My Breakfast Companion

 My friend will knock on the door until he gets peanuts! There every day!

Chevron Ends

 The Supreme Court finally did away with Chevron. The Court notes:

Rather than safeguarding reliance interests, Chevron affirmatively destroys them. Under Chevron, a  tatutory ambiguity, no matter why it is there, becomes a license authorizing an agency to change positions as much as it likes, with “[u]nexplained inconsistency” being “at most . . . a reason for holding an interpretation to be . . . arbitrary and capricious.” Brand X, 545 U. S., at 981. But statutory ambiguity, as we have explained, is not a reliable indicator of actual delegation of discretionary authority to agencies.Chevron thus allows agencies to change course even when Congress has given them no power to do so. By its sheer breadth, Chevron fosters unwarranted instability in the law, leaving those attempting to plan around agency action in an eternal fog of uncertainty. Chevron accordingly has undermined the very “rule of law” values that stare decisis exists to secure.

 To understand this issue consider a simple case of two parties entering to a contract. There comes a point when the parties disagree as to the meaning os a clause. It may have been poorly crafted by their attorney, usually the case. Normally the parties have agreed to either litigation in a certain court or arbitration under certain rules. 

However Chevron does not do this. Congress writes a law, and as is often the case it contains ambiguous or meaningless terms. Thus the parties, industry or individuals being one and the Executive being the other, would have gone to Court. A non involved third party. But Chevron said no, the Executive can decide whatever it means and the other party has to assent. There is no right to a third party remediation. Chevron created monsters in the Executive branch. Any un-elected bureaucrat can decide whatever they want and the citizens must agree of suffer.

This decision will have massive positive effects on industry. In my experience and in my opinion the US is the most regulated country I have ever operated in. Every action I took as a business was regulated down to the toilet tissues!  

Inflation Folks

 Just a note. Got Home Insurance bill, up 12% from last year. Up 90% since 2021! Not that house values increased, nor are we in high risk zone. This is called inflation folks. Food, gas, insurance, dental care,  clothes, etc. The things ordinary people pay for. I wonder when was the last time a President went food shopping, I yes, Bush I and he was clueless! I suspect it is just worse. Let's see tonight.

Andromeda Strain Redux: From the folks that brought you COVID!

 Back in the 60s I worked on the Apollo mission designing one of the navigation system elements. There was a serious concern about bringing something back from the moon landing. Layers of security, isolation, testing etc were applied.

Now the Chinese bring back soil samples from the dark side. God only knows what is in the soil. They just drop it in a field somewhere and treat if like its a delivery from Grub Hub!

What surprise will we get this time?

Daylilies

 If you wanty to track the dayliles see Telmarc Gardens.

Free Speech

 The Indispensible Right by Turley is an exceptionally well written and structured presentation of the position of the First Amendment right to free speech since the founding of the country. Although the Amendment states that free speech shall not be abridged, over the nearly 250 years of this country group after group, Administration after Administration have found ways and means to go around the right of free speech. The use of the less well defined assertion of sedition has been used to attack those not in power by those in power.

 My view of many of these issues is somewhat nuanced and reflects personal contact with those whose free speech was encumbered by Presidents. As Turley opens with Ms Whitney, an alleged communist in the early part of the twentieth century, it was my grandmother, Hattie Kruger, who was arrested by Wilson and thrown in the Occoquan prison with six other women for protesting outside the White House with suffragists. Imprisoned for sign holding outside the White House, by direct order of Wilson, the seven women were dragged to the prison, hosed down in frigid November weather, force fed by hose, and allowed no counsel. Occoquan was the Guantanamo of Wilson’s time. Women were the Al Qaeda of his period as well. But the crime of the women was just their right to free speech.

 Turley takes the reader from one act of free speech suppression to another over 250 years. From Adams, to Jefferson, to Jackson, Lincoln, yet somehow missing Wilson. On p 153 Turley seems to glorify Wilson as a defender of rage rhetoric. In my opinion and in my experience such could not be farther from the truth. Wilson made propaganda a key element of his Administration (see Bernays, Propaganda. Bernays was one of Wilson’s chief propagandists and his work made it to Madison Avenue for decades), he made it the driver for the entry into WW I. Wilson was a manipulative southerner and Turley’s reference to Wilson’s work on Constitutional Government was far from the interpretation of many. Wilson saw a Parliamentary system as a better one and he rejected many elements of the Constitution.

 Overall the book is easy to read for those not fully engaged in the topic for a period of time. It is an excellent overview of how free speech has been curtailed historically.

