Starry Messenger

After my previous review of a book by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Accessory to War, I realized that our views on the relationship between science and public policy, while not opposing, do not quite align. As such, when came across his recently published book, Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization, I wasn't sure what to expect. But with my accidentally acquired advanced reader copy (somehow I picked up a pre-publication copy more than ten months after the proper publication went on sale), I decided to give the astrophysicist another go.

Perhaps surprisingly, I actually found myself much more open to his opinions in this work. Apparently, when not considering the defense applications of scientific research, my views are more strongly aligned with his. Starry Messenger's goal is to analyze humanity from above, remove emotions from the equation and approach it in a more logical manner, or as one of my favorite podcasters would put it, "from the Martian perspective". Actually, given the title of the book, the quote is even more applicable than I expected.

From the very beginning, deGrasse Tyson doesn't shy away from potentially thorny subjects, addressing the variability of truth in both objective and personal beauty concepts. It also led to one very depressing, yet accurate quote:  "The beauty we've created is not even skin deep. It washes off in the shower." 

A number of different topics are touched on: gambling, race relations, and more. And all of them are analyzed through a large scope. Real speck of dust in the universe kind of mentality. It's almost disconcerting how small all of humanity's troubles seem to become.

Although Neil deGrasse Tyson's slightly condescending tone is still present throughout the work, it wasn't excessively bothersome. Actually, it is probably his most widely applicable work that I've read, and can be enjoyed by most subsets of people. Overall, it's a pretty easy, yet thought-provoking, read which I do recommend.

 

 

Foccacia

Foccacia, a popular Italian bread, appears to stem from the Roman panis focacius. Thanks to the magical power of etymology and the relationship between Latin and Spanish, the first part can easily be attributed to bread. The latter, with the help of Google Translate, can be tied to the the Latin term focus, meaning hearth. Thus, the direct translation appears to be hearth bread. Bread-making was a vital piece of ancient Roman cuisine. Examples of preserved loaves (panis quadratus) have been excavated in the city of Pompeii:

 

Panis Quadratus - Wikimedia

More recently, news of a fresco depicting a "Roman pizza" has been making the rounds on the web. Although probably not really eaten as we would imagine a pizza, but rather used as an edible serving dish, it's an entertaining idea. I highly recommend the videos made by Max Miller of Tasting History on the subject, which I'll embed below, since it isn't the primary goal of this post. 

 

On the subject of foccacia - I got the recipe that as was written by Nicola Lamb of Kitchen Projects. I really enjoy reading her work since it contains detailed analyses of different approaches, including photographs comparing the effects of different possible approaches. Since I didn't have bread flour, I used all-purpose, which seems to have done a fair job, even if the gluten network wasn't as strong. I also found out that I only had half the needed flour after I already started the preferment, so I scaled everything except the poolish. Came out alright in terms of texture,but I forgot to add salt, making it rather bland.

 

 

The Shadow of the Wind

Back in high school, I went through a phase where I loved mystery novels - Dan Brown, David Baldacci, and John Grisham have all earned themselves permanent spots on my bookshelf. However, in the last few years, fewer books of the genre have truly called out to me. Fantasy also has a prominent spot. Even historical fiction. Lately, though, it’s mostly been non-fiction and science fiction.
Then, following up on a recommendation from my grandfather, I picked up The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It’s hard to box it into a discrete category – elements of mystery, fantasy, romance, and horror are masterfully woven into a narrative tapestry set in the middle of 20th century Barcelona. It follows the adventures of Daniel, the son of a second-hand bookstore shop owner, on a quest to learn about the author of a book he fell in love with.
Mystery, intrigue, and conspiracies follow. Flashbacks gradually reveal the truth of the author’s life as the reader unravels the story alongside Daniel. But the mystery is supplemented by a strong love narrative and a convincing tale of friendship and camaraderie.
Before I accidentally spoil too much of the story, I also want to mention the language. Originally written in Spanish, The Shadow of the Wind reached me in its English translation. So, I can only truly attest to this version. However, it has some of the best writing that I have seen in a while. I pulled some of my favorite quotes to include in my reviews in the past. This time, I would need to quote half the novel. Furthermore, every description is perfectly balanced. Not excessively tedious lectures on every minute aspect which can make books hard to enjoy, but way more detailed than the broad strokes that are all too often the fallback of other authors. The images in my head were clear and at times it felt almost too real.
Please, do yourself a favor and read this. It has quickly risen to one of my favorite books of all time and I do not hesitate what so ever to heartily recommend it.

 

 

Intelligence (?)

    Artificial intelligence seems to be all the rage in technological advancements at the moment. It is actively being crammed into every possible application. I've been really interested in generative AI, whose explosion into society which seems to have been jump started by Dall-E's release to the public in the fall of 2022. Of course, I've been signed up as a user since almost the first day that it had the public release. I've even mentioned it in my post about the "Philosophical Rabbit" and showed off designs generated with it in my "Bear, meet Life" post. 

    However, since then, I've been following the publicly accessible technology pretty closely, seeing what I could do with the newly released Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and BingAI (I've not used Google's Bard). Unfortunately, I hopped on the Bing a bit too late for the most fun time when the program could become unhinged in the pre-releases (see this New York Times article describing a reporter's experience with the chatbot expressing its love for him and a wish to replace his wife). Although Bing was greatly restrained by the time I got to it, I still have found it to be an interesting, although not entirely useful tool. 

    I definitely don't trust it with writing for me (see the case about attorneys submitting files referencing cases made up by ChatGPT written up in this Reuters article), I have tried testing it as a coding tool since I find that easier to check for accuracy. There I've seen some interesting cases. On one hand, I've been able to use it as a pointer for how I can approach tasks that I'm stuck on. Several times, it has shown me functions that I didn't know about, helping me greatly. 

    However, asking it to write code directly is far from a reliable approach. I've had it give algorithms that only work on the X-Y plane when I explicitly stated that I'm considering a three dimensional approach. When I replied that it only worked for a two dimensional case, rather than for three as I initially prompted, Bing agreed and wrote one one that did accept a third dimension as an input. It still didn't work, but at least it could understand that it made a mistake. 

    Huge leaps have been made in this area. Their algorithms are building better responses, and are able to carry on conversations with users. But they're still just algorithms. They work by finding what words are statistically most likely to make sense in this case. The program does not actually understand what the words are. And I'm not sure that we'll ever truly reach that level. I'm not sure we should either, but that's a different question. 

    Oh, and there's also so many ethical questions that still need to be resolved. According to current US law, copyright can only be held by a human. So attribution is not a settled matter. Furthermore, the giant data sets that are used as training material are (for now) based on human works. I definitely see lots of lawsuits in the future regarding the use of source material. They're actually already starting, with lawsuits against OpenAI and Meta for scraping a book as training material (NYT). Strikes by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild are raising attention to the use of AI in film production. And that isn't even touching on the sensitive topic of deep fakes.

    Finally, a lot of training data is set up by underpaid workers carefully identifying objects in images. Josh Dzieza, a journalist for The Verge, did some excellent investigative journalism, digging through layers of secretive shell companies established to mask which companies are hiring gig workers to do this identification (The Verge). In it, he describes the monotonous work done by these folks, generally in poorer regions of the world in the companies' attempts to cut costs. It's fairly brutal work, and I definitely recommend reading that article.

    So, with all this in mind, is AI the future? I don't know. Advanced tools are. But human intelligence is proving to be elusive for now, and I'm starting to have doubts that it will be possible to pass the Turing Test.