Good morning. Hello. How are you? #665
Emma's awesome "new" docs, mundane marital snappiness, dentist, Agency at seven, LaMDA, my superintelligence polling research, Chinese SETI takebacks, floatovoltaics, craven Ford dealers.
Hello! Good morning! What is up? Happy Thursday. My god I have a busy day today. I have meetings at 10, 11, 1, 2, 3 and 6. WHAT FUN. Gonna be great. Gonna be great.
I am still getting testimonials two days later about what a profound impact Tears for Fears had on people’s lives, people younger than me, and specifically “Break it Down Again” which is so, so fascinating. My wife is listening to “Break it Down Again” on repeat now. She’s also listening to a lot of Olivia Rodrigo which is very reassuring because for quite some time now I have thought that my wife would really like Olivia Rodrigo, but beyond “Driver’s License,” she hasn’t listened to much of her. I’m glad that is rectified. Apparently Jane is into her too. Lovely. I’m listening to the new Sacred Bones records complilation, Todo Muere SBXV, which has a killer Boris track and a great cover of Psychic TV’s “Godstar” and I am just discovering a band called The Hunt that sounds… a lot like Tears for Fears. Spotify tells me they have not made an album in nine years. I’m gonna need to learn more about them.
The other Tears for Fears story that I need to tell is about the boots. Because I should tell you about the boots. Emma reminded me of this yesterday. Back when we were in Boston, well, Somerville, we were at the playground with Jane, the one next to Sean and Jussi’s house, and Jussi said “Oh I need to give you those boots,” and she ran back to the house and got them and came back with a nearly mint condition of silver glittery Doc Marten eight-hole women’s boots. In the box. Jussi said that they were the first pair of shoes she bought with her first paycheck right after college so, you know, these Docs are, like, 26 years old. And they still had the box. And they were perfect. It was insane! What amazing boots! What a gift! How do you repay something like that? Fantastic. Jussi is a good friend.
SO, we’re going to Tears for Fears, we’ve arrived at the venue. There is a very long line of cars to park, it’s going very slow, and we are slowly passing by a parking entrance with security guards and attendants and shit waving people in and no one’s going in. It’s clearly an “official” lot cuz of the attendants and guards and stuff. Eventually we decide to go into the lot, we park in the back, up against some trees, trying to get some shade for the car since it’s 99°F out. Then we look at Google maps to get a sense of where we are and it’s faaaar to the venue. Or at least it looks like it on Google maps. We’ve never been here before. Emma has doubts, she wonders if we should move, I am impatient, as far as I’m concerned we’ve made our bed and need to lie in it, let’s get to walking. We get out of the car, and Emma has brought two pairs of shoes, and she holds up both pairs — a pair of black shoes and the sparkly Docs — and she’s like “which shoes should I wear?”
And in perfect impatient, unhelpful spouse mode, I semi-snap, “whichever ones are more comfortable.” I don’t care.
And then, the window rolls down of the little Mini next to us and both the man and the woman in there yell “Wear the cool sparkly ones!”
The Docs are so cool they inspire total strangers to weigh in on them.
And I have been caught in mundane marital snappiness, the sort of thing we do in spite of ourselves, but almost always in private. I have been caught red-handed. IU deserve the mockery.
And I feel I need to defend myself because at this point I could have been curt, or doubled down, or glared, but, naw, those people were 100% right and I was being a drip. And I just say “ha, yeah, you caught me I was being pretty lame there I am sorry wife,” and I proceed to tell the married couple all about the Docs, how they’re original, how she has the box, and how Jussi just gave them to Emma isn’t that cool? Really turned that thing around because I decided I was not right, did not need to be right, was, in fact, wrong, and it was better to own it.
The end.
Dentist was fine yesterday, they marvelled at the perfect condition of my teeth, they complimented me on my fine, fine dental care. Really sort of took me in and talked shop, it was great. We shot the shit about whether I made the right decision back when I was thirteen about keeping my wisdom teeth and, yeah, there’s technically enough room in there, but man is it tight, and flossing is a bitch and they were so impressed that even though flossing is such a bitch that my teeth literally rip Plackers to shreds, I still do it. I am a dedicated flosser.
Also the hygienist is a Timehopper, which is always nice.
Also nice is that a friend, an industry friend, who learned a lot from Agency and used it to help build his agency, sent me a gift basket of a bunch of delicious snacks and god damn if that doesn’t warm the heart, all from a book that was published seven years ago. I’ve been sort of half-assedly trying to get the rights to the book back from Crain and they haven’t said no, exactly. I think it’s time for a polishing off. The main advice and content of the book is 100% still dead-on and timely, but the case studies could use some updating, as well as the subtitle, which I never liked. Might be fun to put a new cover on it. I’ve always wrestled with the double-entendre of the name, the double-entendre of running an agency and having agency is so good, but the name is also sort of exclusionary, because the book is applicable to so many services and consulting companies that very studiously don’t call themselves agencies, or don’t consider themselves agencies, and although it’s always sold decently, I feel like it could have done better with a different name. Would be kind of funny to get the rights back and A/B test the exact same book with two different names.