 The book begins with an attempt to address the question of what is a “right” and what is the basis for these rights. In this context there is the concept of natural rights, those rights that are assumed to have some universality. The origin of this rights is debatable, as from God, or as a fundamental part of the human psyche. The author examines many of these dimensions. Locke has been the alleged basis for property rights for example. Namely property rights result from the act of human work on unencumbered land for example. Then there is the concept that rights are a result of the human brains function. In my view it is a limbic system functionality. The classic example is a two year old and their toy. Try taking it away and the child screams “mine!”. Parents then attempt to mollify this limbic response to a right to property by saying the child should “share” and this does not always work. Natural Rights lead to Natural Law. In Ockham’s case he sees a distinction between God given Natural Rights and the rights mandated by law. Thus one can question that Freedom of Speech is either a Natural Right, a legal right, or both.

 The book proceeds through various examples of Freedom of Speech and the suppression of it by Government. In this context we use one assumes the legal right of Free Speech. The most compelling violation of Free Speech in my opinion is the Bebs case. The author focuses on weaknesses of the Court and especially Holmes in deciding this case. However Deb, a Socialist, was arguing against the War, WW I. The Congress had passed an Act prohibiting any speech against the War, a clear violation of the First Amendment. The Court in the Debs case blatantly followed the Congress and denied the Constitution. Silencing a political adversary via the law and the Court had become a common practice. Debs was subsequently pardoned. This is in contrast to the Goldman case, a foreign born national and communist, not a socialist. Goldman gets set back from whence she came because the communists fundamentally argued for an overthrow of the Government, not a Free Speech issue. The Debs decision really needs more depth. It is in my opinion a key landmark in a poor Court. The details behind Debs, its context, the Socialists etc need to be placed in context. For example, the counterpoint of Ema Goldman and the communists set an alter example. Goldman was not a natural born citizen, thus there was a place to return her to. Also the communists desired to truly overthrow the Government and replace it with communism. Socialists in extreme wanted public utilities so that water and sewers worked.

 Finally the author deals with the current Trump issues. Here things, in my opinion, get a bit muddy, mainly due to the timeliness of the case.  Did Trump incite to riot, or was it just free speech? Will the Court be Holmesian or extend the First Amendment accordingly? Is there a clear line between Free Speech and the limits thereto?

Inflation and a Container of Laundry Soap. Weimar Anyone?

 I am the shopper for the house. I know prices from week to week, record them and compare. For inflation. Well today my hat blew off! A container of Tide at Stop and Shop was $18. A month ago it was $12! That is 50% price increase a month or more than 600% a year. Recall Weimar Germany. 

The economy is the key driver in this election. Soap, meat, gasoline (if you can still be allowed to buy it), clothes, etc is increasing at a phenomenal rate. These are the things normal people consume. CATV increases at 12% pa. Local train service 25% pa. 

It will be interesting to see if people really vote their pocket book, if they still have one!

After some thought I concluded this is a strategy to use less energy. If one cannot afford to wash clothes, then one cannot use energy in the washer, in the hot water heater, in the dryer, etc. Furthermore, clothes are now dirty, smelly, and makes for anti-social environment. Thus person to person communications is reduced and reliance is increased in propaganda type social media. Control is increased. Just a thought.

UPDATE: Yikes it is now at $22 per container! The price has jumped another $4 in just two days! Welcome to Weimar folks, get the wheel barrows out!

AI and the Pope

 A few months back I wrote a Note on the issue of "what is AI". It appears that everyone knows but no one agrees. Now the Pope and his band of followers is lecturing world leaders.

In the Guardian, they note:

Global governance is now over AI like a rash. The EU, never slow to regulate in the digital field, has passed an act that seeks to regulate AI in the EU to ensure it is “aligned with human rights, democratic integrity, and the rule of law”. Canada is broadly following suit. The UK and the US are being less prescriptive. So how does the pope fit into this patchwork tapestry? It is to Meloni’s credit that she is attempting to build on Japan’s work rather than set off in an entirely new direction. Indeed she has described AI as “the main challenge we face, anthropologically, economically, productively and socially”. But she has attached herself to the pope, partly because the pope himself is leaning on the thinking of a Franciscan friar Paolo Benanti – who has in turn become central to her own thinking, turning up as her adviser to meetings with titans such as Bill Gates.  Under-shaved, brown-robed and jovial, Benanti is adept at explaining how technology can change the world, “with humans ceding the power of choice to an algorithm that knows us too well. Some people treat AIs like idols, like oracles, like demigods. The risk is that they delegate critical thinking and decisional power to these machines.” AI is about choices. He points out: “Already a few tens of thousands of years ago, the club could have been a very useful tool or a weapon to destroy others …”The Italians, not pioneers in the technology, warn that AI prefigures a world in which progress does not optimise human capabilities, but replaces them

 If one looks closer one sees again the lack of any specific definition. Banning opioids is somewhat easy, we know the chemical structure. Banning or regulating AI is a lost cause. First everything is now AI yet no one can define it. I guess it is like pornography, you know it when you see it? Hardly.

The risk is having controlling individuals take it upon themselves to posit definitions at will.

Misinformation or Propaganda?

