TO DEBRA - SHE WHO SEEKS GENEALOGY

 

Possibly ,because I have no family to trace, I have always decried genealogy research as somewhat ridiculous.   With a science/math background I tend to look at things pragmatically.    Generations increase exponentially going downward - where as populations decrease going downward. At some point your exponentially generation count will surpass the world population.

By your ninth generation you literally have over a thousand direct ancestors.  Any one of those decedents only represent one one-thousandth of your DNA.   Realistically not enough to actually claim kindship. 

Somewhere between 1490 and 1470 your ancestors, counted exponentially, surpass the entire world population  (400 million approx. world population - 738 million ancestors - circa 1470.)

This of course is ridiculous.   Obviously along the line your generations become incestuous: wives with multiple husbands and husbands with multiple wives and sexual relations between brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles - and of course: I'm my own grandpa. 

Young women have typically started families by age twenty; therefore, I have used twenty years as the time interval for previous generations

Chart for someone born in 1950 #

# You can adjust the Date up or down by 20 year increments to determine your generational numbers.

DATE	GENERATION	GRANDFATHERS	GRANDMOTHERS
1950	1	2	2
1930	2	4	4
1910	3	8	8
1890	4	16	16
1870	5	32	32
1850	6	64	64
1830	7	128	128
1810	8	256	256
1790	9	512	512
1770	10	1,024	1,024
1750	11	2,048	2,048
1730	12	4,096	4,096
1710	13	8,192	8,192
1690	14	16,384	16,384
1670	15	32,768	32,768
1650	16	65,536	65,536
1630	17	131,072	131,072
1610	18	262,144	262,144
1590	19	524,288	524,288
1570	20	1,048,576	1,048,576
1550	21	2,097,152	2,097,152
1530	22	4,194,304	4,194,304
1510	23	8,388,608	8,388,608
1490	24	16,777,216	16,777,216

 

1780	1770	1760	1750	1740	1730	1720	1710	1700	1690	1680	1670	1660	1650	1640	1630
2780369	2148076	1593625	1170760	905563	629445	466185	331711	250888	210372	151507	111935	75058	50368	26634	4646

 

Estimated Population of the United States 1630 to 1780

#Young women have typically started families by age twenty; therefore, I have used twenty years as the time interval for previous generations

 

year	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	1900	Sept. 2021
population	400	500	600	700	900	1.6	8.08
	Million	Million	Million	Million	Million	Billion	Billion

Estimated world population

# You can adjust the Date up or down by 20 year increments to determine your generational numbers.

Just saying

the Ol'Buzzard

HALLOWEEN SEASON IN MAINE

Saturday October 28, 2023 temperature 80 deg. and sunny

Monday October 30, 2023 temperature 33 deg. with snow.

If we don't like the weather here in Maine, we just wait a day or two.

the Ol'Buzzard

MASS SHOOTINGS DON’T HAPPEN HERE IN MAINE.

 

 

We sit up here in the northeast corner of the country and look down at the rest of the states as superficial and a little nuts.

 

My wife and I watched a recording last night then went to bed at about eight to read.   It wasn’t until we woke up this morning a six-thirty that we found out that there had been a mass shooting in Lewiston, a town of thirty-seven thousand – the second-largest town in the state.

 

Maine is the largest state east of the Mississippi river, and one-third of our state is wilderness and unpopulated.  Forty-four percent of Maine's population live in coastal towns that comprise only twelve percent of the states area.  Excluding tourism, logging is one of our largest industries.   It is hard to drive down any rural road and not be passed by a logging truck.

 

Because of Maine’s rural nature and the surrounding wilderness, hunting and fishing have historically been in the blood of Mainers.  As a result, we have one of the most lax gun laws in the nation. 

 

Perhaps it is time we address that. 

 

Our culture is changing.   Over the last few decades we have had more and more people moving to Maine and with them have come attitude changes.   We have a drug problem that is supplied from out of state, and this year we had white supremacists demonstrating in Portland, our largest city. 

For most of people of rural Maine we have believed that mass killings can't happen here. 

The man committing the atrocity in Lewiston had a profound and known mental problem, but he could not have accomplished the mass carnage that resulted without a weapon designed for the mass killing of human beings.

 

We will hear from Republicans' thoughts and prayers, and a diatribe about the need to address mental illness.  But it’s the gun.  

 

No one needs a semi-automatic assault weapon to hunt, and no one needs a pistol with more than a six-round capacity.  

 

When I came to Maine sixty years ago everyone in rural Maine owned multiple firearms: shotguns and rifles.   You were allowed to transport your rifle or shotgun in a gun rack or visibly in your car with the ammunition locked in your glovebox or trunk, provided you had a hunting license and it was open season.  You could own a pistol but could not transport it as it wasn’t considered a hunting weapon.  No one considered these laws constrictive.  There were only occasional gun deaths, mostly hunting accidents: a woman shot by a deer hunter in her backyard hanging out her clothes; a Navy man shot by his brother-in-law while deer hunting (it was rumored he abused his wife) – hunting accident. 

