Maybe I’m local
On Thursdays, I try to remember to go to the Thursday market that materialises every week just a couple of blocks away. Have I already told you about the Thursday market There’s an egg lady and a vegetable guy and there’s a man selling fish. There is a cheese stand and a bakery, but I don’t buy from that baker. Once I heard him being snarky to a woman because she asked a question. There’s a new meat lady, and I happened to be there on the former meat lady’s last day. She retired, and on her last day there was a construction worker in line in front of me who was visibly upset that she was retiring. They chatted for an inordinate amount of time. I haven’t seen either of them since. This week the egg lady was on a video call when I went to get some local, organic, free range eggs. She was helping someone on her farm find a chicken – apparently that one likes to run off into the rafters. The worker was a bit frantic. The egg lady mouthed our entire interaction including an “Entschuldigung!” (sorry!) and I just smiled really big.
I remember once that the doorbell rang. I hadn’t known that my doorbell worked. Certainly it worked only sometimes. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard the doorbell. I stumbled to the bedroom window, and stood there looking down at the policeman standing outside the gate. Everyone’s worst nightmare. I’d been awoken by the police. I remember feeling like I was in a dream. The policeman was alert. I was half asleep. “Ma’am, do you have chickens?” he asked, and I realized that I was actually awake.
I have the type of life in which police officers involve me in their investigations of dead chickens and the egg lady involves me in her case of the missing chicken.
I used to be better at shutting down the part of my brain that worries about the state of the world. Lately, though, I’ve been struggling to remember that version of myself. I enjoy those worlds in which Big Tech and AI and corporate greed and global politics don’t really exist. The microcosm of the Thursday market is the kind of salve I need a lot more regularly.
- 368 Chickens > https://368chickens.com
- This is why I’ll never be an adult > https://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/06/this-is-why-ill-never-be-adult.html
- All the flash games you forgot the names of > https://flashmuseum.org/
Maybe I’m a shortcut
We are conditioned to think that computing machines tell us facts. They run on mathematics, it’s not philosophical, there’s no nuance. There are only zeros and ones. It’s binary. True or false. Math is one of those hard sciences. We expect computers to tell us facts, which is why AI’s unwavering confidence strikes me as particularly dangerous. Even brains who know how LLMs work, even brains who understand that predictive algorithms aren’t always serving up the right prediction, even brains who get that the machine is as likely to make something up as not – even those brains are keen to take shortcuts.
Outsourcing responsibility to a machine is a shortcut, and there’s nothing inherently bad about it. It’s ok to take shortcuts sometimes. The problem is that we are ridiculously good at taking the wrong shortcuts, the shortcuts that get us mired in a swamp. The ones that are hard to turn back from. Bias is a shortcut. Stereotypes are shortcuts.
I am interested in understanding, at least, what shortcuts I’m taking. We have time to take the long way around.
- Darwin’s AI: What happens when technology locks in its era’s values? > https://experiments.friendsoftheearth.uk/blog/darwins-ai-what-happens-when-technology-locks-its-eras-values
- The 3 AI Use Cases: Gods, Interns, and Cogs > https://www.dbreunig.com/2024/10/18/the-3-ai-use-cases-gods-interns-and-cogs.html
- Elon Musk’s A.I.-Fuelled War on Human Agency > https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/elon-musks-ai-fuelled-war-on-human-agency
Maybe I need help
I’m doing A LOT better today. I was sick and then I was depressed and now my brain has decided I’m allowed to have a bit of dopamine and energy. So naturally it’s pissing rain and I’ve got chores to do.
How have you been? Hit reply and let me know.