So, regarding this Google employee who was tasked to determine the sentience of their AI engine LaMDA and then proceeded to do exactly that and decide that LaMDa was sentient. I seem to be alone among my friends in finding his story and determination semi-plausible? I am somewhat shocked at the universal derision and skepticism that he is facing. Rex does make a good point that it’s nice that the entire einternet is skeptical about something for once, and I suppose that’s true. So maybe I am the only sucker here, but… honestly… sentience seems like a pretty low bar. I am no expert here, but go ahead and google “Are animals sentient” and “are bugs sentient” and poke around a bit. I mean, you know, try and use some judgement and stick to only reasonable-looking likes since Google as a search engine is pure garbage and 99% of any batch of results will be absolute complte garbage these days and my god Google is absolutely contributing to the downfall of civilization it is just horrible. But putting that aside, the point here is that sentience is a very low bar? He is not saying that LaMDA has reached human-level intelligence, or superintelligence. He’s saying it’s aware of itself, can learn, adapt, sense things. A bug’s brain is, like, eighteen molecules (I am exaggerating). It does not shock me that the resources of one of the most rich and powerful organizations of humans in all of history can achieve something similar to the eighteen molecules in a big brain. This does nto seem to be a major scientific barrier or breakthrough. It seems perfectly plausible to me.
Which reminds me: five years ago or so, I undertook the largest — and, at the time, only public — public opinion survey about American attitudes to superintelligence and superintelligence research. Seemed to me it would be useful for people to know whether citizens of the country were cool with private companies spending billions trying to research ways to make us obsolete. And no one had ever run a poll about it. At least not publicly. I’m sure Google and some others had done some private polls (actually, I am not sure of this at all it wouldn’t surrise me if they never bothered, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if they had), but no one had published anything. No one. Seemed crazy. So I spent several thousand dollars out of my own pocket to run the first major public poll about superintelligence and public opinion. It was super fun! And it had an impact. I did conference calls with Harvard, MIT, Bostrom’s Future of Humanity Institute and Musk’s Open AI (makers of the Dall-E2 AI graphics engine that is currently enjoying a meme-y moment). I am obviously 100% not an expert in the field, but it was great talking to all of those people. It is stunning to me that, still, no one does this research on a regular basis.
Another fun thing that happened yesterday is that the Chinese announced that their SETI program had found evidence of alien life, and then took it back. So, you know, make of that what you will. If you have read the Three Body Problem books, you might now think about purchasing some land in Australia that isn’t in the ouback so, you know, when the time comes, you might have a decent plot.
Also, is outback capitalized? When talking about the Australian Outback? Actually seems like it should be. I’m not going to Google it because what’s the point.
And, finally, I learned about a thing called floatovoltaics, which is the installation of solar panels on water, usually man-mad bodies such as aqueducts and canals, so as to not disturb ecosystems. They are installing one of the largest floatovoltaic installations in the US at Fort Bragg, not too far from me. That seems cool. They are more expensive to install, but the water makes the ground area cooler, and at high temperatures, solar cells lose efficiency, so all things being equal, in warm climats floatovoltaics will be slightly more efficient than land-based solar systems. That is awesome. What a great word. floatovoltaics.
A+ to the photographer who felt zero compunction to frame, crop or shop that Lowe’s hardware bucket out of the photo.
I have officially given up on my quest to buy a car in the short term. I put a second offer in on a different Mach-E, and the dealer decided that $8,000 of additional, pointless, greedy markup beyond the MSRP was not enough, and they were sticking to their guns of demanding $15k of additional markup, for no reason. I mean, look at this window sticker, it is the abolute best, just total clown car action:
I fuckin love it. “Market adjustment.” Also the car is currently in recall and cannot be delivered until at least July. “This is the only way to get the car without waiting” the dealer said. “I would still have to wait,” I pointed out. He had no response. There are exactly two of this car, the version I want, in North Carolina. Neither dealer is willing to play ball. The additional markup at each dealer is $15k. I mean, I haven’t checked, for all I know the same people own both dealerships. Definitely two different cars, though, two different VINs.
But that $15k exactly makes the Mach-E GT PE a less-affordable, less-good deal than the comparable Model Y Performance. It is insanity. I mean, I personally, am never giving Elon Musk another dollar, fuck that guy and his flippant “I think I’ll support Ron DeSantis in the presidential” bullshit. Never. Again. A. Single. Dollar. But other people considering this model as a viable contendor to the Model Y performance are gonna think, yeah, no. A custom-order Model Y performance ships in August. This is so, so painfully self-defeating. I feel such sympathy for Ford Corporate. Their dealer network is an albatross of grift.
Moody and quiet playlist for you today, mostly new stuff, including the song I am listening to right now from this Sacred Bones comp, a few classics. Man that Sacred Bones comp was great, strong recommend. Some of these acts I barely know — Florist and La Luz and Holydrug Couple all require a bit more investigation but they show promise.
Okay! Talk tomorrow. Have a lovely Thursday.
The Break It Down Again popularity is fascinating to me, too (and a pleasant surprise). I remember thinking when it came out that it was not as huge a hit for them as usual, and I felt bad for them (him, i guess). Crazy to think that 29 years later i'd be learning how popular it really was. // Also with the Chinese/alien thing, everyone I know who has read The Three Body Problem got excited/nervous when that news came out...