Lunch at the Labs

Various web links I found to be of interest recently.

• Our Ancestors Thought We'd Build an Economic Paradise. Instead We Got 2022

  J. Bradford Delong

  My crude guess is that there has been as much proportional technological progress-useful ideas discovered, developed, deployed, and then diffused throughout the global economy-making humanity more productive in the 150-year span since 1870 as there were in the entire nearly 10,000-year span since the beginnings of the creation of agriculture around the year 8000.
  ...
  But the Neoliberal Order entrenched itself in the Global North. But it failed to deliver on its own promises.

  • The Neoliberal Order did not restore the rapid growth of prosperity by reinvigorating entrepreneurship-rather, growth slowed further as the cult of short-term financial results undermined the ability of businesses and governments to make long-term mutually-reinforcing common-prosperity investments.
  • The Neoliberal Order did not properly distribute prosperity to the deserving and their just deserts to the undeserving-instead, rent-seeking strengthened among the plutocracy, to which kleptocracy added itself.
  • The Neoliberal Order did not restore moral order and solidity to Global North society-things continued to fall apart and the center held less. and less.

  The only one of its promises the Neoliberal Order in the Global North fulfilled was to greatly increase inequality of income and wealth. It led to plutocracy, tinged with kleptocracy.

• Are Large Language Models Sentient?

  What we actually mean when we ask that question.

  This all strikes me as rather odd, mainly because the question of sentience is an unfalsifiable one. All the evidence in the world can't prove the presence or absence of it-making it a useless technical question to pose in the first place. It's fun for a philosophical faff at the ol' Parisian salon, sure, but not worthy of any serious energy. Especially not institutional energy.
  ...
  For the purposes of this discussion, we'll say sentience is the ability to "feel feelings". By that I mean the ability to have subjective experiences-or what philosophers might call "qualia".
  ...
  Our thought experiment with Mary showed us that the physics and the mental phenomena we experience are conceived as two separate things! Anything you learn about the physics and biology of how I tick won't tell you what I'm actually feeling underneath, or if I'm feeling anything at all.

• Fact Check: Rep. Rashida Tlaib Said Progressives Must Oppose Israeli Apartheid

  Recent claims that Tlaib insisted progressives must reject Israel's right to exist have been examined and found to be misinformation.

  To test these claims, The Intercept identified and reviewed the comments in question. According to a video of Tlaib's remarks at a Palestine Advocacy Day event, she made the following assertion: "I want you all to know that among progressives, it becomes clear that you cannot claim to hold progressive values yet back Israel's apartheid government."

  Tlaib does not say that in order to hold progressive values one must oppose Zionism or assert that Israel has no right to exist. The Intercept reached out to Greenblatt and Nadler for additional information that would support their claims but did not receive any.
  ...
  Tlaib explicitly refers to "Israel's apartheid government" in her remarks, making clear that it is the apartheid nature of the government that she stands in opposition to, not the idea of an Israeli state.

• Taibbi: The Washington Post Dabbles In Orwell

  Snowden is America's most famous revealer-of-secrets, and the way he's talked about has evolved to an extreme degree in less than a decade, showing how quickly a story about security overreach can be flipped into an argument for more vigilance. The press, which once worked with Snowden in its proper role as a bulwark against government excess, is effectively an arm of the state now, as is shown again in this absurd episode.

  This article began as an aggressive rewrite of history and the Post's own views, but underwent numerous alterations after it attracted criticism online yesterday.
  ...
  There was no reference to Clapper being inveigled in a perjury controversy for denying that fact, under oath. Asked on March 12, 2013 by Senator Ron Wyden, "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions, or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper responded, "No, sir. ... Not wittingly." A year later, we were still in a world where Politifact could rate an intelligence chief's words "false." That seems a lifetime ago, with Snowden in permanent exile and Clapper a paid TV analyst.

• The science of a wandering mind

  Around the same time, brain imaging techniques were developing, and they were telling neuroscientists that something happens in the brain even when it isn't occupied with a behavioral task. Large regions of the brain, now called the default mode network, did the opposite: If you gave people a task, the activity in these areas went down.
  ...
  The results, presented in these word clouds, suggest functions for each part of the network. The core: involved in thinking about oneself. The medial temporal lobe subsystem: thinking about things that happen, or episodic processes. The dorsal medial subsystem: thinking about social processes. These three aspects often come together during mind-wandering, Smallwood says.

• How Wearing a Mask Can Help Protect You Even If No One Else Wears One

  A modeling study published in the journal PNAS in December 2021 estimated a masked person's likelihood of getting sick after talking with an unmasked person who has COVID-19. Someone wearing a surgical mask had up to a 90% chance of getting infected after half an hour (even while seated about five feet apart from the sick person), while someone in a respirator (N95s and KN95s) had around a 20% chance after a full hour, the researchers estimated. If both the sick person and their companion wore respirators, the infection risk dropped to just 0.4% after an hour.

• Vitamin D won't protect you from Covid or respiratory infections, studies say

  Vitamin D supplements aren't likely to prevent an infection from Covid-19 or respiratory infections like colds or flu, even if your current levels of the vitamin are low, according to two new, large clinical trials.

  Also, Vitamin D, omega-3 won't prevent frailty, study warns healthy seniors.

• I Wish I Was a Little Bit Taller

  A growing number of men are undergoing a radical and expensive surgery to grow anywhere from three to six inches. The catch: It requires having both your femurs broken

• Mel Magazine

  A Men's lifestyle and culture magazine.