nuclear environment. Survival of a limited number of humans capable of reproducing was the acceptable end point. The destruction of society and billions was acceptable. Until some started to think a bit about this "mutual assured destruction" approach. Taking the "Games" and placing them on a computer would be the ultimate enablement of an undirected dynamic decision AI system. One would suspect that perhaps as in the film the ultimate decision is "not to play the game".

Now a recent case which may fit this scenario is that of the self-driving car. At best we may tell the vehicle the desired end point. We could equally ask the vehicle to take us to view the Fall foliage in New England, thus creating a second layer of vagueness but with some modicum of specificity.

8. Thinking

What is thinking. Does it mean I can write a poem? Write a short story. Devise a new algorithm or find a new chemical pathway or genetic pathway? Can some AI system develop a new philosophical approach, say aligning Wittgenstein and Heidegger? These become complex and beyond what may appear today.

However when we examine the machines that think which Gerrish describes we find a set of common threads.

1. Directed

All of the examples are task directed. They drive a car, play a game, work a test, and even may diagnose a disease. They are not general in any way.

2. Trained

They all get trained to do a task. Their advantage is the ability to look ahead but along the path already that they were trained upon.

3. Bounded

Each approach is limited to the task at hand and cannot readily or possibly at all be used for even a moderately different task. The machine plays Go, Chess, Atari Games, but cannot go laterally to another game.

4. Common Techniques

Whether we call it deep learning, neural nets, hidden Markov models or whatever, there are some common methodologies that enable the directed and learning to get the systems to maximize their performance. Driving a care has two objectives; get to where you want, and do so in a harmless a manner as possible. There is a path and there are exogeneous limitations.

Thus AI as a broad rubric can be understood as such, it yet fails to achieve what we saw a century ago in radio design for example.

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[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262038404/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Stalin, Nations and Nationalism

The following are the alleged writings of Stalin on nations. They are worth a read. We all too often see Stalin as merely the Soviet executioner. There was a thought process there as well. I make no comments on what follows.

What is a nation? A nation is primarily a community, a definite community of people. This community is not racial, nor is it tribal. The modem Italian nation was formed from Romans, Teutons, Etruscans, Greeks. Arabs and so-forth. The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans the Britons, Teutons, and so on. The same must be said of the British, the Germans and others, who were formed into nations from people of diverse races and tribes. Thus, a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people. On the other hand, it is unquestionable that the great empires of Cyrus and Alexander could not be called nations. although they claim to be constituted historically and were formed out of different tribes They were not nations, but casual and loosely-connected conglomerations of groups, which fell apart or joined together according to the victories or defeats of this or that conqueror.

Thus, a nation is not a casual or ephemeral conglomeration, but a stable community of people. But not every stable community constitutes a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, but nobody calls them nations. What distinguishes a national community from a state community? The fact, among others, that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a state need not have a common language. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish in Russia would be impossible if each did not have a common language, whereas the integrity of Russia and Austria is not affected by the fact that there are a number of different languages within their borders. We are referring, of course, to the spoken languages of the people and not to the official governmental languages.

Thus, a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation. This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all who speak one language necessarily constitute one nation. A common language for every nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation which at one and the same time speaks several languages, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! Englishmen and Americans speak one language, but they do not constitute one nation. The same is true of the Norwegians and the Danes, the English and the Irish. But why, for instance, do the English and the Americans not constitute one nation in spite of their common language?

Firstly, because they do not live together, but inhabit different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation. But people cannot live together for lengthy periods unless they have a common territory. Englishmen and Americans originally inhabited the same territory. England, and constituted one nation. After, one section of the English emigrated from England to a new territory. America, and there, in the new territory, in the course of time, came to form the new American nation. Difference of territory led to the formation of different nations.

 

Thus, a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation. But this is not all. Common territory does not by itself create a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic bond weakly the various parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such bond between England and America, and so they constitute two different nations. But the Americans v themselves would not deserve to be called a nation were not the different parts , of America bound together into an economic whole, as a result of division of labor between them, the development of means of communications and so forth

Take the Georgians, for instance. The Georgians before the Reform, inhabited a common territory and spoke one language. Nevertheless, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for, being split up into a number  of disconnected principalities, they could not share a common economic life; for centuries they waged war against each other and pillaged each other, each inciting the Persians and Turks against the other. The ephemeral and casual union of the principalities which some successful king sometimes managed to bring about embraced at best a superficial administrative sphere, and rapidly disintegrated owing to the caprices of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Nor could it be otherwise in economically disunited Georgia. . . . Georgia came on the scene as a nation only in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of means of communication and the rise of capitalism, introduced division of labor between the various districts of Georgia, completely shattered the economic isolation of the principalities and bound them together into a single whole.

The same must be said of the other nations which have passed through the stage of feudalism and have developed capitalism. Thus, a common economic life, economic cohesion, is one of the characteristic features of a nation. But even this is not all. Apart from the foregoing, one must take into consideration the specific spiritual complexion of the people constituting a nation. Nations differ not only in their conditions of life, but also in spiritual complexion, which manifests itself in peculiarities of national culture. If England, America and Ireland, which speak one language, nevertheless constitute three distinct nations, it is in no small measure due to the peculiar psychological make-up which they developed from generation to generation as a result of dissimilar conditions of existence. Of course, by itself, psychological make-up or, as it is otherwise called, 'national character,’ is something intangible for the observer, but in so far as it manifests itself in a distinctive culture common to the nation it is something tangible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, 'national character’ is not a thing that is fixed once and for all, but is modified by changes in the conditions of life; but since it exists at very given moment, it leaves its impress on the physiognomy of the nation. Thus, a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation. We have now exhausted the characteristic features of a nation. A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.

It goes without saying that a nation, like every historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its history, its beginning and end. It must be emphasized that none of the above characteristics taken separately is sufficient to define a nation. More than that, it is sufficient for a single one of these characteristics to be lacking and the nation ceases to be a nation.  It is possible to conceive of people possessing a common ‘national character who, nevertheless, cannot be said to constitute a single nation if they are economically disunited, inhabit different territories, speak different languages, and so forth. Such, for instance, are the Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and Caucasian Highland Jews, who, in our opinion, do not constitute a single nation.

It is possible to conceive of people with a common territory and economic life who nevertheless would not constitute a single nation because they have no common language and no common "national character". Such, for instance, are the Germans and Letts in the Baltic region. Finally, the Norwegians and the Danes speak one language, but they do not constitute a single nation owing to the absence of the other characteristics.

It is only when all these characteristics are present together that we have a nation

Reference: ‘The Nation', in Marxism and the Natural Question, from The Essential Stalin: Major

Theoretical Writings 1905-1952, ed. Bruce Franklin (Croom Helm: London, 1973), 57-61.