 I never use X, Facebook, etc. I have known since their beginning that they are powerful propaganda tools tuned to influences specific individuals. One must be quite naive to believe that any of these platforms convey facts. 

In fact, facts are all too often lacking in almost all reporting. Facts are elusive, confusing, not readily available, and also do not convey the message desired by the platform they appear upon.

My information gathering is eclectic and idiosyncratic. I use Feedly and examine up to 30+ news sites in multiple languages. From Le Monde, to the Guardian, to various Hong Kong papers, to the Jerusalem Post and Saudi press. Each has its own ax to grind and each may contain some facts but a great deal of opinion.

In a recent Science paper they note:

Similarly, public discourse about social media has been shaped by the assumption that platform algorithms are the primary cause of exposure to false and extremist content online. For example, a 2022 article in The New York Times begins by stating that “It is well known that social media amplifies misinformation and other harmful content” and then proceeds to cite non-academic work by an advocacy group. Broad assertions like these neglect a growing body of research on consumer demand for false and extremist content, the role of media and political elites in exposing people to misinformation, and how platform affordances enable the distribution of such content to subscribers and followers. In short, although algorithms indisputably shape the content people see, we interpret recent empirical evidence as suggesting that, on average, these algorithms tend to push users to more moderate content and to offer extreme content predominantly to those who have sought it out. Increasing public attention to this research will help to foster a broader conversation about other mechanisms of misinformation dissemination and harm besides algorithms.Finally, social media is particularly vulnerable to the human tendency to confuse correlation with causation. Surveys show that US citizens blame social media for the spread of misinformation, political incivility and even political violence This tendency may reflect the temporal association between social media usage levels and negative social trends of the past two decades as well as the way in which social media content refracts societal ills. However, much of the research explicitly designed to identify causal effects does not support these claims

The NY Times is notorious for selling its advocacy propaganda before any "factual" news. Even the factual news can be infected with internal positions. Thus to gather true facts, if such were possible, one must examine data across a wide set of sources and totally avoid the social media platforms. Despite the last sentence above, well crafted propaganda can exist and be quite difficult to ascertain.

The Other D Day

 The D Day we all are reminded of by the Press is the one in Europe. At the same time in the Pacific there was an equivalent, namely the capture of Saipan and Tinian. Tinan was critical for the B 29 attacks on Japan. Saipan was a Jap fortress.

The following are press samples from that time.

 My father's ship, the Albert W Grant played a key role. It is worth recalling the global scope of that War, something we could very well expect again. It is also important to recall that the Admirals and Generals who conducted the war were not the ones there at the beginning.

Does Science Demand Publication?

 In a debate between Musk and Yann LeCun who is at Meta, aka Facebook, they argue over what is "science". LeCun demands peer reviewed publications. The Nature article notes:

LeCun, chief scientist at tech giant Meta who is known for his foundational work in deep learning and neural networks called out Musk’s post, saying that he “claims to want a “maximally rigorous pursuit of the truth” but spews crazy-ass conspiracy theories on his own social platform”. It escalated quickly, with Musk questioning what science LeCun had done in the past 5 years. LeCun, who also holds an academic post in AI at New York University in New York City, replied: “Over 80 technical papers published since January 2022. What about you?” LeCun then posted saying “if you do research and don’t publish, it’s not Science”. He argued that research is only ‘science’ when it is collected as a body of knowledge, tested for correctness and reproducibility, and then published. “Technological marvels don’t just pop out of the vacuum. They are built on years (sometimes decades) of scientific research,” he said. Without sharing that scientific information, “technological progress would slow to a crawl”.

The Frenchman perhaps forgot Darwin, Darwin took forever to publish his work. In today's world publishing comes in a variety of means and methods. Ironically in the same issue of Nature they note:

The retraction rate for European biomedical-science papers increased fourfold between 2000 and 2021, a study of thousands of retractions has found. Two-thirds of these papers were withdrawn for reasons relating to research misconduct, such as data and image manipulation or authorship fraud. These factors accounted for an increasing proportion of retractions over the roughly 20-year period, the analysis suggests. “Our findings indicate that research misconduct has become more prevalent in Europe over the last two decades,” write the authors, led by Alberto Ruano‐Ravina, a public-health researcher at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Other research-integrity specialists point out that retractions could be on the rise because researchers and publishers are getting better at investigating and identifying potential misconduct. There are more people working to spot errors and new digital tools to screen publications for suspicious text or data.

That is, many published papers are useless. The Frenchman seems to neglect reality. Science is a progression of ideas and counter ideas. Some are correct and some need alterations. I have found that "publishing" draft ideas of value, having had some 100,000 readers. Some ideas may be great, others lacking. My Technical Reports all are DRAFT and subject to revision. The Frenchman seems to have that  arrogance I have seen frequently in those of self-possessed excellence, yet lacking in substance.