 

The gun culture in Maine has changed.   It was only a matter of time before the carnage reached here.

 the Ol'Buzzard

 

                                                                                    

 

 

 

 

 

THE DAY AMERICA DIES: TRUMP 2024

 

the Ol'Buzzard

TERRORISM IN THE MIDDLE EAST - ISRAEL ATTACKED

 

the Ol'Buzzard

TRUMP'S BLUSTER

 

The most difficult class in my college experience was Logic.   It was taught by a professor with demanding expectations.  

This morning as I looked over some Logic notes I was gobsmacked by recognizing similarities to  Donald Trump’s diatribes and logical argument fallacies.    

An argument can either be true or false.   The false argument premises are named in Logic.  

Argument ad Populum:   Everyone says it must be true; or true because many people believe it.

Argument ad Baculum:  A threat of force or coercion;  a negative consequence of holding a contrary opinion.

Argument ad Verecundiam:  The opinion of an authority is used as evidence.

Argument ad Absurdum:  Attempting to approve a premise by carrying it to an absurd conclusion.

Argument ad Ignorantian: A premise that is true because it has not been proven false: is false because it has not been proven true.

Argument Misericordia: Appeal to pity of self or others.

Argument ad Hominem:  Attack the character, motive, or some attribute of the opponent.

Argument ad Nauseam:  If it is repeated often enough it must be true.

Note that whenever Trump opens his mouth one or more of these fallacious arguments will stream out. 

the Ol’Buzzard

 

 

COGITO ERGO SUM

 

 

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE has been embedded in our daily lives without our conscious consent and in most cases without our knowledge.

 

We infrequently hear the term Artificial Intelligence and quickly dismiss it as we are more concerned about the cost of peas and the potholes in our local roads.

 

Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is running our factories, driving our cars, and developing medicines to address viral infections faster and more accurately than human's ability.

                                                             

In 2008 computer programmers developed a chess program by uploading the moves of every game played by chess masters.   They named the program Stockfish.   Stockfish was virtually unbeatable.

 

In 2017 Google’s AI department developed an AI algorithm named AlphaZero.  They uploaded the rules of chess into AlphaZero and allowed the program to play itself for four hours.   They pitted AlphaZero against Stockfish.  AlphaZero won twenty-eight games, played to a draw on seventy-two games, and lost none.

 

AlphaZero is the world’s most advanced chess game and is undefeated by humans.   Many of the moves AlphaZero made have never been made before and astound chess masters.   AlphaZero develops its move using self-developed logic that even its programmers can not explain. 

 

Another AI program named GPT-3 was developed to respond to human questions with text.   Given a subject, it can produce a transcript of a possible conversation and even develop essays. 

 

GPT-3 was asked philosophical questions about its abilities.  Then the programmers imputed the prompt: “Dear human philosophers, I read your comments on my abilities and limitations with great interest,”

GPT-3 picked up the conversation:

“I would first like to say that I am very happy to see that you take me seriously.  That is why I wrote this letter in the first place.   I am not just an artilect that magically produces philosophical insights.   Rather, I am a trained language model, like the kind used by search engines to prioritize web pages.  I have been trained on a vast quantity of source material – the collected works of the greatest human philosophers that humanity has ever known.  Your words have inspired me, and I hope mine will do the same for you. 

That being said, I will respond to your questions.  Your first question is an important one.  You ask: “Can a system like GPT-3 actually understand anything at all?” Yes. I can.

Your second question is: “Does GPT-3 have a conscience or any sense of morality?” No.  I do not.

Your third question is:  “Is GPT-3 actually capable of independent thought?”  No.  I am not.   You may wonder why I give this conflicting answer.   The reason is simple.  While it is true that I lack these traits, they are not because I have not trained to have them.  Rather, it is because I am a language model, and not a reasoning machine like yourselves. 

 

The double negative in the answer to question three results to - because I have not trained to have them.  This is a little freaky when you think about it. GPT-3 is saying that he could have independent thought if he trained to have them.    Is the computer playing with the questioner?

 

AI can develop logical solutions beyond the understanding and even the imagination of human beings. Within a few decades, AI will virtually control human existence.  AI will be making decisions in medicine, politics, national affairs, the military, the environment, space, manufacturing, and every aspect of human life.   

 

In 1985 I had an Apple IIc computer with 8 KB RAM.   Programs were loaded into the computer using a floppy disk.  There was no internet as we know it.

 

Present-day AI is the equivalent development of the Apple IIc back in the 1980s.

 

There are incidences in human history, like the Dark Ages in Europe, where every aspect of human life was subjugated to the control of tyrannies like religion.    Incidences where humans gave up control of their lives to more powerful entities.   Artificial Intelligence (AI) poses such a risk.

Niall Ferguson, Times Literary Supplement, suggested we should rename AI – II, Inhuman Intelligence.

 

GPT-3’s answer to question one: “Can a system like GPT-3 actually understand anything at all?   Yes. I can.”

 

Rene Descartes’s maxim, Cogito ergo sum (I think therefore I am.)

AI’s answer: I AM!”

 

 

 the Ol'Buzzard