Here and There #35

Immigrants, grocery pricing, bite-marks as evidence, AI, Judge Cannon, computer science, and Paul Simon

One of the huge myths—really, lies—being purveyed by the Republicans and especially DJT, both in the past and in the present, is that immigrants are creating a huge crime wave. This is simply not true.

Do you use the GasBuddy app to get the best price on gasoline in your neighborhood or when traveling? We already know that gasoline prices can change in a matter of hours, usually in (false) connection to the price of crude on the New York markets. I’ve seen prices change by as much as 10% in minutes. That kind of instant price changing may be coming to your supermarket in the next short while. And you may have an app to tell you where milk is the least expensive.

I’m a huge fan of Radley Balko, who is one of our best journalists researching and writing on our criminal justice system. Usually, I read his substack. This time, he has an article in The Atlantic about his debunking of the uniqueness of human bite-marks (they’re not unique) and the way that pseudo-science has been used in prosecutions, rather badly. In this article, he’s discouraged at the way his work has been used to reverse-effects in Nevada, by the Supreme Court of that state. Sad stuff, but worth learning. (Link is to a PDF of the article; I’m a subscriber.)

It was only 2 days ago that I learned the (quasi-)mathematical expression “p(doom).” The expression stands for the “probability of doom” as Artificial Intelligence becomes becomes more capable and more ubiquitous. There’s no actual math or science involved (so far as I can tell). It’s simply a way to express how serious a threat AI is, and it’s thrown around rather loosely in the AI community. I got into the topic a bit throw this long article in The New Yorker, in which the author spends some time with those taking a very negative view and others who are strong proponents, even champions of, AI. (The link is to a PDF you can download.) Reading the article didn’t encourage me that the people developing AI really have a handle on the ethical implications of their work.

Judge Aileen Cannon, the federal judge overseeing the case of U.S. v. Trump in South Florida regarding DJT’s retention of classified documents has been pilloried by the left for being in the former president’s pocket and been overturned by DJT-appointed judges on appeal at least once. In short, she’s not seen as a particularly good judge by some and as deeply fraudulent by others. Someone pointed to this in-depth article that suggests something less: she’s not very experienced, this case is very difficult—in short, she’s not “evil” just in over her head.

Then there’s the growth of computer science degrees/programs/colleges within university structures. (See above on AI as one of the related issues.) As specialization has grown, so has the siloing of human knowledge and its teaching in higher education. Technological development in human history has always outpaced humanity’s ability to think well and carefully about the ethical implications of that new technology. This article (gift link) is one person’s take on the problem, as it currently exists. Business and medicine also share the same problem (and probably other fields do, too). I share the concern and don’t have much hope that, apart from disaster, we’ll do anything to work against the problem.

I’m a lifelong Paul Simon fan; my first two LP purchases were Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited and Simon & Garfunkel’s Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, & Thyme. If you’ve not had the opportunity, even if you’re only secondarily a Simon fan, you should watch/listen to his entire chat with Stephen Colbert, which ranges from music, to what makes a “good” song, to faith. It’s worth 30 minutes of your life. (Colbert is such a great interviewer, too!)

Many of us have long decried the abandonment of ethics when Evangelicals evaluate politicians. Russell Moore, in perhaps the most important article he has written to date, cogently pointed out the absurdity, the nihilism, the destruction that has come from Evangelicals’ embrace of DJT. Accurate and depressing.

Study after study has shown that children (and adults) learn better when they aren’t tied to electronic/digital things. We read better on paper; it’s just true. There are loud calls (though few if any are listening) to say that children also develop better as humans if they’re disconnected from electronics. A NY Times journalist based in Australia tells a personal story about the effect of sending his 13-year-old to a year’s worth of no-digital-gadgets school. (Gift link.) The article especially reminded me that, in the years I was dating my spouse, telephone was mostly too expensive (long distance telephone cost sums of money outside my reach); so I wrote many letters (by hand, of course).